Part 2

She went out, waited for him while he locked the door. "Dick," she began again, as they walked along the path, "I don't want to be shut out of any part of your life, least of all out of the realest part. I want to be truly your wife."

No answer. She glanced up at him; obviously his thoughts were far away.

She slipped her arms through his. "Tell me what you're thinking about, dear."

"About that test I was making."

"What was it?"

"Oh, nothing. Is the house satisfactory? How do you like old Nanny?" As she did not answer, he looked down at her. "Why, what's the matter with my little sweetheart? Such a discontented expression!"

"Nothing--nothing at all," replied she, forcing a smile and steadying her quivering lip.

"I'm afraid those two days on the train----"

"Yes," she interrupted eagerly. "And I guess I'm hungry, too. _That's_ very upsetting."

With a little forcing she kept up the semblance of good spirits through breakfast and until he was off to the laboratory again. Then she gave way to her mood--for it could be only a mood. With old Nanny as guide, she went through the house, through all its spacious solidly and stiffly furnished rooms. At every step Nanny had something to say of Miss Eudosia--how good Miss Eudosia had been, how Miss Eudosia kept everything as her mother had it before her, how particular Miss Eudosia had been. And when it wasn't Miss Eudosia it was Colonel 'Kill--that splendid-looking, terrible-looking old Achilles Vaughan; as a child she had decided that the awful god the family worshiped must look like Achilles Vaughan. Nanny talked on and on; Courtney's spirits went down and down. In one respect the house should have appealed to her--in its perfect order. For she had inherited from her mother a passion for order--an instinct that would have a neatly kept ribbon box almost as soon as she could talk, and had prompted her, long before she could talk distinctly, to cry if they tried to put on her a dress the least bit mussed or a stocking with a hole in it. But there is the order that is of life, and there is the order that is of death. This Vaughan order seemed to her to be of death. She felt surrounded, hemmed in, menaced by a throng of the Vaughan women of past generations--those women of the old-fashioned kind, thoughtless, mindless, cool, and correct and inane--the kind of women the Vaughan men liked--the kind Richard liked--"No--no. He does _not_ like that kind!"

Assisted by Nanny and Mazie, she unpacked the trunks into drawers and closets. When the last box was empty, Jimmie took them down to the cellar. She was established--was at home. She and Dick were to have the same bedroom; he would use the big spare bedroom directly across the hall and its bath for dressing. It was all most convenient, most comfortable. But she could not get interested, could not banish the feeling that she would soon be flitting, that she was stranger, intruder here. And the last sweet days of the honeymoon kept recurring in pictured glimpses of their happiness of various kinds, all centering about love. How tender he had been, how absorbed in their romance--that wonderful romance which began ideally in a chance meeting and love at first sight. And now, just as she was getting over her deep-down shyness with him, was feeling the beginnings of the courage to be wholly her natural self, to show him her inmost thoughts, o release the tenderness, the demonstrativeness that had been pent up in her all her life--just as the climax of happiness was at hand--here was this shadow, this relegating her to the chill isolation and self-suppression and self-concealment of a pedestaled Vaughan wife. "He acts as if a woman were not like a man--as if I had no sense because I'm not tall, and don't go about in a frown and spectacles." And it depressed her still further to recall that his attitude had been the same throughout courtship and honeymoon--treating her as a baby, a pet, something to protect and shield, something of which nothing but lover's small talk was expected. She had liked it then; it seemed to fit in with the holiday spirit. "I gave him a false impression. It's my fault." To pretend to be infantile for purposes of a holiday of love-making is one thing; to have one's pretense taken as an actual and permanent reality--that was vastly different, and wearisome, and humiliating, and not to be permitted. "But," she reflected, "it's altogether my fault. And the thing for me to do is not to talk about it to him, but just quietly to go to work and make myself his wife--fit myself for it." A wonderful man she thought him; and it thrilled her, this high and loving ambition to be worthy of him, and not mere pendant and parasite as so many wives were content to be.

They were to go the scant half mile across the lake in the motor boat at noon and lunch at her old home. She was ready a few minutes before time, and started toward the Smoke House. Halfway she stopped and turned back. No, she could not interrupt him there again. His manner, unconscious, more impressive than any deliberate look or word, made her feel that the Smoke House was set in an enchanted wood which she could not penetrate until She smiled tenderly.

At half past twelve he came on the run. "Why didn't you telephone?" exclaimed he. "We'll be scandalously late. I'm so sorry. When I get to work down there I forget everything. I even forgot I was married."

She busied herself with the buttons of her glove, and the brim of her hat hid her face. And such a few hours ago he and she were all in all to each other!

"Do you forgive me?"

She thought she was forgiving him; the hurt would soon pass. So she gave him a look that passed muster with his unobservant eyes. "Don't worry. We'll soon be there."

