Part 6

She had been gone during what ought to have been her busiest season. She rather expected to find the place in some confusion. Instead, so far advanced toward completion were her plans, and so thoroughly had she trained Jimmie and his son Bill and the house servants, everything was well under way. All her instructions, both those given before she left and those written to Jimmie from her father's--had been carried out exactly. They had worked as hard as if she had been there, had done it because they loved her--for only love can arouse and inspire the sluggish energies of those who serve. The lawns were trim and freshly green, the walks were covered with new tan-bark; and its red brown harmonized with the colors of lawn and trees as its odor harmonized with the odors from the grass and the foliage, from the brilliant flowers in great beds at either side of the house. All the windows were gay with boxes of blooming plants. Railings of verandas and balconies were draped with mats of budding creepers. The gardens--the beds in the lawns and along the verandas--the edges of walks and drives--the thickets and trellises--all were blossoming and odorous. Lovely contrasts of light and shade, delicious perfumes, birds flashing to and fro, singing in the trees and bushes--the Vaughan place illustrated what Pope meant when he called landscape gardening nature plus a soul. The soul that had given form to nature's color and perfume was Courtney's.

As the carriage drove down the deeply shaded main drive from highway to drive-front porch, she gazed round with a creator's pride and joy and love. She had two children--Winchie and this lovely place. All the servants gathered to welcome her--all except old Nanny, who had never forgiven and who resented the changes as sacrilege. They watched eagerly for signs of approval. Her expression, as she looked at what they had done, then at them, the unsteady voice in which she said "Beautiful--beautiful" went straight to their hearts. Within the house, everywhere open wide to June's enchantment, there was evidence of the same creative impulse--order without stiffness, art without any trace of art's labor.

Winchie would go straightway to look at his rabbits; she went upstairs alone to bathe and change after the dusty journey, telling Lizzie to bring him as soon as he had satisfied himself that his rabbits were all right. The door of the bedroom immediately across the hall from hers stood open, and with the thorough housekeeper's instinct she glanced in. It was the room Dick usually occupied. Instead of Dick's belongings she saw, spread about, toilet articles and clothing strange to her. She entered. On the bureau she instantly noted a pair of tasteful silver and ebony brushes; the monogram was "B.G." She opened a drawer; neckties, more attractive than any she had ever seen, filled two compartments to overflowing with their patterned silks and linens. In the third compartment several dozen line handkerchiefs; the monogram on them was again "B.G."

She opened the nearest closet. On forms hung perhaps a dozen coats; she recognized the cut and materials as foreign. Beneath was a long row of boots, shoes, pumps, slippers, all of the kind a woman of taste at once knows and appreciates. As she was closing the door there swung out from the hook high up a suit of beautiful striped linen pajamas monogramed in gray and faintly perfumed with lavendar. She went on into the adjoining front room--the room Dick had used as a study. Obviously, he no longer used it. The books of fiction and poetry--the big silver cigarette box--the gaudily trimmed silk dressing gown flung carelessly on a chair--none of these belonged to him or suggested his studious and rather Spartan temperament.

In the hall she saw Lizzie just come with Winchie. "Who's in these rooms?" asked she.

"Mr. Gallatin," replied Lizzie. "Mr. Vaughan put him in here and moved down to the suite at the Smoke House."

Lizzie's tone indicated that she was assuming Courtney knew all about Mr. Gallatin. That tone put her on guard. "When did he come?" asked she, feeling her way.

"Two weeks ago yesterday. He's very nice. He's as particular as you about his things, but it's a pleasure to look after them."

