Chapter VIII: Part 8

Instead of going out immediately for a walk with Winchie, as was the habit, she lingered about the house, keeping herself busily occupied. She must write Basil. What she said must be final, for she owed him the truth. And she must not say much; a long letter would give him hope, no matter what words she used, and would harrow him in the reading and her in the writing. At last she put on hat and even gloves for the walk, sat hastily down at her desk, wrote: "I cannot. I belong to my boy, not to myself." She wished to add, "I shall try to forget. So must you, for my sake--" and also some word of love. But with the two sentence she halted her pen. She read what she had written--"I cannot. I belong to my boy--not to myself." She folded the sheet, sealed it in an envelope, addressed it. As she reached for the stamp she called Winchie. They went out together, and she mailed the letter in the box at the edge of town. Well, it was settled--once more. Was this final? "Nothing is settled until it's settled right." And she said to herself that this settlement was undoubtedly right--that is, as nearly right as anything ever is. Yes, it was settled--but her father's uncompromising axiom continued to reiterate its clear-cut, unqualified assertion.

"Why did you sigh, mamma?" asked the boy.

"Did I sigh?" said she, trying to smile as she looked down at him.

"Yes--and you haven't been listening as we came along. You didn't hear what I said about the dead whip-poor-will I found on the lawn--did you?"

"No," she confessed. "But I'll listen now."

She found herself wondering at her calmness. "Perhaps," reflected she, "my fright about Winchie conquered my love. And how deep the roots of my life are sunk into the soil of this place! Still--I don't understand it. It doesn't seem natural I should be calm." There flashed before her mind a picture--herself flying disheveled--coming forward with laughter and jest--and lie--with the sting of forbidden kisses still upon her face--the thrill of forbidden caresses-- And she flushed crimson as the autumnal maples above her head, and glanced guiltily down at Winchie--and saw that he was trying to pretend not to see.

*XV*

Long before Dick got caught up with the particular piece of work that postponed their "fresh start," Courtney's "queer mood" and his own resolution were shelved in one of those back closets of his memory where reposed in darkness and dust matters relating to his family. He forgot nothing; his was not the forgetting kind of mind. Everything was stored away somewhere, under its proper heading, ready for him if he should happen to need it. But for that especial matter there came no demand. His happy married life had resumed its unrippled course. He worked, with allowance for exercise--usually a long walk or a row on the lake in the very early morning, before breakfast. Courtney occupied herself with house and garden. She was building a vegetable greenhouse with a small legacy from an aunt; also, there was the household routine of a multitude of time-filling, thought-filling, not to be neglected details for keeping things smooth and orderly--and there were reading and painting and music--and there were callers and visits. She even began to be philosophical about the almost daily evidences that her husband regarded her as an inferior. All men felt that way toward women. The very men who never made a move without consulting their wives thought themselves superior intelligences, and their wives mere possessors of a crafty instinct, in common with the lower animals, an instinct that was worth availing themselves of, as long as it was right there in the house. No, she was a silly supersensitive, she told herself, to be disturbed by such a ridiculous universal masculine weakness of vanity. As husbands went, Richard was about as good as any--better than most.

The evenings they spent together. A charming picture of family life they made each evening during that rare, exquisite September. The big log fire in the sitting room; he at the desk, she reading or sewing, or, less frequently, playing and singing softly. She had never been lovelier. The slightly haggard look was becoming to her young face, and the weariness of the eyelids also, and the pathos of her mouth so eager to smile, and the milky emerald of the eyes, like seas troubled so deep down that the surface was only clouded, but not ruffled. Sometimes she let Winchie stay with them an hour or so. Then the picture was complete--the boy playing on the floor before the fire, making what he called drawings at the table, always between his father and his mother, always nearer his mother, near enough to put out his hand and touch her and make quite sure of the reality of her lovely presence. Yes, she assured herself many times each day, the struggle was over; the pain would grow less and less, would pass--for the question of her life relations was settled--"and settled right."

This until mid-October, when the bleak rains inaugurated what promised to be a worse than the previous winter. On the fourth successive day indoors, as she sat at a drawing table in the upstairs sitting room, she suddenly lifted her head, thrust back the table, flung down the pencil, and rushed to the window. The lawns were flooded. Bushes and trees were drearily fluttering the last wet faded tatters of autumnal finery. Decay--desolation--death-- "Will he never come! Will he never write!" And the secret of her calm, so carefully guarded from herself, was a secret from her no longer.

It had been a farce--the six weeks of resignation. One of self-deception's familiar farces; those farces that finally make old people cynical in spite of themselves about the reality of disinterested goodness, of self-sacrifice, of anything except selfishness. A farce--nothing more. That was why she could write a brief farewell and send it off with merely a pang and a sigh. And ever since she had been confidently waiting for something to happen. Something? What but his coming--coming to give her again the love that was life and light to her, the love she could no more refuse than a drowning man can withhold his hand from clutching the rope though the devil himself toss it. And once more her father's maxim, "Nothing is settled until it's settled right," began to thrust itself at her--mockingly now, as if deriding her self-deceiving attempts to found her life upon conditions to which mind and conscience had agreed, but not heart. And heart, the most powerful of the trinity that must harmonize within a human being or there is no peace--heart had suddenly torn up the treaty of peace and declared war. And war there was.

