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Title: The Side Of The Angels
A Novel
Author: Basil King
Illustrator: Elizabeth Shippen Grimm
Release Date: October 20, 2009 [EBook #30301]
Language: English
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The Side of the Angels
A Novel
By BASIL KING
Author of "The Way Home," Etc.
With Frontispiece
By ELIZABETH SHIPPEN GREEN
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by Arrangement with Harper & Brothers
The Side of the Angels
Copyright, 1915, 1916, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published February, 1916
[Illustration: "I'M CLAUDE. DON'T YOU REMEMBER ME?"]
THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS
"_My lord, I am on the side of the angels._"--DISRAELI.
CHAPTER I
The difficulty was, in the first place, one of date--not the date of a
month or a year, but of a generation or a century. Had Thorley Masterman
found himself in love with Rosie Fay in 1760, or even in 1860, there
would have been little to adjust and nothing to gainsay. In 1860 the
Fays were still as good as the Thorleys, and almost as good as the
Mastermans. Going back as far as 1760, the Fays might have been
considered better than the Thorleys had the village acknowledged
standards of comparison, while there were no Mastermans at all. That is,
in 1760 the Mastermans still kept their status as yeomen, clergymen, and
country doctors among the hills of Derbyshire, untroubled as yet by that
spirit of unrest for conscience' sake which had urged the Fays and the
Thorleys out of the flat farmlands of East Anglia one hundred and thirty
years before.
During the intervening period the flat farmlands remained only as an
equalizing symbol. Thorleys, Fays, Willoughbys, and Brands worked for
one another with the community of interests developed in a beehive, and
intermarried. If from the process of intermarriage the Fays were, on the
whole, excluded, the discrimination lay in some obscure instinct for
affinity of which no one at the time was able to forecast the
significance.
But by 1910 there was a difference, the difference apparent when out of
the flat farmlands seismic explosion has thrown up a range of mountain
peaks. For the expansion of the country which the middle nineteenth
century had wrought, the Thorleys, Mastermans, Willoughbys, and Brands
had been on the alert, with eyes watchful and calculations timed. The
Fays, on the other hand, had gone on with the round of seed-time and
harvest, contented and almost somnolent, awakening to find that the ages
had been giving them the chances that would never come again. It was
across the wreck of those chances, and across some other obstacles
besides, that Thorley Masterman, for the first time since childhood,
looked into the gray-green eyes of Rosie Fay and got the thrill of their
wide-open, earnest beauty.
He was then not far from thirty years of age, having studied at a great
American university, in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, and obtained other
sorts of knowledge of mankind. He knew Rosie Fay, in this secondary,
grown-up phase of their acquaintance, as the daughter of his first
patient, and he had obtained his first patient through the kindly
intervention of Uncle Sim. From February to November, 1910, his
"shingle" had hung in one of the two streets of the village without
attracting a patient at all. He had already begun to feel his position a
trial when his half-brother's daily jest turned it into a humiliation.
"Must be serious matter, Thor," Claude would say, "to be responsible for
so many valuable lives."
Mr. Leonard Willoughby, his father's partner in the old
"banking-and-broking" house of Toogood & Masterman, enjoyed the same
sort of chaff. "Looking pale, Thor. Must be working too hard."
"Never mind, Thor," Mrs. Willoughby would encourage him. "When I'm ill
you shall get me--but then I'm never ill."
At such minutes her daughter Lois could only smile sympathetically and
talk hurriedly of something else. As he had meant since boyhood to marry
Lois Willoughby when the moment for marriage came, Thor counted this
tactfulness in her favor.
Nevertheless, he was puzzled. Having disregarded his future possession
of money and prepared himself for a useful career with all the
thoroughness he could command, nobody seemed to want him. It was not
that the village was over-provided with doctors. Every one admitted that
it wasn't--otherwise he would not have settled in his native place. The
village being really a township with a scattered population--except on
the Thorley estate, which was practically part of a great New England
city, where there were rows of suburban streets--it was quite
insufficiently served by Dr. Noonan at one end and Dr. Hill at the
other, for Uncle Sim in the Old Village could scarcely be said to count.
No; the opening was good enough. The trouble lay, apparently, in Thorley
Masterman himself. Making all allowances for the fact that a young
physician must wait patiently, and win his position by degrees, he had
reason to feel chagrined. He grew ashamed to pass the little house in
the Old Village which he had fitted up as an office. He grew ashamed to
go out in his runabout.
The runabout had been worse than an extravagance, since, on the ground
that it would take him to his patients the more quickly, he had felt
justified in borrowing its price. The most useful purpose it served now
was to bring Mr. Willoughby home from town when unfit to come by
himself. Otherwise its owner hated taking it out of the garage,
especially if Claude were in sight. Claude had envied him the runabout
at first, but soon found a way to work his feeling off.
"Anybody dying, old chap?" he would ask, with a curl of his handsome
lip. "Hope you'll get to him in time."
It was while in the runabout, however, in the early part of a November
afternoon, that the young doctor met his uncle Sim.
"Hello, Thor!" the latter called. "Where you off to? Was looking for
you."
Thor brought the machine to a standstill. Uncle Sim threw a long, thin
leg over his mare's back and was on the ground. "Whoa, Delia, whoa! Good
old girl!"
He liked to believe that the tall bay was spirited. Standing beside
Thor's runabout, he held the reins loosely in his left hand, while the
right arm was thrown caressingly over Delia's neck. The outward and
visible sign of his eccentricity was in his difference from every one
else. In a community--one might say a country--in which each man did his
utmost to look like every other man, the fact that Simeon Masterman was
willing to look like no one but himself was sufficient to prove him, in
the language of his neighbors, "a little off." It was sometimes said
that he suggested Don Quixote--he was so tall, so gaunt, and so
eager-eyed--and, except that there was no melancholy in his face,
perhaps he did.
"Got a job for you." The old man's voice was nasal and harsh without
being disagreeable.
Grown sensitive, Thor was on his guard. "Not one of your jobs that are
given away with a pound of tea?" he said, suspiciously.
"I don't know about the pound of tea--but it's given away. Giving it
away because I can't deal with it myself. Calls for some one with more
ingenuity--so I've told 'em about you."
Thor laughed. "Don't wonder you're willing to give it up, Uncle Sim."
"You'll wonder still less when you've seen the patient. By the way, it's
Fay's wife. 'Member old Fay, don't you?"
The young man nodded. "Used to be Grandpa Thorley's gardener. Has the
greenhouses on father's land north of the pond. Some sort of row going
on between him and father now. What's she got?"
"It's not what she's got, poor woman; it's what she hasn't got. That's
what's the matter with her."
"I'm afraid it's a variety of symptom I never heard of."
"No; but you'll hear of it soon. Whoa, Delia! Steady! Good girl! If you
can treat it you'll be the most distinguished specialist in the country.
Whoa, Delia! I'm giving you the chance to begin."
Thor wondered what was at the back of the old fellow's mind. There was
generally something in what he said if you could think it out. "Since
you've diagnosed the case, Uncle Sim--" he began, craftily.
"Can't I give you a tip for the treatment? No, I can't. And it wouldn't
do any good if I did, because she won't take my medicine."
"Perhaps I could make her."
The old man laughed harshly. "You! That's good. Why, you'd be the first
to make game of it yourself."
He had his left foot in the stirrup and his right leg over Delia's back
before Thor could formulate another question. As with head thrown back
he continued his amused chuckling, there was about him, in spite of his
sixty years, a something irresponsible and debonair that would have
pleased Franz Hals or Simon de Vos.
* * * * *
Within ten minutes Thor was knocking at the door of a small house with a
mansard roof, situated in what had once been the apple-orchard of a
farm. All but a sparse half-dozen of the trees had given place to lines
of hothouses, through the glass of which he could see oblongs of vivid
green. He was so preoccupied with the fact of paying his first visit to
his first patient as scarcely to notice that the girl who opened the
door was pretty. He almost ignored her.
"How do you do, Miss Fay? I'm Dr. Thorley Masterman. I believe your
mother would like to see me. May I go to her at once?"
He was in the narrow hallway and at the foot of the stairs when she
said: "You can go right up. But perhaps I ought to tell you that she's
not--well, she's not very sick."
He looked at her inquiringly, getting the first faint impression of her
beauty. "What's the matter, then?"
"That's what we don't know." After a second's hesitation she added,
"Perhaps it's melancholy." Another second passed before she said, "We've
had a good deal of trouble."
The tone touched him. Her way of holding her head, rather meekly, rather
proudly, sufficiently averted to give him the curve of the cheek,
touched him, too. "What kind of trouble?"
"Oh, every kind. But she'll tell you about it herself. It's all she'll
talk about. That's why we can't do anything for her--and I don't believe
you can."
"I'd better see."
Following her directions given from the foot of the stairs, he entered a
barely furnished bedroom of which two sides leaned inward, to correspond
to the mansard grading of the roof. One window looked out on the
greenhouses, another toward Thorley's Pond. Beside the former, in a
high, upholstered arm-chair, sat a tall woman, fully dressed in black,
with a patchwork quilt of many colors across her knees. In spite of gray
hair slightly disheveled, and wild gray eyes, she was a handsome woman
who on a larger scale made him think of the girl down-stairs.
"How do you do, Mrs. Fay?" he began, feeling the burden of the situation
to be on himself. "I'm Dr. Thor--"
"I know who you are," the woman said, ungraciously. "If you hadn't been
a Masterman I shouldn't have sent for you."
He took a small chair, drawing it up beside her. "I know you've been
treated by my uncle Sim--"
"He's a fool. Tries to heal a broken heart by feeding it on rainbows."
Thor smiled. "That's like him. And yet rainbows have been known to heal
a broken heart before now."
"They won't heal mine. What I want is down on the solid earth." There
was a kind of desperate pleading in her face as she added, "Why can't I
have it?"
"That depends on what it is. If it's health--?"
"It's better than health."
He smiled. "I've always heard that health is pretty good, as things
go--"
"It's good enough. But there's something better, and that's patience. If
you've got patience you can do without health."
"I don't think you're much in need of a doctor, Mrs. Fay," he laughed.
"I am," she declared, savagely. "I am, because I 'ain't got either of
'em; and if I had I'd give them both for something else." She held him
with her wild gray eyes, as she said: "I'd give 'em both for money.
Money's better than patience and better than health. If I had money I
shouldn't care how sick I was, or how unhappy. If I had money my son
wouldn't be in jail."
Though startled, he knew that, like a confessor, he must show no sign of
surprise. He remembered now that there had been a boy in the Fay family,
two or three years younger than himself. "I didn't know--" he began,
sympathetically.
"You didn't know, because we're not even talked about. If your brother
was in jail for stealing money it's the first thing the town would
tattle of. But you've been back from your travels for a year or more,
and you 'ain't even heard that our Matt is doing three years at
Colcord."
"But you'd rather people didn't hear it, wouldn't you?"
"I'd rather that they'd care whether I'm alive or dead," she said,
fiercely. "I've lived all my life in this village, and my ancestors
before me. Fay's family has done the same. But we're pushed aside and
forgotten. It's as much as ever if some one will tell you that Jasper
Fay raises lettuce in the winter, and cucumbers in spring, and a few
flowers all the year round, and can't pay his rent. I don't believe
you've heard that much. _Have_ you?"
He dodged the subject by asking the usual professional questions and
giving some elementary professional advice. "I'm afraid, Mrs. Fay,
you're taking a discouraged view of life," he went on, by way of doing
his duty.
She sat still more erect in her arm-chair, her eyes flashing. "If you'd
seen yourself driven to the wall for more'n thirty year, and if when you
got to the wall you were crushed against it, and crushed again, wouldn't
you take a discouraged view of life? I've lived on bread and water, or
pretty near it, ever since I was married, and what's come of it? We're
worse off than we ever were. Fay's put everything he could scrape
together into this bit of land, and now your father is shilly-shallying
again about renewing the lease."
"Oh, so that's it!"
"That's it--but it's only some of it. Look out there. All Fay's sweat
and blood and all of mine is in those greenhouses and that ground. It's
everything we've got to live on, and God knows what kind of a living it
is. Your father has never given us more'n a three years' lease, and
every three years he's raised the rent on us. He's had us in his power
from the first--Oh, he's crafty, getting us to rent the land from him
instead of buying it, and Fay that soft that he believed him to be his
friend!--he's had us in his power from the first, and he's never spared
us. No wonder he's rich! And you're coming in for that Thorley money,
too. I know what your grandfather Thorley's will was. Going to get it
when you're thirty. Must be pretty nigh that now, ain't you?"
To humor her Thor named the date in the following February when he
should reach the age fixed by his grandfather for entering on the
inheritance.
"What'd I tell you? I remember your grandfather as plain as plain. Big,
hard-faced man he was, something like you. My folks could remember him
when he hawked garden-trucks to back doors in the city. Nothing but a
farmer's son he was, just like the rest of us--and he died rich. Only
difference between the Thorleys and the Fays was that the Thorleys held
on to their land and the Fays didn't. Neither did my folks, the
Grimeses. If we'd been crafty and hadn't sold till the city was creeping
down our chimneys like the Thorleys and the Brands, we should be as rich
as them. Cut your father out of his will good and hard, your grandfather
did, and now it'll all come to you. Why, there was a time when the
Thorleys hired out to my folks, and so did the Willoughbys! And now--!"
She threw the quilt from off her knees and spread her hands outward.
"Oh, I'm sick of it! I've spent my life watching every one else go up
and me and mine go down--and I'm sick of it. I'm not sick any other
way--"
"No, I don't think you are," he said, gently.
"But that's bad enough, isn't it? If I had a fever or a cold you could
give me something to take it away. But what can you do for the state of
mind I'm in?"
He answered, slowly, "I can't do much just yet--though I can do a
little--but by and by, perhaps--when I know more exactly what the
trouble is--"
"You can't know it better than I can tell you now. It's just this--that
I've all I can do to keep from stealing down to Thorley's Pond, when no
one's looking, and throwing myself in. What do you think of that?"
"I think you won't do it," he smiled, "but I wouldn't play with the idea
if I were you."
"Look here," she cried, seizing him by the arm and pulling him out of
his chair. "Look out of that window." He followed the pointing of her
finger to a high bluff covered with oaks, to which the withered brown
foliage still clung, though other trees were bare. "That's Duck Rock.
Well, there's a spot there where the water's thirty foot deep. What do
you think of that?"
He moved back from the window, but remained standing. "I think that it
doesn't matter to you and me whether it's thirty foot deep or sixty or a
hundred."
"It matters to me. In thirty foot of water I'd go down like a stone; and
then it'd be all over. After that nothing but--sleep." Her eyes held him
again. "_You_ don't believe there'll be anything after it but sleep, do
you?"
He dodged that question, too. "But you do."
"I was brought up an orthodox Congregational--but what's the good? All
I've ever got out of it was rainbows; and what I've wanted is solid.
I've wanted to do something, and be something, and have something--and
not be pushed back and trampled out of sight by people who used to hire
out to my folks and can treat me like dirt to-day, just because they've
got the money. Why haven't I got it, too? I'm fit for it. I had good
schooling. Louisa Thorley--your own mother, that is--and me went to
school together. Your father ran away with her and she died when you
were born. We went to school to old Miss Brand--aunt to Bessie Brand
that's now Bessie Willoughby and holds her head so high. Poor as church
mice they was in those days. But then every one was poor. We was all
poor together--and happy. And now some are poor and some are rich--and
there's upper classes and lower classes--and everything's got
uneven--and I'm sick of it."
To calm her excitement he talked to her with the inspiration of young
earnestness, getting his reward in an attention accorded perhaps for the
very reason that the earnestness was young. "I think I must run off
now," he finished, when he thought her slightly comforted, "but I'll
send you something I want you to take at once. You'll take a
tablespoonful in half a glass of water--"
The rebellious spirit revived, though less bitterly. "And it'll do me as
much good as a dose of your uncle's rainbows. What I want is what I
shall never get--or sleep."
"Well, you'll get sleep," he said, smiling and holding out his hand.
"You'll sleep to-night--and I'll come again to-morrow."
He was at the door when she called out: "Do you know what our Matt got
his three years for? It was for stealing money from Massy's
grocery-store, where he was bookkeeper. And do you know what made him
steal it? It was to help us pay the rent the last time your father
raised it. I'll bet he's done worse than that twenty times a year; but
he's driving round in automobiles, while my poor boy's in Colcord."
CHAPTER II
On going down-stairs, Thor looked about him for Rosie Fay. She was
nowhere to be seen, and the house was cheerless. He could imagine that
to an ambitious woman circumscribed by its dreary neatness Duck Rock
with its thirty feet of water might be a welcome change.
Continuing his search when he went outside, he gazed round what was left
of the old orchard. He remembered Fay--a slim fellow with a gentle,
dreamy face and starry eyes. He had seen him occasionally during the
past eighteen years, though rarely. As a matter of fact, Fay's
greenhouses lay on that part of the shore of Thorley's Pond most out of
the way of the pedestrian. Only of late had new roads wormed themselves
up the steep northern bank of the pond, bringing from the city
well-to-do, country-loving souls who desired space and sunshine. It was
a satisfaction to Thor's father, Archie Masterman, that only the best
type of suburban residence was going up among these sylvan glades, and
that the property was justifying his foresight as an investor.
The young man could understand that it should be so, for the spot was
picturesque. Sheltered from the north by a range of wooded hills, it was
like a great green cup held out to the sunshine. The region was
favorable, therefore, to the raising of early "garden-truck." Whenever
the frost was out of the ground, oblongs of green things growing in
straight lines gave a special freshness to the landscape, while from any
of the knolls over which the township clambered clusters of greenhouses
glinted like distant sheets of water. One had to get them in contrast to
the sparkling blue eye of Thorley's Pond to perceive that they were not
tiny lakes. With so pleasing a view, hemmed in by the haze of the city
toward the south, and a hint of the Atlantic south of that, there was
every reason why Fay's plot of land should appreciate in value.
On these grounds it became comprehensible to Thor that his father might
raise the rent and still not be an instrument of oppression. It was
consoling to him to perceive this. It helped to allay certain
uncomfortable suspicions that had risen in his mind since coming home,
and which were not easy to dispel.
He caught sight at last of Rosie's dull-green frock in the one hothouse
in which there were flowers. Through the glass roof he could see the red
disks of poinsettias and the crimson or white of azaleas coming into
bloom. The other two houses sheltered long, level rectangles of tender
green, representing lettuce in different stages of the crop. A
bow-legged Italian was closing the skylights that had been opened for
the milder part of the day; another Italian replaced the covers on
hot-beds that might have contained violets. From the high furnace
chimney a plume of yellow-brown smoke floated heavily on the windless
air. The place looked undermanned and forlorn.
On opening the door he was met by the sweet, warm odor of damp earth and
green things growing and blossoming. Pausing in her work, the girl
looked down the half-length of the greenhouse as a hint for him to
advance. He went toward her between feathery banks of gray-green
carnations, on which the long, oval, compact buds were loosening their
sheaths to display the dawn-pink within. Half covered up by a coarse
apron or pinafore, she stood at a high table, like a counter, against a
background of poinsettias.
"We don't go in for flowers, really," she explained to him, after he had
given her certain directions concerning her mother. "It would be better
if we didn't try to raise them at all."
Thor, whose ear was sensitive, noticed that her voice was pleasant to
listen to, and her speech marked by a simple, unaffected refinement. He
lingered because he was interested in her work. He found a kind of
fascination in watching her as she took a moist red flower-pot from one
end of the table, threw in a handful or two of earth from the heap at
the other end, then a root that looked like a cluster of yellow,
crescent-shaped onions, then a little more earth, after which she turned
to place the flower-pot as one of the row on the floor behind her. There
was something rhythmic in her movements. Each detail took the same
amount of action and time. She might have been working to music. Her
left hand made precisely the same gesture with each flower-pot she took
from the line in which they lay telescoped together. Her right hand
described the same graceful curve with every impatient, petulant handful
of earth.
"Why do you raise them, then?" he asked, for the sake of saying
something.
She answered, wearily: "Oh, it's father. He can't make up his mind what
to do. Or, rather, he makes up his mind both ways at once. Because some
people make a good thing out of raising flowers he thinks he'll do that.
And because others do a big business in garden-stuff, he thinks he'll do
that."
"And so he falls between two stools. I see."
"It's no use being a market-gardener," she went on, disdainfully tossing
the earth into another pot, "unless you're a big market-gardener, and
it's no use being a florist unless you're a big florist. Everything has
to be big nowadays to make it pay. And the trouble with father is that
he does so many things small. He sees big," she analyzed, continuing her
work--"so big that he goes all to pieces when he tries to carry his
ideas out."
"And you think that if he concentrated his forces on raising
garden-stuff--"
She explained further: People had to have lettuce and radishes and
carrots and cucumbers whatever happened, whereas flowers were a luxury.
Whenever money was scarce they didn't buy them. If it were not for
weddings and funerals and Christmas and Easter they wouldn't buy them at
all. Then, too, they were expensive to raise, and difficult. You
couldn't do it by casting a little seed into the ground. Every azalea
was imported from Belgium; every lily-bulb from Japan. True, the
carnations were grown from slips, but if he only knew the trouble they
gave! Those at which he was looking, and which had the innocent air of
springing and blooming of their own accord, had been through no less
than four tedious processes since the slips were taken in the preceding
February. First they had been planted in sand for the root to strike;
then transferred to flats, or shallow wooden boxes; then bedded out in
the garden; and lastly brought into the house. If he would only consider
the labor involved in all that, to say nothing of the incessant watching
and watering, and keeping the house at the proper temperature by night
and by day--well, he could see for himself.
He did see for himself. He said so absently, because he was noting the
fact that her serious, earnest eyes were of the peculiar shade which,
when seen in eyes, is called green. It was still absently that he added,
"And you have to work pretty hard."
She shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, I don't mind that. Anything to live."
"What are you doing there?"
There was an exasperated note in her voice as she replied: "Oh, these
are the Easter lilies. We have to begin on them now."
"And do you do them all?"
"I do, when there's no one else. Father's men keep leaving." She flung
him a look he would have thought defiant if he hadn't found it frank. "I
don't blame them. Half the time they're not paid."
"I see. So that you fill in. Do you like it?"
"Would you like doing what isn't of any use?--what will never be of any
use? Would you like to be always running as hard as you can, just to
fall out of the race?"
He tried to smile. "I shouldn't like it for long."
"Well, there's that," she said, as though he had suggested a form of
consolation. "It won't be for long. It can't be. Father won't be able to
go on like this."
He decided to take the bull by the horns. "Is that because my father
doesn't want to renew the lease?"
She shrugged her shoulders again. "Oh no, not particularly. It _is_
that--and everything else."
He felt it the part of tact to make signs of going, uttering a few
parting injunctions with regard to the mother as he did so.
"And I wouldn't leave her too much alone," he advised. "She could easily
slip out without attracting any one's attention. Tell your father I said
so. I suppose he's not in the house."
"He's off somewhere trying to engage a night fireman."
He ignored this information to emphasize his counsels. "It's most
important that while she's in this state of mind some one should be with
her. And if we knew of anything she'd specially like--"
She continued to work industriously. "The thing she'd like best in this
world won't do her any good when it happens." She threw in a bulb with
impetuous vehemence. "It's to have Matt out of jail. He will be out in
the course of a few months. But he'll be--a jail-bird."
"We must try to help him live that down."
She turned her great greenish eyes on him again with that look which
struck him as both frank and pitiful. "That's one of the things people
in our position can't do. It's the first thing mother herself will think
of when she sees Matt hanging about the house--for he'll never get a
job."
"He can help your father. He can be the night fireman."
She shrugged her shoulders with the fatalistic movement he was beginning
to recognize. "Father won't need a night fireman by that time."
He could only say: "All the same, your mother must be watched. She can't
be allowed to throw herself from Duck Rock, now, can she?"
"I don't say allowed. But if she did--"
"Well, what then?"
"She'd be out of it. That would be something."
"Admitting that it would be something for her, what would it be for your
father and you?"
She relaxed the energy of her hands. He had time to notice them. It hurt
him to see anything so shapely coarsened with hard work. "Wouldn't it be
that much?" she asked, as if reaching a conclusion. "If she were out of
it, it would be a gain all round."
Never having heard a human being speak like this, he was shocked. "But
everything can't be so black. There must be something somewhere."
She glanced up at him obliquely. Months afterward he recalled the look.
Her tone, when she spoke, seemed to be throwing him a challenge as well
as making an admission. "Well, there is--one thing."
He spoke triumphantly. "Ah, there _is_ one thing, then?"
"Yes, but it may not happen."
"Oh, lots of things may not happen. We just have to hope they will.
That's all we've got to live by."
There was a lovely solemnity about her. "And even if it did happen, so
many people would be opposed to it that I'm not sure it would do any
good, after all."
"Oh, but we won't think of the people who'd be opposed to it--"
"We should have to, because"--the sweet fixity of her gaze gave him an
odd thrill--"because you'd be one."
He laughed as he held out his hand to say good-by. "Don't be too sure.
And in any case it won't matter about me."
She declined to take his hand on the ground that her own was soiled with
loam, but she mystified him slightly when she said: "It will matter
about you; and if the thing ever happens I want you to remember that I
told you so. I can't play fair; but I'll play as fair as I can."
CHAPTER III
Thor was deaf to these enigmatic words in the excitement of perceiving
that the girl had beauty. The discovery gave him a new sort of pleasure
as he turned his runabout toward the town. Beauty had not hitherto been
a condition to which he attached great value. If anything, he had held
it in some scorn. Now, for the first time in his emotional life, he was
stirred by a girl's mere prettiness--a quite unusual prettiness, it had
to be admitted; a slightly haggard prettiness, perhaps; a prettiness a
little worn by work, a little coarsened by wind and weather; a
prettiness too desperate for youth and too tragic for coquetry, but for
those very reasons doubtless all the more haunting. He was obliged to
remind himself that it was nothing to him, since he had never swerved
from the intention to marry Lois Willoughby as soon as he had made a
start in practice and come into the money he was to get at thirty; but
he could see it was the sort of thing by which other men might be
affected, and came to a mental standstill there.
Driving on into the city, he went straight to his father's office in
Commonwealth Row. It was already after four o'clock, and except for two
young men sorting checks and putting away ledgers, the cagelike
divisions of the banking department were empty. One of the men was
whistling; the other was calling in a loud, gay voice, "Say, Cheever,
what about to-night?"--signs that the enforced decorum of the day was
past.
Claude was in the outer office reserved for customers. He wore his
overcoat, hat, and gloves. A stick hung over his left arm by its crooked
handle. The ticker was silent, but a portion of the tape fluttered
between his gloved fingers.
Though his back was toward the door, he recognized his half-brother's
step with that mixture of envy and irritation which Thor's presence
always stirred in him. He was not without fraternal affection,
especially when Thor was away; when he was at home it was difficult for
Claude not to resent the elder's superiority. Claude called it
superiority for want of a better word, though he meant no more than a
combination of advantages he himself would have enjoyed. He meant Thor's
prospective money, his good spirits, good temper, and good health.
Claude had not good health, which excused, in his judgment, his lack of
good spirits and good temper. Neither had Claude any money beyond the
fifteen hundred dollars a year he earned in his father's office. He was
in the habit of saying to himself, and in confidence to his friends,
that it was "damned hard luck" that he should be compelled to live on a
pittance like that, when Thor, within a few months, would come into a
good thirty thousand a year.
It was some consolation that Thor was what his brother called "an ugly
beast"--sallow and lantern-jawed, with a long, narrow head that looked
as if it had been sat on. The eyes were not bad; that had to be
admitted; they were as friendly as a welcoming light; but the mouth was
so big and aggressive that even the mustache Thor was trying to grow
couldn't subdue its boldness. As for the nose and chin, they
looked--according to Claude's account--as if they had been created soft,
and subjected to a system of grotesque elongation before hardening.
Claude could the more safely make game of his brother's looks seeing
that he himself was notably handsome, with traits as regular as if they
had been carved, and a profile so exact that it was frequently exposed
in photographers' windows, to the envy of gentlemen gazers. While Thor
had once tried to mitigate his features by a beard that had been
unsuccessful and had now disappeared, Claude wouldn't disfigure himself
by a hair. He was as clean-shaven as a marble Apollo, and not less
neatly limbed.
"Gone." Claude raised his eyes just long enough to utter the word.
Thor came to an abrupt stop. "Club?"
"Suppose so." He added, without raising his head, "Wish to God the
drunken sot would stay there." He continued, while still apparently
reading the tape in his hand, "Father wishes it, too."
Thor was not altogether taken by surprise. Ever since his return from
Europe, a year earlier, he had wondered how his father's patience could
hold out. He took it that there was a reason for it, a reason he at once
expressed to Claude:
"Father can't wish it. He can't afford to."
Claude lifted his handsome, rather insolent face. "Why not?"
"For the simple reason that he's got his money."
"Much you know about it. Len Willoughby hasn't enough money left in
Toogood & Masterman's to take him on a trip to Europe."
Thor backed toward the receiving-teller's wicket, where he rested the
tips of his elbows on the counter. He was visibly perturbed. "What's
become of it, then?"
"Don't ask me. All I know is what I'm telling you."
"Did father say so himself?"
"Not in so many words. But I know it." He tossed the tape from him and
began to smooth his gloves. "Father means to ship him."
"Ship him? He can't do that."
"Can't? I should like to know why not."
"Because he can't. That's why. Because he has--"
"Yes? Cough it up. Speak as if you had something up your sleeve."
Thor reflected as to the wisdom of saying more. "Well, I have," he
admitted. "It's something I remember from the time we were kids. You
were too young to notice. But _I_ noticed--and I haven't forgotten.
Father can't ship Len Willoughby without being sure he has enough to
live on." He decided to speak out, if for no other reason than that of
securing Claude's co-operation. "Father persuaded Mr. Willoughby to put
Mrs. Willoughby's money into the business when he didn't want to."
"Ah, shucks!" Claude exclaimed, contemptuously.
"He did," Thor insisted. "It was back in 1892, in Paris, that first time
they took us abroad. You were only nine and I was twelve. I heard them.
I was hanging round one evening in that little hotel we stayed at in the
rue de Rivoli--the Hôtel de Marsan, wasn't it? The Willoughbys had been
living in Paris for five or six years, and father got them to come home.
I heard him ask mother to talk it up with Mrs. Willoughby. Mother said
she didn't want to, but father got round her, and she agreed to try. She
said, too, that Bessie might be willing because Len had already begun to
take too much and it would brace him up if he got work to do."
"Work!" Claude sniffed. "Him!"
"Father knew he couldn't work--knew he'd tried all sorts of
things--first to be an artist, then to write, then to get into the
consular service, and the Lord knows what. It wasn't his work that
father was after. It was just when the Toogood estate withdrew old Mr.
Toogood's money, and father had to have more capital."
"Well, Len Willoughby didn't have any."
"No; but his wife had. It came to the same thing. Suppose she must have
had between three and four hundred thousand from old man Brand. I
remember hearing father say to mother that Len was making ducks and
drakes of it as fast as he could, and that it might as well help the
firm of Toogood & Masterman as go to the deuce. Can still hear father
feeding the poor fool with bluff about the great banker he'd make and
how it was the dead loss of a fortune that he hadn't had a seat on the
Stock Exchange years before."
Claude sniffed again. "You'd better carry your load to father himself."
"I will--if I have to." Before Claude had found a rejoinder, Thor went
on, changing the subject abruptly, so as not to be led into being
indiscreet, "Say, Claude, do you remember Fay, the gardener?"
Claude was still smoothing his gloves, but he stopped, with the thumb
and fingers of his right hand grasping the middle finger of the left.
More than ever his features suggested a marble stoniness. "No."
"Oh, but you must. Used to be Grandpa Thorley's gardener. Has the
greenhouses on father's land north of the pond."
Claude recovered himself slightly. "Well, what about him?"
"Been to see his wife. Patient of Uncle Sim's. Turned her on to me.
They're having the deuce of a time."
Claude recovered himself still more. He looked at his brother curiously.
"Well, what's it got to do with me?"
"Nothing directly."
"Well, then--indirectly?" Claude asked, defiantly.
"Only this, that it has to do with both of us, since it concerns
father."
Claude was by this time master of himself. "Look here, Thor. Are you
getting a bee in your bonnet about father?"
"Good Lord! no. But father's immersed in business. He can't be expected
to know how all the details of his policy work out. He's not young any
longer, and he isn't in touch with modern social and economic ideas."
"Oh, stow the modern social and economic ideas, and let's get to
business. What's up with this family--of--of--What-d'you-call-'ems?"
With his feet planted firmly apart, Claude swung his stick airily back
and forth across the front of his person, though he listened with
apparent attention.
"You know, Thor, as a matter of fact," he explained, when the latter had
finished his account, "that the kindest thing father can do for Fay is
to let him peter out. Fay thinks that father and the lease are the
obstacle he's up against, when in reality it's the whole thing."
"Oh, so you do know about it?"
Claude saw his mistake, and righted himself quickly. "Y-yes. Now that
you--you speak of it, I--I do. It comes--a--back to me. I've heard
father mention it."
"And what did father say?"
"Just what I'm telling you. That the lease isn't the chief factor in
Fay's troubles--isn't really a factor at all. Poor old fellow's a
dunderhead. That's where it is in a nutshell. Never could make a living.
Never will. Remember him?"
"Vaguely. Haven't seen him for years."
"Well, when you do see him you'll understand. Nice old chap as ever
lived. Only impractical, dreamy. Gentle as a sheep--and no more capable
of running that big, expensive plant than a motherly old ewe. That's
where the trouble is. When father's closed down on him and edged him
out--quietly, you understand--it'll be the best thing that ever happened
to them all."
Thor reflected. "I see that you know more about it than you thought. You
know all about it."
Again Claude caught himself up, shifting his position adroitly. "Oh no,
I don't. Just what I've heard father say. When you spoke of it at first
the name slipped my memory."
Thor reverted to the original theme. "The son's in jail. Did you know
that?"
But Claude was again on his guard. "Oh, so there's a son?"
"Son about your age. Matt his name is. Surely you must recall him. Used
to pick pease with us when Fay'd let us do it."
Claude shook his head silently.
"And there's a girl."
Claude's stick hung limply before him. His face and figure resumed their
stony immobility. "Oh, is there? Plain?"
"No; pretty. Very pretty. Very unusually pretty. Come to think of it, I
shouldn't mind saying--Yes, I will say it! She's the prettiest girl I've
ever seen." The eyes of the two brothers met. "Bar none."
The smile on Claude's lips might have passed for an expression of
brotherly chaff. "Go it, old chap. Seem smitten."
"Oh, it isn't that. Nothing of the sort at all. I speak of her only
because I'm sorry for her. Brunt of whole thing comes on her."
"Well, what do you propose that we should do?"
"I haven't got as far as proposing. Haven't thought the thing out at
all. But I think we ought to do something--you and I."
"We can't do anything without father--and father won't. He simply won't.
Fay'll have to go. Good thing, too; that's what I say. Get 'em all on a
basis on which they can manage. Fay'll find a job with one of the other
growers--"
"Yes; but what's to become of the girl?"
Claude stared with a kind of bravado. "How the devil do I know? She'll
do the best she can, I suppose. Go into a shop. Lots of girls go into
shops."
Thor studied his brother with mild curiosity. "You're a queer fellow,
Claude. A minute ago you couldn't remember Fay's name; and now you've
got his whole business at your fingers' ends."
But Claude repeated his explanation. "Got father's business at my
fingers' ends, if that's what you mean. In such big affairs chap like
Fay only a detail. Couldn't recall him at first, but once I'd caught on
to him--"
By moving away toward the inner office, where Cheever was still at work,
Claude intimated that, as far as he was concerned, the conversation was
ended. Thor returned to his runabout.
"Say, Claude," Cheever called, "comin' to see 'The Champion' to-night,
ain't you? Countin' on you."
Claude laid a friendly hand on Cheever's arm. He liked to be on easy
terms with his father's clerks. "Awfully sorry, Billy, but you must
excuse me. Fact is, that damn-fool brother of mine has been putting his
finger in my pie. Got to do something to get it out--and do it quick.
Awfully sorry. Sha'n't be free."
CHAPTER IV
Beside his favorite window at the club, commanding the movement of the
street and the bare trees of the park, Len Willoughby had got together
the essentials to a pleasant hour. They consisted of the French and
English illustrated papers, two or three excellent Havanas, a bottle of
Scotch whisky, and a siphon of aerated water. On the table beside him
there was also an empty glass that had contained a cocktail.
It was the consoling moment of the day. After the strain of a
nine-o'clock breakfast and the rush to the city before eleven, after the
hours of purposeless hanging about the office of Toogood & Masterman,
where he could see he wasn't wanted, he found it restful to retire into
his own corner and sink drowsily into his cups. He did sink into them
drowsily, and yet through well-marked phases of excitement. He knew
those phases now; he could tell in advance how each stage would pass
into another.
There was first the comfort of the big chair and the friendly covers of
_L'Illustration_ and the _Graphic_. He didn't care to talk. He liked to
be let alone. When he came from the office he was generally dispirited.
Masterman's queer, contemptuous manner was enough to discourage any one.
He was sure, too, that Claude and Billy Cheever ridiculed his big, fat
figure behind his back. But once he sank into the deep, red-leather
arm-chair he was safe. It was ridiculous that a man of his age should
come to recognize the advantages of such a refuge, but he laid it to the
charge of a mean and spiteful world.
The world did not cease to be mean and spiteful till after he had had
his cocktail. It was wonderful the change that took place then--not
suddenly, but with a sweet, slow, cheering inner transformation. It was
a surging, a glowing, a mellowing. It was like the readjustment of the
eyes of the soul. It was seeing the world as generous, kindly. It was
growing generous and kindly himself, with the happy conviction that more
remained to be got out of life than he had ever wrung from it.
Still, it was something to be a rich banker. Every one couldn't be that.
Archie Masterman had certainly possessed a quick eye when he singled out
Len Willoughby as the man who could put the firm of Toogood & Masterman
on its feet. Three hundred thousand dollars of Bessie's money had gone
into that business in 1892, just in time to profit by the panic of 1893.
Lord, how they had bought!--gilt-edged stocks for next to nothing!--and
how they had sold, a few years later! Len never knew how much money they
made. He supposed Archie didn't, either. There were years when the Stock
Exchange had been like a wheat-field, yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold
and a hundredfold for every seed they had sown. He had never attempted
to keep a tally on what came in; it was sufficient to know that there
was always plenty to take out. Besides, it had been an understanding
from the first that Archie was to do the drudgery. Len liked this,
because it left him free--free for summers in Europe and winters in
Egypt or at Palm Beach.
By degrees reminiscence tended toward somnolence. And yet it couldn't be
said that Len slept. He kept sufficiently awake to put out his hand from
time to time and seize the tumbler. He could even brew himself another
glass. If a brother clubman strolled near enough to say, "Hello, Len!"
or, "Hello, Willoughby!" he could respond with a dull, "Hello, Tom!" or,
"Hello, Jones!" But he spoke as out of a depth; he spoke with some of
that weariness at being called back to life which Rembrandt depicts on
the face of Lazarus rising from the tomb. It was delicious to sink away
from the prosaic and the boresome, to be so fully awake that he could
follow the movement in the street and the hopping of the sparrows in the
trees, and yet be, as it were, removed, enchanted, seeing and hearing
and thinking and even drinking through the medium of a soothing,
slumbrous spell.
It could hardly ever be said that he went beyond this point. Though
there were occasions on which he miscalculated his effects, they could
generally be explained as accidental. Above all, they didn't rise from
an appetite for drink. The phrase was one he was fond of; he often used
it in condemning a vice of which he disapproved. He used it on this
particular afternoon, when Thor Masterman, who had come to drive him
homeward in his runabout, was sitting in the opposite arm-chair, waiting
to make the start.
"There's one thing about me, Thor--never had an appetite for drink. Not
to say _drink_. Thing I despise. Your father's all wrong about me. Don't
know what's got into him. Thinks I take too much. Rot! That's what it
is--bally rot! _You_ know that, Thor, don't you? Appetite for drink
something I despise."
Thor considered the moment one to be made use of. "Has father been
saying anything about it?"
"No; but he looks it. Suppose I don't know what he means? Sees double,
your father does. Anybody'd think, from the way he treats me, that I was
a disgrace to the firm. I'd like to know what that firm'd be without
me."
Thor tried to frame his next question discreetly. "I hope there's been
no suggestion of the firm's doing without you, Mr. Willoughby?"
To this Len gave but an indirect reply. "There'll be one soon, if your
father doesn't mind himself. I'll retire--and take my money out.
Where'll he be then?"
Thor felt his way. "You've taken out a good deal already, haven't you?"
"Not any more than belonged to me. You can bet your boots on that."
"No; not any more than belonged to you, of course. I was only thinking
that with the splendid house you've built--and its up-keep--and your
general expenses--which are pretty heavy, aren't they?--"
"Not any more than belonged to me, Thor. You can bet your boots on
that."
The repetition was made drowsily. The big head of bushy white hair, with
its correlative of bushy white beard, swayed with a slow movement that
ended in a jerk. It was obvious that the warnings and admonitions to
which Thor had been leading up were not for that day. They were useless
even when, a half-hour later, the movement of the runabout and the keen
air of the high lands as they approached the village roused the big
creature to a maudlin cursing of his luck.
On nearing the house, the delicate part of the task which of late Thor
had taken almost daily on himself became imminent. It was to get his
charge into the house, up to his room, and stretched on a couch without
being seen by Lois. Thor had once caught her carrying out this duty
unaided. She had evidently called for her father in her mother's
limousine, and as Thor passed down the village street she was helping
the staggering, ungainly figure toward the door. The next day Thor took
his runabout from the garage and went on the errand himself. He was also
more ingenious than she in finding a way by which the sorry object could
be smuggled indoors. The carriage entrance of the house was too near the
street. That it should be so was a trial to Mrs. Willoughby, who would
have preferred a house standing in grounds, but there never had been any
help for it. When money came in it had been Len's desire to buy back a
portion of the old Willoughby farm, and build a mansion on what might
reasonably be called his ancestral estate. Of this property there was
nothing in the market but a snip along County Street; and though he was
satisfied with the site as enabling him to display his prosperity to
every one who passed up and down, his wife regretted the absence of a
dignified approach.
By avoiding County Street when he came out from town, and following a
road that scrambled over the low hillside till it made a juncture with
Willoughby's Lane, by descending that ancient cow-path and bringing Len
to the privacy of his side-door, Thor endeavored to keep his father's
partner from becoming an object of public scandal. He took this trouble
not because he bothered about public scandal in itself, but in order to
protect Lois Willoughby.
So far his methods had been successful. They failed to-day only because
Lois herself was at the side-door. With a pair of garden shears in her
gloved hands she was trimming the leafless vine that grew over the
pillars of the portico. Thor could see, as she turned round, that she
braced herself to meet the moment's humiliation, speaking on the instant
he drew up at the steps.
"So good of you to bring papa out from town! I'm sure he's enjoyed the
drive." Her hand was on the lever that opened the door of the machine.
"Poor papa! You look done up. I dare say you're not well. Be careful,
now," she continued, as he lumbered heavily to his feet. "That's a long
step there. Take my hand. I know you must be as tired as can be."
"Dog tired," the father complained, as he lowered himself cautiously.
"Dog's life. Tha's wha' I lead. No thanks for it, either. Damn!" The
imprecation was necessary because he missed his footing and came down
with a jerk. "Can't you see I'm gettin' out?" he groaned, peevishly.
"Stan'in' right in my way."
"Better leave him to me," Thor whispered. "I know just what to do with
him. One of the advantages of being a doctor."
Willoughby had mind enough to clutch at this suggestion. "Doctor's what
I want, hang it all! Sick as a dog. I do' know what'll happen to me some
day. Head aches fit to split. Never had appetite for drink. Tha's one
good thing about me."
* * * * *
Lois was still standing near the portico when Thor had assisted his
charge to his room, stretched him on a couch, covered him with a rug,
left him in a heavy sleep, and crept down the stairs again. It did not
escape his eye, quickened by the minutes he had spent with Rosie Fay,
that Lois lacked color. For the first time in his life he acutely
observed the difference between a plain woman and a pretty one.
"Oh, Thor," she began, as soon as he came out, "I don't know how to
thank you for your kindness to papa! How is it to go on? Where is it to
end? Oh, Thor, you're a doctor! Tell me what you think. Is there
anything I can do?"
His kind, searching eyes, as he stood with one hand on the
steering-wheel, rested on her silently. After all, she was twenty-seven,
and must take her portion of life's responsibilities. Besides, whatever
she might have to bear he meant to share with her. She should not be
obliged, like Rosie Fay, for instance, to carry her load alone.
And yet she didn't look as if she would shirk her part. With that tall,
erect figure, delicate in outline but strong with the freedom of an
open-air life, that proud head which was nevertheless carried meekly,
and that straightforward gaze, she gave the impression of being ready to
meet anything. The face might be irregular, lacking in many of the
tender prettinesses as natural to other girls, even at twenty-seven, as
flowers to a field; but no one could deny its force of character.
"I'll tell you something you could do," he said, at last. "You could
see--or try to see--that he doesn't spend too much." A slight pause
marked his hesitation before adding, "That no one spends too much."
"You mean mamma and me?"
He smiled faintly. "I mean whoever does the spending--but your father
most of all, because I'm afraid he's rather reckless. He's spent a good
deal during the last twelve or fifteen years, hasn't he?"
She was very quick. "More than he had a right to spend?"
"Well, more than my father," he felt it safe to say.
"But he had more than your father to spend, hadn't he?"
"Do you know that for a certainty?"
"I only know it from papa himself. But, oh, Thor, what is it? Why are
you asking?"
He ignored these questions to say: "Couldn't your mother tell us? After
all, it was her money, wasn't it?"
She shook her head. "Oh, mamma wouldn't know. If you're in any doubt
about it, why don't you ask Mr. Masterman? He could tell you better than
any one. Besides, mamma isn't in."
He spoke with a touch of scorn. "I suppose she's in town."
The tone evoked on Lois's part a little smile. They had had battles on
the subject before. "That's just where she is."
"That's just where she always is."
"Oh no; not always. Sometimes she stays at home. But she's there pretty
often, I admit. She has to make calls, partly because I won't--when I
can help it."
He spoke approvingly. "You, at any rate, don't fritter away your time
like other women."
"It depends on what other women you mean. I fritter away my time like
some women, even though it isn't like the women who make calls. I play
golf, for instance, and tennis; I even ride."
"All the same, you don't like the silly thing called society any more
than I do."
There was daylight enough to show him the blaze of bravado in her eyes.
Her way of holding her head had a certain daring--the daring of one too
frank, perhaps too proud, to shrink at truth. "Oh, I don't know. I dare
say I should have liked society well enough if society had liked me. But
it didn't. As mamma says, I wasn't a success." To compel him to view her
in all her lack of charm, she added, with a persistent smile, "You know
that, don't you?"
He did know it, though he could hardly say so. He had heard Claude
descant on the subject many a time in the years when Lois was still
putting in a timid appearance at dances. Claude was interested in
everything that had to do with girls, from their clothes to their
complexions.
"Can't make it out," he would say at breakfast, after a party; "dances
well; dresses well; but doesn't take. Fellows afraid of her. Everybody
shy of a girl who isn't popular. Hasn't enough devil. Girl ought to have
some devil, hang it all! Dance with her myself? Well, I do--about three
times a year. Have her left on my hands an hour at a time. Fellow can't
afford that. Think we have no chivalry? Should come to dances yourself,
old chap. You'd be a godsend to the girls in the dump."
Thor's dancing days were over before Lois's had begun, but he could
imagine what they had been to her. He could look back over the four or
five years that separated her from the ordeal, and still see her in "the
dump"--tall, timid, furtively watching the young men with those swimming
brown orbs of hers, wondering whether or not she should have a partner;
heartsore under her finery, often driving homeward in the weary early
hours with tears streaming down her cheeks. He knew as much about it as
if he had been with her. He suffered for her retrospectively. He did it
to a degree that made his long face sorrowful.
The sorrow caused Lois some impatience. "For mercy's sake, Thor, don't
look at me like that! It isn't as bad as you seem to think. I don't mind
it."
"But I do," he declared, with indignation, only to feel that he was
slowly coloring.
He colored because the statement brought him within measurable distance
of a declaration which he meant to make, but for which he was not ready.
She seemed to divine his embarrassment, speaking with forced lightness.
"Please don't waste your sympathy on me. If any one's to be pitied, it's
mamma. I'm such a disappointment to her. Let's talk of something else.
Where have you been to-day, and what have you been doing?"
He was not blind to her tact, counting it to her credit for the future,
and asked abruptly if she knew Fay, the gardener.
"Fay, the gardener?" she echoed. "I know who he is." She went more
directly to the point in saying, "I know his daughter."
"Well, she's having a hard time."
"Is she? I should think she might."
His face grew keener. "Why do you say that?"
"Oh, I don't know--she's that sort. At least, I should judge she was
that sort from the little I've seen of her."
"How much have you seen of her?"
"Almost nothing; but little as it was, it impressed itself on my mind. I
went to see her once at Mr. Whitney's suggestion."
"Whitney? He's the rector at St. John's, isn't he? What had he to do
with her? She doesn't belong to his church?"
Lois explained. "It was when we established the branch of the Girl's
Friendly Society at St. John's. Mr. Whitney thought she might care to
join it."
"And did she?"
"No; quite the other way. When I went to ask her, she resented it. She
had an idea I was patronizing her. That's the difficulty in approaching
girls like that."
He looked at her with a challenging expression. "Girls like what?"
"I suppose I mean girls who haven't much money--or who've got to work."
He still challenged her, his head thrown back. "They probably don't
consider themselves inferior to you for that reason. It wouldn't be
American if they did."
"And it wouldn't be American if I did; and I don't. They only make me
feel so because they feel it so strongly themselves. That's what's not
American; and it isn't on my part, but on theirs. They force their
sentiment back on me. They make me patronizing whether I will or no."
"And were you patronizing when you went to see Miss Fay?"
To conceal the slightly irritated attentiveness with which he waited for
her reply he began to light his motor lamps. Condescension toward Rosie
Fay suddenly struck him as offensive, no matter from whom it came.
"I'm sure I don't know," she replied, indifferently. "There was
something about her that disconcerted me."
"She's as good as we are," he declared, snapping the little door of one
of the lanterns.
"I don't deny that."
"A generation or two ago we were all farming people together. The
Willoughbys and the Brands and the Thorleys and the Fays were on an
equal footing. They worked for one another and intermarried. The
progress of the country has taken some of us and hurled us up, while it
has seized others of us and smashed us down; but we should try to get
over that when it comes to human intercourse."
"That's what I was doing when I asked her to join our Friendly Society."
"Pff! The deuce you were! I know your friendly societies. Keep those who
are down down. Help the humble to be humbler by making them obsequious."
"You know nothing at all about it," she declared, with spirit. "In
trying to make things better you're content to spin theories, while we
put something into practice."
He snapped the door of the second lamp with a little bang. "Put
something into practice, with the result that people resent it."
"With the result that Rosie Fay resented it; but she's not a fair
example. She's proud and rebellious and intense. I never saw any one
just like her."
"You probably never saw any one who had to be like her because they'd
had her luck. Look here, Lois," he said, with sudden earnestness, "I
want you to be a friend to that girl."
She opened her eyes in mild surprise at his intensity. "There's nothing
I should like better, if I knew how."
"But you do know how. It's easy enough. Treat her as you would a girl in
your own class--Elsie Darling, for instance."
"It's not so simple as that. When Elsie Darling came back after five or
six years abroad mamma and I drove into town and called on her. She
wasn't in, and we left our cards. Later, we invited her to lunch or to
dinner. I should be perfectly willing to go through the same formalities
with Miss Fay--only she'd think it queer. It would be queer. It would be
queer because she hasn't got--what shall I say?--she hasn't got the
social machinery for that kind of ceremoniousness. The machinery means
the method of approach, and with people who have to live as she does
it's the method of approach that presents the difficulty. It's not as
easy as it looks."
"Very well, then; let us admit that it's hard. The harder it is the more
it's the job for you."
There was an illuminating quality in her smile that atoned for lack of
beauty. "Oh, if you put it in that way--"
"I do put it in that way," he declared, with an earnestness toned down
by what was almost wistfulness. "There are so many things in which I
want help, Lois--and you're the one to help me."
She held out her hand with characteristic frankness. "I'll do anything I
can, Thor. Just tell me what you want me to do when you want me to do
it--and I'll try."
"Oh, there'll be a lot of things in which we shall have to pull
together," he said, as he held her hand. "I want you to remember, if
ever any trouble comes, that"--he hesitated for a word that wouldn't say
too much for the moment--"that I'll be there."
"Thank you, Thor. That's a great comfort."
She withdrew her hand quietly. Quietly, too, she assured him, as she
moved toward the steps, that she would not fail to force herself again
on Rosie Fay. "And about that other matter--the one you spoke of
first--you'll tell me more by and by, won't you?"
After her capacity for ringing true, his conscientiousness prompted him
to let her see that she could feel quite sure of him. "I'll tell you
anything I can find out; and one of these days, Lois, I must--I
must--say a lot more."
She mounted a step or two without turning away from him. "Oh, well," she
said, lightly, as though dismissing a topic of no importance, "there'll
be plenty of time."
But her smile was a happy one--so happy that he who smiled rarely smiled
back at her from the runabout.
He could scarcely be expected to know as yet that his pleasure was not
in any happiness of hers, but in the help she might bring to a little
creature whose image had haunted him all the afternoon--a little
creature whose desperate flower-like face looked up at him from a
background of poinsettias.
CHAPTER V
On coming to the table that evening Claude begged his mother to excuse
him for not having dressed for dinner, on the ground that he had an
engagement with Billy Cheever. Mrs. Masterman pardoned him with a
gracious inclination of the head that made her diamond ear-rings
sparkle. No one in the room could be unaware that she disapproved of
Claude's informality. Not only did it shock her personal delicacy to
dine with men who concealed their shirt-bosoms under the waistcoats they
had worn all day, but it contravened the aims by which during her entire
married life she had endeavored to elevate the society around her. She
herself was one to whom the refinements were as native as foliage to a
tree. "It's all right, Claudie dear; but you do know I like you to dress
for the evening, don't you?" Without waiting for the younger son to
speak, she continued graciously to the elder: "And you, Thor. What have
you been doing with yourself to-day?"
Her polite inclusion of her stepson was meant to start "her men," as she
called them, in the kind of conversation in which men were most at ease,
that which concerned themselves. Thor replied while consuming his soup
in the manner acquired in Parisian and Viennese restaurants frequented
by young men:
"Got a patient."
Hastily Claude introduced a subject of his own. "Ought to go and see
'The Champion,' father. Hear it's awfully good. Begins with a
prize-fight--"
But the father's attention was given to Thor. "Who've you picked up?"
"Fay's wife--Fay, the gardener."
"Indeed? Have to whistle for your fee."
"Oh, I know that--"
"Thor, _please_!" Mrs. Masterman begged. "Don't eat so fast."
"If you know it already," the father continued, "I should think you'd
have tried to squeak out of it." He said "know it alweady" and "twied to
squeak," owing to a difficulty with the letter _r_ which gave an
appealing, childlike quality to his speech. "If you start in by taking
patients who are not going to pay--"
Claude sought another diversion. "What does it matter to Thor? In three
months' time he'll be able to pay sick people for coming to him--what?"
"That's not the point," Masterman explained. "A doctor has no right to
pauperize people"--he said "pauper-wize people"--"any more than any one
else."
"Oh, as to that," Thor said, forcing himself to eat slowly and sit
straight in the style commended by his stepmother, "it won't need a
doctor to pauperize poor Fay."
"Quite right there," his father agreed. "He's done it himself."
Thor considered the moment a favorable one for making his appeal.
"Claude and I have been talking him over--"
"The devil we have!" Claude exclaimed, indignantly.
"What's that?" Masterman's handsome face, which after his day's work was
likely to be gray and lifeless, grew sharply interrogative. Time had
chiseled it to an incisiveness not incongruous with a lingering air of
youth. His hair, mustache, and imperial were but touched with gray. His
figure was still lithe and spare. It was the custom to say of him that
he looked but the brother of his two strapping sons.
Claude emphasized his annoyance. "Talking him over! I like that! You
blow into the office just as I'm ready to come home, and begin
cross-questioning me about father's affairs. I tell you I don't know
anything about them. If you call that talking him over--well, you're
welcome to your own use of terms."
The head of the house busied himself in carving the joint which had been
placed before him. "If you want information, Thor, ask me."
"I don't want information, father; and I don't think Claude is fair in
saying I cross-questioned him. I only said that I thought he and I ought
to do what we could to get you to renew Fay's lease."
"Oh, did you? Then I can save you the trouble, because I'm not going
to."
The declaration was so definite that it left Thor with nothing to say.
"Poor old Fay has worked pretty hard, hasn't he?" he ventured at last.
"Possibly. So have I."
"But with the difference that you've been prosperous, and he hasn't."
Masterman laughed good-naturedly. "Which is the difference between me
and a good many other people. You don't blame me for that?"
"It's not a question of blaming any one, father. I only supposed that
among Americans it was the correct thing for the lucky ones to come to
the aid of the less fortunate."
"Take it that I'm doing that for Fay when I get him out of an impossible
situation."
Thor smiled ruefully. "When you get him out of the frying-pan into the
fire?"
"Well," Claude challenged, coming to his father's aid, "the fire's no
worse than the frying-pan, and may be a little better."
"I've seen the girl," Mrs. Masterman contributed to the discussion.
"She's been in the greenhouse when I've gone to buy flowers. I must say
she didn't strike me very favorably." The two brothers exchanged glances
without knowing why. "She seemed to me so much--so very much--above her
station."
"What _is_ her station?" Thor asked, bridling. "Her station's the same
as ours, isn't it?"
The father was amused. "The same as _what_?"
"Surely we're all much of a muchness. Most of us were farmers and
market-gardeners up to forty or fifty years ago. I've heard," he went
on, utilizing the information he had received that afternoon, "that the
Thorleys used to hire out to the Fays."
"Oh, the Thorleys!" Mrs. Masterman smiled.
"The Mastermans didn't," Archie said, gently. "You won't forget that, my
boy. Whatever you may be on any other side, you come from a line of
gentlemen on mine. Your grandfather Masterman was one of the best-known
old-school physicians in this part of the country. His father before him
was a Church of England clergyman in Derbyshire, who migrated to America
because he'd become a Unitarian. Sort of idealist. Lot of 'em in those
days. Time of Napoleon and Southey and Coleridge and all that. Thought
that because America was a so-called republic, or a so-called democracy,
he'd find people living for one another, and they were just looking out
for number one like every one else. Your Uncle Sim takes after him. Died
of a broken heart, I believe, because he didn't find the world made over
new. But you see the sort of well-born, high-minded stock you sprang
from."
Thor lifted his big frame to an erect position, throwing back his head.
"I don't care a fig for what I sprang from, father. I don't even care
much for what I am. It strikes me as far more important to see that our
old friends and neighbors--who are just as good as we are--don't have to
go under when we can keep them up."
"Yes, when we can," Thor's father said, with unperturbed gentleness;
"but very often we can't. In a world where every one's swimming for his
own dear life, those who can't swim have got to drown."
"But every one is not swimming for his own dear life. Most of us are
safe on shore. You and I are, for example. And when we are, it seems to
me the least we can do is to fling a life-preserver to the poor chaps
who are throwing up their hands and sinking."
Mrs. Masterman rallied her stepson indulgently. "Oh, Thor, how
ridiculous you are! How you talk!"
Claude patted his mother's hand. He was still trying to turn attention
from bearing too directly on the Fays. "Don't listen to him, mumphy.
Beastly socialist, that's what he is. Divide up all the money in the
world so that everybody'll have thirty cents, and then tell 'em to go
ahead and live regardless. That'd be his way of doing things."
But the father was more just. "Oh no, it wouldn't. Thor's no fool! Has
some excellent ideas. A little exaggerated, perhaps, but that'll cure
itself in time. Fault of youth. Good fault, too." He turned
affectionately to his elder son, "Rather see you that way, my boy, than
with an empty head."
Thor fell silent, from a sense of the futility of talking.
CHAPTER VI
At the moment when Claude was excusing himself further, begging to be
allowed to run away so as not to keep Billy Cheever waiting, Rosie Fay
was noticing with relief that her mother was asleep at last. Thor's
sedative had taken effect in what the girl considered the nick of time.
Having smoothed the pillow, adjusted the patchwork quilt, and placed the
small kerosene hand-lamp on a chair at the foot of the bed, so as to
shade it from the sleeper's eyes, she slipped down-stairs.
She wore a long, rough coat. Over her hair she had flung a scarf of some
gauzy green stuff that heightened her color. The lamplight, or some
inner flame of her own, drew opalescent gleams from her gray-greenish
eyes as she descended. She was no longer the desperate, petulant little
Rosie of the afternoon. Her face was aglow with an eager life. The
difference was that between a blossom wilting for lack of water and the
same flower fed by rain.
In the tiny living-room at the foot of the stairs her father was eating
the supper she had laid out for him. It was a humble supper, spread on
the end of a table covered with a cheap cotton cloth of a red and
sky-blue mixture. Jasper Fay, in his shirt-sleeves, munched his cold
meat and sipped his tea while he entertained himself with a book propped
against a loaf of bread. Another small kerosene hand-lamp threw its
light on the printed page and illumined his mild, clear-cut,
clean-shaven face.
"She's asleep," Rosie whispered from the doorway. "If she wakes while
I'm gone you must give her the second dose. I've left it on the
wash-stand."
The man lifted his starry blue eyes. "You going out?"
"I'm only going for a little while."
"Couldn't you have gone earlier?"
"How could I, when I had supper to get--and everything?"
He looked uneasy. "I don't like you to be running round these dark
roads, my dear. You've been doing it a good deal lately. Where is it you
go?"
"Why, father, what nonsense! Here I am cooped up all day--"
He sighed. "Very well, my dear. I know you haven't much pleasure. But
things will be different soon, I hope. The new night fireman seems a
good man, and I expect we'll do better now. He'll be here at ten. Were
you going far?"
She answered promptly. "Only to Polly Wilson's. She wants me to"--Rosie
turned over in her mind the various interests on which Polly Wilson
might desire to consult her--"she wants me to see her new dress."
"Very well, my dear, but I hope after this evening you'll be able to do
your errands in the daytime. You know how it was with Matt. If he hadn't
gone roaming the streets at night--"
Rosie came close to the table. Her face was resolute. "Father, I'm not
Matt. I know what I'm doing." She added, with increased determination,
"I'm acting for the best."
He was mildly surprised. "Acting for the best in going to see Polly
Wilson's new dress?"
She ignored this. "I'm twenty-three, father. I've got to follow my own
judgment. If I've a chance I must use it."
"What sort of a chance, my dear?"
"There's nothing to hope for here," she went on, cruelly, "except from
what I can do myself. Mother's no good; and Matt's worse than if he was
dead. I wish to God he would die--before he comes out. And you know what
you are, father."
"I do the best I can, my dear," he said, humbly.
"I know you do; but we can all see what that is. Everybody else is going
ahead but us."
"Oh no, they're not, my dear. There are lots that fall behind as bad as
we do--and worse."
She shook her head fiercely. "No, not worse. They couldn't. And
whatever's to be done, I've got to do it. If I don't--or if I
can't--well, we might as well give up. So you mustn't try to stop me,
father. I know what I'm doing. It's for your sake and everybody's sake
as much as for my own."
He dropped his eyes to his book, in seeming admission that he had no
tenable ground on which to meet her in a conflict of wills. "Very well,
my dear," he sighed. "If you're going to Polly Wilson's you'd better be
off. You'll be home by ten, won't you? I must go then to show the new
fireman his way about the place."
* * * * *
Outside it was a windy night, but not a cold one. Shreds of dark cloud
scudded across the face of a three-quarters moon, giving it the
appearance of traveling through the sky at an incredible rate of speed.
