Mrs. Pole's thin lips twitched with mirth, and Conny, who was never content with mere inference, asked bluntly:—

"Then what do you do with yourselves—evenings?" Her tone reflected the emptiness of the landscape, and she added with a treble laugh, "I've always wondered what suburban life is like!"

"Oh, you eat and read and sleep. Then there are the children daytimes. I help teach 'em. We live the model life,—flowers and shrubs in the summer, I suppose.... The Bishop was with me for a time."

The large bare drawing-room, which was sunnily lighted from the southwest, was singularly without the usual furniture of what Conny called "civilized life." There were no rugs, few chairs, but one table, such as might be made by the village carpenter and stained black, which was littered with books and magazines. There was also a large writing cabinet of mahogany,—a magnificent piece of Southern colonial design,—and before the fire a modern couch. Conny inventoried all this in a glance. She could not "make it out." 'They can't be as poor as that,' she reflected, and turned to the books on the table.

"Weiniger's Sex and Character," she announced, "Brieux's Maternite, Lavedan, Stendhal, Strobel on Child Life,—well, you do read! And this?" She held up a yellow volume of French plays. "What do you do with this when the, Bishop comes?"

"The Bishop is used to me now. Besides, he doesn't see very well, poor dear, and has forgotten his French. Have you read that book of Weiniger's? It is a good dose for woman's conceit these days."

There was a touch of playful cynicism in the tone, which went with the fleeting smile. Mrs. Pole understood Cornelia Woodyard perfectly, and was amused by her. But Conny's coarse and determined handling of life did not fascinate her fastidious nature as it had fascinated Isabelle's.

Conny continued to poke among the books, emitting comments as she happened upon unexpected things. It was the heterogeneous reading of an untrained woman, who was seeking blindly in many directions for guidance, for light, trying to appease an awakened intellect, and to answer certain gnawing questions of her soul....

Isabelle and Margaret talked of their visit at the Virginia Springs. In the mature face, Isabelle was seeking the blond-haired girl, with deep-set blue eyes, and sensitive mouth, that she had admired at St. Mary's. Now it was not even pretty, although it spoke of race, for the bony features, the high brow, the thin nose, had emerged, as if chiselled from the flesh by pain.

'She has suffered,' Isabelle thought, 'suffered—and lived.'

Conny had recounted to Isabelle on their way out some of the rumors about the Poles. Larry Pole was a weakling, had gone wrong in money matters,—nothing that had flared up in scandal, merely family transactions. Margaret had taken the family abroad—she had inherited something from her mother—and suddenly they had come back to New York, and Larry had found a petty job in the city. Evidently, from the bare house, their hiding themselves out here, most of the wife's money had gone, too.

Pity! because Margaret was proud. She had her Virginian mother's pride with a note of difference. The mother had been proud in the conventional way, of her family, her position,—things. Margaret had the pride of accomplishment,—of deeds. She was the kind who would have gone ragged with a poet or lived content in a sod hut with a Man. And she had married this Larry Pole, who according to Conny looked seedy and was often rather "boozy." How could she have made such a mistake,—Margaret of all women? That Englishman Hollenby, who really was somebody, had been much interested in her. Why hadn't she married him? Nobody would know the reason....

The luncheon was very good. The black cook, "a relic of my mother's establishment," as Margaret explained, gave them a few savory family dishes, and there was a light French wine. Margaret ate little and talked little, seeming to enjoy the vivacity of the other women.

"Tell about your visit to the Gorings," Conny drawled. "Percy's cousin, Eugene Goring, who married Aline, you know. Boots in the bath-tub, and the babies running around naked, and Aline lost in the metaphysics of the arts, making chairs."

And Isabelle recounted what she had seen of Aline's establishment in St. Louis, with its total disregard of what Conny called the "decencies" of life. They all laughed at her picture of their "wood-nymph," as they had named Aline.

"And Eugene talking anarchy, and washing the dishes,—it sounds like a Weber and Field's farce," gurgled Conny. "He wrote Percy about lecturing in New York,—wanted to come East. But Percy couldn't do anything for him. It isn't a combination to make a drawing-room impression."

"But," Margaret protested, "Aline is a person, and that is more than you can say of most of us married women. She has kept her personality."

"If I were 'Gene," Conny replied contemptuously, "I'd tone her 'personality' down."

"He's probably big enough to respect it."

There followed a discussion of the woman's part in marriage, Margaret defending independence, "the woman's right to live for herself," and Conny taking the practical view.

"She can't be anything any way, just by herself. She had better make the most of the material she's got to work with—or get another helping," she added, thinking of Larry.

"And Aline isn't happy," Isabelle remarked; "she has a look on her face as if she were a thousand miles away, and had forgotten her marriage as much as she could. Her chairs and tables are just ways of forgetting."

"But they have something to think about,—those two. They don't vegetate."

"I should say they had,—but no anarchy in my domestic circle, thank you!" Conny observed.

"I shouldn't object to anarchy," sighed Margaret, with her whimsical smile.

"Margaret is bored," Isabelle pronounced, "simply awfully bored. She's so bored that I expect some day she will poison herself and the children, merely to find out what comes next."

"No wonder—buried in the snowdrifts out here," Conny agreed. "Isn't there anything you want to do, even something wicked?"

"Yes," Mrs. Pole answered half seriously. "There is one thing I'd like to do before I die."

"Tell us!"

"I'd like to find Somebody—man or woman—who cared for the things I care for—sky and clouds and mountains,—and go away with him anywhere for—a little while, just a little while," she drawled dreamily, resting her elbows on the table.

"Elope! Fie, fie!" Conny laughed.

"My mother's father had a plantation in one of the Windward Islands," Margaret continued. "It must be nice down there—warm and sunny. I'd like to lie out on the beach and forget children and servants and husbands, and stop wondering what life is. Yes, I'd like a vacation—in the Windward Islands, with somebody who understood."

"To wit, a man!" added Conny.

"Yes, a man! But only for the trip."

They laughed a good deal about Margaret's vacation, called her the "Windward Islands," and asked her to make reservations for them in her Paradise when they had found desirable partners.

"Only, I should have to bring John, and he wouldn't know what to do with himself on a beach," Isabelle remarked. "I don't know any one else to take."

"You mustn't go Windwarding until you have to," Margaret explained....

At the dessert, the children came in,—two boys and a girl. The elder boy was eight, with his mother's fair hair, blue eyes, and fine features, and the same suggestion of race in the narrow high brow, the upward poise of the head. His younger brother was nondescript, with dark hair and full lips. Margaret observed her children with a curiously detached air, Isabelle thought. Was she looking for signs of Larry in that second son? Alas, she might see Larry always, with the cold apprehension of a woman too wise to deceive herself! The little girl, fresh from her nap, was round and undefined, and the mother took her into her arms, cuddling her close to her breast, as if nothing, not even the seed of Larry, could separate her from this one; as if she felt in her heart all the ills and sorrows, the woman's pains to be,—the eternal feminine defeat,—in this tiny ball of freshness. And the ironical smile subtly softened to a glow of affection. Here, at least, was an illusion!

Isabelle, watching these two, understood—all the lines, the smile, the light cynicism—the Windward Islands! She put her arms impulsively about the mother and the child, hugging them closely. Margaret looked up into her shining eyes and pressed her hand....

"There are some cigarettes in the other room," Margaret suggested; "we'll build up the fire and continue the argument in favor of the Windward Islands."

"It is a long way to New York over that road," Conny observed. "I have an engagement."

Now that she had satisfied her curiosity about "how the Poles lived," she began to think of her dinner with Cairy, and was fearful lest she might be delayed.

"Spend the night," suggested Margaret; but Isabelle, who understood Conny, telephoned at once for the motor.

"You aren't going back to the West, Isabelle?" Margaret asked, while they waited for the motor. "Won't you miss it?"

"Miss the West? Did you ever know a woman that had escaped from the Mississippi Valley who would go back there?" Conny drawled. "Why, Belle is like a girl just out of school, looking at the shop windows!"

Cornelia Woodyard, who had lived a number of years in a corner of that same vast valley, looked from metropolitan heights on the monotony of the "middle West." She had the New Yorker's amusing incapacity to comprehend existence outside the neighborhood of Fifth Avenue and Central Park.

"One lives out there," Margaret protested with sudden fire, "in those great spaces. Men grow there. They do things. When my boys are educated I shall take them away from New York, to the Virginia mountains, perhaps, and have them grow up there, doing things, real things, working with their hands, becoming men! Perhaps not there," she mused, recollecting that the acres of timber and coal in the mountains, her sons' inheritance from her vigorous ancestors, had been lost to them in a vulgar stock dealer's gamble by their father,—"perhaps out to Oregon, where I have an uncle. His father rode his horse all the way from Louisiana across the continent, after the War! He had nothing but his horse—and before he died he built a city in his new country. That is where men do things!"

Margaret had flashed into life again. As Tom Cairy would have said, "Vraiment, ma petite cousine a une grande ame—etouffee" (For Cairy always made his acute observations in the French tongue).

"There's something of the Amazon in you, Margaret," Conny remarked, "in spite of your desire to seclude yourself in the Windward Islands with a suitable mate."

