Chapter IX: Book SIX: Wilson Avenue (5)

While they waited for the kindling to get well ablaze before putting on the coal, Clive took Felix to a French window that opened on a balcony. “Here you have a view of the lake,” he said, and then going to one end of the balcony, “these steps lead down to my shower-bath, which unfortunately only functions in summer. You must come out here then—you’ll like it. It’s really wonderful country. I love it even in the winter. I’ll tell you: Why don’t you and Rose-Ann stay out here this week? I’ve got to be in town next week anyway, and I’ll clear out tonight when the fuss is all over and leave you to yourselves. Everything is shipshape, and Rose-Ann will have no difficulty in finding where things are—and I’ll arrange with Mrs. Cowan to get your dinners. You haven’t a place in town yet, have you?”

Felix thanked him, with the sense that the dedication of this house to another honeymoon than the one for which it was originally intended gave Clive a kind of painful and ironic pleasure. But there seemed to be no good reason for refusing the offer.

“Do you suppose my job will still be open for me when I come back married?” he asked.

“Not merely that, but you’ll probably get a raise,” said Clive. “That’s the custom. They figure that a young man who has married and settled down will be a more faithful slave. Usually they’re right. Only in this case, taking Rose-Ann into consideration, I would say that ‘settling down’ wasn’t the correct term.”

“Why, what do you mean?”

“I mean that Rose-Ann is much more likely to keep you in mischief than to keep you out of it. You know that.”

“You’ve got a funny idea of Rose-Ann,” said Felix.

“Oh, not at all. You know yourself she’s not the ordinary girl by any means. And she won’t make an ordinary wife—for which you can be thankful.”

He put the coal on the fire, set up the fire-screen in front of the fireplace, and they went downstairs.

“You needn’t eye me like the basilisk,” said Clive, taking a cigarette, “I’m not saying anything against your beloved.”

“All the same, I think you’ve got some kind of curious and erroneous notion about her. She’s not interested in these damned theories of ours. She’s a real person,” Felix protested.

“She’s real, all right,” said Clive. “But she’s not a simple person. She’s very complex. I think she’s just as complicated—as mixed up—as you or I.”

“Heaven forbid!” said Felix.

Rose-Ann came in just then, and Felix looked at her guiltily, ashamed of discussing her with his friend.

“Things are getting along very well,” she said. “I just ran in for a moment to see my lover.” She came up to him, with a shy frankness, to be kissed. “That ought to show Clive what sort of a person she is!” he thought.

She turned from his embrace to Clive. “It’s curious,” she said, “the pleasure people take in other people’s weddings! There’s Mrs. Cowan—she doesn’t know me and Felix. She hasn’t any reason to believe we are going to be happy. It’s just because it’s a wedding! I was thinking about it, and I realized that if this were a secret love-affair, she would be shut out of it. But a wedding lets her in. In a way, it’s really more her wedding than it is ours!”

“Well,” said Felix, “I don’t mind! I haven’t that damnable instinct of privacy that some people seem to regard as essential to love-affairs. I’d as soon the whole world knew we’re in love.”

“All right, Felix—but you haven’t had to discuss the nuptial couch with her, and _I_ have! She’s upstairs now getting the room fixed up, and putting my clothes in the bureau; I left her to avoid an argument about which nightgown I should wear—as a matter of fact, she doesn’t think any of them are equal to the occasion, they’re all too plain! Perhaps you’d as soon everybody knew all about those details, which is what a wedding seems to amount to—but I don’t like it!” And she made a face and left the room.

“Well?” said Clive, rather triumphantly.

“Well?” said Felix, stolidly. He really had not liked that last speech of Rose-Ann’s. If she didn’t want her nightgowns discussed in public, then why—?

“You’re really rather conventional, at the bottom of your soul, aren’t you?” Clive remarked thoughtfully.

“Of course I am. And so is everybody else. So are you, if you only knew it.”

“Then,” said Clive, coolly, “why do you marry Rose-Ann? She isn’t. It you want a conventional wife and conventional married happiness, why don’t you marry some simple little country girl, and have a houseful of babies? Why—”

There was a knock at the door.

“That’s my other witness,” said Clive, and hurried into the hall.

2

While Clive and the newcomer talked for a moment in the hall, Felix stood frowning at the fire.... Clive, he felt, was becoming rather exasperating. Really, the unquestioning enthusiasm of Mrs. Cowan was preferable to such an inappropriately critical attitude as Clive’s. There was something deliberately malicious in it. That last remark about the “simple little country girl” was an attempt to shake his faith in this marriage. It was a damned mean trick!... And then he laughed at himself. For how could Clive possibly have guessed the effect of that remark? How could he know what a crazy fool he was talking to? “A simple country girl.” How could Clive know that there lurked in the back of Felix’s mind an absurd and impossible wish—a wish, long-forgotten, except in the most senseless of idle day-dreams, which these words of Clive’s made him remember, with an inexplicable pang! A wish for precisely what he ought never to have—. Marriage with the girl of that foolish day-dream would be, for such a person as himself, the most fantastic of tragedies: and it was doubtless its very impossibility that had made him conceive it as a romantic ideal. And that houseful of babies—for they too were a part of that foolish day-dream of his—why, that was madness. In actuality, he would have fled from the prospect of such a marriage. He really wanted—what he had so miraculously found in Rose-Ann: a companionship in the adventure and beauty of life.... And in an hour or two his choice would be confirmed—irrevocably. Marriage was just that—a definite decision among tangled and contradictory wishes....

