Part 31

Now that he was nothing but fellow worker to her, she could look at him with the friendly impartiality of human being for fellow being. Piecing together what she knew of his masculine side and what she could how see latent in those strong features, those intense nervous energies, she felt that somewhere there might be a woman equal to concentrating upon herself what went altogether into the duel for nature's secrets. "And unless she were a great woman, he would burn her up like a match tossed into a furnace."

This latent capacity of his for love fascinated her. There were even moments when it tempted her--was like a challenge taunting her womanhood as confessedly ineffectual. But at the laboratory she was too busy to linger over such thoughts; and in her other hours, there was household routine to compel her attention--and the plans for the great attempt.

At last Carter wrote that he would positively come in two weeks. "You've been splendidly patient with me," Dick said as he showed her the latter. "I've seen that you were eager to be gone." As she murmured a polite denial, he repeated, "Yes, eager--but not in the way to make me uncomfortable over my selfishness."

"I've rarely thought of it while I was down here," said she. "It was only in the evenings--and when I happened not to sleep very well."

"It was natural you should be upset," sympathized Dick. "Who wouldn't be, standing on the edge of the icy plunge so long? But you'll like it--and everything'll come out all right. I've discovered that you have a lot of common sense--and that's more than I can say for most men--including myself."

Another month, at the farthest, and she would be in New York, would have made the great beginning! ... Should she send Basil word as soon as she arrived? Should she wait until she got her bearings? She saw it would be wiser to wait. Everything depended on beginnings--right beginnings--and it would be the right beginning for Basil to find her as obviously master of her own destiny, as free to withhold or to give, as was he himself. Also-- Coming from a small town in the West, she could not but feel strange in New York, and look provincial. "Yes, I'll wait," she decided, the instant this last reason dropped into the balance. For, she had not the vanity that underestimates the matter of looks and neglects the fact that everyone is at a distinct disadvantage in a strange environment.

One morning, about a week later, there came a ring at the telephone which was in Dick's part of the laboratory. As these calls were always for her, she rose from her case in the back room and went to answer. It was Mazie--"The hotel over to Fenton wants to speak to you, ma'am."

"Connect them, please," said Courtney, hoping her voice had betrayed and would betray nothing to the man behind her.

Soon came an operator's voice, and then Basil's. "I must see you!"

"Yes," she said. "I'll come."

"In your auto runabout--on the Fenton road to Tippecanoe--at two this afternoon. Will that do?"

"Yes. I'll be there. Good-by." And she rang off.

She turned from the telephone with a glance at Richard. He was busy with the blowpipe--no doubt had not even heard. As she was leaving to go up to the house for dinner, she said to him: "I'll not be back this afternoon."

"All right," replied he. "I sha'n't need you till to-morrow morning."

"I'll be here, then, of course."

He turned on the high stool. "You know," said he, with only the faintest suggestion of the unusual in face and voice, "there's no reason why you shouldn't see anyone you wish, at your own house."

She flushed guiltily. But her composure instantly returned, and she went on toward the door, casting about for a reply.

"I've no desire to interfere," continued he. "But--Jimmie went to Fenton on an errand yesterday, and he happened to tell me he saw at a distance a man who looked enough like Gallatin to be his twin. If you should be seen--you know how they gossip here. You could send the boy and Helen over to Wenona for the afternoon. Pardon my suggesting these things. It occurred to me you might not realize how closely you're watched by everybody, since the divorce."

She stood in the outer doorway, trying to conceal her agitation and trying to reflect.

"I appreciate you'd rather see him elsewhere--and I'd prefer you did, too. But your son has his rights--don't you think?"

"Yes," said Courtney. "I'll see him at the house."

"Thank you," said Richard. And he resumed his careful mixing of two powders in a small brass mortar.

She went, returned, stood where she could see his profile. "You give me your word of honor you'll not interfere with him in any way?"