In the south wind there was the tang of ocean salt, mingled with the
sweeter scents of woodland and withered garden nearer home. There was a
crackling of boughs in the old apple-trees, and from the ridge behind
the house came the deep, soft, murmurous soughing of pines.
If Rosie lingered on the door-step it was not because she was afraid of
the night sounds or of the dark. She was restrained for a minute by a
sense of terror at what she was about to do. It was not a new terror.
She felt it on every occasion when she went forth to keep this tryst. As
she had already said to her father, she knew what she was doing. She was
neither so young nor so inexperienced as to be unaware of the element of
danger that waited on her steps. No one could have told her better than
she could have told herself that the voice of wise counsel would have
bidden her stay at home. But if she was not afraid of the night, neither
was she irresolute before the undertaking. Being forewarned, she was
forearmed. Being forearmed, she could run the risks. Running the risks,
she could enjoy the excitement and find solace in the romance.
For it was romance, romance of the sort she had dreamed of and planned
for and got herself ready to be equal to, if ever it should come.
Somehow, she had always known it would come. She could hardly go back to
the time when she did not have this premonition of a lover who would
appear like a prince in a fairy-tale and lift her out of her low estate.
And he had come. He had come late on an afternoon in the preceding
summer, when she was picking wild raspberries in the wood above Duck
Rock. It was a lonely spot in which she could reasonably have expected
to be undisturbed. She was picking the berries fast and deftly, because
the fruitman who passed in the morning would give her a dollar for her
harvest. Was it the dollar, or was it the sweet, wandering, summer air?
Was it the mingled perfumes of vine and fruit and soft loam loosened as
she crept among the brambles, or was it the shimmer of the waning
sunlight or the whir of the wings of birds or the note of a
hermit-thrush in some still depth of the woodland ever so far away? Or
was it only because she was young and invincibly happy at times, in
spite of a sore heart, that she sang to herself as her nimble fingers
secured the juicy, delicate red things and dropped them into the pan?
He came like Pan, or a faun, or any other woodland thing, with no sound
of his approach, not even that of oaten pipes. When she raised her eyes
he was standing in a patch of bracken. She had been stooping to gather
the fruit that clustered on a long, low, spiny stem. The words on her
lips had been:
At least be pity to me shown
If love it may na be--
but her voice trailed away faintly on the last syllable, for on looking
up he was before her. He wore white flannels, and a Panama hat of which
the brim was roguishly pulled down in front to shade his eyes.
He was smiling unabashed, and yet with a friendliness that made it
impossible for her to take offense. "Isn't it Rosie?" he asked, without
moving from where he stood in the patch of trampled bracken. "I'm
Claude. Don't you remember me?"
A Delphic nymph who had been addressed by Apollo, in the seclusion of
some sacred grove, could hardly have felt more joyous or more dumb.
Rosie Fay did not know in what kind of words to answer the glistening
being who had spoken to her with this fine familiarity. Later, in the
silence of the night, she blushed with shame to think of the figure she
must have cut, standing speechless before him, the pan of red
raspberries in her hands, her raspberry-red lips apart in amazement, and
her eyes gleaming and wide with awe.
She remained vague as to what she answered in the end. It was confusedly
to the effect that though she remembered him well enough, she supposed
that he had long ago forgotten one so insignificant as herself.
Presently he was beside her, dropping raspberries into her pan, while
they laughed together as in those early days when they had picked peas
by her father's permission in Grandpa Thorley's garden.
Their second meeting was accidental--if it was accidental that each had
come to the same spot, at the same hour, on the following day, in the
hope of finding the other. The third meeting was also on the same spot,
but by appointment, in secret, and at night! Claude had been careful to
impress on her the disaster that would ensue if their romance were
discovered.
But Rosie Fay knew what she was doing. She repeated that statement often
to herself. Had she really been a Delphic nymph, or even a young lady of
the best society, she might have given herself without reserve to the
rapture of her idyl; but her circumstances were peculiar. Rosie was
obliged to be practical, to look ahead. A fairy prince was not only a
romantic dream in her dreary life, but an agency to be utilized. The
least self-seeking of drowning maids might expect the hero on the bank
to pull her out of the water. The very fact that she recognized in
Claude a tendency to dally with her on the brink instead of landing her
in a place of safety compelled her to be the more astute.
But she was not so astute as to be inaccessible to the sense of terror
that assailed her every time she went to meet him. It was the fright of
one accustomed to walk on earth when seized and borne into the air.
Claude's voice over the telephone, as she had heard it that afternoon,
was like the call to adventures at once enthralling and appalling, in
which she found it hard to keep her head. She kept it only by saying to
herself: "I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing. My father is
ruined; my brother is in jail. But I love this man and he loves me. If
he marries me--"
But Rosie's thoughts broke off abruptly there. They broke off because
they reached a point beyond which imagination would not carry her. If he
marries me! The supposition led her where all was blurred and roseate
and golden, like the mists around the Happy Isles. Rosie could not
forecast the conditions that would be hers as the wife of Claude
Masterman. She only knew that she would be transported into an
atmosphere of money, and money she had learned by sore experience to be
the sovereign palliative of care. Love was much to poor Rosie, but
relief from anxiety was more. It had to be so, since both love and light
are secondary blessings to the tired creature whose first need is rest.
It was for rest that Claude Masterman stood primarily in her mind. He
was a fairy prince, of course; he was a lover who might have satisfied
any girl's aspirations. But before everything else he was a hero and a
savior, a being in whose vast potentialities, both social and financial,
she could find refuge and lie down at last.
It needed but this bright thought to brace her. She clasped her hands to
her breast; she lifted her eyes to the swimming moon; she drew deep
breaths of the sweet, strong air; she appealed to all the supporting
forces she knew anything about. A minute later she was speeding through
the darkness.
CHAPTER VII
Between the greenhouses, of which the glass gleamed dimly in the
moonlight, Rosie followed a path that straggled down the slope of her
father's land to the new boulevard round the pond. The boulevard here
swept inland about the base of Duck Rock, in order to leave that wooded
bluff an inviolate feature of the landscape. So inviolate had it been
that during the months since Rosie had picked wild raspberries in its
boskage the park commissioners had seized on it as a spot to be subdued
by winding paths and restful benches. To make it the more civilized and
inviting they had placed one of the arc-lamps that now garlanded the
circuit of the pond just where it would guide the feet of lovers into
the alluring shade. Rosie was glad of this friendly light before
engaging on the rough path up the bluff under the skeleton-like trees.
She was not afraid; she was only nervous, and the light gave her
confidence.
But to-night, as she emerged on the broad boulevard from the weedy
outskirts of her father's garden, the clatter of horse-hoofs startled
her into drawing back. She would have got herself altogether out of
sight had there been anything at hand in the nature of a shrub high
enough to conceal her. As it was she could only shrink to the extreme
edge of the roadside, hoping that the rider, whoever he was, would pass
without seeing her. This he might have done had not the bay mare Delia,
unaccustomed to the sight of young ladies roaming alone at night,
thought it the part of propriety to shy.
"Whoa, Delia! whoa! What's the matter? Steady, old girl! steady!" There
was a flash of the quick, penetrating eyes around the circle made by the
arc-light. "Why, hello, Rosie! 'Pon my soul! Look scared as a stray
kitten. Where you going?"
Rosie could only reply that she wasn't going anywhere. She was
just--out.
"Well, it's a fine night. Everybody seems to be out. Just met Claude."
The girl was unable to repress a startled "Oh!" though she bit her
tongue at the self-betrayal.
Uncle Sim laughed merrily. "Don't wonder you're frightened--pretty girl
like you. Devil of a fellow, Claude thinks he is. Suppose you don't know
him. Ah, well, that wouldn't make any difference to him, if he was to
run across you. I'll tell you what! You come along with me." Chuckling
to himself, he slipped from Delia's back, preparing to lead the mare and
accompany the girl on foot. "We'll go round by the Old Village and up
Schoolhouse Lane. The walk'll do you good. You'll sleep better after it.
Come along now, and tell me about your mother as we go. Did my nephew,
Thor, come to see her? What did he give her? Did she take it? Did it
make her sleep?"
But Rosie shrank away from him with the eyes of a terrified animal. "Oh
no, Dr. Masterman! Please! I don't want to take that long walk. I'll go
back up the path--the way I came. I just ran out to--to--"
He looked at her with suspicious kindliness. "Will you promise me you'll
go back the way you came?"
"Yes, yes; I will."
"Then that's all right. It's an awful dangerous road, Rosie. Tramps--and
everything. But if you'll go straight back up the path I'll be easy in
my mind about you." He watched her while she retreated. "Good night!" he
called.
"Good night," came her voice from half-way up the garden.
She was obliged to wait in the shadow of an outlying hothouse till the
sound of Delia's hoofs, clattering off toward the Old Village, died away
on the night. She crept back again, cautiously. Cautiously, too, she
stole across the boulevard and into the wood. Once there, she flew up
the path with the frantic eagerness of a hare. She was afraid Claude
might have come and gone. She was afraid of the incident with old Sim.
What did he mean? Did he mean anything? If he betrayed Claude at home,
would it keep the latter from meeting her? She had no great confidence
in Claude's ability to withstand authority. She had no great confidence
in anything, not even in his love, or in her own. The love was true
enough; it was ardently, desperately true; but would it bear the strain
that could so easily be put upon it? She felt herself swept by an
immense longing to be sure.
She had so many subjects to think of and to dread that she forgot to be
frightened as she sped up the bluff. It was only on reaching the summit
and discovering that Claude wasn't there that she was seized by fear.
There was a bench beside her--a round bench circling the trunk of an
oak-tree--and she sank upon it.
* * * * *
The crunching of footsteps told her some one was coming up the slope. In
all probability it was Claude; but it might be a stranger, or even an
animal. The crunching continued, measured, slow. She would have fled if
there had been any way of fleeing without encountering the object of her
alarm. The regular beat of the footsteps growing heavier and nearer
through the darkness rendered her almost hysterical. When at last
Claude's figure emerged into the moonlight, his erect slenderness
defined against the sky, she threw herself, sobbing, into his arms.
It was not the least of Claude's attractions that he was so tender with
women swept by crises of emotion. Where Thor would have stood helpless,
or prescribed a mild sedative, Claude pressed the agitated creature to
his breast and let her weep.
When her sobs had subsided to a convulsive clinging to him without
tears, he explained his delay in arriving by his meeting with Uncle Sim.
They were seated on the bench by this time, his arms about her, her face
close to his.
"Awful nuisance, he is. Regular Paul Pry. Can't keep anything from him.
Scours the country night and day like the Headless Horseman of Sleepy
Hollow. Never know when you'll meet him."
"I met him, too," Rosie said, getting some control of her voice.
"The deuce you did! Did he speak to you? Did he say anything about me?"
"He said he'd seen you."
"Is that all?"
She weighed the possible disadvantages of saying too much, coming to the
conclusion that she had better tell him more. "No, it isn't quite all.
He seemed to--warn me against you."
"Oh, the devil!" In his start he loosened his embrace, but grasped her
to him again. "What's he up to now?"
"Do you think he's up to anything?"
"What else did he say? Tell me all you can think of."
She narrated the brief incident.
"Will it make any difference to us?" she ventured to ask.
"It'll make a difference to us if he blabs to father. Of course!"
"What sort of difference, Claude?"
"The sort of difference it makes when there's the devil to pay."
She clasped him to her the more closely. "Does that mean that we
shouldn't be able to see each other any more?"
The question being beyond him, Claude smothered it under a selection of
those fond epithets in which his vocabulary was large. In the very
process of enjoying them Rosie was rallying her strength. She was still
clasping him as she withdrew her head slightly, looking up at him
through the moonlight.
"Claude, I want to ask you something."
With his hand on the knot of her hair, he pressed her face once more
against his. "Yes, yes, darling. Ask me anything. Yes, yes, yes, yes."
She broke in on his purring with the words, "Are we engaged?"
The purring ceased. Without relaxing his embrace he remained passive,
like a man listening. "What makes you ask me that?"
"It's what people generally are when they're--when they're like us,
isn't it?"
Brushing his lips over the velvet of her cheeks, he began to purr again.
"No one was ever like us, darling. No one ever will be. Don't worry your
little head with what doesn't matter."
"But it does matter to me, Claude. I want to know where I am."
"Where you are, dearie. You're here with me. Isn't that enough?"
"It's enough for now, Claude, but--"
"And isn't what's enough for now all we've got to think of?"
"No, Claude dearest. A girl isn't like a man--"
"Oh yes, she is, when she loves. And you love me, don't you, dearie? You
love me just a little. Say you love me--just a little--a very little--"
"Oh, Claude, my darling, my darling, you know I love you. You're all
I've got in the world--"
"And you're all I've got, my little Rosie. Nothing else counts when I'm
with you--"
"But when you're not with me, Claude? What then? What am I to think when
you're away from me? What am I to be?"
"Be just as you are. Be just as you've always been since the day I first
saw you--"
"Yes, yes, Claude; but you don't understand. If any one were to find out
that I came here to meet you like this--"
"No one must find out, dear. We must keep that mum."
"But if they did, Claude, it wouldn't matter to you at all--"
"Oh, wouldn't it, though? Father'd make it matter, I can tell you."
"Yes, but you wouldn't be disgraced. I should be. Don't you see? No one
would ever believe--"
"Oh, what does it matter what any one believes. Let them all go hang."
"We can't let them all go hang. You can't let your father go hang, and I
can't let mine. Do you know what my father would do to me if he knew
where I am now? He'd kill me."
"Oh, rot, Rosie!"
"No, no, Claude; I'm telling you the truth. He's that sort. You wouldn't
think it, but he is. He's one of those mild, dreamy men who, when
they're enraged--which isn't often--don't know where to stop. If he
thought I'd done wrong he'd put a knife into me, just like that." She
struck her clenched hand against his heart. "When Matt was arrested--"
He tore himself from her suddenly. The sensitive part of him had been
touched. "Oh, Lord, Rosie, don't let's go into that. I hate that
business. I try to forget it."
"No one can forget it who remembers me."
"Oh yes, they can. _I_ can--when you don't drag it up. What's the use,
Rosie? Why not be happy for the few hours every now and then that we can
get together? What's got into you?" He changed his tone. "You hurt me,
Rosie, you hurt me. You talk as if you didn't trust me. You seem to have
suspicions, to be making schemes--"
"Oh, Claude! For God's sake!" Rosie, too, was touched on the quick,
perhaps by some truth in the accusation.
He kissed her ardently. "I know, dear; I know. I know it's all
right--that you don't mean anything. Kiss me. Tell me you won't do it
any more--that you won't hurt the man who adores you. What does anything
else matter? You and I are everything there is in the world. Don't let
us talk. When we've got each other--"
Rosie gave it up, for the present at any rate. She began to perceive
dimly that they had different conceptions of love. For her, love was
engagement and marriage, with the material concomitants the two states
implied. But for Claude love was something else. It was something she
didn't understand, except that it was indifferent to the orderly
procession by which her own ambitions climbed. He loved her; of that she
was sure. But he loved her for her face, her mouth, her eyes, her hair,
the color of her skin, her roughened little hands, her lithe little
body. Of nothing else in her was he able to take cognizance. Her hard
life and her heart-breaking struggles were conditions he hadn't the eyes
to see. He was aware of them, of course, but he could detach her from
them. He could detach her from them for the minutes she spent with him,
but he could see her go back to them and make no attempt to follow her
in sympathy.
But he loved her beauty. There was that palliating fact. After all,
Rosie was a woman, and here was the supreme tribute to her womanhood. It
was not everything, and yet it was the thing enchanting. It was the kind
of tribute any woman in the world would have put before social rescue or
moral elevation, and Rosie was like the rest. She could be lulled by
Claude's endearments as a child is lulled by a cradle-song. With this
music in her ears doubts were stilled and misgivings quieted and
ambitions overruled. Return to the world of care and calculation
followed only on Claude's words uttered just as they were parting.
"And you'd better be on your guard against Thor. So long as he's going
to your house you mustn't give anything away."
CHAPTER VIII
Dressed for going out, Mrs. Willoughby was buttoning her gloves as she
stood in the square hall hung with tapestries of a late Gobelins period
and adorned with a cabinet in the style of Buhl flanked by two
decorative Regency chairs. Her gaze followed the action of her fingers
or wandered now and then inquiringly up the stairway.
Her broad, low figure, wide about the hips, tapered toward the feet in
lines suggestive of a spinning-top. She was proud of her feet, which
were small and shapely, and approved of a fashion in skirts that
permitted them to be displayed. Being less proud of her eyes, she also
approved of a style of hat which allowed the low, sloping brim, worn
slantwise across the brows, to conceal one of them.
"You're surely not going in that rag!"
The protest was called forth by Lois's appearance in a walking-costume
on the stairs.
"But, mamma, I'm not going at all. I told you so."
"Told me so! What's the good of telling me so? There'll be loads of men
there--simply loads. Goodness me! Lois, if you're ever going to know any
men at all--"
"I know all the men I want to know."
"You don't know all the men you want to know, and if you do I should be
ashamed to say it. A girl who's had all your advantages and doesn't make
more show! What on earth are you doing that you don't want to come?"
Lois hesitated, but she was too frank for concealments. "I'm going to
see a girl Thor Masterman wants me to look after. He thinks I may be
able to help her."
The mother subsided. "Oh, well--if it's that!" She added, so as not to
seem to hint too much: "I always like you to do what you can toward
uplift. I'll take you as far as the Old Village, if you're going that
way."
There had been a time when such concessions at the mention of Thor
Masterman would have irritated Lois more than any violence of
opposition; but that time was passing. She could hardly complain if
others saw what was daily becoming more patent to herself. She could
complain of it the less since she found it difficult to conceal her
happiness. It was a happiness that softened the pangs of care and
removed to a distance the conditions incidental to her father's habits
and impending financial ruin.
Nevertheless, the conditions were there, and had to be confronted. She
made, in fact, a timid effort to confront them as she sat beside her
mother in the admirably fitted limousine.
"Mother, what are we going to do about papa?"
Mrs. Willoughby's indignant rising to the occasion could be felt like an
electric wave. "Do about him? Do about what?"
"About the way he is."
"The way he is? What on earth are you talking about?"
"I mean the way he comes home."
"He comes home very tired, if that's what you're trying to say. Any man
who works as they work him at that office--"
"Do you think it's work?"
"No, I don't think it's work. I call it slavery. It's enough to put a
man in his grave. I've seen him come home so that he could hardly speak;
and if you've done the same you may know that he's simply tired enough
to die."
Lois tried to come indirectly to her point by saying, "Thor Masterman
has been bringing him home lately."
"Oh, well; I suppose Thor knows he doesn't lose anything by that move."
Lois ignored the remark to say, "Thor seems worried."
The mother's alertness was that of a ruffled, bellicose bird defending
its mate. "If Thor's worried about your father, he can spare himself the
trouble. He can leave that to me. I'll take care of him. What he needs
is rest. When everything is settled I mean to take him away. Of course
we can't go _this_ winter. If we could we should go to Egypt--he and I.
But we can't. We know that. We make the sacrifice."
These discreet allusions, too, Lois thought it best to let pass in
silence. "It wasn't altogether about papa that Thor was worried. He
seems anxious about money."
Bessie tossed her head. "That may easily be. If your father takes our
money out of the firm, as he threatens to do, the Mastermans will
be--well, I don't know where."
The girl felt it right to go a step further. "He seemed to hint--he
didn't say it in so many words--that perhaps papa wouldn't have so very
much to take out."
This was dismissed lightly. "Then he doesn't know what's he talking
about. Archie's frightfully close in those things, I must say. He's
never let either of the boys know anything about the business. He won't
even let me. But your father knows. If Thor thinks for a minute the
money isn't nearly all ours he may come in for a rude awakening."
Reassured by this firmness of tone, Lois began to take heart. Getting
out at the Old Village, she continued her way on foot, and found Rosie
among the azaleas and poinsettias.
* * * * *
Thor Masterman met her an hour later, as she returned homeward. He knew
where she had been as soon as he saw her turn the corner at which the
road descends the hill, recognizing with a curious pang her promptness
in carrying out his errand. The pang was a surprise to him--the
beginning of a series of revelations on the subject of himself.
Her desire to please him had never before this instant caused him
anything but satisfaction. It had been but the response to his desire to
please her. He had not been blind to the goal to which this mutual
good-will would lead them, but he had quite made up his mind that she
would make him as good a wife as any one. As a preliminary to marriage
he had weighed the possibility of falling ardently in love, coming at
last to the conclusion that he was not susceptible to that passion.
His long-standing intention to marry Lois Willoughby was based on the
fact that besides being sympathetic to him she was plain and lonely. If
the motive hadn't taken full possession of his heart it was because the
state of being plain and lonely had never seemed to him the worst of
calamities, by any means. The worst of calamities, that for which no
patience was sufficient, that for which there was no excuse, that which
kings, presidents, emperors, parliaments, congresses, embassies, and
armies should combine their energies to prevent, was to be poor. He was
entirely of Mrs. Fay's opinion, that with money ill-health and
unhappiness were details. You could bear them both. You could bear being
lonely; you could bear being plain. Consequently, the menace that now
threatened Lois Willoughby's fortunes strengthened her claim on him; but
all at once he felt, as he saw her descend the hill, that the claim
might make complications.
Was it because she was plain? Curious that he had never attached
importance to that fact before! But it blinded him now to her graceful
carriage as well as to the way she had of holding her head with a noble,
independent poise that made her a woman of distinction.
She was smiling with an air at once intimate and triumphant. "I think
I've won in the first encounter, at any rate."
In his wincing there was the surprise of a man who in a moment of
expansion has made a sacred confidence only to find it crop up lightly
in subsequent conversation. He was obliged to employ some self-control
in order to say, with a manner sufficiently offhand, "What happened?"
She told of making her approaches under the plea of buying potted
plants. A cold reception had given way before her persistent
friendliness, while there had been complete capitulation on the tender
of an invitation to County Street to tea. The visit had been difficult
to manage, but amusing, and a little pitiful.
To the details that were difficult or pitiful he could listen with calm,
but he was inwardly indignant that Lois should find anything in her
meeting with Rosie that lent itself to humor. He knew that humor. The
superior were fond of indulging in it at the expense of the less
fortunate. Even Lois Willoughby had not escaped that taint of class.
Fearing to wound her by some impatient word, he made zeal in his round
of duties the excuse for an abrupt good-by.
But zeal in his round of duties changed to zeal of another kind as with
set face and long, swinging stride he hurried up the hill. The plans he
had been maturing for the psychological treatment of Mrs. Fay melted
into eagerness to know how the poor little thing had taken Lois's
advances. He was disappointed, therefore, that Rosie should receive him
coldly.
Within twenty-four hours his imagination had created between them
something with the flavor of a friendship. He had been thinking of her
so incessantly that it was disconcerting to perceive that apparently she
had not been thinking of him at all. He was the doctor to her, and no
more. She continued to direct Antonio, the Italian, who was opening a
crate of closely packed azalea-plants, while she discussed the effect of
his sedative on her mother. Her manner was dry and business-like; her
replies to his questions brief and to the point.
But professional duty being done, he endeavored to raise the personal
issue. "What did you mean yesterday when you said that you couldn't play
fair, but that you'd play as fair as you could?"
She turned from her contemplation of the stooping Antonio's back. "Did I
say that?"
He hardly heeded the question in the pleasure he got from this glimpse
of her green eyes. "You said that--or something very much like it."
His uncertainty gave her the chance to correct that which, in the light
of Claude's warning, might prove to have been an indiscretion. "I'm sure
I can't imagine. You must have--misunderstood me."
He pursued the topic not because he cared, but in order to make her look
at him again. "Oh no, I didn't. Don't you remember? It was after you
said that there was one thing that might happen--"
She was sure of her indiscretion now. He might even be setting a snare
for her. Dr. Sim Masterman might have withdrawn from her mother's case
in order to put the one brother on the other's tracks. If Claude was
right in his suspicions, there was reasonable ground for alarm. She
said, with assumed indifference: "Oh, that! That was nothing. Just a
fancy."
He still talked for the sake of talking, attaching no importance to her
replies. "Was it a fancy when you said that I would be one of the people
opposed to it--if it happened?"
"Well, yes. But you'd only be one among a lot." She shifted to firmer
ground. "I wasn't thinking of you in particular--or of any one in
particular."
"Were you thinking of any _thing_ in particular?"
The question threw her back on straight denial. "N-no; not exactly; just
a fancy."
"But I shouldn't be opposed to it, whatever it is--if it was to your
advantage."
His persistence deepened her distrust. A man whom she had seen only once
before would hardly display such an interest in her and her affairs
unless he had a motive, especially when that man was a Masterman. She
took refuge in her task with the azaleas. "No, not there, Antonio. Put
them there--like this--I'll show you."
The necessity for giving Antonio practical demonstration taking her to
the other side of the hothouse, Thor felt himself obliged to go. He went
with the greater regret since he had been unable to sound her on the
subject of Lois Willoughby's advances, though her skill in eluding him
heightened his respect. His disdain for the small arts of coquetry being
as sincere as his scorn of snobbery, he counted it to her credit that
she eluded him at all. There would be plenty of opportunities for speech
with her. During them he hoped to win her confidence by degrees.
In the bedroom up-stairs, where the mother was again seated in her
upholstered arm-chair with the quilt across her knees, he endeavored to
put into practice his idea of mental therapeutics. He began by speaking
of Matt, using the terms that would most effectively challenge her
attention. "When he comes back, you know, we must make him forget that
he's ever worn stripes."
She eyed him sternly. "What'd be the good of his forgetting it? He'll
have done it, just the same."
"Some of us have done worse than that, and yet--"
"And yet we didn't get into Colcord for them. But that's what counts.
You can do what you like as long as you ain't put in jail. Look at your
father--"
"So when he comes home--" he interrupted, craftily.
She leaned forward, throwing the quilt from her knees. "See here," she
asked, confidentially, "how would you feel if you saw your son coming up
out of hell?"
"How should I feel? I should be glad he was coming up instead of going
down. You would, too, wouldn't you? And now that he's coming up we must
keep him up. That's the point. So many poor chaps that have been in his
position feel that because they've once been down they've got to stay
down. We must make him see that he's come back among friends--and you
must tell us what to do. You must give your mind to it and think it out.
He's your boy--so it's your duty to take the lead."
Her cold eye rested on him as if she were giving his words
consideration. "Why don't you ask your father to take the lead? He sent
him to Colcord."
Thor got no further than this during the hour he spent with her, seeing
that Uncle Sim had been right in describing the case as one for
ingenuity--and something more. Questioning himself as to what this
something more could be, he brought up the subject tentatively with
Jasper Fay, whom he met on leaving the house. Thor himself stood on the
door-step, while Fay, who wore gardening overalls, confronted him from
the withered grass-plot that ended in a leafless hedge of bridal-veil.
"She's never been a religious woman at all, has she?"
Fay answered with a distant smile. "She did go in for religion at one
time, sir; but I guess she found it slim diet. It got to seem to her
like Thomas Carlyle's hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed.
After that she quit."
"I had an idea that you belonged to the First Church and were Dr.
Hilary's parishioners."
Fay explained. "Dr. Hilary married us, but we haven't troubled the
church much since. I never took any interest in the Christian religion
to begin with; and when I looked into it I found it even more fallacious
than I supposed." To account for this advanced position on the part of a
simple market-gardener he added, "I've been a good deal of a reader."
Thor spoke slowly and after meditation. "It isn't so much a question of
its being fallacious as of its capacity for producing results."
Fay turned partially round toward the south, where a haze hung above the
city. His tone was infused with a mild bitterness. "Don't we see the
results it can produce--over there?"
"That's right, too." Thor was so much in sympathy with this point of
view that he hardly knew how to go on. "And yet some of us doctors are
beginning to suspect that there may be a power in Christianity--a purely
psychological power, you understand--that hasn't been used for what it's
worth."
Fay nodded. He had been following this current of contemporary thought.
"Yes, Dr. Thor. So I hear. Just as, I dare say, you haven't found out
all the uses of opium."
"Well, opium is good in its place, you know."
"I suppose so." He lifted his starry eyes with their mystic, visionary
rapture fully on the young physician. "And yet I remember how George
Eliot prayed that when her troubles came she might get along without
being drugged by that stuff--meaning the Christian religion, sir--and I
guess I'd kind o' like that me and mine should do the same."
Thor dropped the subject and went his way. As far as he had opinions of
his own, they would have been similar to Fay's had he not within a year
or two heard of sufficiently authenticated cases in which sick spirits
or disordered nerves had yielded to spiritual counsels after the doctor
had had no success. He had been so little impressed with these instances
that he might not have allowed his speculations with regard to Mrs. Fay
to go beyond the fleeting thought, only for the fact that on passing
through the Square he met Reuben Hilary. In general he was content to
touch his hat to the old gentleman and go on; but to-day, urged by an
impulse too vague to take accurate account of, he stopped with
respectful greetings.
"I've just been to see an old parishioner of yours, sir," he said, when
the preliminaries of neighborly conversation had received their due.
"Have you, now?" was the non-committal response, delivered with a
North-of-Ireland intonation.
"Mrs. Fay--wife of Fay, the gardener. I can't say she's ill," Thor
went on, feeling his way, "but she's mentally upset." He decided to
plunge into the subject boldly, smiling with that mingling of
frankness and perplexity which people found appealing because of its
conscientiousness. "And I've been wondering, Dr. Hilary, if you couldn't
help her."
"Have you, now? And what would you be wanting me to do?"
Thor reflected as to the exact line to take, while the kindly eyes
covered him with their shrewd, humorous twinkle. "You see," Thor tried
to explain, "that if she could get the idea that there's any other stand
to take toward trouble than that of kicking against it, she might be in
a fair way to get better. At present she's like a prisoner who dashes
his head against a stone wall, not seeing that there's a window by which
he might make his escape."
There was renewed twinkling in the merry eyes. "But if there's a window,
why don't you point it out to her?"
Thor grinned. "Because, sir, I don't see it myself."
"T't, t't! Don't you, then? And how do you know it's there?"
Thor continued to grin. "To be frank with you, sir, I don't believe it
is there. But if you can make her believe it is--"
"That is, you want me to deceive the poor creature."
"Oh no, sir," Thor protested. "You wouldn't be deceiving her because you
do believe it."
"So that I'd only be deceiving her to the extent that I'm deceived
myself."
"You're too many for me," Thor laughed again, preparing to move on. "I
didn't know but that if you gave her what are called the consolations of
religion--that's the right phrase, isn't it--"
"There is such a phrase. But you can't _give_ people the consolations of
religion; they've got to find them for themselves. If they won't do
that, there's no power in heaven or earth that can force consolation
upon them."
"But religion undertakes to do something, doesn't it?"
The old man shook his head. "Nothing whatever--no more than air
undertakes that you shall breathe it, or water that you shall drink it,
or fire that you shall warm yourself at its blaze."
Thor mused. When he spoke it was as if summing up the preceding remarks.
"So that you can't do anything, sir, for my friend, Mrs. Fay?"
"Nothing whatever, me dear Thor--but help her to do something for
herself."
"Very well, sir. Will you try that?"
"Sure, I'll try it. I'm too proud of the Word of God to thrust it where
it isn't wanted--_margaritas ante porcos_, if you've Latin enough for
that--but when any one asks for it as earnestly as you, me dear Thor--"
Having won what he asked, Thor shook the old man's hand and thanked him,
after which he hurried off to the garage to take out his runabout and
bring Lois's father home from town.
CHAPTER IX
As November and December passed and the new year came in, small
happenings began to remind Thorley Masterman that he was soon to inherit
money. It was a fact which he himself could scarcely credit. Perhaps
because he was not imaginative the condition of being thirty years of
age continued to seem remote even when he was within six weeks of that
goal.
He was first impressed with the rapidity of his approach to it on a
morning when he came late to breakfast, finding at his plate a long
envelope, bearing in its upper left-hand corner the request that in the
event of non-delivery it should be returned to the office of Darling &
Darling, at 27, Commonwealth Row. A glance, which he couldn't help
reading, passed round the table as he took it up. It was not new to him
that among the other members of the household, closely as they were
united, there was a sense of vague injustice because he was coming into
money and they were not.
The communication was brief, stating no more than the fact that in view
of the transfer of the estate which would take place a few weeks later,
Mr. William Darling, the sole trustee, would be glad to see the heir on
a day in the near future, to submit to him the list of investments and
other properties that were to make up his inheritance. Thor saw his
grandfather's money, so long a fairy prospect, as likely to become a
matter of solid cash. The change in his position would be considerable.
As yet, however, his position remained that of a son in his father's
family, and, in obedience to what he knew was expected of him, he read
the note aloud. Though there was an absence of comment, his stepmother,
in passing him his coffee, murmured, caressingly, "Dear old Thor."
"Dear old Thor," Claude mimicked, "will soon be able to do everything he
pleases."
Mrs. Masterman smiled. It was her mission to conciliate. "And what will
that be?"
"I know what it won't be," Claude said, scornfully. "It won't be
anything that has to do with a pretty girl."
Thor flushed. It was one of the minutes at which Claude's taunts gave
him all he could do to contain himself. As far as his younger brother
was concerned, he meant well by him. It had always been his intention
that his first use of Grandpa Thorley's money should be in supplementing
Claude's meager personal resources and helping him to keep on his feet.
He could be patient with him, too--patient under all sorts of stinging
gibes and double-edged compliments--patient for weeks, for
months--patient right up to the minute when something touched him too
keenly on the quick, and his wrath broke out with a fury he knew to be
dangerous. It was so dangerous as to make him afraid--afraid for Claude,
and more afraid for himself. There had been youthful quarrels between
them from which he had come away pale with terror, not at what he had
done, but at what he might have done had he not maintained some measure
of self-control.
The memory of such occasions kept him quiet now, though the irony of
Claude's speech cut so much deeper than any one could suspect. "Won't be
anything that has to do with a pretty girl!" Good God! When he was
beginning to feel his soul rent in the struggle between love and honor!
It was like something sprung on him--that had caught him unawares. There
were days when the suffering was so keen that he wondered if there was
no way of lawfully giving in. After all, he had never asked Lois
Willoughby to marry him. There had never been more between them than an
unspoken intention in his mind which had somehow communicated itself to
hers. But that was not a pledge. If he were to marry some one else, she
couldn't reproach him by so much as a syllable.
It was not often that he was tempted to reason thus, but Claude's
sarcasm brought up the question more squarely than it had ever raised
itself before. It was exactly the sort of subject on which, had it
concerned any one else, Thor would have turned for light to Lois
herself. In being debarred from her counsels, he felt strangely at a
loss. While he said to himself that after all these years there was but
one thing for him to do, he was curious as to the view other people
might take of such a situation. It was because of this need, and with
Claude's sneer ringing in his heart, that later in the day he sprang the
question on Dearlove. Dearlove was the derelict English butler whom Thor
had picked out of the gutter and put in charge of his office so that he
might have another chance. He had been summoned into his master's
presence to explain the subsidence in the contents of a bottle of cognac
that Thor kept at the office for emergency cases and had neglected to
put under lock and key.
"That was a full bottle a month ago," Thor declared, holding the
accusing object up to the light.
"Was it, sir?" Dearlove asked, dismally. He stood in his habitual
attitude, his arms crossed on his stomach, his hands thrust, monklike,
into his sleeves.
"And I've only taken one glass out of it--the day that young fellow fell
off his bicycle."
Dearlove eyed the bottle piteously. "'Aven't you, sir? Perhaps you took
more out that day than you thought."
But Thor broke in with what was really on his mind. "Look here,
Dearlove! What would you say to a man who was in love with one woman if
he married another?"
Dearlove was so astonished as to be for a minute at a loss for speech.
"What'd I say to him, sir? I'd say, what did he do it for? If it was--"
"Yes, Dearlove?" Thor encouraged. "If it was for--what?"
"Well, sir, if he'd got money with her, like--well, that'd be one
thing."
"But if he didn't? If it was a case in which money didn't matter?"
Dearlove shook his head. "I never 'eard of no such case as that, sir."
Thor grew interested in the sheerly human aspects of the subject.
Romance was so novel to him that he wondered if every one came under its
spell at some time--if there was no exception, not even Dearlove. He
leaned across the desk, his hands clasped upon it.
"Now, Dearlove, suppose it was your own case, and--"
"Oh, me, sir! I'm no example to no one--not with Brightstone 'anging on
to me the way she does. I can't look friendly at so much as a kitten
without Brightstone--"
"Now here's the situation, Dearlove," Thor interrupted, while the
ex-butler listened, his head judicially inclined to one side: "Suppose a
man--a patient of mine, let us say--meant to marry one young lady, and
let her see it. And suppose, later, he fell very much in love with
another young lady--"
"He'd 'ave to ease the first one off a bit, wouldn't he, sir?"
"You think he ought to."
"I think he'd 'ave to, sir, unless he wanted to be sued for breach."
"It's the question of duty I'm thinking of, Dearlove."
"Ain't it his dooty to marry the one he's in love with, sir? Doesn't the
Good Book say as 'ow fallin' in love"--Dearlove blushed becomingly--"as
'ow fallin' in love is the way God A'mighty means to fertilize the earth
with people? Doesn't the Good Book say that, sir?"
"Perhaps it does. I believe it's the kind of primitive subject it's
likely to take up."
"So that there's that to be thought of, sir. They say the children not
born o' love matches ain't always strong." He added, as he shuffled
toward the door, "We never had no little ones, Brightstone and me--only
a very small one that died a few hours after it was born."
Thor was not convinced by this reasoning, but he was happier than
before. Such expressions of opinion, which would probably be indorsed by
nine people out of ten, assured him that he might follow the urging of
his heart and yet not be a dastard.
* * * * *
He felt on stronger ground, therefore, when he talked with Fay one
afternoon in the week following. "Suppose my father doesn't renew the
lease--what would happen to you?"
Fay raised himself from the act of doing something to a head of lettuce
which was unfolding its petals like a great green rose. His eyes had the
visionary look that marked his inability to come down to the practical.
"Well, sir, I don't rightly know."
"But you've thought of it, haven't you?"
"Not exactly thought of it. He's said he wouldn't two or three times
already, and then changed his mind."
"Would it do you any good if he did? Aren't you fighting a losing
battle, anyhow?"
"That's not wholly the way I judge, Dr. Thor. Neither the losing battle
nor the winning one can be told from the balance-sheet. The success or
failure of a man's work is chiefly in himself."
Thor studied this, gazing down the level of soft verdure to the end of
the greenhouse in which they stood. "I can see how that might be in one
way, but--"
"It's the way I mostly think of, sir. Every man has his own habit of
mind, hasn't he? I agree with the great prophet Thomas Carlyle when he
says"--he brought out the words with a mild pomposity--"when he says
that a certain inarticulate self-consciousness dwells in us which only
our works can render articulate. He speaks of the folly of the precept
'Know thyself' till we've made it 'Know what thou canst work at.' I can
work at this, Dr. Thor; I couldn't work at anything else. I know that
making both ends meet is an important part of it, of course--"
"But to you it isn't the _most_ important part of it."
Fay's eyes wandered to the other greenhouse in which lettuce grew, to
the hothouse full of flowers, and out over the forcing-beds of violets.
"No, Dr. Thor; not the most important part of it--to me. I've created
all this. I love it. It's my life. It's myself. And if--"
"And if my father doesn't renew the lease--?"
"Then I shall be done for. It won't be just going bankrupt in the money
sense; it'll be everything else--blasted." He subjoined, dreamily: "I
don't know what would happen to me after that. I'd be--I'd be equal to
committing crimes."
Thor couldn't remember ever having seen tears on an elderly man's cheeks
before. He took a turn down half the length of the greenhouse and back
again. "Look here, Fay," he said, in the tone of one making a
resolution, "supposing my father would give _me_ a lease of the place?"
"You, Dr. Thor?"
"Yes, me. Would you work it for me?"
Fay reflected long, while Thor watched the play of light and shadow over
the mild, mobile face. "It wouldn't be my own place any more, would it,
sir?"
"No, I suppose it wouldn't--not strictly. But it would be the next best
thing. It would be better than--"
"It would be better than being turned out." He reflected further. "Was
you thinking of taking it over as an investment, sir?"
Not having considered this side of his idea, Thor sought for a natural,
spontaneous answer, and was not long in finding one. "I want to be
identified with the village industries, because I'm going into
politics."
"Oh, are you, sir? I didn't know you was that way inclined."
"I'm not," Thor explained, when they had moved from the greenhouse into
the yard. "I only feel that we people of the old stock hang out of
politics too much and that I ought to pitch in and make one more. So you
get my idea, Fay. It'll give me standing to hold a bit of property like
this, even if it's only on lease."
There was no need for further explanations. Fay consented, not
cheerfully, but with a certain saddened and yet grateful resignation, of
which the expression was cut short by a cheery, ringing voice from the
gateway:
"Hello, Mr. Fay! Hello, Dr. Thor! Whoa, Maud, whoa! Stand, will you?
What you thinking of?"
The response to this greeting came from both men simultaneously, each
making it according to his capacity for heartiness. "Hello, Jim!" They
emphasized the welcome by unconsciously advancing to meet the tall,
stalwart young Irishman of the third generation on American soil who
came toward them with the long, loose limbs and swinging stride
inherited from an ancestry bred to tramping the hills of Connemara. A
pair of twinkling eyes and a mouth that was always on the point of
breaking into a smile when it was not actually smiling tempered the
peasant shrewdness of a face that got further softening, and a touch of
superiority, from a carefully tended young mustache.
Thor and Jim Breen had been on friendly terms ever since they were boys;
but the case was not exceptional, since the latter was on similar terms
with every one in the village. From childhood upward he had been a local
character, chiefly because of a breezy self-respect that was as free
from self-consciousness as from self-importance. There was no one to
whom he wasn't polite, but there had never been any one of whom he was
afraid. "Hello, Mr. Masterman!" "Hello, Dr. Hilary!" "Hello, Father
Ryan!" "Hello Dr. Sim!" had been his form of greeting ever since he had
begun swaggering around the village, with head up and face alert, at the
age of five. No one had ever been found to resent this cheerful
familiarity, not even Archie Masterman.
As a man in whom friendliness was a primary instinct, Jim Breen never
entered a trolley-car nor turned a street corner without speaking or
nodding to every one he knew. Never did he visit a neighboring town
without calling on, or calling up, every one he could claim as an
acquaintance. He was always on hand for fires, for fights, for fallen
horses, for first-aid in accidents, for ball-games, for the outings of
Boy Scouts, and for village theatricals and dances. There were rumors
that he was sometimes "wild," but the wildness being confined to his
incursions into the city--which generally took place after dark--it was
not sufficiently in evidence to shock the home community. It was a
matter of common knowledge that he used, in village phrase, "to go with"
Rosie Fay--the breaking of the friendship being attributed by some of
the well-informed to his reported wildness, and by others to differences
in religion. As Thor had been absent in Europe during this episode, and
was without the native suspicion that would have connected the two
names, he took Jim's arrival pleasantly.
Having finished his bit of business, which concerned an order for
azaleas too large for his father to meet, and in which Mr. Fay might
find it to his advantage to combine, Jim turned blithely toward Thor.
"Hear about the town meeting, Dr. Thor?--what old Billy Taylor said
about the new bridge? What do you think of that for nerve? Tell you
what, there's some things in this town needs clearing up."
The statement bringing out Thor's own intention to run as a candidate
for office at the next election, Jim expressed his interest in the
vernacular of the hour, "What do you know about that?" Further
discussion of politics ending in Jim's pledging his support to his
boyhood's friend, Thor shook hands with an encouraging sense of being
embarked on a public career, and went forward to visit his patient in
the house.
His steps were arrested, however, by hearing Jim say with casual
light-heartedness, "Rosie anywheres about, Mr. Fay?"
The old man having nodded in the direction of the hothouse, Jim advanced
almost to the door, where Thor, on looking over his shoulder, saw him
pause.
It was a curious pause for one so self-confident as the young
Irishman--a pause like that of a man grown suddenly doubtful, timid,
distrustful. His hand was actually on the latch when, to Thor's
surprise, he wheeled away, returning to his "team" with head bent and
stride slackened thoughtfully. By the time he had mounted the wagon,
however, and begun to tug at Maud he was whistling the popular air of
the moment with no more than a subdued note in his gaiety.
CHAPTER X
But Thor was pleased with the idea that his father could scarcely refuse
him the lease. He would in fact make it worth his while not to do so.
Rosie Fay and those who belonged to her might, therefore, feel solid
ground beneath their feet, and go on working and, if need were,
suffering, without the intolerable dread of eviction. It would be a
satisfaction to him to accomplish this much, whatever the dictates of
honor might oblige him to forego.
He felt, too, that he was getting his reward when, after Jim's
departure, Rosie nodded through the glass of the hothouse, giving him
what might almost be taken for a smile. He forbore to go to her at once,
keeping that pleasure for the end of his visit. After seeing his
patient, there were generally small directions to give the daughter
which afforded pretexts for lingering in her company. His patient was
getting better, not through ministrations of his own, but through some
mysterious influence exerted by Reuben Hilary. As a man of science and a
skeptic, Thor was slightly impatient of this aid, even though he himself
had invoked it.
He was half-way up the stairs on his way to the bedroom in the mansard
roof when, on hearing a man's voice, he paused. The voice was saying,
with that inflection in which there was no more than a hint of the
brogue:
"Now there's what we were talking of the last time I was here: 'Let not
your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Ye believe in God;
believe also in me.' There's the two great plagues of human
existence--fear and trouble--staggered for you at a blow. And you do
believe in God, now, don't you?"
Thor had turned to tiptoe down again when he heard the words, spoken in
the rebellious tones with which he was familiar, modulated now to an odd
submissiveness: "I don't know whether I do or not. Isn't there something
in the Bible about, 'Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief'?"
"There is, and it's a good way to begin."
Thor was out in the yard before he could hear more. Standing for a
minute in the windy sunshine, he wondered at the curious phenomenon
presented by men in evident possession of their faculties who relied for
the dispersion of human care on means invisible and mystic. The fact
that in this case he himself had appealed to the illusion rendered the
working of it none the less astonishing. His own method for the
dispersion of human care--and the project was dear to him--was by
dollars and cents. It was, moreover, a method as to which there was no
trouble in proving the efficiency.
He took up the subject of her mother with Rosie, who, with the help of
Antonio, was rearranging the masses of azaleas, carnations, and
poinsettias after the depletion of the Christmas sales. "She's really
better, isn't she?"
Rosie pushed a white azalea to the place on the stand that would best
display its domelike regularity. "She seems to be."
"What do you think has helped her?"
She gave him a queer little sidelong smile. "You're the doctor. I should
think you'd know."
He adored those smiles--constrained, unwilling, distrustful smiles that
varied the occasional earnest looks that he got from her green eyes.
"But I don't know. It isn't anything I do for her."
She banked two or three azaleas together, so that their shades of pink
and pomegranate-red might blend. "I suppose it's Dr. Hilary."
"I know it's Dr. Hilary. But he isn't working by magic. If she's getting
back her nerve it isn't because he wishes it on her, as the boys say."
Suspecting all his approaches, she confined herself to saying, "I'm sure
I don't know," speaking like a guilty witness under cross-examination.
The assiduity of his visits, the persistency with which he tried to make
her talk, kept her the more carefully on her guard against betraying
anything unwarily.
But to him the reserve was an added charm. He called it shyness or
coyness or maidenly timidity, according to the circumstance that called
it forth; but whatever it was, this apathy to his passionate dumb-show
piqued him to a frenzy infused with an element of homage. Any other girl
in her situation would have come half-way at least toward a man in his.
His training having rendered him analytical of the physical side of
things, he endeavored, more or less unsuccessfully, to account for the
extraordinary transformation in himself, whereby every nerve in his body
yearned and strained toward this hard, proud little creature who, too
evidently--as yet, at any rate--refused to take him into account. She
made him feel like a man signaling in the dark or speaking across a
vacuum through which his voice couldn't carry, while he was conscious at
the same time of searchings of heart at making the attempts to do
either.
He was beset by these scruples when, after taking his runabout from the
garage, in order to go to town, he met Lois Willoughby in the Square. On
the instant he remembered Dearlove's counsel of a few days
earlier--"He'd 'ave to ease the first one off a bit." Whatever was to be
his ultimate decision, the wisdom of this course was incontestable. As
she paused, smiling, expecting him to stop, he lifted his hat and drove
onward. Perhaps it was only his imagination that caught in her great,
velvety brown eyes an expression of surprise and pain; but whether his
sight was accurate or not, the memory of the moment smote him. The
process of "easing the first one off" would probably prove difficult. "I
shall have to explain to her that I was in a hurry," he said, to comfort
himself, as he flew onward to the town.
* * * * *
The explanation would have been not untrue, since he was already overdue
at his appointment with Mr. William Darling, his grandfather's executor.
It was the second of the meetings arranged for giving him a general idea
of the estate he was coming into. At the first he had gone over the
lists of stocks, mortgages, and bonds. To-day, with a map of the city
and the surrounding country spread out, partially on the desk and
partially over Mr. Darling's knees as he tilted back in a
revolving-chair, Thor learned the location of certain bits of landed
property which his grandfather, twenty or thirty years before, had
considered good investments. The astuteness of this ancestral foresight
was illustrated by the fact that Thor was a richer man than he had
supposed. While he would possess no enormous wealth, according to the
newer standards of the day, he would have something between thirty and
forty thousand dollars of yearly income.
"And that," Mr. Darling explained with pride, "at a very conservative
rate of investment. You could easily have more; but if you take my
advice you'll not be in a hurry to look for more till you need it. I
don't want to hurt any one's feelings. You surely understand that."
Thor was not sure that he did understand it. He was not sure; and yet he
hesitated to ask for the elucidation of what was intended perhaps to
remain cryptic. In a small chair drawn up beside Mr. Darling's revolving
seat of authority, his elbow on his knee, his chin supported by his
fist, he studied the map.
"I don't want to hurt any one's feelings," the lawyer declared again,
"either before or after the fact."
This time an intention of some sort was so evident that Thor felt
obliged to say, "Do you mean any one in particular, sir?"
The trustee threw the map from off his knees, and, rising, walked to the
window. He was a small, neat, sharp-eyed man of fresh, frosty
complexion, his exquisite clothes making him something of a dandy, while
his manner of turning his head, with quick little jerks and perks,
reminded one of a bird. At the window he stood with his hands behind his
back, looking over the jumble of nineteenth-century roofs--out of which
an occasional "skyscraper" shot like a tower--to where a fringe of masts
and funnels edged the bay. He spoke without turning round.
"I don't mean any one in particular unless there should be any one in
particular to mean."
With this oracular explanation Thor was forced to be content, and, as
the purpose of the meeting seemed to have been accomplished, he rose to
take his leave.
Mr. Darling was quick in showing himself not only faithful as a trustee,
but cordial as a man of the world. "My wife would like you to come and
see her," he said, in shaking hands. "She asked me to say, too, that she
hopes you and your brother will come to the dance she's going to give
for Elsie in the course of a month or two. You'll get your cards in
time."
Warmly expressing the pleasure this entertainment would give him, while
knowing in his heart that he wouldn't attend it, the young man took his
departure.
* * * * *
But no later than that evening he began to perceive why the oracle had
spoken. Claude having excused himself from dressing for dinner on the
ground of another mysterious engagement with Billy Cheever, and Mrs.
Masterman having retired up-stairs, Thor was alone in the library with
his father.
It was a mellow room, in which the bindings of long rows of books,
mostly purchased by Grandpa Thorley in "sets," an admirable white-marble
chimney=piece in a Georgian style, and a few English eighteenth-century
prints added by Archie Masterman himself, disguised the heavy
architectural taste of the sixties. Grandpa Thorley had built the house
at the close of the Civil War, the end of that struggle having found
him--for reasons he was never eager to explain--a far richer man than
its beginning. He had built the house, not on his own old farm, which
was already being absorbed into the suburban portion of the city, but on
a ten-acre plot in County Street, which, with its rich bordering fields,
its overarching elms, and its lofty sites, was revealing itself even
then as the predestined quarter of the wealthy. So long as there had
been no wealthy, County Street had been only a village highway; but the
social developments following on the Civil War had required a Faubourg
St.-Germain.
In this house Miss Louisa Thorley had grown up and been wooed by Archie
Masterman. It had been the wooing of a very plain girl by a good-looking
lad, and had received a shock when Grandpa Thorley suspected other
motives than love to account for the young man's ardor. Her suitor being
forbidden the house, Miss Thorley had no resource but to meet him in the
city on the 7th of March, 1880, and go with him to a convenient
parsonage. Thor was born on the 10th of February of the year following.
Two days later the young mother died.
Grandpa Thorley himself held out for another ten years, when his will
revealed the fact that he had taken every precaution to keep Archie
Masterman from profiting by a penny of the Thorley money. So strict were
the provisions of this document that on the father was thrown the entire
cost of bringing up and educating Louisa Thorley's son.
But Archie Masterman was patient. He took a lease of the Thorley house
when Darling & Darling as executors put it in the market, and paid all
the rent it was worth. Moreover, there had never been a moment in Thor's
life when he had been made to feel that his maintenance was a burden
unjustly thrown on one who could ill afford to bear it. For this
consideration the son had been grateful ever since he knew its
character, and was now eager to make due return.
For the minute he was moving restlessly about the room, not knowing what
to say. From the way in which his father, who was comfortably stretched
in an arm-chair before the fire, dropped the evening paper to the floor,
while he puffed silently at his cigar, Thor knew that he was expected to
give some account of the interview between himself and the trustee that
afternoon. Any father might reasonably look for such a confidence, while
the conditions of affectionate intimacy in which the Masterman family
lived made it a matter of course.
The son was still marching up and down the room, smoking cigarettes
rapidly and throwing the butts into the fire, when he had completed his
summary of the information received in his two meetings with the
executor.
The father had neither interrupted nor asked questions, but he spoke at
last. "What did you say was the approximate value of the whole estate?"
Thor told him.
"And of the income?"
Thor repeated that also.
"Criminal."
Thor stopped dead for an instant, but resumed his march. He had stopped
in surprise, but he went on again so as to give the impression of not
having heard the last observation.
"It's criminal," the father explained, with repressed indignation, "that
money should bring in so trifling a return."
"He said it was very conservatively invested."
"It's damned idiotically invested. Such incompetence deserves an even
stronger term. If my own money didn't earn more for me than that--well,
I'm afraid you wouldn't have seen Vienna and Berlin."
The remark gave Thor an opening he was glad to seize. "I know that,
father. I know how much you've spent for me, and how generous you've
always been, with Claude to provide for, too; and now that I'm to have
enough of my own I want to repay you every--"
"Don't hurt me, my boy. You surely don't think I'd take compensation for
bringing up my own son. It's not in the least what I'm driving at. I
simply mean that now that the whole thing is coming into your own hands
you'll probably want to do better with it than has been done
heretofore."
Thor said nothing. There was a long silence before his father went on:
"Even if you didn't want _me_ to have anything to do with it, I could
put you in touch with people who'd give you excellent advice."
Thor paced softly, as if afraid to make his footfalls heard. Something
within him seemed frozen, paralyzed. He was incapable of a response.
"Of course," the father continued, gently, with his engaging lisp, "I
can quite understand that you shouldn't want me to have anything to do
with it. The new generation is often distrustful of the old."
Thor beat his brains for something to say that would meet the courtesies
of the occasion without committing him; but his whole being had grown
dumb. He would have been less humiliated if his father had pleaded with
him outright.
"And yet I haven't done so badly," Masterman continued, with pathos in
his voice. "I had very little to begin with. When I first went into old
Toogood's office I had nothing at all. I made my way by thrift,
foresight, and integrity. I think I can say as much as that. Your
grandfather Thorley was unjust to me; but I've never resented it, not by
a syllable."
It was a relief to Thor to be able to say with some heartiness, "I know
that, father."
"Not that I didn't have some difficult situations to face on account of
it. When the Toogood executors withdrew the old man's money it would
have gone hard with me if I hadn't been able to--to"--Thor paused in his
walk, waiting for what was coming--"if I hadn't been able to command
confidence in other directions," the father finished, quietly.
Thor hastened to divert the conversation from his own affairs. "Mr.
Willoughby put his money in then, didn't he?"
"That was one thing," Masterman admitted, coldly.
Thor could speak the more daringly because his march up and down kept
him behind his father's back. "And now, I understand, you think of
dropping him."
"I shouldn't be dropping him. That's not the way to put it. He drops
himself--automatically." The clock on the mantelpiece ticked a few times
before he added, "I can't go on supporting him."
"Do you mean that he's used up all the capital he put in?"
"That's what it comes to. He's spent enormous sums. At times it's been
near to crippling me. But I can't keep it up. He's got to go. Besides,
the big, drunken oaf is a disgrace to me. I can't afford to be
associated with him any longer."
Thor came round to the fireplace, where he stood on the hearth-rug, his
arm on the mantelpiece. "But, father, what'll he do?"
"Surely that's his own lookout. Bessie's got money still. I didn't get
all of it, by any means."
"No; but if you've got most of it--"
Masterman shot out of his seat. "Take care, Thor. I object to your way
of expressing yourself. It's offensive."
"I only mean, father, that if Mr. Willoughby saved the business--"
"He didn't do anything of the kind," Masterman said, sharply. "No one
knows better than he that I never wanted him at all."
But Thor ventured to speak up. "Didn't you tell mother one night in
Paris, when we were there in 1892, that his money might as well come to
you as go to the deuce? Mother said she hated business and didn't want
to have anything to do with it. She hoped you'd let the Willoughbys and
their money alone. Didn't that happen, father?"
If Thor was expecting his father to blanch and betray a guilty mind, he
was both disappointed and relieved. "Possibly. I've no recollection. I
was looking for some one to enter the business. He wasn't my ideal, the
Lord knows; and yet I might have said something about it--carelessly.
Why do you ask?"
The son tried to infuse his words with a special intensity as, looking
straight into his father's eyes, he said, "Because I--I remember the way
things happened at the time."
"Indeed? And may I ask what your memories lead you to infer? They've
clearly led you to infer something."
During the seconds in which father and son scrutinized each other Thor
felt himself backing down with a sort of spiritual cowardice. He didn't
want to accuse his father. He shrank from the knowledge that would have
justified him in doing so. To express himself with as little stress as
possible, he said, "They lead me to infer that we've some moral
responsibility toward Mr. Willoughby."
"Really? That's very interesting. Now, I should have said that if I'd
ever had any I'd richly worked it off." It was perhaps to glide away
from the points already raised that he asked: "Aren't you a little hasty
in looking for moral responsibility? Let me see! Who was it the last
time? Old Fay, wasn't it?"
Thor flushed, but he accepted the diversion. He even welcomed it. Such
glimpses as he got of his father's mind appalled him. For the present,
at any rate, he would force no issue that would verify his suspicions
and compel him to act upon them. Better the doubt. Better to believe
that Willoughby had been a spendthrift. He would have no difficulty as
to that, had it not been for those dogging memories of the little hotel
in the rue de Rivoli.
Besides, as he said to himself, he had his own ax to grind. He
endeavored, therefore, to take the reference to Fay jocosely. "That
reminds me," he smiled, though the smile might have been a trifle
nervous, "that if you don't want to renew Fay's lease when it falls in,
I wish you'd make it over to me." Disconcerted by the look of amazement
his words called up, he hastened to add: "I'd take it on any terms you
please. You've only got to name them."
Masterman backed away to the large oblong library table strewn with
papers and magazines. He seemed to need it for support. His tones were
those of a man amazed to the point of awe. "What in the name of Heaven
do you want that for?"
Thor steadied his nerve by lighting a cigarette. "To give me a footing
in the village. I'm going into politics."
"O Lord!"
Thor hurried on. "Yes, I know how you feel. But to me it seems a duty."
"Seems a--_what_?"
The son felt obliged to be apologetic. "You see, father, so few men of
the old American stock are going into politics nowadays--"
"Well, why should they?"
"The country has to be governed."
"Lots of fools to do that who are no good for anything else. Why should
_you_ dirty your hands with it?"
"That isn't the way I look at it."
"It's the way you _will_ look at it when you know a little more about it
than you evidently do now. Of course, with your money you'll have a
right to fritter away your time in anything you please; but as your
father I feel that I ought to give you a word of warning. You wouldn't
be a Masterman if you didn't need it--on that score?"
"What score?"
"The score of being caught by every humbugging socialistic scheme--"
"I'm not a socialist, father."
"Well, what are you? I thought you were."
"I'm not now. I've passed that phase."
"That's something to the good, at any rate."
"With politics in this country as they are--and so many alien peoples to
be licked into shape--it's no use looking for the state to undertake
anything progressive for another two hundred years."
"Ah! Want something more rapid-firing."
"Want something immediate."
"And you've found it?"
"Only in the conviction that whatever's to be done must be done by the
individual. I've no theories any longer. I've finished with them all.
I'm driven back on the conclusion that if anything is to be accomplished
in the way of social betterment it must be by the man-to-man process in
one's own small sphere. If we could get that put into practice on a
considerable scale we should do more than the state will be able to
carry out for centuries to come."
"Put what into practice?"
"The principle that no man shall let a friend or a neighbor suffer
without relief when he can relieve him."
"Thor, you should have been God."
"I don't know anything about God, father. But if I were to create a God,
I should make that his first commandment."
Masterman squared himself in front of his son. "So that's behind this
scheme of yours for taking over Fay's lease. You're trying to trick me
into doing what you know I won't do of my own accord. What could _you_
do with the lease but make a present of it to old Fay? Politics be
hanged! Come, now. Be frank with me."
Thor threw back his head. "I can't be wholly frank with you, father; but
I'll be as frank as I can. I do want to help the poor old chap; you'd be
sorry for him if you'd been seeing him as I have; but that was only one
of my motives. Leaving politics out of the question, I have others. But
I don't want to speak of them--yet. Probably I shall never need to speak
of them at all."
Thor was willing that his father should say, "It's the girl!" but he
contented himself with the curt statement: "I'm sorry, Thor; but you
can't have the lease. I'm going to sell the place."
"But, father," the young man cried, "what's to become of Fay?"
"Isn't that what you asked me just now about Len Willoughby? Who do you
think I am, Thor? Am I in this world to carry every lame dog on my
back?"
"It isn't a question of every lame dog, but of an old tenant and an old
friend."
"Toward whom I have what you're pleased to call a moral responsibility.
Is that it?"
"That's it, father--put mildly."
"Well, I don't admit your moral responsibility; and, what's more, I'm
not going to bear it. Do you understand?"
Thor felt himself growing white, with the whiteness that attended one of
his surging waves of wrath. He clenched his fists. He drew away. But he
couldn't keep himself from saying, quietly, with a voice that shook
because of his very effort to keep it firm: "All right, father. If you
don't bear it, I will."
He was moving toward the door when Archie called after him, "Thor, for
God's sake, don't be a _fool_!"
He answered from the threshold, over his shoulder, "It's no use asking
me not to do as I've said, father, because I can't help it." He was in
the hall when he added, "And if I could, I shouldn't try."
CHAPTER XI
By the time his anger had cooled down, Thor regretted the words with
which he had left his father's presence, and continued to regret them.
They were braggart and useless. Whatever he might feel impelled to do,
for either Leonard Willoughby or Jasper Fay, he could do better without
announcing his intentions beforehand. He experienced a sense of guilt
when, on the next day, and for many days afterward, his father showed by
his manner that he had been wounded.
Lois Willoughby showed that she, too, had been wounded. The process of
"easing the first one off," besides affording him side-lights on a
woman's heart, involved him in an erratic course of blowing hot and cold
that defeated his own ends. When he blew cold the chill was such that he
blew hotter than ever to disperse it. He could see for himself that this
seeming capriciousness made it difficult for Lois to preserve the equal
tenor of her bearing, though she did her best.
He had kept away from her for a week or more, and would have continued
to do so longer had he not been haunted by the look his imagination
conjured up in her eyes. He knew its trouble, its bewilderment, its
reflected heartache. "I'm a damned cad," he said to himself; and
whenever he worked himself up to that point remorse couldn't send him
quickly enough to pay her a visit of atonement.
