MR. AND MRS. ALFRED LAMMLE

It was generally looked upon as rather a good joke. Aunt Cecilia, of course, was prolific of apologies; the launch had made so many trips, and every one thought Beatrice and Lord Clairloch had gone at another time; there had been no general gathering afterward, they had all gone to bed as soon as they reached the yacht, and James, as Beatrice knew, had gone to bed early with a headache; how clever it was of Beatrice to have thought of those two rooms and wasn't it lucky they had been engaged, after all, and so forth. But most of the others were inclined to be facetious. Breakfast, thanks to their efforts, was quite a merry meal.

For the two most nearly concerned the situation was almost devoid of embarrassment. They arrived at the yacht shortly after eight in a launch they had ordered the night before at the hotel, and repaired to their respective rooms without even being seen in their evening clothes. By the time breakfast was over Beatrice had quite recovered from her irritation at Tommy and had even almost ceased to blame herself for the events of the previous night.

The party broke up after lunch, the yacht proceeding to Bar Harbor and the guests going their various ways. Beatrice and James went directly back to New York. James was very silent in the train, as silent as he had been on the way up, but Beatrice was less inclined to find fault with him for that than before. As she looked at him quietly reading in the chair opposite her it even occurred to her that his silence was preferable to Tommy's companionable chirpings, even at their best. And with Tommy at his worst, as he had been last night, there was no comparison. Oh, yes, she was thoroughly tired of Tommy!

Dinner in their apartment passed off almost as quietly as the journey, yet quite pleasantly, in Beatrice's opinion. The night was cool, and a refreshing breeze blew in from the harbor. After the maid had left the room and they sat over their coffee and cigarettes, James spoke.

"About last night," he began, and stopped.

"Yes?" said Beatrice encouragingly.

"I thought at first I wouldn't mention it, and then I decided it would be rather cowardly not to ... I want to say that—"

"That what?"

"That I have no objections."

"To what?" Her bewilderment was not feigned.

"To last night! I don't want you to think I'm jealous, or unsympathetic, or anything like that.... You are at liberty to do what you please—to get pleasure where you can find it. I understand."

"You don't understand at all!" Her manner was still one of bewilderment, though possibly other feelings were beginning to enter.

"I understand, and shall understand in the future. I shan't mention the matter again. Only one thing more—whenever our—our bargain interferes too much, you can end it. I shan't offer any opposition."

She sat frozen in her chair, making no sign that she had understood, so he explained in an almost gentle tone of voice: "I mean you can divorce me, you know."

"Divorce!"

"Oh, very well, just as you like. Of course our marriage ceases to be such from now on...."

So unprepared, so at peace with herself and the world had she been that it was only now that she fully comprehended his meaning. James was accusing her, making the great accusation ... James thought that she.... Of course, not being the kind of a woman who dissolves in tears at that accusation, her first dominant emotion was one of anger; an anger sharper than any she had ever felt; an anger she would have thought to be impossible to her, after all these months of lassitude, all these years of chastening. She rose from her chair and made a step toward the door; her impulse being to walk out of the room, out of the house, out of James' life, without a word. Not a word of self-defense; some charges are too vile to merit reply!

Then commonsense flared up, conquering anger and pride. No, she must not give way to her pride; she must act like a sensible being. After all, James was her husband, he had some right to accuse if he thought proper; the falseness of his accusation did not take away his right of explanation; he should be made to see.

Slowly she turned and went back to her place. She sat down squarely facing James with both hands on the table in front of her, and prepared to talk like a lawyer presenting a case. James was watching her quietly, interested, perhaps ever so slightly amused, but not in the least moved.

"James, as I understand it, you think that I—that Tommy and I...."

"Yes?"

"Well, you've made a great mistake, that's all. You've condemned me without a hearing. You've assumed that I was guilty—"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, let's not talk about being guilty or innocent or wronging each other or being faithful to each other! Those things have no meaning for us. I'm not blaming you—I've tried to explain that to the best of my ability!"

"Very well, then, let us say you have made a mistake in facts."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean—what should I mean? That Tommy and I are not lovers."

"Well, what then?"

"What then—?"

