Chapter 22

Masculine moral struggle is usually noisier than feminine�unless the woman is seeking to impress some man, before yielding of her own free will what she wishes him to fancy his superior charm and force and subtlety are conquering. Thus, woman being by nature freer from the footless kinds of hypocrisy than man, it was only in the regular order that while Courtney quietly accepted the situation and conformed to it, Basil should accept it with much moral bluster. He accused now his own wickedness, now the wickedness of destiny, and again woman's sinful charms. Still, the masculine conscience no less than the feminine is bred to be an ultimately accommodating chaperon; and Basil's conscience would soon have gone to sleep had it not been kept awake and feverish by a contrasting presence. That contrast was Helen's virginal beauty and virginal purity�both of which fascinated his overstimulated and degenerating imagination.

Helen was, as Courtney had said, a girl of the old-fashioned type. This does not mean that she was a rare survival of an extinct type, but simply that she was the girl of yesterday as distinguished from the girl of to-morrow, and from the girl that is partly of yesterday, partly of to-morrow�all three of whom we have with us in this transitional to-day. Helen had by inheritance and training all woman's ancient instincts to be a possessed and protected property. These instincts originated in the necessities and the ignorance of former societies; but they are cultivated and clung to because masculine vanity dotes on the superior attitude, and because the female very humanly finds it more comfortable to be looked after than to look after herself, to have her thinking done for her than to think for herself, to be supported than to support herself, to be strong through weakness than to be strong through strength. The male wants to pose as master. The female yields, since the usual cost to her is merely putting up with airs of superiority at which she can secretly laugh; at worst, the cost is only that intangible thing, self-respect. So, why not? Self-respect is purely subjective, unseen. It provides no comforts or luxuries. Lack of it attracts no attention in a world that sees only surfaces. So, why not sacrifice it, when it becomes inconvenient? Men do. Why shouldn't women?

Helen had no desire to be of full human stature�to be free. She wished to be a "true woman," meek servant of a lord and master, and never under the painful necessity of taking responsible thought for herself. Having no capacity or desire for comradeship with men, she denounced it as unwomanly. Her physical virtue�"purity," she called it�she regarded as her chief glory. She was glad it was still woman's chief asset in the struggle for existence; for, she could not help knowing she had beauty, and it is beauty that makes virtue valuable, though of course beauty adds nothing to its glory.

Helen certainly had beauty, nearly as great beauty as she imagined in that heart of hearts where our vanity feels free to spread its tail to the last gaudy feather and to strut as no peacock or gobbler ever dared. Her skin was white as milk, her features were classically regular, and she was now a shade taller than Basil, could almost look level-eyed at Richard. Her dark hair was commonplace in color and texture, was rather short, did not grow especially well about her brow or behind the ears; but it was thick and abundant, and the brow and the ears were charming in themselves. Thanks to Courtney's skill in devising a corset, the defect of waist too close to bust was no longer conspicuous. She had sound teeth, good arms and legs, narrow hands and feet. Her large brown eyes were of the kind that has been regarded as ideal for woman from the days of Homer singing the ox-eyed Juno, down to our own day when intelligence is trying to get a place among feminine virtues and the look of intelligence among feminine beauties. She had learned from Courtney�who knew�a great deal about dress�dress that all women talk, but only the rare exceptional woman knows.

Also, she had from her a practical training for what she regarded as woman's only sphere, the home. Courtney had taught her how to keep house with comfort, order and system. As Courtney had none of the teacher's vanity but used the method of suggestion, she fancied she had learned and was learning from herself; the more so, since she in defiance of daily experience could not credit a woman of Courtney's lively and, because light, undoubtedly thoughtless and careless temperament, with enough seriousness to be a good housekeeper. Helen there showed herself about on a level with the human average; for all but incredible is the stupidity of our misjudgments and mismeasurements of our fellow beings. There was not in her the capacity to reflect who thought out the new ideas that were constantly being put into effect, who told her what to do and who quietly and tactfully saw that she did it.

The most obvious improvement in Helen was through her unconsciously acting on Courtney's advice of delicately veiled suggestion and dropping the culture pose. She was now patterning upon Courtney's naturalness so far as she could. She had the handicap of an ingrained and incurable passion for those innocuous little tricks of manner with the men; also, she was greatly hindered by a conventional assortment of the so-called "lofty ideals." Still, she was letting much of her own natural personality appear. She was only slightly exaggerating her bent toward sweetness and sympathy. She was not quite so strenuous in advocacy of fine old-fashioned womanliness�heart without mind, purity that is mere strait jacketed carnality; virtue that, when it yields, makes lofty pretense of yielding only in reluctant tolerance of man's coarseness and of nature's shameful way of reproducing. At Tecumseh, when Dr. Madelene Ranger delivered a course of lectures on the profession all young women are candidates for�that is, on matrimony�to the girls of the senior class of the college of liberal arts, Helen was one of those who refused to attend and signed the�unheeded�protest to the faculty. She was no longer so proud of this as she had been, although she still thought she had done what ought to be right though it rather seemed foolish.

