GRACE and Trenton had sprung apart as Moore passed in the highway and they waited in silence until the sound of his even step over the hard macadam died away. The romp through the corn field had loosened her hair and she began thrusting it back under her hat. Trenton, straightening his tie, looked the least bit crestfallen.
“Who was that?” he asked.
“John Moore, an awfully nice fellow I knew in college. He’s just moving to Indianapolis to go into the law.”
“There’s no question but he saw us. It’s so easy to forget there are other people in the world! I hope his seeing us won’t embarrass you.”
“Oh, John’s all right,” she replied. “The only embarrassment is that I fibbed to him about this afternoon. He asked me to go walking,—we did a lot of tramping at college—and I told him I was going to a matinee.”
“Well, you were!” laughed Trenton; then with an attempt at carelessness, “Is he a suitor?”
“Heavens, no! But I admire John as every one does who knows him. He’s a mighty good friend, and the kindest soul in the world.”
As they resumed their walk toward The Shack she continued talking of John, Trenton manifesting a sympathetic interest and asking questions to elicit further anecdotes of Moore’s varied activities at the University.
“He may be in love with you,” he suggested. “You see I can’t help being just a little jealous of every man you knew before you knew me.”
“If John’s in love with me he’s very successful in concealing it!” she laughed. “No; strange as it may seem, he likes to talk to me and I’m proud of his friendship. He does a lot of reading and thinking. He’s a fine character and you’d be sure to like him. He’s leaving the law school to go into Judge Sander’s office; the Judge has picked him for a winner.”
“I know Sanders; he’s Tommy’s lawyer. I see I’ll have to keep an eye on Moore,” he went on teasingly. “I’m not sure he isn’t likely to become a dangerous rival!”
“I wish I were sure you could be jealous! Maybe I’m jealous too! Hasn’t that ever occurred to you?”
She was a little frightened at her temerity in asking a question that was the crystallization of her constant speculation as to his attitude toward his wife. There flashed through her mind everything he had said of Mrs. Trenton, which, to be sure, was very little though the little required clarifying. She recalled the apology in his St. Louis letter for having spoken of Mrs. Trenton at all. In that first talk at The Shack he had led her to believe that his wife gave him wide liberty to do as he pleased; but it was conceivable that a woman might indulge her husband’s acquaintance with women she did not know and was not likely to meet without sanctioning infidelity. Grace had persuaded herself that there was a distinct difference between entering into a liaison with a man who still maintained martial relations with his wife and one who did not. She was vastly pleased with the moral perception that showed her this. And she was confident that she had the will to dismiss him if his explanation of the modus vivendi that existed between him and his wife should prove to be unsatisfactory.
The cowpath they were traversing made it necessary for them to walk singly and he went ahead, holding back the boughs that hung over the trail. For a few minutes she thought he meant to ignore her question but suddenly he stopped and swung round.
“I know what you’re thinking of,” he said quietly. “You’re thinking of Mrs. Trenton.”
He pulled a twig from a young maple and broke it into tiny bits. Grace wondered whether this trifling unconscious act might not symbolize the casting aside of such slight ties as bound him to his wife.
“Yes, I’ve thought of her a great deal. You couldn’t blame me for that.”
“No; that’s wholly natural,” he said quickly. “You wouldn’t be the woman I know you to be if you didn’t. You have a right to know just what my relations are with my wife. I’ll be frank about it. I loved her when I married her and I believe she loved me.”
There was an appeal for sympathy in his eyes, a helplessness in his tone that was new to her knowledge of him. It was as though the thought of Mrs. Trenton brought a crushing depression upon him. Jealousy yielded to pity in her heart; she was touched with something akin to maternal solicitude for his happiness. But she wished to know more; the time had come for an understanding of his attitude toward his wife and of Mrs. Trenton’s toward him.
“Does love really die?” she asked almost in a whisper. “If you two loved each other once how can you tell whether the love is dead or not?”