He turned to face the girl whom Clive had led into the room. For an instant he was startled as by an apparition. Perhaps it was the effect of Clive’s words—this young woman seemed the very creature of his day-dreaming wish. Young, hardly more than nineteen, of slight but robust figure, with soft brown hair, dark quiet eyes and a serene mouth, she brought with her the fragrance of that fantasy which had only a moment ago disquieted him. She had a bundle in her arms, and for an instant the illusion was breathlessly complete—she was Rose-Ann’s phantom rival come to him in visible sweet flesh, bearing his baby at her bosom.

“The bridegroom!” Clive was saying. “The witness!—Miss Phyllis Nelson, Mr. Felix Fay.”

She smiled imperturbably and held out her hand, her eyes meeting his.

“And what have you in that bundle, Phyllis? Something without which no wedding would be complete, I suppose,” said Clive.

“Only some smilax,” she said. “And I know how many knives and forks you have, Clive, so I brought along some of my mother’s silver. But where is—”

Rose-Ann ran in just then, and the two girls, while Clive pronounced their names, shook hands, and then suddenly kissed each other, and with arms linked went out into the kitchen.

Clive followed with the bundle, asking Phyllis if by any chance it contained a veil for the bride. He and Felix were shooed back into the other room, and Rose-Ann and Phyllis reset the table. The three women could be heard talking together, with a kind of excited seriousness, as they worked. Felix’s last glimpse was of Phyllis arranging wreaths of smilax on the white tablecloth, and Rose-Ann, with an adorable gesture, lifting her arms to twine some of it about the low-hanging chandelier, while Mrs. Cowan, her hands on her hips, stood looking from one to the other with approval before dashing back to the kitchen.

“Womenfolk have an instinct for such things,” said Clive, sitting down beside the fire. “Even Rose-Ann appears domestic.”

Felix looked at Clive fretfully. “I don’t see anything terribly domestic about hanging up a wreath of flowers.”

“You are hard to suit,” Clive commented. “When I say she isn’t domestic, you look daggers at me, and when I say she is, you still object. What shall I say? I strive to please.”

“So it seems,” said Felix.

Clive smiled. “Since you’re so conventional, you ought not to complain. Nothing is more regular and old-fashioned than the effort to embarrass a bridegroom. You may interpret my remarks as a modern version of that ancient mode of licensed tribal merriment—an intellectualized kind of ‘shivaree.’ I am trying to make up for the absence of the traditional tin pans out by the front gate. After all, Felix, you are taking Rose-Ann away from all the rest of us, and you must expect to be made to suffer a little for your selfishness.”

“Dinner!” Phyllis called in to them.

They went into the dining-room.

3

In the middle of the table was a glass bowl brimmed with sweet peas, and around it a wreath of smilax; a festoon of smilax hung from the chandelier. At the head of the table stood impressively a platter bearing a steaming roast duck.

Mrs. Cowan hovered proudly over this spectacle, preparing to take her departure.

“Oh, not without a piece of the wedding-cake!” cried Rose-Ann, and cut it for her.

Immensely gratified, and having wished the bride happiness, and at the last moment bestowed upon her a motherly kiss, Mrs. Cowan went, bearing the piece of cake carefully wrapped in a napkin.

Clive stared after her. “Very interesting,” he said, “she takes home a piece of her own cake—”

“No longer her own,” Rose-Ann finished, “and no longer merely cake—but a piece of Wedding Cake! Will she put it under her pillow, I wonder, and dream of getting another husband? She’s a widow, and her husband used to get drunk ‘something awful.’ Yes, she was telling me all about it—I think by way of warning, so I wouldn’t be too badly disillusioned by the facts of marriage. ‘You can’t expect ’em to be angels,’ she said. So you see Felix, I’m prepared for anything!”

This speech jarred upon Felix. It was too much in the vein that Clive had been indulging all evening. He wondered if he were going to become critical of Rose-Ann, now that he had a sense of possession with regard to her. He said to himself that Rose-Ann was over-wrought and he himself over-sensitive.

“Rose-Ann, here at my right hand,” Clive was saying, “Felix, here at my left. I believe that is correct. The Witness will take the remaining seat, opposite me. First of all, we must have a toast.” He rose. “Up with you all! No, Rose-Ann, you sit still—you can’t drink your own health.... Here’s to the bride!”

They lifted their glasses.

“No—wait till I finish my speech.... In defiance of all the laws of nature and of modern realistic fiction, we wish her happiness!... No, that isn’t all I have to say.... We make this wish—at least I do—with an unwonted confidence in its fulfilment. For this is no ordinary marriage, dedicated to the prosaic comforts of a mutual bondage—it is an attempt to realize the sharp new joys of freedom. A marriage, let us say, in name only—for upon Rose-Ann I set my faith, believing that not even a wedding can turn her into a wife!” Rose-Ann looked up at him and smiled. “To Rose-Ann,” he concluded, “and her adventure!”

They drank. Felix looked at the others. He had a sense of something having been outraged by this speech—something which, if only a tradition, was somehow real to all of them except Clive. But Rose-Ann merely looked amused, and Phyllis’s expression told him nothing. He reflected, “She’s used to him by this time.”

A sense of embarrassment remained with him, in spite of the light talk that followed as Clive heaped their plates in turn with roast duck and dressing.

“Why are you so quiet, Felix?” Clive asked at last. “You might at least tell us how it feels to be a bridegroom—whether you feel as depressed as you look.”

“I confess I shall be glad when it’s over,” said Felix.