The motor finally came puffing up the drive, and the women stood on the veranda, prolonging their farewells. A round, red, important sun peeped from under the gray cloud bank that had lowered all the afternoon, flooding the thin branches of the budding trees, falling warm and gold across the dead fields.

"See!" Margaret cried, raising her thin arms to the sun. "The Promise!"

"I hope it will hold until we reach Jerome Avenue," Conny replied practically, preparing to enter the car.

"The promise of another life!"

Margaret was standing in the sun, her nostrils dilated, absorbing the light, the source of joy and life.

"Windward Islands, eh?" Conny coughed, settling herself comfortably in her corner.

"The real land," Margaret murmured to herself.

The chauffeur had reached for the lever when there appeared on the drive two men bearing something between them, a human something, carefully.

"What's that!" exclaimed Conny in a frightened voice. "What is it?" she repeated to the chauffeur,—demanding of a man something in his province to know.

"Looks though they had a child—hurt," the chauffeur replied.

Margaret, shading her eyes with a thin hand, looked down the avenue. She made no movement to go towards the men,—merely waited motionless for the thing to come. And the men came slowly forward, past the car, up the steps.

It was the older boy. The man who held the head and shoulders of the child said, "An accident—not serious, I believe."

Margaret opened the door and pointed to the lounge before the fire. The man who had spoken laid the boy down very gently with his head on a cushion, and smoothed back the rumpled hair.

"I will go for the doctor," the other man said, and presently there was the sound of the motor leaping down the hill.

Margaret had dropped on her knees beside the unconscious boy, and placed one hand on his brow. "Bring some water," she said to Isabelle, and began to unbutton the torn sweater.

Conny, with one look at the white face and closed eyes, went softly out into the hall and sat down.

"Will you telephone to Dr. W. S. Rogers in New York, and ask him to send some one if he can't come himself?" Margaret asked the stranger, who was helping her with the boy's clothes.

"Can I telephone any one else—his father?" the man suggested, as he turned to the door.

"No—it would be no use—it's too late to reach him."

Then she turned again to the boy, who was still unconscious....

When the man had finished telephoning, he came back through the hall, where Conny was sitting.

"How did it happen?" she asked.

"He fell over the culvert,—the high one just as you leave the station, you know. He was riding his bicycle,—I saw the little chap pushing it up the hill as I got out of the train. Then a big touring car passed me, and met another one coming down at full speed. I suppose the boy was frightened and tried to get too far out on the culvert and fell over. The motors didn't notice him; but when I reached the spot, I saw his bicycle hanging on the edge and looked over for him,—could just see his head in the bushes and leaves. Poor little fellow! It was a nasty fall. But the leaves and the rubbish must have broken it somewhat."

"Rob! Rob Falkner!" Isabelle exclaimed, as the man turned and met her at the door. "I didn't recognize you—with your beard! How is Bessie?"

"Very well, I believe. She is in Denver, you know."

When he had gone back to the boy, Isabelle said to Conny:—

"We used to know the Falkners very well. There is a story! ... Strange he should be here. But I heard he was in the East somewhere."

Conny did not seem interested in Rob Falkner and his turning up at this juncture. She sat with a solemn face, wondering how she could get back to the city. Finally she resolved to telephone Cairy.

* * * * *

Falkner went over to the unconscious boy, and taking his hand, counted the pulse. "It's all right so far," he said to the mother, who did not hear him. After a time she looked up, and her low voice dragged hoarsely,—"You mustn't wait. The doctor will be here soon, and we can do everything now."

"I will wait until the doctor comes," Falkner replied gently, and stepped to the window to watch for the motor.

After the local doctor had come and said, "A slight concussion,—nothing serious, I expect," and the boy had revived somewhat, Conny departed alone in the motor, Isabelle having decided to stay with Margaret over the night. Falkner helped the doctor carry the patient upstairs, and then started to leave. Isabelle waited for him at the door.

"Mrs. Pole wishes me to thank you for all your kindness."

"I shall look in to-morrow morning," he replied hurriedly. "I would stay now until the boy's father came; but I don't suppose there is anything I can do. I am living at the hotel below, and you can telephone if you want me."

"You are living here?"

"Yes; I am working on the new dam, a few miles from this place."

"I am so glad to see you again," Isabelle said, the only words she could think of.

"Thank you."

Then with a curt nod he was off. He had not shown in any way that he was glad to see her, Isabelle reflected. Falkner was always moody, but she had thought he liked her,—and after all their friendship! Something had kept her from asking more about Bessie.



CHAPTER XXXI

Larry did not return for dinner, which Isabelle ate by herself in sombre silence. When she went upstairs to take the mother's place with the boy, Margaret did not seem to notice her husband's absence, though she inquired repeatedly whether the New York doctor had telephoned. Later in the evening when Isabelle suggested that some effort should be made to find the boy's father, Margaret exclaimed impatiently:—

"I can't tell where he is! ... It is easier for me that he isn't here." And in answer to Isabelle's expression, she added: "Don't look so shocked, B! Larry gets on my nerves frightfully when there is anything extra to bear or do. Of course I shall telephone his office in the morning, and he will come out at once. That doctor said there would be no change before morning. Do you suppose he knows anything, that doctor? He had the look of polite ignorance!"

The New York doctor arrived towards midnight with a nurse, and stayed the night to await developments. Margaret still sat by the boy's bed, and Isabelle left her huddled in a large chair, her eyes staring at the shadow on the faintly lighted bed. She had listened to what Dr. Rogers had to say without a word. She was almost stone, Isabelle felt, looking at her with some awe. What could have made her like this!

She was still in this stony mood the next morning when Larry reached the house. Dressed in a loose black gown that clung to her slight figure and brought out the perfect whiteness of her skin, she stood and listened indifferently to the vague explanation of his absence that her husband poured out profusely. Then with a remark that the doctor would see him before he went, she left the room. Isabelle, who was present, watched the two keenly, trying to divine the secret. To be sure, Larry was not attractive, she decided,—too effusive, too anxious to make the right impression, as if he were acting a part before Isabelle, and full of wordy concern for every one. A little below the medium height, he stood very erect, consciously making the most of his inches. His sandy hair was thin, and he wore glasses, behind which one eye kept winking nervously. Neatly, almost fashionably dressed, he bore no evident marks of dissipation. After Conny's description, Isabelle had expected to see his shortcomings written all over him. Though he was over-mannered and talkative, there was nothing to mark him as of the outcast class. "One doesn't despise one's husband because he's foolish or unfortunate about money matters," Isabelle said to herself. And the sympathy that she had felt for Margaret began to evaporate.

"You say that he fell off that embankment?" Larry remarked to her. "I was afraid he was too young to ride about here by himself with all the motors there are in this neighborhood. But Margaret was anxious to have him fearless.... People who motor are so careless—it has become a curse in the country.... Mrs. Woodyard came out with you? I am so sorry this frightful accident spoiled your day."...

He ran on from remark to remark, with no prompting from Isabelle, and had got to their life in Germany when the doctor entered the room. Larry shook hands punctiliously with him, inquiring in a special tone: "I hope you have good news of the little fellow, Doctor? I thought I would not go up until I had seen you first."...

The doctor cut short the father's prolixity in a burly voice:—

"It's concussion, passing off, I think. But nobody can say what will happen then,—whether there is anything wrong with the cord. It may clear up in a few days. It may not. No use speculating.... I shall be back to-morrow or send some one. Good day."

Larry followed him into the hall, talking, questioning, exclaiming. Isabella noticed that the doctor gave Pole a quick, impatient glance, shaking him off with a curt reply, and jumped into the waiting carriage. In some ways men read men more rapidly than women can. They look for fewer details, with an eye to the essential stuff of character.

What had the doctor said to Margaret? Had he let her know his evident fears? When she came into the room for a moment, there was an expression of fixed will in her white face, as if she had gone down into herself and found there the courage to meet whatever was coming.... 'The older boy, too,' thought Isabelle,—'the one so like her, with no outward trace of the father!'

While Margaret was giving directions for telephoning, making in brief phrases her arrangements for the day, Falkner came in. He was in his working clothes, and with his thick beard and scrubby mustache looked quite rough beside the trim Larry.

"How is the boy?" he demanded directly, going up to the mother.

"Better, I think,—comfortable at least," she answered gently. There was a warm gleam in her eyes as she spoke to this stranger, as if she had felt his fibre and liked it.

"I will come in this afternoon. I should like to see him when I can."

"Yes, this afternoon," Margaret replied. "I should be glad to have you come."

Isabelle had told Pole that Falkner was the man who had found the boy and brought him home. Larry, with the subtle air of superiority that clothes seem to give a small man, thanked Falkner in suitable language. Isabelle had the suspicion that he was debating with himself whether he should give this workingman a couple of dollars for his trouble, and with an hysterical desire to laugh interposed:—

"Mr. Pole, this is Mr. Falkner, an old friend of ours!"

"Oh," Larry remarked, "I didn't understand!" and he looked at Falkner again, still from a distance.

"Rob," Isabelle continued, turning to Falkner, "you didn't tell me yesterday how Bessie is. I haven't heard from her for a long while,—and Mildred?"

"They are well, I believe. Bessie doesn't write often."

