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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/8134.txt b/8134.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2af26b4 --- /dev/null +++ b/8134.txt @@ -0,0 +1,20575 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Together, by Robert Herrick + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Together + +Author: Robert Herrick + +Posting Date: October 20, 2012 [EBook #8134] +Release Date: May, 2005 +First Posted: June 17, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOGETHER *** + + + + +Produced by Susan Skinner, Eric Eldred, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + + + +TOGETHER + +BY + +ROBERT HERRICK + + + + + + + +PART ONE + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +She stood before the minister who was to marry them, very tall and +straight. With lips slightly parted she looked at him steadfastly, not at +the man beside her who was about to become her husband. Her father, with a +last gentle pressure of her arm, had taken his place behind her. In the +hush that had fallen throughout the little chapel, all the restless +movement of the people who had gathered there this warm June morning was +stilled, in the expectation of those ancient words that would unite the two +before the altar. Through the open window behind the altar a spray of young +woodbine had thrust its juicy green leaves and swayed slowly in the air, +which was heavy with earthy odors of all the riotous new growth that was +pushing forward in the fields outside. And beyond the vine could be seen a +bit of the cloudless, rain-washed sky. + +There before the minister, who was fumbling mechanically at his +prayer-book, a great space seemed to divide the man and the woman from all +the others, their friends and relatives, who had come to witness the +ceremony of their union. In the woman's consciousness an unexpected +stillness settled, as if for these few moments she were poised between the +past of her whole life and the mysterious future. All the preoccupations of +the engagement weeks, the strange colorings of mood and feeling, all the +petty cares of the event itself, had suddenly vanished. She did not see +even him, the man she was to marry, only the rugged face of the old +minister, the bit of fluttering vine, the expanse of blue sky. She stood +before the veil of her life, which was about to be drawn aside. + +This hushed moment was broken by the resonant tones of the minister as he +began the opening words of the sacrament that had been said over so many +millions of human beings. Familiar as the phrases were, she did not realize +them, could not summon back her attention from that depth within of awed +expectancy. After a time she became aware of the subdued movements in the +chapel, of people breaking into the remote circle of her mystery,--even +here they must needs have their part--and of the man beside her looking +intently at her, with flushed face. It was this man, this one here at her +side, whom she had chosen of all that might have come into her life; and +suddenly he seemed a stranger, standing there, ready to become her husband! +The woodbine waved, recalling to her flashing thoughts that day two years +before when the chapel was dedicated, and they two, then mere friends, had +planted this vine together. And now, after certain meetings, after some +surface intercourse, they had willed to come here to be made one... + +"And who gives this woman in marriage?" the minister asked solemnly, +following the primitive formula which symbolizes that the woman is to be +made over from one family to another as a perpetual possession. She gave +herself of course! The words were but an outgrown form... + +There was the necessary pause while the Colonel came forward, and taking +his daughter's hand from which the glove had been carefully turned back, +laid it gently in the minister's large palm. The father's lips twitched, +and she knew he was feeling the solemnity of his act, that he was +relinquishing a part of himself to another. Their marriage--her father's +and mother's--had been happy,--oh, very peaceful! And yet--hers must be +different, must strike deeper. For the first time she raised her shining +eyes to the man at her side... + +"I, John, take thee Isabelle for my wedded wife, to have and to hold ... in +sickness and in health ... until death us do part ... and hereby I plight +thee my troth." + +Those old words, heard so many times, which heretofore had echoed without +meaning to her,--she had vaguely thought them beautiful,--now came +freighted with sudden meaning, while from out the dreamlike space around +sounded the firm tones of the man at her side repeating slowly, with grave +pauses, word by word, the marriage oath. "I, John, take thee Isabelle," +that voice was saying, and she knew that the man who spoke these words in +his calm, grave manner was the one she had chosen, to whom she had willed +to give herself for all time,--presently she would say it also,--for +always, always, "until death us do part." He was promising it with tranquil +assurance,--fidelity, the eternal bond, throughout the unknown years, out +of the known present. "And hereby I plight thee my troth." Without a tremor +the man's assured voice registered the oath--before God and man. + +"I, Isabelle," and the priest took up with her this primal oath of +fidelity, body and soul. All at once the full personal import of the words +pierced her, and her low voice swelled unconsciously with her affirmation. +She was to be for always as she was now. They two had not been one before: +the words did not make them so now. It was their desire. But the old +divided selves, the old impulses, they were to die, here, forever. + +She heard herself repeating the words after the minister. Her strong young +voice in the stillness of the chapel sounded strangely not her own voice, +but the voice of some unknown woman within her, who was taking the oath for +her in this barbaric ceremony whereby man and woman are bound together. +"And hereby I plight thee my troth,"--the voice sank to a whisper as of +prayer. Her eyes came back to the man's face, searching for his eyes. + +There were little beads of perspiration on his broad brow, and the shaven +lips were closely pressed together, moulding the face into lines of +will,--the look of mastery. What was he, this man, now her husband for +always, his hand about hers in sign of perpetual possession and protection? +What beneath all was he who had taken with her, thus publicly, the mighty +oath of fidelity, "until death us do part"? Each had said it; each believed +it; each desired it wholly. Perversely, here in the moment of her deepest +feeling, intruded the consciousness of broken contracts, the waste of +shattered purposes. Ah, but _theirs_ was different! This absolute oath of +fidelity one to the other, each with his own will and his own desire,--this +irredeemable contract of union between man and woman,--it was not always a +binding sacrament. Often twisted and broken, men and women promising in the +belief of the best within them what was beyond their power to perform. +There were those in that very chapel who had said these words and broken +them, furtively or legally... With them, of course, it would be different, +would be the best; for she conceived their love to be of another kind,--the +enduring kind. Nevertheless, just here, while the priest of society +pronounced the final words of union, something spoke within the woman's +soul that it was a strange oath to be taking, a strange manner of making +two living beings one! + +"And I pronounce you man and wife," the words ran. Then the minister +hastened on into his little homily upon the marriage state. But the woman's +thought rested at those fateful words,--"man and wife,"--the knot of the +contract. There should fall a new light in her heart that would make her +know they were really one, having now been joined as the book said "in holy +wedlock." From this sacramental union of persons there should issue to both +a new spirit... + +Her husband was standing firm and erect, listening with all the +concentration of his mind to what the minister was saying--not tumultuously +distracted--as though he comprehended the exact gravity of this contract +into which he was entering, as he might that of any other he could make, +sure of his power to fulfil all, confident before Fate. She trembled +strangely. Did she know him, this other self? In the swift apprehension of +life's depths which came through her heightened mood she perceived that +ultimate division lying between all human beings, that impregnable fortress +of the individual soul.... It was all over. He looked tenderly at her. Her +lips trembled with a serious smile,--yes, they would understand now! + +The people behind them moved more audibly. The thing was done; the priest's +words of exhortation were largely superfluous. All else that concerned +married life these two would have to find out for themselves. The thing was +done, as ordained by the church, according to the rules of society. Now it +was for Man and Wife to make of it what they would or--could. + +The minister closed his book in dismissal. The groom offered his arm to the +bride. Facing the chapelful she came out of that dim world of wonder +whither she had strayed. Her veil thrown back, head proudly erect, eyes +mistily ranging above the onlookers, she descended the altar steps, gazing +down the straight aisle over the black figures, to the sunny village green, +beyond into the vista of life! ... Triumphant organ notes beat through the +chapel, as they passed between the rows of smiling faces,--familiar faces +only vaguely perceived, yet each with its own expression, its own reaction +from this ceremony. She swept on deliberately, with the grace of her long +stride, her head raised, a little smile on her open lips, her hand just +touching his,--going forward with him into life. + +Only two faces stood out from the others at this moment,--the dark, +mischievous face of Nancy Lawton, smiling sceptically. Her dark, little +eyes seemed to say, 'Oh, you don't know yet!' And the other was the large, +placid face of a blond woman, older than the bride, standing beside a +stolid man at the end of a pew. The serene, soft eyes of this woman were +dim with tears, and a tender smile still lingered on her lips. She at +least, Alice Johnston, the bride's cousin, could smile through the tears--a +smile that told of the sweetness in life..... + +At the door the frock-coated young ushers formed into double line through +which the couple passed. The village green outside was flooded with +sunshine, checkered by drooping elm branches. Bells began to ring from the +library across the green and from the schoolhouse farther down. It was +over--the fine old barbaric ceremony, the passing of the irredeemable +contract between man and woman, the public proclamation of eternal union. +Henceforth they were man and wife before the law, before their kind--one +and one, and yet not two. + +Thus together they passed out of the church. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +The company gathered within the chapel for the wedding now moved and talked +with evident relief, each one expressing his feeling of the solemn service. + +"Very well done, very lovely!" the Senator was murmuring to the bride's +mother, just as he might give an opinion of a good dinner or some neat +business transaction or of a smartly dressed woman. It was a function of +life successfully performed--and he nodded gayly to a pretty woman three +rows away. He was handsome and gray-haired, long a widower, and evidently +considered weddings to be an attractive, ornamental feature of social life. +Mrs. Price, the bride's mother, intent upon escaping with the Colonel by +the side door and rejoining the bridal party at the house before the guests +arrived on foot, scarcely heeded the amiable Senator's remarks. This affair +of her daughter's marriage was, like most events, a matter of engrossing +details. The Colonel, in his usual gregarious manner, had strayed among the +guests, forgetful of his duties, listening with bent head to congratulatory +remarks. She had to send her younger son, Vickers, after him where he +lingered with Farrington Beals, the President of the great Atlantic and +Pacific Railroad, in which his new son-in-law held a position. When the +Colonel finally dragged himself away from the pleasant things that his old +friend Beals had to say about young Lane, he looked at his impatient wife +with his tender smile, as if he would like to pat her cheek and say, "Well, +we've started them right, haven't we?" + +The guests flowed conversationally towards the door and the sunny green, +while the organ played deafeningly. But play as exultantly as it might, it +could not drown the babble of human voices. Every one wanted to utter those +excitable commonplaces that seem somehow to cover at such times deep +meanings. + +"What a perfect wedding!" + +"How pretty it all was!" + +"Not a hitch." + +"She looked the part." + +"Good fellow--nice girl--ought to be happy ... Well, old man, when is your +turn coming? ... Could hear every word they said ... looked as though they +meant it, too! ..." + +In an eddy of the centre aisle a tall, blond young woman with handsome, +square shoulders and dark eyes stood looking about her calmly, as if she +were estimating the gathering, setting each one down at the proper social +valuation, deciding, perhaps, in sum that they were a very "mixed lot," old +friends and new, poor and rich. A thin girl, also blond, with deep blue +eyes, and a fine bony contour of the face, was swept by the stream near the +solitary observer and held out a hand:-- + +"Cornelia!" + +"Margaret!" + +"Isn't it ideal!" Margaret Lawton exclaimed, her nervous face still stirred +by all that she had felt during the service,--"the day, the country, and +this dear little chapel!" + +"Very sweet," the large woman replied in a purring voice, properly +modulated for the sentiment expressed. "Isabelle made an impressive bride." +And these two school friends moved on towards the door. Cornelia Pallanton, +still surveying the scene, nodded and said to her companion, "There's your +cousin Nannie Lawton. Her husband isn't here, I suppose? There are a good +many St. Louis people." + +The guests were now scattered in little groups over the green, dawdling in +talk and breathing happily the June-scented air. The stolid man and his +placid wife who had sat near the rear had already started for the Colonel's +house, following the foot-path across the fields. They walked silently side +by side, as if long used to wordless companionship. + +The amiable Senator and his friend Beals examined critically the little +Gothic chapel, which had been a gift to his native town by the Colonel, as +well as the stone library at the other end of the green. "Nice idea of +Price," the Senator was saying, "handsome buildings--pleasant little +village," and he moved in the direction of Miss Pallanton, who was alone. + +Down below in the valley, on the railroad siding, lay the special train +that had brought most of the guests from New York that morning. The engine +emitted little puffs of white smoke in the still noon, ready to carry its +load back to the city after the breakfast. About the library steps were the +carriages of those who had driven over from neighboring towns; the whole +village had a disturbed and festal air. + +The procession was straggling across the village street through the stile +and into the meadow, tramping down the thick young grass, up the slope to +the comfortable old white house that opened its broad verandas like +hospitable arms. The President of the Atlantic and Pacific, deserted by the +Senator, had offered his arm to a stern old lady with knotty hands partly +concealed in lace gloves. Her lined face had grown serious in age and +contention with life. She clung stiffly to the arm of the railroad +president,--proud, silent, and shy. She was _his_ mother. From her one +might conclude that the groom's people were less comfortably circumstanced +than the bride's--that this was not a marriage of ambition on the woman's +part. It was the first time Mrs. Lane had been "back east" since she had +left her country home as a young bride. It was a proud moment, walking with +her son's chief; but the old lady did not betray any elation, as she +listened to the kindly words that Beals found to say about her son. + +"A first-rate railroad man, Mrs. Lane,--he will move up rapidly. We can't +get enough of that sort." + +The mother, never relaxing her tight lips, drank it all in, treasured it as +a reward for the hard years spent in keeping that boarding-house in Omaha, +after the death of her husband, who had been a country doctor. + +"He's a good son," she admitted as the eulogy flagged. "And he knows how to +get on with all kinds of folks...." + +At their heels were Vickers Price and the thin Southern girl, Margaret +Lawton. Vickers, just back from Munich for this event, had managed to give +the conventional dress that he was obliged to wear a touch of strangeness, +with an enormous flowing tie of delicate pink, a velvet waistcoat, and +broad-brimmed hat. The clothes and the full beard, the rippling chestnut +hair and pointed mustache, showed a desire for eccentricity on the part of +the young man that distinguished him from all the other well-dressed young +Americans. He carried a thin cane and balanced a cigarette between his +lips. + +"Yes," he was saying, "I had to come over to see Isabelle married, but I +shall go back after a look around--not the place for me!" He laughed and +waved his cane towards the company with an ironic sense of his +inappropriateness to an American domestic scene. + +"You are a composer,--music, isn't it?" the girl asked, a flash in her blue +eyes at the thought of youth, Munich, music. + +"I have written a few things; am getting ready, you know," Vickers Price +admitted modestly. + +Just there they were joined by a handsome, fashionably dressed man, his +face red with rapid walking. He touched his long, well-brushed black +mustache with his handkerchief as he explained:-- + +"Missed the train--missed the show--but got here in time for the fun, on +the express." + +He took his place beside the girl, whose color deepened and eyes turned +away,--perhaps annoyed, or pleased? + +"That's what you come for, isn't it?" she said, forcing a little joke. +Noticing that the two men did not speak, she added hastily, "Don't you know +Mr. Price, Mr. Vickers Price? Mr. Hollenby." + +The newcomer raised his silk hat, sweeping Vickers, who was fanning himself +with his broad-brimmed felt, in a light, critical stare. Then Mr. Hollenby +at once appropriated the young woman's attention, as though he would +indicate that it was for her sake he had taken this long, hot journey. + + * * * * * + +There were other little groups at different stages on the hill,--one +gathered about a small, dark-haired woman, whose face burned duskily in the +June sun. She was Aline Goring,--the Eros of that schoolgirl band at St. +Mary's who had come to see their comrade married. And there was Elsie +Beals,--quite elegant, the only daughter of the President of the A. and P. +The Woodyards, Percy and Lancey, classmates of Vickers at the university, +both slim young men, wearing their clothes carelessly,--clearly not of the +Hollenby manner,--had attached themselves here. Behind them was Nan Lawton, +too boisterous even for the open air. At the head of the procession, now +nearly topping the hill beneath the house, was that silent married couple, +the heavy, sober man and the serene, large-eyed woman, who did not mingle +with the others. He had pointed out to her the amiable Senator and +President Beals, both well-known figures in the railroad world where he +worked, far down, obscurely, as a rate clerk. His wife looked at these two +great ones, who indirectly controlled the petty destiny of the Johnstons, +and squeezed her husband's hand more tightly, expressing thus many mixed +feelings,--content with him, pride and confidence in him, in spite of his +humble position in the race. + +"It's just like the Pilgrim's Progress," she said with a little smile, +looking backward at the stream. + +"But who is Christian?" the literal husband asked. Her eyes answered that +she knew, but would not tell. + + * * * * * + +Just as each one had reflected his own emotion at the marriage, so each +one, looking up at the hospitable goal ahead,--that irregular, broad white +house poured over the little Connecticut hilltop,--had his word about the +Colonel's home. + +"No wonder they call it the Farm," sneered Nan Lawton to the Senator. + +"It's like the dear old Colonel, the new and the old," the Senator +sententiously interpreted. + +Beals, overhearing this, added, "It's poor policy to do things that way. +Better to pull the old thing down and go at it afresh,--you save time and +money, and have it right in the end." + +"It's been in the family a hundred years or more," some one remarked. "The +Colonel used to mow this field himself, before he took to making hardware." + +"Isabelle will pull it about their ears when she gets the chance," Mrs. +Lawton said. "The present-day young haven't much sentiment for +uncomfortable souvenirs." + +Her cousin Margaret was remarking to Vickers, "What a good, homey sort of +place,--like our old Virginia houses,--all but that great barn!" + +It was, indeed, as the Senator had said, very like the Colonel, who could +spare neither the old nor the new. It was also like him to give Grafton a +new stone library and church, and piece on rooms here and there to his own +house. In spite of these additions demanded by comfort there was something +in the conglomeration to remind the Colonel, who had returned to Grafton +after tasting strife and success in the Middle West, of the plain home of +his youth. + +"The dear old place!" Alice Johnston murmured to her husband. "It was never +more attractive than to-day, as if it knew that it was marrying off an only +daughter." To her, too, the Farm had memories, and no new villa spread out +spaciously in Italian, Tudor, or Classic style could ever equal this white, +four-chimneyed New England mansion. + +On the west slope of the hill near the veranda a large tent had been +erected, and into this black-coated waiters were running excitedly to and +fro around a wing of the house which evidently held the servant quarters. +Just beyond the tent a band was playing a loud march. There was to be +dancing on the lawn after the breakfast, and in the evening on the village +green for everybody, and later fireworks. The Colonel had insisted on the +dancing and the fireworks, in spite of Vickers's jeers about pagan rites +and the Fourth of July. + +The bride and groom had already taken their places in the broad hall, which +bisected the old house. The guests were to enter from the south veranda, +pass through the hall, and after greeting the couple gain the refreshment +tent through the library windows. The Colonel had worked it all out with +that wonderful attention to detail that had built up his great hardware +business. Upstairs in the front bedrooms the wedding presents had been +arranged, and nicely ticketed with cards for the amusement of aged +relatives,--a wonderful assortment of silver and gold and glass,--an +exhibition of the wide relationships of the contracting pair, at least of +the wife. And through these rooms soft-footed detectives patrolled, +examining the guests.... + +Isabelle Price had not wished her wedding to be of this kind, ordered so to +speak like the refreshments from Sherry and the presents from Tiffany, with +a special train on the siding. When she and John had decided to be married +at the old farm, she had thought of a country feast,--her St. Mary's girls +of course and one or two more, but quite to themselves! They were to walk +with these few friends to the little chapel, where the dull old village +parson would say the necessary words. The marriage over, and a simple +breakfast in the old house,--the scene of their love,--they were to ride +off among the hills to her camp on Dog Mountain, alone. And thus quietly, +without flourish, they would enter the new life. But as happens to all such +pretty idylls, reality had forced her hand. Colonel Price's daughter could +not marry like an eloping schoolgirl, so her mother had declared. Even John +had taken it as a matter of course, all this elaborate celebration, the +guests, the special train, the overflowing house. And she had yielded her +ideal of having something special in her wedding, acquiescing in the "usual +thing." + +But now that the first guests began to top the hill and enter the hall with +warm, laughing greetings, all as gay as the June sunlight, the women in +their fresh summer gowns, she felt the joy of the moment. "Isn't it jolly, +so many of 'em!" she exclaimed to her husband, squeezing his arm gayly. He +took it, like most things, as a matter of course. The hall soon filled with +high tones and noisy laughter, as the guests crowded in from the lawn about +the couple, to offer their congratulations, to make their little jokes, and +premeditated speeches. Standing at the foot of the broad stairs, her veil +thrown back, her fair face flushed with color and her lips parted in a +smile, one arm about a thick bunch of roses, the bride made a bright spot +of light in the dark hall. All those whirling thoughts, the depths to which +her spirit had descended during the service, had fled; she was excited by +this throng of smiling, joking people, by the sense of her role. She had +the feeling of its being _her_ day, and she was eager to drink every drop +in the sparkling cup. A great kindness for everybody, a sort of beaming +sympathy for the world, bubbled up in her heart, making the repeated hand +squeeze which she gave--sometimes a double pressure--a personal expression +of her emotion. Her flashing hazel eyes, darting into each face in turn as +it came before her, seemed to say: 'Of course, I am the happiest woman in +the world, and you must be happy, too. It is such a good world!' While her +voice was repeating again and again, with the same tremulous intensity, +"Thank you--it is awfully nice of you--I am so glad you are here!" + +To the amiable Senator's much worn compliment,--"It's the prettiest wedding +I have seen since your mother's, and the prettiest bride, too,"--she +blushed a pleased reply, though she had confessed to John only the night +before that the sprightly Senator was "horrid,--he has such a way of +squeezing your hand, as if he would like to do more,"--to which the young +man had replied in his perplexity, due to the Senator's exalted position in +the A. and P. Board, "I suppose it's only the old boy's way of being +cordial." + +Even when Nannie Lawton came loudly with Hollenby--she had captured him +from her cousin--and threw her arms about the bride, Isabelle did not draw +back. She forgot that she disliked the gay little woman, with her muddy +eyes, whose "affairs"--one after the other--were condoned "for her +husband's sake." Perhaps Nannie felt what it might be to be as happy and +proud as she was,--she was large, generous, comprehending at this moment. +And she passed the explosive little woman over to her husband, who received +her with the calm courtesy that never made an enemy. + +But when "her girls" came up the line, she felt happiest. Cornelia was +first, large, handsome, stately, her broad black hat nodding above the +feminine stream, her dark eyes observing all, while she slowly smiled to +the witticisms Vickers murmured in her ear. Every one glanced at Miss +Pallanton; she was a figure, as Isabelle realized when she finally stood +before her,--a very handsome figure, and would get her due attention from +her world. They had not cared very much for "Conny" at St. Mary's, though +she was a handsome girl then and had what was called "a good mind." There +was something coarse in the detail of this large figure, the plentiful +reddish hair, the strong, straight nose,--all of which the girls of St. +Mary's had interpreted their own way, and also the fact that she had come +from Duluth,--probably of "ordinary" people. Surely not a girl's girl, nor +a woman's woman! But one to be reckoned with when it came to men. Isabelle +was conscious of her old reserve as she listened to Conny's piping, +falsetto voice,--such a funny voice to come from that large person through +that magnificent white throat. + +"It makes me so happy, dear Isabelle," the voice piped; "it is all so +ideal, so exactly what it ought to be for you, don't you know?" And as +Percy Woodyard bore her off--he had hovered near all the time--she smiled +again, leaving Isabelle to wonder what Conny thought would be "just right" +for her. + +"You must hurry, Conny," she called on over Vickers's head, "and make up +your mind; you are almost our last!" + +"You know I never hurry," the smiling lips piped languidly, and the large +hat sailed into the library, piloted on either side by Woodyard and +Vickers. Isabelle had a twinge of sisterly jealousy at seeing her younger +brother so persistently in the wake of the large, blond girl. Dear Vick, +her own chum, her girl's first ideal of a man, fascinatingly developed by +his two years in Munich, must not go bobbing between Nan Lawton and Conny! + +And here was Margaret Lawton--so different from her cousin's wife--with the +delicate, high brow, the firm, aristocratic line from temple to chin. She +was the rarest and best of the St. Mary's set, and though Isabelle had +known her at school only a year, she had felt curiosity and admiration for +the Virginian. Her low, almost drawling voice, which reflected a controlled +spirit, always soothed her. The deep-set blue eyes had caught Isabelle's +glance at Vickers, and with an amused smile the Southern girl said, "He's +in the tide!" + +Isabelle said, "I am so, so glad you could get here, Margaret." + +"I wanted to--very much. I made mother put off our sailing." + +"How is the Bishop?" she asked, as Margaret was pushed on. + +"Oh, happy, riding about the mountains and converting the poor heathen, who +prefer whiskey to religion. Mother's taking him to England this summer to +show him off to the foreign clergy." + +"And Washington?" + +Margaret's thin, long lips curved ironically for answer. Hollenby, who +seemed to have recollected a purpose, was waiting for her at the library +door.... "Ah, my Eros!" Isabella exclaimed with delight, holding forth two +hands to a small, dark young woman, with waving brown hair and large eyes +that were fixed on distant objects. + +"Eros with a husband and two children," Aline Goring murmured, in her soft +contralto. "You remember Eugene? At the Springs that summer?" The husband, +a tall, smooth-shaven, young man with glasses and the delicate air of the +steam-heated American scholar bowed stiffly. + +"Of course! Didn't I aid and abet you two?" + +"That's two years and a half ago," Aline remarked, as if the simple words +covered a multitude of facts about life. "We are on our way to St. Louis to +settle." + +"Splendid!" Isabelle exclaimed. "We shall have you again. Torso, where we +are exiled for the present, is only a night's ride from St. Louis." + +Aline smiled that slow, warm smile, which seemed to come from the remote +inner heart of her dreamy life. Isabelle looked at her eagerly, searching +for the radiant, woodsy creature she had known, that Eros, with her dreamy, +passionate, romantic temperament, a girl whom girls adored and kissed and +petted, divining in her the feminine spirit of themselves. Surely, she +should be happy, Aline, the beautiful girl made for love, poetic, tender. +The lovely eyes were there, but veiled; the velvety skin had roughened; and +the small body was almost heavy. The wood nymph had been submerged in +matrimony. + +Goring was saying in a twinkling manner:-- + +"I've been reckoning up, Mrs. Lane. You are the seventh most intimate girl +friend Aline has married off the last two years. How many more of you are +there?" + +Aline, putting her arms about the bride's neck, drew her face to her lips +and whispered:-- + +"Dearie, my darling! I hope you will be so happy,--that it will be all you +can wish!" After these two had disappeared into the library, where there +was much commotion about the punch-bowl, the bride wondered--were _they_ +happy? She had seen the engagement at Southern Springs,--the two most +ecstatic, unearthly lovers she had ever known.... But now? ... + +Thus the stream of her little world flowed on, repeating its high-pitched +note of gratulation, of jocular welcome to the married state, as if to say, +'Well, now you are one of us--you've been brought in--this is life.' That +was what these smiling people were thinking, as they welcomed the neophytes +to the large vale of human experience. 'We have seen you through this +business, started you joyously on the common path. And now what will you +make of it?' For the occasion they ignored, good naturedly, the stones +along the road, the mistakes, the miserable failures that lined the path, +assuming the bride's proper illusion of triumph and confidence.... Among +the very last came the Johnstons, who had lingered outside while the more +boisterous ones pressed about the couple. Isabelle noticed that the large +brown eyes of the placid woman, who always seemed to her much older than +herself, were moist, and her face was serious when she said, "May it be all +that your heart desires--the Real Thing!" + +A persistent aunt interrupted them here, and it was hours afterward when +Isabelle's thought came back to these words and dwelt on them. 'The real +thing!' Of course, that was what it was to be, her marriage,--the woman's +symbol of the Perfect, not merely Success (though with John they could not +fail of worldly success), nor humdrum content--but, as Alice said, the real +thing,--a state of passionate and complete union. Something in those misty +brown eyes, something in the warm, deep voice of the older woman, in the +prayer-like form of the wish, sank deep into her consciousness. + +She turned to her husband, who was chatting with Fosdick, a large, heavy +man with a Dr. Johnson head on massive shoulders. One fat hand leaned +heavily on a fat club, for Fosdick was slightly lame and rolled in his +gait. + +"Isabelle," he remarked with a windy sigh, "I salute my victor!" + +Old Dick, Vickers's playmate in the boy-and-girl days, her playmate, +too,--he had wanted to marry her for years, ever since Vick's freshman year +when he had made them a visit at the Farm. He had grown very heavy since +then,--time which he had spent roving about in odd corners of the earth. As +he stood there, his head bent mockingly before the two, Isabelle felt +herself Queen once more, the--American woman who, having surveyed all, and +dominated all within the compass of her little world, has chosen the One. +But not Dickie, humorous and charming as he was. + +"How goes it, Dickie?" + +"As always," he puffed; "I come from walking or rather limping up and down +this weary earth and observing--men and women--how they go about to make +themselves miserable." + +"Stuff!" + +"My dear friends," he continued, placing both hands on the big cane, "you +are about to undergo a new and wonderful experience. You haven't the +slightest conception of what it is. You think it is love; but it is the +holy state of matrimony,--a very different proposition--" + +They interrupted him with laughing abuse, but he persisted,--a serious +undertone to his banter. "Yes, I have always observed the scepticism of +youth, no matter what may be the age of the contracting parties and their +previous experience, in this matter. But Love and Marriage are two distinct +and entirely independent states of being,--one is the creation of God, the +other of Society. I have observed that few make them coalesce." + +As relatives again interposed, Fosdick rolled off, ostentatiously thumping +his stick on the floor, and made straight for the punch-bowl, where he +seemed to meet congenial company. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Meanwhile inside the great tent the commotion was at its height, most of +the guests--those who had escaped the fascination of the punch-bowl--having +found their way thither. Perspiring waiters rushed back and forth with +salad and champagne bottles, which were seized by the men and borne off to +the women waiting suitably to be fed by the men whom they had attached. +Near the entrance the Colonel, with his old friends Beals and Senator +Thomas, was surveying the breakfast scene, a contented smile on his kind +face, as he murmured assentingly, "So--so." He and the Senator had served +in the same regiment during the War, Price retiring as Colonel and the +Senator as Captain; while the bridegroom's father, Tyringham Lane, had been +the regimental surgeon. + +"What a good fellow Tyringham was, and how he would have liked to be here!" +the Senator was saying sentimentally, as he held out a glass to be +refilled. "Poor fellow!--he never got much out of his life; didn't know how +to make the most of things,--went out there to that Iowa prairie after the +War. You say he left his widow badly off?" + +The Colonel nodded, and added with pride, "But John has made that right +now." + +The Senator, who had settled in Indianapolis and practised railroad law +until his clients had elevated him to the Senate, considered complacently +the various dispensations of Providence towards men. He said generously:-- + +"Well, Tyringham's son has good blood, and it will tell. He will make his +way. We'll see to that, eh, Beals?" and the Senator sauntered over to a +livelier group dominated by Cornelia Pallanton's waving black plumes. + +"Oh, marriage!" Conny chaffed, "it's the easiest thing a woman can do, +isn't it? Why should one be in a hurry when it's so hard to go back?" + +"Matrimony," Fosdick remarked, "is an experiment where nobody's experience +counts but your own." He had been torn from the punch-bowl and thus +returned to his previous train of thought. + +"Is that why some repeat it so often?" Elsie Beals inquired. She had broken +her engagement the previous winter and had spent the summer hunting with +Indian guides among the Canadian Rockies. She regarded herself as unusual, +and turned sympathetically to Fosdick, who also had a reputation for being +odd. + +"So let us eat and be merry," that young man said, seizing a pate and glass +of champagne, "though I never could see why good people should make such an +unholy rumpus when two poor souls decide to attempt the great experiment of +converting illusion into reality." + +"Some succeed," an earnest young man suggested. + +Conny, who had turned from the constant Woodyard to the voluble fat man, +who might be a Somebody, remarked:-- + +"I suppose you don't see the puddles when you are in their condition. It's +always the belief that we are going to escape 'em that drives us all into +your arms." + +"What I object to," Fosdick persisted, feeding himself prodigiously, "is +not the fact, but this savage glee over it. It's as though a lot of caged +animals set up a howl of delight every time the cage door was opened and a +new pair was introduced into the pen. They ought to perform the wedding +ceremony in sackcloth and ashes, after duly fasting, accompanied by a few +faithful friends garbed in black with torches." + +Conny gave him a cold, surface smile, setting down his talk as "young" and +beamed at the approaching Senator. + +"Oh, what an idea!" giggled a little woman. "If you can't dance at your own +wedding, you may never have another chance." + +Conny, though intent upon the Senator, kept an eye upon Woodyard, +introducing him to the distinguished man, thinking, no doubt, that the +Chairman of the A. and P. Board might be useful to the young lawyer. For +whatever she might be to women, this large blond creature with white neck, +voluptuous lips, and slow gaze from childlike eyes had the power of drawing +males to her, a power despised and also envied by women. Those simple eyes +seemed always to seek information about obvious matters. But behind the +eyes Conny was thinking, 'It's rather queer, this crowd. And these Prices +with all their money might do so much better. That Fosdick is a silly +fellow. The Senator is worn of course, but still important!' And yet Conny, +with all her sureness, did not know all her own mental processes. For she, +too, was really looking for a mate, weighing, estimating men to that end, +and some day she would come to a conclusion,--would take a man, Woodyard or +another, giving him her very handsome person, and her intelligence, in +exchange for certain definite powers of brain and will. + +The bride and groom entered the tent at last. Isabelle, in a renewed glow +of triumph, stepped over to the table and with her husband's assistance +plunged a knife into the huge cake, while her health was being drunk with +cheers. As she firmly cut out a tiny piece, she exposed a thin but +beautifully moulded arm. + +"Handsome girl," the Senator murmured in Conny's ear. "Must be some sore +hearts here to-day. I don't see how such a beauty could escape until she +was twenty-six. But girls want their fling these days, same as the men!" + +"Toast! Toast the bride!" came voices from all sides, while the waiters +hurried here and there slopping the wine into empty glasses. + +As the bride left the tent to get ready for departure, she caught sight of +Margaret Lawton in a corner of the veranda with Hollenby, who was bending +towards her, his eyes fastened on her face. Margaret was looking far away, +across the fields to where Dog Mountain rose in the summer haze. Was +Margaret deciding _her_ fate at this moment,--attracted, repulsed, waiting +for the deciding thrill, while her eyes searched for the ideal of happiness +on the distant mountain? She turned to look at the man, drawing back as his +hand reached forward. So little, so much--woman's fate was in the making +this June day, all about the old house,--attracting, repulsing, +weighing,--unconsciously moulding destiny that might easily be momentous in +the outcome of the years.... + +When the bride came down, a few couples had already begun to dance, but +they followed the other guests to the north side where the carriage stood +ready. Isabelle looked very smart in her new gown, a round travelling hat +just framing her brilliant eyes and dark hair. Mrs. Price followed her +daughter closely, her brows puckered in nervous fear lest something should +be forgotten. She was especially anxious about a certain small bag, and had +the maid take out all the hand luggage to make sure it had not been +mislaid. + +Some of the younger ones led by Vickers pelted the couple with rice, while +this delay occurred. It was a silly custom that they felt bound to follow. +There was no longer any meaning in the symbol of fertility. Multiply and be +fruitful, the Bible might urge, following an ancient economic ideal of +happiness. But the end of marriage no longer being this gross purpose, the +sterile woman has at last come into honor! ... + +The bride was busy kissing a group of young women who had clustered about +her,--Elsie Beals, Aline, Alice Johnston, Conny. Avoiding Nannie Lawton's +wide open arms, she jumped laughingly into the carriage, then turned for a +last kiss from the Colonel. + +"Here, out with you Joe," Vickers exclaimed to the coachman. "I'll drive +them down to the station. Quick now,--they mustn't lose the express!" + +He bundled the old man from the seat, gathered up the reins with a +flourish, and whipped the fresh horses. The bride's last look, as the +carriage shot through the bunch of oleanders at the gate, gathered in the +group of waving, gesticulating men and women, and above them on the steps +the Colonel, with his sweet, half-humorous smile, her mother at his side, +already greatly relieved, and behind all the serious face of Alice +Johnston, the one who knew the mysteries both tender and harsh, and who +could still call it all good! ... + +Vickers whisked them to the station in a trice, soothing his excitement by +driving diabolically, cutting corners and speeding down hill. At the +platform President Beals's own car was standing ready for them, the two +porters at the steps. The engine of the special was to take them to the +junction where the "Bellefleur" would be attached to the night express,--a +special favor for the President of the A. and P. The Senator had insisted +on their having his camp in the Adirondacks for a month. Isabelle would +have preferred her own little log hut in the firs of Dog Mountain, which +she and Vickers had built. There they could be really quite alone, forced +to care for themselves. But the Colonel could not understand her bit of +sentiment, and John thought they ought not to offend the amiable Senator, +who had shown himself distinctly friendly. So they were to enter upon their +new life enjoying these luxuries of powerful friends. + +The porters made haste to put the bags in the car, and the engine snorted. + +"Good-by, Mr. Gerrish," Isabelle called to the station agent, who was +watching them at a respectful distance. Suddenly he seemed to be an old +friend, a part of all that she was leaving behind. + +"Good-by, Miss Price--Mrs. Lane," he called back. "Good luck to you!" + +"Dear old Vick," Isabelle murmured caressingly, "I hate most to leave you +behind." + +"Better stay, then,--it isn't too late," he joked. "We could elope with the +ponies,--you always said you would run off with me!" + +She hugged him more tightly, burying her head in his neck, shaking him +gently. "Dear old Vick! Don't be a fool! And be good to Dad, won't you?" + +"I'll try not to abuse him." + +"You know what I mean--about staying over for the summer. Oh dear, dear!" +There was a queer sob in her voice, as if now for the first time she knew +what it was. The old life was all over. Vick had been so much of that! And +she had seen little or nothing of him since his return from Europe, so +absorbed had she been in the bustle of her marriage. Up there on Dog +Mountain which swam in the haze of the June afternoon they had walked on +snowshoes one cold January night, over the new snow by moonlight, talking +marvellously of all that life was to be. She believed then that she should +never marry, but remain always Vick's comrade,--to guide him, to share his +triumphs. Now she was abandoning that child's plan. She shook with nervous +sobs. + +"The engineer says we must start, dear," Lane suggested. "We have only just +time to make the connection." + +Vickers untwisted his sister's arms from his neck and placed them gently in +her husband's hands. + +"Good-by, girl," he called. + +Sinking into a chair near the open door, Isabelle gazed back at the hills +of Grafton until the car plunged into a cut. She gave a long sigh. "We're +off!" her husband said joyously. He was standing beside her, one hand +resting on her shoulder. + +"Yes, dear!" She took his strong, muscled hand in hers. But when he tried +to draw her to him, she shrank back involuntarily, startled, and looked at +him with wide-open eyes as if she would read Destiny in him,--the Man, her +husband. + +For this was marriage, not the pantomime they had lived through all that +day. That was demanded by custom; but now, alone with this man, his eyes +alight with love and desire, his lips caressing her hair, his hands drawing +her to him,--this was marriage! + +Her eyes closed as if to shut out his face,--"Don't, don't!" she murmured +vaguely. Suddenly she started to her feet, her eyes wide open, and she held +him away from her, looking into him, looking deep into his soul. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +It was a hot, close night. After the Bellefleur had been coupled to the +Western express at the junction, Lane had the porters make up a bed for +Isabelle on the floor of the little parlor next the observation platform, +and here at the rear of the long train, with the door open, she lay +sleepless through the night hours, listening to the rattle of the trucks, +the thud of heavy wheels on the rails, disturbed only when the car was +shifted to the Adirondack train by the blue glare of arc lights and phantom +figures rushing to and fro in the pallid night. + +The excitement of the day had utterly exhausted her; but her mind was +extraordinarily alive with impressions,--faces and pictures from this great +day of her existence, her marriage. And out of all these crowding images +emerged persistently certain ones,--Aline, with the bloom almost gone, the +worn air of something carelessly used. That was due to the children, to +cares,--the Gorings were poor and the two years abroad must have been a +strain. All the girls at St. Mary's had thought that marriage ideal, made +all of love. For there was something of the poet in Eugene Goring, the slim +scholar, walking with raised head and speaking with melodious voice. He was +a girl's ideal.... And then came Nan Lawton, with her jesting tone, and +sly, half-shut eyes. Isabelle remembered how brilliant Nan's marriage was, +how proud she herself had been to have a part in it. Nan's face was blotted +by Alice Johnston's with her phlegmatic husband. She was happy, serene, but +old and acquainted with care. + +Why should she think of them, of any other marriage? Hers was to be +different,--oh, yes, quite exceptional and perfect, with an intimacy, a +mutual helpfulness.... The girls at St. Mary's had all had their emotional +experiences, which they confessed to one another; and she had had hers, of +course, like her affair with Fosdick; but so innocent, so merely kittenish +that they had almost disappeared from memory. These girls at St. Mary's +read poetry, and had dreams of heroes, in the form of football players. +They all thought about marriage, coming as they did from well-to-do +parents, whose daughters might be expected to marry. Marriage, men, +position in the world,--all that was their proper inheritance. + +After St. Mary's there had been two winters in St. Louis,--her first real +dinners and parties, her first real men. Then a brief season in Washington +as Senator Thomas's guest, where the horizon, especially the man part of +it, had considerably widened. She had made a fair success in Washington, +thanks to her fresh beauty and spirit, and also, she was frank to confess, +thanks to the Senator's interest and the reputation of her father's wealth. +Then had come a six months with her mother and Vickers in Europe, from +which she returned abruptly to get engaged, to begin life seriously. + +These experimental years had seemed to her full of radiant avenues, any one +of which she was free to enter, and for a while she had gone joyously on, +discovering new avenues, pleasing herself with trying them all +imaginatively. At the head of all these avenues had stood a man, of course. +She could recall them all: the one in St. Louis who had followed her to +Washington, up the Nile, would not be turned away. Once he had touched her, +taken her hand, and she had felt cold,--she knew that his was not her way. +In Washington there had been a brilliant congressman whom the Senator +approved of,--an older man. She had given him some weeks of puzzled +deliberation, then rejected him, as she considered sagely, because he spoke +only to her mind. Perhaps the most dangerous had been the Austrian whom she +had met in Rome. She almost yielded there; but once when they were alone +together she had caught sight of depths in him, behind his black eyes and +smiling lips, that made her afraid,--deep differences of race. The Prices +were American in an old-fashioned, clean, plain sense. So when he +persisted, she made her mother engage passage for home and fled with the +feeling that she must put an ocean between herself and this man, fled to +the arms of the man she was to marry, who somehow in the midst of his busy +life managed to meet her in New York. + +But why him? Out of all these avenues, her possibilities of various fate, +why had she chosen him, the least promising outwardly? Was it done in a +mood of reaction against the other men who had sought her? He was most +unlike them all, with a background of hard struggle, with limitations +instead of privileges such as they had. The Colonel's daughter could +understand John Lane's persistent force,--patient, quiet, sure. She +remembered his shy, inexperienced face when her father first brought him to +the house for dinner. She had thought little of him then,--the Colonel was +always bringing home some rough diamond,--but he had silently absorbed her +as he did everything in his path, and selected her, so to speak, as he +selected whatever he wanted. And after that whenever she came back to her +father's home from her little expeditions into the world, he was always +there, and she came to know that he wanted her,--was waiting until his +moment should come. It came. + +Never since then had she had a regret for those possibilities that had been +hers,--for those other men standing at the other avenues and inviting her. +From the moment that his arms had held her, she knew that he was the +best,--so much stronger, finer, simpler than any other. She was proud that +she had been able to divine this quality and could prefer real things to +sham. During the engagement months she had learned, bit by bit, the story +of his struggle, what had been denied to him of comfort and advantage, what +he had done for himself and for his mother. She yearned to give him what he +had never had,--pleasure, joy, the soft suavities of life, what she had had +always. + +Now she was his! Her wandering thoughts came back to that central fact. + +Half frightened, she drew the blanket about her shoulders and listened. He +had been so considerate of her,--had left her here to rest after making +sure of her comfort and gone forward to the stuffy stateroom to sleep, +divining that she was not yet ready to accept him; that if he took her now, +he should violate something precious in her,--that she was not fully won. +She realized this delicate instinct and was grateful to him. Of course she +was his,--only his; all the other avenues had been closed forever by her +love for him, her marriage to him. Ah, that should be wonderful for them +both, all the years that were to come! Nevertheless, here on the threshold, +her wayward soul had paused the merest moment to consider those other +avenues, what they might have offered of experience, of knowledge, had she +taken any other one of them. Were she here with another than him, destiny, +her inmost self, the whole world of being would be changed, would be other +than it was to be! What was that mysterious power that settled fate on its +grooves? What were those other lives within her soul never to be lived, the +lives she might have lived? Bewildered, weary, she stretched out her arms +dreamily to life, and with parted lips sank into slumber.... + +The sun was streaming through the open door; the train had come to a halt. +Isabelle awoke with a start, afraid. Her husband was bending over her and +she stared up directly into his amused eyes, looked steadily at him, +remembering now all that she had thought the night before. This was her +avenue--this was _he_ ... yet she closed her eyes as he bent still nearer +to kiss her neck, her temples, her lips. Like a frightened child she drew +the clothes close about her, and turned from his eager embraces. Beyond his +face she saw a line of straight, stiff firs beside the track, and the blue +foot-hills through which the train was winding its way upwards to the +mountains. She stretched herself sleepily, murmuring:-- + +"Dear, I'm so tired! Is it late?" + +"Ten o'clock. We're due in half an hour. I had to wake you." + +"In half an hour!" She fled to the dressing-room, putting him off with a +fleeting kiss. + +One of the Senator's guides met them at the station with a buckboard. All +the way driving upwards through the woods to the camp they were very gay. +It was like one of those excursions she used to take with Vickers when he +was in his best, most expansive mood, alternately chaffing and petting her. +Lane was in high spirits, throwing off completely that sober self which +made him so weighty in his world, revealing an unexpected boyishness. He +joked with the guide, talked fishing and shooting. With the deep breaths of +mountain air he expanded, his eyes flashing a new fire of joy at sight of +the woods and streams. Once when they stopped to water the horses he seized +the drinking-cup and dashed up the slope to a spring hidden among the +trees. He brought back a brimming cupful of cold water, which she emptied. +Then with a boyish, chivalrous smile he put his lips to the spot where she +had drunk and drained the last drop. "That's enough for me!" he said, and +they laughed self-consciously. His homage seemed to say that thus through +life he would be content with what she left him to drink,--absurd fancy, +but at this moment altogether delightful.... Later she rested, pillowing +her head on his shoulder, covered by his coat, while the trap jolted on +through the woods between high hills. Now and then he touched her face with +the tips of his strong fingers, brushing away the wandering threads of +hair. Very peaceful, happy, feeling that it was all as she would have +wished it, she shut her eyes, content to rest on this comrade, so strong +and so gentle. Life would be like this, always. + +The Senator's camp was a camp only in name, of course; in fact it was an +elaborate and expensive rustic establishment on a steep bluff above a +little mountain lake. The Japanese cook had prepared a rich dinner, and the +champagne was properly iced. The couple tiptoed about the place, looking at +each other in some dismay, and John readily fell in with her suggestion +that they should try sleeping in the open, with a rough shelter of +boughs,--should make their first nest for themselves. The guide took them +to a spot some distance up the lake and helped them cut the fir boughs, all +but those for the bed, which they insisted upon gathering for themselves. +After bringing up the blankets and the bags he paddled back to the camp, +leaving them to themselves in the solitude of the woods, under the black, +star-strewn sky. + +Alone with him thus beside their little fire her heart was full of dream +and content, of peace and love. They two seemed to have come up out of the +world to some higher level of life. After the joyous day this solitude of +the deep forest was perfect. When the fire had died down to the embers, he +circled her with his arms and kissed her. Although her body yielded to his +strong embrace her lips were cold, hard, and her eyes answered his passion +with a strange, aloof look, as if her soul waited in fear.... She knew what +marriage was to be, although she had never listened to the allusions +whispered among married women and more experienced girls. Something in the +sex side of the relations between men and women had always made her shrink. +She was not so much pure in body and soul, as without sex, unborn. She knew +the fact of nature, the eternal law of life repeating itself through desire +and passion; but she realized it remotely, only in her mind, as some +necessary physiological mechanism of living, like perspiration, fatigue, +hunger. But it had not spoken in her body, in her soul; she did not feel +that it ever could speak to her as it was speaking in the man's lighted +eyes, in his lips. So now as always she was cold, tranquil beneath her +lover's kisses. + +And later on their bed of boughs, with her husband's arms about her, his +heart throbbing against her breast, his warm breath covering her neck, she +lay still, very still,--aloof, fearful of this mystery to be revealed, a +little weary, wishing that she were back once more in the car or in her own +room at the Farm, for this night, to return on the morrow to her comrade +for another joyous, free day. + +"My love! ... Come to me! ... I love you, love you!" ... + +The passionate tone beat against her ears, yet roused no thrilling +response. The trembling voice, the intensity of the worn old words coming +from him,--it was all like another man suddenly appearing in the guise of +one she thought she knew so well! The taut muscles of his powerful arm +pressing against her troubled her. She would have fled,--why could one be +like this! Still she caressed his face and hair, kissing him gently. Oh, +yes, she loved him,--she was his! He was her husband.' Nevertheless she +could not meet him wholly in this inmost intimacy, and her heart was +troubled. If he could be content to be her companion, her lover! But this +other thing was the male, the something which made all men differ from all +women in the crisis of emotion--so she supposed--and must be endured. She +lay passive in his arms, less yielding than merely acquiescent, drawn in +upon herself to something smaller than she was before.... + +When he slept at her side, his head pillowed close to hers on the fragrant +fir, she still lay awake, her eyes staring up at the golden stars, still +fearful, uncomprehending. At last she was his, as he would have +her,--wholly his, so she said, seeking comfort,--and thus kissing his brow, +with a long, wondering sigh she fell asleep by his side. + +In the morning they dipped into the cold black lake, and as they paddled +back to the camp for breakfast while the first rays of the warm sun shone +through the firs in gold bars, she felt like herself once more,--a +companion ready for a frolic. The next morning Lane insisted on cooking +their breakfast, for he was a competent woodsman. She admired the deft way +in which he built his little fire and toasted the bacon. In the undress of +the woods he showed at his best,--self-reliant, capable. There followed a +month of lovely days which they spent together from sunrise to starlight, +walking, fishing, canoeing, swimming,--days of fine companionship when they +learned the human quality in each other. He was strong, buoyant, perfectly +sure of himself. No emergency could arise where he would be found wanting +in the man's part. The man in him she admired,--it was what first had +attracted her,--was proud of it, just as he was proud of her lithe figure, +her beauty, her gayety, and her little air of worldliness. She began to +assume that this was all of marriage, at least the essential part of it, +and that the other, the passionate desire, was something desired by the man +and to be avoided by the woman. + +They liked their guide, one of those American gypsies, half poacher, half +farmer. He kept a wife and family in a shack at the foot of the lake, and +Isabelle, with a woman's need for the natural order of life, sought out and +made friends with the wild little brood. The woman had been a mill-hand, +discovered by the woodsman on a chance visit to the town where she worked, +and made his wife, his woman. Not yet thirty, she had had eight children, +and another was coming. Freckled, with a few wisps of thin blond hair, her +front teeth imperfect, she was an untidy, bedraggled object, used and +prematurely aged. Nevertheless the guide seemed attached to her, and when +on a Sunday the family went down to the settlement, following the trail +through the camp, Isabelle could see him help the woman at the wire fence, +carrying on one arm the youngest child, trailing his gun in the other hand. + +"He must care for her!" Isabelle remarked. + +"Why, of course. Why not?" her husband asked. + +"But think--" It was all she could say, not knowing how to put into words +the mournful feeling this woman with her brood of young gave her. What joy, +what life for herself could such a creature have? Isabelle, her imagination +full of comfortable houses with little dinner parties, pretty furniture, +books, theatres, charity committees,--all that she conceived made up a +properly married young woman's life,--could not understand the existence of +the guide's wife. She was merely the man's woman, a creature to give him +children, to cook the food, to keep the fire going. He had the woods, the +wild things he hunted; he had, too, his time of drink and rioting; but she +was merely his drudge and the instrument of his animal passion. Well, +civilization had put a few milestones between herself and Molly Sewall! In +the years to come her mind would revert often to this family as she saw it +filing down the path to the settlement, the half-clothed children peeping +shyly at her, the woman trailing an old shawl from her bent shoulders, the +man striding on ahead with his gun and his youngest baby, careless so long +as there was a fire, a bit of food, and the forest to roam in.... + +So passed these days of their honeymoon, each one perfect, except for the +occasional disquieting presence of passion, of unappeasable desire in the +man. This male fire was as mysterious, as inexplicable to her as that first +night,--something to be endured forgivingly, but feared, almost hated for +its fierce invasion of her. If her husband could only take her as +companion,--the deep, deep friend, the first and best for the long journey +of life! Perhaps some day that would content him; perhaps this flower of +passion came only at first, to be subdued by the work of life. She never +dreamed that some day she herself might change, might be waked by passion. +And yet she knew that she loved her husband, yearned to give him all that +he desired. Taking his face between her hands, she would kiss it gently, +tenderly, as a mother might kiss a hot, impulsive child trying to still a +restless spirit within. + +This mystery of passion! It swept over the man, transfiguring him as the +summer storm swept across the little lake, blackening the sky with shadows +through which the lightning played fearsomely. She saw this face hot with +desire of her, as the face of a stranger,--another one than the strong, +self-contained man she had married,--a face with strange animal and +spiritual depths in it, all mixed and vivified. It was the brute, she said +to herself, and feared. Brute and God lie close together; but she could not +see the God,--felt only the fury of the brute. + +Like the storm it passed off, leaving him as she loved him, her tender and +worshipping husband. It never entered her thought that she might love any +man more than she loved him, that perhaps some day she would long for a +passion to meet her own heart. She saw now no lack in her cold limbs, her +hard lips, her passionless eyes. She was still Diana,--long, shapely, +muscular. In her heart she loved this Diana self, so aloof from desire! + +The last night of their stay in the mountains she revolved all these things +in her mind as they lay side by side on their fir couch, he asleep in a +deep, dreamless fatigue, she alert and tense after the long day in the +spirituous air, the night wind sighing to her from the upper branches of +the firs. To-morrow they would start for the West, to begin the prose of +life. Suddenly a thought flashed over her that stopped the beat of her +pulse,--she might already have conceived! She did not wish to escape having +children, at least one or two; she knew that it was to be expected, that it +was necessary and good. He would want his child and she also, and her +father and mother would be made happy by children. But her heart said,--not +yet, already. Something in which her part had been so slight! She felt the +injustice of Nature that let conception come to a woman indifferently, +merely of desire in man and acquiescence in woman. How could that be! How +could woman conceive so blindly? The child should be got with joy, should +flower from a sublime moment of perfect union when the man and the woman +were lifted out of themselves to some divine pinnacle of experience, of +soul and body union and self-effacement. Then conception would be but the +carrying over of their deep yearning, each for the other, the hunger of +souls and bodies to create. + +Now she saw that it could be otherwise, as perhaps with her this very +moment: that Nature took the seed, however it might fall, and nourished it +wherever it fell, and made of it, regardless of human will, the New +Life,--heedless of the emotion of the two that were concerned in the +process. For the first time she saw that pitiless, indifferent face of +Nature, intent only on the Result, the thing created, scorning the +spiritual travail of the creator, ignoring any great revelation of the man +and the woman that would seem to count for so much in this process of +life-making. Thus a drunken beast might beget his child in the body of a +loathing woman, blind souls sowing life blindly for a blind future. + +The idea clutched her like fear: she would defy this fate that would use +her like any other piece of matrix, merely to bear the seed and nourish it +for a certain period of its way, one small step in the long process. Her +heart demanded more than a passive part in the order of Nature. Her soul +needed its share from the first moment of conception in making that which +she was to give to the race. Some day a doctor would explain to her that +she was but the soil on which the fertile germ grew like a vegetable, +without her will, her consent, her creating soul! But she would reject that +coarse interpretation,--the very blasphemy of love. + +And here, at this point, as she lay in the dark beneath the sighing firs, +it dawned in her dimly that something was wanting in her marriage, in the +union with the man she had chosen. She had taken him of her own free +choice; she was willingly his; she would bear his children if they came. +Her body and her soul were committed to him by choice, and by that ceremony +of marriage before the people in the chapel,--to take her part with him in +the endless process of Fate, the continuance of life. + +Nevertheless, lying there in full contemplation of this new life that might +already be putting its clutch upon her life, to suck from her its own +being, she rebelled at it all. Her heart cried for her part, her very own, +for that mysterious exaltation that should make her really one with the +father in the act of creation, in the fulfilment of Love. And somehow she +knew assuredly that this could not be, not with this man by her side, not +with her husband.... + +She turned to him, pillowed there at her side, one hand resting fondly on +her arm. Her eyes stared at him through the darkness, trying to read the +familiar features. Did he, too, know this? Did he feel that it was +impossible ever to be really one with her? Did he suspect the terrible +defeat she was suffering now? A tear dropped from her eye and fell on the +upturned face of the sleeper. He moved, murmured, "dearest," and settled +back into his deep sleep; taking his hand from her arm. With a little cry +she fell on him and kissed him, asking his forgiveness for the mistake +between them. She put her head close to his, her lips to his lips; for she +was his and yet not his,--a strange division separating them, a cleavage +between their bodies and their souls. + +"Why did we not know?" something whispered within. But she answered herself +more calmly,--"It will all come right in the end--it must come right--for +his sake!" + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +When young John Lane first came to St. Louis to work as a clerk in the +traffic department of the Atlantic and Pacific, he had called on Colonel +Price at his office, a dingy little room in the corner of the second story +of the old brick building which had housed the wholesale hardware business +of Parrott and Price for a generation. The old merchant had received the +young man with the pleasant kindliness that kept his three hundred +employees always devoted to him. + +"I knew your father, sir!" he said, half-closing his eyes and leaning back +in his padded old office chair. "Let me see--it was in sixty-two in camp +before Vicksburg. I went to consult him about a boil on my leg. It was a +bad boil,--it hurt me.... Your father was a fine man--What are you doing in +St. Louis?" he concluded abruptly, looking out of his shrewd blue eyes at +the fresh-colored young man whose strong hands gripped squarely the arms of +his chair. + +And from that day Lane knew that the Colonel never lost sight of him. When +his chance came, as in time it did come through one of the mutations of the +great corporation, he suspected that the old hardware merchant, who was a +close friend of the chief men in the road, had spoken the needed word to +lift the clerk out of the rut. At any rate the Colonel had not forgotten +the son of Tyringham Lane, and the young man had often been to the +generous, ugly Victorian house,--built when the hardware business made its +first success. + +Nevertheless, when, three years later John Lane made another afternoon +visit to that dingy office in the Parrott and Price establishment, his +hands trembed nervously as he sat waiting while the Colonel scrawled his +signature to several papers. + +"Well, John!" the old man remarked finally, shoving the papers towards the +waiting stenographer. "How's railroadin' these days?" + +"All right," Lane answered buoyantly. "They have transferred me to the +Indiana division, headquarters at Torso--superintendent of the Torso and +Toledo." + +"Indeed! But you'll be back here some day, eh?" + +"I hope so!" + +"That's good!" The Colonel smiled sympathetically, as he always did when he +contemplated energetic youth, climbing the long ladder with a firm grip on +each rung. + +"I came to see you about another matter," Lane began hesitantly. + +"Anything I can do for you?" + +"Yes, sir; I want to marry your daughter,--and I'd like you to know it." + +The old merchant's face became suddenly grave, the twinkle disappearing +from his blue eyes. He listened thoughtfully while the young man explained +himself. He was still a poor man, of course; his future was to be made. But +he did not intend to remain poor. His salary was not much to offer a girl +like the Colonel's daughter; but it would go far in Torso--and it was the +first step. Finally he was silent, well aware that there was small +possibility that he should ever be a rich man, as Colonel Price was, and +that it was presumptuous of him to seek to marry his daughter, and +therefore open to mean interpretation. But he felt that the Colonel was not +one to impute low motives. He knew the very real democracy of the +successful merchant, who never had forgotten his own story. + +"What does Belle say?" the Colonel asked. + +"I should not have come here if I didn't think--" the young man laughed. + +"Of course!" + +Then the Colonel pulled down the top of his desk, signifying that the day's +business was done. + +"We have never desired what is called a good match for our girl," he +remarked slowly in reply to a further plea from Lane. "All we want is the +best;" he laid grave emphasis on this watchword. "And the best is that +Isabelle should be happy in her marriage. If she loves the man she marries, +she must be that.... And I don't suppose you would be here if you weren't +sure you could make her love you enough to be happy!" + +The old man's smile returned for a fleeting moment, and then he mused. + +"I am afraid it will be hard for her to settle down in a place like +Torso--after all she's had," Lane conceded. "But I don't expect that Torso +is the end of my rope. I shall give her a better chance than that, I hope." + +The Colonel nodded sympathetically. + +"I shouldn't consider it any hardship for my daughter to live in Torso or +in any other place--if she has a good husband and loves him. That is all, +my boy!" + +Lane, who realized the grades of a plutocratic democracy better than three +years before, and knew the position of the Prices in the city, comprehended +the splendid simplicity, the single-mindedness of the man, who could thus +completely ignore considerations of wealth and social position in the +marriage of his only daughter. + +"I shall do my best, sir, to make her happy all her life!" the young man +stammered. + +"I know you will, my boy, and I think you will succeed, if she loves you as +you say she does." + +Then the Colonel took his hat from the nail behind the door, and the two +men continued their conversation in the street. They did not turn up town +to the club and residence quarter, but descended towards the river, passing +on their way the massive skeleton of the ten-story building that was to +house, when completed, the Parrott and Price business. It rose in the smoky +sunset, stretching out spidery tendons of steel to the heavens, and from +its interior came a mighty clangor. The Colonel paused to look at the new +building,--the monument of his success as a merchant. + +"Pretty good? Corbin's doing it,--he's the best in the country, they tell +me." + +Soon they kept on past the new building into an old quarter of the city, +the Colonel apparently having some purpose that guided his devious course +through these unattractive streets. + +"There!" he exclaimed at last, pointing across a dirty street to a shabby +little brick house. "That's the place where Isabelle's mother and I started +in St. Louis. We had a couple of rooms over there the first winter. The +store was just a block further west. It's torn down now. I passed some of +the best days of my life in those rooms on the second story.... It isn't +the outside that counts, my boy!" The Colonel tucked his hand beneath the +young man's arm, as they turned back to the newer quarters of the city. + +Mrs. Price, it should be said, did not accept Lane's suit as easily as the +Colonel. Her imagination had been expanded by that winter in Washington, +and though she was glad that Isabelle had not accepted any of "those +foreigners," yet Harmony Price had very definite ideas of the position that +the Colonel's daughter might aspire to in America.... But her objections +could not stand before the Colonel's flat consent and Isabelle's decision. + +"They'll be a great deal better off than we were," her husband reminded +her. + +"That's no reason why Belle should have to start where we did, or anywhere +near it!" his wife retorted. What one generation had been able to gain in +the social fight, it seemed to her only natural that the next should at +least hold. + +The Colonel gave the couple their new home in Torso, selecting, with a fine +eye for real estate values, a large "colonial" wooden house with ample +grounds out beyond the smoke of the little city, near the new country club. +Mrs. Price spent an exciting three months running back and forth between +New York, St. Louis, and Torso furnishing the new home. Isabelle's liberal +allowance was to continue indefinitely, and beyond this the Colonel +promised nothing, now or later; nor would Lane have accepted more from his +hand. It was to the Torso house that the Lanes went immediately after their +month in the Adirondacks. + + * * * * * + +Torso, Indiana, is one of those towns in the Mississippi Valley which makes +more impression the farther from New York one travels. New York has never +heard of it, except as it appears occasionally on a hotel register among +other queer places that Americans confess to as home. At Pittsburg it is a +round black spot on the map, in the main ganglia of the great A. and P. and +the junction point of two other railroads. At Cincinnati it is a commercial +centre of considerable importance, almost a rival. While Torso to Torso is +the coming pivot of the universe. + +It is an old settlement--some families with French names still own the +large distilleries--on the clay banks of a sluggish creek in the southern +part of the state, and there are many Kentuckians in its population. +Nourished by railroads, a division headquarters of the great A. and P., +near the soft-coal beds, with a tin-plate factory, a carpet factory, a +carriage factory, and a dozen other mills and factories, Torso is a black +smudge in a flat green landscape from which many lines of electric railway +radiate forth along the country roads. And along the same roads across the +reaches of prairie, over the swelling hills, stalk towering poles, bearing +many fine wires glistening in the sunlight and singing the importance of +Torso to the world at large. + +The Lanes arrived at night, and to Isabelle the prairie heavens seemed dark +and far away, the long broad streets with their bushy maple trees empty, +and the air filled with hoarse plaints, the rumbling speech of the +railroad. She was homesick and fearful, as they mounted the steps to the +new house and pushed open the shining oak door that stuck and smelled of +varnish. The next morning Lane whisked off on a trolley to the A. and P. +offices, while Isabelle walked around the house, which faced the main +northern artery of Torso. From the western veranda she could see the roof +of the new country club through a ragged group of trees. On the other side +were dotted the ample houses of Torso aristocracy, similar to hers, as she +knew, finished in hard wood, electric-lighted, telephoned, with many baths, +large "picture" windows of plate glass, with potted ferns in them, and much +the same furniture,--wholesome, comfortable "homes." Isabelle, turning back +to her house to cope with the three Swedes that her mother had sent on from +St. Louis, had a queer sense of anti-climax. She swept the landscape with a +critical eye, feeling she knew it all, even to what the people were saying +at this moment in those large American-Georgian mansions; what Torso was +doing at this moment in its main street.... No, it could not be for the +Lanes for long,--that was the conviction in her heart. Their destiny would +be larger, fuller than any to be found in Torso. Just what she meant by a +"large, full life," she had never stopped to set down; but she was sure it +was not to be found here in Torso. + +Here began, however, the routine of her married life. Each morning she +watched her husband walk down the broad avenue to the electric car,--alert, +strong, waving his newspaper to her as he turned the corner. Each afternoon +she waited for him at the same place, or drove down to the office with the +Kentucky horses that she had bought, to take him for a drive before dinner. +He greeted her each time with the same satisfied smile, apparently not +wilted by the long hours in a hot office. There was a smudged, work-a-day +appearance to his face and linen, the mark of Torso, the same mark that the +mill-hands across the street from the A. and P. offices brought home to +their wives.... Thus the long summer days dragged. For distraction there +was a mutiny in the crew of Swedish servants, but Isabelle, with her +mother's instinct for domestic management, quickly produced order, in spite +of the completely servantless state of Torso. She would telegraph to St. +Louis for what she wanted and somehow always got it. The house ran,--that +was her business. It was pretty and attractive,--that was also her +business. But this woman's work she tossed off quickly. Then what? She +pottered in the garden a little, but when the hot blasts of prairie heat in +mid-August had shrivelled all the vines and flowers and cooked the beds +into slabs of clay, she retired from the garden and sent to St. Louis for +the daily flowers. She read a good deal, almost always novels, in the vague +belief that she was "keeping up" with modern literature, and she played at +translating some German lyrics. + +Then people began to call,--the wives of the Torso great, her neighbors in +those ample mansions scattered all about the prairie. These she reported to +John with a mocking sense of their oddity. + +"Mrs. Fraser came to-day. What is she? Tin-plate or coal?" + +"He's the most important banker here," her husband explained seriously. + +"Oh,--well, she asked me to join the 'travel-class.' They are going through +the Holy Land. What do you suppose a 'travel-class' is?"... + +Again it was the wife of the chief coal operator, Freke, "who wanted me to +know that she always got her clothes from New York." She added gently, "I +think she wished to find out if we are fit for Torso society. I did my best +to give her the impression we were beneath it."... + +These people, all the "society" of Torso, they met also at the country +club, where they went Sundays for a game of golf, which Lane was learning. +The wife of the A. and P. superintendent could not be ignored by Torso, and +so in spite of Isabelle's efforts there was forming around her a social +life. But the objective point of the day remained John,--his going and +coming. + +"Busy day?" she would ask when he bent to kiss her. + +"They're all busy days!" + +"Tell me what you did." + +"Oh," he would answer vaguely, "just saw people and dictated letters and +telegrams,--yes, it was a busy day." And he left her to dress for dinner. + +She knew that he was weary after all the problems that he had thrust his +busy mind into since the morning. She had no great curiosity to know what +these problems were. She had been accustomed to the sanctity of business +reserve in her father's house: men disappeared in the morning to their work +and emerged to wash and dress and be as amusing as they might for the few +remaining hours of the day. There were rumors of what went on in that +mysterious world of business, but the right kind of men did not disclose +the secrets of the office to women. + +It never occurred to Lane to go over with her the minute detail of his full +day: how he had considered an application from a large shipper for +switching privileges, had discussed the action of the Torso and Northern in +cutting the coal rates, had lunched with Freke, the president of a coal +company that did business with the A. and P.; and had received, just as he +left the office, the report of a serious freight wreck at one end of his +division. As he had said, a busy day! And this business of life, like an +endless steel chain, had caught hold of him at once and was carrying him +fast in its revolution. It was his life; he liked it. With cool head and +steady nerves he set himself at each problem, working it out according to +known rules, calling on his trained experience. He did not look into the +future, content with the preoccupation of the present, confident that the +future, whatever and wherever it might be, would be crowded with affairs, +activity, which he would meet competently.... + +"Well, what have _you_ been doing?" he asked as he sat down, fresh from his +bath, and relaxed comfortably in anticipation of a pleasant dinner. +Isabelle made a great point of dinner, having it served formally by two +maids, with five "Busy day?" she would ask when he bent to kiss her. + +"They're all busy days!" + +"Tell me what you did." + +"Oh," he would answer vaguely, "just saw people and dictated letters and +telegrams,--yes, it was a busy day." And he left her to dress for dinner. + +She knew that he was weary after all the problems that he had thrust his +busy mind into since the morning. She had no great curiosity to know what +these problems were. She had been accustomed to the sanctity of business +reserve in her father's house: men disappeared in the morning to their work +and emerged to wash and dress and be as amusing as they might for the few +remaining hours of the day. There were rumors of what went on in that +mysterious world of business, but the right kind of men did not disclose +the secrets of the office to women. + +It never occurred to Lane to go over with her the minute detail of his full +day: how he had considered an application from a large shipper for +switching privileges, had discussed the action of the Torso and Northern in +cutting the coal rates, had lunched with Freke, the president of a coal +company that did business with the A. and P.; and had received, just as he +left the office, the report of a serious freight wreck at one end of his +division. As he had said, a busy day! And this business of life, like an +endless steel chain, had caught hold of him at once and was carrying him +fast in its revolution. It was his life; he liked it. With cool head and +steady nerves he set himself at each problem, working it out according to +known rules, calling on his trained experience. He did not look into the +future, content with the preoccupation of the present, confident that the +future, whatever and wherever it might be, would be crowded with affairs, +activity, which he would meet competently.... + +"Well, what have _you_ been doing?" he asked as he sat down, fresh from his +bath, and relaxed comfortably in anticipation of a pleasant dinner. +Isabelle made a great point of dinner, having it served formally by two +maids, with five courses and at least one wine, "to get used to living +properly," as she explained vaguely. + +"Mrs. Adams called." She was the wife of the manager of the baking-powder +works and president of the country club, a young married woman from a +Western city with pretensions to social experience. "John," Isabelle added +after mentioning this name, "do you think we shall have to stay here long?" + +Her husband paused in eating his soup to look at her. "Why--why?" + +"It's so second-classy," she continued; "at least the women are, mostly. +There's only one I've met so far that seemed like other people one has +known." + +"Who is she?" Lane inquired, ignoring the large question. + +"Mrs. Falkner." + +"Rob Falkner's wife? He's engineer at the Pleasant Valley mines." + +"She came from Denver." + +"They say he's a clever engineer." + +"She is girlish and charming. She told me all about every one in Torso. +She's been here two years, and she seems to know everybody." + +"And she thinks Torso is second-class?" Lane inquired. + +"She would like to get away, I think. But they are poor, I suppose. Her +clothes look as if she knew what to wear,--pretty. She says there are some +interesting people here when you find them out.... Who is Mr. Darnell? A +lawyer." + +"Tom Darnell? He's one of the local counsel for the road,--a Kentuckian, +politician, talkative sort of fellow, very popular with all sorts. What did +Mrs. Falkner have to say about Tom Darnell?" + +"She told me all about his marriage,--how he ran away with his wife from a +boarding-school in Kentucky--and was chased by her father and brothers, and +they fired at him. A regular Southern scrimmage! But they got across the +river and were married." + +"Sounds like Darnell," Lane remarked contemptuously. + +"It sounds exciting!" his wife said. + +The story, as related by the vivacious Mrs. Falkner, had stirred Isabelle's +curiosity; she could not dismiss this Kentucky politician as curtly as her +husband had disposed of him.... + +They were both wilted by the heat, and after dinner they strolled out into +the garden to get more air, walking leisurely arm in arm, while Lane smoked +his first, cigar. Having finished the gossip for the day, they had little +to say to each other,--Isabelle wondered that it should be so little! Two +months of daily companionship after the intimate weeks of their engagement +had exhausted the topics for mere talk which they had in common. To-night, +as Lane wished to learn the latest news from the wreck, they went into the +town, crossing on their way to the office the court-house square. This was +the centre of old Torso, where the distillery aristocracy still lived in +high, broad-eaved houses of the same pattern as the Colonel's city mansion. +In one of these, which needed painting and was generally neglected, the +long front windows on the first story were open, revealing a group of +people sitting around a supper-table. + +"There's Mrs. Falkner," Isabelle remarked; "the one at the end of the +table, in white. This must be where they live." + +Lane looked at the house with a mental estimate of the rent. + +"Large house," he observed. + +Isabelle watched the people laughing and talking about the table, which was +still covered with coffee cups and glasses. A sudden desire to be there, to +hear what they were saying, seized her. A dark-haired man was leaning +forward and emphasizing his remarks by tapping a wine glass with along +finger. That might be Tom Darnell, she thought.... The other houses about +the square were dark and gloomy, most of them closed for the summer. + +"There's a good deal of money in Torso," Lane commented, glancing at a +brick house with wooden pillars. "It's a growing place,--more business +coming all the time." + +He looked at the town with the observant eye of the railroad officer, who +sees in the prosperity of any community but one word writ large,--TRAFFIC. + +And that word was blown through the soft night by the puffing locomotives +in the valley below, by the pall of smoke that hung night and day over this +quarter of the city, the dull glow of the coke-ovens on the distant hills. +To the man this was enough--this and his home; business and the woman he +had won,--they were his two poles! + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +"You see," continued Bessie Falkner, drawing up her pretty feet into the +piazza cot, "it was just love at first sight. I was up there at the hotel +in the mountains, trying to make up my mind whether I could marry another +man, who was awfully rich--owned a mine and a ranch; but he was so dull the +horses would go to sleep when we were out driving ... And then just as I +concluded it was the only thing for me to do, to take him and make the best +of him,--then Rob rode up to the hotel in his old tattered suit--he was +building a dam or something up in the mountains--and I knew I couldn't +marry Mr. Mine-and-Ranch. That was all there was to it, my dear. The rest +of the story? Why, of course he made the hotel his headquarters while he +was at work on the dam; I stayed on, too, and it came along--naturally, you +know." + +Mrs. Falkner dipped into a box of candy and swung the cot gently to and +fro. The men were still talking inside the house and the two wives had come +outside for long confidences. Isabelle, amused by this sketch of the +Colorado courtship, patted the blond woman's little hand. Mrs. Falkner had +large blue eyes, with waving tendrils of hair, which gave her face the look +of childish unsophistication;--especially at this moment when her +voluptuous lips were closing over a specially desired piece of candy. + +"Of course it would come along--with you!" + +"I didn't do a thing--just waited," Bessie protested, fishing about the +almost empty box for another delectable bit. "He did it all. He was in such +a hurry he wanted to marry me then and there at the hotel and go live up in +the mountains in a cabin above the dam where he was at work. He's romantic. +Men are all like that then, don't you think? But of course it couldn't be +that way; so we got married properly in the fall in Denver, and then came +straight here. And," with a long sigh, "we've been here ever since. Stuck!" + +"I should think you would have preferred the cabin above the dam," Isabelle +suggested, recalling her own romantic notion of Dog Mountain. Mrs. Falkner +made a little grimace. + +"That might do for two or three months. But snowed in all the winter, even +with the man you like best in all the world? He'd kill you or escape +through the drifts ... You see we hadn't a thing, not a cent, except his +salary and that ended with the dam. It was only eighty a month anyway. This +is better, a hundred and fifty," she explained with childish frankness. +"But Rob has to work harder and likes the mountains, is always talking of +going back. But I say there are better things than hiding yourself at the +land's end. There's St. Louis, or maybe New York!" + +Isabelle wondered how the Falkners were able to support such a hospitable +house--they had two small children and Bessie had confided that another was +coming in the spring--on the engineer's salary. + +"And the other one," Mrs. Falkner added in revery, "is more than a +millionnaire now." + +Her face was full of speculation over what might have been as the wife of +all that money. + +"But we are happy, Rob and I,--except for the bills! Don't you hate bills?" + +Isabelle's only answer was a hearty laugh. She found this pretty, frank +little "Westerner" very attractive. + +"It was bills that made my mother unhappy--broke her heart. Sometimes we +had money,--most generally not. Such horrid fusses when there wasn't any. +But what is one to do? You've got to go on living somehow. Rob says we +can't afford this house,--Rob is always afraid we won't get through. But we +do somehow. I tell him that the good time is coming,--we must just +anticipate it, draw a little on the future." + +At this point the men came through the window to the piazza. Bessie shook +her box of candy coquettishly at Lane, who took the chair beside her. +Evidently he thought her amusing, as most men did. Falkner leaned against +the white pillar and stared up at the heavens. Isabelle, accustomed to men +of more conventional social qualities, had found the young engineer glum +and odd. He had a stern, rather handsome face, a deep furrow dividing his +forehead and meeting the part of his thick brown hair, which curled +slightly at the ends. "If he didn't look so cross, he would be quite +handsome," thought Isabelle, wondering how long it might be before her host +would speak to her. She could see him as he rode up to the hotel piazza +that day, when Bessie Falkner had made up her mind on the moment that she +could not marry "the other man." Finally Falkner broke his glum silence. + +"Do you eat candy, Mrs. Lane? Pounds of it, I mean,--so that it is your +staple article of diet." + +"Tut, tut," remarked his wife from her cot. "Don't complain." + +His next remark was equally abrupt. + +"There's only one good thing in this Torso hole," he observed with more +animation than he had shown all the evening, "and that's the coke-ovens at +night--have you noticed them? They are like the fiery pits, smouldering, +ready for the damned!" + +It was not what she expected from a civil engineer, in Torso, Indiana, and +she was at a loss for a reply. + +"You'd rather have stayed in Colorado?" she asked frankly. + +He turned his face to her and said earnestly, "Did you ever sleep out on a +mountain with the stars close above you?--'the vast tellurian galleons' +voyaging through space?" + +Isabelle suspected that he was quoting poetry, which also seemed odd in +Torso. + +"Yes,--my brother and I used to camp out at our home in Connecticut. But I +don't suppose you would call our Berkshire Hills mountains." + +"No," he replied dryly, "I shouldn't." + +And their conversation ended. Isabella wished that the Darnells had not +been obliged to go home immediately after supper. The young lawyer knew how +to talk to women, and had made himself very agreeable, telling stories of +his youth spent among the mountains with a primitive people. She had +observed that he drank a good deal of whiskey, and there was something in +his black eyes that made her uncomfortable. But he was a man that women +liked to think about: he touched their imaginations. She did not talk about +him to John on their way home, however, but discussed the Falkners. + +"Don't you think she is perfectly charming?" (Charming was the word she had +found for Bessie Falkner.) "So natural and amusing! She's very Western--she +can't have seen much of life--but she isn't a bit ordinary." + +"Yes, I like her," Lane replied unenthusiastically, "and he seems original. +I shouldn't wonder if he were clever in his profession; he told me a lot +about Freke's mines." + +What he had learned about the Pleasant Valley mines was the chief thing in +the evening to Lane. He did not understand why Isabelle seemed so much more +eager to know these people--these Darnells and Falkners--than the Frasers +and the Adamses. She had made fun of the solemn dinner that the Frasers had +given to introduce them into Torso "society." + +"I wonder how they can live on that salary," Isabelle remarked. "One +hundred and fifty a month!" + +"He must make something outside." + + * * * * * + +After the Lanes had gone, Bessie Falkner prepared yawningly for bed, +leaving her husband to shut up the house. Her weekly excitement of +entertaining people over, she always felt let down, like a poet after the +stir of creation. It was useless to go over the affair with Rob, as he was +merely bored. But she spent hours thinking what the women said and how they +looked and deciding whom she could have the next time. On her way to bed +she went into the nursery where her two little girls were asleep in their +cots beside the nurse, and finding a window open woke the nurse to reprove +her for her carelessness. In the hall she met her husband bringing up the +silver. + +"Emma is so thoughtless," she complained. "I shall have to let her go if I +can find another servant in this town." + +Her husband listened negligently. The Falkners were perpetually changing +their two servants, or were getting on without them. + +"Mrs. Lane's maids all wear caps," Mrs. Falkner had observed frequently to +her husband. + +Bessie had strict ideas of how a house should be run, ideas derived from +the best houses that she was familiar with. Since the advent of the Lanes +she had extended these ideas and strove all the harder to achieve +magnificent results. Though the livery of service was practically unknown +in Torso, she had resolved to induce her cook (and maid of all work) to +serve the meals with cap and apron, and also endeavored to have the +nursemaid open the door and help serve when company was expected. + +"What's the use!" her husband protested. "They'll only get up and go." + +He could not understand the amount of earnest attention and real feeling +that his wife put into these things,--her pride to have her small domain +somewhat resemble the more affluent ones that she admired. Though her +family had been decidedly plain, they had given her "advantages" in +education and dress, and her own prettiness, her vivacity and charm, had +won her way into whatever society Kansas City and Denver could offer. She +had also visited here and there in different parts of the country,--once in +New York, and again at a cottage on the New England coast where there were +eight servants, a yacht, and horses. These experiences of luxury, of an +easy and large social life, she had absorbed through every pore. With that +marvellous adaptability of her race she had quickly formed her ideals of +"how people ought to live." It was frequently difficult to carry out these +ideals on a circumscribed income, with a husband who cared nothing for +appearances, and that was a source of constant discontent to Bessie. + +"Coming to bed?" she asked her husband, as she looked in vain for the +drinking water that the maid was supposed to bring to her bedside at night. + +"No," Falkner answered shortly. "I've got to make out those estimates +somehow before morning. If you will have people all the time--" + +Bessie turned in at her door shrugging her shoulders. Rob was in one of his +"cross" moods,--overworked, poor boy! She slowly began to undress before +the mirror, thinking of Isabelle Lane's stylish figure and her perfect +clothes. "She must have lots of money," she reflected, "and so nice and +simple! He's attractive, too. Rob is foolish not to like them. He showed +his worst side to-night. If he wants to get on,--why, they are the sort of +people he ought to know." Her husband's freakish temper gave her much +trouble, his unexpectedly bearish moods when she was doing her very best +for him, "bringing him out" as she put it, making the right kind of +friends,--influential ones, so that he might have some chance in the +scramble for the good things of life. Surely that was a wife's part. Bessie +was satisfied that she had done much for her husband in this way, developed +him socially; for when he rode up to the mountain hotel, he was solitary, +moody, shy. Tonight he hadn't kissed her,--in fact hadn't done so for +several days. He was tired by the prolonged heat, she supposed, and worried +about the bills. He was always worried about expenses. + +As the clothes slipped from her still shapely figure, she stood before the +glass, thinking in a haze of those first lover-days that had departed so +soon. Now instead of petting her, Rob spent his hours at home upstairs in +his attic workroom, doing extra work or reading. Could it be that he was +growing tired of her, so soon, in four years? She glanced over her shoulder +at her pretty arms, her plump white neck reflected in the glass, and smiled +unconsciously with assurance. Oh, he would come back to the lover-mood--she +was still desirable! And as the smile curved her lip she thought, "I +married him for love!" She was very proud of that.... + +The house was now deliciously cool and quiet. Bessie sank into her bed with +a sigh, putting out one hand for a magazine and turning on the electric +light beside the bed. It had been a tiresome day, with the supper to bring +off. There had been six courses, and everything had been very nice. The +black cook she had engaged to prepare the meal was a treasure, could serve +a better dinner than Mrs. Fraser's or Mrs. Adams's. She herself had made +the salad and prepared the iced grape-fruit. Every limb ached--she was +always so tired. She loved this last quiet hour of the day that she had by +herself, now that the nurse took both the children. With her delicate +health the nurse had been a necessity. She usually looked blooming and +rosy, but was always tired, always had been as long as she could remember. +The doctor had told Falkner after the second child came that his wife would +always be a delicate woman, must be carefully protected, or she would +collapse and have the fearful modern disease of nerves. So Falkner had +insisted on having the best nurse obtainable to relieve her from the +wearing nights,--though it meant that somehow eighteen hundred dollars must +grow of itself! + +As midnight sounded from the court-house clock, Bessie laid down the +magazine and stretched her tired limbs, luxuriating in the comfort of her +soft bed. The story she had been reading was sentimental,--the love of a +cowboy for the fair daughter of a railroad president. She longed for the +caresses of her cow-boy lover, and wondered dreamily if Lane were a devoted +husband. He seemed so; but all men were probably alike: their first desires +gratified, they thought of other things. So she put out the light and +closed her eyes, in faint discontent with life, which was proving less +romantic than she had anticipated. + +She had her own room. At first it had held two beds, her husband sharing +the room with her. But as the house was large he had taken a room on the +third story. Nowadays, as Bessie knew, the better sort of American +household does not use the primitive double bed. For hygiene and comfort +enlightened people have taken to separate beds, then separate quarters. A +book might be written on the doing away of the conjugal bed in American +life! There should be interesting observations on the effect of this +change, social, and hygienic, and moral,--oh, most interesting! ... A +contented smile at last stole over the young wife's face. Was she dreaming +of her babies, of those first days of love, when her husband never wished +her out of his sight, or simply of the well-ordered, perfectly served, +pretty supper that she had given for the Lanes whom she was most anxious to +know well? The supper had quite met her aspirations except in the matter of +caps and aprons, had satisfied her cherished ideal of how "nice people" +lived in this world. + +That ideal is constantly expanding these days. In America no one is classed +by birth or profession. All is to make, and the women with their marvellous +powers of absorption do the shaping. In a thousand ways they learn "how to +live as other people do,"--in magazines and on bill boards, in the theatre, +the churches, the trains, the illustrated novel. Suggestions how to live! + +Meantime upstairs in the mansard room of the old house Falkner was figuring +over stresses and strains of an unemotional sort. When past midnight he +shoved the papers into the drawer, a familiar thought coursed through his +brain: somehow he must sell himself at a dearer price. Living was not cheap +even in Torso, and the cost of living was ever going higher, so the papers +said and the wives. There were four of them now, a fifth to come in a few +months. There should be a third servant, he knew, if they were to live +"like other people." With a gesture that said, "Oh, Hell!" he jumped from +his chair and took down a volume of verse from the pine shelf above the +mantel and lighted a cigarette. For a few minutes he might lose himself and +forget the fret of life, in the glowing pictures of things not seen. + +The book dropped from his hand. He had carried it in his mountain kit, had +read it to Bessie when they were engaged. She had listened, flattered, +looking at him and smoothing his hair. But after marriage she confessed +flatly that she was not "literary." So they had read together a book of +travels, then a novel, then a magazine, and latterly nothing. Taking +another cigarette, the man read on, and before his tired eyes rose the +purple peaks of the Rockies, the shining crests of snow, the azure sky. And +also a cabin in a green meadow beside a still mountain lake, and a woman +fair and tall and straight, with blue eyes and a caressing hand,--a child +on one arm. But Bessie was sleeping downstairs. Putting out his light, the +man went to bed. + +The man on horseback riding up the trail to look into the girl's eyes that +summer afternoon! + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +The two young wives quickly became very intimate. They spent many mornings +together "reading," that is, they sat on the cool west veranda of the +Lanes's house, or less often on the balcony at the Falkners's, with a novel +turned down where their attention had relaxed, chatting and sewing. +Isabelle found Bessie Falkner "cunning," "amusing," "odd," and always +"charming." She had "an air about her," a picturesque style of gossip that +she used when instructing Isabelle in the intricacies of Torso society. +Isabelle also enjoyed the homage that Bessie paid her. + +Bessie frankly admired Isabella's house, her clothes, her stylish self, and +enjoyed her larger experience of life,--the Washington winter, Europe, even +the St. Louis horizon,--all larger than anything she had ever known. +Isabelle was very nearly the ideal of what she herself would have liked to +be. So when they had exhausted Torso and their households, they filled the +morning hours with long tales about people they had known,--"Did you ever +hear of the Dysarts in St. Louis? Sallie Dysart was a great belle,--she had +no end of affairs, and then she married Paul Potter. The Potters were very +well-known people in Philadelphia, etc." Thus they gratified their +curiosity about _lives_, all the interesting complications into which men +and women might get. Often Bessie stayed for luncheon, a dainty affair +served on a little table which the maid brought out and set between them. +Sometimes Bessie had with her the baby girl, but oftener not, for she +became exacting and interfered with the luncheon. + +Bessie had endless tidbits of observation about Torsonians. "Mrs. Freke was +a cashier in a Cleveland restaurant when he married her. Don't you see the +bang in her hair still? ... Mrs. Griscom came from Kentucky,--very old +family. Tom Griscom, their only son, went to Harvard,--he was very wild. +He's disappeared since.... Yes, Mrs. Adams is common, but the men seem to +like her. I don't trust her green eyes. Mr. Darnell, they say, is always +there. Oh, Mr. Adams isn't the one to care!" + +Often they came back to Darnell,--that impetuous, black-haired young lawyer +with his deep-set, fiery eyes, who had run away with his wife. + +"She looks scared most of the time, don't you think? They say he drinks. +Too bad, isn't it? Such a brilliant man, and with the best chances. He ran +for Congress two years ago on the Democratic ticket, and just failed. He is +going to try again this next fall, but his railroad connection is against +him.... Oh, Sue Darnell,--she is nobody; she can't hold him--that's plain." + +"What does she think of Mrs. Adams?" + +Bessie shrugged her shoulders significantly. + +"Sue has to have her out at their farm. Well, they say she was pretty gay +herself,--engaged to three men at once,--one of them turned up in Torso +last year. Tom was very polite to him, elaborately polite; but he left town +very soon, and she seemed dazed.... I guess she has reason to be afraid of +her husband. He looks sometimes--well, I shouldn't like to have Rob look at +me that way, not for half a second!" + +The two women clothed the brilliant Kentuckian with all the romance of +unbridled passion. "He sends to Alabama every week for the jasmine Mrs. +Adams wears--fancy!" + +"Really! Oh, men! men!" + +"It's probably _her_ fault--she can't hold him." + +That was the simple philosophy which they evolved about marriage,--men were +uncertain creatures, only partly tamed, and it was the woman's business to +"hold" them. So much the worse for the women if they happened to be tied to +men they could not "hold." Isabelle, remembering on one occasion the +flashing eyes of the Kentuckian, his passionate denunciation of mere +commercialism in public life, felt that there might be some defence for +poor Tom Darnell,--even in his flirtation with the "common" Mrs. Adams. + +Then the two friends went deeper and talked husbands, both admiring, both +hilariously amused at the masculine absurdities of their mates. + +"I hate to see poor Rob so harassed with bills," Bessie confided. "It is +hard for him, with his tastes, poor boy. But I don't know what I can do +about it. When he complains, I tell him we eat everything we have, and I am +sure I never get a dress!" + +Isabelle, recollecting the delicious suppers she had had at the Falkners's, +thought that less might be eaten. In her mother's house there had always +been comfort, but strict economy, even after the hardware business paid +enormous profits. This thrift was in her blood. Bessie had said to Rob that +Isabelle was "close." But Isabelle only laughed at Bessie when she was in +these moods of dejection, usually at the first of the month. Bessie was so +amusing about her troubles that she could not take her seriously. + +"Never mind, Bessie!" she laughed. "He probably likes to work hard for +you,--every man does for the woman he loves." + +And then they would have luncheon, specially devised for Bessie's epicurean +taste. For Bessie Falkner did devout homage to a properly cooked dish. +Isabelle, watching the contented look with which the little woman swallowed +a bit of jellied meat, felt that any man worth his salt would like to +gratify her innocent tastes. Probably Falkner couldn't endure a less +charming woman for his wife. So she condoned, as one does with a clever +child, all the little manifestations of waywardness and selfishness that +she was too intelligent not to see in her new friend. Isabelle liked to +spoil Bessie Falkner. Everybody liked to indulge her, just as one likes to +feed a pretty child with cake and candy, especially when the discomforts of +the resulting indigestion fall on some one else. + +"Oh, it will all come out right in the end!" Bessie usually exclaimed, +after she had well lunched. She did not see things very vividly far +ahead,--nothing beyond the pleasant luncheon, the attractive house, her +adorable Isabelle. "I always tell Rob when he is blue that his chance will +come some day; he'll make a lucky strike, do some work that attracts public +attention, and then we'll all be as happy as can be." + +She had the gambler's instinct; her whole life had been a gamble, now +winning, now losing, even to that moment when her lover had ridden up to +the hotel and solved her doubts about the rich suitor. In Colorado she had +known men whose fortunes came over night, "millions and millions," as she +told Isabelle, rolling the words in her little mouth toothsomely. Why not +to her? She felt that any day fortune might smile. + +"My husband says that Mr. Falkner is doing excellent work,--Mr. Freke said +so," Isabelle told Bessie. + +"And Rob talks as if he were going to lose his job next week! Sometimes I +wish he would lose it--and we could go away to a large city." + +Bessie thus echoed the feeling in Isabelle's own heart,--"I don't want to +spend my life on an Indiana prairie!" To both of the women Torso was less a +home, a corner of the earth into which to put down roots, than a +way-station in the drama and mystery of life. Confident in their husbands' +ability to achieve Success, they dreamed of other scenes, of a larger +future, with that restlessness of a new civilization, which has latterly +seized even women--the supposedly stable sex. + + * * * * * + +As the year wore on there were broader social levels into which Isabelle in +company with Bessie dipped from time to time. The Woman's Club had a +lecture course in art and sociology. They attended one of the lectures in +the Normal School building, and laughed furtively in their muffs at "Madam +President" of the Club,--a portly, silk-dressed dame,--and at the +ill-fitting black coat of the university professor who lectured. They came +away before the reception. + +"Dowds!" Bessie summed up succinctly. + +"Rather crude," Isabelle agreed tolerantly. + +During the winter Isabelle did some desultory visiting among the Hungarians +employed at the coke-ovens, for Bessie's church society. Originally of +Presbyterian faith, she had changed at St. Mary's to the Episcopal church, +and latterly all church affiliations had grown faint. The Colonel +maintained a pew in the first Presbyterian Church, but usually went to hear +the excellent lectures of a Unitarian preacher. Isabelle's religious views +were vague, broad, liberal, and unvital. Bessie's were simpler, but +scarcely more effective. Lane took a lively interest in the railroad +Y.M.C.A., which he believed to be helpful for young men. He himself had +been a member in St. Louis and had used the gymnasium. Isabelle got up an +entertainment for the Hungarian children, which was ended by a disastrous +thunderstorm. She had an uneasy feeling that she "ought to do something for +somebody." Alice Johnston, she knew, had lived at a settlement for a couple +of years. But there were no settlements in Torso, and the acutely poor were +looked after by the various churches. Just what there was to be done for +others was not clear. When she expressed her desire "not to live selfishly" +to her husband, he replied easily:-- + +"There are societies for those things, I suppose. It ought to be natural, +what we do for others." + +Just what was meant by "natural" was not clear to Isabelle, but the word +accorded with the general belief of her class that the best way to help in +the world was to help one's self, to become useful to others by becoming +important in the community,--a comfortable philosophy. But there was one +definite thing that they might accomplish, and that was to help the +Falkners into easier circumstances. + +"Don't you suppose we could do something for them? Now that the baby has +come they are dreadfully poor,--can't think of going away for the summer, +and poor Bessie needs it and the children. I meant to ask the Colonel when +he was here last Christmas. Isn't there something Rob could do in the +road?" + +Lane shook his head. + +"That is not my department. There might be a place in St. Louis when they +begin work on the new terminals. I'll speak to Brundage the next time he's +here." + +"St. Louis--Bessie would like that. She's such a dear, and would enjoy +pretty things so much! It seems as if she almost had a right to them." + +"Why did she marry a poor man, then?" Lane demanded with masculine logic. + +"Because she loved him, silly! She isn't mercenary." + +"Well, then,--" but Lane did not finish his sentence, kissing his wife +instead. "She's rather extravagant, isn't she?" he asked after a time. + +"Oh, she'll learn to manage." + +"I will do what I can for him, of course." + +And Isabelle considered the Falkners' fate settled; John, like her father, +always brought about what he wanted. + + * * * * * + +They spent the Christmas holidays that year with her parents. Lane was +called to New York on railroad business, and Isabelle had a breathless ten +days with old friends, dining and lunching, listening to threads of gossip +that had been broken by her exile to Torso. She discovered an unexpected +avidity for diversion, and felt almost ashamed to enjoy people so keenly, +to miss her husband so little. She put it all down to the cramping effect +of Torso. So when the Colonel asked her how she liked her new home, she +burst forth, feeling that her opportunity had come:-- + +"It doesn't agree with me, I think. I've grown frightfully thin,--John says +I mustn't spend another summer there.... I hope we can get away soon. John +must have a wider field, don't you think?" + +"He seems to find Torso pretty wide." + +"He's done splendid work, I know. But I don't want him side-tracked all his +life in a little Indiana town. Don't you think you could speak to the +Senator or Mr. Beals?" + +The Colonel smiled. + +"Yes, I could speak to them, if John wants me to." + +"He hasn't said anything about it," she hastened to add. + +"So you are tired of Torso?" he asked, smiling still more. + +"It seems so good to be here, to hear some music, and go to the theatre; to +be near old friends," she explained apologetically. "Don't you and mother +want us to be near you?" + +"Of course, my dear! We want you to be happy." + +"Why, we are happy there,--only it seems so out of the world, so +second-class. And John is not second-class." + +"No, John is not second-class," the Colonel admitted with another smile. +"And for that reason I don't believe he will want me to interfere." + +Nevertheless she kept at her idea, talking it over with her mother. All her +friends were settled in the great cities, and it was only natural that she +should aspire to something better than Torso--for the present, St. Louis. +So the Colonel spoke to Lane, and Lane spoke to his wife when they were +back once more in the Torso house. He was grave, almost hurt. + +"I'm sorry, Belle, you are so tired of life here. I can take another +position or ask to be transferred; but you must understand, dear, that +whatever is done, it must be by myself. I don't want favors, not even from +the Colonel!" + +She felt ashamed and small, yet protested: "I don't see why you should +object. Every one does the same,--uses all the pull he has." + +"There are changes coming,--I prefer to wait. The man who uses least pull +usually hangs on longest." + +As he walked to the office that morning, the thought of Isabelle's +restlessness occupied his mind. "It's dull for her here, of course. It +isn't the kind of life she's been used to, or had the right to expect as +the Colonel's daughter." He felt the obligation to live up to his wife, +having won her from a superior position. Like a chivalrous American +gentleman he was not aggrieved because even during the first two years of +marriage, he--their life together--was not enough to satisfy his wife. He +did not reflect that his mother had accepted unquestioningly the Iowa town +to which his father had brought her after the War; nor that Isabelle's +mother had accepted cheerfully the two rooms in the little brick house near +the hardware store. Those were other days. + +He saw the picture of Isabelle standing beside the dining-room window with +the sun on her hair,--a developed type of human being, that demanded much +of life for satisfaction and adjustment. He plunged into his affairs with +an added grip, an unconscious feeling that he must by his exertions provide +those satisfactions and adjustments which his wife's nature demanded for +its perfect development. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +It was to be Isabella's first real dinner-party, a large affair for Torso. +It had already absorbed her energies for a fortnight. The occasion was the +arrival of a party of Atlantic and Pacific officials and directors, who +were to inspect the Torso and Northern, with a view to its purchase and +absorption. The Torso and Northern was only a little scab line of railroad, +penetrating the soft-coal country for a couple of hundred miles, bankrupt +and demoralized. When Lane saw President Beals at Christmas, he pointed out +to him what might be made of this scrap-heap road, if it were rehabilitated +and extended into new coal fields. Beals had shown no interest in the Torso +and Northern at that time, and Lane forgot the matter until he noticed that +there was a market for Torso and Northern equipment bonds, which before had +been unsalable at twenty. Seeing them rise point by point for a month, he +had bought all he could pay for; he knew the weather signs in the railroad +world. When the inspection party was announced, his sagacity was proved. + +Isabelle was excited by the prospect of her dinner for the distinguished +visitors. Who should she have of Torso's best to meet them? The Frasers and +the Griscoms, of course. John insisted on inviting the Frekes, and Isabelle +wanted the Darnells and the Adamses, though her husband demurred at +recognizing the bond. But Tom Darnell was so interesting, his wife urged, +and she was presentable. And the Falkners? There was no special reason for +having them, but Isabelle thought it might be a good thing for Rob to meet +some influential people, and Bessie would surely amuse the men. Isabelle's +executive energy was thoroughly aroused. The flowers and the wines were +ordered from St. Louis, the terrapin from Philadelphia, the fish and the +candies from New York. Should they have champagne? Lane thought not, +because "it's not quite our style." But Isabelle overbore his objections:-- + +"The Adamses always have it, and the Senator will expect it and all the New +York crowd." + +Her husband acquiesced, feeling that in these things his wife knew the +world better than he,--though he would have preferred to offer his superior +officers a simpler meal. + +The inspection party returned from their trip over the Torso and Northern +in the best of spirits. Lane felt sure that the purchase had been decided +upon by this inner coterie of the A. and P., of which the mouthpiece, +Senator Thomas, had emitted prophetic phrases,--"valuable possibilities +undeveloped," "would tap new fields,--good feeder," etc., etc. Lane thought +pleasantly of the twenty equipment bonds in his safe, which would be +redeemed by the Atlantic and Pacific at par and accrued interest, and he +resolved to secure another block, if they were to be had, before the sale +was officially confirmed by the directors. Altogether it had been an +agreeable jaunt. He had met several influential directors and had been +generally consulted as the man who knew the exact local conditions. And he +was aware that he had made a favorable impression as a practical railroad +man.... + +When his guests came down to the drawing-room, he was proud of what his +wife had done. The house was ablaze with candles--Bessie had persuaded +Isabelle to dispense with the electric light--and bunches of heavy, +thick-stemmed roses filled the vases. A large silver tray of decanters and +cocktails was placed in the hall beside the blazing fire. The Senator had +already possessed himself of a cocktail, and was making his little speeches +to Isabelle, who in a Paris gown that gave due emphasis to her pretty +shoulders and thin figure, was listening to him gayly. + +"Did you think we lived in a log-cabin, Senator?" she protested to his +compliments. "We eat with knives and forks, silver ones too, and sometimes +we even have champagne in Torso!"... + +Lane, coming up with the first Vice-president, Vernon Short, and a Mr. +Stanton, one of the New York directors ("a great swell," and "not just +money," "has brains, you know," as the Senator whispered), was proud of his +competent wife. She was vivaciously awake, and seemed to have forgotten her +girlish repugnance to the amorous Senator. As she stood by the drawing-room +door receiving her guests, he felt how much superior to all the Torso +"leaders" she was,--yes, she deserved a larger frame! And to-night he felt +confident that he should be able before long to place her in it.... The +Senator, having discharged his cargo of compliments, was saying:-- + +"Saw your friend Miss Pallanton that was--Mrs. Woodyard--at the Stantons's +the other night, looking like a blond Cleopatra. She's married a bright +fellow, and she'll be the making of him. He'll have to hop around to please +her,--I expect that's what husbands are for, isn't it, Lane?" + +And here Isabelle passed him over to Bessie, who had come without Falkner, +he having made some silly excuse at the last moment,--"just cross," as +Bessie confided to Isabelle. She was looking very fresh in a gown that she +and Isabelle's seamstress had contrived, and she smiled up into the +Senator's face with her blandest child-manner. The Senator, who liked all +women, even those who asked his views on public questions, was especially +fond of what he called the "unsophisticated" variety, with whom his title +carried weight. + +When they reached the dining room, Lane's elation rose to a higher pitch. +The table, strewn with sweet jasmine and glossy leaves, was adorned with +all the handsome gold and silver service and glass that Isabelle had +received at her marriage. It was too barbarically laden to be really +beautiful; but it was in the best prevailing taste of the time, and to +Lane, who never regarded such matters attentively, "was as good as the +best." Looking down the long table after they were seated, he smiled with +satisfaction and expanded, a subtle suavity born of being host to +distinguished folk unlocking his ordinarily reticent tongue, causing him +even to joke with Mrs. Adams, whom he did not like. + +The food was excellent, and the maids, some borrowed, some specially +imported from St. Louis, made no mistakes, at least gross ones. The feast +moved as smoothly as need be. Isabelle, glancing over the table as the game +came on, had her moment of elation, too. This was a real dinner-party, as +elaborate and sumptuous as any that her friends in St. Louis might give. +The Farrington Beals, she remembered, had men servants,--most New York +families kept them, but that could hardly be expected in Torso. The dinner +was excellent, as the hungry visitors testified, and they seemed to find +the women agreeable and the whole affair unexpectedly cosmopolitan, which +was pleasing after spending a long week in a car, examining terminals and +coal properties. Indeed, it was very much the same dinner that was being +served at about that hour in thousands of well-to-do houses throughout the +country all the way from New York to San Francisco,--the same dishes, the +same wines, the same service, almost the same talk. Nothing in American +life is so completely standardized as what is known as a "dinner" in good, +that is well-to-do, society. Isabelle Lane, with all her executive ability, +her real cleverness, aspired to do "the proper thing," just as it was done +in the houses of the moderately rich everywhere. + +The model of hospitality is set by the hotel manager and his chef, and all +that the clever hostess aspires to do is to offer the nearest copy of this +to her guests. Neither the Lanes nor any of their guests, however, felt +this lack of distinction, this sameness, in the entertainment provided for +them. They had the comfortable feeling of being in a cheerful house, well +warmed and well lighted, of eating all this superfluous food, which they +were accustomed to eat, of saying the things they always said on such +occasions.... + +Isabelle had distributed her Torsonians skilfully: Bessie was adorable and +kept three men hanging on her stories. Mrs. Adams, on the other side of +Stanton, was furtively eying Darnell, who was talking rather loudly, trying +to capture the Senator's attention from Bessie. Across the table Mrs. +Darnell, still the striking dark-haired schoolgirl, was watching her +husband, with a pitiful something in her frightened eyes that made Isabelle +shrink.... It was Darnell who finally brought the conversation to a full +stop. + +"No, Senator," he said in his emphatic voice, "it is not scum like the +assassin of the President that this country should fear!" + +"We're paying now for our liberal policy in giving homes to the anarchistic +refuse of Europe," the Senator insisted. "Congress must pass legislation +that will protect us from another Czolgocz." + +Darnell threw up his head, his lips curving disdainfully. He had emptied +his champagne glass frequently, and there was a reckless light in his dark +eyes. Isabelle trembled for his next remark:-- + +"You are wrong, sir, if you will allow me to say so. The legislation that +we need is not against poor, feeble-minded rats like that murderer. We have +prisons and asylums enough for them. What the country needs is legislation +against its honored thieves, the real anarchists among us. We don't get 'em +from Europe, Senator; we breed 'em right here,--in Wall street." + +If some one had discharged assafoetida over the table, there could not have +been a more unpleasant sensation. + +"You don't mean quite that, Darnell," Lane began; but the Kentuckian +brushed him to one side. + +"Just that; and some day you will see what Americans will do with their +anarchists. I tell you this land is full of discontent,--men hating +dishonesty, privilege, corruption, injustice! men ready to fight their +oppressors for freedom!" + +The men about the table were all good Republicans, devout believers in the +gospel of prosperity, all sharers in it. They smiled contemptuously at +Darnell's passion. + +"Our martyred President was a great and good man," the Senator observed +irrelevantly in his public tone. + +"He was the greatest breeder of corruption that has ever held that office," +retorted the Kentuckian. "With his connivance, a Mark Hanna has forged the +worst industrial tyranny the world has ever seen,--the corrupt grip of +corporations on the lives of the people." + +"Pretty strong for a corporation lawyer!" Lane remarked, and the men +laughed cynically. + +"I am no longer a corporation hireling," Darnell said in a loud voice. + +Isabelle noticed that Mrs. Adams's eyes glowed, as she gazed at the man. + +"I sent in my resignation last week." + +"Getting ready for the public platform?" some one suggested. "You won't +find much enthusiasm for those sentiments; wages are too high!" + +There was a moment of unpleasant silence. The Kentuckian raised his head as +if to retort, then collected himself, and remarked meekly:-- + +"Pardon me, Mrs. Lane, this is not the occasion for such a discussion. I +was carried away by my feelings. Sometimes the real thought will burst +out." + +The apology scarcely bettered matters, and Isabelle's response was flat. + +"I am sure it is always interesting to hear both sides." + +"But I can't see that to a good citizen there can be two sides to the +lamentable massacre of our President," the Senator said severely. "I had +the privilege of knowing our late President intimately, and I may say that +I never knew a better man,--he was another Lincoln!" + +"I don't see where Mr. Darnell can find this general discontent," the +Vice-president of the A. and P. put in suavely. "The country has never been +so prosperous as during the McKinley-Hanna regime,--wages at the high +level, exports increasing, crops abundant. What any honest and industrious +man has to complain of, I can't see. Why, we are looking for men all the +time, and we can't get them, at any price!" + +"'Ye shall not live by bread alone,'" Darnell muttered. It was a curious +remark for a dinner-party, Isabelle thought. Mrs. Adams's lips curled as if +she understood it. But now that the fiery lawyer had taken to quoting the +Bible no one paid any further attention to him, and the party sank back +into little duologues appropriate to the occasion. Later Bessie confessed +to Isabelle that she had been positively frightened lest the Kentuckian +would do "something awful,"--he had been drinking, she thought. But Darnell +remained silent for the brief time before the ladies left the room, merely +once raising his eyes apologetically to Isabelle with his wine-glass at his +lips, murmuring so that she alone could hear him,--"I drink to the gods of +Prosperity!" She smiled back her forgiveness. He had behaved very badly, +almost wrecked her successful dinner; but somehow she could not dislike +him. She did not understand what he was saying or why he should say it when +people were having a good time; but she felt it was part of his interesting +and uncertain nature.... + +Presently the coffee and cigars came and the women went across the hall, +while the men talked desultorily until the sound of Bessie's voice singing +a French song to Isabella's accompaniment attracted them. After the next +song the visitors went, their car being due to leave on the Eastern +express. They said many pleasant things to Isabelle, and the Senator, +holding her hand in his broad, soft palm, whispered:-- + +"We can't let so much charm stay buried in Torso!" + +So when the last home guest had departed and Lane sat down before the fire +for another cigar, Isabelle drew her chair close to his, her heart beating +with pleasant emotions. + +"Well?" she said expectantly. + +"Splendid--everything! They liked it, I am sure. I felt proud of you, +Belle!" + +"It was all good but the fish,--yes, I thought our party was very nice!" +Then she told him what the Senator had said, and this time Lane did not +repel the idea of their moving to wider fields. He had made a good +impression on "the New York crowd," and he thought again complacently of +the Torso and Northern equipment bonds. + +"Something may turn up before long, perhaps." + +New York! It made her heart leap. She felt that she was now doing the +wife's part admirably, furthering John's interests by being a competent +hostess, and she liked to further his interests by giving pleasant dinners, +in an attractive gown, and receiving the admiration of clever men. It had +not been the way that her mother had helped on the Colonel; but it was +another way, the modern way, and a very agreeable way. + +"Darnell is an awful fool," Lane commented. "If he can't hold on to himself +any better than he did to-night, he won't get far." + +"Did you know that he had resigned?" + +"No,--it's just as well he has. I don't think the A. and P. would have much +use for him. He's headed the wrong way;" and he added with hardly a pause, +"I think we had better cut the Darnells out, Isabelle. They are not our +sort." + +Isabelle, thinking that this was the man's prejudice, made no reply. + +"It was too bad Rob Falkner wouldn't come. It would have been a good thing +for him to meet influential people." + +Already she spoke with an air of commanding the right sort that her husband +had referred to. + +"He doesn't make a good impression on people," Lane remarked. "Perhaps he +will make good with his work." + +As a man who had made his own way he felt the great importance of being +able to "get on" with people, to interest them, and keep them aware of +one's presence. But he was broad enough to recognize other roads to +success. + +"So you were quite satisfied, John?" his wife asked as she kissed him +good-night. + +"Perfectly--it was the right thing--every way--all but Darnell's rot; and +that didn't do much harm." + +So the two went to their rest perfectly satisfied with themselves and their +world. Lane's last conscious thought was a jumble of equipment bonds, and +the idea of his wife at the head of a long dinner table in some very grand +house--in New York. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +The Darnells had a farm a few miles out of Torso, and this spring they had +given up their house on the square and moved to the farm permanently. +Bessie said it was for Mrs. Darnell's health; men said that the lawyer was +in a tight place with the banks; and gossip suggested that Darnell +preferred being in Torso without his wife whenever he was there. The farm +was on a small hill above a sluggish river, and was surrounded by a growth +of old sycamores and maples. There was a long stretch of fertile fields in +front of the house, dotted by the huge barns and steel windmills of +surrounding farms. + +One Sunday in early May the Lanes were riding in the direction of the +Darnell place, and Isabelle persuaded her husband to call there. "I +promised to ride out here and show him the horses," she explained. The +house was a shabby frame affair, large for a farmhouse, with porticoes and +pillars in Southern style. They found the Darnells with the Falkners in the +living-room. Tom Darnell was reading an Elizabethan play aloud, rolling out +the verse in resounding declamation, punctuated by fervid +appreciation,--"God! but that's fine!" "Hear this thing sing." "Just listen +to this ripper." + + "O God! O God! that it were possible + To undo things done; to call back yesterday! + That Time could turn up his swift sandy glass, + To untell the days, and to redeem the hours!" ... + +When the Lanes had found chairs before the fire, he kept on reading, but +with less enthusiasm, as if he felt an alien atmosphere. Falkner listened +to the lines with closed eyes, his grim jaw relaxed, the deep frown +smoothed. Bessie stroked a white cat,--it was plain that her thoughts were +far away. Mrs. Darnell, who looked slovenly but pretty, stared vacantly out +of the window. The sun lay in broad, streaks on the dusty floor; there was +an air of drowsy peace, broken only by the warm tones of the lawyer as his +voice rose and fell over the spirited verse. Isabelle enjoyed it all; here +was something out of her usual routine. Darnell's face, which reflected the +emotion of the lines, was attractive to her. He might not be the "right +sort"; but he was unusual.... Finally Darnell flung the book into the +corner and jumped up. + +"Here I am boring you good people with stuff dead and gone these hundreds +of years. Falkner always starts me off. Let's have a drink and take a look +at the horses." + +The living-room was a mess of furniture and books, wineglasses, bottles, +wraps, whips, and riding-boots. Lane looked it over critically, while +Darnell found some tumblers and poured out wine. Then they all went to the +stable and dawdled about, talking horse. The fields were green with the +soft grass, already nearly a foot high. Over the house an old grape-vine +was budding in purple balls. There was a languor and sweetness to the air +that instigated laziness. Although Lane wished to be off, Isabelle lingered +on, and Darnell exclaimed hospitably: "You stay to dinner, of course! It is +just plain dinner, Mrs. Lane,"--and he swept away all denial. Turning to +his wife, who had said nothing, he remarked, "It's very good of them to +come in on us like this, isn't it, Irene?" + +Mrs. Darnell started and mumbled:-- + +"Yes, I am sure!" + +His manners to his wife were always perfect, deferential,--why should she +shrink before him? Isabelle wondered.... Dinner, plentiful and appetizing, +was finally provided by the one negro woman. Darnell tried to talk to Lane, +but to Isabelle's surprise her husband was at a disadvantage:--the two men +could not find common ground. Then Darnell and Falkner quoted poetry, and +Isabelle listened. It was all very different from anything she knew. While +the others waited for their coffee, Darnell showed her the old +orchard,--"to smell the first blossoms." It was languorously still there +under the trees, with the misty fields beyond. Darnell said dreamily:-- + +"This is where I'd like to be always,--no, not six miles from Torso, but in +some far-off country, a thousand miles from men!" + +"You, a farmer!" laughed Isabelle. "And what about Congress, and the real +anarchists?" + +"Oh, you cannot understand! You do not belong to the fields as I do." He +pointed ironically to her handsome riding skirt. "You are of the cities, of +people. You will flit from this Indiana landscape one day, from provincial +Torso, and spread your gay wings among the houses of men. While I--" He +made a gesture of despair,--half comic, half serious,--and his dark face +became gloomy. + +Isabelle was amused at what she called his "heroics," but she felt +interested to know what he was; and it flattered her that he should see her +"spreading gay wings among the houses of men." These days she liked to +think of herself that way. + +"You will be in Washington, while we are still in Torso!" she answered. + +"Maybe," he mused. "Well, we play the game--play the game--until it is +played out!" + +'He is not happy with his wife,' Isabelle concluded sagely; 'she doesn't +understand him, and that's why she has that half-scared look.' + +"I believe you really want to play the game as much as anybody," she +ventured with a little thrill of surprise to find herself talking so +personally with a man other than her husband. + +"You think so?" he demanded, and his face grew wistful. "There is nothing +in the game compared with the peace that one might have--" + +Lane was calling to her, but she lingered to say:-- + +"How?" + +"Far away--with love and the fields!" + +They walked back to where John was holding the horses. She was oddly +fluttered. For the first time since she had become engaged a man had +somehow given her that special sensation, which women know, of confidence +between them. She wished that John had not been so anxious to be off, and +she did not repeat to him Darnell's talk, as she usually did every small +item. All that she said was, after a time of reflection, "He is not a happy +man." + +"Who?" + +"Mr. Darnell." + +"From what I hear he is in a bad way. It is his own fault. He has plenty of +ability,--a splendid chance." + +She felt that this was an entirely inadequate judgment. What interested the +man was the net result; what interested the woman was the human being in +whom that result was being worked out. They talked a little longer about +the fermenting tragedy of the household that they had just left, as the +world talks, from a distance. But Isabelle made the silent +reservation,--'she doesn't understand him--with another woman, it would be +different.'... + +Their road home lay through a district devastated by the mammoth sheds of +some collieries. A smudged sign bore the legend:-- + +PLEASANT VALLEY COAL COMPANY + +Lane pulled up his horse and looked carefully about the place. Then he +suggested turning west to examine another coal property. + +"I suppose that Freke man is awfully rich," Isabelle remarked, associating +the name of the coal company with its president; "but he's so common,--I +can't see how you can stand him, John!" + +Lane turned in his saddle and looked at the elegant figure that his wife +made on horseback. + +"He isn't half as interesting as Tom Darnell or Rob," she added. + +"I stand him," he explained, smiling, "for the reason men stand each other +most often,--we make money together." + +"Why, how do you mean? He isn't in the railroad." + +"I mean in coal mines," he replied vaguely, and Isabelle realized that she +was trespassing on that territory of man's business which she had been +brought up to keep away from. Nevertheless, as they rode homeward in the +westering golden light, she thought of several things:--John was in other +business than the railroad, and that puffy-faced German-American was in +some way connected with it; business covered many mysteries; a man did +business with people he would not ordinarily associate with. It even +crossed her mind that what with sleep and business a very large part of her +husband's life lay quite beyond her touch. Perhaps that was what the +Kentuckian meant by his ideal,--to live life with some loved one far away +in companionship altogether intimate. + +But before long she was thinking of the set of her riding-skirt, and that +led to the subject of summer gowns which she meant to get when she went +East with her mother, and that led on to the question of the summer itself. +It had been decided that Isabelle should not spend another summer in the +Torso heat, but whether she should go to the Connecticut place or accept +Margaret Lawton's invitation to the mountains, she was uncertain. Thus +pleasantly her thoughts drifted on into her future. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +If Isabelle had been curious about her husband's interest in the Pleasant +Valley Coal Company, she might have developed a highly interesting chapter +of commercial history, in which Mr. Freke and John Lane were enacting +typical parts. + +The Atlantic and Pacific railroad corporation is, as may easily be +inferred, a vast organism, with a history, a life of its own, lying like a +thick ganglia of nerves and blood-vessels a third of the way across our +broad continent, sucking its nourishment from thousands of miles of rich +and populous territory. To write its history humanly, not statistically, +would be to reveal an important chapter in the national drama for the past +forty years,--a drama buried in dusty archives, in auditors' reports, +vouchers, mortgage deeds, general orders, etc. Some day there will come the +great master of irony, the man of insight, who will make this mass of +routine paper glow with meaning visible to all! + +Meanwhile this Atlantic and Pacific, which to-day is a mighty system, was +once only a handful of atoms. There was the period of Birth; there was the +period of Conquest; and finally there has come the period of Domination. +Now, with its hold on the industry, the life of eight states, complete, +like the great Serpent it can grumble, "I lie here possessing!" + +Farrington Beals came to be President of the Atlantic and Pacific at the +close of the period of Conquest. The condottieri leaders, those splendid +railroad brigands of the seventies and eighties, had retired with "the +fruits of their industry." To Farrington Beals and his associate was left +the care of the orchard. It was their task to solidify a conglomerate mass +of interest-bearing burden, to operate the property with the greatest +efficiency possible, in order that it might support the burdens laid upon +it and yet other burdens to come as the land waxed rich,--all burdens being +ultimately passed to the broad back of the Public, where burdens seem +naturally to belong. To this end, Beals men, as they were called, gradually +replaced throughout the length and breadth of the system the old +operatives, whose methods belonged to the coarse days of brigandage! These +Beals men were youngsters,--capable, active, full of "jump," with the word +"traffic, traffic" singing always in their ears. Beals was a splendid +"operator," and he rapidly brought the Atlantic and Pacific into the first +rank of the world's railroads. That shrewd and conservative statesman, +Senator Alonzo Thomas (who had skilfully marshalled the legal and political +forces during the period of Conquest) was now chairman of the Board, and he +and the President successfully readjusted the heterogeneous mass of bonds +and stocks, notes and prior liens, taking advantage of a period of +optimistic feeling in the market to float a tremendous general mortgage. +When this "Readjustment" had been successfully put through, the burden was +some forty or fifty millions larger than before,--where those millions went +is one of the mysteries to reward that future Carlyle!--but the public load +was adjusted more trimly. So it was spoken of as a "masterly stroke of +finance," and the ex-statesman gained much credit in the highest circles. + +The Senator and the President are excellent men, as any financier will tell +you. They are charitable and genial, social beings, members of clubs, hard +working and intelligent, public spirited, too,--oh, the very best that the +Republic breeds! To see Farrington Beals, gray-haired, thoughtful, almost +the student, clothed in a sober dark suit, with a simple flower in the +buttonhole, and delicate glasses on the bridge of his shapely nose,--to see +him modestly enter the general offices of the Atlantic and Pacific, any one +would recognize an Industrial Flywheel of society. To accompany him over +the system in his car, with a party of distinguished foreign stockholders, +was in the nature of a religious ceremony, so much the interests of this +giant property in his care seemed allied with the best interests of our +great land! + +Thus Beals men ran the road,--men like John Hamilton Lane, railroad men to +the core, loyal men, devoted to the great A. and P. And traffic increased +monthly, tonnage mounted, wheels turned faster, long freight trains wound +their snaky coils through the Alleghanies, over the flat prairies, into +Eastern ports, or Western terminals--Traffic, Traffic! And money poured +into the treasury, more than enough to provide for all those securities +that the Senator was so skilled in manufacturing. All worked in this +blessed land of freedom to the glory of Farrington Beals and the profit of +the great A. and P. + +What has Isabelle to do with all this? Actually she was witness to one +event,--rather, just the surface of it, the odd-looking, concrete outside! +An afternoon early in her married life at Torso, she had gone down to the +railroad office to take her husband for a drive in the pleasant autumn +weather. As he was long in coming to meet her, she entered the brick +building; the elevator boy, recognizing her with a pleasant nod, whisked +her up to the floor where Lane had his private office. Entering the outer +room, which happened to be empty at this hour, she heard voices through the +half-open door that led to the inner office. It was first her husband's +voice, so low that she could not hear what he was saying. Presently it was +interrupted by a passionate treble. Through the door she could just see +John's side face where he was seated at his desk,--the look she liked best, +showing the firm cheek and jaw line, and resolute mouth. Over his desk a +thin, roughly dressed man with a ragged reddish beard was leaning on both +arms, and his shoulders trembled with the passion of his utterance. + +"Mr. Lane," he was saying in that passionate treble, "I must have them +cars--or I shall lose my contract!" + +"As I have told you a dozen times, Mr. Simonds, I have done my best for +you. I recognize your trouble, and it is most unfortunate,--but there seems +to be a shortage of coalers just now." + +"The Pleasant Valley company get all they want!" the man blurted out. + +Lane merely drummed on his desk. + +"If I can't get cars to ship my coal, I shall be broke, bankrupt," the thin +man cried. + +"I am very sorry--" + +"Sorry be damned! Give me some cars!" + +"You will have to see Mr. Brundage at St. Louis," Lane answered coldly. "He +has final say on such matters for the Western division. I merely follow +orders." + +He rose and closed his desk. The thin man with an eloquent gesture turned +and rushed out of the office, past Isabelle, who caught a glimpse of a +white face working, of teeth chewing a scrubby mustache, of blood-shot +eyes. John locked his desk, took down his hat and coat, and came into the +outer office. He kissed his wife, and they went to drive behind the +Kentucky horses, talking of pleasant matters. After a time, Isabelle asked +irrelevantly:-- + +"John, why couldn't you give that man the cars he wanted?" + +"Because I had no orders to do so." + +"But aren't there cars to be had when the other company gets them?" + +"There don't happen to be any cars for Simonds. The road is friendly to Mr. +Freke." + +And he closed his explanation by kissing his wife on her pretty neck, as +though he would imply that more things than kisses go by favor in this +world. Isabelle had exhausted her interest in the troubled man's desire for +coal cars, and yet in that little phrase, "The road is friendly to Mr. +Freke," she had touched close upon a great secret of the Beals regime. +Unbeknownst to her, she had just witnessed one of those little modern +tragedies as intense in their way as any Caesarian welter of blood; she had +seen a plain little man, one of the negligible millions, being "squeezed," +in other words the operation in an ordinary case of the divine law of +survival. Freke was to survive; Simonds was not. In what respects Simonds +was inferior to Freke, the Divine Mind alone could say. When that +convulsive face shot past Isabelle in Lane's office, it was merely the +tragic moment when the conscious atom was realizing fully that he was not +to be the one to survive! The moment when Suspense is converted into +Despair.... + +Nor could Isabelle trace the well-linked chain of cause and effect that led +from Simonds about-to-be-a-bankrupt _via_ Freke and the Pleasant Valley +Coal Company through the glory of the A. and P. (incidentally creating in +the Senator his fine patriotism and faith in the future of his country) to +her husband's check-book and her own brilliant little dinner, "where they +could afford to offer champagne." But in the maze of earthly affairs all +these unlike matters were related, and the relationship is worth our +notice, if not Isabelle's. If it had been expounded to her, if she had seen +certain certificates of Pleasant Valley stock lying snugly side by side +with Torso Northern bonds and other "good things" in her husband's +safe,--and also in the strong boxes of Messrs. Beals, Thomas, Stanton, _et +al_., she would have said, as she had been brought up to say, "that is my +husband's affair."... + +The Atlantic and Pacific, under the shrewd guidance of the amiable Senator, +was a law-abiding citizen, outwardly. When the anti-rebate laws were +passed, the road reformed; it was glad to reform, it made money by +reforming. But within the law there was ample room for "efficient" men to +acquire more money than their salaries, and they naturally grasped their +opportunities, as did the general officers. Freke, whom Isabelle disliked, +with her trivial woman's prejudice about face and manners, embodied a +Device,--in other words he was an instrument whereby some persons could +make a profit, a very large profit, at the expense of other persons. The A. +and P. 'was friendly to Freke.' The Pleasant Valley Coal Company never +wanted cars, and it also enjoyed certain other valuable privileges, covered +by the vague term "switching," that enabled it to deliver its coal into the +gaping hulls at tidewater at seventy to eighty cents per ton cheaper than +any of its competitors in the Torso district. No wonder that the Pleasant +Valley company, with all this "friendliness" of the A. and P., prospered, +and that Mr. Freke, under one name or another, swallowed presently, at a +bargain, the little mine that the man Simonds had struggled to operate, as +well as thousands of acres of bituminous coal lands along the Pleasant +River, and along the Torso Northern road. (Perhaps the inwardness of that +Inspection Party can now be seen, also.) The signs of the Pleasant Valley +Coal Company and its aliases squatted here and there all through the Torso +coal region. As the Senator would say, it was a very successful business, +"thanks to the initiative of Mr. Freke." And that poor Simonds, who had +amply demonstrated his inability to survive, his utter lack of adaptation +to his environment, by not being able to be friendly with the great A. and +P., went--where all the inefficient, non-adaptable human refuse goes--to +the bottom. _Bien entendu!_ + +Freke was the Pleasant Valley Coal Company,--that is, he was its necessary +physiognomy,--but really the coal company was an incorporated private farm +of the officers and friends of the A. and P.,--an immensely profitable +farm. Lane in his callow youth did not know this fact; but he learned it +after he had been in Torso a few weeks. He was quick to learn, a typical +Beals man, thoroughly "efficient," one who could keep his eyes where they +belonged, his tongue in his mouth, and his ears open. As he told Isabelle +that Sunday afternoon, "he had had many business dealings with Freke," +alias the Pleasant Valley Company, etc., and they had been uniformly +profitable. + +For the fatherly Senator and the shrewd Beals believed that the "right +sort" should make a "good thing"; they believed in thrift. In a word, to +cut short this lengthy explanation, the great Atlantic and Pacific, one of +the two or three most efficiently operated railroads in the United States, +was honeycombed with that common thing "graft," or private "initiative"! +From the President's office all the way down to subordinates in the traffic +department, there were "good things" to be enjoyed. In that growing bunch +of securities that Lane was accumulating in his safe, there were, as has +been said, a number of certificates of stock in coal companies--and not +small ones. + +And this is why Lane maintained social as well as financial relations with +the coarse Mr. Freke. And this is why, also, Lane felt that they could +afford "the best," when they undertook to give a dinner to the +distinguished gentlemen from New York. Of course he did not explain all +this to Isabelle that pleasant Sunday afternoon. Would Isabelle have +comprehended it, if he had? Her mind would have wandered off to another +dinner, to that cottage at Bedmouth, which she thought of taking for the +summer, or to the handsome figure that John made on horseback. At least +nine out of ten American husbands would have treated the matter as Lane +did,--given some sufficient general answer to their wives' amateurish +curiosity about business and paid their figures due compliments, and +thought complacently of the comfortable homes to which they were +progressing and the cheerful dinners therein,--all, wife, home, dinner, the +result of their fortunate adaptation to the environments they found +themselves in.... + +Perhaps may be seen by this time the remote connection between that tragic +gesture of Frank Simonds on the Saturday afternoon, calling on heaven and +the Divine Mind that pitilessly strains its little creatures through the +holes of a mighty colander--between that tragic gesture, I say, and +Isabelle's delightful dinner of ten courses,--champagne and terrapin! + + * * * * * + +But this tiresome chapter on the affairs of the Atlantic and Pacific +railroad,--will it never be done! So sordid, so commonplace, so newspapery, +so--just what everything in life is--when we might have expected for the +dollar and a quarter expended on this pound of wood pulp and +ink,--something less dull than a magazine article; something about a +motor-car and a girl with a mischievous face whom a Russian baron seeks to +carry away by force and is barely thwarted by the brave American college +youth dashing in pursuit with a new eighty h. p., etc., etc. Or at least if +one must have a railroad in a novel (when every one knows just what a +railroad is), give us a private car and the lovely daughter of the +President together with a cow-punching hero, as in Bessie's beloved story. +But an entire chapter on graft and a common dinner-party with the champagne +drunk so long ago--what a bore! + +And yet in the infinite hues of this our human life, the methods by which +our substantial hero, John Hamilton Lane, amassed his fortune, are worthy +of contemplation. There is more, O yawning reader, in the tragic gesture of +ragged-bearded Frank Simonds than in some tons of your favorite brand of +"real American women"; more in the sublime complacency of Senator Alonzo +Thomas, when he praised "that great and good man," and raised to his memory +his glass of Pommery brut, triple sec, than in all the adventures of +soldiers of fortune or yellow cars or mysterious yachts or hectic Russian +baronesses; more--at least for the purpose of this history--in John's +answer to Isabelle's random inquiry that Sunday afternoon than in all the +"heart-interest" you have absorbed in a twelvemonth. For in the atmosphere +of the ACTS here recorded, you and I, my reader, live and have our being, +such as it is--and also poor Frank Simonds (who will never appear again to +trouble us). And to the seeing eye, mystery and beauty lie in the hidden +meaning of things seen but not known.... + +Patience! We move to something more intimate and domestic, if not more +thrilling. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +The child was coming! + +When Isabelle realized it, she had a shock, as if something quite outside +her had suddenly interposed in her affairs. That cottage at Bedmouth for +the summer would have to be given up and other plans as well. At first she +had refused to heed the warning,--allowed John to go away to New York on +business without confiding in him,--at last accepted it regretfully. Since +the terrifying fear those first days in the Adirondack forest lest she +might have conceived without her passionate consent, the thought of +children had gradually slipped out of her mind. They had settled into a +comfortable way of living, with their plans and their expectations. "That +side of life," as she called it, was still distasteful to her,--she did not +see why it had to be. Fortunately it did not play a large part in their +life, and the other, the companionable thing, the being admired and petted, +quite satisfied her. Children, of course, sometime; but "not just yet." + +"It will be the wrong time,--September,--spoil everything!" she complained +to Bessie. + +"Oh, it's always the wrong time, no matter when it happens. But you'll get +used to it. Rob had to keep me from going crazy at first. But in the end +you like it." + +"It settles Bedmouth this year!" + +"It is a bore," Bessie agreed sympathetically, feeling sorry for herself, +as she was to have spent six weeks with Isabelle. "It takes a year out of a +woman's life, of course, no matter how she is situated. And I'm so +fearfully ugly all the time. But you won't be,--your figure is better." + +Bessie, like most childlike persons, took short views of immediate matters. +She repeated her idea of child-bearing:-- + +"I hated it each time,--especially the last time. It did seem so +unnecessary--for us.... And it spoils your love, being so afraid. But when +it comes, why you like it, of course!" + +John arrived from his hurried trip to New York, smiling with news. He did +not notice his wife's dejected appearance when he kissed her, in his +eagerness to tell something. + +"There is going to be a shake-up in the road," he announced. "That's why +they sent for me." + +"Is there?" she asked listlessly. + +"Well, I am slated for fourth Vice-president. They were pleased to say +handsome things about what I have done at Torso. Guess they heard of that +offer from the D. and O." + +"What is fourth Vice-president?" Isabelle inquired. + +"In charge of traffic west--headquarters at St. Louis!" + +He expected that his wife would be elated at this fulfilment of her +desires; but instead Isabelle's eyes unaccountably filled with tears. When +he understood, he was still more mystified at her dejection. Very tenderly +holding her in his arms, he whispered his delight into her ears. His face +was radiant; it was far greater news than his promotion to the fourth +vice-presidency of the A. and P. + +"And you knew all this time!" he exclaimed reproachfully. + +"I wasn't sure!" + +He seemed to take the event as natural and joyful, which irritated her +still more. As Bessie had said, "Whatever ties a woman to the home, makes +her a piece of domestic furniture, the men seem to approve of!" + +"What a fright I look already!" Isabelle complained, gazing at the dark +circles under her eyes in the glass. She thought of Aline, whose complexion +like a Jacqueminot rose had been roughened and marred. Something still +virginal in her soul rebelled against it all. + +"Oh, not so bad," Lane protested. "You are just a little pinched. You'll be +fitter than ever when it's over!" + +The man doesn't care, she thought mutinously. It seems to him the proper +thing,--what woman is made for. Isabelle was conscious that she was made +for much more, for her own joy and her own activity, and she hated to part +with even a little of it! + +He could not understand her attitude. As a man he had retained the +primitive joy in the coming of the child, any child,--but _his_ child and +the first one above all! Compared with that nothing was of the least +importance. Seeing her pouting into the glass, he said reproachfully:-- + +"But you like children, Belle!" + +And taking her again into his arms and kissing her, he added, "We'll give +the little beggar a royal welcome, girl!" + +His grave face took on a special look of content with the world and his +share in it, while Isabelle continued to stare at herself in the glass and +think of the change a child would make in her life. Thus the woman of the +new generation, with her eagerness for a "large, full life," feels towards +that process of nature for which the institution of marriage was primarily +designed. + + * * * * * + +So for a time longer Isabelle tried to ignore the coming fact, to put it +out of her mind, and grasp as much of her own life as she could before the +life within her should deprive her of freedom. As Lane's new duties would +not begin until the summer, it was arranged that Isabelle should spend the +hot weeks at the Grafton farm with her mother, and then return to St. Louis +for her confinement in her old home. Later they would settle themselves in +the city at their leisure.... It was all so provoking, Isabelle persisted +in thinking. They might have had at least a year of freedom in which to +settle themselves in the new home. And she had had visions of a few months +in Europe with Vickers, who was now in Rome. John might have come over +after her. To give up all this for what any woman could do at any time! + +As the months passed she could not evade the issue. By the time she was +settled in her old room at the Farm she had grown anaemic, nervous. The +coming of the child had sapped rather than created strength as it properly +should have done. White and wasted she lay for long hours on the lounge +near the window where she could see the gentle green hills. Here her cousin +Alice Johnston found her, when she arrived with her children to make Mrs. +Price a visit. The large, placid woman knelt by Isabelle's side and +gathered her in her arms. + +"I'm so glad, dear! When is it to be?" + +"Oh, sometime in the fall," Isabelle replied vaguely, bored that her +condition already revealed itself. "Did you want the first one?" she asked +after a time. + +"Well, not at the very first. You see it was just so much more of a risk. +And our marriage was a risk without that.... I hated the idea of becoming a +burden for Steve. But with you it will be so different, from the start. And +then it always makes its own place, you see. When it comes, you will think +you always wanted it!" + +She smiled in her large human way, as if she had tested the trials of life +and found that all held some sweet. Isabelle looked down at her thin arms. +The Johnstons had four, and they were so poor! As if divining her thought, +Alice said:-- + +"Every time I wondered how we were going to survive, but somehow we did. +And now it will all be well, with Steve's new position--" + +"What is that?" + +"Hasn't John told you? It has just been settled; Steve is going into the A. +and P.,--John's assistant in St. Louis." + +"I'm so glad for you," Isabelle responded listlessly. She recalled now +something that her husband had said about Johnston being a good man, who +hadn't had his chance, and that he hoped to do something for him. + +"Tremendous rise in salary,--four thousand," Alice continued buoyantly. "We +shan't know what to do with all that money! We can give the children the +best education." + +Isabelle reflected that John's salary had been five thousand at Torso, and +as fourth Vice-president would be ten thousand. And she still had her +twenty-five hundred dollars of allowance from her father. Alice's elation +over Steve's rise gave her a sudden appreciation of her husband's growing +power,--his ability to offer a struggling man his chance. Perhaps he could +do something for the Falkners also. The thought took her out of herself for +a little while. Men were free to work out their destiny in life, to go +hither and thither, to alter fate. But a woman had to bear children. John +was growing all this time, and she was separated from him. She tried to +believe that this was the reason for her discontent, this separation from +her husband; but she knew that when she had been perfectly free, she had +not shared largely in his activity.... + +"You must tell me all about the St. Mary's girls," Alice said. "Have you +seen Aline?" + +"Yes,--she has grown very faddy, I should think,--arts and crafts and all +that. Isn't it queer? I asked her to visit us, but she has another one +coming,--the third!" + +Isabelle made a little grimace. + +"And Margaret?" + +"She has suddenly gone abroad with her husband--to Munich. He's given up +his business. Didn't her marriage surprise you?" + +"Yes, I thought she was going to marry that Englishman who was at your +wedding." + +"Mr. Hollenby? Yes, every one did. Something happened. Suddenly she became +engaged to this Pole,--a New York man. Very well connected, and has money, +I hear. Conny wrote me about him." ... + +So they gossiped on. When Alice rose to leave her, Isabelle held her large +cool hand in hers. The older woman, whose experience had been so unlike +hers, so difficult, soothed her, gave her a suggestion of other kinds of +living than her own little life. + +"I'm glad you are here," she said. "Come in often, won't you?" + +And her cousin, leaning over to kiss her as she might a fretful child who +had much to learn, murmured, "Of course, dear. It will be all right!" + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +The Steve Johnstons had had a hard time, as Isabelle would have phrased it. + +He had been a faithful, somewhat dull and plodding student at the technical +school, where he took the civil engineering degree, and had gone forth to +lay track in Montana. He laid it well; but this job finished, there seemed +no permanent place for him. He was heavy and rather tongue-tied, and made +no impression on his superiors except that of commonplace efficiency. He +drifted into Canada, then back to the States, and finally found a place in +Detroit. + +Here, while working for thirty dollars a week, he met Alice Johnston,--she +also was earning her living, being unwilling to accept from the Colonel +more than the means for her education,--and from the first he wished to +marry her, attracted by her gentle, calm beauty, her sincerity, and +buoyant, healthy enjoyment of life. She was teaching in a girls' school, +and was very happy. Other women had always left the heavy man on the road, +so to speak, marking him as stupid. But Alice Johnston was keener or kinder +than most young women: she perceived beneath the large body a will, an +intelligence, a character, merely inhibited in their envelope of large +bones and solid flesh, with an entire absence of nervous system. He was +silent before the world, but not foolish, and with her he was not long +silent. She loved him, and she consented to marry him on forty dollars a +week, hopefully planning to add something from her teaching to the budget, +until Steve's slow power might gain recognition. + +"So we married," she said to Isabelle, recounting her little life history +in the drowsy summer afternoon. "And we were so happy on what we had! It +was real love. We took a little flat a long way out of the city, and when I +came home afternoons from the school, I got the dinner and Steve cooked the +breakfasts,--he's a splendid cook, learned on the plains. It all went +merrily the first months, though Aunt Harmony thought I was such a fool to +marry, you remember?" She laughed, and Isabella smiled at the memory of the +caustic comments which Mrs. Price had made when Alice Vance, a poor niece, +had dared to marry a poor man,--"They'll be coming to your father for help +before the year is out," she had said. But they hadn't gone to the Colonel +yet. + +"Then little Steve came, and I had to leave the school and stay at home. +That was hard, but I had saved enough to pay for the doctor and the nurse. +Then that piece of track elevation was finished and Steve was out of work +for a couple of months. He tried so hard, poor boy! But he was never meant +to be an engineer. I knew that, of course, all along.... Well, the baby +came, and if it hadn't been for my savings,--why, I should have gone to the +hospital! + +"Just then Steve met a man he had known at the Tech, and was given that +place on a railroad as clerk in the traffic department. He was doubtful +about taking it, but I wasn't. I was sure it would open up, and even +twenty-five dollars a week is something. So he left for Cleveland a week +after the baby was born, and somehow I packed up and followed with the baby +when I could. + +"That wasn't the end of hard times by any means. You see Ned came the next +year,--we're such healthy, normal specimens!" She laughed heartily at this +admission of her powers of maternity. "And it wasn't eighteen months before +Alice was coming.... Oh, I know that we belong to the thriftless pauper +class that's always having children,--more than it can properly care for. +We ought to be discouraged! But somehow we have fed and clothed 'em all, +and we couldn't spare one o' the kiddies. There's James, too, you know. He +came last winter, just after Steve had the grippe and pneumonia; that was a +pull. But it doesn't seem right to--to keep them from coming--and when you +love each other--" + +Her eyes shone with a certain joy as she frankly stated the woman's +problem, while Isabelle looked away, embarrassed. Mrs. Johnston continued +in her simple manner:-- + +"If Nature doesn't want us to have them, why does she give us the power? +... I know that is wretched political economy and that Nature really has +nothing to do with the modern civilized family. But as I see other women, +the families about me, those that are always worrying over having children, +trying to keep out of it,--why, they don't seem to be any better off. And +it is--well, undignified,--not nice, you know.... We can't spare 'em, nor +any more that may come! ... As I said, I believed all along that Steve had +it in him, that his mind and character must tell, and though it was +discouraging to have men put over him, younger men too, at last the +railroad found out what he could do." + +Her face beamed with pride. + +"You see Steve has a remarkable power of storing things up in that big head +of his. Remembers a lot of pesky little detail when he's once fixed his +mind on it,--the prices of things, figures, and distances, and rates and +differentials. Mr. Mason--that was the traffic manager of our +road--happened to take Steve to Buffalo with him about some rate-making +business. Steve, it turned out, knew the situation better than all the +traffic managers. He coached Mr. Mason, and so our road got something it +wanted. It was about the lumber rate, in competition with Canadian roads. +Mr. Mason made Steve his assistant--did you ever think what an awful lot +the rate on lumber might mean to _you_ and yours? It's a funny world. +Because Steve happened to be there and knew that with a rate of so much a +thousand feet our road could make money,--why, we had a house to live in +for the first time! + +"Of course," she bubbled, "it isn't just that. It's Steve's head,--an +ability to find his way through those great sheets of figures the railroads +are always compiling. He stores the facts up in that big round head and +pulls 'em out when they are wanted. Why, he can tell you just what it would +cost to ship a car of tea from Seattle to New York!" + +Isabella had a vision of Steve Johnston's large, heavy head with its thick, +black hair, and she began to feel a respect for the stolid man. + +"John said he had great ability," she remarked. "I'm so glad it all came +out right in the end." + +"I had my first servant when the promotion came, and that spring we took a +little house,--it was crowded in the flat, and noisy." + +"You will find it so much easier now, and you will like St. Louis." + +"Oh, yes! But it hasn't been really bad,--the struggle, the being poor. You +see we were both well and strong, and we loved so much, and we always had +the problem of how to live,--that draws you together if you have the real +thing in you. It isn't sordid trying to see what a quarter can be made to +do. It's exciting." + +As she recalled the fight, a tender smile illuminated her face and curved +her lips upward. To her poverty had not been limiting, grinding, but an +exhilarating fight that taxed her resources of mind and body. + +"Of course there are a lot of things you can't have. But most people have +more than they know how to handle, no matter where they are!" + +Isabelle was puzzled by this remark, and explained Alice Johnston's content +by her age, her lack of experience, at least such experience as she had +had. For life to her presented a tantalizing feast of opportunities, and it +was her intention to grasp as many of these as one possibly could. Any +other view of living seemed not only foolish but small-minded. Without any +snobbishness she considered that her sphere and her husband's could not be +compared with the Johnstons'. The Lanes, she felt, were somehow called to +large issues. + +Nevertheless, Isabelle could understand that Alice's marriage was quite a +different thing from what hers was,--something to glorify all the petty, +sordid details, to vivify the grimy struggle of keeping one's head above +the social waters. + +"Now," Alice concluded, "we can save! And start the children fairly. But I +wonder if we shall ever be any happier than we have been,--any closer, +Steve and I?" + +Alice, by her very presence, her calm acceptance of life as it shaped +itself, soothed Isabelle's restlessness, suggested trust and confidence. + +"You are a dear," she whispered to her cousin. "I am so glad you are to be +near me in St. Louis!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Isabelle saw the fat headlines in the Pittsburg paper that the porter +brought her,--"Congressman Darnell and his wife killed!" The bodies had +been found at the bottom of an abandoned quarry. It was supposed that +during a thunder-storm the night before, as he was driving from Torso to +his farm in company with his wife, the horses had become uncontrollable and +had dashed into the pit before Darnell could pull them up. He had just +taken his seat in Congress. Isabelle remembered that he called the day +before she left Torso, and when she had congratulated him on his election, +had said jokingly: "Now I shall get after your husband's bosses, Mrs. Lane. +We shan't be on speaking terms when next we meet." He seemed gay and vital. +So it had ended thus for the tempestuous Kentuckian.... + +John was waiting for her at the station in Torso, where she was to break +the journey. His face was eager and solicitous. He made many anxious +inquiries about her health and the journey. But she put it all to one side. + +"Tell me about the Darnells. Isn't it dreadful!" + +"Yes," he said slowly, "it is very bad." Lane's voice was grave, as if he +knew more than the published report. + +"How could it have happened,--he was such a good driver? He must have been +drunk." + +"Tom Darnell could have driven all right, even if he had been drunk. I am +afraid it's worse than that." + +"Tell me!" + +"There are all sorts of rumors. He came up from Washington unexpectedly, +and his wife met him at the station with their team. They went to the hotel +first, and then suddenly started for the farm in the midst of the storm. It +was a terrible storm.... One story is that he had trouble with a bank; it +is even said he had forged paper. I don't know! ... Another story was about +the Adams woman,--you know she followed him to Washington.... Too bad! He +was a brilliant fellow, but he tied himself all up, tied himself all up," +he observed sententiously, thus explaining the catastrophe of an unbalanced +character. + +"You mean it was--suicide?" Isabelle questioned. + +"Looks that way!" + +"How awful! and his wife killed, too!" + +"He was always desperate--uncontrolled sort of fellow. You remember how he +went off the handle the night of our dinner." + +"So he ended it--that way," she murmured. + +And she saw the man driving along the road in the black storm, his young +wife by his side, with desperate purpose. She remembered his words in the +orchard, his wistful desire for another kind of life. "The Adams woman, +too," as John expressed it, and "he couldn't hold his horses." This nature +had flown in pieces, liked a cracked wheel, in the swift revolution of +life. To her husband it was only one of the messes recorded in the +newspapers. But her mind was full of wonder and fear. As little as she had +known the man, she had felt an interest in him altogether disproportionate +to what he said or did. He was a man of possibilities, of streaks, of +moods, one that could have been powerful, lived a rich life. And at +thirty-three he had come to the end, where his passions and his ideals in +perpetual warfare had held him bound. He had cut the knot! And she had +chosen to go with him, the poor, timid wife! ... Surely there were strange +elements in people, Isabelle felt, not commonly seen in her little +well-ordered existence, traits of character covered up before the world, +fissures running back through the years into old impulses. Life might be +terrible--when it got beyond your hand. She could not dismiss poor Tom +Darnell as summarily as John did,--"a bad lot, I'm afraid!" + +"You mustn't think anything more about it," her husband said anxiously, as +she sat staring before her, trying to comprehend the tragedy. "I have +arranged to take you on to-morrow. The Colonel writes that your brother +Ezra is seedy,--touch of malaria, he thinks. The Colonel is looking forward +a lot to your coming." + +He talked on about the little domestic things, but she held that picture in +the background of her mind and something within her said over and over, +'Why should it be like that for any one!' + +And all the next day, on their way to St. Louis, she could not dismiss the +thought from her mind: 'Why, I saw him only a few weeks ago. How well he +read that poetry, as if he enjoyed it! And what he said that night at +dinner he really meant,--oh, he believed it! And he was sorry for his +wife,--yes, I am sure he was sorry for her. But he loved the other +woman,--she understood him. And so he ended it. It's quite dreadful!' + + * * * * * + +The Colonel met them at the station with his new motor. His face was a bit +grave as he said in answer to their inquiry:-- + +"No, it is not malaria, I am afraid. The doctors think it is typhoid. There +has been a great deal of it in the city this summer, and the boy wouldn't +take a vacation, was afraid I would stay here if he did. So I went up to +Pelee, instead." + +It was typhoid, and young Price died within the week. In the hush that +followed the death of her brother Isabelle lay waiting for the coming of +her child.... Her older brother Ezra! He was like a sturdy young tree in +the forest, scarce noticed in the familiar landscape until his loss. Quiet, +hard-working "Junior," as the family called him,--what would the Colonel do +without him? The old man--now he was obviously old even to Isabelle--would +come to her room and sit for long hours silent, as if he, too, was waiting +for the coming of the new life into his house. + +These two deaths so unlike, the tragic end of Darnell and her brother's +sudden removal, sank deep into her, sounding to her in the midst of her own +childish preoccupation with her own life, the intricacy, the mystery of all +existence. Life was larger than a private garden hedged with personal +ambitions. She was the instrument of forces outside her being. And in her +weakness she shrank into herself. + +They told her that she had given birth to a daughter--another being like +herself! + + + + +PART TWO + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +Colonel Price was a great merchant, one of those men who have been the +energy, the spirit of the country since the War, now fast disappearing, +giving way to another type in this era of "finance" as distinguished from +"business." When the final review was ended, and he was free to journey +back to the little Connecticut village where three years before he had left +with his parents his young wife and their one child, he was a man just over +thirty, very poor, and weak from a digestive complaint that troubled him +all his life. But the spirit of the man was unbroken. Taking his little +family with him, he moved to St. Louis, and falling in there with a couple +of young men with like metal to himself, who happened also to possess some +capital, he started the wholesale hardware business of Parrott, Price, and +Co., which rapidly became the leading house in that branch of trade +throughout the new West. The capital belonged to the other men, but the +leadership from the start to Colonel Price. It was his genius as a trader, +a diviner of needs, as an organizer, that within twenty years created the +immense volume of business that rolled through the doors of their old +warehouse. During the early years the Colonel was the chief salesman and +spent his days "on the road" up and down the Mississippi Valley, sleeping +in rough country taverns, dining on soda biscuit and milk, driving many +miles over clayey, rutty roads,--dealing with men, making business. + +Meanwhile the wife--her maiden name was Harmony Vickers--was doing her part +in that little brick house which the Colonel had taken Lane to see. There +she worked and saved, treating her husband's money like a sacred fund to be +treasured. When the colonel came home from his weekly trips, he helped in +the housework, and nursed the boy through the croup at night, saving his +wife where he could. It was long after success had begun to look their way +before Mrs. Price would consent to move into the wooden cottage on a quiet +cross street that the Colonel wanted to buy, or employ more than one +servant. But the younger children as they came on, first Vickers, then +Isabelle, insensibly changed the family habits,--also the growing wealth +and luxury of their friends, and the fast increasing income of the Colonel, +no longer to be disguised. Yet when they built that lofty brick house in +the older quarter of the city, she would have but two servants and used +sparingly the livery carriage that her husband insisted on providing for +her. The habit of fearsome spending never could wholly be eradicated. When +the Colonel had become one of the leading merchants of the city, she +consented grudgingly to the addition of one servant, also a coachman and a +single pair of horses, although she preferred the streetcars on the next +block as safer and less troublesome; and she began gradually to entertain +her neighbors, to satisfy the Colonel's hospitable instincts, in the style +in which they entertained her. + +Mrs. Price had an enormous pride in the Colonel and in his reputation in +St. Louis, a pride that no duke's wife could exceed. It was the Colonel who +had started the movement for a Commercial Association and was its first +president. As his wife she had entertained under her roof a President of +the United States, not to mention a Russian prince and an English peer. It +was the Colonel, as she told her children, who had carried through the +agitation for a Water Commission; who urged the Park system; who saved the +Second National Bank from failure in the panic days of ninety-three. She +knew that he might have been governor, senator, possibly vice-president, if +it had not been for his modesty and his disinclination to dip into the +muddy pool of politics. As she drove into the city on her errands she was +proudly conscious that she was the wife of the best-known private citizen, +and as such recognized by every important resident and every quick-witted +clerk in the stores where she dealt. To be plain Mrs. Ezra Price was ample +reward for all the hardship and deprivation of those beginning years! + +She was proud, too, of the fact that the money which she spent was honest +money. For the hardware merchant belonged to the class that made its +fortunes honestly, in the eye of the Law and of Society, also. Although +latterly his investments had carried him into real estate, railroads, and +banks, nevertheless it was as the seller of hardware that he wished to be +known. He was prouder of the Lion brand of tools than of all his stock +holdings. And though for many years a director in the Atlantic and Pacific +and other great corporations, he had always resolutely refused to be drawn +into the New York whirlpool; he was an American merchant and preferred to +remain such all his life rather than add a number of millions to his estate +"by playing faro in Wall Street." + +The American merchant of this sort is fast disappearing, alas! As a class +it has never held that position in the East that it had in the West. In the +older states the manufacturer and the speculator have had precedence. +Fortunes built on slaves and rum and cotton have brought more honor than +those made in groceries and dry goods. Odd snobbery of trade! But in that +broad, middle ground of the country, its great dorsal column, the merchant +found his field, after the War, to develop and civilize. The character of +those pioneers in trade, men from Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, was +such as to make them leaders. They were brave and unselfish, faithful, and +trusting of the future. With the plainest personal habits and tastes, +taking no tarnish from the luxury that rose about them, seeing things +larger than dollars on their horizon, they made the best aristocracy that +this country has seen. Their coat of arms bore the legend: Integrity and +Enterprise. + +For their fortunes were built not speculatively, but on the ancient +principles of trade, of barter between men, which is to divine needs and +satisfy them, and hence they are the only fortunes in our rich land that do +not represent, to some degree, human blood, the sacrifice of the many for +the few. They were not fattened on a protective tariff, nor dug in wild +speculation out of the earth, nor gambled into being over night on the +price of foodstuffs, nor stolen from government lands, nor made of water in +Wall Street. These merchants earned them, as the pedler earns the profit of +his pack, as the farmer reaps the harvest of his seed. They earned them by +labor and sagacity, and having them, they stood with heads erect, looking +over their world and knowing that such as it is they helped to build it. + +The day of the great merchant has already gone. Already the names of these +honorable firms are mere symbols, cloaking corporate management, trading on +the old personalities. No one saw the inevitable drift clearer than Colonel +Price. In common with his class he cherished the desire of handing on the +structure that he had built to the next generation, with the same +sign-manual over the door,--to his son and his grandson. So he had resisted +the temptation to incorporate the business and "take his profits." There +was a son to sit in his seat. The sons of the other partners would not be +fit: Starbird's only son, after a dissipated youth, was nursing himself +somewhere on the Riviera; his daughter had married an Easterner, and beyond +the quarterly check which the daughter and son received from the business, +this family no longer had a share in it. As for Parrott there was a younger +son serving somewhere in the immense establishment, but he had already +proved his amiable incapacity for responsibility. The second generation, as +the Colonel was forced to admit, was a disappointment. Somehow these +merchants had failed to transmit the iron in their blood to their children. +The sons and sons-in-law either lacked ability and grit, or were frankly +degenerate,--withered limbs! + +With the Colonel it had promised to be different; that first boy he had +left behind when he went to the War had grown up under his eye, was +saturated with the business idea. Young Ezra had preferred to leave the +military academy where he had been at school and enter the store at +eighteen. At twenty-six he had been made treasurer of the firm, only a few +months before his death.... The Colonel's thin figure bent perceptibly +after that autumn of ninety-seven. He erected a pseudo-Greek temple in +Fairview Cemetery, with the name Price cut in deep Roman letters above the +door, to hold the ashes of his son,--then devoted all his energies to +measures for sanitary reform in the city. He was a fighter, even of +death.... + +Vickers had cabled at once when the news reached him that he was sailing +for home. He and Isabelle had inherited their mother's nervous constitution +and had come later in the family fortunes. They had known only ease and +luxury, tempered as it was by their father's democratic simplicity and +their mother's plain tastes. Insensibly they had acquired the outlook of +the richer generation, the sense of freedom to do with themselves what they +pleased. Both had been sent East to school,--to what the Colonel had been +told were the best schools,--and Vickers had gone to a great university. + +There for a time the boy had tried to compete in athletics, as the one +inevitable path of ambition for an American boy at college; but realizing +soon that he was too slightly built for this field, he had drifted into +desultory reading and sketching for the college comic paper. Then a social +talent and a gift for writing music gave him the composition of the score +for the annual musical play. This was a hit, and from that time he began to +think seriously of studying music. It was agreed in the family that after +his graduation he should go abroad "to see what he could do." Ezra had +already taken his place in the hardware business, and the younger son could +be spared for the ornamental side of life, all the more as he was delicate +in health and had not shown the slightest evidence of "practical ability." +So the summer that he took his degree, a creditable degree with honors in +music, the Prices sailed for Europe to undertake one of those elaborate +tasting tours of foreign lands that well-to-do American families still +essay. In the autumn it concluded by the Colonel's establishing the family +in Munich and returning to his affairs. Vickers had been in Europe most of +the time since, living leisurely, studying, writing "little things" that +Isabelle played over for the Colonel on the piano. + + * * * * * + +Now he had come home at the family call,--an odd figure it must be +confessed in St. Louis, with his little pointed beard, and thin mustache, +his fondness for flowing neckwear and velveteen waistcoats, his little +canes and varnished boots. And he stayed on; for the family seemed to need +him, in a general way, though it was not clear to him what good he could do +to them and there were tempting reasons for returning to Rome. In spite of +the sadness of the family situation the young man could not repress his +humorous sense of the futility of all hopes built upon himself. + +"Just think of me selling nails,"--he always referred to the hardware +business as "selling nails,"--he said to his mother when she spoke to him +of the Colonel's hope that he would try to take his brother's place. "All I +know about business is just enough to draw a check if the bank will keep +the account straight. Poor Colonel! That germ ought to have got me instead +of Junior!" + +"You owe it to your father, Vick. You can't be more useless than Bob +Parrott, and your father would like to see you in the office--for a time +any way." + +Vickers refrained from saying that there was an unmentioned difference +between him and Bob Parrott. Young Parrott had never shown the desire to do +anything, except play polo; while he might,--at least he had the passion +for other things. The family, he thought, took his music very lightly, as a +kind of elegant toy that should be put aside at the first call of real +duty. Perhaps he had given them reason by his slow preparation, his waiting +on the fulness of time and his own development to produce results for the +world to see. Isabelle alone voiced a protest against this absorption of +the young man into the family business. + +"Why, he has his own life! It is too much of a sacrifice," she +remonstrated. + +"Nothing that can give your father comfort is too much of a sacrifice," +Mrs. Price replied sharply. + +"It can't last long," Isabelle said to Vickers. "The Colonel will see,--he +is generous." + +"He will see that I am no good fast enough!" + +"He will understand what you are giving up, and he is too large hearted to +want other people to do what they are not fitted to do." + +"I don't suppose that the family fortunes need my strong right arm +exactly?" the young man inquired. + +"Of course not! It's the sentiment, don't you see?" + +"Yes, of course, the sentiment for nails!" the young man accepted +whimsically. "Poor Junior did the sentiment as well as the business so +admirably, and I shall be such a hollow bluff at both, I fear." + +Nevertheless, the next morning Vickers was at breakfast on time, and when +the Colonel's motor came around at eight-thirty, he followed his father +into the hall, put on an unobtrusive black hat, selected a sober pair of +gloves, and leaving his little cane behind him took the seat beside his +father. Their neighbor in the block was getting into his brougham at the +same moment. + +"Alexander Harmon," the Colonel explained, "president of the Commercial +Trust Company." + +They passed more of the Colonel's acquaintances on their way down the +avenue, emerging from their comfortable houses for the day's work. It was +the order of an industrial society, the young man realized, in a depressed +frame of mind. He also realized, sympathetically, that he was occupying his +brother's seat in the motor, and he was sorry for the old man at his side. +The Colonel looked at him as if he were debating whether he should ask his +son to stop at a barber shop and sacrifice his pointed beard,--but he +refrained. + +Vickers had never seen the towering steel and terra-cotta building in which +the hardware business was now housed. It stood in a cloud of mist and smoke +close by the river in the warehouse district. As the car drew up before its +pillared entrance, the Colonel pointed with pride to the brass plaque +beside the door on which was engraved the architect's name. + +"Corbin did it,--you know him? They say he's the best man in America. It +was his idea to sign it, the same as they do in Paris. Pretty good +building, eh?" + +The young man threw back his head and cast a critical glance over the +twelve-story monster and again at the dwarfed classic entrance through +which was pouring just now a stream of young men. + +"Yes, Corbin is a good man," he assented vaguely, looking through the smoke +drifts down the long crowded thoroughfare, on into a mass of telegraph +wires, masts, and smokestacks, and lines of bulky freight cars. Some huge +drays were backed against the Price building receiving bundles of iron rods +that fell clanging into their place. Wagons rattled past over the uneven +pavement, and below along the river locomotives whistled. Above all was the +bass overtone of the city, swelling louder each minute with the day's work. +A picture of a fair palace in the cavernous depths of a Sienna street came +over the young man with a vivid sense of pain. Under his breath he muttered +to himself, "Fierce!" Then he glanced with compunction at the gentle old +face by his side. How had he kept so perfectly sweet, so fine in the midst +of all this welter? The Colonel was like an old Venetian lord, shrewd with +the wisdom of men, gentle with more than a woman's mercy; but the current +that flowed by his palace was not that of the Grand Canal, the winds not +those of the Levant! + +But mayhap there was a harmony in this shrill battlefield, if it could be +found.... + +Within those long double doors there was a vast open area of floor space, +dotted with iron beams, and divided economically into little plots by +screens, in each one of which was a desk with the name of its occupant on +an enamel sign. + +"The city sales department," the Colonel explained as they crossed to the +bank of shooting elevators. The Colonel was obliged to stop and speak and +shake hands with many men, mostly in shirt sleeves, with hats on their +heads, smoking cigars or pipes. They all smiled when they caught sight of +the old man's face, and when he stopped to shake hands with some one, the +man's face shone with pride. It was plain enough that the "old man" was +popular with his employees. The mere handshake that he gave had something +instinctively human and kind in it. He had a little habit of kneading +gently the hand he held, of clinging to it a trifle longer than was needed. +Every one of the six or seven hundred men in the building knew that the +head of the business was at heart a plain man like themselves, who had +never forgotten the day he sold his first bill of goods, and respected all +his men each in his place as a man. They knew his "record" as a merchant +and were proud of it. They thought him a "big man." Were he to drop out, +they were convinced the business would run down, as if the main belt had +slipped from the great fly-wheel of the machine shop. All the other +"upstairs" men, as the firm members and managers of departments were +called, were nonentities beside "our Colonel," the "whole thing," "it," as +he was affectionately described. + +So the progress to the elevators was slow, for the Colonel stopped to +introduce his son to every man whose desk they passed or whose eye he +caught. + +"My boy, Vickers, Mr. Slason--Mr. Slason is our credit man, Vick--you'll +know him better soon.... Mr. Jameson, just a moment, please; I want you to +meet this young man!" + +"If he's got any of your blood in him, Colonel, he's all right," a beefy, +red-faced man jerked out, chewing at an unlighted cigar and looking Vickers +hard in the face. + +Even the porters had to be introduced. It was a democratic advance! But +finally they reached the "upstairs" quarters, where in one corner was the +Colonel's private den, partitioned off from the other offices by ground +glass,--a bare space with a little old black walnut desk, a private safe, +and a set of desk telephones. Here Vickers stood looking down at the +turmoil of traffic in the street below, while his father glanced over a +mass of telegrams and memoranda piled on his desk. + +The roar of business that had begun to rumble through the streets at +daybreak and was now approaching its meridian stunned the young man's +nerves. Deadened by the sound of it all, he could not dissociate from the +volume that particular note, which would be his note, and live oblivious to +the rest.... So this was business! And what a feeble reed he was with which +to prop it! Visions of that other life came thronging to his mind,--the +human note of other cities he had learned to love, the placid hours of +contemplation, visions of things beautiful in a world of joy! Humorously he +thought of the hundreds of thousands of dollars this busy hive earned each +year. A minute fraction of its profits would satisfy him, make him richer +than all of it. And he suspected that the thrifty Colonel had much more +wealth stored away in that old-fashioned iron safe. What was the use of +throwing himself into this great machine? It would merely grind the soul +out of him and spit him forth. + +To keep it going,--that was the reason for sacrificing his youth, his +desire. But why keep the thing going? Pride, sentiment? He did not know the +Colonel's feeling of fatherhood towards all the men who worked for him, his +conviction that in this enterprise which he had created, all these human +beings were able to live happier lives because of him, his leadership. +There was poetry in the old man, and imagination. But the young man, with +his eyes filled with those other--more brilliant--glories, saw only the +grime, heard only the dull roar of the wheels that turned out a meaningless +flood of gold, like an engine contrived to supply desires and reap its +percentage of profits. + +"Father!" he cried involuntarily. + +Hot words of protest were in his throat. Let some other young man be found +to run the machine; or let them make a corporation of it and sell it in the +market. Or close the doors, its work having been done. But give him his +life, and a few dollars! + +"Eh, Vick? Hungry? We'll go over to the club for luncheon in just a +minute." And the old Colonel smiled affectionately at his son over his +glasses. + +"Not now--not just yet," Vickers said to himself, with a quick rush of +comprehension. + +But the "now" never seemed to come, the right moment for delivering the +blow, through all those months that followed, while the young man was +settling into his corner of the great establishment. When the mother or +Isabelle confessed their doubts to the Colonel, the old man would say:-- + +"It will do him no harm, a little of it. He'll know how to look after your +money, mother, when I am gone." And he added, "It's making a man of him, +you'll see!" + +There was another matter, little suspected by the Colonel, that was rapidly +to make a man of his engaging young son. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +When Vickers Price raised his eyes from his desk and, losing for the moment +the clattering note of business that surged all around him, looked through +dusky panes into the cloud of mist and smoke, visions rose before him that +were strange to the smoky horizon of the river city.... + +From the little balcony of his room on the Pincio, all Rome lay spread +before him,--Rome smiling under the blue heaven of an April morning! The +cypresses in the garden pointed to a cloudless sky. Beyond the city roofs, +where the domes of churches rose like little islands, was the green band of +the Janiculum, and farther southwards the river cut the city and was lost +behind the Aventine. And still beyond the Campagna reached to the hills +about Albano. + +Beneath he could see the Piazza del Popolo, with a line of tiny cabs +standing lazily in the sunlight, and just below the balcony was a garden +where a fountain poured softly, night and day. Brilliant balls of colored +fruit hung from the orange trees, glossy against the yellow walls of the +palazzo across the garden. From the steep street on the other side of the +wall rose the thin voice of a girl, singing a song of the mountains, with a +sad note of ancient woe, and farther away in the city sounded the hoarse +call of a pedler.... This was not the Rome of the antiquary, not the tawdry +Rome of the tourist. It was the Rome of sunshine and color and music, the +Rome of joy, of youth! And the young man, leaning there over the iron +railing, his eyes wandering up and down the city at his feet, drank deep of +the blessed draught,--the beauty and the joy of it, the spirit of youth and +romance in his heart.... + +From some one of the rooms behind a neighboring balcony floated a woman's +voice, swelling into a full contralto note, then sinking low and sweet into +brooding contemplation. After a time Vickers went to his work, trying to +forget the golden city outside the open window, but when the voice he had +heard burst forth joyously outside, he looked up and saw the singer +standing on her balcony, shading her eyes with a hand, gazing out over the +city, her voice breaking forth again and again in scattered notes, as +though compelled by the light and the joy of it all. She was dressed in a +loose black morning gown that rippled in the breeze over her figure. She +clasped her hands above her bronze-colored hair, the action revealing the +pure white tint of neck and arms, the well-knit body of small bones. She +stood there singing to herself softly, the note of spring and Rome in her +voice. Still singing she turned into her room, and Vickers could hear her, +as she moved back and forth, singing to herself. And as he hung brooding +over Rome, listening to the gurgle of the fountain in the garden, he often +listened to this contralto voice echoing the spirit within him.... +Sometimes a little girl came out on the balcony to play. + +"Are you English?" she asked the young man one day. + +"No, American, like you, eh?" Vickers replied. + +They talked, and presently the little girl running back into the room spoke +to some one: "There is a nice man out there, mother. He says he's American, +too." Vickers could not hear what the woman said in reply.... + +The child made them friends. Mrs. Conry, Vickers learned, was his +neighbor's name, and she was taking lessons in singing, preparing herself, +he gathered, for professional work,--a widow, he supposed, until he heard +the little girl say one day, "when we go home to father,--we are going +home, mother, aren't we? Soon?" And when the mother answered something +unintelligible, the little girl with a child's subtle tact was silent.... + +This woman standing there on the balcony above the city,--all gold and +white and black, save for the gray eyes, the curving lines of her supple +body,--this was what he saw of Europe,--all outside those vivid Roman weeks +that he shared with her fading into a vague background. Together they +tasted the city,--its sunny climbing streets, its white squares, and dark +churches, the fields beyond the Colosseum, the green Campagna, the vivid +mornings, the windless moonlight nights! All without this marvellous +circle, this charmed being of Rome, had the formlessness of a distant +planet. Here life began and closed, and neither wished to know what the +other had been in the world behind. + +That she was from some Southern state,--"a little tiny place near the Gulf, +far from every civilized thing," Mrs. Conry told him; and it was plain +enough that she was meagrely educated,--there had been few advantages in +that "tiny place." But her sensuous temperament was now absorbing all that +it touched. Rome meant little to her beyond the day's charm, the music it +made in her heart; while the man vibrated to every association, every +memory of the laden city.... + +Thus the days and weeks slipped by until the gathering heat warned them of +the passing of time. One June day that promised to be fresh and cool they +walked through the woods above the lake of Albano. Stacia Conry hummed the +words of a song that Vickers had written and set to music, one of a cycle +they had planned for her to sing--the Songs of the Cities. This was the +song of Rome, and in it Vickers had embedded the sad strain that the girl +sang coming up the street,--the cry of the past. + +"That is too high for me," she said, breaking off. "And it is melancholy. I +hate sad things. It reminds me of that desolate place at the end of the +earth where I came from." + +"All the purest music has a strain of sadness," Vickers protested. + +"No, no; it has longing, passion! ... I escaped!" She looked down on the +cuplike lake, shimmering in the sun below. "I knew in my heart that _this_ +lived, this world of sunshine and beauty and joy. I thirsted for it. Now I +drink it!" + +She turned on him her gray eyes, which were cool in spite of her emotion. +She had begun again the song in a lower key, when at a turn in the path +they came upon a little wooden shrine, one of those wayside altars still +left in a land where religion has been life. Before the weather-stained +blue-and-red madonna knelt a strangely mediaeval figure,--a man wasted and +bare-headed, with long hair falling matted over his eyes. An old sheepskin +coat came to his bare knees. Dirty, forlorn, leaning wearily on his +pilgrim's staff, the man was praying before the shrine, his lips moving +silently. + +"What a figure!" Vickers exclaimed in a low voice, taking from his pocket a +little camera. As he tiptoed ahead of Mrs. Conry to get his picture before +the pilgrim should rise, he saw the intense yearning on the man's face. +Beckoning to his companion, Vickers put the camera into his pocket and +passed on, Mrs. Conry following, shrinking to the opposite side of the way, +a look of aversion on her mobile face. + +"Why didn't you take him?" she asked as they turned the corner of the road. + +"He was praying,--and he meant it," Vickers answered vaguely. + +The woman's lips curved in disgust at the thought of the dirty pilgrim on +his knees by the roadside. + +"Only the weak pray! I hate that sort of thing,--prayer and penitence." + +"Perhaps it is the only real thing in life," Vickers replied from some +unknown depth within him. + +"No, no! How can you say that? You who know what life can be. Never! That +is what they tried to teach me at school. But I did not believe it. I +escaped. I wanted to sing. I wanted my own life." She became grave, and +added under her breath: "And I shall get it. That is best, best, best!" She +broke into a run down the sun-flecked road, and they emerged breathless in +an olive orchard beside the lake. Her body panted as she threw herself down +on the grass. "Now!" she smiled, her skin all rose; "can you say that?" And +her voice chanted, "To live,--my friend,--to LIVE! And you and I are made +to live,--isn't it so?" + +The artist in Vickers, the young man of romance, his heart tender with +sentiment, responded to the creed. But woven with the threads of this +artist temperament were other impulses that stirred. The pilgrim in the act +of penitence and ecstatic devotion was beautiful, too, and real,--ah, very +real, as he was to know.... + +They supped that afternoon in a little wine shop looking towards the great +dome swimming above Rome. And as the sun shot level and golden over the +Campagna, lighting the old, gray tombs, they drove back to the city along +the ancient Latin road. The wonderful plain, the most human landscape in +the world, began to take twilight shadows. Rome hung, in a mist of sun, +like a mirage in the far distance, and between them and the city flowed the +massive arches of an aqueduct, and all about were the crumbling tombs, half +hidden by the sod. The carriage rolled monotonously onwards. The woman's +eyes nearly closed; she looked dreamily out through the white lids, fringed +with heavy auburn lashes. She still hummed from time to time the old +refrain of Vickers's song. Thus they returned, hearing the voice of the old +world in its peculiar hour. + +"I am glad that I have had it--that I have lived--a little. This, this!--I +can sing to-night! You must come and sit on my balcony and look at the +stars while I sing to you--the music of the day." + +As the Porta San Paolo drew near, Vickers remarked:-- + +"I shall write you a song of Venice,--that is the music for you." + +"Venice, and Paris, and Vienna, and Rome,--all! I love them all!" + +She reached her arms to the great cities of the earth, seeing herself in +triumph, singing to multitudes the joy of life.... "Come to-night,--I will +sing for you!"... + +On the porter's table at the hotel lay a thick letter for Mrs. Conry. It +bore the printed business address,--THE CONRY CONSTRUCTION COMPANY. Mrs. +Conry took it negligently in her white hand. "You will come later?" she +said, smiling back at the young man. + + * * * * * + +Sitting crowded in front of Arragno's and sipping a liqueur, Fosdick +remarked to Vickers: "So you have run across the Conry? Of course I know +her. I saw her in Munich the first time. The little girl still with her? +Then it was Vienna.... She's got as far as Rome! Been over here two or +three years studying music. Pretty-good voice, and a better figure. Oh, +Stacia is much of a siren." + +Vickers moved uneasily and in reply to a question Fosdick continued:-- + +"Widow--grass widow--properly linked--who knows? Our pretty country-women +have such a habit of trotting around by themselves for their own +delectation that you never can tell how to place them. She may be +divorced--she may be the other thing! You can't tell. But she is a very +handsome woman."... + +Mrs. Conry herself told Vickers the facts, as they sat at a little +restaurant on the Aventine where they loved to go to watch the night steal +across the Palatine. + +"... He offered me my education--my chance. I took it. I went to the +conservatory at Cincinnati. Then he wanted to marry me, and promised to +send me abroad to study more."... Her tone was dry, impartially recounting +the fact. Then her eyes dropped, and Vickers's cigarette glowed between +them as they leaned across the little iron table.... "I was a child +then--did not know anything. I married him. The first years business was +poor, and he could not let me have the money. When times got better, he let +me come--kept his promise. I have been here nearly three years, back two or +three times. And now," her voice dropped, "I must go back for good--soon." + +Nothing more. But it seemed to Vickers as if a ghost had risen from the +river mist and come to sit between them. That the woman was paying a price +for her chance, a heavy price, he could see. They walked back to the city +between the deserted vineyards. As they crossed the river, Mrs. Conry +stopped, and remarked sombrely, "A bargain is a bargain the world over, is +it not?" + +Vickers felt the warm breathing woman close to him, felt her brooding eyes. +"One pays," he murmured, "I suppose!" + +She threw up her hand in protest, and they walked on into the lighted city. + + * * * * * + +Occasionally Fosdick joined their excursions, and after one of them he said +to Vickers:-- + +"My friend, she is wonderful; more so every time I see her. But beneath +that soft, rounded body, with its smooth white skin, is something hard. Oh, +I know the eyes and the hair and the throat and the voice! I, too, am a +man. Paint her, if you like, or set her to music. She is for _bel canto_ +and moonlight and the voice of Rome. But there is a world outside this all, +my friend, to which you and I belong, and _you_ rather more than I.... +Stacia Conry doesn't belong at all." + +"Which means?" demanded Vickers steadily of the burly Fosdick. + +"Take care that you don't get stuck in the sea of Sargasso. I think +something bitter might rise out of all that loveliness." + +Nevertheless, instead of going to the Maloya with Fosdick, Vickers stayed +on in Rome, and September found him there and Mrs. Conry, too, having +returned to the city from the mountain resort, where she had left the +little girl with her governess. They roamed the deserted city, and again +began to work on the songs which Mrs. Conry hoped to give in concerts on +her return to America. Very foolish of the young man, and the woman, thus +to prolong the moment of charm, to linger in the Sargasso Sea! But at least +with the man, the feeling that kept him in Rome those summer months was +pure and fine, the sweetest and the best that man may know, where he gives +of his depths with no thought of reward, willing to accept the coming +pain.... Little Delia, who had seen quite as much of Vickers as her mother, +said to him the day she left with her governess:-- + +"We're going home soon--before Thanksgiving. I'm so glad! And you'll be +there, too?" + +"I suppose not, Delia," the young man replied. But as it happened he was +the first to go back.... + +That late September day they had returned from a ramble in the hills. It +was nearly midnight when the cab rattled up the deserted streets to their +hotel. As Vickers bade his companion good-night, with some word about a +long-projected excursion to Volterra, she said:-- + +"Come in and I will sing for a while. I don't feel like sleep.... Yes, +come! Perhaps it will be the last of all our good times." + +In the large dark apartment the night wind was drawing over the roofs of +the hill through the open windows, fluttering stray sheets of music along +the stone floor. Mrs. Conry lighted a candle on the piano, and throwing +aside her hat and veil, dropping her gloves on the floor, struck some heavy +chords. She sang the song they had been working over, the song of Venice, +with a swaying melody as of floating water-grasses. Then she plunged into a +throbbing aria,--singing freely, none too accurately, but with a passion +and self-forgetfulness which promised greater things than the concert +performer. From this on to other snatches of opera, to songs, wandering as +the mood took her, coming finally to the street song that Vickers had woven +into his composition for Rome, with its high, sad note. There her voice +stopped, died in a cry half stifled in the throat, and leaving the piano +she came to the window. A puff of wind blew out the candle. With the +curtains swaying in the night wind, they stood side by side looking down +into the dark city, dotted irregularly with points of light, and up above +the Janiculum to the shining stars. + +"Rome, Rome," she murmured, and the words sighed past the young man's +ears,--"and life--LIFE!" + +It was life that was calling them, close together, looking forth into the +night, their hearts beating, the longing to grasp it, to go out alone into +the night for it. Freedom, and love, and life,--they beckoned! Vickers saw +her eyes turn to him in the dark.... + +"And now I go," he said softly. He found his way to the door in the dark +salon, and as he turned he saw her white figure against the swaying +curtain, and felt her eyes following him. + +In his room he found the little blue despatch, sent up from his banker, +which announced his brother's death, and the next morning he left by the +early express for the north to catch the Cherbourg boat. As he passed Mrs. +Conry's salon he slipped under the door the despatch with a note, which +ended, "I know that we shall see each other again, somewhere, somehow!" and +from the piazza he sent back an armful of great white _fleur-de-lys_. Later +that morning, while Vickers was staring at the vintage in the Umbrian +Valley and thinking of the woman all white and bronze with the gray eyes, +Mrs. Conry was reading his note. A bitter smile curved her lips, as she +gathered up the white flowers and laid them on the piano. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +One winter day while Vickers Price was "selling nails," as he still +expressed his business career, there came in his mail a queer little +scrawl, postmarked Pittsburg. It was from Delia Conry, and it ran:-- + +"We've been home a month. We live in a hotel. I don't like it. The bird you +gave me died. Mother says she'll get me a new one. I wish I could see you. +Love from Delia." + +But not a word from Mrs. Conry! Fosdick, drifting through Rome on his way +to Turkestan, wrote:-- + +"... What has become of the Conry? She has disappeared from the cities of +Europe with her melodious songs and beautiful hair. Are you touring the +States with her? Or has she rediscovered Mr. Conry--for a period of +seclusion? ... To think of you serving hardware to the barbarians across +the counter enlivens my dull moments. From the Sargasso Sea to St. +Louis,--there is a leap for you, my dear."... + +While he "served hardware to the barbarians" and in other respects +conformed to the life of a privileged young American gentleman, Vickers +Price dreamed of those Roman days, the happiest of his life. If that night +they two had taken life in their hands? ... Could the old Colonel have read +his son's heart,--if from the pinnacle of his years filled with ripe deeds +he could have comprehended youth,--he might have been less sure that the +hardware business was to be "the making of Vick"! + +What had come to her? Had she accepted her lot, once back in the groove of +fate, or had she rebelled, striking out for her own vivid desire of joy and +song, of fame? Vickers would have liked to hear that she had rebelled, was +making her own life,--had taken the other road than the one he had accepted +for himself. His tender, idealizing heart could not hold a woman to the +sterner courses of conduct. + +For, as Fosdick had told him in Rome, the young man was a Sentimentalist +with no exact vision of life. His heart was perpetually distorting whatever +his mind told him was fact. This woman, with her beauty, her love of music, +had touched him at the lyric moment of life, when reality was but the +unstable foundation for dream. Life as might be, glowing, colored, and +splendid,--life as it was within him, not as this hideous maelstrom all +about him reported. And why not the I, the I! cried the spirit of youth, +the egotistic spirit of the age. For all reply there was the bent, gray +head of the Colonel at his desk in the office beside him. "One sentiment +against another," Fosdick might say.... + +Finally Stacia Conry wrote, a little note: she was to be in St. Louis on +the fourteenth for a short time and hoped that he would call on her at the +hotel. A perfectly proper, colorless little note, written in an unformed +hand, with a word or two misspelled,--the kind of note that gave no +indication of the writer, but seemed like the voice of a stranger. However, +as Vickers reflected, literary skill, the power to write personal little +notes did not go necessarily with a talent for music--or for life. Nannie +Lawton wrote intimate notes, and other women, single and married, whom +Vickers had come to know these past months. But their cleverest phrases +could not stir his pulses as did this crude production. + +The woman who was waiting for him in the little hotel parlor, however, gave +him a curious shock,--she was so different in her rich street costume from +the woman in black and white, whose picture had grown into his memory. She +seemed older, he thought, thus accounting for that strange idealizing power +of the mind to select from a face what that face has specially given it and +create an altogether new being, with its own lineaments graven in place of +actual bone and tissue. It takes time to correct this ideal misreport of +the soul, to accept the fact! Except for the one glance from the gray eyes +which she gave him as they shook hands, Stacia Conry did not stir the past. +But she was voluble of the present. + +"You did not expect this! You see my husband had some work to attend to +near here, and I thought I would come with him.... No, we left Delia in +Pittsburg with his mother,--she wanted to see you, but she would be in the +way." + +They came soon to her singing, and her face clouded. + +"I haven't been able to get an opening. I wanted to sing the Cycle with an +orchestra. But I haven't succeeded,--our Pittsburg orchestra won't look at +any talent purely domestic. It is all pull over here. I haven't any +influence.... You must start with some backing,--sing in private houses for +great people! We don't know that kind, you see." + +"And concerts?" Vickers inquired. + +"The same way,--to get good engagements you must have something to show.... +I've sung once or twice,--in little places, church affairs and that kind of +thing." + +Vickers laughed as Mrs. Conry's expressive lips curled. + +"They tell you to take everything to begin with. But singing for church +sociables in Frankfort and Alleghany,--that doesn't do much! I want to go +to New York,--I know people there, but--" + +Vickers understood that Mr. Conry objected. + +"It must come sometime," she said vehemently; "only waiting is killing. It +takes the life out of you, the power, don't you think?" + +"Could you sing here?" Vickers asked,--"now, I mean? I might be able to +arrange it." + +"Oh, if you could!" Mrs. Conry's face glowed, and her fingers played +nervously with her long chain. "If I could give the Cycle with your +accompaniment, here in St. Louis where you are so well known--" + +Vickers smiled at the picture of his debut in St. Louis drawing-rooms. + +"I will ask my sister to help," he said. "I should like her to call." + +Mrs. Conry became suddenly animated, as if after a period of depressing +darkness she saw a large ray of sunshine. She had thought of possibilities +when she had persuaded her husband to take her to St. Louis, but had not +expected them to develop at once. + +"You see," she continued quickly, "if I can get a hearing here, it means +that other people may want me,--I'll become known, a little." + +"My mother couldn't have it," Vickers explained, "nor my sister, because of +our mourning. But Mrs. Lawton,--that would be better any way." He thought +of Nannie Lawton's love of _reclame_, and he knew that though she would +never have considered inviting the unheralded Mrs. Conry to sing in her +drawing-room, she would gladly have _him_ appear there with any one, +playing his own music. + +"Yes, we'll put it through! The Songs of the Cities." He repeated the words +with sentimental visions of the hours of their composition. + +"And then I have some more,--Spanish songs. They take, you know! And +folk-songs." Mrs. Conry talked on eagerly of her ambitions until Vickers +left, having arranged for Isabelle to call the next day. As he took his way +to the Lawtons' to use his influence with the volatile Nan in behalf of +Mrs. Conry, his memory of their talk was sad. 'America, that's it,' he +explained. 'She wants to do something for herself, to get her +independence.' And he resolved to leave no stone unturned, no influence +unused, to gratify her ambition. + +So Isabelle called on Mrs. Conry in company with Nannie Lawton. Vickers +little knew what an ordeal the woman he loved was passing through in this +simple affair. A woman may present no difficulties to the most fastidiously +bred man, and yet be found wanting in a thousand particulars by the women +of his social class. As the two emerged from the hotel, Isabelle looked +dubiously at Mrs. Lawton. + +"Queer, isn't she?" that frank lady remarked. "Oh, she's one of those stray +people you run across in Europe. Perhaps she can sing all right, though I +don't care. The men will be crazy after her,--she's the kind,--red hair and +soft skin and all that.... Better look out for that young brother of yours, +Isabelle. She is just the one to nab our innocent Vickie." + +Isabelle's report of her call had some reserves. + +"Of course she is very striking, Vick. But, you see,--she--she isn't +exactly our kind!" + +"That is Nan," the young man retorted impatiently. "I never heard you say +that sort of thing before. What on earth is 'our kind'? She is beautiful +and has talent, a lot of it,--all she wants is her chance. And why +shouldn't she have it?" + +Isabelle smiled at his heat, and replied caressingly:-- + +"She shall have all that Nan and I can do for her here. But don't be +foolish about her. I suspect you could be with a woman--because of your +dear old heart.... If she can't sing a note, she'll make a hit with her +looks, Nan says!" + +So the musicale was arranged. There were mostly women in Mrs. Lawton's +smart little music room when Mrs. Conry rose to sing a series of +introductory songs. She was very striking, as Isabelle and Mrs. Lawton had +foreseen that she would be,--rather bizarrely dressed in a white and gold +costume that she had designed herself, with a girdle of old stones strung +loosely about her waist. She was nervous and sang uncertainly at first so +that Vickers had to favor her in his accompaniment. He could see the +trembling of her white arm beside him. The Cycle of the Cities came near +the end of the programme, and when Vickers took his seat to play the +accompaniments, he was aware that a number of men had arrived and were +standing in the hall, peering through the doors at the performance. He knew +well enough what the men were thinking of him, sitting there playing his +own songs,--that it was a queer, monkey performance for the son of Colonel +Price! The fine arts are duly recognized in American cities; but the +commercial class, as always has been its wont, places them in a category +between millinery and theology. + +She had chosen _Paris_ to open with, and gave the song with assurance, +eliciting especially from the men in the hall the first real applause. Then +followed _Vienna, Munich_. She was singing well, gaining confidence. When +it came to _Venice_,--Vickers remembered as he followed her swimming voice +the twilight over the Campagna, the approaching mass of Rome,--even the +women woke to something like enthusiasm. As she uttered the first note of +_Rome_, she glanced down at Vickers, with a little smile, which said:-- + +"Do you remember? This is _ours_,--I am singing this for you!" + +Her face was flushed and happy. She sang the difficult music as she had +sung that last night in Rome, and Vickers, listening to the full voice so +close to him, heard again the high sad note of the street singer, in the +golden spring day, uttering this ancient melody of tears,--only this time +it was woven with laughter and joy. When she finished, he sought her eyes; +but Mrs. Conry was sweeping the gathering with a restless glance, thinking +of her encore.... + +Afterwards the women said agreeable things about Vickers's music, +especially the _Paris_ and the _Venice_. About Mrs. Conry they said that +her voice was good, "somewhat uncultivated," "too loud for drawing-room +music,"--safe criticisms. The men said little about the music, but they +clustered around the singer. Mrs. Lawton looked significantly at Isabelle +and winked. One old gentleman, something of a beau as well as a successful +lawyer, congratulated Vickers on his "tuneful" music. "It must be a +pleasant avocation to write songs," he said.... + +They dined at the Lawtons', and afterwards Vickers took Mrs. Conry to the +hotel. She was gay with the success she had had, the impression she had +made on the men. + +"Something'll come of this, I am sure. Do you think they liked me?" + +"You sang well," Vickers replied evasively, "better than well, the _Rome_." + +In the lobby of the hotel she turned as though to dismiss him, but Vickers, +who was talking of a change to be made in one of the songs, accompanied her +to the parlor above, where they had practised the music in preparation for +the concert. Mrs. Conry glanced quickly into the room as they entered, as +if expecting to find some one there. Vickers was saying:-- + +"I think we shall have to add another one to the Cycle,--_New York_ or +something to stand for--well, what it is over here,--just living!" + +The door of the inner room opened and a man appeared, coatless, with a +much-flowered waistcoat. + +"So you're back," the man remarked in a heavy voice. + +"My husband," Mrs. Conry explained, "Mr. Vickers Price!" + +Mr. Conry shuffled heavily into the room. He was a large man with a big +grizzled head and very red face, finely chased with purple veins. He gave +Vickers a stubby hand. + +"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Price. Heard about you from Delia. Sit down." +Conry himself stood, swaying slightly on his stout legs. After a time he +chose a seat with great deliberation and continued to stare at the young +man. "Have a cigar?" He took one from his waistcoat pocket and held it +towards the young man. "It's a good one,--none of your barroom smokes,--oh, +I see you are one of those cigarette fiends, same as Stacia!" + +There was a conversational hiatus, and Vickers was thinking of going. + +"Well, how was the show?" Conry demanded of his wife. "Did you sing +good,--make a hit with the swells? She thinks she wants to sing," he +explained with a wink to Vickers, "but I tell her she's after +sassiety,--that's what the women want; ain't it so?" + +"Mrs. Conry sang very well indeed," Vickers remarked in default of better, +and rose to leave. + +"Don't go,--what's your hurry? Have something to drink? I got some in there +you don't see every day in the week, young man. A racing friend of mine +from Kentuck sends it to me. What's yours, Stacy?" ... + +When the young man departed, Stacia Conry stared at the door through which +he had disappeared, with a dead expression that had something disagreeable +in it. Conry, who had had his drink, came back to the parlor and began to +talk. + +"I went to a show myself to-night, seeing you were amusing yourself.... +There was a girl there who danced and sang,--you'd oughter seen her.... +Well, what are you sittin' staring at? Ain't you coming to bed?" + +His wife rose from her seat, exclaiming harshly, "Let me alone!" And Conry, +with a half-sober scrutiny of the woman, who had flung herself face down on +the lounge, mumbled:-- + +"Singing don't seem to agree with you. Well, I kept my word; gave you the +money to educate yourself." ... + +"And I have paid you!" the wife flashed. "God, I have paid!" + +The man stumbled off to bed. + + * * * * * + +Vickers, on leaving the hotel, walked home in the chill night, a sickening +sensation in his heart. If he had been a shrewd young man, he might have +foreseen the somewhat boozy Mr. Conry, the vulgar setting of the woman he +loved. If there had been the least thing base in him, he might have +welcomed it, for his own uses. But being a sentimentalist and simple in +nature, the few moments of intercourse with Mr. Conry had come like a +revelation to him. This was what she had sold herself to for her education. +This was what she was tied to! And this what she sought to escape from by +her music, to place herself and her child beyond the touch of that man! + +Vickers in his disgust overlooked the fact that little Delia seemed to love +her father, and that though Conry might not be to his taste, he might also +be a perfectly worthy citizen, given occasionally to liquor. But love and +youth and the idealizing temperament make few allowances. To give her that +freedom which her beauty and her nature craved, he would do what he could, +and he searched his memory for names and persons of influence in the +professional world of music. He had the fragments of a score for an opera +that he had scarce looked at since he had begun "to sell nails"; but +to-night he took it from the drawer and ran it over,--"Love Among the +Ruins,"--and as he went to sleep he saw Stacia Conry singing as she had +sung that last night in Rome, singing the music of his opera, success and +fame at her feet.... + +The something that Mrs. Conry hoped for did come from that introduction at +the Lawtons'. The wife of one of those men she had charmed called on her +and invited her to sing "those pleasant little songs Mr. Price wrote for +you" (with Mr. Price's appearance, of course!). And several women, who were +anxious to be counted as of the Lawton set, hastened to engage Mrs. Conry +to sing at their houses, with the same condition. Vickers understood the +meaning of this condition and disliked the position, but consented in his +desire to give Mrs. Conry every chance in his power. Others understood the +situation, and disliked it,--among them Isabelle. Nannie Lawton threw at +her across a dinner-table the remark: "When is Vick going to offer his +'Love Among the Ruins'? Mrs. Conry is the 'ruins,' I suppose!" + +And the musicales, in spite of all that Vickers could do, were only +moderately successful. In any community, the people who hunt the latest +novelty are limited in number, and that spring there arrived a Swedish +portrait painter and an Antarctic traveller to push the beautiful singer +from the centre of attention. So after the first weeks the engagements +became farther spaced and less desirable, less influential. Mrs. Conry +still stayed at the hotel, though her husband had been called to another +city on a contract he had undertaken. She realized that her debut had not +been brilliant, but she clung to the opportunity, in the hope that +something would come of it. And naturally enough Vickers saw a good deal of +her; not merely the days they appeared together, but almost every day he +found an excuse for dropping in at the hotel, to play over some music, to +take her to ride in his new motor, which he ran himself, or to dine with +her. Mrs. Conry was lonely. After Isabelle went to California for her +health, she saw almost no one. The women she met at her engagements found +her "not our kind," and Nan Lawton's witticism about "the ruins" and +Vickers did not help matters. Vickers saw the situation and resented it. +This loneliness and disappointment were bad for her. She worked at her +music in a desultory fashion, dawdled over novels, and smoked too many +cigarettes for the good of her voice. She seemed listless and discouraged. +Vickers redoubled his efforts to have her sing before a celebrated manager, +who was coming presently to the city with an opera company. + +'She sees no way, no escape,' he said to himself. 'One ray of hope, and she +would wake to what she was in Europe!' + +In his blind, sentimental devotion, he blamed the accidents of life for her +disappointment, not the woman herself. When he came, she awoke, and it was +an unconscious joy to him, this power he had to rouse her from her apathy, +to make her become for the time the woman he always saw just beneath the +surface, eager to emerge if life would but grant her the chance. + +His own situation had changed with the growing year. The Colonel, closely +watching "the boy," was coming gradually to comprehend the sacrifice that +he had accepted, all the more as Vickers never murmured but kept steadily +at his work. Before Isabelle left for California, she spoke plainly to her +father:-- + +"What's the use, Colonel! No matter how he tries, Vick can never be like +you,--and why should he be any way?" + +"It won't have done any harm," the old man replied dubiously. "We'll see!" + +First he made his son independent of salary or allowance by giving him a +small fortune in stocks and bonds. Then one day, while Mrs. Conry was still +in the city, he suggested that Vickers might expect a considerable vacation +in the summer. "You can go to Europe and write something," he remarked, in +his simple faith that art could be laid down or resumed at will. Vickers +smiled, but did not grasp the opportunity eagerly. When he told Mrs. Conry +that afternoon of the proposed "vacation," she exclaimed enviously:-- + +"I knew you would go back!" + +"I am not sure that I shall go." + +She said perfunctorily: "Of course you must go--will you go back to Rome? I +shall be so glad to think you are doing what you want to do." + +He turned the matter off with a laugh:-- + +"The dear old boy thinks two months out of a year is long enough to give to +composing an opera. It's like fishing,--a few weeks now and then if you can +afford it!" + +"But you wouldn't have to stay here at all, if you made up your mind not +to," she remarked with a touch of hardness. "They'll give you what you +want." + +"I am not sure that I want it," he replied slowly, "at the price." + +She looked at him uncomprehendingly, then perceiving another meaning in his +words, lowered her eyes. She was thinking swiftly, 'If we could both go!' +But he was reflecting rather bitterly on that new wealth which his father +had given him, the dollars piling up to his credit, not one of which he +might use as he most dearly desired to use them--for her! With all this +power within his easy reach he could not stretch forth his hand to save a +human soul. For thus he conceived the woman's need. + +It came to Mrs. Conry's last engagement,--the last possible excuse for her +lingering in the city. It was a suburban affair, and the place was +difficult to reach. Vickers had invited the Falkners to go with them, to +prevent gossip, and Bessie willingly accepted as a spree, though she had +confided to Isabelle that "Mrs. Conry was dreadful ordinary," "not half +good enough for our adorable Vickers to _afficher_ himself with." +Nevertheless, she was very sweet to the beautiful Mrs. Conry, as was +Bessie's wont to be with pretty nearly all the world. It was late on their +return, and the Falkners left them at the station. With the sense that +to-night they must part, they walked slowly towards the hotel, then stopped +at a little German restaurant for supper. They looked at each other across +the marble-top table without speaking. The evening had been a depressing +conclusion to the concert season they had had together. And that morning +Vickers had found it impossible to arrange a meeting for Mrs. Conry with +the director of a famous orchestra, who happened to be in the city. + +"You must go to-morrow?" Vickers asked at last. "I may get a reply from +Moller any day." + +Mrs. Conry looked at him out of her gray eyes, as if she were thinking many +things that a woman might think but could not say, before she replied +slowly:-- + +"My husband's coming back to-morrow--to get me." As Vickers said nothing, +she continued, slowly shaking the yellow wine in her glass until it +circled,--"And it's no use--I'm not good enough for Moller--and you know +it. I must have more training, more experience." + +Vickers did know it, but had not let himself believe it. + +"My little struggle does not matter,--I'm only a woman--and must do as most +women do.... Perhaps, who knows! the combination may change some day, +and--" she glanced fearlessly at him--"we shall all do as we want in +another world!" + +Then she looked at her watch. It was very late, and the tired waiters stood +leaning listlessly against their tables. + +"I am tired," she said at last. "Will you call a cab, please?" + +They drove silently down the empty boulevard. A mist came through the cab +window, touching her hair with fine points. Her hand lay close to his. + +"How happy we were in Rome! Rome!" she looked out into the dark night, and +there were tears in her eyes. "You have been very good to me, dear friend. +Sometime I shall sing to you again, to you alone. Now good-by." ... + +His hand held hers, while his heart beat and words rose clamorously to his +lips,--the words of rebellion, of protest and love, the words of youth. But +he said nothing,--it was better that they should part without a spoken +word,--better for her and better for him. His feeling for her, compact of +tenderness, pity, and belief, had never been tested by any clear light. She +was not his; and beyond that fact he had never looked. + +So the carriage rolled on while the two sat silent with beating hearts, and +as it approached the hotel he quickly bent his head and kissed the hand +that was in his. + +"Come to-morrow," she whispered, "in the morning,--once more." + +"No," he said simply; "I can't. You know why." + +As Vickers stepped out of the cab he recognized Conry. The contractor had +been looking up and down the street, and had started to walk away, but +turned at the sound of the carriage wheels and came over towards them. +Something in his appearance, the slouch hat pulled forward over his face, +the quick jerky step, suggested that he had been drinking. Vickers with a +sensation of disgust foresaw a scene there on the pavement, and he could +feel the shrinking of the woman by his side. + +"Good evening, Mr. Conry," Vickers said coolly, turning to give Mrs. Conry +his hand. A glance into Conry's eyes had convinced him that the man was in +a drunken temper, and his one thought was to save her from a public brawl. +Already a couple of people sauntering past had paused to look at them. +Conry grasped the young man by the arm and flung him to one side, and +thrusting his other hand into the cab jerked his wife out of it. + +"Come here!" he roared. "I'll show you--you--" + +Mrs. Conry, trembling and white, tried to free her arm and cross the +pavement. The driver, arranging himself on the seat, looked down at +Vickers, winked, and waited. Conry still dragged his wife by the arm, and +as she tried to free herself he raised his other hand and slapped her +across the face as he would cuff a struggling dog, then struck her again. +She groaned and half sank to the pavement. The curious bystanders said +nothing, made no move to interfere. Here was a domestic difference, about a +woman apparently; and the husband was exerting his ancient, impregnable +rights of domination over the woman, who was his.... + +All these months Vickers had never even in imagination crossed the barrier +of Fact. Now without a moment's wavering he raised his hand and struck +Conry full in the face, and as the man staggered from the unexpected blow +he struck him again, knocking him to the ground. Then, swiftly +disentangling the woman's hand from her husband's grasp, he motioned to the +cab driver to pull up at the curb and carried her into the cab. When +Vickers closed the door, the driver without further orders whipped up his +horse and drove into a side street, leaving the group on the pavement +staring at them and at Conry, who was staggering to his feet.... + +Within the cab Mrs. Conry moaned inarticulately. Vickers held her in his +arms, and slowly bending his head to hers he kissed her upon the lips. Her +lips were cold, but after a time to the touch of his lips hers responded +with a trembling, yielding kiss. + +Thus they drove on, without words, away from the city. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +It had all happened in a brief moment of time,--the blow, the rescue, the +kiss. But it had changed the face of the world for Vickers. What hitherto +had been clouded in dream, a mingling of sentiment, pity, tender yearning, +became at once reality. With that blow, that kiss, his soul had opened to a +new conception of life.... + +They drove to the Lanes' house. Isabelle had returned that day from +California, and her husband was away on business. Vickers, who had a +latch-key, let himself into the house and tapped at his sister's door. When +she saw him, she cried out, frightened by his white face:-- + +"Vick! What has happened?" + +"Mrs. Conry is downstairs, Isabelle. I want her to stay here with you +to-night!" + +"Vick! What is it?" Isabelle demanded with staring eyes. + +"I will tell you to-morrow." + +"No--now!" She clutched her wrap about her shiveringly and drew him within +the room. + +"It's--I am going away, Isabelle, at once--with Mrs. Conry. There has been +trouble--her husband struck her on the street, when she was with me. I took +her from him." + +"Vick!" Her voice trembled as she cried, "No,--it wasn't that!" + +"No," he said gravely. "There was no cause, none at all. He was drunk. But +I don't know that it would have made any difference. The man is a low +brute, and her life is killing her. I love her--well, that is all!" + +"Vick!" she cried; "I knew you would do some--" she hesitated before his +glittering eyes--"something very risky," she faltered at last. + +He waved this aside impatiently. + +"What will you do now?" she asked hesitantly. + +"I don't know,--we shall go away," he replied vaguely; "but she is waiting, +needs me. Will you help her,--help _us_?" he demanded, turning to the door, +"or shall we have to go to-night?" + +"Wait," she said, putting her hands on his arms; "you can't do that! Just +think what it will mean to father and mother, to everybody.... Let me dress +and take her back!" she suggested half heartedly. + +"Isabelle!" he cried. "She shall never go back to that brute." + +"You love her so much?" + +"Enough for anything," he answered gravely, turning to the door. + +In the face of his set look, his short words, all the protesting +considerations on the tip of her tongue seemed futile. To a man in a mood +like his they would but drive him to further folly. And admiration rose +unexpectedly in her heart for the man who could hold his fate in his hands +like this and unshakenly cast it on the ground. The very madness of it all +awed her. She threw her arms about him, murmuring:-- + +"Oh, Vick--for you--it seems so horrid, so--" + +"It _is_ mean," he admitted through his compressed lips. "For that very +reason, don't you see, I will take her beyond where it can touch her, at +once, this very night,--if you will not help us!" + +And all that she could do was to kiss him, the tears falling from her eyes. + +"I will, Vick, dear.... It makes no difference to me what happens,--if you +are only happy!" + + * * * * * + +As he drove to his father's house in the damp April night, he tried to +think of the steps he must take on the morrow. He had acted irresistibly, +out of the depths of his nature, unconcerned that he was about to tear in +pieces the fabric of his life. It was not until he had let himself into the +silent house and noiselessly passed his mother's door that he realized in +sudden pain what it must mean to others. + +He lay awake thinking, thinking. First of all she must telegraph for Delia +to meet them somewhere,--she must have the child with her at once; and they +must leave the city before Conry could find her and make trouble.... And he +must tell the Colonel.... + +The next morning when Vickers entered his sister's library, Stacia Conry +rose from the lounge where she had been lying reading a newspaper, and +waited hesitantly while he came forward. She was very pretty this morning, +with a faint touch of rose beneath her pale skin, her long lashes falling +over fresh, shy eyes. In spite of it all she had slept, while the sleepless +hours he had spent showed in his worn, white face. He put out his arms, and +she clung to him. + +"We must decide what to do," he said. + +"You will not leave me?" she whispered, her head lying passive against his +breast. Suddenly raising her head, she clasped her arms about his neck, +drawing him passionately to her, crying, "I love you--love you,--you will +never leave me?" + +And the man looking down into her eyes answered from his heart in all +truth:-- + +"Never, never so long as I live!" The words muttered in his broken voice +had all the solemnity of a marriage oath; and he kissed her, sealing the +promise, while she lay passive in his arms. + +Holding her thus to him, her head against his beating heart, he felt the +helplessness, the dependence of the woman, and it filled him with a +subdued, sad joy. His part was to protect her, to defend her always, and +his grip tightened about her yielding form. Their lips met again, and this +time the sensuous appeal of the woman entered his senses, clouding for the +time his delicate vision, submerging that nobler feeling which hitherto +alone she had roused. She was a woman,--his to desire, to have! + +"What shall we do?" she asked, sitting down, still holding his hand. + +"First we must get Delia. We had better telegraph your mother at once to +meet us somewhere." + +"Oh!" + +"You must have Delia, of course. He will probably make trouble, try to get +hold of the child, and so we must leave here as soon as possible, to-day if +we can." + +"Where shall we go?" she asked, bewildered. + +"Somewhere--out of the country," he replied slowly, looking at her +significantly. "Of course it would be better to wait and have the divorce; +but he might fight that, and make a mess,--try to keep the child, you +understand." + +She was silent, and he thought she objected to his summary plan. But it was +on her lips to say, 'Why not leave Delia with him until it can all be +arranged?' Something in the young man's stern face restrained her; she was +afraid of outraging instincts, delicacies that were strange to her. + +"Should you mind," he asked pleadingly, "going without the divorce? Of +course to me it is the same thing. You are mine now, as I look at it,--any +marriage would mean little to either of us after--the past! Somehow to hang +about here, with the danger of trouble to you, waiting for a divorce, with +the row and all,--I can't see you going through it. I think the--other +way--is better." + +She did not fully understand his feeling about it, which was that with the +soiled experience of her marriage another ceremony with him would be a mere +legal farce. To the pure idealism of his nature it seemed cleaner, nobler +for them to take this step without any attempt to regularize it in the eyes +of Society. To him she was justified in doing what she had done, in leaving +her husband for him, and that would have to be enough for them both. He +despised half measures, compromises. He was ready to cast all into his +defiance of law. Meanwhile she pondered the matter with lowered eyes and +presently she asked:-- + +"How long would it take to get a divorce?" + +"If he fought it, a year perhaps, or longer." + +"And I should have to stay here in the city?" + +"Or go somewhere else to get a residence." + +"And we--" she hesitated to complete the thought. + +He drew her to him and kissed her. + +"I think we shall be enough for each other," he said. + +"I will do whatever you wish," she murmured, thus softly putting on his +shoulders the burden of the step. + +He was the man, the strong protector that had come to her in her distress, +to whom she fled as naturally as a hunted animal flies to a hole, as a +crippled bird to the deep underbrush. Her beauty, her sex, herself, had +somehow attracted to her this male arm, and the right to take it never +occurred to her. He loved her, of course, and she would make him love her +more, and all would be well. If he had been penniless, unable to give her +the full protection that she needed, then they would have been obliged to +consider this step more carefully, and doubts might have forced themselves +upon her. But as it was she clung to him, trusting to the power of her sex +to hold him constant, to shield her.... + +"Now I must go down to the office to see my father," Vickers said finally. +"I'll be back early in the afternoon, and then--we will make our plans." + +"Will you tell him, your father?" Mrs. Conry asked tensely. + +"He will have to know, of course." As he spoke a wave of pain shot over the +young man's face. He stepped to the door and then turned:-- + +"You will telegraph about Delia,--she might meet us in New York--in two +days." + +"Very well," Mrs. Conry murmured submissively. + + * * * * * + +The Colonel was sitting in his little corner office before the +old-fashioned dingy desk, where he had transacted so many affairs of one +sort or another for nearly thirty years. He was not even reading his mail +this morning, but musing, as he often was when the clerks thought that he +was more busily employed. Isabelle and her child had returned from +California, the day before. She had not recovered from bearing the child, +and the St. Louis doctors who had been consulted had not helped her. It +might be well to see some one in New York.... But the Colonel was thinking +most of all this morning of his son. The tenacious old merchant was +wondering whether he had done right in accepting the young man's sacrifice. +In his disgust for the do-nothing, parasitic offspring about him, perhaps +he had taken a delicate instrument and blunted it by setting it at coarse +work. Well, it was not too late to change that. + +'The boy didn't start right,' the Colonel mused sadly. 