"Yes, what of it? I never said you were, did I? Suppose you're not, then; if you're glad, I'm glad, if you're sorry, I'm sorry. It doesn't alter our position."

"James, you don't understand!"

"What?"

"When you spoke before you thought that I was—that I had sinned.—I do consider it a sin; perhaps you'll allow me to call it so if it pleases me."

"Certainly." He smiled.

"Well, you were wrong. I haven't."

"All right; I was wrong. You haven't."

"Very well, then!"

"Very well WHAT?"

"James!"

"I'm sorry.—But what are you driving at? I wasn't accusing you, you know; I was simply telling you you were free, which you knew before, and offering you more freedom if you wanted it. Why this outburst of virtue?"

"James, you are rather brutal!"

"I'm sorry if I seem so; I don't mean to be." He shifted his position slightly and went on quite gently with another smile: "Beatrice, if you have successfully met a temptation—or what you look upon as a temptation—I'm sure I'm very glad. After all, we are friends, and what pleases my friend pleases me, other things being equal. But does that pleasing fact in itself alter things between us when, from my own selfish point of view, I don't care in the least whether you overcame the temptation or not? And does it, I ask you, alter facts? Does it make you any less fond of Tommy than you are; does it make you as fond of me as you are of him?"

"Oh, James! You understand so little—"

"Whatever I may understand or not understand I know that you spent all of last evening and practically all yesterday and a great part of the evening before with Tommy, and that you gave no particular evidence of being bored ... Beatrice, you were happy with him, happy as a child, the happiest person in the whole crowd, and you showed it, too! Do you mean to say that you've ever, at any time in your life, been as happy in my society as all that! No! Deny it if you can!"

"James, you are jealous!" The discovery came to her like an inspiration, sending a thrill through her. She did not stop to analyze it now, but when she came to think it over later she realized that there was something in that thrill quite distinct from the satisfaction of finding a good reply to James' really rather searching (though of course quite unfounded) charges.

"There's a good deal of the cave-man left in you, James, argue as you may. Do you think any one but a jealous man could talk as you are talking now? 'Deny it if you can'—what do you care whether I deny it or not, according to what you just said? Oh, James, how are you living up to your part of the bargain?"

Her tone was free from rancor or spite, and her words had their effect. James was not beyond appreciating the justice in what she said. He left his chair and raised his hand to his forehead with a gesture of bewilderment.

"Oh, Lord, I suppose you're right," he muttered, and began pacing the room.

So they remained in silence for some time, she sitting quietly in her chair as before and he walking aimlessly up and down, desperately trying to adjust himself to this new fact. It is strange how people will give themselves away when they begin talking; he had been so sure of himself in his thoughts; he had gone over such matters so satisfactorily in his own head! Beatrice understood his plight and respected it; it was not for her, after these last few days, to minimize the trials of self-discovery....

The maid popped in at the pantry door and popped out again.

"All right, Mary, you can take the things," said Beatrice, and led the way into the living room.

There was no air of finality in this move, but the slight domestic incident at least had the effect of putting a check on introspection and restoring things to a more normal footing. Once in the living room—it was a large high room, built as a studio and reaching up two stories—they were both much more at ease; they began to feel capable of resuming negotiations, when the time arrived, like two normal sensible beings. James threw himself on a couch; Beatrice moved about the room, opening a window here, turning up a light there, arranging a vase of flowers somewhere else. At last, deeming the time ripe, she stopped in one of her noiseless trips and spoke down at her husband.

"James, do you realize that you alone, of all the people on the yacht, had the remotest suspicion? You remember how they all joked about it?"

Oh, the danger of putting things into words! Beatrice's voice was as gentle as she could make it; there was even a note of casual amusement in it, but in some intangible way, merely by reopening the subject vocally, Beatrice laid herself open to attack. James' lip curled; he could no more keep it from doing so than keep his hair from curling.

"You must remember, however, that they were not fully acquainted with the circumstances...."

Beatrice turned away in despair, not angry at James, but realizing the inevitability of his reply as well as he himself. She sat down in an armchair and leaned her head against the back of it; she wished it might not be necessary ever to rise from that chair again. The blind hopelessness of their situation lay heavy on them both.