About seven that evening Dick knocked at her bedroom door. "May I come?" he called.

"Yes--if you won't stay long," was her reply in a listless tone.

He entered, looked surprised when he saw her propped up in bed with her supper tray in her lap. "Are you ill?"

"No."

"You didn't come down to supper."

"No."

"I don't think I ever knew you to do this before."

"No."

"Your voice sounds--strange--tired."

"I am."

"You don't exercise enough, I guess. And there's little for you to do about the house--with Lizzie looking after the flowers and Nanny such a good housekeeper and Mazie such a splendid cook. We're getting the benefit of my aunt's toil. She built up such a splendid system that it runs itself--and there's really not enough for you to do. You ought to----"

"Won't you take this tray--take it down with you?"

"Don't you want me to sit a while?"

"Don't let me interfere with your work."

"Oh, there's no hurry."

"I'm sure you want to be at it."

He took the tray from her lap, put it on the floor beside his chair. She reached for the book on the stand at her elbow, opened it, seemed to be waiting for him to go. He glanced round uncertainly. "What a charming room this is," said he. "That pale brown paper with the panels made by broad violet stripes-- Let me see--was this one of the rooms you did over?"

She was reading.

"Yes of course. In my aunt's time-- You'd have admired her, and she'd have been invaluable as a teacher. But then she taught Nanny; and Nanny's been very good about teaching you, hasn't she?"

No answer.

He laughed. "We've got a rather bad habit of not listening--haven't we?"

"Oh--I don't mind."

He glanced at the tray. "Why, you didn't eat anything!"

"No."

"Are you quite sure you're not ill?"

"Quite."

"Well, if there's anything I can----"

"Nothing, thanks."

He went to the bed, bent over and kissed her. "Good night."

"Good night." She was reading again; and his thoughts returned to his work as he closed her bedroom door behind him. If he had looked in on her an hour later, he might have seen that she had not yet turned the page she pretended to begin, to get rid of him--or, rather, to help him go where he really wished to be. And he would have distrusted her assurance that she was not ill. For her eyes, wide and circled and wretched, were staring into space. She was indeed ill--ill of loneliness, of heart-emptiness, of that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick. And the rain streamed on and on. The sight of it by day filled her with the despair that lowers and rages. The sound of it monotonously pattering upon the balcony at night changed her despair from active to passive, from vain revolt to lying inert in the wash of inky waves under inky sky.

The sympathy between her and Winchie was so close that they were like one rather than like two. He had early discovered her sensitiveness to the weather, but never before had he seen her frankly downhearted. He did not annoy her. He watched her furtively, his little heart aching. He spent most of his time near the west windows of the upstairs sitting room. From them, now that the trees were almost bare, he could see part of the Donaldson's roof--the part topped by a weather vane. He knew that so long as the vane pointed east the rains would pour down, and his mother's low spirits would continue--that when it should veer to the west the rain would cease and the sky clear.

Day after day he watched, his hopes rising as the vane veered now toward the north, now toward the south, and falling again as, with a jerk, it flirted back into the eye of the east. That vane was the last thing he saw as the darkness closed down in the late afternoon; it was the first thing he looked at in the morning, dashing to the window the instant he awakened. The change came in the night, when it finally did come. As he awakened, the difference in the light, in the feel of the air told him that all was well once more. But he made sure; he hurried to one of his windows, turned the slats of a blind, looked at the vane. Then, with a shout, he darted to her door, beat upon it, crying: "Mamma! Mamma Courtney! The wind's west--the wind's west!"

She understood, opened the door. She had made her face bright. "Thank you--thank you," she said, with a catch in her voice, as she knelt and took him in her arms. He put one of his small hands on each of her cheeks, kissed her, then looked into her eyes. His face fell. She could not deceive him; it had not been the rain.

The wind was in the west; her mood veered--but to another futility. She watched for the postman. She startled and ran to the window at every crunch of wheels on the drive. She was agitated whenever the telephone bell rang. At night every suggestion of sound from the direction of the window made her lift her head from the pillow to listen; and often she would fly to open a shutter and lean out into the darkness. She would not go to Wenona, lest he should come while she was away. She never left the house for a walk without telling the servants just where she was going--"and if anyone comes, send for me."

Never before had she surrendered to the somber mood; she had always met it by taking up some one of the things at hand that interested her, and working at it until health and youth and hope reasserted themselves. But this time she could find nothing to build upon; it was all quicksand, slipping away and leaving her to sink. She no longer cared about her surroundings. She had always seen to it that the servants she had so thoroughly trained in a modern system she had carefully worked out did their duties, and did them well. Now she let the servants do as they pleased--and they soon pleased to do very poorly--as poorly as the average human being does, unless held rigidly from his natural tendencies to slovenliness and shirking. She had always done the buying for the kitchen, and had herself selected at the farm the things to be sent over. Now the good old days of Aunt Eudosia returned, with the farmer sending whatever gave him or one of "the hands" the least trouble, and with Nanny accepting from the storekeepers what they chose at their own price. The bills went up; yet the meat was often tough, the chickens and game inferior, the butter and eggs only fair, instead of the very best. Canned vegetables appeared on the table when fresh vegetables were still to be had. The coffee was capricious. The table itself was carelessly set; napkins were used several times, instead of only once; tablecloths did not always go into the wash with the first spot. Lizzie and Mazie lost no opportunity to cut down the amount of work they would have to do on wash and ironing days.

