Chapter 27

After a few days Courtney asked Helen to take Winchie to the laboratory. "You can arrange with Richard as to future visits," she said. "And in talking with him�and with me�please remember he and I don't exist for each other. I can trust you?"

"Yes," presently came from Helen in so reluctant a tone that Courtney congratulated herself on having thought to exact the promise.

Winchie said little about his father at the supper table, but a great deal about a streak of light his father had made for him with an electrical apparatus�"clear across the room, mamma�real lightning�only there wasn't any thunder�just noise�like when Jimmie snaps the whip fast." Several times in the next three or four weeks she discovered evidence of visits to the laboratory in remarks Winchie let drop; for he said nothing direct, having somehow divined that the visits were not to be talked about. But he had not the faintest suspicion there was anything wrong between his father and his mother. He had always been used to their leading separate lives; the mere surface cleavage was too unimportant to affect him, all-observant though he was, with his natural mind which Courtney had not spoiled by false education. And the parents of the only children he played with�those along the shore�were exceeding discreet in discussing the divorce in the family circle.

In the first winter storm one of the maples near the edge of the lake, about the oldest and finest tree on the place, blew down and in its fall destroyed the summer-house. Courtney was awakened by the resounding crash. Before breakfast she, in short skirt and close-fitting jacket, went to see and to decide what should be done. As she reached the scene Dick in shaggy ulster and cap came from behind the towering mass of wreckage. She could not be certain whether his ease, so superior to hers, was due to his having seen her coming and having got ready, or to absolute indifference. "Jimmie told me what happened," explained he. "I came early, thinking I'd not be caught trespassing." He looked sadly at the great tree, with its enormous boughs sprawled upon the frozen surface of the lake. "Jimmie and I," said he, "used to have a swing in it that went out over the water. We used to dive from the seatboard."

Courtney could see the swing go up and up, high as the tree itself, then a daring boy release his hold and shoot through the air, slim and straight, to plunge into the lake. "You'd almost touch bottom away out where it's deepest�wouldn't you?" she said, her eyes sparkling.

"I've brought up mud in my hands from where it's twenty feet deep."

They stood in silence, in the presence of the fallen giant whose life had begun when the Indians trapping and fishing there were getting from the far coast beyond the mountains the first rumors of the great winged boats and the white man. "It was a grand tree," she sighed. "I'll miss it as I'd not miss many people I'm more or less fond of.... I remember that swing."

"You do?"

"One day my mother brought me along when she was calling here. I must have been about the age Winchie is now. I had on red shoes�I remember because they hurt terribly and I didn't dare show a sign for fear they'd be taken away. You lured me out to play�and put me in the swing�and made it go�the limit."

"I remember perfectly now. That was you�was it?"

"It was. It was," replied she. "You despised little girls and thought you'd scare me to death."

"But I remember you were game. You didn't scream."

"I guess I was too badly frightened. Do you remember how mother shrieked when she saw from the window what you were up to?"

"Do I? The whipping father gave me bent the whole business into me forever. I wasn't game. How I did howl!"

"I wish I'd heard!" She shivered laughingly. "I feel now how I was suffering when the swing was out over the water and high up among the boughs."

Richard was looking at her curiously. "So, that was you?" he said in an abstracted way. "You certainly didn't look scared.... Helen tells me you're planning to go East in the spring and study landscape gardening.... I see you don't like her having told me. I assure you it was my fault. I asked her point blank. She told me simply the one fact."

"It's not a secret," said Courtney, and she went on to explain, as to an acquaintance who knew nothing of her life, "I used to go to college�up at Battle Field�with a girl named Narcisse Siersdorf. She's made quite a reputation as an architect. We were good friends, and it occurred to me I might get advice from her. She's been wonderfully kind�took an interest right away. We're negotiating. I don't know what'll come of it. I've sent her an account of things I've done, and some pictures."

He looked at the slight, strong figure, at the small and delicate face, at the eyes so feminine yet for all that full of character. "Are you in earnest?" he asked.

"I've got to be," replied she.