He knew she was at home because he met one or two of the County Street
ladies coming away from the house. With knowing looks they told him he
should find her. They did not, however, tell him that she had another
visitor, whose voice he recognized while depositing his hat and overcoat
on one of the Regency chairs in the tapestried square hall.
"Oh, don't go yet," Lois was saying. "Here's Dr. Thor Masterman. He'll
want to see you."
But Rosie insisted on taking her departure, making polite excuses for
the length of her call.
She was deliciously pretty; he saw that at once on entering. Wearing the
new winter suit for which she had pinched and saved, and a hat of the
moment's fashion, she easily dazzled Thor, though Lois could perceive,
in details of material, the "cheapness" that in American eyes is the
most damning of all qualities. Rosie's face was bright with the flush of
social triumph, for the County Street ladies had been kind to her, and
she had had tea with all the ceremony of which she read in the
accredited annals of good society. If she had not been wondering whether
or not the County Street ladies knew her brother was in jail, she could
have suppressed all other causes for anxiety and given herself freely to
the hour's bliss.
But she would not be persuaded to remain, taking her leave with a full
command of graceful niceties. Thor could hardly believe she was his
fairy of the hothouse. She was a princess, a marvel. "Beats them all,"
he said, gleefully, to himself, referring to the ladies of County
Street, and almost including Lois Willoughby.
He did not quite include her. He perceived that he couldn't do so when,
after having bowed Rosie to the door, he returned to take his seat in
the drawing-room. There was a distinction about Lois, he admitted to
himself, that neither prettiness nor fine clothes nor graceful niceties
could rival. He wondered if she wasn't even more distinguished since
this new something had come into her life--was it joy or grief?--which
he himself had brought there.
Her greeting to him was of precisely the same shade as all her greetings
during the past two months. It was like something rehearsed and executed
to perfection. When she had given him his tea and poured another cup for
herself, they talked of Rosie.
"Do you know," she said, in a musing tone, "I think the poor little
thing has really enjoyed being here this afternoon?"
"Why shouldn't she?"
"Yes, but why should she? Apart from the very slight novelty of the
thing--which to an American girl is no real novelty, after all--I don't
understand what it is she cares so much about?"
He weighed the question seriously. "She finds a world of certain--what
shall I say?--of certain amenities to which she's equal--any one can see
that!--and which she hasn't got. That's something in itself--to a girl
with imagination."
"I think she's in love," Lois said, suddenly.
Thor was startled. "Oh no, she isn't. She can't be. Who on earth could
she be in love with?"
"Oh, it's not with you. Don't be alarmed," Lois smiled. It was so like
Thor to be shy of a pretty girl. He had been so ever since she could
remember him.
"That's good," he managed to say. He regained control of himself, though
he tingled all over. "It would have to be with me or Dr. Hilary. We're
the only two men, except the Italians, who ever appear on the place."
"Oh, you don't know," Lois said, pensively. "Girls like that often have
what they call, rather picturesquely, a fellow."
"Oh, don't!" His cry was instantly followed by a nervous laugh. He felt
obliged to explain. "It's so funny to hear you talk like that. It
doesn't go with your style."
She took this pleasantly and they spoke of other things; but Thor was
eager to get away. A real visit of atonement had become impossible. That
must be put off for another day--perhaps for ever. He wasn't sure. He
couldn't tell. For the minute his head was in a whirl. He hardly knew
what he was saying, except that his rejoinders to Lois's remarks were
more or less at random. Vital questions were pounding through his brain
and demanding an answer. Who knew but that with regard to Rosie she was
right--and yet wrong? Women, with their remarkable powers of divination,
didn't always hit the nail directly on the head. It might be the case
with Lois now. She might be right in her surmise that Rosie was in love,
and mistaken in those light and cruel words: "Oh, not with you!" He
didn't suppose it was with him. And yet ... and yet...!
* * * * *
He got away at last, and tore through the winter twilight toward the old
apple-orchard above the pond. He knew what he would say. "Rosie, are you
in love with any one? If so, for God's sake, tell me." What he would do
when she answered him was matter outside his present capacity for
thought.
It had begun to snow. By the time he reached the house on the hill his
shoulders were white. The necessity for shaking himself in the little
entry gave the first prosaic chill to his ardor.
Rosie had returned and was preparing supper. The princess and marvel had
resolved herself again into the fairy of the hothouse. Not that Thor
minded that. What disconcerted him was her dry little manner of
surprise. She had not expected him. There was nothing in her mother's
condition to demand his call. She herself was busy. She had come from
the kitchen to answer the door. A smell of cooking filled the house.
No one of these details could have kept him from carrying out his
purpose; but together they were unromantic. How could he adjure her to
tell him for God's sake whether or not she was in love with any one when
he saw she was afraid that something was burning on the stove? He could
only stammer out excuses for having come. Inventing on the spot new and
incoherent directions for the treatment of Mrs. Fay, he took himself
away again, not without humiliation.
Being in a savage mood as he stalked down the hill, he was working
himself into a rage when an unexpected occurrence gave him other things
to think of.
At the foot of the hill, just below the slope of the Square, was the
terminus of the electric tram-line from the city. In summer it was a
pretty spot, well shaded by ornamental trees, with a small Gothic church
and its parsonage in the center of a trimly kept lawn. It was prettier
still as Thor Masterman approached it, at the close of a winter's day,
with the great soft flakes, heaping their beauty on roof and shrub and
roadway, the whole lit up with plenty of cheerful electricity, and no
eye to behold it but his own.
Because of this purity and solitude a black spot was the more
conspicuous; and because it was a moving black spot it caught the
onlooker's glance at once. It was a moving black spot, though it
remained in one place--on the cement seat that circled a
copper-beech-tree for the convenience of villagers waiting for the cars.
It was extraordinary that any one should choose this uninviting,
snow-covered resting-place, unless he couldn't do otherwise.
The doctor in Thor was instantly alert, but before advancing many paces
he had made his guess. Patients were beginning to take his time,
rendering his afternoons less free; and so what might have been expected
had happened. Mr. Willoughby had managed to come homeward by the
electric car, but was unable to go any farther.
Nevertheless, Thor was startled as he crossed the roadway to hear a
great choking sob. The big creature was huddled somehow on the seat, but
with face and arms turned to the trunk of the tree, against whose cold
bark he wept. He wept shamelessly aloud, with broken exclamations of
which "O my God! O my God!" was all that Thor could hear distinctly.
"It's delirium this time, for sure," he said to himself, as he laid his
hand on the great snow-heaped shoulder.
He changed his mind on that score as soon as Mr. Willoughby was able to
speak coherently. "I'm heart-broken, Thor. Haven't touched a thing
to-day--scarcely. But I'm all in."
More sobs followed. It was with difficulty that Thor could get the
lumbering body on its feet. "You mustn't stay here, Mr. Willoughby.
You'll catch cold. Come along home with me."
"I do' wan' to go home, Thor. Got no home now. Ruined--tha's what I am.
Ruined. Your father's kicked me out. All my money gone. No' a cent left
in the world."
Thor dragged him onward. "But you must come home just the same, Mr.
Willoughby. You can't stay out here. The next car will be along in a
minute, and every one will see you."
"I do' care who sees me, Thor. I'm ruined. Father says I'll have to go.
Got all the papers ready. O my God! what'll Bessie say?"
As they stumbled forward through the snow Thor tried to learn what had
happened.
"Got all my money and then kicked me out," was the only explanation.
"Not a cent in the world. What'll Bessie say? Oh, what'll Bessie say?
All her money. Hasn't got a hundred thousand dollars left out of tha'
grea' big estate. Make away with myself. Tha's what I'll do. O my God!
my God!"
On arriving in front of the house Thor saw lights in the drawing-room.
Lois was probably still there. It was no more than a half-hour since he
had left her, and other callers might have succeeded him. He tried to
steer his charge round the corner toward the side entrance in
Willoughby's Lane.
But Len grew querulous. "I do' want to go in the side door. Go in the
front door, hang it all! Father can't turn me out of my own house, the
infernal hound."
The door opened, and Lois stood in the oblong of light. "Oh, what is
it?" she cried, peering outward. "Is it you, Thor? What's the matter?"
"Treat me like a servant," Willoughby complained, as, with Thor
supporting him, he stumbled up the steps. "I do' want to go in the side
door. Front door good enough for me. No confounded kitchen-boy, if I
_am_ ruined. Look here, Lois," he rambled on, when he had got into the
hall and Thor was helping him to take off his overcoat--"look here,
Lois; we haven't got a cent in the world. Tha's wha' we haven't got--not
a cent in the world. Archie Masterman's got my money, and your money,
and your mother's money, and the whole damned money of all of us. Kicked
me out now. No good to him any more."
With some difficulty Thor got him to his room, where he undressed him
and put him to bed. On his return to the hall he found Lois seated in
one of the arm-chairs, her face pale.
"Oh, Thor, is this what you meant a few weeks ago?"
He did his best to explain the situation to her gently. "I don't know
just what's happened, but I'm afraid there's trouble ahead."
She nodded. "Yes; I've been expecting it, and now I suppose it's come."
"I shouldn't wonder if it had. But you must be brave, Lois, and not
think matters worse than they are."
"Oh, I sha'n't do that," she said, with a hint of haughtiness at his
solicitude. "Don't worry about me. I'm quite capable of bearing
whatever's to be borne. Please go on."
"If anything has happened," he said, speaking from where he stood in the
middle of the floor, "it's that father wants to dissolve the
partnership."
"I've been looking for that. So has mamma."
"And if they do dissolve the partnership, I'm afraid--I'm afraid
there'll be very little money coming to Mr. Willoughby."
"Whose fault would that be?"
"Frankly, Lois, I don't know. It might be that of my father or of
yours--"
"And I shouldn't think you'd want to find out."
He looked down at her curiously. "Why do you say that? Shouldn't you?"
She seemed to shiver. "Why should I? If the money's gone, it's gone.
Whether my father has squandered it or your father has--" She rose and
crossed the hall to the stairs, where, with a foot on the lowest of the
steps, she leaned on the pilaster of the balustrade. "I don't want to
know," she said, with energy. "If the money's gone, they've shuffled it
away between them; and I don't see that it would help either you or me
to find out who's to blame."
It was a minute at which Thor could easily have brought out the words
which for so many years he had supposed he would one day speak to her.
His pity was such that it would have been a luxury to tell her to throw
all the material part of her care on him. If he could have said that
much without saying more he would have had no hesitation. But there was
still a chance of the miracle happening with regard to Rosie Fay. Love
was love--and sweet. It was first love, and, in its way, it was young
love. It was springtide love. The dew of the morning was on it, and the
freshness of sunrise. It was hard to renounce it, even to go to the aid
of one whose need of him was so desperate that to hide it she turned her
face away. Instead of the words of cheer and rescue that were almost
gushing to his lips, he said, soberly:
"Has your mother any idea of what's going on?"
She began pacing restlessly up and down. "Oh, she's been worried for the
last few weeks. She couldn't help knowing something. Papa's been
dropping so many hints that she's been meaning to see your father."
"I suppose it will be very hard for her."
She paused, confronting him. "It will be at first. But she'll rise to
it. She does that kind of thing. You don't know mother. Very few people
do. She simply adores papa. It's pathetic. All this time that he's been
so--so--she won't recognize it. She won't admit for a second--or let me
admit it--that he's anything but tired or ill. It's splendid--and yet
there's something about it that almost breaks my heart. Mamma has lots
of pluck, you know. You mightn't think it--"
"Oh, I know it."
"I'm glad you do. People in general see only one side of her, but it's
not the only side. She has her weaknesses. I see that well enough. She's
terribly a woman; and she can't grow old. But that's not criminal, is
it? There's a great deal in her that's never been called on, and perhaps
this trouble will bring it out."
He spoke admiringly. "It will bring out a great deal in you."
She began again to pace up and down. "Oh, me! I'm so useless. I've never
been of any help to any one. Do you know, at times, latterly, I've
envied that little Rosie Fay?"
"Why?"
"Because she's got duties and responsibilities and struggles. She's got
something more to do than dress and play tennis and make calls. There
are people who depend on her--"
"She's splendid, isn't she?"
She paused in her restless pacing. "She might be. She is--very nearly."
Though he had taken the opportunity to get further away from the appeal
of her distress, he felt a pang of humiliation in the promptness with
which she followed his lead.
But he couldn't go on with the discussion. It was too sickening. Every
inflection of her voice implied that with her own need he had no longer
anything to do--that it was all over--that she recognized the fact--that
she was trying her utmost to let him off easily. That she should suspect
the truth, or connect the change with Rosie Fay, he knew was out of the
question. It was not the way in which her mind would work. If she
accounted for the situation at all it would probably be on the ground
that when it came to the point he had found that he didn't care for her.
The promises he had tacitly made and she had tacitly understood she was
ready to give back.
He was quite alive to the fact that her generosity made his impotence
the more pitiable. That he should stand tongue-tied and helpless before
the woman whom he had allowed to think that she could count on him was
galling not only to his manhood, but to all those primary instincts that
sent him to the aid of weakness. There was a minute in which it seemed
to him that if he did not on the instant redeem his self-respect it
would be lost to him for ever. After all, he did care for her--in a way.
There was no woman in the world toward whom he felt an equal degree of
reverence. More than that, there was no woman in the world whom he could
admit so naturally to share his life, whose life he himself could so
naturally share. If Rosie were to marry him, the whole process would be
different. In that case there would be no sharing; there would be
nothing but a wild, gipsy joy. His delight would be to heap happiness
upon her, content with her acceptance and the very little which was all
he could expect her to give him in return. With Lois Willoughby it would
be equality, partnership, companionship, and a life of mutual
comprehension and respect. That would be much, of course; it was what a
few months ago he would have thought enough; it was plainly that with
which he must manage to be satisfied.
He was about to plunge in--to plunge in with one last backward look to
the more exquisite joys he must leave behind--and tell her that his
strength and loyalty were hers to dispose of as she would when she
herself unwittingly balked the impulse.
It was still to hold open to him the way of escape that she continued to
speak of Rosie. "If she were to marry some nice fellow, like Jim Breen,
for instance--"
Thor bounded. "Like--who?"
She was too deeply preoccupied with her own emotions to notice his. "He
was attentive to her for a long time once."
He cried out, incredulously: "Oh no; it couldn't be. She's too--too
superior."
"I'm afraid the superiority is just the trouble--though I don't know
anything about it, beyond the gossip one hears in the village. Any one
who goes to so many of the working people's houses as I do hears it
all."
He was still incredulous. "And you've heard--_that_?"
"I've heard that poor Jim wanted to marry her--and she wouldn't look at
him. It's a pity, I think. She'd be a great deal happier in marrying a
man with the same kind of ways as herself than she'd be with some one--I
can only put it," she added, with a rueful smile, "in a way you don't
like, Thor--than she'd be with some one of another station in life."
His heart pounded so that he could hardly trust himself to speak with
the necessary coolness. "Is there any question of--of any one of another
station in life?"
"N-no; only that if she _is_ in love--and of course I'm only guessing at
it--I think it's very likely to be with some one of that kind."
The statement which was thrown out with gentle indifference affected him
so profoundly that had she again declared that it was not with him he
could have taken it with equanimity. With whom else could it be? It
wasn't with Antonio, and it wasn't with Dr. Hilary. There was the
choice. Were there any other rival, he couldn't help knowing it. He had
sometimes suspected--no, it was hardly enough for suspicion!--he had
sometimes hoped--but it had been hardly enough for hope!--and yet
sometimes, when she gave him that dim, sidelong smile or turned to him
with the earnest, wide-open look in her greenish eyes, he had thought
that possibly--just possibly....
He didn't know what answers he made to her further remarks. A faint
memory remained with him of talking incoherently against reason, against
sentiment, against time, as, with her velvety regard resting upon him
sadly, he swung on his overcoat and hurried to take his leave.
CHAPTER XII
He hurried because inwardly he was running away from the figure he had
cut. Never had he supposed that in any one's time of need--to say
nothing of hers!--he could have proved so worthless. And he hurried
because he knew a decision one way or the other had become imperative.
And he hurried because his failure convinced him that so long as there
was a possibility that Rosie cared for him secretly he would never do
anything for Lois Willoughby. Whatever his sentiment toward the
woman-friend of his youth, he was tied and bound by the stress of a love
of which the call was primitive. He might be over-abrupt; he might
startle her; but at the worst he should escape from this unbearable
state of inactivity.
So he hurried. It had stopped snowing; the evening was now fair and
cold. As it was nearly six o'clock, his father would probably have come
home. He would make him first an offer of new terms, and he would see
Rosie afterward. His excitement was such that he knew he could neither
eat nor sleep till the questions in his heart were answered.
But on reaching his own gate he was surprised to see Mrs. Willoughby's
motor turn in at the driveway and roll up to the door. It was not that
there was anything strange in her paying his mother a call, but to-day
the circumstances were unusual. Anything might happen. Anything might
have happened already. On reaching the door he let himself in with
misgiving.
He recognized the visitor's voice at once, but there was a note in it he
had never heard before. It was a plaintive note, and rather childlike:
"Oh, Ena, _what's_ become of my money?"
His mother's inflections were as childlike as the other's, and as full
of distress. "How do I know, Bessie? Why don't you ask Archie?"
"I have asked him. I've just come from there. I can't make out anything
he says. He's been trying to tell me that we've spent it--when I know we
haven't spent it."
There were tears in Ena's voice as she said: "Well, I can't explain it,
Bessie. _I_ don't know anything about business."
From where he stood, with his hand on the knob, as he closed the door
behind him, Thor could see into the huge, old-fashioned, gilt-framed
mirror over the chimney-piece in the drawing-room. The two women were
standing, separated by a small table which supported an azalea in bloom.
His stepmother, in a soft, trailing house-gown, her hands behind her
back, seemed taller and slenderer than ever in contrast to Mrs.
Willoughby's dumpiness, dwarfed as it was by an enormous muff and
encumbering furs.
The latter drew herself up indignantly. Her tone changed. "You do know
something about business, Ena. You knew enough about it to drag Len and
me into what we never would have thought of doing, if you and Archie
hadn't--"
"I? Why, Bessie, you must be crazy."
"I'm not crazy; though God knows it's enough to make me so. I remember
everything as if it had happened this afternoon."
There was a faint scintillation in the diamonds in Ena's brooch and
ear-rings as she tossed her head. "If you do that you must recall that I
was afraid of it from the first."
Bessie was quick to detect the admission. "Why?" she demanded. "If you
were afraid of it, _why_ were you afraid? You weren't afraid without
seeing something to be afraid of."
Mrs. Masterman nearly wept. "I don't know anything about business at
all, Bessie."
"Oh, don't tell me that," Bessie broke in, fiercely. "You knew enough
about it to see that Archie wanted our money in 1892."
"But _I_ hadn't anything to do with it."
"Hadn't anything to do with it? Then who had? Who was it suggested to me
that Len should go into business?--one evening?--in the Hôtel de
Marsan?--after dinner? Who was that?"
"If I said anything at all it was that I hated business and everything
that had to do with it."
"Oh, I can understand that well enough," Bessie exclaimed, scornfully.
"You hated it because you saw already that your husband was going to
ruin us. Come now, Ena! Didn't you?"
Mrs. Masterman protested tearfully. "I didn't know anything about it. I
only wished that Archie would let you and your money alone--and I wish
it still."
"Very well, then!" Bessie cried, flinging her hands outward
dramatically. "Isn't that what I'm saying? You knew something. You knew
it and you let us go ahead. You not only let us go ahead, but you led us
on. You could see already that Archie was spinning his web like a
spider, and that he'd catch us as flies. Now didn't you? Tell the truth,
Ena. Wasn't it in your mind from the first? Long before it was in his?
I'll say that for Archie, that I don't suppose he really _meant_ to ruin
us, while you knew he _would_. That's the difference between a man and
his wife. The man only drifts, but the wife sees years ahead what he's
drifting to. You saw it, Ena--"
When his stepmother bowed her head to sob into her handkerchief Thor
ventured to enter the room. Neither of the women noticed him.
"I must say, Ena," Bessie continued, "that seems to me frightful. I
don't know what you can be made of that you've lived cheerfully through
these last eighteen years when you knew what was coming. If it had been
coming to yourself--well, that might be borne. But to stand by and watch
for it to overtake some one else--some one who'd always been your
friend--some one you liked, for I do believe you've liked me, in your
way and my way--that, I must say, is the limit--_cela passe les bornes_.
Now, doesn't it?"
Mrs. Masterman struggled to speak, but her sobs prevented her.
"In a way it's funny," Bessie continued, philosophically, "how bad a
good woman can be. You're a good woman, Ena, of a kind. That is, you're
good in as far as you're not bad; and I suppose that for a woman that's
a very fair average. But I can tell you that there are sinners whom the
world has scourged to the bone who haven't _begun_ to do what you've
been doing these past eighteen years--who wouldn't have had the nerve
for it. No, Ena," she continued, with another sweeping gesture. "'Pon my
soul, I don't know what you're made of. I almost think I admire you. I
couldn't have done it; I'll be hanged if I could. There are women who've
committed murder and who haven't been as cool as you. They've committed
murder in a frantic fit of passion that went as quick as it came, and
they've swung for it, or done time for it. But they'd never have had the
pluck to sit and smile and wait for this minute as you've waited for
it--when you saw it from such a long way off."
It was the crushed attitude in which his stepmother sank weeping into a
chair that broke the spell by which Thor had been held paralyzed; but
before he could speak Bessie turned and saw him.
"Oh, so it's you, Thor. Well, I wish you could have come a minute ago to
hear what I've been saying."
"I've heard it, Mrs. Willoughby--"
"Then I am sure you must agree with me. Or rather, you would if you knew
how things had been managed in Paris eighteen years ago. I've been
trying to tell your dear stepmother that we've been mistaken in her. We
haven't done her justice. We've thought of her as just a sweet and
gentle ladylike person, when all the while she's been a heroine. She's
been colossal--as Clytemnestra was colossal, and Lady Macbeth. She beats
them both; for I don't believe either of them could have watched the
sword of Damocles taking eighteen years to fall on a friend and not have
had nervous prostration--while she's as fresh as ever."
He laid his hand on her arm. "You'll come away now, won't you, Mrs.
Willoughby?" he begged.
She adjusted her furs hurriedly. "All right, Thor. I'll come. I only
want to say one thing more--"
"No, no; please!"
"I will say it," she insisted, as he led her from the room, "because
it'll do Ena good. It's just this," she threw back over her shoulder,
"that I forgive you, Ena. You're so magnificent that I can't nurse a
grudge against you. When a woman has done what you've done she may be
punished by her own conscience--but not by me. I'm lost in admiration
for the scale on which she carries out her crimes."
By the time they were in the porch, with the door closed behind them,
Bessie's excitement subsided suddenly. Her voice became plaintive and
childlike again, as she said, wistfully:
"Oh, Thor, do you think it's all gone?--that we sha'n't get any of it
back? I know we haven't spent it. We _can't_ have spent it."
Since Thor was Thor, there was only one thing for him to say. He needed
no time to reflect or form resolutions. Whatever the cost to him, in
whatever way, he could say nothing else. "You'll get it all back, Mrs.
Willoughby. Don't worry about it any more. Just leave it to me."
But Bessie was not convinced. "I don't see how that's going to be. If
your father says the money is gone, it _is_ gone--whether we've spent it
or not. Trust him!" Nevertheless, she kissed him, saying: "But I don't
blame you, Thor. If there were two like you in the world it would be too
good a place to live in, and Len and Lois think the same."
He got her into the motor and closed the door upon her. Standing on the
door-step, he watched it crawl down the avenue, like a great black
beetle on the snow. As it passed the gateway his father appeared, coming
on foot from the electric car.
CHAPTER XIII
On re-entering the house, Thor waited for his father in the hall.
Finding the drawing-room empty, and inferring that his mother had gone
up-stairs, he decided to say nothing of the scene between her and Mrs.
Willoughby. For the time being his own needs demanded right of way.
Nothing else could be attended to till they had received consideration.
With that reflection something surged in him--surged and exulted. He was
to be allowed to speak of his love at last! He was to be forced to
confess it! If he was never to name it again, he would do so this once,
getting some outlet for his passion! He both glowed and trembled. He
both strained forward and recoiled. Already he felt drunk with a wine
that roused the holier emotions as ardently as it fired the senses. He
could scarcely take in the purport of his father's words as the latter
stamped the snow from his boots in the entry and said:
"Has that poor woman been here? Sorry for her, Thor; sorry for her from
the bottom of my heart."
The young man had no response to make. He was in a realm in which the
reference had no meaning. Archie continued, while hanging his overcoat
and hat in the closet at the foot of the stairs:
"Impossible to make her understand. Women like that can never see why
they shouldn't eat their cake and have it, too. Books open for her
inspection. But what's one to do?"
When he emerged from the closet Thor saw that his face was gray. He
looked mortally tired and sad. He had been sad for some weeks past--sad
and detached--ever since the night when he had made his ineffectual bid
for the care of Thor's prospective money. He had betrayed no hint of
resentment toward his son--nothing but this dignified lassitude, this
reserved, high-bred, speechless expression of failure that smote Thor to
the heart. But this evening he looked worn as well, worn and old, though
brave and patient and able to command a weary, flickering smile.
"But I'm glad it's come. It will be a relief to have it over. Seen it
coming so long that it's been like a nightmare. Rather have come to
grief myself--assure you I would."
"Father, could I speak to you for a few minutes?"
"About this?"
"No, not about this; about something else--something rather important."
There was a sudden gleam in the father's eyes which gave Thor a second
pang. He had seen it once or twice already during these weeks of partial
estrangement. It was the gleam of hope--of hope that Thor might have
grown repentant. It had the sparkle of fire in it when, seated in a
business attitude at the desk which held the center of the library, he
looked up expectantly at his son. "Well, my boy?"
Thor remained standing. "It's about that property of Fay's, father."
"Oh, again?" The light in the eyes went out with the suddenness of an
electric lamp.
"I only want to say this, father," Thor hurried on, so as to get the
interview over, "that if you want to sell the place, I'll take it. I'll
take it on your own terms. You can make them what you like."
Archie leaned on the desk, passing his hand over his brow. "I'm sorry,
Thor. I can't."
Thor had the curious reminiscent sensation of being once more a little
boy, with some pleasure forbidden him. "Oh, father, why? I want it
awfully."
"So I see. I don't see why you should, but--"
"Well, I'll tell you. I want to protect Fay, because--"
Masterman interrupted without looking up. "And that's just what I don't
want to do. I want to get rid of the lot."
Rid of the lot! The expression was alarming. In his father's mind the
issue, then, was personal. It was not only personal, but it was
inclusive. It included Rosie. She was rated in--the lot. Clearly the
minute had come at which to speak plainly.
"If you want to get rid of them on my account, father, I may as well
tell you--"
"No; it's got nothing to do with you." He was still resting his forehead
on his hand, looking downward at the blotting-paper on his desk. "It's
Claude."
Thor started back. "Claude? What's he got to do with it?"
"I hadn't made up my mind whether to tell you or not; but--"
"He doesn't even know them. Of course he knows who they are. Fay was
Grandpa Thorley's--"
Masterman continued to speak wearily. "He may not know them all. It's
motive enough for my action that he knows--the girl."
"Oh no, he doesn't."
"You'd better ask him."
"I have asked him."
"Then you'd better ask him again."
"But, father, she couldn't know him without my seeing it. I'm at the
house nearly every day. The mother, you know."
"Apparently your eyes aren't sharp enough. You should take a lesson from
your uncle Sim."
"But, father, I don't understand--"
"Then I'll tell you. It seems that Claude has known this girl for the
past four or five months--"
"Oh no, no! That's all wrong. It isn't three months since I talked to
Claude about her. Claude didn't even remember they had a girl. He'd
forgotten it."
"I know what I'm talking about, Thor. Don't contradict. Seems your uncle
Sim has had his eye on them all along."
Thor smote his side with his clenched fist. "There's some mistake,
father. It can't _be_."
"I wish there was a mistake, Thor. But there isn't. If I could afford it
I should send Claude abroad. Send him round the world. But I can't just
now, with this mix-up in the business. There's no doubt but that the
girl is bad--"
"Father!"
If Masterman had been looking up he would have seen the convulsion of
pain on his son's face, and got some inkling of his state of mind.
"As bad as they make 'em--" he went on, tranquilly.
"No, no, father. You mustn't say that."
"I can't help saying it, Thor. I know how you feel about Claude. You
feel as I do myself. But you and I must take hold of him and save him.
We must get rid of this girl--"
"But she's not bad, father--"
Masterman raised himself and leaned back in his chair. He saw that Thor
was white, with curious black streaks and shadows in his long, gaunt
face. "Oh, I know how you feel," he said, again. "It does seem monstrous
that the thing should have happened to Claude; but, after all, he's
young, and with a little tact we can pull him out. I've said nothing to
your mother, and don't mean to. No use alarming her needlessly. I've not
said anything to Claude, either. Only known the thing for four or five
days. Don't want to make him restive, or drive him to take the bit
between his teeth. High-spirited young fellow, Claude is. Needs to be
dealt with tactfully. Thing will be, to cut away the ground beneath his
feet without his knowing it--by getting rid of the girl."
"But I know Rosie Fay, father, and she's not--"
"Now, my dear Thor, what _is_ a girl but bad when she's willing to meet
a man clandestinely night after night--?"
"Oh, but she hasn't done it."
"And I tell you she has done it. Ever since last summer. Night after
night."
"Where?" Thor demanded, hoarsely.
"In the woods above Duck Rock. Look here," the father suggested, struck
with a good idea, "the next time Claude says he has an engagement to go
out with Billy Cheever, why don't you follow him--?"
There was both outrage and authority in Thor's abrupt cry, "Father!"
"Oh, I know how you feel. You'd rather trust him. Well, I would myself.
It's the plan I'm going on. We mustn't be too hard on him, must we?
Sympathetic steering is what he wants. Fortunately we're both men of the
world and can accept the situation with no Puritanical hypocrisies. He's
not the first young fellow who's got into the clutches of a hussy--"
It was to keep himself from striking his father down that Thor got out
of the room. For an instant he had seen red; and across the red the word
_parricide_ flashed in letters of fire. It might have been a vision. It
was frightening.
Outside it was a night of dim, spirit-like radiance. The white of the
earth and the violet of the sky were both spangled with lights. Low on
the horizon the full moon was a glorious golden disk.
The air was sweet and cold. As he struck down the avenue, of which the
snow was broken only by his own and his father's footsteps and the
wheels of Bessie's car, he bared his head to cool his forehead and the
hot masses of his hair. He breathed hard; he was aching; his distress
was like that of being roused from a weird, appalling dream. He had not
yet got control of his faculties. He scarcely knew why he had come out,
except that he couldn't stay within.
On nearing the street the buzzing of an electric car reminded him that
Claude was probably coming home. Instinctively he turned his steps away
from meeting him, tramping up the long, white, empty stretch of County
Street.
At Willoughby's Lane he turned up the hill, not for any particular
purpose, but because the tramping there would be a little harder. He
needed exertion. It eased the dull ache of confused inward pain. In the
Willoughby house there was no light except in the hall and in Bessie's
bedroom. Mother and daughter had doubtless taken refuge in the latter
spot to discuss the disastrous turn of their fortunes. Ah, well! There
would probably be nothing to keep him from going to their rescue now.
_Probably!_ He clung to the faint chance offered by the word. He didn't
know the real circumstances--yet. _Probably_ his father had been
accurate in his statements, even though wrong in what he had inferred.
_Probably_ Claude and Rosie had met--night after night--secretly--in the
woods--in the dark. _Probably!_ He stopped dead in his walk; he threw
back his head and groaned to the violet sky; he pulled with both hands
at his collar as though choking. Secretly--in the woods--in the dark! It
was awful--and yet it was entrancing. If Rosie had only come to meet
_him_ like that!--in that mystery!--in that seclusion!--with that
trust!--with that surrender of herself!
"How can I blame Claude?"
It was his first formulated thought. He tramped on again. How could he
blame Claude? Poor Claude! He had his difficulties. No one knew that
better than Thor. And if Rosie loved the boy ...
* * * * *
Below the ridge of the long, wooded hill there was a road running
parallel to County Street. He turned into that. But he began to perceive
to what goal he was tending. He had taken this direction aimlessly; and
yet it was as if his feet had acted of their own accord, without the
guiding impulse of the mind. From a long, straight stem a banner of
smoke floated heavy and luminous against the softer luminosity of the
sky. He knew now where he was going and what he had to do.
But he paused at the gate, when he got there, uncertain as to where at
this hour he should find her. There was a faint light in the mother's
room, but none elsewhere in the house. The moon was by this time high
enough to throw a band of radiance across Thorley's Pond and strike pale
gleams from the glass of the hothouse roofs.
It required some gazing to detect in Rosie's greenhouse the blurred glow
of a lamp. He remembered that there was a desk near this spot at which
she sometimes wrote. She was writing there now--perhaps to Claude.
But she was not writing to Claude; she was making out bills. As
bookkeeper to the establishment, as well as utility woman in general, it
was the one hour in the day when she had leisure for the task. She
raised her head to peer down the long, dim aisle of flowers on hearing
him open the door.
"It's I, Rosie," he called to her, as he passed between banks of
carnations. "Don't be afraid."
She was not afraid, but she was excited. As a matter of fact, she was
saying to herself, "He's found out." It was what she had been expecting.
She had long ago begun to see that his almost daily visits were not on
her mother's account. He had been coming less as a doctor than as a
detective. Very well! If his detecting had been successful, so much the
better. Since the battle had to be fought some time, it couldn't begin
too soon.
She remained seated, her right hand holding the pen, her left lying on
the open pages of the ledger. He spoke before he had fully emerged into
the glow of the lamp.
"Oh, Rosie! What's this about you and Claude?"
Her little face grew hard and defiant. She was not to be deceived by
this wounded, unhappy tone. "Well--what?" she asked, guardedly, looking
up at him.
He stooped. His face was curiously convulsed. It frightened her. "Do you
_love_ him?"
Instinctively she took an attitude of defense, rising and pushing back
her chair, to shield herself behind it. "And what if I do?"
"Then, Rosie, you should have told me."
Again the heart=broken cry seemed to her a bit of trickery to get her
confidence. "Told you? How could I tell you? What should I tell you
for?"
"How long have you loved him?"
Her face was set. The shifting opal lights in her eyes were the fires of
her will. She would speak. She would hide nothing. Let the
responsibility be on Claude. Her avowal was like that of a calamity or a
crime. "I've loved him ever since I knew him."
"And how long is that?"
"It will be five months the day after to-morrow."
"Tell me, Rosie. How did it come about?"
She was still defiant. She put it briefly. "I was in the wood above Duck
Rock. He came by. He spoke to me."
"And you loved him from the first?"
She nodded, with the desperate little air he had long ago learned to
recognize.
"Oh, Rosie, tell me this. Do you love him--much?"
She was quite ready with her answer. It was as well the Mastermans
should know. "I'd die for him."
"Would you, Rosie? And what about him?"
Her lip quivered. "Oh, men are not so ready to die for love as women
are."
He leaned toward her, supporting himself with his hands on the desk.
"And you are ready, Rosie! You really--would?"
She thought he looked wild. He terrified her. She shrank back into the
dimness of a mass of foliage. "Oh, what do you mean? What are you asking
me for? Why do you come here? Go away."
"I'll go presently, Rosie. You won't be sorry I've come. I only want you
to tell me all about it. There are reasons why I want to know."
"Then why don't you ask him?" she demanded, passionately. "He's your
brother."
"Because I want you to tell me the story first."
There was such tenderness in his voice that she grew reassured in spite
of her alarm. "What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to say first of all that you know I'm your friend."
"You can't be my friend," she said, suspiciously, "unless you're
Claude's friend, too; and Claude wouldn't own to a friend who tried to
part us."
"I don't want to part you, Rosie. I want to bring you together."
The assertion was too much for credence. She was thrown back on the
hypothesis of trickery. "You?"
"Yes, Rosie. Has Claude never told you that he's more to me than any one
in the world, except--" He paused; he panted; he tried to keep it back,
but it forced itself out in spite of his efforts--"except you." Once
having said it, he repeated it: "Except you, Rosie; except--you."
Though he was still leaning toward her across the desk, his head sank.
There was silence between them. It was long before Rosie, the light in
her eyes concentrated to two brilliant, penetrating points, crept
forward from the sheltering mass of foliage. She could hardly speak
above a whisper.
"Except--who?"
He lifted his head. She noticed subconsciously that his face was no
longer wild, but haggard. He spoke gently: "Except you, Rosie. You're
most to me in the world."
As she bent toward him her mouth and eyes betrayed her horror at the
irony of this discovery. She would rather never have known it than know
it now. It was all she could do to gasp the one word, "Me?"
"I shouldn't have told you," he hurried on, apologetically, "but I
couldn't help it. Besides, I want you to understand how utterly I'm your
friend. I ask nothing more than to be allowed to help you and Claude in
every way--"
She cried out. The thing was preposterous. "You're going to do
that--_now_?"
"I'm your big brother, Rosie--the big brother to both of you. That's
what I shall be in future. And what I've said will be a dead secret
between us, won't it? I shouldn't have told you, but I couldn't help it.
It was stronger than me, Rosie. Those things sometimes are. But it's a
secret now, dead and buried. It's as if it hadn't been said, isn't it?
And if I should marry some one else--"
This was too much. It was like the world slipping from her at the minute
she had it within her grasp. The horror was not only in her eyes and
mouth, but in her voice. "Are you going to marry some one else?"
"I might have to, Rosie--for a lot of reasons. It might be my duty. And
now that I can't marry you--"
She uttered a sort of wail. "Oh!"
"Don't be sorry for me, Rosie dear. I can't stand it. I can stand it
better if you're not sorry--"
"But I _am_," she cried, desperately.
"Then I must thank you--only don't be. It will make me grieve the more
for saying what I never should have said. But that's a secret between
us, as I said before, isn't it? And if I do marry--she'll never find it
out, will she? That wouldn't do, would it, Rosie?"
His words struck her as passing all the bounds of practical common
sense. They were so mad that she felt herself compelled to ask for more
assurance. "Are you--in love--with--with _me_?" If the last syllable had
been louder it would have been a scream.
"Oh, Rosie, forgive me! I shouldn't have told you. It was weak. It was
wrong. I only did it to show you how you could trust me. But I should
have showed you that some other way. You'd already told me how it was
between you and Claude, and so it was treachery to him. But I never
dreamed of trying to come between you. Believe me, I didn't. I swear to
you I only want--"
She broke in, panting. She wouldn't have spoken crudely or abruptly if
there had been any other way. But the chance was there. In another
minute it might be too late. "Yes; but when I said that about Claude--"
She didn't know how to go on. He encouraged her. "Yes, Rosie?"
She wrung her hands. "Oh, don't you _see_? When I said that about
Claude--I didn't--I didn't know--"
He hastened to relieve her distress. "You didn't know I cared for you?"
"No!" The word came out with another long wail.
He looked at her curiously. "But what's that got to do with it?"
Her eyes implored him piteously, while she beat the palm of one hand
against the back of the other. It was terrible that he couldn't see what
she meant--and the moments slipping away!
"It wouldn't have made you love Claude any the less, would it?"
She had to say something. If she didn't he would never understand. "Not
love, perhaps; but--"
The sudden coldness in his voice terrified her again--but differently.
"But what, Rosie?"
She cried out, as if the words rent her. "But Claude has no--_money_."
"And I have. Is that it?"
It was no use to deny it. She nodded dumbly. Besides, she counted on his
possession of common sense, though his use of it was slow.
He raised himself from his attitude of leaning on the desk. It was his
turn to take shelter amid the dark foliage behind him. He couldn't bear
to let the lamplight fall too fully on his face. "Is it this, Rosie," he
asked, with an air of bewilderment, "that you'd marry me because I
have--the money?"
It seemed to Rosie that the question gave her reasonable cause for
exasperation. She was almost sobbing as she said: "Well, I can't marry
Claude _without_ money. He can't marry me." A ray was thrown into her
little soul when she gasped in addition, "And there's father and mother
and Matt!"
Thor's expression lost some of its bewilderment because it deepened to
sternness. "But Claude means to marry you, doesn't he?"
She cried out again, with that strange effect of the words rending her.
"I don't--_know_."
He had a moment of wild fear lest his father had been right, after all.
"You don't know? Then--what's your relation to each other?"
"I don't know that, either. Claude won't tell me." She crossed her hands
on her bosom as she said, desperately, "I sometimes think he doesn't
mean anything at all."
The terror of the instant passed. "Oh yes, he does, Rosie. I'll see to
that."
"Do you mean that you'll make him marry me?"
He smiled pitifully. "There'll be no making, Rosie. You leave it to me."
He turned from her not merely because the last word had been spoken, but
through fear lest something might be breaking within himself. On
regaining the white roadway he thought he saw Jasper Fay in the shadow
of the house, but he was too deeply stricken to speak to him. He went up
the hill and farther from the village. It was not yet eight o'clock, but
time had ceased to have measurement. He went up the hill to be alone in
that solitude which was all that for the moment he could endure. He
climbed higher than the houses and the snow-covered gardens; his back
was toward the moon and the glow above the city. The prospect of
reaching the summit gave something for his strong body to strain forward
to.
The ridge, when he got to it, was treeless, wind-swept, and moon-swept.
It was a great white altar, victimless and bare. He felt devastated,
weak. It was a relief, bodily and mental, to sink to his knees--to
fall--to lie at his length. He pressed his hot face into the cool,
consoling whiteness, as a man might let himself weep on a pillow. His
arms were outstretched beyond his head. His fingers pierced beneath the
snow till they touched the tender, nestling mosses. All round him there
was silveriness and silence, and overhead the moon.
CHAPTER XIV
Descending the hill, Thor saw a light in his uncle Sim's stable, and
knew that Delia was being settled for the night. Uncle Sim still lived
in the ramshackle house to which his father--old Dr. Masterman, as
elderly people in the village called him--had taken his young wife, who
had been Miss Lucy Dawes. In this house both Sim and Archie Masterman
were born. It was the plainest of dwellings, painted by wind and weather
to a dovelike silver-gray. Here lived Uncle Sim, cared for in the
domestic sense by a lady somewhat older and more eccentric than himself,
known to the younger Mastermans as Cousin Amy Dawes.
Thor avoided the house and Cousin Amy Dawes, going directly to the
stable. By the time he had reached the door Uncle Sim was shutting it.
In the light of a lantern standing in the snow the naked elms round
about loomed weirdly. The greetings were brief.
"Hello, Uncle Sim!"
"Hello, Thor!"
Thor made an effort to reduce the emotional tremor of his voice to the
required minimum. "Father's been telling me about Claude and Rosie Fay."
Uncle Sim turned the key in the lock with a loud grating. "Father had to
do it, did he? Thought you might have caught on to that by yourself. One
of the reasons I sent you into the Fay family."
"Did you know it then?--already?"
"Didn't _know_ it. Couldn't help putting two and two together."
"You see everything, Uncle Sim."
Uncle Sim stooped to pick up the lantern. "See everything that's under
my nose. Thought you could, too."
"This hasn't been under my nose."
"Oh, well! There are noses and noses. A donkey has one kind and a dog
has another."
Thor was not a finished actor, but he was doing his best to play a part.
"Well, what do you think now?"
"What do I think now? I don't think anything--about other people's
business."
"I think we ought to do something," Thor declared, with energy.
"All right. Every one to his mind. Only it's great fun to let other
people settle their own affairs."
"Settle their own affairs--and suffer."
"Yes, and suffer. Suffering doesn't hurt any one."
"Do you mean to say, Uncle Sim, that I should sit still and do nothing
while the people I care for most in the world are in all sorts of
trouble that I could get them out of?"
"That little baggage, Rosie Fay, isn't one of the people you care for
most in the world, I presume?"
Thor knew that with Uncle Sim's perspicacity this might be a leading
question, but he made the answer he considered the most diplomatic in
the circumstances. "She is if--if Claude is in love with her. But--but
why do you call her that, Uncle Sim?"
"Because she's a little witch. Most determined little piece I know. Hard
working; lots of pluck; industrious as the devil. Whole soul set on
attaining her ends."
Thor considered it prudent to return to the point from which he had been
diverted. "Well, if the people I care for most are in trouble that I can
get them out of--"
"Oh, if you can get them out of it--"
"Well, I can."
"Then that's all right. Only the case must be rather rare. Haven't often
seen the attempt made except with one result--not that of getting people
out of trouble, but of getting oneself in. But every one to his taste,
Thor. Wouldn't stop you for the world. Only advise you not to be in a
hurry."
"There's no question of being in a hurry when things have to be done
_now_."
"All right, Thor. You know better than I. I'm one of those slowpokes who
look on the fancy for taking a hand in other people's affairs as I do on
the taste for committing suicide--there's always time. If you don't do
it to-day, you can to-morrow--which is a reason for putting it off,
ain't it?"
There was more than impatience in Thor's protest as he cried, "But how
can you put it off when there's some one--some one who's--who's
unhappy?"
"I see. Comes back to that. But I don't mind some one's being unhappy.
Don't care a tuppenny damn. Do 'em good. I've seen more people unhappy
than I could tell you about in a year; and nine out of ten were made men
and women by it who before that had been only rags."
"I'm afraid I can't accept that cheerful doctrine, Uncle Sim--"
"All right, Thor. Don't want you to. Wouldn't interfere with you any
more than with any one else. Free country. Got your own row to hoe. If
you make yourself miserable in the process, why, it'll do you as much
good as it does all the rest. Nothing like it. Wouldn't save you from it
for anything. But there's a verse of an old song that you might turn
over in your mind--old song written about two or three thousand years
ago: 'Oh, tarry thou the Lord's leisure--'"
Thor tossed his head impatiently. "Oh, pshaw!"
"But it goes on: 'And be strong.' You can be awful strong when you're
tarrying the Lord's leisure, Thor, because then you know you're not
making any damn-fool mistakes."
Thor spoke up proudly: "I'd rather _make_ mistakes--than do nothing."
"That's all right, Thor; splendid spirit. Don't disapprove of it a mite.
Go ahead. Make mistakes. It'll be live and learn. Not the least afraid.
I've often noticed that when young fellows of your sort prefer their own
haste to the Lord's leisure there's a Lord's haste that hurries on
before 'em, so as to be all ready to meet 'em when they come a cropper
in the ditch."
Thor turned away sharply. "I guess I'll beat it, Uncle Sim."
The old man, swinging his lantern, shambled along by his nephew's side,
as the latter made for the road again. "Oh, I ain't trying to hold you
back, Thor. Now, am I? On the contrary, I say, go ahead. Rush in where
angels fear to tread; and if you don't do anything else you'll carry the
angels along with you. You may make an awful fool of yourself, Thor--but
you'll be on the side of the angels and the angels'll be on yours."
* * * * *
Though dinner was over by the time Thor reached home, his stepmother sat
with him while he ate it. It was a new departure for her. Thor could not
remember that she had ever done anything of the sort before. She sat
with him and served him, asking no questions as to why he was late. She
seemed to divine a trouble on his part beyond her power to console, and
for which the only sympathy she dared to express was that of small
kindly acts. He understood this and was grateful.
He found her society soothing. This, too, surprised him. He felt so
battered and sore that the mere presence of one who approached him from
an affectionate impulse had the effect on him of a gentle hand. Never
before in his life had he been conscious of woman's genius for
comforting, possibly because never before in his life had he needed
comfort to the same degree.
No reference was made by his stepmother or himself to the scene with
Mrs. Willoughby in the afternoon, but it was not hard for him to
perceive that in some strange way it was stirring the victim of it to
newness of life. It was not that she admitted the application of
Bessie's charges to herself; they only startled her to the knowledge
that there were heights and depths in human existence such as her
imagination had never plumbed. Her nature was making a feeble effort to
expand, as the petals of a bud that has been kept hard and compact by a
backward spring may unfold to the heat of summer.
When he had finished his hasty meal, Thor rose and kissed her, saying,
"Thank you, mumphy," using the pet name that had not been on his lips
since childhood. She drew his face downward with a sudden sob, a sob
quite inexplicable except on the ground that her poor, withered,
strangled little soul was at last trying to live.
* * * * *
Having gone up-stairs to his room, Thor shut the door and bolted it in
his desire for solitude. He changed his coat and kicked off his boots.
When he had lighted a pipe he threw himself on the old sofa which had
done duty as couch at the foot of his bed ever since he was a boy. It
was the attitude in which he had always been best able to "think things
out."
Now that he had eaten a sufficient dinner, he felt physically less
bruised, though mentally there was more to torture him. He regretted
having seen Uncle Sim. He hated the alternative of letting things alone.
There was a sense in which action would have been an anodyne to
suffering, and had it not been for Uncle Sim he would have had no
scruple in making use of it.
It was all very well to talk of letting people settle their own affairs;
but how _could_ they settle them, in these particular cases, without his
intervention? As far as power went he was like a fairy prince who had
only to wave a wand to see the whole scene transfigured. If he hadn't
asked Uncle Sim's advice he would be already waving it, instead of
lolling on his back, with his right foot poised over his left knee and
dangling a heelless slipper in the air. He felt shame at the very
attitude of idleness.
True, there were the two distinct lines of action--that of making a
number of people happy now, and that of holding back that they might
fight their own battles. By fighting their own battles they might emerge
from the conflict the stronger--after forty or fifty years! Those who
were unlikely to live so long--Len and Bessie Willoughby, for
example--would probably go down rebelling and protesting to their
graves. But Claude and Rosie and Lois might all grow morally the
stronger. There was that possibility. It was plain. Claude and Rosie
might marry on the former's fifteen hundred dollars a year, have
children, and bring them up in poverty as model citizens; but whatever
the high triumph of their middle age, Thor shrank from the thought of
the interval for both. And Lois, too, might live down grief,
disappointment, small means, and loneliness; might become hardened and
toughened and beaten to endurance, and grow to be the best and bravest
and kindest old maid in the world. Uncle Sim would probably consider
that in these noble achievements the game would be worth the candle; but
he, Thor Masterman, didn't. The more he developed the possibilities of
this future for every one concerned, himself included, the more he
loathed it.
It was past eleven before he reached the point of loathing at which he
was convinced that action should begin; but once he reached it, he
bounded to his feet. He felt wonderfully free and vigorous. If certain
details could be settled there and then--he couldn't wait till the
morrow--he thought that, in spite of everything, he should sleep.
He had heard Claude go to his room, which was on the same floor as his
own, an hour earlier. Claude was probably by this time in bed and
asleep, but the elder brother couldn't hesitate for that. Within less
than a minute he had crossed the passage, entered Claude's bedroom, and
turned on the electric light.
Claude's profile sunk into the middle of the pillow might have been
carved in ivory. His dark wavy hair fell back picturesquely from temple
and brow. Under the coverings his slim form made a light, graceful line.
The room was at once dainty and severe. A striped paper, brightened by a
design of garlands, knots, and flowers _à la Marie Antoinette_, made a
background for white furniture in the style of Louis XVI., modern and
inexpensive, but carefully selected by Mrs. Masterman. The walls were
further lightened by colored reprints of old French scenes, discreetly
amorous, collected by Claude himself.
Thor stood for some seconds in front of the bed before the brother
opened his eyes. More seconds passed while the younger gazed up at the
elder. "What the dev--!" Claude began, sleepily.
But Thor broke in, promptly, "Claude, why didn't you ever tell me you
knew Rosie Fay?"
Claude closed his eyes again. The expected had happened. Like Rosie, he
resolved to meet the moment cautiously, creating no more opposition than
he could help. "Why should I?" he parried, without hostility.
"Because I asked you, for one thing."
He opened his eyes. "When did you ever ask me?"
"At the bank; one day when I found you there. It must have been two
months ago."
Claude stirred slightly under the bedclothes. "Oh, then."
"Yes, then. Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't see how I could. What good would it have done, anyhow?"
It was on Thor's tongue to say, "It would have done the good of not
telling lies," but he suppressed that. One of his objects was to be
conciliating. He had other objects, which he believed would be best
served by taking a small chair and sitting on it astride, close to
Claude's bed. An easy, fraternal air was maintained by the effect of the
pipe still hanging by its curved stem from the corner of his mouth. He
began to think highly of himself as a comedian.
"I wish you had told me," he said, quietly, "because I could have helped
you."
Claude lay still. His eyes grew brilliant. "Helped me--how?"
"Helped you in whatever it is you're trying to do." He added, with
significance, "You are trying to do something, aren't you?"
Claude endeavored to gain time by saying, "Trying to do what?"
"You're--" Thor hesitated, but dashed in. "You're in love with her?"
It was still to gain time that Claude replied, "What do you think?"
Thor's heart bounded with a great hope. Perhaps Claude was not in love
with her. He had not been noticeably moved as yet. In that case it might
be possible--barely possible--that after Rosie had outlived her
disappointment there might be a chance that he.... But he dared not
speculate. Mustering everything that was histrionic within him, he said,
with the art that conceals art, "I think you are--decidedly."
Claude rolled partly over in bed. "That's about it."
The confession was as full as one brother could expect from another.
Thor's heart sank again. He managed, however, to keep on the high plane
of art as he brought out the words, "And what about her?"
Again Claude's avowal was as ardent as the actual conditions called for.
"Oh, I guess she's all right."
"So--what now?"
Claude rolled back toward his brother, raising his head slightly from
the pillow. "Well--what now?"
"You're going to be married, I suppose?"
Claude lifted himself on his elbow. "Married on fifteen hundred a year?"
He went on, before Thor could say anything, "If there was nothing else
to consider!"
Thor felt stirrings of hope again. "Then, if you're not going to be
married, what do you mean?"
"What do I mean? What can I mean?"
"Oh, come, Claude! You're not a boy any longer. You know perfectly well
that a man of honor--with your traditions--can't trifle with a girl like
that--or break her heart--or--or ruin her."
"I'm not doing any of the three. She knows I'm not. She knows I'm only
in the same box she's in herself."
"That is, you're both in love, without seeing how you're going to--"
Claude lurched forward in the bed. "Look here, Thor; if you want to
know, it's this. I've tried to leave the girl alone--and I can't. I'm
worse than a damn fool; I'm every sort of a hound. I can't marry her,
and I can't give her up. When I haven't seen her for a week, I'm
frantic; and when I do see her I swear to God I'll never see her again.
So now you know."
Claude threw himself back again on the pillows, but Thor went on,
quietly: "Why do you swear to God you'll never see her again?"
"Because I'm killing her. That is, I should be killing her if she wasn't
the bravest little brick on earth. You don't know her, Thor. You've seen
her, and you know she's pretty; but you don't know that she's as plucky
as they make 'em--pluckier."
Thor answered, wearily, "I've rather guessed that, which is one of the
reasons why I feel you should be true to her."
"I am true to her--truer than I ought to be. If I was less true it would
be better for us both. She'd get over it--"
Again Thor was aware of an up-leaping hope. "And you, too?"
"Oh, I suppose so--in time."
"Yes, but you'd suffer."
Claude gave another lurch forward in the bed. "I couldn't suffer worse
than I'm suffering now, knowing I'm an infernal cad--and not seeing how
to be anything else."
"But you wouldn't be an infernal cad if you married her."
The young man flung himself about the bed impatiently. "Oh, what's the
use of talking?"
"If she had money you could marry her all right."
"Ah, go to the devil, Thor!" The tone was one of utter exasperation.
Thor persisted. "If she had, let us say, four or five thousand dollars a
year of her own--"
Claude stretched his person half-way out of bed. "I said--go to the
devil!"
"Well, she has."
"Has what?"
"Four or five thousand dollars a year of her own. That is, she _will_
have it, if you and she get married."
"Say, Thor, have you got the jimjams?"
"I'm speaking quite seriously, Claude. I've always intended to do
something to help you out when I got hold of Grandpa Thorley's money;
and, if you like, I'll do it that way."
"Do it what way?"
"The way I say. If you and Rosie get married, she shall have five
thousand a year of her own."
"From you?"
Thor nodded.
The younger brother looked at the elder curiously. It was a long minute
before he spoke. "If it's to help me out, why don't _I_ have it? I'm
your brother. I should think I'd be the one."
"Because I'd rather do it that way. It would be a means of evening
things up. It would make her more like your equal. You know as well as I
do that father and mother will kick like blazes; but if Rosie has
money--"
"If Rosie has money they'll know she gets it from somewhere. They won't
think it comes down to her out of heaven."
"They can think what they like. They needn't know that I have anything
to do with it. They know you haven't got five thousand a year, and if
she has--why, there'll be the solid cash to convince them. The whole
thing will be a pill for them; but if it's gilded--"
Claude's knees were drawn up in the bed, his hands clasped about them.
Thor noticed the strangeness of his expression, but he was unprepared
for his words when they came out. "Say, Thor, you're _not_ in love with
her yourself, are you?"
Owing to what he believed to be the perfection of his acting, it was the
question Thor had least expected to be called on to answer. He knew he
was turning white or green, and that his smile when he forced it was
nothing but a ghastly movement of the mouth. It was his turn to gain
time, but he could think of nothing more forcible than, "What makes you
ask me that?"
"Because it looks so funny--so damned funny."
"There's nothing funny in my trying to give a lift to my own brother, is
there?"
"N-no; perhaps not. But, see here, Thor--" He leaned forward. "You're
not in love with her, are you?"
Thor knew the supreme moment of his life had come, that he should never
reach another like it. It was within his power to seize the cup and
drain it--or thrust it aside. Of all temptations he had ever had to meet
none had been so strong as this. It was the stronger for his knowing
that if it was conquered now it would probably never return. He would
have put himself beyond reach of its returning. That in itself appalled
him. There was some joy in feeling the temptation there, as a thing to
be dallied with. He dallied with it now. He dallied with it to the
extent of saying, with a smile he tried to temper to playfulness:
"Well, what if I was in love with her?"
Something about Claude leaped into flame. "Then I wouldn't touch a cent
of your money. I wouldn't let her touch it. I wouldn't let her look at
it. I'd marry her on my own--I'll be hanged if I wouldn't. I'd marry her
to-morrow. I'd get out of bed and marry her to-night. I'd--"
Thor forced his smile to a tenderer playfulness, sitting calmly astride
of his chair, his left arm along the back, his right hand holding his
pipe by the bowl. "So you wouldn't let me have her?"
Claude lashed across the bed. "I'd see you hanged first. I'd see you
damned. I'd see you damned to hell. She's mine, I tell you. I'm not
going to give her up to any one--and to you least of all. Do you get
that? Now you know."
"All right, Claude. Now I know."
"Yes, but I don't know." Claude wriggled to the side of the bed, drawing
as near to his brother as he could without getting out. "I don't know.
I've asked you a question, and you haven't answered it. And, by God!
you've got to answer it. Sooner than let any one else get her, I'll
marry her and starve. Now speak."
Thor got up heavily. He had the feeling with which the ancients
submitted when they stood soberly and affirmed that it was useless to
struggle against Fate. Fate was upon him. He saw it now. He had tried to
elude her, but she had got him where he couldn't move. She asserted
herself again when Claude, hanging half out of bed, his mouth feverish,
his eyes burning, insisted, imperiously, "Say, you--_speak_!"
Thor spoke. He spoke from the middle of the floor, his pipe still in his
hand. He spoke without premeditation, as though but uttering the words
that Destiny had put into his mouth from all eternity.
"It's all right, Claude. Calm down. I'm--I'm going to be married to Lois
Willoughby."
But Claude was not yet convinced. "When?"
"Just as soon as we can fix things up after the tenth of next
month--after I get the money."
"How long has that been settled?" Claude demanded, with lingering
suspicion.
"It's been settled for years, as far as I'm concerned. I can hardly
remember the time when I didn't intend--just what I'm going to do."
Claude let himself drop back again among the pillows.
"So now it's all right, isn't it?" Thor continued, making a move toward
the door. "It'll be Lois and I--and you and Rosie. And the money will go
to Rosie. I insist on that. It'll even things up. Five thousand a year.
Perhaps more. We'll see."
He looked back from the door, but Claude, after his excitement, was
lying white and silent, his eyes closed, his profile upturned. Thor was
swept by compunction. It had always been part of the family tradition to
respect Claude's high-strung nerves. Nothing did him more harm than to
be thwarted or stirred up. With a murmured good-night Thor turned out
the light, opening and closing the door softly.
But in the passage he heard the pad of bare feet behind him. Claude
stood there in his pajamas.
"Say, Thor," he whispered, hoarsely, "you're top-hole--'pon my soul you
are." He caught his brother's hand, pulling it rather than shaking it,
like a boy tugging at a bell-rope. "You're a top-hole brother, Thor," he
repeated, nervously, "and I'm a beast. I know you don't care anything
about Rosie. Of course you don't. But I've got the jumps. I've been
through such a lot during the months I've been meeting her that I'm on
springs. But with you to back me up--"
"I'll back you up all right, Claude. Just wade in and get married--and I
guess our team will hold its own against all comers. Lois will be with
us. She's fond of Rosie--"
With another tug at his brother's arm, and more inarticulate thanks,
Claude darted back to his room again.
Thor closed his own door and locked it behind him. He was too far spent
for more emotion. He had hardly the energy to throw off his clothes and
turn out the light. Within five minutes of his final assurance to Claude
he was sleeping profoundly.
CHAPTER XV
Having slept soundly till after eight in the morning, Thor woke with an
odd sense of pleasure. On regaining his faculties he was able to analyze
it as the pleasure he had experienced in having Claude tugging at his
arm. It meant that Claude was happy, and, Claude being happy, Rosie
would be happy. Claude and Rosie were taken care of.
Consequently Lois would be taken care of. Thor turned the idiom over
with a vast content. It was the tune to which he bathed and dressed.
They would all three be taken care of. Those who were taken care of were
as folded sheep. His mind could be at rest concerning them. It was
something to have the mind at rest even at the cost of heartache.
There was, of course, one intention that before all others must be
carried out. He would have to clinch the statement he had made, for the
sake of appeasing and convincing Claude, concerning Lois Willoughby. It
was something to be signed and sealed before Claude could see her or
betray the daring assertion to his parents. Fortunately, the younger
brother's duties at the bank would deprive him of any such opportunity
earlier than nightfall, so that Thor himself was free for the regular
tasks of the day. He kept, therefore, his office hours during the
forenoon, and visited his few patients after a hasty luncheon. There was
one patient whom he omitted--whom he would leave henceforth to Dr.
Hilary.
It was but little after four when he arrived at the house at the corner
of Willoughby's Lane and County Street. Mrs. Willoughby met him in the
hall, across which she happened to be bustling. She wore an apron, and
struck him as curiously business-like. As he had never before seen her
share in household tasks, her present aspect seemed to denote a change
of heart.
"Oh, come in, Thor," she said, briskly. "I'm glad you've come. Go up and
see poor Len. He's so depressed. You'll cheer him."
If there was a forced note in her bravery he did not perceive it. "I'm
glad to see you're not depressed," he observed as he took off his
overcoat.
She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm going to die game."
"Which means--"
"That there's fight in me yet."
"Fight?" His brows went up anxiously.
"Oh, not with your father. You needn't be afraid of that. Besides, I see
well enough it would be no use. If he says we've spent our money, he's
got everything fixed to make it look so, whether we've spent it or not.
No, I'm not going to spare him because he's your father. I'm going to
say what I think, and if you don't like it you can lump it. I sha'n't go
to law. I'd get the worst of it if I did. But neither shall I be bottled
up. So there!"
"It doesn't matter what you say to me--" Thor began, with significant
stress on the ultimate word.
"It may not matter what I say to you, but I can tell you it will matter
what I say to other people."
Thor took no notice of that. "And if you're not going to law, would it
be indiscreet to ask what you are going to do?"
Bessie forced the note of bravery again, with a flash in her little
eyes. "I'm going to live on my income; that's what I'm going to do.
