  Produced by Al Haines. David Graham Phillips The A NOVEL NEW YORK AND LONDON Copyright, 1909, by Published September, 1909 THE HUNGRY HEART I Courtship and honeymoon of Richard Vaughan and Courtney Benedict are told accurately enough by a thousand chroniclers of love's fairy tales and dreams. Where such romances end in a rosily vague "And they lived happily ever after," there this history begins. Richard and Courtney have returned from Arcady to reality, to central Indiana and the Vaughan homestead, across the narrow width of Wenona the lake from Wenona the town. The homecoming was late in a June evening, with a perfumed coolness descending upon the young lovers from the grand old trees, round the Vaughan house like his bodyguard round a king. Next morning toward eight Courtney, still half asleep, reached out hazily. Her hand met only the rumpled linen on Richard's side of the huge fourposter. She started up, brushed back the heavy wave of auburn hair fallen over her brow, gazed down at his pillow. The dent of his head, but not he. Her eyes searched the dimness. The big room contained only a few large pieces of old mahogany; at a glance she saw into every corner. Alone in the room. Her eyes, large and anxious now, regarded the half-open door of the dressing room to the rear. "Dick!" she called hopefully. No answer. "Dick!" she repeated, a note of doubt in her voice. Silence. "Dick!" she repeated reproachfully. It was the first morning she had awakened without the sense of his nearness that had become so dear, so necessary. It was the first morning in this house strange to her—in this now life they were to make beautiful and happy together. She gave a forlorn sigh like a disappointed child, drew up her knees, rested her elbows upon them, and her small head upon her hands. Sitting there in the midst of that bed big enough for half a dozen as small as she, she suggested a butterfly poised motionless with folded wings. A moment and she lifted her drooped head. How considerate of him not to wake her when the three days and nights on train had been so wearing! Swift and light as a butterfly she sprang from the bed, flung open the shutters of the lake-front windows. In poured summer like gay cavalcade through breach in gloomy walls—summer in full panoply of perfume and soft air and sparkling sunshine. She almost laughed aloud for joy at this timely rescue. She gazed away across the lake to the town where she was born and bred! "Home!" she cried. "And so happy—so utterly happy!" Her expression, her whole manner, her quick movements gave the impression of the impulsive self-unconsciousness of a child. It was a radiant figure, small and perfect like a sun sprite, that issued from the room three quarters of an hour later to flit along the polished oak hall, to descend a stairway glistening like hall above and wider and loftier hall below. With hair piled high on her small head, with tail of matinee over her arm and tall heels clicking merrily on the steps, she whistled as she went. Some people—women—criticised that laughter-loving mouth of hers as too wide for so small a face. It certainly did not suggest a button-hole. But no one could have found fault with the shape of the mouth or with the coloring, whether of the lips or within, or with her teeth, pearl white and seeming the whiter for the rose bronze of her skin—the shade that seems to be of the essence of youth, health, and summer. Her nose was rather large, but slender and well shaped. It was the nose of mobility, of sensitiveness, of intelligence, not at all of repose. And there were her eyes, of a strange soft emerald, with long dark lashes; the brows long also and only slightly curved, and slender yet distinct. These eyes were her greatest beauty—greater even than her skin. It would have been difficult to say whether in them or in her mouth lay her greatest charm, for charm is not always beauty, and beauty often wholly lacks charm. But woman feels that figure determines the woman—"the woman" meaning, of course, efficiency as a man catcher. It was upon Courtney's flawless figure that the sour glance of old Nanny, the head servant, rested—old Nanny, whose puritanism aggravated for her by suppression all the damned charms of "the flesh." Nanny had reigned supreme in that house ever since Dick Vaughan was left alone; so from the first news of the engagement she had been hating Courtney, whom she regarded as her supplanter. As Courtney entered the dining room, stiff and dim and chilly, like all the rooms in that house, old Nanny was superintending fat, subdued Mazie at work at the breakfast table. It occupied the exact center of the room, formal as for a state banquet. "Good morning," cried Courtney in her charming manner of bright friendliness. "Good morning, Mazie. Am I late? Where's Richard?" Her voice was deeper than one would have expected, but low and musical. Mazie smiled a welcome, then cast a frightened glance of apology at Nanny, who did not smile. "Mr. Richard's down to the Smoke House," said she. The Smoke House was the laboratory Dick's grandfather, Achilles Vaughan, had built for him on the site of the smoke house of the pioneer Vaughan, settler there when Wenona was a trading post in New France. "Of course!" said Courtney. "I might have known. He wanted to go last night, but I wouldn't let him." Nanny scowled at this innocent, laughing "I wouldn't let him." She turned on Mazie, who was gazing open-mouthed at Courtney's simple, fresh finery. "What'r ye gawkin' here fur, with your mouth hangin' like a chicken with the gaps?" she demanded in a fierce aside. Mazie lumbered through the door into the kitchen. "As I was saying," continued Nanny to her new mistress, "he's put in most nigh all his time down to that there smoke house day and night—ever since his aunt, Miss Eudosia, died. Yes, an' before that, while Colonel 'Kill, his grandfather, was still alive. He's got sleeping rooms and everything in the upstairs. He often don't come here even to meals for weeks. Mazie or Jimmie carry 'em to him." Courtney nodded. "A regular hermit. It was the merest chance that we happened to meet." "You