Chapter 14

Five days since the letter to Basil, a fortnight since he went, and the first move toward freedom not yet made. Each day added its strength of loneliness and longing to the resolve that became the guiding purpose of her life when she sent him away. But she must restrain her eagerness, must compel herself to wait upon opportunity�upon the favorable gust of event or emotion. To be tactless and abrupt would mean defeat; for, hard though it was to realize, she must keep ever in mind that Richard had legal right over Winchie. Moral right she denied not only because he was as much a stranger to Winchie as to herself, but chiefly because a child belonged to its mother. Indeed, if she had not been brought up in a legal family it would not have occurred to her that in any circumstances she need disturb herself about having Winchie. There was nothing of pose or effusiveness about her love for him; it was that deep and utter love which is not conscious of itself, but simply is. She and the boy were as much part of each other as when his being was still hidden within hers. She knew that she and Winchie were one; but she also knew the man-made law. So in seeking her freedom she must move carefully. Sometimes she felt she must be dreaming; it simply could not be possible that in arranging her life she must take into account a person so utterly alien and apart as this nominal husband of hers.

She had rarely seen him since Basil left. He was exercising�walking or rowing on the lake�very early in the mornings. But he spent the whole day at his work. When he occasionally came to dinner or supper, he was deep in his problems, was as unconscious of his wife and child as his child was of him. Courtney was no longer unconscious of him. As before, she did not see him when she looked at him, did not listen when he talked, answered, if answer was necessary, by a sort of reflex mental action that never involved her real mind. But she had the sense of his presence�as keen when he was out of sight as when he sat working or in a deep abstraction before her eyes. And she was constantly revolving how to begin the revolt�for she saw more and more clearly that it would be regarded by him as a revolt against womanliness, against duty, against honor, against decency, would burst upon him like thunder from clear sky, no matter how adroitly she might begin. Until then his ideas of woman had impressed her only in a vague, general way. She had avoided thinking them out or hearing them from his own lips because she knew definite knowledge would only make the struggle to be a wife to him as far as she might the more painful, the more humiliating. But now, piece by piece, his conception of womanhood and woman's place fitted itself together in her mind from stray sentences dropped by him from time to time in their five years. Every day she recalled some forgotten or ignored remark that added to the completeness of the record�and to its discouragement. As to the position of woman in the scheme of things, he was untouched of any modern idea. He was just where his grandfather had been; and Colonel Achilles Vaughan had been where the whole world had been since the Oriental contempt for women reconquered Europe under the banner of the Cross.

In one of the last warm days she half sat, half lay in the hammock on the lake-front veranda, apparently idle, really with a brain as industrious as a beehive. Gradually, however, the beauty of the scene�summer dying like a lovely woman whose mortal disease only enhances loveliness�stole in upon her and won her for the moment. She looked at the wonderful colors far and near, she drank in the last potent draughts of summer's perfume. And suddenly she thought, "I would be divorcing all this, too!" These gardens that she had created; the house that she had made over. Why, these things were part of her very soul. The same life throbbed in them that throbbed in her boy and in herself�her own life blood! The place was in Richard Vaughan's name just as she herself was, just as Winchie was. But it was not his; it�all that made it individual�was hers!

Most of us pass through the world, leaving little more trace of our individuality than a traveler leaves in a hotel room. But Courtney had the creative instinct powerfully developed. She even never dressed in exactly the same way, no matter how simple her costume or how often she wore it; and her clothes were so individual that Richard the absent spoke of hats and dresses she had worn several years back. And this place�it was like the picture the artist keeps by him and touches and retouches. Also, she now realized for the first time how profoundly domestic she was by nature. Not by chance had she avoided the life of the gadabout and meddler which is chosen by so many women when they find themselves mismated, and so, without hope of the normal life. She had always classed herself with the flyabout sort of women rather than with the domestic sort; she had fallen into the common error of taking as representative of the domestic type those dreary rotters who sit at home inert and slovenly simply because it requires less effort to stay at home than to dress and issue forth. Now she saw that she was domestic, was a home-maker and a home-lover; and she understood a deeper depth of her unhappiness�the unhappiness that comes from being cheated out of one's dearest desires; for how incomplete must be any home without love of husband and wife. And she understood why, as she made her surroundings more and more like her dreams, her longing for love had grown apace; she was like the bird that builds its nest, and has nothing to put in it.

