XXIV
Pelham and Jane came back from their trip to Jackson in a gentle mood. Death quiets the footfall and lowers the voice instinctively; their joy in the final preparation of the house on Haviland Avenue was unconsciously hushed.
He had his word about the various purchases; but his haphazard taste began to defer regularly to her sense of artistic home-making. The little clashes that came smoothed themselves away.
While she was superintending the unpacking of a treasured dinner set, her aunt's contribution, Pelham volunteered to hang the pictures on the living-room and study walls. She edged out to watch him, and interrupted at once, "Oh, never, never, Pelham! Pictures must be hung at eye-level."
Perturbed eyes met hers. "Ours hang near the ceiling, at home."
"They were probably larger. Mrs. Anderson taught me that. There.... And don't you agree now that my taste in wall paper is excellent? This gray oatmeal, as a background——"
"It is cool and lovely. I've grown up among flowers and curlicues."
They did not buy many things, Pelham's uncertain income being a chief cause. While with the company, he had lived up to his salary; from the few pay checks as state inspector he had not been able to lay aside a great sum. This, with a legacy kept untouched from college days, and an income that Jane had from her father's estate, put them beyond immediate worry; but there was no idle surplus for expensive furnishings. The election, as well as the wedding trip, had cut into his savings; and his present potboiling work—statistical researches for the United Charities reports—did not go very far, nor promise a future.
Remembering these facts, Jane's natural economy sought the less pretentious stores. The dining-room set and the bedroom furniture were substantial, but inexpensive for the taste they showed; the piano and bookcases were paid for on what Lily, the cook and maid-of-all-tasks, called "de extortion plan."
As she approved of the final placing of the pictures, Jane reflected with satisfaction on the fine showing their funds had made; and Pelham, his mind rather on the total shown by the bank's balance slip the first of the month, was glad that the bulk of the buying was ended.
Thoughtfully she studied the room. "That couch could stand two or three pillows.... I saw some ruby cretonne that would go wonderfully with that cover."
When she had purchased it and made it up, he had to admit that it was the most colorful spot in the house.
And what a colorful time those first days were! Many of the ordinary achievements toward the joint home brought positive ecstasy.
The puffed pride of those ruby cushions marked the end of the metamorphosis of the house into a home. "It's really presentable, now," she sighed contentedly, as she sat in their own chair, on their own porch of their own dwelling.
Pelham lounged back against her knee, studying the dark countenance of the mountain; somehow its spell had drawn toward it the face of the house, and the unlidded gaze of its blind-less front eyes. There was a pleasant rustle in his ears, as his wife bent over her sewing; Jane could not resist an occasional tingle of embarrassment at this preoccupation, in his presence, with the intimate mends in her garments. Would she ever dare mend his! What shameless and delightful publicity marriage entailed!
Abstractedly he thought over the outstanding raptures of these days. What simple stuff made the enduring pleasures! There was the thrill, for instance, when he had, with studied casualness, pulled out of his pocket the signed lease, for her inspection. What an unimportant thing, yet wearing somehow the grace of man's protecting, shelter-building rôle! Then the zest of standing beside her while they chose furniture ... rugs, table, bedroom furniture.... The emotional exaltation had been immense. And the first meal they had had in the dining-room, with matter-of-fact Lily in and out in matter-of-fact fashion, and Jane across the white and silver expanse, her face softened by the soft lighting—these moments might become habitual, but the ecstasy of their first tasting had welded a permanent bond connecting the two. Added to this delight in things was the growing joy in each other—the day's cordial comradeships, the splendor of cool nights sacred to love, and reverent gray dawns in which he woke to watch the loveliness of her calm face asleep on the pillow's rumpled primness—these shook him with their intimate beauty.
"Tired, dear?" He put up his hands and caught hers.
"Not a bit. I sighed through sheer animal comfort, I think."
"You've earned a holiday—busy since morning with the house. Get your wraps; you don't choose the club—let's go up to the crest, and watch for Canopus.... If we're in luck, he'll be visible in a quarter of an hour."
They reached the vantage place; despite the fitful waverings of the horizon air, they saw the star's golden torch drag fierily over the tree-fretted heights of Shadow Mountain. There was a sullen reddish smolder over the face of this alien sun; but the brief glimpse of the burning visitant from southern skies was an unforgettable experience.
"If we could only watch it from the old top of the mountain."
"The old top, Pelham?"
