As she got into training and over the first sore muscles of mind and body, work began to strengthen her. The nerves and small ailments grew secondary, were overlooked, actually lessened. There need be nothing esoteric in saying that a vital interest in life is as essential to health as to happiness. One need consider only the practical and physical effects of interest and self-forgetfulness, serenity and self-resource.
Sometimes her increasing trade took her away for two or three days, as far as Louisville or Cincinnati. The thought of Guy followed her, a sweet pain. She found herself hurrying back to her bright prisoner, and because of both conditions the marvel of that brightness grew on her, together with certain embarrassed comparisons. More than anything else, she admired his strength where she had been weak.
His brightness seemed to her the most pathetic thing about him; it was so sorry. It was indeed the epitome of his tragedy. To be as unobtrusive as possible, and, when necessarily in evidence, as pleasant as possible, was the role he had assigned himself. It was the one thing he could do, the only thing he could do for her.
Doubtless the very controlling of the nervousness helped it. Moreover, his revolting organization was gradually adapting itself somewhat to the new conditions. Sensitive and uncertain tendrils of vitality began to creep out from the roots of a blighted vigor.
Bessie, increasingly perceptive, began to suspect that what she saw was the brightness after the storm. She wondered what his long solitary hours were like when she was away. What must they be, with him helpless, disappointed, lonely, liable to maddening attacks of nerves? But he assured her that he was perfectly comfortable; Mammy Dinah was faithful and competent; and he was really making headway with the German and French that he had taken up because he could put them down as need was, and because—they might come in, in some way, some time. “In heaven?” Bessie wondered secretly, but, enlightened by her own experience, saw the advantage of his being entertained.
“You're too much alone,” she said, feeling for the trouble. “And so am I,” she added, thoughtfully. She should have noticed his eyes at that last. He had developed a sort of controlled voracity for endearment, but he never asked for it. In the old days he had taken his own masterfully, with no doubts. Now he waited. He did not starve. She cajoled him and coaxed his appetite and patted the pillows, and made pretty, laughing eyes at him and fate quite in her habitual manner. Her touch and tone of affection had never been so free. But in that very fact he found another sting.
“The better I do on the road, the more they keep me out,” she was saying. “We can't go on this way. I've been thinking lately—Could you bear to go North, Guy, and to live in a city, among strangers? Perhaps at headquarters there might be an opening for me that would let me settle down.”
“What! Cincinnati! Is there any such chance?”
“You'd like it? Why on earth—Are you so bored here?”
“Oh, Bibi, have you never thought of it? In a city there'd be some chance of something I could do!”