Part 33

She turned away. He saw that her emotions were making her tremble. How she loved him! What a prize such a love would be--and how chagrined Courtney would feel--Courtney the vampire woman who had tried to destroy him, and thought she had succeeded--and was gloating over his misery. "If we'd had the chance, Helen, how happy we could have made each other! But I mustn't talk of that."

"Why not?" said she, with bold shyness. "I know that for some reason we can never be anything more to each other. But it's been a happiness--" earnestly, with tears in her eyes of the Homeric Juno and in her voice young and honest and sympathetic--"a real happiness to feel that the best of you--the part that's really you--found something to like in me."

He thrilled. Here was a woman! And a woman who appreciated him. He wondered how he could have lingered under a malign spell when such beauty of soul--and body, too--was his for the asking. "Helen!" he cried. And all his wounded heart's longing and all his wounded vanity's suffering gave energy to his cry. He took her hand; he put his arm round her. Her cheek touched his. How cool yet warm she was! How lovely and sweet! And the unsullied, untouched down! How fresh! Except her male relatives, no doubt no man but himself had ever kissed her-- "Helen--Helen! God forgive me, but I can't refuse this moment of pure happiness."

She gently drew away. "Oh, Basil," she sobbed. "And I had said no man should ever kiss me until-- But you--it seems different. You are so noble--so pure minded." Her eyes gazed into his with a trustful adoration that thrilled him.

"Helen--do you love me?" he cried.

Her honest eyes opened wider. "Would I have let you touch me if I didn't?"

"Yes--I know that!" he exclaimed. "How pure you are! It's like heaven after hell."

She gazed on into his eyes. A faint flush overspread her pale cheeks. She kissed him. "I love you, Basil," she said, gravely. Then all at once the color surged wave on wave over her brow, her cheeks, her neck. She hung her head, slowly drew away from his detaining vibrating arms. There is a time for lighting a fire; there is a time for leaving it to burn of itself. Helen had by the guidance of feminine instinct hit upon exactly the right instant for drawing back. She released herself, avoided his touch just when passion having captured his imagination swept on to the conquest of the flesh. At the edges of her lowered eyes appeared two tears to hang glistening in the lashes. From her bosom rose a sigh, soft, suppressed but heart-breaking.

The bright flame was leaping in his eyes. "You noble, splendid woman!" he cried, as his glance leaped from charm to charm--from delicate, regular features to sumptuous yet girlish figure. "What a jewel--in what a casket! You appeal to the best there is in me--only to the best. If I become a man again, it will be through you." And sincerity rang in his voice; for, the fire of high resolve to be a good man, to be worthy of this exalted womanhood, was burning in his blood. "Helen--will you help me? I've sinned--you never will know how dreadfully. But I love you."

Her answer was a beautiful shaft of the love light from her now wonderful eyes.

"Helen--will you marry me?"

From head to foot she trembled. All her color fled, leaving her face whiter than the milk-white skin of her voluptuous neck and shoulders. "I--love--you," she said simply.

"Then you will? Say you will, Helen. I cannot trust myself to go away without your strength to help me."

"I will, Basil."

There were tears in his eyes as in hers as he reverently kissed her hands. He had a sense of peace, of sin forgiven, of joyous return to the fold of honor and respectability. And her heart was overflowing with love, with gratitude to him and to God.

*XXX*

Returning to the house after full two hours, she burst excitedly in upon Courtney, who was at her easel in the upstairs sitting room. Courtney had by much experimenting found that of her several possible indoor occupations painting was far the best sedative for mind and nerves. The girl's face, exultant with pride, exalted with love, gave her a shock; for, only complete triumph could have so roused those regular, chastely cool features from their wonted repose. She had on impulse sent Helen to Basil in vague hope that they, admirably suited because each needed just what the other had to give, possibly might somehow get a start in the direction of making a match of it. She had the most convincing of reasons for believing that the heart in need of balm is the most susceptible to it. But she did not believe that Basil's heart was, at least latterly, involved; and, as she had not a glimmer of a suspicion of his stolen draughts of "moral tonic," she could not credit the story so clearly written upon those radiant features.