In the living rooms, upstairs as well as down, there was no longer the beautiful order that had made the interior a pleasure to the eye and so comfortable. A chair had only three casters; a door was losing its knob. A window curtain had broken away from its rod at one corner and was hanging down. Several cushions had rips in them that would soon be rents. Winchie's ravages remained unrepaired--and unrebuked. The flowers in the vases were not fresh every day, and were arranged by a servant's heavy hands. Window gardens and baskets and hothouse suffered from alterations of drought and deluge, and showed it. The red spider was rarely interrupted in his ruinous feasts. Where order has been perfect, brief neglect produces unsightly disorder. The house was becoming like most houses--indifferently looked after by women who know little about housekeeping as an art and feel "above" the endless petty details that must be attended to, no matter what the enterprise, if there is to be success. The work of changing the library to a winter conservatory had, like the vegetable greenhouse, been begun, and abandoned midway.

From the house the blight spread to herself. It is well-nigh impossible for a person who has been bred from birth in personal order and cleanliness to become really slovenly and dirty, unless beaten down into the hopeless wretchedness of extreme poverty. But Courtney had lost interest in herself, just as she had lost interest in the house. She got herself together "any old way" in the mornings, took to breakfasting in bed. Sometimes she dressed for supper, and sometimes she came in working or walking clothes or in the negligee she had been wearing all day. Sometimes her blouse was buttoned in the back, oftener it was partly open. Wrinkled stockings had been her especial abhorrence, as she was proud of her slim tapering legs; now she habitually went the whole day without garters. She read much, and always novels. Formerly their pandering to "spirituality," to "culture," to all the silly and enfeebling sentimentalisms had bored her. They had offended her sense of what was truly ideal--for, even thus early in her development, she had a strong suspicion that "idealism" was not a mode of life but a strut, and that "idealists" were not above but beneath usefulness. Now she took novels as a drug fiend his dope. Anything to escape reality--the ugly facts which her negligence was making uglier day by day.

She was in the way trod by so many women who, married and safe, cease to compete and deteriorate physically, morally, and mentally. And she knew it. She had too much intelligence to delude herself, as some women do. Instead of being angered when evidence of her plight thrust at her, she found bitter satisfaction in it. "I'll soon be down to the level of those 'good' women Dick regards as models," thought she. And she read on at her novels.

And still she continued to hope, though she constantly assured herself that hope was dead and buried. It was nearly Christmas; he had been gone more than four months--a hundred and thirty days. No word from him, no sign. "It's over," declared she. "It was just physical attraction, nothing more. And he got enough." This lash upon pride and vanity stung. But the pain seemed to ease another and fiercer pain, and she scourged on. "He got enough. In New York he found fresh attraction--not hard for a man with money and free." Yes, he had used her, despising her the while--how she writhed as she rubbed the coarse salt of these taunts into her wounds!--had used her, despising her the while, had cast her away, like the butt of a smoked cigarette. "And why shouldn't he use and despise and drop me? Could anyone have been 'easier' than I was--I, poor fool, with my dreams of love, and my loneliness and credulity? Well, anyhow he ought to be grateful to fate for having given him a distraction in this dull hole." ... What vanity had been hers, to imagine she could win and hold such a man as he--man of the world, experienced, clever. What colossal vanity! "Really, I deserve all I've got. I'm just like the rest of the women--a vanity box, a mirror and a powder puff, silly and empty--a fool for men to flatter and wheedle and laugh at.... What a poor, dependent thing a woman is! Dick's right; we're worthless except as pastimes. Don't we always despise and trample on a man who takes us seriously? We feel he has dropped down to our level."

She dissected, one by one, the "good" women over in the town and in the big houses along the south shore--their inane lives, their inane pastimes, their inane conversation. What animal grossness concealed by manners and a thin veneer of education, just as their costly clothes concealed the truth about their neglected bodies. What lazy ignorance beneath those pretentious fads for "culture" or religion or charity. And the men, too--through their passions dominated by these women. Not an idea--not an aspiration--just hunting and money-making and eating and drinking--catering to crude appetites. Slavish conformity to the soddening, mind-suffocating routine prescribed by custom for the comfortable classes. Fit associates, these men and their women. The nauseating hypocrisies and self-cheating about virtue and piety and "pure family life!" A pigsty of a world, if one looked at it as it was, instead of at its professions and pretenses. "I'd rather be the dupe of my own honest folly than the dupe of the world's cheap frauds. At least, I aspired. And now that I've fallen back into the muck, all bruised and broken, I don't lie to myself about its being muck.... And what can I do for Winchie? If I teach him what he ought to be, I'll unfit him for life in the world. If I fit him for life in the world, I must teach him to pretend, to cheat, to lie, to trample and cringe. If I teach him the truth about women, he'll become a rake. If I don't, he'll become their dupe. If I teach him the truth about men, he'll shun them. If I don't, they will debauch him."