Had Richard forgotten to tell her he expected this Mr. Gallatin? Or had she, fallen long since into his absent-minded habit, failed to hear as he told her? Was it a chance visit from some college or scientific acquaintance? The character of the stranger's installation--the quantity of clothing--did not speak for a brief chance visit. The quality of the clothing, the taste, the care, the worldly interest and knowledge it suggested, were all against the idea of "B.G.'s" being a devotee of science. At least, if there were such scientists, this was the first she had known of it. After she had changed for the evening, and had given Winchie his supper and sent him to bed, she went into the stranger's quarters again. These personal belongings of his attracted her; they so clearly revealed taste and refinement, a refinement unusual in a man; they so strongly hinted a personality more in sympathy with her own passionate joy in life than with Richard's intellectual abstractions. In the early days of their married life Richard had been rather particular about himself; but he had got more and more indifferent, no longer shaved every day, was at times distinctly slovenly. "B.G. is a bachelor," thought she. "Married men--except those that are at heart bachelors--soon lose this sort of gloss." Usually she had not the faintest interest in anything concerning Richard. But this man interested her.

She was in the sitting room downstairs, playing and singing in an undertone when Richard came. "Hello," said he. And he kissed the cheek she turned to a reachable angle. His manner was as casual as hers. It was their habitual manner, and long had been. The difference between his habit and hers was that his yielded from time to time to the intermittent gusts of desire, while hers remained always tranquilly cool. "Your father's quite all right again?" was his careless first question.

"I hope so. I think so."

He was not merely looking at her now, he was seeing her. His eyes lighted up and into his voice came the wooing note. "Glad you've not dropped into my sloppy ways," said he. He was admiring her pale-green chiffon dress that left the slender column of her throat bare and her forearms, but almost concealed her shoulders. "Gallatin won't think we're altogether barbarians here. He dresses for supper. He's at it now."

His eyes showed that he was not thinking at all of Gallatin, but of her--thoughts which did not leave her entirely indifferent, but gave her an unwonted sense of vague distaste, after her long absence and complete freedom. As he moved toward her she said: "There's time for you to dress. And you need a shave badly. Is he from the East?"

"From Philadelphia by way of Pittsburg. He's been doing a little chemistry in his amateurish way in the mills there. I'd not have him about if I didn't need his money."

Dick was coming on toward her again. "The bell will ring in ten minutes," she reminded him. Perhaps through perverseness, the impulse to evade was a little stronger.

But he came, put his arms round her, kissed her again, this time with undivided attention. She lost the impulse to evade, submitted, smiled amicably, and, to extricate herself, rose. The lines of her dress brought out the perfection of her small, slim figure; its color harmonized with her deep-sea eyes and with the delicate bronze of her skin. "What a beauty you are!" he exclaimed. "No wonder I'm so proud of you."

Usually she was indifferent, without being conscious of it; this evening of her return from freedom to married life she felt her indifference. She said coldly, "If you're going to dress----"

"A shave'll be enough," protested Dick. "Your finery'll more than make up for my absence of it. Bachelors like Gallatin have to sleek themselves up. They've still got their brides to win."

"You'll be late."

"I want you to be extra civil to Gallatin. He's likely to get bored in this quiet place after a few months. He's rather gay, I imagine. At least he used to be. And I don't want him to pull out."

"After a few months," repeated Courtney, interested. "Why, how long is he to stay?"

"A year or so--perhaps longer."

"Here in the house!"

"I can't put him down at the laboratory, so near my secrets. I'm not going to let him in on everything. That's part of our bargain. We're partners, you understand."

"Here in the house!" exclaimed Courtney again. The very idea of an outsider as spectator at what was going on there made her acutely conscious of it, all in an instant.

"Oh, you'll like him--at least, you must for my sake. He doesn't amount to much, but he's agreeable--well mannered--good family--entertaining in a light way."

"There goes the bell."

