Part 10

"I know I deserve any punishment you choose to give," said he. "And I'll take it. Only--I want to stay on here--and to have your friendship."

She studied him critically. Her expression would have been trying enough in its penetrating judicial intelligence for the least self-conscious of men. It utterly disconcerted Basil, bred in the fashionable world's incessant consciousness of self. But in his desperation he withstood her look, returned it with eyes that were appealing yet not abject. It pleased her that he was not abject. "After all, you went on my advice, didn't you?" said she in a friendlier tone. "And you've been most manlike--have shown yourself to be just what I thought you. So I'm really unreasonable." She gave him her hand. "Yes, let us be friends."

"And you forgive me?"

She smiled queerly. "That's asking too much. I may--in time. Just at present--you've made me feel horribly cheap and--common."

He hung his head. "If you knew how I've suffered for it," he said. "I was afraid you'd send me away--would never see me again."

"Let's not talk about it," cried she, angry at her own weakness in not meting out to him what he apparently expected and certainly deserved. But she was not so angry that she held to her purpose of going upstairs. Instead, she sat at the piano and began to dash off the noisiest pieces she knew.

*IX*

The friendship now throve like Courtney's best-placed flower bed. She had always been healthy; so she had not a touch of "temperament"--which is the misleading romantic name for internal physical conditions anything but romantic. Most of those who have mentality have also imperfect health through neglect of physical needs; and the somberer shades, the grays and blue blacks, made the more melancholy by imagination, usually canopy their lives. But with her it was not so. Always healthy in body and in mind, she now irradiated perfume and color like the rose that is getting just the right sun and rain.

Late in that summer there were several weeks when one perfect day followed another like a child's dream of fairy-land. Vaughan wished to work alone, dropped completely out of their life, was forgotten. Every day, all day long, she and Basil were together, he helping her at the pastime that kept house and grounds beautiful. She was one of those human beings who abhor disorder; if anything went wrong it was righted at once. If a knob came off a door or a plant withered, she could not rest until the imperfection was remedied. It kept her incessantly occupied, but the results were worth the pains they cost. Her imagination, stimulated by Basil, planned many changes in grounds and gardens, changes that would bring the place still nearer the landscape artist's three ideals--contrast, variety, bounds concealed. And she and Basil together carried out these alterations.

Then there were the leisure hours, as full as the hours of toil. They--with Winchie--strolled in the woods on the farm, across the highway, and picnicked under the trees beside the brook, or in the shadow of some gigantic fern-covered rock left on a hillside by the retreating glaciers of the ice age. Or, they went out on the lake, Winchie fishing, she and Gallatin talking in low tones or happy in sympathetic silence, with the boat moving languidly where the shadows of the great weeping willows were deepest, its keel troubling the dark clear waters hardly more than a floating leaf.

She was fond of talking, he of listening. And she had so many things to say--the things that had been accumulating in those five years when she had said little, had read and thought much. When Basil did talk it was usually of what he had experienced in his wanderings over Europe and Asia. And, as she had been everywhere in fancy through her reading, she drew him out with questions that made it hard for him to believe she had not actually viewed with her own eyes. He seemed a wonderful person to her, he who had lived in the world's half dozen great capitals, had wandered all over the earth and had seen everything. Her comments astonished him, made him ashamed, and privately reverent of her "woman's intuition. No wonder it's considered better than brains."

"I wish I'd had some one like you along when I was chasing about," said he. "It was usually horribly dull, and I went on at it chiefly because I was always hoping something interesting would turn up. Now, I see it was turning up all the time. You have a light way of looking at things. A man sees only the serious side."

"Oh, it couldn't be dull--not anywhere on earth," insisted she.

"No--not with--that is, with somebody like you along." An awkward silence; then, "and I don't see how you ever learned so much without having experience."

"I don't really know things," confessed she. "I just _seem_ to know. As a matter of fact, I'm frightfully innocent."

"That's the beautiful part of it," said he with enthusiasm.

