Chapter XX: Part 20

From this pale fleece of cloud fell a light shower, trilling on the roof of the east wing beneath her window. And from field and wood and hill went up another trilling, exquisitely musical and plaintive--the clear, sweet, myriad flutes of autumn crickets. So that heaven and earth seemed doubly woven together by this interlacing of lovely sound, the one descending, the other ascending.

The rain came softly in her face. She held up her face to it, loving the delicate, cool touch upon her lips and eyelids.

As usual, Sweet-Waters had given her to herself again. She was just Sophy Taliaferro once more. Sophy Chesney and Sophy Loring were poor, wind-driven waifs, somewhere far away in the outer deserts of her mind. To-morrow Charlotte and Joe wished "to talk _very_ seriously with her." This had been Charlotte's parting word that night. Well--to-morrow was twelve hours away. Now she would just be Sophy Taliaferro.

* * * * *

But she waked up next morning to find herself unmistakably Sophy Loring once more.

Her heart was very heavy. Life had no taste. The future rose before her like a cyclopean wall, which could not be scaled or dug under and in which there was no door.

Her heart winced and shrank from the long, painful scenes with Morris that she apprehended. She was quite sure that he had no real love left for her, yet she knew his nature. She feared that the very fact of finding himself about to lose her would kindle in him a fictitious ardour. It might well be that, as the unattainable, she would once more seem his heart's desire.

After breakfast she went with Joe and Charlotte to Joe's study. Bobby and Winks were having a gorgeous time playing "Indians" all over the place. As she sat in the open window, Sophy could hear the voices of the two "Braves," rising in shrill, ecstatic warwhoops from the straw-stack near the stables. She smiled. At least Bobby was thoroughly happy in the new state of things.

She was seated on the low window-ledge, Charlotte opposite her. The Judge had established himself in the revolving chair before his desk. He felt the need of some strong, dignified background during the coming interview. His sombre, official-looking desk, with its piles of legal documents and tomes, afforded him this spiritual sustainment. He was very nervous. Sophy was so "hard to tackle" sometimes. "Rash" was the disconcerting adjective that kept rising in his mind. Sophy was so "almighty rash"! He thanked his stars that rashness was not Charlotte's characteristic. "Firmness" described his helpmeet. He felt that this firmness would indeed make her a true helpmeet in the present case. There was certainly no help coming from Sophy herself. She was (they both thought) most inconsiderately waiting for them to "begin."

The day was exquisitely temperate and golden after last night's showers. She had put on one of her old duck skirts and thin white blouses. Her hair was "clubbed" and fastened with a black bow as of old. She was, outwardly at least, even defiantly Sophy Taliaferro. Charlotte felt that it was almost improper of Sophy to look so like her former self, so "unmarried," as it were, "after all she had been through." But Sophy was Sophy. The most that they could hope was by great "tactfulness" to persuade her to be "reasonable" on certain points.

The Judge cleared his throat. Sophy had her hands clasped about her knee, one slim, brown-shod foot was dangling. It was a disconcertingly "unmatronly" attitude. The Judge glanced nervously at Charlotte. Her eyebrows said: "Go on." He cleared his throat a second time:

"_A-rrrum!_"

Sophy turned her head and looked inquiringly at him.

"Yes?" she said.

The Judge flushed as his eyes met hers. Good man ... it embarrassed him to meet the eyes of one of his own womenkind whose wedded husband had actually embraced an "abandoned minx" under their own roof. Charlotte had termed Belinda Horton an "abandoned minx." The Judge considered the term apposite. So Belinda figured thus in their thoughts from that moment. But all this came too perilously near to mentioning the seventh commandment in "the presence of a lady" not to cause the dear, old-fashioned man acute discomfort.

"Well, Joe?" said Sophy again, as he hesitated.

"It's ... it's all ... mighty involved, Sophy," he stammered, looking down at the snowstorm paper-weight which he had picked up and was turning nervously round and round.

"Yes, Joe. I know that," she said gravely. "That's what I want you to help me about."

"Divorce is a mighty serious--er--ugly thing...."

"But not as ugly as marriage that is no marriage, Joe."

The Judge rumpled his smoky wreath the wrong way.

"Yes ... I know how you must feel...." he admitted unhappily.

"No, Joe. Nobody but a woman can know how she feels," put in Charlotte, reddening in her turn.