'He didn't start +selling hardware on the road. He's done his best, and he's no such duffer +as Parrott's boy anyhow. But he would make only a front office kind of +business man. The business must get on by itself pretty soon. Perhaps that +idea for a selling company would not be a bad thing. And that would be the +end of Parrott and Price.' + +Nevertheless, the old man's heart having come slowly to this generous +decision was not light,--if the other boy had lived, if Belle had married +some one who could have gone into the business. The bricks and mortar of +the building were part of his own being, and he longed to live out these +last few years in the shadow of his great enterprise.... + +"Father, can I see you about something important?" + +The Colonel, startled from his revery, looked up at his son with his sweet +smile. + +"Why, yes, my boy,--I wasn't doing much, and I had something to say to you. +Sit down. You got away from home early this morning." + +He glanced inquiringly at his son's white, set face and tense lips. Playing +with his eye-glasses, he began to talk lightly of other matters, as was his +wont when he felt the coming of a storm. + +Vickers listened patiently, staring straight across his father to the wall, +and when the Colonel came to a full pause, + +"Father, you said you were ready for me to take a vacation. I must go at +once, to-day if possible. And, father, I can't come back." + +The old man moved slightly in his chair. It was his intention to offer the +young man his freedom, but it hurt him to have it taken for granted in this +light manner. He waited. + +"Something has happened," Vickers continued in a low voice, "something +which will alter my whole life." + +The Colonel still waited. + +"I love a woman, and I must take her away from here at once." + +"Who is she?" the old man asked gently. + +"Mrs. Conry--" + +"But she's a married woman, isn't she, Vick?" + +"She has a dirty brute of a husband--she's left him forever!" + +The Colonel's blue eyes opened in speechless surprise, as his son went on +to tell rapidly what had happened the previous night. Before he had +finished the old man interrupted by a low exclamation:-- + +"But she is a married woman, Vickers!" + +"Her marriage was a mistake, and she's paid for it, poor woman,--paid with +soul and body! She will not pay any longer." + +"But what are you going to do, my boy?" + +"I love her, father. I mean to take her away, at once, take her and her +child." + +"Run away with a married woman?" The Colonel's pale face flushed slightly, +less in anger than in shame, and his eyes fell from his son's face. + +"I wish with all my heart it wasn't so, of course; that she wasn't married, +or that she had left him long ago. But that can't be helped. And I don't +see how a divorce could make any difference, and it would take a long time, +and cause a dirty mess. He's the kind who would fight it for spite, or +blackmail. Perhaps later it will come. Now she must not suffer any more. I +love her all the deeper for what she has been through. I want to make her +life happy, make it up to her somehow, if I can." + +The Colonel rose and with an old man's slow step went over to the office +door and locked it. + +"Vickers," he said as he turned around from the door, still averting his +shamed face, "you must be crazy, out of your mind, my son!" + +"No, father," the young man replied calmly; "I was never surer of anything +in my life! I knew it would hurt you and mother,--you can't understand. But +you must trust me in this. It has to be." + +"Why does it have to be?" + +"Because I love her!" he burst out. "Because I want to save her from that +man, from the degradation she's lived in. With me she will have some joy, +at last,--her life, her soul,--oh, father, you can't say these things to +any one! You can't give good reasons." + +The old merchant's face became stern as he replied:-- + +"You wish to do all this for her, and yet you do not mean to marry her." + +"I can't marry her! I would to-day if I could. Some day perhaps we +can,--for the sake of the child it would be better. But that makes no +difference to me. It is the same as marriage for us--" + +"'Doesn't make any difference'--'the same as marriage'--what are you +talking about?" + +The young man tried to find words which would fully express his feeling. He +had come a long way these last hours in his ideas of life; he saw things +naked and clear cut, without dubious shades. But he had to realize now that +what _his_ soul accepted as incontrovertible logic was meaningless to +others. + +"I mean," he said at last slowly, "that this woman is the woman I love. I +care more for her happiness, for her well-being than for anything else in +life. And so no matter how we arrange to live, she is all that a woman can +be to a man, married or not as it may happen." + +"To take another man's wife and live with her!" the Colonel summed up +bitterly. "No, Vick, you don't mean that. You can't do a dirty thing like +that. Think it over!" + +So they argued a little while longer, and finally the old man pleaded with +his son for time, offering to see Mrs. Conry, to help her get a separation +from her husband, to send her abroad with her child,--to all of which +Vickers replied steadily:-- + +"But I love her, father--you forget that! And she needs me now!" + +"Love her!" the old man cried. "Don't call that love!" + +Vickers shut his lips and rose, very white. + +"I must go now. Let's not say any more. We've never had any bitter words +between us, father. You don't understand this--do you think I would hurt +you and mother, if it didn't have to be? I gave up my own life, when it was +only myself at stake; but I cannot give her up--and everything it will mean +to her." + +The Colonel turned away his face and refused to see his son's outstretched +hand. He could not think without a blush that his son should be able to +contemplate this thing. Vickers, as he turned the handle of the door, +recollected something and came back. + +"Oh, you must cancel that stock agreement. I shouldn't want to own it now +that I have quit. The other things, the money, I shall keep. You would like +me to have it, father, and it will be quite enough." + +The old man made a gesture as if to wave aside the money matter. + +"Good-by, father!" he said slowly, tenderly. + +"You'll see your mother?" + +"Yes--I'm going there now." + +Thus father and son parted. + + * * * * * + +Nothing, it seemed to Vickers, after this painful half hour, could be as +miserable as what he had been through, and as a matter of fact his +interview with his mother was comparatively easy. + +To Mrs. Price her son's determination was merely an unexpected outburst of +wild folly, such as happened in other families,--coming rather late in +Vick's life, but by no means irremediable. Vickers had fallen into the +hands of a designing woman, who intended to capture a rich man's son. Her +first thought was that the Colonel would have to buy Mrs. Conry off, as Mr. +Stewart had done in a similar accident that befell Ted Stewart, and when +Vickers finally made it plain to her that his was not that kind of case, +she fell to berating him for the scandal he would create by "trapesing off +to Europe with a singer." Oddly enough that delicate modesty, like a +woman's, which had made it almost impossible for the Colonel to mention the +affair, did not seem to trouble her. To live with another man's wife was in +the Colonel's eyes a sin little short of incest, and more shocking than +many kinds of murder. But his wife, with a deeper comprehension of the +powers of her sex, of the appeal of woman to man, saw in it merely a +weakness that threatened to become a family disgrace. When she found after +an hour's talk that her arguments made no impression, while Vickers sat, +harassed and silent, his head resting on his hands, she burst into tears. + +"It's just like those things you read of in the papers," she sobbed, "those +queer Pittsburg people, who are always doing some nasty thing, and no +decent folks will associate with them." + +"It's not the thing you do, mother; it's the way you do it, the purpose, +the feeling," the young man protested. "And there won't be a scandal, if +that's what's troubling you. You can tell your friends that I have gone +abroad suddenly for my health." + +"Who would believe that? Do you think her husband's going to keep quiet?" +Mrs. Price sniffled, with considerable worldly wisdom. + +"Well, let them believe what they like. They'll forget me in a week." + +"Where are you going?" + +"To Europe, somewhere,--I haven't thought about the place. I'll let you +know." + +"And how about her child?" + +"We shall take her with us." + +"She wants her along, does she?" + +"Of course!" + +Vickers rose impatiently. + +"Good-by, mother." + +She let him kiss her. + +"I shall come to see you sometimes, if you want me to." + +"Oh, you'll be coming back fast enough," she retorted quickly. + +And then she straightened the sofa pillows where he had been sitting and +picked up a book she had been reading. As Vickers went to his room to get a +bag, Isabelle opened the door of her mother's room, where she had been +waiting for him. She put her arms about his neck, as she had that night of +her marriage on the station platform at Grafton, and pressed him tightly to +her. + +"Vick! Vick!" she cried. "That it had to be like this, your love! Like +this!" + +"It had to be, Belle," he answered with a smile. "It comes to us in +different ways, old girl." + +"But you! You!" She led him by the hand to the sofa, where she threw +herself, a white exhausted look coming into her face. He stroked her hair +with the ends of his fingers. Suddenly she half turned, grasping his hand +with both of hers. + +"Can you be happy--really happy?" + +"I think so; but even that makes no difference, perhaps. I should do it all +the same, if I knew it meant no happiness for me." + +She looked at him searchingly, trying to read his heart in his eyes. After +the year of her marriage, knowing now the mystery of human relations, she +wondered whether he might not be right. That precious something, pain or +joy, which was wanting in her union he might find in this forbidden +by-path, in this woman who seemed to her so immeasurably beneath her +brother. She kissed him, and he went away. + +When the hall door clicked, she rose from the lounge and dragged herself to +the window to watch him, holding her breath, her heart beating rapidly, +almost glad that he was strong enough to take his fate in his hands, to +test life, to break the rules, to defy reason! "Vick, dear Vick," she +murmured. + +In the room below Mrs. Price, also, was looking out of the bay window, +watching her son disappear down the avenue. She had not been reading, and +she had heard him come down into the hall, but let him go without another +word. He walked slowly, erect as the Colonel used to walk. Tears dropped +from her eyes,--tears of mortification. For in her heart she knew that he +would come back some day, this woman who had lured him having fallen from +him like a dead leaf. She sat on at the window until the Colonel's figure +appeared in the distance coming up the avenue. His head was bent; he looked +neither to the right nor to the left; and he walked very slowly, like an +old man, dragging his feet after him. He was crushed. It would not have +been thus if he had lost his fortune, the work of all his years. Such a +fate he would have looked in the eye, with raised head.... + +That night Vickers and Stacia Conry left for New York, and a few days later +Mrs. Price read their names in a list of outgoing passengers for Genoa. She +did not show the list to the Colonel, and their son's name was never +mentioned in the house. + +When the people who knew the Prices intimately began to whisper, then +chatter, they said many hard things of Vickers, chiefly that he was a Fool, +a judgment that could not be gainsaid. Nevertheless the heart of a Fool may +be pure. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +Isabelle did not regain her strength after the birth of her child. She lay +nerveless and white, so that her husband, her mother, the Colonel, all +became alarmed. The celebrated accoucheur who had attended her alarmed them +still more. + +"Something's wrong,--she couldn't stand the strain. Oh, it's another case +of American woman,--too finely organized for the plain animal duties. A lot +of my women patients are the same way. They take child-bearing +hard,--damned hard.... What's the matter with them? I don't know!" he +concluded irritably. "She must just go slow until she gets back her +strength." + +She went "slow," but Nature refused to assert itself, to proclaim the will +to live. For months the days crept by with hardly a sign of change in her +condition, and then began the period of doctors. The family physician, who +had a reputation for diagnosis, pronounced her case "anaemia and nervous +debility." "She must be built up,--baths, massage, distraction." Of course +she was not to nurse her child, and the little girl was handed over to a +trained nurse. Then this doctor called in another, a specialist in nerves, +who listened to all that the others said, tapped her here and there, and +wished the opinion of an obstetrical surgeon. After his examination there +was a discussion of the advisability of "surgical interference," and the +conclusion "to wait." + +"It may be a long time--years--before Mrs. Lane fully recovers her tone," +the nerve specialist told the husband. "We must have patience. It would be +a good thing to take her to Europe for a change." + +This was the invariable suggestion that he made to his wealthy patients +when he saw no immediate results from his treatment. It could do no harm, +Europe, and most of his patients liked the prescription. They returned, to +be sure, in many cases in about the same condition as when they left, or +merely rested temporarily,--but of course that was the fault of the +patient. + +When Lane objected that it would be almost impossible for him to leave his +duties for a trip abroad and that he did not like to have his wife go +without him, the specialist advised California:-- + +"A mild climate where she can be out-of-doors and relaxed." + +Isabelle went to California with her mother, the trained nurse, and the +child. But instead of the "mild climate," Pasadena happened to be raw and +rainy. She disliked the hotel, and the hosts of idle, overdressed, and +vulgar women. So her mother brought her back, as we have seen, and then +there was talk of the Virginia Springs, "an excellent spring climate." + +A new doctor was called in, who had his own peculiar regime of sprays and +baths, of subcutaneous medicine, and then a third nerve specialist, who +said, "We must find the right key," and looked as if he might have it in +his office. + +"The right key?" + +"Her combination, the secret of her vitality. We must find it for +her,--distraction, a system of physical exercises, perhaps. But we must +occupy the mind. Those Christian Scientists have an idea, you know,--not +that I recommend their tomfoolery; but we must accomplish their results by +scientific means." And he went away highly satisfied with his liberality of +view.... + +On one vital point the doctors were hopelessly divided. Some thought +Isabelle should have another child, "as soon as may be,"--it was a chance +that Nature might take to right matters. The others strongly dissented: a +child in the patient's present debilitated condition would be criminal. As +these doctors seemed to have the best of the argument, it was decided that +for the present the wife should remain sterile, and the physicians +undertook to watch over the life process, to guard against its asserting +its rights. + +The last illusions of romance seemed to go at this period. The simple old +tale that a man and a woman loving each other marry and have the children +that live within them and come from their mutual love has been rewritten +for the higher classes of American women, with the aid of science. Health, +economic pressure, the hectic struggle to survive in an ambitious world +have altered the simple axioms of nature. Isabelle accepted easily the +judgment of the doctors,--she had known so many women in a like case. Yet +when she referred to this matter in talking to Alice Johnston, she caught +an odd look on her cousin's face. + +"I wonder if they know, the doctors--they seem always to be finding excuses +for women not to have children.... We've been all through that, Steve and +I; and decided we wouldn't have anything to do with it, no matter what +happened. It--tarnishes you somehow, and after all does it help? There's +Lulu Baxter, living in daily fear of having a child because they think they +are too poor. He gets twenty-five hundred from the road--he's under Steve, +you know--and they live in a nice apartment with two servants and +entertain. They are afraid of falling in the social scale, if they should +live differently. But she's as nervous as a witch, never wholly well, and +they'll just go on, as he rises and gets more money, adding to their +expenses. They will never have money enough for children, or only for one, +maybe,--no, I don't believe it pays!" + +"But she's so pretty, and they live nicely," Isabelle protested, and added, +"There are other things to live for besides having a lot of children--" + +"What?" the older woman asked gravely. + +"Your husband"; and thinking of John's present homeless condition, she +continued hastily, "and life itself,--to be some one,--you owe something to +yourself." + +"Yes," Alice assented, smiling,--"if we only knew what it was!" + +"Besides if we were all like you, Alice dear, we should be paupers. Even we +can't afford--" + +"We should be paupers together, then! No, you can't convince me--it's +against Nature." + +"All modern life is against Nature," the young woman retorted glibly; "just +at present I regard Nature as a mighty poor thing." + +She stretched her thin arms behind her head and turned on the lounge. + +"That's why the people who made this country are dying out so rapidly, +giving way before Swedes and Slavs and others,--because those people are +willing to have children." + +"Meantime we have the success!" Isabelle cried languidly. "_Apres nous_ the +Slavs,--we are the flower! An aristocracy is always nourished on +sterility!" + +"Dr. Fuller!" Alice commented.... "So the Colonel is going with you to the +Springs?" + +"Yes, poor old Colonel!--he must get away--he's awfully broken up," and she +added sombrely. "That's one trouble with having children,--you expect them +to think and act like you. You can't be willing to let them be themselves." + +"But, Isabelle!" + +"Oh, I know what you are going to say about Vick. I have heard it over and +over. John has said it. Mother has said it. Father looks it. You needn't +bother to say it, Alice!" She glanced at her cousin mutinously. "John +thought I was partly to blame; that I ought to have been able to control +Vick. He speaks as if the poor boy were insane or drunk or +something--because he did what he did!" + +"And you?" + +Isabelle sat upright, leaning her head thoughtfully on her hands, and +staring with bright eyes at Alice. + +"Do you want to know what I really believe? ... I have done a lot of +thinking these months, all by myself. Well, I admire Vick tremendously; he +had the courage--" + +"Does that take courage?" + +"Yes! For a man like Vickers.... Oh, I suppose she is horrid and not worth +it--I only hope he will never find it out! But to love any one enough to be +willing, to be glad to give up your life for him, for her--why, it is +tremendous, Alice! ... Here is Tots," she broke off as the nurse wheeled +the baby through the hall,--"Miss Marian Lane.... Nurse, cover up her face +with the veil so her ladyship won't get frostbitten," and Isabelle sank +back again with a sigh on the lounge and resumed the thread of her thought. +"And I am not so sure that what John objects to isn't largely the +mess,--the papers, the scandal, the fact they went off without waiting for +a divorce and all that. Of course that wasn't pleasant for respectable folk +like the Lanes and the Prices. But why should Vickers have given up what +seemed to him right, what was his life and hers, just for our prejudices +about not having our names in the papers?" + +"That wasn't all!" + +"Well, I shall always believe in Vick, no matter what comes of it.... +Marriage--the regular thing--doesn't seem to be such a great success with +many people, I know. Perhaps life would be better if more people had Vick's +courage!" + +Isabelle forced her point with an invalid's desire to relieve a wayward +feeling and also a childish wish to shock this good cousin, who saw life +simply and was so sure of herself. Alice Johnston rose with a smile. + +"I hope you will be a great deal stronger when you come back, dear." + +"I shall be--or I shall have an operation. I don't intend to remain in the +noble army of N.P.'s." + +"How is John?" + +"Flourishing and busy--oh, tremendously busy! He might just as well live in +New York or Washington for all I see of him." + +"Steve says he is very clever and successful,--you must be so proud!" + +Isabelle smiled. "Of course! But sometimes I think I should like a +substitute husband, one for everyday use, you know!" + +"There are plenty of that kind!" laughed Alice. "But I don't believe they +would satisfy you wholly." + +"Perhaps not.... How is Steve? Does he like his new work?" + +"Yes," Alice replied without enthusiasm. "He's working very hard, too." + +"Oh, men love it,--it makes them feel important." + +"Did you ever think, Belle, that men have difficulties to meet,--problems +that we never dream of?" + +"Worse than the child-bearing question?" queried Isabelle, kicking out the +folds of her tea-gown with a slippered foot. + +"Well, different; harder, perhaps.... Steve doesn't talk them over as he +used to with me." + +"Too tired. John never talks to me about business. We discuss what the last +doctor thinks, and how the baby is, and whether we'll take the Jackson +house or build or live at the Monopole and go abroad, and Nan Lawton's +latest,--really vital things, you see! Business is such a bore." + +The older woman seemed to have something on her mind and sat down again at +the end of the lounge. + +"By the way," Isabelle continued idly, "did you know that the Falkners were +coming to St. Louis to live? John found Rob a place in the terminal work. +It isn't permanent, but Bessie was crazy to come, and it may be an opening. +She is a nice thing,--mad about people." + +"But, Isabelle," her cousin persisted, "don't you want to know the things +that make your husband's life,--that go down to the roots?" + +"If you mean business, no, I don't. Besides they are confidential matters, +I suppose. He couldn't make me understand...." + +"They have to face the fight, the men; make the decisions that count--for +character." + +"Of course,--John attends to that side and I to mine. We should be treading +on each other's toes if I tried to decide his matters for him!" + +"But when they are questions of right and wrong--" + +"Don't worry. Steve and John are all right. Besides they are only officers. +You don't believe all that stuff in the magazines about Senator Thomas and +the railroads? John says that is a form of modern blackmail." + +"I don't know what to believe," the older woman replied. "I know it's +terrible,--it's like war!" + +"Of course it's war, and men must do the fighting." + +"And fight fair." + +"Of course,--as fair as the others. What are you driving at?" + +"I wonder if the A. and P. always fights fair?" + +"It isn't a charitable organization, my dear.... But Steve and John are +just officers. They don't have to decide. They take their orders from +headquarters and carry them out." + +"No matter what they are?" + +"Naturally,--that's what officers are for, isn't it? If they don't want to +carry them out, they must resign." + +"But they can't always resign," + +"Why not?" + +"Because of you and me and the children!" + +"Oh, don't worry about it! They don't worry. That's what I like a man for. +If he's good for anything, he isn't perpetually pawing himself over." + +This did not seem wholly to satisfy Alice, but she leaned over Isabelle and +kissed her:-- + +"Only get well, my dear, and paw some of your notions over,--it won't do +you any harm!" + +That evening when the Lanes were alone, after they had discussed the topics +that Isabelle had enumerated, with the addition of the arrangements for the +trip to the Springs, Isabelle asked casually:-- + +"John, is it easy to be honest in business?" + +"That depends," he replied guardedly, "on the business and the man. Why?" + +"You don't believe what those magazine articles say about the Senator and +the others?" + +"I don't read them." + +"Why?" + +"Because the men who write them don't understand the facts, and what they +know they distort--for money." + +"Um," she observed thoughtfully. "But are there facts--like those? _You_ +know the facts." + +"I don't know all of them." + +"Are those you know straight or crooked?" she asked, feeling considerable +interest in the question, now that it was started. + +"I don't know what you would mean by crooked,--what is it you want to +know?" + +"Are you honest?" she asked with mild curiosity. "I mean in the way of +railroad business. Of course I know you are other ways." + +Lane smiled at her childlike seriousness. + +"I always try to do what seems to me right under the circumstances." + +"But the circumstances are sometimes--queer?" + +"The circumstances are usually complex." + +"The circumstances are complex," she mused aloud. "I'll tell Alice that." + +"What has Alice to do with it?" + +"She seems bothered about the circumstances--that's all,--the circumstances +and Steve." + +"I guess Steve can manage the circumstances by himself," he replied coldly, +turning over the evening paper. "She probably reads the magazines and +believes all she hears." + +"All intelligent women read the magazines--and believe what they hear or +else what their husbands tell them," she rejoined flippantly. Presently, as +Lane continued to look over the stock page of the paper, she observed:-- + +"Don't you suppose that in Vickers's case the circumstances may have +been--complex?" + +Lane looked at her steadily. + +"I can't see what that has to do with the question." + +"Oh?" she queried mischievously. He considered the working of her mind as +merely whimsical, but she had a sense of logical triumph over the man. +Apparently he would make allowances of "circumstances" in business, his +life, that he would not admit in private affairs. As he kissed her and was +turning out the light, before joining the Colonel for another cigar, she +asked:-- + +"Supposing that you refused to be involved in circumstances that +were--complex? What would happen?" + +"What a girl!" he laughed cheerfully. "For one thing I think we should not +be going to the Springs to-morrow in a private car, or buying the Jackson +house--or any other. Now put it all out of your head and have a good rest." + +He kissed her again, and she murmured wearily:-- + +"I'm so useless,--they should kill things like me! How can you love me?" + +She was confident that he did love her, that like so many husbands he had +accepted her invalidism cheerfully, with an unconscious chivalry for the +wife who instead of flowering forth in marriage had for the time being +withered. His confidence, in her sinking moods like this, that it would all +come right, buoyed her up. And John was a wise man as well as a good +husband; the Colonel trusted him, admired him. Alice Johnston's doubts +slipped easily from her mind. Nevertheless, there were now two subjects of +serious interest that husband and wife would always avoid,--Vickers, and +business honesty! + +She lay there feeling weak and forlorn before the journey, preoccupied with +herself. These days she was beset with a tantalizing sense that life was +slipping past her just beyond her reach, flowing like a mighty river to +issues that she was not permitted to share. And while she was forced to lie +useless on the bank, her youth, her own life, was somehow running out, too. +Just what it was that she was missing she could not say,--something +alluring, something more than her husband's activity, than her child, +something that made her stretch out longing hands in the dark.... She would +not submit to invalidism. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +The Virginia mountains made a narrow horizon of brilliant blue. On their +lower slopes the misty outlines of early spring had begun with the budding +trees. Here and there the feathery forest was spotted by dashes of pink +coolness where the wild peach and plum had blossomed, and the faint blue of +the rhododendron bushes mounted to the sky-line. The morning was brilliant +after a rain and the fresh mountain air blew invigoratingly, as Isabelle +left the car on her husband's arm. With the quick change of mood of the +nervous invalid she already felt stronger, more hopeful. There was color in +her thin face, and her eyes had again the vivacious sparkle that had been +so largely her charm. + +"We must find some good horses," she said to her father as they approached +the hotel cottage which had been engaged; "I want to get up in those hills. +Margaret promised to come for a week.... Oh, I am going to be all right +now!" + +The hotel was one of those huge structures dropped down in the mountains or +by the sea to provide for the taste for fresh air, the need for +recuperation, of a wealthy society that crams its pleasures and its +business into small periods,--days and hours. It rambled over an acre or +two and provided as nearly as possible the same luxuries and occupations +that its frequenters had at home. At this season it was crowded with rich +people, who had sought the balm of early spring in the Virginia mountains +after their weeks of frantic activity in the cities, instead of taking the +steamers to Europe. They were sitting, beautifully wrapped in furs, on the +long verandas, or smartly costumed were setting out for the links or for +horseback excursions. The Colonel and Lane quickly discovered acquaintances +in the broker's office where prominent "operators" were sitting, smoking +cigars and looking at the country through large plate-glass windows, while +the ticker chattered within hearing. There was music in the hall, and fresh +arrivals with spotless luggage poured in from the trains. This mountain inn +was a little piece of New York moved out into the country. + +But it was peaceful on the piazza of the cottage, which was somewhat +removed from the great caravansary, where Isabelle lay and watched the blue +recesses of the receding hills. Here her husband found her when it was time +to say good-by. + +"You'll be very well off," he remarked, laying his hand affectionately on +his wife's arm. "The Stantons are here--you remember him at Torso?--and the +Blakes from St. Louis, and no doubt a lot more people your father +knows,--so you won't be lonely. I have arranged about the horses and +selected a quiet table for you." + +"That is very good of you,--I don't want to see people," she replied, her +eyes still on the hills. "When will you be back?" + +"In a week or ten days I can run up again and stay for a couple of days, +over Sunday." + +"You'll telegraph about Marian?" + +"Of course." + +And bending over to kiss her forehead, he hurried away. It seemed to her +that he was always leaving, always going somewhere. When he was away, he +wrote or telegraphed her each day as a matter of course, and sent her +flowers every other day, and brought her some piece of jewellery when he +went to New York. Yes, he was very fond of her, she felt, and his was a +loyal nature,--she never need fear that in these many absences from his +wife he might become entangled with women, as other men did. He was not +that kind.... + +The Colonel crossed the lawn in the direction of the golf links with a +party of young old men. It was fortunate that the Colonel had become +interested, almost boyishly, in golf; for since that morning when his son +had left him he had lost all zest for business. A year ago he would never +have thought it possible to come away like this for a month in the busy +season. To Isabelle it was sad and also curious the way he took this matter +of Vickers. He seemed to feel that he had but one child now, had put his +boy quite out of his mind. He was gradually arranging his affairs--already +there was talk of incorporating the hardware business and taking in new +blood. And he had aged still more. But he was so tremendously vital,--the +Colonel! No one could say he was heart-broken. He took more interest than +ever in public affairs, like the General Hospital, and the Park Board. But +he was different, as Isabelle felt,--abstracted, more silent, apparently +revising his philosophy of life at an advanced age, and that is always +painful. If she had only given him a man child, something male and vital +like himself! He was fond of John, but no one could take the place of his +own blood. That, too, was a curious limitation in the eyes of the younger +generation. + +"Isabelle!" + +She was wakened from her brooding by a soft Southern voice, and perceived +Margaret Pole coming up the steps. With the grasp of Margaret's small +hands, the kiss, all the years since St. Mary's seemed to fall away. The +two women drew off and looked at each other, Margaret smiling +enigmatically, understanding that Isabelle was trying to read the record of +the years, the experience of marriage on her. Coloring slightly, she turned +away and drew up a chair. + +"Is your husband with you?" Isabelle asked. "I do so want to meet him." + +"No; I left him at my father's with the children. He's very good with the +children," she added with a mocking smile, "and he doesn't like little +trips. He doesn't understand how I can get up at five in the morning and +travel all day across country to see an old friend.... Men don't understand +things, do you think?" + +"So you are going abroad to live?" + +"Yes," Margaret answered without enthusiasm. "We are going to study +music,--the voice. My husband doesn't like business!" + +Isabelle had heard that Mr. Pole, agreeable as he was, had not been +successful in business. But the Poles and the Lawtons were all comfortably +off, and it was natural that he should follow his tastes. + +"He has a very good voice," Margaret added. + +"How exciting--to change your whole life like that!" Isabelle exclaimed, +fired by the prospect of escape from routine, from the known. + +"Think so?" Margaret remarked in a dull voice. "Well, perhaps. Tell me how +you are--everything." + +And they began to talk, and yet carefully avoided what was uppermost in the +minds of both,--'How has it been with you? How has marriage been? Has it +given you all that you looked for? Are you happy?' For in spite of all the +education, the freedom so much talked about for women, that remains the +central theme of their existence,--the emotional and material satisfaction +of their natures through marriage. Margaret Pole was accounted intellectual +among women, with bookish tastes, thoughtful, and she knew many women who +had been educated in colleges. "They are all like us," she once said to +Isabelle; "just like us. They want to marry a man who will give them +everything, and they aren't any wiser in their choice, either. The only +difference is that a smaller number of them have the chance to marry, and +when they can't be married, they have something besides cats and maiden +aunts to fall back upon. But interests in common with their husbands, +intellectual interests,--rubbish! A man who amounts to anything is always a +specialist, and he doesn't care for feminine amateurishness. An +acquaintance with Dante and the housing of the poor doesn't broaden the +breakfast table, not a little bit." + +When Margaret Pole talked in this strain, men thought her intelligent and +women cynical. Isabelle felt that this cynicism had grown upon her. It +appeared in little things, as when she said: "I can stay only a week. I +must see to breaking up the house and a lot of business. We shall never +sail if I don't go back and get at it. Men are supposed to be practical and +attend to the details, but they don't if they can get out of them." When +Isabelle complimented her on her pretty figure, Margaret said with a +mocking grimace: "Yes, the figure is there yet. The face goes first +usually." Isabelle had to admit that Margaret's delicate, girlish face had +grown strangely old and grave. The smile about the thin lips was there, but +it was a mocking or a wistful smile. The blue eyes were deeper underneath +the high brow. Life was writing its record on this fine face,--a record not +easily read, however. They fell to talking over the St. Mary's girls. + +"Aline,--have you seen much of her?" Margaret asked. + +"Not as much as I hoped to,--I have been so useless," Isabelle replied. +"She's grown queer!" + +"Queer?" + +"She is rather dowdy, and they live in such a funny way,--always in a mess. +Of course they haven't much money, but they needn't be so--squalid,--the +children and the mussy house and all." + +"Aline doesn't care for things," Margaret observed. + +"But one must care enough to be clean! And she has gone in for fads,--she +has taken to spinning and weaving and designing jewellery and I don't know +what." + +"That is her escape," Margaret explained. + +"Escape? It must be horrid for her husband and awful for the children." + +"What would you have her do? Scrub and wash and mend and keep a tidy house? +That would take all the poetry out of Aline, destroy her personality. Isn't +it better for her husband and for the children that she should keep herself +alive and give them something better than a good housewife?" + +"Keep herself alive by making weird cloths and impossible bracelets?" + +Margaret laughed at Isabelle's philistine horror of the Goring household, +and amused herself with suggesting more of the philosophy of the +Intellectuals, the creed of Woman's Independence. She pointed out that +Aline did not interfere with Goring's pursuit of his profession though it +might not interest her or benefit her. Why should Goring interfere with +Aline's endeavors to develop herself, to be something more than a mother +and a nurse? + +"She has kept something of her own soul,--that is it!" + +"Her own soul!" mocked Isabelle. "If you were to take a meal with them, you +would wish there was less soul, and more clean table napkins." + +"My dear little _bourgeoise_," Margaret commented with amusement, "you must +get a larger point of view. The housewife ideal is doomed. Women won't +submit to it,--intelligent ones. And Goring probably likes Aline better as +she is than he would any competent wife of the old sort." + +"I don't believe any sane man likes to see his children dirty, and never +know where to find a clean towel,--don't tell me!" + +"Then men must change their characters," Margaret replied vaguely; "we +women have been changing our characters for centuries to conform to men's +desires. It's time that the men adjusted themselves to us." + +"I wonder what John would say if I told him he must change his character," +mused Isabelle. + +"There is Cornelia Woodyard," Margaret continued; "she combines the two +ideals--but she is very clever." + +"We never thought so at St. Mary's." + +"That's because we judged her by woman's standards, sentimental +ones,--old-fashioned ones. But she is New." + +"How new?" asked Isabelle, who felt that she had been dwelling in a dark +place the past three years. + +"Why, she made up her mind just what she wanted out of life,--a certain +kind of husband, a certain kind of married life, a certain set of +associates,--and she's got just what she planned. She isn't an opportunist +like most of us, who take the husbands we marry because they are there, we +don't know why, and take the children they give us because they come, and +live and do what turns up in the circumstances chosen for us by the Male. +No, Conny is very clever!" + +"But how?" + +"Eugene Woodyard is not a rich man,--Conny was not after money,--but he is +a clever lawyer, well connected,--in with a lot of interesting people, and +has possibilities. Conny saw those and has developed them,--that has been +her success. You see she combines the old and the new. She makes the mould +of their life, but she works through him. As a result she has just what she +wants, and her husband adores her,--he is the outward and visible symbol of +Conny's inward and material strength!" + +Isabelle laughed, and Margaret continued in her pleasant drawl, painting +the Woodyard firmament. + +"She understood her man better than he did himself. She knew that he would +never be a great money-getter, hadn't the mental or the physical +qualifications for it. So she turns him deftly into a reformer, a kind of +gentlemanly politician. She'll make him Congressman or better,--much +better! Meantime she has given him a delightful home, one of the nicest I +know,--on a street down town near a little park, where the herd does not +know enough to live. And there Conny receives the best picked set of people +I ever see. It is all quite wonderful!" + +"And we thought her coarse," mused Isabelle. + +"Perhaps she is,--I don't think she is fine. But a strong hand is rarely +fine. I don't think she would hesitate to use any means to arrive,--and +that is Power, my dear little girl!" + +Margaret Pole rose, the enigmatic smile on her lips. + +"I must leave you now to your nap and the peace of the hills," she said +lightly. "We'll meet at luncheon. By the way, I ran across a cousin of mine +coming in on the train,--a Virginian cousin, which means that he is close +enough to ask favors when he wants them. He wishes to meet you,--he is a +great favorite of the Woodyards, of Conny, I should say,--Tom Cairy.... He +was at college with your brother, I think. I will bring him over in the +afternoon if you say so. He's amusing, Thomas; but I don't vouch for him. +Good-by, girl." + +Isabelle watched Margaret Pole cross the light green of the lawn, walking +leisurely, her head raised towards the mountains. 'She is not happy,' +thought Isabelle. 'There is something wrong in her marriage. I wonder if it +is always so!' Margaret had given her so much to think about, with her +sharp suggestions of strange, new views, that she felt extraordinarily +refreshed. And Margaret, her eyes on the blue hills, was thinking, 'She is +still the girl,--she doesn't know herself yet, does not know life!' Her +lips smiled wistfully, as though to add: 'But she is eager. She will have +to learn, as we all do.' Thus the two young women, carefully avoiding any +reference to the thought nearest their hearts, discovered in a brief half +hour what each wanted to know.... + +After the noisy luncheon, with its interminable variety of food, in the +crowded, hot dining room, Isabelle and Margaret with Cairy sought refuge in +one of the foot-paths that led up into the hills. Cairy dragged his left +leg with a perceptible limp. He was slight, blond hair with auburn tinge, +smooth shaven, with appealing eyes that, like Margaret's, were recessed +beneath delicate brows. He had pleased Isabelle by talking to her about +Vickers, whom he had known slightly at the university, talking warmly and +naturally, as if nothing had happened to Vickers. Now he devoted himself to +her quite personally, while Margaret walked on ahead. Cairy had a way of +seeing but one woman at a time, no matter what the circumstances might be, +because his emotional horizon was always limited. That was one reason why +he was liked so much by women. He had a good deal to say about the +Woodyards, especially Conny. + +"She is so sure in her judgments," he said. "I always show her everything I +write!" (He had already explained that he was a literary "jobber," as he +called it, at the Springs to see a well-known Wall Street man for an +article on "the other side" that he was preparing for _The People's +Magazine_, and also hinted that his ambitions rose above his magazine +efforts.) + +"But I did not know that Conny was literary," Isabelle remarked in +surprise. + +The young Southerner smiled at her simplicity. + +"I don't know that she is what _you_ mean by literary; perhaps that is the +reason she is such a good judge. She knows what people want to read, at +least what the editors think they want and will pay for. If Con--Mrs. +Woodyard likes a thing, I know I shall get a check for it. If she throws it +down, I might as well save postage stamps." + +"A valuable friend," Margaret called back lightly, "for a struggling man of +letters!" + +"Rather," Cairy agreed. "You see," turning to Isabelle again, "that sort of +judgment is worth reams of literary criticism." + +"It's practical." + +"Yes, that is just what she is,--the genius of the practical; it's an +instinct with her. That is why she can give really elaborate dinners in her +little house, and you have the feeling that there are at least a dozen +servants where they ought to be, and all that." + +From the Woodyards they digressed to New York and insensibly to Cairy's +life there. Before they had turned back for tea Isabelle knew that the lame +young Southerner had written a play which he hoped to induce some actress +to take, and that meantime he was supporting himself in the various ways +that modern genius has found as a substitute for Grub Street. He had also +told her that New York was the only place one could live in, if one was +interested in the arts, and that in his opinion the drama was the coming +art of America,--"real American drama with blood in it"; and had said +something about the necessity of a knowledge of life, "a broad +understanding of the national forces," if a man were to write anything +worth while. + +"You mean dinner-parties?" Margaret asked at this point.... + +When he left the women, he had arranged to ride with Isabelle. + +"It's the only sport I can indulge in," he said, referring to his physical +infirmity, "and I don't get much of it in New York." + +As he limped away across the lawn, Margaret asked mischievously:-- + +"Well, what do you think of Cousin Thomas? He lets you know a good deal +about himself all at once." + +"He is so interesting--and appealing, don't you think so, with those eyes? +Isn't it a pity he is lame?" + +"I don't know about that. He's used that lameness of his very effectively. +It's procured him no end of sympathy, and sympathy is what Thomas +likes,--from women. He will tell you all about it some time,--how his negro +nurse was frightened by a snake and dropped him on a stone step when he was +a baby." + +"We don't have men like him in St. Louis," Isabelle reflected aloud; "men +who write or do things that are really interesting--it is all business or +gossip. I should like to see Conny,--it must be exciting to live in New +York, and be somebody!" + +"Come and try it; you will, I suppose?" + +In spite of Margaret's gibes at her distant cousin, Isabelle enjoyed Cairy. +He was the kind of man she had rarely seen and never known: by birth a +gentleman, by education and ambition a writer, with a distinct social sense +and the charm of an artist. In spite of his poverty he had found the means +to run about the world--the habited part of it--a good deal, and had always +managed to meet the right people,--the ones "whose names mean something." +He was of the parasite species, but of the higher types. To Isabelle his +rapid talk, about plays, people, pictures, the opera, books, was a +revelation of some of that flowing, stream of life which she felt she was +missing. And he gave her the pleasant illusion of "being worth while." The +way he would look at her as he rolled a cigarette on the veranda steps, +awaiting her least word, flattered her woman's sympathy. When he left for +Washington, going, as he said, "where the _People's_ call me," she missed +him distinctly. + +"I hope I shall meet him again!" + +"You will," Margaret replied. "Thomas is the kind one meets pretty often if +you are his sort. And I take it you are!" + +Isabelle believed that Margaret Pole was jealous of her young cousin or +piqued because of a sentimental encounter in their youth. Cairy had hinted +at something of this kind. Margaret patted Isabella's pretty head. + +"My little girl," she mocked, "how wonderful the world is, and all the +creatures in it!" + + * * * * * + +From this month's visit at the Springs the Colonel got some good golf, Mrs. +Price a vivid sense of the way people threw their money about these days +("They say that Wall Street broker gave the head waiter a hundred dollar +bill when he left!"). And Isabelle had absorbed a miscellaneous assortment +of ideas, the dominant one being that intelligent Americans who really +wished to have interesting lives went East to live, particularly to New +York. And incidentally there was inserted in the nether layers of her +consciousness the belief that the world was changing its ideas about women +and marriage, "and all that." She desired eagerly to be in the current of +these new ideas. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +"What makes a happy marriage?" Rob Falkner queried in his brutal and +ironical mood, which made his wife shiver for the proprieties of pleasant +society. It was at one of Bessie's famous Torso suppers, when the Lanes and +Darnells were present. + +"A good cook and a good provider," Lane suggested pleasantly, to keep the +topic off conversational reefs. + +"A husband who thinks everything you do just right!" sighed Bessie. + +"Plenty of money and a few children--for appearances," some one threw in. + +Isabelle remarked sagely, "A husband who knows what is best for you in the +big things, and a wife who does what is best in the small ones." + +"Unity of Purpose--Unity of Souls," Tom Darnell announced in his oratorical +voice, with an earnestness that made the party self-conscious. His wife +said nothing, and Falkner summed up cynically:-- + +"You've won, Lane! The American husband must be a good provider, but it +doesn't follow that the wife must be a good cook. Say a good entertainer, +and there you have a complete formula of matrimony: PROVIDER (Hustler, +Money-getter, Liberal) and ENTERTAINER (A woman pretty, charming, social)." + +"Here's to the Falkner household,--the perfect example!" + +Thus the talk drifted off with a laugh into a discussion of masculine +deficiencies and feminine endurances. Isabelle, looking back with the +experience of after years, remembered this "puppy-dog" conversation. How +young they all were and how they played with ideas! Bessie, also, +remembered the occasion, with an injured feeling. On the way home that +night Lane had remarked to his wife:-- + +"Falkner is a queer chap,--he was too personal to-night." + +"I suppose it is hard on him; Bessie is rather wilful and extravagant. He +looked badly to-night. And he told me he had to take an early train to +examine some new work." + +Lane shrugged his shoulders, as does the man of imperturbable will, perfect +digestion, and constant equilibrium, for the troubles of a weaker vessel. + +"If he doesn't like what his wife does, he should have character enough to +control her. Besides he should have known all that before he married!" + +Isabelle smiled at this piece of masculine complacency,--as if a man could +know any essential fact about a woman from the way she did her hair to the +way she spent money before he had lived with her! + +"I do hope he will get a better place," Isabelle remarked good-naturedly. +"It would do them both so much good." + +As we have seen, Falkner's chance came at last through Lane, who +recommended him to the A. and P. engineer in charge of the great terminal +works that the road had undertaken in St. Louis. The salary of the new +position was four thousand dollars a year,--a very considerable advance +over the Torso position, and the work gave Falkner an opportunity such as +he had never had before. The railroad system had other large projects in +contemplation also. + +"Bessie has written me such a letter,--the child!" Isabelle told her +husband. "You would think they had inherited a million. And yet she seems +sad to leave Torso, after all the ragging she gave the place. She has a +good word to say even for Mrs. Fraser!" + +Bessie Falkner was one of those who put down many small roots wherever +chance places them. She had settled into Torso more solidly than she knew +until she came to pull up her roots and put them down in a large, strange +city. "We won't know any one there," she said dolefully to her Torso +friends. "The Lanes, of course; but they are such grand folk now--and +Isabella has all her old friends about her." Nevertheless, it scarcely +entered her mind to remain "in this prairie village all our days." Bessie +had to the full the American ambition to move on and up as far as +possible.... + +Fortune, having turned its attention to the Falkners, seemed determined to +smile on them this year. An uncle of Bessie's died on his lonely ranch in +Wyoming, and when the infrequent local authorities got around to settling +his affairs, they found that he had left his little estate to Elizabeth +Bissell, who was now Mrs. Robert Falkner of Torso. The lonely old rancher, +it seemed, had remembered the pretty, vivacious blond girl of eighteen, who +had taken the trouble to show him the sights of Denver the one time he had +visited his sister ten years before. Bessie, amused at his eccentric +appearance, had tried to give "Uncle Billy" a good time. "Uncle Billy," she +would say, "you must do this,--you will remember it all your life. Uncle +Billy, won't you lunch with me down town to-day? You must go to the +theatre, while you are here. Uncle, I am going to make you a necktie!" So +she had chirped from morning until night, flattering, coaxing, and also +making sport of the old man. "Bess has a good heart," her mother said to +Uncle Bill, and it must be added Bessie also had a woman's instinct to +please a possible benefactor. Uncle Billy when he returned to the lonely +ranch wrote a letter to his pretty niece, which Bessie neglected to answer. +Nevertheless, when Uncle Billy made ready to die, he bestowed all that he +had to give upon the girl who had smiled on him once. + +Thus Bessie's purring good nature bore fruit, Before the property could be +sold, the most imaginative ideas about her inheritance filled Bessie's +dreams. Day and night she planned what they would do with this +fortune,--everything from a year in Europe to new dresses for the children! +When it came finally in the form of a draft for thirteen thousand and some +odd dollars, her visions were dampened for a time,--so many of her castles +could not be acquired for thirteen thousand and some odd dollars. + +Falkner was for investing the legacy in Freke's mines, which, he had good +reason to believe, were better than gold mines. But when Bessie learned +that the annual dividends would only be about twelve hundred dollars, she +demurred. That was too slow. Secretly she thought that "if Rob were only +clever about money," he might in a few years make a real fortune out of +this capital. There were men she had known in Denver, as she told her +husband, "who hadn't half of that and who had bought mines that had brought +them hundreds of thousands of dollars." To which remark, Rob had replied +curtly that he was not in that sort of business and that there were many +more suckers than millionnaires in Denver--and elsewhere. + +So, finally, after paying some Torso debts, it came down to buying a house +in St. Louis; for the flat that they had first rented was crowded and +Bessie found great difficulty in keeping a servant longer than a week. Rob +thought that it would be more prudent to rent a house for six to nine +hundred than to buy outright or build, until they saw how his work for the +A. and P. developed. But Bessie wanted a home,--a house of her own. So they +began the wearisome search for a house. Bessie already had her views about +the desirable section to live in,--outside the smoke in one of "those +private estate parks,"--where the Lanes were thinking of settling. (A few +months had been sufficient for Bessie to orientate herself socially in her +new surroundings.) "That's where all the nice young people are going," she +announced. In vain Rob pointed out that there were no houses to be bought +for less than eighteen thousand in this fashionable neighborhood. "You +never dare!" she retorted reproachfully. "You have to take risks if you +want anything in this world! How many houses in St. Louis that aren't +mortgaged do you suppose there are?" + +"But there is only about eleven thousand of Uncle Billy's money left, and +those houses in Buena Vista Park cost from eighteen to twenty-four thousand +dollars." + +"And they have only one bath-room," sighed Bessie. + +The summer went by in "looking," and the more houses they looked at the +less satisfied was Bessie. She had in the foreground of her mind an image +of the Lanes' Torso house, only "more artistic"; but Falkner convinced her +that such a house in St. Louis would cost thirty thousand dollars at the +present cost of building materials. + +"It is so difficult," she explained to Mrs. Price, "to find anything small +and your own, don't you know?" She arched her brows prettily over her +dilemma. Mrs. Price, who, in spite of the fascination that Bessie exerted, +had prim ideas "of what young persons in moderate circumstances" should do, +suggested that the Johnstons were buying a very good house in the new +suburb of Bryn Mawr on the installment plan. + +"As if we could bury ourselves in that swamp,--we might as well stay in +Torso!" Bessie said to her husband disgustedly. + +Falkner reflected that the train service to Bryn Mawr made it easier of +access to his work than the newer residential quarter inside the city which +Bessie was considering. But that was the kind of remark he had learned not +to make.... + +In the end it came to their building. For Bessie found nothing "small and +pretty, and just her own," with three bath-rooms, two maids' rooms, etc., +in any "possible" neighborhood. She had met at a dinner-party an attractive +young architect, who had recently come from the East to settle in St. +Louis. Mr. Bowles prepared some water-color sketches which were so pretty +that she decided to engage him. With misgivings Rob gave his consent. A +narrow strip of frontage was found next a large house in the desired +section. They had to pay three thousand dollars for the strip of land. Mr. +Bowles thought the house could be built for eight or ten thousand dollars, +depending on the price of materials, which seemed to be going up with +astonishing rapidity. + +Then Bessie plunged into plans. It was a gusty March day when the Falkners +went out with the architect to consider the lot, and spent an afternoon +trying to decide how to secure the most sun. Falkner, weary of the whole +matter, listened to the glib young architect. Another windy day in April +they returned to the lot to look at the excavation. The contracts were not +yet signed. Lumber had gone soaring, and there was a strike in the brick +business, the kind of brick they had chosen being unobtainable, while +hardware seemed unaccountably precious. Already it was impossible to build +the house for less than twelve thousand, even after sacrificing Bessie's +private bath. Falkner had consented to the mortgage,--"only four thousand," +Bessie said; "we'll save our rent and pay it off in a year or two!" +Bessie's periods of economy were always just dawning! + +Falkner, looking at the contractor's tool shed, had a sense of depressing +fatality. From the moment that the first spadeful of ground had been dug, +it seemed to him that the foundation of his domestic peace had begun to +crumble. But this depression was only an attack of the grippe, he said to +himself, and he tried to take an interest in the architect's description of +how they should terrace the front of the lot.... + +Of course, as the novelists tell us, the man of Strong Will, of Mature +Character, of Determined Purpose, would not have allowed his wife to +entangle him in this house business (or in matrimony, perhaps, in the first +instance)! But if society were composed of men of S. W., M. C., and D. P., +there would be no real novels,--merely epics of Slaughter and Success, of +Passionate Love and Heroic Accomplishment.... At this period Falkner still +loved his wife,--wanted to give her every gratification within his power, +and some just beyond,--though that love had been strained by five hard +years, when her efforts as an economic partner had not been intelligent. +(Bessie would have scorned such an unromantic term as "economic partner.") +They still had their times of amiable understanding, of pleasant +comradeship, even of passionate endearment. But by the time the young +architect's creation at number 26 Buena Vista Pleasance had become their +residence, that love was in a moribund condition.... Yet after all, as +Bessie sometimes reminded him, it was her money that was building the +house, at least the larger part of it; and further it was all her life that +was to be spent in it, presumably. The woman's home was her world. + +Thus, in the division that had come between them, the man began to consider +his wife's rights, what he owed to her as a woman that he had taken under +his protection,--a very dangerous state of mind in matrimony. If he had +discovered that her conception of the desirable end of life was not his, he +must respect her individuality, and so far as possible provide for her that +which she seemed to need. The faithful husband, or dray-horse +interpretation of marriage, this. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +If it takes Strong Will, Mature Character, and Determined Purpose to live +effectively, it takes all of that and more--humor and patience--to build a +house in America, unless one can afford to order his habitation as he does +a suit of clothes and spend the season in Europe until the contractor and +the architect have fought it out between them. But Bessie was a young woman +of visions. She had improved all her opportunities to acquire taste,--the +young architect said she had "very intelligent ideas." And he, Bertram +Bowles, fresh from Paris, with haunting memories of chateaux and villas, +and a knowledge of what the leading young architects of the East were +turning out, had visions too, in carrying out this first real commission +that he had received in St. Louis. "Something _chic_, with his stamp on +it," he said.... + +The hours with the contractors to persuade them that they could do +something they had never seen done before! The debates over wood finish, +and lumber going up while you talked! The intricacies of heating, plumbing, +electric lighting, and house telephones--when all men are discovered to be +liars! Falkner thought it would be easier to lay out the entire terminal +system of the A. and P. than to build one "small house, pretty and just +your own, you know." Occasionally even Bessie and the polite Bertram Bowles +fell out, when Falkner was called in to arbitrate. Before the question of +interior decoration came up the house had already cost fourteen thousand +dollars, which would necessitate a mortgage of six thousand dollars at +once. Here Falkner put his foot down,--no more; they would live in it with +bare walls. Bessie pleaded and sulked,--"only another thousand." And "not +to be perfectly ridiculous," Falkner was forced to concede another +thousand. "Not much when you consider," as the architect said to Bessie.... +Time dragged on, and the house was not ready. The apartment hotel into +which they had moved was expensive and bad for the children. In June +Falkner insisted on moving into the unfinished house, with carpenters, +painters, decorators still hanging on through the sultry summer months. + +"I met your poor little friend Mrs. Falkner at Sneeson's this morning," Nan +Lawton said to Isabelle. "She was looking over hangings and curtains for +her house.... She is nothing but a bag of bones, she's so worn. That +husband of hers must be a brute to let her wear herself all out. She was +telling me some long yarn about their troubles with the gas men,--very +amusing and bright. She is a charming little thing." + +"Yes," Isabelle replied; "I am afraid the house has been too much for them +both." + +She had been Bessie's confidant in all her troubles, and sympathized--who +could not sympathize with Bessie?--though she thought her rather foolish to +undertake so much. + +"We'll simply have to have rugs, I tell Rob," Bessie said to her. "He is in +such bad humor these days, and says we must go on the bare floors or use +the old Torso carpets. Fancy!" + +And Isabelle said, as she was expected to say, "Of course you will have to +have rugs. They are having a sale at Moritz's,--some beauties and cheap." + +Yet she had a sneaking sympathy for Falkner. Isabelle did not suspect that +she herself was the chief undoing of the Falkner household, nor did any one +else suspect it. It was Bessie's ideal of Isabelle that rode her hard from +the beginning of her acquaintance with the Lanes. And it was Isabelle who +very naturally introduced them to most of the people they had come to know +in their new world. Isabelle herself had much of her mother's thrift and +her father's sagacity in practical matters. She would never have done what +Bessie was doing in Bessie's circumstances. But in her own circumstances +she did unconsciously a great deal more,--and she disliked to fill her mind +with money matters, considering it vulgar and underbred to dwell long on +them. The rich and the very wise can indulge in these aristocratic +refinements! Isabelle, to be sure, felt flattered by Bessie's admiring +discipleship,--who does not like to lead a friend? She never dreamed of her +evil influence. The power of suggestion, subtle, far-reaching, ever working +on plastic human souls! Society evolves out of these petty reactions.... + +The rugs came. + +"We simply have to have rugs,--the house calls for it," asserted Bessie, +using one of Mr. Bertram Bowles's favorite expressions. + +"My purse doesn't," growled Falkner. + +Nevertheless Bessie selected some pretty cheap rugs at Moritz's, which +could be had on credit. In the great rug room of the department store she +met Alice Johnston, who was looking at a drugget. The two women exchanged +experiences as the perspiring clerks rolled and rerolled rugs. + +"Yes, we shall like Bryn Mawr," Mrs. Johnston said, "now that the foliage +covers up the tin cans and real estate signs. The schools are really very +good, and there is plenty of room for the boys to make rough house in. We +are to have a garden another year.... Oh, yes, it is rural middle +class,--that's why I can get drugget for the halls." + +Bessie thought of her pretty house and shuddered. + +"We are planning to call and see the house--Isabelle says it's +wonderful--but it will have to be on a Sunday--the distance--" + +"Can't you come next Sunday for luncheon? I will ask Isabelle and her +husband," Bessie interrupted hospitably, proud to show off her new toy. + +And on Sunday they all had a very good time and the new "toy" was much +admired, although the paint was still sticky,--the painter had been +optimistic when he took the contract and had tried to save himself +later,--the colors wrong, and the furniture, which had done well enough in +Torso, looked decidedly shabby. + +"It's the prettiest house I know," Isabelle said warmly, and Bessie felt +repaid. + +She was very tired, and to-day looked worn. The new toy was dragging her +out. As the long St. Louis summer drew to an end, she was always tired. +Some obscure woman's trouble, something in the delicate organism that had +never been quite right, was becoming acutely wrong. She lived in fear of +having another child,--the last baby had died. By the new year she was in +care of Isabelle's specialist, who advised an operation. When that was +over, it was nearly spring, and though she was still delicate, she wished +to give some dinners "to return their obligations." Falkner objected for +many reasons, and she thought him very hard. + +"It is always sickness and babies for me," she pouted; "and when I want a +little fun, you think we can't afford it or something." + +Her hospitable heart was so bent on this project, it seemed so natural that +she should desire to show off her toy, after her struggle for it, so +innocent "to have our friends about us," that he yielded in part. A good +deal might be told about that dinner, from an economic, a social, a +domestic point of view. But we must lose it and hasten on. Imagine merely, +what a charming woman like Bessie Falkner, whose scheme of the universe was +founded on the giving of "pleasant little dinners," would do,--a woman who +was making her life, building her wigwam, filling it with those she wished +to have as friends, and you will see it all. It was, of course, a great +success. Mrs. Anstruthers Leason said of the hostess (reported by Nan +Lawton through Isabelle), "Little Mrs. Falkner has the real social gift,--a +very rare thing among our women!" And when an invitation came from Mrs. +Anstruthers Leason to dinner and her box at the French opera, Bessie was +sure that she had found her sphere. + + * * * * * + +Falkner seemed to Bessie these days to be growing harder,--he was +"exacting," "unsympathetic," "tyrannical." "He won't go places, and he +won't have people,--isn't nice to them, even in his own house," Bessie said +sadly to Isabelle. "I suppose that marriage usually comes to that: the wife +stands for bills and trouble, and the husband scolds. Most people squabble, +don't they?" + +"Of course he loves you, dear," Isabelle consoled her. "American husbands +always take their wives for granted, as Nannie says. A foreigner pays +attentions to his wife after marriage that our husbands don't think are +necessary once they have us. Our husbands take us too much as a matter of +course,--and pay the bills!" + +Bessie felt and said that Rob took life too hard, worried too much. After +all, when a man married a woman and had children, he must expect a certain +amount of trouble and anxiety. She wasn't sure but that wives were needed +to keep men spurred to their highest pitch of working efficiency. She had +an obscure idea that the male was by nature lazy and self-indulgent, and +required the steel prod of necessity to do his best work. As she looked +about her among the struggling households, it seemed such was the +rule,--that if it weren't for the fact of wife and children and bills, the +men would deteriorate.... Naturally there were differences,--"squabbles," +as she called them; but she would have been horrified if any one had +suggested that these petty squabbles, the state of mind they produced or +indicated, were infinitely more degrading, more deteriorating to them both, +than adultery. It never entered her mind that either she or her husband +could be unfaithful, that Falkner could ever care for any other woman than +her. "Why, we married for love!" + + * * * * * + +Love! That divine unreason of the gods, which lures man as a universal +solvent of his sorrow, the great solution to the great enigma! Where was +it? Bessie asked when Rob passed her door in the morning on his way to his +solitary breakfast without a word of greeting or a kiss, and finally left +the house without remembering to go upstairs again. And Falkner asked +himself much the same thing, when Bessie persisted in doing certain things +"because everybody does," or when he realized that after two years in his +new position, with a five hundred dollars' increase in his salary the +second year, he was nearly a thousand dollars in debt, and losing steadily +each quarter. Something must be done--and by him!--for in marriage, he +perceived with a certain bitterness, Man was the Forager, the Provider. And +in America if he didn't bring in enough from the day's hunt to satisfy the +charming squaw that he had made his consort, why,--he must trudge forth +again and get it! A poor hunter does not deserve the embellishment of a +Bessie and two pretty children. + +So he went forth to bring in more game, and he read no poetry these days. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +The calm male observer might marvel at Bessie's elation over the prospect +of sitting in Mrs. Anstruthers Leason's box at the performance of "Faust" +given by the French Opera Company on tour. But no candid woman will. It +could be explained partly by the natural desire to associate with +entertaining, well-dressed folk, who were generally considered to be "the +best," "the leaders" of local society. Sitting there in the stuffy box, +which was a poor place for seeing or hearing, Bessie felt the satisfaction +of being in the right company. She had discovered in one of the serried +rows of the first balcony Kitty Sanders, whom she had known as a girl in +Kansas City, where Bessie had once lived in the peregrinations of the +Bissell family. Kitty had married a prosperous dentist and enjoyed with him +an income nearly twice that of Rob Falkner. Kitty, scanning the boxes +closely, also spied Bessie, and exclaimed to her husband:-- + +"Why, there's Bessie Bissell in that box! You know she married a young +fellow, an engineer or something." And she added either aloud or to +herself, "They seem to be _in it_,--that's the Leason box." While the +alluring strains of the overture floated across the house, she mused at the +strange mutations of fortune, which had landed Bessie Bissell there and +herself here beside the dentist,--with some envy, in spite of three beloved +children at home and a motorcar.... + +To the dispassionate male observer this state of mind might be more +comprehensible if Bessie had appeared in Mrs. Corporation's box on a gala +night at the Metropolitan, or in the Duchess of Thatshire's box at Covent +Garden. But the strange fact of democracy is that instead of discouraging +social desires it has multiplied them ten thousand fold. Every city in the +land has its own Mrs. Anstruthers Leason or Mrs. Corporation, to form the +local constellation, towards which the active-minded women of a certain +type will always strive or gravitate, as you choose to put it. This being +so, the American husband, one might suppose, would sigh for an absolute +monarchy, where there is but one fixed social firmament, admission to which +is determined by a despot's edict. Then the great middle class could rest +content, knowing that forever, no matter what their gifts might be, their +wives could not aspire to social heights. With us the field is clear, the +race open to money and brains, and the result? Each one can answer for +himself. + +Isabelle, returning to her home that fall, with a slight surplus of +vitality, was eager for life. "I have been dead so long," she said to her +husband. "I want to see people!" Born inside the local constellation, as +she had been, that was not difficult. Yet she realized soon enough that the +Prices, prominent as they were, had never belonged to the heart of the +constellation. It remained for her to penetrate there, under the guidance +of the same Nannie Lawton whom as a girl she had rather despised. For every +constellation has its inner circle, the members of which touch +telepathically all other inner circles. The fact that Nannie Lawton called +her by her first name would help her socially more, than the Colonel's +record as a citizen or her husband's position in the railroad or their +ample means. Before her second winter of married life had elapsed, she had +begun to exhaust this form of excitement, to find herself always tired. +After all, although the smudge of St. Louis on the level alluvial plains of +America was a number of times larger than the smudge of Torso, the human +formula, at least in its ornamental form, remained much the same. She was +patroness where she should be patroness, she was invited where she would +have felt neglected not to be invited, she entertained very much as the +others she knew entertained, and she and her husband had more engagements +than they could keep. She saw this existence stretching down the years with +monotonous iteration, and began to ask herself what else there was to +satisfy the thirst for experience which had never been assuaged. + +Bessie, with a keener social sense, kept her eye on the game,--she had to, +and her little triumphs satisfied her. Nan Lawton varied the monotony of +"the ordinary round" by emotional dissipations that Isabelle felt herself +to be above. Other women of their set got variety by running about the +country to New York or Washington, to a hotel in Florida or in the +mountains of Carolina, or as a perpetual resource to Paris and Aix and +Trouville and London.... + +Isabelle was too intelligent, too much the daughter of her father, to +believe that a part of the world did not exist outside the social +constellation, and an interesting part, too. Some of those outside she +touched as time went on. She was one of the board of governors for the +Society of Country Homes for Girls, and here and on the Orphanage board she +met energetic and well-bred young married women, who apparently genuinely +preferred their charities, their reading clubs, the little country places +where they spent the summers, to the glory of Mrs. Anstruthers Leason's +opera box or dinner dance. As she shot about the city on her errands, +social and philanthropic, Isabelle sometimes mused on the lives of the +"others,"--all those thousands that filled the streets and great buildings +of the city. Of course the poor,--that was simple enough; the struggle for +life settled how one would live with ruthless severity. If it was a daily +question how you could keep yourself housed and fed, why it did not matter +what you did with your life. In the ranks above the poor, the little people +who lived in steam-heated apartments and in small suburban boxes had their +small fixed round of church and friends, still closely circumscribed and to +Isabelle, in her present mood,--simply dreadful. When she expressed this to +Fosdick, whom she was taking one morning to a gallery to see the work of a +local artist that fashionable people were patronizing, he had scoffed at +her:-- + +"_Madame la princesse_," he said, waving his hand towards the throng of +morning shoppers, "don't you suppose that the same capacity for human +sensation exists in every unit of that crowd bent towards Sneeson's as in +you?" + +"No," protested Isabelle, promptly; "they haven't the same experience." + +"As thrilling a drama can be unrolled in a twenty-five dollar flat as in a +palace." + +"Stuff! There isn't one of those women who wouldn't be keen to try the +palace!" + +"As you ought to be to try the flat, in a normally constituted society." + +"What do you mean by a normally constituted society?" + +"One where the goal of ease is not merely entertainment." + +"You are preaching now, aren't you?" demanded Isabelle. "Society has always +been pretty much the same, hasn't it? First necessities, then comforts, +then luxuries, and then--" + +"Well, what?" + +"Oh, experience, art, culture, I suppose." + +"Isabelle," the big man smilingly commented, "you are the same woman you +were six years ago." + +"I am not!" she protested, really irritated. "I have done a lot of +thinking, and I have seen a good deal of life. Besides I am a good wife, +and a mother, which I wasn't six years ago, and a member of the Country +Homes Society and the Orphanage, and a lot more." They laughed at her +defence, and Isabelle added as a concession: "I know that there are plenty +of women not in society who lead interesting lives, are intelligent and all +that. But I am a good wife, and a good mother, and I am intelligent, and +what is more, I see amusing people and more of them than the others,--the +just plain women. What would you have me do?" + +"Live," Fosdick replied enigmatically. + +"We all live." + +"Very few do." + +"You mean emotional--heart experiences, like Nan's affairs? ... Sometimes I +wonder if that wouldn't be--interesting. But it would give John such a +shock! ... Well, here are the pictures. There's Mrs. Leason's +portrait,--flatters her, don't you think?" + +Fosdick, leaning his fat hands on his heavy stick, slowly made the round of +the canvasses, concluding with the portrait of Mrs. Leason. + +"Got some talent in him," he pronounced; "a penny worth. If he can only +keep away from this sort of thing," pointing with his stick to the +portrait, "he might paint in twenty years." + +"But why shouldn't he do portraits? They all have to, to live." + +"It isn't the portrait,--it's the sort of thing it brings with it. You met +him, I suppose?" + +"Yes; dined with him at Mrs. Leason's last week." + +"I thought so. That's the beginning of his end." + +"You silly! Art has always been parasitic,--why shouldn't the young man go +to pleasant people's houses and have a good time and be agreeable and get +them to buy his pictures?" + +"Isabelle, you have fallen into the bad habit of echoing phrases. 'Art has +always been parasitic.' That's the second commonplace of the drawing-room +you have got off this morning." + +"Come over here and tell me something.... I can't quarrel with you, +Dickie!" Isabelle said, leading the way to a secluded bench. + +"If I were not modest, I should say you were flirting with me." + +"I never flirt with any man; I am known as the Saint, the Puritan,--I might +try it, but I couldn't--with you.... Tell me about Vick. Have you seen +him?" + +"Yes," Fosdick replied gravely. "I ran across him in Venice." + +"How was he?" + +"He looked well, has grown rather stout.... The first time I saw him was on +the Grand Canal; met him in a smart gondola, with men all togged out, no +end of a get-up!" + +"You saw them _both_?" + +"Of course,--I looked him up at once. They have an old place on the +Giudecca, you know. I spent a week with them. He's still working on the +opera,--it doesn't get on very fast, I gather. He played me some of the +music,--it's great, parts of it. And he has written other things." + +"I know all that," Isabelle interrupted impatiently. "But is he happy?" + +"A man like Vickers doesn't tell you that, you know." + +"But you can tell--how did they seem?" + +"Well," Fosdick replied slowly, "when I saw them in the gondola the first +time, I thought--it was too bad!" + +"I was afraid so," Isabelle cried. "Why don't they marry and come to New +York or go to London or some place and make a life?--people can't live like +that." + +"I think he wants to marry her," Fosdick replied. + +"But she won't?" + +"Precisely,--not now." + +"Why--what?" + +Fosdick avoided the answer, and observed, "Vick seems awfully fond of the +little girl, Delia." + +"Poor, poor Vick!" Isabelle sighed. "He ought to leave that creature." + +"He won't; Vick was the kind that the world sells cheap,--it's best kind. +He lives the dream and believes his shadows; it was always so. It will be +so until the end. Life will stab him at every corner." + +"Dear, dear Vick!" Isabelle said softly; "some days I feel as if I would +have done as he did." + +"But fortunately there is John to puncture your dream with solid fact." + +"John even might not be able to do it! ... I am going over to see Vick this +summer." + +"Wouldn't that make complications--family ones?" + +Isabelle threw up her head wilfully. + +"Dickie, I think there is something in me deeper than my love for John or +for the child,--and that is the feeling I have about Vick!" + +Fosdick looked at her penetratingly. + +"You ought not to have married, Isabelle." + +"Why? Every one marries--and John and I are very happy.... Come; there are +some people I don't want to meet." + +As they descended the steps into the murky light of the noisy city, +Isabelle remarked:-- + +"Don't forget to-night, promptly at seven,--we are going to the theatre +afterwards. I shall show you some of our smart people and let you see if +they aren't more interesting than the mob." + +She nodded gayly and drove off. As she went to a luncheon engagement, she +thought of Vickers, of Fosdick's remarks about living, and a great wave of +dissatisfaction swept over her. "It's this ugly city," she said to herself, +letting down the window. "Or it's nerves again,--I must do something!" That +phrase was often on her lips these days. In her restlessness nothing seemed +just right,--she was ever trying to find something beyond the horizon. As +Fosdick would have said, "The race vitality being exhausted in its +primitive force, nothing has come to take its place." But at luncheon she +was gay and talkative, the excitement of human contact stimulating her. And +afterwards she packed the afternoon with trivial engagements until it was +time to dress for her guests. + +The dinner and the theatre might have passed off uneventfully, if it had +not been for Fosdick. That unwieldy social vessel broke early in the +dinner. Isabelle had placed him next Mrs. Leason because the lady liked +celebrities, and Fosdick, having lately been put gently but firmly beyond +the confines of the Tzar's realm for undue intimacy with the rebellious +majority of the Tzar's subjects, might be counted such. For the time being +he had come to a momentary equilibrium in the city of his birth. Fosdick +and Mrs. Leason seemed to find common ground, while the other men, the +usual speechless contingent of tired business men, allowed themselves to be +talked at by the women. Presently Fosdick's voice boomed forth:-- + +"Let me tell you a story which will illustrate my point, Mrs. Leason. Some +years ago I was riding through the Kentucky mountains, and after a wretched +luncheon in one of the log-and-mud huts I was sitting on the bench in front +of the cabin trying to make peace with my digestion. The ground in that +spot sloped down towards me, and on the side of this little hill there lay +a large hog, a razor-back sow. There were eight little pigs clustered in +voracious attitudes about her, and she could supply but six at a time,--I +mean that she was provided by nature with but six teats." + +Mrs. Leason visibly moved away from her neighbor, and for the rest of his +story Fosdick had a silent dinner table. + +"The mother was asleep," Fosdick continued, turning his great head closer +to Mrs. Leason, "probably attending to her digestion as I was to mine, and +she left her offspring to fight it out among themselves for the possession +of her teats. There was a lively scrap, a lot of hollerin' and squealin' +from that bunch of porkers, grunts from the ins and yaps from the outs, you +know. Every now and then one of the outs would make a flying start, get a +wedge in and take a nip, forcing some one of his brothers out of the heap +so that he would roll down the hill into the path. Up he'd get and start +over, and maybe he would dislodge some other porker. And the old sow kept +grunting and sleeping peacefully in the sun while her children got their +dinner in the usual free-fight fashion. + +"Now," Fosdick raised his heavy, square-pointed finger and shook it at the +horrified Mrs. Leason and also across the table, noticing what seemed to +him serious interest in his allegory, "I observed that there was a +difference among those little porkers,--some were fat and some were peaked, +and the peaked fellers got little show at the mother. Now what I ask myself +is,--were they weak because they couldn't manage to get a square feed, or +were they hustled out more than the others because they were naturally +weak? I leave that to my friends the sociologists to determine--" + +"Isabella," Lane interposed from his end of the table, "if Mr. Fosdick has +finished his pig story, perhaps--" + +Isabelle, divided between a desire to laugh and a very vivid sense of Mrs. +Leason's feelings, rose, but Fosdick had not finished and she sat down +again. + +"But what I meant to say was this, madam,--there's only one difference +between that old sow and her brood and society as it is run at present, and +that is there are a thousand mouths to every teat, and a few big, fat +fellows are getting all the food." + +He looked up triumphantly from his exposition. There was a titter at Mrs. +Lawton's end of the table. This lady had been listening to an indecent +story told in French-English when Fosdick had upset things. Now she +remarked in an audible tone:-- + +"Disgusting, I say!" + +"Eh! What's the matter? Don't you believe what I told you?" Fosdick +demanded. + +"Oh, yes, Dickie,--anything you say,--only don't repeat it!" Isabelle +exclaimed, rising from the table. + +"Does he come from a farm?" one woman murmured indignantly. "Such _gros +mots_!" She too had been listening to the story of adultery at Mrs. +Lawton's end of the table. Isabelle, who had taken in the whole situation +from her husband's shocked face, Nan Lawton's sly giggle over the salacious +tidbit, and Mrs. Leason's offended countenance, felt that she must shriek +to relieve her feelings. + +The party finally reached the theatre and saw a "sex" play, which caused a +furious discussion among the women. "No woman would have done that." "The +man was not worth the sacrifice," etc. And Fosdick gloomily remarked in +Isabelle's ears: "Rot like this is all you see on the modern stage. And +it's because women want it,--they must forever be fooling with sex. Why +don't they--" + +"Hush, Dickie! you have exploded enough to-night. Don't say that to Mrs. +Leason!" + +Her world appeared to her that night a harlequin tangle, and, above all, +meaningless--yes, dispiritedly without sense. John, somehow, seemed +displeased with her, as if she were responsible for Dickie's breaks. She +laughed again as she thought of the sow story, and the way the women took +it. "What a silly world,--talk and flutter and gadding, all about nothing!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +Isabelle did not see much of the Falkners as time went on. Little lines of +social divergence began to separate them more and more widely. "After all, +one sees chiefly the people who do the same things one does," Isabelle +explained to herself. Bessie thought Isabelle "uncertain," perhaps +snobbish, and felt hurt; though she remarked to Rob merely, "The Lanes are +very successful, of course." + +Affairs in the Buena Vista Pleasance house had progressed meantime. There +were, naturally, so many meals to be got and eaten, so many little +illnesses of the children, and other roughnesses of the road of life. There +was also Bessie's developing social talent, and above all there was the +infinitely complex action and reaction of the man and the wife upon each +other. Seen as an all-seeing eye might observe, with all the emotional +shading, the perspective of each act, the most commonplace household +created by man and woman would be a wonderful cosmography. But the +novelist, even he who has the courage to write a dull book, can touch but +here and there, on the little promontories of daily life, where it seems to +him the spiritual lava boils up near the surface and betrays most +poignantly the nature of the fire beneath.... + +It was a little over three years since the Falkners had moved into the +Buena Vista Pleasance house. Husband and wife sat in the front room after +their silent dinner alone, with the September breeze playing through the +windows, which after a hot day had been thrown open. There was the debris +of a children's party in the room and the hall,--dolls and toys, +half-nibbled cakes and saucers of ice-cream. Bessie, who was very neat +about herself, was quite Southern in her disregard for order. She was also +an adorable hostess for children, because she gave them loose rein. + +"What is it you wish to say?" she asked her husband in a cold, defensive +tone that had grown almost habitual. + +Though pale she was looking very pretty in a new dress that she had worn at +a woman's luncheon, where she had spent the first part of the afternoon. +She had been much admired at the luncheon, had taken the lead in the talk +about a new novel which was making a ten days' sensation. Her mind was +still occupied partly with what she had said about the book. These +discussions with Rob on household matters, at increasingly frequent +periods, always froze her. "He makes me show my worst side," she said to +herself. At the children's tea, moreover, an attack of indigestion had +developed. Bessie was fond of rich food, and in her nervous condition, +which was almost chronic, it did not agree with her, and made her +irritable. + +"I have been going over our affairs," Falkner began in measured tones. That +was the usual formula! Bessie thought he understood women very badly. She +wondered if he ever did anything else those evenings he spent at home +except "go over their affairs." She wished he would devote himself to some +more profitable occupation. + +"Well?" + +Falkner looked tired and listless. The summer was always his hardest time, +and this summer the road had been pushing its terminal work with actual +ferocity. He wore glasses now, and was perceptibly bald. He was also +slouchy about dress; Bessie could rarely induce him to put on evening +clothes when they dined alone. + +"Well?" she asked again. It was not polite of him to sit staring there as +if his mind were a thousand miles away. A husband should show some good +manners to a woman, even if she was his wife! + +Their chairs were not far apart, but the tones of their voices indicated an +immeasurable gulf that had been deepening for years. Falkner cleared his +voice. + +"As I have told you so often, Bessie, we are running behind all the time. +It has got to a point where it must stop." + +"What do you suggest?" + +"You say that three servants are necessary?" + +"You can see for yourself that they are busy all the time. There's work for +four persons in this house, and there ought to be a governess beside. I +don't at all like the influence of that school on Mildred--" + +"Ought!" he exclaimed. + +"If people live in a certain kind of house, in a certain neighborhood, they +must live up to it,--that is all. If you wish to live as the Johnstons +live, why that is another matter altogether." + +Her logic was imperturbable. There was an unexpressed axiom: "If you want a +dowd for your wife who can't dress or talk and whom nobody cares to +know,--why you should have married some one else." Bessie awaited his reply +in unassailable attractiveness. + +"Very well," Falkner said slowly. "That being so, I have made up my mind +what to do." + +Mildred entered the room at this moment, looking for a book. She was eight, +and one swift glance at her parents' faces was enough to show her quick +intelligence that they were "discussing." + +"What is it, Mildred?" Bessie asked in the cooing voice she always had for +children. + +"I want my _Jungle Book_," the little girl replied, taking a book from the +table. + +"Run along, girlie," Bessie said; and Mildred, having decided that it was +not an opportune moment to make affectionate good-nights, went upstairs. + +"Well, what is it?" Bessie demanded in the other tone. + +"I have a purchaser for the house, at fair terms." + +"Please remember that it is _my_ house." + +"Wait! Whatever remains after paying off the mortgage and our debts, not +more than six thousand dollars, I suppose, will be placed to your credit in +the trust company." + +"Why should I pay all our debts?" + +Her husband looked at her, and she continued hastily:-- + +"What do you mean to do then? We can't live on the street." + +"We can hire a smaller house somewhere else, or live in a flat." + +Bessie waved her hand in despair; they had been over this so many times and +she had proved so conclusively the impossibility of their squeezing into a +flat. Men never stay convinced! + +"Or board." + +"Never!" she said firmly. + +"You will have to choose." + +This was the leading topic of their discussion, and enough has been said to +reveal the lines along which it developed. There was much of a discursive +nature, naturally, introduced by Bessie, who sought thereby to fog the +issue and effect a compromise. She had found that was a good way to deal +with a husband. But to-night Falkner kept steadily at his object. + +"No, no, no!" he iterated in weary cadence. "It's no use to keep on +expecting; five thousand is all they will pay me, and it is all I am really +worth to them. And after this terminal work is finished, they may have +nothing to offer me.... We must make a clean sweep to start afresh, right, +on the proper basis." After a moment, he added by way of appeal, "And I +think that will be the best for us, also." + +"You expect me to do all the work?" + +"Expect!" Falkner leaned his head wearily against the chair-back. Words +seemed useless at this point. Bessie continued rather pitilessly:-- + +"Don't you want a home? Don't you want your children brought up decently +with friends about them?" + +"God knows I want a home!" the husband murmured. + +"I think I have made a very good one,--other people think so." + +"That's the trouble--too good for me!" + +"I should think it would be an incentive for a man--" + +"God!" Falkner thundered; "that you should say that!" + +It had been in her heart a long time, but she had never dared to express it +before,--the feeling that other men, no abler than Rob, contrived to give +their wives, no more seductive than she, so much more than she had had. + +"Other men find the means--" + +She was thinking of John Lane, of Purrington,--a lively young broker of +their acquaintance,--of Dr. Larned,--all men whose earning power had leaped +ahead of Falkner's. Bessie resented the economic dependence of married +women on their husbands. She believed in the foreign _dot_ system. "My +daughters shall never marry as I did," she would say frankly to her +friends. "There can be no perfectly happy marriage unless the woman is +independent of her husband in money matters to a certain extent." ... For +she felt that she had a right to her ideals, so long as they were not bad, +vicious; a right to her own life as distinct from her husband's life, or +the family life. "The old idea of the woman's complete subordination has +gone," she would say. "It is better for the men, too, that women are no +longer mere possessions without wills of their own." It was such ideas as +this that earned for Bessie among her acquaintances the reputation of being +"intelligent" and "modern." + +And Falkner, a vision of the mountains and the lonely cabin before his +eyes, remarked with ironic calm:-- + +"And why should I earn more than I do, assuming that I could sell myself at +a higher figure?" + +For the man, too, had his dumb idea,--the feeling that something precious +inside him was being murdered by this pressing struggle to earn more, +always more. As man he did not accept the simple theory that men were +better off the harder they were pushed, that the male brute needed the spur +of necessity to function, that all the man was good for was to be the +competent forager. No! Within him there was a protest to the whole spirit +of his times,--to the fierce competitive struggle. Something inside him +proclaimed that he was not a mere maker of dollars, that life was more than +food and lodging, even for those he loved most. + +"What do I get out of it?" he added bitterly. "Perhaps I have done too +much." + +"Oh, if that is the way you feel,--if you don't love me!" Bessie exclaimed +with wounded pride. "Probably you are tired of me. When a man is sick of +his wife, he finds his family a burden, naturally." + +And there they paused at the brink of domestic vulgarity. + +Falkner saw the girl on the veranda of the mountain hotel, with her golden +hair, her fresh complexion, her allurement. Bessie, most men would think, +was even more desirable this minute than then as an unformed girl. The +arched eyebrows, so clearly marked, the full lips, the dimpled neck, all +spake:-- + +"Come kiss me, and stop talking like that!" + +For a moment the old lure seized the man, the call of the woman who had +once been sweet to him. Then his blood turned cold within him. That was the +last shame of marriage,--that a wife should throw this lure into the +reasoning, a husband to console himself--that way! Falkner rose to his +feet. + +"I shall make arrangements to sell the house." + +"Very well; then I shall take the children and go to my mother in Denver." + +"As you please." + +Without looking again at his wife, he left the room. + +Bessie had played blindly her last card, the wife's last card, and lost! +There was bitterness and rebellion in her heart. She had loved her +husband,--hadn't she shown it by marrying him instead of the mine owner? +She had been a good woman, not because she hadn't had her chances of other +men's admiration, as she sometimes let her husband know. Dickie Lawton had +made love to her outrageously, and the last time the old Senator had been +in St. Louis,--well, he would never come again to her house. Not a shadow +of disloyalty had ever crossed her heart. + +Bessie thought that a good wife must be chaste, of course; other matters of +wifely duty were less distinct. + +No! her husband did not care for her any more,--that was the real cause of +their troubles. It was hard to wake up to such a fact after nine years of +marriage with a man whom you loved! + +There was a tragedy between, but not the one that Bessie suspected, nor the +mere tragedy of extravagance. Each realized dimly that the other hindered +rather than promoted that something within which each held tenaciously as +most precious. Instead of giving mutually, they stole mutually, and the end +of that sort of life must be concubinage or the divorce court--or a +spiritual readjustment beyond the horizon of either Falkner or his wife. + + * * * * * + +"Did you know that the Falkners were going to give up their house?" Lane +asked his wife. + +"No, indeed. I saw Bessie at the symphony the other day, and she spoke of +going out to Denver to visit her mother; but she didn't say anything about +the house. Are you sure?" + +"Yes; Falkner told Bainbridge he was selling it. And he wanted Bainbridge +to see if there was an opening for him on the road in the East. I am afraid +things haven't gone well with them." + +"After all the trouble they had building, and such a pretty house! What a +shame!" + +Lane was in his outing clothes, about to go to the country club for an +afternoon of golf with the Colonel. He looked very strong and handsome in +his Scotch tweeds. Lately he had begun to take more exercise than he had +found time for the first years of his marriage, had developed a taste for +sport, and often found a day or two to fish or hunt when friends turned up +from the East. Isabelle encouraged this taste, though she saw all the less +of her husband; she had a feeling that it was good for him to relax, made +him more of the gentleman, less of the hard-working clerk. The motor was at +the door, but he dawdled. + +"It is a pity about the Falkners,--I am afraid they are not getting on well +together. He's a peculiar fellow. Bainbridge tells me his work is only +pretty good,--doesn't put his back into it the way a man must who means to +get up in his profession these days. There is a lot doing in his line, too. +It will be a shame if trouble comes to Bessie." + +"The old difficulty, I suppose," Isabelle remarked; "not enough money--same +story everywhere!" + +It was the same story everywhere, even in these piping times of prosperity, +with fortunes doubling, salaries going up, and the country pouring out its +wealth. So few of her friends, even the wealthy ones, seemed to have enough +money for their necessities or desires. If they had four servants, they +needed six; if they had one motor, they must have two; and the new idea of +country houses had simply doubled or trebled domestic budgets. It wasn't +merely in the homes of ambitious middle-class folk that the cry went +up,--"We must have more!" Isabelle herself had begun to feel that the +Colonel might very well have given her a package of stocks and bonds at her +wedding. Even with her skilful management, and John's excellent salary, +there was so much they could not do that seemed highly desirable to do. +"Everything costs so these days!" And to live meant to spend,--to live! + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +Isabelle did not go to Vickers as she firmly intended to that summer. Lane +offered a stubborn if silent opposition to the idea of her joining her +brother,--"so long as that woman is with him." He could not understand +Isabelle's passionate longing for her brother, nor the fact that his +loyalty to his mistake endeared Vickers all the more to her. She divined +the ashes in her brother's heart, the waste in which he dwelt, and the fact +that he "had made a complete mess of life" did not subtract from her love. +After all, did the others, their respectable acquaintance, often make much +of living? + +It was not John's opposition, however, that prevented the journey, but the +alarming weakness of the Colonel. In spite of his activity and his exercise +the old man had been growing perceptibly weaker, and his digestive trouble +had developed until the doctors hinted at cancer. To leave the Colonel now +and go to the son he had put out of his life would be mere brutality. +Vickers might come back, but Mrs. Price felt that this would cause the +Colonel more pain than pleasure. + +During the spring Isabelle made many expeditions about the city in company +with her father, who gave as an excuse for penetrating all sorts of new +neighborhoods that he wished to look at his real estate, which was widely +scattered. But this was merely an excuse, as Isabelle easily perceived; +what he really cared about was to see the city itself, the building, the +evidences of growth, of thriving. + +"When your mother and I came to live in the city," he would say, laying a +large white hand on his daughter's knee, "it was all swamp out this +way,--we used to bring Ezra with us in the early spring and pick +pussy-willows. Now look at it!" And what Isabelle saw, when she looked in +the direction that the old man waved his hand, was a row of ugly brick +apartment houses or little suburban cottages, or brick stores and +tenements. There was nothing in the scene, for her, to inspire enthusiasm, +and yet the Colonel would smile and gaze fondly out of those kindly blue +eyes at the acres of human hive. It was not pride in his shrewd foresight +in investing his money, so much as a generous sympathy for the growth of +the city, the forthputting of a strong organism. + +"I bought this tract in eighty-two," he said, pointing to a stretch of +factories and grain elevators. "Had to borrow part of the money to do it. +Parrott thought I was a fool, but I knew the time would come when it would +be sold by the foot,--folks are born and must work and live," he mused. He +made the man drive the car slowly through the rutty street while he looked +keenly at the hands pouring from the mills, the elevators, the railroad +yards. "Too many of those Polaks," he commented, "but they are better than +niggers. It is a great country!" + +In the old man's pride there was more than selfish satisfaction, more than +flamboyant patriotism over his "big" country; there was an almost pathetic +belief in the goodness of life, merely as life. These breeding millions, in +this teeming country, were working out their destiny,--on the whole a +better destiny than the world had yet seen. And the old man, who had lived +his life and fought vitally, felt deep in the inner recesses of his being +that all was good; the more chance for the human organism to be born and +work out its day, the better. In the eyes of the woman of the newer +generation this was a singular-pantheism,--incomprehensible. Unless one +were born under favorable conditions, what good was there in the struggle? +Mere life was not interesting. + +They went, too, to see the site of the coming Exposition. The great trees +were being cut down and uprooted to give space for the vast buildings. The +Colonel lamented the loss of the trees. "Your mother and I used to come out +here Sundays in summer," he said regretfully. "It was a great way from town +then--there was only a steam road--and those oaks were grateful, after the +heat. I used to lie on the ground and your mother would read to me. She had +a very sweet voice, Isabelle!" + +But he believed in the Exposition, even if the old trees must be sacrificed +for it. He had contributed largely to the fund, and had been made a +director, though the days of his leadership were over. "It is good for +people to see how strong they are," he said. "These fairs are our Olympic +games!" + + * * * * * + +At first he did not wish to leave the city, which was part of his bone and +flesh; but as the summer drew on and he was unable to endure the motor his +thoughts turned back to his Connecticut hills, to the old farm and the +woods and the fields. Something deeper than all was calling to him to +return to the land that was first in his blood. So they carried him--now a +bony simulacrum of his vigorous self--to the old house at Grafton. For a +few weeks he lay wrapped in rugs on the veranda, his eyes on Dog Mountain. +At first he liked to talk with the farm-hands, who slouched past the +veranda. But more and more his spirit withdrew even from this peaceful +scene of his activity, and at last he died, as one who has no more concern +about life.... + +To Isabelle, who had been with him constantly these last fading months, +there was much that remained for a long time inexplicable in her father's +attitude towards life. He seemed to regret nothing, not even the death of +his elder son, nor his estrangement from Vickers, and he had little of the +old man's pessimism. There were certain modern manifestations that she knew +he disliked; but he seemed to have a fine tolerance even for them, as being +of no special concern to him. He had lived his life, such as it was, +without swerving, without doubts or hesitations, which beset the younger +generation, and now that it was over he had neither regret nor desire to +grasp more. + +When the Colonel's will was opened, it caused surprise not only in his +family, but in the city where he had lived. It was long talked about. In +the first place his estate was much larger than even those nearest him had +supposed; it mounted upwards from eight millions. The will apparently had +been most carefully considered, largely rewritten after the departure of +Vickers. His son was not mentioned in the document. Nor were there the +large bequests, at least outright, to charities that had been expected of +so public spirited a man. The will was a document in the trust field. To +sum it all up, it seemed as if the old man had little faith in the +immediate generation, even in his daughter and her successful husband. For +he left Isabelle only the farm at Grafton and a few hundred thousand +dollars. To be sure, after his wife's death the bulk of the estate would be +held in trust for her child, or children, should her marriage prove more +fruitful in the future. Failing heirs, he willed that the bulk of the +estate should go to certain specified charities,--an Old Man's Home, The +Home for Crippled Children, etc. And it was arranged that the business +should be continued under the direction of the trustees. The name of +Parrott and Price should still stand for another generation! + +"A singular will!" Lane, who was one of the trustees, said to his wife. + +Isabelle was more hurt than she cared to have known. She had always +supposed that some day she would be a rich woman in her own right. But it +was the silent comment, the mark of disapproval, that she read in the lines +of the will which hurt. The Colonel had never criticised, never chided her; +but she had felt at times that he did not like the kind of life she had +elected to lead latterly. + +"He thought we were extravagant, probably," she replied to her husband. + +"I can't see why,--we never went to him for help!" + +She knew that was not exactly the reason,--extravagance. The old man did +not like the modern spirit--at least the spirit of so many of her +friends--of spending for themselves. The Colonel did not trust the present +generation; he preferred that his money should wait until possibly the +passing of the years had brought wisdom. + +"A selfish will!" the public said. + + + + +PART THREE + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +Fosdick had called Cornelia Woodyard the "Vampire,"--why, none of her +admirers could say. She did not look the part this afternoon, standing +before the fire in her library, negligently holding a cup of tea in one +hand, while she nibbled gourmandizingly at a frosted cake. She had come in +from an expedition with Cairy, and had not removed her hat and gloves, +merely letting her furs slip off to the floor. While she had her tea, Cairy +was looking through the diamond panes of a bank of windows at a strip of +small park, which was dripping in the fog of a dubious December day. Conny, +having finished her tea, examined lazily some notes, pushed them back into +their envelopes with a disgusted curl of her long lips, and glancing over +her shoulder at Cairy drawled in an exhausted voice:-- + +"Poke the fire, please, Tommy!" + +Cairy did as he was told, then lighted a cigarette and stood expectantly. +Conny seemed lost in a maze of dreary thoughts, and the man looked about +the room for amusement. It was a pleasant little room, with sufficient +color of flowers and personal disorderliness of letters and books and +papers to soften the severity of the Empire furniture. Evidently the +architect who had done over this small down-town house had been +supplemented by the strong hand of its mistress. Outside and inside he had +done his best to create something French out of the old-fashioned New York +block house, but Cornelia Woodyard had Americanized his creation enough to +make it intimate, livable. + +"Can't you say something, Tommy?" Conny murmured in her childish treble. + +"I have said a good deal first and last, haven't I?" + +"Don't be cross, Tommy! I am down on my job to-day." + +"Suppose you quit it! Shall we go to the Bahamas? Or Paris? Or Rio?" + +"Do you think that you could manage the excursion, Tommy?" Although she +smiled good-naturedly, the remark seemed to cut. The young man slumped into +a chair and leaned his head on his hands. + +"Besides, where would Percy come in?" + +Cairy asked half humorously, "And where, may I ask, do I come in?" + +"Oh, Tommy, don't look like that!" Conny complained. "You _do_ come in, you +know!" + +Cairy brought his chair and placed himself near the fire; then leaned +forward, looking intently into the woman's eyes. + +"I think sometimes the women must be right about you, you know." + +"What do they say?" + +... "That you are a calculating machine,--one of those things they have in +banks to do arithmetic stunts!" + +"No, you don't, ... silly! Tell me what Gossom said about the place." + +"He didn't say much about that; he talked about G. Lafayette Gossom and +_The People's Magazine_ chiefly.... The mess of pottage is three hundred a +month. I am to be understudy to the great fount of ideas. When he has an +inspiration he will push a bell, and I am to run and catch it as it flows +red hot from his lips and put it into shape,--if I can." + +Cairy nursed his injured leg with a disgusted air. + +"Don't sniff, Tommy,--there are lots of men who would like to be in your +shoes." + +"I know.... Oh, I am not ungrateful for my daily bread. I kiss the hand +that found it,--the hand of power!" + +"Silly! Don't be literary with me. Perhaps I put the idea into old Noddy +Gossom's head when he was here the other night. You'll have to humor him, +listen to his pomposity. But he has made a success of that _People's +Magazine_. It is an influence, and it pays!" + +"Four hundred thousand a year, chiefly automobile and corset ads, I should +say." + +"Nearly half a million a year!" Conny cried with the air of 'See what I +have done for you!' + +"Yes!" the Southerner remarked with scornful emphasis ... "I shall harness +myself once more to the car of triumphant prosperity, and stretch forth my +hungry hands to catch the grains that dribble in the rear. Compromise! +Compromise! All is Compromise!" + +"Now you are literary again," Conny pronounced severely. "Your play wasn't +a success,--there was no compromise about that! The managers don't want +your new play. Gossom does want your little articles. You have to live, and +you take the best you can get,--pretty good, too." + +"Madam Materialist!" + +Conny made a little face, and continued in the same lecturing tone. + +"Had you rather go back to that cross-roads in the Virginia +mountains--something Court-house--or go to London and write slop home to +the papers, as Ted Stevens does?" + +"You know why I don't go back to the something Courthouse and live on +corn-bread and bacon!" Cairy sat down once more very near the blond woman +and leaned forward slowly. Conny's mouth relaxed, and her eyes softened. + +"You are dear," she said with a little laugh; "but you are silly about +things." As the young man leaned still farther forward, his hand touching +her arm, Conny's large brown eyes opened speculatively on him.... + +The other night he had kissed her for the first time, that is, really +kissed her in unequivocal fashion, and she had been debating since whether +she should mention the matter to Percy. The right moment for such a +confidence had not yet come. She must tell him some day. She prided herself +that her relation with her husband had always been honest and frank, and +this seemed the kind of thing he ought to know about, if she were going to +keep that relation what it had been. She had had tender +intimacies--"emotional friendships," her phrase was--before this affair +with Cairy. They had always been perfectly open: she had lunched and dined +them, so to speak, in public as well as at the domestic table. Percy had +rather liked her special friends, had been nice to them always. + +But looking into the Southerner's eyes, she felt that there was something +different in this case; it had troubled her from the time he kissed her, it +troubled her now--what she could read in his eyes. He would not be content +with that "emotional friendship" she had given the others. Perhaps, and +this was the strangest thrill in her consciousness, she might not be +content to have him satisfied so easily.... Little Wrexton Grant had sent +her flowers and written notes--and kissed her strong fingers, once. Bertie +Sollowell had dedicated one of his books to her (the author's copy was +somewhere in Percy's study), and hinted that his life missed the guiding +hand that she could have afforded him. He had since found a guiding hand +that seemed satisfactory. Dear old Royal Salters had squired her, bought +her silver in Europe, and Jevons had painted her portrait the year he +opened his studio in New York, and kissed a very beautiful white +shoulder,--purely by way of compliment to the shoulder. All these marks of +gallantry had been duly reported to Percy, and laughed at together by +husband and wife in that morning hour when Conny had her coffee in bed. +Nevertheless, they had touched her vanity, as evidences that she was still +attractive as a woman. No woman--few women at any rate--of thirty-one +resents the fact that some man other than her husband can feel tenderly +towards her. And "these friends"--the special ones--had all been respecters +of the law; not one would have thought of coveting his neighbor's wife, any +more than of looting his safe. + +But with Tom Cairy it was different. Not merely because he was Southern and +hence presumably ardent in temperament, nor because of his reputation for +being "successful" with women; not wholly because he appealed to her on +account of his physical disability,--that unfortunate slip by the negro +nurse. But because there was in this man the strain of feminine +understanding, of vibrating sentiment--the lyric chord of +temperament--which made him lover first and last! That is why he had +stirred most women he had known well,--women in whom the emotional life had +been dormant, or unappeased, or petrified. + +"You are such a dear!" Conny murmured, looking at him with her full soft +eyes, realizing in her own way that in this fragile body there was the soul +of the lover,--born to love, to burn in some fashion before some altar, +always. + +The special aroma that Cairy brought to his love-making was this sense that +for the time it was all there was in life, that it shut out past and +future. The special woman enveloped by his sentiment did not hear the steps +of other women echoing through outer rooms. She was, for the moment, first +and last. He was able to create this emotional delusion genuinely; for into +each new love he poured himself, like a fiery liquor, that swept the heart +clean. + +"Dearest," he had murmured that night to Conny, "you are wonderful,--woman +and man,--the soul of a woman, the mind of a man! To love you is to love +life." + +And Conny, in whose ears the style of lover's sighs was immaterial, was +stirred with an unaccountable feeling. When Cairy put his hand on hers, and +his lips quivered beneath his mustache, her face inevitably softened and +her eyes widened like a child's eyes. For Conny, even Conny, with her +robust intelligence and strong will to grasp that out of life which seemed +good to her, wanted to love--in a way she had never loved before. Like many +women she had passed thirty with a husband of her choice, two children, and +an establishment entirely of her making before she became aware that she +had missed something on the way,--a something that other women had. She had +seen Severine Wilson go white when a certain man entered the room--then +light brilliantly with joy when his eyes sought her.... That must be worth +having, too! ... + +Her relations with her husband were perfect,--she had said so for years and +every one said the same thing about the Woodyards. They were very intimate +friends, close comrades. She knew that Percy respected and admired her more +than any woman in the world, and paid her the last flattery of conceding to +her will, respecting her intelligence. But there was something that he had +not done, could not do, and that was a something that Cairy seemed able to +do,--give her a sensation partly physical, wholly emotional, like the +effect of stimulant, touching every nerve. Conny, with her sure grasp of +herself, however, had no mind to submit blindly to this intoxication; she +would examine it, like other matters,--was testing it now in her capacious +intelligence, as the man bent his eyes upon her, so close to her lips. + +Had she only been the "other sort," the conventional ordinary sort, she +would have either gulped her sensation blindly,--"let herself go,"--or +trembled with horror and run away as from some evil thing. Being as she +was, modern, intellectual, proudly questioning all maxims, she kept this +new phenomenon in her hand, saying, "What does it mean for _me_?" The note +of the Intellectuals! + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +There was the soft sound of a footstep on the padded stairs, and Percy +Woodyard glanced into the room. + +"Hello, Tom!" he said briskly, and crossed to Conny, whose smooth brow he +touched softly with the tips of his fingers. "How goes it, Tom?" + +"You are home early," Conny complained in her treble drawl. + +"Must go to Albany to-night," Percy explained, a weary note in his voice. +"Not dining out to-night, Tom?" + +It was a little joke they had, that when Cairy was not with them he was +"dining out."... + +When Cairy had left, Conny rose from her lounging position as if to resume +the burden of life. + +"It's the Commission?" she inquired. + +"Yes! I sent you the governor's letter." + +For a time they discussed the political situation in the new Commission, to +which Woodyard had recently been appointed, his first conspicuous public +position. Then his wife observed wearily: "I was at Potts's this morning +and saw Isabelle Lane there. She was in mourning." + +"Her father died,--you know we saw it in the papers." + +"She must be awfully rich." + +"He left considerable property,--I don't know to whom." + +"Well, they are in New York. Her husband has been made something or other +in the railroad, so they are going to live here." + +"He is a very able man, I am told." + +After a time Conny drawled: "I suppose we must have 'em here to +dinner,--they are at a hotel up town. Whom shall we have?" + +Evidently after due consideration Conny had concluded that the Lanes must +come under her cognizance. She ran over half a dozen names from her best +dinner list, and added, "And Tom." + +"Why Tom this time?" Percy demanded. + +"He's met Isabelle--and we always have Tommy! You aren't jealous, are you, +Percy?" She glanced at him in amusement. + +"I must dress," Percy observed negligently, setting down his cup of tea. + +"Come here and tell me you are not jealous," Conny commanded. As her +husband smiled and brushed her fair hair with his lips, she muttered, "You +silly!" just as she had to Cairy's unreasonableness. Why! She was Percy's +destiny and he knew it.... She had a contempt for people who ruffled +themselves over petty emotions. This sex matter had been exaggerated by +Poets and Prudes, and their hysterical utterances should not inhibit her +impulses. + +Nevertheless she did not consider it a suitable opportunity to tell Percy +about the kiss. + + * * * * * + +Percy Woodyard and Cornelia Pallanton had married on a new, radical basis. +They had first met in the house of an intellectual woman, the wife of a +university professor, where clever young persons were drawn in and taught +to read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Ibsen and George Moore, and to engage +gracefully in perilous topics. They had been rather conscious that they +were radicals,--"did their own thinking," as they phrased it, these young +persons. They were not willing to accept the current morality, not even +that part of it engraved in law; but so far as regarded all of morality +that lay outside the domain of sex their actions were not in conflict with +society, though they were Idealists, and in most cases Sentimentalists. But +in the matter of sex relation, which is the knot of the tangle for youth, +they believed in the "development of the individual." It must be determined +by him, or her, whether this development could be obtained best through +regular or irregular relations. The end of all this individual development? +"The fullest activity, the largest experience, the most complete +presentation of personality," etc. Or as Fosdick railed, "Suck all and spit +out what you don't like!" + +So when these two young souls had felt sufficiently moved, one to the +other, to contemplate marriage, they had had an "understanding": they would +go through with the customary formula and oaths of marriage, to please +their relatives and a foolish world; but neither was to be "bound" by any +such piece of silly archaism as the marriage contract. Both recognized that +both had diversified natures, which might require in either case more +varied experience than the other could give. In their enlightened affection +for each other, neither would stand in the light of the other's best +good.... There are many such young people, in whom intellectual pride has +erased deeper human instincts. But as middle life draws on, they +conform--or seek refuge in the divorce court. + +Neither Percy nor Cornelia had any intention of practising adultery as a +habit: they merely wished to be honest with themselves, and felt superior +to the herd in recognizing the errant or variant possibilities in +themselves. Conny took pleasure in throwing temptation in Percy's way, in +encouraging him to know other women,--secretly gratified that he proved +hopelessly domestic. And on her side we have seen the innocent lengths to +which she had hitherto gone. + +For it proved as life began in earnest for these two that much of their +clear philosophy crumbled. Instead of the vision of feminine Idealism that +the young lawyer had worshipped, Conny developed a neat, practical nature, +immensely capable of "making things go." As her husband was the most +obvious channel through which things could move, her husband became her +chief care. She had no theory of exploiting him,--she had no theories at +all. She saw him as so much capacity to be utilized. Just as she never was +entrapped into a useless acquaintance, never had a "wrong person" at her +house, never wasted her energies on the mere ebullition of good feeling, so +she never allowed Percy to waste his energies on fruitless works. +Everything must count. Their life was a pattern of simple and pronounced +design, from the situation of their house to the footing on which it was +established and the people who were encouraged to attach themselves there. + +Woodyard had been interested in social good works, and as a young man had +served the Legal Aid Society. A merely worldly woman would have discouraged +this mild weakness for philanthropy. But Conny knew her material; out of +such as Percy, corporation lawyers--those gross feeders at the public +trough--were not made. Woodyard was a man of fine fibre, rather +unaggressive. He must either be steered into a shady pool of legal +sinecure, or take the more dangerous course through the rapids of public +life. It was the moment of Reform. Conny realized the capabilities of +Reform, and Percy's especial fitness for it; Reform, if not remunerative, +was fashionable and prominent. + +So Conny had steered their little bark, hoisting sail to every favorable +wind, no matter how slight the puff, until Woodyard now was a minor figure +in the political world. When his name occurred in the newspapers, a good +many people knew who he was, and his remarks at dinners and his occasional +speeches were quoted from, if there was not more valuable matter. He had +been spoken of for Congress. (Conny, of course, would never permit him to +engulf himself in that hopeless sea.) Just what Conny designed as the +ultimate end, she herself did not know; like all great generals, she was an +opportunist and took what seemed to her worth taking from the fortunes of +the day. The last good thing which had floated up on her shore was this +Commissionership. She had fished that up with the aid of the amiable +Senator, who had spoken a word here and a word there in behalf of young +Woodyard. + +Conny was very well pleased with herself as a wife, and she knew that her +husband was pleased with her. Moreover, she had not the slightest intention +of permitting anything to interfere with her wifely duties as she saw +them.... + +Percy had gone upstairs to that roof story where in New York children are +housed, to see his boy and girl. He was very fond of his children. When he +came down, his thoughtful face was worried. + +"The kids seem always to have colds," he remarked. + +"I know it," Conny admitted. "I must take them to Dr. Snow to-morrow." +(They had their own doctor, and also their own throat specialist.) + +"I wonder if it is good for them here, so far down in the city,--they have +only that scrap of park to play in." + +Conny, who had been over this question a good many times, answered +irrefutably,-- + +"There seem to be a good many children growing up all right in the same +conditions." + +She knew that Percy would like some excuse to escape into the country. +Conny had no liking for suburban life, and with her husband's career at the +critical point the real country was out of the question. + +"I suppose Jack will have to go to boarding school another year," Percy +said with a sigh. + +He was not a strong man himself, though of solid build and barely thirty. +He had that bloodless whiteness of skin so often found among young American +men, which contrasted with his dark mustache, and after a long day's work +like this his step dragged. He wore glasses over his blue eyes, and when he +removed them the dark circles could be seen. Conny knew the limits of his +strength and looked carefully to his physical exercise. + +"You didn't get your squash this afternoon?" + +When Percy was worried about anything, she immediately searched for a +physical cause. + +"No! I had to finish up things at the office so that I could get away +to-night." + +Then husband and wife went to their dinner, and Woodyard gave Conny a +short-hand account of his doings, the people he had seen, what they had +said, the events at the office. Conny required this account each day, +either in the morning or in the evening. And Woodyard yielded quite +unconsciously to his wife's strong will, to her singularly definite idea of +"what is best." He admired her deeply, was grateful to her for that +complete mastery of the detail of life which she had shown, aware that if +it were not for the dominating personality of this woman he had somehow had +the good fortune to marry, life would have been a smaller matter for him. + +"Con," he said when they had gone back to the library for their coffee, "I +am afraid this Commission is going to be ticklish business." + +"Why?" she demanded alertly. + +"There are some dreadful grafters on it,--I suspect that the chairman is a +wolf. I suspect further that it has been arranged to whitewash certain rank +deals." + +"But why should the governor have appointed you?" + +"Possibly to hold the whitewash brush." + +"You think that the Senator knows that?" + +"You can't tell where the Senator's tracks lead." + +"Well, don't worry! Keep your eyes open. You can always resign, you know." + +Woodyard went off to his train after kissing his wife affectionately. Conny +called out as he was getting into his coat:-- + +"Will you be back Sunday? Shall I have the Lanes then?" + +"Yes,--and you will go to the Hillyers to-morrow?" + +"I think so,--Tom will take me." + +After the door closed Conny went to her desk and wrote the note to +Isabelle. Then after meditating a few moments, more notes of invitation. +She had decided on her combination,--Gossom, the Silvers, the Hillyers (to +get them off her mind), Senator Thomas, and Cairy. She did not take Percy's +objection to Tom seriously. + +She had decided to present a variety of people to the Lanes. Isabelle and +she had never been intimate, and Conny had a woman's desire to show an +accomplished superiority to the rich friend, who had been inclined to snub +her in boarding school. Conny was eminently skilful in "combinations." +Every one that composed her circle or even entered it might some day be of +use in creating what is called "publicity." That, as Cornelia Woodyard +felt, was the note of the day. "You must be talked about by the right +people, if you want to be heard, if you want your show!" she had said to +Cairy. Thanks to Lane's rapid rise in the railroad corporation, Isabelle +had come legitimately within the zone of interest. + +After she had settled this matter to her satisfaction, she turned to some +house accounts and made various calculations. It was a wonder to every one +who knew them how the Woodyards "could do so much on what they had." As a +matter of fact, with the rising scale of living, it required all Conny's +practical adroitness to make the household come out nearly even. Thanks to +a great-aunt who admired Percy, they had been able to buy this house and +alter it over, and with good business judgment it had been done so that the +property was now worth nearly a third more than when they took it. But a +second man-servant had been added, and Conny felt that she must have a +motor; she pushed away the papers and glanced up, thinking, planning. + +The Senator and she had talked investments the last time they had met. She +had a little money of her own. If the old fox would only take it and roll +it up into a big snowball! Isabelle, now, with all that wealth! Conny +pursed her lips in disgust to think that so much of the ammunition of war +had fallen into such incompetent hands. "Yes," she said to herself, "the +Senator must show me how to do it." Perhaps it flitted vaguely through her +mind that Percy might object to using stock market tips from the Senator. +But Percy must accept her judgment on this matter. They could not go on any +longer with only twenty thousand a year. + +Turning out the lights, she went to her bedroom. It was very plain and +bare, with none of the little toilette elegances or chamber comforts that +women usually love. Conny never spent except where it showed saliently. Her +evening gowns were sometimes almost splendid, but her dressing gowns were +dowdy, and poor little Bessie Falkner spent twice as much on lingerie. + +Having discharged the duties of her day, her mind returned to Cairy, to his +work for Gossom, to his appealing self, and her lips relaxed in a gentle +smile. Hers was a simple nature, the cue once caught. She had come of +rather plain people, who knew the worth of a dollar, and had spent their +lives saving or investing money. The energy of the proletariat had been +handed to her undiminished. The blood was evident in the large bones, the +solid figure, and tenacious fingers, as well as in the shrewdness with +which she had created this household. It was her instinct to push out into +the troubled waters of the material world. She never weakened herself by +questioning values. She knew--what she wanted. + +Nevertheless, as she reached up her hand to turn out the night light, she +was smiling with dreamy eyes, and her thoughts were no longer practical! + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +When Isabelle emerged from the great hotel and turned down the avenue to +walk to the office of Dr. Potts, as he required her to do every day, she +had a momentary thrill of exultation. Descending the gentle incline, she +could see a good part of the city extending into a distant blue horizon +before her. The vast buildings rose like islands in the morning mist. It +reminded her, this general panorama, of the awe-compelling spaces of the +Arizona canon into which she had once descended. Here were the same +irregular, beetling cliffs, the same isolated crags, with sharply outlined +lower and minor levels of building. The delicate blue, the many grays of +storm and mist gave it color, also. But in place of the canon's eternal +quiet,--the solitude of the remote gods,--this city boiled and hummed. +That, too,--the realization of multitudinous humanity,--made Isabelle's +pulses leap. + +In spite of her poor health, she had the satisfaction of at last being +here, in the big hive, where she had wished to be so long. She was a part +of it, a painfully insignificant mite as yet, but still a part of it. +Hitherto New York had been a sort of varied hotel, an entertainment. Now it +was to be her scene, and she had begun already to take possession. It had +all come about very naturally, shortly after her father's death. While she +was dreading the return to St. Louis, which must be emptier than ever +without the Colonel, and she and her mother were discussing the possibility +of Europe, John's new position had come. A Western road had made him an +offer; for he had a splendid record as a "traffic getter." The Atlantic and +Pacific could not lose him; they gave him the third vice-presidency with +headquarters in New York and general charge of traffic. Thus the Lanes' +horizon shifted, and it was decided that the first year in the city they +should spend in a hotel with Mrs. Price. Isabelle's health was again +miserable; there had been the delayed operation; and now she was in the +care of the famous Potts, trying to recover from the operation, from the +old fatigue and the recent strains, "to be made fit." + +The move to New York had not meant much to Lane. He had spent a great deal +of his time there these last years, as well as in Washington, +Pittsburg,--in this city and that,--as business called him. His was what is +usually regarded as a cosmopolitan view of life,--it might better be called +a hotel-view. Home still meant to him the city where his wife and child +were temporarily housed, but he was equally familiar with half a dozen +cities. Isabelle, too, had the same rootless feeling. She had spent but a +short time in any one place since she had left her father's house to go to +St. Mary's. That is the privilege or the curse of the prosperous American. +Life thus becomes a shifting panorama of surfaces. Even in the same city +there are a dozen spots where the family ark has rested, which for the sake +of a better term may be called "homes." That sense of rooted attachment +which comes from long habituation to one set of physical images is +practically a lost emotion to Americans.... + +There were days when New York roared too loudly for Isabelle's nerves, when +the jammed streets, the buzzing shops, the overflowing hotels and theatres, +made her long for quiet. Then she thought of the Farm as the most stable +memory of a fixed condition, and she had an unformed plan of "doing over" +the old place, which was now her own, and making it the centre of the +family's centrifugal energy. Meantime there was the great Potts, who +promised her health, and the flashing charm of the city. + +Occasionally she felt lonely in this packed procession, this hotel +existence, with its multitude of strange faces, and longed for something +familiar, even Torso! At such times when she saw the face of an old +acquaintance, perhaps in a cab at a standstill in the press of the avenue, +her heart warmed. Even a fleeting glimpse of something known was a relief. +Clearly she must settle herself into this whirlpool, put out her tentacles, +and grasp an anchorage. But where? What? + +One morning as she and her mother were making slow progress down the +avenue, she caught sight of Margaret Pole on the sidewalk, waiting to cross +the stream, a little boy's hand in hers. Isabelle waved to her frantically, +and then leaped from the cab, dodged between the pushing motors, and +grasped Margaret. + +"You here!" she gasped. + +"We came back some months ago," Margaret explained. + +She was thin, Isabelle thought, and her face seemed much older than the +years warranted. Margaret, raising her voice above the roar, explained that +they were living out of town, "in the country, in Westchester," and +promised to come to lunch the next time she was in the city. Then with a +nod and a smile she slipped into the stream again as if anxious to be lost, +and Isabelle rejoined her mother. + +"She looks as if she were saving her clothes," Mrs. Price announced with +her precise view of what she observed. Isabelle, while she waited for the +doctor, mused on the momentary vision of her old friend at the street +corner. Margaret turned up in the noise and mist of the city, as everybody +might turn up; but Margaret old, worn, and almost shabby! Then the nurse +came for her and she went into the doctor's room, with a depressing +sensation compounded of a bad night, the city roar, the vision of Margaret. + +"Well, my lady, what's the story to-day?" + +Dr. Potts looked up from his desk, and scrutinized the new patient out of +his shaggy eyebrows. Isabelle began at once the neurasthenic's involved and +particularized tale of woe, breaking at the end with almost a sob:-- + +"I am so useless! I am never going to be well,--what is the matter with +me?" + +"So it's a bad world this morning, eh?" the doctor quizzed in an indulgent +voice. "We'll try to make it better,--shake up the combination." He broke +off suddenly and remarked in an ordinary, conversational voice: "Your +friend Mrs. Woodyard was in here this morning,--a clever woman! My, but she +is clever!" + +"What is the matter with her?" + +"Same thing,--Americanitis; but she'll pull out if she will give herself +half a chance." + +Then he returned to Isabelle, wrote her a prescription, talked to her for +ten minutes, and when she left the office she felt better, was sure it +would "all come out right." + +The great Dr. Potts! He served as God to several hundred neurasthenic +women. Born in a back street of a small town, he had emerged into the +fashionable light after prodigious labor and exercise of will. Physically +he stood six feet, with a heavy head covered with thick black hair, and +deep-set black eyes. He had been well educated professionally, but his +training, his medical attainments, had little to do with his success. He +had the power to look through the small souls of his women patients, and he +found generally Fear, and sometimes Hypocrisy,--a desire to evade, to get +pleasure and escape the bill. These he bullied. Others he found struggling, +feeble of purpose, desiring light, willingly confessing their weakness, and +begging for strength. These he despised; he gave them drugs and flattered +them. There were some, like Conny, who were perfectly poised, with a plain +philosophy of selfishness. These he understood, being of fellow clay, and +plotted with them how to entrap what they desired. + +Power! That was Potts's keynote,--power, effectiveness, accomplishment, at +any and all cost. He was the spirit of the city, nay of the country itself! +"Results--get results at all costs," that was the one lesson of life which +he had learned from the back street, where luckier men had shouldered +him.... "I must supply backbone," he would say to his patients. "I am your +temporary dynamo!" + +To Isabelle this mass of energy, Dr. Alexander Potts, seemed like the +incarnate will to live of the great city. After her visit at his office she +came out into the sharp air, the shrill discords of the busy streets, +attuned--with purpose,--"I am going to be well now! I am going to do this. +Life will arrange itself, and at last I shall be able to live as others +live." This borrowed purpose might last the day out, and she would plunge +into a dozen matters; or it might wear off in an hour or two. Then back she +went the next day to be keyed up once more. + +"Do something! Deliver the goods, no matter what goods or how you get them +into the premises!" Potts thundered, beating the desk in the energy of his +lecture. "Live! That's what we must all do. Never mind _how_ you +live,--don't waste good tissue worrying over that. _Live!_" + +Dr. Potts was an education to Isabelle. His moods of brutality and of +sympathy came like the shifting shadows of a gusty day. His perfectly +material philosophy frightened her and allured her. He was +Mephistopheles,--one hand on the medicine chest of life, the other pointing +satirically towards the towered city. + +"See, my child," he purred; "I will tinker this little toy of your body for +you; then run along down there and play with your brothers and sisters." + +In the mood of reaction that the neurasthenic must meet, the trough of the +wave, Isabelle doubted. Potts had not yet found the key to her mechanism; +the old listless cloud befogged her still. After a sleepless night she +would sit by her window, high up in the mountain of stone, and look out +over the city, its voice dull at this hour of dawn,--a dozing monster. +Something like terror filled her at these times, fear of herself, of the +slumbering monster, so soon to wake and roar. "Act, do!" thundered Potts; +"don't think! Live and get what you want...." Was that all? The peaceful +pastures at Grafton, the still September afternoon when the Colonel died, +the old man himself,--there was something in them beyond mere energy, quite +outside the Potts philosophy. + +Once she ventured to suggest this doubt to Cornelia Woodyard, who, being +temporarily in need of a bracer, had resorted to "old Pot." She had planned +to go to the opera that night and wanted to "be herself." + +"I wonder if he's right about it all," said Isabelle; "if we are just +machines, with a need to be oiled now and then,--to take this drug or that? +Is it all as simple as he makes out? All just autointoxication, chemistry, +and delusion?" + +"You're ill,--that's why you doubt," Conny replied with tranquil +positiveness. "When you've got the poison out of your system, you'll see, +or rather you won't see crooked,--won't have ideas." + +"It's all a formula?" + +Conny nodded, shutting her large mouth firmly. + +"And he has the key. You are merely an organ, and he pulls out this stop or +that; gives you one thing to take and then another. You tell him this dotty +idea you've got in your head and he'll pull the right stop to shake it +out." + +"I wonder! Some days I feel that I must go away by myself, get out of all +the noise, and live up among the mountains far off--" + +She stopped. For Conny was not one to whom to confide a longing for the +stars and the winds in the pines and the scent of the earth. Such vaporing +would be merely another symptom! + +"What would you go mooning off by yourself for? You'd be crazy, for a fact. +Better come down to Palm Beach with me next month." + +The great Potts had the unfortunate habit of gossiping about his patients +with one another. He had said to Conny: "Your friend Isabelle interests me. +I should say that she had a case of festering conscience." He crossed his +legs and gazed wisely up at the ceiling. "A rudimentary organ left over +from her hard-working ancestors. She is inhibited, tied, thinks she can't +do this and that. What she needs"--Potts had found the answer to his riddle +and brought his eyes from the ceiling--"is a lover! Can't you find her +one?" + +"Women usually prefer to select _that_ for themselves." + +"Oh, no,--one is as good as another. What she needs is a counter-irritant. +That husband of hers, what is he like?" + +"Just husband, very successful, good-natured, gives her what she wants,--I +should say they pull well together." + +"That's it! He's one of the smooth, get-everything-the-dear-woman-wants +kind, eh? And then busies himself about his old railroad? Well, it is the +worst sort for her. She needs a man who will beat her." + +"Is that what the lover would do?" + +"Bless you, no! He would make her stop thinking she had an ache." When +Conny went, the doctor came to the door with her and as he held her hand +cried breezily: "Remember what I said about your friend. Look up some nice +young man, who will hang around and make her think she's got a soul." He +pressed Conny's hand and smiled. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +When the Lanes went to Sunday luncheon at the Woodyards', the impression on +Isabelle was exactly what Conny wished it to be. The little house had a +distinct "atmosphere," Conny herself had an "atmosphere," and the people, +who seemed much at home there and very gay, were what is termed +"interesting." That is, each person had his ticket of "distinction," as +Isabelle quickly found out. One was a lawyer whose name often appeared in +the newspapers as counsel for powerful interests; another was a woman +novelist, whose last book was then running serially in a magazine and +causing discussion; a third--a small man with a boyish open face--Isabelle +discovered with a thrill of delight was the Ned Silver whose clever little +articles on the current drama she had read in a fashionable weekly paper. + +Isabelle found her hostess leaning against the mantelpiece with the air of +having just come in and discovered her guests. + +"How are you, dearie?" she drawled in greeting. "This is Mr. Thomas Randall +Cairy, Margaret's cousin,--do you remember? He says he has met you before, +but Thomas usually believes he has met ladies whom he wants to know!" Then +Conny turned away, and thereafter paid little attention to the Lanes, as +though she wished them to understand that the luncheon was not given for +them. + +"In this case," Cairy remarked, "Mrs. Woodyard's gibe happens to miss. I +haven't forgotten the Virginian hills, and I hope you haven't." + +It was Cairy who explained the people to Isabelle:-- + +"There is Gossom, the little moth-eaten, fat man at the door. He is the +mouthpiece of the _People's_, but he doesn't dislike to feast with the +classes. He is probably telling Woodyard at this moment what the President +said to him last week about Princhard's articles on the distillery trust!" + +Among the Colonel's friends the magazine reporter Princhard had been +considered an ignorant and malicious liar. Isabelle looked eagerly as Cairy +pointed him out,--a short, bespectacled man with a thin beard, who was +talking to Silver. + +"There is the only representative of the fashionable world present, Mrs. +George Bertram, just coming in the door. We do not go in for the purely +fashionable--yet," he remarked mockingly. "Mrs. Bertram is interested in +music,--she has a history, too."... + +By the time the company were ready to lunch, Isabelle's pulse had risen +with excitement. She had known, hitherto, but two methods of assimilating +friends and acquaintances,--pure friendship, a good-natured acceptance of +those likable or endurable people fate threw in one's way; and +fashion,--the desire to know people who were generally supposed to be the +people best worth knowing. But here she perceived quickly there was a third +principle of selection--"interest." And as she glanced about the +appointments of Conny's smart little house, her admiration for her old +schoolmate rose. Conny evidently had a definite purpose in life, and had +the power and intelligence to pursue it. To the purposeless person, such as +Isabelle had been, the evidences of this power were almost mysterious. + +At first the talk at the table went quite over Isabelle's head. It +consisted of light gibe and allusion to persons and things she had never +heard of,--a new actress whom the serious Percy was supposed to be in love +with, Princhard's adventure with a political notability, a new very +"American" play. Isabelle glanced apprehensively at her husband, who was at +Conny's end of the table. Lane was listening appreciatively, now and then +exchanging a remark with the lawyer across the table. John Lane had that +solid acquaintance with life which made him at home in almost all +circumstances. If he felt as she did, hopelessly countrified, he would +never betray it. Presently the conversation got to politics, the President, +the situation at Albany. Conny, with her negligent manner and her childish +treble voice, gave the talk a poke here and there and steered it skilfully, +never allowing it to get into serious pools or become mere noise. In one of +the shifts Cairy asked Isabelle, "Have you seen Margaret since her return?" + +"Yes; tell me why they came back!" + +Cairy raised his eyebrows. "Too much husband, I should say,--shouldn't +you?" + +"I don't know him. Margaret seemed older, not strong,--what is the matter +with us all!" + +"You'll understand what is the matter with Margaret when you see Larry! And +then she has three children,--an indecent excess, with her health and that +husband."... + +The company broke up after the prolonged luncheon almost at once, to +Isabelle's regret; for she wished to see more of these people. As they +strolled upstairs to the library Cairy followed her and said:-- + +"Are you going to Mrs. Bertram's with us? She has some music and people +Sundays--I'll tell Mrs. Woodyard," and before she could reply he had +slipped over to Conny. That lady glanced at Isabelle, smiled on Cairy, and +nodded. What she said to Cairy was: "So you've got a new interest. Take +care, Tommy,--you'll complicate your life!" But apparently she did not +regard Isabelle seriously; for presently she was saying to her, "Mrs. +Bertram wants me to bring you around with us this afternoon,--you'll like +it." + +Lane begged off and walked back to the hotel in company with the lawyer. +After a time which was filled with the flutter of amiable little speeches, +appointments, and good-bys, Isabelle found herself in company with the +Silvers and Gossom, Cornelia and Cairy on her way to Mrs. Bertram's, which +was "just around the corner,"--that is, half a dozen blocks farther up town +on Madison Avenue. Mrs. Silver was a pretty, girlish woman with a troubled +face, who seemed to be making great efforts to be gay. She and Cornelia +called each other by first names, and when Isabelle asked about her later, +Conny replied with a preoccupied drawl:-- + +"Yes, Annie Silver is a nice little thing,--an awful drag on him, you know. +They haven't a dollar, and she is going to have a baby; she is in fits +about it." + +As a matter of fact Silver managed to earn by his swiftly flowing pen over +four thousand dollars a year, without any more application than the average +clerk. + +"But in New York, you know!" as Conny explained. "They have lived in a +little apartment, very comfortably, and know nice people. Their friends are +good to them. But if they take to having children!" It meant, according to +Conny's expressive gesture, suburban life, or something "way up town," "no +friends." Small wonder that Annie Silver's face was drawn, and that she was +making nervous efforts to keep up to the last. Isabelle felt that it must +be a tragedy, and as Conny said, "Such a clever man, too!" + + * * * * * + +Mrs. Bertram's deep rooms were well filled, and Cairy, who still served as +her monitor, told Isabelle that most of the women were merely fashionable. +The men--and there was a good sprinkling of them--counted; they all had +tickets of one sort or another, and he told them off with a keen phrase for +each. When the music began, Isabelle found herself in a recess of the +farther room with several people whom she did not know. Cairy had +disappeared, and Isabelle settled back to enjoy the music and study the +company. In the kaleidoscope of the day, however, another change was to +come,--one that at the time made no special impression on her, but one that +she was to remember years afterward. + +A young man had been singing some songs. When he rose from the piano, the +people near Isabelle began to chatter:-- + +"Isn't he good looking! ... That was his own music,--the Granite City ... +Can't you see the tall buildings, hear the wind sweeping from the sea and +rushing through the streets!" etc. Presently there was a piece of music for +a quartette. At its conclusion a voice said to Isabelle from behind her +chair:-- + +"Pardon me, but do you know what that was?" + +She looked over her shoulder expecting to see an acquaintance. The man who +had spoken was leaning forwards, resting one elbow on her chair, his hand +carelessly plucking his gray hair. He had deep piercing black eyes, and an +odd bony face. In spite of his gray hair and lined face she saw that he was +not old. + +"Something Russian, I heard some one say," Isabelle replied. + +"I don't like to sit through music and not know anything about it," the +stranger continued with a delicate, deliberate enunciation. "I don't +believe that I should be any wiser if I heard the name of the piece; but it +flatters your vanity, I suppose, to know it. There is Carova standing +beside Mrs. Bertram; he's going to sing." + +"Who is Carova?" Isabelle demanded eagerly. + +"The new tenor at the Manhattan,--you haven't heard him?" + +"No," Isabelle faltered and felt ashamed as she added, "You see I am almost +a stranger in New York." + +"Mrs. Bertram knows a lot of these musical chaps." + +Then the tenor sang, and after the applause had given way to another rustle +of talk, the gray-haired man continued as if there had been no +interruption:-- + +"So you don't live in New York?--lucky woman!" + +Isabelle moved her chair to look at this person, who wanted to talk. She +thought him unusual in appearance, and liked his friendliness. His face was +lined and thin, and the long, thin hand on his knee was muscular. Isabelle +decided that he must be Somebody. + +"I am here for my health, but I expect to live in New York," she explained. + +"In New York for your health?" he asked in a puzzled tone. "You see, I am a +doctor." + +"Yes--I came to consult Dr. Potts. I gave out,--am always giving out," +Isabelle continued with that confiding frankness that always pleased men. +"I'm like so many women these days,--no good, nerves! If you are a doctor, +please tell me why we should all go to pieces in this foolish fashion?" + +"If _I_ could do that satisfactorily and also tell you how not to go to +pieces, I should be a very famous man," he replied pleasantly. + +"Perhaps you are!" + +"Perhaps. But I haven't discovered that secret, yet." + +"Dr. Potts says it's all the chemistry inside us--autointoxication, +poison!" + +"Yes, that is the latest theory." + +"It seems reasonable; but why didn't our grandmothers get poisoned?" + +"Perhaps they did,--but they didn't know what to call it." + +"You think that is so,--that we are poor little chemical retorts? It +sounds--horrid." + +"It sounds sensible, but it isn't the whole of it." + +"Tell me what you think!" + +"I don't like to interfere with Dr. Potts," he suggested. + +"I shouldn't talk to you professionally, I know; but it is in my mind most +of the time. What is the matter? What is wrong?" + +"I, too, have thought about it a great deal." He smiled and his black eyes +had a kindly gleam. + +"Do you believe as Dr. Potts does that it is all what you eat, just matter? +If your mind is so much troubled, if you have these queer ideas, it can't +be altogether the chemistry?" + +"It might be the soul." + +"Don't laugh--" + +"But I really think it might be the soul." + +The music burst upon them, and when there was another interval, Isabelle +persisted with the topic which filled her mind. + +"Will you tell me what you mean by the soul?" + +"Can _you_ answer the question? ... Well, since we are both in doubt, let +us drop the term for a while and get back to the body." + +"Only we must not end with it, as Potts does!" + +"No, we must not end with the body." + +"First, what causes it,--hysterics, nerves, no-goodness,--the whole thing?" + +"Improper food, bad education, steam heat, variable climate, inbreeding, +lack of children,--shall I stop?" + +"No! I can't find a reasonable cause yet." + +"I haven't really begun.... The brain is a delicate instrument. It can do a +good deal of work in its own way, if you don't abuse it--" + +"Overwork it?" suggested Isabelle. + +"I never knew an American woman who overworked her brain," he retorted +impatiently. "I mean abuse it. It's grossly abused." + +"Wrong ideas?" + +"No ideas at all, in the proper sense,--it's stuffed with all sorts of +things,--sensations, emotions.... Where are you living?" + +"At the Metropole." + +"And where were you last month?" + +"In St. Louis." + +"And the month before?" + +"I went to Washington with my husband and--" + +"Precisely--that's enough!" he waved his thin hand. + +"But it rests me to travel," Isabelle protested. + +"It seems to rest you. Did you ever think what all those whisking changes +in your environment mean to the brain cells? And it isn't just travelling, +with new scenes, new people; it is everything in your life,--every act from +the time you get up to the time you go to bed. You are cramming those brain +cells all the time, giving them new records to make,--even when you lie +down with an illustrated paper. Why, the merest backwoodsman in Iowa is +living faster in a sense than Cicero or Webster.... The gray matter cannot +stand the strain. It isn't the quality of what it has to do; it is the mere +amount! Understand?" + +"I see! I never thought before what it means to be tired. I have worked the +machine foolishly. But one must travel fast--be geared up, as you say--or +fall behind and become dull and uninteresting. What is living if we can't +keep the pace others do?" + +"Must we? Is that _living_?" he asked ironically. "I have a diary kept by +an old great-aunt of mine. She was a country clergyman's wife, away back in +a little village. She brought up four sons, helped her husband fit them for +college as well as pupils he took in, and baked and washed and sewed. And +learned German for amusement when she was fifty! I think she lived +somewhat, but she probably never lived at the pressure you have the past +month." + +"One can't repeat--can't go back to old conditions. Each generation has its +own lesson, its own way." + +"But is our way _living_? Are we living now this very minute, listening to +music we don't apparently care for, that means nothing to us, with our mind +crammed full of distracting purposes and reflections? When I read my aunt +Merelda's journal of the silent winter days on the snowy farm, I think +_she_ lived, as much as one should live. Living doesn't consist in the +number of muscular or nervous reactions that you undergo." + +"What is your formula?" + +"We haven't yet mentioned the most formidable reason for the American +plague," he continued, ignoring her question. "It has to do with that +troublesome term we evaded,--the Soul." + +"The Soul?"... + +The music had come to an end, and the people were moving about them. +Cornelia came up and drawled:-- + +"Tom and I are going on,--will you go with us?" + +When Isabelle reached her hostess, she had but one idea in her mind, and +exclaimed impulsively to that somewhat bored lady:-- + +"Who is that man just going out? With gray hair? The tall, thin man?" + +"Dr. Renault? He's a surgeon, operates on children,--has done something or +other lately."... + +She smiled at Isabelle's impulsiveness, and turned to another. + +'A surgeon,' Isabelle thought. 'What has he to do with the soul?' + +In a few moments she had a chance to repeat her question aloud to Dr. +Renault when they left the house together. + +"Did you ever hear," he replied directly, "that a house divided against +itself will fall?" + +"Of course." + +"I should say that this national disease, which we have been discussing, is +one of the results of trying to live with divided souls,--souls torn, +distraught!" + +"And we need--?" + +"A religion." + +The doctor raised his hat and sauntered down the avenue. + +"A religion!" Isabelle murmured,--a queer word, here at the close of Mrs. +Bertram's pleasantly pagan Sunday afternoon, with ladies of undoubted +social position getting into their motors, and men lighting cigarettes and +cigars to solace them on the way to their clubs. Religion! and the need of +it suggested by a surgeon, a man of science.... + +When the three reached the Woodyards' house, Conny paused with, "When shall +I see you again?" which Isabelle understood as a polite dismissal. Cairy to +her surprise proposed to walk to the hotel with her. Isabelle felt that +this arrangement was not in the plan, but Conny merely waved her hand with +a smile,--"By-by, children." + +They sauntered up the avenue, at the pace required by Cairy's disability. +The city, although filled with people loitering in holiday ease, had a +strange air of subdued life, of Sunday peace, not disturbed even by the +dashing motors. Isabelle, bubbling with the day's impressions, was eager to +talk, and Cairy, as she had found him before at the Virginia Springs, was a +sympathetic man to be with. He told her the little semi-scandalous story of +her recent hostess.... "And now they have settled down to bring up the +children like any good couple, and it threatens to end on the 'live happy +ever after' note. Sam Bertram is really domestic,--you can see he admires +her tremendously. He sits and listens to the music and nods his sleepy old +head." + +"And the--other one?" Isabelle asked, laughing in spite of the fact that +she felt a little shocked. + +"Who knows? ... The lady disappears at rare intervals, and there are +rumors. But she is a good sort, and you see Sam admires her, needs her." + +"But it is rather awful when you stop to think of it!" + +"Why more awful than if Sam had stuck a knife into the other's ribs or +punctured him with a bullet? ... I think it is rather more intelligent." + +Cairy did not know Renault. "Mrs. Bertram gets everybody," he said. +Isabelle felt no inclination to discuss with Cairy her talk about +neurasthenia and religion. So their chatter drifted from the people they +had seen to Cairy himself, his last play, "which was a rank fizzle," and +the plan of the new one. One got on fast and far with Cairy, if one were a +woman and felt his charm. By the time they had reached the hotel, he was +counselling Isabelle most wisely how she should settle herself in New York. +"But why don't you live in the country? in that old village Mrs. Woodyard +told me about? The city is nothing but a club, a way-station these days, a +sort of Fair, you know, where you come two or three times a year to see +your dressmaker and hear the gossip." + +"But there's my husband!" Isabelle suggested. "You see his business is +here." + +"I forgot the husband,--make him change his business. Besides, men like +country life." + + * * * * * + +Isabelle found her husband comfortably settled near a hot radiator, reading +a novel. Lane occasionally read novels on a Sunday when there was +absolutely nothing else to do. He read them slowly, with a curious interest +in the world they depicted, the same kind of interest that he would take in +a strange civilization, like that of the Esquimaux, where phenomena would +have only an amusing significance. He dropped his glasses when his wife +appeared and helped himself to a fresh cigar from the box beside him. + +"Have a good time?" + +It was the formula that he used for almost every occupation pursued by +women. Isabelle, throbbing with her new impressions and ideas, found the +question depressing. John was not the person to pour out one's mind to when +that mind was in a tumult. He would listen kindly, assent at the wrong +place, and yawn at the end. Undoubtedly his life was exciting, but it had +no fine shades. He was growing stout, Isabelle perceived, and a little +heavy. New York life was not good for him. + +"I thought Conny's house and the people so--interesting,"--she used the +universal term for a new sensation,--"didn't you?" + +"Yes,--very pleasant," he assented as he would have if it had been the +Falkners or the Lawtons or the Frasers. + +In the same undiscriminating manner he agreed with her other remarks about +the Woodyards. People were people to him, and life was life,--more or less +the same thing everywhere; while Isabelle felt the fine shades. + +"I think it would be delightful to know people worth while," she observed +almost childishly, "people who _do_ something." + +"You mean writers and artists and that kind? I guess it isn't very +difficult," Lane replied indulgently. + +Isabelle sighed. Such a remark betrayed his remoteness from her idea; she +would have it all to do for herself, when she started her life in New York. + +"I think I shall make over the place at Grafton," she said after a time. +Her husband looked at her with some surprise. She was standing at the +window, gazing down into the cavernous city in the twilight. He could not +possibly follow the erratic course of ideas through her brain, the tissue +of impression and suggestion, that resulted in such a conclusion. + +"Why? what do you want to do with it? I thought you didn't care for the +country." + +"One must have a background," she replied vaguely, and continued to stare +at the city. This was the sum of her new experience, with all its elements. +The man calmly smoking there did not realize that his life, their life, was +to be affected profoundly by such trivial matters as a Sunday luncheon, a +remark by Tom Cairy, the savage aspect of the great city seen through April +mist, and the low vitality of a nervous organism. But everything plays its +part with an impressionable character in which the equilibrium is not found +and fixed. As the woman stared down into the twilight, she seemed to see +afar off what she had longed for, held out her hands towards,--life. + +Pictures, music, the play of interesting personalities, books, +plays,--ideas,--that was the note of the higher civilization that Conny had +caught. If Conny had absorbed all this so quickly, why could not she? +Cornelia Woodyard--that somewhat ordinary schoolmate of her youth--was +becoming for Isabelle a powerful source of suggestion, just as Isabelle had +been for Bessie Falkner in the Torso days. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +When Mrs. Woodyard returned to her house at nine o'clock in the evening and +found it dark, no lights in the drawing-room or the library, no fire +lighted in either room, she pushed the button disgustedly and flung her +cloak into a chair. + +"Why is the house like a tomb?" she demanded sharply of the servant, who +appeared tardily. + +"Mrs. Woodyard was not expected until later." + +"That should make no difference," she observed curtly, and the flustered +servant hastened to pull curtains, light lamps, and build up the fire. + +Conny disliked entering a gloomy house. Moreover, she disliked explaining +things to servants. Her attitude was that of the grand marshal of life, who +once having expressed an idea or wish expects that it will be properly +fulfilled. This attitude worked perfectly with Percy and the children, and +usually with servants. No one "got more results" in her establishment with +less worry and thought than Mrs. Woodyard. The resolutely expectant +attitude is a large part of efficiency. + +After the servant had gathered up her wrap and gloves, Conny looked over +the room, gave another curve to the dark curtains, and ordered whiskey and +cigarettes. It was plain that she was expecting some one. She had gone to +the Hillyers' to dinner as she had promised Percy, and just as the party +was about to leave for the opera had pleaded a headache and returned home. +It was true that she was not well; the winter had taxed her strength, and +she lived quite up to the margin of her vitality. That was her plan, also. +Moreover, the day had contained rather more than its share of problems.... + +When Cairy's light step pressed the stair, she turned quickly from the +fire. + +"Ah, Tommy,--so you got my message?" She greeted him with a slow smile. +"Where were you dining?" + +"With the Lanes. Mrs. Lane and I saw _The Doll's House_ this afternoon." As +Conny did not look pleased, he added, "It is amusing to show Ibsen to a +child." + +"Isabelle Lane is no child." + +"She takes Shaw and Ibsen with that childlike earnestness which has given +those two great fakirs a posthumous vogue," Cairy remarked with a yawn. "If +it were not for America,--for the Mississippi Valley of America, one might +say,--Ibsen would have had a quiet grave, and Shaw might remain the Celtic +buffoon. But the women of the Mississippi Valley have made a gospel out of +them.... It is as interesting to hear them discuss the new dogmas on +marriage as it is to see a child eat candy." + +"You seem to find it so--with Isabelle." + +"She is very intelligent--she will get over the Shaw-measles quickly." + +"You think so?" Conny queried. "Well, with all that money she might do +something, if she had it in her.... But she is middle class, in +ideas,--always was." + +That afternoon Isabelle had confided her schoolgirl opinion of Mrs. +Woodyard to Cairy. The young man balancing the two judgments smiled. + +"She is good to behold," he observed, helping himself to whiskey. + +"Not your kind, Tommy!" Conny warned with a laugh. "The Prices are very +_good_ people. You'll find that Isabelle will keep you at the proper +distance." + +Cairy yawned as if the topic did not touch him. "I thought you were going +to _Manon_ with the Hillyers." + +"I was,--but I came home instead!" Conny replied softly, and their eyes +met. + +"That was kind of you," he murmured, and they were silent a long time. + +It had come over her suddenly in the afternoon that she must see Cairy, +must drink again the peculiar and potent draught which he alone of men +seemed to be able to offer her. So she had written the note and made the +excuse. She would not have given up the Hillyers altogether. They were +important to Percy just now, and she expected to see the Senator there and +accomplish something with him. It was clearly her duty, her plan of life as +she saw it, for her to go to the Hillyers'. But having put in an +appearance, flattered the old lawyer, and had her little talk with Senator +Thomas before dinner, she felt that she had earned her right to a few hours +of sentimental indulgence.... + +Conny, sitting there before the fire, looking her most seductive best, had +the clear conscience of a child. Her life, she thought, was arduous, and +she met its demands admirably, she also thought. The subtleties of feeling +and perception never troubled her. She felt entitled to her sentimental +repose with Cairy as she felt entitled to her well-ordered house. She did +not see that her "affair" interfered with her duties, or with Percy, or +with the children. If it should,--then it would be time to consider.... + +"Tommy," she murmured plaintively, "I am so tired! You are the only person +who rests me." + +She meant it quite literally, that he always rested and soothed her, and +that she was grateful to him for it. But the Southerner's pulses leaped at +the purring words. To him they meant more, oh, much more! He gave her +strength; his love was the one vital thing she had missed in life. The +sentimentalist must believe that; must believe that he is giving, and that +some generous issue justifies his passion. Cairy leaning forward +caressingly said:-- + +"You make me feel your love to-night! ... Wonderful one! ... It is all ours +to-night, in this still room." + +She did not always make him feel that she loved him, far from it. And it +hurt his sentimental soul, and injured his vanity. He would be capable of a +great folly with sufficient delusion, but he was not capable of loving +intensely a woman who did not love him. To-night they seemed in harmony, +and as their lips met at last, the man had the desired illusion--she was +his! + +They are not coarsely physiological,--these Cairys, the born lovers. They +look abhorrently on mere flesh. With them it must always be the spirit that +leads to the flesh, and that is their peculiar danger. Society can always +take care of the simply licentious males; women know them and for the most +part hate them. But the poet lovers--the men of "temperament"--are fatal to +its prosaic peace. These must "love" before they can desire, must gratify +that emotional longing first, pour themselves out, and have the ecstasy +before the union. That is their fatal nature. The state of love is their +opiate, and each time they dream, it is the only dream. Each woman who can +give them the dream is the only woman,--she calls to them with a single +voice. And they divine afar off those women whose voices will call.... + +What would come after? ... The woman looked up at the man with a peculiar +light in her eyes, a gentleness which never appeared except for him, and +held him from her, dreaming intangible things.... She, too, could dream +with him,--that was the wonder of it all to her! This was the force that +had taken her out of her ordinary self. She slipped into nothing--never +drifted--looked blind fate between the eyes. But now she dreamed! ... And +as the man spoke to her, covered her with his warm terms of endearment, she +listened--and forgot her little world. + +Even the most selfish woman has something of the large mother, the giving +quality, when a man's arms hold her. She reads the man's need and would +supply it. She would comfort the inner sore, supply the lack. And for this +moment, Conny was not selfish: she was thinking of her lover's needs, and +how she could meet them. + +Thus the hour sped. + +"You love--you love!" the man said again and again,--to convince himself. + +Conny smiled disdainfully, as at the childish iteration of a child, but +said nothing. Finally with a long sigh, coming back from her dream, she +rose and stood thoughtfully before the fire, looking down at Cairy +reflectively. He had the bewildered feeling of not understanding what was +in her mind. + +"I will dine with you to-morrow," she remarked at last. + +Cairy laughed ironically. It was the perfect anti-climax,--after all this +unfathomable silence, after resting in his arms,--"I will dine with you +to-morrow!" + +But Conny never wasted words,--the commonest had a meaning. While he was +searching for the meaning under this commonplace, there was the noise of +some one entering the hall below. Conny frowned. Another interruption in +her ordered household! Some servant was coming in at the front door. Or a +burglar? + +If it were a burglar, it was a very well assured one that closed the door +carefully, took time to lay down hat and coat, and then with well-bred +quiet ascended the stairs. + +"It must be Percy," Conny observed, with a puzzled frown. "Something must +have happened to bring him back to-night." + +Woodyard, seeing a light in the library, looked in, the traveller's weary +smile on his face. + +"Hello, Percy!" Conny drawled. "What brings you back at this time?" + +Woodyard came into the room draggingly, nodded to Cairy, and drew a chair +up to the fire. His manner showed no surprise at the situation. + +"Some things came up at Albany," he replied vaguely. "I shall have to go +back to-morrow." + +"What is it?" his wife demanded quickly. + +"Will you give me a cigarette, Tom?" he asked equably, indicating that he +preferred not to mention his business, whatever it might be. Cairy handed +him his cigarette case. + +"These are so much better than the brand Con supplies me with," he observed +lightly. + +He examined the cigarette closely, then lit it, and remarked:-- + +"The train was beastly hot. You seem very comfortable here." + +Cairy threw away his cigarette and said good-by. + +"Tom," Conny called from the door, as he descended, "don't forget the +dinner." She turned to Percy,--"Tom is taking me to dinner to-morrow." + +There was silence between husband and wife until the door below clicked, +and then Conny murmured interrogatively, "Well?" + +"I came back," Percy remarked calmly, "because I made up my mind that there +is something rotten on in that Commission." + +Conny, after her talk with the Senator, knew rather more about the +Commission than her husband; but she merely asked, "What do you mean?" + +"I mean that I want to find just who is interested in this up-state +water-power grant before I go any farther. That is why I came down,--to see +one or two men, especially Princhard." + +While Cornelia was thinking of certain remarks that the Senator had made, +Percy added, "I am not the Senator's hired man." + +"Of course not!" + +Her husband's next remark was startling,--"I have almost made up my mind to +get out, Con,--to take Jackson's offer of a partnership and stick to the +law." + +Here, Conny recognized, was a crisis, and like most crises it came +unexpectedly. Conny rose to meet it. Husband and wife discussed the +situation, personal and political, of Percy's fortunes for a long time, and +it was not settled when it was time for bed. + +"Con," her husband said, still sitting before the fire as she turned out +the lights and selected a book for night reading, "aren't you going pretty +far with Tom?" + +Conny paused and looked at him questioningly. + +"Yes," she admitted in an even voice. "I have gone pretty far.... I wanted +to tell you about it. But this political business has worried you so much +lately that I didn't like to add anything." + +As Percy made no reply, she said tentatively:-- + +"I may go farther, Percy.... Tom loves me--very much!" + +"It means that--you care for him--the same way?" + +"He's given me something," Conny replied evasively, "something I never +felt--just that way--before." + +"Yes, Tom is of an emotional nature," Woodyard remarked dryly. + +"You don't like Tom. Men wouldn't, I can understand. He isn't like most +men.... But women like him!" + +Then for a while they waited, until he spoke, a little wearily, +dispassionately. + +"You know, Con, I always want you to have everything that is best for +you--that you feel you need to complete your life. We have been the best +sort of partners, trying not to limit each other in any way.... I know I +have never been enough for you, given you all that you ought to have, in +some ways. I am not emotional, as Tom is! And you have done everything for +me. I shall never forget that. So if another can do something for you, make +your life happier, fuller,--you must do it, take it. I should be a beastly +pig to interfere!" + +He spoke evenly, and at the end he smiled rather wanly. + +"I know you mean it, Percy,--every word. But I shouldn't want you to be +unhappy," replied Conny, in a subdued voice. + +"You need not think of me--if you feel sure that this is best for you." + +"You know that I could not do anything that might hurt our life,--_that_ is +the most important!" + +Her husband nodded. + +"The trouble is that I want both!" she analyzed gravely; "both in different +ways." + +A slight smile crept under her husband's mustache, but he made no comment. + +"I shall always be honest with you, Percy, and if at any time it becomes--" + +"You needn't explain," Percy interrupted hurriedly. "I don't ask! I don't +want to know what is peculiarly your own affair, as this.... As I said, you +must live your life as you choose, not hampered by me. We have always +believed that was the best way, and meant it, too, haven't we?" + +"But you have never wanted your own life," Conny remarked reflectively. + +"No, not that way!" The look on Percy's face made Conny frown. She was +afraid that he was keeping something back. + +"I suppose it is different with a man." + +"No, not always," and the smile reappeared under the mustache, a painful +smile. "But you see in my case I never wanted--more." + +"Oh!" murmured Conny, more troubled than ever. + +"You won't do it lightly, whatever you do, I know! ... And I'll manage--I +shall be away a good deal this winter." + +There was another long silence, and when Conny sighed and prepared to leave +the room, Percy spoke:-- + +"There's one thing, Conny.... This mustn't affect the children." + +"Oh, Percy!" she protested. "Of course not." + +"You must be careful that it won't--in any way, you understand. That would +be very--wrong." + +"Of course," Conny admitted in the same slightly injured tone, as if he +were undervaluing her character. "Whatever I do," she added, "I shall not +sacrifice you or the children, naturally." + +"We needn't talk more about it, then, need we?" + +Conny slowly crossed the room to her husband, and putting one hand on his +shoulder she leaned down and pushed up the hair from his forehead, +murmuring:-- + +"You know I love you, Percy!" + +"I know it, dear," he answered, caressing her face with his fingers. "If I +don't happen to be enough for you, it is my fault--not yours." + +"It isn't that!" she protested. But she could not explain what else it was +that drew her to Cairy so strongly. "It mustn't make any difference between +us. It won't, will it?" + +Percy hesitated a moment, still caressing the lovely face. + +"I don't think so, Con.... But you can't tell that now--do you think?" + +"It mustn't!" she said decisively, as if the matter was wholly in her own +hands. And leaning still closer towards him, she whispered: "You are +wonderful to me. A man who can take things as you do is really--big!" She +meant him to understand that she admired him more than ever, that in +respect to character she recognized that he was larger and finer than the +other man. + +Percy kissed the cheek so close to his lips. Conny shrank back perceptibly. +Some elemental instinct of the female pushed its way through her +broad-minded modern philosophy and made her shudder at the double embrace. +She controlled herself at once and again bowed her beautiful head to his. +But Percy did not offer to kiss her. + +"There are other things in life than passion," she remarked slowly. + +Percy looking directly into her eyes observed dryly: "Oh, many more.... But +passion plays the deuce with the rest sometimes!" + +And he held open the door for his wife to leave the room. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + +"That snipe!" Conny called Margaret's husband, Mr. Lawrence Pole. Larry, as +he was known in his flourishing days when he loafed in brokers' offices, +and idiotically dribbled away his own fortune and most of his wife's, +rarely earned a better word than this epithet. "She ought to leave +him--divorce him--get rid of such rubbish somehow," Conny continued with +unwonted heat, as the tired motor chugged up the steep Westchester hillside +on its way to Dudley Farms where the Poles lived. + +"Perhaps Margaret has prejudices," Isabella suggested. "You know she used +to be religious, and there's her father, the Bishop." + +"It would take a good many bishops to keep me tied to Larry!" + +Conny was enjoying the early spring air, the virginal complexion of the +April landscape. She surveyed the scene from Isabelle's motor with +complacent superiority. How much better she had arranged her life than +either Margaret or Isabelle! After the talk with Percy the previous +evening, she felt a new sense of power and competency, with a touch of +gratitude for that husband who had so frankly and unselfishly "accepted her +point of view" and allowed her "to have her own life" without a distressing +sense of wrecking anything. Conny's conscience was simple, almost +rudimentary; but it had to be satisfied, such as it was. To-day it was +completely satisfied, and she took an ample pleasure in realizing how well +she had managed a difficult situation,--and also in the prospect of dinner +with her lover in the evening. + +That morning before the motor had come for her, she had gone over with +Percy the complicated situation that had developed at Albany. It was her +way in a crisis to let him talk it all out first, and then later, +preferably when he came to her room in the morning after his breakfast with +the children, to suggest those points which she wished to determine his +action. Thus her husband absorbed her views when they would make most +impression and in time came to believe that they were all evolved from his +inner being.... To-day when he appeared shortly before her coffee, she had +glanced at him apprehensively out of her sleepy eyes. But he betrayed no +sign of travail of spirit. Though naturally weary after his brief rest, he +had the same calm, friendly manner that was habitual with him. So they got +at once to the political situation. + +She was content with the way in which she had led him, for the time at +least, to resolve his doubts and suspicions. They had no reason to suspect +the Senator,--he had always encouraged Woodyard's independent position in +politics and pushed him. There was not yet sufficient evidence of fraud in +the hearings before the Commission to warrant aggressive action. It would +be a pity to fire too soon, or to resign and lose an opportunity later. It +would mean not only political oblivion, but also put him in a ridiculous +light in the press, and suggest cowardice, etc. So he had gone away to +attend to some matters at his office, and take an afternoon train back to +Albany, with the conviction that "he must do nothing hurriedly, before the +situation had cleared up." Those were his own phrases; Conny always +preferred to have Percy use his own words to express his resolves. + +There was only one small matter on her mind: she must see the Senator and +find out--well, as much as she could discreetly, and be prepared for the +next crisis.... + +"I don't see why Margaret buries herself like this," Conny remarked, coming +back to the present foreground, with a disgusted glance at the little +settlement of Dudley Farms, a sorry combination of the suburb and the +village, which they were approaching. "She might at least have a flat in +the city somewhere, like others." + +"Margaret wants the children to be in the country. Probably she gets less +of Larry out here,--that may compensate!" + +"As for the children," Conny pronounced with lazy dogmatism, "I don't +believe in fussing. Children must camp where it's best for the parents. +They can get fresh air in the Park." + +The motor turned in at a neglected driveway, forbidding with black +tree-trunks, and whirled up to the piazza of a brick house, an ugly +survival of the early country mansion. Mrs. Pole, who was bending over a +baby carriage within a sun parlor, came forward, a smile of welcome on her +pale face. She seemed very small and fragile as she stood above them on the +steps, and her thin, delicate face had the marked lines of a woman of +forty. She said in her slow, Southern voice, which had a pleasant human +quality:-- + +"I hope you weren't mired. The roads are something awful about here. I am +so glad to see you both." + +When she spoke her face lost some of the years. + +"It is a long way out,--one can't exactly run in on you, Margaret! If it +hadn't been for Isabelle's magnificent car, you might have died without +seeing me!" Conny poured forth. + +"It _is_ a journey; but you see people don't run in on us often." + +"You've got a landscape," Conny continued, turning to look across the bare +treetops towards the Sound. It would have been a pleasant prospect except +for the eruption of small houses on every side. "But how can you stand it +the whole year round? Are there any civilized people--in those houses?" She +indicated vaguely the patch of wooden villas below. + +"Very few, I suppose, according to your standard, Cornelia. But we don't +know them. I pulled up the drawbridge when we first came." + +Mrs. Pole's thin lips twitched with mirth, and Conny, who was never content +with mere inference, asked bluntly:-- + +"Then what do you do with yourselves--evenings?" Her tone reflected the +emptiness of the landscape, and she added with a treble laugh, "I've always +wondered what suburban life is like!" + +"Oh, you eat and read and sleep. Then there are the children daytimes. I +help teach 'em. We live the model life,--flowers and shrubs in the summer, +I suppose.... The Bishop was with me for a time." + +The large bare drawing-room, which was sunnily lighted from the southwest, +was singularly without the usual furniture of what Conny called "civilized +life." There were no rugs, few chairs, but one table, such as might be made +by the village carpenter and stained black, which was littered with books +and magazines. There was also a large writing cabinet of mahogany,--a +magnificent piece of Southern colonial design,--and before the fire a +modern couch. Conny inventoried all this in a glance. She could not "make +it out." 'They can't be as poor as that,' she reflected, and turned to the +books on the table. + +"Weiniger's _Sex and Character_," she announced, "Brieux's _Maternite_, +Lavedan, Stendhal, Strobel on Child Life,--well, you do read! And this?" +She held up a yellow volume of French plays. "What do you do with this when +the Bishop comes?" + +"The Bishop is used to me now. Besides, he doesn't see very well, poor +dear, and has forgotten his French. Have you read that book of Weiniger's? +It is a good dose for woman's conceit these days." + +There was a touch of playful cynicism in the tone, which went with the +fleeting smile. Mrs. Pole understood Cornelia Woodyard perfectly, and was +amused by her. But Conny's coarse and determined handling of life did not +fascinate her fastidious nature as it had fascinated Isabelle's. + +Conny continued to poke among the books, emitting comments as she happened +upon unexpected things. It was the heterogeneous reading of an untrained +woman, who was seeking blindly in many directions for guidance, for light, +trying to appease an awakened intellect, and to answer certain gnawing +questions of her soul.... + +Isabelle and Margaret talked of their visit at the Virginia Springs. In the +mature face, Isabelle was seeking the blond-haired girl, with deep-set blue +eyes, and sensitive mouth, that she had admired at St. Mary's. Now it was +not even pretty, although it spoke of race, for the bony features, the high +brow, the thin nose, had emerged, as if chiselled from the flesh by pain. + +'She has suffered,' Isabelle thought, 'suffered--and lived.' + +Conny had recounted to Isabelle on their way out some of the rumors about +the Poles. Larry Pole was a weakling, had gone wrong in money +matters,--nothing that had flared up in scandal, merely family +transactions. Margaret had taken the family abroad--she had inherited +something from her mother--and suddenly they had come back to New York, and +Larry had found a petty job in the city. Evidently, from the bare house, +their hiding themselves out here, most of the wife's money had gone, too. + +Pity! because Margaret was proud. She had her Virginian mother's pride with +a note of difference. The mother had been proud in the conventional way, of +her family, her position,--things. Margaret had the pride of +accomplishment,--of deeds. She was the kind who would have gone ragged with +a poet or lived content in a sod hut with a Man. And she had married this +Larry Pole, who according to Conny looked seedy and was often rather +"boozy." How could she have made such a mistake,--Margaret of all women? +That Englishman Hollenby, who really was somebody, had been much interested +in her. Why hadn't she married him? Nobody would know the reason.... + +The luncheon was very good. The black cook, "a relic of my mother's +establishment," as Margaret explained, gave them a few savory family +dishes, and there was a light French wine. Margaret ate little and talked +little, seeming to enjoy the vivacity of the other women. + +"Tell about your visit to the Gorings," Conny drawled. "Percy's cousin, +Eugene Goring, who married Aline, you know. Boots in the bath-tub, and the +babies running around naked, and Aline lost in the metaphysics of the arts, +making chairs." + +And Isabelle recounted what she had seen of Aline's establishment in St. +Louis, with its total disregard of what Conny called the "decencies" of +life. They all laughed at her picture of their "wood-nymph," as they had +named Aline. + +"And Eugene talking anarchy, and washing the dishes,--it sounds like a +Weber and Field's farce," gurgled Conny. "He wrote Percy about lecturing in +New York,--wanted to come East. But Percy couldn't do anything for him. It +isn't a combination to make a drawing-room impression." + +"But," Margaret protested, "Aline is a person, and that is more than you +can say of most of us married women. She has kept her personality." + +"If I were 'Gene," Conny replied contemptuously, "I'd tone her +'personality' down." + +"He's probably big enough to respect it." + +There followed a discussion of the woman's part in marriage, Margaret +defending independence, "the woman's right to live for herself," and Conny +taking the practical view. + +"She can't be anything any way, just by herself. She had better make the +most of the material she's got to work with--or get another helping," she +added, thinking of Larry. + +"And Aline isn't happy," Isabelle remarked; "she has a look on her face as +if she were a thousand miles away, and had forgotten her marriage as much +as she could. Her chairs and tables are just ways of forgetting." + +"But they have something to think about,--those two. They don't vegetate." + +"I should say they had,--but no anarchy in my domestic circle, thank you!" +Conny observed. + +"I shouldn't object to anarchy," sighed Margaret, with her whimsical smile. + +"Margaret is bored," Isabelle pronounced, "simply awfully bored. She's so +bored that I expect some day she will poison herself and the children, +merely to find out what comes next." + +"No wonder--buried in the snowdrifts out here," Conny agreed. "Isn't there +anything you want to do, even something wicked?" + +"Yes," Mrs. Pole answered half seriously. "There is _one_ thing I'd like to +do before I die." + +"Tell us!" + +"I'd like to find Somebody--man or woman--who cared for the things I care +for--sky and clouds and mountains,--and go away with him anywhere for--a +little while, just a little while," she drawled dreamily, resting her +elbows on the table. + +"Elope! Fie, fie!" Conny laughed. + +"My mother's father had a plantation in one of the Windward Islands," +Margaret continued. "It must be nice down there--warm and sunny. I'd like +to lie out on the beach and forget children and servants and husbands, and +stop wondering what life is. Yes, I'd like a vacation--in the Windward +Islands, with somebody who understood." + +"To wit, a man!" added Conny. + +"Yes, a man! But only for the trip." + +They laughed a good deal about Margaret's vacation, called her the +"Windward Islands," and asked her to make reservations for them in her +Paradise when they had found desirable partners. + +"Only, I should have to bring John, and he wouldn't know what to do with +himself on a beach," Isabelle remarked. "I don't know any one else to +take." + +"You mustn't go Windwarding until you have to," Margaret explained.... + +At the dessert, the children came in,--two boys and a girl. The elder boy +was eight, with his mother's fair hair, blue eyes, and fine features, and +the same suggestion of race in the narrow high brow, the upward poise of +the head. His younger brother was nondescript, with dark hair and full +lips. Margaret observed her children with a curiously detached air, +Isabelle thought. Was she looking for signs of Larry in that second son? +Alas, she might see Larry always, with the cold apprehension of a woman too +wise to deceive herself! The little girl, fresh from her nap, was round and +undefined, and the mother took her into her arms, cuddling her close to her +breast, as if nothing, not even the seed of Larry, could separate her from +this one; as if she felt in her heart all the ills and sorrows, the woman's +pains to be,--the eternal feminine defeat,--in this tiny ball of freshness. +And the ironical smile subtly softened to a glow of affection. Here, at +least, was an illusion! + +Isabelle, watching these two, understood--all the lines, the smile, the +light cynicism--the Windward Islands! She put her arms impulsively about +the mother and the child, hugging them closely. Margaret looked up into her +shining eyes and pressed her hand.... + +"There are some cigarettes in the other room," Margaret suggested; "we'll +build up the fire and continue the argument in favor of the Windward +Islands." + +"It is a long way to New York over that road," Conny observed. "I have an +engagement." + +Now that she had satisfied her curiosity about "how the Poles lived," she +began to think of her dinner with Cairy, and was fearful lest she might be +delayed. + +"Spend the night," suggested Margaret; but Isabelle, who understood Conny, +telephoned at once for the motor. + +"You aren't going back to the West, Isabelle?" Margaret asked, while they +waited for the motor. "Won't you miss it?" + +"Miss the West? Did you ever know a woman that had escaped from the +Mississippi Valley who would go back there?" Conny drawled. "Why, Belle is +like a girl just out of school, looking at the shop windows!" + +Cornelia Woodyard, who had lived a number of years in a corner of that same +vast valley, looked from metropolitan heights on the monotony of the +"middle West." She had the New Yorker's amusing incapacity to comprehend +existence outside the neighborhood of Fifth Avenue and Central Park. + +"One lives out there," Margaret protested with sudden fire, "in those great +spaces. Men grow there. They _do_ things. When my boys are educated I shall +take them away from New York, to the Virginia mountains, perhaps, and have +them grow up there, doing things, real things, working with their hands, +becoming men! Perhaps not there," she mused, recollecting that the acres of +timber and coal in the mountains, her sons' inheritance from her vigorous +ancestors, had been lost to them in a vulgar stock dealer's gamble by their +father,--"perhaps out to Oregon, where I have an uncle. His father rode his +horse all the way from Louisiana across the continent, after the War! He +had nothing but his horse--and before he died he built a city in his new +country. That is where men do things!" + +Margaret had flashed into life again. As Tom Cairy would have said, +"_Vraiment, ma petite cousine a une grande ame--etouffee_" (For Cairy +always made his acute observations in the French tongue). + +"There's something of the Amazon in you, Margaret," Conny remarked, "in +spite of your desire to seclude yourself in the Windward Islands with a +suitable mate." + +The motor finally came puffing up the drive, and the women stood on the +veranda, prolonging their farewells. A round, red, important sun peeped +from under the gray cloud bank that had lowered all the afternoon, flooding +the thin branches of the budding trees, falling warm and gold across the +dead fields. + +"See!" Margaret cried, raising her thin arms to the sun. "The Promise!" + +"I hope it will hold until we reach Jerome Avenue," Conny replied +practically, preparing to enter the car. + +"The promise of another life!" + +Margaret was standing in the sun, her nostrils dilated, absorbing the +light, the source of joy and life. + +"Windward Islands, eh?" Conny coughed, settling herself comfortably in her +corner. + +"The real land," Margaret murmured to herself. + +The chauffeur had reached for the lever when there appeared on the drive +two men bearing something between them, a human something, carefully. + +"What's that!" exclaimed Conny in a frightened voice. "What is it?" she +repeated to the chauffeur,--demanding of a man something in his province to +know. + +"Looks though they had a child--hurt," the chauffeur replied. + +Margaret, shading her eyes with a thin hand, looked down the avenue. She +made no movement to go towards the men,--merely waited motionless for the +thing to come. And the men came slowly forward, past the car, up the steps. + +It was the older boy. The man who held the head and shoulders of the child +said, "An accident--not serious, I believe." + +Margaret opened the door and pointed to the lounge before the fire. The man +who had spoken laid the boy down very gently with his head on a cushion, +and smoothed back the rumpled hair. + +"I will go for the doctor," the other man said, and presently there was the +sound of the motor leaping down the hill. + +Margaret had dropped on her knees beside the unconscious boy, and placed +one hand on his brow. "Bring some water," she said to Isabelle, and began +to unbutton the torn sweater. + +Conny, with one look at the white face and closed eyes, went softly out +into the hall and sat down. + +"Will you telephone to Dr. W. S. Rogers in New York, and ask him to send +some one if he can't come himself?" Margaret asked the stranger, who was +helping her with the boy's clothes. + +"Can I telephone any one else--his father?" the man suggested, as he turned +to the door. + +"No--it would be no use--it's too late to reach him." + +Then she turned again to the boy, who was still unconscious.... + +When the man had finished telephoning, he came back through the hall, where +Conny was sitting. + +"How did it happen?" she asked. + +"He fell over the culvert,--the high one just as you leave the station, you +know. He was riding his bicycle,--I saw the little chap pushing it up the +hill as I got out of the train. Then a big touring car passed me, and met +another one coming down at full speed. I suppose the boy was frightened and +tried to get too far out on the culvert and fell over. The motors didn't +notice him; but when I reached the spot, I saw his bicycle hanging on the +edge and looked over for him,--could just see his head in the bushes and +leaves. Poor little fellow! It was a nasty fall. But the leaves and the +rubbish must have broken it somewhat." + +"Rob! Rob Falkner!" Isabelle exclaimed, as the man turned and met her at +the door. "I didn't recognize you--with your beard! How is Bessie?" + +"Very well, I believe. She is in Denver, you know." + +When he had gone back to the boy, Isabelle said to Conny:-- + +"We used to know the Falkners very well. There is a story! ... Strange he +should be _here_. But I heard he was in the East somewhere." + +Conny did not seem interested in Rob Falkner and his turning up at this +juncture. She sat with a solemn face, wondering how she could get back to +the city. Finally she resolved to telephone Cairy. + + * * * * * + +Falkner went over to the unconscious boy, and taking his hand, counted the +pulse. "It's all right so far," he said to the mother, who did not hear +him. After a time she looked up, and her low voice dragged hoarsely,--"You +mustn't wait. The doctor will be here soon, and we can do everything now." + +"I will wait until the doctor comes," Falkner replied gently, and stepped +to the window to watch for the motor. + +After the local doctor had come and said, "A slight concussion,--nothing +serious, I expect," and the boy had revived somewhat, Conny departed alone +in the motor, Isabelle having decided to stay with Margaret over the night. +Falkner helped the doctor carry the patient upstairs, and then started to +leave. Isabelle waited for him at the door. + +"Mrs. Pole wishes me to thank you for all your kindness." + +"I shall look in to-morrow morning," he replied hurriedly. "I would stay +now until the boy's father came; but I don't suppose there is anything I +can do. I am living at the hotel below, and you can telephone if you want +me." + +"You are living here?" + +"Yes; I am working on the new dam, a few miles from this place." + +"I am so glad to see you again," Isabelle said, the only words she could +think of. + +"Thank you." + +Then with a curt nod he was off. He had not shown in any way that he was +glad to see her, Isabelle reflected. Falkner was always moody, but she had +thought he liked her,--and after all their friendship! Something had kept +her from asking more about Bessie. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + +Larry did not return for dinner, which Isabelle ate by herself in sombre +silence. When she went upstairs to take the mother's place with the boy, +Margaret did not seem to notice her husband's absence, though she inquired +repeatedly whether the New York doctor had telephoned. Later in the evening +when Isabelle suggested that some effort should be made to find the boy's +father, Margaret exclaimed impatiently:-- + +"I can't tell where he is! ... It is easier for me that he isn't here." And +in answer to Isabelle's expression, she added: "Don't look so shocked, B! +Larry gets on my nerves frightfully when there is anything extra to bear or +do. Of course I shall telephone his office in the morning, and he will come +out at once. That doctor said there would be no change before morning. Do +you suppose he knows anything, that doctor? He had the look of polite +ignorance!" + +The New York doctor arrived towards midnight with a nurse, and stayed the +night to await developments. Margaret still sat by the boy's bed, and +Isabelle left her huddled in a large chair, her eyes staring at the shadow +on the faintly lighted bed. She had listened to what Dr. Rogers had to say +without a word. She was almost stone, Isabelle felt, looking at her with +some awe. What could have made her like this! + +She was still in this stony mood the next morning when Larry reached the +house. Dressed in a loose black gown that clung to her slight figure and +brought out the perfect whiteness of her skin, she stood and listened +indifferently to the vague explanation of his absence that her husband +poured out profusely. Then with a remark that the doctor would see him +before he went, she left the room. Isabelle, who was present, watched the +two keenly, trying to divine the secret. To be sure, Larry was not +attractive, she decided,--too effusive, too anxious to make the right +impression, as if he were acting a part before Isabelle, and full of wordy +concern for every one. A little below the medium height, he stood very +erect, consciously making the most of his inches. His sandy hair was thin, +and he wore glasses, behind which one eye kept winking nervously. Neatly, +almost fashionably dressed, he bore no evident marks of dissipation. After +Conny's description, Isabelle had expected to see his shortcomings written +all over him. Though he was over-mannered and talkative, there was nothing +to mark him as of the outcast class. "One doesn't despise one's husband +because he's foolish or unfortunate about money matters," Isabelle said to +herself. And the sympathy that she had felt for Margaret began to +evaporate. + +"You say that he fell off that embankment?" Larry remarked to her. "I was +afraid he was too young to ride about here by himself with all the motors +there are in this neighborhood. But Margaret was anxious to have him +fearless.... People who motor are so careless--it has become a curse in the +country.... Mrs. Woodyard came out with you? I am so sorry this frightful +accident spoiled your day."... + +He ran on from remark to remark, with no prompting from Isabelle, and had +got to their life in Germany when the doctor entered the room. Larry shook +hands punctiliously with him, inquiring in a special tone: "I hope you have +good news of the little fellow, Doctor? I thought I would not go up until I +had seen you first."... + +The doctor cut short the father's prolixity in a burly voice:-- + +"It's concussion, passing off, I think. But nobody can say what will happen +then,--whether there is anything wrong with the cord. It may clear up in a +few days. It may not. No use speculating.... I shall be back to-morrow or +send some one. Good day." + +Larry followed him into the hall, talking, questioning, exclaiming. +Isabella noticed that the doctor gave Pole a quick, impatient glance, +shaking him off with a curt reply, and jumped into the waiting carriage. In +some ways men read men more rapidly than women can. They look for fewer +details, with an eye to the essential stuff of character. + +What had the doctor said to Margaret? Had he let her know his evident +fears? When she came into the room for a moment, there was an expression of +fixed will in her white face, as if she had gone down into herself and +found there the courage to meet whatever was coming.... 'The older boy, +too,' thought Isabelle,--'the one so like her, with no outward trace of the +father!' + +While Margaret was giving directions for telephoning, making in brief +phrases her arrangements for the day, Falkner came in. He was in his +working clothes, and with his thick beard and scrubby mustache looked quite +rough beside the trim Larry. + +"How is the boy?" he demanded directly, going up to the mother. + +"Better, I think,--comfortable at least," she answered gently. There was a +warm gleam in her eyes as she spoke to this stranger, as if she had felt +his fibre and liked it. + +"I will come in this afternoon. I should like to see him when I can." + +"Yes, this afternoon," Margaret replied. "I should be glad to have you +come." + +Isabelle had told Pole that Falkner was the man who had found the boy and +brought him home. Larry, with the subtle air of superiority that clothes +seem to give a small man, thanked Falkner in suitable language. Isabelle +had the suspicion that he was debating with himself whether he should give +this workingman a couple of dollars for his trouble, and with an hysterical +desire to laugh interposed:-- + +"Mr. Pole, this is Mr. Falkner, an old friend of ours!" + +"Oh," Larry remarked, "I didn't understand!" and he looked at Falkner +again, still from a distance. + +"Rob," Isabelle continued, turning to Falkner, "you didn't tell me +yesterday how Bessie is. I haven't heard from her for a long while,--and +Mildred?" + +"They are well, I believe. Bessie doesn't write often." + +Pole followed him into the hall, making remarks. Isabelle heard Falkner +reply gruffly: "Yes, it was a nasty fall. But a kid can fall a good way +without hurting himself seriously." + +When Pole came back and began to talk to her, Isabelle's sympathy for his +wife revived. The house had settled into the dreary imitation of its +customary routine that the house of suspense takes on. To live in this, +with the mild irritation of Larry's conversational fluency, was quite +intolerable. It was not what he said, but the fact that he was forever +saying it. "A bag of words," Isabelle called him. "Poor Margaret!" And she +concluded that there was nothing more useful for her to do than to take +upon herself the burden of Larry until he should dispose of himself in some +harmless way. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + +No, women such as Margaret Pole do not "despise their husbands because they +are unfortunate in money matters,"--not altogether because they prove +themselves generally incompetent in the man's struggle for life! This +process of the petrification of a woman's heart, slow or rapid as it may +be, is always interesting,--if the woman is endowed in the first place with +the power to feel. How Margaret Lawton may have come to marry Lawrence +Pole, we can defer for the present, as a matter of post-mortem psychology, +unprofitable, melancholy, and inexact, however interesting. How does any +woman come to marry any man? Poets, psychologists, and philosophers have +failed to account for the accidents of this emotional nexus. + +What is determinable and more to our purpose is the subsequent process of +dissolution, or petrifaction. All that need be said is that Margaret +married her husband when she was twenty-four, with confidence, belief in +him, and a spiritual aspiration concerning marriage not possible to many +who marry. However foolishly she may have deluded herself,--betrayed a +fatal incapacity to divine,--she believed when she went to the altar with +Lawrence Pole that she was marrying a Man,--one whom she could respect as +well as love, and to whom she should remain loyally bound in mind and heart +and soul. + +She was ardent, this delicate Southern girl. Under a manner that had seemed +to comrades at St. Mary's cold because of its reticence, there burned the +fire of a crusading race,--of those Southerners who had pushed from the fat +lowlands about the sea into the mountains and across them to the +wilderness; of that uncle, who after the defeat of his cause had ridden his +cavalry horse across the entire country in search of a new opening, to +build at forty-three a new life for himself and his wife--after defeat! +There was courage, aspiration, the power of deeds in that blood,--note the +high forehead, the moulded chin, the deep eyes of this woman. And there was +also in her religious faith, received from her father the Bishop, piety, +and accepted beliefs in honor, loyalty, love to one's family and friends, +and charity to the world. All this was untested, handed down to her wrapped +in the prayer-book by the Bishop. And she had seen a bit of what we call +the world, there in Washington among her mother's friends,--had been gay, +perhaps reckless, played like a girl with love and life, those hours of +sunshine. She knew vaguely that some men were liars, and some were carnal; +but she came to her marriage virgin in soul as well as body, without a spot +from living, without a vicious nerve in her body, ready to learn. + +And folly with money, mere incompetence, did not turn that heart to +stone,--not that alone. The small segment of the world that knew the Poles +might think so, hearing how Larry had gone into Wall Street and fatuously +left there his own small fortune, and later, going back after his lesson, +had lost what he could of his wife's property. To be sure, after that first +"ill luck," Margaret's eyes had opened to the fact that her husband was not +"practical," was easily led by vanity. In the Lawton family it had been the +Man's part to deal effectively with practical life, and women did not +concern themselves with their judgments. But as Margaret had never expected +to be rich,--had no ambition for place in the social race,--she would have +gone back to her blue-capped mountains and lived there contented, "with +something to look at." She had urged this course upon her husband after the +first disaster; but he was too vain to "get out," to "quit the game," to +leave New York. So with the understanding that henceforth he would stick to +prosaic methods of money making, he had started again in his brokerage +business. This was at the time when Margaret was occupied with her babies. +As the indubitable clay of her idol revealed itself, she had thought that +child-bearing, child-having would be a tolerable compensation for her idyl. +Margaret Pole was one who "didn't mind having babies," and did not consider +the fatal nine months a serious deprivation of life. She liked it all, she +told Isabelle, and was completely happy only when the children were coming +and while they were helpless babies. One real interest suffices for all. + +Then one day, after the second boy was born, Larry came in, shaking in hand +and heart, and the miserable news was soon out,--"caught in the panic," +"unexpected turn of the market." But how could he be caught, his wife +demanded, with contracting blue eyes? Had his firm failed? And after a +little,--lie and subterfuge within lie and subterfuge being unwrapped,--it +appeared,--the fact. He had "gone into cotton"--with whose money? His +mother's estate,--those excellent four per cent gold bonds that the thrifty +judge had put aside for his widow! + +With the look that Margaret gave her husband, he might have seen that the +process of petrifaction had set in, had gone far, indeed. + +Margaret loved her mother-in-law,--the sweet old woman of gentle fancies +who lived in an old house in an old town on the Massachusetts coast, the +town where she and the judge had grown up. An unworldly, gentle woman, who +had somehow told her daughter-in-law without words that she knew what was +missing in her woman's heart. No, the judge's widow should not pay for her +son's folly! So Margaret sold the New York house, which was hers, and also +some of those mountain lands that had a growing value now, realizing +bitterly that by this early sale she was sacrificing her boys' +heritage--the gift of her forefathers--for a miserable tithe of its real +value,--just because their father was too weak to hold what others had +given him; and hadn't kept faith with her like a frank comrade.... What was +left she took into her own possession. + +So the Poles went abroad, after this. In doubt and distress, in sickness +and divorce, what else does an American do? Margaret had one lingering hope +for her husband. He had a good voice. At college it was considered +remarkable,--a clear, high tenor. He had done little with his gift except +make social capital out of it. And he had some aptitude for acting. He had +been a four years' star in the college operas. If the judge had not +belonged to the settled classes, Larry might have adorned a "Broadway +show." Instead, through his father's influence, he had attempted +finance--and remained an amateur, a "gentleman." But now, Margaret said to +herself, over there, away from trivial society,--the bungled business +career ended,--Larry might turn to his gift seriously. He was only +thirty-two,--not too old, with hard work and steady persistence, which she +would supply, to achieve something. For she would have been content to have +him in the Broadway show; it mattered not to her now what he should do. And +then she beguiled herself with the hope that some of that intellectual +life, the interests in books, music, art--in ideas--could come to them in +common,--a little of what she had dreamed the husband-and-wife life might +be like. Thus with clear insight into her husband's nature, with few +illusions, but with tolerance and hope, Margaret betook herself to Munich +and settled her family in a little villa on the outskirts, conformable to +their income,--_her_ income, which was all they had. But it mattered not +what she had to live on; her mother had shown her how to make a little +answer.... + +At first Larry liked this Munich life. It saved his vanity, and offered an +easy solution for his catastrophe in cotton. He was the artist, not fitted +for business, as his wife saw. He liked to go to concerts and opera, and +take lessons,--but he had to learn German and he was lazy about that. +Margaret studied German with him, until the little girl came. Then Larry +was left to amuse himself, and did it. First he found some idle American +students, and ran about with them, and through them he fell in with a woman +of the Stacia Conry type, of which there is always a supply in every +agreeable European centre. When Margaret emerged from her retirement and +began to look about, she found this Englishwoman very prominent on the +horizon. Larry sang with her and drove with her and did the other things +that he could not do with his wife. He was the kind of man who finds the +nine months of his wife's disability socially irksome, and amuses himself +more or less innocently. + +Margaret understood. Whether Larry's fondness for Mrs. Demarest was +innocent or not, she did not care; she was surprised with herself to find +that she had no jealousy whatever. Mrs. Demarest did not exist for her. +This Mrs. Conry had a husband who came to Munich after her and bore her +back to London. When Larry proposed that they should spend the next season +in London, his wife said calmly:-- + +"You may if you like. I am going to return to America." + +"And my work?" + +Margaret waved a hand ironically:-- + +"You will be better alone.... My father is getting old and feeble; I must +see him."... + +When the family sailed, Larry was in the party. Mrs. Demarest had written +him the proper thing to write after such an intimacy, and Larry felt that +he must "get a job."... + +In those months of the coming of the little girl and the summer afterwards, +the new Margaret had been born. It was a quiet woman, outwardly calm, +inwardly thinking its way slowly to conclusions,--thoughts that would have +surprised the good Bishop. For when her heart had begun to grow cold in the +process of petrifaction, there had awakened a new faculty,--her mind. She +began to digest the world. Those little rules of life, the ones handed down +with the prayer-book, having failed, she asked questions,--'What is life? +What is a woman's life? What is my life? What is duty? A woman's duty? My +duty, married to Larry?'... + +And one by one with relentless clarity she stripped bare all those +platitudinous precepts that she had inherited, had accepted, as one accepts +the physical facts of the world. When the untrained mind of a woman, driven +in on itself by some spiritual bruise, begins to reach out for light, the +end may be social Anarchy. Margaret read and understood French and German, +and she had ample time to read. She saw modern plays that presented facts, +naked and raw, and women's lives from the inside, without regard to the +moral convention. She perceived that she had a soul, an inner life of her +own, apart from her husband, her children, her father, from all the world. +That soul had its own rights,--must be respected. What it might compel her +to do in the years to come, was not yet clear. She waited,--growing. If it +had not been for her father, she would have been content to stay on in +Europe as she was, reading, thinking, loving her children. + +On the way back to America, Larry, becoming conscious in the monotony of +the voyage of his own insufficiency and failure, hinted that he was ready +to accept the mountain home, which Margaret still retained, her mother's +old house. "We might try living in the country," he suggested. But +Margaret, focussing in one rapid image the picture of her husband always +before her in the intimacy of a lonely country life, Larry disintegrating +in small ways, shook her head firmly, giving as an excuse, "The children +must have schools." She would set him at some petty job in the city, +anything to keep him from rotting completely. For he was the father of her +children! + +The good old Bishop met them at the pier in New York. In spite of his +hardened convictions about life, the little rule of thumb by which he +lived, he knew something of men and women; and he suspected that process of +petrifaction in his daughter's heart. So he took occasion to say in their +first intimate talk:-- + +"I am glad that you and Lawrence have decided to come home to live. It is +not well for people to remain long away from their own country, to evade +the responsibilities of our social brotherhood. The Church preaches the +highest communism, ... and you must help your husband to find some definite +service in life, and do it." + +Margaret's lips curved dangerously, and the Bishop, as if answering this +sign, continued:-- + +"Lawrence does not show great power, I know, my dear. But he is a good +man,--a faithful husband and a kind father. That is much, Margaret. It +rests with you to make him more!" + +'Does it?' Margaret was asking herself behind her blank countenance. 'One +cannot make bricks without straw.... What is that sort of goodness worth in +a man? I had rather my husband were what you call a bad man--and a Man.' +But she said nothing. + +"Thus our Lord has ordered it in this life," continued the Bishop, feeling +that he was making headway; "that one who is weak is bound to one who is +stronger,--perchance for the good of both." + +Margaret smiled. + +"And a good woman has always the comfort of her children,--when she has +been blessed with them,--who will grow to fill the desolate places in her +heart," concluded the good Bishop, feeling that he had irrefutably +presented to his daughter the right ideas. But the daughter was thinking, +with the new faculty that was awakening in her:-- + +'Do children fill the desolate spots in a woman's heart completely? I love +mine, even if they are spotted with his weaknesses. I am a good mother,--I +know that I am,--yet I could love,--oh, I could love grandly some one else, +and love them more because of it! At thirty a woman is not done with +loving, even though she has three children.' + +But she did not dispute her father's words, merely saying in a weary voice, +"I suppose Larry and I will make a life of it, as most people do, somehow!" + +Nevertheless, as she spoke these words of endurance, there was welling up +within her the spirit of rebellion against her lot,--the ordinary lot of +acceptance. She had a consciousness of power in herself to live, to be +something other than the prosaic animal that endures. + + * * * * * + +The Poles took the house at Dudley Farms and began the routine of American +suburban life, forty miles from New York. After several months of futile +effort, spaced by periods of laziness that Margaret put an end to, a +gentleman's job was secured for Larry, through the kindness of one of his +father's friends. At first Larry was inclined to think that the work would +belittle him, spoil his chances of "better things." But Margaret, seeing +that as assistant secretary to the Malachite Company he could do no harm, +could neither gamble nor loaf, replied to these doubts in a tone of cold +irony:-- + +"You can resign when you find something better suited to your talents." + +Thus at thirty-five Larry was _range_ and a commuter. He dressed well, kept +up one of his clubs, talked the condition of the country, and was a kind +father to his boys.... 'What more should a woman expect?' Margaret asked +herself, thinking of her father's words and enumerating her blessings. +Three healthy children, a home and enough to eat and wear, a husband who +(in spite of Conny's gossip) neither drank to excess nor was unfaithful nor +beat her,--who had none of the obvious vices of the male! Good God! +Margaret sighed with a bitter sense of irony. + +"I must be a wicked woman," her mother would have said under similar +circumstances,--and there lies the change in woman's attitude. + +Looking across the table at Larry in his neat evening clothes,--he was +growing a trifle stout these days,--listening to his observations on the +railroad service, or his suggestion that she should pay more attention to +dress, Margaret felt that some day she must shriek maniacally. But instead +her heart grew still and cold, and her blue eyes icy. + +"What is there in woman that makes trifles so important?" she asked +Isabelle in a rare effusion of truth-speaking. "Why do some voices--correct +and well-bred ones--exasperate you, and others, no better, fill you with +content, comfort? Why do little acts--the way a man holds a book or strokes +his mustache--annoy you? Why are you dead and bored when you walk with one +person, and are gay when you walk by yourself?" + +To all of which Isabelle sagely replied: "You think too much, Margaret +dear. As John says when I ask him profound questions, 'Get up against +something real!'" + +For Isabelle could be admirably wise where another was concerned. + +"Yes," Margaret admitted, "I suppose I am at fault. It is my job to make +life worth living for all of us,--the Bishop, mother-in-law, children, +Larry,--all but myself. That's a woman's privilege." + +So she did her "job." But within her the lassitude of dead things was ever +growing, sapping her physical buoyancy, sapping her will. She called to her +soul, and the weary spirit seemed to have withdrawn. + +"A case of low vitality," in the medical jargon of the day. And hers was a +vital stock, too. + +'In time,' she said, 'I shall be dead, and then I shall be a good +woman,--wholly good! The Bishop will be content.' And she smiled in denial +of her own words. For even then, at the lowest ebb, her soul spoke: there +was wonder and joy and beauty somewhere in this gray procession of +phenomena, and it must come to her sometime. And when it came, her heart +said, she would grasp it! + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + +These days Larry Pole began to think well of himself once more. He had made +his mistakes,--what man hasn't?--but he had wiped out the score, and he was +fulfilling the office of under-secretary to the great Malachite Company +admirably. He was conscious that the men in the office felt that his +personality, his bearing, and associations gave distinction to the place. +And he still secretly looked for some turn in the game which would put him +where he desired to be. In New York the game is always on, the tables +always set: from the newsboy to the magnate the gambler's hope is open to +every man. + +Only one thing disturbed his self-complacency,--Margaret treated him +indifferently, coldly. He even suspected that though by some accident she +had borne him three children he had never won her love, that she had never +been really his. Since their return from Europe and establishing themselves +in the country, she had withdrawn more and more from him--where? Into +herself. She had her own room and dressing-room, beyond the children's +quarters, in the rear of the rambling house, and her life seemed to go on +in those rooms more and more. It was almost, Larry observed discontentedly, +as if there were not a husband in the situation. Well, he reflected +philosophically, women were like that,--American women; they thought they +owned themselves even after they had married. If a wife took that attitude, +she must not complain if the husband went his way, too. Larry in these +injured moods felt vague possibilities of wickedness within him,--justified +errancies.... + +One day he was to see deep into that privacy, to learn all--all he was +capable of understanding--about his wife. Margaret had been to the city,--a +rare event,--had lunched with Isabella, and gone to see a new actress in a +clever little German play. She and Isabelle had talked it over,--very +animatedly. Then she had brought back with her some new books and foreign +reviews. After dinner she was lying on the great lounge before the fire, +curled up in a soft dress of pale lilac, seriously absorbing an article on +a Russian playwright. Hers was a little face,--pale, thin, with sunken +eyes. The brow was too high, and latterly Margaret paid no attention to +arranging her hair becomingly. It was not a face that could be called +pretty; it would not be attractive to most men, her husband thought as he +watched her. But it had drawn some men strongly, fired them; and Larry +still longed for its smiles,--desired her. + +He had felt talkative that evening, had chattered all through dinner, and +she had listened tolerantly, as she might to her younger boy when he had a +great deal to say about nothing. But now she had taken refuge in this +review, and Larry had dropped from sight. When he had finished his +cigarette, he sat down on the edge of the lounge, taking her idle hand in +his. She let him caress it, still reading on. After a time, as he continued +to press the hand, his wife said without raising her eyes:-- + +"What do you want?" + +"'What do you want?'" Larry mimicked! "Lord! you American women are as hard +as stone." + +"Are the others different?" Margaret asked, raising her eyes. + +"They say they are--how should I know?" + +"I thought you might know from experience," she observed equably. + +"I have never loved any woman but you, Margaret!" he said tenderly. "You +know that!" + +Margaret made no response. The statement seemed to demand something of her +which she could not give. He took her hand again, caressed it, and finally +kissed her. She looked at him steadily, coldly. + +"Please--sit over there!" As her husband continued to caress her, she sat +upright. "I want to say something to you, Larry." + +"What is it?" + +"There can't be any more of _that_--you understand?--between us." + +"What do you mean?" + +"I mean--_that_, what you call love, passion, is over between us." + +"Why? ... what have I done?" + +Margaret waved her hand impatiently:-- + +"It makes no difference,--I don't want it--I can't--that is all." + +"You refuse to be my wife?" + +"Yes,--that way." + +"You take back your marriage vow?" (Larry was a high churchman, which fact +had condoned much in the Bishop's eyes.) + +"I take back--myself!" + +Margaret's eyes shone, but her voice was calm. + +"If you loved any other man--but you are as cold as ice!" + +"Am I?" + +"Yes! ... I have been faithful to you always," he observed by way of +defence and accusation. + +Margaret rose from the couch, and looked down at her husband, almost +compassionately. But when she spoke, her low voice shook with scorn:-- + +"That is your affair,--I have never wanted to know.... You seem to pride +yourself on that. Good God! if you were more of a man,--if you were man +enough to want anything, even sin,--I might love you!" + +It was like a bolt of white fire from the clear heavens. Her husband +gasped, scarcely comprehending the words. + +"I don't believe you know what you are saying. Something has upset you.... +Would you like me to love another woman? That's a pretty idea for a wife to +advance!" + +"I want you to--oh, what's the use of talking about it, Larry? You know +what I mean--what I think, what I have felt--for a long time, even before +little Elsa came. How can you want love with a woman who feels towards you +as I do?" + +"It is natural enough for a man who cares for his wife--" + +"Too natural," Margaret laughed bitterly. "No, Larry; that's all over! You +can do as you like,--I shan't ask questions. And we shall get on very well, +like this." + +"This comes of the rotten books you read!" he fumed. + +"I do my own thinking." + +"Suppose I don't want the freedom you hand out so readily?" he asked with +an appealing note. "Suppose I still love you, my wife? have always loved +you! You married me.... I've been unfortunate--" + +"It isn't that, you know! It isn't the money--the fact that you would have +beggared your mother--not quite that. It's everything--_you!_ Why go into +it? I don't blame you, Larry. But I know you now, and I don't love +you--that is all." + +"You knew me when you married me. Why did you marry me?" + +"Why--why did I marry you?" + +Margaret's voice had the habit of growing lower and stiller as passion +touched her heart. "Yes--you may well ask that! Why does a woman see those +things she wants to see in a man, and is blind to what she might see! ... +Oh, why does any woman marry, my husband?" + +And in the silence that followed they were both thinking of those days in +Washington, eight years before, when they had met. He was acting as +secretary to some great man then, and was flashing in the pleasant light of +youth, popularity, social approbation. He had "won out" against the +Englishman, Hollenby,--why, he had never exactly known. + +Margaret was thinking of that why, as a woman does think at times for long +years afterwards, trying to solve the psychological puzzle of her foolish +youth! Hollenby was certainly the abler man, as well as the more brilliant +prospect. And there were others who had loved her, and whom even as a girl +she had wit enough to value.... A girl's choice, when her heart speaks, as +the novelists say, is a curious process, compounded of an infinite number +of subtle elements,--suggestions, traits of character, and above all +temporary atmospheric conditions of mind. It is a marvel if it ever can be +resolved into its elements! ... The Englishman--she was almost his--had +lost her because once he had betrayed to the girl the brute. One frightened +glimpse of the animal in his nature had been enough. And in the rebound +from this chance perception of man as brute, she had listened to Lawrence +Pole, because he seemed to her all that the other was not,--high-souled, +poetic, restrained, tender,--all the ideals. With him life would be a +communion of lovely and lovable things. He would secure some place in the +diplomatic service abroad, and they would live on the heights, with art, +ideas, beauty.... + +"Wasn't I a fool--not to know!" she remarked aloud. She was thinking, with +the tolerance of mature womanhood: 'I could have tamed the brute in the +other one. At least he was a man!' "Well, we dream our dreams, sentimental +little girls that we are! And after a time we open our eyes like kittens on +life. I have opened mine, Larry,--very wide open. There isn't a sentimental +chord in my being that you can twang any longer.... But we can be +good-tempered and sensible about it. Run along now and have your cigar, or +go over to the country club and find some one to play billiards,--only let +me finish what you are pleased to call my rotten reading,--it is so +amusing!" + +She had descended from the crest of her passion, and could play with the +situation. But her husband, realizing in some small way the significance of +these words they had exchanged, still probed the ground:-- + +"If you feel like that, why do you still live with me? Why do you consent +to bear my name?" + +The pomposity of the last words roused a wicked gleam in his wife's eyes. +She looked up from her article again. + +"Perhaps I shan't always 'consent to bear your name,' Larry. I'm still +thinking, and I haven't thought it all out yet. When I do, I may give up +your name,--go away. Meanwhile I think we get on very well: I make a +comfortable home for you; you have your children,--and they are well +brought up. I have kept you trying to toe the mark, too. Take it all in +all, I haven't been a bad wife,--if we are to present references?" + +"No," Larry admitted generously; "I have always said you were too good for +me,--too fine." + +"And so, still being a good wife, I have decided to take myself back." She +drew her small body together, clasping her arms about the review. "My body +and my soul,--what is personally most mine. But I will serve you--make you +comfortable. And after a time you won't mind, and you will see that it was +best." + +"It goes deeper than that," her husband protested, groping for the idea +that he caught imperfectly; "it means practically that we are living under +the same roof but aren't married!" + +"With perfect respectability, Larry, which is more than is always the case +when a man and a woman live under the same roof, either married or +unmarried! ... I am afraid that is it in plain words. But I will do my best +to make it tolerable for you." + +"Perhaps some day you'll find a man,--what then?" + +Margaret looked at him for a long minute before replying. + +"And if I should find a Man, God alone knows what would happen!" + +Then in reply to the frightened look on her husband's face, she added +lightly:-- + +"Don't worry, Larry! No immediate scandal. I haven't any one in view, and +living as I do it isn't likely that I shall be tempted by some knightly or +idiotic man, who wants to run away with a middle-aged woman and three +children. I am anchored safely--at any rate as long as dad lives and your +mother, and the children need my good name. Oh!" she broke off suddenly; +"don't let us talk any more about it!" ... + +Leaning her head on her hands, she looked into the fire, and murmured to +herself as if she had forgotten Larry's presence:-- + +"God! why are we so blind, so blind,--and our feet caught in the net of +life before we know what is in our souls!" + +For she realized that when she said she was middle-aged and anchored, it +was but the surface truth. At thirty, with three children, she was more the +woman, more capable of love, passion, understanding, devotion--more capable +of giving herself wholly and greatly to a mate--than any girl could be. The +well of life still poured its flood into her! Her husband could never know +that agony of longing, those arms stretched out to--what? When would this +torture of defeated capacity be ended--when had God set the term for her to +suffer! + +In the black silence that had fallen between them, Pole betook himself to +the club, as his wife had suggested, for the consolation of billiards and +talk among sensible folk, "who didn't take life so damned hard." In the +intervals of these distractions his mind would revert to what had passed +between him and his wife that evening. Margaret's last remarks comforted +him somewhat. Nothing of a scandalous or public demonstration of her +feeling about her marriage was imminent. Nevertheless, his pride was hurt. +In spite of the fact that he had suspected for a long time that his wife +was cold,--was not "won,"--he had hitherto travelled along in complacent +egotism. "They were a fairly happy couple" or "they geed as well as most," +as he would have expressed it. He had not suspected that Margaret might +feel the need of more than that. To-night he had heard and understood the +truth,--and it was a blow. Deep down in his masculine heart he felt that he +had been unjustly put in the wrong, somehow. No woman had the right--no +wife--to say without cause that having thought better of the marriage +bargain she had "taken herself back." There was something preposterous in +the idea. It was due to the modern fad of a woman's reading all sorts of +stuff, when her mind was inflammable. He recognized that his wife was the +more important, the stronger person of the two,--that was the trouble with +American women (Larry always made national generalizations when he wished +to express a personal truth)--they knew when they were strong,--felt their +oats. They needed to be "tamed." + +But Larry was aware that he was not fitted for the task of woman-tamer, and +moreover it should have been begun long before this. + +So having won his game of billiards Larry had a drink, which made him even +more philosophical. "Margaret is all right," he said to himself. "She was +strung up to-night,--something made her go loose. But she'll come +around,--she'll never do the other thing!" Yet in spite of a second whiskey +and soda before starting for home, he was not absolutely convinced of this +last statement. + +What makes a man like Larry Pole content to remain the master of the fort +merely in name, when the woman has escaped him in spirit? Why will such men +as he live on for years, aye and get children, with women, who do not even +pretend to love them? + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile the wife sat there before the fire, her reading forgotten, +thinking, thinking. She had said more than she herself knew to be in her +heart. For one lives on monotonously, from day to day, unresolved, and then +on occasion there flame forth unsuspected ideas, resolves. For the soul has +not been idle.... It was true that their marriage was at an end. And it was +not because of her husband's failures, his follies,--not the money +mistakes. It was himself,--the petty nature he revealed in every act. For +women like Margaret Pole can endure vice and folly and disappointment, but +not a petty, trivial, chattering biped that masquerades as Man. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + +IN the weeks that followed the accident Margaret Pole saw much of Falkner. +The engineer would come up the hill to the old house late in the afternoon +after his work, or ride up on his bicycle in the morning on his way to the +dam he was building. Ned--"the Little Man" as Falkner called him--came to +expect this daily visit as one of his invalid rights. Several times Falkner +stayed to dinner; but he bored Larry, who called him "a Western bounder," +and grumbled, "He hasn't anything to say for himself." It was true that +Falkner developed chronic dumbness in Larry's conversational presence. But +Margaret seemed to like the "bounder." She discovered that he carried in +his pocket a volume of verse. An engineer who went to his job these days +with a poetry book in his coat pocket was not ordinary, as she remarked to +her husband.... + +Falkner's was one of those commonplace figures to be seen by the thousands +in an American city. He dressed neither well nor ill, as if long ago the +question of appearances had ceased to interest him, and he bought what was +necessary for decency in the nearest shop. His manners, though brusque, +indicated that he had always been within that vague line which marks off +the modern "gentleman." His face, largely covered by beard and mustache, +was pale and thoughtful, and his eyes were tired, usually dull. He was +merely one of the undistinguished units in the industrial army. Obviously +he had not "arrived," had not pushed into the circle of power. Some lack of +energy, or natal unfitness for the present environment? Or was he inhibited +by a twist of fate, needing an incentive, a spur? + +At any rate the day when Margaret met him, the day when he had brought her +boy home in his arms, the book of life seemed closed and fastened for him +forever. The fellow-units in the industrial scheme in which he had become +fixed, might say of him,--"Yes, a good fellow, steady, intelligent, but +lacks push,--he'll never get there." Such are the trite summaries of man +among men. Of all the inner territory of the man's soul, which had resolved +him in its history to what he was, had left him this negative unit of life, +his fellows were ignorant, as man must be of man. They saw the Result, and +in the rough arithmetic of life results are all that count with most +people. + +But the woman--Margaret,--possessing her own hidden territory of soul +existence, had divined more, even in that first tragic moment, when he had +borne her maimed child into the house and laid his burden tenderly on the +lounge. As he came and went, telephoning, doing the little that could be +done, she saw more than the commonplace figure, clothed in ready-made +garments; more than the dull, bearded face, the strong, thin hands, the +rumpled hair. Something out of that vast beyond which this stranger had in +common with her had spoken through the husk, even then.... + +And it had not ended there, as it would have ended, had Falkner been the +mere "bounder" Larry saw. It was Falkner to whom the mother first told the +doctors' decision about the boy. Certain days impress their atmosphere +indelibly; they have being to them like persons, and through years the +odor, the light, the sense of their few hours may be recalled as vividly as +when they were lived. This May day the birds were twittering beside the +veranda where Margaret was reading to the Little Man, when Falkner came up +the drive. The long windows of the house were opened to admit the soft air, +for it was already summer. Margaret was dressed in a black gown that +relieved the pallor of her neck and face like the dark background of an old +portrait. As the boy called, "There's big Bob!" she looked up from her book +and smiled. Yet in spite of the placid scene, the welcoming smile, Falkner +knew that something had happened,--something of moment. The three talked +and the birds chattered; the haze of the gentle brooding day deepened. Far +away above the feathery treetops, which did their best to hide the little +houses, there was the blue line of sea, gleaming in the sun. It seemed to +Falkner after the long day's work the very spot of Peace, and yet in the +woman's controlled manner there was the something not peace. When Falkner +rose to go, Margaret accompanied him to the steps. + +"It's like the South to-day, all this sun and windless air. You have never +been in the South? Some days I ache for it." + +In the full light she seemed a slight, worn figure with a blanched face. + +"Bring me my puppy, please, Bob!" the child called from his couch. "He's in +the garden." + +Falkner searched among the flower-beds beneath the veranda and finally +captured the fat puppy and carried him up to the boy, who hugged him as a +girl would a doll, crooning to him. Margaret was still staring into space. + +"What has happened?" Falkner asked. + +She looked at him out of her deep eyes, as if he might read there what had +happened. They descended the steps and walked away from the house. + +"He hears so quickly," she explained; "I don't want him to know yet." + +So they kept on down the drive. + +"Dr. Rogers was here this morning.... He brought two other doctors with +him.... There is no longer any doubt--it is paralysis of the lower limbs. +He will never walk, they think." + +They kept on down the drive, Falkner looking before him. He knew that the +woman was not crying, would never betray her pain that watery way; but he +could not bear to see the misery of those eyes. + +"My father the Bishop has written me ... spiritual consolation for Ned's +illness. Should I feel thankful for the chastening to my rebellious spirit +administered to me through my poor boy? Should I thank God for the lash of +the whip on my stubborn back?" + +Falkner smiled. + +"My father the Bishop is a good man, a kind man in his way, yet he never +considered my mother--he lived his own life with his own God.... It would +surprise him if he knew what I thought about God,--_his_ God, at least."... + +Falkner looked at her at last, and they stopped. Afterwards he knew that he +already loved Margaret Pole. He, too, had divined that the woman, stricken +through her child, was essentially alone in the world, and in her hungry +eyes lay the story of the same dreary road over which he had passed. And +these two, defeated ones in the riotous world of circumstance, silently, +instinctively held out hands across the void and looked at each other with +closed lips. + +Among the trees the golden haze deepened, and the birds sang. Down below in +the village sounded the deep throbs of an engine: the evening train had +come from the city. It was the only disturbing note in the peace, the +silence. The old house had caught the full western sun, and its dull red +bricks glowed. On the veranda the small boy was still caressing the puppy. + +"Mother!" a thin voice sounded. Margaret started. + +"Good-by," Falkner said. "I shall come to-morrow." + +At the gate he met Pole, lightly swinging a neat green bag, his gloves in +his hand. Larry stopped to talk, but Falkner, with a short, "Pleasant +afternoon," kept on. Somehow the sight of Pole made the thing he had just +learned all the worse. + +Thus it happened that in the space of a few weeks Margaret knew Falkner +more intimately than Isabelle had ever known him or ever could know him. +Two beings meeting in this illusive, glimmering world of ours may come to a +ready knowledge of each other, as two travellers on a dark road, who have +made the greater part of the stormy journey alone. It would be difficult to +record the growth of that inner intimacy,--so much happening in wordless +moments or so much being bodied forth in little words that would be as +meaningless as newspaper print. But these weeks of the child's invalidism, +there was growing within them another life that no one shared or would have +understood. When Larry observed, "That bounder is always here," Margaret +did not seem to hear. Already the food that the "bounder" had given her +parched self was too precious to lose. She had begun to live again the +stifled memories, the life laid away,--to talk of her girlhood, of her +Virginia hills, her people. + +And Falkner had told her something of those earlier years in the Rockies, +when he had lived in the world of open spaces and felt the thrill of life, +but never a word of what had passed since he had left the canons and the +peaks. Sometimes these days there was a gleam in his dark eyes, a smile on +the bearded lips that indicated the reopening of the closed book once more. +His fellow-units in the industrial world might not see it; but Margaret +felt it. Here was a human being pressed into the service of the machine and +held there, at pay, powerless to extract himself, sacrificed. And she saw +what there was beneath the mistake; she felt the pioneer blood, like her +own, close to the earth in its broad spaces, living under the sky in a new +land. She saw the man that should be, that once was, that must be again! +And in this world of their other selves, which had been denied them, these +two touched hands. They needed little explanation. + +Rarely Margaret spoke of her present life, and then with irony, as if an +inner and unsentimental honesty compelled utterance: "You see," she +remarked once when her husband called her, "we dress for dinner because +when we started in New York we belonged to the dining-out class. If we +didn't keep up the habit, we should lose our self-respect.... My neck is +thin and I don't look well in evening dress. But that makes no matter.... +We have prayers on Sunday morning; religion is part of the substantial +life."