"I hate it!" she cried.

"Oh, no," protested he.

"Yes, hate it," she insisted. The chief pleasure in this friendship with him was that it gave her freedom to be herself, to be frank. She would not let him spoil it for her, as Richard had in their early married days spoiled even the times of closest intimacy with formalism and restraint. "I want to know--I want to _live_," she went on, with glowing, eager face. "I've always felt proud it was the woman who had the sense to eat the apple. I detest innocence. I love _life_!"

"Oh, you don't mean exactly that."

"Just that."

"Even--sin?" This, not an inquiry, but an argument proving her beyond question in the wrong.

But she replied undauntedly: "It seems to me, the only way to learn is by doing things. And doesn't that mean making mistakes--sins, as you call it? Life's a good deal like gardening. You have to do it wrong first in order to learn how to do it right."

"That's all very well for a man. But----"

She was giving him one of those disconcerting eerie glances from the mysterious eyes. "I've got to _live_, and in the same world you have. Also, I've got to bring up a boy to live in it."

"I must say," confessed he, "I don't see just how to meet that." And she accepted the answer as evidence of his broad-minded sympathy. She did not realize that he was anything but convinced, but was simply admitting the "light cleverness" of her reply and was too eager about standing well with her to combat her "queer ideas."

The interruption to the delights of this friendship came before she had nearly exhausted his novelty, and while she was still as uncritical of him as a starving man of the cooking. However, in any circumstances it would have been long before she could have made any accurate judgment of him. She had become his partisan; and a generous nature takes the most favorable, the always too favorable, view of a personality to which it is attracted.

Until that summer Richard had been, for a young man, remarkably careful about regularity and exercise. At the very outset of his task, away back at Johns Hopkins, seven years before, he had realized that he was in for an investigation of all known elements in every possible combination--that is, for a long and hard struggle for about the most jealously guarded of nature's secrets--the origin of heat. And he knew that, if he was to win any victory worth while, he must resist the temptation to overwork, and must make health his first consideration. And although he had small liking for physical exercise and was as little fond of the grind of regularity as the next man, he had kept to his rules for himself with the same inflexible firmness that characterized him in all his serious purposes. But Basil's coming with the additional money he had needed, and the help, too, tempted him beyond his resistance. In exercise, as in everything else, there is system or there is nothing. Before Basil had been there a month Richard was breaking his rules; and soon the whole system went by the board. All summer he had not exercised, and he ate at any hours or not at all. Such a reversal of a long-established routine could not but create an immediate internal commotion. There were no physical surface signs; he looked the same as always; but his temper became uncertain. Where he had been simply absent-minded he was now irascible in it. Without reason--except the internal physical turmoil he himself did not feel or suspect---he would burst from abstraction to attack Gallatin or Courtney or Winchie or one of the servants, or to rave against everything and everybody. And this new Richard appeared at just the time when it would stand out in sharpest, most odious relief--most dangerous contrast to the even temper of Basil Gallatin. Under the stimulus of her friendship with Gallatin, Courtney had got back much of her former gayety. Again she was overflowing with jest and laughter, with the joy she seemed to have absorbed from the bright things that grew or flitted and flew in her gardens.

The change in Richard came rapidly, yet was so gradual that its cause escaped them all. It is not in human nature to be inexhaustibly patient even with the vagaries of an obvious invalid. Where the illness is unsuspected, patience with its victim soon turns to gall. This new development in Richard's character--for Courtney and all the others assumed it was character--changed her passive, almost unsuspected resentment and indifference into dislike that could easily deepen into aversion.

He was disagreeably reminding her of his existence; he was saying in effect "Look at me!" She looked. She had bowed to fate, had accepted a loveless life of duty. She had done her part loyally. She had made a home, had kept it in order, had submitted whenever his physical necessities began to distract him from his work. Yes, she had accepted all the degradation without a murmur. And when love had come to her unsought, had tempted her, she had put the temptation aside. In order that his plans might not be upset, she had taken the hard instead of the easy way to combat this temptation, had let Basil Gallatin stay on. And what was her reward? Whenever Richard spoke, it was to say something disagreeable, to be as nearly insulting as a well-bred man could become.

