Part 28

As she stood at the bureau, buckle still unfastened, eyes and mind upon those few calm, precisely pruned lines of Dick's, there came a thought that dealt a deathblow to her long dying feminine _folie de grandeur_. While it was true she had not sought nor wished Dick's interest of any kind, the fact remained that he, after living in daily contact with her for six years, had been so little affected by her personality that he was letting her go without any sign of emotion. "But I am as indifferent to him as he to me." she urged upon herself in hope of some slight consolation. She instantly remembered that it was he, not she, who had begun the indifference. And then came the stinging, blood-heating recollection that he had used at his pleasure the only part of her that had been able to impress him as valuable to a man of purpose and achievement. Nor could she dismiss him with a contemptuous "low minded and unworthy," for she knew he was neither. Squirm how she would, she could not get away from the humiliating fact--"six years of me, and not even enough physical value to make his jealousy for a single moment triumph over his sense of self-respect!"

Winchie had finished breakfast and was playing with his wagon on the veranda. Helen was still at table. "Has Mr. Gallatin gone East with Dick?" she inquired, turning rosy red.

"No," replied Courtney, not noting Helen's color. If she had, she would have suspected nothing. When Helen came home in good spirits from that visit to Saint X, after the Chicago shopping trip, and was no longer ill at ease with Basil, Courtney--eager, as we all are, to seize the first pretext to be relieved of a weight upon conscience--assumed that she had got completely over her fancy. As for Basil, Courtney trusted him absolutely.

"But he's away, isn't he?" persisted Helen, after a pause. "Lizzie tells me his rooms haven't been disturbed for two nights."

"He went day before yesterday, I believe," said Courtney. "Did you see Richard this morning?"

"Just a minute. He was hurrying for the train when I came down."

"I thought he didn't look very well, last night," pursued Courtney.

Helen, absorbed in her own agitating thoughts, failed to respond to this lead; so she put the question direct. "How did he look this morning?"

"About as usual," replied Helen. "I didn't notice any change. He had on that new gray suit. It's very becoming. When's he coming back?"

Courtney seemed not to have heard. "He forgot to give me his address. Did he leave it with you?"

"The Willard in Washington, then the Astor in New York."

"It may be I'll want to write him or something."

"I should think so!" cried Helen. "You and he write every day, don't you?"

"Not to each other," said Courtney dryly. "We never did establish the daily letter. That's one of the dreariest farces in married life. It belongs to the kind of people who think they're happy because they're too stupid or too bored to quarrel."

When she had eaten the tip end of a roll and drunk a little coffee, she went out on the veranda, sent Winchie to the lawn and asked Helen to sit with her at the western end where no one could hear or overhear. "You asked me when Richard was coming back," she began.

"It was simply a chance question," apologized Helen.

"He's not coming back."

"Not coming back!" echoed Helen. "You're going to move East?"

The emerald eyes met Helen's excited glance placidly. "We are going to get a divorce," she said.

Helen's big brown eyes opened wide. With lips ajar she stared at Courtney. Then she gave a little laugh that sounded as if the shock had unbalanced her mind and reduced her to imbecility. "A divorce," she murmured feebly.

"We both wish to be free," continued Courtney, talking in the matter-of-fact way that was the surest preventive of hysteria in herself or in Helen. "So, he's gone away. I'll stay here a while, then-- But I haven't made any plans. There's plenty of time."

A long silence, Helen gazing at Courtney, at Winchie racing along the paths with his red-striped wagon, at Courtney again, at trees and lake, as if she doubted the reality of all things. "I don't know what to say!" she exclaimed at last.

"Naturally," replied Courtney, "since there's nothing to say."

"I can't believe it!"

"Why not?"

"There aren't two people better suited to each other. Why, you never quarreled."

"That's it. I love contention. He wouldn't give it to me. So--pop goes the weasel."

"How can you! When your heart must be breaking." Helen put aside her stupefaction and brought the tears to her soft brown eyes in tardy conformity to the etiquette for nearest female friend on such occasions.