“It’s the saddest thing in the world,” he said, smiling in his tolerance of her ignorance, “that love can and does die. Mrs. Trenton and I meet rarely now; but our estrangement came about gradually. I admit that the fault has been more than half mine. In every such case there’s always fault on both sides. When I saw that her interests were carrying her away from me, and particularly after she began to be a public character through her writing and lecturing, I might have asserted myself a little more strongly—let her know that I wanted her and needed her even if the first passion was gone. But—you may laugh at this—I had old-fashioned ideas that didn’t square with her new notions of things. I wanted children and a home of the traditional kind. Possibly it was in my mind,” he smiled wanly, “that I expected my wife to bring my slippers and mother me when I was tired. All men are babies, you know; but all women don’t understand that. Probably there’s where the trouble began. And I found myself more and more alone as Mrs. Trenton got deeper into her reform work. She likes the excitement of moving about and stirring people up. I think she even enjoys being criticized by the newspapers. I’m a peaceful person myself and can’t quite understand that. We still keep a house in Pittsburgh but I haven’t seen Mrs. Trenton there for a long time. I doubt whether she any longer considers it her domicile. When we’ve met it’s been by accident or where I’ve made the opportunity by going to some place where she was lecturing. The breach has widened until we’re hardly more than acquaintances. She’s said that if I ever found a woman I thought I’d be happy with to be frank about it. It may be in her mind to free me if I ask it. I don’t know. And that’s the situation.”
“You don’t—you’re sure you don’t—love her any more?” Grace asked, uttering the words slowly.
“No”; he answered meeting her direct gaze with a candor that was a part of his charm for her. “That’s all over. It was over before I met you. But I suppose, after a fashion, I’m still fond of her; she was always interesting and amusing. Even as a girl she’d been a great hand to take up with new ideas. When the suffrage movement developed she found she could write and speak and I saw less of her to a point where we began an existence quite independent of each other. I want you to be satisfied about this; if there’s anything you want to know——”
“No; I believe you and I think I understand. And I’m sorry—very sorry for your unhappy times. I wish——”
“Yes, dear——”
“Oh, you’re so fine; so kind, so deserving of happiness! I want so much to help you find it. I want to be of real use to you. You deserve so much of life.”
“But—do I deserve you!” he asked softly.
She answered with a look all eloquent of her love, and kissed him.
When they reached the house they found Irene and Kemp in the living room engaged in a heated argument over Irene’s preemption of a bottle of whiskey which she had seized to prevent his further consumption of the contents.
“Take it, Ward!” Irene cried, flinging off Kemp’s hold upon her arm and handing the bottle to Trenton. “Tommy’s had too much. I’m going to take him home.”
“Gimme tha’ bottle; gotta have another drink,” blurted Kemp, lunging toward Trenton.
“Not another drop!” said Trenton, passing the bottle to Grace, who ran with it to the dining room and told Jerry to hide it. Kemp, caught in Trenton’s arms, drew back and stared, grinning stupidly in his befuddlement at the legerdemain by which the bottle had eluded him.
“Tommy’s a naughty boy,” said Irene. “He’s nasty when he’s drunk. Hands off!” she cried as Kemp again menaced her. “Don’t you dare touch me!”
“Not goin’ home. Never goin’ home. Goin’ to shtay right here,” declared Kemp, tottering as he attempted to assume an attitude of defiance.
The Japanese boy had brought in the tea tray and was lighting the kettle-lamp.
“Everythin’s goin’ fine,” Kemp continued, indicating the tray with a flourish. “Have nice chat over teacups—hiccups—tea-cups—joke, ha, ha! Guests drink tea; host drink whisk—key—thass thirty year ole, Ward. Can’t change drinks; always makes me sick change drinks. Where’s tha’ bottle?”
“You’ve spoiled everything by getting drunk,” said Irene viciously. “You’re going home. You know what you told me the other night at Minnie’s. Your doctor’s warned you to cut out the booze or you’ll die. Your heart won’t stand it.”
Kemp turned toward her slowly, opening and closing his eyes in the effort to comprehend this statement. He was very white; Trenton was watching him with deep concern.
“Nothin’ the matter with me. Jus’ foolin’ ’bout doctor. Hadda get lil’ sympathy out o’ Irene.”
“I’ll put you to bed, Tommy,” said Trenton. “A nap will pull you out of this.”
“No y’ don’t, Ward, old man! Not slippy; not bit slippy.”