She had built this nest; now she must abandon it. Heavier and heavier grew her heart, as she thought of the years of thought and toil she had invested, as she looked about at the results. She rebuked herself almost fiercely�in terror of the weakness to which these lamentings might tempt her; in shame at the disloyalty to Basil. "I'm utterly selfish," she said to herself. "I'm shrinking from making any sacrifice at all." There she stopped short in a kind of terror. "Sacrifice"�what a strange word to use�what an ominous word�and how clearly it warned her that delay was eating out courage, was strengthening her natural woman's inertia. Sacrifice! She began to picture what the new life would be�perfect sympathy, companionship ever closer and closer, how she would grow and expand, how Winchie would thrive in an atmosphere of ideal love�and Basil and she would together create a place, a home which would be incomparably lovelier than this.... "Yes, I must establish my life on its permanent basis." Her life must be straightened out, must be settled right. Until it was based right, nothing could be right; mind and heart would always be uneasy, and from time to time in a turmoil. "Nothing is settled," her father often used to quote, "until it's settled right." He was thinking of large affairs, but the thing was just as true of the affairs of private life. Her and Richard's relations, her and Basil's relations, and therefore her and Winchie's relations, were awry, all awry. There had been successive adjustments; they had one after the other fallen to pieces�because "nothing is settled until it's settled right."

That very evening, it so happened, for the first time Richard made a remark that gave her an opening. "Why don't you stay down in the evenings?" said he. "It doesn't disturb me for you to play and sing in the sitting room when I'm in the library."

"The last few times I did it," replied she, "you slipped away to the shop."

He reddened, laughed guiltily. "Did I? Well�perhaps in certain moods��"

"Oh, I'm not complaining," she assured him. "I've got used to our leading separate lives�long ago.... I like it as much as you do."

"Separate lives," said he reflectively. "It's true, we don't see much of each other. Husbands and wives rarely do, when the man amounts to anything, or is trying to amount to anything."

"Unless they work together."

"And that's impossible where people are of our station."

Our station! Her lip curled and her heart protested. How could a human being with a human heart talk of a station too high for love�love that was the soul of life.

"Also," continued he, reflective and absent, "it's out of the question where the husband is pursuing an intellectual occupation." Even had he not been merely thinking aloud, it would not have occurred to him that there was any slur in a statement of an elementary axiom as to the different spheres of the two sexes. "And," he went on, "it's unnecessary to married happiness, as we've proved. You had an idea once�do you remember?�"

"Yes�I remember."

"If I'd let you have your foolish, impulsive, romantic way, and you'd been at my elbow down at the shop, where I get irritable and cranky�we'd not have made our present record�would we?"

She shivered. "No," she said faintly.

"Five years with hardly a misunderstanding, and not one quarrel."

His words, his manner�complacent, content�calmly possessive�dried up her courage and her hope. But she held to her purpose. She said, "We're not interested enough in each other to quarrel."

He laughed, assuming she was jesting. "That's it! That's exactly it."

"I was speaking seriously. It's the truth. We care nothing about each other."

"Courtney!" he admonished. "Aren't you carrying the joke too far? I don't think you realize how that sounds."

"I realize how it is."

He looked at her curiously. "Why, I thought you were joking."

"Not in the least."

"How pale your face is. And what a strange expression round the mouth�and your eyes are circled. Are you ill, dear?"

"Absolutely well. It's the strain of getting ready to say these things to you." She saw he was observing her like a physician studying a patient. "No, I'm not insane, either," said she good-humoredly.

"What's happened to upset you?"

She put one knee in a chair, leaned toward him over its back, her elbows upon it. Said she, "It isn't a matter of to-day, but of five years�or, rather, of four years."

He straightened up in his chair. She imagined that his grandfather, old Colonel Achilles, must have looked like that at the same age. "What are you talking about?" he demanded.

"About our failure as a married couple," replied she, meeting his gaze with calm courage.

"Failure!" exclaimed he. "Why, our married life is ideal. I wouldn't have it changed in the least particular." He nodded his handsome, powerful head. "Not in the least particular."

She had expected him to say something like this. But the actual words, spoken with sincerity and conviction, stopped her. Her road had ended against the face of a cliff with a precipice on either side.

"I want to be free," she said desperately. "I must be free!"

"Free? You are free."

"I mean free from marriage," explained she gently, "free to make my own life."

