“Well, I never!” she whispered. “Wot liberties ter taik wiv a lady!”
She drew away from him in pretended haughtiness, tilting her chin into the air.
Some one yawned. “Good Lord! We must have been mad.”
Disenchantment spoke in the complaining voice. They turned. The rest of the party were awake, looking bored and fretful.
“I’m aching for some sleep,” Fluffy sighed; “I know I’m going to quarrel with some one. It was you and your wretched Cynaras did this for us, Horace. If I’m not in bed in half-an-hour, I’ll never speak to you again.”
“Why mother, where’s King?” Desire noticed the absence of Mr. Dak.
“If he’s wise, he’s walking back to New York,” Vashti said; “but I think he’s outside, directing the driver.—We certainly were mad. I am tired.”
A discontented silence settled down. Teddy wished that they all would close their eyes and leave him alone with Desire. She was like a wild thing when others were watching; beneath her stillness he could detect her agitation lest he should betray to others that he loved her.
“You’re not cross, too—are you?” he whispered. “Are you, Princess?”
She shook her head. “You made a splendid pillow.”
She gave him no encouragement, so he sank into himself. He tried to recapture his sensations of the night In his dreams he must have been conscious of her; they must have gone together on all manner of adventures. He blamed himself for having slept; if he had kept his vigil, what memories he would have had.
The car halted. The door was opened by Mr. Dak. White and soft as a swan’s breast, gleaming in the early morning sunlight, lay a rolling expanse of unruffled country. Distant against the glassy sky mountains shone imperturbably, like the humped knees of Rip Van Winkles taking their eternal rest.
Mr. Dak beamed with pride. He seemed to be claiming all the credit for the stillness and whiteness, and most especially for the low-roofed farmhouse, with its elms and barns, and its plume of blue smoke curling up hospitably into the frosted silence. He was pathetically eager to be thanked. He looked more like a maiden-aunt than ever.
As the company tumbled out, their self-ridicule was heightened by the patent unsuitability of their attire. The men in their silk-hats and evening-dress, the women in their high-heeled shoes and dainty gowns looked dishonest and shallow apart from their environment.
“Damn!” said Fluffy, giving way to temperament “I want to hide.”
Horace attempted comfort. “You’ll feel better when you’ve had breakfast.”
“I shan’t. I shan’t ever feel better. You oughtn’t to have brought me. You know I’m not responsible after midnight.”
“But you were so keen on waking in the country.”
She swept by him indignantly up the uncleared path, kilting her skirt. “Could I wake when I haven’t slept?”
In the door a young man was standing—a very stolid and sensible young man. He wore oiled boots and corduroy breeches; he was coatless; his sleeves were rolled up and, despite the cold, his shirt was unbuttoned at the neck. In an anxious manner Mr. Dak was explaining to him the situation. As the others came up he was introduced as Sam; he at once began to speak of breakfast.
“I don’t want any breakfast,” Fluffy pouted ungraciously; “all I want is a place to lie down.”
Sam eyed her rather contemptuously—the way a mastiff might have looked at Twinkles.
“The wife’s bathing the babies; but I daresay it can be managed.” He stepped back into the hall and shouted, “Mrs. Sam! Mrs. Sam!”
Mrs. Sam appeared with a child in her arms, which she had hastily wrapped in a towel. She was a wholesome, smiling, deep-breasted young woman, with a face as placid as a Madonna’s. Three beds were promised and the ladies immediately retired.
“Cross, aren’t they?” said Sam, before the last skirt had rustled petulantly up the stairs.
“Rather,” Horace assented.
“It’s to be expected,” said Mr. Dak.
“Expected! Is it?” Sam scratched his head. “Well, all I can say is if a woman doesn’t choose to be agreeable, she can go somewhere else, as far as I’m concerned.”
It was a rambling old house, paneled, many-windowed, and full of quaint furniture. The room in which breakfast was set was a converted kitchen, with shiny oak-chairs and a wide open-fireplace in which great logs blazed and crackled. It was cheerful with the strong reflected light thrown in by the newly laundered landscape. From the next room came the rumble of farm-hands talking; as the door opened for the maid to bring in dishes, the smell of baking bread and coffee entered. When the guests had seated themselves, their host became busy about serving.
“I used to be a bit wild myself,” he said. “I knew Broadway as well as any man. But it made me tired—there’s nothing in it. If you want to be really happy, take my advice: settle down and have babies.”
Mrs. Sam returned. Having dressed the fair-haired mite she was carrying, she gave it into her husband’s care. He took it on his knee and commenced spooning food into its mouth. Drawing nearer to the fire, she set about bathing her youngest. Teddy watched her as she stooped to kiss the kicking limbs, laughing and keeping up a flow of secret chatter. Neither she nor her husband apologized for this intimate display of domesticity. Sometimes he caught her quiet eyes. They made him think of his mother’s. Try as he would, he could not prevent himself from comparing her with the women upstairs. Old standards, odd glimpses of his own childhood flitted across his memory. “These people are married,” he told himself. How foolish the cynicisms of last night sounded now!