was the first young woman he'd laid an eye on in a long time." Nanny's tone was colorless. Only a very stupid woman puts both barb and poison on a shaft when either is enough. Courtney, who understood and felt remorseful about the old woman's jealous anger, answered with good-humored gentleness: "I guess that was why I got him. But he'll not be a hermit any more." "He's begun already," said Nanny. "We mustn't allow it," replied Courtney, not quite so good-humoredly. The old woman's steady bearing down was having its effect. "There's no goin' agin nature. The Vaughan men ain't ever bothered much about women. They don't let foolishness detain 'em long. And this one's his gran'paw over agin. When he gits at his work, he's like a dog after a rabbit." "It seems a little chilly and damp in here," said Courtney. "Do help me open the windows. I love sun and air." "Miss Eudosia—" began Nanny, and checked herself with a considerable shortening of the distance between chin and end of nose. Courtney understood what that beginning meant. But she ignored. "And," she went on, busying herself with curtains and fastenings, "we'll move the table in front of this big window. I like breakfast near the window in summer, near the fire in winter." Nanny lowered upon the small straight young figure, so bright and graceful. "Miss Eudosia—" she began fiercely. Again she checked herself, but it was to say with bitterness, "But then she's dead—and forgot." "No, indeed!" protested Courtney. "You'd have thought she'd gone only a few months ago instead of four years if you'd heard Richard talking about her yesterday. And I'm sure she'd have done what I'm suggesting if she'd happened to think of it." Then with a look that might have softened any but a woman resolved to hate another woman: "Do try to humor me in little things, Nanny. I'll be very meek about things that do matter. I've had no experience in keeping house. You'll teach me, won't you?" Nanny stood inflexible, her wrinkled hands folded tightly at the waist line of her black alpaca. She could not help Courtney displace that table from its ancient site. It was as if this frivolous, whistling, useless chit of an ornamental wife were violating the sacred Eudosia's coffin—the graves of all the Vaughans—for traditions are graves, and Nanny, like all who live by tradition, lived among graves. After a time Courtney, more nervous under those angry eyes than she showed, got the table at the open window. The room was livable now, and after she had rearranged the dishes the table looked invitingly human. But her buoyant young enthusiasm had oozed away. With wistful gaze out over prim lawns and flower beds, stiff and staid as Sunday, she said: "I guess I'll bring Richard to breakfast." "He et before he went." "Oh!" Courtney's tone showed that she was hurt. But she instantly brightened. "I'll get him to come and sit with me while I have breakfast." A covert sneering smile in the depths of Nanny's eyes made her flush angrily. "If I was you I wouldn't interrupt him," said the old woman. "He don't allow it." "How absurd!" cried Courtney. But straightway she was amazed and shocked at herself—on this her first morning in the new and beautiful life, to be drawn nearer a vulgar squabble than in all her nineteen years—and with an old woman toward whom it would be cowardice not to be forbearing. "I'm cross because I'm hungry," she said contritely. "While breakfast's coming I'll run down for him." "He's set in his ways," said Nanny. "He'll not mind me—this once." And she took up her train and went by the long French window to the broad veranda with its big fluted pillars. At the end steps she paused. Yes, it was summer in the Vaughan grounds as elsewhere. But that prodigal wanton had there been caught, had had her tresses sleeked and bound, her luxuriant figure corseted and clad in the most repellant classical severity. Courtney, of the eyes keen for color and form and fitness of things, felt rebuked and subdued once more. She glanced farther round, saw Nanny's parchment face and sinister gaze watching and hating her. There is a limit beyond which youth refuses to be suppressed and compressed, and defiantly expands in more than its natural gay audacity. This climax of Nanny, representative of Vaughans not so rigid in death as they had been in life, was just the necessary little-too-much. With a laugh and a toss of the head, she swung her skirts very high indeed above her pretty ankles and ran like a young antelope across the lawn, and into and along the path leading away toward the eastern part of the grounds. Through a carefully artificial thicket of lilacs, elders, and snowballs she sped, then through a small wood with not a spray of underbrush anywhere. She came out in a clearing at the water's edge. Before her, one of its walls rising sheer from the retaining wall of the lake, stood the laboratory. She paused astonished. She had expected a temporary sort of structure. Before her rose a fitting temple for the mysteries of the "black art." It was a long two-story building of stone and brick, not visible from the lake proper because it stood upon the bank of a deep, narrow inlet. The weather had stained its walls into the semblance of age wherever they showed through the heavy mantle of bitter-sweet that overspread even the roof. Around the place hung an air of aloofness and seclusion, of mystery, that appealed to her young instinct for the romantic. The brick path divided into two. One went to what was obviously the entrance to the second-story bachelor suite; the other turned to the left, rounded the corner of the house, ended at the massive iron door of the laboratory proper. This door was wide open. Courtney stood upon the threshold like a bright bird peering from the sunshine into the entrance to a cave. The air that came out was heavy with the odors of chemicals, but not sharp or especially unpleasant. Besides, in high school and college she had done a good deal at chemistry, enough to be seized of its fascination. She stood gazing into a big high-ceilinged room, filled with a bewildering variety of unusual articles—gigantic