Pole followed him into the hall, making remarks. Isabelle heard Falkner reply gruffly: "Yes, it was a nasty fall. But a kid can fall a good way without hurting himself seriously."

When Pole came back and began to talk to her, Isabelle's sympathy for his wife revived. The house had settled into the dreary imitation of its customary routine that the house of suspense takes on. To live in this, with the mild irritation of Larry's conversational fluency, was quite intolerable. It was not what he said, but the fact that he was forever saying it. "A bag of words," Isabelle called him. "Poor Margaret!" And she concluded that there was nothing more useful for her to do than to take upon herself the burden of Larry until he should dispose of himself in some harmless way.



CHAPTER XXXII

No, women such as Margaret Pole do not "despise their husbands because they are unfortunate in money matters,"—not altogether because they prove themselves generally incompetent in the man's struggle for life! This process of the petrification of a woman's heart, slow or rapid as it may be, is always interesting,—if the woman is endowed in the first place with the power to feel. How Margaret Lawton may have come to marry Lawrence Pole, we can defer for the present, as a matter of post-mortem psychology, unprofitable, melancholy, and inexact, however interesting. How does any woman come to marry any man? Poets, psychologists, and philosophers have failed to account for the accidents of this emotional nexus.

What is determinable and more to our purpose is the subsequent process of dissolution, or petrifaction. All that need be said is that Margaret married her husband when she was twenty-four, with confidence, belief in him, and a spiritual aspiration concerning marriage not possible to many who marry. However foolishly she may have deluded herself,—betrayed a fatal incapacity to divine,—she believed when she went to the altar with Lawrence Pole that she was marrying a Man,—one whom she could respect as well as love, and to whom she should remain loyally bound in mind and heart and soul.

She was ardent, this delicate Southern girl. Under a manner that had seemed to comrades at St. Mary's cold because of its reticence, there burned the fire of a crusading race,—of those Southerners who had pushed from the fat lowlands about the sea into the mountains and across them to the wilderness; of that uncle, who after the defeat of his cause had ridden his cavalry horse across the entire country in search of a new opening, to build at forty-three a new life for himself and his wife—after defeat! There was courage, aspiration, the power of deeds in that blood,—note the high forehead, the moulded chin, the deep eyes of this woman. And there was also in her religious faith, received from her father the Bishop, piety, and accepted beliefs in honor, loyalty, love to one's family and friends, and charity to the world. All this was untested, handed down to her wrapped in the prayer-book by the Bishop. And she had seen a bit of what we call the world, there in Washington among her mother's friends,—had been gay, perhaps reckless, played like a girl with love and life, those hours of sunshine. She knew vaguely that some men were liars, and some were carnal; but she came to her marriage virgin in soul as well as body, without a spot from living, without a vicious nerve in her body, ready to learn.

And folly with money, mere incompetence, did not turn that heart to stone,—not that alone. The small segment of the world that knew the Poles might think so, hearing how Larry had gone into Wall Street and fatuously left there his own small fortune, and later, going back after his lesson, had lost what he could of his wife's property. To be sure, after that first "ill luck," Margaret's eyes had opened to the fact that her husband was not "practical," was easily led by vanity. In the Lawton family it had been the Man's part to deal effectively with practical life, and women did not concern themselves with their judgments. But as Margaret had never expected to be rich,—had no ambition for place in the social race,—she would have gone back to her blue-capped mountains and lived there contented, "with something to look at." She had urged this course upon her husband after the first disaster; but he was too vain to "get out," to "quit the game," to leave New York. So with the understanding that henceforth he would stick to prosaic methods of money making, he had started again in his brokerage business. This was at the time when Margaret was occupied with her babies. As the indubitable clay of her idol revealed itself, she had thought that child-bearing, child-having would be a tolerable compensation for her idyl. Margaret Pole was one who "didn't mind having babies," and did not consider the fatal nine months a serious deprivation of life. She liked it all, she told Isabelle, and was completely happy only when the children were coming and while they were helpless babies. One real interest suffices for all.

Then one day, after the second boy was born, Larry came in, shaking in hand and heart, and the miserable news was soon out,—"caught in the panic," "unexpected turn of the market." But how could he be caught, his wife demanded, with contracting blue eyes? Had his firm failed? And after a little,—lie and subterfuge within lie and subterfuge being unwrapped,—it appeared,—the fact. He had "gone into cotton"—with whose money? His mother's estate,—those excellent four per cent gold bonds that the thrifty judge had put aside for his widow!

With the look that Margaret gave her husband, he might have seen that the process of petrifaction had set in, had gone far, indeed.

Margaret loved her mother-in-law,—the sweet old woman of gentle fancies who lived in an old house in an old town on the Massachusetts coast, the town where she and the judge had grown up. An unworldly, gentle woman, who had somehow told her daughter-in-law without words that she knew what was missing in her woman's heart. No, the judge's widow should not pay for her son's folly! So Margaret sold the New York house, which was hers, and also some of those mountain lands that had a growing value now, realizing bitterly that by this early sale she was sacrificing her boys' heritage—the gift of her forefathers—for a miserable tithe of its real value,—just because their father was too weak to hold what others had given him; and hadn't kept faith with her like a frank comrade.... What was left she took into her own possession.

So the Poles went abroad, after this. In doubt and distress, in sickness and divorce, what else does an American do? Margaret had one lingering hope for her husband. He had a good voice. At college it was considered remarkable,—a clear, high tenor. He had done little with his gift except make social capital out of it. And he had some aptitude for acting. He had been a four years' star in the college operas. If the judge had not belonged to the settled classes, Larry might have adorned a "Broadway show." Instead, through his father's influence, he had attempted finance—and remained an amateur, a "gentleman." But now, Margaret said to herself, over there, away from trivial society,—the bungled business career ended,—Larry might turn to his gift seriously. He was only thirty-two,—not too old, with hard work and steady persistence, which she would supply, to achieve something. For she would have been content to have him in the Broadway show; it mattered not to her now what he should do. And then she beguiled herself with the hope that some of that intellectual life, the interests in books, music, art—in ideas—could come to them in common,—a little of what she had dreamed the husband-and-wife life might be like. Thus with clear insight into her husband's nature, with few illusions, but with tolerance and hope, Margaret betook herself to Munich and settled her family in a little villa on the outskirts, conformable to their income,—her income, which was all they had. But it mattered not what she had to live on; her mother had shown her how to make a little answer....

At first Larry liked this Munich life. It saved his vanity, and offered an easy solution for his catastrophe in cotton. He was the artist, not fitted for business, as his wife saw. He liked to go to concerts and opera, and take lessons,—but he had to learn German and he was lazy about that. Margaret studied German with him, until the little girl came. Then Larry was left to amuse himself, and did it. First he found some idle American students, and ran about with them, and through them he fell in with a woman of the Stacia Conry type, of which there is always a supply in every agreeable European centre. When Margaret emerged from her retirement and began to look about, she found this Englishwoman very prominent on the horizon. Larry sang with her and drove with her and did the other things that he could not do with his wife. He was the kind of man who finds the nine months of his wife's disability socially irksome, and amuses himself more or less innocently.

Margaret understood. Whether Larry's fondness for Mrs. Demarest was innocent or not, she did not care; she was surprised with herself to find that she had no jealousy whatever. Mrs. Demarest did not exist for her. This Mrs. Conry had a husband who came to Munich after her and bore her back to London. When Larry proposed that they should spend the next season in London, his wife said calmly:—

"You may if you like. I am going to return to America."

"And my work?"

Margaret waved a hand ironically:—

"You will be better alone.... My father is getting old and feeble; I must see him."...

When the family sailed, Larry was in the party. Mrs. Demarest had written him the proper thing to write after such an intimacy, and Larry felt that he must "get a job."...

In those months of the coming of the little girl and the summer afterwards, the new Margaret had been born. It was a quiet woman, outwardly calm, inwardly thinking its way slowly to conclusions,—thoughts that would have surprised the good Bishop. For when her heart had begun to grow cold in the process of petrifaction, there had awakened a new faculty,—her mind. She began to digest the world. Those little rules of life, the ones handed down with the prayer-book, having failed, she asked questions,—'What is life? What is a woman's life? What is my life? What is duty? A woman's duty? My duty, married to Larry?'...

And one by one with relentless clarity she stripped bare all those platitudinous precepts that she had inherited, had accepted, as one accepts the physical facts of the world. When the untrained mind of a woman, driven in on itself by some spiritual bruise, begins to reach out for light, the end may be social Anarchy. Margaret read and understood French and German, and she had ample time to read. She saw modern plays that presented facts, naked and raw, and women's lives from the inside, without regard to the moral convention. She perceived that she had a soul, an inner life of her own, apart from her husband, her children, her father, from all the world. That soul had its own rights,—must be respected. What it might compel her to do in the years to come, was not yet clear. She waited,—growing. If it had not been for her father, she would have been content to stay on in Europe as she was, reading, thinking, loving her children.

