"But you"ve got help, whereas they"ve got no one. You"ll be a G.o.dsend to them."
"That"s just what I"m afraid of. Who wants to be a G.o.dsend to people?"
"I should think any one would."
"If I"m a G.o.dsend to them, it shows what _they_ must be."
"Mustn"t undervalue yourself. Besides, you knew what they were when you began--"
"Oh, hang it all, Thor! I didn"t begin. It--it happened."
Thor"s eyes followed his brother as the latter began moving restlessly about the room. "Well, you"re glad it happened, aren"t you?"
Claude stopped abruptly. "Of course I am. But what stumps me is why you should be. See here; would you be as keen on it if I were going to marry some one else?"
Before so leading a question Thor had to choose his words. "I"d be just as keen on it; only if you were going to marry some one else, some one in circ.u.mstances more like your own, you wouldn"t require so much of my--of my sympathy."
"Well, it beats me," Claude admitted, starting for the door. "I know you"re a good chap at heart--top-hole, of course!--but I shouldn"t have supposed you were as good as all that. I"ll be darned if I should!"
Thor thought it best not to inquire too precisely into the suggestions implied by "all that," contenting himself with asking, "When may I tell Lois?"
Claude answered over his shoulder as he pa.s.sed into the hall. "Tell her myself--perhaps now."
He joined his sister-in-law in the drawing-room, though he didn"t tell her. He was on the point of doing so once or twice, but sheered off to something else.
"Awful queer fellow, Thor. Can _you_ make him out?"
Lois was doing something with white silk or thread which she hooked in and out with a crocheting implement. The action, as she held the work up, showed the beauty of her hands. On her lips there was a dim, happy smile. "Making Thor out is a good deal like reading in a language you"re just beginning to learn; you only see some of the beauties yet--but you know you"ll find plenty more when you get on a bit. In the mean while the idioms may bother you."
Claude, who was leaning forward limply, his elbows on his knees, made a circular, protesting movement of his neck and head, as though his collar fitted him uncomfortably. "Well, he"s all Greek to me."
"But they say Greek richly repays those who study it."
"Humph! "Fraid I"m not built that way. Do you know why he"s got such a bee in his bonnet about--?"
He was going to say, in order to lead up to his announcement, "about Fay, the gardener"; but he couldn"t. The words wouldn"t come out. The prospect of telling any one that he was going to marry little Rosie Fay terrified him. He hardly understood now how he could have told his father and mother. He would never have done it if Thor hadn"t been behind him. As it was, both his parents were so discreet concerning his confidence that neither had mentioned it since that night--which made his situation endurable. So he changed the form of his question to--"bee in his bonnet about--helping people?"
"Oh, it isn"t a bee in his bonnet. It"s just--himself. He can"t do anything else."
He said, moodily, "Perhaps he doesn"t help them as much as he thinks."
"He doesn"t--as much as he wants to. I know that."
"Well, why not?"
She dropped her work to her lap and looked vaguely toward the dying fire. Her air was that of a person who had already considered the question, though to little purpose. "I don"t know. Sometimes I think he doesn"t go the right way to work. And yet it can hardly be that.
Certainly no one could go to work with a better heart."
Claude was referring inwardly to Rosie"s five thousand a year, and perceiving that it created as many difficulties as it did away with, when he said, "Thinks everything a matter of dollars and cents."
She received this pensively. "Perhaps."
And yet Thor"s warning sent Claude to see Rosie on the following afternoon. It was not his regular day for coming, so that his appearance was a matter of happy terror tempered only by the fact that he caught her in her working-dress. His regular days were those on which Jasper Fay took his garden-truck to town. Fay rarely returned then before six or seven, so that with the early twilights there was time for an enchanted hour in the gloaming. The gloaming and the blossoms and the languorous heat and the heavy scents continued to act on Claude"s senses as a love-philter might in his veins.
It was the kind of meeting to be clandestine. Secrecy was a necessary ingredient in its deliciousness. The charm of the whole relation was in its being kept _sub rosa_. _Sub rosa_ was the term. It should remain under the rose where it had had its origin. It should be a stolen bliss in a man"s life and not a daily staple. That was something Thor would never understand, that a man"s life needed a stolen bliss to give it piquancy. There was a kind of bliss which when it ceased to be hidden ceased to be exquisite. Mysteries were seductive because they were mysteries, not because they were proclaimed and expounded in the market-place. Rosie in her working-dress among the fern-trees and the great white Easter lilies was Rosie as a mystery, as a bliss. It was the pity of pities that she couldn"t be left so, where she belonged--in the state in which she met so beautifully all the requirements of taste. To drag her out, and put her into spheres she wasn"t meant for, and endow her with five thousand dollars a year, was like exposing a mermaid, the glory of her own element, by pulling her from the water.