bottles, cylinders, vials, jars of glass, of stone, of metal; huge retorts with coils of pipe, lead and rubber; lamps and balances and mortars; tiers on tiers of crowded shelves of glass and porcelain and iron; drying ovens, distilling apparatus, condensers and generators, crushers and pulverizers, cupels and cupel trays, calorimeters and crucibles and microscopes; floor all but filled with batteries and engines and machines of gold and platinum, of aluminum and copper, of brass and steel and glass and nickel. A thousand articles, in the orderly confusion that indicates constant use. She was more and more amazed as she stared and reflected. "He works with all these things!" thought she, depressed for no clear reason. "I had no idea—no idea!" She ventured a step farther. In a twinkling her expression of wonder and vague pain vanished before a love light that seemed to stream not from her face only, but from her whole body, with those rare eyes of hers as radiating centers. She was seeing Richard—near a window, so standing that his long high-bred face was in profile to her. He was tall, well above six feet; his careless flannels revealed the strong, slender, narrow form of the pioneers and their pure-blooded descendants. His fairish hair was thick and wavy—"Thank Heaven, not curly!" thought Courtney. She did not interrupt. She preferred to watch him, to let her glance caress him, all unconscious of her presence. In one hand he was balancing a huge bottle; the other held a long test tube. He was slowly dropping the bottle's contents of quiet colorless liquid into the test tube, which was half full of a liquid, also quiet and colorless. Each drop as it touched the surface of the liquid dissolved into black steam. It was this steam that gave off the pungent odor. As she watched, there came a slow tightening at her throat, at her heart. "I never saw him look like this," thought she. No, it wasn't his serious intentness; one of the things she had first noted about him, and best loved, was the seriousness of his deep-set dark gray eyes—the look of the man who "amounts to something," and would prove it before he got through. No, it was the kind of seriousness. She felt she was seeing a Richard Vaughan she did not know at all. "But, then," she reflected, "there's a side of me he doesn't know about either." This, however, did not satisfy her. The man she was now seeing disquietingly suggested that the Richard Vaughan she had been knowing and loving and had been loved by was not the real man at all, but only one of his moods. "I thought he just amused himself with chemistry. Instead— Nanny is about right." A pang shot through her; she would have recognized it as jealousy, had she stopped to think. But at nineteen one does not stop to think. "I do believe he cares almost as much for this as he does for me." He lowered the bottle to the table. As he straightened up, he caught sight of her. His expression changed; but the change was not nearly enough either in degree or in kind to satisfy her. "Hello!" cried he carelessly. "Good morning." She got ready to be kissed. But, instead of coming toward her, he half turned away, to hold the test tube up between his eyes and the light. "Um—mm," he grumbled, shaking it again and again, and each time looking disappointedly at the unchanged liquid. Like all American girls of the classes that shelter their women, she had been brought up to accept as genuine the pretense of superhuman respect and deference the American man—usually in all honesty—affects toward woman—until he marries her, or for whatever reason becomes tired and truthful. She had been confirmed in these ideas of man as woman's incessant courtier, almost servant, by receiving for the last five lively years the admiration, exaggerated and ardent, which physical charm, so long as it is potent, exacts from the male. No more than other women of her age—or than older women—or than the men had she penetrated the deceptive surface of things and discovered beneath "chivalry's" smug meaningless professions the reality, the forbearance of "strength" with "weakness," the graciousness of superior for inferior. Thus, such treatment as this of Dick's would have been humiliating from a casual man, on a casual occasion. From her husband, her lover, the man she had just been garlanding with all the fairest flowers of her ardent young heart—from him, and on this "first" morning, this unconcern, which Nanny's talk enabled her to understand, was worse than stab into feminine vanity; it was stab straight into her inmost self, the seat of her life. She dared not admit the wound—not to her own secret thought. Bravely she struggled until her voice and manner were under control. "I've come to take you to breakfast," said she. It seemed to her that her tone was gratifying evidence of triumph of strength of character over "silly supersensitiveness—as if Dick could mean to hurt me!" "Breakfast," repeated he. His gaze was discontentedly upon the bottle whose contents had acted disappointingly. "Breakfast— Oh, yes— Don't wait on me. I had coffee before I came down here. I'll be along in a few minutes." He took up the bottle again, resumed the cautious pouring. The tears sprang to her eyes; her lip quivered. But sweet reasonableness conquered again, and she perched on a high stool near the door. She gazed round, tried to interest herself in the certainly extraordinary exhibits on floor and tables and shelves. She recalled the uses of the instruments she recognized, tried to guess the uses of those that were new to her. But her mind refused to wander from the one object that really interested her in that room. Perhaps ten minutes passed, she watching him, he watching the unchanged liquid in the test tube. She had been born in her father's and mother's prime. She had been taught to use her brain. Thus, underneath the romantic and idealizing upper strata of her character there was the bedrock of good common sense, to resist and to survive any and all shocks. As she sat watching her engrossed husband her love, her fairness, and her good sense pleaded for him, or, rather, protested against her