His expression showed how he was touched by her air of sad thoughtfulness as she gazed across the glistening level of ice. "Not at all," said he. "While nothing's been said about it, you must know that as Winchie's mother��"

She interrupted him with a laugh that made the color flare into his face. "So, you thought I was hinting, did you? I don't suppose you ever will be able to understand a woman. No�I don't hint."

"I didn't suspect��"

"Be honest!"

He hung his head like a foolish boy.

"As I was saying," she went on, "I've got to do something because, when I'm free, I want to feel free. Maybe I'm flying in the face of nature, but I've a hankering for the same sort of independence a man has�not the same, but the same sort.... It isn't a bit nice, being a woman�if one wakens to the fact that she's in the same market�if in a higher grade stall�with 'those others.'"

He looked up with a frown. "That's not the way to look at it," he protested with more than a touch of his old-time dictatorial manner.

"It's the way I look at it," replied she, quietly. That reminder of his tyranny, added to his unconsciously contemptuous suspicion that she was hinting for alimony, had stirred all her latterly latent antagonism to him�made her doubt the sincerity�or, rather, the thoroughness of the change in him. She began to move away. "I must go tell Jimmie what to do about this tree."

"Please�not just yet," he said, red and embarrassed. "I beg your pardon for taking that tone. And I'll admit you're right, though I'd like to be able to deny it. Still, it's not your fault that you were brought up in the customary way��"

"I don't want to be reminded of that," she interrupted, rather bitterly. "In spite of all I've been through�and of the certainty that unless I free myself, I'll have to go through it again�I'm having a constant fight against my cowardice." Her face changed in an instant from grave to gay. "I'm saying and doing all sorts of things to make it impossible for me to back down. I guess telling you was one of them."

"You're not going to make any move until spring�toward this architect friend, I mean?"

"I've no reason to think�at least not much reason�that she'll take me."

"Meanwhile�why not perfect yourself in the trade you already almost know?"

"What's that?"

"I'm going to pay a man a hundred and fifty dollars a month to help me at the laboratory�exactly the work you did�and he'll do it no better, if as well."

Courtney flushed with pleasure at this praise. "Really?" she said. "You mean that?"

His expression forewarned her he was about to touch on the impossible subject. "I can't comprehend, now that it's over," said he, "how I was such an ass as to stick to the notion that women haven't brains when I had, right before me, proof to the contrary."

"Meaning me?" said she with amused eyes.

"Meaning you," replied he with a laugh. Then seriously, "And if you'll let me say so, the reason I blame myself for everything is, I've seen that my stupid ignorance of you was at the bottom of it all."

She shrugged her shoulders indifferently. "We were both brought up very stupidly for marriage. But then�who isn't? No wonder marriage is successful only by accident."

"What a confession the proverb is," said he, "�that people have to be married once, before they're fit to be married."

"Well," said she, "at least we've had our experience, and can be glad we got it young enough for it to be useful. But I must get to work." And she nodded and went briskly up the snow-drifted lawns. Not until afternoon, while she was overseeing the sawing up of the tree, did his unfinished offer come back to her. Had he left it unfinished because she had not encouraged him to go on or because he had repented of the impulse? Probably the latter, she decided; at any rate, even if he had urged, she could not have accepted. "He'd be sure to misunderstand. Men and women always do misunderstand each other�" She smiled at herself�"that is, they don't. They learn by experience that there's always the motive behind, in everything that crosses the sex line. He'd not realize this was an exception." There she mocked herself again. "At least, I think it'd be an exception. I'm not quite sure I'd not be doing it out of cowardice�to get him where I could recover him if I lost my nerve and had to. Our dependence makes us so poor spirited that, though we know we don't want a certain man, we like to have him where we could use him, 'in case.'"

Several stormy days, with no communication between house and laboratory. On the first bright afternoon, she and Winchie were entering the grounds after a walk to Wenona and back, through the still, dry air, charged with sunbeams, air like a still, dry champagne, strong and subtle. They came upon Dick clearing the snow from the direct path between laboratory and gates. His trousers were tucked into high boots and he was in flannel shirt sleeves. As they�or, rather, as Winchie�paused, he leaned on his shovel and laughed�at the fun that is merrier than any joke�the fun of being healthily alive from center to farthest tip. The sunshine was brilliant on the unsullied surface of the snow, on the ice-encased branches, and on those three health-flushed faces. "Just been to the doctor's, I suppose?" said he to the boy who was as ruddy as a rooster's comb, as smooth and hard as marble.