Thank the Lord I've some money left. I didn't let Archie Masterman get
his hands on all of it--not me. I've got some money left, and we've got
this house. I'm going to let it. I'm going to let it to-morrow if I get
the chance. I'm getting it ready now. And then we're going abroad. Oh, I
know lots of places where we can live--_petits trous pas chers_; dear
little places, too--where Len'll have a chance to--to get better."
Thor made a big resolution. "If you're going to let the house, why not
let it to me?"
She knew what was coming, but it made her feel faint. Backing to one of
the Regency chairs, she sank into it. It was in mere pretense that she
said, "What do you want it for?"
"I want it because I want to marry Lois." He added, with an anxiety that
sprang of his declaration to Claude, "Do you think she'll take me?"
Bessie spoke with conviction. "She'll take you unless she's more of a
fool than I think. Of course she'll take you. Any woman in her senses
would jump at you. I know I would." She dashed away a tear. "But look
here, Thor," she hurried on, "if you marry Lois you won't have the whole
family on your back, you know. You won't be marrying Len and me. I tell
you right now because you're the sort that'll think he ought to do it.
Well, you won't have to. I mean what I say when I tell you we're going
to live on our income--what's left of it. We can, and we will, and we're
going to."
"Couldn't we talk about all that when--?"
"When you're married to Lois and have more of a right to speak? No.
We'll talk about it now--and never any more. Len and I are going to have
plenty--plenty. If you think I can't manage--well, you'll see."
"Oh, I know you've got lots of pluck, Mrs. Willoughby--"
She sprang to her feet. With her hands thrust jauntily into the pockets
of her apron, she looked like some poor little soubrette, grown
middle-aged, stout, and rather grotesque, in a Marivaux play. She acted
her part well. "Pluck? Oh, I've got more than that. I've got some
ability. If you never knew it before, you'll see it now. I've spent a
lot; but then I've had a lot--or thought I had; and now that I'm going
to have little--well, I'll show you I can cut my coat according to my
cloth as well as the next one."
"I don't doubt that in the least, and yet--"
"And yet you want us to have all our money back. Oh, I know what you
meant yesterday afternoon. I didn't see it at the time--I had so many
things to think of; but I caught on to it as soon as I got home. We
should get it back, because you'd give it to us. Well, you won't. You
can marry Lois, if she'll marry you--and I hope to the Lord she won't be
such a goose as to refuse you!--and you can take the house off our
hands; but more than that you won't be able to do, not if you were Thor
Masterman ten times over."
He smiled. "I shouldn't like to be that. Once is bad enough."
Her little eyes shone tearily. "All the same, I like you for it. I do
believe that if you hadn't said it I should have gone to law. I
certainly meant to; but when I saw how nice _you_ were--" Dashing away
another tear, she changed her tone suddenly. "Tell me. What did your
mother say after I left yesterday?"
Thor informed her that to the best of his knowledge she hadn't said
anything.
Bessie chuckled. "I didn't leave her much to say, did I? Well, I'm glad
to have had the opportunity of talking it out with her."
"You certainly talked it out--if that's the word."
"Yes, didn't I? And now, I suppose, she's mad."
Thor was unable to affirm as much as this. In fact, the conversation,
since Mrs. Willoughby liked to apply that term to the encounter, had
induced in his stepmother, as far as he could see, a somewhat superior
frame of mind.
"Well, I hope it'll do her as much good as it did me," Bessie sighed,
devoutly; "and now that I've let off steam I'll go 'round and make it
up. Now go and see Len. He'll want to talk to you."
Thor intimated that he would be glad of a minute with Lois, to which
Mrs. Willoughby replied that Lois was having one of her fits of
bird-craze. She was in the kitchen at that minute getting suet with
which to go up into the woods and feed the chickadees. Good Lord! there
had been chickadees since the world began, and they had lived through
the winter somehow. Bessie had no patience with what she called
"nature-fads," but it was as easy to talk sense into a chickadee itself
as to keep Lois from going into the woods with two or three pounds of
suet after every snow-storm. She undertook, however, to delay her
daughter's departure on this errand till warning had been given to Thor.
Up-stairs Thor found Len sitting in his big arm-chair, clad in a
gorgeous dressing-gown. He was idle, stupefied, and woebegone. With his
bushy, snow-white hair and beard, his puffy cheeks, his sagging mouth,
and his clumsy bulk he produced an effect half spectral and half
fleshly, but quite pathetically ludicrous. His hand trembled violently
as he held it toward his visitor.
"Not well to-day, Thor," he complained. "Ought to be back in bed. Any
other man wouldn't have got up. Always had too much energy. Awful blow,
Thor, awful blow. Never could have believed it of your father. But I'm
not downed yet. Go to work and make another fortune. That's what I'll
do."
Thor sympathized with his friend's intentions, and, having slipped
down-stairs again, found Lois in the hall, a basket containing a varied
assortment of bird-foods on her arm.
When she had given him permission to accompany her, they took their way
up Willoughby's Lane, whence it was possible to pass into the woodland
stretches of the hillside. The day was clear and cold, with just enough
wind to wake the æolian harp of the forest into sound. Once in the
woods, they advanced warily. "Listen to the red-polls," Lois whispered.
She paused, leaning forward, her face alight. There was nothing visible;
but a low, continuous warble, interspersed with a sort of liquid rattle,
struck the ear. Taking a bunch of millet stalks from her basket, she
directed Thor while he tied them to the bough of a birch that trailed
its lower branches to the snow. When they had gone forward they
perceived, on looking around, that some dozen or twenty of the
crimson-headed birds had found their food.
So they went on, scattering seeds or crumbs in sheltered spots, and
fixing masses of suet in conspicuous places, to an approving chirrup of
_dee-dee, chick-a-dee-dee-dee_, from friendly little throats. The
basket was almost emptied by the time they reached the outskirts of the
wood and neared the top of the hill.
Lois was fastening the last bunch of millet stalks to a branch hanging
just above her head. Thor stood behind her, holding the basket, and
noticing, as he had often noticed before, the slim shapeliness of her
hands. In spite of the cold, they were bare, the fur of the cuffs
falling back sufficiently to display the exquisitely formed wrists.
"Lois, when can we be married?"
She gave no sign of having heard him, unless it was that her hands
stopped for an instant in the deft rapidity of their task. Within a few
seconds they had resumed their work, though, it seemed to him, with less
sureness in the supple movement of the fingers. Beyond the upturned
collar of her coat he saw the stealing of a warm, slow flush.
He was moved, he hardly knew how. He hardly knew how, except that it was
with an emotion different from that which Rosie Fay had always roused in
him. In that case the impulse was primarily physical. He couldn't have
said what it was primarily in this. It was perhaps mental, or spiritual,
or only sympathetic. But it was an emotion. He was sure of that, though
he was less sure that it had the nature of love. As for love, since
yesterday the word sickened him. Its association had become, for the
present, at any rate, both sacred and appalling. He couldn't have used
it, even if he had been more positive concerning the blends that made up
his present sentiment.
It was to postpone as long as possible the moment for turning around
that Lois worked unnecessarily at the fastening of her millet stalks.
They were not yet secured to her satisfaction when, urged by a sudden
impulse, he bent forward and kissed her wrist. She allowed him to do
this without protest, while she knotted the ends of her string; but she
was obliged to turn at last.
"I didn't know you wanted to be married," she said, with shy frankness.
He responded as simply as she. "But now that you do know it--how soon
can it be?"
"Why are you asking me?" Before he had time to reply she went on, "Is it
because papa has got into trouble?"
He was ready with his answer. "It's because he's got into trouble that
I'm asking you to-day; but I've been meaning to ask you for years and
years."
She uttered something like a little cry. "Oh, Thor, is that true?"
The fact that he must make so many reservations impelled him to be the
more ardent in what he could affirm without putting a strain on his
conscience. "I can swear it to you, Lois, if you want me to. It began as
long ago as when I was a youngster and you were a little girl."
She clasped her hands tightly. "Oh, Thor!"
"Since that time there hasn't been a--" He was going to say a day, but
he made a rapid correction--"there hasn't been a year when I haven't
looked forward to your being my wife." He allowed a few seconds to pass
before adding, "I should think you'd have seen it."
She answered as well as a joyous distress would let her. "I did see it,
Thor--or thought I did--for a while. Only latterly--"
"You mustn't judge by--latterly," he broke in, hastily. "Latterly I've
had a good deal to go through."
"Oh, you poor Thor! Tell me about it."
Nothing would have eased his heart more effectively than to have poured
out to her the whole flood of his confidence. It was what he was
accustomed to doing when in her company. He could talk to her with more
open heart than he had ever been able to talk to any one. It would have
been a relief to tell her the whole story of Rosie Fay; and if he
refrained from taking this course, it was only because he reminded
himself that it wouldn't "do." It obviously wouldn't "do." He was unable
to say why it wouldn't "do" except on the general ground that there were
things a man had better keep to himself. He curbed, therefore, his
impulse toward frankness to say:
"I can't--because there are things I shall never be able to talk about.
If I could speak of them to any one it would be to you."
She looked at him anxiously. "It's nothing that I have to do with, is
it?"
"Only in as far as you have to do with everything that concerns me."
Tears in her eyes could not keep her face from growing radiant. "Oh,
Thor, how can I believe it?"
"It's true, Lois. I can hardly go back to the time when, in my own mind,
it hasn't been true."
"But I'm not worthy of it," she said, half tearfully.
"I hope it isn't a question of worthiness on the one side or the other.
It's just a matter of--of our belonging together."
It was not in doubt, but with imploring looks of happiness, that she
said, "Oh, are you sure we do?"
He was glad she could accept his formula. It not only simplified
matters, but enabled him to be sincere. The fact that in his own way he
was quite sincere rendered him the more grateful to her for not forcing
him, or trying to force him, to express himself insincerely. It was
almost as if she divined his state of mind.
"Words aren't of much use between _us_," he declared, in his
appreciation of this attitude on her part. "We're more or less
independent of them, don't you think?"
She nodded her approval of this sentiment as her eyes followed the
action of her fingers in buttoning her gloves.
"But I'll tell you what I feel as exactly as I can put it," he went on.
"It's that you're essential to me, and I'm essential to you. At least,"
he subjoined, humbly, "I hope I'm essential to you."
She nodded again, her face averted, her eyes still following the
movements of her fingers at her wrist.
"I can't express it in language very different from that," he stammered,
"because--well, because I'm not--not very happy; and the chief thing I
feel about you is that you're a kind of--of shelter."
He had found the word that explained his state of mind. It was as a
shelter that he was seeking her. If there were points of view from which
his object was to protect her, there were others from which he needed
protection for himself. In desiring her as his wife he was, as it were,
fleeing to a refuge. He did desire her as his wife, even though but
yesterday he had more violently desired Rosie Fay. The violence was
perhaps the secret of his reaction--not that it was reaction so much as
the turning of his footsteps toward home. He was homing to her. He was
homing to her by an instinct beyond his skill to analyze, though he knew
it to be as straight and sure as that of the pigeon to the cote.
There was a silence following his use of the word shelter--a silence in
which she seemed to envelop him with her deep, luminous regard. The
still, remote beauty of the winter woods, the notes of friendly birds,
the sweet, wild music of the wind in the tree-tops, accompanied that
look, as mystery and incense and organ harmonies go with benedictions.
"Oh, Thor, you're wonderful!" was all she could say, when words came to
her. "You make me feel as if I could be of some use in the world. What's
more wonderful still, you make me feel as if I had been of use all these
years when I've felt so useless."
It was in the stress of the sensation of having wandered into far,
exotic regions in which his feet could only stray that he said, simply,
"You're home to me."
She was so near to bursting into tears that she turned from him sharply
and walked up the hill. He followed slowly, swinging the empty basket.
Her buoyant step on the snow, over which the frost had drawn the
thinnest of shining crusts, gave a nymphlike smoothness to her motion.
Having reached the treeless ridge, she emerged on that high altar on
which, not twenty-four hours earlier, he had sunk face downward in the
snow. The snow had drifted again over his footprints and the mark of his
form. It was drifting still, in little powdery whirls, across a surface
that caught tints of crimson and glints of fire from an angry sunset. It
was windy here. As she stood above him, facing the north, her figure
poised against a glowering sky, her garments blew backward. Even when he
reached her and was standing by her side, she continued to gaze outward
across the undulating, snow-covered country, in the folds of which an
occasional farm-house lamp shone like a pale twilight star.
"You see, it's this way," he pursued, as though there had been no
interruption. "When I'm with you I seem to get back to my natural
conditions--the conditions in which I can live and work. That's what I
mean by your being home to me. Other places"--he ventured this much of
the confession he had at heart--"other places have their temptations;
but it's only at home that one lives."
He took courage to go on from the way in which her gloved hand stole
into his. "I dare say you think I talk too much about work; but, after
all, we can't forget that we live in a country in the making, can we? In
a way, it's a world in the making. There's everything to do--and I want
to be doing some of it, Lois," he declared, with a little outburst. "I
can't help it. I know some people think I'm an enthusiast, and others
put me down as a prig--but I can't help it."
"I know you can't, Thor, and I can't tell you how much I--I"--she felt
for the right word--"I admire it."
He turned to her eagerly. "You're the only one, Lois, who knows what I
mean--who can speak my language. You want to be useful, too."
"And I never have been."
"Nor I. I've known that things were to be done; but I haven't known how
to set about them, or where to begin. Don't you think we may be able to
find the way together?"
She seemed suddenly to cling to him. "Oh, Thor, if you'd only make me
half as good as you are!"
Perhaps the ardor with which he seized her was the unspent force of the
longing roused in him by Rosie. Perhaps it blazed up in him merely
because she was a woman. For two or three days now his need of the
feminine had been acute. Did she minister to that? or did she bring him
something that could be offered by but one woman in the world? He
couldn't tell. He only knew that he had her in his arms, with his lips
on hers, and that he was content. He was content, with a sense of
fulfilment and appeasement. It was as if he had been straining for a
great prize and won the second--but at a moment when he had expected
none at all. There was happiness in it, even if it was a quieter,
staider happiness than that of which he now knew himself to be capable.
"You're home to me, Lois," he murmured as he held her. "You're home to
me."
He meant that though there were strange, entrancing Edens on which he
had not been allowed to enter, there was, nevertheless, a vast peace of
mind to be found at the restful, friendly fireside.
"And you're the whole wide world to me, Thor," she whispered, clasping
her arms about his neck and drawing his face nearer.
CHAPTER XVI
On leaving Lois and returning homeward, Thor met his brother at the
entrance to the avenue. They had not spoken since the preceding night.
On purpose to avoid a meeting, Claude had breakfasted early and escaped
to town before Thor had come down-stairs. In the glimpse Thor had caught
of his younger brother as the latter left the house he saw that he
looked white and worried.
He looked white and worried still under the glare of street electricity.
As they walked up the driveway together Thor took the opportunity to put
himself right in the matter that lay most urgently on his mind. "Lois
and I are to be married on one of the last days of February," he said,
with his best attempt to speak casually. "She wants to work it in before
Lent, which begins on the first day of March. Have scruples about
marrying in Lent in their church. Quiet affair. No one but the two
families."
Claude asked the question as to which he felt most curiosity. "Going to
tell father?"
"To-night. No use shilly-shallying about things of that sort. Father
mayn't like it; but he can't kick."
Claude spoke moodily: "He can't kick in your case."
"We're grown men, Claude. We're the only judges of what's right for us.
I don't mean any disrespect to father; but we've got to be free. Best
way, as far as I see, is to be open and aboveboard and firm. Then
everybody knows where you are."
Claude made no response till they reached the door-step, where he
lingered. "Look here, Thor," he said then, "I've got to put this thing
through in my own way, you know."
Thor didn't need to be told what this thing was. "That's all right,
Claude. I've got nothing to do with it."
"You've got something to do with it when you put up the money. And what
I feel," he added, complainingly, "is that my taking it makes me look as
if I was bought."
"Oh, rot, Claude!" Thor made a great effort. "Hang it all! when a
fellow's in--in love, and going to be married himself, you don't suppose
he can ignore his own brother who's in the same sort of box, and can't
be married for the sake of a few hundred dollars? That wouldn't be
human."
It was not difficult for Claude to take this point of view, but he
repeated, tenaciously, "I've got to do it in my own way."
"Good Lord! old chap, I don't care how you do it," Thor declared,
airily, "so long as it's done. Just buck up and be a man, and you'll
pull it off magnificently. It's the sort of thing you've got to pull off
magnificently--or slump."
"That's what I think," Claude agreed, "and so I'm"--he hesitated before
announcing so bold a program--"and so I'm going to take her abroad."
"Oh!" Thor gave a little gasp. He had not expected to have Rosie pass
out of his ken. He had supposed that he should remain near her, watch
over her, know what she was doing and what was being done to her. He was
busy trying to readjust his mind while Claude stammered out suggestions
for the payment of Rosie's proposed dowry. It was clear without his
saying so that he hated doing it; but he did say so, adding that it made
him feel as if he was bought.
Thor was irritated by the repetition. "Let's drop that, Claude, if you
don't mind. Be satisfied once for all that if you and Rosie accept the
money it will be as a favor to me. I'm so built that I can't be happy in
my own marriage without knowing that you and--and she have the chance to
be happy in yours. With all the money that's coming to me, and that I've
never done any more to deserve than you have, what I'm setting aside
will be a trifle. As to the payments, I'll do just as you say. The first
quarter will be paid to Rosie on the day you're married--when there'll
be a little check for you, for good luck. So go ahead and make your
plans. Go abroad, if you want to. Dare say it's the best thing you can
do."
To escape his brother's shamefaced thanks Thor passed into the porch.
"I'm not going to tell any one about it till I'm ready," Claude warned
as he followed.
Thor turned. "Of course you know that father's on to the whole
business."
"The deuce he is!"
"Father told me. How did you suppose I knew anything about it?"
"So that's it! Been wondering all day who could have given me away.
That's Uncle Sim's tricks. Knew the old fool had his eye--"
"It was bound to come out somehow, you know, in a little village like
this. Natural enough that Uncle Sim should want to put father wise to a
matter that concerns the whole family. I thought I'd tell you so that
you can take your line."
"Take what line?"
"How do I know? That's up to you. The line that will best protect Rosie,
I suppose. Remember that that's your first consideration now. I only
want you to understand that you can't keep father in the dark. I should
say it was more dignified, and perhaps better policy, not to try."
* * * * *
An hour later Mrs. Masterman was commenting at the dinner-table on the
pleasing circumstance that invitations to Miss Elsie Darling's party had
come for the entire family. There were cards not only for the two young
men, but for the father and mother also. Since both the older and the
younger members of society were included, it was clear that the function
was to pass the limitations of a dance and become a ball.
Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Masterman was superior to this form of
entertainment. It was the one above all others that reminded them that
they belonged to society in the higher sense. They dined out with
tolerable frequency; with tolerable frequency their friends dined with
them. As for the afternoon teas to which they were bidden in the course
of a season, Mrs. Masterman could scarcely keep count of them. But balls
came only once or twice in a winter, and not always so often as that. A
ball was a community event. It was an occasion on which to display the
fact that the neighborhood could unite in a gathering more socially
significant than the mere frolicking of boys and girls. Moreover, it was
an opportunity for proving that the higher circles of the village stood
on equal terms with those of the city, with the solidarity of true
aristocracies all over the world.
On Mrs. Masterman's murmuring something to the effect that Claude would
go to the ball, of course, the young man mumbled words that sounded
like, "Not for mine." The mother understood the response to be a
negative, and replied with a protest.
"Oh, but you must, Claudie dear. It'll be so nice for you to meet Elsie.
She's a charming girl, they say, after her years abroad." She concluded,
with a wrinkling of her pretty brow, "It seems to me you don't know many
really nice girls."
She had been moved by no more than a mother's solicitude, but Claude
kept his eyes on his plate. He knew that his father was probably looking
at him, and that Thor was saying, "Now's your chance to speak up and
declare that you know the nicest girl in the world." Poor Claude was
sensible of the opportunity, and yet felt himself paralyzed with regard
to making use of it. In reply he could only say, vaguely, that if he had
to go he would have to go, and not long afterward Mrs. Masterman rose.
The sons followed their parents into the library, pausing to light their
cigarettes on the way. By the time they had crossed the hall the head of
the house had settled himself with the evening paper in his favorite
arm-chair before the slumbering wood fire. Mrs. Masterman stooped over
the long table strewn with periodicals, turning the pages of a new
magazine. Thor advanced to a discreet distance behind his father's
chair, where he paused and said, quietly:
"Father, I want to tell you and mother that I'm engaged to Lois
Willoughby. We're to be married almost at once--toward the end of next
month."
There was dead silence. As far as could be observed, Masterman continued
to study his paper, while his wife still stooped over the pages of her
magazine. It was long before the father said, with the seeming
indifference meant to be more bitter than gall:
"That, I presume, is your answer to my move with regard to the father.
Very well, Thor. You're your own master. I've nothing to say."
Before Thor could explain that it was only the carrying out of a
long-planned intention, his stepmother looked up and spoke. "I _have_
something to say, Thor dear. I hope you're going to be very happy. I'm
sure you will be. She's a noble girl."
Her newly germinating vitality having asserted itself to this extent,
she stood aghast till Thor strode up and kissed her, saying: "Thank you,
mumphy. She is a noble girl--one of the best."
The example had its effect on Claude, who had stood hesitating in the
doorway, and now came toward his father's chair, though timidly.
"Father, I'm going to be married, too."
His mother uttered a smothered cry. Masterman turned sharply.
"Who? You?"
The implied scorn in the tone put Claude on his mettle. "Yes, father,"
he tried to say with dignity. It was in search of further support for
this dignity that he added, in a manner that he tried to make formal,
but which became only faltering, "To--to--to Miss Rosanna Fay."
Masterman shrugged his shoulders and returned to his newspaper. There
were full three minutes in which each of the spectators waited for
another word. "Have you nothing to say to me, father?" Claude pleaded,
in a tone curiously piteous.
The father barely glanced around over his shoulder. "What do you expect
me to say?--to call you a damn fool? The words would be wasted."
"I'm a grown man, father--" Claude began to protest.
"Are you? It's the first intimation I've had of it. But I'm
willing to take your word. If so, you must assume a grown man's
responsibilities--from now on."
Claude's throat was dry and husky. "What do you mean by--from now on?"
"I mean from the minute when you've irrevocably chosen between this
woman and us. You haven't irrevocably chosen as yet. You've still
time--to reconsider."
"But if I don't reconsider, father?--if I can't?"
"The choice is between her and--us."
He returned to his paper; but again his wife's nascent will to live
asserted itself, to no one's astonishment more than to her own. "It's
not between her and me, Claude," she cried, casting as she did so a
frightened glance at the back of her husband's head. "I'm your mother. I
shall stand by you, whoever fails." Her words terrified her so utterly
that before she dared to cross the floor to her son she looked again
beseechingly at the iron-gray top of her husband's head as it appeared
above the back of the arm-chair. Nevertheless, she stole swiftly to her
boy and put her hands on his shoulders. "I'm your mother, dear," she
sobbed, tremblingly; "and if she's a good girl, and loves you,
I'll--I'll accept her."
Masterman turned his newspaper inside out, as though pretending not to
hear.
Thor waited till Claude and his mother, clinging to each other, had
crept out of the room, before saying, "I'm responsible for this,
father."
There was no change in the father's attitude. "So I supposed."
"The girl is a good girl, and I couldn't let Claude break her heart."
"You found it easier to break mine."
"I don't mean that, father--"
"Then I can only say that you're as successful in what you don't mean as
in what you do."
"I don't understand."
"No, perhaps not. But it would be futile for me to try to explain to
you. Good night."
Thor remained where he was. "It isn't futile for me to try to explain to
you, father. I know Rosie Fay, and you don't. She's a beautiful girl,
with that strong character which Claude needs to give him backbone. He
is in love with her, and he's made her fall in love with him. It
wouldn't be decent on his part or honorable on ours--"
The father interrupted wearily. "You'll spare me the sentimentalities.
The facts are bad enough. When I want instructions in decency and honor
I'll come to you and get them. In the mean time I've said--good night."
"But, father, we _must_ talk about it--"
Masterman raised himself in his chair and turned. "Thor," he said,
sternly, his words getting increased effect from his childlike lisp, "if
you knew how painful your presence is to me--you'd go."
Thor flushed. There was nothing left for him but to turn. And yet he had
not gone many steps beyond the library door before he heard his father
fling the paper to the floor, uttering a low groan.
The young man stood still, shifting between two minds. Should he go away
and leave his father to the mortifying sense that his sons were setting
him at defiance? or should he return and insist on full explanations? He
would have done the latter had it not been for the words, "If you knew
how painful your presence is to me!" He still heard them. They cut him
across the face--across the heart. He went on up-stairs.
As he passed the open door of Mrs. Masterman's room he heard Claude
saying: "Oh, mother darling, if you knew her, you'd feel about her just
as I do. When she's dressed up as a lady she'll put every other girl in
the shade. You'll see she will. After she's had a year or two in
Paris--"
Thor entered the room while the mother was crying out: "Paris! Why,
Claudie dear, what are you talking about? How are you going to
_live_?--let alone Paris!"
"That's all right, mother. Don't fret. I can get money. I'm not a fool.
Look here," he added, in a confidential tone, winking at Thor over her
shoulder, "I'll tell you something. It's a secret, mind you. Not a word
to father! I'm all right for money _now_."
She could only repeat, in a tone of mystification, "All right for money
now?"
Claude made an inarticulate sound of assent. "Got it all fixed."
"Oh, but how?"
"I said it was a secret." He winked at his brother again. "I shouldn't
tell even you, only you've been such a spanking good mother to back me
up that I want to ease your mind."
She threw an imploring look at her stepson, though she addressed her
son. "Oh, Claude, you haven't done anything wrong, have
you?--forged?--or embezzled?--or whatever it is they do in banks."
"No, mother; it's all on the square." Because of Thor's presence he
added: "If it will make you any the more cheerful I'll tell you this,
too. It's not going to be my money; it' be Rosie's. Strictly speaking, I
sha'n't have anything to do with it. She'll have--about _five thousand
dollars a year_! When it's all over--and we're married--you can put
father wise to that; but not before, mind you."
"But, Claudie darling, I don't understand a bit. How can she have five
thousand dollars a year, when they're as poor as poor? And she hasn't a
relation who could possibly--"
He, too, threw a glance at Thor. "She may not have a relation, but she
might have a--a friend. Now, mother, this is just between you and me. If
you hadn't been such a spanking good mother I shouldn't have told you a
word of it."
"Yes, but, Claude! Think! What sort of a friend could it possibly be
who'd give a girl all that money? Why, it's ridiculous!"
"It isn't ridiculous. Is it, Thor? You leave it to me, mumphy."
"But it is ridiculous, Claudie dear. You'll see if it isn't. No man in
the world would settle five thousand dollars a year on a girl like
that--without a penny--unless he had a reason, and a very good reason,
too. Would he, Thor?" she demanded of her stepson, whom she had not
hitherto included. She continued to address him: "I don't care who he is
or what he is. Don't you agree with me? Wouldn't anybody agree with me
who had his senses?"
Thor's heart jumped. This was a view of his intentions that he had not
foreseen. Fortunately he could disarm his stepmother by revealing
himself as the god from the machine, for she would consider it no more
than just that he should use part of his inheritance for Claude's
benefit. He might have made the attempt there and then had not Claude
done it for himself.
"Now you leave it to me, mumphy dear. I know exactly what I'm about. I
can't explain. But I'll tell you this much more--it'll make your mind
quite easy--that it's all on my account that Rosie's to have the money."
He gave his brother another look. "If she didn't marry me she wouldn't
get it. At least," he added, more doubtfully, "I don't think she would.
See?"
Mrs. Masterman confessed that she didn't see--quite; but her tone made
it clear that she was influenced by Claude's assurances, while Thor felt
it prudent to go on his way up the second stairway.
CHAPTER XVII
There were both amazement and terror in Rosie's face when, at dusk next
day, Claude strolled down the flowery path of the hothouse. Since Thor
had turned from her, on almost the same spot, forty-eight hours
previously, no hint from either of the brothers had come her way.
Through the intervening time she had lived in an anguish of wonder. What
was happening? What was to happen still? Would anything happen at all?
Had Claude discovered the astounding fact that the elder brother was in
love with her? If he had, what would he do? Would he go wild with
jealousy? Or would he never have anything to do with her again? Either
case was possible, and the latter more than possible if he had received
a hint of the degree in which she had betrayed herself to Thor.
As to that, she didn't know whether she was glad or sorry. She knew how
crude had been her self-revelation, and how shocking; but the memory of
it gave her a measure of relief. It was like a general confession, like
the open declaration of what had been too long kept buried in the heart.
It had been a shameful thing to own that, loving one man, she would have
married another man for money; but a worse shame lay in being driven to
that pass. For this she felt herself but partly responsible, if
responsible at all. What did she, Rosie Fay, care for money in itself?
Put succinctly, her first need was of bread, of bread for herself and
for those who were virtually dependent on her. After bread she wanted
love and pleasure and action and admiration and whatever else made up
life--but only after it. She was craving for them, she was stifling for
lack of them, but they were all secondary. The very best of them was
secondary. Only one thing stood first--and that was bread.
Undoubtedly her frankness had revolted Thor Masterman. But what did he
know of an existence which left the barest possible margin for absolute
necessity? What would life have meant to him had he never had a day
since he first began to think when he had been entirely free from
anxiety as to the prime essentials? Rosie couldn't remember a time when
the mere getting of their pinched daily food hadn't been a matter of
contrivance, with some doubt as to its success. She couldn't remember a
time when she had ever been able to have a new dress or a pair of boots
without long calculation beforehand. On the other hand, she remembered
many a time when the pinched food couldn't be paid for, and the new
dress or the pair of boots had come almost within reach only to be
whisked aside that the money might be used for something still more
needful. In a world of freedom and light and flowers and abundance her
little soul had been kept in a prison where the very dole of bread and
water was stinted.
She had never been young. Even in childhood she had known that. She had
known it, and been patient with the fact, hoping for a chance to be
young when she was older. If money came in then, money for boots and
bread, for warm clothes in winter and thin clothes in summer, for fuel
and rent and taxes and light, and the pay of the men, and the
innumerable details which, owing to her father's dreaminess, she was
obliged to keep on her mind--if money were ever to come in for these
things, she could be young with the best. She could be young with the
intenser happiness that would come from spirits long thwarted. It might
never now be a light-hearted happiness, but it would be happiness for
all that. It would be the deeper, and the more satisfying, and the more
aware of itself for its years of suppression.
To her long experience in denial Rosie could only oppose a heart more
imperiously exacting in its demands. Her tense little spirit didn't know
how to do otherwise. From lines of ancestry that had never done anything
but toil with patient relentlessness to wring from the soil whatever it
was capable of yielding, she had inherited no habit of compromise. In
them it had been called grit; but a softer generation having let that
word fall into disuse, Rosie could only account for herself by saying
she "wasn't a quitter." She meant that she could neither forego what she
asked for, nor be content with anything short of what she conceived to
be the best. Could she have done that, she might have enjoyed the meager
"good time" of other girls in the village; she might have listened to
the advances of young Breen the gardener, or of Matt's colleague in the
grocery-store. But she had never presented such possibilities for her
own consideration. She was like an ant, that sees but one object to the
errand on which it has set out, disdaining diversion.
And if it had all summed itself up into what looked like a hard,
unlovely avariciousness, it was because poor Rosie had nothing to tell
her the values and co-relations of the different ingredients in life.
For the element that suffuses good-fortune and ill-fortune alike with
corrective significance she had imbibed from her mother one kind of
scorn, and from her father another. She knew no more of it than did Thor
Masterman. Like him, she could only work for a material blessing with
material hands, though without his advantages for molding things to his
will. He had his advantages through money. Since all things material are
measured by that, by that Rosie measured them. The matter and the
measure were all she knew. They meant safety for herself and for her
parents, and protection for Matt when he came out of jail. How could she
do other than spend her heart upon them? What choice had she when the
alternative lay between Claude and love on the one side and on the other
Thor, with his hands full of daily bread for them all? With Claude and
his love there went nothing besides, while with Thor and his daily bread
there would be peace and security for life. She asked it of herself; she
asked it, in imagination, of him. What else could she do but sell
herself when the price on her poor little body had been set so high?
She had spent two burning, rebellious days. All the while she was
cooking meals, or setting tables, or washing dishes, or making beds, or
selling flowers, or pruning, or watering, or addressing envelopes for
the monthly bills, her soul had been raging against the unjust code by
which she would have to be judged. Thor would judge her; Claude would
judge her, if he knew; any one who knew would judge her, and women most
fiercely of all. But what did they know about it? What did they know of
twenty-odd years of going around in a cage? What did they know of the
terror of seeing the cage itself demolished, and being without a
protection? Did they suppose she wouldn't suffer in giving up her love?
Of course she would suffer! The very extremity of her suffering would
prove the extremity of her need. Passionately Rosie defended herself
against her imaginary accusers, because unconsciously she accused
herself.
Nevertheless, Claude's sudden appearance startled her, though the set of
his shoulders towering through the dusk transported her to the enchanted
land. Here were mountains, and lakes, and palaces, and plashed marble
steps, and the music of lutes, and banquets of ambrosial things to which
daily bread was as nothing. Claude brought them with him. They were the
conditions of that glorious life in which he had his being. They were
the conditions in which she had her being, too, the minute she came
within his sphere.
She passed through some poignant seconds as he approached. For the first
time since her idyl had begun to give a new meaning to existence she
perceived that if he renounced her it would be the one thing she
couldn't bear. She might have the strength to give him up; for him to
give her up would be beyond all the limits of endurance. She put it to
herself tersely in saying it would break her heart.
But he dispelled her fears by smiling. He smiled from what was really a
long way off. Even she could see that he smiled from pleasure, though
she couldn't trace his pleasure to his delicious feeling of surprise. If
she had ceased to be a dryad in a wood, it was to become the Armida of
an enchanted garden. She could have no idea of the figure she presented
to a connoisseur in girls as from a background of palms, fern-trees, and
banked masses of bloom she stared at him with lips half parted and wide,
frightened eyes.
Submitting to this new witchery in the same way as he was yielding to
the heavy, languorous perfumes of the place, Claude smiled continuously.
"The fat's all in the fire, Rosie," he said, in a loud whisper, as he
drew nearer; "so we've nothing to be afraid of any longer."
It was some minutes before she could give concrete significance to these
words. In the mean time she occupied herself with assuring him that
there was no one in the hothouse but herself, and that in this gloaming
they could not be seen from outside. She even found a spot--a kind of
low staging from which foliage plants had recently been moved away--on
which they could sit down. They did so, clinging to each other,
though--conscious of her coarse working-dress--she was swept by a
shameful sense of incongruity in being on such terms with this
faultlessly attired man. She did her best to shrink from sight, to blot
herself out in his embrace, unaware that to Claude the very roughness,
and the scent of growing things, gave her a savage, earthy charm.
He explained the situation to her, word by word. When he told her that
their meetings were known to his father, she hid her face on his breast.
When he went on to describe how resolute he had been in taking the bull
by the horns, she put her hands on his shoulders and looked up into his
face with the devotion of a dog. On hearing what a good mother Mrs.
Masterman had been, her utterances, which welled up out of her heart as
if she had been crying, were like broken phrases of blessing. As a
matter of fact, she was only half listening. She was telling herself how
mad she had been in fancying for an instant that she could ever have
married Thor--that she could ever have married any one, no matter how
great the need or how immense the compensation. Having confronted the
peril, she knew now, as she had not known it hitherto, that her heart
belonged to this man who held her in his arms for him to do with it as
he pleased. He might treasure it, or he might play with it, or he might
break it. It was all one. It was his. It was his and she was his--to
shatter on the wheel or to trample in the mire, just as he was inclined.
It was so clear to her now that she wondered she hadn't seen it with
equal force in those days when she was so resolute in declaring that she
"knew what she was doing."
And yet within a few minutes she saw how difficult it was to surrender
herself, even mentally, without reserves. She was still listening but
partially. She recognized plainly enough that the things he was saying
were precisely those which a month ago would have filled her soul with
satisfaction. He loved her, loved her, loved her. Moreover, he had found
the means of sweeping all obstacles aside. They were to be married as
soon as possible--just as soon as he could "arrange things." Thor and
his mother were with them, and his father's conversion would be only a
matter of time. These assurances, by which all the calculations of her
youth were crowned, found her oddly apathetic. It was not because she
had lost the knowledge of their value, but only that they had become
subsidiary to the great central fact that she was his--without money or
price on his side, and no matter at what cost on hers.
It was only when he began to murmur semi-coherent plans for the future,
in which she detected the word Paris, that she was frightened.
"Oh, but, Claude darling, how could I go to Paris when there's so much
for me to do here?"
It could not be said that he took offense, but he hinted at reproval.
"Here, dearest? Where?"
"Here where we are. I don't see how I could go away."
"But you'd _have_ to go away--if we were married."
"Would it be necessary to go so far?"
"Wouldn't it be the farther the better?"
"For some things. But, oh, Claude, I have so many things to consider!"
"But I thought that when a woman married she left--"
"Her father and mother and everything. Yes, I know. But how can I leave
mine--when I'm the only one who has any head? Mother's getting better,
but father's not much good except for mooning over books. And then"--she
hesitated, but whipped herself on--"then there's Matt. He'll be out
before long. Some one must be here to tell them what to do."
He withdrew his arms from about her. "Of course, if you're going to
raise so many difficulties--"
"I'm not raising difficulties, Claude darling. I'm only telling you what
difficulties there are. God knows I wish there weren't any; but what can
I do? If it were just going to Paris and back--"
"Well, why not go--and come back when we're obliged to?"
In the end they compromised on that, each considering it enough for the
present. Rosie was unwilling to dampen his ardor when for the first time
he seemed able to enter into her needs as a human being with cares and
ties. He discussed them all, displaying a wonderful disposition to
shoulder and share them. He went so far as to develop a philanthropic
interest in Matt. Rosie had never known anything so amazing. She clasped
him to her with a kind of fear lest the man should disappear in the god.
"I'll talk to Thor about him," Claude said, confidently. "Got a bee in
his bonnet, Thor has, about helping chaps who come out of jail, and all
that."
Rosie shuddered. It was curiously distasteful for her to apply to Thor.
She felt guilty toward him. If she could do as she chose, she would
never see him again. She said nothing, however, while Claude went on:
"Thor's a top-hole brother, you know. You'll find that out one of these
days. Lots of things I shall have to explain to you." He added, without
leading up to it. "He's engaged to Lois Willoughby."
Rosie sprang from his arms. "What? Already?"
She was standing. He looked up at her curiously. "Already? Already--how?
What do you mean by that?"
She tried to recapture her position.
"Why, already--right after us."
She reseated herself, getting possession of one of his hands. To this
tenderness he made no response. He seemed to ruminate. "Say, Rosie--" he
began at last, but apparently thought better of what he had meant to
say. "All right," he broke in, carelessly, going on to speak of the
wisdom of leaving the public out of their confidence until their plans
were more fully matured. "Thor's to be married about the twentieth of
next month," he continued, while Rosie was on her guard against further
self-betrayal. "After that we'll have Lois on our side, and she'll do a
lot for us."
By the time Claude emerged from the hothouse it was dark. Glad of the
opportunity of slipping away unobserved, he was hurrying toward the road
when he found himself confronted by Jasper Fay. In the latter's voice
there was a sternness that got its force from the fact that it was so
mild.
"You been in the hothouse, Mr. Claude?"
Claude laughed. In his present mood of happiness he could easily have
announced himself as Fay's future son-in-law. Nothing but motives of
prudence held him back. He answered, jestingly, "Been in to see if you
had any American beauties."
"No, Mr. Claude; we don't grow them; no _kind_ of American beauties."
Claude laughed again. "Oh, I don't know about that. Good night, Mr. Fay.
Glad to have seen you."
He passed on with spirits slightly dashed because his condescension met
with no response. He was so quick to feel that Fay's silence struck him
as hostile. It struck him as hostile with a touch of uncanniness. On
glancing back over his shoulder he saw that Fay was following him
watchfully, like a dog that sneaks after an intruder till he has left
the premises. Being sensitive to the creepy and the sinister, Claude was
glad when he had reached the road.
CHAPTER XVIII
The provision that for the moment he was to lead his customary life and
Rosie hers made it possible for Claude to attend the ball by which Mrs.
Darling drew the notice of the world to her daughter. He did so with
hesitations, compunctions, reluctances, and repugnances which in no wise
diminished his desire to be present at the event.
It took place in the great circular ball-room of the city's newest and
most splendid hotel. The ball-room itself was white-and-gold and Louis
Quinze. Against this background a tasteful decorator had constructed a
colonnade that reproduced in flowers the exquisite marble circle of the
Bosquet at Versailles. An imitation of Girardon's fountain splashed in
the center of the room and cooled the air.
Claude arrived late. He did so partly to compromise with his
compunctions and partly to accentuate his value. In gatherings at which
young men were sometimes at a premium none knew better than he the
heightened worth of one who sauntered in when no more were to be looked
for, and who carried himself with distinction. Handsome at any time,
Claude rose above his own levels when he was in evening dress. His
figure was made for a white waistcoat, his feet for dancing-pumps.
Moreover, he knew how to enter a room with that modesty which prompts a
hostess to be encouraging. As he stood rather timidly in the doorway,
long after the little receiving group had broken up, Mrs. Darling said
to herself that she had never seen a more attractive young man--whoever
he was!
She was glad afterward that she had made this reservation, for without
it she might have been prejudiced against him on learning that he was
Archie Masterman's son. As it was, she could feel that the sins of the
fathers were not to be visited on the children, especially in the case
of so delightful a lad. Mrs. Darling had an eye for masculine good
looks, particularly when they were accompanied by a suggestion of the
thoroughbred. Claude's very shyness--the gentlemanly hesitation which on
the threshold of a ball-room has no dandified airs of seeming too much
at ease--had this suggestion of the thoroughbred. Mrs. Darling, dragging
a long, pink train and waving slowly a bespangled pink fan, moved toward
him at once.
"How d'w do? So glad to see you! I'm afraid my daughter is dancing."
There was something in her manner that told him she had no idea who he
was--something that could be combined with polite welcome only by one
born to be a hostess.
Claude had that ready perception of his rôle which makes for social
success. He bowed with the right inclination, and spoke with a gravity
dictated by respect. "I'm afraid I must introduce myself, Mrs. Darling.
I'm so late. I'm Claude Masterman. My father is--"
"Oh, they're here! So lovely your mother looks! Really there's not a
young girl in the room can touch her. Won't you find some one and dance?
I'm sorry my daughter--But later on I'll find her and intro--Why,
Maidie, there you are! I thought you'd never come. How d'w do, dear?"
A more important guest than himself being greeted, Claude felt at
liberty to move on a pace or two and look over the scene. It was easy to
do this, for the outer rim of the circle, that which came beneath the
colonnade, was raised by two steps above the space reserved for dancing.
The _coup d'[oe]il_ was therefore extensive.
A mass of color, pleasing and confused, revolved languorously to those
strains of the Viennese operetta in which the waltz might be said to
have finished the autocracy of its long reign. The rhythm of the dancers
was as regular and gentle as the breathing of a child. In glide and
turn, in balance and smoothness, in that lift which was scarcely motion,
there was the suggestion of frenzy restrained, of passion lulled, which
emanates from the barely perceptible heave of a slumbering summer sea.
It was dreamy to a charm; it was graceful to the point at which the eye
begins to sicken of gracefulness; it was monotonous with the force of a
necromantic spell. It was soothing; it also threw a hint of melancholy
into a gathering intended to be gay. It was as though all that was most
sentimentally lovely in the essence of the nineteenth century had
concentrated its strength to subdue the daring spirit of the twentieth,
winning a decade of success. Now, however, that the decade was past,
there were indications of revolt. On the arc of the circle most remote
from the eye of the hostess audacious couples were giving way to bizarre
little dips and kicks and attitudes, named by outlandish names,
inaugurating a new freedom.
Claude stood alone beneath one of the wide, delicate floral arches--a
spectator who was not afraid of being observed. In reality he was noting
to himself the degree to which he had passed beyond the merely
pleasure-seeking impulse. In Rosie and Rosie's cares he had come to
realities. He was rather proud of it. With regard to the young men and
young women swirling in this variegated whirlpool, as well as to those
who, wearied with the dance, were sitting or reclining on the steps,
where rugs and cushions had been thrown for their convenience, he felt a
distinct superiority. They were still in the childish stage, while he
was grown to be a man. To the pretty girls, with their Parisian frocks
and their relatively idle lives, Rosie, with her power of tackling
actualities, was as a human being to a race of marionettes. It would be
necessary for him, in deference to his hosts, to step down among them in
a minute or two and twirl in their company; but he would do it with a
certain pity for those to whom this sort of thing was really a pastime;
he would do it as one for whom pastimes had lost their meaning and who
would be in some sense taking a farewell.
The music breathed out its last drowsy cadence, and the whirlpool
resolved itself into a series of shimmering, subsidiary eddies. There
was a decentralizing movement toward the rugs and cushions on the steps,
or to the seclusion of seats skilfully embowered amid groups of palms.
Dowagers sought the rose-colored settees against the walls. Gentlemen,
clasping their white-gloved hands at the base of their spinal columns,
bent in graceful conversational postures. A few pairs of attractive
young people continued to pace the floor. Claude remained where he was.
He remained where he was partly because he hadn't decided what else to
do, and partly because his quick eye had singled out the one girl in the
room who embodied something that was not embodied by every other girl.
When first he saw her she was standing beside the Girardon fountain in
conversation with a young man. The fact that the young man was his
friend Cheever brought her directly within Claude's circle and stirred
that spirit of emulation which five minutes earlier he thought he had
outlived. The girl was adjusting something in her corsage, her glance
flying upward from the action of her fingers toward Cheever's face, not
shyly or coquettishly, but with a perfectly straightforward nonchalance
which might have meant anything from indifference to defiance.
Claude knew the precise moment at which she noticed him by the fact that
she glanced toward him twice in rapid succession, after which Cheever
glanced toward him, too. He understood then that she had been
sufficiently struck by him to ask his name, and judged that Billy would
treat him to some such pardonable epithet as "awful ass," in order to
keep her attention on himself. In this apparently he didn't succeed, for
presently they began to saunter in Claude's direction. The latter stood
his ground.
In the knowledge that he could endure scrutiny, he stood his ground with
an ease that plainly roused the young lady's interest. With her hand on
the arm of her cavalier she sauntered forward, and, swerving slightly,
sauntered by. She sauntered by with a lingering look of curiosity that
seemed to throw him a challenge. Never in his life had Claude received
such a look. It was perhaps the characteristic look of the girl of the
twentieth century. It was neither bold nor rude nor self-assertive, but
it was unconscious, inquiring, and unabashed. For Claude it was a new
experience, calling out in him a new response.
It was a rule with Claude never to take the initiative with girls of his
own class, or with those who--because they lived in the city while he
lived in the village--felt themselves geographically his superiors. He
found it wise policy to wait to be sought, and therefore fell back
toward his hostess with compliments for her scheme of decoration. He got
the reward he hoped for when Mrs. Darling called to her daughter,
saying:
"Elsie dear, come here. I want to introduce Mr. Claude Masterman."
So it happened that when the nineteenth century was putting forth a
further effort with the swooning phrases of the barcarolle from the
"Contes d'Hoffmann," adapted to the Boston, Claude found himself swaying
with the twentieth.
They had not much to say. Whatever interest they felt in each other was
guarded, taciturn. When they talked it was in disjointed sentences on
fragmentary subjects.
"You've been abroad, haven't you?"
"Yes; for the last five years."
"Do you like being back?"
The answer was doubtful. "Rather. For some things." Then, as though to
explain this lack of enthusiasm, "Everybody looks alike." She qualified
this by adding, "You don't."
"Neither do you," he stated, in the matter-of-fact tone which he felt to
be suited to the piquantly matter-of-fact in her style.
It was a minute or two before either of them spoke again. "You've got a
brother, haven't you? My father's his guardian or something."
Assenting to these statements, Claude said further, "He couldn't come
to-night because he's going to be married on Thursday."
"To that Miss Willoughby, isn't it?" A jerky pause was followed by a
jerky addition: "I think she's nice."
"Yes, she is; top-hole. So's my brother."
She threw back her head to fling him up a smile that struck him as
adorably straightforward. "I like to hear one brother speak of another
like that. You don't often."
"Oh, well, every brother couldn't, you know."
They had circled and reversed more than once before she sighed: "I wish
I had a brother--or a sister. It's an awful bore being the only one."
"Better to be the only one than one of too many."
More minutes had gone by in the suave swinging of their steps to
Offenbach's somnolent measures when she asked, abruptly, "Do you skate?"
"Sometimes. Do you?"
"I go to the Coliseum."
Claude's next question slipped out with the daring simplicity he knew
how to employ. "Do you go on particular days?"
"I generally go on Tuesdays." If she was moved by an afterthought it was
without flurry or apparent sense of having committed an indiscretion.
"Not every Tuesday," she said, quietly, and dropped the subject there.
When, a few minutes later, she was resting on a rug thrown down on the
steps, with Claude posed gracefully by her side, Archie Masterman found
the opportunity to stroll near enough to his wife to say in an
undertone, "Do you see Claude?"
Ena's answer was no more than a flutter of the eyelids, but a flutter of
the eyelids quite sufficient to take in the summing up of significant,
unutterable things in her husband's face.
CHAPTER XIX
By the time Thor and Lois had returned from their honeymoon in early May
the line of battle in Claude's soul had been extended. The Claude who
might be was fighting hard to get the better of the Claude who was. It
was, nevertheless, the Claude who was that spoke in response to the
elder brother's timid inquiry concerning the situation as it affected
Rosie Fay. Hardly knowing how to frame his question, Thor had put it
awkwardly.
"Done anything yet?"
"No."
In the little smoking-room that had been Len's and was now Thor's--Mr.
and Mrs. Willoughby having retired already to their _petit trou pas
cher_--they puffed at their cigars in silence. It had been the wish of
both bride and bridegroom that Claude should dine with them on their
second evening at home. Thor had man[oe]uvered for these few minutes
alone with his brother in order to get the information he was now
seeking. For his own assurance there were things he needed to know. He
wanted to feel convinced that he hadn't acted hastily, that in marrying
he had made no mistake. There would be proof of that when he saw that
Claude and Rosie had found their happiness in each other, and that in
what he himself had done--there had been no other way! He wished that
Uncle Sim's pietistic refrain wouldn't hum so persistently in his
memory: "Oh, tarry thou the Lord's leisure!" He didn't believe in a
Lord's leisure; but neither did he want to be afraid of his own haste.
He had grown so self-conscious on the subject that it took courage for
him to say:
"Isn't it getting to be about time?"
Claude drew the cigar from his lips and stared obliquely. "Look here,
old chap; I thought I was to put this thing through in my own way?"
"Oh, quite so; quite so."
Claude's thrust went home when he said, "I don't see why _you_ should be
in such a hurry about it." He followed this by a question that Thor
found equally pertinent: "Why the devil are you?"
"Because I thought you were."
"Well, even if I am, I don't see any reason for rushing things."
"Oh, would you call it--rushing?" He threw off, carelessly, "I hear you
go a good deal to the Darlings'!"
"Not any oftener than they ask me."
"Well, then, they ask you pretty often, don't they?"
"I suppose they do it when they feel inclined. I haven't counted the
number of occasions."
"No; but I dare say Rosie has."
"I'm not a fool, Thor. I don't talk to Rosie about the Darlings."
"Nor to the Darlings about her. That's the point. At least, it's one of
the two points; and both are important. It's no more unjust for Rosie
Fay to know nothing of Elsie Darling than it is for Elsie Darling to
know nothing of Rosie Fay."
"Oh, rot, Thor!" Claude sprang to his feet, knocking off the ash of his
cigar into the fireplace. "What do you think I'm up to?"
"I don't know. And what I'm afraid of is that _you_ don't know."
"If you think I mean to leave Rosie in the lurch--"
"I don't think you _mean_ it--no!"
"Then, if you think I'd do it--"
"The surest way not to do it is to--do the other thing."
"I'll do the other thing when I'm ready--not before."
"Humph! That's just what I thought would happen."
"And this is just what _I_ thought would happen--that because you'd put
up that confounded money you'd try to make me feel I was bought. Well,
I'm not bought. See? Rather than be bribed into doing what I mean to do
anyhow I'll not do it at all."
"Oh, if you mean to do it _anyhow_--"
Claude rounded on his brother indignantly. "Say, Thor, do you think I'm
going to be a damn scoundrel?"
"Do you think you'd be a damn scoundrel if you didn't put it through?"
"I should be worse. Even a damn scoundrel can be called a man, and I
should have forfeited the name. There! Does that satisfy you?"
"Up to a point--yes."
Claude sniffed. "You're such a queer chap, Thor, that if I've satisfied
you up to a point I ought to be content."
"Oh, I'm all right, Claude. I only hoped that you'd be able to go on
with it for some better reason than just--just not to be a scoundrel."
"Good Lord, old chap! I'm crazy about it. If Rosie wouldn't hum and haw
I'd be the happiest man alive."
"Oh? So Rosie hums and haws, does she? What about?"
"About that confounded family of hers. Must do this for the father, and
that for the mother, and something else for the beastly cub that's in
jail. You can see the position that puts me in."
"But if you're really in love with her--"
"I'm really in love with _her_, I'm not with them. I never pretended to
be. But if I have to marry the bunch, the cub and all--"
Thor couldn't help thinking of the opening he would have had here for
his own favorite kinds of activity. "Then that'll give you a chance to
help them."
"Not so stuck on helping people as you, old chap. Want help myself."
"But you've got help, whereas they've got no one. You'll be a godsend to
them."
"That's just what I'm afraid of. Who wants to be a godsend to people?"
"I should think any one would."
"If I'm a godsend to them, it shows what _they_ must be."
"Mustn't undervalue yourself. Besides, you knew what they were when you
began--"
"Oh, hang it all, Thor! I didn't begin. It--it happened."
Thor's eyes followed his brother as the latter began moving restlessly
about the room. "Well, you're glad it happened, aren't you?"
Claude stopped abruptly. "Of course I am. But what stumps me is why you
should be. See here; would you be as keen on it if I were going to marry
some one else?"
Before so leading a question Thor had to choose his words. "I'd be just
as keen on it; only if you were going to marry some one else, some one
in circumstances more like your own, you wouldn't require so much of
my--of my sympathy."
"Well, it beats me," Claude admitted, starting for the door. "I know
you're a good chap at heart--top-hole, of course!--but I shouldn't have
supposed you were as good as all that. I'll be darned if I should!"
Thor thought it best not to inquire too precisely into the suggestions
implied by "all that," contenting himself with asking, "When may I tell
Lois?"
Claude answered over his shoulder as he passed into the hall. "Tell her
myself--perhaps now."
He joined his sister-in-law in the drawing-room, though he didn't tell
her. He was on the point of doing so once or twice, but sheered off to
something else.
"Awful queer fellow, Thor. Can _you_ make him out?"
Lois was doing something with white silk or thread which she hooked in
and out with a crocheting implement. The action, as she held the work
up, showed the beauty of her hands. On her lips there was a dim, happy
smile. "Making Thor out is a good deal like reading in a language you're
just beginning to learn; you only see some of the beauties yet--but you
know you'll find plenty more when you get on a bit. In the mean while
the idioms may bother you."
Claude, who was leaning forward limply, his elbows on his knees, made a
circular, protesting movement of his neck and head, as though his collar
fitted him uncomfortably. "Well, he's all Greek to me."
"But they say Greek richly repays those who study it."
"Humph! 'Fraid I'm not built that way. Do you know why he's got such a
bee in his bonnet about--?"
He was going to say, in order to lead up to his announcement, "about
Fay, the gardener"; but he couldn't. The words wouldn't come out. The
prospect of telling any one that he was going to marry little Rosie Fay
terrified him. He hardly understood now how he could have told his
father and mother. He would never have done it if Thor hadn't been
behind him. As it was, both his parents were so discreet concerning his
confidence that neither had mentioned it since that night--which made
his situation endurable. So he changed the form of his question to--"bee
in his bonnet about--helping people?"
"Oh, it isn't a bee in his bonnet. It's just--himself. He can't do
anything else."
He said, moodily, "Perhaps he doesn't help them as much as he thinks."
"He doesn't--as much as he wants to. I know that."
"Well, why not?"
She dropped her work to her lap and looked vaguely toward the dying
fire. Her air was that of a person who had already considered the
question, though to little purpose. "I don't know. Sometimes I think he
doesn't go the right way to work. And yet it can hardly be that.
Certainly no one could go to work with a better heart."
Claude was referring inwardly to Rosie's five thousand a year, and
perceiving that it created as many difficulties as it did away with,
when he said, "Thinks everything a matter of dollars and cents."
She received this pensively. "Perhaps."
* * * * *
And yet Thor's warning sent Claude to see Rosie on the following
afternoon. It was not his regular day for coming, so that his appearance
was a matter of happy terror tempered only by the fact that he caught
her in her working-dress. His regular days were those on which Jasper
Fay took his garden-truck to town. Fay rarely returned then before six
or seven, so that with the early twilights there was time for an
enchanted hour in the gloaming. The gloaming and the blossoms and the
languorous heat and the heavy scents continued to act on Claude's senses
as a love-philter might in his veins.
It was the kind of meeting to be clandestine. Secrecy was a necessary
ingredient in its deliciousness. The charm of the whole relation was in
its being kept _sub rosa_. _Sub rosa_ was the term. It should remain
under the rose where it had had its origin. It should be a stolen bliss
in a man's life and not a daily staple. That was something Thor would
never understand, that a man's life needed a stolen bliss to give it
piquancy. There was a kind of bliss which when it ceased to be hidden
ceased to be exquisite. Mysteries were seductive because they were
mysteries, not because they were proclaimed and expounded in the
market-place. Rosie in her working-dress among the fern-trees and the
great white Easter lilies was Rosie as a mystery, as a bliss. It was the
pity of pities that she couldn't be left so, where she belonged--in the
state in which she met so beautifully all the requirements of taste. To
drag her out, and put her into spheres she wasn't meant for, and endow
her with five thousand dollars a year, was like exposing a mermaid, the
glory of her own element, by pulling her from the water.
He grew conscious of this, as he always did the minute they touched on
the practical. In general he avoided the practical in order to keep
within the range of topics of which his love was not afraid. But at
times it was necessary to speak of the future, and when they did the
poor mermaid showed her fins and tail. She could neither walk nor dance
nor fly; she could only flounder. There was no denying the fact that
poor little Rosie floundered. She floundered because she was obliged to
deal with life on a scale of which she had no experience, but as to
which Claude had keenly developed social sensibilities. Not that she was
pretentious; she was only what he called pathetic, with a pathos that
would have made him grieve for her if he hadn't been grieving for
himself.
He had asked her idea of their married life, since she had again
expressed her inability to fall in with his. "Oh, Rosie, let us go and
live in Paris!" he had exclaimed, to which she had replied, as she had
replied so many times already: "Claude, darling, how _can_ I? How can I
leave them, when they've no one else?"
"Then if we get married, what do you propose that we should do?"
He had never come to anything so bluntly definite before. With that
common sense of hers which was always looking for openings that would
lead to common-sense results, Rosie took it as an opportunity. She
showed that she had given some attention to the matter, though she
expressed herself with hesitation. They were sitting in the most
embowered recess the hothouse could afford--in a little shrine she kept
free, yet secret, for the purpose of their meetings. She let him hold
both her hands, though her face and most of her person were averted from
him as she spoke. She spoke with an anxiety to let him see that in
marrying her he wouldn't be letting himself down too low.
"There's that little house in Schoolhouse Lane," she faltered. "The
Lippitts used to live in it."
"Well?"
"If we lived there, I could manage--with a girl." She brought out the
subordinate clause with some confusion, for the keeping of "a girl" was
an ambition to which it was not quite easy to aspire. She thought it
best, however, to be bold, and stammered on, "We could get one for about
four a week."
He let her go on.
"And if we lived in the Lippitt house I could slip across our own yard,
and across Mrs. Willert's yard--she wouldn't mind!--and keep an eye on
things here. Mother's ever so much better. She's taking hold again--"
"Then why couldn't we go and settle in Paris?"
"Because--don't you see, Claude?--that's not the only thing. There's
father and Matt and the business. I must be on hand to--to prop them up.
If I were to go, everything would come down with a crash--even if your
father didn't make any more trouble about the lease. I suppose if we
were married he wouldn't do _that_?"
Though he kept silence, his nervous, fastidious, super-fine soul was
screaming. Why couldn't he have been allowed to keep the poignant joy of
touching her, of breathing her acrid, earthy atmosphere, of kissing her
lips and her eyelids, to himself? It was an intoxication--but no one
wanted intoxication all the time. It was curious that a life in this
delirious state should be forced on him by the brother who wished him
well. It was still more curious that he should feel obliged to force it
on himself in order not to be a cad.
He didn't despise Rosie for the poverty of her ideals. On the contrary,
her ideals were exactly suited to the little rustic thing she was. If he
could have been Strephon to her Chloe it would have been perfect. But he
couldn't be Strephon; he could be nothing but a neurotic
twentieth-century youth, sensitive to such amenities and refinements as
he had, and eager to get more. He was the type to go sporting with
Amaryllis in the shade--but the shade was what made the exercise
enchanting.
His obscure rebellion against the power that forced him to drag his love
out into the light impelled him to say, without quite knowing why, "Did
Thor ever speak of you and me being married?"
Because he was pressing her to him so closely he felt the shudder that
ran through her frame. It seemed to run through his own as he waited for
her reply.
"No."
Rosie never told a lie unless she thought she was obliged to. She
thought it now because of Claude's jealousy. She had seen flashes of it
more than once, and always at some mention of his brother. She was
terror-stricken as she felt his arm relax its embrace--terror-stricken
lest Thor should have already given the information that would prove she
was lying. She asked, trembling, "Did he ever say he had?"
"Do you think he'd say it, if he hadn't?"
"N-no; I don't suppose so."
"Then why should you ask me that?"
She surprised him by bursting into tears. "Oh, Claude, don't be cross
with me. Don't say what you said the last time you were cross--that
you'd go away and never come back again. If you did that I should die. I
couldn't live. I should kill myself."
There followed one of the scenes of soothing in which Claude was
specially adept, and which he specially enjoyed. The pleasure was so
exquisite that he prolonged it, so that by the time he emerged from the
hothouse Jasper Fay was standing in the yard.
As the old man's back was turned, Claude endeavored to slip by,
unobserved and silent. He succeeded in the silence, but not in being
unobserved. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the dim figure dogging
him as it had dogged him on a former occasion, with the bizarre,
sinister suggestion of a beast about to spring.
Claude could afford to smile at so absurd an idea in connection with
poor old Fay, but his nerves were shaken by certain passionate,
desperate utterances he had just heard from Rosie. She was in general so
prudent, so self-controlled, that he had hardly expected to see her give
way either in weeping or in words. She had broken down in both respects,
while his nature was so responsive that he felt as if he had broken down
himself. In the way of emotions it had been delicious, wonderful. It was
a revelation of the degree to which the little creature loved him. It
was a sensation in itself to be loved like that. It struck him as a
strange, new discovery that in such a love there was a value not to be
reckoned by money or measured by social refinements. New, strange
harmonies swept through the æolian harp of his being--harmonies both
tragic and exultant by which he felt himself subdued. It came to him
conclusively that if in marrying Rosie there would be many things to
forego, there would at least be compensation.
And yet he shivered at the stealthy creeping behind him of the shadowy
old man, by whom he felt instinctively that he was hated.
CHAPTER XX
Claude found it a vivid and curious contrast to dine that evening with
the Darlings and their sophisticated friends. The friends were even more
sophisticated than Claude himself, since they had more money, had
traveled more, and in general lived in a broader world. But Claude knew
that it was in him to reach their standards and go beyond them. All he
needed was the opportunity; and opportunity to a handsome young American
of good antecedents like himself is rarely wanting. He never took in
that fact so clearly as on this night.
