Chapter 7

“The price? But you are willing to work?”

“Work--yes. But not to lie, not to cheat, not to exchange self-respect for self-contempt--at least, I think, I hope not.”

“But why should that be necessary?”

“It may not be if I am free--free to meet every situation as it arises, with no responsibility for others resting upon me in the decision. If I had a wife, how could I be free? I might be forced to sell myself--not for fame but for a bare living. Suppose choice between freedom with poverty and comfort with self-contempt were put squarely at me, and I a married man. She would decide, wouldn’t she?”

“Yes, and if she were the right sort of a woman, decide instantly for self-respect.”

“Of course--if I asked her. But do you imagine that when a man loves a woman he lets her know?”

“It would be a crime not to let her know.”

“It would be a greater crime to put her to the test--if she were a woman brought up, say, as you have been.”

“How can you say that? How can you so overestimate the value of mere incidentals?”

“How can I? Because I have known poverty--have known what it was to look want in the face. Because I have seen women, brought up as you have been, crawling miserably about in the sloughs of poverty. Because I have seen the weaknesses of human nature and know that they exist in me--yes, and in you, for all your standing there so strong and arrogant and self-reliant. It is easy to talk of misery when one does not understand it. It is easy to be the martyr of an hour or a day. But to drag into a sordid and squalid martyrdom the woman one loves--well, the man does not live who would do it, if he knew what I know, had seen what I have seen. No, love is a luxury of the rich and the poor and the steady-going. It is not for my kind, not for me.”

They were pausing at Mrs. Carnarvon’s door.

“I shall not come in this afternoon,” he said. “But to-morrow--if I don’t come in to-day, don’t you think it will be all right for me to come then?”

“I shall expect you,” she said.

The talk of those who had come in for tea seemed artificial and flat. She soon went up-stairs, eager to be alone. Mechanically she went to her desk to write her customary daily letter to Danvers. She looked vacantly at the pen and paper, and then she remembered why she was sitting there.

“You are a traitor,” she said to her reflection in the mirror over the desk. “But you will pay for your treason. Has not one a right to that for which she is willing to pay?”

XII.

MAKING THE MOST OF A MONTH.

To be sure of a woman a man must be confident either of his own powers or of her absolute frankness and honesty. It was self-assurance that made Edward Danvers blindly confident of Marian.

His father, a man with none but selfish uses for his fellow men, had given him a pains-taking training as a vigilant guard for a great fortune. His favourite maxim was, “Always look for motives.” And he once summed up his own character and idea of life by saying: “I often wake at night and laugh as I think how many men are lying awake in their beds, scheming to get something out of me for nothing.”

There could be but one result of such an education by such an educator. Danvers was acutely suspicious, saved from cynicism and misanthropy by his vanity only. He was the familiar combination of credulity and incredulity, now trusting not at all and again trusting with an utter incapacity to judge. Had he been far more attractive personally, he might still have failed to find genuine affection. To be liked for one’s self alone or even chiefly is rarely the lot of any human being who has a possession that is all but universally coveted--wealth or position or power or beauty.

Danvers and Marian had known each the other from childhood. And she perhaps came nearer to liking him for himself than did any one else of his acquaintance. She was used to his conceit, his selfishness, his meanness and smallness in suspicion, his arrogance, his narrow-mindedness. She knew his good qualities--his kindness of heart, his shamed-face generosity, his honesty, the strong if limited sense of justice which made him a good employer and a good landlord. They had much in common--the same companions, the same idea of the agreeable and the proper, the same passion for out-door life, especially for hunting. He fell in love with her when she came back from two years in England and France, and she thought that she was in love with him. She undoubtedly was fond of him, proud of his handsome, athletic look and bearing, proud of his skill and daring in the hunting field.

One day--it was in the autumn a year before Howard met her--they were “in at the death” together after a run across a stiff country that included several dangerous jumps. “You’re the only one that can keep up with me,” he said, admiring her glowing face and star-like eyes, her graceful, assured seat on a hunter that no one else either cared or dared to ride.