James spoke next.

"Beatrice, will you tell me what it's all about? Why are we squabbling this way? How can we find out—what on earth are we going to do about it all?"

"I've no more idea than you, James."

"Every time we get talking we always fall back on our bargain, as if that was the one reliable thing in the whole universe. Always our bargain, our bargain! Beatrice, what in Heaven's name is our bargain?"

"Marriage, I take it."

"You know it's more than that—less than that—not that, anyway! At first it was all quite clear to me; we were two people whose lives had been broken and we were going to try to mend them as best we might. And as it seemed we could do that better together than alone we determined to marry. Our marriage was to be a perfectly loose, free arrangement, and we were to stick to its terms only as long as we could profit by doing so. We were to part without ill feeling and with perfect understanding. And now, at the first shred of evidence—no, not even evidence, suspicion—that you want to break away we start quarreling like a pair of cats, and I become a monster of jealousy, like any comic husband in a play...."

Beatrice's heart sank again at those words; there was no mistaking the bitterness in them. That heightened a fear she had felt when James had answered her about the people on the yacht; James was still smarting with the discovery of his jealousy, and the trouble was that the smart was so sharp that he might not forgive her for having made him feel it. She felt the taste of her little triumph turn to ashes in her mouth.

"No, James, no!" she interrupted hurriedly. "You weren't, really. That was all nonsense—we both saw that...."

"No, it's true—I was jealous. Jealous! and for what? And what's more, I still am. I can't help it. When I think of Tommy, and the boat-race, and all that. Oh, Lord, the idiocy of it!"

"I don't particularly mind your being jealous, James, if that's any comfort to you."

"No! Why on earth should you? You're living up to your part of the bargain, and I'm not—that's what it comes to. Oh, it's all my fault, every bit of it—no doubt of that!"

His words gave Beatrice a new sensation, not so much a sinking as a steeling of the heart. His self-accusation was all very well, but if it also involved trampling on her—! And she did begin to feel trampled upon; much more so now than when he had directly accused her.... That was odd! Was it possible that she would rather be vilified than ignored, even by James?

Meanwhile James was ranting on—it had not occurred to her that it was ranting before, but it did now:—"There's something about the mere institution of marriage, I suppose, that makes me feel this way; the old idea of possession or something.... You were right about the cave-man! It's something stronger than me—I can't help it; but if it's going on like this every time you—every time you speak to another man, it'll make a delightful thing out of our married life, won't it? This free and easy bargain of ours, this sensible arrangement! Why, it's a thousand times harder than an ordinary marriage, just because I have nothing to hold you with!...

"Beatrice, we're caught in something. Trapped! Don't you feel it? Something you can't see, can't understand, only feel gradually pressing in on you, paralyzing you, smothering you! There's no use blaming each other for it; we're both wound up in it equally; it's something far stronger than either of us. A pair of blind mice in a trap!..."

He flung himself across the room to an open window and stood there, resting his elbows on the sill and gazing out over the twinkling lights of the city. Beatrice sat immovable in her chair, but her bosom was heaving with the memory of certain things he had said. Another revulsion of feeling mastered her; she no longer thought of him as ranting; she felt his words too strongly for that. A pair of blind mice in a trap—yes, yes, she felt all that, but that was not what had stirred her so. What was that he had said about having nothing to hold her with?...

She watched him as he stood there trying to cool his tortured mind in the evening air. He was tremendously worked up; she wondered if he could stand this sort of thing physically; she remembered how ill he had been looking lately.... She watched him with a new anxiety, half expecting to see him topple over backward at any moment, overcome by the strain. Then she could help him; her mind conjured up a vision of herself running into the dining room for some whisky and back to him with the glass in her hand; "Here, drink this," and her hand under his head.... It was wicked of her to wish anything of the kind, of course; but if she could only be of some use to him! If he would but think of turning to her for help in getting out of his trap! He would not find his fellow-mouse cold or unsympathetic.

She could not overcome her desire to find out if any such idea was in his mind. She went over to him and touched him gently on the shoulder.

"James—"

"No, not now, please; I want to think."

