Chapter 10

HOW SIMPLE THE SOLUTION!

When Claire awoke the next morning her whole being seemed gathered into a tense strain that made her feel as though the least thing might snap the taut nerves in her body and leave her broken and stranded on some far, emotional shoal. Her heart beat unevenly, while her lips and hands felt dry and hot, as if she had spent hours in a desert wind. She did not experience the bitter anguish of the night before; such storms are too wild to last, but it had left her deadly heavy within, and she was unable to recover her usual calm.

One great determination dominated her, to prevent these men, at any cost, from knowing her real feelings. It was a determination born out of the sheer force that was carrying her on, a struggle that came from the very strength of the tide she sought to resist.

She had been awakened by a sudden and clear image, the result of her unsettled mind. Her husband was beside her, leaning over the bed and looking down at her with a great love and a greater pity shining in his eyes. She thought that she had thrown up her arms to close about him with the frantic joy of a rescued person, only to have them meet in empty air and fall listless at her sides again.

Beyond the curtain she heard Philip saying cheerfully: "It is a great day outside, one of Claire's days for play."

"Good!" Lawrence answered. "We'll go out, then, and play."

A rush of self-pity, anger against her situation, fear of she knew not what, and a gnawing desire to escape blended in her thoughts, while her heart warmed at the sound of Lawrence's words.

"Oh," she thought, "I can never, never stand this day!"

She got out of bed and began to dress, her nervous hands fumbling at the buttons on her clothes. Her eyes, deeper and shadowed in dark rings, stared vacantly at the white canvas before her. Lawrence was talking again, and she listened. Presently he started across the room and bumped into a chair. The incident was one which had become long familiar to her, and ordinarily she would have thought nothing of it, but this morning she flushed with sudden anger that a chair should have been left in his way. Then she realized that she was foolish, stepped through the curtain, and said before she thought:

"Lawrence, I do wish that you'd look where you are going!"

He laughed merrily. "So do I," he rejoined. "For some years failure to do so has kept me with at least one skinned shin. But just think of the cost of stockings had I been blind as a boy!"

Suddenly she had a vivid picture of him as a ragged, little fellow, stumbling about through his unfathomable darkness, bumping into things and leaving jagged holes in his child's black stockings. Whether she wanted to laugh or cry she did not know, but a great, warm surge of motherliness came over her for the child she imaged, and she said aloud, "Poor little urchin!"

Philip turned and looked at her, smiling. "It would have been a picture indeed," he said.

"I had enough troubles during my rebellious childhood at the orphanage without adding imaginary woes," Lawrence went on, amusedly retrospective. "I remember one day when I was at the awkward stage. I was all dressed for church and happened to stumble over another boy lying in the grass. I fell against a bench, my trousers caught on a projecting nail, and ripped dreadfully. The matron gave me a scolding and sent me to bed for the day."

"Brought up in an orphanage!" thought Claire. "No wonder he is pessimistic."

"I didn't mind missing church," Lawrence continued; "but it struck me as a piece of gross injustice that I should be punished for a boy's lack of muscular coordination. I've experienced the same fate over my blindness. It seems to be a special trick people have, and they play it incessantly. I should think it would get as tiresome to them by and by as it did to me some years ago."

Claire felt as if she were included in his casual criticism of mankind, and wondered just how she had been addicted to the practise. A dozen different instances came to her, and she felt very penitent.

"It's because we're all so thoughtless," she said.

"Perhaps. I rather choose to state it differently. It's for the same reason that I do thousands of things, because I'm more interested in myself than I am in any one else. I'm selfish, and so is the rest of humanity."

"But we aren't deliberately so," Philip protested. "Isn't it rather that we are short-sighted and unimaginative?"

"It may be. The end is the same. If I am too short-sighted, too unimaginative to know how a fellow being feels, I can do nothing but blunder along. He may be hurt by me. I may do him an injustice, I may even cheat him of his chance at life, but it can't be helped, and again the result amounts to my being selfish."

As she worked over her biscuit dough, Claire listened to their talk resentfully. She wished they would keep still, but she said nothing. They went ahead, demonstrating, she thought bitterly, the truth of Lawrence's argument.

"I suppose mankind generally does the best it can," Philip said thoughtfully. "If you ask a man, if you really talk with him, you will find him kindly, inclined to be generous, and willing to do what he can for another. I have always found that true."

"So have I, in a way. He is kindly, he is inclined to be generous, and he is willing to do what he can for another. The trouble is, he makes a maudlin sentiment of his kindliness, a self-flattering charity of his generous inclinations, and is unable to do what he can for another because he is quite sincerely persuaded that he can't do anything."

"My friend, I have had men help me when it cost them trouble to do it. We all have. Without it, we would none of us accomplish anything of value."