Dick smiled without suspending work with the pestle. "Certainly," said he. "On my honor I'll not leave this room until you telephone me that I may." His smile broadened into a laugh that made her extremely uncomfortable, though it was pleasant enough.

"I didn't think you cared about me or him--or anything but your chemistry," she said in self-defense. "I asked simply as a precaution. I felt I owed it to him and to the boy."

"I laughed--you'll pardon me--because he's such a shallow pup. I never think of you two that I don't think of Titania and Nick."

As he tossed this lightly over his shoulder, she was hopelessly at a disadvantage. She was scarlet and shaking with anger. No return thrust occurring to her, she flung a furious glance into his back and departed, with about all the joy out of her anticipations of the meeting. Instead of telephoning from the house, she ascended to the apartment over the laboratory and by the direct wire there got the Phibbs Hotel in Fenton. A few minutes, and Basil was at the other end. "Come to the house here, instead," said she. "At the same time--two o'clock."

A silence, then his voice, "No. You come over."

"I can't do it. And I'd not ask you if I weren't sure. I'll explain when I see you."

"There's an especial reason why I want you here," urged he.

"And there's a more especial reason why I want you here."

"And there's an even more especial reason why I _must_ see you here," insisted he. "It's very unsatisfactory, talking over the telephone, with people probably listening all along the wire. I'll come to-morrow--or late this afternoon. But you come here first."

"No--really, I mustn't," she declared. "Don't you trust me? Don't you know I'd not ask it, if it weren't perfectly--all right?"

"It isn't that, but-- I can't talk about it.... I'll come." And from his tone she knew he had been decided by the fear that she'd think him afraid. And then she realized that she had made her remark because she counted on its appeal to his vanity--and the thought acted upon her enthusiasm not unlike a douche.

*XXVIII*

She was on the drive-front porch with Lizzie, making plausible pretense of rearranging the boxed evergreens. She heard the carriage turn in at the gates, though they were nearly a quarter of a mile from the house. As the horses rounded the bend she looked. But she waited on Lizzie, who was not slow to cry out with delighted surprise, "Why, there's Mr. Gallatin!"

Courtney said, "Do run in and see that the sitting room's straight." Thus, she was alone when he descended. She saw him through a mist and the hand she gave him was cold, was trembling. In the doorway, she said hastily in an undertone: "Helen and Winchie are at Wenona--Richard at the laboratory. You've stopped unexpectedly on your way south--for an hour or two."

"I understand," said he. "I can't trust myself to look at you. My love! My love!"

She flashed up at him a glance radiant with her florid fancies of anticipation. "Come into the house," she contrived to say in an ordinary tone.

As they went along the hall, side by side and talking for effect on possible listeners, she saw that he had dressed as carefully as a bridegroom. No more carefully than she had dressed, so far as she dared; still, it struck her as amusing--as suggestive of hollowness. And the voice which, as she heard it in fancy during those weeks of waiting, had been so moving, so magical--what a commonplace voice it was, and how very like affectation its Eastern intonations sounded. "That nasty remark of Richard's!" she thought. "How weak of me to let such a thing affect me." They entered the sitting room; he quickly closed the door, caught her hands, looked at her from head to foot. "Courtney!" he murmured. "I love you! I love you!"

She thrilled, lifted her eyes--dropped them. A chill stole over her. She had to resist an impulse to draw her hands away. He looked really handsome, was outwardly all her imagination had been picturing--and more. Yet-- What was the matter? What was lacking? Why could she see only the weakness and coarseness--the qualities that had stood out the night he was drunk and the next afternoon when she was battling against his vanity and jealousy? "It's my nerves," she decided. "I'm under a greater strain than I realize." When he kissed her, she turned her head so that his lips touched her cheek. And immediately she released her hands. "We must be careful," she apologized.

"Why? You're free."

"Yes--but--" She paused.

"Why do you act so strange--so distant?"