They got under way, he at the motor, she watching his back. On impulse she moved nearer. "Dick," she said. "Don't turn round. I want to say something to you that's very hard to say.... I feel I ought to warn you. At college the girls called it one of my worst traits. When anyone I care for hurts me, I don't say anything--I even hide it. And they don't realize--and keep on hurting--until-- Oh, I've lost several friends that way. For--the time comes-- I don't let on, and it gets to be too late--and I don't care any more."

"You mean about my keeping you waiting?"

"No--not that--not that alone. Not any one thing. Not anything at all yet--but a kind of a shadow. Just--you've made me feel as if I weren't to be part of you--of your life. No, I don't say it right. I've felt as if I were to be part of you, but that you weren't to be part of me."

He began to laugh, believing that the proper way to dispel a mood so unreal. But glancing at her he saw she was shrinking and literally quivering with pain. His face sobered. He reminded himself that women could not be dealt with on a basis of reason and sense, since they had those qualities only in rudimentary form. As his hands were occupied, he was puzzled how to treat this his first experience with feminine sweet unreasonableness in her. All he could do toward pacifying was to say soothingly, as to a sensitive child: "I understand, sweetheart. I must be very--very careful."

"Not at all!" she cried, ready to weep with vexation at her complete failure to make him understand. "I'm not a silly, sensitive thing, always trailing my feelings for some one to step on."

"No, dearest--of course not," said he in the same tone as before. "If there weren't so many sail boats about, I'd show you how penitent I am."

"But I don't want you to be penitent."

"Then what do you want?"

"I want you to--I want us to be comrades."

"What a child it is! You girls are brought up to play all the time. But you can't expect a man to be like that. Of course we'll play together. I'd not have wanted to marry you if I hadn't needed you."

"But what am _I_ to do when you can't play?" she asked. "And I'm afraid you won't play very often. That is, I know you won't--and I'm glad you won't--for I'd not care as I do if you were that kind. I didn't realize until this morning. But I do realize now, and--Dick, you don't think of me as just to play with?"

Facing her earnestness, he would not have dared confess the truth. "No, indeed!" said he. "Your head's full of notions to-day. You're not at all like your sweet loving self."

She felt instantly altogether in the wrong. "It's the strangeness, I guess," she said penitently.

"That's it, exactly. But in a few days you'll be all right--and as happy as a bird on a bough."

As they were about to land she mustered all her courage, and with heightened color said: "You'll let me come down and try to help, won't you? I'll promise not to be in the way--not for a minute. And if I am, I'll never come again. I can at least wash out test tubes and bring you things you need."

"Oh, if you really want to come," began he, with good-humored tolerance.

"Thank you--thank you," she interrupted, eager and radiant.

"Not right away," he hastened to add. "Just at present I'm clearing things up."

"I understand. You'll tell me when the time comes."

"Yes, I'll tell you."

*II*

In late July, after he had not appeared either at dinner or at supper for four days, she said to him, "You're becoming a stranger."

The idea of reproaching him was not in her mind. She had been most respectful of what she compelled herself to regard as his rights, had been most careful not to intrude or interrupt or in any way annoy. The remark was simply an embarrassed attempt to open conversation--not an easy matter with a man so absorbed and silent as he had become. But he was feeling rather guilty; also, he had not recovered from the failure of an elaborate experiment from which he had expected great things in advancing him toward his ultimate goal--the discovery of a cheap, universal substitute for all known fuels. "You know, my dear," said he, "in the sort of work I'm trying to do a man can't control his hours."

"I know," she hastened to apologize, feeling offense in his tone, and instantly accusing herself of lack of tact. "I'm too anxious for you to succeed to want you ever to think I'm expecting you. I've been busy myself--and a lot of people have been calling."

This, though bravely said, somehow did not lessen his sense of guilt. "You're not lonely, are you?" he asked gently. And he gave her a searching, self-reproachful look.

"No, indeed!" laughed she. "I'm not one of the kind that get hysterical if they're left alone for a few minutes." Her tone and expression were calculated to reassure, and they did reassure.

"Really, you ought to have married a fellow who was fond of society and had time for it. I know how you love dancing and all that." This, with arms about her and an expression which suggested how dreary life would have been if she had married that more suitable other fellow.

"I used to like those things," said she. "But I found they were all simply makeshifts, to pass the time until you came."

"We _are_ happy--aren't we?"

"And just think!" she cried. "How happy we'll be when our real life begins."

"Yes," said he vaguely.

He looked confused and puzzled, but she was too intent upon her dream to note it. "When do you think you'll get time to teach me the ropes?" asked she.

