Chapter 10

Ten minutes before breakfast time a knock at the hall door into her bedroom. She knew who it was that could not reach above the lower panels. "Come in!" she cried. Winchie entered�stopped short on the threshold.

"Good morning, Mr. Benedict Vaughan," said she, nodding at him by way of the mirror before which she was arranging her blouse at the neck. And he knew she was in a particularly fine humor.

"Have we got company? Who?" he asked.

"No. Why?"

"Aren't you going to take me for a walk after breakfast?"

"Of course. Don't we always go?"

"But it's raining."

"I know."

"Wouldn't it spoil that dress?"

"One'd think you had a sloven for a mother. Don't I always dress?"

"But that's a long skirt. And you're not putting on a shirt waist."

"I'll change after breakfast."

"Oh." This, however, contented him for a moment only. He eyed her critically as she made one insignificant little change after another, displaying a fussiness quite unusual. "I guess we're to have company�maybe."

"Not at all. We never have people to breakfast. What are you puzzling about?"

"Why didn't you put on the rain dress?"

Courtney's delicate skin was showing more than its normal color. She shook her head laughingly at him�this child whose questions were forcing her to see a truth she was striving might and main to hide from herself. "You don't like this dress?"

"Yes, I like 'em all. It isn't the dress, exactly."

"Then what is it?"

"I don't know. It's�something. It made me think company right away." The bar of music from the gong came floating up from below. "There's breakfast!" he exclaimed. "Are you 'most ready?"

"Quite," replied she, with a last look at profile, back hair and back of skirt with the aid of a hand glass.

"Maybe there'll be company," said Winchie as they started.

"I'm sure there'll be corn muffins," said she. "I smell them."

"If there's hash, may I have a little?"

"A little."

The descent was slow as Winchie's legs were short. She listened at every step, but could hear no sound of the kind she hoped. At the sitting-room door she glanced round. He was not there. "He's in the dining room," she said half to herself.

"Who, mamma?"

Courtney startled, flushed. "What is it, dear?" she stammered guiltily.

"Has papa come?"

"No, I was thinking of Mr. Gallatin."

Winchie drew his hand from hers. But she did not note it; for they were at the threshold of the dining room, and no one was there but Lizzie. She and Winchie sat, but she did not begin. A moment and she went to the telephone in the hall, took down the receiver of the private wire. Soon she heard in Basil's voice, "Hello. What is it?"

"It's�I."

"Oh." Then silence.

"Did you hurt yourself last night?"

"No, not at all�thank you."

In a constrained voice: "I thought you were coming to breakfast."

"I felt it was better not to."

"Oh!�good-by." And she hung up the receiver.

Back in the dining room, uneasy under Winchie's serious steady gaze, she winced at his first remark: "Mr. Gallatin's company. There's you�and me�and the rest's company." After a pause, doubtfully: "Except papa. He's not quite company, I guess."

"Do you want some of the hash?"

"You said there wasn't to be company."

"Please! Please!" she cried. "You'll give me the headache."

"You said I was always to say what I had in my brains."

She bent over and kissed his hand. "And so you must."

"Do you say everything that's in your brains?"

She reddened again. "Everything Winchie'd understand," replied she. "After a while, when you grow up, you'll find a lot of things in your mind that it'd be of no use to say because nobody would understand�a lot of things you won't understand yourself."

"There is those in, already," said he solemnly.

She laughed. "No doubt."

As she did not encourage him, he addressed himself to the hash, which was the kind he liked�brown and not too dry, and with the potatoes in little cubes. She poured her coffee, just touched one of Mazie's famous corn muffins as she slowly drank it, and gave herself up to the clear and calm daylight reflections that make comment so cynical and so severe upon what we do and say and think under the spell of night. She put on a waterproof hat and suit, leggings and boots, and issued forth for a two-hours' tramp with Winchie, who was dressed in the same fashion. When they got back at ten, she felt she was not the same woman as the one who had the adventure with the burglar on the balcony. She saw Winchie into dry clothes and settled at his rainy-day games�then out she went again. She walked rapidly along the path to the Smoke House; was soon rapping at the heavy iron door of the laboratory. She rapped again and again, turned away angry, was almost back at the edge of the shrubbery when she remembered that Richard had locked the laboratory, that Basil could not possibly be there.

She hesitated, returned to the Smoke House, knocked at the door of the stairway leading up to the suite. No answer. She opened it, went upstairs. At the top she paused, called, "Anybody here?"

Basil appeared in the doorway of the sitting room. He was in a dark-blue summer house suit, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. His face was very red; his eyes did not meet hers. "Lizzie straightened up and left about half an hour ago," said he.

