CHAPTER XV

THE ONLY REMEDY

The sudden flaw of passion that had troubled the waters of Rodney's

soul, subsided, spent itself in mutterings, explanations, tending to

become at last rather apologetic. He said he didn't know why her request

had got him like that. It had seemed to him for a moment as if she

didn't realize what the children's lives meant to them--almost as if she

didn't love them. He knew that was absurd, of course.

Her own rather monstrous comments on these observations had luckily

remained unspoken. What if she did lose a child as a result of her

effort to care for it herself? She could bear more children. And what

chance had she to love them? Where was the soil for love to take root

in, unless she took care of them herself? These weren't really thoughts

of hers--just a sort of crooked reflection of what he was saying off the

surface of a mind terribly preoccupied with something else.

She was in the grip of an appalling realization. This moment--this

actually present moment that was going to last only until she should

speak for the next time, or move her eyes around to his face--was the

critical moment of her life. She had, for just this moment, a choice of

two things to say when next she should speak--a choice of two ways of

looking into his face. A mountaineer, standing on the edge of a

crevasse, deciding whether to try to leap across and win a precarious

way to the summit, or to turn back and confess the climb has been in

vain, is confronted by a choice like that. If ever the leap was to be

made, it must be made now. The rainbow bridge across the crevasse, the

miracle of motherhood, had faded like the mist it was composed of.

She was a mother now. Yet her relation to her husband's life was the

same as that of the girl who had gone to his office the night of the

Randolphs' dinner. And no external event--nothing that could _happen_ to

her (remember that even motherhood had "happened" in her case) could

ever transmute that relation into the thing she wanted. If the alchemy

were to be wrought at all, it would be by the act of her own will--at

the cost of a deliberately assumed struggle. There was nothing, any

more, to hope from waiting. The thing that whispered, "Wait!

To-morrow--some to-morrow or other, it may be easier! Wait until, for

yourself, you've thought out the consequences,"--that was the voice of

cowardice. If she turned back, down the easier path, to-night, it must

be under no delusion that she'd ever try to climb again, or find a pair

of magic wings that would carry her, effortless, to what she wanted.

Well, then, she had her choice. One of two things she might do now. It

was in her power to look up at him and smile, and say: "All right,

Roddy, old man, I'll stop being disagreeable. I won't have any more

whims." And she could go to him and clasp her hands behind his head and

feel the rough pressure of his cheeks against the velvety surfaces of

her forearms, and kiss his eyes and mouth; surrender to the embrace she

knew so well would follow.

She could make, after a fashion, a life of that. She had no fear but it

would last. Barring incalculable misfortunes, she ought to be able to

keep her looks and her charm for him, unimpaired, or but little

impaired, for twenty years--twenty-five, with care. For the rich, the

resources of modern civilization would almost guarantee that. Well,

twenty-five years would see Rodney through his fifties. She needn't,

barring accident, have any more children. He'd probably be content with

two; especially as they were boy and girl.

The other man in him--the man who wasn't her lover--would struggle of

course. Except when she was by, the lover would probably have a bad time

of it. She'd have to find some amusing sort of occupation to enable her

to forget that. But when she was there, it would be strange if she and

her lover together couldn't, most of the time, keep the other man locked

up where he wouldn't disturb them much.

Lived without remorse or misgivings, played magnificently for all it

was worth, as she could play it--she knew that now--it would be a rather

wonderful life. They must be decidedly an exceptional pair of lovers,

she thought. Certainly Madame Gréville's generalization about Americans

did not apply to them, and she was coming to suspect it did apply to the

majority of her friends. She could have that life--safely, surely, as

far as our poor mortality can be sure of anything. She had only to reach

out her hands.

But if, instead, she took the leap ...!

"Roddy ..." she said.

He was slumped down in a big easy chair at the other side of the table,

swinging a restless foot; drumming now and then with his fingers. It was

many silent minutes since the storm of reproach with which he had

repelled her plea for a part in the actual responsible care of her

children had died away. He had spoken with unnecessary vehemence, he

knew. He had admitted that--said he was sorry, as well as he could

without withdrawing from his position. But he had been met by that most

formidable of all weapons--a blank silence--an inscrutable face. Some

sort of scene was inevitable, he knew. And he sat there waiting for it.

She had been hurt. She was undoubtedly very angry.

He thought he was ready for anything. But just the way she spoke his

name, startled--almost frightened--him, she said it so quietly,

so--tenderly.

"Roddy," she said, "I want you to come over here and kiss me, and then

go back and sit down in that chair again."

He went a little pale at that. The swing of his foot was arrested

suddenly. But, for a moment, he made no move--just looked wonderingly

into her great grave eyes.

"Something's going to happen," she went on, "and before it's over, I'm

afraid it's going to hurt you terribly--and me. And I want the kiss for

us to remember. So that we'll always know, whatever happens afterward,

that we loved each other." She held out her arms to him. "Won't you

come?"