He reflected, looked at her, reflected again. She saw, as plainly as if his thoughts were print before her eyes, that he had decided she was a spoiled child in a pet, that he was trying to find some kindly, effective way of humoring her. But to take her words seriously, to meet her on a plane of equality�the idea had not occurred to the grandson of Achilles Vaughan, and could not occur to him. Anger boiled up in her, evaporated. She laughed.

He glanced at her quickly. "Oh, you were joking!" said he in a relieved tone.

"That wasn't why I laughed. It was to save myself from doing something ridiculous�shouting out, or upsetting the table, or running amuck."

"No matter. It's clear to me that you're not yourself this evening�not at all."

"Richard," said she slowly, "I know it's hard for you to believe a woman's not a fool. I don't expect you to credit me with intelligence. Perhaps you might if I were a big, fat woman with a loud voice. But I'm not. So, assume I'm as silly a fool as�as most women pretend to be, to catch husbands and to use them after they're caught. But please assume also that, whatever I am or am not, I want my freedom. And try to realize that we women are living in the twentieth century as well as you men�and not in the tenth or fifteenth."

His expression was serious and respectful; he was not one to fail in polite consideration for the feminine�the wayward, capricious, irrational feminine with which stronger and rational man should ever be patient and gentle. But she saw that he was in reality about as much impressed as he would have been by a demand for the open cage door from a canary born and bred to captivity and helplessness. He came round the table, put his hands tenderly on her shoulders, pressed his lips in a husbandly caress upon the coil of auburn hair that crowned her small head. "You're tired and nervous to-night, dear," said he with grave kindness. "So we'll not talk about it any more. Go to bed, and get a good night's sleep. Then��"

She rose, found herself at a disadvantage standing before one so much taller, sat down in another chair. "Yes, I am tired and I am nervous. But I'm also in earnest. Why, if we weren't strangers, you'd realize. You'd have felt it long ago. Can't you see I'm nothing to you or you to me that is, nothing especial�nothing that ought to satisfy either of us?" She was trying to speak with serious calmness; the very effort overstrained her. And his face�its expression was so hopeless! She was speaking a language he did not understand, was speaking of matters of which he had not the faintest glimmer of knowledge. Her voice broke; she steadied it. It broke again. She began to sob. "This life of ours is a degradation. It's like a stagnant pool�it's death in life. I can't stand it. I want love�want to give love and get it! My whole being cries out for love! I'm dying here of the empty heart. I must go. I ask you to be just�to give me my right�my freedom��"

It was his expression that stopped her. He was not listening to her words at all. He was simply waiting for her to talk out her hysteria, as he thought it, so that he could begin to soothe the agitated child. She threw out her arms in despair.

"Go on, dear," he urged. "Say all you want. You'll feel better for it."

The cliff, with choice between turning back and leaping over one of the precipices on either side�the precipice of flight to Basil in secrecy and dishonor, with Winchie, or the precipice of a divorce with Winchie taken away from her. She buried her face in her arms and burst into wild sobs. With Winchie taken away from her! If she fled, he would follow, would take Winchie. If she divorced him, he would take Winchie. It was hopeless�hopeless. There was no escape. Sobbing, she ran round and round her prison's outer court to which she had penetrated. It had no gates�none! He waited until she was quiet, except that her shoulders heaved occasionally. "Poor dear!" he said tenderly. "Poor child!" And he took her in his arms. She felt physically and morally too weak for the least struggle. She lay passive against his breast, her heartache throbbing dully. He carried her upstairs, laid her gently on the sofa at the foot of her bed. "Now you feel better, don't you?" said he, bending over her and smiling sympathetically down.

She gazed at him with forlorn, hopeless eyes, then rested her head weakly against the cushions in the corner of the sofa.

"Of course, I understood that what you were saying a while ago was only a nervous mood. But it gave me a shock, too. I know now what was the matter."

She grew cold, rigid. Did he suspect? Would he take Winchie?

"I admit I've been neglecting you lately. Gallatin's leaving put a lot of work on me. And, too, I read an article that gave me a silly scare�made me afraid I'd be anticipated in one of my discoveries if I didn't push things. But even if I was negligent, I can't see how you could get the notion in your head that you weren't loved any more." He sat down by her on the sofa, kissed the nape of her neck. "I'll make up for it," he murmured. "Why, it'd be as impossible for me to stop loving you as for you, a good woman, to stop loving your husband. The idea of you talking divorce!" He laughed boyishly. "You and I�divorced! What a naughty child it was! It seems dreadful that those pure lips could be sullied by such a word. But it never was in your heart. A woman like you, a woman I trust my honor to, and trust my boy to, couldn't think such things."

