Chapter 14

She thought he was about to look at her--a thing he had never done, to her knowledge, since they had known each other. She nerved herself to receive the shock, with a certain flutter of expectancy, of excitement even. But instead of looking, he settled himself in a slightly different position and fixed his gaze upon another point in the horizon. She noted that he had splendid hands--ideal hands for a man, with the same suggestion of intense vitality and aliveness that flashed from his eyes. She had not noted this before. Next she saw that he had good feet, and that his boots were his only article of apparel that fitted him, or rather, that looked as if made for him.

She tossed her cigarette over the rail to the sand. He startled her by speaking, in his unemotional way. He said:

"Now, I like you better."

"I don't understand," said she.

No answer from him. The cigarette depending listlessly from his lips seemed--as usual--uncertain whether it would stay or fall. She watched this uncertainty with a curious, nervous interest. She was always thinking that cigarette would fall, but it never did. Said she:

"Why did you say you liked me less?"

"Better," corrected he.

"We used to have a pump in our back yard at home," laughed she. "One toiled away at the handle, but nothing ever came. And it was a promising-looking pump, too."

He smiled--a slow, reluctant smile, but undeniably attractive. Said he:

"Because you threw away your cigarette."

"You object to women smoking?"

"No," said he. His tone made her feel how absurd it was to suspect him of such provincialism.

"You object to MY smoking?" suggested she; laughing, "Pump! Pump!"

"No," said he.

"Then your remark meant nothing at all?"

He was silent.

"You are rude," said she coldly, rising to go into the house.

He said something, what she did not hear, in her agitation. She paused and inquired:

"What did you say?"

"I said, I am not rude but kind," replied he.

"That is detestable!" cried she. "I have not liked you, but I have been polite to you because of Stanley and Mrs. Brindley. Why should you be insulting to me?"

"What have I done?" inquired he, unmoved. He had risen as she rose, but instead of facing her he was leaning against the post of the veranda, bent upon his seaward vigil.

"You have insinuated that your reasons for not liking me were a reflection on me."

"You insisted," said he.

"You mean that they are?" demanded she furiously. She was amazed at her wild, unaccountable rage.

He slowly turned his head and looked at her--a glance without any emotion whatever, simply a look that, like the beam of a powerful searchlight, seemed to thrust through fog and darkness and to light up everything in its path. Said he:

"Do you wish me to tell you why I don't like you?"

"No!" she cried hysterically. "Never mind--I don't know what I'm saying." And she went hastily into the house. A moment later, in her own room upstairs, she was wondering at herself. Why had she become confused? What did he mean? What had she seen--or half seen--in the darkness and fog within herself when he looked at her? In a passion she cried:

"If he would only stay away!"

VI

BUT he did not stay away. He owned and lived in a small house up on the Rumson Road. While the house was little more than a bungalow and had a simplicity that completely hid its rare good taste from the average observer, its grounds were the most spacious in that neighborhood of costly, showy houses set in grounds not much more extensive than a city building lot. The grounds had been cleared and drained to drive out and to keep out the obnoxious insect life, but had been left a forest, concealing the house from the roads. Stanley Baird was now stopping with Keith, and brought him along to the cottage by the sea every day.

The parties narrowed to the same four persons. Mrs. Brindley seemed never to tire of talking to Keith--or to tire of talking about him when the two men had left, late each night. As for Stanley, he referred everything to Keith--the weather prospects, where they should go for the day, what should be eaten and drunk, any point about politics or fashion, life or literature or what not, that happened to be discussed. And he looked upon Donald's monosyllabic reply to his inquiry as a final judgment, ending all possibility of argument. Mildred held out long. Then, in spite of herself, she began to yield, ceased to dislike him, found a kind of pleasure--or, perhaps, fascinated interest--in the nervousness his silent and indifferent presence caused her. She liked to watch that immobile, perfect profile, neither young nor old, indeed not suggesting age in any degree, but only experience and knowledge--and an infinite capacity for emotion, for passion even. The dead-white color declared it had already been lived; the brilliant, usually averted or veiled eyes asserted present vitality, pulsing under a calm surface.