“You mean you are the only one who can keep up with _me,_” she laughed, preparing for what his face warned her was coming.

“No I don’t, Marian dear. I mean that we ought to go right on keeping up with each other. You won’t say no, will you?”

Marian was liking him that day--he was looking his best. She particularly liked his expression as he proposed to her. She had intended to pretend to refuse him; instead her colour rose and she said: “No--which means yes. Everybody expects it of us, Teddy. So I suppose we mustn’t disappoint them.”

The fact that “everybody” did expect it, the fact that he was the great “catch” in their set, with his two hundred and fifty thousand a year, his good looks and his good character--these were her real reasons, with the first dominant. But she did not admit it to herself then. At twenty-four even the mercenary instinct tricks itself out in a most deceptive romantic disguise if there is the ghost of an opportunity. Besides, there was no reason, and no sign of an approaching reason, for the shadow of a suspicion that life with Teddy Danvers would not be full of all that she and her friends regarded as happiness.

But she would not marry immediately. She was tenacious of her freedom. She was restless, dissatisfied with herself and not elated by her prospects. She had an excellent mind, reasonable, appreciative, ambitious. Until she “came out” she had spent much time among books; but as she had had no capable director of her reading, she got from it only a vague sense, that there was somewhere something in the way of achievement which she might possibly like to attain if she knew what it was or where to look for it. As she became settled in her place in the routine of social life, as her horizon narrowed to the conventional ideas of her set, this sense of possible and attractive achievement became vaguer. But her restlessness did not diminish.

“I never saw such an ungrateful girl,” was Mrs. Carnarvon’s comment upon one of Marian’s outbursts of almost peevish fretting. “What do you want?”

“That’s just it,” exclaimed Marian, half-laughing. “What _do_ I want? I look all about me and I can’t see it. Yet I know that there must be something. I think I ought to have been a man. Sometimes I feel like running away--away off somewhere. I feel as if I were getting second-bests, paste substitutes for the real jewels. I feel as I did when I was a child and demanded the moon. They gave me a little gilt crescent and said: ‘Here is a nice little moon for baby;’ and it made me furious.”

Mrs. Carnarvon looked irritated. “I don’t understand it. You are getting the best of everything. Of course you can’t expect to be happy. I don’t suppose that any one is happy. But all the solid things of life are yours, and you can and should be comfortable and contented.”

“That’s just it,” answered Marian indignantly. “I have always been swaddled in cotton wool. I have never been allowed really to feel. I think it is the spirit of revolt in me. Yes, I ought to have been a man. I’m sure that then I could have made life a little less tiresome.”

It was this dissatisfaction that postponed the announcement of the engagement from month to month until a year had slipped away.

Instead of coming to New York, Danvers went off to Montana for a mountain-lion hunt with two Englishmen who had been staying with him in “The Valley.” He would join Marian for the trip South, the engagement would be announced, and the wedding would be in May--such was the arrangement which Marian succeeded in making. It settled everything and at the same time it gave her a month of freedom in New York. She hinted enough of this programme to Howard to enable him to grasp its essential points.

“A month’s holiday,” was his comment. They were alone on the second seat of George Browning’s coach, driving through the Park. “If we were like those people”--he was looking at a young man and young woman, side by side upon a Park bench, blue with cold but absorbed in themselves and obviously ecstatic. Marian glanced at them with slightly supercilious amusement and became so interested that she turned her head to follow them with her eyes after the coach had passed.

“Is he kissing her?” asked Howard.

“No--not yet. But I’m sure he will as soon as we have turned the corner.” She said nothing for a moment or two, her glance straight ahead and upon vacancy, he admiring the curve of her cheek at the edge of its effective framing of fur.

“But we are not----” She spoke in a low tone, regretful, pensive, almost sad. “We are not like them.”

“Oh, yes we are. But--we fancy we are not. We’ve sold our birthright, our freedom, our independence for--for----”

“Well--what?”

“Baubles--childish toys--vanities--shadows. Doesn’t it show what ridiculous little creatures we human beings are that we regard the most valueless things as of the highest value, and think least of the true valuables. For, tell me, Lady-Whom-I-Love, what is most valuable in the few minutes of this little journey among the stars on the good ship Mother Earth?”

