Chapter 8

THE TIGHTENING NET.

Christmas was upon them. They gathered before the big fireplace in silent meditation, while outside the wind whipped sheeted snow against the walls and wailed dismally its endless journeying. They could not help but feel the something melancholy in the air. The little cabin, standing so far away from civilization and all the things they were accustomed to know seemed somehow to set them apart from the rest of the world and leave them stranded as it were, upon a barren stretch of thought.

In keeping with the setting, solemn questions of destiny, death, and the meaning of things took the place of the usual Christmas festival and glitter.

In Lawrence's mind, Claire was growing more and more predominant. He found her constant association weaving itself into his life until, when he looked ahead toward the day when they must part, he discovered himself asking what he could find that would take her place. Her voice, her little habits of speech, the unexpected question that showed her deep interest in him, in his work, and in his attitude toward her, these had gradually stirred in him the desire to establish in his own mind a definite relation toward her which he could maintain.

When Claire went out for a while with Philip, Lawrence spent the interim in trying to reason out his problem. He told himself that he would feel differently in his old environment with friends and work, but the answer was not satisfactory. He knew that even there, he would miss the quick sound of movement, the quick phrase that was Claire.

Did he love her then? He asked himself that, and could not answer. What was love to him, anyway? He sought to think out a scheme of love that would fit into his system of utter selfishness, and failed. The memory of her in his arms came to him now with a warm, emotional coloring that had been absent during the days of their journey.

Had he been so impersonal then at first? He remembered his first wild joy at finding her there in the surf, and he admitted that even then there had been a subtle heightening of his pleasure, because it was a woman. Since his blindness he had been separated from the other sex even more than from his own, and now he was to live with one daily, having her alone to talk to, to watch, to be interested in, and to know--yes, that had been a part of his feeling that morning. He remembered that he had been slightly irritated at her when he had first decided that she was cold and intellectual. He had wanted her to be warm, colorful, vivid, and feminine. He had found later that she was all these things, but not toward him. It was a man whom he had never known, her husband, Howard Barkley, for whom she was wholly woman. Always when she spoke of him her voice had warmed, grown softer, subtly shaded with color.

Claire opened the cabin door.

"Hello, Mr. Dreamer! Still in the land of to-morrow?" she called, taking off her heavy wraps.

"Where's Philip?" Lawrence demanded gruffly, without moving.

"Working over a trap in the ravine. I was a little tired, so I didn't wait."

Lawrence could hear her brushing her hair. He was glad she had returned without Philip. Now at least they would have a few minutes alone.

"Snow bad?" he asked. If he could only have run his hands through that curly mass! The memory of her hair brushing against his face made his temples throb dully.

"Yes, my hair is filled with it. I caught my cap on a branch, and the whole load of snow came down on top of me."

"How old are you, Claire?" he demanded suddenly.

She laughed. "Guess! Don't you know it isn't good form to ask a lady her age?"

"Sometimes you are quite thirty, and other times--"

"Well, go on." Claire was standing at the opposite side of the fireplace with her back to the flame.

"Other times, you are two," Lawrence continued calmly.

"I thought that was coming. Well, just to prove what a really nice person I am, I'll tell you. I'm twenty-six."

"When were you married, Claire?" Her breath tightened at his question.

"Curiosity is a wonderful thing, and the impudence of man passeth all understanding. I have been married exactly six years, three months, and twenty-four days." The last sentence brought the catch into her voice that Lawrence had expected.

"I know you miss your husband," he forced himself to say formally.

"Yes, you see"--Claire hesitated--"ours wasn't like some marriages one hears about. Howard and I were both very much in love." She realized too late the past tense. Had Lawrence noticed it? "I miss him dreadfully," she added desperately.

Lawrence said nothing. He had noticed Claire's slip, and the verb had sent him into a thousand realized dreams. The next instant he was cursing himself for a fool. "Fools, all of us," he thought. "Philip, too, warming himself with dreams of Claire." Before the nearness of the Spaniard's personality, Howard Barkley faded into the background. Lawrence reviewed his own position moodily.

Blind, unable to do the work that Philip did, certainly unable to use the million little ways of courtesy-building as Philip did, his chances were unequal.