"I, too, have had them help me, from the lending of money down to guiding me across a traffic-blurred street, but I have never yet found more than three or four whose imagination was keen enough and whose judgment clear enough to give me a square deal at living."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that the same man who will help me across the street, lend me money, and be a splendid comrade, stops short when he comes to the field of self-support. He will say sympathetically, 'I don't see how you can do it,' or 'I admire your grit, old man, and I'd like to see you do it,' and then begin scheming around to direct my interests, aspirations, and efforts into some other channel from where I want them, as though, out of his own great wisdom, he knew much better than I what a blind man could do. If you want to learn just how small the imagination of mankind is and how obstructive to progress is their fool good-heartedness, go among them as a capable mind with a physical handicap. You'll size them up, yourself included, as the most blindly wall-butting set of blundering organisms that ever felt their way through an endlessly obstructed universe."

"Breakfast!" Claire broke in with an unwonted sharpness in her tone. "And do let the biscuits stop the argument."

They laughed and sat down to a silent meal. When it was ended, and the men took their cigarettes to the fireplace, she said: "I wish you would both do me a favor to-day."

"We will! Name it!" They spoke at the same time.

She turned toward them with an earnestness which she had scarcely meant to betray.

"Go out, both of you, and leave me here alone a while."

Lawrence was silent. Her words and her tone sent a sharp pain through him, and he wondered if she were ill. He wanted to say something to her, started to do so, checked himself, and laughed embarrassedly.

Philip stared at her. He noticed the pale face and the dark rings under her eyes.

"Why, certainly," he said, and rose. "You aren't looking well, Claire. Is anything seriously wrong?" He looked at her again with the same unconsciously tender warmth in his eyes.

She saw it, flushed angrily, wanted to scream at him, and said simply, "No, I just want to think, and want it quiet. You two talk too much about yourselves and about things that you don't understand."

"Very true"--Lawrence also had risen--"if I did understand them, I'd show humanity how to stop being animals and be men."

"While as it is," she said nervously, "you allow them to blunder along and help the good work out by making plenty of trouble for them by your own blind shortness of vision."

He stood, wondering at her. How had he unintentionally hurt her, and what exactly did she mean?

Philip laughed heartily. "A just judgment on him for his sorry view of the world," he commented, opening the door.

"We'll tramp back into the hills," he said to Lawrence when they were both outside, "and see what there is of deficient imagination in them."

"There isn't," Lawrence said quietly; "they and the ocean are testimonials to the real potential power of an otherwise very faulty artist."

Left alone, Claire worked furiously at setting the house to rights. Her nervous state led her to throw herself into the work with an energy that kept her from thinking. She sought for things to do with the desperation of a person whose only escape from the furies that followed him is utter physical exhaustion. When the cabin had been arranged and rearranged until there was no possible excuse for further effort, she took her heavy man's coat from its place and stepped out upon the snow-covered plateau before the house.

Along its edges the lake shone milk-white in the sun, while farther out the ice glinted a clear, watery blue that made a gleaming jewel set in the sparkling snow around it. She stood gazing across the ice to the forest beyond. Its still beauty crept over her, and she breathed deeply of the cold, crisp air. Her head ached dully, and her chest felt tight as though trying to expand beyond its limit to make room for the trouble that filled her being. After standing motionless for a few moments, she started briskly across the snow toward the far side of the lake. She walked carefully over the ice and into the trees beyond. In her mind was one thought, to escape--but escape from what? From herself, she answered, and then suddenly, with a panicky bursting of the tension, she thought that is done only through death.

She stopped and let the word "death" fill her mind, as a word sometimes does, growing and growing until its increasing weight oppresses the brain with a sense of physical pressure. "Death"--is it an escape? She tried to imagine herself dead, and failed. She could find no adequate image to express oblivion, and she gave up trying, while she began to wonder if she actually were immortal, and if she were, what would she say to herself beyond the edge of life?

She thought of herself as standing, naked of soul, unbodied, in some far etherealized atmosphere, and she shuddered. "I would still be Claire, loving these two men and fearing a third." Tears crept down her cheeks. No, she did not want to be immortal and have no escape from herself.

If she would only be able to endure the months still remaining before she got home, then everything would be settled. But would it? Did she want Lawrence to go out of her life, did she want to lose him? She could have him still as a friend, her home open to him always, her husband as glad to welcome him as she herself--yes, that would be best.

She was walking again now, rapidly, thinking as she moved, and it all seemed very clear to her. She would tell her husband how Lawrence had suffered, how brave he had been, and how he had carried her on and on, when death seemed inevitable. Howard would owe Lawrence a tremendous debt of gratitude, and would make existence easier for him. Lawrence had had a hard life, his bitter attitude showed that he deserved a less obstructed road, and she would give it to him. In their home all three would talk, laugh, and be, oh, so happy, while Lawrence could work better with his studio near her, perhaps in her own house where care could be taken of him. He would create great art there, and his bitterness would end. She would show him that her husband was understanding and imaginative. Again she stopped suddenly.

But Lawrence--would he accept? He was so independent, so doggedly determined to fight his life out while his very battling made him ironical and darkly pessimistic. She tried to imagine him agreeing to her plan, and instead she heard him say, "I'm sorry, Claire, but I can't do it. I've got to go it alone and win or go under. I can't accept the charity you offer me in place of love. Gratitude, I know, prompts you, but you owe me nothing, you paid your debt by being eyes for me. No, if we can't be lovers, we can't be anything else. I know my limitations."

