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diff --git a/old/65556-0.txt b/old/65556-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 202de4d..0000000 --- a/old/65556-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7029 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Hare and Tortoise, by Pierre Coalfleet - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Hare and Tortoise - -Author: Pierre Coalfleet - -Release Date: June 7, 2021 [eBook #65556] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Alex White & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team - at https://www.pgdpcanada.net - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARE AND TORTOISE *** - - - - - - [Cover Illustration] - - - - - =H A R E A N D= - =T O R T O I S E= - - - - =By= - =PIERRE COALFLEET= - =_Author of “Solo_”= - - - - - - - - - =McCLELLAND & STEWART= - =PUBLISHERS TORONTO= - - - - - Copyright 1925 by - THE FORUM PUBLISHING COMPANY - Copyright 1925 by - DUFFIELD & COMPANY - - _Printed in U. S. A._ - - - - - =To= - - =R. M.= - - - - - HARE AND TORTOISE - - - - - HARE and TORTOISE - - - - - CHAPTER I - - -KEBLE EVELEY’S voice, rising and falling in graceful patterns, had -lulled his wife’s mind into a tranquil remoteness. She had got more from -the sinuosity of the sentences he was reading than from the thesis they -upheld. Walter Pater had so little to tell her that she needed to know. -This vaguely chagrined her, for Keble thought highly of Pater; Pater and -he had something in common, something impeccable and elusive, -something— - -She checked her musings in alarm at the menacing word “affected.” - -Was it affectation on Keble’s part? Or was there perhaps a winnowed -level of civilization thousands of miles east of these uncouth hills and -beyond the sea where precious phrases like Pater’s and correct manners -like Keble’s were matter of course? In any such _milieu_ what sort of -figure could _she_ hope to cut? - -No doubt a pitiful one. And her thoughts drifted wistfully but -resignedly down the stream of consciousness. - -It was not the first time she had failed to keep stroke with Keble in -the literary excursions he conducted on cool evenings before a log fire -that had been burning since their marriage in the autumn, six months -before. Only a few evenings past he had read a poem by Robert Browning, -who was to Louise merely a name that had fallen from the lips of her -English teacher at Normal School. She had felt herself rather pleasantly -scratched and pommeled by the lines as Keble had read them, but they had -failed to make continuous sense. And next morning, when she had gone to -the book-shelves to read and ponder in private, she hadn’t even been -able to identify the incoherent poem among the host of others in the red -volume. - -Once, too, when he had been playing the piano she had been humiliatingly -inept. For an hour she had been happy to lie back and listen to -harmonies which, though they had signified no more to her than a -monologue in a foreign tongue, had moved her to the verge of tears. Then -he had played something he called a prelude, a pallidly gay composition -utterly unlike many others called preludes, and on finishing it had -turned to ascertain its effect upon her. She hadn’t been listening -carefully, for it had set an old tune running in her head. “It’s pretty, -dear,” she had commented. “It reminds me of something Nana used to hum.” - -Her remark was inspired, for the suave prelude in question was no more -than a modern elaboration of a folk-theme that was a common heritage of -the composer and Nana. But the association between a French-Canadian -servant-girl and the winner of a recent _prix de Rome_ had been too -remote even for her musically discerning young husband, who had got up -from the piano with a hint of forbearance in his manner. That had cut -her to the quick, for it had implied maladdress on her part, and -gradually, through an intuitive process that hurt, she had gained an -inkling of the incongruity of her comparison. She had wished to state -the incongruity and turn it off with a touch of satire aimed at her -headlong self, but chagrin had held her mute. It was one of those -occasions where an attempted explanation would only underline the -regrettable fact that an explanation had been needed. Her ideas, she -felt, would always be ill-assorted; her comments, however good _per se_, -irrelevant. Her mind was a basket tumbling over with wild flowers; it -must be annoying for Keble to find pollen on his nose from a dandelion -in the basket after he had leaned forward at the invitation of a violet. - -Rising from her couch she crossed the room on tiptoe and sat on the arm -of Keble’s chair, leaning her head on his back as he continued to read. - -“After that sharp, brief winter, the sun was already at work, softening -leaf and bud, as you might feel by a faint sweetness in the air,” read -Keble. - -The faint sweet airs of a Western Canadian spring,—the first after a -sharp _long_ winter,—were at the black open window, stirring the -curtains, cooling her cheek; and Keble was with Marius the Epicurean in -Rome, seven thousand miles and many centuries away. - -“. . . Marius climbed the long flights of steps to be introduced to the -emperor Aurelius. Attired in the newest mode, his legs wound in dainty -_fasciae_ of white leather, with the heavy. . . .” - -Louise placed her hands across the page and leaned forward over Keble’s -shoulder to kiss the cheek half-turned in polite interrogation. “Are -_fasciae_ puttees, darling?” she inquired. Not that she really cared. -Indeed she was dismayed when he began to explain, and yawned. Penitently -she sank to an attitude of attention upon a stool at his feet. Keble got -up for his pipe, placing the book on a large rough table beside neat -piles of books and reviews. - -Louise remained on her footstool looking after him; then, as he turned -to come back, transferred her gaze to her hands, got up, biting her lip, -and crossed the room for her needlework. - -Keble’s influence during the last year had been chastening. Her own -ideas were vivid, but impetuous; they often scampered to the edge of -abysses—and plunged in. At times she abruptly stopped, lost in -wonderment at her husband’s easy, measured stride. Keble, like Marius, -mounted flights of thought in dainty _fasciae_,—never in plain -puttees,—and always step by step. She dashed up, pell-mell, and -sometimes beat him; but often fell sprawling at the emperor’s feet. -Whereupon Keble would help her up, brush her, and pet her a little, only -to resume the gait that she admired but despaired of acquiring. Beyond -her despair there was an ache, for she had come to believe that, as Lord -Chesterfield put it, “Those lesser talents, of an engaging, insinuating -manner, or easy good breeding, a gentle behavior and address, are of -infinitely more advantage than they are generally thought to be.” Even -in Alberta. - -She herself had written pages and pages of prose, and had filled an old -copy-book with incoherent little poems of which Keble knew nothing. They -sang of winds sweeping through canyons and across sage plains, of snowy -forests and frozen rivers; they uttered vague lament, unrest, -exultation. Through them surged yearnings and confessions that abashed -her. She kept them as mementoes of youthful rebellion, shut them up in a -corner of the old box that had conveyed her meagre marriage equipment -hither from her father’s tiny house in the Valley, and then watched -Keble’s eyes and lips, listened to his spun-silver sentences in the hope -of acquiring clues to—she scarcely knew what. - -Keble had come to the second lighting of a thoughtful pipe before the -silence was broken. He looked for some moments in her direction before -saying, “What sort of tea-cozy thing are you making now, dear?” - -Tea-cozy thing! It was a bureau scarf,—a beautiful, beautiful one! For -the birthday of Aunt Denise Mornay-Mareuil in Quebec. And Louise -sacrilegiously crossed herself. - -“So beautiful,” he agreed, “that Aunt Denise will take it straight to -her chapel and lay it across the altar where she says her prayers. You -know your father’s theory that despite oneself one plays into the hands -of the priests. How are you going to get around that, little heretic?” - -“By writing to Aunt Denise that it’s for her bureau! _My_ conscience -will be clear. Besides, I’m making it to give her pleasure, and if it -pleases her to put it on the altar where she prays for that old scamp, -then why not? She loved him, and that’s enough for her,—the poor dear -cross old funny!” - -“Would an atheist altar cloth intercept Aunt Denise’s Roman prayers? -Perhaps turn them into curses?” - -Louise ignored this and bit off a piece of silk. “Besides, I’m not such -a _limited_ heretic as Papa. I’m a comprehensive heretic.” - -“What kind of thing is that, for goodness’ sake?” - -“It’s a kind of thing that pays more attention to people’s gists than to -whether they cross their _i’s_ and dot their _t’s_. It’s a kind of thing -that’s going out to the pantry and get you something to eat before bed -time, even though it knows it’s bad for you.” - - 2 - -From a recalcitrant little garden in front of the log house, Louise -could follow the figure of her husband on a buckskin colored pony which -matched his blond hair. He was skirting the edge of the lake toward the -trail that led up through pines and aspens to the ridge where their -“Castle” would ultimately be built. Keble had still three months of his -novitiate as rancher to fulfil before his father’s conservative doubts -would be appeased and the money forthcoming from London for the project -of transforming the mountain lake and plains into something worthy the -name of “estate”: a comfortable house, a farm, a stock range, and a game -preserve. He was boyishly in earnest about it all. - -When Keble had disappeared into the trail, Louise’s eyes came back along -the pebbly strip of shore, past the green slope that led through -thinning groups of tall cottonwood trees to the superintendent’s cabin -and the barns, resting finally upon the legend over her front door: -_Sans Souci_. She remembered how gaily she had painted the board and -tacked it up. Had the blows of her hammer been challenges to Fate? - -She sighed and bent over the young flower beds. At an altitude of five -thousand feet everything grew so unwillingly; yet everything that -survived seemed so nervously vital! She dreaded Keble’s grandiose -projects; or rather, the nonchalance with which he could conceive them -intimidated her. There was something jolly about things as they had -been: the cottage and the horses and dogs, the two servants, the -rattling car, and the canoe. She thought, indulgently, of the awe in -which she had originally held even this degree of luxury. - -Her ditch was now fairly free of pebbles, and she placed the dahlia -bulbs in line. As she worked, the thin mountain sunshine crept up on -her, warming, fusing, gilding her thoughts. Spring could do so much to -set one’s little world aright. In the winter when the mountains were -white and purple and the emerald water had frozen black, when supplies -from the Valley were held up for days at a time, one was not so -susceptible to the notion of a universal benevolence as one could be on -a morning like this, with its turquoise sky, its fluffy clouds that -seemed to grow on the tops of the fir trees like cotton, and its rich -silence, only intensified by the scream of a conceited crane flying from -the distant river to the rock in the lake where he made a daily -“grub-call” at the expense of Keble’s trout. - -There was one other alien sound: the noise of a motor, a battered car -from the Valley that brought mail on Tuesdays and Fridays. But this was -Monday. The driver was talking to one of the hands; and a young -stranger, quite obviously a “dude” and English, was looking about the -place with a sort of eager, friendly curiosity. Then Mr. Brown appeared, -and after a short consultation took the stranger in the direction of a -road that led around by another route to the ridge. - -An hour later, from her bedroom window she saw Keble approaching the -cottage, his arm about the shoulders of the visitor. They might have -been two boys dawdling home from school: boys with a dozen trifles which -they had saved up for each other, to exchange with intimate lunges and -gesticulations. She had never seen Keble thus demonstrative. Indeed, she -had never seen him before in the company of a friend. She ran downstairs -two steps at a time. - -“Oh, Louise, here’s Windrom out of a blue sky,—you know: Walter Windrom -who was at Marlborough with me.” - -Keble had become suddenly casual again and shut off some current within -him in the manner that always baffled her. She knew Walter Windrom from -Keble’s tales of school life in England, and she had a quite special -corner in her heart for the shy young man who had been his friend. She -envied him for having been so close to Keble at a time when she was -ignorant of his very existence. Walter could remember how Keble had -looked and talked and worn his caps at that age, whereas she could only -imagine. She remembered that Keble had marched off to war instead of -going up to Oxford with his chum, as they had planned, and that Windrom -had recently been given a diplomatic post in Washington. The image of -Keble in a Lieutenant’s uniform awakened another memory: Keble had once -told her that he and Windrom had played at warfare with their history -master, and with her usual impetuosity she got part of this picture into -her first remark to the new man: “You used to play tin soldiers -together!” - -“And Keble always won the battles, even if he had to violate the Hague -conventions to do it!” Walter’s tone was indulgent. - -“Oh!” exclaimed Louise. “But he would break them so morally! Even the -Hague would be fooled.” - -“The history of England in a nutshell,” agreed Walter. “We played -battles like Waterloo, and I had to be Napoleon to his Wellington.” - -“But you didn’t mind really, old man, you know you didn’t.” - -“Not a bit! The foundation on which true friendship rests is that one of -the parties enjoys to beat, and the other rather enjoys being beaten.” - -“Walter has turned philosopher and poet and says clever things that you -needn’t believe at all.” - -“Oh, but I do believe him,” said Louise quickly, alarmed at the extent -to which she _did_. To cover it she held out her hands with an exuberant -cordiality and drew them into the house. - -The luncheon table was drawn near windows framed by yellow curtains -which Louise had herself hemmed. Through them, beyond the young green -plants in the window-boxes, beyond the broken trees that Keble called -the Castor and Pollux group, from their resemblance to the pillars in -the Roman Forum, the two mountains that bounded the end of the lake -could be seen coming together in an enormous jagged V, one overlapping -the other in a thickly wooded canyon. - -“And to think that all this marvel belongs to you, to do with as you see -fit!” exclaimed Windrom. “It’s as though God had let you put the -finishing touches on a monument He left in the rough.” - -“We’re full of godlike projects,” said Keble. “This afternoon I’ll find -a mount for you and take you over the place.” - -“Let it be a gentle one,” Windrom pleaded. “Horses scare me,—to say -nothing of making me sore.” - -“Sundown won’t,” Louise quickly reassured him, then turned to her -husband. “Let him ride Sundown, Keble . . . He’s mine,” she explained. -“The only thing left in the rough by God that I’ve had the honor of -improving, apart from myself! Like lightning if you’re in a hurry, but -wonderfully sympathetic. I’ll give you some lumps of sugar. For sugar -he’ll do anything. He’s the only horse in Alberta that knows the taste -of it. But don’t let Keble see you pamper him, for he’s getting to be -very Canadian and very Western and calls it dudish and demoralizing and -scolds you for it.” - -She paused, a little abashed by the length to which her harmless desire -to help along the talk had taken her, and smiled half apologetically, -half trustfully as her husband resumed inquiries about the incredible -number of unheard-of people they knew in common: people who thought -nothing of wandering from London to Cairo, from New York to Peking: -rich, charming, clever, initiated people,—people who would always know -what to do and say, she was sure of it. - - 3 - -If it was the natural fate of a tenderfoot that Sundown should have been -lame from a rope-burn that afternoon and that his understudy should be a -horse that had not been ridden since the previous summer, it was -carelessness on the part of Keble Eveley that allowed the visitor to -climb the perpendicular trail to the ridge in a loosely cinched saddle. -In any case, when Windrom, in trying to avoid scraping a left kneecap on -one pine tree, caught his right stirrup in the half fallen dead branch -of another, the horse, reflecting the nervousness of his rider, began to -rear in a manner that endangered his foothold on the steep slope, and -almost before Keble knew that something was amiss behind him, a sudden -forward motion of the horse, accompanied by a slipping motion of the -saddle, threw his friend against a vicious rock which marked a bend in -the trail. - -Keble turned and dismounted anxiously when Windrom failed to rise. The -body lay against the rock, the left arm doubled under it. Keble lifted -his victim upon his own horse and after great difficulty brought him to -the cottage, where an astonishingly calm Louise vetoed most of his -suggestions, installed the patient as comfortably as possible in bed, -and commanded her husband to get in communication with the Valley. - -Despite the halting telephonic system, the twenty miles of bad road, the -prevalence of spring ailments throughout the Valley requiring the -virtual ubiquitousness of the little French doctor, it was not many -hours before he arrived to relieve their flagging spirits. For his -son-in-law’s naïve wonderment at Louise’s efficiency, Dr. Bruneau had -only an indulgent smile. “But why shouldn’t she know what to do?” he -exclaimed. “Is her father not a doctor, and was her mother not a nurse?” - -When the broken ribs had been set, Louise remained in the sick-room, and -the two men were smoking before the fire downstairs. The situation had -put the doctor in a reminiscential humor. His daughter grown up and -married, in the rôle of nurse, set in train memories of the epidemic -that had swept through the Valley when Louise was nine years old. Her -mother had insisted on helping, had gone out night and day nursing and -administering. - -“And I was so busy tending the others that she went almost before I knew -she was ill. . . . Until that day, Death had been only my professional -enemy. . . . It was an excellent woman, very _pratique_. Louis is -_pratique_, too, but _au fond_ romantic. That she holds from me. I’m not -_pratique_. I don’t collect my bills. But out here, at least, the -priests don’t get what I should have, as they did in Quebec. Down there -they take from the poor people whatever there is, and nothing is left to -pay the bills of a heretic _médecin_. The priests thought that was fair, -since the _médecin_ gave them nothing for their embroideries and their -holy smells! - -“Here at least one is not molested,—if one were permitted to enjoy -one’s freedom! All my life I have wanted to sit by my fire and read, one -after the other, every book discouraged by Rome. . . . But always when I -get out my pipe and take down Renan or Voltaire there is a call: little -Johnny has a fit, come quick; _Madame Chose_ is having a baby,—_Cré -Mâtin: Madame_ who has had already twelve! If the baby lives they thank -God; if he dies they blame me. And that’s life. . . . - -“All one can do in this low world, my son, is work, without asking why. -We are like clocks that Nature has wound up to keep time for her, and -it’s enough that Nature knows what we are registering. The people who -are always trying to read the hour on their own dials keep damn poor -time. Witness my excellent sister. Denise burns expensive candles for -her _drôle_ of a husband, that _rusé_ Mareuil who marched his socialists -up the hill to give him a fine showing, then, unlike the King of France, -stayed on the hill and let them march down by themselves when they had -served his ambition, and got himself assassinated for his treachery. And -his devout widow, after fumbling her beads in the parlor, goes into the -pantry to count the gingersnaps for fear the hired girl has taken some -home to her family. Denise is too spiritual to be a good human clock, -and too full of wheels to be of any use to eternity. It’s a funny world, -_va!_” - -When Dr. Bruneau had gone, Keble reflected that it was indeed a funny -world. Not the least ludicrous feature of it being that he, the product -of many generations of almost automatic gentility, should have happened -to make himself the son-in-law of a garrulous, fantastic, kind-hearted, -plebeianly shrewd, Bohemian country physician, who, more like his sister -than he knew, was too spiritual to be successful in his profession, and -too close to the earth to be a valid sage,—a man of the people, of the -soil from which Louise had come forth as the fine flower. - -He recalled with a faint smile the pretexts he used to devise for -dropping into the doctor’s little house on his long ski-journeys to the -Valley: a fancied ailment, the desire to borrow a book or offer a gift -of whisky from a recently-arrived supply. He recalled his reluctant -leave-takings and the very black, mocking eyes, tantalizing lips, and -jaunty curls of the girl who accompanied him to the door. He recalled -the shock of his sense of fitness on realizing during the spring the -significance of his visits; his abrupt pilgrimage to the family fold in -England to repair his perspective; the desolating sense of absence; the -sudden cablegram; and her proud, challenging reply. It had been brought -to him just before dinner, and he could yet feel the thrill that had -passed through him as he entered the dining-room formulating his -revolutionary announcement. - -He recalled with a little twinge the scared expression that had come -over his mother’s face, the hurt and supercilious protest voiced by his -sister, the strained congratulations offered by Girlie Windrom, Walter’s -sister, who had been visiting them, and the ominous silence from the -paternal end of the table. A few days later his father had seen him off -to Southampton, with the final comment: “Till the soil by all means, my -boy. I can understand a farmer. We’ve all farmed. But we’ve never gone -so far afield for our wives.” - -Then, with a more sympathetic impulse his father had said, “Your mother -and I had rather set our hearts on Girlie Windrom for you. One of these -days you will have to assume responsibilities as head of the family, -whether it bores you or not, and it is not wholly reassuring to know -that our name will be handed on to nephews of a French-Canadian -traitor.” Keble had reflected that Louise could scarcely be held to -account for her aunt’s marriage to a man who had brilliantly satirized -some of his father’s most pompous Imperialistic speeches, but he had -seen that nothing would be gained by pointing this out. - -He could almost wish he had had a brother who might have satisfied the -family by marrying Girlie, understudying his father in the ranks of the -diehards, and going through all the other motions appropriate to the -heir of a statesman, a landlord, and a viscount. - - 4 - -Walter was at first embarrassed by having his chum’s wife assume all the -duties of a nurse, but gradually under her deft regime the two men, and -later Mrs. Windrom, who had set out from Washington on receiving news of -the accident, took Louise’s ministrations as matter of course. Louise -saved her pride by announcing that she was a born Martha, but privately -resolved that, for the future, her Mary personality should not so easily -be caught napping. - -Except for strangers who at rare intervals had strayed thither on -hunting trips, Mrs. Windrom was the first woman of Keble’s world who had -entered their house. After her first maternal anxiety had been allayed -and she had been assured that Dr. Bruneau had not mis-set her son’s -bones, Mrs. Windrom made a point of being pleasant to the young woman -who was filling the place she had always expected her own daughter to -occupy. Unfortunately, Louise _felt_ that Mrs. Windrom made a point of -it. Being a woman of restricted imagination, Mrs. Windrom was at a loss -for ways and means to be friendly with a girl who had scarcely heard of -the routines and the people comprising her stock-in-trade. There was not -much to say beyond “good mornings” and “my dears,” and the very lack of -an extensive common ground made it necessary for Mrs. Windrom to fill -the gap with superfluous politenesses. She never failed to commend -Louise’s tea and cakes, her pretty linen patterns, and her bouquets of -wild flowers, but for the quick intuition, the embarrassed private -cogitation, and the tortuous readjustments of manner by means of which -Louise achieved absence of friction, Mrs. Windrom had necessarily only a -limited appreciation. - -Once or twice Louise, whose patience was particularly tried by Mrs. -Windrom’s incomprehensible habit of remaining in her bedroom until -eleven, experienced a sensation of deep, angry rebellion, for which she -ended by chiding herself and went on grimly fulfilling her -self-appointed tasks sustained by an undercurrent of pride that would -not have been lost on Keble had he not been caught back into the past -for the moment, to rebreathe the faded but sweet odors of the hawthorne -hedges and the red-leather clubs he had abandoned nearly three years -ago. - -Walter, towards the end of his recovery, more than once sensed the -loneliness of Louise’s position. Being conscientious as well as shy, he -was at some pains to conjure up discreet words in which to couch his -feeling. Meanwhile his glances and gentle acknowledgments gave her the -stimulus she needed to carry her through. - -On the day set for their departure, Walter made a meticulous avowal of -gratitude which reached a chord in her nature that had never been made -to vibrate. “Sometimes, at least once in the course of a woman’s married -life,” he said, “I imagine there is some service, perhaps trifling, -perhaps important, that only a man other than her husband can render. If -such an occasion ever arises for you, I shall be there, eager to perform -it. I think I can be impersonal and friendly at the same time. It’s my -only real talent. Moreover, I’m older than Keble, in imagination if not -in years, and am more acutely conscious of certain shades of things that -concern him than he can be.” - -The unspoken corollary was that Walter was also more acutely conscious -than Keble of certain shades of herself, and in that moment a ray of -light penetrated to an obscure recess of Louise’s mind, a recess that -had refused to admit certain unlovely truths and heterodoxies,—a recess -that had declined, for instance, to put credence in the change of heart -of so many women in books and plays: Nora Helmer, Mélisande, Guinevere; -and for the first time in her life she understood how there could be a -psychology of infidelity. For the first time she understood that one -might have to be unfaithful in the letter to remain faithful in the -spirit. Just as one might have to break a twenty-dollar bill to obtain a -twenty dollars’ worth. It was a strangely sweet, strangely unhappy -moment, but only a moment, for almost immediately she was recalled to a -consciousness of hand-bags, cloaks, veils, and small, nameless duties of -eyes and hands and lips. Then Mrs. Windrom kissed her good-bye, with an -emphasized friendliness that only set her mind at work wondering what it -was that Mrs. Windrom had left unsaid or undone that she should feel -obliged to emphasize the kiss. Louise could find no words to define the -gap that lay between them; but she was sure that Mrs. Windrom defined it -to a T, and had stated it to a T in letters to Girlie, who would restate -it to Alice Eveley and the Tulk-Leamingtons! - -As the car mounted the hill beyond Mr. Brown’s cottage, Keble turned to -her, with the absent-minded intention of thanking her, following the cue -of the others, for everything she had done. The visit of his friends -breaking into their long days had been for him an exciting distraction, -and he could be only cloudily conscious of the strain it had put upon -her, whose life had been socially humble and barren. His face still bore -traces of the mask which people of his world apparently always wore. He -found Louise pale, with brows slightly drawn together, the mouth with -its arched lips relaxed, as of one suffering a slight with no feeling of -rancor. - -One instinct, to take her in his arms and reassure her by sheer contact, -was held in abatement by another, an instinct to stop and reason out the -elements that had produced the momentary hiatus. This procrastination on -his part had an almost tragic significance for the impulsive girl. She -lowered her eyes, pressed her teeth against her lip, straightened her -arms, and walked into the house. If he had followed more quickly on her -steps she would have succumbed to a passionate desire to be petted. As -it was, he reached her side only after she had had time to put on her -pride. - -There was still a chance, had he been emotionally nimble enough to say -something humorous about the visit, something gently satiric about Mrs. -Windrom’s exaggerated fear of missing connections with the stage from -the Valley to Witney, something natural and relaxed and sympathetic,—if -only her old nickname, “Weedgie,”—to reinstate her in the position to -which, as his most intimate, she felt entitled. - -A great deal, she felt, depended on what his tone would be. She held -herself taut, dreading an echo of the hollow courtesies that had filled -her rooms for days with such forbidding graciousness. - -Keble had a congenital aversion to demonstrations. Tenderness might coax -him far, but it would never induce him to “slop over.” As he went to the -table for his pipe, his eyes encountered an alien object which he lifted -thankfully, for it served as a cue. - -“Hello, Mrs. Windrom left her _pince-nez_ behind . . . I’ll have them -put into the mail for Sweet to take out this afternoon. Hadn’t you -better write a note to go with them, my dear?” - -She turned and faced him. In her eyes he saw something smoldering, -something whose presence he had on two or three occasions half -suspected: a dark, living subtlety that he could attribute only to her -Frenchness. Her nostrils were slightly dilated, her lips quietly -composed. She walked very close, looked directly into his eyes, and with -a little sidelong shrug that brought her shoulder nearly to her chin, -whipped out the words, “If I weren’t so damn polite I’d smash them!” - -The slam of the door, a few seconds later, drove her exclamation at him -with a force that, after the first thrill, left him vexed and -bewildered. - - - - - CHAPTER II - - -LOUISE had wondered why Katie Salter had not appeared to do the weekly -washing. In the light of a report brought by the mail carrier the reason -was now too frightfully clear. Katie’s son, a boy of twelve, had -accidentally killed himself while examining an old shot-gun. - -Keble was sitting at his table filling in a cheque. Louise had been -silently watching him. “I’ll give this to Sweet to take to Katie on his -way back to the Valley,” he said. “It will cover expenses and more.” - -“Give it to me instead, dear. I’ll take it when I go this afternoon.” - -“Oh! Then what about our trip to the Dam with the Browns?” - -“I’m afraid I’ll have to be excused. I must do what I can for Katie. She -has nobody.” - -“She has the neighbors. Mrs. what’s her name, Dixon, is taking care of -her. Besides, all the women for miles around flock together for an -occasion of that sort. It will be rather ghastly.” - -“Especially for Katie. That’s why I have to go.” - -“Oh, Lord! if you feel you must. I’ll come with you.” - -She rose from her chair and picked up the cheque he had left on the edge -of the table. She had thought it all out within a few seconds, and in -none of the pictures she had conjured up could she find a place for her -husband. The fastidiousness which persisted through all his efforts to -be “plain folks” could not be reconciled with the stark details of the -tragedy ten miles down the road. - -“No, Keble dear,” she replied with a firmness she knew he wouldn’t -resist. More than once she had secretly wished he would resist her -firmness, for every yielding on his part seemed to increase her habit of -being firm, and that was a habit that bade fair to petrify the amiable -little gaieties and pliancies of her nature. “You know you’ve been -anxious about the Dam. It won’t do to put off the trip again. Katie will -understand your absence, and she will feel comforted to have at least -one dude present. You know I’m considered a dude, too, since my -marriage. Nowadays my old friends address me as stiffly as we used to -address the schoolma’am. . . . It’s strange what trifles determine the -manners of this world.” - -“Was our marriage such a trifle?” - -Louise came out of her reflective mood and smiled, then said, as if just -discovering it, “Why, yes, when you think of all the big things there -are.” - -“What about Billy’s death? Is that a big thing?” - -“A big thing to Katie, just as our being together is a big thing to us.” - -“What a horrid way of putting it!” - -“. . . Marriage _is_ being together, though.” - -He let that pass and returned to his point. “A big thing to Katie, but -negligible in the light of something else, I suppose you mean?” - -“Exactly.” - -“In the light of what, for example?” - -“I don’t quite know, dear. I’ll tell you when I’ve had time to -philosophize it out.” - -She kissed him and went out to the saddle shed. - -Sundown knew his mistress’s moods and decided on an easy trot for the -first few miles of the route, which lay through groves of pine and -yellowing cottonwood. Eventually the road emerged into a broad stretch -of dust-green sage perforated with gopher holes, and Louise set a -diagonal course toward the stony river bed which had to be forded. A -flock of snow-white pelicans sailed lazily overhead, following the -stream toward favorite fishing pools. A high line of mountains, pale -green, violet, and buff, merged into the hazy sky. The heat was -oppressive and ominous. - -For an hour not one human being crossed her path. The only sign of -habitation had been the villainous dog and three or four horses of a not -too prosperous homestead owned by one of Keble’s horse wranglers. All -along the road she had been preoccupied by the tone of her parting talk -with Keble, vaguely chagrined that her husband seemed to deprecate her -identifying herself too closely with the life of the natives. Strangely -enough he sought to identify himself with them, while, presumably, -expecting her to identify herself with the class from which he had -sprung, as though, gradually, she would have portentous new duties to -undertake. - -She couldn’t help dreading the prospect. Not that she shrank from -duties,—on the contrary; it was the menacing gentility of it all that -subdued her. When Keble had first come to them, disgusted with the old -order, he had persuaded her that the younger generation,—his English -generation,—had learned an epoch-making lesson, that it had earned its -right to ignore tradition and to build the future according to its own -iconoclastic logic. He had determined to create his own life, rather -than passively accept the life that had been awaiting him over there -since birth. She had thrilled with pride at having been chosen partner -in such a daring scheme. Only to find that, in insidious ways, perhaps -unconsciously, Keble was buttressing himself with the paraphernalia of -the old order which he professed to repudiate. She could love Keble -without gloating over his blue prints and his catalogues of prize -cattle, his nineteenth century poets, and his eighteenth century -courtliness. The natives might gape at her luxurious bathroom fixtures -and other marvels that were beginning to arrive in packing-cases at the -Witney railway station. She had almost no possessive instinct, and -certainly no ambition to be mistress of the finest estate in the -province. Her most clearly defined ambition was to be useful,—useful to -herself, and thereby, in some vague but effective way, to her -generation. Her father, for all his obscurity, was to her notion more -useful than Keble. Wherever Keble went he drove a fair bargain: took -something and gave something in return. Wherever the little physician -went he left healing, courage, cheerfulness, and in return took, from -some source close to the heart of life, the energy and will to give -more. - -She dismounted to open the gate of the Dixon yard and led Sundown past a -meagre field of wheat, past straggling beds of onions and potatoes, -towards a small unpainted house which struck her as the neglected wife -of the big, scrupulously cared-for barn. Two harnessed farm wagons were -standing before it, and a dirty touring car. A group of men were -lounging near the woodshed chewing tobacco with a Sunday manner, and -some small boys, bare-legged, were playing a discreet, enforcedly -subdued game of tag. Two saddled horses were hitched to the fence, to -which she led Sundown. - -One of the Dixon children had run indoors to announce her advent, and as -she stepped into the kitchen she was met by a woman dressed in black -cotton and motioned into the adjoining room,—a combination of parlor -and bedroom,—where two or three other women were sewing together strips -of white cheese-cloth. All eyes turned to her. - -The walls were covered with newspaper, designed to prevent draughts. -There was a rust-stained print of Queen Victoria and a fashion plate ten -years out of date. At the two tiny windows blossomless geranium stalks -planted in tomato tins made a forlorn pattern. The centre of the room -was occupied by a rough box in which lay a powder-scarred little form -clad in a coquettish “sailor suit” of cheese-cloth. - -Louise drew near and looked wonderingly at the yellowish-white, -purple-flecked face and hideously exposed teeth of the boy who had a few -days since run errands for her, and who had planned to grow up and -“drive the mail.” - -The women expected her to weep, and in anticipation began to sniffle. - -“At what time is the burial?” she asked, dry-eyed. - -“As soon as we can git this here covering made. We’ve had to do -everything pretty quick. We can’t keep him long.” - -Louise shuddered and was turning away when she remembered the flowers in -her hand,—dahlias and inappropriate, but the only flowers to be had, -the only flowers on the scene,—and placed them in the coffin, with an -odd little pat, as if to reassure Billy. Then she threaded a needle and -set to work with the others. - -When all the strips were sewn together and gathered, they were nailed to -the boards and to the cover of the coffin. Perspiration rolled from the -forehead of Mr. Dixon, and his embarrassment at having to make so much -noise caused him from time to time to spit on the floor. - -The sound of hammering stirred Katie’s drugged imagination, and overhead -thin wails began to arise. With the continued pounding the lamentations -increased in volume, and presently the sound of moving chairs could be -heard, followed by indistinct consolations and footsteps on the -uncarpeted stairs. The door burst open, and Katie lurched in, her face -twisted and swollen behind a crooked veil. Clawing away the man with the -hammer, she threw herself across the box. A long strand of greyish-red -hair escaped from under a dusty hat and brushed against the redder hair -of the boy. - -It was some time before Katie could be drawn away. Finally, with a -renewed burst of sobbing she let herself be led by Louise into a corner -of the kitchen. Mixed with her sobs were incoherent statements. “It was -for his health,” Katie was trying to tell Louise, “I brought him up -here. And I was workin’ so hard, only for his schoolin’.” - -Louise kept peering anxiously out of doors. Black clouds had gathered, -and a treacherous little breeze had begun to stir the discarded pieces -of cheese-cloth which she could see on the floor through the open door. -A tree in the yard rustled, as if sighing in relief at a change from the -accumulated heat of days. - -After long delays the time arrived for the fastening down of the lid. To -everyone’s surprise, and thanks largely to Louise’s tact, Katie allowed -the moment to pass as if in a stupor. The coffin was placed in one of -the farm wagons, and a soiled quilt thrown over it. The outer box was -lifted upon the second wain, and served as a seat for the men and boys -in the gathering. Katie and the women were installed in the dirty motor, -which was to lead the way. And Louise, unstrapping her rain-cape, -mounted Sundown and galloped ahead to open the gate. - -As the clumsy procession filed past her, the clouds broke, and a deluge -of hailstones beat against them, followed by sheets of water into which -it was difficult to force the horses. It persisted during the whole -journey toward the mound which was recognized as a graveyard, although -no one but Rosie Dixon and an unknown tramp had ever been interred -there. - -On the approach of the bedraggled _cortège_ two men in shirtsleeves and -overalls, grasping shovels, came from under the shelter of a dripping -tree to indicate the halting place. Louise dismounted at once and led -Katie to a seat on some planks that rested near the grave. Mrs. Dixon, a -glass of spirits of ammonia in her hand, pointed out Rosie’s resting -place and for a moment transposed the object of her sorrow. - -The grave proved too narrow for the outer box, and there was another -long wait on the wet planks while the grave-diggers shoveled and took -measurements, with muttered advice and expletives. The rain had abated. -A mongrel who had followed them ran from one to another, and yelped when -some one attempted to chasten him. - -At length the box splashed into place, scraping shrilly against -projecting pebbles, and the assembly drew near to assist or watch the -lowering of the white cheese-cloth box. Katie was reviving for another -paroxysm. - -With a shock Louise discovered that they were preparing to put the cover -in place without a sign of a religious ceremony. - -“Is there no one here to take charge of the service?” she inquired. - -The man with the shovel replied for the others. “You see, Mrs. Eveley, -Mr. Boots is away from the Valley. We couldn’t get a parson from Witney. -We thought perhaps somebody would offer to say a prayer like.” - -To herself she was saying that not even her father could let poor Billy -be buried so casually. - -“Let me take charge,” she offered, with only the vaguest notion of what -she was going to do. - -Mrs. Dixon took her place beside Katie, and Louise proceeded to the head -of the grave, making on her breast the sign her mother had secretly -taught her. - -“My dear friends,” she commenced. “We poor human beings have so little -use for our souls that we turn them over to pastors and priests for safe -keeping, till some emergency such as the present. In French there is a -proverb which says: it is better to deal with God direct than with his -saints. If we had acquired the habit of doing so, we shouldn’t feel -embarrassed when God is not officially represented. With our souls in -our own keeping, we could not be so cruelly surprised. - -“As a matter of fact, priests and parsons know no more than we do about -life and death. Truth lies deep within ourself, and the most that any -ambassador of heaven can do is to direct our gaze inward. Although we -know nothing, we have been born with an instinctive belief that the -value of life cannot be measured merely in terms of the number of years -one remains a living person. We can’t help feeling that every individual -life contributes to an unknown total of Life. Our human misfortune is -that we see individuals too big and Life itself too small. We forget we -are like bees, whose glory is that each contributes, namelessly, a -modicum to the hive and to the honey that gives point to their -existence. We do wrong to attach tragic importance to the death of even -our nearest friend, for their dying is a phase of their existence in the -larger sense, just as sleeping is a phase of our twenty-four hour -existence. - -“The real tragedy is that we build up our lives upon something which is -by its nature impermanent. The wisest of us are too prone to live for -the sake of a person, and if that person suddenly ceases to exist the -ground is swept from under us. To find a new footing is difficult, but -possible, and it may even be good for us to be obliged to reach out in a -new direction and live for something more permanent than ourselves. - -“We are too easily discouraged by pain. We should learn from nature that -pain is merely a symptom of growth. Trees could not be luxuriant in -spring if in winter they hadn’t experienced privation. What we have -derived from life has been at the expense of others’ privations and -death; if we are unwilling to be deprived in our turn, we are stupidly -selfish. - -“Instinct tells us that, in a voice that can be heard above the voice of -grief. It also tells us to be courageous and neighborly. In that spirit -we can say that Katie’s loss is our opportunity. It affords us an -occasion to prove our human solidarity by giving her a hand over the -barren stretch and helping her to a new conception of life. - -“In that spirit let us put a seal on the last reminder of the soul which -has passed into the keeping of forces that direct us all, and let us do -so with a profound reverence for all the elements in nature which are a -mystery to us. Some of us have grown up without an orthodox faith. But -we can all be humble enough to bow our heads in acknowledgement of the -great wisdom which has created us mortal and immortal.” - -Stepping back to make way for the men, Louise, on some incongruous urge, -again made the sign of the cross with which she had superstitiously -preluded her address. From the faces around her she knew she had spoken -with an impersonal concentration as puzzling to them as it had been to -herself. - -One of the grave-diggers suddenly said “Amen,” and Mrs. Dixon, in -tremulous tones, added, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” - -The ceremony over, and Katie installed in the home of a neighbor until -she should feel able to remove with her belongings to a cabin on the -Eveley ranch, Louise rode away in the twilight towards the Valley, to -spend a night with her father. - -The air had a tang in it that suggested October rather than August, and -the storm had deposited a sprinkling of white on the summits of the -mountains. Not a sign remained of the landscape which only a few hours -earlier had been drooping under a sultry heat. Her knuckles ached with -cold as Sundown trotted on toward the town which was beginning to -sparkle far away in the gloom. - - 2 - -When Louise and her father were alone they dropped into French which -gave them a sense of intimacy and of isolation which they liked. The -little doctor was greatly pleased on his arrival from a trying case that -night to find her in possession of the library. Her first question, -issuing from some depth of revery, was even more unaccountable than her -presence. - -“_Bon soir, Papa_,” she greeted him. “Can you tell me exactly how much -money I have in the bank, including what Uncle Mornay-Mareuil left me?” - -Dr. Bruneau opened his eyes, made a bewildered grimace, went to a desk -in the corner, and rummaged for a bank-book. “Including interest to -date,” he gravely replied, “eleven thousand, two hundred and -thirty-three dollars and thirty-three cents.” - -He came to his own chair opposite her, picking up the pipe which she had -filled for him. “What’s in that black little head?” - -“Many things. More, really, than I know,—or, at least, than I knew.” - -“Nothing wrong?” - -“. . . I even wonder if there is anything right.” - -He was at once reassured. “You’ve been with Katie Salter. How is she?” - -“She’s bearing it. Papa, _penses-tu_, I delivered the funeral oration.” - -“_B’en vrai, tu en as!