One day when Stanley, in the manner of one who wishes a thing settled and settled right, said he would ask Donald Keith about it, Mildred, a little piqued, a little amused, retorted:

"And what will he answer? Why, simply yes or no."

"That's all," assented Stanley. "And that's quite enough, isn't it?"

"But how do you know he's as wise as he pretends?"

"He doesn't pretend to be anything or to know anything. That's precisely it."

Mildred suddenly began to like Keith. She had never thought of this before. Yes, it was true, he did not pretend. Not in the least, not about anything. When you saw him, you saw at once the worst there was to see. It was afterward that you discovered he was not slovenly, but clean and neat, not badly but well dressed, not homely but handsome, not sickly but soundly well, not physically weak but strong, not dull but vividly alive, not a tiresome void but an unfathomable mystery.

"What does he do?" she asked Mrs. Brindley.

Cyrilla's usually positive gray eyes looked vague. She smiled. "I never asked," said she. "I've known him nearly three years, and it never occurred to me to ask, or to wonder. Isn't that strange? Usually about the first inquiry we make is what a man does."

"I'll ask Stanley," said Mildred. And she did about an hour later, when they were in the surf together, with the other two out of earshot. Said Stanley:

"He's a lawyer, of course. Also, he's written a novel or two and a book of poems. I've never read them. Somehow, I never get around to reading."

"Oh, he's a lawyer? That's the way he makes his living."

"A queer kind of lawyer. He never goes to court, and his clients are almost all other lawyers. They go to him to get him to tell them what to do, and what not to do. He's got a big reputation among lawyers, Fred Norman tells me, but makes comparatively little, as he either can't or won't charge what he ought. I told him what Norman said, and he only smiled in that queer way he has. I said: 'You make twenty or thirty thousand a year. You ought to make ten times that.'"

"And what did he answer?" asked Mildred. "Nothing?"

"He said: 'I make all I want. If I took in more, I'd be bothered getting rid of it or investing it. I can always make all I'll want--unless I go crazy. And what could a crazy man do with money? It doesn't cost anything to live in a lunatic asylum.'"

Several items of interest to add to those she had collected. He could talk brilliantly, but he preferred silence. He could make himself attractive to women and to men, but he preferred to be detached. He could be a great lawyer, but he preferred the quiet of obscurity. He could be a rich man, but he preferred to be comparatively poor.

Said Mildred: "I suppose some woman--some disappointment in love--has killed ambition, and everything like that."

"I don't think so," replied Baird. "The men who knew him as a boy say he was always as he is now. He lived in the Arabian desert for two years."

"Why didn't he stay?" laughed Mildred. "That life would exactly suit him."

"It did," said Stanley. "But his father died, and he had to come home and support his mother--until she died. That's the way his whole life has been. He drifts in the current of circumstances. He might let himself be blown away to-morrow to the other end of the earth and stay away years--or never come back."

"But how would he live?"

"On his wits. And as well or as poorly as he cared. He's the sort of man everyone instinctively asks advice of--me, you, his valet, the farmer who meets him at a boundary fence, the fellow who sits nest him in a train--anyone."

Mildred did not merely cease to dislike him; she went farther, and rapidly. She began to like him, to circle round that tantalizing, indolent mystery as a deer about a queer bit of brush in the undergrowth. She liked to watch him. She was alternately afraid to talk before him and recklessly confidential--all with no response or sign of interest from him. If she was silent, when they were alone together, he was silent, too. If she talked, still he was silent. What WAS he thinking about? What did he think of her?--that especially.

"What ARE you thinking?" she interrupted herself to say one afternoon as they sat together on the strand under a big sunshade. She had been talking on and on about her career--talking conceitedly, as her subject intoxicated her--telling him what triumphs awaited her as soon as she should be ready to debut. As he did not answer, she repeated her question, adding:

"I knew you weren't listening to me, or I shouldn't have had the courage to say the foolish things I did."