He was glad that he had not been placed next to Elsie at table, for the
reason that he felt some treachery to Rosie in his being there at all.
Conversely, in the light of Thor's judgment, he felt some treachery to
Elsie that he should come to her with Rosie's kisses on his lips. Not
that he owed her any explanations--from one point of view. Considering
the broad latitude of approach and withdrawal allowed to American young
people, and the possibility of playing fast and loose with some amount
of mutual comprehension, he owed her no explanations whatever; but the
fact remained that she was expressing a measure of willingness to be
Juliet to his Romeo in braving the mute antagonism that existed between
their respective families. As far as that went, he knew he was unwelcome
to the Darlings; but he knew, too, that Elsie's favor carried over her
parents' heads the point of his coming and going. It was conceivable
that she might carry over their heads a point more important still if he
were to urge her.
To the Claude who was it seemed lamentable that he couldn't urge her;
but to the Claude who might be there were higher things than the
gratification of fastidious social tastes, and for the moment that
Claude had some hope of the ascendant. It was that Claude who spoke
when, after dinner, the men had rejoined the ladies.
"Your mother doesn't like my coming here."
Elsie threw him one of her frank, flying glances. "Well, she's asked
you, hasn't she?"
He smiled. "She only asked me at the last minute. I can see some other
fellow must have dropped out."
"You can see it because it's a dinner-party of elderly people to which
you naturally wouldn't be invited unless there had been the place to
fill. That constantly happens when people entertain as much as we do.
But it isn't a slight to be asked to come to the rescue. It's a
compliment. You never ask people to do that unless you count them as
real friends."
He insisted on his point. "I don't suppose it was her idea."
"You mean it was mine; but even if it was, it comes to the same thing.
She asked you. She needn't have done it."
He still insisted. "She did it, but she didn't want to." He added,
lowering his voice significantly, "And she was right."
He forced himself to return her gaze, which rested on him with unabashed
inquiry. Everything about her was unabashed. She was free from the
conventional manners of maidendom, not as one who has been emancipated
from them, but as one who has never had them. She might have belonged to
a generation that had outgrown the need for them, as perhaps she did.
Shyness, coyness, and emphasized reserve formed no part of her
equipment; but, on the other hand, she was clear--clear with a kind of
crystalline clearness, in eyes, in complexion, and in the staccato
quality of her voice.
"She's right--how?"
"Right--because I oughtn't to come. I'm--I'm not free to come."
"Do you mean--?" She paused, not because she was embarrassed, but only
to find the right words. She kept her eyes on his with a candor he could
do nothing but reciprocate. "Do you mean that you're bound--elsewhere?"
He nodded. "That's it."
"Oh!" She withdrew her eyes at last, letting her gaze wander vaguely
over the music-room, about which the other guests were seated. They were
lined on gilded settees against the white French-paneled walls, while a
young man played Chopin's Ballade in A flat on a grand piano in the far
corner. Not being in the music-room itself, but in the large, square
hall outside, the two young people could talk in low tones without
disturbing the company. If she betrayed emotion it was only in the
nervousness with which she tapped her closed fan against the palm of her
left hand. Her eyes came back to his face. "I'm glad you've told me."
He took a virtuous tone. "I think those things ought to be--to be open
and aboveboard."
"Oh, of course. The wonder is that I shouldn't have heard it. One
generally does."
"Oh, well, you wouldn't in this case."
"Isn't it anybody--about here?"
"It's some one about here, but not any one you would have heard of. She
lives in our village. She's the daughter of a--well, of a
market-gardener."
"How interesting! And you're in love with her?" But because of what she
saw in his face she went on quickly: "No; I won't ask you that. Don't
answer. Of course you're in love with her. _I_ think it's splendid--a
man with your"--chances was the word that suggested itself, but she made
it future--"a man with your future to fall in love with a girl like
that."
There was a bright glow in her face to which he tried to respond. He
said that which, owing to its implications, he could not have said to
any other girl in the world, but could say to her because of her
twentieth-century freedom from the artificial. "Now you see why I
shouldn't come."
She gave a little assenting nod. "Yes; perhaps you'd better not--for a
while--not quite so often, at any rate. By and by, I dare say, we shall
get everything on another--another basis--and then--"
She rose, so that he followed her example; but he shook his head. "No,
we sha'n't. There won't be any other basis."
She took this with her usual sincerity. "Well, perhaps not. I don't
suppose we can really tell yet. We must just--see. When he stops," she
added, with scarcely a change of tone, as she moved away from him, "do
go over and talk to Mrs. Boyce. She likes attentions from young men."
What Claude chiefly retained of his brief conversation was the approval
in the words, "_I_ think it's splendid." He thought it splendid himself.
He felt positive now that if he had pressed his suit--if he had been
free to press it--he might one day have been treading this polished
floor not as guest, but as master. There were no difficulties in the way
that couldn't easily be overcome, if he and Elsie had been of a mind to
do it--and she would have a good fifty thousand a year! Yes, it was
splendid; there was no other word for it. He was giving up this
brilliant future for the sake of little Rosie Fay--and counting the
world well lost.
* * * * *
The sense of self-approval was so strong in him that as he traveled
homeward he felt the great moment to have come. He must keep his word;
he must be a gentleman. He was flattered by the glimpse he had got of
Elsie Darling's heart; and yet the fact that she might have come to love
him acted on him as an incentive, rather than the contrary, to carrying
out his plans. She would see him in a finer, nobler light. As long as
she lived, and even when she had married some one else, she would keep
her dream of him as the magnificently romantic chap who could love a
village maid and be true to her.
And he did love a village maid! He knew that now by certain infallible
signs. He knew it by the very meagerness of his regret in giving up
Elsie Darling and all that the winning of her would have implied. He
knew it by the way he thrilled when he thought of Rosie's body trembling
against his, as it had trembled that afternoon. He knew it by the wild
tingle of his nerves when she shuddered at the name of Thor. That is, he
thought she had shuddered; but of course she hadn't! What had she to
shudder at? He was brought up against that question every time the
unreasoning fear of Thor possessed him. He knew the fear to be
unreasoning. However possible it might be to suspect Rosie--and a man
was always ready to suspect the woman he loved!--to suspect Thor was
absurd. If in the matter of Rosie's dowry Thor was "acting queerly,"
there was an explanation of that queerness which would do him credit. Of
that no one who knew Thor could have any question and at the same time
keep his common sense. Claude couldn't deny that he was jealous; but
when he came to analyze his passion in that respect he found it nothing
but a dread lest his own supineness might allow Rosie to be snatched
away from him. He had been dilly-dallying over what he should have
clinched. He had been afraid of the sacrifice he would be compelled to
make, without realizing, as he realized to-night, that Rosie would be
worth it. No later than to-morrow he would buy a license and a
wedding-ring, and, if possible, marry her in the evening. Before the
fact accomplished difficulties--and God knew there were a lot of
them!--would smooth themselves away.
As he left the tram-car at the village terminus he was too excited to go
home at once, so he passed his own gate and went on toward Thor's. It
was not yet late. He could hear Thor's voice reading aloud as the maid
admitted him, and could follow the words while he took off his overcoat
and silk hat and laid them carefully on one of the tapestried chairs. He
still followed them as he straightened his cravat before the glass,
pulled down his white waistcoat, and smoothed his hair.
"'Christ's mission, therefore,'" Thor read on, "'was not to relieve
poverty, but to do away with it. It was to do away with it not by
abolition, but by evolution. It is clear that to Christ poverty was not
a disease, but a symptom--a symptom of a sick body politic. To suppress
the symptom without undertaking the cure of the whole body would have
been false to the thoroughness of His methods.'"
Claude appeared on the threshold. Lois smiled. Thor looked up.
"Hello, Claude! Come in. Just wait a minute. Reading Vibart's _Christ
and Poverty_. Only a few lines more to the end of the chapter. 'To the
teaching of Christ,'" Thor continued, "'belongs the discovery that the
causes of poverty are economic only in the second place, and moral in
the first. Economic conditions are shifting, changing vitally within the
space of a generation. Nothing is permanent but the moral, as nothing is
effectual. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with
all thy soul and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself; on
these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. On these two
commandments hangs also the solution of the problems of poverty, seeing
that a race that obeys them finds no such problems confronting it. In
proportion to the spread of moral obedience these problems tend to
disappear. They were never so near to disappearing as now, when the
moral sense has become alive to them.'"
Claude smoked a cigar while they sat and talked. It was talk in which he
personally took little share, but from which he sought to learn whether
or not Thor was satisfied with what he had done. If there was any
_arrière pensée_, he thought he might detect it by looking on. It was a
pleasant scene, Lois with her sewing, Thor with his book. The library
had the characteristic of American libraries in general, of being the
most cheerful room in the house.
"What I complain of in all this," Thor said, tossing the book on the
table, "is the intermediary suffering. It does no good to the starving
of to-day to know that in another thousand years men will have so
grasped the principles of Christ that want will be abolished."
Lois smiled over her sewing. "You might as well say that it does no good
to the people who have to walk to-day, or travel by trains and motors,
to know that in a hundred years the common method of getting about will
probably be by flying. This writer lays it down as a principle that
there's a rate for human progress, and that it's no use expecting man to
get on faster than he has the power to go."
"I don't expect him to get on faster than he has the power to go. I only
want him to go faster than he's going."
"Haven't you seen others, who wanted the same thing, dragging people off
their feet, with the result that legs or necks were broken?"
"That's absurd, of course; but between that and quickening the stride
there's a difference."
"Exactly; which is what Vibart says. His whole argument is that if you
want to do away with poverty you must begin at the beginning, and
neither in the middle nor at the end. People used to begin at the end
when they imagined the difficulty to be met by temporarily supplying
wants. Now they're beginning in the middle by looking for social and
economic readjustments which won't be effective for more than a few
years at a time. To begin at the beginning, as I understand him to say,
they must get at themselves with a new point of view, and a new line of
action toward one another. They must try the Christian method which they
never _have_ tried, or put up with poverty and other inequalities. It's
futile to expect to do away with them by the means they're using now;
and that," she added, in defense of the author she was endeavoring to
sum up, "seems to me perfectly true."
Without following the line of argument, in which he took no interest,
Claude spoke out of his knowledge of his brother. "Trouble with Thor is
that he's in too much of a hurry. Won't let anything take its own pace."
This was so like a paraphrase in Claude's language of Uncle Sim's
pietistic ditty that Thor winced. "Take its own pace--and stop still,"
he said, scornfully.
"And then," Lois resumed, tranquilly, "you've got to remember that
Vibart has a spiritual as well as a historical line of argument. The
evolution of the human race isn't merely a matter of following out
certain principles; it depends on the degree of its conscious
association with divine energy. Isn't that what he says? The closer the
association the faster the progress. Where there's no such association
progress is clogged or stopped. You remember, Thor. It's in the chapter,
'Fellow-workers with God.'"
"I couldn't make it out," Thor said, with some impatience.
"'Fellow-workers with God!' I don't see what that means."
"Then, until you do see--"
Apparently she thought better of what she was about to say, and
suppressed it. The conversation drifted to cognate subjects, while
Claude became merely an observer. He wanted to be perfectly convinced
that Thor was happy. That Lois was happy he could see. Happiness was
apparent in every look and line of her features and every movement of
her person. She was like another woman. All that used to seem wistful in
her and unfulfilled had resolved itself into radiant contentment.
According to Claude, you could see it with half an eye. She had gained
in authority and looks, while she had developed a power of holding her
own against her husband that would probably do him good.
As to Thor he was less sure. He looked older than one might have
expected him to look. There was an expression in his face that was
hardly to be explained by marriage and a two months' visit to Europe.
Claude was not analytical, but he found himself saying, "Looks like a
chap who'd been through something. What?" Being "through something"
meant more than the experience incidental to a wedding and a honeymoon.
With that thought torture began to gnaw at Claude's soul again, so that
when his brother was called to the telephone to answer a lady who was
asking what her little boy should take for a certain pain, he sprang the
question on Lois:
"What do you really think of Thor? You don't suppose he has anything on
his mind, do you?"
Lois was startled. "Do you?"
"I asked first."
"Well, what made you?"
"Oh, I don't know. Two or three things. I just wondered if you'd noticed
it."
Her face clouded. "I haven't noticed that he had anything on his mind. I
knew already--he told me before we were married--that there was
something about which he wasn't--wasn't quite happy. I dare say you know
what it is--"
He shook his head.
"Don't you? Well, neither do I. He may tell me some day; and till
then--But I've thought he was better lately--more cheerful."
"Hasn't he been cheerful?"
"Oh yes--quite--as a rule. But of course I've seen--"
They were interrupted by Thor's return, after which Claude took his
departure.
He woke in the morning with a frenzy that astonished himself to put into
execution what he had resolved. With his nervous volatility he had half
expected to feel less intensely on the subject after having slept on it;
but everything that could be called desire in his nature had focused
itself now into the passion to make Rosie his own. That first!--and all
else afterward. That first!--but he could neither see beyond it nor did
he want to see.
The excitement he had been tempted to ascribe on the previous evening to
his talk with Elsie Darling, and perhaps in some degree to a glass or
two of champagne, having become intensified, it was a proof of its being
"the real thing." He was sure now that it was not only the real thing,
but that it would be lasting. This was no spasmodic breeze through his
æolian harp, but the breath and life of his being. He came to this
conclusion as he packed a bag that he could send for toward evening, and
made a few other preparations for a temporary absence from his father's
house. Putting one thing with another, he had reason to feel sure that
he and Rosie would be back there together before long, forgiven and
received, so that he was relieved of the necessity of taking a farewell.
"_I_ think it's splendid," rang in his heart like a cheer. Any one would
think it splendid who knew what he was going to do--and what he was
renouncing!
It was annoying that on reaching the spot where he took the electric car
to go to town old Jasper Fay should be waiting there. It was still more
annoying that among the other intending passengers there should be no
one whom Claude knew. To drop into conversation with a friend would have
kept Fay at a distance. Just now his appearance--neat, shabby, pathetic,
the superior workingman in his long-preserved, threadbare Sunday
clothes--introduced disturbing notes into the swelling hymeneal chant to
which Claude felt himself to be marching. There were practical reasons,
too, why he should have preferred to hold no intercourse with Fay till
after he had crossed his Rubicon. He nodded absently, therefore, and,
passing to the far end of the little straggling line, prayed that the
car would quicken its speed in coming.
Through the tail of his eye he could see Fay detach himself from the
patient group of watchers and shamble in his direction. "What's it to be
now?" Claude said to himself, but he stood his ground. He stood his
ground without turning, or recognizing Fay's approach. He leaned
nonchalantly on his stick, looking wearily up the line for rescue, till
he heard a nervous cough. The nervous cough was followed by the words,
huskily spoken:
"Mr. Claude!"
He was obliged to look around. There was something about Fay that was at
once mild and hostile, truculent and apologetic. He spoke respectfully,
and yet with a kind of anger in the gleam of his starry eyes.
"Mr. Claude, I wish you wouldn't hang round my place any more. It don't
do any one any good." Claude was weighing the advantages of avowing
himself plainly on the spot, when Fay went on, "One experience of that
kind has been about enough--in _one_ year."
Claude's heart seemed to stop beating. "One experience of what kind?"
"You're all Mastermans together," Fay declared, bitterly. "I don't trust
any of you. You're both your father's sons."
"By God! I've got at it!" Claude cried to himself. Aloud he said, with
no display of emotion. "I don't understand you. I don't know what you
mean."
Fay merely repeated, hoarsely, "I don't want either of you coming any
more."
Claude took a tone he considered crafty. "Oh, come now, Mr. Fay. Even if
you don't want me, I shouldn't think you'd object to my brother Thor."
"Your brother Thor! You've a nice brother Thor!"
"Why, what's he done?"
"Ask my little girl. No, you needn't ask her. She wouldn't tell you. She
won't tell me. All I know is what I've seen."
If it hadn't been for the decencies and the people standing by, Claude
could have sprung on the old man and clutched his throat. All he could
do, however, was to say, peacefully, "And what _have_ you seen?"
Fay looked around to assure himself that no one was within earshot. The
car was bearing down on them with a crashing buzz, so that he was
obliged to speak rapidly. "I've seen him creep into my hothouse where my
little girl was at work, under cover of the night, and I've seen him
steal away. And when I've looked in after he was gone she was crying fit
to kill herself."
"What made you wait till he went away?" Claude asked, fiercely. "Why
didn't you go in after him and see what they were up to?"
The old man's face expressed the helplessness of the average American
parent in conflict with a child. "Oh, she wouldn't let me. She won't
have none of my interference. She says she knows what she's about. But I
don't know what _you're_ about, Mr. Claude; and so I'm beggin' you to
keep away. No good'll come of your actions. I don't trust any Masterman
that lives."
The car had stopped and emptied itself. The people were getting in. Fay
climbed the high steps laboriously, dropping a five-cent piece into a
slot as he rounded a little barrier. Claude sprang up after him,
dropping in a similar piece of money. Its tinkle as it fell shivered
through his nerves with the excruciating sharpness of a knife-thrust.
CHAPTER XXI
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 it _then_--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 loved
_you_ any 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 help _him_!--and everything on you--!"
"That's got nothing to do with it, Rosie--"
"It _has_ got 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 you _see_? It wasn't _him_."
"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 have _done_ it--"
"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 how _could_ I!"
"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 you _know_ what 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 marry _him_ whether
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. It _would_ be 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.
CHAPTER XXII
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? _I_ had 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
they _have_ quarreled--"
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, what _can_ you 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 ask _him_, 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 ask _him_ how 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've _been_ fools 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 on _them_. 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? _I_ can'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. He _was_ to 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 what _would_ do 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.
CHAPTER XXIII
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 what _do_ we 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 say _Abba--Father_ does 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 say _Abba--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
say _Abba--Father_, and see." She shook her head. She couldn't say
_Abba--Father_ at 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.
CHAPTER XXIV
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't _know_ that 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. "_We_ can'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 he _is_ Archie Masterman's son--"
"Oh no, nor I," Lois hastened to interpose.
"But there's nothing wrong. I've asked her--and I _know_. 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:
"Ah, dinna ye mind, Lord Gregory,
By bonnie Irvinside,
Where first I owned the virgin love
I long, long had denied?"
Though the singer was invisible, Lois knew she could not be far away,
since the voice was too weak to carry. She was about to go forward when
the faint melody began again:
"An exile from my father's ha'
And a' for loving thee;
At least be pity to me shown,
If love it may na' be."
Placing the voice now as near the great oak-tree circled by a seat, just
below the point where the ascending bluff broke fifty feet to the pond
beneath, Lois went rapidly up the last few yards of the ascent.
Rosie was seated with her back to the gnarled trunk, while she looked
out over the half-mile of dancing blue wavelets to where, on the other
side, the brown, wooden houses of the Thorley estate swept down to the
shore. She rose on seeing the visitor approach, showing a startled
disposition to run away. This she might have done had not Lois caught
her by the hand and detained her.
"I know all about everything, Rosie--about everything."
She meant that she understood the situation not only as regarding one
brother, but as regarding both. Rosie's response was without interest or
curiosity. "Do you?"
"Yes, Rosie; and I want to talk to you about it. Let us sit down."
Still holding the girl's hands in a manner that compelled her to reseat
herself, she examined the little face for the charm that had thrown such
a spell on Thor. With a pang she owned to herself that she found it. No
one could look at Thor with that expression of entreaty without reaching
all that was most tender in his soul.
For the moment, however, that point must be allowed to pass. "Not yet!
Not yet!" something cried to the passion that was trying to get control
of her. She went on earnestly, almost beseechingly: "I know just what
happened, Rosie dear, and how hard it's been for you; and I want you to
let me help you."
There was no light in Rosie's chrysoprase-colored eyes. Her voice was
listless. "What can you do?"
Put to her in that point-blank way, Lois found the question difficult.
She could only answer: "I can be with you, Rosie. We can be side by
side."
"There wouldn't be any good in that. I'd rather be left alone."
"Oh, but there would be good. We should strengthen each other. I--I need
help, too. I should find it partly, if I could do anything for you."
Rosie surveyed her friend, not coldly, but with dull detachment. "Do you
think Claude will come back to me?"
"What do you think, yourself?"
"I don't think he will." She added, with a catch in her breath like that
produced by a sudden, darting pain, "I know he won't."
"Would you be happy with him if he did?"
"I shouldn't care whether I was happy or not--if he'd come."
Lois thought it the part of wisdom to hold out no hope. "Then, since we
believe he won't come, isn't it better to face it with--"
"I don't see any use in facing it. You might as well ask a plant to face
it when it's pulled up by the roots and thrown out into the sun. There's
nothing left to face."
"But you're not pulled up by the roots, Rosie. Your roots are still in
the soil. You've people who need you--"
Rosie made a little gesture, with palms outward. "I've given them all I
had. I'm--I'm--empty."
"Yes, you feel so now. That's natural. We do feel empty of anything more
to give when there's been a great drain on us. But somehow it's the
people who've given most who always have the power to go on
giving--after a little while. With time--"
The girl interrupted, not impatiently, but with vacant indifference.
"What's the good of time--when it's going to be always the same?"
"The good of time is that it brings comfort--"
"I don't want comfort. I'd rather be as I am."
"That's perfectly natural--for now. But time passes whether we will or
no; and whether we will or no, it softens--"
"Time can't pass if you won't let it."
"Why--why, what do you mean?"
"I mean--just that."
Lois clasped the girl's hands desperately. "But, Rosie, you must _live_.
Life has a great deal in store for you still--perhaps a great deal of
happiness. They say that life never takes anything from us for which it
isn't prepared to give us compensation, if we'll only accept it in the
right way."
Rosie shook her head. "I don't want it."
Lois tried to reach the dulled spirit by another channel. "But we all
have disappointments and sorrows, Rosie. I have mine. I've great ones."
The aloofness in Rosie's gaze seemed to put miles between them. "That
doesn't make any difference to me. If you want me to be sorry for
them--I'm not. I can't be sorry for any one."
In her desire to touch the frozen springs of the girl's emotions, Lois
said what she would have supposed herself incapable of saying. "Not when
you know what they are?--when you know what one of them is, at any
rate!--when you know what one of them _must_ be! You're the only person
in the world except myself who can know."
Rosie's voice was as lifeless as before. "I can't be sorry. I don't know
why--but I can't be."
"Do you mean that you're glad I have to suffer?"
"N-no. I'm not glad--especially. I just--don't care."
Lois was baffled. The impenetrable iciness was more difficult to deal
with than active grief. She made her supreme appeal. "And then, Rosie,
then there's--there's God."
Rosie looked vaguely over the lake and said nothing. If she fixed her
eyes on anything, it was on the quivering balance of a kingfisher in the
air. When with a flash of silver and blue he swooped, and, without
seeming to have touched the water, went skimming away with a fish in his
bill, her eyes wandered slowly back in her companion's direction.
Lois made another attempt. "You believe in God, don't you?"
There was a second's hesitation. "I don't know as I do."
The older woman spoke with the pleading of distress. "But there _is_ a
God, Rosie."
There was the same brief hesitation. "I don't care whether there is or
not."
Though Lois could get no further, it hurt her to see the look of relief
in the little creature's face when she rose and said: "You'd rather I'd
go away, wouldn't you? Then I will go; but it won't be for long. I'm not
going to leave you to yourself. I'm coming back soon. I shall come back
again to-day. If you're not at home, I'll follow you up here."
She waited for some sign of protest, but Rosie sat silent and impassive.
Though courtesy kept her dumb, it couldn't conceal the air of resigned
impatience with which she awaited her visitor's departure.
Lois looked down at her helplessly. In sheer incapacity to affect the
larger issues, she took refuge in the smaller. "Isn't it near your
dinner-time? I'm going your way. We could go along together."
"I don't want any dinner. I'll go home--by and by."
Lois felt herself dismissed. "Very well, Rosie. I'll say good-by for
now. But it will only be for a little while. You understand that, don't
you? I'm not going to let you throw me off. I'm going to cling to you.
I've got the right to do it, because--because the very thing that makes
you unhappy--makes me."
In the eyes that Rosie lifted obliquely Lois read such unutterable
things that she turned away. She carried that look with her as she went
down the hill beneath the oaks and between the sunlit patches of brakes,
spleenwort, and lady-ferns. What scenes, what memories, had called it
up? What part in those scenes and memories had been played by Thor? What
had been the actual experience between this girl and him? Would she ever
know? Had she better know? What should she do if she were to know? Once
more the questions she had been trying to repress urged themselves for
answer; but once more she controlled herself through the counsel of the
inner voice: "Not yet! Not yet!"
CHAPTER XXV
But after Lois had gone Rosie came to life again. That is, she entered
once more the conditions in which her mind was free to tread its round
of grief. Lois kept her out of them. Her father and mother did the same.
Household duties and the tasks of the hothouse and the necessity for
eating and sleeping and speaking did the same. She turned from them all
with a weariness as consuming as a sickness unto death.
She had done so from the instant when, crouching behind the vines of the
cucumber-house, with all her senses strained, she perceived by the mere
rustling of the leaves that Claude was making his way down the long,
green aisle. She knew then that it was the end. If there had been no
other cause of rupture between them, the girl who kept ten or twelve
servants would have created it. Rosie knew enough of Claude to be aware
that love could not bear down the scale against this princeliness of
living. There would be so such repentance and reaction on his part as
she had experienced with Thor. Once he was gone, he was gone. It was the
end.
The soft opening and closing of the hothouse door as he went out reached
her like a sigh, a last sigh, a dying sigh, after which--nothing! Rosie
expected nothing--but she waited. She waited as watchers wait round a
death-bed for the possibility of one more breath; but none came. She
stirred then and rose. She rose mechanically, brushing the earth from
her clothing, and began again the interrupted task of picking the
superfluous female flowers and letting them flutter downward.
It was when she had come to the end of her third row and was about to
turn into the fourth that the sense of the impossibility of going on
swept over her. "Oh, I can't!" She dropped her arms to her side. "I
can't. I can't." She meant only that she couldn't go on just then; but
in the back of her mind there was the conviction that she would never go
on again.
She continued to stand with arms hanging and head drooped to one side,
closed in by vines, with flowers of the hue of light around her like a
halo, and bees murmuring among them. It was not merely that she was
listless and incapable; the world seemed to have dropped away. She was
marooned on a rock, with an ocean of nothingness about her. Everything
she wanted had gone--sunk, vanished. It had come within sight, like
mirage to the shipwrecked, only to torture her with what she couldn't
have. It was worse than if it had never shown itself at all. Love had
appeared with one man, money with the other. Love and money were two of
the three things she cared for; the poor, shiftless family was the
third. Since the first two had gone, the last must follow them. Quite
consciously and deliberately Rosie lifted her hands with a little
lamentable effort, letting them drop again, and so renounced her burden.
She crept back to the spot whence she had risen, and lay down. There was
a kind of ritual in the act. It was not now a mere stricken, physical
crouching as when she had turned away from Claude. It was something more
significant. It was withdrawal from work, from life, from all the
demands she had put forth so fiercely.
Renouncing these, Rosie also renounced Claude. It was a proof of the
degree to which she had dismissed him that when, a half-hour later, she
heard a rustling in the vines behind her it never occurred to her that
he might have come back. She knew already that he would never come back.
The fatalism of her little soul left her none of those uncertainties
which are safeguards against despair. She raised her head and looked;
but she saw exactly the person she knew she would see.
Antonio grinned, and announced dinner. The sight of his young mistress
half sitting, half lying on the ground struck him as droll.
Rosie got up and brushed herself again. She knew it must be dinner-time.
The fact had been at the back of her mind all through these minutes of
comforting negation. She should have been in the house laying the table
while her mother cooked the meal. It was the first time in years that
she had rebelled against a duty. It was not exactly rebellion now. It
was something more serious than that. She realized it as she stood where
she was, with hands hanging limply, and said to herself, "I've quit."
Nevertheless, she emerged slowly from the jungle of vines and followed
Antonio down the long, rustling aisle. There was a compulsion in the
day's routine to which she felt the necessity of yielding. She had
traversed half the length of the greenhouse before it came to her that
it was precisely to the day's routine that she couldn't return. Anything
was better than that. Any fate was preferable to the round of cooking
and cleaning and seed-time and harvest of which every detail was
impregnated with the ambitions she had given up. She had lived through
these tasks and beyond them out into something else--into a great
emptiness in which her spirit found a kind of ease. She could no more go
back to them than a released soul could go back to earth.
In the yard she stood looking at the poor, battered old house. Inside,
her father, who had probably by this time returned from town, would be
sitting down to table. Antonio--to save the serving of two sets of
meals--would be sitting down with him. Her mother would be bringing
something from the kitchen, holding a hot platter with the corner of her
apron. If she went in her mother would sit down, too, while she herself
would do the running to and fro between the table and the pantry or the
stove. She would snatch a bite for herself in the intervals of
attendance.
Rosie revolted. She revolted not against the drudgery, which was part of
the matter-of-course of living unless one "kept a girl"; she revolted
against the living itself. It was all over for her. In proof that it was
she turned her back on it.
Her moving away was at first without purpose. If her feet strayed into
the familiar path that ran down the hill between the hothouses and the
apple-trees it was because there was no other direction to take. She
hadn't meant to go up through the wood to Duck Rock before she found
herself doing it. The newly leafing oaks were a shimmer of bronze-green
above her, while she trod on young ferns that formed a carpet such as
was never woven by hands. Into it were worked white star-flowers without
number, with an occasional nodding trillium. The faint, bitter scent of
green things too tender as yet to be pungent rose from everything she
crushed. She was not soothed by nature, like Thor Masterman. She had too
much to do with the raising of plants for sale to take much interest in
what the earth produced without money and without price. If it had not
been that her mind was as nearly as possible empty of thought, she
wouldn't have paused to watch an indigo-bunting, whose little brown mate
was probably near by, hop upward from branch to branch of a solitary
juniper, his body like a blue flower in the dark boughs, while he poured
forth a song that waxed louder as he mounted. She observed him idly and
passed onward because there was nothing but that to do.
Her heart was too dead to feel much emotion when she emerged on the spot
where she had been accustomed to keep her trysts with Claude. Her trysts
with Claude had been at night; she had other sorts of association with
this summit in the daytime. All her life she had been used to come here
berrying. Here she came, too, with Polly Wilson and other
girl-friends--when she had any--for strolls and gossiping. Here, too,
Jim Breen had made love to her, and Matt's companion of the grocery. The
spot being therefore not wholly dedicated to memories of Claude, she
could approach it calmly.
She sat down on the familiar seat that circled the oak-tree and gave the
best view over the pond. The oak-tree was the last and highest of the
wood. Beyond it there was only an upward-climbing fringe of grass,
starred with cinquefoil and wild strawberry--and then the precipice. It
was but a miniature precipice that broke to a miniature sea, but it gave
an impression of grandeur. Sitting on the bench, with one's head against
the oak, one could, if one chose, see nothing but sky and water. There
was nothing but sky and water and air. In the noon stillness there was
not even a boat on the lake nor a bird on the wing. The only sounds were
those of a hammering far over on the Thorley estate, the humming of an
electric car, which at this distance was no more disturbing than the
murmur of a bee, and the song of the indigo-bunting, fluted now from the
tree-top. To Rosie it was peace, peace without pleasure, but without
pain--as nearly as might be that absorption into nothingness for which
she yearned as the Buddhist seeks absorption into God.
She rested, not suffering--at least not suffering anything she could
feel. She was beyond grief. The only thing she was not beyond was the
horror of returning to the interests that had hitherto made up life.
As for Claude, she could think of him, when she began doing so, with
singular detachment. The whole episode with him might have been ended
years before. It was like something which no longer perturbs, though the
memory of it is vivid. She could go back and reconstruct the experience
from the first. Up to the present she had never found any opportunity of
doing that, since each meeting with him was so soul-filling in itself.
Now that she had the leisure, she found herself using it as the
afternoon wore on.
Being on the spot where she had first met him, she could re-enact the
scene. She knew the very raspberry-bine at which she had been at work.
She went to it and lifted it up. It was a spiny, red-brown, sprawling
thing just beginning to clothe itself with leaves. It had been
breast-high when she had picked the fruit from it, and Claude had stood
over there, in that patch of common brakes which then rose above his
knees, but was now a bed of delicate, elongated sprays leaning backward
with incomparable grace. She found the heart to sing--her voice, which
used to be strong enough, yielding her but the ghost of song, as the
notes of an old spinnet give back the ghost of music long ago dead:
"Oh, mirk, mirk is the midnight hour,
And loud the tempest's roar;
A waeful wanderer seeks thy tower,
Lord Gregory ope thy door."
She could not remember having so much as hummed this air since the day
Claude had interrupted it; but she went on, unfalteringly, to the lines
at which he had broken in:
"At least be pity to me shown,
If love it may na' be--"
She didn't falter even here; she only allowed her voice to trail away in
the awed pianissimo into which he had frightened her. She stopped then
and went through the conversation that ensued on the memorable day, and
of which the very words were imprinted on her heart: "Isn't it Rosie?
I'm Claude." She hadn't smiled on that occasion, but she smiled to
herself now--a ghost of a smile to match her ghost of a voice--because
his tone had been so sweet. She had never heard anything like it
before--and since, only in his moments of endearment.
* * * * *
But she went home at last. She went home because the May afternoon grew
chilly, and in the gathering of shadows beneath the oaks there was
something eery. Expecting a scene or a scolding, she was surprised to
find both father and mother calm. They had evidently exchanged views
concerning her, deciding that she had better indulge her whims. When she
refused to eat they made little or no protest, and only once during the
night did her mother cross the passage to ask fretfully why she didn't
go to bed. On the following day there was the same silent acknowledgment
of her right to refuse to work and of her freedom to absent herself.
Rosie was quite clear as to what had taken place. Antonio had betrayed
the fact of Claude's visit, and her parents had scented a hopeless
love-affair. Rosie was indifferent. Her love-affairs were her own
business; she owed neither explanation nor apology to any one. So long
as her parents conceded her liberty to come and go, to nibble rather
than to eat, and not to speak when spoken to, she was content.
They conceded this all through that week. In her presence they bore
themselves with timid constraint, and followed her with stealthy eyes
that watched for every shadow that crossed her face; but they let her
alone. She was as free as wind all Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
Saturday, and Sunday.
During those days she continued to live in the exultation of the void.
There was nothing to fear any more. The worst had happened to her that
could happen, and so, in a manner of speaking, she was safe. Never since
she had begun to think had she been so free from misgiving and
foreboding as to what each new day would bring forth. No day could bring
forth anything now that could hurt her.
By Saturday the nerves of sensation began to show signs of recovering
themselves and returning to activity. In thinking of Claude, and living
through again her meetings with him, there were moments like pangs, of
longing, of passion, of despair, as the case might be, that went as
quickly as they came. But they didn't frighten her. If they were
premonitions of a state of anguish--why, there had been so much anguish
in her episode with Claude that there couldn't be much more now. If
anything, she welcomed it. It would be more as if he was back with her.
The void was peaceful. But the void filled with suffering on his account
would be better still. Anything!--anything but to be forced to go back!
But on Monday it was the urgency of going back that confronted her. She
had come down in the morning to find her breakfast laid in just the way
she liked it--tea, a soft-boiled egg, buttered toast, and, as a special
temptation to a capricious appetite, a dab of marmalade. She sat down to
the table unwillingly, sipping at the tea and nibbling at the toast, but
leaving the egg and the marmalade untouched. In her mother's bustling to
and fro she felt the long-delayed protest in the atmosphere. It came
while her mother was crossing the room to replace some dishes on the
dresser.
"Now, my girl, buck up. Just eat your breakfast and set to work and stop
your foolish fancies. If you don't look out you'll get yourself where I
was, and I guess it'll take more than Dr. Hilary to pull _you_ out." She
added, as she returned to the kitchen: "Your father told me to tell you
to get busy on the cucumbers. There's a lot to be picked. He's been
spannin' them and finds them ready."
Rosie made use of her privilege of not answering. When she had eaten all
she could she took a basket and made her way toward the cucumber-house
she had not entered since she had left it with the words, "I've quit."
It was like going to the scaffold to drag her feet across the yard; it
was like mounting it to lift the latch of the paintless door and feel
the stifling, pollen-laden air in her face. Nevertheless, habit took her
in. Habit sent her eyes searching among the lowest stretches of the
vines, where the cool, green things were hanging. Habit caused her to
stoop and span them with her rough little hand. When her father's thumb
and fingers met around them they were ready to be picked; they were
ready when her own came within an inch of doing so.
But she raised herself with a rebellious impulse of her whole person
before she had picked one. She had picked hundreds in her time; she had
picked thousands. She couldn't begin again. With the first one she
gathered the yoke of the past would be around her neck once more. She
couldn't bear it. "I can't. I can't." With the words on her lips she
slipped out by the door at the far end of the hothouse and sped toward
her refuge on Duck Rock.
She had never felt it as so truly a refuge before. Neither had she ever
before needed a refuge so acutely. She needed it to-day because the
memory of Claude had at last become a living thing, and every sentient
part of her that could be filled with grief was filled with it. Grief
had come suddenly; it was creating a new world for her. It was no longer
a peaceful void; it was a world of wild passions, wild projects, wild
things she would do, wild words she would speak if ever she had the
chance to speak them. She would go in search of him! She would find his
father and mother! She would appeal to Thor! She would discover the girl
with ten or twelve servants who had come between them! She would implore
them all to send him back! She would drag him back! She would hang about
his neck till he swore never again to leave her! If he refused, she
would kill him! If she couldn't kill him, she would kill herself!
Perhaps if she killed herself she would inflict on him the worst
suffering of all!
She thought about that. After all, it was the thing most practical. The
other impulses were not practical. She knew that, of course. She could
humiliate herself to the dust without affecting him. Up to to-day she
had not wanted him to suffer; but now she did. If she killed herself, he
_would_ suffer. However long he lived, or however many servants the
woman he married would be able to keep, his life would be poisoned by
the memory of what he had done to her.
Her imagination reveled in the scenes it was now able to depict. Leaning
back with her head resting against the trunk of the old oak, she closed
her eyes and viewed the dramatic procession of events that might follow
on that morning and haunt Claude Masterman to his grave. She saw herself
leaping from the rock; she saw her body washed ashore, her head and
hands hanging limp, her long, wet hair streaming; she saw her parents
mourning, and Thor remorseful, and Claude absolutely stricken. Her
efforts rested there. Everything was subordinate to the one great fact
that by doing this she could make the sword go through his heart. She
went to the edge of the cliff and peered over. Though it was a sheer
fifty feet, it didn't seem so very far down. The water was blue and
lapping and inviting. It looked as if it would be easy.
She returned to her seat. She knew she was only playing. It relieved the
tumult within her to pretend that she could do as desperately as she
felt. It quieted her. Once she saw that she had it in her power to make
Claude unhappy, something in her spirit was appeased.
She began the little comedy all over again, from the minute when she
started forth from home on the momentous day to fill her pan with
raspberries. She traced her steps down the hill and up through the
glades of the bluff wherever the ripe raspberries were hanging. She came
to the minute when her stage directions called for "Lord Gregory," and
she sang it with the same thin, silvery piping which was all she could
contribute now to the demand of drama. It was both an annoyance and a
surprise to hear a footfall and the swish of robes and to turn and see
Lois Willoughby.
Beyond the fact that she couldn't help it, she didn't know why she
became at once so taciturn and repellent. "Oh, she'll come again," she
said in self-excuse, and with vague ideas of atonement, after Lois had
gone away. Besides, the things that Lois had said in the way of
solicitude, sympathy, and God made no appeal to her. If she felt regret
it was from obscure motives of compassion, since this woman, too, had
missed what was best in love.
She would have returned to her dream had her dream returned to her; but
Lois had broken the spell. Rosie could no longer get the ecstasies of
re-enactment. Re-enactment itself became a foolish thing, the husk of
what had once been fruit. It was a new phase of loss. Everything went
but her misery and her desire to strike at Claude--that and the sense
that whatever she did, and no matter how elusive she made herself, she
would have to go back to the old life at last. She struggled against the
conviction, but it settled on her like a mist. She played again with the
raspberry-bine, she sang "Lord Gregory," she peered over the brink of
the toy precipice--but she evoked nothing. She stood as close to the
edge of the cliff as she dared, whipping and lashing and taunting her
imagination by the rashness of the act. Nothing came but the commonplace
suggestion that even if she fell in, the boat which had appeared on the
lake, and from which two men were fishing, would rescue her. The worst
she would get would be a wetting and perhaps a cold. She wouldn't drown.
Common sense took possession of her. The thing for her to do, it told
her cruelly, was to go back and pick the cucumbers. After that there
would be some other job. In the market-garden business jobs were
endless, especially in spring. She could set about them with a better
heart since, after all that had happened, Archie Masterman couldn't
refuse now to renew the lease. He wouldn't have the face to refuse
it--so common sense expressed itself--when his son had done her such a
wrong. If she had scored no other victory, her suffering would at least
have secured that.
It was an argument of which she couldn't but feel the weight. There
would be three more years of just managing to live--three more years of
sowing and planting and watering and watching, at the end of which they
would not quite have starved, while Matt would have had a hole in which
to hide himself on coming out of jail. Decidedly it was an argument. She
had already shown her willingness to sell herself; and this would
apparently prove to be her price.
Wearily, when noon had passed and afternoon set in, she got herself to
her feet. Wearily she began to descend the hill. She would go back again
to the cucumbers. She would take up again the burden she had thrown
down. She would bring her wild heart into harness and tame it to
hopelessness. Common sense could suggest nothing else.
She went now by the path, because it was tortuous and less direct than
the bee-line over fern. She paused at every excuse--now to watch a robin
hopping, now to look at a pink lady's-slipper abloom in a bed of
spleenwort, now for no reason at all. Each step cost her a separate act
of renunciation; each act of renunciation was harder than the other. But
successive steps and successive acts brought her down the hill at last.
"I can't. I can't."
She dragged herself a few paces farther still.
"I can't! I can't!"
She was in sight of the boulevard, where a gang of Finns were working,
and beyond which lay the ragged, uncultivated outskirts of her father's
land. Up through a tangle of nettles and yarrow she could see the zigzag
path which had been the rainbow bridge of her happiness. She came to a
dead stop, the back of her hand pressed against her mouth fearfully. "If
I go up there," she said to herself, "I shall never come down again."
She meant that she would never come down again in the same spirit. That
spirit would be captured and slain. She herself would be captured and
slain. Nothing would live of her but a body to drudge in the hothouse to
earn a few cents a day.
Suddenly, without forming a resolution or directing an intention, she
turned and sped up the hill. At first she only walked rapidly; but the
walk broke into a run, and the run into a swift skimming along through
the trees like that of a roused partridge.
And yet she didn't know what she was running from. Something within her,
a power of guardedness or that capacity for common sense which had made
its last desperate effort to get the upper hand, had broken down. All
she could yield to was the terror that paralyzed thought; all she could
respond to was the force that drew her up the hill with its awful
fascination. "I must do it, I must," were the words with which she met
her own impulse to resist. If her confused thought could have become
explanatory it would have said: "I must get away from the life I've
known, from the care, from the hope, from the love. I must do something
that will make Claude suffer; I must frighten him; I must wound him; I
must strike at the girl who has won him away with her ten or twelve
servants. And there's no way but this."
Even so the way was obscure to her. She was taking it without seeing
whither it was to lead. If one impulse warned her to stop, another
whipped her onward. "I can't stop! I can't stop!" she cried out, when
warning became alarm.
For flight gave impetus to itself. It was like release; it was a kind of
wild glee. She was as a bird whose wings have been bound, and who has
worked them free again. There was a frenzy in sheer speed.
The path was steep, but she was hardly aware of so much as touching it.
Fear behind and anguish within her carried her along. She scarcely knew
that she was running breathlessly, that she panted, that once or twice
she stumbled and fell. Something was beckoning to her from the great,
safe, empty void--something that was nothing, unless it was peace and
sleep--something that had its abode in the free spaces of the wind and
the blue caverns of the sky and the kindly lapping water--something
infinite and eternal and restful, in whose embrace she was due.
At the edge of the wood she had a last terrifying moment. The
raspberry-bine was there, and the great oak with the seat around it, and
the carpet of cinquefoil and wild strawberry. She gave them a quick,
frightened look, like an appeal to impede her. If she was to stop she
must stop now. "But I can't stop," she seemed to fling to them, over her
shoulder, as she kept on to where, beyond the highest tip of greensward,
the blue level of the lake appeared.
The boat with the two fishermen was nearer the shore than when she had
observed it last. "They'll save me! Oh, they'll save me!" she had time
to whisper to herself, at the supreme moment when she left everything
behind.
There followed a space which in Rosie's consciousness was long. She felt
that she was leaping, flying, out into the welcoming void, and that the
promise of rest and peace had not deceived her.
But it was in the shock of falling that sanity returned; and all that
the tense little creature had been, and tried to be, and couldn't be,
and longed to be, and feared to be, and failed to be broke into a cry at
which the fishermen dropped their rods.
CHAPTER XXVI
"Thor, would you mind if I went away for a little while?"
He looked at her across the luncheon-table, but her eyes were downcast.
Though she endeavored to maintain the non-committal attitude she had
taken up at breakfast, she couldn't meet his gaze.
"If you went away!" he echoed, blankly. "Why should you do that?"
"I've been to see--" She found a difficulty in pronouncing the
name--"I've been to see Rosie. She's rather--upset."
Under the swift lifting of her lids he betrayed his self-consciousness.
"I suppose so." He kept to the most laconic form of speech in order to
leave no opening to her penetration.
"And I thought if I could take her away--"
"Where should you go?"
"Oh, anywhere. That wouldn't matter. To New York, perhaps. That might
interest her. But anywhere, so long as--"
He got out his consent while making an excuse for rising from the table.
The conversation was too difficult to sustain. It was without looking at
him that she said, as he was leaving the room:
"Then I'll go and ask her at once. I dare say she won't come--but I can
try. It will give me an excuse for going back. I feel worried at having
left her at all."
* * * * *
Between three and four that afternoon she entered her husband's office
hurriedly. It was Mrs. Dearlove who received her. "Do you know where Dr.
Masterman is? Do you know where he expected to call this afternoon?"
Brightstone consulted a card hanging on the wall. "He was to 'ave seen
Mrs. Gibbs, 'm--Number 10 Susan Street--some time through the day."
Lois made no secret of her agitation. "Have they a telephone?"
"Oh, no, 'm; 'ardly. Only a poor charwoman."
"Was he going anywhere at all where they _could_ have a telephone?"
Mrs. Dearlove having mentioned the possibilities, Lois rang up house
after house. She left the same message everywhere: Thor was to be asked
to come directly to his office, where she was awaiting him. It was after
four when he appeared.
She met him in the little entry and, taking him by the arm, drew him
into the waiting-room. "Come in, Thor dear, come in." She knew by his
eyes that he suspected something of what she had to tell.
"Caught me at the Longyears'," he tried to say in a natural voice, but
he could hardly force the words beyond his lips.
"It's Rosie, Thor," she said, instantly. "She's _all_ right."
He dropped into a chair, supporting himself on the round table strewn
with illustrated papers and magazines for the entertainment of waiting
patients. His lips moved, but no sound passed them. Long, dark shadows
streaked the pallor of his face.
She sat down beside him, covering his hands with her own. "She's all
right, Thor dear ... now ... and I don't think she'll be any the worse
for it in the end.... She may be the better.... We can't tell yet....
But--but you haven't heard it in the village, have you?"
He shook his head, perhaps because he was dazed, perhaps because he
didn't trust himself to speak.
"That's good." She spoke breathlessly. "I was so afraid you might ... I
wanted to tell you myself ... so that you wouldn't--you wouldn't get a
shock.... There's no reason for a shock--not now, Thor.... It's
only--it's only ... just what I was afraid of--what I spoke of at
lunch.... She--she--she did it."
He found strength to speak. "She did--what?"
Lois continued the same breathless way. "She threw herself into the
pond.... But she's all right.... Jim Breen and Robbie Willert were out
in a boat--fishing.... They saw her.... They got to her just as she went
down the second time.... Jim Breen dived after her and brought her
up.... She wasn't unconscious very long ... and fortunately Dr. Hill was
close by--at old Mrs. Jukes's in Schoolhouse Lane.... So she's home now
and all right, or nearly.... I arrived just as they were bringing her
ashore.... She was breathing then.... I went on before them to the
house.... I told Mrs. Fay ... and Mr. Fay.... I saw them put her to
bed.... She's all right.... And then I came here--to tell you, Thor--"
He struggled to his feet, throwing his head back and clenching his
fists. "I swear to God that if I ever see Claude again I'll--I'll kill
him!"
Without rising she caught one of his hands and pulled him downward. "Sit
down, Thor," she said, in a tone of command. "You mustn't take it like
that. You mustn't make things worse than they are. They're bad enough as
it is. They're so bad--or at least so hard for--for some of us--that we
must do everything we can to make it possible to bear them."
He sat down at her bidding; but with elbows resting on the table he
covered his face with his hands. She clasped her own and sat looking at
him. That is, she sat looking at his strong knuckles and at the shock of
dark hair that fell over the finger-tips where the nails dug into his
forehead. She felt a great pity for him; but a pity that permitted her
to sit there, watchful, detached, not as if it was Thor--but some one
else.
There would be an end now to silences and concealments. She saw that
already. He was making no further attempt to keep her in the dark. In
the shock of the moment all the barricades he had built around his
secret life had fallen like the walls of Jericho. She had nothing to do
but walk upward and inward and take possession. All was open. There was
neither shrine nor sanctuary any longer. It was no privilege to be
admitted thus; anybody would have been admitted who sat beside him as
she was sitting now.
But in the end the paroxysm passed and his hands came down.
"I know it's hard for you, Thor--" The eyes he turned on her were full
of such unspeakable things that she stopped. She was obliged to wait
till he looked away again before she could go on. "I know it's hard for
you, Thor. It's hard for--for us all. But my point is that bitterness or
violence will only make it worse. You must remember--I feel that I
_must_ remind you of it--that you're not the--not the only sufferer."
He bowed his head into his hands again, but without the mad anguish of a
few minutes earlier.
"Where so much is intolerable," she pursued, "what we have to do--each
one of us--is to see how tolerable we can make things for every one
else."
He raised his head for one quick, reproachful glance. "Do you mean
tolerable for--for Claude?"
"Yes, I do mean for Claude. _We_ sha'n't have to punish him."
He gave her another look. "Then what have we got to do?"
"Nothing that isn't kind--and well thought out beforehand. That's really
the important thing. When one can't move without hurting some one, isn't
it better not to move at all?"
It was the old doctrine of tarrying the Lord's leisure against which his
instincts were still in revolt. His indignation was such that he could
partially turn and face her. "Do you mean to say that we should _let_
him abandon her--_now_?"
She laid her hand on his arm. "Oh, Thor dear, it isn't for us to let--or
prevent--or anything. We can't drive other people--and it's only to a
slight degree that we can lead them. Even I know that. What we can do
best is to follow--and pick up the pieces."
He shook his head blankly. "I don't understand. What good would that
do?"
She rose, saying quietly, "I shall have to let you think it out for
yourself."
As he remained seated, his forehead resting on his hand, she passed
behind him. With her arm thrown lightly across his shoulders she bent
over him till her cheek touched his hair. "Thor dear," she whispered,
"we've got our own problems to solve, haven't we? We can't solve
Claude's and Rosie's too. No one can do that but themselves. Whatever
happens--whether he comes back and marries her, or whether he
doesn't--no help would ever come of your interference or mine. If we'd
only understood that before--"
"You mean, if I had."
"Well, Thor darling, you haven't. You see, human beings are so terribly
free. I say terribly, on purpose--because you can't compel them to be
wise and prudent and safe, even when they're making the most obvious
mistakes. We must let them make them--and suffer--and learn." She bent
closer to his ear. "And it's what we must do, Thor dear, you and I.
We've made our mistakes already--though perhaps we didn't know it. Now
we must have the suffering--and--and the learning."
She brushed her lips lightly across his hair and left him.
As she walked through the Square, and past the terminus of the
tram-line, and on into the beginning of County Street, she was obliged
to keep repeating her own words--"Nothing that isn't kind and well
thought out beforehand." Having counseled him against bitterness and
violence, she saw that her immediate task was not to swallow her own
words. Bitterness was beyond suppression, and violence would have been
so easy! "_Well thought out beforehand_," she emphasized. "Whatever I do
I must keep to that. If _I_ don't, God knows where we shall be."
In pursuance of this principle she turned in at her father-in-law's
gate. He and Mrs. Masterman must also be warned. Rosie's rash act would
touch them so closely that unless they were informed of it gently
something regrettable might be said or done.
As to that, however, her fears proved groundless. Masterman himself
opened the door for her as she went up the steps. "Saw you coming," he
explained. "Just got out from town. Ena's been telling me the most
distressing thing--the most damnably theatrical, idiotic thing. Perhaps
you've heard of it."
"I know what you mean. I've been there. I was there when they brought
her ashore. It may have been idiotic, as you say, but I don't think it
was theatrical."
"You will when you know. Ena," he called up the stairs after they had
entered the hall; "Lois is here. Come down."
Mrs. Masterman entered the library a minute later with both hands
outstretched. "Oh, my dear, what a comedy this is!" It was not often
that her manner forsook its ladylike suavity. "_What_ a comedy! But of
course you don't know. Nobody knows, thank God! But we must tell _you_."
She turned to her husband. "Will you tell her, Archie, or shall I?"
"If it's about Claude and Rosie Fay," Lois said, when they had got
seated, "I know all that. Thor told me. He told me yesterday,
because--well, because I'd been taking an interest in Rosie for some
months past, and when I went to see her yesterday afternoon old Mr. Fay
wouldn't let me. He said there'd been trouble--or something--between
Claude and Rosie--"
"Oh, he's been so romantic, poor boy," Ena interrupted, "and so loyal.
You'd hardly believe. He's been taken in completely. He _did_ want to
marry her. That's true. There's no use denying it. He told his father
and he told me. Oh, you've no idea. We've been _so_ worried. But he must
have found her out--_simply_ found her out."
Lois weighed the wisdom of asking questions or of learning more than
Thor chose to tell her, but in the end it seemed reasonable to ask,
"Found her out--how?"
Ena threw up her pretty hands. "Oh, well, with a girl of that sort what
could you expect? Claude's been completely taken in--or he was. He's so
innocent, poor boy. He wouldn't believe--not even when I told him. I
tried to stand by him--I really did. Didn't I, Archie? When he said he
wanted to marry her I said, said I, 'If she's a good girl, Claude, and
loves you, I'll accept her.' I really did, Lois--and you can imagine
what it cost me. But I could see at once. Any one who wasn't infatuated
as Claude was would have seen at a glance. The girl must be--well,
something awful."
Lois spoke warmly. "Oh, I don't think that."
"My dear Lois, I _know_. What's more, Thor knows, too. And I must say I
can't help blaming Thor. He's backed Claude up--and backed him up when
all the while he's known what she was."
Lois felt obliged to speak. "I don't think he's known anything--anything
to her discredit."
"Oh, but he has. I assure you he has. And what amazes me about
Thor--simply amazes me--is that he shouldn't see it in the right light.
Archie did, as soon as I told him. Didn't you, Archie? And I _didn't_
tell him," Ena ran on, excitedly, "till I saw what trouble dear Claudie
was in. When Claudie began to see for himself I betrayed his confidence
to the extent of telling his father, but not before. You could hardly
blame me for that, could you?--his own father. And when I did tell
Archie--why, it was so plain that a child could have understood."
The question, "What was plain?" could not but come to Lois's lips, but
she succeeded in withholding it. She even rose, with signs of going. It
was Archie who responded to his wife, taking a man's view of that which
seemed to her so damning.
"We must make allowances, of course, for its being a cock-and-bull story
to begin with. Girls like that never know how to tell the truth."
"We couldn't treat it as a cock-and-bull story so long as Claude
believed it," the mother declared, in defense of her right to be
anxious. "And Thor believed it, too. I know he did. And I _do_ blame
Thor for not telling Claude--a boy so inexperienced!--that a girl
couldn't be getting money from some other man--and go on getting it
after she was married--unless there'd been something wrong."
Lois felt as if her blood had been arrested at her heart. "Money from
some other man?"
"Money from some other man," Mrs. Masterman repeated, firmly. "I told
Claude at the time that no man in his senses would settle money on a
girl like that unless there'd been a reason--and a very good reason,
too. A very good reason, _too_, I said. But Claude's as ignorant of the
world as if he was ten years old. He really is. She took him in
completely."
Being too consciously a gentleman to say more in disparagement of a
woman's character than he had permitted himself already, Masterman
remained in the library while his wife accompanied Lois to the door. The
latter had said good-by and was descending the steps when Ena cried out
in a tone that was like a confession:
"Oh, Lois, you don't think that poor girl had any _reason_ to throw
herself into the pond, do you?"
At the foot of the steps Lois turned and looked upward. Ena was wringing
her hands, but the daughter-in-law didn't notice it. As a matter of
fact, Lois was too deeply sunk into thoughts of her own to have any
attention to spare for other people's searchings of heart. Having heard
the question, she could answer it, but absently, and as though it were a
point of no pressing concern.
"She hadn't the reason you're thinking of. I feel very sure of that.
I've asked her mother--and she says she knows it."
Mrs. Masterman was uttering some expression of relief, but Lois could
listen to no more. In her heart there was room for only one
consideration. "Money! Money!" she was saying to herself as she went
down the avenue beneath the leafing elms. "He was going to give
her--that."
But Ena returned to the threshold of the library, where her husband,
standing with his back to the empty fireplace, was meditating moodily.
"Archie," she faltered, "you do think that girl was only seeking
notoriety, don't you?"
He raised his head, which had been hanging pensively. "Certainly. Don't
you?"
She tried to speak with conviction. "Oh yes; of--of course."
"That is," Archie analyzed, "she was going in for cheap tragedy in the
hope that the sensation would reach Claude. That was her game--quite
evidently. Dare say it was a put-up job between her and those two young
men. Took very good care, at any rate, to have 'em 'longside."
"But if Claude should hear of it--"
"Must see that he doesn't. Wiring him to-night to go on to Japan, after
he's seen California. Let him go to India, if he likes--round the world.
Anything to keep him away--and you and I," he added, "had better hook it
till the whole thing blows over."
She looked distressed. "Hook it, Archie?"
"Close the house up and go abroad. Haven't been abroad for three years
now. Little motor trip through England--and back toward the end of the
summer. Fortunately I've sold that confounded property. Good price, too.
Hobson, of Hobson & Davies. Going to build for residence. Takes it from
the expiration of the lease, which is up in July. He'll clear out the
whole gang then, so that by the time we come back they'll be gone. What
do you think? Might do Devonshire and Cornwall--always wanted to take
that trip--with a few weeks in Paris before we come home."
The suggestion of going abroad came as such a pleasing surprise that
Mrs. Masterman slipped into a chair to turn it over in her mind. "Then
Claude _couldn't_ come back, could he?" expressed the first of the
advantages she foresaw. "He'd have nowhere to go."
"Oh, he'll not be in a hurry to do that," Archie said, confidently.
"And I do want some things," she mused further. "I had nothing to wear
for the Darlings' ball--nothing--and you know how long I've worn the
dinner-dresses I have. I really couldn't put on the green again." She
was silent for some minutes, when another of those queer little cries
escaped her such as had broken from her lips when she stood at the door
with Lois: "But, oh, Archie, I want to do what's right!--what's right,
Archie!"
He looked at her from under his brows as his head again drooped moodily.
"What's--_what_?"
"What's right, Archie. Latterly--Oh, I don't know!--but latterly--" She
passed her hand across her brow.... "Sometimes I feel--I get to be
afraid, Archie--as if we weren't--as if we hadn't--as if something were
going to happen--to overtake us--"
Crossing the room, he bent back her pretty head and kissed her.
"Nonsense," he smiled, unsteadily. "Nerves, dear. Don't wonder at
it--with all we've been through--one way and another. But that's what
we'll do. Close the house up and go abroad for three months.
Inconvenient just now with the upset in the business--but we'll do it.
Get out of the way. See something new. There, now, old girl," he coaxed,
patting her on the shoulder, "brace up and shake it off. Nothing but
nerves." He added, as he moved back toward his stand by the fireplace,
"Get 'em myself."
"Do you, Archie? Like that? Like--like what I said?"
He had resumed his former attitude, his feet wide apart, his hands
behind his back, his head hanging, when he muttered, "Like the devil."
She was not sure how much mental discomfort was indicated by the phrase,
so she sat looking at him distressfully. Being unused to grappling with
grave questions of right and wrong, she found the process difficult. It
was like wandering through morasses in which she could neither sink nor
swim, till she found herself emerging on solid, familiar ground again
with the reconciling observation, "Well, I do need a few things."
CHAPTER XXVII
It was not till Rosie was well enough to go listlessly back to work, and
the Mastermans had sailed, that Lois found her own emotions ripe for
speech. During the intervening fortnight she and Thor had lived their
ordinary life together, but on a basis which each knew to be temporary.
While he kept his office hours in the mornings and visited his patients
in the afternoons, and she busied herself with household tasks or
superintended the gardener in replanting the faded tulip-beds with phlox
and sweet-peas and dahlias; while she sewed or did embroidery in the
evenings and listened to him reading aloud, or--since the nights were
growing warm--they sat silent on an upper balcony, or talked about the
stars, each knew that the inner tension would never be relaxed till it
was broken.
If there was any doubt of that it was on Thor's side. Because she said
nothing, there were minutes when he hoped she had nothing to say.
Unaware of a woman's capacity for keeping the surface unruffled while
storm may be raging beneath, he beguiled himself at times into thinking
that his fears of her acuteness had been false alarms. If so, he could
only be thankful. He wanted to forget. If he had had a prayer to put up
on the subject, it would have been that she would allow him to forget.
So, as day followed day, regularly, peacefully, with an abstention on
her part from comment that could give him pain, he began to indulge the
hope--a hope which he knew in his heart to be baseless--that she had
nothing to remember.
When he was called on at last to face the realities of the case the
moment was as unexpected to him as it was to her. She had not meant to
bring the subject up on that particular evening. She had made no
program--not because she was uncertain as to what she ought to say, but
because the impulse to say it lagged. In the end it came to her without
warning, surprising herself no less than him.
"Thor, were you going to give money to Rosie Fay?"
The croaking of frogs seemed part of the silence in which she waited for
his answer. The warm air was heavy with the scents of lilac,
honeysuckle, and syringa. As they stood by the railing of the balcony
that connected the exterior of their two rooms, she erect, he leaning
outward with an arm stretched toward the sky, a great white lilac, whose
roots were in the early days of the Willoughby farm, threw up its
tribute of blossom almost to their feet. The lights of the village being
banked under verdure, the eye sought the stars.
Thor loved the stars. On moonless nights he spent hours in contemplation
of their beckoning mystery. From Auriga and Taurus in January, he
followed them round to Aries and Perseus in December, getting a beam on
his inward way. Just now, with the aid of a pencil, he was tracing for
his wife's benefit the lines of the rising Virgin. Lois could almost
discern the graceful, recumbent figure, winged, noble, lying on the
eastern horizon, Spica's sweet, silvery light a-tremble in her hand. She
was actually thinking how white for a star was Spica's radiance, when
the words slipped out: "Thor, were you going to give money to Rosie
Fay?"
He suppressed the natural question concerning her sources of information
in order to say, as quietly as he could, "If--if Claude had married her
I was going to--to help them out."
She resented what she considered his evasiveness. "That isn't just what
I asked."
"Even so, it tells you what you want to know. Doesn't it?"
"Not everything I want to know."
"Why should you want to know--everything?"
"Because--" It struck her that her reason could be best expressed by
shifting her ground. "Thor dear, exactly why did you want to marry me?"
The change in tactics troubled him. "I think I told you that at the
time."
"You told me you came to me as to a--to a shelter."
"And as to a home. I said that, too, Lois."