Dick rushed away to shave. He had been gone but a few moments when Courtney was roused from her agitated reverie by the sense of some one in the room. Near the threshold stood the newcomer, who was to be a factor in her intimate life, a spectator of it, whether she willed or no, for "a year or so--perhaps longer." He was a blond young man, fair and smooth of skin, his hair almost golden. He certainly was not handsome; only his coloring and a pair of frank gray eyes saved him from downright homeliness. As their eyes met, his heavy, conventional face was suddenly transformed by as charming a smile as she had ever seen. He was of about the medium height, his figure neither powerful nor weak. He wore a dinner suit of dark gray, fashionably draped upon him, pumps, gray socks that matched his gray silk tie, a plaited French shirt, an unusually tall, perfectly fitting collar. If he had not been so well and so tastefully dressed, he would have attracted no attention anywhere--unless he had smiled. That smile meant a frank nature, a kind and generous heart--rarities to make their possessor distinguished in whatever company.

Courtney, with woman's swift grasp of surface details, noted all this and more while she was advancing with extended hand and saying, "Mr. Gallatin, is it not?"

He was obviously confused and embarrassed. Her natural, self-unconscious manner encouraged him candidly to explain. "I feel very shy," said he, speaking with a strong Eastern accent, "and very guilty. Shy because, before I came, I had somehow got the impression Vaughan was not married--and that we were to keep bachelor hall. I was astonished to find he had a wife." His eyes added without impertinence that he was amazed and dazzled now that he saw the wife. "I feel guilty," he went on, "because I seem to be thrusting myself in upon you. But Vaughan assured me I'd not be intruding."

"You needn't trouble yourself about that," said she. She liked his accent; it was pleasant as a novelty, and rather amusing. She liked his manners. They were of the best type of conventional manners, the type affected by fashionable people everywhere, the type that is excelled only by the kind of manners of which it is an artful and insincere imitation--the simple manners of those rare self-unconscious people who have the courage--or, rather, the lack of fear--to be natural and spontaneous. "We'll not wait for Richard," she said, as the supper bell rang. "He's got a great deal to do before he can come."

She had just finished the sentence when he entered, exactly as he was when he went out. "I forgot I'd taken all my razors down to the laboratory," he explained.

During supper he and Gallatin talked chemistry; that is, he talked and Gallatin listened--listened and ate. Courtney noted--with increased liking for him--that he had a vigorous appetite and that he liked the things they had to eat. But her thoughts soon wandered away to her gardening, to retouching her plans for bringing the grounds a little nearer her ideal than they had been the summer before. When the men lighted cigars, she went to the veranda to stroll up and down in the moonlight. She forgot everything unpleasant in the delight of being home again. As she looked about her, her heart was singing the nightingale's song. She was startled--and her heart's song was stopped--by the newcomer's voice. "Vaughan's gone to the library," said Gallatin. "Do you mind if I walk with you?"

She did mind very much indeed. She had somehow lost interest in him as soon as he ceased to be the mystery B.G. She liked him well enough, admired his manners, his really delicate tact in what must have been for him an extremely difficult position. But she had got the impression that Dick was right in estimating him as a "don't-amount-to-much." And just now he was distinctly a kill-joy. However, she acquiesced courteously, though with no unnecessary cordiality. She felt that now was the time to get him in the habit of respecting her privacy; she could establish a barrier now, where an attempt to establish it later on would offend him. At best, the barrier would be a poor enough makeshift; he would be bound to see, to make her feel uncomfortable about things she had been able to keep unconscious of or indifferent to. Still, she was far too generous to blame him.

"Do you have much spare time?" she asked, her manner more cordial than if she had not been wishing him out of the house.

"A great deal. Vaughan realizes I'm only an amateur."

"I'll take you over to the club and introduce you. You'll find some very agreeable people."

"Thank you. It has been rather dull these two weeks--especially of evenings."

"I don't see how you had the courage to come."

"I had to," said he, in the curt way in which a young man gives himself the pleasure of hinting a secret he cannot with good taste give himself the pleasure of telling.

She glanced across the lake at the twinkling lamps of the town. "The women over there will fill every minute you give them," said she. "You see, most of our men are busy all day and tired in the evening. You'll be a lion."

"That sounds attractive. I'm amazed at the West. I had no idea civilization was so advanced."

The implied condescension in this amused her. But she merely said: "Oh, I guess the same sort of people are much alike the world over."