On the way back to America, Larry, becoming conscious in the monotony of the voyage of his own insufficiency and failure, hinted that he was ready to accept the mountain home, which Margaret still retained, her mother's old house. "We might try living in the country," he suggested. But Margaret, focussing in one rapid image the picture of her husband always before her in the intimacy of a lonely country life, Larry disintegrating in small ways, shook her head firmly, giving as an excuse, "The children must have schools." She would set him at some petty job in the city, anything to keep him from rotting completely. For he was the father of her children!

The good old Bishop met them at the pier in New York. In spite of his hardened convictions about life, the little rule of thumb by which he lived, he knew something of men and women; and he suspected that process of petrifaction in his daughter's heart. So he took occasion to say in their first intimate talk:—

"I am glad that you and Lawrence have decided to come home to live. It is not well for people to remain long away from their own country, to evade the responsibilities of our social brotherhood. The Church preaches the highest communism, ... and you must help your husband to find some definite service in life, and do it."

Margaret's lips curved dangerously, and the Bishop, as if answering this sign, continued:—

"Lawrence does not show great power, I know, my dear. But he is a good man,—a faithful husband and a kind father. That is much, Margaret. It rests with you to make him more!"

'Does it?' Margaret was asking herself behind her blank countenance. 'One cannot make bricks without straw.... What is that sort of goodness worth in a man? I had rather my husband were what you call a bad man—and a Man.' But she said nothing.

"Thus our Lord has ordered it in this life," continued the Bishop, feeling that he was making headway; "that one who is weak is bound to one who is stronger,—perchance for the good of both."

Margaret smiled.

"And a good woman has always the comfort of her children,—when she has been blessed with them,—who will grow to fill the desolate places in her heart," concluded the good Bishop, feeling that he had irrefutably presented to his daughter the right ideas. But the daughter was thinking, with the new faculty that was awakening in her:—

'Do children fill the desolate spots in a woman's heart completely? I love mine, even if they are spotted with his weaknesses. I am a good mother,—I know that I am,—yet I could love,—oh, I could love grandly some one else, and love them more because of it! At thirty a woman is not done with loving, even though she has three children.'

But she did not dispute her father's words, merely saying in a weary voice, "I suppose Larry and I will make a life of it, as most people do, somehow!"

Nevertheless, as she spoke these words of endurance, there was welling up within her the spirit of rebellion against her lot,—the ordinary lot of acceptance. She had a consciousness of power in herself to live, to be something other than the prosaic animal that endures.

* * * * *

The Poles took the house at Dudley Farms and began the routine of American suburban life, forty miles from New York. After several months of futile effort, spaced by periods of laziness that Margaret put an end to, a gentleman's job was secured for Larry, through the kindness of one of his father's friends. At first Larry was inclined to think that the work would belittle him, spoil his chances of "better things." But Margaret, seeing that as assistant secretary to the Malachite Company he could do no harm, could neither gamble nor loaf, replied to these doubts in a tone of cold irony:—

"You can resign when you find something better suited to your talents."

Thus at thirty-five Larry was range and a commuter. He dressed well, kept up one of his clubs, talked the condition of the country, and was a kind father to his boys.... 'What more should a woman expect?' Margaret asked herself, thinking of her father's words and enumerating her blessings. Three healthy children, a home and enough to eat and wear, a husband who (in spite of Conny's gossip) neither drank to excess nor was unfaithful nor beat her,—who had none of the obvious vices of the male! Good God! Margaret sighed with a bitter sense of irony.

"I must be a wicked woman," her mother would have said under similar circumstances,—and there lies the change in woman's attitude.

Looking across the table at Larry in his neat evening clothes,—he was growing a trifle stout these days,—listening to his observations on the railroad service, or his suggestion that she should pay more attention to dress, Margaret felt that some day she must shriek maniacally. But instead her heart grew still and cold, and her blue eyes icy.

"What is there in woman that makes trifles so important?" she asked Isabelle in a rare effusion of truth-speaking. "Why do some voices—correct and well-bred ones—exasperate you, and others, no better, fill you with content, comfort? Why do little acts—the way a man holds a book or strokes his mustache—annoy you? Why are you dead and bored when you walk with one person, and are gay when you walk by yourself?"

To all of which Isabelle sagely replied: "You think too much, Margaret dear. As John says when I ask him profound questions, 'Get up against something real!'"

For Isabelle could be admirably wise where another was concerned.

"Yes," Margaret admitted, "I suppose I am at fault. It is my job to make life worth living for all of us,—the Bishop, mother-in-law, children, Larry,—all but myself. That's a woman's privilege."

So she did her "job." But within her the lassitude of dead things was ever growing, sapping her physical buoyancy, sapping her will. She called to her soul, and the weary spirit seemed to have withdrawn.

"A case of low vitality," in the medical jargon of the day. And hers was a vital stock, too.

'In time,' she said, 'I shall be dead, and then I shall be a good woman,—wholly good! The Bishop will be content.' And she smiled in denial of her own words. For even then, at the lowest ebb, her soul spoke: there was wonder and joy and beauty somewhere in this gray procession of phenomena, and it must come to her sometime. And when it came, her heart said, she would grasp it!



CHAPTER XXXIII

These days Larry Pole began to think well of himself once more. He had made his mistakes,—what man hasn't?—but he had wiped out the score, and he was fulfilling the office of under-secretary to the great Malachite Company admirably. He was conscious that the men in the office felt that his personality, his bearing, and associations gave distinction to the place. And he still secretly looked for some turn in the game which would put him where he desired to be. In New York the game is always on, the tables always set: from the newsboy to the magnate the gambler's hope is open to every man.

Only one thing disturbed his self-complacency,—Margaret treated him indifferently, coldly. He even suspected that though by some accident she had borne him three children he had never won her love, that she had never been really his. Since their return from Europe and establishing themselves in the country, she had withdrawn more and more from him—where? Into herself. She had her own room and dressing-room, beyond the children's quarters, in the rear of the rambling house, and her life seemed to go on in those rooms more and more. It was almost, Larry observed discontentedly, as if there were not a husband in the situation. Well, he reflected philosophically, women were like that,—American women; they thought they owned themselves even after they had married. If a wife took that attitude, she must not complain if the husband went his way, too. Larry in these injured moods felt vague possibilities of wickedness within him,—justified errancies....

One day he was to see deep into that privacy, to learn all—all he was capable of understanding—about his wife. Margaret had been to the city,—a rare event,—had lunched with Isabella, and gone to see a new actress in a clever little German play. She and Isabelle had talked it over,—very animatedly. Then she had brought back with her some new books and foreign reviews. After dinner she was lying on the great lounge before the fire, curled up in a soft dress of pale lilac, seriously absorbing an article on a Russian playwright. Hers was a little face,—pale, thin, with sunken eyes. The brow was too high, and latterly Margaret paid no attention to arranging her hair becomingly. It was not a face that could be called pretty; it would not be attractive to most men, her husband thought as he watched her. But it had drawn some men strongly, fired them; and Larry still longed for its smiles,—desired her.

He had felt talkative that evening, had chattered all through dinner, and she had listened tolerantly, as she might to her younger boy when he had a great deal to say about nothing. But now she had taken refuge in this review, and Larry had dropped from sight. When he had finished his cigarette, he sat down on the edge of the lounge, taking her idle hand in his. She let him caress it, still reading on. After a time, as he continued to press the hand, his wife said without raising her eyes:—

"What do you want?"

"'What do you want?'" Larry mimicked! "Lord! you American women are as hard as stone."

"Are the others different?" Margaret asked, raising her eyes.

"They say they are—how should I know?"

"I thought you might know from experience," she observed equably.

"I have never loved any woman but you, Margaret!" he said tenderly. "You know that!"

Margaret made no response. The statement seemed to demand something of her which she could not give. He took her hand again, caressed it, and finally kissed her. She looked at him steadily, coldly.

"Please—sit over there!" As her husband continued to caress her, she sat upright. "I want to say something to you, Larry."

"What is it?"

"There can't be any more of that—you understand?—between us."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean—that, what you call love, passion, is over between us."

"Why? ... what have I done?"

Margaret waved her hand impatiently:—

"It makes no difference,—I don't want it—I can't—that is all."

"You refuse to be my wife?"

"Yes,—that way."

"You take back your marriage vow?" (Larry was a high churchman, which fact had condoned much in the Bishop's eyes.)

"I take back—myself!"

Margaret's eyes shone, but her voice was calm.

"If you loved any other man—but you are as cold as ice!"

"Am I?"

"Yes! ... I have been faithful to you always," he observed by way of defence and accusation.

Margaret rose from the couch, and looked down at her husband, almost compassionately. But when she spoke, her low voice shook with scorn:—

"That is your affair,—I have never wanted to know.... You seem to pride yourself on that. Good God! if you were more of a man,—if you were man enough to want anything, even sin,—I might love you!"

It was like a bolt of white fire from the clear heavens. Her husband gasped, scarcely comprehending the words.

"I don't believe you know what you are saying. Something has upset you.... Would you like me to love another woman? That's a pretty idea for a wife to advance!"

"I want you to—oh, what's the use of talking about it, Larry? You know what I mean—what I think, what I have felt—for a long time, even before little Elsa came. How can you want love with a woman who feels towards you as I do?"

"It is natural enough for a man who cares for his wife—"

"Too natural," Margaret laughed bitterly. "No, Larry; that's all over! You can do as you like,—I shan't ask questions. And we shall get on very well, like this."