_ . . . What did you say?” - -“I talked over their heads, and a little over my own, as though I were -under a spell. I thought I was going to say something religious; but it -was scarcely that. It was rather like what the cook scrapes together -when people turn up for dinner unexpectedly,—philosophical pot-luck. -Everybody seemed puzzled, but I wasn’t just inventing words, as I used -to do when addressing my paper dolls. The words seemed to make sense in -spite of me. . . . And I had a strange feeling, afterwards, of having -grown up all at once. I don’t think I’ll ever feel sheer girlish again. -And the worst of that is, I don’t quite know how a woman is supposed to -feel and conduct herself. It’s very perplexing. . . . Papa, what do you -believe comes after this life, or what doesn’t?” - -“Precisely that,—that nothing does.” - -“I told them that we were infinitesimal parts of some mighty human -machinery, and although life was the most valuable thing we knew of -there was something beyond our comprehension a million times more -valuable; that even though we as individuals perished, our energies -didn’t.” - -The doctor was chuckling. “I hope they’ll take your word for it! . . . -We may be immortal for all I know. But if we are, I see no reason why -cats and chickens should not be. In the dissecting room they’re very -much like men.” - -“They are; they must be! Though not as individuals. The death of a man -or the death of a cat simply scatters so many units of vitality in other -directions! _Tiens!_ when our dam broke, up at the canyon, all the -electric lights went out. That was the death of our little lighting -plant. But the water power that generated our current is still there, -immortal, even if the water _is_ rushing off in a direction that doesn’t -happen to light our lamps, a direction that makes Keble grieve and Mr. -Brown swear. . . . That’s a rock on which Keble and I have often split. -I think he sincerely believes he’s going to a sort of High Church -heaven, intact except for his clothes and his prayer-book. I wish I -could believe something as naïve as that.” - -“_Pas vrai!_ You are too fond of free speculation, like your poor -Papa. . . . And now, those dollars in the bank?” - -“Oh, I was just wondering. . . . Besides, you never can tell, I might -decide to run off some day and improve my education.” - -Her father shot a look of inquiry across the table, but her face was -impassive. “You’re not exactly ignorant; and certainly not stupid.” - -She laughed. “_Ah ça!_ . . . Will you please get me a cheque book the -next time you call at the bank?” - -The next morning Louise passed in helping Nana dust and straighten the -accumulation of books and knick-knacks in the house. She relieved the -old servant by preparing luncheon herself, and the doctor arrived from -the little brown shingled hospital opposite the cement and plaster bank -to rejoin her, bringing with him a new cheque book, which she carelessly -thrust into the pocket of her riding breeches. - -“What a sensible Papa you are, not to warn me against extravagance!” - -“I’ve never doubted you, my child. It’s not likely I shall commence now. -You might have gone far if you hadn’t decided to marry; I always -maintained that. As it is, you made a match that no other girl in the -Valley could have done,—though I for one never guaranteed it would be -successful.” - -“_Hein ça!_” she mocked, absent-mindedly. “I’ve made an omelette that no -other girl in the Valley could have done, and it’s too successful for -words. Keble is upset for days if he catches me in my own kitchen.” - -She divided the omelette into three parts, one for Nana, who, more than -any other person in the Valley, was awed by the fact that Weedgie -Bruneau had turned into the Honorable Mrs. Eveley. - - 3 - -During several days Louise’s thoughtful, suddenly grown-up mood -persisted, but it was destined to be violently detracked by the chance -reading of a poem which had been marked in blue pencil and cut out, -apparently, from the page of a magazine. It was lying on Keble’s table, -among other papers. It was unsigned, and the title was _Constancy_. With -a sense of wonderment that grew into fear she read: - - _You cry I’ve not been true,_ - _Why should I be?_ - _For, being true to you,_ - _Who are but one part of an infinite me,_ - _Should I not slight the rest?_ - - _Rather are you false to me and nature_ - _In seeking to prolong the span_ - _Of impulses born mortal;_ - _In prisoning memories_ - _Impalpable as the fluttering of wings._ - - _If I’d been false,_ - _I have but mounted higher_ - _Toward a spacious summit,_ - _Bourne of all soaring vows._ - _The buds we gathered in the vale have perished._ - _Branches that offered roofs of shimmering green motley,_ - _Their summer service rendered,_ - _Divested themselves,_ - _Framing rude necessary heights._ - - _Yet you sit plaintive there while I aspire,_ - _Intent upon a goal you will not see._ - _Must I descend to you?_ - _Or shall I venture still?—My staff_ - _An accusation of inconstancy._ - - -What did it mean? Why was it marked? Who had written it? Why was it -lying on Keble’s desk? She stood cold and still, her gaze returning -again and again to the paper in her hand. - -Unable to answer the questions, she sat down and made an ink copy of the -brutal lines. When the last word was written she replaced the original -on the table and took the copy to her bedroom, reading it, unconsciously -memorizing it, making room in her philosophy for its egoistic claim, and -finally locking it in the box that sheltered her youthful manuscripts. - -Although she did not refer to the enigmatic poem, she knew that to its -discovery could be traced a breach that began to make itself felt, a -breach which she knew Keble associated in some vague way with the -funeral of little Billy Salter. Keble, for his part, had made no mention -of the poem, and day after day those accusatory blue marks continued to -peer through the unanswered correspondence that rested on his table. -Although she argued the lines out of countenance, though she watched for -Keble’s polite mask to fall and reveal some emotion that would disprove -her interpretation of them, they ate into her heart. - -The poem might have been a hint from Providence. She _was_ an impediment -to Keble’s progress, a poor creature unable to comprehend the hereditary -urges that bore him along in a direction that seemed to her futile. How -often must he have been legitimately impatient of her deficiencies! How -often must he have starved for the internationally flavored chit-chat -with which a wife like Girlie Windrom would have entertained him! With -what a bitter sigh must he have read his thought thus expressed by an -unknown poet! That would account for the marking and the clipping. She -promised herself to profit by the hint, if hint it were. - -As the breach widened, Keble maintained the deferential attitude he had -always assumed in the course of their hitherto negligible -misunderstandings. Technically he was always in the right. Her -acquaintance with people of his class had been large enough to teach her -that good breeding implied the maintenance of a certain tone, that in -divergences of view between well and dubiously bred people, the moral -advantage seemed always to lie with the former. It was a trick she had -yet to learn. - -There was a sort of finality in the nature of this breach that made it -unlike any other in their relationship. This was a conclusion she -admitted after days of desperate clinging to the illusion that nothing -was amiss. Meanwhile Keble waited; and she sank deeper into silence. - -In the midst of her self-analysis a letter arrived for Keble from the -friend of the early spring. Walter Windrom had spent the intervening -months in England, but was returning to his post in Washington. - -The renewal of this link with the outer world had a stimulating effect -upon Louise. It suggested a plan which ran through her veins like a -tonic. - -That night, through a blur of tears, she wrote the following letter, -while her husband lay uneasily asleep. - - “Hillside, September 16. - - “Dear Walter: Before leaving the ranch you offered to do - something for me. You may if you will. I’ve been miserable for - months at the thought of what a very back-woods creature I am. I - can never be what I would like to be; therefore I’ve decided to - be what I _can_ be, so _hard_ that I shall be even with Fate. I - can’t go away, but I can afford a tutor with my very own money. - So will you please immediately pick out the most suitable girl - you can find. Above all things she mustn’t be a teacher, or - anything professional; she must simply be somebody nice, and too - well-bred for words! I’ll learn _by ear_; I never could learn - any other way. - - “I will pay all expenses and whatever salary you suggest. And - I’d rather it be a big salary for a paragon than economize on a - second-best. She could come here as a former friend of mine, for - Keble must know nothing about my conspiracy. Do you think that - is too much like not playing the game? After all, it’s only that - I wish to play the game better,—I mean his sort of game. Not - that I especially like it; but I’ve let myself in for it. - - “Would you do that, Walter, please, without making fun of me? - Address me in care of Dr. Achille Bruneau.” - - - - - CHAPTER III - - -IN Keble’s new car, purchased with a recent birthday cheque from the -family, Louise was driving swiftly over the lumpy road that wound its -way down the hill, beside the river, across sage plains, around fields -of alfalfa, toward the distant Valley. There was an autumn crispness in -the air, and the rising sun made the world bigger and bigger every -minute. She rejoiced in the freshness of the earth; and the fun of -goading a powerful motor over deserted, treacherous roads made her -chuckle. Most of all, she was excited by the element of adventure in the -journey. She welcomed most things in life that savored of adventure. -What mattered chiefly to her was that she should go forward. And this -morning’s exploit was a leap. If she were ever to get out of her present -_impasse_ it would be thanks to the unknown woman she was hastening to -meet. - -As she swung into the long main street, passing the post office and the -drug-store, the bank, the hotel, and the hospital, scattering greetings -among stragglers, she was conscious of the wide-eyed interest in her -smart blue car. The inhabitants made capital of their intimacy with her. -In the old days she was “Doc. Bruneau’s girl;” nowadays she was, in -addition, the wife of a “rich dude” and a liberal buyer of groceries and -hardware. - -“As though that made me any different!” she reflected, and drew the car -up before the doctor’s white-washed garden fence, sending a bright hallo -to an old schoolmate, Minnie Hopper, whom she had once passionately -cherished for their similar taste in hair-ribbons and peppermint sticks, -and who was now Mrs. Otis Swigger, wife of Oat, the proprietor of “The -Canada House” and the adjoining “shaving parlor and billiard saloon.” -For Minnie marriage was nine-tenths of life. She was the mother of two -chalky babies; she had an “imitation mahogany bedroom set”; and her -ambition was to live in Witney, beyond the mountain pass, where there -was a “moving picture palace” and a railway station. - -Even Keble,—Louise pursued the thought as the gate clicked behind -her,—seemed to think marriage nine-tenths of life. For _her!_ - -She was burning with curiosity. - -A tall, lithe, solid young woman was standing before a heaped -bookcase,—a fair-skinned, clear-eyed woman of thirty-two or three, with -a broad forehead over which a soft, shining, flat mass of reddish-brown -hair was drawn. She wore a rough silk shirt with a brown knitted cravat; -a fawn colored skirt, severely simple but so cunningly cut that it -assumed new lines with the slightest motion of her body; brown stockings -and stout brown golf shoes of an indefinable smartness. - -Louise had never seen a woman so all-of-a-piece, and of a piece so rare. -As a rule, in encountering new personalities, she was first of all -sensitive to signs of intelligence, or its lack. She could not have said -whether this person were excessively clever or excessively the reverse. -It was the woman’s composure that baffled her. The wide-set grey eyes -and the relaxed but firm lips gave no clue. She swiftly guessed that in -this woman’s calculations there was a scale of values that virtually -ignored cleverness, as such; that cleverness was to her merely a chance -intensity that co-existed with other more important qualities in -accordance with which she made her classifications, if she bothered to -_make_ classifications; and something suggested that for this woman -classifying processes were automatic. What her mechanical standards of -judgment were, there was no gauging: degrees of gentility, perhaps. That -was what Louise would have to learn. - -The lips, without parting, formed themselves into a reassuring smile, -which had the contrary effect of making Louise acutely conscious of a -necessity to be correct, of marshaling all the qualities in herself that -had aroused approbation in the most discriminating people she had known. - -The stranger replaced a book she had been inspecting and took a step in -Louise’s direction. Louise shook herself, as if chidingly, and let her -natural directness dispel the momentary awkwardness. She went forward -quickly with outstretched hand. - -“You are Miss Cread, of course. I am Mrs. Eveley. I’m so sorry to have -kept you waiting overnight here.” - -“Your father has been more than hospitable. He delighted me last night -with his quaint ideas.” - -“Oh dear,—about priests and things?” Louise was inclined to deprecate -her father’s penchant for assailing the church in whatever hearing. - -Miss Cread laughed. “Partly. I dote on this little house, and all _its_ -things.” - -“Papa suggests that after he dies I transport it to a quai on the left -bank of the Seine in Paris and knock out the front wall. He says it -would make a perfect book stall. . . . Papa once won a scholarship to -study medicine in Paris. It rather spoiled him for a life in these -wilds. I do hope you won’t die of boredom with us. I’ve never been to -Paris. Indeed I’ve never been farther than Winnipeg, and that seemed -thousands of miles. Of course you’ve been abroad.” - -“A great deal.” - -“You’re not a bit American.” Louise was thinking of camping parties that -sometimes penetrated the Valley in cars decorated with banners bearing -the device “Idaho” or “Montana.” She had motioned her new friend to a -chair and was leaning forward opposite her. “Do you know,” she suddenly -confided, “I’m terribly afraid of you.” - -“Good gracious, why?” - -“You’ll laugh, but never mind. It’s because you’re so -distinguished-looking.” - -Miss Cread reflected. “A distinctive appearance doesn’t necessarily make -one dangerous. It is I, on the contrary, who should be afraid.” - -“I’m sure nothing could frighten you!” - -“Oh, yes. Responsibility. You see, this is my first post. I’m quite -inexperienced. I do hope Mr. Windrom made that clear.” - -“Oh, experience! Why, you’re simply swimming in it,—in the kind that -matters to me at this moment. I mean your life, your surroundings, all -the things that decided Mr. Windrom in his selection of you as a -companion, have done something for you, have made you the person -who—bowled me over when I entered this room. My husband is brimming -over with the same,—oh, call it genuineness. Like sterling silver -spoons. I don’t know whether I’m sterling or not, but I do know I need -polishing. . . . It may be entirely a matter of birth. Papa and I -haven’t a crumb of birth, so far as I know,—though I have a musty old -aunt who swears we have. She endows convents, and her idea of a grand -pedigree would be to have descended from a line of saints, I -imagine. . . . For my part I have no pretensions whatever, not one, any -more than poor Papa. He thinks it rather a pity to be born at all, -though he’s forever helping people _get_ born. . . . I was rash enough -to dive into marriage without holding my breath, and got a mouthful of -water. Sometimes I feel that my husband wishes I could be a little more -sedate, a little more,—oh, you know, Miss Cread, what I called -distinguished-looking, though I could feel that you disapproved of the -phrase. One of the very things you must do is to teach me what I ought -to say instead of distinguished-looking. That’s what Minnie Hopper would -have said, and at least I’m not a Minnie Hopper.” - -“You’re like nobody I’ve ever seen or heard of!” This was fairly -ejaculated, and it gave Louise courage to continue, breathlessly, as -before. - -“It is for my husband’s sake that I’m trying this experiment. At least I -think it’s for his sake: we never quite know when we’re being selfish, -do we? He will soon be a rather important person, for here. He’s getting -more and more things to look after: I can hardly turn nowadays without -running into some new thing that sort of belongs to us. We shall have -guests from England later on, and I can’t have them dying of -mortification on my threshold. . . . When I married I was blind in love, -and somehow took it for granted that I’d pick up all the hints I should -need. But I haven’t. . . . Am I talking nonsense?” - -“Not at all. Please go on.” - -“If you have any pride you can’t ask your husband to instruct you in -subjects you should know more about than he,—don’t you agree? I’m sure -I know more about baking bread than any of the Eveleys back to Adam, but -I don’t know a tenth as much about when to shake hands and when not to, -and that’s much more important than I ever dreamed. - -“It may be silly, but I’ve made up my mind to be the sort of person my -husband won’t feel he ought to make excuses for. Not that he ever would, -of course! I’ve never admitted a word of all this to a soul. I hope you -understand, and I hope you don’t think such trifles trivial!” - -“My dear! . . . . Aren’t you a little morbid about yourself? I know -women of the world who are uncouth compared with you. . . . As for -creating an impression, you are rather formidable already! There are -little tricks of pronunciation I can show you, and I shall be delighted -to tell you all the stupid things I know about shaking hands and the -like. . . . I’m already on your side; I was afraid I mightn’t be. One -can never depend on a man’s version, you know, even as discerning a man -as Mr. Windrom; and a woman usually takes the man’s part in a domestic -situation.” - -Louise had a sudden twinge. - -“There is only one thing that worries me now.” - -Miss Cread waited, with questioning eyebrows. - -“How _am_ I going to pass you off? I’ve told my husband I knew you when -you taught at Harristown! I went to Normal School there for a year, you -know. He’ll see with half an eye that you’re no school teacher. What are -we to invent? I can’t fib for a cent.” - -“Well. . . . Shall we invent that my family lost its money and I had to -work for my living? And that things are better now, but my family have -all perished, and I’ve come here for a change. That statement doesn’t do -serious violence to my conscience.” - -“There’s a little two-room log cabin you can have to retire to whenever -you get bored with us. . . . And of course we’ll have to call each other -by our first names. You don’t mind, do you?” - -Miss Cread smiled sympathetically. - -“She’s nice,” decided Louise, in relief, then said, “I’ll go out and -help Nana now. After lunch, _en route la bonne troupe_!” - -This phrase, more than anything Louise had said, afforded Miss Cread the -clue to their relationship. Louise had reverted into French with a -little flourish which seemed to say, “At least I have one advantage over -you: I am bi-lingual.” Miss Cread saw that it was characteristic of -Louise to underestimate her virtues and fail to recognize her faults, -and for her, who had spoken French in Paris before Louise was born, -Louise’s accent was unlovely, as only the Canadian variety can be. She -would let her pupil make the discovery for herself. Miss Cread was -pleased to find that her mission was going to be a subtle one. - -“I shall be fearfully nervous for a few days, until we get into swing,” -said Louise at the table. - -“Then my first task is to restore your composure.” - -“Your second will be to keep it restored. . . . I’m growing less and -less afraid of you. Wouldn’t it be funny if I should get so used to you -I answered you back, like in school?” - -“There’s no telling where it will stop. You’re a venturesome woman.” - -Louise laughed merrily. “Don’t you love adventure?” It was an -announcement rather than an inquiry. - - 2 - -Late in the afternoon they reached the fields where the men were cutting -the scanty crops. Keble on his buckskin mare was in consultation with -the superintendent, and on hearing the honk of the car wheeled about, -came toward the road, and dismounted. - -“Miriam dear, this is my husband. His name is Keble, and he’s frightened -to death that you’ll notice, though not call attention to, the muddy -spot on the breeches that Mona cleaned this very morning. Keble, this is -Miriam Cread, who is coming to stop with us as long as I can force her -to stay.” - -Keble took a firm white hand in his. The stranger’s smile, the confident -poise of her head, the simple little hat whose slant somehow suggested -Bond Street or the Rue de la Paix, amazed him. It was as though Louise -had brought home a Sargent portrait and said she had bought it at the -Witney emporium. - -“What I can’t forgive you for, my dear,” he said blandly enough, “is -that you should have kept me so long in ignorance of such a charming -friend’s existence.” He turned to the guest. “I’ve heard all about Pearl -and Amy and Minnie, but next to nothing about you. Don’t you think -that’s perverse? My wife is sort of human _feuilleton_: something new -every day.” - -He was surprised to hear himself using a term which would certainly have -conveyed nothing to Pearl or Amy or Minnie, but he knew the allusion had -registered. - -“I suppose that’s the first duty of a wife,” Miriam laughed. “Besides, -Louise Bruneau is nothing if not original. All her friends recognize -that.” She patted Louise ever so gently on the shoulder. - -The modulation of the voice, the grace of the little pat, the composure, -the finely-cut nostrils, the slant of the hat! - -They chatted, then Louise started the engine, and in a moment the car -was zig-zagging up the long hill that lay between them and the lake. - -Louise was conquering an unreasonable pang. To herself she was -explaining the freemasonry that existed among people of Keble’s and Miss -Cread’s world; there was some sort of telepathic pass word, she knew not -what. It was going to be the Windrom atmosphere all over again: -permeated by exotic verbal trifles. But that was what she had bargained -for; the stakes were worth the temporary disadvantage. Walter needn’t, -of course, have sent quite such a perfect specimen. - -What “stakes”? Well, surely there were objects to live for that -outweighed the significance of petty jealousies, petty possessions, the -rights of one person in another. She brought the car around to a point -from which the lake spread out under them in all the glory of deep -emerald water and distant walls of sun-bronzed rock. The cottages and -farm buildings grouped themselves beneath, and along the pebbly shore a -rich league of grey-black and dark green pine forest linked the -buildings and the mountains. Two frantic sheep dogs came barking to meet -them. - -An exclamation of delight escaped from the travel-weary guest. - -“I’m glad you like it,” remarked Louise, relenting. - -“It’s superb,” Miriam replied. Again she gave Louise’s shoulder a -discreet pat, as the latter began the winding descent. “You very lucky -woman!” she commented. - - 3 - -Riding, fishing, and hunting for the winter’s supply of game enlivened -the autumn months, and when the snow arrived, drifting through the -canyons, obliterating all traces of roads and fences, there were -snow-shoe and ski-journeys, skating on a swept portion of the lake, and -dances before the great fireplace. Self-consciously at first, but soon -without being aware of it, Louise reflected the sheen of her companion, -and acquired objective glimpses of herself. There had been long -discussions in which tastes and opinions had been sifted, and Louise’s -speech and cast of thought subtly supervised. Throughout the program -Keble made quiet entrances and exits, dimly realizing what was taking -place, grateful for, yet a little distrustful of the gradual -transformation. It was as though, in an atmosphere of peace, unknown -forces were being secretly mobilized. There was a charm for him in the -nightly fireside readings and conversations. When he was present they -were likely to develop into a monologue of daring theories invented and -sustained by Louise,—a Louise who had begun to take some of her girlish -extravagances in earnest. In the end Keble found himself, along with -Miriam Cread, bringing to bear against Louise’s radicalism the stock -counter arguments of his class. - -This was disconcerting, for he had been in the habit of regarding -himself as an innovator, with his back to the past and his gaze fixed -upon the future; and although it was pleasant to find himself so often -in accord with a highly civilized and attractive young woman just -appreciably his senior, it was a set-back to his illusion of having -graduated from the prejudices and short-sightedness of conventional -society. For the sum total of his mental bouts with Louise was that she -serenely but quite decisively relegated him to the ranks of the safe and -sane. And “safe and sane” as she voiced the phrase meant something less -commendable than “safe and sane” as he voiced it. For Keble “safe and -sane” was of all vehicles the one which would carry him and his goods -most adequately to his mortal destination. He had always assumed that -Louise had faith in the vehicle. Now he seemed to see her sitting on the -tail-board, swinging her legs like a naughty child, ready to leap off at -the approach of any conveyance that gave promise of more speed and -excitement. - -During his later school-days, Keble, by virtue of an ability to -discriminate, had arrived at a point of self-realization that rendered -his conformity to custom a bore to him but failed to provide him with -the logical alternative. For this he had consulted, and responded to, -the more refined manifestations of individualism in contemporary -literature and art, to the extent of falling under the illusion that he -himself was a thoroughgoing individualist. A victim of a period of -social transition, he, like so many other young men of his generation, -made the mistake of assuming that his doubts and objections were the -effect of a creative urge within himself, whereas he had merely acquired -a decent wardrobe of modern notions which distinguished him from his -elders and, to his own eyes, disguised the inalterably conservative -nature of his principles. Hence the almost irreconcilable combination: -an instinctive abstemiousness and an Epicurean relish. - -Whenever Louise, after some brilliant skirmish with the outriders of -orthodoxy, came galloping into camp with the news that a direct route -lay open to the citadel of personal freedom and personal morality, Keble -found himself throwing up his cap in a sympathetic glee, but then he -fell to wondering whether the gaining of the citadel were worth the -trampling down of fields, the possible breaking of church windows, the -discomfort to neutral bystanders. - -At such moments he suspected that he was in the wrong camp; that he had -been led there through his admiration for daring spirits rather than a -desire for the victory they coveted. It alarmed him to discover that the -topsy-turvy fancies that had endeared Louise to him were not merely -playful. It alarmed him to discover that she was ready to put her most -daring theories into practise, ready to regard her own thoughts and -emotions as so many elements in a laboratory in which she was free to -experiment, in scientific earnest, at the risk of explosions and bad -odors, all for the sake of arriving at truths that would be of -questionable value. Certainly, to Keble’s mind, the potential results, -should the experiments be never so successful, were not worth the -incidental damage,—not where one’s wife was concerned. For him “safe -and sane” meant the avoidance of risk. For Louise he suspected that -“safe and sane” smacked of unwillingness to take the personal risks -inevitable in any conquest of truth. That brought him to the -consideration of “truth,” and he saw that for him truth was something -more tangible, and much nearer home, than it was for his wife. And he -was in the lamentable situation of feeling that she was right, yet being -constitutionally unable, or unwilling, or afraid, to go in her -direction. - -Miriam caught something of the true proportions in the situation, and it -was her policy to remain negative in so far as possible, pressing gently -on either side of the scales, as the balance seemed to require. She had -a conscientious desire to help the other two attain a comfortable _modus -vivendi_, but as the winter progressed it became increasingly evident to -her that her efforts might end by having a contrary effect. Reluctantly -she saw herself saddled with the rôle of referee. Furthermore, it seemed -as though the mere presence of a referee implied, even incited, combat. -Their evenings often ended on a tone of dissension, Louise soaring on -the wings of some new radical conclusion; Keble anxiously counseling -moderation; and Miriam, by right and left sallies, endeavoring, not -always with success, to bring the disputants to a level of good-humored -give and take. - -On two or three occasions she had been tempted to withdraw entirely, -feeling that as long as a third person were present to hear, the -diverging views of husband and wife would inevitably continue to be -expressed. But on reflection she realized that her withdrawal could in -no sense reconcile their divergences. From Louise she had derived the -doctrine that views must, and will, out, and that to conceal or -counterfeit them is foolish and dishonest. As Miriam saw it, these two -had come to the end of the first flush of excited interest in each -other. Their ship had put to sea, the flags had been furled, the sails -bent. They had reached the moment when it was necessary to set a course. -And they might be considered fortunate in having a fair-minded third -person at hand to see them safely beyond the first reefs. It hadn’t -occurred to Miriam that she might be a reef. - -With Louise nothing remained on the surface; the massage that polished -her manners polished her thoughts, and with increasing facility in the -technique of carrying herself came an increasing desire to carry herself -some_where_. As a girl she had too easily outdistanced her companions. -Until Miriam Cread’s advent there had been no woman with whom to -compete, and her intelligence had in consequence slumbered. Keble had -transformed her from a girl into a woman; but Miriam made her realize -the wide range of possibilities comprised under Womanhood, and had put -her on her mettle to define her own particular character as a woman. Now -her personality was fully awake, and her daily routine was characterized -by an insatiable mental activity, during which she proceeded to a -footing on many subjects about which she had never given herself the -trouble to think. She had read more books than most girls, and had dined -on weighty volumes in her father’s library for the sake of their sweets; -but under the pressure of her new intellectual intensity she found that, -without knowing it, she had been nourished on their soups and roasts. -The unrelated impressions that she had long been capturing from books -and thrusting carelessly upon mental shelves now formed a fairly -respectable stock-in-trade. Every new book, every new discussion, every -new incident furnished fuel to the motor that drove her forward. - -But there was one moment, during the Christmas festivities, when the -boldness of her recent thoughts, the inhibitive tightness of her new -garments of correctitude, the fatigue of standing guard over herself, -became intolerably irksome, when she looked away from Keble and Miriam -and the Browns towards her tubby, bald-headed, serene little father, -twinkling and smoking his beloved pipe before the fire: a moment when -she longed to be the capricious, dreamy girl who had curled up at his -feet during the winter evenings of her first acquaintance with the -English boy from Hillside. - -If Keble had divined that mood, if he could have stepped in and caught -her out of it with an expert caress, if he had read the thought that was -then in her mind,—namely that no amount of cleverness could suppress -the yearning that her conjugal experience had so far failed to -gratify,—if his eyes had penetrated her and not the flames, where -presumably they envisaged the air castles he would soon be translating -into stone and cement, then the yards of the matrimonial ship might have -swung about, the sails have taken the breeze, and the blind helmsman -have directed a course into a sharply defined future. At that moment -Louise might have been converted, by a sufficiently subtle lover, into a -passionate partner in the most prosaic of schemes. All she needed was to -be coaxed and driven gently, to a point not far off. It was too personal -to be explained; and if he couldn’t see it, then she must do what she -could on her own initiative, at her expense and his. - -The dreamy girl faded out of her eyes, and a self-contained, positive -young woman rose from her seat with an easy directness, crossed the room -to switch on the lights, and said, “Keble, I’ve just decided how I shall -dispose of my Christmas present.” For the benefit of the Browns she -explained, “I had a colossal cheque in my stocking from a father-in-law -who doesn’t know what a spendthrift I am.” - -“What will you do with it?” asked her husband. - -“Something very nice. You’re sure to object.” - -“Is that what makes it nice: my objecting?” - -“That makes it more exciting.” - -“Then let me object hard, dear.” - -Louise withstood the laughter that greeted Keble’s score. “Do it -immediately,” she advised, “and have it over with; then I’ll say what it -is.” - -“Why not spare us a scene?” suggested Miriam. “We know what a brute he -is.” - -“You’re concerned in it,” Louise replied. “I hope you won’t object, for -that would be fatal.” - -This gave Keble his opportunity for revenge against Miriam’s “brute.” -“Mayn’t we take Miriam’s compliance for granted? We know what a diplomat -she is.” - -Louise was now seated on the opposite side of the table, facing them. -“Do you object, Papa?” - -“On principle, yes, because it’s sure to be something rash. As a matter -of fact, no, because you’re the only sensible rash person there is.” - -Louise was delighted. “It’s Papa’s stubborn belief in my common sense, -more than anything else, that gives me the courage of my enlightened -rashness,” she proclaimed. - -At this Keble turned with a smile to Miriam. “Now I see what you meant -by brute. It’s because I won’t always acknowledge the enlightenment of -rashness.” - -Miriam colored a little, to her great annoyance. “Really, you mustn’t -seek meanings in my random words.” - -“Oh, then it wasn’t meant literally?” - -“There aren’t any literal brutes left; only figurative ones. Must I do -penance for a levity I admit to have been uncalled for?” - -“I’ll let you off,—with the warning that I shall watch your remarks -more closely in future.” - -“Then I can only defend myself by becoming the objectionable thing you -called _me_!” - -“Diplomat! Is that objectionable?” - -“Rather. It implies the existence of things to be connived at. Once -you’ve admitted diplomat you’ve admitted stakes, and rivalry.” - -Mrs. Brown was on what she called tender hooks. Her husband was -waggishly of the opinion that the cheque would end by being spent on -wagon loads of sugar for Sundown, that pampered circus beast. - -“Has everybody finished objecting?” - -Everybody had. - -“Well, then, Miriam and I are going on a jaunt,—to New York and then -South where it’s warm.” - -“It’s a sort of holiday from me, I gather?” said Keble when the others -had done exclaiming. - -Miriam’s eyes turned in warning towards the speaker, whose lips broke -into a smile, in relish of the “brute” which, diplomatically, was