"Yes," she agreed, slowly, "you said that, too." A brief interval gave
emphasis to the succeeding words: "But did you think it was enough?"
"I couldn't judge of that. I could only say--what I had to
say--truthfully."
"Oh, I know it was--truthfully. It's--it's just the trouble. You see,
Thor," she went on, unsteadily, "I thought you were telling me only some
of what was in your heart--and it was all."
"I'm not certain that I know what you mean by all. What I felt was--so
much." He added, reproachfully, "It's surely a great deal when a man
finds a woman his refuge from trouble."
"That's perfectly true, Thor; and there's no one in the world who
wouldn't be touched by it. But in the case of a wife, she can hardly
help thinking of the kind of trouble he's escaping from."
"But so long as he escapes from it--"
She interrupted quickly: "Yes; so long as he does. But when he doesn't?
When, instead of leaving his trouble outside the refuge, he brings it
in?"
He took an uneasy turn up and down the balcony. "Look here, Lois; have
you any particular motive in bringing this up now?"
"Yes, Thor. It's the same motive I had a few weeks ago, only that I
haven't been sure of it till to-night. I want you"--she hesitated, but
urged herself on--"I want you--to let me go away."
"Go away?" he cried, sharply. "Go away where?"
"I don't know yet. Anywhere. There are one or two visits I might
make--or I could find a place. That part of it doesn't matter."
"But when you wanted to go away a few weeks ago--"
"It was to--to take _her_. I shouldn't need to do that now, because
she's better. In a way she's all right--all right, only changed."
It was to make a show of not being afraid to mention Rosie that he said,
"Changed in what way?"
"Well, you'll see." She decided that for his own sake it was kindness to
be cruel, and so added: "Changed to a healthier frame of mind. She's
very much ashamed of what she tried to do, and wants to begin again on
a--on a less foolish basis. So," she continued, reverting to her former
point, "my going away wouldn't now have anything to do with her. It
would be on my own account. I want to--to think."
"Think about what?"
"Well, chiefly about you."
He knew they were nearing the heart of the question, and so went up to
it boldly. "To wonder--whether or not--I--love you? Is that it?"
"N-no; not exactly." She allowed a second to pass before letting slip
the words: "Rather the other way."
"The other way--how?"
She spoke very softly. "Whether or not--I love _you_."
"Oh!" His tone was as soft as hers, but with the ejaculation he moved
his big hands about his body like a man feeling for his wound. "I
thought you did."
"Yes, I thought so, too--till--till lately. Perhaps I do, even now. I
don't know. It's what I want to get away for--to think--to see. I can't
do either when you're so near me. You--you overwhelm me--you crush me. I
don't get the free use of my mind."
He turned again to pace the narrow limits of the balcony. "If you ever
did love me, Lois," he said, in a voice she hardly recognized because of
the new thrill in it, "I've done nothing to deserve the withdrawal
of--of your affection."
She answered while still keeping her eyes absently on Spica's white
effulgence. "I know you haven't, Thor dear. But that's not the point.
It's rather that I have to go back and--and revise everything--form new
conceptions."
He paused, standing behind her. "I don't think I get your idea."
"No, probably not. You couldn't without knowing what it all used to mean
to me."
"_Used_ to mean?"
"Yes, Thor; used to mean in a way that it doesn't now, and never can any
more."
There was pain in his voice as he said, "That's hard, Lois--damnably
hard."
"I know, Thor dear. I wouldn't say it if I hadn't made up my mind that I
must--that I ought to. I've had a great shock--which has been in its way
a great humiliation--but I could go on keeping it to myself if I hadn't
come to the conclusion that it's best for you to know. Men are so slow
to fathom what their wives are thinking of--"
"Well, then, tell me."
She turned slowly round from her contemplation of the stars, a hand on
each side grasping the low rail against which she leaned. The spangles
on a scarf over her bare shoulders glittered iridescently in the light
streaming from her room. Of Thor she could discern little more than the
whiteness of his face and of his evening shirt-front from the obscurity
in which he kept himself. A minute or more elapsed before she went on.
"You see, Thor, I didn't fall in love with you first of all for your own
sake; it was because--because I thought you'd fallen in love with me.
That's a sort of confession, isn't it? It may be something I ought to be
ashamed of, and perhaps I am--a little. But you'd understand how it
could happen if you were to realize what it was to me that a man should
fall in love with me at all."
He tried to interrupt her, but she insisted on going on in her own way.
"I wasn't attractive. I never had been. During the years when I was
going out I never received what people call attentions--not from any
one. I don't say that I didn't suffer on account of it. I did--but I'd
begun to take the suffering philosophically. I'd made up my mind that no
one would ever care for me, and I was getting used to the
idea--when--when you came."
Because her voice trembled she pressed her handkerchief against her
lips, while Thor stood silent in the darkness of the far end of the
balcony.
"And when you did come, Thor dear, it couldn't but seem to me the most
amazing thing that ever happened. I didn't allow myself to think that
you were in love with me--I didn't dare--at first. It made me happy that
you should think it worth while just to come and see me, to talk to me,
to tell me some of the things you hoped to do. That in itself--"
She broke off again, losing something of her self-command. In the stress
of physical agitation she drew the spangled scarf over her shoulders and
stepped forward into the shaft of light that fell through the open
French window of her room.
"But, finally, Thor, I came to the conclusion that you must love me. I
couldn't explain your kindness in any other way. Believe me, I didn't
accept that way till--till it seemed the only one, but when I did, well,
it wasn't merely pride and happiness that I felt--it was something
more." A sob in her throat obliged her to interrupt herself again, while
the croaking of frogs continued. "And so, Thor dear, love came to me,
too. It came because I thought you brought it; but now that I see you
didn't bring it, you can understand why I should be in doubt as to--as
to whether or not--it really did come."
Since he recognized the futility of making an immediate response, they
stood confronting each other in silence.
She took another step nearer him. "But what I'm not in any doubt about
at all is the scorn I feel for myself for ever having cherished the
delusion. If I'd been a woman with--with more claim, let us say, to
being loved--"
"Lois, for God's sake, don't say that!"
"But I must say it, Thor. It's at the bottom of all I mean. I was weak
and foolish enough to think that in spite of the things I lacked a man
had given me his heart--when he hadn't."
"Lois, I can't stand this. Please don't go on."
"But I have to stand it, Thor. I have to stand it day and night, without
ever getting away from the thought of it. I have to go back and puzzle
and wonder and speculate as to why you did what you've done to me. I see
things this way, Thor: There was a time when you thought you might come
to care for me. You really thought it. And then--something happened--and
you were not so sure. Later, you felt that you couldn't--that you never
would. But the something that happened happened the wrong way for
you--and papa broke down as he did--and I was in danger of being
poor--and you were kind and generous--and--you weren't very happy as
things were--you told me so, didn't you? And--and--in short--you thought
you might as well. You knew I expected it--or had expected it once--and
so--so you did it. Tell me, Thor dear; am I so very far wrong? Wasn't it
like that?"
He raised his head defiantly. "And if I admitted that it was like that,
what then?"
"Oh, nothing. I should merely ask you the same thing--to let me go
away."
"Away for how long?"
She reflected. "Till I could establish a new basis on which to come
back."
"I don't know what you mean by a new basis."
"I dare say I don't mean anything very different from the compromise
most people have to make--a little while after marriage; only that in my
case the necessity comes more as--a shock. You see, Thor, you're not the
man--not the man I thought you were. I must have a little while to get
used to that."
He stirred uneasily. "You find I'm--I'm not so good a man."
"Oh, I don't say that. I don't say that at all. You're just as good.
Only you're not--" She went up to him, laying her hands on his
shoulders--"Oh, you don't understand. I loved the other Thor. I'm not
sure that I love this one. I don't know. Perhaps I do. I can't tell till
I get away from you. Let me go. It may not be for long."
She stepped back from him toward the window of her room, through which
she seemed about to pass. He was obliged to speak in order to retain
her.
"Look here, Lois," he began, not knowing exactly how he meant to
continue. She turned with a foot on the threshold, her hand on the knob
of the open window-door. The pose, set off by the simplicity of the old
black evening dress she was in the habit of wearing when they were
alone, displayed the commanding beauty of her figure to a degree which
he had never observed before. He remembered afterward that something
shot through him, something he had associated hitherto only with
memories of little Rosie Fay, but for the minute he was too intensely
preoccupied for more than a subconscious attention. She was waiting and
he must say something to justify his appeal to her. "It's all right,"
were the words he found. "I'm willing. That is, I'm willing in
principle. Only"--he stammered on--"only I don't want you to go roaming
the country by yourself. Why not let me go? I could go away for a while,
and you could stay here." He warmed to the idea as soon as he began to
express it. "This is your home, rather than mine. It's your father's
house. You've lived in it for years. I couldn't stay here without
you--while you're used to it without me. I'll go. I'll go--and I'll not
come back till you tell me. There. Will that do?"
The advantages of the arrangement were evident. She answered slowly.
"It--it might. But what about your patients?"
"Oh, Hill would look after them. He said he would if I wanted to attend
the medical congress at Minneapolis. I told him I didn't, but--but"--he
tapped the rail to emphasize the timeliness of the idea--"but, by
George! I'll do it. You'd have three weeks at least--and as many more as
you ask for."
She gave the suggestion a minute's thought. "Very well, Thor. Since the
congress is going on--and your time wouldn't be altogether thrown
away--You see, all I want is a little quiet--a little solitude,
perhaps--just to realize where I am--and to see how--to begin again--if
we ever can."
She closed one side of the window, softly and slowly. Her hands were on
the other _battant_ when he uttered a little throaty cry. "Aren't you
going to say good night?"
Standing on the low step of the window, she was sufficiently above him
to be able to fold his head in her arms, to pillow it on her breast,
while she imprinted a long kiss on the thick, dark mass of his hair.
Having released him, she withdrew, closing the window gently and pulling
down the blinds.
Outside in the darkness Thor turned once more to where the Virgin,
recumbent, noble, outlined and crowned with stars, Spica the wheat-ear
in the hand hanging by her side, rose slowly toward mid-heaven.
Irrelevantly there came back to his memory something said months before
by his uncle Sim, but which he had not recalled since the night he heard
it. "You may make an awful fool of yourself, Thor, but you'll be on the
side of the angels--and the angels will be on yours."
"Humph!" he snorted to himself. "That's all very fine. But--where are
the angels?" And again he sought the stars.
CHAPTER XXVIII
It was Jim Breen who told Lois that Jasper Fay's tenancy of the land
north of the pond was definitely ended. "Want a nice fern-tree, Mrs.
Masterman?" he had asked, briskly. "Two or three beauties for sale at
Mr. Fay's place. Look dandy in the corner of a big room. Beat palms and
rubber-plants like a rose'll beat a bur. Get a nice one cheap at Mr.
Fay's."
Lois wondered. "Is Mr. Fay selling off?"
"Well, not exactly. Father's selling what he don't want to cart over to
our place. Didn't you know? Father's bought out Mr. Fay's stock. Mr.
Fay's got to beat it by July ninth."
As Lois looked into the honest face she made the reflection with a
little jealous pang that Rosie Fay was just the type that men like Jim
Breen fell in love with. There was something in men like Jim Breen, in
men like Thor Masterman--the big, generous, tender men--that impelled
them toward piteous little creatures like Rosie Fay, driven probably by
the protective yearning in themselves. It placed the tall women, the
strong women, the women whose first impulse was to give to others rather
than to get anything for themselves, at a disadvantage. In response to
the information just received, she said, anxiously, "Why, Jim, tell me
about it."
He drew from the wagon a wooden "flat" filled with zinnia plantlings,
like so many little green rosettes. "Hadley B. Hobson owns that property
now, Mrs. Masterman," he said, cheerily, depositing the "flat" on the
ground. "Going to build. Didn't you know? Have a dandy place there. Had
architects and landscape-gardeners prowling 'round for the last two
weeks, and old man Fay won't allow one of them on the grounds. You'd die
laughing to see him chasing them off with a spade or a rake or whatever
he has in his hand. His property till July ninth, he says, and he
wouldn't let so much as a crow fly over it if it belonged to Hadley B.
Hobson. You'd die laughing."
"I don't see how you can laugh when he's in such trouble, poor man."
"Oh, well," Jim drawled, optimistically, "he won't do so bad. He can
always have a job with father. Father's mingled with him ever since the
two of them were young. If Mr. Fay hadn't been so moonstruck he'd have
had just the same chance as father had."
Lois chose a moment which seemed to be discreet in order to say: "I know
Rosie quite well. I've seen a good deal of her during the past few
months."
"Rosie's all right, Mrs. Masterman," Jim answered, suddenly and a trifle
aggressively. "I don't care what any one says--she's all right."
"I know she's all right, Jim. She's one of the most remarkable
characters I've ever met. I often wish she'd let me help her more."
"Well, you hold on to her, Mrs. Masterman," he advised, with a curious,
pleading quality in his voice. "You'll find she'll be worth it. And if
ever a girl was up against it--she is."
"I will hold on to her, Jim."
"It's all rot what people are saying that she'd gone melancholy because
she took that fool jump into the pond. I know how she did it. She'd got
to the point where she couldn't help it, where she just couldn't stand
any more--with the business all gone to pieces and Matt coming out of
jail, and everything else. Who wouldn't have done it? I'd have done it
myself, if I'd been a girl. She'd got worked up, Mrs. Masterman, and
when girls get worked up, why, they'll do anything. I believe the
shock's done her good. Sort of cleared her mind like."
Lois tried to be tactful. "Then you see her?"
"We-ll--on and off." He grew appealing and confidential. "I don't mind
telling you, Mrs. Masterman," he began, as if acknowledging an
indiscretion, "I went with Rosie once. Went with her for over a year."
"Did you, Jim?"
He leaned nonchalantly against Maud's barrel-shaped body, his face
taking on an expression of boyish regret. "And I'd have gone on going
with her if--if Rosie hadn't--hadn't kind of dropped me."
"Oh, but, Jim, why should she?"
"We-ll, I can understand it. Rosie's high-toned, you know, Mrs.
Masterman, and she's got a magnificent education. I guess you wouldn't
come across them more refined, not in the most tip-top families. Pretty!
My Lord! pretty isn't the word for it. And I think she grows prettier.
And work! Why, Mrs. Masterman, if that girl was at the head of a plant
like ours there wouldn't be anything for father and me to do but sit in
a chair and rock."
"I'm glad she's willing to see you," Lois ventured.
He sprang to his seat behind Maud. "Well, I guess she needs all the
friends she's got."
Lois ventured still further. "I'm sure she needs friends like you, Jim."
There was a flare in his eye as he fumbled for the reins. "Well, she's
only got to stoop and pick me up. Git along, Maud. Gee!" In obedience to
his pull Maud arched her heavy neck and executed a sidewise movement
uncertainly. "She knows I'm there," he continued, as the wagon creaked
round. "Been there ever since she dropped me. Gee! Maud, gee! What you
thinking of? I've never gone with any one else, Mrs. Masterman--not
really _gone_ with them. Rosie's been the only one so far. Well,
good-by. And you _will_ hold on to her, Mrs. Masterman, now, won't you?"
"Indeed I will, Jim--and--and you must do the same."
He threw her a rueful look over his shoulder, as Maud paced toward the
gate. "Oh, I'm on the job every time."
The visit gave her a number of themes for thought, of which the most
insistent was the power some women had of drawing out the love of men.
For the rest of the day her gardening became no more than a mechanical
directing of the setting out of seedlings, while she meditated on the
problem of attractiveness.
How was it that women of small endowments could captivate men at sight,
and that others of inexhaustible potentialities--she was not afraid to
rank herself among them--went unrecognized and undesired? If Rosie Fay
had been content with the honors of a local belle, she could have had
her choice among half the young men in the village. What was her gift?
What was the gift of that great sisterhood, comprising perhaps a third
of the women in the world, to whom the majority of men turned
instinctively, ignoring, or partially ignoring, the rest? Was it mere
sheep-stupidity in men themselves that sent one where the others went,
without capacity for individual discernment?--or was there a secret call
that women like Rosie Fay could give which brought them too much of that
for which other women were left famishing?
She put the question that evening to Dr. Sim Masterman, who had dropped
in to see her, as he not infrequently did after his supper, now that
Thor was away. Indeed, his visits were so regular as to make her afraid
that with his curious social or spiritual second sight he suspected more
in Thor's absence than zeal for the science of medicine.
"Why do men fall in love with inferior women?--become infatuated with
them?"
He answered while sprawling before the library fire, his long legs
apart, his fingers interlocked over his old tan waistcoat. "No use to
discuss love with a woman. She can't get hold of it by the right end."
"Oh, but I thought that was just what she could do--one of the few
capabilities universally conceded her."
"All wrong, my dear. A man occasionally understands love, but a woman
never--or so rarely that it hardly counts. Gets it backward--wrong end
first--nine women out of ten."
She looked up from her sewing. "I do wish you'd tell me what you mean by
that."
"Clear enough. Love is in the first place the instinct to love some one
else, and only in the second place the desire to be loved in return. Ten
to one, the woman puts the cart before the horse. She's thinking of the
return before she's done anything to get it. She don't want to love half
as much as to be _loved_--and so she finds herself left."
Lois went on with her sewing again, but she was uneasy. She thought of
her confession to Thor. Could it be that there was something wrong with
her love as well as with his? It was to see what he had to say further
that she asked, "Finds herself left in what way?"
"Make 'emselves too sentimental," he grumbled on. "In love with love.
They like that expression, and it does 'em harm. Sets 'em to
wool-gathering--with the heart. Makes 'em think love more important than
it is."
"It's generally supposed to be rather important."
"Rather's the word. But it's not the only thing of which that can be
said--and more. Women reason as if it was. Make their lives depend on
it. Mistake. If you can get it, well and good; if not--there's
compensation."
She lifted her head not less in amazement than in indignation.
"Compensation for having to do without _love_?"
"Heaps."
"And may I ask what?"
"No use telling you. Wouldn't believe me. Be like telling a man who's
fond of his wine that he'd be just as well off with water."
She said, musingly, "Yes; love _is_ the wine of life, isn't it?"
"Wine that maketh glad the heart of man--and can also play the deuce
with it."
She sat for some time smiling to herself with faint amusement. "Do you
really disapprove of love, Uncle Sim?" she asked, at last.
He yawned loudly and stretched himself. "What 'd be the good of that?
Don't disapprove of it any more than I disapprove of the circulation of
the blood. Force in life--of course! Treasure to be valued and peril to
be controlled. To play with it requires skill; to utilize it calls for
wisdom."
She had again been smiling gently to herself when she said, "I doubt if
_you_ can ever have been in love."
"Got nothing to do with it. Not obliged to have been insane to
understand insanity. As a matter of fact, best brain specialists have
always kept their senses."
"Oh, then, you rate love with insanity."
"Depends on the kind. Some sorts not far from it. Obsession.
Brain-storm. Supernormal excitement. Passing commotion of the senses.
Comes as suddenly as a summer tempest--thunder and lightning and
rain--and goes the same way."
"Oh, but would you call that love?"
"You bet I'd call it love. Love the poets write about. Grand passion.
Whirls along like a tornado--makes a noise and kicks up dust--and all
over in an afternoon. That's the real thing. If you can't love like
that, you can't love at all--not in the grand manner. The going just as
vital as the coming. Very essence of it that it shouldn't last. That's
why Shakespeare kills his Romeo and his Juliet at the end of the
play--and Wagner his Tristan and his Isolde. Nothing else to do with
'em. People of that kind go through just the same set of high jinks six
or eight months later with some one else; and in poetry that wouldn't
do. Romantic lovers love by crises, and never pass twice the same way.
People who don't do that--and lots of 'em don't--needn't think they can
be romantic. They ain't."
"But surely there _is_ a love--"
"Of the nice, tame, house-keeping variety. Of course! And it bears the
same relation to the other kind as a glass of milk to a bottle of
champagne. Mind you, I like milk. I approve of it. In the long run it
'll beat champagne any day--especially where you expect babies. I'm only
saying that it doesn't come of the same vintage as Veuve Cliquot. Women
often wish it did; and when it doesn't they make things uncomfortable.
No use. Can't make a Tristan out of good, honest, faithful William
Dobbin, nohow. The thing with the fizz is bound to go flat; and the
thing that stands by you, to be relied on all through life, won't have
any fizz."
Feeling at liberty to reject these vaporings as those of an eccentric
old man who could know little or nothing on the subject, Lois reverted
to the aspect of the question which had been in her mind when she
started the theme. "You still haven't answered what I asked--as to why
men fall in love with inferior women, and often with a kind of
infatuation they hardly ever feel for the good ones."
He took longer than usual to reflect. "Part of man's dual nature. Paul
knew a good deal about that. Puts the new man in contrast to the old
man--the inner man in contrast to the outer man--the spiritual man in
contrast to the carnal. The old, outer, carnal man falls in love with
one kind of person, and the new, inner, spiritual man with another.
Depends on which element is the stronger. The higher falls in love with
the higher type; the lower with the lower."
"But suppose neither is stronger than the other?--that they're equally
balanced--and--?"
"And in conflict. One of the commonest sights in life. Known fellows in
love with two women at the same time--with a good wife at home, mother
of the children, and all that--and another kind of woman somewhere else.
True, in a way, to 'em both. Struggle of the two natures."
Lois was distressed. "Oh, but that kind of thing can't be love."
"Can't be? 'Tis. Ask any one who's ever felt it--who's been dragged by
it both ways at once. He'll tell you whether it's love or not--and each
kind the real thing--while it lasts."
It was the expression "while it lasts" that Lois most resented. It
reduced love to a phase--to a passing experience that might be repeated
on an indefinite number of occasions. It was more than a depreciation;
it had the nature of a sacrilege. And yet no later than the following
day she received a shock that showed her there was something to be said
in its favor.
* * * * *
She had gone nominally to see Rosie, but really to verify for herself
Jim Breen's report of the collapse of Jasper Fay's little industry. She
found it hard to believe that after Claude's conduct toward Rosie her
father-in-law could have the heart to bring further woe upon a family
that had already had enough. Nothing but seeing for herself could coerce
her incredulity.
She had seen for herself. Over the little place which had always been
neat even when it was forlorn there was now the stamp of desolation. The
beds which had been seeded or planted a month before, and which should
now have been weeded, trimmed, and hoed, were growing with an untended
recklessness that had all the proverbial resemblance to moral breakdown.
In the cucumber-house the vines had become rusty and limp, sagging from
the twines on which they climbed in debauched indifference to
sightliness. The roof of the hothouse that had contained the flowers had
a deep gash in the glass which it was no longer worth while to mend.
There was no yellow-brown plume from the furnace chimney, and the very
windows of the old house with the mansard roof had in their stare the
glazed, unseeing expression of eyes in which there is death. Inside,
Mrs. Fay was packing up. Battered old trunks that had long been stored
in some moldy hiding-place stood agape; a packing-case held the place of
honor in a forbidding "best room" into which Lois had never looked
before. Mrs. Fay had little to say. Tears welled into her cold eyes with
the attempt to say anything. Outside, Fay himself had nothing to say at
all. Lois had accosted him, and though he had ceased to regard her as an
enemy, he stood grimly silent as his only response to her words of
consolation.
"I know things will come all right again, Mr. Fay. They must. They look
dark now; but haven't you often noticed that after the worst times in
our lives we're able to look back and see that the very thing that
seemed most cruel was the turning-point at which a change for the better
began? You must surely have noticed that--a man with so much experience
as you."
He looked vaguely about him, standing in patience till she had said her
say, but giving no indication that her words had anything to do with
him. The change in his appearance shocked her. Everything in his face
had taken on what was to her a terrible significance. The starry
mysticism had vanished from the eyes to be replaced by a look that was
at once hunted and searching, vindictive and yet woebegone. The mouth
was sunken as the mouths of old men become from the loss of teeth, and
the thin lips which used to be kindly and vacillating were drawn with a
hard, unflinching tightness. The skin that had long been gray was now
ghostly, with the shadowy, not quite earthly, hue of things about to
disappear.
She had talked to him for some minutes before he woke to animation. At
sight of two young men--surveyor's clerks, perhaps--who had set up in
the roadway what might have been a camera on a tripod, or more probably
a theodolite, through which they were squinting over the buildings and
the slope of the land, he left her abruptly. With a hoe in his hand he
crept forward, taking his place behind a clump of syringa that grew near
the gate, ready to strike if either of the lads ventured to put foot on
his property. It was the situation at which, according to light-hearted
Jim Breen, you would have died laughing; but Lois had difficulty in
keeping back her tears.
She found Rosie in the hothouse, of which the interior corresponded to
the gash in the roof. All the smaller plants had been removed,
disclosing the empty, ugly, earth-stained, water-stained wooden
stagings. Only some half-dozen fern-trees remained of all the former
beauty.
But even here Rosie was at work, sitting at the old desk, which,
deprived of its sheltering greenery, was shabbier than ever, making out
bills. There was still money owing to her father, and it was important
that it should be collected. Over and over again she wrote her neat
"Acct. rendered," while she added as a postscript in every case: "Please
remit. Going out of business."
And yet, if there was anything on the dilapidated premises that could
cheer or encourage it was Rosie. With the enforced rest and seclusion
following on her fruitless dash to escape, her prettiness had become
more delicate, less worn. Shame at her folly had put into her greenish
eyes a pleading timidity which became a quivering, babyish tremble when
it reached the lips. The contrast which the girl thus presented to her
parents, as well as something that was visibly developing within her,
enabled Lois to affirm that which hitherto she had only hoped or
suspected, that the wild leap into the pond had worked some mysterious
good.
Like her father and mother, Rosie had little to say. The meeting was
embarrassing. There were too many unuttered and unutterable thoughts on
both sides to make intercourse easy or agreeable. All they could achieve
was to be sorry for each other, in a measure to respect each other, and
to make up by an enforced, slightly perfunctory, good will for what they
lacked in the way of spontaneity.
Lois took the chair on which Rosie had been seated at the desk, while
Rosie leaned against a corner of the empty staging. It furnished the
latter with something to say to be able to tell the new plans of the
family. Her father had taken a job with Mr. Breen. It wouldn't be like
managing his own place, but it would be better than nothing. He had also
rented a tenement in a "three-family" house on the Thorley estate, to
which they would move as soon as possible. It was important to make the
change, so as to be settled when Matt came out of jail. Both Rosie and
her mother were glad that he wouldn't be free till the 10th of July,
because the lease terminated on the 9th. He would return, therefore, to
absolutely new conditions, and there would be no necessity of going over
any of the old ground again. As far as they were concerned--Rosie and
her mother--the sooner they went the better they would like it, since
they had to go; but "poor father," Rosie said, with a catch in her
voice, "won't leave till the last minute has struck. Even then," she
added, "I think they'll have to drive him off. This place has been his
life. I don't think he'll last long after he's had to leave it."
Having given sympathetic views on these points as they came up, Lois
rose to depart. She had actually shaken hands and turned away when Rosie
seemed to utter a little cry. That is, her words came out with the
emotion of a cry. "Mrs. Masterman! I want to ask you something!"
Lois turned in surprise. "Yes, Rosie? What?"
With one hand Rosie clung to the staging for support. The back of the
other hand was pressed against her lips. She could hardly speak. "Is--is
Claude staying away on my account?" Before Lois could answer, Rosie
added, "Because he--he needn't."
Lois wondered. "What do you mean by that, Rosie?"
"Only that--that he needn't. I--I don't care whether he stays away or
not."
Lois took a step back toward the girl. "You mean that it doesn't make
any difference to you what he does?"
She shook her head. "No; not now; not--not any more."
"That is, you've given him up?"
Rosie sought for an explanation. "I haven't given him up. I
only--_see_."
"You see what, Rosie?"
"Oh, I don't know. It's--it's like having had a dream--a strange, awful
dream--and waking from it."
"Waking from it?"
Rosie nodded. She made a further effort to explain. "After I--I
did--what I did--that day at Duck Rock--everything was different. I
can't describe it. It was like dying--and coming back. It was like--like
waking."
"Do you mean that what happened before seemed--unreal?"
She nodded again. "Yes, that's it. It was like a play." But she
corrected herself quickly. "No; it wasn't like a play. It was more than
that. It was like a dream--an awful dream--but a dream you like--a dream
you'd go through again. No; you wouldn't go through it again--it would
kill you." She grew incoherent. "Oh, I don't know--I don't know. It's
gone--just gone. I don't say it wasn't real. It _was_ real. It was a
kind of frenzy. It got hold of me. It got hold of me body and soul. I
couldn't think of anything else--while it lasted."
Lois was pained. "Oh, but, Rosie, love can't come and go like that."
"Can't it? Then it wasn't love." But she contradicted herself again.
"Yes, it _was_ love. It was love--while it lasted."
While it lasted! While it lasted! The phrase seemed to be on every one's
lips. There was distress in Lois's voice as she said, "But if it was
love, Rosie, it ought to have lasted."
And Rosie seemed to agree with her. "Yes, it ought to have. But it
didn't. It went away. No, it didn't go away; it just--it
just--_wasn't_." She wrung her hands, struggling with the difficulty she
found in explaining herself. "After that day at Duck Rock it was
like--it was like the breaking of a spell that was on me. Everything was
different. It was like seeing through plain daylight again after looking
through colored glass. I didn't want the things I'd been wanting. They
were foolish to me--I _saw_ they were foolish--and--and impossible. But
it wasn't as if they had died; it was as if I had--and come back."
It was on behalf of love that Lois felt driven to make a protest. "And
yet, Rosie, if you were to see Claude again--"
"No, no, no," the girl cried, excitedly; "I don't want to see him. He
needn't stay away--not on my account--but I sha'n't see him if I can
help it. It would be like dying the second time. All the same, he
needn't be afraid of me; and his family needn't be afraid of me. I want
to--to forget them all."
Enlightenment came slowly to Lois because of her unwillingness to be
convinced of the heart's capriciousness. That love could be likened to
brain-storm--obsession--the tornado whose rage dies out in an
afternoon--was a wound to her tenderest beliefs. That the natural man
must be taken into consideration as well as the spiritual also did
violence to what she would have liked to make a serene, smooth theory of
life. She stood looking long at the girl, studying her subconsciously,
before she was able to say, calmly: "Very well, Rosie, dear. I'll let
Claude know. I can get his address, and I'll write to him."
But another surprise was in store for her. She was near the door leading
from the hothouse when she became aware that Rosie was behind her, and
heard the same little gasping cry as before. "Mrs. Masterman! I want to
ask you something!" Lois had hardly looked round when the girl went on
again. "You know father and mother. They think the world of you--mother
especially. Do you suppose they'd mind very much if I--if I turned?"
Lois was puzzled. "If you did what, Rosie?"
"If I turned; if I turned Catholic."
"Oh!"
The reformed tradition was strong in Lois. She was prepared to defend it
by argument and with affection. For a minute she was almost on the point
of stating the historical Protestant position when she was deterred by
the thought of Dr. Sim. What would he have said to Rosie? She remembered
suddenly something that he once did say: "If you can seize any one
aspect of the Christian religion, do it--for the least of them all will
save you."
Remembering this, Lois withheld her arguments, asking the non-committal
question, "Why should you think of doing that?"
Rosie flushed. "Oh, I don't know. I've been"--she hung her head--"I've
been pretty bad, you know. I've told lies--and I--I tried to kill
myself--and everything."
"And you think you'd get more help that way than any other?"
"Oh, I don't know. I went twice lately--not here--in town. It frightened
me. I--I liked it."
Had Lois dared she would have asked if Jim Breen had inspired this
sudden change, but she said, merely: "Oh, I don't believe your father
and mother would feel badly in the end--not if it brought comfort to
you, Rosie dear. Is it that you want me to talk to them?--to help you
out?"
Rosie nodded silently, and with face averted in a kind of shame.
"Very well, then, I will." She felt it due to her own convictions to
add: "Perhaps I can do it all the better because--because my personal
opinions are the other way. They'll see I'm only seeking whatever may
make for your happiness." There was silence for a few seconds before she
said, in conclusion, "And oh! Rosie dear, I do hope you'll be happy,
after all--all that's been so hard for you."
Rosie was too strong and self-contained to cry, but there was a mist in
her eyes as they shook hands again and parted.
* * * * *
That night Lois wrote to her husband: "You ask me, dear Thor, if I see
my way yet, and frankly I can't say that I do. I begin, however, to
wonder if there is not a reason for my remaining puzzled and so long in
the dark. I begin to ask if I know what love is--if anybody knows what
it is. Do you? If so, what is it? Is it the same thing for every one? or
does it differ with individuals? Is it a temporary thing?--or a
permanent thing?--or does it matter? Is it one of the highest promptings
we have?--or one of the lowest?--or is it that primary impulse of
animate nature which when developed and perfected leads to God? Is there
a spiritual man and a carnal man, each with a love that can conflict
with the love of the other? Is the one man on the side of the angels, as
Uncle Sim would say, and the other man on that of the flesh, till the
stronger gains the victory? Or is there something in love of the nature
of obsession? Does it come and go like the tornado--as violent in its
passage, but as quickly passed? Thor, darling, I begin to be afraid of
love. If we are to start again I want it to be on some other ground--a
new ground--a ground we don't know anything about as yet, but which
perhaps we shall discover."
CHAPTER XXIX
Thorley Masterman pondered on the words Lois had written him as he
tramped along the bluffs above the Mississippi, with the towers and
spires of Minneapolis looming like battlements through the haze of an
afternoon at the end of June. He had left the conference on new methods
of treating the thyroid gland which was being held in St. Paul in order
to think his position out. Having motored over from his hotel in
Minneapolis, he preferred to "tramp it" back. The glorious wooded way on
the St. Paul side of the river was in itself an invitation to his
strong, striding limbs, while the wine of Western air and the stimulus
of Western energy quickened the savage outdoor impulse so ready to leap
in his blood. The song of mating birds quickened it, too, and the
romance of the river gliding through the gorge below, and the beauty of
the cities eying each other like embattled queens from headland across
to headland and through the splendor of the promise of a gold-and-purple
sunset.
It was a great setting for great thoughts, inspiring ideas so large that
when he reached his hotel he found them too big to reduce easily to
paper.
"You ask me what love is, and say you don't know. I'm more daring than
you in that I think I do know. I know two or three things about it, even
if I don't know all.
"For one thing, I know that no one can do more than say what love is for
himself. You can't say what it is for me, or isn't, or must be, or ought
to be. That's my secret. I can't always share it, or at any rate share
it all, even with the person I love. But neither can I say what it is,
or isn't, or should be, or must be, for you. You have your secret. No
two people love in the same way, or get precisely the same kind of joy
or sorrow from loving. Since love is the flower of personality, it has
the same infinite variety that personalities possess. We give one thing
and we get back another. Do not some of our irritations--I'm not
speaking of you and me in particular--arise from the fact that, giving
one thing, we expect to get the same thing back, when all the while no
one else has that special quality to offer? The flower is different
according to the plant that produces it. When the pine-tree loved the
palm there was more than the distance to make the one a mystery to the
other.
"Of the two things essential to love, the first, so it seems to me, is
that what one gives should be one's best--the very blossom of one's
soul. It may have the hot luxuriance of the hibiscus, or the flame of
the wild azalea in the woods, or no more than the mildly scented,
flowerless bloom of the elm or the linden that falls like manna in the
roadway. Each has its beauties and its limitations; but it is worth
noticing that each serves its purpose in life's infinite profusion as
nothing else could serve it to that particular end. The elm lends
something to the hibiscus--the hibiscus to the elm. Neither can expect
back what it gives to the other. Perfection is accomplished when each
offers what it can.
"Which brings me to the remaining thing I know about love--that it
exists in offering. Love is the desire to go outward, to pour forth, to
express, to do, to contribute. It has no system of calculation and no
yard-stick for the little more or the little less. It is spontaneous and
irrepressible and overflowing, and loses the extraordinary essence that
makes it truly love when it weighs and measures and inspects too closely
the quality of its return. It is in the fact that love is its own
sufficiency, its own joy, its own compensation for all its pain, that I
find it divine. The one point on which I can fully accept your Christian
theology is that your God is love. Given a God who is Love and a Love
that is God, I can see Him as worthy to be worshiped. Call Him, then, by
any name you please--Jehovah, Allah, Krishna, Christ--you still have the
Essence, the _Thing_. Love to be love must feel itself infinite, or as
nearly infinite as anything human can be. When I can't pour it out in
that way--when I pause to reflect how far I can go, or reach a point
beyond which I see that I cannot go any further--I do not truly love."
Having written this much, he laid down his pen and considered. He had
said nothing personal, unless it was by implication. It was only after
long meditation that he decided to leave the matter there. The prime
question was no longer as to whether or not he loved her, but as to
whether or not she loved him. That was for her to decide. It was for her
to decide without his urging or tormenting. He began to feel not only
too sensitive on the subject, but too proud to make appeals to which she
would probably listen out of generosity. Since he had been in the wrong,
it was for her to make the advances; and so he ended his letter and
posted it.
The discussion continued throughout the correspondence that ensued while
he migrated from Minneapolis to Milwaukee, from Milwaukee to Denver, and
from Denver to Colorado Springs. It was partly from curiosity of travel
that he zigzagged in this way across the country, and partly to make it
plain to Lois without saying it that he awaited her permission to come
home. That he should be obliged to return one day, without her
permission if not with it, was a matter of course, but it would make the
meeting easier if she summoned him. As a hint that she could do so and
have no fear, he asked her in a postscript to one of his letters to tell
him, when she next wrote, what was happening to Rosie Fay.
To this she replied as simply and straightforwardly as he had put the
question, imparting all that Jim Breen had told her and whatever she had
gleaned for herself, adding as a seeming afterthought in the letter she
wrote next day:
"If Rosie _could_ bring herself to marry Jim it would be the happiest of
all solutions, and make things easier for Claude. I think she will. If
so, it won't be so much because her heart will have been caught in the
rebound as that the poor little thing is mentally and emotionally
exhausted, and glad to creep into the arms of any strong, good man who
will love her and take care of her. Just to be able to do that much will
be enough for Jim. I see a good deal of him; so I know. Every time he
brings an order of new plants we have a little talk--always about Rosie.
His love is of the kind you wrote about the other day; it has no
yard-stick for the little more or the little less in the return. Perhaps
men can love like that more easily than women do. Uncle Sim seemed to
hint one evening that there is generally a selfish strain in a woman's
love, in that what it gets is more precious to it than what it gives. I
wonder."
Thor received these two letters together on returning to Colorado
Springs from a day's visit to that high wilderness in which John Hay
sought freedom from interruption in writing his _Life of Lincoln_. He
understood fully that Lois was deliberately being cruel in order to be
kind. The very spacing out of her information over two separate days was
meant to impress him and at the same time to spare. Things would be
easier for Claude, she said, when she meant that they would be easier
for him.
But for him it was a matter of indifference. That is, it was the same
kind of matter of indifference that pain becomes in a limb that has
grown benumbed. For reasons he could hardly explain, that part of his
being to which Rosie Fay had made her pathetic appeal couldn't feel any
more. It was like something atrophied from over-strain. There was the
impulse to suffer, but no suffering. Moreover, he was sure that though
these nerves might one day vibrate again, they could never do so
otherwise than reminiscently. To the episode he felt as a mother might
feel to the dead child she has never been able to acknowledge as her
own. It was something buried, and yet sacred--sacred in spite of the
fact that it never should have been. As an incident in his life it had
brought keen joy and keener pain, but he had already outlived both. He
had outlived them as apparently Rosie had outlived them herself--not by
the passage of time, but by an intensity of experience which seemed to
have covered years.
He came to this conclusion not instinctively, nor all at once, but by
dint of reflection, as he sat on the broad terrace of the hotel,
watching the transformation scene that takes place in the Rockies during
the half-hour before sunset. His pipe was in his mouth; Lois's letters
lay open on the little table he had drawn up beside his chair. Other
tourists bore him company, scattered singly or in groups, smoking and
drinking tea. A mild suggestion of Europe, a suggestion of Cap Martin or
of Cannes, was blocked by the domes of the great range and by a shifting
interplay of magic lights where his eye was impelled to look for the
broad, still levels of Mediterranean blue.
There was a wonder in the moment which the yearning in his spirit was
tempted to take as symbolic, and perhaps prophetic, of his future. Where
all day long he had seen nothing but hard ridges packed against one
another, without water, without snow, without perspective, without a
shred of mist, without a hint of mystery, without anything to set the
mind to wondering what was above them or beyond them, the dissolving
views of late afternoon began to throw up a succession of lovely ranges,
pierced by valleys, glens, and gorges. Where the eye had ached with the
harsh red of the rocks spread with the harsh green of the scant
vegetation, soft vapors rose insensibly--purple, pink, and
orange--changing into nameless hues as they climbed into the great
clefts and veiled the rolling domes and swathed the pinnacles and
furrowed the deep passes and put the horizon infinitely far away. The
transmutation from conditions in which Nature herself seemed for once to
be barbaric, alien, hostile to civilized man, painted with Cheyenne
war-paint and girdled with a belt of scalps, to this breaking up of
glory into glory, of color into color, and of form into form, rising,
mingling, melting, fading, rising and mingling again, melting again,
fading again, passing swiftly in a last brief recrudescence from gold
into green and from green into black, with the hurried eclipse and the
sudden tranquillity of night--the transmutation which produced all this
was to Thor hopeful and in its way inspiriting. In the last rays of
light he drew out his fountain-pen and the scribbling-book he kept for
notes by the way, writing quickly without preamble or formality.
"Thanks for telling me about Rosie. It is as it should be--as will be
best. Jim saved her. Nothing so good could ever happen to her as to
marry him.
"As for me, there are two things, Lois, that I can truthfully affirm. I
can declare them the more emphatically because I have had time to think
them over--to think you over, and myself. If I ever had a doubt about
them I haven't now, because leisure and solitude have enabled me to see
them clearly. The first is that I have given you my best; and the
second, that I have given it without any restriction of which I have
been aware. If there was anything I withheld from you, and which you
think you should have had, I can only say that it was not of the nature
of my best. What it was I make no attempt to say, nor would it do any
good to try. Whatever it was, I wish neither to depreciate it nor to
deny it. It was something that swept me--like the tornado of which one
of your letters speaks--but it passed. It passed, leaving me tired and
older--oh, very much older!--and with an intense desire to creep home.
As a physicist I know nothing of a carnal man and a spiritual man, so
that I cannot enter into your analysis; but I do know that there are
higher and lower promptings in the human heart, and that in my case the
higher turn to you. As compared with you I'm only as the ship compared
to the haven in which it would take refuge. The ship is good for
something, but it needs a port."
Again he decided to leave his appeal suspended here, and on the next
morning began his preparations for gradually turning homeward.
CHAPTER XXX
It was William Sweetapple, the gardener's boy, who informed Lois that
Claude had come back, throwing the information casually over his
shoulder as he watered the lawn.
"Seen Mr. Claude to-day, 'm."
"Oh no, you didn't, Sweetapple," Lois contradicted. "Mr. Claude is in
the West."
"He may be in the West now, 'm, but he wasn't at twenty-five minutes
past two this afternoon."
Sudden fear brought Lois down a step or two of the portico, over the
Corinthian pillars of which roses clambered in early July profusion. In
white, with a broad-brimmed Winterhalter hat from which a floating green
veil hung over her shoulders and down her back, her strong, slim figure
seemed to have gained in fulfilment of herself even in the weeks that
Thor had been away.
"Where did you see him, Sweetapple?--or think you saw him?"
Sweetapple turned the nozzle of the hose so as to develop a crown of
spray with which he bedewed the roses of all colors grouped in a great
central bed. "I didn't think, 'm. It was him."
"Well, where?"
"See him first going into the woods leading up to Duck Rock. That was
when I was on my way to Lawyer Petley's."
"Did you see him twice?"
"See him again as I come back. He was down in the road by that
time--looking up toward old man Fay's--Hadley B. Hobson's place that is
to be. Old man Fay's got to quit. Family moved already. You knew that,
didn't you, 'm?"
It was because Lois was really alarmed by this time that she said, "Oh,
you must have been mistaken, Sweetapple!"
"Just as you say, 'm," Sweetapple agreed; "but I see him; it was him."
She withdrew again, reseating herself in the shade of the semicircular
open porch protecting the side-door, where she had been writing on a
pad. Though so near the roadway, a high growth of shrubs screened her
from all but the passers up and down Willoughby's Lane. At this time of
year they were relatively few, many of the residents of County Street
having already gone to the seaside or the mountains. Lois enjoyed the
seclusion thus afforded her, and the tranquillity. The garden and her
poorer neighbors gave an outlet to her need for physical activity, while
in the solitude of the house and in that wider solitude created by the
absence of all the Willoughbys and Mastermans something within her was
being healed. It was being healed--but healed in a way that left her
changed. The change was manifest in what she said when, with the pad on
her knee again, she began to write.
"I am deeply moved, dear Thor, by your last letter from Colorado
Springs, and would gladly say something adequate in response to it. When
I can I will--if I ever can. As to that the decisive word must be with
time. I cannot hurry it. I can give you no assurance now. Now I
feel--but why should I repeat it? An illusion once dispelled can rarely
be brought back. Still less can you replace it by reality. What we are
looking for is a substitute for love. You may have found it--but I have
not. I can accept your definition of love as a giving out, a pouring
forth, a desire to do and to contribute; but it is precisely here that I
fail to respond to the test. There is something in me stagnated or
dammed up. My heart feels like a well that has gone dry. I have nothing
to yield. I understand what Rosie Fay said to me the day when I talked
to her on Duck Rock: 'I'm empty; I've given all I had to give.' It was
less blameworthy on her part than on mine, because she, poor little
thing, had given so much and I so little. And yet my supply seems to be
exhausted. It must have been thin and shallow to begin with. As I feel
at present it would take a new creation to replenish it.
"With regard to my calling forth what is best in you, dear Thor--well,
any one would do that or anything. You're one of those who have nothing
but the best to offer. Do you know what Uncle Sim said of you last
night?--'Thor is always on the side of the angels--and, though he makes
mistakes, they'll rescue him.' They will, dear Thor; I'm sure of it.
They may rescue us both--even if at present I don't see how."
Having written this much, she paused to ask what she should say further.
Should she speak of his coming home? No. Since the address he had given
her indicated that he was on his way, it was best that he should take
the responsibility of his own return. Should she tell him that
Sweetapple thought he had seen Claude? No. It would alarm him without
doing any good. If Claude was back, he was back--besides which,
Sweetapple might be wrong. So she signed her name with her usual
significant abruptness, sealing the envelope and addressing it.
Her hesitation came in putting on the stamp. Somehow the letter seemed
too cold to send. She didn't want to be cold--only to be sincere.
Sincerity during these weeks of solitude had become a sort of obsession.
She couldn't tell him that she had forgiven him as long as resentment
lingered in her heart, and yet she was anxious not to wound him more
than she could help. Wounding him she wounded herself more deeply, for
in spite of everything his pain was hers.
Slowly she tore the letter open again, to a sunset chorus of birds of
whose song she had just become conscious. From tree to tree they fluted
to one another and answered back, now with a reckless, passionate
warble, now with a long, liquid love-note. It was the voice of the rich
world that lay around her--a world of flowers and lawns, and meadows and
upland woods, and cool, deep shades and mellowing light. But it was also
the voice that had accompanied her into the enchanted land on that
winter's day when Thor had kissed her wrist. The day seemed now
immeasurably far away in time, and the enchanted land had been left
behind her; but the voice was still there, fluting, calling, reminding,
entreating, with an insistence that almost made her weep.
She wrote hurriedly in postscript: "If there was ever anything I could
do for you, dear Thor, perhaps what I used to feel would come back to
me. If it only would! If I could only be great and generous and
inexacting as you would be! I want to be, Thor darling; I long to be;
but I am like a person paralyzed, whose limbs no longer answer to his
will. I pray for recovery and restoration--but will it ever come?"
As encouragement to Thor she was no more satisfied with this than with
what she had said earlier, but it expressed all she could allow herself
to say. Anything more would have permitted him to infer such things as
he had permitted her to infer, an accident that must have no repetition.
She ended the note definitely, getting it ready for the post.
She was still engaged in doing so when, the crunching of footsteps
causing her to lift her head, she saw Claude. Having come round to the
side portico on a hint from William Sweetapple, he stood at a little
distance, smiling. He was smiling, but as a dead man might smile. Lois
could neither rise nor speak, from awe. Claude himself could neither
speak nor advance. He stood like a specter--but a specter who has been
in hell. The very smile was that of the specter who has no right to come
out of hell, and yet has come.
Lois was not precisely troubled; she was terrified. If Claude had only
spoken a word or taken a step forward it would have broken the spell
that held her dazed and dumb. But he did nothing. He only stood and
smiled--that awful smile which expressed more anguish than any rictus of
pain. He stood just as he came into sight, on turning the corner of the
house, with the many colors of the rose-bed at his left hand. It was
exactly like this, she had always imagined, that disembodied spirits or
astral forms made their appearances to portend death.
She got possession of her faculties at last. "Claude!" She could just
whisper it.
He continued to smile as he advanced and came up the steps; but it was
not till he was actually beside her that he said, in a voice which might
also have been that of a dead man, "You didn't expect me, did you?"
She remembered afterward that they neither shook hands nor exchanged any
of the usual forms of greeting, but at the minute it didn't seem natural
that they should. Her own tone was as strained as his as she answered,
awesomely: "No. Sit down, Claude. When did you come?"
Throwing his hat on the floor, he dropped wearily into a deck-chair and
closed his eyes. With the sharp profile grown extraordinarily white and
thin, the dead-man expression terrified her again. She wished he would
raise his head and look at her--look more like life. All he did was to
open his eyes heavily, as he replied, "Got back yesterday."
It was less from interest than from the desire to get on the plane of
actual things that she asked, "Where are you staying?"
"Slept at the house last night. Old Maggs, the caretaker, has the key,
so I made him let me in."
"But are you going to stay any time?"
"Might as well. Don't see why not."
There was so much to say and so much she was afraid to say that she
hardly knew with what to begin. "Weren't you," she ventured,
timidly--"weren't you having a good time?"
His answer as he lay back with eyes closed again was another of his
smiles, only dimmer now with a faint bitter-sweetness. She knew it was
like asking a man if his pain is better when it is killing him.
Nevertheless, the ground of common, practical things was the only one to
keep to, so she went on: "But you won't like sleeping at the house every
night--with no one in it. Don't you want to come here?"
He shook his head. "No, thanks. Mrs. Maggs will make my bed and give me
breakfast. That's all I need. Get the rest of my meals in town."
"But you'll stay to dinner now, won't you?"
He lifted himself up in his chair at last, his face taking on its first
look of life. "Thor be there?"
"Why, no. Thor's away--in the West. Didn't you know?"
He started nervously. "Away in the West? Not looking for me?"
She tried to smile. "Of course not. He went to attend the medical
congress in Minneapolis. He's on his way home now."
"When do you expect him?"
"Oh, not at once. I don't know when. He's taking his time."
He studied her awhile, with eyes that seemed to read her secret. "What
for?"
"To see the country, I suppose. My last letter was from Colorado
Springs."
He dropped back into the chair with a tired sigh of relief. "All right.
I'll stay to dinner. Thanks."
She allowed him to rest, asking no more questions than she could help
till dinner was over and they had come out again on the portico, so that
he might have his cigar in the cool, scented evening air. She was more
at ease with him, too, now that she could no longer see the suffering in
his pinched, emaciated face.
"Claude, why did you come home?"
He withdrew the cigar from his lips just long enough to say, "Because I
couldn't stay away."
"Why couldn't you?"
"Because I couldn't."
"Don't you think it would have been well to make the effort?"
"What was the good of making the effort when I couldn't keep it up?"
"But you kept it up for a while."
"Not after--after I heard."
"Heard about Rosie?"
He made an inarticulate sound of assent.
"What did you hear?"
"I heard--what she did."
"How? Who told you?"
"That chump Billy Cheever. Wrote me."
"How did he know it had anything to do with you?"
"Oh, I was fool enough to tell him about her once--and so he caught on
to it. Put two and two together, I suppose, when he heard that--that--"
She seized the opportunity to make the first incision toward getting in
her point. "That she threw herself into the pond? Did he say that Jim
Breen dived after her and brought her up?"
He answered indifferently. "He said some one did. He didn't say who."
"It was Jim. He saved her." As the statement evoked no response, she
continued, "Claude, what did you come home _for_?"
Again he withdrew his cigar from his mouth, looking at her obliquely.
"To marry her."
She allowed some time to elapse before saying, "Claude, I don't think
you will."
"Oh yes, I shall."
"What makes you so sure?"
"Because I am."
"I'm not. Or, rather, if I _am_ sure--it's the other way."
He sprang up, seizing her by the arm over which there was nothing but a
gauze scarf by way of covering. "Lois, for God's sake! What do you mean?
You know something. Tell me. She hasn't gone away with Thor, has she?"
She, too, sprang up, shaking off his hand as if it had been a serpent.
"You fool! Don't touch me! She'll marry Jim Breen. She'll be in love
with him in a week or two."
It was all over in an instant, but the blaze in her eyes seemed
literally to knock him down. He fell back into the deck-chair again,
though he sat astride on it with his feet on the floor, covering his
face with his hands.
"I beg your pardon, Lois," he muttered, humbly. "I don't know what I'm
saying."
"No, you don't," she agreed, speaking breathlessly because the leaping
of her heart was so wild; "but that's hardly an excuse for taking leave
altogether of your senses."
He continued to mutter into his hands. "I'm crazy! I'm drunk! I'm stark
mad! But, oh, Lois, if you knew what I've been through you wouldn't
mind."
The hot anger that had rolled over her with a wrath such as she had
never felt before began to roll away again, leaving her sick and
shivering. It was an excuse for going into the house to find a cloak and
for getting the minute's respite necessary to self-control. To regain
it--to overcome that throb of her being of which the after effect was a
faintness unto death--she was obliged to walk steadily, holding her head
high. She was obliged, too, to repent of the tigress impulse with which
she had turned on Claude, flinging in his face that for which she had
meant to prepare him by degrees. The fact that it had seemingly passed
over his head was no palliation to the outrage. As she mounted the
stairs and went to her room she repeated her own formula: "_Nothing that
isn't kind and well thought out beforehand._" What she had said had been
neither well thought out nor kind, but the temptation had been
overwhelming. For the instant it had seemed secondary that Thor hadn't
taken Rosie to the West, since Claude, who knew so much more of the
inner history of the episode than she did herself, had thought such an
action possible. More clearly than ever before she saw that some
appalling struggle for the possession of the little creature must have
taken place, and that it had been going on during those months when life
was apparently so peaceful and she had been living in her fool's
paradise. It was not till he had lost the fight that Thor had come to
her in the snow-bound woods with the twitter of birds and the deep music
of the tree-tops accompanying those half-truths she had been eager to
believe. She herself had been fatuous and vain in assuming that he could
love her; but if there was little to say for her, there was nothing at
all to be said for him. He had been the more false for the reason that,
as far as he went, he had been sincere. It was his very sincerity that
had tricked her. Less than at any time since the day when he had
stammered out his futile explanations did she feel it possible to pardon
him.
But there was something else. Now, if she chose, she could _know_. In
his present state of mind Claude would betray anything. She had only to
question him, to throw the emphasis adroitly here or there, and the
whole story would come out. It was like having a key come into her
hands--a key that would unlock all those mysteries which were her
terror. She was still irresolute, however, as to using it after she had
taken an old opera-cloak from a wardrobe, thrown it over her shoulders,
and gone down=stairs again.
She found Claude as she had left him--astride on the deck-chair, his
face in his hands, the burning end of the cigar that protruded between
his fingers making a point of light. The abject attitude moved her to
pity in spite of everything. She herself remained standing, her tall
figure thrown into dim relief between two of the white Corinthian
pillars of the portico. By standing, it seemed to her obscurely, she
could more easily escape if any such awful revelation as she was afraid
of were to spring on her against her will. She could almost feel it
waiting for her in the depths of the heavy-scented darkness.
For the minute, however, the folly of Claude's return was the matter
immediately to be dealt with; to get him to go away again was the end to
be attained. It was with this in view, as well as with a measure of
compassion, that she said:
"You poor Claude! You _have_ been through things, haven't you?"
The answer came laconically: "Been in hell."
"Yes, that's what I thought," she agreed, simply. "I thought it the
instant you came round the corner this afternoon. But why? For what
reason--exactly?"
He lifted his haunted face, stammering out his recital in a way that
reminded her of Thor. She could see that he had profited by his mistake
of a few minutes earlier, and that just as Thor had tried to tell
Claude's story without involving his own, so Claude was endeavoring to
spare her by doing the same thing. Being able to supply the blanks more
accurately now than on the former occasion, she found a kind of
poignant, torturing amusement in fitting her knowledge in.
He began with his first meeting with Rosie, describing the scene. He had
not taken the adventure seriously, not any more than he had taken a
dozen similar. Girls like that could generally be thrown off as easily
as they were taken on, and they bore you no ill-will for the change. As
a matter of fact, a new flirtation generally began where the old one
ended, which made part of the fun for the girl as for the man. He was
speaking of respectable girls, Lois was to understand--village girls,
shop girls, and others of the higher wage-earning variety, who didn't
mind showing a spice of devil before they married and settled down. Lots
of them didn't, and were no worse for it in the end. It had not occurred
to him that Rosie would be different from others of the class, or that
she would take in deadly earnest what was no more than play for him.
When he had made this discovery he had tried to withdraw, but only with
the result of becoming involved more deeply. Over the processes by which
he was led finally to pledge himself he grew incoherent, as also over
the signs which caused him to suspect that Rosie was playing fast and
loose with him. His mutterings as to "somebody else who was in love with
her" and who was "ready to put up money" threw her back on memories of
his uneasy questions concerning Thor on the evenings after the return
from the honeymoon. It was with a sense of the key slipping into the
lock that she said:
"And that made you jealous?"
"As the devil. It was because it did that I knew I couldn't give her
up--that I'd never let her go."
There was sincere curiosity in her tone as she asked the question, "But,
Claude, why did you?"
"Because she lied to me."
"Oh! And had you never lied to her?"
He mumbled something about that not being the same thing. "She swore to
me that there'd never been any put-up job between her and--and--"
She helped him out. "The--the other person." She could hear the key
grating as it turned. "And was there?"
He made the impatient, circular movement of his head, as though his
collar chafed him, with which she was familiar. He was gaining time in
order to use tact. "Oh, I don't know. There was--there was something.
Whatever it was, she denied it, when all the while they were--"
She felt obliged fully to turn the key. She knew how perilous the
question might be, but it was beyond her to keep it back. "They were
what, Claude?"
"They were trying to catch me in a trap."
It was like the door into the hall of mysteries opening, but only to
make disclosures dimmer and more mystifying still. The postponement of
dreadful certainties enabled her, however, to say with some slight
relief, "But this--this other person couldn't have been very fond of her
himself if he--if he gave her up to you."
He bowed his head still lower into his hands, muttering toward the
floor: "Oh, I don't know. I don't care--now. Anyhow, she lied to me,
and"--he lifted his haggard eyes again--"and I jumped at it. I saw the
way out--and I jumped at it. I told her--I told her--I'd go and marry
some one else."
"Did you mean Elsie Darling?"
He nodded speechlessly.
It was to come back again to the point which her anger had caused her to
miss that she went forward and laid her hand on his shoulder kindly. "I
would, Claude, if I were you," she said, in a matter-of-fact voice.
"She'd make you a good wife."
"No one will make me a good wife now," he said, hoarsely. "I'm going to
marry Rosie. I'll marry her if it puts me in the gutter. I'll marry her
if I never have a cent."
She went back to her place between the pillars, leaning against one of
them. "But, Claude," she reasoned, "would that do any good? Would it
make either of you happy, after all that's been said and done?"
He seemed to writhe. "I don't care anything about that. I've got to do
it."
"You haven't got to do it if Rosie doesn't want it."
"It's got nothing to do with her."
She looked at him in astonishment. "Nothing to do with her? What do you
mean?"
He tried to explain further. He had not primarily come back to atone for
the suffering he had inflicted on Rosie, or because his love for her was
such that he couldn't live without her. He had come back to propitiate
the demon within himself--the demon or the god, he was not sure which it
was, for it possessed the attributes of both. He had come back to escape
the chastisement his soul inflicted on itself--because without coming
back he could no longer be a man. He had come back because the Furies
had driven him with their whip of knotted snakes, and he could do
nothing but yield to their hounding. If Lois thought that traveling in
the West was beer and skittles when hunted and scourged by yourself like
that--well, she had better try it and see.
What she must understand already was that Rosie and happiness had become
minor considerations. He would sacrifice both to regain a measure of his
self-respect. He had never supposed, and he didn't suppose now, that
Rosie would be happy in marrying him, but that was no longer to the
point. The demon or the god must be appeased, at no matter what cost to
the victim.
He made these explanations not straightforwardly or concisely, but with
rambling digressions that took him over half the Middle West. He
described, or hinted at, all sorts of scenes, peopled by gay young
business men and garnished by pretty girls, in which he could have
enjoyed himself had it not been for the enemy in his heart. It wasn't
merely that he had thrown over Rosie with a cruelty that made her try to
kill herself, and still less was it that he couldn't live down his love
when once he set about it. It was that the Claude who might have been
was strangled and slain, leaving him no inner fellowship but with the
Claude who was. Reviving the Claude who might have been was like
reviving a corpse, and yet there was nothing to do but make the attempt.
"I'm a gentlemen--what?" he asked, raising his white face pitifully. "I
must act like a gentlemen--what?"
"Yes, but if it's too late, Claude--for that particular thing?"
"Oh, but it isn't--it won't be--not when she sees me."
"It might be; and if she doesn't want it, Claude, I don't see why you--"
"You don't see why because you're not me. If you were, you would. A
woman hasn't a man's sense of honor, anyhow."
She let this pass with an inward smile in order to say, "But, Claude,
suppose you _can't_ do it?"
He twisted his neck, with his customary chafing, irritated movement.
"I'll do it--or croak."
"Oh, but that's nonsense!"
"To you--not to me. You haven't been through the mill that I've been
ground up in. You don't know what it is to have been born--born a
gentleman--and to have blasted yourself into human remains. That's what
I am now--not a man--to say nothing of a gentleman--just human
remains--too awful to look at."
She tried to reason with him. "But, Claude, you mustn't exaggerate
things or put the punishment out of proportion to the crime. Admitting
that what you did to Rosie was dishonorable--brutal, if you like--"
"Oh, it isn't that. It's what I did to myself. Can't you see?"
She saw, but not with the intensity of Claude himself. Sitting down at
last, she let him talk again. He had felt something shattered in him, so
he said, at the very minute when he had turned to leave the
cucumber-house on the day of the final rupture. He knew already that he
was a cad, and that he was doing what only a cad would have done; but he
had expected the remorse to pass. He had known himself for a cad on
other occasions, and yet had outlived the sense of shame. That he should
outlive it again he had taken for granted, though he knew that this time
he couldn't do it without suffering. He was willing to take the
suffering. He was not specially unwilling that Rosie should take it,
too. In her way she had been as much to blame as he was. Though he
didn't question the sincerity of her love for him, she had plotted and
schemed to catch him, because from her point of view he was a rich man's
son, and even so had had moments of disloyalty. He found it not
unreasonable to expect her to share the responsibility for what had
overtaken her. But she, too, would outlive the pain of it and follow his
example in marrying some one else.
Lois felt her opportunity to have fully come. "I think she will. She'll
marry Jim Breen--if you'll only leave her alone."
"Oh, rot!"
The tone expressed the degree of importance he attached to this
possibility. He went on again, discursively, incoherently, covering much
of the same ground, but with new and illuminating details, details of
which the background was still a jumble of suppers and dances and
journeys, but in which the god or the demon gave him no rest. His
distaste for diversion having declared itself from the day of his
starting for Chicago, he had whipped up an appetite to counteract it.