He traced Nathaniel Guild's idea of the mighty sky-piercing ridge that had once united the iron strata of this crest and the West Adamsville one, with an overlap of sandstone whose grayed relics still crumbled in the small hills flanking the two iron ranges.
"It shrivels our puny importance, doesn't it, dear, to think of the former majesty of these hills!"
"We're as important to ourselves, Pelham."
Together in spirit they climbed the airy darkness that had been the old mountain; their fancies winged back to the shaken ages before man's weak restlessness hid in trees and caves, and came out into the open, to clear away and shape the forests, and split apart the everlasting hills for the malleable wealth hid within them.
But the ecstatic moods could not last forever. The graying embers of the strike re-won their efforts; the inevitable selfishnesses and littlenesses of life came in, to break the filmy web of romance and delight. Man can stay on the high peaks, whether of spirituality or intellect, of surging emotion or unstrung sentiment, but a little while; their rarefied atmosphere, the height of man's upward groping, will not sustain vigorous animal life. When such moments come, if we are in tune we pass into their magnetic sway whole-heartedly; let the little daily frets, the appetites and prejudices, be in control, and the height is unclimbed, the high emotion lifting another passes unnoticed over our stooping backs.
The two differing personalities found life together a perpetual welter of adjustment. Insofar as they were adaptable, these adjustments were easy; but neither his training, as a favored first son, nor her self-sure nature, helped cushion the continual shocks. Neither had reached the opinionated thirties, when inconsiderate habits have rutted too deeply to permit habitual considerateness; but the two determined wills had no easy task to come to agreement upon even small details of the home life.
Pelham's "picturesque" pipes, as he reminded her the unmarried Jane had always described them, showed a depraved tendency to roost wherever their master finished with them.
"But, darling, you must remember," she insisted, in affectionate exasperation. "Lily found one on the piano this morning; I barely moved the sugar bowl, and look at this table cloth! Your old ashes have made it simply filthy. The hall table's marked; your bureau——"
"I always mean to put 'em on the rack," he urged in contrition.
She sniffed distastefully, holding out the offender at the end of dainty fingers. "Here it is."
Again, he would become unreasonably exasperated when she insisted upon asking what meat he would prefer for dinner, when she had him to shop with her. "Mm-hmm, it's a lovely steak," he would agree abstractedly. "Yes, I like ham, too.... Or a roast. Darling, I don't care. Get anything."
She felt aggrieved at his callousness upon the momentous topic.
Upon other matters connected with eating he was not so unopinionated. "Just look here, Jane! Lily's douched the potatoes in fat again. You know that fried starch——"
"Yes, dear, I know ... by now. You needn't eat any; she'll bring some mashed ones for you."
He grinned surlily. "I'll try a few, Jane; I like them, though they're not good for me.... Another spoonful, please."
The country club was another viand of contention. Jane had never enjoyed the inconsequential chatter and watery flirtations that were its chief offer; Pelham found in them a forgetfulness from strike worries and the increasing financial problem.
The week after their sight of Canopus, he announced a determination to drop by for tennis with Lane Cullom, and the dinner afterwards.
"You may see Hollis; it's his spring holiday," his wife observed without inflection.
"I saw he was back. I don't mind, if he doesn't.... Sure you don't want to come? For dinner, or afterwards for a few minutes?"
"Dances are so boring, Pell."
"Once in a while I like 'em."
"I'll go next week, if you go then.... Don't make a scene with Hollis."
He jerked with needless viciousness at his belt. "Why make such an assumption? I'm not going to make a scene."
Her pen scratched raspingly over the businesslike letter-heads of the State Suffrage Association. "You almost had a fight with John Birrell, at the bowling tournament."
"You exaggerate everything, Jane. There was nothing like it——"
"You told me——"
"I told you, very plainly, that there would have been a fight, if we hadn't held in our tempers. He's a decent fellow; he's still sore about my mining report. The State is again investigating them."
She did not look up.
"Good-night, dear," planting an indecisive kiss on her hair.
"Good-night."
Probably Hollis would be in uniform, he reflected. The boy hadn't lost any time in joining the Yale Battery, when the President's initial break with Germany foreshadowed war.
Just after dinner, his brother Ned charged up. "Hell-o, Pell! Didn't expect to see me, did you? Father let me come, because Hollis was here."
"Aren't we the young sport!"
"There he is—Hey, Hollis! Here's Pell!"
The brother, fine-looking in his well-pressed khaki, came over unhurriedly. "Hello, Pelham. How you making out?"
"Oh, all right. I'm working for the United Charities, you know—Labor Legislation Committee."