"No, I wasn't," admitted he.

"Why not?"

"For the reason you gave."

"That what I said was--just talk?"

"Yes."

"You don't believe I'll do those things?"

"Do you?"

"I've GOT to believe it," said she. "If I didn't--" She came to a full stop.

"If you didn't, then what?" It was the first time he had ever flattered her with interest enough to ask her a question about herself.

"If I didn't believe I was going to succeed--and succeed big--" she began. After a pause, she added, "I'd not dare say it."

"Or think it," said he.

She colored. "What do you mean?" she asked.

He did not reply.

"What do you mean, Mr. Keith?" she urged.

"You are always asking me questions to which you already know the answer," said he.

"You're referring to a week or so ago, when I asked you why you disliked me?"

No answer. No sign of having heard. No outward sign of interest in anything, even in the cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth.

"Wasn't that it?" she insisted.

"You are always asking me questions to which you already know the answer," repeated he.

"I am annoying you?"

No answer.

She laughed. "Do you want me to go away and leave you in peace with that--law case--or whatever it is?"

"I don't like to be alone."

"But anyone would do?--a dog?"

No reply.

"You mean, a dog would be better because it doesn't ask questions to which it knows the answer."

No reply.

"Well, I have a pleasant-sounding voice. As I'm saying nothing, it may be soothing--like the sound of the waves. I've learned to take you as you are. I rather like your pose."

No reply. No sign that he was even tempted to rise to this bait and protest.

"But you don't like mine," she went on. "Yes, it is a pose. But I've got to keep it up, and to pretend to myself that it isn't. And it isn't altogether. I shall be a successful singer."

"When?" said he. Actually he was listening!

She answered: "In--about two years, I think."

No comment.

"You don't believe it?"

"Do you?" A pause. "Why ask these questions you've already answered yourself?"

"I'll tell you why," replied she, her face suddenly flushed with earnestness. "Because I want you to help me. You help everyone else. Why not me?"

"You never asked me," said he.

"I didn't know I wanted it until just now--as I said it. But YOU must have known, because you are so much more experienced than I--and understand people--what's going on in their minds, deeper than they can see." Her tone became indignant, reproachful. "Yes, you must have known I needed your help. And you ought to have helped me, even if you did dislike me. You've no right to dislike anyone as young as I."

He was looking at her now, the intensely alive blue eyes sympathetic, penetrating, understanding. It was frightful to be so thoroughly understood--all one's weaknesses laid bare--yet it was a relief and a joy, too--like the cruel healing knife of the surgeon. Said he:

"I do not like kept women."

She gasped, grew ghastly. It was a frightful insult, one for which she was wholly unprepared. "You--believe--that?" she said slowly.

"Another of those questions," he said. And he looked calmly away, out over the sea, as if his interest in the conversation were at an end.

What should she say? How deny--how convince him? For convince him she must, and then go away and never permit him to speak to her again until he had apologized. She said quietly: "Mr. Keith, you have insulted me."

"I do not like kept women, either with or without a license," said he in the same even, indifferent way. "When you ceased to be a kept woman, I would help you, if I could. But no one can help a kept woman."

There was nothing to do but to rise and go away. She rose and went toward the house. At the veranda she paused. He had not moved. She returned. He was still inspecting the horizon, the cigarette depending from his lips--how DID he keep it alight? She said:

"Mr. Keith, I am sure you did not mean to insult me. What did you mean?"

"Another of those questions," said he.

"Honestly, I do not understand."

"Then think. And when you have thought, you will understand."

"But I have thought. I do not understand."

"Then it would be useless to explain," said he. "That is one of those vital things which, if one cannot understand them for oneself, one is hopeless--is beyond helping."

"You mean I am not in earnest about my career?"

"Another of those questions. If you had not seen clearly what I meant, you would have been really offended. You'd have gone away and not come back."

