Chapter 13

“And looking a lot better than most that do,” he commented without premeditation.

She glanced at him again, and he saw that her eyes were gray, habitually half closed and inviting.

“I've had frightfully bad luck,” she went on; “once or twice when it seemed that I was to have a chance, when it appeared brighter--everything went to pieces.”

“Perhaps you want too much,” he suggested.

“Perhaps,” she agreed wearily; “ease and pretty clothes and--a man.” She added the latter with a more musical inflection than he had yet heard.

“Of course,” he proceeded importantly, “there are not a great many men. At least I haven't found them. As you say, most people are incapable of any power or decision. I always maintain it's something in the country. Now in----” He stopped, re-began: “In Europe they are different. There a man is better understood, and women as well.”

“I have never been out of America,” Miss Beggs admitted.

“But you might well have been,” he assured her; “you are more Continental than any one else I can think of.”

He moved toward the middle of the bench and she said quickly: “You must not misunderstand. I am not cheap nor silly. It might have been better for me.” She addressed the fading light on the sea. “Silly women, too, do remarkably well. But I am not young enough to change now.” She rose, gracefully drawn against space; her firm chin was elevated and her hands clenched. “I won't grow old this way and shrivel like an apple,” she half cried.

It would be a pity, he told himself, watching her erect figure diminish over the boardwalk. He had a feeling of having come in contact with an extraordinarily potent force. By heaven, she positively crackled! He smiled, thinking of the misguided people who had employed her, ignorant of all that underlay that severe prudent manner. At the same time he was flattered that she had confided in him. It was clear she recognized that he, at least, was a man. He was really sorry for her--what an invigorating influence she was!

She had spoken of being no longer young--something over thirty-five he judged--and that brought the realization that he was getting on. A few years now, ten or twelve, and life would be behind him. It was a rare and uncomfortable thought. Usually he saw himself as at the most desirable age--a young spirit tempered by wisdom and experience. But in a flash he read that his prime must depart; every hour left was priceless.

The best part of this must be dedicated to a helpless invalid; a strong current of self-pity set through him. But it was speedily lost in a more customary arrogance. August Turnbull repeated the favorite aphorisms from Frederick Rathe about the higher man. If he believed them at all, if they applied to life in general they were equally true in connection with his home; in short--his wife. Emmy Turnbull couldn't really be called a wife. There should be a provision to release men from such bonds.

It might be that the will-to-power would release itself. In theory that was well enough, but practically there were countless small difficulties. The strands of life were so tied in, one with another. Opinion was made up of an infinite number of stupid prejudices. In short, no way presented itself of getting rid of Emmy.

His mind returned to Meta Beggs. What a woman she was! What a triumph to master her contemptuous stubborn being!

IV

At least, August reflected with a degree of comfort at breakfast, Emmy didn't come down in the morning; she hadn't enough strength. He addressed himself to the demolishment of a ripe Cassaba melon. It melted in his mouth to the consistency of sugary water. His coffee cup had a large flattened bowl, and pouring in the ropy cream with his free hand he lifted the silver cover of a dish set before him. It held spitted chicken livers and bacon and gave out an irresistible odor. There were, too, potatoes chopped fine with peppers and browned; and hot delicately sweetened buns. He emptied two full spits, renewed his coffee and finished the potatoes.

With a butter ball at the center of a bun he casually glanced at the day's paper. The submarines, he saw, were operating farther south. A small passenger steamer, the _Veronica_ had been torpedoed outside the Delaware Capes.

A step sounded in the hall, and Louise entered the dining room, clad all in white with the exception of a closely fitting yellow hat. After a moment Victorine, a girl small for her age, with a petulant satiated expression, followed.

“It's a shame,” Louise observed, “that with Morice and his wife in the cottage you have to breakfast alone. I suppose all those theatrical people get up at noon.”

“Not quite,” Rosalie told her from the doorway.

Louise made no reply other than elevating her brows. Victorine looked at the other with an exact mirroring of her mother's disdain.

“Good morning,” Morice said indistinctly, hooking the collar of his uniform. “It's a bloody nuisance,” he asserted. “Why can't they copy the English jacket?”

