CHAPTER XIV
On the whole Rod considered that he came off very well in the matter of breaking this news to the family. Laska, who was staying awhile at Hawk's Nest, having a clear understanding of the situation, bundled Isabel off to town at once and gallantly proposed that she, herself, take Mary under her wing for the remaining four weeks. Rod promptly vetoed this.
"Won't work," he said frankly. "You've never even met the girl. She's much too clever to be fussed up by a burst of family interest all at once. I'm not going to have you pitchfork her into a giddy round before she has time to get her bearings. When we're married and come home, I'll take it kindly if you will all be as casual as if I'd married some girl we'd all known for years. No special efforts at gaiety, please, at this stage of the game."
Laska agreed that might be good policy. She was frankly curious about this girl Rod was going to marry. She was also well aware that the slangy fast-stepping crowd which occasionally descended on Hawk's Nest might make it difficult for a rank outsider thrown in their way. As Rod's wife, Mary would partake of the family dignity. As a mere fiancée she would be fair game, especially for the younger women.
So matters stood as they were. The circumstances were fortuitous enough. Grove was the one fly in the ointment,—an uncertainty as to what he might do or say. And Grove had just betaken himself across the Atlantic, cooking up some financial stew in London. Grove was very jealous of his dignity. He was more arrogant than ever. Rod anticipated a certain amount of minor trouble with Grove. Hence he was as well satisfied that Grove was not present to inject the virus of his distaste into the already dubious mind of their father. Phil merely grinned and wished him luck.
"I don't know that I'd have had it turn out just this way if I'd been the arbiter of destiny," Oliver Thorn said to him. "I hope you and Mary will never be sorry. It's natural, I suppose—but natural evolution sometimes has its pains and disasters. Why do you want to go outside your own class to fall in love and marry?"
"Because I can't find what I want in my own crowd," Rod responded blithely. "Neither can Mary," he added as an afterthought.
Old Thorn reflected on this.
"Maybe you're right," he admitted soberly. "I never thought of it just that way before."
"And when it comes down to brass tacks," Rod went on, "the only fundamental difference between my family and yours is a matter of money. It's hardly right to classify us as belonging to a different order."
"True enough," Thorn agreed. "Mary's people, her mother's and mine, have had advantages, as they say. We didn't somehow manage to retain a stranglehold on the sources of wealth, that's all. We've been a restless lot. We've helped open up new territory from the Alleghanies west. We've always been independent. But we never took root for long. There are certain inherent advantages in taking root in the right sort of soil," his gaze rested on the red roof beyond the channel, "in taking hold and hanging on. With the prestige that goes with money—pshaw!" he made an impatient gesture. "When I let go this timber I'll have plenty to give two old people of simple tastes a comfortable living as long as they live. I never thought about money in connection with Mary before. Maybe she'll have a tussle with some of your crowd. Still—give her a wardrobe and a background—she has everything else—they'd all kowtow."
"My idea," Rod agreed blandly. "They will."
"Perhaps," Oliver Thorn sighed. "Still, she's got a handicap. If the going gets rough, don't blame Mary. Blame me. I should have foreseen something like this—and made preparation."
"Oh dammit," Rod said carelessly, "there isn't going to be any blame. Mary has real class. You know it. I know it. If there are poor simps on our visiting list who won't recognize it, why I'll just mark 'em off the list."
And so they were married.
Various people have various ideas about marriage,—ideas which sometimes do and sometimes do not coincide with facts. Love is as old as humanity. Marriage is an institution. Were this simply a mendacious tale of romantic youth, one might close it here with a sigh and the simple statement that they lived happily ever after. One could leave the rest to imagination.
And so they were married—married!
Well, what of it? People do not cease to live after marriage. To most it is only the beginning of their real being. So, one would say, it should have been for Rod Norquay and Mary Thorn. One would be right. They were possibly more fortunate than most. Home, friends, the invisible aura of wealth, established position, lay to their hand. They had nothing to face beyond the inevitable process of adaptation to the intimacies of matrimony, to each other's individual moods and tenses. This seemed no problem, since neither they nor any other young man or woman passionately in love ever recognized such a problem. Instinct triumphs; mutual taste smooths the way for compromises in the clash of their separate personalities.