"It's perhaps fortunate for Richard," reflected she, "that Basil showed the true nature of his love in that trip to Pittsburg. For what do _I_ owe Richard Vaughan? Is there any woman anywhere who does not in her heart feel she'd be justified in doing _anything_, when her husband has treated her as mine has treated me?" And the obvious answer--that her husband was the normal husband, that it was she who, expecting what the conventional and customary marriage relation did not contemplate and did not provide, was in the wrong--this answer seemed to her no answer at all, but an insult to her intelligence and her self-respect.

Because of Vaughan's rages Gallatin got into the habit of rising from the table as soon as he finished and leaving the Vaughans to themselves. Courtney, with the sex charm subtly seducing her to seek and exaggerate merits in Basil, was deeply moved by this thoughtfulness; for it increased her humiliation to have him there when Richard lost control of himself. One evening, as they finished supper, Vaughan was suddenly infuriated by the stealthy fiend of indigestion that is the chief cause of humanity's faults of temperament, from morbidness to acute mania. He burst out at Gallatin--sprang from absent-mindedness with flaming eyes like a madman from ambush. "You messed everything to-day!" cried this unsuspected and unconscious invalid, sicker far than many a one in bed with doctors and nurses. "You simply raised the devil. Another day or so like it, and I'll not let you come into the shop."

Gallatin made no reply.

"I suppose you're cursing me," fumed Richard. "That's the way it always is. The whole world's mad on the subject of self-excuse. Somebody else is always to blame, and criticism is always an outrage."

"Not at all," said Gallatin, and Courtney knew his self-control was wholly for her sake. "I was stupid to-day, Vaughan. It was wholly my fault. I know I came near blowing up the shop and sending us both to kingdom come----"

An exclamation of terror from Courtney halted him. She was pale, was looking with frightened, questioning eyes from one man to the other.

Vaughan blazed again. "There you go!" cried he to Gallatin. "Now, she'll think I'm at something as dangerous as a powder factory--when, in fact----"

"Yes, indeed, Mrs. Vaughan," interrupted Gallatin. "It was my stupidity that made all the danger. Really, we do nothing that ought to be dangerous."

"That's not true," said Courtney quietly. "I know the truth now. And I never thought of it before!" She could not understand how she had been so unthinking; it was another, an unexpected measure of the cleavage between Richard's life and hers.

"You'd better confine your attention to things you understand," said Vaughan. "It was all Gallatin's folly, I assure you."

"That's the truth, Mrs. Vaughan," said Gallatin earnestly. "The whole truth."

She said no more, but her face showed she did not believe him. Gallatin, depressed and remorseful, went out on the veranda, strolled down toward the lake. Vaughan sat on, pulling savagely at his cigar. He was enraged because his outburst had caused the disclosure of the secret he had intended to keep from her, had given her a false idea which, as she was a woman, a creature of notions and whims, nothing could ever correct. He forgot his fine philosophy about self-excuse, and turned his rage from himself to her. "It's really all your fault," he exclaimed, glowering at her.

Winchie, seated between his father and mother, took up his knife and raised it threateningly against his father, his gray-green eyes ablaze.

In another mood Vaughan would have been secretly delighted, would have gravely accepted the rebuke and made apology to the boy and to Courtney. But the devil--the realest devil that torments spirit through flesh--was in him that night, was on the prowl. He pointed his cigar at the infuriated child. "What's the meaning of this?" he demanded.

"Winchie," said Courtney, in a low, firm voice.

The boy's eyes shifted from father to mother.

"Put down that knife, go upstairs and go to bed."

Son and mother looked at each other fully ten seconds; the boy lowered the knife, laid it on the table, descended from his chair, marched haughtily from the room. When he was gone Vaughan said: "You should have made him apologize to me."