"You don't mean you got him!" she exclaimed, laying her brush on the rest and leaning back. And in her amazement and excitement over this sudden freakish prank of fate, out of her mind flew all the wretched thoughts over which she had been brooding--thoughts centering about her own ugly part in that scene at the laboratory.

Helen, undisturbed by this frankness of woman to woman friend, when there are no listeners, flung ecstatic arms about her and kissed her on either cheek. "I'm so happy!" she cried. "And I owe it all to you."

"Engaged?" inquired Courtney, the utter impossibility of the thing down-facing the clear evidence of its actuality.

Helen held up her left hand, displaying the old-fashioned diamond ring Basil had always worn on his little finger. "It was his mother's," she said, regarding it with an expression in the big brown eyes that would have thrilled him, had he seen. It thrilled Courtney; and no further proof of the absolute passing of Basil was needed than the unalloyed pleasure Helen's happiness gave her. "Engaged," said Helen, softly, dreamily. "And the day set--the second of June."

"Splendid!" Helen, she felt, was secure; for, Basil had the highest respect for his given word.

"And if you hadn't sent me down there, I do believe it'd never have happened. Just think!--though we've loved each other practically from the first meeting. He says it was his feeling about me that started him to struggling against that bad woman. Do you remember----"

"Yes, I remember," said Courtney. How dead it all was!--dead with the death that leaves no scar upon the heart, only a lesson in the memory. How could it ever have seemed living?--and immortal!

"Oh--of course you remember. You knew about her."

"Not much about her," replied Courtney. Pensively, "Really, nothing at all."

"I'm sure I don't want to know anything. The less a good woman knows about evil, the better.... I think recently he must have almost succeeded in breaking away; for, to-day I'm sure he was hesitating at the parting of the ways--whether to go back to her or not. And my coming there decided him. Isn't it beautiful?"

"Like a fairy tale," said Courtney, taking up her brush and eying critically the little landscape to which she was giving the finishing touches. "But, my dear, I don't think you ought to tell me these things."

She felt selfish in saying this; Helen had inexperienced youth's irresistible craving to confide, and was simply bursting with simple and innocent vanity over having achieved the double triumph of both spiritual and worldly advantage. But Helen was not to be suppressed or even discouraged. "Oh, yes," replied she. "He asked me to tell you we are engaged. I think he knows you've heard about that woman who was dragging him down, and thought you could advise me whether he was a fit man for me to marry. You see he feels he's been very bad."

"Men always like to think that," said Courtney. "But as long as they think so, they're not. No, he isn't bad, as men go. He wants to settle down. And he will settle down--with you." She was looking at the landscape but her quizzical eyes were seeing the pair of them a few years hence, contentedly yawning at each other, leading the conventional life of the well-to-do that swathes them body and mind in soft, indolent fat.

Helen had only half listened to Courtney, as she cared as little as the next woman about her lover's past, and knew for herself that he was high-minded and of the noblest instincts. She halted her own and Courtney's musings with an absent, "I feel that way about it, too." She moved nervously about the room, from time to time casting an appealing glance at her absorbed friend. Finally she burst out desperately: "There's something I want your advice about. I don't know whether I've done right or not."

"Yes?" said Courtney, encouragingly.

"I hadn't told you but--the fact is--while I was on that visit to Saint X, I--I became engaged to Will Arbuthnot."

Courtney looked laughingly at her over the suspended brush. "Oh, Helen--Helen!"

"But let me explain, dear," begged Helen, cheeks scarlet and eyes down. "When I went up there--and until just a few minutes ago--I thought--" Her faltering voice died away altogether.

"Thought there was no hope of getting Basil," said Courtney, with no censure, with only sympathy. She resumed touching up the picture to ease Helen's embarrassment. "Go on."