“So I ran away from towns and the women they breed; I became a farmer and married her,” Sam was saying. “I don’t reckon I did so badly.”
When the meal was ended, Mr. and Mrs. Sam excused themselves and went about their work. Mr. Dak lit a cigar; before the first ash had fallen, he was nodding.
Horace and Teddy drew up to the logs, toasting themselves and sitting near together. There was a distinct atmosphere of disappointment. They glanced at each other occasionally, saying nothing. It was an odd thing, Teddy reflected—the men whom he met at Vashti’s apartment rarely had anything to say to each other. They met distrustfully as the women’s friends. They never talked of their interests or displayed any curiosity; yet most of them were distinguished in their own line and would have been knowable, if met under other circumstances.
Horace glanced up and spoke abruptly in a lowered voice. “When I was at Baveno one summer, I ran across an old man. He had a cottage in a vineyard half a mile up the hill, overlooking Maggiore. He came every year all the way from Madrid to photograph the view from his terrace. He thought it the most beautiful view in the world, and was as jealous of letting any one else share it as if it had been a woman. He had taken thousands of pictures of it, all similar and yet all different He was always hoping to get two that were alike; but the light on snow-mountains is fickle. I suppose he was a little cracked. He had fooled away his career, and was old and hadn’t married. When he went back to Madrid, it was only to earn money so as to be able to return and to take still more photographs next year.—Can you guess why I’ve told you?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Because we’re like that—you and I. We let a woman who’s as unpossessable as a landscape, become a destructive habit with us. You’re not very old yet, but you’ll find out that there are women in the world who can never be possessed. There’s only one thing to do when you meet one—run away before she becomes a habit.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit cowardly?” Teddy objected.
“In her heart every woman wants to marry and be like—— Well, like Mrs. Sam was with those kiddies.”
“Go on believing. It’s good that you should believe it. But don’t put your belief to the test.” Horace leant forward and tapped him on the knee. “Go back to England while you can.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I think you do. Fluffy isn’t discreet over other people’s affairs. You’ve fallen in love with a dream, my boy—with an exquisite, unrealizable romance. Keep your dreams for your work; don’t try to find ’em in life—they aren’t there. Look what’s happened this morning through following a dream into the daylight. Here we sit, a pair of foolish tragedies in evening-dress, while our ideals are sleeping off their tempers upstairs.”
When Teddy frowned and didn’t answer, Horace smiled. “I know how it is. I’ve been through it. You oughtn’t to get angry; anything that I’m saying applies twice as forcibly to myself. Look here, Gurney, your affection for Desire is made up of memories of how you’ve loved her. She’s given you nothing. That isn’t right. Neither she, nor her mother, nor Fluffy know how to——”
“Desire——”
“No. Hear me out There are women who never take a holiday from themselves. They’re too timid—too selfish. They’re afraid of marrying; they distrust men. They’re afraid of having children; they worship their own bodies. They loath the disfigurement of child-bearing. All their standards are awry. They regard the sacredness of birth as defilement—think it drags them down to the level of the animals. They make love seem ugly. They’ve got a morbid streak that makes them fear everything that’s blustering and genuine. Their fear lest they should lose their liberty keeps them captives. They’re slaves of freedom, starving their souls and living for externals. Because they’re women, their nature cries out for men; but the moment they’ve dragged the soul out of a man their weak passion is satisfied. They have the morals of nuns and the lure of courtesans. They’re suffocating and unhealthy as tropic flowers.—I’ve been at it too long, but I want you to get out while you can.”
All this was spoken in the whisper of a conspirator lest Mr. Dak should be aroused. It was as though Horace had raised a mask, revealing behind his bored good-humor a face emaciated with longings. Teddy wanted to be angry—felt he ought to be angry; but he couldn’t. “I’d rather we didn’t discuss Desire,” he said coldly. “You see, my case is different from yours. I intend to marry her.”
“My dear boy, it’s not different; I was no more a trifler than you are—I intended to marry Fluffy. I gave up a good woman—a good woman who’s waiting for me now. But I’m like that old man at Baveno; the unpossessable haunts me. I’ve been infatuated so long that I can’t break myself of the habit. But you haven’t. You’re young, with a life before you. For God’s sake go back to the simple good people—the people you understand. Your mother wasn’t a Desire, I’ll warrant; if she had been, you wouldn’t be her son. A man commits a crime against his children when he willfully stoops below his mother to the girl he worships. Desire’ll never belong to you, even though you marry her. She’s not of your flesh. Her pretty, baby hands’ll tear the wings off your idealism. She won’t even know she’s doing it. You’ve made your soul the purchase-price of love, while she—she commits sacrilege against love every hour.” He gripped him by the arm. “Cut loose from her while there’s time. She doesn’t know what you’re offering.”
“Shish!” Mr. Dak was sitting up, a finger pressed against his mouth.
Some one stirred behind them. In the middle of the room Desire was standing. Her hands were clasped against her breast as though she held a bird. Through the windows the purity of the snow-covered country formed a dazzling background for her head and shoulders. The gold in the bronze of her hair glistened. She might have been posing for a realist painting of the immaculate conception. There was a misty, pained looked in the grayness of her eyes—an eloquence of yearning.
