I
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’.”