"I thought he was hopelessly in the power of that bad woman. So, I put my feeling for him out of my heart.... I know you're laughing at me. You're so cynical, Courtney. But a girl has got to do the best she can. And it's getting harder and harder for a poor girl to marry--that is, to marry a man with anything. And brought up as I've been I have to have nice surroundings. I want a good home--and--and--children--and they must be educated properly--and able to keep their place in our station of life."

"Certainly," reassured Courtney. "You did the practical, sensible thing."

"I know, what I did _seems_ to bear out your ideas. You're always teasing me about my ideals being mostly pretense. Well, perhaps they are. It does look like it--doesn't it?"

"Everybody's are," said Courtney, squinting at the picture. "Ideals are paste pearls. One can wear much bigger and finer ones than of the real--and nobody knows they're paste--or need ever know if one's careful to avoid their being tested. I'm glad, dear, you weren't so foolish as you always insisted you'd be."

Helen looked as if her soul were freed of a huge weight. "I will say, Courtney, that I'd never think of confiding in any person who believes like me, while I always feel safe in confiding in you."

"Thank you," said Courtney with genuine gratitude. "You don't know what a flattering compliment that is.... So, you're engaged to Will Arbuthnot?"

"Yes--that is, up at Saint X Will asked me to marry him. He's a nice, clean, thoroughly good fellow. And when Basil went away I supposed he'd gone to that bad----"

"I understand," interrupted Courtney. "Never mind about her."

"I felt I could grow to like Will, and I put Basil out of my heart." There she fluttered a guiltily uneasy glance at Courtney.

"And now," teased Courtney, "you give the naughty man the preference over the nice one."

"That's just it!" exclaimed Helen in triumph. "Basil needs me. I did hesitate--at least, I tried to--until he begged me to strengthen him by saying yes. Then I felt it was clearly my duty." Helen took Courtney's amused nod at her landscape as approval. "And while I hated to do a thing that in a way might seem deceitful--still, Basil has such an exalted opinion of me--and it helps him, to feel that way--and if he had found out that I hadn't loved him all along--or if I'd asked him to wait--I might have lost all chance to help him to be the noble, good man-- _Don't_ smile that way. Courtney."

And Courtney instantly changed her smile to one of tenderness. "I know you're good and sweet, dear--and beautifully sincere," said she, with perfect honesty; for, experience had left in her little of the familiar self-complacence that condemns human beings for human traits. "Much too good for Basil."

"Of course," said Helen, beaming, "a woman who has kept herself pure is superior to a man who has not been clean and nice."

"Always make Basil feel that," advised Courtney. "He's the kind of man that can behave only when he's on his knees--and you're the kind of woman that prefers worship to love.... I suppose you'll live in the East."

"In New York, I think," replied Helen, reflectively. "He talks of the country. But I've had enough of that. I'm sure he'd be better contented in a city."

Courtney laughed gayly. "What a dear you are!" she exclaimed, looking at her friend tenderly. "And so absolutely unconscious of it."

Helen returned her gaze in unaffected surprise. "I don't know what you mean. Why do you laugh?"

"Nothing." Courtney was painting again. "What are you going to do about Will Arbuthnot?"

"Why, be perfectly honest with him," cried Helen, injured and reproachful. "I simply couldn't be deceitful."

"Tell him you've found you can make a better match? Oh, you mustn't do that."

"I should think not!" exclaimed Helen, horrified. "That wouldn't be the truth. No, I'll tell him I find I don't love him as a woman should love the man she's to give herself to. You know I've got the old-fashioned ideals--that is, ideas--of the sacredness of womanhood. He'll understand."

"Yes," said Courtney gravely, though her eyes were dancing, "he'll have a deeper reverence for true womanhood.... Well, the men deserve it. They're responsible for our not daring to be our natural human selves."

"But I _am_ natural, dear," remonstrated Helen warmly.

Courtney was busily trying for a shade of brown on her palette. "You're sure Basil won't hear of your other engagement? Remember, he knows several Saint X people."

"I made an agreement with Will that we'd keep it a secret until we got ready to marry." Courtney laughed again; it was so obvious what lingering longing and hope had prompted this precaution. "What _are_ you laughing at _now_?" asked Helen.