They laughed, and went on talking. Rose-Ann was apparently enjoying herself. She and Clive were exchanging pleasantries on the subject of “modern marriage.” For some reason the phrase annoyed Felix. Did they know what nonsense they were talking? Or did they really think that his and Rose-Ann’s marriage was to be, as it were, a sociological performance for the benefit of on-lookers?

Presently Rose-Ann was humourously disclaiming “all the credit” for the modernity of the arrangement. Felix, she insisted, was equally entitled to it; he was just as modern as she was!

“Why,” Felix suddenly asked in exasperation, “should we all want to be so damned modern?”

“Hark to the defiant bridegroom!” said Clive. “He wishes us to understand that _his_ wife is going to love, honour, and obey him, in the good old—fashioned way. He won’t stand for any of this new-fangled nonsense. The Cave-man emerges!”

Felix flushed. He had only succeeded in making a fool of himself, it seemed.

Rose-Ann spoke up. “I hope it _will_ be modern,” she said. “I’m sure it won’t be like any of the marriages I’ve seen back in my home town.... Why are you so afraid of freedom and modernity, Felix?”

Perhaps it was that word _afraid_, which Rose-Ann used so lightly, that stung him. “Because,” he said, “I am apparently the only one here who knows what those words mean.”

He had not intended to say it—certainly he had not intended to say it in that tone of voice. It came out, raspingly, like a voice out of a music-box, a voice from a strange record that has been put in unawares. His voice was, even to his own ears, remote and metallic.

Rose-Ann looked at him, startled. “What words, Felix?” she asked gently.

“The words you have all been bandying about,” he replied. “Modernity. Freedom.” His voice was still hard.

“Well, what _do_ they mean?”

She leaned toward him.

The others were silent, listening—Clive with an amused smile, Phyllis with troubled eyes.

“Not what you think, I’m afraid, Rose-Ann,” Felix’s voice answered, the voice with a quiet grimness in it.

Rose-Ann’s voice took up the challenge softly. “And what do _you_ think they mean, Felix?”

He looked away from her, and spoke as if from a distance, slowly. “Freedom.... It’s not a nice word, not a pretty word ... to me. There is something terrible in it ... something to be afraid of....” He looked back at her. “Don’t offer me freedom, Rose-Ann.”

Her voice was still soft, but infinitely cool and firm. “Why? Because you might take it? I knew that when I made the offer, Felix. I think I know what you mean. But I take back nothing.” She lifted her chin proudly. “I am not afraid of freedom.”

“Bravo!” cried Clive. “Rose-Ann, I am falling in love with you myself! Why don’t you marry _me_ instead of Felix! He doesn’t appreciate you.”

Curiously enough, nobody except Felix seemed to mind Clive’s clowning. Both girls laughed, and the atmosphere was suddenly cleared.

“But what an odd occasion for us to choose to stage a quarrel!” said Rose-Ann, gaily.

“Yes,” said Felix, now bewildered and contrite. “I must have got into my argumentative mood. I’m sorry. When I get to arguing I think of no one and nothing, except the point at issue—which is usually not of the slightest importance. It’s a bad habit you must break me of when we are married.”

“You are forgiven,” said Phyllis.

“Don’t forget there’s fruit salad coming,” said Rose-Ann, rising and bringing a bowl from the sideboard.

“Yes,” said Clive, “and the car will be here for you two people in ten minutes or so. Will you have your coffee now, Felix?—Rose-Ann?”

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XVIII. The Authority of the State of Illinois

1

THE car took them through the deepening snow on up to the county seat, where the license was soon made out for them. “You’re lucky to find me here on hand tonight,” said the county clark. They expressed their appreciation. “But I like to accommodate young folks,” he said smiling, and shook hands with them when they left.

It was snowing more heavily all the time, and the roads were difficult, but Judge Peabody had kept his promise, and was waiting for them when they arrived. He greeted them with grave benevolence.

“Mr. Bangs tells me you want a very simple ceremony,” he said, and put on his spectacles and took out a little book, turning the pages back and forth until he found the right place.

“Do you, Felix Fay, take this woman, Rose-Ann Prentiss, to be your wedded wife, to cherish and protect, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?”

A promise: a strange defiance flung out by the human spirit against the infinite vicissitudes of chance; a barrier of will against all the hostile forces of the days and years; a renunciation of whatever may lie outside the magic circle of our little mutual happiness, forever; a few weak words, easily forgotten, that must be stronger than passion, stronger than forgetfulness....

“I do,” he said.

“Do you, Rose-Ann Prentiss....”

“I do.”

“Then, by the authority of the State of Illinois, in me vested, I pronounce you husband and wife.”

He took off his spectacles and put them in his pocket.

2

Rose-Ann and Felix looked at each other in a kind of surprise. So they were married!

The judge was wishing them happiness. “And now,” he said, “I’ll hurry home before the snow gets any deeper.”

Felix, a little embarrassed, and wishing he could do it less obtrusively, gave him a crumpled bill, which the judge, without embarrassment, smoothed out and placed in a wallet.

“Good-night!” he said, and let Phyllis help him on with his overcoat. “Good-night!”

At the door he turned. “Oh, by the way,” he said. “Do you want a marriage certificate?”

The question was addressed to Rose-Ann. She shook her head in a determined negative.

“No?” he repeated absently. “Lots of people don’t, nowadays.... Good-night!”

“I suppose you know the house is yours for as long as you want it now,” said Clive to Rose-Ann.

“Yes,” she said, “Felix just remembered to tell me a little while ago. It’s terribly nice of you, Clive. I can’t think of a lovelier place to be!”