And his shoulder remained a piece of tweed under her hand; he did not even bother to shake her off.

She sat down again to wait.

When at last he left the window it was to sit down by a lamp and take up a book. That was not a bad sign, in itself, as long as he made his reading an interlude and not an ending. But as she sat watching him it became more and more evident that he regarded their interview as closed. And so they sat stolidly for some time, James determined that nothing should lead him into another humiliating exhibition of feeling and Beatrice determined that whatever happened she would make him stop ignoring her. And though she was at first merely hurt by his indifference she presently began to feel her determination strengthened by something else, something which, starting as hardly more than natural feminine pique shortly grew into irritation, then into anger of a slow-burning type and lastly, as her eyes tired of seeing him sit there so unaffectedly absorbed in his reading, into something for the moment approaching active dislike. We all know what hell hath no fury like, and Beatrice, as she fed her mind on the thought of how often he had insulted and repelled and above all ignored her that evening, began to consider herself very much in the light of a woman scorned.

"Is that all, James?" she ventured at length.

He put down his book and looked up with the manner of one making a great effort to be reasonable.

"What do you want, Beatrice?"

Beatrice would have given a good deal to be able to say that what she really wanted was that he should take her to him as he had that day at Bar Harbor and never once since, but as she could not she made a substitute answer.

"We can't leave things as they are, can we?"

"Why not? Haven't we said too much already?"

"Too much for peace, but not enough for satisfaction. We can't leave things hanging in the air this way."

"Very well, then, if you insist. How shall we begin?"

"Well, suppose we begin with our bargain—see what its terms are and whether we can live up to them and whether it's for our benefit to do so."

"All right. What do you consider the terms of our bargain to be?"

They were both talking in the measured tones of people determined to keep control over themselves at all costs. They looked at each other warily, as though guarding against being maneuvered into a betrayal of temper or feeling.

"Well, in the first place, I assume that we want to present a good front to the world. Bold and united. We want to prevent people from knowing...."

"Certainly."

"And if we give the impression of being happy together we've gone a good way toward that end."

"Yes, that's logical."

"Well—?"

"What?"

"It's your turn now, isn't it?"

"Oh, no; you've begun so well you'd better go on."

"Well, I've only got one more idea on the subject, and that is just tentative—a sort of suggestion." She sat down on the sofa by him and strove to make her manner a little more intimate without becoming mawkish or intrusive. "It has occurred to me that we haven't given that impression very much in the past, and I think the reason for that may be that we—well, that we don't work together enough. Does it ever occur to you, James, that we don't understand each other very well? Not nearly as much as we might, I sometimes think, without—without having to pretend anything. We know each other so slightly! Sometimes it gives me the oddest feeling, to think I am married to you, who are stranger to me than almost any of my friends...."

She feared the phrasing of that thought was a little unfortunate, and broke off suddenly with: "But perhaps I'm boring you?"

"No, no—I'm very much interested. How do you think we ought to go about it?"

"It's difficult to say, of course. How do you think? I should suggest, for one thing, that we should be less shy with each other—less afraid of each other. Especially about things that concern us. Even if it is hard to talk about such things, I think we ought to. We should be more frank with each other, James."

"As we have been this evening, for example?"

The cynical note rang in his voice, the note she most dreaded.

"No, I didn't mean that, necessarily. I don't mind saying, though, that I think even our talking to-night has been a good thing. It has cleared the air, you know. See where we are now!"

"Yes, and it's cleared you too. But what about me?"

"I don't understand."

"Oh, you've come out of it all right! You've behaved yourself, vindicated yourself, done nothing you didn't expect to, nothing you have reason to be ashamed of afterward. I have! I haven't been able to open my mouth without making a fool of myself in one way or another...."

"Only because you're overtired, James...."

"I've said things I never thought myself capable of saying, and I've found I thought things that no decent man should think. It was an interesting experience."

"James, my dear, don't be so bitter! I'm not blaming you. I can forget all that!"

She laid her hand on his knee and the action, together with the quality of her voice, had a visible effect on him. He paused a moment and looked at her curiously. When he spoke again it was without bitterness.