"I wouldn't spoil your innocence by telling you," replied Courtney. And she rose and, palette in one hand, brush in the other, kissed her affectionately. "I'm glad you're happy--and I'm sure you'll always be happy."

"Indeed I shall. And he'll be happy too. As he said, he's lived in an atmosphere of deceit and falsehood, and he needs to be lifted up into purity and love and--and--all that makes a good home and life on a high plane."

Courtney was smiling strangely into her color box. "You'll be married in Saint X at Mrs. Torrey's, I suppose?"

Helen began her answer in a place so remote that Courtney, used as she was to the complexities of feminine thought, was completely baffled. Said Helen: "Will Cousin Richard think me disloyal, marrying a man he's at outs with?"

Courtney reflected. "I don't know what he'll think." she said. "But you've got to consider yourself first--and Basil."

"Yes, certainly--" Again Helen was only half listening. "About the wedding," she presently said. "I was thinking it out, while Basil and I were talking----"

"Helen--Helen!" And the small head with its auburn crown shook in mock disapproval. "Not while he was making his first love to you?"

Helen reddened. "I had to think about things. You know, a woman can't afford to let herself loose like a man. And I decided it'd be best for us not to announce the engagement, but just to marry. And not at Saint X. I'll go up to Aunt Lida's in Laporte. What is it, dear? Why do you look so queer?"

"Nothing--nothing." Courtney had no desire--indeed, what would have been the use?--to tell her thoughts as she viewed the swamp of deceit and double dealing into which Helen and Basil were dragging each other in pursuit of those will-o'-the-wisp ideals. Ideals! But Courtney's lip did not curl in scorn as it would have curled a few months before. She had learned that supreme lesson of tolerance--even when you are sure you are right, not to fancy that what is right for you is right for anyone else.

"No," Helen was saying, "I'll not tell Richard. It would annoy him and do no good. Oh, I ought to be ashamed of myself, to be so happy when you are unhappy."

"I--unhappy?"

"I know you conceal it, dear. You're brave and self-reliant. But-- Isn't there _anything_ I could do to bring you and Dick together again? You're a woman, dear. You simply have to be taken care of, and----"

"Don't shadow your romance with worry about me," said Courtney nervously. She was all confusion and restlessness.

"But I can't help it," pleaded Helen. "I know Richard was neglectful. And he's not an attractive man to a woman, as Basil is--isn't livable and lovable like Basil----"

Helen went on and on contrasting the two men, to Richard's disadvantage at every point. In former days she had been too much "afraid Richard'll find out how foolish I am and how little I know" to get in the least acquainted with him; since the divorce they had talked only constrained commonplaces, when she took Winchie to him. Thus, the comparison was grotesque distortion of Richard. But Courtney was not tempted to try to set her right. Helen, of small mentality and in love with Basil, would not appreciate, would not be convinced, would simply be irritated--would probably misunderstand and be encouraged to pursue her absurd scheme for bringing them together. But parallel with Helen's talk there was in Courtney's mind a juster contrasting of the two men--the one strong, the other weak; the one real, the other idealist; the one simple, the other a _poseur_; the one intelligent, the other merely conceited; the one master of his emotions, the other their slave; the one an original, the other a pattern, an identical sample of thousands turned out by the "best families" and the "best colleges" and the "best society." And then it came to her why she had estimated Basil quickly and accurately, once she began it--that it was because in Richard she for the first time had a measure to do her measuring with. The mists of his abstraction had completely hid his personality from her, as from everybody. Those mists had blown away in the cyclone of the disruption of their marriage, and he had stood revealed--and Basil also--Basil, the dwarf beside the giant. She could see how the lesser man had made what was, in the circumstances, irresistible appeal to the imperious craving that must be satisfied before the need of heart for sympathy and of mind for comradeship could gain a hearing, the craving that in gaining its ends will compel the imagination to play any necessary sorry trick upon the intelligence. She could see this; and she could also see how sorry the trick upon intelligence had been--how absurd was her dream of founding a life-long content and happiness upon what Basil could give her and she Basil.