He came--a man bewildered--bent down over her and found her lips; but

almost absently, out of a daze.

"No, not like that," she murmured. "In the old way."

There was a long embrace.

"I wouldn't do it," she said, "I don't believe I'd have the courage to

do it, if it were just me. But there's some one else--I've made some one

a promise. I can't tell you about that. Now please go back and sit over

there where you were, where we can talk quietly.--Oh, Roddy, I love you

so!--No, please go back, old man! And--and light your pipe. Oh, don't

tremble like that! It--it isn't a tragedy. It's--for us, it's the

greatest hope in the world."

He went back to his chair. He even lighted his pipe as she asked him to,

and waited as steadily as he could for her to begin.

But she couldn't begin while she looked at him. She moved a little

closer to the table and leaned her elbow on it, shaded her eyes with one

hand, while the other played with the stump of a pencil that happened to

be lying there.

"Do you remember ..." she began, and it was wonderful how quiet and

steady her voice was. There was even the trace of a smile about her

wonderful mouth. "Do you remember that afternoon of ours, the very first

of them, when you brought home my note-books and found me asleep on the

couch in our old back parlor? Do you remember how you told me that one's

desires were the only motive power he had? One couldn't ride anywhere,

you said, except on the backs of his own passions? Well, it was a funny

thing--I got to wondering afterward what my desires were, and it seemed

I hadn't any. Everything had, somehow, come to me before I knew I wanted

it. Everything in the world, even your love for me, came like that.

"But I've got a passion now, Rodney. I've had it for a long while. It's

a desire I can't satisfy. The thing I want, and there's nothing in the

world that I wouldn't give to get it, is--well, your friendship; that's

a way of saying it."

What he had been waiting to hear, of course, she didn't know. But she

knew by the way he started and stared at her, that it hadn't been for

that. The thing struck him, it seemed, as a sort of grotesquely

irritating anti-climax.

"Gracious Heaven!" he said. "My friendship! Why, I'm in love with you!

That's certainly a bigger thing. Go back to your geometry, child. The

greater includes the less, doesn't it?"

"I don't know whether it's a bigger thing or not," she said. "But it

doesn't include the other. Love's just a sort of miracle thing that

happens to you. You don't have it because you deserve it. The person I

made that promise to would have earned it, if any one could. But it

doesn't come that way. It's like lightning. It strikes or else it

doesn't. Well, it struck us. But friendship--there's this about it. You

can't get it any way in the world, except just by earning it. Nobody can

give it to you, no matter how hard he tries. So when you've got it, you

can always say, 'There's something that I'm entitled to--something

that's mine.' Your love isn't mine any more than the air is. I never did

anything to earn it.

"And that's why it can't satisfy me.--Because it doesn't, Roddy. It

hasn't for ever so long. It's something wonderful that's--_happened_ to

me. It's the loveliest thing that ever happened to anybody. And just

because it's so wonderful and beautiful, I can't bear to--well, this is

hard to say--I can't bear to use it to live on. I can't bear to have it

mixed up in things like millinery bills and housekeeping expense. I

can't bear to see it become a thing that piles a load of hateful

obligations on your back. I could live on your friendship, Roddy;

because your friendship would mean that somehow I was earning my way,

but I can't live on your love; any more than you could on mine. Won't

you--won't you just try to think for a moment what that would mean to

you?"

Now that he had sensed the direction her talk was headed in, even though

he hadn't even vaguely glimpsed the point at which she was going to

bring up, he made it much harder for her to talk to him. He was tramping

up and down the room, stopping and turning short every now and then with

a gesture of exasperation, or an interruption that never got beyond two

or three words and broke off always in a sort of frantic speechlessness.

She knew he couldn't help it. Down underneath his mind, controlling

utterly its processes, was a ganglion of instincts that were utterly

outraged by the things she was saying to him. It was they and not his

intelligence she had to fight. She must be patient, as gentle as she

could, but she must make him listen.

"You've got my friendship!" he cried out now. "It's a grotesque

perversion of the facts to say you haven't."

She smiled at him as she shook her head. "I've spent too many months

trying to get it and seeing myself fail--oh, so ridiculously!--not to

know what I am talking about, Roddy."

And then, still smiling, rather sadly, she told what some of the

experiments had been--some of her attempts to break into the life he

kept locked away from her and carry off a share of it for herself.

"I was angry at first when I found you keeping me out," she said, "angry

and hurt. I used to cry about it. And then I saw it wasn't your fault.

That's how I discovered friendship had to be earned."

But her power to maintain that attitude of grave detachment was about

spent. The passion mounted in her voice and in her eyes as she went on.

"You thought it was because of my condition, as you called it, that my

mind had got full of wild ideas;--the wild idea that I wasn't really and

truly your wife at all, but only your mistress, and that I was pulling

you down from something free and fine that you had been, to something

that you despised yourself for being and had to try to deny you were.