sensitiveness. What a dear he was! And how natural that he should be absorbed in these experiments, after having been away so long. What right had she to demand that his mood should be the same as hers? What a silly child she had shown herself, expecting him to continue to act as if love making were the whole of life. If he were to be, and to do exactly as she wished, would she not soon grow sick of him, as of the other men, who had thought to win her by inviting her to walk on them? Her eyes were sweet and tender when Dick, happening to glance seeingly in her direction, saw her ensconced, chin on hand, elbow on knee. "Hello," said he half absently. "Good morning." There was no room for doubt; he had completely forgotten her. As her skin was not white, but of delicate pale yet rosy bronze, it did not readily betray change of emotion. But such a shock had he given her sensitive young heart, in just the mood of love and longing to be most easily bruised, that even his abstraction was penetrated. He set the bottle down. "Didn't I speak to you—" he began, and then remembered. "I beg your pardon," he said, contrite and amused. Pride always hides a real wound. She smiled. "I'm waiting to take you to breakfast," she said. He looked uncertainly at the bottle and the tube. A wave of remorse for her thoughts swept over her. "Also," she went on, and she was radiant again, "I'm waiting to be kissed." He laughed, gazed lovingly at her. "What a beauty she is, this morning," he cried. "Like the flowers—the roses—the finest rose that every grew—in a dream of roses." Her eyes at once showed that his negligence was forgotten. Their lips met in a lingering kiss. He drew away, threw back his head, gazed at her. "Was there ever woman so lovely and fresh and pure?" he said. With impulsive daring she overcame her virginal shyness, flung her arms round his neck, and kissed him. "I love you," she murmured, blushing. "When I woke up and found you gone—it was dreadfully lonely." She had dropped into the somewhat babyish manner natural to any affectionate nature in certain moods and circumstances. It seemed especially natural to her, on account of her size and her exuberant gayety; and she had been assuming it with him in all its charming variations from the beginning of their engagement because it was the manner that pleased him best. "Next time, you'll wake me and take me along—won't you?" He patted her. "Bless the baby! A lot of work I'd do." "I'm going to help you. I can soon learn." He shook his head in smiling negative. "You're going to be the dearest, sweetest wife a man ever had," said he. "And always your womanly self." "But," she persisted with an effort, "I can help. I'm sure I can." There was no trace of the "baby" in her expression now; on the contrary, her face and her voice were those of an extremely intelligent young woman, serious without the dreary, posed solemnity that passes current for seriousness, but is mere humorless asininity. "I really know something about chemistry," she went on. "I liked it, and took the courses both at high school and at college. Last winter I won a prize for original work." His smile made her color. "I don't say that," she hastened to explain, "because I think I'm a wonderful chemist, but just to prove to you that I do know a little something—enough to be able to help in a humble sort of way." His expression was still that of grown people when laughing at the antics of children, and concealing amusement behind a thin pretense of grave admiration. "Yes, I've no doubt you're clever at it," said he. "But a refined woman oughtn't to try to do the man sort of thing." "But, dear, I'm not so superfine as you seem to think—and not altogether foolish." She glanced round the laboratory. "You don't know how at home I feel here. What a wonderful, beautiful equipment you have! Everything of the best—and so well taken care of! Dick, I want to be your—wife. As I watched you I realized I've got to fit myself for it. That is—of course, I always knew I'd have to do that—but now I know just what I must do." "What a serious child it is!" he cried, pinching her cheek. It was delightful, this baby playing at "grown-up." She laughed because she loved him and loved laughter; but she persisted. "Being wife to a man means a great deal more than looking pretty and making love." "That's very dear and sweet," said he, in the same petting, patronizing way. "I'm content with you as you are. I don't want anything more." And he set about putting things away and locking up. Quiet on her high stool, she struggled against a feeling of resentment, of depression. Her instinct was, as always, to hide her hurt; but it seemed to her that if she did, it would not get well, would get worse. "Dick," she began at last. "Yes?" said he absently. "Come along, dear." And he lifted her down with a kiss. She went out, waited for him while he locked the door. "Dick," she began again, as they walked along the path, "I don't want to be shut out of any part of your life, least of all out of the realest part. I want to be truly your wife." No answer. She glanced up at him; obviously his thoughts were far away. She slipped her arms through his. "Tell me what you're thinking about, dear." "About that test I was making." "What was it?" "Oh, nothing. Is the house satisfactory? How do you like old Nanny?" As she did not answer, he looked down at her. "Why, what's the matter with my little sweetheart? Such a discontented expression!" "Nothing—nothing at all," replied she, forcing a smile and steadying her quivering lip. "I'm afraid those two days on the train——" "Yes," she interrupted eagerly. "And I guess I'm hungry, too. That's very upsetting." With a little forcing she kept up the semblance of good spirits through breakfast and until he was off to the laboratory again. Then she gave way to her mood—for it could be only a mood. With old Nanny as guide, she went through the house, through all its spacious solidly and stiffly furnished rooms. At every step Nanny had something to say of Miss Eudosia—how good Miss Eudosia had been, how Miss Eudosia kept everything as her mother had it before her, how