"Well ... I reckon I can give a mighty shrewd guess at it," said the Judge.

"It's very simple," Sophy said. "I want to be free. I don't think I've any false vanity about it. I did have at first. But then, you see, _I_ was mistaken, as well as Morris. I don't feel hard to Morris. It really isn't all his fault...."

"Oh!" said Charlotte. She was quite crimson now.

"No, Chartie, it is not," Sophy persisted. "But I can't enter into all that...."

"I should think not!"

"I only want to get free and to set him free, as soon as possible."

"_He_ oughtn't to be free--the idea!" cried Charlotte indignantly.

Sophy shook her head at her, smiling.

"Oh, Chartie," she said, "we aren't in the 'dark backward' of the Victorian era! Why shouldn't he be free to live his life as he wants to, as well as I?"

"That's downright irreligious, Sophy!" cried her sister with passion.

"I don't think so," said Sophy mildly.

The Judge intervened.

"Come," he said nervously, "don't let's squabble over side-issues."

"'Side-issues'! _Joe!_" exclaimed his wife.

"Oh, well ... don't let's squabble, at any rate," he said huntedly. "The main point, what we're here to discuss, is Sophy's wish to be divorced."

"And I think she's perfectly justified!" snapped Charlotte.

The Judge resumed, addressing Sophy:

"Now, the question is, what will be ... er ... Mr. Loring's attitude in the matter?"

"I think he'll oppose it ... at first," said Sophy.

The Judge looked curious.

"Why only 'at first'?" he asked.

Sophy said quietly and rather sadly:

"Because it isn't in his nature to keep up anything for long."

"Mh!" said the Judge.

He took up the paper-weight which he had laid aside and turned it so vigorously that the little cottage and figures within the glass-ball were almost blotted from sight by the mimic snowstorm.

"Divorce is a slow affair in Virginia," he said at last.

"Then I'd rather get mine in the West," said Sophy.

Charlotte looked at her in horror.

"Oh, Sophy!" she cried. "No! ... you _wouldn't_!... It's ... it's so _vulgar_!"

"Life is vulgar," said Sophy.

"Oh, my _dear_!"

"I mean it in the big sense. Vulgar means common to all--to all people. So I say life is vulgar ... and the longing for freedom is vulgar. No one has ever longed for freedom as slaves have, I suppose. Well, I am a slave ... and I long for freedom. I long for it so that I want it quickly. I want it as one wants water when one's famishing, and bread when one's starving. I'm not so aristocratic in my hunger and thirst that I prefer to wait through dignified years for a bit of stale bread. I want my loaf _now_ ... and I want the whole loaf ... not half...."

Sophy was indeed speaking with "vulgar" intensity. She "let herself go" because she wanted Joe and Charlotte to understand once for all that there was no use in trying to make her behave "reasonably."

Charlotte's small mouth was tight shut. The Judge looked rather pale. Just as he had thought, Sophy was evincing rashness in its most aggravated form.

XXXVIII

Sophy slipped down from her perch on the window-sill, and came and stood between them.

"Oh, Chartie ... Joe...." she said, turning from one to the other, "why do you look so? Surely you don't want me to waste long years of my life, clanking this chain after me, wherever I go?... Not free ... not a wife ... not _anything_ really--and Morris in the same plight!... And Belinda.... Think of that wild, self-willed girl...."

"You're crazy, Sophy!... You really talk as if you were crazy!..." broke in Charlotte, suffocated. "How can you _mention_ that ... that...." Propriety prevented Charlotte from expressing herself fully. ".... That _creature_?" she ended, breathing very short. "How can you care _what_ becomes of her?"

Sophy looked tired all at once. She dropped into a chair near the desk.

"I suppose you'll think I'm crazier than ever," she said. "But while I don't like Belinda, I don't think she's _quite_ a 'creature' ... not yet, anyway. And her one chance is to.... Well ... my setting Morris free quickly ... as soon as possible, will give her her chance."

Charlotte stared at her; her little mouth unlocked by sheer amazement.

Then she said in a faint voice:

"To _think_ of my living to hear _you_ speak like that!"

"I can't help it, Chartie. That's the way I feel. I must be perfectly honest with you and Joe, or what's the use of my talking with you at all? Do you think I _like_ doing it?" she asked, her own voice suddenly trembling. "Never, never have I hated anything so much!" she ended vehemently.

