"Drinking. Helen must have noticed how Gallatin's mopping it up these days."
"Nonsense," said Courtney sharply. She was much irritated—as human beings are extremely apt to be, when some matter they are making determined efforts to ignore is forced on their attention.
"He was so drunk this morning that he had to go out and take the air. That's what made me think of it."
Drunk! She winced at that bald revolting word. She flamed at what she tried to think was an injustice. "This morning?" cried she. "Why, that's absurd. I'd have noticed it."
"You're another innocent. He carries a package well—always did." There Richard laughed at memories of his and Gallatin's "wild-oats" days of which he fancied Courtney knew nothing—and he would have been panic-stricken had he thought there was danger of her finding out about them. "Yes," he went on, "Gallatin's been going some for several weeks now. But this daytime drinking is a new development."
"I'm sure you're mistaken," said Courtney, her irritation showing in her color now. "You both drink at supper."
"He about six to my two. I never take more than two. And every once in a while I see Jimmie or Bill carrying a case of bottles to or from his apartments. I can understand a boy's doing that sort of thing. A boy wants to try everything. But how a grown man can keep on at it is beyond me. Still, he hasn't much mind. He never says or thinks anything he hasn't got from somebody else. But—women'd never notice that." This last sentence half to himself, not at all for her hearing.
Courtney was all a-quiver with anger. For, his shrewd observation on Basil's mentality compelled her to admit to herself another truth, indeed a whole swarm of truths, she had been hiding from herself—how Basil's conversation, when they were all together and the subject was necessarily other than love, no longer seemed brilliant or especially interesting even; how at the shop he made an extremely poor showing, was now pupil, and rather backward pupil, to her who almost daily had to cover up his blunders; how in helping her with the gardening he never went beyond either approving her ideas or offering suggestions already stated in the books; how she was constantly coming across things she had thought original with him only because she happened not to have read the books that contained them or to have known the phase of life in which they were familiar commonplaces. Angry though an untruth about anyone or anything we love makes us, that anger is as equanimity itself beside the anger roused by a disagreeable truth.
As they neared the house she quickened her pace, hurrying not so much from Richard as from her own thoughts—the thoughts his words had startled from unexpected lurking places as a sudden light sets bats to whirling. Courtney was loyal through and through; also, she clung to Basil like a shipwrecked sailor to a life raft. The stronger the waves of adverse destiny or of doubt, the fiercer she clung to her life raft. In face of the clearest proof from without against Basil, she would have shut her eyes and held fast to him. Yet with devilish malice and merciless persistence circumstances were now constantly taking her blind resolute loyalty by surprise and forcing upon her exhibitions of him as a shallow and sensual person. A proud, intelligent woman's love could reconcile itself to either of these—to a shallow man whose passion was simply symbol of deep and sincere love; or, to a sensual man whose grossness was the coarse rich soil that sent up and nourished high intelligence, fascinating and compelling. But no woman worth while as a human being could continue to love a shallow man treating her as mere "symbol of the sensual side of life" because he was incapable of appreciating any but physical qualities, and then simply as physical qualities.
It was with a heart defiantly loving, defiantly loyal, that she met Basil at eleven that night to admit him. He had not appeared either at the house or at the laboratory during the afternoon or for supper or afterwards. So, she had not seen him since Richard's "attack on him behind his back"—for, she had succeeded in convincing herself that Richard's accusations were an outcropping of prejudice against him. She felt humble toward him because she had listened without bursting out in his defense—this, though to defend would have been the height of stupid imprudence. As he entered the door she softly opened, he lurched against her, stumbled over the rug, saved himself by catching hold of her and almost bringing her down. A wave of suspicion, of sickening fear and repulsion shuddered through her. But she frowned herself down, took him firmly by the arm.