Courtney did not reply. She was pulling out the bows the flowing tie she was wearing under the loose collar of her shirt waist.

"I'll have Lizzie bring him back."

"No," said Courtney, and her eyes met his. "You will not interfere with Winchie. I do not interfere with your work."

"But you do!" Richard burst out. "It's your interfering that's making Gallatin so worthless."

She shrank back in her chair, hastily veiled her eyes. Now it was the cuffs of the shirt waist that were engaging her attention.

"You dislike him, I know," Vaughan went on. "But why do you treat him so badly?"

No answer. She could hardly believe that it had been so long since Richard had noted her and Basil. Besides, when had she ever treated him in a way that could be called badly?

"I am sure you treat him badly. Why?"

No answer.

"I asked you a question. Politeness would suggest----"

"Not in this family," said Courtney, cold and calm, her slim fingers touching her hair here and there.

"All I've got to say is, it's no wonder Gallatin's becoming useless at the shop. He must feel his position acutely. I can conceive of no reason why you should subject a gentleman--and my guest--to such indignity."

Courtney looked as if she were sitting quietly alone.

"Has he been making love to you?" demanded Vaughan.

Her eyelids fluttered, but it was the only sign she gave.

"Some time ago I observed he had a way of looking at you that was most loverlike."

Still no answer, and no sign.

"Even so, you could deal with him tactfully. He is a gentleman."

"You said that before," observed she, elbows on the table, her chin on the backs of her intertwined fingers, her gaze upon the bowl of old-fashioned yellow roses in the center of the table.

He glowered at her. "So I did," said he. "Now I say it again, and perhaps you will be able to grasp it. And I want you to treat him as a gentleman should be treated. So long as he is my guest, so long as he conducts himself like a gentleman, you must be courteous to him."

No answer; no change.

"Do you hear, Courtney?"

"Yes."

"What do you intend to do?"

Up went the long lashes and the deep green eyes burned coldly at him. "As I choose," said she. "And I may add, I will not put up with your bad temper any longer. At the next outburst from you, Winchie and I leave this house. I will not be insulted, and will not have my boy ruined by his father's bad example."

Richard's eyes softened; he lowered them, the red mounted. After a silence he said "Excuse me" without looking at her, rose and went to the veranda. When she finished giving directions for the next day to Nanny and was going upstairs, he was still walking up and down, head bent, hands behind his back, sternness in that long aristocratic profile. An hour later, as she sat at her desk in her own sitting room upstairs, she heard his voice at the door into the hall.

"May I come in?" he asked.

"Certainly," replied she. Her back was toward the door.

"I want to beg your pardon."

"Very well," said she, her voice cold and even. She did not realize how much this meant from a man who had not the apologizing spirit or habit. And if she had realized, she would have been no more appreciative.

"You do not accept it?" said he, ruffled at once, and feeling that she was now the one in the wrong.

"I do not care any thing about it, one way or the other."

He was silent for a moment, then: "I hardly blame you," said he, with a great air of generous concession. "I've been out of temper, rude--disgracefully so--for some time. I'm sorry." And he stood looking at her expectantly, more complacent than penitent.

"I see you think a few words are enough to make up for all you've done."

"What more can I do? It's not a bit like you, Courtney, to----"

"And what do you know about me?" inquired she, turning half round and looking calmly at him over her shoulder. "It's quite true," she went on, "that I have no means of support but what I earn here as your housekeeper and--wife. But, I----"

"Courtney!" he cried in a tone of imperative rebuke.

"A few plain words--of truth--seem to shock you more than your own conduct."

"Such language from you! But you did not realize what you were saying."

"I did. I meant just what I said."

"That is not language for a wife to use to a husband."