“And that’s the car honking outside,” he said, “to take Phyllis home and me to the station. I shall just catch the ten-fifteen. Efficiency!” He gave her his hand. “I’ll leave you two strictly alone here—but I’ll expect to come and visit you in your real home as soon as you acquire one. May I? You’ll probably be willing by that time to see other human beings again.”

“Of course!” she said. “And you, too, Phyllis!”

“I’m sorry,” said Phyllis. “I shan’t be here. I’m just home for the week-end, and then I’m off to school again. I hope I _shall_ see you again sometime. I’m sure you’re going to be very happy. Good-bye.” The girls kissed.

“Felix,” said Clive, “doesn’t like me any more. He thinks I almost spoiled his wedding. Good-bye, old man!”

“Well,” said Rose-Ann, when the door shut them out, “that’s over!” She came to him and drooped within his arms. “I’m very tired. Felix, I never want to be married again!”

“Poor dear!” he said, “it is rather awful, isn’t it?”

“Oh,” she said, lifting her head from his breast, “there’s one more thing to do, before we can be—just us. I promised to save a piece of my wedding cake for somebody.” She smiled. “You can’t guess who!”

“Yes, I can,” he said. “Old Granny Perk!”

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XIX. Together

1

AT dawn Felix awoke with a sense of loneliness. The vague consciousness which had remained with him even in sleep of a beautiful and beloved body at his side, was gone; and the hand that he reached out in troubled half-sleep had found no warm and reassuring presence. For an instant it seemed as though the night had been only a dream. He felt a vast desolation, a profound fear. It was as if not this one night only had been taken from him, but the thousand nights and days which lay implicit in it—the lifetime of sweetness and intimacy which it had begun.

Startled awake by the pain of this loneliness, he looked about him. Rose-Ann was not there. The bed was still warm where she had lain, the pillow kept the impression of her head, but she was gone. The white light of the dawn lighted the room, the fire was dying in the grate, a cool little wind swept in through an open window, and one of the leaves of the long French window that opened on the balcony stood ajar. Rose-Ann’s clothing lay folded on a chair at the foot of the bed.

His reason told him that Rose-Ann had slipped out to the balcony to breathe the morning air. But he was still filled with the terror of that waking moment. Moved by an unreasoning fear, he leaped from the bed and ran to the French window. Outside the world was white. On the balcony, in the deep snow, were the imprints of her little naked feet. Still agitated, he followed those footprints where they led around the corner of the house. And then he stopped, and gazed.

She was there, standing unclothed and rosy in the morning wind, in the light of the dawn, leaning over the railing of the porch.

“Rose-Ann!” he called sharply.

She turned. “Good-morning, old sleepy-head!” she cried. “You were dozing so peacefully that I didn’t have the heart to wake you up. Isn’t it lovely!” And she waved a hand toward the ice-bound lake that stretched out to the east like an Arctic wilderness, tinged with the rose of dawn.

“What are you doing out here?” he demanded, commencing to shiver.

“I was thinking of taking a snow-bath!” she said. “I’ve always wanted to and never have. Look where the snow has drifted up here against the house. Wouldn’t it be wonderful just to drop off into that snow bank! Come, let’s do it!” She took his hand and led him to the edge of the porch, which was here only a few feet above the ground, with the snow piled up to its very edge.

“But how would we get out of that snow-bank once we had got in!” he expostulated. It was a crazy idea, and he had no intention of letting her carry it out.

“Oh, don’t let’s stand here and argue about it,” she said impatiently, “and get cold. I’m going to, anyway!” And before he could stop her she had climbed the railing and leaped down into the snow-bank.... He realized that he must do the same. There was no choice! And in an instant he had leaped down beside her, down crunching through soft feathery snow that stung the skin deliciously and made the blood hot in his veins—and an instant later, laughing, they were fighting their way out and stumbling up the steps to the balcony and into the house.

“Towels!” cried Rose-Ann, racing to the bathroom and back and flinging him one. “Now wasn’t that worth doing!”

“And no doubt very entertaining to the neighbours,” Felix grumbled—secretly rejoicing in their spectacular feat. It really seemed to him a splendidly pagan thing to have done.

“Our only neighbour for miles is Mrs. Cowan,” said Rose-Ann, “and she’s over somewhere the other way. Besides, for once in my life I’m going to do the things I want to do without stopping to think of other people first. Now, Felix, can you build a fire? If you can’t, I can!”

“Of course I can build a fire,” said Felix. “The real question is, can you cook an egg? Because if you can’t, I can.” He was a little nettled at her having taken the lead in the snow-bath, and he did not intend to let her carry off any more honours of leadership. “If Clive has not deceived and betrayed us,” he continued, “you ought to be able to find eggs and things in the kitchen.”

“All right,” she said obediently; and finished with the simple task of dressing, in an old skirt and a smock, but not without a look at herself in the glass, she started off to the kitchen.

Felix looked at the fire. It needed rebuilding, and he would have to chop some more kindling. He went down to the woodshed, and energetically chopped up one stick. Then he paused, laid down the hatchet, and commenced to whistle a plaintive, melancholy, tuneless tune. He picked up his hatchet, ran his thumb over the edge, and laid it down again.

He was not thinking about chopping kindling. He was thinking about Rose-Ann, there in the kitchen only a few feet away. What was she doing? He could see her in imagination, ransacking Clive’s cupboards. He wished he could see her in reality. He started to his feet impulsively, and then sat down again.

He was annoyed with himself. Couldn’t he be separated from her for a few minutes without wanting to tag after her? She would be surprised, and perhaps annoyed, by his coming in. She would ask, “Have you got the fire built? Well then, for heaven’s sake, go and build it, and leave me alone to get you some breakfast!”