A wound always constructs a cover, to protect itself while it is healing. The wounded heart of an intelligent man or woman usually protects itself with the scab of cynicism. For the last few years Courtney had shared with Wenona's few progressive, restless young married women that reputation for thinking and saying startling things which anyone at all free in thought and speech soon gets among conventional people. Now she became a mild scandal. Wenona appreciated that it was the fashion in these degenerate days, the mark of the "upper class," to indulge in audacities of every kind. Also, whatever a Benedict and a Vaughan did must be just about right. But sometimes, when she was in a particularly insurgent mood, her callers went away dazed.

They wondered what her husband thought of such disbelief in everything that men, themselves disbelieving, held it imperative for women to believe--women and children and preachers. The fact was he knew nothing about it. Conversation between him and his wife was confined to the necessary routine matters, and never extended beyond a few sentences. They saw each other at table only; then Winchie did most of the talking, or it grew out of and centered round things he had inquired about. Richard and Courtney neither acted nor felt like strangers. That would have meant strain. They ignored each other with the easy unconsciousness that characterizes an intimate life in which there is no sympathy, no common interest. When Richard talked about his work, as he did occasionally, merely the better to arrange his thoughts, Courtney did not listen. When Courtney and Winchie talked together, Richard did not listen.

"You saw the news in to-day's paper?" said Richard at supper a few days after Christmas.

As he continued to look expectantly at her, she roused herself from her reverie, slowly grasped his question. "I didn't read to-day's papers," answered she.

"Well, Gallatin's engagement's announced--from Philadelphia."

She nerved herself for the reaction of inward turmoil which would, she felt, certainly follow such a blow. To her amazement no reaction came. She felt as calm as if the news had been about some one of whom she had never heard.

"Why, you seem not to be interested."

"Oh, yes," replied she indifferently.

"I remember, you didn't like him."

It almost seemed true to her. Or, rather, that she had never cared about him one way or the other.

"And he so mad about you," continued Richard with raillery. "I'll never forget the looks he used to give you--or the ones he gave me, either. Well, it's all over now. He's evidently cured."

"Evidently," said Courtney. She looked calmly at him, shifted her gaze. It happened to fall upon Winchie. The boy was frowning jealously into his plate. She colored. She never had the slightest self-consciousness about Basil with Richard, but only with the boy. However, the reminder soon passed in marvel at her amazing tranquillity. How could she be thus calm in face of such a blow? Had she really conquered her love? Had this sudden, unexpected news of his perfidy killed it all in an instant? Had she never loved him?

Richard had been talking, and she had been so absorbed she had not heard. Now he was holding a letter across the table toward her. Mechanically she reached out, took it, fixed her eyes upon it. "And Mrs. Torrey says," Richard was explaining, "that we ought to ask Cousin Helen here--for a few months at least--until she gets over her father's death."

"Wenona's no place for a girl in search of a husband."

"A husband!" exclaimed Richard. "Who said anything about a husband?"

"Now that her father's dead, with nothing but a small life insurance, she's got to marry."

"Yes, I suppose so."

"That's what Mrs. Torrey's saying between these lines." And she handed the letter back.

"Mrs. Torrey's a fine, noble old lady. Such sordid ideas never'd enter her head."

"Mrs. Torrey's a woman."

"And a good one--and so is Helen," maintained Richard. "Marrying's about the last idea in her head at present."

"I believe that is the theory--among men who know nothing about women."

"She's doubtless almost prostrated with grief."

"With anxiety, perhaps. Not with grief. Not for a worthless old drunkard."

"You forget, Courtney. He was her _father_."

Courtney lifted her eyebrows. "So much the more certain she detested him. She had to live right up against him."

Richard leaned forward slightly, to add emphasis to his rebuke. "I repeat, Helen is a good woman--a woman with a sense of duty. She must have loved him."

"Why repeat such twaddle?" inquired Courtney, unimpressed. "What has duty to do with hearts?"

Dick looked strong disapproval. "What is the matter, my dear? You're not talking in the least like yourself."

"You always make that same remark," observed Courtney, "whenever I say anything that does not suit you."

"Are you irritated by the prospect of Helen's coming? If you don't want her----"

"I am not irritated about anything. As for Helen, I care not a rap one way or the other."

Winchie had finished. He kissed his father, then his mother good night, and went upstairs. Richard came out of a deep study to say, "It's a pity Gallatin isn't free and here--if Helen comes."

"It would have made a good match," said Courtney judiciously. "A splendid living for Helen."

"I wasn't thinking of Gallatin's wealth," protested Richard, reddening. Then he laughed, "At least, not altogether."

"The living's the main point in marriage."

"What an unpleasant mood you're in."

"I? I never felt more amiable."

"Have I said anything to offend you?"

"Not a thing." She rose languidly. "You're still the model--not a single redeeming fault."

She stretched herself with slow, lazy grace. "But you," said he, "are a bundle of redeeming faults and vagaries--a bouquet of them." And he was about to kiss her.

She flung away from him with flashing eyes. He stared, amazed. "How you startled me!" she exclaimed, quickly changing her expression from fury to half-laughing irritation.

"Miss Caprice!" And his gaze was soft and brilliant.

There was a virgin coldness in her manner that puzzled and abashed him. "How I hate this body of mine, sometimes!" said she. "An admiring look makes me angry, and a kiss seems an insult. Come to me with your love when I'm old and ugly. Then, perhaps, I'll believe it."