"I don't know," she confessed. She felt ashamed of herself that she was visiting on him the consequences of her own folly in having let her imagination overleap all the bounds of probability in forecast. "I don't know," she repeated. "Nerves, I suppose. Or, perhaps it's a bad cold. I've felt one coming on all day. This morning I forgot to close the----"

"Aren't you glad to see me?"

"Yes--yes, indeed," she protested. "Let's sit down."

She took a chair near the table. He was thus compelled to the sofa, several feet away. "We ought to have met where we first arranged," said he, constrained, embarrassed.

"I have to be careful. You forget Winchie."

An uncomfortable silence, then he: "You've been free thirty-nine days. Yet you have not written me."

"I explained to you----"

"Didn't you feel like writing?"

"Of course. But----"

"But--what?"

"I wanted to be independent as well as free."

He looked at her gloomily. "Is _that_ what you call love?"

She forced a smile and nodded.

"Do you know what I've come for? For you."

She felt herself drawing together, shrinking away from him. "For me?" she echoed vaguely.

"To marry you."

She was not looking at him; but she was seeing his face as it was when swollen and distorted by drink. She answered hastily, "Oh, I couldn't do that."

"Why not?"

"I can't marry till--till I'm independent. I've been making a lot of plans. I'm going to work early next month."

"What nonsense!" he cried. "Courtney, do you realize you've not yet said a single word of love? What is the matter? Is it our meeting in this house?"

"Perhaps. I don't know. I don't understand it myself." Why was her mind so perverse? Why did it thrust at her the things it was unjust to remember, generous and necessary to forget? Why was she critical, aloof, instead of responsive and generously glad? She went on: "It may be the cold. My nose feels queer, and----"

"We must marry, right away," he insisted, frowning upon her lack of seriousness. "We've been separated too long already."

That seemed to her to explain. But it did not remove. She said, "Not until I'm independent."

"But that means years--years!"

"Oh, no," protested she. "Not the kind of independence _I_ mean. I simply want to be sure I could earn my living if it were necessary."

"But it isn't necessary. And life is so short, dearest. And at most we'll have few enough years of happiness."

"I know," said she, surprised that these truths did not move her in the least, nor his looks, his tones, so charged with entreaty she such a short time ago would have found irresistible. "But I've thought it out, and I realize everything depends on my getting that feeling of independence. I'll not risk again what I've been through."

"You know very well, that couldn't happen. As for your working, why, dear, unless a woman's been bred to making a living, it's almost impossible for her."

"Nevertheless I must try."

"If you loved me, you'd not talk like this," cried he, bitterly.

Instead of protesting, she became thoughtful. "Do you really think so?" she asked. "I wonder if that's true."

"Certainly not," retreated he, alarmed. "We love each other. But your way of acting and talking has upset me. I ought not have come here. We should have met over at Tippecanoe."

"You don't seem to see my point of view, Basil."

"I do, but it's a mere notion. A very fine notion," he hastened to add, though he could not make his tone other than grudging, "but foolish."

"It was my dependence that put me in such a frightful position with Richard. And----"

"Courtney," he interrupted, between anger and appeal, "please don't repeat that comparison of what you were to him and what you and I are to each other. It--hurts me, and it's not fair."

"Would you promise to love me always just as you do now?"

"I certainly would. I shall."

She lowered her eyes. Her heart sank.

"Wouldn't you?" he asked.

"No," replied she. "How can I--or anyone--honestly say how he or she'll feel about a person they don't know through and through--a month ahead--let alone a year--ten years--twenty? You know that's true, Basil. You're not honest with yourself--or with me."

He was silent, was watching her with sullen, suspicious eyes.

"It seems to me," she went on, "that love--real love--ought to make you careful. If we were a boy and a girl, without experience or intelligence or anything but hazy, rosy emotions----"

"You and I never will agree about love," he interrupted, impatiently. "But that's a small matter. The only point is that we love each other. Love's like a rose, Courtney. Tear it apart to see what it's made of and you lose the rose and have only withered petals."

"Yes--one kind of love. But is it the kind to build one's life upon?"