“It is much better looking,” Louise added.

“Well,” Rosalie proclaimed, “I'm glad to see Morice in any; even if it means nothing more than a desk in the Quartermaster's Department.”

“That is very necessary,” August Turnbull spoke decidedly.

“Perhaps,” she agreed.

“I think it is bad taste to raise such insinuations.” Louise was severe.

“An army,” August put in, “travels on its stomach. As Louise suggests--we must ask you not to discuss the question in your present tone.” Morice's wife half-audibly spoke into her melon, and his face reddened. “What did I understand you to say?” he demanded.

“Oh, 'Swat the fly!'” Rosalie answered hardily.

“Not at all!” he almost shouted. “What you said was 'Swat the Kaiser!'”

“Well, swat him!”

“It was evident, also, that you did not refer to the Emperor of Germany--but to me.”

“You said it,” she admitted vulgarly. “If any house ever had a Hohenzollern this has.”

“Shut up, Rosalie!” her husband commanded, perturbed; “you'll spoil everything.”

“It might be better if she continued,” Louise Foster corrected him. “Perhaps then we'd learn something of this--this beauty.”

“I got good money for my face anyhow,” Rosalie asserted. “And no cash premium went with it either. As for going on, I'll go.” She turned to August Turnbull: “I've been stalling round here for nearly a year with Morice scared to death trying to get a piece of change out of you. Now I'm through; I've worked hard for a season's pay, but this is slavery. What you want is an amalgamated lady bootblack and nautch dancer. You're a joke to a free white woman. I'm sorry for your wife. She ought to slip you a bichloride tablet. If it was worth while I'd turn you over to the authorities for breaking the food regulations.”

She rose, unceremoniously shoving back her chair. “For a fact, I'm tired of watching you eat. You down as much as a company of good boys on the march. Don't get black in the face; I'd be afraid to if I were you.”

August Turnbull's rage beat like a hammer at the base of his head. He, too, rose, leaning forward with his napkin crumpled in a pounding fist.

“Get out of my house!” he shouted.

“That's all right enough,” she replied; “the question is--is Morice coming with me? Is that khaki he has on or a Kate Greenaway suit?”

Morice looked from one to the other in obvious dismay. He had a pleasant dull face and a minute spiked mustache on an irresolute mouth.

“If you stay with me,” she warned him further, “I'll have you out of that grocery store and into a trench.”

“Pleasant for you, Morice,” Louise explained.

“Things were so comfortable, Rosalie,” he protested despairingly. “What in the name of sense made you stir this all up? The governor won't do a tap for us now.”

His wife stood by herself, facing the inimical Turnbull front, while Morice wavered between.

“If you'll get along,” the former told him, “I can make a living till you come back. We can do without any Trübner money. I'm not a lot at German, but I guess you can understand me,” she again addressed August. “Not that I blame you for the change, such as it is.”

“I'll have to go with her,” Morice unhappily declared.

August Turnbull's face was stiff with congestion. The figures before him wavered in a sort of fog. He put out a hand, supporting himself on the back of his chair.

“Get out of my house,” he repeated in a hoarse whisper.

Fortunately Morice's leave had come to an end, and Rosalie and he withdrew in at least the semblance of a normal departure. August's rage changed to an indignant surprise, and he established himself with a rigid dignity on the veranda. There, happening on a cigar that burned badly, he was reduced to a state of further self-commiseration. That is, he dwelt on the general deterioration of the world about him. There was no discipline; there was no respect; authority was laughed at. All this was the result of laxness, of the sentimentality he condemned; a firmer hand was needed everywhere.

He turned with relief to the contemplation of Meta Beggs; she was enormously satisfactory to consider. August watched her now with the greatest interest; he even sat in his wife's room while her companion moved silently and gracefully about. Miss Beggs couldn't have noticed this, for scarcely ever did her gaze meet his; she had a habit of standing lost in thought, her slimness a little drooping, as if she were weary or depressed. She was in his mind continually--Miss Beggs and Emmy, his wife.