"This comes of the rotten books you read!" he fumed.

"I do my own thinking."

"Suppose I don't want the freedom you hand out so readily?" he asked with an appealing note. "Suppose I still love you, my wife? have always loved you! You married me.... I've been unfortunate—"

"It isn't that, you know! It isn't the money—the fact that you would have beggared your mother—not quite that. It's everything—you! Why go into it? I don't blame you, Larry. But I know you now, and I don't love you—that is all."

"You knew me when you married me. Why did you marry me?"

"Why—why did I marry you?"

Margaret's voice had the habit of growing lower and stiller as passion touched her heart. "Yes—you may well ask that! Why does a woman see those things she wants to see in a man, and is blind to what she might see! ... Oh, why does any woman marry, my husband?"

And in the silence that followed they were both thinking of those days in Washington, eight years before, when they had met. He was acting as secretary to some great man then, and was flashing in the pleasant light of youth, popularity, social approbation. He had "won out" against the Englishman, Hollenby,—why, he had never exactly known.

Margaret was thinking of that why, as a woman does think at times for long years afterwards, trying to solve the psychological puzzle of her foolish youth! Hollenby was certainly the abler man, as well as the more brilliant prospect. And there were others who had loved her, and whom even as a girl she had wit enough to value.... A girl's choice, when her heart speaks, as the novelists say, is a curious process, compounded of an infinite number of subtle elements,—suggestions, traits of character, and above all temporary atmospheric conditions of mind. It is a marvel if it ever can be resolved into its elements! ... The Englishman—she was almost his—had lost her because once he had betrayed to the girl the brute. One frightened glimpse of the animal in his nature had been enough. And in the rebound from this chance perception of man as brute, she had listened to Lawrence Pole, because he seemed to her all that the other was not,—high-souled, poetic, restrained, tender,—all the ideals. With him life would be a communion of lovely and lovable things. He would secure some place in the diplomatic service abroad, and they would live on the heights, with art, ideas, beauty....

"Wasn't I a fool—not to know!" she remarked aloud. She was thinking, with the tolerance of mature womanhood: 'I could have tamed the brute in the other one. At least he was a man!' "Well, we dream our dreams, sentimental little girls that we are! And after a time we open our eyes like kittens on life. I have opened mine, Larry,—very wide open. There isn't a sentimental chord in my being that you can twang any longer.... But we can be good-tempered and sensible about it. Run along now and have your cigar, or go over to the country club and find some one to play billiards,—only let me finish what you are pleased to call my rotten reading,—it is so amusing!"

She had descended from the crest of her passion, and could play with the situation. But her husband, realizing in some small way the significance of these words they had exchanged, still probed the ground:—

"If you feel like that, why do you still live with me? Why do you consent to bear my name?"

The pomposity of the last words roused a wicked gleam in his wife's eyes. She looked up from her article again.

"Perhaps I shan't always 'consent to bear your name,' Larry. I'm still thinking, and I haven't thought it all out yet. When I do, I may give up your name,—go away. Meanwhile I think we get on very well: I make a comfortable home for you; you have your children,—and they are well brought up. I have kept you trying to toe the mark, too. Take it all in all, I haven't been a bad wife,—if we are to present references?"

"No," Larry admitted generously; "I have always said you were too good for me,—too fine."

"And so, still being a good wife, I have decided to take myself back." She drew her small body together, clasping her arms about the review. "My body and my soul,—what is personally most mine. But I will serve you—make you comfortable. And after a time you won't mind, and you will see that it was best."

"It goes deeper than that," her husband protested, groping for the idea that he caught imperfectly; "it means practically that we are living under the same roof but aren't married!"

"With perfect respectability, Larry, which is more than is always the case when a man and a woman live under the same roof, either married or unmarried! ... I am afraid that is it in plain words. But I will do my best to make it tolerable for you."

"Perhaps some day you'll find a man,—what then?"

Margaret looked at him for a long minute before replying.

"And if I should find a Man, God alone knows what would happen!"

Then in reply to the frightened look on her husband's face, she added lightly:—

"Don't worry, Larry! No immediate scandal. I haven't any one in view, and living as I do it isn't likely that I shall be tempted by some knightly or idiotic man, who wants to run away with a middle-aged woman and three children. I am anchored safely—at any rate as long as dad lives and your mother, and the children need my good name. Oh!" she broke off suddenly; "don't let us talk any more about it!" ...

Leaning her head on her hands, she looked into the fire, and murmured to herself as if she had forgotten Larry's presence:—

"God! why are we so blind, so blind,—and our feet caught in the net of life before we know what is in our souls!"

For she realized that when she said she was middle-aged and anchored, it was but the surface truth. At thirty, with three children, she was more the woman, more capable of love, passion, understanding, devotion—more capable of giving herself wholly and greatly to a mate—than any girl could be. The well of life still poured its flood into her! Her husband could never know that agony of longing, those arms stretched out to—what? When would this torture of defeated capacity be ended—when had God set the term for her to suffer!

In the black silence that had fallen between them, Pole betook himself to the club, as his wife had suggested, for the consolation of billiards and talk among sensible folk, "who didn't take life so damned hard." In the intervals of these distractions his mind would revert to what had passed between him and his wife that evening. Margaret's last remarks comforted him somewhat. Nothing of a scandalous or public demonstration of her feeling about her marriage was imminent. Nevertheless, his pride was hurt. In spite of the fact that he had suspected for a long time that his wife was cold,—was not "won,"—he had hitherto travelled along in complacent egotism. "They were a fairly happy couple" or "they geed as well as most," as he would have expressed it. He had not suspected that Margaret might feel the need of more than that. To-night he had heard and understood the truth,—and it was a blow. Deep down in his masculine heart he felt that he had been unjustly put in the wrong, somehow. No woman had the right—no wife—to say without cause that having thought better of the marriage bargain she had "taken herself back." There was something preposterous in the idea. It was due to the modern fad of a woman's reading all sorts of stuff, when her mind was inflammable. He recognized that his wife was the more important, the stronger person of the two,—that was the trouble with American women (Larry always made national generalizations when he wished to express a personal truth)—they knew when they were strong,—felt their oats. They needed to be "tamed."

But Larry was aware that he was not fitted for the task of woman-tamer, and moreover it should have been begun long before this.

So having won his game of billiards Larry had a drink, which made him even more philosophical. "Margaret is all right," he said to himself. "She was strung up to-night,—something made her go loose. But she'll come around,—she'll never do the other thing!" Yet in spite of a second whiskey and soda before starting for home, he was not absolutely convinced of this last statement.

What makes a man like Larry Pole content to remain the master of the fort merely in name, when the woman has escaped him in spirit? Why will such men as he live on for years, aye and get children, with women, who do not even pretend to love them?

* * * * *

Meanwhile the wife sat there before the fire, her reading forgotten, thinking, thinking. She had said more than she herself knew to be in her heart. For one lives on monotonously, from day to day, unresolved, and then on occasion there flame forth unsuspected ideas, resolves. For the soul has not been idle.... It was true that their marriage was at an end. And it was not because of her husband's failures, his follies,—not the money mistakes. It was himself,—the petty nature he revealed in every act. For women like Margaret Pole can endure vice and folly and disappointment, but not a petty, trivial, chattering biped that masquerades as Man.



CHAPTER XXXIV

IN the weeks that followed the accident Margaret Pole saw much of Falkner. The engineer would come up the hill to the old house late in the afternoon after his work, or ride up on his bicycle in the morning on his way to the dam he was building. Ned—"the Little Man" as Falkner called him—came to expect this daily visit as one of his invalid rights. Several times Falkner stayed to dinner; but he bored Larry, who called him "a Western bounder," and grumbled, "He hasn't anything to say for himself." It was true that Falkner developed chronic dumbness in Larry's conversational presence. But Margaret seemed to like the "bounder." She discovered that he carried in his pocket a volume of verse. An engineer who went to his job these days with a poetry book in his coat pocket was not ordinary, as she remarked to her husband....

Falkner's was one of those commonplace figures to be seen by the thousands in an American city. He dressed neither well nor ill, as if long ago the question of appearances had ceased to interest him, and he bought what was necessary for decency in the nearest shop. His manners, though brusque, indicated that he had always been within that vague line which marks off the modern "gentleman." His face, largely covered by beard and mustache, was pale and thoughtful, and his eyes were tired, usually dull. He was merely one of the undistinguished units in the industrial army. Obviously he had not "arrived," had not pushed into the circle of power. Some lack of energy, or natal unfitness for the present environment? Or was he inhibited by a twist of fate, needing an incentive, a spur?

At any rate the day when Margaret met him, the day when he had brought her boy home in his arms, the book of life seemed closed and fastened for him forever. The fellow-units in the industrial scheme in which he had become fixed, might say of him,—"Yes, a good fellow, steady, intelligent, but lacks push,—he'll never get there." Such are the trite summaries of man among men. Of all the inner territory of the man's soul, which had resolved him in its history to what he was, had left him this negative unit of life, his fellows were ignorant, as man must be of man. They saw the Result, and in the rough arithmetic of life results are all that count with most people.