She saw that this was true. And, seeing, she wondered how she could have been so stupid as not to have seen it at once. She had yet to learn that overlooking the obvious is a universal human failing and that seeing the obvious is the talent and the use of the superior of earth--the few who dominate and determine the race.

"You reproach me for not having helped you," he went on. "How does it happen that you are uneasy in mind--so uneasy that you are quarreling at me?"

A light broke upon her. "You have been drawing me on, from the beginning," she cried. "You have been helping me--making me see that I needed help."

"No," said he. "I've been waiting to see whether you would rouse from your dream of grandeur."

"YOU have been rousing me."

"No," he said. "You've roused yourself. So you may be worth helping or, rather, worth encouraging, for no one can HELP you but yourself."

She looked at him pathetically. "But what shall I do?" she asked. "I've got no money, no experience, no sense. I'm a vain, luxury-loving fool, cursed with a--with a--is it a conscience?"

"I hope it's something more substantial. I hope it's common sense."

"But I have been working--honestly I have."

"Don't begin lying to yourself again."

"Don't be harsh with me."

He drew in his legs, in preparation for rising--no doubt to go away.

"I don't mean that," she cried testily. "You are not harsh with me. It's the truth that's harsh--the truth I'm beginning to see--and feel. I am afraid--afraid. I haven't the courage to face it."

"Why whine?" said he. "There's nothing in that."

"Do you think there's any hope for me?"

"That depends," said he.

"On what?"

"On what you want."

"I want to be a singer, a great singer."

"No, there's no hope."

She grew cold with despair. He had a way of saying a thing that gave it the full weight of a verdict from which there was no appeal.

"Now, if you wanted to make a living," he went on, "and if you were determined to learn to sing as well as you could, with the idea that you might be able to make a living--why, then there might be hope."

"You think I can sing?"

"I never heard you. Can you?"

"They say I can."

"What do YOU say?"

"I don't know," she confessed. "I've never been able to judge. Sometimes I think I'm singing well, and I find out afterward that I've sung badly. Again, it's the other way."

"Then, obviously, what's the first thing to do?"

"To learn to judge myself," said she. "I never thought of it before--how important that is. Do you know Jennings--Eugene Jennings?"

"The singing teacher? No."

"Is he a good teacher?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because he has not taught you that you will never sing until you are your own teacher. Because he has not taught you that singing is a small and minor part of a career as a singer."

"But it isn't," protested she.

A long silence. Looking at him, she felt that he had dismissed her and her affairs from his mind.

"Is it?" she said, to bring him back.

"What?" asked he vaguely.

"You said that a singer didn't have to be able to sing."

"Did I?" He glanced down the shore toward the house. "It feels like lunch-time." He rose.

"What did you mean by what you said?"

"When you have thought about your case a while longer, we'll talk of it again--if you wish. But until you've thought, talking is a waste of time."

She rose, stood staring out to sea. He was observing her, a faint smile about his lips. He said:

"Why bother about a career? After all, kept woman is a thoroughly respectable occupation--or can be made so by any preacher or justice of the peace. It's followed by many of our best women--those who pride themselves on their high characters--and on their pride."

"I could not belong to a man unless I cared for him," said she. "I tried it once. I shall never do it again."

"That sounds fine," said he. "Let's go to lunch."

"You don't believe me?"

"Do you?"