... + +Conny had said once, hearing Margaret rail like this: "She ought to make a +better bluff, or get out,--not guy old Larry like that; it isn't decent, +embarrasses one so. You can't guy him, too."... + +But Falkner understood how the acid of her daily life eating into her had +touched, at these times, a sensitive nerve and compelled such +self-revelations. + + * * * * * + +It was Falkner who first spoke to the Poles about Dr. Renault. In some way +he had heard of the surgeon and learned of the wonderful things he had +done. + +"Anyhow it is worth while seeing him. It is best to try everything." + +"Yes," Margaret assented quickly; "I shall not give up--never!" + +Through a doctor whom he knew Falkner arranged the visit to the surgeon, +who was difficult of access. And he went in the evening after the visit to +learn the result. + +"He thinks there is a chance!" and Margaret added more slowly: "It is a +great risk. I supposed it must be so." + +"You will take it?" + +"I think," she said slowly, "that Ned would want me to. You see he is like +me. It may accomplish nothing, Dr. Renault said. It may be partially +successful.... Or it may be--fatal. He was very kind,--spent all the +afternoon here. I liked him immensely; he was so direct.' + +"When will it be?" + +"Next week." + +The operation took place, and was not fatal. "Now we shall have to wait," +the surgeon said to the mother,--"and hope! It will be months before we +shall know finally what is the result." + +"I shall wait and hope!" Margaret replied to him. Renault, who had a chord +in common with this Southern woman, stroked her hand gently as he left. +"Better take the little chap away somewhere and get a change yourself," he +said. + +It was a still, hot night of late June, the last time that Falkner climbed +the hill to the old place. The summer, long delayed, had burst these last +days with scorching fury. Margaret was to leave on the morrow for Bedmouth, +where she would spend the summer with old Mrs. Pole. She was lying on the +veranda couch. She smiled as Falkner drew a chair to her side, the frank +smile from the deep blue eyes, that she gave only to her children and to +him, and there was a joyous note in her voice:-- + +"At last there is a sign. I have a little more hope now!" + +She told him of the first faint indications of life in the still limbs of +the child. + +"It will be months before we can tell really. But tonight I have strong +hope!" + +"What we need most in life is hope," he mused. "It keeps the thing going." + +"As long as a man can work, he has hope," she replied stoutly. + +"I suppose so,--at least he must think so." + +Margaret knew that the work the engineer was engaged on was nearly +finished. It might last at the most another six weeks, and he did not know +where he should go then; but it was altogether unlikely that the fall would +find him at Dudley Farms. + +"I was in the city to-day," he said after a time, "and in the company's +office I ran across my old chief. He's going to Panama in the fall."... + +Margaret waited with strange expectancy for what Falkner might say next. +She rarely asked questions, sought directly to know. She had the power of +patience, and an unconscious belief that life shaped itself largely without +the help of speech. Here and there in the drama of events the spoken word +might be called for--but rarely. + +"They have interesting problems down there," Falkner continued; "it is +really big work, you know. A man might do something worth while. But it is +a hole!" + +She still waited, and what she expected came:-- + +"He asked me to go with him,--promised me charge of one of the dams, my own +work,--it is the biggest thing that ever came my way." + +And then the word fell from her almost without her will:-- + +"You must go! _Must_ go!" + +"Yes," he mused on; "I thought so. There was a time when it would have made +me crazy, such a chance.... It's odd after all these years, when I thought +I was dead--" + +"Don't say dead!" + +"Well, rutted deep in the mire, then,--that this should happen." + +She had said "go," with all the truth of her nature. It was the thing for +him to do. But she did not have the strength to say another word. In the +moment she had seen with blinding clearness all that this man meant in her +little firmament. 'This was a Man!' She knew him. She loved him! yes, she +loved him, thank God! And now he must go out of her life as suddenly as he +had come into it,--must leave her alone, stranded as before in the dark. + +"It isn't so easy to decide," Falkner continued. "There isn't much money in +it,--not for the under men, you know." + +"What difference does that make!" she flashed. + +"Not to me," he explained, and there was a pause. "But I have my wife and +child to think of. I need all the money I can earn." + +It was the first time any reference had been made to his family. After a +time Margaret said:-- + +"But they pay fair salaries, and any woman would rather be pinched and have +her husband in the front ranks--" And then she hesitated, something in +Falkner's eyes troubling her. + +"I shall not decide just yet.... The offer has stirred my blood,--I feel +that I have some youth left!" + +They said little more. Margaret walked with him down the avenue. In her +summer dress she looked wasted, infinitely fragile. + +"This is not good-by," he said at last. "I shall go down the coast in a +boat for a week, as I used to do when I was a boy, and my sister has a +cottage at Lancaster. That is not far from Bedmouth?" + +"No, it isn't far," she answered softly. + +They paused and then walked back, as if all was not said yet. + +"There is another reason," Falkner exclaimed abruptly, "why I did not wish +to go--and you must know it." + +She raised her head and looked at him, murmuring,-- + +"Yes! I know it! ... But _nothing_ should keep you here." + +"No, not keep me.... But there is something infinitely precious to lose by +going.... You have made me live again, Margaret. I was dead, dead,--a dead +soul." + +"We were both dead ... and now we live!" + +"It were better not said, perhaps--" + +"No!" she interrupted passionately. "It ought to be said! Why not?" + +"There can be nothing for us," he muttered dully. + +"No!" and her hands touched his. "Don't say that! We are both in the +world,--don't you see?" + +His face drew near to hers, they kissed, and she clung to him for the +moment, then whispered: "Now go! You must live, live,--live greatly,--for +us both!" + +Margaret fled to her room, knelt down beside the boy's bed, with clasped +hands, her eyes shining down on the sleeping child, a smile on her face. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + +Cornelia Woodyard's expression was not pleasant when she was deliberating +or in perplexity. Her broad brow wrinkled, and her mouth drew down at the +corners, adding a number of years to her face. She did not allow this +condition of perplexity to appear in public, reserving her "heavy +thinking," as Tom Cairy called these moments, for the early morning hours +of privacy. This languid spring day while Conny turned over her mail that +lay strewn in disorder on her bed, she apparently had one of her worst fits +of dubitation. She poked about in the mass of letters, bills, and +newspapers until she found the sheet she was looking for,--it was in her +husband's handwriting,--reread it, the scowl deepening, pushed it back +thoughtfully into its envelope, and rang for the maid that looked after her +personally as well as performed other offices in the well-organized +household. When Conny emerged at the end of the hour in street costume, the +frown had disappeared, but her fair face wore a preoccupied air. + +"Hello, Tom!" she said wanly to Cairy, who was dawdling over the paper in +the library. "How is it out?" + +"Warm,--a perfect day!" Cairy replied, smiling at her and jumping to his +feet. + +"Is the cab there?" + +"Yes,--shall we start?" + +"I can't go to-day, Tom,--something has turned up." + +"Something has turned up?" he queried. He was an expert in Conny's moods, +but he had seen little of this mood lately. + +"Business," Conny explained shortly. "Leave the cab, please. I may want +it.... No," she added as Cairy came towards her with a question on his +lips. "I can't bother to explain,--but it's important. We must give up our +day." + +She turned to her desk, and then remarked as if she felt Cairy's +disappointment: "You can come in after dinner if you like, Tom! We can have +the evening, perhaps." + +He looked at her questioningly, as if he would insist on an explanation. +But Conny was not one of whom even a lover would demand explanations when +she was in this mood. + +"We can't always play, Tommy!" she sighed. + +But after he had left the room she called him back. + +"You didn't kiss me," she said sweetly. "You may if you like, just once.... +There!" she raised her head and smiled at Cairy, with that satisfaction +which emotional moments brought to her. "You had better get to work, too. +You can't have been of much use to Gossom lately." And she settled herself +at her desk with the telephone book. As she called the hotel where Senator +Thomas usually stayed when he was in the city, the scowl returned to her +brow. Her mind had already begun to grapple with the problems suggested by +Percy's letter of the morning. But by the time she had succeeded in getting +the Senator, her voice was gentle and sweet.... + +... "Yes, at luncheon,--that will be very nice!" And she hung up the +receiver with an air of swift accomplishment. + + * * * * * + +It is not necessary to go into what had passed between Cornelia Woodyard +and Cairy in the weeks that had elapsed since that day when Conny had been +so anxious to get back to New York from the Poles'. It would gratify merely +a vulgar curiosity. Suffice it to say that never before had Conny been so +pleased with life or her own competent handling of her affairs in it. Up to +this morning she felt that she had admirably fulfilled all claims upon her +as well as satisfied herself. Things had seemed "to come her way" during +this period. The troublesome matter before the Commission that had roused +her husband's conscience and fighting blood had gone over for the time. The +Commission had reserved its decision, and the newspapers had gone off on a +number of other scents of wrong-doing that seemed more odorously promising. +Percy's conscience had returned to its normal unsuspecting state, and he +had been absorbed to an unwonted degree in private business of one sort or +another. + +Meantime the Senator and Cornelia had had a number of little talks. The +Senator had advised her about the reinvestment of her money, and all her +small fortune was now placed in certain stocks and bonds of a paper company +that "had great prospects in the near future," as the Senator +conservatively phrased it. Percy, naturally, had known about this, and +though he was slightly troubled by the growing intimacy with the Senator, +he was also flattered and trusted his wife's judgment. "A shrewd business +head," the Senator said of Conny, and the Senator ought to know. "It is as +easy to do business with her as with a man." Which did not mean that +Cornelia Woodyard had sold her husband to the Senator,--nothing as crude as +that, but merely that she "knew the values" of this life. + +The Senator and Conny often talked of Percy, the promise he had shown, his +ability and popularity among all kinds of men. "If he steers right now," +the Senator had said to his wife, "there is a great future ahead of +Woodyard, and"--with a pleasant glance at Conny--"I have no doubt he will +avoid false steps." The Senator thought that Congress would be a mistake. +So did Conny. "It takes luck or genius to survive the lower house," the +Senator said. They had talked of something in diplomacy, and now that the +stocks and bonds of the paper-mill were to be so profitable, they could +afford to consider diplomacy. Moreover, the amiable Senator, who knew how +to "keep in" with an aggressively moral administration at Washington +without altogether giving up the pleasing habit of "good things," promised +to have Woodyard in mind "for the proper place." + +So Conny had dreamed her little dream, which among many other things +included the splendor of a career in some European capital, where Conny had +no doubt that she could properly shine, and she felt proud that she could +do so much for Percy. The world, this one at any rate, was for the +able,--those who knew what to take from the table and how to take it. She +was of those who had the instinct and the power. Then Percy's letter:-- + +... "Princhard came up to see me yesterday. From the facts he gave me I +have no doubt at all what is the inner meaning of the Water Power bill. I +shall get after Dillon [the chairman of the Commission] and find out what +he means by delaying matters as he has.... It looks also as though the +Senator had some connection with this steal.... I am sorrier than I can say +that we have been so intimate with him, and that you followed his advice +about your money. I may be down Sunday, and we will talk it over. Perhaps +it is not too late to withdraw from that investment. It will make no +difference, however, in my action here." ... + +Simply according to Conny's crisp version, "Percy has flown the track +again!" + + * * * * * + +After a pleasant little luncheon with the Senator, Conny sent a telegram to +her husband that she would meet him at the station on the arrival of a +certain train from Albany that evening, adding the one word, "urgent," +which was a code word between them. Then she telephoned the office of _The +People's_, but Cairy was not there, and he had not returned when later in +the afternoon she telephoned again. + +"Well," she mused, a troubled expression on her face, "perhaps it is just +as well,--Tom might not be easy to manage. He's more exacting than Percy +about some things." So while the cab was waiting to take her to the +station, she sat down at her desk and wrote a note,--a brief little note:-- + +"DEAR TOM: I am just starting for the station to meet Percy. Something very +important has come up, which for the present must change things for us +all.... You know that we agreed the one thing we could not do would be to +let our feelings interfere with our duties--to any one.... I don't know +when I can see you. But I will let you know soon. Good-by. C." + +"Give this to Mr. Cairy when he calls and tell him not to wait," she said +to the maid who opened the door for her. Conny did not believe in "writing +foolish things to men," and her letter of farewell had the brevity of +telegraphic despatch. Nevertheless she sank into the corner of the cab +wearily and closed her eyes on the brilliant street, which usually amused +her as it would divert a child. "He'll know sometime!" she said to herself. +"He'll understand or have to get along without understanding!" and her lips +drew together. It was a different world to-night from that of the day +before; but unhappy as she was she had a subtle satisfaction in her +willingness and her ability to meet it whatever side it turned towards her. + +The train was a halfhour late, and as she paced the court slowly, she +realized that Cairy had come to the house,--he was always prompt these +days,--had received the note, and was walking away, reading it,--thinking +what of her? Her lips tightened a trifle, as she glanced at the clock. "He +will go to Isabella's," she said to herself. "He likes Isabelle." She knew +Cairy well enough to feel that the Southerner could not long endure a +lonely world. And Conny had a tolerant nature; she did not despise him for +going where he could find amusement and comfort; nor did she think his love +less worth having. But she bit her lip as she repeated, "He will go to +Isabelle." If Percy wanted to know the extent of his wife's devotion to +their married life, their common interests, he should have seen her at this +moment. As the train drew in, she had already thought, "But he will come +back--when it is possible." + +She met her husband with a frank smile. + +"You'll have to take me somewhere to dinner," she drawled. "There isn't any +at home,--besides I want to talk at once. Glad to see me?" + +When they were finally by themselves in a small private room of a +restaurant where Conny loved to go with her husband,--"because it seems so +naughty,"--she said in answer to his look of inquiry: "Percy, I want you to +take me away--to Europe, just for a few weeks!" + +Woodyard's face reflected surprise and concern. + +"But, Con!" he stammered. + +"Please, Percy!" She put her hand softly on his arm. "No matter what is in +the way,--only for a few weeks!" and her eyes filled with tears, quite +genuine tears, which dropped slowly to her pale face. "Percy," she +murmured, "don't you love me any longer?"... + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + +It was perfectly true, as Conny surmised, that Cairy went to Isabelle. But +not that evening--the blow was too hard and too little expected--nor on the +whole more frequently than he had been in the habit of going during the +winter. Isabelle interested him,--"her problem," as he called it; that is, +given her husband and her circumstances, how she would settle herself into +New York,--how far she might go there. It flattered him also to serve as +intellectual and aesthetic mentor to an attractive, untrained woman, who +frankly liked him and bowed to his opinion. It was Cairy, through Isabelle, +much more than Lane, who decided on the house in that up-town cross street, +on the "right" side of the Park, which the Lanes finally bought. It was in +an excellent neighborhood, "just around the corner" from a number of houses +where well-known people lived. In the same block the Gossoms had +established themselves, on the profits of _The People's_, and only two +doors away, on the same side of the street, a successful novelist had +housed himself behind what looked like a Venetian facade. Close by were the +Rogerses,--he was a fashionable physician; the Hillary Peytons; the +Dentons,--all people, according to Cairy, "one might know." + +When Isabelle came to look more closely into this matter of settling +herself in the city, she regretted the Colonel's illiberal will. They might +easily have had a house nearer "the Avenue," instead of belonging to the +polite poor-rich class two blocks east. Nevertheless, she tried to comfort +herself by the thought that even with the Colonel's millions at their +disposal they would have been "little people" in the New York scale of +means. And the other thing, the "interesting," "right" society was much +better worth while. "You make your own life,--it isn't made for you," Cairy +said. + +Isabelle was very busy these days. Thanks to the Potts regime, she was +feeling almost well generally, and when she "went down," Dr. Potts was +always there with the right drug to pull her up to the level. So she +plunged into the question of altering the house, furnishing it, and getting +it ready for the autumn. Her mother and John could not understand her +perplexity about furnishing. What with the contents of two houses on hand, +it seemed incomprehensible that the new home should demand a clean sweep. +But Isabelle realized the solid atrocity of the Torso establishment and of +the St. Louis one as well. She was determined that this time she should be +right. With Cairy for guide and adviser she took to visiting the old +furniture shops, selecting piece by piece what was to go into the new +house. She was planning, also, to make that deferred trip to Europe to see +her brother, and she should complete her selection over there, although +Cairy warned her that everything she was likely to buy in Europe these days +would be "fake." Once launched on the sea of household art, she found +herself in a torturing maze. What was "right" seemed to alter with +marvellous rapidity; the subject, she soon realized, demanded a culture, an +experience that she had never suspected. Then there was the matter of the +Farm at Grafton, which must be altered. The architect, who was making over +the New York house, had visited Grafton and had ideas as to what could be +done with the rambling old house without removing it bodily. "Tear down the +barn--throw out a beautiful room here--terrace it--a formal garden there," +etc. In the blue prints the old place was marvellously transformed. + +"Aren't you doing too much, all at once?" Lane remonstrated in the mild way +of husbands who have experienced nervous prostration with their wives. + +"Oh, no; it interests me so! Dr. Potts thinks I should keep occupied +reasonably, with things that really interest me.... Besides I am only +directing it all, you know." + +And glad to see her once more satisfied, eager, he went his way to his +work, which demanded quite all his large energy. After all, women had to do +just about so much, and find their limit themselves. + +Isabelle had learned to "look after herself," as she phrased it, by which +she meant exercise, baths, massage, days off when she ran down to Lakewood, +electricity,--all the physical devices for keeping a nervous people in +condition. It is a science, and it takes time,--but it is a duty, as +Isabelle reflected. Then there was the little girl. She was four now, and +though the child was almost never on her hands, thanks to the excellent +Miss Butts, Molly, as they called her, had her place in her mother's busy +thoughts: what was the best regimen, whether she ought to have a French or +a German governess next year, how she should dress, and in the distance the +right school to be selected. Isabelle meant to do her best for the little +girl, and looked back on her own bringing up--even the St. Mary's part of +it--as distressingly haphazard, and limiting. Her daughter should be fitted +"to make the most of life," which was what Isabelle felt that she herself +was now beginning to do. + +So Isabelle was occupied, as she believed profitably, spending her new +energy wisely, and though she was getting worn, it was only a month to the +date she had set for sailing. Vickers had promised to meet her at Genoa and +take her into the Dolomites and then to San Moritz, where she could rest. +As her life filled up, she saw less of her husband than ever, for he, too, +was busy, "with that railroad thing," as she called the great Atlantic and +Pacific. She made him buy a horse and ride in the Park afternoons when he +could get the time, because he was growing too heavy. He had developed +laziness socially, liked to go to some restaurant for dinner with chance +friends that were drifting continually through New York, and afterwards to +the theatre,--"to see something lively," as he put it, preferably Weber and +Fields', or Broadway opera. Isabelle felt that this was not the right +thing, and boring, too; but it would all be changed when they were +"settled." Meantime she went out more or less by herself, as the wives of +busy men have to do. + +"It is so much better not to bring a yawning husband home at midnight," she +laughed to Cairy on one of these occasions when she had given him a seat +down town in her cab. "By the way, you haven't spoken of Conny +lately,--don't you see her any more?" + +Isabelle still had her girlish habit of asking indiscreet, impertinent +questions. She carried them off with a lively good nature, but they +irritated Cairy occasionally. + +"I have been busy with my play," he replied shortly. + +As a matter of fact he had been attacked by one of those fits of intense +occupation which came upon him in the intervals of his devotions. At such +times he worked to better effect, with a kind of abandoned fury, than when +his thoughts and feelings were engaged, as if to make up to his muse for +his periods of neglect. The experience, he philosophized, which had stored +itself, was now finding vent,--the spiritual travail as well as the +knowledge of life. A man, an artist, had but one real passion, he told +Isabelle,--and that was his work. Everything else was mere fertilizer or +waste. Since the night that Conny had turned him from the door, he had +completed his new play, which had been hanging fire all winter, and he was +convinced it was his best. "Yes, a man's work, no matter what it may be, is +God's solace for living." In response to which Isabelle mischievously +remarked:-- + +"So you and Conny really have had a tiff? I must get her to tell me about +it." + +"Do you think she would tell you the truth?" + +"No." + +Isabelle, in spite of Cairy's protestations about his work, was gratified +with her discovery, as she called it. She had decided that Conny was "a bad +influence" on the Southerner; that Cairy was simple and ingenuous,--"really +a nice boy," so she told her husband. Just what evil Conny had done to +Cairy Isabelle could not say, ending always with the phrase, "but I don't +trust her," or "she is so selfish." She had made these comments to Margaret +Pole, and Margaret had answered with one of her enigmatic smiles and the +remark:-- + +"Conny's no more selfish than most of us women,--only her methods are more +direct--and successful." + +"That is cynical," Isabelle retorted. "Most of us women are not selfish; I +am not!" + +And in her childlike way she asked her husband that very night:-- + +"John, do you think I am selfish?" + +John answered this large question with a laugh and a pleasant compliment. + +"I suppose Margaret means that I don't go in for charities, like that Mrs. +Knop of the Relief and Aid, or for her old Consumers' League. Well, I had +enough of that sort of thing in St. Louis. And I don't believe it does any +good; it is better to give money to those who know how to spend it.... Have +you any poor relatives we could be good to, John? ... Any cousins that +ought to be sent to college, any old aunts pining for a trip to +California?" + +"Lots of 'em, I suppose," her husband responded amiably. "They turn up +every now and then, and I do what I can for them. I believe I am sending +two young women to college to fit themselves for teaching." + +Lane was generous, though he had the successful man's suspicion of all +those who wanted help. He had no more formulated ideas about doing for +others than his wife had. But when anything appealed to him, he gave and +had a comfortable sense that he was helping things along. + +Isabelle, in spite of the disquiet caused by Margaret's statement, felt +convinced that she was doing her duty in life broadly, "in that station +where Providence had called her." 'She was sure that she was a good wife, a +good daughter, a good mother. And now she meant to be more than these +humdrum things,--she meant to be Somebody, she meant to live! ... + +When she found time to call at the Woodyards', she saw that the house was +closed, and the caretaker, who was routed out with difficulty, informed her +that the master and mistress had sailed for Europe the week before. + +'Very sudden,' mused Isabelle. 'I don't see how Percy could get away.' + +Half the houses on the neighboring square were closed already, however, and +she thought as she drove up town that it was time for her to be going. The +city was becoming hot and dusty, and she was rather tired of it, too. Mrs. +Price was to open the Farm for the summer and have Miss Butts and the +little girl with her. John promised "to run over and get her" in September, +if he could find time. Her little world was all arranged for, she reflected +complacently. John would stay at the hotel and go up to Grafton over +Sundays, and he had joined a club. Yes, the Lanes were shaking into place +in New York. + +Cairy sent her some roses when she sailed and was in the mob at the pier to +bid her good-by. + +"Perhaps I shall be over myself later on," he said, "to see if I can place +the play." + +"Oh, do!" Isabelle exclaimed. "And we'll buy things. I am going to ruin +John." + +Lane smiled placidly, as one not easily ruined. When the visitors were +driven down the gangway, Isabelle called to Cairy:-- + +"Come on and go back in the tug with John!" + +So Cairy limped back. Isabelle was nervous and tired, and now that she was +actually on the steamer felt sad at seeing accustomed people and things +about to slip away. She wanted to hold on to them as long as possible. +Presently the hulking steamer was pulled out into the stream and headed for +the sea. It was a hot June morning and through the haze the great buildings +towered loftily. The long city raised a jagged sky-line of human immensity, +and the harbor swarmed with craft,--car ferries, and sailing vessels +dropping down stream carefully to take the sea breeze, steamers lined with +black figures, screeching tugs, and occasionally a gleaming yacht. The +three stood together on the deck looking at the scene. + +"It always gives me the same old thrill," Cairy said. "Coming or going, it +makes no difference,--it is the biggest fact in the modern world." + +"I love it!" murmured Isabelle, her eyes fastened on the serried walls +about the end of the island. "I shall never forget when I saw it as a +child, the first time. It was mystery, like a story-book then, and it has +been the same ever since." + +Lane said nothing, but watched the city with smiling lips. To him the squat +car ferries, the lighters, the dirty tramp steamers, the railroad yards +across the river, as well as the lofty buildings of the long city--all the +teeming life here at the mouth of the country--meant Traffic, the +intercourse of men. And he, too, loved the great roaring city. He looked at +it with a vista that reached from the Iowa town where he had first +"railroaded it," up through the intervening steps at St. Louis and Torso, +to his niche in the largest of these buildings,--all the busy years which +he had spent dealing with men. + +Isabelle touched his arm. + +"I wish you were coming, too, John," she said as the breeze struck in from +the open sea. "Do you remember how we talked of going over when we were in +Torso?" + +What a stretch of time there was between those first years of marriage and +to-day! She would never have considered in the Torso days that she could +sail off like this alone with a maid and leave her husband behind. + +"Oh, it will be only a few weeks,--you'll enjoy yourself," he replied. He +had been very good about her going over to join Vickers, made no objections +to it this time. They were both growing more tolerant, as they grew older +and saw more of life. + +"What is in the paper?" she asked idly, as her husband rolled it up. + +"There's a dirty roast on your friend, Percy Woodyard,--nothing else!" + +"See, that must be the tug!" exclaimed Isabelle, pushing up her veil to +kiss her husband. "Good-by--I wish you were going, too--I shall miss you +so--be sure you exercise and keep thin!"... + +She watched the two men climb down into the bobbing tug and take places +beside the pilot room,--her tall, square-shouldered husband, and the +slighter man, leaning on a cane, both looking up at her with smiles. John +waved his paper at her,--the one that had the "roast" about Percy Woodyard. +She had meant to read that,--she might see the Woodyards in Paris. Then the +tug moved off, both men still waving to her. She hurried to the rear deck +to get a last look, sentimental forlornness at leaving her husband coming +over her afresh. As she gazed back at the retreating tug there was also in +her heart a warm feeling for Cairy. "Poor Tom!" she murmured without +knowing why. + +On this great ship, among the thousand or more first-class passengers, +there were a goodly number of women like her, leaving home and husband for +a foreign trip. After all, as she had often said, it was a good idea for +husbands and wives to have vacations from each other. There was no real +reason why two people should stick together in an endless daily intimacy +because they were married.... + +Thus the great city--the city of her ambitions--sank mistily on the +horizon. + + + + +PART FOUR + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + + +Mrs. Pole's house stood on the outskirts of the old town of Bedmouth, +facing the narrow road that ran eastward to the Point. In the days of Mrs. +Pole's father the ships passing to and from Bedmouth on the river could be +seen from the front windows. Now the wires of a trolley road disfigured the +old street and cheap wooden houses cut off the view of the river. In the +rear there was a small garden, sloping down to an inlet of the sea, from +which could be seen Bedmouth-way the slender spires of two churches that +rose among the drooping branches of the elms, and seaward the squat outline +of a great summer hotel, bedecked with many flags. In the black mould of +the old garden grew tall syringa bushes, lilacs, pampas grass, and a few +tiger lilies, and over the crumbling brick walls hung dusty leaves of +grapevines. When the gate at the bottom of the garden was open, there was a +view of the inlet, bordered with marsh grass, and farther away a segment of +the open sea, with the lighthouse on Goose Rock. + +Here the Judge's wife had come to live when her husband died, forsaking +Washington, which had grown "too busy for an old woman." ... + +At the end of the garden, which was shaded by the high wall, Margaret sat, +an uncut book on her knees, her eyes resting on the green marsh to be seen +through the open door. Near by Ned in his little invalid chair was picking +the mortar from the brick wall with a nail he had been able to reach. The +two were often alone like this for hours, silent. + +"Mother," the child said at last, as Margaret took up the book. + +"What is it, Ned?" + +"Must I sit like this always,--forever and ever?" + +"I hope not, dear. You must remember Dr. Renault said it would take +patience." + +"But I have been patient." + +"Yes, I know, dear!" + +"If I didn't get any better, should I have to sit like this always?" At +last the question which she feared had come, the child's first doubt. It +had been uncertain, the recovery of the lost power; at times it seemed as +if there were no progress. The mother answered in her slow, deep voice:-- + +"Yes, dear; you would have to be patient always. But we are going to hope!" + +"Mother," the child persisted, "why does it have to be so?" + +And the mother answered steadily:-- + +"I don't know, my boy. Nobody knows why." + +Ned resumed his scratching at the wall, pondering this mystery of an +inexplicable world. Presently there was a sound of oars beyond the wall, +and the child exclaimed:-- + +"There's Big Bob! He said he'd take me for a row." + +Falkner carried off the Little Man for his promised boat ride, leaving +Margaret to cut the leaves of her book and to think. It was the week +before, the end of August, that Falkner had put into Bedmouth in his small +sloop. He was staying with his sister at Lancaster, only a short walk on +the other side of the Point. After a few days more at the most he would +have to turn back southwards, and then? ... She threw down her book and +paced slowly back and forth along the garden walk. As the sun sank low, her +mother-in-law appeared, a frail little lady, who looked gently into +Margaret's face. + +"I am afraid you feel the heat, Margaret. It has been a very hot day." + +"Is it hot?" Margaret asked vaguely, shading her eyes with her hand to look +out over the marsh. + +There was the sound of oars and a child's laugh, loud and careless, just +beyond the wall. "Look out!" Ned cried. + +"There, you've wet your feet!" The two women smiled. That boyish laugh was +rare these days. + +When the grandmother wheeled Ned into the house for his supper, Margaret +and Falkner strolled out of the garden beside the marsh to a rocky knoll +that jutted into the sea. They seated themselves under a scrawny pine whose +roots were bathed by the incoming tide, and watched the twilight stillness +steal across the marshes and the sea. There was no air and yet the ships +out by Goose Island passed across the horizon, sails full set, as though +moved by an unseen hand. + +They knew each other so well! And yet in silent times like these their +intimacy seemed always to go deeper, to reveal without the aid of speech +new levels of understanding. + +"I had a letter this morning from Marvin," Falkner remarked at last. + +Margaret scooped up a handful of pebbles and let them fall through her thin +fingers, waiting for the expected words. + +"It is settled. We sail from New York the tenth." + +"The tenth?" + +"Yes, ... so I must go back soon and get ready." + +The decision about Panama had been in the balance when Falkner left New +York, she knew. Another opportunity of work in the States had come +meanwhile; the decision had not been easy to make. When Falkner had written +his wife, Bessie had replied: "You must do what seems best to you, as you +have always done in the past.... Of course I cannot take the children to +Panama." And when Falkner had written of the other work nearer home, Bessie +said: "I don't care to make another move and settle in a new place.... We +seem to get on better like this. Go to Panama if you want to, and we will +see when you get back." So he had debated the matter with himself all the +way up the coast.... + +"When must you leave?" + +"To-morrow," he answered slowly, and again they were silent. + +It was as she wished, as she had urged. The new work would reopen the man's +ambition, and that _must_ be. Where a man's work was concerned, +nothing--nothing surely of any woman--should intervene. That was her +feeling. No woman's pining or longing to fetter the man: clear the decks +for action! + +"To-morrow!" she murmured. She was smiling bravely, a smile that belied the +tenseness within. Falkner picked the long spines from a pine branch, and +arranged them methodically one by one in a row. They were not all alike, +differing in minute characteristics of size and length and color. Nature at +her wholesale task of turning out these millions of needles varied the +product infinitely. And so with human beings! + +They two were at peace together, their inner hunger appeased, with a +sustaining content in life neither had ever known before. When they were +together in this intimate silence, their spirits were freed from all +bondage, free to rise, to leap upwards out of the encircling abysm of +things. And this state of perfect meeting--spiritual equilibrium--must +end.... + +"To-morrow?" she repeated, raising her eyes and gazing far out to the +sunlit sea. And her heart was saying, "Tomorrow, and to-morrow, and the +days thereafter,--and all empty of this!" + +"It is best so," he said. "It could not go on like this!" + +"No! We are human, after all!" and smiling wanly she rose to return to the +house. When they reached his boat, Falkner took her hand,--a hand with +finely tapering fingers, broad in the palm and oval,--a woman's hand, firm +to hold, gentle to caress. The fingers tightened about his slowly. He +looked into the blue eyes; they were dry and shining. And in those shining +eyes he read the same unspoken words of revolt that rose within his +heart,--'Why thus too late! too late! Why has life declared itself in all +its meaning--too late? Why were we caught by the mistakes of half +knowledge, and then receive the revelation?' The futile questions of human +hearts. + +"You will come to-night--after dinner?" Margaret asked. "Bring the boat. We +will go to Lawlor's Cove. I want to get away--from everything!" + +As she mounted the garden steps to the house, she heard the whirr of a +motor in the street. It stopped in front of the house, and as Margaret +waited she heard Mrs. Hillyer's thin voice: "I am so sorry! Please tell +Mrs. Pole that I came over from Lancaster to get her for dinner." Presently +the motor whirled away in the direction of the great hotel, a cloud of dust +following in its wake. Margaret stood for a moment watching the car +disappear into the distance, thankful that she had escaped Mrs. Hillyer and +her new motor just now.... The sun, sinking into the Bedmouth elms across +the green marshes, fell full and golden upon her face. It was still and hot +and brooding, this sunset hour, like the silent reaches of her heart. But +slowly a smile broke from her lips, and she raised her arms to the light. +It had touched her, the Sun God! It had burned her with its heat, its life. +She knew! And she was glad. Nothing could take its fire wholly from her. + +"To-night!" she murmured to herself. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + + +She had written him in that fierce honesty which spoke in every penstroke +on the paper:-- + +... "Yes, I love you! I am proud when I say it over to myself, when I see +it written here. I want you to know just how it is with me and my +husband.... So our marriage was a mistake, one of the millions women make +out of the girlish guess. Ignorance, blind ignorance of self and life! And +my husband knows how it is between us. He knows that when the man comes to +me whom I can love, I shall love him.... The man has come.... When it is +time, I shall go to him and tell him honestly what has happened. I hate the +little, lying women,--those who are afraid. I am not afraid! But these last +hours I will have my heart's joy to myself,--we will draw a circle about +ourselves."... + +"As I kiss you, I love you with that spirit you have given me," she said to +Falkner. "That is right, and this is right. You have given me life, and +thus I give it back to you."... + +When they were alone beside the sea this last evening, Margaret said: +"Dearest, you must know as I know, that nothing which we have had together +is sin. I would not yield even to you where I felt the right. To my father +the Bishop, this would be Sin. To that dear old lady over there in +Bedmouth, who suffered all her life from a bullying husband and from a +selfish son,--and who is now too broken to think for herself,--it would be +Sin, anything not suffering would be Sin! But I know!" She raised her head +proudly from his arms. "I know within me that this is the rightest thing in +all my life. When it came, I was sure that I should take it, and that it +would save me from worse than death.... It came ... and we were strong +enough to take it, thank God!" + +On the other side of the shingle rampart, which rose sheer behind them, the +slow swells of the sea fell at distant intervals with solemn resonance, the +only sound that broke the stillness of the night. This surge rising and +falling on the land from out the great body of the sea was like a deep +voice in the woman's soul, echoing her instinct of a reason beyond reasons +that compelled. + +But the man, holding her close to him, his lips upon her lips, did not heed +her hot words of justification. His was the hunger which took what +satisfied it without debate. + +"It makes little difference, the right and the wrong, after to-night," he +replied grimly, "in all the days to come.... We have lived and we have +loved, that is enough." + +"No, no,--we are not weak, blind fools!" she spoke on swiftly. "I will not +have it so! I will not have you leave me to-night with the thought that +some day you will feel that of me. You must understand--you must always +remember through all the years of life--that I--the woman you love--am +sinless, am pure.... I can go with your kisses upon my lips to my children, +to little Ned, and hold them tight, and know that I am pure in the sight of +God! ... + +"I give them my life, my all,--I am giving them this, too. A woman's heart +is not filled with the love of children. A woman's life is not closed at +thirty-two! ... I have a soul--a life to be satisfied,--ah, dearest, a soul +of my own to be filled, in order to give. Most men don't know that a woman +has a life of her own--apart from her children, from her husband, from all. +It's hers, hers, her very own!" she cried with a sob of joy and anguish. + +In these words escaped the essence of that creed which had taken the place +of the Bishop's teaching,--the creed that is breathed insensibly in the +atmosphere of the age,--'I, the woman, have a soul that is mine which has +its rights, and what it bids me take, that I will take and hold!' + +The man listened to the solemn rhythm of the sea pounding upon the rocky +coast, and it spoke to him of fatality, of the surge of life striking +blindly, carrying in its mighty grip the little human atoms. It had borne +him up to the stars, and in a few hours it would roll him back, down into +the gulf, from which no effort of his will could take him. With this +hunger, which was his human birthright, he must labor on, unappeased. It +was given him merely to know what would recreate living for him, what would +make of the days joy instead of pain, and it was not to be his, except for +this moment of time. + +"I think," he said, "there is enough to suffer and endure. We will not +quibble about the law. In the face of the gulf, why argue?" and he took her +once more in his arms, where she rested content.... + +Lawlor's Point was a little neck of shingle, curving inwards from the open +sea, making a small harbor. On the landward side the still, salty marsh was +fringed by evergreens that rose dark in the night. Once it had been a farm, +its few acres swept by the full Atlantic winds, its shore pounded by the +rock drift of the coast. Within the shingle the waves had washed a sandy +beach.... Margaret knew the place years before, and they had found it +to-night in the dark. The abandoned farm-house, windowless, loomed above +them, desolate, forlorn, emitting an odor of the past from its damp rooms. +About the old walnut tree where they had been sitting there grew in the +long grass fleur-de-lys and myrtle. + +"Let us go nearer to the water!" Margaret exclaimed. "I want to hear its +voice close to my ears. This place is musty with dead lives. Dead lives!" +She laughed softly. "I was like them once, only I walked and spoke, instead +of lying still in a grave. And then you found me, dearest, and touched me. +I shall never be dead like that again." + +And when they had picked their way over the rough shingle to the water, she +said in another passionate outburst, as if nature dammed for a long time +were pouring itself forth in torrent:-- + +"Pain! Don't say the word. Do you think that we can count the pain--ever? +Now that we have lived? What is Pain against Being!" + +"A man's thought, that!" he reflected, surprised by the piercing insight, +the triumphant answer of the spirit to the backward dragging surge of +circumstance. "A woman suffers--always more than a man." + +Margaret, flinging up her head to the dark heaven, the deep guttural note +of the sea in her ears, chanted low, "Some pain is tonic.... Though +to-night we are together, one and undivided--for the last time, the last +time," she whispered, "yet I cannot feel the pain." + +The man rebelled:-- + +"The last time? ... But we are not ready, Margaret,--not yet!" + +"We should never be ready!" + +"We have had so little." + +"Yes! So little--oh, so little of all the splendid chance of living." + +The same thought lay between them. They had come but to the edge of +experience, and beyond lay the vision of recreated life. Like souls that +touched the confines of a new existence and turned back, so must they turn +back to earth. So little! A few hours of meeting, a few spoken words, a few +caresses, a few moments like this of mute understanding, out of all +conscious time, and then nothing,--the blank! + +There was something cowardly, thus to turn back at the edge of experience, +incomplete and wistfully desirous. Yet the man would not ask her to venture +on. What the woman would gladly give, he would not take as sacrifice. She +understood. + +"Would it be easier?" she asked slowly, "if for a time we had all?" + +"Yes!" + +"If for a little while we left the world behind us and went away--to +know--all?" + +"We should be happier then, always.... But I cannot ask it." + +"It would be better so," she whispered dreamily. "I will go!" + +Her hands clasped about him and her lips trembled. + +"We will take our life!" She smiled as the vision of joy--food for a +lifetime--filled her heart. "For a few hours I will be yours, all yours." + +Thus, there beside the grumbling sea, these two--full man and woman, having +weighed the issues of this life, the complex threads of soul and body, +obligation and right, willed that they would take to themselves out of all +eternity a few days, a few nights, a few mornings and a few +evenings,--entire hours to be theirs, from which must be born courage for +the future. + + * * * * * + +Old Mrs. Pole looked up at the sound of Margaret's step. The younger +woman's face was pale, but still radiant with a complete joy. She patted +the old lady's cheek and glanced down at the magazine in her lap. Between +these two there was a depth of unspoken sympathy. + +"Found a good story, mother dear?" Margaret asked. + +The old woman's lips trembled. Many times that evening she had resolved to +speak to Margaret of something her heart ached over. For she had seen far +these last days with those old eyes that had seen so much. She could divine +the dead waste in her daughter-in-law's heart, having lived with father and +son, and out of the wisdom of suffering years endured she wished to speak +to-night. But the deeper wisdom of age restrained her. + +"Yes, my dear,--a very good story." + +Each ache must find its own healing. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + + +The long train pulled slowly into the station of the little seaport town. +It was late, as always at this turning-point of the season, when the summer +population was changing its roost from sea to mountain or from the north to +the south shore. Falkner, glancing anxiously along the line of cars for a +certain figure, said again to himself, 'If she shouldn't come--at the last +moment!' and ashamed of his doubt, replied, 'She will, if humanly +possible.' ... At last his eye caught sight of Margaret as she stepped from +the last car. She had seen him at the instant, and she smiled rapidly above +the crowd, one of her fleeting smiles, like a ray of April sun. Another +smile, he took her bag from the porter's hand, and their meeting was over. +It was not until they were seated at a table in a sheltered corner of the +station restaurant that he spoke:-- + +"The _Swallow_ is waiting at the wharf. But we had best get something hot +to eat here. We shall have a long sail." + +He took charge, at once, and while he ordered the luncheon, she looked at +the travellers swarming to their food. Once during the long ride she had +thought, "If we were seen by some one!" and her face had burned at the +miserable fear. Now looking at the passing faces, she had a fierce wish +that she might be seen by all the world! To speak out, to act +unashamed,--but not yet,--no; the time was not ripe. As her look returned +to Falkner, who was dressed in yachting flannels with a white sweater she +smiled again:-- + +"I am so hungry!" + +"I am afraid it will be bad. However--" + +"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters--to-day!" + +Neither of them, she reflected, cared for the detail of life, for luxury, +mere comfort. They had shed superfluity, unlike those around them, who +lived for it. + +"Is it all right?" he asked as the waitress slung the dishes on the table. + +"Everything!" and she added: "I can telephone Ned? I promised to speak to +him every day." + +"Of course!" + +"Now let us forget.... What a lot of people there are in the world running +about!" + +"We'll say good-by to them all very soon," he replied. + +Their spirits rose as they ate. It was festive and joyous, even this dirty +country station. The September sun was shining brightly through the window, +and a faint breeze came straying in, smelling of the salt water. She had +given no thought to what they would do, to where they would go. She did not +ask. It was good to trust all to him, just to step forth from the old maze +into this dreamed existence, which somehow had been made true, where there +was no need to take thought. She pushed away her ice untouched and began +slowly to draw on her gloves. + +"All the way here from Bedmouth I had a queer feeling that I was making a +journey that I had made before, though I was never here in my life. And now +it seems as if we had sat by this window some other day,--it is all so +expected!" she mused. And she thought how that morning when she got up, she +had gone to her little girl, the baby Lilla, and kissed her. With her arms +about the child she had felt again that her act was right and that some day +when the little one was a woman she would know and understand. + +Her lips trembled, and then a slow smile suffused her face, bringing color, +and leaning forward she murmured:-- + +"I am so happy!" Their eyes met, and for the moment they were lost in +wonder, unconscious of the noisy room.... + +With a familiarity of old knowledge, Falkner descended the winding streets +to the water front. In this lower part of the town the dingy old houses had +an air of ancient grandeur, and tall elms drooped dust-laden branches over +the street. + +"Dear old place!" he exclaimed, memories reviving of his boyhood cruises. +"It was in ninety-one when I was here last. I never expected to put in here +again." + +The streets were empty, a noon stillness brooding in them. Margaret slipped +her hand into his, the joy, the freedom, the sense of the open road +sweeping over her afresh. The world was already fading behind them.... They +came out upon the wharves, and threaded their way among the sagging gray +buildings that smelt of salt fish, until the harbor water lapped at the +piles beneath their feet. + +"There's the _Swallow_!" Falkner cried, pointing into the stream. + +They were soon aboard, and Margaret curled herself in the cockpit on a rug, +while Falkner ran up the sails. Little waves were dancing across the +harbor. Taking the tiller, he crouched beside her and whispered:-- + +"Now we are off--to the islands of the blest!" + +It was all so in her dream, even to the white sail slowly filling before +the breeze. They glided past hulking schooners lying idle with grimy sails +all set, and from their decks above black-faced men looked down curiously +at the white figure in the cockpit of the little sloop. Behind the +schooners the wharves and the red brick warehouses, the elms and the white +houses on the hill, the tall spires--all drew backwards into the westering +sun. A low gray lighthouse came into sight; the _Swallow_ dipped and rose; +and the breeze freshened as they entered the lower bay. A great ship was +slowly rounding the point, bound outward, too, laboring into the deep--for +what? For some noisy port beneath the horizon. But for her the port of +starlight and a man's arm,--the world was wonderful, this day! Falkner +raised his hand and pointed far away to the eastward where a shadow lay +like a finger on the sea, + +"Our harbor is over there!" + +Away to the east, to the broad open ocean, it was fitting they should +speed,--they who had shaken themselves loose from the land.... + +She held the tiller when he rummaged below for a chart, and while she was +there alone, a pot-bellied pleasure steamer, swarming with people, rolled +past, shaking the _Swallow_ with its wake. The people on the decks spied +the sail-boat, raised glasses, looked down, and had their say. 'A bit of +the chattering world that is left,' thought Margaret, 'like all the rest.' +And something joyful within cried: 'Not to-day! To-day I defy you. To-day I +have escaped--I am a rebel. You can do nothing with me. Oh, to-day I am +happy, happy, happy,--can you say that?' Falkner came up from the cabin +with his chart, and shading his eyes, swept the sea for the landmarks of +their course. And the _Swallow_ sped on out of the noisy to-day through a +path of gold and blue to the radiant to-morrow. + +"See!" Falkner pointed back to the old seaport grown dim in the distance +behind them. The sun was falling behind the steeples, and only the black +smoke from engine and chimney marked the edge of the shore. Far away to the +north opened a long reach of blue water and at the head of the bay green +fields descending gently to the sea. The _Swallow_ was a lonely dot in the +open waters, dipping, rising, the sun on its white sail,--fleeing always. +Falkner sat beside her, circling her shoulders with his arm, talking of the +sea and the boat as if they had sailed for many days like this together and +were familiar with all. His arm as it touched her said, 'I love you!' And +his eyes resting on her face said, 'But we are happy, together, you and +I,--so strangely happy!' + +What was left there behind--the city and the vessels, the land itself--was +all the mirage of life, had never been lived by them. And this--the +swaying, sweeping boat, a dot upon the ocean and they together, heart by +heart, going outward to the sea and night--was all that was real. Could it +be possible that they two would ever land again on that far shore of +circumstance, hemmed in by petty and sorrowful thoughts? + +Yet across the dream came the thought of the Little Man, waiting behind +there, and the woman knew that on the morrow after the morrow she should +wake. For life is stronger than a single soul! ... + +To the west and north there were islands, long stretches of sea opening +between their green shores, far up into the coast land. The wind freshened +and died, until at last in the twilight with scarcely a ripple the +_Swallow_ floated into a sheltered cove on the outermost of all the +islands. A forest of stiff little spruces covered the sea point, and behind +this was a smooth green field, and above on the crest of the island a small +white farm-house. + +"A man named Viney used to live there," Falkner said, breaking a long +silence. "Either he or some one else will take us in." Margaret helped him +anchor, furl the sails, and then they went ashore, pulling the tender far +up on the shingle beech beside the lobster-pots. They crossed the field--it +was nearly dark and the _Swallow_ was a speck on the dark water +beneath--and knocked at the white farm-house. + +"It is like what you knew must be so when you were a child," whispered +Margaret. + +"But suppose they turn us away?" + +"Why, we'll go back to the _Swallow_ or sleep under the firs! But they +won't. There is a charm in all our doings this day, dearest." + +The Vineys welcomed them, and gave them supper. Then Mr. Viney, divining +that with these two wanderers a love matter was concerned, remarked +suggestively:-- + +"Maybe you'd like to go over to my son's place to sleep. My son's folks +built a camp over there on the Pint. It's a sightly spot, and they've gone +back to the city. Here, Joe, you show 'em the path!" + +So in the starlight they threaded the spruce forest down by the sea, and +found the "camp," a wooden box, with a broad veranda hanging over the +eastern cliff. + +"Yes!" exclaimed Margaret, taking now her woman's place of command; "this +is the very spot. We'll sleep here on the veranda. You can bring out the +bedding. If we had ordered it all, we could not have discovered the perfect +thing, like this!" + +The gray pathway of the ocean lay at their feet, and from the headlands up +and down the coast, from distant islands, the lights began to call and +answer each other. A cloud of smoke far eastward hung over a seagoing +steamer. And throughout the little island, over the floor of the ocean, in +the wood about them, there was perfect stillness, a cessation of all +movement. + +"Peace! Such large and splendid peace!" Margaret murmured, as they stood +gazing at the beauty of the coming night. Peace without and answering peace +within. Surely they had come to the heart of solitude, removed from the +tumultuous earth. + +"Come!" he whispered at her ear, and she slowly turned her face to him. + +"Now, I know!" she said triumphantly. "This has been sent to answer +me,--all the glory and the wonder and the peace of life, my dearest! I know +it all. We have lived all our years with this vision in our hearts, and it +has been given to us to have it at last." + +And as they lay down beside each other she murmured:-- + +"Peace that is above joy,--see the stars!" + +And there beneath the tranquil stars in the calm night came the ecstasy of +union, transcending Fate and Sorrow.... + +Thus at the extreme verge of human experience these two realized that inner +state of harmony, that equilibrium of spirit, towards which conscious +beings strive blindly, and which sanctioning what man forbids gives reason +to life. The spirit within them declared that it was best so to gain the +heights, whether in the final sum of life it should lie as Sin or Glory, +For this night, for these immediate hours, as man and woman they would rise +to wider kingdoms of themselves than ever otherwise might be reached. + +Thus far to them had come revelation. + + * * * * * + +In the morning Margaret would play housewife. Sending Falkner to the +Vineys' for the things needed, she cooked the meal while he swam out to the +_Swallow_ and made ready for the day's sail. Whimsically she insisted on +doing all without his help, and when he was ready, she served him before +she would eat herself,--"Just as Mrs. Viney would her man." + +Did she wish to show him that she was equal to the common surface of +living,--a comrade to do her part? Or, rather, was the act +symbolical,--woman serving joyfully where she yields real mastery? The +woman, so often capricious and disdainful, was submissive, as if she would +say: "This man is my mate. I am forever his. It is my best joy to be +through him myself." + +And after the meal she insisted on completing the task by washing the +dishes, putting all to rights in the camp; then mended a rent in his coat +which he had got from a stumble in the dark the night before. He laughed, +but her eyes shone. + +"Let me _do_ as long as I can! ... There--wouldn't you and I shed things! +That's the way to live,--to shed things." As they passed the Vineys' house +on their way to the boat, Margaret observed:-- + +"That would do very well for us, don't you think? You could go lobstering, +and I would have a garden. Can you milk a cow?" She was picturing the mould +for their lives. + +And all that day as they sailed among the islands, up thoroughfares, across +the reaches of the sea, they played a little game of selecting the right +cottage from the little white farm-houses dotted along the shores, and +said, "We'd take this or that, and we'd do thus and so with it--and live +this way!" Then they would laugh, and grow pensive, as if the land with its +smoke wreaths had suddenly drifted past their eyes, reminding them of the +future. 'You are bound with invisible cords,' a voice said. 'You have +escaped in fancy, but to-morrow you will find the world wagging its old +way.' But the woman knew that no matter what came, the morrow and all the +morrows could never be again as her days once had been. For the subtle +virtue of a great fulfilment is its power to alter the inner aspect of all +things thereafter. Nothing could ever be the same to either of them. The +stuff of their inner lives had been changed.... + +They sailed the day long in the full sun, which beat down with a memory of +summer that already had departed. At noon they landed on a rocky islet, a +mere clump of firs water bound, and after eating their luncheon they lay +under the fragrant trees and talked long hours. + +"If this hadn't been," Falkner said with deep gratitude, "we should not +have known each other." + +She smiled back triumphantly. That was the truth she had divined the night +he was to have left her. + +"No," she assented, "we should have been almost strangers and been +dissatisfied always." + +"And now nothing can come between us, not time nor circumstance, nor pain. +Nothing! It is sealed for all time--our union." + +"Our life together, which has been and will be forever." + +None of the surface ways of life, no exchange of words, no companionship, +could have created anything to resemble this inner union which had come +about. The woman giving herself with full knowledge, the man possessing +with full insight,--this experience had made a spirit common to both, in +which both might live apart from each other, so long as they could see with +the spirit,--an existence new, deep, inner. + +So they talked of the life to be with perfect willingness, as two might who +were to part soon for a long journey, which both would share intimately and +real loneliness never seize them. + +"And beyond this luminous moment," suggested the man,--his the speculative +imagination,--"there must lie other levels of intimacy, of comradeship. If +we could go on into the years like this, why, the world would ever be +new,--we should go deeper into the mysteries every day, discovering +ourselves, creating ourselves!" + +The warm sunlight, the islands mirrored in the waveless sea, the aromatic +breath of the spruce and fir, the salty scent of the tidal shore--this +physical world in which they lay--and that other more remote physical world +of men and cities--all, all was but the pictured drama of man's inner life. +As he lived, each day dying and recreated, with an atmosphere of the soul +as subtly shifting as the atmosphere of the earth, so this wonderful +panorama of his faded, dissolved, was made anew. For out of the panorama of +sense man builds his tabernacle, and calls it life, but within the veil +there lies hidden beneath a power, that can unlock other worlds,--strange, +beautiful worlds, like the mazes of the firmament through which the earth +pursues its way. And the tide ebbing past this islet to the sea, flowing +fast outward into the deep, carried them in its silent depths out into the +new, the mysterious places of the spirit. + +The sun sank, covering the islands and the sea with a rare amethystine glow +deepening to a band of purple, like some old dyed cloth, then fading to +pale green at the rim of the earth. There ensued a hush, a pause in life, +that filled the air. 'We are fading, we are withdrawing,' whispered the +elements. 'Our hour is past, the riotous hour, the springtime flood, the +passionate will. And in our place the night will come and bring you peace.' +The sadness of change, the sense of something passing, of moments slipping +away to eternity! ... + +"Tell me," she said as they drifted back with the tide, "what is it?" + +"Only," he answered, "the thought of waste,--that it should have come late, +too late!" + +Proudly denying the flaw in the perfect image, she protested:-- + +"Not late,--the exact hour. Don't you see that it could never have been +until now? Neither of us was ready to understand until we had lived all the +mistakes, suffered all. That is the law of the soul,--its great moments can +neither be hastened nor delayed. All is appointed." + +Her gentle voice touched his heart like a soothing +hand,--'Accept--rejoice--be strong--it must be so! And it is good!' + +"Dearest, we should have passed each other in the dark, without knowing, +earlier. You could not have seen me, the thing you love in me, nor I you, +until we were stricken with the hunger.... It takes time to know this +babbling life, to know what is real and what is counterfeit. Before or +after, who knows how it might have been? This was the time for us to meet!" + +In these paths her eyes were bright to see the way, her feet accustomed. So +it was true. By what they had suffered, apart, by what they had tested and +rejected, they had fitted themselves to come together, for this point of +time, this flame of fulfilment. Mystery of waste to be accepted. No +wistfulness for loss! Brave smiles for that which had been given. And +resolved hearts for that to come.... + +Slowly, with the mood of the day in her lingering feet, Margaret crossed +the field towards the Vineys' cottage, while Falkner stayed to make the +_Swallow_ ready for its homeward journey in the morning. Joe Viney rowed +out to the boat with him. Nodding towards the slight figure on the path +above, the fisherman observed simply:-- + +"She ain't strong, your wife?" + +With that illumined face! He had thought her this day pure force. Later as +he followed her slow steps to the camp, he said over the old man's words, +"She ain't strong." She lived behind her eyes in the land of will and +spirit. And the man's arms ached to take her frail body to him, and keep +her safe in some island of rest. + + + + +CHAPTER XL + + +After supper Margaret sat and talked with Mrs. Viney. The fisherman's wife +was a woman of fifty, with a dragging voice, a faint curiosity in her +manner. Her iron-gray hair smoothed flat was tied in a little knot behind. +Her husband, a good ten years older, had the vitality of a young man +compared with his wife. He was grizzled and squat, with thick red face and +powerful shoulders. His eyes twinkled sharply under their fleshy lids; but +he exhibited no outward curiosity over the two strangers who had dropped +down on his island. + +"That woman!" Margaret exclaimed disgustedly to Falkner as they went back +to the camp. + +"Our excellent hostess? What is the matter with her?" + +"She's a whiner!" Margaret replied hotly. "The woman is always the +whiner,--it makes me despise my sex. What do you suppose she wants? She has +a sister in Lawrence, Mass., and Lawrence, Mass., is her Paris! She wants +her husband to give up this, all the life he's known since he was a boy, +and go to live in Lawrence, Mass., so that she can walk on brick sidewalks +and look into shop windows. There's an ideal for you, my dear!" + +Falkner laughed at her outburst. After all an ambition for Lawrence, Mass., +was not criminal. + +"Oh, women! ... She wanted me to know that she had seen life,--knew a lady +who had rings like mine,--the social instinct in women,--phew! And he +smoked his pipe like an honest man and said not a word. He'll never die in +Lawrence, Mass." + +"But it must be lonely for the poor thing here winters; their children have +all gone to the city." + +"There are ten families at the other end of the island, if she must have +some one to clack with." + +"Perhaps she doesn't find the island society congenial," Falkner suggested +slyly. He had heard Margaret inveigh against certain less restricted +societies. + +"But the old man said, 'Winters are best of all--when it's fierce outside, +and there's nothing but yourself to amuse yourself with!' That's the man. +And he said: 'I like the blows, too. I've been on the sea all my life, and +I don't know nothing about it to speak on.' He has a sense of what it +means,--all this greatness about him." + +"But her element, you forget, is Lawrence, Mass." + +"The man has the imagination, if he is a man! If he is a man! Woman just +tails on,--as I cling to you, dearest!" + +"And sometimes I think you would want to take the lead,--to have your own +little way." + +"Yes, I like my way, too! But the women who think they can strike out +alone--live their own lives, as they say--are foolish. The wise women work +through men,--accomplish themselves in those they love. Isn't that bigger +than doing all the work yourself?" + +"Women create the necessity for man's work." + +"You know I don't mean that! ... What is bliss is to make the way clear for +the one you loved.... I could do that! I'd set my little brain working to +smooth away the immediate difficulties, those that hinder, the little +things that stick in the way. I'd clean the armor for my lord and bring him +nourishing food." + +"And point out the particular castle you would like him to capture for your +dwelling?" + +"Never! If the man were worth serving, he would mark his own game."... + +They had walked to the eastern point of the island, where nothing was to be +seen but the wide sea. The wind had utterly fallen, leaving the surface of +the water mottled with currents from beneath. Far away on the horizon some +ships seemed to be sailing--they had wind out there--and their sails still +shone in the twilight. About the cliff at their feet the tide ran in black +circles. It was still, and the earth was warm and fragrant from the hot +day. Margaret rested her head upon his arm and closed her eyes. + +"It has been too much for you," he said, concerned. + +"No," she murmured, "I am not tired. This is content, at the day's end. It +is marvellous,"--she opened her eyes again upon him with a smile of wonder. +"I haven't had a moment of fatigue, and I have done so much since +yesterday,--more than I have done for years. I wonder what it is gives us +women strength or weakness." + +"Joy gives strength!" + +"Peace gives strength. Sometimes I think that all the weakness in +life--women's weakness--is merely wrong adjustment. It is never work that +kills--it isn't just living, no matter how hard it is. But it is trying to +live when you are dead.... Dearest, if we stayed here, I should be always +strong! I know it. All the weariness and the pain and the languor would go; +I should be what I was meant to be, what every human being is meant to +be,--strong to bear." + +"It is a bitter thought." + +"I suppose that is why men and women struggle so blindly to set themselves +right, why they run away and commit all sorts of follies. They feel within +them the capacity for health, for happiness, if they can only get right +somehow. And when they find the way--" + +She made a little gesture with her hand that swept the troubles from the +road. + +"If they can be sure, it is almost a duty--to put themselves right, isn't +it?" + +Here they had come to the temptation which in all their intimate moments +they had avoided.... 'Others have remade the pattern of their lives,--why +not we?' The woman answered the thought in the man's mind. + +"I should never take it, even knowing that it is my one chance for health +and all that I desire, not while my father lives, not while my +mother-in-law lives; it would add another sorrow to their graves. Nor while +my husband has a right to his children. We are all bound in criss-cross in +life. Nor would you, dearest, have me; you would hate me,--it would turn +our glory to gall!" + +It was not her habit to put her hands before her eyes. She was clear with +herself, and without the sentimental fog. For the Bishop's creed she cared +nothing. For her mother-in-law's prejudices she cared as little. The +punishment of Society she would have met with gleeful contempt. People +could not take from her what she valued, for she had stripped so much that +there was little left in her heart to be deprived of. As for her husband, +he did not exist for her; towards him she was spiritually blind. Her +children were so much a part of her that she never thought of them as away +from her. Where she went, they would be, as a matter of course. + +They had never laid all this on the table before them, so to speak, but +both had realized it from the beginning. They had walked beside the social +precipice serene, but aware of the depths--and the heights. + +"I hate to be limited by the opinions, the prejudices, of other people, of +any one," the man protested. "There seems a cowardice in silently +acquiescing in social laws that I don't respect, because the majority so +wills it." + +"Not because it is the will of the majority--not that; but because others +near you will be made wretched. That is the only morality I have!" + +The law of pity in the place of the law of God! A fragile leash for passion +and egotism. They both shuddered. + +The dusk gathered all about them. Her head still rested on his breast, and +her hand stole to his face. She whispered, "So we pay the forfeit--for our +blindness!" + +"And if I stay--" + +"Don't say it! Don't say that! Do you think that I could be here this +moment in your arms if _that_ were possible?" + +Her voice trembled with scorn, disgust of the adulterous world. + +"Hiding and corner lies for us? No, no, my lover,--not for _you!_ Not even +for _me_. That is the one price too great to pay for happiness. It would +kill it all. Kill it! Surely. I should become in your eyes--like one +of--_them_. It would be--oh, you understand!" She buried her head in his +coat. + +Again she had saved them, kept the balance of their ideal. She would have +love, not hidden lust. What she had done this once could never be done +again without defilement. She had come to him as to a man condemned to die, +to leave the earth forever, and the one most precious thing he wanted and +the one most precious thing that she had to give,--that she had given +freely--to the man condemned to death. + +"We have come all the hard way up the heights to infinite joy, to Peace! +Shall we throw ourselves down into the gulf?"... + + * * * * * + +In the night Falkner woke with a start, putting out his hand to fend off a +catastrophe. She was not there by his side! For one moment fear filled his +mind, and then as he sprang up he saw her in the faint moonlight, leaning +against the post of the veranda, looking out into the night. At his +movement she turned. + +"The night was too beautiful to sleep through, dearest! I have so much to +think about." + +She came back to his side and knelt above him, drawing her cloak around +her. "See! we are all alone here under the stars." The fog had stolen in +from the sea, risen as high as the trees, and lay close over land and +ocean. The heavens were cloudless, and the little moon was low. "Those +tranquil stars up there! They give us our benediction for the time to +come.... We have had our supreme joy--our desire of desires--and now Peace +shall enter our hearts and remain there. That is what the night says.... It +can never be as it was before for you or me. We shall carry away something +from our feast to feed on all our lives. We shall have enough to give +others. Love makes you rich--so rich! We must give it away, all our lives. +We shall, dearest, never fear." + +For the soul has its own sensualities,--its self-delight in pain, in +humiliation,--its mood of generosity, too. The penetrating warmth of a +great passion irradiates life about it. + +"My children, my children," she murmured, "I love them more--I can do for +them more. And for dear Mother Pole--and even for him. I shall be +gentler--I shall understand.... Love was set before me. I have taken it, +and it has made me strong. I will be glad and love the world, all of it, +for your sake, because you have blessed me.... Ours is not the fire that +turns inward and feeds upon itself!" + +"Oh, Margaret, Margaret!--" + +"Listen," she murmured, clasping his neck, "you are the Man! You must +spread the flame where I cannot. I kiss you. I have eaten of life with you. +Together we have understood. Forget me, cease to love me; but always you +must be stronger, greater, nobler because you have held me in your arms and +loved me. If you cannot carry us upwards, it has been base,--the mere +hunger of animals,--my lover! You have made of my weakness strength, and I +have given you peace! Pour it out for me in deeds that I may know I have +loved a Man, that my hero lives!" + +Like a cry of the spirit it rang out into the night between the mist-hidden +earth and the silent stars. In the stillness there had come a revelation of +life,--the eternal battle of man between the spirit and the flesh, between +the seen and the unseen, the struggle infinite and always. Where life is, +that must be. And the vision of man's little, misshapen existence,--the +incomplete and infinitesimal unit he is,--and also the significance of +him,--this material atom, the symbol, the weapon of the spirit, shone forth +before them. This the woman had felt in giving herself to him, that the +spirit within was freed by the touch of flesh.... + +Already in the calm night desire and passion seemed to fade from them. Here +had ended their passion, and now must begin the accomplishment. When the +revelation comes, and the spirit thus speaks through the flesh, it is peace +with human beings.... + +They lay there awake but silent into the gray hours of dawn, and when the +mist had spread upwards to the sky, shutting out the stars, they slept. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI + + +At breakfast Joe Viney said:-- + +"I was lobsterin' this morning." + +"It must have been the thud of your oars that we heard when we woke." + +"Mos' likely,--I was down there at the end of the island, hauling in the +pots. It's goin' to be a greasy day. But there's wind comin'." + +They could hear the long call of a steamer's whistle and the wail of the +fog-horn beyond the next island. The little white house was swathed in the +sea mist. + +"Better take the steamer at the Neck, if you're going to the city," Mrs. +Viney suggested. "It'll be cold and damp sailing this morning." + +"Never!" Margaret protested. + +Mrs. Viney looked at Margaret pityingly. That a woman from the city should +care to come to this forlorn, lonesome spot, "when the summer folks had +gone," and sleep out of doors on fir boughs, and go off in a messy +sail-boat in a fog, when there was a clean, fast steamer that would take +her in an hour to the city--it was a mystery. As she packed some pieces of +soggy bread, a little meat, and still soggier cake into a box for their +luncheon she shook her head, protesting:-- + +"You'll spoil that hat o' yourn. It wasn't meant for sailin'." + +"No, it wasn't; that's true!" She took off the flower-bedecked hat with its +filmy veiling. "Would you like it? I shall find a cap in the boat." + +'Clearly,' thought Mrs. Viney, 'the woman is crazy;' but she accepted the +hat. Afterwards she said to her husband:-- + +"I can't make them two out. She ain't young, and she ain't exactly old, and +she ain't pretty,--well, she's got the best of the bargain, a little wisp +like her." For, womanlike, she admired Falkner in his sweater and flannels, +strong and male, with a dark coat of tan on his face. + +Viney accompanied them to the boat, waddling across the field, his hands in +the armholes of his vest. He said little, but as he shoved them off in +their tender, he observed:-- + +"It's the sort of day you could get lost in mighty easy." + +"Oh," Falkner called back cheerily, "I guess I know my way." + +"Well, I guess you _do_!" + + * * * * * + +As Viney had said, the wind came through the fog, driving the boat in +unseen fashion, while the sail hung almost limp. There was a little eddy of +oily water at the stern; they were slipping, sliding through the fog-bank, +back to the earth. + +"Back to life," Falkner hummed, "back; back, to the land, to the world!" + +The fog clung in Margaret's hair, and dimmed her eyes. She bared her arms +to feel the cool touch of it on her skin. Clean things, like the sun +yesterday, the resinous firs, the salty fog,--clean elemental things,--how +she loved them! + +"And suppose," Falkner suggested, "I should lose my way in this nest of +reefs and islands and we got shipwrecked or carried out to sea?" + +"I should hear Ned calling through the fog." A simple answer, but withal +enough. Their hour, which they had set themselves, was past. And lying here +in the impalpable mist, slipping towards the hidden port, she was filled +with ineffable content.... + +"You are still radiant!" Falkner said wonderingly. + +"It can't fade--never wholly! I cherish it." She drew her arms close about +her. "Sacred things never utterly die!" + +They had found it, they had lived it, they knew--what the unspiritual and +carnal millions that clutter God's earth may never know--ecstasy, the +secret behind the stars, beyond the verge of the sea, in the great lunar +spaces of spirit. + + * * * * * + +On they glided through the thoroughfares, around island points, across +reaches of the sea, sweeping onward now with an audible gurgle in their +wake, the sails bellying forward; veering this way, falling off there, as +the impassive man touched the tiller, obeying an instinct, seeing into the +dark beyond. Now a bit of cliff loomed in the fog, again a shingled roof or +a cluster of firs, and the whistling buoy at the harbor's mouth began to +bellow sadly,--reminders all of the shell of that world towards which they +sailed. And at last the harbor, with its echoing bells and fog-whistles, +the protesting shrieks of its man-machines; suddenly the colossal hull of a +schooner at anchor. Then the ghostly outlines of the huddled shipping, the +city roofs, the steeples, the shriek of engines in the freight yards--they +touched the earth! It had ended. The noise of living reverberated in their +ears. + +Margaret rose with a sigh, and looked back through the closing curtain of +fog to an island headland misty and vague. + +"My heaven--oh, my heaven! our haven, my master!" + +Like two newly wakened beings, stunned by the light and sound around them, +they stumbled over the wharf. A large sailing vessel was loading there for +its voyage,--a Portuguese ship bound for Demerara, so the black sailor said +whom Falkner questioned. With a last look at its tall masts they took their +way into the city and so to the station. + +Here was the same crowd coming from the trains,--the little human motes +pushing hither and thither, hurrying from train to train, dashing, +dawdling, loitering. Were they the same motes as two days before? Were they +always the same,--marionettes wound to perform the clamorous motions of +life? Or were they men and women like themselves, with their own great +secrets in their hearts? Above all, the secret that transforms! Had these +others, too, gone into the great high places? + +They walked to the bridge while they waited for the Bedmouth train. Far +down the harbor rose the tall masts of the Portuguese ship. + +"Bound for Demerara," murmured Falkner, with a smile; "we might be sailing +for the Windward Islands?" + +"No," Margaret smiled back; "we love too much for that,--you and I." + + + + +CHAPTER XLII + + +Within the old parlor of the Bedmouth house Mrs. Pole was waiting for a +step. It came at last. + +"The children?" Margaret demanded, kissing the old lady. + +"Perfectly well." + +"I must go up to them," and she started for the door. + +"Wait!" Mrs. Pole said, looking up sadly into the younger woman's pale +face, which still held the glow. + +"Yes, mother?" The voice rang with a note of vitality, of life, as if to +chant, 'I have come back to you from a long way off!' Mrs. Pole said +slowly:-- + +"Lawrence is upstairs. He came on from New York yesterday." + +"Oh!" + +At the head of the stairs she met her husband, who had heard her voice +below. + +"You have been away!" he said sharply, an unwonted touch of authority in +his voice. + +It was in her heart to say: 'Yes, in heaven! Can't you see it in my face?' +She replied gently:-- + +"Yes, I have been--away!" + +"Where?" + +She looked at him out of her deep eyes, and said slowly:-- + +"Do you wish me to tell you?" + +And after a moment, as if her husband was not there and she were looking +through him at something beyond, she went on into the children's room. +Pole, steadying himself by the hand-rail, descended the stairs. + +He no longer existed, even as a convention, for his wife. + + + + +PART FIVE + + + +CHAPTER XLIII + + +Isabelle had not succeeded in bringing Vickers home with her that first +time she had gone abroad. They had had a very pleasant month in the +Dolomites, and he had taken her to Paris to join the Woodyards, with whom +she returned. Whenever she had spoken to Vickers of coming home he had +smiled and made a little joke. Once he said, "Not yet,--I cannot go yet, +Belle," and she understood that it was "that beast of a woman," as she +called Mrs. Conry, who kept him. She wanted to say to him, "Well, Vick, if +you won't leave her, why don't you marry her then!" But gentle as her +brother was to her, she did not like to touch on that topic. + +She had meant to go over the next spring, but the new house was under way +then. A year later a letter from Fosdick, who was returning from Russia by +the way of Venice, made her start for Europe at once. + +... "Madam," Fosdick wrote, "having sucked our Vickers dry, has left him at +last, I am happy to say. Gone off with a fresh orange. Vick doesn't realize +his luck,--he's plain dazed. Before the other orange becomes dry, it is our +simple duty--yours and mine--to remove the stranded hero out of reach. I +think you can do it now.... I forgot to say that the Conry left with him a +pledge of her return in the shape of a lump of a girl, her daughter by +Conry. Vick seems idiotically tied to this little Conry.... Oh, it is a +shame, a shame!" + +Isabelle cabled Fosdick to bring Vickers with him to Paris and started with +her mother. "No sermons, you know, mother," she warned Mrs. Price. "It's +something you and I don't understand." + +When Vickers came to their hotel in Paris, it seemed to Isabelle that the +last two years had worked more damage than the previous six. There was a +dazed and submissive air about her brother that brought the tears to her +eyes. In the languid, colorless face before her, she could scarcely find a +trace of the pale, tense boy, who had roused her in the middle of the night +the day before he left St. Louis.... + +"Why don't you come to this hotel?" Mrs. Price had demanded. + +Vickers had made an excuse, and when his mother had left the room, he said +to Isabelle, "You will have to explain to mother that I am not alone." + +Isabelle gasped, and Vickers hastened to say, "You see Delia is with me." + +"Dick wrote me that she left her child!" + +"Yes.... I am really very fond of the poor little thing." + +"The beast!" Isabelle muttered. + +Vickers shuddered, and Isabelle resolved that no matter what happened she +would not allow herself to refer again to either mother or child. Later she +walked back with him to his rooms and saw the girl. Delia Conry was a +heavily built and homely girl of thirteen, with light gray eyes. All but +the eyes were like her father, the builder. There was no hint of the +mother's soft, seductive physique. + +"Delia," Vickers said gently, "come and speak to my sister, Mrs. Lane." + +As the child awkwardly held out a hand, Isabelle felt the tears come into +her eyes. Here was her old Vickers,--the gentle, idealistic soul she had +loved, the only being it seemed to her then that she had ever really loved. + +"Delia and I have been tramping the Louvre," Vickers remarked. "That's the +way we are learning history." + +Isabelle glanced about the forlorn little sitting-room of the third-class +hotel. + +"Why did you come here?" + +"It does well enough, and it's near the Louvre and places.... It is very +reasonable." + +Then Isabelle remembered what Fosdick had said about Vickers's gift of half +his fortune to Mrs. Conry. "You see the idiot hadn't sense enough to run +off with a man who had money. Some damn fool, artist! That's why you must +pack Vick away as soon as you can get him to go." + +With this in her mind she exclaimed impulsively:-- + +"You are coming back with us, Vick!" + +"To live in America?" he queried with bitter humor. "So you came out as a +rescue party!" + +"You must get back into life," Isabelle urged vaguely. + +"What life? You don't mean the hardware business?" + +"Don't be silly! ... You can't go on living over here alone by yourself +with that child." + +"Why not?" + +"Oh, because--you must _do_ something, Vick! I want you to be famous." + +"That doesn't seem quite possible, now," he replied gently. + +"You'll come and live with me--oh, I need you, Vick!" + +She threw her arms about him and hugged him tightly to her as she had as a +girl. The intensity of her feeling moved him strangely, and her words also. +What was it she meant by "needing him"? + +"You must--that's the thing!" + +Holding her head away she searched his face critically, and her heart was +wrung again by the sense of waste in it all. "Poor brother," she murmured, +tightening her clasp. + +"I'm not going over as a helpless dependent!" he protested, and suddenly +without warning he shot out his question,--"And what have _you_ made out of +it? How have the years been?" + +"Oh, we jog on, John and I,--just the usual thing, you know,--no heights +and no depths!" + +An expression of futility came momentarily into her eyes. It wasn't what +she had pictured to herself, her marriage and life. Somehow she had never +quite caught hold of life. But that was a common fate. Why, after all, +should she commiserate her brother, take the 'poor Vick' tone that +everybody did about him? Had she attained to a much more satisfactory level +than he, or had the others who 'poor Vickered' him? There was something in +both their natures, perhaps, at jar with life, incapable of effectiveness. + +Vickers finally consented to return to America with his mother and sister +"for a visit." Delia, he said, ought to see her father, who was a broken +man, living in some small place in the West. (Isabelle suspected that +Vickers had sent him also money.) Conry had written him lately, asking for +news of his daughter. + +"Does Vick intend to tote that lump of a girl around with him for the next +twenty years?" Mrs. Price demanded of Isabelle, when she heard that Delia +was to be of their party. + +"I suppose so, unless she totes herself off!" + +"The woman dumped her child on him! Well, well, the Colonel had something +of the fool in him where women were concerned,--only I looked after that!" + +"Mother," Isabelle retorted mischievously, "I am afraid you'll never be +able to keep down the fool in us; Vick is pretty nearly all fool, the +dear!" + +Her brother's return being settled, Isabelle plunged into her shopping, +buying many things for both the houses, as well as her dresses. There were +friends flitting back and forth, snatches of sight-seeing, and theatres. By +the time they took the steamer Isabelle confessed she was a "wreck." Yet +she talked of taking an apartment in Paris the next spring and sending her +child to a convent, as Mrs. Rogers had done. "It would be nice to have my +own corner over here to run to," she explained. "Only Potts wants me to +bury myself at Schwalbach." + +Cairy joined them at Plymouth. He had been in London making arrangements +for the production of a play there, and had hopes of enlarging his sphere. + +"Coming home?" he asked Vickers. "That's good!" + +"Thank you," Vickers replied dryly. + +Cairy had already the atmosphere of success about him. He still limped in a +distinguished manner, and his clothes marked him even in the company of +well-dressed American men. He had grown stouter,--was worried by the fear +of flesh, as he confided to Vickers,--and generally took himself with +serious consideration. It was a far call from the days when he had been +Gossom's ready pen. He now spoke of his "work" importantly, and was kind to +Vickers, who "had made such a mess of things," "with all that money, too." +With his large egotism, his uniform success where women were concerned, +Vickers's career seemed peculiarly stupid. "No woman," he said to Isabelle, +"should be able to break a man." And he thought thankfully of the square +blow between the eyes that Conny had dealt him. + +In the large gay party of returning Americans that surrounded Isabelle and +Cairy on the ship Vickers was like a queer little ghost. He occupied +himself with his small charge, reading and walking with her most of the +days. Isabelle was conscious of the odd figure Vickers made, in his +ill-fitting Italian clothes, with an old Tyrolean cloak of faded green +hanging about him, his pale face half hidden by a scrubby beard, his +unseeing eyes, wandering over the great steamer, a little girl's hand in +his, or reading in a corner of the deserted dining hall. + +Vickers was not so dull of eye, however, that he did not observe Isabelle +and Cairy, sitting side by side on the deck, talking and reading. They +tried to "bring him in," but they had a little language of jokes and +references personal to themselves. If Vickers wondered what his sister, as +he knew her, found so engrossing in the Southerner, he was answered by a +remark Isabelle made:-- + +"Tom is so charming! ... There are few men in America who understand how to +talk to a woman, you know." + +When Vickers had left his native land, the art of talking to a woman as +distinguished from a man had not been developed.... + +Lane met the party at Quarantine. That was his domestic office,--"meeting" +and "seeing off." As he stood on the deck of the bobbing tug waving to his +wife, he was a symbol of the American husband, Cairy jokingly pointed out. +"There's John holding out the welcoming arms to roving wife." And there +were hundreds of them, roving wives, on the deck, very smartly dressed for +their return to domesticity, with laden trunks coming up out of the holds, +and long customs bills to pay, the expectant husbands waiting at the pier +with the necessary money. And there were others with their husbands beside +them on the decks, having carried them through Europe, bill-payers and +arrangers extraordinary for their majesties, the American wives. Cairy was +writing a farce about it with the title, "Coming Home." + +Vickers, who scarcely remembered his brother-in-law, looked curiously at +the self-possessed, rather heavy man on the tug. He was an effective +person, "one who had done something," the kind his countrymen much admired. +"Had a pleasant voyage, I suppose, and all well?" Then he had turned to +Vickers, and with slight hesitation, as if not sure of his ground, +observed, "You will find considerable changes, I suppose." + +"I suppose so," Vickers assented, feeling that conversation between them +would be limited. In the confusion at the pier while the numerous trunks +were being disgorged, Vickers stood apart with Delia Conry and had an +opportunity to observe the quiet, efficient manner in which John Lane +arranged everything. He had greeted Isabelle and his mother impartially, +with a family kiss for both. Vickers caught his brother-in-law's eye on him +several times as they were waiting, and once Lane made as if to speak and +was silent. Vickers was sensitively aware that this man of affairs could +not pretend to understand him,--could at the best merely conceal under +general tolerance and family good feeling his real contempt for one who had +so completely "made a mess of things." He had foreseen the brother-in-law, +and that had been one reason why he had hesitated to return, even for a +visit. Lane soon made another effort, saying: "You will find it rather warm +in the city. We have had a good deal of hot weather this summer." + +"Yes," Vickers replied; "I remember New York in September. But I am used to +long summers." + +As the stranger's eyes roved over the noisy pier, Lane looked at the little +girl, who was rendered dumb by the confusion and clung to Vickers's hand, +and then he eyed his brother-in-law again, as if he were recollecting the +old Colonel and thinking of the irony in the fact that his only surviving +son should be this queer, half-foreign chap. + +A large motor waited outside the pier to take the party to the hotel. + +"Aren't you coming, Tom?" Isabella asked, as Cairy made for a cab with his +luggage. + +"I will meet you at the station to-morrow," Cairy called back. "Business!" + +"Well,--how is everything?" she asked her husband. "Glad to see me back?" + +"Of course." + +They darted swiftly up town to an immense hotel, where Lane had engaged +rooms for the party. Having seen them into the elevator, he returned by the +motor to his office. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV + + +The old Farm at Grafton had been marvellously transformed. Vickers Price, +standing on the terrace the evening of his arrival, looked wistfully for +landmarks, for something to recall the place he had loved as a boy, which +had gathered charm in his imaginative memory these years of his exile. The +Georgian facade of the new house faced the broad meadow through which the +wedding party had wandered back to the Farm the day of Isabelle's marriage. +Below the brick terrace, elaborate gardens, suggesting remotely Italy, had +been laid out on the slope of the New England hill. The thin poplars, +struggling to maintain themselves in the bitter blasts of an American +winter, gave an unreal air to the place as much as anything. The village of +Grafton, which had once been visible as a homely white-dotted road beyond +the meadow, had been "planted out." There was a formal garden now where the +old barn stood, from which the Colonel's pointers had once yapped their +greetings on the arrival of strangers. The new brick stables and the garage +were in the woods across the road, connected with the house by telephone. + +On their arrival by the late train they had had supper quite informally. It +had been served by two men, however, and there was a housekeeper to relieve +the mistress of the care of the increased establishment. What had +bewildered Vickers on his return to America after an absence of ten years, +from the moment he had taken ship until the Lanes' new French motor had +whisked him up to the Farm--Isabelle still clung to the old name--was the +lavish luxury, the increased pace of living, on this side of the ocean. The +years he had spent in Italy had been the richest period of our industrial +renaissance. In the rising tide of wealth the signs of the old order--the +simplicity of the Colonel's day--had been swept away. + +As Vickers stood rather apart from the others, who were strolling about the +terrace, and looked at Dog Mountain, the only perfectly familiar feature in +the scene, Isabella tucked her arm under his and led him towards the +gardens:-- + +"Vick, I want you to see what I have done. Don't you think it's much +better? I am not altogether satisfied." She glanced back at the long +facade: "I think I should have done better with Herring rather than Osgood. +But when we started to alter the old place, I didn't mean to do so much to +it." + +Isabelle knew more now than when Osgood had been engaged, two years before, +and Herring's reputation had meanwhile quite overshadowed the older +architect's. + +"I told Isabelle at the start," said Cairy, who joined them, "she had +better pull the old place down, and have a fresh deal. You had to come to +it practically in the end?" He turned to Isabelle teasingly. + +"Yes," she admitted half regretfully; "that's the way I always do a +thing,--walk backwards into it, as John says. But if we had built from the +ground up, it wouldn't have been this place, I suppose.... And I don't see +why we did it,--Grafton is so far from anything." + +"It's neither Tuxedo nor Lenox," Cairy suggested. + +"Just plain Connecticut. Well, you see the Colonel left the place to +me,--that was the reason." + +And also the fact that he had left her only a small portion of his fortune +besides. It was an ironical rebuke for his act that much of the small +fortune he had given her had gone to transform his beloved Farm into +something he would never have recognized. Vickers thought sadly, "If the +old Colonel's ghost should haunt this terrace, he couldn't find his way +about!" + +"But it's snug and amusing,--the Farm? Isn't it?" Cairy demanded of Vickers +in a consoling manner. + +"I shouldn't call it snug," Vickers replied, unconsciously edging away from +the Southerner, "nor wholly amusing!" + +"You don't like my efforts!" Isabelle exclaimed wearily. She herself, as +she had said, was not satisfied; but money as well as strength and her +husband's dislike of "more building" had held her hand. + +"We all change," Vickers replied humorously. "I can't blame the old place +for looking different. I have changed somewhat myself, and you, Cairy,"--he +glanced at the figure by his sister's side, which had sleek marks of +prosperity as well as the Farm,--"too. All changed but you, Isabelle!" + +"But I have changed a lot!" she protested. "I have grown better looking, +Vickie, and my mind has developed, hasn't it, Tom? One's family never sees +any change but the wrinkles!"... + +Vickers, turning back to the terrace where Fosdick and Gossom were smoking, +had a depressed feeling that of all the changes his was the greatest. + +"I must look in on my little girl," he explained to Isabelle, as he left +her and Cairy. + +Isabelle watched him mount the steps. His small figure had grown heavy from +his inactive life abroad. The thick hair had almost gone from the top of +his head, and the neat pointed beard had become bushy. In his negligent +clothes he looked quite slouchy, she had felt that evening, as if he had +long ceased to have any interest in his person. "It's all that beast of a +woman," she said resentfully to Cairy, remembering the slender, quite +elegant brother of the old days. "And to think of his saddling himself with +her brat and lugging her around with him! I couldn't make him drop her in +New York with her governess. But it's impossible!" + +"The lady left him her husband's child, as a souvenir, didn't she?" + +"I can't think of it!" Isabelle exclaimed, shrugging her shoulders. "To go +off with that other man--after all he had given up for her! The beast!" + +"Perhaps that was the best she could do for him under the circumstances," +Cairy remarked philosophically. "But the child must be a bore." He laughed +at the comical situation. + +"Just like Vick!" + +It was also like Vickers to give Mrs. Conry a large share of his small +fortune when she had seen fit to leave him, as Fosdick had told her.... + +After visiting his small charge, who was lonely this first night in the +strange house, Vickers had gone to his room and sat down by the window. +Below him on the terrace Fosdick and Gossom were discussing Socialism, the +Russian revolution, and the War of Classes. New topics, or rather new forms +of old themes, they seemed to Vickers. Fosdick, from his rolling around the +earth, had become an expert on the social revolution; he could tell the +approximate dates when it "would be pulled off" in all the great countries. +He had bought a farm somewhere in Vermont, and had sat down to wait for the +social revolution; meantime he was raising apples, and at intervals +descended upon the houses of his friends to inveigh against predatory +wealth or visited the city for the sake of more robust amusement. Gossom, +whose former radicalism was slowly modifying into an "intelligent +conservatism," was mildly opposing Fosdick's views. "We have gone too far +in this campaign of vilification of wealth,--Americans are sound at the +core,--what they want is conservative individualism, a sense of the law," +etc. Vickers smiled to himself, and looking out over the old meadow forgot +all about the talkers. + +From the meadow came the sweet scent of the September crop of hay. There +was the river at the end of the vista, disappearing into a piece of +woodland. The place was sown with memories, and Vickers's eyes were moist +as he leaned there, looking forth into the night. It was but a shallow New +England brook, this river, meandering through cranberry bogs, with alders +and bilberry bushes on either side. He remembered the cranberry picking at +this season, and later when the meadow had been flooded, the skating over +the bushes that were frozen in the ice, and the snaky forms of the +cranberry plants visible at the bottom. All these years he had thought of +this little meadow as he had conceived it when a child,--a mighty river +flowing on mysteriously through the dark valley,--on, around the woods that +made out like a bold headland, then on and on to the remote sea. It was dim +and wild, this meadow of his childhood, and the brook was like that river +on which was borne to Camelot the silent bark with the fair Elaine. His +older brother had taken him down that same brook in a canoe,--a quite +wonderful journey. They had started early, just as the August moon was +setting; and as they passed the headland of woods--pines and maples fearful +in their dark recesses--an early thrush had broken the silence of the +glimmering dawn with its sweet call. And another had answered from the +depth of the wood, and then another, while the little canoe had slipped +noiselessly past into strange lands,--a country altogether new and +mysterious.... To-night that old boyhood thrill came over him, as when +kneeling in the canoe with suspended paddle, in the half light of dawn, he +had heard the thrushes calling from the woods. Then it had seemed that life +was like this adventurous journey through the gray meadows, past the silent +woods, on into the river below, and the great sea, far, far away! A +wonderful journey of enlarging mystery from experience to experience into +some great ocean of understanding.... + +Vickers sat down at the piano by the window, and forgetting all that had +taken the place of his dream,--the searing flame of his manhood,--struck +the gentle chords of that boyhood journey, something of the river and the +meadow and the woods and the gray dawn, which had often sounded in his ears +far away in Venice. + +Isabelle and Cairy, coming up the terrace steps, heard the notes and +stopped to listen. + +"Charming!" Cairy murmured. "His own?" + +"How I wish he would try to do something, and get his work played by our +orchestras! He could if he would only interest himself enough. But the +ambition seems gone out of him. He merely smiles when I talk about it." + +"He'll come back to it," Cairy grinned. "It's in the air here to put your +talent in the front window." + +Vickers played on softly, dreaming of the boy's river of life, at home once +more in the old Farm. + + * * * * * + +Early the next morning as Vickers stole softly through the corridor, on his +way for a stroll, a door opened and Isabelle looked out. + +"You'll find coffee downstairs, Vick. I remembered your dawn-wandering +habit and asked Mrs. Stevens to have it ready for you. I'll join you in a +few moments." + +Before he had finished his coffee, Isabelle appeared and sleepily poured +out a cup for herself. The servant was making ready a tray at the +sideboard. + +"Tom is one of your sleepless kind, too," she explained. "He does his +writing before the house is awake, so as not to be disturbed, or he says he +does. I believe he just turns over and takes another nap!" + +"Cairy seems at home here," Vickers observed, sipping his coffee. + +"Of course, Tommy is one of the family," Isabelle replied lightly. "He is +much more domesticated than John, though, since his great success last +winter, he hasn't been up very much." + +"Has he made a great success?" Vickers inquired. "What at?" + +"Haven't you heard of his play! It ran all the winter, and this new one +they say will also make a great hit." + +Vickers, who remembered Cairy in college as one always endeavoring after +things out of his reach, looked mildly surprised. + +"I hadn't heard that he was a dramatist," he said. + +"I wish _you_ would do something!" Isabelle remarked, feeling that Cairy's +success might point for Vickers his own defeat, and stir him into healthy +action. + +"What? Write a play?" + +"No--you old dear!" She caressed his hand. "I think it would be good for +you to feel you were doing something in the world, instead of running about +with that absurd child." She wanted to say much more about Delia Conry, but +bided a more fitting time. + +"I haven't run much so far," was all that Vickers replied. "You shouldn't +have bothered to come down," he added when the coffee was finished. "I just +wanted to poke around the old place as I used to." + +"I know--and I wanted to be with you, of course, this first time. Don't you +remember how we got our own breakfasts when we went shooting in the +autumn?" + +Her brother nodded. + +"Those were good times, Vick! ... They were the best for both of us," she +added less buoyantly. She pushed away her cup, put her arm about his +shoulders, and kissed him. + +"You shouldn't say that, Belle!" + +"Vickie, it's so nice to hug you and have you all to myself before the +others are up. I've missed some one to go batting with me, to hug and bully +and chatter with. Now you've come I shall be a girl all over again." + +And Isabelle was her old self for the first time since Vickers had joined +her in Paris a month before,--no longer preoccupied, striving after some +satisfaction that never perfectly arrived. Here the past was upon them +both,--in spite of Osgood's transformations,--a past when they had been +close, in the precious intimacy of brother and sister. Outside in the new, +very new Dutch garden, Isabelle resumed her anxieties of the day. + +"The gardener ought not to have put those bulbs there,--he knows nothing +really! I shall have to find another man.... I hope the chauffeur John +engaged will get along with the houseman. The last one fought.... Oh, did I +tell you that Potts is coming out Saturday,--the great Dr. Potts? He wants +to look me over,--get me ready for the winter campaign.... There's Tom, +writing at the desk by his window. Hello, Tommy!" Isabelle waved a hand +gayly at the balcony above them. Vickers smiled at the disconnected +remarks, so like Isabelle. Her conversation was a loose bundle of +impressions, reflections, wishes, and feelings, especially her feelings +about other people. And Isabelle had a taste for lame cats, as her mother +said,--at least those cats that obviously felt their lameness. + +"You don't like Tom," she rambled on. "Why not? Poor Tommy! he's so sweet +and clever. Why don't you like Tom, Vickers? You must like him--because +he'll be here a lot, and I am awfully fond of him." + +"Why 'poor Tom'?" Vickers asked laconically. + +"He's had such a hard time, a struggle to get on,--his people were poor, +very nice though,--the best Virginia, you know.... He's ambitious, and he +isn't strong. If this play shouldn't go--he's counting on it so much!" + +Vickers smilingly drew her hand beneath his arm and led her out through the +garden into the meadow. "The same old Belle after all," he murmured. "I +don't see that Brother Cairy is badly off,--he has a good deal of petting, +I fancy. I have heard all about that Virginia childhood and the rest of +it.... Do you remember, Belle, when we used to go over to the Ed Prices' +and were scared when we saw a tramp in the bushes on the hill? And how we +ran through the willows as if the devil was after us?--Who have the Ed +Prices' farm now?" + +"Don't you know that father gave it to Alice Johnston? Wasn't it nice of +him! Her husband is in the road, in St. Louis, doing very well, John says. +Alice is over there now,--she brings the children on for the summer.... I +don't see much of her--she is so enveloped in children!" + +"What's become of the brother,--the one I licked and threw into Beaty's +pond?" + +"The world seems to have licked him, too," Isabelle replied, laughing at +the old memory. "The last time Alice spoke of him she said he was on some +newspaper in Spokane, had been in the Klondike, I believe.... There's Mr. +Gossom and Tom! We must go back for breakfast." + +"Thanks! I have had mine. I think I'll walk over to the Price place and see +Alice. Don't look for me before noon." + +"But there are people coming for luncheon," Isabelle protested. + +Vickers waved his hand to her and called back, "I think you'll get on very +well without me!" + +Isabelle was already answering Cairy's shout from the terrace. As Vickers +took his way through the meadow, he thought how sweet she was, the real +Isabelle, when one got to her as he had this morning. But she had never +once mentioned John; her husband seemed to be very little in her mind. + + + + +CHAPTER XLV + + +Vickers strode off through the meadow that morning in the hope of finding +familiar things, and indulging in old memories. The country roads had been +widened and improved, and many of the farm-houses had given way to more or +less pretentious "places." Motors whirled past him. The hill that he +remembered as a veritable mountain was a mere rise in the straightened road +over which a fast car plunged at full speed, covering him with dust and +leaving behind a sickening odor. He struck off into a wood-lot; here and in +the pastures and meadows he found himself again. It was nearly noon before +he came up the lane that led to the Ed Price farm. + +This was off the beat of the motors, away from the new "estates," at the +end of a grassy road bordered by gray birches. The ample old house he +remembered very well with its square central chimney and stretch of +outbuildings that joined the yellow barn. At his knock a broad-shouldered, +smiling woman came to the door, and after a moment's hesitation +exclaimed:-- + +"Why, Vick,--can it be you?" + +"Yes, Cousin Alice." + +She led him to the orchard in the rear, where with the aid of two little +boys she was preparing vegetables for dinner. Tying on a large apron, she +said:-- + +"You see we all have to take a hand. Won't you have a bib and dip in, too? +... Children, this is your uncle--cousin. Which is it, Vickers?" + +It was pleasant in the long grass under the apple tree, looking across the +orchard of gnarled and stubby trees to the lane. Mrs. Johnston worked and +talked, while the little boys with furtive glances pecked at the peas like +two birds. + +"I heard you were coming--I did not know just when. It is good to see you +back, Vick!" + +There was a comfortable largeness in the atmosphere of this woman, which +suited the homely background of the square farm-house and the peaceful +orchard. And there was a pleasant warmth in her tone. + +"How do you find it?" she asked; "or perhaps you haven't had time yet to +know." + +"It hardly seems like being home," Vickers admitted, "everything is so +changed--everything but this!" he added gratefully, thinking of Alice as +well as the farm. + +"Yes,--the country has changed, so many rich people have bought places. And +your old home--" She hesitated to complete her sentence. + +"I can't find my way around there." Vickers laughed. "What would the +Colonel say!" + +Alice looked as if she preferred not to think what the Colonel might say of +his daughter's alterations. + +"I suppose Isabelle had to have more room,--she has so many people with +her. And you will find that life has changed over here in ten years." + +"Nothing but change!" + +"Except among the poor! ... No, Tot, you can't eat the pods. There, boys, +take sister and run out to the barn to help Charlie wash the buggy.... How +does Isabelle seem to you?" + +"I scarcely know--I haven't made up my mind. How does she seem to _you_?" + +"She does too much,--she's not strong enough," Alice replied evasively. + +"No, she doesn't seem strong; but she can't keep still!" + +"She gets so little comfort out of anything,--that is the worst of it. +Sometimes I wish John weren't so strong,--that he would have an illness, so +that Isabelle would have something definite to do." + +"She would have a trained nurse!" Vickers suggested with a laugh. + +"She is such a dear,--I wish she were happier!" + +"Perhaps that isn't in the blood." + +"But I never saw a happier creature than she was the day she was married! +And John is a fine fellow, and she has everything a woman could want." + +"A woman wants a good many things these days."... + +They chatted on about Isabelle and her love of people, and then about St. +Louis and the old days at Grafton. For the first time since he had landed, +it seemed to Vickers, he was permitted to ignore his failure,--he was at +home. When he rose to go, Alice protested:-- + +"But you aren't going back,--it is just our dinner-time, and we haven't +said half what we have to say!" + +So he dined with the brood of children in the large front room, and +afterwards Alice walked down the lane with him. + +"I hope you are going to stay here?" she asked warmly. + +"Oh, I don't know! America doesn't seem to need me," he replied, +endeavoring to joke; "not that I know any place which does. I am waiting to +be called." + +In spite of the joking manner there was sadness in the voice. Alice was +silent for a time and then replied earnestly:-- + +"Perhaps you are called here--for the present." + +"You mean over there?" he asked quickly, nodding in the direction of +Grafton. + +"Yes!" + +"Why do you think so?" + +"You know Isabelle really cares for you as she doesn't for any one else in +the world!" + +"Yes,--we have always been close." + +"But she cares for what you _think_--" + +Vickers made a gesture, as if it were impossible that any one could do +that. + +"Yes," Alice continued gently; "a woman never gets wholly away from the +influence of one she has admired as Isabelle admired you." + +"But one's experience," he mused, "no matter how costly it has been, never +seems to be of any use to any one else." + +"Can you tell--until the end? ... What we don't see in life is so much more +than what we see!" + +Vickers looked at her gratefully. He would like to feel that he was needed +somewhere in this hurried world. Presently there was a childish uproar +behind them, and Alice turned back. + +"My brood is getting tempestuous; I must say good-by!" + +She held Vickers's hand in her warm, firm grasp. + +"I hope we shall see you often.... I think that you are called here!" + +Vickers returned to the Farm, thinking of Alice Johnston. She had given him +of her peace, of her confidence, her large way of taking the issues of +life. 'And I used to say that she was a commonplace dumpy country girl!' he +mused. He pondered what she had spoken,--the suggestion, vague but +comforting, of purpose, of a place for him in the world to fill. Just what +was she thinking of? "We'll see," he murmured, as he mounted the steps of +the terrace. As Alice had said, the unseen in life was so much more than +the seen. + + * * * * * + +In the formal garden the pretty little English governess was conducting the +social game for the two girls. Marian Lane, having shown Delia her pony and +her rabbits without eliciting much enthusiasm, now sat and stared at her +with politely suppressed scorn for the dull red frock that Vickers had +designed for his charge. + +"Have you been to dancing school?" she demanded. + +"What is that?" Delia asked. + +She was dully uncomfortable in the company of this very dainty little +creature, who was always dressed in delicate, light fabrics, and seemed to +have many possessions. And Miss Betterton had a well-bred manner of putting +the stranger outside the little social game. So when Delia spied Vickers, +she cried, "There's father!" and ran towards him. + +"Uncle Vickers is not Mabel's father," Marian asserted to Miss Betterton. + +"Hush, dearie!" the well-bred Miss Betterton replied; "we mustn't talk +about that." + +When Isabelle and Cairy came up to the house from their afternoon ride, +they found Vickers playing croquet with Miss Betterton and the two little +girls, who in his society were approaching something like informality in +their manner of addressing each other. + +"He looks quite domestic," Cairy jeered. + +"Hello, Vick! Come over and see the horses," Isabelle called. + +At the stable Marian's new pony that Cairy had selected was exhibited. Lane +drove up with a friend he had brought from the city for the week end, and +the party played with the pony and laughed at his tricks, which Cairy +showed off. + +"He looks like a cross between an Angora cat and a Newfoundland dog," Cairy +remarked, leaning down to feel of his legs. As he stooped the ivory handle +of a small revolver pushed out of the hip pocket of his riding breeches. + +"What's that, Uncle Tom?" Marian asked, pointing to the pistol. + +Cairy drew out the pistol and held it up, with a slight flourish,--"A +family weapon!" + +Holding the pony with one hand and pointing the revolver at a blossom on a +magnolia tree a few paces away, he fired and the white petals came +fluttering down. A second report and another blossom fell. The pony jumped +and snorted, but it did not disturb Cairy's aim. A third blossom fell, and +then he quickly shot the descending bud which had been cut by the previous +shot. + +"Steady hand!" Lane commented. + +"It's an old habit of mine to carry it and practise when I have a chance," +Cairy remarked, breaking the revolver. After extracting the shells, he +handed the pistol to Isabelle. + +"Made in Paris," she read from the chased plate. + +"Yes; it's a pretty toy, don't you think?" + +"It's a curious shell," Lane remarked, picking up one of the empty shells +from the ground. + +"Yes, I have to have them specially made," replied Cairy. The toy was +handed around and much admired. + +"But, Uncle Tom," Marian asked, "why do you carry a pistol?" + +"In the South gentlemen always carry pistols." + +"Is it very dangerous in the South?" the little girl inquired. Then the +older people laughed, and Cairy looked rather foolish. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI + + +Isabelle's house appeared to Vickers more like a comfortable country club +or a small country inn than the home of a private family. There were people +coming and going all the time. Isabelle seemed at a loss without a peopled +background. "And they are all interesting," she said to her brother, with a +touch of pride. "It's the only place Dickie will stay in for any time,--he +says I have the best collection of fakes he knows. But he likes to chatter +with them." So far as Vickers could discover there was no special principle +of selection in the conglomerate, except the vague test of being +"interesting." Besides Gossom and Cairy and the Silvers and others of their +kind there were Lane's business friends, officers of the railroad, and men +that Lane brought out to golf with or ride with. "We don't go in for +society," Isabelle explained, affecting a stronger indifference than she +really felt for "merely smart people." She wished her brother to know that +she had profited by her two years of New York life to gather about her +intellectual people, and there was much clever talk at the Farm, to which +Vickers paid an amused and bewildered attention. + +From the quiet corner where Vickers looked on at the household these autumn +days, he watched especially his brother-in-law. Lane could be at the Farm +only for occasional days, and while there spent his time out of doors. He +took small part in all the talk, but it amused him as might the vivacity of +children. He left this personal side of life to Isabelle, content to be a +passive spectator of the little game she was playing; while, as Vickers +judged from what Gossom and other men said, Lane himself had a more +absorbing, more exacting game in the city, which he was playing with +eminent success. "He's getting close to the king row," Isabelle remarked to +Vickers. "He was offered the presidency of some road of other out West. But +we couldn't go out there again to live!" + +Of all the men and women who came and went at the Farm, Cairy was on the +most familiar footing. "He likes to work here," Isabelle explained with +pride, "and he amuses John more than most of them. Besides he's very useful +about the place!" Surely Cairy was pleasantly installed, as Conny would +have said. He was delightful with the governess, who admired his light +conversation, and he selected the pony for Molly, and taught her how to +fall off gracefully. At domestic moments, which were rare, he effaced +himself. He had a curious position in the household that puzzled Vickers. +He was accepted,--the wheels ran around him. Isabelle treated him with a +jesting, frank intimacy, very much as she treated her brother. And Lane, +Vickers decided, had distinctly more use for the limping Southerner than he +had for most of the people at the house, including his brother-in-law. +Cairy was so completely out of Lane's world of men that there were no +standards of comparison for him. + +"Tommy distracts John," Isabelle explained to Vickers. "If he only could +play golf, I suspect John would steal him from me." + +As the weeks passed, however, Cairy was drawn to the city for longer +intervals. The new play had not been a "Broadway success," in fact had been +taken off after a short run, and Cairy's money affairs were again becoming +precarious, much to Isabella's frank concern. "It's the wretched condition +of the theatre in our country," she complained; "to think that a few +miserable newspaper writers can ruin the chances of a dramatist's being +heard! The managers become panicky, if it doesn't go at once in New +York.... There is a chance that they will put it on again somewhere West. +But Tom hasn't much hope." + +"It was a poor play," Fosdick asserted flatly. "And if you hadn't heard it +line by line from Tommy, you'd know it." + +"No," Isabelle protested; "it's lots cleverer than most things." + +"I do not know how it may be with the theatre," Gossom put in at this +point, "but more literature is produced in America to-day than at any other +time in the world's history!" + +"Oh!" + +"I don't mean mere rhetoric, college writing," Gossom went on dogmatically; +"but literature, things with blood to them in the language people use. Why, +in the story contest for the _People's_ there were at least fourteen +masterpieces submitted, and not one of them had any reference to Europe, or +showed the least trace of what college professors call style!" He turned +triumphantly to Vickers, to whom he had previously expressed his conviction +that America was the future home of all the arts. This was an idea in his +patriotic creed. + +"Fourteen masterpieces,--really!" drawled Fosdick; "and how much a +masterpiece, please? I must send you mine." + +They had heard a good deal this week about the famous story contest for the +_People's_. Gossom, ignoring the gibe, continued:-- + +"We publish every month real literature, the kind that comes from the +heart, the stuff of real human lives. I am tired of this silly whine about +the lack of opportunities for genius in our country." + +"It's hard on Tommy, all the same," Isabelle concluded irrelevantly. + + * * * * * + +When Isabelle moved to New York for the winter, Vickers took Delia Conry +West, and on his return after a few days in the city went up to the Farm, +where Miss Betterton and Marian were still staying. He felt relieved to get +back once more in the country that was now beginning its quiet preparation +for winter. New York had overwhelmed him. And he could not but see that in +the city he was something of a problem to his beautiful sister. She would +not hear of his going to a hotel, and yet he was in the way. Vickers was +not one to make an impression. And one must make an impression of some sort +in Isabelle's world. "He's quaint, your brother," one of her friends said. +"But he's locked up and the key is lost. Most people won't take the time to +hunt for keys or even open doors." + +If he had been more the artist, had some _reclame_ from his music or his +father's money, he would have fitted in. But a subdued little man with a +sandy beard, sunken eyes, and careless clothes,--no, he was queer, but not +"interesting"! And Isabelle, in spite of her strong sisterly loyalty, was +relieved when she saw him off at the station. + +"It's nice to think of you, Vickie, snugged away in the country, going +around in your velveteens with a pipe in your mouth. Keep an eye on Molly +and don't flirt with Miss Betterton. I shall run up often, and you must +come down for the opera when you want to hear some music." + +So Vickers betook himself to his seclusion. And when he did run down for +the opera, he found himself jostled in a worse jam of Isabelle's +occupations than before. Although she had just recovered from her yearly +attack of grippe, and felt perpetually tired and exhausted, she kept up +with her engagement list, besides going once a week to her boys' club, +where Cairy helped her. Seeing her tired, restless face, Vickers asked her +why she did it all. + +"I should die if I sat back!" she answered irritably. "But I'll go up to +the Farm with you for a day or two.... There's the masseuse--you'll find +some cigarettes in the drawer--don't forget we dine early."... + +When they reached the Farm the next afternoon, little Marian met them in +the hall, dressed like a white doll. "How do you do, Mamma?" she said very +prettily. "I am so glad to see you." And she held up her face to be kissed. +The little girl had thought all day of her mother's coming, but she had not +dared to ask the governess to meet her at the station; for "Mamma has not +arranged it so." Isabelle looked at her daughter critically, and said in +French to the English governess, "Too pale, my darling,--does she take her +ride each day?" + +Everything about the child's life was perfectly arranged, all thought out, +from her baths and her frocks and her meals to the books she read and the +friends she should have. But to Vickers, who stood near, it seemed a +strange meeting between mother and child. + +That evening as Isabelle lay with a new novel before the blazing fire, too +listless to read, Vickers remarked:--"A month of this would make you over, +sis!" + +"A month! I couldn't stand it a week, even with you, Bud!" + +"You can't stand the other." + +"Come! The rest cure idea is exploded. The thing to do nowadays is to vary +your pursuits, employ different sets of nerve centres!" Isabelle quoted the +famous Potts with a mocking smile. "You should see how I vary my +activities,--I use a different group of cells every half hour. You don't +know how well I look after the family, too. I don't neglect my job. Aren't +you comfortable here? Mary cooks very well, I think." + +"Oh, Mary is all right.... You may shift the batteries, Belle, but you are +burning up the wires, all the same." + +"Let 'em burn, then,--I've got to live! ... You see, Vickie, I am not the +little girl you remember. I've grown up! When I was _down_ after Marian +came, I did such a lot of thinking.... I was simple when I married, Vick. I +thought John and I would spoon out the days,--at least read together and be +great chums. But it didn't turn out that way; you can't live that sort of +life these days, and it would be stupid. Each one has to develop his +talent, you see, and then combine the gifts. John thinks and breathes the +railroad. And when he's off duty, he wants to exercise or go to the theatre +and see some fool show. That's natural, too,--he works hard. But I can't do +_his_ things,--so I do _my_ things. He doesn't care.... To tell the truth, +Vick, I suspect John wouldn't miss me before the month's bills were due, if +I should elope to-night!" + +"I am not so sure, Belle." + +"Of course--don't I know? That must be the case with most marriages, and +it's a good thing, perhaps." + +Vickers suggested softly, "The Colonel's way was good, too." + +"Women didn't expect much those days. They do now. Even the architects +recognize the change in our habits." + +"I don't believe the architects have made any changes for Alice." + +"Oh, Alice!" Isabelle pished. "She is just a mother." + +"And the millions of others, men and women?" + +"They copy those on top as fast as they can; the simple life is either +compulsory or an affectation.... I don't care for the unexpressive +millions!" + +(A Cairy phrase--Vickers recognized the mint.) + +Isabelle rose, and drawing aside the curtains, looked out at the snowy +gardens. + +"See how stunning the poplars are against the white background! Do you +remember, Vick, when we ran away from school and came up here together and +spent two nights while they were telegraphing all over for us? What a +different world! ... Well, good night, Buddie,--I must sleep up." + +Yes, thought Vickers, as he lighted another cigarette, what a different +world! That summed up the months since he had taken the steamer at +Cherbourg. And what different people! Had he stood still while Isabelle and +her friends had expanded, thrown off limitations? For her and the many +others like her the intoxicating feast of life seemed to have been spread +lavishly. With full purses and never sated appetites they rushed to the +tables,--all running, out of breath, scenting opportunities, avid to know, +to feel, to experience! "We are passing through another renaissance," as +Gossom had pompously phrased it. But with what a difference! + +To-night as Vickers looked across the still white fields from his bedroom +window, he was less concerned with the national aspect of the case than +with what this renaissance meant to his sister. Even with the aid of the +great Potts she could never keep the nerve-racking pace that she had set +herself. And yet in actual expenditure of force, either mental or physical, +what Isabelle did or any of her acquaintance did was not enough to tire +healthy, full-grown women. There was maladjustment somewhere. What ailed +this race that was so rapidly becoming neurasthenic as it flowered? + +One thing was plain,--that so far as emotional satisfaction went Isabelle's +marriage was null, merely a convention like furniture. And John, as Vickers +recognized in spite of his brother-in-law's indifference to him, was a good +husband. Fortunately Isabelle, in spite of all her talk, was not the kind +to fill an empty heart with another love.... A suspicion of that had +crossed his mental vision, but had faded almost at once.... Isabelle was +another sort! + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII + + +Isabelle had agreed to stay out the week with Vickers, and in spite of her +restlessness, her desire to be doing something new, the old self in +her--the frank, girlish, affectionate self--revived, as it always did when +she was alone with her brother. He said:-- + +"I am coming to agree with Potts, Isabelle; you need to elope." + +As she looked up, startled, he added, "With me! I'll take you to South +America and bring you back a new woman." + +"South America,--no thanks, brother." + +"Then stay here."... + +That evening Isabelle was called to the telephone, and when she came back +her face was solemn. + +"Percy Woodyard died last night,--pneumonia after grippe. Too bad! I +haven't seen him this winter; he has been very delicate.... I must go in +for the funeral." + +"I thought you and Cornelia were intimate," Vickers remarked; "but I +haven't heard you mention her name since I've been home." + +"We were, at first; but I haven't seen much of her the last two years.... +Too bad--poor Percy! Conny has killed him." + +"What do you mean?" + +"Oh, she's worked him to death,--made him do this and that. Tom says--" +Isabelle hesitated. + +"What does Tom say?" + +"Oh, there was a lot of talk about something he did,--went off to Europe +two years ago, and let some politicians make money--I don't know just what. +But he's not been the same since,--he had to drop out of politics." + +This and something more Isabelle had learned from Cairy, who had heard the +gossip among men. Woodyard was too unimportant a man to occupy the public +eye, even when it was a question of a "gigantic steal," for more than a few +brief hours. By the time the Woodyards had returned from that journey to +Europe, so hastily undertaken, the public had forgotten about the Northern +Mill Company's franchise. But the men who follow things and remember, knew; +and Percy Woodyard, when he sailed up the bay on his return in October, +realized that politically he was buried,--that is, in the manner of +politics he cared about. And he could never explain, not to his most +intimate friend, how he had happened to desert his post, to betray the +trust of men who trusted him. It was small satisfaction to believe that it +would all have happened just as it had, even if he had been there to block +the path of the determined majority. + +When, towards the end of their stay abroad, a letter had come from the +Senator in regard to "that post in the diplomatic service," Percy had +flatly refused to consider it. + +"But why, Percy?" his wife had asked gently,--she was very sweet with him +since their departure from New York. "We can afford it,--you know my +property is paying very well." + +In the look that Percy gave her, Conny saw that her husband had plumbed her +farther than she had ever dreamed him capable of doing, and she trembled. + +"I am going back to New York to practise my profession," Percy said +shortly. "And we shall live henceforth on _my_ earnings, solely." + +So he had gone back to his office and taken up his practice. He was a +delicate man, and the past year had strained him. His practice was not +large or especially profitable. The franchise scandal stood in his way, and +though he succeeded in securing some of the corporation practice that he +had once scorned, his earnings were never sufficient to support the +establishment Conny had created. In fact that able mistress of domestic +finance increased the establishment by buying a place at Lancaster for +their country home. She was weaving a new web for her life and Percy's, the +political one having failed, and no doubt she would have succeeded this +time in making the strands hold, had it not been for Percy's delicate +health. He faded out, the inner fire having been quenched.... + +At the funeral Isabelle was surprised to see Cairy. Without knowing +anything exactly about it, she had inferred that in some way Conny had +treated Tom "badly," and she had not seen him the last times she had been +at the Woodyards'. But that had not been lately. Somehow they had drifted +apart these last two years,--their paths had diverged in the great social +whirlpool ever more and more, though they still retained certain common +friends, like the Silvers, who exchanged the current small gossip of each +other's doings. Isabelle was thinking of this and many other things about +Percy and Conny as she waited in the still drawing-room for the funeral +service to begin. She had admired Conny extravagantly at first, and now +though she tried to think of her in her widowhood sympathetically, she +found it impossible to pity her; while of poor Percy, who it seemed "had +been too much under his wife's thumb," she thought affectionately.... The +hall and the two rooms on this floor where the people had gathered were +exquisitely prepared. Isabelle could see Conny's masterly hand in it +all.... + +When the service was over, Isabelle waited to speak with Conny, who had +asked her to stay. She saw Cairy go out behind the Senator, who looked +properly grave and concerned, his black frock-coat setting off the thick +white hair on the back of his head. + + * * * * * + +The two men walked down the street together, and the Senator, who had met +Cairy at the Woodyards' a number of times and remembered him as an inmate +of the house, fell to talking about the dead man. + +"Poor chap!" he said meditatively; "he had fine talents." + +"Yes," assented Cairy. "It was a shame!" His tone left it doubtful just +what was a shame, but the Senator, assuming that it was Percy's untimely +death, continued:-- + +"And yet Woodyard seemed to lack something to give practical effectiveness +to his abilities. He did not have the power to 'seize that tide which leads +men on to victory,'--to size up the situation comprehensively, you know." +(The Senator was fond of quoting inaccurately and then paraphrasing from +his own accumulated wisdom.) + +"I doubt very much," he went on expansively, "if he would have counted for +as much as he did--as he promised at one time to count at any rate--if it +had not been for his wife. Mrs. Woodyard is a very remarkable woman!" + +"Yes, she is a strong personality,--she was the stronger of the two +undoubtedly." + +"She has one of the ablest business heads that I know of," the Senator said +emphatically, nodding his own head. "She should have been a man." + +"One would miss a good deal--if she were a man," suggested Cairy. + +"Her beauty,--yes, very striking. But she has the brain of a man." + +"She is the sort that must make destiny," agreed Cairy, feeling a literary +satisfaction in the phrase and also pride that he could so generously play +chorus to the Senator's praise. "I fancy she will marry again!" + +He wondered at the moment whether the Senator might not venture now to +break his long widowerhood. The great man, stopping on the step of his +club, remarked in a curious voice:-- + +"I suppose so,--she is young and beautiful, and would naturally not +consider her life ended. And yet--she is not exactly the sort of woman a +man marries--unless he is very young!" + +With a nod and a little smile the Senator went briskly up the steps of his +club. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII + + +The time, almost the very minute, when Isabelle realized the peculiar +feeling she had come to have for Cairy, was strangely clear to her. It was +shortly after Percy Woodyard's funeral. She had been to Lakewood with her +mother, and having left her comfortably settled in her favorite hotel, had +taken the train for New York. Tom was to go to the theatre with her that +evening, and had suggested that they dine at a little down-town restaurant +he used to frequent when he was Gossom's slave. He was to meet her at the +ferry. + +She had been thinking of Percy Woodyard, of Fosdick's epithet for +Conny,--the Vampire. And there flashed across her the thought, 'She will +try to get Tom back!' (Cairy had told her that he had gone to the funeral +because Conny had written him a little note.) 'And she is so bad for him, +so bad for any man!' Then looking out on the brown March landscape, she +felt a pleasant glow of expectation, of something desirable in immediate +prospect, which she did not at once attribute to anything more definite +than the fact she was partly rested, after her two days at Lakewood. But +when in the stream of outgoing passengers that filled the echoing terminal +she caught sight of Tom's face, looking expectantly over the heads of the +crowd, a vivid ray of joy darted through her. + +'He's here!' she thought. 'He has come across the ferry to meet me!' + +She smiled and waved the bunch of violets she was wearing--those he had +sent down to Lakewood for her--above the intervening heads. + +"I thought I would snatch a few more minutes," he explained, as they walked +slowly through the long hall to the ferry. + +The bleak March day had suddenly turned into something warm and gay for +her; the dreary terminal was a spot to linger in. + +"That was very nice of you," she replied gently, "and so are these!" + +She held up his flowers, and in the look they exchanged they went far in +that progress of emotional friendship, the steps of which Cairy knew so +well.... The city was already lighted, tier on tier of twinkling dots in +the great hives across the river, and as they sat out on the upper deck of +the ferry for the sake of fresh air, Isabelle thought she had never seen +the city so marvellous. There was an enchantment in the moving lights on +the river, the millions of fixed lights in the long city. The scent of sea +water reached them, strong and vital, with its ever witching associations +of far-off lands. Isabelle turned and met Cairy's eyes looking intently at +her. + +"You seem so joyous to-night!" he said almost reproachfully. + +She smiled at him softly. + +"But I am! Very happy!--it is good to be here." + +That was it,--the nearest description of her feeling,--it was all so good. +She was so much alive! And as she settled back against the hard seat, she +thought pleasantly of the hours to come, the dinner, the play, and then Tom +would take her home and they would talk it over.... She had asked John to +go with her. But he had declined on the ground that "he could not stand +Ibsen," and "he didn't like that little Russian actress." Really, he was +getting very lazy, Isabelle had thought. He would probably smoke too many +cigars, yawn over a book, and go to bed at ten. That was what he usually +did unless he went out to a public dinner, or brought home work from the +office, or had late business meetings. Nothing for his wife, she had +complained once.... + +This wonderful feeling of light-hearted content continued as they walked +through dingy streets to the old brick building that housed the restaurant, +half cafe, half saloon, where the Irish wife of the Italian proprietor +cooked extraordinary Italian dishes, according to Cairy. He was pensive. He +had been generally subdued this winter on account of the failure of his +play. And, after all, the London opening had not come about. It was +distinctly "his off year"--and he found it hard to work. "Nothing so takes +the ideas out of you as failure," he had said, "and nothing makes you feel +that you can do things like success." + +Isabelle wanted to help him; she was afraid that he was being troubled +again by lack of money. Art and letters were badly paid, and Tom, she was +forced to admit, was not provident. + +"But you are happy to-night," she had said coaxingly on the ferry. "We are +going to be very gay, and forget things!" That was what Tom did for +her,--made her forget things, and return to the mood of youth where all +seemed shining and gay. She did that for him, too,--amused and distracted +him, with her little impetuosities and girlish frankness. "You are such a +good fellow--you put heart into a man," he had said. + +She was happy that she could affect him, could really influence a man whose +talent she admired, whom she believed in. + +"I can't do anything to John except make him yawn!" she had replied. + +So to-night she devoted her happy mood to brushing away care from Cairy's +mind, and by the time they were seated at the little table with its coarse, +wine-stained napkin, he was laughing at her, teasing her about growing +stout, of which she pretended to be greatly afraid. + +"Oh, dear!" she sighed. "I stand after meals and roll and roll, and Mrs. +Peet pounds me until I am black and blue, but it's no use. I am gaining! +Tommy, you'll have to find some younger woman to say your pretty things to. +I am growing frightfully homely! ... That's one comfort with John,--he'll +never know it." + +As the meal passed their mood became serious once more and tender, as it +had been when they met. Cairy, lighting cigarette after cigarette, talked +on, about himself. He was very despondent. He had made a hard fight for +recognition; he thought he had won. And then had come discouragement after +discouragement. It looked as if he should be obliged to accept an offer +from a new magazine that was advertising its way into notice and do some +articles for them. No, he would not go back to be Gossom's private +mouthpiece at any price! + +He did not whine,--Cairy never did that exactly; but he presented himself +for sympathy. The odds had been against him from the start. And Isabelle +was touched by this very need for sunshine in the emotional temperament of +the man. Conny had appraised the possibilities of his talent intelligently, +believed that if properly exploited he should "arrive." But Isabelle was +moved by the possibilities of his failure,--a much more dangerous state of +mind.... + +It was long past the time for the theatre, but Cairy made no move. It was +pleasantly quiet in the little room. The few diners had left long ago, and +the debilitated old waiter had retreated to the bar. Cairy had said, "If it +were not for you, for what you give me--" And she had thought, 'Yes, what I +_might_ give him, what he needs! And we are so happy together here.'... + +Another hour passed. The waiter had returned and clattered dishes +suggestively and departed again. Cairy had not finished saying all he +wanted to say.... There were long pauses between his words, of which even +the least carried feeling. Isabelle, her pretty mutinous face touched with +tenderness, listened, one hand resting on the table. Cairy covered the hand +with his, and at the touch of his warm fingers Isabelle flushed. Was it the +mood of this day, or something deeper in her nature that thrilled at this +touch as she had never thrilled before in her life? It held her there +listening to his words, her breath coming tightly. She wanted to run away, +and she did not move.... The love that he was telling her she seemed to +have heard whispering in her heart long before.... + +The way to Isabelle's heart was through pity, the desire to give, as with +many women. Cairy felt it instinctively, and followed the path. Few men can +blaze their way to glory, but all can offer the opportunity to a woman of +splendid sacrifice in love! + +"You know I care!" she had murmured. "But, oh, Tom--" That "but" and the +sigh covered much,--John, the little girl, the world as it is. If she could +only give John what she felt she could give this man, with his pleading +eyes that said, 'With you I should be happy, I should conquer!' + +"I know--I ask for nothing!" + +(Nothing! Oh, damnable lover's lie! Do the Cairys ever content themselves +with nothings?) + +"I will do as you say--in all things. We will forget this talk, or I will +not go back to the Farm; but I am glad we understand!" + +"No, no," she said quickly. "You must come to the Farm! It must be just as +it has been." She knew as she said the words that it could never be "as it +had been." She liked to close her eyes now to the dark future; but after +to-day, after this new sense of tenderness and love, the old complexion of +life must be different. + +Cairy still held her hand. As she looked up with misty eyes, very happy and +very miserable, a little figure came into the empty room followed by the +waiter, and glanced aimlessly about for a table. + +"Vick!" Isabelle cried in astonishment. "Where did you come from?" + +Vickers had a music score under his arm, and he tapped it as he stood above +them at the end of their table. + +"I've been trying over some things with Lester at his rooms, and came in +for a bite. I thought you were going to the theatre, Belle?" + +"We are!" Cairy exclaimed, looking at his watch. "We'll about get the last +act!" + +Vickers fingered his roll and did not look at Isabelle. Suddenly she +cried:-- + +"Take me home, Vick! ... Good-night, Tom!" + +She hurried nervously from the place. Vickers hailed a cab, and as they +rode up town neither spoke at first. Then Vickers put his hand on hers and +held it very tightly. She knew that he had seen--her tear-stained eyes and +Cairy's intent face,--that he had seen and understood. + +"Vick," she moaned, "why is it all such a muddle? Life--what you mean to +do, and what you can do! John doesn't care, doesn't understand.... I'm such +a fool, Vick!" She leaned her head on his shoulder and sobbed. He caressed +her hand gently, saying nothing. + +He was sure now that he was called somewhere on this earth. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIX + + +When Lane went West early in May for his annual inspection trip, Isabelle +moved to the Farm for the season. She was wan and listless. She had talked +of going abroad with Vickers, but had suddenly given up the plan. A box of +books arrived with her, and she announced to Vickers that she meant to read +Italian with him; she must do something to kill the time. But the first +evening when she opened a volume of French plays, she dropped it; books +could not hold her attention any more. All the little details about her +house annoyed her,--nothing went smoothly. The governess must be changed. +Her French was horrible. Marian followed her mother about with great eyes, +fearful of annoying her, yet fascinated. Isabelle exclaimed in sudden +irritation: + +"Haven't you anything to do, Molly!" And to Vickers she complained: +"Children nowadays seem perfectly helpless. Unless they are provided with +amusement every minute, they dawdle about, waiting for you to do something +for them. Miss Betterton should make Molly more independent." + +And the next day in a fit of compunction she arranged to have a children's +party, sending the motor for some ten-mile-away neighbors. + +In her mood she found even Vickers unsatisfactory: "Now you have me here, +cooped up, you don't say a word to me. You are as bad as John. That +portentous silence is a husband's privilege, Vick.... You and I used to +_jaser_ all the time. Other men don't find me dull, anyway. They tell me +things!" + +She pouted like a child. Vickers recalled that when she had said something +like this one day at breakfast with John and Cairy present, Lane had lifted +his head from his plate and remarked with a quiet man's irony: "The other +men are specials,--they go on for an occasion. The husband's is a steady +job." + +Cairy had laughed immoderately. Isabelle had laughed with him,--"Yes, I +suppose you are all alike; you would slump every morning at breakfast." + +This spring Isabelle had grown tired, even of people. "Conny wants to come +next month, and I suppose I must have her. I wanted Margaret, but she has +got to take the little boy up to some place in the country and can't +come.... There's a woman, now," she mused to Vickers, her mind departing on +a train of association with Margaret Pole. "I wonder how she possibly +stands life with that husband of hers. He's getting worse all the time. +Drinks now! Margaret asked me if John could give him something in the +railroad, and John sent him out to a place in the country where he would be +out of harm.... There's marriage for you! Margaret is the most intelligent +woman I know, and full of life if she had only half a chance to express +herself. But everything is ruined by that mistake she made years ago. If I +were she--" Isabelle waved a rebellious hand expressively. "I thought at +one time that she was in love with Rob Falkner,--she saw a lot of him. But +he has gone off to Panama. Margaret won't say a word about him; perhaps she +is in love with him still,--who knows!" + +One day she looked up from a book at Vickers, who was at the piano, and +observed casually:-- + +"Tom is coming up to spend June when he gets back from the South." She +waited for an expected remark, and then added, "If you dislike him as much +as you used to, you had better take that time for Fosdick." + +"Do you want me to go?" + +"No,--only I thought it might be more comfortable for you--" + +"Cairy doesn't make me uncomfortable." + +"Oh--well, you needn't worry about me, brother dear!" She blushed and came +across the room to kiss him. "I am well harnessed; I shan't break the +traces--yet."... + +It was a summerish day, and at luncheon Isabelle seemed less moody than she +had been since her arrival. "Let's take one of our old long rides,--just +ride anywhere, as we used to," she suggested. + +They talked of many things that afternoon, slipping back into the past and +rising again to the present. Vickers, happy in her quieter, gentler mood, +talked of himself, the impressions he had received these months in his own +land. + +"What strikes me most," he said, "at least with the people that I see about +you, Belle, is the sharp line between work and play. I see you women all at +play, and I see the men only when they are wearily watching you play or +playing with you. One hears so much about business in America. But with you +people it is as much suppressed as if your husbands and brothers went off +to some other star every day to do their work and came back at night by air +ship to see their families." + +"Business is dull," Isabelle explained,--"most men's business. They want to +forget it themselves when they leave the office." + +"But it is so much a part of life," Vickers protested, thinking of the +hours and days Lane spent absorbed in affairs that Isabelle hadn't the +curiosity to inquire about. + +"Too much over here." + +"And not enough."... + +On their way home in the cool of the evening, over a hilly road through the +leafing woods, their horses walked close together, and Isabelle, putting an +arm affectionately on her brother's shoulder, mused:-- + +"One feels so differently different days. Tell me, Vick, what makes the +atmosphere,--the color of life in one's mind? Look over there, along the +river. See all the gray mist and up above on the mountain the purple--and +to-morrow it will be gone! Changing, always changing! It's just so inside +you; the color is changing all the time.... There is the old village. It +doesn't seem to me any longer the place you and I lived in as boy and girl, +the place I was married from." + +"It is we who have changed, not Grafton." + +"Of course; it's what we have lived through, felt,--and we can't get back! +We can't get back,--that's the sad thing." + +"Perhaps it isn't best to get back altogether." + +Isabelle gave him a curious glance, and then in a hard tone remarked, +"Sometimes I think, Vick, that in spite of your experience you are the same +soft, sentimental youth you were before it happened." + +"Not quite." + +"Did you ever regret it, Vick?" + +"Yes," he said bravely, "many times; but I am not so sure now that one can +really regret anything that is done out of one's full impulse." + +"Well,--that was different," Isabelle remarked vaguely. "Did you ever +consider, Vick, that marriage is an awful problem for a woman,--any woman +who has individuality, who thinks? ... A man takes it easily. If it doesn't +fit, why he hangs it up in the closet, so to speak, and takes it out just +as little as he has to. But a woman,--she must wear it pretty much all of +the time--or give it up altogether. It's unfair to the woman. If she wants +to be loved, and there are precious few women who don't want a man to love +them, don't want that first of all, and her husband hasn't time to bother +with love,--what does she get out of marriage? I know what you are going to +say! John loves me, when he thinks about it, and I have my child, and I am +happily placed, in very comfortable circumstances, and--" + +"I wasn't going to say that," Vickers interrupted. + +"But," continued Isabelle, with rising intensity, "you know that has +nothing to do with happiness.... One might as well be married to a +hitching-post as to John. Women simply don't count in his life. Sometimes I +wish they did--that he would make me jealous! Give him the railroad and +golf and a man to talk to, and he is perfectly happy.... Where do I come +in?" + +"Where do you put yourself in?" + +"As housekeeper," she laughed, the mood breaking. "The Johnstons are coming +next week, all eight--or is it nine?--of them. I must go over and see that +the place is opened.... They live like tramps, with one servant, but they +seem very happy. He is awfully good, but dull,--John is a social lion +compared to Steve Johnston. John says he's very clever in his line. And as +for Alice, she always was big, but she's become enormous. I don't suppose +she ever thinks of anything so frivolous as a waist-line." + +"I thought she had a beautiful face." + +"Vick, I don't believe that you know whether a woman has a figure! You +might write a _Symphonie Colossale_ with Alice and her brood as the theme." + +"She is Woman," suggested Vickers. + +"Woman!" Isabelle scoffed. "Why is child-bearing considered the +corner-stone of womanhood? Having young? Cows do that. Women are good for +other things,--inspiration, love, perhaps!" She curved her pretty lips at +her brother mockingly.... + +There were two telegrams at the house. Isabelle, opening the first, read +aloud, "Reach Grafton three thirty, Tuesday. John," and dropped it on the +table. The other she did not read aloud, but telephoned an answer to the +telegraph office. Later she remarked casually, "Tom finds he can get back +earlier; he'll be here by the end of the week." + + + + +CHAPTER L + + +"There's Steve," Isabelle said to Vickers, "coming across the meadow with +his boys. He is an old dear, so nice and fatherly!" + +The heavy man was plodding slowly along the path, the four boys frisking +around him in the tall June grass like puppies. + +"He has come to see John about some business. Let us take the boys and have +a swim in the pool!" + +Isabelle was gay and happy this morning with one of those rapid changes in +mood over night that had become habitual with her. When they returned from +their romp in the pool, the boys having departed to the stable in search of +further amusement, Lane and Johnston were still talking while they slowly +paced the brick terrace. + +"Still at it!" exclaimed Isabelle. "Goodness! what can it be to make John +talk as fast as that! Why, he hasn't said half as many words to me since +he's been back. Just look at 'em, Vick!" + + * * * * * + +Outside on the terrace Steve Johnston was saying, stuttering in his +endeavor to get hastily all the words he needed to express his feelings:-- + +"It's no use, Jack! I tell you I am sick of the whole business. I know it's +big pay,--more than I ever expected to earn in my life. But Alice and I +have been poor before, and I guess we can be poor again if it comes to +that." + +"A man with your obligations has no right to give up such an opportunity." + +"Alice is with me; we have talked the thing all through.... No, I may be a +jackass, but I can't see it any different. I don't like the business of +loading the dice,--that is all. I have stood behind the counter, so to +speak, and seen the dice loaded, fifteen years. But I wasn't responsible +myself. Now in this new place you offer me I should be IT,--the man who +loads.... I have been watching this thing for fifteen years. When I was a +rate clerk on the Canada Southern, I could guess how it was,--the little +fellows paid the rate as published and the big fellows didn't. Then when I +went into the A. and P. I came a step nearer, could watch how it was +done--didn't have to guess. Then I went with the Texas and Northern as +assistant to the traffic manager, and I loaded the dice--under orders. +Now--" + +"Now," interrupted Lane, "you'll take your orders from my office." + +"I know it,--that's part of the trouble, Jack!" the heavy man blurted out. +"You want a safe man out there, you say. I know what that means! I don't +want to talk good to you, Jack. But you see things differently from me."... + +"All this newspaper gossip and scandal has got on your nerves," Lane said +irritably. + +"No, it hasn't. And it isn't any fear of being pulled up before the +Commission. That doesn't mean anything to me.... No, I have seen it coming +ever since I was a clerk at sixty a month. And somehow I felt if it ever +got near enough me so that I should have to fix the game--for that's all it +amounts to, Jack, and you know it--why, I should have to get out. At last +it's got up to me, and so I am getting out!" + +The stolid man puffed with the exertion of expressing himself so fully, +inadequate as his confused sentences were to describe all that fermenting +mass of observation, impression, revulsion, disgust that his experience in +the rate-making side of his employment had stored up within him the last +fifteen years. Out of it had come a result--a resolve. And it was this that +Lane was combating heatedly. It was not merely that he liked Johnston +personally and did not want him "to make a fool of himself," as he had +expressed it, not altogether because he had made up his mind that the heavy +man's qualities were exactly what he needed for this position he had +offered him; rather, because the unexpected opposition, Johnston's +scruples, irritated him personally. It was a part of the sentimental +newspaper clamor, half ignorance, half envy, that he despised. When he had +used the words, "womanish hysteria," descriptive of the agitation against +the railroads, Steve had protested in the only humorous remark he was ever +known to make:-- + +"Do I look hysterical, Jack?" + +So the two men talked on. What they said would not have been wholly +understood by Isabelle, and would not have interested her. And yet it +contained more elements of pathos, of modern tragedy, than all the novels +she read and the plays she went to see. The homely, heavy man--"He looks +just like a bag of meal with a yellow pumpkin on top," Isabelle had +said--replied to a thrust by Lane:-- + +"Yes, maybe I shall fail in the lumber business. It's pretty late to swap +horses at forty-three. But Alice and I have talked it over, and we had +rather run that risk than the other--" + +"You mean?" + +"That I should do what Satters of the L. P. has just testified he's been +doing--under orders--to make traffic." + +It was a shrewd blow. Satters was a clear case where the powerful L. P. +road had been caught breaking the rate law by an ingenious device that +aroused admiration in the railroad world. He had been fined a few thousand +dollars, which was a cheap forfeit. This reference to Satters closed the +discussion. + +"I hope you will find the lumber business all you want it to suit your +conscience, Steve. Come in and have some lunch!" + +The heavy man refused,--he was in no mood for one of Isabelle's luncheons, +and he had but one more day of vacation. Gathering up his brood, he +retraced his way across the meadow, the four small boys following in his +track. + +"Well!" exclaimed Isabelle to her husband. "What was your business all +about? Luncheon has been waiting half an hour. It was as good as a play +watching you two out there. Steve looked really awake." + +"He was awake all right," Lane replied. + +"Tell us all about it--there, Vick, see if he doesn't put me off with 'Just +business, my dear'!" + +"It _was_ just business. Steve has declined a good position I made for him, +at nearly twice the salary he has ever earned." + +"And all those boys to put through college!" + +"What was it?" Vickers asked. + +Something made Lane unusually communicative,--his irritation with Steve or +his wife's taunt. + +"Did you ever hear of the Interstate Commerce Commission?" he asked his +brother-in-law, in a slightly ironical tone. And he began to state the +situation, and stated it remarkably well from his point of view, explaining +the spirit of interference that had been growing throughout the country +with railroad management, corporation management in general,--its +disastrous effect if persisted in, and also "emotionalism" in the press. He +talked very ably, and held his wife's attention. Isabelle said:-- + +"But it was rather fine of Steve, if he felt that way!" + +"He's kept his mouth shut fifteen years." + +"He's slow, is Steve, but when he sees--he acts!" + +Vickers said nothing, but a warm sense of comfort spread through his heart, +as he thought, 'Splendid!--she did that for him, Alice.' + +"I hope he won't come to grief in the lumber business," Lane concluded. +"Steve is not fitted for general business. And he can't have much capital. +Only their savings." + +Then he yawned and went to the library for a cigar, dismissing Steve and +his scruples and the railroad business altogether from his mind, in the +manner of a well-trained man of affairs, who has learned that it is a +useless waste of energy to speculate on what has been done and to wonder +why men should feel and act as they do feel and act. + +And Isabelle, with a "It will come hard on Alice!"--went off to cut some +flowers for the vases, still light-hearted, humming a gay little French +song that Tom had taught her. + + * * * * * + +If it were hard for Alice Johnston, the large woman did not betray it when +Vickers saw her a few days later. With the help of her oldest boy she was +unharnessing the horse from the Concord buggy. + +"You see," she explained, as Vickers tried to put the head halter on the +horse, "we are economizing on Joe, who used to do the chores when he did +not forget them, which was every other day!" + +When Vickers referred to Steve's new business, she said cheerfully:-- + +"I think there is a good chance of success. The men Steve is going in with +have bought a large tract of land in the southern part of Missouri. They +have experience in the lumber business, and Steve is to look after the city +end,--he's well known in St. Louis." + +"I do so hope it will go right," Vickers remarked, wishing that in some way +he could help in this brave venture. + +"Yes!" Alice smiled. "It had to be, this risk,--you know there come times +when there is only one thing to do. If Steve hadn't taken the step, left +the railroad, I think that neither of us would have been happy afterwards. +But these are anxious days for us. We have put all the money in our +stocking into it,--seven thousand dollars; all we have in the world but +this old farm, which the Colonel gave me. I wanted to mortgage the farm, +but Steve wouldn't let me. So all our eggs are in one basket. Not so many +eggs, but we can't spare one!" + +She laughed serenely, with a broad sense of humor over the family venture, +yet with a full realization of its risk. Vickers marvelled at her strong +faith in Steve, in the future, in life. As he had said to Isabelle, this +was Woman, one who had learned the deeper lessons of life from her +children, from her birth-pangs. + +She took him into the vegetable garden which she and the children had +planted. "We are truck-farmers," she explained. "I have the potatoes, +little Steve the corn, Ezra the peas, and so on to Tot, who looks after the +carrots and beets because they are close to the ground and don't need much +attention. The family is cultivating on shares." + +They walked through the rows of green vegetables that were growing lustily +in the June weather, and then turned back to the house. Alice stopped to +fasten up a riotous branch of woodbine that had poked its way through a +screen. + +"If the worst comes to the worst, I shall turn farmer in earnest and raise +vegetables for my wealthy neighbors. And there is the orchard! We have been +poor so much of the time that we know what it means.... I have no doubt it +will come out all right,--and we don't worry, Steve and I. We aren't +ambitious enough to worry." + +It was a pleasant place, the Price farm, tucked away in a fold of gentle +hills, at the end of a grassy lane. The bees hummed in the apple trees, and +the June breeze swayed through the house, where all the windows and doors +were open. Vickers, looking at the calm, healthy woman sitting beside him +on the porch, did not pity the Johnstons, nor fear for them. Alice, surely, +was the kind that no great misfortune could live with long. + +"I am really a farmer,--it's all the blood in my veins," Alice remarked. +"And when I get back here summers, the soil seems to speak to me. I've +known horses and cows and pigs and crops and seasons for centuries. It's +only skin deep, the city coating, and is easily scraped off.... Your +father, Vickers, was a wise man. He gave me the exact thing that was best +for me when he died,--this old farm of my people. Just as he had given me +the best thing in my life,--my education. If he had done more, I should be +less able to get along now." + +They had dinner, a noisy meal at which the children served in turns, Alice +sitting like a queen bee at the head of the table, governing the brood. +Vickers liked these midday meals with the chattering, chirping youngsters. + +"And how has it been with the music?" Alice asked. "Have you been able to +work? You spent most of the winter up here, didn't you?" + +"I have done some things," Vickers said; "not much. I am not at home yet, +and what seems familiar is this, the past. But I shall get broken in, no +doubt. And," he added thoughtfully, "I have come to see that this is the +place for me--for the present." + +"I am glad," she said softly. + + + + +CHAPTER LI + + +As Vickers crossed the village on his way back from the Johnstons', Lane +emerged from the telegraph office and joined him. On the rare occasions +when they were thrown together alone like this, John Lane's taciturnity +reached to positive dumbness. Vickers supposed that his brother-in-law +disliked him, possibly despised him. It was, however, a case of absolute +non-understanding. It must remain forever a problem to the man with a firm +grasp on concrete fact how any one could do what Vickers had done, except +through "woman-weakness," for which Lane had no tolerance. Moreover, the +quiet little man, with his dull eyes, who moved about as if his faculties +had been forgotten in the morning when he got up, who could sit for hours +dawdling at the piano striking chords, or staring at the keys, seemed +merely queer to the man of action. "I wish he would do something," Isabelle +had said of Vickers, using his own words of her, and her husband had +replied, "Do? ... What could he do!" + +"I've just been to see Alice," Vickers remarked timidly. "She takes Steve's +change of business very calmly." + +"She doesn't know," Lane answered curtly. "And I am afraid he doesn't +either." + +He let the topic drop, and they walked on in silence, turning off at the +stile into an old by-path that led up to the new house through a small +grove of beeches, which Isabelle had saved at her brother's plea from the +destructive hand of the landscape artist. Vickers was thinking about Lane. +He understood his brother-in-law as little as the latter comprehended him. +He had often wondered these past months: 'Doesn't he _see_ what is +happening to Isabelle? Doesn't he care! It isn't surely helpless yet,--they +aren't so wholly incompatible, and Isabelle is frank, is honest!' But if +Lane saw the state of affairs in his house, he never showed that he +perceived it. His manner with his wife was placid,--although, as Isabelle +often said, he was very little with her. But that state of separation in +which the two lived seemed less due to incompatibility than to the accident +of the way they lived. Lane was a very busy man with much on his mind; he +had no time for emotional tribulations. + +Since his return from the West--these five days which he had allowed +himself as vacation--he had been irritable at times, easily disturbed, as +he had been with Steve Johnston, but never short with his wife. Vickers +supposed that some business affair was weighing on him, and as was his +habit he locked it up tight within.... + +And Lane would never have told what it was that gnawed at him, last of all +to Vickers. It was pride that made him seem not to see, not to know the +change that had come into his house. And something more, which might be +found only in this kind of American gentleman,--a deep well of loyalty to +his wife, a feeling of: 'What she wishes, no matter what it may be to me!' +'I shall trust her to the last, and if she fails me, I will still trust her +to be true to herself.' A chivalry this, unsuspected by Vickers! Something +of that old admiration for his wife which made him feel that he should +provide her with the opportunities she craved, that somehow she had stooped +in marrying him, still survived in spite of his successful career. And +love? To define the sort of sentiment Lane at forty-two had for his wife, +modified by his activities, by his lack of children, by her evident lack of +passion for him, would not be an easy matter. But that he loved her more +deeply than mere pride, than habit would account for, was sure. In that +afterglow between men and women which comes when the storms of life have +been lived through, Lane might be found a sufficient lover.... + +As they entered the narrow path that led through the beechwood, Lane +stepped aside to allow Vickers to precede him. The afternoon sun falling on +the glossy new leaves made a pleasant light. They had come to a point in +the path where the western wing of the house was visible through the trees +when suddenly Vickers stopped, hesitated, as if he would turn back, and +said aloud hastily: "I always like this side of the house best,--don't you? +It is quieter, less open than the south facade, more _intime_--" He talked +on aimlessly, blocking the path, staring at the house, gesticulating. When +he moved, he glanced at Lane's face.... + +Just below in a hollow where a stone bench had been placed, Isabelle was +sitting with Cairy, his arm about her, her eyes looking up at him, +something gay and happy in the face like that little French song she was +singing these days, as if a voice had stilled the restless craving in her, +had touched to life that dead pulse, which had refused to beat for her +husband.... This was what Vickers had seen, and it was on his lips to say, +"When did Cairy come? Isabelle did not tell me." But instead he had +faltered out nonsense, while the two, hearing his voice, betook themselves +to the upper terrace. Had her husband seen them? Vickers wondered. +Something in the man's perfect control, his manner of listening to +Vickers's phrases, made him feel that he had seen--all. But Lane in his +ordinary monosyllabic manner pointed to a nest of ground sparrows beside +the path. "Guess we had better move this establishment to a safer place," +he remarked, as he carefully put the nest into the thicket. + +When they reached the hall, Isabelle, followed by Cairy, entered from the +opposite door. "Hello, Tom; when did you get in?" Lane asked in his +ordinary equable voice. "I sent your message, Isabelle." And he went to +dress for dinner. + + * * * * * + +The dinner that night of the three men and the woman was tense and still at +first. All the radiance had faded from Isabelle's face, leaving it white, +and she moved as if she were numb. Vickers, watching her face, was sad at +heart, miserable as he had been since he had seen her and Cairy together. +Already it had gone so far! ... Cairy was talkative, as always, telling +stories of his trip to the South. At some light jeer over the California +railroad situation, Lane suddenly spoke:-- + +"That is only one side, Tom. There is another." + +Ordinarily he would have laughed at Cairy's flippant handling of the topics +of the day. But to-night he was ready to challenge. + +"The public doesn't want to hear the other side, it seems," Cairy retorted +quickly. + +Lane looked at him slowly as he might at a mosquito that he purposed to +crush. "I think that some of the public wants to hear all sides," he +replied quietly. "Let us see what the facts are."... + +To-night he did not intend to be silenced by trivialities. Cairy had given +him an opening on his own ground,--the vast field of fact. And he talked +astonishingly well, with a grip not merely of the much-discussed railroad +situation, but of business in general, economic conditions in America and +abroad,--the trend of development. He talked in a large and leisurely way +all through the courses, and when Cairy would interpose some objection, his +judicious consideration eddied about it with a deferential sweep, then +tossed it high on the shore of his buttressed conclusions. Vickers listened +in astonishment to the argument, while Isabelle, her hands clasped tight +before her, did not eat, but shifted her eyes from her husband's face to +Cairy's and back again as the talk flowed. + +... "And granted," Lane said by way of conclusion, having thoroughly +riddled Cairy's contentions, "that in some cases there has been trickery +and fraud, is that any reason why we should indict the corporate management +of all great properties? Even if all the law-breaking of which our roads +are accused could be proved to be true, nevertheless any philosophic +investigator would conclude that the good they have done--the efficient +service for civilization--far outbalances the wrong--" + +"Useful thieves and parasites!" Cairy interposed. + +"Yes,--if you like to put it in those words," Lane resumed quietly. "The +law of payment for service in this world of ours is not a simple one. For +large services and great sacrifices, the rewards must be large. For large +risks and daring efforts, the pay must be alluring. Every excellence of a +high degree costs,--every advance is made at the sacrifice of a lower order +of good." + +"Isn't that a pleasant defence for crime?" Isabelle asked. + +Lane looked at his wife for a long moment of complete silence. + +"Haven't you observed that people break laws, and seem to feel that they +are justified in doing so by the force of higher laws?" + +Isabelle's eyes fell. He had seen, Vickers knew,--not only this afternoon, +but all along! ... Presently they rose from the table, and as they passed +out of the room Isabelle's scarf fell from her neck. Lane and Cairy stooped +to pick it up. Cairy had his hands on it first, but in some way it was the +husband who took possession of it and handed it to the wife. Her hand +trembled as she took it from him, and she hurried to her room. + +"If you are interested in this matter of the Pacific roads, Tom," Lane +continued, handing Cairy the cigarette box, "I will have my secretary look +up the data and send it out here.... You will be with us some time, I +suppose?" + +Cairy mumbled his thanks. + +After this scene Vickers felt nothing but admiration for his +brother-in-law. The man knew the risks. He cared,--yes, he cared! Vickers +was very sure of that. At dinner it had been a sort of modern duel, as if, +with perfect courtesy and openness, Lane had taken the opportunity to try +conclusions with the rival his wife had chosen to give him,--to tease him +with his rapier, to turn his mind to her gaze.... And yet, even he must +know how useless victory was to him, victory of this nature. Isabella did +not love Cairy because of his intellectual grasp, though in the matters she +cared for he seemed brilliant. + +'It's to be a fight between them,' thought Vickers. 'He is giving the other +one every chance. Oh, it is magnificent, this way of winning one's wife. +But the danger in it!' And Vickers knew now that Lane scorned to hold a +woman, even his wife, in any other way. His wife should not be bound to him +by oath, nor by custom, nor even by their child. Nor would he plead for +himself in this contest. Against the other man, he would play merely +himself,--the decent years of their common life, their home, her own heart. +And he was losing,--Vickers felt sure of that. + + + + +CHAPTER LII + + +Did he know that he had virtually lost when at the end of his brief +vacation he went back to the city, leaving his rival alone in the field? +During those tense days Vickers's admiration for the man grew. He was good +tempered and considerate, even of Cairy. Lane had always been a pleasant +host, and now instead of avoiding Cairy he seemed to seek his society, made +an effort to talk to him about his work, and advised him shrewdly in a +certain transaction with a theatrical manager. + +"If she should go away with Cairy," Vickers said to himself, "he will look +out for them always!" + +Husband and wife, so Vickers judged, did not talk together during all this +time. Perhaps they did not dare to meet the issue openly. At any rate when +Isabelle proposed driving John to the station the last night, he said +kindly, "It's raining, my dear,--I think you had better not." So he kissed +her in the hall before the others, made some commonplace suggestion about +the place, and with his bag in hand left, nodding to them all as he got +into the carriage. Isabelle, who had appeared dazed these days, as if, her +heart and mind occupied in desperate inner struggle, her body lived +mechanically, left the two men to themselves and went to her room. And +shortly afterwards Cairy, who had become subdued, thoughtful, pleaded work +and went upstairs. + + * * * * * + +When Vickers rose early the next morning, the country was swathed in a thin +white mist. The elevation on which the house stood just pierced the fog, +and, here and there below, the head of a tall pine emerged. Vickers had +slept badly with a suffocating sense of impending danger. When he stepped +out of the drawing-room on the terrace, the coolness of the damp fog and +the stillness of the June morning not yet broken by bird notes soothed his +troubled mind. All this silent beauty, serenely ordered nature--and +tumultuous man! Out of the earthy elements of which man was compounded, he +had sucked passions which drove him hither and yon.... As he walked towards +the west garden, the window above the terrace opened, and Isabelle, dressed +in her morning clothes, looked down on her brother. + +"I heard your step, Vick," she said in a whisper. Her face in the gray +light was colorless, and her eyes were dull, veiled. "Wait for me, Bud!" + +In a few moments she appeared, covered with a gray cloak, a soft +saffron-colored veil drawn about her head. Slipping one hand under his +arm,--her little fingers tightening on his flesh,--she led the way through +the garden to the beech copse, which was filled with mist, then down to the +stone bench, where she and Cairy had sat that other afternoon. + +"How still it is!" she murmured, shivering slightly. She looked back to the +copse, vague in the mist, and said: "Do you remember the tent we had here +in the summers? We slept in it one night.... It was then I used to say that +I was going to marry you, brother, and live with you for always because +nobody else could be half so nice.... I wish I had! Oh, how I wish I had! +We should have been happy, you and I. And it would have been better for +both of us." + +She smiled at him wanly. He understood the reference she made to his +misadventure, but said nothing. Suddenly she leaned her head on his +shoulder. + +"Vick, dear, do you think that any one could care enough to forgive +everything? Do you love me enough, so you would love me, no matter what I +did? ... That's real love, the only kind, that loves because it must and +forgives because it loves! Could you, Vick? Could you?" + +Vickers smoothed back her rumpled hair and drew the veil over it. + +"You know that nothing would make any difference to me." + +"Ah, you don't know! But perhaps you could--" Then raising her head she +spoke with a harder voice. "But that's weak. One must expect to pay for +what one does,--pay everything. Oh, my God!" + +The fog had retreated slowly from their level. They stood on the edge +looking into its depth. Suddenly Vickers exclaimed with energy:-- + +"You must end this, Isabelle! It will kill you." + +"I wish it might!" + +"End it!" and he added slowly, "Send him away--or let me take you away!" + +"I--I--can't,--Vick!" she cried. "It has got beyond me.... It is not just +for myself--just me. It's for _him_, too. He needs me. I could do so much +for him! And here I can do nothing." + +"And John?" + +"Oh, John! He doesn't care, really--" + +"Don't say that!" + +"If he did--" + +"Isabelle, he saw you and Tom, here, the afternoon Tom came!" + +She flushed and drew herself away from her brother's arms. + +"I know it--it was the first time that--that anything happened! ... If he +cared, why didn't he say something then, do something, strike me--" + +"That is not right, Belle; you know he is not that kind of animal." + +"If a man cares for a woman, he hasn't such godlike control! ... No, John +wants to preserve appearances, to have things around him smooth,--he's too +cold to care!" + +"That's ungenerous." + +"Haven't I lived with him years enough to know what is in his heart? He +hates scandal. That's his nature,--he doesn't want unpleasant words, a +fuss. There won't be any, either.... But I'm not the calculating kind, +Vick. If I do it, I do it for the whole world to know and to see. I'm not +Conny,--no sneaking compromises; I'll do it as you did it,--for the whole +world to see and know." + +"But you'll not do it!" + +"You think I haven't the courage? You don't know me, Vick. I am not a girl +any longer. I am thirty-two, and I know life _now_, my life at any rate.... +It was all wrong between John and me from the beginning,--yes, from the +beginning!" + +"What makes you say that! You don't really believe it in your heart. You +loved John when you married him. You were happy with him afterwards." + +"I don't believe that any girl, no matter what experience she has had, can +really love a man before she is married to him. I was sentimental, +romantic, and I thought my liking for a man was love. I wanted to +love,--all girls do. But I didn't know enough to love. It is all blind, +blind! I might have had that feeling about other men, the feeling I had for +John before.... Then comes marriage, and it's luck, all luck, whether love +comes, whether it is right--the thing for you--the only one. Sometimes it +is,--often enough for those who don't ask much, perhaps. But it was _wrong_ +for John and me. I knew it from the first days,--those when we tried to +think we were happiest. I have never confessed this to a human +being,--never to John. But it was so, Vick! I didn't know then what was the +matter--why it was wrong. But a woman suspects then.... Those first days I +was wretched,--I wanted to cry out to him: 'Can't you see it is wrong? You +and I must part; our way is not the same!' But he seemed content. And there +was father and mother and everything to hold us to the mistake. And of +course I felt that it might come in time, that somehow it was my fault. I +even thought that love as I wanted it was impossible, could never exist for +a woman.... So the child came, and I went through the motions. And the gap +grew between us each year as I came to be a woman. I saw the gap, but I +thought it was always so, almost always, between husbands and wives, and I +went on going through the motions.... That was why I was ill,--yes, the +real reason, because we were not fitted to be married. Because I tried to +do something against nature,--tried to live married to a man who wasn't +really my husband!" + +Her voice sank exhausted. Never before even to herself had she said it +all,--summed up that within her which must justify her revolt. Vickers felt +the hot truth to her of her words; but granted the truth, was it enough? + +Before he could speak she went on wearily, as if compelled:-- + +"But it might have gone on so until the end, until I died. Perhaps I could +have got used to it, living like that, and fussed around like other women +over amusements and charities and houses,--all the sawdust stuffing of +life--and become a useless old woman, and not cared, not known." + +She drew a deep breath. + +"But you see--I know _now_--what the other is! I have known since"--her +voice sank to a whisper--"that afternoon when I kissed him for the first +time." She shuddered. "I am not a stick, Vick! I--am a woman! ... No, don't +say it!" She clasped his arm tightly. "You don't like Tom. You can't +understand. He may not be what I feel he is--he may be less of a man for +men than John. But I think it makes little difference to a woman so long as +she loves--what the man is to others. To her he is _all_ men!" + +With this cry her voice softened, and now she spoke calmly. "And you see I +can give him something! I can give HIM love and joy. And more--I could make +it possible for him to do what he wants to do with his life. I would go +with him to some beautiful spot, where he could be all that he has it in +him to be, and I could watch and love. Oh, we should be enough, he and I!" + +"Dear, that you can never tell! ... It was not enough for us--for her. You +can't tell when you are like this, ready to give all, whether it's what the +other most needs or really wants." + +In spite of Isabelle's doubting smile, Vickers hurried on,--willing now to +show his scar. + +"I have never told you how it was over there all these years. I could not +speak of it.... I thought _we_ should be enough, as you say. We had our +love and our music.... But we weren't enough, almost from the start. She +was unhappy. She really wanted those things we had given up, which she +might have had if it had been otherwise--I mean if she had been my wife. I +was too much of a fool to see that at once. I didn't want divorce and +marriage--there were difficulties in the way, too. We had thrown over the +world, defied it. I didn't care to sneak back into the fold.... Our love +turned bad. All the sentiment and lofty feeling somehow went out of it. We +became two animals, tied together first by our passion, and afterwards +by--the situation. I can't tell you all. It was killing.... It did kill the +best in me." + +"It was _her_ fault. The woman makes the kind of love always." + +"No, she might have been different, another way! But I tell you the facts. +She became dissatisfied, restless. She was unfaithful to me. I knew it, and +I shielded her--because in part I had made her what she was. But it was +awful. And at the end she went away with that other man. He will leave her. +Then she'll take another.... Love turns sour, I tell you--love taken that +way. Life becomes just curdled milk. And it eats you like poison. Look at +me,--the marrow of a man is all gone!" + +"Dear Vick, it was all _her_ fault. Any decent woman would have made you +happy,--you would have worked, written great music,--lived a large life." + +His story did not touch her except with pity for him. To her thinking each +case was distinct, and her lips curved unconsciously into a smile, as if +she were picturing how different it would be with _them_.... + +The fog had broken, and was rising from the meadows below, revealing the +trees and the sun. The birds had begun to sing in the beeches. It was fresh +and cool and moist before the warmth of the coming day. Isabelle drew deep +breaths and loosened her scarf. + +Vickers sat silent, miserable. As he had said to Alice, the wreck of his +life, where he had got knowledge so dearly, availed nothing when most he +would have it count for another. + +"No, Vick! Whatever happens it will be our own fate, nobody's else--and I +want it!" + +There was cool deliberation in her tone as if the resolve had been made +already. + +"Not John's fate, too?" + +"He's not the kind to let a thing like this upset him long. While the +railroad runs and the housekeeper stays--" + +"And Molly's fate?" + +"Of course I have thought about Marian. There are ways. It is often done. +She would be with me until she went to school, which won't be long, now." + +"But just think what it would mean to her if her mother left her father." + +"Oh, not so much, perhaps! I have been a good mother.... And why should I +kill the twenty, thirty, maybe forty years left of my life for a child's +sentiment for her mother? Very likely by the time she grows up, people will +think differently about marriage." + +She talked rapidly, as if eager to round all the corners. + +"She may even decide to do the same thing some day." + +"And you would want her to?" + +"Yes! Rather than have the kind of marriage I have had." + +"Isabelle!" + +"You are an old sentimental dreamer, Vick. You don't understand modern +life. And you don't know women--they're lots more like men, too, than you +think. They write such fool things about women. There are so many silly +ideas about them that they don't dare to be themselves half the time, +except a few like Margaret. She is honest with herself. Of course she loves +Rob Falkner. He's in Panama now, but when he gets back I have no doubt +Margaret will go and live with him. And she's got three children!" + +"Isabelle, you aren't Margaret Pole or Cornelia Woodyard or any other woman +but yourself. There are some things _you_ can't do. I know you. There's the +same twist in us both. You simply can't do this! You think you can, and you +talk like this to me to make yourself think that you can.... But when it +comes to the point, when you pack your bag, you know you will just unpack +it again--and darn the stockings!" + +"No, no!" Isabelle laughed in spite of herself; "I can't--I won't.... Why +do I sniffle so like this? It's your fault, Vick; you always stir the +pathetic note in me, you old fraud!" + +She was crying now in long sobs, the tears falling to his hand. + +"I know you because we are built the same foolish, idiotic way. There are +many women who can play that game, who can live one way for ten or a dozen +years, and then leave all that they have been--without ever looking back. +But you are not one of them. I am afraid you and I are sentimentalists. +It's a bad thing to be, Belle, but we can't help ourselves. We want the +freedom of our feelings, but we want to keep a halo about them. You talked +of cutting down these beeches. But you would never let one be touched, not +one." + +"I'll have 'em all cut down to-morrow," Isabelle murmured through her +tears. + +"Then you'll cry over them! No, Belle, it's no use going dead against your +nature--the way you were made to run. You may like to soar, but you were +meant to walk." + +"You think there is nothing to me,--that I haven't a soul!" + +"I know the soul." + +Isabella flung her arms about her brother and clung there, breathing hard. +The long night had worn her out with its incessant alternation of doubt and +resolve, endlessly weaving through her brain. + +"Better to suffer on in this cloudy world than to make others suffer," he +murmured. + +"Don't talk! I am so tired--so tired.".... + +From the hillside below came a whistled note, then the bar of a song, like +a bird call. Some workman on the place going to his work, Vickers thought. +It was repeated, and suddenly Isabelle took her arms from his neck,--her +eyes clear and a look of determination on her lips. + +"No, Vick; you don't convince me.... You did the other thing when it came +to you. Perhaps we _are_ alike. Well, then, I shall do it! I shall dare to +live!".... + +And with that last defiance,-the curt expression of the floating beliefs +which she had acquired,--she turned towards the house. + +"Come, it is breakfast time." + +She waited for him to rise and join her. For several silent moments they +lingered to look at Dog Mountain across the river, as if they were looking +at it for the last time, at something they had both so much loved. + +"You are dear, brother," she murmured, taking his hand. "But don't lecture +me. You see I am a woman now!" + +And looking into her grave, tear-stained face, Vickers saw that he had +lost. She had made her resolution; she would "dare to live," and that life +would be with Cairy! His heart was sad. Though he had tried to free himself +of his old dislike of Cairy and see him through Isabelle's eyes, it was +useless. He read Tom Cairy's excitable, inflammable, lightly poised nature, +with the artist glamour in him that attracted women. He would be all +flame--for a time,--then dead until his flame was lighted before another +shrine. And Isabelle, proud, exacting, who had always been served,--no, it +was hopeless! Inevitable tragedy, to be waited for like the expected +motions of nature! + +And beneath this misery for Isabelle was the bitterest of human +feelings,--personal defeat, personal inadequacy. 'If I had been another!' +"Don't lecture me!" she had said almost coldly. The spiritual power of +guidance had gone from him, because of what he had done. Inwardly he felt +that it had gone. That was part of the "marrow of the man" that had been +burned out. The soul of him was impotent; he was a shell, something dead, +that could not kindle another to life. + +'I could have saved her,' he thought. 'Once I could have saved her. She has +found me lacking _now_, when she needs me most!' + +The whistle sounded nearer. + +"Will you do one thing for me, Isabelle?" + +"All--but one thing!" + +"Let me know first." + +"You will know." + +Cairy was coming down the terrace, cigarette in hand. His auburn hair shone +in the sunlight. After his sleep, his bath, his cup of early coffee, he was +bright with physical content, and he felt the beauty of the misty morning +in every sense. Seeing the brother and sister coming from the beeches +together, he scrutinized them quickly; like the perfect egotist, he was +swiftly measuring what this particular conjunction of personalities might +mean to him. Then he limped towards them, his face in smiles, and bowing in +mock veneration, he lay at Isabelle's feet a rose still dewy with mist. + +Vickers turned on his heel, his face twitching. But Isabelle with parted +lips and gleaming eyes looked at the man, her whole soul glad, as a woman +looks who is blind to all but one thought,--'I love him.' + +"The breath of the morn," Cairy said, lifting the rose. "The morn of +morns,--this is to be a great day, my lady! I read it in your eyes." + + + + +CHAPTER LIII + + +It was still sultry at four o'clock in the afternoon, and the two men +walked slowly in the direction of the river. Cairy, who had been summoned +by telegram to the city, would have preferred to be driven to the junction +by Isabelle, but when Vickers had suggested that he knew a short cut by a +shady path along the river, he had felt obliged to accept the implied +invitation. He was debating why Price had suddenly evinced this desire to +be with him, for he felt sure that Vickers disliked him. But Isabelle had +shown plainly that she would like him to accept her brother's offer,--she +was too tired to go out again, she said, and the only horse that could be +used was a burden to drive. So he set forth on the two-mile walk this +oppressive afternoon, not in the best mood, determined to let Vickers do +the talking. + +They plodded across the meadow in silence, Cairy thinking of the interview +in the city, his spirits rising as they always soared at the slightest hint +of an "opening." "I'll make her take the play," he said to himself; "she +isn't much good as an actress, but I must get the thing on. I'll need the +money." He hoped to finish his business with this minor star, who had +expressed a desire to see him, and return to Grafton by the morning +express. Isabelle would be disappointed if he should not be back for +luncheon. + +Vickers's head was bent to the path. He had seized this chance of being +alone with Cairy, and now that they were beyond the danger of interruption +his blood beat uncomfortably in his head and he could not speak--for fear +of uttering the wrong word.... When they reached the river, the two men +paused involuntarily in the shade and looked back up the slope to the Farm, +lying in the warm haze on the brow of the hill. As they stood there, the +shutter of an upper chamber was drawn in, and Cairy smiled to himself. + +"The house looks well from here," he remarked. "It's a pleasant spot." + +"It is a dear old place!" Vickers answered, forgetting for the moment the +changes that Isabelle had wrought at the Farm. "It's grown into our +lives,--Isabelle's and mine. We used to come here as boy and girl in +vacations.... It was a day something like this when my sister was married. +I remember seeing her as she came out of the house and crossed the meadow +on my father's arm. We watched her from the green in front of the +chapel.... She was very beautiful--and happy!" + +"I can well imagine it," Cairy replied dryly, surprised at Vickers's sudden +loquacity on family matters. "But I suppose we ought to be moving on, +hadn't we, to get that express? You see I am a poor walker at the best." + +Vickers struck off by the river path, leading the way. Suddenly he stopped, +and with flushed face said:-- + +"Tom, I wish you wouldn't come back to-morrow!" + +"And why the devil--" + +"I know it isn't _my_ house, it isn't _my_ wife, it isn't _my_ affair. But, +Tom, my sister and I have been closer than most,--even husband and wife. I +love her,--well, that's neither here nor there!" + +"What are you driving at, may I ask?" Cairy demanded coldly. + +"What I am going to say isn't usual--it isn't conventional. But I don't +know any conventional manner of doing what I want to do. I think we have to +drop all that sometimes, and speak out like plain human beings. That's the +way I am going to speak to you,--as man to man.... I don't want to beat +about the bush, Tom. I think it would be better if you did not come back +to-morrow,--never came back to the Farm!" + +He had not said it as he meant to phrase it. He was aware that he had lost +ground by blurting it out like this. Cairy waited until he had lighted a +cigarette before he replied, with a laugh:-- + +"It is a little--brusque, your idea. May I ask why I am not to come back?" + +"You know well enough! ... I had hoped we could keep--other names out of +this." + +"We can't." + +"My sister is very unhappy--" + +"You think I make your sister unhappy?" + +"Yes." + +"I prefer to let her be the judge of that," Cairy retorted, walking ahead +stiffly and exaggerating his limp. + +"You know she cannot be a judge of what is best--just now." + +"I think she can judge of herself better than any--outsider!" + +Vickers flushed, controlled himself, and said almost humbly:-- + +"I know you care for her, Tom. We both do. So I thought we might discuss it +amicably." + +"This doesn't seem to me a discussable matter." + +"But anything that concerns one I love as I do Isabelle _must_ be +discussable in some way." + +"Your sister told me about her talk with you this morning.... You did your +best then, it seems. If you couldn't succeed in changing _her_ mind,--what +do you expect from me?" + +"That you will be generous! ... There are some things that Isabelle can't +see straight just now. She doesn't know herself, altogether." + +"I should think that her husband--" + +"Can't you feel his position? His lips are closed by his pride, by his +love!" + +"I should say, Vickers," Cairy remarked with a sneer, "that you had better +follow Lane's sensible course. This is a matter for the two most concerned +and for them alone to discuss.... With your experience you must understand +that ours is the situation which a mature man and a mature woman must +settle for themselves. Nothing that an outsider says can count." + +And turning around to face Vickers, he added slowly, "Isabelle and I will +do what seems best to us, just as under similar circumstances you did what +you thought was best for you without consulting anybody, as I remember." + +Vickers quivered as his eye met Cairy's glance, but he accepted the sneer +quietly. + +"The circumstances were not the same. And I may have learned that it is a +serious matter to do what you wish to do,--to take another man's wife, no +matter what the circumstances are." + +"Oh, that's a mere phrase. There's usually not much taking! When a woman is +unhappy in her marriage, when she can be happy with another man, when no +one can be really hurt--" + +"Somebody always is hurt." + +"The only thing I am greatly interested in is Isabelle's happiness, her +life. She has been stifled all these years of marriage, intellectually, +emotionally stifled. She has begun to live lately--we have both begun to +live. Do you think we shall give that up? Do you think any of your little +preachments can alter the life currents of two strong people who love and +find their fulfilment in each other? You know men and women very little if +you think so! We are living to-day at the threshold of a new social +epoch,--an honester one than the world has seen yet, thank God! Men and +women are daring to throw off the bonds of convention, to think for +themselves, and determine what is best for them, for their highest good, +undisturbed by the bogies so long held up. I will take my life, I will +live, I will not be suffocated by a false respect for my neighbor's +opinion." + +Cairy paused in the full career of his phrases. He was gesticulating with +his hands, almost forgetful of Vickers, launched as it were on a dramatic +monologue. He was accustomed thus to dramatize an emotional state, as those +of his temperament are wont to do, living in a world of their own feelings +imaginatively projected. While Vickers listened to Cairy's torrent of +words, he had but one thought: 'It's no use. He can't be reached that +way--any way!' + +A stone wall stopped their progress. As Cairy slowly dragged himself over +the wall, Vickers saw the outline of the pistol in the revolver pocket, and +remembered the afternoon when Cairy had shown them the weapon and displayed +his excellent marksmanship. And now, as then, the feeling of contempt that +the peaceable Anglo-Saxon has for the man who always goes armed in a +peaceable land came over him. + +Cairy resumed his monologue on the other side of the wall. + +"It is the silliest piece of barbaric tradition for a civilized man to +think that because a woman has once seen fit to give herself to him, she is +his possession for all time. Because she has gone through some form, some +ceremony, repeated a horrible oath that she doesn't understand, to say that +she belongs to that man, is _his_, like his horse or his house,--phew! +That's mere animalism. Human souls belong to themselves! Most of all the +soul of a delicately sensitive woman like Isabelle! She gives, and she can +take away. It's her duty to take herself back when she realizes that it no +longer means anything to her, that her life is degraded by--" + +"Rot!" Vickers exclaimed impatiently. He had scarcely heard what Cairy had +been saying. His sickening sense of failure, of impotency, when he wished +most for strength, had been succeeded by rage against the man, not because +of his fluent argument, but because of himself; not against his theory of +license, but against him. He saw Isabelle's life broken on the point of +this glib egotism. "We needn't discuss your theories. The one fact is that +my sister's life shall not be ruined by you!" + +Cairy, dropping back at once to his tone of worldly convention, replied +calmly:-- + +"That I think we shall have to let the lady decide for herself,--whether I +shall ruin her life or not. And I beg to point out that this topic is of +your own choosing. I regard it as an impertinence. Let us drop it. And if +you will point out the direction, I think I will hurry on by myself and get +my train." + +"My God, no! We won't drop it--not yet. Not until you have heard a little +more what I have in mind.... I think I know you, Cairy, better than my +sister knows you. Would you make love to a _poor_ woman, who had a lot of +children, and take _her_? Would you take her and her children, like a man, +and work for them? ... In this case you will be given what you want--" + +"I did not look for vulgarity from you! But with the _bourgeoisie_, I +suppose, it all comes down to dollars and cents. I have not considered Mrs. +Lane's circumstances." + +"It's not mere dollars and cents! Though that is a test,--what a man will +do for a woman, not what a woman will do for a man she loves and--pities." + +As Cairy shot an ugly glance at him, Vickers saw that he was fast angering +the man past all hope of influence. But he was careless now, having utterly +failed to avert evil from the one he loved most in the world, and he poured +out recklessly his bitter feeling:-- + +"The only success you have to offer a woman is success with other women! +That little nurse in the hospital, you remember? The one who took care of +you--" + +"If you merely wish to insult me--" the Southerner stammered. + +They were in the midst of a thicket of alders near the river, and the +sinking sun, falling through the young green leaves, mottled the path with +light and shade. The river, flushed with spring water, gurgled pleasantly +over pebbly shallows. It was very still and drowsy; the birds had not begun +their evening song. + +The two men faced each other, their hands clenched in their coat pockets, +and each read the hate in the other's face. + +"Insult you!" Vickers muttered. "Cairy, you are scum to me--scum!" + +Through the darkness of his rage a purpose was struggling--a blind +purpose--that urged him on. + +... "I don't know how many other women after the nurse have served to +fatten your ego. But you will never feed on my sister's blood while I +live!" + +He stepped closer unconsciously, and as he advanced Cairy retreated, taking +his clenched hand from his pocket. + +"Why don't you strike?" Vickers cried. + +Suddenly he knew that purpose; it had emerged with still clearness in his +hot brain. His heart whispered, 'She will never do it over my body!' And +the thought calmed him at once. He saw Cairy's trembling arm and angry +face. 'He'll shoot,' he said to himself coldly. 'It's in his blood, and +he's a coward. He'll shoot!' Standing very still, his hands in his pockets, +he looked quietly at the enraged man. He was master now! + +"Why don't you strike?" he repeated. + +And as the Southerner still hesitated, he added slowly:-- + +"Do you want to hear more?" + +The memory of old gossip came back to him. 'He is not the real Virginia +Cairy,' some one had said once; 'he has the taint,--that mountain branch of +the family,--the mother, you know, they say!' Very slowly Vickers spoke:-- + +"No decent man would want his sister living with a fellow whose mother--" + +As the words fell he could see it coming,--the sudden snatch backwards of +the arm, the little pistol not even raised elbow high. And in the drowsy +June day, with the flash of the shot, the thought leapt upwards in his +clear mind, 'At last I am not impotent--I have saved her!'.... + +And when he sank back into the meadow grass without a groan, seeing Cairy's +face mistily through the smoke, and behind him the blur of the sky, he +thought happily, 'She will never go to him, now--never!'--and then his eyes +closed. + + * * * * * + +It was after sunset when some men fishing along the river heard a groan and +hunting through the alders and swamp grass found Vickers, lying face down +in the thicket. One of the men knew who he was, and as they lifted him from +the pool of blood where he lay and felt the stiff fold of his coat, one +said:-- + +"He must have been here some time. He's lost an awful lot of blood! The +wound is low down." + +They looked about for the weapon in the dusk, and not finding it, took the +unconscious man into their boat and started up stream. + +"Suicide?" one queried. + +"Looks that way,--I'll go back after the pistol, later." + + * * * * * + +Isabelle had had tea with Marian and the governess out in the garden, and +afterwards strolled about through the beds, plucking a flower here and +there. To the agitation of the morning the calm of settled resolve had +succeeded. She looked at the house and the gardens thoughtfully, as one +looks who is about to depart on a long journey. In her heart was the +stillness after the storm, not joy,--that would come later when the step +was taken; when all was irrevocably settled. She thought quite methodically +of how it would all be,--what must be done to cut the cords of the old +life, to establish the new. John would see the necessity,--he would not +make difficulties. He might even be glad to have it all over! Of course her +mother would wail, but she would learn to accept. She would leave Molly at +first, and John naturally must have his share in her always. That could be +worked out later. As for the Farm, they might come back to it afterwards. +John had better stay on here for the present,--it was good for Molly. They +would probably live in the South, if they decided to live in America. She +would prefer London, however.... She was surprised at the sure way in which +she could think it all out. That must be because it was right and there was +no wavering in her purpose.... Poor Vick! he would care most. But he would +come to realize how much better it was thus, how much more right really +than to go dragging through a loveless, empty life. And when he saw her +happy with Tom--but she wished he liked Tom better. + +The failure of Vickers to return in time for tea had not troubled her. He +had a desultory, irregular habit of life. He might have stopped at Alice's +or even decided to go on to the city with Tom, or merely wandered off +across the country by himself.... + +In the last twilight three men came up the meadow path, carrying something +among them, walking slowly. Isabelle caught sight of them as they reached +the lower terrace and with her eyes fastened on them, trying to make out +the burden they were carrying so carefully, stood waiting before the house. + +"What is it?" she asked at last as the men drew nearer, seeing in the gloom +only the figures staggering slightly as they mounted the steps. + +"Your brother's been hurt, Mrs. Lane," a voice said. + +"Hurt!" That nameless fear of supernatural interference, the quiver of the +human nerve at the possible message from the infinite, stopped the beating +of her heart. + +"Yes'm--shot!" the voice said. "Where shall we take him?" + +They carried Vickers upstairs and placed him in Isabelle's bed, as she +directed. Bending over him, she tried to unbutton the stiff coat with her +trembling fingers, and suddenly she felt something warm--his blood. It was +red on her hand. She shuddered before an unknown horror, and with +mysterious speed the knowledge came to her heart that Fate had overtaken +her--here! + + + + +CHAPTER LIV + + +The doctors had come, probed for the bullet, and gone. They had not found +the bullet. The wound was crooked, they said, entering the fleshy part of +the abdomen, ranging upwards in the direction of the heart, then to the +back. The wounded man was still unconscious. There was a chance, so the New +York surgeon told Isabelle,--only they had not been able to locate the +bullet, and the heart was beating feebly. There had been a great loss of +blood. If he had been found earlier, perhaps--they did not know.... + +Outside on the drive the doctors exchanged glances, low words, and signs. +Accident? But how, the ball ranging upwards like that? He would have to be +on his knees. Well, then, suicide! Had the pistol been found? ... There +need be no scandal--the family was much loved in the village. Accident, of +course. The fellow was always odd, the local practitioner explained to the +city doctor, as he carried his distinguished colleague home in his car for +breakfast. There was that scandal with a woman in Venice. They said it was +all over, but you could never tell about those things.... + +Upstairs the nurse made ready the room for illness, while Isabelle sat by +the bed, watching her brother. Vickers was still unconscious, scarcely +breathing. The nurse, having tried a number of ways to get her out of the +room, now ignored her, and Isabelle sat in a kind of stupor, waiting for +that Fate which had overtaken her to be worked out. When the gray dawn of +the morning stole into the dark room, the nurse unbolted the shutters and +threw open the window. In the uncertain light Dog Mountain loomed large and +distant. Isabelle turned her head from Vickers's face and watched the +wooded peak as it came nearer and nearer in the deepening light.... It was +this hill that she and Vickers had climbed in the winter morning so long +ago! How wonderful it had been then, life, for them both, with glorious +possibilities of living! She had put forth her hands to grasp them, these +possibilities, one after another, to grasp them for herself. Now they had +come to an end--for both. There was no more to grasp.... + +When she turned back to the silent form by her side, she saw that Vickers +had opened his eyes. His face was very white and the eyes were buried deep +beneath the eyebrows as of a man long sick, and he lay motionless. But the +eyes had meaning in them; they were the eyes of the living. So brother and +sister looked into each other, thus, and without words, without a murmur, +it was all known between them. She understood! He had thrown his life into +the abyss before her that she might be kept to that vision they had had as +boy and girl. It was not to be for him. But for her! + +"Vick!" she whispered, falling on her knees by his side. For reply there +was that steady searching look, which spoke to unknown depths within her. +"Vick!" she moaned. The white lips of the dying man trembled, and a faint +flutter of breath crossed them--but no words. His fingers touched her hair. +When she looked at him again through her tears, the eyes were closed, and +the face bore an austere look of preoccupation, as of one withdrawn from +the business of life.... Afterwards the nurse touched the kneeling woman, +the doctor came, she was led away. She knew that Vickers was dead. + + * * * * * + +Late that afternoon there came a knock at the door of the room where +Isabelle was, and her husband, hearing no sound, entered. She looked up +wonderingly from the lounge where she lay. She did not know that John was +in the house, that he had been sent for. She was unaware what time had +elapsed since the evening before. + +"Isabelle," he said and stopped. She looked at him questioningly. The +irritation that of late his very presence had caused her she was not +conscious of now. All the irritations of life had been suddenly wiped out +in the great fact. As she looked at her husband's grave face, she saw it +with a new sense,--she saw what was behind it, as if she had had the power +given her to read beneath matter. She saw his concern, his real sorrow, his +consideration, the distress for her in the heart of this man, whom she had +thrust out of her life.... + +"Isabelle," he said very gently, hesitantly. "Tom has come--is +downstairs--wants to see you. He asked me if you would see him for a +moment." + +This also did not surprise her. She was silent for a moment, and her +husband said:-- + +"Do you want to see him?" + +"Yes," she replied finally. "I will see him.... I will go down at once." + +She rose and stepped towards the door. + +"Isabelle!" Her husband's voice broke. Still standing with one hand on the +knob of the door, he took from his pocket with the other a small pistol, +and held it towards her on the palm of his hand. "Isabelle," he said, "this +was in the river--near where they found him!" + +She looked at it calmly. It was that little gold and ivory chased toy which +she remembered Tom had used one afternoon to shoot the magnolia blossoms +with. She remembered it well. It was broken open, and a cartridge half +protruded from the breach. + +"I thought you should know," Lane added. + +"Yes," Isabelle whispered. "I know. I knew! ... But I will go down and see +him." + +Her husband replaced the pistol in his pocket and opened the door for her. + + * * * * * + +Cairy was waiting before the fireplace in the library, nervously pacing to +and fro across the rug. Would she see him? How much did she know? How much +did they all know? How much would she forgive? ... These questions had +racked him every hour since in a spasm of nervous terror he had flung the +pistol over the bushes and heard it splash in the river, and with one +terrified look at the wounded man, whom he had dragged into the thicket, +had got himself in some unremembered fashion to the junction in time for +the express. These and other considerations--what story should he +tell?--had racked him all through the evening, which he had been obliged to +spend with the actress, answering her silly objections to this and that in +his play. Then during the night it became clear to him that he must return +to the Farm in the morning as he had planned, as if nothing had happened. +His story would be that Vickers had turned back before they reached the +junction, and had borrowed his pistol to shoot at woodchucks.... Would +Isabelle believe this? She _must_ believe it! ... It took courage to walk +up to the familiar house, but he must see her. It was the only way. And he +had been steadying himself for his part ever since he had left the city. + +When Isabelle entered the room, she closed the door behind her and stood +with her back against it for support. She wore the same white dress that +she had had on when Cairy and Vickers had left her, not having changed it +for tea. It had across the breast a small red stain,--the stain of her +brother's blood. Cairy reached out his hands and started towards her, +crying:-- + +"Isabelle! Isabelle! how awful! Isabelle,--I--" She raised her arm as if to +forbid him to advance, and he stood still, his words dying on his lips. +Looking at him out of her weary eyes, Isabelle seemed to see through the +man, with that same curious insight that had come when she had read the +truth in her brother's eyes; the same insight that had enabled her to see +the kindness and the pity beneath her husband's impassive gravity. So now +she knew what he was going to say, the lie he would try to tell her. It was +as if she knew every secret corner of the man's soul, had known it always +really, and had merely veiled her eyes to him wilfully. Now the veil had +been torn aside. Had Vickers given her this power to see into the heart of +things, for always, so that the truths behind the veil she made should +never be hid? + +'Why does he try to lie to me?' she seemed to ask herself. 'It is so weak +to lie in this world where all becomes known.' She merely gazed at him in +wonder, seeing the deformed soul of the deformed body, eaten by egotism and +passions. And this last--cowardice! And he was the man she had loved! That +she had been ready to die for, to throw away all for, even the happiness of +others! ... It was all strangely dead. A body stood there before her in its +nakedness. + +"What do you want?" she demanded almost indifferently. + +"I had to see you!" He had forgotten his story, his emotion,--everything +beneath that piercing stare, which stripped him to the bone. + +"Haven't you--a word--" he muttered. + +Her eyes cried: 'I know. I know! I know ALL--even as those who are dead +know.' + +"Nothing!" she said. + +"Isabelle!" he cried, and moved nearer. But the warning hand stopped him +again, and the empty voice said, "Nothing!" + +Then he saw that it was all ended between them, that this brother's blood, +which stained her breast, lay forever between them, could not be crossed by +any human will. And more, that the verity of life itself lay like a +blinding light between them, revealing him and her and their love. It was +dead, that love which they had thought was sacred and eternal, in the clear +light of truth. + +Without a word he walked to the open window and stepped into the garden, +and his footstep on the gravel died away. Then Isabelle went back to the +dead body in her room above. + +On the terrace Lane was sitting beside his little girl, the father talking +in low tones to the child, explaining what is death. + + + + +PART SIX + + + +CHAPTER LV + + +It was a long, cold drive from the station at White River up into the +hills. In the gloom of the December afternoon the aspect of the austere, +pitiless northern winter was intensified. A thin crust of snow through +which the young pines and firs forced their green tips covered the dead +blackberry vines along the roadside. The ice of the brooks was broken in +the centre like cracked sheets of glass, revealing the black water gurgling +between the frozen banks. The road lay steadily uphill, and the two +rough-coated farm horses pulled heavily at the stiff harness, slipping +constantly in the track that was worn smooth and polished by the shoes of +the wood-sleds. As the valley fell behind, the country opened out in broad +sheets of snow-covered fields where frozen wisps of dead weeds fluttered +above the crust. Then came the woods, dark with "black growth," and more +distant hillsides, gray and black, where the leafless deciduous growth +mingled with the evergreens. At infrequent intervals along the road +appeared little farm-houses,--two rooms and an attic, with rickety +outhouses and barns, all banked with earth to protect them from the winter. +These were forlorn enough when they showed marks of life; but again and +again they were deserted, with their special air of decay, the wind sucking +through the paneless windows, the snow lying in unbroken drifts up to the +rotting sills. Sometimes a lane led from the highroad to where one or +perhaps two houses were hidden under the shelter of a hill, removed still +farther from the artery of life. Already the lamps had begun to glimmer +from these remote habitations, dotting the hillsides like widely scattered +candles. + +Lonely and desolate! These human beings lived in an isolation of snow and +frozen earth. So thought Isabelle Lane, chilled beneath the old fur robe, +cold to the heart.... Ahead the hills lifted with broader lines, higher, +more lonely, and the gray clouds almost touched their tops. In a cleft of +the range towards which the road was winding, there shone a saffron light, +the last effort of the December sun to break through the heavy sky. And for +a few moments there gleamed far away to the left a spot of bright light, +marvellously clear and illuming, where the white breast of a clearing on +the mountain had received these last few rays of sun. A warm golden pathway +led through the forest to it from the sun. That distant spot of sunny snow +was radiant, still, uplifting. Suddenly gloom again! The saffron glow faded +from the Pass between the hills, and the north wind drew down into the +valley, drifting the manes and the tails of the plodding horses. Soft wisps +of snow circled and fell,--the heralding flakes of winter storm.... + +It seemed to Isabelle that she had been journeying on like this for +uncounted time, and would plod on like this always,--chilled, numbed to the +heart, moving through a frozen, lonely world far from the voices of men, +remote from the multitudinous feet bent on the joyous errands of life.... +She had sunk into a lethargy of body and mind, in which the cheerless +physical atmosphere reflected the condition of being within,--something +empty or dead, with a dull ache instead of consciousness.... + +The sleigh surmounted the long hill, swept at a trot around the edge of the +mountain through dark woods, then out into an unexpected plateau of open +fields. There was a cluster of lights in a small village, and they came to +a sudden stop before a little brick house that was swathed in spruce +boughs, like a blanket drawn close about the feet, to keep out the storm. +The door opened and against the lighted room a small black figure stood +out. Isabelle, stumbling numbly up the steps, fell into the arms of +Margaret Pole. + +"You must be nearly dead, poor dear! I have lighted a fire in your room +upstairs.... I am so glad you have come. I have hoped for it so long!" + +When they were before the blazing wood fire, Margaret unfastened Isabelle's +long cloak and they stood, both in black, pale in the firelight, and looked +at each other, then embraced without a word. + +"I wanted to come," Isabelle said at last when she was settled into the old +arm-chair beside the fire, "when you first wrote. But I was too ill. I +seemed to have lost not only strength but will to move.... It's good to be +here." + +"They are the nicest people, these Shorts! He's a wheelwright and +blacksmith, and she used to teach school. It's all very plain, like one of +our mountain places in Virginia; but it's heavenly peaceful--removed. +You'll feel in a day or two that you have left everything behind you, down +there below!" + +"And the children?" + +"They are splendidly. And Ned is really getting better--the doctor has +worked a miracle for the poor little man. We think it won't be long now +before he can walk and do what the others do. And he is happy. He used to +have sullen fits,--resented his misfortune just like a grown person. He's +different now!" + +There was a buoyant note in Margaret's deep tones. Pale as she was in her +black dress and slight,--"the mere spirit of a woman," as Falkner had +called her,--there was a gentler curve to the lips, less chafing in the +sunken eyes. + +'I suppose it is a great relief,' thought Isabelle,--'Larry's death, even +with all its horror,--she can breathe once more, poor Margaret!' + +"Tell me!" she said idly, as Margaret wheeled the lounge to the fire for +Isabelle to rest on; "however did you happen to come up here to the land's +end in Vermont--or is it Canada?" + +"Grosvenor is just inside the line.... Why, it was the doctor--Dr. Renault, +you know, the one who operated on Ned. I wanted to be near him. It was in +July after Larry's death that we came, and I haven't been away since. And I +shall stay, always perhaps, at least as long as the doctor can do anything +for the little man. And for me.... I like it. At first it seemed a bit +lonesome and far away, this tiny village shut in among the hills, with +nobody to talk to. But after a time you come to see a lot just here in this +mite of a village. One's glasses become adjusted, as the doctor says, and +you can see what you have never taken the time to see before. There's a +stirring world up here on Grosvenor Flat! And the country is so +lovely,--bigger and sterner than my old Virginia hills, but not unlike +them." + +"And why does your wonderful doctor live out of the world like this?" + +"Dr. Renault used to be in New York, you know,--had his own private +hospital there for his operations. He had to leave the city and his work +because he was threatened with consumption. For a year he went the usual +round of cures,--to the Adirondacks, out West; and he told me that one +night while he was camping on the plains in Arizona, lying awake watching +the stars, it came to him suddenly that the one thing for him to do was to +stop this health-hunt, go back where he came from, and go to work--and +forget he was ill until he died. The next morning he broke camp, rode out +to the railroad, came straight here from Arizona, and has been here ever +since." + +"But why _here_?" + +"Because he came from Grosvenor as a boy. It must be a French +family--Renault--and it is only a few miles north to the line.... So he +came here, and the climate or the life or something suits him wonderfully. +He works like a horse!" + +"Is he interesting, your doctor?" Isabelle asked idly. + +"That's as you take him," Margaret replied with a little smile. "Not from +Conny Woodyard's point of view, I should say. He has too many blind sides. +But I have come to think him a really great man! And that, my dear, is more +than what we used to call 'interesting.'" + +"But how can he do his work up here?" + +"That's the wonderful part of it all! He's _made_ the world come to +him,--what he needs of it. He says there is nothing marvellous in it; that +all through the middle ages the sick and the needy flocked to remote spots, +to deserts and mountain villages, wherever they thought help was to be +found. Most great cures are not made even now in the cities." + +"But hospitals?" + +"He has his own, right here in Grosvenor Flat, and a perfect one. The great +surgeons and doctors come up here and send patients here. He has all he can +do, with two assistants." + +"He must be a strong man." + +"You will see! The place is Renault. It all bears the print of his hand. He +says himself that given a man with a real idea, a persistent idea, and he +will make the desert blossom like a garden or move mountains,--in some way +he will make that idea part of the organism of life! ... There! I am +quoting the doctor again, the third time. It's a habit one gets into up +here!" + +At the tinkle of a bell below, Margaret exclaimed:-- + +"It's six and supper, and you have had no real rest. You see the hours are +primitive here,--breakfast at seven, dinner noon, and supper six. You will +get used to it in a few days." + +The dining room was a corner of the old kitchen that had been partitioned +off. It was warm and bright, with an open fire, and the supper that Mrs. +Short put on the table excellent. Mr. Short came in presently and took his +seat at the head of the table. He was a large man, with a bony face +softened by a thick grizzled beard. He said grace in a low voice, and then +served the food. Isabelle noticed that his large hands were finely formed. +His manner was kindly, in a subtle way that of the host at his own table; +but he said little or nothing at first. The children made the conversation, +piping up like little birds about the table and keeping the older people +laughing. Isabelle had always felt that children at the table were a bore, +either forward and a nuisance, or like little lynxes uncomfortably +absorbing conversation, that was not suited to them. Perhaps that was +because she knew few families where children were socially educated to take +their place at the table, being relegated for the most part to the nurse or +the governess. + +Isabelle was much interested in Mr. Short. His wife, a thin, gray-haired +woman, who wore spectacles and had a timid manner of speaking, was less of +a person than the blacksmith. Sol Short, she found out later, had never +been fifty miles from Grosvenor Flat in his life, but he had the poise, the +self-contained air of a man who had acquired all needed worldly experience. + +"Was it chilly coming up the Pass?" he asked Isabelle. "I thought 'twould +be when it came on to blow some from the mountains. And Pete Jackson's +horses _are_ slow." + +"They seemed frozen!" + +The large man laughed. + +"Well, you would take your time if you made that journey twice a day most +every day in the year. You can't expect them to get exactly excited over +it, can you?" + +"Mr. Short," Margaret remarked, "I saw a light this evening in the house on +Wing Hill. What can it be?" + +"Some folks from down state have moved in,--renters, I take it." + +"How do you know that?" + +"From the look of the stuff Bailey's boy was hauling up there this morning. +It's travelled often." + +"Mr. Short," Margaret explained merrily, "is the Grosvenor _Times_. His +shop is the centre of our universe. From it he sees all that happens in our +world--or his cronies tell him what he can't see. He knows what is going on +in the remotest corner of the township,--what Hiram Bailey got for his +potatoes, where Bill King sold his apples, whether Mrs. Beans's second son +has gone to the Academy at White River. He knows the color and the power of +every horse, the number of cows on every farm, the make of every +wagon,--everything!" + +"Not so bad as all that!" the blacksmith protested. It was evidently a +family joke. "We don't gossip, do we, Jenny?" + +"We don't gossip! But we keep our eyes open and tell what we see." + +It was a pleasant, human sort of atmosphere. After the meal the two friends +went back to Isabelle's couch and fire, Mrs. Short offering to put the +youngest child to bed for Margaret. + +"She likes to," Margaret explained. "Her daughter has gone away to +college.... It is marvellous what that frail-looking woman can do; she does +most of the cooking and housework, and never seems really busy. She +prepared this daughter for college! She makes me ashamed of the little I +accomplish,--and she reads, too, half a dozen magazines and all the stray +books that come her way." + +"But how can you stand it?" Isabelle asked bluntly; "I mean for months." + +"Stand it? You mean the hours, the Strongs, Grosvenor? ... Why, I feel +positively afraid when I think that some day I may be shaken out of this +nest! You will see. It is all so simple and easy, so human and natural, +just like Mr. Short's day's work,--the same thing for thirty years, ever +since he married the school teacher and took this house. You'll hear him +building the fires to-morrow before daylight. He is at his shop at +six-thirty, home at twelve, back again at one, milks the cow at five, and +supper at six, bed at nine. Why, it's an Odyssey, that day,--as Mr. Short +lives it!" + +Margaret opened the window and drew in the shutters. Outside it was very +still, and the snow was falling in fine flakes. + +"The children will be so glad to-morrow," she remarked, "with all this +snow. They are building a large bob-sled under Mr. Short's direction.... +No!" she resumed her former thread of thought. "It doesn't count so much as +we used to think--the variety of the thing you do, the change,--the +novelty. It's the mind you do it with that makes it worth while." + +Isabelle stared at the ceiling which was revealed fitfully by the dying +fire. She still felt dead, numb, but this was a peaceful sort of grave, so +remote, so silent. That endless torturing thought--the chain of weary +reproach and useless speculation, which beset every waking moment--had +ceased for the moment. It was like quiet after a perpetual whirring sound. + +She liked to look at Margaret, to feel her near, but she mused over her. +She was changed. Margaret had had this disease, too, this weariness of +living, the torturing doubt,--if this or that, the one thing or the other, +had happened, it might have been different,--the haggling of defeated will! +No wonder she was glad to be out of the city up here at peace.... + +"But one can't stay out of life for always," she remonstrated. + +"Why not? What you call the world seems to get along very well without us, +without any one in particular. And I don't feel the siren call, not yet!" + +"But life can't be over at thirty-three,--one can't be really dead, I +suppose." + +"No,--just beginning!" Margaret responded with an elasticity that amazed +Isabelle, who remembered the languid woman she had known so many years. +"Just beginning," she murmured, "after the journey in the dark." + +'Of course,' mused Isabelle, 'she means the relief from Larry, the anxiety +over the boy,--all that she has had to bear. Yes, for her there is some +beginning anew. She might possibly marry Rob Falkner now, if his wife got +somebody else to look after her silly existence. Why shouldn't she? +Margaret is still young,--she might even be pretty again.' And Isabelle +wished to know what the situation was between Margaret and Falkner. + +Nothing, it seemed, could make any difference to herself! She ached to tell +some one of the despair in her heart, but even to Margaret she could not +speak. Since that summer morning six months before when Vickers had died +without a spoken word, she had never said his name. Her husband had mutely +respected her muteness. Then she had been ill,--too ill to think or plan, +too ill for everything but remembrance. Now it was all shut up, her +tragedy, festering at the bottom of her heart like an undrained wound, +poisoning her soul.... Suddenly in the midst of her brooding she woke with +a start at something Margaret was saying, so unlike her reticent self. + +... "You knew, of course, about Larry's death?" + +"Yes, John told me." + +"It was in the papers, too." + +"Poor Margaret!--I was so sorry for you--it was terrible!" + +"You mustn't think of it that way,--I mean for me. It was terrible that any +human being should be where Larry got,--where he was hunted like a dog by +his own acts, and in sheer despair made an end of himself. I often think of +that--think what it must be not to have the courage to go on, not to feel +the strength in yourself to live another hour!" + +"It's always insanity. No sane person would do such a thing!" + +"We call it insanity. But what difference does the name make?" Margaret +said. "A human being falls into a state of mind where he is without one +hope, one consideration,--all is misery. Then he takes what seems the only +relief--death--as he would food or drink; that is sad." + +"It was Larry's own doing, Margaret; he had his chance!" + +"Of course, more than his chance--more than many chances. He was the kind +of protoplasm that could not endure life, that carried in itself the seed +of decay,--yet--yet--" She raised her pale face with the luminous eyes and +said softly: "Sometimes I wonder if it had to be. When I look at little Ned +and see how health is coming to that crippled body--the processes are +righting themselves--sound and healthy, ready to be helped back to life--I +wonder if it may not be so with other processes not wholly physical. I +wonder! ... Did you ever think, Isabelle, that we are waiting close to +other worlds,--we can almost hear from them with our ears,--but we only +hear confusedly so far. Some day we may hear more clearly!" + +Margaret had reverted, Isabelle concluded, to the religion of her father, +the Bishop! What she was vaguely talking about was the Bishop's heaven, in +which the widow and orphan were counselled to take comfort. + +"I wish I could feel it,--what the church teaches," Isabelle replied. "But +I can't,--it isn't real. I go to church and say over the creed and ask +myself what it means, and feel the same way when I come out--or worse!" + +"I don't mean religion--the church," Margaret smiled back. "That has been +dead for me a long time. It's something you come to feel within you about +life. I can't explain--only there might have been a light even for poor +Larry in that last dreadful darkness! ... Some day I want to tell you all +about myself, something I have never told any one,--but it will help to +explain, perhaps.... Now you must go to bed,--I will send my black Sue up +with your coffee in the morning."... + +Isabelle, as she lay awake in the stillness, the absolute hush of the snowy +night, thought of what Margaret had said about her husband. John had told +her how Larry had gradually gone to the bad in a desultory, weak-kneed +fashion,--had lost his clerkship in the A. and P. that Lane had got for +him; then had taken to hanging about the downtown hotels, betting a little, +drinking a little, and finally one morning the curt paragraph in the paper: +"Found, in the North River, body of a respectably dressed man about forty +years. Papers on him show that he was Lawrence Pole of Westchester," etc., +etc. + +And John's brief comment,--"Pity that he hadn't done it ten years ago." +Yes, thought Isabella, pity that he was ever born, the derelict, ever came +into this difficult world to complicate further its issues. Margaret +apparently had towards this worthless being who had marred her life a +softened feeling. But it was absurd of her now to think that she might have +loved him! + + + + +CHAPTER LVI + + +Long before it was light the next morning Isabelle heard the heavy tread of +the blacksmith as he was going his rounds to light the fires; then she +snuggled deeper into bed. When Margaret's maid finally came with the coffee +and pushed back the heavy shutters, Isabelle looked out into another world +from the one she had come to half frozen the afternoon before. She had +entered the village from the rear, and now she looked off south and west +from the level shelf on which the houses sat, across a broad valley, to +black woods and a sloping breast of hills, freshly powdered with snow, to +the blue sky-line, all as clear in the snow-washed mountain air as in a +desert. The sun striking down into the valley brought out the faint azure +of the inner folds of the hills. + +There was scarcely a footprint in the road to break the soft mass of +new-fallen snow. Isabelle could see a black cat deliberately stealing its +way from the barn across the road to the house. It lifted each paw with +delicate precision and pushed it firmly into the snow, casting a deep +shadow on the gleaming surface of white. The black cat, lean and muscular, +stretching itself across the snow, was the touch of art needed to complete +the silent scene.... + +A wood-sled drawn by two heavy horses came around the corner of the house, +softly churning the new snow before its runners. A man clad in a burly +sheepskin coat and fur cap, his feet in enormous rubber shoes, stood on the +sled, slowly thrashing his arms and breathing frostily. + +"Hello, Sol!" the man cried to the blacksmith, who was shovelling a path +from the barn to the house. + +"Morning, Ed. Going up to Cross's lot?" + +"Ye--as--" + +"Hard sledding?" + +The two men exchanged amicable nothings in the crisp, brilliant air through +which their voices rang with a peculiar timbre. To Isabelle, looking and +listening from her window, it was all so fresh, so simple, like a picture +on a Japanese print! For the first time in months she had a distinct +desire,--to get outside and look at the hills. + +"You are commanded," announced Margaret, a little later, "to the doctor's +for supper at six. That wasn't the way it was put exactly, but it amounts +to the same thing. The doctor's least word is a command here.... Now I am +off to help the housekeeper with the accounts,--it's all I am good for!"