Poverty, unremitting struggle for an economic foothold, unwelcome babies and frowsy domesticity withers many a fine flower of romantic passion when it should still be brightly blooming. Rod and Mary had before them no toilsome effort to keep the wolf from the door. Their place in the sun was made and provided. They had but to eat, drink, and be merry. Where could lie in wait for them the elements of clash and struggle, of fear and hope, of stifled griefs and aching disappointments,—all the sad travail and hard-won victories bestowed upon men and women through the long procession of the years?
Go to, you say. Considering the circumstances they marry and live happy ever after. That is the accepted formula.
Quite simple. But life is not an affair of formula. The simple tends to become the complex. So the findings of science indicate. So from time to time philosophers inform us. We don't pay much attention, by and large, to either scientific or philosophic fulminations. But occasionally one or the other, or both, utters a workable truth. The dictum that even the simplest thing contains within itself all the elements of the profoundly complex is one of these basic truths.
Fate, Destiny, God, Chance, whoever or whatever rolls the dice of events did not decree that Rod and his wife should come to their full estate by way of teas and tennis, the secure comfort of Hawk's Nest and the full social life open to the Norquays in town when they chose to avail themselves of town. It didn't elect for Mary an absorption into the younger matrons' set, immediate luxury and alternate boredom and excitement. Nor for Rod a mixture of gentlemanly leisure, casual attention to estate affairs and dillettante efforts at writing a prose epic of pioneering times. No. Before they were born, forces were shaping to jostle them out of this pleasant groove. Or was it merely a careless roll of the dice? Who can say?
They returned from a brief honeymoon quite frankly absorbed in each other, in the confirmation of the dreams and glamor of love, exultingly triumphant in having achieved a perfect union of the spirit as well as the flesh. They were welcomed to Hawk's Nest by a hand-picked group of the family and intimates. Laska, Phil, their father, their sister Dorothy from Victoria with two chubby sons, two cousins from Montreal, an old school chum of Phil's with his wife.
For the time it seemed to Rod that his childish impression of family solidarity, of complete and intimate understanding and support, which had made so fine an atmosphere of home about the place, had been restored in full force. As if the Norquay Trust Company and Grove's hectic yachting parties, jazz and restlessness, the slow disintegration of their unity had vanished into some place remote.
It was very pleasant for a week or so. Rod watched with mingled pride and amusement the first cordial effort to be kind to his wife, merely because she was his wife, evolve into a relieved acceptance of her as quite one of themselves.
"One would think," he reflected, "that they had half expected her to eat spinach with a knife."
Rod, of course, knew quite well that Mary's adaptation to this more luxurious mode of living, a more elaborate manner, was no more difficult for her than his own ready fitting-in to the life of a logging crew. He had long ago learned that rubbing elbows with people is the surest cure for self-consciousness; that the fundamentals of good breeding are simple. There were a great many people of his own kind who believed that good manners must necessarily be the exclusive possession of the well-to-do. It had never occurred to him before so strongly, but he saw now that most of his own family and many of his friends took it for granted that to be poor—as they defined poverty—meant that one had never been anywhere, knew nothing, murdered the King's English, committed every conceivable faux pas, and was naturally an impossible sort of person.
It was a narrow creed; one that filled Rod with impatience. Those who held to it most rigidly were least qualified to pass rational judgment on any man or woman. Their knowledge of life was as limited as that of the people they regarded as inferior.
"'Fess up," he bantered Dorothy, one day. "You were all very dubious about the new Mrs. Norquay, weren't you?"
"Well, what do you expect?" his sister replied. "One doesn't anticipate a combination of brains, beauty, and deportment from such a source?"
"Why not?" he inquired innocently.
"Well, one doesn't," she replied. "I don't understand it yet. Mary's a dear. She has never had any advantages, so to speak, yet she fits in here as if she belonged. That's all I know about it."