And she strolled out of the room and upstairs. The instant she had her bedroom door locked, she knew why she had come away--knew she had been obeying an instinct warning her secret self that she could not many minutes longer endure the strain. "But really I am calm," she insisted. In the same second her wound opened and was aching and bleeding and throbbing, unhealed. "I can never forget--never!" she cried. "Was it only this body of mine he cared for? What does it matter? Even the little he gave was more than I had to give. I ought to have been more humble about giving--I who had so little. And what happiness he gave me in exchange! No--not happiness, but more than happiness." Her eyes strained into the night. It was so dreary--so lonely. "Basil!--Basil! I'm dying for you--dying from the core out!"

She flung her windows wide. The snow came whirling in. The wind was moaning among the branches. Somewhere, far away, a bell tolled. Silence, utter solitude, a stretch of white snow under a black sky, and the chilling cold. "Come to me!" she cried. "I am so cold--so lonely--so hungry! And I love you."

Even where a woman cannot doubt that her lover has forgotten, there are times when memory--of his vows so convincing, of his caresses that seemed the inspiration of her charms alone--makes her defy certainty and believe. And Courtney had no real reason to think him either false or forgetful. They had been torn apart when their love was still hungry and thirsty, when even the long calm that precedes satiety was still far in the future, when they were so absorbed in loving that they had not yet had time to begin to get acquainted with each other's real self. It was doubt of him that was forced, belief in him that was natural. "If he were not so strong, so honorable!" she cried. "Ah, if he were only where I could tempt him!"

Even the thought of Winchie now lost all power to check her; he was too much like part of herself. She seemed as placid in her slender youthfulness as those handsome matronly women who suggest extinct volcanoes covered with flowers and smiling fields. Beneath her manner of monotonous, emotionless calm she was battling with the temptation to take her boy and fly from that cold desolation of loveless loneliness, to fly to him. If Richard had not been absolutely apart from her life, absolutely out of her thoughts she would have hated him. As it was her rage fretted at the impersonal barriers and bonds that held her--not Richard, but conventionality and, above all, lack of money. "If only I had money!" she cried again and again.

But she had nothing--her clothes, a few dollars that must be paid out for expenses already incurred. "If I went to him, it would be to become his dependent, just as I am Richard's. Oh, the horror of being a woman! Bred to dependence; bred for the market; bred to tease some man into undertaking her support for life. There is the rotten spot in my whole life. If Richard had ever deigned to speculate as to what was going on in my head, he'd never have dared touch me. He'd have feared I was his only for hire. But would he care? Doesn't he expect me to be true because he supports me? Isn't that what marriage means, beneath the cant and pretense? Yes, I'm simply part of his property, and the pretenses that gloze it over only make it the more revolting. Oh, if men had sensibilities, and if they knew what women thought!--why we smile and flatter and stay on, in spite of neglect and insult!"

She felt that, if she should go to Basil, the day would come when their love would die of this poison exuding from the basic fact of their relations--his sense of his rights because of her dependence; or, her fear of losing or impairing her living; or, her feeling that since she took bread she must give body--all she had to pay with. Richard thought he could afford to be neglectful; and when it suited him to give passing attention to his property again--to walk in his garden and eat a little fruit from his tree--he thought he had a perfect right to do so. If Richard was thus, if all men believed thus, why fancy Basil an exception? Basil, in time, when passion cooled, would hold her in the same light disesteem. If a man lost his virtue, even hypocrisy did not go beyond a half smiling shake of the head; if a woman lost her virtue, she was "ruined." Ruined--that is, a worthless wreck. "No, I shall not go to Basil. No doubt, he still cares--in a man's way of caring. But he holds me, the unfaithful wife, cheap enough. If I were to lose reputation also, were to be unable to give him the pleasure of trespassing on another's property, were to be merely a ruined woman, living off him, he'd soon treat me like the slave that I am. No, I'll not change owners.... If only I had money!"

What, then? She had seen all along that she was like one sinking in the ooze of a marsh--softly, inevitably toward suffocation. "If I stay on here, I'll become like the rest of the settled, disillusioned married women. I'll become a chronic sloven and--as my disposition isn't toward fat, squatted good nature--a shrew. A slovenly shrew!" Why not? What had she left to live for? In a few years Winchie would be away at school--then in some city at profession or business--and married and out of her life. "I might as well give up. Why not?"

There seemed to be no reason. But our conduct in its main lines is not governed by reason, but by instincts that impel us even against will. When Richard had failed her at the outset of their married life, she had sunk; then her temperament of hope and energy had forced her up again in face of deepest discouragements. So now, while there was no reason why she should cease to sink, should begin to struggle, while Basil's announced engagement assuring a speedy marriage seemed just the thing to make her sink on, she began to rouse herself and to look about her. For the second time her longings and energies had lost their stimulus, their inspiration, their vitalizing center. And that center is to an unselfish nature as necessary as queen bee to swarm which clusters about her, labors for her, and renews through her. With human beings such as Courtney Vaughan longings and energies rarely die upon the corpse of their inspiration. After a while they fly upward, as did hers, and begin to circle in search of a new clustering center, a new reason for living and working on. "I can't stay here," she kept repeating. "I must go somewhere. I must do something. Where? What?" How settle her life problem so that it would be "settled right," and she could have peace and happiness? She found no answer. But she kept on thrusting the question at herself. It was as significant of her character as of her trend of thought that her cry "If only I had money!" changed to "If only I could _make_ money!"