“He’s got a dinner engagement in town at seven and I’ve got a date myself,” said Irene. “I’ll take him home. The chauffeur will look after him. There’s no use letting him spoil the day for you and Grace. You came out in the runabout, didn’t you, Jerry? Jerry can walk over to the interurban when he’s ready to go and you two can take your time about going in. You can manage the runabout, can’t you, Ward?”
“That’s easy enough,” Trenton replied, frowning in his perplexity as he eyed Kemp, who had stumbled to a chair where he sat breathing heavily. “But I don’t like your going in alone with Tommy.”
Irene bent over Kemp and drew a phial from his pocket. She shook out a tablet and placed it in his mouth. The vigilant Japanese boy was ready with a glass of water.
“Strych-ni-ah,” explained Kemp with a drunken grin. “How you come think o’ that, Irene? First aid ’n all that sor’ thing. Givin’ me poison; thass wha’ she’s doin’. Forgot I had tha’ stuff in my pocket. Awfu’ funny. Doctor cut off whiskey and gimme rat poison. Mos’ singular. Mos’ incomree—in-com-pre-hens-ble.”
He lay back in his chair and threw out his legs, wagging his head as he laughed inordinately at his lingual difficulties. When Trenton tried to feel his pulse he good-naturedly resisted. He was perfectly all right; never felt better in his life, he declared.
The question of his immediate return to town was peremptorily settled by Irene, who rang for the car.
“His heart’s certainly doing queer things,” said Trenton. “It would be better for us all to go in.”
“Oh, he’ll come out of it. It’s nearly dark and I’ll open the car window and give him air. Craig’s driven him for years and he’ll look after him at home. I’m sick of this business. If he wants to kill himself let him go ahead.”
“He oughtn’t to be left alone at home,” said Grace. “You’d better go in with him, Ward, and see that he has the doctor.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” said Irene decisively. “I’ve been through this before and his heart kicking up this way doesn’t mean anything. Alcohol hits him quick but it doesn’t last long. He really didn’t have enough to make a baby tipsy. But he never learns that he can’t stand it. You two just forget all about him.”
Craig, the chauffeur, came in with Kemp’s coat and they got him into it; but Kemp played for delay. His dinner engagement was of no consequence; he insisted that Irene could go alone if she pleased; she was a quitter and above all things he hated a quitter. His engagement to dine was at the Isaac Cummings’s, and the fact that he was asked there called for an elaborate explanation which he insisted on delivering from the door. People were always boring him by asking him to do things when his wife was away, from a mistaken idea that a man alone in town is a forlorn and pitiable being, subject to the wiles of people he cares nothing for and in normal circumstances avoids. He warmed to the work of abusing Cummings; it was an impertinence on the part of his business competitor to invite him to his house. The Cummingses were climbers; his wife detested Mrs. Cummings, and if she had been home he wouldn’t have been trapped into an engagement of which he now profoundly repented; and besides the dinner would be dry; he would never be able to sit through it. The insistence of the others that it was a formal function and that it was too late to withdraw his acceptance aroused him to an elaborate elucidation of the Cummings’s offer of hospitality. Cummings was hard up; he had sunk a lot of money in oil ventures. Kemp recited a list of Cummings’s liabilities, tracing imaginary tables of figures on the wall with an unsteady finger and turning to his auditors for their concurrence in his opinion that Cummings was on the verge of bankruptcy.
“Playin’ up to me; thinks Tom Kemp’s goin’ help him out! Poor boob’d like to merge—merge his business with me—me! No y’ don’t, Mr. Cummings!” he bowed mockingly to an imaginary Cummings. The bow would have landed him on the floor if Trenton hadn’t caught him.
“Jes’ foolin’; don’ need to hol’ me, Ward,” he said, straightening himself. “Goin’ home ri’ now. Miss Kirby take my arm! Guess I know my manners; or’nary courtesy due lady ’nevery part th’ worl’.”
Irene steadied him to the car, and after Craig had lifted him in he waved his hand to Trenton and Grace with an effort at gaiety.
“House all yours, Ward; make y’ present ole Shack. Burn it down; do’s y’ please. Jerry’ll give y’ anythin’ y’ want—wine ’neverythin’.”