The conversation languished through a to her tiresome discussion of differences of accent, dress, manners, and such trifles until he happened to say: "This place of yours here was a revelation to me. I've been talking to Vaughan about it--admiring it. He tells me his grandfather's responsible for it. He must have been an extraordinary man."

"He was," said Courtney, in a queer voice. She glanced out over her creation and the blood burned in her cheeks.

"He'd certainly be proud of the way you keep it up."

Her sense of humor had come to the rescue; besides, vanity was not a dominating emotion with her who had too much else to think about to have much time for thought of self. "I'm fond of gardening," was her placid noncommittal reply to his compliment.

"Yes, Vaughan's grandfather must have been a wonder," Gallatin went on reflectively. He had paused, was leaning on the rail, looking out over the lawns and gardens. "I don't mind confessing to you--if you'll not tell your husband--that I'm a chemist only by profession, with landscape gardening as my real passion."

Courtney glanced at him with interested eyes.

"I know a little something about it," he continued. "I learned long ago in a general way that a personality is always revealed in any work, and I at once looked for the personality in this place. That old man must have been an artist.... I can't reconcile these grounds with the portrait of him in the library."

Courtney was smiling to herself. A thrill of pride and pleasure was running through her. She began to like Basil Gallatin, to feel that he was by no means commonplace, but a man of breadth and artistic instinct, something at least of the man of the big world, not merely the man of the little world of well-cut manners and clothes.

"That portrait is of a stern, narrow man--strong but conventional," he went on, confirming her more sympathetic judgment of him. "This place--the house as well as the grounds--shows a very different individuality. It's feminine and sensuous and poetical. Yes, it's distinctly feminine--and delightfully disdainful of the conventional--of everything and anything 'cut and dried.' I don't mean the details--the things you're probably responsible for--and they're very charming. But I mean the whole conception--so free, so daring, and so lovely. Yet Vaughan tells me that the old gentleman made the plans himself and superintended their carrying out. It's very curious. Don't you think so?"

"I hadn't thought about it."

"You're not interested?"

"Why do you say so?"

"Your tone. I suppose a man is tedious when he gets on his hobby. I noticed you were bored when we were talking chemistry at supper."

"I wasn't bored. I simply wasn't listening."

"You don't like chemistry?"

"I did. But my enthusiasm cooled as I got interested in other things."

Again the conversation languished. She suspected that his opinion of her was rapidly declining. But some instinct withheld her from making any effort whatever to rehabilitate herself. Finally he said: "Well, I guess I've disturbed you long enough. I'll go to my room and read."

"I'm going up myself after I've had a little talk with Nanny about the house."

As soon as he disappeared, she dismissed him from mind with a few pleasant and friendly thoughts--"he may not have any great amount of brains or force, but he certainly has good taste. He will be a distinct addition." When she ascended to her sitting room, perhaps an hour later, she halted on the threshold, coloring with anger. Dick was seated at her center table reading a newspaper; Gallatin was inspecting the books in one of her cases. Dick saw her and said: "Come in. Don't mind us."

Courtney, struggling against her anger at this climax to the impudent intrusion upon her privacy, remained upon the threshold.

Dick's eyes had dropped to his paper. "Gallatin," he went on, "was complaining that the books in the library were too old and solemn. So I brought him here. I knew you'd laid in a stock of the frivolous kinds that grandfather wouldn't have tolerated. Finding what you want, old man?"

When Dick's speaking warned him that Courtney had come, Gallatin had startled guiltily and had hastily put away the book he was examining. But he didn't turn round until Richard directly addressed him. His face was red and his eyes were down. "I feel sleepy," said he awkwardly. "I'll look again some other time if Mrs. Vaughan will let me."

"Certainly," said Courtney, cold as a flower blooming in the heart of a block of ice.