Why had she put in that about "lovers"? He had never said anything to lead her to think he would say that. She answered herself that it was because she would want him to say it. And if he did say it, what would she answer? She would say--no, she couldn't do that--she would want to say, "Then let us be lovers!" But that was impossible. In her own husband's home!

And what would she think of Philip when she was again in her old world? He, also, was deserving of gratitude. She stamped her foot in the snow. She hated him, hated him, and he would drop out of her life, utterly and forever. She would be glad when she saw the last of him with his seductive eyes. Those eyes--why did he, and not Lawrence, have them? They should have been Lawrence's. It was one more instance of the endless ironic humor of the universe.

Lawrence--Lawrence and her husband! She turned wearily back toward the cabin.

It was nearly noon when she reached home again, and Lawrence, a worried look on his face, was standing in the door of the cabin.

"You beat me back," Claire said, as she approached, and her heart leaped at the look of relief that came into his face.

"Claire, you ought to be punished," he said in gay, tender tones.

"What sentence would you pass, Mr. Judge?" she questioned.

He stepped out toward her.

"Perhaps your fate needs a good washing in cold snow," he laughed.

"Perhaps it does," she said, caressingly. "Do you think you could administer it?"

"I know I could."

He stooped and took up a handful of snow.

She did the same and said gaily, "Two washed faces seem inevitable."

Lawrence laughed and caught her around the waist. Her blood tingled, and her throat hurt as if she would choke. She began to struggle desperately, frightened at her own emotion. He laughed, and held her tighter with one arm while he tried to reach her face with the other hand. She was pressed against him, and they swayed back and forth, while Philip laughed from the doorway. Her heart was beating trip-hammer blows against her breast, she gasped for breath, and her eyes closed. His hand reached her face, and she ducked against his shoulder.

"Lawrence! Lawrence!" she sobbed. Her voice startled him. Its pleading, yielding intensity sent his own blood racing. He let her go, and stepped back quickly while his breath came short.

"Pardon me, Claire," he muttered, and turned away.

Claire saw Philip watching them, in his eyes a strange, new glitter. She rushed past him to the cabin and into her little room.

It was a silent dinner they ate that day.

Claire was deeply, bitterly humiliated, and she kept seeing again and again with exaggerated clearness that look in Philip's eyes when she had staggered free from Lawrence's arms. It burned in her mind like an unquenchable coal, and she revolted at it. She was utterly unable to collect her thoughts. She fancied she could still feel the warm pressure of Lawrence's body while she suffered untold agony of soul for having been carried away by his touch. She reproached herself with a scorn that seared for having ever allowed herself to engage in that silly scuffle.

She could scarcely bear to sit at the table with Philip, and she did not once look in his direction. In her heart there was no anger against Lawrence, only a dull, aching dread, tempered with a longing she did not attempt to analyze.

Dominating her thought was the one phrase, "Why need Philip have seen?"

That look in his eyes--oh, God! would she have to go on day after day facing those eyes that compelled her in spite of herself? Must she feel his glances burning through her when her soul was filled with hatred for him? But was it hatred? Surely his eyes, those lights that made her marvel, were the windows to a high and noble soul. Yes, he was fine, yet she wished he was not there, that she had never known him. She asked herself if she would rather have perished, and she knew she would not. Better to have lived forever with Philip's eyes piercing into her than to give up life when Lawrence was with her, needing her, and--she stopped--loving her, yes, loving her. It was true. She remembered his voice when he had released her, and thrilled again at the tense note.

He did love her! And Philip? She felt her heart sink, and then a strange, subtle warmth came over her. It was good to be loved by two men so powerful, so worth while, each in his own way.

Of course, she could never care for Philip. He was beyond her power to love; besides her heart was filled with Lawrence. But her husband, yes, she had loved her husband. Her many days of happiness with him proved that. She could never have lived with him as she had if love had not been between them. She must remember that, and be true to him. It would be hard to see Lawrence go out of her life, but it was her duty, she owed it to herself, to her husband, and to society.

If she could only get through the remaining months without allowing Lawrence to hope! She must not give him another opportunity to want her or to discuss his feelings with her. She would be very, very careful.

She must plan it as easily for him as possible. The way to accomplish that was not to be with him. This would necessitate her associating more with Philip. After all, why shouldn't she? He was good and strong, and not really in love with her. Of course, he might be, if she allowed it, but she would stop that. She would show him by word, look, and act that any such love was inconceivable. He would understand and forget his earlier feeling, for after all he was not yet alive to the situation. It was merely circumstances that had brought that look into his eyes.

Disliking him as she did, it would be hard to associate with him. She studied this last problem carefully, and at last arrived at a new state of mind. She did not dislike him, it was merely the natural unconscious trend of male and female that she hated. He was not to blame, neither was she, and they were, fortunately, beings with mind and will. They could use their God-given power to talk it out and face the situation. Then Philip's natural nobility would make the solution easy. They would be on a splendid footing of frank understanding; their foresight would have saved them from a ridiculous and criminal mistake.

In these mountains she would have found two real friends and a higher ground of life. After the first painful talk with Philip they would go out from the cabin, warm comrades, with nothing to regret.