But the greatest improvement of all in Helen was the subtlest. She had come there, expecting to be a dependent, feeling and, in a sweet refined way, acting like the poor relation, harbored on sufferance. Women, trained from the outset to be dependents, easily degenerate into sycophants, like men who have always looked to others for employment and have lost self-confidence if they ever had it. But lack of self-reliance, a vice in a man, is regarded as a virtue in a woman; so, women have absolutely no restraint upon their abandoning even the forms of self-respect, once they get in the way of degenerating. Thus, Helen's relations with Courtney might easily have become what is usually seen where there is intimacy between a poor woman and a woman of means. But Courtney�not deliberately but with the unconsciousness of large natures�made this degradation impossible. It was not merely that Helen had not been made to feel a dependent; it was more�far more. It was that she had been made to feel independent, more independent than Courtney herself felt. And this fine feeling, this erectness of spirit, permeated to every part of her character, would have made a full-statured human being of her, had she had the mentality to shake off her early training as mere conventional female.

Richard frankly declared her an ideal woman; Basil secretly agreed with him. Helen became the constant reminder of his lost honor, of the heaven he had given up for the forbidden delights. He reveled in Courtney the tempest; but during the lulls his eyes turned yearningly to Helen, the serene and pure calm. Courtney represented sinful excess, Helen righteous restraint. Courtney's was love the devastator; a love for Helen would be love the uplifter. He wanted Courtney; he felt that Helen was what he ought to want. And in the lulls, with passion exhausted and needing the stimulus of contrast�he sometimes fancied that, if he could somehow contrive to assert his manhood and escape from slavery to Courtney, he would be happy with Helen, and once more noble and good. Like many another, he flattered himself that he had an aspiration to a better life when in reality he was making pretense of virtuous longing merely to whet his appetite for vice. He shut his eyes to the obvious but rarely seen�or, rather, rarely admitted�truth that a man is as he does, not as he pretends or dreams.

Before finally and fully condemning Basil�or Courtney or anyone�for anything he or she may have done contrary to our views of propriety and morality, it would be well to reflect upon the true nature of conscience�to which Basil and Courtney and all of us habitually refer all moral questions for settlement. As we grow older we are awed or amused rather than shocked�and, unless we have lived as the moles and the earthworms, are not astonished at all�by the wondrous ways in which our conscience adjusts itself to necessity�or to what overwhelming inclination makes us believe to be necessity. But in unanalytic youth such adjustments take place unconsciously to ourselves; the mind, in the parts of itself hidden from us, concocts the proof positive that what we desire is necessary and right; all we are conscious of is that we suddenly have the mandate of necessity and the godspeed of conscience. Thus, conscience in youth can be as flexible as occasion may require, yet can, without hypocrisy, be for the conduct of others a very Draco of a lawgiver, a very Brutus of a judge. This, in youth only. But� How many of us ever do grow up?

The free-and-easy mode of life at the house made it impossible for any two to be alone, except by stealth, without everyone's knowing it. As a man who since early youth had led the "man sort of life" he was thoroughly used to associating the idea stealth with the relations of men and women. However, flexible though conventional "honor" is, he had misgivings about bending it to the requirements of desire in this particular case. But as his longing for such a moral invigorator as Helen's innocent purity grew in intensity, he began deliberately to revolve contriving to see her alone again, and by stealth. His first success was accidental�callers occupying Courtney when he came seeking her. As he turned away from the house he spied Helen, seated under a maple tree sewing near where Winchie and the older Donaldson boy were playing ball. She colored faintly when he dropped to the grass near her and lit a cigarette. He so placed himself that he commanded all approaches from the house and could not be taken by surprise. "Why is it," he began, "that I don't see you at all any more�except at the table?"

The fact that he did not pursue when she began to avoid had disappointed her keenly. But it had given her a better opinion of him. It showed�so she told herself, perhaps by way of consolation to vanity�that however bad he might be he yet had redeeming reverence for purity. But she had long been weary of the dutiful struggle against his charm of the worldly and the rich for her the unworldly and the poor. So, her manner was not wholly discouraging as she said, in reply to his respectfully regretful question, "I've been very much occupied."

He watched her swift white fingers a while, then stared gloomily out toward the lake. She stole a pitying glance at him. "Poor fellow!" thought she. "He's suffering terribly to-day. That dreadful woman! How could Courtney, generous though she is, defend a creature who is simply wrecking his life?" As she had kept close watch on him all these months, these signs of his sufferings were not new to her. But never had she seen them so movingly plain. "Poor fellow!" thought she.