Those were the obsessions of a pregnant woman, you thought--something

she was to be soothed and coddled into forgetting. You were wrong about

that, Roddy.

"I did have an obsession, but it wasn't the thing you thought. It was an

obsession that kept me quiet, and contented and happy, and willing to

wait in spite of everything. The obsession was that none of those things

mattered because a big miracle was coming that was going to change it

all. I was going to have a job at last--a job that was just as real as

yours--the job of being a mother."

Her voice broke in a fierce sharp little laugh over the word, but she

got it back in control again.

"I was going to have a baby to feed out of my own body, to keep alive

with my own care. There was going to be responsibility and hard work,

things that demanded courage and endurance and sacrifice. I could earn

your friendship with that, I said. That was the real obsession, Roddy,

and it never really died until to-night. Because of course I have kept

on hoping, even after I might have seen how it was. But the babies'

lives aren't to be jeopardized to gratify my whims. Well, I suppose I

can't complain. It's over, that's the main thing.

"And now, here I am perfectly normal and well again--as good as ever.

I've kept my looks--oh, my hair and my complexion and my figure. I could

wear pretty clothes again and start going out to things now that the

season's begun, just as I did a year ago. People would admire me, and

you'd be pleased, and you'd love me as much as ever, and it would all be

like the paradise it was last year, except for one thing. The one thing

is that if I do that, I'll know this time what I really am. Your

mistress, Roddy; your legal, perfectly respectable mistress,--and a

little more despicable rather than less, I think, because of the

adjectives."

"I've let that word go by once," he said quietly, but with a dangerous

light of anger in his eyes. "I won't again. It's perfectly outrageous

and inexcusable that you should talk like that, and I'll ask you never

to do it again."

"I won't," she flashed back at him, "if you'll explain why I'm not

exactly what I say." And after ten seconds of silence, she went on.

"Why, Roddy, I've heard you describe me a hundred times. Not the you

that's my lover. The other you; talking all over the universe to Barry

Lake. You've described the woman who's never been trained nor taught nor

disciplined; who's been brought up soft, with the bloom on, for the

purpose of making her marriageable; who's never found her job in

marriage, who doesn't cook, nor sew, nor spin, nor even take care of her

own children; the woman who uses her sex charm to save her from having

to do hard ugly things, and keep her in luxury. Do you remember what

you've called her, Roddy? Do you remember the word you've used? I've

used a gentler word than that.

"Oh, you didn't know, you poor blind boy, that I was the woman you were

talking about. You never saw it at all. But I am. I was brought up like

that.--Oh, not on purpose. Dear old mother! She wasn't trying to make me

into a prostitute any more then you are trying to make me into your

mistress. You both love me, that's all. It's just an instinct not to let

anything hurt me, nor frighten me, nor tire me, nor teach me what work

is. She thought she was educating me to be a lawyer so that when the

time came, I could be one of the leaders of the woman movement just as

she'd been. And all the while, without knowing it, she was educating me

to be the sort of person you'd fall in love with--something precious and

expensive--something to be taken care of.

"I didn't understand any of that when you married me, Roddy; it was just

like a dream to me--like a fairy story come true. If any one had told me

a year ago, that I should ever be anything but perfectly happy in your

love for me, I'd have laughed at him. I remember telling Madame Gréville

that our marriage had turned out well--ended happily. And she did laugh.

That was before I'd begun to understand. But I do understand now. I know

why it was you could talk to me, back in those days before we were

married, about anything under the sun--things ten thousand miles above

my head; what it was that fooled me into thinking we were friends as

well as lovers. I know why you've never been able to talk to me like

that since. And I know--this is the worst of all, Roddy,--this is the

piece of knowledge that makes it impossible--I know what a good mistress

I could make. I know I could make you love me whether you wanted to or

not; whether I loved you or not. I could make other men love me, if I

could make up my mind to do it--make them tell me all their hopes and

dreams, and think I had a fine mind and a wonderful understanding. Oh,

it's too easy--it's too hatefully easy!

"Do you know why I told you that? Because if you believe it and

understand it, you will see why I can't go on living on your love.

Because how can you be sure, knowing that my position in the world, my

friends--oh, the very clothes on my back, and the roof over my head, are

dependent on your love,--how are you going to be sure that my love for

you is honest and disinterested? What's to keep you from

wondering--asking questions? Love's got to be free, Roddy. The only way

to make it free is to have friendship growing alongside it. So, when I

can be your partner and your friend, I'll be your mistress, too. But

not--not again, Roddy, till I can find a way. I'll have to find it for

myself. I'll have to go...."

She broke down there over a word she couldn't at first say, buried her

face in her arms and let a deep racking sob or two have their own way

with her. But presently she sat erect again and, with a supreme effort

of will, forced her voice to utter the word.

"I've got to go somewhere alone--away from you, and stay until I find

it. If I ever do, and you want me, I'll come back."