After a little groping he understood. He had forgotten all about that fantastic plan of hers to potter at the laboratory. And she had been serious--had been waiting for him to ask her down! A glance at her face warned him that she was far too much in earnest to be laughed at. "Oh, I don't know exactly when," said he. "Probably not for some time. Don't bother about it."

"Of course, I'll not bother you about it," replied she. "But naturally I can't help thinking. It won't be long?"

He detested liars and lies. Yet, looking on her as a sort of child--and it's no harm to humor a child--he said, "I hope not."

He blushed as he said it, though his conscience was assuring him there was absolutely nothing wrong in this kind of playful deception with woman the whimsical, the irrational. "Certainly not," thought he. "She'll soon forget all about it. I don't see how she happened to remember so long as this." Still, it was not pleasant to tell even the whitest of white lies, facing eyes so earnest and so trusting as were hers just then. He changed the subject--inquired who had been calling. She did not return to it. She was content; his long hours and his complete absorption were proof of his eagerness to hasten the day when they should be together. "Of course," thought she, "he likes what he's doing--likes it for itself. But _the_ reason is 'us.'" And some day soon he would surprise her--and they would begin to lead the life of true lovers--the life she had dreamed and planned as a girl--the life she had begun to realize during courtship and honeymoon--the life of which, even in these days of aloneness and waiting, she had occasional foretastes when overpowering impulse for a "lighter hour" brought him back to her for a little while.

She had been puzzled when in those hours he sometimes called her "temptress." The word was tenderly spoken, but she felt an accent of what was somehow suggestion of reproach--and of rebuke. Now she thought she understood. He meant she stimulated in him the same deep longings that incessantly possessed her; and when those longings were stimulated, it was hard for him to keep his mind on the work he was hastening with all his energy--the work that must be done before their happiness could begin. "I must be careful not to tempt him," thought she.

From this she went on to feel she understood another matter that had puzzled her, had at times disquieted her. She had noticed that his moods of caressing tenderness, of longing for the outward evidences of love seemed to be satisfied, and to cease just when her own delight in them was swelling to its fullness. Why should what roused her quiet him? This had been the puzzle; now she felt she had solved it: He had greater self-control than she; he would not let his feelings master him, when they would certainly interfere with the work that must be done to clear their way of the last obstacles to perfect happiness; so he withdrew into himself and fought down the longings for more and ever more love that were no doubt as strong in him as in her.

Thus she, in her faith and her inexperience, reasoned it all out to her satisfaction and to his glory. She had not the faintest notion of the abysmal difference between her idea of love and his. With her the caresses had their chief value as symbols--as the only means by which the love within could convey news of its existence. With Dick, the caresses were not symbols at all, not means to an end, but the end in themselves. Of love such as she dreamed and expected he knew nothing; for it he felt no more need than the usual busy, ambitious man. His work, his struggle to wrest from nature close-guarded secrets, filled his mind and his heart.

He soon assumed she had forgotten her fantastic whim, and forgot it himself. She often wished he would talk to her about his work, would not be quite so discouraging when she timidly tried to talk with him about it. And in spite of herself she could not but be uneasy at times over his growing silence, his habitual absentmindedness. But she accepted it all, as loving inexperience will accept anything and everything--until the shock of disillusion comes. So stupefying is habit, there were times when her dream became vague, when she drifted along, leading, as if it were to be permanent, the ordinary life of the modern married woman whose husband is a busy man. She was learning a great deal about that life from her young married friends of the neighborhood and of Wenona. Many of them--in fact, most of them--were husbanded much like herself. But they were restless, unhappy, and for the best of reasons--because they had no aim, no future. She pitied them profoundly, felt more and more grateful for her own happier lot. For she--Dick's wife--had a future, bright and beautiful. Surely it could not be much longer before he would have the way clear for the life in common, the life together!

She fell to talking, in a less light vein than she usually permitted herself with him, about these friends of hers to him one evening as they walked up and down the veranda after supper. She described with some humor, but an underlying seriousness, their lives--their amusing, but also pitiful, efforts to kill time--their steady decline toward inanity. "I don't see what they married for," said she. "They really care nothing about their husbands--or their husbands about them. The men seem to be contented. But the women aren't, though they pretend to be--_pretend_ to their _husbands_! Isn't it all sad and horrible?"

"Indeed it is," he replied. He had been only half listening, but had caught the drift of what she was saying. "It's hard to believe decent women can be like that."

"And the men--they're worse," said she; "for they're satisfied."

"Why shouldn't they be?" said Dick. "They don't know what kind of wives they've got."

"I--I don't think you quite understood me."

"Oh, yes; you said the wives were dissatisfied. They've got good homes and contented husbands. What right have they to be dissatisfied? What more do they want?"

"What we've got," said she tenderly. "Love."

"But they've got love. Didn't you say their husbands were contented? When a man's contented it means that he loves his wife. And a good woman always loves her husband."