*XVI*

They were at supper, Dick reading the paper, Winchie busy with bowl of rice and milk, Courtney listening to the storm that shrieked in baffled rage after each vain assault upon the house. Her whole being was quivering with the pain that never pierced her more acutely than when she was in the presence of Basil's vacant place at the table. Winchie, without looking up, broke the silence: "We shan't go, mamma, shall we, unless it clears up?"

Dick, turning the paper, happened to hear. "Go where?" he asked.

"To grandfather's."

"When?"

Courtney said: "Winchie and I are going to-morrow."

"Impossible," said Dick. "They'd think you were crazy."

"Perhaps I am," Courtney replied. "Anyhow, we're going."

"Why?"

"I need a change."

"Put it off till spring." And he resumed the newspaper as if the matter were disposed of.

"No. To-morrow," said she, not in the least aggressively; but her tone was of unalterable determination.

"Or, if you must go somewhere, why not Saint X? You can visit Pauline Scarborough or the Hargraves--and bring Helen March back with you."

"I prefer the farm."

He laid the paper down. "You're not serious?"

"Quite."

"Now, my dear--" he began. His tone was one he had unconsciously adopted from his grandfather. He used it whenever he, as head of the family, confronted an "irrational, feminine caprice."

"What's the use of reasoning with me?" interrupted she. "Didn't your grandfather teach you that women can't reason?"

"I'm willing for you to go to Saint X. But----"

She looked significantly toward Winchie. Dick took the hint, went back to his reading until they were alone. Then he resumed: "I'm sure you'll not persist now that I've pointed out to you----"

"If you wish me to keep my temper," interrupted she, "you'll not use that wheedling tone. I'd feel I was degrading Winchie by speaking to him in a way that belittled his intelligence."

Dick looked astonished. "I had no intention----"

"I know--I know," said she appealingly. "It doesn't matter. I really don't care anything about it.

"But you'll not go when it's so clearly a folly to----"

"I am going," said she. "You ought to be grateful that I have such inexpensive whims. Most of us silly women--" She paused, with a lift of the long, slender eyebrows. How absurd to gird at him whose opinions interested her as little as hers interested him!

He revolved what she had been saying, presently reddened. "I thought I had explained to you," said he, "that the laboratory is very expensive. I know I don't give you much. I've had to cut down the household allowance because I feel sure Gallatin will be withdrawing his capital. But just as soon as I----"

She was even of temper again. "You remind me of old Hendricks," interrupted she pleasantly. "You know, he made three people toil for him all their lives, with no pay and mighty poor board and clothes--on the promise of a legacy--and they died before he did."

But Dick was offended. "It seems to me," said he, "in view of what I'm doing at the shop----"

"Please don't," she cried. "You're trying to make me out an ingrate, who doesn't appreciate how you're toiling just for wife and child. Now, what's the fact? Isn't your work your amusement?"

"Of course, I like it, but----"

"Weren't you doing the same thing before you had a family? Wouldn't you be doing it if you should lose them? Isn't it your pride that you work solely for love of science?"

He looked disconcerted assent.

"Then the fact is, you spend most of your income on your own amusement, as much as if you drank it."

He reflected. "That never occurred to me before," said he. "Possibly I have viewed it too one-sidedly. I must think it over and see."

She shrugged her shoulders. "Pray don't, on my account."

He made no reply, put forward no further objections to her going, though the next morning developed a driving sleet. As she and Winchie were about to get into the carriage he asked; "How long will you be gone?"

"Until I feel better."

"If you are ill, you must not go in this weather."

She looked at him strangely. "If I were dying I should go," was her slow reply.

He hesitated, studied her small, resolute face, her fever-bright eyes, with a puzzled expression. "I suppose it's best to give a woman her way in her whims, so long as they're harmless," said he aloud, but to himself rather than to her. She finished wrapping up the boy, went out to the carriage, and got in. He lifted Winchie in, tucked them both carefully, bade them a last good-by, his expression grave and constrained.

In those fifteen miles through the searching cold, over roads like fields deep plowed and frozen hard, she debated how best to carry out her main purpose in going to that dreary farm--how to take her father partly, perhaps wholly, into her confidence so that she might get his help--for help she must have. Her mother was now impossible--quite demented on the subject of religion latterly through the long steeping of mind and heart in a theology whose heaven was hardly less formidable as an eternal prospect than its hell, and whose hell was a fiery sea canopied by shriek and stench of burning multitude. The old maid sisters had neither experience nor judgment, only bitterness. To them it would be inconceivable that a married woman, with a husband who supported her in comfort, could be other than blissfully happy. But her father-- He had been a man of affairs, judge. He had lived and read and thought. She had heard her mother rebuke him for expressing "loose" opinions; probably he was concealing opinions even more liberal and enlightened and humane. Perhaps he could give her practical advice--or at least sympathy.