particular Miss Eudosia had been. And when it wasn't Miss Eudosia it was Colonel 'Kill—that splendid-looking, terrible-looking old Achilles Vaughan; as a child she had decided that the awful god the family worshiped must look like Achilles Vaughan. Nanny talked on and on; Courtney's spirits went down and down. In one respect the house should have appealed to her—in its perfect order. For she had inherited from her mother a passion for order—an instinct that would have a neatly kept ribbon box almost as soon as she could talk, and had prompted her, long before she could talk distinctly, to cry if they tried to put on her a dress the least bit mussed or a stocking with a hole in it. But there is the order that is of life, and there is the order that is of death. This Vaughan order seemed to her to be of death. She felt surrounded, hemmed in, menaced by a throng of the Vaughan women of past generations—those women of the old-fashioned kind, thoughtless, mindless, cool, and correct and inane—the kind of women the Vaughan men liked—the kind Richard liked—"No—no. He does not like that kind!" Assisted by Nanny and Mazie, she unpacked the trunks into drawers and closets. When the last box was empty, Jimmie took them down to the cellar. She was established—was at home. She and Dick were to have the same bedroom; he would use the big spare bedroom directly across the hall and its bath for dressing. It was all most convenient, most comfortable. But she could not get interested, could not banish the feeling that she would soon be flitting, that she was stranger, intruder here. And the last sweet days of the honeymoon kept recurring in pictured glimpses of their happiness of various kinds, all centering about love. How tender he had been, how absorbed in their romance—that wonderful romance which began ideally in a chance meeting and love at first sight. And now, just as she was getting over her deep-down shyness with him, was feeling the beginnings of the courage to be wholly her natural self, to show him her inmost thoughts, o release the tenderness, the demonstrativeness that had been pent up in her all her life—just as the climax of happiness was at hand—here was this shadow, this relegating her to the chill isolation and self-suppression and self-concealment of a pedestaled Vaughan wife. "He acts as if a woman were not like a man—as if I had no sense because I'm not tall, and don't go about in a frown and spectacles." And it depressed her still further to recall that his attitude had been the same throughout courtship and honeymoon—treating her as a baby, a pet, something to protect and shield, something of which nothing but lover's small talk was expected. She had liked it then; it seemed to fit in with the holiday spirit. "I gave him a false impression. It's my fault." To pretend to be infantile for purposes of a holiday of love-making is one thing; to have one's pretense taken as an actual and permanent reality—that was vastly different, and wearisome, and humiliating, and not to be permitted. "But," she reflected, "it's altogether my fault. And the thing for me to do is not to talk about it to him, but just quietly to go to work and make myself his wife—fit myself for it." A wonderful man she thought him; and it thrilled her, this high and loving ambition to be worthy of him, and not mere pendant and parasite as so many wives were content to be. They were to go the scant half mile across the lake in the motor boat at noon and lunch at her old home. She was ready a few minutes before time, and started toward the Smoke House. Halfway she stopped and turned back. No, she could not interrupt him there again. His manner, unconscious, more impressive than any deliberate look or word, made her feel that the Smoke House was set in an enchanted wood which she could not penetrate until She smiled tenderly. At half past twelve he came on the run. "Why didn't you telephone?" exclaimed he. "We'll be scandalously late. I'm so sorry. When I get to work down there I forget everything. I even forgot I was married." She busied herself with the buttons of her glove, and the brim of her hat hid her face. And such a few hours ago he and she were all in all to each other! "Do you forgive me?" She thought she was forgiving him; the hurt would soon pass. So she gave him a look that passed muster with his unobservant eyes. "Don't worry. We'll soon be there." They got under way, he at the motor, she watching his back. On impulse she moved nearer. "Dick," she said. "Don't turn round. I want to say something to you that's very hard to say.... I feel I ought to warn you. At college the girls called it one of my worst traits. When anyone I care for hurts me, I don't say anything—I even hide it. And they don't realize—and keep on hurting—until— Oh, I've lost several friends that way. For—the time comes— I don't let on, and it gets to be too late—and I don't care any more." "You mean about my keeping you waiting?" "No—not that—not that alone. Not any one thing. Not anything at all yet—but a kind of a shadow. Just—you've made me feel as if I weren't to be part of you—of your life. No, I don't say it right. I've felt as if I were to be part of you, but that you weren't to be part of me." He began to laugh, believing that the proper way to dispel a mood so unreal. But glancing at her he saw she was shrinking and literally quivering with pain. His face sobered. He reminded himself that women could not be dealt with on a basis of reason and sense, since they had those qualities only in rudimentary form. As his hands were occupied, he was puzzled how to treat this his first experience with feminine sweet unreasonableness in her. All he could do toward pacifying was to say soothingly, as to a sensitive child: "I understand, sweetheart. I must be very—very careful." "Not at all!" she cried, ready to weep with vexation at her complete failure to make him understand. "I'm not a silly, sensitive thing, always trailing my feelings for some one to step on." "No, dearest—of course not," said he in the same tone as before. "If there weren't so many sail boats about, I'd show you how penitent