"Still fooling with that socialist crew?"
"I'm still a member of the party, Hollis."
"You aren't a foreigner; why don't you get out?"
Pelham's eyes snapped. "Why not learn something about the movement, before you pass judgment on it?"
"You'll wake up soon. The heads of the movement are all pro-German; everybody says so. The government's liable to arrest 'em any minute."
The older brother grinned. "We won't quarrel about it."
"I don't care. I think it's outrageous, agitating against the government, when we may have war——"
Ned's bright eyes went from one to the other. "Pell's right, you don't know much about socialism, Hollis. I've been reading books at the library—it's great stuff!"
"Let father catch you!"
"I'm glad to see you back, anyhow," Pelham smiled. "Drop by the Charities building some morning and we'll talk over Sheff."
Hollis called, and the brothers had lunch together. Although the younger said nothing of it, Pelham could not help feeling the other's distaste at the dingy side-office in the Charities building where the older did his work now. And Pelham observed with a twinge of envy his brother's lavish order for the meal, his excessive tipping. Hollis planned nothing for the good of the world; money was his without asking; while in his own case....
Well, he did not need to worry yet. He was not making enough to support himself and Jane; but their fund was still sizable; and as soon as the strike uncertainty was over, he could get into something permanent. There was more cause for worry in the stagnation of the mine struggle. Thanks to the men's dogged persistence, production on the mountain was less than half normal. The companies could not hold out forever. Still, the inaction was wearing; he felt a restlessness against the whole fettering situation ... including the pestering details of the house on Haviland Avenue.
Other causes, unknown to him, egged on this unrest. The years of affection absorbed in his mother had so accustomed him to her that in his later loves he constantly looked for her characteristics, her most trifling traits. Jane was like her, in many ways; but he was discovering more ways in which she was dissimilar. Her directness, for one thing, was not the Barbour sweetness. And since she was not a reincarnation of Mary, and the door to the mountain was shut, not only by the present situation but by the rooted inhibition which forever banned his mother as the object of his man's affections, the deep imperative urged him forth again. He would be finally content, although he did not phrase it this clearly, with no less than perfection in woman—perfection to him meaning Mary; which is another way of saying that he could not be content. Thus he must still seek. The headstrong wildness of the mountain intensified the gipsying urge. Sooner or later, he felt vaguely, these forces would push him to some definite move. The uncertainty lay as to when, and in what direction, the outbreak would occur.
Opportunity never delays, when the strong heart demands it. A note from Louise told of her arrival in the city, and gave her phone number. First impulse was to ring her up at once; he had not realized how much he wanted to see her. He thought over the matter; there was no harm in one last ride.
He called up both women, alleging a visit to strike headquarters to one, and preempting the other for the afternoon. Just before three he claimed the New Orleans girl.
"Come on," he told her delightedly, holding her cool hands hidden in his. "It's too fine an afternoon to rust indoors."
A short while later he experimented diffidently. "You know, I'm married."
"Yes, Mr. Lover; I suppose I saw the lady in my city."
"Well?"
She mimicked his uncertainty. "Well?"
After all, what was the harm? Louise set certain strings in his nature ringing in response to her obvious lure, strings that Jane's finer person did not touch. Why should he cripple himself by denying a rounded development, a full self-expression to his nature?
The fresh majesty of these thoughts quite persuaded him; how could they have escaped mankind so long? He had never been taught that desire is the parthenogenetic parent of logic, the shaper of all intellectual decisions.
They swung aimlessly into the country club grounds, almost deserted this early in the afternoon. Up to the big billiard garret, the rough beams above, the window-seats in the gables, he took her.
"With a few more cushions——"
He lugged over an armful, and bent to nest them around her. The intangible sheath of the lilas surrounding her enwrapped him, mingled with the delicately acrid breath of her body, that unmistakable exhalation of feminine pores which summons the man as the drowsy odor of sweet clover draws the boisterous flight of the bee.
His throat choked, a tingling warmness washed throughout him.
"Don't ... you're——" Provocative fingers pushed him back.
The conventional protest died away. He kissed her fiercely, with a passionate brutality strange to his experience. Her fervor matched his; she gave herself enough to increase his desire, yet withheld wilfully with that simulation of the chase which blows up the flame to its maddest height. At length, the racking storm quiescent for a moment, he knelt weakly beside her, spin-drift battered by the inner surge of the tempest.
"I'm married," he parroted his earlier statement.