merely -flashed across the room. This little passage arrested Louise, who had -been for the twentieth time reminded, by Keble’s detachment, of the -inexplicable poem. - -“Or yours from me,” she replied. “What’s sauce for the gander—” - -Keble judged the moment opportune for bringing forth his best Port, and -while the three men took a new lease of life, the women chatted -excitedly about resorts and itineraries. - -Louise’s announcement had been especially welcome to Miriam. It promised -an escape from umpiring,—from neutral-mindedness. Her cheeks burned a -little. - -The doctor was drifting back, along with Keble’s superintendent, into -the rigorous pioneer days of the Valley, the days before the branch line -had been built into Witney, contrasting the primitive arrangements of -that era with the recent encroachments of civilization. The logical -development in the talk would be some reference to Keble’s ambitious -designs, which the spring would see well under way. Miriam glanced up to -see how he would receive the cue, which usually roused him to -enthusiasm. He allowed it to pass, and she was intrigued to see on his -face a look of boyish, wistful abstraction, and loneliness. - -He felt her eyes on him, and turned as she looked away. She knew he -disliked to be surprised in a self-revelatory mood, and she had time to -notice his features assume their usual impersonal cast. That she -regretted; the wistfulness had been ingenuous and touching. At times she -felt that he deliberately submerged his most likable traits. That was a -great pity, because it gave Louise new incentives to go off on her -independent courses. Miriam felt that his self-consciousness had begun -by hurting Louise, driving her to protect herself against a coldness she -couldn’t understand. The unfortunate result was that Louise had rather -more than protected herself: had gradually attained a self-sufficiency -that took Keble’s coldness for granted, even inducing it. That was a -moral advantage which Miriam’s femininity resented, though nothing could -have drawn the admission from her. - -She was glad when Louise, by a new manoeuvre in the talk, gave her an -excuse to go into the next room. For there were times when nothing -sheathed the sharp edges of life so satisfactorily as a half hour at the -piano. - - 4 - -Only when she had waved Keble farewell from the back of the train at -Witney did Louise allow herself to dwell on the significance of the step -she had taken. Keble’s generous acquiescence in her plan merely -underlined the little question that kept irritating her conscience. For -all her skill she hadn’t known how to assure Keble that she wasn’t -turning her back on him; for all her love she couldn’t have admitted to -him that she was setting out for a sanatorium, to undergo treatment for -social ignorances in the hope of returning to him more fit than ever. -With the train now bolting east, she had the nervous dread of a -prospective patient. - -Yet as province after province rolled by, and the dreary prairie began -to be broken first by lakes and woods, then by larger and larger -communities, graduating her approach into civilization, her natural -optimism asserted itself in a typically vehement reaction. Now that -there was no turning back, the obvious thing to do was to wring every -possibility out of the experience to which she was committed. Nothing -should be too superficial for her attention. To Miriam’s relief her -despondency gave place to a feverish activity of observation. She began -to notice her fellow-travelers and to tick them off mercilessly, one by -one, with all their worths and blemishes. - -“Let’s leave no stone unturned, Miriam,” she said, imperatively, as they -neared their first halting place. “I won’t go home till I’ve done and -seen and had one of everything. Then for the next eighty years I shall -be able to out-small-talk the most outrageous dude that ever dares cross -my threshold.” - -She kept rein on the excitement caused in her by the hotels, shops, -museums, and theatres of Toronto and Montreal, for from Miriam’s -lukewarmness she divined that they were at best but carbon copies of the -hotels, shops, museums, and theatres of New York. So she contented -herself with watching the movements of her companion, marveling at -Miriam’s easy way with porters and chambermaids, her ability to arrive -on the right platform ten minutes before the right train departed, to -secure the most pleasant rooms at the least exorbitant rate and order -the most judicious dinners, all without fuss or worry. Having learned -that traveling was one of the major modern arts, she added it to the -list of subjects in which she was enrolled as student. By the time they -had reached Fifth Avenue and put up at a hostelry that was still -imposing, though it had been half forgotten in the mania for newer and -gayer establishments, Louise was imperturbable. - -During the next few days the experience that made the deepest impression -on her was the religious earnestness with which one was expected to -cultivate one’s exterior. On a memorable, but modest visit to Winnipeg -with her father,—who was attending a medical conference,—she had “gone -in and bought” whatever she had been in need of. Never had she dreamt -that so much art and science could be brought to bear on the merely -getting of oneself groomed. But after a few seances in the neighborhood -of Fifty-Seventh Street, Louise threw herself into this strange new cult -with characteristic fervor. This was partly due to the fact that Madame -Adèle, the dressmaker, and Monsieur Jules, the hairdresser, had -accomplished what good portrait painters often accomplish, and thrown -into relief properties of body and soul of which she had never been -aware. - -At the end of a fortnight she had mastered many rites, and when the last -frocks, hats, gloves, and slippers had arrived, and she had adapted her -steps and gestures and rhythms to the unbelievable new picture she made, -Miriam, for the first time since their association, expressed herself as -satisfied. - -“I’ve been waiting to see you dressed,” she announced as they sat in the -tea-room of a fashionable hotel. “It’s the final test. And you -pass—_magna cum laude_. Opposite you I feel dull and not at all what -you would once have called distinguished-looking.” - -“Don’t be absurd, Miriam,” returned her pupil in an even tone, with a -purified articulation that would have made Minnie Hopper stare. “I may -cost eight hundred dollars more than you at the moment, but I look -_new_, and you know it. Whereas you will always look _good_, without -looking new, no matter if you’re straight out of a bandbox. If I’ve made -any progress at all, the proof of it is that I recognize the truth of -what I’ve just said. . . . Not only that, but you can console yourself -with the knowledge that if you sit opposite me till Doomsday you’ll -never utter a syllable that couldn’t be printed in a book of etiquette. -Whereas I,—well, the mere fact that they’ve pulled out my lopsided -eyebrow doesn’t mean that before the sun sets I shan’t do and say some -inadvertent _bêtise_ that will proclaim the pit from which I was digged -and make you say to yourself, ‘Why does she?’. . . . One comfort is that -most of these expensive people here are even more plebeian, at least in -their souls, than I am, and you’re almost the only person in the world -whom I can’t fool. . . . Fancy not having you there to be genteel to, -and to shock,—especially to shock! At any moment I may deliberately say -something vulgar, dear. The temptation often comes over me in hot -waves.” - -“The ‘deliberately’ redeems you. Most people are vulgar without knowing -it; they would bite off their tongues if they knew. . . . As for -inadvertence, you’ve made only one _faux pas_ in days.” - -“Oh, dear! What?” - -“Yesterday, at that awful house.” - -“Mrs. Pardy’s? Why, darling, you took me there yourself, as a treat.” - -“Yes, but it was Elsa Pardy we went to leave cards for. Elsa was one of -the nicest girls in Washington when I knew her there. I would never have -looked her up in that casual way if I had foreseen such a fulsome -sister-in-law.” - -Louise laughed at the recollection, snuggling into the thought that Mrs. -Pardy could not be laid at _her_ door. Then came the thought of her -alleged remissness. “I hope I didn’t out-_faux_ Mrs. P. . . . I wonder -how Keble would like me to call him Mr. E.” - -“No wonder Elsa doesn’t stay there.” - -“But, Miriam, my _faux pas!_ I won’t be done out of my daily -correction.” - -Miriam smiled indulgently. “It was the merest trifle. Indeed if Mrs. -Pardy had made it, it would have done her credit. For that matter she -did, effusively, and if we hadn’t been such fastidious folk we should -have lauded her for it. And I do!” - -“Miriam . . . before I throw a bun at you!” - -“Well, my dear, you invited the woman to pay you a visit.” - -“Jolly kind of me, too. Is _that_ all?” - -“Heavens, it’s enough!” - -“I was merely returning a hospitality,—the hospitality of your -friends.” - -“Don’t tease.” - -“After all, what less could I do when she practically gave us her house -and her chauffeur and her marble staircase and diamond bracelets and -ancestral lemon groves in California.” - -“None of which we wanted, you see. Nor asked for a thing! Nor accepted a -thing except under compulsion. The mere fact that one strays into a -house that looks like a glorified Turkish bath and has it, as you say, -_given_ to one, doesn’t put one under the slightest obligation. We -merely sat on the edge of her golden chairs, regretted Elsa’s absence, -heard about Mr. P.’s kidneys and sundry organs, and drank a cup of tea.” - -“And ate a cream puff. Don’t slight that delicious, cordial, luxurious, -fattening, vulgar cream puff. I ate two and longed for a third. That -made it a grub-call, and I had to invite her back. I’ll never outgrow -that primitive custom. Besides, I took care to say, if she was ever in -my part of the world. That made it pretty safe.” - -“Ah, that’s just what made it an error. Not only because it was -gratuitous, but because Mrs. Pardy is the sort of woman who would -charter a private train to be in your part of the world in order, -accidentally, to drop in on a young woman who makes the sort of -impression you make,—for you do, you know. Especially when she finds -out,—and be sure she’ll investigate,—who the Eveleys are.” - -“Well, darling, let her come. She didn’t bother me a bit. It would be -rough on Keble, I suppose.” - -“Rough and warm,” said Miriam a little testily. “She had the effect on -me of heavy flannels in midsummer.” - -Louise gleefully pounced on her opportunity. “_Fi donc!_ Miriam Cread -conjuring up such incorrect things as flannels,—and it isn’t anywhere -near Doomsday!” - -“It’s near dressing time. And we must pack a little before dinner. After -the theatre we’ll be too tired.” - -“How shall we explain our sudden departure to Mrs. Pardy? Before she -sends out invitations to all her friends to ‘meet’ us!” - -“We can have the measles. Or you’re moving to Alaska.” - -“And if ever she and Mr. P. are in the Arctic Circle. . . . Measles -wouldn’t do the trick. She would come right in and nurse us. And give us -her doctor and her florist. Frankly, dear, I rather like Mrs. Pardy; -she’s so hearty. I thought that was going to rhyme but it didn’t.” - -“Come along. We’re going to walk home, for exercise.” - -“In these heels? . . . Is fifty cents enough to leave the waiter?” - -“Enough, good gracious! Leave the brute a quarter.” - -They made their way through a thronged corridor towards the street, and -Miriam felt a proprietary pride in her companion, whose present -restraint was as instinctively in keeping with her tailored costume, -unostentatious fur, and defiant little hat, as her old flamboyance had -been with her khaki breeches and willow switch. - -“Since I’ve begun to spend money,” Louise reflected, “I’ve been more and -more oppressed by the unfairness of my having access to so much,—though -of course it’s nothing compared to what one sees flung about in this -bedlam. But all these exaggerated refinements, and people taking -notice,—while it excites me, I don’t honestly care for it. There’s -something as uncomfortable about it as there would be about ‘boughten’ -teeth. Sartorial hysteria; the rash known as civilization; I keep saying -phrases like that to myself. . . . After about the fifth time I think -I’d bite that beauty woman. I like my face too well to have it rubbed -out once a week!” - -They turned into Fifth Avenue and joined the hordes let loose at this -transition hour of the day. Against the grey buildings women were as -bright as flowers, fulfilling, as Miriam reflected, the decorative -function that trees fulfil on European boulevards. - -“I had a cheque from Keble to-day,” Louise continued. “As if we hadn’t -heaps already! It came in a charming letter. Keble in his letters is -much more human than he is in the flesh. If I stayed away long enough I -might forget that and fall romantically in love with him all over again. -Which would be tragic. . . . He says he’s happy, poor lamb, to know that -I’m beginning to take an interest in life! But I wish he’d be candid and -say he’s miserable. Then I’d know what to do. When he so obstinately -pretends to be happy and isn’t, I’m lost. Miriam, look at that -creature!” - -It was a bizarrely clad woman, so thoroughly made over in every detail -of appearance that there was scarcely a square inch of her original -pattern left: a weird, costly fabrication that attracted the attention -of everybody within range of vision or smell. - -“Do you know who it is?” asked Miriam, amused at the startled look in -her companion’s eyes. - -“No, do you? She looks Japanese.” - -“Merely East Side. It’s Myra Pelter, the actress we’re to see to-night -in ‘Three Blind Mice’.” - -Louise yielded to a temptation to turn and stare. “Now there you are, -Miriam: the _reductio ad absurdum_ of hectic shopping and beautifying. -Isn’t it enough to drive one into a nunnery! I’m glad we’re on our way -to the seashore, where there are at least ‘such quantities of sand’ and -sky and water.” - -Miriam smiled doubtfully, a little wearily. “There will be quantities of -transparent stockings and French perfumes, too, my dear.” - -“Well, I like frivolities, as such,—but only as such, mind you. From -now on I ignore them the minute they try to be anything more. I think -I’m going in for human souls. I’m already tired of looking at people as -Adèle looks at them, or as if they were books in a shop window. I’m -going to open a few and see what they’re all about. . . . The worst of -it is, you can’t look at the last chapter of people and see how they -end. You can only read them, as you can only read yourself, in -maddeningly short instalments. They’re always on the brink of new doings -when you come to a ‘to be continued’. And I’ve reached a point where I -must have gists and summaries, must see what things are leading to, -what’s being driven at in this infuriating universe,—this multi-verse.” - -They had by this time reached their rooms, and Miriam was making a -preliminary sorting of objects to be packed. “Don’t you think,” she -ventured, “that you are inclined to be a little headlong as a -philosopher?” - -Louise was deftly choosing the articles of her toilette for the evening. -“Oh, no doubt of it! But I’m too deep in my sea now to care. I simply -swim on and on, after a shoal of notions.” - -“And splash a little,” commented Miriam, with an abstracted air that -saved the remark from being censorious. She was wondering whether she -had been over-scrupulous in refusing the gown that Adèle had privately -offered her by way of commission. And a little resentful that Adèle -should dare offer it to _her_. Miriam was old enough to remember a day -when such transactions were considered off-color, and it bothered her -that she should be so old-fashioned as to be unable to accept the place -assigned her in the callous new order, as some of her former friends, -with the greatest complacence, seemed to have done. Suddenly, bereft of -credit in a society to which she had once felt herself a necessary -adjunct, catching occasional glimpses of faces that recalled school-days -to her, and Newport and Paris, faces now hard, bright and mercenary, -Miriam felt abandoned. - -Her thoughts strayed westward and hovered. In Alberta she had been an -exile; but not so acutely alone as here. - - 5 - -The remaining weeks of their holiday accomplished even more towards -Louise’s worldly initiation, for she found herself dining and dancing -and matching opinions in private palaces among an anomalous assortment -of men and women. Before proceeding to Florida they paused in -Washington, where friends of Miriam and Walter Windrom whirled them into -the routine of that unique conglomeration of the provincial and the -sophisticated. Left alone among them, Louise might for a while have been -awed by pompous ladies whose husbands were senators from western states, -and unimpressed by young men whose shoulders bore no trace of the -burdens laid upon them by foreign governments. But Miriam’s polite -negativity towards the conspicuously grand, and her full and ready -response to some of the unassuming furnished Louise with useful cues, -and when Walter was of the party she was even more secure, for he had a -faculty of accepting everything at its face value, while privately -adding to or subtracting from the offering, with a twinkle in his eye, -or a twinkle in his speech. - -Walter’s good-natured technique, Louise reflected, was more nearly akin -to her own temperament than were Miriam’s precisely graduated coolness -and cordialities. Certain importunate people Miriam simply ignored, as -though declining to give them a seat in her coach. Walter, while he was -equally exclusive, got over the necessity of inviting them into his -coach by stepping out and walking a short distance with them. This -method seemed to Louise not only more humane, but also braver than -Miriam’s, and certainly no less dignified. It was gentlemanly, too; and -she objected, as only a woman can object, to feminine tactics. - -At Palm Beach they were greeted by a free, open, careless life that -suited Louise’s mood better than anything their excursion had afforded -her. She had decided that there was no hurry about “going in for human -souls” and consequently spent many hours in roaming through deep-chaired -hotel lounges, marble and wicker sun parlors, porches, pergolas, and -terraces; and in strolling along the hot sands or across lawns shaded by -flowering trees and edged with lotus pools. She also swam, played -tennis, and chatted _ad libitum_ with strangers. - -On her return to Canada, under the escort of Keble, who had accepted her -invitation to come and fetch them, she was brimming over with ideas for -the embellishment of their projected home. Yet, though she knew Keble -was eager to have her offer suggestions, she deliberately held them -back. By declining to participate in it she would lessen its hold on -her. It should be his castle, not hers. - - - - - CHAPTER IV - - -AS the days were told off one by one in anticipation of the arrival of -Trenholme Dare, the young architect and landscape gardener of Montreal, -with his army of workmen, Louise became more conspicuously reticent, -more conspicuously addicted to her books on socialism and metaphysics, -her chats with the wives of luckless ranchers, her Quixotic jaunts -north, south, east, and west in search of lonely school-teachers to be -befriended, sick cattle to be disinfected, odd lots of provisions to be -acquired from hard-up settlers. On the very day that a site was to be -chosen for the foundation of her private greenhouse, she fled from -Hillside and rode sixteen miles over the muddy roads of early spring for -a mere ice-cream soda; yet when she had heard of the recurrence of -little Annie Brown’s chronic earache, she had foregone a dance at the -Valley to sit up all night and heat linseed oil, smooth pillows, and -sing old French ditties. - -She realized the extent of her hostility to Keble’s plans one day when a -particular adverb escaped from her subconsciousness apropos of her -husband’s look of boyish pleasure and surprise, a sort of diffident -radiance in his face, as he glanced through a budget of documents which -changed his status from that of a dependent young rancher on probation -into an independent estate-holder. He seemed odiously contented, she -thought, then checked herself. “Odiously” was the adverb, and in fear -and wonder she rode down towards the range to reflect, to read herself a -long, abundantly illustrated sermon on heartlessness, and, if possible, -reduce herself to a state of remorse and penitence. - -In this attempt she failed signally, and indeed went so far over into -the opposite scale as to say with a passionate flick of the reins which -made Sundown leap, “Then if we must, we must, that’s all, and I’ll be -Nero. The sooner Rome burns the better. _Vas-y donc, bonjour!_” - -The spring rains had set in, and water coursed down the usual channels -with a volume and roar that attracted one’s attention to brooklets which -in other seasons flowed by unnoticed. Water lurked in every depression, -as though the earth were some vast sponge, red and brown and green. Near -the river, the road was washed away. In some places rude bridges that -had served the previous summer were now rendered ridiculous through a -capricious change in the course of the stream. The bi-weekly mail wagon -had left deep ruts now filled with water the color of cocoa. The -mountains were still topped with thick white snow and reminded her of -frosted cakes. There was a heavy, rich fragrance and vigor in the air. -When a hare darted across the trail into the miniature forest of sage -bushes, she, in spirit, darted with him, in a glee. As she cut herself a -switch from a bush of willows she welcomed the drops of water that -showered over her face and ran up her sleeve, as though, like some -intelligent plant, she knew that the drops would make her grow. Even the -mud that spattered her boots and stirrup straps she cheerfully accepted -as seasonable. And she rode on at haphazard, as carelessly, yet with as -much vigorous assurance as had been manifested by the hare. Like the -hare she had no idea whither she was bound. Like the hare she was -swiftly, gracefully making for the unknown destination. Temperamentally -she was hare-like; that would make Keble a tortoise; and according to -the fable he would win the race; that thought would bear -investigation,—but not for the moment. For the moment she chose to -intoxicate herself with the conviction that nothing in the world -mattered. The ills that most people complained of,—ills like little -Annie’s earaches and her own increasing estrangement from her -husband,—merely lent life an additional savor, and she could conceive -of acquiring a taste for chagrin, as one acquired a taste for bitters; -if not a taste, then at least an insensibility. Her whole philosophy -amounted to a conviction of the necessity of behaving as though the odds -weren’t there. - -There was only one thing that could have brought her atonement with the -spring world nearer to perfection, and that would have been to have -Keble riding at her side. Not the correct Keble who studied blue prints -and catalogues, who read prose that sounded like poetry and poems that -sounded like prose, but some idealized Keble who, with the same eyes, -hair, hands, strength, honesty, and “nice back-of-his-neck,” could do -what the actual Keble could not do: keep ahead of her, command her, -surprise, shock, and seduce her, snatch her off her feet and whirl her -through space with a momentum that prevented thought,—the Keble, in -short, who failed to exist but whom she loved against hope. Love was a -mystery to which she had gladly abandoned herself, but which, while -appearing to receive her with open arms, had remained as inscrutable at -close range as it had been from a distance. When the arms folded about -her she felt imprisoned and blinded; when she drew back for perspective -the arms fell, or, what was still more disheartening, methodically -turned to some unallied, if useful employment, leaving her restlessly -expectant and vaguely resentful. The consequence of which was that her -great supply of affection, like the cascades pouring down from the -hills, spread over undefined areas, capriciously turned into new -channels, leaving, here and there, little bridges of a former season -spanning empty river beds. That very morning at breakfast Keble had said -to her, “Good morning, dear, did you sleep well?” That phrase was a -useless old bridge over a flat stretch of pebbles. To Miriam he had -said, “I’ve had a reply from the cement people; would you like to type -some more tiresome letters to-day?” And that was a new bridge over God -knew what. - -She forgot that she had just been glorying in the conviction that -nothing in the world mattered. Once she had said to her father that she -sometimes wondered if anything were right. She blushed at a sudden -humiliating guess as to what might make _everything_ right. Humiliating -because,—for all her fine theorizing,—it might be, after all, more -physio- than psyhcho-logical. - - 2 - -Keble’s corner of creation had become a chaos of felled trees, -excavations, foundations, ditches, scaffoldings, cement-mixers, tripods, -lead pipe, packing-cases, tents, and Irish masons. Four years before, on -returning to London from a journey around the world, he had heard his -father say that a young man who had “anything in him” couldn’t help -desiring to exert himself even to the point of great sacrifice in the -attainment of whatever most interested him. That remark had discouraged -Keble, for he could imagine nothing for which he could have an -overwhelming desire to sacrifice himself: least of all British politics, -which was the breath in his father’s nostrils. - -The remark had sent him roaming again, not to see more of the world but -to think. And, thanks to a hunting accident which confined him several -weeks to a log cabin in the wilds of Alberta, he had not only thought, -but found the thing for which he desired to exert himself to the point -of sacrifice. At the moment when the lure of a new country was driving -from his memory the vapid gaieties of West End night clubs, he met a -girl who seemed to be the human counterpart of all the mystery and -spaciousness in nature which had cast a spell upon him. The acres which -his father had acquired many years before for the mere fun of owning -something in Canada were a jumble of forest primeval, clear waters, -prairies, untamed animals. Louise was a jumble equally enticing. And the -passion to reclaim the one became inextricably allied with a passion to -reclaim the other. It mattered no more to him that his rivals in the -latter case were cowboys than that, in the former, his opponents were -inexperience and a sceptical family. In both cases he saw possibilities -that others hadn’t seen. - -His forests and fields, being without a purpose of their own, yielded -docilely to his axes and ploughshares and grouped themselves into the -picture he had conceived of them. But his wife, after the first months -of submission, had begun to sprout and spread with a capricious and -bewildering luxuriance. - -For some time he felt the change, but not until the arrival of Trenholme -Dare did his feeling become statable. Not that there was any technical -lack of affection or good will or loyalty; there was simply a great lack -of common effort. The original trust and enthusiasm had vanished, and -since no one was to blame, he was beginning to be anxious about its -return. At times he suspected that he ought, in some fashion, to assert -himself. But, fundamentally humble, as well as proud, he could do -nothing more than watch Louise’s progress in a sort of despairing -approbation, and go on cultivating his own garden. - -What changes had taken place in himself, with increasing seriousness of -purpose, he could not have said. The changes in Louise were -multitudinous, in the sense that a tree in spring is more multitudinous -than the same tree in winter. She had acquired foliage and blossoms. He -trembled to see what the fruit would be. Once he had been priggish -enough to wonder whether he could be contented with a wife brought up in -such primitive simplicity; his priggishness received a final snub in -Palm Beach, where instead of the impetuous creature whose cultivation he -had once bumptiously promised himself to take in hand, he was met by a -woman who had herself so completely in hand that she set the tone for -everybody within range. Vaguely he suspected that the transformation was -the result of a process undertaken with the intention of pleasing him. -But to have claimed this would have seemed to him presumptuous. He now -found in her a cautiousness, politeness, and undemonstrativeness that, -to his dismay, he recognized as an echo of his own; and, their positions -reversed, he had some conception of the hurt he must have inflicted on -her. Whereupon he longed for her old headlong assaults and -gamineries,—longed for them for their warmth and for their value as -examples to learn by. - -The only encouraging factor in the situation was Louise’s honesty. In -that respect at least there was no change. He was convinced that she had -told him only one lie in her life, and that was a pathetic fib for which -he was more than ready to answer to Saint Peter, since it was a -by-product of the process of self-improvement Louise had undertaken, as -he suspected, to do him honor. Being the first lie, it was overdone: for -Miriam Cread was, of all the women he could think of, perhaps the least -like a Harristown schoolmistress. He had never challenged the story, and -it had never been officially contradicted. Neither Louise nor Miriam -knew that one day, in looking through a bundle of old illustrated -weeklies, his eye had been arrested by the photograph of a group of -people in the paddock at Ascot, prominent among whom was “Rear Admiral -Cread of Washington, D. C. and his daughter,” chatting with a dowdy old -princess of the blood royal at the very moment,—as Keble took the -trouble to calculate,—when Weedgie Bruneau was alleged to have been -improving her acquaintance with Miriam in a remote normal school in the -Canadian northwest. - -How Miriam had got to Hillside, what she had come for, and why she -stopped on, were questions whose answers were of no importance. -Important was the fact that Miriam’s presence had had the effect of an -electrolized rod plunged into the chemical solution of his marriage. As -a result of which Louise and he had separated into copper and NO_{3}. In -short he had relapsed into a rather flat solution, and she had come out -a very bright metal. - -Miriam was not a source of anxiety to him. Whatever machine she had -dropped from, she had played fair. At times she was a positive boon: -sweet, serene, solid. “I wish you could see her, my son,” he had once -written to Walter Windrom. “Even your flawless Myra Pelter’s nose, if -not put out of joint, would have to be furtively looked at in the -mirror, just once, to see that it was still straight.” - -But the _man_ from the machine. - -He was entirely self-made, and, as Keble was the first to admit, a -tremendously good job. Miriam’s comment was that, though his thumbs were -too thin-waisted for a Hercules and his shoulders too broad for an -Apollo, he was undoubtedly of divine descent. Louise, on first seeing -him, had shrugged her shoulders and said, under her breath, the one -word: “Cocksure.” - -Keble’s impression of Dare was recorded in his latest letter to Windrom, -with whom, as a relief from his recent solitary self-catechism, he had -resumed a more intensive correspondence. “He takes possession of you,” -wrote Keble, “Chiefly, I think, with his voice, which is more palpable -than most men’s handshakes: one of those voices that contain chords as -well as single tones, that sink and spread, then draw together into the -sound of hammer on steel, and scatter into a laugh which is like a -shower of sparks. If I were a sculptor I would model him in bronze -fifteen feet high and label him the twentieth century, if not the -twenty-first. If I owned a monopoly of the world’s industry I would make -him general manager. If I were the sovereign people I would cheerfully -and in a sort of helpless awe make him dictator, all the while deploring -and failing to understand his views. He would simply thunder forth -policies in a voice full of chromatic thirds, and with frantic, nervous -huzzahs I would bear him shoulder-high to the throne.” - -Dare struck Keble as a philosopher who through excess of physical energy -had turned to mechanical science. Or perhaps a born engineer whose -talent for organizing matter had a sort of spiritual echo. At one moment -he would make his facts support his philosophical speculations; at the -next his philosophy, like a gigantic aeroplane, would mount into the sky -with tons of fact stowed away in neat compartments. The result was that -Keble didn’t know whether to marvel at the load Dare could mount with, -or be alarmed at the whirling away into space of so much solid matter. - -“Contact with this chap,” wrote Keble, “has taught me this, that to me -who,—it must alas be admitted,—am merely on the brink of understanding -my epoch, individuality has seemed almost an end in itself, as though -the object of life were achieved when the flower blossomed. (I remember -romantic nights during my furloughs in Paris when I paid mute tribute to -long-haired, be-sandalled creatures who were, to my excessively English -eyes, ‘being individual’). But egos are _passé_; mass ego, it seems (or -egi) have come in. For Dare the blossoming, even the fructifying, are -incidental. His interest (at least in the reflective lulls after dinner, -for during the daytime he’s the most practical of men) extends to the -cosmic activity which is (in some manner I have yet to comprehend) -rendered possible by the virtually automatic living and procreating and -dying of millions upon millions of violets and pine trees and rabbits -and ladies and gentlemen and glaciers and republics and solar systems. -He assaults the subject with these stimulating volleys of odds and ends. - -“Now imagine, Walter, for only you can, the effect of all this on my -wife. It’s turning into ‘a case unprecedented’, and before long I may, -like Bunthorne, have to be ‘contented with a tulip or li-lie’. Louise -long ago talked me into a cocked hat. Miriam, through the mysterious -licence she had been endowed with, kept up a semblance of intellectual -alto to Louise’s dizzy soprano. But now, oh dear me _now_, Miriam and I -aren’t even in tempo with her, much less in key. My household,—I still -claim it as mine through force of habit, which is always imperative with -me,—has become a china shop for the taurean and matadorean antics of -two of the most ruthlessly agile products of the age. - -“Louise is for the moment (and you can only define her momentarily) an -interpreting link between Dare (twenty-first century) and me -(nineteenth). Her original association with me awakened her -consciousness to a delicate scale of weights and measures in matters of -taste and opinion. When she had acquired my acuteness of perception she -discovered that she was naturally endowed with Alpine talents that made -my hilltop look like a mound. From her easy victories over Miriam and me -she concluded that there were endless enterprises awaiting her. When she -was alone she began to feel herself operating on a higher gear, making -for herself new speed records. Now that I look back, I know that my -cautiousness, in more than one crisis, gave her ample excuse for going -her own gait. I have it from her lips that she has kept her love -(whatever we mean by that enormously capacious word) for me brightly -burning, as I, in all the welter, have done. Her religious nature, for -want of a cult, has always centered round an exquisite instinct which I -suspect to be a sort of sublimated eroticism: something that I suppose -no man ever understands,—or would some other man? That’s the devilish -puzzle of it. Yet almost without being aware of it she seems to have -kindled new fires before an altar so much more important and -all-embodying than her feeling for me or mere anybody else that the -light of her little lamp of constancy is like the light of a star in the -blaze of noon. - -“What one does in a case like that is more than I know. All I am sure of -at this moment is you, my son, a lighthouse that flashes at dependable -intervals through my fogs. Do you, for one, stay a little in the rear of -the procession if every one else gets out of sight. I don’t deserve it -of you; I merely exact it,—again through force of habit: the same habit -that, in our school holidays suffered me to play with _your_ yacht on -the Kensington round pond after I had wrecked my own.” - - 3 - -Miriam, who had watched Louise as one watches an acrobat,—with -excitement and dread,—felt herself in a sense frustrated by Louise’s -continued apathy. If it had been punctuated by new verbal heresies, new -feats of talk with Trenholme Dare, now the dominating figure at -Hillside, Miriam, like Keble, would at least have been able to account -for it even had she failed to sympathize. But Louise’s indifference -seemed to have spread even to the realm of ideas, and there had been -very few acrobatic displays of late. Possibly Louise was in love; but if -so, it would have been much more like her to say so, flatly. - -The effect of this on Miriam was to make her more sharply conscious of -the anomaly of her rôle. More than once she had argued that her mission -was at an end, but in each instance Louise had induced her to remain. -Having yielded at first with a faint sense of guilt, Miriam had come -through custom to accept her position with all its ambiguities. As -Keble’s activities increased, she had stepped into the breach and -relieved him of many daily transactions, delighted at being able to -offer a definite service for the cheque which was left on her dressing -table every month. Keble ended by turning over to her his ledgers and -most of his correspondence. - -But her feeling of guilt recurred at moments when the house seemed to be -an armed camp, with Keble and herself deep in their estimates; and -Louise inciting Dare to phantastic metaphysical speculation. At such -moments her mind persisted in criticizing Louise. It was not exactly -that she lacked confidence in her, for Louise was in her own fashion -surefooted and loyal. But Miriam was a little appalled at the extensity -of the ground Louise could be surefooted on, the sweeping nature of her -conception of loyalty. Louise, scorner of the ground, was all for -steering in a direct line to her goal and ignoring the conventional -railway routes whose zigzags were conditioned by topographical -exigencies not pertinent to fliers. Her loyalty would not fail Keble, -for she could cherish him in the spirit without subscribing to him in -the letter. Louise’s loyalty might be expressed in idioms which were not -to be found in Keble’s moral vocabulary. Just as there were some eternal -truths which could be expressed more adequately in French than in -English, so, conceivably, there might be vital experiences which Louise -could obtain more adequately through the agency of some man other than -Keble; certainly she would not acknowledge any law that attempted to -prevent her doing so, had she a mind to it. - -There were times when Miriam felt herself to be an interpreter; more -than once in tête-à-têtes with Keble she had found herself de-coding -some succinct remark of Louise’s to explain away a worried line in his -forehead, and it was on those occasions that she had felt especially -guilty,—not because she ran the risk of giving an unfair -interpretation, but because it was conceivable that, had she not been -there to decipher, Louise would have taken more pains to employ a -language Keble could understand. - -This qualm she could dispel by reminding herself that at the time of her -advent Louise and Keble had been drifting apart through very lack of an -interpreter. Then it was Keble’s language which had been too precious -for his wife, and Louise herself had taken energetic steps to increase -her vocabulary to meet the demand. Would Keble take steps to learn her -new words? At least there was evidence that he suffered at not being -able to speak them. But after all Keble was a man, and no man should be -expected to grope in the irrational mazes of a woman’s psychology. It -was a woman’s duty to make herself intelligible to the man who loved -her; Miriam was tenaciously sure of this. Yet Louise nowadays made no -effort to share her ideas with Keble; she merely challenged him to soar -with her, and when he, thinking of Icarus, held back, she went flying -off with Dare, who certainly made no effort to bear any one aloft, but -whose powerful rushing ascensions either filled you with a desire to fly -or bowled you over. - -Dare, for all his impetuosity, was, like Louise, prodigiously -conscientious; but like her he was more concerned with the sense of a -word than with its orthography. He was too certain of the organic and -creative nature of experience to live according to any formula. You felt -unwontedly safe with him, just as you did with Louise, but safe from -dangers that only he had made you see, dangers on a remote horizon. As -you ambled along, with nothing more ominous than a cloud of dust or a -shower of rain to disturb your pedestrian serenity, Louise and Dare -would swoop down, armed to the teeth, gleefully to assure you that -nothing fatal would happen, that accidents to limb held no terrors for -moral crusaders worthy the name; then, leaving you to stand there in -bewilderment, they would swoop off again to catch up with unknown -squadrons beyond the rim of vision, whence, for the first time, a -muffled sound of bombing came to your ears. And your knees would begin -to tremble, not on their account,—oh dear no, _they_ could take care of -themselves,—but on your own. Suddenly your pedestrian course seemed -drab to you,—long, weary, prosaic; but you lacked wings, weapons, zeal, -and endurance. - -Louise was a Spartan both morally and physically. She could ignore -transgressions of the social code as easily as she could ignore bodily -discomforts. Recently Miriam had seen an example of each. When Pearl -Beatty, the schoolteacher, had been made the