... + +So Isabelle was left to set forth on her ramble of exploration by herself. +She pushed through the snow to the last house on the village street, where +the road dipped down a long hill, and the wide arc of northern mountains +was revealed in a glittering rampart. Her eyes filled involuntarily with +tears. + +"I must be very weak," she said to herself, "to cry because it's +beautiful!" And sitting down on a rock by the road, she cried more, with a +feeling of self-pity and a little self-contempt. An old woman came to the +door of the house she had just passed with a dish-pan of water and looked +curiously at the stranger. At first the countrywoman opened her lips as if +she intended to speak, but stood with her dish-pan and said nothing. +Isabelle could see through her tears the bent figure and battered face of +the old woman,--a being without one line of beauty or even animal grace. +What a fight life must have been to reduce any woman's body to that! And +the purpose,--to keep the breath of life in a worn old body, just to live? + +"Pleasant morning!" Isabelle said with a smile through her tears. + +"It ain't bad," the old woman admitted, emptying her dish-pan. + +As Isabelle retraced her steps into the village the old woman followed her +with curious eyes, thinking no doubt that a woman like this stranger, well +dressed, young, and apparently well fed, ought not to be sitting on a rock +on a winter's day crying! + +"And she's quite right!" Isabelle said to herself. + +The jewelled morning was the same to them both,--the outer world was +imperturbable in its circular variety. But the inner world, the +vision,--ah, there was the extraordinary variation in human lives! From +heaven to hell through all gradations, and whether it were heaven or hell +did not depend on being like this crone at the end of the road or like +herself in its sheltered nooks,--it was something else. + +"I will have to see Margaret's wonderful doctor, if this keeps on," she +said, still dropping tears. + +The blacksmith stood beside the open door of his shop, gazing reflectively +across the white fields to the upland. Beside him was a broken wood-sled +that he was mending. Seeing Isabelle, he waved her a slow salute with the +sled-runner he had ready in his hand. + +"Morning!" he called out in his deep voice. "Seeing the country? The hills +are extra fine this morning." + +He proceeded slowly to brush the snow from the frame of the sled, still +glancing now and then over the fields. Isabelle felt that she had caught +his characteristic moment, _his_ inner vision. + +"You have a good view from your shop." + +"The best in the town! I've always been grateful to my father for one +thing,--well, for many things,--but specially because he had the good sense +to set the old smithy right here where you can see something. When there +isn't much going on, I come out of doors here and take a long look at the +mountains. It rests your back so." + +Isabelle sat down in the shop and watched Mr. Short repair the sled, +interested in the slow, sure movements he made, the painstaking way in +which he fitted iron and wood and riveted the pieces together. It must be a +relief, she thought, to work with one's hands like that,--which men could +do, forgetting the number of manual movements Mrs. Short also made during +the same time. The blacksmith talked as he worked, in a gentle voice +without a trace of self-consciousness, and Isabelle had again that sense of +VISION, of something inward and sustaining in this man of remote and narrow +range,--something that expressed itself in the slow speech, the peaceful, +self-contained manner. As she went back up the street to the house the +thick cloud of depression, of intangible misery, in which she had been +living as it seemed to her for eternity, settled down once more,--the +habitual gait of her mind, like the dragging gait of her feet. She at least +was powerless to escape the bitter food of idle recollection. + + * * * * * + +The doctor's house was a plain, square, white building, a little way above +the main road, from which there was a drive winding through the spruces. On +the sides and behind the house stretched one-story wings, also white and +severely plain. "Those are the wards, and the one behind is the operating +room," Margaret explained. + +The house inside was as plain as on the outside: there were no pictures, no +rugs, no useless furniture. The large hall divided the first floor in two. +On the right was the office and the dining room, on the left with a +southerly exposure the large living room. There were great, blazing fires +in all the rooms and in the hall at either side,--there was no other +heat,--and the odor of burning fir boughs permeated the atmosphere. + +"It's like a hospital almost," Isabelle commented as they waited in the +living room. "And he has French blood! How can he stand it so--bare and +cold?" + +"The doctor's limitations are as interesting as his powers. He never has a +newspaper in the house, nor a magazine,--burns them up if he finds them +lying about. Yet he reads a great deal. He has a contempt for all the froth +of immediate living, and still the whole place is the most modern, +up-to-date contemporary machine of its kind!" + +Outside was the blackness of the cold winter night; inside the grayness of +stained walls lighted by the glow from the blazing fires. A few pieces of +statuary, copies of the work of the idealistic Greek period, stood in the +hall and the living room. All that meant merely comfort, homelikeness--all +in a word that was characteristically American--was wanting. Nevertheless, +as Isabelle waited in the room she was aware of a peculiar grave beauty in +its very exclusions. This house had the atmosphere of a mind. + +Some nurse came in and nodded to Margaret, then Mrs. Beck the matron +appeared, and a couple of young doctors followed. They had been across the +valley on snow-shoes in the afternoon and were talking of their adventures +in the woods. There was much laughter and gayety--as if gathered here in +the wilderness these people all knew one another very well. After some time +Isabelle became aware of the entrance of another person, and turning around +saw a thin, slight man with a thick head of gray hair. His smooth-shaven +face was modelled with many lines, and under the dark eyebrows that had not +yet turned gray there were piercing black eyes. Although the talk and the +laughter did not die at once, there was the subtle movement among the +persons in the room which indicated that the master of the house had +appeared. Dr. Renault walked directly to Isabelle. + +"Good evening, Mrs. Lane. Will you come in to supper?" + +He offered her his arm, and without further word of ceremony they went into +the dining room. At the table the doctor said little to her at first. He +leaned back in his chair, his eyes half closed, listening to the talk of +the others, as if weary after a long day. Isabelle was puzzled by a sense +of something familiar in the man at her side; she must have met him before, +she could not tell where. The dining room, like the living room, was +square, panelled with white wood, and the walls stained. It was bare except +for several copies of Tanagra figurines in a recess above the chimney and +two large photographs of Greek athletes. The long table, made of heavy oak +planks, had no cloth, and the dishes were of the coarsest earthenware, such +as French peasants use. + +The talk was lively enough,--about two new cases that had arrived that +afternoon, the deer-hunting season that had just closed, bear tracks +discovered on Bolton Hill near the lumber-camp, and a new piano that a +friend had sent for the convalescent or "dotty" ward, as they called it. +The young doctor who sat at Isabelle's right asked her if she could play or +sing, and when she said no, he asked her if she could skee. Those were the +only personal remarks of the meal. Margaret, who was very much at home, +entered into the talk with unwonted liveliness. It was a workshop of busy +men and women who had finished the day's labor with enough vitality left to +react. The food, Isabelle noticed, was plentiful and more than good. At the +end of the meal the young men lighted cigarettes, and one of the nurses +also smoked, while a box of cigars was placed before Renault. Some one +began to sing, and the table joined the chorus, gathering about the +chimney, where there were a couple of settles. + +It was a life, so Isabelle saw, with an order of its own, a direction of +its own, a strong undercurrent. Its oddity and nonchalance were refreshing. +Like one of the mountain brooks it ran its own course, strong and liquid +beneath the snow, to its own end. + +"You seem to have a very good time up here among yourselves!" Isabelle said +to the doctor, expressing her wonder frankly. + +"And why not?" he asked, a smile on his thin lips. He helped himself to a +cigar, still looking at her whimsically, and biting off its end held a +match ready to strike, as if awaiting her next remark. + +"But don't you ever want to get away, to go back to the city? Don't you +feel--isolated?" + +"Why should we? Because there's no opera or dinner parties? We have a +dinner party every night." He lighted his cigar and grinned at Isabelle. +"The city delusion is one of the chief idiocies of our day. City people +encourage the idea that you can't get on without their society. Man was not +meant to live herded along sidewalks. The cities breed the diseases for us +doctors,--that is their one great occupation." + +He threw the match into the fire, leaned back in his chair with his hands +knit behind his head, and fastening his black eyes on Isabelle began to +talk. + +"I lived upwards of twenty years in cities with that same delusion,--not +daring to get more than a trolley-car fare away from the muck and noise. +Then I was kicked out,--had to go, thank God! On the Arizona plains I +learned to know what an idiot I had been to throw away the better half of a +life in a place where you have to breathe other peoples' bad air. Why, +there isn't room to think in a city! I never used to think, or only at odd +moments. I lived from one nervous reflex to another, and took most of my +ideas from other folks. Now I do my own thinking. Just try it, young woman; +it is a great relief!" + +"But--but--" Isabelle stammered, laughing in spite of herself. + +"You know," Renault bore on tranquilly, "there's a new form of mental +disease you might call 'pavementitis'--the pavement itch. When the patient +has it badly, so that he can't be happy when removed from his customary +environment, he is incurable. A man isn't a sound man, nor a woman a +healthy woman, who can't stand alone on his own two legs and be nourished +intellectually and emotionally away from the herd.... That young fellow who +has just gone out was a bad case of pavementitis when he came to +me,--couldn't breathe comfortably outside the air of New York. Hard worker, +too. He came up here to 'rest.' Rest! Almost nobody needs rest. What they +want is hard work and tranquil minds. I put him on his job the day he came. +You couldn't drive him away now! Last fall I sent him back to see if the +cure was complete. Telegraphed me in a week that he was coming up,--life +was too dull down there! ... And that little black-haired woman who is +talking to Mrs. Pole,--similar case, only it was complicated. She was +neurotic, hysterical, insomniac, melancholy,--the usual neurasthenic +ticket. Had a husband who didn't suit or a lover, I suspect, and it got +fastened in the brain,--rode her. She's my chief nurse in the surgical ward +now,--a tremendous worker; can go three nights without sleep if necessary +and knows enough to sleep soundly when she gets the chance.... Has relapses +of pavementitis now and then, when some of her fool friends write her; but +I fix that! ... So it goes; I have had incurable cases of course, as in +everything else. The only thing to do with 'em then is to send them back to +suck their poison until it kills." + +The whimsical tone of irony and invective made Isabelle laugh, and also +subtly changed her self-preoccupation. Evidently Dr. Renault was not a +Potts to go to with a long story of woe. + +"I thought it was surgery, your specialty," she remarked, "not nervous +prostration." + +"We do pretty much everything here--as it is needed. Come in to-morrow +morning sometime and look the shop over." + +He rose, threw away his cigar, and at this signal the group scattered. +Renault, Margaret, and Isabelle went back to the bare living room, where +the doctor stood silently in front of the fireplace for a few minutes, as +though expecting his guests to leave. When they started, he threw open a +long window and beckoned to Isabelle to follow him. Outside there was a +broad platform running out over the crest of the hill on which the house +was built. The land beyond fell away sharply, then rose in a wooded swell +to the northern mountains. The night was dark with glittering starlight +above, and the presence of the white masses of the hills could be felt +rather than seen,--brooding under the stars. There was the tinkle of a +sleigh-bell on the road below,--the only sound in the still night. + +"There!" Renault exclaimed. "Is there anything you would like to swap for +this?" + +He breathed deeply of the frosty air. + +"It seems almost as if a voice were speaking in the silence!" + +"Yes," Renault assented gravely. "There is a voice, and you can hear it up +here--if you listen." + + + + +CHAPTER LVII + + +On their way home the two women discussed the doctor eagerly. + +"I must have seen Dr. Renault somewhere," Isabelle said, "or rather what he +might have been once. He's a person!" + +"That is it,--he is a person,--not just a doctor or a clever surgeon." + +"Has he other regular patients besides the children, the surgical cases?" + +"He started with those alone. But latterly, they tell me, he has become +more interested in the nervous ward,--what he calls the 'dotty' +ward,--where there are chiefly convalescent children or incurable nervous +diseases of children. It is wonderful what he does with them. The power he +has over them is like the power of the old saints who worked miracles,--a +religious power,--or the pure force of the will, if you prefer." + +After her evening with Renault, Isabelle felt that Margaret's description +might not be too fervid. + +Towards morning Isabelle woke, and in the sudden clarity of the silent hour +thoughts flowed through her with wonderful vividness. She saw Renault's +face and manner, his sharp eyes, his air of dictation, arrogant and at the +same time kindly,--yes, there was a power in the man! As Margaret had put +it,--a religious power. The word set loose numberless thoughts, distasteful +ones, dead ones. She saw the respectable Presbyterian caravansary in St. +Louis where the family worshipped,--sermons, creeds, dogmas,--the little +stone chapel at Grafton where she had been confirmed, and her attempt to +believe herself moved by some spiritual force, expressed in the formulas +that the old clergyman had taught her. Then the phrases rose in her mind. +It might have done her good once,--people found it helpful,--women +especially in their hours of trial. She disliked the idea of leaning for +help on something which in her hours of vigor she rejected. A refuge, an +explanation,--no, it was not possible! The story of the atonement, the +rewards, the mystical attempt to explain the tragedy of life, its sorrow +and pain,--no, it was childish! So the word "religious" had something in it +repellent, sickly, and self-deceptive.... Suddenly the words stood out +sharply in her mind,--"What we need is a new religion!" A new +religion,--where had she heard that? ... Another flash in her brooding +consciousness and there came the face of the doctor, the face of the man +who had talked to her one Sunday afternoon at the house where there had +been music. She remembered that she wished the music would not interrupt +their conversation. Yes, he was bidding her good-by, at the steps, his hat +raised in his hand, and he had said with that same whimsical smile, "What +we need is a new religion!" It was an odd thing to say in the New York +street, after an entirely delightful Sunday afternoon of music. Now the +face was older, more tense, yet with added calm. Had he found his religion? +And with a wistful desire to know what it was, the religion that made +Renault live as he did, Isabelle dropped once more to sleep. + + * * * * * + +When Isabelle presented herself at the doctor's house the next morning, as +he had suggested, the little black-haired nurse met her and made Renault's +excuses. The doctor was occupied, but would try to join her later. +Meanwhile would she like to look over the operating room and the surgical +ward? The young doctor who had been afflicted with pavementitis--a large, +florid, blond young man--showed her through the operating room, explaining +to her the many devices, the endless well-thought-out detail, from the +plumbing to the special electric lighting. + +"It's absolutely perfect, Mrs. Lane!" he summed up, and when Isabelle +smiled at his enthusiasm, he grew red of face and stuttered in his effort +to make her comprehend all that his superlative meant. "I know what I am +saying. I have been all over Europe and this country. Every surgeon who +comes here says the same thing. You can't even _imagine_ anything that +might be better. There isn't much in the world where you can't imagine a +something better, an improvement. There's almost always a better to be had +if you could get it. But here, no! ... Porowitz, the great Vienna +orthopaedic surgeon, was here last winter, and he told me there wasn't a +hospital in the whole world where the chances for recovery, taking it all +round, were as large as up here in Grosvenor Flat, Vermont. Think of it! +And there is no hospital that keeps a record where the percentage of +successful operations is as high as ours.... That's enough to say, I +guess," he concluded solemnly, wiping his brow. + +In the surgical ward the wasted, white faces of the sick children disturbed +Isabelle. It all seemed neat, quiet, pleasant. But the physical dislike of +suffering, cultivated by the refinement of a highly individualistic age, +made her shudder. So much there was that was wrong in life to be made +right,--partly right, never wholly right.... It seemed useless, almost +sentimentalism, to attempt this patching of diseased humanity.... + +In the convalescent ward, Margaret was sitting beside a cot reading to her +boy. + +"He'll be home in a few days now!" she said in answer to Isabelle's glance. +"Some day he will be a great football player." + +The child colored at the reference to his ailment. + +"I can walk now," he said, "a little." + +Dr. Renault was at the other end of the ward sitting beside a girl of +twelve, with one arm about her thin back, talking to her. The child's face +was stained with half-dried tears. Presently the doctor took the child up +and carried her to the window, and continued to talk to her, pointing out +of the window. After a time he joined Isabelle, saying:-- + +"I was kept from meeting you when you came by that little girl over there. +She is, by the way, one of our most interesting cases. Came here for hip +disease. She is an orphan,--nothing known about her parents,--probably +alcoholic from the mental symptoms. She has hysteria and undeveloped +suicidal mania." + +"What can you do for her?" + +"What we can with medicine and surgery, and where that fails--we try other +means." + +Isabelle was eager to know what were those "other means," but the doctor +was not a man to be questioned. Presently as he sauntered through the room +he volunteered:-- + +"I have been talking to her,--telling her how the hills are made.... You +see we have to clean out their minds as well as their bodies, get rid so +far as we can of the muddy deposit, both the images associated with their +environment--that is done by bringing them up here--and also what might be +called inherited thought processes. Give 'em a sort of spiritual purge, in +other words," he said with a smile. "Then we can build up, feed their minds +something fresh. Sarah Stern there is an obstinate case,--she has a deep +deposit of ancestral gloom." + +"But you can't overcome the temperament, the inherited nature!" + +Renault waved his hand impatiently. + +"You've been told that since you were born. We have all grown up in that +belief,--it is the curse of the day! ... It can't be done altogether--yet. +Sarah may revert and cut her throat when she leaves here.... But the vital +work for medicine to-day is to see just how much can be done to change +temperament,--inherited nature, as you call it. In other words, to put new +forces to work in diseased brains. Perhaps some day we can do it all,--who +knows?" + +"Plant new souls in place of the old!" + +Renault nodded gravely. + +"That's the true medicine--the root medicine,--to take an imperfect +organism and develop it, mould it to the perfected idea. Life is +plastic,--human beings are plastic,--that is one important thing to +remember!" + +"But you are a surgeon?" + +Renault's lips quivered with one of his ironical smiles. + +"I was a surgeon, just as I was a materialist. When I was young, I was +caught by the lure of so-called science, and became a surgeon, because it +was precise, definite,--and I am something of a dab at it now--ask the boys +here! ... But surgery is artisan work. Younger hands will always beat you. +Pallegrew in there is as good as I am now. There is nothing creative in +surgery; it is on the order of mending shoes. One needs to get beyond +that.... And here is where we get beyond patching.... Don't think we are +just cranks here. We do what we can with the accepted tools,--the knife and +the pill. But we try to go farther--a little way." + +They descended to the basement of the main house where the more active +children were playing games. + +"We have to teach some of them the primitive instincts,--the play instinct, +for example,--and we have a workroom, where we try to teach them the +absorbing excitement of work.... I am thinking of starting a school next. +Don't you want to try a hand at a new sort of education?" + +So, pausing now and then to joke with a child or speak to an assistant, +Renault took Isabelle over his "shop" once more, explaining casually his +purposes. As a whole, it developed before her eyes that here was a +laboratory of the human being, a place where by different processes the +diseased, the twisted, the maimed, the inhibited, the incomplete were +analyzed and reconstructed. As they emerged on the broad platform where +they had stood the night before, Isabelle asked:-- + +"Why is it you work only with children?" + +"Because I started with the little beggars.... And they are more plastic, +too. But some day the same sort of thing will be done with adults. For we +are all plastic.... Good-day!" and he walked away rapidly in the direction +of his office. + +Isabelle returned to the village in a strange excitement of impressions and +thoughts. She felt as if she had been taken up out of the world that she +had lived in and suddenly introduced to a planet which was motived by +totally other ideas than those of the world she knew. Here was a life +laboratory, a place for making over human character as well as tissue. And +in bravado, as it were, the mere refuse of human material was chosen to be +made anew, with happiness, effectiveness, health! She realized that a +satisfactory understanding of it would come slowly; but walking here in the +winter sunshine along the village street, she had that sensation of +strangeness which the child has on coming from the lighted playhouse into +the street.... The set vision that tormented her within--that, too, might +it not be erased? + +About the post-office people were gathered gossiping and laughing, waiting +for the noon mail to be distributed. Country-women in fur coats drove up in +dingy cutters to do their Saturday shopping. The wood-sleds went jogging +past towards the valley. School children were recklessly sliding down the +cross street into the main road. Sol Short was coming over from his shop to +get his paper... Here the old world was moving along its wonted grooves in +this backwater community. But over it all like the color swimming over the +hills was SOMETHING more,--some aspect of life unseen! And faintly, very +dimly, Isabelle began to realize that she had never really been +alive,--these thirty years and more. + +"We are all plastic," she murmured, and looked away to the hills. + + + + +CHAPTER LVIII + + +Life at Grosvenor moved on in a placid routine, day after day. What with +her children and the engrossing work at the doctor's Margaret was busy +every morning, and Isabelle rarely saw her before the noon meal. Then at +the plentiful dinner over which the blacksmith presided with a gentle +courtesy and sweetness there was gossip of the hospital and the village, +while Short, who had the father instinct, entertained the children. He knew +all the resources of the country, every animal wild or tame, every rod of +wood and pasture and hill. The little Poles opened him like an atlas or +encyclopedia. + +"Mr. Wilson begins to haul from his lot to-morrow," he would announce for +their benefit. "I guess he'll take you up to the clearing where the men are +cutting if you look for him sharp. And when you get there, you want to find +a very tall man with a small head. That's Sam Tisdell,--and you tell him I +said he would show you the deer run and the yard the deer have made back +there a piece behind the clearing." + +Then he told them how, when he was a young man, he had hunted for deer on +the mountains and been caught one time in a great snowstorm, almost losing +his life. + +"The children have so much to do and to think about here in Grosvenor that +they are no trouble at all. They never have to be entertained," Margaret +remarked. "Mr. Short is much better for them than a Swiss governess with +three languages!" + + * * * * * + +There were long evenings after the six o'clock suppers, which the two +friends spent together usually, reading or talking before Isabelle's fire. +Wherever the talk started, it would often gravitate to Renault, his +personality dominating like some mountain figure the community. Margaret +had been absorbed into the life of the hospital with its exciting yet +orderly movement. There were new arrivals, departures, difficult cases, +improvements and failures to record. She related some of the slowly wrought +miracles she had witnessed during the months that she had been there. + +"It all sounds like magic," Isabelle had said doubtfully. + +"No, that is just what it isn't," Margaret protested; "the doctor's +processes are not tricks,--they are evident." + +And the two discussed endlessly these "processes" whereby minds were used +to cure matter, the cleansing of the soul,--thought substitution, +suggestion, the relationship of body and mind. And through all the talk, +through the busy routine of the place, in the men and women working in the +hospital, there emerged always that something unseen,--Idea, Will, Spirit, +the motiving force of the whole. Isabelle felt this nowhere more strongly +than in the change in Margaret herself. It was not merely that she seemed +alert and active, wholly absorbed in the things about her, but more in the +marvellous content which filled her. And, as Isabelle reflected, Margaret +was the most discontented woman she had known; even before she married, she +was ever hunting for something. + +"But you can't stay here always," Isabelle said to her one evening. "You +will have to go back to the city to educate the children if for no other +reason." + +"Sometimes I think I shan't go back! Why should I? ... You know I have +almost no money to live on." (Isabelle suspected that Larry's last years +had eaten into the little that had been left of Margaret's fortune). "The +children will go to school here. It would be useless to educate them above +their future, which must be very plain." + +"But you have a lot of relatives who would gladly help you--and them." + +"They might, but I don't think I want their help--even for the children. I +am not so sure that what we call advantages, a good start in life, and all +that, is worth while. I had the chance--you had it, too--and what did we +make of it?" + +"Our children need not repeat our mistakes," Isabelle replied with a sigh. + +"If they were surrounded with the same ideas, they probably would!" ... + +"The doctor has thrown his charm over you!" + +"He has saved my life!" Margaret murmured; "at least he has shown me how to +save it," she corrected. + +There it was again, the mysterious Peace that possessed her, that had +touched Margaret's hard, defiant spirit and tamed it. But Isabelle, +remembering the letters with the Panama postmark she had seen lying on the +hall table, wondered, and she could not help saying:-- + +"You are young yet, Margaret,--oh, it might be--happiness, all that you +have missed!" + +"No!" Margaret replied, with a little smile. "I--think not!" + +She closed her eyes as if she were contemplating that other happiness, and +after a silence she opened them and touched Isabelle's hand. + +"I want to tell you something, dear.... I loved Rob Falkner, very much, the +most a woman can." + +"I knew it! ... I felt it.... That it only might be!" + +"He came to me," Margaret continued, "when I was hard and bitter about +life, when I was dead.... It was the kind of love that women dream of, +ours,--the perfect thing you feel in your heart has always been +there,--that takes all of you! ... It was good for us both--he needed me, +and I needed him." + +"Margaret!" + +"I was wonderfully happy, with a dreadful happiness that was two parts +pain, pain for myself, and more pain for him, because he needed me, you +understand, and it could not be--I could not live with him and give him the +food he hungered for--love." + +Isabelle kissed the wistful face, "I know," she said. "I want to tell you +more--but you may not understand! ... He had to go away. It was best; it +was his work, his life, and I should have been a poor weak fool to let our +love stand in the way. So it was decided, and I urged him to go. He came to +see me at Bedmouth before he left,--a few days, a few hours of love. And we +saw how it would have to be, that we should have to go on loving and living +in the spirit, for as long as our love lasted, apart. We faced that. +But--but--" + +Margaret hesitated and then with shining eyes went on in a low voice. + +"It was not enough what we had had! I was not ready to let him go, to see +him go--without all. He never asked--I gave him all. We went away to have +our love by ourselves,--to live for each other just a few days. He took me +away in his boat, and for a few days, a few nights, we had our love--we saw +our souls." + +She waited, breathing fast, then controlled herself. + +"Those hours were more than ordinary life. They do not seem to me real even +now, or perhaps they are the most real thing in all I have known. It was +love before the parting--before Fate.... When it was all over, we went back +to earth. I returned, to Mother Pole's house in Bedmouth, and I went up to +the children's room and took my baby in my arms and kissed her, my little +girl. And I knew that it had been right, all pure and holy, and I was glad, +oh, so glad that it had been, that we had had the courage!" + +Isabelle pressed the hand she held close to her breast and watched the +shining face. + +"And I have never felt differently--never for one moment since. It was the +greatest thing that ever came to me, and it seems to me that I should never +really have lived if it had not been for those days--those nights and +days--and the heaven that we saw!" + +"Then how can you speak as if life were ended now--" + +Margaret held her hand before her face and did not answer. "It might be +possible--for you both.... She never really cared for Rob,--she left him +and took her child when they sold their house--because she was +disappointed. And she has refused to go to him ever since." + +"I know all that," Margaret murmured; "that is not it wholly. I can't tell. +I don't know yet. It is not clear.... But I know that I am proud and glad +of what has been,--of our love in its fulness and glory. And I know it was +not sin! Nothing can make it so to me." + +She had risen and stood proudly before Isabelle. + +"It has made living possible for him and for me,--it has made it something +noble and great, to feel this in our souls.... I wanted to tell you; I +thought you would understand, and I did not want you to be wrong about +me,--not to know me all!" + +She knelt and buried her head in Isabelle's lap, and when she raised her +face there were tears falling from the eyes. + +"I don't know why I should cry!" she exclaimed with a smile. "I don't +often.... It was all so beautiful. But we women cry when we can't express +ourselves any other way!" + +"I shall always hope--" + +Margaret shook her head. + +"I don't know.... There are other things coming,--another revelation, +perhaps! I don't think of what will be, dear." + +But womanwise, Isabelle thought on after Margaret had left, of Falkner and +Margaret, of their love. And why shouldn't it come to them, she asked +herself? The other, Falkner's marriage, had been a mistake for both, a +terrible mistake, and they had both paid for it. Bessie could have made it +possible if she had wanted to, if she had had it in her. She had her +chance. For him to go back to her now, with the gulf between them of all +this past, was mere folly,--just conventional wrong-headedness. And it +would probably be no better for Bessie if he were to make the sacrifice.... +The revelation that Margaret had hinted of had not come to Isabelle. She +lay awake thinking with aching heart of her own story,--its tragic ending. +But _he_ was not a man,--that, too, had been a mistake! + + * * * * * + +Isabelle, largely left to herself, for occupation drove about the snowy +hills, sometimes taking with her for company one of the convalescents or a +nurse, often alone, liking the solitude of the winter spaces. Sometimes she +went to the blacksmith's shop and talked with the old man, learning the +genealogy and the sociology of the neighborhood. The text for Sol Short's +wisdom was ever at hand in the passers-by. Ending one of his transcripts, +he made a phrase that lingered in Isabelle's mind long afterward. "So she +was left a charge upon the property," he said of an old woman that had come +out of one of the village houses. "Aunt Mehitabel went with the house. When +it was sold, she had to be taken over by the new owner, and her keep +provided. And there she is now, an old woman in ill health and ill temper. +I don't know as there is a worse combination."... + +"I wonder why I stay," Isabelle said to Margaret after nearly two months +had slipped by. "I am quite rested, as well as I shall ever be, I believe. +You don't need me. Nobody does exactly! Molly writes me very contented +little letters. Mother is staying with her, and she is at the party age, +and would be terribly bored to come here, as you suggested. John is in St. +Louis; he seems to have a good deal to do out there this winter. So you see +my little world gets on perfectly without me." + +"Better stay here, then," Margaret urged, "until spring. It will do you +good. You haven't exhausted the doctor yet!" + +"I almost never see him, and when he does remember me he chaffs me as if I +were a silly child. No, I think I will go next week." + +But she did not wish to leave. The winter peace of the little village had +been like an enveloping anodyne to her weary body and mind. Removed from +all her past, from the sights and the people that suggested those obsessing +thoughts which had filled her waking hours with dreariness, she had sunk +into the simple routine of Grosvenor as the tired body sinks into a soft +bed. The daily sight of the snowy fields, the frozen hillsides black with +forests, and the dry spirituous air, lifted her. Now and then the effect of +the anodyne wore off and the old gnawing pain, or a sodden sense of +futility, overwhelmed her afresh. "It will never get straight!" she said, +thinking in the terms of Potts's specifics. "I am somehow wrong, and I must +go all my life with this torture--or worse--until I die!" And the whole +panorama of her little life would unroll before her in the sleepless hours +of the still night: her girl ambitions, her mistaken marriage, her striving +for experience, for life, to satisfy--what? Then her mistaken love, and +Vickers's sacrifice, and the blackness afterwards,--the mistake of it all! +"They'll be better without me,--mother and Molly and John! Let me die!" she +cried. Then illogically she would think of Renault and wonder what _he_ +could do for her. But she shrank from baring herself before his piercing +gaze. "He would say I was a fool, and he would be right!" + +So she went out into the cold country and walked miles over the frozen +fields through the still woods, trying to forget, only to return still +ridden by her thoughts,--bitter tears for Vickers, sometimes almost +reproach for his act. "If he had let me plunge to my fate, it would have +been better than this! I might never have known my mistake,--it would have +been different, all of it different. Now there is nothing!" And at the end +of one of these black moods she resolved to return to her world and "go +through the motions as others do. What else? Perhaps it will be better when +I am distracted. Potts will give me something to brace me."... + +But Isabelle did not return to the city and get that prescription from the +great Potts. + + + + +CHAPTER LIX + + +Just as Isabelle had completed her packing on Sunday afternoon, a message +came to her from Dr. Renault through Margaret. "We need another woman,--two +of our nurses have been called away and a third is sick. Will you give us +some help?" + +"I am going up myself for the night," Margaret added. "They are badly +pushed,--six new cases the last three days." + +So the night found Isabelle under the direction of Mrs. Felton, the little +black-haired woman whose "case" the doctor had analyzed for her. It was a +long night, and the next morning, all the experienced nurses being needed +at an operation, Isabelle went on. The day was full and also the next two. +The hospital force was inadequate, and though the doctor had telegraphed +for help there would be no relief for a week. So Isabelle was caught up in +the pressing activity of this organism and worked by it, impelled without +her own will, driven hard as all around her were driven by the +circumstances behind her. Dr. Renault abhorred noise, disorder, excitement, +confusion of any kind. All had to run smoothly and quietly as if in perfect +condition. He himself was evident, at all hours of day or night, chaffing, +dropping his ironical comments, listening, directing,--the inner force of +the organism. One night the little nurse dropped asleep, clearly worn out, +and Isabelle sent her to bed. The ward was quiet; there was nothing to be +done. Isabelle, pacing to and fro in the glass sun parlor to keep herself +awake, suddenly became aware of the stillness within her. It was as if some +noisy piece of machinery had ceased to revolve without her having noticed +it. It was possible for her in this quiet moment to realize this: for the +first time in five days she had not thought of herself. For five days she +had not consciously thought! Doubtless she would have to pay for this +debauch of work. She would collapse. But for five days she had not known +whether she felt ill or well, was happy or distressed. Excitement--to be +paid for! She shrank from the weary round of old thought that must come, +the revolution of the wheels within. For five days she had not thought, she +had not cared, she had not known herself! That must be the opiate of the +poor, driven by labor to feed and clothe themselves; of the ambitious, +driven by hope and desire.... She must work, too; work was a good thing. +Why had Potts not included it in his panaceas? ... + +Later when she walked back into the still ward, she thought she heard a +stifled breathing, but when she went the rounds of the cots, all was still. +It was not until nearly morning that she noticed something wrong with a +little boy, observing the huddled position of the limbs drawn up beneath +the blanket. She felt of his face--it was cold. Frightened, she hurried to +the bell to summon the night doctor. As she reached it Renault entered the +ward and with a warning hand brought her back to the cot. He put his +fingers swiftly here and there on the child's body. + +"Where is Mrs. Felton?" he demanded severely. + +"She was so worn out I persuaded her to get some rest. Have I neglected +anything?--is anything wrong?" + +"The child is dead," Renault replied, straightening himself and covering up +the little form. + +"Oh, I have--done something wrong!" + +"It would have made no difference what you did," the doctor replied dryly. +"Nothing would have made any difference. There was the millionth part of a +chance, and it was not for him." + +As they stood looking down at the dead face, it seemed to Isabelle that +suddenly he had become a person, this dead child, with his lost millionth +of a chance,--not merely one of the invalids sleeping in the room. For this +brief moment when life had ceased to beat in his frail body, and before +decay had begun, there was an individuality given him that he had never +achieved in life. + +"Poor little fellow!" Isabelle murmured softly. "He must have suffered so +much." Then with that common consolation with which the living evade the +thought of death, she added, "He has escaped more pain; it is better so, +perhaps!" + +"No--that is wrong!" + +Renault, standing beside the bed, his arms folded across his breast, looked +up from the dead child straight into the woman's eyes. + +"That is false!" he cried with sudden passion. "Life is GOOD--all of +it--for every one." + +He held her eyes with his glance while his words reverberated through her +being like the CREDO of a new faith. + + * * * * * + +When another nurse had come to relieve Isabelle, she left the ward with the +doctor. As they went through the passageway that led to the house, Renault +said in his usual abrupt tone:-- + +"You had better run home, Mrs. Lane, and get some sleep. To-morrow will be +another hard day." + +She wheeled suddenly and faced him. + +"How dare you say that life is good for any other human being! What do +_you_ know of another's agony,--the misery that existence may mean, the +daily woe?" + +Her passionate burst of protest died in a sob. + +"I say it because I believe it, because I _know_ it!" + +"No one can know that for another." + +"For animals the account of good and evil may be struck, the pains set +against the satisfactions that life offers. When we judge that the balance +is on the wrong side, we are merciful,--put the creature out of its misery, +as we say. But no human being is an animal in that sense. And no human +being can cast his balance of good and evil in that mechanical way--nor any +one else for him!" + +"But one knows for himself! When you suffer, when all is blank within and +you cry as Job cried,--'would God it were morning, and in the morning would +God it were night!' then life is _not_ good. If you could be some one else +for a few hours, then you might understand--what defeat and living death--" + +Oh, if she could tell! The impulse to reveal surged in her heart, that deep +human desire to call to another across the desert, so that some one besides +the silent stars and the wretched Self may know! Renault waited, his +compelling eyes on her face. + +"When you have lost the most in your life--hope, love! When you have killed +the best!" she murmured brokenly. "Oh, I can't say it! ... I can never say +it--tell the whole." + +Tears fell, tears of pity for the dead child, for herself, for the +fine-wrought agony of life. + +"But I know!" Renault's voice, low and calm, came as it were from a shut +corner of his heart. "I have felt and I have seen--yes, Defeat, Despair, +Regret--all the black ghosts that walk." + +Isabelle raised her eyes questioningly. + +"And it is because of that, that I can raise my face to the stars and say, +'It is good, all good--all that life contains.' And the time will come when +you will repeat my words and say to them, 'Amen.'" + +"That I could!" + +"We are not animals,--there is the Unseen behind the Seen; the Unknown +behind the Observed. There is a Spirit that rises within us to slay the +ghosts, to give them the lie. Call upon it, and it will answer.... For +Peace is the rightful heritage of every soul that is born." + +"Not Peace." + +"Yes,--I say Peace! Health, perhaps; happiness, perhaps; efficiency, +perhaps. But Peace always lies within the grasp of whomsoever will stretch +out his hand to possess it." ... + +As they stopped at the house door and waited in the deep silence of the +dark morning, Renault put his hands on Isabelle's shoulders:-- + +"Call to it, and it will come from the depths! ... Goodnight." + +There in the still dawning hour, when the vaulted heavens seemed brooding +close to the hills and the forests, these two affirmations of a creed rang +in Isabella's soul like the reverberating chords of some mystic promise:-- + +"Life is good ... all of it ... for every one!" And, "Peace is the rightful +heritage of every soul. It lies within the grasp of whomsoever will stretch +out his hand to possess it." + +It was still within her. + + + + +CHAPTER LX + + +When Isabelle woke, the morning sun fretted the green shutters. She was +tired in every limb,--limp, content to lie in bed while Mrs. Strong lighted +the fire, threw open the shutters, and brought breakfast and the mail. +Through the east windows the sun streamed in solidly, flooding the +counterpane, warming the faded roses of the wall paper. A bit of the north +range of hills, the flat summit of Belton's Top with a glittering ice-cap, +she could see above the gray gable of the barn. The sky was a soft, +cloudless blue, and the eaves were busily dripping in a drowsy persistency. + +She liked to lie there, watching the sun, listening to the drip, her +letters unopened, her breakfast untouched. She was delightfully empty +of thoughts. But one idea lay in her mind,--she should stay on, here, +just here. Since she had packed her trunk the Sunday before, a great deal +seemed to have happened,--a space had been placed between the outer world +that she had restlessly turned back towards and herself. Some day she +should go back to that other world--to Molly and John and all the rest. +But not now--no!... + +As she lay there, slowly the little things of the past weeks since she had +travelled the cold road from White River--the impressions, the sights, the +ideas--settled into her thought, pushing back the obstinate obsessions that +had possessed her for months. The present began to be important, to drive +out the past. Outside in the street some one whistled, the bells of the +passing sleds jangled, a boy's treble halloa sounded far away,--unconscious +voices of the living world, like the floating clouds, the noise of running +water, the drip of the melting snow on the eaves,--so good it all was and +real! ... + +Margaret had found that Peace the doctor had spoken of, Margaret whose +delicate curving lips had always seemed to her the symbol of discontent, of +the inadequacy of life. Margaret had found it, and why not she? ... That +explained the difference she felt these days in Margaret. There had always +been something fine and sweet in the Southern woman, something sympathetic +in her touch, in the tone of her voice even when she said cynical things. +Now Margaret never said bitter things, even about the wretched Larry. She +had always been a listener rather than a talker, but now there was a balm +in her very presence, a touch upon the spirit, like a cool hand on the +brow. Yes! She had found that rightful heritage of Peace and breathed it +all around her, like warmth and light. + +Margaret came in with the noon mail, which she had collected from the box +in the post-office. As she tossed the papers and letters on the bed, +Isabelle noticed another of the oblong letters in the familiar handwriting +from Panama.... + +"Or is it that?" she asked herself for a moment, and then was ashamed. The +smile, the clear look out of the deep eyes, the caressing hand that stroked +her face, all said no,--it was not that! And if it were, it must be good. + +"So you are going to stay with us a while longer, Isabelle.... I shall +unpack your trunk and hide it," Margaret said with smiling conviction. + +"Yes,--I shall stay, for the present.... Now I must get into my clothes. +I've been lazing away the whole morning here--not even reading my letters!" + +"That's right," Margaret drawled. "Doing nothing is splendid for the +temperament. That's why the darkies have such delightful natures. They can +sit whole days in the sun and never think a thought." With her hand on the +door she turned: "You must send for Molly,--it will be good for her to +forget the dancing lessons and frocks. My children will take her down to +Mill Hill and make a boy of her." + +"Well,--but she will be a nuisance, I am afraid. She is such a young +lady."... + +At last Isabelle tore open a letter from her husband, one that Margaret had +just brought. It was concise and dry, in the economical epistolary style +into which they had dropped with each other. He was glad to hear that her +rest in the country was doing her good. If it agreed with her and she was +content, she had better stay on for the present. He should be detained in +the West longer than he had expected. There were important suits coming on +against the railroad in which he should be needed, hearings, etc. At the +close there was an unusually passionate sentence or two about "the public +unrest and suspicion," and the President and the newspapers. "They seem to +like the smell of filth so much that they make a supply when they can't +find any." + +Broils of the world! The endless struggle between those who had and those +who envied them what they had. There was another side, she supposed, and in +the past Cairy had been at some pains to explain that other side to her. +Her husband must of course be prejudiced, like her father; they saw it all +too close. However, it was a man's affair to settle, unless a woman wished +to play Conny's role and move her husband about the board. Broils! How +infinitely far away it seemed, all the noise of the world! ... She began to +dress hurriedly to report at the hospital for the afternoon. As she glanced +again at her husband's letter, she saw a postscript, with some scraps of +St. Louis gossip:-- + +"I hear that Bessie is to get a divorce from Falkner. I wonder if it can be +true.... I saw Steve in the street last week. From what I learn the lumber +business isn't flourishing.... Pity he didn't swallow his scruples and stay +with us where he would be safe!" + +Poor Alice--if Steve should fail now, with all those children! And then she +remembered what Alice Johnston had said to Vickers, "You see we have been +poor so much of the time that we know what it is like." It would take a +good deal to discourage Alice and Steve. But John must keep an eye on them, +and try to help Steve. John, it occurred to her then for the first time, +was that kind,--the substantial sort of man that never needed help himself, +on which others might lean. + + * * * * * + +So Isabelle stayed in the mountain village through the winter months. Molly +came with her governess, and both endeavored to suppress politely their +wonder that any one could imprison herself in this dreary, cold place. The +regular nurses came back to the hospital, but Isabelle, once having been +drawn in, was not released. + +"He's a hard master," Margaret said of the doctor. "If he once gets his +hand on you, he never lets go--until he is ready to." + +Apparently Renault was not ready to let go of Isabelle. Without explaining +himself to her, he kept her supplied with work, and though she saw him +often every day, they rarely talked, never seriously. He seemed to avoid +after that first night any opportunity for personal revelation. The doctor +was fond of jokes and had the manner of conducting his affairs as if they +were a game in which he took a detached and whimsical interest. If there +was sentiment in his nature, an emotional feeling towards the work he was +doing, it was well concealed, first with drollery, and then with scientific +application. So far as any one could observe the daily routine, there was +nothing, at least in the surgical side of the hospital, that was not coldly +scientific. As Renault had said, "We do what we can with every instrument +known to man, every device, drug, or pathological theory." And his mind +seemed mostly engrossed with this "artisan" side of his profession, in +applying his skill and learning and directing the skill and learning of +others. It was only in the convalescent ward that the other side showed +itself,--that belief in the something spiritual, beyond the physical, to be +called upon. One of the doctors, a young Norwegian named Norden, was his +assistant in this work. And every one in the place felt that Norden was +closest of all to the doctor. Norden in his experiments with nervous +diseases used hypnotism, suggestion, psychotherapy,--all the modern forms +of supernaturalism. His attitude was ever, as he said to Isabelle, "It +might be--who knows?"--"There is truth, some little truth in all the ages, +in all the theories and beliefs." Isabelle had a strong liking for this +uncouth Northman with his bony figure and sunken eyes that seemed always +burning with an unattained desire, an inexpressible belief. Norden said to +her, the only way is "to recognize both soul and body in dealing with the +organism. Medicine is a Religion, a Faith, a great Solution. It ought to be +supported by the state, free to all.... The old medicine is either machine +work or quackery, like the blood-letting of barbers." ... + +It was an exhilarating place to live in, Renault's hospital,--an atmosphere +of intense activity, mental and physical, with a spirit of some large, +unexpressed truth, a passionate faith, that raised the immediate finite and +petty task to a step in the glorious ranks of eternity. The personality of +Renault alone kept this atmosphere from becoming hectic and sentimental. He +held this ship that he steered so steadily in the path of fact that there +was no opportunity for emotional explosions. But he himself was the +undefined incarnate Faith that made the voyage of the last importance to +every one concerned. Small wonder that the doctors and nurses--the +instruments of his will--"could not be driven away"! They had caught the +note, each one of them, of that unseen power and lived always in the hope +of greater revelations to come. + +As the order of the days settled into a rhythmic routine with the passing +of the weeks, Isabelle Lane desired more and more to come closer to this +man who had touched her to the quick, to search more clearly for her +personal Solution which evaded her grasp. There were many questions she +wished to have answered! But Renault had few intimate moments. He avoided +personalities, as if they were a useless drain upon energy. His message was +delivered at casual moments. One day he came up behind Isabelle in the +ward, and nodding towards Molly, who was reading a story to one of the +little girl patients, said:-- + +"So you have put daughter to some use?" + +"Yes!" Isabelle exclaimed irritably. "I found her going over her dresses +for the tenth time and brought her along.... However does she get that air +of condescension! Look at her over there playing the grand lady in her +pretty frock for the benefit of these children. Little Snob! She didn't get +_that_ from me." + +"Don't worry. Wait a day or two and you will see the small girl she is +reading to hand her one between the eyes," Renault joked. "She's on to Miss +Molly's patronage and airs, and she has Spanish blood in her. Look at her +mouth now. Doesn't it say, 'I am something of a swell myself?" + +"They say children are a comfort!" Isabelle remarked disgustedly. "They are +first a care and then a torment. In them you see all that you dislike in +yourself popping up--and much more besides. Molly thinks of nothing but +clothes and parties and etiquette. She has twice the social instinct I ever +had. I can see myself ten years hence being led around by her through all +the social stuff I have learned enough to avoid." + +"You can't be sure." + +"They change, but not the fundamentals. Molly is a little _mondaine_,--she +showed it in the cradle." + +"But you don't know what is inside her besides that tendency, any more than +you know now what is inside yourself and will come out a year hence." + +"If I don't know myself at my age, I must be an idiot!" + +"No one knows the whole story until the end. Even really aged people +develop surprising qualities of character. It's a Christmas box--the inside +of us; you can always find another package if you put your hand in deep +enough and feel around. Molly's top package seems to be finery. She may dip +lower down." + +'So I am dipping here in Grosvenor,' thought Isabelle, 'and I may find the +unexpected!' ... This was an empty quarter of an hour before dinner and +Renault was talkative. + +"Who knows?" he resumed whimsically. "You might have a good sense of humor +somewhere, Mrs. Lane, pretty well buried." + +Isabelle flushed with mortification. + +"You are witty enough, young woman. But I mean real humor, not the rattle +of dry peas in the pod that goes for humor at a dinner party. Do you know +why I keep Sam about the place,--that fat lazy beggar who takes half an +hour to fetch an armful of wood? Because he knows how to laugh. He is a +splendid teacher of mirth. When I hear him laugh down in the cellar, I +always open the door and try to get the whole of it. It shakes my stomach +sympathetically. The old cuss knows it, too, which is a pity! ... Well, +young mademoiselle over there is play-acting to herself; she thinks she +will be a grand lady like mamma. God knows what she will find more +interesting before she reaches the bottom of the box. Don't worry! And did +you ever think where they catch the tricks, these kids? If you went into +it, you could trace every one down to some suggestion; it wouldn't take you +long to account for that high and mighty air in your child that you don't +fancy. If you don't want her to pick up undesirable packages, see that they +aren't handed out to her." + +"But she has had the best--" + +"Yes, of course. Lord! the best! Americans are mad for the best. Which +means the highest priced. I've no doubt, Mrs. Lane, you have given Molly +all the disadvantages.... Did you ever sit down for five minutes and ask +yourself seriously what is the best, humanly speaking, for that child? What +things _are_ best any way? ... Do you want her to end where you are at your +age?" + +Isabelle shook her head sadly:-- + +"No,--not that!" + +"Cultivate the garden, then.... Or, to change the figure, see what is +handed out to her.... For every thought and feeling in your body, every act +of your will, makes its trace upon her,--upon countless others, but upon +her first because she is nearest." + +Molly, having closed her book and said good-evening to the little patient, +came up to her mother. + +"It is time, I think, mamma, for me to go home to dress for dinner." She +looked at the little watch pinned to her dress. Renault and Isabelle +laughed heartily. + +"What pebble that you tossed into the pool produced that ripple, do you +think?" the doctor quizzed, twirling Molly about by her neck, much to her +discomfort. + +"He treats me like a child, too," Isabelle complained to Margaret; "gives +me a little lesson now and then, and then says 'Run along now and be a good +girl.'" + +"It is a long lesson," Margaret admitted, "learning how to live, especially +when you begin when we did. But after you have turned the pages for a +while, somehow it counts." + + + + +CHAPTER LXI + + +The first of March was still deep winter in Grosvenor, but during the night +the southwest wind had begun to blow, coming in at Isabelle's window with +the cool freshness of anticipated spring. The day was calm and soft, with +films of cloud floating over the hills, and the indefinable suggestion of +change in the air, of the breaking of the frost. The southwest wind had +brought with it from the low land the haze, as if it had come from far warm +countries about the Gulf, where the flowers were already blooming and the +birds preparing for the northward flight. It touched the earth through the +thick mantle of ice and snow, and underneath in the rocky crust of frozen +ground there was the movement of water. The brooks on the hills began to +gurgle below the ice. + +Up there in the north the snow had come early in the autumn, covering as +with a warm blanket this rocky crust before the frost could strike deep. +"An early spring," Sol Short announced at dinner, a dreamy look in his +eyes, like the soft sky outside, the look of unconscious gladness that +rises in man at the thought of the coming year, the great revival of +life.... That afternoon Margaret and Isabelle drove over the snowy upland, +where the deep drifts in the fields had shrivelled perceptibly, sucked by +the warm sun above and the opening earth beneath. The runners of the sleigh +cut into the trodden snow, and in the sheltered levels of the road the +horse's feet plashed in slush. The birches and alders lifted their bare +stems hardily from the retreating drifts. Soft violet lights hovered in the +valleys. + +"It is coming, Spring!" Margaret cried. + +"Remember, Mr. Short said there would be many a freeze before it really +came to stay!" + +"Yes, but it is the first call; I feel it all through me." + +The week before Ned had left the hospital, and for the first time in three +years had sat at the table with his brother and sister. His face had lost +wholly the gray look of disappointed childhood. Spring, arrested, was +coming to him at last.... + +As they climbed upward into the hills the stern aspect of winter returned, +with the deep drifts of snow, the untracked road. When they topped the Pass +and looked down over the village and beyond to the northern mountains, the +wind caught the sharp edges of the drifts and swept a snowy foam in their +faces. But the sun was sinking into a gulf of misty azure and gold, and the +breath of awakening earth was rising to meet the sun. + +Up here it was still winter, the Past; beneath was the sign of change, the +coming of the New. And as Isabelle contemplated the broad sweep below, her +heart was still, waiting for whatever should come out of the New. + +The sun fell behind the Altar, as they called the flat top of Belton's +Mountain, and all about the hills played the upward radiance from its +descending beams.... Margaret touched the loafing horse with the whip, and +he jogged down into the forest-covered road. + +"Rob Falkner lands to-day in New York," Margaret remarked with a steady +voice. + +Isabelle started from her revery and asked:-- + +"Does he mean to go back to Panama?" + +"I don't believe he knows yet. The life down there is, of course, terribly +lonely and unfruitful. The work is interesting. I think he would like to go +on with it until he had finished his part. But there are changes; the man +he went out with has resigned." + +Margaret wanted to talk about him, apparently, for she continued:-- + +"He has done some very good work,--has been in charge of a difficult +cut,--and he has been specially mentioned several times. Did you see the +illustrated article in the last _People's_? There were sketches and +photographs of his section.... But he hasn't been well lately, had a touch +of fever, and needs a rest." + +"My husband wrote that they were to be divorced--he had heard so." + +"I don't believe it," Margaret replied evenly. "His wife hasn't been down +there.... It isn't exactly the place for a woman, at least for one who +can't stand monotony, loneliness, and hardship. She has been in Europe with +her mother, this last year." + +"You know I used to know her very well years ago. She was very pretty then. +Everybody liked Bessie," Isabelle mused. + +And later she remarked:-- + +"Singular that _her_ marriage should be such a failure." + +"Is it singular that any given marriage should be a failure?" Margaret +asked with a touch of her old irony. "It is more singular to me that any +marriage, made as they must be made to-day, should be anything but a dismal +failure." + +"But Bessie was the kind to be adored. She was pretty, and clever, and +amusing,--a great talker and crazy about people. She had real social +instinct,--the kind you read of in books, you know. She could make her +circle anywhere. She couldn't be alone five minutes,--people clustered +around her like bees. Her life might have been a romance, you would +suppose,--pretty girl, poor, marries an ambitious, clever man, who arrives +with her social help, goes into politics--oh, anything you will!" + +"But the real thing," Margaret observed. + +"What do you mean?" + +"Love! ... Love that understands and helps." + +"Well, I saw the most dazzling future for her when she used to give garden +parties in Torso, with only two unattached men who were possible in the +place! And at least she might have had a small home in the suburbs and an +adoring husband home at five-thirty,--but she wasn't that kind.... Poor +Bess! I am sorry for her." + +"I suppose the reason why a man and a woman hurt instead of help each other +in marriage is never known to any one but themselves," Margaret observed +dryly, urging on the horse. "And perhaps not even to themselves!" + +There was a change in Margaret, an inner ferment that displayed itself in +the haze in her clear eyes,--the look of one whose mind broods over the +past,--a heightened color, a controlled restlessness of mood. 'No, it is +not settled,' thought Isabelle. 'Poor Margaret!' She went about her many +duties with the same silent sureness, the same poise as before. Whatever +was happening to her was according to the discipline of her nature, +controlled, suppressed. 'If she would only splutter,' Isabelle wished, +'instead of looking like a glowing sphinx!' + +"Margaret!" she exclaimed in the evening, after a long silence between +them. "You are so young--so pretty these days!" + +"You think so? Thanks!" Margaret replied, stretching her thin arms above +her head, which was crushed against one of Mrs. Short's hard pillows. "I +suppose it is the Indian summer, the last warm glow before the end!" She +opened her trembling lips in one of her ironical smiles. "There always +comes a time of ripeness to a woman before she goes over the hill into old +age." + +"Nonsense! You are younger than you were twelve years ago!" + +"Yes, I am younger in a sense than I ever was. I am well and strong, and I +am in equilibrium, as I never was before.... And it's more than that. We +become more vital if we survive the tangle of youth. We see more--we feel +more! When I hear girls talk about love, I always want to say: 'What do you +know, what _can_ you know about it! Love isn't born in a woman before she +is thirty,--she hasn't the power. She can have children, but she can't love +a man.'" + +Margaret pressed her hands tensely together and murmured to herself, "For +love is born with the soul,--and is the last thing that comes into the +heart!" + +Isabelle with caressing impulsiveness put her arms about the slight figure. + +"I love you, Margaret; it seems as if you were the only person I really +loved now! It has been heaven to be with you all these weeks. You calm me, +you breathe peace to me.... And I want to help you, now." + +Margaret smiled sadly and drew Isabelle's dark head to her and kissed it. + +"Nobody can help, dear.... It will come right! It must come right, I am +sure." + +With the feelings that are beyond expression they held each other thus. +Finally Margaret said in a low voice:-- + +"Rob comes day after to-morrow; he will be at the Inn." + +Isabelle rose from the couch with a sudden revulsion in her heart. After +all, was this calm, this peace that she had admired in Margaret and longed +to possess herself, this Something which she had achieved and which seemed +to put her beyond and above ordinary women, nothing but the woman's +satisfaction in love, whose lover is seeking her? She found herself almost +despising Margaret unreasonably. Some man! That created the firmament of +women's heaven, with its sun and its moon and its stars. Remembered +caresses and expected joys,--the woman's bliss of yielding to her chosen +master,--was that all! + +Margaret, following Isabelle with her eyes, seemed to comprehend this +sudden change in her heart. But she merely remarked:-- + +"He cannot stay long,--only a couple of days, I believe." + +"Tell me," Isabelle demanded sharply, as if she had the right to know, must +know, "what are you going to do?" + +Margaret closed her eyes, and after a time of utter stillness she said in a +voice beseechingly tender:-- + +"Dear, perhaps I do not know, yet." + +Her eyes were wet with unaccustomed tears. Stretching a hand to Isabelle +and smiling again, she murmured:-- + +"Whatever it will be, you must trust that it will be right for me and for +him,--you must know that." + +Isabelle pressed her hand gently:-- + +"Forgive me." + +"And some day I will tell you." + + + + +CHAPTER LXII + + +Mrs. Short peered through the dining-room window on the snow field,--a +dazzling white under the March sun now well above the hills,--and watched +the two black figures tracking their way on snow-shoes towards the forest. +Margaret's slight figure swept ahead with a skill and assurance that the +taller one did not show. "I guess," mused the blacksmith's wife, "that life +on the Isthmus of Panama don't fit a man much to distinguish himself on +those things." Nevertheless, the man tramped laboriously behind the woman +until the two were halted by a fence, now visible through the sunken drift. +They faced each other, and were evidently discussing mirthfully how the +obstacle was to be met. The man stooped to untie the shoes, his pockets +bulging with the day's luncheon; but suddenly the woman backed away and +began to climb the fence, a difficult feat. The man lumbered after her, +catching one shoe in the top rail, finally freeing himself. Then the two +black figures were lost over the dip of the hill. The smile still lingered +on Mrs. Short's face,--the smile that two beings, man and woman, still +young and vital, must always bring, as though saying, 'There's spring yet +in the world, and years of life and hope to come!' + + * * * * * + +Behind the hill in the hollow Margaret was showing Falkner how to squat on +his shoes and coast over the crust. At the bottom of the slide the brook +was gurgling under a film of ice. The upward slope untouched by the sun, +was glare ice, and they toiled. Beyond was the forest with its black tree +trunks amid the clotted clumps of snowy underbrush. Falkner pushed on with +awkward strength to reach Margaret, who lingered at the opening of the +wood. How wonderful she was, he thought, so well, so full of life and +fire,--O God! all woman! And his heart beat hard, now that what he had seen +these two years behind the curtain of his eyes was so near,--after all the +weary months of heat and toil and desire! Only she was more, so much +more--as the achieved beauty of the day is more than memory or +anticipation.... + +She smiled a welcome when he reached her, and pointed away to the misty +hills. "The beauty of it!" she whispered passionately. "I adore these +hills, I worship them. I have seen them morning and night all these months. +I know every color, every rock and curving line. It is like the face, of a +great austere God, this world up here, a God that may be seen." + +"You have made me feel the hills in your letters." + +"Now we see them together.... Isn't it wonderful to be here in it all, you +and I, together?" + +He held his arms to her. + +"Not yet," she whispered, and sped on into the still darkness between the +fir branches. He followed. + +So on, on over the buried bushes, across the trickly, thawing streams, +through a thick swamp, close with alder and birch, on up the slope into +woods more largely spaced, where great oaks towered among the fir and the +spruce, and tall white birches glimmered in the dusk--all still and as yet +dead. And on far up the mountain slope until beneath the Altar they came to +a little circle, hedged round with thick young firs, where the deep snow +was tracked with footprints of birds and foxes. Margaret leaned against the +root of a fallen birch and breathed deeply. She had come like the wind, +swift and elusive, darting through the forest under the snowy branches, as +if--so felt the man with his leashed desire of her--the mere physical joy +of motion and air and sun and still woods were enough, and love had been +lost in the glory of the day! ... + +"Here," she murmured with trembling lips, "at last!" + +"At last!" he echoed, her eyes close to his. And as they waited a moment +before their lips met, the woman's face softened and changed and pleaded +with him wistfully, all the sorrow of waiting and hunger, of struggle and +triumph in her eyes, and memory of joy and ecstasy that had been.... Her +head fell to his shoulder, all will gone from her body, and she lay in his +arms. + +"Love!" she murmured; "my soul's desire, at last!" ... + + * * * * * + +They had their luncheon there, in the sunny circle among the firs, and +spoke of their two years' separation. + +"And I am not going back!" Falkner cried joyously. + +"You have decided already?" + +"My chief has resigned, you know,--and there is a piece of work up North +here he wants me for.... But that is not all the reason!" + +Her face blanched. They had begun their journey again, and were following +the ridge of the mountain in the light of the westering sun. They walked +slowly side by side so that they might talk. Margaret looked up +questioningly. + +"You and I have always been honest--direct with each other," he said. + +She nodded gravely. + +"We have never slipped into things; we have looked ahead, looked it all in +the face." + +"Yes!" she assented proudly. + +"Then we will look this in the face together.... I have come back for one +thing--for you!" + +As he drew her to him, she laid her hands on his breast and looked at him +sadly. + +"The other was not enough!" + +"Never!--nothing could ever be enough but to have you always." + +"Dearest, that I might forever give you all that you ever desired! All!" +she cried out of the tenderest depth of a woman's heart,--the desire to +give all, the best, to the man loved, the sacrificial triumph of woman, +this offering of body and soul and life from the need to give, give, give! + +"I have come for one thing," he said hoarsely; "for you!" + +She drew herself back from his arms unconsciously and said:-- + +"You must understand.... Dearest, I love you as I never loved you before. +Not even when you came to me and gave me life.... I long to give you +all--for always. But, dearest, for us it--cannot be." + +"I do not understand," Falkner protested. "You think I am not free,--but I +have come to tell you--" + +"No,--listen first! And you and I will be one in this as we always have +been one since the beginning.... When we went away together those days, we +climbed the heights--you gave me my soul--it was born in your arms. And I +have lived since with that life. And it has grown, grown--I see so much +farther now into the infinite that we reached out to then. And I see +clearly what has been in the past--oh, so clearly!" + +"But why should that divide us now?" + +"Listen! ... Now it is different. He, my husband, would be between us +always, as he was not then. I took what I needed then--took it fiercely. I +never thought of him. But now I see how all along from the beginning I +withdrew my hand from him. Perhaps that was the reason he went so +desperately to pieces at the end. I could not have made him a strong man. +But, dearest, he died utterly alone, disgraced in his own heart--alone! +That is awful to think of!" + +"It was his nature," Falkner protested sternly. + +"It was his nature to be weak and small and petty.... But don't you see +that I deserted him--I took back my hand! And now I should let you take +back yours.... Yes,--I have changed, dearest. I have come to understand +that the weak must be the burden of the strong--always!" + +Falkner's lean face grew hard with the lines of hunger,--repressed but not +buried,--the lines of inner strife. In a dry voice he said:-- + +"I thought that we had settled all that once, Margaret." + +"One cannot settle such things so.... It has come to me--the light--slowly, +so slowly. And it is not all clear yet. But I see a larger segment of the +circle than we could see two years ago." ... + +Without more words they began to descend towards the village. The hills +that compassed their view were rimmed with the green and saffron lights of +the afterglow. Their summits were sharp edged as if drawn by a titanic hand +against a sea of glowing color. But within the forests on the slope there +was already the gloom of night. Slowly the words fell from his lips:-- + +"I will never believe it! Why should a man and a woman who can together +make the world brave and noble and full of joy be parted--by anything? A +sacrifice that gives nothing to any one else!" + +That cry was the fruit of the man's two years' battle alone with his heart. +To that point of hunger and desire he had come from the day when they +parted, when they made their great refusal.... + +Both remembered that evening, two years before, when they had sailed back +to the land--to part. They remembered the Portuguese ship that was weighing +anchor for a distant port. As they looked at it wistfully, he had said, +"And why not?" And she had replied with shining eyes, "Because we love too +much for that." Then he had accepted,--they had found the heights and on +them they would remain, apart in the world of effort, always together in +their own world which they had created. Then he had understood and gone +away to his struggle. Now he could live no longer in that shadowy union: he +had come back to possess his desire. + +With her it had been different, this separation.... How much more she loved +now than then! Her love had entered into her these two years, deeper to the +depths of her being, stronger as she was stronger in body, more vital. It +had given her strength even for the great denial to him,--and this she +realized miserably; their love had given her strength, had unfolded her +soul to herself until she had come to large new spheres of feeling, and +could see dimly others beyond. While with him it had burned away all else +but one human, personal want. He thought to go back now to their island in +the sea,--as if one could ever go back in this life, even to the fairest +point of the past! ... + +She laid a caressing hand on his arm. + +"Don't you see, dearest, that we could never come out again on the heights +where we were?" + +From the sombre mood of his defeat, he said bitterly:-- + +"So it was all wrong,--a mistake, a delusion!" + +"Never!" she flashed. "Never! Not for one moment since we parted would I +give up what has been between us.... You do not understand, dearest! ... +Life began for me there. If it had not been for that, this could not be +now. But one journeys on from knowledge to knowledge." + +"Then why not other heights--together?" + +And she whispered back very low:-- + +"Because we should kill it! All of it... now that I see it would be base. +We have risen above that glory,--yes, both of us! We have risen above it, +divine as it was. It would be no longer divine, my dearest. I should be but +a woman's body in your arms, my lover.... Now we shall rise always, always, +together--each in the other!" + +The lights of the village shone just below them. A sleigh went tinkling +loudly along the road, with the voices of talking people in the dark night. +Margaret stopped before they reached the road, and turning to him put her +arms about his neck and drew him to her. + +"Don't you know that I shall be yours always? Ah, dearest, dearest!" + +In the passionate tenderness of her kiss he felt the fulness of victory and +defeat. She was his, but never to be his. He kissed her burning eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER LXIII + + +Supper at the Shorts' was the pleasantest time of the day. The small, plain +room, warm and light and homely, the old blacksmith's contented face as he +sat at the head of his table and served the food, glancing now and then +with a meaning look at his wife, mutely talking with her, and the two +friends in light summer dresses chatting of the day,--it was all so remote +from the bustle of life, so simply peaceful that to Isabelle supper at the +Shorts' was the symbol of Grosvenor life as much as Renault's hospital. It +was the hour when the blacksmith's ripest wisdom and best humor came to the +surface; when, having pounded existence and lassitude out of iron and wood +in the little shop down the street, he relaxed the muscles of his tired +body and looked over to his wife and found the world good. + +"Theirs is the figure of perfect marriage," Margaret had said; "interlocked +activity, with emotional satisfaction. Mrs. Short's climax of the day is +her hot supper laid before her lord.... Do you see how they talk without +words across the table? They know what the other is thinking always. So the +Shorts have found what so many millions miss,--a real marriage!" + +To-night when Falkner came back with Margaret for supper, this note of +perfect domesticity was at its best. Mr. Short had gone to the cellar for a +bottle of cider wine in honor of the guest from Panama, and his wife +rustled in black silk. She had made a marvellous cake that sat proudly on +the sideboard, looking down on the feast. The blacksmith carved the hot +meat, and in his gentle voice talked to the stranger. + +"You must have found it hard work when the snow got soft on the hills. As I +felt the sun coming down warm, I said to myself, 'Those shoes will seem as +big as cart-wheels to him.'... You were up by Belton's? There's big timber +in there still, back on the mountain, where they found it too hard to get +out. You come across a great log now and then that looks like a fallen +giant.... But I remember on my father's farm, twenty miles from here in the +back country, when I was a boy"-- + +He held the carving-knife suspended above the steak, lost in the vista of +years. These anecdotal attacks worried his wife, who feared for her hot +food; but the others encouraged him. + +--"there were trees lying on the ground in the pasture rotting, that must +have been five feet through at the butt end. I used to sit atop of them and +think how big they would have been standing up with their tops waving.... +Yes, wood was cheap in those days."... + +Isabelle, as she watched Margaret and Falkner, was puzzled. Margaret in her +rose-colored tea-gown was like a glowing coal, but Falkner seemed glum and +listless. "Tired, poor man!" Mrs. Short thought, and the blacksmith had +full scope for his memories. But gradually Falkner became interested and +asked questions. As a boy he had lived in the country, and in the +atmosphere of the Shorts the warm memories of those days revived, and he +talked of his own country up in the "big timber" of Michigan. Margaret, +resting her head on her hands, watched his eager eyes. She knew, so well, +what was in his mind below his memories. 'These good people have all this! +these simple people, just the plain, elementary, ordinary things of +life,--a peaceful shelter, warmth, comfort, happiness. And we, she and I, +might have this and so much more,--a thousand interests and ecstasies, but +we who are still young must live on in cheerless separation, missing all +this--and for what?' + +She read it in his eyes. She knew the man-nature, how it develops when +middle life comes,--the desire for home, for the settled and ordered spot, +the accustomed shelter. When the zest of the wandering days no longer +thrills, the adventurous and experimenting impulse is spent, that is what +man, even a passionate lover, craves to find in a woman,--peace and the +ordered life. And she could give it to this man, who had never had +it,--companionship and comradeship as well, and make an inner spot of peace +where the man might withdraw from the fighting world. Oh, she knew how to +fit his life like a spirit! ... + +When Falkner rose to leave, Margaret slipped on a long coat, saying:-- + +"I will show you the way to the Inn; you would never find it alone!" + +As she took his arm outside, he asked dully:-- + +"Which way now?" + +"This is our way first," and Margaret turned up the road away from the +village, past the doctor's house. They walked in silence. When she pointed +out Renault's hospital, Falkner looked at it indifferently. "Queer sort of +place for a hospital. What kind of a man is he?" + +"A queer sort of man," Margaret replied. + +Beyond the hospital the road mounted the hillside, passing through dark +woods. Beneath their feet the frozen snow crunched icily. + +"Good people that blacksmith and his wife," Falkner remarked. "That was the +kind of thing I dreamed it would be,--a place, a spot, of our own, no +matter how plain and small, and some one to look across the table as that +gray-haired woman looks at the old fellow, as if she knew him to the +roots.... I hope it will be some time before they get the apartment hotel +in Grosvenor! ... A man has his work," he mused. + +"Yes, the man has his work." + +"And a woman her children." + +"And the woman her children." + +"So that is what life comes to in the middle distance,--the man has his +work and the woman her children.... But one doesn't marry for that! There +is something else." + +Her clasp tightened on his arm, and he turned quickly and taking the +fingers in his hand separated them one by one between his. In the starlight +he could see the fine line of her face from brow to pointed chin, and he +could hear her breathing. + +"This, this!" he muttered fiercely. "Your touch, so; your look, so--your +voice in my ear--what makes it magic for me? Why not another? Any +other--why this? To go to the heart of one! Yours--which will never be +mine." + +The sweep of dominating desire, the male sense of mastery and will to +possess, surged up again in the man, tempting him to break the barriers she +had erected between them, to take her beyond her scruples, and carry her +with him, as the strong man of all time has carried away the woman whom he +would have for mate. + +She held her face upwards for his kiss, and as she trembled once more in +the arms of the man she had consented to, there was answered in her the +mystery he had propounded,--'Because of the I within me that he loves and +respects, because of that I which is mine and no other's, not even +his,--therefore he loves me of all the world,--I am his soul!'... + +It was all snowy upland near the crest of the hill. They leaned against a +rock, close together, and listened to the stillness around them, his arm +beneath her cloak drawing her closer, closer to him, away from herself. In +the forgetfulness of joy she seemed mounting, floating, high up above all, +the man's desire bearing her on wings away from the earth with its failure +and sorrow, up to the freedom she had thirsted for, up to fulfilment.... + +Now his eyes, once more victorious, looked close into hers, and something +within her spoke,--low and sweet and far away.... + +"I love you, dearest! I will be yours, as you will have me,--as we were +those other days, and more. Much more! I will be your slave, your +mistress,--to do with as you wish, to take and leave.... There can be no +marriage, none. Will you have me? Will you take me like that? To be your +thing? Will you ... and throw me away when I am used and finished for you? +... I will give you all! Now! ... And when the time comes that must come, I +will go out." + +Then, at last, the man saw! She would give all, even her own soul, if he +would take it. But first, there was something he must kill,--there in her +body within his close embrace, with her breath on his face,--something she +offered him as a last gift to kill.... The body was but a symbol, a piece +of clothing, a rag.... So he understood, and after a long time his arms +loosened about her. + +"I see," he whispered, and as he kissed her lips, "Never that!" + +The summit of the mountain loomed above them,--the Altar. Margaret as they +turned towards the village stretched her arms upwards to the Altar,--there +where she had lain as it were naked for the sacrifice before the man she +loved. "Come!" he said gently. + +They had kissed for the last time. + + * * * * * + +As they approached the Inn at the farther end of the village, Falkner was +saying in reply to her question:-- + +"Yes, after I have seen something of Mildred, I shall go to Washington to +join the chief. He will want me to live up in the country at the works. I +shall like that.... The dam will take three years at least, I suppose. It +must be like the work of the ancient Egyptians, for all time and colossal. +I wish the work might last out my day!" + +The woman's heart tightened. Already he had swung, as she willed, to the +one steadfast star in his firmament,--work, accomplishment,--accepting the +destiny she had willed, to struggle upwards apart from her to that high +altar where they both had stood this night.... + +When Margaret entered the house, Isabelle's light was still burning and her +door was open. She paused as she passed to her room, her coat flung back +revealing the soft rose color beneath, and in her white face her eyes shone +softly. + +"Rob leaves to-morrow morning by the early train," she remarked. + +"So soon!" + +"Yes,--for the West." + +And then Isabelle knew, as Margaret had promised. + + + + +CHAPTER LXIV + + +Dr. Renault's private office was a large, square room with a north window +that gave a broad view of the pointed Albany mountains. Along the walls +were rows of unpainted wooden shelves on which were stacked books and +pamphlets. One small piece of bronze on the shelf above the fireplace--a +copy of the seated Mercury in the Naples museum--was the sole ornament in +the room. A fire was dying on the hearth this gray March afternoon, and +flashes of light from a breaking log revealed the faces of Renault and +Isabelle, standing on opposite sides of his work table. They had stood like +this a long time while the gray day came to an end outside and the trees +lashed by the north wind bent and groaned. Isabelle was passing the office, +after dinner, on some errand, and the doctor had called her. Accident had +led to this long talk, the longest and the deepest she had had with +Renault. One thing had touched another until she had bared to him her +heart, had laid before his searching gaze the story of her restless, futile +life. And the words that he had spoken had dropped like hot metal upon her +wounds and burned until her hands trembled as they leaned upon his desk.... + +"The discipline of life!" he had said. The phrase was hateful to her. It +stirred within her all the antagonism of her generation to the creed of her +people, to the Puritan ideal, cold, narrow, repressive. And yet Renault was +far from being a Puritan. But he, too, believed in the "discipline of +life." And again when she had confessed her ambitions for "a broad life," +"for experience," he had said: "Egotism is the pestilence of our day,--the +sort of base intellectual egotism that seeks to taste for the sake of +tasting. Egotism is rampant. And worst of all it has corrupted the women, +in whom should lie nature's great conservative element. So our body social +is rotten with intellectual egotism. Yes, I mean just what you have prided +yourself on,--Culture, Education, Individuality, Cleverness,--'leading your +own lives,' Refinement, Experience, Development, call it what you will,--it +is the same, the inturning of the spirit to cherish self. Not one of all +you women has a tenth of the experience my mother had, who, after bringing +up her family of eight, at fifty-seven went to the town school to learn +Latin, because before she had not had the time."...To some defence of her +ideal by Isabelle, he retorted with fine scorn:-- + +"Oh, I know the pretty impression our American women make in the eyes of +visiting foreigners,--so 'clever,' so 'fascinating,' so 'original,' so +'independent,' and such 'charm'! Those are the words, aren't they? While +their dull husbands are 'money-getters.' They at least are doers, not +talkers! ... + +"Do you know what you are, women like you, who have money and freedom to +'live your own lives'? You are sexless; you haven't nature's great apology +for the animal,--desire. Such women sin, when they sin, with their minds. +Great God! I had rather those broad-hipped Italian peasant women of +Calabria, with solid red-brown flesh, bred bastards for the country than +have these thin, anaemic, nervous, sexless creatures, with their 'souls' +and their 'charm,' marry and become mothers! What have you done to the +race? The race of blond giants from the forests of the north? Watch the +avenue in New York!" + +Again,--"So what have you made of marriage, 'leading your own lives'? You +make marriage a sort of intelligent and intellectual prostitution--and you +develop divorce. The best among you--those who will not marry unless the +man can arouse their 'best selves'--will not bear children even then. And +you think you have the right to choose again when your so-called souls have +played you false the first time.... And man, what of him? You leave him to +his two gross temptations,--Power and Lust. Man is given you to protect, +and you drive him into the market-place, where he fights for your ease, and +then relaxes in the refined sensualities you offer him as the reward for +his toil. With the fall of man into the beast's trough must come the +degradation of women. They cannot travel apart; they must pull together. +What have _you_ done for your husband?" He turned sharply on Isabelle. +"Where is he now? where has he been all these years? What is he doing this +hour? Have you nursed his spirit, sharpened his sword? ... I am not +speaking of the dumb ones far down in the mass, nor of the humdrum +philistines that still make homes, have traces of the nest-instinct left; +but of you, _you_,--the developed intelligences who flatter yourselves that +you lead because you are free to do as you like. By your minds you are +betrayed!" + +Before the blast of his scorching words Isabelle saw her ambitions shrivel +into petty nothings,--all the desires from her first married days to find a +suitable expression of her individuality, her wish to escape Torso, her +contempt for St. Louis, her admiration for Cornelia Woodyard, her seeking +for "interesting" people and a cultivated and charming background for +herself, and last of all her dissatisfaction in her marriage because it +failed to evoke in her the passion she desired. It was a petty story, she +felt,--ashamed before Renault's irony. + +He knew her life, more than she had told him, much more. He knew _her_. He +read below the surface and had known her from the first hour they had met. +It was all true,--she had wanted many things that now she saw were futile. +She had accepted her marriage as failure--almost with relief, as an excuse +for her restlessness. Yes, she had made mistakes; what was worse, was a +mistake herself! Crushed with this sense of futility, of failure, she +cried:-- + +"But we are caught in the stream when we are young and eager. The world +seems so big and rich if you but reach out your hand to take." + +"And from its feast you took--what?" + +She was silent, self-convicted; for she had taken chaff! ...Nevertheless, +it was not dead within her--the self. It cried out under Renault's pitiless +scorn for satisfaction, for life. The rebellious surge of desire still +suffocated her at times. There was beauty, the loveliness of the earth, the +magic wonder of music and art,--all the clamor of emotion for an expression +of self. And love? Ah, that was dead for her. But the life within, the +self, still hungered for possession at times more fiercely than ever. Why +should it be killed at her age? Why were they not good, these hungry +desires, this fierce self that beat in her blood for recognition? The +conquering, achieving SELF! That was the spirit of her race, to see and +take that which was good in their eyes, to feed the SELF with all that the +world contained of emotions, ideas, experience; to be big, and strong, and +rich,--to have Power! That was what life had meant for her ancestors ever +since the blond race emerged from their forests to conquer. All else was +death to the self, was merely sentimental deception, a playing at +resignation.... + +As if he traced her fast thoughts, Renault said:-- + +"A house divided against itself--" + +"But even if I have failed--" + +"Failed because you did not look deep enough within!" + +Renault's voice insensibly softened from his tone of harsh invective as he +added:-- + +"And now you know what I meant when I said that a neurasthenic world needed +a new religion!" + +So he had remembered her,--knew her all the time! + +"But you can't get it because you need it--" + +"Yes, because you feel the need! ... Not the old religion of abnegation, +the impossible myths that come to us out of the pessimistic East, created +for a relief, a soporific, a means of evasion,--I do not mean that as +religion. But another faith, which abides in each one of us, if we look for +it. We rise with it in the morning. It is a faith in life apart from our +own personal fate.... Because we live on the surface, we despair, we get +sick. Look below into the sustaining depths beyond desire, beyond self, to +the depths,--and you will find it. It will uplift you.... When you wake in +the morning, there will come to you some mysterious power that was not +there before, some belief, some hope, some faith. Grasp it! ... When the +clouds lift, the physical clouds and the mental clouds, then appears the +Vision and the knowledge. They are the truth from the depths within,--the +voice of the spirit that lives always. And by that voice man himself lives +or dies, as he wills,--by the voice of the spirit within." + +So as the drear day of the dying winter drew to a close, as the ashes +powdered on the hearth and the face of Renault became obscure in the +twilight, the dim outlines of a great meaning rose before her, reconciling +all.... The Vision that abides within apart from the teasing phantasmagoria +of sense, the Vision that comes, now dim, now vivid, as the flash of white +light in the storm, the Vision towards which mankind blindly reaches, the +Vision by which he may learn to live and endure all! + +And this Vision was all that really mattered,--to see it, to follow where +it pointed the way! + +... "The waste in life, the wrong steps, the futile years!" she murmured. + +"Rather the cost, the infinite cost of human souls--and their infinite +value once born," Renault corrected. "Do not distress yourself about what +to do, the claims of this or that. The thing to do will always be clear, +once you trust yourself, seek wholly the Vision. And as for beauty and +satisfaction and significance,--it is infinite in every moment of every +life--when the eyes are once open to see!" + +There was the sound of footsteps outside, and Isabelle moved to the door. + +"So," Renault concluded, putting his hands on her shoulders, "it is not the +End but the Beginning. And always so,--a mysterious journey, this life, +with countless beginnings.... We go out into the night. But the light +comes--when we forget to see ourselves." + +The wind raged in the trees outside, sweeping across the earth, tearing the +forest, cleansing and breaking its repose, preparing for the renewal to +come. Like a mighty voice it shouted to man; like the whirlwind it shook +his earth.... For the first time since Vickers lay dead in the dawn of the +June morning Isabelle could bear to look at the past,--to accept it calmly +as part of herself out of which she had lived, in recognition of that +beginning within. + + + + +CHAPTER LXV + + +"They seem to be in such a pother, out in the world," Isabelle remarked to +Margaret, as she turned over the leaves of her husband's letter. "The +President is calling names, and a lot of good people are calling names +back. And neither side seems to like being called names. John doesn't like +it, and he calls names. And they sulk and won't play marbles. It all sounds +like childish squabbling." + +Margaret, who was unusually absent-minded this evening, sighed:-- + +"So many desires of men, always struggling at cross-purposes! I haven't +read the papers for months! They don't seem real up here, somehow. What's +happening?" + +"I haven't opened my papers, either. Look there!" Isabelle pointed to a +pile of unwrapped newspapers in the corner. "But I must go through them and +see what John is grumbling about. It isn't like John to grumble at +anything." Then she read from her husband's letter: "The President in his +besotted vanity and colossal ignorance has succeeded in creating trouble +that twenty Presidents won't be able to settle. The evils which he may have +corrected are nothing to those he has brought upon innocent people.... So +far as our road is concerned, this prejudiced and partisan investigation, +instigated by the newspapers and notoriety seekers, will do no great +harm.... I suppose you have seen the garbled press account of my +cross-examination,--don't let it disturb you."... + +Isabelle looked up. + +"I wonder what he means by that! 'My cross-examination'? It must be +something rather out of the ordinary to stir John to such +expression,--'Besotted vanity and colossal ignorance.' Whew!" + +After Margaret left, Isabelle began abstractedly to strip the wrappers from +the newspapers, glancing at the thickest headlines:-- + +BANK FAILURE--SUICIDE OF BANK PRESIDENT--SENSATIONAL DIVORCE, etc. + +Here it was at last:-- + +THE ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC ON THE GRILL!! INVESTIGATION OF THE GREAT +RAILROAD'S COAL BUSINESS + +Isabelle scanned the newspaper column indifferently. As Margaret had said, +the squabbles of the great, conglomerate, writhing business world seemed +remote indeed. They had never been actual to her, though she was the +daughter of a merchant. In the Colonel's house, as in most American homes +of the well-to-do, the newspaper was regarded as a necessary evil, largely +composed of lies and garbled rumors. It was taken for granted that almost +everything to be seen in print was vitiated by sensational falsehood, and +so far as "business"--mystic word!--was concerned, all "news" was pure +fabrication. This sceptical attitude had been intensified by John, who +regarded any criticism of the actions of capital as dictated by envy, as +"unpatriotic," aimed at the efforts of the most energetic and respectable +element in the community; moreover, "socialistic," that is, subversive of +the established order, etc. According to John the ablest men would always +"get on top," no matter what laws were made. And getting on top meant that +they would do what they wished with their own, i.e. capital. Thus without +thinking about it Isabelle had always assumed that men in general were +envious of their betters. Sometimes, to be sure, she had suspected that +this simple theory might be incomplete, that her husband and his friends +might be "narrow." Some people whose opinion she respected even approved of +the President's policy in seeking to curb the activities of capital. But +she had slight interest in the vexed question, and skipped all references +to industrial turmoil in her reading. + +So to-night her eyes slipped carelessly down the column, which was not +intelligible without previous accounts, and she continued to rip the +wrappers from newspapers, letting the stiff parcels of paper drop to the +floor. She was thinking of what Renault had said, bits of his phrases +constantly floating through her mind. If he had only been more precise! She +wanted to know _what_ to do,--here, now. He had said: "Wait! It will all be +clear. It makes little difference what it is. You will find the path." With +her eager temperament that was all baffling. Margaret had found her +path,--had seen her Vision, and it had brought to her peace. Her restless, +bitter nature had been wonderfully changed into something exquisitely calm +and poised, so that her very presence, silent in the room, could be +felt.... + +Isabelle's eyes caught the headline in the paper she was opening:-- + +OFFICIALS OF THE ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC BEFORE THE FEDERAL GRAND JURY + +JOHN S. LANE, THIRD VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE ROAD, INDICTED + +Isabelle's mind suddenly woke to the present, and she began to read +breathlessly: "As a result of the recent investigations by the Interstate +Commerce Commission of the relation between the Atlantic and Pacific and +certain coal properties, officials of that system have been examined by a +special Grand Jury, and it is rumored," etc. Isabelle glanced at the date +of the paper. It was a month old! Even now, perhaps, her husband was on +trial or had already been tried for illegal acts in the conduct of his +business, and she knew nothing about it! Another paper had the item: "This +time the district attorney under direction from Washington will not be +content to convict a few rate clerks or other underlings. The indictment +found against one of the vice-presidents of this great corporation that has +so successfully and impudently defied the law will create a profound +impression upon the whole country. It is a warning to the corporation +criminals that the President and his advisers are not to be frightened by +calamity-howlers, and will steadfastly pursue their policy of going higher +up in their effort to bring the real offenders before the courts. The +coming trial before federal Judge Barstow will be followed with intense +interest," etc., etc. + +Isabelle rapidly uncovered the remaining newspapers, arranging them in the +order of dates, and then glanced through every column in search of news +about the trial, even to the editorial comments on the action of the Grand +Jury. The earlier papers that had the account of the investigation by the +Commission had been destroyed unread, but she inferred from what she saw +that the affair rose from the complaint of independent mine-owners in +Missouri and Indiana that they were discriminated against by the railroad. +The federal authorities were trying to establish the fact of conspiracy on +the part of the Atlantic and Pacific to control the coal business along its +lines. There were hints of an "inside ring," whose operations tended to +defraud both stockholders and public.... + +As she read the wordy columns of report and suspicion, there suddenly shot +into Isabelle's mind a memory of a Sunday afternoon in Torso when she and +John had ridden by Mr. Freke's mines and John had said in reply to her +question, "Mr. Freke and I do business together." Mr. Freke was the +president of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company,--a name that occurred often +in the newspaper report, the name which had been spread across the black +sheds she had seen that Sunday afternoon. Now she remembered, also, that +she had had to sign certain papers for transfer of stock when John had sold +something to put the money--into coal. And last of all she remembered at +the very beginning of her life in Torso the face of that man in her +husband's office and how he had begged for cars, and his cry, "My God! I +shall go bankrupt!" Out of it all--the newspaper paragraphs, the legal +terms, the editorial innuendoes, the memories--there was shaped something +like a coherent picture of what this dispute really meant, and her +husband's concern in it. + +It was now midnight. Isabelle's mind was stung to keen apprehension. She +did not know whether John was guilty of what the government was seeking to +prove him guilty. She could not judge whether the government was justified +in bringing suit against the railroad and its officials. There was +doubtless the other side, John's side. Perhaps it was a technical crime, a +formal slip, as she had been told it was in other cases where the +government had prosecuted railroads. That would come out clearly at the +trial, of course. But the fact that stared her in the face was that her +husband was to be _tried_--perhaps was on trial this very day--and she did +not even know it! She reached for the papers again and searched for the +date of the trial of the coal cases in the federal court. It was to open +the nineteenth of March--it was now the twenty-second! And the last paper +to reach her was the issue of the eighteenth. The trial had already begun. + +Isabelle paced the narrow breadth of her chamber. Her husband was on trial, +and he had not written her. His last letters, which she had destroyed, had +betrayed signs of irritation, disturbance.... Renault's charge, "The curse +of our day is egotism," rang in her ears. She had been so much concerned +over her own peace of mind, her own soul, that she had had no room for any +perception--even for the man with whom she had lived side by side for ten +years! Love or not, satisfaction or not in marriage, it must mean something +to live for ten years of life with another human being, eat bread with him, +sleep under the same roof with him, bear a child to him.... And there in +her silent room Isabelle began to see that there was something in marriage +other than emotional satisfaction, other than conventional cohabitation. +"Men are given to you women to protect--the best in them!" "You live off +their strength,--what do you give them? Sensuality or spirit?" Her husband +was a stranger; she had given him nothing but one child. + +Isabelle opened her trunks and began to pack. There was a train south from +White River at eight-thirty, which connected with the New York express. +Molly could follow later with the governess.... She flung the things +loosely into the trunks, her mind filled with but one idea. She must get to +St. Louis as soon as possible. 'John--my husband--is being tried out there +for dishonest conduct in his business, and we are so far apart that he +doesn't even mention it in his letters!' + +At last, the packing over, she crouched by the embers and tried to warm her +numb hands. This burst of decided will which had made her swiftly prepare +for the journey gave out for the moment.... What should she do out there, +after all? She would merely be in the way and annoy John. And with a +strength that startled her came the answer, 'After all, we are man and +wife; he is my husband, and he is in trouble!' + +It would not be possible to see Renault before she left. Well, he had +spoken his message to her, having chosen his own time. And already his +prophecy was coming about. The thing to do was plain. The Vision was there, +and the voice had spoken out of the depths. She was extraordinarily calm, +as if raised above doubt, the confusing calls of personal consideration. +There might be disgrace to come for her husband. There was the undoubted +miserable failure of her marriage,--the strong possibility of her husband's +impassive coldness at her futile flight to his side, at this hour. But +there was no Fear! ... And serenely she dropped into sleep. + + + + +CHAPTER LXVI + + +Margaret and the children drove down to White River with her the next +morning. Just as Margaret had previously opposed her restless desire to +leave Grosvenor, with gentle suggestions and quiet persuasion, so this time +she accepted her going as inevitable. + +"But you may come back; I wish it might be!" was all she said, not very +hopefully. + +Isabelle shook her head. She made no plans, but she felt that no matter +what the outcome of the trial might be it was hardly probable that her path +would lead back to this retreat. As she got into the sleigh she looked up +the hillside to the hospital, its many windows glistening in the rising +sun, its severe outlines sharp against the snowy field, and her eyes roved +on to the dusky firs in the valley, up to the purple hilltop of the Altar, +on to the distant peaks rising behind, with crests already bare. Her eyes +were misty as she drove through the familiar village street, past the +blacksmith's shop, where Sol Short waved a second good-by with a glowing +bar of steel caught from the forge, on towards the Pass and the +descent,--it was a haven of peace, this hillside village! Within that +circle of snowy hills, in the silent beauty of the Northern winter, she had +lived more, lived deeper, than anywhere else in the world. But she should +not come back,--there would be no place for that. Grosvenor had given its +benediction,--the hills and the woods, the snowy expanses and frozen +brooks, the sunsets and starlit firmament,--the blacksmith's simple content +and Renault's beacon lights, Margaret's peace,--all had done their work in +her. As the lumbering sleigh dragged over the Pass, she gazed back to fix +its image in her mind forever. The fresh March wind blew in her face, chill +but full of distant promise, as if in its sweep from the north it had heard +the tidings of spring, the stirrings deep below snow and frost. And the sky +shimmered cloudless from horizon to horizon, a soft blue.... + +The agitations before and the struggle to come were interspaced by this +lofty place of Peace--wherein she had found herself! + + * * * * * + +The frost-covered train from the north drew up at the platform in a cloud +of steam. The fireman, a lad of eighteen, with a curl waving from under his +cap, was leaning far out of the cab, smoking a cigarette and looking up at +the snowy mountains just visible from White River. He was careless,--alive, +and content this fine morning,--his grimy arms bare on the sill of the cab +window, the broad earth and its hills spread before him. As the engine shot +past, he looked down at Isabelle, curiously, and then up to the mountains +again, as if his life were complete enough. A careless figure of the human +routine of the world, endlessly moving, changing, energizing, functioning +in its destined orbit! And all lives were tied together in the fine mesh of +circumstance,--one destiny running into another as the steel band of +railroad ran on and on into distant places, just as the lad in the engine +cab was somehow concerned with the whole human system that ended, +perchance, in the courtroom at St. Louis.... + +Isabelle took Margaret in her arms and holding her close, as if she would +seize her very spirit, kissed her. + +"Tell the doctor," she said, "that I am beginning to understand--a little." + + + + +PART SEVEN + + + +CHAPTER LXVII + + +What is marriage? At least in these United States where men once dreamed +they would create a new society of ideal form based on that poetic +illusion, "All men"--presumably women, too!--"are born free and equal!" + +Yes, what has marriage been,--first among the pioneers pushing their way to +new land through the forest, their women at their sides, or in the ox-cart +behind them with the implements of conquest,--pushing out together into the +wide wilderness, there to fight side by side, to tame Nature and win from +her a small circle of economic order for their support? Together these two +cut the trees, build the cabin, clear the land and sow it, thus making +shelter and food. And then the Woman draws apart to bring _her_ increment, +the children, to fight with them, to follow in their steps. In that warfare +against stubborn Nature and Chaos, against the Brute, against the Enemy in +whatever form, the Man and the Woman are free and equal,--they stand +together and win or lose together, live or die in the life-long battle. And +the end? If they triumph in this primitive struggle for existence, they +have won a few acres of cleared land for the harvest, a habitation, and +food, and children who will take up from their hands the warfare for life, +to win further concessions from Nature, a wider circle of order from chaos. +This is the marriage type of the pioneer,--a primitive, body-wracking +struggle of two against all, a perfect type, elemental but whole,--and this +remains the large pattern of marriage to-day wherever sound. Two bodies, +two souls are united for the life struggle to wring order out of +chaos,--physical and spiritual. + +Generations are born and die. The circles grow wider, more diversified, +overlap, intersect. But the type remains of that primitive wilderness +struggle of the family. Then comes to this breeding society the Crisis. +There came to us the great War,--the conflict of ideals. Now Man leaves +behind in the home the Woman and her children, and goes forth alone to +fight for the unseen,--the Idea that is in him, that is stronger than woman +or child, greater than life itself. Giving over the selfish struggle with +the Brute, he battles against articulate voices. And the Woman is left to +keep warm the forsaken nest, to nurse the brood there, to wait and want, +perchance to follow after her man to the battle-field and pick out her dead +and bear it back to burial. She, too, has her part in the struggle; not +merely the patient, economic part, but the cherishing and the shaping of +man's impulse,--the stuff of his soul that sends him into the battle-field. +Alone she cannot fight; her Man is her weapon. He makes to prevail those +Ideals which she has given him with her embraces. This also is the perfect +type of Marriage,--comradeship, togethership,--and yet larger than before +because the two share sacrifice and sorrow and truth,--things of the +spirit. Together they wage War for others. + +And there follows a third condition of Marriage. The wilderness reduced, +society organized, wars fought, there is the time of peace. Now Man, free +to choose his task, goes down into the market-place to sell his force, and +here he fights with new weapons a harder fight; while his Woman waits +behind the firing line to care for him,--to equip him and to hoard his +pelf. On the strength and wisdom of her commissariatship the fate of this +battle in good part depends. Of such a nature was Colonel Price's marriage. +"He made the money, I saved it," Harmony Price proudly repeated in the +after-time. "We lived our lives together, your mother and I," her husband +said to their daughter. It was _his_ force that won the dollars, made the +economic position, and _her_ thrift and willingness to forego present ease +that created future plenty. Living thus together for an economic end, +saving the surplus of their energies, they were prosperous--and they were +happy. The generation of money-earners after the War, when the country +already largely reclaimed began to bear fruit abundantly, were happy, if in +no greatly idealistic manner, yet peacefully, contentedly happy, and +usefully preparing the way for the upward step of humanity to a little +nearer realization of that poetic illusion,--the brotherhood of man. + +In all these three stages of the marriage state, the union of Man and Woman +is based on effort in common, together; not on sentiment, not on emotion, +not on passion, not on individual gratification of sense or soul. The two +are partners in living, and the fruit of their bodies is but another proof +of partnership.... + +And now emerges another economic condition, the inexorable successor of the +previous one, and another kind of Marriage. Society is complexly organized, +minutely interrelated; great power here and great weakness there, vast +accumulations of surplus energies, hoarded goods, many possessions,--oh, a +long gamut up and down the human scale! And the CHANCE, the great gamble, +always dangles before Man's eyes; not the hope of a hard-won existence for +woman and children, not a few acres of cleared wilderness, but a dream of +the Aladdin lamp of human desires,--excitements, emotions, ecstasies,--all +the world of the mind and the body. So Woman, no longer the Pioneer, no +longer the defender of the house, no longer the economist, blossoms--as +what? The Spender! She is the fine flower of the modern game, of the +barbaric gamble. At last she is Queen and will rule. The Man has the money, +and the Woman has--herself, her body and her charm. She traffics with man +for what he will give, and she pays with her soul.... To her the man comes +from the market-place soiled and worn, and lays at her feet his gain, and +in return she gives him of her wit, of her handsome person, gowned and +jewelled, of her beauty, of her body itself. She is Queen! She amuses her +lord, she beguiles him, she whets his appetite and pushes him forth to the +morrow's fight, to bring back to her more pelf, to make her greater yet. +She sits idle in her cabin-palace, attended by servants, or goes forth on +her errands to show herself before the world as her man's Queen. So long as +she may but please this lord of hers, so long as she may hold him by her +mind or her body, she will be Queen. She has found something softer than +labor with her hands, easier than the pains of childbirth,--she has found +the secret of rule,--mastery over her former master, the slave ruling the +lord. Like the last wife of the barbarian king she is heaped with jewels +and served with fine wines and foods and lives in the palace,--the +favorite. + +And Woman, now the mistress rather than the wife, has longings for Love. +She listens to her heart, and it whispers strange fancies. "I cannot love +this man whom I have married, though he feeds me and gives me of his best. +My soul will have none of him,--I will not consent to live with him and +bear children for him and thus be a slave. Lo, am I not a Queen, to give +and take back, to swear and then swear again? I will divorce this man who +can no longer thrill me, and I will take another dearer to my heart,--and +thus I shall be nobler than I was. I shall be a person with a soul of my +own. To have me man must win me not once, but daily. For marriage without +the love of my soul is beastly." So she cheats herself with fine phrases +and shirks. Small comradeship here! Marriage to this woman is a state of +personal gratification, the best bargain she can make with man.... + +To this state has come the honorable condition of marriage in a country +where "men"--and surely women!--"are born free and equal." The flower of +successful womanhood--those who have bargained shrewdly--are to be found +overfed, overdressed, sensualized, in great hotels, on mammoth steamers and +luxurious trains, rushing hither and thither on idle errands. They have +lost their prime function: they will not or they cannot get children. They +are free! As never women were before. And these wives are the custodians of +men, not merely of their purses but of their souls. They whisper to them +the Ideals of their hearts: "Come bring me money, and I will kiss you. Make +me a name before the world, and I will noise it abroad. Build me a house +more splendid than other houses, set me above my sisters, and I will +reflect honor on you among men for the clothes I wear and the excellent +shape of my figure." + +And thus, unwittingly, Woman becomes again in the revolution of the ages +what she was at first, the female creature, the possession, the thing for +lust and for amusement,--the cherished slave. For the death of woman's soul +follows when she pays with her body,--a simple, immutable law.... Woman in +America, splendidly free and Queen! What have you done with the men who +were given into your charge? Clever, beautiful, brilliant,--our most +shining prize,--but what have you done for the souls of the men given into +your keeping? ... The answer roars up from the city streets,--the most +material age and the most material men and the least lovely civilization on +God's earth. No longer the fighting companion at man's side, but reaching +out for yourselves, after your own desires, you have become the slave of +the Brute as you were before. And a neurotic slave. For when Woman is no +longer comrade of man in the struggle, she is either Nothing or a--but blot +the word! + + * * * * * + +Perfect justice, a complete picture of society in a civilization of eighty +millions, requires many shades. The darker shades are true only of the +rotting refuse, the scum of the whole. Among the married millions most are, +fortunately, still struggling through the earlier types from the pioneer to +the economist. But as the water runs there lies the sea beyond. From the +prairie village to the city tenement, the American woman sees in marriage +the fulfilment of her heart's desire,--to be Queen, to rule and not work. +Thus for emancipated Woman. + +And the poor creature Man, who fights for his Queen? A trained energy, a +vessel of careless passion, a blind doer, dreaming great truths and seeing +little ends,--Man is still abroad ranging his forest, his hunting blood up, +"playing the game." There are moments when his sleep is troubled with +feverish dreams in which he hears murmurs,--"The body is more than +raiment," and "The soul is more than the body"; "There are other +hunting-grounds, another warfare." But roused from these idle fancies he +sallies forth from his cabin-palace, or his hotel apartment, or his +steam-heated and childless flat into the old fray, to kill his meat and +bring it home.... We chatter of the curse of Castle Garden, unmindful that +in the dumb animal hordes, who labor and breed children, lies the future. +For Theirs Will Be The Land, when the blond hunter of the market and his +pampered female are swept into the dust heap. + + + + +CHAPTER LXVIII + + +In the vast eighteen-story, thousand-room New York hotel where Isabelle +Lane stayed for the night on her way west, there was the usual constant +bustle of arriving and departing people. The heat, the crowd, the luxury of +this cliff-city with its throngs of much-dressed men and women overwhelmed +Isabelle with a sense of startling unreality. It was not simply that she +had been removed from the noise of city life for a number of months, +secluded in the quiet of open spaces, and that the latest novelty in New +York hotels contrasted sharply with primitive Grosvenor. But she found +herself examining the scene, from the moment she entered the crowded foyer +with its stucco-marble columns and bronze railings, its heavy hangings and +warm atmosphere, with eyes that seemed to observe what was there before her +for the first time. She looked at the thick rugs, the uniformed servants, +the line of pale, sleek young men in the office enclosure, the swarming +"guests" (according to the euphemistic slang of American hotels!),--all +these women in evening gowns, much jewelled, on their way to dinner, with +their attendant males; and she asked herself if it were the same world that +she had always known. + +The little bronze doors in the bank of elevators opened and shut, taking in +and disgorging men and women, to shoot upwards to the tiers of partitioned +privacy above or to hurry forth on their errands. Waiting for the hotel +maid to fetch her key, Isabelle felt like a soul resurrected from a grave, +come back to experience what had once been its theatre of activity and joy. +She felt the tense hum of life in the activity of the clerks behind the +desk, the servants hurrying on their errands, the coming and going of the +horde of people, among whom watchful house detectives moved about silently. +She knew that across the narrow street was another even larger cliff-city, +where the same picture of life was repeating itself, and around the corner +there were four or five more, and farther away dozens almost exactly like +this one,--all crowded, humming with people, with the same heavy atmosphere +of human beings hived together in hot air, men and women dressed like +these, feeding like these in great halls, spending lavishly for comfort, +pleasure, and repose! ... + +This mammoth caravansary was a symbol of the broad, riotously rich +country,--a spiritual and material symbol, representing its thoughts, its +ideals, its art, its beauty, its joy. Into these metropolitan cliff-cities +flowed the stream of dominant, successful lives of the nation, seeking to +find satisfaction for their efforts, their rightful triumph. Once Isabelle +had had the child's pleasure in the hotel pageant. Later it had been an +accepted convenience. Now she sat there looking on as from a great +distance, and she said over and over wonderingly: "Can this be life? No, +this is not life,--'tis not real!" + +At the news-stand near by a group of men and women were loitering, the men +buying theatre tickets, the women turning over the leaves of magazines, +scanning lazily the titles of novels. The magazines were stacked in rows, +each with a gaudy cover,--"artistic" or designed merely to capture the eye +by a blaze of color. One of the women turned the leaves of several novels, +idly, with a kind of fat ennui, as if loath to be tempted even by mental +dissipation. Then noting a title that had somehow lodged itself with +favorable associations in her brain, she said to the girl behind the +counter, "You may send this up to my room." + +So the work of imagination, the picture of life, the soul of the poet +creator, was slipped from the pile to be sent upwards along with the other +purchases of the day,--clothes and jewellery and candy,--what the woman had +desired that day. This group moved on and another took its place. The books +and the magazines disappeared like the theatre tickets and the cigars and +cigarettes at the neighboring stand,--feeding the maw of the multitude, +which sought to tickle different groups of brain cells. Gay little books, +saucy little books, cheap little books, pleasant little books,--all making +their bid to certain cells in the gray matter of these sated human beings! +A literature composed chiefly by women for women,--tons of wood pulp, miles +of linen covers, rivers of ink,--all to feed the prevailing taste, like the +ribbons, the jewels, the candy, the theatre tickets! A great age, as Mr. +Gossom, swelling with pride, would have said, and a great people, that has +standardized its pleasures and has them marketed in convenient packages for +all tastes! An age of women's ideals, a literature by women for women! ... +Isabelle bought a copy of Mr. Gossom's patriotic magazine for the People, +and turned its fresh pages with a curiosity to see what it was like, and +who was writing now. The sentimental novel by the popular English novelist +that she had looked at when it first appeared came to its conclusion in +this number. And it not having met with the expected popular approval, for +all its sentiment, Mr. Gossom had abandoned the idyllic in favor of a +startling series of articles on "Our National Crimes," plentifully and +personally illustrated. Mr. Gossom would have preferred to prolong the +sentimental note,--"pleasant reading," as he called it; personally he did +not approve of hanging up the nation's wash in the front yard, for he +himself was an investor in corporations. But what could he do? It was his +business to give the People what the People wanted. And just now they +wanted to be shocked and outraged by revelations of business perfidy. +Another six months, perhaps, when the public was tired of contemplating +rascality, the editor would find something sweet, full of country charm and +suburban peace, to feed them.... On the title-page there were the old names +and some new ones, but the same grist,--a "homely" story of "real life" +among the tenements, a "humorous" story of the new school, an article on a +marvellous invention to set the public on the gape, etc.... Fosdick had an +article of a serious nature, on Trades Unions and Socialism. 'So Dickie, +having ceased to roll about the world,' thought Isabelle, 'has begun to +write about it.' She turned down the page at his article and looked into +the advertising section. That was where the _People's_ excelled,--in its +thick advertising section. Between the automobiles and the pianolas were +inserted some pages of personal puff, photographs of the coming +contributors, and an account of their deeds,--the menus prepared for the +coming months. Isabelle looked at the faces of the contributors, among whom +was Dick's face, very smooth and serious. As a whole the photographs might +be those of any Modern Order of Redmen, consciously posed before the camera +of Fame. But they gave that personal touch so necessary to please the +democratic taste. Thus from Aeschylus to Mr. Gossom's "literature." ... It +seemed no more real, no more a part of what life is in its essence, than +the hotel and the sleek people thronging it. + + * * * * * + +When Isabelle entered the dining room, the head waiter placed her in a +sheltered nook behind one of the stucco pillars, not far from the stringed +instruments concealed in a little Gothic choir loft over the entrance. +There were flowers on the tables and multitudinous electric candles in pink +silk shades. The open-timbered ceiling had been decorated by an artist of +some fame, who had sought in vain to give to this rich feeding place of the +herd the grace of an Italian palace. Two long mural paintings adorned the +end walls, and six highly colored tapestries were hung at equal spaces +laterally. In spite of the large proportions of the room, it was +insufferably hot and heavy with the odors of wilting flowers and perspiring +humanity, somewhat perfumed, and of foods and wines. The early diners were +leaving for the theatres and opera, the women trailing their rich gowns +over the rugged floor as they stared about them. (They were mostly +strangers from inland cities who had been attracted by the fame of this +newest hotel.) Their places were quickly taken by others in couples and in +parties, and the hum of talk was feebly punctuated by occasional bursts of +teasing sound from the stringed instruments. Isabelle felt curiously alone, +sitting here in the crowded dining room,--alone as she had not felt on the +most solitary hillside of Grosvenor. She closed her eyes and saw the +village in its cup among the mountains glittering white in the March sun. +The thin, pure air of the forests filled her nostrils. She was homesick--for +the first time in her life! With a little shake she roused herself and +turned to Fosdick's article that she had brought with her to the table. It +was all about the progress of the socialist parties abroad, their aims and +accomplishments, showing first-hand observation and knowledge; also a +vivaciously critical spirit,--in short what Gossom would call "a smart +article." ... There was another "serious" article on the problem of housing +the poor, amply illustrated. In the newspapers that she had glanced through +on her long journey, there had been likewise much about "movements," +political and social, speeches and societies organized to promote this +interest or that, and endless references to the eternal conflict of capital +and labor, in the struggle for their respective shares of the human cake. +It was the same with all the more serious magazines at the news-stand; they +were filled with discussion of "movements" for the betterment of humanity, +of talk about this means or that to make the world run a little more +smoothly. It was proof, according to the editors, of the sound spirit of +democracy, fighting for ideals, making progress along right lines. In other +days Isabelle would have considered Fosdick's article brilliant, if not +profound. She would have felt that here was something very important for +serious people to know, and believed she was thinking.... To-night +Fosdick's phrases seemed dead, like this hotel life, this hotel reading +matter. Even the impassioned editorial she had seen on child-labor laws, +and the article on factory inspection, and the bill to regulate the hours +of labor on railroads--all the "uplift" movements--seemed dead, +wooden,--part of the futile machinery with which earnest people deluded +themselves that they were doing something. Would all of them, even if +successful, right the wrong of life in any deep sense? ... + +Isabelle laid down the magazine and looked over the room again. Her eyes +fell on a party of four at one of the tables in front of her, beneath the +mural painting. While the food she had ordered was being slowly put before +her, she watched them. There seemed something familiar about the black back +of the man at the nearer side of the table, about the way he leaned +forward, gesticulating from his wrists, and also about the large woman at +his right with her head turned away. After a time this head came around and +looked down the room. It was Conny! Conny splendidly blond and large, in +half-mourning, with a fresh touch of color on her pale face, her beautiful +shoulders quite bare. And that full mouth and competent chin,--no one but +Conny! Isabelle hastily looked down at her plate. She had not recognized +the others at the table. Conny was seated just beneath the pink and white +painting representing spring,--a mixture of Botticelli brought to date and +Puvis. And Conny carried on the allegory of Flora into full-blown summer. +She was drinking her wine meditatively, and her firm chin--the Senator had +said it was moulded for an empress--was slightly tilted, revealing the +thick, muscular neck. + +So long ago it was when Isabelle had been thrilled by her luncheon at the +Woodyards'. She hurried her dinner now to escape the necessity of talking +to Conny when her party passed out. But as she prepared to rise, she saw +that they were coming towards her and sat down again, opening the magazine. +From it she could see them, Conny in the lead sweeping forward in that +consciously unconscious manner with which she took her world. The man +behind her had some trouble in keeping up with her pace; he limped, and +almost tripped on Conny's train. Isabelle saw him out of her lowered +eyelids. It was Tom Cairy. They almost brushed her table as they passed, +Conny and after her Tom. Conny was drawling in her treble note, "She made a +great sensation in Herndon's piece over in London." ... And Isabelle was +conscious that she was sitting alone at the hotel table, staring into +vacancy, with a waiter impatiently eying the coin in her hand.... + +She had looked at him for half an hour, not knowing him! And suddenly she +saw how dead it all was: not merely her feeling for Cairy, but her whole +past, the petty things clone or felt by that petty other self, ending with +the tragic fact of Vickers's sacrifice. She had passed through into another +world.... This man who had sat there near her all the evening she had once +believed that she loved more than life itself,--his mere voice had made her +tremble,--this God she had created to worship! And she had not recognized +him. + +High up in her corner of the brick and stone cliff above the twinkling +city, Isabelle knelt by the open window, looking out into the foggy night. +Unconscious of the city sounds rising in one roar from the pavement,--the +voice of the giant metropolis,--she knelt there thinking of that dead past, +that dead self, and of Vickers, a solemn unearthly music like the march of +life in her ears. She knelt there, wide-eyed, able to see it all calmly, +something like prayer struggling upwards in her heart for expression. + + + + +CHAPTER LXIX + + +All night long in the corridors of the cliff-city the elevator doors had +clicked, as they were opened and shut on the ceaseless trips to pack away +the people in the eighteen stories. In the morning they became even +livelier in their effort to take down the hungry guests for breakfast and +the day's business. The corridors and the lobbies and the foyer were +thronged with the same people, freshly dressed for the day, fat or lean, +heavy eyed or alert, pale, nervous, with quick tones and jerky movements. +And there was a line of new arrivals before a fresh row of pale clerks. The +prominent people of the city, especially the women, had already left town +for the Springs or Florida or Paris or the Mediterranean, anywhere but +here! Their flitting, however, had made no impression on the hotels or the +honey-hives along the avenue. What they abandoned--the city in March with +its theatres, opera, restaurants, and shops--the provincials came hungrily +to suck. For the cast-off, the spurned, is always Somebody's desired. + +It was the same on the other side of the ferry in the railroad terminal, +hurrying throngs pressing through the little wickets that bore the legend +of the destination of each train,--"The Florida East Coast Limited," "New +Orleans, Texas, and the South," "Washington and Virginia," etc. From this +centre the strands of travel ran outwards to many beguiling points. And +there were two perpetual motions,--the crowd flowing out to some joy beyond +the horizon, and the crowd flowing back irresistibly to the sucking +whirlpool. Always movement, change, endless going, going with these +people,--the spirit of the race in their restless feet! There was always +the Desirable beyond at the other end of the line. All the world that could +move was in unstable flux, scurrying hither and thither in hot search for +the phantom Better--change, variety--to be had for the price of a ticket. + +It was a relief to be on the Pullman, seated for a time in a small fixed +space, free from the revolving whirlpool of restless humanity, though that +fixity itself was being whirled across the land. With a sigh Isabelle +leaned back and looked at the passing country outside. The snow had long +disappeared, leaving the brown earth naked and forlorn. It was the same +landscape, under similar conditions, that Isabelle had gazed at the spring +afternoon when she was hurrying back to meet Cairy, his violets on her +breast. It seemed to her then that she was happy, with a wonderful +happiness. Now she was content.... As the train rushed through the +Alleghanies, the first faint touches of spring appeared in the swelling +stems of the underbrush, in the full streams of yellow water, and the few +spears of green grass beside the sheltering fence posts, and the soft misty +atmosphere full of brooding changes over the level fields. + +Isabelle became eager to get on to her journey's end, to see her husband. +Once out there with him, whatever accident befell them, she was equal to +it, would see its real meaning, would find in it Peace. She had brought +with her the copy of the _People's_ and a number of other magazines and +books, and as the day waned she tried to interest herself in some of their +"pleasant" stories. But her eyes wandered back to the landscape through +which they were speeding, to the many small towns past which they +darted,--ugly little places with ugly frame or brick buildings, stores and +houses and factories, dirty and drab, unlike the homely whiteness of the +Grosvenor village street. But they were strangely attracting to her +eye,--these little glimpses of other lives, seen as the train sped by, at +the back porches, the windows, the streets; the lives of the many fixed and +set by circumstance, revolving between home and workshop, the lives of the +multitude not yet evolved into ease and aspiration. But they counted, these +lives of the multitude,--that was what she felt this day; they counted +quite as much as here or any. She had travelled back and forth over this +main artery of the Atlantic and Pacific many times from her childhood up. +But hitherto the scene had meant nothing to her; she had never looked at it +before. She had whirled through the panorama of states, thinking only of +herself, what was to happen to her at the end of the journey. But to-day it +was _her_ country, _her_ people, _her_ civilization that she looked out on. +The millions that were making their lives in all these ugly little houses, +these mills and shops, men and women together, loving, marrying, breeding, +and above all living! "All of life is good!" Each one of these millions had +its own drama, each to itself, as hers had been to her, with that tragic +importance of being lived but once from the germ to the ultimate dust. Each +one was its own epic, its own experience, and its own fulfilment. As +Renault once said, "Any of the possibilities may lie in a human soul." And +in that was the hope and the faith for Democracy,--the infinite variety of +these possibilities! + +So the literature of "movements" and causes, the effort by organization to +right the human fabric, seemed futile, for the most part. If man were right +with himself, square with his own soul, each one of the millions, there +would be no wrongs to right by machinery, by laws, by discussion, by +agitation, by theories or beliefs. Each must start with self, and right +that.... Yes, the world needed a Religion, not movements nor reforms! + + * * * * * + +... Sometime during the night Isabelle was roused by the stopping of the +train, and pulling aside the curtain of the window she looked out. The +train was standing in the yards of a large station with many switch lights +feebly winking along the tracks. At first she did not recognize the place; +it might be any one of the division headquarters where the through trains +stopped to change engines. But as she looked at the maze of tracks, at the +dingy red brick building beyond the yards, she finally realized that it was +Torso, the spot where her married life had begun. It gave her an odd +sensation to lie there and look out on the familiar office building where +she used to go for John--so long ago! Torso, she had felt at that time, was +cramping, full of commonplace, ordinary people that one did not care to +know. She had been very anxious to escape to something larger,--to St. +Louis and then to New York. She wondered what she would think of it now if +she should go back,--of Mrs. Fraser and the Griscoms. Then she remembered +the Falkners, and how badly it had gone since with Bessie. It was sad to +think back over the years and see how it might have been different, and for +the moment she forgot that if it had been different in any large sense, the +result would have been different. She would not be here now, the person she +was. Regret is the most useless of human states of mind.... The railroad +operatives were busy with lanterns about the train, tapping wheels, filling +the ice-boxes and gas-tanks, and switching cars. She could see the faces of +the men as they passed her section in the light of their lanterns. With +deliberate, unconscious motions they performed their tasks. Like the face +of that lad on the engine at White River, these were the faces of ordinary +men, privates of the industrial world, and yet each had something about it +distinctive, of its own. What kept these privates at their work, each in +his place? Hunger, custom, faith? Surely something beyond themselves that +made life seem to each one of them reasonable, desirable. Something not +very different from the spirit which lay in her own soul, like a calming +potion, which she could almost touch when she needed its strength. "For +life is good--all of it!" ... and "Peace is the rightful heritage of every +soul." + +The train rolled on towards its destination, and she fell asleep again, +reassured. + + + + +CHAPTER LXX + + +At the station in St. Louis a young man came forward from the crowd about +the gate and raised his hat, explaining to Isabelle that he had been sent +by her husband to meet her. Mr. Lane, he said further, was in court and +found it impossible to be there. When she was in the cab and her trunk had +been secured the young man asked:-- + +"Where shall I tell him? The Price house?" + +A picture of the familiar empty rooms, of waiting there with her ghosts, +aggravated the disappointment she had felt at not seeing John on her +arrival. She hesitated. + +"Could I go to the court?" + +"Sure--of course; only Mr. Lane thought--" + +"Get in, won't you, and come with me," Isabelle said, interrupting him, and +then as the young man shyly took the vacant seat, she asked:-- + +"Aren't you Teddy Bliss? ... I haven't seen you for--years!" She added with +a smile, "Since you played baseball in your father's back yard. How is your +mother?" + +It gave her a sense of age to find the son of her old friend in this +smiling young man. Life was getting on apace.... The cab made its way +slowly into the heart of the city, and they talked of the old times when +the Blisses had been neighbors across the alley from the Prices. Isabelle +wished to ask the young man about the trial. The New York paper that she +had seen on the train had only a short account. But she hesitated to show +her ignorance, and Teddy Bliss was too much abashed before the handsome +wife of his "boss" to offer any information. Finally Isabelle asked:-- + +"Is the trial nearly over?" + +"Pretty near the end. Cross-examination to-day. When I left, Mr. Lane was +on the stand. Then come the arguments and the judge's charge, and it goes +to the jury." + +And he added with irresistible impulse:-- + +"It's a great case, Mrs. Lane! ... When our lawyers get after that district +attorney, he won't know what's happened to him.... Why, the road's secured +the best legal talent that ever argued a case in this district, so they +tell me. That man Brinkerhoff is a corker!" + +"Indeed!" Isabelle replied, smiling at the young man's enthusiasm for the +scrap. To him it was all a matter of legal prowess with victory to the +heavy battalions. + +"Federal court-rooms are in here temporarily,--crowded out of the federal +building," her companion explained as the cab stopped before a grimy office +building. + +Isabelle had expected that the trial would be in some sort of public +building, which might have at least the semblance of serving as a temple of +justice. But justice, it seemed, like most else in this day, had to +accommodate itself to the practical life.... Upstairs there was a small +crowd about the door of the court-room, through which the young man gained +admission by a whispered word to the tobacco-chewing veteran that kept the +gate. + +The court-room was badly lighted by two windows at the farther end, in +front of which on a low platform behind a plain oak desk sat the judge, and +grouped about him informally the jurors, the lawyers, and stenographers, +and mixed with these the defendants and witnesses. The body of the room, +which was broken by bare iron pillars, was well filled with reporters and +curious persons. Isabelle sank into a vacant chair near the door and looked +eagerly for her husband. At last by craning her head she caught a partial +view of him where he sat behind a pillar, his face bent downwards leaning +on his hand, listening with an expression of weariness to the wrangle of +counsel. He was sallow, and his attitude was abstracted, the attitude in +which he listened at board meetings or gathered the substance of a wordy +report from a subordinate. It was not the attitude of a criminal on trial +for his honor! ... + +"That's Brinkerhoff, the big gun," young Bliss whispered to Isabelle, +indicating a gentle, gray-headed, smooth-shaven man, who seemed to be +taking a nap behind his closed eyes. + +The judge himself was lolling back listlessly, while several men in front +of him talked back and forth colloquially. The argument between counsel +proceeded with polite irony and sarcastic iteration of stock phrases, "If +your honor pleases," ... "My learned brother, the district attorney," ... +"The learned counsel for the defence," etc. The judge's eyes rested on the +ceiling, as if he too wished to take a nap. There was a low hum of +conversation among the men grouped about the desk meanwhile, and +occasionally one of the young men who had been scribbling on a pad would +grasp his hat hurriedly and leave the room. Thus the proceedings dragged +on. + +"They are arguing about admitting some evidence," the young man at her side +explained.... + +Isabelle, who had been living in a suppressed state of emotional excitement +ever since that night three days before when she had turned from the +newspapers to pack her trunk, felt a sudden limp reaction come over her. +Apparently the whole proceeding was without vitality,--a kind of routine +through which all parties had to go, knowing all the time that it settled +nothing,--did not much count. The judge was a plain, middle-aged man in a +wrinkled sack coat,--very much in appearance what Conny would call a +"bounder." The defending counsel talked among themselves or wrote letters +or took naps, like the celebrated Mr. Brinkerhoff, and the counsel for the +government listened or made a remark in the same placid manner. It was all +very commonplace,--some respectable gentlemen engaged in a dull technical +discussion over the terms of the game, in which seemingly there was no +momentous personal interest involved. + +"The government's case will collapse if they can't get those books of the +coal companies in as evidence," young Bliss informed Isabelle. He seemed to +understand the rules of the game,--the point at issue. + +Surely the methods of modern justice are unpicturesque, unimpressive! +Compare this trial of the cause of the People against the mighty Atlantic +and Pacific railroad corporation _et al_. with the trial of the robber +baron dragged from his bleak castle perched above the highroad where he had +laid in wait to despoil his fellow-men, weaker vessels, into the court of +his Bishop,--there to be judged, to free himself if he might by grasping +hot iron with his naked hand, by making oath over the bones of some saint, +and if found guilty to be condemned to take the cross in the crusade for +the Saviour's sepulchre. Fantastic, that; but human--dramatic! And starkly +memorable, like the row of his victim's heads nailed along the battlements +of his castle. More civilized, the modern tyrant takes the cash and lets +the victim die a natural death. Or compare this tedious legal game--which +does not count--with that pageant of England's trial of a corrupt +administrator at the bar of Parliament! The issues involved are hardly less +vital to millions in the case of the People against the Atlantic and +Pacific _et al_. than in the case of the races of India against Warren +Hastings; but democracy is the essence of horse-sense. 'For these gentlemen +before me,' the judge seemed to say, 'are not criminals, no matter how the +jury may render its verdict, in any ordinary sense of the term. They may +have exceeded the prescribed limits in playing the game that all men +play,--the great predatory game of get all you can and keep it! ... But +they are not common criminals.' + +At last the judge leaned forward, his elbows on the desk:-- + +"The court orders that the papers in question be admitted as evidence +pertinent to this case." + +Teddy Bliss looked chagrined. His side had been ruled against. + +"They'll be sure to reverse the decision on appeal," he whispered +consolatorily to his employer's wife. "An exception has been taken." + +That was apparently the opinion of those concerned who were grouped about +the judge's desk. There was no consternation, merely a slight movement as +if to free muscles cramped by one position, a word or two among counsel. +The great Brinkerhoff still wore that placid look of contemplation, as if +he were thinking of the new tulip bulbs he had imported from Holland for +his house up the Hudson. He was not aroused even when one of his +fellow-counsel asked him a question. He merely removed his glasses, wiped +them reflectively, and nodded to his colleague benignantly. He knew, as the +others knew, that the case would be appealed from the verdict of the jury +to a higher court, and very likely would turn up ultimately in the highest +court of all at Washington, where after the lapse of several years the +question at issue would be argued wholly on technicalities, and finally +decided according to the psychological peculiarities of the various +personalities then composing the court. The residuum of justice thus meted +out to his clients--if they were not successful before in maintaining their +contention--would not affect these honorable gentlemen appreciably. The +corporation would pay the legal expenses of the protracted litigation, and +hand the bill on to the public ultimately, and the people by their taxes +would pay their share of this row.... He put on his glasses and resumed his +meditation. + +"Court is adjourned." At last! Isabelle stood up eagerly, anxious to catch +her husband's attention. He was talking with the lawyers. The young clerk +went up to him and touched his elbow, and presently Lane came down the room +in the stream of reporters and lawyers bent on getting to luncheon. It was +neither the place nor the time that Isabelle would have preferred for +meeting her husband after their long separation. There was so much in her +heart,--this meeting meant so much, must be so much for them both in all +the future years. The familiar solid figure, with the reserved, impassive +face came nearer; Lane reached out his hand. There were lines about the +mouth, and his hair seemed markedly gray. + +"John!" was all she could say. + +"Glad to see you, Isabelle!" he replied. "Sorry I couldn't meet you at the +station. Everything all right?" + +It was his usual kindly, rather short-hand manner with her. + +"Yes," she said, "everything is all right." She felt as if all the +significance of her act had been erased. + +"You know your mother hasn't come back from the Springs," he added, "but +they are expecting you at the house." + +"Can't we go somewhere and have luncheon together? I want so much to see +you!" she urged. + +"I wish I might, but I have these lawyers on my hands--must take them to +the club for luncheon. Sorry I shall be kept here until late in the +afternoon. I will put you in a cab." And he led the way to the elevator. As +always he was kind and considerate. But in his equable manner was there +also some touch of coldness, of aloofness from this wife, who had taken +this curious opportunity to come into his affairs? + +"Thank you," she faltered, as he looked down the street for a cab. +"Couldn't I go somewhere about here for luncheon and come back afterwards +to the court-room? I should like to wait for you." + +"Why, if you want to," he replied, looking at her with surprise. And as if +divining a reason for her agitation, he said: "You mustn't mind what the +papers say. It won't amount to anything, either way it goes." + +"I think I'll stay," she said hurriedly. + +"Very well. I will call Bliss to take you to a hotel." + +He beckoned to the waiting young man, and while Mr. Bliss was finding a +cab, Lane said to his wife:-- + +"You are looking very well. The country has done you good?" + +"Yes! I am very well,--all well!" She tried to smile buoyantly. "I don't +expect ever to be ill again." + +He received this as a man accustomed to the vagaries of woman's health, and +said, "That's good!" + +Then he put her into the cab, gave some instructions to the young man, and +raised his hat. His manner was perfect to her, and yet Isabelle went to her +luncheon with the bubbling Mr. Bliss sad at heart. She was such an +outsider, such a stranger to her husband's inner self! That it was to be +expected, her own fault, the result of the misspent years of married life +made it none the easier to bear.... + +Mr. Teddy Bliss exercised his best connoisseurship in selecting the dishes +from the printed broadside put before him at the hotel restaurant, +consulting Isabelle frequently as to her tastes, where the desire to please +was mingled with the pride of appearing self-possessed. Having finally +decided on tomato bisque aux crutons, prairie chicken, grilled sweet +potatoes, salad and peche Melba, which was all very much to his liking, he +dropped the card and looked at Isabelle with a broad smile. The world and +its affairs still had an irrepressible zest and mirthful aspect to young +Mr. Bliss. + +"You're likely to hear some or-a-tory this afternoon, Mrs. Lane," he +scoffed. "The district attorney is a Southerner, and he's going to spread +himself when he makes his plea, you can believe. It's his chance to get +talked about from San Francisco to Washington.... Of course it don't cut +any ice what he says, but the papers will play it up large, and that's what +they are after, the government. You see"--he waxed confidential--"the +government's got to save its face somehow after all the talk and the dust +they have raised. If they can secure a conviction,--oh, just a nominal fine +(you know there is no prison penalty),--why, it'll be good campaign +material this fall. So they fixed on the A. and P. as a shining mark for +their shot. And you know there's a good deal of feeling, especially in this +state, against railroads." + +"I see!" In spite of herself Isabelle was amused at the naive assurance the +young man had given her that nothing serious could happen to her +husband,--not imprisonment! Mr. Bliss's point of view about the famous case +was evidently that of the railroad office, tinged with a blithe sporting +interest in a legal scrap. The ill-paid government attorneys trying the +case were a lot of "light-weight mits," put up against the best "talent" in +the country employed by the powerful corporation to protect itself; in +short, a sure thing for the railroad in the final knockout if not in the +first round. + +"It was bad, their getting in those Pleasant Valley Company books," he +remarked less exuberantly. "But it won't make any difference in the end. +The papers have made the most of that evidence already." + +"Why do you suppose the newspapers are so bitter against the road?" + +"They aren't, the best of them; they know too much what's good for them. +They just print the record of the trial. As for the sensational ones, you +see it's this way,--they don't care, they haven't any convictions. It is +just a matter of business for them. Slamming the corporations suits their +readers. The people who buy most of the papers like to have the prosperous +classes slammed. Most people are envious; they want the other fellow's +roll,--isn't that so? They think they are as good as the best, and it makes +'em sick to see the other fellow in his automobile when they are earning +fifteen or eighteen per! They don't stop to consider that it's brains that +makes the diff." + +"So it is merely envy that produces all this agitation?" + +"I am not saying that the corporations are philanthropic institutions," Mr. +Bliss continued didactically; "of course they aren't. They are out for +business, and every man knows what that means. I suppose they do a good +many tough things if they get the chance--same as their critics. What of +it? Wouldn't the little fellow do the same thing, if he could,--had the +chance? ... What would this country be to-day without the corporations, the +railroads? Without the Atlantic and Pacific, right here in St. Louis? And +all the work of those men they are prosecuting and fining and trying to put +into jail? Why, if the President had his way, he'd lock up every man that +had enough sense and snap in him to do things, and he'd make this country +like a Methodist camp meeting after the shouting is over! There's no sense +to it." + +Isabelle laughed at the young man's vigorous defence of "our" side. It +seemed useless to attempt to pick flaws in his logic, and it would hardly +become her as the wife of his "boss" to betray that she was not wholly +convinced of his accuracy. + +"Besides, why can't the government let bygones be bygones? Every one knows +that the roads did some queer things in the old days. But why rake up old +crimes and make a mess? I say let's have a clean slate and begin over.... +But if they keep on legislating and howling against corporations, like some +of these trust-busting state legislatures, we'll have a panic sure thing, +and that will do the business for the reformers, won't it now?" + +This, as Isabelle realized, was, in the popular language of Mr. Teddy +Bliss, her husband's point of view, the philosophy of the ruling class, +imbibed by their dependents. As the young man turned from expounding the +business situation to his succulent bird, Isabelle had time for reflection. + +This young man was sucking his views about honesty, business morality, from +the Atlantic and Pacific, from her husband. One of Renault's sentences came +to her, "We all live in large part on a borrowed capital of suggested +ideas, motives, desires." And the corollary: "Each is responsible not only +for the capital that he borrows from others,--that it should really be the +right idea for him,--but also for the capital he lends,--the suggestions he +gives to others--possibly less stable minds. For thus by borrowing and +lending ideas is created that compulsive body of thought throughout the +universe on which we all act." + +Her husband was on trial for that which he had borrowed and thus made his +own, as well as for that which he had passed on into life--to Mr. Teddy +Bliss, for example. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXI + + +The government attorney had already begun his argument when Isabelle, +escorted by Teddy Bliss, returned to the court-room. The district attorney +was a short, thick-set, sallow-faced man, with bushy gray hair growing in +the absurd "Pompadour" fashion, and a homely drooping mustache. Another +"bounder," thought Isabelle, one of the hungry outsiders, not in fee to the +corporations, who hired only the best lawyers. Perhaps he was aware of his +position there in the dingy court-room before the trained gladiators of his +profession--and also before his country! The lawyers for the defendants +lolling in their chairs settled themselves placidly to see what this humble +brother would make of the business. Mr. Brinkerhoff's eyelids drooped over +his gentle eyes, as if to shut out all distractions of sense from his +brain. The thick-set district attorney frequently scraped his throat and +repeated the phrase, "if it please your honor." He had a detestable nasal +whine, and he maltreated the accents of several familiar words. The culture +of letters and vocal delivery had evidently not been large in the small +inland college where he had been educated. These annoying peculiarities at +first distracted Isabelle's attention, while the lawyer labored through the +opening paragraphs of his argument. In the maze of her thoughts, which had +jumped across the continent to the little mountain village, there fell on +her ears the words, "In a land of men born free and equal before the law." +Was it the tone of unexpected passion vibrating through those ancient +words, or the idea itself that startled her like an electric shock? That +pathetic effort of our ancestors to enact into constitutional dogma the +poetic dream of a race! "Born free and equal"!--there was nothing more +absurd, more contrary to the daily evidence of life, ever uttered. Isabelle +fancied she saw a soft smile play over the benign face of Mr. Brinkerhoff, +as if he too had been struck by the irony of the words. But to the district +attorney they did not seem to be a mere poetic aspiration, nor a catch +phrase with which to adorn his speech; they voiced a real idea, still +pulsating with passionate truth. From this moment Isabelle forgot the +lawyer's nasal intonation, his uncultivated delivery. + +He stood there, so it seemed, as the representative of the mute millions +which make the nation to defend before the court their cause against the +rapacious acts of the strong. This great railroad corporation, with its +capital of three hundred and seventy-five millions of dollars in stocks and +bonds (a creature, nevertheless, of the common public, called into +existence by its necessities and chartered by its will), had taken upon +itself to say who should dig coal and sell it from the lands along its +lines. They and their servants and allies had, so the charge ran, seized +each individual man or association of men not allied to them, and throttled +the life in them--specifically refusing them cars in which to transport +their coal, denying them switching privileges, etc.... The government, +following its duty to protect the rights of each man and all men against +the oppression of the few, had brought this suit to prohibit these secret +practices, to compel restitution, to punish the corporation and its +servants for wrong done.... "The situation was, if your honor please, as if +a company of men should rivet a chain across the doors of certain +warehouses of private citizens and should prevent these citizens from +taking their goods out of their warehouses or compel them to pay toll for +the privilege of transacting their lawful business.... And the government +has shown, if it please your honor, that this Pleasant Valley Coal Company +is but a creature of the defendant corporation, its officers and owners +being the servants of the railroad company, and thereby this Pleasant +Valley Coal Company has enjoyed and now enjoys special privileges in the +matter of transportation, cars, and switching facilities. The government +has further shown that the Atlantic and Pacific, by its servant, John +Lane...." + +At this point the railroad counsel looked interested; even the serene Mr. +Brinkerhoff deigned to unclose his eyes. For the district attorney, having +disposed of his oratorical flourish of trumpets, had got down to the facts +of the record and what they could be made to prove. In the close argument +that followed, Isabella's thoughts went back to that trumpet phrase,--"all +men born free and equal." Slowly there dawned in her an altogether new +comprehension of what this struggle before her eyes, in which her husband +was involved, meant. Nay, what human life itself, with all its noisy +discord, meant! + +Their forerunners, the fathers of the people, held the theory that here at +last, in this broad, rich, new land, men should struggle with one another +for the goods of life on an equal basis. Man should neither oppress nor +interfere with man. Justice at last to all! The struggle should be ordered +by law so that men might be free to struggle and equal in their rights. To +all the same freedom to live, to enjoy, to become! So these fathers of the +republic had dreamed. So some still dreamed that human life might be +ordered, to be a fair, open struggle--for all. + +But within a brief century and a quarter the fallacy of this aspiration had +become ridiculously apparent. "Born free and equal!" Nothing on this globe +was ever so born. The strong who achieved, the weak who succumbed--both +knew the nonsense of it. Free and equal,--so far as men could maintain +freedom and equality by their own force,--that was all! + +(There was that man who begged John to give him cars. Poor thing! he could +not maintain his right.) + +And every man who complained at the oppression of another either oppressed +some one or would so oppress him, if he had the chance and the power. It +was, of course, the business of the law to police the fight,--the game had +its rules, its limits, which all must obey, when not too "destructive." But +essentially this new land of liberty and hope was like all other human +societies,--a mortal combat where the strong triumphed and the weak went +under in defeat.... That was what the array of brilliant counsel employed +by the Atlantic and Pacific really represented. "Gentlemen, you can't block +us with silly rules. We must play this game of life as it was ordered by +God it should be played when the first protoplasm was evolved.... And +really, if it were not for us, would there be any game for you little +fellows to play?" + +Egotism, the curse of egotism! This was stark male egotism,--the instinct +for domination. And defendants and plaintiffs were alike in spirit, +struggling for position in the game. The weaker ones--if they had the +hold--would pluck at the windpipe of their oppressors.... + +So while the attorney for the people spoke on about rate-sheets and +schedules A and B, and bills of lading from the Pleasant Valley Company +(marked "exhibits nine and ten"), the woman in the court-room began to +comprehend dimly the mystery behind this veil of words. Every man felt +instinctively this spirit of fight,--the lively young clerk at her side as +well as the defendant before the bar, her husband; the paid writers for Mr. +Gossom's patriotic magazine as well as the President and his advisers,--all +had it in their blood. It was the spirit of our dominating race, fostered +through the centuries,--the spirit of achievement, of conquest. Mr. +Gossom's clever writers, the President, and the "good element" generally, +differed from their opponents only in manner and degree. "Gently, gently, +gentlemen," they called. "Play according to the rules of the game. Don't +bang all the breath out of your adversary's body when you have him by the +throat. Remember, gentlemen, to give every one his turn!" + +In the light of this understanding of the nature of the game of life, the +efforts of the government to preserve order in a row of this magnitude +became almost farcical,--so long as the spirit of man was untouched and +SUCCESS was admittedly the one glorious prize of life! ... + +Finally the district attorney ceased to speak, and the judge looked at his +watch. There was not time for the defence to make its argument to-day, and +so court was adjourned. The lawyers stretched themselves, chatted, and +laughed. The raw district attorney had done his worst, and judging from Mr. +Brinkerhoff's amiable smile, it was not very bad. The newspaper men +scurried out of the room for the elevators,--there was good copy this +afternoon! + +Lane joined his wife after a few moments, and they left the court-room. + +"Are you tired?" he asked solicitously. "It must have been dull for you, +all that law talk." + +"Oh, no! ... I think I was never so much interested in anything in my +life," she replied with a long sigh. + +He looked as if he were puzzled, but he made no further reference to the +trial, either then or on their way to her mother's house. And Isabelle in a +tumult of impressions and feelings was afraid to speak yet, afraid lest she +might touch the wrong nerve, strike the wrong note,--and so set them +farther apart in life than they were now. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXII + + +They dined in the lofty, sombre room at the rear of the house, overlooking +a patch of turf between the house and the stable. Above the massive +sideboard hung an oil portrait of the Colonel, a youthful painting but +vigorous, where something of the old man's sweetness and gentle wisdom had +been caught. This dining room had been done over the year before Isabelle +was married; its taste seemed already heavy and bad. + +Her mother's old servants served the same rich, substantial meal they had +served when she was a child, with some poor sherry, the Colonel's only +concession to domestic conviviality. The room and the food subtly typified +the spirit of the race,--that spirit which was illuminated in the +court-room--before it had finally evolved.... The moral physiology of men +is yet to be explored! + +Lane leaned back in the Colonel's high-backed chair, gray and weary under +the brilliant light. At first he tried to be interested in Grosvenor, asked +questions of his wife, but soon he relapsed into a preoccupied silence. +This mood Isabelle had never seen in her husband, nor his physical +lassitude. After a time she ventured to ask:-- + +"Is it likely to last much longer, the trial?" + +"A couple of days, the lawyers think." And after a while he added morosely: +"Nobody can tell how long if it is appealed.... I have had to muddle away +the better part of the winter over this business, first and last! It's +nothing but popular clamor, suspicion. The government is playing to the +gallery. I don't know what the devil will happen to the country with this +lunatic of a President. Capital is already freezing up tight. The road will +have to issue short-time notes to finance the improvements it has under +way, and abandon all new work. Men who have money to invest aren't going to +buy stock and bonds with a set of anarchists at Washington running the +country!" + +It was quite unlike Lane to explode in this manner. It was not merely the +result of nervous fatigue, Isabelle felt: it indicated some concealed sore +in her husband's mind. + +"How do you think it will be decided?" she asked timidly. + +"The trial? Nobody can guess. The judge is apparently against us, and that +will influence the jurors,--a lot of farmers and sore-heads! ... But the +verdict will make no difference. We shall carry it up, fight it out till +the last court. The government has given us enough errors,--all the opening +we need!" + +The government had played badly, that is. Isabelle had it on her tongue to +demand: "But how do _you_ feel about it,--the real matter at issue? What is +right--_just_?" Again she refrained, afraid to array herself apparently on +the side of his enemies. + +"It is all this infernal agitation, which does nobody any good and will +result in crippling business," he repeated, as they went to the library for +their coffee. + +This room, where the Colonel usually sat evenings with his wife and the +neighbors who dropped in, was exactly as it had been in the old days,--even +the same row of novels and books of travel in a rack on the polished table. +Only the magazines had been changed. + +Lane lighted a cigar and sipped his coffee. Revived by his dinner and +cigar, he began to talk more freely, in the same mood of disgusted +irritation, the mood of his class these days, of the men he met at his +club, in business,--the lawyers, the capitalists, the leaders of society. +Isabelle, listening to his bitter criticism, wished that she might get him +to speak more personally,--tell her all the detail that had led up to the +suit, explain his connection with it,--show her his inmost heart as he +would show it to himself in a time of exact truth! With this feeling she +went over to where he was sitting and put her hand on his shoulder, and as +he glanced up in surprise at this unexpected demonstration, she said +impulsively:-- + +"John, please, John! ... Tell me everything--I can understand.... Don't you +think there might be some little truth in the other side? Was the road +fair, was it just in this coal business? I so want to know, John!" + +Her voice trembled with suppressed emotion. She wished to draw him to her, +in the warmth of her new feeling to melt his stern antagonism, his harsh +mood. But as he looked inquiringly at her--weighing as it were the meaning +of this sudden interest in his affairs--the wife realized how far apart she +was from her husband. The physical separation of all these years, the +emotional separation, the intellectual separation had resulted in placing +them in two distinct spheres spiritually. The intervening space could not +be bridged in a moment of expansive emotion. It would be a slow matter, if +it ever could be accomplished, to break the crust that had formed like ice +between their souls. Isabelle went back to her seat and drank her coffee. + +"I don't know what you mean by fair and just," he replied coldly. "Business +has to be done according to its own rules, not as idealists or reformers +would have it done. The railroad has done nothing worse than every big +business is compelled to do to live,--has made a profit where there was one +to make.... This would be a poor sort of country, even for the reformers +and agitators, if the men who have the power to make money should be bound +hand and foot by visionaries and talkers. You can't get the sort of men +capable of doing things on a large scale to go into business for clerk's +wages. They must see a profit--and a big one,--and the men who aren't worth +anything will always envy them. That's the root of the whole matter." + +It would be useless, Isabelle saw, to point out that his defence was +general, and an evasion of the point she wished to see clearly,--what the +real _fact_ with him was. His mind was stiffened by the prejudices of his +profession, tempered in fierce fires of industrial competition as a result +of twenty years of triumphant struggle with men in the life and death +grapple of business. He was strong just because he was narrow and blind. If +he had been able to doubt, even a little, the basis of his actions, he +would never have become the third vice-president of the Atlantic and +Pacific, one of the most promising of the younger men in his profession. + +Recognizing her defeat, Isabelle asked about the Johnstons. + +"I have seen Steve a couple of times," Lane replied. "I meant to write you, +but hadn't the time. Steve didn't make good in that lumber business. Those +men he went in with, it looks to me, were sharks. They took all his money +away,--every cent. You know they mortgaged the house, too. Then the company +failed; he was thrown out. Steve was not sharp enough for them, I guess." + +"Isn't that too bad!" + +"Just what might have been expected," Lane commented, associating Steve +Johnston's failure with his previous train of thought; "I told him so when +he gave up railroading. He was not an all-round man. He had one talent--a +good one--and he knew the business he was trained in. But it wasn't good +enough for him. He must get out and try it alone--" + +"It wasn't to make more money," Isabelle protested, remembering the day at +the Farm when the two men had walked back and forth, delaying luncheon, +while they heatedly discussed Steve's determination to change his business. + +"He had this reform virus in his system, too! ... Well, he is bookkeeper, +now, for some little down-town concern at eighteen hundred a year. All he +can get these days. The railroads are discharging men all the time. He +might be earning six thousand in the position I offered him then. Do you +think Alice and the boys will be any better off for his scruples? Or the +country?" + +"Poor Alice! ... Are they still living in the house at Bryn Mawr?" + +"Yes, I believe so. But Steve told me he couldn't carry the mortgage after +the first of the year,--would have to give up the house." + +"I must go out there to-morrow," she said quickly; and after a time she +added, "Don't you think we could do something for them, John?" + +Lane smiled, as if the suggestion had its touch of irony. + +"Why, yes! I mean to look into his affairs when I can find the time.... +I'll see what I can do." + +"Oh, that is good!" Isabelle exclaimed warmly. It was like her husband, +prompt generosity to a friend in trouble. And this matter brought husband +and wife closer in feeling than they had been since her arrival. + +"Ready money is a pretty scarce commodity," Lane remarked; "but I will see +what can be done about his mortgage." + +It was not easy, he wished his wife to know, even for the strong to be +generous these days, thanks to the reformers, and the "crazy man in +Washington," with whom he suspected she sympathized. + +They sat in silence after this until he had finished his cigar. There were +many subjects that must be discussed between them, which thrust up their +heads like sunken rocks in a channel; but both felt their danger. At last +Isabelle, faint from the excitement of the day, with all its mutations of +thought and feeling, went to her room. She did not sleep for hours, not +until long after she heard her husband's step go by the door, and the click +of the switches as he turned out the electric lights. + +There was much to be done before their marriage could be recreated on a +living principle. But where the man was strong and generous, and the woman +was at last awakened to life, there was no reason to despair. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXIII + + +Isabelle did not go back to the court-room to listen to the remaining +arguments, not even to hear Mr. Brinkerhoff's learned and ingenious plea in +behalf of the rights of capital, the sacred privileges of property. She +felt that John would rather not have her there. But Isabelle read every +word of the newspaper report of the trial, which since the district +attorney's impassioned and powerful plea had excited even greater public +interest than before. Not only locally, but throughout the country, the +trial of the People vs. the Atlantic and Pacific et al. was recognized as +the first serious effort of the reform administration to enforce the laws +against capital, by convicting not merely the irresponsible agents but also +some of the men "higher up." It was John Lane's position in the railroad +that gave these "coal cases" their significance. + +Isabelle read the report of the trial with thoughtful care, but much of it +was too technical for her untrained mind to grasp. All these arguments +about admitting certain ledgers in evidence, all these exceptions to the +rulings of the court, the dodges, fences, pitfalls, the dust created by the +skilled counsel for the defence, confused her. What she gathered in a +general way was that the road was fighting its case on technicalities, +seeking to throw the suit out of court, without letting the one real matter +at issue appear,--had they dealt illegally and unjustly with the public? To +her emotional temperament this eminently modern method of tactics was +irritating and prejudiced her against her husband's side. "But I don't +understand," she reflected sadly, "so John would say. And they don't seem +to want people to understand!" + +With these thoughts on her mind, she took the cars to the little suburb +north of the city, where the Johnstons lived. Bryn Mawr was one of the +newer landscape-gardened of our city suburbs, with curving roads, +grass-plots, an art _nouveau_ railroad station, shrubs and poplar sticks +set out along the cement sidewalks, in an effort to disguise the rawness of +the prairie pancake that the contractors had parcelled into lots. Isabelle +found some difficulty in tracing her way along the ingeniously twisted +avenues to the Johnston house. But finally she reached the +two-story-and-attic wooden box, which was set in a little grove of maple +trees. Two other houses were going up across the street, and a trench for a +new sewer had been opened obstructively. At this period of belated spring +Bryn Mawr was not a charming spot. Unfinished edges left by the landscape +gardener and the contractor showed pitilessly against the leafless, scrubby +trees and the rolling muddy fields beyond. It was all covered with a chill +mist. In the days when she lived in St. Louis she had never found time to +go so far to see Alice, and she had shared Bessie's horror of the remote +and cheerless existence in this suburb, had wondered how an intelligent and +well-bred woman like Alice Johnston could endure its dull level of +platitudinous existence. But now as she picked her way across the sewer +excavation, she felt that the little wooden box ahead of her was home for +this family,--they must not lose that! Place and circumstance had lessened +in her estimates of life. + +Alice opened the door herself, and with a radiant smile of hungry delight +enveloped Isabelle in her arms. + +"Where did you drop from, Belle?" + +"Oh, I thought I'd come on," Isabelle replied vaguely, not liking to +mention the trial. + +"And you found your way out here, and navigated that ewer safely! The boys +find it surpassingly attractive,--as a coal mine, or a canal in Mars, or +the Panama ditch. I've tried to induce Mr. Jorgesson, the contractor, to +hang out a lantern or two at night. But he evidently thinks well of the +caution and sobriety of the Johnston family and prefers to take his chances +of a suit for damages. So far the family has escaped." + +Alice's face showed two girlish dimples, while she talked glibly,--too +glibly, Isabelle thought. They went into the dining room where there was a +tiny coal fire before which Alice had been sewing. Isabelle's +namesake--number two in the list--having been considered by her aunt, was +dismissed on an errand. The older boys were at school, the baby out in the +kitchen "with the colored lady who assists," as Alice explained. + +When they were alone, the cousins looked at each other, each thinking of +the changes, the traces of life in the other. Isabelle held out her hands +yearningly, and Alice, understanding that she knew what had befallen them, +smiled with trembling lips. Yet it was long before she could speak of their +misfortune in her usual calm manner. + +... "The worst is that we have had to take Ned out of the technical +institute and send him back to the school here with Jack. It isn't a good +school. But we may move into the city in the fall.... And Belle had to give +up her music. We all have to chip in, you see!" + +"She mustn't give up her music. I shall send her," Isabelle said quickly, +reflecting whimsically how she had loathed her own music lessons. Alice +flushed, and after a moment's pause said deliberately:-- + +"Do you really mean that, Isabelle?" + +"Of course! I only hope she will get more out of it than I did." + +"I should be glad to accept your offer for her sake.... I want her to have +something, some interest. A poor girl without that,--it is worse for her +than for the boys!" + +Isabelle could see Alice's struggle with her pride, and understood the +importance of this little matter to her, which had made her deliberately +clutch at the chance for the little girl. + +"Belle shall come to me to-morrow and spend the day. I will send for the +teacher.... Now that's settled, and, Alice, you and Steve will be better +off soon! He is too able a man--" + +Alice shook her head steadily, saying:-- + +"I am afraid not, Belle! Steve is too good a man, that is the trouble. I +don't say this to him. I wouldn't take a particle of hope from him. But I +know Steve all through: he isn't the kind to impress people, to get +on,--and he is no longer young." + +"It is such a pity he left the railroad," Isabelle mused. "John says they +are turning men off instead of taking them on, or he might have found a +position for him." + +"Never!" Alice's eyes flamed. "If it had to be done over, even now, we +should do the same thing.... Steve is slow and quiet, never says much, but +he does a lot of thinking. And when he makes up his mind, he sticks.... +When he saw what it meant to take that position in the traffic department, +what he would have to know and do, he couldn't do it. It is useless trying +to make a man like Steve live contrary to his nature. You can't bend a big, +thick tree any way you want it." + +"But, Alice, he might have been wrong!" Isabelle protested, coloring. + +"Yes,--he might have been wrong," Alice admitted, her eyes falling. "But +Steve couldn't see it any other way. So he had to do as he did.... And the +lumber business failed. I was afraid it would! Dear Steve! He wasn't fitted +to fight with those men, to see that they didn't cheat him." + +It was later that Alice uttered the deep cry of her heart. + +... "Don't think, Belle, that I mind the hard times, the work and all; not +even the school for Ned, and the poor prospect for the children. After all, +they may do as well without the advantages we could have given them. But +what breaks my heart is to see Steve, who is bigger and abler and stronger +than most men, go down to the bottom of the ladder and have to take his +orders from an ignorant little German. It's small of me, I know, and Steve +doesn't complain. But it seems to me terribly unjust somehow." + +For a moment her feeling overcame her; then she recovered her composure and +continued: "But then, it's Steve! And I wouldn't have him a particle +different, not for all the success in the world. You see I have my pride, +my snobbery. I am a snob about my husband." + +The boys came in from school, and the house shook with racketing children. + +"They don't know what has happened, really,--they are too young, thank +Heaven!" Alice exclaimed. "And I don't mean they ever shall know--ever +think they are poor." + +The two stood on the porch for a last word, arranging for the little girl's +visit to Isabelle on the morrow. The twilight had descended through the +mist. + +"See!" Alice said, pointing to the white tree trunks across the street, and +the vague fields beyond. "Isn't it very much like that Corot the Colonel +used to love so much,--the one in the library? We have our Corot, too.... +Good-by, dear! I have chattered frightfully about ourselves. Some day you +must tell me of your stay with Mrs. Pole and of yourself." + +"There isn't much to tell!" + +Alice Johnston, watching her cousin's agreeable figure disappear into the +mist, felt that if with Isabelle there might be not much to tell, at least +a great deal had happened these last months. + +And Isabelle, picking her way cautiously along the sewer excavation, was +thinking of the home behind. The couple of hours she had spent with Alice +had been filled with a comprehension, a curiously immediate grasp of the +other person's vision of life,--what it all meant to her,--Alice's +disappointment, her pride in her defeated husband. For the first time in +all the years she had known them, Steve and Alice and the children seemed +quite real persons, and their life as vivid, as interesting to her, as her +own. + +Sad as their little story was, in its pathetic limitations of plans and +hopes, it did not seem to her intolerable, or sordid, or depressing, as it +once would have seemed. Just as she possessed somewhere in herself a new +strength to endure whatever misfortune might come to her, so she had an +instinctive feeling of how others endured what on the surface of events +seemed merely distressing and disagreeable. And the Johnston house, plain +and homely as it was, with all the noisy children, had an air of peace +about it, the spirit of those that dwelt there, which Isabelle felt to be +the most precious thing on earth.... Alice had said, "It's Steve--and I +wouldn't have him different for all the success in the world!" The words +stung Isabelle. Such was marriage,--perfect marriage,--to be able to say +that in the face of worldly defeat. Neither she nor John could ever say +that about the other. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXIV + + +The newsboys were crying the verdict up and down the wet street. Across the +front page of the penny sheet which Isabelle bought ran in broad, splotched +letters: GUILTY; RAILROAD GRAFTERS FINED; and in slightly smaller type: +_Atlantic and Pacific found guilty of illegal discrimination in famous coal +cases--Fined eighty-five thousand dollars. Vice-president Lane, General +Traffic Manager of Road, fined thirteen thousand six hundred and eighty +dollars_, etc. Isabelle crumpled the paper into her muff and hurried home. +As she walked numbly, she thought, 'Why six hundred and eighty dollars? why +so exact?' As if the precise measure of wrong could be determined! On the +doorstep of her mother's house lay the quietly printed, respectable +two-cent evening paper that the family had always read. Isabelle took this +also with her to her room. Even in this conservative sheet, favorable to +the interests of the property classes, there were scare-heads about the +verdict. It was of prime importance as news. Without removing her hat or +coat, Isabelle read it all through,--the judge's charge to the jury, the +verdict, the reporters' gossip of the court-room. The language of the judge +was trenchant, and though his charge was worded in stiff and solemn form +and laden with legal phrases, Isabelle understood it better even than the +hot eloquence of the district attorney. It swept away all that legal dust, +those technical quibbles, which Mr. Brinkerhoff and his associate counsel +had so industriously sprinkled over the issue. "If the facts have been +established of such and such a nature, beyond reasonable doubt; if the +connection of the defendant has been clearly set forth," etc. As the penny +sheet put it, "Judge Barstow's charge left no room for doubt as to the +verdict. The jury was out forty minutes and took one ballot." Twelve men, +be they farmers or "sore-heads," had found John Lane guilty of something +very like grand larceny. The case was to be appealed--of course. + +Even the respectable two-cent paper delivered itself editorially on the +verdict in the famous coal cases, with unusual daring. For the _Post_ was +ordinarily most cautious not to reflect upon matters inimical to "leading +interests." To-night it was moved beyond the limits of an habitual +prudence. + +"Judge Barstow," it said, "in his able analysis left no room for doubt as +to the gravity of the charges brought by the government against the +Atlantic and Pacific and certain of its officers. The verdict will be no +surprise to those who have followed closely the so-called coal cases +through the preliminary investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission +and the recent trial. A state of affairs in the management of the Atlantic +and Pacific railroad was revealed that may well shock men long accustomed +to the methods of corporate control. It was shown that officers and +employees of the railroad owned or controlled various coal properties that +depended for their existence upon special favors given them by the road, +and that these companies were enabled by their secret alliance with the +railroad to blackmail independent, rival companies, and drive them out of +existence. To put it in plain words, the Atlantic and Pacific favored its +secret partners at the expense of their competitors.... Apart from the +legal aspect so ably dealt with by Judge Barstow, the spectacle of graft in +the Atlantic and Pacific must surprise the stockholders of that corporation +quite as much as the public at large. Apparently high-salaried officials +shared in these extra profits together with freight clerks and division +superintendents! ... We cannot believe that the moral sense of the country +will long tolerate a condition of affairs such as has been revealed in the +case of Vice-president Lane."... + +This was no academic question of economic policy! No legal technicality. +The paper fell from Isabelle's hand, and she sat staring at the floor. Her +husband was called in plain prose a "grafter,"--one who participated in +unearned and improper profits, due to granting favors in his official +capacity to himself. + +As Isabelle closed the old-fashioned shutters before dressing for dinner, +she saw her husband coming up the steps, walking with his slow, powerful +stride, his head erect,--the competent, high-minded, generous man, a rock +of stable strength, as she had always believed him, even when she loved him +least! There must be something wrong with the universe when this man, the +best type of hard, intelligent labor, should have become a public robber! +... Renault's solemn words repeated themselves, "The curse of our age, of +our country, is its frantic egotism." The predatory instinct, so highly +valued in the Anglo-Saxon male, had thriven mightily in a country of people +"born free and equal," when such a man as John Lane "grafted" and believed +himself justified. + + * * * * * + +Lane stood behind her chair waiting for her in the dining room. As she +entered the room he glanced at her questioningly. He had noticed that the +evening paper was not in its usual place in the hall. But after that glance +he settled himself composedly for the meal, and while the servants were in +the room husband and wife talked of immediate plans. He said he should have +to go to New York the next day, and asked what she wished to do. Would she +wait here in St. Louis for her mother? Or join her at the Springs? Or open +the Farm? He should have to be back and forth between New York and St. +Louis all the spring, probably. + +Isabelle could answer only in monosyllables. All these details of where she +should be seemed irrelevant to the one burning point,--what will you do +now, in the face of this verdict of guilt? At last the meal was over, and +they were alone. Isabelle, without looking up, said:-- + +"I saw the verdict in the papers, John." + +He made no reply, and she cried:-- + +"Tell me what you are going to do! We must talk about it." + +"The case will be appealed, as I told you before." + +"Yes! ... but the fine, the--" + +She stopped for lack of the right word. He made a gesture of indifference +at the word "fine," but still waited. + +"John, is it true what the judge said, what the district attorney said, +about--the officials getting money from those coal companies?" + +She colored, while Lane eyed her and at last replied irritably:-- + +"The officers of the road invested their money, like most men, where they +saw fit, I suppose." + +"But does that mean they take advantage of their position with the road to +make money--improperly?" + +"That depends on what you call 'improperly.'" + +Her mind leaped clear of this evasion; she cried out:-- + +"But why did you want to make money--so much money? You had a large salary, +and I could have had all the money we wanted from my father!" + +Her husband looked at her almost contemptuously, as if her remark was too +childish for serious consideration. It was axiomatic that all men who had +the power desired to make what money they could. + +"I certainly never cared to live on your father's money," he retorted. + +"But we didn't need so much--" + +"I wonder if you realize just how much we have seemed to need in one way or +another since we moved East?" + +There it was staring her in the face, her share in the responsibility for +this situation! She had known only vaguely what they were spending, and +always considered that compared with women of her class she was not +extravagant, in fact economical. + +"But, John, if I had only known--" + +"Known what?" he demanded harshly. "Known that I was making money in stocks +and bonds, like other men, like your father's friend, Senator Thomas, like +Morton, and Beals himself? Isabelle, you seem to have the comprehension of +a child! ... Do you think that such men live on salaries?" + +"But why weren't the others indicted and tried?" + +He hesitated a moment, his face flushing, and then there burst out the +truth. She had unwittingly touched the sore spot in his mind. + +"Because there had to be some sort of scapegoat to satisfy public clamor! +The deals went through my office mostly; but the road is behind me, of +course.... They all shared, from Beals down." + +At last they were at the heart of the matter, he challenging her criticism, +she frightened at the cloudy places in her husband's soul that she had +penetrated, when a servant interrupted them, saying that Lane was wanted at +the telephone. While he was out of the room, Isabelle thought swiftly. What +would be the next word? Was it not better to accept his excuse? "They have +all done as I have done, men who are honored and respected. It is +universal, what we do, and it is only an accident that I am put up as a +target for public abuse!" If she persisted in knowing all, she would merely +divide herself farther from her husband, who would resent her attitude. And +what right had she to examine and judge, when for all these years she had +gone her way and let him go his? + +The blood beat in her ears, and she was still uncertain when Lane returned. +His face had lost its color of passion, and his voice was subdued as he +said:-- + +"Steve has met with an accident,--a serious one." + +"Steve!" Isabelle cried. + +"Yes; I think we had better go out there at once. Alice got some one to +telephone for her." + +The account of the accident had been in that late edition of the penny +paper which Isabelle had seen, but it had been crowded into the second page +by the magnitude of the Atlantic and Pacific sensation. Lane bought the +papers, and they read them on their way to Bryn Mawr. Johnston had been run +down as he was going to the station early that Saturday afternoon. It was a +heavy motor, running at reduced yet lively speed through the crowded city +street. A woman with a child by the hand had stepped from the sidewalk to +hail an approaching street-car, without noticing the automobile that was +bearing down behind her. Steve had seen their danger, rushed for the woman +and pulled her and the child out of the way,--got them clear of the motor. +But he was struck, a glancing blow in the back, as the motor sheered off. +He had been taken to a drug-store, and reviving quickly had insisted on +going home. The driver of the car, apparently a humane person, had waited +with a notable display of decency and taken the injured man with the doctor +who had attended him at the drug-store to Bryn Mawr.... The reporter for +the penny paper had done his best by the accident, describing the thrilling +rescue of the woman and child, the unavoidable blow to the rescuer, with +all the vividness of his art. + +"It was a brave act," Lane remarked, folding up the sheet and putting it in +his pocket.... + +As soon as they entered, Alice came down to them from the sick room. She +was pale, but she seemed to Isabelle wonderfully composed and calm,--the +steady balance-wheel of the situation. When Steve had first reached home, +he had apparently not been badly off, she told them. He had insisted on +walking upstairs and said that he would be quite right after he had laid +down a little while. So the doctor went back to the city in the motor. But +at dinner time, Alice, going into his room, found him breathing heavily, +almost unconscious, and his voice had become so thick that she could +scarcely make out what he was saying. She had summoned their own doctor, +and he had called another from the city. They feared cerebral trouble, due +to a lesion of the spinal chord; but nothing could be certainly determined +yet. + +"Something seems to be on his mind," Alice said in conclusion. "I thought I +made out your name, John; so I had you telephoned for. I don't know that it +will do any good, but it may quiet him to see you." + +While Lane was upstairs, Alice talked on in the composed, capable, +self-contained manner that she usually had,--merely speaking a trifle +faster, with occasional pauses, as if she were listening for a sound from +Steve's room. But the house was painfully still. + +... "You see," she explained, "Steve doesn't move quickly,--is too heavy +and slow. I suppose that was why he didn't succeed in getting out of the +way himself. The car wasn't really going fast, not over eight miles an +hour, the chauffeur said.... But Steve saved the woman and child,--they +would have been killed." + +He had saved the woman and child,--chance strangers in the +street,--possibly at the cost of his life or the use of his limbs. There +was an ironical note in the tragedy. This stout man with the character in +his slow organism that could accomplish great things--this hero of +Alice's--had stepped off the sidewalk to save the life of a careless +passer-by, and risked his own life, the happiness of his wife and children, +in just that little way. + +"It was so like Steve,--to realize but one point, _their_ danger," Alice +continued with a proud smile. And Isabelle could see the dull, large-framed +man, his head slightly bent, plodding forward in the stream of home-goers +on the pavement, suddenly lift his head, and without a moment's hesitation +step out into the path of danger.... + +When Isabelle and John left the house late in the evening, he said gravely, +"The doctors don't think there is much chance for him." + +"He will die!" Isabelle gasped, thinking of Alice, who had smiled at them +cheerily when they went out of the door. + +"Perhaps worse than that,--complete paralysis,--the lower limbs are +paralyzed now." + +"How perfectly awful!" + +"I think he knew me. He grasped my hand so hard it hurt, and I could make +out my name. But I couldn't understand what he was trying to say." + +"Do you suppose it could be the mortgage?" + +"Very likely. I must attend to that matter at once." + +They were silent on the way back to the city, each buried in thought. The +verdict, which had stirred them so deeply a few hours before, had already +sunk into the background of life, overshadowed by this nearer, more human +catastrophe. + +"I shall have to go on to New York to-morrow, for a few days at least," +Lane said as they entered the house. + +"I will stay here, of course," Isabelle replied, "and you can bring Molly +and the governess back with you. I will telegraph them." It was all easily +decided, what had seemed perplexing earlier in the evening, when she had +been occupied merely with herself and John. "I can be of some help to Alice +any way, and if he should die--" + +"Yes," Lane agreed. "That is best. I will be back in a week." And he added +casually, announcing a decision arrived at on the way to the city:-- + +"I'll have my lawyer look up that mortgage. You can tell Alice to-morrow +and try to get Steve to understand, so that he will have it off his mind as +soon as possible." + +Her heart responded with a glow. Yes, that was the very thing to do! She +had money enough to help them, but she did not know just what to do. It was +like John, this sure, quick way of seeing the one thing to be done +immediately and doing it. It was like him, too, to do generous things. How +many poor boys and young men he had helped along rough roads in their +struggle up,--given them the coveted chance in one way and another, without +ostentation or theory, simply in the human desire to help another with that +surplus strength which had given him his position of vantage. + +"I will write the note to Mather now, telling him what to do about the +mortgage," he continued in his methodical, undemonstrative manner. As he +sat down at the desk and drew pen and paper towards him, he paused a +moment. "You will see to the nurses,--they should have two. The doctors may +decide on an operation. Have the best men, of course." + +He struck pen into the paper with his broad, firm stroke. Isabelle stood +watching him, her heart beating strangely, and suddenly leaning over him +she kissed his forehead, then fled swiftly to the door. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXV + + +Isabelle waited in the carriage outside the station for her husband and +Molly. The New York train was late as usual. She had driven in from Bryn +Mawr, where she had spent most of the ten days since Lane's departure. She +was steeped now in the atmosphere of that suburban house covered by the +April mist, with the swelling bushes and trees all about it. There had been +an operation, decided on after consultation with the eminent surgeons that +Isabelle had summoned. After the operation hope had flickered up, as the +sick man breathed more easily, was able to articulate a few intelligible +words, and showed an interest in what was going on about him. But it had +waned again to-day, and when Isabelle left, Alice was holding her husband's +large hand, talking to him cheerfully, but there was no response.... How +wonderful she was,--Alice! That picture of her filled Isabelle's thought as +she waited in the carriage. Never a tear or a whimper all these anxious +days, always the calm, buoyant voice, even a serene smile and little joke +at her husband's bedside, such as she had used to enliven him +with,--anything to relax his set, heavy features. "How she loves him!" +thought Isabelle, almost with pain. + +When she left that afternoon, Alice had sent a grateful message to John. +"He will come out to-morrow if he can?" she had asked. She knew now that +the hours were numbered without being told so by the doctors. And never a +tear, a self-pitying cry! Oh, to be like that,--sturdy in heart and +soul,--with that courage before life, that serene confidence in face of the +worst fate can offer! Alice was of the faith of Renault. + +Lane came down the platform, followed by Molly and her governess. As he +raised his hat in greeting, Isabelle noticed the deep lines at the corners +of his mouth, and the line above his broad, straight nose. When they were +in the carriage, she realized that her husband had been living these ten +days in another world from the one she had inhabited, and in spite of his +questions about Steve and Alice, he was preoccupied, still held by the +anxieties and perplexities of his business in New York, still in the close +grip of his own affairs, his personal struggle. So she talked with Molly, +who was almost articulately joyful over her escape from the country, at the +sight of streets and motor carriages. + +As they were going to dinner a servant brought word that a reporter wished +to speak to John. Usually Lane refused to see reporters outside his office, +and there turned them over to his secretary, who was skilled in the gentle +art of saying inoffensive nothings in many words. But to her surprise John +after slight hesitation went into the library to see the man, and it was a +long half hour before he returned to his dinner. The evening was another +one of those torturing periods when Isabella's heart was full and yet must +be carefully repressed lest she make a false step. After a little talk +about Molly, her mother, the Johnstons, Lane turned to open his mail that +had been sent up for him from the office. Isabelle left him absorbed in +this task, but she could not sleep, and when at last she heard him go to +his room, she followed him. Laying her hands on his arms, she looked at him +pleadingly, longing now not so much to know the facts, to reason and judge, +as to understand, perhaps comfort him,--at least to share the trouble with +him. + +"Can't you tell me all about it, John?" + +"About what?" he demanded dryly, his dislike of effusiveness, emotionalism, +showing in the glitter of his gray eyes. + +"Tell me what is troubling you! I want to share it,--all of it. What has +happened?" + +He did not answer at once. There was an evident struggle to overcome his +habitual reserve, the masculine sense of independence in the conduct of his +affairs. Also, there was between them her prejudice, the woman's +insufficient knowledge, and the barrier of the long years of aloofness. But +at last, as if he had reflected that she would have to know soon in any +case, he said dryly:-- + +"The Board has voted to relieve me of my duties as general manager of +traffic. I am assigned to St. Louis for the present, but the duties are not +specified. A polite hint--which I have taken!" + +"Did Mr. Beals do that?" + +"Beals went to Europe on his vacation when the coal cases first came up.... +Besides, it would have made no difference. I think I see in it the fine +hand of our good friend the Senator,--smug-faced old fox!" + +Isabelle felt how much this action by the directors had stung him, how +severely he was suffering. + +"It was ... because of the verdict?" + +"Oh, the general mess, the attacks in the press, complaints from +stockholders! They want to get under cover, show the public they are +cleaning house, I suppose. They thought to shelve me until the row fizzles +out, then drop me. But I am not the sort of man to sit around as a willing +sacrifice, to pose for the papers as a terrible example. They will know, +to-morrow!" + +Isabelle understood why he had consented to see the reporter. Hitherto, he +had refused to speak, to make any public defence of himself or comment on +the trial. But after this action on the part of the directors, after the +long smouldering hours on the train, he had decided to speak,--at length. +It would not be pleasant reading in certain quarters near Wall Street, what +he said, but it would make good copy. + +Biting fiercely at his cigar, which had gone out, he struck a match sharply +and talked on:-- + +"I am not a back number yet. There is not another road in the country that +has shown such results, such gain in traffic, as the A. and P. since I was +put in charge of traffic five years ago. There are others who know it, too, +in New York. I shan't have to twiddle my thumbs long when my resignation is +published. The prejudiced trial out here won't stand in the way." + +In the storm of his mood, it was useless to ask questions. Isabelle merely +murmured:-- + +"Too bad, too bad,--I am so sorry, John!" + +Instead of that dispassionate groping for the exact truth, justice between +her husband and the public, that she had first desired, she was simply +compassionate for his hurt pride. Innocent or guilty, what right had she to +judge him? Even if the worst of what had been charged was literally true, +had she not abandoned him at the start,--left him to meet the problems of +the modern battle as he could,--to harden his soul against all large and +generous considerations? Now when he was made the scapegoat for the sins of +others, for the sin of his race, too,--how could she sit and censure! The +time would come for calm consideration between them. There was that +something in her heart which buoyed her above the present, above the +distress of public condemnation,--even disgrace and worldly failure. Coming +close to him again, she said with ringing conviction:-- + +"It can make no difference to you and me, John!" + +He failed to see her meaning. + +"The money doesn't matter,--it isn't that, of course. We shan't starve!" + +"I didn't mean the money!" + +"Sensible people know what it amounts to,--only the mob yaps." + +"I didn't mean criticism, either," she said softly. + +"Well, that New York crowd hasn't heard the last of me yet!" + +His lips shut tight together. The spirit of fight, of revenge, was aroused. +It was useless to talk further. She drew his arm about her. + +"You will go out to see Steve to-morrow, won't you?" + +"Yes, of course,--any time in the afternoon." + +She kissed him and went back to her room. + +One precept out of Renault's thin book of life was hard to +acquire,--Patience. But it must be acquired,--the power to abide the time +calmly, until the right moment should come. The morrows contain so many +reversals of the to-days! + + + + +CHAPTER LXXXVI + + +It was probable that the dying man did not recognize Lane, though it was +hard to say what dim perception entered through the glazing eyes and +penetrated the clouding brain. The children had been about the room all the +morning, Alice said, and from the way the father clung to Jack's hand she +thought there still was recognition. But the sense of the outer world was +fast fading now. The doctor was there, by way of kindly solicitude,--he +could do nothing; and when the Lanes came he went away, whispering to John +as he left, "Not long now." Alice had sent away the nurse, as she had the +night before, refusing to lose these last minutes of service. She told +Isabelle that in the early morning, while she was watching and had thought +Steve was asleep from his quieter breathing, she had found his eyes resting +on her with a clear look of intelligence, and then kneeling down with her +face close to his lips he had whispered thickly. Her eyes were still +shining from those last lover's words in the night.... + +When John went back to the city, Isabelle stayed on, taking luncheon with +the nurses and little Belle. Neighbors came to the door to inquire, to +leave flowers. These neighbors had been very kind, Alice had said often, +taking the boys to their homes and doing the many little errands of the +household. "And I hardly knew them to bow to! It's wonderful how people +spring up around you with kindness when trouble comes!"... + +Meanwhile, overhead the life was going out, the strong man yielding slowly +to the inevitable. Twilight came on, the doctor returned and went away +again, and the house became absolutely still. Once Isabelle crept upstairs +to the door of the sick room. Alice was holding Steve's head, with one arm +under his pillow, looking,--looking at him with devouring eyes! ... +Gradually the breathing grew fainter, at longer intervals, the eyelids fell +over the vacant eyes, and after a little while the nurse, passing Isabelle +on the stairs, whispered that it was over,--the ten days' losing fight. +Presently Alice came out of the room, her eyes still shining strangely, and +smiled at Isabelle. + +When they went out the next afternoon, there was in the house that dreary +human pause created by the fact of death,--pause without rest. Flowers +scented the air, and people moved about on tiptoe, saying nothings in +hushed voices, and trying to be themselves. + +But in the dim room above, where Alice took them, there was peace and +naturalness. The dead man lay very straight beneath the sheet, his fleshy +body shrunken after its struggle to its bony stature. Isabelle had always +thought Steve a homely man,--phlegmatic and ordinary in feature. She had +often said, "How can Alice be so romantic over old Steve!" But as the dead +man lay there, wasted, his face seemed to have taken on a grave and austere +dignity, an expression of resolute will in the heavy jaw, the high brow, +the broad nostril, as though the steadfast soul within, so prosaically +muffled in the flesh, had at the last spoken out to those nearest him the +meaning of his life, graving it on his dead face. Lane, caught by this +high, commanding note of the lifeless features, as of one who, though +removed by infinite space, still spoke to the living, gazed steadily at the +dead man. And Isabelle felt the awe of his presence; here was one who could +speak with authority of elemental truths.... + +Alice, her arms resting on the foot-rail of the bed, was leaning forward, +looking with eyes still shining at her husband, her lover, her mate. And +her lips parted in a little smile. Large and strong and beautiful, in the +full tide of conscious life, she contemplated her dead comrade. + +A feeling that she was in the presence of mystery--the mystery of perfect +human union--stole through Isabelle. The woman standing there at the feet +of her dead man had had it all,--all the experience that woman can have. +Had she not loved this man, received his passion, borne his children, +fought by his side the fight of life,--and above all and beyond all else +cherished in her the soul of the man, the sacred part of him, that beauty +unknown to others hitherto, now written plain for all to see on his face! +And her lighted eyes seemed to say, 'What place is there here for grief? +Even though I am left in mid life, to struggle on alone with my children, +without his help, yet have I not had it all? Enough to warm my heart and +soul through the empty years that must come!'... + +Tears dropped from Isabelle's eyes, and convulsively she grasped the hand +that rested beside her, as though she would say, 'To lose all this, what +you two have had, how can you bear it!' Alice bent down over her +tear-stained face and kissed her,--with a little gesture towards Steve, +murmuring "I have had so much!" + + * * * * * + +They walked slowly back to the city in the warm April night. Neither had +spoken since they left the little house, until Isabelle said with a deep +solemnity:-- + +"It was perfect--that!" + +"Yes! Steve was a good man, and Alice loved him." + +Each knew what lay behind these commonplace words in the heart of the +other. These two, Steve and Alice, in spite of hardship, the dull grind of +their restricted existence, the many children, the disappointments, had had +something--a human satisfaction--that _they_ had missed--forever; and as +they walked on through the deserted streets silently, side by side, they +saw that now it could never be for them. It was something that missed once +in its perfection was missed for all time. However near they might come to +be, however close in understanding and effort, they could never know the +mystery of two who had lived together, body and soul, and together had +solved life. + +For mere physical fidelity is but a small part of the comradeship of +marriage. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXVII + + +Miss Marian Lane was such a thorough cosmopolite that she had no +discernible affection for any place. She referred to Central Park, to the +Farm, to the Price house in St. Louis, to Grosvenor with equal indifference +and impartiality, as she might later to London or Paris or Rome. She did +not even ask her mother where they were to spend the summer. That there was +a Park in St. Louis, as in all properly created cities, she had confidence, +because she asked Miss Joyce to take her there the day after her arrival. +Isabelle's own childhood had been strongly colored by places,--the old +house in K Street, this ugly Victorian mansion, and especially the Farm. +Places had meant so much to her in her youth, her feelings reflecting their +physical atmosphere, that they had been more vivid than persons. But Molly +was equally content anywhere. She needed merely Miss Joyce, a Park, and +pretty clothes. + +Clothes, indeed, were the only subject that aroused a semblance of passion +in Molly's sedate soul. "Oh, we shall go shopping, mamma!" she exclaimed +with the first real animation Isabelle had seen in her, when her +grandmother remarked that Molly had outgrown all her dresses this winter. +They were sitting in the large front bedroom that the Colonel and his wife +had always occupied. Mrs. Price had just returned from the Springs, and was +already talking of spending the summer in Europe. Since the Colonel's death +she had become a great globe-trotter, indefatigably whisking hither and +thither with her reliable maid. It seemed as if after all these years of +faithful economy and routine living, the suppressed restlessness of her +race, which had developed at an earlier age in Isabelle, was revenging +itself upon the old lady. "Mother's travels" had become a household +joke.... + +"Can't we go to-day? Miss Joyce and I saw some lovely things at Roseboro's, +mother!" Molly urged, jumping up from the lounge, where she had been +telling her grandmother about Grosvenor. "Oh, yes, grandmother," Isabelle +had heard her say in a listless voice, "we had a pleasant time in +Grosvenor. Miss Joyce took me coasting with James Pole. And we had sleigh +rides. Miss Joyce was afraid to drive the horses, so we did not go except +when Mrs. Pole took us.... Aunt Margaret was very nice. Miss Joyce gave us +all dancing lessons."... + +It was always Miss Joyce this and Miss Joyce that, since Molly's return, +until Isabelle had impatiently concluded that the faithful English +governess with her narrow character had completely ironed out the +personality of her charge. As she listened to Molly's conversation with her +grandmother, she resolved to get rid of Miss Joyce, in order to escape +hearing her name if for no other reason. + +"I suppose you'll wait to get her clothes until you are back in New York," +the practical Mrs. Price observed; "they are so much cheaper and more +tasteful there. The stores here don't seem to be what they were,--even +Roseboro's can't compare with Altman's and Best's for children's things." + +"We may not be in New York this spring," Isabelle replied, waking from her +meditations on the subject of Miss Joyce and her daughter. "John's plans +are uncertain--and I don't care to go without him." + +"You can try Roseboro's, then; but I don't believe you will be satisfied." + +"Oh, mamma, can't we go in the motor now!" + +And Molly ran to Miss Joyce to dress herself for the expedition. + +Isabelle had scrutinized her little daughter with fresh interest the few +days she had been with her. Molly had always been an unresponsive child +since she was a baby. In spite of her beautiful pink coloring, carefully +preserved by country life, she was scarcely more alive than an automaton. +Whatever individuality she had was so deeply buried that her mother could +not discover it. Why was it? Why was she so colorless? She had been "moved +about" a good deal, like many American children, according to the +exigencies of the family,--to St. Louis, the Farm, the New York hotel, the +New York house, Europe, Grosvenor,--a rapid succession of panoramas for one +small mind to absorb. But Molly had never seemed disturbed by it. One place +was as good as another,--one set of children, provided they had nice +manners and were well dressed, as agreeable as any other. If she were put +down in a Pasadena hotel, she found playmates, judiciously selected by Miss +Joyce, of course, who supervised their games. In all the changes of scene +Isabelle had been most scrupulous in her care for diet, exercises, regime, +and as long as the child seemed content and physically well she had seen no +harm in taking her about from scene to scene. Now Isabelle had her doubts. + +The little girl came downstairs, followed by the capable Miss Joyce, who +was brushing out a fold in her white broadcloth coat and arranging a curl, +and looked in at her mother's room, with a pretty little smile and a +gesture of the fingers she had copied from some child. "All ready, +mamma,--shall we wait for you in the motor?" As she passed on, followed by +Miss Joyce,--the figure of dainty young plutocracy and her +mentor,--Isabelle murmured, "I wonder if it has been good for her to move +about so much!" + +Mrs. Price, a literal old lady, took up the remark:-- + +"Why, she looks healthy. Miss Joyce takes excellent care of her. I think +you are very fortunate in Miss Joyce, Isabelle." + +"I don't mean her health, mother!" + +"She is as forward as most children of her age,--she speaks French very +prettily," the grandmother protested. "She has nice manners, too." + +Isabelle saw the futility of trying to explain what she meant to her +mother, and yet the old lady in her next irrelevant remark touched the very +heart of the matter. + +"Children have so much attention these days,--what they eat and do is +watched over every minute. Why, we had a cat and a dog, and a doll or two, +the kitchen and the barn to run about in--and that was all. Parents were +too busy to fuss about their children. Boys and girls had to fit into the +home the best they could." + +There was a home to fit into! A cat and a dog, a few dolls, and the kitchen +and the barn to run about in,--that was more than Molly Lane with all her +opportunities had ever had. + +"There weren't any governesses or nurses; but we saw more of our father and +mother, naturally," the old lady continued. "Only very rich people had +nurses in those times." + +The governess was a modern luxury, provided to ease the conscience of lazy +or incompetent mothers, who had "too much to do" to be with their children. +Isabelle knew all the arguments in their favor. She remembered Bessie +Falkner's glib defence of the governess method, when she had wanted to +stretch Rob's income another notch for this convenience,--"If a mother is +always with her children, she can't give her best self either to them or to +her husband!" Isabelle had lived enough since then to realize that this +vague "best self" of mothers was rarely given to anything but distraction. + +Isabelle had been most conscientious as a mother, spared no thought or +pains for her child from her birth. The trained nurse during the first two +years, the succession of carefully selected governesses since, the lessons, +the food, the dentist, the doctors, the clothes, the amusements,--all had +been scrupulously, almost religiously, provided according to the best +modern theories. Nothing had been left to chance. Marian should be a +paragon, physically and morally. Yet, her mother had to confess, the child +bored her,--was a wooden doll! In the scientifically sterilized atmosphere +in which she had lived, no vicious germ had been allowed to fasten itself +on the young organism, and yet thus far the product was tasteless. Perhaps +Molly was merely a commonplace little girl, and she was realizing it for +the first time. Isabelle's maternal pride refused to accept such a +depressing answer, and moreover she did not believe that any young thing, +any kitten or puppy, could be as colorless, as little vital as the +exquisite Miss Lane. She must find the real cause, study her child, live +with her awhile. The next generation, apparently, was as inscrutable a +manuscript to read as hers had been to the Colonel and her mother. Her +parents had never understood all the longings and aspirations that had +filled her fermenting years, and now she could not comprehend the dumbness +of her child. Those fermenting years had gone for nothing so far as +teaching her to understand the soul of her child. The new ferment was of a +different composition, it seemed.... + + * * * * * + +Isabelle was to find that her daughter had developed certain tastes besides +a love for clothes and a delight in riding in motor-cars.... Molly was in +the library after luncheon, absorbed in an illustrated story of a popular +magazine, which Isabelle glanced over while Miss Joyce made ready her +charge to accompany her mother to the Johnstons'. The story was "innocent," +"clean reading" enough,--thin pages of smart dialogue between prettily +dressed young men and athletic girls, the puppy loves of the young +rich,--mere stock fiction-padding of the day. But the picture of life--the +suggestion to the child's soft brain? Isabelle tossed the magazine into the +waste basket, and yawned. Molly had left it with a sigh. + +On the way to the Bryn Mawr house Isabelle tried to explain to Molly what +had happened to the Johnstons through the loss of the father, telling her +what a good man Steve was, the sorrow the family had to bear. Molly +listened politely. + +"Yes, mother!" And she asked, "Are they very poor?" An innocent remark that +irritated Isabelle unreasonably. + +The children played together downstairs while Isabelle discussed with Alice +some business matters. It had not sounded very lively below, and when the +mothers came down they found Molly and Belle sitting on opposite sides of +the little parlor, looking stiffly at each other. The boys had slipped off +for more stirring adventures outdoors, which Molly had refused to join, as +she was making a formal call with her mother. In the motor going home Molly +remarked: "The boys haven't good manners. Belle seems a nice girl. She +hasn't been anywhere and can't talk. That was a very homely dress she had +on; don't you think so? Does she have to wear dresses like that? Can't you +give her something prettier, mamma?" + +Isabelle, who thought her god-daughter an interesting child, full of +independence and vitality in spite of her shyness, wondered, "Is Molly just +a stick, or only a little snob?" + +Molly was sitting very gracefully in her grandmother's limousine, riding +through the parks and avenues with the air of a perfect little lady +accustomed to observe the world from the cushioned seat of a brougham or +motor-car. Catching sight of a bill board with the announcement of a +popular young actress's coming engagement, she remarked:-- + +"Miss Daisy May is such a perfect dear, don't you think, mamma? Couldn't +Miss Joyce take me to see her act next Saturday afternoon? It's a perfectly +nice play, you know." + +Repressing a desire to shake her daughter, Isabelle replied: "I'll take you +myself, Molly. And shan't we invite Delia Conry? You know she is at school +here and has very few friends." + +"Oh!" Molly said thoughtfully. "Delia is so ordinary. I should like to ask +Beatrice Lawton,--Miss Joyce knows her governess.... Or if we must be good +to some one, we might take Belle." + +"We'll take them both." + +"I don't think Beatrice would enjoy Belle," her daughter objected after +further reflection. + +"Well, I shall ask Delia and Belle, then, to go with me alone!" + +(She had looked up the Conry child at the school where Vickers had sent +her, and had arranged to have her brother's small estate settled on the +girl, as she felt he would have wished. Delia, whose mother had never been +heard from, was a forlorn little object and Isabelle pitied her.) + +When her temporary irritation with Molly had passed, she saw there was +nothing unnatural in the child's attitude. Probably she was a little snob. +Most children brought up as Molly had been, most of her friends, were +little snobs. Their governesses taught them snobbery, unconsciously; their +domestic habits taught them snobbery. + +Isabelle resolved more firmly that she should dispense with the excellent +Miss Joyce. A beginning very far down would have to be made, if she were to +reach the individuality of this perfectly nurtured modern child of hers. +There was nothing bad about Molly; she was irritatingly blameless. But what +she lacked was appalling! At eighteen she would be unendurable. + +And the mother had no warm feeling, no impelling affection for her +daughter, any more than the child had for her. That lack would make it all +the harder to do what must be done. Here, again, as with her husband, she +must begin to pay for all the years that she had shirked her job,--for the +sake of "her own life," her intellectual emancipation and growth,--shirked, +to be sure, in the most conscientious and enlightened modern manner. + +For nobody could call Miss Lane a neglected child. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXVIII + + +It would be very simple for Mrs. Price to provide Alice with a comfortable +income,--the Colonel would have done so; and when Isabelle suggested it to +her mother after the funeral of Steve, the old lady agreed, though she was +not of a philanthropic nature and recalled the fact that the marriage had +been a foolish one. But Alice flatly refused the arrangement. She had been +trained to work; she was not too old to find something to do, and she had +already taken steps to secure a place as matron in a hospital. "I am +strong," she said to Isabelle. "Steve has left it for me to do,--all of it. +And I want to show him that I can do it. I shall be happier!" + +John had a better comprehension of her feelings and of the situation than +either Isabelle or her mother. "Alice is an able woman," he had said; "she +will not break down,--she is not that kind. And she'll be happier working." + +So he took care of her little life insurance money. He also obtained a +scholarship in a technical school for the oldest boy, and undertook to fit +the second one for college, as he showed studious tendencies. Isabelle +would look after Belle's education. In all these practical details of +readjusting the broken family, John Lane was more effective than his wife, +giving generously of his crowded hours to the Johnston affairs, ever ready +to do all that might be done without hurting the widow's pride and vigorous +will. + +And this, as Isabelle knew, came in the days of his greatest personal +perplexity. His resignation as third vice-president had been accepted after +protest, negotiations, and then had elicited a regretful communication to +the press (emanating from the Senator's office) of an eulogistic nature, +concluding with the delicately phrased suggestion that "Mr. Lane's untiring +devotion to his work necessitates his taking a rest from all business cares +for the present. It is understood that he contemplates a long vacation in +Europe." + +John handed the paper to Isabelle with an ironical smile. + +"You see we are to go abroad,--the usual thing! That's the Senator's crafty +hand. He wants everything decently smooth." + +But the public no longer cared. The coal cases had gone up to a higher +court on appeal, and when the final decision was handed down, the "street" +would be interested not in the question of John Lane's guilt or innocence, +but in the more important question of whether the Supreme Court "would back +up the President's campaign against capital." + +Meanwhile, there was none of the social stigma attached to the verdict +against her husband that Isabelle had resolutely expected. As soon as it +was known that the Lanes were established in the city for the spring, their +friends sought them out and they were invited to dine more than Isabelle +cared for. In their class, as she quickly perceived from jesting references +to the trial, such legal difficulties as John's were regarded as merely the +disagreeable incidents of doing business in a socialistic age. Lane, far +from being "down and out," was considered in the industrial and railroad +world a strong man rather badly treated by a weak-kneed board of directors, +who had sought to save themselves from trouble by sacrificing an able +servant to the public storm. No sooner was his resignation published than +he received an offer of the presidency of a large transit company in the +middle West. While he was considering this offer, he was approached by +representatives of another great railroad, which, though largely owned by +the same "interests" that controlled the Atlantic and Pacific, was +generally supposed to be a rival. Lane was too valuable a man to be lost to +the railroad army. The "interests" recognized in him a powerful instrument, +trained from boyhood for their purposes,--one "who knew how to get +business." The offer flattered Lane, and soothed that sore spot in his +inner consciousness. He saw himself reinstated in his old world, with a +prospect of crossing swords with his old superiors in a more than secondary +position. + +Isabelle knew all about this offer. She and her husband talked together +more freely than they had ever done before. The experiences of the past +weeks,--Steve's death, the planning for Alice's future, as well as the +emotional result of the trial--had brought them nearer an understanding. +Lane had begun to realize a latent aptitude in his wife for grasping the +essential matters of business,--investments, risks, corporation management. +She understood far more than the distinction between stock and bond, which +is supposedly the limit of woman's business intelligence. As the warm May +days came on they took long rides into the fresh country, talking over the +endless detail of affairs,--her money, her mother's money, the Colonel's +trust funds, the Johnstons' future, the railroad situation,--all that John +Lane had hitherto carried tightly shut in his own mind. + +And thus Isabelle began to comprehend the close relation between what is +called "business" and the human matters of daily life for every individual +in this complex world. There was not simply a broad mark between right and +wrong,--dramatic trials; but the very souls of men and women were involved +in the vast machine of labor and profit. + +She was astonished to discover the extent of her husband's interests, his +personal fortune, which had grown amazingly during these last ten fat years +of the country's prosperity. + +"Why, you don't have to take any position!" + +"Yes, we could afford to make that European trip the Board so kindly +indicated." + +"We _might_ go abroad," she said thoughtfully. + +A few years before she would have grasped the chance to live in Europe +indefinitely. Now she found no inclination in her spirit for this solution. + +"It isn't exactly the time to leave home," her husband objected; "there is +sure to be a severe panic before long. All this agitation has unsettled +business, and the country must reap the consequences. We could go for a few +months, perhaps." + +"It wouldn't be good for Molly." + +And though she did not say it, it would not be good for him to leave the +struggle for any length of time. Once out of the game of life, for which he +had been trained like an athlete, he would degenerate and lose his peculiar +power. And yet she shrank unaccountably from his reentering the old life, +with the bitter feeling in his heart he now had. It meant their living in +New York, for one thing, and a growing repugnance to that huge, squirming, +prodigal hive had come over her. Once the pinnacle of her ambitions, now it +seemed sordid, hectic, unreal. Yet she was too wise to offer her +objections, to argue the matter, any more than to open the personal wound +of his trial and conviction. Influence, at least with a man of John Lane's +fibre, must be a subtle, slow process, depending on mutual confidence, +comprehension. And she must first see clearly what she herself knew to be +best. So she listened, waiting for the vision which would surely come. + +In these business talks her mind grasped more and more the issues of +American life. She learned to recognize the distinction between the +officials of corporations and the control behind,--the money power. There +emerged into view something of a panorama of industry, organized on modern +lines,--the millions of workers in the industrial armies; the infinite +gradations of leadership in these armies, and finally far off in the +distance, among the canons of the skyscrapers in the great cities, the Mind +of it all, the Control, the massed Capital. There were the Marshals' +quarters! Even the chiefs of great corporations were "little people" +compared with their real employers, the men who controlled capital. And +into that circle of intoxicating power, within its influence, she felt that +her husband was slowly moving--would ultimately arrive, if success +came,--at the height of modern fame. Men did not reach the Marshals' +quarters with a few hundred thousands of dollars, nor with a few millions, +with savings and inheritances and prudent thrift. They must have tens of +millions at their command. And these millions came through alliances, +manipulations, deals, by all sorts of devices whereby money could be made +to spawn miraculously.... + +Meanwhile the worker earned his wage, and the minor officers their +salaries--what had they to complain of?--but the pelf went up to the +Marshals' camp, the larger part of it,--in this land where all were born +free and equal. No! Isabelle shuddered at the spectacle of the bloody road +up to the camp, and prayed that her life might not be lived in an +atmosphere of blood and alarms and noisy strife, even for the sake of +millions of dollars and limitless Power. + +One evening in this period of dubitation Lane remarked casually:-- + +"Your father's friend, Pete Larrimore, came in to-day to see me. Do you +remember him, Isabelle? The old fellow with the mutton-chop whiskers, who +used to send us bags of coffee from his plantation in Mexico." + +"Awful coffee,--we couldn't give it away!" + +"He wanted to talk to me about a scheme he is interested in. It seems that +he has a lot of property in the southwest, Oklahoma and the Texas +Panhandle, some of it very valuable. Among other things he has become +involved in a railroad. It was started by some people who hadn't the +capital to carry it through, and now it begins nowhere and ends in the same +place. Larrimore and his friends think they can get the capital to carry +the road south to the line and up north, and ultimately will sell it +perhaps to one of the big systems.... They are looking for a man to build +it and push it through." + +"What did you say?" Isabelle demanded eagerly. + +"Oh, I just listened. If they can get the money, it might be successful. +That country is growing fast.... It would be a chance for some young man to +win his spurs,--hard work, though." + +He talked on, explaining the strategic position of the new road, its +relation to rivals, the prospects of that part of the country, the present +condition of the money market in respect to new enterprises; for Isabelle +seemed interested. But when she interrupted with sudden energy, "Do it, +John! Why don't _you_ take it?" he looked puzzled. + +"It is a young man's job,--pioneer work." + +"But you are young--we are young! And it would be something worth doing, +pioneer work, building up a new country like that." + +"There's not much money in it," he replied, smiling at her girlish +enthusiasm, "and I am afraid not much fame." + +Not money, not the fame of the gladiator, the fame of the money power; +merely the good report of a labor competently performed, the reward of +energy and capacity--and the thing done itself. But to Isabelle this +pioneer quality of the work appealed strongly. Her imagination expanded +under the idea. + +"I can see you living for the next ten years in a small Texas town!" he +jested. "However, I suppose you wouldn't live out there." + +"But I should!" she protested. "And it is what I should like best of all, I +think--the freedom, the open air, the new life!" + +So from a merely casual suggestion that Lane had not thought worth serious +consideration, there began to grow between them a new conception of their +future. And the change that these last weeks had brought was marked by the +freedom with which husband and wife talked not only about the future, but +about the past. Isabelle tried to tell her husband what had been going on +within her at the trial, and since then. + +"I know," she said, "that you will say I can't understand, that my feeling +is only a woman's squeamishness or ignorance.... But, John, I can't bear to +think of our going back to it, living on in that way, the hard way of +success, as it would be in New York." + +Lane looked at her narrowly. He was trying to account for this new attitude +in his wife. That she would be pleased, or at least indifferent, at the +prospect of returning to the East, to the New York life that she had always +longed for and apparently enjoyed, he had taken for granted. Yet in spite +of the fixed lines in which his nature ran and the engrossing +preoccupations of his interests, he had felt many changes in Isabelle since +her return to St. Louis,--changes that he ascribed generally to the +improvement in her health,--better nerves,--but that he could not +altogether formulate. Perhaps they were the indirect result of her +brother's death. At any rate his wife's new interest in business, in his +affairs, pleased him. He liked to talk things over with her.... + +Thus the days went steadily by towards the decision. Lane had promised his +wife to consider the Larrimore offer. One morning the cable brought the +startling news that the president of the Atlantic and Pacific had committed +suicide in his hotel room in Paris the evening before he was to sail for +home. "Bad health and nervous collapse," was the explanation in the +despatch. But that a man of sixty-three, with a long record of honorable +success, a large fortune, no family troubles, should suddenly take his own +life, naturally roused the liveliest amazement throughout the country. +Nobody believed that the cable told the whole truth; but the real reasons +for the desperate act were locked tight among the directors of the railroad +corporation and a few intimate heads of control--who know all. + +Lane read the news to Isabelle. It shook him perceptibly. He had known +Farrington Beals for years, ever since at the Colonel's suggestion he had +been picked out of the army of underlings and given his first chance. +Isabelle remembered him even longer, and especially at her wedding with the +Senator and her father. They were old family friends, the Bealses. + +"How terrible for Mrs. Beals and Elsie!" she exclaimed. "How could he have +done it! The family was so happy. They all adored him! And he was about to +retire, Elsie told me when I saw her last, and they were all going around +the world in their yacht.... He couldn't have been very ill." + +"No, I am afraid that wasn't the only reason," John admitted, walking to +and fro nervously. + +He was thinking of all that the old man had done for him, his resentment at +his chief's final desertion of him forgotten; of how he had learned his +job, been trained to pull his load by the dead man, who had always +encouraged him, pushed him forward. + +"He went over for a little rest, you said. And he always went every year +about this time for a vacation and to buy pictures. Don't you remember, +John, what funny things he bought, and how the family laughed at him?" + +"Yes,--I know." He also knew that the president of the Atlantic and Pacific +had gone across the ocean "for his yearly vacation" just at the opening of +the coal investigation to escape the scandal of the trial, and had not +returned at the usual time, although the financial world was unsettled. And +he knew other things; for already clubs and inner offices had been buzzing +with rumors. + +"I am afraid that it is worse than it seems," he said to his wife on his +return from the city that afternoon. "Beals was terribly involved. I hear +that a bank he was interested in has been closed.... He was tied up +fast--in all sorts of ways!" + +"John!" Isabelle cried, and paused. Did this old man's death mean another +scandal, ruin for another family, and one she had known well,--disgrace, +scandal, possibly poverty? + +"Beals was always in the market--and this panic hit him hard; he was on the +wrong side lately." + +It was an old story, not in every case with the same details, but horribly +common,--a man of the finest possibilities, of sturdy character, rising up +to the heights of ambition, then losing his head, playing the game wantonly +for mere pride and habit in it,--his judgment giving way, but playing on, +stumbling, grasping at this and that to stop his sliding feet, breaking the +elementary laws! And finally, in the face of disaster, alone in a hotel +room the lonely old man--no doubt mentally broken by the strain--putting +the pistol to his head with his shaking hand. And, afterwards, the debris +of his wreck would be swept aside to clear the road for others! + +Farrington Beals was not a single case. In this time of money disturbance, +suicide and dishonor were rife in the streets, revealing the rotten timber +that could not stand the strain of modern life, lived as it had been lived +the past ten years. It was not one blast that uprooted weak members of the +forest, but the eating decay of the previous years, working at the heart of +many lives. "The frantic egotism of the age!" Yes, and the divided souls, +never at peace until death put an end to the strife at last,--too much for +little bodies of nerve and tissue to stand,--the racking of divided wills, +divided souls. + +"John!" Isabelle cried that night, after they had again talked over the +tragedy; "let us go--go out there--to a new land!" She rose from the lounge +and swept across the room with the energy of clear purpose--of Vision. "Let +us put ourselves as far as possible out of this sort of thing! .... It will +kill us both. Do it for my sake, even if you can't feel as I do!" + +And then there poured forth all the story of these years, of their life +apart, as she had come to see it the last months, in the remote and +peaceful hills, in the court-room, in the plain pathos of Steve's death and +Alice's heroism, and now in this suicide,--all that had given her insight +and made her different from what she had been,--all that revealed the +cheapness of her old ideals of freedom, intellectual development, +self-satisfaction, that cult of the ego, which she had pursued in sympathy +with the age. Now she wished to put it away, to remove herself and her +husband, their lives together, outwardly as she had withdrawn herself +inwardly. And her husband, moved in spite of himself by her tense desire, +the energy of her words, listened and comprehended--in part. + +"I have never been a real wife to you, John. I don't mean just my love for +that other man, when you were nobly generous with me. But before that, in +other ways, in almost all ways that make a woman a wife, a real wife.... +Now I want to be a real wife. I want to be with you in all things.... You +can't see the importance of this step as I do. Men and women are different, +always. But there is something within me, underneath, like an inner light +that makes me see clearly now,--not conscience, but a kind of flame that +guides. In the light of that I see what a petty fool I have been. It all +had to be--I don't regret because it all had to be--the terrible waste, the +sacrifice," she whispered, thinking of Vickers. "Only now we must live, you +and I together,--together live as we have never lived before!" + +She held out her hands to him as she spoke, her head erect, and as he +waited, still tied by years of self-repression, she went to him and put her +arms about him, drawing her to him, to her breast, to her eyes. Ten years +before he had adored her, desired her passionately, and she had shrunk from +him. Then life had come imperceptibly in between them; he had gone his way, +she hers. Now she was offering herself to him. And she was more desirable +than before, more woman,--at last whole. The appeal that had never been +wholly stifled in the man still beat in his pulses for the woman. And the +appeal never wholly roused in the woman by him reached out now for him; but +an appeal not merely of the senses, higher than anything Cairy could rouse +in a woman, an appeal, limitless, of comradeship, purpose, wills. He kissed +her, holding her close to him, realizing that she too held him in the inner +place of her being. + +"We will begin again," he said. + +"Our new life--together!" + + * * * * * + +And this is Influence, the work of one will upon another, sometimes +apparent, dramatic, tragic; sometimes subtle, unknowable, speaking across +dark gulfs. The meaning of that dead man's austere face, the howl of +journalists on his uncovered trail, the old man dead in his hotel room +disgraced, the deep current of purpose in his new wife,--all these and much +more sent messages into the man's unyielding soul to change the atmosphere +therein, to alter the values of things seen, to shape--at last--the will. +For what makes an act? Filaments of nerve, some shadowy unknown process in +brain cells? These are but symbols for mystery! Life pressing +multifariously its changing suggestions upon the sentient organism prompts, +at last, the act. But there is something deeper than the known in all this +wondrous complexity.... + +John Lane, the man of fact, the ordered efficient will, was dimly conscious +of forces other than physical ones, beyond,--not recognizable as +motives,--self-created and impelling, nevertheless; forces welling up from +the tenebrous spaces in the depths of his being, beneath conscious life. +And at last, something higher than Judgment swayed the man. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXIX + + +The private car Olympus had been switched for the day to a siding at the +little town of Orano on the edge of the Texas upland. The party within--the +Lanes, Margaret and her children, and several men interested in the new +railroad--had been making a leisurely tour of inspection, passing through +the fertile prairies and woodlands of Oklahoma, stopping often at the +little towns that were springing up along the road, aiming south until they +had reached the Panhandle. These September days the harvests were rich and +heavy, covered with a golden haze of heat,--the sweat of earth's +accomplishment. The new soil was laden with its fruit. The men had been +amazed by the fertility, the force of the country. "Traffic, traffic," Lane +had murmured enthusiastically, divining with his trained eye the enormous +possibilities of the land, the future for the iron highroad he was pushing +through it. Traffic,--in other words, growth, business, human effort and +human life,--that is the cosmic song that sings itself along the iron road. + +Margaret had said mockingly:-- + +"Wouldn't it do our New York friends a world of good to get out here once a +year and realize that life goes on, and very real life, outside the narrow +shores of Manhattan!" + +That was the illuminating thought which had come to them all in different +ways during this slow progress from St. Louis south and west. This broad +land of states had a vital existence, a life of its own, everywhere, not +merely in the great centres, the glutted metropolitan points. Men lived and +worked, happily, constructively, in thousands and thousands of small +places, where the seaboard had sunk far beneath the eastern horizon. Life +was real, to be lived vitally, as much here in prairie and plain as +anywhere on the earth's surface. The feeling which had come to Isabelle on +her westward journey in March--the conviction that each one counted, had +his own terrestrial struggle, his own celestial drama, differing very +little in importance from his neighbor's; each one--man, woman, or +child--in all the wonderful completeness of life throughout the +millions--swept over her again here where the race was sowing new land. And +lying awake in the stillness of the autumn morning on the lofty plateau, as +she listened to the colored servants chaffing at their work, there came to +her the true meaning of that perplexing phrase, which had sounded with the +mockery of empty poetry on the lips of the district attorney,--"All men +born free and equal." Yes! in the realm of their spirits, in their +souls,--the inner, moving part of them, "free and equal"! ... + +"It's the roof of the world!" Margaret said, as she jumped from the car +platform and looked over the upland,--whimsically recalling the name of a +popular play then running in New York. + +An unawakened country, dry and untilled, awaiting the hand of the master, +it lifted westward in colored billows of undulating land. Under the clear +morning sun it was still and fresh, yet untouched, untamed. + +"It _is_ the roof of the world," she repeated, "high and dry and +extraordinarily vast,--leading your eyes onward and upward to the heavens, +with all the rest of the earth below you in the fog. How I should like to +live here always! If I were you, Isabelle, I should get your husband to +give you a freight-car like those the gangs of track-layers use, with a +little stovepipe sticking out of one corner, and just camp down in it +here,--on the roof of the world." + +She lifted her thin, delicate face to the sun, reaching out her arms to it +hungrily. + +"We must sleep out to-night under the stars, and talk--oh, much talk, out +here under the stars!" + +During the past year at Grosvenor her frail body had strengthened, revived; +she was now firm and vigorous. Only the deep eyes and the lines above them +and about the mouth, the curve of the nostril and chin, showed as on a +finely chased coin the subtle chiselling of life. And here in the uplands, +in the great spaces of earth and sky, the elemental desire of her soul +seemed at last wholly appeased, the longing for space and height and light, +the longing for deeds and beauty and Peace. At last, after the false roads, +the fret and rebellion, she had emerged into the upper air.... + +"How well the little man rides!" Isabelle remarked as the children went by +them on some ponies they had found. + +Margaret's face glowed with pride. + +"Yes, Ned has improved very fast. He will go to school with the others +now.... The doctor has really saved his life--and mine, too," she murmured. + +So the two slept out under the stars, as Margaret wished, with dotted +heavens close above and vague space all about; and they talked into the +morning of past years, of matters that meant too much to them both for +daylight speech. Isabelle spoke of Vickers, of the apparent waste of his +life. "I can see now," she said, "that in going away with that woman as he +did he expressed the real soul of him, as he did in dying for me. He was +born to love and to give, and the world broke him. But he escaped!" And she +could not say even to Margaret what she felt,--that he had laid it on her +to express his defeated life. + +They spoke even of Conny. "You received the cards for her wedding?" +Margaret asked. "The man is a stockbroker. She is turning her talents to a +new field,--money. I hear the wedding was very smart, and they are to live +on Long Island, with a yacht and half a dozen motors." + +"I thought she would marry--differently," Isabelle observed vaguely, +recalling the last time she had seen Conny. + +"No! Conny knows her world perfectly,--that's her strength. And she knows +exactly what to take from it to suit her. She is a bronze Cleopatra with +modern variations. I think they ought to put her figure on the gold eagles +as the American Woman Triumphant, ruling her world." + +"And on the other side the figure of a Vampire, stacking at the souls of +men." ... + +And then they talked of the future, the New Life, as it would shape itself +for Isabelle and her husband, talked as if the earth were fresh and life +but in the opening. + +"He may do something else than this," Isabelle said. "He has immense power. +But I hope it will always be something outside the main wheels of industry, +as Mr. Gossom would say,--something with another kind of reward than the +Wall Street crown." + +"I wish he might find work here for Rob," Margaret said; "something out +here where he belongs that will not pay him in fame or money. For he has +that other thing in him, the love of beauty, of the ideal." She spoke with +ease and naturally of her lover. "And there has been so little that is +ideal in his life,--so little to feed his spirit." + +And she added in a low voice, "I saw her in New York--his wife." + +"Bessie!" + +"Yes,--she was there with the girl,--Mildred.... I went to see her--I had +to.... I went several times. She seemed to like me. Do you know, there is +something very lovable in that woman; I can see why Rob married her. She +has wrecked herself,--her own life. She would never submit to what the +doctor calls the discipline of life. She liked herself just as she was; she +wanted to be always a child of nature, to win the world with her charm, to +have everything nice and pleasant and gay about her, and be petted into the +bargain. Now she is gray and homely and in bad health--and bitter. It is +pitiful to wake up at forty after you have been a child all your life, and +realize that life was never what you thought it was.... I was very sorry +for her." + +"Will they ever come together again?" + +"Perhaps! Who knows? The girl must bring them together; she will not be +wholly satisfied with her mother, and Rob needs his daughter.... I hope +so--for his sake. But it will be hard for them both,--hard for him to live +with a spent woman, and hard for her to know that she has missed what she +wanted and never quite to understand why.... But it may be better than we +can see,--there is always so much of the unknown in every one. That is the +great uplifting thought! We live in space and above unseen depths. And +voices rise sometimes from the depths." + +And lying there under the stars Margaret thought what she could not +speak,--of the voice that had risen within her and made her refuse the +utmost of personal joy. She had kissed her lover and held him in her arms +and sent him away from her. Without him she could not have lived; nor could +she live keeping him.... + +At last they came to Renault, the one who had opened their eyes to life and +to themselves. + +"Still working," Margaret said, "burning up there in the hills like a +steady flame! Some day he will go out,--not die, just wholly consume from +within, like one of those old lamps that burn until there is nothing, no +oil left, not even the dust of the wick." + +As the faint morning breeze began to draw across the upland they fell +asleep, clasping hands. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXX + + +The rising sun had barely shot its first beams over the eastern swell when +Lane came to the tent to call them for the early breakfast before the day's +expedition to a wonderful canon. Isabelle, making a sign to John not to +disturb Margaret, who was still fast asleep, drew the blanket over her +shoulders and joined her husband. The level light flooded the rolling +upland with a sudden glory of gold, except along the outer rim of the +horizon where the twilight color of deep violet still held. Husband and +wife strolled away from the tents in the path of the sun. + +"Big, isn't it?" he exclaimed. + +"Yes!" she murmured. "It is a big, big world!" And linking her arm in his +they walked on towards the sun together. + +In the morning light the earth was fresh and large and joyous. And life, as +Renault had said over the body of the dead child, seemed good, all of it! +That which was past, lived vainly and in stress, and that which was to come +as well. So Alice had affirmed in the presence of her bereavement.... Life +is good, all of it,--all its devious paths and issues! + +"It is so good to be here with you!" Isabelle whispered to her husband. + +"Yes,--it is a good beginning," he replied. And in his face she read that +he also understood that a larger life was beginning for them both. + +As they turned back to the tents, they saw Margaret huddled in her blanket +like a squaw, gazing steadily at the sun. + +"And the morrow is added to the morrow to make eternity," she was murmuring +to herself. "But always a new world, a new light, a new life!" + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Together, by Robert Herrick + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOGETHER *** + +***** This file should be named 8134.txt or 8134.