Chapter 17

When the mail cart on the third afternoon failed to bring a letter from Richard, she decided that prudence had been satisfied, that she need wait no longer. Toward four she and Winchie set out, snuggled deep in furs and straw in the rear of a huge country sleigh. The roads were perfect; the snow was like a strand at low tide, rolled smooth and firm by the broad tires of high tide's billows. The big horses, steaming as if they were engines, flew as if they were a wind. But her impatient heart was always far ahead, fretting at their laggard pace.

They dashed into the outskirts of Wenona. The journey was ended except the mile and a half round the curve of the lake. She became all at once serenely calm. Life her real life�was now about to begin. It was far from the life she would have chosen, had she been prearranging her own fate. However�who could live an ideal life in such a topsy-turvy world? Nature and conventionality ever at war; right and wrong, not two straight paths, one up, the other down, but a tangle, a maze, a labyrinth. One must often travel the path of the wrong in order to reach the path of the right; and keeping to the path of the right often meant arriving in a hopeless network of blind alleys of the wrong. She was in the confused state about right and wrong characteristic of this era of transition that has seen the crumbling of the despotism of dogma, and has not yet received, or created, a moral guidance to replace it. "Life is a compromise, unless one lives alone and miserably and uselessly," thought she. "My life's to be a thistle with fig grafts. I'll do the best I can with it�Basil and I. With him to help me�his strength and character and self-denying love�with him to help, all may go well. Is my compromise�Basil's and mine�worse than those almost everyone has to make? If so, then they ought to educate women differently, and change marriage."

And when the sleigh reached the drive-front porch, making a dashing and musical arrival, she was in a mood of moral exaltation that might have stirred the enthusiasm of a saint�that is, a saint ignorant of the foundations of that mood or the processes by which it had reared itself skyward. Saints who are wise in the ways of humanity do not interrogate too closely the glitter and lift of moral temples; they know humanity has only humble materials with which to build.

The doors opened wide and, in a flood of bright warm air, redolent of the perfume of flowers, out came Dick to welcome them. "I am glad!" cried he. Because of the peculiar relations long established between them�relations such as must exist in some degree between a husband and a wife before the triangular situation can ever even threaten�because of these peculiar relations, she had not anticipated and did not feel the least embarrassment. She was not defying or ignoring her husband; she had no husband. After he swung Winchie to the porch he turned to do the same service for her. But she had quickly disengaged herself from the robes and was standing beside him. He looked into her face, fully revealed by the pour of soft light from the hall. "Your trip certainly has done you good," said he.

"Thank you," replied she absently, presenting her left cheek for the necessary formality of the occasion. Her attention was wholly elsewhere.

In the hall before her there had appeared two people, hanging back discreetly, so that they would not intrude upon the family reunion. Basil, she expected. The woman beside him so astonished her that she forgot to be glad to see him. Who was she? This tall, slender girl with the proud, regular features, the attractively done dark hair, the big, honest brown eyes? She glanced at Basil, standing beside this lovely girl and making a laughing remark; her feminine sight instantly noted how the remark was received by the girl�the flattering glance and smile a marriageable woman rarely wastes upon anything from one of her own sex or from an ineligible man. And through Courtney shot a pang that dissolved her structure of moral uplift as a needle thrust collapses a toy balloon. Who was this woman?�this young woman�this tall woman�this handsome woman�so pleased with Basil Gallatin?

"Aren't you surprised to find Helen March here?" Dick was now saying.

Helen March! So, that scrawny, raw-boned girl, all freckles and pimples, and unable to manage her mouth, the Helen March she had seen three years before and had not seen since�so, that prim and homely gawk had developed into this stately creature! Prim, still�unless that expression was the familiar maidenly pose to attract wife hunters. But certainly neither homely nor awkward. She even dressed her hair well, and wore her clothes with quite an air. All this Courtney saw and felt and thought in a few twinklings of an eye�for in such circumstances a woman's mind works with the rapidity of genius, and with genius's grasp of essential detail. Helen was advancing.