"Now, dear, please don't cry. You know that I know how easy it is for women to cry, and how little it means."

Helen hastily dried her eyes. "Oh, dear! It must be fixed up!" she said in a more natural tone, genuinely sympathetic and friendly. "He doesn't mean it. I'm sure he doesn't."

Courtney laughed--rather disagreeably. Helen was confirming her own newly formed, anything but exalted opinion of herself as a human value. "I suppose it'll never for an instant occur to anyone that I might be the discontented one."

"Well, you know, yourself, Courtney," stammered Helen, "it doesn't seem likely a woman'd give up a good husband and a good home----"

Courtney's arresting smile was bitterly ironic. "Indeed it doesn't," assented she. "Give up what she married for? Not unless she was sure of a better living. Men think they marry for love--but it's really to--I'm not equal to saying why men marry. You can find the reason in Ben Franklin's autobiography, if you care to look it up. As for us women--it's the living."

"It's not true of me!" cried Helen, who had in all its amusing, or exasperating, efflorescence the universal feminine passion for drawing everything down to the personal, for seeking a compliment to herself or a reflection upon herself in any and every remark addressed to her by man or woman. "Poor as I am, I'm----"

"Never mind, dear," said Courtney with good-humored raillery. "At your age I was talking the same way. You'll find out some day that the hardest person in the world to get acquainted with is your real self. Why, there isn't one human being in ten million who'd know his real self if they met in the street." She rose to inspect the thick mat of morning-glories trellised up the end of the veranda. "And most of us, if we were introduced to our real selves, would refuse to speak to such low creatures--especially the romantic people."

"I _know_ I'd not marry for _anything_ but love!"

Courtney, her back to Helen, was busy with the morning-glories. "Of course," said she. "One may eat because one is fond of the dinner--of the dishes, of the way it's served, of the company, and so on, and so on. But what's the _real_ reason?" She turned on Helen with a mocking smile. "Why, because to live one must eat. That makes the rest incidental. A sensible person tries to take the most favorable view of the food he has to eat or go without. A sensible woman does her best to love the man that asks her."

"I wish you wouldn't say that sort of things, Courtney," Helen cried. "I know illusions are illusions, but I want to keep them."

Courtney's expression changed abruptly. The deep-green eyes looked dreamily away. "If only one _could_ keep them!" she said. "But one can't." She shook her head sadly. "One can't." Then her face brightened. "My dear, it's better to throw them away oneself and get--perhaps something better--certainly something truer--in place of them. Sooner or later life will snatch them away, anyhow--and leave one quite naked." She turned sad, mysterious eyes on the girl. "You don't know," she went on, "what it has cost me, this being bred in illusions. Illusions--everywhere! Illusions for and about everything and everybody! Oh, Helen--Helen--that's what's the matter with us women. That's why we're such poor creatures--why we make such bad marriages, why we're such imperfect wives and mothers. We don't think. We purr or scratch."

A long pause, then Helen sighed. "And I believed you and Richard were happy!"

"No," replied Courtney, her smile mocking, but pain in her eyes. "But we're going to be--if we can get over what our illusions have cost us and can set our feet on the solid earth. No more lies! And the biggest lie of all is that lying can ever bring real happiness." She was standing in the long, open window. She thought a moment, then said with an energy that frightened the girl: "And I'm sick--sick--sick of perfumes that end in a stench!"

That afternoon she sent an acceptance of Richard's proposition--a "line" as he had suggested: "Winchie and I will stay on here until the divorce--and, if you so wish, so long as I am alone. I will keep Helen here, too." On the fourth morning after the dispatch of this, there came a letter from James & Vandegrift, inclosing one, unsealed, from Richard. She read the inclosure first:

"MADAM: From this date I cease to be your husband. You may take such legal action as this may suggest.

"RICHARD VAUGHAN."

