All was now clear to her. And thenceforth she looked at him with deep sympathy. He was not handsome; his mouth, for example, was so heavy that it flatly gave the lie to his idealist, poetic eyes. His nose was not good, was too small for a man's face. Somewhere there lurked a suggestion of weakness, and this was not lessened by his attention to dress—though she liked his clothes and his way of wearing them. He was far from her ideal of a man. But the longer one knew him, the better one thought of him, chiefly because the more confidence one had in his essential generosity and kindness. And she felt that he had capacity for tenderness of a very manly sort, and for appreciation of love and of all the beautiful things; just the kind of nature fate seemed to delight in making the sport of its maliciousness.
One night, in the pensive mood to which she sometimes yielded for an hour, she was at the piano softly playing; and singing that saddest of sad love's songs:
"Alas for lovers! Pair by pair
The wind has swept them all away—
The young, the yare; the fresh, the fair—
Where are the snows of yesterday?"
Through the window she saw him leaning against a pillar of the veranda. His profile was outlined clear against the luminous dusk. Its expression made her voice die altogether in a sob. She forgot her own sense of fleeting wasting youth, of supreme joy forever denied, of love never to be hers. This sorrow before her in those profiled features—they were strong features now—was no vague dream, but a living reality. She longed to go to him and try to console him; and at the same time, no matter how well she had known him, she could not have gone—for in that unsuspected strength of his there was the hopelessness that is beyond consolation. From that time he was the foremost figure in her thoughts; and her fancy put its own color into everything he said and did. If he had begun to drink she would have been only the more sympathetic; for, she could comprehend how unhappy love might drive its victim to any excess—were not her own longings, for three years now latent except for an occasional outburst, once more throbbing and aching day and night?
It was part of her routine to make a careful tour every day to see that everything was up to the mark. One day, in their guest's sitting room, she happened to see half fallen from the stationery rack a letter from his foreign correspondent. It was apparently unopened. The shock of this made her take a second look before she realized how she was intruding upon his sacred privacy. But she had seen; the letter was indeed unopened. And she knew that the last come of these letters had been at least three days in his possession.
Her heart ached for him; she felt she understood. His love affair had been going more and more badly—his increasing silence and sadness made that certain. And this letter must contain some news he dared not read—some words that meant the burial of his dead hope. She went downstairs with a heavy heart, and out into the sunshine—out to the rose garden in the western part of the grounds. She had been dreaming all along that this romance of which she was unsuspected, deeply moved spectator would surely "come out all right." Life did not always mock the story books. Love was not always sad, not always mere deceptive echo of one's own heart call—echo that flitted mockingly on as one pursued. No; this love that meant so much to him would prove real. Such had been her dream. Now— The flowers, their perfume, the gay birds, the sunbeams—all the sights and sounds she loved seemed tricks of a black enchanter. She remembered the day they buried her little brother. There had been just such radiant glory as this. She remembered the day she had seen that her own dream of love was dead. There had been just such sunshine and music and perfume. How could anyone with a human heart even for a moment laugh, jest? To be light was to make oneself party to this cruel levity of bird and flower and sunbeam. Laugh, when loved ones were dying somewhere—and the living were bending over dead faces with cracking hearts? Jest, when the winds of time and change were blowing love and lovers all away?
She caught her breath in a kind of terror when, on her return to the house, Lizzie told her that Mr. Gallatin had dashed in, had packed a bag, and had rushed off to Chicago. "He has business there," Richard explained at dinner. "And I've asked him to buy some stuff for the laboratory." She was uneasy, at times unhappy, throughout the following week, as she thought of him trying to rid himself of his too heavy burden. Probably he was dissipating—she hoped he was, if it would give him relief. She began to debate whether she ought not to tell Richard what she had accidentally discovered, and suggest that he go to Chicago to help his friend, who might have fallen ill or worse. At dinner and at supper, even at breakfast, where she had seen him only occasionally, she positively missed Gallatin. Until he came, the time spent at table had been the stupidest part of each day—Richard and she in silence or abstraction, or exchanging disconnected commonplaces about the weather, the food, their friends. While Gallatin was far from lively, still he and she had talked—usually about gardening and plants, the difficulties and mysteries of inducing things to grow, the comparative merits of various species for flowering and for hardiness—not exciting conversation, but interesting, a relief to a monotony the dreariness of which she did not appreciate until he came—and went.
On the eighth day, as they were at supper, he appeared unexpectedly on the threshold. There was no forcing in the cordiality of her smile. At first glance, she suspected that he was in much better spirits. And this impression was soon confirmed. Certainly good news—the best—must have reached him in Chicago. Otherwise he could not sit there eating heartily, laughing, making amusing remarks, telling funny incidents of the trip. Courtney tried to continue to feel delighted that he had found surcease from sorrow. But her spirits went steadily down. She felt horribly alone. She had been company for him in his unhappiness—though he did not know it. Now, she quite unreasonably felt as if he had deserted her. She was ashamed of this, so ungenerous, so selfish, but she could not help it.
After supper Richard left them alone; they went out on the veranda—out where the full beauty of that place, now at summer's climax, could be seen in the soft sunset light. She stood watching a belated bird, a tall white sail—listening to the faint sounds of the town that came tinkling across the water. But she was thinking of the man beside her. "You've been enjoying yourself in Chicago," said she.
"No," was his unexpected answer. "I've been impatient to get back." He glanced round at trees and lawns, gardens and shrubbery, with delighted eyes. "I had to go away, to appreciate how well off I was." He went to the edge of the veranda to get a broader sweep. He seemed to be noting, reveling in, every detail. He drew a deep breath, returned to the big lounge chair, and lit a cigarette. "Yes," continued he. "Yes—I didn't dream it, or imagine it. It's all true. It's all here." Without looking at her: "And you happen to be wearing the same dress you had on the evening I came. Now, don't tell me you made it—as you've made those gardens and these rooms."