Did he want Claire for Claire, or was it only the fighting instinct, the desire to overcome men not handicapped as he was? Would he still want Claire after he had won her? After the intimacies of home life had made her familiar as nothing else could, and had dispelled all romance, all the alluring appeal that sprang from the deepest sex-prompted desire yet unattained, would he still want her? That was the question, and he could not say. The experience alone could tell him--and would that experience ever come?

Claire watched Lawrence's face, the while her own thoughts raced on. It had been love she felt for her husband. She was sure of that. Of course, in the years of their life together, the old, wild passion had gradually retired into its normal proportion, leaving them free to go about calmly and untroubled. But it was there, as she well knew in the hours when they became lovers again. Certainly those hours had been joyous, happy ones, unclouded by any suspicion of mere gratification of impulse or desire. Yes, they had been hours of love claiming its rightful expression over the more constant hours of daily living.

Then she recalled her experience of the night before. She had been dreaming of her husband, but he possessed Lawrence's features, illumined with the glow of Philip's eyes, and she had started into full wakefulness with a sudden sense of her position. Now she sat before the fire, and resolved grimly that no matter what happened she would be faithful to Howard. Of course, she would go with Philip to look after his traps, the exercise was the best antidote to such morbid thoughts, and he would never make advances to her, of that she was sure. As for the days that she might spend alone with Lawrence, he was too self-centered, too much wrapped up in his wood-carving, to think of a woman--and she disregarded the little pang of discontent that accompanied her thought.

Philip was hanging the skins over the door. Claire realized that she had been too engrossed to notice his entrance.

"I break a six weeks' fast to-day"--and he turned toward Lawrence. "Do you smoke?"

"Man!" said Lawrence, springing up, "if I'd known you had tobacco in store I'd have murdered you long ago to get it. I would be a more agreeable companion if I could taste tobacco now and then."

"Pardon me for not thinking to ask you. I was declaring a six months' course in self-discipline for the good of my soul."

"Bring forth the smoke," said Lawrence joyously.

"Unfortunately"--Philip turned to Claire--"a bachelor's storehouse contains no treat for a lady. Your visit was unexpected."

"I shall gain my pleasure through watching you two sink back into a beloved vice," she answered.

"Horrible!" Lawrence sat down, and took the cigarette which Philip produced. "To enjoy seeing one succumb to vice."

"Isn't it characteristic of scandal-loving humanity?" she rejoined.

"And on Christmas Day!" Philip chided her lightly. Then he went on, seriously: "But one should really be above all things save love and gratitude to God on this day."

"I suppose so," said Lawrence, "but it's difficult to determine just where this object of gratitude abides and what He is."

"Is it necessary to locate Him?" asked Claire.

Lawrence breathed deeply with the satisfaction in his cigarette. "I should hate to direct my gratitude toward some one who missed it, and thus have it lost in desert space," he answered.

"It isn't that we need God so much as it is simply the good we gain ourselves," said Philip slowly. "I still follow the old trail for my own heart's sake."

"And does it get you anywhere?" Lawrence's question was characteristic.

"Yes, I think so. I find myself nearer to the source of that which is worth while."

"What is worth while?" Claire asked.

The answers she obtained were the two men revealed.

"The fullest life possible for me," said Lawrence.

"The fullest heart possible for me," followed Philip.

"But you both mean the same thing, don't you?" asked Claire.

"I mean the fullest number of my own desires gratified," Lawrence avowed.

Philip leaned back in his chair and looked at Claire, meditatively.

"If he did as he says, we should have to lock him up," he observed.

They all laughed.

"Not at all." Lawrence was amiably argumentative. "To be sure, if my desires were gratified at your expense, as this smoke, for example"--he laughed--"and on an all-inclusive scale, you might have to resort to personal violence. But, in fact, many of my desires would bring you joy in their gratification, you know."

"I do know," said Philip cordially, "but the danger in your point of view is that it allows for no check. You would sacrifice both of us if it were necessary to gratify your desires--that is, if you lived true to your assertion."

"Perhaps I would. I don't know. There is the weak point in my whole scheme. I evade it by failing to sacrifice you, but I support my theory by saying there is no occasion to do so."