topic of scandalous gossip -which echoed through the Valley, Louise in defiance of her husband and -the public had fetched Pearl to the ranch for a week-end, and said to -her in effect, “Pearl dear, I’ll see that you don’t lose your job, -provided you don’t lose your head. If it’s a _man_ you want, wait till -you find the right one, then bring him here and I’ll protect you both. -But if it’s a lot of men you want you can’t go on teaching school in our -Valley; it’s too complicated. The only way to play that game with -pleasure and profit,—and I doubt whether you’re really vicious -enough,—is to save your money, go to a big city, buy some good clothes, -and sit in the lobby of the leading commercial hotel until fate’s finger -points.” As a result of this manoeuvre some of Pearl’s thoughtless -exuberance rushed into a channel of devotion to Louise, who seized the -occasion to build up in the girl a sense of her own value and then -bullied the Valley into respecting it. - -As for physical courage, only a few days previously Louise, uttering an -occasional “Oh damn!” to relieve her agony, had stoically probed with a -needle deep under her thumb-nail to release a gathering that had formed -as a result of rust poisoning, while Miriam stood by in horror. - -Far deeper than her dread of anything Louise might do was a dread -engendered by lack of confidence in herself. Within herself there was -some gathering of emotion for which, unlike Louise, she hadn’t the -courage to probe. As she had told Louise at their first meeting, -responsibility could frighten her; and she now shrank before the -responsibility of her inclinations. The most she dared admit to herself -was that she was growing too fond of the life around her. In her first -youth she had fancied herself a real person in a pleasantly artificial -setting, mildly enamoured of glittering symbols of life; in this faraway -corner, renovated by solitude, physical exertion, and obligatory -self-analysis, she saw herself as an artificial person in a pleasantly -real setting, enamoured of life itself. She had come to teach, and had -remained to learn. In the old days a horse had been a sleek toy upon -which one cantered in Rock Creek Park or Rotten Row or the Monte Pinchio -gardens until a motor came and fetched one home to lunch. A dog had been -a sort of living muff. Camping expeditions had been an elaborate means -of relaxing overwrought nerves. Nowadays a horse was a friend who -uncomplainingly bore one great distances, who discovered the right path -when one was lost. A dog was a companion who escorted one through -fearsome trails, who retrieved the grouse one hit, and kept watch by -night at the cabin door. Camping expeditions were a serious means to -some explorative end; one slept on the hard ground under a raincoat -simply because there was nothing else to sleep on, and eagerly looked -forward to doing it again. Men and women whom one would once have sent -down to the kitchen for a cup of tea were now one’s convives. And far -from losing caste on this level, one acquired a useful perspective of -society and a new conception of one’s identity. Association with a girl -like Pearl Beatty, for instance, not only opened one’s eyes at last to -some blunt facts about one’s own nature, but also furnished the clue to -scandals concerning which one had been stupidly supercilious in the days -when life consisted in the automatic fulfilment of projects announced -beforehand on pieces of cardboard. - -Yet for the first time in a dozen years she was not sure of herself. So -far she had been loyal in thought as well as deed, but the present -inventory of herself revealed claims for which she had also little -rebellious gusts of loyalty. Louise herself counted for something in -this development, since however much one might deprecate Louise’s bold -convictions, one couldn’t deny that they were often ingratiating. “It’s -more honorable to hoist your own sail and sail straight on a reef than -it is to be towed forever!” When Louise tossed off remarks of that sort -one was tempted to lengths of experiment that one would once have -drastically disapproved. Louise’s philosophy might end by producing -inedible fruits, but meanwhile there was no denying the charm of the -blossoms she flaunted under one’s windows and virtually defied one not -to smell. - -As long as Louise was plying at verbal thunder and lightning, Miriam’s -confidence in herself underwent to qualms. For at such times, she, in -comparison with Louise, personified all that was discreet. But when -Louise’s effervescences died down, when the last waterspout of her -exultant proclamations had collapsed on a lake of apathy too deep and -dark to be penetrated, Miriam felt the wavelets radiating to the shore -at her feet, gently communicating a more daring rhythm to her own -desires. - -The first definite effect of these reflections was Miriam’s decision to -leave. Otherwise she would be forced to come to an understanding with -herself and run the risk of discovering that she was ready to—steal. - -It was late in September. Dare’s army of workmen were fighting against -time to complete the exteriors of the new house and outbuildings before -winter. Miriam drew rein as her horse reached the top of the hill from -which she had obtained her first glimpse of the lake more than a year -ago. The sun was not yet up, but the world was expecting it. The lake -which only yesterday had been an emerald was now a long, flat pearl -encircled in a narrow, faintly amethystine mist which like a scarf of -gauze broke the perpendicular lines of the farthermost shore. In it were -mirrored the colossal rocks forming the jagged V of the canyon, and -threadbare clouds of pale rose and jade, lemon and amber. The oily brown -log cottages silhouetted near the outlet had the pictorial value of -black against the living pearl of the water, and Louise’s flower beds -were banked with something mauve dulled by dew. Frost-bitten, orange-red -geraniums in wooden urns raised high on crooked tree-stumps made hectic -blurs on each side of the main cottage. Farther off, and higher than the -tops of the pine trees which rose above the pervasive lavender mist, -were clusters of yellow and crimson foliage and slender tree trunks that -stood out like strokes of Chinese white. Higher yet were stretches of -rusty gorse which finally straggled off to bare patches of buff-hued -turf ending in the rock walls of Hardscrapple, whose irregular peaks, -four thousand feet above, were faintly edged with silver light. - -At the end of the pine ridge to the right of the lake, surmounting a -broad meadow, standing out from the wooded slope of the mountain, and -bringing the whole landscape to a focus, was the Castle with its severe -lines, its broad balconies and high windows. One terrace dominated the -lake, while another looked over the top of the pine ridge towards the -distant valley where the river twisted its way for thirty miles through -a grey-green sage plain broken by occasional dark islands of pine and -bounded on the farther side by patchy brown and green risings -culminating in a lumpy horizon. - -Everything visible for fifty miles had been stained bright with the hues -of the changing season, only to be softened by the clinging mist, which -seemed to hush as well as to veil. - -From three kitchens,—Louise’s, Mrs. Brown’s, and the workmen’s -encampment,—white ribbons of smoke rose straight up as though to -reinforce the pale, exhausted clouds. Grendel, Miriam’s retriever, was -standing in the wet grass, one paw held up and tail motionless as though -awaiting confirmation of a hint of jack-rabbits. An acrid odour gave -body to the air: an odour whose ingredients included the damp earth, the -bark of the firs, the bunches of rust-colored berries, the leather of -the saddle, and the warm vitality of the horse. Once there was a sound -of whinnying from the slopes beneath, and once a distant sound of -splashing,—Keble or Dare at his morning plunge in the lake. - -How splendid to be a man, with a man’s vigorous instincts! Even the -pipes they smoked at night were condonable, when you thought of the -strong teeth that clenched their stems, the strong fingers that twisted -the stems out during the cleaning process, and the earnestness that went -into the filling and lighting, the contented bodily collapse, as of -giants refreshed, that followed the first puff. - -Splendid to be a man, certainly. But how much more wonderful to be at -the disposal of some clean, earnest, boyish creature who would be -comfortingly gigantic when one felt helpless, enticingly indolent when -one felt strong. As for being a victim to a capacity for tenderness -which one had no right to indulge,—that was simply unfair. - -The sound of loose planks disturbed by running feet came up to her on -the motionless air. It was Keble, in sandals and dressing gown, -returning from the boat-slip to the cottage. She leaned forward and -patted her horse. - -Near the foot of the winding road she drew rein again. Grendel had -dashed ahead to play practical jokes on a colony of hens. Joe was -chopping wood. Mona was moving tins in the dairy. Annie Brown was at the -pump, getting water on her “pinny”. Some one was whistling. Grendel -barked at the top of his lungs and came bounding back through the grass. -The sun was beginning to turn the mountain peaks into brass and bronze. -The flat pallid clouds were trailing away. A flush of blue crept over -the sky. - -Miriam’s throat ached with the kind of happiness that is transformed at -birth into pain. She remembered the remark she had made to Louise on -first descending this road: “You very lucky woman!” - -Half an hour later, at the breakfast table, she was struck by the pallor -of Louise’s cheeks, which normally glowed. Louise was chatting with a -show of good spirits that failed to hoodwink her. She broke open an egg -with a slight feeling of vexation, for it was nerve-racking to be faced -daily with a human puzzle. She was more than willing to be sorry for -Louise, but one couldn’t quite be sorry until one knew why. - -A moment later their eyes met. Louise gave her a characteristically -friendly smile, and suddenly Miriam guessed. She was assailed by a -nameless envy, a nameless resentment, sincere compassion, then, by a -strange relief that left her almost comically weak. - -When breakfast was finished and the men were out of the room she went to -Louise, grasped her by the shoulders, looked into her eyes with kindly -inquiry, then, having been assured, said, “My dear, why didn’t you tell -me? Or rather, how could I have failed to see!” - -To Miriam’s amazement Louise bit her lips and trembled,—Louise, the -Spartan! Miriam kissed her cold cheek and gave her arm an affectionate -pat. She felt awkward. “What’s there to be afraid of?” she scoffed. “You -of all people!” - -“It’s not fear,” Louise quietly contradicted. “It’s disgust.” - -“How does Keble take it?” - -“He is as blind as you were. And I haven’t been able to bring myself to -telling him. That explains better than anything my state of mind. He -will be so odiously glad.” - -Miriam was shocked. - -“Yes, odiously,” Louise petulantly repeated. “I know it’s abominable of -me to talk like this. But he will be so suffocatingly good and kind -. . . Oh Miriam!” - -She burst into tears and let Miriam’s arms receive her. “I loathe -hysterical women,” she sobbed, then turned to Miriam with appealing -eyes. “You will stay won’t you?” - -Miriam hesitated. The decision she had come to on her solitary ride -broke down as other similar decisions had done. - -“Why, yes, dear,—yes, of course I’ll see you through it,” she replied, -and allowed Louise’s grateful caress to silence a little exulting voice -within her. - - 4 - -A singular, poignant peace brooded over Hillside through the long months -of Miriam’s second winter at the ranch. While the outer world stood -transfixed with cold, its lakes and streams frozen and its heart stifled -under the snow, the people indoors went about their tasks and diversions -with an orderliness that recalled old times to Louise and Keble and -tended to persuade Miriam that her doubts about herself had been -exaggerated. - -To break the monotony of correspondence, books, cards, and skiing trips -there had been countless boxes to unpack in the unfinished house on the -hill: boxes of furnishings and ornaments, music to try over and books to -catalogue. To give unity to the winter, there was the dramatic suspense -of waiting for the human miracle. The attitude of Louise combined -tolerance of Keble’s solicitude with amusement at Miriam’s -half-embarrassed excitement. For the rest she accepted with common sense -a situation which she privately regarded as an insult on the part of -fate. - -The apathy which Miriam had noted so uneasily in the early autumn had -not disappeared, although it had lost its trance-like fixity, in the -place of which had come a more regular attention to daily tasks, a quiet -competence. Miriam’s admiration for Louise had steadily grown, despite -her distrust of Louise’s intellectual “climbing” and her -half-acknowledged envy of Louise’s power to enslave Keble, to give Dare -Rolands for his Olivers, and to bind maids and cooks, farm hands and -horse wranglers, neighbors and creditors together in a fanatical -vassalage. On none of her slaves did Louise make arbitrary demands. If -she exhorted or scolded them, it was always apropos of their success or -failure in being true to themselves. If Miriam’s admiration ever -wavered, it was on occasions when Louise, carried away by her own -_élan_, cut capers merely to show what capers she could cut,—like an -obstreperous child shouting, “Watch me jump down three steps at a time.” - -But recently Louise had not been cutting capers, and as she sat before a -fire that gave the lie to the incredible temperature that reigned beyond -the storm doors, calmly stitching garments for an infant whose advent -was distasteful to her, Miriam regarded her with the protective -affection she might have felt for a sister ten years her junior. - -“I can’t make you out,” she said. “In your place I would be obnoxiously -proud of myself.” - -“When I was first married I wanted him. Then as time went on I hoped -there wouldn’t be any him at all. Saw to it, in fact. I’ve been -negligent.” - -“Why _him_?” Miriam inquired. - -“Because it’s my duty to produce a member of the ancient and honorable -House of Lords. His forebears expect it. As for me, I’d rather have a -monkey.” - -Grimness had replaced the old zest and elasticity, and Miriam noted with -surprise that this single fact completely altered the personality of the -household. If the present mood proved permanent, she reflected, the -Castle, for all their pains, would have the character of a house to let. - -Dare had left in the late autumn and would return in the spring, perhaps -remaining for the house-warming which was to be the occasion of a visit -by members of Keble’s family. At the time of Dare’s departure Miriam had -watched Louise with intense curiosity. She had longed to know the nature -of the rôle played by Louise’s heart in her relation with Dare,—a -relation which both so freely acknowledged to be exhilarating. During -one of their final evenings Louise had said to Dare, “When you leave -Hillside I shall climb to the top of Hardscrapple, chant a hymn to the -sun, and dive head first into the canyon, for there won’t be anything to -live for, except Keble and Miriam, and they’re only the land I’m a fish -on, whereas you’re the water I’ll be a fish out of!” - -To which Dare had instantly retorted, “Indeed I’m not the water you’re a -fish in. I’m the whale you’re a swordfish attacking, and I shall be glad -to get back east where there’s nothing I can’t either swallow or -out-swim.” - -Miriam had been exasperated at not being able to read between the -bantering lines. For there must be a situation, she reasoned; two such -abounding persons, no matter how adroit, could never have got so far -into each others’ minds without having got some distance into each -other’s blood. - -But the situation, whatever it was, was not divulged, and Miriam was -denied whatever solace her own unruly heart might have derived from the -knowledge that Keble’s wife’s heart was also unruly. - -Whether Louise’s sense of duty had a share in it or not, a “him” was -duly produced and ecstatically made at home. Even his mother ended by -admitting that he was “not a bad little beast.” She had vetoed Keble’s -plan to import a nurse from England, and had trained Katie Salter for -the post. As motherhood had once been Katie’s passionate avocation, -Louise could think of no better way to translate into deeds the spirit -of her outlandish funeral sermon on neighborliness than to promote Katie -from the wash-house to the nursery. - -Keble and Miriam came in from an hour’s skating one afternoon late in -December to find Louise at the tea-table submitting to Katie’s proud -account of the prodigy’s gain in weight. She was mildly amused to learn -that the tender hair on the back of babies’ heads was worn off by their -immoderate addiction to pillows. - -Keble leaned over the perambulator, not daring to put his finger into -the trap of his son’s microscopic hand lest its coldness have some dire -effect. He had an infatuated apprehension of damage to his child, having -so recently learned the terrific physical cost of life. His tenderness -for the infant had a strange effect on Louise. It made her wish that she -were the baby. Tears gathered in her eyes as she watched him, still -aglow from his exercise and fairly hanging on Katie’s statistics. - -She began to pour tea as Miriam threw aside her furs and drew up a -chair. Miriam had hoped, in common with Keble and Katie Salter, that -Louise’s indifference would disappear as if by magic when the baby came -within range of the census. She was forced to admit, however, that -Louise was not appreciably more partial to her son than to Elvira Brown -or Dicky Swigger. - -“Could you desert him long enough to drink a cup of tea?” Louise -inquired after a decent interval. She liked the solemn manner in which -Keble talked to the future member of the House of Lords. Like Gladstone -addressing the Queen, Keble addressed the baby as though it were a -public meeting. “You must make due allowance for the incurable -knick-knackery of woman kind,” he was saying, as he smoothed out a lace -border in which two tiny fingers had become entangled and against -which,—or something equally unjust,—a lusty voice was beginning to -protest. - -“He’s not as polite as you are, if he does take after you,” Louise -commented when Keble had praised the toasted cheese cakes. - -Keble judged this a fair criticism, and Miriam was of the opinion that a -polite baby would be an unendurable monstrosity. “I like him best of -all,” she said, “when he kicks and twists and screams ‘fit to bust his -pram’, as Katie says. Although I’m also quite keen about him when he’s -dining. Yes, thanks, and another cheese cake . . . And his way of always -getting ready to sneeze and then _not_, that’s endearing. And his dreams -about food.” - -“You wouldn’t find them half as endearing if you had to wake up in the -middle of the night and replenish him.” - -“Oh I say, Weedgie! Must you always speak of him as though he were a -gas-tank, or a bank account!” - -“Pass me your cup. After skating you also want a lot of replenishing, -like your greedy heir. Now let’s for goodness’ sake talk about something -else,—the New Year’s dance for instance.” - -Keble was always ready nowadays to talk on any subject in which Louise -showed signs of interest. The recognized household term for it was -“trying to be the water Louise is a fish in.” - - - - - CHAPTER V - - -IN England there were several thousand acres which Keble would one day -automatically take over. In Canada, creating his own estate, he could -enjoy a satisfaction known only to the remotest of his ancestors. And as -his wilderness became productive he acquired, atavistically, the -attitude of a squire towards the people whose livelihood depended on -him. He housed them comfortably; he listened to their claims and -quarrels; he hired, discharged, and promoted with conscientious -deliberation; and every so often he wrote letters to the provincial -parliament about the state of the roads. - -“Now it’s time to amuse them,” Louise had suggested. “People don’t -remember that you have installed expensive lighting plants for their -benefit, but they never forget a lively party.” - -Thus was sown the seed of the New Year’s dance which was to be held in -the hall and reception rooms of the empty new house. Invitations were -issued to every soul at Hillside, and a poster tacked to the bulletin -board of the Valley post office announced that anybody who cared to make -the journey would be welcome. - -Preparations for this evening revived Louise’s spirits as nothing had -done in months. No detail was left to chance. Keble, held responsible -for the music, endeavored for days to whip up the sluggish dance rhythms -of the Valley bandmaster. “I’ve done everything but stand on my head and -beat time with my feet,” he reported in desperation, “and they still -play the fox-trots as though they were dirges. Fortunately the Valley -knows no better.” - -Miriam superintended the decorating of the rooms, aided by the “hands”, -who, like Birnam Wood, advanced across the white meadow obliterated -under a mass of evergreens. - -Only one contretemps occurred. A few days after Christmas Mrs. Boots, -the minister’s wife, accompanied by Mrs. Sweet, wife of the mail -carrier, made her way to the Castle and warned Louise that her dance -would conflict with the “watch-night service” at the Valley church. - -New Year’s fell on a Saturday, and to postpone the ball one night would -involve dancing into the early hours of the Day of Rest. Keble had made -arrangements to leave on Saturday for the east, on a short business trip -to London. To hold the entertainment over until Monday would therefore -be out of the question. - -Louise had a characteristic inspiration. “Why not turn the library into -a chapel!” she exclaimed, kindling at the prospect of an extra dramatic -item on her program, “And pause at midnight for spiritual refreshments! -I’ll make everybody file in and kneel, Mr. Boots can say a prayer, and -we’ll all sing a little hymn—perfect!” - -“And then go on dancing!” cried Mrs. Boots, in horror. - -Mrs. Sweet reflected the horror on her friend’s face. Then her -disapproving glances traveled to a corner of the hall where some noisy -girls were making paper chains and lanterns under the direction of Pearl -Beatty. - -Louise saw that she had given pain to the minister’s wife. “Forgive me,” -she said impulsively. “I’m such a heathen! But if I were a Christian I’m -sure it wouldn’t disturb my conscience to dance and pray alternately; -indeed each would gain by the contrast. What’s the point of a religion -that has to be kept in a cage?” - -Mrs. Boots could have found answers if she had been given time to catch -her breath, but before she had a word ready Louise was shaking her -cordially by the hand and consigning her to a maid who was to take the -ladies to the cottage and comfort them with tea and a sight of the baby -before the mail sleigh returned to the Valley. - -Whatever the concourse of the faithful at the watch-night service, there -was never an instant’s doubt as to the triumph of the forces of evil. -From the moment when Keble and the wife of the Mayor of Witney, followed -by Louise and the Mayor, stepped out at the head of a “grand march” -until daybreak on the first of January when a winded band played a -doleful version of “God Save the King”, the festivities went forward -with irresistible momentum. Keble made a speech, and then with true -British fortitude danced with every female guest. Miriam, acting on -orders, solicited dances from bashful cowboys, and once, in the grip of -an honest lad who seemed to have mistaken her for a pump, she caught the -eyes of Keble, in the grip of the new laundress, who was bolting towards -a wall with him. And they hadn’t dared to burst out laughing. - -Louise darted in and out, setting everything on fire, making the dour -laugh and the obstreperous subside, launching witty sallies and personal -broadsides, robbing Pearl of her plethora of partners and leading them -captive to the feet of girls who, after living for days on the exciting -prospect, were now sitting against the wall with their poor red hands in -their laps, enjoying it, vicariously. - -For Louise the evening would have been perfect but for one disturbing -remark which she overheard in the supper room. Minnie Swigger, whose -brand new “Kelly green” satin had lost something of its splendor when -contrasted with the simple black velvet in which Louise was sheathed, -had watched Miriam pass by in company with Pearl Beatty and Jack -Wallace, the proprietor of the Valley livery stable, and had vouchsafed -her criticism in an ungrateful voice which carried to Louise’s ears: -“She’s supposed to be his secretary. Either Weedgie is blind, or she -holds Miss Cread over his head as an excuse for her own little game. -Nobody but her could get away with it.” - -Louise wheeled about and walked up to Minnie. “Get away with what?” she -inquired evenly. - -Minnie was too startled to reply for a moment, then with the defiance -born of a bad conscience she said, “I don’t care if you did hear me. It -certainly looks funny, and that’s not my fault. And Pearl Beatty there, -as big as life! When you make a fuss over her decent fellows like Jack -Wallace get the idea she’s all right.” - -“Isn’t she?” - -“If you call _that_ all right!” - -“Being all right is minding your own business. You’re a nice little -thing, Minnie, but you _don’t_. Not always. Don’t try to mind mine; it’s -far too much for you.” - -What the natives thought was in itself a matter of indifference, but if -“things,” as Minnie alleged, did “look funny”, it was just conceivable -that the natives, for all their ignorance, saw the situation at Hillside -in a clearer perspective than any of the actors. Keble’s departure was, -therefore, in a sense opportune. - - 2 - -Although it meant twenty-four hours without sleep, Louise and Miriam -next morning insisted on accompanying Keble as far as the Valley. The -four took breakfast, along with Dr. Bruneau, at the Canada House as -Miriam’s guests. They were weary, a little feverish, and inclined to be -silent. Keble alone chatted with a volubility that betrayed his -nervousness, his regret at the separation, and his excitement at the -prospect of revisiting the home he had long ago abandoned. Louise was -pale, and kept hiding in the depths of her fur coat. Miriam and the -doctor sustained Keble’s talk, but could not relax the tension. The -stage was due in fifteen minutes. - -Suddenly Louise jumped up from the table, which was being cleared by an -ill-kempt waitress with whom Keble had danced a few hours previously. “I -nearly forgot . . . the snapshots of Baby for his grandmother. They’re -still at the drug-store. I’ll run over and get them.” - -“Let me go, dear,” Keble had risen. - -“We’ll go together,” Louise proposed, and Miriam noted an eager light in -his eyes. - -On the snowy road he tucked his glove under Louise’s arm, and they -picked their way across in silence to the drug-store. - -When she had obtained the photographs and thrust them into an inner -pocket of his coat, they returned more slowly towards the hotel. - -“It will seem very strange,” he said, “without you and the monkey. I -can’t tell you how disappointed I am at your refusing to come home with -me.” - -“A change from us will do you good . . . You’re to give my love and the -monkey’s to everybody, and tell them I’m looking forward very much to -their visit.” - -Keble stopped in the middle of the deserted street, to face her with -appealing eyes, and rested a hand on her arm. “Weedgie, that’s all so -pathetically trite, for you! Tell me, _sans facons_, why wouldn’t you -come, and why wouldn’t you let me take the snapshots of you as well as -the monkey?” - -She was a little timid. This was the Louise with whom he had originally -fallen love, and whom he remembered even through her noisiest -performances. “Because I’m perverse. I want your people, if they are -going to make my acquaintance at all, to get their first impression of -me in my own setting.” She couldn’t confess that she would have been -gratified if his people had been a few degrees more pressing in their -invitations to her. “If they like me in spite of it, or even if they -don’t, I shall feel at least square with myself. But if they were to -find me passable in _their_ setting, then come out here and pooh-pooh -the Valley, I should be—oh, hurt and angry.” - -Keble shook her gently. “Rubbish!” - -“Mrs. Windrom thought me crude,” she said, entirely without rancor. In -her heart she thought Mrs. Windrom crude. - -“Walter didn’t,” Keble retorted. “And Walter’s little finger is worth -more than his mother’s eternal soul.” - -“Walter is a man, dear. Mrs. Boots doesn’t like me, and her soul is -worth thousands of little fingers,—or toes, rather.” She was stroking -his coon-skin coat. - -“Toes, rather? . . . Oh, I see—Boots, toes.” - -Without warning he caught her in his arms and kissed her. “You -preposterous person!” he laughed, a little abashed by his flare of -passion. - -They returned silently to the hotel porch, where they were joined by -Miriam and the doctor. The stage had arrived and they were discussing -the state of the mountain road. Keble climbed into the sleigh. - -When everyone had said good-bye, and the horses had been set into -motion, Keble turned to Miriam with a parting admonition regarding -business letters, then added, “Keep an eye on Louise, now that she’s -come to life again. And do give the monkey an occasional piece of -sugar.” - -The last injunction was a facetious allusion to a remark made some weeks -previously by Mr. Brown, who had declared that Keble was spoiling the -baby as much as his wife spoiled her circus horse. - -When the stage had disappeared, Louise turned to Miriam with an air of -being lost. “Isn’t it strange,” she said, “to think of going back alone! -I never realized before how completely it’s Keble that makes the ranch -go round. I feel like _la délaissée_,—you know the girl in the ditty: -_qui pleure nuit et jour_.” - -“Good gracious, Louise, don’t tell me you’re turning sentimental on top -of everything.” - -“It would only be _re_-turning. I’ve always been sentimental under the -surface. At least I used to be with my dolls. And for some reason I’ve -felt like a little girl this morning.” - -A cloud passed over Miriam’s sky. Lack of sleep and the dissipation of -the last week would sufficiently account for it. Faint lines indicated -the inner boundaries of her cheeks, and her eyes had lost their -agate-like clarity. - -“You look like a tired little girl,” she said sadly. “I feel all of -eighty.” - - - - - PART TWO - - - - - CHAPTER I - - -IT was the second anniversary of the death of Billy Salter. A summer -breeze played over the hillock which was surmounted by two small -tombstones. The branches of the trees which had sheltered the -grave-diggers from hail on the day of the funeral were now tossing in a -frantic effort to extend their shade to the rows of asters with which -Katie and Louise had bounded the two graves. - -“Seems less lonesome for Billy, don’t it, Mrs. Eveley, when Rosie has a -flower bed too,” Katie had commented. Rosie Dixon had died before Billy -was born, but her span of life had been as limited as his own, which had -the effect of making them seem contemporaries. - -As Katie had expressed it, “If both were living to-day Rosie would be -twenty-nine and Billy fourteen, just going into long pants; but really -they’re only the same age—both twelve, poor babies!” - -Louise recalled the remark this August afternoon as she and Trenholme -Dare tied their horses to neighboring trees and ascended towards the -deserted graves. “I couldn’t help feeling that Katie had stumbled on an -interesting idea,” she said. - -“She had,” Dare agreed. “If Katie was a savant she might have developed -it into an epoch-making theory of time.” - -“How far ahead would that have got her?” - -“Not an inch. Metaphysicians are higher in the air, and their altitude -gives them a more panoramic view, but they are traveling towards -eternity at exactly the same speed as Katie and not a whit faster. The -value of intricate theories is that they are reducible to homely, -concrete observations like Katie’s. Conversely the beauty of Katie’s -homely discovery is that it can be elevated into a formula and -re-applied, even canonized, along with Newton’s apple and adventures of -other scientific saints. It’s like art: the glory of music is that it is -made up of vulgar sounds, and the saving grace of vulgar sounds is that -they can all get to a musical heaven.” - -Louise was sitting on the grass, gazing down towards grey plains which -merged into the distant brown hills, which in turn merged into a sky -whose blue gave an impression of actual depth. It was not a canopy -to-day but an ocean of air, or rather,—since it was bodiless and -unglazed,—an ocean’s ghost, with small clouds, like the ghosts of -icebergs, drifting across its waveless surface. - -The breeze which tossed the branches and stirred Sundown’s mane came to -sport with her own hair. Her hat lay at her feet, and with an arm limply -outstretched she wielded a switch, flicking the dusty toes of her riding -boots. - -“By all that,” she said, “you imply that philosophizing doesn’t get one -anywhere. Yet you philosophize as never was, and you seem to be getting -ahead like a comet.” - -“Philosophy isn’t the propeller, it’s the log that records the progress -and adventures of the mind at sea. If by philosophizing you mean the -mental gymnastics which toughen thought for subsequent _applied_ -mentality, I dare say philosophy can be said to get one ahead; but it -doesn’t make one wiser in any real sense. The savant knows more than -Katie Salter about the nature of the ingredients of life, but that -doesn’t make him a better _liver_ than Katie. No doubt the man who can -enunciate a theory of relativity is more commendable to God than the -woman who can only prevent your son from eating angle-worms, for God’s -evolution depends on intelligence, and _Herr Doktor_ Einstein is more -intelligent than Katie Salter, _unbedingt_. But God is strangely -ungrateful; he treats them both alike, giving us all impartially the -status of drops in the salty ocean of eternity. What we call our life is -merely the instant when we are phosphorescent; the savant may be more -luminously phosphorescent than you and me, but before he can say Jack -Robinson he has relapsed into the ocean and new drops of salty water -have formed, comprising left-over particles of dead hims and yous and -mes, forming a new identity which is tossed up into birth to be luminous -for a moment and say Jack Robinson and then disintegrate in favor of -still further combinations of remnants . . . The folly of regarding -Socrates as sublime and me as ridiculous is that we are one and the same -entity, just as those asters are merely a continuation of the first -aster seed, which was merely the continuation of a continuation.” - -Louise recalled the discussion she had had with her father on the day of -Billy’s funeral, when they had agreed to grant cats equal rights with -Billy in the matter of immortality. “Would you go so far as to say that -Socrates and Sundown were parts of the same entity?” she inquired. - -“Even further. I should include the fly that his tail can’t quite reach, -the worms under his feet, and the leaves over his head. It’s all in the -ocean . . . Stones and mud aren’t as self-assertive as radium, but who -is to say that they have no phosphorescent potentialities? If you eat a -speck of mud on your celery, doesn’t it, or something chemical in it, -become a part of you and take a more distinguished place in the realm of -things vital?” - -“Then how to account for the fact that we can talk, Sundown can only -neigh, and stones can’t even sigh,—even if they _are_ full of sermons.” - -“By the fact that stones are figuratively phosphorescent in an extremely -negligible degree, that Sundown is phosphorescent in an infinitely -greater degree, and that you and I are so surcharged with -phosphorescence that we simply burst into hissing flames of -intelligence. Or, if you prefer, we’re not so tightly packed as stones; -our atoms are more free to roam and collide and become interesting. -Human intelligence, with all its concomitants of reasoning and speech, -is a sort of transformation which is analogous to the remarkable things -that happen in a laboratory when certain combinations are subjected to -intense pressures and temperatures. Degrees of vitality are like the -gradations of electrical force: sluggish magnetic fields, live wires, -dynamos, power stations. Everything has some vital status, just as -everything has some electrical status.” - -“But you make everything seem so impersonal and arbitrary. Don’t you -believe that human beings can voluntarily increase or decrease their -voltage and usefulness? If I determine to live up to my best instincts, -can’t I do so on my own initiative, without having been anticipated by -Fate?” - -“I think of it the other way round. Your strongest instincts, good or -bad, will live up to you. They will determine your acts. The decision to -live up to them begs the question, for it is they that prompted the -decision, making up your so-called mind for you. You only said the words -of your excellent decision after the excellent decision had surged and -pulsated and battled and muscled its way through your system to the tip -of your tongue. Taking a decision is like taking a train: in reality the -train takes you.” - -“According to that theory there’s nothing to stop the whole world from -going to pot, morally speaking. What if bad instincts obtain a majority -in the house?” - -“Ah, but thanks be to God they won’t! Nature hasn’t gone to pot -physically, for all the efforts of plague and dyspepsia. She won’t go to -pot morally, either, though we may always need prisons, or their future -equivalents. Nature is, in the long run, economical; she balances her -books; and morality, like health, is merely a question of thrift.” - -“And religion? What is it?” - -“Oh,—for a slouchy metaphor, call it the sparks struck off by moral -friction.” - -“That’s deep water.” - -“Moral: accept the concrete and don’t try to formulate the abstract. -Katie would never have expected an apple to fall into the sky just -because she had never heard of Isaac Newton. And when she feels that -Rosie Dixon and Billy, despite arguments to the contrary, are the same -age, she has got just as far as the hypothetical metaphysician who would -turn her experience into a revolutionary theory of objective and -subjective time,—except that Katie won’t get a Nobel prize. If she -lives to be three score and ten, snug in her three dimensions, and never -hears time defined as qualitative multiplicity, she will fulfil a -sublime destiny; she will with unerring instinct and awe-inspiring -virtuosity obey complex laws which are none the less urgent for being -unformulated in her narrow skull. And when she dies, her soul, like John -Brown’s, will, though in fearfully divisible, microscopic, and -unrecognizable particles, go ‘marching on’.” - -“Thank goodness Katie is miles down the road by this time where she -can’t hear what a hash she is going to be!” - -“Yes, that after all marks the difference between people like Katie who -are close to the earth, and those who do get up in a metaphysical -balloon. Katie comforts herself with promises of a red plush heaven full -of harps, where she at the age of seventy-three will repair in a white -robe to rejoin her Billy, still twelve; whereas the savants who see the -world as an ant-heap are not appalled at the thought of personal -obliteration, I for one think it’s rather a lark to be a sort of -caricature on a school blackboard for three score and ten years then -turn into a thin cloud of chalk dust when higher forces rub you off; -it’s fun to speculate on the future of the particles of chalk in the -cloud.” - -Louise confessed that she could not gloat over the prospect, but let it -be understood that, for the sake of feeling herself floating in the air -amongst a distinguished metaphysical crew, including Dare, she -cheerfully accepted the principle. Then something made her lean forward -and gaze towards a distant bend in the road. - -“Look! That’s them!” - -“What’s who?” Dare asked, and added, “grammar be blowed!” - -Three touring cars, an unprecedented sight, were winding their way up -from the direction of the Valley. - -“Keble’s telegram said this evening,” Louise explained, with a blank -look at her companion, followed by a glance at her wrist watch. “And -it’s not three o’clock yet. Thank heaven Miriam is at home to give them -tea.” - -“Them” referred to the English travelers, whose visit had been postponed -in order that it might be embraced in a western tour which Lord Eveley -and his assistants in the Colonial Office were scheduled to make on -Imperial business. Keble had left the ranch a few days before to meet -them in Calgary and guide them hither. All through the spring and summer -he had been bringing his building work to completion, and Dare had been -on hand several weeks now, partly in the rôle of contractor, partly in -the rôle of friend. He had remained for the celebrations before -proceeding to Japan, where he was to make notes and sketches for a -commission in California. - -“What a pity you won’t be on hand to receive them,” Dare sympathized. - -Louise flicked her switch rebelliously. “If they say evening, they can’t -expect me to know they mean afternoon. There’s no reconciling that -discrepancy whether you call time qualitative multiplicity or plain -duration. And they’ll just have to wait.” She smiled maliciously. “I -hope they’ll look blank at each other and say, ‘Just as I thought’.” - -“Why? So you can fool them all by being excessively correct?” - -She was delighted. “How did you guess?” - -“The clue to you is always the same. You’re a born actress.” - -To herself she was thinking. “Even the most enlightened men fail to -understand that some women are capable of being the quintessence of -themselves when they’re most outrageously play-acting.” And she was not -at all sorry that Dare should fall into one of the traps laid