“Teddy.”
That was all. It was the second time. It meant more than if she had held out her arms to him. Her clear, lazy voice, speaking his name, seemed to mark the end of evasion. He went to her without a word. There was the heat of tears behind his eyes and a swollen feeling in his heart. The passion she had roused in him at other times sank into gentleness.
The things that Horace had been saying were true—he knew it; but if his love could reach her imagination, they would prove them false together. What was the good of love if it couldn’t do that? Probably Hal had thought to do the same for Vashti, and Horace for Fluffy—all the men who had loved in vain had promised themselves to do just that; but they hadn’t loved with sufficient obstinacy—with sufficient courage.
He helped her into her wraps. They passed out into the gold and silver landscape. It was like entering into a new faith—like leaving deceit behind. Merriness was in the air. Birds fluttered out of hedges, making the snow glitter in their exit. From farms out of sight, roosters blew shrill challenges, like trumpeters riding through a Christmas faeryland. Humping their knees against the horizon, mountains lay hushed in their eternal rest.
There was scarcely a sound save the crunch of their footsteps. At a turn, where the lane descended and the house was lost to sight, she drew closer. “You may take my arm if you like.”
He thrilled to the warmth of it. His fingers closed upon the slimness of her wrist. Their bodies came together, separated and came together with the unevenness of the treading.
She laughed softly. “It’s like a legend. It’s ever so much better than our other good times.”
“I’m glad you think that.” He pressed against her. “We’ve always talked across hotel-tables and in theatres; we’ve always been going somewhere or doing something up till now. We’ve never met only to be together. It was a little vulgar, wasn’t it, buying all our pleasures with money?”
“A little, and stupid when we had ourselves.”
They spoke in whispers; there was no one to hear what they said.
“Horace was persuading you to go away?”
“Yes.”
“Because of me? He was right. Are you going?”
“Never.”
“You ought to go. I’m—I’m glad you’re not going.”
On they went, heedless of direction. At times their lips grew silent, but their hearts twittered like birds. They did not look at each other. Strange that they should be so shy after so much boldness! When one saw some new beauty to be admired, a hugging of the arm would tell it.
They came to a wood—an enchanted place of maple and silver birch. The squirrel’s granary was full; there was no sound of life. It was a sylvan Pompeii frozen in its activities by the avalanche from the clouds. Trees stood stiffly, like arrested dancers, sheathed in their scabbards of burnished ice. Boughs hung heavy with snow blossoms. Scrub-oak and berries of winter-green wrought mosaics of red and brown on the silver flooring. Over all was the coffined stillness of death. Here and there a solitary leaf shone more scarlet, like the resurrection hope of a lamp kept burning in the hollow of a shrine. It was a forsaken temple of broken arches. Summer acolytes, with their flower-faces, no longer fidgeted on the altar-steps. The choir of birds had fled. The sun remained as priest and sole worshiper. Night and morning he raised the host to the wintry tinkling of crystal bells. Down a far vista, as they plunged deeper, their attention was held by a steady brightness—a pond which glowed like a stained-glass window. By its withered sedges they sat down.
“It’s like—-”
“Yes, isn’t it?”
“I was a little girl then. Meester Deek, was I a dear little girl?”
“The dearest in the world. Not half so dear as you are now.”
“Ah, you would say that; you’re always kind. If—if you only knew, I was much dearer then.”
He was holding her hand. Slowly he unbuttoned her glove. She watched him idly. He drew it off and raised the slender fingers to his lips.
“You always told me I had beautiful hands.”
He kissed the fingers separately and then the palm, which was delicate as a rose-leaf.
“And don’t miss the little mole on the back; mother used to say that it told her when I had been bad.”
So he kissed the little mole on the back as well. Curious that he should take so little, when his heart cried out for so much! His head was swimming. He felt nothing, saw nothing but her presence.
“I wouldn’t have let you do that once,” she whispered.
In the long silence that followed, the snow-laden trees shivered, muttering their suspense. Each time he tried to meet her eyes, she looked away as though his glance scorched her.
“My dear! My dearest!”
She did not answer.
“I love you. I’ve always loved you. I can’t live without you. You’re more to me than anything in the world.”
“Don’t say that” Her voice trembled. “It’s terrible to love people so much; you give them such power to hurt you. I might die, or I might love some one else, or——”
“But you don’t—you wouldn’t.”
His arm stole about her neck. Like a child fondling a child, he tried to coax her face towards him. He yearned, as if his soul depended on it, to rest his lips on hers. She smiled, closing her eyes in denial. As he leant out, she turned her face swiftly aside. He kissed her where the little false curl quivered.
“Oh, Meester Deek, why must you kiss me? Where’s the good of it? Can’t we be just friends?”
“All my life I’ve loved you,” he pleaded hoarsely. “Doesn’t it mean anything to you? Care for me a little—only a little, Desire. Say you do, and I’ll be content.”
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