Grace and Trenton watched the car turn the long bend toward the highway and hurried back to the fire of hickory logs that crackled merrily in the living-room fireplace.
“Now for tea!” said Grace. “I ate a huge dinner but our tramp’s given me a new appetite.”
She sat down before the tray while he stood by the hearth, resting his elbow on the mantel-shelf, watching her. Jerry asked if he should turn on the lights.
“Thank you, no, Jerry;” Grace answered. “The fire gives light enough. No; don’t trouble about dinner. You might give us some sandwiches with our tea.”
There was a broad smile on Trenton’s face as he took his cup and sat down near her.
“What’s the joke, Ward?” she asked. She was now finding it easy to call him Ward.
“It’s not a joke; I was just admiring your manner of addressing Jerry. It was quite perfect. He was greatly impressed by it.”
“Oh, was that it! What did you expect me to do—snap at him?”
“No; I was only thinking how charming you’d be as the lady of a great house. Your slaves would worship you. Jerry caught the idea too; I never saw him bow so low.”
“Jerry’s adorable,” she murmured, her eyes flashing her appreciation of Trenton’s compliment. “But, really I must look awful; my hair’s in a mess. I’ll run upstairs and give it a smoothing as soon as we’ve had tea.”
“Please don’t! I like it that way. The dark frame for your face adds a charm that’s bewildering!”
“What did Tommy mean about Cummings?” she asked presently. “Isn’t the Cummings business prospering?”
“Tommy must know what he’s talking about. He never quite loses his head even when he’s drunk. These are anxious times and it’s quite possible that Cummings is hard up. Tommy can afford to feel easy because he’s well off even without his manufacturing business. I’ve got to do something about Tommy, though,” he went on thoughtfully. “His New York doctor told me he’ll have to stop his monkey shines or something unpleasant will happen to him. While I’m here I’m going to try to get him to submit to treatment. But he’s not easy to manage—frankly says he prefers a short life and a merry one. We’ve got to save Tommy if we can.”
He smiled a little sadly. Grace liked the way he talked of Kemp and listened attentively while he gave many instances of Tommy’s kindness and generosity.
“About your father’s improvements on the motor,” Trenton continued, “I’ll go into that while I’m here. From the claims of the new patents it would appear that he’s got something of real value; but we’ll have to give them a try-out. We can do that at Kemp’s shop. Of course Tommy will be anxious to get the new ideas if they’re practical.”
“Even a small success just now will mean so much to father,” said Grace. “He was greatly excited by your letter and had to be convinced that you weren’t acting for Cummings. He pretends to mother that there was nothing unfair in Cummings’s treatment of him, but deep down in his heart he’s terribly bitter.”
A fire makes for intimacy and their concord was now so complete that silence had all the felicity of speech. The perfect expression of love may be conveyed in a glance and from time to time their eyes met in communications too precious for words. After these mute periods the talk would ripple on again unhurriedly as though they were the inheritors of immeasurable time.
In moments of animation when her dark eyes flashed and she smilingly invited his response she disclosed new and beguiling charms. In its disorder her hair emphasized what Irene was fond of calling Grace’s gypsy look.
The tea disposed of, she sent away the tray and as his cigarette case was empty she filled it from a box Jerry found for her.
“It seems funny to be using other people’s things this way,” she remarked. “It’s like finding a house in perfect running order on a desert island.”
“You don’t know what a joy it is to be waited on in this fashion.”
He looked up at her fondly as she stood beside him. When she returned the case he drew her upon his knees, took her hand and scrutinized it closely. He pressed a kiss upon the palm and closed his fingers upon it.
“How long will you keep it?” he asked.
“The hand?” she asked provokingly.
“No; what I’ve just put into it!”
“Oh, I don’t need to keep that, do I? Won’t there be some more?”
“Millions!” he replied and clasped her tight.
“Your hands are finely shaped and interesting, Ward. Oh, you have a double life line! You’ll never die! The Mount of Apollo is wonderfully developed—don’t you see it, right there? Of course that’s what that is. It’s plain enough why music affects you so. You really might have been an artist of some kind yourself.”