Presently he said: "Won't you talk to me? I feel like a�a damned soul to-day."

Helen thrilled. He looked so distinguished, was so elegantly dressed in his simple manly way, had that gloss, that sheen, which marks all the kinds and conditions of anglers for the opposite sex. "What shall I talk about?" she asked.

Her sympathetic smile, showing her excellent teeth and lighting up her dark eyes, changed for him her common-place query into a stimulating exhibit of depth of soul. "Anything�anything," he said. "You've got such an honest, sweet voice that whatever you say makes one feel better."

"What is troubling you?"

"Oh, I don't want to talk about myself."

But her instinct told her he had brought his stained soul to confessional. "It might help you," she suggested, blushing at her own boldness.

He looked gratefully at her and away. "It seems to me," said he, "you've been avoiding me. Is it so?"

Helen bent her head low over her work.

"I suppose it was instinctive," he went on. "To you, I'd seem� Sometimes I feel that, if you and I had kept on with those talks we were having last spring, things would have been different with me. However, it's too late now."

Helen's eyes filled. "Oh, no. It's never too late," said she.

He sighed and rose�Courtney was coming toward them. Helen took no part in the conversation that followed. She was pondering the few meaningless and youthful phrases he had uttered as if they were freighted with wisdom and destiny. And she continued to ponder them after he and Courtney and Winchie went away for a drive to Wenona. The more meaningless a thing is, the more food for thought to those incapable of thinking. When it is clear, it is grasped at once and the incident closes; but let it have no meaning at all, and lives will be devoted to cogitating upon it, and library shelves will groan with tomes of exegesis. Helen found in Basil's words what she wished to find�found a plain mandate of duty to help him. He couldn't be so very bad�probably not so bad as Richard was in his bachelor days, before chemistry and Courtney calmed him. And look at Richard now!

She did not know the very particular dangers for Basil in drink. But she saw that he was taking a great deal more whisky and water than formerly, and she felt that it had to do with his obviously desperate depression. Her one chance to see him, she knew, was when Courtney was occupied; for, had she not led Courtney to think that she did not wish to be left alone with him ever? She decided it was best not to tell Courtney she had changed her mind�somewhat�about him; Courtney would misjudge, would think her careless about principle, weak, love-sick�worst of all, would probably advise against her talking with him. Thus it came to pass that when Courtney was safely occupied�with callers, with Winchie, at sewing or painting or dressing�Helen put herself oftener and oftener in such a position that Basil could find her if he chose. She did not dream that he also wished to be stealthy; she thought the stealth was all on her own side�and he, seeing this, soon pretended to himself that he thought so, too, and had not the slightest sense of guilt toward Courtney. It did not take him long to find a satisfying explanation for Helen's aversion to having it known that they met alone; here, decided he, was another evidence of her modesty, her delicate sensitiveness of the good woman who can't bear being talked about lightly�and, if they talked alone where others could see, there would surely be joking and teasing and gossiping.

Once more habit gave illustration of its subtle grasping of ever more and more power. Before either was aware of it, they were meeting clandestinely with clocklike regularity. And Helen's life filled with sunshine of the most delicious warmth and sparkle. And Basil, keeping steadily on at his drinking, and never relaxing in his devotion to the sweet sin of which Courtney was the scarlet altar, reveled in those agonies of a sense of utter depravity that are about the only charm of wickedness. "I am not fit to live," reflected he with comfortable gloom, as he sat in his apartment alone drinking after an afternoon with Helen and a late evening with Courtney. Here was excellent excuse for drinking and gloriously damning himself. He did not go to bed until he had finished the bottle and the last cigarette in the big silver box on his table. Also, between spasms of self-damning he had contrived to finish a novel of intrigue that had as its villain-hero just such a devil of a fellow as he felt he himself was�or was in delightful danger of becoming.

How it ever befell he never could remember. But the day came when he, sitting with Helen in the summerhouse�the summerhouse!�found himself holding her hand. He stared at the pretty white hand, large and capable yet feminine in every curve. He noted that it was lying contentedly, confidingly upon the brown of his palm. He lifted his dazed eyes. Her lashes were down, her cheeks overspread with delicate color; her bosom, like a young Juno's, rose and fell with agitated irregularity. It was not poisonous mock morality, it was the decent human man underneath, that sent an honestly horrified "Good God!" to his lips. He laid her hand gently in her lap, stood up, thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets. His face was red with real shame.

"I've often told you," said he, "that I'm no fit companion for a pure woman�that my life's ruined past redeeming��"

"Don't say those things," she implored. "They hurt me�and they're not so. I know you."