The latter had a surprising power to disturb him; lately he had even dreamed of her starving to death in the presence of abundant food. He began to be superstitious about it, to think of her in a ridiculous nervous manner as an evil design on his peace and security. She seemed unnatural with her shrunken face bowed opposite him at the table. His feeling for her shifted subconsciously to hatred. It broke out publicly in sardonic or angry periods under which she would shrink away, incredibly timid, from his scorn. This quality of utter helplessness gave the menace he divined in her its illusive air of unreality. She seemed--she was--entirely helpless; a prematurely aged woman, of the mildest instincts, dying of malnutrition.

Miss Beggs now merged into all his daily life, his very fiber. He regarded her in an attitude of admirable frankness. “Still it is extraordinary you haven't married.”

The tide was out, it was late afternoon, and they were walking over the hard exposed sand. Whenever she came on a shell she crushed it with a sharp heel.

“There were some,” she replied indifferently.

He nodded gravely. “It would have to be a special kind of man,” he agreed. “An ordinary individual would be crushed by your personality. You'd need a firm hand.”

Her face was inscrutable. “I have always had the misfortune to be too late,” she told him.

“I wish I had known you sooner!” he exclaimed.

Her arms, in transparent sleeves, were like marble. His words crystallized an overwhelming realization of how exactly she was suited to him. The desire to shut her will in his hand increased a thousandfold.

“Yes,” she said, “I would have married you. But there's no good discussing it.” She breathed deeply with a sinking forward of her rounded shoulders. All her vigor seemed to have left her. “I have been worried about Mrs. Turnbull lately,” she went on. “Perhaps it's my imagination--does she look weaker to you?”

“I haven't noticed,” he answered brusquely.

Curiously he had never thought of Emmy as dying; she appeared eternal, without the possibility of offering him the relief of such freedom as yet remained. Freedom for--for Meta Beggs.

“The doctor was at the cottage again Thursday,” she informed him. “I didn't hear what he said.”

“Humbugs,” August Turnbull pronounced.

A sudden caution invaded him. It would be well not to implicate himself too far with his wife's companion. She was a far shrewder woman than was common; there was such a thing as blackmail. He studied her privately. Damn it, what a pen he had been caught in! Her manner, too, changed immediately, as though she had read his feeling.

“I shall have to go back.”

She spoke coldly. A moment before she had been close beside him, but now she might as well have been miles away.

V

The fuse of the electric light in the dining room burned out, and dinner proceeded with only the illumination of the silk-hooded candles. In the subdued glow Meta Beggs was infinitely attractive. His wife's place was empty. Miss Beggs had brought apologetic word from Emmy that she felt too weak to leave her room. A greater degree of comfort possessed August Turnbull than he had experienced for months. With no one at the table but the slim woman on the left and himself a positive geniality radiated from him. He pressed her to have more champagne--he had ordered that since she preferred it to Rhine wine--urged more duckling, and ordered the butler to leave the brandy decanter before them.

She laughed--a rare occurrence--and imitated, for his intense amusement, Mrs. Frederick Rathe's extreme cutting social manner. He drank more than he intended, and when he rose his legs were insecure. He made his way toward Meta Beggs. She stood motionless, her thin lips like a thread of blood on her tense face.

“What a wife you'd make!” he muttered.

There was a discreet cough at his back, and swinging about he saw a maid in a white starched cap and high cuffs.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said; “Mrs. Turnbull wants to know would you please come up to her room.”

He swayed slightly, glowering at her with a hot face in which a vein throbbed persistently at his temple. Miss Beggs had disappeared.

“Very well,” he agreed heavily.

Mounting the stairs he fumbled for his cigar case, and entered the chamber beyond his, clipping the end from a superlative perfecto.

Emmy was in bed, propped up on a bank of embroidered pillows. A light from one side threw the shadow of her head on a wall in an animated caricature of life.

“I didn't want to disturb you, August.”

Her voice was weak and apologetic. He stood irritably beside her.

“It's hot in here.” His wife at once detected whatever assaulted his complete comfort. She fell into a silence that strained his patience to the utmost.