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/1/3/8134/ + +Produced by Susan Skinner, Eric Eldred, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Together + +Author: Robert Herrick (1868-1938) + +Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8134] +[This file was first posted on June 17, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, TOGETHER *** + + + + +E-text prepared by Susan Skinner, Eric Eldred, and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team + + + +TOGETHER + +BY + +ROBERT HERRICK + + + + + + + +PART ONE + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +She stood before the minister who was to marry them, very tall and +straight. With lips slightly parted she looked at him steadfastly, not at +the man beside her who was about to become her husband. Her father, with a +last gentle pressure of her arm, had taken his place behind her. In the +hush that had fallen throughout the little chapel, all the restless +movement of the people who had gathered there this warm June morning was +stilled, in the expectation of those ancient words that would unite the two +before the altar. Through the open window behind the altar a spray of young +woodbine had thrust its juicy green leaves and swayed slowly in the air, +which was heavy with earthy odors of all the riotous new growth that was +pushing forward in the fields outside. And beyond the vine could be seen a +bit of the cloudless, rain-washed sky. + +There before the minister, who was fumbling mechanically at his +prayer-book, a great space seemed to divide the man and the woman from all +the others, their friends and relatives, who had come to witness the +ceremony of their union. In the woman's consciousness an unexpected +stillness settled, as if for these few moments she were poised between the +past of her whole life and the mysterious future. All the preoccupations of +the engagement weeks, the strange colorings of mood and feeling, all the +petty cares of the event itself, had suddenly vanished. She did not see +even him, the man she was to marry, only the rugged face of the old +minister, the bit of fluttering vine, the expanse of blue sky. She stood +before the veil of her life, which was about to be drawn aside. + +This hushed moment was broken by the resonant tones of the minister as he +began the opening words of the sacrament that had been said over so many +millions of human beings. Familiar as the phrases were, she did not realize +them, could not summon back her attention from that depth within of awed +expectancy. After a time she became aware of the subdued movements in the +chapel, of people breaking into the remote circle of her mystery,--even +here they must needs have their part--and of the man beside her looking +intently at her, with flushed face. It was this man, this one here at her +side, whom she had chosen of all that might have come into her life; and +suddenly he seemed a stranger, standing there, ready to become her husband! +The woodbine waved, recalling to her flashing thoughts that day two years +before when the chapel was dedicated, and they two, then mere friends, had +planted this vine together. And now, after certain meetings, after some +surface intercourse, they had willed to come here to be made one... + +"And who gives this woman in marriage?" the minister asked solemnly, +following the primitive formula which symbolizes that the woman is to be +made over from one family to another as a perpetual possession. She gave +herself of course! The words were but an outgrown form... + +There was the necessary pause while the Colonel came forward, and taking +his daughter's hand from which the glove had been carefully turned back, +laid it gently in the minister's large palm. The father's lips twitched, +and she knew he was feeling the solemnity of his act, that he was +relinquishing a part of himself to another. Their marriage--her father's +and mother's--had been happy,--oh, very peaceful! And yet--hers must be +different, must strike deeper. For the first time she raised her shining +eyes to the man at her side... + +"I, John, take thee Isabelle for my wedded wife, to have and to hold ... in +sickness and in health ... until death us do part ... and hereby I plight +thee my troth." + +Those old words, heard so many times, which heretofore had echoed without +meaning to her,--she had vaguely thought them beautiful,--now came +freighted with sudden meaning, while from out the dreamlike space around +sounded the firm tones of the man at her side repeating slowly, with grave +pauses, word by word, the marriage oath. "I, John, take thee Isabelle," +that voice was saying, and she knew that the man who spoke these words in +his calm, grave manner was the one she had chosen, to whom she had willed +to give herself for all time,--presently she would say it also,--for +always, always, "until death us do part." He was promising it with tranquil +assurance,--fidelity, the eternal bond, throughout the unknown years, out +of the known present. "And hereby I plight thee my troth." Without a tremor +the man's assured voice registered the oath--before God and man. + +"I, Isabelle," and the priest took up with her this primal oath of +fidelity, body and soul. All at once the full personal import of the words +pierced her, and her low voice swelled unconsciously with her affirmation. +She was to be for always as she was now. They two had not been one before: +the words did not make them so now. It was their desire. But the old +divided selves, the old impulses, they were to die, here, forever. + +She heard herself repeating the words after the minister. Her strong young +voice in the stillness of the chapel sounded strangely not her own voice, +but the voice of some unknown woman within her, who was taking the oath for +her in this barbaric ceremony whereby man and woman are bound together. +"And hereby I plight thee my troth,"--the voice sank to a whisper as of +prayer. Her eyes came back to the man's face, searching for his eyes. + +There were little beads of perspiration on his broad brow, and the shaven +lips were closely pressed together, moulding the face into lines of +will,--the look of mastery. What was he, this man, now her husband for +always, his hand about hers in sign of perpetual possession and protection? +What beneath all was he who had taken with her, thus publicly, the mighty +oath of fidelity, "until death us do part"? Each had said it; each believed +it; each desired it wholly. Perversely, here in the moment of her deepest +feeling, intruded the consciousness of broken contracts, the waste of +shattered purposes. Ah, but _theirs_ was different! This absolute oath of +fidelity one to the other, each with his own will and his own desire,--this +irredeemable contract of union between man and woman,--it was not always a +binding sacrament. Often twisted and broken, men and women promising in the +belief of the best within them what was beyond their power to perform. +There were those in that very chapel who had said these words and broken +them, furtively or legally... With them, of course, it would be different, +would be the best; for she conceived their love to be of another kind,--the +enduring kind. Nevertheless, just here, while the priest of society +pronounced the final words of union, something spoke within the woman's +soul that it was a strange oath to be taking, a strange manner of making +two living beings one! + +"And I pronounce you man and wife," the words ran. Then the minister +hastened on into his little homily upon the marriage state. But the woman's +thought rested at those fateful words,--"man and wife,"--the knot of the +contract. There should fall a new light in her heart that would make her +know they were really one, having now been joined as the book said "in holy +wedlock." From this sacramental union of persons there should issue to both +a new spirit... + +Her husband was standing firm and erect, listening with all the +concentration of his mind to what the minister was saying--not tumultuously +distracted--as though he comprehended the exact gravity of this contract +into which he was entering, as he might that of any other he could make, +sure of his power to fulfil all, confident before Fate. She trembled +strangely. Did she know him, this other self? In the swift apprehension of +life's depths which came through her heightened mood she perceived that +ultimate division lying between all human beings, that impregnable fortress +of the individual soul.... It was all over. He looked tenderly at her. Her +lips trembled with a serious smile,--yes, they would understand now! + +The people behind them moved more audibly. The thing was done; the priest's +words of exhortation were largely superfluous. All else that concerned +married life these two would have to find out for themselves. The thing was +done, as ordained by the church, according to the rules of society. Now it +was for Man and Wife to make of it what they would or--could. + +The minister closed his book in dismissal. The groom offered his arm to the +bride. Facing the chapelful she came out of that dim world of wonder +whither she had strayed. Her veil thrown back, head proudly erect, eyes +mistily ranging above the onlookers, she descended the altar steps, gazing +down the straight aisle over the black figures, to the sunny village green, +beyond into the vista of life! ... Triumphant organ notes beat through the +chapel, as they passed between the rows of smiling faces,--familiar faces +only vaguely perceived, yet each with its own expression, its own reaction +from this ceremony. She swept on deliberately, with the grace of her long +stride, her head raised, a little smile on her open lips, her hand just +touching his,--going forward with him into life. + +Only two faces stood out from the others at this moment,--the dark, +mischievous face of Nancy Lawton, smiling sceptically. Her dark, little +eyes seemed to say, 'Oh, you don't know yet!' And the other was the large, +placid face of a blond woman, older than the bride, standing beside a +stolid man at the end of a pew. The serene, soft eyes of this woman were +dim with tears, and a tender smile still lingered on her lips. She at +least, Alice Johnston, the bride's cousin, could smile through the tears--a +smile that told of the sweetness in life..... + +At the door the frock-coated young ushers formed into double line through +which the couple passed. The village green outside was flooded with +sunshine, checkered by drooping elm branches. Bells began to ring from the +library across the green and from the schoolhouse farther down. It was +over--the fine old barbaric ceremony, the passing of the irredeemable +contract between man and woman, the public proclamation of eternal union. +Henceforth they were man and wife before the law, before their kind--one +and one, and yet not two. + +Thus together they passed out of the church. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +The company gathered within the chapel for the wedding now moved and talked +with evident relief, each one expressing his feeling of the solemn service. + +"Very well done, very lovely!" the Senator was murmuring to the bride's +mother, just as he might give an opinion of a good dinner or some neat +business transaction or of a smartly dressed woman. It was a function of +life successfully performed--and he nodded gayly to a pretty woman three +rows away. He was handsome and gray-haired, long a widower, and evidently +considered weddings to be an attractive, ornamental feature of social life. +Mrs. Price, the bride's mother, intent upon escaping with the Colonel by +the side door and rejoining the bridal party at the house before the guests +arrived on foot, scarcely heeded the amiable Senator's remarks. This affair +of her daughter's marriage was, like most events, a matter of engrossing +details. The Colonel, in his usual gregarious manner, had strayed among the +guests, forgetful of his duties, listening with bent head to congratulatory +remarks. She had to send her younger son, Vickers, after him where he +lingered with Farrington Beals, the President of the great Atlantic and +Pacific Railroad, in which his new son-in-law held a position. When the +Colonel finally dragged himself away from the pleasant things that his old +friend Beals had to say about young Lane, he looked at his impatient wife +with his tender smile, as if he would like to pat her cheek and say, "Well, +we've started them right, haven't we?" + +The guests flowed conversationally towards the door and the sunny green, +while the organ played deafeningly. But play as exultantly as it might, it +could not drown the babble of human voices. Every one wanted to utter those +excitable commonplaces that seem somehow to cover at such times deep +meanings. + +"What a perfect wedding!" + +"How pretty it all was!" + +"Not a hitch." + +"She looked the part." + +"Good fellow--nice girl--ought to be happy ... Well, old man, when is your +turn coming? ... Could hear every word they said ... looked as though they +meant it, too! ..." + +In an eddy of the centre aisle a tall, blond young woman with handsome, +square shoulders and dark eyes stood looking about her calmly, as if she +were estimating the gathering, setting each one down at the proper social +valuation, deciding, perhaps, in sum that they were a very "mixed lot," old +friends and new, poor and rich. A thin girl, also blond, with deep blue +eyes, and a fine bony contour of the face, was swept by the stream near the +solitary observer and held out a hand:-- + +"Cornelia!" + +"Margaret!" + +"Isn't it ideal!" Margaret Lawton exclaimed, her nervous face still stirred +by all that she had felt during the service,--"the day, the country, and +this dear little chapel!" + +"Very sweet," the large woman replied in a purring voice, properly +modulated for the sentiment expressed. "Isabelle made an impressive bride." +And these two school friends moved on towards the door. Cornelia Pallanton, +still surveying the scene, nodded and said to her companion, "There's your +cousin Nannie Lawton. Her husband isn't here, I suppose? There are a good +many St. Louis people." + +The guests were now scattered in little groups over the green, dawdling in +talk and breathing happily the June-scented air. The stolid man and his +placid wife who had sat near the rear had already started for the Colonel's +house, following the foot-path across the fields. They walked silently side +by side, as if long used to wordless companionship. + +The amiable Senator and his friend Beals examined critically the little +Gothic chapel, which had been a gift to his native town by the Colonel, as +well as the stone library at the other end of the green. "Nice idea of +Price," the Senator was saying, "handsome buildings--pleasant little +village," and he moved in the direction of Miss Pallanton, who was alone. + +Down below in the valley, on the railroad siding, lay the special train +that had brought most of the guests from New York that morning. The engine +emitted little puffs of white smoke in the still noon, ready to carry its +load back to the city after the breakfast. About the library steps were the +carriages of those who had driven over from neighboring towns; the whole +village had a disturbed and festal air. + +The procession was straggling across the village street through the stile +and into the meadow, tramping down the thick young grass, up the slope to +the comfortable old white house that opened its broad verandas like +hospitable arms. The President of the Atlantic and Pacific, deserted by the +Senator, had offered his arm to a stern old lady with knotty hands partly +concealed in lace gloves. Her lined face had grown serious in age and +contention with life. She clung stiffly to the arm of the railroad +president,--proud, silent, and shy. She was _his_ mother. From her one +might conclude that the groom's people were less comfortably circumstanced +than the bride's--that this was not a marriage of ambition on the woman's +part. It was the first time Mrs. Lane had been "back east" since she had +left her country home as a young bride. It was a proud moment, walking with +her son's chief; but the old lady did not betray any elation, as she +listened to the kindly words that Beals found to say about her son. + +"A first-rate railroad man, Mrs. Lane,--he will move up rapidly. We can't +get enough of that sort." + +The mother, never relaxing her tight lips, drank it all in, treasured it as +a reward for the hard years spent in keeping that boarding-house in Omaha, +after the death of her husband, who had been a country doctor. + +"He's a good son," she admitted as the eulogy flagged. "And he knows how to +get on with all kinds of folks...." + +At their heels were Vickers Price and the thin Southern girl, Margaret +Lawton. Vickers, just back from Munich for this event, had managed to give +the conventional dress that he was obliged to wear a touch of strangeness, +with an enormous flowing tie of delicate pink, a velvet waistcoat, and +broad-brimmed hat. The clothes and the full beard, the rippling chestnut +hair and pointed mustache, showed a desire for eccentricity on the part of +the young man that distinguished him from all the other well-dressed young +Americans. He carried a thin cane and balanced a cigarette between his +lips. + +"Yes," he was saying, "I had to come over to see Isabelle married, but I +shall go back after a look around--not the place for me!" He laughed and +waved his cane towards the company with an ironic sense of his +inappropriateness to an American domestic scene. + +"You are a composer,--music, isn't it?" the girl asked, a flash in her blue +eyes at the thought of youth, Munich, music. + +"I have written a few things; am getting ready, you know," Vickers Price +admitted modestly. + +Just there they were joined by a handsome, fashionably dressed man, his +face red with rapid walking. He touched his long, well-brushed black +mustache with his handkerchief as he explained:-- + +"Missed the train--missed the show--but got here in time for the fun, on +the express." + +He took his place beside the girl, whose color deepened and eyes turned +away,--perhaps annoyed, or pleased? + +"That's what you come for, isn't it?" she said, forcing a little joke. +Noticing that the two men did not speak, she added hastily, "Don't you know +Mr. Price, Mr. Vickers Price? Mr. Hollenby." + +The newcomer raised his silk hat, sweeping Vickers, who was fanning himself +with his broad-brimmed felt, in a light, critical stare. Then Mr. Hollenby +at once appropriated the young woman's attention, as though he would +indicate that it was for her sake he had taken this long, hot journey. + + * * * * * + +There were other little groups at different stages on the hill,--one +gathered about a small, dark-haired woman, whose face burned duskily in the +June sun. She was Aline Goring,--the Eros of that schoolgirl band at St. +Mary's who had come to see their comrade married. And there was Elsie +Beals,--quite elegant, the only daughter of the President of the A. and P. +The Woodyards, Percy and Lancey, classmates of Vickers at the university, +both slim young men, wearing their clothes carelessly,--clearly not of the +Hollenby manner,--had attached themselves here. Behind them was Nan Lawton, +too boisterous even for the open air. At the head of the procession, now +nearly topping the hill beneath the house, was that silent married couple, +the heavy, sober man and the serene, large-eyed woman, who did not mingle +with the others. He had pointed out to her the amiable Senator and +President Beals, both well-known figures in the railroad world where he +worked, far down, obscurely, as a rate clerk. His wife looked at these two +great ones, who indirectly controlled the petty destiny of the Johnstons, +and squeezed her husband's hand more tightly, expressing thus many mixed +feelings,--content with him, pride and confidence in him, in spite of his +humble position in the race. + +"It's just like the Pilgrim's Progress," she said with a little smile, +looking backward at the stream. + +"But who is Christian?" the literal husband asked. Her eyes answered that +she knew, but would not tell. + + * * * * * + +Just as each one had reflected his own emotion at the marriage, so each +one, looking up at the hospitable goal ahead,--that irregular, broad white +house poured over the little Connecticut hilltop,--had his word about the +Colonel's home. + +"No wonder they call it the Farm," sneered Nan Lawton to the Senator. + +"It's like the dear old Colonel, the new and the old," the Senator +sententiously interpreted. + +Beals, overhearing this, added, "It's poor policy to do things that way. +Better to pull the old thing down and go at it afresh,--you save time and +money, and have it right in the end." + +"It's been in the family a hundred years or more," some one remarked. "The +Colonel used to mow this field himself, before he took to making hardware." + +"Isabelle will pull it about their ears when she gets the chance," Mrs. +Lawton said. "The present-day young haven't much sentiment for +uncomfortable souvenirs." + +Her cousin Margaret was remarking to Vickers, "What a good, homey sort of +place,--like our old Virginia houses,--all but that great barn!" + +It was, indeed, as the Senator had said, very like the Colonel, who could +spare neither the old nor the new. It was also like him to give Grafton a +new stone library and church, and piece on rooms here and there to his own +house. In spite of these additions demanded by comfort there was something +in the conglomeration to remind the Colonel, who had returned to Grafton +after tasting strife and success in the Middle West, of the plain home of +his youth. + +"The dear old place!" Alice Johnston murmured to her husband. "It was never +more attractive than to-day, as if it knew that it was marrying off an only +daughter." To her, too, the Farm had memories, and no new villa spread out +spaciously in Italian, Tudor, or Classic style could ever equal this white, +four-chimneyed New England mansion. + +On the west slope of the hill near the veranda a large tent had been +erected, and into this black-coated waiters were running excitedly to and +fro around a wing of the house which evidently held the servant quarters. +Just beyond the tent a band was playing a loud march. There was to be +dancing on the lawn after the breakfast, and in the evening on the village +green for everybody, and later fireworks. The Colonel had insisted on the +dancing and the fireworks, in spite of Vickers's jeers about pagan rites +and the Fourth of July. + +The bride and groom had already taken their places in the broad hall, which +bisected the old house. The guests were to enter from the south veranda, +pass through the hall, and after greeting the couple gain the refreshment +tent through the library windows. The Colonel had worked it all out with +that wonderful attention to detail that had built up his great hardware +business. Upstairs in the front bedrooms the wedding presents had been +arranged, and nicely ticketed with cards for the amusement of aged +relatives,--a wonderful assortment of silver and gold and glass,--an +exhibition of the wide relationships of the contracting pair, at least of +the wife. And through these rooms soft-footed detectives patrolled, +examining the guests.... + +Isabelle Price had not wished her wedding to be of this kind, ordered so to +speak like the refreshments from Sherry and the presents from Tiffany, with +a special train on the siding. When she and John had decided to be married +at the old farm, she had thought of a country feast,--her St. Mary's girls +of course and one or two more, but quite to themselves! They were to walk +with these few friends to the little chapel, where the dull old village +parson would say the necessary words. The marriage over, and a simple +breakfast in the old house,--the scene of their love,--they were to ride +off among the hills to her camp on Dog Mountain, alone. And thus quietly, +without flourish, they would enter the new life. But as happens to all such +pretty idylls, reality had forced her hand. Colonel Price's daughter could +not marry like an eloping schoolgirl, so her mother had declared. Even John +had taken it as a matter of course, all this elaborate celebration, the +guests, the special train, the overflowing house. And she had yielded her +ideal of having something special in her wedding, acquiescing in the "usual +thing." + +But now that the first guests began to top the hill and enter the hall with +warm, laughing greetings, all as gay as the June sunlight, the women in +their fresh summer gowns, she felt the joy of the moment. "Isn't it jolly, +so many of 'em!" she exclaimed to her husband, squeezing his arm gayly. He +took it, like most things, as a matter of course. The hall soon filled with +high tones and noisy laughter, as the guests crowded in from the lawn about +the couple, to offer their congratulations, to make their little jokes, and +premeditated speeches. Standing at the foot of the broad stairs, her veil +thrown back, her fair face flushed with color and her lips parted in a +smile, one arm about a thick bunch of roses, the bride made a bright spot +of light in the dark hall. All those whirling thoughts, the depths to which +her spirit had descended during the service, had fled; she was excited by +this throng of smiling, joking people, by the sense of her role. She had +the feeling of its being _her_ day, and she was eager to drink every drop +in the sparkling cup. A great kindness for everybody, a sort of beaming +sympathy for the world, bubbled up in her heart, making the repeated hand +squeeze which she gave--sometimes a double pressure--a personal expression +of her emotion. Her flashing hazel eyes, darting into each face in turn as +it came before her, seemed to say: 'Of course, I am the happiest woman in +the world, and you must be happy, too. It is such a good world!' While her +voice was repeating again and again, with the same tremulous intensity, +"Thank you--it is awfully nice of you--I am so glad you are here!" + +To the amiable Senator's much worn compliment,--"It's the prettiest wedding +I have seen since your mother's, and the prettiest bride, too,"--she +blushed a pleased reply, though she had confessed to John only the night +before that the sprightly Senator was "horrid,--he has such a way of +squeezing your hand, as if he would like to do more,"--to which the young +man had replied in his perplexity, due to the Senator's exalted position in +the A. and P. Board, "I suppose it's only the old boy's way of being +cordial." + +Even when Nannie Lawton came loudly with Hollenby--she had captured him +from her cousin--and threw her arms about the bride, Isabelle did not draw +back. She forgot that she disliked the gay little woman, with her muddy +eyes, whose "affairs"--one after the other--were condoned "for her +husband's sake." Perhaps Nannie felt what it might be to be as happy and +proud as she was,--she was large, generous, comprehending at this moment. +And she passed the explosive little woman over to her husband, who received +her with the calm courtesy that never made an enemy. + +But when "her girls" came up the line, she felt happiest. Cornelia was +first, large, handsome, stately, her broad black hat nodding above the +feminine stream, her dark eyes observing all, while she slowly smiled to +the witticisms Vickers murmured in her ear. Every one glanced at Miss +Pallanton; she was a figure, as Isabelle realized when she finally stood +before her,--a very handsome figure, and would get her due attention from +her world. They had not cared very much for "Conny" at St. Mary's, though +she was a handsome girl then and had what was called "a good mind." There +was something coarse in the detail of this large figure, the plentiful +reddish hair, the strong, straight nose,--all of which the girls of St. +Mary's had interpreted their own way, and also the fact that she had come +from Duluth,--probably of "ordinary" people. Surely not a girl's girl, nor +a woman's woman! But one to be reckoned with when it came to men. Isabelle +was conscious of her old reserve as she listened to Conny's piping, +falsetto voice,--such a funny voice to come from that large person through +that magnificent white throat. + +"It makes me so happy, dear Isabelle," the voice piped; "it is all so +ideal, so exactly what it ought to be for you, don't you know?" And as +Percy Woodyard bore her off--he had hovered near all the time--she smiled +again, leaving Isabelle to wonder what Conny thought would be "just right" +for her. + +"You must hurry, Conny," she called on over Vickers's head, "and make up +your mind; you are almost our last!" + +"You know I never hurry," the smiling lips piped languidly, and the large +hat sailed into the library, piloted on either side by Woodyard and +Vickers. Isabelle had a twinge of sisterly jealousy at seeing her younger +brother so persistently in the wake of the large, blond girl. Dear Vick, +her own chum, her girl's first ideal of a man, fascinatingly developed by +his two years in Munich, must not go bobbing between Nan Lawton and Conny! + +And here was Margaret Lawton--so different from her cousin's wife--with the +delicate, high brow, the firm, aristocratic line from temple to chin. She +was the rarest and best of the St. Mary's set, and though Isabelle had +known her at school only a year, she had felt curiosity and admiration for +the Virginian. Her low, almost drawling voice, which reflected a controlled +spirit, always soothed her. The deep-set blue eyes had caught Isabelle's +glance at Vickers, and with an amused smile the Southern girl said, "He's +in the tide!" + +Isabelle said, "I am so, so glad you could get here, Margaret." + +"I wanted to--very much. I made mother put off our sailing." + +"How is the Bishop?" she asked, as Margaret was pushed on. + +"Oh, happy, riding about the mountains and converting the poor heathen, who +prefer whiskey to religion. Mother's taking him to England this summer to +show him off to the foreign clergy." + +"And Washington?" + +Margaret's thin, long lips curved ironically for answer. Hollenby, who +seemed to have recollected a purpose, was waiting for her at the library +door.... "Ah, my Eros!" Isabella exclaimed with delight, holding forth two +hands to a small, dark young woman, with waving brown hair and large eyes +that were fixed on distant objects. + +"Eros with a husband and two children," Aline Goring murmured, in her soft +contralto. "You remember Eugene? At the Springs that summer?" The husband, +a tall, smooth-shaven, young man with glasses and the delicate air of the +steam-heated American scholar bowed stiffly. + +"Of course! Didn't I aid and abet you two?" + +"That's two years and a half ago," Aline remarked, as if the simple words +covered a multitude of facts about life. "We are on our way to St. Louis to +settle." + +"Splendid!" Isabelle exclaimed. "We shall have you again. Torso, where we +are exiled for the present, is only a night's ride from St. Louis." + +Aline smiled that slow, warm smile, which seemed to come from the remote +inner heart of her dreamy life. Isabelle looked at her eagerly, searching +for the radiant, woodsy creature she had known, that Eros, with her dreamy, +passionate, romantic temperament, a girl whom girls adored and kissed and +petted, divining in her the feminine spirit of themselves. Surely, she +should be happy, Aline, the beautiful girl made for love, poetic, tender. +The lovely eyes were there, but veiled; the velvety skin had roughened; and +the small body was almost heavy. The wood nymph had been submerged in +matrimony. + +Goring was saying in a twinkling manner:-- + +"I've been reckoning up, Mrs. Lane. You are the seventh most intimate girl +friend Aline has married off the last two years. How many more of you are +there?" + +Aline, putting her arms about the bride's neck, drew her face to her lips +and whispered:-- + +"Dearie, my darling! I hope you will be so happy,--that it will be all you +can wish!" After these two had disappeared into the library, where there +was much commotion about the punch-bowl, the bride wondered--were _they_ +happy? She had seen the engagement at Southern Springs,--the two most +ecstatic, unearthly lovers she had ever known.... But now? ... + +Thus the stream of her little world flowed on, repeating its high-pitched +note of gratulation, of jocular welcome to the married state, as if to say, +'Well, now you are one of us--you've been brought in--this is life.' That +was what these smiling people were thinking, as they welcomed the neophytes +to the large vale of human experience. 'We have seen you through this +business, started you joyously on the common path. And now what will you +make of it?' For the occasion they ignored, good naturedly, the stones +along the road, the mistakes, the miserable failures that lined the path, +assuming the bride's proper illusion of triumph and confidence.... Among +the very last came the Johnstons, who had lingered outside while the more +boisterous ones pressed about the couple. Isabelle noticed that the large +brown eyes of the placid woman, who always seemed to her much older than +herself, were moist, and her face was serious when she said, "May it be all +that your heart desires--the Real Thing!" + +A persistent aunt interrupted them here, and it was hours afterward when +Isabelle's thought came back to these words and dwelt on them. 'The real +thing!' Of course, that was what it was to be, her marriage,--the woman's +symbol of the Perfect, not merely Success (though with John they could not +fail of worldly success), nor humdrum content--but, as Alice said, the real +thing,--a state of passionate and complete union. Something in those misty +brown eyes, something in the warm, deep voice of the older woman, in the +prayer-like form of the wish, sank deep into her consciousness. + +She turned to her husband, who was chatting with Fosdick, a large, heavy +man with a Dr. Johnson head on massive shoulders. One fat hand leaned +heavily on a fat club, for Fosdick was slightly lame and rolled in his +gait. + +"Isabelle," he remarked with a windy sigh, "I salute my victor!" + +Old Dick, Vickers's playmate in the boy-and-girl days, her playmate, +too,--he had wanted to marry her for years, ever since Vick's freshman year +when he had made them a visit at the Farm. He had grown very heavy since +then,--time which he had spent roving about in odd corners of the earth. As +he stood there, his head bent mockingly before the two, Isabelle felt +herself Queen once more, the--American woman who, having surveyed all, and +dominated all within the compass of her little world, has chosen the One. +But not Dickie, humorous and charming as he was. + +"How goes it, Dickie?" + +"As always," he puffed; "I come from walking or rather limping up and down +this weary earth and observing--men and women--how they go about to make +themselves miserable." + +"Stuff!" + +"My dear friends," he continued, placing both hands on the big cane, "you +are about to undergo a new and wonderful experience. You haven't the +slightest conception of what it is. You think it is love; but it is the +holy state of matrimony,--a very different proposition--" + +They interrupted him with laughing abuse, but he persisted,--a serious +undertone to his banter. "Yes, I have always observed the scepticism of +youth, no matter what may be the age of the contracting parties and their +previous experience, in this matter. But Love and Marriage are two distinct +and entirely independent states of being,--one is the creation of God, the +other of Society. I have observed that few make them coalesce." + +As relatives again interposed, Fosdick rolled off, ostentatiously thumping +his stick on the floor, and made straight for the punch-bowl, where he +seemed to meet congenial company. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +Meanwhile inside the great tent the commotion was at its height, most of +the guests--those who had escaped the fascination of the punch-bowl--having +found their way thither. Perspiring waiters rushed back and forth with +salad and champagne bottles, which were seized by the men and borne off to +the women waiting suitably to be fed by the men whom they had attached. +Near the entrance the Colonel, with his old friends Beals and Senator +Thomas, was surveying the breakfast scene, a contented smile on his kind +face, as he murmured assentingly, "So--so." He and the Senator had served +in the same regiment during the War, Price retiring as Colonel and the +Senator as Captain; while the bridegroom's father, Tyringham Lane, had been +the regimental surgeon. + +"What a good fellow Tyringham was, and how he would have liked to be here!" +the Senator was saying sentimentally, as he held out a glass to be +refilled. "Poor fellow!--he never got much out of his life; didn't know how +to make the most of things,--went out there to that Iowa prairie after the +War. You say he left his widow badly off?" + +The Colonel nodded, and added with pride, "But John has made that right +now." + +The Senator, who had settled in Indianapolis and practised railroad law +until his clients had elevated him to the Senate, considered complacently +the various dispensations of Providence towards men. He said generously:-- + +"Well, Tyringham's son has good blood, and it will tell. He will make his +way. We'll see to that, eh, Beals?" and the Senator sauntered over to a +livelier group dominated by Cornelia Pallanton's waving black plumes. + +"Oh, marriage!" Conny chaffed, "it's the easiest thing a woman can do, +isn't it? Why should one be in a hurry when it's so hard to go back?" + +"Matrimony," Fosdick remarked, "is an experiment where nobody's experience +counts but your own." He had been torn from the punch-bowl and thus +returned to his previous train of thought. + +"Is that why some repeat it so often?" Elsie Beals inquired. She had broken +her engagement the previous winter and had spent the summer hunting with +Indian guides among the Canadian Rockies. She regarded herself as unusual, +and turned sympathetically to Fosdick, who also had a reputation for being +odd. + +"So let us eat and be merry," that young man said, seizing a pate and glass +of champagne, "though I never could see why good people should make such an +unholy rumpus when two poor souls decide to attempt the great experiment of +converting illusion into reality." + +"Some succeed," an earnest young man suggested. + +Conny, who had turned from the constant Woodyard to the voluble fat man, +who might be a Somebody, remarked:-- + +"I suppose you don't see the puddles when you are in their condition. It's +always the belief that we are going to escape 'em that drives us all into +your arms." + +"What I object to," Fosdick persisted, feeding himself prodigiously, "is +not the fact, but this savage glee over it. It's as though a lot of caged +animals set up a howl of delight every time the cage door was opened and a +new pair was introduced into the pen. They ought to perform the wedding +ceremony in sackcloth and ashes, after duly fasting, accompanied by a few +faithful friends garbed in black with torches." + +Conny gave him a cold, surface smile, setting down his talk as "young" and +beamed at the approaching Senator. + +"Oh, what an idea!" giggled a little woman. "If you can't dance at your own +wedding, you may never have another chance." + +Conny, though intent upon the Senator, kept an eye upon Woodyard, +introducing him to the distinguished man, thinking, no doubt, that the +Chairman of the A. and P. Board might be useful to the young lawyer. For +whatever she might be to women, this large blond creature with white neck, +voluptuous lips, and slow gaze from childlike eyes had the power of drawing +males to her, a power despised and also envied by women. Those simple eyes +seemed always to seek information about obvious matters. But behind the +eyes Conny was thinking, 'It's rather queer, this crowd. And these Prices +with all their money might do so much better. That Fosdick is a silly +fellow. The Senator is worn of course, but still important!' And yet Conny, +with all her sureness, did not know all her own mental processes. For she, +too, was really looking for a mate, weighing, estimating men to that end, +and some day she would come to a conclusion,--would take a man, Woodyard or +another, giving him her very handsome person, and her intelligence, in +exchange for certain definite powers of brain and will. + +The bride and groom entered the tent at last. Isabelle, in a renewed glow +of triumph, stepped over to the table and with her husband's assistance +plunged a knife into the huge cake, while her health was being drunk with +cheers. As she firmly cut out a tiny piece, she exposed a thin but +beautifully moulded arm. + +"Handsome girl," the Senator murmured in Conny's ear. "Must be some sore +hearts here to-day. I don't see how such a beauty could escape until she +was twenty-six. But girls want their fling these days, same as the men!" + +"Toast! Toast the bride!" came voices from all sides, while the waiters +hurried here and there slopping the wine into empty glasses. + +As the bride left the tent to get ready for departure, she caught sight of +Margaret Lawton in a corner of the veranda with Hollenby, who was bending +towards her, his eyes fastened on her face. Margaret was looking far away, +across the fields to where Dog Mountain rose in the summer haze. Was +Margaret deciding _her_ fate at this moment,--attracted, repulsed, waiting +for the deciding thrill, while her eyes searched for the ideal of happiness +on the distant mountain? She turned to look at the man, drawing back as his +hand reached forward. So little, so much--woman's fate was in the making +this June day, all about the old house,--attracting, repulsing, +weighing,--unconsciously moulding destiny that might easily be momentous in +the outcome of the years.... + +When the bride came down, a few couples had already begun to dance, but +they followed the other guests to the north side where the carriage stood +ready. Isabelle looked very smart in her new gown, a round travelling hat +just framing her brilliant eyes and dark hair. Mrs. Price followed her +daughter closely, her brows puckered in nervous fear lest something should +be forgotten. She was especially anxious about a certain small bag, and had +the maid take out all the hand luggage to make sure it had not been +mislaid. + +Some of the younger ones led by Vickers pelted the couple with rice, while +this delay occurred. It was a silly custom that they felt bound to follow. +There was no longer any meaning in the symbol of fertility. Multiply and be +fruitful, the Bible might urge, following an ancient economic ideal of +happiness. But the end of marriage no longer being this gross purpose, the +sterile woman has at last come into honor! ... + +The bride was busy kissing a group of young women who had clustered about +her,--Elsie Beals, Aline, Alice Johnston, Conny. Avoiding Nannie Lawton's +wide open arms, she jumped laughingly into the carriage, then turned for a +last kiss from the Colonel. + +"Here, out with you Joe," Vickers exclaimed to the coachman. "I'll drive +them down to the station. Quick now,--they mustn't lose the express!" + +He bundled the old man from the seat, gathered up the reins with a +flourish, and whipped the fresh horses. The bride's last look, as the +carriage shot through the bunch of oleanders at the gate, gathered in the +group of waving, gesticulating men and women, and above them on the steps +the Colonel, with his sweet, half-humorous smile, her mother at his side, +already greatly relieved, and behind all the serious face of Alice +Johnston, the one who knew the mysteries both tender and harsh, and who +could still call it all good! ... + +Vickers whisked them to the station in a trice, soothing his excitement by +driving diabolically, cutting corners and speeding down hill. At the +platform President Beals's own car was standing ready for them, the two +porters at the steps. The engine of the special was to take them to the +junction where the "Bellefleur" would be attached to the night express,--a +special favor for the President of the A. and P. The Senator had insisted +on their having his camp in the Adirondacks for a month. Isabelle would +have preferred her own little log hut in the firs of Dog Mountain, which +she and Vickers had built. There they could be really quite alone, forced +to care for themselves. But the Colonel could not understand her bit of +sentiment, and John thought they ought not to offend the amiable Senator, +who had shown himself distinctly friendly. So they were to enter upon their +new life enjoying these luxuries of powerful friends. + +The porters made haste to put the bags in the car, and the engine snorted. + +"Good-by, Mr. Gerrish," Isabelle called to the station agent, who was +watching them at a respectful distance. Suddenly he seemed to be an old +friend, a part of all that she was leaving behind. + +"Good-by, Miss Price--Mrs. Lane," he called back. "Good luck to you!" + +"Dear old Vick," Isabelle murmured caressingly, "I hate most to leave you +behind." + +"Better stay, then,--it isn't too late," he joked. "We could elope with the +ponies,--you always said you would run off with me!" + +She hugged him more tightly, burying her head in his neck, shaking him +gently. "Dear old Vick! Don't be a fool! And be good to Dad, won't you?" + +"I'll try not to abuse him." + +"You know what I mean--about staying over for the summer. Oh dear, dear!" +There was a queer sob in her voice, as if now for the first time she knew +what it was. The old life was all over. Vick had been so much of that! And +she had seen little or nothing of him since his return from Europe, so +absorbed had she been in the bustle of her marriage. Up there on Dog +Mountain which swam in the haze of the June afternoon they had walked on +snowshoes one cold January night, over the new snow by moonlight, talking +marvellously of all that life was to be. She believed then that she should +never marry, but remain always Vick's comrade,--to guide him, to share his +triumphs. Now she was abandoning that child's plan. She shook with nervous +sobs. + +"The engineer says we must start, dear," Lane suggested. "We have only just +time to make the connection." + +Vickers untwisted his sister's arms from his neck and placed them gently in +her husband's hands. + +"Good-by, girl," he called. + +Sinking into a chair near the open door, Isabelle gazed back at the hills +of Grafton until the car plunged into a cut. She gave a long sigh. "We're +off!" her husband said joyously. He was standing beside her, one hand +resting on her shoulder. + +"Yes, dear!" She took his strong, muscled hand in hers. But when he tried +to draw her to him, she shrank back involuntarily, startled, and looked at +him with wide-open eyes as if she would read Destiny in him,--the Man, her +husband. + +For this was marriage, not the pantomime they had lived through all that +day. That was demanded by custom; but now, alone with this man, his eyes +alight with love and desire, his lips caressing her hair, his hands drawing +her to him,--this was marriage! + +Her eyes closed as if to shut out his face,--"Don't, don't!" she murmured +vaguely. Suddenly she started to her feet, her eyes wide open, and she held +him away from her, looking into him, looking deep into his soul. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +It was a hot, close night. After the Bellefleur had been coupled to the +Western express at the junction, Lane had the porters make up a bed for +Isabelle on the floor of the little parlor next the observation platform, +and here at the rear of the long train, with the door open, she lay +sleepless through the night hours, listening to the rattle of the trucks, +the thud of heavy wheels on the rails, disturbed only when the car was +shifted to the Adirondack train by the blue glare of arc lights and phantom +figures rushing to and fro in the pallid night. + +The excitement of the day had utterly exhausted her; but her mind was +extraordinarily alive with impressions,--faces and pictures from this great +day of her existence, her marriage. And out of all these crowding images +emerged persistently certain ones,--Aline, with the bloom almost gone, the +worn air of something carelessly used. That was due to the children, to +cares,--the Gorings were poor and the two years abroad must have been a +strain. All the girls at St. Mary's had thought that marriage ideal, made +all of love. For there was something of the poet in Eugene Goring, the slim +scholar, walking with raised head and speaking with melodious voice. He was +a girl's ideal.... And then came Nan Lawton, with her jesting tone, and +sly, half-shut eyes. Isabelle remembered how brilliant Nan's marriage was, +how proud she herself had been to have a part in it. Nan's face was blotted +by Alice Johnston's with her phlegmatic husband. She was happy, serene, but +old and acquainted with care. + +Why should she think of them, of any other marriage? Hers was to be +different,--oh, yes, quite exceptional and perfect, with an intimacy, a +mutual helpfulness.... The girls at St. Mary's had all had their emotional +experiences, which they confessed to one another; and she had had hers, of +course, like her affair with Fosdick; but so innocent, so merely kittenish +that they had almost disappeared from memory. These girls at St. Mary's +read poetry, and had dreams of heroes, in the form of football players. +They all thought about marriage, coming as they did from well-to-do +parents, whose daughters might be expected to marry. Marriage, men, +position in the world,--all that was their proper inheritance. + +After St. Mary's there had been two winters in St. Louis,--her first real +dinners and parties, her first real men. Then a brief season in Washington +as Senator Thomas's guest, where the horizon, especially the man part of +it, had considerably widened. She had made a fair success in Washington, +thanks to her fresh beauty and spirit, and also, she was frank to confess, +thanks to the Senator's interest and the reputation of her father's wealth. +Then had come a six months with her mother and Vickers in Europe, from +which she returned abruptly to get engaged, to begin life seriously. + +These experimental years had seemed to her full of radiant avenues, any one +of which she was free to enter, and for a while she had gone joyously on, +discovering new avenues, pleasing herself with trying them all +imaginatively. At the head of all these avenues had stood a man, of course. +She could recall them all: the one in St. Louis who had followed her to +Washington, up the Nile, would not be turned away. Once he had touched her, +taken her hand, and she had felt cold,--she knew that his was not her way. +In Washington there had been a brilliant congressman whom the Senator +approved of,--an older man. She had given him some weeks of puzzled +deliberation, then rejected him, as she considered sagely, because he spoke +only to her mind. Perhaps the most dangerous had been the Austrian whom she +had met in Rome. She almost yielded there; but once when they were alone +together she had caught sight of depths in him, behind his black eyes and +smiling lips, that made her afraid,--deep differences of race. The Prices +were American in an old-fashioned, clean, plain sense. So when he +persisted, she made her mother engage passage for home and fled with the +feeling that she must put an ocean between herself and this man, fled to +the arms of the man she was to marry, who somehow in the midst of his busy +life managed to meet her in New York. + +But why him? Out of all these avenues, her possibilities of various fate, +why had she chosen him, the least promising outwardly? Was it done in a +mood of reaction against the other men who had sought her? He was most +unlike them all, with a background of hard struggle, with limitations +instead of privileges such as they had. The Colonel's daughter could +understand John Lane's persistent force,--patient, quiet, sure. She +remembered his shy, inexperienced face when her father first brought him to +the house for dinner. She had thought little of him then,--the Colonel was +always bringing home some rough diamond,--but he had silently absorbed her +as he did everything in his path, and selected her, so to speak, as he +selected whatever he wanted. And after that whenever she came back to her +father's home from her little expeditions into the world, he was always +there, and she came to know that he wanted her,--was waiting until his +moment should come. It came. + +Never since then had she had a regret for those possibilities that had been +hers,--for those other men standing at the other avenues and inviting her. +From the moment that his arms had held her, she knew that he was the +best,--so much stronger, finer, simpler than any other. She was proud that +she had been able to divine this quality and could prefer real things to +sham. During the engagement months she had learned, bit by bit, the story +of his struggle, what had been denied to him of comfort and advantage, what +he had done for himself and for his mother. She yearned to give him what he +had never had,--pleasure, joy, the soft suavities of life, what she had had +always. + +Now she was his! Her wandering thoughts came back to that central fact. + +Half frightened, she drew the blanket about her shoulders and listened. He +had been so considerate of her,--had left her here to rest after making +sure of her comfort and gone forward to the stuffy stateroom to sleep, +divining that she was not yet ready to accept him; that if he took her now, +he should violate something precious in her,--that she was not fully won. +She realized this delicate instinct and was grateful to him. Of course she +was his,--only his; all the other avenues had been closed forever by her +love for him, her marriage to him. Ah, that should be wonderful for them +both, all the years that were to come! Nevertheless, here on the threshold, +her wayward soul had paused the merest moment to consider those other +avenues, what they might have offered of experience, of knowledge, had she +taken any other one of them. Were she here with another than him, destiny, +her inmost self, the whole world of being would be changed, would be other +than it was to be! What was that mysterious power that settled fate on its +grooves? What were those other lives within her soul never to be lived, the +lives she might have lived? Bewildered, weary, she stretched out her arms +dreamily to life, and with parted lips sank into slumber.... + +The sun was streaming through the open door; the train had come to a halt. +Isabelle awoke with a start, afraid. Her husband was bending over her and +she stared up directly into his amused eyes, looked steadily at him, +remembering now all that she had thought the night before. This was her +avenue--this was _he_ ... yet she closed her eyes as he bent still nearer +to kiss her neck, her temples, her lips. Like a frightened child she drew +the clothes close about her, and turned from his eager embraces. Beyond his +face she saw a line of straight, stiff firs beside the track, and the blue +foot-hills through which the train was winding its way upwards to the +mountains. She stretched herself sleepily, murmuring:-- + +"Dear, I'm so tired! Is it late?" + +"Ten o'clock. We're due in half an hour. I had to wake you." + +"In half an hour!" She fled to the dressing-room, putting him off with a +fleeting kiss. + +One of the Senator's guides met them at the station with a buckboard. All +the way driving upwards through the woods to the camp they were very gay. +It was like one of those excursions she used to take with Vickers when he +was in his best, most expansive mood, alternately chaffing and petting her. +Lane was in high spirits, throwing off completely that sober self which +made him so weighty in his world, revealing an unexpected boyishness. He +joked with the guide, talked fishing and shooting. With the deep breaths of +mountain air he expanded, his eyes flashing a new fire of joy at sight of +the woods and streams. Once when they stopped to water the horses he seized +the drinking-cup and dashed up the slope to a spring hidden among the +trees. He brought back a brimming cupful of cold water, which she emptied. +Then with a boyish, chivalrous smile he put his lips to the spot where she +had drunk and drained the last drop. "That's enough for me!" he said, and +they laughed self-consciously. His homage seemed to say that thus through +life he would be content with what she left him to drink,--absurd fancy, +but at this moment altogether delightful.... Later she rested, pillowing +her head on his shoulder, covered by his coat, while the trap jolted on +through the woods between high hills. Now and then he touched her face with +the tips of his strong fingers, brushing away the wandering threads of +hair. Very peaceful, happy, feeling that it was all as she would have +wished it, she shut her eyes, content to rest on this comrade, so strong +and so gentle. Life would be like this, always. + +The Senator's camp was a camp only in name, of course; in fact it was an +elaborate and expensive rustic establishment on a steep bluff above a +little mountain lake. The Japanese cook had prepared a rich dinner, and the +champagne was properly iced. The couple tiptoed about the place, looking at +each other in some dismay, and John readily fell in with her suggestion +that they should try sleeping in the open, with a rough shelter of +boughs,--should make their first nest for themselves. The guide took them +to a spot some distance up the lake and helped them cut the fir boughs, all +but those for the bed, which they insisted upon gathering for themselves. +After bringing up the blankets and the bags he paddled back to the camp, +leaving them to themselves in the solitude of the woods, under the black, +star-strewn sky. + +Alone with him thus beside their little fire her heart was full of dream +and content, of peace and love. They two seemed to have come up out of the +world to some higher level of life. After the joyous day this solitude of +the deep forest was perfect. When the fire had died down to the embers, he +circled her with his arms and kissed her. Although her body yielded to his +strong embrace her lips were cold, hard, and her eyes answered his passion +with a strange, aloof look, as if her soul waited in fear.... She knew what +marriage was to be, although she had never listened to the allusions +whispered among married women and more experienced girls. Something in the +sex side of the relations between men and women had always made her shrink. +She was not so much pure in body and soul, as without sex, unborn. She knew +the fact of nature, the eternal law of life repeating itself through desire +and passion; but she realized it remotely, only in her mind, as some +necessary physiological mechanism of living, like perspiration, fatigue, +hunger. But it had not spoken in her body, in her soul; she did not feel +that it ever could speak to her as it was speaking in the man's lighted +eyes, in his lips. So now as always she was cold, tranquil beneath her +lover's kisses. + +And later on their bed of boughs, with her husband's arms about her, his +heart throbbing against her breast, his warm breath covering her neck, she +lay still, very still,--aloof, fearful of this mystery to be revealed, a +little weary, wishing that she were back once more in the car or in her own +room at the Farm, for this night, to return on the morrow to her comrade +for another joyous, free day. + +"My love! ... Come to me! ... I love you, love you!" ... + +The passionate tone beat against her ears, yet roused no thrilling +response. The trembling voice, the intensity of the worn old words coming +from him,--it was all like another man suddenly appearing in the guise of +one she thought she knew so well! The taut muscles of his powerful arm +pressing against her troubled her. She would have fled,--why could one be +like this! Still she caressed his face and hair, kissing him gently. Oh, +yes, she loved him,--she was his! He was her husband.' Nevertheless she +could not meet him wholly in this inmost intimacy, and her heart was +troubled. If he could be content to be her companion, her lover! But this +other thing was the male, the something which made all men differ from all +women in the crisis of emotion--so she supposed--and must be endured. She +lay passive in his arms, less yielding than merely acquiescent, drawn in +upon herself to something smaller than she was before.... + +When he slept at her side, his head pillowed close to hers on the fragrant +fir, she still lay awake, her eyes staring up at the golden stars, still +fearful, uncomprehending. At last she was his, as he would have +her,--wholly his, so she said, seeking comfort,--and thus kissing his brow, +with a long, wondering sigh she fell asleep by his side. + +In the morning they dipped into the cold black lake, and as they paddled +back to the camp for breakfast while the first rays of the warm sun shone +through the firs in gold bars, she felt like herself once more,--a +companion ready for a frolic. The next morning Lane insisted on cooking +their breakfast, for he was a competent woodsman. She admired the deft way +in which he built his little fire and toasted the bacon. In the undress of +the woods he showed at his best,--self-reliant, capable. There followed a +month of lovely days which they spent together from sunrise to starlight, +walking, fishing, canoeing, swimming,--days of fine companionship when they +learned the human quality in each other. He was strong, buoyant, perfectly +sure of himself. No emergency could arise where he would be found wanting +in the man's part. The man in him she admired,--it was what first had +attracted her,--was proud of it, just as he was proud of her lithe figure, +her beauty, her gayety, and her little air of worldliness. She began to +assume that this was all of marriage, at least the essential part of it, +and that the other, the passionate desire, was something desired by the man +and to be avoided by the woman. + +They liked their guide, one of those American gypsies, half poacher, half +farmer. He kept a wife and family in a shack at the foot of the lake, and +Isabelle, with a woman's need for the natural order of life, sought out and +made friends with the wild little brood. The woman had been a mill-hand, +discovered by the woodsman on a chance visit to the town where she worked, +and made his wife, his woman. Not yet thirty, she had had eight children, +and another was coming. Freckled, with a few wisps of thin blond hair, her +front teeth imperfect, she was an untidy, bedraggled object, used and +prematurely aged. Nevertheless the guide seemed attached to her, and when +on a Sunday the family went down to the settlement, following the trail +through the camp, Isabelle could see him help the woman at the wire fence, +carrying on one arm the youngest child, trailing his gun in the other hand. + +"He must care for her!" Isabelle remarked. + +"Why, of course. Why not?" her husband asked. + +"But think--" It was all she could say, not knowing how to put into words +the mournful feeling this woman with her brood of young gave her. What joy, +what life for herself could such a creature have? Isabelle, her imagination +full of comfortable houses with little dinner parties, pretty furniture, +books, theatres, charity committees,--all that she conceived made up a +properly married young woman's life,--could not understand the existence of +the guide's wife. She was merely the man's woman, a creature to give him +children, to cook the food, to keep the fire going. He had the woods, the +wild things he hunted; he had, too, his time of drink and rioting; but she +was merely his drudge and the instrument of his animal passion. Well, +civilization had put a few milestones between herself and Molly Sewall! In +the years to come her mind would revert often to this family as she saw it +filing down the path to the settlement, the half-clothed children peeping +shyly at her, the woman trailing an old shawl from her bent shoulders, the +man striding on ahead with his gun and his youngest baby, careless so long +as there was a fire, a bit of food, and the forest to roam in.... + +So passed these days of their honeymoon, each one perfect, except for the +occasional disquieting presence of passion, of unappeasable desire in the +man. This male fire was as mysterious, as inexplicable to her as that first +night,--something to be endured forgivingly, but feared, almost hated for +its fierce invasion of her. If her husband could only take her as +companion,--the deep, deep friend, the first and best for the long journey +of life! Perhaps some day that would content him; perhaps this flower of +passion came only at first, to be subdued by the work of life. She never +dreamed that some day she herself might change, might be waked by passion. +And yet she knew that she loved her husband, yearned to give him all that +he desired. Taking his face between her hands, she would kiss it gently, +tenderly, as a mother might kiss a hot, impulsive child trying to still a +restless spirit within. + +This mystery of passion! It swept over the man, transfiguring him as the +summer storm swept across the little lake, blackening the sky with shadows +through which the lightning played fearsomely. She saw this face hot with +desire of her, as the face of a stranger,--another one than the strong, +self-contained man she had married,--a face with strange animal and +spiritual depths in it, all mixed and vivified. It was the brute, she said +to herself, and feared. Brute and God lie close together; but she could not +see the God,--felt only the fury of the brute. + +Like the storm it passed off, leaving him as she loved him, her tender and +worshipping husband. It never entered her thought that she might love any +man more than she loved him, that perhaps some day she would long for a +passion to meet her own heart. She saw now no lack in her cold limbs, her +hard lips, her passionless eyes. She was still Diana,--long, shapely, +muscular. In her heart she loved this Diana self, so aloof from desire! + +The last night of their stay in the mountains she revolved all these things +in her mind as they lay side by side on their fir couch, he asleep in a +deep, dreamless fatigue, she alert and tense after the long day in the +spirituous air, the night wind sighing to her from the upper branches of +the firs. To-morrow they would start for the West, to begin the prose of +life. Suddenly a thought flashed over her that stopped the beat of her +pulse,--she might already have conceived! She did not wish to escape having +children, at least one or two; she knew that it was to be expected, that it +was necessary and good. He would want his child and she also, and her +father and mother would be made happy by children. But her heart said,--not +yet, already. Something in which her part had been so slight! She felt the +injustice of Nature that let conception come to a woman indifferently, +merely of desire in man and acquiescence in woman. How could that be! How +could woman conceive so blindly? The child should be got with joy, should +flower from a sublime moment of perfect union when the man and the woman +were lifted out of themselves to some divine pinnacle of experience, of +soul and body union and self-effacement. Then conception would be but the +carrying over of their deep yearning, each for the other, the hunger of +souls and bodies to create. + +Now she saw that it could be otherwise, as perhaps with her this very +moment: that Nature took the seed, however it might fall, and nourished it +wherever it fell, and made of it, regardless of human will, the New +Life,--heedless of the emotion of the two that were concerned in the +process. For the first time she saw that pitiless, indifferent face of +Nature, intent only on the Result, the thing created, scorning the +spiritual travail of the creator, ignoring any great revelation of the man +and the woman that would seem to count for so much in this process of +life-making. Thus a drunken beast might beget his child in the body of a +loathing woman, blind souls sowing life blindly for a blind future. + +The idea clutched her like fear: she would defy this fate that would use +her like any other piece of matrix, merely to bear the seed and nourish it +for a certain period of its way, one small step in the long process. Her +heart demanded more than a passive part in the order of Nature. Her soul +needed its share from the first moment of conception in making that which +she was to give to the race. Some day a doctor would explain to her that +she was but the soil on which the fertile germ grew like a vegetable, +without her will, her consent, her creating soul! But she would reject that +coarse interpretation,--the very blasphemy of love. + +And here, at this point, as she lay in the dark beneath the sighing firs, +it dawned in her dimly that something was wanting in her marriage, in the +union with the man she had chosen. She had taken him of her own free +choice; she was willingly his; she would bear his children if they came. +Her body and her soul were committed to him by choice, and by that ceremony +of marriage before the people in the chapel,--to take her part with him in +the endless process of Fate, the continuance of life. + +Nevertheless, lying there in full contemplation of this new life that might +already be putting its clutch upon her life, to suck from her its own +being, she rebelled at it all. Her heart cried for her part, her very own, +for that mysterious exaltation that should make her really one with the +father in the act of creation, in the fulfilment of Love. And somehow she +knew assuredly that this could not be, not with this man by her side, not +with her husband.... + +She turned to him, pillowed there at her side, one hand resting fondly on +her arm. Her eyes stared at him through the darkness, trying to read the +familiar features. Did he, too, know this? Did he feel that it was +impossible ever to be really one with her? Did he suspect the terrible +defeat she was suffering now? A tear dropped from her eye and fell on the +upturned face of the sleeper. He moved, murmured, "dearest," and settled +back into his deep sleep; taking his hand from her arm. With a little cry +she fell on him and kissed him, asking his forgiveness for the mistake +between them. She put her head close to his, her lips to his lips; for she +was his and yet not his,--a strange division separating them, a cleavage +between their bodies and their souls. + +"Why did we not know?" something whispered within. But she answered herself +more calmly,--"It will all come right in the end--it must come right--for +his sake!" + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +When young John Lane first came to St. Louis to work as a clerk in the +traffic department of the Atlantic and Pacific, he had called on Colonel +Price at his office, a dingy little room in the corner of the second story +of the old brick building which had housed the wholesale hardware business +of Parrott and Price for a generation. The old merchant had received the +young man with the pleasant kindliness that kept his three hundred +employees always devoted to him. + +"I knew your father, sir!" he said, half-closing his eyes and leaning back +in his padded old office chair. "Let me see--it was in sixty-two in camp +before Vicksburg. I went to consult him about a boil on my leg. It was a +bad boil,--it hurt me.... Your father was a fine man--What are you doing in +St. Louis?" he concluded abruptly, looking out of his shrewd blue eyes at +the fresh-colored young man whose strong hands gripped squarely the arms of +his chair. + +And from that day Lane knew that the Colonel never lost sight of him. When +his chance came, as in time it did come through one of the mutations of the +great corporation, he suspected that the old hardware merchant, who was a +close friend of the chief men in the road, had spoken the needed word to +lift the clerk out of the rut. At any rate the Colonel had not forgotten +the son of Tyringham Lane, and the young man had often been to the +generous, ugly Victorian house,--built when the hardware business made its +first success. + +Nevertheless, when, three years later John Lane made another afternoon +visit to that dingy office in the Parrott and Price establishment, his +hands trembed nervously as he sat waiting while the Colonel scrawled his +signature to several papers. + +"Well, John!" the old man remarked finally, shoving the papers towards the +waiting stenographer. "How's railroadin' these days?" + +"All right," Lane answered buoyantly. "They have transferred me to the +Indiana division, headquarters at Torso--superintendent of the Torso and +Toledo." + +"Indeed! But you'll be back here some day, eh?" + +"I hope so!" + +"That's good!" The Colonel smiled sympathetically, as he always did when he +contemplated energetic youth, climbing the long ladder with a firm grip on +each rung. + +"I came to see you about another matter," Lane began hesitantly. + +"Anything I can do for you?" + +"Yes, sir; I want to marry your daughter,--and I'd like you to know it." + +The old merchant's face became suddenly grave, the twinkle disappearing +from his blue eyes. He listened thoughtfully while the young man explained +himself. He was still a poor man, of course; his future was to be made. But +he did not intend to remain poor. His salary was not much to offer a girl +like the Colonel's daughter; but it would go far in Torso--and it was the +first step. Finally he was silent, well aware that there was small +possibility that he should ever be a rich man, as Colonel Price was, and +that it was presumptuous of him to seek to marry his daughter, and +therefore open to mean interpretation. But he felt that the Colonel was not +one to impute low motives. He knew the very real democracy of the +successful merchant, who never had forgotten his own story. + +"What does Belle say?" the Colonel asked. + +"I should not have come here if I didn't think--" the young man laughed. + +"Of course!" + +Then the Colonel pulled down the top of his desk, signifying that the day's +business was done. + +"We have never desired what is called a good match for our girl," he +remarked slowly in reply to a further plea from Lane. "All we want is the +best;" he laid grave emphasis on this watchword. "And the best is that +Isabelle should be happy in her marriage. If she loves the man she marries, +she must be that.... And I don't suppose you would be here if you weren't +sure you could make her love you enough to be happy!" + +The old man's smile returned for a fleeting moment, and then he mused. + +"I am afraid it will be hard for her to settle down in a place like +Torso--after all she's had," Lane conceded. "But I don't expect that Torso +is the end of my rope. I shall give her a better chance than that, I hope." + +The Colonel nodded sympathetically. + +"I shouldn't consider it any hardship for my daughter to live in Torso or +in any other place--if she has a good husband and loves him. That is all, +my boy!" + +Lane, who realized the grades of a plutocratic democracy better than three +years before, and knew the position of the Prices in the city, comprehended +the splendid simplicity, the single-mindedness of the man, who could thus +completely ignore considerations of wealth and social position in the +marriage of his only daughter. + +"I shall do my best, sir, to make her happy all her life!" the young man +stammered. + +"I know you will, my boy, and I think you will succeed, if she loves you as +you say she does." + +Then the Colonel took his hat from the nail behind the door, and the two +men continued their conversation in the street. They did not turn up town +to the club and residence quarter, but descended towards the river, passing +on their way the massive skeleton of the ten-story building that was to +house, when completed, the Parrott and Price business. It rose in the smoky +sunset, stretching out spidery tendons of steel to the heavens, and from +its interior came a mighty clangor. The Colonel paused to look at the new +building,--the monument of his success as a merchant. + +"Pretty good? Corbin's doing it,--he's the best in the country, they tell +me." + +Soon they kept on past the new building into an old quarter of the city, +the Colonel apparently having some purpose that guided his devious course +through these unattractive streets. + +"There!" he exclaimed at last, pointing across a dirty street to a shabby +little brick house. "That's the place where Isabelle's mother and I started +in St. Louis. We had a couple of rooms over there the first winter. The +store was just a block further west. It's torn down now. I passed some of +the best days of my life in those rooms on the second story.... It isn't +the outside that counts, my boy!" The Colonel tucked his hand beneath the +young man's arm, as they turned back to the newer quarters of the city. + +Mrs. Price, it should be said, did not accept Lane's suit as easily as the +Colonel. Her imagination had been expanded by that winter in Washington, +and though she was glad that Isabelle had not accepted any of "those +foreigners," yet Harmony Price had very definite ideas of the position that +the Colonel's daughter might aspire to in America.... But her objections +could not stand before the Colonel's flat consent and Isabelle's decision. + +"They'll be a great deal better off than we were," her husband reminded +her. + +"That's no reason why Belle should have to start where we did, or anywhere +near it!" his wife retorted. What one generation had been able to gain in +the social fight, it seemed to her only natural that the next should at +least hold. + +The Colonel gave the couple their new home in Torso, selecting, with a fine +eye for real estate values, a large "colonial" wooden house with ample +grounds out beyond the smoke of the little city, near the new country club. +Mrs. Price spent an exciting three months running back and forth between +New York, St. Louis, and Torso furnishing the new home. Isabelle's liberal +allowance was to continue indefinitely, and beyond this the Colonel +promised nothing, now or later; nor would Lane have accepted more from his +hand. It was to the Torso house that the Lanes went immediately after their +month in the Adirondacks. + + * * * * * + +Torso, Indiana, is one of those towns in the Mississippi Valley which makes +more impression the farther from New York one travels. New York has never +heard of it, except as it appears occasionally on a hotel register among +other queer places that Americans confess to as home. At Pittsburg it is a +round black spot on the map, in the main ganglia of the great A. and P. and +the junction point of two other railroads. At Cincinnati it is a commercial +centre of considerable importance, almost a rival. While Torso to Torso is +the coming pivot of the universe. + +It is an old settlement--some families with French names still own the +large distilleries--on the clay banks of a sluggish creek in the southern +part of the state, and there are many Kentuckians in its population. +Nourished by railroads, a division headquarters of the great A. and P., +near the soft-coal beds, with a tin-plate factory, a carpet factory, a +carriage factory, and a dozen other mills and factories, Torso is a black +smudge in a flat green landscape from which many lines of electric railway +radiate forth along the country roads. And along the same roads across the +reaches of prairie, over the swelling hills, stalk towering poles, bearing +many fine wires glistening in the sunlight and singing the importance of +Torso to the world at large. + +The Lanes arrived at night, and to Isabelle the prairie heavens seemed dark +and far away, the long broad streets with their bushy maple trees empty, +and the air filled with hoarse plaints, the rumbling speech of the +railroad. She was homesick and fearful, as they mounted the steps to the +new house and pushed open the shining oak door that stuck and smelled of +varnish. The next morning Lane whisked off on a trolley to the A. and P. +offices, while Isabelle walked around the house, which faced the main +northern artery of Torso. From the western veranda she could see the roof +of the new country club through a ragged group of trees. On the other side +were dotted the ample houses of Torso aristocracy, similar to hers, as she +knew, finished in hard wood, electric-lighted, telephoned, with many baths, +large "picture" windows of plate glass, with potted ferns in them, and much +the same furniture,--wholesome, comfortable "homes." Isabelle, turning back +to her house to cope with the three Swedes that her mother had sent on from +St. Louis, had a queer sense of anti-climax. She swept the landscape with a +critical eye, feeling she knew it all, even to what the people were saying +at this moment in those large American-Georgian mansions; what Torso was +doing at this moment in its main street.... No, it could not be for the +Lanes for long,--that was the conviction in her heart. Their destiny would +be larger, fuller than any to be found in Torso. Just what she meant by a +"large, full life," she had never stopped to set down; but she was sure it +was not to be found here in Torso. + +Here began, however, the routine of her married life. Each morning she +watched her husband walk down the broad avenue to the electric car,--alert, +strong, waving his newspaper to her as he turned the corner. Each afternoon +she waited for him at the same place, or drove down to the office with the +Kentucky horses that she had bought, to take him for a drive before dinner. +He greeted her each time with the same satisfied smile, apparently not +wilted by the long hours in a hot office. There was a smudged, work-a-day +appearance to his face and linen, the mark of Torso, the same mark that the +mill-hands across the street from the A. and P. offices brought home to +their wives.... Thus the long summer days dragged. For distraction there +was a mutiny in the crew of Swedish servants, but Isabelle, with her +mother's instinct for domestic management, quickly produced order, in spite +of the completely servantless state of Torso. She would telegraph to St. +Louis for what she wanted and somehow always got it. The house ran,--that +was her business. It was pretty and attractive,--that was also her +business. But this woman's work she tossed off quickly. Then what? She +pottered in the garden a little, but when the hot blasts of prairie heat in +mid-August had shrivelled all the vines and flowers and cooked the beds +into slabs of clay, she retired from the garden and sent to St. Louis for +the daily flowers. She read a good deal, almost always novels, in the vague +belief that she was "keeping up" with modern literature, and she played at +translating some German lyrics. + +Then people began to call,--the wives of the Torso great, her neighbors in +those ample mansions scattered all about the prairie. These she reported to +John with a mocking sense of their oddity. + +"Mrs. Fraser came to-day. What is she? Tin-plate or coal?" + +"He's the most important banker here," her husband explained seriously. + +"Oh,--well, she asked me to join the 'travel-class.' They are going through +the Holy Land. What do you suppose a 'travel-class' is?"... + +Again it was the wife of the chief coal operator, Freke, "who wanted me to +know that she always got her clothes from New York." She added gently, "I +think she wished to find out if we are fit for Torso society. I did my best +to give her the impression we were beneath it."... + +These people, all the "society" of Torso, they met also at the country +club, where they went Sundays for a game of golf, which Lane was learning. +The wife of the A. and P. superintendent could not be ignored by Torso, and +so in spite of Isabelle's efforts there was forming around her a social +life. But the objective point of the day remained John,--his going and +coming. + +"Busy day?" she would ask when he bent to kiss her. + +"They're all busy days!" + +"Tell me what you did." + +"Oh," he would answer vaguely, "just saw people and dictated letters and +telegrams,--yes, it was a busy day." And he left her to dress for dinner. + +She knew that he was weary after all the problems that he had thrust his +busy mind into since the morning. She had no great curiosity to know what +these problems were. She had been accustomed to the sanctity of business +reserve in her father's house: men disappeared in the morning to their work +and emerged to wash and dress and be as amusing as they might for the few +remaining hours of the day. There were rumors of what went on in that +mysterious world of business, but the right kind of men did not disclose +the secrets of the office to women. + +It never occurred to Lane to go over with her the minute detail of his full +day: how he had considered an application from a large shipper for +switching privileges, had discussed the action of the Torso and Northern in +cutting the coal rates, had lunched with Freke, the president of a coal +company that did business with the A. and P.; and had received, just as he +left the office, the report of a serious freight wreck at one end of his +division. As he had said, a busy day! And this business of life, like an +endless steel chain, had caught hold of him at once and was carrying him +fast in its revolution. It was his life; he liked it. With cool head and +steady nerves he set himself at each problem, working it out according to +known rules, calling on his trained experience. He did not look into the +future, content with the preoccupation of the present, confident that the +future, whatever and wherever it might be, would be crowded with affairs, +activity, which he would meet competently.... + +"Well, what have _you_ been doing?" he asked as he sat down, fresh from his +bath, and relaxed comfortably in anticipation of a pleasant dinner. +Isabelle made a great point of dinner, having it served formally by two +maids, with five "Busy day?" she would ask when he bent to kiss her. + +"They're all busy days!" + +"Tell me what you did." + +"Oh," he would answer vaguely, "just saw people and dictated letters and +telegrams,--yes, it was a busy day." And he left her to dress for dinner. + +She knew that he was weary after all the problems that he had thrust his +busy mind into since the morning. She had no great curiosity to know what +these problems were. She had been accustomed to the sanctity of business +reserve in her father's house: men disappeared in the morning to their work +and emerged to wash and dress and be as amusing as they might for the few +remaining hours of the day. There were rumors of what went on in that +mysterious world of business, but the right kind of men did not disclose +the secrets of the office to women. + +It never occurred to Lane to go over with her the minute detail of his full +day: how he had considered an application from a large shipper for +switching privileges, had discussed the action of the Torso and Northern in +cutting the coal rates, had lunched with Freke, the president of a coal +company that did business with the A. and P.; and had received, just as he +left the office, the report of a serious freight wreck at one end of his +division. As he had said, a busy day! And this business of life, like an +endless steel chain, had caught hold of him at once and was carrying him +fast in its revolution. It was his life; he liked it. With cool head and +steady nerves he set himself at each problem, working it out according to +known rules, calling on his trained experience. He did not look into the +future, content with the preoccupation of the present, confident that the +future, whatever and wherever it might be, would be crowded with affairs, +activity, which he would meet competently.... + +"Well, what have _you_ been doing?" he asked as he sat down, fresh from his +bath, and relaxed comfortably in anticipation of a pleasant dinner. +Isabelle made a great point of dinner, having it served formally by two +maids, with five courses and at least one wine, "to get used to living +properly," as she explained vaguely. + +"Mrs. Adams called." She was the wife of the manager of the baking-powder +works and president of the country club, a young married woman from a +Western city with pretensions to social experience. "John," Isabelle added +after mentioning this name, "do you think we shall have to stay here long?" + +Her husband paused in eating his soup to look at her. "Why--why?" + +"It's so second-classy," she continued; "at least the women are, mostly. +There's only one I've met so far that seemed like other people one has +known." + +"Who is she?" Lane inquired, ignoring the large question. + +"Mrs. Falkner." + +"Rob Falkner's wife? He's engineer at the Pleasant Valley mines." + +"She came from Denver." + +"They say he's a clever engineer." + +"She is girlish and charming. She told me all about every one in Torso. +She's been here two years, and she seems to know everybody." + +"And she thinks Torso is second-class?" Lane inquired. + +"She would like to get away, I think. But they are poor, I suppose. Her +clothes look as if she knew what to wear,--pretty. She says there are some +interesting people here when you find them out.... Who is Mr. Darnell? A +lawyer." + +"Tom Darnell? He's one of the local counsel for the road,--a Kentuckian, +politician, talkative sort of fellow, very popular with all sorts. What did +Mrs. Falkner have to say about Tom Darnell?" + +"She told me all about his marriage,--how he ran away with his wife from a +boarding-school in Kentucky--and was chased by her father and brothers, and +they fired at him. A regular Southern scrimmage! But they got across the +river and were married." + +"Sounds like Darnell," Lane remarked contemptuously. + +"It sounds exciting!" his wife said. + +The story, as related by the vivacious Mrs. Falkner, had stirred Isabelle's +curiosity; she could not dismiss this Kentucky politician as curtly as her +husband had disposed of him.... + +They were both wilted by the heat, and after dinner they strolled out into +the garden to get more air, walking leisurely arm in arm, while Lane smoked +his first, cigar. Having finished the gossip for the day, they had little +to say to each other,--Isabelle wondered that it should be so little! Two +months of daily companionship after the intimate weeks of their engagement +had exhausted the topics for mere talk which they had in common. To-night, +as Lane wished to learn the latest news from the wreck, they went into the +town, crossing on their way to the office the court-house square. This was +the centre of old Torso, where the distillery aristocracy still lived in +high, broad-eaved houses of the same pattern as the Colonel's city mansion. +In one of these, which needed painting and was generally neglected, the +long front windows on the first story were open, revealing a group of +people sitting around a supper-table. + +"There's Mrs. Falkner," Isabelle remarked; "the one at the end of the +table, in white. This must be where they live." + +Lane looked at the house with a mental estimate of the rent. + +"Large house," he observed. + +Isabelle watched the people laughing and talking about the table, which was +still covered with coffee cups and glasses. A sudden desire to be there, to +hear what they were saying, seized her. A dark-haired man was leaning +forward and emphasizing his remarks by tapping a wine glass with along +finger. That might be Tom Darnell, she thought.... The other houses about +the square were dark and gloomy, most of them closed for the summer. + +"There's a good deal of money in Torso," Lane commented, glancing at a +brick house with wooden pillars. "It's a growing place,--more business +coming all the time." + +He looked at the town with the observant eye of the railroad officer, who +sees in the prosperity of any community but one word writ large,--TRAFFIC. + +And that word was blown through the soft night by the puffing locomotives +in the valley below, by the pall of smoke that hung night and day over this +quarter of the city, the dull glow of the coke-ovens on the distant hills. +To the man this was enough--this and his home; business and the woman he +had won,--they were his two poles! + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +"You see," continued Bessie Falkner, drawing up her pretty feet into the +piazza cot, "it was just love at first sight. I was up there at the hotel +in the mountains, trying to make up my mind whether I could marry another +man, who was awfully rich--owned a mine and a ranch; but he was so dull the +horses would go to sleep when we were out driving ... And then just as I +concluded it was the only thing for me to do, to take him and make the best +of him,--then Rob rode up to the hotel in his old tattered suit--he was +building a dam or something up in the mountains--and I knew I couldn't +marry Mr. Mine-and-Ranch. That was all there was to it, my dear. The rest +of the story? Why, of course he made the hotel his headquarters while he +was at work on the dam; I stayed on, too, and it came along--naturally, you +know." + +Mrs. Falkner dipped into a box of candy and swung the cot gently to and +fro. The men were still talking inside the house and the two wives had come +outside for long confidences. Isabelle, amused by this sketch of the +Colorado courtship, patted the blond woman's little hand. Mrs. Falkner had +large blue eyes, with waving tendrils of hair, which gave her face the look +of childish unsophistication;--especially at this moment when her +voluptuous lips were closing over a specially desired piece of candy. + +"Of course it would come along--with you!" + +"I didn't do a thing--just waited," Bessie protested, fishing about the +almost empty box for another delectable bit. "He did it all. He was in such +a hurry he wanted to marry me then and there at the hotel and go live up in +the mountains in a cabin above the dam where he was at work. He's romantic. +Men are all like that then, don't you think? But of course it couldn't be +that way; so we got married properly in the fall in Denver, and then came +straight here. And," with a long sigh, "we've been here ever since. Stuck!" + +"I should think you would have preferred the cabin above the dam," Isabelle +suggested, recalling her own romantic notion of Dog Mountain. Mrs. Falkner +made a little grimace. + +"That might do for two or three months. But snowed in all the winter, even +with the man you like best in all the world? He'd kill you or escape +through the drifts ... You see we hadn't a thing, not a cent, except his +salary and that ended with the dam. It was only eighty a month anyway. This +is better, a hundred and fifty," she explained with childish frankness. +"But Rob has to work harder and likes the mountains, is always talking of +going back. But I say there are better things than hiding yourself at the +land's end. There's St. Louis, or maybe New York!" + +Isabelle wondered how the Falkners were able to support such a hospitable +house--they had two small children and Bessie had confided that another was +coming in the spring--on the engineer's salary. + +"And the other one," Mrs. Falkner added in revery, "is more than a +millionnaire now." + +Her face was full of speculation over what might have been as the wife of +all that money. + +"But we are happy, Rob and I,--except for the bills! Don't you hate bills?" + +Isabelle's only answer was a hearty laugh. She found this pretty, frank +little "Westerner" very attractive. + +"It was bills that made my mother unhappy--broke her heart. Sometimes we +had money,--most generally not. Such horrid fusses when there wasn't any. +But what is one to do? You've got to go on living somehow. Rob says we +can't afford this house,--Rob is always afraid we won't get through. But we +do somehow. I tell him that the good time is coming,--we must just +anticipate it, draw a little on the future." + +At this point the men came through the window to the piazza. Bessie shook +her box of candy coquettishly at Lane, who took the chair beside her. +Evidently he thought her amusing, as most men did. Falkner leaned against +the white pillar and stared up at the heavens. Isabelle, accustomed to men +of more conventional social qualities, had found the young engineer glum +and odd. He had a stern, rather handsome face, a deep furrow dividing his +forehead and meeting the part of his thick brown hair, which curled +slightly at the ends. "If he didn't look so cross, he would be quite +handsome," thought Isabelle, wondering how long it might be before her host +would speak to her. She could see him as he rode up to the hotel piazza +that day, when Bessie Falkner had made up her mind on the moment that she +could not marry "the other man." Finally Falkner broke his glum silence. + +"Do you eat candy, Mrs. Lane? Pounds of it, I mean,--so that it is your +staple article of diet." + +"Tut, tut," remarked his wife from her cot. "Don't complain." + +His next remark was equally abrupt. + +"There's only one good thing in this Torso hole," he observed with more +animation than he had shown all the evening, "and that's the coke-ovens at +night--have you noticed them? They are like the fiery pits, smouldering, +ready for the damned!" + +It was not what she expected from a civil engineer, in Torso, Indiana, and +she was at a loss for a reply. + +"You'd rather have stayed in Colorado?" she asked frankly. + +He turned his face to her and said earnestly, "Did you ever sleep out on a +mountain with the stars close above you?--'the vast tellurian galleons' +voyaging through space?" + +Isabelle suspected that he was quoting poetry, which also seemed odd in +Torso. + +"Yes,--my brother and I used to camp out at our home in Connecticut. But I +don't suppose you would call our Berkshire Hills mountains." + +"No," he replied dryly, "I shouldn't." + +And their conversation ended. Isabella wished that the Darnells had not +been obliged to go home immediately after supper. The young lawyer knew how +to talk to women, and had made himself very agreeable, telling stories of +his youth spent among the mountains with a primitive people. She had +observed that he drank a good deal of whiskey, and there was something in +his black eyes that made her uncomfortable. But he was a man that women +liked to think about: he touched their imaginations. She did not talk about +him to John on their way home, however, but discussed the Falkners. + +"Don't you think she is perfectly charming?" (Charming was the word she had +found for Bessie Falkner.) "So natural and amusing! She's very Western--she +can't have seen much of life--but she isn't a bit ordinary." + +"Yes, I like her," Lane replied unenthusiastically, "and he seems original. +I shouldn't wonder if he were clever in his profession; he told me a lot +about Freke's mines." + +What he had learned about the Pleasant Valley mines was the chief thing in +the evening to Lane. He did not understand why Isabelle seemed so much more +eager to know these people--these Darnells and Falkners--than the Frasers +and the Adamses. She had made fun of the solemn dinner that the Frasers had +given to introduce them into Torso "society." + +"I wonder how they can live on that salary," Isabelle remarked. "One +hundred and fifty a month!" + +"He must make something outside." + + * * * * * + +After the Lanes had gone, Bessie Falkner prepared yawningly for bed, +leaving her husband to shut up the house. Her weekly excitement of +entertaining people over, she always felt let down, like a poet after the +stir of creation. It was useless to go over the affair with Rob, as he was +merely bored. But she spent hours thinking what the women said and how they +looked and deciding whom she could have the next time. On her way to bed +she went into the nursery where her two little girls were asleep in their +cots beside the nurse, and finding a window open woke the nurse to reprove +her for her carelessness. In the hall she met her husband bringing up the +silver. + +"Emma is so thoughtless," she complained. "I shall have to let her go if I +can find another servant in this town." + +Her husband listened negligently. The Falkners were perpetually changing +their two servants, or were getting on without them. + +"Mrs. Lane's maids all wear caps," Mrs. Falkner had observed frequently to +her husband. + +Bessie had strict ideas of how a house should be run, ideas derived from +the best houses that she was familiar with. Since the advent of the Lanes +she had extended these ideas and strove all the harder to achieve +magnificent results. Though the livery of service was practically unknown +in Torso, she had resolved to induce her cook (and maid of all work) to +serve the meals with cap and apron, and also endeavored to have the +nursemaid open the door and help serve when company was expected. + +"What's the use!" her husband protested. "They'll only get up and go." + +He could not understand the amount of earnest attention and real feeling +that his wife put into these things,--her pride to have her small domain +somewhat resemble the more affluent ones that she admired. Though her +family had been decidedly plain, they had given her "advantages" in +education and dress, and her own prettiness, her vivacity and charm, had +won her way into whatever society Kansas City and Denver could offer. She +had also visited here and there in different parts of the country,--once in +New York, and again at a cottage on the New England coast where there were +eight servants, a yacht, and horses. These experiences of luxury, of an +easy and large social life, she had absorbed through every pore. With that +marvellous adaptability of her race she had quickly formed her ideals of +"how people ought to live." It was frequently difficult to carry out these +ideals on a circumscribed income, with a husband who cared nothing for +appearances, and that was a source of constant discontent to Bessie. + +"Coming to bed?" she asked her husband, as she looked in vain for the +drinking water that the maid was supposed to bring to her bedside at night. + +"No," Falkner answered shortly. "I've got to make out those estimates +somehow before morning. If you will have people all the time--" + +Bessie turned in at her door shrugging her shoulders. Rob was in one of his +"cross" moods,--overworked, poor boy! She slowly began to undress before +the mirror, thinking of Isabelle Lane's stylish figure and her perfect +clothes. "She must have lots of money," she reflected, "and so nice and +simple! He's attractive, too. Rob is foolish not to like them. He showed +his worst side to-night. If he wants to get on,--why, they are the sort of +people he ought to know." Her husband's freakish temper gave her much +trouble, his unexpectedly bearish moods when she was doing her very best +for him, "bringing him out" as she put it, making the right kind of +friends,--influential ones, so that he might have some chance in the +scramble for the good things of life. Surely that was a wife's part. Bessie +was satisfied that she had done much for her husband in this way, developed +him socially; for when he rode up to the mountain hotel, he was solitary, +moody, shy. Tonight he hadn't kissed her,--in fact hadn't done so for +several days. He was tired by the prolonged heat, she supposed, and worried +about the bills. He was always worried about expenses. + +As the clothes slipped from her still shapely figure, she stood before the +glass, thinking in a haze of those first lover-days that had departed so +soon. Now instead of petting her, Rob spent his hours at home upstairs in +his attic workroom, doing extra work or reading. Could it be that he was +growing tired of her, so soon, in four years? She glanced over her shoulder +at her pretty arms, her plump white neck reflected in the glass, and smiled +unconsciously with assurance. Oh, he would come back to the lover-mood--she +was still desirable! And as the smile curved her lip she thought, "I +married him for love!" She was very proud of that.... + +The house was now deliciously cool and quiet. Bessie sank into her bed with +a sigh, putting out one hand for a magazine and turning on the electric +light beside the bed. It had been a tiresome day, with the supper to bring +off. There had been six courses, and everything had been very nice. The +black cook she had engaged to prepare the meal was a treasure, could serve +a better dinner than Mrs. Fraser's or Mrs. Adams's. She herself had made +the salad and prepared the iced grape-fruit. Every limb ached--she was +always so tired. She loved this last quiet hour of the day that she had by +herself, now that the nurse took both the children. With her delicate +health the nurse had been a necessity. She usually looked blooming and +rosy, but was always tired, always had been as long as she could remember. +The doctor had told Falkner after the second child came that his wife would +always be a delicate woman, must be carefully protected, or she would +collapse and have the fearful modern disease of nerves. So Falkner had +insisted on having the best nurse obtainable to relieve her from the +wearing nights,--though it meant that somehow eighteen hundred dollars must +grow of itself! + +As midnight sounded from the court-house clock, Bessie laid down the +magazine and stretched her tired limbs, luxuriating in the comfort of her +soft bed. The story she had been reading was sentimental,--the love of a +cowboy for the fair daughter of a railroad president. She longed for the +caresses of her cow-boy lover, and wondered dreamily if Lane were a devoted +husband. He seemed so; but all men were probably alike: their first desires +gratified, they thought of other things. So she put out the light and +closed her eyes, in faint discontent with life, which was proving less +romantic than she had anticipated. + +She had her own room. At first it had held two beds, her husband sharing +the room with her. But as the house was large he had taken a room on the +third story. Nowadays, as Bessie knew, the better sort of American +household does not use the primitive double bed. For hygiene and comfort +enlightened people have taken to separate beds, then separate quarters. A +book might be written on the doing away of the conjugal bed in American +life! There should be interesting observations on the effect of this +change, social, and hygienic, and moral,--oh, most interesting! ... A +contented smile at last stole over the young wife's face. Was she dreaming +of her babies, of those first days of love, when her husband never wished +her out of his sight, or simply of the well-ordered, perfectly served, +pretty supper that she had given for the Lanes whom she was most anxious to +know well? The supper had quite met her aspirations except in the matter of +caps and aprons, had satisfied her cherished ideal of how "nice people" +lived in this world. + +That ideal is constantly expanding these days. In America no one is classed +by birth or profession. All is to make, and the women with their marvellous +powers of absorption do the shaping. In a thousand ways they learn "how to +live as other people do,"--in magazines and on bill boards, in the theatre, +the churches, the trains, the illustrated novel. Suggestions how to live! + +Meantime upstairs in the mansard room of the old house Falkner was figuring +over stresses and strains of an unemotional sort. When past midnight he +shoved the papers into the drawer, a familiar thought coursed through his +brain: somehow he must sell himself at a dearer price. Living was not cheap +even in Torso, and the cost of living was ever going higher, so the papers +said and the wives. There were four of them now, a fifth to come in a few +months. There should be a third servant, he knew, if they were to live +"like other people." With a gesture that said, "Oh, Hell!" he jumped from +his chair and took down a volume of verse from the pine shelf above the +mantel and lighted a cigarette. For a few minutes he might lose himself and +forget the fret of life, in the glowing pictures of things not seen. + +The book dropped from his hand. He had carried it in his mountain kit, had +read it to Bessie when they were engaged. She had listened, flattered, +looking at him and smoothing his hair. But after marriage she confessed +flatly that she was not "literary." So they had read together a book of +travels, then a novel, then a magazine, and latterly nothing. Taking +another cigarette, the man read on, and before his tired eyes rose the +purple peaks of the Rockies, the shining crests of snow, the azure sky. And +also a cabin in a green meadow beside a still mountain lake, and a woman +fair and tall and straight, with blue eyes and a caressing hand,--a child +on one arm. But Bessie was sleeping downstairs. Putting out his light, the +man went to bed. + +The man on horseback riding up the trail to look into the girl's eyes that +summer afternoon! + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +The two young wives quickly became very intimate. They spent many mornings +together "reading," that is, they sat on the cool west veranda of the +Lanes's house, or less often on the balcony at the Falkners's, with a novel +turned down where their attention had relaxed, chatting and sewing. +Isabelle found Bessie Falkner "cunning," "amusing," "odd," and always +"charming." She had "an air about her," a picturesque style of gossip that +she used when instructing Isabelle in the intricacies of Torso society. +Isabelle also enjoyed the homage that Bessie paid her. + +Bessie frankly admired Isabella's house, her clothes, her stylish self, and +enjoyed her larger experience of life,--the Washington winter, Europe, even +the St. Louis horizon,--all larger than anything she had ever known. +Isabelle was very nearly the ideal of what she herself would have liked to +be. So when they had exhausted Torso and their households, they filled the +morning hours with long tales about people they had known,--"Did you ever +hear of the Dysarts in St. Louis? Sallie Dysart was a great belle,--she had +no end of affairs, and then she married Paul Potter. The Potters were very +well-known people in Philadelphia, etc." Thus they gratified their +curiosity about _lives_, all the interesting complications into which men +and women might get. Often Bessie stayed for luncheon, a dainty affair +served on a little table which the maid brought out and set between them. +Sometimes Bessie had with her the baby girl, but oftener not, for she +became exacting and interfered with the luncheon. + +Bessie had endless tidbits of observation about Torsonians. "Mrs. Freke was +a cashier in a Cleveland restaurant when he married her. Don't you see the +bang in her hair still? ... Mrs. Griscom came from Kentucky,--very old +family. Tom Griscom, their only son, went to Harvard,--he was very wild. +He's disappeared since.... Yes, Mrs. Adams is common, but the men seem to +like her. I don't trust her green eyes. Mr. Darnell, they say, is always +there. Oh, Mr. Adams isn't the one to care!" + +Often they came back to Darnell,--that impetuous, black-haired young lawyer +with his deep-set, fiery eyes, who had run away with his wife. + +"She looks scared most of the time, don't you think? They say he drinks. +Too bad, isn't it? Such a brilliant man, and with the best chances. He ran +for Congress two years ago on the Democratic ticket, and just failed. He is +going to try again this next fall, but his railroad connection is against +him.... Oh, Sue Darnell,--she is nobody; she can't hold him--that's plain." + +"What does she think of Mrs. Adams?" + +Bessie shrugged her shoulders significantly. + +"Sue has to have her out at their farm. Well, they say she was pretty gay +herself,--engaged to three men at once,--one of them turned up in Torso +last year. Tom was very polite to him, elaborately polite; but he left town +very soon, and she seemed dazed.... I guess she has reason to be afraid of +her husband. He looks sometimes--well, I shouldn't like to have Rob look at +me that way, not for half a second!" + +The two women clothed the brilliant Kentuckian with all the romance of +unbridled passion. "He sends to Alabama every week for the jasmine Mrs. +Adams wears--fancy!" + +"Really! Oh, men! men!" + +"It's probably _her_ fault--she can't hold him." + +That was the simple philosophy which they evolved about marriage,--men were +uncertain creatures, only partly tamed, and it was the woman's business to +"hold" them. So much the worse for the women if they happened to be tied to +men they could not "hold." Isabelle, remembering on one occasion the +flashing eyes of the Kentuckian, his passionate denunciation of mere +commercialism in public life, felt that there might be some defence for +poor Tom Darnell,--even in his flirtation with the "common" Mrs. Adams. + +Then the two friends went deeper and talked husbands, both admiring, both +hilariously amused at the masculine absurdities of their mates. + +"I hate to see poor Rob so harassed with bills," Bessie confided. "It is +hard for him, with his tastes, poor boy. But I don't know what I can do +about it. When he complains, I tell him we eat everything we have, and I am +sure I never get a dress!" + +Isabelle, recollecting the delicious suppers she had had at the Falkners's, +thought that less might be eaten. In her mother's house there had always +been comfort, but strict economy, even after the hardware business paid +enormous profits. This thrift was in her blood. Bessie had said to Rob that +Isabelle was "close." But Isabelle only laughed at Bessie when she was in +these moods of dejection, usually at the first of the month. Bessie was so +amusing about her troubles that she could not take her seriously. + +"Never mind, Bessie!" she laughed. "He probably likes to work hard for +you,--every man does for the woman he loves." + +And then they would have luncheon, specially devised for Bessie's epicurean +taste. For Bessie Falkner did devout homage to a properly cooked dish. +Isabelle, watching the contented look with which the little woman swallowed +a bit of jellied meat, felt that any man worth his salt would like to +gratify her innocent tastes. Probably Falkner couldn't endure a less +charming woman for his wife. So she condoned, as one does with a clever +child, all the little manifestations of waywardness and selfishness that +she was too intelligent not to see in her new friend. Isabelle liked to +spoil Bessie Falkner. Everybody liked to indulge her, just as one likes to +feed a pretty child with cake and candy, especially when the discomforts of +the resulting indigestion fall on some one else. + +"Oh, it will all come out right in the end!" Bessie usually exclaimed, +after she had well lunched. She did not see things very vividly far +ahead,--nothing beyond the pleasant luncheon, the attractive house, her +adorable Isabelle. "I always tell Rob when he is blue that his chance will +come some day; he'll make a lucky strike, do some work that attracts public +attention, and then we'll all be as happy as can be." + +She had the gambler's instinct; her whole life had been a gamble, now +winning, now losing, even to that moment when her lover had ridden up to +the hotel and solved her doubts about the rich suitor. In Colorado she had +known men whose fortunes came over night, "millions and millions," as she +told Isabelle, rolling the words in her little mouth toothsomely. Why not +to her? She felt that any day fortune might smile. + +"My husband says that Mr. Falkner is doing excellent work,--Mr. Freke said +so," Isabelle told Bessie. + +"And Rob talks as if he were going to lose his job next week! Sometimes I +wish he would lose it--and we could go away to a large city." + +Bessie thus echoed the feeling in Isabelle's own heart,--"I don't want to +spend my life on an Indiana prairie!" To both of the women Torso was less a +home, a corner of the earth into which to put down roots, than a +way-station in the drama and mystery of life. Confident in their husbands' +ability to achieve Success, they dreamed of other scenes, of a larger +future, with that restlessness of a new civilization, which has latterly +seized even women--the supposedly stable sex. + + * * * * * + +As the year wore on there were broader social levels into which Isabelle in +company with Bessie dipped from time to time. The Woman's Club had a +lecture course in art and sociology. They attended one of the lectures in +the Normal School building, and laughed furtively in their muffs at "Madam +President" of the Club,--a portly, silk-dressed dame,--and at the +ill-fitting black coat of the university professor who lectured. They came +away before the reception. + +"Dowds!" Bessie summed up succinctly. + +"Rather crude," Isabelle agreed tolerantly. + +During the winter Isabelle did some desultory visiting among the Hungarians +employed at the coke-ovens, for Bessie's church society. Originally of +Presbyterian faith, she had changed at St. Mary's to the Episcopal church, +and latterly all church affiliations had grown faint. The Colonel +maintained a pew in the first Presbyterian Church, but usually went to hear +the excellent lectures of a Unitarian preacher. Isabelle's religious views +were vague, broad, liberal, and unvital. Bessie's were simpler, but +scarcely more effective. Lane took a lively interest in the railroad +Y.M.C.A., which he believed to be helpful for young men. He himself had +been a member in St. Louis and had used the gymnasium. Isabelle got up an +entertainment for the Hungarian children, which was ended by a disastrous +thunderstorm. She had an uneasy feeling that she "ought to do something for +somebody." Alice Johnston, she knew, had lived at a settlement for a couple +of years. But there were no settlements in Torso, and the acutely poor were +looked after by the various churches. Just what there was to be done for +others was not clear. When she expressed her desire "not to live selfishly" +to her husband, he replied easily:-- + +"There are societies for those things, I suppose. It ought to be natural, +what we do for others." + +Just what was meant by "natural" was not clear to Isabelle, but the word +accorded with the general belief of her class that the best way to help in +the world was to help one's self, to become useful to others by becoming +important in the community,--a comfortable philosophy. But there was one +definite thing that they might accomplish, and that was to help the +Falkners into easier circumstances. + +"Don't you suppose we could do something for them? Now that the baby has +come they are dreadfully poor,--can't think of going away for the summer, +and poor Bessie needs it and the children. I meant to ask the Colonel when +he was here last Christmas. Isn't there something Rob could do in the +road?" + +Lane shook his head. + +"That is not my department. There might be a place in St. Louis when they +begin work on the new terminals. I'll speak to Brundage the next time he's +here." + +"St. Louis--Bessie would like that. She's such a dear, and would enjoy +pretty things so much! It seems as if she almost had a right to them." + +"Why did she marry a poor man, then?" Lane demanded with masculine logic. + +"Because she loved him, silly! She isn't mercenary." + +"Well, then,--" but Lane did not finish his sentence, kissing his wife +instead. "She's rather extravagant, isn't she?" he asked after a time. + +"Oh, she'll learn to manage." + +"I will do what I can for him, of course." + +And Isabelle considered the Falkners' fate settled; John, like her father, +always brought about what he wanted. + + * * * * * + +They spent the Christmas holidays that year with her parents. Lane was +called to New York on railroad business, and Isabelle had a breathless ten +days with old friends, dining and lunching, listening to threads of gossip +that had been broken by her exile to Torso. She discovered an unexpected +avidity for diversion, and felt almost ashamed to enjoy people so keenly, +to miss her husband so little. She put it all down to the cramping effect +of Torso. So when the Colonel asked her how she liked her new home, she +burst forth, feeling that her opportunity had come:-- + +"It doesn't agree with me, I think. I've grown frightfully thin,--John says +I mustn't spend another summer there.... I hope we can get away soon. John +must have a wider field, don't you think?" + +"He seems to find Torso pretty wide." + +"He's done splendid work, I know. But I don't want him side-tracked all his +life in a little Indiana town. Don't you think you could speak to the +Senator or Mr. Beals?" + +The Colonel smiled. + +"Yes, I could speak to them, if John wants me to." + +"He hasn't said anything about it," she hastened to add. + +"So you are tired of Torso?" he asked, smiling still more. + +"It seems so good to be here, to hear some music, and go to the theatre; to +be near old friends," she explained apologetically. "Don't you and mother +want us to be near you?" + +"Of course, my dear! We want you to be happy." + +"Why, we are happy there,--only it seems so out of the world, so +second-class. And John is not second-class." + +"No, John is not second-class," the Colonel admitted with another smile. +"And for that reason I don't believe he will want me to interfere." + +Nevertheless she kept at her idea, talking it over with her mother. All her +friends were settled in the great cities, and it was only natural that she +should aspire to something better than Torso--for the present, St. Louis. +So the Colonel spoke to Lane, and Lane spoke to his wife when they were +back once more in the Torso house. He was grave, almost hurt. + +"I'm sorry, Belle, you are so tired of life here. I can take another +position or ask to be transferred; but you must understand, dear, that +whatever is done, it must be by myself. I don't want favors, not even from +the Colonel!" + +She felt ashamed and small, yet protested: "I don't see why you should +object. Every one does the same,--uses all the pull he has." + +"There are changes coming,--I prefer to wait. The man who uses least pull +usually hangs on longest." + +As he walked to the office that morning, the thought of Isabelle's +restlessness occupied his mind. "It's dull for her here, of course. It +isn't the kind of life she's been used to, or had the right to expect as +the Colonel's daughter." He felt the obligation to live up to his wife, +having won her from a superior position. Like a chivalrous American +gentleman he was not aggrieved because even during the first two years of +marriage, he--their life together--was not enough to satisfy his wife. He +did not reflect that his mother had accepted unquestioningly the Iowa town +to which his father had brought her after the War; nor that Isabelle's +mother had accepted cheerfully the two rooms in the little brick house near +the hardware store. Those were other days. + +He saw the picture of Isabelle standing beside the dining-room window with +the sun on her hair,--a developed type of human being, that demanded much +of life for satisfaction and adjustment. He plunged into his affairs with +an added grip, an unconscious feeling that he must by his exertions provide +those satisfactions and adjustments which his wife's nature demanded for +its perfect development. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +It was to be Isabella's first real dinner-party, a large affair for Torso. +It had already absorbed her energies for a fortnight. The occasion was the +arrival of a party of Atlantic and Pacific officials and directors, who +were to inspect the Torso and Northern, with a view to its purchase and +absorption. The Torso and Northern was only a little scab line of railroad, +penetrating the soft-coal country for a couple of hundred miles, bankrupt +and demoralized. When Lane saw President Beals at Christmas, he pointed out +to him what might be made of this scrap-heap road, if it were rehabilitated +and extended into new coal fields. Beals had shown no interest in the Torso +and Northern at that time, and Lane forgot the matter until he noticed that +there was a market for Torso and Northern equipment bonds, which before had +been unsalable at twenty. Seeing them rise point by point for a month, he +had bought all he could pay for; he knew the weather signs in the railroad +world. When the inspection party was announced, his sagacity was proved. + +Isabelle was excited by the prospect of her dinner for the distinguished +visitors. Who should she have of Torso's best to meet them? The Frasers and +the Griscoms, of course. John insisted on inviting the Frekes, and Isabelle +wanted the Darnells and the Adamses, though her husband demurred at +recognizing the bond. But Tom Darnell was so interesting, his wife urged, +and she was presentable. And the Falkners? There was no special reason for +having them, but Isabelle thought it might be a good thing for Rob to meet +some influential people, and Bessie would surely amuse the men. Isabelle's +executive energy was thoroughly aroused. The flowers and the wines were +ordered from St. Louis, the terrapin from Philadelphia, the fish and the +candies from New York. Should they have champagne? Lane thought not, +because "it's not quite our style." But Isabelle overbore his objections:-- + +"The Adamses always have it, and the Senator will expect it and all the New +York crowd." + +Her husband acquiesced, feeling that in these things his wife knew the +world better than he,--though he would have preferred to offer his superior +officers a simpler meal. + +The inspection party returned from their trip over the Torso and Northern +in the best of spirits. Lane felt sure that the purchase had been decided +upon by this inner coterie of the A. and P., of which the mouthpiece, +Senator Thomas, had emitted prophetic phrases,--"valuable possibilities +undeveloped," "would tap new fields,--good feeder," etc., etc. Lane thought +pleasantly of the twenty equipment bonds in his safe, which would be +redeemed by the Atlantic and Pacific at par and accrued interest, and he +resolved to secure another block, if they were to be had, before the sale +was officially confirmed by the directors. Altogether it had been an +agreeable jaunt. He had met several influential directors and had been +generally consulted as the man who knew the exact local conditions. And he +was aware that he had made a favorable impression as a practical railroad +man.... + +When his guests came down to the drawing-room, he was proud of what his +wife had done. The house was ablaze with candles--Bessie had persuaded +Isabelle to dispense with the electric light--and bunches of heavy, +thick-stemmed roses filled the vases. A large silver tray of decanters and +cocktails was placed in the hall beside the blazing fire. The Senator had +already possessed himself of a cocktail, and was making his little speeches +to Isabelle, who in a Paris gown that gave due emphasis to her pretty +shoulders and thin figure, was listening to him gayly. + +"Did you think we lived in a log-cabin, Senator?" she protested to his +compliments. "We eat with knives and forks, silver ones too, and sometimes +we even have champagne in Torso!"... + +Lane, coming up with the first Vice-president, Vernon Short, and a Mr. +Stanton, one of the New York directors ("a great swell," and "not just +money," "has brains, you know," as the Senator whispered), was proud of his +competent wife. She was vivaciously awake, and seemed to have forgotten her +girlish repugnance to the amorous Senator. As she stood by the drawing-room +door receiving her guests, he felt how much superior to all the Torso +"leaders" she was,--yes, she deserved a larger frame! And to-night he felt +confident that he should be able before long to place her in it.... The +Senator, having discharged his cargo of compliments, was saying:-- + +"Saw your friend Miss Pallanton that was--Mrs. Woodyard--at the Stantons's +the other night, looking like a blond Cleopatra. She's married a bright +fellow, and she'll be the making of him. He'll have to hop around to please +her,--I expect that's what husbands are for, isn't it, Lane?" + +And here Isabelle passed him over to Bessie, who had come without Falkner, +he having made some silly excuse at the last moment,--"just cross," as +Bessie confided to Isabelle. She was looking very fresh in a gown that she +and Isabelle's seamstress had contrived, and she smiled up into the +Senator's face with her blandest child-manner. The Senator, who liked all +women, even those who asked his views on public questions, was especially +fond of what he called the "unsophisticated" variety, with whom his title +carried weight. + +When they reached the dining room, Lane's elation rose to a higher pitch. +The table, strewn with sweet jasmine and glossy leaves, was adorned with +all the handsome gold and silver service and glass that Isabelle had +received at her marriage. It was too barbarically laden to be really +beautiful; but it was in the best prevailing taste of the time, and to +Lane, who never regarded such matters attentively, "was as good as the +best." Looking down the long table after they were seated, he smiled with +satisfaction and expanded, a subtle suavity born of being host to +distinguished folk unlocking his ordinarily reticent tongue, causing him +even to joke with Mrs. Adams, whom he did not like. + +The food was excellent, and the maids, some borrowed, some specially +imported from St. Louis, made no mistakes, at least gross ones. The feast +moved as smoothly as need be. Isabelle, glancing over the table as the game +came on, had her moment of elation, too. This was a real dinner-party, as +elaborate and sumptuous as any that her friends in St. Louis might give. +The Farrington Beals, she remembered, had men servants,--most New York +families kept them, but that could hardly be expected in Torso. The dinner +was excellent, as the hungry visitors testified, and they seemed to find +the women agreeable and the whole affair unexpectedly cosmopolitan, which +was pleasing after spending a long week in a car, examining terminals and +coal properties. Indeed, it was very much the same dinner that was being +served at about that hour in thousands of well-to-do houses throughout the +country all the way from New York to San Francisco,--the same dishes, the +same wines, the same service, almost the same talk. Nothing in American +life is so completely standardized as what is known as a "dinner" in good, +that is well-to-do, society. Isabelle Lane, with all her executive ability, +her real cleverness, aspired to do "the proper thing," just as it was done +in the houses of the moderately rich everywhere. + +The model of hospitality is set by the hotel manager and his chef, and all +that the clever hostess aspires to do is to offer the nearest copy of this +to her guests. Neither the Lanes nor any of their guests, however, felt +this lack of distinction, this sameness, in the entertainment provided for +them. They had the comfortable feeling of being in a cheerful house, well +warmed and well lighted, of eating all this superfluous food, which they +were accustomed to eat, of saying the things they always said on such +occasions.... + +Isabelle had distributed her Torsonians skilfully: Bessie was adorable and +kept three men hanging on her stories. Mrs. Adams, on the other side of +Stanton, was furtively eying Darnell, who was talking rather loudly, trying +to capture the Senator's attention from Bessie. Across the table Mrs. +Darnell, still the striking dark-haired schoolgirl, was watching her +husband, with a pitiful something in her frightened eyes that made Isabelle +shrink.... It was Darnell who finally brought the conversation to a full +stop. + +"No, Senator," he said in his emphatic voice, "it is not scum like the +assassin of the President that this country should fear!" + +"We're paying now for our liberal policy in giving homes to the anarchistic +refuse of Europe," the Senator insisted. "Congress must pass legislation +that will protect us from another Czolgocz." + +Darnell threw up his head, his lips curving disdainfully. He had emptied +his champagne glass frequently, and there was a reckless light in his dark +eyes. Isabelle trembled for his next remark:-- + +"You are wrong, sir, if you will allow me to say so. The legislation that +we need is not against poor, feeble-minded rats like that murderer. We have +prisons and asylums enough for them. What the country needs is legislation +against its honored thieves, the real anarchists among us. We don't get 'em +from Europe, Senator; we breed 'em right here,--in Wall street." + +If some one had discharged assafoetida over the table, there could not have +been a more unpleasant sensation. + +"You don't mean quite that, Darnell," Lane began; but the Kentuckian +brushed him to one side. + +"Just that; and some day you will see what Americans will do with their +anarchists. I tell you this land is full of discontent,--men hating +dishonesty, privilege, corruption, injustice! men ready to fight their +oppressors for freedom!" + +The men about the table were all good Republicans, devout believers in the +gospel of prosperity, all sharers in it. They smiled contemptuously at +Darnell's passion. + +"Our martyred President was a great and good man," the Senator observed +irrelevantly in his public tone. + +"He was the greatest breeder of corruption that has ever held that office," +retorted the Kentuckian. "With his connivance, a Mark Hanna has forged the +worst industrial tyranny the world has ever seen,--the corrupt grip of +corporations on the lives of the people." + +"Pretty strong for a corporation lawyer!" Lane remarked, and the men +laughed cynically. + +"I am no longer a corporation hireling," Darnell said in a loud voice. + +Isabelle noticed that Mrs. Adams's eyes glowed, as she gazed at the man. + +"I sent in my resignation last week." + +"Getting ready for the public platform?" some one suggested. "You won't +find much enthusiasm for those sentiments; wages are too high!" + +There was a moment of unpleasant silence. The Kentuckian raised his head as +if to retort, then collected himself, and remarked meekly:-- + +"Pardon me, Mrs. Lane, this is not the occasion for such a discussion. I +was carried away by my feelings. Sometimes the real thought will burst +out." + +The apology scarcely bettered matters, and Isabelle's response was flat. + +"I am sure it is always interesting to hear both sides." + +"But I can't see that to a good citizen there can be two sides to the +lamentable massacre of our President," the Senator said severely. "I had +the privilege of knowing our late President intimately, and I may say that +I never knew a better man,--he was another Lincoln!" + +"I don't see where Mr. Darnell can find this general discontent," the +Vice-president of the A. and P. put in suavely. "The country has never been +so prosperous as during the McKinley-Hanna regime,--wages at the high +level, exports increasing, crops abundant. What any honest and industrious +man has to complain of, I can't see. Why, we are looking for men all the +time, and we can't get them, at any price!" + +"'Ye shall not live by bread alone,'" Darnell muttered. It was a curious +remark for a dinner-party, Isabelle thought. Mrs. Adams's lips curled as if +she understood it. But now that the fiery lawyer had taken to quoting the +Bible no one paid any further attention to him, and the party sank back +into little duologues appropriate to the occasion. Later Bessie confessed +to Isabelle that she had been positively frightened lest the Kentuckian +would do "something awful,"--he had been drinking, she thought. But Darnell +remained silent for the brief time before the ladies left the room, merely +once raising his eyes apologetically to Isabelle with his wine-glass at his +lips, murmuring so that she alone could hear him,--"I drink to the gods of +Prosperity!" She smiled back her forgiveness. He had behaved very badly, +almost wrecked her successful dinner; but somehow she could not dislike +him. She did not understand what he was saying or why he should say it when +people were having a good time; but she felt it was part of his interesting +and uncertain nature.... + +Presently the coffee and cigars came and the women went across the hall, +while the men talked desultorily until the sound of Bessie's voice singing +a French song to Isabella's accompaniment attracted them. After the next +song the visitors went, their car being due to leave on the Eastern +express. They said many pleasant things to Isabelle, and the Senator, +holding her hand in his broad, soft palm, whispered:-- + +"We can't let so much charm stay buried in Torso!" + +So when the last home guest had departed and Lane sat down before the fire +for another cigar, Isabelle drew her chair close to his, her heart beating +with pleasant emotions. + +"Well?" she said expectantly. + +"Splendid--everything! They liked it, I am sure. I felt proud of you, +Belle!" + +"It was all good but the fish,--yes, I thought our party was very nice!" +Then she told him what the Senator had said, and this time Lane did not +repel the idea of their moving to wider fields. He had made a good +impression on "the New York crowd," and he thought again complacently of +the Torso and Northern equipment bonds. + +"Something may turn up before long, perhaps." + +New York! It made her heart leap. She felt that she was now doing the +wife's part admirably, furthering John's interests by being a competent +hostess, and she liked to further his interests by giving pleasant dinners, +in an attractive gown, and receiving the admiration of clever men. It had +not been the way that her mother had helped on the Colonel; but it was +another way, the modern way, and a very agreeable way. + +"Darnell is an awful fool," Lane commented. "If he can't hold on to himself +any better than he did to-night, he won't get far." + +"Did you know that he had resigned?" + +"No,--it's just as well he has. I don't think the A. and P. would have much +use for him. He's headed the wrong way;" and he added with hardly a pause, +"I think we had better cut the Darnells out, Isabelle. They are not our +sort." + +Isabelle, thinking that this was the man's prejudice, made no reply. + +"It was too bad Rob Falkner wouldn't come. It would have been a good thing +for him to meet influential people." + +Already she spoke with an air of commanding the right sort that her husband +had referred to. + +"He doesn't make a good impression on people," Lane remarked. "Perhaps he +will make good with his work." + +As a man who had made his own way he felt the great importance of being +able to "get on" with people, to interest them, and keep them aware of +one's presence. But he was broad enough to recognize other roads to +success. + +"So you were quite satisfied, John?" his wife asked as she kissed him +good-night. + +"Perfectly--it was the right thing--every way--all but Darnell's rot; and +that didn't do much harm." + +So the two went to their rest perfectly satisfied with themselves and their +world. Lane's last conscious thought was a jumble of equipment bonds, and +the idea of his wife at the head of a long dinner table in some very grand +house--in New York. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +The Darnells had a farm a few miles out of Torso, and this spring they had +given up their house on the square and moved to the farm permanently. +Bessie said it was for Mrs. Darnell's health; men said that the lawyer was +in a tight place with the banks; and gossip suggested that Darnell +preferred being in Torso without his wife whenever he was there. The farm +was on a small hill above a sluggish river, and was surrounded by a growth +of old sycamores and maples. There was a long stretch of fertile fields in +front of the house, dotted by the huge barns and steel windmills of +surrounding farms. + +One Sunday in early May the Lanes were riding in the direction of the +Darnell place, and Isabelle persuaded her husband to call there. "I +promised to ride out here and show him the horses," she explained. The +house was a shabby frame affair, large for a farmhouse, with porticoes and +pillars in Southern style. They found the Darnells with the Falkners in the +living-room. Tom Darnell was reading an Elizabethan play aloud, rolling out +the verse in resounding declamation, punctuated by fervid +appreciation,--"God! but that's fine!" "Hear this thing sing." "Just listen +to this ripper." + + "O God! O God! that it were possible + To undo things done; to call back yesterday! + That Time could turn up his swift sandy glass, + To untell the days, and to redeem the hours!" ... + +When the Lanes had found chairs before the fire, he kept on reading, but +with less enthusiasm, as if he felt an alien atmosphere. Falkner listened +to the lines with closed eyes, his grim jaw relaxed, the deep frown +smoothed. Bessie stroked a white cat,--it was plain that her thoughts were +far away. Mrs. Darnell, who looked slovenly but pretty, stared vacantly out +of the window. The sun lay in broad, streaks on the dusty floor; there was +an air of drowsy peace, broken only by the warm tones of the lawyer as his +voice rose and fell over the spirited verse. Isabelle enjoyed it all; here +was something out of her usual routine. Darnell's face, which reflected the +emotion of the lines, was attractive to her. He might not be the "right +sort"; but he was unusual.... Finally Darnell flung the book into the +corner and jumped up. + +"Here I am boring you good people with stuff dead and gone these hundreds +of years. Falkner always starts me off. Let's have a drink and take a look +at the horses." + +The living-room was a mess of furniture and books, wineglasses, bottles, +wraps, whips, and riding-boots. Lane looked it over critically, while +Darnell found some tumblers and poured out wine. Then they all went to the +stable and dawdled about, talking horse. The fields were green with the +soft grass, already nearly a foot high. Over the house an old grape-vine +was budding in purple balls. There was a languor and sweetness to the air +that instigated laziness. Although Lane wished to be off, Isabelle lingered +on, and Darnell exclaimed hospitably: "You stay to dinner, of course! It is +just plain dinner, Mrs. Lane,"--and he swept away all denial. Turning to +his wife, who had said nothing, he remarked, "It's very good of them to +come in on us like this, isn't it, Irene?" + +Mrs. Darnell started and mumbled:-- + +"Yes, I am sure!" + +His manners to his wife were always perfect, deferential,--why should she +shrink before him? Isabelle wondered.... Dinner, plentiful and appetizing, +was finally provided by the one negro woman. Darnell tried to talk to Lane, +but to Isabelle's surprise her husband was at a disadvantage:--the two men +could not find common ground. Then Darnell and Falkner quoted poetry, and +Isabelle listened. It was all very different from anything she knew. While +the others waited for their coffee, Darnell showed her the old orchard, +--"to smell the first blossoms." It was languorously still there under the +trees, with the misty fields beyond. Darnell said dreamily:-- + +"This is where I'd like to be always,--no, not six miles from Torso, but in +some far-off country, a thousand miles from men!" + +"You, a farmer!" laughed Isabelle. "And what about Congress, and the real +anarchists?" + +"Oh, you cannot understand! You do not belong to the fields as I do." He +pointed ironically to her handsome riding skirt. "You are of the cities, of +people. You will flit from this Indiana landscape one day, from provincial +Torso, and spread your gay wings among the houses of men. While I--" He +made a gesture of despair,--half comic, half serious,--and his dark face +became gloomy. + +Isabelle was amused at what she called his "heroics," but she felt +interested to know what he was; and it flattered her that he should see her +"spreading gay wings among the houses of men." These days she liked to +think of herself that way. + +"You will be in Washington, while we are still in Torso!" she answered. + +"Maybe," he mused. "Well, we play the game--play the game--until it is +played out!" + +'He is not happy with his wife,' Isabelle concluded sagely; 'she doesn't +understand him, and that's why she has that half-scared look.' + +"I believe you really want to play the game as much as anybody," she +ventured with a little thrill of surprise to find herself talking so +personally with a man other than her husband. + +"You think so?" he demanded, and his face grew wistful. "There is nothing +in the game compared with the peace that one might have--" + +Lane was calling to her, but she lingered to say:-- + +"How?" + +"Far away--with love and the fields!" + +They walked back to where John was holding the horses. She was oddly +fluttered. For the first time since she had become engaged a man had +somehow given her that special sensation, which women know, of confidence +between them. She wished that John had not been so anxious to be off, and +she did not repeat to him Darnell's talk, as she usually did every small +item. All that she said was, after a time of reflection, "He is not a happy +man." + +"Who?" + +"Mr. Darnell." + +"From what I hear he is in a bad way. It is his own fault. He has plenty of +ability,--a splendid chance." + +She felt that this was an entirely inadequate judgment. What interested the +man was the net result; what interested the woman was the human being in +whom that result was being worked out. They talked a little longer about +the fermenting tragedy of the household that they had just left, as the +world talks, from a distance. But Isabelle made the silent +reservation,--'she doesn't understand him--with another woman, it would be +different.'... + +Their road home lay through a district devastated by the mammoth sheds of +some collieries. A smudged sign bore the legend:-- + +PLEASANT VALLEY COAL COMPANY + +Lane pulled up his horse and looked carefully about the place. Then he +suggested turning west to examine another coal property. + +"I suppose that Freke man is awfully rich," Isabelle remarked, associating +the name of the coal company with its president; "but he's so common,--I +can't see how you can stand him, John!" + +Lane turned in his saddle and looked at the elegant figure that his wife +made on horseback. + +"He isn't half as interesting as Tom Darnell or Rob," she added. + +"I stand him," he explained, smiling, "for the reason men stand each other +most often,--we make money together." + +"Why, how do you mean? He isn't in the railroad." + +"I mean in coal mines," he replied vaguely, and Isabelle realized that she +was trespassing on that territory of man's business which she had been +brought up to keep away from. Nevertheless, as they rode homeward in the +westering golden light, she thought of several things:--John was in other +business than the railroad, and that puffy-faced German-American was in +some way connected with it; business covered many mysteries; a man did +business with people he would not ordinarily associate with. It even +crossed her mind that what with sleep and business a very large part of her +husband's life lay quite beyond her touch. Perhaps that was what the +Kentuckian meant by his ideal,--to live life with some loved one far away +in companionship altogether intimate. + +But before long she was thinking of the set of her riding-skirt, and that +led to the subject of summer gowns which she meant to get when she went +East with her mother, and that led on to the question of the summer itself. +It had been decided that Isabelle should not spend another summer in the +Torso heat, but whether she should go to the Connecticut place or accept +Margaret Lawton's invitation to the mountains, she was uncertain. Thus +pleasantly her thoughts drifted on into her future. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +If Isabelle had been curious about her husband's interest in the Pleasant +Valley Coal Company, she might have developed a highly interesting chapter +of commercial history, in which Mr. Freke and John Lane were enacting +typical parts. + +The Atlantic and Pacific railroad corporation is, as may easily be +inferred, a vast organism, with a history, a life of its own, lying like a +thick ganglia of nerves and blood-vessels a third of the way across our +broad continent, sucking its nourishment from thousands of miles of rich +and populous territory. To write its history humanly, not statistically, +would be to reveal an important chapter in the national drama for the past +forty years,--a drama buried in dusty archives, in auditors' reports, +vouchers, mortgage deeds, general orders, etc. Some day there will come the +great master of irony, the man of insight, who will make this mass of +routine paper glow with meaning visible to all! + +Meanwhile this Atlantic and Pacific, which to-day is a mighty system, was +once only a handful of atoms. There was the period of Birth; there was the +period of Conquest; and finally there has come the period of Domination. +Now, with its hold on the industry, the life of eight states, complete, +like the great Serpent it can grumble, "I lie here possessing!" + +Farrington Beals came to be President of the Atlantic and Pacific at the +close of the period of Conquest. The condottieri leaders, those splendid +railroad brigands of the seventies and eighties, had retired with "the +fruits of their industry." To Farrington Beals and his associate was left +the care of the orchard. It was their task to solidify a conglomerate mass +of interest-bearing burden, to operate the property with the greatest +efficiency possible, in order that it might support the burdens laid upon +it and yet other burdens to come as the land waxed rich,--all burdens being +ultimately passed to the broad back of the Public, where burdens seem +naturally to belong. To this end, Beals men, as they were called, gradually +replaced throughout the length and breadth of the system the old +operatives, whose methods belonged to the coarse days of brigandage! These +Beals men were youngsters,--capable, active, full of "jump," with the word +"traffic, traffic" singing always in their ears. Beals was a splendid +"operator," and he rapidly brought the Atlantic and Pacific into the first +rank of the world's railroads. That shrewd and conservative statesman, +Senator Alonzo Thomas (who had skilfully marshalled the legal and political +forces during the period of Conquest) was now chairman of the Board, and he +and the President successfully readjusted the heterogeneous mass of bonds +and stocks, notes and prior liens, taking advantage of a period of +optimistic feeling in the market to float a tremendous general mortgage. +When this "Readjustment" had been successfully put through, the burden was +some forty or fifty millions larger than before,--where those millions went +is one of the mysteries to reward that future Carlyle!--but the public load +was adjusted more trimly. So it was spoken of as a "masterly stroke of +finance," and the ex-statesman gained much credit in the highest circles. + +The Senator and the President are excellent men, as any financier will tell +you. They are charitable and genial, social beings, members of clubs, hard +working and intelligent, public spirited, too,--oh, the very best that the +Republic breeds! To see Farrington Beals, gray-haired, thoughtful, almost +the student, clothed in a sober dark suit, with a simple flower in the +buttonhole, and delicate glasses on the bridge of his shapely nose,--to see +him modestly enter the general offices of the Atlantic and Pacific, any one +would recognize an Industrial Flywheel of society. To accompany him over +the system in his car, with a party of distinguished foreign stockholders, +was in the nature of a religious ceremony, so much the interests of this +giant property in his care seemed allied with the best interests of our +great land! + +Thus Beals men ran the road,--men like John Hamilton Lane, railroad men to +the core, loyal men, devoted to the great A. and P. And traffic increased +monthly, tonnage mounted, wheels turned faster, long freight trains wound +their snaky coils through the Alleghanies, over the flat prairies, into +Eastern ports, or Western terminals--Traffic, Traffic! And money poured +into the treasury, more than enough to provide for all those securities +that the Senator was so skilled in manufacturing. All worked in this +blessed land of freedom to the glory of Farrington Beals and the profit of +the great A. and P. + +What has Isabelle to do with all this? Actually she was witness to one +event,--rather, just the surface of it, the odd-looking, concrete outside! +An afternoon early in her married life at Torso, she had gone down to the +railroad office to take her husband for a drive in the pleasant autumn +weather. As he was long in coming to meet her, she entered the brick +building; the elevator boy, recognizing her with a pleasant nod, whisked +her up to the floor where Lane had his private office. Entering the outer +room, which happened to be empty at this hour, she heard voices through the +half-open door that led to the inner office. It was first her husband's +voice, so low that she could not hear what he was saying. Presently it was +interrupted by a passionate treble. Through the door she could just see +John's side face where he was seated at his desk,--the look she liked best, +showing the firm cheek and jaw line, and resolute mouth. Over his desk a +thin, roughly dressed man with a ragged reddish beard was leaning on both +arms, and his shoulders trembled with the passion of his utterance. + +"Mr. Lane," he was saying in that passionate treble, "I must have them +cars--or I shall lose my contract!" + +"As I have told you a dozen times, Mr. Simonds, I have done my best for +you. I recognize your trouble, and it is most unfortunate,--but there seems +to be a shortage of coalers just now." + +"The Pleasant Valley company get all they want!" the man blurted out. + +Lane merely drummed on his desk. + +"If I can't get cars to ship my coal, I shall be broke, bankrupt," the thin +man cried. + +"I am very sorry--" + +"Sorry be damned! Give me some cars!" + +"You will have to see Mr. Brundage at St. Louis," Lane answered coldly. "He +has final say on such matters for the Western division. I merely follow +orders." + +He rose and closed his desk. The thin man with an eloquent gesture turned +and rushed out of the office, past Isabelle, who caught a glimpse of a +white face working, of teeth chewing a scrubby mustache, of blood-shot +eyes. John locked his desk, took down his hat and coat, and came into the +outer office. He kissed his wife, and they went to drive behind the +Kentucky horses, talking of pleasant matters. After a time, Isabelle asked +irrelevantly:-- + +"John, why couldn't you give that man the cars he wanted?" + +"Because I had no orders to do so." + +"But aren't there cars to be had when the other company gets them?" + +"There don't happen to be any cars for Simonds. The road is friendly to Mr. +Freke." + +And he closed his explanation by kissing his wife on her pretty neck, as +though he would imply that more things than kisses go by favor in this +world. Isabelle had exhausted her interest in the troubled man's desire for +coal cars, and yet in that little phrase, "The road is friendly to Mr. +Freke," she had touched close upon a great secret of the Beals regime. +Unbeknownst to her, she had just witnessed one of those little modern +tragedies as intense in their way as any Caesarian welter of blood; she had +seen a plain little man, one of the negligible millions, being "squeezed," +in other words the operation in an ordinary case of the divine law of +survival. Freke was to survive; Simonds was not. In what respects Simonds +was inferior to Freke, the Divine Mind alone could say. When that +convulsive face shot past Isabelle in Lane's office, it was merely the +tragic moment when the conscious atom was realizing fully that he was not +to be the one to survive! The moment when Suspense is converted into +Despair.... + +Nor could Isabelle trace the well-linked chain of cause and effect that led +from Simonds about-to-be-a-bankrupt _via_ Freke and the Pleasant Valley +Coal Company through the glory of the A. and P. (incidentally creating in +the Senator his fine patriotism and faith in the future of his country) to +her husband's check-book and her own brilliant little dinner, "where they +could afford to offer champagne." But in the maze of earthly affairs all +these unlike matters were related, and the relationship is worth our +notice, if not Isabelle's. If it had been expounded to her, if she had seen +certain certificates of Pleasant Valley stock lying snugly side by side +with Torso Northern bonds and other "good things" in her husband's +safe,--and also in the strong boxes of Messrs. Beals, Thomas, Stanton, _et +al_., she would have said, as she had been brought up to say, "that is my +husband's affair."... + +The Atlantic and Pacific, under the shrewd guidance of the amiable Senator, +was a law-abiding citizen, outwardly. When the anti-rebate laws were +passed, the road reformed; it was glad to reform, it made money by +reforming. But within the law there was ample room for "efficient" men to +acquire more money than their salaries, and they naturally grasped their +opportunities, as did the general officers. Freke, whom Isabelle disliked, +with her trivial woman's prejudice about face and manners, embodied a +Device,--in other words he was an instrument whereby some persons could +make a profit, a very large profit, at the expense of other persons. The A. +and P. 'was friendly to Freke.' The Pleasant Valley Coal Company never +wanted cars, and it also enjoyed certain other valuable privileges, covered +by the vague term "switching," that enabled it to deliver its coal into the +gaping hulls at tidewater at seventy to eighty cents per ton cheaper than +any of its competitors in the Torso district. No wonder that the Pleasant +Valley company, with all this "friendliness" of the A. and P., prospered, +and that Mr. Freke, under one name or another, swallowed presently, at a +bargain, the little mine that the man Simonds had struggled to operate, as +well as thousands of acres of bituminous coal lands along the Pleasant +River, and along the Torso Northern road. (Perhaps the inwardness of that +Inspection Party can now be seen, also.) The signs of the Pleasant Valley +Coal Company and its aliases squatted here and there all through the Torso +coal region. As the Senator would say, it was a very successful business, +"thanks to the initiative of Mr. Freke." And that poor Simonds, who had +amply demonstrated his inability to survive, his utter lack of adaptation +to his environment, by not being able to be friendly with the great A. and +P., went--where all the inefficient, non-adaptable human refuse goes--to +the bottom. _Bien entendu!_ + +Freke was the Pleasant Valley Coal Company,--that is, he was its necessary +physiognomy,--but really the coal company was an incorporated private farm +of the officers and friends of the A. and P.,--an immensely profitable +farm. Lane in his callow youth did not know this fact; but he learned it +after he had been in Torso a few weeks. He was quick to learn, a typical +Beals man, thoroughly "efficient," one who could keep his eyes where they +belonged, his tongue in his mouth, and his ears open. As he told Isabelle +that Sunday afternoon, "he had had many business dealings with Freke," +alias the Pleasant Valley Company, etc., and they had been uniformly +profitable. + +For the fatherly Senator and the shrewd Beals believed that the "right +sort" should make a "good thing"; they believed in thrift. In a word, to +cut short this lengthy explanation, the great Atlantic and Pacific, one of +the two or three most efficiently operated railroads in the United States, +was honeycombed with that common thing "graft," or private "initiative"! +From the President's office all the way down to subordinates in the traffic +department, there were "good things" to be enjoyed. In that growing bunch +of securities that Lane was accumulating in his safe, there were, as has +been said, a number of certificates of stock in coal companies--and not +small ones. + +And this is why Lane maintained social as well as financial relations with +the coarse Mr. Freke. And this is why, also, Lane felt that they could +afford "the best," when they undertook to give a dinner to the +distinguished gentlemen from New York. Of course he did not explain all +this to Isabelle that pleasant Sunday afternoon. Would Isabelle have +comprehended it, if he had? Her mind would have wandered off to another +dinner, to that cottage at Bedmouth, which she thought of taking for the +summer, or to the handsome figure that John made on horseback. At least +nine out of ten American husbands would have treated the matter as Lane +did,--given some sufficient general answer to their wives' amateurish +curiosity about business and paid their figures due compliments, and +thought complacently of the comfortable homes to which they were +progressing and the cheerful dinners therein,--all, wife, home, dinner, the +result of their fortunate adaptation to the environments they found +themselves in.... + +Perhaps may be seen by this time the remote connection between that tragic +gesture of Frank Simonds on the Saturday afternoon, calling on heaven and +the Divine Mind that pitilessly strains its little creatures through the +holes of a mighty colander--between that tragic gesture, I say, and +Isabelle's delightful dinner of ten courses,--champagne and terrapin! + + * * * * * + +But this tiresome chapter on the affairs of the Atlantic and Pacific +railroad,--will it never be done! So sordid, so commonplace, so newspapery, +so--just what everything in life is--when we might have expected for the +dollar and a quarter expended on this pound of wood pulp and +ink,--something less dull than a magazine article; something about a +motor-car and a girl with a mischievous face whom a Russian baron seeks to +carry away by force and is barely thwarted by the brave American college +youth dashing in pursuit with a new eighty h. p., etc., etc. Or at least if +one must have a railroad in a novel (when every one knows just what a +railroad is), give us a private car and the lovely daughter of the +President together with a cow-punching hero, as in Bessie's beloved story. +But an entire chapter on graft and a common dinner-party with the champagne +drunk so long ago--what a bore! + +And yet in the infinite hues of this our human life, the methods by which +our substantial hero, John Hamilton Lane, amassed his fortune, are worthy +of contemplation. There is more, O yawning reader, in the tragic gesture of +ragged-bearded Frank Simonds than in some tons of your favorite brand of +"real American women"; more in the sublime complacency of Senator Alonzo +Thomas, when he praised "that great and good man," and raised to his memory +his glass of Pommery brut, triple sec, than in all the adventures of +soldiers of fortune or yellow cars or mysterious yachts or hectic Russian +baronesses; more--at least for the purpose of this history--in John's +answer to Isabelle's random inquiry that Sunday afternoon than in all the +"heart-interest" you have absorbed in a twelvemonth. For in the atmosphere +of the ACTS here recorded, you and I, my reader, live and have our being, +such as it is--and also poor Frank Simonds (who will never appear again to +trouble us). And to the seeing eye, mystery and beauty lie in the hidden +meaning of things seen but not known.... + +Patience! We move to something more intimate and domestic, if not more +thrilling. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +The child was coming! + +When Isabelle realized it, she had a shock, as if something quite outside +her had suddenly interposed in her affairs. That cottage at Bedmouth for +the summer would have to be given up and other plans as well. At first she +had refused to heed the warning,--allowed John to go away to New York on +business without confiding in him,--at last accepted it regretfully. Since +the terrifying fear those first days in the Adirondack forest lest she +might have conceived without her passionate consent, the thought of +children had gradually slipped out of her mind. They had settled into a +comfortable way of living, with their plans and their expectations. "That +side of life," as she called it, was still distasteful to her,--she did not +see why it had to be. Fortunately it did not play a large part in their +life, and the other, the companionable thing, the being admired and petted, +quite satisfied her. Children, of course, sometime; but "not just yet." + +"It will be the wrong time,--September,--spoil everything!" she complained +to Bessie. + +"Oh, it's always the wrong time, no matter when it happens. But you'll get +used to it. Rob had to keep me from going crazy at first. But in the end +you like it." + +"It settles Bedmouth this year!" + +"It is a bore," Bessie agreed sympathetically, feeling sorry for herself, +as she was to have spent six weeks with Isabelle. "It takes a year out of a +woman's life, of course, no matter how she is situated. And I'm so +fearfully ugly all the time. But you won't be,--your figure is better." + +Bessie, like most childlike persons, took short views of immediate matters. +She repeated her idea of child-bearing:-- + +"I hated it each time,--especially the last time. It did seem so +unnecessary--for us.... And it spoils your love, being so afraid. But when +it comes, why you like it, of course!" + +John arrived from his hurried trip to New York, smiling with news. He did +not notice his wife's dejected appearance when he kissed her, in his +eagerness to tell something. + +"There is going to be a shake-up in the road," he announced. "That's why +they sent for me." + +"Is there?" she asked listlessly. + +"Well, I am slated for fourth Vice-president. They were pleased to say +handsome things about what I have done at Torso. Guess they heard of that +offer from the D. and O." + +"What is fourth Vice-president?" Isabelle inquired. + +"In charge of traffic west--headquarters at St. Louis!" + +He expected that his wife would be elated at this fulfilment of her +desires; but instead Isabelle's eyes unaccountably filled with tears. When +he understood, he was still more mystified at her dejection. Very tenderly +holding her in his arms, he whispered his delight into her ears. His face +was radiant; it was far greater news than his promotion to the fourth +vice-presidency of the A. and P. + +"And you knew all this time!" he exclaimed reproachfully. + +"I wasn't sure!" + +He seemed to take the event as natural and joyful, which irritated her +still more. As Bessie had said, "Whatever ties a woman to the home, makes +her a piece of domestic furniture, the men seem to approve of!" + +"What a fright I look already!" Isabelle complained, gazing at the dark +circles under her eyes in the glass. She thought of Aline, whose complexion +like a Jacqueminot rose had been roughened and marred. Something still +virginal in her soul rebelled against it all. + +"Oh, not so bad," Lane protested. "You are just a little pinched. You'll be +fitter than ever when it's over!" + +The man doesn't care, she thought mutinously. It seems to him the proper +thing,--what woman is made for. Isabelle was conscious that she was made +for much more, for her own joy and her own activity, and she hated to part +with even a little of it! + +He could not understand her attitude. As a man he had retained the +primitive joy in the coming of the child, any child,--but _his_ child and +the first one above all! Compared with that nothing was of the least +importance. Seeing her pouting into the glass, he said reproachfully:-- + +"But you like children, Belle!" + +And taking her again into his arms and kissing her, he added, "We'll give +the little beggar a royal welcome, girl!" + +His grave face took on a special look of content with the world and his +share in it, while Isabelle continued to stare at herself in the glass and +think of the change a child would make in her life. Thus the woman of the +new generation, with her eagerness for a "large, full life," feels towards +that process of nature for which the institution of marriage was primarily +designed. + + * * * * * + +So for a time longer Isabelle tried to ignore the coming fact, to put it +out of her mind, and grasp as much of her own life as she could before the +life within her should deprive her of freedom. As Lane's new duties would +not begin until the summer, it was arranged that Isabelle should spend the +hot weeks at the Grafton farm with her mother, and then return to St. Louis +for her confinement in her old home. Later they would settle themselves in +the city at their leisure.... It was all so provoking, Isabelle persisted +in thinking. They might have had at least a year of freedom in which to +settle themselves in the new home. And she had had visions of a few months +in Europe with Vickers, who was now in Rome. John might have come over +after her. To give up all this for what any woman could do at any time! + +As the months passed she could not evade the issue. By the time she was +settled in her old room at the Farm she had grown anaemic, nervous. The +coming of the child had sapped rather than created strength as it properly +should have done. White and wasted she lay for long hours on the lounge +near the window where she could see the gentle green hills. Here her cousin +Alice Johnston found her, when she arrived with her children to make Mrs. +Price a visit. The large, placid woman knelt by Isabelle's side and +gathered her in her arms. + +"I'm so glad, dear! When is it to be?" + +"Oh, sometime in the fall," Isabelle replied vaguely, bored that her +condition already revealed itself. "Did you want the first one?" she asked +after a time. + +"Well, not at the very first. You see it was just so much more of a risk. +And our marriage was a risk without that.... I hated the idea of becoming a +burden for Steve. But with you it will be so different, from the start. And +then it always makes its own place, you see. When it comes, you will think +you always wanted it!" + +She smiled in her large human way, as if she had tested the trials of life +and found that all held some sweet. Isabelle looked down at her thin arms. +The Johnstons had four, and they were so poor! As if divining her thought, +Alice said:-- + +"Every time I wondered how we were going to survive, but somehow we did. +And now it will all be well, with Steve's new position--" + +"What is that?" + +"Hasn't John told you? It has just been settled; Steve is going into the A. +and P.,--John's assistant in St. Louis." + +"I'm so glad for you," Isabelle responded listlessly. She recalled now +something that her husband had said about Johnston being a good man, who +hadn't had his chance, and that he hoped to do something for him. + +"Tremendous rise in salary,--four thousand," Alice continued buoyantly. "We +shan't know what to do with all that money! We can give the children the +best education." + +Isabelle reflected that John's salary had been five thousand at Torso, and +as fourth Vice-president would be ten thousand. And she still had her +twenty-five hundred dollars of allowance from her father. Alice's elation +over Steve's rise gave her a sudden appreciation of her husband's growing +power,--his ability to offer a struggling man his chance. Perhaps he could +do something for the Falkners also. The thought took her out of herself for +a little while. Men were free to work out their destiny in life, to go +hither and thither, to alter fate. But a woman had to bear children. John +was growing all this time, and she was separated from him. She tried to +believe that this was the reason for her discontent, this separation from +her husband; but she knew that when she had been perfectly free, she had +not shared largely in his activity.... + +"You must tell me all about the St. Mary's girls," Alice said. "Have you +seen Aline?" + +"Yes,--she has grown very faddy, I should think,--arts and crafts and all +that. Isn't it queer? I asked her to visit us, but she has another one +coming,--the third!" + +Isabelle made a little grimace. + +"And Margaret?" + +"She has suddenly gone abroad with her husband--to Munich. He's given up +his business. Didn't her marriage surprise you?" + +"Yes, I thought she was going to marry that Englishman who was at your +wedding." + +"Mr. Hollenby? Yes, every one did. Something happened. Suddenly she became +engaged to this Pole,--a New York man. Very well connected, and has money, +I hear. Conny wrote me about him." ... + +So they gossiped on. When Alice rose to leave her, Isabelle held her large +cool hand in hers. The older woman, whose experience had been so unlike +hers, so difficult, soothed her, gave her a suggestion of other kinds of +living than her own little life. + +"I'm glad you are here," she said. "Come in often, won't you?" + +And her cousin, leaning over to kiss her as she might a fretful child who +had much to learn, murmured, "Of course, dear. It will be all right!" + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +The Steve Johnstons had had a hard time, as Isabelle would have phrased it. + +He had been a faithful, somewhat dull and plodding student at the technical +school, where he took the civil engineering degree, and had gone forth to +lay track in Montana. He laid it well; but this job finished, there seemed +no permanent place for him. He was heavy and rather tongue-tied, and made +no impression on his superiors except that of commonplace efficiency. He +drifted into Canada, then back to the States, and finally found a place in +Detroit. + +Here, while working for thirty dollars a week, he met Alice Johnston,--she +also was earning her living, being unwilling to accept from the Colonel +more than the means for her education,--and from the first he wished to +marry her, attracted by her gentle, calm beauty, her sincerity, and +buoyant, healthy enjoyment of life. She was teaching in a girls' school, +and was very happy. Other women had always left the heavy man on the road, +so to speak, marking him as stupid. But Alice Johnston was keener or kinder +than most young women: she perceived beneath the large body a will, an +intelligence, a character, merely inhibited in their envelope of large +bones and solid flesh, with an entire absence of nervous system. He was +silent before the world, but not foolish, and with her he was not long +silent. She loved him, and she consented to marry him on forty dollars a +week, hopefully planning to add something from her teaching to the budget, +until Steve's slow power might gain recognition. + +"So we married," she said to Isabelle, recounting her little life history +in the drowsy summer afternoon. "And we were so happy on what we had! It +was real love. We took a little flat a long way out of the city, and when I +came home afternoons from the school, I got the dinner and Steve cooked the +breakfasts,--he's a splendid cook, learned on the plains. It all went +merrily the first months, though Aunt Harmony thought I was such a fool to +marry, you remember?" She laughed, and Isabella smiled at the memory of the +caustic comments which Mrs. Price had made when Alice Vance, a poor niece, +had dared to marry a poor man,--"They'll be coming to your father for help +before the year is out," she had said. But they hadn't gone to the Colonel +yet. + +"Then little Steve came, and I had to leave the school and stay at home. +That was hard, but I had saved enough to pay for the doctor and the nurse. +Then that piece of track elevation was finished and Steve was out of work +for a couple of months. He tried so hard, poor boy! But he was never meant +to be an engineer. I knew that, of course, all along.... Well, the baby +came, and if it hadn't been for my savings,--why, I should have gone to the +hospital! + +"Just then Steve met a man he had known at the Tech, and was given that +place on a railroad as clerk in the traffic department. He was doubtful +about taking it, but I wasn't. I was sure it would open up, and even +twenty-five dollars a week is something. So he left for Cleveland a week +after the baby was born, and somehow I packed up and followed with the baby +when I could. + +"That wasn't the end of hard times by any means. You see Ned came the next +year,--we're such healthy, normal specimens!" She laughed heartily at this +admission of her powers of maternity. "And it wasn't eighteen months before +Alice was coming.... Oh, I know that we belong to the thriftless pauper +class that's always having children,--more than it can properly care for. +We ought to be discouraged! But somehow we have fed and clothed 'em all, +and we couldn't spare one o' the kiddies. There's James, too, you know. He +came last winter, just after Steve had the grippe and pneumonia; that was a +pull. But it doesn't seem right to--to keep them from coming--and when you +love each other--" + +Her eyes shone with a certain joy as she frankly stated the woman's +problem, while Isabelle looked away, embarrassed. Mrs. Johnston continued +in her simple manner:-- + +"If Nature doesn't want us to have them, why does she give us the power? +... I know that is wretched political economy and that Nature really has +nothing to do with the modern civilized family. But as I see other women, +the families about me, those that are always worrying over having children, +trying to keep out of it,--why, they don't seem to be any better off. And +it is--well, undignified,--not nice, you know.... We can't spare 'em, nor +any more that may come! ... As I said, I believed all along that Steve had +it in him, that his mind and character must tell, and though it was +discouraging to have men put over him, younger men too, at last the +railroad found out what he could do." + +Her face beamed with pride. + +"You see Steve has a remarkable power of storing things up in that big head +of his. Remembers a lot of pesky little detail when he's once fixed his +mind on it,--the prices of things, figures, and distances, and rates and +differentials. Mr. Mason--that was the traffic manager of our road-- +happened to take Steve to Buffalo with him about some rate-making business. +Steve, it turned out, knew the situation better than all the traffic +managers. He coached Mr. Mason, and so our road got something it wanted. It +was about the lumber rate, in competition with Canadian roads. Mr. Mason +made Steve his assistant--did you ever think what an awful lot the rate on +lumber might mean to _you_ and yours? It's a funny world. Because Steve +happened to be there and knew that with a rate of so much a thousand feet +our road could make money,--why, we had a house to live in for the first +time! + +"Of course," she bubbled, "it isn't just that. It's Steve's head,--an +ability to find his way through those great sheets of figures the railroads +are always compiling. He stores the facts up in that big round head and +pulls 'em out when they are wanted. Why, he can tell you just what it would +cost to ship a car of tea from Seattle to New York!" + +Isabella had a vision of Steve Johnston's large, heavy head with its thick, +black hair, and she began to feel a respect for the stolid man. + +"John said he had great ability," she remarked. "I'm so glad it all came +out right in the end." + +"I had my first servant when the promotion came, and that spring we took a +little house,--it was crowded in the flat, and noisy." + +"You will find it so much easier now, and you will like St. Louis." + +"Oh, yes! But it hasn't been really bad,--the struggle, the being poor. You +see we were both well and strong, and we loved so much, and we always had +the problem of how to live,--that draws you together if you have the real +thing in you. It isn't sordid trying to see what a quarter can be made to +do. It's exciting." + +As she recalled the fight, a tender smile illuminated her face and curved +her lips upward. To her poverty had not been limiting, grinding, but an +exhilarating fight that taxed her resources of mind and body. + +"Of course there are a lot of things you can't have. But most people have +more than they know how to handle, no matter where they are!" + +Isabelle was puzzled by this remark, and explained Alice Johnston's content +by her age, her lack of experience, at least such experience as she had +had. For life to her presented a tantalizing feast of opportunities, and it +was her intention to grasp as many of these as one possibly could. Any +other view of living seemed not only foolish but small-minded. Without any +snobbishness she considered that her sphere and her husband's could not be +compared with the Johnstons'. The Lanes, she felt, were somehow called to +large issues. + +Nevertheless, Isabelle could understand that Alice's marriage was quite a +different thing from what hers was,--something to glorify all the petty, +sordid details, to vivify the grimy struggle of keeping one's head above +the social waters. + +"Now," Alice concluded, "we can save! And start the children fairly. But I +wonder if we shall ever be any happier than we have been,--any closer, +Steve and I?" + +Alice, by her very presence, her calm acceptance of life as it shaped +itself, soothed Isabelle's restlessness, suggested trust and confidence. + +"You are a dear," she whispered to her cousin. "I am so glad you are to be +near me in St. Louis!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Isabelle saw the fat headlines in the Pittsburg paper that the porter +brought her,--"Congressman Darnell and his wife killed!" The bodies had +been found at the bottom of an abandoned quarry. It was supposed that +during a thunder-storm the night before, as he was driving from Torso to +his farm in company with his wife, the horses had become uncontrollable and +had dashed into the pit before Darnell could pull them up. He had just +taken his seat in Congress. Isabelle remembered that he called the day +before she left Torso, and when she had congratulated him on his election, +had said jokingly: "Now I shall get after your husband's bosses, Mrs. Lane. +We shan't be on speaking terms when next we meet." He seemed gay and vital. +So it had ended thus for the tempestuous Kentuckian.... + +John was waiting for her at the station in Torso, where she was to break +the journey. His face was eager and solicitous. He made many anxious +inquiries about her health and the journey. But she put it all to one side. + +"Tell me about the Darnells. Isn't it dreadful!" + +"Yes," he said slowly, "it is very bad." Lane's voice was grave, as if he +knew more than the published report. + +"How could it have happened,--he was such a good driver? He must have been +drunk." + +"Tom Darnell could have driven all right, even if he had been drunk. I am +afraid it's worse than that." + +"Tell me!" + +"There are all sorts of rumors. He came up from Washington unexpectedly, +and his wife met him at the station with their team. They went to the hotel +first, and then suddenly started for the farm in the midst of the storm. It +was a terrible storm.... One story is that he had trouble with a bank; it +is even said he had forged paper. I don't know! ... Another story was about +the Adams woman,--you know she followed him to Washington.... Too bad! He +was a brilliant fellow, but he tied himself all up, tied himself all up," +he observed sententiously, thus explaining the catastrophe of an unbalanced +character. + +"You mean it was--suicide?" Isabelle questioned. + +"Looks that way!" + +"How awful! and his wife killed, too!" + +"He was always desperate--uncontrolled sort of fellow. You remember how he +went off the handle the night of our dinner." + +"So he ended it--that way," she murmured. + +And she saw the man driving along the road in the black storm, his young +wife by his side, with desperate purpose. She remembered his words in the +orchard, his wistful desire for another kind of life. "The Adams woman, +too," as John expressed it, and "he couldn't hold his horses." This nature +had flown in pieces, liked a cracked wheel, in the swift revolution of +life. To her husband it was only one of the messes recorded in the +newspapers. But her mind was full of wonder and fear. As little as she had +known the man, she had felt an interest in him altogether disproportionate +to what he said or did. He was a man of possibilities, of streaks, of +moods, one that could have been powerful, lived a rich life. And at +thirty-three he had come to the end, where his passions and his ideals in +perpetual warfare had held him bound. He had cut the knot! And she had +chosen to go with him, the poor, timid wife! ... Surely there were strange +elements in people, Isabelle felt, not commonly seen in her little +well-ordered existence, traits of character covered up before the world, +fissures running back through the years into old impulses. Life might be +terrible--when it got beyond your hand. She could not dismiss poor Tom +Darnell as summarily as John did,--"a bad lot, I'm afraid!" + +"You mustn't think anything more about it," her husband said anxiously, as +she sat staring before her, trying to comprehend the tragedy. "I have +arranged to take you on to-morrow. The Colonel writes that your brother +Ezra is seedy,--touch of malaria, he thinks. The Colonel is looking forward +a lot to your coming." + +He talked on about the little domestic things, but she held that picture in +the background of her mind and something within her said over and over, +'Why should it be like that for any one!' + +And all the next day, on their way to St. Louis, she could not dismiss the +thought from her mind: 'Why, I saw him only a few weeks ago. How well he +read that poetry, as if he enjoyed it! And what he said that night at +dinner he really meant,--oh, he believed it! And he was sorry for his +wife,--yes, I am sure he was sorry for her. But he loved the other +woman,--she understood him. And so he ended it. It's quite dreadful!' + + * * * * * + +The Colonel met them at the station with his new motor. His face was a bit +grave as he said in answer to their inquiry:-- + +"No, it is not malaria, I am afraid. The doctors think it is typhoid. There +has been a great deal of it in the city this summer, and the boy wouldn't +take a vacation, was afraid I would stay here if he did. So I went up to +Pelee, instead." + +It was typhoid, and young Price died within the week. In the hush that +followed the death of her brother Isabelle lay waiting for the coming of +her child.... Her older brother Ezra! He was like a sturdy young tree in +the forest, scarce noticed in the familiar landscape until his loss. Quiet, +hard-working "Junior," as the family called him,--what would the Colonel do +without him? The old man--now he was obviously old even to Isabelle--would +come to her room and sit for long hours silent, as if he, too, was waiting +for the coming of the new life into his house. + +These two deaths so unlike, the tragic end of Darnell and her brother's +sudden removal, sank deep into her, sounding to her in the midst of her own +childish preoccupation with her own life, the intricacy, the mystery of all +existence. Life was larger than a private garden hedged with personal +ambitions. She was the instrument of forces outside her being. And in her +weakness she shrank into herself. + +They told her that she had given birth to a daughter--another being like +herself! + + + + +PART TWO + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +Colonel Price was a great merchant, one of those men who have been the +energy, the spirit of the country since the War, now fast disappearing, +giving way to another type in this era of "finance" as distinguished from +"business." When the final review was ended, and he was free to journey +back to the little Connecticut village where three years before he had left +with his parents his young wife and their one child, he was a man just over +thirty, very poor, and weak from a digestive complaint that troubled him +all his life. But the spirit of the man was unbroken. Taking his little +family with him, he moved to St. Louis, and falling in there with a couple +of young men with like metal to himself, who happened also to possess some +capital, he started the wholesale hardware business of Parrott, Price, and +Co., which rapidly became the leading house in that branch of trade +throughout the new West. The capital belonged to the other men, but the +leadership from the start to Colonel Price. It was his genius as a trader, +a diviner of needs, as an organizer, that within twenty years created the +immense volume of business that rolled through the doors of their old +warehouse. During the early years the Colonel was the chief salesman and +spent his days "on the road" up and down the Mississippi Valley, sleeping +in rough country taverns, dining on soda biscuit and milk, driving many +miles over clayey, rutty roads,--dealing with men, making business. + +Meanwhile the wife--her maiden name was Harmony Vickers--was doing her part +in that little brick house which the Colonel had taken Lane to see. There +she worked and saved, treating her husband's money like a sacred fund to be +treasured. When the colonel came home from his weekly trips, he helped in +the housework, and nursed the boy through the croup at night, saving his +wife where he could. It was long after success had begun to look their way +before Mrs. Price would consent to move into the wooden cottage on a quiet +cross street that the Colonel wanted to buy, or employ more than one +servant. But the younger children as they came on, first Vickers, then +Isabelle, insensibly changed the family habits,--also the growing wealth +and luxury of their friends, and the fast increasing income of the Colonel, +no longer to be disguised. Yet when they built that lofty brick house in +the older quarter of the city, she would have but two servants and used +sparingly the livery carriage that her husband insisted on providing for +her. The habit of fearsome spending never could wholly be eradicated. When +the Colonel had become one of the leading merchants of the city, she +consented grudgingly to the addition of one servant, also a coachman and a +single pair of horses, although she preferred the streetcars on the next +block as safer and less troublesome; and she began gradually to entertain +her neighbors, to satisfy the Colonel's hospitable instincts, in the style +in which they entertained her. + +Mrs. Price had an enormous pride in the Colonel and in his reputation in +St. Louis, a pride that no duke's wife could exceed. It was the Colonel who +had started the movement for a Commercial Association and was its first +president. As his wife she had entertained under her roof a President of +the United States, not to mention a Russian prince and an English peer. It +was the Colonel, as she told her children, who had carried through the +agitation for a Water Commission; who urged the Park system; who saved the +Second National Bank from failure in the panic days of ninety-three. She +knew that he might have been governor, senator, possibly vice-president, if +it had not been for his modesty and his disinclination to dip into the +muddy pool of politics. As she drove into the city on her errands she was +proudly conscious that she was the wife of the best-known private citizen, +and as such recognized by every important resident and every quick-witted +clerk in the stores where she dealt. To be plain Mrs. Ezra Price was ample +reward for all the hardship and deprivation of those beginning years! + +She was proud, too, of the fact that the money which she spent was honest +money. For the hardware merchant belonged to the class that made its +fortunes honestly, in the eye of the Law and of Society, also. Although +latterly his investments had carried him into real estate, railroads, and +banks, nevertheless it was as the seller of hardware that he wished to be +known. He was prouder of the Lion brand of tools than of all his stock +holdings. And though for many years a director in the Atlantic and Pacific +and other great corporations, he had always resolutely refused to be drawn +into the New York whirlpool; he was an American merchant and preferred to +remain such all his life rather than add a number of millions to his estate +"by playing faro in Wall Street." + +The American merchant of this sort is fast disappearing, alas! As a class +it has never held that position in the East that it had in the West. In the +older states the manufacturer and the speculator have had precedence. +Fortunes built on slaves and rum and cotton have brought more honor than +those made in groceries and dry goods. Odd snobbery of trade! But in that +broad, middle ground of the country, its great dorsal column, the merchant +found his field, after the War, to develop and civilize. The character of +those pioneers in trade, men from Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, was +such as to make them leaders. They were brave and unselfish, faithful, and +trusting of the future. With the plainest personal habits and tastes, +taking no tarnish from the luxury that rose about them, seeing things +larger than dollars on their horizon, they made the best aristocracy that +this country has seen. Their coat of arms bore the legend: Integrity and +Enterprise. + +For their fortunes were built not speculatively, but on the ancient +principles of trade, of barter between men, which is to divine needs and +satisfy them, and hence they are the only fortunes in our rich land that do +not represent, to some degree, human blood, the sacrifice of the many for +the few. They were not fattened on a protective tariff, nor dug in wild +speculation out of the earth, nor gambled into being over night on the +price of foodstuffs, nor stolen from government lands, nor made of water in +Wall Street. These merchants earned them, as the pedler earns the profit of +his pack, as the farmer reaps the harvest of his seed. They earned them by +labor and sagacity, and having them, they stood with heads erect, looking +over their world and knowing that such as it is they helped to build it. + +The day of the great merchant has already gone. Already the names of these +honorable firms are mere symbols, cloaking corporate management, trading on +the old personalities. No one saw the inevitable drift clearer than Colonel +Price. In common with his class he cherished the desire of handing on the +structure that he had built to the next generation, with the same +sign-manual over the door,--to his son and his grandson. So he had resisted +the temptation to incorporate the business and "take his profits." There +was a son to sit in his seat. The sons of the other partners would not be +fit: Starbird's only son, after a dissipated youth, was nursing himself +somewhere on the Riviera; his daughter had married an Easterner, and beyond +the quarterly check which the daughter and son received from the business, +this family no longer had a share in it. As for Parrott there was a younger +son serving somewhere in the immense establishment, but he had already +proved his amiable incapacity for responsibility. The second generation, as +the Colonel was forced to admit, was a disappointment. Somehow these +merchants had failed to transmit the iron in their blood to their children. +The sons and sons-in-law either lacked ability and grit, or were frankly +degenerate,--withered limbs! + +With the Colonel it had promised to be different; that first boy he had +left behind when he went to the War had grown up under his eye, was +saturated with the business idea. Young Ezra had preferred to leave the +military academy where he had been at school and enter the store at +eighteen. At twenty-six he had been made treasurer of the firm, only a few +months before his death.... The Colonel's thin figure bent perceptibly +after that autumn of ninety-seven. He erected a pseudo-Greek temple in +Fairview Cemetery, with the name Price cut in deep Roman letters above the +door, to hold the ashes of his son,--then devoted all his energies to +measures for sanitary reform in the city. He was a fighter, even of +death.... + +Vickers had cabled at once when the news reached him that he was sailing +for home. He and Isabelle had inherited their mother's nervous constitution +and had come later in the family fortunes. They had known only ease and +luxury, tempered as it was by their father's democratic simplicity and +their mother's plain tastes. Insensibly they had acquired the outlook of +the richer generation, the sense of freedom to do with themselves what they +pleased. Both had been sent East to school,--to what the Colonel had been +told were the best schools,--and Vickers had gone to a great university. + +There for a time the boy had tried to compete in athletics, as the one +inevitable path of ambition for an American boy at college; but realizing +soon that he was too slightly built for this field, he had drifted into +desultory reading and sketching for the college comic paper. Then a social +talent and a gift for writing music gave him the composition of the score +for the annual musical play. This was a hit, and from that time he began to +think seriously of studying music. It was agreed in the family that after +his graduation he should go abroad "to see what he could do." Ezra had +already taken his place in the hardware business, and the younger son could +be spared for the ornamental side of life, all the more as he was delicate +in health and had not shown the slightest evidence of "practical ability." +So the summer that he took his degree, a creditable degree with honors in +music, the Prices sailed for Europe to undertake one of those elaborate +tasting tours of foreign lands that well-to-do American families still +essay. In the autumn it concluded by the Colonel's establishing the family +in Munich and returning to his affairs. Vickers had been in Europe most of +the time since, living leisurely, studying, writing "little things" that +Isabelle played over for the Colonel on the piano. + + * * * * * + +Now he had come home at the family call,--an odd figure it must be +confessed in St. Louis, with his little pointed beard, and thin mustache, +his fondness for flowing neckwear and velveteen waistcoats, his little +canes and varnished boots. And he stayed on; for the family seemed to need +him, in a general way, though it was not clear to him what good he could do +to them and there were tempting reasons for returning to Rome. In spite of +the sadness of the family situation the young man could not repress his +humorous sense of the futility of all hopes built upon himself. + +"Just think of me selling nails,"--he always referred to the hardware +business as "selling nails,"--he said to his mother when she spoke to him +of the Colonel's hope that he would try to take his brother's place. "All I +know about business is just enough to draw a check if the bank will keep +the account straight. Poor Colonel! That germ ought to have got me instead +of Junior!" + +"You owe it to your father, Vick. You can't be more useless than Bob +Parrott, and your father would like to see you in the office--for a time +any way." + +Vickers refrained from saying that there was an unmentioned difference +between him and Bob Parrott. Young Parrott had never shown the desire to do +anything, except play polo; while he might,--at least he had the passion +for other things. The family, he thought, took his music very lightly, as a +kind of elegant toy that should be put aside at the first call of real +duty. Perhaps he had given them reason by his slow preparation, his waiting +on the fulness of time and his own development to produce results for the +world to see. Isabelle alone voiced a protest against this absorption of +the young man into the family business. + +"Why, he has his own life! It is too much of a sacrifice," she +remonstrated. + +"Nothing that can give your father comfort is too much of a sacrifice," +Mrs. Price replied sharply. + +"It can't last long," Isabelle said to Vickers. "The Colonel will see,--he +is generous." + +"He will see that I am no good fast enough!" + +"He will understand what you are giving up, and he is too large hearted to +want other people to do what they are not fitted to do." + +"I don't suppose that the family fortunes need my strong right arm +exactly?" the young man inquired. + +"Of course not! It's the sentiment, don't you see?" + +"Yes, of course, the sentiment for nails!" the young man accepted +whimsically. "Poor Junior did the sentiment as well as the business so +admirably, and I shall be such a hollow bluff at both, I fear." + +Nevertheless, the next morning Vickers was at breakfast on time, and when +the Colonel's motor came around at eight-thirty, he followed his father +into the hall, put on an unobtrusive black hat, selected a sober pair of +gloves, and leaving his little cane behind him took the seat beside his +father. Their neighbor in the block was getting into his brougham at the +same moment. + +"Alexander Harmon," the Colonel explained, "president of the Commercial +Trust Company." + +They passed more of the Colonel's acquaintances on their way down the +avenue, emerging from their comfortable houses for the day's work. It was +the order of an industrial society, the young man realized, in a depressed +frame of mind. He also realized, sympathetically, that he was occupying his +brother's seat in the motor, and he was sorry for the old man at his side. +The Colonel looked at him as if he were debating whether he should ask his +son to stop at a barber shop and sacrifice his pointed beard,--but he +refrained. + +Vickers had never seen the towering steel and terra-cotta building in which +the hardware business was now housed. It stood in a cloud of mist and smoke +close by the river in the warehouse district. As the car drew up before its +pillared entrance, the Colonel pointed with pride to the brass plaque +beside the door on which was engraved the architect's name. + +"Corbin did it,--you know him? They say he's the best man in America. It +was his idea to sign it, the same as they do in Paris. Pretty good +building, eh?" + +The young man threw back his head and cast a critical glance over the +twelve-story monster and again at the dwarfed classic entrance through +which was pouring just now a stream of young men. + +"Yes, Corbin is a good man," he assented vaguely, looking through the smoke +drifts down the long crowded thoroughfare, on into a mass of telegraph +wires, masts, and smokestacks, and lines of bulky freight cars. Some huge +drays were backed against the Price building receiving bundles of iron rods +that fell clanging into their place. Wagons rattled past over the uneven +pavement, and below along the river locomotives whistled. Above all was the +bass overtone of the city, swelling louder each minute with the day's work. +A picture of a fair palace in the cavernous depths of a Sienna street came +over the young man with a vivid sense of pain. Under his breath he muttered +to himself, "Fierce!" Then he glanced with compunction at the gentle old +face by his side. How had he kept so perfectly sweet, so fine in the midst +of all this welter? The Colonel was like an old Venetian lord, shrewd with +the wisdom of men, gentle with more than a woman's mercy; but the current +that flowed by his palace was not that of the Grand Canal, the winds not +those of the Levant! + +But mayhap there was a harmony in this shrill battlefield, if it could be +found.... + +Within those long double doors there was a vast open area of floor space, +dotted with iron beams, and divided economically into little plots by +screens, in each one of which was a desk with the name of its occupant on +an enamel sign. + +"The city sales department," the Colonel explained as they crossed to the +bank of shooting elevators. The Colonel was obliged to stop and speak and +shake hands with many men, mostly in shirt sleeves, with hats on their +heads, smoking cigars or pipes. They all smiled when they caught sight of +the old man's face, and when he stopped to shake hands with some one, the +man's face shone with pride. It was plain enough that the "old man" was +popular with his employees. The mere handshake that he gave had something +instinctively human and kind in it. He had a little habit of kneading +gently the hand he held, of clinging to it a trifle longer than was needed. +Every one of the six or seven hundred men in the building knew that the +head of the business was at heart a plain man like themselves, who had +never forgotten the day he sold his first bill of goods, and respected all +his men each in his place as a man. They knew his "record" as a merchant +and were proud of it. They thought him a "big man." Were he to drop out, +they were convinced the business would run down, as if the main belt had +slipped from the great fly-wheel of the machine shop. All the other +"upstairs" men, as the firm members and managers of departments were +called, were nonentities beside "our Colonel," the "whole thing," "it," as +he was affectionately described. + +So the progress to the elevators was slow, for the Colonel stopped to +introduce his son to every man whose desk they passed or whose eye he +caught. + +"My boy, Vickers, Mr. Slason--Mr. Slason is our credit man, Vick--you'll +know him better soon.... Mr. Jameson, just a moment, please; I want you to +meet this young man!" + +"If he's got any of your blood in him, Colonel, he's all right," a beefy, +red-faced man jerked out, chewing at an unlighted cigar and looking Vickers +hard in the face. + +Even the porters had to be introduced. It was a democratic advance! But +finally they reached the "upstairs" quarters, where in one corner was the +Colonel's private den, partitioned off from the other offices by ground +glass,--a bare space with a little old black walnut desk, a private safe, +and a set of desk telephones. Here Vickers stood looking down at the +turmoil of traffic in the street below, while his father glanced over a +mass of telegrams and memoranda piled on his desk. + +The roar of business that had begun to rumble through the streets at +daybreak and was now approaching its meridian stunned the young man's +nerves. Deadened by the sound of it all, he could not dissociate from the +volume that particular note, which would be his note, and live oblivious to +the rest.... So this was business! And what a feeble reed he was with which +to prop it! Visions of that other life came thronging to his mind,--the +human note of other cities he had learned to love, the placid hours of +contemplation, visions of things beautiful in a world of joy! Humorously he +thought of the hundreds of thousands of dollars this busy hive earned each +year. A minute fraction of its profits would satisfy him, make him richer +than all of it. And he suspected that the thrifty Colonel had much more +wealth stored away in that old-fashioned iron safe. What was the use of +throwing himself into this great machine? It would merely grind the soul +out of him and spit him forth. + +To keep it going,--that was the reason for sacrificing his youth, his +desire. But why keep the thing going? Pride, sentiment? He did not know the +Colonel's feeling of fatherhood towards all the men who worked for him, his +conviction that in this enterprise which he had created, all these human +beings were able to live happier lives because of him, his leadership. +There was poetry in the old man, and imagination. But the young man, with +his eyes filled with those other--more brilliant--glories, saw only the +grime, heard only the dull roar of the wheels that turned out a meaningless +flood of gold, like an engine contrived to supply desires and reap its +percentage of profits. + +"Father!" he cried involuntarily. + +Hot words of protest were in his throat. Let some other young man be found +to run the machine; or let them make a corporation of it and sell it in the +market. Or close the doors, its work having been done. But give him his +life, and a few dollars! + +"Eh, Vick? Hungry? We'll go over to the club for luncheon in just a +minute." And the old Colonel smiled affectionately at his son over his +glasses. + +"Not now--not just yet," Vickers said to himself, with a quick rush of +comprehension. + +But the "now" never seemed to come, the right moment for delivering the +blow, through all those months that followed, while the young man was +settling into his corner of the great establishment. When the mother or +Isabelle confessed their doubts to the Colonel, the old man would say:-- + +"It will do him no harm, a little of it. He'll know how to look after your +money, mother, when I am gone." And he added, "It's making a man of him, +you'll see!" + +There was another matter, little suspected by the Colonel, that was rapidly +to make a man of his engaging young son. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +When Vickers Price raised his eyes from his desk and, losing for the moment +the clattering note of business that surged all around him, looked through +dusky panes into the cloud of mist and smoke, visions rose before him that +were strange to the smoky horizon of the river city.... + +From the little balcony of his room on the Pincio, all Rome lay spread +before him,--Rome smiling under the blue heaven of an April morning! The +cypresses in the garden pointed to a cloudless sky. Beyond the city roofs, +where the domes of churches rose like little islands, was the green band of +the Janiculum, and farther southwards the river cut the city and was lost +behind the Aventine. And still beyond the Campagna reached to the hills +about Albano. + +Beneath he could see the Piazza del Popolo, with a line of tiny cabs +standing lazily in the sunlight, and just below the balcony was a garden +where a fountain poured softly, night and day. Brilliant balls of colored +fruit hung from the orange trees, glossy against the yellow walls of the +palazzo across the garden. From the steep street on the other side of the +wall rose the thin voice of a girl, singing a song of the mountains, with a +sad note of ancient woe, and farther away in the city sounded the hoarse +call of a pedler.... This was not the Rome of the antiquary, not the tawdry +Rome of the tourist. It was the Rome of sunshine and color and music, the +Rome of joy, of youth! And the young man, leaning there over the iron +railing, his eyes wandering up and down the city at his feet, drank deep of +the blessed draught,--the beauty and the joy of it, the spirit of youth and +romance in his heart.... + +From some one of the rooms behind a neighboring balcony floated a woman's +voice, swelling into a full contralto note, then sinking low and sweet into +brooding contemplation. After a time Vickers went to his work, trying to +forget the golden city outside the open window, but when the voice he had +heard burst forth joyously outside, he looked up and saw the singer +standing on her balcony, shading her eyes with a hand, gazing out over the +city, her voice breaking forth again and again in scattered notes, as +though compelled by the light and the joy of it all. She was dressed in a +loose black morning gown that rippled in the breeze over her figure. She +clasped her hands above her bronze-colored hair, the action revealing the +pure white tint of neck and arms, the well-knit body of small bones. She +stood there singing to herself softly, the note of spring and Rome in her +voice. Still singing she turned into her room, and Vickers could hear her, +as she moved back and forth, singing to herself. And as he hung brooding +over Rome, listening to the gurgle of the fountain in the garden, he often +listened to this contralto voice echoing the spirit within him.... +Sometimes a little girl came out on the balcony to play. + +"Are you English?" she asked the young man one day. + +"No, American, like you, eh?" Vickers replied. + +They talked, and presently the little girl running back into the room spoke +to some one: "There is a nice man out there, mother. He says he's American, +too." Vickers could not hear what the woman said in reply.... + +The child made them friends. Mrs. Conry, Vickers learned, was his +neighbor's name, and she was taking lessons in singing, preparing herself, +he gathered, for professional work,--a widow, he supposed, until he heard +the little girl say one day, "when we go home to father,--we are going +home, mother, aren't we? Soon?" And when the mother answered something +unintelligible, the little girl with a child's subtle tact was silent.... + +This woman standing there on the balcony above the city,--all gold and +white and black, save for the gray eyes, the curving lines of her supple +body,--this was what he saw of Europe,--all outside those vivid Roman weeks +that he shared with her fading into a vague background. Together they +tasted the city,--its sunny climbing streets, its white squares, and dark +churches, the fields beyond the Colosseum, the green Campagna, the vivid +mornings, the windless moonlight nights! All without this marvellous +circle, this charmed being of Rome, had the formlessness of a distant +planet. Here life began and closed, and neither wished to know what the +other had been in the world behind. + +That she was from some Southern state,--"a little tiny place near the Gulf, +far from every civilized thing," Mrs. Conry told him; and it was plain +enough that she was meagrely educated,--there had been few advantages in +that "tiny place." But her sensuous temperament was now absorbing all that +it touched. Rome meant little to her beyond the day's charm, the music it +made in her heart; while the man vibrated to every association, every +memory of the laden city.... + +Thus the days and weeks slipped by until the gathering heat warned them of +the passing of time. One June day that promised to be fresh and cool they +walked through the woods above the lake of Albano. Stacia Conry hummed the +words of a song that Vickers had written and set to music, one of a cycle +they had planned for her to sing--the Songs of the Cities. This was the +song of Rome, and in it Vickers had embedded the sad strain that the girl +sang coming up the street,--the cry of the past. + +"That is too high for me," she said, breaking off. "And it is melancholy. I +hate sad things. It reminds me of that desolate place at the end of the +earth where I came from." + +"All the purest music has a strain of sadness," Vickers protested. + +"No, no; it has longing, passion! ... I escaped!" She looked down on the +cuplike lake, shimmering in the sun below. "I knew in my heart that _this_ +lived, this world of sunshine and beauty and joy. I thirsted for it. Now I +drink it!" + +She turned on him her gray eyes, which were cool in spite of her emotion. +She had begun again the song in a lower key, when at a turn in the path +they came upon a little wooden shrine, one of those wayside altars still +left in a land where religion has been life. Before the weather-stained +blue-and-red madonna knelt a strangely mediaeval figure,--a man wasted and +bare-headed, with long hair falling matted over his eyes. An old sheepskin +coat came to his bare knees. Dirty, forlorn, leaning wearily on his +pilgrim's staff, the man was praying before the shrine, his lips moving +silently. + +"What a figure!" Vickers exclaimed in a low voice, taking from his pocket a +little camera. As he tiptoed ahead of Mrs. Conry to get his picture before +the pilgrim should rise, he saw the intense yearning on the man's face. +Beckoning to his companion, Vickers put the camera into his pocket and +passed on, Mrs. Conry following, shrinking to the opposite side of the way, +a look of aversion on her mobile face. + +"Why didn't you take him?" she asked as they turned the corner of the road. + +"He was praying,--and he meant it," Vickers answered vaguely. + +The woman's lips curved in disgust at the thought of the dirty pilgrim on +his knees by the roadside. + +"Only the weak pray! I hate that sort of thing,--prayer and penitence." + +"Perhaps it is the only real thing in life," Vickers replied from some +unknown depth within him. + +"No, no! How can you say that? You who know what life can be. Never! That +is what they tried to teach me at school. But I did not believe it. I +escaped. I wanted to sing. I wanted my own life." She became grave, and +added under her breath: "And I shall get it. That is best, best, best!" She +broke into a run down the sun-flecked road, and they emerged breathless in +an olive orchard beside the lake. Her body panted as she threw herself down +on the grass. "Now!" she smiled, her skin all rose; "can you say that?" And +her voice chanted, "To live,--my friend,--to LIVE! And you and I are made +to live,--isn't it so?" + +The artist in Vickers, the young man of romance, his heart tender with +sentiment, responded to the creed. But woven with the threads of this +artist temperament were other impulses that stirred. The pilgrim in the act +of penitence and ecstatic devotion was beautiful, too, and real,--ah, very +real, as he was to know.... + +They supped that afternoon in a little wine shop looking towards the great +dome swimming above Rome. And as the sun shot level and golden over the +Campagna, lighting the old, gray tombs, they drove back to the city along +the ancient Latin road. The wonderful plain, the most human landscape in +the world, began to take twilight shadows. Rome hung, in a mist of sun, +like a mirage in the far distance, and between them and the city flowed the +massive arches of an aqueduct, and all about were the crumbling tombs, half +hidden by the sod. The carriage rolled monotonously onwards. The woman's +eyes nearly closed; she looked dreamily out through the white lids, fringed +with heavy auburn lashes. She still hummed from time to time the old +refrain of Vickers's song. Thus they returned, hearing the voice of the old +world in its peculiar hour. + +"I am glad that I have had it--that I have lived--a little. This, this!--I +can sing to-night! You must come and sit on my balcony and look at the +stars while I sing to you--the music of the day." + +As the Porta San Paolo drew near, Vickers remarked:-- + +"I shall write you a song of Venice,--that is the music for you." + +"Venice, and Paris, and Vienna, and Rome,--all! I love them all!" + +She reached her arms to the great cities of the earth, seeing herself in +triumph, singing to multitudes the joy of life.... "Come to-night,--I will +sing for you!"... + +On the porter's table at the hotel lay a thick letter for Mrs. Conry. It +bore the printed business address,--THE CONRY CONSTRUCTION COMPANY. Mrs. +Conry took it negligently in her white hand. "You will come later?" she +said, smiling back at the young man. + + * * * * * + +Sitting crowded in front of Arragno's and sipping a liqueur, Fosdick +remarked to Vickers: "So you have run across the Conry? Of course I know +her. I saw her in Munich the first time. The little girl still with her? +Then it was Vienna.... She's got as far as Rome! Been over here two or +three years studying music. Pretty-good voice, and a better figure. Oh, +Stacia is much of a siren." + +Vickers moved uneasily and in reply to a question Fosdick continued:-- + +"Widow--grass widow--properly linked--who knows? Our pretty country-women +have such a habit of trotting around by themselves for their own +delectation that you never can tell how to place them. She may be +divorced--she may be the other thing! You can't tell. But she is a very +handsome woman."... + +Mrs. Conry herself told Vickers the facts, as they sat at a little +restaurant on the Aventine where they loved to go to watch the night steal +across the Palatine. + +"... He offered me my education--my chance. I took it. I went to the +conservatory at Cincinnati. Then he wanted to marry me, and promised to +send me abroad to study more."... Her tone was dry, impartially recounting +the fact. Then her eyes dropped, and Vickers's cigarette glowed between +them as they leaned across the little iron table.... "I was a child +then--did not know anything. I married him. The first years business was +poor, and he could not let me have the money. When times got better, he let +me come--kept his promise. I have been here nearly three years, back two or +three times. And now," her voice dropped, "I must go back for good--soon." + +Nothing more. But it seemed to Vickers as if a ghost had risen from the +river mist and come to sit between them. That the woman was paying a price +for her chance, a heavy price, he could see. They walked back to the city +between the deserted vineyards. As they crossed the river, Mrs. Conry +stopped, and remarked sombrely, "A bargain is a bargain the world over, is +it not?" + +Vickers felt the warm breathing woman close to him, felt her brooding eyes. +"One pays," he murmured, "I suppose!" + +She threw up her hand in protest, and they walked on into the lighted city. + + * * * * * + +Occasionally Fosdick joined their excursions, and after one of them he said +to Vickers:-- + +"My friend, she is wonderful; more so every time I see her. But beneath +that soft, rounded body, with its smooth white skin, is something hard. Oh, +I know the eyes and the hair and the throat and the voice! I, too, am a +man. Paint her, if you like, or set her to music. She is for _bel canto_ +and moonlight and the voice of Rome. But there is a world outside this all, +my friend, to which you and I belong, and _you_ rather more than I.... +Stacia Conry doesn't belong at all." + +"Which means?" demanded Vickers steadily of the burly Fosdick. + +"Take care that you don't get stuck in the sea of Sargasso. I think +something bitter might rise out of all that loveliness." + +Nevertheless, instead of going to the Maloya with Fosdick, Vickers stayed +on in Rome, and September found him there and Mrs. Conry, too, having +returned to the city from the mountain resort, where she had left the +little girl with her governess. They roamed the deserted city, and again +began to work on the songs which Mrs. Conry hoped to give in concerts on +her return to America. Very foolish of the young man, and the woman, thus +to prolong the moment of charm, to linger in the Sargasso Sea! But at least +with the man, the feeling that kept him in Rome those summer months was +pure and fine, the sweetest and the best that man may know, where he gives +of his depths with no thought of reward, willing to accept the coming +pain.... Little Delia, who had seen quite as much of Vickers as her mother, +said to him the day she left with her governess:-- + +"We're going home soon--before Thanksgiving. I'm so glad! And you'll be +there, too?" + +"I suppose not, Delia," the young man replied. But as it happened he was +the first to go back.... + +That late September day they had returned from a ramble in the hills. It +was nearly midnight when the cab rattled up the deserted streets to their +hotel. As Vickers bade his companion good-night, with some word about a +long-projected excursion to Volterra, she said:-- + +"Come in and I will sing for a while. I don't feel like sleep.... Yes, +come! Perhaps it will be the last of all our good times." + +In the large dark apartment the night wind was drawing over the roofs of +the hill through the open windows, fluttering stray sheets of music along +the stone floor. Mrs. Conry lighted a candle on the piano, and throwing +aside her hat and veil, dropping her gloves on the floor, struck some heavy +chords. She sang the song they had been working over, the song of Venice, +with a swaying melody as of floating water-grasses. Then she plunged into a +throbbing aria,--singing freely, none too accurately, but with a passion +and self-forgetfulness which promised greater things than the concert +performer. From this on to other snatches of opera, to songs, wandering as +the mood took her, coming finally to the street song that Vickers had woven +into his composition for Rome, with its high, sad note. There her voice +stopped, died in a cry half stifled in the throat, and leaving the piano +she came to the window. A puff of wind blew out the candle. With the +curtains swaying in the night wind, they stood side by side looking down +into the dark city, dotted irregularly with points of light, and up above +the Janiculum to the shining stars. + +"Rome, Rome," she murmured, and the words sighed past the young man's +ears,--"and life--LIFE!" + +It was life that was calling them, close together, looking forth into the +night, their hearts beating, the longing to grasp it, to go out alone into +the night for it. Freedom, and love, and life,--they beckoned! Vickers saw +her eyes turn to him in the dark.... + +"And now I go," he said softly. He found his way to the door in the dark +salon, and as he turned he saw her white figure against the swaying +curtain, and felt her eyes following him. + +In his room he found the little blue despatch, sent up from his banker, +which announced his brother's death, and the next morning he left by the +early express for the north to catch the Cherbourg boat. As he passed Mrs. +Conry's salon he slipped under the door the despatch with a note, which +ended, "I know that we shall see each other again, somewhere, somehow!" and +from the piazza he sent back an armful of great white _fleur-de-lys_. Later +that morning, while Vickers was staring at the vintage in the Umbrian +Valley and thinking of the woman all white and bronze with the gray eyes, +Mrs. Conry was reading his note. A bitter smile curved her lips, as she +gathered up the white flowers and laid them on the piano. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +One winter day while Vickers Price was "selling nails," as he still +expressed his business career, there came in his mail a queer little +scrawl, postmarked Pittsburg. It was from Delia Conry, and it ran:-- + +"We've been home a month. We live in a hotel. I don't like it. The bird you +gave me died. Mother says she'll get me a new one. I wish I could see you. +Love from Delia." + +But not a word from Mrs. Conry! Fosdick, drifting through Rome on his way +to Turkestan, wrote:-- + +"... What has become of the Conry? She has disappeared from the cities of +Europe with her melodious songs and beautiful hair. Are you touring the +States with her? Or has she rediscovered Mr. Conry--for a period of +seclusion? ... To think of you serving hardware to the barbarians across +the counter enlivens my dull moments. From the Sargasso Sea to St. +Louis,--there is a leap for you, my dear."... + +While he "served hardware to the barbarians" and in other respects +conformed to the life of a privileged young American gentleman, Vickers +Price dreamed of those Roman days, the happiest of his life. If that night +they two had taken life in their hands? ... Could the old Colonel have read +his son's heart,--if from the pinnacle of his years filled with ripe deeds +he could have comprehended youth,--he might have been less sure that the +hardware business was to be "the making of Vick"! + +What had come to her? Had she accepted her lot, once back in the groove of +fate, or had she rebelled, striking out for her own vivid desire of joy and +song, of fame? Vickers would have liked to hear that she had rebelled, was +making her own life,--had taken the other road than the one he had accepted +for himself. His tender, idealizing heart could not hold a woman to the +sterner courses of conduct. + +For, as Fosdick had told him in Rome, the young man was a Sentimentalist +with no exact vision of life. His heart was perpetually distorting whatever +his mind told him was fact. This woman, with her beauty, her love of music, +had touched him at the lyric moment of life, when reality was but the +unstable foundation for dream. Life as might be, glowing, colored, and +splendid,--life as it was within him, not as this hideous maelstrom all +about him reported. And why not the I, the I! cried the spirit of youth, +the egotistic spirit of the age. For all reply there was the bent, gray +head of the Colonel at his desk in the office beside him. "One sentiment +against another," Fosdick might say.... + +Finally Stacia Conry wrote, a little note: she was to be in St. Louis on +the fourteenth for a short time and hoped that he would call on her at the +hotel. A perfectly proper, colorless little note, written in an unformed +hand, with a word or two misspelled,--the kind of note that gave no +indication of the writer, but seemed like the voice of a stranger. However, +as Vickers reflected, literary skill, the power to write personal little +notes did not go necessarily with a talent for music--or for life. Nannie +Lawton wrote intimate notes, and other women, single and married, whom +Vickers had come to know these past months. But their cleverest phrases +could not stir his pulses as did this crude production. + +The woman who was waiting for him in the little hotel parlor, however, gave +him a curious shock,--she was so different in her rich street costume from +the woman in black and white, whose picture had grown into his memory. She +seemed older, he thought, thus accounting for that strange idealizing power +of the mind to select from a face what that face has specially given it and +create an altogether new being, with its own lineaments graven in place of +actual bone and tissue. It takes time to correct this ideal misreport of +the soul, to accept the fact! Except for the one glance from the gray eyes +which she gave him as they shook hands, Stacia Conry did not stir the past. +But she was voluble of the present. + +"You did not expect this! You see my husband had some work to attend to +near here, and I thought I would come with him.... No, we left Delia in +Pittsburg with his mother,--she wanted to see you, but she would be in the +way." + +They came soon to her singing, and her face clouded. + +"I haven't been able to get an opening. I wanted to sing the Cycle with an +orchestra. But I haven't succeeded,--our Pittsburg orchestra won't look at +any talent purely domestic. It is all pull over here. I haven't any +influence.... You must start with some backing,--sing in private houses for +great people! We don't know that kind, you see." + +"And concerts?" Vickers inquired. + +"The same way,--to get good engagements you must have something to show.... +I've sung once or twice,--in little places, church affairs and that kind of +thing." + +Vickers laughed as Mrs. Conry's expressive lips curled. + +"They tell you to take everything to begin with. But singing for church +sociables in Frankfort and Alleghany,--that doesn't do much! I want to go +to New York,--I know people there, but--" + +Vickers understood that Mr. Conry objected. + +"It must come sometime," she said vehemently; "only waiting is killing. It +takes the life out of you, the power, don't you think?" + +"Could you sing here?" Vickers asked,--"now, I mean? I might be able to +arrange it." + +"Oh, if you could!" Mrs. Conry's face glowed, and her fingers played +nervously with her long chain. "If I could give the Cycle with your +accompaniment, here in St. Louis where you are so well known--" + +Vickers smiled at the picture of his debut in St. Louis drawing-rooms. + +"I will ask my sister to help," he said. "I should like her to call." + +Mrs. Conry became suddenly animated, as if after a period of depressing +darkness she saw a large ray of sunshine. She had thought of possibilities +when she had persuaded her husband to take her to St. Louis, but had not +expected them to develop at once. + +"You see," she continued quickly, "if I can get a hearing here, it means +that other people may want me,--I'll become known, a little." + +"My mother couldn't have it," Vickers explained, "nor my sister, because of +our mourning. But Mrs. Lawton,--that would be better any way." He thought +of Nannie Lawton's love of _reclame_, and he knew that though she would +never have considered inviting the unheralded Mrs. Conry to sing in her +drawing-room, she would gladly have _him_ appear there with any one, +playing his own music. + +"Yes, we'll put it through! The Songs of the Cities." He repeated the words +with sentimental visions of the hours of their composition. + +"And then I have some more,--Spanish songs. They take, you know! And +folk-songs." Mrs. Conry talked on eagerly of her ambitions until Vickers +left, having arranged for Isabelle to call the next day. As he took his way +to the Lawtons' to use his influence with the volatile Nan in behalf of +Mrs. Conry, his memory of their talk was sad. 'America, that's it,' he +explained. 'She wants to do something for herself, to get her +independence.' And he resolved to leave no stone unturned, no influence +unused, to gratify her ambition. + +So Isabelle called on Mrs. Conry in company with Nannie Lawton. Vickers +little knew what an ordeal the woman he loved was passing through in this +simple affair. A woman may present no difficulties to the most fastidiously +bred man, and yet be found wanting in a thousand particulars by the women +of his social class. As the two emerged from the hotel, Isabelle looked +dubiously at Mrs. Lawton. + +"Queer, isn't she?" that frank lady remarked. "Oh, she's one of those stray +people you run across in Europe. Perhaps she can sing all right, though I +don't care. The men will be crazy after her,--she's the kind,--red hair and +soft skin and all that.... Better look out for that young brother of yours, +Isabelle. She is just the one to nab our innocent Vickie." + +Isabelle's report of her call had some reserves. + +"Of course she is very striking, Vick. But, you see,--she--she isn't +exactly our kind!" + +"That is Nan," the young man retorted impatiently. "I never heard you say +that sort of thing before. What on earth is 'our kind'? She is beautiful +and has talent, a lot of it,--all she wants is her chance. And why +shouldn't she have it?" + +Isabelle smiled at his heat, and replied caressingly:-- + +"She shall have all that Nan and I can do for her here. But don't be +foolish about her. I suspect you could be with a woman--because of your +dear old heart.... If she can't sing a note, she'll make a hit with her +looks, Nan says!" + +So the musicale was arranged. There were mostly women in Mrs. Lawton's +smart little music room when Mrs. Conry rose to sing a series of +introductory songs. She was very striking, as Isabelle and Mrs. Lawton had +foreseen that she would be,--rather bizarrely dressed in a white and gold +costume that she had designed herself, with a girdle of old stones strung +loosely about her waist. She was nervous and sang uncertainly at first so +that Vickers had to favor her in his accompaniment. He could see the +trembling of her white arm beside him. The Cycle of the Cities came near +the end of the programme, and when Vickers took his seat to play the +accompaniments, he was aware that a number of men had arrived and were +standing in the hall, peering through the doors at the performance. He knew +well enough what the men were thinking of him, sitting there playing his +own songs,--that it was a queer, monkey performance for the son of Colonel +Price! The fine arts are duly recognized in American cities; but the +commercial class, as always has been its wont, places them in a category +between millinery and theology. + +She had chosen _Paris_ to open with, and gave the song with assurance, +eliciting especially from the men in the hall the first real applause. Then +followed _Vienna, Munich_. She was singing well, gaining confidence. When +it came to _Venice_,--Vickers remembered as he followed her swimming voice +the twilight over the Campagna, the approaching mass of Rome,--even the +women woke to something like enthusiasm. As she uttered the first note of +_Rome_, she glanced down at Vickers, with a little smile, which said:-- + +"Do you remember? This is _ours_,--I am singing this for you!" + +Her face was flushed and happy. She sang the difficult music as she had +sung that last night in Rome, and Vickers, listening to the full voice so +close to him, heard again the high sad note of the street singer, in the +golden spring day, uttering this ancient melody of tears,--only this time +it was woven with laughter and joy. When she finished, he sought her eyes; +but Mrs. Conry was sweeping the gathering with a restless glance, thinking +of her encore.... + +Afterwards the women said agreeable things about Vickers's music, +especially the _Paris_ and the _Venice_. About Mrs. Conry they said that +her voice was good, "somewhat uncultivated," "too loud for drawing-room +music,"--safe criticisms. The men said little about the music, but they +clustered around the singer. Mrs. Lawton looked significantly at Isabelle +and winked. One old gentleman, something of a beau as well as a successful +lawyer, congratulated Vickers on his "tuneful" music. "It must be a +pleasant avocation to write songs," he said.... + +They dined at the Lawtons', and afterwards Vickers took Mrs. Conry to the +hotel. She was gay with the success she had had, the impression she had +made on the men. + +"Something'll come of this, I am sure. Do you think they liked me?" + +"You sang well," Vickers replied evasively, "better than well, the _Rome_." + +In the lobby of the hotel she turned as though to dismiss him, but Vickers, +who was talking of a change to be made in one of the songs, accompanied her +to the parlor above, where they had practised the music in preparation for +the concert. Mrs. Conry glanced quickly into the room as they entered, as +if expecting to find some one there. Vickers was saying:-- + +"I think we shall have to add another one to the Cycle,--_New York_ or +something to stand for--well, what it is over here,--just living!" + +The door of the inner room opened and a man appeared, coatless, with a +much-flowered waistcoat. + +"So you're back," the man remarked in a heavy voice. + +"My husband," Mrs. Conry explained, "Mr. Vickers Price!" + +Mr. Conry shuffled heavily into the room. He was a large man with a big +grizzled head and very red face, finely chased with purple veins. He gave +Vickers a stubby hand. + +"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Price. Heard about you from Delia. Sit down." +Conry himself stood, swaying slightly on his stout legs. After a time he +chose a seat with great deliberation and continued to stare at the young +man. "Have a cigar?" He took one from his waistcoat pocket and held it +towards the young man. "It's a good one,--none of your barroom smokes,--oh, +I see you are one of those cigarette fiends, same as Stacia!" + +There was a conversational hiatus, and Vickers was thinking of going. + +"Well, how was the show?" Conry demanded of his wife. "Did you sing +good,--make a hit with the swells? She thinks she wants to sing," he +explained with a wink to Vickers, "but I tell her she's after +sassiety,--that's what the women want; ain't it so?" + +"Mrs. Conry sang very well indeed," Vickers remarked in default of better, +and rose to leave. + +"Don't go,--what's your hurry? Have something to drink? I got some in there +you don't see every day in the week, young man. A racing friend of mine +from Kentuck sends it to me. What's yours, Stacy?" ... + +When the young man departed, Stacia Conry stared at the door through which +he had disappeared, with a dead expression that had something disagreeable +in it. Conry, who had had his drink, came back to the parlor and began to +talk. + +"I went to a show myself to-night, seeing you were amusing yourself.... +There was a girl there who danced and sang,--you'd oughter seen her.... +Well, what are you sittin' staring at? Ain't you coming to bed?" + +His wife rose from her seat, exclaiming harshly, "Let me alone!" And Conry, +with a half-sober scrutiny of the woman, who had flung herself face down on +the lounge, mumbled:-- + +"Singing don't seem to agree with you. Well, I kept my word; gave you the +money to educate yourself." ... + +"And I have paid you!" the wife flashed. "God, I have paid!" + +The man stumbled off to bed. + + * * * * * + +Vickers, on leaving the hotel, walked home in the chill night, a sickening +sensation in his heart. If he had been a shrewd young man, he might have +foreseen the somewhat boozy Mr. Conry, the vulgar setting of the woman he +loved. If there had been the least thing base in him, he might have +welcomed it, for his own uses. But being a sentimentalist and simple in +nature, the few moments of intercourse with Mr. Conry had come like a +revelation to him. This was what she had sold herself to for her education. +This was what she was tied to! And this what she sought to escape from by +her music, to place herself and her child beyond the touch of that man! + +Vickers in his disgust overlooked the fact that little Delia seemed to love +her father, and that though Conry might not be to his taste, he might also +be a perfectly worthy citizen, given occasionally to liquor. But love and +youth and the idealizing temperament make few allowances. To give her that +freedom which her beauty and her nature craved, he would do what he could, +and he searched his memory for names and persons of influence in the +professional world of music. He had the fragments of a score for an opera +that he had scarce looked at since he had begun "to sell nails"; but +to-night he took it from the drawer and ran it over,--"Love Among the +Ruins,"--and as he went to sleep he saw Stacia Conry singing as she had +sung that last night in Rome, singing the music of his opera, success and +fame at her feet.... + +The something that Mrs. Conry hoped for did come from that introduction at +the Lawtons'. The wife of one of those men she had charmed called on her +and invited her to sing "those pleasant little songs Mr. Price wrote for +you" (with Mr. Price's appearance, of course!). And several women, who were +anxious to be counted as of the Lawton set, hastened to engage Mrs. Conry +to sing at their houses, with the same condition. Vickers understood the +meaning of this condition and disliked the position, but consented in his +desire to give Mrs. Conry every chance in his power. Others understood the +situation, and disliked it,--among them Isabelle. Nannie Lawton threw at +her across a dinner-table the remark: "When is Vick going to offer his +'Love Among the Ruins'? Mrs. Conry is the 'ruins,' I suppose!" + +And the musicales, in spite of all that Vickers could do, were only +moderately successful. In any community, the people who hunt the latest +novelty are limited in number, and that spring there arrived a Swedish +portrait painter and an Antarctic traveller to push the beautiful singer +from the centre of attention. So after the first weeks the engagements +became farther spaced and less desirable, less influential. Mrs. Conry +still stayed at the hotel, though her husband had been called to another +city on a contract he had undertaken. She realized that her debut had not +been brilliant, but she clung to the opportunity, in the hope that +something would come of it. And naturally enough Vickers saw a good deal of +her; not merely the days they appeared together, but almost every day he +found an excuse for dropping in at the hotel, to play over some music, to +take her to ride in his new motor, which he ran himself, or to dine with +her. Mrs. Conry was lonely. After Isabelle went to California for her +health, she saw almost no one. The women she met at her engagements found +her "not our kind," and Nan Lawton's witticism about "the ruins" and +Vickers did not help matters. Vickers saw the situation and resented it. +This loneliness and disappointment were bad for her. She worked at her +music in a desultory fashion, dawdled over novels, and smoked too many +cigarettes for the good of her voice. She seemed listless and discouraged. +Vickers redoubled his efforts to have her sing before a celebrated manager, +who was coming presently to the city with an opera company. + +'She sees no way, no escape,' he said to himself. 'One ray of hope, and she +would wake to what she was in Europe!' + +In his blind, sentimental devotion, he blamed the accidents of life for her +disappointment, not the woman herself. When he came, she awoke, and it was +an unconscious joy to him, this power he had to rouse her from her apathy, +to make her become for the time the woman he always saw just beneath the +surface, eager to emerge if life would but grant her the chance. + +His own situation had changed with the growing year. The Colonel, closely +watching "the boy," was coming gradually to comprehend the sacrifice that +he had accepted, all the more as Vickers never murmured but kept steadily +at his work. Before Isabelle left for California, she spoke plainly to her +father:-- + +"What's the use, Colonel! No matter how he tries, Vick can never be like +you,--and why should he be any way?" + +"It won't have done any harm," the old man replied dubiously. "We'll see!" + +First he made his son independent of salary or allowance by giving him a +small fortune in stocks and bonds. Then one day, while Mrs. Conry was still +in the city, he suggested that Vickers might expect a considerable vacation +in the summer. "You can go to Europe and write something," he remarked, in +his simple faith that art could be laid down or resumed at will. Vickers +smiled, but did not grasp the opportunity eagerly. When he told Mrs. Conry +that afternoon of the proposed "vacation," she exclaimed enviously:-- + +"I knew you would go back!" + +"I am not sure that I shall go." + +She said perfunctorily: "Of course you must go--will you go back to Rome? I +shall be so glad to think you are doing what you want to do." + +He turned the matter off with a laugh:-- + +"The dear old boy thinks two months out of a year is long enough to give to +composing an opera. It's like fishing,--a few weeks now and then if you can +afford it!" + +"But you wouldn't have to stay here at all, if you made up your mind not +to," she remarked with a touch of hardness. "They'll give you what you +want." + +"I am not sure that I want it," he replied slowly, "at the price." + +She looked at him uncomprehendingly, then perceiving another meaning in his +words, lowered her eyes. She was thinking swiftly, 'If we could both go!' +But he was reflecting rather bitterly on that new wealth which his father +had given him, the dollars piling up to his credit, not one of which he +might use as he most dearly desired to use them--for her! With all this +power within his easy reach he could not stretch forth his hand to save a +human soul. For thus he conceived the woman's need. + +It came to Mrs. Conry's last engagement,--the last possible excuse for her +lingering in the city. It was a suburban affair, and the place was +difficult to reach. Vickers had invited the Falkners to go with them, to +prevent gossip, and Bessie willingly accepted as a spree, though she had +confided to Isabelle that "Mrs. Conry was dreadful ordinary," "not half +good enough for our adorable Vickers to _afficher_ himself with." +Nevertheless, she was very sweet to the beautiful Mrs. Conry, as was +Bessie's wont to be with pretty nearly all the world. It was late on their +return, and the Falkners left them at the station. With the sense that +to-night they must part, they walked slowly towards the hotel, then stopped +at a little German restaurant for supper. They looked at each other across +the marble-top table without speaking. The evening had been a depressing +conclusion to the concert season they had had together. And that morning +Vickers had found it impossible to arrange a meeting for Mrs. Conry with +the director of a famous orchestra, who happened to be in the city. + +"You must go to-morrow?" Vickers asked at last. "I may get a reply from +Moller any day." + +Mrs. Conry looked at him out of her gray eyes, as if she were thinking many +things that a woman might think but could not say, before she replied +slowly:-- + +"My husband's coming back to-morrow--to get me." As Vickers said nothing, +she continued, slowly shaking the yellow wine in her glass until it +circled,--"And it's no use--I'm not good enough for Moller--and you know +it. I must have more training, more experience." + +Vickers did know it, but had not let himself believe it. + +"My little struggle does not matter,--I'm only a woman--and must do as most +women do.... Perhaps, who knows! the combination may change some day, +and--" she glanced fearlessly at him--"we shall all do as we want in +another world!" + +Then she looked at her watch. It was very late, and the tired waiters stood +leaning listlessly against their tables. + +"I am tired," she said at last. "Will you call a cab, please?" + +They drove silently down the empty boulevard. A mist came through the cab +window, touching her hair with fine points. Her hand lay close to his. + +"How happy we were in Rome! Rome!" she looked out into the dark night, and +there were tears in her eyes. "You have been very good to me, dear friend. +Sometime I shall sing to you again, to you alone. Now good-by." ... + +His hand held hers, while his heart beat and words rose clamorously to his +lips,--the words of rebellion, of protest and love, the words of youth. But +he said nothing,--it was better that they should part without a spoken +word,--better for her and better for him. His feeling for her, compact of +tenderness, pity, and belief, had never been tested by any clear light. She +was not his; and beyond that fact he had never looked. + +So the carriage rolled on while the two sat silent with beating hearts, and +as it approached the hotel he quickly bent his head and kissed the hand +that was in his. + +"Come to-morrow," she whispered, "in the morning,--once more." + +"No," he said simply; "I can't. You know why." + +As Vickers stepped out of the cab he recognized Conry. The contractor had +been looking up and down the street, and had started to walk away, but +turned at the sound of the carriage wheels and came over towards them. +Something in his appearance, the slouch hat pulled forward over his face, +the quick jerky step, suggested that he had been drinking. Vickers with a +sensation of disgust foresaw a scene there on the pavement, and he could +feel the shrinking of the woman by his side. + +"Good evening, Mr. Conry," Vickers said coolly, turning to give Mrs. Conry +his hand. A glance into Conry's eyes had convinced him that the man was in +a drunken temper, and his one thought was to save her from a public brawl. +Already a couple of people sauntering past had paused to look at them. +Conry grasped the young man by the arm and flung him to one side, and +thrusting his other hand into the cab jerked his wife out of it. + +"Come here!" he roared. "I'll show you--you--" + +Mrs. Conry, trembling and white, tried to free her arm and cross the +pavement. The driver, arranging himself on the seat, looked down at +Vickers, winked, and waited. Conry still dragged his wife by the arm, and +as she tried to free herself he raised his other hand and slapped her +across the face as he would cuff a struggling dog, then struck her again. +She groaned and half sank to the pavement. The curious bystanders said +nothing, made no move to interfere. Here was a domestic difference, about a +woman apparently; and the husband was exerting his ancient, impregnable +rights of domination over the woman, who was his.... + +All these months Vickers had never even in imagination crossed the barrier +of Fact. Now without a moment's wavering he raised his hand and struck +Conry full in the face, and as the man staggered from the unexpected blow +he struck him again, knocking him to the ground. Then, swiftly +disentangling the woman's hand from her husband's grasp, he motioned to the +cab driver to pull up at the curb and carried her into the cab. When +Vickers closed the door, the driver without further orders whipped up his +horse and drove into a side street, leaving the group on the pavement +staring at them and at Conry, who was staggering to his feet.... + +Within the cab Mrs. Conry moaned inarticulately. Vickers held her in his +arms, and slowly bending his head to hers he kissed her upon the lips. Her +lips were cold, but after a time to the touch of his lips hers responded +with a trembling, yielding kiss. + +Thus they drove on, without words, away from the city. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +It had all happened in a brief moment of time,--the blow, the rescue, the +kiss. But it had changed the face of the world for Vickers. What hitherto +had been clouded in dream, a mingling of sentiment, pity, tender yearning, +became at once reality. With that blow, that kiss, his soul had opened to a +new conception of life.... + +They drove to the Lanes' house. Isabelle had returned that day from +California, and her husband was away on business. Vickers, who had a +latch-key, let himself into the house and tapped at his sister's door. When +she saw him, she cried out, frightened by his white face:-- + +"Vick! What has happened?" + +"Mrs. Conry is downstairs, Isabelle. I want her to stay here with you +to-night!" + +"Vick! What is it?" Isabelle demanded with staring eyes. + +"I will tell you to-morrow." + +"No--now!" She clutched her wrap about her shiveringly and drew him within +the room. + +"It's--I am going away, Isabelle, at once--with Mrs. Conry. There has been +trouble--her husband struck her on the street, when she was with me. I took +her from him." + +"Vick!" Her voice trembled as she cried, "No,--it wasn't that!" + +"No," he said gravely. "There was no cause, none at all. He was drunk. But +I don't know that it would have made any difference. The man is a low +brute, and her life is killing her. I love her--well, that is all!" + +"Vick!" she cried; "I knew you would do some--" she hesitated before his +glittering eyes--"something very risky," she faltered at last. + +He waved this aside impatiently. + +"What will you do now?" she asked hesitantly. + +"I don't know,--we shall go away," he replied vaguely; "but she is waiting, +needs me. Will you help her,--help _us_?" he demanded, turning to the door, +"or shall we have to go to-night?" + +"Wait," she said, putting her hands on his arms; "you can't do that! Just +think what it will mean to father and mother, to everybody.... Let me dress +and take her back!" she suggested half heartedly. + +"Isabelle!" he cried. "She shall never go back to that brute." + +"You love her so much?" + +"Enough for anything," he answered gravely, turning to the door. + +In the face of his set look, his short words, all the protesting +considerations on the tip of her tongue seemed futile. To a man in a mood +like his they would but drive him to further folly. And admiration rose +unexpectedly in her heart for the man who could hold his fate in his hands +like this and unshakenly cast it on the ground. The very madness of it all +awed her. She threw her arms about him, murmuring:-- + +"Oh, Vick--for you--it seems so horrid, so--" + +"It _is_ mean," he admitted through his compressed lips. "For that very +reason, don't you see, I will take her beyond where it can touch her, at +once, this very night,--if you will not help us!" + +And all that she could do was to kiss him, the tears falling from her eyes. + +"I will, Vick, dear.... It makes no difference to me what happens,--if you +are only happy!" + + * * * * * + +As he drove to his father's house in the damp April night, he tried to +think of the steps he must take on the morrow. He had acted irresistibly, +out of the depths of his nature, unconcerned that he was about to tear in +pieces the fabric of his life. It was not until he had let himself into the +silent house and noiselessly passed his mother's door that he realized in +sudden pain what it must mean to others. + +He lay awake thinking, thinking. First of all she must telegraph for Delia +to meet them somewhere,--she must have the child with her at once; and they +must leave the city before Conry could find her and make trouble.... And he +must tell the Colonel.... + +The next morning when Vickers entered his sister's library, Stacia Conry +rose from the lounge where she had been lying reading a newspaper, and +waited hesitantly while he came forward. She was very pretty this morning, +with a faint touch of rose beneath her pale skin, her long lashes falling +over fresh, shy eyes. In spite of it all she had slept, while the sleepless +hours he had spent showed in his worn, white face. He put out his arms, and +she clung to him. + +"We must decide what to do," he said. + +"You will not leave me?" she whispered, her head lying passive against his +breast. Suddenly raising her head, she clasped her arms about his neck, +drawing him passionately to her, crying, "I love you--love you,--you will +never leave me?" + +And the man looking down into her eyes answered from his heart in all +truth:-- + +"Never, never so long as I live!" The words muttered in his broken voice +had all the solemnity of a marriage oath; and he kissed her, sealing the +promise, while she lay passive in his arms. + +Holding her thus to him, her head against his beating heart, he felt the +helplessness, the dependence of the woman, and it filled him with a +subdued, sad joy. His part was to protect her, to defend her always, and +his grip tightened about her yielding form. Their lips met again, and this +time the sensuous appeal of the woman entered his senses, clouding for the +time his delicate vision, submerging that nobler feeling which hitherto +alone she had roused. She was a woman,--his to desire, to have! + +"What shall we do?" she asked, sitting down, still holding his hand. + +"First we must get Delia. We had better telegraph your mother at once to +meet us somewhere." + +"Oh!" + +"You must have Delia, of course. He will probably make trouble, try to get +hold of the child, and so we must leave here as soon as possible, to-day if +we can." + +"Where shall we go?" she asked, bewildered. + +"Somewhere--out of the country," he replied slowly, looking at her +significantly. "Of course it would be better to wait and have the divorce; +but he might fight that, and make a mess,--try to keep the child, you +understand." + +She was silent, and he thought she objected to his summary plan. But it was +on her lips to say, 'Why not leave Delia with him until it can all be +arranged?' Something in the young man's stern face restrained her; she was +afraid of outraging instincts, delicacies that were strange to her. + +"Should you mind," he asked pleadingly, "going without the divorce? Of +course to me it is the same thing. You are mine now, as I look at it,--any +marriage would mean little to either of us after--the past! Somehow to hang +about here, with the danger of trouble to you, waiting for a divorce, with +the row and all,--I can't see you going through it. I think the--other +way--is better." + +She did not fully understand his feeling about it, which was that with the +soiled experience of her marriage another ceremony with him would be a mere +legal farce. To the pure idealism of his nature it seemed cleaner, nobler +for them to take this step without any attempt to regularize it in the eyes +of Society. To him she was justified in doing what she had done, in leaving +her husband for him, and that would have to be enough for them both. He +despised half measures, compromises. He was ready to cast all into his +defiance of law. Meanwhile she pondered the matter with lowered eyes and +presently she asked:-- + +"How long would it take to get a divorce?" + +"If he fought it, a year perhaps, or longer." + +"And I should have to stay here in the city?" + +"Or go somewhere else to get a residence." + +"And we--" she hesitated to complete the thought. + +He drew her to him and kissed her. + +"I think we shall be enough for each other," he said. + +"I will do whatever you wish," she murmured, thus softly putting on his +shoulders the burden of the step. + +He was the man, the strong protector that had come to her in her distress, +to whom she fled as naturally as a hunted animal flies to a hole, as a +crippled bird to the deep underbrush. Her beauty, her sex, herself, had +somehow attracted to her this male arm, and the right to take it never +occurred to her. He loved her, of course, and she would make him love her +more, and all would be well. If he had been penniless, unable to give her +the full protection that she needed, then they would have been obliged to +consider this step more carefully, and doubts might have forced themselves +upon her. But as it was she clung to him, trusting to the power of her sex +to hold him constant, to shield her.... + +"Now I must go down to the office to see my father," Vickers said finally. +"I'll be back early in the afternoon, and then--we will make our plans." + +"Will you tell him, your father?" Mrs. Conry asked tensely. + +"He will have to know, of course." As he spoke a wave of pain shot over the +young man's face. He stepped to the door and then turned:-- + +"You will telegraph about Delia,--she might meet us in New York--in two +days." + +"Very well," Mrs. Conry murmured submissively. + + * * * * * + +The Colonel was sitting in his little corner office before the +old-fashioned dingy desk, where he had transacted so many affairs of one +sort or another for nearly thirty years. He was not even reading his mail +this morning, but musing, as he often was when the clerks thought that he +was more busily employed. Isabelle and her child had returned from +California, the day before. She had not recovered from bearing the child, +and the St. Louis doctors who had been consulted had not helped her. It +might be well to see some one in New York.... But the Colonel was thinking +most of all this morning of his son. The tenacious old merchant was +wondering whether he had done right in accepting the young man's sacrifice. +In his disgust for the do-nothing, parasitic offspring about him, perhaps +he had taken a delicate instrument and blunted it by setting it at coarse +work. Well, it was not too late to change that. + +'The boy didn't start right,' the Colonel mused sadly. 