But, arrived at the farmhouse, she had only to look into those four countenances to see that she was among people who knew no more of the life of the present day--or indeed of the real life of any day, even of what they themselves actually believed and felt--than deep-sea oysters in their bed know of Alpine flowers. Even her father-- In this remote desert he had lost what knowledge of life he formerly possessed. She was now developed enough to realize that he in fact never did know much about life, that his was a book education only. She had journeyed for help in vain; she was still alone, dependent wholly upon her own courage and resource.

"Don't you wish we hadn't come, mamma?" said Winchie when they were in the room assigned them.

"No," she replied truthfully. She was watching the hickory flames in a calmer mood than she had known for weeks; at least she had got away where she could think, could get an outside point of view upon the posture of her affairs. "No, indeed," she went on to Winchie leaning against her knee and looking up at her. "No, I feel better already."

"Then I guess I can stand it," said the boy with a sigh.

"You don't know about the hill where we can coast."

As he had never coasted, this did not lighten the impression made on him by the gloomy farmhouse sitting room, its walls and ceilings covered with somber paper, by the shriveled grandparents, with deep-sunk, lack-luster eyes, by the sharp, sour faces of the two old maids. But next day, when the sun came out and the farmhands beat down a track on the long hill, Winchie found the situation vastly improved. Flat on her breast on a sled, with the boy breathless and happy upon her back, she initiated him into the raptures of "belly-buster."

"Why, mamma, you look like a little girl, not a bit grown up," cried he after they had been at it all morning and were tugging up the hill for one last, magnificent rush down before going home to dinner. And she did indeed seem to be a sister of Winchie's, one hardly in her teens. Of course, the short skirt and her smallness of stature helped. But it was in her cheeks, in her eyes, in the curve of her lips as she showed her white teeth in the happiest of smiles.

"I _am_ a little girl," declared she. And before starting out with him after dinner she did her hair in two long braids that hung below her waistline.

They coasted every day; they took long sleigh rides, long romping walks; they hunted rabbits, went fishing through the ice, were uproarious outside the house and in--the latter to the scandal of the three women of the family, who regarded such goings-on as clearly forbidden in the Scriptures. Even Sunday wasn't so bad as might have been expected; for it snowed too violently for Mrs. Benedict to take them to the church where her favorite doctrines were expounded, and they slipped away to the glorious outdoors. In a sheltered hollow under a shelf of rock they built an enormous snow man, with a top hat of bark. They ate what Winchie regarded as the most wonderful meal of his life at the cottage of one of the farmhands. Never before had he seen such brown brownbread or such molassessy molasses or eaten off such big, strong dishes that there wasn't the least danger of breaking, no matter what you did to them. And he was fascinated by the farmhand's wife and daughter, both acting their company best and eating with the little finger of each hand stuck straight out. And in a box in the corner of the room where they ate was a most exciting brood of little chickens, chirping and squeaking. And in the midst of dinner a huge, hairy, black dog suddenly snatched a piece of meat from the farmhand's plate and retired to the kitchen with it. "Ain't he a caution?" said the farmhand, and Winchie thought he certainly was.

Courtney was like those who put out to sea, leaving their troubles at the one shore, not to think of them until they touch the other. All around were the white hills, and there seemed to be no beyond. She abandoned her plan of studying her situation. She stopped thinking; she ate and slept, and played with the boy, and pretended that she was the little girl she looked, home from school for the holidays, and half hoping somehow something would happen so that there wouldn't be any school any more. She did not think, but she hoped. How? What? Where? She did not know; simply hope, that can burst the strongest grave despair ever buried it in.

Well along in the second week, toward the middle of the afternoon, she and Winchie were on the long hill, rounding out one more happy day. She was as happy as he. When all is lost save youth and health, what is really lost? She on her breast on the sled and he sprawled along her back, his arms round her neck, they shot down the steep with shouts and screams. They stopped, all covered with flying snow, in a soft bank beneath which the zigzag fence was deep buried. They rolled in the snow, washed each other's faces, stood up--were within a few feet of a man in a fur-lined coat almost to his heels. They stared, astounded. Then Winchie's face darkened and hers grew more radiant still as the tears sprang to her eyes.

"Basil!" she murmured, Winchie forgotten. "Oh--_Basil_!" And all in that instant the misery of those months of despair was gloriously transformed into joy.

"Courtney!" he cried. "How beautiful you are!"

He was extraordinarily handsome himself at that moment. Love is a matchless beautifier; and if ever love shone from a human countenance, it was shining, irradiating from his just then. With Winchie jealously watchful they shook hands. "Aren't you and Winchie going to speak to each other?" she asked. And Basil, with reluctance and some confusion held out a hand which the boy very hesitatingly touched.

"I'll pull your sled to the top for you," Basil offered. "Get on, Winchie."

The boy planted his feet more firmly in the snow. "We were going home," said Courtney.

"Get on, Winchie," cried Basil friendlily. "I'll haul you."

"I'm going to walk," replied the boy sullenly.

Courtney understood. "Get on, Winchie," said she. "I'll pull it."

The boy obeyed. The rope was long, so Basil felt free to speak in a lowered voice. "Seeing you--hearing you--touching you-- O my darling! my Courtney!"

She forgot where she was, who she was, everything but love. Love! The road danced before her. The cry of the chickadees, the twitter of the snowbirds, the call of Bob White from the fence sounded like supernal music in her ears. The blood tingled and dizzied her nerves. Love again! "You care--still?" she murmured.