for his -sex,—there were so many he didn’t fall into! - -“I adore acting. And love being caught at it. And always go on till I -_am_.” This suggested a new thought to her. “That’s why Keble and I are -so often a hundred miles apart. I’m acting, and he doesn’t know whether -I’m acting myself or some other character, and that irritates me and I -act all the harder, and it turns into farce or tragedy, and he still -fails to catch me, and I’m too far gone in my rôle to stop, but yearn to -be caught——” - -“And spanked?” - -“You and Miriam spank me sometimes. Then Keble _sees_, and laughs. But -so distressingly late.” - -“Hadn’t we better be starting?” - -The procession had passed the Dixon ranch and was vanishing towards -Hillside. - -“In a minute,” she replied, without stirring. “We don’t have to have -seen them, you know.” Then with an abrupt change of mood she surprised -him by saying, “I dread it, Dare. It’s worse than going up for -examinations.” - -“You’ll probably find them delightful.” - -“You’re not their wild and woolly daughter-in-law.” - -He shifted his position on the grass and sat facing her, with curious, -intent eyes. There was something subduing in his regard, as in his -strength and grace. “I wonder what I am, really. I wish I knew,—my -degree of being accepted as your friend, I mean.” - -She was pleasantly conscious of the urgent need to evade the intentness -of his eyes, but temporized by mocking. “Don’t try to formulate the -abstract. Those are your words, and if you don’t follow your own advice -you’ll be in the predicament Katie would be in if she tried to go up in -a balloon.” - -The forthcoming meeting had unnerved her more than she cared to admit. -An attack of stage-fright had made her say “in a minute” when he had -suggested returning. To that was added a twinge of vertigo, as though -she felt herself standing on a precipice from which force of -circumstances would make her presently retreat, but which for that very -reason had an indefinable lure. The eyes and hands and arms and thighs -of her companion were challenging her. Meanwhile, in her -subconsciousness, the talk of “in-laws” had set in motion a tune from -_The Mikado_, and as she flicked her boots she sang a paraphrase: - - “They married their son,— - They had only got one,— - To their daughter-in-law elect.” - -The ruse by no means succeeded in suppressing the rebellious desire to -look over the precipice. “I wonder if they did right,” she said. - -Dare looked away, and she breathed more freely, hoping yet fearing that -he would immediately resume his disturbing, overpowering intentness. -“Sometimes,” he said, “I resent it; at other times I’m thankful.” - -As he was still looking away she ventured an emotional step nearer. “Do -you mind explaining that cryptic remark?” - -“It’s very simple. If their son hadn’t married you, I undoubtedly would -have. And it would have been a gigantic blunder.” - -“How do you know you would have?” - -“I’m damned if we could have avoided it.” - -“In other words, those strong instincts you were talking about,—good or -bad,—would have taken that _funeste_ direction,—the direction of -bringing us smack up against each other for better or worse.” - -“For a while it would have been heaven on earth. Then hell.” - -“Why?” - -He still avoided her eyes. “Because strong things must clash. Because -you and I don’t permanently need each other; we’re too self-reliant.” - -His unwillingness to look at her roused a demon. “I wonder if you -believe that.” - -“Must one always say all one believes?” - -She ignored the question and he continued. “Marriage, to be successful, -must be entered into by one leading person and one following person. We -were each born to lead. We could never play on the same team, but as -captains of opposing teams we can be profoundly chummy . . . If the -other element had been allowed in, the chumminess in the crucible would -have flared up into a white flame, but the contents of the crucible -would have been reduced to ashes.” - -“Like the Kilkenny cats,” she assented, absent-mindedly. - -She was now stubbornly determined to regain possession of that dangerous -glance. “Isn’t it grotesque,” she went on, “that contemptible, -weak-souled people repeatedly disregard scruples that give pause to the -strong?” - -Dare held his breath, and his profile showed that he was pressing his -teeth against his lip. They had never steered so near the reefs in all -their skilfully navigated acquaintanceship. Louise pulled weakly at the -grass. - -Frankness had been their support up to the present, and each was -privately acknowledging that they could no longer depend on it. - -Silence. Louise felt that she ought to do something to divert his -emotions into more familiar channels. “I wish I were a man,” she said, -and the effort of uttering words made her conscious of the dryness of -her throat. She also had a freakishness of breath to contend with. - -Dare collected himself, sat up, with his back partly turned to her, so -that his eyes looked over the plain. The breeze had gone down and the -afternoon light seemed to be an intrinsic property of the objects it -gilded rather than an emanation from the sun. - -“What would you do if you were?” he asked. - -“The incomparably splendid things you do,” she promptly replied. - -“I’ve come pretty near doing some incomparably asinine things.” - -“But you’ve stopped short. I would have, too, of course. Besides,” she -hesitated, then decided on one final plunge of frankness, “in a world -full of people who don’t do splendid things, you could almost have -pleaded justification in not stopping short, I imagine,—if not actual -provocation.” - -She saw his fingers open, then close. For once in her life, just once, -she longed to see those strangely intent eyes fixed on her, wanted them -to come closer and closer until her own eyes must close, yet she sat -weak, watching the back of his head, then his fingers. For the second -time in her life,—the first was during Walter Windrom’s visit,—she saw -deep into the psychology of infidelity: this time more specifically. -Indeed with a crudeness that made her blush. - -Suddenly he wheeled about. The look was there. She gave a strange little -cry, raised her hands slightly from the ground, and in a flash found -herself imprisoned by his arms, and mouth. - -A few moments later he was on his feet, facing the valley again, his -arms folded. - -He walked to the trees and saddled the ponies. But as Louise made no -move he returned and stood looking down at her. “There’s still time to -escape,” he warned her. - -She was again pulling at the grass. “There’s only one way to escape from -oneself . . . And that is not to acknowledge the danger.” - -“Even when mad things happen?” - -“Mad things are no more disgraceful than the mad desires that -precipitate them. If you admit the desires——” - -“Yes, but—good God!” It ended in an explosive sigh at the futility of -any reasoning faculty one might bring to bear on a problem that had its -source somewhere so far beneath reason’s reach. - -He sat down again, at her feet, and their eyes met in a long, steady -regard. - -“Do you suppose it has been—just _that_, really, all this time?” he -finally asked. - -“Not _only_ that . . . Partly.” - -He held out his hand and she placed hers in it, without hesitation. It -was irrevocable. During the remainder of the afternoon time and scruples -were burnt up in the white flame. - - 2 - -They rode side by side down the steep slope of the mound. The horses -were eager to return, and once in the road their riders let them canter. -Louise was ahead and as she came abreast of the Dixon ranch she reined -in and waited. Her cheeks were still flushed, her eyes restless. She -smiled with a blend of humor and frustration which Dare mistook for -regret. In his face she saw a reply to her own countenance, a reply -which took the form of a little plea for pardon, a plea grotesquely -beside the point,—as if _she_ hadn’t manoeuvred the lapse from grace! -Her frustration was physiological, the eternal waiting for an ecstasy -which Keble and Dare could command at will, but which Fate still -withheld from her. It was unfair and it was discouraging. - -Dare drew up at her side. He was more handsome, more authoritative than -ever, also more tender and humble than she would ever have guessed him -capable of being. Yet also a little annoying. Men could be so -insultingly sure of themselves. Here was a man who by all the signs -ought to have been _the_ man. She had assumed as much and behaved -accordingly. But instead of bringing about the miracle, the duet for the -sake of which she had been willing to risk Keble’s dignity, he had -merely achieved the old solo, with her as instrument. “Why can’t they -understand? Why don’t they learn?” her outraged desires were crying in -protest. She tried to read them a moral lecture, but that was of no -avail. She was, after all, an animal, and it was folly to pretend that -she was not. - -Dare smiled tentatively, inquiringly, waiting for her to speak. - -She looked down at Sundown’s ears. “I suppose that is what I would have -done, if I had been a man. Just once.” - -He shook his head. “The ‘just once’ would have been like diving into a -sea in which you would have to sink or swim. I hope you don’t mean just -once literally, for that would be as good as letting me drown.” - -She was too proud to explain, and she would not raise false hopes. “We -must forget that it happened,” she finally announced. - -He was bewildered. “You mean, you _can_ forget!” - -She made no reply. - -“It was you who said that the fulfilment is no more disgraceful than the -desire.” - -At that moment she hated him for his masculine obtuseness. - -She gave Sundown’s head a jerk. “I’m glad you’re going to Japan,” she -said, and dug her heels into the horse’s sides. A moment later she was -lost to view in a cloud of dust. - -Like some parched and hungry wanderer who had dreamt of orchards, only -to wake up under a bruising hail of apples and pears that startled him -into forgetfulness of his thirst, Dare gasped. “Already!” It was an -ominously precipitate reminder of his theory that they were each -leaders, that neither would be content to subordinate his individuality -to the other’s. - -His mind bit and gnawed at the baffling knot in a tangle which a few -moments since seemed to have yielded for good and all. As a psychologist -he was somewhat too clever, and was capable of overlooking a factor that -might have leapt to the mind of a kitchen-maid. - -He took a trail that served as a short-cut to the ridge, and caught up -with Louise on the new road that branched off towards the Castle. She -turned in her saddle, and patted Sundown’s flank. “Slowpoke!” she flung -back at him, teasingly, but already relentingly. Men were such helpless, -clumsy, cruel, selfish, amiable babies. - -“Been thinking,” Dare explained. - -“To any purpose?” - -“To excellent but piteously sad purpose. I’ve been breaking to my -unhappy ego the meaning of your parting shot.” - -“What did it mean?” - -“That I’m defeated.” - -“In a way, I’m sorrier than you are.” - -“For God’s sake, why?” - -She smiled with a trace of bitter humor, earnestly. “Well, _some one_ -ought to be able to subdue me. God, I need it!” Angry tears came to her -eyes, and she thrust her foot petulantly into the stirrup. Riding alone, -she had just been marveling at the narrowness of the margin by which she -had avoided the disruption of her present life. But for a grotesque -trifle, she might have been riding at this very moment _away_ from -Hillside, forever, with Dare at her side. “That’s where I score,” he -reflected, lugubriously. “For at least now I taste the desolate joy of -capitulation to a stronger opponent. While we were opponents I wished to -keep a few points ahead. The fact that I no longer wish to do so, but -ask nothing better than to be trampled on till I can’t bear it another -minute,—well, what do you make of that?” - -“You’re off your game,” she evaded. “Buck up!” - -They rode on in silence until they came within sight of the broad meadow -at the edge of the pine ridge. - -“Louise!” - -“What!” - -“Do I have to go to Japan?” - -“More than ever.” - - 3 - -When they dismounted and walked towards the house the sun was already -far enough below the mountains to give Hardscrapple the appearance of a -dark cardboard silhouette against the rose and green of the sky. Around -their feet grew patches of scarlet flowers with flannel petals and -brittle stocks. The lake below, seen through a clump of black pines, was -grey and glazed. The Hillside crane, on his evening grub-call, flew over -their heads towards his favorite island. As they watched his landing -Louise noticed two white crescent-shaped objects on the dark floor of -the lake near the stream which came down in steps from the canyon. It -was as though some giant seated on an overhanging ledge had been paring -his nails. - -“They’re on the water already!” she cried. - -“Fishing. Quite true to type,” Dare commented. “The minute rich old men -get away from home they have an uncontrollable desire to kill.” - -Louise sighed at the prospect of unforeseen vagaries in her guests. -“Will they be grumpy if they don’t catch anything?” - -“Probably,—and reminiscent.” - -“I’m glad the flowers came out so well,” Louise remarked irrelevantly, -with an affectionate backward glance at the garden as they reached the -terrace. “With all due respect to your genius, I like my own roses -better than all this.” - -“This” was indicated by a sweeping gesture which took in the Castle, the -commodious outbuildings, and a pattern of roadways and clearings. - -She was arrested by the sound of voices from the other terrace. A tall -woman whom she immediately recognized appeared at the corner, leading a -younger woman towards the parapet. With the air of a licensed guide she -was pointing across the lake towards the “Sans Souci” cottages now -tenanted by the Browns, and volubly describing points of interest. - -“Over there, to the right of those three tall trees. Keble calls them -Castor and Pollux.” - -Half turning towards her companion, as though Girlie’s eyes could not be -trusted to find any spot pointed out to her, Mrs. Windrom caught sight -of the advancing pair. - -“Ha!” she cried, and turned her daughter round by the shoulders. “There -you precious two are at last!” - -Louise hurried forward, with kisses. Girlie seemed as slow to bring her -faculties to a correct focus on Louise as she had been in respect of the -trees. She was a lithe, willowy girl with soft, colorless hair, a smile -faintly reminiscent of Walter, and limp white fingers that spread across -the bosom of a straight, dark-blue garment of incredible spotlessness, -considering the dusty motor journey from Witney. “Being less clever than -her brother,” Louise was reflecting, “she has tried to get even by -taking up outdoor things, which really don’t go with her type.” - -“I was so sorry that Walter couldn’t join you in the east,” she said, -addressing Mrs. Windrom. “But he has promised us a long visit next -year.” - -Girlie was getting a clearer focus. “He did nothing but rave about the -ranch after he and Mother were here,” she contributed. “Now I see why. -It’s like a private Lugano.” - -Louise doubted it, but linked her arm in Girlie’s. “The only way we -could keep him here, however, was to give him a horse that broke his -ribs. I hope you’ll have better luck.” - -“Walter never could ride anything but a hobby,—poetry, or first -editions. Nor play anything more energetic than croquet. As a partner at -golf he’s as helpful as a lame wrist.” - -“But a darling for all that,” Louise defended. - -“Oh, rather!” exclaimed Girlie, with an emphasis that seemed to add, -“That goes without saying,—certainly without _your_ saying it.” - -They proceeded towards wide window-doors and entered the drawing-room, -where Miriam and the other two women had risen on hearing the hubbub. -Louise went straight to the elder woman. “I’m Louise,” she announced. -“Full of apologies.” - -Her mother-in-law kissed her and presented Alice. “We arrived before we -expected. Keble got a special locomotive to bring us through the pass, -and couldn’t let you know because the telegraph office was closed.” - -“It always is, in an emergency. And when it’s open, the wires are down. -We just guess back and forth. Please don’t mind my get-up. You all look -so fresh and frilly. Out here we dress like soldiers, in order to be in -keeping with our slouchy telegraph service and other modern -inconveniences.” - -“I’m sure you look very comfortable,” said Lady Eveley with a maternal -smile. She was bird-like, with an abundance of white hair and a -coquettish little moiré band around her neck to conceal its ruins. When -she smiled, her good will seemed to be reiterated by a series of -wrinkles that extended as far as her forehead. - -“Oh, I’m anything _but!_ First of all I’m dusty, and second of all I’m -parched.” - -“There’ll be a fresh pot in a minute, dear,” said Miriam. “Do sit here.” - -Mrs. Windrom was asking Dare to confirm her statement that the pillars -were Corinthian, which he could not honestly do, and by a monstrous -geographical leap their discussion wandered to a region beyond Girlie’s -focus. “Mother talks architecture as glibly as Baedeker, but she’s -really as ignorant about it as I am,” she assured Dare. “I’ve been -dragged to Italy goodness knows how many times, but the only thing I’m -sure of is the leaning tower of Pisa.” - -Louise presented Dare to Lady Eveley and felt that she was being studied -by Keble’s sister. She went to sit beside Alice near tea, which Miriam -had resuscitated. She gave Miriam’s hand a grateful pat, then turning to -her sister-in-law, expressed the hope that she had found her right room. -“After living so long in a log cabin I assume that everybody will get -lost in this warehouse. Keble is so methodical he refers to right wing -and left wing, like a drill-sergeant. The only way I can remember which -room is which is by the color of the carpet or what you can see from the -windows.” - -Alice was laughing, her amusement being divided between Louise’s -mock-seriousness and the reckless velocity of speech which left no gaps -for replies. She was a dry, alert, lean woman of nearly forty, who -should never have been named Alice. She had none of Keble’s grace, but -something of his openness and discernment. Alice would make as good a -judge as Keble, Louise reflected, but a less merciful jury. As to dress, -she gave Louise the impression of having ordered too much material, and -the white dots in her foulard frock merely emphasized her angles. Her -hair had once been blond like Keble’s, but was now frosted, and arranged -in a fashion that reminded Louise of the magazine covers of her -girlhood. - -When there was a hiatus Alice assured her that they had all been safely -distributed and had spent an hour running back and forth comparing -quarters. “My room has a pale blue and primrose carpet, and I should -think about forty miles of entirely satisfactory view! And gladioli on -the table. How did you know, or did you, that gladioli are my favorite -flowers,—and how did they ever get here?” - -Louise accepted a cup of tea and motioned Dare to a seat nearby. Lady -Eveley joined them and Miriam went out to stroll with the Windroms. - -“I knew you liked them,” Louise replied, “because you once mentioned it -in a letter to Keble; and they grew in the greenhouse, for whose -perfections Mr. Dare is to be thanked. Don’t you think he has done us -rather well?” - -The two women agreed in chorus. Then Alice added, “Father couldn’t -believe his eyes. He remembered the lake from a hunting trip years and -years ago. But when he saw what you and Mr. Dare and Keble have made of -it,—my dear, he almost wants it back!” - -“My husband said you had made the house look like a natural part of the -landscape, Mr. Dare,” Lady Eveley leaned towards him with her timidly -maternal, confidential, richly reiterated little smile. Louise concluded -that her individuality, at its most positive, was never more than an -echo of some other person’s individuality, usually her husband’s. - -“Most houses are so irrelevant to their surroundings,” Alice interposed. -“Our place in Sussex for instance. Of course it has been there since the -beginning of time, and that excuses it, but it’s fearsome to look at, -and would be in any landscape. I wish Mr. Dare would wave his wand over -it.” - -“Alice thinks Keblestone too antiquated,” explained Lady Eveley. “But -her father and I are deeply attached to it, and she and Keble were both -born there. I do hope you will come and stay with us there next summer, -with the baby.” - -“That priceless baby!” Alice exclaimed. “He pulled the most excruciating -faces for us. Then I gave him a beautiful rubber elephant and he flung -it square at his nurse’s eyes,—nearly blinded the poor soul. Where did -you find that nurse, Louise? She’s devotion personified.” - -“He took to his grandfather at once. Sat on his knee and watched him as -though he had never seen anything so curious!” - -“Baby is very rude,” Louise apologized. - -“Brutally candid,” Alice agreed. “If an elephant offends him he throws -it at his nurse, and if a new grandfather is substituted, he solemnly -stares him out of countenance.” - -“We shall spoil him, my dear,” said the monkey’s little grandmother. -“We’re so proud of him.” - -Louise replaced her cup on the table, got up from her chair, and -implanted a playful but wholehearted kiss on the old lady’s forehead. -“I’m dying to see the grandfather who was too big to be flung in Katie’s -eyes,” she announced. “Shall we walk down to the lakeside and meet the -boats? There’s an easy path.” - -She led the way, with Lady Eveley. Two or three times as they descended -the winding path the older woman patted Louise’s arm and smiled, apropos -of nothing, reassuringly. In the end Louise laughed and said, trying to -keep her frankness within gentle bounds, “You know, I’m quite floored by -your friendliness. I’ve been racking my brains to think how I could put -you at your ease, and now I find that everybody’s aim is to put me at -mine. I wish you were going to stay longer. Four days is nothing.” - -“We should love to, my dear, but you see the men have so many speeches -to make, and they must be back on a certain date. It has been very -exciting. All along the way there were deputations to meet the train. -The mayors came and their wives—too amusing! And brought such pretty -flowers. Alice doesn’t object to the cameras at all, though she says her -nose is the only thing that comes out. Alice resents her nose. She says -she wouldn’t mind its size if she didn’t keep _seeing_ it, poor dear -. . . And banquets without end. I don’t see how they find so many -different things to say. My husband just stands up there——” - -“And the words come to him,” interposed Louise “_I_ know.” - -“Isn’t it remarkable? When I can scarcely find enough words to fill up a -letter! I’m terrified when they ask me to speak at the women’s clubs. -Canadian women are so intelligent. And so tireless. Mrs. Windrom is much -better at that kind of thing.” - -“Mrs. Windrom is very clever.” - -“Oh, _very!_ She always remembers names. I don’t, and Alice nudges my -elbow. She is such a good daughter. Never forgets.” - -“Alice seems very alert.” - -“Oh, _very!_” Lady Eveley had a soft little voice and a careful way of -setting down her words, as though they might break. “Very! She takes -after her father. Keble does too, though Keble likes quite a lot of -things I like. Perhaps the baby will take after me. Though I really -don’t see why any one should!” - -Louise had an affectionate smile for this gentle grievance against -creation, and slipped her arm about the black satin waist. “Of course -Baby will take after you, dear,” she promised. “I’ll make him if he -doesn’t naturally. He takes after me when he throws elephants around, -but he takes after his father when he opens his big blue eyes and grins -a trustful, gummy grin. He’s going to be quite like Keble when he -acquires teeth and manners. Katie says so, and she’s the authority on -Baby . . . Perhaps you’ll let me take after you a little, too. But I’m -an awful hoyden.” - -“You’re so clever, aren’t you!” exclaimed Lady Eveley. “We knew it, of -course, from Keble.” - -Louise was serious. “The worst of that,” she mused, “is that clever -people always have a naughty side. And I’m naughty.” - -“But if we were perfect our husbands would find us dull in the long run, -don’t you think?” - -“There’s that, of course,” Louise agreed. How completely every one took -it for granted that there would be a long run! - -They had reached the new boat-slip, and were joined by Mrs. Windrom, -Girlie, and Miriam. Dare and Alice followed, and the talk became -topographical, Mrs. Windrom finding still more objects for Girlie to -look at. Louise felt that Mrs. Windrom was even explaining the landmarks -to her. - -Girlie’s attention, however, kept straying to the boats, which were -hugging the shaded shores and advancing at a leisurely rate. In the -first boat was an object on which Girlie’s eyes could always focus -themselves with an effortless nicety. This object was her fiancé, Ernest -Tulk-Leamington, an oldish young man, who was Lord Eveley’s secretary -and a rising member of the Conservative Party. The first to step out of -the boat, he was followed by Mr. Windrom and a freckled, orange-haired -youth who proved to be Mr. Cutty. - -“Any fish?” cried Mrs. Windrom. Her husband showed signs of becoming -prolix, while Mr. Cutty, behind his back, stole his thunder by -surreptitiously holding up a forked stick on which two apologetic trout -were suspended. - -When the necessary ceremonies were effected, Mr. Windrom declared that -you could never be sure, in untried waters, what flies the fish would -rise to. He went on the principle of using a Royal Coach when in doubt, -but he had tried Royal Coach for an hour without getting a strike, and -had ended by putting out a spinner, by means of which he had caught—— - -He turned. “Those two.” But he saw that the irreverent Mr. Cutty had -already displayed the catch, and he was a little vexed at the -anticlimax, as well as at the showing, which was undoubtedly poor, -viewed against a dark mass of water and mountain, with a half dozen -animated ladies as spectators. Dare had sought Louise’s eyes, and they -smiled at the fulfilment of her fears. - -The second boat was nearing the slip and Louise had a moment in which to -study her father-in-law. It was a reassuring, yet a trying moment, for -she became unnerved and felt suddenly isolated. For two pins she would -have cried. There was no definable reason for the emotion, unless it was -due to her double reaction from the graveyard episode and the -friendliness of her mother-in-law. They were all strangers, even Keble. -In some ways Keble was more of a stranger than Dare,—less an -acquaintance of her most hidden self. Her loneliness was associated, -too, in some vague way with the easy, manly intimacy of the two figures -in the boat, who were links in the chain of her own existence yet so -detached from it. Keble was undeniably an integral part of her identity, -yet as he sat at the oars he seemed to be some attractive young -traveling companion she was destined never to know. - -Lord Eveley, a lean, hale figure in tweeds, a fine old edition of his -son, was reeling in his line, and speaking in a voice which carried -perfectly across the still water. Keble made replies between the slow -strokes of his oars. The yellow had faded from the light, and with its -disappearance the dark shades of the trees took on a richer tone, and -the water turned from glass to velvet. The grey of the pine needles -changed to deep, blackish green, the narrow strip of shallow water was -emerald merging into milky blue, and the pebbles at the bottom were like -ripe and green olives. - -There was a lull in the chatter, and only the faint lapping noise of the -oars broke the stillness. A wave of loneliness had engulfed Louise, -despite the warm little arm that was still resting on hers. By some -considerateness which only Keble seemed to possess, his eyes turned -first of all to her. True, they immediately traveled away towards the -others and his remarks were general, but the first glance had been hers -and it had been accompanied by a quick smile,—a smile which seemed to -condone some lapse of hers; she was too immersed in her present rôle to -recall what the lapse had been. At any rate it was a most timely proof -of Keble’s reliability, and it rescued her. She smiled shyly as Keble -directed his father towards her. - -By one of those mass instincts that sense drama, every one had turned to -watch. Being in the centre of the stage, she forgot her diffidence. - -“Weedgie, here is a father-in-law for you. He’s an indifferent angler, -but a passable sort of pater . . . Father, this is Louise.” - -“Is it really! Upon my soul!” He bestowed a paternal kiss. - -“You seem so surprised!” Louise laughed. “Did you think I was a boy?” - -“By Jove, you know, you might have fooled me if it had been a shade -darker. But if you had, I should have been uncommonly disappointed. -Keble, I take it, makes you disguise yourself in boys’ clothes to -protect you from irresponsible lassos?” - -“Oh dear no, he hates my breeches. Besides, I can protect myself quite -extraordinarily well. The fact is, I’m at a disadvantage in these.” She -was pulling sidewise at “them”. “For when you’re got up as a man you’re -always giving yourself away: your hairpins fall out or you blush. -Whereas in feminine attire you can beat a man at his own game without -his even suspecting you’re using man-to-man tactics. That’s fun.” - -“Yes. I suppose it would be,” agreed Lord Eveley. “Eve did it without -much of either, they say.” - -“They say such shocking things, don’t they! . . . Didn’t you catch _any_ -fish?” - -“Only three. Your better half caught seven,—cheeky young blighter! One -beauty.” - -Mr. Windrom needed to know what they had been caught with. - -“Royal Coach,” said Keble. “It’s the best all round fly.” - -Mr. Windrom was incredulous and pettish. “You must have ’em trained to -follow your boat.” - -“Better luck next time, Mr. Windrom,” Louise ventured. “Keble shall go -in your boat, then they’ll have to bite. Meanwhile please show him how -to make drinkable cocktails. He needs a lesson.” - -She looked at her watch, then smiled at the circle of faces. “It’s just -exactly ‘evening’, so we can consider that the party has arrived. Dinner -is in an hour. Nobody need change unless he wishes. I’m going to turn -back into a woman for dinner, just to prove to my father-in-law what an -awful failure I am as a boy. Meanwhile I’ll race anybody up the hill.” - -“I’m on,” said Mr. Cutty. - -“Me too,” said Dare. - -“Any handicap for skirts?” inquired Alice. - -“Ten yards,” Louise promptly replied. “Measure off ten yards, Keble. -Anybody else?” - -“Come, Girlie,” said Mrs. Windrom. “Any handicap for old age, Louise?” - -“Fifteen yards for any one over thirty-five. Come on Mr. Leamington. -Beat Mr. Dare. He wins everything I go in for . . . Grandfather, you be -starter,—you’re to say one, two, three, go. Miriam dear, you can’t be -in it, for you have to show Grandmother the easy path up. I showed her -down, but one of the many delicious things she told me on the way was -that she forgets things and has to have her elbow nudged.” Louise shot a -bright glance at Lady Eveley. - -“Keble, when you’ve marked off the fifteen, sprint on up the hill and -mark a line on the gravel so we won’t go plunging on the bricks and kill -ourselves . . . Oh!” - -She stopped, and every one, toeing the line, looked around. Her nervous -high spirits were infectious. Even Girlie was excited. Lord Eveley was -holding up his hand in sporting earnest. His wife, under Miriam’s wing, -beamed. - -“I’m trying to think what the prizes will be. Wouldn’t be a race without -prizes. Any suggestions, Mr. Cutty?” - -“Might have forfeits for the first prize, and first go at the billiard -table for another.” - -“Bright head-work, Mr. Cutty. Prizes as follows: the winner must choose -between making a speech at dinner or telling a ghost story before -bedtime. The loser gets his choice between first go at the billiard -table, first choice of horses to-morrow, or ordering his favorite dish -for breakfast,—can’t say fairer than that. But if anybody _tries_ to -lose, God help him! . . . All set, Grandfather!” - -The servants who were arranging the dinner-table thought the party had -gone mad when it came reeling up the slippery grass hill in a hilarious, -panting pell-mell led at first by Mrs. Windrom, who fell back in favor -of Alice Eveley, who in turn was superseded by others. Towards the end -Dare and Mr. Cutty, closely followed by Louise, were leading, then Dare -stumbled and Mr. Cutty toppled into Keble’s arms, the winner. Louise was -weak with laughter at the sight of Mr. Windrom brandishing his fishing -rod and shouting instructions over his shoulder to his faltering -helpmeet. Girlie, her skirts held high, was abreast of Mr. -Tulk-Leamington, whose gallantry interfered with his progress. Alice was -far down the line but doing as well as possible under the disadvantages -of high heels and foulard folds. In the end they all reached the line -but Mrs. Windrom, who had collapsed on the turf, facing a noisily -breathing throng. - -“I’ll have that big trout for breakfast, Louise,” she gasped. “The one -Keble caught. And no one can say I didn’t _try_ to win!” - - 4 - -At breakfast Louise counted votes for a picnic by the river. “Those who -don’t fish,” she suggested, “can sit under the willows and pretend there -aren’t any mosquitoes, or play duck on the rock with Mr. Cutty and me.” - -They had all come down in comically smart riding clothes. Miriam, with -her tanned skin and well-worn khaki, looked like a native in contrast to -Girlie in her grey-green whipcord. Girlie, whose horsemanship had been -loudly heralded, was eager to try out a Mexican saddle. - -Mr. Tulk-Leamington stroked his prematurely bald head. “What will you do -if your pony bucks?” he asked. - -Girlie languidly buttered her toast. “Ernest,” she chided, “you’re -always stirring up mares’ nests.” - -“Dear me!” cried Alice. “Do they buck?” - -“In wild west novels they do,” said Girlie’s fiancé. “What will you do, -Miss Eveley, if yours does?” - -“I shall hang on and scream for Louise.” - -Louise turned the tables on Ernest. “And you?” she inquired. - -Mr. Cutty forestalled him. “He will soar into the firmament. You’ll find -him on some remote tree-top. Can’t you picture a distraught owl trying -to hatch out Ernest’s head!” - -“Mercy!” Lady Eveley exclaimed, in meek distress. “They don’t really try -to throw you, do they, Louise?” - -This caused an uproar. Louise reached across the table to squeeze her -hand. “Of course not, dear. They only try to throw teases like Mr. -Tulk-Leamington and devils incarnate like Mr. Cutty. Sundown is a lamb; -you’ll like him so well that you’ll be sorry when you arrive at the -picnic. Besides I’ll ride beside you all the way.” - -“Sundown wouldn’t throw a fly,” Mr. Cutty broke in. “Mrs. Eveley has to -flick ’em off with her riding crop.” - -Groans drowned this sally and Mr. Cutty nearly lost a spoonful of egg as -a result of a lunge directed at him by the prospective owlet. - -Through the babel, Keble and the older men, having exhausted the -immediate possibilities of prize cattle, were discussing the -half-completed golf course, oblivious to frivolous issues. Only once did -Mr. Windrom seek to intrude, having overheard something about “throwing -a fly,” and this sent the younger generation off into a new gale of -unhallowed mirth. - -Late in the afternoon the picnickers returned in various states of -dampness and soreness, but exuding a contentment for which Louise’s -vigilance was largely responsible. Dare and Mr. Cutty rowed to a -secluded cove to swim; Ernest went to edit his official memoranda; Mrs. -Windrom retired to sleep; Lady Eveley racked her head for words to fill -up a letter; the old men resorted to billiards; and Girlie challenged -Miriam at tennis. - -Louise held court in the kitchen, where she had gone to make some -special pastries and to wheedle, scold, encourage, bully, sting, and -jolly the augmented staff into supreme efforts. She swore that the -future of the Empire hinged on the frothiness of the mousse. The cream -was not to be whipped a minute before eight; the grapes were not to be -dried, but brought in straight from the ice-box in a cold perspiration, -and Gertie was for heaven’s sake not to bump into Griggs on her way to -the side table, as she had the night before. - -When her batter was consigned to the oven she ran out to the greenhouse -for flowers, and saw Keble and his sister stretched in deck chairs near -the tennis court. She waved her shears and speculated as to the subject -of their chat. - -The subject, as she might have guessed, was herself. - -“Why didn’t you give us an inkling?” Alice was saying. “Here you’ve been -married nearly three years, and you’ve kept this spark of the divine -fire all to yourself.” - -Keble smiled with a mixture of affection and faint bitterness. “I didn’t -exactly _keep_ her, old girl. There’s no reason why you and Mother -shouldn’t have got yourself ignited before this.” - -Alice considered. “But we did ask her to come to us.” - -“There are ways and ways of asking. Do you suppose she can’t feel the -difference?” - -Again Alice reflected. “You mean, I suppose, that if you had married -Girlie, for instance, we would have commanded her presence, on pain of -dragging her out of her lair.” - -“I’m glad you see it.” - -“Well, dear, wasn’t it just a bit your fault?” - -“No doubt.” - -“I mean, how were we to know what an original creature you had found out -here? It isn’t reasonable; there can’t be another. We had nothing to go -on but your laconic sketch,—‘wild flowers’, I remember, was your most -enthusiastic description. But there are wild flowers and wild flowers, -you know,—just as there are ‘ways and ways of asking’. There were gaps -and contradictions in your accounts, and the burden of proof rested on -you. We didn’t desire to place you in a false position. Even Claudia -Windrom reported that Louise’s tastes were very western. I might have -known that she was prejudiced, and we certainly ought to have given you -more credit for perspicuity. But men are so blind . . . Then we were -thrown off by Louise’s temperamental trip to Florida. You wrote a -forlorn sort of letter saying that she had gone off on a holiday, and it -was just after we had invited you both to come to the Riviera with us. -That seemed strange.” - -“What did you think I had married, for God’s sake,—an Indian squaw?” - -“Don’t be horrid! . . . We weren’t at all sure you hadn’t married a hand -grenade.” - -Keble laughed. “I’m not at all certain that I haven’t.” - -Alice watched him curiously, then abandoned the flicker of curiosity and -proceeded to give Louise her due. “It’s not so much her -brilliance,—though that’s remarkable,—but her tact! My dear, she could -run a political campaign single-handed. I’ve never seen the Windroms so -beautifully managed in my life. You know _we_ can’t manage them; at our -house one of the trio is always falling out of the picture. But Louise! -the instant she sees an elbow or a leg or a Windromian prejudice -sticking out she flips it back in, or widens the frame to include it, -and nobody the worse. Her way of setting people to rights and making -them feel it is they who are setting everybody else to rights is -_impayable_ . . . And the best you could say for her was wild flowers!” - -“Since Mrs. Windrom was first here a good deal of water has flowed under -the bridges.” - -“I’ll wager it has. Louise wouldn’t be found camping by a stagnant -pool.” - -Again she watched her brother curiously. He was gazing into the -distance, at nothing. - -“Sometimes I feel stagnant beside Louise,” he admitted, put off his -guard by the unwonted charm of a sisterly chat. - -Alice patted his shoulder, with a gesture tender but angular. “Father is -purring with pleasure at the way you’ve stuck to your guns, sonny, -although, naturally, he wouldn’t say so for all the king’s horses and -all the king’s men. In the beginning he used to shake his head in -scepticism and sorrow. Now he never lets a dinner guest get away from -the house without dragging in you and your colonizing enterprise. -Mother, of course, has always doted and still does; but she would have, -if you’d gone in for knife-grinding. She would never conceive the -possibility of any one doubting you. I frankly did,—not you, but your -schemes.” - -“There’s plenty to be done yet,” Keble said. “It will take twenty years. -Sometimes the future looks as steep to me as Hardscrapple.” - -“It won’t look so steep when you’ve got your second wind. I’m full of -rosy hopes for you. What’s more, I’m jolly comfortable here. I thought I -was going to hate it. I’ve been well fed and waited on. I’ve been amused -and sauced by a witty child who isn’t in the least awed by my accursed -standoffishness. I think the most remarkable thing about Louise is that -she is kind, through and through, without _having_ to be; she could -always get her own way without bothering to be kind . . . I’ve also -discovered the thrills of being aunt to the most entrancingly ridiculous -and succulent infant I’ve ever beheld. Most of all I’ve seen Father and -Mother exchanging furtive glances of pride. What more could any old maid -ask for.” - -Miriam and Girlie joined them. “It’s too warm for tennis,” Girlie -complained. “We’re debating whether to go for a swim.” - -Alice thought it an excellent idea, provided she was not included. - -“But these mountain lakes are icy!” Girlie shivered at the thought. - -“Not if you dive in, instead of wading,” said Miriam. “Louise taught me -that.” - -“I’m too tall. I might stick fast. Besides one looks so distressed in -borrowed bathing clothes.” - -“And the only secluded cove is pre-empted!” Keble sympathized. - -“Oh, without a costume I’d be afraid of sinking. It would seem just like -a bath, and one goes straight to the bottom of the bath-tub.” - -The bathing project having died of inanition, Miriam and Girlie went -indoors. - -“I’m trying to think where I’ve seen her before,” Alice said, following -Miriam with her eyes. “I keep associating her in my mind with white -sails, and strawberries. . . . Louise has known her a long while?” - -“For years.” - -“Delightful woman! So sensible. How lucky