He could not confess to her how utterly indispensable her presence had become to him.... Yesterday they had been two different and separate persons—but they were so no longer. A quaint churchly phrase leaped into his mind, a phrase that had never seemed real before: “these twain shall be made one flesh.” He knew its truth now. Last night they had lain and talked for hours of the things they were going to do—together. Together! Their life henceforth had pictured itself to them as something enjoyed always in common. They had not thought, last night, of ever being apart again. But of course they would be apart—a great deal of the time. And doubtless it was as well to begin now. There was no sense whatever to this feeling of loneliness. He was going to have the rest of a lifetime with Rose-Ann, and he certainly ought to be able to go off and chop a little wood without her. No, he must not go to the kitchen to see what she was doing! He must subdue this weakness—this absurd feeling of helpless loneliness when he left her for a moment.

He raised his hatchet and brought it down sharply on the stick of wood. The door opened, and there stood Rose-Ann, with an apron on, her cheeks flushed.

“Hello!” he said, and laid down the hatchet.

“I just came to see what you were doing,” she said.

“Chopping a little kindling, that’s all,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. She continued to look at him with interest.

He took up the hatchet again, and split the stick with a few efficient strokes. She looked about, up-ended a short log, and sat down, her hands in her lap. Felix chopped another stick, and another, with a sense of great peace and contentment. Chopping kindling had become very interesting. He chopped on, under her gaze. He did not need to look up at her. She was there with him; that was sufficient. He went on chopping.

“Don’t you think that’s enough kindling now, Felix?” she asked at last, hesitantly.

He looked at the pile. He _had_ chopped an awful lot! “I thought I might as well cut enough to last for a while,” he explained.

“A good idea,” she agreed. “And we might as well take a lot upstairs while we’re about it. I’ll take some, if you’ll load me.” She held out her arms, and he piled them full, then loaded his own, and they went up together.

She knelt beside him, watching, while he laid the fire. He felt somewhat insecure in his knowledge of fire-making, and he tried to remember just how Clive had done it the day before. But he felt nothing critical in Rose-Ann’s watching; and apparently he remembered well, for the fire behaved quite as it should. He waited until the proper moment, put on the cannel coal, and drew the fire-screen in front of the fireplace.

Rose-Ann stood up. “Now we’ll go and get breakfast,” she said.

In the kitchen, she turned to him. “Do you like omelettes?” she asked.

“I love them,” he said.

“With peas and things in? There’s a can of little peas here.” She searched in a drawer and found a can-opener.

“Here, let me,” said Felix authoritatively, and took it from her.

She surrendered it, and bent to another drawer, bringing out another apron.

“Must wear,” she said, and tied it around him.

The touch of her fingers was too much. He turned and took her in his arms, and found himself tightly bound in hers, and kissed the eager lips uplifted to his.

“Oh, Felix!” she cried in a weak, smothered voice. “Felix, lover!”

“And now,” she said at last, smiling happily and rousing herself from their dream, “we really must get breakfast!”

2

After breakfast, which was prolonged for hours by talk and cigarettes and endless cups of coffee, they “bundled up” and took a long walk, through the deep snow, stumbling and laughing like children, and as indefatigable as children. First they went down to the lake, that snowy waste strewn with high-piled ice-hummocks, and with the blue of water showing strangely here and there. Then they turned their backs on it, and walked toward the west, where the black branches of trees made delicate patterns against the sky. They were as if aware of the kinship of their love to the life of the earth, and seeking outdoors that magical sympathy of natural living things which no roof-tree, however hospitable, can furnish to lovers. This great white expanse, with no green thing visible anywhere, with not even the friendly touch of the ground underfoot, might have seemed to hold out no invitation to their love. It was an earth sunken in winter-sleep, apparently unconscious of their presence, vastly indifferent to their demand. And yet they loved it, and it gave them something which they craved.

Utterly exhausted, they reached home at last, with the sunset flaming behind the black branches. They were ravenously hungry. But they faced the prospect of clearing up after last night’s feast, a task blithely postponed that morning, before they would have dishes enough to eat from. Of course, they might have had Mrs. Cowan come in; but they preferred their magic isolation. Changed into dry garments, they set to work washing dishes—not without a friendly quarrel over which one should wash and which one wipe them.

“Maybe you think a man doesn’t know how to wash dishes,” Felix said belligerently.

“No,” said Rose-Ann, “but I think a woman might have the privilege of washing dishes in her own house.... Felix, I wish this were our own house! I shall hate to go back to town after this.... But don’t let’s think about that now. All right, selfish, you can wash the dishes!”

The thought frightened Felix a little. A house of their own! A house in the country! How beautiful, and yet how—but no, nothing seemed impossible now.... They could plan for it, and work for it, and at last have it, together....

3

“Read me some poetry, Felix,” said Rose-Ann, after dinner, as they lay drowsily, in a great warm nest of cushions, in front of the fire in the room upstairs.

He stirred himself, and then relaxed. Rose-Ann’s head was nestled in the hollow under his shoulder, and her red-gold hair, unbound, flowed across her bosom and touched his caressing hand. He was altogether too happily situated at this moment to want to go downstairs and look for a book of poems. Besides, why need he?

“_And frosts are slain and flowers begotten._”

he began. She closed her eyes, and from her quiet breathing one might have thought her asleep. But once when he faltered, forgetting the words, Rose-Ann murmured them softly:

“_And frosts are slain and flowers begotten._”

He took it up, in his voice of subdued chanting:

“_And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins...._”

and so to the end.