"Don't you recognize me, Courtney?" she asked. The voice was one of those honest, pleasant voices that disarm the most cynical pessimists about human nature�the voice that makes the blas� city man fall to dreaming of taking a country girl to wife.

"Now I do, of course," said Courtney sweetly. And the two embraced and kissed.

To do this, Helen had to bend, as she was more than a head the taller. She bent with not a suggestion of condescension in manner or in thought. Nevertheless Courtney, for the first time in her life painfully sensitive about her stature, flamed and was resentful�and in her scorn of her own pettiness felt tinier within than without. True, Helen's figure was commonplace, the bust too high and ominously large for her age, the hips already faintly menacing, the waist and arms somewhat too short for the great length of leg. True, her own figure was�certainly better. Still, Helen had that advantage of height�could look at Basil level-eyed, could make her seem�short! And this Helen here to stay indefinitely!

There was pathos in the slow, sweet smile Courtney gave Basil as their trembling hands met in what seemed to the others a formal greeting. She turned away with a sigh. Just as she, the thirsty, the desert-bound, was all ready to rush forward and drink�the mirage vanished. Was it to be always so? Was life to be ever a succession of mirages, vanishing at approach, only to reappear and revive hope�and cheat again? Through her mind flashed the memory of the first one�an indelible memory, always for her symbolic of vain expectation: A fourth of July when she was a very small child�how she awakened at sunrise, rushed to the window to find sky clear and world radiant and ready for the picnic that was to be her first great positive joy; how she was dressed in her best, in wonderful new white frock, in white stockings and shoes and white bows covering the top buttons, shimmering sash of pale green, and bows of pale green on her braids; how, just as she descended in all her glory to issue forth, down came the rain�in floods�and no picnic, nothing but stay at home all day and weep and watch the downpour. "It was my horoscope," thought she, as she stood there in the hall too sad for bitterness over her spoiled home-coming. "Is it fate? Or, is it somehow my fault? My fault, I suppose. I must be asking of life something no one�at least, no woman�has the right to expect."

She was near the library door, with Winchie on its threshold staring round big-eyed and crying, "Oh, mamma Courtney. Look!" His eyes were no more wondering than her own. She had been too disheartened to make the library over into a conservatory that year; now, here it was transformed into a conservatory�the carpet up from the hardwood floor, plants beautiful for bloom or for foliage or for both in boxes, in jars, in pots�everywhere. A conservatory like that of former years, but more elaborate.

The others were laughing and watching her face. So she exclaimed "I am surprised!" in the indefinite tone the listener can easily adapt to his expectations. But she was not pleased�far from it. Another fierce pang of jealousy. She, modest about her own abilities, did not realize that the room lacked just the finishing touch of her exquisite taste. To her it seemed better far than she could have done. Why, she hadn't been needed, or missed even! Things went on as well in her absence as when she was here. And near her, side by side, were Basil and Helen�how she could feel them!�so well matched physically�and he fair, she dark. And Courtney had not that self-complacent, satisfied vanity which shelters so many of us from any and all misgivings and doubts.

"Helen did most of it," explained Vaughan. "She's a trump, you'll find. Look out, Helen, or we'll make you do all the work."

"Cousin Dick proposed it and really carried it out," protested Helen in her school-teacherish or collegiate speech and manner. "And Mr. Gallatin was invaluable in showing us how you had it last winter. We wanted to get it exactly the same."

Courtney turned brilliant, grateful eyes on Basil. "So, you remembered, did you?" she ventured to say, sure her meaning and her tone would pass the others safely.

Basil flushed. "You can judge for yourself," said he.

"I'm so overcome I don't know what to say." Their smiling, friendly faces, all bent upon her, made her natural generosity burst forth like April's unending green at the first warmth of the sun. Her eyes filled. "Thank you�thank you all!" she cried. "I am so�so�happy!" And she kissed Helen again, ashamed of her mean impulses toward one whose aloneness and poverty commanded kindness and consideration and help from another woman, especially from a woman who had known the bitterness of dependence and aloneness.