She got up, went over to the window again, and stood leaning against it, her back to them.

The Judge looked miserably at Charlotte, and her eyebrows said: "Wait a while. She'll calm down."

So all three waited in an uncomfortable silence.

Presently Sophy turned round. There were tears in her eyes, but she was smiling. "My poor _dear_ dears!" she said, in such an affectionate, sorry voice that their hearts jumped towards her. "It was horrid of me to burst out at you like that...."

Charlotte went up and put a brisk, muscular little arm hard about her sister's shoulders.

"Come, now, darling ... let's talk _sense_," said she.

"I've got a friend in the West...." the Judge began, fidgeting a little.

Charlotte could not help it.

"Oh, Joe! _Not_ ... Sioux Falls!" she pleaded, as who should say: "At _least_ let the headsman's axe be _clean_."

Sophy interrupted:

"If the gods give me freedom, Chartie, why should I care whether the oracle speaks from Sioux Falls or Athens?"

"Well, _I_ care!" said Charlotte.

"It's _not_ Sioux Falls," said the Judge.

"Go on, Joe," said Sophy.

"I'll write to him. He's a very able lawyer--upon ... er ... these questions...."

"Thank you, dear Joe," said Sophy softly.

The Judge replied mechanically: "Not at all." He was fingering the paper-weight again. He looked uncomfortable ... with a new sort of discomfort. He cleared his throat. Regarding Sophy with doubt in his worried eyes, he said:

"Er ... Sophy ... er ... in case ... what about the question of alimony?"

Like lightning, she replied as he had feared she would:

"Not a penny ... not a cent of alimony, Joe!"

"But in such a case, the Court...."

"I wouldn't accept it."

"Perhaps, dear...." began Charlotte, in a "sense-of-duty" tone. Though she considered her sister unwise, yet she sympathised ardently with this unwisdom.

"No--never!" Sophy said again.

The Judge looked more and more uncomfortable. The snowstorm in the paper-weight became a blizzard. At last he jumped into the midst of things, with all the jerky suddenness of a man who has at last determined to break through the ice-skim on his morning tub.

"Sophy," he blurted, "I must tell you--there was a settlement ... at the time of your marriage with Mr. Loring...."

(He had "Mistered" Loring punctiliously ever since Sophy's disclosure.)

"A settlement?" said Sophy blankly.

"Just so. Yes. A-rrrm!... I ... er ... am responsible for the ... er ... arrangement ... a marriage settlement, you know.... It gives you ten thousand a year, in your own right."

"Gives _me_...? Ten thousand...? My own right?" stammered Sophy. "Oh, you must be mistaken, Joe!" she added, colouring deeply.

Then the Judge explained unhappily. He had stood _in loco parentis_.... The future was always uncertain.... He should have felt himself culpable towards her, _et cetera, et cetera_. And fearing that she might raise objections against her own interests, he had accepted a power-of-attorney to administer the property for her. This was the reason of her ignorance on the subject.

Sophy stood transfixed. Then she took it in. She went up to him, put her arm about his neck, and kissed his harassed face. "You're a dear, kind, _real_ brother," she murmured; "but you're a lawyer, too--so you can just arrange to unsettle that settlement."

"Now, Sophy ... now, Sophy...." he pleaded. "There's nothing undignified ... or ... or...."

"I couldn't, Joe! It's impossible ... utterly...."

"Think of Bobby...."

She coloured deeper than ever.

"I should never maintain my son on Morris's money," she said proudly.

"But, Sophy!... Oh, dog my buttons!..." groaned the harried man. "You've got to _live_...."

"You forget what you saved for me, Joe ... and my thousand a year."

"Saved! About twenty thousand. How will you eat and clothe yourself and the boy and educate him on the income of such a sum? I'm not talking high sentiment; I'm talking hard facts," wound up the Judge, much excited.

Charlotte sat motionless, looking at them. Sophy's eyes had gone black.

"I'll ... I'll ... sing for my living and Bobby's first," she said.

"Pooh!" said the Judge.

He was quite reckless. He, like Charlotte, sympathised too much in one way with this quixotic attitude of hers not to feel called on to remonstrate vigorously in another. He kept telling himself that Sophy was being hifalutin in addition to being rash. He must save her from hifalutiness at least.