"I'm not going to argue with you. Have your way, if you will. You'll soon get enough of work--of this fantastic idea of independence, as you call it. As if I'd not be too afraid of losing your love not to respect your rights and consider you always and in every way."

"But suppose _I_ ceased to love _you_--and were dependent on you----"

"I know. I know. Don't let's argue it. Go on with your plans. The sooner you begin, the sooner you'll see how foolish you are. You don't appreciate what work means--especially for a woman--the toil, the humiliations, the downright miseries--that cost youth and looks and health."

It still further depressed her to see how swiftly his words depressed her--how appalling was the lift and spread of the mountain she had been dreaming of removing with one shovel and one pair of feeble hands. "Instead of discouraging me," cried she with some anger in her reproach, "you ought to be encouraging me. I should think you'd be afraid to have a woman about who might be your wife for the sake of a living--might be making a hypocrite of herself and a fool of you."

He winced; she saw he was thinking of Richard. "That could never happen with _us_!" cried he.

"Never is a long time."

He was squirming in irritation and impatience--and was obviously afraid she would suspect the thoughts he yet could not conceal. "Please don't insist on discussing this, Courtney. Go ahead. Try your scheme. Work! I never heard of a woman at work who wouldn't do almost anything to escape."

She forced a laugh. "Then if I fail and send for you, you'll know what it means--and fly in the other direction."

"Not I," replied he with an overenergy that failed in its purpose of hiding the discomfort her suggestion had caused him. "I tell you, we love each other. That makes everything different." He laughed. "Work! Thank God, you and I don't have to work. We can love."

She sat with eyes down and fingers idly matching the corners of her little handkerchief. What a difference between work as a dream and work in the doing!--between imagining the glories of self-respecting independence and making the coarse, cruel struggle step by step up to those glories--between work as a pastime and work as a necessity. How unpractical she had been! She sighed. "I wish," said she, "I'd never realized that to be secure a woman must be independent. But--now that I've realized it, I've got to go on."

He put on an expression of pretended deep and respectful interest that made it hard for her to hide her amusement. "What are your plans?" he asked.

"I'll tell you sometime. I don't feel in the humor now."

"Something vague--eh?" And she saw that he assumed she was only pretending, after all. A superior man-to-woman smile had replaced his look of nervousness.

She waited until he had got himself comfortably settled down into this agreeable assumption, then said tranquilly, "No. I have the place promised me."

He rose impatiently. If she had needed proof as to his real opinion of women--his conviction of their inferiority, his expression would have given it. Yes, his opinion was the same as Richard's--always had been, as she could now see, recalling remarks he had made from time to time. The same prejudices as Richard; only, Basil had been less courageous--less honest. Those prejudices irritated her in Richard; in Basil they seemed laughable. But he was getting his impatience and scorn, his exasperation against her poor womanish folly somewhat under control. "Now, Courtney, can't you realize--" he began in a teacher-to-infant tone. Then, a new thought struck him. He broke off abruptly. "No--go ahead. It's just as well you should have the lesson," said he.

"Should learn how dependent I am on--some man?"

"How unfitted you are to be anything but a lady."

"I know that already," replied she forlornly. "Or, rather, I'm not fitted to be either dependent or independent."

"Then why not be sensible, and marry me at once?"

She did not answer. She could not tell him the truth; she would not tell him a lie. Anyhow, she wasn't sure what she did think.

"You will--won't you, dear? You'll not waste time that we might give to love and happiness?" And he anxiously watched her face--with its sweet feminineness that gave him hope, its mystery and its resoluteness that made him uneasy.

"It's a temptation," she said, absently. She saw herself trying for independence and failing--losing heart, self-respect--growing cynical through hardship--marrying Basil to escape-- Just there, she suddenly surprised her elusive real self, saw deep into the inmost workings of her own mind--saw that she did not care for Basil Gallatin--that she had really been pretending to herself that she loved him because he was the alternative, the refuge, should her try for independence fail!