This called for an argument in the course of which she got illuminative glimpses of him as a boy who was always interested in machinery. He had been predestined to the calling he had chosen but confessed that sometimes he wished that he had tried his hand at executive work.
“I may do it yet,” he said. “I have opportunities occasionally, which I’m probably foolish to let pass, to take hold of big concerns. But I’ve liked my freedom to roam. It’s helped solve my problem to be able to wander.”
“Yes, I understand, dear,” she said softly, stroking his hair. She knew that by his problem he meant his wife. Though she had accepted as sincere his explanation of his relations with Mrs. Trenton, she resented in spite of herself even this remote reference to the woman whom she had never seen but had constantly tried to visualize.
“I might even move to Indianapolis one of these days,” he was saying. “I have a standing offer from Tommy to come and help him run his plant. I tell him it’s his game to wish his job on me so he can have more time to play. And Tommy doesn’t need that!”
She drew from his waistcoat pocket the locket that had so aroused her curiosity at their first meeting.
“What’s in this, Ward?” she asked, holding up the round gold trinket.
“Oh, that!” he said, frowning at it.
“Don’t look so cross! Must I tease you to show me what’s inside?”
As she dangled it at arm’s length he encouraged the idea that its contents were secret by snatching it away.
“It’s the darkest of mysteries. What will you give me for a peep?”
“I might give you one kiss,” she said, deliberating, “if I like what’s inside.”
“Oh, I must have three!”
“Agreed. But don’t show me if you don’t want to.”
“Well, it’s a great concession, a privilege reserved only for royalty.”
He opened the locket guardedly, so turning it as to conceal the inner surfaces.
“Just a moment, please. Do you stand by the bargain?”
“Absolutely.”
He gave it to her, laughing at her disappointment at finding it empty.
“Fraud!” she exclaimed. “How long has it been empty?”
“Do you really want to know?” he asked, suddenly grave.
“Yes; but not if you’d rather not tell me.”
“I can’t give the exact date, but you can approximate it for yourself. Do you remember the first time I wrote you—from St. Louis? It seems aeons ago!”
“Yes; I’ll never forget that.”
“Well, that night I took out and destroyed a little photograph I’d carried there for a good many years. I’ll leave you to guess why I didn’t care for it any more.”
“Your wife’s picture?”
“Yes; I bought the locket right after we were engaged and the picture had been there until I took it out that night in St. Louis.”
“Tell me more about how you came to take it out,” she asked with the insistence of a child demanding the continuation of a story. “Didn’t it have any kind of meaning for you any more,—not even little associations—memories—you wouldn’t lose?”
“No; it was as though something had died in me and utterly ceased to be. I was wondering about a lot of things that night. After I had written to you I wrote a letter to Mrs. Trenton. She had said from time to time that if I ever found myself interested in another woman not to be afraid to tell her. I don’t know how seriously she meant that. Odd as it may seem, I don’t know Mrs. Trenton! I used to think I did but that was sheer conceit on my part. As long as she had made that suggestion—about telling her if I met a woman who really appealed to me more than she did—I thought I’d tell her about you. Oh, I didn’t tell your name nor where you live!” he exclaimed seeing the look of consternation on Grace’s face. “My agreement with her was half a joke; in later years I’ve never quite known when to take her seriously. I suppose I wrote her more to feel her out as to whether she might not have reached the point where it would be a good thing to quit altogether.”
“Well,” Grace asked, “what did she say?”
“Oh, so far her only answer has been a magnificent silence! The philosophers agree, don’t they, that a woman doesn’t always mean what she says? But a silence is even more baffling. What would you say about it?”
“A little ominous—perhaps——”
“Contempt, disdain, indifference? Maybe she’s just awaiting further advices, as we say in business.”
“Possibly she never got the letter.”
“That’s conceivable; she’s a fast traveler; the mails have hard work to catch up with her.”
“You don’t really know whether she got the letter or what she would have written if she received it. Maybe she’s just waiting for a chance to talk to you about it.”
“Well, in any event we needn’t worry about it,” said Trenton with a shrug. She rose and drew up a low rocker and sat beside him, facing the fire.
“I’d like to have seen your letter,” said Grace, musingly.
“I told her you kissed me. Like a brave man I put the responsibility on you!”