“But you would not care always as you care now? It would not, could not, last. If we--if we were like those people on the bench back there, we’d go on and--and spoil it all.”

“Perhaps--who can say? But in some circumstances couldn’t I make you just as happy as--as some one else could?”

“Not if you had made me infinitely happier at one time than even you could hope to make me all the time. At least I think not. It would always be--be racing against a record; we both would be, wouldn’t we?”

Howard looked at her with an expression which transfigured his face and sent the colour flaming to her cheeks. “That being the case,” he said, “let us--let us make the record one that will not be forgotten--soon.”

During the month he saw her almost every day. She was most ingenious in arranging these meetings. They were together afternoons and evenings. They were often alone. Yet she was careful not to violate any convention, always to keep, or seem to be keeping, one foot “on the line.” Howard threw himself into his infatuation with all his power of concentration He practically took a month’s holiday from the office. He thought about her incessantly. He used all his skill with words in making love to her. And she abandoned herself to an equal infatuation with equal absorption. Neither of them spoke of the past or the future. They lived in the present, talked of the present.

One day she spoke of herself as an orphan.

“I did not know that,” he said. “But then what do I know about you in relation to the rest of the world? To me you are an isolated act of creation.”

“You must tell me about yourself.” She was looking at him, surprised. “Why, I know nothing at all about you.”

“Oh, yes, you do. You know all that there is to know--all that is important.”

“What?” She was asking for the pleasure of hearing him say it.

“That I love you--you--all of you--all of you, with all of me.”

Her eyes answered for her lips, which only said smilingly: “No, we haven’t time to get acquainted--at least not to-day.”

* * * * *

She was to start for Florida at ten the next morning. Mrs. Carnarvon was going away to the opera, giving them the last evening alone. Marian had asked this of her point-blank.

“You are an extraordinarily sensible as well as strong-willed girl, Marian,” Mrs. Carnarvon replied.

“I can’t find it in my heart to blame you for what you’re doing. The fact that I haven’t even hinted a protest, but have lent myself to your little plots, shows that that young man has hypnotized me also.”

“You needn’t disturb yourself, as you know,” Marian said gaily. “I’m not hypnotized. I shall not see Mr. Howard again until--after it’s all over. Perhaps not then.”

He came to dinner and they were not alone until almost nine. She sat near the open fire among the cushions heaped high upon the little sofa. She had never been more beautiful, and apparently never in a happier mood. They both laughed and talked as if it were the first instead of the last day of their month. Neither spoke of the parting; each avoided all subjects that pointed in direction of the one subject of which both thought whenever their minds left the immediate present. As the little clock on the mantle began to intimate in a faint, polite voice the quarter before eleven, he said abruptly, almost brusquely:

“I feel like a coward, giving you up in this way. Yes--giving you up; for you have a traitor in your fortress who has offered me the keys, who offers them to me now. But I do not trust you; and I can’t trust myself. The curse of luxury is on you, the curse of ambition on me. If we had found each the other younger; if I had lived less alone, more in the ordinary habit of dependence upon others; if you had been brought up to live instead of to have all the machinery of living provided and conducted for you--well, it might have been different.”

“You are wrong as to me, right as to yourself. But yours is not the curse of ambition. It is the passion for freedom. It would be madness for you, thinking as you do, even if you could--and you can’t.”

He stood up and held out his hand. She did not rise or look at him.

“Good night,” she said at last, putting her hand in his. “Of course I am thinking I shall see you tomorrow. One does not come out of such a dream,”--she looked up at him smiling--“all in a moment.”

“Good night,” he smiled back at her. “I shall not open ‘the fiddler’s bill’ until--until I have to.” At the door he turned. She had risen and was kneeling on the sofa, her elbow on its low arm, her chin upon her hand, her eyes staring into the fire. He came toward her.

“May I kiss you?” he said.

“Yes.” Her voice was expressionless.