But the woman—Margaret,—possessing her own hidden territory of soul existence, had divined more, even in that first tragic moment, when he had borne her maimed child into the house and laid his burden tenderly on the lounge. As he came and went, telephoning, doing the little that could be done, she saw more than the commonplace figure, clothed in ready-made garments; more than the dull, bearded face, the strong, thin hands, the rumpled hair. Something out of that vast beyond which this stranger had in common with her had spoken through the husk, even then....

And it had not ended there, as it would have ended, had Falkner been the mere "bounder" Larry saw. It was Falkner to whom the mother first told the doctors' decision about the boy. Certain days impress their atmosphere indelibly; they have being to them like persons, and through years the odor, the light, the sense of their few hours may be recalled as vividly as when they were lived. This May day the birds were twittering beside the veranda where Margaret was reading to the Little Man, when Falkner came up the drive. The long windows of the house were opened to admit the soft air, for it was already summer. Margaret was dressed in a black gown that relieved the pallor of her neck and face like the dark background of an old portrait. As the boy called, "There's big Bob!" she looked up from her book and smiled. Yet in spite of the placid scene, the welcoming smile, Falkner knew that something had happened,—something of moment. The three talked and the birds chattered; the haze of the gentle brooding day deepened. Far away above the feathery treetops, which did their best to hide the little houses, there was the blue line of sea, gleaming in the sun. It seemed to Falkner after the long day's work the very spot of Peace, and yet in the woman's controlled manner there was the something not peace. When Falkner rose to go, Margaret accompanied him to the steps.

"It's like the South to-day, all this sun and windless air. You have never been in the South? Some days I ache for it."

In the full light she seemed a slight, worn figure with a blanched face.

"Bring me my puppy, please, Bob!" the child called from his couch. "He's in the garden."

Falkner searched among the flower-beds beneath the veranda and finally captured the fat puppy and carried him up to the boy, who hugged him as a girl would a doll, crooning to him. Margaret was still staring into space.

"What has happened?" Falkner asked.

She looked at him out of her deep eyes, as if he might read there what had happened. They descended the steps and walked away from the house.

"He hears so quickly," she explained; "I don't want him to know yet."

So they kept on down the drive.

"Dr. Rogers was here this morning.... He brought two other doctors with him.... There is no longer any doubt—it is paralysis of the lower limbs. He will never walk, they think."

They kept on down the drive, Falkner looking before him. He knew that the woman was not crying, would never betray her pain that watery way; but he could not bear to see the misery of those eyes.

"My father the Bishop has written me ... spiritual consolation for Ned's illness. Should I feel thankful for the chastening to my rebellious spirit administered to me through my poor boy? Should I thank God for the lash of the whip on my stubborn back?"

Falkner smiled.

"My father the Bishop is a good man, a kind man in his way, yet he never considered my mother—he lived his own life with his own God.... It would surprise him if he knew what I thought about God,—his God, at least."...

Falkner looked at her at last, and they stopped. Afterwards he knew that he already loved Margaret Pole. He, too, had divined that the woman, stricken through her child, was essentially alone in the world, and in her hungry eyes lay the story of the same dreary road over which he had passed. And these two, defeated ones in the riotous world of circumstance, silently, instinctively held out hands across the void and looked at each other with closed lips.

Among the trees the golden haze deepened, and the birds sang. Down below in the village sounded the deep throbs of an engine: the evening train had come from the city. It was the only disturbing note in the peace, the silence. The old house had caught the full western sun, and its dull red bricks glowed. On the veranda the small boy was still caressing the puppy.

"Mother!" a thin voice sounded. Margaret started.

"Good-by," Falkner said. "I shall come to-morrow."

At the gate he met Pole, lightly swinging a neat green bag, his gloves in his hand. Larry stopped to talk, but Falkner, with a short, "Pleasant afternoon," kept on. Somehow the sight of Pole made the thing he had just learned all the worse.

Thus it happened that in the space of a few weeks Margaret knew Falkner more intimately than Isabelle had ever known him or ever could know him. Two beings meeting in this illusive, glimmering world of ours may come to a ready knowledge of each other, as two travellers on a dark road, who have made the greater part of the stormy journey alone. It would be difficult to record the growth of that inner intimacy,—so much happening in wordless moments or so much being bodied forth in little words that would be as meaningless as newspaper print. But these weeks of the child's invalidism, there was growing within them another life that no one shared or would have understood. When Larry observed, "That bounder is always here," Margaret did not seem to hear. Already the food that the "bounder" had given her parched self was too precious to lose. She had begun to live again the stifled memories, the life laid away,—to talk of her girlhood, of her Virginia hills, her people.

And Falkner had told her something of those earlier years in the Rockies, when he had lived in the world of open spaces and felt the thrill of life, but never a word of what had passed since he had left the canons and the peaks. Sometimes these days there was a gleam in his dark eyes, a smile on the bearded lips that indicated the reopening of the closed book once more. His fellow-units in the industrial world might not see it; but Margaret felt it. Here was a human being pressed into the service of the machine and held there, at pay, powerless to extract himself, sacrificed. And she saw what there was beneath the mistake; she felt the pioneer blood, like her own, close to the earth in its broad spaces, living under the sky in a new land. She saw the man that should be, that once was, that must be again! And in this world of their other selves, which had been denied them, these two touched hands. They needed little explanation.

Rarely Margaret spoke of her present life, and then with irony, as if an inner and unsentimental honesty compelled utterance: "You see," she remarked once when her husband called her, "we dress for dinner because when we started in New York we belonged to the dining-out class. If we didn't keep up the habit, we should lose our self-respect.... My neck is thin and I don't look well in evening dress. But that makes no matter.... We have prayers on Sunday morning; religion is part of the substantial life."...

Conny had said once, hearing Margaret rail like this: "She ought to make a better bluff, or get out,—not guy old Larry like that; it isn't decent, embarrasses one so. You can't guy him, too."...

But Falkner understood how the acid of her daily life eating into her had touched, at these times, a sensitive nerve and compelled such self-revelations.

* * * * *

It was Falkner who first spoke to the Poles about Dr. Renault. In some way he had heard of the surgeon and learned of the wonderful things he had done.

"Anyhow it is worth while seeing him. It is best to try everything."

"Yes," Margaret assented quickly; "I shall not give up—never!"

Through a doctor whom he knew Falkner arranged the visit to the surgeon, who was difficult of access. And he went in the evening after the visit to learn the result.

"He thinks there is a chance!" and Margaret added more slowly: "It is a great risk. I supposed it must be so."

"You will take it?"

"I think," she said slowly, "that Ned would want me to. You see he is like me. It may accomplish nothing, Dr. Renault said. It may be partially successful.... Or it may be—fatal. He was very kind,—spent all the afternoon here. I liked him immensely; he was so direct.'

"When will it be?"

"Next week."

The operation took place, and was not fatal. "Now we shall have to wait," the surgeon said to the mother,—"and hope! It will be months before we shall know finally what is the result."

"I shall wait and hope!" Margaret replied to him. Renault, who had a chord in common with this Southern woman, stroked her hand gently as he left. "Better take the little chap away somewhere and get a change yourself," he said.

It was a still, hot night of late June, the last time that Falkner climbed the hill to the old place. The summer, long delayed, had burst these last days with scorching fury. Margaret was to leave on the morrow for Bedmouth, where she would spend the summer with old Mrs. Pole. She was lying on the veranda couch. She smiled as Falkner drew a chair to her side, the frank smile from the deep blue eyes, that she gave only to her children and to him, and there was a joyous note in her voice:—

"At last there is a sign. I have a little more hope now!"

She told him of the first faint indications of life in the still limbs of the child.

"It will be months before we can tell really. But tonight I have strong hope!"

"What we need most in life is hope," he mused. "It keeps the thing going."

"As long as a man can work, he has hope," she replied stoutly.

"I suppose so,—at least he must think so."

Margaret knew that the work the engineer was engaged on was nearly finished. It might last at the most another six weeks, and he did not know where he should go then; but it was altogether unlikely that the fall would find him at Dudley Farms.

"I was in the city to-day," he said after a time, "and in the company's office I ran across my old chief. He's going to Panama in the fall."...

Margaret waited with strange expectancy for what Falkner might say next. She rarely asked questions, sought directly to know. She had the power of patience, and an unconscious belief that life shaped itself largely without the help of speech. Here and there in the drama of events the spoken word might be called for—but rarely.

"They have interesting problems down there," Falkner continued; "it is really big work, you know. A man might do something worth while. But it is a hole!"

She still waited, and what she expected came:—

"He asked me to go with him,—promised me charge of one of the dams, my own work,—it is the biggest thing that ever came my way."

And then the word fell from her almost without her will:—

"You must go! Must go!"

"Yes," he mused on; "I thought so. There was a time when it would have made me crazy, such a chance.... It's odd after all these years, when I thought I was dead—"

"Don't say dead!"

"Well, rutted deep in the mire, then,—that this should happen."

She had said "go," with all the truth of her nature. It was the thing for him to do. But she did not have the strength to say another word. In the moment she had seen with blinding clearness all that this man meant in her little firmament. 'This was a Man!' She knew him. She loved him! yes, she loved him, thank God! And now he must go out of her life as suddenly as he had come into it,—must leave her alone, stranded as before in the dark.