She understood that Dick was simply meeting the legal requirements. But, these curt words made her tremble, made her skin burn, made her eyes sink with shame, though she was alone. A few moments and she glanced at the accompanying note from the lawyers. This sentence in it caught her eye: "As two years is the legal period in this State in actions on the ground of abandonment, you will observe that the date of Mr. Vaughan's letter enables you shortly to begin suit." She took up Dick's letter, looked at the date--August 17th, two years before. Then in a few weeks she could sue; in a few weeks more, she would be free. Free! That charmed word had no spell of exultation for her. She sank down by the window with heart suddenly faint and terror-stricken. She had been looking forward to a long time in which to plan--about Winchie, about her future, about Basil. And she would have only a few weeks. A few weeks--and her whole future to be decided--and she without experience, without anyone she could rely upon or even consult, without resources.

August 17th--why had he chosen that date? With so many serious things to think of, her mind kept swinging back to that triviality--why August 17th? All at once it flashed upon her. August 17th--that was the date when Nanny had spied on her and Basil at the summerhouse. She covered her face, and the blood surged in hot billows against her scorching skin.

Helen came, crying: "Oh, there you are. Winchie wants ice cream for supper. Don't you think-- Why, Courtney, how solemn you look!"

"And you would, too," said Courtney, "if your hair had been falling out the way mine has lately."

"Don't be so foolish," reassured Helen. "You could lose half of what you've got, and still have more than most women.... Perhaps it's worry that's making it fall?"

"I--worry? How absurd."

"No, I don't believe you ever do."

"Let's have the ice cream. Chocolate. And I feel just like jelly roll."

*XXVI*

The pause before the first decisive step toward freedom--and perhaps away from Winchie--had shrunk to a day less than two weeks.

It is mercifully not in human nature vividly to anticipate catastrophe. Death is the absolute certainty; yet no living being can imagine himself dead. And it was anything but certain that Dick would ever assert his legal right and take away her child. In her anxiety about Winchie, she had been giving much thought to Dick's character, which would be the deciding factor. And she was surprised at the knowledge of it she had unconsciously absorbed. Except among fools--who, whether they look within or without, see nothing--it is a commonplace of experience to discover that what we fancied we thought about a certain person or thing is precisely the opposite of what we really think when compelled to interrogate ourselves honestly. That is why the whole world can live and die by formulas in which it has not the least actual belief. These discoveries of our self-ignorance always astonish us, no matter how often they occur. Courtney had got many surprises of this kind in the past two years; yet this find--her intimate knowledge of her "abstract" husband's character--seemed incredible.

It wasn't strange that she should know how he took his coffee, his favorite brand of cigarettes and of whisky, that he detested cold baths and would not wear underclothes with silk in them, or, if it could possibly be avoided, starched shirts--that he hated low shoes and high collars. As a "dutiful wife" she had made it her chief business, after Winchie, to see to her legal husband's material comfort, so far as he would permit it. But how had she come by a deep conviction of his honesty, of his truthfulness, of his incapacity for meanness of any kind? Where had she got her confidence in his sense of justice--he who had alienated her by his stubborn and tyrannical injustices to her? Why did she summarily dismiss as absurd the suggestion that his recent conduct was dictated merely by indifference to her or selfish consideration for his own comfort? These high ideas of him certainly did not date from their courtship and honeymoon; for, then she had no more interest or discrimination as to character than the next young person. There was no accounting for it. She simply found that these beliefs were immovably lodged under the opinion of him she had supposed was hers--the opinion that had made her love for Basil seem as right as if she had been a girl. So, while she feared he would take Winchie away from her, with a fear dark enough to shadow her days and make many a night uneasy, she was always saying to herself believingly, "He could not do anything unjust."