"I came for a look round," explained she, admiring, without seeming to do so, his elegant and fashionable suit, the harmony of its color with his soft n�glig�e shirt and flowing artist's tie. But then she always liked the way he dressed, the way he wore his clothes. "I come once a week in the morning to keep Lizzie up to the mark," she went on. "You're down in the laboratory at that time, so you haven't known what a model housekeeper I am."

He did not stand aside for her to enter.

"I also had another reason," pursued she. "Please don't choke up the doorway. I'm coming in."

He bowed, stood aside. She entered, glanced round the sober but not somber room with its walls, ceilings, floor, and furniture of walnut. It was a comfortable place and beautifully clean. "Jimmie attends to the floors?"

"Every week."

She glanced into the adjoining room�kalsomined walls and ceiling, a white oak floor, a big chest of drawers, a big mirror, a big table and chair, a roomy brass bedstead. "Any complaints?"

"Everything perfectly satisfactory," he assured her.

"Now for my other business�my real business," said she, disposing herself in one of the window seats. "You may continue to stand, if you prefer; but it would please me better if you sat."

He seated himself stiffly at the table desk. Her eyes were dancing with amusement at his overelaborated formality. It made him seem such a boy, made her feel vastly wiser and stronger and older than he.

"Why didn't you come to breakfast?" she inquired in a most businesslike tone.

"I made up my mind not to see you again until Vaughan returned."

"And then, to go away?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I prefer not to answer that."

"Why not?"

"It's true Vaughan and I are not exactly friends. Still, I've been disloyal. I shall be so no more."

She clasped her hands round one knee, looked at him with half closed eyes. "I do not like to be regarded as part of some one's else belongings," said she. "I belong to myself."

"I wish to God you did!"

"You attach too much importance to what a woman says and does on impulse. I was much upset last night. I said and did things that seem absurd to me in daylight."

"I am just as absurd, as you call it, in daylight as I was in moonlight."

She flinched, controlled herself, made an impatient gesture. "Don't say those things, or you'll spoil everything," she half pleaded, half commanded.

He strode to a window across the room from that in which she was sitting. "Everything is spoiled. I've simply got to go."

"No." She shook her head slowly. "You will stay, and we'll be friends again, as before."

"If I could only wipe out last night!" he cried, and he wheeled upon her.

She caught her breath. "Do you mean that?" she asked impulsively.

He stopped short, faced her, but his eyes were down. "No, I don't," replied he. "And that's the devil of it."

"Why?"

"If I honestly regretted last night, I could stay."

"Why do you lie to yourself?" she asked, crossing the room toward him. "You have no real intention of going."

His gaze sank. "I shall try to go," he muttered.

She laughed�after she had returned to the safer distance of the window seat. "What a passion for hypocrisy you men have. 'I shall try.' You hope that last tiny rag of a remnant will cover your real purpose."

"You think I am a dishonorable dog. I don't wonder at it."

"No, I don't. But I do think you are taking yourself entirely too seriously. You don't want to go, do you? And I don't wish you to go. And Richard doesn't want you to go."

"He'd compel it if he knew."

"But he doesn't know. Maybe, if I knew some things about you, I'd want you to go. Maybe, if you knew me thoroughly, you'd be eager to go. As it is, we all want things to stay as they are."

"Last night was a warning."

"Yes," she hastened to assent. "Let's heed it. Let's go back to friendship and not wander. My friend, you're letting your mind hang over just one subject, just one side of the relations of men and women. Isn't there more to me than�that?"

"Courtney!" he protested.

"Then let's be friends. Let's put aside what we can't have. Let's take and enjoy what we can. Let's not talk or think about�about love�any more than one frets about not being able to visit the moon. We've been finding life happy these last few weeks, with that subject never mentioned. Why not again? Are you too weak? Am I too uninteresting?"

"I tried once before and failed."

"But now that we've looked the situation straight in the face�now that we're both on guard�don't you think we can do better?"

"I don't know," he confessed. "I'm afraid to try�aren't you?"

Her eyes held him, they were so mysterious. "Not so much as I'm afraid not to try," replied she slowly.

He dropped into his chair again, sat staring at the blotting pad on the desk.

"Had you thought," she went on, "what would happen if we owned ourselves beaten and fled from each other?"

He presently lifted his eyes, looked at her in wonder. "And that never occurred to me!" he cried. "Why, our only chance now is to stay here and fight it out. If we shirked and tried to escape�" He paused.

She nodded gravely.

"If I went away, it'd only be to come back�desperate. And you��"

He did not finish his sentence. They sat silent a long time. "It would be horribly lonely with you gone," said she in an absent, impersonal way. "And loneliness breeds such wild longings."