Availing himself of the freedom of a young man plentifully supplied with
money for the first time in his life, he had made use of all the
resources with which strange and exciting cities could furnish him to
get back his zest in light-heartedness. The result was not in pleasure,
but in disgust, and a horror of himself that grew. It grew from the
beginning, like some giant poisonous weed. It grew while he was in
Chicago; it grew with each further stage of his journey--in St. Louis,
in Cincinnati, in Los Angeles. It was in Los Angeles that he had
received Billy Cheever's letter with the news of Rosie's mad leap, and
he knew for a certainty that the only thing to be done was to turn his
face eastward. Whatever happened, and whoever suffered, he must redeem
himself. Redemption had become for him a need more urgent than food,
more vital than life. Though he didn't use the word, though his terms
were simple and boyish and slangy, Lois could see that his stress was
that which sent pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher, and drove Judas to go
and hang himself. Redemption lay in marrying Rosie, and restoring his
honor, and bringing the Claude who might have been back to life. Indeed,
it was difficult to tell at times which of the two was slain--whether
the Claude who might have been, or the other Claude--so distraught and
involved were his appeals. But beyond marrying Rosie and keeping his
word--being a gentleman, as he expressed it--his outlook didn't extend.
"Any damn thing that liked could happen" when that atoning act had been
accomplished.
* * * * *
There were so many repetitions in his turns of thought that Lois ended
by following them no more than listlessly. Not that she had ceased to be
interested, but her mind was occupied with other phases of the drama.
She remembered, what she had so often heard, that in the Mastermans
there was this extraordinary strain of idealism of which no one could
foresee the turn it would take. She knew the traditions of the
great-grandfather whose heart had broken on finding that America was not
the regenerated land he hoped for. Tales were still current in the
village of old Dr. Masterman, his son, who through sheer confidence in
his fellow-men never paid any one he owed and never collected money from
any one who owed it to him. Archie Masterman, in the next generation,
was supposed to have taken the altruistic tendency by the throat in
himself and choked it down; but Uncle Sim was a byword of eccentric
goodness throughout the countryside. Now the impulse was manifest in
Claude, in this revulsion against his own failure, in this marred and
broken vision of a Something to which he had not been true. And as for
Thor....
But here she was tortured and frightened. Who knew what this strange
inheritance might be working in him? Who could tell how big and tender
and transcending it might become? That it would be transcending and
tender and big was certain. If poor, frivolous, futile Claude could feel
like this, could feel that he must redeem his soul though "any damn
thing that liked" should happen as the price of his redemption, in Thor
the yearning would outflank her range. Might not the secret of secrets
be in that? Might not that which she had been seeing as treachery to
herself be no more than a conflict of aspirations? If Claude, with his
blurred distortion of the divine in him, served no other purpose, he at
least threw a light on Thor. Thor, too, was a Masterman. Thor, too, was
born to the vision--to the longing after the nationally perfect that had
become legendary since the time of the great-grandfather--to the sweet,
neighborly affection that ran through all the tales of that man's
son--to the sturdy righteousness of Uncle Sim--to the standards of honor
from which poor Claude had fallen as angels fall--and to God only knew
what high promptings strangled and vitiated in his father. Thor was heir
to it all, with something of his own to boot, something strong,
something patient, something laborious and loyal, something
long-suffering and winning and meek, that might have marked the leader
of a rebellious people or a pagan, skeptic Christ.
Her mind was so full of this ideal of the man against whom--and also for
whom--her heart was hot that she made no effort to detain Claude when,
after long silence, he picked up his hat and slipped away into the
darkness.
CHAPTER XXXI
He slipped away into the darkness, but only to do what he had done on
the previous evening after making arrangements with old Maggs. He
climbed the hill north of the pond, not so much in the hope of seeing
Rosie or any one else, as to haunt the scenes so closely associated with
his spiritual downfall.
It was a languorous, luscious night, with the scent of new-mown hay
mingling with that of gardens. If there was any breeze it was lightly
from the east, bringing that mitigation of the heat traditional to the
week following Independence Day. As there was no moon, the stars had
their full midsummer intensity, the Scorpion trailing hotly on the
southern horizon, with Antares throwing out a fire like the red rays in
a diamond. Beneath it the city flung up a yellow glow that might have
been the smoke of a distant conflagration, while from the hilltop the
suburbs were a-sparkle. As, standing in the road, Claude looked through
the open gateway down over the slope of land, the hothouse roofs and the
distant levels of the pond gleamed with a faint, ghostly radiance like
the sheen of ancient tarnished crystal.
The house was dark. It was dark and dead. It was dark and dead and
haunted. Everything was haunted; everything was dark. Even the furnace
chimney looming straight and black against the stars was plumeless. But
in the silence and stillness there was something that drew him on. He
crossed the road and went a few paces within the gate. He had not
ventured so far on the previous evening, and during the day he had dared
no more than to look upward from the boulevard below, after that
pilgrimage to Duck Rock on which William Sweetapple had surprised him.
Now in the darkness and quietness he stood, not searching so much as
dreaming. He was dreaming of Rosie, dreaming of her with a kind of
cheer. After all, he would be bringing joy to her as well as getting
peace of spirit for himself. It wouldn't be so hard. She would meet him
as she used to meet him here, as she used to let him come and visit her,
and then the atonement would be made. The process would be simple, and
he should become a man again.
The conviction was so sweet that he lingered to enjoy it, penetrating a
few steps farther into the spacious dimness of the yard. It was the
first minute of inward ease he had known since he had turned his back on
it. Now that he was once more on the spot, the Claude who was a
devil-of-a-fellow, something of a sport, but a decent chap all the same,
began again to run with red blood where there had been nothing but a
whining, shriveling apostate. It was like rejuvenescence, like a
re-creation.
Suddenly something moved. It moved at first in the shadow of the house,
and then out in the starlit spaces. It moved stealthily and creepily and
with a grotesque swiftness. Its action seemed irregular and uncertain,
like that of some night-marauding animal, till Claude perceived that it
was stalking him. He waited long enough to get a view that was almost
clear of a crouching attitude, the crouching attitude of a beast when it
means to spring, whereupon he turned and fled.
That is, he turned and walked away swiftly. He would have run had it not
been for his renascent self-respect. He couldn't bring himself to run
from poor old Fay even though his nerves were tingling. He tried to
reassure himself by saying that it was no more than a repetition of that
dogging to which he had been subjected before, and that it would
discontinue once he was off the premises.
But when he turned to glance over his shoulder it seemed to him that the
sinister footsteps glided after him. That, he reasoned, might have been
no more than fancy. The arc-lights were rare on this rather lonely road,
and the enormous shadows they flung lent themselves to the startling of
sick imaginations. Nevertheless, as he walked Claude continued to look
back over his shoulder, always with renewed impressions of a creepy
thing trying to track him down. Having entered the obscurity of their
own driveway, he broke at last into a light, soundless trot which was
not slackened till he reached the relative protection of the door.
* * * * *
But by morning he had regained a measure of tranquillity. Knowing what
he had to do, he was resolved to do it promptly. With sunlight and
summer and the sense of being home again to brace him up, the Claude who
was a devil-of-a-fellow seemed in a fair way to be reborn. Waiting after
breakfast only long enough to be discreet, he took his way up the hill
again.
He was confident by this time, and the more so because of his being
beyond the need of concealments. There would be no more shrinking into
the odorous depths of the hothouse, or hesitancies, or equivocations. He
would walk up and avow himself--to father and mother as well as to
Rosie. The hero in him was coming to his own at last.
The gash in the hothouse roof which he could see from a distance was
what he noticed first. In his two nocturnal visits this had not been
apparent. Now that he saw it he stood stock-still. It was something like
a gash within himself, a gash in his courage perhaps, or a gash in the
dream of a reconstituted self. He knew vaguely that his father had
refused the renewal of the lease and that at some time in the near
future Fay would have to go; but he had not expected the immediate signs
of complete demoralization. Now that they were there they disconcerted
him.
He went on till he was in view of the house. It gave him the blind stare
with which empty houses respond to interrogation. He continued his way
to the gate and into the yard. All was neglected and fantastically
overgrown. Vetch, burdock, and yarrow were in luxuriant riot with the
planting and seeding of the spring. No living creature was in sight but
a dappled mare, whose round body and heavy fetlocks spoke of a Canuck
strain, hitched in the shade of the magnolia-tree.
The mare wore a straw hat to which was attached a bunch of artificial
roses, and switched her tail to drive away the flies. Harnessed to a
light form of dray, the animal suggested business, so that Claude put on
a business air, going forward with the assurance of one who has a right
to be on the spot. He had not advanced twenty paces before the hothouse
door opened to allow the passage of a fern-tree in a giant wooden pot,
behind which came the pleasant countenance of Jim Breen, red and
perspiring from so much exertion under a July sun. Claude paused till
the fern-tree was deposited in the dray, when the two men stared at each
other across the intervening space.
For the first time Lois's mention of the young Irishman's name returned
to Claude as significant. What the young Irishman thought of him he had
no means of knowing, for a sudden eclipse across the cheery face was
followed by an equally sudden clearing.
"Hello, Claude!"
Jim threw off the greeting guardedly, and yet with a certain challenge.
His very use of the Christian name was meant to be a token of man-to-man
equality. Having attended the public school with Claude, and taken part
with him in ball-games at an age too early for class distinctions, he
was plainly disposed to use that fact as a basis of privilege. He
attempted, however, no other advance, remaining sturdily at the tail of
his dray, hatless and in his shirt-sleeves, but with head erect and gray
eyes set fixedly. The only conciliating feature was his smile, which had
come back, not with its native spontaneity, but daringly and
aggressively, as a brave man smiles at a foe.
Claude resented the attitude; he resented the smile; he resented the use
of his Christian name; but he was resolved to be diplomatic. He went
forward a few steps farther still, but in spite of himself his voice
trembled when he spoke. "Mr. Fay 'round?"
Jim answered nonchalantly. "No; gone to town. Want a good fern-tree,
Claude? Two or three corkers here. Look at that one, now. Get it cheap,
too. Dandy in the corner of a big room."
Sickeningly aware of his feebleness in contrast with this easy, honest
vigor, Claude made an effort to be manly and matter-of-fact. "Mr. Fay
selling off?"
"Not exactly selling off. Fixed things up with father. Father's taken
the stock, and Mr. Fay's going in with him. Didn't want this old place
any longer," Jim continued, loftily. "Kind o' clung to it because he'd
put money into it, like. Money-eater; that's what it was. Make more in a
year with father than he would in this old rockery in ten. Hadley B.
Hobson's bought the place. Know that, don't you? Come to think of it, it
was your old man who owned it. Well, it's Hadley B. Hobson's now--or
will be the day after to-morrow. Have a swell residence here. Good
enough for that, but too small for a plant like Mr. Fay's."
Claude did his best to digest such details in this information as were
new to him while he nerved himself to say, "Is Miss Fay a-about?"
Jim nodded toward the blank windows of the house. "Moved. Better take a
fern-tree, Claude. Won't get a bargain like this, not if every florist
in the town goes bankrupt. This one's a peach, and yet you'll call it a
scream compared to the one I've got inside. Bring it out so as you can
get a squint at it. Can't wait, can't you? Well, so long! Got to finish
my job. Back, Maud, back! Any time you do want a fern-tree, Claude--"
Claude was obliged to speak peremptorily in order to detain him. "I want
to know where the Fays have moved to."
"To town," was the ready answer. "Well, so long! If I don't get on with
my job--"
"What part of town?"
Jim turned at the hothouse door. "Oh, a very nice part."
"But that's not telling me."
"No," the young Irishman threw back, with his peculiar smile, "and if
you take my advice you won't ask anybody else. If old man Fay was to see
you within a mile of the place--"
Claude decided to be confidential. "Old man Fay has no reason to be
afraid any longer, Jim--not as far as I'm concerned."
"Oh, it isn't as far as you're concerned; it's as far as he is. The
boot's on that foot now."
Claude loathed this discussion with a man so inferior to himself, but he
was obliged to get his information somehow. "If he thinks--"
"It's not what he thinks, but what he knows. That's what's the matter
with old man Fay. If I was you I'd give him a darned wide berth--from
now on."
"Yes, but Jim, you don't understand--"
"I understand what I'm telling you, Claude. If you don't clear out of
this village for the next six months--"
Claude was beside himself with exasperation. "But, good God, man, I've
come back to marry Rosie! Now don't you see?"
Jim stalked forward from the hothouse door, standing over the smaller,
slighter man with a tolerant kindliness which persisted in his sunny,
steely smile. "No, I don't see. You clear out. Take a friend's advice.
Whether you've come back to marry Rosie or whether you haven't won't
make a cent's worth of difference to old man Fay. Clear out, all the
same."
In his excitement Claude screamed, shrilly, "Like hell, I will!"
"Like hell, you'll have to. Mind you, Claude, I'm telling you as a
friend. And as for marrying Rosie--well, you can't."
Claude became aggressive. "If that's because you think you _can_--"
"Gee! Me! What do you know about that! It's all I can do to get her to
look at the same side of the road I'm on--so far. But if I can't, still
less can you, and for a very good reason."
"What reason?" Claude demanded, with his best attempt to be stern.
The other became solemn and dramatic. "The reason that--that she's
dead."
Claude jumped. "Dead! What in thunder are you talking about? She wasn't
dead this afternoon."
"Oh yes, she was, Claude--_that_ Rosie. She--she drowned herself. When I
dived in after her it was another Rosie altogether that I brought up. Do
you get me?"
Claude broke in with smothered objurgations, but Jim, feeling the value
of the vein he had started, persisted in going on with it. He did so not
bitterly or reproachfully, but with a playful, Celtic sadness in which a
misty blinking of the eyes struggled with the smile that continued to
hover on his lips.
"The Rosie you knew, Claude, was all limp and white as I held her in my
arms while Robbie Willert rowed us ashore. She was gone. The soul was
out of her. She was as much in heaven as if she'd been dead a week. Her
eyes were shut and her eyelashes wet, just as you might see the fringe
of a flower hung with dewdrops of a morning. And her mouth! You know the
kind of mouth she's got--a little open when she looks at you, as if
you'd taken her by surprise, like. Well, that's the way it was then--a
wee little bit open--as if she was going to speak--but more as if she
was going to cry--and her lips that white!--and not a beat to her heart
no matter how tight you held her! When Dr. Hill brought the breath into
her again it was a different Rosie that came back entirely."
Claude wheeled away in order to hide the spasm that shot across his
face. "Ah, shut up, damn you!" was all he had the strength to say, but
the tone moved Jim to compunction.
The Irishman in him came out as he tried to make things easier for
Claude, without at the same time desisting from his object. "Sure _you_
couldn't tell that that was the way she'd take it. You couldn't tell
that at all. If you'd known it beforehand you'd have acted quite
different. We all know that. Any one else might have done the same thing
that was--that was"--he sought a consolatory phrase--"that was like
you." He plunged still further. "I might have done it myself if I
hadn't--hadn't been built the other way 'round. Only that won't matter
to old man Fay--nor to Matt, neither."
Claude turned so suddenly pale at the mention of the brother that Jim
followed up his advantage. "The old fellow has to be out of this by
to-morrow night, and Matt gets his walking-ticket from Colcord the next
morning." He laid his strong, earthy hand on the neat summer
black-and-white check of Claude's shoulder with the lightest hint of
turning him in the direction of the gate. "Now if you'll make yourself
scarce for a spell I'll be able to manage them both and coax them back
to their senses."
Though he felt himself irresistibly impelled toward the road, Claude
made an effort to recover his dignity. "If you think I'm going to run
away--"
Jim slipped his arm through his companion's, helping him along. "Sure
you're not going to run away. Lay low for a spell, that's all you'll be
doing. Old man Fay is crazy--stark, staring, roaring crazy. It isn't
you, and it isn't Rosie; it's having to get out of here. It was bluff
what I said a minute ago about the place being too small for his plant.
He's dotty on these three old hothouses. My Lord! you'd think no one
ever had hothouses before and never would again. You'd think it was the
end of the world, to hear him talk. You'd die laughing. The fellow he'd
like to put it over on is your old man! Gives me a mouthful about him
three or four times a day--and it'd be a barr'l full of buckshot in the
back if he could get at _him_. Lucky he's in Europe. But I'll calm him
down, don't you fret; and I'll calm down Matt, once I get at him. Let me
have two months--let me have a month!--and I'll have 'em coming to you
like a gray squirrel comes for nuts."
Out in the roadway Claude made a last effort to react against his
humiliation, doing it almost tearfully. "But, look here, Jim, I've got
to marry Rosie--I've _got_ to."
The Irishman in the young man was still in the ascendant as he wagged
his head sympathetically. "Sure you've got to--if she wants it."
"Well, she does want it, doesn't she? She must have told you so, or you
wouldn't know so much about it."
"She's told me all about it from seeding to sale, and it's God's truth
I'm handing out to you--no bluff at all. This Rosie's another
proposition."
"I'll marry her, whatever she is," Claude declared, bravely; "and I've
got to see her, too."
Jim looked thoughtful. "It isn't so easy to see her because--Well, now,
I'll tell you straight, Claude--because it makes her kind o' sick to
think of you. Oh, that's nothing!" he hastened to add, on seeing a
second convulsion pass across Claude's face. "Sure she'd feel the same
about any one who'd done the like o' that to her, now wouldn't she? It
isn't you at all--not any more than it 'd be me or anybody else."
"If I could see her," Claude said, weakly, "I'd--I'd explain."
"Ah, but you couldn't explain quick enough. That's where the trouble
about that'd be. She'd be down on the floor in a faint before you'd be
able to say knife. You couldn't get near her at all at all--not this
Rosie--not if it was to explain away the ground beneath her feet."
"She'd get over that--" Claude began to plead.
"She'd get over it if it didn't kill her first; but it's my belief it
would. If you could have seen her the night she told me about you! It
was like cutting out her own heart and picking it to pieces. She's never
mentioned you before nor since--and I don't think ever will again. No,
Claude," he continued, in a reasoning tone, "there's no two ways about
it, but you've got to get out--for a spell, at any rate. If you don't,
old man Fay'll be after you with a gun, and what Matt Fay'll do may be
worse. I can handle them if you'll keep from hanging yourself out like a
red rag to a bull, like; but if you don't--then the Lord only knows
what'll happen."
"What'll happen," Claude cried, with a final up-leaping of resistance,
"is that you'll marry Rosie."
"I'll marry her if she'll have me. Don't you fret about that. But I
won't _try_ to marry her--not if I see that she's got the least little
bit of a wish to marry you, Claude. I'll play fair. If she changes her
mind from the way she is now, and gets so as to be able to think of you
again, and wants you--wants you of her own free will--then I'll put up
the banns for you myself--and that's honest to God."
He offered his hand on the compact, but Claude didn't take it. He didn't
take it because he didn't see it, and he didn't see it because he looked
over it and beyond it, as over and beyond the young Irishman himself. It
was not that he had any doubt as to Jim's word being honest to God, or
that he questioned Rosie's state of mind as Jim had sketched it. It was
rather that he was seeing the Claude who was a gentleman and a hero and
a devil-of-a-fellow recede into the ether, while he was left eternally
with the Claude who remained behind.
Jim felt no resentment for the neglect of his proffered hand, but the
long stare of those sick, unseeing eyes made him uneasy. "Well, I guess
I must beat it back to my job," he said, beginning to move away. "So
long, Claude, and good luck to you!" He added, in order to return to a
colloquial tone, "If you ever want a fern-tree, don't forget that we've
got some daisies."
But Claude was still staring at the great blue blank which the fading of
his ideal had left behind it.
CHAPTER XXXII
Twenty-four hours after Claude turned to take the way of humiliation
down the hill, undeceived by Jim Breen's friendly tone and the hope of
future possibilities held out to him, Thor Masterman found himself
almost within sight of home. On arriving in the city late in the
afternoon he went to a hotel, where he took a room and dined. When he
had devised the means of letting Lois know that he was camping outside
her gates she might be sufficiently touched to throw them open. She
might never love him again; she might never have really loved him at
all; but he would content himself with a benevolent toleration. Like
her, he was afraid of love. The word meant too much or too little, he
was not sure which. It was too explosive. Its dynamic force was at too
high a pressure for the calm routine of married life. If Lois could find
a substitute for love, he was willing to accept it, giving her his own
substitute in return. All he asked was the privilege of seeing her, of
being with her, of proving his devotion, of having her once more to
share his life.
It was not to force this issue, but to play lovingly with the hope in
it, that when dusk had deepened into evening he took the open electric
car that would carry him to the village. He had no intention beyond that
of enjoying the cool night air and loitering for a few minutes in sight
of the house that sheltered her. She might be on the balcony outside her
room, or beneath the portico of the garden door, so that he should catch
the flutter of her dress. That would be enough for him--to-night. He
might make it enough for the next night and the next. After absence and
distance, it seemed much.
County Street was as he had known it on every warm summer night since he
was a boy, and yet conveyed that impression which every summer night
conveys, of being the first and only one of its kind. The sky was
majestically high and clear and spangled, with the Scorpion and the red
light of Antares well above the city's amber glow. Along the streets and
lanes dim trees rustled faintly, casting gigantic trembling shadows in
the circles of the electric lights. The breeze being from the east and
south, the tang of sea-salt mingled with the strong, dry scent of
new-mown hay and the blended perfumes of a countryside of gardens. All
doors were open as he passed along, and so were all windows. On all
verandas and porches and steps faint figures could be discerned,
low-voiced for the most part, but sending out an occasional laugh or
snatch of song. Thor knew who the people were; many of them were
friends; to some of them he was related; there were few with whom he
hadn't ties antedating birth. It was soothing to him, as he slipped
along in the heavy shadow of the elms, to know that they were near.
* * * * *
On approaching his father's house, which he expected to find dark, he
was astonished to see a light. It was a light like a blurred star, on
one of the upper floors. From what window it shone he found it difficult
to say, the mass of the house being lost in the general obscurity. The
strange thing was that it should be there.
He passed slowly within the gate and along the few yards of the
driveway, pausing from time to time in order to place the quiet beacon
in this room or in that, according to the angle from which it seemed to
burn. He was not alarmed; he was only curious. It was no furtive light.
Though the curtains were closed, it displayed itself boldly in the eyes
of the neighbors and of the two or three ornamental constables who made
their infrequent rounds in County Street. He could only attribute it to
old Maggs, who lived in the coachman's cottage at the far end of the
property, though as to what old Maggs could be doing in the house at
this hour in the evening, at a time when the parents were abroad and
Claude away on a holiday, he was obliged to be frankly inquisitive. An
investigating spirit was further aroused by the fact that in one of his
pauses, as he alternately advanced and halted, he was sure he heard a
footstep. If it was not a footstep, it was a stirring in the shrubbery,
as if something had either moved away or settled into hiding.
He was still unalarmed. Night-crimes were rare in the village, and
relatively harmless even when they were committed. The sound he had
heard might have been made by some roving dog, or by a cat or a startled
bird. Had it not been for the light he would scarcely have noticed it.
Taken in conjunction with the light, it suggested some one who had been
watching and had slunk away; but even that thought was slightly
melodramatic in so well-ordered a community. He went on till he was at
the foot of the steps, at a point where he could no longer descry the
glow in the upper window, but could perceive through the fanlight over
the inner door that, though the lower hall was dark, the electrics were
burning somewhere in the interior of the house.
He verified this on mounting the steps and peering into the vestibule
through the strip of window at the sides of the outer door. Turning the
knob tentatively, he was surprised to find it yield. On entering, he
stood in the porch and listened, but no sound reached him from within.
Taking his bunch of keys from his pocket, he detached his latch-key
softly, and as softly inserted it in the lock. The door opened
noiselessly, showing a light down the stairway from the hall above. He
could now hear some one moving, probably on the topmost floor, with an
opening and shutting of doors that might have been those of closets,
followed by a swishing sound like that of the folding or packing of
clothes. He entered and closed the door with a distinctly audible bang.
Listening again, he found that the sounds ceased suspiciously. Whoever
was there was listening, too. It was easy, by the light streaming from
above, to find the button and turn on the electricity in the lower hall,
whereupon the movement up-stairs began again. Some one came out of a
room and peered downward. He himself went to the foot of the stairs,
looking up. When the watcher on the third floor spoke at last it was in
a voice he didn't instantly recognize. He would have taken it for
Claude's, only that it was so frightened and shrill.
"Who's there?"
"Who are you?" Thor demanded, in tones that rolled and echoed through
the house.
There was a long, hesitating silence. Straining his eyes upward, Thor
could dimly make out a white face leaning over the highest banister.
When the question came at last it was as if reluctantly and shrinkingly.
"Is that you, Thor?"
Thor retreated from the stairs, backing away to the library, of which
the door was the nearest open one. He distinctly recorded the words that
passed through his mind. He might have uttered them audibly, so
indelible was the impression with which they cut themselves in.
"By God! I've got him."
Out of the confused suffering of two months earlier he heard himself
saying: "I swear to God that if I ever see Claude again I'll kill him."
He hadn't meant on that occasion deliberately to register a great oath;
the oath had registered itself. It was there in the archives of his
mind, signed and sealed and waiting for the moment of putting it into
execution. He had hardly thought of it since then; and now it urged
itself for fulfilment like a vow. It was a vow to cover not merely one
offense, but many--all the long years of nameless, unrecorded
irritations, ignored but never allayed, culminating in the act by which
this man had robbed him; robbed him uselessly, robbed him not to enjoy
the spoil, but to fling it away.
It was a moment of seeing red similar to many others in his life. For
the instant he could more easily have killed Claude than refrained from
doing it. That he should so refrain was a matter of course. Naturally!
He still kept a hold on common sense. He would not only refrain, but be
civil. If Claude were in need of anything or were short of cash he would
probably write him a check. It was the irony of this kind of rage that
it was so impotent. It was impotent and absurd. It might shake him to
the foundations of his being, but it would come to nothing in the end.
It both relieved and embittered him to foresee this result.
From the threshold of the library he called up to Claude, "Come down!"
The tone was imperious; it was even threatening. That degree of menace
at least he was unable to suppress.
Claude's steps could be heard on the stairs. They were slow and clanking
because the carpets were up and the house full of echoes. To Thor's
fevered imagination it seemed as if Claude dragged his feet like a man
wearing chains, going haltingly and clumsily before some ominous
tribunal. The sensation--it was more that than anything else--caused the
elder brother to withdraw into the depths of the library, where he
turned on a light.
The room, with its bare floors, its shrouded furniture, its screened
book cases, its blank pictures swaddled in linen bags, its long, gaunt
shadows, and its deadened air, suggested itself horribly and
ridiculously as a fitting scene for a crime. He might kill Claude with a
blow, and if he turned out the lights and shut the door and stole back
to his hotel no one would ever suspect him as the murderer. The idea
would have been no more than grotesque had it not acquired a certain
terror from the mingling of affection and anger and pity in his heart at
the sound of Claude's shrinking, clanking advance. In proportion as
Claude seemed to be afraid of him, he was the more aware that he was a
man to be afraid of. The consciousness caused him to get deeper into the
dimly lighted room, taking his stand at the remotest possible spot, with
his back to the empty fireplace.
But when Claude appeared coatless in the doorway, his head was thrown up
defiantly in apparent effort to treat Thor's entrance as unwarranted.
"What the devil are you doing here?"
Because of the semi-obscurity his face was white with a whiteness that
quickened Thor's sympathy into self-reproach.
"What are _you_ doing here?"
"That's my business." In making this reply Claude seemed to take it for
granted that they met on terms of hostility, though he added, less
aggressively: "If you want to know, I'm packing up. Taking the train for
New York at one o'clock to-night."
Thor endeavored to speak with casual fraternal interest. "What brought
you back?"
Claude took time to light a cigarette, saying, as he blew out the match,
"You."
"Me? I thought it might be--might be some one else."
"Then you thought wrong." He walked to a metal ash-tray which helped to
keep the covering that protected one of the low bookcases in its place,
and deposited the burnt match. He threw off with seeming carelessness as
he did so, "I know only one traitor, to make me keep returning on my
tracks."
Because the impulse to violence was so terrific, Thor braced himself
against it, standing with his feet planted apart and his hands clenched
behind him till the nails dug into the flesh. He could not, however,
restrain a scornful little grunt which was meant for laughter. "_You_
talk of traitors! I'd keep quiet about them, Claude, if I were you. You
make it too easy for an opponent."
"Oh, well," Claude returned, airily, "I'm used to doing that. I made it
infernally easy for an opponent--last winter. But, then, sneaking's
always easy to a snake, till you get your heel on him."
"And snarling's easy to a puppy, till you've throttled him."
"And bluster's easy to a fool, till you let him see you hold him in
contempt."
"As to holding in contempt, two can play at that game, Claude; and you
might find the competition dangerous."
Claude came nearer, the lighted cigarette between his fingers. "Not on
your life! That's one thing in which I'm not afraid to bet on myself."
He came nearer still, planting himself within a few paces of his
brother. His smile, his mirthless, dead-man's smile, held Thor's eyes as
it had held Lois's a day or two before. He made an effort to speak
jauntily. "Why, Thor, a volcano can't belch fire as fast as I can spit
contempt on you. There! Take that!"
With a rapid twist of the hand he threw the lighted cigarette into
Thor's face, where it struck with a little smarting burn below the eye.
Thor held himself in check by clenching his fists more tightly and
standing with bowed head. It was a minute or more before he was
sufficiently master of himself to loosen the grip with which his fingers
dug into one another, and put up his hand to brush the spot of ash from
his cheek. Being in so great fear of his passions, he felt the necessity
for speaking peaceably.
"What did you do that for, Claude? It's beastly silly."
"Oh no, it isn't--not the way I mean it."
"But why should you mean it that way? What have I ever done to you?"
"Good Lord! what haven't you done? You've--you've ruined me."
The charge was so unexpected that Thor looked more amazed than
indignant. "Ruined you?"
"Yes, ruined me. What else did you set out to do when you began your
confounded interference?"
"I didn't mean to interfere--"
Claude might have posed for some symbolical figure of accusation as,
with hands in his trousers pockets and classic profile turned in a
three-quarter light, he flung his words and directed his glances
obliquely and disdainfully at the brother who glowered with bent head.
"When you don't mean to go into a thing you keep out. That was your
place--out. Do you get that?--_out_. But you're never satisfied till
you've made as vile a mess of every one else's affairs as you've made of
your own."
Feeling some justice in the charge, Thor began to excuse himself. "If
I've made a mess of my own, Claude, it's because--"
"Because you can't help it. Oh, I know that. No one can be anything but
a damn fool if he's born one. All the more reason, then, why you should
keep away from where you're not wanted."
By a great effort Thor managed to speak meekly. "How could I keep away
when--?"
"When you're a rubber-neck bred in the bone. No, I suppose you couldn't.
But you hate a spy and a liar even when he can't be anything else; and
the worst of it is--"
"Oh, is there anything worse than that?"
"There's this that's worse, that your spying and your lying weren't bad
enough till you got me into a fix where I have to look like a cad,
when"--the protest in his soul against the rôle he was compelled to play
expressed itself in a little gasp--"when I'm--when I'm not one."
The elder brother found himself unable to resist the opportunity. "If
you look like a cad, I suppose it's because you've acted like a cad.
It's the usual reason."
"Oh, there's cad and cad. There's a fellow who gets snarled up in the
barbed wire because he runs into it, and there's another who
deliberately lays the trap for him. The one can afford to crawl away
with a grin on his face, while the other lies scratched and bleeding."
It seemed to Thor that there was an opening here for a timorous attempt
to cry quits. "If it comes to the question of suffering, Claude, it
isn't all on one side. You may be scratched and bleeding, as you say,
and yet you can get over it; whereas I'm lamed for life."
"Ah, don't come the hypocrite! If you're lamed for life, as I hope to
God you are, it's because you've got a bullet in the leg--which is what
any one hands out to a poacher."
The relatively gentle tone was again the effect of a surprise stimulated
to curiosity. "When was I ever a poacher?"
"You were a poacher when you went making love to a woman who belonged to
another man, while you belonged to another woman."
"Very well," Thor said, quietly, after a minute's thinking. "I accept
the explanation. But I never did it."
"Then you did something so infernally like it that to deny it is mere
quibbling with words."
"All the same, I insist on making the denial."
Claude shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not surprised at that. It's exactly
what your type of cur would do. Unfortunately for you, I've the proof."
"The proof of what?"
"Of your torturing a poor girl into saying she was willing to marry
you--and then throwing the words in her teeth."
It was from the flame in Thor's eyes that Claude leaped back a
half-pace, though he steadied himself against a small table covered up
from the accumulation of summer's dust by a piece of common calico.
Giving himself time enough to have deliberately counted twenty, Thor
subdued the impulse of the muscles as well as that of speech. "Who told
you that?" he asked, at last, in the tone he might have used of some
matter of no importance.
"Who do you think?"
"There's only one person who _could_ have told you--"
"Oh, you admit as much as that, do you? There is a person who could have
told me?"
"Yes, I admit as much as that--but you must have misunderstood her."
Thor's dignity and self-restraint were not without an effect that might
eventually have made for peace had not the brother's conscience been
screaming for a scapegoat on which to lay a portion of his sins. For him
alone the entire weight had become intolerable. Thor had been known to
accept such vicarious burdens before now. In the hope that he would do
so again, Claude answered, tauntingly:
"I didn't misunderstand her when she said you were making me a cat's-paw
to do what you wouldn't do yourself. What kind of stuff are you made of,
Thor? You go flaunting your money before a poor little girl who you know
can't resist it, and then, when you get her willing to do God knows
what, you push her off on me and want to pay me for the job of relieving
you of your dirty work. After you've dragged her in the dust she's still
considered good enough for me--"
"Stop!"
The roar of the monosyllable echoed through the empty house, while Thor
strode forward, the devil in him loose. With the skill of a toreador in
throwing his cloak into the eyes of an infuriated bull, Claude snatched
the calico strip from the table beside which he stood and flung it in
Thor's face. The result was to check the latter in his advance, giving
Claude time to dart nimbly to the other side of the room. As Thor stared
about him, dazed by his rage, he bore out still further the resemblance
to a maddened animal in the bull-ring.
Fear struggled in Claude's heart with the lust for retaliation. Like
Thor himself, he knew the minute to be one in which he could work off a
thousand unpaid scores that had been heaping themselves up since
childhood. For the time being it seemed as if he could not only make the
scapegoat bear his sins, but stab him to the heart while he did it.
"Stop?" he laughed, shrilly. "Like hell, I'll stop. Did you stop when
you went sneaking after Rosie Fay till you got her in a state where she
wanted to kill herself?" The red glare in Thor's eyes was an incentive
to going on. "Did you stop when you tried to father your beastly actions
off on me, and juggle me into marrying the girl you'd had enough of? Did
you stop when you fooled Lois Willoughby into thinking you a saint, and
breaking her heart when she found you out? Look at her now--"
With a smothered oath Thor charged as a wounded rhinoceros might
charge--in a lunge that would have borne his brother down by sheer force
of weight had not Claude eluded him lightly. Once more Thor shook
himself, stupefied by his passion, blinded by the blood in his eyes. He
needed an instant to place his victim, who, with white face and wild,
terrified glances, had found temporary shelter behind the barricade of
the heavy library table.
But before renewing his rush Thor marched to the door that led to the
hall, the only door to the room, locking it and pocketing the key. The
muttered, "By God, I'll have you now!" reached Claude's ears, bringing
to his lips a protest which had not burst into words before the huge
figure charged again. Behind his fortification Claude was alert, dancing
now this way and now that, as Thor brought his strength to bear on the
table to wrench it aside. But by the time that was done Claude was
already elsewhere, overturning tables and chairs in his flight.
Behind a sofa Claude intrenched himself again, a small chair raised
above his head as a weapon of defense. Thor sprang on the sofa, only to
receive the weight of the chair in his chest, staggering him backward
while Claude bounded off to another refuge. Both were cursing
inarticulately; both were panting in broken grunts and sobs; from both
the perspiration in that airless room and in the heat of the July night
was streaming as rain. The pursuit was like that of a leopard by a
lion--the one lithe, agile, and desperate; the other heavy, tremendous,
and sure.
In darting from point to point Claude found himself near a window, where
he fumbled with the fastening in the hope of throwing up the sash,
though wooden shutters defended the outside. Driven from this attempt,
he made for the locked door, pulling at it vainly on the chance that it
would yield. Seeing Thor bearing down on him with redoubled fury, he
obeyed the impulse of the moment and switched off the electricity as he
crept swiftly along the wall. In the darkness he stumbled to a corner,
where his labored breathing could not but betray his hiding-place. While
he crouched in the corner, making himself small, he knew Thor was
stalking him by the sound.
He was stalking him, and yet in the inky blackness of the room accurate
hunting down was difficult. It was like a duel between blind men. Thor
was moving uncertainly, pausing from second to second to fix the object
of his search.
In the mad hope of reaching the fireplace and creeping into the chimney,
Claude wriggled from his corner along the floor, keeping close to the
wainscot. As he did so he touched the legs of a footstool which
suggested its use at once. Controlling the thumping of his heart and the
pumping of his lungs as best he could, he got noiselessly to his feet.
Inch by inch, slinging the footstool by a leg, he moved toward the spot
from which Thor's panting breath seemed to proceed. If he could but
batter in that long skull he would be acquitted of responsibility on the
ground of self-defense. But he was afraid of anything that approached
the hand-to-hand. When it seemed to him that he could vaguely make out
the swaying of a figure in the darkness, he hurled the missile with all
his might--only to hear it crash into one of the covered pictures.
Claude was disappointed, and yet in the din of the shattering glass he
was able to escape again. He had lost all sense of direction. Even his
touch on the furniture didn't help him, since everything was now
displaced. Nevertheless, he continued to duck and dodge, to wriggle and
creep and elude. Once Thor's clutch was actually upon him, but he
managed to tear himself free with nothing worse than a long rent in his
shirt-sleeve. Again Thor seized him, but only to tear his collar from
the stud. A third time Thor's strong fingers were closing round his
throat, and yet after a momentary choking groan he had been able to slip
away. Never before had Claude supposed himself so strong. There was a
minute when he had felt Thor's hot breath snorting in his face, and
still was able to pick up a small, round table on which his mother
sometimes placed her tea-tray, sending it hurtling toward his pursuer,
checking him again. With a splutter of stifled oaths, Thor grasped the
piece of furniture, throwing it violently back. Claude rejoiced as it
crashed into a window and loosened the shutters outside. If he only knew
which of the windows it was, there might be a chance of his getting out
by it.
With this possibility before him he took heart again. The sound of the
breaking of the window enabling him to fix his whereabouts, he began
feeling his way toward the unexpected hope of exit. It became the more
urgent to reach it as he guessed by the fumbling of Thor's hands along
the wall that the latter was trying to find the electric button so as to
turn on the light. He groped, therefore, between the tables and
overturned chairs, getting as far from his enemy as possible. If only
his heart wouldn't pound as though about to burst from his body! If only
his breath wouldn't wheeze itself out with the gurgle of water through a
bottle-neck! He couldn't last much longer. He was so nearly spent that
if Thor kept up the attack he must wear him out. In the end he must let
those powerful hands close round his throat, as he had felt them close a
few minutes before, while he strangled without further resistance. He
felt oddly convinced that it would be by means of strangling that Thor's
quiet, awful tenacity of revenge would wreak itself.
* * * * *
During these horrible minutes Thor had the same conviction. All the
force of his excited nerves had seemed to be centering in his hands. If
he could only tear out that tongue which had hardly ever addressed him
except with a sneer since it had begun to lisp! Now that the amazing
opportunity was at hand, he wondered how he could have put it off so
long. That he should do the thing he was bent on might have been written
like a fate. It was like something he had always known, like something
toward which he had been always working. The tenderness with which he
had yearned over Claude ever since the days when they were children
seemed never to have had any other end in view.
So he stalked his prey while the minutes passed--five minutes--ten
minutes--perhaps more, perhaps less--he had lost all count of time. So
he stalked him--through the darkness, round and round, over tables and
chairs, into corners and out of them. The room was sealed; the house was
empty; the grounds were large. They might have been in some subterranean
vault. When the right moment came he would find the button by which to
turn on the light, and then....
Revulsion came from the fact that he had accidentally put his hand on
the button and lit up the spectacle of the room. At sight of it he could
have laughed. Nothing but the big library table and one of the heavy
arm-chairs stood on its legs. One of the windows had a gash like a grin
on its prim countenance, and one of the pictures sagged drunkenly from
its hook, a mere bag of gilded wood and glass. Cowering in a corner,
Claude was again arming himself with a chair. It was not his weapon, but
his whiteness, that stirred Thor to a pity almost hysterical. One of his
arms was bare where the shirt-sleeve had been torn from it; one side of
his collar sprang loose where it had been wrested from the stud; his
lips were parted in terror, his eyes starting from his head. The thing
Thor could have done more easily than anything else would have been to
fling himself down and weep.
As it was, he could only hold out his hands with a kind of shamed,
broken-hearted appeal, saving, "Claude, come here."
Though his trembling hands dropped the raised chair, Claude shrank more
desperately into his corner. When, to reassure him, Thor took a step
forward, Claude moved along the wall, with his back to that protection,
ready to spring and dodge again. If he understood Thor's advances, he
either mistrusted or rejected them.
"Don't be afraid," Thor tried to say, encouragingly, but after the
attacks of the past few minutes his voice sounded hollow and
unconvincing to himself.
In proportion as he went nearer Claude sidled away, always keeping his
back to the wall, with gasps that were like groans. He spoke but once.
"Open that door!" It was all he could articulate, but it implied a test
of the brother's sincerity.
Thor accepted it, striding to the threshold, turning the key
energetically, and flinging the door wide open. The quiet light burning
in the quiet hall produced something in the nature of a shock. He
stepped into the hall to wipe his brow and curse himself. He could never
win his own pardon for the madness of the past quarter of an hour.
Neither, probably, could he ever win Claude's, though he must go back
and make the attempt.
What happened as he turned again into the library he could never clearly
explain, for the reason that he never clearly knew. The minute remained
in his consciousness as one unrelated to the rest of life, with nothing
to lead up to it and nothing to follow after. Even the savagery of their
mutual onslaught had been no adequate preparation for what now took
place so rapidly that the mind was unable to record it. As he re-entered
the room Claude was standing by one of the low bookcases. So much
remained in the elder brother's memory as fact. The vision of Claude
raising his arm in a quick, vicious movement was a vision and no more,
since on Thor's part it was blurred and then effaced in a sharp, sudden
pain accompanied by a blinding light. Of his own act, which must have
followed so promptly as to be nearly simultaneous, Thor had no
recollection at all. By the time he was able to piece ideas together
Claude was senseless on the floor, while he was bending over him with
blood streaming down his face.
For the instant the brother was merged in the physician. To bring Claude
back to life after the blow that had stunned and felled him was
obviously the first thing to be done. Thor worked at the task madly,
tearing open the shirt, chafing the hands and the brow, feeling the
pulse, listening at the heart. Whether or not there was a response there
he couldn't tell; his own emotion was too overpowering. His fingers on
Claude's wrist shook as with a palsy; his ear at Claude's heart was
deafened by the pounding of his own. Meanwhile Claude lay limp and
still, dead-white, with eyes closed and mouth a little open. Thor had
seen many a man in a state of syncope, but never one who looked so much
like death. Was he dead? Could he be dead? Had the great oath been
fulfilled? He worked frantically. Never till that instant had he known
what terror was. Never had he beheld so clearly what was in his own
soul. As he worked he seemed to be looking in a mirror from which the
passion-ridden fratricide whom he had always recognized dimly within
himself was staring out. The physician disappeared again in the brother.
"O God! O God!" He could hear himself breathing the words. But of what
use were they? As he knelt and chafed and rubbed and listened they came
out because he couldn't keep them back. And he was accomplishing
nothing! Claude was as still and limp as ever. Not a breath!--not a
sign!--not a throb at the pulse!--and the minutes going by!
He dropped the poor arm that fell lifeless to the side, and threw back
his head with a groan. "O God--if you're anywhere!--give him back to
me!"
The broken utterance was the first prayer he had ever uttered in his
life, but, having said it, he went on with his work again. He went on
with new vigor and perhaps a little hope. He fancied he saw a change. It
was not much of a change--a little warmth, a little color, but no more
than might have been created by a fancy.
He ran for water to the nearest tap. In returning to the library his
foot struck something on the floor. It was the metal ash-tray which had
helped to keep the covering in place on one of the bookcases, and into
which Claude had thrown a match. The picture of a few minutes earlier
reformed itself--Claude standing just there, with the ash-tray under his
hand--the rapid motion of the arm--the paralyzing pain--the dazzling
light--and then the blow with which he must have hurled himself on
Claude, striking him to the floor. There was no time to coordinate these
memories now or to attend to the wound in his own forehead. The
explanation came of its own accord as he touched the ash-tray with his
foot while dashing back to Claude's side.
The change continued. There were positive signs of life. The mouth had
closed; there was the faintest possible quiver of the lids. When he
threw a little water into Claude's face there was a twitching of the
muscles and a slight protesting movement of the hand.
"Thank God!"
He couldn't note the involuntary expression of his gratitude, which had
nevertheless been audible. Claude had need of air. Taking him in his
arms, he lifted him like a baby and staggered to his feet. The body hung
loosely over his shoulder as he crossed the room and laid it on the
sofa. The broken window served its purpose now, for a little air was
coming in by it through the spot where the wooden shutter had given way.
Thor succeeded in forcing the shutter altogether, letting the light
summer breeze play into the marble face.
If he only had a little brandy! He summed up hurriedly the possibilities
in the house, coming to the conclusion that nothing of the sort would
have been left within reach. Even the telephone had been disconnected
for the summer. It would be, however, an easy thing to run to his
office. It would be easier still to run to his house, which was nearer.
Claude was breathing freely now. He could be safely left for the few
minutes which was all he needed to be away. With a simple restorative
the boy would soon be on his feet again.
He pushed the sofa closer to the open window, kneeling once more beside
it. Yes, the danger was past. "Thank God! Thank God!" The words were
audible again. It was deliverance. It was salvation. There was a
positive tinge of color in the cheeks; the eyes opened wearily and
closed again. Thor seized the two cold hands in his own and spoke:
"It's all right, old chap. Just lie still for a minute, till I go and
get you a taste of brandy. Be back like a shot. Don't move. You'll be
all right. Fit as a fiddle when you've had something to brace you up."
No answer came, but Thor sought for none. The worst was past; the danger
was averted. With the two cold hands still pressed in his own, he bent
forward and kissed the pale lips with a life-giving kiss such as Elijah
gave to the Shunamite woman's son. Under the warmth of the imprint
Claude stirred again as if making a response.
He ran pantingly like a spent dog--but he ran. He had no idea what time
it was. It might have been midnight; it might have been near morning. He
was amazed to hear the village clock strike ten. Only ten! and he had
lived a lifetime since nine.
He rejoiced to see a light in the house. Lois would be up. As he drew
near he saw it was the light streaming from her room to the upper
balcony outside it. When nearer still he caught the faint glimmer of a
white dress. She was sitting there in the cool of the night, as they had
so often sat together in the spring.
He called out as soon as he thought he could make her hear him. "Lois,
come down!"
The white figure remained motionless, so that as he ran he called again,
"Lois, come down!"
He could see her rise and peer outward. Still running, he called the
third time: "Lois, come down! I want something!"
There was a hurried "Oh, Thor, is it you?" after which the figure
disappeared in the light from the open window.
She met him at the door as he ran up the steps. There was no greeting
between them. He had just breath enough to speak. "It's Claude. He's
down there in the house. He's hurt. I want some brandy."
He was in the hall by this time, while she followed. His own appearance,
now that he was in the light, drew a cry from her. "But, Thor, you're
all cut--and bleeding."
He was now in the dining-room, fumbling at a drawer of the sideboard.
"Never mind that now. It doesn't hurt. I'll attend to it by and by. I
must get back to Claude. Is it here?"
"No; here." She produced the bottle of cognac from a cupboard, thrusting
it into his hands. "Now come. I'm going with you."
They stopped for no further explanation. That could wait. Thor was out
of the house, tearing down the empty street, while she followed scarcely
less swiftly. At that time of night they were almost sure to have the
roadway to themselves.
She lost sight of him as he turned in at the avenue, but continued to
press on. That there had been a struggle between the brothers she could
guess, though she let the matter pass without further mental comment.
The fact that filled her consciousness was that in some strange way Thor
was back--wild-eyed and bleeding. Whatever had happened, he would
probably need her now, accepting the substitute for love.
Half-way up the avenue she saw that both the inner and outer doors of
the house were open and that the electricity from the hall lit up the
porch and steps. Thor was still running, but at the foot of the steps he
surprised her by coming to a halt instead of leaping up them, two or
three at a time. Stopping abruptly, silhouetted in the spot of light, he
threw his hands above his head as if he had been shot and were
staggering backward. He hadn't been shot, because there was no sound. He
hadn't even been wounded, because as she sped toward him she could see
him stoop--spring away--return--and stoop again. She was about to call
out, "Oh, Thor, what is it?" when, on hearing her footsteps, he bounded
to his feet and ran in her direction. "Go back!" he cried, hoarsely. "Go
back! Go back, Lois, go back!"
But she hurried on. If there was trouble or danger she must be by his
side.
He wheeled around again to that over which he had been stooping, but
with a repetition of the movement of flinging up the hands. After that
he seemed to crawl away--to crawl away till he reached the steps, where,
pulling himself half-way up, he lay with his face hidden. The thing he
had seen was something fatal and final, leaving no more to be done. The
thought came to her that if there was no more for him to do, it was
probable that her work was just beginning and that she must keep herself
calm and strong.
She came to him at last and bent over his long, prostrate form. It was
racked and heaving. The sobbing was of a kind she had never heard
before--the violent, convulsive sobbing of a man.
Raising herself, she looked about for the cause of this grief, for a
second or two seeing nothing. The respite enabled her to renew her sense
of the necessity laid upon her to be helpful. Whatever was there, she
must neither flinch nor cry out. She must take up the task where he had
been forced to lay it down.
It was a bare arm from which the shirt-sleeve had been torn away that
caught her attention first--a bare arm with a spatter of blood on it. It
lay extended along the grass just beside the driveway. She was obliged
to take a step or two toward it before seeing that it was Claude's arm,
and that he himself was lying on the sward of the lawn, with a little
trickle of blood from his heart.
She was not frightened. She was not even appalled. She understood as
readily what she ought to do as if the accident had been part of every
day's routine. But as her glance went first to the dead brother and then
to the living one she knew that her substitute for love had been found.
CHAPTER XXXIII
When Jasper Fay was tried for the murder of Claude Masterman, and
acquitted of the charge, it was generally felt that the ends of justice
had been served. No human being, whatever his secret opinion, could have
desired the further punishment of that little old man whose sufferings
might have expiated any possible crime in advance. The jury having found
it improbable that at his age, and with his infirmities, he should have
been lurking in the village at ten o'clock at night and waiting in the
neighborhood of Colcord jail at dawn of the next morning, the verdict
was accepted with relief not only in the little court-house of the
county town, but by the outside public. To none was this absolution more
nearly of the nature of a joy than to the unfortunate young man's
family.
* * * * *
That was in the winter of 1912, and in the mean while Lois had been led
so successfully by her substitute for love as to be at times unaware of
her lack of the divine original. For she was busy, so it seemed to her,
every day of every week and every minute of every day. The first
dreadful necessities on that night of the 9th of July having been
attended to, her thought flew at once to the father and mother of the
dead boy.
"Thor dear, I know exactly what I'm going to do about them, if you'll
let me."
It was early morning by the time she said that, and all that was
immediately pressing was over. Claude was lying in one of the spare
rooms that had been prepared for him, and Dr. Noonan, together with the
four or five grave, burly men, Irish-Americans as far as she could
judge, who had been in and about the house all night hunting for traces
of the crime, had gone away. Those who were still beating the shrubbery
and the grounds were not in view from the library windows. Maggs and his
wife were in the house, as well as Dearlove and Brightstone, getting it
ready for re-occupation, since it was but seemly that the dread guest
who had come under its roof should be decently lodged.
Thor, having spent some hours before the stupefied village authorities,
was surprised and obscurely disappointed not to be put under arrest.
Public disgrace would have appeased in a measure the clamor of
self-accusation. To be treated with respect and taken at his word in his
account of what had happened between himself and Claude was like an
insult to a martyr's memory. When dismissed to his home he found it hard
to go.
Having dragged himself back through the gray morning light, it was to
discover strange wonders wrought in the immediate surroundings. Lois and
her four assistants had whisked the coverings from the furniture and
restored something like an air of life. Even the library, having been
sufficiently noted and described, had been set in what was approximately
order, the broken picture taken from its nail and the broken window
hidden by a curtain.
On the threshold of the room Thor paused, shrinking from a spot which
henceforth he must regard as cursed. But Lois insisted. "Come in, Thor
dear; come in." She felt it imperative that he should overcome on the
instant anything in the way of terrible association. He must counteract
remorse; he must not let himself be haunted. She herself sat still,
therefore, with the restrained demeanor of one who has seen nothing in
the circumstances with which she has not been able to cope. Pale, with
dark rings under the eyes betraying the inner effect of the night of
stress, she nevertheless carried herself as if equal to confronting
developments graver still. The strength she inspired came from rising to
the facts as to some tremendous matter of course.
Now that there was a lull in the excitement she had been quietly
discussing the conditions with Uncle Sim and Dr. Hilary. The latter went
forward as Thor, tall, gaunt, red-eyed, the wound in his forehead
stanched with plaster, advanced into the room.
"You're face to face with a great moral test, me dear Thor," he said,
laying his hands on the young man's shoulders, "but you'll rise to it."
Thor started back, less in indignation than in horror. "Rise? Me?"
"Yes, you, me dear Thor. You'll climb up on it and get it under your
feet. The best use we can make of mistake and calamity is to stand on
them and be that much higher up. I don't care what your sin has been or
what your self-reproach. Now that they're there, you'll utilize them for
your spiritual growth. Neither do I say God help you! for I'm convinced
in me soul that He's doing it."
Thor moved uneasily from under the weight of the benedictory hands. It
was as part of his rejection of mercy that he muttered, "I don't know
anything about Him."
"Don't you, now? Well, that's not so important. He knows all about you.
It's not what we know about God, but what God knows about us that tells
most in the long run."
He passed on into the hall, where he picked up his hat and went out.
Uncle Sim, who, with more of Don Quixote in his face than ever, had been
pacing up and down the room, threw over his shoulder, "Always said you
were on the side of the angels, Thor--and you are."
Thor found his way wearily to the chimney-piece, where he stood with his
face buried in his hands and his back to his two companions. He groaned
impatiently. "Ah, don't talk about angels!"
Uncle Sim continued his pacing. "But I will. Now's the time. What, after
all, are they but the forces in life that make for the best, and who's
ever been on their side more than you?"
Thor groaned again. "What good does that do me now?"
"This good, that when you've been with them they'll be with you, and
don't you forget it! Life doesn't forsake the children who've been
trying to serve it, not even when they lose control of themselves for a
few minutes and do--do what they're sorry for afterward."
Thor writhed. "I killed Claude."
"Oh no, you didn't, Thor dear," Lois said, quietly. "It's wrong for you
to keep saying so. We can see perfectly well what has happened, can't
we, Uncle Sim? If Claude revived while you were away and went out to get
more air, and some one, as you think, was lurking in the shrubbery--"
"But if it hadn't been for me--"
"As far as that goes I might as well say, If it hadn't been for me. I've
told you how he came to me two days ago and how I discouraged him. We're
all involved--you no more than the rest of us."
"If he _is_ involved more than the rest of us," Uncle Sim declared,
"it's all the more reason why the good forces by which he's stood should
now stand by him. It's a matter of common experience to all who've ever
made the test that they do." He turned more directly to Thor. "There's a
verse in one of those old songs I'm fond of quoting at you--I'll never
trouble you with another," he promised, hurriedly, in answer to a
movement of protest on his nephew's part, "if you'll only listen to
this. It's right to the point, and runs this way: 'The angel of the Lord
encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them.' They're
camping round about you now, Thor, as I've always told you they would."
Thor raised his head just enough to say savagely over his shoulder, "But
when I never _have_ feared Him, in the way you mean--and don't."
"Oh, but you have--and do. There's two types for that sort of thing,
both sketched in graphic style by the Master. There's the two sons sent
to work in the vineyard, of whom one said to his father, 'I go, sir,'
and went not. The other said, 'I will not,' but went. 'Whether of them
twain,' the Master asks, 'did the will of his father?' I leave it to
yourself, Thor."
Unable to escape from this ingenious pardon that caught and blessed him
whether he would or no, Thor remained silent, while the uncle addressed
himself to the niece. "I'll be off now, Lois, but I'll come back before
long and bring Amy. We'll stay here. The house'll need to have people in
it, to make it look as if it was lived in, till Archie and Ena can be
got at and brought home."
Thor turned and looked from the one to the other distressfully. "Poor
father and mother! What about them?"
It was then that Lois showed that the matter had already received her
attention. "Thor, dear, I know exactly what I'm going to do, if you'll
let me."
She had been so efficient throughout the night that both men listened
expectantly while she sketched her plan. She would cable the facts as
succinctly as she could put them to her own father and mother, who were
in their _petit trou pas cher_ on the north coast of France. They would
then cross to England and break the news to Mr. and Mrs. Masterman. The
very fact of the breach between her parents on the one side and the
bereaved couple on the other was an additional reason for charging the
former with the errand of mercy. Where so much had been taken it was the
more necessary to rally what remained.
Having expressed his approval of these suggestions, Uncle Sim took his
departure.
"Where is he?" Thor asked at once.
"Come."
Though she rose, she lingered to say, with a manner purposely kept down
to the simplest and most matter-of-fact plane: "You'll come up to the
house and have breakfast, won't you, Thor? It will be ready about
eight." As he began to demur on the ground that he couldn't eat, she
insisted. "Oh, but you must. You know that yourself. You'll feel better,
too, when you've had a bath. You can't take one here, because Mrs. Maggs
hasn't put the towels out. Cousin Amy will attend to that when she comes
down."
These and similar maternal counsels having been given and received, she
led the way into the hall, only to pause again at the foot of the
stairs. "I shall go out now to send my cablegram to mamma. The sooner I
get it off the better it will be, so that they can cross from Havre to
Southampton to-night. I've got it all thought out and condensed, and I
shall write it in French so as to keep it from the people in our own
office here. I suppose that everything will be in the papers by the
afternoon, and we shall have to accept the publicity." Seeing the pain
in his face, she took the opportunity to say: "Oh, we can do that well
enough, Thor dear. We mustn't be afraid of it. We mustn't flinch at
anything. Whatever has to come out will get its significance only from
the way we bear it; and we can bear it well."
Having advanced a few steps up the stairs, she turned again on the first
landing, speaking down toward him as he mounted. "If possible, I should
like to tell Rosie myself. It will be a shock to her, of course; but I
want to be with her when she has to meet it. Don't you think I ought to
be?" On his expressing some form of mute agreement, she continued:
"Then, if you approve, I shall telephone to Jim Breen, asking him to
bring her to see me. Rosie will guess, by my sending for her, that
something strange has happened. I shall word my message to her in that
way."
Her last appeal was made to him as she stood with one hand on the knob
of the door beyond which Claude was lying. "Thor dear, I hope you get at
the truth of the things Uncle Sim and Dr. Hilary have been saying.
There's a great message to you there. You _are_ on the side of the good
things, you know. You always have been, and always will be."
He shook his head. "It's too late to say that to me now."
"Oh no, it isn't! And what's also not too late to say is that you
mustn't let yourself be ridden by remorse." His haggard eyes seeming to
ask her how he could help it, she continued: "Remorse is one of the most
futile things we know anything about. It can't undo the past, while it
destroys the present and poisons the future."
He was almost indignant. "But when you've--?"
"When you've given way as you say you gave way last night? You brace
yourself against doing it again. You make it a new starting-point. Isn't
that it?"
"Yes, but if you're like me!"
With her free hand she brushed back the shock of dark hair from his
forehead. It was the first touch of personal contact between them since
his sudden reappearance. "If one is like you, Thor, of course it's
harder. You're a terrific creature. I begin to see that now. I never
took it in before, because in general you're so restrained. I know it's
the people who are most restrained who can be swept most terribly by
passion--but I hadn't expected it of you. Even so, it's the sort of
thing which only goes with something big in the soul--"
He put up a hand protestingly. "Don't!"
"But I must. It ought to be said. You should understand it.
Fundamentally--I see it quite plainly now--you're the big primitive
creature that's only partially tamed by the tenderest of tender hearts.
Do you know what you remind me of?--of a great St. Bernard dog that asks
nothing better than to love every one and save life, but which when it's
roused...! You see what I mean," she went on, with a kind of soothing,
serious cajolery. "Thor dear, I was never so afraid of you as I've been
this night, and I never"--_loved_ was what she was going to say, but, as
on the day in the winter woods, she suppressed the word for another--"I
never admired you so much. I'm going to make a confession. What you say
you felt toward Claude is what I've often felt myself in--in glimpses.
God knows I don't say that to malign him. I shouldn't say it at all if
it were not to point out that you wouldn't have done him any more
harm--not when it came to the act--than I myself. Would you, now?"
He hung his head, murmuring, brokenly, "No."
"What we've got to see is that you're very human, isn't it? and that's
what they mean--Uncle Sim and Dr. Hilary--when they say that you're face
to face with a great moral test. They mean that after you've used
what--what's happened within the last few hours--as you can use it--as
you _can_ use it, Thor dear--you'll be a far stronger man than you were
before--and you were a strong man already."
With eyes downcast he murmured words to the effect that it was difficult
to see the way.
"Won't the way be to take each new thing as it comes--and there are some
very hard things still to come, you know!--as a step to climb by, to get
it under our feet as something that holds us up instead of over our
heads as something that crushes us down? Won't that be the way? It may
be like climbing a Calvary, but all the same we shall be there--up
instead of down--and," she added, with a smile so faint that it was in
her eyes rather than on her lips, "and you know, Thor darling, that no
one is ever on a Calvary alone."
With these words she turned the handle of the door, leading him into a
room from which the morning light was only partially excluded, and about
which vases and bowls of roses had already been set.
Claude was lying naturally, wearing a suit of his own pajamas, white
with a little pink stripe, his face turned slightly and, as it were,
expectantly toward the two who approached. Having entered the room
first, Lois kept to the background, leaving Thor to go to the bedside
alone.
The difference between the dead Claude and the sleeping one was in the
expression. In the sleeping Claude the features were always as if
chiseled in marble, and, like marble, cold. The dead Claude's face, on
the contrary, radiated that which might have passed for warmth and life.
The look was one he would have worn if mystified and pleased by
something he was trying to understand. In any other case Thor would have
explained away this phenomenon on grounds purely physiological; but
since it was Claude he found himself swept by an invading wonder. He
knew what people more credulous than himself would say. They would say
that on the instant of the great change toward which he had been so
suddenly impelled even poor Claude, with his narrow earthly vision, had
been dowered with an increase of perception that bewildered and perhaps
rejoiced him. Thor couldn't say this himself; but he could wonder. Was
it possible that Claude, with this pleasing, puzzled dawn upon his face,
could have entered into phases of life more vivid than any he had left
behind? Thor found the question surging within his soul; but before he
could silence it with any of his customary answers he heard the counsel
of wise old Hervieu of the Institut Pasteur: "_Ne niez jamais rien._"
But his need was emotional and not philosophical. Stooping, he kissed
once more the lips on which there was this quiver of a new life that
almost made them move, and sank on his knees beside the bed. Lois, who
knew that beyond any subsequent moment this would be the one of last
farewell, slipped softly from the room and closed the door behind her.
She remembered as she did so that apart from her timid touch on his hair
there had been no greeting between her husband and herself since his cry
to her as she sat on the balcony in the darkness; but perhaps the
substitute for love didn't call for it.