"Pooh!" he said again hardily. "As Chartie said, let's talk sense. What about Bobby's education?... Eton--Oxford ... this tutor who's coming in a day or two? Do you think you're going to get divorced and established at the Metropolitan in time to pay for all that?"

"_Joe!_" cried Charlotte.

"Never mind.... I like him to speak out," said Sophy bravely, a scarlet spot on either cheek. Then an inspiration came to her.

"Gerald will educate Bobby for me," she said. "I know he will! I shall write to Gerald and tell him the whole truth. He has always been like a true brother to me."

The Judge was thinking hard and quickly.

"Yes--and suppose he dies suddenly--what then?"

"How 'what then'?" asked Sophy, bewildered.

"Why, what about the property? Is it all entailed--or only partly!"

"I ... I ... don't know," faltered Sophy.

"Very well. If Lord Wychcote dies suddenly, Bobby will inherit ... as I understand it. But if the property is all entailed, your brother-in-law can't leave _you_ anything. The property would be in trust for Bobby until he came of age legally. It would depend entirely on the Court what you had as his mother. Suppose you found yourself more or less at the mercy of the old lady--Bobby getting his education in England--as you've promised he should, mind you--and you without the means to live near him---- Eh? What then?"

"I ... I will write to Mr. Surtees," said Sophy, very white.

"Who's he?"

"The family solicitor."

"Well, do.... I advise you to, by all means."

Here Charlotte stepped forward. She put her arm about her white, suddenly subdued sister, and looked sternly at her husband.

"Joe.... I'm _surprised_ at you!" she said. "A Virginia gentleman being so cruel to a woman!"

"Pooh!" said the Judge a third time. He was in a state of flagrant rebellion. "Stuff!... I'm being a Virginia lawyer and a mighty good friend. If I wasn't darned fond of Sophy, I wouldn't go on like this, you may be sure. Whew!"

He wiped his brow and looked at his handkerchief as though expecting to see it incarnadined. It really _was_ like sweating blood to try to talk reason into one so hopelessly unpractical and hifalutin as Sophy.

"I'll look forward to reading Mr. Surtees's letter with great interest," he remarked grimly.

Sophy had a flash of spirit.

"No matter what he says, I shan't accept alimony!" she retorted.

"And the...."

"Or that settlement either."

The Judge glowered at her for a second. Then he reached out, drew her to him, and kissed her.

"Well ... God bless you for a sweet fool!" was his strange remark.

Sophy laughed faintly, and the sisters went out with their arms about each other. The Judge sank exhausted into his chair.

"Dog my buttons!..." he murmured, as the two disappeared. "The Lord probably thought Adam out more or less carefully, but I reckon He made Eve on impulse...."

XXXIX

But Sophy did not write to Mr. Surtees, as she had said so boldly that she would do. All that was finest in her rebelled at the idea when she came to think it over clearly. It was quite impossible for her to write thus cold-bloodedly and ask the old solicitor what would be her prospects as Bobby's mother, in the event of the sudden death of the man who had really been to her like the kindest, most indulgent of brothers.

Instead, she wrote to Gerald himself, telling him of her proposed divorce and her determination not to accept alimony or avail herself of the marriage settlement arranged by her sister's husband without her knowledge. She asked him not to tell Lady Wychcote of this matter until it should be accomplished. She said simply: "So you see, dear Gerald, as things will be, I shall not have the means to educate Bobby as his father wished. Will you do it for Cecil's son, dear Gerald? Somehow, I don't mind asking you this at all. I feel, indeed, that you would be hurt if I did _not_ ask it."

Gerald's answer came with the name of a steamer written on the envelope to insure promptness. Sophy cried when she read that letter.

"Dear Sophy," he wrote, "I am more touched than I can express by your confidence in me. I beg you not to give another thought to the matter. All shall be just as before your present marriage. I only hope that you will resume Cecil's name again when you are at liberty to do so. As Bobby's mother, it seems to me that it would be more fitting. I am very happy to think of your being in England again. Don't make it too long, and don't think, 'There's that poor, hipped old rotter Gerald, mooning about himself--but sometimes I have a beastly feeling that I mayn't see you again. And as you know, I'm rather fond of you, old girl. Love to the little chap. G."