"I know——"
The stored-up frenzy shook him in restless helplessness, overcoming all restraints. "I'll leave Jane to-morrow, if you say.... Anything you want—There's nothing you can't have from me. Just say it—now—Hurt me some way——"
"I don't want to hurt you, you dear big silly boy. I love you."
He brought her head down until he could feel her parted teeth lightly touching his neck. "Hurt me ... kill me...."
An icy shiver of rapture gripped him as the tiny teeth tightened; as if the fangs of the serpent of forbidden love tentatively touched him, gloating in their power ... saving him for further sacrifice.
"There.... Are you satisfied, Mr. Lover?"
Curbing the tumult in his blood, he drew up a chair and faced her. "I ... we mustn't let this happen again, Louise ma cherie. Kisses ... and all ... I once said—do you remember?—are only the preludes to the finale of love. I am married; it won't hurt me; but you're—you're not."
Her hand rested lightly on his. "You aren't the first man who has ... loved me. You needn't worry about ... me."
Uncertainly his eyes searched the liquid deeps of hers. "Not the first?..."
She flushed unconsciously, returning his level look. Her words came slowly. "Why, no, inquisitive Mr. Lover. There was another man ... we intended to marry.... I'm glad, anyhow." The last three sentences came in soft haste; such frankness embarrassed her. She covered it, changing the theme. "It isn't fair to Jane——"
"Life isn't fair to any of us." His compelling gaze was put on to hide the fleeting emotion of inner timidity. "Where shall we...."
"Lydia Hasson isn't nearly as ... careful as the Tollivers. They're away a lot...."
She readjusted the pillows swiftly, as steps and scraps of conversation floated up the hollow shaft of the circular stairway. "Hadn't we better go?"
The Hassons were not at home, when he called two nights later; but their car might roll up any minute. "This is tantalizing, heart-love," he complained.
"It's something to have you here, anyway," as she cuddled deeper into the wide couch-swing behind the ferns on the wide railing. "We must be careful. If Lydia suspected——" Expressive eyes capped the meaning.
Jane had the Cades in for dinner, the next night; when Pelham arrived from the office, Harvey was entertaining the women with a nasal rendition of Judge Roscoe Little's mannerisms while enunciating a decision for both sides at once. The lawyer's welcome contrasted with some hidden constraint beneath Jane's tempered greeting. Throughout the meal and the talk afterwards he sensed that something was wrong. He could not quite make out what it was; perhaps it lay in his imagination.
His wife swished quickly inside, as the guests chugged away, leaving him to rearrange the porch chairs and follow more slowly. Something was up, that was clear.
She sat at her living-room desk, a litter of letters hurriedly pulled out before her. At his entrance, she raised frosty eyes to his. Without words she observed him. Disquieted by the confident, almost hostile stare, he sat heavily, clutching a handy magazine from the fresh pile beneath the reading lamp.
She did not speak. He exhaled noisily, and turned to the opening story.
"I met Lane Cullom this afternoon," she began in a moment, her voice leveled and restrained.
"What did he have to say?"
"He told me about ... about your driving with that Richard woman yesterday afternoon."
"Mmm.... Yes, she is a friend of Lane's. He introduced me, I believe."
Her eyes fired. "You said you were at strike headquarters."
"So I was, until I took a little run out Hazelton way. Then I came back and finished up my work," he lied recklessly.
"He saw you at Catawba. That's ten miles beyond Hazelton.... You didn't get back until midnight last night, Pelham."
"Why, I was here for supper! Then I had to go down town...."
"You were with Miss Richard again." She ventured a chance shot.
His jaw stiffened, the occasional look of childish petulance smoldering around his eyes. "What if I was? Do you expect me to be locked in by a keeper every night?"
"You never mentioned her ... except meeting her."
His mind squirmed. "We have so much else to talk about."
She pushed the disorder of letters backward with a gesture of irritation. "It was a risk marrying you. Every one said so; you had been splendid with me, but before that—you told me yourself—you'd switched from this girl to that.... You had something up with 'Thea Meade, I never asked what.... And the girls while you were in college, Nellie Tolliver and the rest. I never minded them; that was before I knew you. But this.... Do you think I have no shame, even if you haven't?"
"What a lot of side about nothing! Here I merely meet a young lady, take her riding, drop by to see her—what's wrong in that?"
Her low, tense indictment went on, partly to herself. "I always promised myself that I wouldn't marry a ladies' man. It isn't so much what you've done in this case, as the tendency," she continued illogically. "If everything was above-board, why didn't you tell me that you were with her yesterday afternoon and night?"