"No," declared Winchie, taking him seriously, "I never had a doctor in my life."

This was a good enough excuse. Dick and Courtney became hilarious over Winchie's earnestness. As Winchie had begun to play with the snow his father's labor had piled high on either side of the reappearing path, Courtney did not resist Dick's overtures toward conversation�about the skating, the air, the healthfulness of a hard winter, the ravages of the storm throughout the neighborhood. "I see," said he, "the old maple's gone. You did clear it up in a hurry. There's not a sign of its ever having been in existence�or the summerhouse either."

At that the color poured into her cheeks�the deeper, fierier red of acute embarrassment. When he realized what he had said�which he instantly did�he did not color but became pale. "I'm glad it was destroyed," he said, "glad not a trace of it remains�anywhere. If I believed in omens I'd look on the whole incident as a good omen�the landmark of the Vaughan home that seemed so strong and wasn't�the summerhouse that was a constant reminder�both gone�and the place where they were is clear�is ready for the new and better things."

She was listening with her head low. "Thank you," she said, in a choked voice. "Sometimes I think there isn't another man in the world who'd have helped me as you have."

"Don't you believe it," cried he, cheerfully. "Human nature's a lot better than it pretends. Thank God, very few of us are despicable enough to live up to our creeds and our conventions.... Winchie, you didn't know you came very near losing your father yesterday. He almost blew himself up."

Winchie's eyes grew big. "I'd like to have seen," said he, excitedly. "Jimmie says, when you do go, it'll be straight up through the roof and high as the moon."

"It all came of my working without an assistant," Dick explained to Courtney. "I've got one coming from Baltimore, as I think I told you the other day. But he can't get away just yet. I wish you'd consider my offer."

She felt no embarrassment. His tone prevented; it was businesslike, and polite rather than friendly.

"I need some one badly�some one I shan't have to teach. You like the work. You need the experience. A few weeks of the sort of thing I'd put you at now would fit you for a place in a first-class laboratory." A little constrainedly�"I know why you hesitate. But I assure you, that's foolish. What I'm proposing will not interfere with�with our plans for freeing each other. It's purely business�and good business for you as well as for me."

She looked directly at him for the first time. "You're quite sure you'd not misunderstand?"

"Quite," he assured her.

She still hesitated. "I want to accept," she confessed, "for business reasons. But I've an instinct against it."

He smiled with good-humored mockery. "A vanity, you mean."

She colored guiltily, though she also was smiling. Her nervous fingers were pulling the ice from a branch of a bush.

He noted that Winchie, rolling up a huge snowball, had got safely out of hearing. "Just a vanity," he went on. "Well�pitch it overboard. I make you a business proposition. I need you. You need the experience. I hope you'll accept. I can well afford to pay you what I'll pay Carter. He's tied up until January�perhaps a little later. If you'll accept, I can accomplish a lot this winter. If not, I'll be nearly helpless."

Thus it naturally and easily and sensibly came about that, a few months later, at the very moment when Judge Vanosdol was signing the decree of divorce, Dick and Courtney were in the laboratory, their heads touching as they bent over a big retort, heedless of the strong fumes rising from its boiling and hissing contents. The heat subsided. The compound slowly cleared�a beautiful shade of green instead of the black they hoped for�and confidently expected. They looked dejectedly at each other; she felt like weeping for his chagrin.

"What the devil is the matter?" demanded he, glowering at her. "Sure you didn't make a mistake?"

Her nerves were on edge, as were his. "That's right!" she said, tears in her eyes. "Suspect me."

"I'm not suspecting you," he retorted angrily. "Don't drag your sex into work. You're not a woman here. We've no time for poodle-dog politeness."