His words and manner, all tenderness, were for her reminders of the Vaughan prejudice and the Vaughan will and the Vaughan pride that lay behind; the clang of iron doors, the grate of brass keys in steel locks. She, back in her cell and prostrate on its floor, felt she must indeed have been driven out of her senses by heart hunger to imagine she could get freedom and Winchie from Richard Vaughan. How love and hope had tricked her!

"Asleep, dear?"

"No."

"You don't doubt my love any longer, do you?"

She moved restlessly.

"Still cross?" He took her in his arms in spite of her struggles, began to caress her. And she who had never resisted did not know how to resist now�did not dare to resist, so cowed was she by fear of losing Winchie, so utterly was she despising herself�"nothing but a woman." She endured till reaction stung her into crying out in anguish: "For God's sake, Richard! I am so miserable!"

"I'm sorry," he said contritely. "I thought you wanted it." He rose at once. "Would you like to be left alone?"

"Please."

"You forgive me for neglecting you?

"Anything!" she cried. "Only go. If you don't, I shall�" She pressed her lips together tightly and drew all her nerves and muscles tense to keep back the avowal that was fighting for exit.

"I'll give up my work until you feel better."

"No�no. I don't want� Go�please go! For Winchie's sake�for mine�for your own."

He did not attach enough importance to her words to note them and inquire. When the door closed behind him, she drew a long breath�not so much relief that she was alone, as relief that, before seeing how useless it was to try to escape, she had not burst out with the whole truth. A turn of the wind of emotion before he spoke of Winchie, and she would have told all! Even after he had reminded her�yes, even until the door closed between them, she might still have been goaded by her despair or by his manner into precipitating the cataclysm��

"For he'd never have let me see Winchie again!" And�what else would he have done?�what would he not have done? She put out her lights and, without drawing aside the porti�re, softly opened Winchie's door and entered. She dropped down by his bed, slipped her hand under the cover, delicately warm from his healthy young body. Her fingers rested upon his breast over his heart. That calm, regular throb of young life beat upon her spirit like the soft, insistent rain that soothes the storm-racked sea.

Winchie! If she had lost him! If she had brought disgrace upon him! She drew her hand away lest its trembling should waken him. The room was pitch dark, but she could see him lying there, his tumbled fair hair against the white pillow, his round cheeks flushed with healthy sleep. She sat on the floor beside the bed, listening to his breathing. She had gone down to the gates of the world and had led him through them into life. Claim upon him she had none�for he owed her nothing, and if his lot were not happy he would have the right to blame her. No, he owed her nothing; but his claim upon her was for the last moment of her time, for the last thought of her brain, for the last drop of her blood.

"If it were not for Winchie," she said to herself, "I'd go to Basil. I'd leave here to-night. I owe nothing to Dick. While his way of looking at life is not his fault, neither is it mine. And as it's his way, not mine, he should suffer for it, not I. But for Winchie I must stay�and live and make this house a home."

Never again would there be the least danger of her being goaded into telling Richard and defying and compelling him. No delirium, not even a fever like a maniac loose in the brain and hurling all its tenant thoughts helter-skelter through the lips, could dislodge that secret. It was sealed with the great seal of a mother's love.

When she came down to breakfast, Dick was at one of the long windows, back to the room, hands deep in trousers' pockets. At her "Good morning," he turned quickly. Before he answered, he noted her expression, and his face brightened. He kissed the cheek she turned for him as usual, and they seated themselves. In came Mazie with the coffee; it had the delicious fragrance that proclaims fine coffee well made, the fragrance that will put the grouchiest riser into an amiable frame of mind. Then she brought the spoon bread and an omelette�not the heavy, solid, yellow-brown substantiality that passes for omelette with the general, but a light and airy, delicately colored thing of beauty such as a skilled cook can beat up from eggs the hens have laid within the hour.

"Feeling all right this morning?" asked Dick when Mazie had gone out.

"Perfectly," replied Courtney, her smiling eyes like the dark green of moss round where the spring bubbles up. She was rearranging the flowers in the bowl.

"Sleep well?"

She had not slept at all. She evaded his question by saying: "I was very much upset last night, wasn't I?"