I am." "But I don't want you to be penitent." "Then what do you want?" "I want you to—I want us to be comrades." "What a child it is! You girls are brought up to play all the time. But you can't expect a man to be like that. Of course we'll play together. I'd not have wanted to marry you if I hadn't needed you." "But what am I to do when you can't play?" she asked. "And I'm afraid you won't play very often. That is, I know you won't—and I'm glad you won't—for I'd not care as I do if you were that kind. I didn't realize until this morning. But I do realize now, and—Dick, you don't think of me as just to play with?" Facing her earnestness, he would not have dared confess the truth. "No, indeed!" said he. "Your head's full of notions to-day. You're not at all like your sweet loving self." She felt instantly altogether in the wrong. "It's the strangeness, I guess," she said penitently. "That's it, exactly. But in a few days you'll be all right—and as happy as a bird on a bough." As they were about to land she mustered all her courage, and with heightened color said: "You'll let me come down and try to help, won't you? I'll promise not to be in the way—not for a minute. And if I am, I'll never come again. I can at least wash out test tubes and bring you things you need." "Oh, if you really want to come," began he, with good-humored tolerance. "Thank you—thank you," she interrupted, eager and radiant. "Not right away," he hastened to add. "Just at present I'm clearing things up." "I understand. You'll tell me when the time comes." "Yes, I'll tell you." II In late July, after he had not appeared either at dinner or at supper for four days, she said to him, "You're becoming a stranger." The idea of reproaching him was not in her mind. She had been most respectful of what she compelled herself to regard as his rights, had been most careful not to intrude or interrupt or in any way annoy. The remark was simply an embarrassed attempt to open conversation—not an easy matter with a man so absorbed and silent as he had become. But he was feeling rather guilty; also, he had not recovered from the failure of an elaborate experiment from which he had expected great things in advancing him toward his ultimate goal—the discovery of a cheap, universal substitute for all known fuels. "You know, my dear," said he, "in the sort of work I'm trying to do a man can't control his hours." "I know," she hastened to apologize, feeling offense in his tone, and instantly accusing herself of lack of tact. "I'm too anxious for you to succeed to want you ever to think I'm expecting you. I've been busy myself—and a lot of people have been calling." This, though bravely said, somehow did not lessen his sense of guilt. "You're not lonely, are you?" he asked gently. And he gave her a searching, self-reproachful look. "No, indeed!" laughed she. "I'm not one of the kind that get hysterical if they're left alone for a few minutes." Her tone and expression were calculated to reassure, and they did reassure. "Really, you ought to have married a fellow who was fond of society and had time for it. I know how you love dancing and all that." This, with arms about her and an expression which suggested how dreary life would have been if she had married that more suitable other fellow. "I used to like those things," said she. "But I found they were all simply makeshifts, to pass the time until you came." "We are happy—aren't we?" "And just think!" she cried. "How happy we'll be when our real life begins." "Yes," said he vaguely. He looked confused and puzzled, but she was too intent upon her dream to note it. "When do you think you'll get time to teach me the ropes?" asked she. After a little groping he understood. He had forgotten all about that fantastic plan of hers to potter at the laboratory. And she had been serious—had been waiting for him to ask her down! A glance at her face warned him that she was far too much in earnest to be laughed at. "Oh, I don't know exactly when," said he. "Probably not for some time. Don't bother about it." "Of course, I'll not bother you about it," replied she. "But naturally I can't help thinking. It won't be long?" He detested liars and lies. Yet, looking on her as a sort of child—and it's no harm to humor a child—he said, "I hope not." He blushed as he said it, though his conscience was assuring him there was absolutely nothing wrong in this kind of playful deception with woman the whimsical, the irrational. "Certainly not," thought he. "She'll soon forget all about it. I don't see how she happened to remember so long as this." Still, it was not pleasant to tell even the whitest of white lies, facing eyes so earnest and so trusting as were hers just then. He changed the subject—inquired who had been calling. She did not return to it. She was content; his long hours and his complete absorption were proof of his eagerness to hasten the day when they should be together. "Of course," thought she, "he likes what he's doing—likes it for itself. But the reason is 'us.'" And some day soon he would surprise her—and they would begin to lead the life of true lovers—the life she had dreamed and planned as a girl—the life she had begun to realize during courtship and honeymoon—the life of which, even in these days of aloneness and waiting, she had occasional foretastes when overpowering impulse for a "lighter hour" brought him back to her for a little while. She had been puzzled when in those hours he sometimes called her "temptress." The word was tenderly spoken, but she felt an accent of what was somehow suggestion of reproach—and of rebuke. Now she thought she understood. He meant she stimulated in him the same deep longings that incessantly possessed her; and when those longings were stimulated, it was hard for him to keep his mind on the work he was hastening with all his energy—the work that must be done before their happiness could begin. "I must be careful not to tempt him," thought she. From this she went on to feel she understood another matter that had puzzled her, had at times disquieted her. She had noticed that his moods of caressing tenderness, of longing