The case into which Gallatin had been delving was filled with works on landscape gardening and interior decoration--modern works. As he almost stumbled from the room he cast a further glance round at the walls--walls covered with the original plans, sketches, and paintings Courtney had made for her revolution in house and grounds--very modern-looking drawings all, and unmistakably feminine. She knew that the newcomer had her secret--all of it--not merely the secret of her authorship, but also, through it, the secret of this loveless married life in which the husband had not the remotest idea who his wife was or what she had done. In passing her on his way out, Gallatin visibly shrank and grew as white as he had been red. She went to the window to compose herself, for her blood was boiling in the greatest rage of her life.

Richard went to close the door after Gallatin, then turned on her. "My dear," said he in his "grandfather" tone, which sometimes amused and sometimes angered her, "you are so cold by nature that you don't realize it, but you were almost insulting to Gallatin."

"I hope so!" cried she, facing him. "How dared you bring him in here without my permission? There are not many women who would have accepted quietly your bringing him to this house to live without a word to me. I wish you to understand you cannot thrust him upon my privacy. I don't allow anyone in this room without my consent. It must not occur again."

"Now--now--my dear," said Dick soothingly. "All that is very unreasonable. Of course, I have the right to do as I please in my own house, and you're too good and too sensible a wife to dispute it."

"I do dispute it!" she cried, her bosom heaving. "This room is--_me_!"

"What a tempest in a teapot! Child, what has made you take such a sudden dislike to him--and so violent? He isn't worth it--an amiable, well-meaning, commonplace chap. Really, you mustn't act this way. I've told you I need him, and you must be polite to him."

"The impertinent, prying----"

"I brought him here, Courtney," he interrupted, magisterially. "And I repeat, I had the right to do so."

Like most people of sweet and even temperament, she lost all control of herself in this unprecedented rage, where those in the habit of raging learn a sort of etiquette of bad temper. "You had not the right!" she declared, her eyes blazing into his. "And if you ever do such a thing again, I'll make it impossible for him to remain here. Do you understand?"

"I do not quarrel," said Richard with gentle superiority, "especially not with women--with my wife."

"And why not? You call it chivalry. I call it contempt. And I detest it. If you could appreciate how absurd you are, with your antiquated notions of superior and inferior sex, of rights and duties, and all such nonsense!"

Richard was in full armor of masculine patience against feminine folly. "You are beside yourself, my dear. I'll leave you until you are calm and courteous." And he added, as if he were meting out severe but just punishment, "I shall occupy the spare room."

Courtney gave a strange laugh. He turned away, went into her bedroom. Presently he reappeared exclaiming: "Why, where are my pajamas? I told Lizzie to put them in there."

Courtney's smile was of the same quality of strangeness as her laugh of the moment before. "They are in the spare room," said she. "I put them there before I came in here."

He looked puzzled, vaguely discomfited. "Oh--very well." He glanced inquiringly at her, decided against the trivial question he had been about to ask. "Good night." He was again puzzled when what he heard about the location of the pajamas was recalled and made vivid by the sight of them on the turned-down bed in the spare room. But for an instant only. He dismissed the trifle and went to bed and to sleep. Husbands do not bother their heads about the petty feminine eccentricities of wives. The mystery of these transposed pajamas was too petty to detain a masculine mind.

*VI*

She did not go down to breakfast next morning until Richard and his guest would surely be gone. Her anger against the guest had evaporated because it was clearly unjust. Her anger against Richard was subsiding because it was clearly futile--and also because she hadn't it in her to foster harsh feeling. But there remained a dislike and dread of Gallatin because he had her secret. She could not think with composure of facing him, intolerably her partner in a secret she was ashamed of, was hiding from her husband, was trying to hide from herself. She would be unable to look at him, to remember his existence even, without at the same time having it thrust at her that her married life was a sham, a hypocrisy.

Half an hour before dinner Richard came to her in the big greenhouse she had built back of the library. As the day was warm, all its doors and sashes were open. Richard sent Jimmie's son Bill away and said with agitated abruptness: "Courtney, Gallatin seems determined to take rooms over at the hotel."