When at last she spoke it was in a tone of voice he had never heard from her--impersonal, with at the same time a note of fear like the flutter of a bird's wing.

“The doctor has been here two or three times lately. I didn't want to bother you, and he said----”

She broke off, and her hand raised from her side in a gesture of seeking. He held it uncomfortably, wishing that the occasion would speedily end.

“August, I've--I've got to leave you.”

He did not comprehend her meaning, and stood stupidly looking down at her spent face. “I'm going to die, August, almost any time now. I wanted to tell you first when we were quietly together; and then Louise and Bernard must know.”

His sensations were so confused, the mere shock of such an announcement had so confounded him that he was unable to penetrate the meaning of the sudden expansion of his blood. His attention strayed from the actuality of his wife to the immaterial shadow wavering on the wall. There Emmy's profile, grotesquely enlarged and sharpened, grimaced at him. August Turnbull's feelings disentangled and grew clearer, there was a conventional memory of his wife as a young woman, the infinitely sharper realization that soon he must be free, a vision of Meta Beggs as she had been at dinner that night, and intense relief from nameless strain.

He moved through the atmosphere of suspense that followed the knowledge of Emmy's condition with a feeling of being entirely apart from his family. Out of the chaos of his emotions the sense of release was most insistent. Naturally he couldn't share it with any one else, not at present. He avoided thinking directly of Meta Beggs, partly from the shreds of the superstitious dread that had once colored his attitude toward his wife and partly from the necessity to control what otherwise would sweep him into a resistless torrent. However, most of his impatience had vanished--a little while now, and in a discreet manner he could grasp all that he had believed so hopelessly removed.

Except for the occasions of Louise's informal presence he dined alone with Miss Beggs. They were largely silent, attacking their plates with complete satisfaction. On the day of her monthly payment he drew the check for a thousand dollars in place of the stipulated hundred, and gave it to her without comment. She nodded, managing to convey entire understanding and acceptance of what it forecast. Once, at the table, he called her Meta.

She deliberated a reply--he had asked her opinion about British bottled sauces--but when she answered she called him Mr. Turnbull. This, too, pleased him. She had an unerring judgment in the small affairs of deference. Dinner had been better than usual, and he realized he had eaten too much. His throat felt constricted, he had difficulty in swallowing a final gulp of coffee; the heavy odors of the dining room almost sickened him.

“We'll get out on the beach,” he said abruptly; “a little air.”

They proceeded past the unremitting sprinklers on the strip of lawn to the wide gray sweep of sand. At that hour no one else was visible, and a new recklessness invaded his discomfort. “You see,” he told her, “that bad luck of yours isn't going to hold.”

“It seems incredible,” she murmured. She added without an appearance of the least ulterior thought: “Mrs. August Turnbull.”

“Exactly,” he asserted.

A triumphant conviction of pleasure to come surged through him like a subtle exhilarating cordial.

“I'll take no nonsensical airs from Louise or the Rathes,” he proclaimed.

“Don't let that worry you,” she answered serenely.

He saw that it need not, and looked forward appreciatively to a scene in which Meta would not come off second.

Above them the long curve of the boardwalk was empty, with, behind it, the suave ornamental roofs of the cottages. A wind quartering from the shore had smoothed the ocean into the semblance of a limitless and placid lake. Minute waves ruffled along the beach with a continuous whispering, and the vault of the west, from which the sun had just withdrawn, was filled with light the color of sauterne wine.

It was inconceivable to August Turnbull that soon Emmy would be gone out of his life. He shook his thick shoulders as if by a gesture to unburden himself of her unpleasant responsibility. He smiled slightly at the memory of how he had come to fear her. It had been the result of the strain he was under; once more the vision of mountainous bread and Emmy returned. The devil was in the woman!

“What are you smiling at?” Meta asked.

“Perhaps it was because my luck, as well, has changed,” he admitted.

She came close up to him, quivering with emotion.

“I want everything!” she cried in a vibrant hunger; “everything! Do you understand? Are you willing? I'm starved as much as that woman up in her bed. Can you give me all the gayety, all the silks and emeralds there are in the world?”