"The fact of the matter is, Dot," Rod gave his own opinion, "that girls like Mary Thorn are rare birds in any class, top or bottom. It takes more than clothes and manners to make a real woman."
On the whole, Rod had every reason to be satisfied. It was not the family custom to be demonstrative. They liked Mary. Perceiving that she was a normal young woman of good taste and sound sense, they took her to their bosom, figuratively speaking, without more ado. There was a formal welcoming dinner to which Oliver Thorn and his wife were asked as a matter of courtesy, and to which they came and acquitted themselves with credit. Grandfather Norquay remarked afterward that Mrs. Thorn was a very fine type of woman. Rod's father conceded that Oliver Thorn was a more intelligent, better-informed man than he had imagined. All of which was duly gratifying to Rod.
But this satisfactory state of affairs was broken into by Mr. Grosvenor Sylvester Norquay in his most characteristic manner. He came back from England in due course and steamed straight to Hawk's Nest on the Kowloon. Contrary to his custom, he came alone, and he arrived for some inscrutable reason in his worst temper and his most disagreeable manner.
"Well," he said to Rod at the first opening, "you made a hash of things for fair, didn't you? By Jove, I used to think you had taste if not judgment. I perceive you have neither."
"Are you referring to my marriage?" Rod asked.
"Excellent guesser. You don't imagine I'm referring to the price of logs or foreign exchange, do you?"
"Those are about the only matters you're qualified to pass on, and I'm doubtful about even that," Rod said quietly. "That'll be about all in that vein, elder brother. I know you don't like it—although it's none of your business. I daresay you're going to cut up as rough as you can on general principles. But another break like that and I'll smash you. You may be the big noise in the Norquay Trust, but dictatorial trust company methods won't work in the family. So you'd better be a good dog and not growl or show your teeth. I'll whip you if you do. I'm quite competent to do the job. If you think I'm not, just go ahead and be insulting and act the snob and get critical and sneer; the whole bag of tricks you put on when you want to hurt anybody's feelings. I may not be able to prevent you. But I can make you sorry. And I surely will. How would you like to go back to town with two black eyes and your classical nose a bit off center?"
Rod told him all this in an ordinary conversational tone. And when he issued such a direct challenge, he was not merely letting a little steam off his youthful chest. He had a feeling that the only way to deal with Grove was to defy him,—to act first. The threat of personal chastisement was perhaps Rod's only concession to a personal animus. He meant precisely what he said. There was a definite limit to what he would permit Grove to do and say, where Mary was concerned. A dozen times in his life his hands had doubled into fists against Grove—an involuntary action. He was—or he had been—a little ashamed of this eagerness to do bodily damage to his brother. Once, long ago, Grove's domineering tactics had roused Phil out of his placidity, and Rod had felt his heart uplifted at sight of Grove knocked sprawling with a single hearty punch. Not that Grove lacked the fighting heart; he would have fought Phil to a finish then and there, but for their father's scandalized interference. Grove couldn't stand long in a losing fight; he couldn't take punishment; that was a weakness both his brothers had fathomed long before.
And Rod had never forgotten that for weeks thereafter Grove was politic, to say the least, in his invasions of Phil's territory. Nor had Rod ever quite rid himself of the feeling that it would be a pleasure to repeat such a chastisement with his own hands. They were blood-brothers. There was even a profound physical likeness, except that Grove ran slightly to beef. But they didn't think, or act, or feel alike. They were antagonistic at every point where their lives touched. And Rod did not mean, if he could help it, to let this scowling elder duplicate of himself put a single spoke in the wheel which promised to revolve so smoothly for Mary and himself.
It was so childish, Rod said to himself impatiently, when Grove left him with an inarticulate growl, for him to take it that way. What difference need it make to Grove whom his brother married? Grove was the biggest toad in a puddle where big toads were common.
But it was the nature of the man to restrict the splashing to such as he approved, if it were in his power. It was also the nature of the man to be greedy of power, to exercise it arbitrarily if he could, regardless of justice or even common sense.