"I don't want politeness," cried she. "What did I say that could possibly make you think I did?"

"It was what you didn't say," replied he. "Why didn't you answer back? Or throw the ladle at me?"

"I will next time."

And there they both laughed.

Now, she was free�absolutely free�and with money enough of her own earning to get her and Winchie to New York and to keep them for quite a while. And Narcisse Siersdorf had written most encouraging comments on the account of her efforts at landscape gardening and on the accompanying photographs, and had offered her a clerkship at twenty-five dollars a week "as a starter." Also, Richard, as an earnest of his belief and his interest, had got her an offer of a trial position at twenty dollars a week in the laboratories of the American Coal Products Company at Chicago. She was not only free; she was independent.

The morning after Narcisse's letter came she saw Richard eying her curiously several times, as if he were puzzling over something but hesitated to question her. The fourth or fifth time she caught him at it, she said: "What do you want to ask me? Have I made a mistake?"

"No�no, indeed," protested he. "You don't make mistakes."

He had been extremely polite, no matter how severely his temper was tried, ever since the day of the little flare-up over the failed experiment. And every day it pleased her through and through, pleased and thrilled her, that his reason was fear lest she, perfectly free to go, should resign and quit, if he did not behave.

"Then," she went on to him, "why do you look at me inquiringly?"

"It's your manner," replied he. "You're acting very differently to-day from what you ever did before."

While he was saying it she divined the reason�the letter from Narcisse. The offer from the Coal Products Company had come several weeks before; but that had been got for her. This position in New York was of her own getting. And for the first time in her life she felt like a full-grown personality capable of taking care of herself. Unconsciously her whole outlook upon life changed; the change disclosed itself in her expression, in her voice, in her manner. She handed Richard her patent of nobility, the letter from Narcisse; she watched his face as he read. But she got no clue to his thoughts. As he gave back the letter without comment she said: "I'm in the way to get rid of the reason for a woman's so often wishing she'd been born a man."

"I understand," said he, and turned away to gaze reflectively out of the window.

She went into the rear room to work there. Half an hour later she returned, to find him still staring out over the lake. "I've given him something more to think about," said she to herself, with a sly smile at his back. "And it'll do him good, if ever he starts out to marry again." Yet somehow she was not fully satisfied that her guess covered the whole of what he was thinking. He was extremely puzzling, this polite, appreciative, carefully businesslike Richard.

She was impatient to be gone. She wished to try in longer flight the new wings of freedom and independence she had grown. She felt confident they would sustain her; but she could not be sure until she tried. She had decided for the Siersdorf offer. She liked the chemistry chiefly because, working with Richard at the explorations of hydrogen and nitrogen, she was moving toward a definite high accomplishment�the discovery of a source of happiness to millions�a cheap substitute for coal and wood that would banish that horror of horrors, cold, from the lives of the poor. But it would be quite another thing to work at fabricating new shades of color in dyes, new commercial uses for the by-products of coal; she would be descending from scientist's helper to plodder for a living, from lieutenant of a Columbus to mate on a tramp steamer. Not so, if she went into the Siersdorf office.

There she would remain artist, worker with the fine tools of the imagination. Also Basil's tastes lay in that direction. Fancy is not the air plant that idealists pretend. Its flowers may be spiritual but its roots strike deep into the physical. It may need the sun and the air of heaven, but it needs the soil even more. In the soil it is born; by the soil it chiefly lives. Courtney's fancy was the fancy of a normal human being in whom all the emotions are healthy, ardent, fully developed. It had no long or difficult task in blurring into vagueness whatever marred her memory of her and Basil's romance�or at least in making the blemishes for the time seem unimportant in presence of the rosy, horizon-filling peak moments of their happiness. Once more, from the quiet of her long lonely evenings�hardly the less solitary for Helen's rather monotonous company�arose the longings, the visions, the thrills. She felt that, in her young inexperience, she had been too arrogant in her demands upon life; she had asked more than she could possibly expect from a human love, more than she had any right to expect. But now she was chastened; her point of view was less wildly romantic. What would they not be to each other!�once they were together�and free from all constraint of moral doubts and conventional dreads. It was only natural that in their life of stress passion should have been uppermost, should have become dominant. It was human for Basil to feel that he was contending for even physical possession of her�and until there is physical possession, love has no substantial ground to build upon.