"It isn't so easy to decide," Falkner continued. "There isn't much money in it,—not for the under men, you know."

"What difference does that make!" she flashed.

"Not to me," he explained, and there was a pause. "But I have my wife and child to think of. I need all the money I can earn."

It was the first time any reference had been made to his family. After a time Margaret said:—

"But they pay fair salaries, and any woman would rather be pinched and have her husband in the front ranks—" And then she hesitated, something in Falkner's eyes troubling her.

"I shall not decide just yet.... The offer has stirred my blood,—I feel that I have some youth left!"

They said little more. Margaret walked with him down the avenue. In her summer dress she looked wasted, infinitely fragile.

"This is not good-by," he said at last. "I shall go down the coast in a boat for a week, as I used to do when I was a boy, and my sister has a cottage at Lancaster. That is not far from Bedmouth?"

"No, it isn't far," she answered softly.

They paused and then walked back, as if all was not said yet.

"There is another reason," Falkner exclaimed abruptly, "why I did not wish to go—and you must know it."

She raised her head and looked at him, murmuring,—

"Yes! I know it! ... But nothing should keep you here."

"No, not keep me.... But there is something infinitely precious to lose by going.... You have made me live again, Margaret. I was dead, dead,—a dead soul."

"We were both dead ... and now we live!"

"It were better not said, perhaps—"

"No!" she interrupted passionately. "It ought to be said! Why not?"

"There can be nothing for us," he muttered dully.

"No!" and her hands touched his. "Don't say that! We are both in the world,—don't you see?"

His face drew near to hers, they kissed, and she clung to him for the moment, then whispered: "Now go! You must live, live,—live greatly,—for us both!"

Margaret fled to her room, knelt down beside the boy's bed, with clasped hands, her eyes shining down on the sleeping child, a smile on her face.



CHAPTER XXXV

Cornelia Woodyard's expression was not pleasant when she was deliberating or in perplexity. Her broad brow wrinkled, and her mouth drew down at the corners, adding a number of years to her face. She did not allow this condition of perplexity to appear in public, reserving her "heavy thinking," as Tom Cairy called these moments, for the early morning hours of privacy. This languid spring day while Conny turned over her mail that lay strewn in disorder on her bed, she apparently had one of her worst fits of dubitation. She poked about in the mass of letters, bills, and newspapers until she found the sheet she was looking for,—it was in her husband's handwriting,—reread it, the scowl deepening, pushed it back thoughtfully into its envelope, and rang for the maid that looked after her personally as well as performed other offices in the well-organized household. When Conny emerged at the end of the hour in street costume, the frown had disappeared, but her fair face wore a preoccupied air.

"Hello, Tom!" she said wanly to Cairy, who was dawdling over the paper in the library. "How is it out?"

"Warm,—a perfect day!" Cairy replied, smiling at her and jumping to his feet.

"Is the cab there?"

"Yes,—shall we start?"

"I can't go to-day, Tom,—something has turned up."

"Something has turned up?" he queried. He was an expert in Conny's moods, but he had seen little of this mood lately.

"Business," Conny explained shortly. "Leave the cab, please. I may want it.... No," she added as Cairy came towards her with a question on his lips. "I can't bother to explain,—but it's important. We must give up our day."

She turned to her desk, and then remarked as if she felt Cairy's disappointment: "You can come in after dinner if you like, Tom! We can have the evening, perhaps."

He looked at her questioningly, as if he would insist on an explanation. But Conny was not one of whom even a lover would demand explanations when she was in this mood.

"We can't always play, Tommy!" she sighed.

But after he had left the room she called him back.

"You didn't kiss me," she said sweetly. "You may if you like, just once.... There!" she raised her head and smiled at Cairy, with that satisfaction which emotional moments brought to her. "You had better get to work, too. You can't have been of much use to Gossom lately." And she settled herself at her desk with the telephone book. As she called the hotel where Senator Thomas usually stayed when he was in the city, the scowl returned to her brow. Her mind had already begun to grapple with the problems suggested by Percy's letter of the morning. But by the time she had succeeded in getting the Senator, her voice was gentle and sweet....

... "Yes, at luncheon,—that will be very nice!" And she hung up the receiver with an air of swift accomplishment.

* * * * *

It is not necessary to go into what had passed between Cornelia Woodyard and Cairy in the weeks that had elapsed since that day when Conny had been so anxious to get back to New York from the Poles'. It would gratify merely a vulgar curiosity. Suffice it to say that never before had Conny been so pleased with life or her own competent handling of her affairs in it. Up to this morning she felt that she had admirably fulfilled all claims upon her as well as satisfied herself. Things had seemed "to come her way" during this period. The troublesome matter before the Commission that had roused her husband's conscience and fighting blood had gone over for the time. The Commission had reserved its decision, and the newspapers had gone off on a number of other scents of wrong-doing that seemed more odorously promising. Percy's conscience had returned to its normal unsuspecting state, and he had been absorbed to an unwonted degree in private business of one sort or another.

Meantime the Senator and Cornelia had had a number of little talks. The Senator had advised her about the reinvestment of her money, and all her small fortune was now placed in certain stocks and bonds of a paper company that "had great prospects in the near future," as the Senator conservatively phrased it. Percy, naturally, had known about this, and though he was slightly troubled by the growing intimacy with the Senator, he was also flattered and trusted his wife's judgment. "A shrewd business head," the Senator said of Conny, and the Senator ought to know. "It is as easy to do business with her as with a man." Which did not mean that Cornelia Woodyard had sold her husband to the Senator,—nothing as crude as that, but merely that she "knew the values" of this life.

The Senator and Conny often talked of Percy, the promise he had shown, his ability and popularity among all kinds of men. "If he steers right now," the Senator had said to his wife, "there is a great future ahead of Woodyard, and"—with a pleasant glance at Conny—"I have no doubt he will avoid false steps." The Senator thought that Congress would be a mistake. So did Conny. "It takes luck or genius to survive the lower house," the Senator said. They had talked of something in diplomacy, and now that the stocks and bonds of the paper-mill were to be so profitable, they could afford to consider diplomacy. Moreover, the amiable Senator, who knew how to "keep in" with an aggressively moral administration at Washington without altogether giving up the pleasing habit of "good things," promised to have Woodyard in mind "for the proper place."

So Conny had dreamed her little dream, which among many other things included the splendor of a career in some European capital, where Conny had no doubt that she could properly shine, and she felt proud that she could do so much for Percy. The world, this one at any rate, was for the able,—those who knew what to take from the table and how to take it. She was of those who had the instinct and the power. Then Percy's letter:—

... "Princhard came up to see me yesterday. From the facts he gave me I have no doubt at all what is the inner meaning of the Water Power bill. I shall get after Dillon [the chairman of the Commission] and find out what he means by delaying matters as he has.... It looks also as though the Senator had some connection with this steal.... I am sorrier than I can say that we have been so intimate with him, and that you followed his advice about your money. I may be down Sunday, and we will talk it over. Perhaps it is not too late to withdraw from that investment. It will make no difference, however, in my action here." ...

Simply according to Conny's crisp version, "Percy has flown the track again!"

* * * * *

After a pleasant little luncheon with the Senator, Conny sent a telegram to her husband that she would meet him at the station on the arrival of a certain train from Albany that evening, adding the one word, "urgent," which was a code word between them. Then she telephoned the office of The People's, but Cairy was not there, and he had not returned when later in the afternoon she telephoned again.

"Well," she mused, a troubled expression on her face, "perhaps it is just as well,—Tom might not be easy to manage. He's more exacting than Percy about some things." So while the cab was waiting to take her to the station, she sat down at her desk and wrote a note,—a brief little note:—

"DEAR TOM: I am just starting for the station to meet Percy. Something very important has come up, which for the present must change things for us all.... You know that we agreed the one thing we could not do would be to let our feelings interfere with our duties—to any one.... I don't know when I can see you. But I will let you know soon. Good-by. C."

"Give this to Mr. Cairy when he calls and tell him not to wait," she said to the maid who opened the door for her. Conny did not believe in "writing foolish things to men," and her letter of farewell had the brevity of telegraphic despatch. Nevertheless she sank into the corner of the cab wearily and closed her eyes on the brilliant street, which usually amused her as it would divert a child. "He'll know sometime!" she said to herself. "He'll understand or have to get along without understanding!" and her lips drew together. It was a different world to-night from that of the day before; but unhappy as she was she had a subtle satisfaction in her willingness and her ability to meet it whatever side it turned towards her.

The train was a halfhour late, and as she paced the court slowly, she realized that Cairy had come to the house,—he was always prompt these days,—had received the note, and was walking away, reading it,—thinking what of her? Her lips tightened a trifle, as she glanced at the clock. "He will go to Isabella's," she said to herself. "He likes Isabelle." She knew Cairy well enough to feel that the Southerner could not long endure a lonely world. And Conny had a tolerant nature; she did not despise him for going where he could find amusement and comfort; nor did she think his love less worth having. But she bit her lip as she repeated, "He will go to Isabelle." If Percy wanted to know the extent of his wife's devotion to their married life, their common interests, he should have seen her at this moment. As the train drew in, she had already thought, "But he will come back—when it is possible."