He patted her shoulder. “You'll look like a Christmas tree. When this damned war is over we will go to Europe, to Berlin and Munich. They have the finest streets and theaters and cafés in the world. There things are run by men for men. The food is the best of all--no French fripperies, but solid rare cuts. Drinking is an art----”

“What is that out in the water?” she idly demanded.

He gazed impatiently over the unscored tide and saw a dark infinitesimal blot.

“I have been watching it for a long while,” she continued. “It's coming closer, I think.”

He again took up his planning.

“We'll stay two or three years; till things get on their feet here. Turn the bakery into a company. No work, nothing but parties.”

“Do look!” she repeated. “It's coming in--a little boat. I suppose it is empty.”

The blot was now near enough for him to distinguish its outline. As Meta said, no one was visible. It was drifting. Against his wish his gaze fastened on the approaching boat. It hesitated, appeared to swing away, and then resumed the progress inshore.

“I believe it will float into that cut in the beach below,” he told her.

His attention was divided between the craft and the image of all the pleasures he would introduce to Meta--Turnbull. It was a lucky circumstance that he had plenty of money, for he realized that she would not marry a poor man. This was not only natural but commendable. Poor men were fools, too weak for success; only the strong ate white bread and had fine women, only the masterful conquered circumstance.

“Come,” she said, catching his hand; “it's almost here.”

She half pulled him over the glistening wet sand to where the deeper water thrust into the beach. Her interest was now fully communicated to him.

“We must drag it safely up,” he articulated, out of breath from her eagerness. The bow swept into the onward current, it moved more swiftly, and then sluggishly settled against the bottom. Painted on its blistering white side was a name, “_Veronica_,” and “Ten persons.” There was a slight movement at the rail, and a sharp unreasoning horror gripped August Turnbull.

“Something in it,” he muttered. He wanted to turn away, to run from the beach; but a stronger curiosity dragged him forward. Not conscious of stepping through shallow water he advanced.

A hunger-ravished dead face was turned to him from the bottom, a huddle of bony joints, dried hands. There were others--all dead, starved. In a red glimmer he saw the incredible travesty of a child, a lead-colored woman, shriveled and ageless from agony.

He fell back with a choking cry, “Emmy!”

There was a dull uproar in his head, and then a violent shock at the back of his brain. August Turnbull's body slid down into the tranquil ripples that ran along the boat's side.

ROSEMARY ROSELLE

It would be better for my purpose if you could hear the little clear arpeggios of an obsolete music box, the notes as sweet as barley sugar; for then the mood of Rosemary Roselle might steal imperceptibly into your heart. It is made of daguerreotypes blurring on their misted silver; tenebrous lithographs--solemn façades of brick with classic white lanterns lifted against the inky smoke of a burning city; the pages of a lady's book, elegant engravings of hooped and gallooned females; and the scent of crumbled flowers.

Such intangible sources must of necessity be fragile--a perfume linked to a thin chime, elusive faces on the shadowy mirror of the past, memories of things not seen but felt in poignant unfathomable emotions. This is a magic different from that of to-day; here perhaps are only some wistful ghosts brought back among contemptuous realities--a man in a faded blue uniform with a face drawn by suffering long ended, a girl whose charm, like the flowers, is dust.

It is all as remote as a smile remembered from youth. Such apparent trifles often hold a steadfast loveliness more enduring than the greatest tragedies and successes. They are irradiated by an imperishable romance: this is my desire--to hold out an immaterial glamour, a vapor, delicately colored by old days in which you may discover the romantic and amiable shapes of secret dreams.

I

It will serve us best to see Elim Meikeljohn first as he walked across Winthrop Common. It was very early in April and should have been cool, but it was warm--already there were some vermilion buds on the maples--and Elim's worn shad-belly coat was uncomfortably heavy. The coat was too big for him--his father had worn it for twenty years before he had given it to Elim for college--and it hung in somber greenish folds about his tall spare body. He carried an equally oppressive black stiff hat in a bony hand and exposed a gaunt serious countenance.