"I'll tell you what let's do," she heard him saying. "Let's get married. Then you can take that place, whatever it is. With your future secure no matter what happened, you'd work better and would be much more likely to succeed."

The appeal of this subtle proposal awakened her to her peril. It must be now or never; she must speak the truth now, or lose the courage and the strength to speak it. "Basil," she said abruptly, "I don't love you."

He stared.

"I've been lying to myself and to you. I don't love you."

"That's not true!"

"I never did love you," she replied--for, with the one truth out, the other forged to the front and made its amazing self visible. "No--I never did love you." How plain it all was, now! How strange that she should for even an infatuated moment have believed this was the man she needed, the man who needed her--not words alone, and kisses and thrills, but real need--for mind and heart and body--all that the three have to give and long to give and to receive.

He stood before her, looking down in graciously smiling remonstrance. "That's a little too much," he said tenderly. "You can't have forgotten all we've been to each other--those hours of happiness--those moments of ecstasy--my love--my Courtney----"

There was color in her cheeks, an answering tenderness in the eyes that lifted to his. "No, I've not forgotten. And as I had to learn and as there's no other way for woman or man to learn but experience, I don't regret. But we were both in love with love--not with each other. And what's more, we never could be." Now that she had flung away pretense, its veil of illusion over her sight dropped; she was seeing him as she looked at him--not his qualities that repelled, not his qualities that attracted, but the whole man--was seeing him as we see only those toward whom are amiably indifferent. She was thinking, "What a nice, well-bred man he is, but how small." Not bad, not grossly sensual, not mean--not at all mean, but the reverse. Just small.

He began to recover from the stupefaction of the convincing tones of her denial of love. He was hastily donning the costume of pose that is correct for such occasions. She beamed genially upon him and said, "Now, don't work yourself up, my dear Basil. Sit down over there, and let's talk quite quietly--and naturally."

It is impossible for anyone with any sense of humor whatever to indulge alone in paroxysms of emotion before a tranquil spectator. Basil stopped rolling his eyes and dilating his nostrils, and seated himself, in no very good humor. Her tone was not pleasant. It would have been perfectly proper for a man to use to a woman. It was impertinent, in weaker sex to stronger. "Oh, I'm all right," said he, crossly, as he seated himself. "But you'd better look out about those ideas of yours. They have a terribly unfeminizing effect on women."

"Yes--I guess they do," replied she. A puzzling, alluring combination of seriousness and humor she looked as she sat there opposite him, her elbows on the arms of the chair, her chin resting upon the backs of her linked fingers, her eyes fixed gravely yet somehow quizzically upon him. "Have you ever thought of our life together?" asked she. "Of what we'd do--between times?"

"Between times?"

"No one--not even the most ardent lovers--can make love all the time. There haven't been any 'between times' in our life heretofore, because of the circumstances. But when we were together without interruption--with no excitement or interest of danger--with no stimulus--with just ourselves--what would we do 'between times'?--and there'd be more and more 'between times' as we got used to each other."

This uninviting but obviously truthful picture sobered and exasperated him. "Haven't thought about it," he confessed. "I haven't gone into details. But I know we'll be happy. You'll step into the position you are entitled to and I can see that you get."

"The social position, you mean?"

"Certainly. And we'll enjoy ourselves."

He could not possibly have said anything that would have shown more clearly the width and depth of the gap between them--how little he understood her, how little they had in common.

"You'll be tremendously popular," he said with enthusiasm.

She shook her head slowly. "I don't think _I_ could be happy, wasting my life, scattering myself among a lot of inane pastimes." She laughed a little. "You'd be horribly disappointed in me, Basil."

"I'll risk it. They'll be crazy about you in the East." He nodded proud, confident, self-complacent encouragement. "I'll risk it!"

She met his look with a quiet final "But I'll not." In another mood his proposal, his manner, his very poor sort of pride in her would have amused her. But as she listened, she remembered all she had believed about this man, all her idealizing of his mind and character. And she grew sad and sick. This small man!