A long silence. Then she rose. "Come up to the house and help me with those plans for a kitchen garden under glass," she suggested.

He nodded without looking at her, as if to show her that he understood all and accepted what was beyond question the less dangerous of their alternatives. "As soon as I dress, I'll be there," said he.

"I forgot. I must change, too. In an hour?"

"Less."

They shook hands in an emphatically comradely fashion, and she went. The former conditions were restored. They would not permit them to be interrupted again. They would demonstrate that, with a thousand, thousand other things, interesting, amusing, to talk and to think about, they could bar out love and keep it out.

An hour over the plans, then they had dinner, laughing and joking together like two children. They did not heed or even note the gloom of Winchie and old Nanny�she was waiting, as it was Lizzie's day out. Winchie sat mum and glum, eating in the deliberate way Courtney had taught him and never lifting his jealous eyes from his plate. Nanny�middle-aged, homely, prim with the added sourness of those who have never had the least temptation to be otherwise�Nanny glowered at Gallatin every time she came into the room. She had disapproved of him from the outset and had made no secret of it. This gayety of his, in the absence of the head of the house of Vaughan, changed that dinner for her into a Babylonish revel. She was shocked at Courtney's taking part, but was not surprised. What was to be expected of the weak and frivolous younger generation of her own sex, mad about adorning the body, scornful of the idea of "settling," and incredulous as to hell fire? Her anger concentrated on Gallatin. He was a man; he seemed a serious, moral man. Yet here he was, leading on the vain, weak woman�he a guest of Mr. Vaughan's�trusted by him�put upon his honor. "It's enough to bring Colonel 'Kill back a-harntin'," muttered she into the oven.... Early in the afternoon it cleared gloriously. Outdoors, the two trespassers upon ancient propriety giddied into still higher spirits. And after supper! They banged on the piano and sang "coon" songs and became so hilarious "that you'd think the settin' room was full," said Jimmie to his aunt.

Nanny scowled at the blue yarn sock she was knitting with wrinkled, rheumatism-knotted fingers. "Such goings-on!" she growled.

"Why not?" demanded Jimmie. "Where's the harm? And I reckon Mrs. V. knows how to take care of herself."

"Who said she didn't?" snapped Nanny.

Toward nine Courtney and Basil went out on the veranda. It was a perfect August night. The honeysuckle in great masses upon the rail was giving forth an odor that quieted them like pensive music. Under the trees and among the bushes the now pale, now bright lamps of the "lightning bugs" shone by scores and hundreds. There was a moon, sailing high and almost full. She thought she had never been so happy in her life. At former happy times there was in her no such capacity to appreciate and enjoy as experience had now given her. And what an ideal companion Basil was�so much the man of the world, wise, experienced, yet simple and amazingly modest. And how marvelously they fitted into each other's moods! She had never thought to find a human being with just the right combination of qualities�one who could be serious�always in an interesting way�and also as light as the lightest.

"Look at those elder blossoms," said Basil in a low voice, as if louder tones might break the spell and dissolve the beauty, delicate, fragile, unreal.

Elder bushes were the outer wall of the eastern shrubbery; their flowers, soft, feathery mats, deliciously sweet to smell, looked at that distance and in that light like a wall of snow. Courtney and Basil descended from the veranda, strolled across the lawn. She lifted her head, seemed to drink in the beauty with her whole face, and to exhale it in a newer, subtler loveliness and perfume.

"How sweet the boxwood hedge is after to-day's rain."

As they neared the water's edge, all other perfumes yielded to the powerful, heavy, sensuous odor of the locust blossoms, in white clusters above the bench on which they presently sat. They were silent, gazing across the lake where, in contrast to the darkness and silence of their shore, lay the town, a shimmer of light, a murmur of confused sounds mingling pleasantly. Down the lake, far out beyond the edge of the heavy shadow flung by the trees, a boat was coming, the man rowing, the girl playing the mandolin and singing. The tinkling of the mandolin and the fresh young voice floated over the waters to Courtney and Basil. She drew in her breath sharply, with a sense of alluring danger hovering. The boat drew nearer; the sounds were clearer�clearer, more tender, more moving. The mandolin tinkled. The free, sweet young voice sang: "I want you�ma honey!�yes I do! I want you�I want you��"

She clasped, clinched her hands in her lap. Basil started up. "I can't bear it!" he cried. "I can't!"

"No�no!" she exclaimed, and her strange look suggested a soul drowning. "Go�go quickly!" And drawing her white shawl about her shoulders, she fled into the house.