One evening she fell into a somber mood. It wasn't so clear as usual that Dick would see the to her obvious injustice of separating mother and child. She left Helen, went up and stole in to sit by Winchie's bed--a habit she had formed lately. She got so low spirited that, when she heard Helen go along the hall toward the upstairs sitting room, she slipped downstairs and out into the air to wander among the flowers and beneath the scented trees. There was a thin moon and one of those faint, soft, intermittent breezes that give the disquieting yet fascinating sense of spirit companionship. She strolled to the edge of the lake; the fireflies seemed the eyes of the breeze spirits that were whispering and friendlily touching her. She saw a boat with a single occupant a few yards down the lake, close in shore. Even as she glanced, a low voice--Basil's--came from the boat: "Courtney--may I come?"

She was not startled. Before the voice she had thought, "Basil will probably be trying to see me before long." She answered in the same undertone, "Helen may be looking this way."

"If you sit on the bench down here, I can come to you. The shadow's deep enough."

She hesitated, went to the bench he indicated. The press of the immediate had been all but keeping him out of her mind. But whenever she did think of him it was as her lover. With a nature as tenacious as hers habit is not dethroned in a day or demolished all at once by any convulsion however violent. Also, the more she suffered and the lonelier she felt--not a soul about to whom she could speak or hint any part of what was harassing her--the more tender grew her thoughts of the man in whom she had invested so much. Throwing good love after bad is not a rare human weakness--and Courtney was by no means certain in those depressed days that her investment had been bad, as such investments go in a world of human beings.

He soon had his boat opposite the bench, made it fast. He sprang to her, seized her hands and was kissing them. "No--no. You mustn't," she protested, drawing away.

"Tell me all about it!" he cried. "How I suffered till I heard your voice on the telephone! I was watching the house with a glass all afternoon until dark. I was in the boat, lying a few rods up there all night. And from dawn I was across the lake watching with the glass again. So, I knew everything was quiet. But until your voice came, I was mad with dread--though I had seen you, just like your usual self, in the grounds and on the veranda hours before. But--tell me all about it."

"There's nothing to tell," said she. His recital had seemed to her as if it were of something in which she had neither part nor interest.

"He knows, doesn't he?

"Yes--he knows." And there she stopped because she never had discussed and never would discuss with anyone what happened between her and her husband.

"What is he going to do?"

"I don't know."

"But-- Don't keep me in suspense, dear. Is he going to get a divorce?"

"No. I'm to get it."

"Your voice is very queer. Aren't you--glad?"

"I'm afraid about Winchie."

"Oh--of course. Does he threaten to--" Basil halted.

"No. But-- Basil, you must go."

"Go? It's perfectly safe here."

"Yes. But I've no right to see you, after the way he has acted--until I'm free." All true enough; yet she could not make her voice sound right to herself. "It isn't wise and it isn't honorable," she ended haltingly.

She saw, or rather felt, him eying her somberly. "When will you be free?" he asked in a constrained tone.

"In a few months--I think."

"And then we shall marry at once." He said it in the tone a man uses when he wishes to convince himself and another that what he is saying is the matter of course.

She did not answer.

He laughed unpleasantly. "You don't seem overjoyed at the prospect."

"I'm thinking of Winchie."

"Oh!" A pause; then he asked, "As soon as you've got Winchie safely, we'll marry?"

This was a question she had not faced alone, yet. She was far from ready to face it with him. She found one of those phrases that come easily and naturally to women, ever compelled to be diplomatic. "If we both wish it then." Lightly, "You see, as I'm escaping with reputation intact, you're not bound to marry me."

"Bound?" he exclaimed. "Courtney, please don't joke about this."

"I'm quite serious--though I don't act as funereally as you do when you think you're serious."

"We love each other, and----"

"Do we?" An impulse of honesty, of impatience at her own yielding to the temptation to temporize forced her to say it, "Do we, Basil?"

"Courtney, have you--changed? Can't you forgive me for----"

"It isn't that," she interrupted, and she thought she was telling the truth. "Let's never speak of that. No--it's-- Could anyone go through what we have without being--sobered?"

"That's true. It has made me love you more intensely, more earnestly than ever. What we've suffered has made us like--like the two pieces of metal the fire fuses into one."

"That _sounds_ nice. But--is it so?"