for the outward evidences of love seemed to be satisfied, and to cease just when her own delight in them was swelling to its fullness. Why should what roused her quiet him? This had been the puzzle; now she felt she had solved it: He had greater self-control than she; he would not let his feelings master him, when they would certainly interfere with the work that must be done to clear their way of the last obstacles to perfect happiness; so he withdrew into himself and fought down the longings for more and ever more love that were no doubt as strong in him as in her. Thus she, in her faith and her inexperience, reasoned it all out to her satisfaction and to his glory. She had not the faintest notion of the abysmal difference between her idea of love and his. With her the caresses had their chief value as symbols—as the only means by which the love within could convey news of its existence. With Dick, the caresses were not symbols at all, not means to an end, but the end in themselves. Of love such as she dreamed and expected he knew nothing; for it he felt no more need than the usual busy, ambitious man. His work, his struggle to wrest from nature close-guarded secrets, filled his mind and his heart. He soon assumed she had forgotten her fantastic whim, and forgot it himself. She often wished he would talk to her about his work, would not be quite so discouraging when she timidly tried to talk with him about it. And in spite of herself she could not but be uneasy at times over his growing silence, his habitual absentmindedness. But she accepted it all, as loving inexperience will accept anything and everything—until the shock of disillusion comes. So stupefying is habit, there were times when her dream became vague, when she drifted along, leading, as if it were to be permanent, the ordinary life of the modern married woman whose husband is a busy man. She was learning a great deal about that life from her young married friends of the neighborhood and of Wenona. Many of them—in fact, most of them—were husbanded much like herself. But they were restless, unhappy, and for the best of reasons—because they had no aim, no future. She pitied them profoundly, felt more and more grateful for her own happier lot. For she—Dick's wife—had a future, bright and beautiful. Surely it could not be much longer before he would have the way clear for the life in common, the life together! She fell to talking, in a less light vein than she usually permitted herself with him, about these friends of hers to him one evening as they walked up and down the veranda after supper. She described with some humor, but an underlying seriousness, their lives—their amusing, but also pitiful, efforts to kill time—their steady decline toward inanity. "I don't see what they married for," said she. "They really care nothing about their husbands—or their husbands about them. The men seem to be contented. But the women aren't, though they pretend to be—pretend to their husbands! Isn't it all sad and horrible?" "Indeed it is," he replied. He had been only half listening, but had caught the drift of what she was saying. "It's hard to believe decent women can be like that." "And the men—they're worse," said she; "for they're satisfied." "Why shouldn't they be?" said Dick. "They don't know what kind of wives they've got." "I—I don't think you quite understood me." "Oh, yes; you said the wives were dissatisfied. They've got good homes and contented husbands. What right have they to be dissatisfied? What more do they want?" "What we've got," said she tenderly. "Love." "But they've got love. Didn't you say their husbands were contented? When a man's contented it means that he loves his wife. And a good woman always loves her husband." She laughed. He often amused her with his funny old-style notions about women. "You can't understand people who live and feel as they do, dear," said she. "Of course, you and I seem to be living much like them just now. But you know we'd never be contented if we had to go on and on this way." With not a recollection of the "whim," he stopped short in astonishment. "What way?" he asked. "Aren't we happy?" She smiled radiantly up at him in the clear, gentle evening light. "But not so happy as we shall be, when you get things straightened out and take me into partnership." "Partnership?" he demanded blankly. "What do you mean?" "I call it partnership. I suppose you'd call it working for you. I suppose I shall be pretty poor at first. But I'll surprise you before I've been down there many weeks. I've been brushing up my chemistry, as well as I could, with only books." It came to him what she was talking about—and it overwhelmed him with confusion. "Yes—certainly. I—I supposed you'd forgotten." She gazed at him in dismay. "Forgotten!" Then she brightened. "Oh, you're teasing me." He began to be irritated. "You mustn't fret me about that," he said. "I didn't even mean to speak of it," she protested, her supersensitive dread of intrusion alert. "I know you're doing the best you can. But I couldn't help dreaming of the time when I'll have you back again.... Now, don't look so distressed! Meanwhile, we'll have what we can. And that's something—isn't it?" What queer, irrational creatures women were! To persist in a foolish, fanciful notion such as this! Why couldn't she play at keeping house and enjoy herself as it was intended women should? A woman's trying to do anything serious, a woman's thinking—it was like a parrot's talking—an imitation, and not a good one. But the "whim" and his "harmless deception" became the same sort of irritation in his conscience that a grain of dust is on the eyeball. He was forced to debate whether he should not make a slight concession. After all, where would be the harm in letting her come to the laboratory? She'd soon get enough. Yes, that would be the wise course. Humor a woman or a child in an innocent folly, and you effect a cure. Yes—if she brought the matter up again, and no other way out suggested, he would let her come. It amused him to think of her, delicate as a flower, made for the hothouse, for protection and guidance and