"I don't like your principles," Philip rejoined, "though I admit that my own fail me more often than not."

"Exactly. We humans do fail, and the conclusion to which it brings me is, why hold principles that you find unworkable? I prefer a standard to which I can at least be true, in the main, and avoid self-condemnation, pricks of conscience, and other little inconveniences."

"Such as a sense of duty?" interrupted Claire.

"That above all, Claire," he laughed.

"And obligation?"

"Yes, that too, if you mean a sense of being bound to one because of something he has done in the past. For instance, I am obliged to Philip for his food, his house, my life, and this cigarette, but I scarcely feel that that would imply that I must sacrifice my greatest desire in life as payment if necessary. Of course, it isn't necessary, but if it were, I should refuse."

"I think you would not," asserted Philip.

"I know I would. I rather believe you would also, though it might be that you would not."

"I would sacrifice anything to pay a debt of gratitude." Philip spoke warmly.

"You would--perhaps--but in so doing would you not feel that gratitude was the thing of supreme worth to yourself?"

"Not necessarily. I might even suffer all my life for having done so."

"Impossible. You would either redeem your sense of life's value by a new belief, or you would die."

"Then you think a man can do as he pleases and maintain his self-respect, his personal integrity?"

"He will find some way to make himself feel worth while, or he will cease to be."

"You think that a criminal, or perhaps better, a person abandoned to vice, feels justified?"

"Yes. He creates a belief by which his abandonment is not destructive to himself, or he is converted, which is simply a convulsion of nature for the same end, to preserve his life and make it seem valuable to him."

"Could you, for instance, murder a man, and do it believing that afterward you would somehow make it seem right, or at least so necessary that you would feel as self-respecting and sin-free as before?" Philip was speaking earnestly.

"I should not do so unless I were forced to it, but if I were, I know that I would somehow reconstruct my mental life so that I would still feel existence worth the price."

Claire leaned forward. "Lawrence," she said jestingly, "you have swept away the bulwark of the home, made infidelity easy, and numberless separated families inevitable with your bold, bad talk. Aren't you sorry for all those tragedies?"

He laughed. "Very," he said, "though it was watching such proceedings take place so frequently that led me to accept my theory. Think of the men and women who are unfaithful, who leave their wedded partner for another, and still find life worth while."

"But that is their failure to live true to their principles," said Philip. "It is commonly called sin, my friend."

"It may be, according to their light, but they generally get a new light afterward. You see, I do not believe that God joins men and women. I am persuaded that a very natural physical desire does so, and it doesn't follow that the first is the only or best union."

"My husband would simply dread me if I held your view, and I should feel very wary if I were your wife, Lawrence," remarked Claire.

That was the central point in the whole discussion, though none of them were aware of it. Vaguely they felt that they were groping their way toward the future, but they did not allow the feeling to reach a conscious state, and Philip laughingly broke up the talk.

"Here we are," he said, yawning, "the fire is making us all sleepy, we're talking foolishness, and we need exercise. Why not get it? I think we might all of us go out and face the wind for a quarter of an hour, then let it blow us back to camp like three children. I have the skis for us all."

"Great!" Claire clapped her hands in applause.

"It's a splendid idea," agreed Lawrence, and they set forth.

It was hard going against the wind; Philip was the only one who managed his skis very satisfactorily, and Lawrence, of course, had to be assisted, but the crust was smooth and clear, and they made great sport of it. The two men placed Claire between them and crossed hands in front of her, like skaters. The fresh snow-filled air blew into their lungs, and they laughed like boys on a holiday. Claire glanced at the two and thought: "What a pair to be between!" Then laughed again. All the morbidity was gone, she was not thinking follies now, and neither of them was more than a good friend. Philip was thinking that Claire was good to see as she moved along between them, her graceful stroke carrying her over the snow, her cheeks stung red in the wind. Lawrence was not thinking at all. He was simply moving, deeply enjoying the wind and the exercise and the soft, strong little hand upon his own, helping to guide him through his darkness.

When they turned and stood close together, the wind caught them like a sail and sent them skimming before it. The sense of tobogganing was keenly exhilarating. Home, problems, worries, the future, all seemed very simply, very easy, and not at all a matter for long conversations before a hot fire.