She was eager to be off for New York, to establish her independence, and then to begin her real life on the enduring foundation of equality and comradeship brightened by passion as a tree is brightened by its blossoms and their perfume. But, eager though she was, she could not deny her obligation to remain until Dick's assistant came. She knew now that he had spoken the literal truth when he said he needed her badly. It would be a return for his broad-minded humanity quite beneath her, to leave him in the lurch�especially when carrying on his particular line of experiments meant danger if he had to do all the work alone. She must stay until Carter came. And she was glad of this opportunity to show him that she did appreciate what he had done for her, even though he had done it not for her sake but for his own�in obedience to his sense of the decent and the self-respecting.

So, she worked steadily and interestedly on, just as if the divorce had not yet been entered upon the records of the court as valid and final. She found an unexpected additional source of interest in studying her former husband as an individuality. It is always a novel sensation for a woman with any claim to physical charm to find herself regarded impersonally�sexlessly. That is usually anything but an agreeable sensation; every woman feels the chagrin of failure when she sees that her charms do not charm�this, though she might be disdainful of and resentful of overt tribute to her physical self. Courtney, however, did not in those peculiar circumstances feel sufficiently piqued to try to assert woman's ancient right of dominion over the senses of man. She could enjoy the novelty of being treated like a man, and could study calmly the man who was thus unmindful of what is habitually uppermost in any strongly masculine nature.

At work with Richard alone, she was at last getting acquainted with him. From the beginning of each day at the laboratory to the end, she was receiving a series of vivid impressions of a really superior man�competent, intelligent, resourceful. He thought about himself never; he could not be daunted or baffled. His broad-mindedness was no longer marred by the sex narrowness that had made appreciation of it impossible to her, to any woman of her sort. He knew so much; he carried knowledge so lightly. It seemed to her, after much experience of "learned" men, that knowledge was chiefly power to bore. His knowledge was like a rapier of finest steel skilfully used in his duel with his mysterious masked combatant, the alchemist on guard at nature's secretest laboratory. She felt that he was a man out of a million; yet she had no sense of embarrassed inferiority. This general in the army of exact science, which is the true army of progress, was a democrat, marched with the soldiers afoot, was their equal. "If any woman ever does fall in love with him," thought she, "she will worship him. But�he's too impersonal. We women want something smaller�not a sun star, but a fire on a hearth."

Now that he was nothing but fellow worker to her, she could look at him with the friendly impartiality of human being for fellow being. Piecing together what she knew of his masculine side and what she could how see latent in those strong features, those intense nervous energies, she felt that somewhere there might be a woman equal to concentrating upon herself what went altogether into the duel for nature's secrets. "And unless she were a great woman, he would burn her up like a match tossed into a furnace."

This latent capacity of his for love fascinated her. There were even moments when it tempted her�was like a challenge taunting her womanhood as confessedly ineffectual. But at the laboratory she was too busy to linger over such thoughts; and in her other hours, there was household routine to compel her attention�and the plans for the great attempt.

At last Carter wrote that he would positively come in two weeks. "You've been splendidly patient with me," Dick said as he showed her the latter. "I've seen that you were eager to be gone." As she murmured a polite denial, he repeated, "Yes, eager�but not in the way to make me uncomfortable over my selfishness."

"I've rarely thought of it while I was down here," said she. "It was only in the evenings�and when I happened not to sleep very well."

"It was natural you should be upset," sympathized Dick. "Who wouldn't be, standing on the edge of the icy plunge so long? But you'll like it�and everything'll come out all right. I've discovered that you have a lot of common sense�and that's more than I can say for most men�including myself."