He grew conscious of this, as he always did the minute they touched on the practical. In general he avoided the practical in order to keep within the range of topics of which his love was not afraid. But at times it was necessary to speak of the future, and when they did the poor mermaid showed her fins and tail. She could neither walk nor dance nor fly; she could only flounder. There was no denying the fact that poor little Rosie floundered. She floundered because she was obliged to deal with life on a scale of which she had no experience, but as to which Claude had keenly developed social sensibilities. Not that she was pretentious; she was only what he called pathetic, with a pathos that would have made him grieve for her if he hadn"t been grieving for himself.
He had asked her idea of their married life, since she had again expressed her inability to fall in with his. "Oh, Rosie, let us go and live in Paris!" he had exclaimed, to which she had replied, as she had replied so many times already: "Claude, darling, how _can_ I? How can I leave them, when they"ve no one else?"
"Then if we get married, what do you propose that we should do?"
He had never come to anything so bluntly definite before. With that common sense of hers which was always looking for openings that would lead to common-sense results, Rosie took it as an opportunity. She showed that she had given some attention to the matter, though she expressed herself with hesitation. They were sitting in the most embowered recess the hothouse could afford--in a little shrine she kept free, yet secret, for the purpose of their meetings. She let him hold both her hands, though her face and most of her person were averted from him as she spoke. She spoke with an anxiety to let him see that in marrying her he wouldn"t be letting himself down too low.
"There"s that little house in Schoolhouse Lane," she faltered. "The Lippitts used to live in it."
"Well?"
"If we lived there, I could manage--with a girl." She brought out the subordinate clause with some confusion, for the keeping of "a girl" was an ambition to which it was not quite easy to aspire. She thought it best, however, to be bold, and stammered on, "We could get one for about four a week."
He let her go on.
"And if we lived in the Lippitt house I could slip across our own yard, and across Mrs. Willert"s yard--she wouldn"t mind!--and keep an eye on things here. Mother"s ever so much better. She"s taking hold again--"
"Then why couldn"t we go and settle in Paris?"
"Because--don"t you see, Claude?--that"s not the only thing. There"s father and Matt and the business. I must be on hand to--to prop them up.
If I were to go, everything would come down with a crash--even if your father didn"t make any more trouble about the lease. I suppose if we were married he wouldn"t do _that_?"
Though he kept silence, his nervous, fastidious, super-fine soul was screaming. Why couldn"t he have been allowed to keep the poignant joy of touching her, of breathing her acrid, earthy atmosphere, of kissing her lips and her eyelids, to himself? It was an intoxication--but no one wanted intoxication all the time. It was curious that a life in this delirious state should be forced on him by the brother who wished him well. It was still more curious that he should feel obliged to force it on himself in order not to be a cad.
He didn"t despise Rosie for the poverty of her ideals. On the contrary, her ideals were exactly suited to the little rustic thing she was. If he could have been Strephon to her Chloe it would have been perfect. But he couldn"t be Strephon; he could be nothing but a neurotic twentieth-century youth, sensitive to such amenities and refinements as he had, and eager to get more. He was the type to go sporting with Amaryllis in the shade--but the shade was what made the exercise enchanting.
His obscure rebellion against the power that forced him to drag his love out into the light impelled him to say, without quite knowing why, "Did Thor ever speak of you and me being married?"
Because he was pressing her to him so closely he felt the shudder that ran through her frame. It seemed to run through his own as he waited for her reply.
"No."
Rosie never told a lie unless she thought she was obliged to. She thought it now because of Claude"s jealousy. She had seen flashes of it more than once, and always at some mention of his brother. She was terror-stricken as she felt his arm relax its embrace--terror-stricken lest Thor should have already given the information that would prove she was lying. She asked, trembling, "Did he ever say he had?"
"Do you think he"d say it, if he hadn"t?"
"N-no; I don"t suppose so."
"Then why should you ask me that?"