He bent over and just touched his lips to the back of her neck at the edge of her hair. He thought that she trembled slightly, but her face was set and she did not look toward him. He turned and left her. Half an hour later she heard the bell ring--it was Mrs. Carnarvon. She wished to see no one, so she fled through the rear door of the reception room and up the great stairway to lock herself in her boudoir. She sank slowly upon the lounge in front of the fire and closed her eyes. The fire died out and the room grew cold. A warning chilliness made her rise to get ready for bed.

“No,” she said aloud. “It isn’t ambition and it isn’t lack of love. It’s a queer sort of cowardice; but it’s cowardice for all that. He’s a coward or he wouldn’t have given up. But--I wonder--how am I going to live without him? I need him--more than he needs me, I’m afraid.”

She was standing before her dressing table. On it was a picture of Danvers--handsome, self-satisfied, healthy, unintellectual. She looked at it, gave a little shiver, and with the end of her comb toppled it over upon its face.

XIII.

RECKONING WITH DANVERS.

On that journey south Marian for the first time studied Danvers as a husband in prospect.

The morning after they left New York, their private car arrived at Savannah. At dark the night before they were rushing through a snow storm raging in a wintry landscape. Now they were looking out upon spring from the open windows. As soon as the train stopped, all except Marian and Danvers left the car to walk up and down the platform. Danvers, standing behind Marian, looked around to make sure that none of the servants was about, then rubbed his hand caressingly and familiarly upon her cheek.

“Did you miss me?” he asked.

Marian could not prevent her head from shrinking from his touch.

“There’s nobody about,” Danvers said, reassuringly. But he acted upon the hint and, taking his hand away, came around and sat beside her.

“Did you miss me?” he repeated, looking at her with an expression in his frank, manly blue eyes that made her flush at the thought of “treason” past and to come.

“Did _you_ miss _me_?” she evaded.

“I would have returned long ago if I had not been ashamed,” he answered, smiling. “I never thought that I should come not to care for as good shooting as that. You almost cost me my life.”

“Yes?” Marian spoke absently. She was absorbed in her mental comparison of the two men.

“I got away from the others and was looking at your picture. They started up a lion and he came straight at me from behind. If he hadn’t made a misstep in his hurry and loosened a stone, I guess he would have got me. As it was, I got him.”

“You mean your gun got him.”

“Of course. You don’t suppose I tackled him bare-handed.”

“It might have been fairer. I don’t see how you can boast of having killed a creature that never bothered you, that you had to go thousands of miles out of your way to find, and that you attacked with a gun, giving him no chance to escape.”

“What nonsense!” laughed Danvers. “I never expected to hear you say anything like that. Who’s been putting such stuff into your head?”

Marian coloured. She did not like his tone. She resented the suggestion of the truth that her speech was borrowed. It made her uncomfortable to find herself thus unexpectedly on the dangerous ground.

“I suppose it must have been that newspaper fellow Mrs. Carnarvon has taken up. She talked about him for an hour after you left us to go to bed last night.”

“Yes, it was--was Mr. Howard.” Marian had recovered herself. “I want you to meet him some time. You’ll like him, I’m sure.”

“I doubt it. Mrs. Carnarvon seemed not to know much about him. I suppose he’s more or less of an adventurer.”

Marian wondered if this obvious dislike was the result of one of those strange instincts that sometimes enable men to scent danger before any sign of it appears.

“Perhaps he is an adventurer,” she replied. “I’m sure I don’t know. Why should one bother to find out about a passing acquaintance? It is enough to know that he is amusing.”

“I’m not so sure of that. He might make off with the jewels when you had your back turned.”

As soon as she had made her jesting denial of her real lover Marian was ashamed of herself. And Danvers’ remark, though a jest, cut her. “What I said about a passing acquaintance was not just or true,” she said impulsively and too warmly. “Mr. Howard is not an adventurer. I admire and like him very much indeed. I’m proud of his friendship.”

Danvers shrugged his shoulders and looked at her suspiciously.

“You saw a good deal of this--this friend of yours?” he demanded, his mouth straightening into a dictatorial line.