that she is able to help you -with your accounts. You never could add.” - -“Rather. I don’t know how we could get on without her.” - -“Is she stopping long?” - -“Well, we can’t put her in a pumpkin shell, like Peter, and keep her -forever.” - -“She must feel rather cut off from her own people, out here. Where is -her home?” - -“She used to live in Washington. She has seen what are known as better -days.” - -“One guesses that . . . For heaven’s sake, Keble, who is she? You know -I’m only beating about the bush.” - -“She never speaks of her family. Most of it’s dead.” - -“Cread—Cread.” Alice was lying in wait for an image that kept eluding -her, when suddenly she captured it. “Cowes! Of course. Before the war, -at the Graybridge place . . . You remember Aurelie Graybridge,—she was -Aurelie Streeter of New York. It was a garden party, after a race, and -Admiral Cread was there with the American Ambassador. How stupid of me -to have forgotten! I must remind her.” - -Keble was uneasy. “I don’t think I would, Alice, unless she does first. -She’s uncommonly reticent about herself. She came out here for a -complete change, you see.” - -“No, I don’t see,” said Alice, impatiently. “That’s just the point. But -I’ll hold my tongue . . . I wonder why she hasn’t married.” It always -seemed odd to Alice that other women didn’t marry. “Some man like Dare. -I suppose he’s young for her,—yet not enough to matter.” - -“I’ve thought of that,” Keble reflected. “Discussed it with Louise once. -But they don’t seem to be attracted . . . Dare is a splendid chap. -There’s no resisting him when he gets going. He has given us all a -healthy fillip.” - -“You _have_ been lucky in your companions, you and Louise!” Alice -commented. - -“Rather! Oh, hello, here’s the car with the people from the Valley. -We’re going to show you some natives to-night.” - -“Who is the funny little man in front?” - -“That is the best-informed and most highly esteemed ‘character’ within a -radius of sixty miles,—and incidentally my father-in-law.” - -“The ominous lady in black looks like the Empress Eugénie come back to -mourn her own loss!” - -Keble was puzzled. “I haven’t the faintest notion who she is,—good -Lord! unless it’s Madame Mornay-Mareuil, whom we’ve been expecting off -and on for weeks!” - -They had risen from their chairs. “Go and meet them,” said Alice. “I -shall lie down a while before dressing.” - - - - - CHAPTER II - - -AFTER a hurried knock Louise burst into Miriam’s room. Miriam was seated -before the mirror brushing her reddish-brown hair. “Who do you suppose -has turned up to the feast?” cried Louise, reaching for a chair and -impatiently rescuing the filmy pink draperies of her frock from the -handle of a drawer. “Aunt Denise, straight from Quebec! After all these -months of dilly-dallying she stalks in when we’re having a reunion of -the men her husband spent half his editorial and political career in -insulting!” - -“Why didn’t she telegraph?” - -“Too stingy,—heaven forgive me for saying it,—and too old-fashioned. -She arrived with Papa and the Bootses and Pearl and Amy Sweet. They were -stuffed into the car like flowers in a vase, her trunk lashed on behind. -Papa tried to telephone, but Aunt Denise said if her own niece couldn’t -take her in without being warned, she wouldn’t come at all. That’s her -spirit. What am I to do?” - -“Have you explained the situation to her?” - -“Does one try to explain red to a bull?” - -“Then tip the others off. We’ll have to engage her on safe subjects.” - -“If you _would_ Miriam. In French,—for she hates English. She behaves -as though French were the official language of Canada. . . I’ve been -waiting for something to go wrong, and now it will. ‘Claudia dear’ was -difficult enough. There’s no keeping that woman off a scent.” - -“What scent?” - -Louise was vexed at her slip. “Oh, scents in general. Yours in -particular is most refreshing. Is that the Coty?” - -Without waiting for an answer she plunged on. “Now I’ll have to -rearrange the seating. If I put Aunt Denise near Grandfather she may -scalp him. His triumphant progress across the continent must have rubbed -her the wrong way . . . I’ll have enough on my hands without that. If -Papa drinks one glass too many he’ll tease Aunt Denise about the Pope. -And the Bootses are fanatical teetotallers, and I wouldn’t put it past -them to dash the glass from old Papa Windrom’s lips!” - -“Make me the spare woman,” Miriam offered. “That will leave me free to -shush Pearl and prompt Mrs. Brown. I’ll watch you for cues.” - -Louise gave herself a final glance in the cheval glass, pulled Miriam’s -skirt straight, and left a grateful kiss on her forehead to dispel any -questioning trend that might have lingered as a consequence of the -inadvertent “scent”. Then she made her way downstairs to readjust the -place cards which Dare had decorated with appropriate caricatures. - -This done she stepped out on the terrace. Dare was there, leaning -against the parapet. He offered her a cigarette and lit it in silence. - -“There’s a dreadful ordeal ahead of you,” said Louise, sending a little -cloud of smoke skyward. - -“I’m getting used to ordeals,” he replied. - -“This is a new kind. You have to take the pastor’s wife in to dinner.” - -“I shall ask her to rescue my soul from the devil.” - -“She will be glad of the occasion.” - -In his eyes there was a shadow of the glance that had proved -epoch-making the day before. “On second thoughts,” he added, “I shall do -no such thing. The devil is welcome to it.” He looked away, and Louise -for once could find nothing to say. “Except,” Dare finally resumed, -“that he won’t have it at any price. Neither will God. That leaves me on -my own.” - -“Isn’t that——” Louise began, in a low voice, then was conscious of a -step. Turning, she saw Mrs. Windrom, in purple satin, advancing from the -front terrace, pinning to her corsage a pink rose which drew attention -to the utterly unflowerlike character of her face. The last rays of the -setting sun fell full upon the lenses of the pince-nez which Louise was -once “too damn polite” to smash. - -“What have you two got your heads together about?” she inquired with an -archness that suited her as little as the rose. - -“A plot,” Louise replied, holding out a hand to Mrs. Windrom, and noting -with a little pang the half cynical smile which Dare allowed himself on -seeing the ease of her transition. As if good acting were necessarily a -sin of insincerity! - -“We’re terrifically mixed to-night, and owing to the unforeseen arrival -of my aunt I’ve had to throw everybody up in a blanket and pair them as -they came down. I’ve done what your clever son calls playing fast and -loose with the social alphabet: natives paired with dudes, atheists with -Methodist ministers, teetotallers with bibbers, socialists with -diehards. And all my tried and true friends have a duty to -perform,—namely to keep the talk on safe ground. Poor Aunt Denise, you -know, is the widow of that old man who was fined a dollar for libeling -the king.” - -During the last few weeks Mrs. Windrom had acquired a smattering of -Canadian political history. Louise felt her stiffen. - -“Aunt Denise has always lived under a cloud of illusions. First of all -in convents, then with her husband whom she transformed from a village -lawyer into a national _enfant terrible_. She wouldn’t believe a word -against him, and I think it showed rather a fine spirit. We all idolize -our husbands in some degree, though some of us take more pains not to -show it.” Louise let this remark sink in, and felt Mrs. Windrom’s -shining lenses turn towards Dare, whose gaze was negligently resting on -the opposite shore of the lake. “Consequently, if Aunt Denise should let -her illusions get the better of her tact, I do hope you two will help -change the subject.” - -Mrs. Windrom enjoyed conspiracies. “You may count on me, my dear,” she -replied. “Now I must run up and see if my husband has lost his collar -buttons as usual.” - -Mrs. Windrom looked at the clock on the drawing-room mantle, crossed to -a window to watch the retreating figures of Louise and Dare, then went -towards the great square hall with its rough rafters and balcony, its -shining floor, fur rugs and trophies of Keble’s marksmanship. For no -ulterior reason, but simply because she could not resist an open door, -she peeked into the dining-room, then walked upstairs. - -She had timed her visit to a nicety. Her husband’s tie was being made -into a lopsided bow. - -“Sore?” he asked, when she had straightened it. - -“A little. But I’m used to western saddles. Madame Mornay-Mareuil has -suddenly turned up. Louise is in a panic. For heaven’s sake don’t talk -politics. I can’t see why you leave the cuff buttons till _after_ you’ve -got your shirt on. It’s so simple to put them in beforehand.” - -“Simple, old girl; I just forget, that’s all.” - -“What I can’t make out . . . now I’ve bent my nail! . . . is Louise’s -treatment of Keble.” - -“What treatment?” - -“I mean she ignores him.” - -“Have you seen my other pump?” - -“Do stand still. In favor of the handsome architect.” - -“Steady on, Claudia dear. You’ve already dug up one scandal here. Isn’t -that enough?” - -“Scandal?” - -“Didn’t you tell me the good-looking secretary was making eyes at -Keble?” - -Mrs. Windrom was indignant. “Most certainly not!” - -“Well, those may not be the words you used. But the idea never came into -my head all on its own.” - -This was highly plausible. Tremendous ideas regarding revenues and -tariffs found their way unaided into Mr. Windrom’s head, but not ideas -having to do with illicit _oeillades_. - -“If you deliberately choose to distort my words!” said Mrs. Windrom. - -“I don’t choose to distort anything; I was only looking—Here I am like -‘my son John’ and it’s going on for eight.” - -Mrs. Windrom tranquilly fished a pump from under a discarded garment -which had been allowed to fall to the floor. - -“Have you your handkerchief?” - -Mr. Windrom nodded and followed his wife out to the balcony, which -overlooked the hall. He was rubbing his hands together in anticipation -of a cocktail when his wife seized his arm. - -A tall, elderly woman in a trailing gown of rusty black crossed the -balcony with a slow stride and descended the stairs. She had large black -eyes, a high nose, and tightly drawn white hair streaked with black. - -“Lady Macbeth!” whispered Mr. Windrom, tapping his wife’s arm and making -a face like some sixty-year-old schoolboy. “Mum’s the word, eh? _De -mortuis_——” - -Mrs. Windrom was nettled. “What I can’t make out,” she said, “is how a -squat little doctor could have a sister like that!” - -“You’re always running on to things you can’t make out Claudia. It’s -scarcely for want of trying.” - -“I have to keep my eyes open for two, for you never see anything, and -Girlie’s blind to things she should see. If she’d had a little of -Louise’s vim four years ago——” - -Mr. Windrom came to a halt and made a queer grimace. - -“What’s the matter?” - -“I forgot my handkerchief.” - -“Really, Charles! If I reminded you once I reminded you a dozen times.” - -Mr. Windrom sneezed, loud and long, and turned back towards his room. -“Come now, Claudie,” he protested, “make it six.” - - 2 - -Miriam, on the heels of the Windroms, paused to look over the railing of -the balcony. All her coaching had been leading up to this event, and -there was Louise acquitting herself with a virtuosity that effaced -Miriam from this setting as completely as Fate had effaced her from her -own. - -The grey-blue twilight which came through open doors and windows dimmed -the orange of the lamps. An incredibly regal personage dominated the -assembly, and above a discreet hum Miriam heard a penetrating, -dark-toned voice saying, “_Vous allez me pardonner, ma chère Louise, -d’être descendue un peu en retard. J’ai du défaire une malle. Voilà six -jours que je voyage sans changer de robe. Vous jugerez si je suis -contente d’être installée—et dans quel petit palais! Maintenant vous -allez me présenter ces dames._” - -Slim and brown, nimble and compact, Louise brought her guests in turn to -Madame Mornay-Mareuil. Miriam was annoyed that Louise should have failed -to recognize in her trying aunt a grande dame of unchallenged authority. -With instinctive deference, the company had grouped itself about her, -and Miriam smiled with a trace of vindictive satisfaction, for she had -been as quick as Louise to resent the unconscious patronage in Girlie -Windrom’s way of beginning a remark with, “Of course, out _here_——” - -She went to Dare, who was standing aloof, near a window. “Have you -kissed the queen’s hand?” she inquired. - -“Not yet . . . The little doctor seems to have put one over on the -Eveleys!” Dare’s lips went down with a cynical humor which Miriam noted -as new. There was also something new in his eyes. “I for one,” he said, -“am glad.” - -“Why?” - -“Simply in the name of poetic justice. It’s time Mrs. Eveley got a bit -of her own back,—and Boadicea there will get it for her with a -vengeance.” - -Miriam gave him a smiling nod and went to obey Louise’s summons. - -Dismayed by the astonished hush which had fallen over the hall when Aunt -Denise had appeared on the staircase and come slowly towards her, Louise -had quickly appreciated the dramatic value of the intrusion, and when -she had manoeuvred every one safely to the table she acknowledged that -the preliminary touch of solemnity had given her dinner party a tone -which, instead of diminishing, would incalculably augment the triumph -she had, for months now, determined that it should be. She had known -Aunt Denise only as a formidable quantity in her background, an aunt she -had seen during a single summer, after her mother’s death, but with whom -she had corresponded in a sentimental desire to maintain contact with -the only relative she could claim, except for some half mythical cousins -in Dublin. That her letters to Aunt Denise and her gifts of needlework -had been seeds sown on fertile ground was now abundantly manifest; for -Aunt Denise had assumed a protective kinship and had made that -mysterious kind of “impression” of which she herself, for all her -success, would never learn the secret. - -Of the whole company only Girlie, with her defective focusing apparatus, -had failed to pay immediate homage. In a pretty white dress, she had -perfunctorily acknowledged Aunt Denise’s graciousness and begun to turn -away, when the old lady transfixed her with relentless black eyes. “I -suppose it is the fashion to walk with a bend nowadays,” Aunt Denise had -said. “It doesn’t give the lungs a chance.” - -Girlie had blushed and straightened, but Aunt Denise had withdrawn her -eyes and turned them more charitably on little Mrs. Brown. - -A stock soup had been simmering on the back of the stove for two weeks. -By the time she had tasted it, and found it perfect, Louise’s spirits -were at their highest voltage, and her eyes flashed down the table till -they encountered Miriam’s, which gave back a signal of felicitation. -Miriam, between Dare and Jack Wallace, was beating time to an argument -sustained by Lord Eveley and Pearl Beatty against Mr. Windrom and Amy -Sweet, the latter lending her aid in the form of giggles, for which -three sips of wine,—the first in her life, and drunk in open contempt -of the pledge Mrs. Boots had once persuaded her to sign,—were -responsible. - -Aunt Denise was getting acquainted with Keble, treating him with a -respect that struck Louise as being inherently French. She wondered -whether French women had a somewhat more professional attitude towards -males than women of other races. Keble looked happy, but his French was -buckling under the strain, and Aunt Denise did him the honor of -continuing the conversation in English, an important concession. - -Of all the scraps of talk Louise could overhear, the scrap which most -gratified her,—and she wondered why it should,—was a homely exchange -in which her father and Lady Eveley were engrossed. “It’s the pure -mountain air,” Dr. Bruneau was explaining. “He couldn’t have a better -climate to commence life in.” - -“That’s what my husband was saying. You know, when Keble was ten months -old we took him to Switzerland——” - -“Isn’t it, Mrs. Eveley?” broke in a voice at Louise’s right. - -“Isn’t what, Mr. Boots? Mr. Cutty was pounding with his fork and I -didn’t hear.” - -“Had to pound,” Mr. Cutty defended himself, “to drown Ernest. He’s -telling Mrs. Brown I stole plums from her garden.” - -“Well, didn’t you?” - -“But justice is justice, and the point is, so did Ernest,—and his were -riper!” - -Louise leaned towards Mrs. Brown, “Do spray arsenic on the rest of the -plums dear, and abolish Mr. Cutty. Wasn’t what what, Mr. Boots?” - -Mrs. Windrom forestalled him. “Mr. Boots tells me that the settlers are -all turning socialists because farming doesn’t pay. Do you mean to say -you make no effort to combat such a state of affairs?” - -“I dare say we ought to take more interest in politics.” - -Mrs. Boots, who was beyond Mr. Cutty, left Dare long enough to -interpose, “Why not persuade Mr. Eveley to be a candidate in the coming -elections?” - -Dare had seized his reprieve to whisper to Miriam, “Does all this, -to-night, make you feel fearfully alone?” - -Miriam looked up as though he had startled into flight some bird of -ill-omen, but made no reply. - -Dare leaned a little closer. “I fancy we’re lonely for rather similar -reasons.” - -Miriam hesitated. “First of all I’m not sure what you mean. Second, if -you mean what I dare say you do,—aren’t you rather bold?” - -“Oh yes,” he replied. “Very likely.” - -He returned to his glass, then added, “Your acknowledgment that I was -bold satisfies me of the accuracy of my guess. As we were in the same -boat I couldn’t resist the temptation of bidding for a crumb of -commiseration. It would have been reciprocal. So my boldness wasn’t more -rude than it was humane.” - -“You’re excused,” said Miriam, “under the First Offenders Act.” - -Girlie Windrom, in a commendable spirit, took an opportunity to express -the hope that Madame Mornay-Mareuil, her vis-à-vis, had not found the -long train journey too fatiguing. - -Madame recounted her impressions of the trip and found that Lord Eveley -was in agreement with her regarding the exorbitant prices charged in -western hotels. Accustomed as he was to express his opinions in public -platform style, he soon had Keble’s half of the table as audience, while -Louise gathered in loose threads of talk at her end. The back of her -dinner was now broken and she was standing with one foot triumphantly -resting on its prostrate form. When the ices arrived she couldn’t resist -announcing that the accompanying cakes had been made by herself. The -exclamations were silenced by Aunt Denise who lifted her voice to -complain of Louise’s cheer. - -“Your table groans with luxuries, my child. You have forgotten the -lessons in thrift I taught you when you were a girl.” - -For the first time the little doctor turned from Lady Eveley. “I am to -blame for that,” he said. “You see, sister, after you had left us, Nana -and Louise tried to make me eat wooden cakes made without eggs, -according to your instructions. I can’t digest wood, so I extracted from -Louise’s curly head, one by one, all the notions you had put into it, -and we lived extravagantly ever after,—it’s a sinful world, _va_.” - -To soften for his sister the laughter that greeted his defense of -Louise, Dr. Bruneau added, “With you it was different, since those who -have rich spiritual lives don’t need rich food. Louise and I, poor -heathens, had nothing to indulge but our appetites.” - -“You are free to do so,” returned Aunt Denise, in no wise discomfited. -“My lessons were only the principles of economy and sacrifice our mother -had taught me, the principles which, if you remember, _mon frère_, made -it possible for you and me to have an education.” - -The company seemed relieved to find that royalty could, on occasion, be -“answered back”, and Lord Eveley’s hearty laugh at the mischievous but -not unkind sally had been followed by a scrutinizing glance which hinted -that the statesman had found a mind worth exploring. - -By the time the fruit had appeared, duly perspiring, Louise had only two -worries left. First, the quiescence of the Windroms smote her -conscience: she felt that she had been gratuitous in warning Mrs. -Windrom, while leaving Aunt Denise a license to talk which Aunt Denise -had been well-bred enough not to abuse. Second, she was not entirely -easy in her mind regarding Dare’s silence. He had done his duty by the -pastor’s wife, yet there was some boding unhappiness in his manner. -Before the house was opened Dare had always set the key. Under the old -conditions he would have taken the whole company into his hands and -played with them. And while his moodiness was, in one sense, a deeply -stirring tribute, at the same time there was in it something which made -her feel remorseful, and afraid,—not for herself. It was as though her -conscience were pointing out to her the consequences of extravagance in -her moral kitchen. In the intellectual cakes she had baked for herself -and Dare there had perhaps been too many emotional ingredients. They -were rich and many had been eaten. Dare was conceivably experiencing -this evening the ill effects. - -In the midst of her reflections Lord Eveley surprised her by rising and -delivering a little speech which was at the same time a dedication of -the house and a tribute to its mistress. Anything in the nature of -orthodox ceremony intimidated her. There were toasts,—and Miriam had -never told her what one was supposed to do in such a contingency. -Moreover she hadn’t meant to drink her last glass of wine, and rather -dazedly wished she hadn’t. - -After dinner the company divided for bridge and dancing, and Louise -seized a moment to lay a sympathetic hand on Dare’s coat-sleeve. - -“Are you so bored?” she whispered. - -“It’s not your fault,” he replied, and the unsmiling negligence of his -manner bore witness to the ease with which he and Louise could fit into -each other’s mood. - -“It won’t last much longer,” she said. “It” referred to the house party, -but Dare chose to misinterpret. - -“No,” he replied, “I’m going to Japan.” - -Her eyes fell. When she raised them again she noticed, with a chill, -that Mrs. Windrom, from the opposite corner, had been watching their -tête-à-tête with hawklike vigilance. - -“Come and dance,” she said, drawing him toward the hall. - -There another little shock was in store for her. Alice Eveley, flushed -and flattered after a dance with Jack Wallace, was proceeding across the -room, when suddenly she stopped short and chose a new direction. - -On looking towards Alice’s abandoned goal to see what had caused her to -change her mind, Louise observed that Keble and Miriam were absorbed in -an unsmiling tête-à-tête of the kind that had made Mrs. Windrom feign a -sudden interest in Mrs. Brown’s cameo brooch. - -She raised her arms for her partner’s embrace, and was swept into the -dance. - - - - - CHAPTER III - - -THREE days later Louise stood on the terrace watching the departure of -her guests. As the last car disappeared into the pines she thought of -the day when Walter and his mother drove away from the cottage which she -had named “Sans Souci.” On that day she had tensely waited for some -sympathetic sign from Keble, and he had withheld it. Now she knew that -the balance was changed, that Keble was waiting for a sign from her. Yet -all she could say was, “Thank God, that’s over!” - -Recently she had had no time to project her thoughts into the future. -Until this family reunion was safely thrust into the past she had -schooled herself to be patient, as she had done under the constraint of -approaching motherhood. Both events she had regarded as primary clauses -in her matrimonial pact, and the reward she had promised herself for -executing them was complete moral freedom. She would admit nothing more -binding in the pact, for she had made a point of benefiting as little as -possible from it. If Keble had provided her with a home, she had managed -it skilfully for him. If he had placed his bank account at her disposal, -she had gone disproportionately deep into her own. An element unforeseen -in the pact was that either party to it might, in the process of -carrying out its clauses, develop personal resources for which the other -could have little use but which, on sheer grounds of human economy, -ought not to be allowed to remain unmined. - -Keble had warned her that grappling with ideas might end in one of the -ideas knocking her on the head. Which was nonsense. The danger lay not -in grappling with ideas but in trying to dodge them, in letting them -lurk in your neighborhood ready to take you unawares. If you went at -them with all your might they were soon overpowered. - -Yet going at them brought you face to face with other ideas lurking -farther along the path, and before you knew it you were in a field where -no one,—at times not even Dare—was able or cared to follow. And at the -prospect of forging on alone your imagination staggered a little; an -unwelcome emotion,—unwelcome because more fundamental than you had been -willing to admit,—surged up and insisted that nothing in life was worth -striving for that carried you out of the warmth of the old community of -affection. For, whatever might be achieved through adventuring in wider -fields, a catering to new minds would be entailed, an occasional leaning -upon new arms, homage from new eyes and hearts. That was inevitable, -since human beings were of necessity social. And the overwhelming pity -of it was that you would always be conscious that the neatest mind in -the world, though not the broadest, the most comfortable arms, though -not the most expert, the most candid blue eyes, though not the most -compelling, were those of the man from whom your adventurousness had -drawn you away. The thought of entirely outgrowing them gave you a -chill. When you had penetrated further into the forest of life’s -possibilities you couldn’t go on indefinitely playing hide and seek -among the trees with that old companion. He would stop at the edge of -the forest, and you must make your way through it, alone. - -As Louise sat on the terrace, a little weary after the continuous -tension, recalling the appealing droop of Keble’s lips as he had turned -away from her a few minutes before, she was obliged to face the fact -that some chord within her had responded to the appeal, despite her -stern censorship. She was obliged to admit that even when her path -became definitely distinct from Keble’s, when she should finally throw -all the weight of her personality into a passion worthy of her emotional -possibilities, or that failing, into some project so vital that she -would become oblivious to the trifles that filled so much of Keble’s and -Miriam’s attention, she would not be able to extinguish the fragrance of -the flower of sentiment that Keble had been the first to coax into -blossom. Her feeling toward any new friend who might tread her path -would exhale the odor of the phial of affection labelled “Keble”, though -that phial lay on a neglected shelf. - -Even in the recklessness that had overtaken her beside Billy’s grave, -there had been some purring _obligato_, a running commentary to the -effect that her wanton experiment was in Keble’s name, that all the -thrills in the universe were reducible to the quieter terms of mere -charm, that all the charming things in life were reducible to “Keble”, -and it was inherent in the nature of charm that it could not be captured -and possessed, except in symbols, or by proxy. One could be so -profoundly loyal to one’s personal conception of life,—a conception -which exacted unflinching courage at the approach of new ideas and high -venturesomeness in tracking down concealed ideas,—that one could accept -clues from a stranger even though the accepting might involve a breach -of what the world called constancy. Incidentally, the fact that her -first breach, whatever it may have meant to Dare, was an erotic fiasco -as far as she was concerned, had by no means discountenanced further -experimentation. Life should pay her what it owed her, even if she had -to pay heavy costs in collecting her due. - -On making the shocking discovery that marriage was no solution of her -destiny, she had vigorously bestirred herself, only to make the even -more shocking discovery that she was shedding her husband as a -caterpillar sheds its cocoon. Now, poised for flight, she could cherish -a tender sentiment for the cocoon but could scarcely fold her wings and -crawl back into it. - -She recalled the cruel little poem, still unaccounted for, which had -thrown open a door in her mind. - - _For, being true to you,_ - _Who are but one part of an infinite me,_ - _Should I not slight the rest?_ - -Those lines had come at her with a reproachful directness. In them, or -rather in the blue pencil which marked off the poem on its printed page, -she had read Keble’s impatience with her limitations. Her reason had -seen in the lines a justification against which her heart rebelled. From -that moment she had been disciplining her heart. So effectively indeed, -that now,—were it not for that appealing little droop and for the -sentimental fragrance which still clung to her,—she might have flung -the poem at him and cried, “_Voilà la monnaie de ta pièce_. I’ve learned -my lesson in bitter thoroughness. Now it is I who point to ‘rude -necessary heights’ intent upon a goal _you_ are unable to see.” - -The nature of the goal was not clear even to herself, nor could she -exactly define the help that Dare had given her in mounting towards it. -Certainly the upward journey had been easier since he had first -appeared, and certainly her climbing prowess had seemed more notable in -moments when she and Dare on some high ledge of thought had laughingly -looked down at Keble and Miriam exchanging mystified glances, in which -admiration for the agility of the two on the ledge was blended with -misgivings as to the risks they ran. - -Although she was lured upward by the hope of wider views, there were -times when she scrambled and leaped for the mere joy of climbing. There -were other times when she was intoxicated by a sense of the vastness of -causes to be advocated and the usefulness of deeds to be done. She had -visions of jumping up on platforms and haranguing masses of people till -they, too, were drunk with the wine of their own potentialities. She had -only the sketchiest notion of what she or they were to accomplish. The -nearest she came to a definite program was the vision of a new -self-conscious world blossoming forth into unheard-of activity, giving -birth to new institutions and burying the old. Any cause would be hers -provided it were intelligent, energetic, and comprehensive. In the joy -of being awake she needed to rouse the world from its lethargy, make it -cast away its crutches. In her consciousness of rich personal resources -she needed to make everybody else dig up the treasures latent within -themselves. Most of all, she desired that the world should “get on”, -that its denizens should abandon their moral motorcars and leap into -moral aeroplanes until something still more progressive could be -devised. - -Despite the vagueness of her goal there was no lack of impetus in her -pursuit of it, and every day, on a blind instinct which she had learned -to revere, she did deeds in point, deeds which, when done, proved to be -landmarks, in a perfect row, on her route towards the unknown -destination. This encouraged her to believe that the future would help -her by showing a tendency to create itself. - -The visit of Keble’s family had proved a negative hint as to the nature -of her goal, for clearly her direction was not to be one that led into a -bog of kind, complacent social superiorishness. Whatever errors she -might make she would not end by being gently futile, like her -mother-in-law; she would not turn into a wet blanket like Girlie, nor a -noisy, nosy Christmas-cracker like Mrs. Windrom. Alice Eveley had been -the most satisfactory woman of the four, yet Louise particularly hoped -she would not land in Alice’s bog; for Alice, while intelligent, had -turned none of her intelligence to account; while bright, she shed only -a reflected light; while frank, she could politely dissemble when -downrightness would have been more humane; and while sympathetic, she -held to conventions which had it in them to insist upon mercilessness. -Alice was, one could sincerely admit, a jolly good sort, but only -because she had not opposed favoring circumstances of birth, wealth, and -privilege. Girlie was a less jolly good sort because she had avoided -even the gentle propelling force of favoring circumstances and loitered -in back eddies,—she had been “dragged” to Italy, for instance, and had -brought back no definite impression save that of a campanile which had -made recollection easy for her by leaning! Alice at least floated down -the middle of the stream. But neither had struck out for herself, and -Louise’s complete approval was reserved for people who swam. In that -respect the men of the party had had more to commend them. - -But even the men moved in a hopelessly restricted current. One could -point out so many useful directions in which they wouldn’t dream of -venturing. That was where Dare had shown to advantage. Even though Dare -had kept his tongue in his cheek, his real superiority had been manifest -to Louise. Compared to Mr. Windrom, a renowned old Tory, Dare was a -comet shooting past a fixed star. Mr. Windrom had undoubtedly swum, but -only in the direction of the political current in which his fathers had -immersed him. Dare, like herself, had swum against the current. Like -herself and her father and Aunt Denise and misguided Uncle -Mornay-Mareuil, Dare had emerged from obscurity and poverty. She and -Dare had swum to such good purpose that they had attained the smoothly -running stream that bore on its bosom the most highly privileged members -of civilization. And while momentarily resting, they had caught each -other’s eyes long enough to exchange, with a sort of astonished grunt, -“Is _this_ all!” Was it to be expected that they should stop swimming -just because every one else was contented with civilization’s meandering -flow? To have done so would have been to degrade the valor that had gone -into their efforts thus far. - -Yet the mere fact that they had reciprocated a glance of intelligence -had been pounced upon by one of the privileged members as evidence of -treasonous dissatisfaction with the meandering current, and Mrs. -Windrom’s last words to her, pronounced in a voice which every one was -meant to hear, were, “Do say good-bye to Mr. Dare for me. I’m sorry he’s -not well; but I know what a devoted nurse you will be.” - -Of course Alice and Lady Eveley and Miriam and all the others _might_ -have good enough memories to associate Mrs. Windrom’s remark with -Walter’s accident, but the chances were that they would not, and that -left in their minds an equivocal association between her devotion as -nurse and the particular case of Dare’s indisposition. Louise was aware -that Mrs. Windrom meant her remark to convey this hint, and while she -didn’t care a tinker’s dam for Mrs. Windrom’s approval, she did object -to underhandedness. - -Walter had swum, and although he might not have the prowess of herself -and Dare, still he had shown enough independence of the complacent -stream to qualify in the class which included Dare, herself, and,—by a -narrow margin,—Keble and Miriam. For Miriam had not merely floated. If -she had not made as good progress as Walter or Keble, she was none the -less to be commended for the distances she had covered, for Miriam was -handicapped in having no family or money to lean back on in moments of -fatigue and discouragement. - -Alice had lost some of her standing with Louise by saying to Miriam -before departing, “I hope we shall see something of each other in the -future, Miss Cread. I take it that you will be returning east this -autumn.” - -It was natural enough for Alice to “take it” that Miriam would be -returning. But, in the light of that trifling episode during the dance, -Louise felt that Alice’s express assumption of Miriam’s departure was -almost a hint; and having learned to read Miriam’s countenance, she was -almost sure that Miriam had felt the remark to be, if not a hint, at -least a warning. And that Louise resented; for the fact that Alice had -not been born athletic enough to strike out for herself gave her no -right to curb the athleticism of others. And if it was a warning, and if -Alice justified it to herself on the score of sisterly protection, then -how did Alice justify her many sisterly neglects? Louise felt that if -she had been in Alice’s place when Keble, sick of the war, had first -struck out into the wilds, no power on earth could have prevented her -from following at his heels to fry bacon over his camp fires. If she had -had a brother she would have guarded and bullied and slaved for him with -the single object of making him what Minnie Hopper as a little girl -would have called “the champeen king of the circus.” - -Whether Miriam’s continued sojourn was in the best interests of all -concerned was another matter. Obviously Miriam, despite her protests, -desired to stay. But that was none of Alice Eveley’s business. It was a -matter for Miriam alone to decide, and she should not be hampered in her -decision. In a sense it was Keble’s business too. Certainly not his -wife’s, though long before Keble’s sister had appeared on the scene, -Louise had sometimes arrested herself, as Alice had done, and chosen a -different course in order not to break in on some apparent community of -interest between her husband and Miriam Cread. - -A perambulator appeared at the corner of the terrace, propelled by a -stolid nursemaid. The monkey, rosy and fat, was making lunges at a white -hillock in his coverings which he would have been surprised to know was -his own foot. On seeing his mother he abandoned the hillock to give her -a perky inspection. His bonnet had slid down over one eye, and the tip -of his tongue protruded at the opposite corner of his mouth. - -Louise broke into a laugh. “Katie! Make that child put in his tongue or -else straighten his hat. He looks such an awful rake with both askew.” - -Katie missed the fine point of the monkey’s resemblance to a garden -implement, but, as Dare had recognized, Katie was as immortal in her -ignorance as philosophers are in their erudition. She straightened the -monkey’s headgear, this adjustment being less fraught with complications -than an attempt to reinstate his tongue. - -“His granpa and gramma come into the nursery before breakfast,” Katie -proudly announced. “They said it was to give me a present, which they -done,—but it was really to see the monkey again.” - -Louise had risen and gone over to shake the white hillock, an operation -which revived the monkey’s interest in that phenomenon. - -“Any one would think he was _their_ baby!” she said sharply. - - 2 - -As she was turning to go into the house she met Miriam, whose face was -anxious. “Oh, there you are,” Miriam began. “I wish you would go up to -Dare. They can’t make him drink the things you left for him. Now he’s -arguing with Aunt Denise, who says he’s in a fever. He says he’s not, -and he’s saying it with feverish intensity.” - -Louise gave a start. “Miriam! Papa had two cases of smallpox a few weeks -ago. Those Grays, you know,—down the river.” - -“Wasn’t it one of the Gray girls that Dare rescued the day we went to -Deer Spring? She had climbed a tree and couldn’t get down.” - -They hurried upstairs. “You wait here,” Louise ordered, leaving Miriam -at the door of the bedroom. - -“Thank God it’s you,” said a half delirious voice, as she appeared, and -Dare sank back into bed. - -Louise made a rapid diagnosis, then turned to Aunt Denise. “I think it’s -smallpox,” she whispered. “Will you fumigate the nursery? You’ll find -everything in the medicine chest. I’ll have him moved to one of the -cabins. _Je sais ce qu’il faut faire._” - -There was no timorousness in Aunt Denise. A competent, strong woman -herself, she took competence and strength and a stern sense of duty for -granted in any member of her family. - -When she had gone Louise went to the door to report to Miriam. “Get -somebody to take a few blankets over to your old cabin. Then find Mr. -Brown and have him send up some sort of stretcher. Mrs. Brown will help -you straighten the cabin and build a fire to air it. Then telephone -Papa.” - -“What are you going to do?” Miriam ventured. - -“Nurse. There’s no one else. Besides he wouldn’t obey a stranger. You -won’t mind keeping an eye on the house, will you? Don’t let Aunt Denise -be too thrifty. Above all, keep Keble from fretting. He rears like a -horse when he’s frightened.” - -“But can you keep from catching it?” - -“I can do anything I make up my mind to. Now hurry, dear.” - -Miriam was seriously alarmed, yet Louise’s confidence was tonic. -Moreover this development gave her an elasticity of motion of which she -was a little ashamed. - -When Keble returned for luncheon he found the table set on the terrace -and a strong odor of disinfectants issuing from the house. Miriam -explained, and although Keble was familiar with his wife’s rapidity of -organization, he was bewildered to find that she was installed in a -cabin across the lake, and that his first visit to her was already -scheduled. He was to accompany Miriam in the launch at three. Louise -would talk to them from the boat-slip, where they would leave supplies. - -“That’s all very well,” he agreed. “But what about Louise?” - -“Nurses always protect themselves,” Miriam reassured him. “And Louise -would be the last woman to make a blunder.” - -It was harder than she had foreseen to keep Keble from panic, for every -reassuring remark seemed merely to arouse new images of disaster. He was -sorry for Dare but considered it clumsy of him to have collected Thelma -Gray’s germs. - -“You would have done the same,” Miriam reminded him. - -“But I wouldn’t have gone prowling bareheaded all over the northwest -after a warm evening of dancing,” he said with a sharper accent. - -Miriam had been sleepless after the dinner party, and at dawn from her -window had seen Dare, dishevelled, cross the meadow through the wet -grass and let himself into the house. It came to her as a shock that -Keble had witnessed this incident, of which no mention had