"You know it is!" he cried angrily.

"No, I don't," she replied, as if she were weighing every word. "I've made up my mind not to tell any more lies, especially to myself. I don't feel as I used to feel. There's--some one between us."

"Vaughan?"

"Yes. I've a sense of obligation to him. If you had seen what I saw--how far above the little men who go in for cheap theatricals or act like mad dogs----"

To his sensitiveness it seemed for an instant that she was hitting at him, was slyly reminding him of his own conduct. But he soon felt that he was mistaken--that there was another reason why her words stung him. "It sounds as if you were falling in love with him," he said in a grotesque attempt at a voice of raillery.

"No," replied she, and her voice satisfied him. "That part of my life is over. It could no more be brought back than last year's summer."

"Winter," he corrected.

"It wasn't all winter, to be fair," said she, and changed the subject with, "But--remember, you are free--free as I am. We shan't see each other or hear from each other for a long time. It may be that you'll fall in love with somebody else----"

"Courtney, do you love me? ... Look at me. Answer."

She continued to gaze out over the lake. "Honestly, I do not know. Sometimes I think I do. Again I wonder, did I love you or was I only in love with love? It's so easy to fool oneself when one wants any thing as much as I wanted love."

"If you knew how you were--hurting me you'd not say these things."

"Would you rather I lied to you?" she asked gently.

"Yes! For, I love you and I can't live without you. You've made yourself necessary to me. We must marry as soon as you are free and have Winchie."

"Yes--we will marry, I suppose. There isn't anybody so near to me."

"Except Winchie."

"Winchie _is_ me."

"I understand," he said. "It's--beautiful. Ah, Courtney, we must marry as soon as we can."

"No. I must--" She paused.

"Go on, dear. What is it that's to keep us apart?"

"I must be independent as well as free." The truth was out at last--the truth her nature as a woman of sheltered breeding was always dodging, but which her intelligence and pride were forcing her to face. "I must be independent."

"There couldn't be any question of that kind between us."

"There shan't be," replied she with energy that startled him.

"I'll settle any amount you say on you. I'll make myself your dependent if you wish."

She laughed in a sweet, tender way. Whatever his faults and failings, he certainly was generous. "Basil!" she murmured. Then: "As if that would help matters. Why, anything I got from you would only increase my dependence. No, I must be really free--so neither of us could think for an instant I was your wife because I had to be supported--or you were my husband because you felt I was helpless. We women have got to stop being canary birds if we're to get real self-respect--or real consideration."

"What queer notions you do get," said he with man's tolerant amusement at the fantasies of the women and the children. "Think of wasting such a night--and our few minutes together--discussing theories--and sordid ones!"

"Sordid! Basil, we're made out of earth and we've got to live on the ground. I'm done forever with the kind of romance and idealism we were brought up on. I'm going to build as high as I can, but I'm going to build on the ground. No more cloud castles that vanish when the wind changes. I'm going to use romance for decoration not for building stone, and cakes for dessert, not in place of bread."

He laughed appreciatively. "How clever you are! We'll get on beautifully," he said. "You're the sort of woman that never bores a man or makes him feel like looking about."

"Are you the sort of man that never bores a woman or makes her feel like looking about?"

"That's not for me to say," answered he with a careless laugh.

"It doesn't strike you as important--what a woman might think about such matters, does it?" said she, good-humored in her mockery.

"Oh, yes--if the woman's you. But let's not bother about such things. It seems such a waste of time. One kiss?"

She shook her head. "Not with Richard looking on."

"Do you _want_ me to kiss you--dear?" he said passionately.

With a nervous glance toward the house she rose. "Please!" she said, in vague entreaty. "You must go."

"You haven't told me--anything--yet." He cast hurriedly about for some way to detain her. "There are your plans for being independent."

"I haven't any."

"Do sit down. I'll not touch you again."

"It isn't that, Basil. It's for the same reason that I didn't write and can't. Hasn't what he's done pledged us both to----"