"I'm sure," Helen was saying, "with a little management you could get Richard back."

These words fell upon Courtney's ears just as into her mind again came that scene between her and Richard at the laboratory--the childish, the coarse taunts she had hurled at him, and how he had met them. She was hot with the shame of it when Helen spoke. The suggestion that Richard could be got back overwhelmed her with a crushing, stinging sense of how in contempt he must hold her now. The red of her skin flamed up into scarlet. "Don't speak of those things," she commanded harshly. Then, instantly ashamed of this misdirected outburst of temper, she put on her most careless, frivolous air--put it on well enough to deceive Helen. "Let's talk trousseau," said she. "You haven't much time, you know. June's very near."

But Helen was too curious about the trouble that had so abruptly changed a friendship into hatred. "It must have been exciting--that quarrel between them," she hinted encouragingly. "You were there, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"Tell me, Courtney."

"It cured my cold," said Courtney. "I'd been feeling queer in the nose and eyes----"

"How _can_ you be so light!" exclaimed Helen. "Well--let's talk trousseau." She felt that she had done her duty, that it was a waste of time to try to induce Courtney to be serious-- "She _never_ will have any sense of responsibility--or of the graver side of life." And with a clear conscience she took up trousseau and thought and talked dress steadily the rest of the afternoon, straight through until the supper gong sounded. And she asked so many questions, so much minute advice about every little detail that Courtney's attention could not wander.

At supper Courtney got a real pleasure from Helen's rapt, tenderly smiling countenance--they could not talk before Lizzie as the engagement was to be kept secret. Also, she got pleasure mingled with amusement out of Helen's delightful swift assumption of the ways of a married woman, and out of her immense satisfaction--as shown in a certain sweet and loving condescension to Courtney--over Basil's superiority as a catch. Helen was in fancy already married and installed in grandeur. But after supper, when Helen went up to write her first love letter--(those to Will Arbuthnot didn't count)--Courtney made no attempt to save herself from the attack of the blues that had been threatening ever since she calmed sufficiently to recall what she had said to Dick at the laboratory. She sat at the piano playing softly. Helen's face was haunting her--that expression telling of dreams she understood so well--so well! Would Helen's dream fade too? Probably--yes, certainly--for, the Helen sort of woman soon discouraged love in a man, and the Basil sort of man looked askance at love as tainted of that devil whom no one believed in any more yet everyone feared. Fade--wither--die. And she herself--would she seek on and on, deceived always by hopes and longings--as she had been twice already--the second time worse deceived than the first----

Into her thoughts came an image of Richard. The image grew stronger. Very gradually she realized that he was actually before her, was the tall figure in the doorway of the sitting room----

"I didn't dare interrupt," he said. "It would have been like disturbing a funeral."

"Not quite so bad as that," replied she with an attempt to smile. Though her rose-bronze coloring enabled her to blush deeply without detection, had the corner where she was sitting been less dim he must have seen into what shamefaced confusion his coming threw her.

She went on playing; he seated himself at some distance from her to gaze into the fire and smoke. She was on the grill of humiliating thoughts about herself--what she had said and done that afternoon. She did not lift her eyes until she had made sure by several furtive glances that she could look at him in safety. She watched him--the cigarette gracefully between the long first and second fingers of his hand of the aristocrat and the artist--the poise of his curiously long head so well proportioned--the long, sensitive, mobile features--that indescribable look which proclaims at a glance the man of high intelligence--the man of the finely organized nervous system. Then she observed that he was in evening half dress--one more reason for his looking unusually handsome and distinguished. But all the time she was seeing those two expressions which had transformed him that afternoon--had transformed him and had made her feel mean and poor beside him. A man who could be such a wild hot blast of primeval passion; the man who could be stronger than passion, even such passion--there was indeed a man! And what must he think of her! "But no worse than I deserve."

To break the current of her own thoughts, she interrupted his with a trivial "You are dressed this evening."

"Because I've come to call," he replied, rousing himself from his reverie.

"I'll tell Helen."