She rose from the desk and, without looking at him, went into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

She was working in the garden beneath the west windows. She moved among the flowers, as restless and graceful as any other of the elves always hovering about blooming things--bees, humming birds, butterflies. It was a rare chance to study the marvels of pose of which the human body is capable. Now she was stooping, now kneeling; bending forward, backward, to one side; or, erect and stretching upward, to relieve a tall rosebush of a dead leaf or spray. And the lines of her figure, ever changing, were ever alluring. Her arms, too--and her neck--how smooth and slenderly round, and how intensely alive! Her whole skin seemed aureoled with invisible, tremulous, magnetic waves. She was wearing a big pale-green garden hat; her hair was perfectly done, as always--as if it had taken no time or trouble, yet so that it formed a delightful frame for her small, delicate face, and splintered and reflected every stray of sunlight that dodged in under the brim. Her short skirt revealed slim, tapering ankles and small feet. There are feet that are merely short; then there are feet such as hers--exquisitely small--not useless looking, but the reverse. The same quality of the exquisite was in her figure. She was small, but she was not short. Her smallness enabled a perfection nature never gets in the long or the large. She made largeness suggest coarseness. Women of her form send thrilling through their lovers the feeling of being able completely to enfold and to possess.

All alone and thinking only of the flowers, she entered one of the narrow paths that led toward the veranda. She stretched upward to re-curl a refractory tendril. Both arms were extended, her head thrown back, the rosy bronze face upturned--pathetic, yet laughter-loving mouth, eyes of deep, deep green. Like one awakening from a profound sleep she slowly became conscious that she and Basil Gallatin were gazing into each other's eyes with only the trellised creeper between. And his look made her heart leap. She straightened herself, colored, paled, stood trembling. The next thing she distinctly knew, he had come round to the lawn at the edge of the garden in which she was working.

"How you startled me!" she said, in a careless, casual tone.

As he did not answer, she glanced at him. He was standing with eyes down. And his look made her vaguely afraid.

"Are you going to help me to-day?" she asked, resolved to brave it through.

"I can't stand it!" he cried, his voice trembling with passion. "I love you. I must go. I shall go as soon as Vaughan comes back. Until then I'll keep to the other part of the grounds."

"Why not just do it, and not talk so much?" she demanded, suddenly angry.

"If you had ever loved," said he humbly, "you'd understand. But I didn't intend to say these things. I came to tell you Vaughan's away. They telegraphed for him to hurry to Washington--something about the duties on a lot of new instruments."

"How long will he be?"

"Several weeks, perhaps. He's going afterwards to Baltimore, and then to Philadelphia and New York. He left word with Jimmie about sending a trunk after him. He had just time to catch the express. He asked me to explain to you."

Nanny appeared at the drive-front corner of the house. He said to her: "Oh--Nanny. I've been upstairs packing a few of my belongings. Will you have them taken to Mr. Vaughan's apartment at the shop?"

"Jimmie says Mr. Vaughan locked everything up down there, and took the keys, and said no one was to go near it while he was away."

Basil hesitated, but only for an instant. "How forgetful he is!" he exclaimed with a smile. "Of course I've got to sleep there--as watchman. Well, I'll force the stairway door. You can telephone over for a locksmith this afternoon or to-morrow. He'll make a new lock and key."

Nanny departed, muttering. She did not like disobedience to the head of the house of Vaughan; but, on the other hand, she would have liked it much less had Gallatin stayed on at the house with Mr. Richard not there. Gallatin turned to Courtney. "Would it be too much trouble to send my meals to the shop?" he asked, in a constrained, formal tone that deeply offended her.

"Nanny will attend to that," replied she, eyes cold as winter seas.

"Thank you. If you should need anyone--there's the telephone to the shop. I'll re-connect it."

"You needn't bother."

"There have been several robberies round here of late, and----"

"As you please.... Thank you."

He looked at her as wistfully as a prisoner at the fields of freedom beyond his cell window. She seemed impatient to resume work; he went reluctantly away. She stood gazing after him until he disappeared in the shrubbery at the far eastern edge of the lawns. Then she sighed and glanced at the unblemished sky as if she thought it was clouding.