'He didn't start +selling hardware on the road. He's done his best, and he's no such duffer +as Parrott's boy anyhow. But he would make only a front office kind of +business man. The business must get on by itself pretty soon. Perhaps that +idea for a selling company would not be a bad thing. And that would be the +end of Parrott and Price.' + +Nevertheless, the old man's heart having come slowly to this generous +decision was not light,--if the other boy had lived, if Belle had married +some one who could have gone into the business. The bricks and mortar of +the building were part of his own being, and he longed to live out these +last few years in the shadow of his great enterprise.... + +"Father, can I see you about something important?" + +The Colonel, startled from his revery, looked up at his son with his sweet +smile. + +"Why, yes, my boy,--I wasn't doing much, and I had something to say to you. +Sit down. You got away from home early this morning." + +He glanced inquiringly at his son's white, set face and tense lips. Playing +with his eye-glasses, he began to talk lightly of other matters, as was his +wont when he felt the coming of a storm. + +Vickers listened patiently, staring straight across his father to the wall, +and when the Colonel came to a full pause, + +"Father, you said you were ready for me to take a vacation. I must go at +once, to-day if possible. And, father, I can't come back." + +The old man moved slightly in his chair. It was his intention to offer the +young man his freedom, but it hurt him to have it taken for granted in this +light manner. He waited. + +"Something has happened," Vickers continued in a low voice, "something +which will alter my whole life." + +The Colonel still waited. + +"I love a woman, and I must take her away from here at once." + +"Who is she?" the old man asked gently. + +"Mrs. Conry--" + +"But she's a married woman, isn't she, Vick?" + +"She has a dirty brute of a husband--she's left him forever!" + +The Colonel's blue eyes opened in speechless surprise, as his son went on +to tell rapidly what had happened the previous night. Before he had +finished the old man interrupted by a low exclamation:-- + +"But she is a married woman, Vickers!" + +"Her marriage was a mistake, and she's paid for it, poor woman,--paid with +soul and body! She will not pay any longer." + +"But what are you going to do, my boy?" + +"I love her, father. I mean to take her away, at once, take her and her +child." + +"Run away with a married woman?" The Colonel's pale face flushed slightly, +less in anger than in shame, and his eyes fell from his son's face. + +"I wish with all my heart it wasn't so, of course; that she wasn't married, +or that she had left him long ago. But that can't be helped. And I don't +see how a divorce could make any difference, and it would take a long time, +and cause a dirty mess. He's the kind who would fight it for spite, or +blackmail. Perhaps later it will come. Now she must not suffer any more. I +love her all the deeper for what she has been through. I want to make her +life happy, make it up to her somehow, if I can." + +The Colonel rose and with an old man's slow step went over to the office +door and locked it. + +"Vickers," he said as he turned around from the door, still averting his +shamed face, "you must be crazy, out of your mind, my son!" + +"No, father," the young man replied calmly; "I was never surer of anything +in my life! I knew it would hurt you and mother,--you can't understand. But +you must trust me in this. It has to be." + +"Why does it have to be?" + +"Because I love her!" he burst out. "Because I want to save her from that +man, from the degradation she's lived in. With me she will have some joy, +at last,--her life, her soul,--oh, father, you can't say these things to +any one! You can't give good reasons." + +The old merchant's face became stern as he replied:-- + +"You wish to do all this for her, and yet you do not mean to marry her." + +"I can't marry her! I would to-day if I could. Some day perhaps we +can,--for the sake of the child it would be better. But that makes no +difference to me. It is the same as marriage for us--" + +"'Doesn't make any difference'--'the same as marriage'--what are you +talking about?" + +The young man tried to find words which would fully express his feeling. He +had come a long way these last hours in his ideas of life; he saw things +naked and clear cut, without dubious shades. But he had to realize now that +what _his_ soul accepted as incontrovertible logic was meaningless to +others. + +"I mean," he said at last slowly, "that this woman is the woman I love. I +care more for her happiness, for her well-being than for anything else in +life. And so no matter how we arrange to live, she is all that a woman can +be to a man, married or not as it may happen." + +"To take another man's wife and live with her!" the Colonel summed up +bitterly. "No, Vick, you don't mean that. You can't do a dirty thing like +that. Think it over!" + +So they argued a little while longer, and finally the old man pleaded with +his son for time, offering to see Mrs. Conry, to help her get a separation +from her husband, to send her abroad with her child,--to all of which +Vickers replied steadily:-- + +"But I love her, father--you forget that! And she needs me now!" + +"Love her!" the old man cried. "Don't call that love!" + +Vickers shut his lips and rose, very white. + +"I must go now. Let's not say any more. We've never had any bitter words +between us, father. You don't understand this--do you think I would hurt +you and mother, if it didn't have to be? I gave up my own life, when it was +only myself at stake; but I cannot give her up--and everything it will mean +to her." + +The Colonel turned away his face and refused to see his son's outstretched +hand. He could not think without a blush that his son should be able to +contemplate this thing. Vickers, as he turned the handle of the door, +recollected something and came back. + +"Oh, you must cancel that stock agreement. I shouldn't want to own it now +that I have quit. The other things, the money, I shall keep. You would like +me to have it, father, and it will be quite enough." + +The old man made a gesture as if to wave aside the money matter. + +"Good-by, father!" he said slowly, tenderly. + +"You'll see your mother?" + +"Yes--I'm going there now." + +Thus father and son parted. + + * * * * * + +Nothing, it seemed to Vickers, after this painful half hour, could be as +miserable as what he had been through, and as a matter of fact his +interview with his mother was comparatively easy. + +To Mrs. Price her son's determination was merely an unexpected outburst of +wild folly, such as happened in other families,--coming rather late in +Vick's life, but by no means irremediable. Vickers had fallen into the +hands of a designing woman, who intended to capture a rich man's son. Her +first thought was that the Colonel would have to buy Mrs. Conry off, as Mr. +Stewart had done in a similar accident that befell Ted Stewart, and when +Vickers finally made it plain to her that his was not that kind of case, +she fell to berating him for the scandal he would create by "trapesing off +to Europe with a singer." Oddly enough that delicate modesty, like a +woman's, which had made it almost impossible for the Colonel to mention the +affair, did not seem to trouble her. To live with another man's wife was in +the Colonel's eyes a sin little short of incest, and more shocking than +many kinds of murder. But his wife, with a deeper comprehension of the +powers of her sex, of the appeal of woman to man, saw in it merely a +weakness that threatened to become a family disgrace. When she found after +an hour's talk that her arguments made no impression, while Vickers sat, +harassed and silent, his head resting on his hands, she burst into tears. + +"It's just like those things you read of in the papers," she sobbed, "those +queer Pittsburg people, who are always doing some nasty thing, and no +decent folks will associate with them." + +"It's not the thing you do, mother; it's the way you do it, the purpose, +the feeling," the young man protested. "And there won't be a scandal, if +that's what's troubling you. You can tell your friends that I have gone +abroad suddenly for my health." + +"Who would believe that? Do you think her husband's going to keep quiet?" +Mrs. Price sniffled, with considerable worldly wisdom. + +"Well, let them believe what they like. They'll forget me in a week." + +"Where are you going?" + +"To Europe, somewhere,--I haven't thought about the place. I'll let you +know." + +"And how about her child?" + +"We shall take her with us." + +"She wants her along, does she?" + +"Of course!" + +Vickers rose impatiently. + +"Good-by, mother." + +She let him kiss her. + +"I shall come to see you sometimes, if you want me to." + +"Oh, you'll be coming back fast enough," she retorted quickly. + +And then she straightened the sofa pillows where he had been sitting and +picked up a book she had been reading. As Vickers went to his room to get a +bag, Isabelle opened the door of her mother's room, where she had been +waiting for him. She put her arms about his neck, as she had that night of +her marriage on the station platform at Grafton, and pressed him tightly to +her. + +"Vick! Vick!" she cried. "That it had to be like this, your love! Like +this!" + +"It had to be, Belle," he answered with a smile. "It comes to us in +different ways, old girl." + +"But you! You!" She led him by the hand to the sofa, where she threw +herself, a white exhausted look coming into her face. He stroked her hair +with the ends of his fingers. Suddenly she half turned, grasping his hand +with both of hers. + +"Can you be happy--really happy?" + +"I think so; but even that makes no difference, perhaps. I should do it all +the same, if I knew it meant no happiness for me." + +She looked at him searchingly, trying to read his heart in his eyes. After +the year of her marriage, knowing now the mystery of human relations, she +wondered whether he might not be right. That precious something, pain or +joy, which was wanting in her union he might find in this forbidden +by-path, in this woman who seemed to her so immeasurably beneath her +brother. She kissed him, and he went away. + +When the hall door clicked, she rose from the lounge and dragged herself to +the window to watch him, holding her breath, her heart beating rapidly, +almost glad that he was strong enough to take his fate in his hands, to +test life, to break the rules, to defy reason! "Vick, dear Vick," she +murmured. + +In the room below Mrs. Price, also, was looking out of the bay window, +watching her son disappear down the avenue. She had not been reading, and +she had heard him come down into the hall, but let him go without another +word. He walked slowly, erect as the Colonel used to walk. Tears dropped +from her eyes,--tears of mortification. For in her heart she knew that he +would come back some day, this woman who had lured him having fallen from +him like a dead leaf. She sat on at the window until the Colonel's figure +appeared in the distance coming up the avenue. His head was bent; he looked +neither to the right nor to the left; and he walked very slowly, like an +old man, dragging his feet after him. He was crushed. It would not have +been thus if he had lost his fortune, the work of all his years. Such a +fate he would have looked in the eye, with raised head.... + +That night Vickers and Stacia Conry left for New York, and a few days later +Mrs. Price read their names in a list of outgoing passengers for Genoa. She +did not show the list to the Colonel, and their son's name was never +mentioned in the house. + +When the people who knew the Prices intimately began to whisper, then +chatter, they said many hard things of Vickers, chiefly that he was a Fool, +a judgment that could not be gainsaid. Nevertheless the heart of a Fool may +be pure. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +Isabelle did not regain her strength after the birth of her child. She lay +nerveless and white, so that her husband, her mother, the Colonel, all +became alarmed. The celebrated accoucheur who had attended her alarmed them +still more. + +"Something's wrong,--she couldn't stand the strain. Oh, it's another case +of American woman,--too finely organized for the plain animal duties. A lot +of my women patients are the same way. They take child-bearing +hard,--damned hard.... What's the matter with them? I don't know!" he +concluded irritably. "She must just go slow until she gets back her +strength." + +She went "slow," but Nature refused to assert itself, to proclaim the will +to live. For months the days crept by with hardly a sign of change in her +condition, and then began the period of doctors. The family physician, who +had a reputation for diagnosis, pronounced her case "anaemia and nervous +debility." "She must be built up,--baths, massage, distraction." Of course +she was not to nurse her child, and the little girl was handed over to a +trained nurse. Then this doctor called in another, a specialist in nerves, +who listened to all that the others said, tapped her here and there, and +wished the opinion of an obstetrical surgeon. After his examination there +was a discussion of the advisability of "surgical interference," and the +conclusion "to wait." + +"It may be a long time--years--before Mrs. Lane fully recovers her tone," +the nerve specialist told the husband. "We must have patience. It would be +a good thing to take her to Europe for a change." + +This was the invariable suggestion that he made to his wealthy patients +when he saw no immediate results from his treatment. It could do no harm, +Europe, and most of his patients liked the prescription. They returned, to +be sure, in many cases in about the same condition as when they left, or +merely rested temporarily,--but of course that was the fault of the +patient. + +When Lane objected that it would be almost impossible for him to leave his +duties for a trip abroad and that he did not like to have his wife go +without him, the specialist advised California:-- + +"A mild climate where she can be out-of-doors and relaxed." + +Isabelle went to California with her mother, the trained nurse, and the +child. But instead of the "mild climate," Pasadena happened to be raw and +rainy. She disliked the hotel, and the hosts of idle, overdressed, and +vulgar women. So her mother brought her back, as we have seen, and then +there was talk of the Virginia Springs, "an excellent spring climate." + +A new doctor was called in, who had his own peculiar regime of sprays and +baths, of subcutaneous medicine, and then a third nerve specialist, who +said, "We must find the right key," and looked as if he might have it in +his office. + +"The right key?" + +"Her combination, the secret of her vitality. We must find it for +her,--distraction, a system of physical exercises, perhaps. But we must +occupy the mind. Those Christian Scientists have an idea, you know,--not +that I recommend their tomfoolery; but we must accomplish their results by +scientific means." And he went away highly satisfied with his liberality of +view.... + +On one vital point the doctors were hopelessly divided. Some thought +Isabelle should have another child, "as soon as may be,"--it was a chance +that Nature might take to right matters. The others strongly dissented: a +child in the patient's present debilitated condition would be criminal. As +these doctors seemed to have the best of the argument, it was decided that +for the present the wife should remain sterile, and the physicians +undertook to watch over the life process, to guard against its asserting +its rights. + +The last illusions of romance seemed to go at this period. The simple old +tale that a man and a woman loving each other marry and have the children +that live within them and come from their mutual love has been rewritten +for the higher classes of American women, with the aid of science. Health, +economic pressure, the hectic struggle to survive in an ambitious world +have altered the simple axioms of nature. Isabelle accepted easily the +judgment of the doctors,--she had known so many women in a like case. Yet +when she referred to this matter in talking to Alice Johnston, she caught +an odd look on her cousin's face. + +"I wonder if they know, the doctors--they seem always to be finding excuses +for women not to have children.... We've been all through that, Steve and +I; and decided we wouldn't have anything to do with it, no matter what +happened. It--tarnishes you somehow, and after all does it help? There's +Lulu Baxter, living in daily fear of having a child because they think they +are too poor. He gets twenty-five hundred from the road--he's under Steve, +you know--and they live in a nice apartment with two servants and +entertain. They are afraid of falling in the social scale, if they should +live differently. But she's as nervous as a witch, never wholly well, and +they'll just go on, as he rises and gets more money, adding to their +expenses. They will never have money enough for children, or only for one, +maybe,--no, I don't believe it pays!" + +"But she's so pretty, and they live nicely," Isabelle protested, and added, +"There are other things to live for besides having a lot of children--" + +"What?" the older woman asked gravely. + +"Your husband"; and thinking of John's present homeless condition, she +continued hastily, "and life itself,--to be some one,--you owe something to +yourself." + +"Yes," Alice assented, smiling,--"if we only knew what it was!" + +"Besides if we were all like you, Alice dear, we should be paupers. Even we +can't afford--" + +"We should be paupers together, then! No, you can't convince me--it's +against Nature." + +"All modern life is against Nature," the young woman retorted glibly; "just +at present I regard Nature as a mighty poor thing." + +She stretched her thin arms behind her head and turned on the lounge. + +"That's why the people who made this country are dying out so rapidly, +giving way before Swedes and Slavs and others,--because those people are +willing to have children." + +"Meantime we have the success!" Isabelle cried languidly. "_Apres nous_ the +Slavs,--we are the flower! An aristocracy is always nourished on +sterility!" + +"Dr. Fuller!" Alice commented.... "So the Colonel is going with you to the +Springs?" + +"Yes, poor old Colonel!--he must get away--he's awfully broken up," and she +added sombrely. "That's one trouble with having children,--you expect them +to think and act like you. You can't be willing to let them be themselves." + +"But, Isabelle!" + +"Oh, I know what you are going to say about Vick. I have heard it over and +over. John has said it. Mother has said it. Father looks it. You needn't +bother to say it, Alice!" She glanced at her cousin mutinously. "John +thought I was partly to blame; that I ought to have been able to control +Vick. He speaks as if the poor boy were insane or drunk or +something--because he did what he did!" + +"And you?" + +Isabelle sat upright, leaning her head thoughtfully on her hands, and +staring with bright eyes at Alice. + +"Do you want to know what I really believe? ... I have done a lot of +thinking these months, all by myself. Well, I admire Vick tremendously; he +had the courage--" + +"Does that take courage?" + +"Yes! For a man like Vickers.... Oh, I suppose she is horrid and not worth +it--I only hope he will never find it out! But to love any one enough to be +willing, to be glad to give up your life for him, for her--why, it is +tremendous, Alice! ... Here is Tots," she broke off as the nurse wheeled +the baby through the hall,--"Miss Marian Lane.... Nurse, cover up her face +with the veil so her ladyship won't get frostbitten," and Isabelle sank +back again with a sigh on the lounge and resumed the thread of her thought. +"And I am not so sure that what John objects to isn't largely the +mess,--the papers, the scandal, the fact they went off without waiting for +a divorce and all that. Of course that wasn't pleasant for respectable folk +like the Lanes and the Prices. But why should Vickers have given up what +seemed to him right, what was his life and hers, just for our prejudices +about not having our names in the papers?" + +"That wasn't all!" + +"Well, I shall always believe in Vick, no matter what comes of it.... +Marriage--the regular thing--doesn't seem to be such a great success with +many people, I know. Perhaps life would be better if more people had Vick's +courage!" + +Isabelle forced her point with an invalid's desire to relieve a wayward +feeling and also a childish wish to shock this good cousin, who saw life +simply and was so sure of herself. Alice Johnston rose with a smile. + +"I hope you will be a great deal stronger when you come back, dear." + +"I shall be--or I shall have an operation. I don't intend to remain in the +noble army of N.P.'s." + +"How is John?" + +"Flourishing and busy--oh, tremendously busy! He might just as well live in +New York or Washington for all I see of him." + +"Steve says he is very clever and successful,--you must be so proud!" + +Isabelle smiled. "Of course! But sometimes I think I should like a +substitute husband, one for everyday use, you know!" + +"There are plenty of that kind!" laughed Alice. "But I don't believe they +would satisfy you wholly." + +"Perhaps not.... How is Steve? Does he like his new work?" + +"Yes," Alice replied without enthusiasm. "He's working very hard, too." + +"Oh, men love it,--it makes them feel important." + +"Did you ever think, Belle, that men have difficulties to meet,--problems +that we never dream of?" + +"Worse than the child-bearing question?" queried Isabelle, kicking out the +folds of her tea-gown with a slippered foot. + +"Well, different; harder, perhaps.... Steve doesn't talk them over as he +used to with me." + +"Too tired. John never talks to me about business. We discuss what the last +doctor thinks, and how the baby is, and whether we'll take the Jackson +house or build or live at the Monopole and go abroad, and Nan Lawton's +latest,--really vital things, you see! Business is such a bore." + +The older woman seemed to have something on her mind and sat down again at +the end of the lounge. + +"By the way," Isabelle continued idly, "did you know that the Falkners were +coming to St. Louis to live? John found Rob a place in the terminal work. +It isn't permanent, but Bessie was crazy to come, and it may be an opening. +She is a nice thing,--mad about people." + +"But, Isabelle," her cousin persisted, "don't you want to know the things +that make your husband's life,--that go down to the roots?" + +"If you mean business, no, I don't. Besides they are confidential matters, +I suppose. He couldn't make me understand...." + +"They have to face the fight, the men; make the decisions that count--for +character." + +"Of course,--John attends to that side and I to mine. We should be treading +on each other's toes if I tried to decide his matters for him!" + +"But when they are questions of right and wrong--" + +"Don't worry. Steve and John are all right. Besides they are only officers. +You don't believe all that stuff in the magazines about Senator Thomas and +the railroads? John says that is a form of modern blackmail." + +"I don't know what to believe," the older woman replied. "I know it's +terrible,--it's like war!" + +"Of course it's war, and men must do the fighting." + +"And fight fair." + +"Of course,--as fair as the others. What are you driving at?" + +"I wonder if the A. and P. always fights fair?" + +"It isn't a charitable organization, my dear.... But Steve and John are +just officers. They don't have to decide. They take their orders from +headquarters and carry them out." + +"No matter what they are?" + +"Naturally,--that's what officers are for, isn't it? If they don't want to +carry them out, they must resign." + +"But they can't always resign," + +"Why not?" + +"Because of you and me and the children!" + +"Oh, don't worry about it! They don't worry. That's what I like a man for. +If he's good for anything, he isn't perpetually pawing himself over." + +This did not seem wholly to satisfy Alice, but she leaned over Isabelle and +kissed her:-- + +"Only get well, my dear, and paw some of your notions over,--it won't do +you any harm!" + +That evening when the Lanes were alone, after they had discussed the topics +that Isabelle had enumerated, with the addition of the arrangements for the +trip to the Springs, Isabelle asked casually:-- + +"John, is it easy to be honest in business?" + +"That depends," he replied guardedly, "on the business and the man. Why?" + +"You don't believe what those magazine articles say about the Senator and +the others?" + +"I don't read them." + +"Why?" + +"Because the men who write them don't understand the facts, and what they +know they distort--for money." + +"Um," she observed thoughtfully. "But are there facts--like those? _You_ +know the facts." + +"I don't know all of them." + +"Are those you know straight or crooked?" she asked, feeling considerable +interest in the question, now that it was started. + +"I don't know what you would mean by crooked,--what is it you want to +know?" + +"Are you honest?" she asked with mild curiosity. "I mean in the way of +railroad business. Of course I know you are other ways." + +Lane smiled at her childlike seriousness. + +"I always try to do what seems to me right under the circumstances." + +"But the circumstances are sometimes--queer?" + +"The circumstances are usually complex." + +"The circumstances are complex," she mused aloud. "I'll tell Alice that." + +"What has Alice to do with it?" + +"She seems bothered about the circumstances--that's all,--the circumstances +and Steve." + +"I guess Steve can manage the circumstances by himself," he replied coldly, +turning over the evening paper. "She probably reads the magazines and +believes all she hears." + +"All intelligent women read the magazines--and believe what they hear or +else what their husbands tell them," she rejoined flippantly. Presently, as +Lane continued to look over the stock page of the paper, she observed:-- + +"Don't you suppose that in Vickers's case the circumstances may have +been--complex?" + +Lane looked at her steadily. + +"I can't see what that has to do with the question." + +"Oh?" she queried mischievously. He considered the working of her mind as +merely whimsical, but she had a sense of logical triumph over the man. +Apparently he would make allowances of "circumstances" in business, his +life, that he would not admit in private affairs. As he kissed her and was +turning out the light, before joining the Colonel for another cigar, she +asked:-- + +"Supposing that you refused to be involved in circumstances that +were--complex? What would happen?" + +"What a girl!" he laughed cheerfully. "For one thing I think we should not +be going to the Springs to-morrow in a private car, or buying the Jackson +house--or any other. Now put it all out of your head and have a good rest." + +He kissed her again, and she murmured wearily:-- + +"I'm so useless,--they should kill things like me! How can you love me?" + +She was confident that he did love her, that like so many husbands he had +accepted her invalidism cheerfully, with an unconscious chivalry for the +wife who instead of flowering forth in marriage had for the time being +withered. His confidence, in her sinking moods like this, that it would all +come right, buoyed her up. And John was a wise man as well as a good +husband; the Colonel trusted him, admired him. Alice Johnston's doubts +slipped easily from her mind. Nevertheless, there were now two subjects of +serious interest that husband and wife would always avoid,--Vickers, and +business honesty! + +She lay there feeling weak and forlorn before the journey, preoccupied with +herself. These days she was beset with a tantalizing sense that life was +slipping past her just beyond her reach, flowing like a mighty river to +issues that she was not permitted to share. And while she was forced to lie +useless on the bank, her youth, her own life, was somehow running out, too. +Just what it was that she was missing she could not say,--something +alluring, something more than her husband's activity, than her child, +something that made her stretch out longing hands in the dark.... She would +not submit to invalidism. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +The Virginia mountains made a narrow horizon of brilliant blue. On their +lower slopes the misty outlines of early spring had begun with the budding +trees. Here and there the feathery forest was spotted by dashes of pink +coolness where the wild peach and plum had blossomed, and the faint blue of +the rhododendron bushes mounted to the sky-line. The morning was brilliant +after a rain and the fresh mountain air blew invigoratingly, as Isabelle +left the car on her husband's arm. With the quick change of mood of the +nervous invalid she already felt stronger, more hopeful. There was color in +her thin face, and her eyes had again the vivacious sparkle that had been +so largely her charm. + +"We must find some good horses," she said to her father as they approached +the hotel cottage which had been engaged; "I want to get up in those hills. +Margaret promised to come for a week.... Oh, I am going to be all right +now!" + +The hotel was one of those huge structures dropped down in the mountains or +by the sea to provide for the taste for fresh air, the need for +recuperation, of a wealthy society that crams its pleasures and its +business into small periods,--days and hours. It rambled over an acre or +two and provided as nearly as possible the same luxuries and occupations +that its frequenters had at home. At this season it was crowded with rich +people, who had sought the balm of early spring in the Virginia mountains +after their weeks of frantic activity in the cities, instead of taking the +steamers to Europe. They were sitting, beautifully wrapped in furs, on the +long verandas, or smartly costumed were setting out for the links or for +horseback excursions. The Colonel and Lane quickly discovered acquaintances +in the broker's office where prominent "operators" were sitting, smoking +cigars and looking at the country through large plate-glass windows, while +the ticker chattered within hearing. There was music in the hall, and fresh +arrivals with spotless luggage poured in from the trains. This mountain inn +was a little piece of New York moved out into the country. + +But it was peaceful on the piazza of the cottage, which was somewhat +removed from the great caravansary, where Isabelle lay and watched the blue +recesses of the receding hills. Here her husband found her when it was time +to say good-by. + +"You'll be very well off," he remarked, laying his hand affectionately on +his wife's arm. "The Stantons are here--you remember him at Torso?--and the +Blakes from St. Louis, and no doubt a lot more people your father +knows,--so you won't be lonely. I have arranged about the horses and +selected a quiet table for you." + +"That is very good of you,--I don't want to see people," she replied, her +eyes still on the hills. "When will you be back?" + +"In a week or ten days I can run up again and stay for a couple of days, +over Sunday." + +"You'll telegraph about Marian?" + +"Of course." + +And bending over to kiss her forehead, he hurried away. It seemed to her +that he was always leaving, always going somewhere. When he was away, he +wrote or telegraphed her each day as a matter of course, and sent her +flowers every other day, and brought her some piece of jewellery when he +went to New York. Yes, he was very fond of her, she felt, and his was a +loyal nature,--she never need fear that in these many absences from his +wife he might become entangled with women, as other men did. He was not +that kind.... + +The Colonel crossed the lawn in the direction of the golf links with a +party of young old men. It was fortunate that the Colonel had become +interested, almost boyishly, in golf; for since that morning when his son +had left him he had lost all zest for business. A year ago he would never +have thought it possible to come away like this for a month in the busy +season. To Isabelle it was sad and also curious the way he took this matter +of Vickers. He seemed to feel that he had but one child now, had put his +boy quite out of his mind. He was gradually arranging his affairs--already +there was talk of incorporating the hardware business and taking in new +blood. And he had aged still more. But he was so tremendously vital,--the +Colonel! No one could say he was heart-broken. He took more interest than +ever in public affairs, like the General Hospital, and the Park Board. But +he was different, as Isabelle felt,--abstracted, more silent, apparently +revising his philosophy of life at an advanced age, and that is always +painful. If she had only given him a man child, something male and vital +like himself! He was fond of John, but no one could take the place of his +own blood. That, too, was a curious limitation in the eyes of the younger +generation. + +"Isabelle!" + +She was wakened from her brooding by a soft Southern voice, and perceived +Margaret Pole coming up the steps. With the grasp of Margaret's small +hands, the kiss, all the years since St. Mary's seemed to fall away. The +two women drew off and looked at each other, Margaret smiling +enigmatically, understanding that Isabelle was trying to read the record of +the years, the experience of marriage on her. Coloring slightly, she turned +away and drew up a chair. + +"Is your husband with you?" Isabelle asked. "I do so want to meet him." + +"No; I left him at my father's with the children. He's very good with the +children," she added with a mocking smile, "and he doesn't like little +trips. He doesn't understand how I can get up at five in the morning and +travel all day across country to see an old friend.... Men don't understand +things, do you think?" + +"So you are going abroad to live?" + +"Yes," Margaret answered without enthusiasm. "We are going to study +music,--the voice. My husband doesn't like business!" + +Isabelle had heard that Mr. Pole, agreeable as he was, had not been +successful in business. But the Poles and the Lawtons were all comfortably +off, and it was natural that he should follow his tastes. + +"He has a very good voice," Margaret added. + +"How exciting--to change your whole life like that!" Isabelle exclaimed, +fired by the prospect of escape from routine, from the known. + +"Think so?" Margaret remarked in a dull voice. "Well, perhaps. Tell me how +you are--everything." + +And they began to talk, and yet carefully avoided what was uppermost in the +minds of both,--'How has it been with you? How has marriage been? Has it +given you all that you looked for? Are you happy?' For in spite of all the +education, the freedom so much talked about for women, that remains the +central theme of their existence,--the emotional and material satisfaction +of their natures through marriage. Margaret Pole was accounted intellectual +among women, with bookish tastes, thoughtful, and she knew many women who +had been educated in colleges. "They are all like us," she once said to +Isabelle; "just like us. They want to marry a man who will give them +everything, and they aren't any wiser in their choice, either. The only +difference is that a smaller number of them have the chance to marry, and +when they can't be married, they have something besides cats and maiden +aunts to fall back upon. But interests in common with their husbands, +intellectual interests,--rubbish! A man who amounts to anything is always a +specialist, and he doesn't care for feminine amateurishness. An +acquaintance with Dante and the housing of the poor doesn't broaden the +breakfast table, not a little bit." + +When Margaret Pole talked in this strain, men thought her intelligent and +women cynical. Isabelle felt that this cynicism had grown upon her. It +appeared in little things, as when she said: "I can stay only a week. I +must see to breaking up the house and a lot of business. We shall never +sail if I don't go back and get at it. Men are supposed to be practical and +attend to the details, but they don't if they can get out of them." When +Isabelle complimented her on her pretty figure, Margaret said with a +mocking grimace: "Yes, the figure is there yet. The face goes first +usually." Isabelle had to admit that Margaret's delicate, girlish face had +grown strangely old and grave. The smile about the thin lips was there, but +it was a mocking or a wistful smile. The blue eyes were deeper underneath +the high brow. Life was writing its record on this fine face,--a record not +easily read, however. They fell to talking over the St. Mary's girls. + +"Aline,--have you seen much of her?" Margaret asked. + +"Not as much as I hoped to,--I have been so useless," Isabelle replied. +"She's grown queer!" + +"Queer?" + +"She is rather dowdy, and they live in such a funny way,--always in a mess. +Of course they haven't much money, but they needn't be so--squalid,--the +children and the mussy house and all." + +"Aline doesn't care for things," Margaret observed. + +"But one must care enough to be clean! And she has gone in for fads,--she +has taken to spinning and weaving and designing jewellery and I don't know +what." + +"That is her escape," Margaret explained. + +"Escape? It must be horrid for her husband and awful for the children." + +"What would you have her do? Scrub and wash and mend and keep a tidy house? +That would take all the poetry out of Aline, destroy her personality. Isn't +it better for her husband and for the children that she should keep herself +alive and give them something better than a good housewife?" + +"Keep herself alive by making weird cloths and impossible bracelets?" + +Margaret laughed at Isabelle's philistine horror of the Goring household, +and amused herself with suggesting more of the philosophy of the +Intellectuals, the creed of Woman's Independence. She pointed out that +Aline did not interfere with Goring's pursuit of his profession though it +might not interest her or benefit her. Why should Goring interfere with +Aline's endeavors to develop herself, to be something more than a mother +and a nurse? + +"She has kept something of her own soul,--that is it!" + +"Her own soul!" mocked Isabelle. "If you were to take a meal with them, you +would wish there was less soul, and more clean table napkins." + +"My dear little _bourgeoise_," Margaret commented with amusement, "you must +get a larger point of view. The housewife ideal is doomed. Women won't +submit to it,--intelligent ones. And Goring probably likes Aline better as +she is than he would any competent wife of the old sort." + +"I don't believe any sane man likes to see his children dirty, and never +know where to find a clean towel,--don't tell me!" + +"Then men must change their characters," Margaret replied vaguely; "we +women have been changing our characters for centuries to conform to men's +desires. It's time that the men adjusted themselves to us." + +"I wonder what John would say if I told him he must change his character," +mused Isabelle. + +"There is Cornelia Woodyard," Margaret continued; "she combines the two +ideals--but she is very clever." + +"We never thought so at St. Mary's." + +"That's because we judged her by woman's standards, sentimental +ones,--old-fashioned ones. But she is New." + +"How new?" asked Isabelle, who felt that she had been dwelling in a dark +place the past three years. + +"Why, she made up her mind just what she wanted out of life,--a certain +kind of husband, a certain kind of married life, a certain set of +associates,--and she's got just what she planned. She isn't an opportunist +like most of us, who take the husbands we marry because they are there, we +don't know why, and take the children they give us because they come, and +live and do what turns up in the circumstances chosen for us by the Male. +No, Conny is very clever!" + +"But how?" + +"Eugene Woodyard is not a rich man,--Conny was not after money,--but he is +a clever lawyer, well connected,--in with a lot of interesting people, and +has possibilities. Conny saw those and has developed them,--that has been +her success. You see she combines the old and the new. She makes the mould +of their life, but she works through him. As a result she has just what she +wants, and her husband adores her,--he is the outward and visible symbol of +Conny's inward and material strength!" + +Isabelle laughed, and Margaret continued in her pleasant drawl, painting +the Woodyard firmament. + +"She understood her man better than he did himself. She knew that he would +never be a great money-getter, hadn't the mental or the physical +qualifications for it. So she turns him deftly into a reformer, a kind of +gentlemanly politician. She'll make him Congressman or better,--much +better! Meantime she has given him a delightful home, one of the nicest I +know,--on a street down town near a little park, where the herd does not +know enough to live. And there Conny receives the best picked set of people +I ever see. It is all quite wonderful!" + +"And we thought her coarse," mused Isabelle. + +"Perhaps she is,--I don't think she is fine. But a strong hand is rarely +fine. I don't think she would hesitate to use any means to arrive,--and +that is Power, my dear little girl!" + +Margaret Pole rose, the enigmatic smile on her lips. + +"I must leave you now to your nap and the peace of the hills," she said +lightly. "We'll meet at luncheon. By the way, I ran across a cousin of mine +coming in on the train,--a Virginian cousin, which means that he is close +enough to ask favors when he wants them. He wishes to meet you,--he is a +great favorite of the Woodyards, of Conny, I should say,--Tom Cairy.... He +was at college with your brother, I think. I will bring him over in the +afternoon if you say so. He's amusing, Thomas; but I don't vouch for him. +Good-by, girl." + +Isabelle watched Margaret Pole cross the light green of the lawn, walking +leisurely, her head raised towards the mountains. 'She is not happy,' +thought Isabelle. 'There is something wrong in her marriage. I wonder if it +is always so!' Margaret had given her so much to think about, with her +sharp suggestions of strange, new views, that she felt extraordinarily +refreshed. And Margaret, her eyes on the blue hills, was thinking, 'She is +still the girl,--she doesn't know herself yet, does not know life!' Her +lips smiled wistfully, as though to add: 'But she is eager. She will have +to learn, as we all do.' Thus the two young women, carefully avoiding any +reference to the thought nearest their hearts, discovered in a brief half +hour what each wanted to know.... + +After the noisy luncheon, with its interminable variety of food, in the +crowded, hot dining room, Isabelle and Margaret with Cairy sought refuge in +one of the foot-paths that led up into the hills. Cairy dragged his left +leg with a perceptible limp. He was slight, blond hair with auburn tinge, +smooth shaven, with appealing eyes that, like Margaret's, were recessed +beneath delicate brows. He had pleased Isabelle by talking to her about +Vickers, whom he had known slightly at the university, talking warmly and +naturally, as if nothing had happened to Vickers. Now he devoted himself to +her quite personally, while Margaret walked on ahead. Cairy had a way of +seeing but one woman at a time, no matter what the circumstances might be, +because his emotional horizon was always limited. That was one reason why +he was liked so much by women. He had a good deal to say about the +Woodyards, especially Conny. + +"She is so sure in her judgments," he said. "I always show her everything I +write!" (He had already explained that he was a literary "jobber," as he +called it, at the Springs to see a well-known Wall Street man for an +article on "the other side" that he was preparing for _The People's +Magazine_, and also hinted that his ambitions rose above his magazine +efforts.) + +"But I did not know that Conny was literary," Isabelle remarked in +surprise. + +The young Southerner smiled at her simplicity. + +"I don't know that she is what _you_ mean by literary; perhaps that is the +reason she is such a good judge. She knows what people want to read, at +least what the editors think they want and will pay for. If Con--Mrs. +Woodyard likes a thing, I know I shall get a check for it. If she throws it +down, I might as well save postage stamps." + +"A valuable friend," Margaret called back lightly, "for a struggling man of +letters!" + +"Rather," Cairy agreed. "You see," turning to Isabelle again, "that sort of +judgment is worth reams of literary criticism." + +"It's practical." + +"Yes, that is just what she is,--the genius of the practical; it's an +instinct with her. That is why she can give really elaborate dinners in her +little house, and you have the feeling that there are at least a dozen +servants where they ought to be, and all that." + +From the Woodyards they digressed to New York and insensibly to Cairy's +life there. Before they had turned back for tea Isabelle knew that the lame +young Southerner had written a play which he hoped to induce some actress +to take, and that meantime he was supporting himself in the various ways +that modern genius has found as a substitute for Grub Street. He had also +told her that New York was the only place one could live in, if one was +interested in the arts, and that in his opinion the drama was the coming +art of America,--"real American drama with blood in it"; and had said +something about the necessity of a knowledge of life, "a broad +understanding of the national forces," if a man were to write anything +worth while. + +"You mean dinner-parties?" Margaret asked at this point.... + +When he left the women, he had arranged to ride with Isabelle. + +"It's the only sport I can indulge in," he said, referring to his physical +infirmity, "and I don't get much of it in New York." + +As he limped away across the lawn, Margaret asked mischievously:-- + +"Well, what do you think of Cousin Thomas? He lets you know a good deal +about himself all at once." + +"He is so interesting--and appealing, don't you think so, with those eyes? +Isn't it a pity he is lame?" + +"I don't know about that. He's used that lameness of his very effectively. +It's procured him no end of sympathy, and sympathy is what Thomas +likes,--from women. He will tell you all about it some time,--how his negro +nurse was frightened by a snake and dropped him on a stone step when he was +a baby." + +"We don't have men like him in St. Louis," Isabelle reflected aloud; "men +who write or do things that are really interesting--it is all business or +gossip. I should like to see Conny,--it must be exciting to live in New +York, and be somebody!" + +"Come and try it; you will, I suppose?" + +In spite of Margaret's gibes at her distant cousin, Isabelle enjoyed Cairy. +He was the kind of man she had rarely seen and never known: by birth a +gentleman, by education and ambition a writer, with a distinct social sense +and the charm of an artist. In spite of his poverty he had found the means +to run about the world--the habited part of it--a good deal, and had always +managed to meet the right people,--the ones "whose names mean something." +He was of the parasite species, but of the higher types. To Isabelle his +rapid talk, about plays, people, pictures, the opera, books, was a +revelation of some of that flowing, stream of life which she felt she was +missing. And he gave her the pleasant illusion of "being worth while." The +way he would look at her as he rolled a cigarette on the veranda steps, +awaiting her least word, flattered her woman's sympathy. When he left for +Washington, going, as he said, "where the _People's_ call me," she missed +him distinctly. + +"I hope I shall meet him again!" + +"You will," Margaret replied. "Thomas is the kind one meets pretty often if +you are his sort. And I take it you are!" + +Isabelle believed that Margaret Pole was jealous of her young cousin or +piqued because of a sentimental encounter in their youth. Cairy had hinted +at something of this kind. Margaret patted Isabella's pretty head. + +"My little girl," she mocked, "how wonderful the world is, and all the +creatures in it!" + + * * * * * + +From this month's visit at the Springs the Colonel got some good golf, Mrs. +Price a vivid sense of the way people threw their money about these days +("They say that Wall Street broker gave the head waiter a hundred dollar +bill when he left!"). And Isabelle had absorbed a miscellaneous assortment +of ideas, the dominant one being that intelligent Americans who really +wished to have interesting lives went East to live, particularly to New +York. And incidentally there was inserted in the nether layers of her +consciousness the belief that the world was changing its ideas about women +and marriage, "and all that." She desired eagerly to be in the current of +these new ideas. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +"What makes a happy marriage?" Rob Falkner queried in his brutal and +ironical mood, which made his wife shiver for the proprieties of pleasant +society. It was at one of Bessie's famous Torso suppers, when the Lanes and +Darnells were present. + +"A good cook and a good provider," Lane suggested pleasantly, to keep the +topic off conversational reefs. + +"A husband who thinks everything you do just right!" sighed Bessie. + +"Plenty of money and a few children--for appearances," some one threw in. + +Isabelle remarked sagely, "A husband who knows what is best for you in the +big things, and a wife who does what is best in the small ones." + +"Unity of Purpose--Unity of Souls," Tom Darnell announced in his oratorical +voice, with an earnestness that made the party self-conscious. His wife +said nothing, and Falkner summed up cynically:-- + +"You've won, Lane! The American husband must be a good provider, but it +doesn't follow that the wife must be a good cook. Say a good entertainer, +and there you have a complete formula of matrimony: PROVIDER (Hustler, +Money-getter, Liberal) and ENTERTAINER (A woman pretty, charming, social)." + +"Here's to the Falkner household,--the perfect example!" + +Thus the talk drifted off with a laugh into a discussion of masculine +deficiencies and feminine endurances. Isabelle, looking back with the +experience of after years, remembered this "puppy-dog" conversation. How +young they all were and how they played with ideas! Bessie, also, +remembered the occasion, with an injured feeling. On the way home that +night Lane had remarked to his wife:-- + +"Falkner is a queer chap,--he was too personal to-night." + +"I suppose it is hard on him; Bessie is rather wilful and extravagant. He +looked badly to-night. And he told me he had to take an early train to +examine some new work." + +Lane shrugged his shoulders, as does the man of imperturbable will, perfect +digestion, and constant equilibrium, for the troubles of a weaker vessel. + +"If he doesn't like what his wife does, he should have character enough to +control her. Besides he should have known all that before he married!" + +Isabelle smiled at this piece of masculine complacency,--as if a man could +know any essential fact about a woman from the way she did her hair to the +way she spent money before he had lived with her! + +"I do hope he will get a better place," Isabelle remarked good-naturedly. +"It would do them both so much good." + +As we have seen, Falkner's chance came at last through Lane, who +recommended him to the A. and P. engineer in charge of the great terminal +works that the road had undertaken in St. Louis. The salary of the new +position was four thousand dollars a year,--a very considerable advance +over the Torso position, and the work gave Falkner an opportunity such as +he had never had before. The railroad system had other large projects in +contemplation also. + +"Bessie has written me such a letter,--the child!" Isabelle told her +husband. "You would think they had inherited a million. And yet she seems +sad to leave Torso, after all the ragging she gave the place. She has a +good word to say even for Mrs. Fraser!" + +Bessie Falkner was one of those who put down many small roots wherever +chance places them. She had settled into Torso more solidly than she knew +until she came to pull up her roots and put them down in a large, strange +city. "We won't know any one there," she said dolefully to her Torso +friends. "The Lanes, of course; but they are such grand folk now--and +Isabella has all her old friends about her." Nevertheless, it scarcely +entered her mind to remain "in this prairie village all our days." Bessie +had to the full the American ambition to move on and up as far as +possible.... + +Fortune, having turned its attention to the Falkners, seemed determined to +smile on them this year. An uncle of Bessie's died on his lonely ranch in +Wyoming, and when the infrequent local authorities got around to settling +his affairs, they found that he had left his little estate to Elizabeth +Bissell, who was now Mrs. Robert Falkner of Torso. The lonely old rancher, +it seemed, had remembered the pretty, vivacious blond girl of eighteen, who +had taken the trouble to show him the sights of Denver the one time he had +visited his sister ten years before. Bessie, amused at his eccentric +appearance, had tried to give "Uncle Billy" a good time. "Uncle Billy," she +would say, "you must do this,--you will remember it all your life. Uncle +Billy, won't you lunch with me down town to-day? You must go to the +theatre, while you are here. Uncle, I am going to make you a necktie!" So +she had chirped from morning until night, flattering, coaxing, and also +making sport of the old man. "Bess has a good heart," her mother said to +Uncle Bill, and it must be added Bessie also had a woman's instinct to +please a possible benefactor. Uncle Billy when he returned to the lonely +ranch wrote a letter to his pretty niece, which Bessie neglected to answer. +Nevertheless, when Uncle Billy made ready to die, he bestowed all that he +had to give upon the girl who had smiled on him once. + +Thus Bessie's purring good nature bore fruit, Before the property could be +sold, the most imaginative ideas about her inheritance filled Bessie's +dreams. Day and night she planned what they would do with this +fortune,--everything from a year in Europe to new dresses for the children! +When it came finally in the form of a draft for thirteen thousand and some +odd dollars, her visions were dampened for a time,--so many of her castles +could not be acquired for thirteen thousand and some odd dollars. + +Falkner was for investing the legacy in Freke's mines, which, he had good +reason to believe, were better than gold mines. But when Bessie learned +that the annual dividends would only be about twelve hundred dollars, she +demurred. That was too slow. Secretly she thought that "if Rob were only +clever about money," he might in a few years make a real fortune out of +this capital. There were men she had known in Denver, as she told her +husband, "who hadn't half of that and who had bought mines that had brought +them hundreds of thousands of dollars." To which remark, Rob had replied +curtly that he was not in that sort of business and that there were many +more suckers than millionnaires in Denver--and elsewhere. + +So, finally, after paying some Torso debts, it came down to buying a house +in St. Louis; for the flat that they had first rented was crowded and +Bessie found great difficulty in keeping a servant longer than a week. Rob +thought that it would be more prudent to rent a house for six to nine +hundred than to buy outright or build, until they saw how his work for the +A. and P. developed. But Bessie wanted a home,--a house of her own. So they +began the wearisome search for a house. Bessie already had her views about +the desirable section to live in,--outside the smoke in one of "those +private estate parks,"--where the Lanes were thinking of settling. (A few +months had been sufficient for Bessie to orientate herself socially in her +new surroundings.) "That's where all the nice young people are going," she +announced. In vain Rob pointed out that there were no houses to be bought +for less than eighteen thousand in this fashionable neighborhood. "You +never dare!" she retorted reproachfully. "You have to take risks if you +want anything in this world! How many houses in St. Louis that aren't +mortgaged do you suppose there are?" + +"But there is only about eleven thousand of Uncle Billy's money left, and +those houses in Buena Vista Park cost from eighteen to twenty-four thousand +dollars." + +"And they have only one bath-room," sighed Bessie. + +The summer went by in "looking," and the more houses they looked at the +less satisfied was Bessie. She had in the foreground of her mind an image +of the Lanes' Torso house, only "more artistic"; but Falkner convinced her +that such a house in St. Louis would cost thirty thousand dollars at the +present cost of building materials. + +"It is so difficult," she explained to Mrs. Price, "to find anything small +and your own, don't you know?" She arched her brows prettily over her +dilemma. Mrs. Price, who, in spite of the fascination that Bessie exerted, +had prim ideas "of what young persons in moderate circumstances" should do, +suggested that the Johnstons were buying a very good house in the new +suburb of Bryn Mawr on the installment plan. + +"As if we could bury ourselves in that swamp,--we might as well stay in +Torso!" Bessie said to her husband disgustedly. + +Falkner reflected that the train service to Bryn Mawr made it easier of +access to his work than the newer residential quarter inside the city which +Bessie was considering. But that was the kind of remark he had learned not +to make.... + +In the end it came to their building. For Bessie found nothing "small and +pretty, and just her own," with three bath-rooms, two maids' rooms, etc., +in any "possible" neighborhood. She had met at a dinner-party an attractive +young architect, who had recently come from the East to settle in St. +Louis. Mr. Bowles prepared some water-color sketches which were so pretty +that she decided to engage him. With misgivings Rob gave his consent. A +narrow strip of frontage was found next a large house in the desired +section. They had to pay three thousand dollars for the strip of land. Mr. +Bowles thought the house could be built for eight or ten thousand dollars, +depending on the price of materials, which seemed to be going up with +astonishing rapidity. + +Then Bessie plunged into plans. It was a gusty March day when the Falkners +went out with the architect to consider the lot, and spent an afternoon +trying to decide how to secure the most sun. Falkner, weary of the whole +matter, listened to the glib young architect. Another windy day in April +they returned to the lot to look at the excavation. The contracts were not +yet signed. Lumber had gone soaring, and there was a strike in the brick +business, the kind of brick they had chosen being unobtainable, while +hardware seemed unaccountably precious. Already it was impossible to build +the house for less than twelve thousand, even after sacrificing Bessie's +private bath. Falkner had consented to the mortgage,--"only four thousand," +Bessie said; "we'll save our rent and pay it off in a year or two!" +Bessie's periods of economy were always just dawning! + +Falkner, looking at the contractor's tool shed, had a sense of depressing +fatality. From the moment that the first spadeful of ground had been dug, +it seemed to him that the foundation of his domestic peace had begun to +crumble. But this depression was only an attack of the grippe, he said to +himself, and he tried to take an interest in the architect's description of +how they should terrace the front of the lot.... + +Of course, as the novelists tell us, the man of Strong Will, of Mature +Character, of Determined Purpose, would not have allowed his wife to +entangle him in this house business (or in matrimony, perhaps, in the first +instance)! But if society were composed of men of S. W., M. C., and D. P., +there would be no real novels,--merely epics of Slaughter and Success, of +Passionate Love and Heroic Accomplishment.... At this period Falkner still +loved his wife,--wanted to give her every gratification within his power, +and some just beyond,--though that love had been strained by five hard +years, when her efforts as an economic partner had not been intelligent. +(Bessie would have scorned such an unromantic term as "economic partner.") +They still had their times of amiable understanding, of pleasant +comradeship, even of passionate endearment. But by the time the young +architect's creation at number 26 Buena Vista Pleasance had become their +residence, that love was in a moribund condition.... Yet after all, as +Bessie sometimes reminded him, it was her money that was building the +house, at least the larger part of it; and further it was all her life that +was to be spent in it, presumably. The woman's home was her world. + +Thus, in the division that had come between them, the man began to consider +his wife's rights, what he owed to her as a woman that he had taken under +his protection,--a very dangerous state of mind in matrimony. If he had +discovered that her conception of the desirable end of life was not his, he +must respect her individuality, and so far as possible provide for her that +which she seemed to need. The faithful husband, or dray-horse +interpretation of marriage, this. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +If it takes Strong Will, Mature Character, and Determined Purpose to live +effectively, it takes all of that and more--humor and patience--to build a +house in America, unless one can afford to order his habitation as he does +a suit of clothes and spend the season in Europe until the contractor and +the architect have fought it out between them. But Bessie was a young woman +of visions. She had improved all her opportunities to acquire taste,--the +young architect said she had "very intelligent ideas." And he, Bertram +Bowles, fresh from Paris, with haunting memories of chateaux and villas, +and a knowledge of what the leading young architects of the East were +turning out, had visions too, in carrying out this first real commission +that he had received in St. Louis. "Something _chic_, with his stamp on +it," he said.... + +The hours with the contractors to persuade them that they could do +something they had never seen done before! The debates over wood finish, +and lumber going up while you talked! The intricacies of heating, plumbing, +electric lighting, and house telephones--when all men are discovered to be +liars! Falkner thought it would be easier to lay out the entire terminal +system of the A. and P. than to build one "small house, pretty and just +your own, you know." Occasionally even Bessie and the polite Bertram Bowles +fell out, when Falkner was called in to arbitrate. Before the question of +interior decoration came up the house had already cost fourteen thousand +dollars, which would necessitate a mortgage of six thousand dollars at +once. Here Falkner put his foot down,--no more; they would live in it with +bare walls. Bessie pleaded and sulked,--"only another thousand." And "not +to be perfectly ridiculous," Falkner was forced to concede another +thousand. "Not much when you consider," as the architect said to Bessie.... +Time dragged on, and the house was not ready. The apartment hotel into +which they had moved was expensive and bad for the children. In June +Falkner insisted on moving into the unfinished house, with carpenters, +painters, decorators still hanging on through the sultry summer months. + +"I met your poor little friend Mrs. Falkner at Sneeson's this morning," Nan +Lawton said to Isabelle. "She was looking over hangings and curtains for +her house.... She is nothing but a bag of bones, she's so worn. That +husband of hers must be a brute to let her wear herself all out. She was +telling me some long yarn about their troubles with the gas men,--very +amusing and bright. She is a charming little thing." + +"Yes," Isabelle replied; "I am afraid the house has been too much for them +both." + +She had been Bessie's confidant in all her troubles, and sympathized--who +could not sympathize with Bessie?--though she thought her rather foolish to +undertake so much. + +"We'll simply have to have rugs, I tell Rob," Bessie said to her. "He is in +such bad humor these days, and says we must go on the bare floors or use +the old Torso carpets. Fancy!" + +And Isabelle said, as she was expected to say, "Of course you will have to +have rugs. They are having a sale at Moritz's,--some beauties and cheap." + +Yet she had a sneaking sympathy for Falkner. Isabelle did not suspect that +she herself was the chief undoing of the Falkner household, nor did any one +else suspect it. It was Bessie's ideal of Isabelle that rode her hard from +the beginning of her acquaintance with the Lanes. And it was Isabelle who +very naturally introduced them to most of the people they had come to know +in their new world. Isabelle herself had much of her mother's thrift and +her father's sagacity in practical matters. She would never have done what +Bessie was doing in Bessie's circumstances. But in her own circumstances +she did unconsciously a great deal more,--and she disliked to fill her mind +with money matters, considering it vulgar and underbred to dwell long on +them. The rich and the very wise can indulge in these aristocratic +refinements! Isabelle, to be sure, felt flattered by Bessie's admiring +discipleship,--who does not like to lead a friend? She never dreamed of her +evil influence. The power of suggestion, subtle, far-reaching, ever working +on plastic human souls! Society evolves out of these petty reactions.... + +The rugs came. + +"We simply have to have rugs,--the house calls for it," asserted Bessie, +using one of Mr. Bertram Bowles's favorite expressions. + +"My purse doesn't," growled Falkner. + +Nevertheless Bessie selected some pretty cheap rugs at Moritz's, which +could be had on credit. In the great rug room of the department store she +met Alice Johnston, who was looking at a drugget. The two women exchanged +experiences as the perspiring clerks rolled and rerolled rugs. + +"Yes, we shall like Bryn Mawr," Mrs. Johnston said, "now that the foliage +covers up the tin cans and real estate signs. The schools are really very +good, and there is plenty of room for the boys to make rough house in. We +are to have a garden another year.... Oh, yes, it is rural middle +class,--that's why I can get drugget for the halls." + +Bessie thought of her pretty house and shuddered. + +"We are planning to call and see the house--Isabelle says it's +wonderful--but it will have to be on a Sunday--the distance--" + +"Can't you come next Sunday for luncheon? I will ask Isabelle and her +husband," Bessie interrupted hospitably, proud to show off her new toy. + +And on Sunday they all had a very good time and the new "toy" was much +admired, although the paint was still sticky,--the painter had been +optimistic when he took the contract and had tried to save himself +later,--the colors wrong, and the furniture, which had done well enough in +Torso, looked decidedly shabby. + +"It's the prettiest house I know," Isabelle said warmly, and Bessie felt +repaid. + +She was very tired, and to-day looked worn. The new toy was dragging her +out. As the long St. Louis summer drew to an end, she was always tired. +Some obscure woman's trouble, something in the delicate organism that had +never been quite right, was becoming acutely wrong. She lived in fear of +having another child,--the last baby had died. By the new year she was in +care of Isabelle's specialist, who advised an operation. When that was +over, it was nearly spring, and though she was still delicate, she wished +to give some dinners "to return their obligations." Falkner objected for +many reasons, and she thought him very hard. + +"It is always sickness and babies for me," she pouted; "and when I want a +little fun, you think we can't afford it or something." + +Her hospitable heart was so bent on this project, it seemed so natural that +she should desire to show off her toy, after her struggle for it, so +innocent "to have our friends about us," that he yielded in part. A good +deal might be told about that dinner, from an economic, a social, a +domestic point of view. But we must lose it and hasten on. Imagine merely, +what a charming woman like Bessie Falkner, whose scheme of the universe was +founded on the giving of "pleasant little dinners," would do,--a woman who +was making her life, building her wigwam, filling it with those she wished +to have as friends, and you will see it all. It was, of course, a great +success. Mrs. Anstruthers Leason said of the hostess (reported by Nan +Lawton through Isabelle), "Little Mrs. Falkner has the real social gift,--a +very rare thing among our women!" And when an invitation came from Mrs. +Anstruthers Leason to dinner and her box at the French opera, Bessie was +sure that she had found her sphere. + + * * * * * + +Falkner seemed to Bessie these days to be growing harder,--he was +"exacting," "unsympathetic," "tyrannical." "He won't go places, and he +won't have people,--isn't nice to them, even in his own house," Bessie said +sadly to Isabelle. "I suppose that marriage usually comes to that: the wife +stands for bills and trouble, and the husband scolds. Most people squabble, +don't they?" + +"Of course he loves you, dear," Isabelle consoled her. "American husbands +always take their wives for granted, as Nannie says. A foreigner pays +attentions to his wife after marriage that our husbands don't think are +necessary once they have us. Our husbands take us too much as a matter of +course,--and pay the bills!" + +Bessie felt and said that Rob took life too hard, worried too much. After +all, when a man married a woman and had children, he must expect a certain +amount of trouble and anxiety. She wasn't sure but that wives were needed +to keep men spurred to their highest pitch of working efficiency. She had +an obscure idea that the male was by nature lazy and self-indulgent, and +required the steel prod of necessity to do his best work. As she looked +about her among the struggling households, it seemed such was the +rule,--that if it weren't for the fact of wife and children and bills, the +men would deteriorate.... Naturally there were differences,--"squabbles," +as she called them; but she would have been horrified if any one had +suggested that these petty squabbles, the state of mind they produced or +indicated, were infinitely more degrading, more deteriorating to them both, +than adultery. It never entered her mind that either she or her husband +could be unfaithful, that Falkner could ever care for any other woman than +her. "Why, we married for love!" + + * * * * * + +Love! That divine unreason of the gods, which lures man as a universal +solvent of his sorrow, the great solution to the great enigma! Where was +it? Bessie asked when Rob passed her door in the morning on his way to his +solitary breakfast without a word of greeting or a kiss, and finally left +the house without remembering to go upstairs again. And Falkner asked +himself much the same thing, when Bessie persisted in doing certain things +"because everybody does," or when he realized that after two years in his +new position, with a five hundred dollars' increase in his salary the +second year, he was nearly a thousand dollars in debt, and losing steadily +each quarter. Something must be done--and by him!--for in marriage, he +perceived with a certain bitterness, Man was the Forager, the Provider. And +in America if he didn't bring in enough from the day's hunt to satisfy the +charming squaw that he had made his consort, why,--he must trudge forth +again and get it! A poor hunter does not deserve the embellishment of a +Bessie and two pretty children. + +So he went forth to bring in more game, and he read no poetry these days. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +The calm male observer might marvel at Bessie's elation over the prospect +of sitting in Mrs. Anstruthers Leason's box at the performance of "Faust" +given by the French Opera Company on tour. But no candid woman will. It +could be explained partly by the natural desire to associate with +entertaining, well-dressed folk, who were generally considered to be "the +best," "the leaders" of local society. Sitting there in the stuffy box, +which was a poor place for seeing or hearing, Bessie felt the satisfaction +of being in the right company. She had discovered in one of the serried +rows of the first balcony Kitty Sanders, whom she had known as a girl in +Kansas City, where Bessie had once lived in the peregrinations of the +Bissell family. Kitty had married a prosperous dentist and enjoyed with him +an income nearly twice that of Rob Falkner. Kitty, scanning the boxes +closely, also spied Bessie, and exclaimed to her husband:-- + +"Why, there's Bessie Bissell in that box! You know she married a young +fellow, an engineer or something." And she added either aloud or to +herself, "They seem to be _in it_,--that's the Leason box." While the +alluring strains of the overture floated across the house, she mused at the +strange mutations of fortune, which had landed Bessie Bissell there and +herself here beside the dentist,--with some envy, in spite of three beloved +children at home and a motorcar.... + +To the dispassionate male observer this state of mind might be more +comprehensible if Bessie had appeared in Mrs. Corporation's box on a gala +night at the Metropolitan, or in the Duchess of Thatshire's box at Covent +Garden. But the strange fact of democracy is that instead of discouraging +social desires it has multiplied them ten thousand fold. Every city in the +land has its own Mrs. Anstruthers Leason or Mrs. Corporation, to form the +local constellation, towards which the active-minded women of a certain +type will always strive or gravitate, as you choose to put it. This being +so, the American husband, one might suppose, would sigh for an absolute +monarchy, where there is but one fixed social firmament, admission to which +is determined by a despot's edict. Then the great middle class could rest +content, knowing that forever, no matter what their gifts might be, their +wives could not aspire to social heights. With us the field is clear, the +race open to money and brains, and the result? Each one can answer for +himself. + +Isabelle, returning to her home that fall, with a slight surplus of +vitality, was eager for life. "I have been dead so long," she said to her +husband. "I want to see people!" Born inside the local constellation, as +she had been, that was not difficult. Yet she realized soon enough that the +Prices, prominent as they were, had never belonged to the heart of the +constellation. It remained for her to penetrate there, under the guidance +of the same Nannie Lawton whom as a girl she had rather despised. For every +constellation has its inner circle, the members of which touch +telepathically all other inner circles. The fact that Nannie Lawton called +her by her first name would help her socially more, than the Colonel's +record as a citizen or her husband's position in the railroad or their +ample means. Before her second winter of married life had elapsed, she had +begun to exhaust this form of excitement, to find herself always tired. +After all, although the smudge of St. Louis on the level alluvial plains of +America was a number of times larger than the smudge of Torso, the human +formula, at least in its ornamental form, remained much the same. She was +patroness where she should be patroness, she was invited where she would +have felt neglected not to be invited, she entertained very much as the +others she knew entertained, and she and her husband had more engagements +than they could keep. She saw this existence stretching down the years with +monotonous iteration, and began to ask herself what else there was to +satisfy the thirst for experience which had never been assuaged. + +Bessie, with a keener social sense, kept her eye on the game,--she had to, +and her little triumphs satisfied her. Nan Lawton varied the monotony of +"the ordinary round" by emotional dissipations that Isabelle felt herself +to be above. Other women of their set got variety by running about the +country to New York or Washington, to a hotel in Florida or in the +mountains of Carolina, or as a perpetual resource to Paris and Aix and +Trouville and London.... + +Isabelle was too intelligent, too much the daughter of her father, to +believe that a part of the world did not exist outside the social +constellation, and an interesting part, too. Some of those outside she +touched as time went on. She was one of the board of governors for the +Society of Country Homes for Girls, and here and on the Orphanage board she +met energetic and well-bred young married women, who apparently genuinely +preferred their charities, their reading clubs, the little country places +where they spent the summers, to the glory of Mrs. Anstruthers Leason's +opera box or dinner dance. As she shot about the city on her errands, +social and philanthropic, Isabelle sometimes mused on the lives of the +"others,"--all those thousands that filled the streets and great buildings +of the city. Of course the poor,--that was simple enough; the struggle for +life settled how one would live with ruthless severity. If it was a daily +question how you could keep yourself housed and fed, why it did not matter +what you did with your life. In the ranks above the poor, the little people +who lived in steam-heated apartments and in small suburban boxes had their +small fixed round of church and friends, still closely circumscribed and to +Isabelle, in her present mood,--simply dreadful. When she expressed this to +Fosdick, whom she was taking one morning to a gallery to see the work of a +local artist that fashionable people were patronizing, he had scoffed at +her:-- + +"_Madame la princesse_," he said, waving his hand towards the throng of +morning shoppers, "don't you suppose that the same capacity for human +sensation exists in every unit of that crowd bent towards Sneeson's as in +you?" + +"No," protested Isabelle, promptly; "they haven't the same experience." + +"As thrilling a drama can be unrolled in a twenty-five dollar flat as in a +palace." + +"Stuff! There isn't one of those women who wouldn't be keen to try the +palace!" + +"As you ought to be to try the flat, in a normally constituted society." + +"What do you mean by a normally constituted society?" + +"One where the goal of ease is not merely entertainment." + +"You are preaching now, aren't you?" demanded Isabelle. "Society has always +been pretty much the same, hasn't it? First necessities, then comforts, +then luxuries, and then--" + +"Well, what?" + +"Oh, experience, art, culture, I suppose." + +"Isabelle," the big man smilingly commented, "you are the same woman you +were six years ago." + +"I am not!" she protested, really irritated. "I have done a lot of +thinking, and I have seen a good deal of life. Besides I am a good wife, +and a mother, which I wasn't six years ago, and a member of the Country +Homes Society and the Orphanage, and a lot more." They laughed at her +defence, and Isabelle added as a concession: "I know that there are plenty +of women not in society who lead interesting lives, are intelligent and all +that. But I am a good wife, and a good mother, and I am intelligent, and +what is more, I see amusing people and more of them than the others,--the +just plain women. What would you have me do?" + +"Live," Fosdick replied enigmatically. + +"We all live." + +"Very few do." + +"You mean emotional--heart experiences, like Nan's affairs? ... Sometimes I +wonder if that wouldn't be--interesting. But it would give John such a +shock! ... Well, here are the pictures. There's Mrs. Leason's +portrait,--flatters her, don't you think?" + +Fosdick, leaning his fat hands on his heavy stick, slowly made the round of +the canvasses, concluding with the portrait of Mrs. Leason. + +"Got some talent in him," he pronounced; "a penny worth. If he can only +keep away from this sort of thing," pointing with his stick to the +portrait, "he might paint in twenty years." + +"But why shouldn't he do portraits? They all have to, to live." + +"It isn't the portrait,--it's the sort of thing it brings with it. You met +him, I suppose?" + +"Yes; dined with him at Mrs. Leason's last week." + +"I thought so. That's the beginning of his end." + +"You silly! Art has always been parasitic,--why shouldn't the young man go +to pleasant people's houses and have a good time and be agreeable and get +them to buy his pictures?" + +"Isabelle, you have fallen into the bad habit of echoing phrases. 'Art has +always been parasitic.' That's the second commonplace of the drawing-room +you have got off this morning." + +"Come over here and tell me something.... I can't quarrel with you, +Dickie!" Isabelle said, leading the way to a secluded bench. + +"If I were not modest, I should say you were flirting with me." + +"I never flirt with any man; I am known as the Saint, the Puritan,--I might +try it, but I couldn't--with you.... Tell me about Vick. Have you seen +him?" + +"Yes," Fosdick replied gravely. "I ran across him in Venice." + +"How was he?" + +"He looked well, has grown rather stout.... The first time I saw him was on +the Grand Canal; met him in a smart gondola, with men all togged out, no +end of a get-up!" + +"You saw them _both_?" + +"Of course,--I looked him up at once. They have an old place on the +Giudecca, you know. I spent a week with them. He's still working on the +opera,--it doesn't get on very fast, I gather. He played me some of the +music,--it's great, parts of it. And he has written other things." + +"I know all that," Isabelle interrupted impatiently. "But is he happy?" + +"A man like Vickers doesn't tell you that, you know." + +"But you can tell--how did they seem?" + +"Well," Fosdick replied slowly, "when I saw them in the gondola the first +time, I thought--it was too bad!" + +"I was afraid so," Isabelle cried. "Why don't they marry and come to New +York or go to London or some place and make a life?--people can't live like +that." + +"I think he wants to marry her," Fosdick replied. + +"But she won't?" + +"Precisely,--not now." + +"Why--what?" + +Fosdick avoided the answer, and observed, "Vick seems awfully fond of the +little girl, Delia." + +"Poor, poor Vick!" Isabelle sighed. "He ought to leave that creature." + +"He won't; Vick was the kind that the world sells cheap,--it's best kind. +He lives the dream and believes his shadows; it was always so. It will be +so until the end. Life will stab him at every corner." + +"Dear, dear Vick!" Isabelle said softly; "some days I feel as if I would +have done as he did." + +"But fortunately there is John to puncture your dream with solid fact." + +"John even might not be able to do it! ... I am going over to see Vick this +summer." + +"Wouldn't that make complications--family ones?" + +Isabelle threw up her head wilfully. + +"Dickie, I think there is something in me deeper than my love for John or +for the child,--and that is the feeling I have about Vick!" + +Fosdick looked at her penetratingly. + +"You ought not to have married, Isabelle." + +"Why? Every one marries--and John and I are very happy.... Come; there are +some people I don't want to meet." + +As they descended the steps into the murky light of the noisy city, +Isabelle remarked:-- + +"Don't forget to-night, promptly at seven,--we are going to the theatre +afterwards. I shall show you some of our smart people and let you see if +they aren't more interesting than the mob." + +She nodded gayly and drove off. As she went to a luncheon engagement, she +thought of Vickers, of Fosdick's remarks about living, and a great wave of +dissatisfaction swept over her. "It's this ugly city," she said to herself, +letting down the window. "Or it's nerves again,--I must do something!" That +phrase was often on her lips these days. In her restlessness nothing seemed +just right,--she was ever trying to find something beyond the horizon. As +Fosdick would have said, "The race vitality being exhausted in its +primitive force, nothing has come to take its place." But at luncheon she +was gay and talkative, the excitement of human contact stimulating her. And +afterwards she packed the afternoon with trivial engagements until it was +time to dress for her guests. + +The dinner and the theatre might have passed off uneventfully, if it had +not been for Fosdick. That unwieldy social vessel broke early in the +dinner. Isabelle had placed him next Mrs. Leason because the lady liked +celebrities, and Fosdick, having lately been put gently but firmly beyond +the confines of the Tzar's realm for undue intimacy with the rebellious +majority of the Tzar's subjects, might be counted such. For the time being +he had come to a momentary equilibrium in the city of his birth. Fosdick +and Mrs. Leason seemed to find common ground, while the other men, the +usual speechless contingent of tired business men, allowed themselves to be +talked at by the women. Presently Fosdick's voice boomed forth:-- + +"Let me tell you a story which will illustrate my point, Mrs. Leason. Some +years ago I was riding through the Kentucky mountains, and after a wretched +luncheon in one of the log-and-mud huts I was sitting on the bench in front +of the cabin trying to make peace with my digestion. The ground in that +spot sloped down towards me, and on the side of this little hill there lay +a large hog, a razor-back sow. There were eight little pigs clustered in +voracious attitudes about her, and she could supply but six at a time,--I +mean that she was provided by nature with but six teats." + +Mrs. Leason visibly moved away from her neighbor, and for the rest of his +story Fosdick had a silent dinner table. + +"The mother was asleep," Fosdick continued, turning his great head closer +to Mrs. Leason, "probably attending to her digestion as I was to mine, and +she left her offspring to fight it out among themselves for the possession +of her teats. There was a lively scrap, a lot of hollerin' and squealin' +from that bunch of porkers, grunts from the ins and yaps from the outs, you +know. Every now and then one of the outs would make a flying start, get a +wedge in and take a nip, forcing some one of his brothers out of the heap +so that he would roll down the hill into the path. Up he'd get and start +over, and maybe he would dislodge some other porker. And the old sow kept +grunting and sleeping peacefully in the sun while her children got their +dinner in the usual free-fight fashion. + +"Now," Fosdick raised his heavy, square-pointed finger and shook it at the +horrified Mrs. Leason and also across the table, noticing what seemed to +him serious interest in his allegory, "I observed that there was a +difference among those little porkers,--some were fat and some were peaked, +and the peaked fellers got little show at the mother. Now what I ask myself +is,--were they weak because they couldn't manage to get a square feed, or +were they hustled out more than the others because they were naturally +weak? I leave that to my friends the sociologists to determine--" + +"Isabella," Lane interposed from his end of the table, "if Mr. Fosdick has +finished his pig story, perhaps--" + +Isabelle, divided between a desire to laugh and a very vivid sense of Mrs. +Leason's feelings, rose, but Fosdick had not finished and she sat down +again. + +"But what I meant to say was this, madam,--there's only one difference +between that old sow and her brood and society as it is run at present, and +that is there are a thousand mouths to every teat, and a few big, fat +fellows are getting all the food." + +He looked up triumphantly from his exposition. There was a titter at Mrs. +Lawton's end of the table. This lady had been listening to an indecent +story told in French-English when Fosdick had upset things. Now she +remarked in an audible tone:-- + +"Disgusting, I say!" + +"Eh! What's the matter? Don't you believe what I told you?" Fosdick +demanded. + +"Oh, yes, Dickie,--anything you say,--only don't repeat it!" Isabelle +exclaimed, rising from the table. + +"Does he come from a farm?" one woman murmured indignantly. "Such _gros +mots_!" She too had been listening to the story of adultery at Mrs. +Lawton's end of the table. Isabelle, who had taken in the whole situation +from her husband's shocked face, Nan Lawton's sly giggle over the salacious +tidbit, and Mrs. Leason's offended countenance, felt that she must shriek +to relieve her feelings. + +The party finally reached the theatre and saw a "sex" play, which caused a +furious discussion among the women. "No woman would have done that." "The +man was not worth the sacrifice," etc. And Fosdick gloomily remarked in +Isabelle's ears: "Rot like this is all you see on the modern stage. And +it's because women want it,--they must forever be fooling with sex. Why +don't they--" + +"Hush, Dickie! you have exploded enough to-night. Don't say that to Mrs. +Leason!" + +Her world appeared to her that night a harlequin tangle, and, above all, +meaningless--yes, dispiritedly without sense. John, somehow, seemed +displeased with her, as if she were responsible for Dickie's breaks. She +laughed again as she thought of the sow story, and the way the women took +it. "What a silly world,--talk and flutter and gadding, all about nothing!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +Isabelle did not see much of the Falkners as time went on. Little lines of +social divergence began to separate them more and more widely. "After all, +one sees chiefly the people who do the same things one does," Isabelle +explained to herself. Bessie thought Isabelle "uncertain," perhaps +snobbish, and felt hurt; though she remarked to Rob merely, "The Lanes are +very successful, of course." + +Affairs in the Buena Vista Pleasance house had progressed meantime. There +were, naturally, so many meals to be got and eaten, so many little +illnesses of the children, and other roughnesses of the road of life. There +was also Bessie's developing social talent, and above all there was the +infinitely complex action and reaction of the man and the wife upon each +other. Seen as an all-seeing eye might observe, with all the emotional +shading, the perspective of each act, the most commonplace household +created by man and woman would be a wonderful cosmography. But the +novelist, even he who has the courage to write a dull book, can touch but +here and there, on the little promontories of daily life, where it seems to +him the spiritual lava boils up near the surface and betrays most +poignantly the nature of the fire beneath.... + +It was a little over three years since the Falkners had moved into the +Buena Vista Pleasance house. Husband and wife sat in the front room after +their silent dinner alone, with the September breeze playing through the +windows, which after a hot day had been thrown open. There was the debris +of a children's party in the room and the hall,--dolls and toys, +half-nibbled cakes and saucers of ice-cream. Bessie, who was very neat +about herself, was quite Southern in her disregard for order. She was also +an adorable hostess for children, because she gave them loose rein. + +"What is it you wish to say?" she asked her husband in a cold, defensive +tone that had grown almost habitual. + +Though pale she was looking very pretty in a new dress that she had worn at +a woman's luncheon, where she had spent the first part of the afternoon. +She had been much admired at the luncheon, had taken the lead in the talk +about a new novel which was making a ten days' sensation. Her mind was +still occupied partly with what she had said about the book. These +discussions with Rob on household matters, at increasingly frequent +periods, always froze her. "He makes me show my worst side," she said to +herself. At the children's tea, moreover, an attack of indigestion had +developed. Bessie was fond of rich food, and in her nervous condition, +which was almost chronic, it did not agree with her, and made her +irritable. + +"I have been going over our affairs," Falkner began in measured tones. That +was the usual formula! Bessie thought he understood women very badly. She +wondered if he ever did anything else those evenings he spent at home +except "go over their affairs." She wished he would devote himself to some +more profitable occupation. + +"Well?" + +Falkner looked tired and listless. The summer was always his hardest time, +and this summer the road had been pushing its terminal work with actual +ferocity. He wore glasses now, and was perceptibly bald. He was also +slouchy about dress; Bessie could rarely induce him to put on evening +clothes when they dined alone. + +"Well?" she asked again. It was not polite of him to sit staring there as +if his mind were a thousand miles away. A husband should show some good +manners to a woman, even if she was his wife! + +Their chairs were not far apart, but the tones of their voices indicated an +immeasurable gulf that had been deepening for years. Falkner cleared his +voice. + +"As I have told you so often, Bessie, we are running behind all the time. +It has got to a point where it must stop." + +"What do you suggest?" + +"You say that three servants are necessary?" + +"You can see for yourself that they are busy all the time. There's work for +four persons in this house, and there ought to be a governess beside. I +don't at all like the influence of that school on Mildred--" + +"Ought!" he exclaimed. + +"If people live in a certain kind of house, in a certain neighborhood, they +must live up to it,--that is all. If you wish to live as the Johnstons +live, why that is another matter altogether." + +Her logic was imperturbable. There was an unexpressed axiom: "If you want a +dowd for your wife who can't dress or talk and whom nobody cares to +know,--why you should have married some one else." Bessie awaited his reply +in unassailable attractiveness. + +"Very well," Falkner said slowly. "That being so, I have made up my mind +what to do." + +Mildred entered the room at this moment, looking for a book. She was eight, +and one swift glance at her parents' faces was enough to show her quick +intelligence that they were "discussing." + +"What is it, Mildred?" Bessie asked in the cooing voice she always had for +children. + +"I want my _Jungle Book_," the little girl replied, taking a book from the +table. + +"Run along, girlie," Bessie said; and Mildred, having decided that it was +not an opportune moment to make affectionate good-nights, went upstairs. + +"Well, what is it?" Bessie demanded in the other tone. + +"I have a purchaser for the house, at fair terms." + +"Please remember that it is _my_ house." + +"Wait! Whatever remains after paying off the mortgage and our debts, not +more than six thousand dollars, I suppose, will be placed to your credit in +the trust company." + +"Why should I pay all our debts?" + +Her husband looked at her, and she continued hastily:-- + +"What do you mean to do then? We can't live on the street." + +"We can hire a smaller house somewhere else, or live in a flat." + +Bessie waved her hand in despair; they had been over this so many times and +she had proved so conclusively the impossibility of their squeezing into a +flat. Men never stay convinced! + +"Or board." + +"Never!" she said firmly. + +"You will have to choose." + +This was the leading topic of their discussion, and enough has been said to +reveal the lines along which it developed. There was much of a discursive +nature, naturally, introduced by Bessie, who sought thereby to fog the +issue and effect a compromise. She had found that was a good way to deal +with a husband. But to-night Falkner kept steadily at his object. + +"No, no, no!" he iterated in weary cadence. "It's no use to keep on +expecting; five thousand is all they will pay me, and it is all I am really +worth to them. And after this terminal work is finished, they may have +nothing to offer me.... We must make a clean sweep to start afresh, right, +on the proper basis." After a moment, he added by way of appeal, "And I +think that will be the best for us, also." + +"You expect me to do all the work?" + +"Expect!" Falkner leaned his head wearily against the chair-back. Words +seemed useless at this point. Bessie continued rather pitilessly:-- + +"Don't you want a home? Don't you want your children brought up decently +with friends about them?" + +"God knows I want a home!" the husband murmured. + +"I think I have made a very good one,--other people think so." + +"That's the trouble--too good for me!" + +"I should think it would be an incentive for a man--" + +"God!" Falkner thundered; "that you should say that!" + +It had been in her heart a long time, but she had never dared to express it +before,--the feeling that other men, no abler than Rob, contrived to give +their wives, no more seductive than she, so much more than she had had. + +"Other men find the means--" + +She was thinking of John Lane, of Purrington,--a lively young broker of +their acquaintance,--of Dr. Larned,--all men whose earning power had leaped +ahead of Falkner's. Bessie resented the economic dependence of married +women on their husbands. She believed in the foreign _dot_ system. "My +daughters shall never marry as I did," she would say frankly to her +friends. "There can be no perfectly happy marriage unless the woman is +independent of her husband in money matters to a certain extent." ... For +she felt that she had a right to her ideals, so long as they were not bad, +vicious; a right to her own life as distinct from her husband's life, or +the family life. "The old idea of the woman's complete subordination has +gone," she would say. "It is better for the men, too, that women are no +longer mere possessions without wills of their own." It was such ideas as +this that earned for Bessie among her acquaintances the reputation of being +"intelligent" and "modern." + +And Falkner, a vision of the mountains and the lonely cabin before his +eyes, remarked with ironic calm:-- + +"And why should I earn more than I do, assuming that I could sell myself at +a higher figure?" + +For the man, too, had his dumb idea,--the feeling that something precious +inside him was being murdered by this pressing struggle to earn more, +always more. As man he did not accept the simple theory that men were +better off the harder they were pushed, that the male brute needed the spur +of necessity to function, that all the man was good for was to be the +competent forager. No! Within him there was a protest to the whole spirit +of his times,--to the fierce competitive struggle. Something inside him +proclaimed that he was not a mere maker of dollars, that life was more than +food and lodging, even for those he loved most. + +"What do I get out of it?" he added bitterly. "Perhaps I have done too +much." + +"Oh, if that is the way you feel,--if you don't love me!" Bessie exclaimed +with wounded pride. "Probably you are tired of me. When a man is sick of +his wife, he finds his family a burden, naturally." + +And there they paused at the brink of domestic vulgarity. + +Falkner saw the girl on the veranda of the mountain hotel, with her golden +hair, her fresh complexion, her allurement. Bessie, most men would think, +was even more desirable this minute than then as an unformed girl. The +arched eyebrows, so clearly marked, the full lips, the dimpled neck, all +spake:-- + +"Come kiss me, and stop talking like that!" + +For a moment the old lure seized the man, the call of the woman who had +once been sweet to him. Then his blood turned cold within him. That was the +last shame of marriage,--that a wife should throw this lure into the +reasoning, a husband to console himself--that way! Falkner rose to his +feet. + +"I shall make arrangements to sell the house." + +"Very well; then I shall take the children and go to my mother in Denver." + +"As you please." + +Without looking again at his wife, he left the room. + +Bessie had played blindly her last card, the wife's last card, and lost! +There was bitterness and rebellion in her heart. She had loved her +husband,--hadn't she shown it by marrying him instead of the mine owner? +She had been a good woman, not because she hadn't had her chances of other +men's admiration, as she sometimes let her husband know. Dickie Lawton had +made love to her outrageously, and the last time the old Senator had been +in St. Louis,--well, he would never come again to her house. Not a shadow +of disloyalty had ever crossed her heart. + +Bessie thought that a good wife must be chaste, of course; other matters of +wifely duty were less distinct. + +No! her husband did not care for her any more,--that was the real cause of +their troubles. It was hard to wake up to such a fact after nine years of +marriage with a man whom you loved! + +There was a tragedy between, but not the one that Bessie suspected, nor the +mere tragedy of extravagance. Each realized dimly that the other hindered +rather than promoted that something within which each held tenaciously as +most precious. Instead of giving mutually, they stole mutually, and the end +of that sort of life must be concubinage or the divorce court--or a +spiritual readjustment beyond the horizon of either Falkner or his wife. + + * * * * * + +"Did you know that the Falkners were going to give up their house?" Lane +asked his wife. + +"No, indeed. I saw Bessie at the symphony the other day, and she spoke of +going out to Denver to visit her mother; but she didn't say anything about +the house. Are you sure?" + +"Yes; Falkner told Bainbridge he was selling it. And he wanted Bainbridge +to see if there was an opening for him on the road in the East. I am afraid +things haven't gone well with them." + +"After all the trouble they had building, and such a pretty house! What a +shame!" + +Lane was in his outing clothes, about to go to the country club for an +afternoon of golf with the Colonel. He looked very strong and handsome in +his Scotch tweeds. Lately he had begun to take more exercise than he had +found time for the first years of his marriage, had developed a taste for +sport, and often found a day or two to fish or hunt when friends turned up +from the East. Isabelle encouraged this taste, though she saw all the less +of her husband; she had a feeling that it was good for him to relax, made +him more of the gentleman, less of the hard-working clerk. The motor was at +the door, but he dawdled. + +"It is a pity about the Falkners,--I am afraid they are not getting on well +together. He's a, peculiar fellow. Bainbridge tells me his work is only +pretty good,--doesn't put his back into it the way a man must who means to +get up in his profession these days. There is a lot doing in his line, too. +It will be a shame if trouble comes to Bessie." + +"The old difficulty, I suppose," Isabelle remarked; "not enough money--same +story everywhere!" + +It was the same story everywhere, even in these piping times of prosperity, +with fortunes doubling, salaries going up, and the country pouring out its +wealth. So few of her friends, even the wealthy ones, seemed to have enough +money for their necessities or desires. If they had four servants, they +needed six; if they had one motor, they must have two; and the new idea of +country houses had simply doubled or trebled domestic budgets. It wasn't +merely in the homes of ambitious middle-class folk that the cry went +up,--"We must have more!" Isabelle herself had begun to feel that the +Colonel might very well have given her a package of stocks and bonds at her +wedding. Even with her skilful management, and John's excellent salary, +there was so much they could not do that seemed highly desirable to do. +"Everything costs so these days!" And to live meant to spend,--to live! + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +Isabelle did not go to Vickers as she firmly intended to that summer. Lane +offered a stubborn if silent opposition to the idea of her joining her +brother,--"so long as that woman is with him." He could not understand +Isabelle's passionate longing for her brother, nor the fact that his +loyalty to his mistake endeared Vickers all the more to her. She divined +the ashes in her brother's heart, the waste in which he dwelt, and the fact +that he "had made a complete mess of life" did not subtract from her love. +After all, did the others, their respectable acquaintance, often make much +of living? + +It was not John's opposition, however, that prevented the journey, but the +alarming weakness of the Colonel. In spite of his activity and his exercise +the old man had been growing perceptibly weaker, and his digestive trouble +had developed until the doctors hinted at cancer. To leave the Colonel now +and go to the son he had put out of his life would be mere brutality. +Vickers might come back, but Mrs. Price felt that this would cause the +Colonel more pain than pleasure. + +During the spring Isabelle made many expeditions about the city in company +with her father, who gave as an excuse for penetrating all sorts of new +neighborhoods that he wished to look at his real estate, which was widely +scattered. But this was merely an excuse, as Isabelle easily perceived; +what he really cared about was to see the city itself, the building, the +evidences of growth, of thriving. + +"When your mother and I came to live in the city," he would say, laying a +large white hand on his daughter's knee, "it was all swamp out this +way,--we used to bring Ezra with us in the early spring and pick +pussy-willows. Now look at it!" And what Isabelle saw, when she looked in +the direction that the old man waved his hand, was a row of ugly brick +apartment houses or little suburban cottages, or brick stores and +tenements. There was nothing in the scene, for her, to inspire enthusiasm, +and yet the Colonel would smile and gaze fondly out of those kindly blue +eyes at the acres of human hive. It was not pride in his shrewd foresight +in investing his money, so much as a generous sympathy for the growth of +the city, the forthputting of a strong organism. + +"I bought this tract in eighty-two," he said, pointing to a stretch of +factories and grain elevators. "Had to borrow part of the money to do it. +Parrott thought I was a fool, but I knew the time would come when it would +be sold by the foot,--folks are born and must work and live," he mused. He +made the man drive the car slowly through the rutty street while he looked +keenly at the hands pouring from the mills, the elevators, the railroad +yards. "Too many of those Polaks," he commented, "but they are better than +niggers. It is a great country!" + +In the old man's pride there was more than selfish satisfaction, more than +flamboyant patriotism over his "big" country; there was an almost pathetic +belief in the goodness of life, merely as life. These breeding millions, in +this teeming country, were working out their destiny,--on the whole a +better destiny than the world had yet seen. And the old man, who had lived +his life and fought vitally, felt deep in the inner recesses of his being +that all was good; the more chance for the human organism to be born and +work out its day, the better. In the eyes of the woman of the newer +generation this was a singular-pantheism,--incomprehensible. Unless one +were born under favorable conditions, what good was there in the struggle? +Mere life was not interesting. + +They went, too, to see the site of the coming Exposition. The great trees +were being cut down and uprooted to give space for the vast buildings. The +Colonel lamented the loss of the trees. "Your mother and I used to come out +here Sundays in summer," he said regretfully. "It was a great way from town +then--there was only a steam road--and those oaks were grateful, after the +heat. I used to lie on the ground and your mother would read to me. She had +a very sweet voice, Isabelle!" + +But he believed in the Exposition, even if the old trees must be sacrificed +for it. He had contributed largely to the fund, and had been made a +director, though the days of his leadership were over. "It is good for +people to see how strong they are," he said. "These fairs are our Olympic +games!" + + * * * * * + +At first he did not wish to leave the city, which was part of his bone and +flesh; but as the summer drew on and he was unable to endure the motor his +thoughts turned back to his Connecticut hills, to the old farm and the +woods and the fields. Something deeper than all was calling to him to +return to the land that was first in his blood. So they carried him--now a +bony simulacrum of his vigorous self--to the old house at Grafton. For a +few weeks he lay wrapped in rugs on the veranda, his eyes on Dog Mountain. +At first he liked to talk with the farm-hands, who slouched past the +veranda. But more and more his spirit withdrew even from this peaceful +scene of his activity, and at last he died, as one who has no more concern +about life.... + +To Isabelle, who had been with him constantly these last fading months, +there was much that remained for a long time inexplicable in her father's +attitude towards life. He seemed to regret nothing, not even the death of +his elder son, nor his estrangement from Vickers, and he had little of the +old man's pessimism. There were certain modern manifestations that she knew +he disliked; but he seemed to have a fine tolerance even for them, as being +of no special concern to him. He had lived his life, such as it was, +without swerving, without doubts or hesitations, which beset the younger +generation, and now that it was over he had neither regret nor desire to +grasp more. + +When the Colonel's will was opened, it caused surprise not only in his +family, but in the city where he had lived. It was long talked about. In +the first place his estate was much larger than even those nearest him had +supposed; it mounted upwards from eight millions. The will apparently had +been most carefully considered, largely rewritten after the departure of +Vickers. His son was not mentioned in the document. Nor were there the +large bequests, at least outright, to charities that had been expected of +so public spirited a man. The will was a document in the trust field. To +sum it all up, it seemed as if the old man had little faith in the +immediate generation, even in his daughter and her successful husband. For +he left Isabelle only the farm at Grafton and a few hundred thousand +dollars. To be sure, after his wife's death the bulk of the estate would be +held in trust for her child, or children, should her marriage prove more +fruitful in the future. Failing heirs, he willed that the bulk of the +estate should go to certain specified charities,--an Old Man's Home, The +Home for Crippled Children, etc. And it was arranged that the business +should be continued under the direction of the trustees. The name of +Parrott and Price should still stand for another generation! + +"A singular will!" Lane, who was one of the trustees, said to his wife. + +Isabelle was more hurt than she cared to have known. She had always +supposed that some day she would be a rich woman in her own right. But it +was the silent comment, the mark of disapproval, that she read in the lines +of the will which hurt. The Colonel had never criticised, never chided her; +but she had felt at times that he did not like the kind of life she had +elected to lead latterly. + +"He thought we were extravagant, probably," she replied to her husband. + +"I can't see why,--we never went to him for help!" + +She knew that was not exactly the reason,--extravagance. The old man did +not like the modern spirit--at least the spirit of so many of her +friends--of spending for themselves. The Colonel did not trust the present +generation; he preferred that his money should wait until possibly the +passing of the years had brought wisdom. + +"A selfish will!" the public said. + + + + +PART THREE + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +Fosdick had called Cornelia Woodyard the "Vampire,"--why, none of her +admirers could say. She did not look the part this afternoon, standing +before the fire in her library, negligently holding a cup of tea in one +hand, while she nibbled gourmandizingly at a frosted cake. She had come in +from an expedition with Cairy, and had not removed her hat and gloves, +merely letting her furs slip off to the floor. While she had her tea, Cairy +was looking through the diamond panes of a bank of windows at a strip of +small park, which was dripping in the fog of a dubious December day. Conny, +having finished her tea, examined lazily some notes, pushed them back into +their envelopes with a disgusted curl of her long lips, and glancing over +her shoulder at Cairy drawled in an exhausted voice:-- + +"Poke the fire, please, Tommy!" + +Cairy did as he was told, then lighted a cigarette and stood expectantly. +Conny seemed lost in a maze of dreary thoughts, and the man looked about +the room for amusement. It was a pleasant little room, with sufficient +color of flowers and personal disorderliness of letters and books and +papers to soften the severity of the Empire furniture. Evidently the +architect who had done over this small down-town house had been +supplemented by the strong hand of its mistress. Outside and inside he had +done his best to create something French out of the old-fashioned New York +block house, but Cornelia Woodyard had Americanized his creation enough to +make it intimate, livable. + +"Can't you say something, Tommy?" Conny murmured in her childish treble. + +"I have said a good deal first and last, haven't I?" + +"Don't be cross, Tommy! I am down on my job to-day." + +"Suppose you quit it! Shall we go to the Bahamas? Or Paris? Or Rio?" + +"Do you think that you could manage the excursion, Tommy?" Although she +smiled good-naturedly, the remark seemed to cut. The young man slumped into +a chair and leaned his head on his hands. + +"Besides, where would Percy come in?" + +Cairy asked half humorously, "And where, may I ask, do I come in?" + +"Oh, Tommy, don't look like that!" Conny complained. "You _do_ come in, you +know!" + +Cairy brought his chair and placed himself near the fire; then leaned +forward, looking intently into the woman's eyes. + +"I think sometimes the women must be right about you, you know." + +"What do they say?" + +... "That you are a calculating machine,--one of those things they have in +banks to do arithmetic stunts!" + +"No, you don't, ... silly! Tell me what Gossom said about the place." + +"He didn't say much about that; he talked about G. Lafayette Gossom and +_The People's Magazine_ chiefly.... The mess of pottage is three hundred a +month. I am to be understudy to the great fount of ideas. When he has an +inspiration he will push a bell, and I am to run and catch it as it flows +red hot from his lips and put it into shape,--if I can." + +Cairy nursed his injured leg with a disgusted air. + +"Don't sniff, Tommy,--there are lots of men who would like to be in your +shoes." + +"I know.... Oh, I am not ungrateful for my daily bread. I kiss the hand +that found it,--the hand of power!" + +"Silly! Don't be literary with me. Perhaps I put the idea into old Noddy +Gossom's head when he was here the other night. You'll have to humor him, +listen to his pomposity. But he has made a success of that _People's +Magazine_. It is an influence, and it pays!" + +"Four hundred thousand a year, chiefly automobile and corset ads, I should +say." + +"Nearly half a million a year!" Conny cried with the air of 'See what I +have done for you!' + +"Yes!" the Southerner remarked with scornful emphasis ... "I shall harness +myself once more to the car of triumphant prosperity, and stretch forth my +hungry hands to catch the grains that dribble in the rear. Compromise! +Compromise! All is Compromise!" + +"Now you are literary again," Conny pronounced severely. "Your play wasn't +a success,--there was no compromise about that! The managers don't want +your new play. Gossom does want your little articles. You have to live, and +you take the best you can get,--pretty good, too." + +"Madam Materialist!" + +Conny made a little face, and continued in the same lecturing tone. + +"Had you rather go back to that cross-roads in the Virginia +mountains--something Court-house--or go to London and write slop home to +the papers, as Ted Stevens does?" + +"You know why I don't go back to the something Courthouse and live on +corn-bread and bacon!" Cairy sat down once more very near the blond woman +and leaned forward slowly. Conny's mouth relaxed, and her eyes softened. + +"You are dear," she said with a little laugh; "but you are silly about +things." As the young man leaned still farther forward, his hand touching +her arm, Conny's large brown eyes opened speculatively on him.... + +The other night he had kissed her for the first time, that is, really +kissed her in unequivocal fashion, and she had been debating since whether +she should mention the matter to Percy. The right moment for such a +confidence had not yet come. She must tell him some day. She prided herself +that her relation with her husband had always been honest and frank, and +this seemed the kind of thing he ought to know about, if she were going to +keep that relation what it had been. She had had tender +intimacies--"emotional friendships," her phrase was--before this affair +with Cairy. They had always been perfectly open: she had lunched and dined +them, so to speak, in public as well as at the domestic table. Percy had +rather liked her special friends, had been nice to them always. + +But looking into the Southerner's eyes, she felt that there was something +different in this case; it had troubled her from the time he kissed her, it +troubled her now--what she could read in his eyes. He would not be content +with that "emotional friendship" she had given the others. Perhaps, and +this was the strangest thrill in her consciousness, she might not be +content to have him satisfied so easily.... Little Wrexton Grant had sent +her flowers and written notes--and kissed her strong fingers, once. Bertie +Sollowell had dedicated one of his books to her (the author's copy was +somewhere in Percy's study), and hinted that his life missed the guiding +hand that she could have afforded him. He had since found a guiding hand +that seemed satisfactory. Dear old Royal Salters had squired her, bought +her silver in Europe, and Jevons had painted her portrait the year he +opened his studio in New York, and kissed a very beautiful white +shoulder,--purely by way of compliment to the shoulder. All these marks of +gallantry had been duly reported to Percy, and laughed at together by +husband and wife in that morning hour when Conny had her coffee in bed. +Nevertheless, they had touched her vanity, as evidences that she was still +attractive as a woman. No woman--few women at any rate--of thirty-one +resents the fact that some man other than her husband can feel tenderly +towards her. And "these friends"--the special ones--had all been respecters +of the law; not one would have thought of coveting his neighbor's wife, any +more than of looting his safe. + +But with Tom Cairy it was different. Not merely because he was Southern and +hence presumably ardent in temperament, nor because of his reputation for +being "successful" with women; not wholly because he appealed to her on +account of his physical disability,--that unfortunate slip by the negro +nurse. But because there was in this man the strain of feminine +understanding, of vibrating sentiment--the lyric chord of +temperament--which made him lover first and last! That is why he had +stirred most women he had known well,--women in whom the emotional life had +been dormant, or unappeased, or petrified. + +"You are such a dear!" Conny murmured, looking at him with her full soft +eyes, realizing in her own way that in this fragile body there was the soul +of the lover,--born to love, to burn in some fashion before some altar, +always. + +The special aroma that Cairy brought to his love-making was this sense that +for the time it was all there was in life, that it shut out past and +future. The special woman enveloped by his sentiment did not hear the steps +of other women echoing through outer rooms. She was, for the moment, first +and last. He was able to create this emotional delusion genuinely; for into +each new love he poured himself, like a fiery liquor, that swept the heart +clean. + +"Dearest," he had murmured that night to Conny, "you are wonderful,--woman +and man,--the soul of a woman, the mind of a man! To love you is to love +life." + +And Conny, in whose ears the style of lover's sighs was immaterial, was +stirred with an unaccountable feeling. When Cairy put his hand on hers, and +his lips quivered beneath his mustache, her face inevitably softened and +her eyes widened like a child's eyes. For Conny, even Conny, with her +robust intelligence and strong will to grasp that out of life which seemed +good to her, wanted to love--in a way she had never loved before. Like many +women she had passed thirty with a husband of her choice, two children, and +an establishment entirely of her making before she became aware that she +had missed something on the way,--a something that other women had. She had +seen Severine Wilson go white when a certain man entered the room--then +light brilliantly with joy when his eyes sought her.... That must be worth +having, too! ... + +Her relations with her husband were perfect,--she had said so for years and +every one said the same thing about the Woodyards. They were very intimate +friends, close comrades. She knew that Percy respected and admired her more +than any woman in the world, and paid her the last flattery of conceding to +her will, respecting her intelligence. But there was something that he had +not done, could not do, and that was a something that Cairy seemed able to +do,--give her a sensation partly physical, wholly emotional, like the +effect of stimulant, touching every nerve. Conny, with her sure grasp of +herself, however, had no mind to submit blindly to this intoxication; she +would examine it, like other matters,--was testing it now in her capacious +intelligence, as the man bent his eyes upon her, so close to her lips. + +Had she only been the "other sort," the conventional ordinary sort, she +would have either gulped her sensation blindly,--"let herself go,"--or +trembled with horror and run away as from some evil thing. Being as she +was, modern, intellectual, proudly questioning all maxims, she kept this +new phenomenon in her hand, saying, "What does it mean for _me_?" The note +of the Intellectuals! + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +There was the soft sound of a footstep on the padded stairs, and Percy +Woodyard glanced into the room. + +"Hello, Tom!" he said briskly, and crossed to Conny, whose smooth brow he +touched softly with the tips of his fingers. "How goes it, Tom?" + +"You are home early," Conny complained in her treble drawl. + +"Must go to Albany to-night," Percy explained, a weary note in his voice. +"Not dining out to-night, Tom?" + +It was a little joke they had, that when Cairy was not with them he was +"dining out."... + +When Cairy had left, Conny rose from her lounging position as if to resume +the burden of life. + +"It's the Commission?" she inquired. + +"Yes! I sent you the governor's letter." + +For a time they discussed the political situation in the new Commission, to +which Woodyard had recently been appointed, his first conspicuous public +position. Then his wife observed wearily: "I was at Potts's this morning +and saw Isabelle Lane there. She was in mourning." + +"Her father died,--you know we saw it in the papers." + +"She must be awfully rich." + +"He left considerable property,--I don't know to whom." + +"Well, they are in New York. Her husband has been made something or other +in the railroad, so they are going to live here." + +"He is a very able man, I am told." + +After a time Conny drawled: "I suppose we must have 'em here to +dinner,--they are at a hotel up town. Whom shall we have?" + +Evidently after due consideration Conny had concluded that the Lanes must +come under her cognizance. She ran over half a dozen names from her best +dinner list, and added, "And Tom." + +"Why Tom this time?" Percy demanded. + +"He's met Isabelle--and we always have Tommy! You aren't jealous, are you, +Percy?" She glanced at him in amusement. + +"I must dress," Percy observed negligently, setting down his cup of tea. + +"Come here and tell me you are not jealous," Conny commanded. As her +husband smiled and brushed her fair hair with his lips, she muttered, "You +silly!" just as she had to Cairy's unreasonableness. Why! She was Percy's +destiny and he knew it.... She had a contempt for people who ruffled +themselves over petty emotions. This sex matter had been exaggerated by +Poets and Prudes, and their hysterical utterances should not inhibit her +impulses. + +Nevertheless she did not consider it a suitable opportunity to tell Percy +about the kiss. + + * * * * * + +Percy Woodyard and Cornelia Pallanton had married on a new, radical basis. +They had first met in the house of an intellectual woman, the wife of a +university professor, where clever young persons were drawn in and taught +to read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Ibsen and George Moore, and to engage +gracefully in perilous topics. They had been rather conscious that they +were radicals,--"did their own thinking," as they phrased it, these young +persons. They were not willing to accept the current morality, not even +that part of it engraved in law; but so far as regarded all of morality +that lay outside the domain of sex their actions were not in conflict with +society, though they were Idealists, and in most cases Sentimentalists. But +in the matter of sex relation, which is the knot of the tangle for youth, +they believed in the "development of the individual." It must be determined +by him, or her, whether this development could be obtained best through +regular or irregular relations. The end of all this individual development? +"The fullest activity, the largest experience, the most complete +presentation of personality," etc. Or as Fosdick railed, "Suck all and spit +out what you don't like!" + +So when these two young souls had felt sufficiently moved, one to the +other, to contemplate marriage, they had had an "understanding": they would +go through with the customary formula and oaths of marriage, to please +their relatives and a foolish world; but neither was to be "bound" by any +such piece of silly archaism as the marriage contract. Both recognized that +both had diversified natures, which might require in either case more +varied experience than the other could give. In their enlightened affection +for each other, neither would stand in the light of the other's best +good.... There are many such young people, in whom intellectual pride has +erased deeper human instincts. But as middle life draws on, they +conform--or seek refuge in the divorce court. + +Neither Percy nor Cornelia had any intention of practising adultery as a +habit: they merely wished to be honest with themselves, and felt superior +to the herd in recognizing the errant or variant possibilities in +themselves. Conny took pleasure in throwing temptation in Percy's way, in +encouraging him to know other women,--secretly gratified that he proved +hopelessly domestic. And on her side we have seen the innocent lengths to +which she had hitherto gone. + +For it proved as life began in earnest for these two that much of their +clear philosophy crumbled. Instead of the vision of feminine Idealism that +the young lawyer had worshipped, Conny developed a neat, practical nature, +immensely capable of "making things go." As her husband was the most +obvious channel through which things could move, her husband became her +chief care. She had no theory of exploiting him,--she had no theories at +all. She saw him as so much capacity to be utilized. Just as she never was +entrapped into a useless acquaintance, never had a "wrong person" at her +house, never wasted her energies on the mere ebullition of good feeling, so +she never allowed Percy to waste his energies on fruitless works. +Everything must count. Their life was a pattern of simple and pronounced +design, from the situation of their house to the footing on which it was +established and the people who were encouraged to attach themselves there. + +Woodyard had been interested in social good works, and as a young man had +served the Legal Aid Society. A merely worldly woman would have discouraged +this mild weakness for philanthropy. But Conny knew her material; out of +such as Percy, corporation lawyers--those gross feeders at the public +trough--were not made. Woodyard was a man of fine fibre, rather +unaggressive. He must either be steered into a shady pool of legal +sinecure, or take the more dangerous course through the rapids of public +life. It was the moment of Reform. Conny realized the capabilities of +Reform, and Percy's especial fitness for it; Reform, if not remunerative, +was fashionable and prominent. + +So Conny had steered their little bark, hoisting sail to every favorable +wind, no matter how slight the puff, until Woodyard now was a minor figure +in the political world. When his name occurred in the newspapers, a good +many people knew who he was, and his remarks at dinners and his occasional +speeches were quoted from, if there was not more valuable matter. He had +been spoken of for Congress. (Conny, of course, would never permit him to +engulf himself in that hopeless sea.) Just what Conny designed as the +ultimate end, she herself did not know; like all great generals, she was an +opportunist and took what seemed to her worth taking from the fortunes of +the day. The last good thing which had floated up on her shore was this +Commissionership. She had fished that up with the aid of the amiable +Senator, who had spoken a word here and a word there in behalf of young +Woodyard. + +Conny was very well pleased with herself as a wife, and she knew that her +husband was pleased with her. Moreover, she had not the slightest intention +of permitting anything to interfere with her wifely duties as she saw +them.... + +Percy had gone upstairs to that roof story where in New York children are +housed, to see his boy and girl. He was very fond of his children. When he +came down, his thoughtful face was worried. + +"The kids seem always to have colds," he remarked. + +"I know it," Conny admitted. "I must take them to Dr. Snow to-morrow." +(They had their own doctor, and also their own throat specialist.) + +"I wonder if it is good for them here, so far down in the city,--they have +only that scrap of park to play in." + +Conny, who had been over this question a good many times, answered +irrefutably,-- + +"There seem to be a good many children growing up all right in the same +conditions." + +She knew that Percy would like some excuse to escape into the country. +Conny had no liking for suburban life, and with her husband's career at the +critical point the real country was out of the question. + +"I suppose Jack will have to go to boarding school another year," Percy +said with a sigh. + +He was not a strong man himself, though of solid build and barely thirty. +He had that bloodless whiteness of skin so often found among young American +men, which contrasted with his dark mustache, and after a long day's work +like this his step dragged. He wore glasses over his blue eyes, and when he +removed them the dark circles could be seen. Conny knew the limits of his +strength and looked carefully to his physical exercise. + +"You didn't get your squash this afternoon?" + +When Percy was worried about anything, she immediately searched for a +physical cause. + +"No! I had to finish up things at the office so that I could get away +to-night." + +Then husband and wife went to their dinner, and Woodyard gave Conny a +short-hand account of his doings, the people he had seen, what they had +said, the events at the office. Conny required this account each day, +either in the morning or in the evening. And Woodyard yielded quite +unconsciously to his wife's strong will, to her singularly definite idea of +"what is best." He admired her deeply, was grateful to her for that +complete mastery of the detail of life which she had shown, aware that if +it were not for the dominating personality of this woman he had somehow had +the good fortune to marry, life would have been a smaller matter for him. + +"Con," he said when they had gone back to the library for their coffee, "I +am afraid this Commission is going to be ticklish business." + +"Why?" she demanded alertly. + +"There are some dreadful grafters on it,--I suspect that the chairman is a +wolf. I suspect further that it has been arranged to whitewash certain rank +deals." + +"But why should the governor have appointed you?" + +"Possibly to hold the whitewash brush." + +"You think that the Senator knows that?" + +"You can't tell where the Senator's tracks lead." + +"Well, don't worry! Keep your eyes open. You can always resign, you know." + +Woodyard went off to his train after kissing his wife affectionately. Conny +called out as he was getting into his coat:-- + +"Will you be back Sunday? Shall I have the Lanes then?" + +"Yes,--and you will go to the Hillyers to-morrow?" + +"I think so,--Tom will take me." + +After the door closed Conny went to her desk and wrote the note to +Isabelle. Then after meditating a few moments, more notes of invitation. +She had decided on her combination,--Gossom, the Silvers, the Hillyers (to +get them off her mind), Senator Thomas, and Cairy. She did not take Percy's +objection to Tom seriously. + +She had decided to present a variety of people to the Lanes. Isabelle and +she had never been intimate, and Conny had a woman's desire to show an +accomplished superiority to the rich friend, who had been inclined to snub +her in boarding school. Conny was eminently skilful in "combinations." +Every one that composed her circle or even entered it might some day be of +use in creating what is called "publicity." That, as Cornelia Woodyard +felt, was the note of the day. "You must be talked about by the right +people, if you want to be heard, if you want your show!" she had said to +Cairy. Thanks to Lane's rapid rise in the railroad corporation, Isabelle +had come legitimately within the zone of interest. + +After she had settled this matter to her satisfaction, she turned to some +house accounts and made various calculations. It was a wonder to every one +who knew them how the Woodyards "could do so much on what they had." As a +matter of fact, with the rising scale of living, it required all Conny's +practical adroitness to make the household come out nearly even. Thanks to +a great-aunt who admired Percy, they had been able to buy this house and +alter it over, and with good business judgment it had been done so that the +property was now worth nearly a third more than when they took it. But a +second man-servant had been added, and Conny felt that she must have a +motor; she pushed away the papers and glanced up, thinking, planning. + +The Senator and she had talked investments the last time they had met. She +had a little money of her own. If the old fox would only take it and roll +it up into a big snowball! Isabelle, now, with all that wealth! Conny +pursed her lips in disgust to think that so much of the ammunition of war +had fallen into such incompetent hands. "Yes," she said to herself, "the +Senator must show me how to do it." Perhaps it flitted vaguely through her +mind that Percy might object to using stock market tips from the Senator. +But Percy must accept her judgment on this matter. They could not go on any +longer with only twenty thousand a year. + +Turning out the lights, she went to her bedroom. It was very plain and +bare, with none of the little toilette elegances or chamber comforts that +women usually love. Conny never spent except where it showed saliently. Her +evening gowns were sometimes almost splendid, but her dressing gowns were +dowdy, and poor little Bessie Falkner spent twice as much on lingerie. + +Having discharged the duties of her day, her mind returned to Cairy, to his +work for Gossom, to his appealing self, and her lips relaxed in a gentle +smile. Hers was a simple nature, the cue once caught. She had come of +rather plain people, who knew the worth of a dollar, and had spent their +lives saving or investing money. The energy of the proletariat had been +handed to her undiminished. The blood was evident in the large bones, the +solid figure, and tenacious fingers, as well as in the shrewdness with +which she had created this household. It was her instinct to push out into +the troubled waters of the material world. She never weakened herself by +questioning values. She knew--what she wanted. + +Nevertheless, as she reached up her hand to turn out the night light, she +was smiling with dreamy eyes, and her thoughts were no longer practical! + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +When Isabelle emerged from the great hotel and turned down the avenue to +walk to the office of Dr. Potts, as he required her to do every day, she +had a momentary thrill of exultation. Descending the gentle incline, she +could see a good part of the city extending into a distant blue horizon +before her. The vast buildings rose like islands in the morning mist. It +reminded her, this general panorama, of the awe-compelling spaces of the +Arizona canon into which she had once descended. Here were the same +irregular, beetling cliffs, the same isolated crags, with sharply outlined +lower and minor levels of building. The delicate blue, the many grays of +storm and mist gave it color, also. But in place of the canon's eternal +quiet,--the solitude of the remote gods,--this city boiled and hummed. +That, too,--the realization of multitudinous humanity,--made Isabelle's +pulses leap. + +In spite of her poor health, she had the satisfaction of at last being +here, in the big hive, where she had wished to be so long. She was a part +of it, a painfully insignificant mite as yet, but still a part of it. +Hitherto New York had been a sort of varied hotel, an entertainment. Now it +was to be her scene, and she had begun already to take possession. It had +all come about very naturally, shortly after her father's death. While she +was dreading the return to St. Louis, which must be emptier than ever +without the Colonel, and she and her mother were discussing the possibility +of Europe, John's new position had come. A Western road had made him an +offer; for he had a splendid record as a "traffic getter." The Atlantic and +Pacific could not lose him; they gave him the third vice-presidency with +headquarters in New York and general charge of traffic. Thus the Lanes' +horizon shifted, and it was decided that the first year in the city they +should spend in a hotel with Mrs. Price. Isabelle's health was again +miserable; there had been the delayed operation; and now she was in the +care of the famous Potts, trying to recover from the operation, from the +old fatigue and the recent strains, "to be made fit." + +The move to New York had not meant much to Lane. He had spent a great deal +of his time there these last years, as well as in Washington, +Pittsburg,--in this city and that,--as business called him. His was what is +usually regarded as a cosmopolitan view of life,--it might better be called +a hotel-view. Home still meant to him the city where his wife and child +were temporarily housed, but he was equally familiar with half a dozen +cities. Isabelle, too, had the same rootless feeling. She had spent but a +short time in any one place since she had left her father's house to go to +St. Mary's. That is the privilege or the curse of the prosperous American. +Life thus becomes a shifting panorama of surfaces. Even in the same city +there are a dozen spots where the family ark has rested, which for the sake +of a better term may be called "homes." That sense of rooted attachment +which comes from long habituation to one set of physical images is +practically a lost emotion to Americans.... + +There were days when New York roared too loudly for Isabelle's nerves, when +the jammed streets, the buzzing shops, the overflowing hotels and theatres, +made her long for quiet. Then she thought of the Farm as the most stable +memory of a fixed condition, and she had an unformed plan of "doing over" +the old place, which was now her own, and making it the centre of the +family's centrifugal energy. Meantime there was the great Potts, who +promised her health, and the flashing charm of the city. + +Occasionally she felt lonely in this packed procession, this hotel +existence, with its multitude of strange faces, and longed for something +familiar, even Torso! At such times when she saw the face of an old +acquaintance, perhaps in a cab at a standstill in the press of the avenue, +her heart warmed. Even a fleeting glimpse of something known was a relief. +Clearly she must settle herself into this whirlpool, put out her tentacles, +and grasp an anchorage. But where? What? + +One morning as she and her mother were making slow progress down the +avenue, she caught sight of Margaret Pole on the sidewalk, waiting to cross +the stream, a little boy's hand in hers. Isabelle waved to her frantically, +and then leaped from the cab, dodged between the pushing motors, and +grasped Margaret. + +"You here!" she gasped. + +"We came back some months ago," Margaret explained. + +She was thin, Isabelle thought, and her face seemed much older than the +years warranted. Margaret, raising her voice above the roar, explained that +they were living out of town, "in the country, in Westchester," and +promised to come to lunch the next time she was in the city. Then with a +nod and a smile she slipped into the stream again as if anxious to be lost, +and Isabelle rejoined her mother. + +"She looks as if she were saving her clothes," Mrs. Price announced with +her precise view of what she observed. Isabelle, while she waited for the +doctor, mused on the momentary vision of her old friend at the street +corner. Margaret turned up in the noise and mist of the city, as everybody +might turn up; but Margaret old, worn, and almost shabby! Then the nurse +came for her and she went into the doctor's room, with a depressing +sensation compounded of a bad night, the city roar, the vision of Margaret. + +"Well, my lady, what's the story to-day?" + +Dr. Potts looked up from his desk, and scrutinized the new patient out of +his shaggy eyebrows. Isabelle began at once the neurasthenic's involved and +particularized tale of woe, breaking at the end with almost a sob:-- + +"I am so useless! I am never going to be well,--what is the matter with +me?" + +"So it's a bad world this morning, eh?" the doctor quizzed in an indulgent +voice. "We'll try to make it better,--shake up the combination." He broke +off suddenly and remarked in an ordinary, conversational voice: "Your +friend Mrs. Woodyard was in here this morning,--a clever woman! My, but she +is clever!" + +"What is the matter with her?" + +"Same thing,--Americanitis; but she'll pull out if she will give herself +half a chance." + +Then he returned to Isabelle, wrote her a prescription, talked to her for +ten minutes, and when she left the office she felt better, was sure it +would "all come out right." + +The great Dr. Potts! He served as God to several hundred neurasthenic +women. Born in a back street of a small town, he had emerged into the +fashionable light after prodigious labor and exercise of will. Physically +he stood six feet, with a heavy head covered with thick black hair, and +deep-set black eyes. He had been well educated professionally, but his +training, his medical attainments, had little to do with his success. He +had the power to look through the small souls of his women patients, and he +found generally Fear, and sometimes Hypocrisy,--a desire to evade, to get +pleasure and escape the bill. These he bullied. Others he found struggling, +feeble of purpose, desiring light, willingly confessing their weakness, and +begging for strength. These he despised; he gave them drugs and flattered +them. There were some, like Conny, who were perfectly poised, with a plain +philosophy of selfishness. These he understood, being of fellow clay, and +plotted with them how to entrap what they desired. + +Power! That was Potts's keynote,--power, effectiveness, accomplishment, at +any and all cost. He was the spirit of the city, nay of the country itself! +"Results--get results at all costs," that was the one lesson of life which +he had learned from the back street, where luckier men had shouldered +him.... "I must supply backbone," he would say to his patients. "I am your +temporary dynamo!" + +To Isabelle this mass of energy, Dr. Alexander Potts, seemed like the +incarnate will to live of the great city. After her visit at his office she +came out into the sharp air, the shrill discords of the busy streets, +attuned--with purpose,--"I am going to be well now! I am going to do this. +Life will arrange itself, and at last I shall be able to live as others +live." This borrowed purpose might last the day out, and she would plunge +into a dozen matters; or it might wear off in an hour or two. Then back she +went the next day to be keyed up once more. + +"Do something! Deliver the goods, no matter what goods or how you get them +into the premises!" Potts thundered, beating the desk in the energy of his +lecture. "Live! That's what we must all do. Never mind _how_ you +live,--don't waste good tissue worrying over that. _Live!_" + +Dr. Potts was an education to Isabelle. His moods of brutality and of +sympathy came like the shifting shadows of a gusty day. His perfectly +material philosophy frightened her and allured her. He was +Mephistopheles,--one hand on the medicine chest of life, the other pointing +satirically towards the towered city. + +"See, my child," he purred; "I will tinker this little toy of your body for +you; then run along down there and play with your brothers and sisters." + +In the mood of reaction that the neurasthenic must meet, the trough of the +wave, Isabelle doubted. Potts had not yet found the key to her mechanism; +the old listless cloud befogged her still. After a sleepless night she +would sit by her window, high up in the mountain of stone, and look out +over the city, its voice dull at this hour of dawn,--a dozing monster. +Something like terror filled her at these times, fear of herself, of the +slumbering monster, so soon to wake and roar. "Act, do!" thundered Potts; +"don't think! Live and get what you want...." Was that all? The peaceful +pastures at Grafton, the still September afternoon when the Colonel died, +the old man himself,--there was something in them beyond mere energy, quite +outside the Potts philosophy. + +Once she ventured to suggest this doubt to Cornelia Woodyard, who, being +temporarily in need of a bracer, had resorted to "old Pot." She had planned +to go to the opera that night and wanted to "be herself." + +"I wonder if he's right about it all," said Isabelle; "if we are just +machines, with a need to be oiled now and then,--to take this drug or that? +Is it all as simple as he makes out? All just autointoxication, chemistry, +and delusion?" + +"You're ill,--that's why you doubt," Conny replied with tranquil +positiveness. "When you've got the poison out of your system, you'll see, +or rather you won't see crooked,--won't have ideas." + +"It's all a formula?" + +Conny nodded, shutting her large mouth firmly. + +"And he has the key. You are merely an organ, and he pulls out this stop or +that; gives you one thing to take and then another. You tell him this dotty +idea you've got in your head and he'll pull the right stop to shake it +out." + +"I wonder! Some days I feel that I must go away by myself, get out of all +the noise, and live up among the mountains far off--" + +She stopped. For Conny was not one to whom to confide a longing for the +stars and the winds in the pines and the scent of the earth. Such vaporing +would be merely another symptom! + +"What would you go mooning off by yourself for? You'd be crazy, for a fact. +Better come down to Palm Beach with me next month." + +The great Potts had the unfortunate habit of gossiping about his patients +with one another. He had said to Conny: "Your friend Isabelle interests me. +I should say that she had a case of festering conscience." He crossed his +legs and gazed wisely up at the ceiling. "A rudimentary organ left over +from her hard-working ancestors. She is inhibited, tied, thinks she can't +do this and that. What she needs"--Potts had found the answer to his riddle +and brought his eyes from the ceiling--"is a lover! Can't you find her +one?" + +"Women usually prefer to select _that_ for themselves." + +"Oh, no,--one is as good as another. What she needs is a counter-irritant. +That husband of hers, what is he like?" + +"Just husband, very successful, good-natured, gives her what she wants,--I +should say they pull well together." + +"That's it! He's one of the smooth, get-everything-the-dear-woman-wants +kind, eh? And then busies himself about his old railroad? Well, it is the +worst sort for her. She needs a man who will beat her." + +"Is that what the lover would do?" + +"Bless you, no! He would make her stop thinking she had an ache." When +Conny went, the doctor came to the door with her and as he held her hand +cried breezily: "Remember what I said about your friend. Look up some nice +young man, who will hang around and make her think she's got a soul." He +pressed Conny's hand and smiled. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +When the Lanes went to Sunday luncheon at the Woodyards', the impression on +Isabelle was exactly what Conny wished it to be. The little house had a +distinct "atmosphere," Conny herself had an "atmosphere," and the people, +who seemed much at home there and very gay, were what is termed +"interesting." That is, each person had his ticket of "distinction," as +Isabelle quickly found out. One was a lawyer whose name often appeared in +the newspapers as counsel for powerful interests; another was a woman +novelist, whose last book was then running serially in a magazine and +causing discussion; a third--a small man with a boyish open face--Isabelle +discovered with a thrill of delight was the Ned Silver whose clever little +articles on the current drama she had read in a fashionable weekly paper. + +Isabelle found her hostess leaning against the mantelpiece with the air of +having just come in and discovered her guests. + +"How are you, dearie?" she drawled in greeting. "This is Mr. Thomas Randall +Cairy, Margaret's cousin,--do you remember? He says he has met you before, +but Thomas usually believes he has met ladies whom he wants to know!" Then +Conny turned away, and thereafter paid little attention to the Lanes, as +though she wished them to understand that the luncheon was not given for +them. + +"In this case," Cairy remarked, "Mrs. Woodyard's gibe happens to miss. I +haven't forgotten the Virginian hills, and I hope you haven't." + +It was Cairy who explained the people to Isabelle:-- + +"There is Gossom, the little moth-eaten, fat man at the door. He is the +mouthpiece of the _People's_, but he doesn't dislike to feast with the +classes. He is probably telling Woodyard at this moment what the President +said to him last week about Princhard's articles on the distillery trust!" + +Among the Colonel's friends the magazine reporter Princhard had been +considered an ignorant and malicious liar. Isabelle looked eagerly as Cairy +pointed him out,--a short, bespectacled man with a thin beard, who was +talking to Silver. + +"There is the only representative of the fashionable world present, Mrs. +George Bertram, just coming in the door. We do not go in for the purely +fashionable--yet," he remarked mockingly. "Mrs. Bertram is interested in +music,--she has a history, too."... + +By the time the company were ready to lunch, Isabelle's pulse had risen +with excitement. She had known, hitherto, but two methods of assimilating +friends and acquaintances,--pure friendship, a good-natured acceptance of +those likable or endurable people fate threw in one's way; and +fashion,--the desire to know people who were generally supposed to be the +people best worth knowing. But here she perceived quickly there was a third +principle of selection--"interest." And as she glanced about the +appointments of Conny's smart little house, her admiration for her old +schoolmate rose. Conny evidently had a definite purpose in life, and had +the power and intelligence to pursue it. To the purposeless person, such as +Isabelle had been, the evidences of this power were almost mysterious. + +At first the talk at the table went quite over Isabelle's head. It +consisted of light gibe and allusion to persons and things she had never +heard of,--a new actress whom the serious Percy was supposed to be in love +with, Princhard's adventure with a political notability, a new very +"American" play. Isabelle glanced apprehensively at her husband, who was at +Conny's end of the table. Lane was listening appreciatively, now and then +exchanging a remark with the lawyer across the table. John Lane had that +solid acquaintance with life which made him at home in almost all +circumstances. If he felt as she did, hopelessly countrified, he would +never betray it. Presently the conversation got to politics, the President, +the situation at Albany. Conny, with her negligent manner and her childish +treble voice, gave the talk a poke here and there and steered it skilfully, +never allowing it to get into serious pools or become mere noise. In one of +the shifts Cairy asked Isabelle, "Have you seen Margaret since her return?" + +"Yes; tell me why they came back!" + +Cairy raised his eyebrows. "Too much husband, I should say,--shouldn't +you?" + +"I don't know him. Margaret seemed older, not strong,--what is the matter +with us all!" + +"You'll understand what is the matter with Margaret when you see Larry! And +then she has three children,--an indecent excess, with her health and that +husband."... + +The company broke up after the prolonged luncheon almost at once, to +Isabelle's regret; for she wished to see more of these people. As they +strolled upstairs to the library Cairy followed her and said:-- + +"Are you going to Mrs. Bertram's with us? She has some music and people +Sundays--I'll tell Mrs. Woodyard," and before she could reply he had +slipped over to Conny. That lady glanced at Isabelle, smiled on Cairy, and +nodded. What she said to Cairy was: "So you've got a new interest. Take +care, Tommy,--you'll complicate your life!" But apparently she did not +regard Isabelle seriously; for presently she was saying to her, "Mrs. +Bertram wants me to bring you around with us this afternoon,--you'll like +it." + +Lane begged off and walked back to the hotel in company with the lawyer. +After a time which was filled with the flutter of amiable little speeches, +appointments, and good-bys, Isabelle found herself in company with the +Silvers and Gossom, Cornelia and Cairy on her way to Mrs. Bertram's, which +was "just around the corner,"--that is, half a dozen blocks farther up town +on Madison Avenue. Mrs. Silver was a pretty, girlish woman with a troubled +face, who seemed to be making great efforts to be gay. She and Cornelia +called each other by first names, and when Isabelle asked about her later, +Conny replied with a preoccupied drawl:-- + +"Yes, Annie Silver is a nice little thing,--an awful drag on him, you know. +They haven't a dollar, and she is going to have a baby; she is in fits +about it." + +As a matter of fact Silver managed to earn by his swiftly flowing pen over +four thousand dollars a year, without any more application than the average +clerk. + +"But in New York, you know!" as Conny explained. "They have lived in a +little apartment, very comfortably, and know nice people. Their friends are +good to them. But if they take to having children!" It meant, according to +Conny's expressive gesture, suburban life, or something "way up town," "no +friends." Small wonder that Annie Silver's face was drawn, and that she was +making nervous efforts to keep up to the last. Isabelle felt that it must +be a tragedy, and as Conny said, "Such a clever man, too!" + + * * * * * + +Mrs. Bertram's deep rooms were well filled, and Cairy, who still served as +her monitor, told Isabelle that most of the women were merely fashionable. +The men--and there was a good sprinkling of them--counted; they all had +tickets of one sort or another, and he told them off with a keen phrase for +each. When the music began, Isabelle found herself in a recess of the +farther room with several people whom she did not know. Cairy had +disappeared, and Isabelle settled back to enjoy the music and study the +company. In the kaleidoscope of the day, however, another change was to +come,--one that at the time made no special impression on her, but one that +she was to remember years afterward. + +A young man had been singing some songs. When he rose from the piano, the +people near Isabelle began to chatter:-- + +"Isn't he good looking! ... That was his own music,--the Granite City ... +Can't you see the tall buildings, hear the wind sweeping from the sea and +rushing through the streets!" etc. Presently there was a piece of music for +a quartette. At its conclusion a voice said to Isabelle from behind her +chair:-- + +"Pardon me, but do you know what that was?" + +She looked over her shoulder expecting to see an acquaintance. The man who +had spoken was leaning forwards, resting one elbow on her chair, his hand +carelessly plucking his gray hair. He had deep piercing black eyes, and an +odd bony face. In spite of his gray hair and lined face she saw that he was +not old. + +"Something Russian, I heard some one say," Isabelle replied. + +"I don't like to sit through music and not know anything about it," the +stranger continued with a delicate, deliberate enunciation. "I don't +believe that I should be any wiser if I heard the name of the piece; but it +flatters your vanity, I suppose, to know it. There is Carova standing +beside Mrs. Bertram; he's going to sing." + +"Who is Carova?" Isabelle demanded eagerly. + +"The new tenor at the Manhattan,--you haven't heard him?" + +"No," Isabelle faltered and felt ashamed as she added, "You see I am almost +a stranger in New York." + +"Mrs. Bertram knows a lot of these musical chaps." + +Then the tenor sang, and after the applause had given way to another rustle +of talk, the gray-haired man continued as if there had been no +interruption:-- + +"So you don't live in New York?--lucky woman!" + +Isabelle moved her chair to look at this person, who wanted to talk. She +thought him unusual in appearance, and liked his friendliness. His face was +lined and thin, and the long, thin hand on his knee was muscular. Isabelle +decided that he must be Somebody. + +"I am here for my health, but I expect to live in New York," she explained. + +"In New York for your health?" he asked in a puzzled tone. "You see, I am a +doctor." + +"Yes--I came to consult Dr. Potts. I gave out,--am always giving out," +Isabelle continued with that confiding frankness that always pleased men. +"I'm like so many women these days,--no good, nerves! If you are a doctor, +please tell me why we should all go to pieces in this foolish fashion?" + +"If _I_ could do that satisfactorily and also tell you how not to go to +pieces, I should be a very famous man," he replied pleasantly. + +"Perhaps you are!" + +"Perhaps. But I haven't discovered that secret, yet." + +"Dr. Potts says it's all the chemistry inside us--autointoxication, +poison!" + +"Yes, that is the latest theory." + +"It seems reasonable; but why didn't our grandmothers get poisoned?" + +"Perhaps they did,--but they didn't know what to call it." + +"You think that is so,--that we are poor little chemical retorts? It +sounds--horrid." + +"It sounds sensible, but it isn't the whole of it." + +"Tell me what you think!" + +"I don't like to interfere with Dr. Potts," he suggested. + +"I shouldn't talk to you professionally, I know; but it is in my mind most +of the time. What is the matter? What is wrong?" + +"I, too, have thought about it a great deal." He smiled and his black eyes +had a kindly gleam. + +"Do you believe as Dr. Potts does that it is all what you eat, just matter? +If your mind is so much troubled, if you have these queer ideas, it can't +be altogether the chemistry?" + +"It might be the soul." + +"Don't laugh--" + +"But I really think it might be the soul." + +The music burst upon them, and when there was another interval, Isabelle +persisted with the topic which filled her mind. + +"Will you tell me what you mean by the soul?" + +"Can _you_ answer the question? ... Well, since we are both in doubt, let +us drop the term for a while and get back to the body." + +"Only we must not end with it, as Potts does!" + +"No, we must not end with the body." + +"First, what causes it,--hysterics, nerves, no-goodness,--the whole thing?" + +"Improper food, bad education, steam heat, variable climate, inbreeding, +lack of children,--shall I stop?" + +"No! I can't find a reasonable cause yet." + +"I haven't really begun.... The brain is a delicate instrument. It can do a +good deal of work in its own way, if you don't abuse it--" + +"Overwork it?" suggested Isabelle. + +"I never knew an American woman who overworked her brain," he retorted +impatiently. "I mean abuse it. It's grossly abused." + +"Wrong ideas?" + +"No ideas at all, in the proper sense,--it's stuffed with all sorts of +things,--sensations, emotions.... Where are you living?" + +"At the Metropole." + +"And where were you last month?" + +"In St. Louis." + +"And the month before?" + +"I went to Washington with my husband and--" + +"Precisely--that's enough!" he waved his thin hand. + +"But it rests me to travel," Isabelle protested. + +"It seems to rest you. Did you ever think what all those whisking changes +in your environment mean to the brain cells? And it isn't just travelling, +with new scenes, new people; it is everything in your life,--every act from +the time you get up to the time you go to bed. You are cramming those brain +cells all the time, giving them new records to make,--even when you lie +down with an illustrated paper. Why, the merest backwoodsman in Iowa is +living faster in a sense than Cicero or Webster.... The gray matter cannot +stand the strain. It isn't the quality of what it has to do; it is the mere +amount! Understand?" + +"I see! I never thought before what it means to be tired. I have worked the +machine foolishly. But one must travel fast--be geared up, as you say--or +fall behind and become dull and uninteresting. What is living if we can't +keep the pace others do?" + +"Must we? Is that _living_?" he asked ironically. "I have a diary kept by +an old great-aunt of mine. She was a country clergyman's wife, away back in +a little village. She brought up four sons, helped her husband fit them for +college as well as pupils he took in, and baked and washed and sewed. And +learned German for amusement when she was fifty! I think she lived +somewhat, but she probably never lived at the pressure you have the past +month." + +"One can't repeat--can't go back to old conditions. Each generation has its +own lesson, its own way." + +"But is our way _living_? Are we living now this very minute, listening to +music we don't apparently care for, that means nothing to us, with our mind +crammed full of distracting purposes and reflections? When I read my aunt +Merelda's journal of the silent winter days on the snowy farm, I think +_she_ lived, as much as one should live. Living doesn't consist in the +number of muscular or nervous reactions that you undergo." + +"What is your formula?" + +"We haven't yet mentioned the most formidable reason for the American +plague," he continued, ignoring her question. "It has to do with that +troublesome term we evaded,--the Soul." + +"The Soul?"... + +The music had come to an end, and the people were moving about them. +Cornelia came up and drawled:-- + +"Tom and I are going on,--will you go with us?" + +When Isabelle reached her hostess, she had but one idea in her mind, and +exclaimed impulsively to that somewhat bored lady:-- + +"Who is that man just going out? With gray hair? The tall, thin man?" + +"Dr. Renault? He's a surgeon, operates on children,--has done something or +other lately."... + +She smiled at Isabelle's impulsiveness, and turned to another. + +'A surgeon,' Isabelle thought. 'What has he to do with the soul?' + +In a few moments she had a chance to repeat her question aloud to Dr. +Renault when they left the house together. + +"Did you ever hear," he replied directly, "that a house divided against +itself will fall?" + +"Of course." + +"I should say that this national disease, which we have been discussing, is +one of the results of trying to live with divided souls,--souls torn, +distraught!" + +"And we need--?" + +"A religion." + +The doctor raised his hat and sauntered down the avenue. + +"A religion!" Isabelle murmured,--a queer word, here at the close of Mrs. +Bertram's pleasantly pagan Sunday afternoon, with ladies of undoubted +social position getting into their motors, and men lighting cigarettes and +cigars to solace them on the way to their clubs. Religion! and the need of +it suggested by a surgeon, a man of science.... + +When the three reached the Woodyards' house, Conny paused with, "When shall +I see you again?" which Isabelle understood as a polite dismissal. Cairy to +her surprise proposed to walk to the hotel with her. Isabelle felt that +this arrangement was not in the plan, but Conny merely waved her hand with +a smile,--"By-by, children." + +They sauntered up the avenue, at the pace required by Cairy's disability. +The city, although filled with people loitering in holiday ease, had a +strange air of subdued life, of Sunday peace, not disturbed even by the +dashing motors. Isabelle, bubbling with the day's impressions, was eager to +talk, and Cairy, as she had found him before at the Virginia Springs, was a +sympathetic man to be with. He told her the little semi-scandalous story of +her recent hostess.... "And now they have settled down to bring up the +children like any good couple, and it threatens to end on the 'live happy +ever after' note. Sam Bertram is really domestic,--you can see he admires +her tremendously. He sits and listens to the music and nods his sleepy old +head." + +"And the--other one?" Isabelle asked, laughing in spite of the fact that +she felt a little shocked. + +"Who knows? ... The lady disappears at rare intervals, and there are +rumors. But she is a good sort, and you see Sam admires her, needs her." + +"But it is rather awful when you stop to think of it!" + +"Why more awful than if Sam had stuck a knife into the other's ribs or +punctured him with a bullet? ... I think it is rather more intelligent." + +Cairy did not know Renault. "Mrs. Bertram gets everybody," he said. +Isabelle felt no inclination to discuss with Cairy her talk about +neurasthenia and religion. So their chatter drifted from the people they +had seen to Cairy himself, his last play, "which was a rank fizzle," and +the plan of the new one. One got on fast and far with Cairy, if one were a +woman and felt his charm. By the time they had reached the hotel, he was +counselling Isabelle most wisely how she should settle herself in New York. +"But why don't you live in the country? in that old village Mrs. Woodyard +told me about? The city is nothing but a club, a way-station these days, a +sort of Fair, you know, where you come two or three times a year to see +your dressmaker and hear the gossip." + +"But there's my husband!" Isabelle suggested. "You see his business is +here." + +"I forgot the husband,--make him change his business. Besides, men like +country life." + + * * * * * + +Isabelle found her husband comfortably settled near a hot radiator, reading +a novel. Lane occasionally read novels on a Sunday when there was +absolutely nothing else to do. He read them slowly, with a curious interest +in the world they depicted, the same kind of interest that he would take in +a strange civilization, like that of the Esquimaux, where phenomena would +have only an amusing significance. He dropped his glasses when his wife +appeared and helped himself to a fresh cigar from the box beside him. + +"Have a good time?" + +It was the formula that he used for almost every occupation pursued by +women. Isabelle, throbbing with her new impressions and ideas, found the +question depressing. John was not the person to pour out one's mind to when +that mind was in a tumult. He would listen kindly, assent at the wrong +place, and yawn at the end. Undoubtedly his life was exciting, but it had +no fine shades. He was growing stout, Isabelle perceived, and a little +heavy. New York life was not good for him. + +"I thought Conny's house and the people so--interesting,"--she used the +universal term for a new sensation,--"didn't you?" + +"Yes,--very pleasant," he assented as he would have if it had been the +Falkners or the Lawtons or the Frasers. + +In the same undiscriminating manner he agreed with her other remarks about +the Woodyards. People were people to him, and life was life,--more or less +the same thing everywhere; while Isabelle felt the fine shades. + +"I think it would be delightful to know people worth while," she observed +almost childishly, "people who _do_ something." + +"You mean writers and artists and that kind? I guess it isn't very +difficult," Lane replied indulgently. + +Isabelle sighed. Such a remark betrayed his remoteness from her idea; she +would have it all to do for herself, when she started her life in New York. + +"I think I shall make over the place at Grafton," she said after a time. +Her husband looked at her with some surprise. She was standing at the +window, gazing down into the cavernous city in the twilight. He could not +possibly follow the erratic course of ideas through her brain, the tissue +of impression and suggestion, that resulted in such a conclusion. + +"Why? what do you want to do with it? I thought you didn't care for the +country." + +"One must have a background," she replied vaguely, and continued to stare +at the city. This was the sum of her new experience, with all its elements. +The man calmly smoking there did not realize that his life, their life, was +to be affected profoundly by such trivial matters as a Sunday luncheon, a +remark by Tom Cairy, the savage aspect of the great city seen through April +mist, and the low vitality of a nervous organism. But everything plays its +part with an impressionable character in which the equilibrium is not found +and fixed. As the woman stared down into the twilight, she seemed to see +afar off what she had longed for, held out her hands towards,--life. + +Pictures, music, the play of interesting personalities, books, +plays,--ideas,--that was the note of the higher civilization that Conny had +caught. If Conny had absorbed all this so quickly, why could not she? +Cornelia Woodyard--that somewhat ordinary schoolmate of her youth--was +becoming for Isabelle a powerful source of suggestion, just as Isabelle had +been for Bessie Falkner in the Torso days. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +When Mrs. Woodyard returned to her house at nine o'clock in the evening and +found it dark, no lights in the drawing-room or the library, no fire +lighted in either room, she pushed the button disgustedly and flung her +cloak into a chair. + +"Why is the house like a tomb?" she demanded sharply of the servant, who +appeared tardily. + +"Mrs. Woodyard was not expected until later." + +"That should make no difference," she observed curtly, and the flustered +servant hastened to pull curtains, light lamps, and build up the fire. + +Conny disliked entering a gloomy house. Moreover, she disliked explaining +things to servants. Her attitude was that of the grand marshal of life, who +once having expressed an idea or wish expects that it will be properly +fulfilled. This attitude worked perfectly with Percy and the children, and +usually with servants. No one "got more results" in her establishment with +less worry and thought than Mrs. Woodyard. The resolutely expectant +attitude is a large part of efficiency. + +After the servant had gathered up her wrap and gloves, Conny looked over +the room, gave another curve to the dark curtains, and ordered whiskey and +cigarettes. It was plain that she was expecting some one. She had gone to +the Hillyers' to dinner as she had promised Percy, and just as the party +was about to leave for the opera had pleaded a headache and returned home. +It was true that she was not well; the winter had taxed her strength, and +she lived quite up to the margin of her vitality. That was her plan, also. +Moreover, the day had contained rather more than its share of problems.... + +When Cairy's light step pressed the stair, she turned quickly from the +fire. + +"Ah, Tommy,--so you got my message?" She greeted him with a slow smile. +"Where were you dining?" + +"With the Lanes. Mrs. Lane and I saw _The Doll's House_ this afternoon." As +Conny did not look pleased, he added, "It is amusing to show Ibsen to a +child." + +"Isabelle Lane is no child." + +"She takes Shaw and Ibsen with that childlike earnestness which has given +those two great fakirs a posthumous vogue," Cairy remarked with a yawn. "If +it were not for America,--for the Mississippi Valley of America, one might +say,--Ibsen would have had a quiet grave, and Shaw might remain the Celtic +buffoon. But the women of the Mississippi Valley have made a gospel out of +them.... It is as interesting to hear them discuss the new dogmas on +marriage as it is to see a child eat candy." + +"You seem to find it so--with Isabelle." + +"She is very intelligent--she will get over the Shaw-measles quickly." + +"You think so?" Conny queried. "Well, with all that money she might do +something, if she had it in her.... But she is middle class, in +ideas,--always was." + +That afternoon Isabelle had confided her schoolgirl opinion of Mrs. +Woodyard to Cairy. The young man balancing the two judgments smiled. + +"She is good to behold," he observed, helping himself to whiskey. + +"Not your kind, Tommy!" Conny warned with a laugh. "The Prices are very +_good_ people. You'll find that Isabelle will keep you at the proper +distance." + +Cairy yawned as if the topic did not touch him. "I thought you were going +to _Manon_ with the Hillyers." + +"I was,--but I came home instead!" Conny replied softly, and their eyes +met. + +"That was kind of you," he murmured, and they were silent a long time. + +It had come over her suddenly in the afternoon that she must see Cairy, +must drink again the peculiar and potent draught which he alone of men +seemed to be able to offer her. So she had written the note and made the +excuse. She would not have given up the Hillyers altogether. They were +important to Percy just now, and she expected to see the Senator there and +accomplish something with him. It was clearly her duty, her plan of life as +she saw it, for her to go to the Hillyers'. But having put in an +appearance, flattered the old lawyer, and had her little talk with Senator +Thomas before dinner, she felt that she had earned her right to a few hours +of sentimental indulgence.... + +Conny, sitting there before the fire, looking her most seductive best, had +the clear conscience of a child. Her life, she thought, was arduous, and +she met its demands admirably, she also thought. The subtleties of feeling +and perception never troubled her. She felt entitled to her sentimental +repose with Cairy as she felt entitled to her well-ordered house. She did +not see that her "affair" interfered with her duties, or with Percy, or +with the children. If it should,--then it would be time to consider.... + +"Tommy," she murmured plaintively, "I am so tired! You are the only person +who rests me." + +She meant it quite literally, that he always rested and soothed her, and +that she was grateful to him for it. But the Southerner's pulses leaped at +the purring words. To him they meant more, oh, much more! He gave her +strength; his love was the one vital thing she had missed in life. The +sentimentalist must believe that; must believe that he is giving, and that +some generous issue justifies his passion. Cairy leaning forward +caressingly said:-- + +"You make me feel your love to-night! ... Wonderful one! ... It is all ours +to-night, in this still room." + +She did not always make him feel that she loved him, far from it. And it +hurt his sentimental soul, and injured his vanity. He would be capable of a +great folly with sufficient delusion, but he was not capable of loving +intensely a woman who did not love him. To-night they seemed in harmony, +and as their lips met at last, the man had the desired illusion--she was +his! + +They are not coarsely physiological,--these Cairys, the born lovers. They +look abhorrently on mere flesh. With them it must always be the spirit that +leads to the flesh, and that is their peculiar danger. Society can always +take care of the simply licentious males; women know them and for the most +part hate them. But the poet lovers--the men of "temperament"--are fatal to +its prosaic peace. These must "love" before they can desire, must gratify +that emotional longing first, pour themselves out, and have the ecstasy +before the union. That is their fatal nature. The state of love is their +opiate, and each time they dream, it is the only dream. Each woman who can +give them the dream is the only woman,--she calls to them with a single +voice. And they divine afar off those women whose voices will call.... + +What would come after? ... The woman looked up at the man with a peculiar +light in her eyes, a gentleness which never appeared except for him, and +held him from her, dreaming intangible things.... She, too, could dream +with him,--that was the wonder of it all to her! This was the force that +had taken her out of her ordinary self. She slipped into nothing--never +drifted--looked blind fate between the eyes. But now she dreamed! ... And +as the man spoke to her, covered her with his warm terms of endearment, she +listened--and forgot her little world. + +Even the most selfish woman has something of the large mother, the giving +quality, when a man's arms hold her. She reads the man's need and would +supply it. She would comfort the inner sore, supply the lack. And for this +moment, Conny was not selfish: she was thinking of her lover's needs, and +how she could meet them. + +Thus the hour sped. + +"You love--you love!" the man said again and again,--to convince himself. + +Conny smiled disdainfully, as at the childish iteration of a child, but +said nothing. Finally with a long sigh, coming back from her dream, she +rose and stood thoughtfully before the fire, looking down at Cairy +reflectively. He had the bewildered feeling of not understanding what was +in her mind. + +"I will dine with you to-morrow," she remarked at last. + +Cairy laughed ironically. It was the perfect anti-climax,--after all this +unfathomable silence, after resting in his arms,--"I will dine with you +to-morrow!" + +But Conny never wasted words,--the commonest had a meaning. While he was +searching for the meaning under this commonplace, there was the noise of +some one entering the hall below. Conny frowned. Another interruption in +her ordered household! Some servant was coming in at the front door. Or a +burglar? + +If it were a burglar, it was a very well assured one that closed the door +carefully, took time to lay down hat and coat, and then with well-bred +quiet ascended the stairs. + +"It must be Percy," Conny observed, with a puzzled frown. "Something must +have happened to bring him back to-night." + +Woodyard, seeing a light in the library, looked in, the traveller's weary +smile on his face. + +"Hello, Percy!" Conny drawled. "What brings you back at this time?" + +Woodyard came into the room draggingly, nodded to Cairy, and drew a chair +up to the fire. His manner showed no surprise at the situation. + +"Some things came up at Albany," he replied vaguely. "I shall have to go +back to-morrow." + +"What is it?" his wife demanded quickly. + +"Will you give me a cigarette, Tom?" he asked equably, indicating that he +preferred not to mention his business, whatever it might be. Cairy handed +him his cigarette case. + +"These are so much better than the brand Con supplies me with," he observed +lightly. + +He examined the cigarette closely, then lit it, and remarked:-- + +"The train was beastly hot. You seem very comfortable here." + +Cairy threw away his cigarette and said good-by. + +"Tom," Conny called from the door, as he descended, "don't forget the +dinner." She turned to Percy,--"Tom is taking me to dinner to-morrow." + +There was silence between husband and wife until the door below clicked, +and then Conny murmured interrogatively, "Well?" + +"I came back," Percy remarked calmly, "because I made up my mind that there +is something rotten on in that Commission." + +Conny, after her talk with the Senator, knew rather more about the +Commission than her husband; but she merely asked, "What do you mean?" + +"I mean that I want to find just who is interested in this up-state +water-power grant before I go any farther. That is why I came down,--to see +one or two men, especially Princhard." + +While Cornelia was thinking of certain remarks that the Senator had made, +Percy added, "I am not the Senator's hired man." + +"Of course not!" + +Her husband's next remark was startling,--"I have almost made up my mind to +get out, Con,--to take Jackson's offer of a partnership and stick to the +law." + +Here, Conny recognized, was a crisis, and like most crises it came +unexpectedly. Conny rose to meet it. Husband and wife discussed the +situation, personal and political, of Percy's fortunes for a long time, and +it was not settled when it was time for bed. + +"Con," her husband said, still sitting before the fire as she turned out +the lights and selected a book for night reading, "aren't you going pretty +far with Tom?" + +Conny paused and looked at him questioningly. + +"Yes," she admitted in an even voice. "I have gone pretty far.... I wanted +to tell you about it. But this political business has worried you so much +lately that I didn't like to add anything." + +As Percy made no reply, she said tentatively:-- + +"I may go farther, Percy.... Tom loves me--very much!" + +"It means that--you care for him--the same way?" + +"He's given me something," Conny replied evasively, "something I never +felt--just that way--before." + +"Yes, Tom is of an emotional nature," Woodyard remarked dryly. + +"You don't like Tom. Men wouldn't, I can understand. He isn't like most +men.... But women like him!" + +Then for a while they waited, until he spoke, a little wearily, +dispassionately. + +"You know, Con, I always want you to have everything that is best for +you--that you feel you need to complete your life. We have been the best +sort of partners, trying not to limit each other in any way.... I know I +have never been enough for you, given you all that you ought to have, in +some ways. I am not emotional, as Tom is! And you have done everything for +me. I shall never forget that. So if another can do something for you, make +your life happier, fuller,--you must do it, take it. I should be a beastly +pig to interfere!" + +He spoke evenly, and at the end he smiled rather wanly. + +"I know you mean it, Percy,--every word. But I shouldn't want you to be +unhappy," replied Conny, in a subdued voice. + +"You need not think of me--if you feel sure that this is best for you." + +"You know that I could not do anything that might hurt our life,--_that_ is +the most important!" + +Her husband nodded. + +"The trouble is that I want both!" she analyzed gravely; "both in different +ways." + +A slight smile crept under her husband's mustache, but he made no comment. + +"I shall always be honest with you, Percy, and if at any time it becomes--" + +"You needn't explain," Percy interrupted hurriedly. "I don't ask! I don't +want to know what is peculiarly your own affair, as this.... As I said, you +must live your life as you choose, not hampered by me. We have always +believed that was the best way, and meant it, too, haven't we?" + +"But you have never wanted your own life," Conny remarked reflectively. + +"No, not that way!" The look on Percy's face made Conny frown. She was +afraid that he was keeping something back. + +"I suppose it is different with a man." + +"No, not always," and the smile reappeared under the mustache, a painful +smile. "But you see in my case I never wanted--more." + +"Oh!" murmured Conny, more troubled than ever. + +"You won't do it lightly, whatever you do, I know! ... And I'll manage--I +shall be away a good deal this winter." + +There was another long silence, and when Conny sighed and prepared to leave +the room, Percy spoke:-- + +"There's one thing, Conny.... This mustn't affect the children." + +"Oh, Percy!" she protested. "Of course not." + +"You must be careful that it won't--in any way, you understand. That would +be very--wrong." + +"Of course," Conny admitted in the same slightly injured tone, as if he +were undervaluing her character. "Whatever I do," she added, "I shall not +sacrifice you or the children, naturally." + +"We needn't talk more about it, then, need we?" + +Conny slowly crossed the room to her husband, and putting one hand on his +shoulder she leaned down and pushed up the hair from his forehead, +murmuring:-- + +"You know I love you, Percy!" + +"I know it, dear," he answered, caressing her face with his fingers. "If I +don't happen to be enough for you, it is my fault--not yours." + +"It isn't that!" she protested. But she could not explain what else it was +that drew her to Cairy so strongly. "It mustn't make any difference between +us. It won't, will it?" + +Percy hesitated a moment, still caressing the lovely face. + +"I don't think so, Con.... But you can't tell that now--do you think?" + +"It mustn't!" she said decisively, as if the matter was wholly in her own +hands. And leaning still closer towards him, she whispered: "You are +wonderful to me. A man who can take things as you do is really--big!" She +meant him to understand that she admired him more than ever, that in +respect to character she recognized that he was larger and finer than the +other man. + +Percy kissed the cheek so close to his lips. Conny shrank back perceptibly. +Some elemental instinct of the female pushed its way through her +broad-minded modern philosophy and made her shudder at the double embrace. +She controlled herself at once and again bowed her beautiful head to his. +But Percy did not offer to kiss her. + +"There are other things in life than passion," she remarked slowly. + +Percy looking directly into her eyes observed dryly: "Oh, many more.... But +passion plays the deuce with the rest sometimes!" + +And he held open the door for his wife to leave the room. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + +"That snipe!" Conny called Margaret's husband, Mr. Lawrence Pole. Larry, as +he was known in his flourishing days when he loafed in brokers' offices, +and idiotically dribbled away his own fortune and most of his wife's, +rarely earned a better word than this epithet. "She ought to leave +him--divorce him--get rid of such rubbish somehow," Conny continued with +unwonted heat, as the tired motor chugged up the steep Westchester hillside +on its way to Dudley Farms where the Poles lived. + +"Perhaps Margaret has prejudices," Isabella suggested. "You know she used +to be religious, and there's her father, the Bishop." + +"It would take a good many bishops to keep me tied to Larry!" + +Conny was enjoying the early spring air, the virginal complexion of the +April landscape. She surveyed the scene from Isabelle's motor with +complacent superiority. How much better she had arranged her life than +either Margaret or Isabelle! After the talk with Percy the previous +evening, she felt a new sense of power and competency, with a touch of +gratitude for that husband who had so frankly and unselfishly "accepted her +point of view" and allowed her "to have her own life" without a distressing +sense of wrecking anything. Conny's conscience was simple, almost +rudimentary; but it had to be satisfied, such as it was. To-day it was +completely satisfied, and she took an ample pleasure in realizing how well +she had managed a difficult situation,--and also in the prospect of dinner +with her lover in the evening. + +That morning before the motor had come for her, she had gone over with +Percy the complicated situation that had developed at Albany. It was her +way in a crisis to let him talk it all out first, and then later, +preferably when he came to her room in the morning after his breakfast with +the children, to suggest those points which she wished to determine his +action. Thus her husband absorbed her views when they would make most +impression and in time came to believe that they were all evolved from his +inner being.... To-day when he appeared shortly before her coffee, she had +glanced at him apprehensively out of her sleepy eyes. But he betrayed no +sign of travail of spirit. Though naturally weary after his brief rest, he +had the same calm, friendly manner that was habitual with him. So they got +at once to the political situation. + +She was content with the way in which she had led him, for the time at +least, to resolve his doubts and suspicions. They had no reason to suspect +the Senator,--he had always encouraged Woodyard's independent position in +politics and pushed him. There was not yet sufficient evidence of fraud in +the hearings before the Commission to warrant aggressive action. It would +be a pity to fire too soon, or to resign and lose an opportunity later. It +would mean not only political oblivion, but also put him in a ridiculous +light in the press, and suggest cowardice, etc. So he had gone away to +attend to some matters at his office, and take an afternoon train back to +Albany, with the conviction that "he must do nothing hurriedly, before the +situation had cleared up." Those were his own phrases; Conny always +preferred to have Percy use his own words to express his resolves. + +There was only one small matter on her mind: she must see the Senator and +find out--well, as much as she could discreetly, and be prepared for the +next crisis.... + +"I don't see why Margaret buries herself like this," Conny remarked, coming +back to the present foreground, with a disgusted glance at the little +settlement of Dudley Farms, a sorry combination of the suburb and the +village, which they were approaching. "She might at least have a flat in +the city somewhere, like others." + +"Margaret wants the children to be in the country. Probably she gets less +of Larry out here,--that may compensate!" + +"As for the children," Conny pronounced with lazy dogmatism, "I don't +believe in fussing. Children must camp where it's best for the parents. +They can get fresh air in the Park." + +The motor turned in at a neglected driveway, forbidding with black +tree-trunks, and whirled up to the piazza of a brick house, an ugly +survival of the early country mansion. Mrs. Pole, who was bending over a +baby carriage within a sun parlor, came forward, a smile of welcome on her +pale face. She seemed very small and fragile as she stood above them on the +steps, and her thin, delicate face had the marked lines of a woman of +forty. She said in her slow, Southern voice, which had a pleasant human +quality:-- + +"I hope you weren't mired. The roads are something awful about here. I am +so glad to see you both." + +When she spoke her face lost some of the years. + +"It is a long way out,--one can't exactly run in on you, Margaret! If it +hadn't been for Isabelle's magnificent car, you might have died without +seeing me!" Conny poured forth. + +"It _is_ a journey; but you see people don't run in on us often." + +"You've got a landscape," Conny continued, turning to look across the bare +treetops towards the Sound. It would have been a pleasant prospect except +for the eruption of small houses on every side. "But how can you stand it +the whole year round? Are there any civilized people--in those houses?" She +indicated vaguely the patch of wooden villas below. + +"Very few, I suppose, according to your standard, Cornelia. But we don't +know them. I pulled up the drawbridge when we first came." + +Mrs. Pole's thin lips twitched with mirth, and Conny, who was never content +with mere inference, asked bluntly:-- + +"Then what do you do with yourselves--evenings?" Her tone reflected the +emptiness of the landscape, and she added with a treble laugh, "I've always +wondered what suburban life is like!" + +"Oh, you eat and read and sleep. Then there are the children daytimes. I +help teach 'em. We live the model life,--flowers and shrubs in the summer, +I suppose.... The Bishop was with me for a time." + +The large bare drawing-room, which was sunnily lighted from the southwest, +was singularly without the usual furniture of what Conny called "civilized +life." There were no rugs, few chairs, but one table, such as might be made +by the village carpenter and stained black, which was littered with books +and magazines. There was also a large writing cabinet of mahogany,--a +magnificent piece of Southern colonial design,--and before the fire a +modern couch. Conny inventoried all this in a glance. She could not "make +it out." 'They can't be as poor as that,' she reflected, and turned to the +books on the table. + +"Weiniger's _Sex and Character_," she announced, "Brieux's _Maternite_, +Lavedan, Stendhal, Strobel on Child Life,--well, you do read! And this?" +She held up a yellow volume of French plays. "What do you do with this when +the, Bishop comes?" + +"The Bishop is used to me now. Besides, he doesn't see very well, poor +dear, and has forgotten his French. Have you read that book of Weiniger's? +It is a good dose for woman's conceit these days." + +There was a touch of playful cynicism in the tone, which went with the +fleeting smile. Mrs. Pole understood Cornelia Woodyard perfectly, and was +amused by her. But Conny's coarse and determined handling of life did not +fascinate her fastidious nature as it had fascinated Isabelle's. + +Conny continued to poke among the books, emitting comments as she happened +upon unexpected things. It was the heterogeneous reading of an untrained +woman, who was seeking blindly in many directions for guidance, for light, +trying to appease an awakened intellect, and to answer certain gnawing +questions of her soul.... + +Isabelle and Margaret talked of their visit at the Virginia Springs. In the +mature face, Isabelle was seeking the blond-haired girl, with deep-set blue +eyes, and sensitive mouth, that she had admired at St. Mary's. Now it was +not even pretty, although it spoke of race, for the bony features, the high +brow, the thin nose, had emerged, as if chiselled from the flesh by pain. + +'She has suffered,' Isabelle thought, 'suffered--and lived.' + +Conny had recounted to Isabelle on their way out some of the rumors about +the Poles. Larry Pole was a weakling, had gone wrong in money +matters,--nothing that had flared up in scandal, merely family +transactions. Margaret had taken the family abroad--she had inherited +something from her mother--and suddenly they had come back to New York, and +Larry had found a petty job in the city. Evidently, from the bare house, +their hiding themselves out here, most of the wife's money had gone, too. + +Pity! because Margaret was proud. She had her Virginian mother's pride with +a note of difference. The mother had been proud in the conventional way, of +her family, her position,--things. Margaret had the pride of +accomplishment,--of deeds. She was the kind who would have gone ragged with +a poet or lived content in a sod hut with a Man. And she had married this +Larry Pole, who according to Conny looked seedy and was often rather +"boozy." How could she have made such a mistake,--Margaret of all women? +That Englishman Hollenby, who really was somebody, had been much interested +in her. Why hadn't she married him? Nobody would know the reason.... + +The luncheon was very good. The black cook, "a relic of my mother's +establishment," as Margaret explained, gave them a few savory family +dishes, and there was a light French wine. Margaret ate little and talked +little, seeming to enjoy the vivacity of the other women. + +"Tell about your visit to the Gorings," Conny drawled. "Percy's cousin, +Eugene Goring, who married Aline, you know. Boots in the bath-tub, and the +babies running around naked, and Aline lost in the metaphysics of the arts, +making chairs." + +And Isabelle recounted what she had seen of Aline's establishment in St. +Louis, with its total disregard of what Conny called the "decencies" of +life. They all laughed at her picture of their "wood-nymph," as they had +named Aline. + +"And Eugene talking anarchy, and washing the dishes,--it sounds like a +Weber and Field's farce," gurgled Conny. "He wrote Percy about lecturing in +New York,--wanted to come East. But Percy couldn't do anything for him. It +isn't a combination to make a drawing-room impression." + +"But," Margaret protested, "Aline is a person, and that is more than you +can say of most of us married women. She has kept her personality." + +"If I were 'Gene," Conny replied contemptuously, "I'd tone her +'personality' down." + +"He's probably big enough to respect it." + +There followed a discussion of the woman's part in marriage, Margaret +defending independence, "the woman's right to live for herself," and Conny +taking the practical view. + +"She can't be anything any way, just by herself. She had better make the +most of the material she's got to work with--or get another helping," she +added, thinking of Larry. + +"And Aline isn't happy," Isabelle remarked; "she has a look on her face as +if she were a thousand miles away, and had forgotten her marriage as much +as she could. Her chairs and tables are just ways of forgetting." + +"But they have something to think about,--those two. They don't vegetate." + +"I should say they had,--but no anarchy in my domestic circle, thank you!" +Conny observed. + +"I shouldn't object to anarchy," sighed Margaret, with her whimsical smile. + +"Margaret is bored," Isabelle pronounced, "simply awfully bored. She's so +bored that I expect some day she will poison herself and the children, +merely to find out what comes next." + +"No wonder--buried in the snowdrifts out here," Conny agreed. "Isn't there +anything you want to do, even something wicked?" + +"Yes," Mrs. Pole answered half seriously. "There is _one_ thing I'd like to +do before I die." + +"Tell us!" + +"I'd like to find Somebody--man or woman--who cared for the things I care +for--sky and clouds and mountains,--and go away with him anywhere for--a +little while, just a little while," she drawled dreamily, resting her +elbows on the table. + +"Elope! Fie, fie!" Conny laughed. + +"My mother's father had a plantation in one of the Windward Islands," +Margaret continued. "It must be nice down there--warm and sunny. I'd like +to lie out on the beach and forget children and servants and husbands, and +stop wondering what life is. Yes, I'd like a vacation--in the Windward +Islands, with somebody who understood." + +"To wit, a man!" added Conny. + +"Yes, a man! But only for the trip." + +They laughed a good deal about Margaret's vacation, called her the +"Windward Islands," and asked her to make reservations for them in her +Paradise when they had found desirable partners. + +"Only, I should have to bring John, and he wouldn't know what to do with +himself on a beach," Isabelle remarked. "I don't know any one else to +take." + +"You mustn't go Windwarding until you have to," Margaret explained.... + +At the dessert, the children came in,--two boys and a girl. The elder boy +was eight, with his mother's fair hair, blue eyes, and fine features, and +the same suggestion of race in the narrow high brow, the upward poise of +the head. His younger brother was nondescript, with dark hair and full +lips. Margaret observed her children with a curiously detached air, +Isabelle thought. Was she looking for signs of Larry in that second son? +Alas, she might see Larry always, with the cold apprehension of a woman too +wise to deceive herself! The little girl, fresh from her nap, was round and +undefined, and the mother took her into her arms, cuddling her close to her +breast, as if nothing, not even the seed of Larry, could separate her from +this one; as if she felt in her heart all the ills and sorrows, the woman's +pains to be,--the eternal feminine defeat,--in this tiny ball of freshness. +And the ironical smile subtly softened to a glow of affection. Here, at +least, was an illusion! + +Isabelle, watching these two, understood--all the lines, the smile, the +light cynicism--the Windward Islands! She put her arms impulsively about +the mother and the child, hugging them closely. Margaret looked up into her +shining eyes and pressed her hand.... + +"There are some cigarettes in the other room," Margaret suggested; "we'll +build up the fire and continue the argument in favor of the Windward +Islands." + +"It is a long way to New York over that road," Conny observed. "I have an +engagement." + +Now that she had satisfied her curiosity about "how the Poles lived," she +began to think of her dinner with Cairy, and was fearful lest she might be +delayed. + +"Spend the night," suggested Margaret; but Isabelle, who understood Conny, +telephoned at once for the motor. + +"You aren't going back to the West, Isabelle?" Margaret asked, while they +waited for the motor. "Won't you miss it?" + +"Miss the West? Did you ever know a woman that had escaped from the +Mississippi Valley who would go back there?" Conny drawled. "Why, Belle is +like a girl just out of school, looking at the shop windows!" + +Cornelia Woodyard, who had lived a number of years in a corner of that same +vast valley, looked from metropolitan heights on the monotony of the +"middle West." She had the New Yorker's amusing incapacity to comprehend +existence outside the neighborhood of Fifth Avenue and Central Park. + +"One lives out there," Margaret protested with sudden fire, "in those great +spaces. Men grow there. They _do_ things. When my boys are educated I shall +take them away from New York, to the Virginia mountains, perhaps, and have +them grow up there, doing things, real things, working with their hands, +becoming men! Perhaps not there," she mused, recollecting that the acres of +timber and coal in the mountains, her sons' inheritance from her vigorous +ancestors, had been lost to them in a vulgar stock dealer's gamble by their +father,--"perhaps out to Oregon, where I have an uncle. His father rode his +horse all the way from Louisiana across the continent, after the War! He +had nothing but his horse--and before he died he built a city in his new +country. That is where men do things!" + +Margaret had flashed into life again. As Tom Cairy would have said, +"_Vraiment, ma petite cousine a une grande ame--etouffee_" (For Cairy +always made his acute observations in the French tongue). + +"There's something of the Amazon in you, Margaret," Conny remarked, "in +spite of your desire to seclude yourself in the Windward Islands with a +suitable mate." + +The motor finally came puffing up the drive, and the women stood on the +veranda, prolonging their farewells. A round, red, important sun peeped +from under the gray cloud bank that had lowered all the afternoon, flooding +the thin branches of the budding trees, falling warm and gold across the +dead fields. + +"See!" Margaret cried, raising her thin arms to the sun. "The Promise!" + +"I hope it will hold until we reach Jerome Avenue," Conny replied +practically, preparing to enter the car. + +"The promise of another life!" + +Margaret was standing in the sun, her nostrils dilated, absorbing the +light, the source of joy and life. + +"Windward Islands, eh?" Conny coughed, settling herself comfortably in her +corner. + +"The real land," Margaret murmured to herself. + +The chauffeur had reached for the lever when there appeared on the drive +two men bearing something between them, a human something, carefully. + +"What's that!" exclaimed Conny in a frightened voice. "What is it?" she +repeated to the chauffeur,--demanding of a man something in his province to +know. + +"Looks though they had a child--hurt," the chauffeur replied. + +Margaret, shading her eyes with a thin hand, looked down the avenue. She +made no movement to go towards the men,--merely waited motionless for the +thing to come. And the men came slowly forward, past the car, up the steps. + +It was the older boy. The man who held the head and shoulders of the child +said, "An accident--not serious, I believe." + +Margaret opened the door and pointed to the lounge before the fire. The man +who had spoken laid the boy down very gently with his head on a cushion, +and smoothed back the rumpled hair. + +"I will go for the doctor," the other man said, and presently there was the +sound of the motor leaping down the hill. + +Margaret had dropped on her knees beside the unconscious boy, and placed +one hand on his brow. "Bring some water," she said to Isabelle, and began +to unbutton the torn sweater. + +Conny, with one look at the white face and closed eyes, went softly out +into the hall and sat down. + +"Will you telephone to Dr. W. S. Rogers in New York, and ask him to send +some one if he can't come himself?" Margaret asked the stranger, who was +helping her with the boy's clothes. + +"Can I telephone any one else--his father?" the man suggested, as he turned +to the door. + +"No--it would be no use--it's too late to reach him." + +Then she turned again to the boy, who was still unconscious.... + +When the man had finished telephoning, he came back through the hall, where +Conny was sitting. + +"How did it happen?" she asked. + +"He fell over the culvert,--the high one just as you leave the station, you +know. He was riding his bicycle,--I saw the little chap pushing it up the +hill as I got out of the train. Then a big touring car passed me, and met +another one coming down at full speed. I suppose the boy was frightened and +tried to get too far out on the culvert and fell over. The motors didn't +notice him; but when I reached the spot, I saw his bicycle hanging on the +edge and looked over for him,--could just see his head in the bushes and +leaves. Poor little fellow! It was a nasty fall. But the leaves and the +rubbish must have broken it somewhat." + +"Rob! Rob Falkner!" Isabelle exclaimed, as the man turned and met her at +the door. "I didn't recognize you--with your beard! How is Bessie?" + +"Very well, I believe. She is in Denver, you know." + +When he had gone back to the boy, Isabelle said to Conny:-- + +"We used to know the Falkners very well. There is a story! ... Strange he +should be _here_. But I heard he was in the East somewhere." + +Conny did not seem interested in Rob Falkner and his turning up at this +juncture. She sat with a solemn face, wondering how she could get back to +the city. Finally she resolved to telephone Cairy. + + * * * * * + +Falkner went over to the unconscious boy, and taking his hand, counted the +pulse. "It's all right so far," he said to the mother, who did not hear +him. After a time she looked up, and her low voice dragged hoarsely,--"You +mustn't wait. The doctor will be here soon, and we can do everything now." + +"I will wait until the doctor comes," Falkner replied gently, and stepped +to the window to watch for the motor. + +After the local doctor had come and said, "A slight concussion,--nothing +serious, I expect," and the boy had revived somewhat, Conny departed alone +in the motor, Isabelle having decided to stay with Margaret over the night. +Falkner helped the doctor carry the patient upstairs, and then started to +leave. Isabelle waited for him at the door. + +"Mrs. Pole wishes me to thank you for all your kindness." + +"I shall look in to-morrow morning," he replied hurriedly. "I would stay +now until the boy's father came; but I don't suppose there is anything I +can do. I am living at the hotel below, and you can telephone if you want +me." + +"You are living here?" + +"Yes; I am working on the new dam, a few miles from this place." + +"I am so glad to see you again," Isabelle said, the only words she could +think of. + +"Thank you." + +Then with a curt nod he was off. He had not shown in any way that he was +glad to see her, Isabelle reflected. Falkner was always moody, but she had +thought he liked her,--and after all their friendship! Something had kept +her from asking more about Bessie. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + +Larry did not return for dinner, which Isabelle ate by herself in sombre +silence. When she went upstairs to take the mother's place with the boy, +Margaret did not seem to notice her husband's absence, though she inquired +repeatedly whether the New York doctor had telephoned. Later in the evening +when Isabelle suggested that some effort should be made to find the boy's +father, Margaret exclaimed impatiently:-- + +"I can't tell where he is! ... It is easier for me that he isn't here." And +in answer to Isabelle's expression, she added: "Don't look so shocked, B! +Larry gets on my nerves frightfully when there is anything extra to bear or +do. Of course I shall telephone his office in the morning, and he will come +out at once. That doctor said there would be no change before morning. Do +you suppose he knows anything, that doctor? He had the look of polite +ignorance!" + +The New York doctor arrived towards midnight with a nurse, and stayed the +night to await developments. Margaret still sat by the boy's bed, and +Isabelle left her huddled in a large chair, her eyes staring at the shadow +on the faintly lighted bed. She had listened to what Dr. Rogers had to say +without a word. She was almost stone, Isabelle felt, looking at her with +some awe. What could have made her like this! + +She was still in this stony mood the next morning when Larry reached the +house. Dressed in a loose black gown that clung to her slight figure and +brought out the perfect whiteness of her skin, she stood and listened +indifferently to the vague explanation of his absence that her husband +poured out profusely. Then with a remark that the doctor would see him +before he went, she left the room. Isabelle, who was present, watched the +two keenly, trying to divine the secret. To be sure, Larry was not +attractive, she decided,--too effusive, too anxious to make the right +impression, as if he were acting a part before Isabelle, and full of wordy +concern for every one. A little below the medium height, he stood very +erect, consciously making the most of his inches. His sandy hair was thin, +and he wore glasses, behind which one eye kept winking nervously. Neatly, +almost fashionably dressed, he bore no evident marks of dissipation. After +Conny's description, Isabelle had expected to see his shortcomings written +all over him. Though he was over-mannered and talkative, there was nothing +to mark him as of the outcast class. "One doesn't despise one's husband +because he's foolish or unfortunate about money matters," Isabelle said to +herself. And the sympathy that she had felt for Margaret began to +evaporate. + +"You say that he fell off that embankment?" Larry remarked to her. "I was +afraid he was too young to ride about here by himself with all the motors +there are in this neighborhood. But Margaret was anxious to have him +fearless.... People who motor are so careless--it has become a curse in the +country.... Mrs. Woodyard came out with you? I am so sorry this frightful +accident spoiled your day."... + +He ran on from remark to remark, with no prompting from Isabelle, and had +got to their life in Germany when the doctor entered the room. Larry shook +hands punctiliously with him, inquiring in a special tone: "I hope you have +good news of the little fellow, Doctor? I thought I would not go up until I +had seen you first."... + +The doctor cut short the father's prolixity in a burly voice:-- + +"It's concussion, passing off, I think. But nobody can say what will happen +then,--whether there is anything wrong with the cord. It may clear up in a +few days. It may not. No use speculating.... I shall be back to-morrow or +send some one. Good day." + +Larry followed him into the hall, talking, questioning, exclaiming. +Isabella noticed that the doctor gave Pole a quick, impatient glance, +shaking him off with a curt reply, and jumped into the waiting carriage. In +some ways men read men more rapidly than women can. They look for fewer +details, with an eye to the essential stuff of character. + +What had the doctor said to Margaret? Had he let her know his evident +fears? When she came into the room for a moment, there was an expression of +fixed will in her white face, as if she had gone down into herself and +found there the courage to meet whatever was coming.... 'The older boy, +too,' thought Isabelle,--'the one so like her, with no outward trace of the +father!' + +While Margaret was giving directions for telephoning, making in brief +phrases her arrangements for the day, Falkner came in. He was in his +working clothes, and with his thick beard and scrubby mustache looked quite +rough beside the trim Larry. + +"How is the boy?" he demanded directly, going up to the mother. + +"Better, I think,--comfortable at least," she answered gently. There was a +warm gleam in her eyes as she spoke to this stranger, as if she had felt +his fibre and liked it. + +"I will come in this afternoon. I should like to see him when I can." + +"Yes, this afternoon," Margaret replied. "I should be glad to have you +come." + +Isabelle had told Pole that Falkner was the man who had found the boy and +brought him home. Larry, with the subtle air of superiority that clothes +seem to give a small man, thanked Falkner in suitable language. Isabelle +had the suspicion that he was debating with himself whether he should give +this workingman a couple of dollars for his trouble, and with an hysterical +desire to laugh interposed:-- + +"Mr. Pole, this is Mr. Falkner, an old friend of ours!" + +"Oh," Larry remarked, "I didn't understand!" and he looked at Falkner +again, still from a distance. + +"Rob," Isabelle continued, turning to Falkner, "you didn't tell me +yesterday how Bessie is. I haven't heard from her for a long while,--and +Mildred?" + +"They are well, I believe. Bessie doesn't write often." + +Pole followed him into the hall, making remarks. Isabelle heard Falkner +reply gruffly: "Yes, it was a nasty fall. But a kid can fall a good way +without hurting himself seriously." + +When Pole came back and began to talk to her, Isabelle's sympathy for his +wife revived. The house had settled into the dreary imitation of its +customary routine that the house of suspense takes on. To live in this, +with the mild irritation of Larry's conversational fluency, was quite +intolerable. It was not what he said, but the fact that he was forever +saying it. "A bag of words," Isabelle called him. "Poor Margaret!" And she +concluded that there was nothing more useful for her to do than to take +upon herself the burden of Larry until he should dispose of himself in some +harmless way. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + +No, women such as Margaret Pole do not "despise their husbands because they +are unfortunate in money matters,"--not altogether because they prove +themselves generally incompetent in the man's struggle for life! This +process of the petrification of a woman's heart, slow or rapid as it may +be, is always interesting,--if the woman is endowed in the first place with +the power to feel. How Margaret Lawton may have come to marry Lawrence +Pole, we can defer for the present, as a matter of post-mortem psychology, +unprofitable, melancholy, and inexact, however interesting. How does any +woman come to marry any man? Poets, psychologists, and philosophers have +failed to account for the accidents of this emotional nexus. + +What is determinable and more to our purpose is the subsequent process of +dissolution, or petrifaction. All that need be said is that Margaret +married her husband when she was twenty-four, with confidence, belief in +him, and a spiritual aspiration concerning marriage not possible to many +who marry. However foolishly she may have deluded herself,--betrayed a +fatal incapacity to divine,--she believed when she went to the altar with +Lawrence Pole that she was marrying a Man,--one whom she could respect as +well as love, and to whom she should remain loyally bound in mind and heart +and soul. + +She was ardent, this delicate Southern girl. Under a manner that had seemed +to comrades at St. Mary's cold because of its reticence, there burned the +fire of a crusading race,--of those Southerners who had pushed from the fat +lowlands about the sea into the mountains and across them to the +wilderness; of that uncle, who after the defeat of his cause had ridden his +cavalry horse across the entire country in search of a new opening, to +build at forty-three a new life for himself and his wife--after defeat! +There was courage, aspiration, the power of deeds in that blood,--note the +high forehead, the moulded chin, the deep eyes of this woman. And there was +also in her religious faith, received from her father the Bishop, piety, +and accepted beliefs in honor, loyalty, love to one's family and friends, +and charity to the world. All this was untested, handed down to her wrapped +in the prayer-book by the Bishop. And she had seen a bit of what we call +the world, there in Washington among her mother's friends,--had been gay, +perhaps reckless, played like a girl with love and life, those hours of +sunshine. She knew vaguely that some men were liars, and some were carnal; +but she came to her marriage virgin in soul as well as body, without a spot +from living, without a vicious nerve in her body, ready to learn. + +And folly with money, mere incompetence, did not turn that heart to +stone,--not that alone. The small segment of the world that knew the Poles +might think so, hearing how Larry had gone into Wall Street and fatuously +left there his own small fortune, and later, going back after his lesson, +had lost what he could of his wife's property. To be sure, after that first +"ill luck," Margaret's eyes had opened to the fact that her husband was not +"practical," was easily led by vanity. In the Lawton family it had been the +Man's part to deal effectively with practical life, and women did not +concern themselves with their judgments. But as Margaret had never expected +to be rich,--had no ambition for place in the social race,--she would have +gone back to her blue-capped mountains and lived there contented, "with +something to look at." She had urged this course upon her husband after the +first disaster; but he was too vain to "get out," to "quit the game," to +leave New York. So with the understanding that henceforth he would stick to +prosaic methods of money making, he had started again in his brokerage +business. This was at the time when Margaret was occupied with her babies. +As the indubitable clay of her idol revealed itself, she had thought that +child-bearing, child-having would be a tolerable compensation for her idyl. +Margaret Pole was one who "didn't mind having babies," and did not consider +the fatal nine months a serious deprivation of life. She liked it all, she +told Isabelle, and was completely happy only when the children were coming +and while they were helpless babies. One real interest suffices for all. + +Then one day, after the second boy was born, Larry came in, shaking in hand +and heart, and the miserable news was soon out,--"caught in the panic," +"unexpected turn of the market." But how could he be caught, his wife +demanded, with contracting blue eyes? Had his firm failed? And after a +little,--lie and subterfuge within lie and subterfuge being unwrapped,--it +appeared,--the fact. He had "gone into cotton"--with whose money? His +mother's estate,--those excellent four per cent gold bonds that the thrifty +judge had put aside for his widow! + +With the look that Margaret gave her husband, he might have seen that the +process of petrifaction had set in, had gone far, indeed. + +Margaret loved her mother-in-law,--the sweet old woman of gentle fancies +who lived in an old house in an old town on the Massachusetts coast, the +town where she and the judge had grown up. An unworldly, gentle woman, who +had somehow told her daughter-in-law without words that she knew what was +missing in her woman's heart. No, the judge's widow should not pay for her +son's folly! So Margaret sold the New York house, which was hers, and also +some of those mountain lands that had a growing value now, realizing +bitterly that by this early sale she was sacrificing her boys' +heritage--the gift of her forefathers--for a miserable tithe of its real +value,--just because their father was too weak to hold what others had +given him; and hadn't kept faith with her like a frank comrade.... What was +left she took into her own possession. + +So the Poles went abroad, after this. In doubt and distress, in sickness +and divorce, what else does an American do? Margaret had one lingering hope +for her husband. He had a good voice. At college it was considered +remarkable,--a clear, high tenor. He had done little with his gift except +make social capital out of it. And he had some aptitude for acting. He had +been a four years' star in the college operas. If the judge had not +belonged to the settled classes, Larry might have adorned a "Broadway +show." Instead, through his father's influence, he had attempted +finance--and remained an amateur, a "gentleman." But now, Margaret said to +herself, over there, away from trivial society,--the bungled business +career ended,--Larry might turn to his gift seriously. He was only +thirty-two,--not too old, with hard work and steady persistence, which she +would supply, to achieve something. For she would have been content to have +him in the Broadway show; it mattered not to her now what he should do. And +then she beguiled herself with the hope that some of that intellectual +life, the interests in books, music, art--in ideas--could come to them in +common,--a little of what she had dreamed the husband-and-wife life might +be like. Thus with clear insight into her husband's nature, with few +illusions, but with tolerance and hope, Margaret betook herself to Munich +and settled her family in a little villa on the outskirts, conformable to +their income,--_her_ income, which was all they had. But it mattered not +what she had to live on; her mother had shown her how to make a little +answer.... + +At first Larry liked this Munich life. It saved his vanity, and offered an +easy solution for his catastrophe in cotton. He was the artist, not fitted +for business, as his wife saw. He liked to go to concerts and opera, and +take lessons,--but he had to learn German and he was lazy about that. +Margaret studied German with him, until the little girl came. Then Larry +was left to amuse himself, and did it. First he found some idle American +students, and ran about with them, and through them he fell in with a woman +of the Stacia Conry type, of which there is always a supply in every +agreeable European centre. When Margaret emerged from her retirement and +began to look about, she found this Englishwoman very prominent on the +horizon. Larry sang with her and drove with her and did the other things +that he could not do with his wife. He was the kind of man who finds the +nine months of his wife's disability socially irksome, and amuses himself +more or less innocently. + +Margaret understood. Whether Larry's fondness for Mrs. Demarest was +innocent or not, she did not care; she was surprised with herself to find +that she had no jealousy whatever. Mrs. Demarest did not exist for her. +This Mrs. Conry had a husband who came to Munich after her and bore her +back to London. When Larry proposed that they should spend the next season +in London, his wife said calmly:-- + +"You may if you like. I am going to return to America." + +"And my work?" + +Margaret waved a hand ironically:-- + +"You will be better alone.... My father is getting old and feeble; I must +see him."... + +When the family sailed, Larry was in the party. Mrs. Demarest had written +him the proper thing to write after such an intimacy, and Larry felt that +he must "get a job."... + +In those months of the coming of the little girl and the summer afterwards, +the new Margaret had been born. It was a quiet woman, outwardly calm, +inwardly thinking its way slowly to conclusions,--thoughts that would have +surprised the good Bishop. For when her heart had begun to grow cold in the +process of petrifaction, there had awakened a new faculty,--her mind. She +began to digest the world. Those little rules of life, the ones handed down +with the prayer-book, having failed, she asked questions,--'What is life? +What is a woman's life? What is my life? What is duty? A woman's duty? My +duty, married to Larry?'... + +And one by one with relentless clarity she stripped bare all those +platitudinous precepts that she had inherited, had accepted, as one accepts +the physical facts of the world. When the untrained mind of a woman, driven +in on itself by some spiritual bruise, begins to reach out for light, the +end may be social Anarchy. Margaret read and understood French and German, +and she had ample time to read. She saw modern plays that presented facts, +naked and raw, and women's lives from the inside, without regard to the +moral convention. She perceived that she had a soul, an inner life of her +own, apart from her husband, her children, her father, from all the world. +That soul had its own rights,--must be respected. What it might compel her +to do in the years to come, was not yet clear. She waited,--growing. If it +had not been for her father, she would have been content to stay on in +Europe as she was, reading, thinking, loving her children. + +On the way back to America, Larry, becoming conscious in the monotony of +the voyage of his own insufficiency and failure, hinted that he was ready +to accept the mountain home, which Margaret still retained, her mother's +old house. "We might try living in the country," he suggested. But +Margaret, focussing in one rapid image the picture of her husband always +before her in the intimacy of a lonely country life, Larry disintegrating +in small ways, shook her head firmly, giving as an excuse, "The children +must have schools." She would set him at some petty job in the city, +anything to keep him from rotting completely. For he was the father of her +children! + +The good old Bishop met them at the pier in New York. In spite of his +hardened convictions about life, the little rule of thumb by which he +lived, he knew something of men and women; and he suspected that process of +petrifaction in his daughter's heart. So he took occasion to say in their +first intimate talk:-- + +"I am glad that you and Lawrence have decided to come home to live. It is +not well for people to remain long away from their own country, to evade +the responsibilities of our social brotherhood. The Church preaches the +highest communism, ... and you must help your husband to find some definite +service in life, and do it." + +Margaret's lips curved dangerously, and the Bishop, as if answering this +sign, continued:-- + +"Lawrence does not show great power, I know, my dear. But he is a good +man,--a faithful husband and a kind father. That is much, Margaret. It +rests with you to make him more!" + +'Does it?' Margaret was asking herself behind her blank countenance. 'One +cannot make bricks without straw.... What is that sort of goodness worth in +a man? I had rather my husband were what you call a bad man--and a Man.' +But she said nothing. + +"Thus our Lord has ordered it in this life," continued the Bishop, feeling +that he was making headway; "that one who is weak is bound to one who is +stronger,--perchance for the good of both." + +Margaret smiled. + +"And a good woman has always the comfort of her children,--when she has +been blessed with them,--who will grow to fill the desolate places in her +heart," concluded the good Bishop, feeling that he had irrefutably +presented to his daughter the right ideas. But the daughter was thinking, +with the new faculty that was awakening in her:-- + +'Do children fill the desolate spots in a woman's heart completely? I love +mine, even if they are spotted with his weaknesses. I am a good mother,--I +know that I am,--yet I could love,--oh, I could love grandly some one else, +and love them more because of it! At thirty a woman is not done with +loving, even though she has three children.' + +But she did not dispute her father's words, merely saying in a weary voice, +"I suppose Larry and I will make a life of it, as most people do, somehow!" + +Nevertheless, as she spoke these words of endurance, there was welling up +within her the spirit of rebellion against her lot,--the ordinary lot of +acceptance. She had a consciousness of power in herself to live, to be +something other than the prosaic animal that endures. + + * * * * * + +The Poles took the house at Dudley Farms and began the routine of American +suburban life, forty miles from New York. After several months of futile +effort, spaced by periods of laziness that Margaret put an end to, a +gentleman's job was secured for Larry, through the kindness of one of his +father's friends. At first Larry was inclined to think that the work would +belittle him, spoil his chances of "better things." But Margaret, seeing +that as assistant secretary to the Malachite Company he could do no harm, +could neither gamble nor loaf, replied to these doubts in a tone of cold +irony:-- + +"You can resign when you find something better suited to your talents." + +Thus at thirty-five Larry was _range_ and a commuter. He dressed well, kept +up one of his clubs, talked the condition of the country, and was a kind +father to his boys.... 'What more should a woman expect?' Margaret asked +herself, thinking of her father's words and enumerating her blessings. +Three healthy children, a home and enough to eat and wear, a husband who +(in spite of Conny's gossip) neither drank to excess nor was unfaithful nor +beat her,--who had none of the obvious vices of the male! Good God! +Margaret sighed with a bitter sense of irony. + +"I must be a wicked woman," her mother would have said under similar +circumstances,--and there lies the change in woman's attitude. + +Looking across the table at Larry in his neat evening clothes,--he was +growing a trifle stout these days,--listening to his observations on the +railroad service, or his suggestion that she should pay more attention to +dress, Margaret felt that some day she must shriek maniacally. But instead +her heart grew still and cold, and her blue eyes icy. + +"What is there in woman that makes trifles so important?" she asked +Isabelle in a rare effusion of truth-speaking. "Why do some voices--correct +and well-bred ones--exasperate you, and others, no better, fill you with +content, comfort? Why do little acts--the way a man holds a book or strokes +his mustache--annoy you? Why are you dead and bored when you walk with one +person, and are gay when you walk by yourself?" + +To all of which Isabelle sagely replied: "You think too much, Margaret +dear. As John says when I ask him profound questions, 'Get up against +something real!'" + +For Isabelle could be admirably wise where another was concerned. + +"Yes," Margaret admitted, "I suppose I am at fault. It is my job to make +life worth living for all of us,--the Bishop, mother-in-law, children, +Larry,--all but myself. That's a woman's privilege." + +So she did her "job." But within her the lassitude of dead things was ever +growing, sapping her physical buoyancy, sapping her will. She called to her +soul, and the weary spirit seemed to have withdrawn. + +"A case of low vitality," in the medical jargon of the day. And hers was a +vital stock, too. + +'In time,' she said, 'I shall be dead, and then I shall be a good +woman,--wholly good! The Bishop will be content.' And she smiled in denial +of her own words. For even then, at the lowest ebb, her soul spoke: there +was wonder and joy and beauty somewhere in this gray procession of +phenomena, and it must come to her sometime. And when it came, her heart +said, she would grasp it! + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + +These days Larry Pole began to think well of himself once more. He had made +his mistakes,--what man hasn't?--but he had wiped out the score, and he was +fulfilling the office of under-secretary to the great Malachite Company +admirably. He was conscious that the men in the office felt that his +personality, his bearing, and associations gave distinction to the place. +And he still secretly looked for some turn in the game which would put him +where he desired to be. In New York the game is always on, the tables +always set: from the newsboy to the magnate the gambler's hope is open to +every man. + +Only one thing disturbed his self-complacency,--Margaret treated him +indifferently, coldly. He even suspected that though by some accident she +had borne him three children he had never won her love, that she had never +been really his. Since their return from Europe and establishing themselves +in the country, she had withdrawn more and more from him--where? Into +herself. She had her own room and dressing-room, beyond the children's +quarters, in the rear of the rambling house, and her life seemed to go on +in those rooms more and more. It was almost, Larry observed discontentedly, +as if there were not a husband in the situation. Well, he reflected +philosophically, women were like that,--American women; they thought they +owned themselves even after they had married. If a wife took that attitude, +she must not complain if the husband went his way, too. Larry in these +injured moods felt vague possibilities of wickedness within him,--justified +errancies.... + +One day he was to see deep into that privacy, to learn all--all he was +capable of understanding--about his wife. Margaret had been to the city,--a +rare event,--had lunched with Isabella, and gone to see a new actress in a +clever little German play. She and Isabelle had talked it over,--very +animatedly. Then she had brought back with her some new books and foreign +reviews. After dinner she was lying on the great lounge before the fire, +curled up in a soft dress of pale lilac, seriously absorbing an article on +a Russian playwright. Hers was a little face,--pale, thin, with sunken +eyes. The brow was too high, and latterly Margaret paid no attention to +arranging her hair becomingly. It was not a face that could be called +pretty; it would not be attractive to most men, her husband thought as he +watched her. But it had drawn some men strongly, fired them; and Larry +still longed for its smiles,--desired her. + +He had felt talkative that evening, had chattered all through dinner, and +she had listened tolerantly, as she might to her younger boy when he had a +great deal to say about nothing. But now she had taken refuge in this +review, and Larry had dropped from sight. When he had finished his +cigarette, he sat down on the edge of the lounge, taking her idle hand in +his. She let him caress it, still reading on. After a time, as he continued +to press the hand, his wife said without raising her eyes:-- + +"What do you want?" + +"'What do you want?'" Larry mimicked! "Lord! you American women are as hard +as stone." + +"Are the others different?" Margaret asked, raising her eyes. + +"They say they are--how should I know?" + +"I thought you might know from experience," she observed equably. + +"I have never loved any woman but you, Margaret!" he said tenderly. "You +know that!" + +Margaret made no response. The statement seemed to demand something of her +which she could not give. He took her hand again, caressed it, and finally +kissed her. She looked at him steadily, coldly. + +"Please--sit over there!" As her husband continued to caress her, she sat +upright. "I want to say something to you, Larry." + +"What is it?" + +"There can't be any more of _that_--you understand?--between us." + +"What do you mean?" + +"I mean--_that_, what you call love, passion, is over between us." + +"Why? ... what have I done?" + +Margaret waved her hand impatiently:-- + +"It makes no difference,--I don't want it--I can't--that is all." + +"You refuse to be my wife?" + +"Yes,--that way." + +"You take back your marriage vow?" (Larry was a high churchman, which fact +had condoned much in the Bishop's eyes.) + +"I take back--myself!" + +Margaret's eyes shone, but her voice was calm. + +"If you loved any other man--but you are as cold as ice!" + +"Am I?" + +"Yes! ... I have been faithful to you always," he observed by way of +defence and accusation. + +Margaret rose from the couch, and looked down at her husband, almost +compassionately. But when she spoke, her low voice shook with scorn:-- + +"That is your affair,--I have never wanted to know.... You seem to pride +yourself on that. Good God! if you were more of a man,--if you were man +enough to want anything, even sin,--I might love you!" + +It was like a bolt of white fire from the clear heavens. Her husband +gasped, scarcely comprehending the words. + +"I don't believe you know what you are saying. Something has upset you.... +Would you like me to love another woman? That's a pretty idea for a wife to +advance!" + +"I want you to--oh, what's the use of talking about it, Larry? You know +what I mean--what I think, what I have felt--for a long time, even before +little Elsa came. How can you want love with a woman who feels towards you +as I do?" + +"It is natural enough for a man who cares for his wife--" + +"Too natural," Margaret laughed bitterly. "No, Larry; that's all over! You +can do as you like,--I shan't ask questions. And we shall get on very well, +like this." + +"This comes of the rotten books you read!" he fumed. + +"I do my own thinking." + +"Suppose I don't want the freedom you hand out so readily?" he asked with +an appealing note. "Suppose I still love you, my wife? have always loved +you! You married me.... I've been unfortunate--" + +"It isn't that, you know! It isn't the money--the fact that you would have +beggared your mother--not quite that. It's everything--_you!_ Why go into +it? I don't blame you, Larry. But I know you now, and I don't love +you--that is all." + +"You knew me when you married me. Why did you marry me?" + +"Why--why did I marry you?" + +Margaret's voice had the habit of growing lower and stiller as passion +touched her heart. "Yes--you may well ask that! Why does a woman see those +things she wants to see in a man, and is blind to what she might see! ... +Oh, why does any woman marry, my husband?" + +And in the silence that followed they were both thinking of those days in +Washington, eight years before, when they had met. He was acting as +secretary to some great man then, and was flashing in the pleasant light of +youth, popularity, social approbation. He had "won out" against the +Englishman, Hollenby,--why, he had never exactly known. + +Margaret was thinking of that why, as a woman does think at times for long +years afterwards, trying to solve the psychological puzzle of her foolish +youth! Hollenby was certainly the abler man, as well as the more brilliant +prospect. And there were others who had loved her, and whom even as a girl +she had wit enough to value.... A girl's choice, when her heart speaks, as +the novelists say, is a curious process, compounded of an infinite number +of subtle elements,--suggestions, traits of character, and above all +temporary atmospheric conditions of mind. It is a marvel if it ever can be +resolved into its elements! ... The Englishman--she was almost his--had +lost her because once he had betrayed to the girl the brute. One frightened +glimpse of the animal in his nature had been enough. And in the rebound +from this chance perception of man as brute, she had listened to Lawrence +Pole, because he seemed to her all that the other was not,--high-souled, +poetic, restrained, tender,--all the ideals. With him life would be a +communion of lovely and lovable things. He would secure some place in the +diplomatic service abroad, and they would live on the heights, with art, +ideas, beauty.... + +"Wasn't I a fool--not to know!" she remarked aloud. She was thinking, with +the tolerance of mature womanhood: 'I could have tamed the brute in the +other one. At least he was a man!' "Well, we dream our dreams, sentimental +little girls that we are! And after a time we open our eyes like kittens on +life. I have opened mine, Larry,--very wide open. There isn't a sentimental +chord in my being that you can twang any longer.... But we can be +good-tempered and sensible about it. Run along now and have your cigar, or +go over to the country club and find some one to play billiards,--only let +me finish what you are pleased to call my rotten reading,--it is so +amusing!" + +She had descended from the crest of her passion, and could play with the +situation. But her husband, realizing in some small way the significance of +these words they had exchanged, still probed the ground:-- + +"If you feel like that, why do you still live with me? Why do you consent +to bear my name?" + +The pomposity of the last words roused a wicked gleam in his wife's eyes. +She looked up from her article again. + +"Perhaps I shan't always 'consent to bear your name,' Larry. I'm still +thinking, and I haven't thought it all out yet. When I do, I may give up +your name,--go away. Meanwhile I think we get on very well: I make a +comfortable home for you; you have your children,--and they are well +brought up. I have kept you trying to toe the mark, too. Take it all in +all, I haven't been a bad wife,--if we are to present references?" + +"No," Larry admitted generously; "I have always said you were too good for +me,--too fine." + +"And so, still being a good wife, I have decided to take myself back." She +drew her small body together, clasping her arms about the review. "My body +and my soul,--what is personally most mine. But I will serve you--make you +comfortable. And after a time you won't mind, and you will see that it was +best." + +"It goes deeper than that," her husband protested, groping for the idea +that he caught imperfectly; "it means practically that we are living under +the same roof but aren't married!" + +"With perfect respectability, Larry, which is more than is always the case +when a man and a woman live under the same roof, either married or +unmarried! ... I am afraid that is it in plain words. But I will do my best +to make it tolerable for you." + +"Perhaps some day you'll find a man,--what then?" + +Margaret looked at him for a long minute before replying. + +"And if I should find a Man, God alone knows what would happen!" + +Then in reply to the frightened look on her husband's face, she added +lightly:-- + +"Don't worry, Larry! No immediate scandal. I haven't any one in view, and +living as I do it isn't likely that I shall be tempted by some knightly or +idiotic man, who wants to run away with a middle-aged woman and three +children. I am anchored safely--at any rate as long as dad lives and your +mother, and the children need my good name. Oh!" she broke off suddenly; +"don't let us talk any more about it!" ... + +Leaning her head on her hands, she looked into the fire, and murmured to +herself as if she had forgotten Larry's presence:-- + +"God! why are we so blind, so blind,--and our feet caught in the net of +life before we know what is in our souls!" + +For she realized that when she said she was middle-aged and anchored, it +was but the surface truth. At thirty, with three children, she was more the +woman, more capable of love, passion, understanding, devotion--more capable +of giving herself wholly and greatly to a mate--than any girl could be. The +well of life still poured its flood into her! Her husband could never know +that agony of longing, those arms stretched out to--what? When would this +torture of defeated capacity be ended--when had God set the term for her to +suffer! + +In the black silence that had fallen between them, Pole betook himself to +the club, as his wife had suggested, for the consolation of billiards and +talk among sensible folk, "who didn't take life so damned hard." In the +intervals of these distractions his mind would revert to what had passed +between him and his wife that evening. Margaret's last remarks comforted +him somewhat. Nothing of a scandalous or public demonstration of her +feeling about her marriage was imminent. Nevertheless, his pride was hurt. +In spite of the fact that he had suspected for a long time that his wife +was cold,--was not "won,"--he had hitherto travelled along in complacent +egotism. "They were a fairly happy couple" or "they geed as well as most," +as he would have expressed it. He had not suspected that Margaret might +feel the need of more than that. To-night he had heard and understood the +truth,--and it was a blow. Deep down in his masculine heart he felt that he +had been unjustly put in the wrong, somehow. No woman had the right--no +wife--to say without cause that having thought better of the marriage +bargain she had "taken herself back." There was something preposterous in +the idea. It was due to the modern fad of a woman's reading all sorts of +stuff, when her mind was inflammable. He recognized that his wife was the +more important, the stronger person of the two,--that was the trouble with +American women (Larry always made national generalizations when he wished +to express a personal truth)--they knew when they were strong,--felt their +oats. They needed to be "tamed." + +But Larry was aware that he was not fitted for the task of woman-tamer, and +moreover it should have been begun long before this. + +So having won his game of billiards Larry had a drink, which made him even +more philosophical. "Margaret is all right," he said to himself. "She was +strung up to-night,--something made her go loose. But she'll come +around,--she'll never do the other thing!" Yet in spite of a second whiskey +and soda before starting for home, he was not absolutely convinced of this +last statement. + +What makes a man like Larry Pole content to remain the master of the fort +merely in name, when the woman has escaped him in spirit? Why will such men +as he live on for years, aye and get children, with women, who do not even +pretend to love them? + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile the wife sat there before the fire, her reading forgotten, +thinking, thinking. She had said more than she herself knew to be in her +heart. For one lives on monotonously, from day to day, unresolved, and then +on occasion there flame forth unsuspected ideas, resolves. For the soul has +not been idle.... It was true that their marriage was at an end. And it was +not because of her husband's failures, his follies,--not the money +mistakes. It was himself,--the petty nature he revealed in every act. For +women like Margaret Pole can endure vice and folly and disappointment, but +not a petty, trivial, chattering biped that masquerades as Man. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + +IN the weeks that followed the accident Margaret Pole saw much of Falkner. +The engineer would come up the hill to the old house late in the afternoon +after his work, or ride up on his bicycle in the morning on his way to the +dam he was building. Ned--"the Little Man" as Falkner called him--came to +expect this daily visit as one of his invalid rights. Several times Falkner +stayed to dinner; but he bored Larry, who called him "a Western bounder," +and grumbled, "He hasn't anything to say for himself." It was true that +Falkner developed chronic dumbness in Larry's conversational presence. But +Margaret seemed to like the "bounder." She discovered that he carried in +his pocket a volume of verse. An engineer who went to his job these days +with a poetry book in his coat pocket was not ordinary, as she remarked to +her husband.... + +Falkner's was one of those commonplace figures to be seen by the thousands +in an American city. He dressed neither well nor ill, as if long ago the +question of appearances had ceased to interest him, and he bought what was +necessary for decency in the nearest shop. His manners, though brusque, +indicated that he had always been within that vague line which marks off +the modern "gentleman." His face, largely covered by beard and mustache, +was pale and thoughtful, and his eyes were tired, usually dull. He was +merely one of the undistinguished units in the industrial army. Obviously +he had not "arrived," had not pushed into the circle of power. Some lack of +energy, or natal unfitness for the present environment? Or was he inhibited +by a twist of fate, needing an incentive, a spur? + +At any rate the day when Margaret met him, the day when he had brought her +boy home in his arms, the book of life seemed closed and fastened for him +forever. The fellow-units in the industrial scheme in which he had become +fixed, might say of him,--"Yes, a good fellow, steady, intelligent, but +lacks push,--he'll never get there." Such are the trite summaries of man +among men. Of all the inner territory of the man's soul, which had resolved +him in its history to what he was, had left him this negative unit of life, +his fellows were ignorant, as man must be of man. They saw the Result, and +in the rough arithmetic of life results are all that count with most +people. + +But the woman--Margaret,--possessing her own hidden territory of soul +existence, had divined more, even in that first tragic moment, when he had +borne her maimed child into the house and laid his burden tenderly on the +lounge. As he came and went, telephoning, doing the little that could be +done, she saw more than the commonplace figure, clothed in ready-made +garments; more than the dull, bearded face, the strong, thin hands, the +rumpled hair. Something out of that vast beyond which this stranger had in +common with her had spoken through the husk, even then.... + +And it had not ended there, as it would have ended, had Falkner been the +mere "bounder" Larry saw. It was Falkner to whom the mother first told the +doctors' decision about the boy. Certain days impress their atmosphere +indelibly; they have being to them like persons, and through years the +odor, the light, the sense of their few hours may be recalled as vividly as +when they were lived. This May day the birds were twittering beside the +veranda where Margaret was reading to the Little Man, when Falkner came up +the drive. The long windows of the house were opened to admit the soft air, +for it was already summer. Margaret was dressed in a black gown that +relieved the pallor of her neck and face like the dark background of an old +portrait. As the boy called, "There's big Bob!" she looked up from her book +and smiled. Yet in spite of the placid scene, the welcoming smile, Falkner +knew that something had happened,--something of moment. The three talked +and the birds chattered; the haze of the gentle brooding day deepened. Far +away above the feathery treetops, which did their best to hide the little +houses, there was the blue line of sea, gleaming in the sun. It seemed to +Falkner after the long day's work the very spot of Peace, and yet in the +woman's controlled manner there was the something not peace. When Falkner +rose to go, Margaret accompanied him to the steps. + +"It's like the South to-day, all this sun and windless air. You have never +been in the South? Some days I ache for it." + +In the full light she seemed a slight, worn figure with a blanched face. + +"Bring me my puppy, please, Bob!" the child called from his couch. "He's in +the garden." + +Falkner searched among the flower-beds beneath the veranda and finally +captured the fat puppy and carried him up to the boy, who hugged him as a +girl would a doll, crooning to him. Margaret was still staring into space. + +"What has happened?" Falkner asked. + +She looked at him out of her deep eyes, as if he might read there what had +happened. They descended the steps and walked away from the house. + +"He hears so quickly," she explained; "I don't want him to know yet." + +So they kept on down the drive. + +"Dr. Rogers was here this morning.... He brought two other doctors with +him.... There is no longer any doubt--it is paralysis of the lower limbs. +He will never walk, they think." + +They kept on down the drive, Falkner looking before him. He knew that the +woman was not crying, would never betray her pain that watery way; but he +could not bear to see the misery of those eyes. + +"My father the Bishop has written me ... spiritual consolation for Ned's +illness. Should I feel thankful for the chastening to my rebellious spirit +administered to me through my poor boy? Should I thank God for the lash of +the whip on my stubborn back?" + +Falkner smiled. + +"My father the Bishop is a good man, a kind man in his way, yet he never +considered my mother--he lived his own life with his own God.... It would +surprise him if he knew what I thought about God,--_his_ God, at least."... + +Falkner looked at her at last, and they stopped. Afterwards he knew that he +already loved Margaret Pole. He, too, had divined that the woman, stricken +through her child, was essentially alone in the world, and in her hungry +eyes lay the story of the same dreary road over which he had passed. And +these two, defeated ones in the riotous world of circumstance, silently, +instinctively held out hands across the void and looked at each other with +closed lips. + +Among the trees the golden haze deepened, and the birds sang. Down below in +the village sounded the deep throbs of an engine: the evening train had +come from the city. It was the only disturbing note in the peace, the +silence. The old house had caught the full western sun, and its dull red +bricks glowed. On the veranda the small boy was still caressing the puppy. + +"Mother!" a thin voice sounded. Margaret started. + +"Good-by," Falkner said. "I shall come to-morrow." + +At the gate he met Pole, lightly swinging a neat green bag, his gloves in +his hand. Larry stopped to talk, but Falkner, with a short, "Pleasant +afternoon," kept on. Somehow the sight of Pole made the thing he had just +learned all the worse. + +Thus it happened that in the space of a few weeks Margaret knew Falkner +more intimately than Isabelle had ever known him or ever could know him. +Two beings meeting in this illusive, glimmering world of ours may come to a +ready knowledge of each other, as two travellers on a dark road, who have +made the greater part of the stormy journey alone. It would be difficult to +record the growth of that inner intimacy,--so much happening in wordless +moments or so much being bodied forth in little words that would be as +meaningless as newspaper print. But these weeks of the child's invalidism, +there was growing within them another life that no one shared or would have +understood. When Larry observed, "That bounder is always here," Margaret +did not seem to hear. Already the food that the "bounder" had given her +parched self was too precious to lose. She had begun to live again the +stifled memories, the life laid away,--to talk of her girlhood, of her +Virginia hills, her people. + +And Falkner had told her something of those earlier years in the Rockies, +when he had lived in the world of open spaces and felt the thrill of life, +but never a word of what had passed since he had left the canons and the +peaks. Sometimes these days there was a gleam in his dark eyes, a smile on +the bearded lips that indicated the reopening of the closed book once more. +His fellow-units in the industrial world might not see it; but Margaret +felt it. Here was a human being pressed into the service of the machine and +held there, at pay, powerless to extract himself, sacrificed. And she saw +what there was beneath the mistake; she felt the pioneer blood, like her +own, close to the earth in its broad spaces, living under the sky in a new +land. She saw the man that should be, that once was, that must be again! +And in this world of their other selves, which had been denied them, these +two touched hands. They needed little explanation. + +Rarely Margaret spoke of her present life, and then with irony, as if an +inner and unsentimental honesty compelled utterance: "You see," she +remarked once when her husband called her, "we dress for dinner because +when we started in New York we belonged to the dining-out class. If we +didn't keep up the habit, we should lose our self-respect.... My neck is +thin and I don't look well in evening dress. But that makes no matter.... +We have prayers on Sunday morning; religion is part of the substantial +life."