Good sense and decent instincts, having driven off jealousy, held the field�not without occasional alarms and excursions, but still decisively. It was the merriest party that had gathered about the mahogany dining-room table since Colonel 'Kill imported it from beyond the mountains, along with sundry novelties in those parts, in that early day�carpets and curtains and window glass, wall paper and carved beds and crystal chandeliers. In Colonel 'Kill's time the atmosphere had been genial but austere; Aunt Eudosia, during her brief reign between his death and her own, had maintained his traditions reverently; and Courtney had struggled not altogether with success, though bravely and resolutely, against the atmosphere that lingered on after all her brightening changes. But that night, the spell was broken. Dick put aside his chemistry; Basil and Courtney forgot him and their burden of deceit. Helen belied her mourning which, as Courtney had shrewdly guessed, was mere formality anyhow. Everyone was gay, even jealous little Winchie, devoting himself to Helen, determined to make her love him. And Courtney was gayest of all; was not that vacant place at the table filled once more? Her heart overflowed with joy and her lips and eyes with laughter each time she looked in that direction and saw�him! Everyone was gay except old Nanny, listening sourly to the merriment that came through door and hall into kitchen and sounded like a burst from a ballroom whenever Lizzie was passing in or out. "Poor young man!" muttered Nanny to her dishes and pans. "If he only knowed the whited sepulchre he's living amidst, what a holocaust there'd be." She did not know what holocaust meant, having got merely its vague sense from a sermon; thus, it gave her a conception of anarchy and chaos far beyond the scope of words she understood.

Courtney's emerald eyes, dancing and laughing though they were, scrutinized Basil. Not that she really suspected him; she simply wished to fortify herself against the folly and the unhappiness of suspicion�as women look under a bed before getting into it. Having fortified herself, she concentrated on Helen�Helen, the homeless, the unmarried, the eager to be married. There the results of her scrutiny were not so satisfactory. Basil would have called Helen's manner mere civility; and perhaps, in strict justice, it was nothing more. But Courtney the woman, judging Helen the woman, saw the hidden truth beneath the surface truth�saw that Helen was not without an instinct for a possible customer for the virtue so carefully nurtured against the coming of an opportunity for it to expand in the garden of matrimony with the flower and leaf and fruit of wife and mother. Courtney judged fairly, conceded that Helen was the reverse of forward, was using no arts, no subtleties. But the candidate for matrimony showed in her charmingly receptive and appreciative attitude toward the young man. The danger which Courtney foresaw and feared lay in the fact that Basil and Helen were both attractive. To Courtney it seemed a question of a very brief time when, without any effort whatever on her part, Helen must fall in love with him. What then? A well-bred, pretty woman in love is always more and ever more attractive to the man she centers upon. And Helen was free�and could be honorable throughout!

As Courtney undressed for bed, these reflections, so forbidding of aspect, faced her whichever way she turned. "I like Helen," she thought, "and it's decent and right to give her a home. If I were what I ought to be�ought to try to be�I'd give her every opportunity to win Basil. She's got to have some one to support her. I'm provided for. It's mean of me to stand in her way." She found some cheer in the reflection that, while most women would straight off hate Helen and look on her as an impudent interloper, she herself had generosity enough to be just in thought at least. "But I'm human," said she. "Helen has got to go. She doesn't love him. I do. She doesn't need him. I do. She's got to go!"

It was her habit to sit on the rug before the fire in her sitting room, and do her hair for the night; then she would sometimes stretch herself out flat upon her breast and read by the fire light or watch it and dream or think. She was lying that way, head pillowed upon a book and face toward the fire, when Dick opened the door, glanced in, entered. So absorbed was she that she did not know he was in the room until he spoke.

"It's like what Nanny would call a special providence, isn't it?" said he, seating himself on the sofa parallel to the fireplace but well back from it. He had a long dressing gown over his pajamas and was smoking a last cigarette.