“Say me some more,” she breathed. “Like that. Anything with woods or flowers in it.”

He began quoting, mischievously filling in words to make up the rhythm where he forgot the original:

“_Iris all hues, roses and jessamine....
In shadier bower.... (I forget! But here it was)
With flowers, garlands and sweet-smelling herbs
Espoused Eve decked first her nuptial bed....
Yes Eve! In naked beauty more adorned,
More lovely than Pandora. (So Milton says!)_

“I can’t remember just how it goes, but there are some lovely things in that old Puritan’s blood-and-thunder epic....

“_These, lulled by nightingales, embracing slept,
And on their naked limbs the flowery roof
Showered roses. (She’s asleep!)_”

Outside, unseen, the moon emerged from behind racing clouds, and lighted with its pale radiance the great stretch of winter-bound lake and desolate shore along which they had wandered that day seeking some response in its vast indifference; and its rays touched and silvered the roof-tree of the little house on the edge of a ravine, within whose doors, by the grace of the English poets, it was April. Blossom by blossom, about their couch, the spring began, and upon their naked limbs showered roses.

“No.” said Rose-Ann, “I’m not asleep!”

He laughed tenderly. “No, not now. But you have been for half an hour. I’ve been watching you sleep. You do it beautifully!”

“Have I really?” She stretched herself, like a kitten upon awaking from a nap. “Well, I’m awake now, and I want some more poetry. Something sad this time.”

“More poetry? What a glutton you are!”

“But I _like_ poetry, Felix. It’s real to me—as real as our love.”

“But why sad poetry?” he teased.

“I don’t know. I suppose it’s because I’m so happy.”

“I know,” said Felix, and out of the storehouse of his memory he brought one after another the stories of old unhappy love, impossible love, love that goes toward death. It was as if the contrast of these tragic fantasies was needed to make poignant the sweet and easy fulfilment of their own love—as if some chill breath from the grave must intervene between their caresses lest they seem too tame.

“_The mountain ways one summer
Saw life and joy go past,
When we who were so lonely
Went hand in hand at last._

“_And overhead the pine-woods
Their purple shadows cast,
When the tall twilight laid us
Hot mouth to mouth at last._

“_O hills, beneath your slumber,
Or pines, beneath your blast,
Make room for your two children—
Cold cheek to cheek at last!_”

“No,” murmured Rose-Ann, lifting her head and putting her warm cheek against his own, a cheek wet with sudden tears. “Not cold cheek to cheek, Felix!”

Tears sprung from that sweet sadness which only happy youth dares indulge—the wilful and daring melancholy of young love, turning aside from its joys to think of death....

Rose-Ann dried her eyes cheerfully. “I wanted to cry,” she said. “and now that I have, I feel better. Give me a cigarette!”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XX. “The Nest-building Instinct”

1

BY mid-week, Rose-Ann had become transformed into a housewife. Meals were being planned, the butcher and the grocer were making regular deliveries, Mrs. Cowan had been pressed into service, and Rose-Ann was quite the mistress of the establishment.

And then suddenly she became discontented. “I can’t keep on playing that this is my house,” she said. “There are so many things I want to do to it! Let’s go in to town and look for a place of our own.”

So on Thursday morning they took the train to town. On the way in, they marked—or rather, Rose-Ann marked—a dozen advertisements of apartments to let, which she proposed to spend the morning looking at.

“I’m not going to find what I want,” she said, “and I’m going to be cross, I know. I’d really rather not have you along. Why don’t you do something else? Go and visit the office. We’ll meet at lunch.”

“All right,” said Felix. Going to the office, as it were to confess his marriage, was an uncomfortable errand. In spite of what Clive had said, it seemed to him far less likely that he would get a raise than that he would be fired. But it did not seem to matter much now, if he did get fired. The Chronicle job no longer seemed the only one in Chicago.

“Where shall we meet, and when?” he asked.

He noted down the time and place. “But don’t you want to come with me? Clive would like to see you.”

“No, but you can bring Clive along to lunch, if he will come.”

“Good-bye, then.” It was their first parting since Saturday, ages ago. It was to be for hours. In the station here, amid the crowds, they sought to be casual about it.

“Good-bye.” She smiled, and turned away. He walked a few steps, and then turned. She had stopped, too, and was looking back at him mournfully.

He came back to her and took her in his arms. “How foolish we are!” she whispered, and surrendered herself to a kiss that seemed somehow, to both of them, to make their temporary separation endurable.

At the office, Felix perceived at once, by the manner of his welcome, that he had established himself more firmly in the esteem of everybody by getting married. He shook hands formally with every one, and received their congratulations. At last, it seemed to be over. But Willie Smith reminded him: “You haven’t been in to see the Old Man, have you?”

Felix could not imagine that Mr. Devoe would concern himself with such a matter as a reporter’s marriage. But Willie managed to convey to him Mr. Devoe would feel hurt if not permitted to add his felicitations. “Sure, the Old Man will want to see you!”

Felix shyly went in. Mr. Devoe rose and shook his hand warmly. “Yes, Mr. Bangs told us,” he said. “Quite a surprise, my boy. But it’s the right way to start out in life. Yes.... I understand you’re quite well again? I’m glad it wasn’t anything serious—you look quite well now—” and his eyes twinkled. “When you get back to work, come in and see me—we may have some new plans for you. Next Monday? Very good.”

New plans.... Felix wondered what that phrase might mean. Perhaps the promise of a raise in wages—though it sounded like something more than that. But he could not guess what it might be, and he decided not to tell Rose-Ann about it—she was so egregiously confident for him, and she might build up vain hopes on a phrase that meant nothing. He did not want her to be disappointed.