At this Marian grew haughty and her eyes flashed: “Why do you ask?” she inquired, her tone dangerously calm.

“Because I have the right to know.” He pointed to the diamond on her third finger.

“Oh--that is soon settled.” Marian drew off the ring and held it out to him. “Really, Teddy, I think you ought to have waited a little longer before insisting so fiercely on your rights.”

“Don’t be absurd, Marian.” Danvers did not take the ring but fixed his eyes upon her face and changed his tone to friendly remonstrance. “You know the ring doesn’t mean anything. It’s your promise that counts. And honestly don’t you think your promise does give me the right to ask you about your new friends when you speak of them, of one of them, in--in such a way?”

“I don’t intend to deceive you,” she said, turning the ring around slowly on her finger. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I suppose the only way to speak is just to speak.”

“Do you think you are in love with this man, Marian?”

She nodded, then after a long pause, said, “Yes, Teddy, I love him.”

“But I thought----”

“And so did I, Teddy. But he came, and I--well I couldn’t help it.”

As he did not speak, she looked at him. His face was haggard and white and in his eyes which met hers frankly there was suffering.

“It wasn’t my fault, Teddy,” Marian laid her hand on his arm, “at least, not altogether. I might have kept away and I didn’t.”

“Oh, I don’t blame you. I blame him.”

“But it wasn’t his fault. I--I--encouraged him.”

“Did he know that we were engaged?”

“Yes,” reluctantly.

“The scoundrel! I suspected that he was rotten somewhere.”

“You are unjust to him. I have not told you properly.”

“Did he tell you that he cared for you?”

“Yes--but he didn’t try to get me to break my engagement.”

“So much the more a scoundrel, he. Tell me, Marian--come to your senses and tell me--what in the devil did he hang about you for and make love to you, if he didn’t want to marry you? Would an honest man, a decent man, do that?”

Marian’s face confessed assent.

“I should think you would have seen what sort of a fellow he is. I should think you would despise him.”

“Sometimes it seems to me that I ought to. But I always end by despising myself--and--and--it makes no difference in the way I feel toward him.”

“I think I would do well to look him up and give him a horse-whipping. But you’ll get over him, Marian. I am astonished at your cousin. How could she let this go on? But then, she’s crazy about him too.”

Marian smiled miserably. “I’ve owned up and you ought to congratulate yourself on so luckily getting rid of such an untrustworthy person as I.”

“Getting rid of you?” Danvers looked at her defiantly. “Do you think I’m going to let you go on and ruin yourself on an impulse? Not much! I hold you to your promise. You’ll come round all right after you’ve been away from this fellow for a few days. You’ll be amazed at yourself a week from now.”

“You don’t understand, Teddy.” Marian wished him to see once for all that, whatever might be the future for her and Howard, there was no future for her and him. “Don’t make it so hard for me to tell you.”

“I don’t want to hear any more about it now, Marian. I can’t stand it--I hardly know what I’m saying--wait a few days--let’s go on as we have been--here they come.”

The others of the party came bustling into the car and the train started. For the rest of the journey Danvers avoided her, keeping to the smoking room and the game of poker there. Marian could neither read nor watch the landscape. She did not know whether to be glad or sorry that she had told him. She hated to think that she had inflicted pain and she could not believe, in spite of what she had seen in his eyes, that his feeling in the matter was more than jealousy and wounded vanity.

“He doesn’t really care for me,” she thought. “It’s his pride that is hurt. He will flare out at me and break it off. I do hope he’ll get angry. It will make it so much easier for me.”

Late in the afternoon she took Mrs. Carnarvon into her confidence. “I’ve told Teddy,” she said.

“I might have known!” exclaimed her cousin. “What on earth made you do that?”

“I don’t know--perhaps shame.”

“Shame--trash! Your life is going to be a fine turmoil if you run to Teddy with an account of every little mild flirtation you happen to have. Of all the imbeciles, the most imbecile is the woman who confesses.”

“But how could I marry him when----”

“When you don’t love him?”

“No--I might have done that. I like him. But, when I love another man.”