She met her husband with a frank smile.

"You'll have to take me somewhere to dinner," she drawled. "There isn't any at home,—besides I want to talk at once. Glad to see me?"

When they were finally by themselves in a small private room of a restaurant where Conny loved to go with her husband,—"because it seems so naughty,"—she said in answer to his look of inquiry: "Percy, I want you to take me away—to Europe, just for a few weeks!"

Woodyard's face reflected surprise and concern.

"But, Con!" he stammered.

"Please, Percy!" She put her hand softly on his arm. "No matter what is in the way,—only for a few weeks!" and her eyes filled with tears, quite genuine tears, which dropped slowly to her pale face. "Percy," she murmured, "don't you love me any longer?"...



CHAPTER XXXVI

It was perfectly true, as Conny surmised, that Cairy went to Isabelle. But not that evening—the blow was too hard and too little expected—nor on the whole more frequently than he had been in the habit of going during the winter. Isabelle interested him,—"her problem," as he called it; that is, given her husband and her circumstances, how she would settle herself into New York,—how far she might go there. It flattered him also to serve as intellectual and aesthetic mentor to an attractive, untrained woman, who frankly liked him and bowed to his opinion. It was Cairy, through Isabelle, much more than Lane, who decided on the house in that up-town cross street, on the "right" side of the Park, which the Lanes finally bought. It was in an excellent neighborhood, "just around the corner" from a number of houses where well-known people lived. In the same block the Gossoms had established themselves, on the profits of The People's, and only two doors away, on the same side of the street, a successful novelist had housed himself behind what looked like a Venetian facade. Close by were the Rogerses,—he was a fashionable physician; the Hillary Peytons; the Dentons,—all people, according to Cairy, "one might know."

When Isabelle came to look more closely into this matter of settling herself in the city, she regretted the Colonel's illiberal will. They might easily have had a house nearer "the Avenue," instead of belonging to the polite poor-rich class two blocks east. Nevertheless, she tried to comfort herself by the thought that even with the Colonel's millions at their disposal they would have been "little people" in the New York scale of means. And the other thing, the "interesting," "right" society was much better worth while. "You make your own life,—it isn't made for you," Cairy said.

Isabelle was very busy these days. Thanks to the Potts regime, she was feeling almost well generally, and when she "went down," Dr. Potts was always there with the right drug to pull her up to the level. So she plunged into the question of altering the house, furnishing it, and getting it ready for the autumn. Her mother and John could not understand her perplexity about furnishing. What with the contents of two houses on hand, it seemed incomprehensible that the new home should demand a clean sweep. But Isabelle realized the solid atrocity of the Torso establishment and of the St. Louis one as well. She was determined that this time she should be right. With Cairy for guide and adviser she took to visiting the old furniture shops, selecting piece by piece what was to go into the new house. She was planning, also, to make that deferred trip to Europe to see her brother, and she should complete her selection over there, although Cairy warned her that everything she was likely to buy in Europe these days would be "fake." Once launched on the sea of household art, she found herself in a torturing maze. What was "right" seemed to alter with marvellous rapidity; the subject, she soon realized, demanded a culture, an experience that she had never suspected. Then there was the matter of the Farm at Grafton, which must be altered. The architect, who was making over the New York house, had visited Grafton and had ideas as to what could be done with the rambling old house without removing it bodily. "Tear down the barn—throw out a beautiful room here—terrace it—a formal garden there," etc. In the blue prints the old place was marvellously transformed.

"Aren't you doing too much, all at once?" Lane remonstrated in the mild way of husbands who have experienced nervous prostration with their wives.

"Oh, no; it interests me so! Dr. Potts thinks I should keep occupied reasonably, with things that really interest me.... Besides I am only directing it all, you know."

And glad to see her once more satisfied, eager, he went his way to his work, which demanded quite all his large energy. After all, women had to do just about so much, and find their limit themselves.

Isabelle had learned to "look after herself," as she phrased it, by which she meant exercise, baths, massage, days off when she ran down to Lakewood, electricity,—all the physical devices for keeping a nervous people in condition. It is a science, and it takes time,—but it is a duty, as Isabelle reflected. Then there was the little girl. She was four now, and though the child was almost never on her hands, thanks to the excellent Miss Butts, Molly, as they called her, had her place in her mother's busy thoughts: what was the best regimen, whether she ought to have a French or a German governess next year, how she should dress, and in the distance the right school to be selected. Isabelle meant to do her best for the little girl, and looked back on her own bringing up—even the St. Mary's part of it—as distressingly haphazard, and limiting. Her daughter should be fitted "to make the most of life," which was what Isabelle felt that she herself was now beginning to do.

So Isabelle was occupied, as she believed profitably, spending her new energy wisely, and though she was getting worn, it was only a month to the date she had set for sailing. Vickers had promised to meet her at Genoa and take her into the Dolomites and then to San Moritz, where she could rest. As her life filled up, she saw less of her husband than ever, for he, too, was busy, "with that railroad thing," as she called the great Atlantic and Pacific. She made him buy a horse and ride in the Park afternoons when he could get the time, because he was growing too heavy. He had developed laziness socially, liked to go to some restaurant for dinner with chance friends that were drifting continually through New York, and afterwards to the theatre,—"to see something lively," as he put it, preferably Weber and Fields', or Broadway opera. Isabelle felt that this was not the right thing, and boring, too; but it would all be changed when they were "settled." Meantime she went out more or less by herself, as the wives of busy men have to do.

"It is so much better not to bring a yawning husband home at midnight," she laughed to Cairy on one of these occasions when she had given him a seat down town in her cab. "By the way, you haven't spoken of Conny lately,—don't you see her any more?"

Isabelle still had her girlish habit of asking indiscreet, impertinent questions. She carried them off with a lively good nature, but they irritated Cairy occasionally.

"I have been busy with my play," he replied shortly.

As a matter of fact he had been attacked by one of those fits of intense occupation which came upon him in the intervals of his devotions. At such times he worked to better effect, with a kind of abandoned fury, than when his thoughts and feelings were engaged, as if to make up to his muse for his periods of neglect. The experience, he philosophized, which had stored itself, was now finding vent,—the spiritual travail as well as the knowledge of life. A man, an artist, had but one real passion, he told Isabelle,—and that was his work. Everything else was mere fertilizer or waste. Since the night that Conny had turned him from the door, he had completed his new play, which had been hanging fire all winter, and he was convinced it was his best. "Yes, a man's work, no matter what it may be, is God's solace for living." In response to which Isabelle mischievously remarked:—

"So you and Conny really have had a tiff? I must get her to tell me about it."

"Do you think she would tell you the truth?"

"No."

Isabelle, in spite of Cairy's protestations about his work, was gratified with her discovery, as she called it. She had decided that Conny was "a bad influence" on the Southerner; that Cairy was simple and ingenuous,—"really a nice boy," so she told her husband. Just what evil Conny had done to Cairy Isabelle could not say, ending always with the phrase, "but I don't trust her," or "she is so selfish." She had made these comments to Margaret Pole, and Margaret had answered with one of her enigmatic smiles and the remark:—

"Conny's no more selfish than most of us women,—only her methods are more direct—and successful."

"That is cynical," Isabelle retorted. "Most of us women are not selfish; I am not!"

And in her childlike way she asked her husband that very night:—

"John, do you think I am selfish?"

John answered this large question with a laugh and a pleasant compliment.

"I suppose Margaret means that I don't go in for charities, like that Mrs. Knop of the Relief and Aid, or for her old Consumers' League. Well, I had enough of that sort of thing in St. Louis. And I don't believe it does any good; it is better to give money to those who know how to spend it.... Have you any poor relatives we could be good to, John? ... Any cousins that ought to be sent to college, any old aunts pining for a trip to California?"

"Lots of 'em, I suppose," her husband responded amiably. "They turn up every now and then, and I do what I can for them. I believe I am sending two young women to college to fit themselves for teaching."

Lane was generous, though he had the successful man's suspicion of all those who wanted help. He had no more formulated ideas about doing for others than his wife had. But when anything appealed to him, he gave and had a comfortable sense that he was helping things along.

Isabelle, in spite of the disquiet caused by Margaret's statement, felt convinced that she was doing her duty in life broadly, "in that station where Providence had called her." 'She was sure that she was a good wife, a good daughter, a good mother. And now she meant to be more than these humdrum things,—she meant to be Somebody, she meant to live! ...

When she found time to call at the Woodyards', she saw that the house was closed, and the caretaker, who was routed out with difficulty, informed her that the master and mistress had sailed for Europe the week before.

'Very sudden,' mused Isabelle. 'I don't see how Percy could get away.'

Half the houses on the neighboring square were closed already, however, and she thought as she drove up town that it was time for her to be going. The city was becoming hot and dusty, and she was rather tired of it, too. Mrs. Price was to open the Farm for the summer and have Miss Butts and the little girl with her. John promised "to run over and get her" in September, if he could find time. Her little world was all arranged for, she reflected complacently. John would stay at the hotel and go up to Grafton over Sundays, and he had joined a club. Yes, the Lanes were shaking into place in New York.