... + +Conny had said once, hearing Margaret rail like this: "She ought to make a +better bluff, or get out,--not guy old Larry like that; it isn't decent, +embarrasses one so. You can't guy him, too."... + +But Falkner understood how the acid of her daily life eating into her had +touched, at these times, a sensitive nerve and compelled such +self-revelations. + + * * * * * + +It was Falkner who first spoke to the Poles about Dr. Renault. In some way +he had heard of the surgeon and learned of the wonderful things he had +done. + +"Anyhow it is worth while seeing him. It is best to try everything." + +"Yes," Margaret assented quickly; "I shall not give up--never!" + +Through a doctor whom he knew Falkner arranged the visit to the surgeon, +who was difficult of access. And he went in the evening after the visit to +learn the result. + +"He thinks there is a chance!" and Margaret added more slowly: "It is a +great risk. I supposed it must be so." + +"You will take it?" + +"I think," she said slowly, "that Ned would want me to. You see he is like +me. It may accomplish nothing, Dr. Renault said. It may be partially +successful.... Or it may be--fatal. He was very kind,--spent all the +afternoon here. I liked him immensely; he was so direct.' + +"When will it be?" + +"Next week." + +The operation took place, and was not fatal. "Now we shall have to wait," +the surgeon said to the mother,--"and hope! It will be months before we +shall know finally what is the result." + +"I shall wait and hope!" Margaret replied to him. Renault, who had a chord +in common with this Southern woman, stroked her hand gently as he left. +"Better take the little chap away somewhere and get a change yourself," he +said. + +It was a still, hot night of late June, the last time that Falkner climbed +the hill to the old place. The summer, long delayed, had burst these last +days with scorching fury. Margaret was to leave on the morrow for Bedmouth, +where she would spend the summer with old Mrs. Pole. She was lying on the +veranda couch. She smiled as Falkner drew a chair to her side, the frank +smile from the deep blue eyes, that she gave only to her children and to +him, and there was a joyous note in her voice:-- + +"At last there is a sign. I have a little more hope now!" + +She told him of the first faint indications of life in the still limbs of +the child. + +"It will be months before we can tell really. But tonight I have strong +hope!" + +"What we need most in life is hope," he mused. "It keeps the thing going." + +"As long as a man can work, he has hope," she replied stoutly. + +"I suppose so,--at least he must think so." + +Margaret knew that the work the engineer was engaged on was nearly +finished. It might last at the most another six weeks, and he did not know +where he should go then; but it was altogether unlikely that the fall would +find him at Dudley Farms. + +"I was in the city to-day," he said after a time, "and in the company's +office I ran across my old chief. He's going to Panama in the fall."... + +Margaret waited with strange expectancy for what Falkner might say next. +She rarely asked questions, sought directly to know. She had the power of +patience, and an unconscious belief that life shaped itself largely without +the help of speech. Here and there in the drama of events the spoken word +might be called for--but rarely. + +"They have interesting problems down there," Falkner continued; "it is +really big work, you know. A man might do something worth while. But it is +a hole!" + +She still waited, and what she expected came:-- + +"He asked me to go with him,--promised me charge of one of the dams, my own +work,--it is the biggest thing that ever came my way." + +And then the word fell from her almost without her will:-- + +"You must go! _Must_ go!" + +"Yes," he mused on; "I thought so. There was a time when it would have made +me crazy, such a chance.... It's odd after all these years, when I thought +I was dead--" + +"Don't say dead!" + +"Well, rutted deep in the mire, then,--that this should happen." + +She had said "go," with all the truth of her nature. It was the thing for +him to do. But she did not have the strength to say another word. In the +moment she had seen with blinding clearness all that this man meant in her +little firmament. 'This was a Man!' She knew him. She loved him! yes, she +loved him, thank God! And now he must go out of her life as suddenly as he +had come into it,--must leave her alone, stranded as before in the dark. + +"It isn't so easy to decide," Falkner continued. "There isn't much money in +it,--not for the under men, you know." + +"What difference does that make!" she flashed. + +"Not to me," he explained, and there was a pause. "But I have my wife and +child to think of. I need all the money I can earn." + +It was the first time any reference had been made to his family. After a +time Margaret said:-- + +"But they pay fair salaries, and any woman would rather be pinched and have +her husband in the front ranks--" And then she hesitated, something in +Falkner's eyes troubling her. + +"I shall not decide just yet.... The offer has stirred my blood,--I feel +that I have some youth left!" + +They said little more. Margaret walked with him down the avenue. In her +summer dress she looked wasted, infinitely fragile. + +"This is not good-by," he said at last. "I shall go down the coast in a +boat for a week, as I used to do when I was a boy, and my sister has a +cottage at Lancaster. That is not far from Bedmouth?" + +"No, it isn't far," she answered softly. + +They paused and then walked back, as if all was not said yet. + +"There is another reason," Falkner exclaimed abruptly, "why I did not wish +to go--and you must know it." + +She raised her head and looked at him, murmuring,-- + +"Yes! I know it! ... But _nothing_ should keep you here." + +"No, not keep me.... But there is something infinitely precious to lose by +going.... You have made me live again, Margaret. I was dead, dead,--a dead +soul." + +"We were both dead ... and now we live!" + +"It were better not said, perhaps--" + +"No!" she interrupted passionately. "It ought to be said! Why not?" + +"There can be nothing for us," he muttered dully. + +"No!" and her hands touched his. "Don't say that! We are both in the +world,--don't you see?" + +His face drew near to hers, they kissed, and she clung to him for the +moment, then whispered: "Now go! You must live, live,--live greatly,--for +us both!" + +Margaret fled to her room, knelt down beside the boy's bed, with clasped +hands, her eyes shining down on the sleeping child, a smile on her face. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + +Cornelia Woodyard's expression was not pleasant when she was deliberating +or in perplexity. Her broad brow wrinkled, and her mouth drew down at the +corners, adding a number of years to her face. She did not allow this +condition of perplexity to appear in public, reserving her "heavy +thinking," as Tom Cairy called these moments, for the early morning hours +of privacy. This languid spring day while Conny turned over her mail that +lay strewn in disorder on her bed, she apparently had one of her worst fits +of dubitation. She poked about in the mass of letters, bills, and +newspapers until she found the sheet she was looking for,--it was in her +husband's handwriting,--reread it, the scowl deepening, pushed it back +thoughtfully into its envelope, and rang for the maid that looked after her +personally as well as performed other offices in the well-organized +household. When Conny emerged at the end of the hour in street costume, the +frown had disappeared, but her fair face wore a preoccupied air. + +"Hello, Tom!" she said wanly to Cairy, who was dawdling over the paper in +the library. "How is it out?" + +"Warm,--a perfect day!" Cairy replied, smiling at her and jumping to his +feet. + +"Is the cab there?" + +"Yes,--shall we start?" + +"I can't go to-day, Tom,--something has turned up." + +"Something has turned up?" he queried. He was an expert in Conny's moods, +but he had seen little of this mood lately. + +"Business," Conny explained shortly. "Leave the cab, please. I may want +it.... No," she added as Cairy came towards her with a question on his +lips. "I can't bother to explain,--but it's important. We must give up our +day." + +She turned to her desk, and then remarked as if she felt Cairy's +disappointment: "You can come in after dinner if you like, Tom! We can have +the evening, perhaps." + +He looked at her questioningly, as if he would insist on an explanation. +But Conny was not one of whom even a lover would demand explanations when +she was in this mood. + +"We can't always play, Tommy!" she sighed. + +But after he had left the room she called him back. + +"You didn't kiss me," she said sweetly. "You may if you like, just once.... +There!" she raised her head and smiled at Cairy, with that satisfaction +which emotional moments brought to her. "You had better get to work, too. +You can't have been of much use to Gossom lately." And she settled herself +at her desk with the telephone book. As she called the hotel where Senator +Thomas usually stayed when he was in the city, the scowl returned to her +brow. Her mind had already begun to grapple with the problems suggested by +Percy's letter of the morning. But by the time she had succeeded in getting +the Senator, her voice was gentle and sweet.... + +... "Yes, at luncheon,--that will be very nice!" And she hung up the +receiver with an air of swift accomplishment. + + * * * * * + +It is not necessary to go into what had passed between Cornelia Woodyard +and Cairy in the weeks that had elapsed since that day when Conny had been +so anxious to get back to New York from the Poles'. It would gratify merely +a vulgar curiosity. Suffice it to say that never before had Conny been so +pleased with life or her own competent handling of her affairs in it. Up to +this morning she felt that she had admirably fulfilled all claims upon her +as well as satisfied herself. Things had seemed "to come her way" during +this period. The troublesome matter before the Commission that had roused +her husband's conscience and fighting blood had gone over for the time. The +Commission had reserved its decision, and the newspapers had gone off on a +number of other scents of wrong-doing that seemed more odorously promising. +Percy's conscience had returned to its normal unsuspecting state, and he +had been absorbed to an unwonted degree in private business of one sort or +another. + +Meantime the Senator and Cornelia had had a number of little talks. The +Senator had advised her about the reinvestment of her money, and all her +small fortune was now placed in certain stocks and bonds of a paper company +that "had great prospects in the near future," as the Senator +conservatively phrased it. Percy, naturally, had known about this, and +though he was slightly troubled by the growing intimacy with the Senator, +he was also flattered and trusted his wife's judgment. "A shrewd business +head," the Senator said of Conny, and the Senator ought to know. "It is as +easy to do business with her as with a man." Which did not mean that +Cornelia Woodyard had sold her husband to the Senator,--nothing as crude as +that, but merely that she "knew the values" of this life. + +The Senator and Conny often talked of Percy, the promise he had shown, his +ability and popularity among all kinds of men. "If he steers right now," +the Senator had said to his wife, "there is a great future ahead of +Woodyard, and"--with a pleasant glance at Conny--"I have no doubt he will +avoid false steps." The Senator thought that Congress would be a mistake. +So did Conny. "It takes luck or genius to survive the lower house," the +Senator said. They had talked of something in diplomacy, and now that the +stocks and bonds of the paper-mill were to be so profitable, they could +afford to consider diplomacy. Moreover, the amiable Senator, who knew how +to "keep in" with an aggressively moral administration at Washington +without altogether giving up the pleasing habit of "good things," promised +to have Woodyard in mind "for the proper place." + +So Conny had dreamed her little dream, which among many other things +included the splendor of a career in some European capital, where Conny had +no doubt that she could properly shine, and she felt proud that she could +do so much for Percy. The world, this one at any rate, was for the +able,--those who knew what to take from the table and how to take it. She +was of those who had the instinct and the power. Then Percy's letter:-- + +... "Princhard came up to see me yesterday. From the facts he gave me I +have no doubt at all what is the inner meaning of the Water Power bill. I +shall get after Dillon [the chairman of the Commission] and find out what +he means by delaying matters as he has.... It looks also as though the +Senator had some connection with this steal.... I am sorrier than I can say +that we have been so intimate with him, and that you followed his advice +about your money. I may be down Sunday, and we will talk it over. Perhaps +it is not too late to withdraw from that investment. It will make no +difference, however, in my action here." ... + +Simply according to Conny's crisp version, "Percy has flown the track +again!" + + * * * * * + +After a pleasant little luncheon with the Senator, Conny sent a telegram to +her husband that she would meet him at the station on the arrival of a +certain train from Albany that evening, adding the one word, "urgent," +which was a code word between them. Then she telephoned the office of _The +People's_, but Cairy was not there, and he had not returned when later in +the afternoon she telephoned again. + +"Well," she mused, a troubled expression on her face, "perhaps it is just +as well,--Tom might not be easy to manage. He's more exacting than Percy +about some things." So while the cab was waiting to take her to the +station, she sat down at her desk and wrote a note,--a brief little note:-- + +"DEAR TOM: I am just starting for the station to meet Percy. Something very +important has come up, which for the present must change things for us +all.... You know that we agreed the one thing we could not do would be to +let our feelings interfere with our duties--to any one.... I don't know +when I can see you. But I will let you know soon. Good-by. C." + +"Give this to Mr. Cairy when he calls and tell him not to wait," she said +to the maid who opened the door for her. Conny did not believe in "writing +foolish things to men," and her letter of farewell had the brevity of +telegraphic despatch. Nevertheless she sank into the corner of the cab +wearily and closed her eyes on the brilliant street, which usually amused +her as it would divert a child. "He'll know sometime!" she said to herself. +"He'll understand or have to get along without understanding!" and her lips +drew together. It was a different world to-night from that of the day +before; but unhappy as she was she had a subtle satisfaction in her +willingness and her ability to meet it whatever side it turned towards her. + +The train was a halfhour late, and as she paced the court slowly, she +realized that Cairy had come to the house,--he was always prompt these +days,--had received the note, and was walking away, reading it,--thinking +what of her? Her lips tightened a trifle, as she glanced at the clock. "He +will go to Isabella's," she said to herself. "He likes Isabelle." She knew +Cairy well enough to feel that the Southerner could not long endure a +lonely world. And Conny had a tolerant nature; she did not despise him for +going where he could find amusement and comfort; nor did she think his love +less worth having. But she bit her lip as she repeated, "He will go to +Isabelle." If Percy wanted to know the extent of his wife's devotion to +their married life, their common interests, he should have seen her at this +moment. As the train drew in, she had already thought, "But he will come +back--when it is possible." + +She met her husband with a frank smile. + +"You'll have to take me somewhere to dinner," she drawled. "There isn't any +at home,--besides I want to talk at once. Glad to see me?" + +When they were finally by themselves in a small private room of a +restaurant where Conny loved to go with her husband,--"because it seems so +naughty,"--she said in answer to his look of inquiry: "Percy, I want you to +take me away--to Europe, just for a few weeks!" + +Woodyard's face reflected surprise and concern. + +"But, Con!" he stammered. + +"Please, Percy!" She put her hand softly on his arm. "No matter what is in +the way,--only for a few weeks!" and her eyes filled with tears, quite +genuine tears, which dropped slowly to her pale face. "Percy," she +murmured, "don't you love me any longer?"... + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + +It was perfectly true, as Conny surmised, that Cairy went to Isabelle. But +not that evening--the blow was too hard and too little expected--nor on the +whole more frequently than he had been in the habit of going during the +winter. Isabelle interested him,--"her problem," as he called it; that is, +given her husband and her circumstances, how she would settle herself into +New York,--how far she might go there. It flattered him also to serve as +intellectual and aesthetic mentor to an attractive, untrained woman, who +frankly liked him and bowed to his opinion. It was Cairy, through Isabelle, +much more than Lane, who decided on the house in that up-town cross street, +on the "right" side of the Park, which the Lanes finally bought. It was in +an excellent neighborhood, "just around the corner" from a number of houses +where well-known people lived. In the same block the Gossoms had +established themselves, on the profits of _The People's_, and only two +doors away, on the same side of the street, a successful novelist had +housed himself behind what looked like a Venetian facade. Close by were the +Rogerses,--he was a fashionable physician; the Hillary Peytons; the +Dentons,--all people, according to Cairy, "one might know." + +When Isabelle came to look more closely into this matter of settling +herself in the city, she regretted the Colonel's illiberal will. They might +easily have had a house nearer "the Avenue," instead of belonging to the +polite poor-rich class two blocks east. Nevertheless, she tried to comfort +herself by the thought that even with the Colonel's millions at their +disposal they would have been "little people" in the New York scale of +means. And the other thing, the "interesting," "right" society was much +better worth while. "You make your own life,--it isn't made for you," Cairy +said. + +Isabelle was very busy these days. Thanks to the Potts regime, she was +feeling almost well generally, and when she "went down," Dr. Potts was +always there with the right drug to pull her up to the level. So she +plunged into the question of altering the house, furnishing it, and getting +it ready for the autumn. Her mother and John could not understand her +perplexity about furnishing. What with the contents of two houses on hand, +it seemed incomprehensible that the new home should demand a clean sweep. +But Isabelle realized the solid atrocity of the Torso establishment and of +the St. Louis one as well. She was determined that this time she should be +right. With Cairy for guide and adviser she took to visiting the old +furniture shops, selecting piece by piece what was to go into the new +house. She was planning, also, to make that deferred trip to Europe to see +her brother, and she should complete her selection over there, although +Cairy warned her that everything she was likely to buy in Europe these days +would be "fake." Once launched on the sea of household art, she found +herself in a torturing maze. What was "right" seemed to alter with +marvellous rapidity; the subject, she soon realized, demanded a culture, an +experience that she had never suspected. Then there was the matter of the +Farm at Grafton, which must be altered. The architect, who was making over +the New York house, had visited Grafton and had ideas as to what could be +done with the rambling old house without removing it bodily. "Tear down the +barn--throw out a beautiful room here--terrace it--a formal garden there," +etc. In the blue prints the old place was marvellously transformed. + +"Aren't you doing too much, all at once?" Lane remonstrated in the mild way +of husbands who have experienced nervous prostration with their wives. + +"Oh, no; it interests me so! Dr. Potts thinks I should keep occupied +reasonably, with things that really interest me.... Besides I am only +directing it all, you know." + +And glad to see her once more satisfied, eager, he went his way to his +work, which demanded quite all his large energy. After all, women had to do +just about so much, and find their limit themselves. + +Isabelle had learned to "look after herself," as she phrased it, by which +she meant exercise, baths, massage, days off when she ran down to Lakewood, +electricity,--all the physical devices for keeping a nervous people in +condition. It is a science, and it takes time,--but it is a duty, as +Isabelle reflected. Then there was the little girl. She was four now, and +though the child was almost never on her hands, thanks to the excellent +Miss Butts, Molly, as they called her, had her place in her mother's busy +thoughts: what was the best regimen, whether she ought to have a French or +a German governess next year, how she should dress, and in the distance the +right school to be selected. Isabelle meant to do her best for the little +girl, and looked back on her own bringing up--even the St. Mary's part of +it--as distressingly haphazard, and limiting. Her daughter should be fitted +"to make the most of life," which was what Isabelle felt that she herself +was now beginning to do. + +So Isabelle was occupied, as she believed profitably, spending her new +energy wisely, and though she was getting worn, it was only a month to the +date she had set for sailing. Vickers had promised to meet her at Genoa and +take her into the Dolomites and then to San Moritz, where she could rest. +As her life filled up, she saw less of her husband than ever, for he, too, +was busy, "with that railroad thing," as she called the great Atlantic and +Pacific. She made him buy a horse and ride in the Park afternoons when he +could get the time, because he was growing too heavy. He had developed +laziness socially, liked to go to some restaurant for dinner with chance +friends that were drifting continually through New York, and afterwards to +the theatre,--"to see something lively," as he put it, preferably Weber and +Fields', or Broadway opera. Isabelle felt that this was not the right +thing, and boring, too; but it would all be changed when they were +"settled." Meantime she went out more or less by herself, as the wives of +busy men have to do. + +"It is so much better not to bring a yawning husband home at midnight," she +laughed to Cairy on one of these occasions when she had given him a seat +down town in her cab. "By the way, you haven't spoken of Conny +lately,--don't you see her any more?" + +Isabelle still had her girlish habit of asking indiscreet, impertinent +questions. She carried them off with a lively good nature, but they +irritated Cairy occasionally. + +"I have been busy with my play," he replied shortly. + +As a matter of fact he had been attacked by one of those fits of intense +occupation which came upon him in the intervals of his devotions. At such +times he worked to better effect, with a kind of abandoned fury, than when +his thoughts and feelings were engaged, as if to make up to his muse for +his periods of neglect. The experience, he philosophized, which had stored +itself, was now finding vent,--the spiritual travail as well as the +knowledge of life. A man, an artist, had but one real passion, he told +Isabelle,--and that was his work. Everything else was mere fertilizer or +waste. Since the night that Conny had turned him from the door, he had +completed his new play, which had been hanging fire all winter, and he was +convinced it was his best. "Yes, a man's work, no matter what it may be, is +God's solace for living." In response to which Isabelle mischievously +remarked:-- + +"So you and Conny really have had a tiff? I must get her to tell me about +it." + +"Do you think she would tell you the truth?" + +"No." + +Isabelle, in spite of Cairy's protestations about his work, was gratified +with her discovery, as she called it. She had decided that Conny was "a bad +influence" on the Southerner; that Cairy was simple and ingenuous,--"really +a nice boy," so she told her husband. Just what evil Conny had done to +Cairy Isabelle could not say, ending always with the phrase, "but I don't +trust her," or "she is so selfish." She had made these comments to Margaret +Pole, and Margaret had answered with one of her enigmatic smiles and the +remark:-- + +"Conny's no more selfish than most of us women,--only her methods are more +direct--and successful." + +"That is cynical," Isabelle retorted. "Most of us women are not selfish; I +am not!" + +And in her childlike way she asked her husband that very night:-- + +"John, do you think I am selfish?" + +John answered this large question with a laugh and a pleasant compliment. + +"I suppose Margaret means that I don't go in for charities, like that Mrs. +Knop of the Relief and Aid, or for her old Consumers' League. Well, I had +enough of that sort of thing in St. Louis. And I don't believe it does any +good; it is better to give money to those who know how to spend it.... Have +you any poor relatives we could be good to, John? ... Any cousins that +ought to be sent to college, any old aunts pining for a trip to +California?" + +"Lots of 'em, I suppose," her husband responded amiably. "They turn up +every now and then, and I do what I can for them. I believe I am sending +two young women to college to fit themselves for teaching." + +Lane was generous, though he had the successful man's suspicion of all +those who wanted help. He had no more formulated ideas about doing for +others than his wife had. But when anything appealed to him, he gave and +had a comfortable sense that he was helping things along. + +Isabelle, in spite of the disquiet caused by Margaret's statement, felt +convinced that she was doing her duty in life broadly, "in that station +where Providence had called her." 'She was sure that she was a good wife, a +good daughter, a good mother. And now she meant to be more than these +humdrum things,--she meant to be Somebody, she meant to live! ... + +When she found time to call at the Woodyards', she saw that the house was +closed, and the caretaker, who was routed out with difficulty, informed her +that the master and mistress had sailed for Europe the week before. + +'Very sudden,' mused Isabelle. 'I don't see how Percy could get away.' + +Half the houses on the neighboring square were closed already, however, and +she thought as she drove up town that it was time for her to be going. The +city was becoming hot and dusty, and she was rather tired of it, too. Mrs. +Price was to open the Farm for the summer and have Miss Butts and the +little girl with her. John promised "to run over and get her" in September, +if he could find time. Her little world was all arranged for, she reflected +complacently. John would stay at the hotel and go up to Grafton over +Sundays, and he had joined a club. Yes, the Lanes were shaking into place +in New York. + +Cairy sent her some roses when she sailed and was in the mob at the pier to +bid her good-by. + +"Perhaps I shall be over myself later on," he said, "to see if I can place +the play." + +"Oh, do!" Isabelle exclaimed. "And we'll buy things. I am going to ruin +John." + +Lane smiled placidly, as one not easily ruined. When the visitors were +driven down the gangway, Isabelle called to Cairy:-- + +"Come on and go back in the tug with John!" + +So Cairy limped back. Isabelle was nervous and tired, and now that she was +actually on the steamer felt sad at seeing accustomed people and things +about to slip away. She wanted to hold on to them as long as possible. +Presently the hulking steamer was pulled out into the stream and headed for +the sea. It was a hot June morning and through the haze the great buildings +towered loftily. The long city raised a jagged sky-line of human immensity, +and the harbor swarmed with craft,--car ferries, and sailing vessels +dropping down stream carefully to take the sea breeze, steamers lined with +black figures, screeching tugs, and occasionally a gleaming yacht. The +three stood together on the deck looking at the scene. + +"It always gives me the same old thrill," Cairy said. "Coming or going, it +makes no difference,--it is the biggest fact in the modern world." + +"I love it!" murmured Isabelle, her eyes fastened on the serried walls +about the end of the island. "I shall never forget when I saw it as a +child, the first time. It was mystery, like a story-book then, and it has +been the same ever since." + +Lane said nothing, but watched the city with smiling lips. To him the squat +car ferries, the lighters, the dirty tramp steamers, the railroad yards +across the river, as well as the lofty buildings of the long city--all the +teeming life here at the mouth of the country--meant Traffic, the +intercourse of men. And he, too, loved the great roaring city. He looked at +it with a vista that reached from the Iowa town where he had first +"railroaded it," up through the intervening steps at St. Louis and Torso, +to his niche in the largest of these buildings,--all the busy years which +he had spent dealing with men. + +Isabelle touched his arm. + +"I wish you were coming, too, John," she said as the breeze struck in from +the open sea. "Do you remember how we talked of going over when we were in +Torso?" + +What a stretch of time there was between those first years of marriage and +to-day! She would never have considered in the Torso days that she could +sail off like this alone with a maid and leave her husband behind. + +"Oh, it will be only a few weeks,--you'll enjoy yourself," he replied. He +had been very good about her going over to join Vickers, made no objections +to it this time. They were both growing more tolerant, as they grew older +and saw more of life. + +"What is in the paper?" she asked idly, as her husband rolled it up. + +"There's a dirty roast on your friend, Percy Woodyard,--nothing else!" + +"See, that must be the tug!" exclaimed Isabelle, pushing up her veil to +kiss her husband. "Good-by--I wish you were going, too--I shall miss you +so--be sure you exercise and keep thin!"... + +She watched the two men climb down into the bobbing tug and take places +beside the pilot room,--her tall, square-shouldered husband, and the +slighter man, leaning on a cane, both looking up at her with smiles. John +waved his paper at her,--the one that had the "roast" about Percy Woodyard. +She had meant to read that,--she might see the Woodyards in Paris. Then the +tug moved off, both men still waving to her. She hurried to the rear deck +to get a last look, sentimental forlornness at leaving her husband coming +over her afresh. As she gazed back at the retreating tug there was also in +her heart a warm feeling for Cairy. "Poor Tom!" she murmured without +knowing why. + +On this great ship, among the thousand or more first-class passengers, +there were a goodly number of women like her, leaving home and husband for +a foreign trip. After all, as she had often said, it was a good idea for +husbands and wives to have vacations from each other. There was no real +reason why two people should stick together in an endless daily intimacy +because they were married.... + +Thus the great city--the city of her ambitions--sank mistily on the +horizon. + + + + +PART FOUR + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + + +Mrs. Pole's house stood on the outskirts of the old town of Bedmouth, +facing the narrow road that ran eastward to the Point. In the days of Mrs. +Pole's father the ships passing to and from Bedmouth on the river could be +seen from the front windows. Now the wires of a trolley road disfigured the +old street and cheap wooden houses cut off the view of the river. In the +rear there was a small garden, sloping down to an inlet of the sea, from +which could be seen Bedmouth-way the slender spires of two churches that +rose among the drooping branches of the elms, and seaward the squat outline +of a great summer hotel, bedecked with many flags. In the black mould of +the old garden grew tall syringa bushes, lilacs, pampas grass, and a few +tiger lilies, and over the crumbling brick walls hung dusty leaves of +grapevines. When the gate at the bottom of the garden was open, there was a +view of the inlet, bordered with marsh grass, and farther away a segment of +the open sea, with the lighthouse on Goose Rock. + +Here the Judge's wife had come to live when her husband died, forsaking +Washington, which had grown "too busy for an old woman." ... + +At the end of the garden, which was shaded by the high wall, Margaret sat, +an uncut book on her knees, her eyes resting on the green marsh to be seen +through the open door. Near by Ned in his little invalid chair was picking +the mortar from the brick wall with a nail he had been able to reach. The +two were often alone like this for hours, silent. + +"Mother," the child said at last, as Margaret took up the book. + +"What is it, Ned?" + +"Must I sit like this always,--forever and ever?" + +"I hope not, dear. You must remember Dr. Renault said it would take +patience." + +"But I have been patient." + +"Yes, I know, dear!" + +"If I didn't get any better, should I have to sit like this always?" At +last the question which she feared had come, the child's first doubt. It +had been uncertain, the recovery of the lost power; at times it seemed as +if there were no progress. The mother answered in her slow, deep voice:-- + +"Yes, dear; you would have to be patient always. But we are going to hope!" + +"Mother," the child persisted, "why does it have to be so?" + +And the mother answered steadily:-- + +"I don't know, my boy. Nobody knows why." + +Ned resumed his scratching at the wall, pondering this mystery of an +inexplicable world. Presently there was a sound of oars beyond the wall, +and the child exclaimed:-- + +"There's Big Bob! He said he'd take me for a row." + +Falkner carried off the Little Man for his promised boat ride, leaving +Margaret to cut the leaves of her book and to think. It was the week +before, the end of August, that Falkner had put into Bedmouth in his small +sloop. He was staying with his sister at Lancaster, only a short walk on +the other side of the Point. After a few days more at the most he would +have to turn back southwards, and then? ... She threw down her book and +paced slowly back and forth along the garden walk. As the sun sank low, her +mother-in-law appeared, a frail little lady, who looked gently into +Margaret's face. + +"I am afraid you feel the heat, Margaret. It has been a very hot day." + +"Is it hot?" Margaret asked vaguely, shading her eyes with her hand to look +out over the marsh. + +There was the sound of oars and a child's laugh, loud and careless, just +beyond the wall. "Look out!" Ned cried. + +"There, you've wet your feet!" The two women smiled. That boyish laugh was +rare these days. + +When the grandmother wheeled Ned into the house for his supper, Margaret +and Falkner strolled out of the garden beside the marsh to a rocky knoll +that jutted into the sea. They seated themselves under a scrawny pine whose +roots were bathed by the incoming tide, and watched the twilight stillness +steal across the marshes and the sea. There was no air and yet the ships +out by Goose Island passed across the horizon, sails full set, as though +moved by an unseen hand. + +They knew each other so well! And yet in silent times like these their +intimacy seemed always to go deeper, to reveal without the aid of speech +new levels of understanding. + +"I had a letter this morning from Marvin," Falkner remarked at last. + +Margaret scooped up a handful of pebbles and let them fall through her thin +fingers, waiting for the expected words. + +"It is settled. We sail from New York the tenth." + +"The tenth?" + +"Yes, ... so I must go back soon and get ready." + +The decision about Panama had been in the balance when Falkner left New +York, she knew. Another opportunity of work in the States had come +meanwhile; the decision had not been easy to make. When Falkner had written +his wife, Bessie had replied: "You must do what seems best to you, as you +have always done in the past.... Of course I cannot take the children to +Panama." And when Falkner had written of the other work nearer home, Bessie +said: "I don't care to make another move and settle in a new place.... We +seem to get on better like this. Go to Panama if you want to, and we will +see when you get back." So he had debated the matter with himself all the +way up the coast.... + +"When must you leave?" + +"To-morrow," he answered slowly, and again they were silent. + +It was as she wished, as she had urged. The new work would reopen the man's +ambition, and that _must_ be. Where a man's work was concerned, +nothing--nothing surely of any woman--should intervene. That was her +feeling. No woman's pining or longing to fetter the man: clear the decks +for action! + +"To-morrow!" she murmured. She was smiling bravely, a smile that belied the +tenseness within. Falkner picked the long spines from a pine branch, and +arranged them methodically one by one in a row. They were not all alike, +differing in minute characteristics of size and length and color. Nature at +her wholesale task of turning out these millions of needles varied the +product infinitely. And so with human beings! + +They two were at peace together, their inner hunger appeased, with a +sustaining content in life neither had ever known before. When they were +together in this intimate silence, their spirits were freed from all +bondage, free to rise, to leap upwards out of the encircling abysm of +things. And this state of perfect meeting--spiritual equilibrium--must +end.... + +"To-morrow?" she repeated, raising her eyes and gazing far out to the +sunlit sea. And her heart was saying, "Tomorrow, and to-morrow, and the +days thereafter,--and all empty of this!" + +"It is best so," he said. "It could not go on like this!" + +"No! We are human, after all!" and smiling wanly she rose to return to the +house. When they reached his boat, Falkner took her hand,--a hand with +finely tapering fingers, broad in the palm and oval,--a woman's hand, firm +to hold, gentle to caress. The fingers tightened about his slowly. He +looked into the blue eyes; they were dry and shining. And in those shining +eyes he read the same unspoken words of revolt that rose within his +heart,--'Why thus too late! too late! Why has life declared itself in all +its meaning--too late? Why were we caught by the mistakes of half +knowledge, and then receive the revelation?' The futile questions of human +hearts. + +"You will come to-night--after dinner?" Margaret asked. "Bring the boat. We +will go to Lawlor's Cove. I want to get away--from everything!" + +As she mounted the garden steps to the house, she heard the whirr of a +motor in the street. It stopped in front of the house, and as Margaret +waited she heard Mrs. Hillyer's thin voice: "I am so sorry! Please tell +Mrs. Pole that I came over from Lancaster to get her for dinner." Presently +the motor whirled away in the direction of the great hotel, a cloud of dust +following in its wake. Margaret stood for a moment watching the car +disappear into the distance, thankful that she had escaped Mrs. Hillyer and +her new motor just now.... The sun, sinking into the Bedmouth elms across +the green marshes, fell full and golden upon her face. It was still and hot +and brooding, this sunset hour, like the silent reaches of her heart. But +slowly a smile broke from her lips, and she raised her arms to the light. +It had touched her, the Sun God! It had burned her with its heat, its life. +She knew! And she was glad. Nothing could take its fire wholly from her. + +"To-night!" she murmured to herself. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + + +She had written him in that fierce honesty which spoke in every penstroke +on the paper:-- + +... "Yes, I love you! I am proud when I say it over to myself, when I see +it written here. I want you to know just how it is with me and my +husband.... So our marriage was a mistake, one of the millions women make +out of the girlish guess. Ignorance, blind ignorance of self and life! And +my husband knows how it is between us. He knows that when the man comes to +me whom I can love, I shall love him.... The man has come.... When it is +time, I shall go to him and tell him honestly what has happened. I hate the +little, lying women,--those who are afraid. I am not afraid! But these last +hours I will have my heart's joy to myself,--we will draw a circle about +ourselves."... + +"As I kiss you, I love you with that spirit you have given me," she said to +Falkner. "That is right, and this is right. You have given me life, and +thus I give it back to you."... + +When they were alone beside the sea this last evening, Margaret said: +"Dearest, you must know as I know, that nothing which we have had together +is sin. I would not yield even to you where I felt the right. To my father +the Bishop, this would be Sin. To that dear old lady over there in +Bedmouth, who suffered all her life from a bullying husband and from a +selfish son,--and who is now too broken to think for herself,--it would be +Sin, anything not suffering would be Sin! But I know!" She raised her head +proudly from his arms. "I know within me that this is the rightest thing in +all my life. When it came, I was sure that I should take it, and that it +would save me from worse than death.... It came ... and we were strong +enough to take it, thank God!" + +On the other side of the shingle rampart, which rose sheer behind them, the +slow swells of the sea fell at distant intervals with solemn resonance, the +only sound that broke the stillness of the night. This surge rising and +falling on the land from out the great body of the sea was like a deep +voice in the woman's soul, echoing her instinct of a reason beyond reasons +that compelled. + +But the man, holding her close to him, his lips upon her lips, did not heed +her hot words of justification. His was the hunger which took what +satisfied it without debate. + +"It makes little difference, the right and the wrong, after to-night," he +replied grimly, "in all the days to come.... We have lived and we have +loved, that is enough." + +"No, no,--we are not weak, blind fools!" she spoke on swiftly. "I will not +have it so! I will not have you leave me to-night with the thought that +some day you will feel that of me. You must understand--you must always +remember through all the years of life--that I--the woman you love--am +sinless, am pure.... I can go with your kisses upon my lips to my children, +to little Ned, and hold them tight, and know that I am pure in the sight of +God! ... + +"I give them my life, my all,--I am giving them this, too. A woman's heart +is not filled with the love of children. A woman's life is not closed at +thirty-two! ... I have a soul--a life to be satisfied,--ah, dearest, a soul +of my own to be filled, in order to give. Most men don't know that a woman +has a life of her own--apart from her children, from her husband, from all. +It's hers, hers, her very own!" she cried with a sob of joy and anguish. + +In these words escaped the essence of that creed which had taken the place +of the Bishop's teaching,--the creed that is breathed insensibly in the +atmosphere of the age,--'I, the woman, have a soul that is mine which has +its rights, and what it bids me take, that I will take and hold!' + +The man listened to the solemn rhythm of the sea pounding upon the rocky +coast, and it spoke to him of fatality, of the surge of life striking +blindly, carrying in its mighty grip the little human atoms. It had borne +him up to the stars, and in a few hours it would roll him back, down into +the gulf, from which no effort of his will could take him. With this +hunger, which was his human birthright, he must labor on, unappeased. It +was given him merely to know what would recreate living for him, what would +make of the days joy instead of pain, and it was not to be his, except for +this moment of time. + +"I think," he said, "there is enough to suffer and endure. We will not +quibble about the law. In the face of the gulf, why argue?" and he took her +once more in his arms, where she rested content.... + +Lawlor's Point was a little neck of shingle, curving inwards from the open +sea, making a small harbor. On the landward side the still, salty marsh was +fringed by evergreens that rose dark in the night. Once it had been a farm, +its few acres swept by the full Atlantic winds, its shore pounded by the +rock drift of the coast. Within the shingle the waves had washed a sandy +beach.... Margaret knew the place years before, and they had found it +to-night in the dark. The abandoned farm-house, windowless, loomed above +them, desolate, forlorn, emitting an odor of the past from its damp rooms. +About the old walnut tree where they had been sitting there grew in the +long grass fleur-de-lys and myrtle. + +"Let us go nearer to the water!" Margaret exclaimed. "I want to hear its +voice close to my ears. This place is musty with dead lives. Dead lives!" +She laughed softly. "I was like them once, only I walked and spoke, instead +of lying still in a grave. And then you found me, dearest, and touched me. +I shall never be dead like that again." + +And when they had picked their way over the rough shingle to the water, she +said in another passionate outburst, as if nature dammed for a long time +were pouring itself forth in torrent:-- + +"Pain! Don't say the word. Do you think that we can count the pain--ever? +Now that we have lived? What is Pain against Being!" + +"A man's thought, that!" he reflected, surprised by the piercing insight, +the triumphant answer of the spirit to the backward dragging surge of +circumstance. "A woman suffers--always more than a man." + +Margaret, flinging up her head to the dark heaven, the deep guttural note +of the sea in her ears, chanted low, "Some pain is tonic.... Though +to-night we are together, one and undivided--for the last time, the last +time," she whispered, "yet I cannot feel the pain." + +The man rebelled:-- + +"The last time? ... But we are not ready, Margaret,--not yet!" + +"We should never be ready!" + +"We have had so little." + +"Yes! So little--oh, so little of all the splendid chance of living." + +The same thought lay between them. They had come but to the edge of +experience, and beyond lay the vision of recreated life. Like souls that +touched the confines of a new existence and turned back, so must they turn +back to earth. So little! A few hours of meeting, a few spoken words, a few +caresses, a few moments like this of mute understanding, out of all +conscious time, and then nothing,--the blank! + +There was something cowardly, thus to turn back at the edge of experience, +incomplete and wistfully desirous. Yet the man would not ask her to venture +on. What the woman would gladly give, he would not take as sacrifice. She +understood. + +"Would it be easier?" she asked slowly, "if for a time we had all?" + +"Yes!" + +"If for a little while we left the world behind us and went away--to +know--all?" + +"We should be happier then, always.... But I cannot ask it." + +"It would be better so," she whispered dreamily. "I will go!" + +Her hands clasped about him and her lips trembled. + +"We will take our life!" She smiled as the vision of joy--food for a +lifetime--filled her heart. "For a few hours I will be yours, all yours." + +Thus, there beside the grumbling sea, these two--full man and woman, having +weighed the issues of this life, the complex threads of soul and body, +obligation and right, willed that they would take to themselves out of all +eternity a few days, a few nights, a few mornings and a few evenings, +--entire hours to be theirs, from which must be born courage for the +future. + + * * * * * + +Old Mrs. Pole looked up at the sound of Margaret's step. The younger +woman's face was pale, but still radiant with a complete joy. She patted +the old lady's cheek and glanced down at the magazine in her lap. Between +these two there was a depth of unspoken sympathy. + +"Found a good story, mother dear?" Margaret asked. + +The old woman's lips trembled. Many times that evening she had resolved to +speak to Margaret of something her heart ached over. For she had seen far +these last days with those old eyes that had seen so much. She could divine +the dead waste in her daughter-in-law's heart, having lived with father and +son, and out of the wisdom of suffering years endured she wished to speak +to-night. But the deeper wisdom of age restrained her. + +"Yes, my dear,--a very good story." + +Each ache must find its own healing. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + + +The long train pulled slowly into the station of the little seaport town. +It was late, as always at this turning-point of the season, when the summer +population was changing its roost from sea to mountain or from the north to +the south shore. Falkner, glancing anxiously along the line of cars for a +certain figure, said again to himself, 'If she shouldn't come--at the last +moment!' and ashamed of his doubt, replied, 'She will, if humanly +possible.' ... At last his eye caught sight of Margaret as she stepped from +the last car. She had seen him at the instant, and she smiled rapidly above +the crowd, one of her fleeting smiles, like a ray of April sun. Another +smile, he took her bag from the porter's hand, and their meeting was over. +It was not until they were seated at a table in a sheltered corner of the +station restaurant that he spoke:-- + +"The _Swallow_ is waiting at the wharf. But we had best get something hot +to eat here. We shall have a long sail." + +He took charge, at once, and while he ordered the luncheon, she looked at +the travellers swarming to their food. Once during the long ride she had +thought, "If we were seen by some one!" and her face had burned at the +miserable fear. Now looking at the passing faces, she had a fierce wish +that she might be seen by all the world! To speak out, to act +unashamed,--but not yet,--no; the time was not ripe. As her look returned +to Falkner, who was dressed in yachting flannels with a white sweater she +smiled again:-- + +"I am so hungry!" + +"I am afraid it will be bad. However--" + +"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters--to-day!" + +Neither of them, she reflected, cared for the detail of life, for luxury, +mere comfort. They had shed superfluity, unlike those around them, who +lived for it. + +"Is it all right?" he asked as the waitress slung the dishes on the table. + +"Everything!" and she added: "I can telephone Ned? I promised to speak to +him every day." + +"Of course!" + +"Now let us forget.... What a lot of people there are in the world running +about!" + +"We'll say good-by to them all very soon," he replied. + +Their spirits rose as they ate. It was festive and joyous, even this dirty +country station. The September sun was shining brightly through the window, +and a faint breeze came straying in, smelling of the salt water. She had +given no thought to what they would do, to where they would go. She did not +ask. It was good to trust all to him, just to step forth from the old maze +into this dreamed existence, which somehow had been made true, where there +was no need to take thought. She pushed away her ice untouched and began +slowly to draw on her gloves. + +"All the way here from Bedmouth I had a queer feeling that I was making a +journey that I had made before, though I was never here in my life. And now +it seems as if we had sat by this window some other day,--it is all so +expected!" she mused. And she thought how that morning when she got up, she +had gone to her little girl, the baby Lilla, and kissed her. With her arms +about the child she had felt again that her act was right and that some day +when the little one was a woman she would know and understand. + +Her lips trembled, and then a slow smile suffused her face, bringing color, +and leaning forward she murmured:-- + +"I am so happy!" Their eyes met, and for the moment they were lost in +wonder, unconscious of the noisy room.... + +With a familiarity of old knowledge, Falkner descended the winding streets +to the water front. In this lower part of the town the dingy old houses had +an air of ancient grandeur, and tall elms drooped dust-laden branches over +the street. + +"Dear old place!" he exclaimed, memories reviving of his boyhood cruises. +"It was in ninety-one when I was here last. I never expected to put in here +again." + +The streets were empty, a noon stillness brooding in them. Margaret slipped +her hand into his, the joy, the freedom, the sense of the open road +sweeping over her afresh. The world was already fading behind them.... They +came out upon the wharves, and threaded their way among the sagging gray +buildings that smelt of salt fish, until the harbor water lapped at the +piles beneath their feet. + +"There's the _Swallow_!" Falkner cried, pointing into the stream. + +They were soon aboard, and Margaret curled herself in the cockpit on a rug, +while Falkner ran up the sails. Little waves were dancing across the +harbor. Taking the tiller, he crouched beside her and whispered:-- + +"Now we are off--to the islands of the blest!" + +It was all so in her dream, even to the white sail slowly filling before +the breeze. They glided past hulking schooners lying idle with grimy sails +all set, and from their decks above black-faced men looked down curiously +at the white figure in the cockpit of the little sloop. Behind the +schooners the wharves and the red brick warehouses, the elms and the white +houses on the hill, the tall spires--all drew backwards into the westering +sun. A low gray lighthouse came into sight; the _Swallow_ dipped and rose; +and the breeze freshened as they entered the lower bay. A great ship was +slowly rounding the point, bound outward, too, laboring into the deep--for +what? For some noisy port beneath the horizon. But for her the port of +starlight and a man's arm,--the world was wonderful, this day! Falkner +raised his hand and pointed far away to the eastward where a shadow lay +like a finger on the sea, + +"Our harbor is over there!" + +Away to the east, to the broad open ocean, it was fitting they should +speed,--they who had shaken themselves loose from the land.... + +She held the tiller when he rummaged below for a chart, and while she was +there alone, a pot-bellied pleasure steamer, swarming with people, rolled +past, shaking the _Swallow_ with its wake. The people on the decks spied +the sail-boat, raised glasses, looked down, and had their say. 'A bit of +the chattering world that is left,' thought Margaret, 'like all the rest.' +And something joyful within cried: 'Not to-day! To-day I defy you. To-day I +have escaped--I am a rebel. You can do nothing with me. Oh, to-day I am +happy, happy, happy,--can you say that?' Falkner came up from the cabin +with his chart, and shading his eyes, swept the sea for the landmarks of +their course. And the _Swallow_ sped on out of the noisy to-day through a +path of gold and blue to the radiant to-morrow. + +"See!" Falkner pointed back to the old seaport grown dim in the distance +behind them. The sun was falling behind the steeples, and only the black +smoke from engine and chimney marked the edge of the shore. Far away to the +north opened a long reach of blue water and at the head of the bay green +fields descending gently to the sea. The _Swallow_ was a lonely dot in the +open waters, dipping, rising, the sun on its white sail,--fleeing always. +Falkner sat beside her, circling her shoulders with his arm, talking of the +sea and the boat as if they had sailed for many days like this together and +were familiar with all. His arm as it touched her said, 'I love you!' And +his eyes resting on her face said, 'But we are happy, together, you and +I,--so strangely happy!' + +What was left there behind--the city and the vessels, the land itself--was +all the mirage of life, had never been lived by them. And this--the +swaying, sweeping boat, a dot upon the ocean and they together, heart by +heart, going outward to the sea and night--was all that was real. Could it +be possible that they two would ever land again on that far shore of +circumstance, hemmed in by petty and sorrowful thoughts? + +Yet across the dream came the thought of the Little Man, waiting behind +there, and the woman knew that on the morrow after the morrow she should +wake. For life is stronger than a single soul! ... + +To the west and north there were islands, long stretches of sea opening +between their green shores, far up into the coast land. The wind freshened +and died, until at last in the twilight with scarcely a ripple the +_Swallow_ floated into a sheltered cove on the outermost of all the +islands. A forest of stiff little spruces covered the sea point, and behind +this was a smooth green field, and above on the crest of the island a small +white farm-house. + +"A man named Viney used to live there," Falkner said, breaking a long +silence. "Either he or some one else will take us in." Margaret helped him +anchor, furl the sails, and then they went ashore, pulling the tender far +up on the shingle beech beside the lobster-pots. They crossed the field--it +was nearly dark and the _Swallow_ was a speck on the dark water +beneath--and knocked at the white farm-house. + +"It is like what you knew must be so when you were a child," whispered +Margaret. + +"But suppose they turn us away?" + +"Why, we'll go back to the _Swallow_ or sleep under the firs! But they +won't. There is a charm in all our doings this day, dearest." + +The Vineys welcomed them, and gave them supper. Then Mr. Viney, divining +that with these two wanderers a love matter was concerned, remarked +suggestively:-- + +"Maybe you'd like to go over to my son's place to sleep. My son's folks +built a camp over there on the Pint. It's a sightly spot, and they've gone +back to the city. Here, Joe, you show 'em the path!" + +So in the starlight they threaded the spruce forest down by the sea, and +found the "camp," a wooden box, with a broad veranda hanging over the +eastern cliff. + +"Yes!" exclaimed Margaret, taking now her woman's place of command; "this +is the very spot. We'll sleep here on the veranda. You can bring out the +bedding. If we had ordered it all, we could not have discovered the perfect +thing, like this!" + +The gray pathway of the ocean lay at their feet, and from the headlands up +and down the coast, from distant islands, the lights began to call and +answer each other. A cloud of smoke far eastward hung over a seagoing +steamer. And throughout the little island, over the floor of the ocean, in +the wood about them, there was perfect stillness, a cessation of all +movement. + +"Peace! Such large and splendid peace!" Margaret murmured, as they stood +gazing at the beauty of the coming night. Peace without and answering peace +within. Surely they had come to the heart of solitude, removed from the +tumultuous earth. + +"Come!" he whispered at her ear, and she slowly turned her face to him. + +"Now, I know!" she said triumphantly. "This has been sent to answer +me,--all the glory and the wonder and the peace of life, my dearest! I know +it all. We have lived all our years with this vision in our hearts, and it +has been given to us to have it at last." + +And as they lay down beside each other she murmured:-- + +"Peace that is above joy,--see the stars!" + +And there beneath the tranquil stars in the calm night came the ecstasy of +union, transcending Fate and Sorrow.... + +Thus at the extreme verge of human experience these two realized that inner +state of harmony, that equilibrium of spirit, towards which conscious +beings strive blindly, and which sanctioning what man forbids gives reason +to life. The spirit within them declared that it was best so to gain the +heights, whether in the final sum of life it should lie as Sin or Glory, +For this night, for these immediate hours, as man and woman they would rise +to wider kingdoms of themselves than ever otherwise might be reached. + +Thus far to them had come revelation. + + * * * * * + +In the morning Margaret would play housewife. Sending Falkner to the +Vineys' for the things needed, she cooked the meal while he swam out to the +_Swallow_ and made ready for the day's sail. Whimsically she insisted on +doing all without his help, and when he was ready, she served him before +she would eat herself,--"Just as Mrs. Viney would her man." + +Did she wish to show him that she was equal to the common surface of +living,--a comrade to do her part? Or, rather, was the act +symbolical,--woman serving joyfully where she yields real mastery? The +woman, so often capricious and disdainful, was submissive, as if she would +say: "This man is my mate. I am forever his. It is my best joy to be +through him myself." + +And after the meal she insisted on completing the task by washing the +dishes, putting all to rights in the camp; then mended a rent in his coat +which he had got from a stumble in the dark the night before. He laughed, +but her eyes shone. + +"Let me _do_ as long as I can! ... There--wouldn't you and I shed things! +That's the way to live,--to shed things." As they passed the Vineys' house +on their way to the boat, Margaret observed:-- + +"That would do very well for us, don't you think? You could go lobstering, +and I would have a garden. Can you milk a cow?" She was picturing the mould +for their lives. + +And all that day as they sailed among the islands, up thoroughfares, across +the reaches of the sea, they played a little game of selecting the right +cottage from the little white farm-houses dotted along the shores, and +said, "We'd take this or that, and we'd do thus and so with it--and live +this way!" Then they would laugh, and grow pensive, as if the land with its +smoke wreaths had suddenly drifted past their eyes, reminding them of the +future. 'You are bound with invisible cords,' a voice said. 'You have +escaped in fancy, but to-morrow you will find the world wagging its old +way.' But the woman knew that no matter what came, the morrow and all the +morrows could never be again as her days once had been. For the subtle +virtue of a great fulfilment is its power to alter the inner aspect of all +things thereafter. Nothing could ever be the same to either of them. The +stuff of their inner lives had been changed.... + +They sailed the day long in the full sun, which beat down with a memory of +summer that already had departed. At noon they landed on a rocky islet, a +mere clump of firs water bound, and after eating their luncheon they lay +under the fragrant trees and talked long hours. + +"If this hadn't been," Falkner said with deep gratitude, "we should not +have known each other." + +She smiled back triumphantly. That was the truth she had divined the night +he was to have left her. + +"No," she assented, "we should have been almost strangers and been +dissatisfied always." + +"And now nothing can come between us, not time nor circumstance, nor pain. +Nothing! It is sealed for all time--our union." + +"Our life together, which has been and will be forever." + +None of the surface ways of life, no exchange of words, no companionship, +could have created anything to resemble this inner union which had come +about. The woman giving herself with full knowledge, the man possessing +with full insight,--this experience had made a spirit common to both, in +which both might live apart from each other, so long as they could see with +the spirit,--an existence new, deep, inner. + +So they talked of the life to be with perfect willingness, as two might who +were to part soon for a long journey, which both would share intimately and +real loneliness never seize them. + +"And beyond this luminous moment," suggested the man,--his the speculative +imagination,--"there must lie other levels of intimacy, of comradeship. If +we could go on into the years like this, why, the world would ever be +new,--we should go deeper into the mysteries every day, discovering +ourselves, creating ourselves!" + +The warm sunlight, the islands mirrored in the waveless sea, the aromatic +breath of the spruce and fir, the salty scent of the tidal shore--this +physical world in which they lay--and that other more remote physical world +of men and cities--all, all was but the pictured drama of man's inner life. +As he lived, each day dying and recreated, with an atmosphere of the soul +as subtly shifting as the atmosphere of the earth, so this wonderful +panorama of his faded, dissolved, was made anew. For out of the panorama of +sense man builds his tabernacle, and calls it life, but within the veil +there lies hidden beneath a power, that can unlock other worlds,--strange, +beautiful worlds, like the mazes of the firmament through which the earth +pursues its way. And the tide ebbing past this islet to the sea, flowing +fast outward into the deep, carried them in its silent depths out into the +new, the mysterious places of the spirit. + +The sun sank, covering the islands and the sea with a rare amethystine glow +deepening to a band of purple, like some old dyed cloth, then fading to +pale green at the rim of the earth. There ensued a hush, a pause in life, +that filled the air. 'We are fading, we are withdrawing,' whispered the +elements. 'Our hour is past, the riotous hour, the springtime flood, the +passionate will. And in our place the night will come and bring you peace.' +The sadness of change, the sense of something passing, of moments slipping +away to eternity! ... + +"Tell me," she said as they drifted back with the tide, "what is it?" + +"Only," he answered, "the thought of waste,--that it should have come late, +too late!" + +Proudly denying the flaw in the perfect image, she protested:-- + +"Not late,--the exact hour. Don't you see that it could never have been +until now? Neither of us was ready to understand until we had lived all the +mistakes, suffered all. That is the law of the soul,--its great moments can +neither be hastened nor delayed. All is appointed." + +Her gentle voice touched his heart like a soothing +hand,--'Accept--rejoice--be strong--it must be so! And it is good!' + +"Dearest, we should have passed each other in the dark, without knowing, +earlier. You could not have seen me, the thing you love in me, nor I you, +until we were stricken with the hunger.... It takes time to know this +babbling life, to know what is real and what is counterfeit. Before or +after, who knows how it might have been? This was the time for us to meet!" + +In these paths her eyes were bright to see the way, her feet accustomed. So +it was true. By what they had suffered, apart, by what they had tested and +rejected, they had fitted themselves to come together, for this point of +time, this flame of fulfilment. Mystery of waste to be accepted. No +wistfulness for loss! Brave smiles for that which had been given. And +resolved hearts for that to come.... + +Slowly, with the mood of the day in her lingering feet, Margaret crossed +the field towards the Vineys' cottage, while Falkner stayed to make the +_Swallow_ ready for its homeward journey in the morning. Joe Viney rowed +out to the boat with him. Nodding towards the slight figure on the path +above, the fisherman observed simply:-- + +"She ain't strong, your wife?" + +With that illumined face! He had thought her this day pure force. Later as +he followed her slow steps to the camp, he said over the old man's words, +"She ain't strong." She lived behind her eyes in the land of will and +spirit. And the man's arms ached to take her frail body to him, and keep +her safe in some island of rest. + + + + +CHAPTER XL + + +After supper Margaret sat and talked with Mrs. Viney. The fisherman's wife +was a woman of fifty, with a dragging voice, a faint curiosity in her +manner. Her iron-gray hair smoothed flat was tied in a little knot behind. +Her husband, a good ten years older, had the vitality of a young man +compared with his wife. He was grizzled and squat, with thick red face and +powerful shoulders. His eyes twinkled sharply under their fleshy lids; but +he exhibited no outward curiosity over the two strangers who had dropped +down on his island. + +"That woman!" Margaret exclaimed disgustedly to Falkner as they went back +to the camp. + +"Our excellent hostess? What is the matter with her?" + +"She's a whiner!" Margaret replied hotly. "The woman is always the +whiner,--it makes me despise my sex. What do you suppose she wants? She has +a sister in Lawrence, Mass., and Lawrence, Mass., is her Paris! She wants +her husband to give up this, all the life he's known since he was a boy, +and go to live in Lawrence, Mass., so that she can walk on brick sidewalks +and look into shop windows. There's an ideal for you, my dear!" + +Falkner laughed at her outburst. After all an ambition for Lawrence, Mass., +was not criminal. + +"Oh, women! ... She wanted me to know that she had seen life,--knew a lady +who had rings like mine,--the social instinct in women,--phew! And he +smoked his pipe like an honest man and said not a word. He'll never die in +Lawrence, Mass." + +"But it must be lonely for the poor thing here winters; their children have +all gone to the city." + +"There are ten families at the other end of the island, if she must have +some one to clack with." + +"Perhaps she doesn't find the island society congenial," Falkner suggested +slyly. He had heard Margaret inveigh against certain less restricted +societies. + +"But the old man said, 'Winters are best of all--when it's fierce outside, +and there's nothing but yourself to amuse yourself with!' That's the man. +And he said: 'I like the blows, too. I've been on the sea all my life, and +I don't know nothing about it to speak on.' He has a sense of what it +means,--all this greatness about him." + +"But her element, you forget, is Lawrence, Mass." + +"The man has the imagination, if he is a man! If he is a man! Woman just +tails on,--as I cling to you, dearest!" + +"And sometimes I think you would want to take the lead,--to have your own +little way." + +"Yes, I like my way, too! But the women who think they can strike out +alone--live their own lives, as they say--are foolish. The wise women work +through men,--accomplish themselves in those they love. Isn't that bigger +than doing all the work yourself?" + +"Women create the necessity for man's work." + +"You know I don't mean that! ... What is bliss is to make the way clear for +the one you loved.... I could do that! I'd set my little brain working to +smooth away the immediate difficulties, those that hinder, the little +things that stick in the way. I'd clean the armor for my lord and bring him +nourishing food." + +"And point out the particular castle you would like him to capture for your +dwelling?" + +"Never! If the man were worth serving, he would mark his own game."... + +They had walked to the eastern point of the island, where nothing was to be +seen but the wide sea. The wind had utterly fallen, leaving the surface of +the water mottled with currents from beneath. Far away on the horizon some +ships seemed to be sailing--they had wind out there--and their sails still +shone in the twilight. About the cliff at their feet the tide ran in black +circles. It was still, and the earth was warm and fragrant from the hot +day. Margaret rested her head upon his arm and closed her eyes. + +"It has been too much for you," he said, concerned. + +"No," she murmured, "I am not tired. This is content, at the day's end. It +is marvellous,"--she opened her eyes again upon him with a smile of wonder. +"I haven't had a moment of fatigue, and I have done so much since +yesterday,--more than I have done for years. I wonder what it is gives us +women strength or weakness." + +"Joy gives strength!" + +"Peace gives strength. Sometimes I think that all the weakness in +life--women's weakness--is merely wrong adjustment. It is never work that +kills--it isn't just living, no matter how hard it is. But it is trying to +live when you are dead.... Dearest, if we stayed here, I should be always +strong! I know it. All the weariness and the pain and the languor would go; +I should be what I was meant to be, what every human being is meant to +be,--strong to bear." + +"It is a bitter thought." + +"I suppose that is why men and women struggle so blindly to set themselves +right, why they run away and commit all sorts of follies. They feel within +them the capacity for health, for happiness, if they can only get right +somehow. And when they find the way--" + +She made a little gesture with her hand that swept the troubles from the +road. + +"If they can be sure, it is almost a duty--to put themselves right, isn't +it?" + +Here they had come to the temptation which in all their intimate moments +they had avoided.... 'Others have remade the pattern of their lives,--why +not we?' The woman answered the thought in the man's mind. + +"I should never take it, even knowing that it is my one chance for health +and all that I desire, not while my father lives, not while my +mother-in-law lives; it would add another sorrow to their graves. Nor while +my husband has a right to his children. We are all bound in criss-cross in +life. Nor would you, dearest, have me; you would hate me,--it would turn +our glory to gall!" + +It was not her habit to put her hands before her eyes. She was clear with +herself, and without the sentimental fog. For the Bishop's creed she cared +nothing. For her mother-in-law's prejudices she cared as little. The +punishment of Society she would have met with gleeful contempt. People +could not take from her what she valued, for she had stripped so much that +there was little left in her heart to be deprived of. As for her husband, +he did not exist for her; towards him she was spiritually blind. Her +children were so much a part of her that she never thought of them as away +from her. Where she went, they would be, as a matter of course. + +They had never laid all this on the table before them, so to speak, but +both had realized it from the beginning. They had walked beside the social +precipice serene, but aware of the depths--and the heights. + +"I hate to be limited by the opinions, the prejudices, of other people, of +any one," the man protested. "There seems a cowardice in silently +acquiescing in social laws that I don't respect, because the majority so +wills it." + +"Not because it is the will of the majority--not that; but because others +near you will be made wretched. That is the only morality I have!" + +The law of pity in the place of the law of God! A fragile leash for passion +and egotism. They both shuddered. + +The dusk gathered all about them. Her head still rested on his breast, and +her hand stole to his face. She whispered, "So we pay the forfeit--for our +blindness!" + +"And if I stay--" + +"Don't say it! Don't say that! Do you think that I could be here this +moment in your arms if _that_ were possible?" + +Her voice trembled with scorn, disgust of the adulterous world. + +"Hiding and corner lies for us? No, no, my lover,--not for _you!_ Not even +for _me_. That is the one price too great to pay for happiness. It would +kill it all. Kill it! Surely. I should become in your eyes--like one +of--_them_. It would be--oh, you understand!" She buried her head in his +coat. + +Again she had saved them, kept the balance of their ideal. She would have +love, not hidden lust. What she had done this once could never be done +again without defilement. She had come to him as to a man condemned to die, +to leave the earth forever, and the one most precious thing he wanted and +the one most precious thing that she had to give,--that she had given +freely--to the man condemned to death. + +"We have come all the hard way up the heights to infinite joy, to Peace! +Shall we throw ourselves down into the gulf?"... + + * * * * * + +In the night Falkner woke with a start, putting out his hand to fend off a +catastrophe. She was not there by his side! For one moment fear filled his +mind, and then as he sprang up he saw her in the faint moonlight, leaning +against the post of the veranda, looking out into the night. At his +movement she turned. + +"The night was too beautiful to sleep through, dearest! I have so much to +think about." + +She came back to his side and knelt above him, drawing her cloak around +her. "See! we are all alone here under the stars." The fog had stolen in +from the sea, risen as high as the trees, and lay close over land and +ocean. The heavens were cloudless, and the little moon was low. "Those +tranquil stars up there! They give us our benediction for the time to +come.... We have had our supreme joy--our desire of desires--and now Peace +shall enter our hearts and remain there. That is what the night says.... It +can never be as it was before for you or me. We shall carry away something +from our feast to feed on all our lives. We shall have enough to give +others. Love makes you rich--so rich! We must give it away, all our lives. +We shall, dearest, never fear." + +For the soul has its own sensualities,--its self-delight in pain, in +humiliation,--its mood of generosity, too. The penetrating warmth of a +great passion irradiates life about it. + +"My children, my children," she murmured, "I love them more--I can do for +them more. And for dear Mother Pole--and even for him. I shall be +gentler--I shall understand.... Love was set before me. I have taken it, +and it has made me strong. I will be glad and love the world, all of it, +for your sake, because you have blessed me.... Ours is not the fire that +turns inward and feeds upon itself!" + +"Oh, Margaret, Margaret!--" + +"Listen," she murmured, clasping his neck, "you are the Man! You must +spread the flame where I cannot. I kiss you. I have eaten of life with you. +Together we have understood. Forget me, cease to love me; but always you +must be stronger, greater, nobler because you have held me in your arms and +loved me. If you cannot carry us upwards, it has been base,--the mere +hunger of animals,--my lover! You have made of my weakness strength, and I +have given you peace! Pour it out for me in deeds that I may know I have +loved a Man, that my hero lives!" + +Like a cry of the spirit it rang out into the night between the mist-hidden +earth and the silent stars. In the stillness there had come a revelation of +life,--the eternal battle of man between the spirit and the flesh, between +the seen and the unseen, the struggle infinite and always. Where life is, +that must be. And the vision of man's little, misshapen existence,--the +incomplete and infinitesimal unit he is,--and also the significance of +him,--this material atom, the symbol, the weapon of the spirit, shone forth +before them. This the woman had felt in giving herself to him, that the +spirit within was freed by the touch of flesh.... + +Already in the calm night desire and passion seemed to fade from them. Here +had ended their passion, and now must begin the accomplishment. When the +revelation comes, and the spirit thus speaks through the flesh, it is peace +with human beings.... + +They lay there awake but silent into the gray hours of dawn, and when the +mist had spread upwards to the sky, shutting out the stars, they slept. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI + + +At breakfast Joe Viney said:-- + +"I was lobsterin' this morning." + +"It must have been the thud of your oars that we heard when we woke." + +"Mos' likely,--I was down there at the end of the island, hauling in the +pots. It's goin' to be a greasy day. But there's wind comin'." + +They could hear the long call of a steamer's whistle and the wail of the +fog-horn beyond the next island. The little white house was swathed in the +sea mist. + +"Better take the steamer at the Neck, if you're going to the city," Mrs. +Viney suggested. "It'll be cold and damp sailing this morning." + +"Never!" Margaret protested. + +Mrs. Viney looked at Margaret pityingly. That a woman from the city should +care to come to this forlorn, lonesome spot, "when the summer folks had +gone," and sleep out of doors on fir boughs, and go off in a messy +sail-boat in a fog, when there was a clean, fast steamer that would take +her in an hour to the city--it was a mystery. As she packed some pieces of +soggy bread, a little meat, and still soggier cake into a box for their +luncheon she shook her head, protesting:-- + +"You'll spoil that hat o' yourn. It wasn't meant for sailin'." + +"No, it wasn't; that's true!" She took off the flower-bedecked hat with its +filmy veiling. "Would you like it? I shall find a cap in the boat." + +'Clearly,' thought Mrs. Viney, 'the woman is crazy;' but she accepted the +hat. Afterwards she said to her husband:-- + +"I can't make them two out. She ain't young, and she ain't exactly old, and +she ain't pretty,--well, she's got the best of the bargain, a little wisp +like her." For, womanlike, she admired Falkner in his sweater and flannels, +strong and male, with a dark coat of tan on his face. + +Viney accompanied them to the boat, waddling across the field, his hands in +the armholes of his vest. He said little, but as he shoved them off in +their tender, he observed:-- + +"It's the sort of day you could get lost in mighty easy." + +"Oh," Falkner called back cheerily, "I guess I know my way." + +"Well, I guess you _do_!" + + * * * * * + +As Viney had said, the wind came through the fog, driving the boat in +unseen fashion, while the sail hung almost limp. There was a little eddy of +oily water at the stern; they were slipping, sliding through the fog-bank, +back to the earth. + +"Back to life," Falkner hummed, "back; back, to the land, to the world!" + +The fog clung in Margaret's hair, and dimmed her eyes. She bared her arms +to feel the cool touch of it on her skin. Clean things, like the sun +yesterday, the resinous firs, the salty fog,--clean elemental things,--how +she loved them! + +"And suppose," Falkner suggested, "I should lose my way in this nest of +reefs and islands and we got shipwrecked or carried out to sea?" + +"I should hear Ned calling through the fog." A simple answer, but withal +enough. Their hour, which they had set themselves, was past. And lying here +in the impalpable mist, slipping towards the hidden port, she was filled +with ineffable content.... + +"You are still radiant!" Falkner said wonderingly. + +"It can't fade--never wholly! I cherish it." She drew her arms close about +her. "Sacred things never utterly die!" + +They had found it, they had lived it, they knew--what the unspiritual and +carnal millions that clutter God's earth may never know--ecstasy, the +secret behind the stars, beyond the verge of the sea, in the great lunar +spaces of spirit. + + * * * * * + +On they glided through the thoroughfares, around island points, across +reaches of the sea, sweeping onward now with an audible gurgle in their +wake, the sails bellying forward; veering this way, falling off there, as +the impassive man touched the tiller, obeying an instinct, seeing into the +dark beyond. Now a bit of cliff loomed in the fog, again a shingled roof or +a cluster of firs, and the whistling buoy at the harbor's mouth began to +bellow sadly,--reminders all of the shell of that world towards which they +sailed. And at last the harbor, with its echoing bells and fog-whistles, +the protesting shrieks of its man-machines; suddenly the colossal hull of a +schooner at anchor. Then the ghostly outlines of the huddled shipping, the +city roofs, the steeples, the shriek of engines in the freight yards--they +touched the earth! It had ended. The noise of living reverberated in their +ears. + +Margaret rose with a sigh, and looked back through the closing curtain of +fog to an island headland misty and vague. + +"My heaven--oh, my heaven! our haven, my master!" + +Like two newly wakened beings, stunned by the light and sound around them, +they stumbled over the wharf. A large sailing vessel was loading there for +its voyage,--a Portuguese ship bound for Demerara, so the black sailor said +whom Falkner questioned. With a last look at its tall masts they took their +way into the city and so to the station. + +Here was the same crowd coming from the trains,--the little human motes +pushing hither and thither, hurrying from train to train, dashing, +dawdling, loitering. Were they the same motes as two days before? Were they +always the same,--marionettes wound to perform the clamorous motions of +life? Or were they men and women like themselves, with their own great +secrets in their hearts? Above all, the secret that transforms! Had these +others, too, gone into the great high places? + +They walked to the bridge while they waited for the Bedmouth train. Far +down the harbor rose the tall masts of the Portuguese ship. + +"Bound for Demerara," murmured Falkner, with a smile; "we might be sailing +for the Windward Islands?" + +"No," Margaret smiled back; "we love too much for that,--you and I." + + + + +CHAPTER XLII + + +Within the old parlor of the Bedmouth house Mrs. Pole was waiting for a +step. It came at last. + +"The children?" Margaret demanded, kissing the old lady. + +"Perfectly well." + +"I must go up to them," and she started for the door. + +"Wait!" Mrs. Pole said, looking up sadly into the younger woman's pale +face, which still held the glow. + +"Yes, mother?" The voice rang with a note of vitality, of life, as if to +chant, 'I have come back to you from a long way off!' Mrs. Pole said +slowly:-- + +"Lawrence is upstairs. He came on from New York yesterday." + +"Oh!" + +At the head of the stairs she met her husband, who had heard her voice +below. + +"You have been away!" he said sharply, an unwonted touch of authority in +his voice. + +It was in her heart to say: 'Yes, in heaven! Can't you see it in my face?' +She replied gently:-- + +"Yes, I have been--away!" + +"Where?" + +She looked at him out of her deep eyes, and said slowly:-- + +"Do you wish me to tell you?" + +And after a moment, as if her husband was not there and she were looking +through him at something beyond, she went on into the children's room. +Pole, steadying himself by the hand-rail, descended the stairs. + +He no longer existed, even as a convention, for his wife. + + + + +PART FIVE + + + +CHAPTER XLIII + + +Isabelle had not succeeded in bringing Vickers home with her that first +time she had gone abroad. They had had a very pleasant month in the +Dolomites, and he had taken her to Paris to join the Woodyards, with whom +she returned. Whenever she had spoken to Vickers of coming home he had +smiled and made a little joke. Once he said, "Not yet,--I cannot go yet, +Belle," and she understood that it was "that beast of a woman," as she +called Mrs. Conry, who kept him. She wanted to say to him, "Well, Vick, if +you won't leave her, why don't you marry her then!" But gentle as her +brother was to her, she did not like to touch on that topic. + +She had meant to go over the next spring, but the new house was under way +then. A year later a letter from Fosdick, who was returning from Russia by +the way of Venice, made her start for Europe at once. + +... "Madam," Fosdick wrote, "having sucked our Vickers dry, has left him at +last, I am happy to say. Gone off with a fresh orange. Vick doesn't realize +his luck,--he's plain dazed. Before the other orange becomes dry, it is our +simple duty--yours and mine--to remove the stranded hero out of reach. I +think you can do it now.... I forgot to say that the Conry left with him a +pledge of her return in the shape of a lump of a girl, her daughter by +Conry. Vick seems idiotically tied to this little Conry.... Oh, it is a +shame, a shame!" + +Isabelle cabled Fosdick to bring Vickers with him to Paris and started with +her mother. "No sermons, you know, mother," she warned Mrs. Price. "It's +something you and I don't understand." + +When Vickers came to their hotel in Paris, it seemed to Isabelle that the +last two years had worked more damage than the previous six. There was a +dazed and submissive air about her brother that brought the tears to her +eyes. In the languid, colorless face before her, she could scarcely find a +trace of the pale, tense boy, who had roused her in the middle of the night +the day before he left St. Louis.... + +"Why don't you come to this hotel?" Mrs. Price had demanded. + +Vickers had made an excuse, and when his mother had left the room, he said +to Isabelle, "You will have to explain to mother that I am not alone." + +Isabelle gasped, and Vickers hastened to say, "You see Delia is with me." + +"Dick wrote me that she left her child!" + +"Yes.... I am really very fond of the poor little thing." + +"The beast!" Isabelle muttered. + +Vickers shuddered, and Isabelle resolved that no matter what happened she +would not allow herself to refer again to either mother or child. Later she +walked back with him to his rooms and saw the girl. Delia Conry was a +heavily built and homely girl of thirteen, with light gray eyes. All but +the eyes were like her father, the builder. There was no hint of the +mother's soft, seductive physique. + +"Delia," Vickers said gently, "come and speak to my sister, Mrs. Lane." + +As the child awkwardly held out a hand, Isabelle felt the tears come into +her eyes. Here was her old Vickers,--the gentle, idealistic soul she had +loved, the only being it seemed to her then that she had ever really loved. + +"Delia and I have been tramping the Louvre," Vickers remarked. "That's the +way we are learning history." + +Isabelle glanced about the forlorn little sitting-room of the third-class +hotel. + +"Why did you come here?" + +"It does well enough, and it's near the Louvre and places.... It is very +reasonable." + +Then Isabelle remembered what Fosdick had said about Vickers's gift of half +his fortune to Mrs. Conry. "You see the idiot hadn't sense enough to run +off with a man who had money. Some damn fool, artist! That's why you must +pack Vick away as soon as you can get him to go." + +With this in her mind she exclaimed impulsively:-- + +"You are coming back with us, Vick!" + +"To live in America?" he queried with bitter humor. "So you came out as a +rescue party!" + +"You must get back into life," Isabelle urged vaguely. + +"What life? You don't mean the hardware business?" + +"Don't be silly! ... You can't go on living over here alone by yourself +with that child." + +"Why not?" + +"Oh, because--you must _do_ something, Vick! I want you to be famous." + +"That doesn't seem quite possible, now," he replied gently. + +"You'll come and live with me--oh, I need you, Vick!" + +She threw her arms about him and hugged him tightly to her as she had as a +girl. The intensity of her feeling moved him strangely, and her words also. +What was it she meant by "needing him"? + +"You must--that's the thing!" + +Holding her head away she searched his face critically, and her heart was +wrung again by the sense of waste in it all. "Poor brother," she murmured, +tightening her clasp. + +"I'm not going over as a helpless dependent!" he protested, and suddenly +without warning he shot out his question,--"And what have _you_ made out of +it? How have the years been?" + +"Oh, we jog on, John and I,--just the usual thing, you know,--no heights +and no depths!" + +An expression of futility came momentarily into her eyes. It wasn't what +she had pictured to herself, her marriage and life. Somehow she had never +quite caught hold of life. But that was a common fate. Why, after all, +should she commiserate her brother, take the 'poor Vick' tone that +everybody did about him? Had she attained to a much more satisfactory level +than he, or had the others who 'poor Vickered' him? There was something in +both their natures, perhaps, at jar with life, incapable of effectiveness. + +Vickers finally consented to return to America with his mother and sister +"for a visit." Delia, he said, ought to see her father, who was a broken +man, living in some small place in the West. (Isabelle suspected that +Vickers had sent him also money.) Conry had written him lately, asking for +news of his daughter. + +"Does Vick intend to tote that lump of a girl around with him for the next +twenty years?" Mrs. Price demanded of Isabelle, when she heard that Delia +was to be of their party. + +"I suppose so, unless she totes herself off!" + +"The woman dumped her child on him! Well, well, the Colonel had something +of the fool in him where women were concerned,--only I looked after that!" + +"Mother," Isabelle retorted mischievously, "I am afraid you'll never be +able to keep down the fool in us; Vick is pretty nearly all fool, the +dear!" + +Her brother's return being settled, Isabelle plunged into her shopping, +buying many things for both the houses, as well as her dresses. There were +friends flitting back and forth, snatches of sight-seeing, and theatres. By +the time they took the steamer Isabelle confessed she was a "wreck." Yet +she talked of taking an apartment in Paris the next spring and sending her +child to a convent, as Mrs. Rogers had done. "It would be nice to have my +own corner over here to run to," she explained. "Only Potts wants me to +bury myself at Schwalbach." + +Cairy joined them at Plymouth. He had been in London making arrangements +for the production of a play there, and had hopes of enlarging his sphere. + +"Coming home?" he asked Vickers. "That's good!" + +"Thank you," Vickers replied dryly. + +Cairy had already the atmosphere of success about him. He still limped in a +distinguished manner, and his clothes marked him even in the company of +well-dressed American men. He had grown stouter,--was worried by the fear +of flesh, as he confided to Vickers,--and generally took himself with +serious consideration. It was a far call from the days when he had been +Gossom's ready pen. He now spoke of his "work" importantly, and was kind to +Vickers, who "had made such a mess of things," "with all that money, too." +With his large egotism, his uniform success where women were concerned, +Vickers's career seemed peculiarly stupid. "No woman," he said to Isabelle, +"should be able to break a man." And he thought thankfully of the square +blow between the eyes that Conny had dealt him. + +In the large gay party of returning Americans that surrounded Isabelle and +Cairy on the ship Vickers was like a queer little ghost. He occupied +himself with his small charge, reading and walking with her most of the +days. Isabelle was conscious of the odd figure Vickers made, in his +ill-fitting Italian clothes, with an old Tyrolean cloak of faded green +hanging about him, his pale face half hidden by a scrubby beard, his +unseeing eyes, wandering over the great steamer, a little girl's hand in +his, or reading in a corner of the deserted dining hall. + +Vickers was not so dull of eye, however, that he did not observe Isabelle +and Cairy, sitting side by side on the deck, talking and reading. They +tried to "bring him in," but they had a little language of jokes and +references personal to themselves. If Vickers wondered what his sister, as +he knew her, found so engrossing in the Southerner, he was answered by a +remark Isabelle made:-- + +"Tom is so charming! ... There are few men in America who understand how to +talk to a woman, you know." + +When Vickers had left his native land, the art of talking to a woman as +distinguished from a man had not been developed.... + +Lane met the party at Quarantine. That was his domestic office,--"meeting" +and "seeing off." As he stood on the deck of the bobbing tug waving to his +wife, he was a symbol of the American husband, Cairy jokingly pointed out. +"There's John holding out the welcoming arms to roving wife." And there +were hundreds of them, roving wives, on the deck, very smartly dressed for +their return to domesticity, with laden trunks coming up out of the holds, +and long customs bills to pay, the expectant husbands waiting at the pier +with the necessary money. And there were others with their husbands beside +them on the decks, having carried them through Europe, bill-payers and +arrangers extraordinary for their majesties, the American wives. Cairy was +writing a farce about it with the title, "Coming Home." + +Vickers, who scarcely remembered his brother-in-law, looked curiously at +the self-possessed, rather heavy man on the tug. He was an effective +person, "one who had done something," the kind his countrymen much admired. +"Had a pleasant voyage, I suppose, and all well?" Then he had turned to +Vickers, and with slight hesitation, as if not sure of his ground, +observed, "You will find considerable changes, I suppose." + +"I suppose so," Vickers assented, feeling that conversation between them +would be limited. In the confusion at the pier while the numerous trunks +were being disgorged, Vickers stood apart with Delia Conry and had an +opportunity to observe the quiet, efficient manner in which John Lane +arranged everything. He had greeted Isabelle and his mother impartially, +with a family kiss for both. Vickers caught his brother-in-law's eye on him +several times as they were waiting, and once Lane made as if to speak and +was silent. Vickers was sensitively aware that this man of affairs could +not pretend to understand him,--could at the best merely conceal under +general tolerance and family good feeling his real contempt for one who had +so completely "made a mess of things." He had foreseen the brother-in-law, +and that had been one reason why he had hesitated to return, even for a +visit. Lane soon made another effort, saying: "You will find it rather warm +in the city. We have had a good deal of hot weather this summer." + +"Yes," Vickers replied; "I remember New York in September. But I am used to +long summers." + +As the stranger's eyes roved over the noisy pier, Lane looked at the little +girl, who was rendered dumb by the confusion and clung to Vickers's hand, +and then he eyed his brother-in-law again, as if he were recollecting the +old Colonel and thinking of the irony in the fact that his only surviving +son should be this queer, half-foreign chap. + +A large motor waited outside the pier to take the party to the hotel. + +"Aren't you coming, Tom?" Isabella asked, as Cairy made for a cab with his +luggage. + +"I will meet you at the station to-morrow," Cairy called back. "Business!" + +"Well,--how is everything?" she asked her husband. "Glad to see me back?" + +"Of course." + +They darted swiftly up town to an immense hotel, where Lane had engaged +rooms for the party. Having seen them into the elevator, he returned by the +motor to his office. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV + + +The old Farm at Grafton had been marvellously transformed. Vickers Price, +standing on the terrace the evening of his arrival, looked wistfully for +landmarks, for something to recall the place he had loved as a boy, which +had gathered charm in his imaginative memory these years of his exile. The +Georgian facade of the new house faced the broad meadow through which the +wedding party had wandered back to the Farm the day of Isabelle's marriage. +Below the brick terrace, elaborate gardens, suggesting remotely Italy, had +been laid out on the slope of the New England hill. The thin poplars, +struggling to maintain themselves in the bitter blasts of an American +winter, gave an unreal air to the place as much as anything. The village of +Grafton, which had once been visible as a homely white-dotted road beyond +the meadow, had been "planted out." There was a formal garden now where the +old barn stood, from which the Colonel's pointers had once yapped their +greetings on the arrival of strangers. The new brick stables and the garage +were in the woods across the road, connected with the house by telephone. + +On their arrival by the late train they had had supper quite informally. It +had been served by two men, however, and there was a housekeeper to relieve +the mistress of the care of the increased establishment. What had +bewildered Vickers on his return to America after an absence of ten years, +from the moment he had taken ship until the Lanes' new French motor had +whisked him up to the Farm--Isabelle still clung to the old name--was the +lavish luxury, the increased pace of living, on this side of the ocean. The +years he had spent in Italy had been the richest period of our industrial +renaissance. In the rising tide of wealth the signs of the old order--the +simplicity of the Colonel's day--had been swept away. + +As Vickers stood rather apart from the others, who were strolling about the +terrace, and looked at Dog Mountain, the only perfectly familiar feature in +the scene, Isabella tucked her arm under his and led him towards the +gardens:-- + +"Vick, I want you to see what I have done. Don't you think it's much +better? I am not altogether satisfied." She glanced back at the long +facade: "I think I should have done better with Herring rather than Osgood. +But when we started to alter the old place, I didn't mean to do so much to +it." + +Isabelle knew more now than when Osgood had been engaged, two years before, +and Herring's reputation had meanwhile quite overshadowed the older +architect's. + +"I told Isabelle at the start," said Cairy, who joined them, "she had +better pull the old place down, and have a fresh deal. You had to come to +it practically in the end?" He turned to Isabelle teasingly. + +"Yes," she admitted half regretfully; "that's the way I always do a +thing,--walk backwards into it, as John says. But if we had built from the +ground up, it wouldn't have been this place, I suppose.... And I don't see +why we did it,--Grafton is so far from anything." + +"It's neither Tuxedo nor Lenox," Cairy suggested. + +"Just plain Connecticut. Well, you see the Colonel left the place to +me,--that was the reason." + +And also the fact that he had left her only a small portion of his fortune +besides. It was an ironical rebuke for his act that much of the small +fortune he had given her had gone to transform his beloved Farm into +something he would never have recognized. Vickers thought sadly, "If the +old Colonel's ghost should haunt this terrace, he couldn't find his way +about!" + +"But it's snug and amusing,--the Farm? Isn't it?" Cairy demanded of Vickers +in a consoling manner. + +"I shouldn't call it snug," Vickers replied, unconsciously edging away from +the Southerner, "nor wholly amusing!" + +"You don't like my efforts!" Isabelle exclaimed wearily. She herself, as +she had said, was not satisfied; but money as well as strength and her +husband's dislike of "more building" had held her hand. + +"We all change," Vickers replied humorously. "I can't blame the old place +for looking different. I have changed somewhat myself, and you, Cairy,"--he +glanced at the figure by his sister's side, which had sleek marks of +prosperity as well as the Farm,--"too. All changed but you, Isabelle!" + +"But I have changed a lot!" she protested. "I have grown better looking, +Vickie, and my mind has developed, hasn't it, Tom? One's family never sees +any change but the wrinkles!"... + +Vickers, turning back to the terrace where Fosdick and Gossom were smoking, +had a depressed feeling that of all the changes his was the greatest. + +"I must look in on my little girl," he explained to Isabelle, as he left +her and Cairy. + +Isabelle watched him mount the steps. His small figure had grown heavy from +his inactive life abroad. The thick hair had almost gone from the top of +his head, and the neat pointed beard had become bushy. In his negligent +clothes he looked quite slouchy, she had felt that evening, as if he had +long ceased to have any interest in his person. "It's all that beast of a +woman," she said resentfully to Cairy, remembering the slender, quite +elegant brother of the old days. "And to think of his saddling himself with +her brat and lugging her around with him! I couldn't make him drop her in +New York with her governess. But it's impossible!" + +"The lady left him her husband's child, as a souvenir, didn't she?" + +"I can't think of it!" Isabelle exclaimed, shrugging her shoulders. "To go +off with that other man--after all he had given up for her! The beast!" + +"Perhaps that was the best she could do for him under the circumstances," +Cairy remarked philosophically. "But the child must be a bore." He laughed +at the comical situation. + +"Just like Vick!" + +It was also like Vickers to give Mrs. Conry a large share of his small +fortune when she had seen fit to leave him, as Fosdick had told her.... + +After visiting his small charge, who was lonely this first night in the +strange house, Vickers had gone to his room and sat down by the window. +Below him on the terrace Fosdick and Gossom were discussing Socialism, the +Russian revolution, and the War of Classes. New topics, or rather new forms +of old themes, they seemed to Vickers. Fosdick, from his rolling around the +earth, had become an expert on the social revolution; he could tell the +approximate dates when it "would be pulled off" in all the great countries. +He had bought a farm somewhere in Vermont, and had sat down to wait for the +social revolution; meantime he was raising apples, and at intervals +descended upon the houses of his friends to inveigh against predatory +wealth or visited the city for the sake of more robust amusement. Gossom, +whose former radicalism was slowly modifying into an "intelligent +conservatism," was mildly opposing Fosdick's views. "We have gone too far +in this campaign of vilification of wealth,--Americans are sound at the +core,--what they want is conservative individualism, a sense of the law," +etc. Vickers smiled to himself, and looking out over the old meadow forgot +all about the talkers. + +From the meadow came the sweet scent of the September crop of hay. There +was the river at the end of the vista, disappearing into a piece of +woodland. The place was sown with memories, and Vickers's eyes were moist +as he leaned there, looking forth into the night. It was but a shallow New +England brook, this river, meandering through cranberry bogs, with alders +and bilberry bushes on either side. He remembered the cranberry picking at +this season, and later when the meadow had been flooded, the skating over +the bushes that were frozen in the ice, and the snaky forms of the +cranberry plants visible at the bottom. All these years he had thought of +this little meadow as he had conceived it when a child,--a mighty river +flowing on mysteriously through the dark valley,--on, around the woods that +made out like a bold headland, then on and on to the remote sea. It was dim +and wild, this meadow of his childhood, and the brook was like that river +on which was borne to Camelot the silent bark with the fair Elaine. His +older brother had taken him down that same brook in a canoe,--a quite +wonderful journey. They had started early, just as the August moon was +setting; and as they passed the headland of woods--pines and maples fearful +in their dark recesses--an early thrush had broken the silence of the +glimmering dawn with its sweet call. And another had answered from the +depth of the wood, and then another, while the little canoe had slipped +noiselessly past into strange lands,--a country altogether new and +mysterious.... To-night that old boyhood thrill came over him, as when +kneeling in the canoe with suspended paddle, in the half light of dawn, he +had heard the thrushes calling from the woods. Then it had seemed that life +was like this adventurous journey through the gray meadows, past the silent +woods, on into the river below, and the great sea, far, far away! A +wonderful journey of enlarging mystery from experience to experience into +some great ocean of understanding.... + +Vickers sat down at the piano by the window, and forgetting all that had +taken the place of his dream,--the searing flame of his manhood,--struck +the gentle chords of that boyhood journey, something of the river and the +meadow and the woods and the gray dawn, which had often sounded in his ears +far away in Venice. + +Isabelle and Cairy, coming up the terrace steps, heard the notes and +stopped to listen. + +"Charming!" Cairy murmured. "His own?" + +"How I wish he would try to do something, and get his work played by our +orchestras! He could if he would only interest himself enough. But the +ambition seems gone out of him. He merely smiles when I talk about it." + +"He'll come back to it," Cairy grinned. "It's in the air here to put your +talent in the front window." + +Vickers played on softly, dreaming of the boy's river of life, at home once +more in the old Farm. + + * * * * * + +Early the next morning as Vickers stole softly through the corridor, on his +way for a stroll, a door opened and Isabelle looked out. + +"You'll find coffee downstairs, Vick. I remembered your dawn-wandering +habit and asked Mrs. Stevens to have it ready for you. I'll join you in a +few moments." + +Before he had finished his coffee, Isabelle appeared and sleepily poured +out a cup for herself. The servant was making ready a tray at the +sideboard. + +"Tom is one of your sleepless kind, too," she explained. "He does his +writing before the house is awake, so as not to be disturbed, or he says he +does. I believe he just turns over and takes another nap!" + +"Cairy seems at home here," Vickers observed, sipping his coffee. + +"Of course, Tommy is one of the family," Isabelle replied lightly. "He is +much more domesticated than John, though, since his great success last +winter, he hasn't been up very much." + +"Has he made a great success?" Vickers inquired. "What at?" + +"Haven't you heard of his play! It ran all the winter, and this new one +they say will also make a great hit." + +Vickers, who remembered Cairy in college as one always endeavoring after +things out of his reach, looked mildly surprised. + +"I hadn't heard that he was a dramatist," he said. + +"I wish _you_ would do something!" Isabelle remarked, feeling that Cairy's +success might point for Vickers his own defeat, and stir him into healthy +action. + +"What? Write a play?" + +"No--you old dear!" She caressed his hand. "I think it would be good for +you to feel you were doing something in the world, instead of running about +with that absurd child." She wanted to say much more about Delia Conry, but +bided a more fitting time. + +"I haven't run much so far," was all that Vickers replied. "You shouldn't +have bothered to come down," he added when the coffee was finished. "I just +wanted to poke around the old place as I used to." + +"I know--and I wanted to be with you, of course, this first time. Don't you +remember how we got our own breakfasts when we went shooting in the +autumn?" + +Her brother nodded. + +"Those were good times, Vick! ... They were the best for both of us," she +added less buoyantly. She pushed away her cup, put her arm about his +shoulders, and kissed him. + +"You shouldn't say that, Belle!" + +"Vickie, it's so nice to hug you and have you all to myself before the +others are up. I've missed some one to go batting with me, to hug and bully +and chatter with. Now you've come I shall be a girl all over again." + +And Isabelle was her old self for the first time since Vickers had joined +her in Paris a month before,--no longer preoccupied, striving after some +satisfaction that never perfectly arrived. Here the past was upon them +both,--in spite of Osgood's transformations,--a past when they had been +close, in the precious intimacy of brother and sister. Outside in the new, +very new Dutch garden, Isabelle resumed her anxieties of the day. + +"The gardener ought not to have put those bulbs there,--he knows nothing +really! I shall have to find another man.... I hope the chauffeur John +engaged will get along with the houseman. The last one fought.... Oh, did I +tell you that Potts is coming out Saturday,--the great Dr. Potts? He wants +to look me over,--get me ready for the winter campaign.... There's Tom, +writing at the desk by his window. Hello, Tommy!" Isabelle waved a hand +gayly at the balcony above them. Vickers smiled at the disconnected +remarks, so like Isabelle. Her conversation was a loose bundle of +impressions, reflections, wishes, and feelings, especially her feelings +about other people. And Isabelle had a taste for lame cats, as her mother +said,--at least those cats that obviously felt their lameness. + +"You don't like Tom," she rambled on. "Why not? Poor Tommy! he's so sweet +and clever. Why don't you like Tom, Vickers? You must like him--because +he'll be here a lot, and I am awfully fond of him." + +"Why 'poor Tom'?" Vickers asked laconically. + +"He's had such a hard time, a struggle to get on,--his people were poor, +very nice though,--the best Virginia, you know.... He's ambitious, and he +isn't strong. If this play shouldn't go--he's counting on it so much!" + +Vickers smilingly drew her hand beneath his arm and led her out through the +garden into the meadow. "The same old Belle after all," he murmured. "I +don't see that Brother Cairy is badly off,--he has a good deal of petting, +I fancy. I have heard all about that Virginia childhood and the rest of +it.... Do you remember, Belle, when we used to go over to the Ed Prices' +and were scared when we saw a tramp in the bushes on the hill? And how we +ran through the willows as if the devil was after us?--Who have the Ed +Prices' farm now?" + +"Don't you know that father gave it to Alice Johnston? Wasn't it nice of +him! Her husband is in the road, in St. Louis, doing very well, John says. +Alice is over there now,--she brings the children on for the summer.... I +don't see much of her--she is so enveloped in children!" + +"What's become of the brother,--the one I licked and threw into Beaty's +pond?" + +"The world seems to have licked him, too," Isabelle replied, laughing at +the old memory. "The last time Alice spoke of him she said he was on some +newspaper in Spokane, had been in the Klondike, I believe.... There's Mr. +Gossom and Tom! We must go back for breakfast." + +"Thanks! I have had mine. I think I'll walk over to the Price place and see +Alice. Don't look for me before noon." + +"But there are people coming for luncheon," Isabelle protested. + +Vickers waved his hand to her and called back, "I think you'll get on very +well without me!" + +Isabelle was already answering Cairy's shout from the terrace. As Vickers +took his way through the meadow, he thought how sweet she was, the real +Isabelle, when one got to her as he had this morning. But she had never +once mentioned John; her husband seemed to be very little in her mind. + + + + +CHAPTER XLV + + +Vickers strode off through the meadow that morning in the hope of finding +familiar things, and indulging in old memories. The country roads had been +widened and improved, and many of the farm-houses had given way to more or +less pretentious "places." Motors whirled past him. The hill that he +remembered as a veritable mountain was a mere rise in the straightened road +over which a fast car plunged at full speed, covering him with dust and +leaving behind a sickening odor. He struck off into a wood-lot; here and in +the pastures and meadows he found himself again. It was nearly noon before +he came up the lane that led to the Ed Price farm. + +This was off the beat of the motors, away from the new "estates," at the +end of a grassy road bordered by gray birches. The ample old house he +remembered very well with its square central chimney and stretch of +outbuildings that joined the yellow barn. At his knock a broad-shouldered, +smiling woman came to the door, and after a moment's hesitation +exclaimed:-- + +"Why, Vick,--can it be you?" + +"Yes, Cousin Alice." + +She led him to the orchard in the rear, where with the aid of two little +boys she was preparing vegetables for dinner. Tying on a large apron, she +said:-- + +"You see we all have to take a hand. Won't you have a bib and dip in, too? +... Children, this is your uncle--cousin. Which is it, Vickers?" + +It was pleasant in the long grass under the apple tree, looking across the +orchard of gnarled and stubby trees to the lane. Mrs. Johnston worked and +talked, while the little boys with furtive glances pecked at the peas like +two birds. + +"I heard you were coming--I did not know just when. It is good to see you +back, Vick!" + +There was a comfortable largeness in the atmosphere of this woman, which +suited the homely background of the square farm-house and the peaceful +orchard. And there was a pleasant warmth in her tone. + +"How do you find it?" she asked; "or perhaps you haven't had time yet to +know." + +"It hardly seems like being home," Vickers admitted, "everything is so +changed--everything but this!" he added gratefully, thinking of Alice as +well as the farm. + +"Yes,--the country has changed, so many rich people have bought places. And +your old home--" She hesitated to complete her sentence. + +"I can't find my way around there." Vickers laughed. "What would the +Colonel say!" + +Alice looked as if she preferred not to think what the Colonel might say of +his daughter's alterations. + +"I suppose Isabelle had to have more room,--she has so many people with +her. And you will find that life has changed over here in ten years." + +"Nothing but change!" + +"Except among the poor! ... No, Tot, you can't eat the pods. There, boys, +take sister and run out to the barn to help Charlie wash the buggy.... How +does Isabelle seem to you?" + +"I scarcely know--I haven't made up my mind. How does she seem to _you_?" + +"She does too much,--she's not strong enough," Alice replied evasively. + +"No, she doesn't seem strong; but she can't keep still!" + +"She gets so little comfort out of anything,--that is the worst of it. +Sometimes I wish John weren't so strong,--that he would have an illness, so +that Isabelle would have something definite to do." + +"She would have a trained nurse!" Vickers suggested with a laugh. + +"She is such a dear,--I wish she were happier!" + +"Perhaps that isn't in the blood." + +"But I never saw a happier creature than she was the day she was married! +And John is a fine fellow, and she has everything a woman could want." + +"A woman wants a good many things these days."... + +They chatted on about Isabelle and her love of people, and then about St. +Louis and the old days at Grafton. For the first time since he had landed, +it seemed to Vickers, he was permitted to ignore his failure,--he was at +home. When he rose to go, Alice protested:-- + +"But you aren't going back,--it is just our dinner-time, and we haven't +said half what we have to say!" + +So he dined with the brood of children in the large front room, and +afterwards Alice walked down the lane with him. + +"I hope you are going to stay here?" she asked warmly. + +"Oh, I don't know! America doesn't seem to need me," he replied, +endeavoring to joke; "not that I know any place which does. I am waiting to +be called." + +In spite of the joking manner there was sadness in the voice. Alice was +silent for a time and then replied earnestly:-- + +"Perhaps you are called here--for the present." + +"You mean over there?" he asked quickly, nodding in the direction of +Grafton. + +"Yes!" + +"Why do you think so?" + +"You know Isabelle really cares for you as she doesn't for any one else in +the world!" + +"Yes,--we have always been close." + +"But she cares for what you _think_--" + +Vickers made a gesture, as if it were impossible that any one could do +that. + +"Yes," Alice continued gently; "a woman never gets wholly away from the +influence of one she has admired as Isabelle admired you." + +"But one's experience," he mused, "no matter how costly it has been, never +seems to be of any use to any one else." + +"Can you tell--until the end? ... What we don't see in life is so much more +than what we see!" + +Vickers looked at her gratefully. He would like to feel that he was needed +somewhere in this hurried world. Presently there was a childish uproar +behind them, and Alice turned back. + +"My brood is getting tempestuous; I must say good-by!" + +She held Vickers's hand in her warm, firm grasp. + +"I hope we shall see you often.... I think that you are called here!" + +Vickers returned to the Farm, thinking of Alice Johnston. She had given him +of her peace, of her confidence, her large way of taking the issues of +life. 'And I used to say that she was a commonplace dumpy country girl!' he +mused. He pondered what she had spoken,--the suggestion, vague but +comforting, of purpose, of a place for him in the world to fill. Just what +was she thinking of? "We'll see," he murmured, as he mounted the steps of +the terrace. As Alice had said, the unseen in life was so much more than +the seen. + + * * * * * + +In the formal garden the pretty little English governess was conducting the +social game for the two girls. Marian Lane, having shown Delia her pony and +her rabbits without eliciting much enthusiasm, now sat and stared at her +with politely suppressed scorn for the dull red frock that Vickers had +designed for his charge. + +"Have you been to dancing school?" she demanded. + +"What is that?" Delia asked. + +She was dully uncomfortable in the company of this very dainty little +creature, who was always dressed in delicate, light fabrics, and seemed to +have many possessions. And Miss Betterton had a well-bred manner of putting +the stranger outside the little social game. So when Delia spied Vickers, +she cried, "There's father!" and ran towards him. + +"Uncle Vickers is not Mabel's father," Marian asserted to Miss Betterton. + +"Hush, dearie!" the well-bred Miss Betterton replied; "we mustn't talk +about that." + +When Isabelle and Cairy came up to the house from their afternoon ride, +they found Vickers playing croquet with Miss Betterton and the two little +girls, who in his society were approaching something like informality in +their manner of addressing each other. + +"He looks quite domestic," Cairy jeered. + +"Hello, Vick! Come over and see the horses," Isabelle called. + +At the stable Marian's new pony that Cairy had selected was exhibited. Lane +drove up with a friend he had brought from the city for the week end, and +the party played with the pony and laughed at his tricks, which Cairy +showed off. + +"He looks like a cross between an Angora cat and a Newfoundland dog," Cairy +remarked, leaning down to feel of his legs. As he stooped the ivory handle +of a small revolver pushed out of the hip pocket of his riding breeches. + +"What's that, Uncle Tom?" Marian asked, pointing to the pistol. + +Cairy drew out the pistol and held it up, with a slight flourish,--"A +family weapon!" + +Holding the pony with one hand and pointing the revolver at a blossom on a +magnolia tree a few paces away, he fired and the white petals came +fluttering down. A second report and another blossom fell. The pony jumped +and snorted, but it did not disturb Cairy's aim. A third blossom fell, and +then he quickly shot the descending bud which had been cut by the previous +shot. + +"Steady hand!" Lane commented. + +"It's an old habit of mine to carry it and practise when I have a chance," +Cairy remarked, breaking the revolver. After extracting the shells, he +handed the pistol to Isabelle. + +"Made in Paris," she read from the chased plate. + +"Yes; it's a pretty toy, don't you think?" + +"It's a curious shell," Lane remarked, picking up one of the empty shells +from the ground. + +"Yes, I have to have them specially made," replied Cairy. The toy was +handed around and much admired. + +"But, Uncle Tom," Marian asked, "why do you carry a pistol?" + +"In the South gentlemen always carry pistols." + +"Is it very dangerous in the South?" the little girl inquired. Then the +older people laughed, and Cairy looked rather foolish. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI + + +Isabelle's house appeared to Vickers more like a comfortable country club +or a small country inn than the home of a private family. There were people +coming and going all the time. Isabelle seemed at a loss without a peopled +background. "And they are all interesting," she said to her brother, with a +touch of pride. "It's the only place Dickie will stay in for any time,--he +says I have the best collection of fakes he knows. But he likes to chatter +with them." So far as Vickers could discover there was no special principle +of selection in the conglomerate, except the vague test of being +"interesting." Besides Gossom and Cairy and the Silvers and others of their +kind there were Lane's business friends, officers of the railroad, and men +that Lane brought out to golf with or ride with. "We don't go in for +society," Isabelle explained, affecting a stronger indifference than she +really felt for "merely smart people." She wished her brother to know that +she had profited by her two years of New York life to gather about her +intellectual people, and there was much clever talk at the Farm, to which +Vickers paid an amused and bewildered attention. + +From the quiet corner where Vickers looked on at the household these autumn +days, he watched especially his brother-in-law. Lane could be at the Farm +only for occasional days, and while there spent his time out of doors. He +took small part in all the talk, but it amused him as might the vivacity of +children. He left this personal side of life to Isabelle, content to be a +passive spectator of the little game she was playing; while, as Vickers +judged from what Gossom and other men said, Lane himself had a more +absorbing, more exacting game in the city, which he was playing with +eminent success. "He's getting close to the king row," Isabelle remarked to +Vickers. "He was offered the presidency of some road of other out West. But +we couldn't go out there again to live!" + +Of all the men and women who came and went at the Farm, Cairy was on the +most familiar footing. "He likes to work here," Isabelle explained with +pride, "and he amuses John more than most of them. Besides he's very useful +about the place!" Surely Cairy was pleasantly installed, as Conny would +have said. He was delightful with the governess, who admired his light +conversation, and he selected the pony for Molly, and taught her how to +fall off gracefully. At domestic moments, which were rare, he effaced +himself. He had a curious position in the household that puzzled Vickers. +He was accepted,--the wheels ran around him. Isabelle treated him with a +jesting, frank intimacy, very much as she treated her brother. And Lane, +Vickers decided, had distinctly more use for the limping Southerner than he +had for most of the people at the house, including his brother-in-law. +Cairy was so completely out of Lane's world of men that there were no +standards of comparison for him. + +"Tommy distracts John," Isabelle explained to Vickers. "If he only could +play golf, I suspect John would steal him from me." + +As the weeks passed, however, Cairy was drawn to the city for longer +intervals. The new play had not been a "Broadway success," in fact had been +taken off after a short run, and Cairy's money affairs were again becoming +precarious, much to Isabella's frank concern. "It's the wretched condition +of the theatre in our country," she complained; "to think that a few +miserable newspaper writers can ruin the chances of a dramatist's being +heard! The managers become panicky, if it doesn't go at once in New +York.... There is a chance that they will put it on again somewhere West. +But Tom hasn't much hope." + +"It was a poor play," Fosdick asserted flatly. "And if you hadn't heard it +line by line from Tommy, you'd know it." + +"No," Isabelle protested; "it's lots cleverer than most things." + +"I do not know how it may be with the theatre," Gossom put in at this +point, "but more literature is produced in America to-day than at any other +time in the world's history!" + +"Oh!" + +"I don't mean mere rhetoric, college writing," Gossom went on dogmatically; +"but literature, things with blood to them in the language people use. Why, +in the story contest for the _People's_ there were at least fourteen +masterpieces submitted, and not one of them had any reference to Europe, or +showed the least trace of what college professors call style!" He turned +triumphantly to Vickers, to whom he had previously expressed his conviction +that America was the future home of all the arts. This was an idea in his +patriotic creed. + +"Fourteen masterpieces,--really!" drawled Fosdick; "and how much a +masterpiece, please? I must send you mine." + +They had heard a good deal this week about the famous story contest for the +_People's_. Gossom, ignoring the gibe, continued:-- + +"We publish every month real literature, the kind that comes from the +heart, the stuff of real human lives. I am tired of this silly whine about +the lack of opportunities for genius in our country." + +"It's hard on Tommy, all the same," Isabelle concluded irrelevantly. + + * * * * * + +When Isabelle moved to New York for the winter, Vickers took Delia Conry +West, and on his return after a few days in the city went up to the Farm, +where Miss Betterton and Marian were still staying. He felt relieved to get +back once more in the country that was now beginning its quiet preparation +for winter. New York had overwhelmed him. And he could not but see that in +the city he was something of a problem to his beautiful sister. She would +not hear of his going to a hotel, and yet he was in the way. Vickers was +not one to make an impression. And one must make an impression of some sort +in Isabelle's world. "He's quaint, your brother," one of her friends said. +"But he's locked up and the key is lost. Most people won't take the time to +hunt for keys or even open doors." + +If he had been more the artist, had some _reclame_ from his music or his +father's money, he would have fitted in. But a subdued little man with a +sandy beard, sunken eyes, and careless clothes,--no, he was queer, but not +"interesting"! And Isabelle, in spite of her strong sisterly loyalty, was +relieved when she saw him off at the station. + +"It's nice to think of you, Vickie, snugged away in the country, going +around in your velveteens with a pipe in your mouth. Keep an eye on Molly +and don't flirt with Miss Betterton. I shall run up often, and you must +come down for the opera when you want to hear some music." + +So Vickers betook himself to his seclusion. And when he did run down for +the opera, he found himself jostled in a worse jam of Isabelle's +occupations than before. Although she had just recovered from her yearly +attack of grippe, and felt perpetually tired and exhausted, she kept up +with her engagement list, besides going once a week to her boys' club, +where Cairy helped her. Seeing her tired, restless face, Vickers asked her +why she did it all. + +"I should die if I sat back!" she answered irritably. "But I'll go up to +the Farm with you for a day or two.... There's the masseuse--you'll find +some cigarettes in the drawer--don't forget we dine early."... + +When they reached the Farm the next afternoon, little Marian met them in +the hall, dressed like a white doll. "How do you do, Mamma?" she said very +prettily. "I am so glad to see you." And she held up her face to be kissed. +The little girl had thought all day of her mother's coming, but she had not +dared to ask the governess to meet her at the station; for "Mamma has not +arranged it so." Isabelle looked at her daughter critically, and said in +French to the English governess, "Too pale, my darling,--does she take her +ride each day?" + +Everything about the child's life was perfectly arranged, all thought out, +from her baths and her frocks and her meals to the books she read and the +friends she should have. But to Vickers, who stood near, it seemed a +strange meeting between mother and child. + +That evening as Isabelle lay with a new novel before the blazing fire, too +listless to read, Vickers remarked:--"A month of this would make you over, +sis!" + +"A month! I couldn't stand it a week, even with you, Bud!" + +"You can't stand the other." + +"Come! The rest cure idea is exploded. The thing to do nowadays is to vary +your pursuits, employ different sets of nerve centres!" Isabelle quoted the +famous Potts with a mocking smile. "You should see how I vary my +activities,--I use a different group of cells every half hour. You don't +know how well I look after the family, too. I don't neglect my job. Aren't +you comfortable here? Mary cooks very well, I think." + +"Oh, Mary is all right.... You may shift the batteries, Belle, but you are +burning up the wires, all the same." + +"Let 'em burn, then,--I've got to live! ... You see, Vickie, I am not the +little girl you remember. I've grown up! When I was _down_ after Marian +came, I did such a lot of thinking.... I was simple when I married, Vick. I +thought John and I would spoon out the days,--at least read together and be +great chums. But it didn't turn out that way; you can't live that sort of +life these days, and it would be stupid. Each one has to develop his +talent, you see, and then combine the gifts. John thinks and breathes the +railroad. And when he's off duty, he wants to exercise or go to the theatre +and see some fool show. That's natural, too,--he works hard. But I can't do +_his_ things,--so I do _my_ things. He doesn't care.... To tell the truth, +Vick, I suspect John wouldn't miss me before the month's bills were due, if +I should elope to-night!" + +"I am not so sure, Belle." + +"Of course--don't I know? That must be the case with most marriages, and +it's a good thing, perhaps." + +Vickers suggested softly, "The Colonel's way was good, too." + +"Women didn't expect much those days. They do now. Even the architects +recognize the change in our habits." + +"I don't believe the architects have made any changes for Alice." + +"Oh, Alice!" Isabelle pished. "She is just a mother." + +"And the millions of others, men and women?" + +"They copy those on top as fast as they can; the simple life is either +compulsory or an affectation.... I don't care for the unexpressive +millions!" + +(A Cairy phrase--Vickers recognized the mint.) + +Isabelle rose, and drawing aside the curtains, looked out at the snowy +gardens. + +"See how stunning the poplars are against the white background! Do you +remember, Vick, when we ran away from school and came up here together and +spent two nights while they were telegraphing all over for us? What a +different world! ... Well, good night, Buddie,--I must sleep up." + +Yes, thought Vickers, as he lighted another cigarette, what a different +world! That summed up the months since he had taken the steamer at +Cherbourg. And what different people! Had he stood still while Isabelle and +her friends had expanded, thrown off limitations? For her and the many +others like her the intoxicating feast of life seemed to have been spread +lavishly. With full purses and never sated appetites they rushed to the +tables,--all running, out of breath, scenting opportunities, avid to know, +to feel, to experience! "We are passing through another renaissance," as +Gossom had pompously phrased it. But with what a difference! + +To-night as Vickers looked across the still white fields from his bedroom +window, he was less concerned with the national aspect of the case than +with what this renaissance meant to his sister. Even with the aid of the +great Potts she could never keep the nerve-racking pace that she had set +herself. And yet in actual expenditure of force, either mental or physical, +what Isabelle did or any of her acquaintance did was not enough to tire +healthy, full-grown women. There was maladjustment somewhere. What ailed +this race that was so rapidly becoming neurasthenic as it flowered? + +One thing was plain,--that so far as emotional satisfaction went Isabelle's +marriage was null, merely a convention like furniture. And John, as Vickers +recognized in spite of his brother-in-law's indifference to him, was a good +husband. Fortunately Isabelle, in spite of all her talk, was not the kind +to fill an empty heart with another love.... A suspicion of that had +crossed his mental vision, but had faded almost at once.... Isabelle was +another sort! + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII + + +Isabelle had agreed to stay out the week with Vickers, and in spite of her +restlessness, her desire to be doing something new, the old self in +her--the frank, girlish, affectionate self--revived, as it always did when +she was alone with her brother. He said:-- + +"I am coming to agree with Potts, Isabelle; you need to elope." + +As she looked up, startled, he added, "With me! I'll take you to South +America and bring you back a new woman." + +"South America,--no thanks, brother." + +"Then stay here."... + +That evening Isabelle was called to the telephone, and when she came back +her face was solemn. + +"Percy Woodyard died last night,--pneumonia after grippe. Too bad! I +haven't seen him this winter; he has been very delicate.... I must go in +for the funeral." + +"I thought you and Cornelia were intimate," Vickers remarked; "but I +haven't heard you mention her name since I've been home." + +"We were, at first; but I haven't seen much of her the last two years.... +Too bad--poor Percy! Conny has killed him." + +"What do you mean?" + +"Oh, she's worked him to death,--made him do this and that. Tom says--" +Isabelle hesitated. + +"What does Tom say?" + +"Oh, there was a lot of talk about something he did,--went off to Europe +two years ago, and let some politicians make money--I don't know just what. +But he's not been the same since,--he had to drop out of politics." + +This and something more Isabelle had learned from Cairy, who had heard the +gossip among men. Woodyard was too unimportant a man to occupy the public +eye, even when it was a question of a "gigantic steal," for more than a few +brief hours. By the time the Woodyards had returned from that journey to +Europe, so hastily undertaken, the public had forgotten about the Northern +Mill Company's franchise. But the men who follow things and remember, knew; +and Percy Woodyard, when he sailed up the bay on his return in October, +realized that politically he was buried,--that is, in the manner of +politics he cared about. And he could never explain, not to his most +intimate friend, how he had happened to desert his post, to betray the +trust of men who trusted him. It was small satisfaction to believe that it +would all have happened just as it had, even if he had been there to block +the path of the determined majority. + +When, towards the end of their stay abroad, a letter had come from the +Senator in regard to "that post in the diplomatic service," Percy had +flatly refused to consider it. + +"But why, Percy?" his wife had asked gently,--she was very sweet with him +since their departure from New York. "We can afford it,--you know my +property is paying very well." + +In the look that Percy gave her, Conny saw that her husband had plumbed her +farther than she had ever dreamed him capable of doing, and she trembled. + +"I am going back to New York to practise my profession," Percy said +shortly. "And we shall live henceforth on _my_ earnings, solely." + +So he had gone back to his office and taken up his practice. He was a +delicate man, and the past year had strained him. His practice was not +large or especially profitable. The franchise scandal stood in his way, and +though he succeeded in securing some of the corporation practice that he +had once scorned, his earnings were never sufficient to support the +establishment Conny had created. In fact that able mistress of domestic +finance increased the establishment by buying a place at Lancaster for +their country home. She was weaving a new web for her life and Percy's, the +political one having failed, and no doubt she would have succeeded this +time in making the strands hold, had it not been for Percy's delicate +health. He faded out, the inner fire having been quenched.... + +At the funeral Isabelle was surprised to see Cairy. Without knowing +anything exactly about it, she had inferred that in some way Conny had +treated Tom "badly," and she had not seen him the last times she had been +at the Woodyards'. But that had not been lately. Somehow they had drifted +apart these last two years,--their paths had diverged in the great social +whirlpool ever more and more, though they still retained certain common +friends, like the Silvers, who exchanged the current small gossip of each +other's doings. Isabelle was thinking of this and many other things about +Percy and Conny as she waited in the still drawing-room for the funeral +service to begin. She had admired Conny extravagantly at first, and now +though she tried to think of her in her widowhood sympathetically, she +found it impossible to pity her; while of poor Percy, who it seemed "had +been too much under his wife's thumb," she thought affectionately.... The +hall and the two rooms on this floor where the people had gathered were +exquisitely prepared. Isabelle could see Conny's masterly hand in it +all.... + +When the service was over, Isabelle waited to speak with Conny, who had +asked her to stay. She saw Cairy go out behind the Senator, who looked +properly grave and concerned, his black frock-coat setting off the thick +white hair on the back of his head. + + * * * * * + +The two men walked down the street together, and the Senator, who had met +Cairy at the Woodyards' a number of times and remembered him as an inmate +of the house, fell to talking about the dead man. + +"Poor chap!" he said meditatively; "he had fine talents." + +"Yes," assented Cairy. "It was a shame!" His tone left it doubtful just +what was a shame, but the Senator, assuming that it was Percy's untimely +death, continued:-- + +"And yet Woodyard seemed to lack something to give practical effectiveness +to his abilities. He did not have the power to 'seize that tide which leads +men on to victory,'--to size up the situation comprehensively, you know." +(The Senator was fond of quoting inaccurately and then paraphrasing from +his own accumulated wisdom.) + +"I doubt very much," he went on expansively, "if he would have counted for +as much as he did--as he promised at one time to count at any rate--if it +had not been for his wife. Mrs. Woodyard is a very remarkable woman!" + +"Yes, she is a strong personality,--she was the stronger of the two +undoubtedly." + +"She has one of the ablest business heads that I know of," the Senator said +emphatically, nodding his own head. "She should have been a man." + +"One would miss a good deal--if she were a man," suggested Cairy. + +"Her beauty,--yes, very striking. But she has the brain of a man." + +"She is the sort that must make destiny," agreed Cairy, feeling a literary +satisfaction in the phrase and also pride that he could so generously play +chorus to the Senator's praise. "I fancy she will marry again!" + +He wondered at the moment whether the Senator might not venture now to +break his long widowerhood. The great man, stopping on the step of his +club, remarked in a curious voice:-- + +"I suppose so,--she is young and beautiful, and would naturally not +consider her life ended. And yet--she is not exactly the sort of woman a +man marries--unless he is very young!" + +With a nod and a little smile the Senator went briskly up the steps of his +club. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVIII + + +The time, almost the very minute, when Isabelle realized the peculiar +feeling she had come to have for Cairy, was strangely clear to her. It was +shortly after Percy Woodyard's funeral. She had been to Lakewood with her +mother, and having left her comfortably settled in her favorite hotel, had +taken the train for New York. Tom was to go to the theatre with her that +evening, and had suggested that they dine at a little down-town restaurant +he used to frequent when he was Gossom's slave. He was to meet her at the +ferry. + +She had been thinking of Percy Woodyard, of Fosdick's epithet for +Conny,--the Vampire. And there flashed across her the thought, 'She will +try to get Tom back!' (Cairy had told her that he had gone to the funeral +because Conny had written him a little note.) 'And she is so bad for him, +so bad for any man!' Then looking out on the brown March landscape, she +felt a pleasant glow of expectation, of something desirable in immediate +prospect, which she did not at once attribute to anything more definite +than the fact she was partly rested, after her two days at Lakewood. But +when in the stream of outgoing passengers that filled the echoing terminal +she caught sight of Tom's face, looking expectantly over the heads of the +crowd, a vivid ray of joy darted through her. + +'He's here!' she thought. 'He has come across the ferry to meet me!' + +She smiled and waved the bunch of violets she was wearing--those he had +sent down to Lakewood for her--above the intervening heads. + +"I thought I would snatch a few more minutes," he explained, as they walked +slowly through the long hall to the ferry. + +The bleak March day had suddenly turned into something warm and gay for +her; the dreary terminal was a spot to linger in. + +"That was very nice of you," she replied gently, "and so are these!" + +She held up his flowers, and in the look they exchanged they went far in +that progress of emotional friendship, the steps of which Cairy knew so +well.... The city was already lighted, tier on tier of twinkling dots in +the great hives across the river, and as they sat out on the upper deck of +the ferry for the sake of fresh air, Isabelle thought she had never seen +the city so marvellous. There was an enchantment in the moving lights on +the river, the millions of fixed lights in the long city. The scent of sea +water reached them, strong and vital, with its ever witching associations +of far-off lands. Isabelle turned and met Cairy's eyes looking intently at +her. + +"You seem so joyous to-night!" he said almost reproachfully. + +She smiled at him softly. + +"But I am! Very happy!--it is good to be here." + +That was it,--the nearest description of her feeling,--it was all so good. +She was so much alive! And as she settled back against the hard seat, she +thought pleasantly of the hours to come, the dinner, the play, and then Tom +would take her home and they would talk it over.... She had asked John to +go with her. But he had declined on the ground that "he could not stand +Ibsen," and "he didn't like that little Russian actress." Really, he was +getting very lazy, Isabelle had thought. He would probably smoke too many +cigars, yawn over a book, and go to bed at ten. That was what he usually +did unless he went out to a public dinner, or brought home work from the +office, or had late business meetings. Nothing for his wife, she had +complained once.... + +This wonderful feeling of light-hearted content continued as they walked +through dingy streets to the old brick building that housed the restaurant, +half cafe, half saloon, where the Irish wife of the Italian proprietor +cooked extraordinary Italian dishes, according to Cairy. He was pensive. He +had been generally subdued this winter on account of the failure of his +play. And, after all, the London opening had not come about. It was +distinctly "his off year"--and he found it hard to work. "Nothing so takes +the ideas out of you as failure," he had said, "and nothing makes you feel +that you can do things like success." + +Isabelle wanted to help him; she was afraid that he was being troubled +again by lack of money. Art and letters were badly paid, and Tom, she was +forced to admit, was not provident. + +"But you are happy to-night," she had said coaxingly on the ferry. "We are +going to be very gay, and forget things!" That was what Tom did for +her,--made her forget things, and return to the mood of youth where all +seemed shining and gay. She did that for him, too,--amused and distracted +him, with her little impetuosities and girlish frankness. "You are such a +good fellow--you put heart into a man," he had said. + +She was happy that she could affect him, could really influence a man whose +talent she admired, whom she believed in. + +"I can't do anything to John except make him yawn!" she had replied. + +So to-night she devoted her happy mood to brushing away care from Cairy's +mind, and by the time they were seated at the little table with its coarse, +wine-stained napkin, he was laughing at her, teasing her about growing +stout, of which she pretended to be greatly afraid. + +"Oh, dear!" she sighed. "I stand after meals and roll and roll, and Mrs. +Peet pounds me until I am black and blue, but it's no use. I am gaining! +Tommy, you'll have to find some younger woman to say your pretty things to. +I am growing frightfully homely! ... That's one comfort with John,--he'll +never know it." + +As the meal passed their mood became serious once more and tender, as it +had been when they met. Cairy, lighting cigarette after cigarette, talked +on, about himself. He was very despondent. He had made a hard fight for +recognition; he thought he had won. And then had come discouragement after +discouragement. It looked as if he should be obliged to accept an offer +from a new magazine that was advertising its way into notice and do some +articles for them. No, he would not go back to be Gossom's private +mouthpiece at any price! + +He did not whine,--Cairy never did that exactly; but he presented himself +for sympathy. The odds had been against him from the start. And Isabelle +was touched by this very need for sunshine in the emotional temperament of +the man. Conny had appraised the possibilities of his talent intelligently, +believed that if properly exploited he should "arrive." But Isabelle was +moved by the possibilities of his failure,--a much more dangerous state of +mind.... + +It was long past the time for the theatre, but Cairy made no move. It was +pleasantly quiet in the little room. The few diners had left long ago, and +the debilitated old waiter had retreated to the bar. Cairy had said, "If it +were not for you, for what you give me--" And she had thought, 'Yes, what I +_might_ give him, what he needs! And we are so happy together here.'... + +Another hour passed. The waiter had returned and clattered dishes +suggestively and departed again. Cairy had not finished saying all he +wanted to say.... There were long pauses between his words, of which even +the least carried feeling. Isabelle, her pretty mutinous face touched with +tenderness, listened, one hand resting on the table. Cairy covered the hand +with his, and at the touch of his warm fingers Isabelle flushed. Was it the +mood of this day, or something deeper in her nature that thrilled at this +touch as she had never thrilled before in her life? It held her there +listening to his words, her breath coming tightly. She wanted to run away, +and she did not move.... The love that he was telling her she seemed to +have heard whispering in her heart long before.... + +The way to Isabelle's heart was through pity, the desire to give, as with +many women. Cairy felt it instinctively, and followed the path. Few men can +blaze their way to glory, but all can offer the opportunity to a woman of +splendid sacrifice in love! + +"You know I care!" she had murmured. "But, oh, Tom--" That "but" and the +sigh covered much,--John, the little girl, the world as it is. If she could +only give John what she felt she could give this man, with his pleading +eyes that said, 'With you I should be happy, I should conquer!' + +"I know--I ask for nothing!" + +(Nothing! Oh, damnable lover's lie! Do the Cairys ever content themselves +with nothings?) + +"I will do as you say--in all things. We will forget this talk, or I will +not go back to the Farm; but I am glad we understand!" + +"No, no," she said quickly. "You must come to the Farm! It must be just as +it has been." She knew as she said the words that it could never be "as it +had been." She liked to close her eyes now to the dark future; but after +to-day, after this new sense of tenderness and love, the old complexion of +life must be different. + +Cairy still held her hand. As she looked up with misty eyes, very happy and +very miserable, a little figure came into the empty room followed by the +waiter, and glanced aimlessly about for a table. + +"Vick!" Isabelle cried in astonishment. "Where did you come from?" + +Vickers had a music score under his arm, and he tapped it as he stood above +them at the end of their table. + +"I've been trying over some things with Lester at his rooms, and came in +for a bite. I thought you were going to the theatre, Belle?" + +"We are!" Cairy exclaimed, looking at his watch. "We'll about get the last +act!" + +Vickers fingered his roll and did not look at Isabelle. Suddenly she +cried:-- + +"Take me home, Vick! ... Good-night, Tom!" + +She hurried nervously from the place. Vickers hailed a cab, and as they +rode up town neither spoke at first. Then Vickers put his hand on hers and +held it very tightly. She knew that he had seen--her tear-stained eyes and +Cairy's intent face,--that he had seen and understood. + +"Vick," she moaned, "why is it all such a muddle? Life--what you mean to +do, and what you can do! John doesn't care, doesn't understand.... I'm such +a fool, Vick!" She leaned her head on his shoulder and sobbed. He caressed +her hand gently, saying nothing. + +He was sure now that he was called somewhere on this earth. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIX + + +When Lane went West early in May for his annual inspection trip, Isabelle +moved to the Farm for the season. She was wan and listless. She had talked +of going abroad with Vickers, but had suddenly given up the plan. A box of +books arrived with her, and she announced to Vickers that she meant to read +Italian with him; she must do something to kill the time. But the first +evening when she opened a volume of French plays, she dropped it; books +could not hold her attention any more. All the little details about her +house annoyed her,--nothing went smoothly. The governess must be changed. +Her French was horrible. Marian followed her mother about with great eyes, +fearful of annoying her, yet fascinated. Isabelle exclaimed in sudden +irritation: + +"Haven't you anything to do, Molly!" And to Vickers she complained: +"Children nowadays seem perfectly helpless. Unless they are provided with +amusement every minute, they dawdle about, waiting for you to do something +for them. Miss Betterton should make Molly more independent." + +And the next day in a fit of compunction she arranged to have a children's +party, sending the motor for some ten-mile-away neighbors. + +In her mood she found even Vickers unsatisfactory: "Now you have me here, +cooped up, you don't say a word to me. You are as bad as John. That +portentous silence is a husband's privilege, Vick.... You and I used to +_jaser_ all the time. Other men don't find me dull, anyway. They tell me +things!" + +She pouted like a child. Vickers recalled that when she had said something +like this one day at breakfast with John and Cairy present, Lane had lifted +his head from his plate and remarked with a quiet man's irony: "The other +men are specials,--they go on for an occasion. The husband's is a steady +job." + +Cairy had laughed immoderately. Isabelle had laughed with him,--"Yes, I +suppose you are all alike; you would slump every morning at breakfast." + +This spring Isabelle had grown tired, even of people. "Conny wants to come +next month, and I suppose I must have her. I wanted Margaret, but she has +got to take the little boy up to some place in the country and can't +come.... There's a woman, now," she mused to Vickers, her mind departing on +a train of association with Margaret Pole. "I wonder how she possibly +stands life with that husband of hers. He's getting worse all the time. +Drinks now! Margaret asked me if John could give him something in the +railroad, and John sent him out to a place in the country where he would be +out of harm.... There's marriage for you! Margaret is the most intelligent +woman I know, and full of life if she had only half a chance to express +herself. But everything is ruined by that mistake she made years ago. If I +were she--" Isabelle waved a rebellious hand expressively. "I thought at +one time that she was in love with Rob Falkner,--she saw a lot of him. But +he has gone off to Panama. Margaret won't say a word about him; perhaps she +is in love with him still,--who knows!" + +One day she looked up from a book at Vickers, who was at the piano, and +observed casually:-- + +"Tom is coming up to spend June when he gets back from the South." She +waited for an expected remark, and then added, "If you dislike him as much +as you used to, you had better take that time for Fosdick." + +"Do you want me to go?" + +"No,--only I thought it might be more comfortable for you--" + +"Cairy doesn't make me uncomfortable." + +"Oh--well, you needn't worry about me, brother dear!" She blushed and came +across the room to kiss him. "I am well harnessed; I shan't break the +traces--yet."... + +It was a summerish day, and at luncheon Isabelle seemed less moody than she +had been since her arrival. "Let's take one of our old long rides,--just +ride anywhere, as we used to," she suggested. + +They talked of many things that afternoon, slipping back into the past and +rising again to the present. Vickers, happy in her quieter, gentler mood, +talked of himself, the impressions he had received these months in his own +land. + +"What strikes me most," he said, "at least with the people that I see about +you, Belle, is the sharp line between work and play. I see you women all at +play, and I see the men only when they are wearily watching you play or +playing with you. One hears so much about business in America. But with you +people it is as much suppressed as if your husbands and brothers went off +to some other star every day to do their work and came back at night by air +ship to see their families." + +"Business is dull," Isabelle explained,--"most men's business. They want to +forget it themselves when they leave the office." + +"But it is so much a part of life," Vickers protested, thinking of the +hours and days Lane spent absorbed in affairs that Isabelle hadn't the +curiosity to inquire about. + +"Too much over here." + +"And not enough."... + +On their way home in the cool of the evening, over a hilly road through the +leafing woods, their horses walked close together, and Isabelle, putting an +arm affectionately on her brother's shoulder, mused:-- + +"One feels so differently different days. Tell me, Vick, what makes the +atmosphere,--the color of life in one's mind? Look over there, along the +river. See all the gray mist and up above on the mountain the purple--and +to-morrow it will be gone! Changing, always changing! It's just so inside +you; the color is changing all the time.... There is the old village. It +doesn't seem to me any longer the place you and I lived in as boy and girl, +the place I was married from." + +"It is we who have changed, not Grafton." + +"Of course; it's what we have lived through, felt,--and we can't get back! +We can't get back,--that's the sad thing." + +"Perhaps it isn't best to get back altogether." + +Isabelle gave him a curious glance, and then in a hard tone remarked, +"Sometimes I think, Vick, that in spite of your experience you are the same +soft, sentimental youth you were before it happened." + +"Not quite." + +"Did you ever regret it, Vick?" + +"Yes," he said bravely, "many times; but I am not so sure now that one can +really regret anything that is done out of one's full impulse." + +"Well,--that was different," Isabelle remarked vaguely. "Did you ever +consider, Vick, that marriage is an awful problem for a woman,--any woman +who has individuality, who thinks? ... A man takes it easily. If it doesn't +fit, why he hangs it up in the closet, so to speak, and takes it out just +as little as he has to. But a woman,--she must wear it pretty much all of +the time--or give it up altogether. It's unfair to the woman. If she wants +to be loved, and there are precious few women who don't want a man to love +them, don't want that first of all, and her husband hasn't time to bother +with love,--what does she get out of marriage? I know what you are going to +say! John loves me, when he thinks about it, and I have my child, and I am +happily placed, in very comfortable circumstances, and--" + +"I wasn't going to say that," Vickers interrupted. + +"But," continued Isabelle, with rising intensity, "you know that has +nothing to do with happiness.... One might as well be married to a +hitching-post as to John. Women simply don't count in his life. Sometimes I +wish they did--that he would make me jealous! Give him the railroad and +golf and a man to talk to, and he is perfectly happy.... Where do I come +in?" + +"Where do you put yourself in?" + +"As housekeeper," she laughed, the mood breaking. "The Johnstons are coming +next week, all eight--or is it nine?--of them. I must go over and see that +the place is opened.... They live like tramps, with one servant, but they +seem very happy. He is awfully good, but dull,--John is a social lion +compared to Steve Johnston. John says he's very clever in his line. And as +for Alice, she always was big, but she's become enormous. I don't suppose +she ever thinks of anything so frivolous as a waist-line." + +"I thought she had a beautiful face." + +"Vick, I don't believe that you know whether a woman has a figure! You +might write a _Symphonie Colossale_ with Alice and her brood as the theme." + +"She is Woman," suggested Vickers. + +"Woman!" Isabelle scoffed. "Why is child-bearing considered the +corner-stone of womanhood? Having young? Cows do that. Women are good for +other things,--inspiration, love, perhaps!" She curved her pretty lips at +her brother mockingly.... + +There were two telegrams at the house. Isabelle, opening the first, read +aloud, "Reach Grafton three thirty, Tuesday. John," and dropped it on the +table. The other she did not read aloud, but telephoned an answer to the +telegraph office. Later she remarked casually, "Tom finds he can get back +earlier; he'll be here by the end of the week." + + + + +CHAPTER L + + +"There's Steve," Isabelle said to Vickers, "coming across the meadow with +his boys. He is an old dear, so nice and fatherly!" + +The heavy man was plodding slowly along the path, the four boys frisking +around him in the tall June grass like puppies. + +"He has come to see John about some business. Let us take the boys and have +a swim in the pool!" + +Isabelle was gay and happy this morning with one of those rapid changes in +mood over night that had become habitual with her. When they returned from +their romp in the pool, the boys having departed to the stable in search of +further amusement, Lane and Johnston were still talking while they slowly +paced the brick terrace. + +"Still at it!" exclaimed Isabelle. "Goodness! what can it be to make John +talk as fast as that! Why, he hasn't said half as many words to me since +he's been back. Just look at 'em, Vick!" + + * * * * * + +Outside on the terrace Steve Johnston was saying, stuttering in his +endeavor to get hastily all the words he needed to express his feelings:-- + +"It's no use, Jack! I tell you I am sick of the whole business. I know it's +big pay,--more than I ever expected to earn in my life. But Alice and I +have been poor before, and I guess we can be poor again if it comes to +that." + +"A man with your obligations has no right to give up such an opportunity." + +"Alice is with me; we have talked the thing all through.... No, I may be a +jackass, but I can't see it any different. I don't like the business of +loading the dice,--that is all. I have stood behind the counter, so to +speak, and seen the dice loaded, fifteen years. But I wasn't responsible +myself. Now in this new place you offer me I should be IT,--the man who +loads.... I have been watching this thing for fifteen years. When I was a +rate clerk on the Canada Southern, I could guess how it was,--the little +fellows paid the rate as published and the big fellows didn't. Then when I +went into the A. and P. I came a step nearer, could watch how it was +done--didn't have to guess. Then I went with the Texas and Northern as +assistant to the traffic manager, and I loaded the dice--under orders. +Now--" + +"Now," interrupted Lane, "you'll take your orders from my office." + +"I know it,--that's part of the trouble, Jack!" the heavy man blurted out. +"You want a safe man out there, you say. I know what that means! I don't +want to talk good to you, Jack. But you see things differently from me."... + +"All this newspaper gossip and scandal has got on your nerves," Lane said +irritably. + +"No, it hasn't. And it isn't any fear of being pulled up before the +Commission. That doesn't mean anything to me.... No, I have seen it coming +ever since I was a clerk at sixty a month. And somehow I felt if it ever +got near enough me so that I should have to fix the game--for that's all it +amounts to, Jack, and you know it--why, I should have to get out. At last +it's got up to me, and so I am getting out!" + +The stolid man puffed with the exertion of expressing himself so fully, +inadequate as his confused sentences were to describe all that fermenting +mass of observation, impression, revulsion, disgust that his experience in +the rate-making side of his employment had stored up within him the last +fifteen years. Out of it had come a result--a resolve. And it was this that +Lane was combating heatedly. It was not merely that he liked Johnston +personally and did not want him "to make a fool of himself," as he had +expressed it, not altogether because he had made up his mind that the heavy +man's qualities were exactly what he needed for this position he had +offered him; rather, because the unexpected opposition, Johnston's +scruples, irritated him personally. It was a part of the sentimental +newspaper clamor, half ignorance, half envy, that he despised. When he had +used the words, "womanish hysteria," descriptive of the agitation against +the railroads, Steve had protested in the only humorous remark he was ever +known to make:-- + +"Do I look hysterical, Jack?" + +So the two men talked on. What they said would not have been wholly +understood by Isabelle, and would not have interested her. And yet it +contained more elements of pathos, of modern tragedy, than all the novels +she read and the plays she went to see. The homely, heavy man--"He looks +just like a bag of meal with a yellow pumpkin on top," Isabelle had +said--replied to a thrust by Lane:-- + +"Yes, maybe I shall fail in the lumber business. It's pretty late to swap +horses at forty-three. But Alice and I have talked it over, and we had +rather run that risk than the other--" + +"You mean?" + +"That I should do what Satters of the L. P. has just testified he's been +doing--under orders--to make traffic." + +It was a shrewd blow. Satters was a clear case where the powerful L. P. +road had been caught breaking the rate law by an ingenious device that +aroused admiration in the railroad world. He had been fined a few thousand +dollars, which was a cheap forfeit. This reference to Satters closed the +discussion. + +"I hope you will find the lumber business all you want it to suit your +conscience, Steve. Come in and have some lunch!" + +The heavy man refused,--he was in no mood for one of Isabelle's luncheons, +and he had but one more day of vacation. Gathering up his brood, he +retraced his way across the meadow, the four small boys following in his +track. + +"Well!" exclaimed Isabelle to her husband. "What was your business all +about? Luncheon has been waiting half an hour. It was as good as a play +watching you two out there. Steve looked really awake." + +"He was awake all right," Lane replied. + +"Tell us all about it--there, Vick, see if he doesn't put me off with 'Just +business, my dear'!" + +"It _was_ just business. Steve has declined a good position I made for him, +at nearly twice the salary he has ever earned." + +"And all those boys to put through college!" + +"What was it?" Vickers asked. + +Something made Lane unusually communicative,--his irritation with Steve or +his wife's taunt. + +"Did you ever hear of the Interstate Commerce Commission?" he asked his +brother-in-law, in a slightly ironical tone. And he began to state the +situation, and stated it remarkably well from his point of view, explaining +the spirit of interference that had been growing throughout the country +with railroad management, corporation management in general,--its +disastrous effect if persisted in, and also "emotionalism" in the press. He +talked very ably, and held his wife's attention. Isabelle said:-- + +"But it was rather fine of Steve, if he felt that way!" + +"He's kept his mouth shut fifteen years." + +"He's slow, is Steve, but when he sees--he acts!" + +Vickers said nothing, but a warm sense of comfort spread through his heart, +as he thought, 'Splendid!--she did that for him, Alice.' + +"I hope he won't come to grief in the lumber business," Lane concluded. +"Steve is not fitted for general business. And he can't have much capital. +Only their savings." + +Then he yawned and went to the library for a cigar, dismissing Steve and +his scruples and the railroad business altogether from his mind, in the +manner of a well-trained man of affairs, who has learned that it is a +useless waste of energy to speculate on what has been done and to wonder +why men should feel and act as they do feel and act. + +And Isabelle, with a "It will come hard on Alice!"--went off to cut some +flowers for the vases, still light-hearted, humming a gay little French +song that Tom had taught her. + + * * * * * + +If it were hard for Alice Johnston, the large woman did not betray it when +Vickers saw her a few days later. With the help of her oldest boy she was +unharnessing the horse from the Concord buggy. + +"You see," she explained, as Vickers tried to put the head halter on the +horse, "we are economizing on Joe, who used to do the chores when he did +not forget them, which was every other day!" + +When Vickers referred to Steve's new business, she said cheerfully:-- + +"I think there is a good chance of success. The men Steve is going in with +have bought a large tract of land in the southern part of Missouri. They +have experience in the lumber business, and Steve is to look after the city +end,--he's well known in St. Louis." + +"I do so hope it will go right," Vickers remarked, wishing that in some way +he could help in this brave venture. + +"Yes!" Alice smiled. "It had to be, this risk,--you know there come times +when there is only one thing to do. If Steve hadn't taken the step, left +the railroad, I think that neither of us would have been happy afterwards. +But these are anxious days for us. We have put all the money in our +stocking into it,--seven thousand dollars; all we have in the world but +this old farm, which the Colonel gave me. I wanted to mortgage the farm, +but Steve wouldn't let me. So all our eggs are in one basket. Not so many +eggs, but we can't spare one!" + +She laughed serenely, with a broad sense of humor over the family venture, +yet with a full realization of its risk. Vickers marvelled at her strong +faith in Steve, in the future, in life. As he had said to Isabelle, this +was Woman, one who had learned the deeper lessons of life from her +children, from her birth-pangs. + +She took him into the vegetable garden which she and the children had +planted. "We are truck-farmers," she explained. "I have the potatoes, +little Steve the corn, Ezra the peas, and so on to Tot, who looks after the +carrots and beets because they are close to the ground and don't need much +attention. The family is cultivating on shares." + +They walked through the rows of green vegetables that were growing lustily +in the June weather, and then turned back to the house. Alice stopped to +fasten up a riotous branch of woodbine that had poked its way through a +screen. + +"If the worst comes to the worst, I shall turn farmer in earnest and raise +vegetables for my wealthy neighbors. And there is the orchard! We have been +poor so much of the time that we know what it means.... I have no doubt it +will come out all right,--and we don't worry, Steve and I. We aren't +ambitious enough to worry." + +It was a pleasant place, the Price farm, tucked away in a fold of gentle +hills, at the end of a grassy lane. The bees hummed in the apple trees, and +the June breeze swayed through the house, where all the windows and doors +were open. Vickers, looking at the calm, healthy woman sitting beside him +on the porch, did not pity the Johnstons, nor fear for them. Alice, surely, +was the kind that no great misfortune could live with long. + +"I am really a farmer,--it's all the blood in my veins," Alice remarked. +"And when I get back here summers, the soil seems to speak to me. I've +known horses and cows and pigs and crops and seasons for centuries. It's +only skin deep, the city coating, and is easily scraped off.... Your +father, Vickers, was a wise man. He gave me the exact thing that was best +for me when he died,--this old farm of my people. Just as he had given me +the best thing in my life,--my education. If he had done more, I should be +less able to get along now." + +They had dinner, a noisy meal at which the children served in turns, Alice +sitting like a queen bee at the head of the table, governing the brood. +Vickers liked these midday meals with the chattering, chirping youngsters. + +"And how has it been with the music?" Alice asked. "Have you been able to +work? You spent most of the winter up here, didn't you?" + +"I have done some things," Vickers said; "not much. I am not at home yet, +and what seems familiar is this, the past. But I shall get broken in, no +doubt. And," he added thoughtfully, "I have come to see that this is the +place for me--for the present." + +"I am glad," she said softly. + + + + +CHAPTER LI + + +As Vickers crossed the village on his way back from the Johnstons', Lane +emerged from the telegraph office and joined him. On the rare occasions +when they were thrown together alone like this, John Lane's taciturnity +reached to positive dumbness. Vickers supposed that his brother-in-law +disliked him, possibly despised him. It was, however, a case of absolute +non-understanding. It must remain forever a problem to the man with a firm +grasp on concrete fact how any one could do what Vickers had done, except +through "woman-weakness," for which Lane had no tolerance. Moreover, the +quiet little man, with his dull eyes, who moved about as if his faculties +had been forgotten in the morning when he got up, who could sit for hours +dawdling at the piano striking chords, or staring at the keys, seemed +merely queer to the man of action. "I wish he would do something," Isabelle +had said of Vickers, using his own words of her, and her husband had +replied, "Do? ... What could he do!" + +"I've just been to see Alice," Vickers remarked timidly. "She takes Steve's +change of business very calmly." + +"She doesn't know," Lane answered curtly. "And I am afraid he doesn't +either." + +He let the topic drop, and they walked on in silence, turning off at the +stile into an old by-path that led up to the new house through a small +grove of beeches, which Isabelle had saved at her brother's plea from the +destructive hand of the landscape artist. Vickers was thinking about Lane. +He understood his brother-in-law as little as the latter comprehended him. +He had often wondered these past months: 'Doesn't he _see_ what is +happening to Isabelle? Doesn't he care! It isn't surely helpless yet,--they +aren't so wholly incompatible, and Isabelle is frank, is honest!' But if +Lane saw the state of affairs in his house, he never showed that he +perceived it. His manner with his wife was placid,--although, as Isabelle +often said, he was very little with her. But that state of separation in +which the two lived seemed less due to incompatibility than to the accident +of the way they lived. Lane was a very busy man with much on his mind; he +had no time for emotional tribulations. + +Since his return from the West--these five days which he had allowed +himself as vacation--he had been irritable at times, easily disturbed, as +he had been with Steve Johnston, but never short with his wife. Vickers +supposed that some business affair was weighing on him, and as was his +habit he locked it up tight within.... + +And Lane would never have told what it was that gnawed at him, last of all +to Vickers. It was pride that made him seem not to see, not to know the +change that had come into his house. And something more, which might be +found only in this kind of American gentleman,--a deep well of loyalty to +his wife, a feeling of: 'What she wishes, no matter what it may be to me!' +'I shall trust her to the last, and if she fails me, I will still trust her +to be true to herself.' A chivalry this, unsuspected by Vickers! Something +of that old admiration for his wife which made him feel that he should +provide her with the opportunities she craved, that somehow she had stooped +in marrying him, still survived in spite of his successful career. And +love? To define the sort of sentiment Lane at forty-two had for his wife, +modified by his activities, by his lack of children, by her evident lack of +passion for him, would not be an easy matter. But that he loved her more +deeply than mere pride, than habit would account for, was sure. In that +afterglow between men and women which comes when the storms of life have +been lived through, Lane might be found a sufficient lover.... + +As they entered the narrow path that led through the beechwood, Lane +stepped aside to allow Vickers to precede him. The afternoon sun falling on +the glossy new leaves made a pleasant light. They had come to a point in +the path where the western wing of the house was visible through the trees +when suddenly Vickers stopped, hesitated, as if he would turn back, and +said aloud hastily: "I always like this side of the house best,--don't you? +It is quieter, less open than the south facade, more _intime_--" He talked +on aimlessly, blocking the path, staring at the house, gesticulating. When +he moved, he glanced at Lane's face.... + +Just below in a hollow where a stone bench had been placed, Isabelle was +sitting with Cairy, his arm about her, her eyes looking up at him, +something gay and happy in the face like that little French song she was +singing these days, as if a voice had stilled the restless craving in her, +had touched to life that dead pulse, which had refused to beat for her +husband.... This was what Vickers had seen, and it was on his lips to say, +"When did Cairy come? Isabelle did not tell me." But instead he had +faltered out nonsense, while the two, hearing his voice, betook themselves +to the upper terrace. Had her husband seen them? Vickers wondered. +Something in the man's perfect control, his manner of listening to +Vickers's phrases, made him feel that he had seen--all. But Lane in his +ordinary monosyllabic manner pointed to a nest of ground sparrows beside +the path. "Guess we had better move this establishment to a safer place," +he remarked, as he carefully put the nest into the thicket. + +When they reached the hall, Isabelle, followed by Cairy, entered from the +opposite door. "Hello, Tom; when did you get in?" Lane asked in his +ordinary equable voice. "I sent your message, Isabelle." And he went to +dress for dinner. + + * * * * * + +The dinner that night of the three men and the woman was tense and still at +first. All the radiance had faded from Isabelle's face, leaving it white, +and she moved as if she were numb. Vickers, watching her face, was sad at +heart, miserable as he had been since he had seen her and Cairy together. +Already it had gone so far! ... Cairy was talkative, as always, telling +stories of his trip to the South. At some light jeer over the California +railroad situation, Lane suddenly spoke:-- + +"That is only one side, Tom. There is another." + +Ordinarily he would have laughed at Cairy's flippant handling of the topics +of the day. But to-night he was ready to challenge. + +"The public doesn't want to hear the other side, it seems," Cairy retorted +quickly. + +Lane looked at him slowly as he might at a mosquito that he purposed to +crush. "I think that some of the public wants to hear all sides," he +replied quietly. "Let us see what the facts are."... + +To-night he did not intend to be silenced by trivialities. Cairy had given +him an opening on his own ground,--the vast field of fact. And he talked +astonishingly well, with a grip not merely of the much-discussed railroad +situation, but of business in general, economic conditions in America and +abroad,--the trend of development. He talked in a large and leisurely way +all through the courses, and when Cairy would interpose some objection, his +judicious consideration eddied about it with a deferential sweep, then +tossed it high on the shore of his buttressed conclusions. Vickers listened +in astonishment to the argument, while Isabelle, her hands clasped tight +before her, did not eat, but shifted her eyes from her husband's face to +Cairy's and back again as the talk flowed. + +... "And granted," Lane said by way of conclusion, having thoroughly +riddled Cairy's contentions, "that in some cases there has been trickery +and fraud, is that any reason why we should indict the corporate management +of all great properties? Even if all the law-breaking of which our roads +are accused could be proved to be true, nevertheless any philosophic +investigator would conclude that the good they have done--the efficient +service for civilization--far outbalances the wrong--" + +"Useful thieves and parasites!" Cairy interposed. + +"Yes,--if you like to put it in those words," Lane resumed quietly. "The +law of payment for service in this world of ours is not a simple one. For +large services and great sacrifices, the rewards must be large. For large +risks and daring efforts, the pay must be alluring. Every excellence of a +high degree costs,--every advance is made at the sacrifice of a lower order +of good." + +"Isn't that a pleasant defence for crime?" Isabelle asked. + +Lane looked at his wife for a long moment of complete silence. + +"Haven't you observed that people break laws, and seem to feel that they +are justified in doing so by the force of higher laws?" + +Isabelle's eyes fell. He had seen, Vickers knew,--not only this afternoon, +but all along! ... Presently they rose from the table, and as they passed +out of the room Isabelle's scarf fell from her neck. Lane and Cairy stooped +to pick it up. Cairy had his hands on it first, but in some way it was the +husband who took possession of it and handed it to the wife. Her hand +trembled as she took it from him, and she hurried to her room. + +"If you are interested in this matter of the Pacific roads, Tom," Lane +continued, handing Cairy the cigarette box, "I will have my secretary look +up the data and send it out here.... You will be with us some time, I +suppose?" + +Cairy mumbled his thanks. + +After this scene Vickers felt nothing but admiration for his +brother-in-law. The man knew the risks. He cared,--yes, he cared! Vickers +was very sure of that. At dinner it had been a sort of modern duel, as if, +with perfect courtesy and openness, Lane had taken the opportunity to try +conclusions with the rival his wife had chosen to give him,--to tease him +with his rapier, to turn his mind to her gaze.... And yet, even he must +know how useless victory was to him, victory of this nature. Isabella did +not love Cairy because of his intellectual grasp, though in the matters she +cared for he seemed brilliant. + +'It's to be a fight between them,' thought Vickers. 'He is giving the other +one every chance. Oh, it is magnificent, this way of winning one's wife. +But the danger in it!' And Vickers knew now that Lane scorned to hold a +woman, even his wife, in any other way. His wife should not be bound to him +by oath, nor by custom, nor even by their child. Nor would he plead for +himself in this contest. Against the other man, he would play merely +himself,--the decent years of their common life, their home, her own heart. +And he was losing,--Vickers felt sure of that. + + + + +CHAPTER LII + + +Did he know that he had virtually lost when at the end of his brief +vacation he went back to the city, leaving his rival alone in the field? +During those tense days Vickers's admiration for the man grew. He was good +tempered and considerate, even of Cairy. Lane had always been a pleasant +host, and now instead of avoiding Cairy he seemed to seek his society, made +an effort to talk to him about his work, and advised him shrewdly in a +certain transaction with a theatrical manager. + +"If she should go away with Cairy," Vickers said to himself, "he will look +out for them always!" + +Husband and wife, so Vickers judged, did not talk together during all this +time. Perhaps they did not dare to meet the issue openly. At any rate when +Isabelle proposed driving John to the station the last night, he said +kindly, "It's raining, my dear,--I think you had better not." So he kissed +her in the hall before the others, made some commonplace suggestion about +the place, and with his bag in hand left, nodding to them all as he got +into the carriage. Isabelle, who had appeared dazed these days, as if, her +heart and mind occupied in desperate inner struggle, her body lived +mechanically, left the two men to themselves and went to her room. And +shortly afterwards Cairy, who had become subdued, thoughtful, pleaded work +and went upstairs. + + * * * * * + +When Vickers rose early the next morning, the country was swathed in a thin +white mist. The elevation on which the house stood just pierced the fog, +and, here and there below, the head of a tall pine emerged. Vickers had +slept badly with a suffocating sense of impending danger. When he stepped +out of the drawing-room on the terrace, the coolness of the damp fog and +the stillness of the June morning not yet broken by bird notes soothed his +troubled mind. All this silent beauty, serenely ordered nature--and +tumultuous man! Out of the earthy elements of which man was compounded, he +had sucked passions which drove him hither and yon.... As he walked towards +the west garden, the window above the terrace opened, and Isabelle, dressed +in her morning clothes, looked down on her brother. + +"I heard your step, Vick," she said in a whisper. Her face in the gray +light was colorless, and her eyes were dull, veiled. "Wait for me, Bud!" + +In a few moments she appeared, covered with a gray cloak, a soft +saffron-colored veil drawn about her head. Slipping one hand under his +arm,--her little fingers tightening on his flesh,--she led the way through +the garden to the beech copse, which was filled with mist, then down to the +stone bench, where she and Cairy had sat that other afternoon. + +"How still it is!" she murmured, shivering slightly. She looked back to the +copse, vague in the mist, and said: "Do you remember the tent we had here +in the summers? We slept in it one night.... It was then I used to say that +I was going to marry you, brother, and live with you for always because +nobody else could be half so nice.... I wish I had! Oh, how I wish I had! +We should have been happy, you and I. And it would have been better for +both of us." + +She smiled at him wanly. He understood the reference she made to his +misadventure, but said nothing. Suddenly she leaned her head on his +shoulder. + +"Vick, dear, do you think that any one could care enough to forgive +everything? Do you love me enough, so you would love me, no matter what I +did? ... That's real love, the only kind, that loves because it must and +forgives because it loves! Could you, Vick? Could you?" + +Vickers smoothed back her rumpled hair and drew the veil over it. + +"You know that nothing would make any difference to me." + +"Ah, you don't know! But perhaps you could--" Then raising her head she +spoke with a harder voice. "But that's weak. One must expect to pay for +what one does,--pay everything. Oh, my God!" + +The fog had retreated slowly from their level. They stood on the edge +looking into its depth. Suddenly Vickers exclaimed with energy:-- + +"You must end this, Isabelle! It will kill you." + +"I wish it might!" + +"End it!" and he added slowly, "Send him away--or let me take you away!" + +"I--I--can't,--Vick!" she cried. "It has got beyond me.... It is not just +for myself--just me. It's for _him_, too. He needs me. I could do so much +for him! And here I can do nothing." + +"And John?" + +"Oh, John! He doesn't care, really--" + +"Don't say that!" + +"If he did--" + +"Isabelle, he saw you and Tom, here, the afternoon Tom came!" + +She flushed and drew herself away from her brother's arms. + +"I know it--it was the first time that--that anything happened! ... If he +cared, why didn't he say something then, do something, strike me--" + +"That is not right, Belle; you know he is not that kind of animal." + +"If a man cares for a woman, he hasn't such godlike control! ... No, John +wants to preserve appearances, to have things around him smooth,--he's too +cold to care!" + +"That's ungenerous." + +"Haven't I lived with him years enough to know what is in his heart? He +hates scandal. That's his nature,--he doesn't want unpleasant words, a +fuss. There won't be any, either.... But I'm not the calculating kind, +Vick. If I do it, I do it for the whole world to know and to see. I'm not +Conny,--no sneaking compromises; I'll do it as you did it,--for the whole +world to see and know." + +"But you'll not do it!" + +"You think I haven't the courage? You don't know me, Vick. I am not a girl +any longer. I am thirty-two, and I know life _now_, my life at any rate.... +It was all wrong between John and me from the beginning,--yes, from the +beginning!" + +"What makes you say that! You don't really believe it in your heart. You +loved John when you married him. You were happy with him afterwards." + +"I don't believe that any girl, no matter what experience she has had, can +really love a man before she is married to him. I was sentimental, +romantic, and I thought my liking for a man was love. I wanted to +love,--all girls do. But I didn't know enough to love. It is all blind, +blind! I might have had that feeling about other men, the feeling I had for +John before.... Then comes marriage, and it's luck, all luck, whether love +comes, whether it is right--the thing for you--the only one. Sometimes it +is,--often enough for those who don't ask much, perhaps. But it was _wrong_ +for John and me. I knew it from the first days,--those when we tried to +think we were happiest. I have never confessed this to a human +being,--never to John. But it was so, Vick! I didn't know then what was the +matter--why it was wrong. But a woman suspects then.... Those first days I +was wretched,--I wanted to cry out to him: 'Can't you see it is wrong? You +and I must part; our way is not the same!' But he seemed content. And there +was father and mother and everything to hold us to the mistake. And of +course I felt that it might come in time, that somehow it was my fault. I +even thought that love as I wanted it was impossible, could never exist for +a woman.... So the child came, and I went through the motions. And the gap +grew between us each year as I came to be a woman. I saw the gap, but I +thought it was always so, almost always, between husbands and wives, and I +went on going through the motions.... That was why I was ill,--yes, the +real reason, because we were not fitted to be married. Because I tried to +do something against nature,--tried to live married to a man who wasn't +really my husband!" + +Her voice sank exhausted. Never before even to herself had she said it +all,--summed up that within her which must justify her revolt. Vickers felt +the hot truth to her of her words; but granted the truth, was it enough? + +Before he could speak she went on wearily, as if compelled:-- + +"But it might have gone on so until the end, until I died. Perhaps I could +have got used to it, living like that, and fussed around like other women +over amusements and charities and houses,--all the sawdust stuffing of +life--and become a useless old woman, and not cared, not known." + +She drew a deep breath. + +"But you see--I know _now_--what the other is! I have known since"--her +voice sank to a whisper--"that afternoon when I kissed him for the first +time." She shuddered. "I am not a stick, Vick! I--am a woman! ... No, don't +say it!" She clasped his arm tightly. "You don't like Tom. You can't +understand. He may not be what I feel he is--he may be less of a man for +men than John. But I think it makes little difference to a woman so long as +she loves--what the man is to others. To her he is _all_ men!" + +With this cry her voice softened, and now she spoke calmly. "And you see I +can give him something! I can give HIM love and joy. And more--I could make +it possible for him to do what he wants to do with his life. I would go +with him to some beautiful spot, where he could be all that he has it in +him to be, and I could watch and love. Oh, we should be enough, he and I!" + +"Dear, that you can never tell! ... It was not enough for us--for her. You +can't tell when you are like this, ready to give all, whether it's what the +other most needs or really wants." + +In spite of Isabelle's doubting smile, Vickers hurried on,--willing now to +show his scar. + +"I have never told you how it was over there all these years. I could not +speak of it.... I thought _we_ should be enough, as you say. We had our +love and our music.... But we weren't enough, almost from the start. She +was unhappy. She really wanted those things we had given up, which she +might have had if it had been otherwise--I mean if she had been my wife. I +was too much of a fool to see that at once. I didn't want divorce and +marriage--there were difficulties in the way, too. We had thrown over the +world, defied it. I didn't care to sneak back into the fold.... Our love +turned bad. All the sentiment and lofty feeling somehow went out of it. We +became two animals, tied together first by our passion, and afterwards +by--the situation. I can't tell you all. It was killing.... It did kill the +best in me." + +"It was _her_ fault. The woman makes the kind of love always." + +"No, she might have been different, another way! But I tell you the facts. +She became dissatisfied, restless. She was unfaithful to me. I knew it, and +I shielded her--because in part I had made her what she was. But it was +awful. And at the end she went away with that other man. He will leave her. +Then she'll take another.... Love turns sour, I tell you--love taken that +way. Life becomes just curdled milk. And it eats you like poison. Look at +me,--the marrow of a man is all gone!" + +"Dear Vick, it was all _her_ fault. Any decent woman would have made you +happy,--you would have worked, written great music,--lived a large life." + +His story did not touch her except with pity for him. To her thinking each +case was distinct, and her lips curved unconsciously into a smile, as if +she were picturing how different it would be with _them_.... + +The fog had broken, and was rising from the meadows below, revealing the +trees and the sun. The birds had begun to sing in the beeches. It was fresh +and cool and moist before the warmth of the coming day. Isabelle drew deep +breaths and loosened her scarf. + +Vickers sat silent, miserable. As he had said to Alice, the wreck of his +life, where he had got knowledge so dearly, availed nothing when most he +would have it count for another. + +"No, Vick! Whatever happens it will be our own fate, nobody's else--and I +want it!" + +There was cool deliberation in her tone as if the resolve had been made +already. + +"Not John's fate, too?" + +"He's not the kind to let a thing like this upset him long. While the +railroad runs and the housekeeper stays--" + +"And Molly's fate?" + +"Of course I have thought about Marian. There are ways. It is often done. +She would be with me until she went to school, which won't be long, now." + +"But just think what it would mean to her if her mother left her father." + +"Oh, not so much, perhaps! I have been a good mother.... And why should I +kill the twenty, thirty, maybe forty years left of my life for a child's +sentiment for her mother? Very likely by the time she grows up, people will +think differently about marriage." + +She talked rapidly, as if eager to round all the corners. + +"She may even decide to do the same thing some day." + +"And you would want her to?" + +"Yes! Rather than have the kind of marriage I have had." + +"Isabelle!" + +"You are an old sentimental dreamer, Vick. You don't understand modern +life. And you don't know women--they're lots more like men, too, than you +think. They write such fool things about women. There are so many silly +ideas about them that they don't dare to be themselves half the time, +except a few like Margaret. She is honest with herself. Of course she loves +Rob Falkner. He's in Panama now, but when he gets back I have no doubt +Margaret will go and live with him. And she's got three children!" + +"Isabelle, you aren't Margaret Pole or Cornelia Woodyard or any other woman +but yourself. There are some things _you_ can't do. I know you. There's the +same twist in us both. You simply can't do this! You think you can, and you +talk like this to me to make yourself think that you can.... But when it +comes to the point, when you pack your bag, you know you will just unpack +it again--and darn the stockings!" + +"No, no!" Isabelle laughed in spite of herself; "I can't--I won't.... Why +do I sniffle so like this? It's your fault, Vick; you always stir the +pathetic note in me, you old fraud!" + +She was crying now in long sobs, the tears falling to his hand. + +"I know you because we are built the same foolish, idiotic way. There are +many women who can play that game, who can live one way for ten or a dozen +years, and then leave all that they have been--without ever looking back. +But you are not one of them. I am afraid you and I are sentimentalists. +It's a bad thing to be, Belle, but we can't help ourselves. We want the +freedom of our feelings, but we want to keep a halo about them. You talked +of cutting down these beeches. But you would never let one be touched, not +one." + +"I'll have 'em all cut down to-morrow," Isabelle murmured through her +tears. + +"Then you'll cry over them! No, Belle, it's no use going dead against your +nature--the way you were made to run. You may like to soar, but you were +meant to walk." + +"You think there is nothing to me,--that I haven't a soul!" + +"I know the soul." + +Isabella flung her arms about her brother and clung there, breathing hard. +The long night had worn her out with its incessant alternation of doubt and +resolve, endlessly weaving through her brain. + +"Better to suffer on in this cloudy world than to make others suffer," he +murmured. + +"Don't talk! I am so tired--so tired.".... + +From the hillside below came a whistled note, then the bar of a song, like +a bird call. Some workman on the place going to his work, Vickers thought. +It was repeated, and suddenly Isabelle took her arms from his neck,--her +eyes clear and a look of determination on her lips. + +"No, Vick; you don't convince me.... You did the other thing when it came +to you. Perhaps we _are_ alike. Well, then, I shall do it! I shall dare to +live!".... + +And with that last defiance,-the curt expression of the floating beliefs +which she had acquired,--she turned towards the house. + +"Come, it is breakfast time." + +She waited for him to rise and join her. For several silent moments they +lingered to look at Dog Mountain across the river, as if they were looking +at it for the last time, at something they had both so much loved. + +"You are dear, brother," she murmured, taking his hand. "But don't lecture +me. You see I am a woman now!" + +And looking into her grave, tear-stained face, Vickers saw that he had +lost. She had made her resolution; she would "dare to live," and that life +would be with Cairy! His heart was sad. Though he had tried to free himself +of his old dislike of Cairy and see him through Isabelle's eyes, it was +useless. He read Tom Cairy's excitable, inflammable, lightly poised nature, +with the artist glamour in him that attracted women. He would be all +flame--for a time,--then dead until his flame was lighted before another +shrine. And Isabelle, proud, exacting, who had always been served,--no, it +was hopeless! Inevitable tragedy, to be waited for like the expected +motions of nature! + +And beneath this misery for Isabelle was the bitterest of human +feelings,--personal defeat, personal inadequacy. 'If I had been another!' +"Don't lecture me!" she had said almost coldly. The spiritual power of +guidance had gone from him, because of what he had done. Inwardly he felt +that it had gone. That was part of the "marrow of the man" that had been +burned out. The soul of him was impotent; he was a shell, something dead, +that could not kindle another to life. + +'I could have saved her,' he thought. 'Once I could have saved her. She has +found me lacking _now_, when she needs me most!' + +The whistle sounded nearer. + +"Will you do one thing for me, Isabelle?" + +"All--but one thing!" + +"Let me know first." + +"You will know." + +Cairy was coming down the terrace, cigarette in hand. His auburn hair shone +in the sunlight. After his sleep, his bath, his cup of early coffee, he was +bright with physical content, and he felt the beauty of the misty morning +in every sense. Seeing the brother and sister coming from the beeches +together, he scrutinized them quickly; like the perfect egotist, he was +swiftly measuring what this particular conjunction of personalities might +mean to him. Then he limped towards them, his face in smiles, and bowing in +mock veneration, he lay at Isabelle's feet a rose still dewy with mist. + +Vickers turned on his heel, his face twitching. But Isabelle with parted +lips and gleaming eyes looked at the man, her whole soul glad, as a woman +looks who is blind to all but one thought,--'I love him.' + +"The breath of the morn," Cairy said, lifting the rose. "The morn of +morns,--this is to be a great day, my lady! I read it in your eyes." + + + + +CHAPTER LIII + + +It was still sultry at four o'clock in the afternoon, and the two men +walked slowly in the direction of the river. Cairy, who had been summoned +by telegram to the city, would have preferred to be driven to the junction +by Isabelle, but when Vickers had suggested that he knew a short cut by a +shady path along the river, he had felt obliged to accept the implied +invitation. He was debating why Price had suddenly evinced this desire to +be with him, for he felt sure that Vickers disliked him. But Isabelle had +shown plainly that she would like him to accept her brother's offer,--she +was too tired to go out again, she said, and the only horse that could be +used was a burden to drive. So he set forth on the two-mile walk this +oppressive afternoon, not in the best mood, determined to let Vickers do +the talking. + +They plodded across the meadow in silence, Cairy thinking of the interview +in the city, his spirits rising as they always soared at the slightest hint +of an "opening." "I'll make her take the play," he said to himself; "she +isn't much good as an actress, but I must get the thing on. I'll need the +money." He hoped to finish his business with this minor star, who had +expressed a desire to see him, and return to Grafton by the morning +express. Isabelle would be disappointed if he should not be back for +luncheon. + +Vickers's head was bent to the path. He had seized this chance of being +alone with Cairy, and now that they were beyond the danger of interruption +his blood beat uncomfortably in his head and he could not speak--for fear +of uttering the wrong word.... When they reached the river, the two men +paused involuntarily in the shade and looked back up the slope to the Farm, +lying in the warm haze on the brow of the hill. As they stood there, the +shutter of an upper chamber was drawn in, and Cairy smiled to himself. + +"The house looks well from here," he remarked. "It's a pleasant spot." + +"It is a dear old place!" Vickers answered, forgetting for the moment the +changes that Isabelle had wrought at the Farm. "It's grown into our +lives,--Isabelle's and mine. We used to come here as boy and girl in +vacations.... It was a day something like this when my sister was married. +I remember seeing her as she came out of the house and crossed the meadow +on my father's arm. We watched her from the green in front of the +chapel.... She was very beautiful--and happy!" + +"I can well imagine it," Cairy replied dryly, surprised at Vickers's sudden +loquacity on family matters. "But I suppose we ought to be moving on, +hadn't we, to get that express? You see I am a poor walker at the best." + +Vickers struck off by the river path, leading the way. Suddenly he stopped, +and with flushed face said:-- + +"Tom, I wish you wouldn't come back to-morrow!" + +"And why the devil--" + +"I know it isn't _my_ house, it isn't _my_ wife, it isn't _my_ affair. But, +Tom, my sister and I have been closer than most,--even husband and wife. I +love her,--well, that's neither here nor there!" + +"What are you driving at, may I ask?" Cairy demanded coldly. + +"What I am going to say isn't usual--it isn't conventional. But I don't +know any conventional manner of doing what I want to do. I think we have to +drop all that sometimes, and speak out like plain human beings. That's the +way I am going to speak to you,--as man to man.... I don't want to beat +about the bush, Tom. I think it would be better if you did not come back +to-morrow,--never came back to the Farm!" + +He had not said it as he meant to phrase it. He was aware that he had lost +ground by blurting it out like this. Cairy waited until he had lighted a +cigarette before he replied, with a laugh:-- + +"It is a little--brusque, your idea. May I ask why I am not to come back?" + +"You know well enough! ... I had hoped we could keep--other names out of +this." + +"We can't." + +"My sister is very unhappy--" + +"You think I make your sister unhappy?" + +"Yes." + +"I prefer to let her be the judge of that," Cairy retorted, walking ahead +stiffly and exaggerating his limp. + +"You know she cannot be a judge of what is best--just now." + +"I think she can judge of herself better than any--outsider!" + +Vickers flushed, controlled himself, and said almost humbly:-- + +"I know you care for her, Tom. We both do. So I thought we might discuss it +amicably." + +"This doesn't seem to me a discussable matter." + +"But anything that concerns one I love as I do Isabelle _must_ be +discussable in some way." + +"Your sister told me about her talk with you this morning.... You did your +best then, it seems. If you couldn't succeed in changing _her_ mind,--what +do you expect from me?" + +"That you will be generous! ... There are some things that Isabelle can't +see straight just now. She doesn't know herself, altogether." + +"I should think that her husband--" + +"Can't you feel his position? His lips are closed by his pride, by his +love!" + +"I should say, Vickers," Cairy remarked with a sneer, "that you had better +follow Lane's sensible course. This is a matter for the two most concerned +and for them alone to discuss.... With your experience you must understand +that ours is the situation which a mature man and a mature woman must +settle for themselves. Nothing that an outsider says can count." + +And turning around to face Vickers, he added slowly, "Isabelle and I will +do what seems best to us, just as under similar circumstances you did what +you thought was best for you without consulting anybody, as I remember." + +Vickers quivered as his eye met Cairy's glance, but he accepted the sneer +quietly. + +"The circumstances were not the same. And I may have learned that it is a +serious matter to do what you wish to do,--to take another man's wife, no +matter what the circumstances are." + +"Oh, that's a mere phrase. There's usually not much taking! When a woman is +unhappy in her marriage, when she can be happy with another man, when no +one can be really hurt--" + +"Somebody always is hurt." + +"The only thing I am greatly interested in is Isabelle's happiness, her +life. She has been stifled all these years of marriage, intellectually, +emotionally stifled. She has begun to live lately--we have both begun to +live. Do you think we shall give that up? Do you think any of your little +preachments can alter the life currents of two strong people who love and +find their fulfilment in each other? You know men and women very little if +you think so! We are living to-day at the threshold of a new social +epoch,--an honester one than the world has seen yet, thank God! Men and +women are daring to throw off the bonds of convention, to think for +themselves, and determine what is best for them, for their highest good, +undisturbed by the bogies so long held up. I will take my life, I will +live, I will not be suffocated by a false respect for my neighbor's +opinion." + +Cairy paused in the full career of his phrases. He was gesticulating with +his hands, almost forgetful of Vickers, launched as it were on a dramatic +monologue. He was accustomed thus to dramatize an emotional state, as those +of his temperament are wont to do, living in a world of their own feelings +imaginatively projected. While Vickers listened to Cairy's torrent of +words, he had but one thought: 'It's no use. He can't be reached that +way--any way!' + +A stone wall stopped their progress. As Cairy slowly dragged himself over +the wall, Vickers saw the outline of the pistol in the revolver pocket, and +remembered the afternoon when Cairy had shown them the weapon and displayed +his excellent marksmanship. And now, as then, the feeling of contempt that +the peaceable Anglo-Saxon has for the man who always goes armed in a +peaceable land came over him. + +Cairy resumed his monologue on the other side of the wall. + +"It is the silliest piece of barbaric tradition for a civilized man to +think that because a woman has once seen fit to give herself to him, she is +his possession for all time. Because she has gone through some form, some +ceremony, repeated a horrible oath that she doesn't understand, to say that +she belongs to that man, is _his_, like his horse or his house,--phew! +That's mere animalism. Human souls belong to themselves! Most of all the +soul of a delicately sensitive woman like Isabelle! She gives, and she can +take away. It's her duty to take herself back when she realizes that it no +longer means anything to her, that her life is degraded by--" + +"Rot!" Vickers exclaimed impatiently. He had scarcely heard what Cairy had +been saying. His sickening sense of failure, of impotency, when he wished +most for strength, had been succeeded by rage against the man, not because +of his fluent argument, but because of himself; not against his theory of +license, but against him. He saw Isabelle's life broken on the point of +this glib egotism. "We needn't discuss your theories. The one fact is that +my sister's life shall not be ruined by you!" + +Cairy, dropping back at once to his tone of worldly convention, replied +calmly:-- + +"That I think we shall have to let the lady decide for herself,--whether I +shall ruin her life or not. And I beg to point out that this topic is of +your own choosing. I regard it as an impertinence. Let us drop it. And if +you will point out the direction, I think I will hurry on by myself and get +my train." + +"My God, no! We won't drop it--not yet. Not until you have heard a little +more what I have in mind.... I think I know you, Cairy, better than my +sister knows you. Would you make love to a _poor_ woman, who had a lot of +children, and take _her_? Would you take her and her children, like a man, +and work for them? ... In this case you will be given what you want--" + +"I did not look for vulgarity from you! But with the _bourgeoisie_, I +suppose, it all comes down to dollars and cents. I have not considered Mrs. +Lane's circumstances." + +"It's not mere dollars and cents! Though that is a test,--what a man will +do for a woman, not what a woman will do for a man she loves and--pities." + +As Cairy shot an ugly glance at him, Vickers saw that he was fast angering +the man past all hope of influence. But he was careless now, having utterly +failed to avert evil from the one he loved most in the world, and he poured +out recklessly his bitter feeling:-- + +"The only success you have to offer a woman is success with other women! +That little nurse in the hospital, you remember? The one who took care of +you--" + +"If you merely wish to insult me--" the Southerner stammered. + +They were in the midst of a thicket of alders near the river, and the +sinking sun, falling through the young green leaves, mottled the path with +light and shade. The river, flushed with spring water, gurgled pleasantly +over pebbly shallows. It was very still and drowsy; the birds had not begun +their evening song. + +The two men faced each other, their hands clenched in their coat pockets, +and each read the hate in the other's face. + +"Insult you!" Vickers muttered. "Cairy, you are scum to me--scum!" + +Through the darkness of his rage a purpose was struggling--a blind +purpose--that urged him on. + +... "I don't know how many other women after the nurse have served to +fatten your ego. But you will never feed on my sister's blood while I +live!" + +He stepped closer unconsciously, and as he advanced Cairy retreated, taking +his clenched hand from his pocket. + +"Why don't you strike?" Vickers cried. + +Suddenly he knew that purpose; it had emerged with still clearness in his +hot brain. His heart whispered, 'She will never do it over my body!' And +the thought calmed him at once. He saw Cairy's trembling arm and angry +face. 'He'll shoot,' he said to himself coldly. 'It's in his blood, and +he's a coward. He'll shoot!' Standing very still, his hands in his pockets, +he looked quietly at the enraged man. He was master now! + +"Why don't you strike?" he repeated. + +And as the Southerner still hesitated, he added slowly:-- + +"Do you want to hear more?" + +The memory of old gossip came back to him. 'He is not the real Virginia +Cairy,' some one had said once; 'he has the taint,--that mountain branch of +the family,--the mother, you know, they say!' Very slowly Vickers spoke:-- + +"No decent man would want his sister living with a fellow whose mother--" + +As the words fell he could see it coming,--the sudden snatch backwards of +the arm, the little pistol not even raised elbow high. And in the drowsy +June day, with the flash of the shot, the thought leapt upwards in his +clear mind, 'At last I am not impotent--I have saved her!'.... + +And when he sank back into the meadow grass without a groan, seeing Cairy's +face mistily through the smoke, and behind him the blur of the sky, he +thought happily, 'She will never go to him, now--never!'--and then his eyes +closed. + + * * * * * + +It was after sunset when some men fishing along the river heard a groan and +hunting through the alders and swamp grass found Vickers, lying face down +in the thicket. One of the men knew who he was, and as they lifted him from +the pool of blood where he lay and felt the stiff fold of his coat, one +said:-- + +"He must have been here some time. He's lost an awful lot of blood! The +wound is low down." + +They looked about for the weapon in the dusk, and not finding it, took the +unconscious man into their boat and started up stream. + +"Suicide?" one queried. + +"Looks that way,--I'll go back after the pistol, later." + + * * * * * + +Isabelle had had tea with Marian and the governess out in the garden, and +afterwards strolled about through the beds, plucking a flower here and +there. To the agitation of the morning the calm of settled resolve had +succeeded. She looked at the house and the gardens thoughtfully, as one +looks who is about to depart on a long journey. In her heart was the +stillness after the storm, not joy,--that would come later when the step +was taken; when all was irrevocably settled. She thought quite methodically +of how it would all be,--what must be done to cut the cords of the old +life, to establish the new. John would see the necessity,--he would not +make difficulties. He might even be glad to have it all over! Of course her +mother would wail, but she would learn to accept. She would leave Molly at +first, and John naturally must have his share in her always. That could be +worked out later. As for the Farm, they might come back to it afterwards. +John had better stay on here for the present,--it was good for Molly. They +would probably live in the South, if they decided to live in America. She +would prefer London, however.... She was surprised at the sure way in which +she could think it all out. That must be because it was right and there was +no wavering in her purpose.... Poor Vick! he would care most. But he would +come to realize how much better it was thus, how much more right really +than to go dragging through a loveless, empty life. And when he saw her +happy with Tom--but she wished he liked Tom better. + +The failure of Vickers to return in time for tea had not troubled her. He +had a desultory, irregular habit of life. He might have stopped at Alice's +or even decided to go on to the city with Tom, or merely wandered off +across the country by himself.... + +In the last twilight three men came up the meadow path, carrying something +among them, walking slowly. Isabelle caught sight of them as they reached +the lower terrace and with her eyes fastened on them, trying to make out +the burden they were carrying so carefully, stood waiting before the house. + +"What is it?" she asked at last as the men drew nearer, seeing in the gloom +only the figures staggering slightly as they mounted the steps. + +"Your brother's been hurt, Mrs. Lane," a voice said. + +"Hurt!" That nameless fear of supernatural interference, the quiver of the +human nerve at the possible message from the infinite, stopped the beating +of her heart. + +"Yes'm--shot!" the voice said. "Where shall we take him?" + +They carried Vickers upstairs and placed him in Isabelle's bed, as she +directed. Bending over him, she tried to unbutton the stiff coat with her +trembling fingers, and suddenly she felt something warm--his blood. It was +red on her hand. She shuddered before an unknown horror, and with +mysterious speed the knowledge came to her heart that Fate had overtaken +her--here! + + + + +CHAPTER LIV + + +The doctors had come, probed for the bullet, and gone. They had not found +the bullet. The wound was crooked, they said, entering the fleshy part of +the abdomen, ranging upwards in the direction of the heart, then to the +back. The wounded man was still unconscious. There was a chance, so the New +York surgeon told Isabelle,--only they had not been able to locate the +bullet, and the heart was beating feebly. There had been a great loss of +blood. If he had been found earlier, perhaps--they did not know.... + +Outside on the drive the doctors exchanged glances, low words, and signs. +Accident? But how, the ball ranging upwards like that? He would have to be +on his knees. Well, then, suicide! Had the pistol been found? ... There +need be no scandal--the family was much loved in the village. Accident, of +course. The fellow was always odd, the local practitioner explained to the +city doctor, as he carried his distinguished colleague home in his car for +breakfast. There was that scandal with a woman in Venice. They said it was +all over, but you could never tell about those things.... + +Upstairs the nurse made ready the room for illness, while Isabelle sat by +the bed, watching her brother. Vickers was still unconscious, scarcely +breathing. The nurse, having tried a number of ways to get her out of the +room, now ignored her, and Isabelle sat in a kind of stupor, waiting for +that Fate which had overtaken her to be worked out. When the gray dawn of +the morning stole into the dark room, the nurse unbolted the shutters and +threw open the window. In the uncertain light Dog Mountain loomed large and +distant. Isabelle turned her head from Vickers's face and watched the +wooded peak as it came nearer and nearer in the deepening light.... It was +this hill that she and Vickers had climbed in the winter morning so long +ago! How wonderful it had been then, life, for them both, with glorious +possibilities of living! She had put forth her hands to grasp them, these +possibilities, one after another, to grasp them for herself. Now they had +come to an end--for both. There was no more to grasp.... + +When she turned back to the silent form by her side, she saw that Vickers +had opened his eyes. His face was very white and the eyes were buried deep +beneath the eyebrows as of a man long sick, and he lay motionless. But the +eyes had meaning in them; they were the eyes of the living. So brother and +sister looked into each other, thus, and without words, without a murmur, +it was all known between them. She understood! He had thrown his life into +the abyss before her that she might be kept to that vision they had had as +boy and girl. It was not to be for him. But for her! + +"Vick!" she whispered, falling on her knees by his side. For reply there +was that steady searching look, which spoke to unknown depths within her. +"Vick!" she moaned. The white lips of the dying man trembled, and a faint +flutter of breath crossed them--but no words. His fingers touched her hair. +When she looked at him again through her tears, the eyes were closed, and +the face bore an austere look of preoccupation, as of one withdrawn from +the business of life.... Afterwards the nurse touched the kneeling woman, +the doctor came, she was led away. She knew that Vickers was dead. + + * * * * * + +Late that afternoon there came a knock at the door of the room where +Isabelle was, and her husband, hearing no sound, entered. She looked up +wonderingly from the lounge where she lay. She did not know that John was +in the house, that he had been sent for. She was unaware what time had +elapsed since the evening before. + +"Isabelle," he said and stopped. She looked at him questioningly. The +irritation that of late his very presence had caused her she was not +conscious of now. All the irritations of life had been suddenly wiped out +in the great fact. As she looked at her husband's grave face, she saw it +with a new sense,--she saw what was behind it, as if she had had the power +given her to read beneath matter. She saw his concern, his real sorrow, his +consideration, the distress for her in the heart of this man, whom she had +thrust out of her life.... + +"Isabelle," he said very gently, hesitantly. "Tom has come--is +downstairs--wants to see you. He asked me if you would see him for a +moment." + +This also did not surprise her. She was silent for a moment, and her +husband said:-- + +"Do you want to see him?" + +"Yes," she replied finally. "I will see him.... I will go down at once." + +She rose and stepped towards the door. + +"Isabelle!" Her husband's voice broke. Still standing with one hand on the +knob of the door, he took from his pocket with the other a small pistol, +and held it towards her on the palm of his hand. "Isabelle," he said, "this +was in the river--near where they found him!" + +She looked at it calmly. It was that little gold and ivory chased toy which +she remembered Tom had used one afternoon to shoot the magnolia blossoms +with. She remembered it well. It was broken open, and a cartridge half +protruded from the breach. + +"I thought you should know," Lane added. + +"Yes," Isabelle whispered. "I know. I knew! ... But I will go down and see +him." + +Her husband replaced the pistol in his pocket and opened the door for her. + + * * * * * + +Cairy was waiting before the fireplace in the library, nervously pacing to +and fro across the rug. Would she see him? How much did she know? How much +did they all know? How much would she forgive? ... These questions had +racked him every hour since in a spasm of nervous terror he had flung the +pistol over the bushes and heard it splash in the river, and with one +terrified look at the wounded man, whom he had dragged into the thicket, +had got himself in some unremembered fashion to the junction in time for +the express. These and other considerations--what story should he +tell?--had racked him all through the evening, which he had been obliged to +spend with the actress, answering her silly objections to this and that in +his play. Then during the night it became clear to him that he must return +to the Farm in the morning as he had planned, as if nothing had happened. +His story would be that Vickers had turned back before they reached the +junction, and had borrowed his pistol to shoot at woodchucks.... Would +Isabelle believe this? She _must_ believe it! ... It took courage to walk +up to the familiar house, but he must see her. It was the only way. And he +had been steadying himself for his part ever since he had left the city. + +When Isabelle entered the room, she closed the door behind her and stood +with her back against it for support. She wore the same white dress that +she had had on when Cairy and Vickers had left her, not having changed it +for tea. It had across the breast a small red stain,--the stain of her +brother's blood. Cairy reached out his hands and started towards her, +crying:-- + +"Isabelle! Isabelle! how awful! Isabelle,--I--" She raised her arm as if to +forbid him to advance, and he stood still, his words dying on his lips. +Looking at him out of her weary eyes, Isabelle seemed to see through the +man, with that same curious insight that had come when she had read the +truth in her brother's eyes; the same insight that had enabled her to see +the kindness and the pity beneath her husband's impassive gravity. So now +she knew what he was going to say, the lie he would try to tell her. It was +as if she knew every secret corner of the man's soul, had known it always +really, and had merely veiled her eyes to him wilfully. Now the veil had +been torn aside. Had Vickers given her this power to see into the heart of +things, for always, so that the truths behind the veil she made should +never be hid? + +'Why does he try to lie to me?' she seemed to ask herself. 'It is so weak +to lie in this world where all becomes known.' She merely gazed at him in +wonder, seeing the deformed soul of the deformed body, eaten by egotism and +passions. And this last--cowardice! And he was the man she had loved! That +she had been ready to die for, to throw away all for, even the happiness of +others! ... It was all strangely dead. A body stood there before her in its +nakedness. + +"What do you want?" she demanded almost indifferently. + +"I had to see you!" He had forgotten his story, his emotion,--everything +beneath that piercing stare, which stripped him to the bone. + +"Haven't you--a word--" he muttered. + +Her eyes cried: 'I know. I know! I know ALL--even as those who are dead +know.' + +"Nothing!" she said. + +"Isabelle!" he cried, and moved nearer. But the warning hand stopped him +again, and the empty voice said, "Nothing!" + +Then he saw that it was all ended between them, that this brother's blood, +which stained her breast, lay forever between them, could not be crossed by +any human will. And more, that the verity of life itself lay like a +blinding light between them, revealing him and her and their love. It was +dead, that love which they had thought was sacred and eternal, in the clear +light of truth. + +Without a word he walked to the open window and stepped into the garden, +and his footstep on the gravel died away. Then Isabelle went back to the +dead body in her room above. + +On the terrace Lane was sitting beside his little girl, the father talking +in low tones to the child, explaining what is death. + + + + +PART SIX + + + +CHAPTER LV + + +It was a long, cold drive from the station at White River up into the +hills. In the gloom of the December afternoon the aspect of the austere, +pitiless northern winter was intensified. A thin crust of snow through +which the young pines and firs forced their green tips covered the dead +blackberry vines along the roadside. The ice of the brooks was broken in +the centre like cracked sheets of glass, revealing the black water gurgling +between the frozen banks. The road lay steadily uphill, and the two +rough-coated farm horses pulled heavily at the stiff harness, slipping +constantly in the track that was worn smooth and polished by the shoes of +the wood-sleds. As the valley fell behind, the country opened out in broad +sheets of snow-covered fields where frozen wisps of dead weeds fluttered +above the crust. Then came the woods, dark with "black growth," and more +distant hillsides, gray and black, where the leafless deciduous growth +mingled with the evergreens. At infrequent intervals along the road +appeared little farm-houses,--two rooms and an attic, with rickety +outhouses and barns, all banked with earth to protect them from the winter. +These were forlorn enough when they showed marks of life; but again and +again they were deserted, with their special air of decay, the wind sucking +through the paneless windows, the snow lying in unbroken drifts up to the +rotting sills. Sometimes a lane led from the highroad to where one or +perhaps two houses were hidden under the shelter of a hill, removed still +farther from the artery of life. Already the lamps had begun to glimmer +from these remote habitations, dotting the hillsides like widely scattered +candles. + +Lonely and desolate! These human beings lived in an isolation of snow and +frozen earth. So thought Isabelle Lane, chilled beneath the old fur robe, +cold to the heart.... Ahead the hills lifted with broader lines, higher, +more lonely, and the gray clouds almost touched their tops. In a cleft of +the range towards which the road was winding, there shone a saffron light, +the last effort of the December sun to break through the heavy sky. And for +a few moments there gleamed far away to the left a spot of bright light, +marvellously clear and illuming, where the white breast of a clearing on +the mountain had received these last few rays of sun. A warm golden pathway +led through the forest to it from the sun. That distant spot of sunny snow +was radiant, still, uplifting. Suddenly gloom again! The saffron glow faded +from the Pass between the hills, and the north wind drew down into the +valley, drifting the manes and the tails of the plodding horses. Soft wisps +of snow circled and fell,--the heralding flakes of winter storm.... + +It seemed to Isabelle that she had been journeying on like this for +uncounted time, and would plod on like this always,--chilled, numbed to the +heart, moving through a frozen, lonely world far from the voices of men, +remote from the multitudinous feet bent on the joyous errands of life.... +She had sunk into a lethargy of body and mind, in which the cheerless +physical atmosphere reflected the condition of being within,--something +empty or dead, with a dull ache instead of consciousness.... + +The sleigh surmounted the long hill, swept at a trot around the edge of the +mountain through dark woods, then out into an unexpected plateau of open +fields. There was a cluster of lights in a small village, and they came to +a sudden stop before a little brick house that was swathed in spruce +boughs, like a blanket drawn close about the feet, to keep out the storm. +The door opened and against the lighted room a small black figure stood +out. Isabelle, stumbling numbly up the steps, fell into the arms of +Margaret Pole. + +"You must be nearly dead, poor dear! I have lighted a fire in your room +upstairs.... I am so glad you have come. I have hoped for it so long!" + +When they were before the blazing wood fire, Margaret unfastened Isabelle's +long cloak and they stood, both in black, pale in the firelight, and looked +at each other, then embraced without a word. + +"I wanted to come," Isabelle said at last when she was settled into the old +arm-chair beside the fire, "when you first wrote. But I was too ill. I +seemed to have lost not only strength but will to move.... It's good to be +here." + +"They are the nicest people, these Shorts! He's a wheelwright and +blacksmith, and she used to teach school. It's all very plain, like one of +our mountain places in Virginia; but it's heavenly peaceful--removed. +You'll feel in a day or two that you have left everything behind you, down +there below!" + +"And the children?" + +"They are splendidly. And Ned is really getting better--the doctor has +worked a miracle for the poor little man. We think it won't be long now +before he can walk and do what the others do. And he is happy. He used to +have sullen fits,--resented his misfortune just like a grown person. He's +different now!" + +There was a buoyant note in Margaret's deep tones. Pale as she was in her +black dress and slight,--"the mere spirit of a woman," as Falkner had +called her,--there was a gentler curve to the lips, less chafing in the +sunken eyes. + +'I suppose it is a great relief,' thought Isabelle,--'Larry's death, even +with all its horror,--she can breathe once more, poor Margaret!' + +"Tell me!" she said idly, as Margaret wheeled the lounge to the fire for +Isabelle to rest on; "however did you happen to come up here to the land's +end in Vermont--or is it Canada?" + +"Grosvenor is just inside the line.... Why, it was the doctor--Dr. Renault, +you know, the one who operated on Ned. I wanted to be near him. It was in +July after Larry's death that we came, and I haven't been away since. And I +shall stay, always perhaps, at least as long as the doctor can do anything +for the little man. And for me.... I like it. At first it seemed a bit +lonesome and far away, this tiny village shut in among the hills, with +nobody to talk to. But after a time you come to see a lot just here in this +mite of a village. One's glasses become adjusted, as the doctor says, and +you can see what you have never taken the time to see before. There's a +stirring world up here on Grosvenor Flat! And the country is so +lovely,--bigger and sterner than my old Virginia hills, but not unlike +them." + +"And why does your wonderful doctor live out of the world like this?" + +"Dr. Renault used to be in New York, you know,--had his own private +hospital there for his operations. He had to leave the city and his work +because he was threatened with consumption. For a year he went the usual +round of cures,--to the Adirondacks, out West; and he told me that one +night while he was camping on the plains in Arizona, lying awake watching +the stars, it came to him suddenly that the one thing for him to do was to +stop this health-hunt, go back where he came from, and go to work--and +forget he was ill until he died. The next morning he broke camp, rode out +to the railroad, came straight here from Arizona, and has been here ever +since." + +"But why _here_?" + +"Because he came from Grosvenor as a boy. It must be a French +family--Renault--and it is only a few miles north to the line.... So he +came here, and the climate or the life or something suits him wonderfully. +He works like a horse!" + +"Is he interesting, your doctor?" Isabelle asked idly. + +"That's as you take him," Margaret replied with a little smile. "Not from +Conny Woodyard's point of view, I should say. He has too many blind sides. +But I have come to think him a really great man! And that, my dear, is more +than what we used to call 'interesting.'" + +"But how can he do his work up here?" + +"That's the wonderful part of it all! He's _made_ the world come to +him,--what he needs of it. He says there is nothing marvellous in it; that +all through the middle ages the sick and the needy flocked to remote spots, +to deserts and mountain villages, wherever they thought help was to be +found. Most great cures are not made even now in the cities." + +"But hospitals?" + +"He has his own, right here in Grosvenor Flat, and a perfect one. The great +surgeons and doctors come up here and send patients here. He has all he can +do, with two assistants." + +"He must be a strong man." + +"You will see! The place is Renault. It all bears the print of his hand. He +says himself that given a man with a real idea, a persistent idea, and he +will make the desert blossom like a garden or move mountains,--in some way +he will make that idea part of the organism of life! ... There! I am +quoting the doctor again, the third time. It's a habit one gets into up +here!" + +At the tinkle of a bell below, Margaret exclaimed:-- + +"It's six and supper, and you have had no real rest. You see the hours are +primitive here,--breakfast at seven, dinner noon, and supper six. You will +get used to it in a few days." + +The dining room was a corner of the old kitchen that had been partitioned +off. It was warm and bright, with an open fire, and the supper that Mrs. +Short put on the table excellent. Mr. Short came in presently and took his +seat at the head of the table. He was a large man, with a bony face +softened by a thick grizzled beard. He said grace in a low voice, and then +served the food. Isabelle noticed that his large hands were finely formed. +His manner was kindly, in a subtle way that of the host at his own table; +but he said little or nothing at first. The children made the conversation, +piping up like little birds about the table and keeping the older people +laughing. Isabelle had always felt that children at the table were a bore, +either forward and a nuisance, or like little lynxes uncomfortably +absorbing conversation, that was not suited to them. Perhaps that was +because she knew few families where children were socially educated to take +their place at the table, being relegated for the most part to the nurse or +the governess. + +Isabelle was much interested in Mr. Short. His wife, a thin, gray-haired +woman, who wore spectacles and had a timid manner of speaking, was less of +a person than the blacksmith. Sol Short, she found out later, had never +been fifty miles from Grosvenor Flat in his life, but he had the poise, the +self-contained air of a man who had acquired all needed worldly experience. + +"Was it chilly coming up the Pass?" he asked Isabelle. "I thought 'twould +be when it came on to blow some from the mountains. And Pete Jackson's +horses _are_ slow." + +"They seemed frozen!" + +The large man laughed. + +"Well, you would take your time if you made that journey twice a day most +every day in the year. You can't expect them to get exactly excited over +it, can you?" + +"Mr. Short," Margaret remarked, "I saw a light this evening in the house on +Wing Hill. What can it be?" + +"Some folks from down state have moved in,--renters, I take it." + +"How do you know that?" + +"From the look of the stuff Bailey's boy was hauling up there this morning. +It's travelled often." + +"Mr. Short," Margaret explained merrily, "is the Grosvenor _Times_. His +shop is the centre of our universe. From it he sees all that happens in our +world--or his cronies tell him what he can't see. He knows what is going on +in the remotest corner of the township,--what Hiram Bailey got for his +potatoes, where Bill King sold his apples, whether Mrs. Beans's second son +has gone to the Academy at White River. He knows the color and the power of +every horse, the number of cows on every farm, the make of every +wagon,--everything!" + +"Not so bad as all that!" the blacksmith protested. It was evidently a +family joke. "We don't gossip, do we, Jenny?" + +"We don't gossip! But we keep our eyes open and tell what we see." + +It was a pleasant, human sort of atmosphere. After the meal the two friends +went back to Isabelle's couch and fire, Mrs. Short offering to put the +youngest child to bed for Margaret. + +"She likes to," Margaret explained. "Her daughter has gone away to +college.... It is marvellous what that frail-looking woman can do; she does +most of the cooking and housework, and never seems really busy. She +prepared this daughter for college! She makes me ashamed of the little I +accomplish,--and she reads, too, half a dozen magazines and all the stray +books that come her way." + +"But how can you stand it?" Isabelle asked bluntly; "I mean for months." + +"Stand it? You mean the hours, the Strongs, Grosvenor? ... Why, I feel +positively afraid when I think that some day I may be shaken out of this +nest! You will see. It is all so simple and easy, so human and natural, +just like Mr. Short's day's work,--the same thing for thirty years, ever +since he married the school teacher and took this house. You'll hear him +building the fires to-morrow before daylight. He is at his shop at +six-thirty, home at twelve, back again at one, milks the cow at five, and +supper at six, bed at nine. Why, it's an Odyssey, that day,--as Mr. Short +lives it!" + +Margaret opened the window and drew in the shutters. Outside it was very +still, and the snow was falling in fine flakes. + +"The children will be so glad to-morrow," she remarked, "with all this +snow. They are building a large bob-sled under Mr. Short's direction.... +No!" she resumed her former thread of thought. "It doesn't count so much as +we used to think--the variety of the thing you do, the change,--the +novelty. It's the mind you do it with that makes it worth while." + +Isabelle stared at the ceiling which was revealed fitfully by the dying +fire. She still felt dead, numb, but this was a peaceful sort of grave, so +remote, so silent. That endless torturing thought--the chain of weary +reproach and useless speculation, which beset every waking moment--had +ceased for the moment. It was like quiet after a perpetual whirring sound. + +She liked to look at Margaret, to feel her near, but she mused over her. +She was changed. Margaret had had this disease, too, this weariness of +living, the torturing doubt,--if this or that, the one thing or the other, +had happened, it might have been different,--the haggling of defeated will! +No wonder she was glad to be out of the city up here at peace.... + +"But one can't stay out of life for always," she remonstrated. + +"Why not? What you call the world seems to get along very well without us, +without any one in particular. And I don't feel the siren call, not yet!" + +"But life can't be over at thirty-three,--one can't be really dead, I +suppose." + +"No,--just beginning!" Margaret responded with an elasticity that amazed +Isabelle, who remembered the languid woman she had known so many years. +"Just beginning," she murmured, "after the journey in the dark." + +'Of course,' mused Isabelle, 'she means the relief from Larry, the anxiety +over the boy,--all that she has had to bear. Yes, for her there is some +beginning anew. She might possibly marry Rob Falkner now, if his wife got +somebody else to look after her silly existence. Why shouldn't she? +Margaret is still young,--she might even be pretty again.' And Isabelle +wished to know what the situation was between Margaret and Falkner. + +Nothing, it seemed, could make any difference to herself! She ached to tell +some one of the despair in her heart, but even to Margaret she could not +speak. Since that summer morning six months before when Vickers had died +without a spoken word, she had never said his name. Her husband had mutely +respected her muteness. Then she had been ill,--too ill to think or plan, +too ill for everything but remembrance. Now it was all shut up, her +tragedy, festering at the bottom of her heart like an undrained wound, +poisoning her soul.... Suddenly in the midst of her brooding she woke with +a start at something Margaret was saying, so unlike her reticent self. + +... "You knew, of course, about Larry's death?" + +"Yes, John told me." + +"It was in the papers, too." + +"Poor Margaret!--I was so sorry for you--it was terrible!" + +"You mustn't think of it that way,--I mean for me. It was terrible that any +human being should be where Larry got,--where he was hunted like a dog by +his own acts, and in sheer despair made an end of himself. I often think of +that--think what it must be not to have the courage to go on, not to feel +the strength in yourself to live another hour!" + +"It's always insanity. No sane person would do such a thing!" + +"We call it insanity. But what difference does the name make?" Margaret +said. "A human being falls into a state of mind where he is without one +hope, one consideration,--all is misery. Then he takes what seems the only +relief--death--as he would food or drink; that is sad." + +"It was Larry's own doing, Margaret; he had his chance!" + +"Of course, more than his chance--more than many chances. He was the kind +of protoplasm that could not endure life, that carried in itself the seed +of decay,--yet--yet--" She raised her pale face with the luminous eyes and +said softly: "Sometimes I wonder if it had to be. When I look at little Ned +and see how health is coming to that crippled body--the processes are +righting themselves--sound and healthy, ready to be helped back to life--I +wonder if it may not be so with other processes not wholly physical. I +wonder! ... Did you ever think, Isabelle, that we are waiting close to +other worlds,--we can almost hear from them with our ears,--but we only +hear confusedly so far. Some day we may hear more clearly!" + +Margaret had reverted, Isabelle concluded, to the religion of her father, +the Bishop! What she was vaguely talking about was the Bishop's heaven, in +which the widow and orphan were counselled to take comfort. + +"I wish I could feel it,--what the church teaches," Isabelle replied. "But +I can't,--it isn't real. I go to church and say over the creed and ask +myself what it means, and feel the same way when I come out--or worse!" + +"I don't mean religion--the church," Margaret smiled back. "That has been +dead for me a long time. It's something you come to feel within you about +life. I can't explain--only there might have been a light even for poor +Larry in that last dreadful darkness! ... Some day I want to tell you all +about myself, something I have never told any one,--but it will help to +explain, perhaps.... Now you must go to bed,--I will send my black Sue up +with your coffee in the morning."... + +Isabelle, as she lay awake in the stillness, the absolute hush of the snowy +night, thought of what Margaret had said about her husband. John had told +her how Larry had gradually gone to the bad in a desultory, weak-kneed +fashion,--had lost his clerkship in the A. and P. that Lane had got for +him; then had taken to hanging about the downtown hotels, betting a little, +drinking a little, and finally one morning the curt paragraph in the paper: +"Found, in the North River, body of a respectably dressed man about forty +years. Papers on him show that he was Lawrence Pole of Westchester," etc., +etc. + +And John's brief comment,--"Pity that he hadn't done it ten years ago." +Yes, thought Isabella, pity that he was ever born, the derelict, ever came +into this difficult world to complicate further its issues. Margaret +apparently had towards this worthless being who had marred her life a +softened feeling. But it was absurd of her now to think that she might have +loved him! + + + + +CHAPTER LVI + + +Long before it was light the next morning Isabelle heard the heavy tread of +the blacksmith as he was going his rounds to light the fires; then she +snuggled deeper into bed. When Margaret's maid finally came with the coffee +and pushed back the heavy shutters, Isabelle looked out into another world +from the one she had come to half frozen the afternoon before. She had +entered the village from the rear, and now she looked off south and west +from the level shelf on which the houses sat, across a broad valley, to +black woods and a sloping breast of hills, freshly powdered with snow, to +the blue sky-line, all as clear in the snow-washed mountain air as in a +desert. The sun striking down into the valley brought out the faint azure +of the inner folds of the hills. + +There was scarcely a footprint in the road to break the soft mass of +new-fallen snow. Isabelle could see a black cat deliberately stealing its +way from the barn across the road to the house. It lifted each paw with +delicate precision and pushed it firmly into the snow, casting a deep +shadow on the gleaming surface of white. The black cat, lean and muscular, +stretching itself across the snow, was the touch of art needed to complete +the silent scene.... + +A wood-sled drawn by two heavy horses came around the corner of the house, +softly churning the new snow before its runners. A man clad in a burly +sheepskin coat and fur cap, his feet in enormous rubber shoes, stood on the +sled, slowly thrashing his arms and breathing frostily. + +"Hello, Sol!" the man cried to the blacksmith, who was shovelling a path +from the barn to the house. + +"Morning, Ed. Going up to Cross's lot?" + +"Ye--as--" + +"Hard sledding?" + +The two men exchanged amicable nothings in the crisp, brilliant air through +which their voices rang with a peculiar timbre. To Isabelle, looking and +listening from her window, it was all so fresh, so simple, like a picture +on a Japanese print! For the first time in months she had a distinct +desire,--to get outside and look at the hills. + +"You are commanded," announced Margaret, a little later, "to the doctor's +for supper at six. That wasn't the way it was put exactly, but it amounts +to the same thing. The doctor's least word is a command here.... Now I am +off to help the housekeeper with the accounts,--it's all I am good for!"