been made. -Had Keble, too, spent a sleepless night? Had that any bearing on his -habit, more conspicuous of late, of nervously whistling, and leaving his -seat to wander about the house? Miriam was a little unstrung and was -grateful for the presence of Aunt Denise, whose rigidity held the -household together, even if it occasionally stood in the way of a free -and easy routine. - -Miriam and Keble were at pains to conceal from each other their -consternation at the situation created by Louise’s prompt retirement -into quarantine. Aunt Denise, the most straight-laced person at -Hillside, was probably the only person in the neighborhood who took -Louise’s step as matter of course. Keble was proud of his wife’s medical -talent; it emphasized her womanliness, and it was the essentially -feminine qualities in Louise which he had unflaggingly admired. Yet he -was tormented by the thought of her self-imposed duties, and if he had -had to choose a patient for her he would probably have chosen anyone -rather than Dare. He was also angry at her unconditional veto on a -trained nurse from Harristown. - -To Louise the fitness of her conduct was a matter of so little -consequence that it did not enter her head. In the beginning she saw -that she would have a trying case on her hands. Although her presence -had a soothing effect on Dare, his unfamiliarity with illness made him a -difficult patient, and Louise had to adopt drastic methods, a cross -between bullying and ridiculing him into obedience. Her greatest -difficulty came in changing his wrappings, an operation which had to be -performed with the least possible variation in temperature. Dare -obstructed the task by struggling to free himself, and by trying to -prevent her from bathing him with her lotions. - -In one access of delirium he sat up, glared at her with unrecognized -fury, and shouted, “Get to hell out of this room, before I break in your -skull!” - -Whereupon she walked straight to the bed, pinned his shoulders to the -pillow, and retorted, “Don’t you say another word till I tell you to; if -you order me out I may go, and if I do there’ll be no one to give you a -drink. Now lie still.” - -She held his eyes until she saw a return of lucidity. He collapsed, and -said feebly, “Have I been bad? I can’t have you overhearing me if I -ramble.” - -She had overheard many illuminating scraps of confession. “Listen, Mr. -Dare dear,” she said, with tears in her eyes. “If you’re going to get -well soon, you must be perfectly quiet. The rambling doesn’t matter, but -try to fix it in your mind that you mustn’t be rough. You’re so terribly -strong!” - -“What’s the use of getting well?” he moaned. - -A few moments later his good intentions were consumed in the heat of new -hallucinations. “Is that Claudia?” he shouted. “Oh God, it must be a -thousand in the shade.” - -Sometimes he hummed a few bars of a lively melody, in appallingly -unmusical tones. With a remorse that closed her ears to the -grotesqueness of the performance Louise recognized the tune of their -dance. - -In a few days the ranch settled down to the new order. Miriam and Keble -made daily visits to the boat-slip, the doctor came as often as he could -arrange the long trip, sometimes remaining overnight, and Mrs. Brown, -her mind on the nights when Mrs. Eveley had sat and held Annie’s hand, -cooked tempting dishes and brought them to the window. She also took -turns at sitting outside Dare’s window while Louise lay down in the tiny -sitting room of the cabin. Twice during the doctor’s visits Louise had -gone for a short gallop, but gave up the practise on learning that Dare -had asked for her during her absence. - -At the Castle Aunt Denise ruled with a sway that awed the servants but -failed to produce the industry that Louise could inspire with a much -laxer code. Keble and Miriam, after faint attempts to restore an -unanalyzable comfort that had departed with Louise, fell into step -behind Aunt Denise and were always relieved when the time came to go out -of doors or repair to the library on business. During the first days -Keble had been haunted by a fear that illness would break out in the -house. Once in the middle of the night when he had been awakened by the -sound of crying he ran to the nursery, half expecting to find the monkey -speckled like a trout. Katie, with a trace of asperity, persuaded him -that Baby was only suffering from wind, and this seemed plausible, for -at the height of their wrangle the monkey relapsed into an angelic -slumber, broken only by a motion of lips that implied health of the -serenest and greediest description. - -Miriam found a deep, wistful contentment in trying to keep Keble’s mind -occupied. In the evenings Aunt Denise played patience and retired -punctually at ten. Miriam usually remained another half hour at the -piano, then Keble went alone to read in the library with his pipe and a -decanter. He grew more taciturn than she had ever seen him, and this -mood she dreaded, for it stirred the rebellious ego within her which had -grown during the past months to unmanageable proportions. - -_En revanche_ Keble had moments when a new side of him came to light, an -amiable, tender side which Miriam had long felt he took too great pains -to suppress. After mornings and afternoons during which each had been -employed in personal work or diversion, after evenings of music or cards -or reading, there was an indescribable charm for her in the recurrence -of Keble’s boyish moods, when his man’s mask was laid aside. It might be -the recounting of some lark at school; it might be an experience in the -trenches or in a corner of Greece or China during his bashful tour of -the world; it might even be an admission of incurable dudishness in the -face of some recent native provocation. Whatever it was, it was the -essential Keble, the Keble whom Miriam might have met in a London -drawing-room. His wife induced playful moods in him, but rarely did the -playfulness Louise provoked keep within the bounds of veiled, correct -irony. For his wife’s delectation Keble rendered his playfulness ever so -slightly frisky, exaggerating the caricature of himself; whereas for -her, Miriam liked to persuade herself, he projected a more ironically -shaded sketch of himself which amused without being distorted. - -“It’s such a blessing to have you here, Miriam,” he confessed one -evening. “I should have gone quite dotty alone with Aunt Denise; Louise -and Dare would have come back and found me with a rosary around my neck, -gibbering the names of saints. I believe you were sent to us by some -kind providence of God to be a universal stop-gap in our strange ménage. -I wonder you bear up under the strain.” - -She was tempted to say, “I was sent to you not by God but by Walter -Windrom,” but she couldn’t. Nor could she smile, for his timid candor -gave her a pretext for reading into his remark some depth of feeling for -which the tyrant within her clamored. But she succeeded in replying, “Oh -I bear up wonderfully,—so well, in fact, that if everything were to run -flawlessly I think I should be selfish enough to pray for another gap, -that I might stop it!” - -The tyrant had forced the words into her mouth, but her anxiety was -dispelled by his manner of taking them. He passed his hand over his hair -and said, whimsically, sadly, “Well, I don’t see any immediate prospect -of gaplessness . . . I suppose most ménages are the same, if you were to -explore into them. They muddle along, sometimes on an even keel, more -often pitching about in cross currents. And I suppose one half of the -ménage always feels that the other half is at fault, and there’s no way -of judging between them, because no two people are born with the same -mental apparatus.” - -Disconcerted at the length he had gone, with a characteristic desire to -efface the self-revelatory words, he came abruptly out of the mood by -adding, “Is it apparatuses, or apparati? I see I’ve been talking -nonsense again,—good-night.” - -Miriam wished that he had not seen fit to go back on his -semi-confession, but she could not deny herself the comfort his -soliloquy had given her, and for some days it served as a sop to her -tyrant. - -She had moments of futile compunction as she saw Louise growing haggard. -Twice a day Miriam appeared at the boat-slip, but quite often Louise had -seized those moments for a short nap, and there was nothing to do but -leave the packets and messages on the jetty and return, or go for a walk -with Grendel. She found in herself a dearth of inspiration when it was a -question of making the day less tedious for her friend. Louise with her -resourcefulness would have thought out endless ways of diverting her, -had she been Dare’s nurse. Miriam had pleaded to be allowed to assist. -It was not only that she wished to spare Louise; she envied her the -opportunity as well as the skill that called into play such magnificent -services. Her own life seemed barren in contrast. Although ten years her -junior, Louise had been at the very heart of life, had loved, been -loved, suffered, given birth, and grown strong through exercise. Miriam -envied her the gruelling experience she was going through. She blushed -to think how incompetent she herself would be in Louise’s place, and how -prudish; but incompetence and prudishness could be outgrown, and she -longed to outgrow them. - -She resented the fact that Keble seemed not to notice the degree of -strain on Louise, the dark rings under her eyes, the drawn mouth. Louise -was partly responsible for his failure to see, for whenever he called at -the slip she forced herself to be bright and facetious. But any woman -would have seen through Louise’s brightness, and Keble as a man far less -obtuse than most, ought to have seen through it, ought not to have wrung -their hearts by his casual manner of calling out, in a recent leave -taking, “Don’t overdo it, Weedgie; we mustn’t have _you_ breaking down.” - -A night finally came when the little doctor announced that the crisis -was passed, that the patient would recover. Only then did he admit that -he had almost despaired. Had it not been for Louise’s vigilance, Dare -would not have survived a week, for he was one of those giants who often -succumb under the first onslaught of a complication of ailments. - -“Louise has been splendid,” Keble acknowledged. “It’s lucky for Dare -that they were such good chums.” - -The doctor turned on him with a suddenness that surprised Miriam no less -than Keble. “You don’t understand Louise,” he said. “She would take as -much pains to cure a wounded dog as she would to cure the -Governor-General. She would do as much for the stable boy as she would -do for you; under certain circumstances, more. For she gives her -strength to the helpless. Dare was helpless, body and soul. If you had -watched him tossing and heard him moaning your eyes would have opened to -many things. He was not only physically lost, he was lost in spirit. An -ordinary nurse would have tended his body. Louise has tended his spirit. -By a thousand suggestions she has restored his faith in himself, created -him. For you that spells nothing but the service of a clever woman for a -friend. What do you know about service? What do you know about -friendship? What do you know about the sick man? What do you know about -life? What do you know about Louise? Precious little, my boy!” - -The doctor disappeared in a state of exaltation, leaving Keble -bewildered. “There’s a blind spot in me somewhere, Miriam,” he said. -“Can you put your finger on it?” - -“I’m afraid we’re both blind,” she said feebly. “At least we haven’t -their elemental clairvoyance. The doctor is doubtless right in his -flamboyant way, and we are right in our pitiful way. We can only try, I -suppose, to be right at a higher pitch.” - -“By Jove,” Keble suddenly exclaimed, with a retrospective fear, “it was -a closer shave than we had any idea of. I wonder if Louise realized.” - -Miriam smiled bitterly. “You may be quite sure, my dear Keble, that she -did. If you have been spared a great load of pain, you may take my word -for it that it’s Louise you have to thank.” - -Keble was pale. In his eyes was the look which Miriam had seen on -another occasion, just before the birth of his son. “Then I do wish,” he -quietly said, “that my friends would do me the kindness to point out -some of my most inexcusable limitations, instead of letting me walk -through life in a fool’s paradise.” - -Miriam was ready to retort that even such a wish reflected the _amour -propre_ that determined most of his acts, but she had been touched by -the emotion in his eyes and voice,—an emotion which only one woman -could inspire. “I think we’re all trying desperately to learn the ABC’s -of life,” she said. - -She was unnerved by the self-abasement that had stolen into his -expression. For the first time in her life she went close to him and -took his hand in hers. “Don’t mind if I’ve spoken like a preacher,” she -pleaded in a voice which she could control just long enough to finish -her counsel. “The sermon is directed at my own heart even more than -yours.” - -He returned the pressure of her hands absent-mindedly, and she sought -refuge in her room. - -Keble was restless and turned towards the library through force of -habit. A book was lying face down on the arm of his chair, but after -reading several sentences without hearing what they were saying, he got -up and poured himself a glass of whisky. - -He would have gone to the piano, but Miriam’s superior musicianship had -given him a distaste for his own performances. He wandered through the -drawing-room to the dimly-lit hall, and found himself before the -gramaphone. Every one had gone to bed, but if he closed the shutters of -the box the sound would not be loud enough to disturb the household. At -haphazard he chose a record from a new supply. - -A song of Purcell’s. He threw himself into a deep chair. The opening -bars of the accompaniment were gentle and tranquilizing, with naïve -cadenza. A naïve seventeenth century melody, which was taken up by a -pretty voice: high, clear, pure. - -_Those words!_ He leaned forward, and listened more intently. - -“I attempt from love’s sickness to fly—in vain—for I am myself my own -fever—for I am myself my own fever and pain.” - -As though a ghost had stolen into the dark room, Keble started slowly -from his chair. His eyes riveted on the machine, he paused, then -abruptly reached forward to stop it, inadvertently causing the needle to -slide across the disk with a sound that might have been the shriek of a -dying man. - -For a long while he stood holding the disk. Only when he became -conscious of the startled beating of his heart did he throw off the -spell. - -He was staring at the record in his hands—the ghost. He dreaded the -noise that would be made if he were to drop it on the floor,—even if he -were to lay it down carefully and snap it with his heel. - -He got up swiftly, unbolted the door, and walked out in the cold air to -the end of the terrace, past the stone parapet, down the grassy slope to -a point overhanging the shore of the lake. Far, far away, through the -blackness, were tiny points of light, marking the location of the -Browns’ cottage. His eyes sought a gleam farther along the shore, but -there was nothing in all that blackness to indicate Miriam’s old cabin. - -They were there, perhaps asleep, perhaps wearily wakeful, with only -their souls left to fight for them against some vague, sinister enemy. -Perhaps she was watching over him as he slept; preparing his draughts; -stirring the fire with a little shiver. Perhaps she, too, had been -approached by spectres. Perhaps she was ill, despairing, afraid. Tears -came into his eyes. - -He could feel the disk pressing against his fingers, and the tiny hard -rills through which the needle had traced its uncanny message. - -“What do you know of the sick man!” Above the mysterious silence of the -night a phantom voice, thin, clear, dainty, was singing the answer into -his understanding: “I attempt from love’s sickness to fly, in vain; for -I am myself my own fever and pain.” It could so airily sing, as though -it were a toy song and a toy sentiment, words which were as irrelevantly -indicative as flowers nodding over a grave. - -Many years ago he and Walter had played a game called “scaling”. You -chose round, flat pieces of slate and sent them whirling through the -air. - -He scaled, and waited for the splashing sound far out on the water. - -Poor little record, it had meant well enough. - - - - - CHAPTER IV - - -KEBLE had received a petition signed by Conservatives throughout the -county inviting him to present himself as candidate for the provincial -elections. He had foreseen this, but hesitated to accept the nomination. -In the first place he was barely thirty; in the second place success at -the polls would mean protracted absences from the ranch; in the third -place he was not sure that Louise would approve. He remembered her -saying, apropos of her Uncle Alfred Mornay-Mareuil, “If he had only been -able to control his ambition! Politics is as demoralizing as gambling.” -And Keble quite often took Louise’s remarks at their literal value. - -When it came time to select a candidate for the elections, the scattered -Conservatives of the district, knowing that the only hope of making a -showing against their entrenched opponents was to induce Keble Eveley, -with his important holdings and the prestige of his name, to stand for -them, had encountered opposition from the supporters of the mayor of -Witney, who in several consecutive elections had suffered defeat at the -hands of the Liberal candidate, but who had learned to look forward to -his periodical worsting as an agreeable break in the monotony of his -days. The repeated success of the Liberal representative had resulted in -over-confidence on the part of that gentleman. He had been weaned from -his county, had invested his savings in the capital, and returned home -only to collect rents or sell at a substantial profit stock which he had -acquired at bargain prices. A feeling was abroad, among Liberals and -Progressives, as well as Conservatives, that the electors were being -“used for a good thing.” - -The Conservative leaders knew Keble through business dealings or -hearsay. Some of them had joined in a deputation to receive Lord Eveley -and Mr. Windrom at Witney. They all saw the wisdom of putting up a -vigorous, intelligent, and earnest young man, and the supporters of the -veteran Conservative candidate, in the hope of a change of luck, ended -by yielding to the suggestion. The official invitation was brought to -Hillside by Pat Goard, the campaign manager, and his henchman, the -editor of the “Witney Weekly News”. - -It was on a mild October afternoon. Keble received the delegates in the -library, heard their arguments, and asked for an hour to consider. Aunt -Denise had bowed with frigid graciousness and withdrawn. Keble asked -Miriam to show the visitors over the grounds, then ran down the path to -the jetty, jumped into the launch, and motored across the lake, which -to-day was an expanse of bright blue rippled by the most gentle of -breezes. The slender white trees on the lower shore with their scanty -remnants of pale yellow foliage, the bare branches of other hardwoods, -and the deep rust of the underbrush were the only tangible proofs of the -season. Everything else was gold and sapphire. - -As he neared the boat-slip Keble saw that Louise had set up a deck chair -in a sunny patch before the cabin, and had installed Dare in it. It was -his first glimpse of Dare in several weeks and he was shocked at the -wasted face that appeared above the rugs. For the first time he had some -inkling of what the other man had been through, and a wave of compassion -and affection surged through him. - -Louise was sitting at Dare’s side, and they were talking quietly, -intimately. Although there was almost a life and death contrast between -the two, Keble was no longer blind to the fact that his wife had worn -herself to a dangerous margin, and while he could approve of her act, in -the sense in which Aunt Denise approved of it, he could not, like Aunt -Denise, look on unmoved. Something in the languor of the scene, -something in the intimacy which seemed to unite the two, aroused a -throbbing ache within him. Like Miriam he had felt futile in the face of -this struggle, and now he almost envied Dare the suffering that had -opened to him a secret garden. He paid blind tribute to whatever force -in Dare,—a force transcending mere personality,—awakened in Louise a -spirit that he had never been able to evoke. “I blunder and obtain -forgiveness,” he reflected, “while Dare is right, and pays terrific -penalties.” - -Louise came to the end of the jetty to meet him, and they talked about -Dare’s first day outside the improvised hospital. - -“Only for an hour,” she said. “Then he has to go back. But it marks the -beginning of a new era.” - -Keble would not let himself speculate on the nature of the new era. “And -you can soon rest,” he said. “Be very careful now. This is the most -dangerous time of all for you.” - -She waved away the fear. “Who are those men on the terrace?” - -Keble explained their mission. “I’d like you to decide for me.” - -She remembered an occasion when Keble had wished her to decide upon -decorations for the Castle, and she had hurt him by her indifference. - -As she sat thinking, her arms resting limply in her lap, Keble noted -with a pang the absence of her old elasticity. She looked older, and -tired. He had an impulse to get out of the boat and take her in his -arms. He reflected that a man like Dare, in his place, would have -scouted her precautions. But there was the baby to think of, -and,—cautious men were cautious. - -“I’m hesitating,” Louise finally said, “only because I’m timid about -deciding for you. But I don’t mind saying that if you accepted and were -successful the monkey and his grandfathers and I would be highly -gratified.” - -Tears came to Keble’s eyes,—an indiscretion which he lost no time in -correcting. “Right-oh! . . . Tell Dare how glad we are to know he’s on -the mend, and find out if there’s anything he’d especially like. The -people in Vancouver wrote that his ticket to Japan will be valid for a -reservation on any later boat . . . Good-bye dear. Miriam and I will -call again after dinner.” - -“Bring a volume of Swinburne if you think of it. We’ve been trying to -recall some lines.” - -He promised, and she laughed to see him make a methodical note of it. - -“Good luck!” she called out, as he started the engine. - -“Thanks, old girl. Awfully decent of you to think I may have a chance.” - -“It’s in your blood!” - -“It’s a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal constituency,” he deprecated. “And what -isn’t Liberal leans towards the Progressive.” - -“I’d despise a victory I hadn’t had to fight for!” - -“I believe you would,” he laughed, as though her militancy were one of -her amusing caprices. - -Miriam’s unwieldy charges were drinking whisky and soda on the terrace, -in preference to tea in the drawing-room. - -“How’s the patient?” she inquired. - -“Able to sit up and take a little Swinburne,” Keble reported with a -truculence that wasn’t meant to be as unkind as it sounded. - -“Consulted the missus, have you?” inquired a business-like campaign -manager. - -“I have. The answer is in the affirmative.” - -Keble received a thump on the back that made him vividly conscious of -the sort of thing he had now let himself in for. Could he thump, he -wondered. The first attempt was not too great a success, but one would -undoubtedly improve with practise. - -“Now let’s get down to tacks,” said Mr. Goard, when further drinks had -been consumed in honor of the event. - -The delegates required a message to take back to party headquarters, and -Keble dictated an outline of his political credo, the logic of which was -warmed and colored in conformity with the ejaculated amendments of Pat -Goard. - -“Will that do the trick?” Keble finally asked. - -“That’ll do for a start,” Mr. Goard replied, and Miriam went to -transcribe her notes at the typewriter. - -“Our best to the missus,” said the manager half an hour later as he got -into the car that had brought him to Hillside. “You couldn’t have a -better platform than _her_.” Mr. Goard went on to express the opinion -that it would be the “best fight ever put up”, but added that “those -birds took a lot of beating”. - -Keble promised to fight his hardest, and had a final word for the -newspaper man. “Be sure to emphasize that it’s a straight program of -common sense,—without flummery or mud-slinging or rosy promises that -can’t be fulfilled.” - -The editor acquiesced, but privately reserved the prerogative of serving -up Keble’s phrases at a temperature and with garnishings adapted to the -Witney palate. He had seen elections won by lungs and knuckles. - -“Well,” Keble laughed on returning to Miriam’s side. “That’s done it! Do -you remember the play, ‘What Every Woman Knows’? You’ll have to be -Maggie Wylie and edit my speeches.” - -Miriam’s tyrant exulted, but her honesty compelled her to say, “I doubt -whether your supporters will appreciate my genius; it runs to neatness -of copy and pluperfective subjunctives. Maggie Wylie put damns into her -husband’s speeches, and Louise is the only person who can find the -Witney and Valley equivalents. Is there any occasion she can’t rise to, -for that matter?” This last remark was a trifle bitter. - -In Keble’s mind was an image of Louise sitting beside her patient, -quoting Swinburne. “We’ll submit our efforts to her,” he agreed. “We’ll -pack Louise into an imaginary hall on the boat-slip, and I’ll stand up -on an imaginary platform and rant. Louise will be the proletariat and -boo, clap, or heckle. Then we shall know where we stand.” - -“We are babes in the wood, you and I,” Miriam observed, with a familiar -sense of incompetence. - -For days they collected statistics, held consultations with visiting -politicians and office-seekers, wrote and answered letters, made rough -drafts of speeches which were in turn delivered before the “vast -audience of one” on the boat-slip. More than once Keble and Miriam, -seated in the launch, glanced at each other in dismay as Louise tore -their sentences limb from limb. - -“It’s beautiful _comme_ argument,” she once commented, “only it lacks -drama. Remember, darling, you have to sway them, not convince them. Once -you get inside the Assembly you may be as cool as a cucumber and as -logical as Euclid, but if you wish the natives to _get_ you there, you -have to tickle and sting them! That argument about neglected roads needs -to be played up stronger. Picture the perils of taking your best girl -for a Sunday drive from Witney to the Valley, with the horse getting -mired and the off wheel starting an avalanche down the side of the -Witney canyon and your best girl rolling down the hill to kingdom come; -then suddenly turn serious and describe what decent roads would do for -everybody, including yourself. Don’t be afraid to make the farmers see -that you yourself have something to gain. Show them how the reforms you -advocate would stimulate your trade as well as theirs and increase the -value of your property.” - -After this comment a detailed overhauling of the address in question was -commenced, with Keble dictating and Louise, insinuating metaphors in the -local vernacular. Dare from his deck chair in the distance watched or -dozed until the boat had departed. - -“How is the campaign progressing?” he asked after one prolonged -consultation. - -“Splendidly. Keble and Miriam are up to their neck in statistics. They -go to Witney to-morrow for a preliminary duster . . . Papa says we’ll be -out of quarantine before election day.” - -Dare watched her silently for some time. “Why do you always bracket -their names? You seem to do it deliberately, as though it were a -difficult phrase which you were bent on mastering.” - -“It may be.” - -“You can confess to me, you know. We’ve proved at least that.” - -She patted his hand. - -“May I guess out loud?” he asked. - -She nodded. - -He paused to choose his words. “You feel that Keble and Miriam have -grown to depend on each other in some way analogous to the way in which -you and I depended on each other.” - -She did not deny it. - -“With us, our relation flared up one day into a white flame which for -you seemed merely to cast a light over your past and future, but which -for me burnt into me till I—began to rave.” - -Again she stroked his hand. Lines of fatigue showed in her face, and her -eyes were fixed on the ground. - -“For the sake of the good we had brought each other, you felt that when -I,—the weaker of the two as it turned out,—collapsed, you owed it to -me and to yourself to patch my life together again. You felt that we had -gone into an expedition together, an intellectual expedition, and that -one of us had succumbed to an emotional peril. Like a good comrade you -stood by. When you had wrestled with the Angel of Death you made sure -that the Angel of Life should have a fair field. When I was strong -enough to realize what had made life too great a burden, you began -tenderly, wisely, patiently to make me see that, even without the -fulfilment of the greatest boon I had ever craved, life still held -possibilities. You dug up all my old sayings, pieced together my damaged -philosophy which had seemed sufficient in the days before the white -flame burned my cocksure ideas to a crisp, and you made a more beautiful -garment of it than I had ever succeeded in fashioning. You showed me how -I could keep the fragrance of the flower without crushing the flower -itself. You read me passages, God save the mark, from _La Nouvelle -Héloise_ which a few years ago I would have dismissed with a snort, but -in which you made me believe. You read me one of your early poems which -bore to your present wisdom the relation of a chrysalis to a winged -faith and you ended by persuading me that my collapse merely marked the -transition of my old chrysalis of a philosophy into something winged and -courageous like yours,—a transition that cannot be accomplished without -pain. . . . The patience, the love even, that you expended on me ended -by making me see, as you intended it should, that this crisis, my -overthrowing of my angel of selfishness, was a greater blessing than any -blessing which could have grown out of a surrender on our part to the -urge we both felt,—for you did feel it, too, I think . . . You led me -back to my own path by quoting the lines: - - _In the world of dreams I have chosen my part,_ - _To sleep for a season and hear no word_ - _Of true love’s truth or of light love’s art,_ - _Only the song of a secret bird._ - -Your faith in me,—a generous faith that wasn’t afraid of caresses,—was -a faith in life, in human decency. And now you are extending it, on some -generous impulse, to another quarter. I think I’m guessing right?” - -Louise showed no wish to interrupt him, and he ventured on. “In the -companionship of Keble and Miriam you see something which suggests an -analogy with our relation. We had adventurousness to offer each other; -they have inhibitions to share. You feel that interference on your part -would deprive them of a right you have claimed yourself: their right to -work out some problem of their own; just as interference in our case -would have denied us a privilege of deep understanding and sacrifice.” - -He paused for a moment. “That’s my guess. Now may I offer a suggestion, -for what it’s worth?” - -“Go on.” - -“You have one terrible weakness. In mending another’s life you are -infallible. You are less sure when it comes to taking care of your own. -The thought that you might be prompted by selfish motives would be -enough to make you refrain from interference. But have you the right to -stand by and see two lives drifting on a course that might entail your -own destruction? If you had been able to put yourself irrevocably into -my keeping, that would have been one thing. But you weren’t quite. At -the same time you came far enough in my direction to jeopardize your old -security. If you were to become lost, now, on no man’s land, I should -never forgive myself for letting myself be persuaded by you . . . I’ve -put an extreme case because I know you’re not afraid of facing any -conceivable contingencies.” - -“There’s more in it than that,” she finally replied, and her voice -announced a maturity born of suffering. “Because it’s a relationship for -which I am responsible. If I were to get lost on no man’s land, which -isn’t at all likely, it would be a direct result of my objection to -trenches, and no one but myself could be made to pay the penalty of my -recklessness. I brought Miriam here for my own reasons, and kept her -here. Keble and I were traveling independently; for I couldn’t resist -dashing off his pathway whenever the mood seized me. The more liberties -I took, the more obvious it became that Miriam and Keble had a similar -gait. They were always _there_, together. I was glad for Keble’s sake, -and certainly, since I felt free to scamper about in any direction I -chose, I couldn’t deny him the right to the companionship of any one who -could keep in step with him. People _have_ to have companions. - -“I have even been glad for Miriam’s sake. Miriam gave me more than I -asked of her. At times I must have got on her nerves. What had she by -way of compensation? By way of penalty she had a gradual alienation from -her old life. I could no more think of destroying her new sources of -interest than I could think of destroying the new sources of interest to -which she brought me the clue. The fact that Keble may have become the -central figure of Miriam’s new interests is an accident over which I -have no control, just as the fact that you became a vital force in my -new enthusiasms was an accident over which Keble had no control, over -which no one but myself had any control, and not even until I had -learned its full significance. Life is an uncharted ocean full of such -reefs; only fools try to sail through them; wise people sail _around_ -them. If I’ve learned anything in the last two years I’ve learned that -freedom, like everything worth having, costs heavily; every great -happiness is bought at the price of a great unhappiness. That’s only -fair. And I _won’t be niggardly_ . . . When Keble and Miriam learn the -full significance of their problem, as I have already done, they will -find their own solution. Human liberty means that, if it means anything -. . . - -“You and I fought out our issue and came to our conclusion, which -happened to be that our ways lie apart. You have the song of your secret -bird. I have something equivalent,—though it doesn’t exactly sing! If -one has played the game according to one’s own rules, and not -cheated,—not enough to count,—then that in itself puts a sort of -backbone into one’s life . . . At times a lot of horrid little devils -come tripping up through me, tempting me to be cheap and jealous, to -interfere, to kick and scratch,—oh Mr. Dare dear, why do you let me say -all these rubbishy things? I talk like a book of sermons to convince -myself, but the real me is terribly wordless and weak and silly and bad -and preposterous——” - -She broke down, and Dare drew her head to his side, stroking her hair -and patting courage into her shoulders. - - 2 - -Once Dare was safely on the high road towards recovery his progress was -rapid. Before long he was able to walk into the maze of trails which led -away from the end of the lake, and the day at length came when Dr. -Bruneau lifted the ban. - -Clad in fresh garments, Louise and Dare made a bonfire of the clothing -and bedding and books from the cabin. “There go all the outlived parts -of us,” Dare commented as the flames leaped up into the frosty blue-grey -morning air. “We’ll be phoenixes. . . . I shall never be able to express -my gratitude to you; a man has nothing to say to the person who has -saved his life, any more than he has to say to the forces that -originally gave life to him. He can only accept, marvel, venerate, and -use!” - -When the fire was low enough to be abandoned with safety, they turned -towards the lake, sharing a sense of freedom and poignant exultation -that could only find expression in a deep sigh. “There’s no sign of the -boat,” Louise said. “Let’s walk. We can take it slowly, and it’s a -glorious morning for walking.” - -It was; but Louise couldn’t deny that it would have been pleasant to -have been sought out, this particular morning, to have been called for -and escorted back to the Castle. She would have warmed to some -manifestation of extra thoughtfulness on the morning when all Hillside -knew that she and Dare were to be released from their imprisonment. -Besides, she was tired. - -When, hand in hand, they reached the familiar short-cut across the -meadow and saw the house standing out in cold sunlight from the base of -Hardscrapple, Louise felt more keenly than ever before what a beautiful -home she had possessed. The broad terraces and frost-nipped hedges, the -withered flower stocks, the pretty hangings behind polished plate-glass, -the bedroom balcony with its tubs of privet, the smoke ascending from -the chimneys, the perambulator standing outside the door of the -sun-parlor, the road bending away towards the dairy and barns,—it all -held associations for her sweeter than she would have admitted, and her -sense of joy in possession was flavored with a sense of the -precariousness of possession. She recalled one of her introspective -phrases, that “it was inherent in the nature of charm that it couldn’t -be captured or possessed,—except in symbols or by proxy”. How terrible -it would be to find oneself in possession of symbols from which the -charm had departed! - -A woman in black appeared at the door and came out on the terrace. -Louise turned suddenly to Dare with a whimsical smile. “If you have only -one funny, cross old lady in the world to represent your stock of -sisters and cousins and aunts, and who really ought to have been a -Mother Superior, you’re obliged to love her, aren’t you?” - -Dare judged that you were. - -“And if you love Aunt Denise, it’s perfectly obvious you can’t dote on -people like Mrs. Windrom and Ernest Tulk-Leamington and lots of others. -Don’t you agree?” - -“I’ll agree fast enough, but I can only take your word that it’s -obvious.” - -“She really is pure gold under all that black,—but she’s so far under.” - -Aunt Denise waited with outstretched hands. “You are both very welcome!” -she cried, and turned to congratulate Dare. “_Toi, mon enfant_,” she -continued, with her arm about Louise’s shoulders, and using the familiar -pronoun for the first time since her arrival, “_Tu as bien fait. Tu es -vraiment la fille de ton père, et de ta pauvre mère. Du Ciel elle t’a -envoyé du courage._” - -Louise went indoors and her eyes feasted on the colorful tapestries, the -shiny spaces, the blazing logs, the flowers, the vases and rugs and -odors, the blue and gold vistas through high window-doors. As she -entered the library Keble and Miriam looked up from a broad table -littered with papers. - -Keble came running to greet her. “Why, my dear, we weren’t looking for -you so early! We planned to take the launch and fetch you.” - -“Couldn’t wait.” She went to kiss Miriam. “It’s quite all right, dear. -There’s not a germ left. We’ve exterminated the species. How is the -campaign?” - -“We’re in the throes of final preparations,” said Keble. “To-night is -the big meeting in the Valley. The telephone has already been humming. -Yesterday our enemies cut the wires; that shows that they dread us.” - -“I’ll run off and let you work,” said Louise, “till lunch.” - -“It’s to be a gala lunch,” Miriam warned. “Don’t give a single order. -They’re all jubilant at your return,—so are we, dear.” - -“Have they been starving you?” - -“Do we look starved?” - -Louise surveyed them. “No, you look jolly fit. I believe you have got -along quite comfortably without me; I rather hate you for it.” - -Keble kissed her. “Go see the monkey,” he suggested. “We’ll be out as -soon as we get through this. Explain to Dare.” - -As Louise closed the library door she combated a desire to cry, then -went out not to see the monkey, but a friendly band of slaves that -happened to include Katie Salter, _ergo_ the monkey. - -Lunch proved festive. Keble was excited; Miriam played big sister; and -Aunt Denise reigned with clemency. Dare was still far below par, and his -smile was wan; but he was sufficiently his old self to enter the spirit -of the occasion. - -Talk turned to politics. “You’ll come to-night, of course?” Keble -invited Louise. “Your father has offered to put us up. We leave for -Witney to-morrow morning. If you’re too tired to go on you can stay at -your father’s till the tumult and the shouting die.” - -“What about my patient?” - -Dare answered for the patient’s welfare. “In the absence of his hosts, -he will install himself at their table, take second helpings of -everything, then pray for the speedy advent of the next meal, oblivious -to the political destinies of the Dominion.” - -“Glad to see your appetite back,” said Keble. “Does a man good to see -you so greedy.” - -After a stroll with Keble, Dare came back to the sun-parlor, where he -found Louise checking items in a mail order. He took up a magazine and -lay in the hammock. - -“I’m ordering some winter provisions,” she informed him. - -“You haven’t let much grass grow under your feet.” - -“The grass has become knee-deep since I’ve been away.” - -Miriam came to the doorway, but hesitated a moment on hearing this last -remark, which alluded to goodness knew what. “We’re to be ready at -four,” she said. “Keble wonders if you could put tea ahead a half hour.” - -Louise got up, giving Dare’s hammock a little shake. “Tea at four -instead of four thirty, do you hear, Mr. Dare dear? Are you thrilled?” - -“Couldn’t make it three thirty, could you?” - -Louise had caught Miriam’s arm and was towing her into the hall. “Don’t -look so glum,” she commanded. “Let’s find Gertie and tell her tea at -four, then pack our bags.” - -“What will you wear?” Miriam asked, surveying Louise’s khaki and -wondering what Louise had meant by “glum”. - -“What I have on,” replied Louise. - -“What! Riding breeches on the platform?” - -“Pooh, everybody in the Valley knows my legs by heart! Besides, an -election eve mass meeting isn’t like a speech from the Throne.” - -Miriam was wondering whether she should ask for an explanation of -“glum”, but remained silent as Louise “told Gertie tea at four”, then -led the way upstairs. In Louise’s room, however, the chatter irritated -her, and again Louise intrigued her by saying, “For heaven’s sake, -Miriam, what’s up?” - -“Nothing that I know of.” - -“Something is.” - -“Well if it’s anything,” Miriam temporized, “it’s so little that it’s -practically nothing. Besides it’s none of my business.” - -“All the more, then.” - -“The more what?” - -“Necessary to spit it out, darling. Excuse my vulgarity. It’s only my -real nature coming out in the joy of getting away from that shack. If -not your business, probably mine. Fire away.” - -“You’ll think me Mrs. Grundyish.” - -“Anything to do with the patient?” - -“Thanks for helping me. With Mr. Dare _dear_, so to speak.” - -“Oh!” - -“It’s only that,—well, now you’ve brought him through, shall you need -to be as attentive to him?” - -“Conspicuously attentive?” - -“It amounts to that.” - -“People been saying catty things?” - -“People always do.” - -“You and I don’t let ‘people’ dictate our actions.” - -Miriam stopped to ask herself how much territory Louise’s “you and I” -might be meant to cover. “No,” she assented, “yet there’s something to -be said for not giving people unnecessary topics for gossip, especially -now that the Eveleys are on exhibition. It would be a pity if your -generosity were to be misinterpreted.” - -Louise snapped the cover of her bag and sat on a chair facing Miriam. -Her face had become serious. “Miriam, dear, are you sure you know why -you are so agitated about my attentions to Dare?” - -Miriam bit her lip. Had Louise guessed that her appeal was in the nature -of a final effort to make Louise intervene between herself and the -tyrant which had been inciting her to snatch at any fact or appearance -favoring the disloyal cause? “Whatever the cause of my agitation, as you -call it, I hope you won’t dismiss my caution as mere meddlesomeness.” - -Louise got up and came to place her hands over Miriam’s knees, with an -impulsive yet earnest directness. “Our lives are fearfully unstable, -dear. We’re constantly raising little edifices in ourselves which we -think are solid; then along comes some trickle of feeling and washes the -edifice away, leaving only a heap of sand. The problem is to find -materials within us more reliable than sand, impervious to chance -streams of feeling, with which we can reinforce our edifices, so that -they will see us through a lifetime . . . Only after a series of -washouts do we recognize the necessity of using a durable mortar, and it -takes still longer to discover what materials in us are durable and how -to mix them. We’ve only experience to go by. I don’t think I’m -over-conceited in saying that I’ve learned my lesson; and I don’t think -I’m claiming too much for Dare when I say that he has learned his. In -any case we’re answerable only to ourselves, and I don’t see why any one -need worry.” - -Miriam’s agitation was now undisguised, though its cause was not called -into question. Only her impatience restrained her from weeping. “I don’t -understand you,” she finally said. “You have outlandish moods which make -you do outlandish things, then you offer outlandish explanations in the -form of universal laws . . . How are ordinary mortals to be helped by -your offhand statement that the solution of personal complications is to -find some durable material to cement everything together? That’s begging -the question. If you have the durable materials within you, they should -protect you from washouts; on the other hand, if you suddenly find -yourself in a mess and discover simultaneously that you’re nothing but -sand and water, what are you going to do? You can’t borrow concrete from -your neighbors.” - -“Yes you can. That’s what churches and philosophy and art and schools -are for. The other name for concrete is Wisdom. There’s heaps of it in -the world; one has only to help oneself.” - -“Again you’re begging the question. That wisdom abounds doesn’t imply -that everybody is wise enough to prefer it to folly.” - -Louise got up and walked back to her dressing table. “But there, as Dare -once reminded me, is where nature steps in. If people are hopelessly -weak-willed, they have to be cared for and put up with; it’s not their -fault. But nature’s average is quite high on the side of strength. Human -beings are on the whole wise, just as they are on the whole healthy. And -each human being who feels himself weak in spirit can take a spiritual -tonic or go in for spiritual gymnastics, and if he doesn’t get better, -why I suppose he just becomes a spiritual corpse . . . We’re getting -almost morbidly serious about nothing on earth. I haven’t the vaguest -idea what started us,—oh yes, your objection to my Mr. Dare dear. Let’s -go and see if tea’s at four yet.” - -“Louise!” Miriam cried, in a half-choked voice. “What a treasure you -are.” - -“Don’t be prosy,” said Louise, brushing Miriam’s forehead with her lips. -“That fawn thing of yours wears like iron, doesn’t it. I’m in rags. If -Keble gets in we’ll make him stand us a trip to New York for some duds.” - -Miriam was grateful for the delicacy which had led Louise to terminate -her homily with a flippant flourish, thus giving Miriam an opportunity -to withdraw intact from the compromising currents into which she had -nervously forced the interview. But the tyrant felt cheated, and only -subsided at the tea-table when Keble drew Miriam into a final -consultation and Louise challenged Dare to a toast-eating competition. - - - - - CHAPTER V - - -BEFORE Louise had been an hour in the Valley she saw that the election -was not going to be the “walk-over” that Pat Goard was predicting, -despite the solid support which Keble was receiving at the hands of all -the commercial interests. Although she could be contemptuously -disregardful of public opinion, she seldom made the mistake of -misreading it to her advantage, and as she moved about among groups of -idlers in Main Street she intuitively discovered that there was a -formidable undercurrent of opposition to her husband. - -It came to her with a shock that part of the opposition was directed at -herself. She knew there were people in the Valley who thought of her as -a “menace”. There were women who resented what they regarded as her -superior airs, her new way of talking, her habit of dashing into town in -an expensive motor. She found that her frivolous treatment of the -far-off Watch-Night service had not been forgotten, had even been -exhumed by people who had boisterously profited by Keble’s hospitality -on the night in question. She discovered that sarcastic equivocations -were being circulated regarding her “sick man” and Keble’s “secretary”. -Further than that, capital was being made of the fact that Keble had -brought laborers from the east to work on his land. This was a -particularly malicious weapon, since Keble had advertised months in -advance for local workmen, and of the few who had offered their -services, he had engaged all who qualified for the work in hand. - -She made a rapid computation of her enemies, then a rapid computation of -her friends. Luckily she had invited Mr. and Mrs. Boots to her house -during the visit of her English guests. That had greatly strengthened -the Eveley prestige among the faithful. Mrs. Boots recalled that she was -the first to tell the Eveleys that they should go in for politics. Even -the tongue of the mail carrier’s wife had wagged less carelessly since -Louise had invited Amy Sweet to dinner with a lord. Pearl Beatty, who -had recently become Mrs. Jack Wallace, was a tower of strength for -Keble’s cause, for while the women of the Valley whispered about her, -Pearl’s respectability was now unchallengeable and most of her -detractors owed money to Jack for ploughs and harness bought on credit. -Moreover, Pearl, as a university graduate, could make the untutored -respect her opinion, and she was phenomenally successful on the stump. - -The opposing party had, early in the campaign, strengthened their cause -by dropping the man who had represented and neglected them for so many -years, and chosen as their candidate the much more redoubtable Otis -Swigger, proprietor of the Canada House, a director of the Witney bank, -and the holder of many mortgages. Oat was a good “cusser”; he always had -a chew of tobacco for any one amiable enough to listen to his anecdotes; -he was generally conceded to be an enlightened citizen; and he was a -typical product of his district. Moreover, he was popular enough to -enlist the support of many Progressives, who had decided not to put up a -candidate of their own. - -For Louise, whose erratic ways of arriving at conclusions in no sense -invalidated the accuracy of the conclusions arrived at, the factor which -made Oat Swigger a dangerous opponent was that she had, for her own -reasons, decided not to invite him and Minnie to what the Valley -referred to as her “high-toned house-warming”. In the drug-store Minnie -had tried to pass her without speaking, her chalky chin very high in the -air. Louise had grasped Minnie’s shoulder, with a smile on her lips but -a glint in her eye, and said, “You’re getting near-sighted Minnie. How -are you?” - -“Oh, I’m all right, Smarty!” Minnie had retorted, and broken away. -“Never better in my life!” she flung back. - -“For God’s sake touch wood!” Louise had screamed after her, with a wink -for the man behind the counter. “You’re going to vote for us, I hope,” -she said to him. - -“Sure thing!” he agreed. - -It was with these discoveries bubbling in her mind that she sought out -Keble to present a hasty report before the “monster meeting” in the -Valley town hall. - -Keble and Miriam seemed to have taken stock of most of the points she -had observed, but they had thought of nothing as good as the satirical -counters which leaped to her tongue, and in the short interval before -the meeting, Keble jotted down hints. - -Of the three, Louise was the only one who was seized with misgivings -when Pat Goard came to say that the hall was full and it was time to go -on the platform. She held Keble back for a moment. “Do let me speak -too,” she pleaded. - -Keble laughed and she saw a glance pass between him and Miriam which -seemed to say, “That incurable theatricality cropping out again!” - -“I’m afraid there’s no room on the program,” he said. - -“As if that made any difference!” she retorted. “It wouldn’t take me -five minutes to say my piece.” - -“An extempore address might spoil everything,” he remonstrated. “I’m -using your suggestions; they will be the plums in my pudding.” - -She gave it up, but only because the glance between Miriam and Keble had -abashed her. Perhaps it was mere play-acting, she rebelliously -reflected, but it would be first-rate play-acting, and she had meant -every word she had said weeks ago when she had warned Keble that drama -must be infused into politics if he wished to carry the mass. - -She sat on the platform in her khaki riding suit and was startled by the -volume of applause which greeted Keble when it came time for his speech. -She was also cut by the hissing and booing which seemed to be -concentrated in the back of the hall, where she recognized a number of -hoodlums, probably paid. - -She was also startled by the effectiveness of Keble’s speech. It sounded -honest, and she thrilled to a note of authority in his voice and a -strength in his manner for which she had not given him credit. Miriam -seemed not at all surprised,—but Miriam had heard him speak in public -before. - -The audience was attentive, at times vociferously friendly. There were -occasional interruptions and aggressive questions, which Keble found no -difficulty in answering. At the end there was some cheering, and as the -meeting broke up scores of men and a few women came to shake hands with -Keble. - -Louise greeted friends and used every acquaintanceship in the interest -of propaganda, but secretly she was panic-stricken. She had seen the -Valley in all its moods, and she knew that this evening’s hearty good -will had not been fired with the enthusiasm that won Valley elections. -She was afraid to meet Keble’s eyes, and was glad that in his flush of -triumph at the cheers and individual assurances, he failed to see her -doubt. - -They reached the doctor’s house late in the evening, and went straight -to bed in order to be fresh for the strenuous day at Witney. Louise did -not sleep. She was haunted by the sight of earnest, slightly puzzled, -friendly and unfriendly faces, and by the sound of jeers. Her brain -revolved a dozen schemes, and before she fell asleep she had drawn up a -private plan of campaign. - -After breakfast she went to the bank and cashed a cheque. Then she made -a round of the garages and stables and hired every available conveyance. -While Keble was talking with groups of men in the town, she was using -every minute, unknown to him, to collect influential members of the -community and make them promise to travel to Witney for the final rally -that evening. The cars and wagons were to leave an hour after her -husband’s departure. Nothing was to be said to him about the scheme, for -she was reserving it as a surprise. Her conscience told her it was what -Keble would spurn as “flummery”. Well, it was a flummery world. - -After dinner at the Majestic Hotel in Witney, followed by anteroom -interviews, Keble and his band of supporters, to the blare of trumpets -which made Miriam conceal a smile, proceeded to the Arena, a wooden -edifice with a false front rising proudly above the highest telephone -poles. Flags, posters, slogans, confetti, and peanut shells abounded. -There were argumentative groups outside the doors, while within, every -available seat was taken and already there was talk of an overflow -meeting. Louise had had the satisfaction of seeing her phenomenal -procession of cars, wagons, and beribboned citizens from the Valley -swarm into the town, headed by the Valley band. It had taken all her -skill to prevent Keble from discovering the ruse. Later on he would find -out and be furious. For the moment she didn’t care what he thought. -Besides, it wasn’t bribery to offer people a lift over a distance of -thirty-five miles to listen to a speech. She wasn’t bribing them to -vote; they could vote for or against, as their feelings should dictate -after she had got through with them. Moreover, even if it was trickery, -she had used her own money,—not Keble’s. She smiled at the reflection -that Walter’s predictions were coming true; how it would have amused him -to see her being, with a vengeance, “one decent member of society”! - -The applause on Keble’s appearance was not deafening. After all, Witney -was less well acquainted with Keble than the Valley, even though it had -pleasant recollections of the compliments uttered by his father from the -back platform of a governmental railway carriage. Keble’s address was -similar to former addresses, though throughout this final day he had -brought together concise counter arguments to new attacks, and had -prepared a damaging criticism of his opponent’s latest rosy promises. He -was more than cordially received, but again Louise felt the absence of -enthusiasm which represents the margin of a majority. - -When he had resumed his seat, Mr. Goard, in accordance with a secret -plan, called on Mrs. Eveley, to the amazement of Miriam and Keble, and -to the wonderment of the big audience, who had had three serious -speeches to digest and who sensed in the new move a piquant diversion. - -“Last night,” Louise began, “I asked my husband to let me speak at the -Valley mass meeting, and he objected. So, ladies and gentlemen, -to-night, I didn’t ask his permission at all. I asked Mr. Goard’s, and -as you all know, Pat Goard could never resist a lady.” - -Already she had changed the mind of a score of men who had been on the -point of leaving the hall. - -“I wouldn’t give my husband away by telling you he refused, unless it -illustrated a point I wish to make. The point is that no matter how hard -a man objects,—and the better they are the more they do object,—his -wife always takes her own way in the end. Not only that, ladies and -gentlemen, but the wife adds much more color to her husband’s public -policies than the public realizes. You’ve heard the proverb about the -hand that rocks the cradle. I don’t for a second claim that the average -wife is capable of thinking out a political platform; certainly I -couldn’t; but she is like the irritating fly that goads the horse into a -direction that he didn’t at all know he was going to take. What it all -boils down to is this: when you elect Keble Eveley at the polls -to-morrow, you’ll elect me too. And if you were by any mischance to -elect Oat Swigger, you’d be electing Minnie Swigger. Minnie Swigger is a -jolly good girl, one of my oldest friends. But the point is, ladies and -gentlemen, I can lick Minnie!” - -Shouts of laughter interrupted her. Miriam and Keble had ceased being -shocked. However much they might deprecate her sops to the groundlings, -they were hypnotized by her control of the mass which had a few minutes -earlier been heterogeneous and capricious. Her direct personal allusions -had dispelled a hampering ceremoniousness that had prevailed all -evening. - -“Once when we were girls together at the Valley school,” Louise -continued, seeing that her audience appreciated the reference to Mrs. -Swigger. “I _did_ lick her. I had more hair for her to pull, and she -made the most of it. But I had a champion’s uppercut. Now gentlemen, -when you go to the polls to-morrow, don’t back the wrong girl.” - -She took a step nearer the row of lamps and held them by a change of -mood. “A little while ago somebody said that Keble Eveley was a dude. If -he were, his wife would be a dude too; and though I’ve come up against a -lot of rough characters in my time, nobody has yet been mean enough to -call me a dude to my face; things said behind your back don’t count. So -now, man to man, is there anybody here who has the nerve to call us -dudes? If there is let him say it now, or forever hold his peace.” - -There was a silence, then a shuffling sound directed attention to a -corner, whence a facetious voice called out, “His father’s a sure enough -dude, ain’t he?” - -Louise darted a glance to see who had spoken, paused a moment, smiled, -and took the audience into her confidence. “It’s Matt Hardy,” she -announced. “Matt’s a clever boy (Matt was fifty and weighed fifteen -stone), but like many clever people he overshoots the mark. Matt says -Keble Eveley’s father is a dude; and his obvious implication is that we -are therefore dudes. For the sake of argument, let’s admit that Lord -Eveley is a dude——” - -“A damn fine dude at that,” interposed a friendly voice. - -“A damn fine dude,” echoed Louise. “We’ll admit that.” She wheeled -around with dramatic suddenness, facing Matt’s corner. “Now Matt Hardy’s -father used to live in Utah. The obvious implication is that Matt is a -Mormon with six concealed wives.” - -There was a howl of enjoyment while the discomfited Matthew tried to -maintain a good-humored front against the nudges with which his -neighbours plagued him. The success of the sally lay in the fact that -every one knew Matt for a bachelor who paid his taxes and enjoyed an -immaculate reputation. - -Louise’s spirits rose as she leaned forward over the lights and focused -attention again by a gesture of her arms. - -“It doesn’t in the least matter whether we’re dudes or not,” she said. -“You’re going to elect us anyway. Bye and bye I’ll tell you why. My -husband told you some of the reasons, but there are a lot of others he -hadn’t time to touch on. Never mind that now. Before I get to the -reasons I must sweep the ground clear of objections. That’s the quickest -way. I’ve disposed of one. Are there any other objections to us as your -representatives in the Legislative Assembly? Any more objections, Matt?” - -Matt was still smarting. He had been harboring a desire for revenge. But -his wits stood still under provocation. - -“Matt’s cartridges are used up,” she announced, turning away. - -“No they’re not,” he shouted, with a sudden inspiration. “You’re -French.” - -His voice was drowned by a chorus of jeers. Louise motioned for silence, -then smiled imperturbably. “That’s what Minnie Swigger said, ladies and -gentlemen. That’s what we fought about. And Minnie was half right. But -only half. She overlooked the fact that _me mother was Irish_!” - -The success of this was almost too great. It threatened to rob the -session of its seriousness. After the first delight had simmered down, -individuals were suddenly seized with a recollection of the wink and the -brogue and burst into renewed guffaws or slapped their legs with -resounding thwacks. - -Louise saw the necessity of counteracting this levity, and for several -minutes talked straight at the issue, pointing out the practical changes -that had come about as a result of her husband’s efforts to civilize and -develop his district, and the far-reaching improvements that he, of all -people, was in a position to effectuate. She heard herself enunciating -facts and generalizations which had never occurred to her before. Once -again, as in the case of Billy Salter’s funeral, she found herself -thinking in public more rapidly and concisely than she had ever thought -in private. And under the surface of it all was a wonderment that she -should be so passionately supporting Keble in a plan that had been -distasteful to her. - -Only once she relieved the tenseness by another flash of humor, when, -referring to the candidature of Otis Swigger, she said that while Oat’s -barber shop in the Valley had always been recognized as a public forum, -Oat would be at a distinct disadvantage in Parliament, because he -couldn’t lather the faces of the other members, consequently no one -would be obliged to listen to him. - -She brought her address to a climax with the instinct of an orator, just -when the whole audience had settled down comfortably for more. - -She paused a moment, exulting in the silence, then, changing from an -earnest to a girlish manner, she dropped her arms and said quietly, -“Well, ladies and gentlemen, you still have twelve hours to think over -the truth of all I’ve said. Are you going to vote for us?” - -The answer was in an affirmative that shook the rafters of the Arena and -made Miriam turn pale. The air was charged with an enthusiasm which for -Louise, as she sank back exhausted, spelt Majority. Keble was forced to -acknowledge the prolonged acclamation, and Pat Goard quickly followed up -the advantage with a few words of dismissal. - -Excitement and lack of sleep, following on her long ordeal, had -overtaxed Louise. She felt weak and a little frightened as she walked -towards a side door in a deserted back room of the building, followed by -Keble, who came running to overtake. - -“I know it was cheap,” she quickly forestalled him, “but I couldn’t help -it.” He seemed to have been subdued by the pandemonium she had let -loose, as though suddenly aware that he had been satisfied with too -little until she gave a demonstration of what pitch enthusiasm could and -must be raised to. “It’s my love of acting,” she added. “I hope you -weren’t annoyed.” - -Keble was in the grip of a retrospective panic. “Why am I always finding -things out so late!” he cried, with a profound appeal in his voice. “I’m -always walking near a precipice in the fog. Why can’t I see the things -you see?” - -Her fatigue made her a little hysterical. “Why do you keep your eyes -shut?” she retorted. - -A cloud of feeling that had been growing heavier for weeks burst and -deluged Keble with the sense of what his wife meant to him. He saw what -a jabber all social intercourse might become should she withhold her -interpretative affection from him or expend it elsewhere. He had long -been restive under her continued use of the weapon of polite negativity -with which he had originally defended himself against her impulsiveness. -Now he longed to recapture the sources of the old impulsiveness, to -defend them as his rarest possession, and his longing was redoubled by a -fear that it was too late. - -“Why——” he commenced, but his voice broke and he reached out his arms. -It was dark. She was dazed, and seemed to ward him off. - -“Then what made you do it?” he finally contrived to say. “You’ve saved -the day, if it can be saved. Not that it really matters. Why? Why? Why -not have let me blunder along to defeat, like the silly ass I am?” - -“No woman likes to see her husband beaten,” she replied, in tired, -tearful tones, “by a barber!” she added. - -“Louise!” he implored, in a welter of hopes, fears, and longings that -made him for once brutally incautious. He caught her into his arms, then -marvelled at the limpness of her body. He turned her face to the dim -light, and saw that she had fainted. - - 2 - -Not until Dare had been driven to Witney, there to entrain for the -coast, did Louise give in to the weariness with which she had been -contending for many days prior to Keble’s election. Only her -determination to spare Dare the knowledge that she had overtaxed her -strength for him kept her from yielding sooner. On the day of his -departure she retired to her bedroom, drew the blinds, got into bed, and -gave an order that nobody should be admitted. They might interpret her -retirement as grief at Dare’s departure if they chose; for the moment -she didn’t care a tinker’s dam what any one thought. - -Aunt Denise discouraged Keble’s immediate attempt to telephone for Dr. -Bruneau. “She doesn’t need medicine,” she said, “but rest. Leave her to -me; I understand her temperament.” - -Once more Keble and Miriam could only pool their helplessness. - -“We had better leave matters in her hands,” Miriam decided. “The -Bruneaus seem to be infallible in cases of illness.” - -Keble was only half reassured. “Usually when Louise has a headache that -would drive any ordinary person mad, she goes out and climbs -Hardscrapple. I have a good mind to telephone in spite of Aunt Denise.” - -“If you do,” said Miriam, “Louise will be furious, and that will only -make matters worse. It’s merely exhaustion. Even I have seen it coming.” - -“I wish to God I’d fetched a nurse from Harristown when Dare was ill.” - -“Louise wouldn’t have given up her patient if you had imported a dozen.” - -Keble was vexed and bitterly unhappy. “What are you going to do with a -woman like that!” he cried. “I don’t mind her having her own way; but -damn it all, I object to her doing things that half kill her. That’s -stupid.” - -One of the most difficult lessons Miriam had learnt in her long -discipleship under Louise was how and when to be generous. She saw an -opportunity and breathed more freely. “I think it’s cruel of you to call -her sacrifice stupid. If she breaks down it is not that she has -undertaken too much; but that other people undertake so little. When -Louise resolved to nurse Dare she did it because there was, as she said -to me, no one else. But during that period she was putting the best -brain-work into our campaign. The minute she was free she went to the -Valley, worked like a horse, and turned the tide single-handed because, -as she might have put it, there was nobody else. She thinks and acts for -us all. It isn’t our fault if we are not alert enough to live up to her -standard, but the least we can do when she becomes a victim to our -sluggishness is to refrain from blaming her.” - -“Well, Miriam, I give it up! I don’t understand Louise; I don’t -understand Aunt Denise; I don’t even understand you. You women have one -set of things to say for publication, and then disclose amendments which -alter the color of the published reports. Each new disclosure rings -true, yet they don’t piece together into anything recognizable. I no -sooner get my sails set than the breeze shifts. . . . There’s only one -thing left for me to do, and that is to go on as I began, just crawling -along like a tortoise, colliding into everything sooner or later. By the -time I’m eighty I may have learned something and got somewhere. If not -I’ll just stumble into my grave, and on my tombstone they can write, -‘Poor devil, he meant well’.” - -Miriam had been laughing at the funny aspect of his misery, but her -smile became grim. “That isn’t a bad epitaph. I wish I could be sure -that I’ll be entitled to one as good.” - -Keble glanced at her curiously. “You’re morbid, Miriam. I don’t wonder, -with the monotony of our life here.” - -“No,” she corrected, despite the tyrant. “The life here has done more -than anything to cure me of morbidness. Although, to tell the truth, I -wasn’t conscious of the morbid streak in me until after I’d been here -for a while.” To herself Miriam explained the matter with the help of a -photographic metaphor: Keble’s personality had been a solution which -brought out an alluring but reprehensible image on the negative of her -heart; Louise’s character had been a solution which had gradually -brought out a series of surrounding images which threw the reprehensible -image into the right proportion, subordinating it to the background -without in any way dimming it. Miriam was now forced to admit that one -overture on Keble’s part, one token of a tyrant within him that -reciprocated the desire of her tyrant, would have sufficed to overthrow -all her scruples. - -“I don’t see what you mean,” said Keble. - -Miriam thought for a moment. “You deserve an explanation. I can’t -explain it all; it’s too personal.” She had almost said too humiliating. -“But I’ll make a partial confession. Louise imported me here long ago as -a sort of tutor, at her expense. You weren’t to know; but it can’t do -any harm to give the game away now. While I was supposed to be tutoring -her, I was really learning. By watching Louise I’ve learned the beauty -of unselfishness, trite as that may sound. I can’t be unselfish on -Louise’s scale, for I can’t be anything on her scale, good, bad, or -indifferent. But like you I can mean well, and since I’ve known Louise I -can mean _better_. - -“You sometimes speak of Louise’s play-acting. When your people were here -we once said that she was having a lovely time showing off. I know -better now. I’m convinced that she was trying, in her own way, to -reflect distinction on you, just as I’m convinced that when she -jerrymandered the proletariat she was going it in the face of bodily -discomfort and your disapproval simply because she couldn’t bear the -thought of your being disappointed. I don’t think either of us has given -Louise enough credit for disinterestedness, chiefly because she doesn’t -give herself credit for it. She prates so much about her individual -rights, that we assume her incapable of sacrificing them. At times we’ve -mistaken her pride for indifference. Do look back and see if that isn’t -so. I’m inclined to think that even her present illness is merely the -nervous strain consequent upon some splendid reticence.” - -Miriam paused, unable to confess that the reticence had to do with -herself, as she suspected it had. She saw that she had permission to go -on. - -“Then her interest in Dare. That, you and I have avoided referring to, -and I think we were a little hypocritical. But the core of the secret is -connected with Dare, and I can’t do Louise the injustice of not telling -you. It was unpardonable of me to listen, but I did. I was in the -sun-parlor, in the hammock, dozing, and she and Dare came and sat by the -fire in the hall. The door was open.” - -“When was this?” - -“Only yesterday. They were talking about the elections. ‘When I saw all -those idiots wavering between Oat Swigger and Keble,’ she said, -‘something snapped. From that moment I had only one determination: to -make them feel the worth of all the things Keble stood for in the -universe’ . . . The conversation swung around to the monkey. She told -Dare, as she had long ago told me, that before the monkey arrived she -hoped he would be a boy, not for her sake, but to gratify his -grandfathers. Then when he did turn out a boy, she was amazed to find -herself thankful for your sake. The grandfathers were forgotten, but she -was indifferent. Then after the elections she was for the first time -conscious of cherishing the monkey for her own sake. That feeling grew -until she suddenly resented your rights in him. Then yesterday she took -it into her head to bathe the monkey, and had an insane delusion that -she could wash off his heredity,—scrubbed like a charwoman till the -poor darling howled. ‘Then,’ she said, ‘I was sorry, and by the time I -had got on all his shirts I felt that I had put his heredities on again, -and was glad and kissed him and he flapped his arms and squealed. Then I -cried, because, deep down, I was terrified that perhaps Keble might some -day, if he hasn’t already, resent _my_ contribution to the monkey’.” - -Miriam waited. “I couldn’t resist passing on that monologue to you, for -it seems the most complete answer to many criss-cross questions, and -Louise might never have brought herself to let you see. It would be -impudent of me to say all this had we not formed a habit out here of -being so criss-crossly communicative, and if you hadn’t tacitly given me -a big sister’s licence. Anyway, there it is, for what it’s worth. At -least I mean well.” - -Keble was too strangely moved to trust his voice, and walked out of the -house to ride over the rain-soaked roads. - -That was the most bitter moment that Miriam had ever experienced. She -had come to know that Keble had no emotion to spare for her; but that he -should fail to see into her heart, or, seeing, refuse her the barest -little sign of understanding and compassion,—it was really not quite -fair. - -She had letters to write. She had decided to leave, but apart from that -her plans were uncertain. Her most positive aim was to avoid living with -her old-fashioned aunt in Philadelphia. Grimly she looked forward to a -process of gradual self-effacement. In two or three years she would -probably not receive invitations to the bigger houses. Then there would -be some hot little flat in Washington, on the Georgetown side, with -occasional engagements to give lessons in something,—at best a post as -social secretary to the wife of some new Cabinet Member full of her -importance. Something dependent, and dingy. Each year would add its -quota to an accumulation of dust on the shelves of her heart. And with a -sigh she would take down from a shelf and from time to time reread this -pathetic romance in the wilderness. From time to time she would receive -impulsive invitations from Louise, and would invent excuses for -declining. Perhaps, some years hence, when she could view the episode -with some degree of impersonality and humor, she would write a long -letter of confession to Louise. In advance she was sure of absolution. -That was her only comfort. - -Dare had guessed her secret, and she had been too hypocritical to take -him into her confidence. Now that he was gone she regretted that she had -not been flexible enough to enter into the spirit of his overture. By -evading, she had not only screened her own soul, but denied -commiseration to him. In future she would try to be more alert to such -cues. She wondered whether inflexibility might not have had a good deal -to do with the barrenness of her life. She even wondered whether at -thirty-five one would be ridiculous in vowing to become flexible,—would -that be savoring too strongly of the old maids in farces? - -From her window, as she was patting her hair into place before going -down to tea, she caught sight of Keble’s tall, clean figure dismounting -at the edge of the meadow. Katie was passing along the road with the -perambulator, and Keble went out of his way to greet the monkey. His -high boots were splashed with mud. His belted raincoat emphasized the -litheness of his body. The face that bent over the carriage glowed from -sharp riding against the damp air. The monkey was trying to pull off the -peak of his father’s cap, and Keble was pretending to be an ogre. Katie -looked on indulgently. - -“Even Katie,” thought Miriam, “puts more into life than I do.” A few -months before, Miriam would have thought, “gets more out of it.” - -The mail had been delayed by the state of the roads. Miriam found a -letter from London. When tea was poured she read as follows: - -“My dear Miss Cread: I don’t know whether you are still at Hillside or -whether you will be at all interested in the suggestion I am about to -make, but I am writing on the off chance. My old friend Aurelie -Graybridge is leaving soon on a visit to America. Yesterday, during a -chat with her, I happened to mention your name. She recalled having met -you some years ago, and inquired minutely after you. She has been -looking for a companion to help her keep the run of her committees, and -so forth. For several years a cousin was with her, but her cousin -married and that leaves her with no one. I suggested that you might be -induced to go to her, and she asked me to sound you. - -“You would divide your time between England and the continent. The -duties would be light, chiefly correspondence. A good deal of spare -time; travelling and all expenses provided, and a decent allowance. - -“Aurelie plans to sail next week. I’m enclosing her address. Please -write her if the idea appeals to you. I hope it may, for that will mean -that I shall be likely to see you from time to time. You may of course -have much more interesting plans, in which case don’t mind this -gratuitous scrawl.” - -It was signed by Alice Eveley. Miriam restored the letter to its -envelope, and was thankful that Keble and Aunt Denise were too occupied -to notice her face. - -Her anger was redoubled by the realization that the offer was too good -to be turned down. She knew she would end by despatching an amiably -worded letter to Mrs. Graybridge, then write Keble’s sister a note -thanking her for her kind thoughtfulness. - -“The cat! Oh, the cat!” she was saying under her breath. - - 3 - -In the third week of December Keble returned to Hillside after his first -session in the Provincial Assembly. He had been loth to leave his wife -at the ranch, but she had been too weak to accompany him and was still -somewhat less energetic than she had formerly been. Keble found her on a -divan in her own sitting room, with the monkey propped up beside her. - -“It’s just as you said it would be,” he remarked. “Having to waste -precious weeks in that dull hole makes the ranch so unbelievably -wonderful a place to come back to!” - -When the first questions had been answered, Louise held up a prettily -bound little volume from which she had been reading. “Look! A Christmas -present already,—from Walter Windrom. A collection of his own verse.” - -Keble admired it, then Louise, in a tone which she succeeded in making -casual, said, indicating one of the pages, “That’s a strange sort of -poem, the one called ‘Constancy’. Whatever made Walter write a thing -like that?” - -Keble read the poem. “I’ve seen it before. It’s quite an old one. Girlie -clipped it from some review or other and sent it to me.” - -“What does it mean?” Louise insisted. - -“How should I know?” he laughed. “Girlie had a theory about it. Walter -was smitten with an American actress for a while,—what was her name? -Myra something: Myra Pelter. She treated him rather shabbily. Took his -present, then threw him down for somebody else, I believe, after they’d -been rather thicker, as a matter of fact, than Girlie quite knew. Walter -is romantic, you know, for all his careful cynicism; he’s always singing -the praises of bad lots, and that makes Girlie wild, naturally. Girlie -said the poem was Walter’s attempt to justify this Myra person’s uppish -treatment of him, an attempt to make her out a lady with duties to -art,—all that sort of blether. It’s Girlie’s prosaic imagination: she -can never read a book or a poem without trying to fit it, word for word, -into the author’s private life. I had quite forgotten its existence.” - -It was difficult for Louise to conceal her relief after years of pent-up -unhappiness caused by her over-subjective interpretation of the poem’s -mission. “How could a man as clever as Walter ever take Myra Pelter and -her art seriously. Miriam and I went to see her once. She’s only a -Japanese doll!” - -“Dolls are an important institution. They have turned wiser heads than -Walter’s.” - -Louise looked again at the historical lines. “I hate it,” she mildly -remarked. - -“Tell Walter so—not me!” - -“Oh no,” she sighed. “The poor little lines meant well enough.” - -While her remark did not make sense to him, it seemed an echo of -something he had once said to himself; it brought a dim recollection of -pain. - -“But I _would_ tell him at a pinch,” she continued. “I’m no doll that -says only the ugly things for which you press a button in its back!” - -“Ungainly sentence, that!” - -He remembered now. It was the ghostly little gramaphone record, that had -brought him a message about Dare. - -“It’s an ungainly subject,” she retorted, absent-mindedly. - -“Change it then. There’s always the monkey.” - -“Yes, there’s him. Aren’t you glad?” - -“Rather! . . . I don’t suppose anything could be done about his legs. -They’re as curved as hoops. If he ever tries to make a goal he’ll have -to stand facing the side-lines and kick sideways like a crab.” - -Louise buried her nose in the monkey’s fragrant dress and shook him into -laughter. She was languidly wondering where her own goal was, whether it -was still ahead or whether, as Walter had so discouragingly predicted, -she would find it at her starting post. She was happy; but she suspected -that she was happy only for the moment. The complacence with which Keble -had accepted their revival of interest in each other was already -stirring a little singing restlessness of nerves within her. He so had -the air of having won the race. Perhaps he had, and perhaps he always -would. But she was none the less hare-like, for all that! She looked -into the monkey’s eyes. “Tell your daddy,” she said, “the important -thing is to _make_ the goal,—whether you do it sideways or frontways or -whatever old ways!” - - THE END - - - - - TRANSCRIBER NOTES - -Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple -spellings occur, majority use has been employed. - -Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors -occur. - - - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARE AND TORTOISE *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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