the most careful sheltering, trying to adapt herself to serious work calling for thought and concentration. "But she'd be a nuisance after a day or so. A man's sense of humor—even his love—soon wears thin when his work's interfered with." Still, she'd be glad enough to quit, probably after a single morning of the kind of thing he'd give her to discourage her. "Really, all a woman wants is the feeling she's having her own way." This decision laid the ghost. As she said no more, the whole thing passed to the dark recesses of his memory. One evening in late September, when he was taking a walk alone on the veranda, she came out and joined him. After a few silent turns she said, "Let's sit on the steps." She made him sit a step lower than she, which brought their eyes upon a level. The moon was shining full upon them. The expression of her face, as she looked intently at him, was such that he instinctively said, "What is it, dear?" and reached for her hand. He had given the subject of children—the possibilities, probabilities—about as little thought as a young married man well could. There are some women who instantly and always suggest to men the idea motherhood; there are others, and Courtney was of them, in connection with whom the idea baby seems remote, even incongruous. But as she continued to look steadily at him, without speaking, his mind began to grope about, and somehow soon laid hold of this idea. His expression must have told her that he understood, for she nodded slowly. "Do you mean—" he began in an awe-stricken voice, but did not finish. "Yes. I've suspected for some time. To-day the doctor told me it was so." Her hand nestled more closely into his, and he held it more tightly. A great awe filled him. It seemed very still and vast, this moonlight night. He gazed out over the lake. He could not speak. She continued to look at him. Presently she began in a low, quiet voice, full of the melody of those soft, deep notes that were so strange and thrilling, coming from such slim, delicate smallness of body and of face: "I can't remember the time when I wasn't longing for a baby. When I was still a baby myself I used to ask the most embarrassing questions—and they couldn't stop me— When could I have a baby? How soon? How many? And when I finally learned that I mustn't talk about it, I only thought the more. I never rested till I found out all about it. I came very near marrying the first man that asked me because——" He was looking at her with strong disapproval. She smiled tenderly. "I know you hate for me to be frank and natural," she said with the gentlest raillery. "But, please, let me—just this once. I must tell you exactly what's in my head—my foolish, feminine head, as your grandfather would have said." "Go on, dear. But you couldn't convince me you weren't always innocent and pure minded." "You—a chemist—a scientist, talking about knowledge being wicked! But I'll not discuss those things with you. I never have and I never shall." She drew closer to him, put one arm round his neck. "Now do listen, dear," she went on. "Then—you came into my life. It's very queer—I don't understand why—at least not clearly—but from the moment I loved you I never thought of baby again—except to think I didn't want one." "My dear!" he exclaimed. He drew away to look at her. "Courtney! That's very unnatural. You're quite mistaken." As she did not know men, it seemed to her a unique and profoundly mysterious case, this of him so broad-minded, scandalously broadminded most Wenona people thought, yet in the one direction a puritan of puritans. With a wisdom deeper than she realized she said smilingly: "Dear—dear Dick! I guess the reason you men think women irrational is because you're irrational on the subject of women yourselves. To a crazy person the whole world seems crazy." He did not respond to her pleasantry. She sighed, drew his arm round her, went on: "Well—anyhow, it's true. And, do you know, I think that whenever a woman really loves a man, cares for just him, she doesn't want a baby." "You're quite mistaken," he assured her gravely. "It's natural for a woman to want children. You want them." "Do you?" "I? I've never given it much thought." "I did hope you'd say no," said she, half in jest. "Now honestly, doesn't it seem reasonable that when two people love each other they shouldn't want any—any intruder?" He looked at her with more than a trace of severity in his expression. "Where did you get these unnatural ideas? I don't like you to say such things even in joke. They're most unwomanly." She felt rebuked and showed it, but persisted, "You must admit it'll interfere." "Interfere with what?" "With the life we've been looking forward to—with my helping you." "Oh—yes—" he stammered. Again that exasperating ghost! What possessed her to persist in such nonsense? "You know it would interfere—would put off our happiness for a year or two. A year or two! Oh, Dick!" When she had the child, thought he, the ghost would be laid forever. "Well—we'll do the best we can," he said. His tone and manner of regret were as sincere as ever mother used in assuring her child of the reality of Santa Claus. And Courtney believed and was reconciled. "I do want the baby," she now admitted. "But I want you—love—more, oh, so much more. I'm glad your life work is something I naturally care about. Still, I suppose, when a woman loves a man, she cares about whatever he is and does, and fits herself to be part of it." He smiled with patronizing tenderness, as he often did, always evidently quite sure she'd not understand. If we could but realize it, how our mismeasurements of others would enable us to study as in a mirror our own limitations! "Wait till you have the baby," said he. "Do you think that with me love for a baby could ever take the place of need for love—grown-up love? You're always making me feel as if you didn't know me at all, Dick." He laughed and kissed her. "You don't know yourself. Wait till you have a baby, and you'll be content to be just a woman." "But I'm content to be that now." "Well—let's not argue." |
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