"Because it was my business, and not yours." His tones rose angrily. "Must I render an account to you for every minute of my time? Can't I have some self-respect left? Do you expect to keep me tied to your apron-strings all my life?"
"You needn't tell me, Pelham Judson, that you took her riding to show her the scenery. I know you better—by now. She made a few large eyes at you; you thought at once that you saw your soul-mate. Told her you were misunderstood at home, of course—that she could understand you." He failed completely to detect the scorn, intended to wither his defense.
"What if I did? It's true, isn't it? We get along finely on lots of things, Jane; but there are some things in which we can't agree."
"We both agree, I suppose, that the marriage agreement doesn't call for you to make love to other girls, when you are married to me. Of course, you kissed her——"
"What if I did?" His retort slipped from his lips too quickly; he wished at once that he had held it back. "There's surely no harm——"
"I won't dare hold up my head in her sight!"
"We're grown men and women, Jane. We're not old fogies. We realize, surely, that love can't be bought and sold, to be locked up forever in a marriage license. Love must be free; and when it comes——"
"You can have your 'love' as free as you wish, Pelham. Only, count me out of it." She rose, the commotion stirred by her quick motion setting the loose sheets flying, drifting to the new carpet they had been so proud of a week ago. Furious, she stooped to pick them up, her ire mounting as the unexpected enormity of his conduct became apparent.
"You talk like a fool, Jane. I haven't done anything——"
"I'll tell you what you've done. You've let a passing fancy for a woman make you forget that you're my husband. I won't share you with another woman, even if she will."
"Why, last night, when I came home, you were as loving——"
Her glance bayoneted him. "I've told you before of that Allie Durfield, the poor girl who'd ended up on Butler's Avenue. I've told you the bitterness with which she said, 'You engaged girls cause us the trouble. After your man's spent an evening with you, we pay for it.' I didn't understand her then; I do now. You spend the evening with this woman, then come home ... you call me loving! I wonder you can look me in the face!"
"You exaggerate everything, as usual. We haven't done a thing——"
"You've kissed her."
"That was nothing."
"It's this much. Either you give me your word now that you will not see her again, or—see only her ... and whoever else your fancy dictates. I'm through. I'll go back to Mrs. Anderson's and let you ... let you...." Her voice broke; she tumbled weakly, weeping and distraught, against the couch.
He was at her side in an instant. She rose, flinging the tears flying. "Keep away! How dare you touch me! I suppose you thought I'd cry and make up?... Will you give me your word?" There was a plaintive affection even through the sternness. "Dearest, we can't have our marriage on a rotten foundation."
He fumed to the front door and back, the discarded magazine rustling unnoticed upon the scattered letters. "I'll do anything in reason, Jane. But this is unreasonable, and you know it. You mustn't carry your penchant for running away from situations too far." She flushed at the reference. "I'll agree, of course, not to be unfaithful; but you can't choose whom I may and may not speak to. Common decency——It's ridiculous."
"We can't have a half-way marriage. This has gone too far.... Make your choice. You can't burn both ends of your candle...."
"Anything within reason, Jane."
"You'll promise, then?"
"No." The cruel monosyllable crushed the joy rising in her voice. "It's too ridiculous," he repeated.
There was a dangerous hush in her voice. "You understand the alternative? I leave to-morrow."
"If you're bound to be foolish, I can't stop you. I won't force you to stay here."
"I should say not!"
"You'll come to your senses soon enough. A good night's sleep will cure your tantrum."
Casually he jerked a match against the sole of his shoe. The sputtering head spun smokily into the carpet. He stamped it out, and lit another. Shielding the flame from the night breeze, he relit his pipe. When he looked up, she had left the room.
He knocked considerately on her door at breakfast time. A muffled voice told him that she had a headache, and was not coming out. Well, if she was going to act that way! She was bound to see the matter more reasonably. Probably she was ashamed now to admit that she had been wrong.
He was glad that he had only admitted one kiss....
Disturbed at the thought of the unfinished quarrel, he ran out unannounced to the house for lunch. Voluble Lily, her eyes rolling, informed him that Miss' Jane had left an hour before, and that her trunk had gone too. "An' she said dat you'ud know whar she had gone, Mr. Judson."
"That's all right, Lily. You needn't have supper for me to-night."
Angry with himself, with the inquisitive negro, with the fascination of Louise, which had precipitated this, most of all with headstrong Jane, he shot past the traffic policeman into the swirl of the city. He would show his wife that she couldn't keep him under her little finger!