"Past redeeming," he repeated. "It's the God's truth. I must keep away from you. I've no right to see you�to care for you�to tempt you to care for me. I can't tell you�but if you knew, you'd loathe me as I loathe myself."

"Do you�do you�" Her voice faltered. But she had wrought herself up to such a romantic pitch about him, and his earnestness was so terrifying and so real to her, that she dared to go on�"Do you care for some one else?" And she looked at him in all the beauty of her romance.

"I don't know�I don't know," he answered, in great agitation�physical, though he of course fancied it moral. "Not with the love I might have given a pure woman, if fate and my own vile weakness hadn't conspired to ruin me.... What am I saying? I can't talk to you about it. Think me as bad as your imagination can picture�and I'm worse still."

She gave a low wail that came straight from her honest romantic young heart and went straight to his heart. He sat beside her, took her hand. "Be merciful to me," he begged. "At least I'm not so bad that I don't know goodness when I see it. And you'll always be the ideal of goodness in my eyes�all I once sought in love�all I once deluded myself into believing I had won."

She thrilled. Those words made her feel that he belonged to her. She laid her other hand on his. "Basil," she appealed, "you are young, and brave, and noble. You can free yourself�save yourself��"

He drew away, went to the rail of the pavilion, seated himself there. "No," he said. "I'm past saving. And�we must not meet any more."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because�I am not free�and never shall be."

"Is that true?" Her eyes looked loving incredulity.

"I am more tightly bound�by honor and by�by habit�than if I were married."

She gave a long sigh�of despair, she thought, but in reality of hope, for, at least he was free. Marriage was the only real bond. As for honor�what honor could there be in any tie not sanctioned by religion and society?

"What a cur I am!" he exclaimed, put to shame by her sigh and her forlorn expression.

"Please don't!" she begged. "I understand�as far as a girl could understand such a thing. And I know it's not your fault. And�even if we can't be anything more to each other, still I'm not sorry we've had what we've had. I'm�I'm�glad!"

He felt the glory of her purity beaming upon him like heaven's light on the bleak, black-hot peaks of hell. He longed to linger, and talk on and on; but his sense of honor had reached the limit of its endurance for that day. Without touching her hand he said good-by as if they were never to see each other again and went as if his heart were broken.

Thenceforth Helen let her longing for romance centre in him without concealing the fact from herself�or from him. And her castle-building had an energy it would never have had, if she had not imagined she felt it was hopeless. Nothing so dynamic as the hopelessness that hopes. Believing that he loved her, that she was his one chance of redemption, she continued to give painstaking attention to her toilet, to refresh her memory of those of his favorite poets with whom she was acquainted, to learn lines from those she knew less well, and to put herself in his way�always without forwardness. And he continued to drift�held fast to Courtney with senses so enchained that he would have fought against release like an opium fiend for his drug; fascinated also by the woman he could dream he ought to have loved, and might have loved. Two restraints he laid sternly upon himself. Not to talk of love in a t�te-�-t�te with a woman�that would be impossible. But he would see that the talk was kept to the general, that it never adventured the particular. Also, he would never again so much as touch Helen's hand when they were alone. Were he bred to be as expert at moral truth as at moral sham, he might have found a key to his true state of soul in the tantalization this self-restraint caused him to suffer. There were times when her physical contrast to Courtney was as alluring to his keyed-up, supersensitized nerves as was her moral contrast to his morbid moral sense. If he had had the intelligence and concentration necessary to candid self-analysis, he would have been startled�perhaps benefited�by the discovery that he was in the way to become one of those libertines who in all sincerity teach prayers to the innocence they are plotting to debauch.

And all the time he was drinking more and more deeply�not for the moral reasons he fancied, but for the practical physical reason that a disordered nervous system craves the stimulants that will further aggravate its disorder. Helen's father had carried his liquor badly; a little was enough to upset him a great deal. Basil was one of those men who are able to drink heavily without showing it, even to the most watchful eyes. Often, when she had not the faintest suspicion he was in liquor, he was in fact so far gone that he had to keep his surface preternaturally solemn in order to conceal the disorder of his mind.

The day did not long delay when, under the influence of drink, he suddenly seized her and kissed her. She did not resist; but the shock of the contact, instead of inflaming him, instantly restored him to his senses. He was conscience-stricken; also he saw the impossible complications he was precipitating. In shame and fright�in fright more than shame�he fled from her presence.

So far as outward effect is concerned, the action is everything, the motive nothing. But so far as inward effect is concerned, the action is nothing, the motive everything. In action Basil and Courtney were essentially the same�equal partners in intrigue. But her motive of seeking strength through love availed to hold her steady, even to lift her up; while his motive of sensuality ever less and less refined and redeemed by love was thrusting him down and down.