2

Clive, who looked tired, and seemed preoccupied, came willingly enough along to lunch. “So the nest-building instinct is at work already!” observed Clive. And then: “What kind of place does Rose-Ann want? One with elevators, a man in brass buttons to answer the door, and a garbage incinerator?”

At lunch, which started in with a curious lack of amicability, Felix repeated this latter pleasantry to Rose-Ann. It occurred to him that what she wanted might very easily be something beyond his income, even with that possible raise.

Rose-Ann smiled at Clive. “Not exactly that,” she said. “Perhaps more preposterous still! The truth is, I don’t know, exactly. All I do know is that I don’t like any of the things I’ve seen this morning. I did see some that—but no, even those won’t do.”

“What’s the matter with them?” asked Felix.

“I’ll take you along and let you see for yourself. Mostly stuffy little cubicles. You know what the ordinary Chicago flat is like.”

“Why should you want something different?” asked Clive innocently.

“Why not?” said Rose-Ann, challengingly. “Felix and I are different—why should we live like everybody else?”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Clive. “I confess I thought you were going to.”

“Is that why you have been so distant and satirical with me today? Had you lost confidence in me already?”

“Forgive me,” he said.

“You are angry at some other girl,” said Rose-Ann shrewdly.

Clive smiled. “Perhaps you are right.”

“And if you gave me a hundred guesses,” said Rose-Ann, “perhaps I could guess the girl, too.”

“Perhaps you could,” he conceded.

“So it’s Phyllis. I’m sorry. I like her very much.”

“So do I,” said Clive grimly.

Felix was surprised at Rose-Ann’s rashness in teasing Clive about a situation concerning which he had always shown a disposition to keep his own counsel; and still more surprised at the way Clive took this teasing.

“Well,” Rose-Ann was saying, “she has an air of quiet possessiveness towards you which indicates that not much can be amiss!”

“What is amiss, dear lady,” said Clive gravely, “is with the universe. Phyllis and I are each all right, in our separate ways, I hope. Phyllis is, I’m sure!—she’s a lovely child, isn’t she?... With an interesting history too. Perhaps I’ll tell it to you, some time.”

“Clive is very unhappy, isn’t he?” said Rose-Ann, when he had left them for a moment to talk to a couple who had greeted him from another table.

“He prefers to be unhappy, I think,” said Felix.

“Why should you be so unsympathetic, Felix? Because you are contented, you think everybody else ought to find it easy to achieve the same state? I hope you’re not going to be smug. I’m really sorry for Clive.”

“I might be sorry, if I knew what to be sorry about. I haven’t the slightest idea what the trouble is.”

“That neurotic girl, of course.”

“Neurotic? Do you mean Phyllis? Why, what nonsense!” he exclaimed.

“Why nonsense?” she asked.

“Because—why—well, it’s just ridiculous!”

“After all, Felix, we neither of us know her well enough to be so positive,” said Rose-Ann pacifyingly.

“Then why do you say that about her?”

“Because I think it, Felix!” she replied with a touch of exasperation. “I really do!”

“I can’t understand you,” he said coldly.

“What are you children quarrelling about now?” asked Clive, returning.

Rose-Ann laughed. “About nothing at all, again. Felix, we are rather absurd. Come, we’ll look at those apartments.—And don’t imagine vain things about our home till you see it, Clive!”

3

To Felix, the apartments seemed just apartments. An apartment couldn’t be a house in the country. And as apartments, these were all that could be expected. The only serious objection to them, indeed, was that the rents were rather high.

“Why don’t you like them?” he asked again.

“I don’t know. They’re not quite—our kind of place.”

“I wish I knew what you meant, Rose-Ann,” he said wistfully.

“I’ll try to tell you,” she said, “on the way home.”

And on the train, she began: “You saw those people on the other side of the hall at that last place we looked at?” The door had been opened by a fat man with a bulging neck, and they had glimpsed an interior of plush and golden oak, and the rather plump and vapid-looking woman who awaited him there. “Well, those apartments are made for people like that—I mean people without imagination. They take such an apartment and buy some of the furniture that is made to go in it, and they settle down and are contented there. Why not! It has a kitchen, a dining-room, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a room to sit in and entertain callers. And that is the whole of their existence—cooking, eating, sleeping, washing their bodies, and showing off to their friends. But that isn’t the whole of our existence.—Felix, I would rather we would eat at a lunch-wagon and sleep on a park bench, than make those things the centre of our lives!”

It was not so much her argument that impressed him as the genuine and profound scorn in her tone and manner. He was conscious of a defection of sympathy in himself from the point of view that her words expressed. It might have been himself of a few years ago saying these things so intensely; and yet they seemed like nonsense to him now!

But one could not argue about such things in the midst of a trainload of people, the nearest of whom were already beginning to be too much interested in one’s affairs, so he only said, “Yes—I think I understand.”

But his mind went back to their life in the country—to the cooking of that first breakfast in the kitchen, to their first dinner after walking through miles of snow, to the bed of their happy love and sleep, the tingling snow-baths at dawn, and the fire in front of which they had sat and talked for so many lazy hours—and it seemed to him, without quite understanding why, that Rose-Ann was really denouncing her own life there with him! A kitchen, a table, a bed, a bath, a fire—hadn’t these things circumscribed their life? “People like _that_,” she had said, bitterly. Who were these people but their own happy selves of the past week? And why had she turned so fiercely against that happiness?