"Special providence? What?" inquired she without turning her head. His entrance had not interrupted her train of thought. Her answer was, as usual, a reflex action from her surface mind.

"Why, Basil's coming back."

No reply. She was not thinking of Dick's statement of Basil's return as coming from him but as if she had herself begun to revolve it of her own accord.

"And Helen's being here."

A restless shiver. She was unconscious of Dick's presence. She was gazing absorbed at the proposition: Helen is here.

"It's just as we wanted it," he went on.

The lithe, delicately formed body grew tense. "Speak for yourself," she said curtly.

Richard received this rebuff in silence. "I know you don't like Basil," said he at length. "And, it's true he was a tank and a tear-about at college��"

There he stopped, shamefaced. He forgot he had told her about Basil; he felt it was undignified and unworthy gossip now that he had matrimonial designs upon him. "That slipped out," he said to her apologetically. "I never intended to tell you. Anyhow, he has dropped all that sort of thing, and I don't believe he'll ever turn loose again.... I wonder why that girl broke the engagement. He tells me he's free, and I suspect he wanted to come back because he's pretty badly cut up.... You will be nice to him, Courtney?�and help him and Helen along? They were intended for each other�height�contrast of coloring��"

Courtney sat up impatiently, turned her back to the fire to warm it, clasped her knees in her arms. She was conscious of him now, vaguely, unpleasantly conscious, though the ideas he had suggested still held most of her attention. Gradually she became uncomfortable; no, it was not the cold. Her wandering glance happened upon Richard's face. His expression� That was it! Not cold, but the sense of being looked at by eyes that had not the right. She blushed furiously from head to feet, had an impulse to snatch the rug about her and dart from the room.

"You are�beautiful!" he exclaimed, rising. "I was just contrasting you with Helen March this evening. She's undoubtedly handsome. Has height, and go, and, for a girl, really a surprising amount of��"

Courtney was not listening. She was thinking of her oversight in not locking her doors into the hall.

"Of charm�aside from the freshness that's about all there is to most girls, I imagine."

She must be careful not to irritate him, not to rouse him to the vigilance that nothing can escape. What a luckless beginning of a new life!

"And you're so well now�so alive��"

"I'm all but dead," she declared, pretending a yawn. "I must go to bed." She sprang lightly up. "Good night," she said. And to take away the sting�for, his slight wince showed her there was sting�she stood on tiptoe, hands behind her and face upturned.

His lips touched her cheek hesitatingly; fired by the contact, he took her in his arms and kissed her. She did not draw away; an instinct of prudence, not a deliberate thought, restrained her. She flushed from head to foot, her modesty wounded, her pride abased. "Good night," said he, lingeringly.

"Good night," she echoed, turning away to screen the fire.

Half an hour later all the lights in the house were out. She had gone to bed, but not to sleep. She suddenly sat up, gazed eagerly toward the window giving on the small veranda. It was open for the night; the shutters were latched, however, and through them came intensely cold air and some faint light. She thought she heard a tapping at the shutter�that shutter she had so often thrown wide in the hope that Basil had secretly returned. She listened. After a long wait, again the tapping�so soft that only the attention of an expectant listener would have been attracted.

"Basil!" she murmured. "I must have been expecting him."

She was about to dart to the window when there came a thought like a blow in the face flinging her back and making her cover her head. First the one man; now the other. "God!" she muttered. "How they will degrade me, between them."

No, it should not be! She grew angry with Basil. At the first opportunity, breaking his promise, trying to tempt her to become what he could not but despise. That was what he called love! And how poorly he must think of her! ... She uncovered her head, listened. No repetition of the sound. She ran to the window, opened the shutter. No one! Yes�the snow on the rail had been disturbed. She leaned out. Snow�the black boughs�the biting midnight air�stars�the crescent moon with a pendant planet�the distant muffled sound of a horse stamping in its stall. She closed the shutter, went shivering back to bed�heartsick with disappointment.