Another month, at the farthest, and she would be in New York, would have made the great beginning! ... Should she send Basil word as soon as she arrived? Should she wait until she got her bearings? She saw it would be wiser to wait. Everything depended on beginnings�right beginnings�and it would be the right beginning for Basil to find her as obviously master of her own destiny, as free to withhold or to give, as was he himself. Also� Coming from a small town in the West, she could not but feel strange in New York, and look provincial. "Yes, I'll wait," she decided, the instant this last reason dropped into the balance. For, she had not the vanity that underestimates the matter of looks and neglects the fact that everyone is at a distinct disadvantage in a strange environment.

One morning, about a week later, there came a ring at the telephone which was in Dick's part of the laboratory. As these calls were always for her, she rose from her case in the back room and went to answer. It was Mazie�"The hotel over to Fenton wants to speak to you, ma'am."

"Connect them, please," said Courtney, hoping her voice had betrayed and would betray nothing to the man behind her.

Soon came an operator's voice, and then Basil's. "I must see you!"

"Yes," she said. "I'll come."

"In your auto runabout�on the Fenton road to Tippecanoe�at two this afternoon. Will that do?"

"Yes. I'll be there. Good-by." And she rang off.

She turned from the telephone with a glance at Richard. He was busy with the blowpipe�no doubt had not even heard. As she was leaving to go up to the house for dinner, she said to him: "I'll not be back this afternoon."

"All right," replied he. "I sha'n't need you till to-morrow morning."

"I'll be here, then, of course."

He turned on the high stool. "You know," said he, with only the faintest suggestion of the unusual in face and voice, "there's no reason why you shouldn't see anyone you wish, at your own house."

She flushed guiltily. But her composure instantly returned, and she went on toward the door, casting about for a reply.

"I've no desire to interfere," continued he. "But�Jimmie went to Fenton on an errand yesterday, and he happened to tell me he saw at a distance a man who looked enough like Gallatin to be his twin. If you should be seen�you know how they gossip here. You could send the boy and Helen over to Wenona for the afternoon. Pardon my suggesting these things. It occurred to me you might not realize how closely you're watched by everybody, since the divorce."

She stood in the outer doorway, trying to conceal her agitation and trying to reflect.

"I appreciate you'd rather see him elsewhere�and I'd prefer you did, too. But your son has his rights�don't you think?"

"Yes," said Courtney. "I'll see him at the house."

"Thank you," said Richard. And he resumed his careful mixing of two powders in a small brass mortar.

She went, returned, stood where she could see his profile. "You give me your word of honor you'll not interfere with him in any way?"

Dick smiled without suspending work with the pestle. "Certainly," said he. "On my honor I'll not leave this room until you telephone me that I may." His smile broadened into a laugh that made her extremely uncomfortable, though it was pleasant enough.

"I didn't think you cared about me or him�or anything but your chemistry," she said in self-defense. "I asked simply as a precaution. I felt I owed it to him and to the boy."

"I laughed�you'll pardon me�because he's such a shallow pup. I never think of you two that I don't think of Titania and Nick."

As he tossed this lightly over his shoulder, she was hopelessly at a disadvantage. She was scarlet and shaking with anger. No return thrust occurring to her, she flung a furious glance into his back and departed, with about all the joy out of her anticipations of the meeting. Instead of telephoning from the house, she ascended to the apartment over the laboratory and by the direct wire there got the Phibbs Hotel in Fenton. A few minutes, and Basil was at the other end. "Come to the house here, instead," said she. "At the same time�two o'clock."

A silence, then his voice, "No. You come over."

"I can't do it. And I'd not ask you if I weren't sure. I'll explain when I see you."

"There's an especial reason why I want you here," urged he.

"And there's a more especial reason why I want you here."

"And there's an even more especial reason why I must see you here," insisted he. "It's very unsatisfactory, talking over the telephone, with people probably listening all along the wire. I'll come to-morrow�or late this afternoon. But you come here first."

"No�really, I mustn't," she declared. "Don't you trust me? Don't you know I'd not ask it, if it weren't perfectly�all right?"

"It isn't that, but� I can't talk about it.... I'll come." And from his tone she knew he had been decided by the fear that she'd think him afraid. And then she realized that she had made her remark because she counted on its appeal to his vanity�and the thought acted upon her enthusiasm not unlike a douche.