She laughed. He often amused her with his funny old-style notions about women. "You can't understand people who live and feel as they do, dear," said she. "Of course, you and I seem to be living much like them just now. But you know we'd never be contented if we had to go on and on this way."

With not a recollection of the "whim," he stopped short in astonishment. "What way?" he asked. "Aren't we happy?"

She smiled radiantly up at him in the clear, gentle evening light. "But not so happy as we shall be, when you get things straightened out and take me into partnership."

"Partnership?" he demanded blankly. "What do you mean?"

"I call it partnership. I suppose you'd call it working for you. I suppose I shall be pretty poor at first. But I'll surprise you before I've been down there many weeks. I've been brushing up my chemistry, as well as I could, with only books."

It came to him what she was talking about--and it overwhelmed him with confusion. "Yes--certainly. I--I supposed you'd forgotten."

She gazed at him in dismay. "Forgotten!" Then she brightened. "Oh, you're teasing me."

He began to be irritated. "You mustn't fret me about that," he said.

"I didn't even mean to speak of it," she protested, her supersensitive dread of intrusion alert. "I know you're doing the best you can. But I couldn't help dreaming of the time when I'll have you back again.... Now, don't look so distressed! Meanwhile, we'll have what we can. And that's something--isn't it?"

What queer, irrational creatures women were! To persist in a foolish, fanciful notion such as this! Why couldn't she play at keeping house and enjoy herself as it was intended women should? A woman's trying to do anything serious, a woman's thinking--it was like a parrot's talking--an imitation, and not a good one. But the "whim" and his "harmless deception" became the same sort of irritation in his conscience that a grain of dust is on the eyeball. He was forced to debate whether he should not make a slight concession. After all, where would be the harm in letting her come to the laboratory? She'd soon get enough. Yes, that would be the wise course. Humor a woman or a child in an innocent folly, and you effect a cure. Yes--if she brought the matter up again, and no other way out suggested, he would let her come. It amused him to think of her, delicate as a flower, made for the hothouse, for protection and guidance and the most careful sheltering, trying to adapt herself to serious work calling for thought and concentration. "But she'd be a nuisance after a day or so. A man's sense of humor--even his love--soon wears thin when his work's interfered with." Still, she'd be glad enough to quit, probably after a single morning of the kind of thing he'd give her to discourage her. "Really, all a woman wants is the feeling she's having her own way."

This decision laid the ghost. As she said no more, the whole thing passed to the dark recesses of his memory. One evening in late September, when he was taking a walk alone on the veranda, she came out and joined him. After a few silent turns she said, "Let's sit on the steps." She made him sit a step lower than she, which brought their eyes upon a level. The moon was shining full upon them. The expression of her face, as she looked intently at him, was such that he instinctively said, "What is it, dear?" and reached for her hand.

He had given the subject of children--the possibilities, probabilities--about as little thought as a young married man well could. There are some women who instantly and always suggest to men the idea motherhood; there are others, and Courtney was of them, in connection with whom the idea baby seems remote, even incongruous. But as she continued to look steadily at him, without speaking, his mind began to grope about, and somehow soon laid hold of this idea. His expression must have told her that he understood, for she nodded slowly.

"Do you mean--" he began in an awe-stricken voice, but did not finish.

"Yes. I've suspected for some time. To-day the doctor told me it was so."

Her hand nestled more closely into his, and he held it more tightly. A great awe filled him. It seemed very still and vast, this moonlight night. He gazed out over the lake. He could not speak. She continued to look at him. Presently she began in a low, quiet voice, full of the melody of those soft, deep notes that were so strange and thrilling, coming from such slim, delicate smallness of body and of face: "I can't remember the time when I wasn't longing for a baby. When I was still a baby myself I used to ask the most embarrassing questions--and they couldn't stop me-- When could I have a baby? How soon? How many? And when I finally learned that I mustn't talk about it, I only thought the more. I never rested till I found out all about it. I came very near marrying the first man that asked me because----"

He was looking at her with strong disapproval.

She smiled tenderly. "I know you hate for me to be frank and natural," she said with the gentlest raillery. "But, please, let me--just this once. I must tell you exactly what's in my head--my foolish, feminine head, as your grandfather would have said."

"Go on, dear. But you couldn't convince me you weren't always innocent and pure minded."

"You--a chemist--a scientist, talking about knowledge being wicked! But I'll not discuss those things with you. I never have and I never shall." She drew closer to him, put one arm round his neck. "Now do listen, dear," she went on. "Then--you came into my life. It's very queer--I don't understand why--at least not clearly--but from the moment I loved you I never thought of baby again--except to think I didn't want one."

"My dear!" he exclaimed. He drew away to look at her. "Courtney! That's very unnatural. You're quite mistaken."