“Oh, that wasn’t fair!” she cried hastily. “It would be sure to give her a bad impression of me.”
“I think I intimated that it was only such a kiss as a daughter might bestow upon a father she didn’t think so badly of! I shall always be glad that our first kiss was like that; we’ve traveled a long way since then.”
“Every step has been so dear,” she said contentedly. “I think I could never forget one single thing. I don’t believe I’ve forgotten a word you’ve ever said to me. And when you were away I lived our times all over again. And I like to imagine that we talk to each other by our own private wireless even when you are miles away. I think I can imagine just what you would say and how you would look when you said it. Oh,—” she bent forward quickly and grasped his hand in both of hers; her lips quivered and there was a mist in her eyes. “Oh!—I wish I didn’t love you so much!”
“Has it occurred to you,” he asked, “that we’re alone away out here in the woods?”
“I don’t feel a bit lonesome; I’d never be afraid anywhere with you!”
The fire had burned low and she watched admiringly his manner of replenishing it. He used the shovel to push back the ashes and bring the embers together in a neat bed, in the center of which he dropped a fresh log with calculated accuracy. It was his scientific mind, she reflected, habituated to careful planning even in unimportant things. He stood for a moment inspecting his work; moved the log a trifle; watched attentively the effect of the change, and as the dry loose bark broke into flame brushed the hearth neatly and smiled into her eyes as he found her at his side.
“You do everything just right! I love to see you use your hands,” she said. “They’re so strong and skillful.”
“I ought to know something about fires; I’ve made enough of them. As a young fellow I did a lot of jobs that took me into remote places, surveying and construction gangs; and I’ve camped a bit—hunting and fishing. I might even say that I can make coffee and fry bacon without utterly destroying their food values.”
She established him before the fire in the most comfortable chair in the room and sat at his feet. With her arms folded upon his knees to make a resting place for her head she listened with the rapt attention a child gives to a beguiling chronicler as he told how he was lost for three days in the Canadian wilds, and of a flight by canoe on a stormy night to fetch a doctor for one of his party who had fallen ill. He had given her from the first a sense of far horizons, and tonight her fancy perfected every picture his narratives suggested of hills and woodlands and streams. They constituted a new background against which she saw in him an heroic figure equal to any demand that might be made upon his strength and courage.
“One of these days,” he went on, “We must do the Canadian Rockies together; and then I’d like to take you to some places I know in Maine—just guides and canoes and us; and I want to do India before I die, but not without you. You’re in all my future! I want to live a long time to enjoy life with you. Does that appall you?”
She was gazing wide-eyed into the fire, her dark eyes the harbor of dreams, and he laughed and bent forward to touch her cheek and break the spell that bound her.
“I should love it all, dear!” she said with a happy sigh. “To be with you, to share everything with you! Oh, that would be more happiness than I could bear!”
“You do love me; tell me, dear, once more, that you do!”
“More than all this earth and the stars! More than all the other universes beyond this one!” she cried, laughing at her extravagance.
He raised his hand and bade her listen.
“I thought the wind changed awhile ago. The weather spirit’s abroad. Let’s have a look.”
He threw on the porch lights and opened the front door. It was snowing hard; the porch steps and driveway were already covered, and the nearest trees had been transformed into ghostly sentinels. She clapped her hands in delight at the beauty of it.
“It makes me think of ‘Snow Bound,’” she said when they had gone back to the fire. “I used to know some of that poem. Little Grace will now recite for you!” She assumed the attitude of a school girl recitationist and repeated, gesturing awkwardly:
“‘What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north-wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire’s ruddy glow.’
I’m talented; you can see that! What if we should be snowed in?”
“What if we should!” he answered. “Tommy always carries a full larder and we wouldn’t starve to death.”
With her hands clasped before her she gazed down at the flames. He drew his arm about her waist and the room was silent save for the cosy murmur of the fire.
“Why not stay here all night? Jerry hasn’t left and he’ll spend the night if I ask him and give us breakfast. I suppose you have to go to the store tomorrow?”
“Yes,—” the assent was to one or all of his questions as he might choose to interpret it.
“We can go in of course, early in the morning. I have a nine o’clock