She sank down upon the sand and burst into a wild passion of sobs and tears. When her fight for self-control was over and she looked up to apologize for her pitiful exhibition of weakness--and to note whether she had made an impression upon his sympathies--she saw him just entering the house, a quarter of a mile away. To anger succeeded a mood of desperate forlornness. She fell upon herself with gloomy ferocity. She could not sing. She had no brains. She was taking money--a disgracefully large amount of money--from Stanley Baird under false pretenses. How could she hope to sing when her voice could not be relied upon? Was not her throat at that very moment slightly sore? Was it not always going queer? She--sing! Absurd. Did Stanley Baird suspect? Was he waiting for the time when she would gladly accept what she must have from him, on his own terms? No, not on his terms, but on the terms she herself would arrange--the only terms she could make. No, Stanley believed in her absolutely--believed in her career. When he discovered the truth, he would lose interest in her, would regard her as a poor, worthless creature, would be eager to rid himself of her. Instead of returning to the house, she went in the opposite direction, made a circuit and buried herself in the woods beyond the Shrewsbury. She was mad to get away from her own company; but the only company she could fly to was more depressing than the solitude and the taunt and sneer and lash of her own thoughts. It was late in the afternoon before she nerved herself to go home. She hoped the others would have gone off somewhere; but they were waiting for her, Stanley anxious and Cyrilla Brindley irritated. Her eyes sought Keith. He was, as usual, the indifferent spectator.

"Where have you been?" cried Stanley.

"Making up my mind," said she in the tone that forewarns of a storm.

A brief pause. She struggled in vain against an impulse to look at Keith. When her eyes turned in his direction he, not looking at her, moved in his listless way toward the door. Said he:

"The auto's waiting. Come on."

She vacillated, yielded, began to put on the wraps Stanley was collecting for her. It was a big touring-car, and they sat two and two, with the chauffeur alone. Keith was beside Mildred. When they were under way, she said:

"Why did you stop me? Perhaps I'll never have the courage again."

"Courage for what?" asked he.

"To take your advice, and break off."

"MY advice?"

"Yes, your advice."

"You have to clutch at and cling to somebody, don't you? You can't bear the idea of standing up by your own strength."

"You think I'm trying to fasten to you?" she said, with an angry laugh.

"I know it. You admitted it. You are not satisfied with the way things are going. You have doubts about your career. You shrink from your only comfortable alternative, if the career winks out. You ask me my opinion about yourself and about careers. I give it. Now, I find you asked only that you might have someone to lean on, to accuse of having got you into a mess, if doing what you think you ought to do turns out as badly as you fear."

It was the longest speech she had heard him make. She had no inclination to dispute his analysis of her motives. "I did not realize it," said she, "but that is probably so. But--remember how I was brought up."

"There's only one thing for you to do."

"Go back to my husband? You know--about me--don't you?"

"Yes"

"I can't go back to him."

"No."

"Then--what?" she asked.

"Go on, as now," replied he.

"You despise me, don't you?"

"No."

"But you said you did."

"Dislike and despise are not at all the same."

"You admit that you dislike me," cried she triumphantly. He did not answer.

"You think me a weak, clinging creature, not able to do anything but make pretenses."

No answer.

"Don't you?" she persisted.

"Probably I have about the same opinion of you that you have of yourself."

"What WILL become of me?" she said. Her face lighted up with an expression of reckless beauty. "If I could only get started I'd go to the devil, laughing and dancing--and taking a train with me."

"You ARE started," said he, with an amiable smile. "Keep on. But I doubt if you'll be so well amused as you may imagine. Going to the devil isn't as it's painted in novels by homely old maids and by men too timid to go out of nights. A few steps farther, and your disillusionment will begin. But there'll be no turning back. Already, you are almost too old to make a career."

"I'm only twenty-four. I flattered myself I looked still younger."

"It's worse than I thought," said he. "Most of the singers, even the second-rate ones, began at fifteen--began seriously. And you haven't begun yet."

"That's unjust," she protested. "I've done a little. Many great people would think it a great deal."

"You haven't begun yet," repeated he calmly. "You have spent a lot of money, and have done a lot of dreaming and talking and listening to compliments, and have taken a lot of lessons of an expensive charlatan. But what have those things to do with a career?"

"You've never heard me sing."

"I do not care for singing."

"Oh!" said she in a tone of relief. "Then you know nothing about all this."

"On the contrary, I know everything about a career. And we were talking of careers, not of singing."

"You mean that my voice is worthless because I haven't the other elements?"

"What else could I have meant?" said he. "You haven't the strength. You haven't the health."

She laughed as she straightened herself. "Do I look weak and sickly?" cried she.