For the class of people out of which Mary Thorn had sprung Grove Norquay had only a disdainful recognition. They were the material upon which such as he were ordained to thrive. Rod knew Grove and Grove's crowd. Grove's dignity would suffer at their hands. Grove would be maddened by jocular references to his new sister-in-law. A hand-logger's daughter! How quaint of Rod! Grove would be as disagreeable to Mary as he dared, as vindictive as he could. He was made that way,—more vindictive over trifles than he would be over a deadly wrong.
Rod wondered why their father had never been able to see the weakness of this his son. Phil did. Phil had frankly expected a débâcle in Grove's financial operations. It hadn't come. He throve, waxed great. Nevertheless, quoth Phil, in a moment of pessimism, a man may successfully direct a great profit-making enterprise and still be a poor specimen of manhood, a gross, self-centered, unstable egotist. Rod agreed.
Mr. Grove Norquay tarried only two hours at Hawk's Nest. His visage and manner were at no time genial. He acknowledged his introduction to Mary in about as distant a fashion as he could effect. And having had a wide experience in freezing undesirables, Grove could be appallingly glacial when he tried. His iciness was wasted on Mary. She merely smiled, gazed at him with bland unconcern. She was fairly good at that. Thereafter, during a brief, general conversation Grove took pains neither to address her nor to look at her, except for an occasional appraising glance.
He exploded a small bomb in the vicinity of his wife after luncheon.
"We're going back within the hour," he said. His tone was brusque, snappy.
"Must you go back so soon?" Laska inquired amiably. "It was hardly worth the long run."
"I said 'we,'" Grove bore hard on the pronoun. "If you have any things to take, better have them got ready."
"But, good heavens, Grove, must I go back to town on such short notice? Has anything extraordinary happened?"
Laska was frankly astonished.
"Nothing has happened. But I'm afraid you must. I came especially for you."
Laska looked thoughtful for a moment.
"Of course," she said dryly, "when one has promised to love, honor, and obey, one hasn't much choice. I'll have my bags sent aboard. Give a whoop when you're ready to leave."
She rose. Her gaze swept the faces of the others, came back to Grove. It seemed to Rod that her glance flashed hostility at her husband, although she was smiling. And in the same breath he caught a queer flicker of expression on Phil's usually immobile face. Undercurrents. Veiled swirls of feeling. Rod sensed them all about him, as if a state of tension had been set up. That, he thought irritably, was Grove's usual effect. If he were crossed, ever so slightly, he proceeded at once to generate an atmosphere.
"He had to get at somebody so he takes it out on Laska," Rod said to himself. "Snarly beast. If she'd been keen on going to town, he'd have insisted on her staying here. Phil's sore. I wonder if the old boy's still a little tender about Laska?"
The answer to that came within half an hour, when Rod had forgotten the passing thought. He had gone out on the porch to smoke. There was a recess behind a bulging window. There Rod found a chair. He sat deep in his own mixed reflections. Phil turned a corner and stood by a pillar, hands deep in his pockets. Just as Rod was about to speak, Laska came out. She was hatted and gloved, carrying a small bag.
"Good-by, old scout," she said whimsically. "It's been very pleasant here the last few days. I thought I was going to get acquainted with you all over again. But the oracle decrees otherwise. Will you come and see me in town?"
Phil shook his head.
"Why not?"
"Always too busy," he said briefly.
"Of course," she agreed, after a pause. "How stupid of me to forget that. Well, good-by."
They shook hands. Laska vanished around the house. Rod saw her appear on the gravel walk, joined by Mary, Dorothy and the others. He didn't need to ask why Phil was not with them to speed the departing guest. The expression on Phil's face as he stood looking after Laska told its own story. Rod understood. He was streaked with the same vein of constancy to an affection, an ideal, a conviction. He was supremely sorry for Phil—for them both.
"Five years," he thought, "and it hurts him yet. Laska knows it, too. And she hasn't a shred of an illusion about Grove. Poor devils. And they have to go right on playing the game."
There was a different sort of game afoot, however, the petty malice of which was presently disclosed to Rod.