She went down-stairs to carry out her intentions of ringing up Jim Breen
and sending her cablegram to France. Since the necessity for doing the
former would take her to her own house, she would have the chance of
changing her dress before the relative publicity of the telegraph-office
in the Square. She would need also to explain the circumstances to her
servants, who by this hour would be moving about the house and might be
alarmed on finding that her room had not been occupied. The door to the
garden portico being that which would probably be unlocked, she turned
into Willoughby's Lane, where her attention was caught by the sight of
two men coming down the hill.
What she saw was a young man helping an older one. The old man leaned
heavily on his companion, hobbling with the weariness of one who can
barely drag himself along.
Lois was seized by sudden faintness; but a saving thought restored her.
It was no more than the prompting to give this spent wayfarer a cup of
coffee as he passed her door, but it met the instant's need. By a
deliberate effort of the will she banished every suggestion beyond this
kindly impulse. If there were graver arguments to urge themselves, they
were for others rather than for her.
* * * * *
That she was not the only person within eight or ten hours to be
startled by the sight of that little old man was abundantly evidenced
later. John Stanchfield, Elias Palmer, Harold Ormthwaite, and Nathan
Ridge, all farmers or market-gardeners of the Colcord district,
testified to frights and "spooky feelings" on being accosted by a dim
gray figure plodding along the Colcord road in the lonely interval
between midnight and morning. The dim gray figure seemed to have
recognized the different "teams" by the section of the road through
which they jolted or by their flickering lamps.
"That you, 'Lias?"
"Why, yes! Who be you? Darned if it ain't Jasper Fay! What under the
everlastin' canopy be you a-doin' this way so late at night?--so early
in the mornin', as you might say."
"My poor boy! To be let out at five!"
Grunts of sympathy and inquiries concerning the nature of the "truck"
being taken to market made up the rest of the conversation, which ended
in a mutual, "So long!"
With John Stanchfield and Harold Ormthwaite the exchange of salutations
had been on similar lines. No one but old Nathan Ridge had had the
curiosity to ask: "What you trampin' the eight mile for? Could have took
the train at Marchfield, and got out at the jail door."
"We-ell, the trains didn't just suit. Marchfield's three mile from my
place, and if it comes to trampin' three mile you might as well make it
eight."
"Guess you're pretty nigh tuckered out, ain't you?"
"We-ell, I'm some tired. Been takin' it easy, though. Left home about
eight o'clock last night and just strolled along. Fact is, Nathan, I had
to be out o' my little place last night root and branch, and it's kind
of eased my mind like to be footin' it through the dark."
"Guess you feel pretty bad, don't you?"
"Well, I did. Don't so much now."
"Got used to it?"
"No, it ain't that so much. It's just that if I've suffered, others
will--" But according to Mr. Ridge further explanation was withheld, the
speaker going on disappointingly to say: "Guess I'll be keepin' along.
Hope you'll get your price on them pease. Awful sight of them in the
market after this last dry spell."
So Jasper Fay trudged on. He trudged on patiently, with the ease of a
man accustomed all his life to plodding through the soil, though now and
then he paused. He paused for breath or for a minute's repose, and
sometimes to listen. He listened most frequently to sounds behind him as
if expecting pursuit; he listened to the barking of dogs, the gallop of
grazing horses across the dark pastures, or to the occasional bray of a
motorist's horn. When nothing happened, he went on again, though with
each renewal of the effort his footsteps lagged more wearily.
Dawn was gray by the time he had come face to face with the long, grim
house of sorrow. It was grim unintentionally, grim in spite of
well-meant efforts to cheer it up and make it alluring, at least to the
passer-by. For him ampelopsis had been allowed to clamber over the
red-brick walls; for him a fine piece of lawn was kept neatly cut; for
him the national flag floated during daylight over a grotesque pinnacle;
for him a fountain plashed on feast-days. Neither fountain nor flag nor
sward nor vine was visible except to the outsider, but it was for him
the effect was planned. For him, too, a little common had been set apart
on the other side of the roadway and garnished with a wooden bench under
a noble, fan-shaped elm. Jasper Fay sat down on the bench as he had sat
down on it many a time before, hunched and weary.
For the three years, or nearly, in which Matt had been shut up here the
father had spent with him as many as possible of the minutes allowed for
intercourse, prolonging the sense of communion by sitting and staring at
the walls. In times past he had stared in patient longing for the moment
of the boy's release; but this morning he only stared. Behind the
staring, thought was too inactive for either retrospect or forecast; and
thought was inactive because both past and future now contained elements
too big for the overtaxed mind to deal with. He could only sit wearily
and expectantly on the bench, watching, at the end of one of the long
wings, a small gray door on which he had been told to keep his eyes.
After the first flicker of light the day came slowly. The lowlands
around the prison were shrouded in a thin gray mist, through which
Lombardy poplars and warders' cottages and prison walls loomed ghostly.
When, a few minutes after the clock in the pinnacle had struck five, the
gray door opened soundlessly and a shadowy form slipped out, the effect
was like that of a departed spirit materializing within human ken.
The shadowy form shook hands with some one who remained unseen, and
after it had taken a step or two forward the soundless door shut it out.
It looked timorous and lone in the wide, ghostly landscape, advancing a
few paces, stopping, searching, advancing again, but uncertainly. As it
emerged more fully into view it disclosed a bundle in the hand, a light
gray suit, and a common round straw hat. It moved as though testing
ground that might give way beneath it or as trying the conditions of
some new and awesome sphere of existence into which it had suddenly been
thrust.
With all his remaining forces concentrated into one sharp, eager look,
Jasper Fay crept forward. The ground-mist blurring his outlines, the two
dim figures were face to face before the son perceived his father's
presence or approach. On doing so he started back.
"Why, father! What's the matter? You look"--his voice dropped to
faintness--"you look--terrible."
But the father's faculties were already too exhausted to catch the
movement and note of dismay. He was drained even of emotion. All he
could do was to extend his hand with the casual greeting: "Well, Matt!
How are you? Come to meet you."
He explained, however, the immediate program, which was to go by the
five-thirty train to Marchfield, whence by taking the short cut through
Willoughby's Lane and County Street they could reach home for breakfast
by seven. Home, it had to be told, was no longer the little place on the
north bank of the pond, but a three-family house on the Thorley estate,
with a "back piazza" for yard and nothing at all in the way of garden. A
home without a garden to an old man who had lived in gardens all his
life was more of an irony than a home without a rooftree, but even this
evoked from the sufferer only a mild statement of the fact. Mildness,
resigned and apparently satisfied, marked all the turnings of the
narrative unfolded as they plodded to the station, while the son took
the opportunity to scan at his leisure those changes in the sunken face
that had shocked him at the moment of encounter.
It was no new tale that Matt heard, but it pieced together the isolated
facts made known to him in the few letters he had received and the
scattered bits of family news he had been able to pick up on
visiting-days. For all of it he was prepared. He would have been
prepared for it even if he had received no hint in advance, since it was
nothing but what the weak must expect from the strong and the poor from
the rich. "We'll change all that," was his only comment; but he made it
whenever he found an opening.
Only once did he permit himself to go beyond the dogged repetition of
this phrase. "Got in with some fellows there"--he jerked his head
backward in the direction from which they had come--"who've thought the
whole business out. Could always get together--us trusties.
Internationals them fellows were--the I. I. A--heard of 'em, haven't
you? No bread and treacle in _their_ program. Been handing that out too
long."
The difference between the face Matt Fay had looked forward to seeing
and the one which was now turned up to him was that between a mirror and
a pane of glass. In a mirror there would have been reflection and
responsiveness. Here there was nothing but a blank, shiny stare,
vitreous and unintelligent. Jasper Fay, it seemed to his son, had passed
into some pitiful and premature stage of dotage.
To the released prisoner the change was but one more determining factor
in his own state of mind. He was prepared to find his mother in worse
case than his father, and Rosie in worse case still. Poor little Rosie!
She was the traditional victim of the rich man's son. So be it. Since it
was for him to see that she was avenged, he asked nothing better. The
more wrongs there were besides his own, the more he was justified in
joining the campaign of blood and fire, of eloquence and dynamite, to
which he felt a call.
He thought sullenly over these things as the train jogged through the
rich fields and market-gardens on the way to Marchfield, and the quiet
little man with the glassy stare and the gentle, satisfied, senile smile
sat silent in the seat beside him. Matt Fay was glad of the silence. It
left him the more free to gaze at the meadows and pastures, at the
turnips and carrots and cabbages, of which the dewy glimpses fled by in
successive visions of wonder. It was difficult not to believe that the
sky had grown bluer, the earth greener, and the whole round of nature
more productive during the years in which he had been "put away." His
surprise in this recognition of the beauty of the world gave a poignant,
unexpected blend to his wrath at having been compelled to forfeit it.
He got the same effect from every bird and bee and butterfly that
crossed his path between Marchfield and the village. No yellowing spray
of goldenrod, no blue-eyed ragged-robin, but symbolized the blessings of
which he had been cheated. In proportion as the sun broke through the
bank of cloud, burning away the mist and drawing jeweled rays from the
dewdrops, the new recruit in revolution found his zeal more eager to
begin. The very flagging and stumbling of the steps that tottered beside
his own intensified his ardor.
CHAPTER XXXIV
"It was more strange than I dare tell you, mother dear," Lois added to
the letter of details which she wrote at odd minutes during the day,
"that that poor old man should have broken down just at our door. There
was a kind of fatality in it, as if he had come to throw himself at our
feet. The son would have gone on if his father had been able to drag
himself another yard; but he wasn't. It was all we could do to get him
up the portico steps and into the nearest seat.
"I wonder if you remember him--old Mr. Fay? If so, you wouldn't know him
now. I can only compare him to a tree that's been attacked at the roots
and shrivels and dries in a season. He seems to have passed from sixty
to ninety in the course of a few months, as if the very principle of
life had failed him. It would be pitiful if it wasn't worse. I mean that
we're afraid it may be worse, though that is a matter which as yet I
mustn't write about.
"The son puzzles me--or rather he would if there were not something in
him like all the other Fays, desperate and yet attractive, appealing and
yet hostile. He looks like his sister, which means that he's handsome,
with those extraordinary eyes of the shade of the paler kinds of jade,
and a "finish" to the features quite unusual in a man. The prison shows
in his pallor, in his cropped hair, and in something furtive in the
glance which, Thor says, will probably pass as he gets used again to
freedom. I remember that Dr. Hilary once said of him that he's the stuff
out of which they make revolutionaries and anarchists. In that case I
should think he might be a valuable addition to the cause, for, as with
Rosie, there's a quality in him that wins you at the very moment when
you're most repelled. He makes you sorry for him. We're sorry for them
all. Even now, with poor Claude lying there, we've no other feeling than
that. We've had enough of retaliations and revenges. Nothing could prove
their uselessness more thoroughly than what happened here last night. If
we could let everything rest where it is, leaving the crime to be its
own punishment, God knows we would do it gladly."
Later in the day she continued: "I wish you could have seen the meeting
between Thor and that poor fellow who has just come out of jail. Thor
was superb--so gentle and kind and tender, and all with an air that
tragic sorrow has made noble. There are things I cannot tell you about
him--that Thor must tell to his father if they're ever told at all--but
this I can say even now, that if any good is to come out of all this it
will be through Thor more than any one. He doesn't see his way as yet,
but he'll find it. He'll find it by the same impulse that made him march
up to Matt Fay, putting his hand on his shoulder and looking him in the
eyes with a simple, man-to-man sympathy which no one could resist. The
very fact that Thor feels so deeply that he's been to blame--very, very
much to blame--gives intensity now to his kindness. As for Matt Fay, he
colored and stammered and shuffled, and though he tried to maintain his
bravado, it was without much success. He was still more embarrassed
when, after the old man had finished his coffee and was able to move
again, Thor ordered Sims to bring round the car and drive the two of
them home. We said nothing to them about Claude. I couldn't have borne
its being mentioned to them here--or to have been obliged to watch the
effect. It would be like having to look on at a vivisection. There are
things I don't want to see or to know. All that is really imperative is
that, whatever the outcome, they should consider us their friends."
The letter was not finished till she was alone that night. She wrote
carefully at first, choosing just the right words. "Thor is sleeping at
the other house, and may continue to do so for some time. He seems to
want to be there--as you can understand. Not only does he make it more
bearable for Uncle Sim and Cousin Amy, but he gets a kind of assuagement
to his grief in being near Claude. You needn't be surprised, therefore,
if he remains a little longer--perhaps longer than you might expect."
Up to this point she had been cautious, but for a minute something less
controlled escaped her. "Oh, mother darling, I want to be a good wife to
Thor, as you've been a good wife to papa. He needs me, and yet in his
inmost heart he's bearing this great trial alone. Don't misunderstand
me. I haven't broken down. Perhaps if I could have broken down a little
it would have brought me nearer to him. But I'm not near to him. There's
the truth. I'm infinitely far away from him. In a sense I'm infinitely
below him; for though I've been right in certain matters in which he has
been wrong, I feel strangely his inferior. He has things on his
conscience for which I know he finds it hard to see the way of
repentance--and I have nothing on mine--nothing, that is, but a vague
discomfort and a sense of not being wholly right--and yet I feel that
he's--how shall I put it?--that he's the nearer to God of us two. He
needs me, and I ought to help him; but it's like helping some one who's
on a tower while I stay on the ground. Oh, mother darling, why can't I
be to him what you've been to papa? What is it that men get from women
which _saves_ them? Thor needs saving just as much as other men, though
you mightn't suppose so. I know you think him perfect, and I used to
think the same; but he's not. He has faults--grave ones. I even know
that he's weak where I'm strong, and that the thing he needs is the
thing I can supply--only I don't supply it. Mother dear, you've given it
to papa or he wouldn't be recovering as he is. Why can't I give it, too?
He's there in that house, and I'm here in this. His heart is aching for
grief, and mine because I don't know how to comfort him--and all because
the glimmer of light that leads me on isn't strong enough. It's better
than nothing; I don't deny that. I can grope my way by it when I might
expect to be utterly bewildered--but, oh, mother dear, it's not love."
But having read this page in the morning, she suppressed and destroyed
it. After the night's rest she was more sure of herself. Since she had
any clue at all she felt it wise to possess her soul in patience and see
to what issue it would lead her. For the passages she withdrew she
substituted, therefore, such an account of Rosie as would put her mother
in touch with that portion of Claude's life.
"It's hard to know how the little thing feels just now," she went on,
when the main facts had been given, "because she's so stunned by dread.
It's the same dread that oppresses us all, but which is so much more
terrible for them. For poor little Rosie the things that have happened
are secondary now to what may happen still. _That_ almost blots Claude
out of her mind. Luckily she has a great deal of pluck--of what in our
old-fashioned New England phrase was called grit. That she'll win in the
end, and come out at last to a kind of happiness, I haven't the least
doubt, especially as she has that fine fellow, Jim Breen, to turn to.
You remember him, don't you? It's touching to see his tenderness to
Rosie, now that she has such a need of him. It's the more touching
because she doesn't give him anything but the most indirect
encouragement. He knows perfectly well that whatever he gets from her
now will be only her second best, but he's grateful even for that.
"She came to me yesterday morning of her own accord, before I could get
word to her. William Sweetapple had heard the news and told her as he
passed the house where they have just gone to live in Susan Street.
Rosie had been early to the door to take in the milk, and Sweetapple was
going by. She flew here at once. I had expected her to be crushed--but
she wasn't. As I've just said, she seemed to be looking forward rather
than looking back. She was looking forward to what I've hinted at and
dare not say, and setting her face as a flint. That is how I can best
describe her--and yet it was as a flint with a wonderful shine on it, as
if something had come to her in the way of inner illumination that used
not to be in her at all. Jim Breen is fond of saying that this is not
the Rosie of a year or two ago, and it isn't. It's not even the Rosie of
the episode with Claude. Her face is now like a lighted lamp as compared
with the time when it was blank. I'm not enough in her confidence to
know exactly what has wrought the change, so that I can only guess. It
seems to me the same thing that has given the mother a new view of life,
only that Rosie has probably come to it by another way. They're
strangely alike, those two--each so tense, so strong, so demanding, each
broken on the wheel, and each with that something firm and fine in the
grain to which the wheel can do no more than impart a higher _patina_ of
polishing. They seem to me to bring down into our rather sugary life
some of the old, narrow, splendidly austere New England qualities that
have almost passed away and to make them bloom--bloom, that is, as the
portulacca blooms, in a parched soil where any other plant would bake,
and yet with an almost painfully vivid brilliancy. Doesn't George
Meredith say in one of his books--is it _The Egoist_?--that the light of
the soul should burn upward? Well, that's what it seems to do in
them--to burn upward with a persistent glow, in spite of conditions that
might reasonably put it out."
"The old man is a mystery to me," she wrote later, "chiefly because it
is so impossible to connect him with any of the things we fear. He
seemed so small and shrunken and harmless as he sat on the portico
yesterday morning, drinking his coffee and munching a slice of toast,
that he appealed to me only as something to be taken care of. That
sinister element which I've seen in him of late had gone altogether,
leaving nothing but his old, faded, dreamy mildness, contented and
appeased. That is the really uncanny thing, that he seems _satisfied_.
He showed no fear of us at all, nor the slightest nervousness, not even
when Thor came. Thor was startled to see him there at first, but I
managed to whisper a word or two in French, so that he went straight up
to Fay and shook hands. I was glad of that. It put us in the right
attitude--that of not trying to find a victim or looking for revenge."
Before adding her next paragraph she weighed its subject-matter
pensively. It was not necessary to her letter; it was nothing her mother
was obliged to know. She decided to say it, however, from an instinct
resembling that of self-preservation. If her mother were ever to hear
anything....
"Thor saw Rosie, too. He was coming down-stairs from taking a bath just
as she was in the hall going away. It was the first time he'd seen her
since before we were married. He was so lovely to her!--I wish I could
tell you! You know he used to be interested in her in the days when her
mother was his only patient. It was through him, if you remember, that
Rosie and I came to be friends in the first place. He asked me to go and
see her, to be nice to her. He feels very strongly that we people of the
old, simple American stock should have held together in a way we haven't
done, and that we shouldn't have allowed money to dig the abyss between
us which I'm afraid is there now. I know that you personally are not
interested in ideals of this kind, and yet Thor wouldn't be the Thor you
love unless he had them. So he was lovely with Rosie, holding her hand,
and looking down at her with those kind eyes of his, and begging her,
whatever happened--_whatever happened_, mind you!--to throw everything
on him in the way they would do if he was brother to them all. People
talk about the brotherhood of man; but there will never be any such
thing as the brotherhood of man till more men, and more women, too, get
the spirit that's in him."
* * * * *
Claude had been a week or more in his grave when the letters began to
arrive from Mrs. Willoughby.
"As to our sailing," she wrote from London, "everything depends on Ena.
My cablegrams will have told you that she's better, but not exactly
_how_. She's better mentally, and very sweet. _I_ think it surprising.
Now that the first shock is past, she's calmer, too, and doesn't say so
often that she expected it. Why she should have expected it I couldn't
make out till last night, when Archie told me that there'd been
something between Claude and a girl named Fay. I remember those Fays;
queer people they always were, and rather uppish. _She_ was a big,
handsome girl when I was a little one. Eliza Grimes was her name, and as
long ago as that she couldn't keep her place. I remember how she came
for a while to Aunt Rachel's school, though not for long. Aunt Rachel
couldn't draw too exclusive a line at first, but she did drop her in the
end. I should never have thought that Claude would take up with a girl
like that--Claude, of all people. You can't run counter to class
distinctions without making trouble, I always say--and you see how it
acts. You and Thor are far too republican, or too democratic, or
whatever it is, but I never thought that of poor Claude.
"Not that Archie attributes this dreadful thing to the connection with
the Fays. He won't hear of any such suggestion. Ena seemed to look on it
at first as a retribution, but Archie insists that there never was
anything to retribute. There may be two opinions about that, though,
mind you, I'm not saying so. To the best of my ability I'm letting
bygones be bygones, as I think I've shown. But Ena certainly thought so
at first, and it's my belief she does still. She's told me herself that
when they were motoring through Devon and Cornwall they never reached
their destination for the night without her being afraid of a cablegram
awaiting their arrival. She was sure something terrible was going to
happen, and knew it before they left home. I asked her in that case why
in the name of goodness they should have come, but she couldn't answer
me. Or, rather, she did answer me--just the kind of answer you'd expect
from her. It was to get some new things, and she's got them. Lovely,
some of them are, especially the dinner-gowns from Mariette's--but with
their money--_and where it comes from_--it's easy to dress. Retribution
indeed! It must be retribution enough for the poor thing just to look at
them. She's already had a woman from Jay's to talk over her mourning.
Seems heartless, doesn't it? but then, of course, she must have it.
Jay's woman had to take her measurements from the gray traveling-suit,
for the doctor won't let her get up for another week, not even to be
fitted. That will show you how far we are from sailing, and poor Archie
has changed the bookings twice.
"As for him, I can't tell, for the life of me, how he feels about being
kept here--he's so frightfully the gentleman. I've always said that he
wore good manners not as his natural face, but as a mask, and I feel it
now more than ever. It's a mask that hides even his tears, though I'm
sure, poor man, they flow fast enough beneath it. All the same, I
suspect that he finds it something of a relief to be held up here--for a
while, at any rate. He wishes he was home, and yet for some reason he's
afraid to get there. Terrible as everything is, I know he feels that it
will be more terrible still when he's on the spot."
It was in a subsequent letter that Mrs. Willoughby wrote: "I had to
scrawl so hurriedly yesterday to catch the first mail that I couldn't
begin at the beginning, or get to the point, or anything. I'll try now,
though, as for the beginning, it's like going back to the dark ages, it
all seems so long ago.
"Your first cablegram giving us the news arrived at Les Dalles in the
middle of the afternoon, and such a scramble as we had to get over to
Havre in time for the night boat! I can't tell you how we felt, for it
was one of those shocks so awful that you don't feel anything. At least
I didn't feel anything, though I can't say the same of your father. He,
poor lamb, has felt it terribly, so sensitive as he is, and so easily
upset. Well, we managed to get to Havre in time, and had a fair
crossing. We reached London about ten in the morning, and of course had
no notion of where Archie and Ena were. So we drove to their bankers,
and, as luck would have it, found they were in London on their way
between Cornwall and the north.
"Once we'd learned that, we came straight to this hotel, and sent up our
cards. After that we waited. Waited! I should say so. Your father got
crosser and crosser, threatening to go away without breaking the news at
all. We knew they thought we'd come to make trouble about old scores,
and were discussing whether or not to see us. When word came at last
that we were to be shown up your father was in such a state that I had
to leave him in the public parlor and go and face it alone.
"I wonder if you've ever had the experience of being ushered into a room
where you could see you weren't wanted? I don't suppose so. I never had
it before, and I hope I never shall again. It was one of those chintzy
English sitting-rooms with flowers in every corner. I shall never see
Shirley poppies again without thinking of poor Claude. Archie was
standing in the middle of the floor, looking more the gentleman than
ever, but no Ena!
"'I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, Bessie,' he said, with that frigid
sympathy of his which to me is always like iced water down the spine.
'Is there anything I can do for you?'
"We were facing each other, with a round table between us. 'No, Archie,'
I said. 'I didn't come on my account, but on yours.'
"I can see him still--the way he stood--with a queer little upward flash
of the eyebrows. 'Indeed?'
"'Yes. I had a cablegram yesterday afternoon--from Lois.' I gave him
time to take that in. 'We came over at once--Len and I.'
"I had scarcely said this when my heart leaped into my mouth, for Ena
cried out from behind the door leading into the bedroom, where I felt
sure she was: 'It's about Claude!' It was the strangest sound I ever
heard--the kind of sound she might have made if she saw something
falling on her that would kill her.
"Archie stood motionless, but he turned a kind of gray-white. 'Is it?'
was all he asked.
"I waited again--waited long enough to let them see that what I had to
tell was grave. 'It is, Archie,' I said then.
"'Is he--?' Archie began, but I saw he couldn't finish. In fact he
didn't need to finish, because Ena cried out again, 'He's dead!'
"Archie could only question me with his eyes, so that I said, 'I'm sorry
to have been the one to bring you the news--'
"I got no further than that when a kind of strangling moan came from Ena
and a sound as if she was falling. Archie ran into the bedroom, and the
first thing I heard was, 'Bessie, for God's sake come here!' When I got
there Ena was lying in a little tumbled heap beside the couch. She had
on her lilac kimono and could just as well have seen me as not, so I
knew that what we had said down-stairs had been true. They did want to
give us the cold shoulder.
"Well, you can imagine that it was all over with that. We had everything
we could do to bring Ena around and get her on the couch. It took the
longest time, and while we were doing it--before she could follow
anything we said--Archie asked me what I knew, and I told him. I was
glad to be able to do it in just that way, because I could break it up
and get it in by pieces, a fact at a time. There was so much for him to
do, too, that he couldn't give his whole mind to it, which was another
mercy.
"When I could leave Ena I slipped into the sitting-room, shutting the
door behind me, and letting Archie tell her what I had been able to tell
him. While he was doing that I scribbled a little note, saying that Len
and I were going to Garland's, where they would find us in case we could
do anything more to help them. Without waiting for him to come out of
the bedroom, I left the note on the table and went away."
In succeeding letters Mrs. Willoughby told how Archie had come to them
at Garland's, had insisted on their returning with him to the hotel in
Brook Street, and had installed them in a suite of rooms contiguous to
his own. Moreover, he clung to them, begging them not to leave him. It
was the most extraordinary turning of the tables Bessie had ever known.
He produced the impression of a man not only stunned, but terrified. If
the hand that had smitten Claude had been stretched right out of heaven
he could not have seemed more overawed. He was afraid--that was what it
amounted to. If Mrs. Willoughby read him aright, the tragic thing
affected him like the first trumpet-note of doom. It was as if he saw
the house he had built with so much calculation beginning to tumble
down--laid low by some dread power to which he was holding up his hands.
He was holding up his hands not merely in petition, but in propitiation.
She was not blind to the fact that there was a measure of propitiation
in his boarding and lodging her husband and herself. He clung to them
because his desolation needed something that stood for old friendship to
cling to; but in addition to that he had dim visions of the dread power
that had smitten Claude looming up behind them and acting somehow on
their behalf.
"It's all very well to insist that there's nothing to retribute," ran a
passage in one of the letters, "but the poor fellow is saying one thing
with his lips and another in his soul. What's the play in which the
ghosts come back? Is it "Hamlet," or "Macbeth," or one of Ibsen's? Well,
it's like that. He's seeing ghosts. He wants us to be on hand because we
persuade him that they're not there--that they can't be there, so long
as we're all on friendly terms, and that we're not laying up anything
against him. The very fact that he pays our bills makes him hope that
the ghosts will keep away."
"We've promised to go back with them," she informed her daughter
elsewhere. "For one thing, Ena needs me. If I didn't go she'd have to
have a nurse; and I'd rather not leave her till she's safe in your
hands. I must say I can't make her out. She puzzles me more than Archie
does. Now that a week has gone by and the first shock is over, she's
like a person coming out of a trance. She's so sweet and gentle that
it's positively weird. Of course she's always been sweet--that's her
style--but not in this way. Upon my word, I don't know whether she has a
soul or not--whether she never had one, or whether one is being born in
her. But she's patient, and you might even say resigned. There's no
question about that. She's not a bit hard to take care of, making little
or no demand, and just trying to get up strength enough to sail. She's
grieving over Claude; and yet her grief has the touching quality in it
that you get from a sweet old tune. I must say I don't understand
it--_not in her_."
It was when she was able to announce that Mrs. Masterman was well enough
to sail that Mrs. Willoughby acknowledged the first letters from her
daughter. "We go by the _Ruritania_ on the 3rd. Archie is simply furious
at the hints you're all throwing out about that old man Fay. Perfectly
preposterous, is what he calls them. He seems to think that, once he is
on the spot, he'll be able to show every one that Fay had no possible
reason to want to avenge himself, and must therefore be beyond
suspicion. I must say Archie doesn't strike me as vindictive, which is
another surprise, if one could ever be surprised in a Masterman. They're
all queer, Thor as much as any of them, though he's queer in such
lovable ways. I mean that you never can tell what freaks they'll take,
whether for evil or for good. Nothing would astonish me less than to see
Archie himself in sackcloth and ashes one of these days, and I do
believe that it's the thing he's afraid of himself. What he's fighting
in all this business about Fay is his own impulse to do penance. He's
thinking of the figure he'll cut, wearing a shroud and carrying a
lighted candle. Of course it interests us because--well, because it may
turn out to be a matter of dollars and cents. Not that I count on it.
I've put all that behind me, and I must say that your father and I have
never been so happy together as during these last few months. We get
along perfectly on what we have, and we don't lack for anything. Of
course the way in which your father, the sweet lamb, is improving makes
all the difference in the world to me. So Archie needn't repent on our
account. We've let all that go. It only strikes me as funny the way he
can't do enough for us--taxis at the door the minute we put our noses
out--flowers in the sitting-room--and everything. I know perfectly well
what it means. It isn't _us_. He's simply sacrificing to the hoodoo or
the voodoo that he sees behind us--just like any other Masterman."
She added in a postscript: "You can read Thor as much or as little of my
letters as you choose. I don't care--not a bit! I told him before you
were married that I always intended to speak my mind about his father,
like it or lump it who would."
CHAPTER XXXV
The rest of that year became to Archie Masterman a period of popularity
and triumph, in so far as such terms could be used of a man so sorely
bereaved. Nothing ever sat on him with finer effect than the air of
dignity, charity, and sorrow with which he returned from Europe, while
his stand toward poor old Jasper Fay brought him a degree of sympathy
new even to one whose personality had been sympathetic at all times. The
letter he wrote to Eliza Fay when her husband was put under arrest,
dissociating himself from the act of the guardians of the law and
protesting his belief in his former tenant's innocence, was conceived in
a spirit so noble as to raise the estimate of human nature in the minds
of all who knew its contents. Whatever the inner convictions of the
much-tried woman to whom it was addressed, the document was too precious
to her husband's cause not to be exhibited, though in the matter of
inner convictions Lois was obliged to caution her.
"I wouldn't put it beyond him, not a mite," Mrs. Fay had confessed, with
tragic matter-of-fact; "not after the way he's talked, I wouldn't, and
Matt don't, either."
"Has your son said so?"
"He's said worse. He's said that if he didn't do it, he ought to have.
That's the way he talks. Oh, he's no comfort to me! I knew he wouldn't
be, after that awful place, but I didn't look for him to be quite what
he is, wanting to kill and blow up everything. An I. I. A. is what he
calls himself, and the Lord only knows what that is. I blame myself,"
she went on, with dry, unrelenting statement of the case. "I didn't
bring them up right. I was discontented--"
"Oh, but there's a discontent that's divine," Lois broke in,
consolingly.
"Well, this wasn't it. It was 'hateful and hating one another,' as Paul
says. I put it into their heads--I mean Fay's and the children's. Matt'd
commit murder now as quick as a kitten'll lap milk--or he says he would;
and as for Fay--"
Lois interrupted, hurriedly, "We shouldn't do him the injustice of
condemning him in advance, should we?"
The woman held herself erect, her hard, uncompromising eyes, in which
there was nevertheless an odd suffusion of softness, looking straight
over her companion's head. "I can't help what I know."
"And _I_ can't help what _I_ know, which is that you and I have nothing
to do with judgment, still less with condemnation. There are others to
attend to that, while we try to bring"--she uttered the word with
diffidence--"try to bring love."
"Oh, love!" The tone was that of one who had long ago given up anything
so illusory.
"Then whatever we can find that will take the place of love," Lois
replied, with relief at getting back to ground of which she was more
sure. "Let us call it good will."
Good will was, in fact, what Reuben Hilary had called it, and it was
from him she was quoting. Having gone to him for the analysis of her own
state of mind, she had been comforted to learn that she placed no
impediment in the way of public justice through being privately
merciful.
"The mission of Christ, me dear Mrs. Thor, was salvation. And what do we
mean by salvation? Isn't it the state of being saved? And what do we
want to be saved from? Isn't it from trouble and evil of all kinds? And
where and when do we want to be saved from them? Isn't it right here and
right now? And who are the people that need most to be saved? Isn't it
those that are threatened with danger? And who is to save them? Isn't it
you and I? What more do you ask?"
"So that when it comes to justice--"
"Ah, now, I'm not botherin' about justice. Justice has her sword and her
scales. Let her look after her own affairs. What you and I are out after
is good will."
So Lois got further light upon her way and followed it. She followed it
the more easily because her father-in-law seemed willing to follow it,
too. He could do this with a touching grace since more fully than by
letter she assured him that Claude had come back to redeem his word.
"Oh, thank God!" Ena had exclaimed, on hearing this information
emphasized. "The darling boy was always the soul of honor."
An ethereal vision in black, she was having a cup of tea in the library
before going up-stairs to take off her traveling-dress. Thor, who had
met the party at the dock, had accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby to
their own house, so that Lois was able to get a few words with the
sorrowing parents alone, giving them in fuller detail that which her
letters had only sketched. She had assumed the privilege of the daughter
of the house to sit at the tea-table, while for the minute the returned
voyagers took their place as guests.
There were reasons now why Archie was able to echo his wife's rejoicing
in Claude's change of heart. In this new turn to the situation, which he
had but imperfectly seized from what had been written, he could get the
same kind of consolation that a father draws from the death of a son in
a war with which he has no sympathy. It was the death of a brave man,
when all was said and done. It was also death in conditions that made
his own position the stronger, since it was an aid to the clearing of
his conscience. It detracted nothing from his grief that he should use
Claude's yearning for redemption as a fresh proof that Jasper Fay had
not even a shadowy motive for revenge; and with the elimination of Fay's
motive for revenge, he, Archie Masterman, was more amply acquitted at
the bar before which the hereditary Masterman impulse summoned him. Lois
had the greater confidence, therefore, in making her appeals.
"If they do imprison him, you see, the family will be left without
means. One of these days I think Rosie will marry Jim Breen--"
Ena gave a little cry of disapproval. "What? After _Claude_!"
"Oh, it won't be for a long time yet; and while this trouble is hanging
over her father she won't listen to any suggestion of the kind, little
as she would before. Still--in the end--it will be only natural--" She
left Rosie there. "And Thor's been so good about the son--only--well,
the I. I. A., whatever that is, have got hold of him, so that we can't
count on him to do anything for the poor mother, if she's left alone, or
for Rosie--"
"I'll take care of them." It was probable that Archie Masterman had
never in his life said anything that gave him so complete a
satisfaction. Before Lois could respond to his generosity he went on to
add: "I needn't appear in the matter. I'll leave it to your ingenuity to
find the way to take care of them without mentioning me at all--unless
you think it would be a comfort to them, as a sign of my confidence in
poor old Fay. _That_ I should like to have generally known--that I
absolve him entirely."
By sheer force of will Lois refused to see him as sacrificing to the
hoodoo or the voodoo of which her mother's letters had apprised her. If
she had nothing to do with condemnation in the case of Jasper Fay, she
had nothing to do with it, she reminded herself, in that of Archie
Masterman. Her part in life was to accept every one at his nominal face
value, for only so could she put good will into effective operation.
Tea was over and they were on their feet when she felt her own need
demanding consideration. It was not without nervousness that she said,
"You know Thor has been staying here with Cousin Amy and Uncle Sim."
"So we understood."
"Well, I think he might like to stay a little longer."
"That's not necessary on our account," Masterman said, promptly.
"It wouldn't be on your account, but on his own. That is," she
explained, "he might think it was on your account, but in reality to
feel that he was comforting you would be a comfort to him."
Claude's mother gave way to the first little sob since entering the
house, while the father's face settled to the stoniness that masked his
suffering. "Wouldn't it look very queer?" was all he said. "People might
not understand it."
"Oh, they haven't understood it as it is; but does that matter? I know
there's been talk in the village during the past few weeks, but surely
we're in a position to ignore it." In the hope of opening up the way for
Thor in what he had to make clear, she decided to go further. While
speaking she kept her eyes on Masterman. "You may not need him, but he
may need you. As a matter of fact, he has still something to explain to
you which I may as well tell you now. On that night--the night of the
ninth of July--Thor and Claude were here in the house together. There
was trouble between them."
Mrs. Masterman gasped; her husband breathed hard, saying, merely, "Go
on."
"I don't know what the quarrel was exactly, but--but--there were blows."
"Not the blow--?" Masterman began, with horror in his tone.
"Oh no, not that," Lois interposed, hastily, going on to explain briefly
the incidents of the struggle between the brothers, as far as she knew
them. "That part of it was all over," she continued, eagerly, before
either of the parents could comment on this new phase of the event.
"Claude wasn't much hurt. You can see that from the way he was able to
get up and come out into the air while Thor was running up to our house
for brandy. If there hadn't been some one lurking in the shrubbery--"
"He's been a terrible son to me," Masterman broke in, wrathfully. "When
it isn't in one way it's in another. What have I done to deserve--?"
"He _is_ terrible," Lois admitted, soothingly; "but, oh, Mr. Masterman,
he's terrible in such splendid ways! He hasn't found himself yet; but he
will if you'll give him time. Whatever he's done wrong he'll atone for
nobly. You'll see!"
The mother's intervention came to Lois as a new surprise. "Whatever he's
done wrong he's sorry for. We can be sure of that." She turned to her
husband. "Archie, Claude was my son; and I want to tell you now, before
we go any further, that no matter what happened between Thor and him, I
forgive it, if there's anything to forgive."
"I know Thor feels there was something to forgive," Lois confessed on
her husband's behalf, "whether there was or not."
"Then tell him to come to me," Ena commanded, in a tone such as Lois had
never heard from her.
"I'll tell him to go to you, if you'll ask him to stay here with you a
little longer."
"I sha'n't ask him; Archie will, won't you, Archie?" She laid her hand
on his arm, pleadingly. "If you do, it will mean that you and I are not
trying to judge our two boys, or take sides between them"--she gave a
little sob--"now when it's no use. They quarreled, as brothers will, but
they were fond of each other, for all that."
"Thor adored Claude," Lois said, simply. "I think he cared for him more
than for any one in the world that--that I know of."
Masterman wheeled suddenly and walked away, while his wife made signs to
Lois that they had won.
But it was in another frame of mind that Thor's wife said to herself, as
she saw him coming toward her along County Street: "Now I shall see! I
shall see if he will!"
She meant that now he might return to her, that he might return as a
matter of course. If he came of his own accord, something within her
would leap to greet him. So much she knew; but beyond it she would not
trust herself to go. "I shall see if he will!" she repeated, with
emphasis, throwing the responsibility of taking the first step on him.
It was on him, she felt, that it lay. She had asked him to leave her
until she was prepared to call him back, and she was not prepared. If he
were to ask to be taken back, her attitude could lawfully be different.
Since it was he who had made void the union she had supposed to be based
on love, it was for him to suggest another built on whatever they could
find as a substitute. Great as her pity for him was, she could not by so
much as a glance or a smile relieve him from that necessity.
As they drew near each other she recognized the minute as one that would
be decisive, if not for the rest of life, yet for a long time to come.
She could look ahead and select the very tree under which they would
meet. As a result of the few words that would be then exchanged their
lives would blend again--or he would go to the one house and she to the
other, and they would be further apart than they had ever been before.
He might not think it or see it, because men were so dense; but she
would be as quick to read the signs of which he would remain unconscious
as a bird to scent a storm.
For this very reason she reduced her manner, when they came face to
face, to the simplest and most casual. It was a matter of pride with her
to exert no influence, to leave him free. Not that she found it
necessary to take pains, for she saw from the first minutes of encounter
that his mind was far away from that part of their interests which she
put first. Into her comments on the wonderful courage displayed by Mr.
and Mrs. Masterman he broke, abruptly:
"They've arrested Fay."
What came next was as nearly of the nature of a vow as a man could
venture on without melodramatic eloquence. All his energies, all his
money, all his time, were to be dedicated to securing Fay's acquittal.
For Claude's death one man, and one man only, was to blame. It was
probable enough that Fay had actually struck the blow; it was probable,
too, that he had done it not to avenge himself primarily on Claude, but
on Claude's father. To Thor that was secondary, almost of no importance.
Had he not allowed himself to become a prey to whatever was most
ferocious and malignant in human nature, the crime would never have been
committed. Granting that Fay would have lain in wait for Claude in any
case, an agile young man would have been more than a match for so
enfeebled an antagonist even when armed with a knife, had not some
preceding struggle exhausted him.
To Thor it was so clear that he was beyond the reach of argument. He was
likewise beyond the reach of anything that could be called a purpose or
a wish but that of seeing that another man shouldn't suffer in his
stead. From the region into which this absorption and consecration
carried him Lois found herself and her claims on him thrust out. Whether
he went back to her or whether he did not was, for the time being at any
rate, of so little moment in his eyes that apparently no thought of this
aspect of their situation had occurred to him. It was more stinging to
her pride that he should not consider it than that he should consider it
and refuse. She was fully aware that her irony was thrown away when she
said, in a tone kept down to the matter-of-fact and colloquial:
"And, Thor dear, if they ask you to stay on at the other house, don't
think of me. I've got papa and mamma again. They'll keep me company as
long as"--she was obliged to think of an expression that would imply a
term--"as long as I may need them."
In response to these words he merely nodded. "Very well." The assent was
given as if, whatever the arrangement, it would be a matter of
indifference to them both.
So he went his way and she went hers. Monstrous as it was, monstrous as
she found him, as she found herself, she could hardly conceive of their
doing anything else. If she was unhappy, her unhappiness lay too deep in
subliminal abysses to struggle to the surface of her consciousness. That
he should go to the one house and she to the other was as right as it
had been ten years before. It was so right that she was stupefied by its
rightness. It was so right that the rightness acted on her like an
opiate. It was a minute in which sheer helplessness might have relaxed
her hold on her substitute for love had she not had such pressing need
to make use of it there and then.
She made use of it as, on occasions requiring a show of lavishness,
people eke out a meager supply of silver with plenty of plausible
electroplate. In installing her parents in their old rooms, in bidding
them take their place as masters and forget that they were guests, she
simulated the pleasure not only of a happy daughter but of a happy wife.
While the circumstances of the home-coming tempered anything in the
nature of exuberance, they couldn't forbid all joy, and of joy of just
the right sparkle she was as prodigal as if her treasure-chest had been
stocked with it. Moreover, she was sure that except for the protest, "If
we take these rooms, what are you going to do with Thor?" the worthy
couple didn't know the difference between what she placed before them
and the sterling metal with the hall-mark.
If there was a suspicion in her mother's mind it reserved itself till,
on kissing them good night, Lois fled to the room she had occupied as a
girl. Though she closed the door behind her, the mother pushed it open.
"Look here, Lois," Bessie said, not quite with anxiety and yet not quite
without it, "there's nothing between you and Thor, is there?"
Lois felt that the form of the question saved her. It enabled her to
answer so much more truthfully than her mother knew. "No, mamma dear;
there's nothing at all between us." She went so far as to make the
declaration emphatic and indulge in a tone of faint bitterness:
"_Absolutely_ nothing at all--and I doubt if there ever will be--now."
Though the mother retired before she could catch the concluding
syllable, Lois regretted the bitterness as soon as she felt it escape
her. There was no bitterness in her substitute for love, for the
substitute for love was.... She had always admitted that she didn't know
_what_ it was. But there came back to her mind the words she had been
acting upon for a fortnight and more: "The mission of Christ, me dear
Mrs. Thor, was salvation." And there was no bitterness in that.
CHAPTER XXXVI
"Funny thing the way people talk about salvation," Uncle Sim observed to
Lois, on an evening in the autumn when his legs were extended before her
fire. "To hear 'em you'd think there was no salvation except for sin,
and none even for that but what is post-mortem. Post-mortem salvation
may be all very well, but if there's anything blessed I want it right
now."
"Of course, with a good man like you--"
"Good? Good's got nothing to do with it--or not much. The man who is
called the Saviour, above every one else, didn't wait for people to be
good before He saved them. He saved them first and said 'Sin no more' to
them afterward."
"Oh, but with His extraordinary means--"
"He had no means that you haven't got yourself--in essence. Difference
between you and Him is not in kind, but in degree. If He could save all
men, you and I can at least save one or two or a dozen--or do something
toward it."
"You mean save them _here_."
"Saving 'em here is saving 'em anywhere, isn't it?"
"And you don't mean saving them only in the theological sense of saving
their souls--"
"Mean saving 'em anyhow. Save a man from hanging, or a child from
tumbling in the mud, or an old woman from having her best bonnet spoiled
by rain--it's all salvation--it all meets the human need--it's all part
of the same principle--it all works to the same end."
"And what is the end?"
"The same as the middle, and the same as the beginning, and the same as
it is all through." He rose and stretched himself. "I leave you to find
your own name for it. I call it by a word of four letters," he laughed,
"and it begins with an _l_. You can't have too much of it, if you know
what it is--which is just what many people don't know."
She stood before him, coloring, smiling a little, but with eyes lowered.
"I wonder if _I_ know what it is, Uncle Sim?"
"If you don't," he smiled down at her, "you're taking a good way to
learn."
This view of the principle she was using as a guide was not new to her;
it was only illuminating and corroborative. It was spectrum analysis
where she had seen a star. It was the kingdom of heaven reduced from a
noble phrase to such terms of simple, kindly living as she knew herself
able to fulfil. It was the ideal become practical, and the present
rendered one with the eternal, with the fruits of righteousness sown in
peace of them that make peace beyond anything she had ever expected. On
the winter afternoon when Jasper Fay was acquitted she could look back
over the preceding seven or eight months and see how relatively easy all
had been. She said relatively easy for the reason that much had of
necessity been hard. The distinction she made was that what had been
hard would have been overwhelming had she not taken the principle of
immediate salvation, where it could be brought about, as law. By meeting
each minute's need with the utmost of her strength she found the next
minute's need less terrible. By allowing no one to suffer a shade more,
or an instant longer, than she could help, she perceived a lessening of
the strain all round. With the lessening of the strain it was easier to
calm passions and disarm antipathies. If she could say nothing else for
her substitute for love, she was obliged to admit that it worked.
She was thinking so with a great thankfulness when Thor came to tell her
of the rendering of the verdict. Though he had telephoned the fact, he
was eager to give her the details face to face. He did this while they
stood in the tapestried square hall, avoiding each other's eyes.
It had not been picturesque, he explained to her; but it had been
satisfactory. Though an hour had sufficed the jury to reach their
decision, the farmers and market-gardeners who had formed the mass of
the spectators had forestalled it and scattered to their homes. The
dramatic interest was over; it was generally felt that no more than a
formality remained. When for the last time Jasper Fay was led in to
confront his peers it was before a comparatively empty court.
Because he had suddenly become self-conscious, Thor went on with his
account stammeringly and with curious hesitations. Still wearing his fur
motoring-coat, he held his cap in his hand, like a man in a hurry to get
away.
"I couldn't see even then--at the very end--that the old fellow knew
what it was all about. He looked round him with the same glassy stare
that he's had ever since--ever since that morning when we gave him the
coffee. Mind all gone, poor old chap--and perhaps it's just as well. He
smiled a bit when it was all over and they pushed him from one group to
another to shake his hand, but he didn't realize what he had escaped."
Lois, too, was self-conscious. In this lifting of the burden from Thor's
mind something had changed in their mutual relation. It was as if a
faculty arrested on the night Claude died had suddenly resumed its
function, taking them by surprise. Not in this way had she expected the
thing that seemed dead to come to life again, so that she was unprepared
for the signs of its rebirth. Absorbed as she would otherwise have been
in Thor's narration, she could now follow him but absently. "How did
they get home from Colcord?"
She asked the question to keep him going, lest he should say the thing
she was so strangely afraid to hear. He answered like a man who talks
about what isn't on his mind in order to conceal what is. "I drove them
in. The old fellow sat in the tonneau with Rosie and Jim Breen. Matt Fay
refused the lift and took the train to Marchfield."
A little crowd at the court-house door, he recounted further, had
called, "Three cheers for Dr. Thor!" Another little crowd had greeted
them with a similar welcome on their arrival in Susan Street. A third
had gathered in the grounds of Thor's father's house, shouting, "Three
cheers for Mr. Masterman!" till the object of this good will responded
by coming out to the porch and making a brief, kindly speech. He was
delivering it as Thor drove up, just as the winter twilight necessitated
the turning on of the electric lights--his slender, well-dressed figure
distinct in the illuminated doorway. Thor could hear the strains of "For
he's a jolly good fellow" as, to avoid further demonstration, he backed
his machine from the avenue and turned toward the other house.
She seized the opportunity to say something she had at heart, which
would also help to tide over a minute she found so embarrassing. "Oh,
Thor, I hope he'll not have to suffer any more. He's paid his penalty by
this time."
"You mean--"
"I mean that I hope he'll never have to be any more definite with
himself than he's been already. You can easily see how it is with him.
It's as if he was two men, one accusing and the other defending. I don't
want to have the defense break down altogether, or to see him driven to
the wall. I couldn't bear it."
He waited a long minute before speaking. "If you're thinking of the real
responsibility for Claude's death--"
She nodded. "Yes, I am."
Again he waited. "He puts that on me."
"He puts it on you so as not to take it on himself," she said, quickly,
"because to take it on himself would be beyond human nature to bear.
Don't you see, Thor? We know and he knows that if Jasper Fay did it, it
was not to avenge himself on Claude, but on some one else. But now that
the law says that Fay _didn't_ do it--"
He interrupted, quietly: "I've talked it out with father, and we
understand each other perfectly. You needn't be afraid on his account.
I've taken everything on myself--as I ought to take it."
"Oh, Thor!"
"The only thing that matters about the law is that it shouldn't condemn
any one but me. Now that that danger is out of the way, I can--begin."
She forgot her embarrassment in looking up at him with streaming eyes.
"Begin how, Thor?"
"Begin doing what you told me from the first--begin to start again--to
get it under my feet--to stand on it--to be that much higher up--and not
be"--he fumbled with his cap, his head hung guiltily--"not be ridden by
remorse--any more than--than I can help."
"You'll do it, Thor; you'll do it nobly--"
What she had to say, however, got no further, for the front door was
flung open to allow of Mrs. Willoughby's excited entrance, with Len
puffing heavily behind her.
"Oh, so you're here, Thor!" Bessie cried in the tone of a woman at the
limit of her strength. "Well, I'm glad. You may as well know it first as
last." Breathless, she dropped into one of the hall chairs, endeavoring
to get air by agitating an enormous pillow-muff. "Len's been having--No,
it's too extraordinary!--and I predicted it, didn't I? If you've kept my
letters you've got it down in black and white! Len's been having--It's
just as I said!--it's the shroud and the lighted candle! Len's been
having the strangest, the very _strangest_, talk with Archie."
Lois crept near to her mother, bending down toward her. "But, mother
dear, what about?"
Bessie answered, wildly: "Oh, I don't know what about. I wasn't there. I
was in the drawing-room with Ena. I knew something was going on, from
Ena's manner. What's come over Ena I can't imagine. I've heard of trial
turning human beings into angels, but I never believed it and I can
hardly believe it now. Archie began it himself--I mean with your father.
He beckoned him into the library in the solemnest way. That was after he
had finished his speech and the crowd had stopped cheering. If it _is_
the shroud and the taper--well, all I can say is that he carries them
off just in the way you would expect. No one could do it better, as far
as _that_ goes."
"As far as what goes, mother? I wish you'd tell us."
"It's exactly what I said when I wrote you from London last year. If
you've kept my letters you've got it all down in black and white. He
wants us, and Ena wants us, all to come to dinner. I'm not a bit
surprised--not a bit--though I never counted on it--_never_!"
Thor also bent over her, standing before her, with his hand stretched
out to the back of her chair. "Is it about money, Mrs. Willoughby?"
But she was too far beyond coherence to explain. "He says he wants to
talk to us both after dinner--to Len and me. He's been going over the
accounts again and he finds--he finds--" But she beat with her high
heels on the floor and buried her face in her muff. "Oh, tell them,
Len!--for goodness' sake, tell them! They'll never believe it--not any
more than me."
But her emotion was too much for the big man's shattered nerves. As he
stood just within the doorway, looking with his snowy beard and bushy
white hair like some spectral, aureoled apostle, he began to cry.
CHAPTER XXXVII
Thor and Lois were glad of this interruption. They were glad of the new
and exciting topic. They were glad of the family dinner at the other
house, where they could be together and yet apart. Taking refuge from
each other in any society they could find, they kept close to Mrs.
Masterman when, after dinner, Thor's father retained his two old friends
in the dining-room for the promised explanations. Later in the evening
it was with an emotion like alarm that Lois heard that her parents had
gone home without waiting to bear her company. Secretly she began to
plan methods for stealing away alone. Her shyness of Thor was like
nothing she had known in the days of courtship and marriage, or during
the months in which they had been holding off from each other for
scrutiny and reflection.
It was a shyness which, when they were at last side by side in the
avenue, drove her to affect an over-elaboration of ease. She talked, not
merely because there were so many things to say, but also for the sake
of talking. She talked because he did not, because he towered above her
in the moonlight, dumb, mysterious, waiting. It was that sense of his
waiting that thrilled and terrified her most. It was a large waiting,
patient and deep, the waiting for something predestined and inevitable
that could take its time. It was like the waiting of the ocean for the
streams, of sleep for the day's activities, or of death for all. It
seemed to brood over her like the violet sky, and to quiver with
radiance as the crisp air quivered with the moonlight. It was wide and
restful and bracing. She was walking toward it, she was walking into it,
as she walked over this virginal carpet of snow.
She talked with a kind of desperation--of Thor's father and mother first
of all, of how good they were, each with a special variety of goodness.
It was wonderful what sorrow had done for Mrs. Masterman. "I never see
her now, Thor dear, without thinking of that look in Claude's face that
seemed to us like dawn. I see it in her. Don't you?" Without waiting for
an answer she hurried on. "And your father, Thor. He is good. No one but
a good man could have been so noble toward poor old Fay, when he
knows--when _every one_ knows--no matter what was proved or wasn't
proved in court--when he _knows_ the truth." She seemed to be answering
some unspoken argument on his side as she continued: "Oh yes, I remember
what mamma wrote about it--about the hoodoo or the voodoo--mamma's so
amusing!--but you and I have nothing to do with that, have we, Thor? We
can only take what we see, and judge by what is best. And so with this
wonderful new thing for papa and mamma--that they're to have some of
their money back--we _can't_ go behind it, can we? If he says it was a
mistake we must accept it as that, and never, never let any other
thought come into our minds. I know that papa and mamma, dear, innocent
things--they _are_ dear and innocent, you know, in spite of
everything!--I know they'll only be too glad to take it in the same
way."
Except for an occasional word he had hardly spoken by the time he had
reached the corner of Willoughby's Lane and County Street. Lois had a
renewal of the terror from which her own conversation had distracted
her. The crucial minute was at hand. The door was but a few yards away.
He would either go in with her--or he would go back. She hardly knew
which would be the more supportable--the joy or the dismay.
She caught at the first possibility of postponing both. "Oh, it's so
lovely! Let us walk on a little farther. It isn't half-past nine yet. I
looked at the clock as we were coming out. Papa and mamma ran off so
early. Don't you adore these windless winter nights?--when the air is as
if it had been distilled." She paused in the middle of the road and
looked around. "What's that star, Thor--over there--the one like a great
white diamond?" He told her it was Sirius, adding that its light took
eight years to travel to the earth, and going on to trace with his
finger the constellation of the Dog. The minute's return to the old
habits took some of the feverishness from her sense of tension as they
continued their walk up the hill.
Up the hill there were only two directions in which to go--along the
prosaic road to Marchfield or into the quiet winter woods where masses
of shadow lay interspersed with patches of white moonlight, while, on
this soundless night there was not a murmur in the tree-tops. By
instinct rather than intention they followed a faint, familiar path
running under pines.
Lois was now speaking of the Fays. "Mrs. Fay _knows_. The others
don't--not certainly. Rosie has brought herself round to thinking him
innocent, and Matt and Jim only suspect what happened--but Mrs. Fay
_knows_. It must be a tragic thing to spend your life with a man who's
done a thing like that. Poor soul! We must do what we can to help her,
mustn't we?"
She pursued the theme not for its interest alone, but for the sake of
the objective point to which it was leading her. By speaking freely,
first of Matt and then of Jim Breen, she came at last to Rosie. She
spoke freely of her, too, at the risk of opening up old wounds, at the
risk of lacerating that which was probably still sensitive. Her main
purpose was to speak, and if possible to make him speak, so that this
name should no longer be kept as an inviolable symbol between them.
Since the day when it began to have significance for them both it had
scarcely been pronounced by either otherwise than allusively or of
necessity. She was resolute to make it as little to be shunned as his or
her own.
Not that she was successful, for the minute at any rate. His responses
continued to be brief, so brief that they were hardly responses at all.
They were not grudged or ungracious; they were only like those first
little flashes of lightning which hint that the heavens will soon be
alive. As a frightened boy whistles from bravado, she talked to conceal
her trembling at this coming of celestial wonders.
"Oh, Thor, there'll be so much now to do! It's really only beginning,
isn't it? And it brings in so many elements of our life--I mean of our
whole national life. I like that. I like getting out of our own little
groove--so futile and narrow as it generally is--and being in touch with
what is stronger, even if it's terrific. That's what I feel about Matt
Fay--that he's terrific. He represents a terrific movement, doesn't he?
and one we can't ignore. When I say terrific I don't mean that I'm
afraid of it. I'm not. It seems to me too strengthening to be afraid of.
With all you can say against it, it strikes me as a tonic in our rather
flaccid life, like iron in the blood. I've sympathy with it, too, to
some extent; I've sympathy with _him_. You know, I do belong to the
people. I'm glad we know him, and that in a way we've a right to get
near to him. It puts us in touch with our own national realities as
perhaps otherwise we shouldn't be. Oh, Thor, there's so much to work
out! Isn't it a splendid thing that we can help even to the slightest
degree in doing it!"
To this there was no response whatever. She was not sure that he
listened. Beside her the tall form strode on dumb and dark, crunching
the frozen snow with a creaking sound that roused the winged and furry
things of the wood and silenced her half-hysterical efforts to fight
against that which awaited her like a glory or a doom. Growing suddenly
aware of the uselessness of speaking, she said no more.
After an interval in which her mind seemed to stop working, that of
which she became conscious next was a world of extraordinary purity.
Nothing was ever so white as this snow or this moonlight; nothing was
ever so like the ether beyond the atmosphere as this air; nothing was
ever so golden as the stars in this purple sky, or so mystically solemn
as these pines. As they climbed upward it was like mounting into some
crystal sphere, where evil was not an element.
They came out on that spot in which all the wood-paths converged, that
treeless ridge that rose like a great white altar. It was an end which
neither had foreseen when a half-hour earlier they had prolonged their
walk; otherwise they might have shrunk from it. As it was, the
association of the past with the present startled them, startled them
into pausing long enough to become conscious, to seeing each in the eyes
of the other such things as could not pass into words, before renewing
the ascent. As they continued the way upward it was as if in fulfilment
of some symbolic ceremonial.
They had stood for some minutes silent on the summit, looking out over
the wide, white radiance at their feet, when Thor spoke. "I'm not
thinking about the things you've been talking of. I'm not primarily
interested in them any more."
"You mean--?"
"I mean the helping of others--in the way I've tried it. I see the
mistake in that."
She was faintly surprised. "Indeed?"
"Through the things that have been happening I've worked out--I may say
I've stumbled out--to a great truth."
There was not only surprise in her tone, but curiosity. "Yes, Thor dear.
What is it?"
"It's that a man's first occupation is not with others, but with
himself. It's not to put them right; it's to be right on his own
account." As for the moment she was too disconcerted to comment on this,
he continued: "If reaching this conclusion seems to you like discovering
the obvious, I can only say that it hasn't been obvious to me. It's just
beginning to come to me that I was so busy casting out other people's
devils that I'd forgotten all about my own."
"You've been so generous in all you've thought about other people,
Thor--"
He interrupted with decision. "The most effective way in which to be
generous to other people is to be strict with one's self; but it never
occurred to me till lately. I've been so eager that my neighbor's garden
should be trim and productive, that mine has been overrun with weeds."
Against this self-condemnation she felt it her duty to protest. "But
Uncle Sim says you've always been on the side of the--"
"Yes, I know," he broke in, with what was nearly a laugh. "But it's just
where the dear old fellow has been wrong about me. I've wanted every one
else to be there, on the side of the good things--I admit that--but I
was to have plenty of rope. Now I'm coming to understand--and it's taken
all this trouble to drive it home to my stupidity--that if I want to see
any one else on the side of the angels I must get there first. That's
where the ax must go to the root of the tree. In the main other people
will take care of _them_selves if I take care of _my_self--and I'm going
to try."
She was hurt on his behalf. "Oh, Thor, please don't say such things when
you're so--so noble."
"I'm only saying them, Lois, to show you that I see what's been wrong
with me from the start. You've tried to say it yourself at times, only I
couldn't take it in. Do you remember the day in my office when you came
to tell me that"--he nerved himself to approach the subject with the
simple directness he knew she desired--"that Rosie had--?"
She hastened to come to his aid. "Yes, but I didn't mean it in just that
way."
"No; but I do. I mean it because I can look back and trace it as the
cause of all our disasters from--"
"Oh, Thor!" she pleaded.
He went on, steadily: "From the way in which I asked you to marry me
right up to what--to what happened about Claude." He was obliged to draw
a long, hard breath before saying more. "I was so determined that every
one else should be right that I didn't care how wrong _I_ was--which is
like handing out water from a poisoned well."
She wished she could touch him, or slip her hand into his, by way of
comfort, but the distance between them was still too great. She could
only say: "That's putting it unjustly to yourself, Thor. If you've made
mistakes they've been splendid ones. They've been finer than the ways in
which most of us have been right."
She thought he smiled.
"Oh, I don't ask to be defended or explained. I only want to say that
from to-night onward I shall be starting on a new plan of life. I shall
be working from the inside, and not from the outside. If I'm to do
anything in this world, something must first be accomplished in me--and
I've got to begin." He turned from his contemplation of the dim, white
landscape to look down at her. "Will you help me? Will you show me how?"
It seemed to her that without having moved she was somehow nearer to his
breast. She couldn't so much as glance up at him. She could hardly
speak. The words only trembled out as she said, "If I can, Thor dear."
"You can," he said, simply, "because you know."
She barely lifted her eyes. "Oh, do you think I do?"
"You've got the secret of it. There _is_ a secret. I see that now--a
secret, just as there is to everything else that's worth learning."
"Oh, Thor, you make me afraid--"
"Through all these dreadful months," he pursued, tranquilly, "you've
kept us straight, and led us out, and raised us higher, not because
you're specially strong, Lois, or specially wise, but because--because
you've got some other quality. I want you to show me what it is, so that
I may have it, too. If I could get it--get just a little of it--it would
seem as if Claude hadn't--hadn't died in vain." She was now so near his
breast that he was obliged to bend his head in order to speak down to
her. "You wrote me last year that you were looking for a substitute for
love. Couldn't you find it in that?"
She was so close to him that her cheek brushed the fur collar of his
coat, yet she managed to keep her mind clear and to control her voice so
as to ask the thing she most vitally needed to know. "And if I did,
Thor--if I _could_--what should you find it in?"
"In adoration--for one thing," he said, simply.
It was such happiness that she tore herself away from it. Advancing
swiftly over the light snow to a higher point of the summit, she stood
for a minute poised alone against the dark sky, crowned to his eyes with
a diadem of stars. Very slowly he strode after her, but even when he
reached her side it was only to slip his hand into hers and gaze outward
with her into the far, dim, restful spaces.
It was she who spoke at last, timidly, and against rising tears. "Shall
we go home, Thor?"
"I'm _at_ home," he said, quietly. But the quietness gave way suddenly
to fierceness, as little lightning flashes yield in a few seconds to the
violent magnificence of storm. Seizing her in his arms with a clasp that
would have been brutal if it had not been so sweet, he whispered,
"You're home to me, Lois--you're home to me."
"And you're the whole wide world to me, Thor dear," she answered,
drawing his face downward.
THE END
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