"That's awfully decent of you, Beatrice, but the trouble is I can't forget. Those things stay in the memory, and they're not desirable companions. And as talking, the kind of frank talking you suggest, seems to bring them out in spite of me, I think perhaps we'd better not have much of that kind of talk. It seems to me that the less we talk the better we shall get on."

Beatrice was silent a moment in her turn. She had not brought him quite to where she wanted him, but she had brought him nearer than he had been before. She resolved to let things stay as they were.

"Very well, James," she said, leaning back by his side; "we won't talk if you don't want to. About those things, that is. There are plenty of other things we can talk about. And let's go to places more together and do things more together. I see no reason why we shouldn't get on very well together. After all, I do enjoy being with you, when you're in a good mood, more than with any one else I know—that I could be with—"

"Then why—Oh, Lord!" He stopped himself and sank forward in despair with his head on his hands.

"Well, go on and say it."

"No, no."

"Yes. It's better that way."

"I was going to say, why did you appear to enjoy yourself with Tommy so much more than—Oh, it's no use, Beatrice! I can't help it—it's beyond me!"

"Oh, James!"

"Yes, that's just it! It's the devil in me!"

"When that was all over, James!"

"All over! Then there was something!... Oh, good Lord! We can't go through it all over again!"

"James, I meant that you were all over feeling that—"

"Yes, yes, I know you did, and I thought you meant the other and said that, and of course I had no right to because of what we are, and so forth, over and over again! Round and round and round, like a mouse in a trap! Caught again!..."

He got up and walked across the room once or twice, steadying himself with one last great effort. In a moment he stopped dead in front of her.

"See here, Beatrice!"

"Yes?"

"It can't happen again, do you see? It's got to stop right here and now! I can't stand it—call it weak of me if you like, but I can't. It'll drive me stark mad. We are not going to talk about these things again, do you see?"

"What sort of things?"

"Anything! Anything that can possibly bring these things into my head and make a human fiend of me. And you're not to tempt me to talk of them, either. Do you promise?"

"I promise anything that's reasonable—anything that will help you. But do you intend to let this—this weakness end everything—spoil our whole life?"

"Spoil! What on earth is there to spoil? We've got on well enough up to now, haven't we? Well, we'll go back to where we were, where we were this morning! And we'll stay there, please God, as long as we two shall live! You're free, absolutely free, from now on! I shan't question anything you may care to do from this moment, I promise you!"

She remained silent a moment, awed in spite of herself by the fervency of his words. She was cruelly disappointed in him. She had made so many attempts, she had humbled herself so often, she had suffered his rebuffs so many times and she had brought him at one time in spite of himself so near to a happier state of things that his one-minded insistence on his own humiliation seemed to her indescribably petty and selfish. His jealousy, his vile, rudimentary dog-in-the-manger jealousy; that was what he couldn't get over; that was what he could not forgive her for! What a small thing that was to resent, in view of what she herself had so steadfastly refrained from resenting!... However, since he wished it, there was nothing more to be done. She could be as cold and unemotional as he, if it came to the test.

"Then you definitely give up every effort toward a better understanding?"

"Yes!"

"And you prefer, once for all, to be strangers rather than friends?"

"Strangers don't squabble!"

"Very well, then, James," she said with a quiet smile, "strangers let it be. I daresay it's better so, after all. I shouldn't wonder if you found me quite as good and thorough a stranger, from now on, as you could desire. It was foolish of me to talk to you as I did."

"No, no—don't get blaming yourself. It's such a cheap form of satisfaction."

She stood looking at him a moment with coldly glittering eyes.

"It's quite true," she repeated; "I was a fool. I was a fool to imagine that you and I could have anything in common. Ever. Well, nothing can very well put us farther apart than we are now. There's a certain comfort in that, perhaps."

"There is."

"At last we agree. Husbands and wives should always agree. Good-night, James."

"Good-night,"

He watched her as she glided from the room, so slim and beautiful and disdainful. Perhaps a shadow of regret for her passed across his mind, a thought of what a woman, what a wife, even, she might have been under other circumstances; but it did not go far into him. Things were as they were; he had long since given up bothering about them, trying only to think and feel as little as possible. He took up his book again and read far into the night.