"Care? There's only you for me in all the world."

She caught her breath, like the swinger at the long swing's dizziest height when it halts to begin the delirious descent. "Love!" she murmured. "Love!"

"And I know you love me," he went on. "I've never doubted--not once. I've tried to doubt, but I couldn't. Up before me would come those dear eyes of yours, and--Courtney, there isn't a kiss--or a caress--hardly a touch of the hands you and I have ever lived that I haven't felt again and again."

"Don't!" she pleaded, her eyes swimming. "Don't, or I'll break down. My love--my love!"

"I don't know what would have become of me," he went on, "if I hadn't known you'd send for me--yes--in spite of your note. I expected it, for I knew you wouldn't be able to come. The more I thought, the clearer I saw. Not to go any further, there was the boy." He glanced round at Winchie; the angry gray-green eyes were fixed upon him. He glanced away, disconcerted. But he forgot Winchie when his eyes returned to her. "Beautiful! Beautiful--little girl," he murmured, his look sweeping her small, perfect figure to the edge of her short skirt. "I like your new way of wearing your hair."

She blushed. "I did it to make me feel young. I've been feeling so old--old and tired and lonely."

"Thank God, you sent for me."

"Sent for you! A hundred times a day in thought." She laughed aloud, sparkling like the ice-cased boughs in the late afternoon sun. "A thousand thousand times in longing--every time my heart beat."

"Oh, it is so good to be with you!" He drew in a huge draught of the clean, cold, vital air. "Does the sun anywhere else shine on such happiness as this? But I've been mad with happiness ever since the word came."

"The word? What word?"

"Vaughan's letter. I knew you got him to write it."

Courtney stopped short. "I!" she exclaimed. "I don't know what you mean."

"I got a letter from him three days ago. He asked me to take another quarter interest in his work--said he needed the money, as he found he'd been using more of his own in it than he could afford with justice to his family----"

"Oh!" cried Courtney sharply.

"What is it?" asked Basil.

She was looking straight ahead. "Nothing--nothing. Go on." And she started to walk again.

"Your cry sounded like pain."

"Did it? Go on."

"I assumed you had at last succeeded in making the chance for me to come back. So, I telegraphed I'd accept, provided he'd let me work with him again--and that I'd be on at once to talk things over. I took the first train--and here I am."

"Yes, here. That's another mystery to explain."

"Nothing simpler. The station man at Wenona told me you were visiting your father. I jumped at the chance. I can say I thought you all were here. Anything more?"

"I saw the announcement of your engagement."

"It's broken. I couldn't marry her--couldn't have done it in any circumstances. So, I gave her what she was losing by our not marrying. And I'm free. You want me to stay?"

He spoke indifferently about the money he had given up, and he evidently felt indifferent. She would have been hurt had he acted otherwise. At the same time it was a measure of his generosity and of his love, a sordid but certain measure. She regarded that payment as a sort of ransom--his ransom for the right to come to her. "That was his price for the right," thought she. "He paid it without a second thought--would have paid any price. My price for the right to be his may be harder. But I must pay, too--as generously as he."

He was watching her anxiously. "Courtney, I can't go away!"

"You mustn't," replied she. Then a reason--the reason--the solution of her life problem--came to her as if by inspiration. "It's my only chance to be a good woman. That sounds strange, doesn't it?"

"Not to me. I understand. If you hadn't sent for me soon--" he checked himself.

"What?"

"You didn't know that my coming here last spring--and loving you--cured me of the drinking habit. I know, it's stupid and disgusting. I used to loathe myself when I gave way. But it's the only resort in loneliness. And if I realized that you were lost to me, what would I care?"

She nodded sympathetically. "I was going all to pieces, in another way. I was sliding down as fast as Winchie and I were coasting the hill back there. I was going the way of all women who have no love--grown-up love--in their lives. I know now, the reason I used to keep myself together and built myself up and looked after things was because I was waiting and hoping for love, and was expecting it. Love is all of a woman's life, as things are run in this world--at present."

"And quite enough it is, too," said he.

"No," disagreed she. "But let that pass. If I went back to--to that life--alone, I'd be going to ruin. And I'd probably drag him and Winchie down with me. A woman of that unburied-dead sort drags down everybody about her.... You've only to look round, in any station of life, to see those women by the scores. Some few are saved by children--not many and they are of a different nature from me--from most women, I think.... If I don't go back, I either go to you disgraced, a shame to my family, a lifelong stain on my boy here, a miserable, afraid dependent of yours.... No, don't interrupt; I've thought it all out.... Or, I'd plunge into a life of social dissipation. If possible, that sort of woman is worse for herself and for her husband and children than the domestic rotter. A chattering, card-playing gadabout. Possibly I might remain true to my husband, but-- If the world weren't the fool it is, it would have discovered long ago that there are worse vices than--" As always when she forced herself to say frank, merciless things, she looked straight into his eyes with defiant audacity--"worse vices than ours."

"But--" he began, shifting his gaze and coloring.

"Oh, yes, it is. Don't make any mistake about it. But I know lots of 'good' women--liars, gossips, naggers, petty swindlers of their husbands, envious, malicious, spiteful--lots and lots of so-called good women beside whom I'd feel white as this snow."

"Rather!" exclaimed Basil.