... + +So Isabelle was left to set forth on her ramble of exploration by herself. +She pushed through the snow to the last house on the village street, where +the road dipped down a long hill, and the wide arc of northern mountains +was revealed in a glittering rampart. Her eyes filled involuntarily with +tears. + +"I must be very weak," she said to herself, "to cry because it's +beautiful!" And sitting down on a rock by the road, she cried more, with a +feeling of self-pity and a little self-contempt. An old woman came to the +door of the house she had just passed with a dish-pan of water and looked +curiously at the stranger. At first the countrywoman opened her lips as if +she intended to speak, but stood with her dish-pan and said nothing. +Isabelle could see through her tears the bent figure and battered face of +the old woman,--a being without one line of beauty or even animal grace. +What a fight life must have been to reduce any woman's body to that! And +the purpose,--to keep the breath of life in a worn old body, just to live? + +"Pleasant morning!" Isabelle said with a smile through her tears. + +"It ain't bad," the old woman admitted, emptying her dish-pan. + +As Isabelle retraced her steps into the village the old woman followed her +with curious eyes, thinking no doubt that a woman like this stranger, well +dressed, young, and apparently well fed, ought not to be sitting on a rock +on a winter's day crying! + +"And she's quite right!" Isabelle said to herself. + +The jewelled morning was the same to them both,--the outer world was +imperturbable in its circular variety. But the inner world, the +vision,--ah, there was the extraordinary variation in human lives! From +heaven to hell through all gradations, and whether it were heaven or hell +did not depend on being like this crone at the end of the road or like +herself in its sheltered nooks,--it was something else. + +"I will have to see Margaret's wonderful doctor, if this keeps on," she +said, still dropping tears. + +The blacksmith stood beside the open door of his shop, gazing reflectively +across the white fields to the upland. Beside him was a broken wood-sled +that he was mending. Seeing Isabelle, he waved her a slow salute with the +sled-runner he had ready in his hand. + +"Morning!" he called out in his deep voice. "Seeing the country? The hills +are extra fine this morning." + +He proceeded slowly to brush the snow from the frame of the sled, still +glancing now and then over the fields. Isabelle felt that she had caught +his characteristic moment, _his_ inner vision. + +"You have a good view from your shop." + +"The best in the town! I've always been grateful to my father for one +thing,--well, for many things,--but specially because he had the good sense +to set the old smithy right here where you can see something. When there +isn't much going on, I come out of doors here and take a long look at the +mountains. It rests your back so." + +Isabelle sat down in the shop and watched Mr. Short repair the sled, +interested in the slow, sure movements he made, the painstaking way in +which he fitted iron and wood and riveted the pieces together. It must be a +relief, she thought, to work with one's hands like that,--which men could +do, forgetting the number of manual movements Mrs. Short also made during +the same time. The blacksmith talked as he worked, in a gentle voice +without a trace of self-consciousness, and Isabelle had again that sense of +VISION, of something inward and sustaining in this man of remote and narrow +range,--something that expressed itself in the slow speech, the peaceful, +self-contained manner. As she went back up the street to the house the +thick cloud of depression, of intangible misery, in which she had been +living as it seemed to her for eternity, settled down once more,--the +habitual gait of her mind, like the dragging gait of her feet. She at least +was powerless to escape the bitter food of idle recollection. + + * * * * * + +The doctor's house was a plain, square, white building, a little way above +the main road, from which there was a drive winding through the spruces. On +the sides and behind the house stretched one-story wings, also white and +severely plain. "Those are the wards, and the one behind is the operating +room," Margaret explained. + +The house inside was as plain as on the outside: there were no pictures, no +rugs, no useless furniture. The large hall divided the first floor in two. +On the right was the office and the dining room, on the left with a +southerly exposure the large living room. There were great, blazing fires +in all the rooms and in the hall at either side,--there was no other +heat,--and the odor of burning fir boughs permeated the atmosphere. + +"It's like a hospital almost," Isabelle commented as they waited in the +living room. "And he has French blood! How can he stand it so--bare and +cold?" + +"The doctor's limitations are as interesting as his powers. He never has a +newspaper in the house, nor a magazine,--burns them up if he finds them +lying about. Yet he reads a great deal. He has a contempt for all the froth +of immediate living, and still the whole place is the most modern, +up-to-date contemporary machine of its kind!" + +Outside was the blackness of the cold winter night; inside the grayness of +stained walls lighted by the glow from the blazing fires. A few pieces of +statuary, copies of the work of the idealistic Greek period, stood in the +hall and the living room. All that meant merely comfort, homelikeness--all +in a word that was characteristically American--was wanting. Nevertheless, +as Isabelle waited in the room she was aware of a peculiar grave beauty in +its very exclusions. This house had the atmosphere of a mind. + +Some nurse came in and nodded to Margaret, then Mrs. Beck the matron +appeared, and a couple of young doctors followed. They had been across the +valley on snow-shoes in the afternoon and were talking of their adventures +in the woods. There was much laughter and gayety--as if gathered here in +the wilderness these people all knew one another very well. After some time +Isabelle became aware of the entrance of another person, and turning around +saw a thin, slight man with a thick head of gray hair. His smooth-shaven +face was modelled with many lines, and under the dark eyebrows that had not +yet turned gray there were piercing black eyes. Although the talk and the +laughter did not die at once, there was the subtle movement among the +persons in the room which indicated that the master of the house had +appeared. Dr. Renault walked directly to Isabelle. + +"Good evening, Mrs. Lane. Will you come in to supper?" + +He offered her his arm, and without further word of ceremony they went into +the dining room. At the table the doctor said little to her at first. He +leaned back in his chair, his eyes half closed, listening to the talk of +the others, as if weary after a long day. Isabelle was puzzled by a sense +of something familiar in the man at her side; she must have met him before, +she could not tell where. The dining room, like the living room, was +square, panelled with white wood, and the walls stained. It was bare except +for several copies of Tanagra figurines in a recess above the chimney and +two large photographs of Greek athletes. The long table, made of heavy oak +planks, had no cloth, and the dishes were of the coarsest earthenware, such +as French peasants use. + +The talk was lively enough,--about two new cases that had arrived that +afternoon, the deer-hunting season that had just closed, bear tracks +discovered on Bolton Hill near the lumber-camp, and a new piano that a +friend had sent for the convalescent or "dotty" ward, as they called it. +The young doctor who sat at Isabelle's right asked her if she could play or +sing, and when she said no, he asked her if she could skee. Those were the +only personal remarks of the meal. Margaret, who was very much at home, +entered into the talk with unwonted liveliness. It was a workshop of busy +men and women who had finished the day's labor with enough vitality left to +react. The food, Isabelle noticed, was plentiful and more than good. At the +end of the meal the young men lighted cigarettes, and one of the nurses +also smoked, while a box of cigars was placed before Renault. Some one +began to sing, and the table joined the chorus, gathering about the +chimney, where there were a couple of settles. + +It was a life, so Isabelle saw, with an order of its own, a direction of +its own, a strong undercurrent. Its oddity and nonchalance were refreshing. +Like one of the mountain brooks it ran its own course, strong and liquid +beneath the snow, to its own end. + +"You seem to have a very good time up here among yourselves!" Isabelle said +to the doctor, expressing her wonder frankly. + +"And why not?" he asked, a smile on his thin lips. He helped himself to a +cigar, still looking at her whimsically, and biting off its end held a +match ready to strike, as if awaiting her next remark. + +"But don't you ever want to get away, to go back to the city? Don't you +feel--isolated?" + +"Why should we? Because there's no opera or dinner parties? We have a +dinner party every night." He lighted his cigar and grinned at Isabelle. +"The city delusion is one of the chief idiocies of our day. City people +encourage the idea that you can't get on without their society. Man was not +meant to live herded along sidewalks. The cities breed the diseases for us +doctors,--that is their one great occupation." + +He threw the match into the fire, leaned back in his chair with his hands +knit behind his head, and fastening his black eyes on Isabelle began to +talk. + +"I lived upwards of twenty years in cities with that same delusion,--not +daring to get more than a trolley-car fare away from the muck and noise. +Then I was kicked out,--had to go, thank God! On the Arizona plains I +learned to know what an idiot I had been to throw away the better half of a +life in a place where you have to breathe other peoples' bad air. Why, +there isn't room to think in a city! I never used to think, or only at odd +moments. I lived from one nervous reflex to another, and took most of my +ideas from other folks. Now I do my own thinking. Just try it, young woman; +it is a great relief!" + +"But--but--" Isabelle stammered, laughing in spite of herself. + +"You know," Renault bore on tranquilly, "there's a new form of mental +disease you might call 'pavementitis'--the pavement itch. When the patient +has it badly, so that he can't be happy when removed from his customary +environment, he is incurable. A man isn't a sound man, nor a woman a +healthy woman, who can't stand alone on his own two legs and be nourished +intellectually and emotionally away from the herd.... That young fellow who +has just gone out was a bad case of pavementitis when he came to +me,--couldn't breathe comfortably outside the air of New York. Hard worker, +too. He came up here to 'rest.' Rest! Almost nobody needs rest. What they +want is hard work and tranquil minds. I put him on his job the day he came. +You couldn't drive him away now! Last fall I sent him back to see if the +cure was complete. Telegraphed me in a week that he was coming up,--life +was too dull down there! ... And that little black-haired woman who is +talking to Mrs. Pole,--similar case, only it was complicated. She was +neurotic, hysterical, insomniac, melancholy,--the usual neurasthenic +ticket. Had a husband who didn't suit or a lover, I suspect, and it got +fastened in the brain,--rode her. She's my chief nurse in the surgical ward +now,--a tremendous worker; can go three nights without sleep if necessary +and knows enough to sleep soundly when she gets the chance.... Has relapses +of pavementitis now and then, when some of her fool friends write her; but +I fix that! ... So it goes; I have had incurable cases of course, as in +everything else. The only thing to do with 'em then is to send them back to +suck their poison until it kills." + +The whimsical tone of irony and invective made Isabelle laugh, and also +subtly changed her self-preoccupation. Evidently Dr. Renault was not a +Potts to go to with a long story of woe. + +"I thought it was surgery, your specialty," she remarked, "not nervous +prostration." + +"We do pretty much everything here--as it is needed. Come in to-morrow +morning sometime and look the shop over." + +He rose, threw away his cigar, and at this signal the group scattered. +Renault, Margaret, and Isabelle went back to the bare living room, where +the doctor stood silently in front of the fireplace for a few minutes, as +though expecting his guests to leave. When they started, he threw open a +long window and beckoned to Isabelle to follow him. Outside there was a +broad platform running out over the crest of the hill on which the house +was built. The land beyond fell away sharply, then rose in a wooded swell +to the northern mountains. The night was dark with glittering starlight +above, and the presence of the white masses of the hills could be felt +rather than seen,--brooding under the stars. There was the tinkle of a +sleigh-bell on the road below,--the only sound in the still night. + +"There!" Renault exclaimed. "Is there anything you would like to swap for +this?" + +He breathed deeply of the frosty air. + +"It seems almost as if a voice were speaking in the silence!" + +"Yes," Renault assented gravely. "There is a voice, and you can hear it up +here--if you listen." + + + + +CHAPTER LVII + + +On their way home the two women discussed the doctor eagerly. + +"I must have seen Dr. Renault somewhere," Isabelle said, "or rather what he +might have been once. He's a person!" + +"That is it,--he is a person,--not just a doctor or a clever surgeon." + +"Has he other regular patients besides the children, the surgical cases?" + +"He started with those alone. But latterly, they tell me, he has become +more interested in the nervous ward,--what he calls the 'dotty' +ward,--where there are chiefly convalescent children or incurable nervous +diseases of children. It is wonderful what he does with them. The power he +has over them is like the power of the old saints who worked miracles,--a +religious power,--or the pure force of the will, if you prefer." + +After her evening with Renault, Isabelle felt that Margaret's description +might not be too fervid. + +Towards morning Isabelle woke, and in the sudden clarity of the silent hour +thoughts flowed through her with wonderful vividness. She saw Renault's +face and manner, his sharp eyes, his air of dictation, arrogant and at the +same time kindly,--yes, there was a power in the man! As Margaret had put +it,--a religious power. The word set loose numberless thoughts, distasteful +ones, dead ones. She saw the respectable Presbyterian caravansary in St. +Louis where the family worshipped,--sermons, creeds, dogmas,--the little +stone chapel at Grafton where she had been confirmed, and her attempt to +believe herself moved by some spiritual force, expressed in the formulas +that the old clergyman had taught her. Then the phrases rose in her mind. +It might have done her good once,--people found it helpful,--women +especially in their hours of trial. She disliked the idea of leaning for +help on something which in her hours of vigor she rejected. A refuge, an +explanation,--no, it was not possible! The story of the atonement, the +rewards, the mystical attempt to explain the tragedy of life, its sorrow +and pain,--no, it was childish! So the word "religious" had something in it +repellent, sickly, and self-deceptive.... Suddenly the words stood out +sharply in her mind,--"What we need is a new religion!" A new +religion,--where had she heard that? ... Another flash in her brooding +consciousness and there came the face of the doctor, the face of the man +who had talked to her one Sunday afternoon at the house where there had +been music. She remembered that she wished the music would not interrupt +their conversation. Yes, he was bidding her good-by, at the steps, his hat +raised in his hand, and he had said with that same whimsical smile, "What +we need is a new religion!" It was an odd thing to say in the New York +street, after an entirely delightful Sunday afternoon of music. Now the +face was older, more tense, yet with added calm. Had he found his religion? +And with a wistful desire to know what it was, the religion that made +Renault live as he did, Isabelle dropped once more to sleep. + + * * * * * + +When Isabelle presented herself at the doctor's house the next morning, as +he had suggested, the little black-haired nurse met her and made Renault's +excuses. The doctor was occupied, but would try to join her later. +Meanwhile would she like to look over the operating room and the surgical +ward? The young doctor who had been afflicted with pavementitis--a large, +florid, blond young man--showed her through the operating room, explaining +to her the many devices, the endless well-thought-out detail, from the +plumbing to the special electric lighting. + +"It's absolutely perfect, Mrs. Lane!" he summed up, and when Isabelle +smiled at his enthusiasm, he grew red of face and stuttered in his effort +to make her comprehend all that his superlative meant. "I know what I am +saying. I have been all over Europe and this country. Every surgeon who +comes here says the same thing. You can't even _imagine_ anything that +might be better. There isn't much in the world where you can't imagine a +something better, an improvement. There's almost always a better to be had +if you could get it. But here, no! ... Porowitz, the great Vienna +orthopaedic surgeon, was here last winter, and he told me there wasn't a +hospital in the whole world where the chances for recovery, taking it all +round, were as large as up here in Grosvenor Flat, Vermont. Think of it! +And there is no hospital that keeps a record where the percentage of +successful operations is as high as ours.... That's enough to say, I +guess," he concluded solemnly, wiping his brow. + +In the surgical ward the wasted, white faces of the sick children disturbed +Isabelle. It all seemed neat, quiet, pleasant. But the physical dislike of +suffering, cultivated by the refinement of a highly individualistic age, +made her shudder. So much there was that was wrong in life to be made +right,--partly right, never wholly right.... It seemed useless, almost +sentimentalism, to attempt this patching of diseased humanity.... + +In the convalescent ward, Margaret was sitting beside a cot reading to her +boy. + +"He'll be home in a few days now!" she said in answer to Isabelle's glance. +"Some day he will be a great football player." + +The child colored at the reference to his ailment. + +"I can walk now," he said, "a little." + +Dr. Renault was at the other end of the ward sitting beside a girl of +twelve, with one arm about her thin back, talking to her. The child's face +was stained with half-dried tears. Presently the doctor took the child up +and carried her to the window, and continued to talk to her, pointing out +of the window. After a time he joined Isabelle, saying:-- + +"I was kept from meeting you when you came by that little girl over there. +She is, by the way, one of our most interesting cases. Came here for hip +disease. She is an orphan,--nothing known about her parents,--probably +alcoholic from the mental symptoms. She has hysteria and undeveloped +suicidal mania." + +"What can you do for her?" + +"What we can with medicine and surgery, and where that fails--we try other +means." + +Isabelle was eager to know what were those "other means," but the doctor +was not a man to be questioned. Presently as he sauntered through the room +he volunteered:-- + +"I have been talking to her,--telling her how the hills are made.... You +see we have to clean out their minds as well as their bodies, get rid so +far as we can of the muddy deposit, both the images associated with their +environment--that is done by bringing them up here--and also what might be +called inherited thought processes. Give 'em a sort of spiritual purge, in +other words," he said with a smile. "Then we can build up, feed their minds +something fresh. Sarah Stern there is an obstinate case,--she has a deep +deposit of ancestral gloom." + +"But you can't overcome the temperament, the inherited nature!" + +Renault waved his hand impatiently. + +"You've been told that since you were born. We have all grown up in that +belief,--it is the curse of the day! ... It can't be done altogether--yet. +Sarah may revert and cut her throat when she leaves here.... But the vital +work for medicine to-day is to see just how much can be done to change +temperament,--inherited nature, as you call it. In other words, to put new +forces to work in diseased brains. Perhaps some day we can do it all,--who +knows?" + +"Plant new souls in place of the old!" + +Renault nodded gravely. + +"That's the true medicine--the root medicine,--to take an imperfect +organism and develop it, mould it to the perfected idea. Life is +plastic,--human beings are plastic,--that is one important thing to +remember!" + +"But you are a surgeon?" + +Renault's lips quivered with one of his ironical smiles. + +"I was a surgeon, just as I was a materialist. When I was young, I was +caught by the lure of so-called science, and became a surgeon, because it +was precise, definite,--and I am something of a dab at it now--ask the boys +here! ... But surgery is artisan work. Younger hands will always beat you. +Pallegrew in there is as good as I am now. There is nothing creative in +surgery; it is on the order of mending shoes. One needs to get beyond +that.... And here is where we get beyond patching.... Don't think we are +just cranks here. We do what we can with the accepted tools,--the knife and +the pill. But we try to go farther--a little way." + +They descended to the basement of the main house where the more active +children were playing games. + +"We have to teach some of them the primitive instincts,--the play instinct, +for example,--and we have a workroom, where we try to teach them the +absorbing excitement of work.... I am thinking of starting a school next. +Don't you want to try a hand at a new sort of education?" + +So, pausing now and then to joke with a child or speak to an assistant, +Renault took Isabelle over his "shop" once more, explaining casually his +purposes. As a whole, it developed before her eyes that here was a +laboratory of the human being, a place where by different processes the +diseased, the twisted, the maimed, the inhibited, the incomplete were +analyzed and reconstructed. As they emerged on the broad platform where +they had stood the night before, Isabelle asked:-- + +"Why is it you work only with children?" + +"Because I started with the little beggars.... And they are more plastic, +too. But some day the same sort of thing will be done with adults. For we +are all plastic.... Good-day!" and he walked away rapidly in the direction +of his office. + +Isabelle returned to the village in a strange excitement of impressions and +thoughts. She felt as if she had been taken up out of the world that she +had lived in and suddenly introduced to a planet which was motived by +totally other ideas than those of the world she knew. Here was a life +laboratory, a place for making over human character as well as tissue. And +in bravado, as it were, the mere refuse of human material was chosen to be +made anew, with happiness, effectiveness, health! She realized that a +satisfactory understanding of it would come slowly; but walking here in the +winter sunshine along the village street, she had that sensation of +strangeness which the child has on coming from the lighted playhouse into +the street.... The set vision that tormented her within--that, too, might +it not be erased? + +About the post-office people were gathered gossiping and laughing, waiting +for the noon mail to be distributed. Country-women in fur coats drove up in +dingy cutters to do their Saturday shopping. The wood-sleds went jogging +past towards the valley. School children were recklessly sliding down the +cross street into the main road. Sol Short was coming over from his shop to +get his paper... Here the old world was moving along its wonted grooves in +this backwater community. But over it all like the color swimming over the +hills was SOMETHING more,--some aspect of life unseen! And faintly, very +dimly, Isabelle began to realize that she had never really been +alive,--these thirty years and more. + +"We are all plastic," she murmured, and looked away to the hills. + + + + +CHAPTER LVIII + + +Life at Grosvenor moved on in a placid routine, day after day. What with +her children and the engrossing work at the doctor's Margaret was busy +every morning, and Isabelle rarely saw her before the noon meal. Then at +the plentiful dinner over which the blacksmith presided with a gentle +courtesy and sweetness there was gossip of the hospital and the village, +while Short, who had the father instinct, entertained the children. He knew +all the resources of the country, every animal wild or tame, every rod of +wood and pasture and hill. The little Poles opened him like an atlas or +encyclopedia. + +"Mr. Wilson begins to haul from his lot to-morrow," he would announce for +their benefit. "I guess he'll take you up to the clearing where the men are +cutting if you look for him sharp. And when you get there, you want to find +a very tall man with a small head. That's Sam Tisdell,--and you tell him I +said he would show you the deer run and the yard the deer have made back +there a piece behind the clearing." + +Then he told them how, when he was a young man, he had hunted for deer on +the mountains and been caught one time in a great snowstorm, almost losing +his life. + +"The children have so much to do and to think about here in Grosvenor that +they are no trouble at all. They never have to be entertained," Margaret +remarked. "Mr. Short is much better for them than a Swiss governess with +three languages!" + + * * * * * + +There were long evenings after the six o'clock suppers, which the two +friends spent together usually, reading or talking before Isabelle's fire. +Wherever the talk started, it would often gravitate to Renault, his +personality dominating like some mountain figure the community. Margaret +had been absorbed into the life of the hospital with its exciting yet +orderly movement. There were new arrivals, departures, difficult cases, +improvements and failures to record. She related some of the slowly wrought +miracles she had witnessed during the months that she had been there. + +"It all sounds like magic," Isabelle had said doubtfully. + +"No, that is just what it isn't," Margaret protested; "the doctor's +processes are not tricks,--they are evident." + +And the two discussed endlessly these "processes" whereby minds were used +to cure matter, the cleansing of the soul,--thought substitution, +suggestion, the relationship of body and mind. And through all the talk, +through the busy routine of the place, in the men and women working in the +hospital, there emerged always that something unseen,--Idea, Will, Spirit, +the motiving force of the whole. Isabelle felt this nowhere more strongly +than in the change in Margaret herself. It was not merely that she seemed +alert and active, wholly absorbed in the things about her, but more in the +marvellous content which filled her. And, as Isabelle reflected, Margaret +was the most discontented woman she had known; even before she married, she +was ever hunting for something. + +"But you can't stay here always," Isabelle said to her one evening. "You +will have to go back to the city to educate the children if for no other +reason." + +"Sometimes I think I shan't go back! Why should I? ... You know I have +almost no money to live on." (Isabelle suspected that Larry's last years +had eaten into the little that had been left of Margaret's fortune). "The +children will go to school here. It would be useless to educate them above +their future, which must be very plain." + +"But you have a lot of relatives who would gladly help you--and them." + +"They might, but I don't think I want their help--even for the children. I +am not so sure that what we call advantages, a good start in life, and all +that, is worth while. I had the chance--you had it, too--and what did we +make of it?" + +"Our children need not repeat our mistakes," Isabelle replied with a sigh. + +"If they were surrounded with the same ideas, they probably would!" ... + +"The doctor has thrown his charm over you!" + +"He has saved my life!" Margaret murmured; "at least he has shown me how to +save it," she corrected. + +There it was again, the mysterious Peace that possessed her, that had +touched Margaret's hard, defiant spirit and tamed it. But Isabelle, +remembering the letters with the Panama postmark she had seen lying on the +hall table, wondered, and she could not help saying:-- + +"You are young yet, Margaret,--oh, it might be--happiness, all that you +have missed!" + +"No!" Margaret replied, with a little smile. "I--think not!" + +She closed her eyes as if she were contemplating that other happiness, and +after a silence she opened them and touched Isabelle's hand. + +"I want to tell you something, dear.... I loved Rob Falkner, very much, the +most a woman can." + +"I knew it! ... I felt it.... That it only might be!" + +"He came to me," Margaret continued, "when I was hard and bitter about +life, when I was dead.... It was the kind of love that women dream of, +ours,--the perfect thing you feel in your heart has always been +there,--that takes all of you! ... It was good for us both--he needed me, +and I needed him." + +"Margaret!" + +"I was wonderfully happy, with a dreadful happiness that was two parts +pain, pain for myself, and more pain for him, because he needed me, you +understand, and it could not be--I could not live with him and give him the +food he hungered for--love." + +Isabelle kissed the wistful face, "I know," she said. "I want to tell you +more--but you may not understand! ... He had to go away. It was best; it +was his work, his life, and I should have been a poor weak fool to let our +love stand in the way. So it was decided, and I urged him to go. He came to +see me at Bedmouth before he left,--a few days, a few hours of love. And we +saw how it would have to be, that we should have to go on loving and living +in the spirit, for as long as our love lasted, apart. We faced that. +But--but--" + +Margaret hesitated and then with shining eyes went on in a low voice. + +"It was not enough what we had had! I was not ready to let him go, to see +him go--without all. He never asked--I gave him all. We went away to have +our love by ourselves,--to live for each other just a few days. He took me +away in his boat, and for a few days, a few nights, we had our love--we saw +our souls." + +She waited, breathing fast, then controlled herself. + +"Those hours were more than ordinary life. They do not seem to me real even +now, or perhaps they are the most real thing in all I have known. It was +love before the parting--before Fate.... When it was all over, we went back +to earth. I returned, to Mother Pole's house in Bedmouth, and I went up to +the children's room and took my baby in my arms and kissed her, my little +girl. And I knew that it had been right, all pure and holy, and I was glad, +oh, so glad that it had been, that we had had the courage!" + +Isabelle pressed the hand she held close to her breast and watched the +shining face. + +"And I have never felt differently--never for one moment since. It was the +greatest thing that ever came to me, and it seems to me that I should never +really have lived if it had not been for those days--those nights and +days--and the heaven that we saw!" + +"Then how can you speak as if life were ended now--" + +Margaret held her hand before her face and did not answer. "It might be +possible--for you both.... She never really cared for Rob,--she left him +and took her child when they sold their house--because she was +disappointed. And she has refused to go to him ever since." + +"I know all that," Margaret murmured; "that is not it wholly. I can't tell. +I don't know yet. It is not clear.... But I know that I am proud and glad +of what has been,--of our love in its fulness and glory. And I know it was +not sin! Nothing can make it so to me." + +She had risen and stood proudly before Isabelle. + +"It has made living possible for him and for me,--it has made it something +noble and great, to feel this in our souls.... I wanted to tell you; I +thought you would understand, and I did not want you to be wrong about +me,--not to know me all!" + +She knelt and buried her head in Isabelle's lap, and when she raised her +face there were tears falling from the eyes. + +"I don't know why I should cry!" she exclaimed with a smile. "I don't +often.... It was all so beautiful. But we women cry when we can't express +ourselves any other way!" + +"I shall always hope--" + +Margaret shook her head. + +"I don't know.... There are other things coming,--another revelation, +perhaps! I don't think of what will be, dear." + +But womanwise, Isabelle thought on after Margaret had left, of Falkner and +Margaret, of their love. And why shouldn't it come to them, she asked +herself? The other, Falkner's marriage, had been a mistake for both, a +terrible mistake, and they had both paid for it. Bessie could have made it +possible if she had wanted to, if she had had it in her. She had her +chance. For him to go back to her now, with the gulf between them of all +this past, was mere folly,--just conventional wrong-headedness. And it +would probably be no better for Bessie if he were to make the sacrifice.... +The revelation that Margaret had hinted of had not come to Isabelle. She +lay awake thinking with aching heart of her own story,--its tragic ending. +But _he_ was not a man,--that, too, had been a mistake! + + * * * * * + +Isabelle, largely left to herself, for occupation drove about the snowy +hills, sometimes taking with her for company one of the convalescents or a +nurse, often alone, liking the solitude of the winter spaces. Sometimes she +went to the blacksmith's shop and talked with the old man, learning the +genealogy and the sociology of the neighborhood. The text for Sol Short's +wisdom was ever at hand in the passers-by. Ending one of his transcripts, +he made a phrase that lingered in Isabelle's mind long afterward. "So she +was left a charge upon the property," he said of an old woman that had come +out of one of the village houses. "Aunt Mehitabel went with the house. When +it was sold, she had to be taken over by the new owner, and her keep +provided. And there she is now, an old woman in ill health and ill temper. +I don't know as there is a worse combination."... + +"I wonder why I stay," Isabelle said to Margaret after nearly two months +had slipped by. "I am quite rested, as well as I shall ever be, I believe. +You don't need me. Nobody does exactly! Molly writes me very contented +little letters. Mother is staying with her, and she is at the party age, +and would be terribly bored to come here, as you suggested. John is in St. +Louis; he seems to have a good deal to do out there this winter. So you see +my little world gets on perfectly without me." + +"Better stay here, then," Margaret urged, "until spring. It will do you +good. You haven't exhausted the doctor yet!" + +"I almost never see him, and when he does remember me he chaffs me as if I +were a silly child. No, I think I will go next week." + +But she did not wish to leave. The winter peace of the little village had +been like an enveloping anodyne to her weary body and mind. Removed from +all her past, from the sights and the people that suggested those obsessing +thoughts which had filled her waking hours with dreariness, she had sunk +into the simple routine of Grosvenor as the tired body sinks into a soft +bed. The daily sight of the snowy fields, the frozen hillsides black with +forests, and the dry spirituous air, lifted her. Now and then the effect of +the anodyne wore off and the old gnawing pain, or a sodden sense of +futility, overwhelmed her afresh. "It will never get straight!" she said, +thinking in the terms of Potts's specifics. "I am somehow wrong, and I must +go all my life with this torture--or worse--until I die!" And the whole +panorama of her little life would unroll before her in the sleepless hours +of the still night: her girl ambitions, her mistaken marriage, her striving +for experience, for life, to satisfy--what? Then her mistaken love, and +Vickers's sacrifice, and the blackness afterwards,--the mistake of it all! +"They'll be better without me,--mother and Molly and John! Let me die!" she +cried. Then illogically she would think of Renault and wonder what _he_ +could do for her. But she shrank from baring herself before his piercing +gaze. "He would say I was a fool, and he would be right!" + +So she went out into the cold country and walked miles over the frozen +fields through the still woods, trying to forget, only to return still +ridden by her thoughts,--bitter tears for Vickers, sometimes almost +reproach for his act. "If he had let me plunge to my fate, it would have +been better than this! I might never have known my mistake,--it would have +been different, all of it different. Now there is nothing!" And at the end +of one of these black moods she resolved to return to her world and "go +through the motions as others do. What else? Perhaps it will be better when +I am distracted. Potts will give me something to brace me."... + +But Isabelle did not return to the city and get that prescription from the +great Potts. + + + + +CHAPTER LIX + + +Just as Isabelle had completed her packing on Sunday afternoon, a message +came to her from Dr. Renault through Margaret. "We need another woman,--two +of our nurses have been called away and a third is sick. Will you give us +some help?" + +"I am going up myself for the night," Margaret added. "They are badly +pushed,--six new cases the last three days." + +So the night found Isabelle under the direction of Mrs. Felton, the little +black-haired woman whose "case" the doctor had analyzed for her. It was a +long night, and the next morning, all the experienced nurses being needed +at an operation, Isabelle went on. The day was full and also the next two. +The hospital force was inadequate, and though the doctor had telegraphed +for help there would be no relief for a week. So Isabelle was caught up in +the pressing activity of this organism and worked by it, impelled without +her own will, driven hard as all around her were driven by the +circumstances behind her. Dr. Renault abhorred noise, disorder, excitement, +confusion of any kind. All had to run smoothly and quietly as if in perfect +condition. He himself was evident, at all hours of day or night, chaffing, +dropping his ironical comments, listening, directing,--the inner force of +the organism. One night the little nurse dropped asleep, clearly worn out, +and Isabelle sent her to bed. The ward was quiet; there was nothing to be +done. Isabelle, pacing to and fro in the glass sun parlor to keep herself +awake, suddenly became aware of the stillness within her. It was as if some +noisy piece of machinery had ceased to revolve without her having noticed +it. It was possible for her in this quiet moment to realize this: for the +first time in five days she had not thought of herself. For five days she +had not consciously thought! Doubtless she would have to pay for this +debauch of work. She would collapse. But for five days she had not known +whether she felt ill or well, was happy or distressed. Excitement--to be +paid for! She shrank from the weary round of old thought that must come, +the revolution of the wheels within. For five days she had not thought, she +had not cared, she had not known herself! That must be the opiate of the +poor, driven by labor to feed and clothe themselves; of the ambitious, +driven by hope and desire.... She must work, too; work was a good thing. +Why had Potts not included it in his panaceas? ... + +Later when she walked back into the still ward, she thought she heard a +stifled breathing, but when she went the rounds of the cots, all was still. +It was not until nearly morning that she noticed something wrong with a +little boy, observing the huddled position of the limbs drawn up beneath +the blanket. She felt of his face--it was cold. Frightened, she hurried to +the bell to summon the night doctor. As she reached it Renault entered the +ward and with a warning hand brought her back to the cot. He put his +fingers swiftly here and there on the child's body. + +"Where is Mrs. Felton?" he demanded severely. + +"She was so worn out I persuaded her to get some rest. Have I neglected +anything?--is anything wrong?" + +"The child is dead," Renault replied, straightening himself and covering up +the little form. + +"Oh, I have--done something wrong!" + +"It would have made no difference what you did," the doctor replied dryly. +"Nothing would have made any difference. There was the millionth part of a +chance, and it was not for him." + +As they stood looking down at the dead face, it seemed to Isabelle that +suddenly he had become a person, this dead child, with his lost millionth +of a chance,--not merely one of the invalids sleeping in the room. For this +brief moment when life had ceased to beat in his frail body, and before +decay had begun, there was an individuality given him that he had never +achieved in life. + +"Poor little fellow!" Isabelle murmured softly. "He must have suffered so +much." Then with that common consolation with which the living evade the +thought of death, she added, "He has escaped more pain; it is better so, +perhaps!" + +"No--that is wrong!" + +Renault, standing beside the bed, his arms folded across his breast, looked +up from the dead child straight into the woman's eyes. + +"That is false!" he cried with sudden passion. "Life is GOOD--all of +it--for every one." + +He held her eyes with his glance while his words reverberated through her +being like the CREDO of a new faith. + + * * * * * + +When another nurse had come to relieve Isabelle, she left the ward with the +doctor. As they went through the passageway that led to the house, Renault +said in his usual abrupt tone:-- + +"You had better run home, Mrs. Lane, and get some sleep. To-morrow will be +another hard day." + +She wheeled suddenly and faced him. + +"How dare you say that life is good for any other human being! What do +_you_ know of another's agony,--the misery that existence may mean, the +daily woe?" + +Her passionate burst of protest died in a sob. + +"I say it because I believe it, because I _know_ it!" + +"No one can know that for another." + +"For animals the account of good and evil may be struck, the pains set +against the satisfactions that life offers. When we judge that the balance +is on the wrong side, we are merciful,--put the creature out of its misery, +as we say. But no human being is an animal in that sense. And no human +being can cast his balance of good and evil in that mechanical way--nor any +one else for him!" + +"But one knows for himself! When you suffer, when all is blank within and +you cry as Job cried,--'would God it were morning, and in the morning would +God it were night!' then life is _not_ good. If you could be some one else +for a few hours, then you might understand--what defeat and living death--" + +Oh, if she could tell! The impulse to reveal surged in her heart, that deep +human desire to call to another across the desert, so that some one besides +the silent stars and the wretched Self may know! Renault waited, his +compelling eyes on her face. + +"When you have lost the most in your life--hope, love! When you have killed +the best!" she murmured brokenly. "Oh, I can't say it! ... I can never say +it--tell the whole." + +Tears fell, tears of pity for the dead child, for herself, for the +fine-wrought agony of life. + +"But I know!" Renault's voice, low and calm, came as it were from a shut +corner of his heart. "I have felt and I have seen--yes, Defeat, Despair, +Regret--all the black ghosts that walk." + +Isabelle raised her eyes questioningly. + +"And it is because of that, that I can raise my face to the stars and say, +'It is good, all good--all that life contains.' And the time will come when +you will repeat my words and say to them, 'Amen.'" + +"That I could!" + +"We are not animals,--there is the Unseen behind the Seen; the Unknown +behind the Observed. There is a Spirit that rises within us to slay the +ghosts, to give them the lie. Call upon it, and it will answer.... For +Peace is the rightful heritage of every soul that is born." + +"Not Peace." + +"Yes,--I say Peace! Health, perhaps; happiness, perhaps; efficiency, +perhaps. But Peace always lies within the grasp of whomsoever will stretch +out his hand to possess it." ... + +As they stopped at the house door and waited in the deep silence of the +dark morning, Renault put his hands on Isabelle's shoulders:-- + +"Call to it, and it will come from the depths! ... Goodnight." + +There in the still dawning hour, when the vaulted heavens seemed brooding +close to the hills and the forests, these two affirmations of a creed rang +in Isabella's soul like the reverberating chords of some mystic promise:-- + +"Life is good ... all of it ... for every one!" And, "Peace is the rightful +heritage of every soul. It lies within the grasp of whomsoever will stretch +out his hand to possess it." + +It was still within her. + + + + +CHAPTER LX + + +When Isabelle woke, the morning sun fretted the green shutters. She was +tired in every limb,--limp, content to lie in bed while Mrs. Strong lighted +the fire, threw open the shutters, and brought breakfast and the mail. +Through the east windows the sun streamed in solidly, flooding the +counterpane, warming the faded roses of the wall paper. A bit of the north +range of hills, the flat summit of Belton's Top with a glittering ice-cap, +she could see above the gray gable of the barn. The sky was a soft, +cloudless blue, and the eaves were busily dripping in a drowsy persistency. + +She liked to lie there, watching the sun, listening to the drip, her +letters unopened, her breakfast untouched. She was delightfully empty +of thoughts. But one idea lay in her mind,--she should stay on, here, +just here. Since she had packed her trunk the Sunday before, a great deal +seemed to have happened,--a space had been placed between the outer world +that she had restlessly turned back towards and herself. Some day she +should go back to that other world--to Molly and John and all the rest. +But not now--no!... + +As she lay there, slowly the little things of the past weeks since she had +travelled the cold road from White River--the impressions, the sights, the +ideas--settled into her thought, pushing back the obstinate obsessions that +had possessed her for months. The present began to be important, to drive +out the past. Outside in the street some one whistled, the bells of the +passing sleds jangled, a boy's treble halloa sounded far away,--unconscious +voices of the living world, like the floating clouds, the noise of running +water, the drip of the melting snow on the eaves,--so good it all was and +real! ... + +Margaret had found that Peace the doctor had spoken of, Margaret whose +delicate curving lips had always seemed to her the symbol of discontent, of +the inadequacy of life. Margaret had found it, and why not she? ... That +explained the difference she felt these days in Margaret. There had always +been something fine and sweet in the Southern woman, something sympathetic +in her touch, in the tone of her voice even when she said cynical things. +Now Margaret never said bitter things, even about the wretched Larry. She +had always been a listener rather than a talker, but now there was a balm +in her very presence, a touch upon the spirit, like a cool hand on the +brow. Yes! She had found that rightful heritage of Peace and breathed it +all around her, like warmth and light. + +Margaret came in with the noon mail, which she had collected from the box +in the post-office. As she tossed the papers and letters on the bed, +Isabelle noticed another of the oblong letters in the familiar handwriting +from Panama.... + +"Or is it that?" she asked herself for a moment, and then was ashamed. The +smile, the clear look out of the deep eyes, the caressing hand that stroked +her face, all said no,--it was not that! And if it were, it must be good. + +"So you are going to stay with us a while longer, Isabelle.... I shall +unpack your trunk and hide it," Margaret said with smiling conviction. + +"Yes,--I shall stay, for the present.... Now I must get into my clothes. +I've been lazing away the whole morning here--not even reading my letters!" + +"That's right," Margaret drawled. "Doing nothing is splendid for the +temperament. That's why the darkies have such delightful natures. They can +sit whole days in the sun and never think a thought." With her hand on the +door she turned: "You must send for Molly,--it will be good for her to +forget the dancing lessons and frocks. My children will take her down to +Mill Hill and make a boy of her." + +"Well,--but she will be a nuisance, I am afraid. She is such a young +lady."... + +At last Isabelle tore open a letter from her husband, one that Margaret had +just brought. It was concise and dry, in the economical epistolary style +into which they had dropped with each other. He was glad to hear that her +rest in the country was doing her good. If it agreed with her and she was +content, she had better stay on for the present. He should be detained in +the West longer than he had expected. There were important suits coming on +against the railroad in which he should be needed, hearings, etc. At the +close there was an unusually passionate sentence or two about "the public +unrest and suspicion," and the President and the newspapers. "They seem to +like the smell of filth so much that they make a supply when they can't +find any." + +Broils of the world! The endless struggle between those who had and those +who envied them what they had. There was another side, she supposed, and in +the past Cairy had been at some pains to explain that other side to her. +Her husband must of course be prejudiced, like her father; they saw it all +too close. However, it was a man's affair to settle, unless a woman wished +to play Conny's role and move her husband about the board. Broils! How +infinitely far away it seemed, all the noise of the world! ... She began to +dress hurriedly to report at the hospital for the afternoon. As she glanced +again at her husband's letter, she saw a postscript, with some scraps of +St. Louis gossip:-- + +"I hear that Bessie is to get a divorce from Falkner. I wonder if it can be +true.... I saw Steve in the street last week. From what I learn the lumber +business isn't flourishing.... Pity he didn't swallow his scruples and stay +with us where he would be safe!" + +Poor Alice--if Steve should fail now, with all those children! And then she +remembered what Alice Johnston had said to Vickers, "You see we have been +poor so much of the time that we know what it is like." It would take a +good deal to discourage Alice and Steve. But John must keep an eye on them, +and try to help Steve. John, it occurred to her then for the first time, +was that kind,--the substantial sort of man that never needed help himself, +on which others might lean. + + * * * * * + +So Isabelle stayed in the mountain village through the winter months. Molly +came with her governess, and both endeavored to suppress politely their +wonder that any one could imprison herself in this dreary, cold place. The +regular nurses came back to the hospital, but Isabelle, once having been +drawn in, was not released. + +"He's a hard master," Margaret said of the doctor. "If he once gets his +hand on you, he never lets go--until he is ready to." + +Apparently Renault was not ready to let go of Isabelle. Without explaining +himself to her, he kept her supplied with work, and though she saw him +often every day, they rarely talked, never seriously. He seemed to avoid +after that first night any opportunity for personal revelation. The doctor +was fond of jokes and had the manner of conducting his affairs as if they +were a game in which he took a detached and whimsical interest. If there +was sentiment in his nature, an emotional feeling towards the work he was +doing, it was well concealed, first with drollery, and then with scientific +application. So far as any one could observe the daily routine, there was +nothing, at least in the surgical side of the hospital, that was not coldly +scientific. As Renault had said, "We do what we can with every instrument +known to man, every device, drug, or pathological theory." And his mind +seemed mostly engrossed with this "artisan" side of his profession, in +applying his skill and learning and directing the skill and learning of +others. It was only in the convalescent ward that the other side showed +itself,--that belief in the something spiritual, beyond the physical, to be +called upon. One of the doctors, a young Norwegian named Norden, was his +assistant in this work. And every one in the place felt that Norden was +closest of all to the doctor. Norden in his experiments with nervous +diseases used hypnotism, suggestion, psychotherapy,--all the modern forms +of supernaturalism. His attitude was ever, as he said to Isabelle, "It +might be--who knows?"--"There is truth, some little truth in all the ages, +in all the theories and beliefs." Isabelle had a strong liking for this +uncouth Northman with his bony figure and sunken eyes that seemed always +burning with an unattained desire, an inexpressible belief. Norden said to +her, the only way is "to recognize both soul and body in dealing with the +organism. Medicine is a Religion, a Faith, a great Solution. It ought to be +supported by the state, free to all.... The old medicine is either machine +work or quackery, like the blood-letting of barbers." ... + +It was an exhilarating place to live in, Renault's hospital,--an atmosphere +of intense activity, mental and physical, with a spirit of some large, +unexpressed truth, a passionate faith, that raised the immediate finite and +petty task to a step in the glorious ranks of eternity. The personality of +Renault alone kept this atmosphere from becoming hectic and sentimental. He +held this ship that he steered so steadily in the path of fact that there +was no opportunity for emotional explosions. But he himself was the +undefined incarnate Faith that made the voyage of the last importance to +every one concerned. Small wonder that the doctors and nurses--the +instruments of his will--"could not be driven away"! They had caught the +note, each one of them, of that unseen power and lived always in the hope +of greater revelations to come. + +As the order of the days settled into a rhythmic routine with the passing +of the weeks, Isabelle Lane desired more and more to come closer to this +man who had touched her to the quick, to search more clearly for her +personal Solution which evaded her grasp. There were many questions she +wished to have answered! But Renault had few intimate moments. He avoided +personalities, as if they were a useless drain upon energy. His message was +delivered at casual moments. One day he came up behind Isabelle in the +ward, and nodding towards Molly, who was reading a story to one of the +little girl patients, said:-- + +"So you have put daughter to some use?" + +"Yes!" Isabelle exclaimed irritably. "I found her going over her dresses +for the tenth time and brought her along.... However does she get that air +of condescension! Look at her over there playing the grand lady in her +pretty frock for the benefit of these children. Little Snob! She didn't get +_that_ from me." + +"Don't worry. Wait a day or two and you will see the small girl she is +reading to hand her one between the eyes," Renault joked. "She's on to Miss +Molly's patronage and airs, and she has Spanish blood in her. Look at her +mouth now. Doesn't it say, 'I am something of a swell myself?" + +"They say children are a comfort!" Isabelle remarked disgustedly. "They are +first a care and then a torment. In them you see all that you dislike in +yourself popping up--and much more besides. Molly thinks of nothing but +clothes and parties and etiquette. She has twice the social instinct I ever +had. I can see myself ten years hence being led around by her through all +the social stuff I have learned enough to avoid." + +"You can't be sure." + +"They change, but not the fundamentals. Molly is a little _mondaine_,--she +showed it in the cradle." + +"But you don't know what is inside her besides that tendency, any more than +you know now what is inside yourself and will come out a year hence." + +"If I don't know myself at my age, I must be an idiot!" + +"No one knows the whole story until the end. Even really aged people +develop surprising qualities of character. It's a Christmas box--the inside +of us; you can always find another package if you put your hand in deep +enough and feel around. Molly's top package seems to be finery. She may dip +lower down." + +'So I am dipping here in Grosvenor,' thought Isabelle, 'and I may find the +unexpected!' ... This was an empty quarter of an hour before dinner and +Renault was talkative. + +"Who knows?" he resumed whimsically. "You might have a good sense of humor +somewhere, Mrs. Lane, pretty well buried." + +Isabelle flushed with mortification. + +"You are witty enough, young woman. But I mean real humor, not the rattle +of dry peas in the pod that goes for humor at a dinner party. Do you know +why I keep Sam about the place,--that fat lazy beggar who takes half an +hour to fetch an armful of wood? Because he knows how to laugh. He is a +splendid teacher of mirth. When I hear him laugh down in the cellar, I +always open the door and try to get the whole of it. It shakes my stomach +sympathetically. The old cuss knows it, too, which is a pity! ... Well, +young mademoiselle over there is play-acting to herself; she thinks she +will be a grand lady like mamma. God knows what she will find more +interesting before she reaches the bottom of the box. Don't worry! And did +you ever think where they catch the tricks, these kids? If you went into +it, you could trace every one down to some suggestion; it wouldn't take you +long to account for that high and mighty air in your child that you don't +fancy. If you don't want her to pick up undesirable packages, see that they +aren't handed out to her." + +"But she has had the best--" + +"Yes, of course. Lord! the best! Americans are mad for the best. Which +means the highest priced. I've no doubt, Mrs. Lane, you have given Molly +all the disadvantages.... Did you ever sit down for five minutes and ask +yourself seriously what is the best, humanly speaking, for that child? What +things _are_ best any way? ... Do you want her to end where you are at your +age?" + +Isabelle shook her head sadly:-- + +"No,--not that!" + +"Cultivate the garden, then.... Or, to change the figure, see what is +handed out to her.... For every thought and feeling in your body, every act +of your will, makes its trace upon her,--upon countless others, but upon +her first because she is nearest." + +Molly, having closed her book and said good-evening to the little patient, +came up to her mother. + +"It is time, I think, mamma, for me to go home to dress for dinner." She +looked at the little watch pinned to her dress. Renault and Isabelle +laughed heartily. + +"What pebble that you tossed into the pool produced that ripple, do you +think?" the doctor quizzed, twirling Molly about by her neck, much to her +discomfort. + +"He treats me like a child, too," Isabelle complained to Margaret; "gives +me a little lesson now and then, and then says 'Run along now and be a good +girl.'" + +"It is a long lesson," Margaret admitted, "learning how to live, especially +when you begin when we did. But after you have turned the pages for a +while, somehow it counts." + + + + +CHAPTER LXI + + +The first of March was still deep winter in Grosvenor, but during the night +the southwest wind had begun to blow, coming in at Isabelle's window with +the cool freshness of anticipated spring. The day was calm and soft, with +films of cloud floating over the hills, and the indefinable suggestion of +change in the air, of the breaking of the frost. The southwest wind had +brought with it from the low land the haze, as if it had come from far warm +countries about the Gulf, where the flowers were already blooming and the +birds preparing for the northward flight. It touched the earth through the +thick mantle of ice and snow, and underneath in the rocky crust of frozen +ground there was the movement of water. The brooks on the hills began to +gurgle below the ice. + +Up there in the north the snow had come early in the autumn, covering as +with a warm blanket this rocky crust before the frost could strike deep. +"An early spring," Sol Short announced at dinner, a dreamy look in his +eyes, like the soft sky outside, the look of unconscious gladness that +rises in man at the thought of the coming year, the great revival of +life.... That afternoon Margaret and Isabelle drove over the snowy upland, +where the deep drifts in the fields had shrivelled perceptibly, sucked by +the warm sun above and the opening earth beneath. The runners of the sleigh +cut into the trodden snow, and in the sheltered levels of the road the +horse's feet plashed in slush. The birches and alders lifted their bare +stems hardily from the retreating drifts. Soft violet lights hovered in the +valleys. + +"It is coming, Spring!" Margaret cried. + +"Remember, Mr. Short said there would be many a freeze before it really +came to stay!" + +"Yes, but it is the first call; I feel it all through me." + +The week before Ned had left the hospital, and for the first time in three +years had sat at the table with his brother and sister. His face had lost +wholly the gray look of disappointed childhood. Spring, arrested, was +coming to him at last.... + +As they climbed upward into the hills the stern aspect of winter returned, +with the deep drifts of snow, the untracked road. When they topped the Pass +and looked down over the village and beyond to the northern mountains, the +wind caught the sharp edges of the drifts and swept a snowy foam in their +faces. But the sun was sinking into a gulf of misty azure and gold, and the +breath of awakening earth was rising to meet the sun. + +Up here it was still winter, the Past; beneath was the sign of change, the +coming of the New. And as Isabelle contemplated the broad sweep below, her +heart was still, waiting for whatever should come out of the New. + +The sun fell behind the Altar, as they called the flat top of Belton's +Mountain, and all about the hills played the upward radiance from its +descending beams.... Margaret touched the loafing horse with the whip, and +he jogged down into the forest-covered road. + +"Rob Falkner lands to-day in New York," Margaret remarked with a steady +voice. + +Isabelle started from her revery and asked:-- + +"Does he mean to go back to Panama?" + +"I don't believe he knows yet. The life down there is, of course, terribly +lonely and unfruitful. The work is interesting. I think he would like to go +on with it until he had finished his part. But there are changes; the man +he went out with has resigned." + +Margaret wanted to talk about him, apparently, for she continued:-- + +"He has done some very good work,--has been in charge of a difficult +cut,--and he has been specially mentioned several times. Did you see the +illustrated article in the last _People's_? There were sketches and +photographs of his section.... But he hasn't been well lately, had a touch +of fever, and needs a rest." + +"My husband wrote that they were to be divorced--he had heard so." + +"I don't believe it," Margaret replied evenly. "His wife hasn't been down +there.... It isn't exactly the place for a woman, at least for one who +can't stand monotony, loneliness, and hardship. She has been in Europe with +her mother, this last year." + +"You know I used to know her very well years ago. She was very pretty then. +Everybody liked Bessie," Isabelle mused. + +And later she remarked:-- + +"Singular that _her_ marriage should be such a failure." + +"Is it singular that any given marriage should be a failure?" Margaret +asked with a touch of her old irony. "It is more singular to me that any +marriage, made as they must be made to-day, should be anything but a dismal +failure." + +"But Bessie was the kind to be adored. She was pretty, and clever, and +amusing,--a great talker and crazy about people. She had real social +instinct,--the kind you read of in books, you know. She could make her +circle anywhere. She couldn't be alone five minutes,--people clustered +around her like bees. Her life might have been a romance, you would +suppose,--pretty girl, poor, marries an ambitious, clever man, who arrives +with her social help, goes into politics--oh, anything you will!" + +"But the real thing," Margaret observed. + +"What do you mean?" + +"Love! ... Love that understands and helps." + +"Well, I saw the most dazzling future for her when she used to give garden +parties in Torso, with only two unattached men who were possible in the +place! And at least she might have had a small home in the suburbs and an +adoring husband home at five-thirty,--but she wasn't that kind.... Poor +Bess! I am sorry for her." + +"I suppose the reason why a man and a woman hurt instead of help each other +in marriage is never known to any one but themselves," Margaret observed +dryly, urging on the horse. "And perhaps not even to themselves!" + +There was a change in Margaret, an inner ferment that displayed itself in +the haze in her clear eyes,--the look of one whose mind broods over the +past,--a heightened color, a controlled restlessness of mood. 'No, it is +not settled,' thought Isabelle. 'Poor Margaret!' She went about her many +duties with the same silent sureness, the same poise as before. Whatever +was happening to her was according to the discipline of her nature, +controlled, suppressed. 'If she would only splutter,' Isabelle wished, +'instead of looking like a glowing sphinx!' + +"Margaret!" she exclaimed in the evening, after a long silence between +them. "You are so young--so pretty these days!" + +"You think so? Thanks!" Margaret replied, stretching her thin arms above +her head, which was crushed against one of Mrs. Short's hard pillows. "I +suppose it is the Indian summer, the last warm glow before the end!" She +opened her trembling lips in one of her ironical smiles. "There always +comes a time of ripeness to a woman before she goes over the hill into old +age." + +"Nonsense! You are younger than you were twelve years ago!" + +"Yes, I am younger in a sense than I ever was. I am well and strong, and I +am in equilibrium, as I never was before.... And it's more than that. We +become more vital if we survive the tangle of youth. We see more--we feel +more! When I hear girls talk about love, I always want to say: 'What do you +know, what _can_ you know about it! Love isn't born in a woman before she +is thirty,--she hasn't the power. She can have children, but she can't love +a man.'" + +Margaret pressed her hands tensely together and murmured to herself, "For +love is born with the soul,--and is the last thing that comes into the +heart!" + +Isabelle with caressing impulsiveness put her arms about the slight figure. + +"I love you, Margaret; it seems as if you were the only person I really +loved now! It has been heaven to be with you all these weeks. You calm me, +you breathe peace to me.... And I want to help you, now." + +Margaret smiled sadly and drew Isabelle's dark head to her and kissed it. + +"Nobody can help, dear.... It will come right! It must come right, I am +sure." + +With the feelings that are beyond expression they held each other thus. +Finally Margaret said in a low voice:-- + +"Rob comes day after to-morrow; he will be at the Inn." + +Isabelle rose from the couch with a sudden revulsion in her heart. After +all, was this calm, this peace that she had admired in Margaret and longed +to possess herself, this Something which she had achieved and which seemed +to put her beyond and above ordinary women, nothing but the woman's +satisfaction in love, whose lover is seeking her? She found herself almost +despising Margaret unreasonably. Some man! That created the firmament of +women's heaven, with its sun and its moon and its stars. Remembered +caresses and expected joys,--the woman's bliss of yielding to her chosen +master,--was that all! + +Margaret, following Isabelle with her eyes, seemed to comprehend this +sudden change in her heart. But she merely remarked:-- + +"He cannot stay long,--only a couple of days, I believe." + +"Tell me," Isabelle demanded sharply, as if she had the right to know, must +know, "what are you going to do?" + +Margaret closed her eyes, and after a time of utter stillness she said in a +voice beseechingly tender:-- + +"Dear, perhaps I do not know, yet." + +Her eyes were wet with unaccustomed tears. Stretching a hand to Isabelle +and smiling again, she murmured:-- + +"Whatever it will be, you must trust that it will be right for me and for +him,--you must know that." + +Isabelle pressed her hand gently:-- + +"Forgive me." + +"And some day I will tell you." + + + + +CHAPTER LXII + + +Mrs. Short peered through the dining-room window on the snow field,--a +dazzling white under the March sun now well above the hills,--and watched +the two black figures tracking their way on snow-shoes towards the forest. +Margaret's slight figure swept ahead with a skill and assurance that the +taller one did not show. "I guess," mused the blacksmith's wife, "that life +on the Isthmus of Panama don't fit a man much to distinguish himself on +those things." Nevertheless, the man tramped laboriously behind the woman +until the two were halted by a fence, now visible through the sunken drift. +They faced each other, and were evidently discussing mirthfully how the +obstacle was to be met. The man stooped to untie the shoes, his pockets +bulging with the day's luncheon; but suddenly the woman backed away and +began to climb the fence, a difficult feat. The man lumbered after her, +catching one shoe in the top rail, finally freeing himself. Then the two +black figures were lost over the dip of the hill. The smile still lingered +on Mrs. Short's face,--the smile that two beings, man and woman, still +young and vital, must always bring, as though saying, 'There's spring yet +in the world, and years of life and hope to come!' + + * * * * * + +Behind the hill in the hollow Margaret was showing Falkner how to squat on +his shoes and coast over the crust. At the bottom of the slide the brook +was gurgling under a film of ice. The upward slope untouched by the sun, +was glare ice, and they toiled. Beyond was the forest with its black tree +trunks amid the clotted clumps of snowy underbrush. Falkner pushed on with +awkward strength to reach Margaret, who lingered at the opening of the +wood. How wonderful she was, he thought, so well, so full of life and +fire,--O God! all woman! And his heart beat hard, now that what he had seen +these two years behind the curtain of his eyes was so near,--after all the +weary months of heat and toil and desire! Only she was more, so much +more--as the achieved beauty of the day is more than memory or +anticipation.... + +She smiled a welcome when he reached her, and pointed away to the misty +hills. "The beauty of it!" she whispered passionately. "I adore these +hills, I worship them. I have seen them morning and night all these months. +I know every color, every rock and curving line. It is like the face, of a +great austere God, this world up here, a God that may be seen." + +"You have made me feel the hills in your letters." + +"Now we see them together.... Isn't it wonderful to be here in it all, you +and I, together?" + +He held his arms to her. + +"Not yet," she whispered, and sped on into the still darkness between the +fir branches. He followed. + +So on, on over the buried bushes, across the trickly, thawing streams, +through a thick swamp, close with alder and birch, on up the slope into +woods more largely spaced, where great oaks towered among the fir and the +spruce, and tall white birches glimmered in the dusk--all still and as yet +dead. And on far up the mountain slope until beneath the Altar they came to +a little circle, hedged round with thick young firs, where the deep snow +was tracked with footprints of birds and foxes. Margaret leaned against the +root of a fallen birch and breathed deeply. She had come like the wind, +swift and elusive, darting through the forest under the snowy branches, as +if--so felt the man with his leashed desire of her--the mere physical joy +of motion and air and sun and still woods were enough, and love had been +lost in the glory of the day! ... + +"Here," she murmured with trembling lips, "at last!" + +"At last!" he echoed, her eyes close to his. And as they waited a moment +before their lips met, the woman's face softened and changed and pleaded +with him wistfully, all the sorrow of waiting and hunger, of struggle and +triumph in her eyes, and memory of joy and ecstasy that had been.... Her +head fell to his shoulder, all will gone from her body, and she lay in his +arms. + +"Love!" she murmured; "my soul's desire, at last!" ... + + * * * * * + +They had their luncheon there, in the sunny circle among the firs, and +spoke of their two years' separation. + +"And I am not going back!" Falkner cried joyously. + +"You have decided already?" + +"My chief has resigned, you know,--and there is a piece of work up North +here he wants me for.... But that is not all the reason!" + +Her face blanched. They had begun their journey again, and were following +the ridge of the mountain in the light of the westering sun. They walked +slowly side by side so that they might talk. Margaret looked up +questioningly. + +"You and I have always been honest--direct with each other," he said. + +She nodded gravely. + +"We have never slipped into things; we have looked ahead, looked it all in +the face." + +"Yes!" she assented proudly. + +"Then we will look this in the face together.... I have come back for one +thing--for you!" + +As he drew her to him, she laid her hands on his breast and looked at him +sadly. + +"The other was not enough!" + +"Never!--nothing could ever be enough but to have you always." + +"Dearest, that I might forever give you all that you ever desired! All!" +she cried out of the tenderest depth of a woman's heart,--the desire to +give all, the best, to the man loved, the sacrificial triumph of woman, +this offering of body and soul and life from the need to give, give, give! + +"I have come for one thing," he said hoarsely; "for you!" + +She drew herself back from his arms unconsciously and said:-- + +"You must understand.... Dearest, I love you as I never loved you before. +Not even when you came to me and gave me life.... I long to give you +all--for always. But, dearest, for us it--cannot be." + +"I do not understand," Falkner protested. "You think I am not free,--but I +have come to tell you--" + +"No,--listen first! And you and I will be one in this as we always have +been one since the beginning.... When we went away together those days, we +climbed the heights--you gave me my soul--it was born in your arms. And I +have lived since with that life. And it has grown, grown--I see so much +farther now into the infinite that we reached out to then. And I see +clearly what has been in the past--oh, so clearly!" + +"But why should that divide us now?" + +"Listen! ... Now it is different. He, my husband, would be between us +always, as he was not then. I took what I needed then--took it fiercely. I +never thought of him. But now I see how all along from the beginning I +withdrew my hand from him. Perhaps that was the reason he went so +desperately to pieces at the end. I could not have made him a strong man. +But, dearest, he died utterly alone, disgraced in his own heart--alone! +That is awful to think of!" + +"It was his nature," Falkner protested sternly. + +"It was his nature to be weak and small and petty.... But don't you see +that I deserted him--I took back my hand! And now I should let you take +back yours.... Yes,--I have changed, dearest. I have come to understand +that the weak must be the burden of the strong--always!" + +Falkner's lean face grew hard with the lines of hunger,--repressed but not +buried,--the lines of inner strife. In a dry voice he said:-- + +"I thought that we had settled all that once, Margaret." + +"One cannot settle such things so.... It has come to me--the light--slowly, +so slowly. And it is not all clear yet. But I see a larger segment of the +circle than we could see two years ago." ... + +Without more words they began to descend towards the village. The hills +that compassed their view were rimmed with the green and saffron lights of +the afterglow. Their summits were sharp edged as if drawn by a titanic hand +against a sea of glowing color. But within the forests on the slope there +was already the gloom of night. Slowly the words fell from his lips:-- + +"I will never believe it! Why should a man and a woman who can together +make the world brave and noble and full of joy be parted--by anything? A +sacrifice that gives nothing to any one else!" + +That cry was the fruit of the man's two years' battle alone with his heart. +To that point of hunger and desire he had come from the day when they +parted, when they made their great refusal.... + +Both remembered that evening, two years before, when they had sailed back +to the land--to part. They remembered the Portuguese ship that was weighing +anchor for a distant port. As they looked at it wistfully, he had said, +"And why not?" And she had replied with shining eyes, "Because we love too +much for that." Then he had accepted,--they had found the heights and on +them they would remain, apart in the world of effort, always together in +their own world which they had created. Then he had understood and gone +away to his struggle. Now he could live no longer in that shadowy union: he +had come back to possess his desire. + +With her it had been different, this separation.... How much more she loved +now than then! Her love had entered into her these two years, deeper to the +depths of her being, stronger as she was stronger in body, more vital. It +had given her strength even for the great denial to him,--and this she +realized miserably; their love had given her strength, had unfolded her +soul to herself until she had come to large new spheres of feeling, and +could see dimly others beyond. While with him it had burned away all else +but one human, personal want. He thought to go back now to their island in +the sea,--as if one could ever go back in this life, even to the fairest +point of the past! ... + +She laid a caressing hand on his arm. + +"Don't you see, dearest, that we could never come out again on the heights +where we were?" + +From the sombre mood of his defeat, he said bitterly:-- + +"So it was all wrong,--a mistake, a delusion!" + +"Never!" she flashed. "Never! Not for one moment since we parted would I +give up what has been between us.... You do not understand, dearest! ... +Life began for me there. If it had not been for that, this could not be +now. But one journeys on from knowledge to knowledge." + +"Then why not other heights--together?" + +And she whispered back very low:-- + +"Because we should kill it! All of it... now that I see it would be base. +We have risen above that glory,--yes, both of us! We have risen above it, +divine as it was. It would be no longer divine, my dearest. I should be but +a woman's body in your arms, my lover.... Now we shall rise always, always, +together--each in the other!" + +The lights of the village shone just below them. A sleigh went tinkling +loudly along the road, with the voices of talking people in the dark night. +Margaret stopped before they reached the road, and turning to him put her +arms about his neck and drew him to her. + +"Don't you know that I shall be yours always? Ah, dearest, dearest!" + +In the passionate tenderness of her kiss he felt the fulness of victory and +defeat. She was his, but never to be his. He kissed her burning eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER LXIII + + +Supper at the Shorts' was the pleasantest time of the day. The small, plain +room, warm and light and homely, the old blacksmith's contented face as he +sat at the head of his table and served the food, glancing now and then +with a meaning look at his wife, mutely talking with her, and the two +friends in light summer dresses chatting of the day,--it was all so remote +from the bustle of life, so simply peaceful that to Isabelle supper at the +Shorts' was the symbol of Grosvenor life as much as Renault's hospital. It +was the hour when the blacksmith's ripest wisdom and best humor came to the +surface; when, having pounded existence and lassitude out of iron and wood +in the little shop down the street, he relaxed the muscles of his tired +body and looked over to his wife and found the world good. + +"Theirs is the figure of perfect marriage," Margaret had said; "interlocked +activity, with emotional satisfaction. Mrs. Short's climax of the day is +her hot supper laid before her lord.... Do you see how they talk without +words across the table? They know what the other is thinking always. So the +Shorts have found what so many millions miss,--a real marriage!" + +To-night when Falkner came back with Margaret for supper, this note of +perfect domesticity was at its best. Mr. Short had gone to the cellar for a +bottle of cider wine in honor of the guest from Panama, and his wife +rustled in black silk. She had made a marvellous cake that sat proudly on +the sideboard, looking down on the feast. The blacksmith carved the hot +meat, and in his gentle voice talked to the stranger. + +"You must have found it hard work when the snow got soft on the hills. As I +felt the sun coming down warm, I said to myself, 'Those shoes will seem as +big as cart-wheels to him.'... You were up by Belton's? There's big timber +in there still, back on the mountain, where they found it too hard to get +out. You come across a great log now and then that looks like a fallen +giant.... But I remember on my father's farm, twenty miles from here in the +back country, when I was a boy"-- + +He held the carving-knife suspended above the steak, lost in the vista of +years. These anecdotal attacks worried his wife, who feared for her hot +food; but the others encouraged him. + +--"there were trees lying on the ground in the pasture rotting, that must +have been five feet through at the butt end. I used to sit atop of them and +think how big they would have been standing up with their tops waving.... +Yes, wood was cheap in those days."... + +Isabelle, as she watched Margaret and Falkner, was puzzled. Margaret in her +rose-colored tea-gown was like a glowing coal, but Falkner seemed glum and +listless. "Tired, poor man!" Mrs. Short thought, and the blacksmith had +full scope for his memories. But gradually Falkner became interested and +asked questions. As a boy he had lived in the country, and in the +atmosphere of the Shorts the warm memories of those days revived, and he +talked of his own country up in the "big timber" of Michigan. Margaret, +resting her head on her hands, watched his eager eyes. She knew, so well, +what was in his mind below his memories. 'These good people have all this! +these simple people, just the plain, elementary, ordinary things of +life,--a peaceful shelter, warmth, comfort, happiness. And we, she and I, +might have this and so much more,--a thousand interests and ecstasies, but +we who are still young must live on in cheerless separation, missing all +this--and for what?' + +She read it in his eyes. She knew the man-nature, how it develops when +middle life comes,--the desire for home, for the settled and ordered spot, +the accustomed shelter. When the zest of the wandering days no longer +thrills, the adventurous and experimenting impulse is spent, that is what +man, even a passionate lover, craves to find in a woman,--peace and the +ordered life. And she could give it to this man, who had never had +it,--companionship and comradeship as well, and make an inner spot of peace +where the man might withdraw from the fighting world. Oh, she knew how to +fit his life like a spirit! ... + +When Falkner rose to leave, Margaret slipped on a long coat, saying:-- + +"I will show you the way to the Inn; you would never find it alone!" + +As she took his arm outside, he asked dully:-- + +"Which way now?" + +"This is our way first," and Margaret turned up the road away from the +village, past the doctor's house. They walked in silence. When she pointed +out Renault's hospital, Falkner looked at it indifferently. "Queer sort of +place for a hospital. What kind of a man is he?" + +"A queer sort of man," Margaret replied. + +Beyond the hospital the road mounted the hillside, passing through dark +woods. Beneath their feet the frozen snow crunched icily. + +"Good people that blacksmith and his wife," Falkner remarked. "That was the +kind of thing I dreamed it would be,--a place, a spot, of our own, no +matter how plain and small, and some one to look across the table as that +gray-haired woman looks at the old fellow, as if she knew him to the +roots.... I hope it will be some time before they get the apartment hotel +in Grosvenor! ... A man has his work," he mused. + +"Yes, the man has his work." + +"And a woman her children." + +"And the woman her children." + +"So that is what life comes to in the middle distance,--the man has his +work and the woman her children.... But one doesn't marry for that! There +is something else." + +Her clasp tightened on his arm, and he turned quickly and taking the +fingers in his hand separated them one by one between his. In the starlight +he could see the fine line of her face from brow to pointed chin, and he +could hear her breathing. + +"This, this!" he muttered fiercely. "Your touch, so; your look, so--your +voice in my ear--what makes it magic for me? Why not another? Any +other--why this? To go to the heart of one! Yours--which will never be +mine." + +The sweep of dominating desire, the male sense of mastery and will to +possess, surged up again in the man, tempting him to break the barriers she +had erected between them, to take her beyond her scruples, and carry her +with him, as the strong man of all time has carried away the woman whom he +would have for mate. + +She held her face upwards for his kiss, and as she trembled once more in +the arms of the man she had consented to, there was answered in her the +mystery he had propounded,--'Because of the I within me that he loves and +respects, because of that I which is mine and no other's, not even +his,--therefore he loves me of all the world,--I am his soul!'... + +It was all snowy upland near the crest of the hill. They leaned against a +rock, close together, and listened to the stillness around them, his arm +beneath her cloak drawing her closer, closer to him, away from herself. In +the forgetfulness of joy she seemed mounting, floating, high up above all, +the man's desire bearing her on wings away from the earth with its failure +and sorrow, up to the freedom she had thirsted for, up to fulfilment.... + +Now his eyes, once more victorious, looked close into hers, and something +within her spoke,--low and sweet and far away.... + +"I love you, dearest! I will be yours, as you will have me,--as we were +those other days, and more. Much more! I will be your slave, your +mistress,--to do with as you wish, to take and leave.... There can be no +marriage, none. Will you have me? Will you take me like that? To be your +thing? Will you ... and throw me away when I am used and finished for you? +... I will give you all! Now! ... And when the time comes that must come, I +will go out." + +Then, at last, the man saw! She would give all, even her own soul, if he +would take it. But first, there was something he must kill,--there in her +body within his close embrace, with her breath on his face,--something she +offered him as a last gift to kill.... The body was but a symbol, a piece +of clothing, a rag.... So he understood, and after a long time his arms +loosened about her. + +"I see," he whispered, and as he kissed her lips, "Never that!" + +The summit of the mountain loomed above them,--the Altar. Margaret as they +turned towards the village stretched her arms upwards to the Altar,--there +where she had lain as it were naked for the sacrifice before the man she +loved. "Come!" he said gently. + +They had kissed for the last time. + + * * * * * + +As they approached the Inn at the farther end of the village, Falkner was +saying in reply to her question:-- + +"Yes, after I have seen something of Mildred, I shall go to Washington to +join the chief. He will want me to live up in the country at the works. I +shall like that.... The dam will take three years at least, I suppose. It +must be like the work of the ancient Egyptians, for all time and colossal. +I wish the work might last out my day!" + +The woman's heart tightened. Already he had swung, as she willed, to the +one steadfast star in his firmament,--work, accomplishment,--accepting the +destiny she had willed, to struggle upwards apart from her to that high +altar where they both had stood this night.... + +When Margaret entered the house, Isabelle's light was still burning and her +door was open. She paused as she passed to her room, her coat flung back +revealing the soft rose color beneath, and in her white face her eyes shone +softly. + +"Rob leaves to-morrow morning by the early train," she remarked. + +"So soon!" + +"Yes,--for the West." + +And then Isabelle knew, as Margaret had promised. + + + + +CHAPTER LXIV + + +Dr. Renault's private office was a large, square room with a north window +that gave a broad view of the pointed Albany mountains. Along the walls +were rows of unpainted wooden shelves on which were stacked books and +pamphlets. One small piece of bronze on the shelf above the fireplace--a +copy of the seated Mercury in the Naples museum--was the sole ornament in +the room. A fire was dying on the hearth this gray March afternoon, and +flashes of light from a breaking log revealed the faces of Renault and +Isabelle, standing on opposite sides of his work table. They had stood like +this a long time while the gray day came to an end outside and the trees +lashed by the north wind bent and groaned. Isabelle was passing the office, +after dinner, on some errand, and the doctor had called her. Accident had +led to this long talk, the longest and the deepest she had had with +Renault. One thing had touched another until she had bared to him her +heart, had laid before his searching gaze the story of her restless, futile +life. And the words that he had spoken had dropped like hot metal upon her +wounds and burned until her hands trembled as they leaned upon his desk.... + +"The discipline of life!" he had said. The phrase was hateful to her. It +stirred within her all the antagonism of her generation to the creed of her +people, to the Puritan ideal, cold, narrow, repressive. And yet Renault was +far from being a Puritan. But he, too, believed in the "discipline of +life." And again when she had confessed her ambitions for "a broad life," +"for experience," he had said: "Egotism is the pestilence of our day,--the +sort of base intellectual egotism that seeks to taste for the sake of +tasting. Egotism is rampant. And worst of all it has corrupted the women, +in whom should lie nature's great conservative element. So our body social +is rotten with intellectual egotism. Yes, I mean just what you have prided +yourself on,--Culture, Education, Individuality, Cleverness,--'leading your +own lives,' Refinement, Experience, Development, call it what you will,--it +is the same, the inturning of the spirit to cherish self. Not one of all +you women has a tenth of the experience my mother had, who, after bringing +up her family of eight, at fifty-seven went to the town school to learn +Latin, because before she had not had the time."...To some defence of her +ideal by Isabelle, he retorted with fine scorn:-- + +"Oh, I know the pretty impression our American women make in the eyes of +visiting foreigners,--so 'clever,' so 'fascinating,' so 'original,' so +'independent,' and such 'charm'! Those are the words, aren't they? While +their dull husbands are 'money-getters.' They at least are doers, not +talkers! ... + +"Do you know what you are, women like you, who have money and freedom to +'live your own lives'? You are sexless; you haven't nature's great apology +for the animal,--desire. Such women sin, when they sin, with their minds. +Great God! I had rather those broad-hipped Italian peasant women of +Calabria, with solid red-brown flesh, bred bastards for the country than +have these thin, anaemic, nervous, sexless creatures, with their 'souls' +and their 'charm,' marry and become mothers! What have you done to the +race? The race of blond giants from the forests of the north? Watch the +avenue in New York!" + +Again,--"So what have you made of marriage, 'leading your own lives'? You +make marriage a sort of intelligent and intellectual prostitution--and you +develop divorce. The best among you--those who will not marry unless the +man can arouse their 'best selves'--will not bear children even then. And +you think you have the right to choose again when your so-called souls have +played you false the first time.... And man, what of him? You leave him to +his two gross temptations,--Power and Lust. Man is given you to protect, +and you drive him into the market-place, where he fights for your ease, and +then relaxes in the refined sensualities you offer him as the reward for +his toil. With the fall of man into the beast's trough must come the +degradation of women. They cannot travel apart; they must pull together. +What have _you_ done for your husband?" He turned sharply on Isabelle. +"Where is he now? where has he been all these years? What is he doing this +hour? Have you nursed his spirit, sharpened his sword? ... I am not +speaking of the dumb ones far down in the mass, nor of the humdrum +philistines that still make homes, have traces of the nest-instinct left; +but of you, _you_,--the developed intelligences who flatter yourselves that +you lead because you are free to do as you like. By your minds you are +betrayed!" + +Before the blast of his scorching words Isabelle saw her ambitions shrivel +into petty nothings,--all the desires from her first married days to find a +suitable expression of her individuality, her wish to escape Torso, her +contempt for St. Louis, her admiration for Cornelia Woodyard, her seeking +for "interesting" people and a cultivated and charming background for +herself, and last of all her dissatisfaction in her marriage because it +failed to evoke in her the passion she desired. It was a petty story, she +felt,--ashamed before Renault's irony. + +He knew her life, more than she had told him, much more. He knew _her_. He +read below the surface and had known her from the first hour they had met. +It was all true,--she had wanted many things that now she saw were futile. +She had accepted her marriage as failure--almost with relief, as an excuse +for her restlessness. Yes, she had made mistakes; what was worse, was a +mistake herself! Crushed with this sense of futility, of failure, she +cried:-- + +"But we are caught in the stream when we are young and eager. The world +seems so big and rich if you but reach out your hand to take." + +"And from its feast you took--what?" + +She was silent, self-convicted; for she had taken chaff! ...Nevertheless, +it was not dead within her--the self. It cried out under Renault's pitiless +scorn for satisfaction, for life. The rebellious surge of desire still +suffocated her at times. There was beauty, the loveliness of the earth, the +magic wonder of music and art,--all the clamor of emotion for an expression +of self. And love? Ah, that was dead for her. But the life within, the +self, still hungered for possession at times more fiercely than ever. Why +should it be killed at her age? Why were they not good, these hungry +desires, this fierce self that beat in her blood for recognition? The +conquering, achieving SELF! That was the spirit of her race, to see and +take that which was good in their eyes, to feed the SELF with all that the +world contained of emotions, ideas, experience; to be big, and strong, and +rich,--to have Power! That was what life had meant for her ancestors ever +since the blond race emerged from their forests to conquer. All else was +death to the self, was merely sentimental deception, a playing at +resignation.... + +As if he traced her fast thoughts, Renault said:-- + +"A house divided against itself--" + +"But even if I have failed--" + +"Failed because you did not look deep enough within!" + +Renault's voice insensibly softened from his tone of harsh invective as he +added:-- + +"And now you know what I meant when I said that a neurasthenic world needed +a new religion!" + +So he had remembered her,--knew her all the time! + +"But you can't get it because you need it--" + +"Yes, because you feel the need! ... Not the old religion of abnegation, +the impossible myths that come to us out of the pessimistic East, created +for a relief, a soporific, a means of evasion,--I do not mean that as +religion. But another faith, which abides in each one of us, if we look for +it. We rise with it in the morning. It is a faith in life apart from our +own personal fate.... Because we live on the surface, we despair, we get +sick. Look below into the sustaining depths beyond desire, beyond self, to +the depths,--and you will find it. It will uplift you.... When you wake in +the morning, there will come to you some mysterious power that was not +there before, some belief, some hope, some faith. Grasp it! ... When the +clouds lift, the physical clouds and the mental clouds, then appears the +Vision and the knowledge. They are the truth from the depths within,--the +voice of the spirit that lives always. And by that voice man himself lives +or dies, as he wills,--by the voice of the spirit within." + +So as the drear day of the dying winter drew to a close, as the ashes +powdered on the hearth and the face of Renault became obscure in the +twilight, the dim outlines of a great meaning rose before her, reconciling +all.... The Vision that abides within apart from the teasing phantasmagoria +of sense, the Vision that comes, now dim, now vivid, as the flash of white +light in the storm, the Vision towards which mankind blindly reaches, the +Vision by which he may learn to live and endure all! + +And this Vision was all that really mattered,--to see it, to follow where +it pointed the way! + +... "The waste in life, the wrong steps, the futile years!" she murmured. + +"Rather the cost, the infinite cost of human souls--and their infinite +value once born," Renault corrected. "Do not distress yourself about what +to do, the claims of this or that. The thing to do will always be clear, +once you trust yourself, seek wholly the Vision. And as for beauty and +satisfaction and significance,--it is infinite in every moment of every +life--when the eyes are once open to see!" + +There was the sound of footsteps outside, and Isabelle moved to the door. + +"So," Renault concluded, putting his hands on her shoulders, "it is not the +End but the Beginning. And always so,--a mysterious journey, this life, +with countless beginnings.... We go out into the night. But the light +comes--when we forget to see ourselves." + +The wind raged in the trees outside, sweeping across the earth, tearing the +forest, cleansing and breaking its repose, preparing for the renewal to +come. Like a mighty voice it shouted to man; like the whirlwind it shook +his earth.... For the first time since Vickers lay dead in the dawn of the +June morning Isabelle could bear to look at the past,--to accept it calmly +as part of herself out of which she had lived, in recognition of that +beginning within. + + + + +CHAPTER LXV + + +"They seem to be in such a pother, out in the world," Isabelle remarked to +Margaret, as she turned over the leaves of her husband's letter. "The +President is calling names, and a lot of good people are calling names +back. And neither side seems to like being called names. John doesn't like +it, and he calls names. And they sulk and won't play marbles. It all sounds +like childish squabbling." + +Margaret, who was unusually absent-minded this evening, sighed:-- + +"So many desires of men, always struggling at cross-purposes! I haven't +read the papers for months! They don't seem real up here, somehow. What's +happening?" + +"I haven't opened my papers, either. Look there!" Isabelle pointed to a +pile of unwrapped newspapers in the corner. "But I must go through them and +see what John is grumbling about. It isn't like John to grumble at +anything." Then she read from her husband's letter: "The President in his +besotted vanity and colossal ignorance has succeeded in creating trouble +that twenty Presidents won't be able to settle. The evils which he may have +corrected are nothing to those he has brought upon innocent people.... So +far as our road is concerned, this prejudiced and partisan investigation, +instigated by the newspapers and notoriety seekers, will do no great +harm.... I suppose you have seen the garbled press account of my +cross-examination,--don't let it disturb you."... + +Isabelle looked up. + +"I wonder what he means by that! 'My cross-examination'? It must be +something rather out of the ordinary to stir John to such +expression,--'Besotted vanity and colossal ignorance.' Whew!" + +After Margaret left, Isabelle began abstractedly to strip the wrappers from +the newspapers, glancing at the thickest headlines:-- + +BANK FAILURE--SUICIDE OF BANK PRESIDENT--SENSATIONAL DIVORCE, etc. + +Here it was at last:-- + +THE ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC ON THE GRILL!! INVESTIGATION OF THE GREAT +RAILROAD'S COAL BUSINESS + +Isabelle scanned the newspaper column indifferently. As Margaret had said, +the squabbles of the great, conglomerate, writhing business world seemed +remote indeed. They had never been actual to her, though she was the +daughter of a merchant. In the Colonel's house, as in most American homes +of the well-to-do, the newspaper was regarded as a necessary evil, largely +composed of lies and garbled rumors. It was taken for granted that almost +everything to be seen in print was vitiated by sensational falsehood, and +so far as "business"--mystic word!--was concerned, all "news" was pure +fabrication. This sceptical attitude had been intensified by John, who +regarded any criticism of the actions of capital as dictated by envy, as +"unpatriotic," aimed at the efforts of the most energetic and respectable +element in the community; moreover, "socialistic," that is, subversive of +the established order, etc. According to John the ablest men would always +"get on top," no matter what laws were made. And getting on top meant that +they would do what they wished with their own, i.e. capital. Thus without +thinking about it Isabelle had always assumed that men in general were +envious of their betters. Sometimes, to be sure, she had suspected that +this simple theory might be incomplete, that her husband and his friends +might be "narrow." Some people whose opinion she respected even approved of +the President's policy in seeking to curb the activities of capital. But +she had slight interest in the vexed question, and skipped all references +to industrial turmoil in her reading. + +So to-night her eyes slipped carelessly down the column, which was not +intelligible without previous accounts, and she continued to rip the +wrappers from newspapers, letting the stiff parcels of paper drop to the +floor. She was thinking of what Renault had said, bits of his phrases +constantly floating through her mind. If he had only been more precise! She +wanted to know _what_ to do,--here, now. He had said: "Wait! It will all be +clear. It makes little difference what it is. You will find the path." With +her eager temperament that was all baffling. Margaret had found her +path,--had seen her Vision, and it had brought to her peace. Her restless, +bitter nature had been wonderfully changed into something exquisitely calm +and poised, so that her very presence, silent in the room, could be +felt.... + +Isabelle's eyes caught the headline in the paper she was opening:-- + +OFFICIALS OF THE ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC BEFORE THE FEDERAL GRAND JURY + +JOHN S. LANE, THIRD VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE ROAD, INDICTED + +Isabelle's mind suddenly woke to the present, and she began to read +breathlessly: "As a result of the recent investigations by the Interstate +Commerce Commission of the relation between the Atlantic and Pacific and +certain coal properties, officials of that system have been examined by a +special Grand Jury, and it is rumored," etc. Isabelle glanced at the date +of the paper. It was a month old! Even now, perhaps, her husband was on +trial or had already been tried for illegal acts in the conduct of his +business, and she knew nothing about it! Another paper had the item: "This +time the district attorney under direction from Washington will not be +content to convict a few rate clerks or other underlings. The indictment +found against one of the vice-presidents of this great corporation that has +so successfully and impudently defied the law will create a profound +impression upon the whole country. It is a warning to the corporation +criminals that the President and his advisers are not to be frightened by +calamity-howlers, and will steadfastly pursue their policy of going higher +up in their effort to bring the real offenders before the courts. The +coming trial before federal Judge Barstow will be followed with intense +interest," etc., etc. + +Isabelle rapidly uncovered the remaining newspapers, arranging them in the +order of dates, and then glanced through every column in search of news +about the trial, even to the editorial comments on the action of the Grand +Jury. The earlier papers that had the account of the investigation by the +Commission had been destroyed unread, but she inferred from what she saw +that the affair rose from the complaint of independent mine-owners in +Missouri and Indiana that they were discriminated against by the railroad. +The federal authorities were trying to establish the fact of conspiracy on +the part of the Atlantic and Pacific to control the coal business along its +lines. There were hints of an "inside ring," whose operations tended to +defraud both stockholders and public.... + +As she read the wordy columns of report and suspicion, there suddenly shot +into Isabelle's mind a memory of a Sunday afternoon in Torso when she and +John had ridden by Mr. Freke's mines and John had said in reply to her +question, "Mr. Freke and I do business together." Mr. Freke was the +president of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company,--a name that occurred often +in the newspaper report, the name which had been spread across the black +sheds she had seen that Sunday afternoon. Now she remembered, also, that +she had had to sign certain papers for transfer of stock when John had sold +something to put the money--into coal. And last of all she remembered at +the very beginning of her life in Torso the face of that man in her +husband's office and how he had begged for cars, and his cry, "My God! I +shall go bankrupt!" Out of it all--the newspaper paragraphs, the legal +terms, the editorial innuendoes, the memories--there was shaped something +like a coherent picture of what this dispute really meant, and her +husband's concern in it. + +It was now midnight. Isabelle's mind was stung to keen apprehension. She +did not know whether John was guilty of what the government was seeking to +prove him guilty. She could not judge whether the government was justified +in bringing suit against the railroad and its officials. There was +doubtless the other side, John's side. Perhaps it was a technical crime, a +formal slip, as she had been told it was in other cases where the +government had prosecuted railroads. That would come out clearly at the +trial, of course. But the fact that stared her in the face was that her +husband was to be _tried_--perhaps was on trial this very day--and she did +not even know it! She reached for the papers again and searched for the +date of the trial of the coal cases in the federal court. It was to open +the nineteenth of March--it was now the twenty-second! And the last paper +to reach her was the issue of the eighteenth. The trial had already begun. + +Isabelle paced the narrow breadth of her chamber. Her husband was on trial, +and he had not written her. His last letters, which she had destroyed, had +betrayed signs of irritation, disturbance.... Renault's charge, "The curse +of our day is egotism," rang in her ears. She had been so much concerned +over her own peace of mind, her own soul, that she had had no room for any +perception--even for the man with whom she had lived side by side for ten +years! Love or not, satisfaction or not in marriage, it must mean something +to live for ten years of life with another human being, eat bread with him, +sleep under the same roof with him, bear a child to him.... And there in +her silent room Isabelle began to see that there was something in marriage +other than emotional satisfaction, other than conventional cohabitation. +"Men are given to you women to protect--the best in them!" "You live off +their strength,--what do you give them? Sensuality or spirit?" Her husband +was a stranger; she had given him nothing but one child. + +Isabelle opened her trunks and began to pack. There was a train south from +White River at eight-thirty, which connected with the New York express. +Molly could follow later with the governess.... She flung the things +loosely into the trunks, her mind filled with but one idea. She must get to +St. Louis as soon as possible. 'John--my husband--is being tried out there +for dishonest conduct in his business, and we are so far apart that he +doesn't even mention it in his letters!' + +At last, the packing over, she crouched by the embers and tried to warm her +numb hands. This burst of decided will which had made her swiftly prepare +for the journey gave out for the moment.... What should she do out there, +after all? She would merely be in the way and annoy John. And with a +strength that startled her came the answer, 'After all, we are man and +wife; he is my husband, and he is in trouble!' + +It would not be possible to see Renault before she left. Well, he had +spoken his message to her, having chosen his own time. And already his +prophecy was coming about. The thing to do was plain. The Vision was there, +and the voice had spoken out of the depths. She was extraordinarily calm, +as if raised above doubt, the confusing calls of personal consideration. +There might be disgrace to come for her husband. There was the undoubted +miserable failure of her marriage,--the strong possibility of her husband's +impassive coldness at her futile flight to his side, at this hour. But +there was no Fear! ... And serenely she dropped into sleep. + + + + +CHAPTER LXVI + + +Margaret and the children drove down to White River with her the next +morning. Just as Margaret had previously opposed her restless desire to +leave Grosvenor, with gentle suggestions and quiet persuasion, so this time +she accepted her going as inevitable. + +"But you may come back; I wish it might be!" was all she said, not very +hopefully. + +Isabelle shook her head. She made no plans, but she felt that no matter +what the outcome of the trial might be it was hardly probable that her path +would lead back to this retreat. As she got into the sleigh she looked up +the hillside to the hospital, its many windows glistening in the rising +sun, its severe outlines sharp against the snowy field, and her eyes roved +on to the dusky firs in the valley, up to the purple hilltop of the Altar, +on to the distant peaks rising behind, with crests already bare. Her eyes +were misty as she drove through the familiar village street, past the +blacksmith's shop, where Sol Short waved a second good-by with a glowing +bar of steel caught from the forge, on towards the Pass and the +descent,--it was a haven of peace, this hillside village! Within that +circle of snowy hills, in the silent beauty of the Northern winter, she had +lived more, lived deeper, than anywhere else in the world. But she should +not come back,--there would be no place for that. Grosvenor had given its +benediction,--the hills and the woods, the snowy expanses and frozen +brooks, the sunsets and starlit firmament,--the blacksmith's simple content +and Renault's beacon lights, Margaret's peace,--all had done their work in +her. As the lumbering sleigh dragged over the Pass, she gazed back to fix +its image in her mind forever. The fresh March wind blew in her face, chill +but full of distant promise, as if in its sweep from the north it had heard +the tidings of spring, the stirrings deep below snow and frost. And the sky +shimmered cloudless from horizon to horizon, a soft blue.... + +The agitations before and the struggle to come were interspaced by this +lofty place of Peace--wherein she had found herself! + + * * * * * + +The frost-covered train from the north drew up at the platform in a cloud +of steam. The fireman, a lad of eighteen, with a curl waving from under his +cap, was leaning far out of the cab, smoking a cigarette and looking up at +the snowy mountains just visible from White River. He was careless,--alive, +and content this fine morning,--his grimy arms bare on the sill of the cab +window, the broad earth and its hills spread before him. As the engine shot +past, he looked down at Isabelle, curiously, and then up to the mountains +again, as if his life were complete enough. A careless figure of the human +routine of the world, endlessly moving, changing, energizing, functioning +in its destined orbit! And all lives were tied together in the fine mesh of +circumstance,--one destiny running into another as the steel band of +railroad ran on and on into distant places, just as the lad in the engine +cab was somehow concerned with the whole human system that ended, +perchance, in the courtroom at St. Louis.... + +Isabelle took Margaret in her arms and holding her close, as if she would +seize her very spirit, kissed her. + +"Tell the doctor," she said, "that I am beginning to understand--a little." + + + + +PART SEVEN + + + +CHAPTER LXVII + + +What is marriage? At least in these United States where men once dreamed +they would create a new society of ideal form based on that poetic +illusion, "All men"--presumably women, too!--"are born free and equal!" + +Yes, what has marriage been,--first among the pioneers pushing their way to +new land through the forest, their women at their sides, or in the ox-cart +behind them with the implements of conquest,--pushing out together into the +wide wilderness, there to fight side by side, to tame Nature and win from +her a small circle of economic order for their support? Together these two +cut the trees, build the cabin, clear the land and sow it, thus making +shelter and food. And then the Woman draws apart to bring _her_ increment, +the children, to fight with them, to follow in their steps. In that warfare +against stubborn Nature and Chaos, against the Brute, against the Enemy in +whatever form, the Man and the Woman are free and equal,--they stand +together and win or lose together, live or die in the life-long battle. And +the end? If they triumph in this primitive struggle for existence, they +have won a few acres of cleared land for the harvest, a habitation, and +food, and children who will take up from their hands the warfare for life, +to win further concessions from Nature, a wider circle of order from chaos. +This is the marriage type of the pioneer,--a primitive, body-wracking +struggle of two against all, a perfect type, elemental but whole,--and this +remains the large pattern of marriage to-day wherever sound. Two bodies, +two souls are united for the life struggle to wring order out of +chaos,--physical and spiritual. + +Generations are born and die. The circles grow wider, more diversified, +overlap, intersect. But the type remains of that primitive wilderness +struggle of the family. Then comes to this breeding society the Crisis. +There came to us the great War,--the conflict of ideals. Now Man leaves +behind in the home the Woman and her children, and goes forth alone to +fight for the unseen,--the Idea that is in him, that is stronger than woman +or child, greater than life itself. Giving over the selfish struggle with +the Brute, he battles against articulate voices. And the Woman is left to +keep warm the forsaken nest, to nurse the brood there, to wait and want, +perchance to follow after her man to the battle-field and pick out her dead +and bear it back to burial. She, too, has her part in the struggle; not +merely the patient, economic part, but the cherishing and the shaping of +man's impulse,--the stuff of his soul that sends him into the battle-field. +Alone she cannot fight; her Man is her weapon. He makes to prevail those +Ideals which she has given him with her embraces. This also is the perfect +type of Marriage,--comradeship, togethership,--and yet larger than before +because the two share sacrifice and sorrow and truth,--things of the +spirit. Together they wage War for others. + +And there follows a third condition of Marriage. The wilderness reduced, +society organized, wars fought, there is the time of peace. Now Man, free +to choose his task, goes down into the market-place to sell his force, and +here he fights with new weapons a harder fight; while his Woman waits +behind the firing line to care for him,--to equip him and to hoard his +pelf. On the strength and wisdom of her commissariatship the fate of this +battle in good part depends. Of such a nature was Colonel Price's marriage. +"He made the money, I saved it," Harmony Price proudly repeated in the +after-time. "We lived our lives together, your mother and I," her husband +said to their daughter. It was _his_ force that won the dollars, made the +economic position, and _her_ thrift and willingness to forego present ease +that created future plenty. Living thus together for an economic end, +saving the surplus of their energies, they were prosperous--and they were +happy. The generation of money-earners after the War, when the country +already largely reclaimed began to bear fruit abundantly, were happy, if in +no greatly idealistic manner, yet peacefully, contentedly happy, and +usefully preparing the way for the upward step of humanity to a little +nearer realization of that poetic illusion,--the brotherhood of man. + +In all these three stages of the marriage state, the union of Man and Woman +is based on effort in common, together; not on sentiment, not on emotion, +not on passion, not on individual gratification of sense or soul. The two +are partners in living, and the fruit of their bodies is but another proof +of partnership.... + +And now emerges another economic condition, the inexorable successor of the +previous one, and another kind of Marriage. Society is complexly organized, +minutely interrelated; great power here and great weakness there, vast +accumulations of surplus energies, hoarded goods, many possessions,--oh, a +long gamut up and down the human scale! And the CHANCE, the great gamble, +always dangles before Man's eyes; not the hope of a hard-won existence for +woman and children, not a few acres of cleared wilderness, but a dream of +the Aladdin lamp of human desires,--excitements, emotions, ecstasies,--all +the world of the mind and the body. So Woman, no longer the Pioneer, no +longer the defender of the house, no longer the economist, blossoms--as +what? The Spender! She is the fine flower of the modern game, of the +barbaric gamble. At last she is Queen and will rule. The Man has the money, +and the Woman has--herself, her body and her charm. She traffics with man +for what he will give, and she pays with her soul.... To her the man comes +from the market-place soiled and worn, and lays at her feet his gain, and +in return she gives him of her wit, of her handsome person, gowned and +jewelled, of her beauty, of her body itself. She is Queen! She amuses her +lord, she beguiles him, she whets his appetite and pushes him forth to the +morrow's fight, to bring back to her more pelf, to make her greater yet. +She sits idle in her cabin-palace, attended by servants, or goes forth on +her errands to show herself before the world as her man's Queen. So long as +she may but please this lord of hers, so long as she may hold him by her +mind or her body, she will be Queen. She has found something softer than +labor with her hands, easier than the pains of childbirth,--she has found +the secret of rule,--mastery over her former master, the slave ruling the +lord. Like the last wife of the barbarian king she is heaped with jewels +and served with fine wines and foods and lives in the palace,--the +favorite. + +And Woman, now the mistress rather than the wife, has longings for Love. +She listens to her heart, and it whispers strange fancies. "I cannot love +this man whom I have married, though he feeds me and gives me of his best. +My soul will have none of him,--I will not consent to live with him and +bear children for him and thus be a slave. Lo, am I not a Queen, to give +and take back, to swear and then swear again? I will divorce this man who +can no longer thrill me, and I will take another dearer to my heart,--and +thus I shall be nobler than I was. I shall be a person with a soul of my +own. To have me man must win me not once, but daily. For marriage without +the love of my soul is beastly." So she cheats herself with fine phrases +and shirks. Small comradeship here! Marriage to this woman is a state of +personal gratification, the best bargain she can make with man.... + +To this state has come the honorable condition of marriage in a country +where "men"--and surely women!--"are born free and equal." The flower of +successful womanhood--those who have bargained shrewdly--are to be found +overfed, overdressed, sensualized, in great hotels, on mammoth steamers and +luxurious trains, rushing hither and thither on idle errands. They have +lost their prime function: they will not or they cannot get children. They +are free! As never women were before. And these wives are the custodians of +men, not merely of their purses but of their souls. They whisper to them +the Ideals of their hearts: "Come bring me money, and I will kiss you. Make +me a name before the world, and I will noise it abroad. Build me a house +more splendid than other houses, set me above my sisters, and I will +reflect honor on you among men for the clothes I wear and the excellent +shape of my figure." + +And thus, unwittingly, Woman becomes again in the revolution of the ages +what she was at first, the female creature, the possession, the thing for +lust and for amusement,--the cherished slave. For the death of woman's soul +follows when she pays with her body,--a simple, immutable law.... Woman in +America, splendidly free and Queen! What have you done with the men who +were given into your charge? Clever, beautiful, brilliant,--our most +shining prize,--but what have you done for the souls of the men given into +your keeping? ... The answer roars up from the city streets,--the most +material age and the most material men and the least lovely civilization on +God's earth. No longer the fighting companion at man's side, but reaching +out for yourselves, after your own desires, you have become the slave of +the Brute as you were before. And a neurotic slave. For when Woman is no +longer comrade of man in the struggle, she is either Nothing or a--but blot +the word! + + * * * * * + +Perfect justice, a complete picture of society in a civilization of eighty +millions, requires many shades. The darker shades are true only of the +rotting refuse, the scum of the whole. Among the married millions most are, +fortunately, still struggling through the earlier types from the pioneer to +the economist. But as the water runs there lies the sea beyond. From the +prairie village to the city tenement, the American woman sees in marriage +the fulfilment of her heart's desire,--to be Queen, to rule and not work. +Thus for emancipated Woman. + +And the poor creature Man, who fights for his Queen? A trained energy, a +vessel of careless passion, a blind doer, dreaming great truths and seeing +little ends,--Man is still abroad ranging his forest, his hunting blood up, +"playing the game." There are moments when his sleep is troubled with +feverish dreams in which he hears murmurs,--"The body is more than +raiment," and "The soul is more than the body"; "There are other +hunting-grounds, another warfare." But roused from these idle fancies he +sallies forth from his cabin-palace, or his hotel apartment, or his +steam-heated and childless flat into the old fray, to kill his meat and +bring it home.... We chatter of the curse of Castle Garden, unmindful that +in the dumb animal hordes, who labor and breed children, lies the future. +For Theirs Will Be The Land, when the blond hunter of the market and his +pampered female are swept into the dust heap. + + + + +CHAPTER LXVIII + + +In the vast eighteen-story, thousand-room New York hotel where Isabelle +Lane stayed for the night on her way west, there was the usual constant +bustle of arriving and departing people. The heat, the crowd, the luxury of +this cliff-city with its throngs of much-dressed men and women overwhelmed +Isabelle with a sense of startling unreality. It was not simply that she +had been removed from the noise of city life for a number of months, +secluded in the quiet of open spaces, and that the latest novelty in New +York hotels contrasted sharply with primitive Grosvenor. But she found +herself examining the scene, from the moment she entered the crowded foyer +with its stucco-marble columns and bronze railings, its heavy hangings and +warm atmosphere, with eyes that seemed to observe what was there before her +for the first time. She looked at the thick rugs, the uniformed servants, +the line of pale, sleek young men in the office enclosure, the swarming +"guests" (according to the euphemistic slang of American hotels!),--all +these women in evening gowns, much jewelled, on their way to dinner, with +their attendant males; and she asked herself if it were the same world that +she had always known. + +The little bronze doors in the bank of elevators opened and shut, taking in +and disgorging men and women, to shoot upwards to the tiers of partitioned +privacy above or to hurry forth on their errands. Waiting for the hotel +maid to fetch her key, Isabelle felt like a soul resurrected from a grave, +come back to experience what had once been its theatre of activity and joy. +She felt the tense hum of life in the activity of the clerks behind the +desk, the servants hurrying on their errands, the coming and going of the +horde of people, among whom watchful house detectives moved about silently. +She knew that across the narrow street was another even larger cliff-city, +where the same picture of life was repeating itself, and around the corner +there were four or five more, and farther away dozens almost exactly like +this one,--all crowded, humming with people, with the same heavy atmosphere +of human beings hived together in hot air, men and women dressed like +these, feeding like these in great halls, spending lavishly for comfort, +pleasure, and repose! ... + +This mammoth caravansary was a symbol of the broad, riotously rich +country,--a spiritual and material symbol, representing its thoughts, its +ideals, its art, its beauty, its joy. Into these metropolitan cliff-cities +flowed the stream of dominant, successful lives of the nation, seeking to +find satisfaction for their efforts, their rightful triumph. Once Isabelle +had had the child's pleasure in the hotel pageant. Later it had been an +accepted convenience. Now she sat there looking on as from a great +distance, and she said over and over wonderingly: "Can this be life? No, +this is not life,--'tis not real!" + +At the news-stand near by a group of men and women were loitering, the men +buying theatre tickets, the women turning over the leaves of magazines, +scanning lazily the titles of novels. The magazines were stacked in rows, +each with a gaudy cover,--"artistic" or designed merely to capture the eye +by a blaze of color. One of the women turned the leaves of several novels, +idly, with a kind of fat ennui, as if loath to be tempted even by mental +dissipation. Then noting a title that had somehow lodged itself with +favorable associations in her brain, she said to the girl behind the +counter, "You may send this up to my room." + +So the work of imagination, the picture of life, the soul of the poet +creator, was slipped from the pile to be sent upwards along with the other +purchases of the day,--clothes and jewellery and candy,--what the woman had +desired that day. This group moved on and another took its place. The books +and the magazines disappeared like the theatre tickets and the cigars and +cigarettes at the neighboring stand,--feeding the maw of the multitude, +which sought to tickle different groups of brain cells. Gay little books, +saucy little books, cheap little books, pleasant little books,--all making +their bid to certain cells in the gray matter of these sated human beings! +A literature composed chiefly by women for women,--tons of wood pulp, miles +of linen covers, rivers of ink,--all to feed the prevailing taste, like the +ribbons, the jewels, the candy, the theatre tickets! A great age, as Mr. +Gossom, swelling with pride, would have said, and a great people, that has +standardized its pleasures and has them marketed in convenient packages for +all tastes! An age of women's ideals, a literature by women for women! ... +Isabelle bought a copy of Mr. Gossom's patriotic magazine for the People, +and turned its fresh pages with a curiosity to see what it was like, and +who was writing now. The sentimental novel by the popular English novelist +that she had looked at when it first appeared came to its conclusion in +this number. And it not having met with the expected popular approval, for +all its sentiment, Mr. Gossom had abandoned the idyllic in favor of a +startling series of articles on "Our National Crimes," plentifully and +personally illustrated. Mr. Gossom would have preferred to prolong the +sentimental note,--"pleasant reading," as he called it; personally he did +not approve of hanging up the nation's wash in the front yard, for he +himself was an investor in corporations. But what could he do? It was his +business to give the People what the People wanted. And just now they +wanted to be shocked and outraged by revelations of business perfidy. +Another six months, perhaps, when the public was tired of contemplating +rascality, the editor would find something sweet, full of country charm and +suburban peace, to feed them.... On the title-page there were the old names +and some new ones, but the same grist,--a "homely" story of "real life" +among the tenements, a "humorous" story of the new school, an article on a +marvellous invention to set the public on the gape, etc.... Fosdick had an +article of a serious nature, on Trades Unions and Socialism. 'So Dickie, +having ceased to roll about the world,' thought Isabelle, 'has begun to +write about it.' She turned down the page at his article and looked into +the advertising section. That was where the _People's_ excelled,--in its +thick advertising section. Between the automobiles and the pianolas were +inserted some pages of personal puff, photographs of the coming +contributors, and an account of their deeds,--the menus prepared for the +coming months. Isabelle looked at the faces of the contributors, among whom +was Dick's face, very smooth and serious. As a whole the photographs might +be those of any Modern Order of Redmen, consciously posed before the camera +of Fame. But they gave that personal touch so necessary to please the +democratic taste. Thus from Aeschylus to Mr. Gossom's "literature." ... It +seemed no more real, no more a part of what life is in its essence, than +the hotel and the sleek people thronging it. + + * * * * * + +When Isabelle entered the dining room, the head waiter placed her in a +sheltered nook behind one of the stucco pillars, not far from the stringed +instruments concealed in a little Gothic choir loft over the entrance. +There were flowers on the tables and multitudinous electric candles in pink +silk shades. The open-timbered ceiling had been decorated by an artist of +some fame, who had sought in vain to give to this rich feeding place of the +herd the grace of an Italian palace. Two long mural paintings adorned the +end walls, and six highly colored tapestries were hung at equal spaces +laterally. In spite of the large proportions of the room, it was +insufferably hot and heavy with the odors of wilting flowers and perspiring +humanity, somewhat perfumed, and of foods and wines. The early diners were +leaving for the theatres and opera, the women trailing their rich gowns +over the rugged floor as they stared about them. (They were mostly +strangers from inland cities who had been attracted by the fame of this +newest hotel.) Their places were quickly taken by others in couples and in +parties, and the hum of talk was feebly punctuated by occasional bursts of +teasing sound from the stringed instruments. Isabelle felt curiously alone, +sitting here in the crowded dining room,--alone as she had not felt on the +most solitary hillside of Grosvenor. She closed her eyes and saw the +village in its cup among the mountains glittering white in the March sun. +The thin, pure air of the forests filled her nostrils. She was homesick-- +for the first time in her life! With a little shake she roused herself and +turned to Fosdick's article that she had brought with her to the table. It +was all about the progress of the socialist parties abroad, their aims and +accomplishments, showing first-hand observation and knowledge; also a +vivaciously critical spirit,--in short what Gossom would call "a smart +article." ... There was another "serious" article on the problem of housing +the poor, amply illustrated. In the newspapers that she had glanced through +on her long journey, there had been likewise much about "movements," +political and social, speeches and societies organized to promote this +interest or that, and endless references to the eternal conflict of capital +and labor, in the struggle for their respective shares of the human cake. +It was the same with all the more serious magazines at the news-stand; they +were filled with discussion of "movements" for the betterment of humanity, +of talk about this means or that to make the world run a little more +smoothly. It was proof, according to the editors, of the sound spirit of +democracy, fighting for ideals, making progress along right lines. In other +days Isabelle would have considered Fosdick's article brilliant, if not +profound. She would have felt that here was something very important for +serious people to know, and believed she was thinking.... To-night +Fosdick's phrases seemed dead, like this hotel life, this hotel reading +matter. Even the impassioned editorial she had seen on child-labor laws, +and the article on factory inspection, and the bill to regulate the hours +of labor on railroads--all the "uplift" movements--seemed dead, +wooden,--part of the futile machinery with which earnest people deluded +themselves that they were doing something. Would all of them, even if +successful, right the wrong of life in any deep sense? ... + +Isabelle laid down the magazine and looked over the room again. Her eyes +fell on a party of four at one of the tables in front of her, beneath the +mural painting. While the food she had ordered was being slowly put before +her, she watched them. There seemed something familiar about the black back +of the man at the nearer side of the table, about the way he leaned +forward, gesticulating from his wrists, and also about the large woman at +his right with her head turned away. After a time this head came around and +looked down the room. It was Conny! Conny splendidly blond and large, in +half-mourning, with a fresh touch of color on her pale face, her beautiful +shoulders quite bare. And that full mouth and competent chin,--no one but +Conny! Isabelle hastily looked down at her plate. She had not recognized +the others at the table. Conny was seated just beneath the pink and white +painting representing spring,--a mixture of Botticelli brought to date and +Puvis. And Conny carried on the allegory of Flora into full-blown summer. +She was drinking her wine meditatively, and her firm chin--the Senator had +said it was moulded for an empress--was slightly tilted, revealing the +thick, muscular neck. + +So long ago it was when Isabelle had been thrilled by her luncheon at the +Woodyards'. She hurried her dinner now to escape the necessity of talking +to Conny when her party passed out. But as she prepared to rise, she saw +that they were coming towards her and sat down again, opening the magazine. +From it she could see them, Conny in the lead sweeping forward in that +consciously unconscious manner with which she took her world. The man +behind her had some trouble in keeping up with her pace; he limped, and +almost tripped on Conny's train. Isabelle saw him out of her lowered +eyelids. It was Tom Cairy. They almost brushed her table as they passed, +Conny and after her Tom. Conny was drawling in her treble note, "She made a +great sensation in Herndon's piece over in London." ... And Isabelle was +conscious that she was sitting alone at the hotel table, staring into +vacancy, with a waiter impatiently eying the coin in her hand.... + +She had looked at him for half an hour, not knowing him! And suddenly she +saw how dead it all was: not merely her feeling for Cairy, but her whole +past, the petty things clone or felt by that petty other self, ending with +the tragic fact of Vickers's sacrifice. She had passed through into another +world.... This man who had sat there near her all the evening she had once +believed that she loved more than life itself,--his mere voice had made her +tremble,--this God she had created to worship! And she had not recognized +him. + +High up in her corner of the brick and stone cliff above the twinkling +city, Isabelle knelt by the open window, looking out into the foggy night. +Unconscious of the city sounds rising in one roar from the pavement,--the +voice of the giant metropolis,--she knelt there thinking of that dead past, +that dead self, and of Vickers, a solemn unearthly music like the march of +life in her ears. She knelt there, wide-eyed, able to see it all calmly, +something like prayer struggling upwards in her heart for expression. + + + + +CHAPTER LXIX + + +All night long in the corridors of the cliff-city the elevator doors had +clicked, as they were opened and shut on the ceaseless trips to pack away +the people in the eighteen stories. In the morning they became even +livelier in their effort to take down the hungry guests for breakfast and +the day's business. The corridors and the lobbies and the foyer were +thronged with the same people, freshly dressed for the day, fat or lean, +heavy eyed or alert, pale, nervous, with quick tones and jerky movements. +And there was a line of new arrivals before a fresh row of pale clerks. The +prominent people of the city, especially the women, had already left town +for the Springs or Florida or Paris or the Mediterranean, anywhere but +here! Their flitting, however, had made no impression on the hotels or the +honey-hives along the avenue. What they abandoned--the city in March with +its theatres, opera, restaurants, and shops--the provincials came hungrily +to suck. For the cast-off, the spurned, is always Somebody's desired. + +It was the same on the other side of the ferry in the railroad terminal, +hurrying throngs pressing through the little wickets that bore the legend +of the destination of each train,--"The Florida East Coast Limited," "New +Orleans, Texas, and the South," "Washington and Virginia," etc. From this +centre the strands of travel ran outwards to many beguiling points. And +there were two perpetual motions,--the crowd flowing out to some joy beyond +the horizon, and the crowd flowing back irresistibly to the sucking +whirlpool. Always movement, change, endless going, going with these +people,--the spirit of the race in their restless feet! There was always +the Desirable beyond at the other end of the line. All the world that could +move was in unstable flux, scurrying hither and thither in hot search for +the phantom Better--change, variety--to be had for the price of a ticket. + +It was a relief to be on the Pullman, seated for a time in a small fixed +space, free from the revolving whirlpool of restless humanity, though that +fixity itself was being whirled across the land. With a sigh Isabelle +leaned back and looked at the passing country outside. The snow had long +disappeared, leaving the brown earth naked and forlorn. It was the same +landscape, under similar conditions, that Isabelle had gazed at the spring +afternoon when she was hurrying back to meet Cairy, his violets on her +breast. It seemed to her then that she was happy, with a wonderful +happiness. Now she was content.... As the train rushed through the +Alleghanies, the first faint touches of spring appeared in the swelling +stems of the underbrush, in the full streams of yellow water, and the few +spears of green grass beside the sheltering fence posts, and the soft misty +atmosphere full of brooding changes over the level fields. + +Isabelle became eager to get on to her journey's end, to see her husband. +Once out there with him, whatever accident befell them, she was equal to +it, would see its real meaning, would find in it Peace. She had brought +with her the copy of the _People's_ and a number of other magazines and +books, and as the day waned she tried to interest herself in some of their +"pleasant" stories. But her eyes wandered back to the landscape through +which they were speeding, to the many small towns past which they +darted,--ugly little places with ugly frame or brick buildings, stores and +houses and factories, dirty and drab, unlike the homely whiteness of the +Grosvenor village street. But they were strangely attracting to her +eye,--these little glimpses of other lives, seen as the train sped by, at +the back porches, the windows, the streets; the lives of the many fixed and +set by circumstance, revolving between home and workshop, the lives of the +multitude not yet evolved into ease and aspiration. But they counted, these +lives of the multitude,--that was what she felt this day; they counted +quite as much as here or any. She had travelled back and forth over this +main artery of the Atlantic and Pacific many times from her childhood up. +But hitherto the scene had meant nothing to her; she had never looked at it +before. She had whirled through the panorama of states, thinking only of +herself, what was to happen to her at the end of the journey. But to-day it +was _her_ country, _her_ people, _her_ civilization that she looked out on. +The millions that were making their lives in all these ugly little houses, +these mills and shops, men and women together, loving, marrying, breeding, +and above all living! "All of life is good!" Each one of these millions had +its own drama, each to itself, as hers had been to her, with that tragic +importance of being lived but once from the germ to the ultimate dust. Each +one was its own epic, its own experience, and its own fulfilment. As +Renault once said, "Any of the possibilities may lie in a human soul." And +in that was the hope and the faith for Democracy,--the infinite variety of +these possibilities! + +So the literature of "movements" and causes, the effort by organization to +right the human fabric, seemed futile, for the most part. If man were right +with himself, square with his own soul, each one of the millions, there +would be no wrongs to right by machinery, by laws, by discussion, by +agitation, by theories or beliefs. Each must start with self, and right +that.... Yes, the world needed a Religion, not movements nor reforms! + + * * * * * + +... Sometime during the night Isabelle was roused by the stopping of the +train, and pulling aside the curtain of the window she looked out. The +train was standing in the yards of a large station with many switch lights +feebly winking along the tracks. At first she did not recognize the place; +it might be any one of the division headquarters where the through trains +stopped to change engines. But as she looked at the maze of tracks, at the +dingy red brick building beyond the yards, she finally realized that it was +Torso, the spot where her married life had begun. It gave her an odd +sensation to lie there and look out on the familiar office building where +she used to go for John--so long ago! Torso, she had felt at that time, was +cramping, full of commonplace, ordinary people that one did not care to +know. She had been very anxious to escape to something larger,--to St. +Louis and then to New York. She wondered what she would think of it now if +she should go back,--of Mrs. Fraser and the Griscoms. Then she remembered +the Falkners, and how badly it had gone since with Bessie. It was sad to +think back over the years and see how it might have been different, and for +the moment she forgot that if it had been different in any large sense, the +result would have been different. She would not be here now, the person she +was. Regret is the most useless of human states of mind.... The railroad +operatives were busy with lanterns about the train, tapping wheels, filling +the ice-boxes and gas-tanks, and switching cars. She could see the faces of +the men as they passed her section in the light of their lanterns. With +deliberate, unconscious motions they performed their tasks. Like the face +of that lad on the engine at White River, these were the faces of ordinary +men, privates of the industrial world, and yet each had something about it +distinctive, of its own. What kept these privates at their work, each in +his place? Hunger, custom, faith? Surely something beyond themselves that +made life seem to each one of them reasonable, desirable. Something not +very different from the spirit which lay in her own soul, like a calming +potion, which she could almost touch when she needed its strength. "For +life is good--all of it!" ... and "Peace is the rightful heritage of every +soul." + +The train rolled on towards its destination, and she fell asleep again, +reassured. + + + + +CHAPTER LXX + + +At the station in St. Louis a young man came forward from the crowd about +the gate and raised his hat, explaining to Isabelle that he had been sent +by her husband to meet her. Mr. Lane, he said further, was in court and +found it impossible to be there. When she was in the cab and her trunk had +been secured the young man asked:-- + +"Where shall I tell him? The Price house?" + +A picture of the familiar empty rooms, of waiting there with her ghosts, +aggravated the disappointment she had felt at not seeing John on her +arrival. She hesitated. + +"Could I go to the court?" + +"Sure--of course; only Mr. Lane thought--" + +"Get in, won't you, and come with me," Isabelle said, interrupting him, and +then as the young man shyly took the vacant seat, she asked:-- + +"Aren't you Teddy Bliss? ... I haven't seen you for--years!" She added with +a smile, "Since you played baseball in your father's back yard. How is your +mother?" + +It gave her a sense of age to find the son of her old friend in this +smiling young man. Life was getting on apace.... The cab made its way +slowly into the heart of the city, and they talked of the old times when +the Blisses had been neighbors across the alley from the Prices. Isabelle +wished to ask the young man about the trial. The New York paper that she +had seen on the train had only a short account. But she hesitated to show +her ignorance, and Teddy Bliss was too much abashed before the handsome +wife of his "boss" to offer any information. Finally Isabelle asked:-- + +"Is the trial nearly over?" + +"Pretty near the end. Cross-examination to-day. When I left, Mr. Lane was +on the stand. Then come the arguments and the judge's charge, and it goes +to the jury." + +And he added with irresistible impulse:-- + +"It's a great case, Mrs. Lane! ... When our lawyers get after that district +attorney, he won't know what's happened to him.... Why, the road's secured +the best legal talent that ever argued a case in this district, so they +tell me. That man Brinkerhoff is a corker!" + +"Indeed!" Isabelle replied, smiling at the young man's enthusiasm for the +scrap. To him it was all a matter of legal prowess with victory to the +heavy battalions. + +"Federal court-rooms are in here temporarily,--crowded out of the federal +building," her companion explained as the cab stopped before a grimy office +building. + +Isabelle had expected that the trial would be in some sort of public +building, which might have at least the semblance of serving as a temple of +justice. But justice, it seemed, like most else in this day, had to +accommodate itself to the practical life.... Upstairs there was a small +crowd about the door of the court-room, through which the young man gained +admission by a whispered word to the tobacco-chewing veteran that kept the +gate. + +The court-room was badly lighted by two windows at the farther end, in +front of which on a low platform behind a plain oak desk sat the judge, and +grouped about him informally the jurors, the lawyers, and stenographers, +and mixed with these the defendants and witnesses. The body of the room, +which was broken by bare iron pillars, was well filled with reporters and +curious persons. Isabelle sank into a vacant chair near the door and looked +eagerly for her husband. At last by craning her head she caught a partial +view of him where he sat behind a pillar, his face bent downwards leaning +on his hand, listening with an expression of weariness to the wrangle of +counsel. He was sallow, and his attitude was abstracted, the attitude in +which he listened at board meetings or gathered the substance of a wordy +report from a subordinate. It was not the attitude of a criminal on trial +for his honor! ... + +"That's Brinkerhoff, the big gun," young Bliss whispered to Isabelle, +indicating a gentle, gray-headed, smooth-shaven man, who seemed to be +taking a nap behind his closed eyes. + +The judge himself was lolling back listlessly, while several men in front +of him talked back and forth colloquially. The argument between counsel +proceeded with polite irony and sarcastic iteration of stock phrases, "If +your honor pleases," ... "My learned brother, the district attorney," ... +"The learned counsel for the defence," etc. The judge's eyes rested on the +ceiling, as if he too wished to take a nap. There was a low hum of +conversation among the men grouped about the desk meanwhile, and +occasionally one of the young men who had been scribbling on a pad would +grasp his hat hurriedly and leave the room. Thus the proceedings dragged +on. + +"They are arguing about admitting some evidence," the young man at her side +explained.... + +Isabelle, who had been living in a suppressed state of emotional excitement +ever since that night three days before when she had turned from the +newspapers to pack her trunk, felt a sudden limp reaction come over her. +Apparently the whole proceeding was without vitality,--a kind of routine +through which all parties had to go, knowing all the time that it settled +nothing,--did not much count. The judge was a plain, middle-aged man in a +wrinkled sack coat,--very much in appearance what Conny would call a +"bounder." The defending counsel talked among themselves or wrote letters +or took naps, like the celebrated Mr. Brinkerhoff, and the counsel for the +government listened or made a remark in the same placid manner. It was all +very commonplace,--some respectable gentlemen engaged in a dull technical +discussion over the terms of the game, in which seemingly there was no +momentous personal interest involved. + +"The government's case will collapse if they can't get those books of the +coal companies in as evidence," young Bliss informed Isabelle. He seemed to +understand the rules of the game,--the point at issue. + +Surely the methods of modern justice are unpicturesque, unimpressive! +Compare this trial of the cause of the People against the mighty Atlantic +and Pacific railroad corporation _et al_. with the trial of the robber +baron dragged from his bleak castle perched above the highroad where he had +laid in wait to despoil his fellow-men, weaker vessels, into the court of +his Bishop,--there to be judged, to free himself if he might by grasping +hot iron with his naked hand, by making oath over the bones of some saint, +and if found guilty to be condemned to take the cross in the crusade for +the Saviour's sepulchre. Fantastic, that; but human--dramatic! And starkly +memorable, like the row of his victim's heads nailed along the battlements +of his castle. More civilized, the modern tyrant takes the cash and lets +the victim die a natural death. Or compare this tedious legal game--which +does not count--with that pageant of England's trial of a corrupt +administrator at the bar of Parliament! The issues involved are hardly less +vital to millions in the case of the People against the Atlantic and +Pacific _et al_. than in the case of the races of India against Warren +Hastings; but democracy is the essence of horse-sense. 'For these gentlemen +before me,' the judge seemed to say, 'are not criminals, no matter how the +jury may render its verdict, in any ordinary sense of the term. They may +have exceeded the prescribed limits in playing the game that all men +play,--the great predatory game of get all you can and keep it! ... But +they are not common criminals.' + +At last the judge leaned forward, his elbows on the desk:-- + +"The court orders that the papers in question be admitted as evidence +pertinent to this case." + +Teddy Bliss looked chagrined. His side had been ruled against. + +"They'll be sure to reverse the decision on appeal," he whispered +consolatorily to his employer's wife. "An exception has been taken." + +That was apparently the opinion of those concerned who were grouped about +the judge's desk. There was no consternation, merely a slight movement as +if to free muscles cramped by one position, a word or two among counsel. +The great Brinkerhoff still wore that placid look of contemplation, as if +he were thinking of the new tulip bulbs he had imported from Holland for +his house up the Hudson. He was not aroused even when one of his +fellow-counsel asked him a question. He merely removed his glasses, wiped +them reflectively, and nodded to his colleague benignantly. He knew, as the +others knew, that the case would be appealed from the verdict of the jury +to a higher court, and very likely would turn up ultimately in the highest +court of all at Washington, where after the lapse of several years the +question at issue would be argued wholly on technicalities, and finally +decided according to the psychological peculiarities of the various +personalities then composing the court. The residuum of justice thus meted +out to his clients--if they were not successful before in maintaining their +contention--would not affect these honorable gentlemen appreciably. The +corporation would pay the legal expenses of the protracted litigation, and +hand the bill on to the public ultimately, and the people by their taxes +would pay their share of this row.... He put on his glasses and resumed his +meditation. + +"Court is adjourned." At last! Isabelle stood up eagerly, anxious to catch +her husband's attention. He was talking with the lawyers. The young clerk +went up to him and touched his elbow, and presently Lane came down the room +in the stream of reporters and lawyers bent on getting to luncheon. It was +neither the place nor the time that Isabelle would have preferred for +meeting her husband after their long separation. There was so much in her +heart,--this meeting meant so much, must be so much for them both in all +the future years. The familiar solid figure, with the reserved, impassive +face came nearer; Lane reached out his hand. There were lines about the +mouth, and his hair seemed markedly gray. + +"John!" was all she could say. + +"Glad to see you, Isabelle!" he replied. "Sorry I couldn't meet you at the +station. Everything all right?" + +It was his usual kindly, rather short-hand manner with her. + +"Yes," she said, "everything is all right." She felt as if all the +significance of her act had been erased. + +"You know your mother hasn't come back from the Springs," he added, "but +they are expecting you at the house." + +"Can't we go somewhere and have luncheon together? I want so much to see +you!" she urged. + +"I wish I might, but I have these lawyers on my hands--must take them to +the club for luncheon. Sorry I shall be kept here until late in the +afternoon. I will put you in a cab." And he led the way to the elevator. As +always he was kind and considerate. But in his equable manner was there +also some touch of coldness, of aloofness from this wife, who had taken +this curious opportunity to come into his affairs? + +"Thank you," she faltered, as he looked down the street for a cab. +"Couldn't I go somewhere about here for luncheon and come back afterwards +to the court-room? I should like to wait for you." + +"Why, if you want to," he replied, looking at her with surprise. And as if +divining a reason for her agitation, he said: "You mustn't mind what the +papers say. It won't amount to anything, either way it goes." + +"I think I'll stay," she said hurriedly. + +"Very well. I will call Bliss to take you to a hotel." + +He beckoned to the waiting young man, and while Mr. Bliss was finding a +cab, Lane said to his wife:-- + +"You are looking very well. The country has done you good?" + +"Yes! I am very well,--all well!" She tried to smile buoyantly. "I don't +expect ever to be ill again." + +He received this as a man accustomed to the vagaries of woman's health, and +said, "That's good!" + +Then he put her into the cab, gave some instructions to the young man, and +raised his hat. His manner was perfect to her, and yet Isabelle went to her +luncheon with the bubbling Mr. Bliss sad at heart. She was such an +outsider, such a stranger to her husband's inner self! That it was to be +expected, her own fault, the result of the misspent years of married life +made it none the easier to bear.... + +Mr. Teddy Bliss exercised his best connoisseurship in selecting the dishes +from the printed broadside put before him at the hotel restaurant, +consulting Isabelle frequently as to her tastes, where the desire to please +was mingled with the pride of appearing self-possessed. Having finally +decided on tomato bisque aux crutons, prairie chicken, grilled sweet +potatoes, salad and peche Melba, which was all very much to his liking, he +dropped the card and looked at Isabelle with a broad smile. The world and +its affairs still had an irrepressible zest and mirthful aspect to young +Mr. Bliss. + +"You're likely to hear some or-a-tory this afternoon, Mrs. Lane," he +scoffed. "The district attorney is a Southerner, and he's going to spread +himself when he makes his plea, you can believe. It's his chance to get +talked about from San Francisco to Washington.... Of course it don't cut +any ice what he says, but the papers will play it up large, and that's what +they are after, the government. You see"--he waxed confidential--"the +government's got to save its face somehow after all the talk and the dust +they have raised. If they can secure a conviction,--oh, just a nominal fine +(you know there is no prison penalty),--why, it'll be good campaign +material this fall. So they fixed on the A. and P. as a shining mark for +their shot. And you know there's a good deal of feeling, especially in this +state, against railroads." + +"I see!" In spite of herself Isabelle was amused at the naive assurance the +young man had given her that nothing serious could happen to her +husband,--not imprisonment! Mr. Bliss's point of view about the famous case +was evidently that of the railroad office, tinged with a blithe sporting +interest in a legal scrap. The ill-paid government attorneys trying the +case were a lot of "light-weight mits," put up against the best "talent" in +the country employed by the powerful corporation to protect itself; in +short, a sure thing for the railroad in the final knockout if not in the +first round. + +"It was bad, their getting in those Pleasant Valley Company books," he +remarked less exuberantly. "But it won't make any difference in the end. +The papers have made the most of that evidence already." + +"Why do you suppose the newspapers are so bitter against the road?" + +"They aren't, the best of them; they know too much what's good for them. +They just print the record of the trial. As for the sensational ones, you +see it's this way,--they don't care, they haven't any convictions. It is +just a matter of business for them. Slamming the corporations suits their +readers. The people who buy most of the papers like to have the prosperous +classes slammed. Most people are envious; they want the other fellow's +roll,--isn't that so? They think they are as good as the best, and it makes +'em sick to see the other fellow in his automobile when they are earning +fifteen or eighteen per! They don't stop to consider that it's brains that +makes the diff." + +"So it is merely envy that produces all this agitation?" + +"I am not saying that the corporations are philanthropic institutions," Mr. +Bliss continued didactically; "of course they aren't. They are out for +business, and every man knows what that means. I suppose they do a good +many tough things if they get the chance--same as their critics. What of +it? Wouldn't the little fellow do the same thing, if he could,--had the +chance? ... What would this country be to-day without the corporations, the +railroads? Without the Atlantic and Pacific, right here in St. Louis? And +all the work of those men they are prosecuting and fining and trying to put +into jail? Why, if the President had his way, he'd lock up every man that +had enough sense and snap in him to do things, and he'd make this country +like a Methodist camp meeting after the shouting is over! There's no sense +to it." + +Isabelle laughed at the young man's vigorous defence of "our" side. It +seemed useless to attempt to pick flaws in his logic, and it would hardly +become her as the wife of his "boss" to betray that she was not wholly +convinced of his accuracy. + +"Besides, why can't the government let bygones be bygones? Every one knows +that the roads did some queer things in the old days. But why rake up old +crimes and make a mess? I say let's have a clean slate and begin over.... +But if they keep on legislating and howling against corporations, like some +of these trust-busting state legislatures, we'll have a panic sure thing, +and that will do the business for the reformers, won't it now?" + +This, as Isabelle realized, was, in the popular language of Mr. Teddy +Bliss, her husband's point of view, the philosophy of the ruling class, +imbibed by their dependents. As the young man turned from expounding the +business situation to his succulent bird, Isabelle had time for reflection. + +This young man was sucking his views about honesty, business morality, from +the Atlantic and Pacific, from her husband. One of Renault's sentences came +to her, "We all live in large part on a borrowed capital of suggested +ideas, motives, desires." And the corollary: "Each is responsible not only +for the capital that he borrows from others,--that it should really be the +right idea for him,--but also for the capital he lends,--the suggestions he +gives to others--possibly less stable minds. For thus by borrowing and +lending ideas is created that compulsive body of thought throughout the +universe on which we all act." + +Her husband was on trial for that which he had borrowed and thus made his +own, as well as for that which he had passed on into life--to Mr. Teddy +Bliss, for example. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXI + + +The government attorney had already begun his argument when Isabelle, +escorted by Teddy Bliss, returned to the court-room. The district attorney +was a short, thick-set, sallow-faced man, with bushy gray hair growing in +the absurd "Pompadour" fashion, and a homely drooping mustache. Another +"bounder," thought Isabelle, one of the hungry outsiders, not in fee to the +corporations, who hired only the best lawyers. Perhaps he was aware of his +position there in the dingy court-room before the trained gladiators of his +profession--and also before his country! The lawyers for the defendants +lolling in their chairs settled themselves placidly to see what this humble +brother would make of the business. Mr. Brinkerhoff's eyelids drooped over +his gentle eyes, as if to shut out all distractions of sense from his +brain. The thick-set district attorney frequently scraped his throat and +repeated the phrase, "if it please your honor." He had a detestable nasal +whine, and he maltreated the accents of several familiar words. The culture +of letters and vocal delivery had evidently not been large in the small +inland college where he had been educated. These annoying peculiarities at +first distracted Isabelle's attention, while the lawyer labored through the +opening paragraphs of his argument. In the maze of her thoughts, which had +jumped across the continent to the little mountain village, there fell on +her ears the words, "In a land of men born free and equal before the law." +Was it the tone of unexpected passion vibrating through those ancient +words, or the idea itself that startled her like an electric shock? That +pathetic effort of our ancestors to enact into constitutional dogma the +poetic dream of a race! "Born free and equal"!--there was nothing more +absurd, more contrary to the daily evidence of life, ever uttered. Isabelle +fancied she saw a soft smile play over the benign face of Mr. Brinkerhoff, +as if he too had been struck by the irony of the words. But to the district +attorney they did not seem to be a mere poetic aspiration, nor a catch +phrase with which to adorn his speech; they voiced a real idea, still +pulsating with passionate truth. From this moment Isabelle forgot the +lawyer's nasal intonation, his uncultivated delivery. + +He stood there, so it seemed, as the representative of the mute millions +which make the nation to defend before the court their cause against the +rapacious acts of the strong. This great railroad corporation, with its +capital of three hundred and seventy-five millions of dollars in stocks and +bonds (a creature, nevertheless, of the common public, called into +existence by its necessities and chartered by its will), had taken upon +itself to say who should dig coal and sell it from the lands along its +lines. They and their servants and allies had, so the charge ran, seized +each individual man or association of men not allied to them, and throttled +the life in them--specifically refusing them cars in which to transport +their coal, denying them switching privileges, etc.... The government, +following its duty to protect the rights of each man and all men against +the oppression of the few, had brought this suit to prohibit these secret +practices, to compel restitution, to punish the corporation and its +servants for wrong done.... "The situation was, if your honor please, as if +a company of men should rivet a chain across the doors of certain +warehouses of private citizens and should prevent these citizens from +taking their goods out of their warehouses or compel them to pay toll for +the privilege of transacting their lawful business.... And the government +has shown, if it please your honor, that this Pleasant Valley Coal Company +is but a creature of the defendant corporation, its officers and owners +being the servants of the railroad company, and thereby this Pleasant +Valley Coal Company has enjoyed and now enjoys special privileges in the +matter of transportation, cars, and switching facilities. The government +has further shown that the Atlantic and Pacific, by its servant, John +Lane...." + +At this point the railroad counsel looked interested; even the serene Mr. +Brinkerhoff deigned to unclose his eyes. For the district attorney, having +disposed of his oratorical flourish of trumpets, had got down to the facts +of the record and what they could be made to prove. In the close argument +that followed, Isabella's thoughts went back to that trumpet phrase,--"all +men born free and equal." Slowly there dawned in her an altogether new +comprehension of what this struggle before her eyes, in which her husband +was involved, meant. Nay, what human life itself, with all its noisy +discord, meant! + +Their forerunners, the fathers of the people, held the theory that here at +last, in this broad, rich, new land, men should struggle with one another +for the goods of life on an equal basis. Man should neither oppress nor +interfere with man. Justice at last to all! The struggle should be ordered +by law so that men might be free to struggle and equal in their rights. To +all the same freedom to live, to enjoy, to become! So these fathers of the +republic had dreamed. So some still dreamed that human life might be +ordered, to be a fair, open struggle--for all. + +But within a brief century and a quarter the fallacy of this aspiration had +become ridiculously apparent. "Born free and equal!" Nothing on this globe +was ever so born. The strong who achieved, the weak who succumbed--both +knew the nonsense of it. Free and equal,--so far as men could maintain +freedom and equality by their own force,--that was all! + +(There was that man who begged John to give him cars. Poor thing! he could +not maintain his right.) + +And every man who complained at the oppression of another either oppressed +some one or would so oppress him, if he had the chance and the power. It +was, of course, the business of the law to police the fight,--the game had +its rules, its limits, which all must obey, when not too "destructive." But +essentially this new land of liberty and hope was like all other human +societies,--a mortal combat where the strong triumphed and the weak went +under in defeat.... That was what the array of brilliant counsel employed +by the Atlantic and Pacific really represented. "Gentlemen, you can't block +us with silly rules. We must play this game of life as it was ordered by +God it should be played when the first protoplasm was evolved.... And +really, if it were not for us, would there be any game for you little +fellows to play?" + +Egotism, the curse of egotism! This was stark male egotism,--the instinct +for domination. And defendants and plaintiffs were alike in spirit, +struggling for position in the game. The weaker ones--if they had the +hold--would pluck at the windpipe of their oppressors.... + +So while the attorney for the people spoke on about rate-sheets and +schedules A and B, and bills of lading from the Pleasant Valley Company +(marked "exhibits nine and ten"), the woman in the court-room began to +comprehend dimly the mystery behind this veil of words. Every man felt +instinctively this spirit of fight,--the lively young clerk at her side as +well as the defendant before the bar, her husband; the paid writers for Mr. +Gossom's patriotic magazine as well as the President and his advisers,--all +had it in their blood. It was the spirit of our dominating race, fostered +through the centuries,--the spirit of achievement, of conquest. Mr. +Gossom's clever writers, the President, and the "good element" generally, +differed from their opponents only in manner and degree. "Gently, gently, +gentlemen," they called. "Play according to the rules of the game. Don't +bang all the breath out of your adversary's body when you have him by the +throat. Remember, gentlemen, to give every one his turn!" + +In the light of this understanding of the nature of the game of life, the +efforts of the government to preserve order in a row of this magnitude +became almost farcical,--so long as the spirit of man was untouched and +SUCCESS was admittedly the one glorious prize of life! ... + +Finally the district attorney ceased to speak, and the judge looked at his +watch. There was not time for the defence to make its argument to-day, and +so court was adjourned. The lawyers stretched themselves, chatted, and +laughed. The raw district attorney had done his worst, and judging from Mr. +Brinkerhoff's amiable smile, it was not very bad. The newspaper men +scurried out of the room for the elevators,--there was good copy this +afternoon! + +Lane joined his wife after a few moments, and they left the court-room. + +"Are you tired?" he asked solicitously. "It must have been dull for you, +all that law talk." + +"Oh, no! ... I think I was never so much interested in anything in my +life," she replied with a long sigh. + +He looked as if he were puzzled, but he made no further reference to the +trial, either then or on their way to her mother's house. And Isabelle in a +tumult of impressions and feelings was afraid to speak yet, afraid lest she +might touch the wrong nerve, strike the wrong note,--and so set them +farther apart in life than they were now. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXII + + +They dined in the lofty, sombre room at the rear of the house, overlooking +a patch of turf between the house and the stable. Above the massive +sideboard hung an oil portrait of the Colonel, a youthful painting but +vigorous, where something of the old man's sweetness and gentle wisdom had +been caught. This dining room had been done over the year before Isabelle +was married; its taste seemed already heavy and bad. + +Her mother's old servants served the same rich, substantial meal they had +served when she was a child, with some poor sherry, the Colonel's only +concession to domestic conviviality. The room and the food subtly typified +the spirit of the race,--that spirit which was illuminated in the +court-room--before it had finally evolved.... The moral physiology of men +is yet to be explored! + +Lane leaned back in the Colonel's high-backed chair, gray and weary under +the brilliant light. At first he tried to be interested in Grosvenor, asked +questions of his wife, but soon he relapsed into a preoccupied silence. +This mood Isabelle had never seen in her husband, nor his physical +lassitude. After a time she ventured to ask:-- + +"Is it likely to last much longer, the trial?" + +"A couple of days, the lawyers think." And after a while he added morosely: +"Nobody can tell how long if it is appealed.... I have had to muddle away +the better part of the winter over this business, first and last! It's +nothing but popular clamor, suspicion. The government is playing to the +gallery. I don't know what the devil will happen to the country with this +lunatic of a President. Capital is already freezing up tight. The road will +have to issue short-time notes to finance the improvements it has under +way, and abandon all new work. Men who have money to invest aren't going to +buy stock and bonds with a set of anarchists at Washington running the +country!" + +It was quite unlike Lane to explode in this manner. It was not merely the +result of nervous fatigue, Isabelle felt: it indicated some concealed sore +in her husband's mind. + +"How do you think it will be decided?" she asked timidly. + +"The trial? Nobody can guess. The judge is apparently against us, and that +will influence the jurors,--a lot of farmers and sore-heads! ... But the +verdict will make no difference. We shall carry it up, fight it out till +the last court. The government has given us enough errors,--all the opening +we need!" + +The government had played badly, that is. Isabelle had it on her tongue to +demand: "But how do _you_ feel about it,--the real matter at issue? What is +right--_just_?" Again she refrained, afraid to array herself apparently on +the side of his enemies. + +"It is all this infernal agitation, which does nobody any good and will +result in crippling business," he repeated, as they went to the library for +their coffee. + +This room, where the Colonel usually sat evenings with his wife and the +neighbors who dropped in, was exactly as it had been in the old days,--even +the same row of novels and books of travel in a rack on the polished table. +Only the magazines had been changed. + +Lane lighted a cigar and sipped his coffee. Revived by his dinner and +cigar, he began to talk more freely, in the same mood of disgusted +irritation, the mood of his class these days, of the men he met at his +club, in business,--the lawyers, the capitalists, the leaders of society. +Isabelle, listening to his bitter criticism, wished that she might get him +to speak more personally,--tell her all the detail that had led up to the +suit, explain his connection with it,--show her his inmost heart as he +would show it to himself in a time of exact truth! With this feeling she +went over to where he was sitting and put her hand on his shoulder, and as +he glanced up in surprise at this unexpected demonstration, she said +impulsively:-- + +"John, please, John! ... Tell me everything--I can understand.... Don't you +think there might be some little truth in the other side? Was the road +fair, was it just in this coal business? I so want to know, John!" + +Her voice trembled with suppressed emotion. She wished to draw him to her, +in the warmth of her new feeling to melt his stern antagonism, his harsh +mood. But as he looked inquiringly at her--weighing as it were the meaning +of this sudden interest in his affairs--the wife realized how far apart she +was from her husband. The physical separation of all these years, the +emotional separation, the intellectual separation had resulted in placing +them in two distinct spheres spiritually. The intervening space could not +be bridged in a moment of expansive emotion. It would be a slow matter, if +it ever could be accomplished, to break the crust that had formed like ice +between their souls. Isabelle went back to her seat and drank her coffee. + +"I don't know what you mean by fair and just," he replied coldly. "Business +has to be done according to its own rules, not as idealists or reformers +would have it done. The railroad has done nothing worse than every big +business is compelled to do to live,--has made a profit where there was one +to make.... This would be a poor sort of country, even for the reformers +and agitators, if the men who have the power to make money should be bound +hand and foot by visionaries and talkers. You can't get the sort of men +capable of doing things on a large scale to go into business for clerk's +wages. They must see a profit--and a big one,--and the men who aren't worth +anything will always envy them. That's the root of the whole matter." + +It would be useless, Isabelle saw, to point out that his defence was +general, and an evasion of the point she wished to see clearly,--what the +real _fact_ with him was. His mind was stiffened by the prejudices of his +profession, tempered in fierce fires of industrial competition as a result +of twenty years of triumphant struggle with men in the life and death +grapple of business. He was strong just because he was narrow and blind. If +he had been able to doubt, even a little, the basis of his actions, he +would never have become the third vice-president of the Atlantic and +Pacific, one of the most promising of the younger men in his profession. + +Recognizing her defeat, Isabelle asked about the Johnstons. + +"I have seen Steve a couple of times," Lane replied. "I meant to write you, +but hadn't the time. Steve didn't make good in that lumber business. Those +men he went in with, it looks to me, were sharks. They took all his money +away,--every cent. You know they mortgaged the house, too. Then the company +failed; he was thrown out. Steve was not sharp enough for them, I guess." + +"Isn't that too bad!" + +"Just what might have been expected," Lane commented, associating Steve +Johnston's failure with his previous train of thought; "I told him so when +he gave up railroading. He was not an all-round man. He had one talent--a +good one--and he knew the business he was trained in. But it wasn't good +enough for him. He must get out and try it alone--" + +"It wasn't to make more money," Isabelle protested, remembering the day at +the Farm when the two men had walked back and forth, delaying luncheon, +while they heatedly discussed Steve's determination to change his business. + +"He had this reform virus in his system, too! ... Well, he is bookkeeper, +now, for some little down-town concern at eighteen hundred a year. All he +can get these days. The railroads are discharging men all the time. He +might be earning six thousand in the position I offered him then. Do you +think Alice and the boys will be any better off for his scruples? Or the +country?" + +"Poor Alice! ... Are they still living in the house at Bryn Mawr?" + +"Yes, I believe so. But Steve told me he couldn't carry the mortgage after +the first of the year,--would have to give up the house." + +"I must go out there to-morrow," she said quickly; and after a time she +added, "Don't you think we could do something for them, John?" + +Lane smiled, as if the suggestion had its touch of irony. + +"Why, yes! I mean to look into his affairs when I can find the time.... +I'll see what I can do." + +"Oh, that is good !" Isabelle exclaimed warmly. It was like her husband, +prompt generosity to a friend in trouble. And this matter brought husband +and wife closer in feeling than they had been since her arrival. + +"Ready money is a pretty scarce commodity," Lane remarked; "but I will see +what can be done about his mortgage." + +It was not easy, he wished his wife to know, even for the strong to be +generous these days, thanks to the reformers, and the "crazy man in +Washington," with whom he suspected she sympathized. + +They sat in silence after this until he had finished his cigar. There were +many subjects that must be discussed between them, which thrust up their +heads like sunken rocks in a channel; but both felt their danger. At last +Isabelle, faint from the excitement of the day, with all its mutations of +thought and feeling, went to her room. She did not sleep for hours, not +until long after she heard her husband's step go by the door, and the click +of the switches as he turned out the electric lights. + +There was much to be done before their marriage could be recreated on a +living principle. But where the man was strong and generous, and the woman +was at last awakened to life, there was no reason to despair. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXIII + + +Isabelle did not go back to the court-room to listen to the remaining +arguments, not even to hear Mr. Brinkerhoff's learned and ingenious plea in +behalf of the rights of capital, the sacred privileges of property. She +felt that John would rather not have her there. But Isabelle read every +word of the newspaper report of the trial, which since the district +attorney's impassioned and powerful plea had excited even greater public +interest than before. Not only locally, but throughout the country, the +trial of the People vs. the Atlantic and Pacific et al. was recognized as +the first serious effort of the reform administration to enforce the laws +against capital, by convicting not merely the irresponsible agents but also +some of the men "higher up." It was John Lane's position in the railroad +that gave these "coal cases" their significance. + +Isabelle read the report of the trial with thoughtful care, but much of it +was too technical for her untrained mind to grasp. All these arguments +about admitting certain ledgers in evidence, all these exceptions to the +rulings of the court, the dodges, fences, pitfalls, the dust created by the +skilled counsel for the defence, confused her. What she gathered in a +general way was that the road was fighting its case on technicalities, +seeking to throw the suit out of court, without letting the one real matter +at issue appear,--had they dealt illegally and unjustly with the public? To +her emotional temperament this eminently modern method of tactics was +irritating and prejudiced her against her husband's side. "But I don't +understand," she reflected sadly, "so John would say. And they don't seem +to want people to understand!" + +With these thoughts on her mind, she took the cars to the little suburb +north of the city, where the Johnstons lived. Bryn Mawr was one of the +newer landscape-gardened of our city suburbs, with curving roads, +grass-plots, an art _nouveau_ railroad station, shrubs and poplar sticks +set out along the cement sidewalks, in an effort to disguise the rawness of +the prairie pancake that the contractors had parcelled into lots. Isabelle +found some difficulty in tracing her way along the ingeniously twisted +avenues to the Johnston house. But finally she reached the +two-story-and-attic wooden box, which was set in a little grove of maple +trees. Two other houses were going up across the street, and a trench for a +new sewer had been opened obstructively. At this period of belated spring +Bryn Mawr was not a charming spot. Unfinished edges left by the landscape +gardener and the contractor showed pitilessly against the leafless, scrubby +trees and the rolling muddy fields beyond. It was all covered with a chill +mist. In the days when she lived in St. Louis she had never found time to +go so far to see Alice, and she had shared Bessie's horror of the remote +and cheerless existence in this suburb, had wondered how an intelligent and +well-bred woman like Alice Johnston could endure its dull level of +platitudinous existence. But now as she picked her way across the sewer +excavation, she felt that the little wooden box ahead of her was home for +this family,--they must not lose that! Place and circumstance had lessened +in her estimates of life. + +Alice opened the door herself, and with a radiant smile of hungry delight +enveloped Isabelle in her arms. + +"Where did you drop from, Belle?" + +"Oh, I thought I'd come on," Isabelle replied vaguely, not liking to +mention the trial. + +"And you found your way out here, and navigated that ewer safely! The boys +find it surpassingly attractive,--as a coal mine, or a canal in Mars, or +the Panama ditch. I've tried to induce Mr. Jorgesson, the contractor, to +hang out a lantern or two at night. But he evidently thinks well of the +caution and sobriety of the Johnston family and prefers to take his chances +of a suit for damages. So far the family has escaped." + +Alice's face showed two girlish dimples, while she talked glibly,--too +glibly, Isabelle thought. They went into the dining room where there was a +tiny coal fire before which Alice had been sewing. Isabelle's +namesake--number two in the list--having been considered by her aunt, was +dismissed on an errand. The older boys were at school, the baby out in the +kitchen "with the colored lady who assists," as Alice explained. + +When they were alone, the cousins looked at each other, each thinking of +the changes, the traces of life in the other. Isabelle held out her hands +yearningly, and Alice, understanding that she knew what had befallen them, +smiled with trembling lips. Yet it was long before she could speak of their +misfortune in her usual calm manner. + +... "The worst is that we have had to take Ned out of the technical +institute and send him back to the school here with Jack. It isn't a good +school. But we may move into the city in the fall.... And Belle had to give +up her music. We all have to chip in, you see!" + +"She mustn't give up her music. I shall send her," Isabelle said quickly, +reflecting whimsically how she had loathed her own music lessons. Alice +flushed, and after a moment's pause said deliberately:-- + +"Do you really mean that, Isabelle?" + +"Of course! I only hope she will get more out of it than I did." + +"I should be glad to accept your offer for her sake.... I want her to have +something, some interest. A poor girl without that,--it is worse for her +than for the boys!" + +Isabelle could see Alice's struggle with her pride, and understood the +importance of this little matter to her, which had made her deliberately +clutch at the chance for the little girl. + +"Belle shall come to me to-morrow and spend the day. I will send for the +teacher.... Now that's settled, and, Alice, you and Steve will be better +off soon! He is too able a man--" + +Alice shook her head steadily, saying:-- + +"I am afraid not, Belle! Steve is too good a man, that is the trouble. I +don't say this to him. I wouldn't take a particle of hope from him. But I +know Steve all through: he isn't the kind to impress people, to get +on,--and he is no longer young." + +"It is such a pity he left the railroad," Isabelle mused. "John says they +are turning men off instead of taking them on, or he might have found a +position for him." + +"Never!" Alice's eyes flamed. "If it had to be done over, even now, we +should do the same thing.... Steve is slow and quiet, never says much, but +he does a lot of thinking. And when he makes up his mind, he sticks.... +When he saw what it meant to take that position in the traffic department, +what he would have to know and do, he couldn't do it. It is useless trying +to make a man like Steve live contrary to his nature. You can't bend a big, +thick tree any way you want it." + +"But, Alice, he might have been wrong!" Isabelle protested, coloring. + +"Yes,--he might have been wrong," Alice admitted, her eyes falling. "But +Steve couldn't see it any other way. So he had to do as he did.... And the +lumber business failed. I was afraid it would! Dear Steve! He wasn't fitted +to fight with those men, to see that they didn't cheat him." + +It was later that Alice uttered the deep cry of her heart. + +... "Don't think, Belle, that I mind the hard times, the work and all; not +even the school for Ned, and the poor prospect for the children. After all, +they may do as well without the advantages we could have given them. But +what breaks my heart is to see Steve, who is bigger and abler and stronger +than most men, go down to the bottom of the ladder and have to take his +orders from an ignorant little German. It's small of me, I know, and Steve +doesn't complain. But it seems to me terribly unjust somehow." + +For a moment her feeling overcame her; then she recovered her composure and +continued: "But then, it's Steve! And I wouldn't have him a particle +different, not for all the success in the world. You see I have my pride, +my snobbery. I am a snob about my husband." + +The boys came in from school, and the house shook with racketing children. + +"They don't know what has happened, really,--they are too young, thank +Heaven!" Alice exclaimed. "And I don't mean they ever shall know--ever +think they are poor." + +The two stood on the porch for a last word, arranging for the little girl's +visit to Isabelle on the morrow. The twilight had descended through the +mist. + +"See!" Alice said, pointing to the white tree trunks across the street, and +the vague fields beyond. "Isn't it very much like that Corot the Colonel +used to love so much,--the one in the library? We have our Corot, too.... +Good-by, dear! I have chattered frightfully about ourselves. Some day you +must tell me of your stay with Mrs. Pole and of yourself." + +"There isn't much to tell!" + +Alice Johnston, watching her cousin's agreeable figure disappear into the +mist, felt that if with Isabelle there might be not much to tell, at least +a great deal had happened these last months. + +And Isabelle, picking her way cautiously along the sewer excavation, was +thinking of the home behind. The couple of hours she had spent with Alice +had been filled with a comprehension, a curiously immediate grasp of the +other person's vision of life,--what it all meant to her,--Alice's +disappointment, her pride in her defeated husband. For the first time in +all the years she had known them, Steve and Alice and the children seemed +quite real persons, and their life as vivid, as interesting to her, as her +own. + +Sad as their little story was, in its pathetic limitations of plans and +hopes, it did not seem to her intolerable, or sordid, or depressing, as it +once would have seemed. Just as she possessed somewhere in herself a new +strength to endure whatever misfortune might come to her, so she had an +instinctive feeling of how others endured what on the surface of events +seemed merely distressing and disagreeable. And the Johnston house, plain +and homely as it was, with all the noisy children, had an air of peace +about it, the spirit of those that dwelt there, which Isabelle felt to be +the most precious thing on earth.... Alice had said, "It's Steve--and I +wouldn't have him different for all the success in the world!" The words +stung Isabelle. Such was marriage,--perfect marriage,--to be able to say +that in the face of worldly defeat. Neither she nor John could ever say +that about the other. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXIV + + +The newsboys were crying the verdict up and down the wet street. Across the +front page of the penny sheet which Isabelle bought ran in broad, splotched +letters: GUILTY; RAILROAD GRAFTERS FINED; and in slightly smaller type: +_Atlantic and Pacific found guilty of illegal discrimination in famous coal +cases--Fined eighty-five thousand dollars. Vice-president Lane, General +Traffic Manager of Road, fined thirteen thousand six hundred and eighty +dollars_, etc. Isabelle crumpled the paper into her muff and hurried home. +As she walked numbly, she thought, 'Why six hundred and eighty dollars? why +so exact?' As if the precise measure of wrong could be determined! On the +doorstep of her mother's house lay the quietly printed, respectable +two-cent evening paper that the family had always read. Isabelle took this +also with her to her room. Even in this conservative sheet, favorable to +the interests of the property classes, there were scare-heads about the +verdict. It was of prime importance as news. Without removing her hat or +coat, Isabelle read it all through,--the judge's charge to the jury, the +verdict, the reporters' gossip of the court-room. The language of the judge +was trenchant, and though his charge was worded in stiff and solemn form +and laden with legal phrases, Isabelle understood it better even than the +hot eloquence of the district attorney. It swept away all that legal dust, +those technical quibbles, which Mr. Brinkerhoff and his associate counsel +had so industriously sprinkled over the issue. "If the facts have been +established of such and such a nature, beyond reasonable doubt; if the +connection of the defendant has been clearly set forth," etc. As the penny +sheet put it, "Judge Barstow's charge left no room for doubt as to the +verdict. The jury was out forty minutes and took one ballot." Twelve men, +be they farmers or "sore-heads," had found John Lane guilty of something +very like grand larceny. The case was to be appealed--of course. + +Even the respectable two-cent paper delivered itself editorially on the +verdict in the famous coal cases, with unusual daring. For the _Post_ was +ordinarily most cautious not to reflect upon matters inimical to "leading +interests." To-night it was moved beyond the limits of an habitual +prudence. + +"Judge Barstow," it said, "in his able analysis left no room for doubt as +to the gravity of the charges brought by the government against the +Atlantic and Pacific and certain of its officers. The verdict will be no +surprise to those who have followed closely the so-called coal cases +through the preliminary investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission +and the recent trial. A state of affairs in the management of the Atlantic +and Pacific railroad was revealed that may well shock men long accustomed +to the methods of corporate control. It was shown that officers and +employees of the railroad owned or controlled various coal properties that +depended for their existence upon special favors given them by the road, +and that these companies were enabled by their secret alliance with the +railroad to blackmail independent, rival companies, and drive them out of +existence. To put it in plain words, the Atlantic and Pacific favored its +secret partners at the expense of their competitors.... Apart from the +legal aspect so ably dealt with by Judge Barstow, the spectacle of graft in +the Atlantic and Pacific must surprise the stockholders of that corporation +quite as much as the public at large. Apparently high-salaried officials +shared in these extra profits together with freight clerks and division +superintendents! ... We cannot believe that the moral sense of the country +will long tolerate a condition of affairs such as has been revealed in the +case of Vice-president Lane."... + +This was no academic question of economic policy! No legal technicality. +The paper fell from Isabelle's hand, and she sat staring at the floor. Her +husband was called in plain prose a "grafter,"--one who participated in +unearned and improper profits, due to granting favors in his official +capacity to himself. + +As Isabelle closed the old-fashioned shutters before dressing for dinner, +she saw her husband coming up the steps, walking with his slow, powerful +stride, his head erect,--the competent, high-minded, generous man, a rock +of stable strength, as she had always believed him, even when she loved him +least! There must be something wrong with the universe when this man, the +best type of hard, intelligent labor, should have become a public robber! +... Renault's solemn words repeated themselves, "The curse of our age, of +our country, is its frantic egotism." The predatory instinct, so highly +valued in the Anglo-Saxon male, had thriven mightily in a country of people +"born free and equal," when such a man as John Lane "grafted" and believed +himself justified. + + * * * * * + +Lane stood behind her chair waiting for her in the dining room. As she +entered the room he glanced at her questioningly. He had noticed that the +evening paper was not in its usual place in the hall. But after that glance +he settled himself composedly for the meal, and while the servants were in +the room husband and wife talked of immediate plans. He said he should have +to go to New York the next day, and asked what she wished to do. Would she +wait here in St. Louis for her mother? Or join her at the Springs? Or open +the Farm? He should have to be back and forth between New York and St. +Louis all the spring, probably. + +Isabelle could answer only in monosyllables. All these details of where she +should be seemed irrelevant to the one burning point,--what will you do +now, in the face of this verdict of guilt? At last the meal was over, and +they were alone. Isabelle, without looking up, said:-- + +"I saw the verdict in the papers, John." + +He made no reply, and she cried:-- + +"Tell me what you are going to do! We must talk about it." + +"The case will be appealed, as I told you before." + +"Yes! ... but the fine, the--" + +She stopped for lack of the right word. He made a gesture of indifference +at the word "fine," but still waited. + +"John, is it true what the judge said, what the district attorney said, +about--the officials getting money from those coal companies?" + +She colored, while Lane eyed her and at last replied irritably:-- + +"The officers of the road invested their money, like most men, where they +saw fit, I suppose." + +"But does that mean they take advantage of their position with the road to +make money--improperly?" + +"That depends on what you call 'improperly.'" + +Her mind leaped clear of this evasion; she cried out:-- + +"But why did you want to make money--so much money? You had a large salary, +and I could have had all the money we wanted from my father!" + +Her husband looked at her almost contemptuously, as if her remark was too +childish for serious consideration. It was axiomatic that all men who had +the power desired to make what money they could. + +"I certainly never cared to live on your father's money," he retorted. + +"But we didn't need so much--" + +"I wonder if you realize just how much we have seemed to need in one way or +another since we moved East?" + +There it was staring her in the face, her share in the responsibility for +this situation! She had known only vaguely what they were spending, and +always considered that compared with women of her class she was not +extravagant, in fact economical. + +"But, John, if I had only known--" + +"Known what?" he demanded harshly. "Known that I was making money in stocks +and bonds, like other men, like your father's friend, Senator Thomas, like +Morton, and Beals himself? Isabelle, you seem to have the comprehension of +a child! ... Do you think that such men live on salaries?" + +"But why weren't the others indicted and tried?" + +He hesitated a moment, his face flushing, and then there burst out the +truth. She had unwittingly touched the sore spot in his mind. + +"Because there had to be some sort of scapegoat to satisfy public clamor! +The deals went through my office mostly; but the road is behind me, of +course.... They all shared, from Beals down." + +At last they were at the heart of the matter, he challenging her criticism, +she frightened at the cloudy places in her husband's soul that she had +penetrated, when a servant interrupted them, saying that Lane was wanted at +the telephone. While he was out of the room, Isabelle thought swiftly. What +would be the next word? Was it not better to accept his excuse? "They have +all done as I have done, men who are honored and respected. It is +universal, what we do, and it is only an accident that I am put up as a +target for public abuse!" If she persisted in knowing all, she would merely +divide herself farther from her husband, who would resent her attitude. And +what right had she to examine and judge, when for all these years she had +gone her way and let him go his? + +The blood beat in her ears, and she was still uncertain when Lane returned. +His face had lost its color of passion, and his voice was subdued as he +said:-- + +"Steve has met with an accident,--a serious one." + +"Steve!" Isabelle cried. + +"Yes; I think we had better go out there at once. Alice got some one to +telephone for her." + +The account of the accident had been in that late edition of the penny +paper which Isabelle had seen, but it had been crowded into the second page +by the magnitude of the Atlantic and Pacific sensation. Lane bought the +papers, and they read them on their way to Bryn Mawr. Johnston had been run +down as he was going to the station early that Saturday afternoon. It was a +heavy motor, running at reduced yet lively speed through the crowded city +street. A woman with a child by the hand had stepped from the sidewalk to +hail an approaching street-car, without noticing the automobile that was +bearing down behind her. Steve had seen their danger, rushed for the woman +and pulled her and the child out of the way,--got them clear of the motor. +But he was struck, a glancing blow in the back, as the motor sheered off. +He had been taken to a drug-store, and reviving quickly had insisted on +going home. The driver of the car, apparently a humane person, had waited +with a notable display of decency and taken the injured man with the doctor +who had attended him at the drug-store to Bryn Mawr.... The reporter for +the penny paper had done his best by the accident, describing the thrilling +rescue of the woman and child, the unavoidable blow to the rescuer, with +all the vividness of his art. + +"It was a brave act," Lane remarked, folding up the sheet and putting it in +his pocket.... + +As soon as they entered, Alice came down to them from the sick room. She +was pale, but she seemed to Isabelle wonderfully composed and calm,--the +steady balance-wheel of the situation. When Steve had first reached home, +he had apparently not been badly off, she told them. He had insisted on +walking upstairs and said that he would be quite right after he had laid +down a little while. So the doctor went back to the city in the motor. But +at dinner time, Alice, going into his room, found him breathing heavily, +almost unconscious, and his voice had become so thick that she could +scarcely make out what he was saying. She had summoned their own doctor, +and he had called another from the city. They feared cerebral trouble, due +to a lesion of the spinal chord; but nothing could be certainly determined +yet. + +"Something seems to be on his mind," Alice said in conclusion. "I thought I +made out your name, John; so I had you telephoned for. I don't know that it +will do any good, but it may quiet him to see you." + +While Lane was upstairs, Alice talked on in the composed, capable, +self-contained manner that she usually had,--merely speaking a trifle +faster, with occasional pauses, as if she were listening for a sound from +Steve's room. But the house was painfully still. + +... "You see," she explained, "Steve doesn't move quickly,--is too heavy +and slow. I suppose that was why he didn't succeed in getting out of the +way himself. The car wasn't really going fast, not over eight miles an +hour, the chauffeur said.... But Steve saved the woman and child,--they +would have been killed." + +He had saved the woman and child,--chance strangers in the +street,--possibly at the cost of his life or the use of his limbs. There +was an ironical note in the tragedy. This stout man with the character in +his slow organism that could accomplish great things--this hero of +Alice's--had stepped off the sidewalk to save the life of a careless +passer-by, and risked his own life, the happiness of his wife and children, +in just that little way. + +"It was so like Steve,--to realize but one point, _their_ danger," Alice +continued with a proud smile. And Isabelle could see the dull, large-framed +man, his head slightly bent, plodding forward in the stream of home-goers +on the pavement, suddenly lift his head, and without a moment's hesitation +step out into the path of danger.... + +When Isabelle and John left the house late in the evening, he said gravely, +"The doctors don't think there is much chance for him." + +"He will die!" Isabelle gasped, thinking of Alice, who had smiled at them +cheerily when they went out of the door. + +"Perhaps worse than that,--complete paralysis,--the lower limbs are +paralyzed now." + +"How perfectly awful!" + +"I think he knew me. He grasped my hand so hard it hurt, and I could make +out my name. But I couldn't understand what he was trying to say." + +"Do you suppose it could be the mortgage?" + +"Very likely. I must attend to that matter at once." + +They were silent on the way back to the city, each buried in thought. The +verdict, which had stirred them so deeply a few hours before, had already +sunk into the background of life, overshadowed by this nearer, more human +catastrophe. + +"I shall have to go on to New York to-morrow, for a few days at least," +Lane said as they entered the house. + +"I will stay here, of course," Isabelle replied, "and you can bring Molly +and the governess back with you. I will telegraph them." It was all easily +decided, what had seemed perplexing earlier in the evening, when she had +been occupied merely with herself and John. "I can be of some help to Alice +any way, and if he should die--" + +"Yes," Lane agreed. "That is best. I will be back in a week." And he added +casually, announcing a decision arrived at on the way to the city:-- + +"I'll have my lawyer look up that mortgage. You can tell Alice to-morrow +and try to get Steve to understand, so that he will have it off his mind as +soon as possible." + +Her heart responded with a glow. Yes, that was the very thing to do! She +had money enough to help them, but she did not know just what to do. It was +like John, this sure, quick way of seeing the one thing to be done +immediately and doing it. It was like him, too, to do generous things. How +many poor boys and young men he had helped along rough roads in their +struggle up,--given them the coveted chance in one way and another, without +ostentation or theory, simply in the human desire to help another with that +surplus strength which had given him his position of vantage. + +"I will write the note to Mather now, telling him what to do about the +mortgage," he continued in his methodical, undemonstrative manner. As he +sat down at the desk and drew pen and paper towards him, he paused a +moment. "You will see to the nurses,--they should have two. The doctors may +decide on an operation. Have the best men, of course." + +He struck pen into the paper with his broad, firm stroke. Isabelle stood +watching him, her heart beating strangely, and suddenly leaning over him +she kissed his forehead, then fled swiftly to the door. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXV + + +Isabelle waited in the carriage outside the station for her husband and +Molly. The New York train was late as usual. She had driven in from Bryn +Mawr, where she had spent most of the ten days since Lane's departure. She +was steeped now in the atmosphere of that suburban house covered by the +April mist, with the swelling bushes and trees all about it. There had been +an operation, decided on after consultation with the eminent surgeons that +Isabelle had summoned. After the operation hope had flickered up, as the +sick man breathed more easily, was able to articulate a few intelligible +words, and showed an interest in what was going on about him. But it had +waned again to-day, and when Isabelle left, Alice was holding her husband's +large hand, talking to him cheerfully, but there was no response.... How +wonderful she was,--Alice! That picture of her filled Isabelle's thought as +she waited in the carriage. Never a tear or a whimper all these anxious +days, always the calm, buoyant voice, even a serene smile and little joke +at her husband's bedside, such as she had used to enliven him with, +--anything to relax his set, heavy features. "How she loves him!" thought +Isabelle, almost with pain. + +When she left that afternoon, Alice had sent a grateful message to John. +"He will come out to-morrow if he can?" she had asked. She knew now that +the hours were numbered without being told so by the doctors. And never a +tear, a self-pitying cry! Oh, to be like that,--sturdy in heart and +soul,--with that courage before life, that serene confidence in face of the +worst fate can offer! Alice was of the faith of Renault. + +Lane came down the platform, followed by Molly and her governess. As he +raised his hat in greeting, Isabelle noticed the deep lines at the corners +of his mouth, and the line above his broad, straight nose. When they were +in the carriage, she realized that her husband had been living these ten +days in another world from the one she had inhabited, and in spite of his +questions about Steve and Alice, he was preoccupied, still held by the +anxieties and perplexities of his business in New York, still in the close +grip of his own affairs, his personal struggle. So she talked with Molly, +who was almost articulately joyful over her escape from the country, at the +sight of streets and motor carriages. + +As they were going to dinner a servant brought word that a reporter wished +to speak to John. Usually Lane refused to see reporters outside his office, +and there turned them over to his secretary, who was skilled in the gentle +art of saying inoffensive nothings in many words. But to her surprise John +after slight hesitation went into the library to see the man, and it was a +long half hour before he returned to his dinner. The evening was another +one of those torturing periods when Isabella's heart was full and yet must +be carefully repressed lest she make a false step. After a little talk +about Molly, her mother, the Johnstons, Lane turned to open his mail that +had been sent up for him from the office. Isabelle left him absorbed in +this task, but she could not sleep, and when at last she heard him go to +his room, she followed him. Laying her hands on his arms, she looked at him +pleadingly, longing now not so much to know the facts, to reason and judge, +as to understand, perhaps comfort him,--at least to share the trouble with +him. + +"Can't you tell me all about it, John?" + +"About what?" he demanded dryly, his dislike of effusiveness, emotionalism, +showing in the glitter of his gray eyes. + +"Tell me what is troubling you! I want to share it,--all of it. What has +happened?" + +He did not answer at once. There was an evident struggle to overcome his +habitual reserve, the masculine sense of independence in the conduct of his +affairs. Also, there was between them her prejudice, the woman's +insufficient knowledge, and the barrier of the long years of aloofness. But +at last, as if he had reflected that she would have to know soon in any +case, he said dryly:-- + +"The Board has voted to relieve me of my duties as general manager of +traffic. I am assigned to St. Louis for the present, but the duties are not +specified. A polite hint--which I have taken!" + +"Did Mr. Beals do that?" + +"Beals went to Europe on his vacation when the coal cases first came up.... +Besides, it would have made no difference. I think I see in it the fine +hand of our good friend the Senator,--smug-faced old fox!" + +Isabelle felt how much this action by the directors had stung him, how +severely he was suffering. + +"It was ... because of the verdict?" + +"Oh, the general mess, the attacks in the press, complaints from +stockholders! They want to get under cover, show the public they are +cleaning house, I suppose. They thought to shelve me until the row fizzles +out, then drop me. But I am not the sort of man to sit around as a willing +sacrifice, to pose for the papers as a terrible example. They will know, +to-morrow!" + +Isabelle understood why he had consented to see the reporter. Hitherto, he +had refused to speak, to make any public defence of himself or comment on +the trial. But after this action on the part of the directors, after the +long smouldering hours on the train, he had decided to speak,--at length. +It would not be pleasant reading in certain quarters near Wall Street, what +he said, but it would make good copy. + +Biting fiercely at his cigar, which had gone out, he struck a match sharply +and talked on:-- + +"I am not a back number yet. There is not another road in the country that +has shown such results, such gain in traffic, as the A. and P. since I was +put in charge of traffic five years ago. There are others who know it, too, +in New York. I shan't have to twiddle my thumbs long when my resignation is +published. The prejudiced trial out here won't stand in the way." + +In the storm of his mood, it was useless to ask questions. Isabelle merely +murmured:-- + +"Too bad, too bad,--I am so sorry, John!" + +Instead of that dispassionate groping for the exact truth, justice between +her husband and the public, that she had first desired, she was simply +compassionate for his hurt pride. Innocent or guilty, what right had she to +judge him? Even if the worst of what had been charged was literally true, +had she not abandoned him at the start,--left him to meet the problems of +the modern battle as he could,--to harden his soul against all large and +generous considerations? Now when he was made the scapegoat for the sins of +others, for the sin of his race, too,--how could she sit and censure! The +time would come for calm consideration between them. There was that +something in her heart which buoyed her above the present, above the +distress of public condemnation,--even disgrace and worldly failure. Coming +close to him again, she said with ringing conviction:-- + +"It can make no difference to you and me, John!" + +He failed to see her meaning. + +"The money doesn't matter,--it isn't that, of course. We shan't starve!" + +"I didn't mean the money!" + +"Sensible people know what it amounts to,--only the mob yaps." + +"I didn't mean criticism, either," she said softly. + +"Well, that New York crowd hasn't heard the last of me yet!" + +His lips shut tight together. The spirit of fight, of revenge, was aroused. +It was useless to talk further. She drew his arm about her. + +"You will go out to see Steve to-morrow, won't you?" + +"Yes, of course,--any time in the afternoon." + +She kissed him and went back to her room. + +One precept out of Renault's thin book of life was hard to +acquire,--Patience. But it must be acquired,--the power to abide the time +calmly, until the right moment should come. The morrows contain so many +reversals of the to-days! + + + + +CHAPTER LXXXVI + + +It was probable that the dying man did not recognize Lane, though it was +hard to say what dim perception entered through the glazing eyes and +penetrated the clouding brain. The children had been about the room all the +morning, Alice said, and from the way the father clung to Jack's hand she +thought there still was recognition. But the sense of the outer world was +fast fading now. The doctor was there, by way of kindly solicitude,--he +could do nothing; and when the Lanes came he went away, whispering to John +as he left, "Not long now." Alice had sent away the nurse, as she had the +night before, refusing to lose these last minutes of service. She told +Isabelle that in the early morning, while she was watching and had thought +Steve was asleep from his quieter breathing, she had found his eyes resting +on her with a clear look of intelligence, and then kneeling down with her +face close to his lips he had whispered thickly. Her eyes were still +shining from those last lover's words in the night.... + +When John went back to the city, Isabelle stayed on, taking luncheon with +the nurses and little Belle. Neighbors came to the door to inquire, to +leave flowers. These neighbors had been very kind, Alice had said often, +taking the boys to their homes and doing the many little errands of the +household. "And I hardly knew them to bow to! It's wonderful how people +spring up around you with kindness when trouble comes!"... + +Meanwhile, overhead the life was going out, the strong man yielding slowly +to the inevitable. Twilight came on, the doctor returned and went away +again, and the house became absolutely still. Once Isabelle crept upstairs +to the door of the sick room. Alice was holding Steve's head, with one arm +under his pillow, looking,--looking at him with devouring eyes! ... +Gradually the breathing grew fainter, at longer intervals, the eyelids fell +over the vacant eyes, and after a little while the nurse, passing Isabelle +on the stairs, whispered that it was over,--the ten days' losing fight. +Presently Alice came out of the room, her eyes still shining strangely, and +smiled at Isabelle. + +When they went out the next afternoon, there was in the house that dreary +human pause created by the fact of death,--pause without rest. Flowers +scented the air, and people moved about on tiptoe, saying nothings in +hushed voices, and trying to be themselves. + +But in the dim room above, where Alice took them, there was peace and +naturalness. The dead man lay very straight beneath the sheet, his fleshy +body shrunken after its struggle to its bony stature. Isabelle had always +thought Steve a homely man,--phlegmatic and ordinary in feature. She had +often said, "How can Alice be so romantic over old Steve!" But as the dead +man lay there, wasted, his face seemed to have taken on a grave and austere +dignity, an expression of resolute will in the heavy jaw, the high brow, +the broad nostril, as though the steadfast soul within, so prosaically +muffled in the flesh, had at the last spoken out to those nearest him the +meaning of his life, graving it on his dead face. Lane, caught by this +high, commanding note of the lifeless features, as of one who, though +removed by infinite space, still spoke to the living, gazed steadily at the +dead man. And Isabelle felt the awe of his presence; here was one who could +speak with authority of elemental truths.... + +Alice, her arms resting on the foot-rail of the bed, was leaning forward, +looking with eyes still shining at her husband, her lover, her mate. And +her lips parted in a little smile. Large and strong and beautiful, in the +full tide of conscious life, she contemplated her dead comrade. + +A feeling that she was in the presence of mystery--the mystery of perfect +human union--stole through Isabelle. The woman standing there at the feet +of her dead man had had it all,--all the experience that woman can have. +Had she not loved this man, received his passion, borne his children, +fought by his side the fight of life,--and above all and beyond all else +cherished in her the soul of the man, the sacred part of him, that beauty +unknown to others hitherto, now written plain for all to see on his face! +And her lighted eyes seemed to say, 'What place is there here for grief? +Even though I am left in mid life, to struggle on alone with my children, +without his help, yet have I not had it all? Enough to warm my heart and +soul through the empty years that must come!'... + +Tears dropped from Isabelle's eyes, and convulsively she grasped the hand +that rested beside her, as though she would say, 'To lose all this, what +you two have had, how can you bear it!' Alice bent down over her +tear-stained face and kissed her,--with a little gesture towards Steve, +murmuring "I have had so much!" + + * * * * * + +They walked slowly back to the city in the warm April night. Neither had +spoken since they left the little house, until Isabelle said with a deep +solemnity:-- + +"It was perfect--that!" + +"Yes! Steve was a good man, and Alice loved him." + +Each knew what lay behind these commonplace words in the heart of the +other. These two, Steve and Alice, in spite of hardship, the dull grind of +their restricted existence, the many children, the disappointments, had had +something--a human satisfaction--that _they_ had missed--forever; and as +they walked on through the deserted streets silently, side by side, they +saw that now it could never be for them. It was something that missed once +in its perfection was missed for all time. However near they might come to +be, however close in understanding and effort, they could never know the +mystery of two who had lived together, body and soul, and together had +solved life. + +For mere physical fidelity is but a small part of the comradeship of +marriage. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXVII + + +Miss Marian Lane was such a thorough cosmopolite that she had no +discernible affection for any place. She referred to Central Park, to the +Farm, to the Price house in St. Louis, to Grosvenor with equal indifference +and impartiality, as she might later to London or Paris or Rome. She did +not even ask her mother where they were to spend the summer. That there was +a Park in St. Louis, as in all properly created cities, she had confidence, +because she asked Miss Joyce to take her there the day after her arrival. +Isabelle's own childhood had been strongly colored by places,--the old +house in K Street, this ugly Victorian mansion, and especially the Farm. +Places had meant so much to her in her youth, her feelings reflecting their +physical atmosphere, that they had been more vivid than persons. But Molly +was equally content anywhere. She needed merely Miss Joyce, a Park, and +pretty clothes. + +Clothes, indeed, were the only subject that aroused a semblance of passion +in Molly's sedate soul. "Oh, we shall go shopping, mamma!" she exclaimed +with the first real animation Isabelle had seen in her, when her +grandmother remarked that Molly had outgrown all her dresses this winter. +They were sitting in the large front bedroom that the Colonel and his wife +had always occupied. Mrs. Price had just returned from the Springs, and was +already talking of spending the summer in Europe. Since the Colonel's death +she had become a great globe-trotter, indefatigably whisking hither and +thither with her reliable maid. It seemed as if after all these years of +faithful economy and routine living, the suppressed restlessness of her +race, which had developed at an earlier age in Isabelle, was revenging +itself upon the old lady. "Mother's travels" had become a household +joke.... + +"Can't we go to-day? Miss Joyce and I saw some lovely things at Roseboro's, +mother!" Molly urged, jumping up from the lounge, where she had been +telling her grandmother about Grosvenor. "Oh, yes, grandmother," Isabelle +had heard her say in a listless voice, "we had a pleasant time in +Grosvenor. Miss Joyce took me coasting with James Pole. And we had sleigh +rides. Miss Joyce was afraid to drive the horses, so we did not go except +when Mrs. Pole took us.... Aunt Margaret was very nice. Miss Joyce gave us +all dancing lessons."... + +It was always Miss Joyce this and Miss Joyce that, since Molly's return, +until Isabelle had impatiently concluded that the faithful English +governess with her narrow character had completely ironed out the +personality of her charge. As she listened to Molly's conversation with her +grandmother, she resolved to get rid of Miss Joyce, in order to escape +hearing her name if for no other reason. + +"I suppose you'll wait to get her clothes until you are back in New York," +the practical Mrs. Price observed; "they are so much cheaper and more +tasteful there. The stores here don't seem to be what they were,--even +Roseboro's can't compare with Altman's and Best's for children's things." + +"We may not be in New York this spring," Isabelle replied, waking from her +meditations on the subject of Miss Joyce and her daughter. "John's plans +are uncertain--and I don't care to go without him." + +"You can try Roseboro's, then; but I don't believe you will be satisfied." + +"Oh, mamma, can't we go in the motor now!" + +And Molly ran to Miss Joyce to dress herself for the expedition. + +Isabelle had scrutinized her little daughter with fresh interest the few +days she had been with her. Molly had always been an unresponsive child +since she was a baby. In spite of her beautiful pink coloring, carefully +preserved by country life, she was scarcely more alive than an automaton. +Whatever individuality she had was so deeply buried that her mother could +not discover it. Why was it? Why was she so colorless? She had been "moved +about" a good deal, like many American children, according to the +exigencies of the family,--to St. Louis, the Farm, the New York hotel, the +New York house, Europe, Grosvenor,--a rapid succession of panoramas for one +small mind to absorb. But Molly had never seemed disturbed by it. One place +was as good as another,--one set of children, provided they had nice +manners and were well dressed, as agreeable as any other. If she were put +down in a Pasadena hotel, she found playmates, judiciously selected by Miss +Joyce, of course, who supervised their games. In all the changes of scene +Isabelle had been most scrupulous in her care for diet, exercises, regime, +and as long as the child seemed content and physically well she had seen no +harm in taking her about from scene to scene. Now Isabelle had her doubts. + +The little girl came downstairs, followed by the capable Miss Joyce, who +was brushing out a fold in her white broadcloth coat and arranging a curl, +and looked in at her mother's room, with a pretty little smile and a +gesture of the fingers she had copied from some child. "All ready, +mamma,--shall we wait for you in the motor?" As she passed on, followed by +Miss Joyce,--the figure of dainty young plutocracy and her +mentor,--Isabelle murmured, "I wonder if it has been good for her to move +about so much!" + +Mrs. Price, a literal old lady, took up the remark:-- + +"Why, she looks healthy. Miss Joyce takes excellent care of her. I think +you are very fortunate in Miss Joyce, Isabelle." + +"I don't mean her health, mother!" + +"She is as forward as most children of her age,--she speaks French very +prettily," the grandmother protested. "She has nice manners, too." + +Isabelle saw the futility of trying to explain what she meant to her +mother, and yet the old lady in her next irrelevant remark touched the very +heart of the matter. + +"Children have so much attention these days,--what they eat and do is +watched over every minute. Why, we had a cat and a dog, and a doll or two, +the kitchen and the barn to run about in--and that was all. Parents were +too busy to fuss about their children. Boys and girls had to fit into the +home the best they could." + +There was a home to fit into! A cat and a dog, a few dolls, and the kitchen +and the barn to run about in,--that was more than Molly Lane with all her +opportunities had ever had. + +"There weren't any governesses or nurses; but we saw more of our father and +mother, naturally," the old lady continued. "Only very rich people had +nurses in those times." + +The governess was a modern luxury, provided to ease the conscience of lazy +or incompetent mothers, who had "too much to do" to be with their children. +Isabelle knew all the arguments in their favor. She remembered Bessie +Falkner's glib defence of the governess method, when she had wanted to +stretch Rob's income another notch for this convenience,--"If a mother is +always with her children, she can't give her best self either to them or to +her husband!" Isabelle had lived enough since then to realize that this +vague "best self" of mothers was rarely given to anything but distraction. + +Isabelle had been most conscientious as a mother, spared no thought or +pains for her child from her birth. The trained nurse during the first two +years, the succession of carefully selected governesses since, the lessons, +the food, the dentist, the doctors, the clothes, the amusements,--all had +been scrupulously, almost religiously, provided according to the best +modern theories. Nothing had been left to chance. Marian should be a +paragon, physically and morally. Yet, her mother had to confess, the child +bored her,--was a wooden doll! In the scientifically sterilized atmosphere +in which she had lived, no vicious germ had been allowed to fasten itself +on the young organism, and yet thus far the product was tasteless. Perhaps +Molly was merely a commonplace little girl, and she was realizing it for +the first time. Isabelle's maternal pride refused to accept such a +depressing answer, and moreover she did not believe that any young thing, +any kitten or puppy, could be as colorless, as little vital as the +exquisite Miss Lane. She must find the real cause, study her child, live +with her awhile. The next generation, apparently, was as inscrutable a +manuscript to read as hers had been to the Colonel and her mother. Her +parents had never understood all the longings and aspirations that had +filled her fermenting years, and now she could not comprehend the dumbness +of her child. Those fermenting years had gone for nothing so far as +teaching her to understand the soul of her child. The new ferment was of a +different composition, it seemed.... + + * * * * * + +Isabelle was to find that her daughter had developed certain tastes besides +a love for clothes and a delight in riding in motor-cars.... Molly was in +the library after luncheon, absorbed in an illustrated story of a popular +magazine, which Isabelle glanced over while Miss Joyce made ready her +charge to accompany her mother to the Johnstons'. The story was "innocent," +"clean reading" enough,--thin pages of smart dialogue between prettily +dressed young men and athletic girls, the puppy loves of the young +rich,--mere stock fiction-padding of the day. But the picture of life--the +suggestion to the child's soft brain? Isabelle tossed the magazine into the +waste basket, and yawned. Molly had left it with a sigh. + +On the way to the Bryn Mawr house Isabelle tried to explain to Molly what +had happened to the Johnstons through the loss of the father, telling her +what a good man Steve was, the sorrow the family had to bear. Molly +listened politely. + +"Yes, mother!" And she asked, "Are they very poor?" An innocent remark that +irritated Isabelle unreasonably. + +The children played together downstairs while Isabelle discussed with Alice +some business matters. It had not sounded very lively below, and when the +mothers came down they found Molly and Belle sitting on opposite sides of +the little parlor, looking stiffly at each other. The boys had slipped off +for more stirring adventures outdoors, which Molly had refused to join, as +she was making a formal call with her mother. In the motor going home Molly +remarked: "The boys haven't good manners. Belle seems a nice girl. She +hasn't been anywhere and can't talk. That was a very homely dress she had +on; don't you think so? Does she have to wear dresses like that? Can't you +give her something prettier, mamma?" + +Isabelle, who thought her god-daughter an interesting child, full of +independence and vitality in spite of her shyness, wondered, "Is Molly just +a stick, or only a little snob?" + +Molly was sitting very gracefully in her grandmother's limousine, riding +through the parks and avenues with the air of a perfect little lady +accustomed to observe the world from the cushioned seat of a brougham or +motor-car. Catching sight of a bill board with the announcement of a +popular young actress's coming engagement, she remarked:-- + +"Miss Daisy May is such a perfect dear, don't you think, mamma? Couldn't +Miss Joyce take me to see her act next Saturday afternoon? It's a perfectly +nice play, you know." + +Repressing a desire to shake her daughter, Isabelle replied: "I'll take you +myself, Molly. And shan't we invite Delia Conry? You know she is at school +here and has very few friends." + +"Oh!" Molly said thoughtfully. "Delia is so ordinary. I should like to ask +Beatrice Lawton,--Miss Joyce knows her governess.... Or if we must be good +to some one, we might take Belle." + +"We'll take them both." + +"I don't think Beatrice would enjoy Belle," her daughter objected after +further reflection. + +"Well, I shall ask Delia and Belle, then, to go with me alone!" + +(She had looked up the Conry child at the school where Vickers had sent +her, and had arranged to have her brother's small estate settled on the +girl, as she felt he would have wished. Delia, whose mother had never been +heard from, was a forlorn little object and Isabelle pitied her.) + +When her temporary irritation with Molly had passed, she saw there was +nothing unnatural in the child's attitude. Probably she was a little snob. +Most children brought up as Molly had been, most of her friends, were +little snobs. Their governesses taught them snobbery, unconsciously; their +domestic habits taught them snobbery. + +Isabelle resolved more firmly that she should dispense with the excellent +Miss Joyce. A beginning very far down would have to be made, if she were to +reach the individuality of this perfectly nurtured modern child of hers. +There was nothing bad about Molly; she was irritatingly blameless. But what +she lacked was appalling! At eighteen she would be unendurable. + +And the mother had no warm feeling, no impelling affection for her +daughter, any more than the child had for her. That lack would make it all +the harder to do what must be done. Here, again, as with her husband, she +must begin to pay for all the years that she had shirked her job,--for the +sake of "her own life," her intellectual emancipation and growth,--shirked, +to be sure, in the most conscientious and enlightened modern manner. + +For nobody could call Miss Lane a neglected child. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXVIII + + +It would be very simple for Mrs. Price to provide Alice with a comfortable +income,--the Colonel would have done so; and when Isabelle suggested it to +her mother after the funeral of Steve, the old lady agreed, though she was +not of a philanthropic nature and recalled the fact that the marriage had +been a foolish one. But Alice flatly refused the arrangement. She had been +trained to work; she was not too old to find something to do, and she had +already taken steps to secure a place as matron in a hospital. "I am +strong," she said to Isabelle. "Steve has left it for me to do,--all of it. +And I want to show him that I can do it. I shall be happier!" + +John had a better comprehension of her feelings and of the situation than +either Isabelle or her mother. "Alice is an able woman," he had said; "she +will not break down,--she is not that kind. And she'll be happier working." + +So he took care of her little life insurance money. He also obtained a +scholarship in a technical school for the oldest boy, and undertook to fit +the second one for college, as he showed studious tendencies. Isabelle +would look after Belle's education. In all these practical details of +readjusting the broken family, John Lane was more effective than his wife, +giving generously of his crowded hours to the Johnston affairs, ever ready +to do all that might be done without hurting the widow's pride and vigorous +will. + +And this, as Isabelle knew, came in the days of his greatest personal +perplexity. His resignation as third vice-president had been accepted after +protest, negotiations, and then had elicited a regretful communication to +the press (emanating from the Senator's office) of an eulogistic nature, +concluding with the delicately phrased suggestion that "Mr. Lane's untiring +devotion to his work necessitates his taking a rest from all business cares +for the present. It is understood that he contemplates a long vacation in +Europe." + +John handed the paper to Isabelle with an ironical smile. + +"You see we are to go abroad,--the usual thing! That's the Senator's crafty +hand. He wants everything decently smooth." + +But the public no longer cared. The coal cases had gone up to a higher +court on appeal, and when the final decision was handed down, the "street" +would be interested not in the question of John Lane's guilt or innocence, +but in the more important question of whether the Supreme Court "would back +up the President's campaign against capital." + +Meanwhile, there was none of the social stigma attached to the verdict +against her husband that Isabelle had resolutely expected. As soon as it +was known that the Lanes were established in the city for the spring, their +friends sought them out and they were invited to dine more than Isabelle +cared for. In their class, as she quickly perceived from jesting references +to the trial, such legal difficulties as John's were regarded as merely the +disagreeable incidents of doing business in a socialistic age. Lane, far +from being "down and out," was considered in the industrial and railroad +world a strong man rather badly treated by a weak-kneed board of directors, +who had sought to save themselves from trouble by sacrificing an able +servant to the public storm. No sooner was his resignation published than +he received an offer of the presidency of a large transit company in the +middle West. While he was considering this offer, he was approached by +representatives of another great railroad, which, though largely owned by +the same "interests" that controlled the Atlantic and Pacific, was +generally supposed to be a rival. Lane was too valuable a man to be lost to +the railroad army. The "interests" recognized in him a powerful instrument, +trained from boyhood for their purposes,--one "who knew how to get +business." The offer flattered Lane, and soothed that sore spot in his +inner consciousness. He saw himself reinstated in his old world, with a +prospect of crossing swords with his old superiors in a more than secondary +position. + +Isabelle knew all about this offer. She and her husband talked together +more freely than they had ever done before. The experiences of the past +weeks,--Steve's death, the planning for Alice's future, as well as the +emotional result of the trial--had brought them nearer an understanding. +Lane had begun to realize a latent aptitude in his wife for grasping the +essential matters of business,--investments, risks, corporation management. +She understood far more than the distinction between stock and bond, which +is supposedly the limit of woman's business intelligence. As the warm May +days came on they took long rides into the fresh country, talking over the +endless detail of affairs,--her money, her mother's money, the Colonel's +trust funds, the Johnstons' future, the railroad situation,--all that John +Lane had hitherto carried tightly shut in his own mind. + +And thus Isabelle began to comprehend the close relation between what is +called "business" and the human matters of daily life for every individual +in this complex world. There was not simply a broad mark between right and +wrong,--dramatic trials; but the very souls of men and women were involved +in the vast machine of labor and profit. + +She was astonished to discover the extent of her husband's interests, his +personal fortune, which had grown amazingly during these last ten fat years +of the country's prosperity. + +"Why, you don't have to take any position!" + +"Yes, we could afford to make that European trip the Board so kindly +indicated." + +"We _might_ go abroad," she said thoughtfully. + +A few years before she would have grasped the chance to live in Europe +indefinitely. Now she found no inclination in her spirit for this solution. + +"It isn't exactly the time to leave home," her husband objected; "there is +sure to be a severe panic before long. All this agitation has unsettled +business, and the country must reap the consequences. We could go for a few +months, perhaps." + +"It wouldn't be good for Molly." + +And though she did not say it, it would not be good for him to leave the +struggle for any length of time. Once out of the game of life, for which he +had been trained like an athlete, he would degenerate and lose his peculiar +power. And yet she shrank unaccountably from his reentering the old life, +with the bitter feeling in his heart he now had. It meant their living in +New York, for one thing, and a growing repugnance to that huge, squirming, +prodigal hive had come over her. Once the pinnacle of her ambitions, now it +seemed sordid, hectic, unreal. Yet she was too wise to offer her +objections, to argue the matter, any more than to open the personal wound +of his trial and conviction. Influence, at least with a man of John Lane's +fibre, must be a subtle, slow process, depending on mutual confidence, +comprehension. And she must first see clearly what she herself knew to be +best. So she listened, waiting for the vision which would surely come. + +In these business talks her mind grasped more and more the issues of +American life. She learned to recognize the distinction between the +officials of corporations and the control behind,--the money power. There +emerged into view something of a panorama of industry, organized on modern +lines,--the millions of workers in the industrial armies; the infinite +gradations of leadership in these armies, and finally far off in the +distance, among the canons of the skyscrapers in the great cities, the Mind +of it all, the Control, the massed Capital. There were the Marshals' +quarters! Even the chiefs of great corporations were "little people" +compared with their real employers, the men who controlled capital. And +into that circle of intoxicating power, within its influence, she felt that +her husband was slowly moving--would ultimately arrive, if success +came,--at the height of modern fame. Men did not reach the Marshals' +quarters with a few hundred thousands of dollars, nor with a few millions, +with savings and inheritances and prudent thrift. They must have tens of +millions at their command. And these millions came through alliances, +manipulations, deals, by all sorts of devices whereby money could be made +to spawn miraculously.... + +Meanwhile the worker earned his wage, and the minor officers their +salaries--what had they to complain of?--but the pelf went up to the +Marshals' camp, the larger part of it,--in this land where all were born +free and equal. No! Isabelle shuddered at the spectacle of the bloody road +up to the camp, and prayed that her life might not be lived in an +atmosphere of blood and alarms and noisy strife, even for the sake of +millions of dollars and limitless Power. + +One evening in this period of dubitation Lane remarked casually:-- + +"Your father's friend, Pete Larrimore, came in to-day to see me. Do you +remember him, Isabelle? The old fellow with the mutton-chop whiskers, who +used to send us bags of coffee from his plantation in Mexico." + +"Awful coffee,--we couldn't give it away!" + +"He wanted to talk to me about a scheme he is interested in. It seems that +he has a lot of property in the southwest, Oklahoma and the Texas +Panhandle, some of it very valuable. Among other things he has become +involved in a railroad. It was started by some people who hadn't the +capital to carry it through, and now it begins nowhere and ends in the same +place. Larrimore and his friends think they can get the capital to carry +the road south to the line and up north, and ultimately will sell it +perhaps to one of the big systems.... They are looking for a man to build +it and push it through." + +"What did you say?" Isabelle demanded eagerly. + +"Oh, I just listened. If they can get the money, it might be successful. +That country is growing fast.... It would be a chance for some young man to +win his spurs,--hard work, though." + +He talked on, explaining the strategic position of the new road, its +relation to rivals, the prospects of that part of the country, the present +condition of the money market in respect to new enterprises; for Isabelle +seemed interested. But when she interrupted with sudden energy, "Do it, +John! Why don't _you_ take it?" he looked puzzled. + +"It is a young man's job,--pioneer work." + +"But you are young--we are young! And it would be something worth doing, +pioneer work, building up a new country like that." + +"There's not much money in it," he replied, smiling at her girlish +enthusiasm, "and I am afraid not much fame." + +Not money, not the fame of the gladiator, the fame of the money power; +merely the good report of a labor competently performed, the reward of +energy and capacity--and the thing done itself. But to Isabelle this +pioneer quality of the work appealed strongly. Her imagination expanded +under the idea. + +"I can see you living for the next ten years in a small Texas town!" he +jested. "However, I suppose you wouldn't live out there." + +"But I should!" she protested. "And it is what I should like best of all, I +think--the freedom, the open air, the new life!" + +So from a merely casual suggestion that Lane had not thought worth serious +consideration, there began to grow between them a new conception of their +future. And the change that these last weeks had brought was marked by the +freedom with which husband and wife talked not only about the future, but +about the past. Isabelle tried to tell her husband what had been going on +within her at the trial, and since then. + +"I know," she said, "that you will say I can't understand, that my feeling +is only a woman's squeamishness or ignorance.... But, John, I can't bear to +think of our going back to it, living on in that way, the hard way of +success, as it would be in New York." + +Lane looked at her narrowly. He was trying to account for this new attitude +in his wife. That she would be pleased, or at least indifferent, at the +prospect of returning to the East, to the New York life that she had always +longed for and apparently enjoyed, he had taken for granted. Yet in spite +of the fixed lines in which his nature ran and the engrossing +preoccupations of his interests, he had felt many changes in Isabelle since +her return to St. Louis,--changes that he ascribed generally to the +improvement in her health,--better nerves,--but that he could not +altogether formulate. Perhaps they were the indirect result of her +brother's death. At any rate his wife's new interest in business, in his +affairs, pleased him. He liked to talk things over with her.... + +Thus the days went steadily by towards the decision. Lane had promised his +wife to consider the Larrimore offer. One morning the cable brought the +startling news that the president of the Atlantic and Pacific had committed +suicide in his hotel room in Paris the evening before he was to sail for +home. "Bad health and nervous collapse," was the explanation in the +despatch. But that a man of sixty-three, with a long record of honorable +success, a large fortune, no family troubles, should suddenly take his own +life, naturally roused the liveliest amazement throughout the country. +Nobody believed that the cable told the whole truth; but the real reasons +for the desperate act were locked tight among the directors of the railroad +corporation and a few intimate heads of control--who know all. + +Lane read the news to Isabelle. It shook him perceptibly. He had known +Farrington Beals for years, ever since at the Colonel's suggestion he had +been picked out of the army of underlings and given his first chance. +Isabelle remembered him even longer, and especially at her wedding with the +Senator and her father. They were old family friends, the Bealses. + +"How terrible for Mrs. Beals and Elsie!" she exclaimed. "How could he have +done it! The family was so happy. They all adored him! And he was about to +retire, Elsie told me when I saw her last, and they were all going around +the world in their yacht.... He couldn't have been very ill." + +"No, I am afraid that wasn't the only reason," John admitted, walking to +and fro nervously. + +He was thinking of all that the old man had done for him, his resentment at +his chief's final desertion of him forgotten; of how he had learned his +job, been trained to pull his load by the dead man, who had always +encouraged him, pushed him forward. + +"He went over for a little rest, you said. And he always went every year +about this time for a vacation and to buy pictures. Don't you remember, +John, what funny things he bought, and how the family laughed at him?" + +"Yes,--I know." He also knew that the president of the Atlantic and Pacific +had gone across the ocean "for his yearly vacation" just at the opening of +the coal investigation to escape the scandal of the trial, and had not +returned at the usual time, although the financial world was unsettled. And +he knew other things; for already clubs and inner offices had been buzzing +with rumors. + +"I am afraid that it is worse than it seems," he said to his wife on his +return from the city that afternoon. "Beals was terribly involved. I hear +that a bank he was interested in has been closed.... He was tied up +fast--in all sorts of ways!" + +"John!" Isabelle cried, and paused. Did this old man's death mean another +scandal, ruin for another family, and one she had known well,--disgrace, +scandal, possibly poverty? + +"Beals was always in the market--and this panic hit him hard; he was on the +wrong side lately." + +It was an old story, not in every case with the same details, but horribly +common,--a man of the finest possibilities, of sturdy character, rising up +to the heights of ambition, then losing his head, playing the game wantonly +for mere pride and habit in it,--his judgment giving way, but playing on, +stumbling, grasping at this and that to stop his sliding feet, breaking the +elementary laws! And finally, in the face of disaster, alone in a hotel +room the lonely old man--no doubt mentally broken by the strain--putting +the pistol to his head with his shaking hand. And, afterwards, the debris +of his wreck would be swept aside to clear the road for others! + +Farrington Beals was not a single case. In this time of money disturbance, +suicide and dishonor were rife in the streets, revealing the rotten timber +that could not stand the strain of modern life, lived as it had been lived +the past ten years. It was not one blast that uprooted weak members of the +forest, but the eating decay of the previous years, working at the heart of +many lives. "The frantic egotism of the age!" Yes, and the divided souls, +never at peace until death put an end to the strife at last,--too much for +little bodies of nerve and tissue to stand,--the racking of divided wills, +divided souls. + +"John!" Isabelle cried that night, after they had again talked over the +tragedy; "let us go--go out there--to a new land!" She rose from the lounge +and swept across the room with the energy of clear purpose--of Vision. "Let +us put ourselves as far as possible out of this sort of thing! .... It will +kill us both. Do it for my sake, even if you can't feel as I do!" + +And then there poured forth all the story of these years, of their life +apart, as she had come to see it the last months, in the remote and +peaceful hills, in the court-room, in the plain pathos of Steve's death and +Alice's heroism, and now in this suicide,--all that had given her insight +and made her different from what she had been,--all that revealed the +cheapness of her old ideals of freedom, intellectual development, +self-satisfaction, that cult of the ego, which she had pursued in sympathy +with the age. Now she wished to put it away, to remove herself and her +husband, their lives together, outwardly as she had withdrawn herself +inwardly. And her husband, moved in spite of himself by her tense desire, +the energy of her words, listened and comprehended--in part. + +"I have never been a real wife to you, John. I don't mean just my love for +that other man, when you were nobly generous with me. But before that, in +other ways, in almost all ways that make a woman a wife, a real wife.... +Now I want to be a real wife. I want to be with you in all things.... You +can't see the importance of this step as I do. Men and women are different, +always. But there is something within me, underneath, like an inner light +that makes me see clearly now,--not conscience, but a kind of flame that +guides. In the light of that I see what a petty fool I have been. It all +had to be--I don't regret because it all had to be--the terrible waste, the +sacrifice," she whispered, thinking of Vickers. "Only now we must live, you +and I together,--together live as we have never lived before!" + +She held out her hands to him as she spoke, her head erect, and as he +waited, still tied by years of self-repression, she went to him and put her +arms about him, drawing her to him, to her breast, to her eyes. Ten years +before he had adored her, desired her passionately, and she had shrunk from +him. Then life had come imperceptibly in between them; he had gone his way, +she hers. Now she was offering herself to him. And she was more desirable +than before, more woman,--at last whole. The appeal that had never been +wholly stifled in the man still beat in his pulses for the woman. And the +appeal never wholly roused in the woman by him reached out now for him; but +an appeal not merely of the senses, higher than anything Cairy could rouse +in a woman, an appeal, limitless, of comradeship, purpose, wills. He kissed +her, holding her close to him, realizing that she too held him in the inner +place of her being. + +"We will begin again," he said. + +"Our new life--together!" + + * * * * * + +And this is Influence, the work of one will upon another, sometimes +apparent, dramatic, tragic; sometimes subtle, unknowable, speaking across +dark gulfs. The meaning of that dead man's austere face, the howl of +journalists on his uncovered trail, the old man dead in his hotel room +disgraced, the deep current of purpose in his new wife,--all these and much +more sent messages into the man's unyielding soul to change the atmosphere +therein, to alter the values of things seen, to shape--at last--the will. +For what makes an act? Filaments of nerve, some shadowy unknown process in +brain cells? These are but symbols for mystery! Life pressing +multifariously its changing suggestions upon the sentient organism prompts, +at last, the act. But there is something deeper than the known in all this +wondrous complexity.... + +John Lane, the man of fact, the ordered efficient will, was dimly conscious +of forces other than physical ones, beyond,--not recognizable as +motives,--self-created and impelling, nevertheless; forces welling up from +the tenebrous spaces in the depths of his being, beneath conscious life. +And at last, something higher than Judgment swayed the man. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXIX + + +The private car Olympus had been switched for the day to a siding at the +little town of Orano on the edge of the Texas upland. The party within--the +Lanes, Margaret and her children, and several men interested in the new +railroad--had been making a leisurely tour of inspection, passing through +the fertile prairies and woodlands of Oklahoma, stopping often at the +little towns that were springing up along the road, aiming south until they +had reached the Panhandle. These September days the harvests were rich and +heavy, covered with a golden haze of heat,--the sweat of earth's +accomplishment. The new soil was laden with its fruit. The men had been +amazed by the fertility, the force of the country. "Traffic, traffic," Lane +had murmured enthusiastically, divining with his trained eye the enormous +possibilities of the land, the future for the iron highroad he was pushing +through it. Traffic,--in other words, growth, business, human effort and +human life,--that is the cosmic song that sings itself along the iron road. + +Margaret had said mockingly:-- + +"Wouldn't it do our New York friends a world of good to get out here once a +year and realize that life goes on, and very real life, outside the narrow +shores of Manhattan!" + +That was the illuminating thought which had come to them all in different +ways during this slow progress from St. Louis south and west. This broad +land of states had a vital existence, a life of its own, everywhere, not +merely in the great centres, the glutted metropolitan points. Men lived and +worked, happily, constructively, in thousands and thousands of small +places, where the seaboard had sunk far beneath the eastern horizon. Life +was real, to be lived vitally, as much here in prairie and plain as +anywhere on the earth's surface. The feeling which had come to Isabelle on +her westward journey in March--the conviction that each one counted, had +his own terrestrial struggle, his own celestial drama, differing very +little in importance from his neighbor's; each one--man, woman, or +child--in all the wonderful completeness of life throughout the +millions--swept over her again here where the race was sowing new land. And +lying awake in the stillness of the autumn morning on the lofty plateau, as +she listened to the colored servants chaffing at their work, there came to +her the true meaning of that perplexing phrase, which had sounded with the +mockery of empty poetry on the lips of the district attorney,--"All men +born free and equal." Yes! in the realm of their spirits, in their +souls,--the inner, moving part of them, "free and equal"! ... + +"It's the roof of the world!" Margaret said, as she jumped from the car +platform and looked over the upland,--whimsically recalling the name of a +popular play then running in New York. + +An unawakened country, dry and untilled, awaiting the hand of the master, +it lifted westward in colored billows of undulating land. Under the clear +morning sun it was still and fresh, yet untouched, untamed. + +"It _is_ the roof of the world," she repeated, "high and dry and +extraordinarily vast,--leading your eyes onward and upward to the heavens, +with all the rest of the earth below you in the fog. How I should like to +live here always! If I were you, Isabelle, I should get your husband to +give you a freight-car like those the gangs of track-layers use, with a +little stovepipe sticking out of one corner, and just camp down in it +here,--on the roof of the world." + +She lifted her thin, delicate face to the sun, reaching out her arms to it +hungrily. + +"We must sleep out to-night under the stars, and talk--oh, much talk, out +here under the stars!" + +During the past year at Grosvenor her frail body had strengthened, revived; +she was now firm and vigorous. Only the deep eyes and the lines above them +and about the mouth, the curve of the nostril and chin, showed as on a +finely chased coin the subtle chiselling of life. And here in the uplands, +in the great spaces of earth and sky, the elemental desire of her soul +seemed at last wholly appeased, the longing for space and height and light, +the longing for deeds and beauty and Peace. At last, after the false roads, +the fret and rebellion, she had emerged into the upper air.... + +"How well the little man rides!" Isabelle remarked as the children went by +them on some ponies they had found. + +Margaret's face glowed with pride. + +"Yes, Ned has improved very fast. He will go to school with the others +now.... The doctor has really saved his life--and mine, too," she murmured. + +So the two slept out under the stars, as Margaret wished, with dotted +heavens close above and vague space all about; and they talked into the +morning of past years, of matters that meant too much to them both for +daylight speech. Isabelle spoke of Vickers, of the apparent waste of his +life. "I can see now," she said, "that in going away with that woman as he +did he expressed the real soul of him, as he did in dying for me. He was +born to love and to give, and the world broke him. But he escaped!" And she +could not say even to Margaret what she felt,--that he had laid it on her +to express his defeated life. + +They spoke even of Conny. "You received the cards for her wedding?" +Margaret asked. "The man is a stockbroker. She is turning her talents to a +new field,--money. I hear the wedding was very smart, and they are to live +on Long Island, with a yacht and half a dozen motors." + +"I thought she would marry--differently," Isabelle observed vaguely, +recalling the last time she had seen Conny. + +"No! Conny knows her world perfectly,--that's her strength. And she knows +exactly what to take from it to suit her. She is a bronze Cleopatra with +modern variations. I think they ought to put her figure on the gold eagles +as the American Woman Triumphant, ruling her world." + +"And on the other side the figure of a Vampire, stacking at the souls of +men." ... + +And then they talked of the future, the New Life, as it would shape itself +for Isabelle and her husband, talked as if the earth were fresh and life +but in the opening. + +"He may do something else than this," Isabelle said. "He has immense power. +But I hope it will always be something outside the main wheels of industry, +as Mr. Gossom would say,--something with another kind of reward than the +Wall Street crown." + +"I wish he might find work here for Rob," Margaret said; "something out +here where he belongs that will not pay him in fame or money. For he has +that other thing in him, the love of beauty, of the ideal." She spoke with +ease and naturally of her lover. "And there has been so little that is +ideal in his life,--so little to feed his spirit." + +And she added in a low voice, "I saw her in New York--his wife." + +"Bessie!" + +"Yes,--she was there with the girl,--Mildred.... I went to see her--I had +to.... I went several times. She seemed to like me. Do you know, there is +something very lovable in that woman; I can see why Rob married her. She +has wrecked herself,--her own life. She would never submit to what the +doctor calls the discipline of life. She liked herself just as she was; she +wanted to be always a child of nature, to win the world with her charm, to +have everything nice and pleasant and gay about her, and be petted into the +bargain. Now she is gray and homely and in bad health--and bitter. It is +pitiful to wake up at forty after you have been a child all your life, and +realize that life was never what you thought it was.... I was very sorry +for her." + +"Will they ever come together again?" + +"Perhaps! Who knows? The girl must bring them together; she will not be +wholly satisfied with her mother, and Rob needs his daughter.... I hope +so--for his sake. But it will be hard for them both,--hard for him to live +with a spent woman, and hard for her to know that she has missed what she +wanted and never quite to understand why.... But it may be better than we +can see,--there is always so much of the unknown in every one. That is the +great uplifting thought! We live in space and above unseen depths. And +voices rise sometimes from the depths." + +And lying there under the stars Margaret thought what she could not +speak,--of the voice that had risen within her and made her refuse the +utmost of personal joy. She had kissed her lover and held him in her arms +and sent him away from her. Without him she could not have lived; nor could +she live keeping him.... + +At last they came to Renault, the one who had opened their eyes to life and +to themselves. + +"Still working," Margaret said, "burning up there in the hills like a +steady flame! Some day he will go out,--not die, just wholly consume from +within, like one of those old lamps that burn until there is nothing, no +oil left, not even the dust of the wick." + +As the faint morning breeze began to draw across the upland they fell +asleep, clasping hands. + + + + +CHAPTER LXXX + + +The rising sun had barely shot its first beams over the eastern swell when +Lane came to the tent to call them for the early breakfast before the day's +expedition to a wonderful canon. Isabelle, making a sign to John not to +disturb Margaret, who was still fast asleep, drew the blanket over her +shoulders and joined her husband. The level light flooded the rolling +upland with a sudden glory of gold, except along the outer rim of the +horizon where the twilight color of deep violet still held. Husband and +wife strolled away from the tents in the path of the sun. + +"Big, isn't it?" he exclaimed. + +"Yes!" she murmured. "It is a big, big world!" And linking her arm in his +they walked on towards the sun together. + +In the morning light the earth was fresh and large and joyous. And life, as +Renault had said over the body of the dead child, seemed good, all of it! +That which was past, lived vainly and in stress, and that which was to come +as well. So Alice had affirmed in the presence of her bereavement.... Life +is good, all of it,--all its devious paths and issues! + +"It is so good to be here with you!" Isabelle whispered to her husband. + +"Yes,--it is a good beginning," he replied. And in his face she read that +he also understood that a larger life was beginning for them both. + +As they turned back to the tents, they saw Margaret huddled in her blanket +like a squaw, gazing steadily at the sun. + +"And the morrow is added to the morrow to make eternity," she was murmuring +to herself. "But always a new world, a new light, a new life!" + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, TOGETHER *** + +This file should be named tgthr10.txt or tgthr10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, tgthr11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, tgthr10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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