Dick made a gesture of generous dismissal. "Oh, I knew it was only a passing mood," said he, helping himself liberally to the omelette. "Everybody has moods. Do give me some of that coffee."

Strange indeed was the expression of that small, quiet face. What a chaos a few blundering words from her a few hours ago would have put in place of this domestic content of his! "I want to say one thing more," said she, "and then we'll never speak of last night�or what led up to it."

"Yes, dear?"

"We talked a lot about ourselves�and I was thinking altogether of myself, I find. But the truth is, Winchie's the only important fact in our lives. We don't belong to ourselves. We belong to him."

"That's not exactly the way I'd put it," said he hesitatingly. "Do try this spoon bread. Mazie's a wonder at making it. Do try it."

"Not just now," said she. "No, I know you wouldn't put it that way. Put it any way you like. But it must be Winchie first, last, and all the time. We must see to it that he has the right sort of example�from you�from me�from us both."

Dick nodded approvingly, and when his mouth was said: "There's no disputing that. Where is he, by the way?"

"He'll be down in a minute," replied Courtney; then went on unruffled: "If you and I had had love before our eyes in our homes when we were children��"

"But I did. And I'm sure your father and mother were an equally fine example��"

"No matter," interrupted Courtney. Then she said, in a tone that revealed for the first time how profoundly moved she was: "The point is I want you to help me make a home�of love for Winchie."

"By all means!" exclaimed Dick heartily.

He stirred his coffee thoughtfully, looked at her with puzzled eyes; and she saw that his keen, analytic mind, usually reserved wholly for his work, was curiously inspecting her words and her manner for the meaning that must be beneath so much earnestness about a passing anger over a few days of neglect. She said no more�and was glad when Winchie came rushing in to turn the current of his thoughts. As he was leaving for the shop, he hunted her out in the library to kiss her good-by�a thing he had not done in several years.

She colored, made an effort, kissed him.

"I'm sorry for my negligence since Basil left me in the lurch," said he cheerfully. "And you're sorry you flew into such a fury about it. And it's all settled�and forgotten?"

"We�make a fresh start," replied she.

"I'll come and take a walk with you before dinner."

"No�no. Please don't. You mustn't change abruptly." She stopped, confused to find herself already shrinking from the new course she had so highly resolved. "Yes�do come," said she.

"Oh�I forgot. There's one thing I simply must attend to to-day."

"Then�to-morrow."

"Yes�to-morrow we'll make the start�the fresh start."

"Very well," said she, relieved�for she felt she had done her duty.

Instead of going out immediately for a walk with Winchie, as was the habit, she lingered about the house, keeping herself busily occupied. She must write Basil. What she said must be final, for she owed him the truth. And she must not say much; a long letter would give him hope, no matter what words she used, and would harrow him in the reading and her in the writing. At last she put on hat and even gloves for the walk, sat hastily down at her desk, wrote: "I cannot. I belong to my boy, not to myself." She wished to add, "I shall try to forget. So must you, for my sake�" and also some word of love. But with the two sentence she halted her pen. She read what she had written�"I cannot. I belong to my boy�not to myself." She folded the sheet, sealed it in an envelope, addressed it. As she reached for the stamp she called Winchie. They went out together, and she mailed the letter in the box at the edge of town. Well, it was settled�once more. Was this final? "Nothing is settled until it's settled right." And she said to herself that this settlement was undoubtedly right�that is, as nearly right as anything ever is. Yes, it was settled�but her father's uncompromising axiom continued to reiterate its clear-cut, unqualified assertion.

"Why did you sigh, mamma?" asked the boy.

"Did I sigh?" said she, trying to smile as she looked down at him.

"Yes�and you haven't been listening as we came along. You didn't hear what I said about the dead whip-poor-will I found on the lawn�did you?"

"No," she confessed. "But I'll listen now."

She found herself wondering at her calmness. "Perhaps," reflected she, "my fright about Winchie conquered my love. And how deep the roots of my life are sunk into the soil of this place! Still�I don't understand it. It doesn't seem natural I should be calm." There flashed before her mind a picture�herself flying disheveled�coming forward with laughter and jest�and lie�with the sting of forbidden kisses still upon her face�the thrill of forbidden caresses� And she flushed crimson as the autumnal maples above her head, and glanced guiltily down at Winchie�and saw that he was trying to pretend not to see.