All these things passed through his mind swiftly and vaguely, an emotion rather than a thought: an emotion of mingled anger and pity—a strange anger and a strange pity that he could not understand. Vaguely he sensed the existence in her of a tragically divided mind, torn between the desire to sink deep into the lap of that simple and traditional domesticity she had been experiencing, and the fear of some profound hurt and shame in making that surrender in vain....

But if he sensed this struggle in her, it was not very clearly, and it was obscured by his effort to think the situation out in logical terms. “Confound it,” he thought, “if we live in town, we _must_ live in an apartment—and all apartments are more or less alike. Of course, some are bigger than others. It is probably the cramped space that she objects to, after that house in the country. Well, if I get my raise—let me see....”

Across the aisle were two women interestedly talking with each other, one of them a young mother, with a rather frightened little tow-headed boy of a year old in her lap. He had been enduring this strange adventure rather stoically, but he felt neglected, and his lips were curving down further and further toward the danger point of tears. He was feeling very sorry for himself.... Rose-Ann had watched the small lips begin to twist and the round chin begin to tremble, and she leaned forward and smiled at him—a smile which interested him, which he considered hesitantly, and at last found irresistible and answered wholeheartedly with a beaming one of his own. This was not such a cold and indifferent world after all; somebody did love him!

Rose-Ann looked up, rather furtively, at Felix, who was engaged in computing his rent-paying capacity. The women got out at the next stop, and she leaned back in her seat.

“Some time,” Felix was saying, “we might be able to have a house in the country like Clive’s....”

“We don’t want a house in the country,” said Rose-Ann energetically. “What would we do with a house in the country? No, we want a place in town, convenient to our work, yours and mine.”

“Your work?—you mean your dramatic class?” asked Felix, reflecting that Rose-Ann was rather changeable. Only a few days ago she had hated to come to town....

“No—I mean a real job. I don’t know what, yet. But I’m going to get one. I’m tired of playing with children.”

Felix looked at her vaguely, still doing sums in his head. And for a moment he seemed to her very stupid. And perhaps he was. Yet it is an exacting demand to make upon a young husband that he be able to read his wife’s mind, and know the wishes which she will not even admit the existence of to herself!

They reached Woods Point, and took a waiting taxi.

“If I only knew what you really want!” he said, as they started up their path.

“What I really want?”

“Yes. All places to live in are more or less alike.”

“Oh! No, they’re not, Felix. There are enough odd corners left in a city like Chicago to provide for the few odd people like us who don’t want the same things everybody else does. Don’t fear, we shall find something, sooner or later!”

“But when and how?” Felix demanded impatiently. “We must live somewhere while we are looking for this Utopia!”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Rose-Ann.... An idea, a whimsical and perverse idea, had just come into her mind—an idea that hurt her at first by its flagrant rebellious malice, and then suddenly took possession of her, and seemed eminently sane and reasonable. “I’ve been thinking of it all day,” she said—and as she spoke it seemed to her a mature and long-considered plan. She took his arm persuasively. “Felix, we have a whole lifetime ahead of us—and it is more important for us to live the kind of life we want to, than just to be together for a week or two. If we take the kind of place we don’t want, we shall settle down there and be like everybody else, and it will take years to break free.... Suppose we weren’t married yet—we would decide on how and where we wanted to live, first; and we would take whatever little time was necessary to work out our practical arrangements before we did commence living together....”

Why, yes, perhaps—though this, Felix reflected wistfully, was not the spirit in which they had acted on that Saturday ... ages ago it seemed, when they had left the hospital to be married. But what in the world was she getting at?

“Felix, dear, would you think it so terrible for us to live apart a little while, you at your place and I at mine, until we get a place we really want—?”

He understood her argument now, and to his mind it seemed one reasonable enough. He had, in the past, sometimes argued in favour of lovers keeping their own separate establishments. And a mere temporary separation, for any good reason, and however in defiance of custom, was something which he could expect himself to view calmly. But his reason was not for the moment in control of the situation. The blood mounted to his head in a dizzying rush of anger, his cheeks burned, and, with an effort to control himself, he said coldly: “No, I would not consider that idea for a moment.” And then, losing control of himself, he added: “If you want to leave me, Rose-Ann, you can do it right now. But there won’t be any coming back. Do you understand?”

He was astonished at himself for that speech, and still more astonished at its results. Rose-Ann dropped his arm, looked at him, and then, under his indignant glance, suddenly melted to tears.

“But, Felix!” she cried, and came and clung to his arm desperately. “I didn’t mean that! Oh, Felix!” and as they reached their door, she flung herself unrestrainedly on his breast.

“Felix! forgive me! I will do whatever you want. I will live anywhere you say. I will be good, truly I will!”

He petted her, and kissed her cheek, and drew her inside, infinitely astonished. He had impulsively accused her of some horrid disloyalty, some crime against him which he could not even name, and of which he did not for a moment believe her guilty, whatever it might be: and she had confessed it in tears, and promised to be “good”! They had had a battle over something which neither of them understood, some issue which neither could believe really existed—but a battle nevertheless—conducted with mysterious threats on both sides, and now ended in tears and forgiveness as mysterious! A battle over what? He did not know. He only knew that somehow he was the victor.

But how take advantage of a victory which one does not understand?

“Yes,” said Rose-Ann fervently, kissing him amid her tears with what seemed a new access of passion. “How foolish to think of being apart—even for a while!”

“Not foolish, exactly,” said Felix, beginning to be a little ashamed of himself. “I’m sorry I was so unreasonably angry at you.... I know that love ought not to be too—too possessive. I don’t want you to feel that I _own_ you!...”