One thing in his letter, however, seemed odd to them all. It was his suggestion that she should take Chesney's name again, after her divorce. About this, on the Judge's advice, she did write to Mr. Surtees. She herself, as Bobby's mother, would have much preferred to be called Mrs. Chesney. She did not wish to go on calling herself "Mrs. Morris Loring." She felt very sure that within a short time after the divorce there would be another "Mrs. Morris Loring." She awaited Mr. Surtees's reply with some anxiety. It was quite satisfactory. He expressed himself as of the opinion that it would be "quite natural, fitting, and possible for Mrs. Loring to resume the name of her first husband." He quoted the case of Cowley v. Cowley, decided in the House of Lords in 1901: "Lady Violet Neville, after becoming Countess Cowley, obtained a divorce from her husband on the ground of his misconduct. She then married a commoner, a Mr. Biddulph, but nevertheless continued to call herself Countess Cowley. The Earl brought proceedings to restrain her from using the name, but the House of Lords, on appeal, refused to grant an injunction. Lord Macnaughton, in giving judgment, said: 'Everybody knows that it is a very common practice for peeresses (not being peeresses in their own right) after marrying Commoners to retain the title lost by such marriage. It is not a matter of right. It is merely a matter of courtesy, and allowed by the usages of society.'"

And all this time (it was nearly October) never a word came from Loring. Sophy corresponded with his mother, who knew nothing of the strained relations between them, and through her she learned that Morris had gone to Canada with some friends. A sporting expedition. Mrs. Loring mentioned it casually, of course, supposing that Sophy knew already. Mrs. Horton and Belinda were still at Nahant. Morry had been _so_ thoughtful! He had come down to say good-by to her before starting for Canada--but had not stopped the night. Didn't Sophy think he looked rather thin? She herself was much better, _et cetera, et cetera_.

When Sophy read this letter, she wondered what had passed between Morris and Belinda during that flying visit to Nahant. He was evidently "disciplining" her (Sophy). Silence and absence were to bring her to a right frame of mind.

She began to get desperately restless and impatient. She felt that she must come to a definite understanding with him. She would have written, but she did not wish such a letter to follow him from place to place at the risk of getting lost.

Judge Macon had heard from his "friend in the West." If Mrs. Loring wished to institute divorce proceedings, the sooner she came to Ontowega herself the better. So wrote the Western lawyer. He wished to interview Mrs. Loring personally.

Yet Sophy felt that it would be impossible for her to go until she had come to a definite understanding with Morris.

All her philosophy, drawn sound and sweet from the sodden husk of experience, could not keep her from fretting inwardly. Her first irrepressible joy over the mere idea of freedom died flatly down. She was unhappy--even very unhappy. Memories stung her day and night. Vain regret.... It was like the feeling of homesickness for a home that has been burned down. As she walked and rode, as she sat in her study, with its perfume of rose-geraniums and cedar wood, her collie at her feet--these memories came teasing, teasing, like wan-eyed, persistent beggars when one's purse is empty. Sophy's heart was empty of the coin of love--but it brimmed with pity--the heavy, leaden currency of pity.

The only real pleasure that she had in these days was from Amaldi's letters. The first one had been sent from the steamer in which he had sailed for Italy a few days after she had left Newport. It was rather short, rather shy. "You must forbear with my English, please," he had said. "I find it much more hard to write than in speaking." But the little quaintnesses of construction only made his letter seem more charming to her. He had not alluded to their last meeting except indirectly. He wrote: "There is much mist this morning. I see the last of America, dim as dreams through this mist. But above rises the great goddess, she that is to America what Pallas was to Athens. She lifts high her torch--and it seems I see it shine upon your face. I remember her name and the meaning of this light that she is holding so high above the mist. For you I repeat her name many times in my heart. It is with a feeling of religion that I say this name over and over--linking it to yours. And I feel that for you, high above all mist, is that pure flame shining."

Sophy loved this letter, for among other things, it reassured her about their friendship. It made her feel in many ways that he was too fine not to have realized that there could be no more love in her life and too strong to sacrifice their beautiful friendship to a vain desire something that could never be. She spent a solacing hour in writing him a letter such as she felt he would love to receive--all about her home, herself, her daily doings, her dog, her horse ... some of her inmost thoughts that she felt he would understand and share with her.

The end of September had been chilly, but October came in with soft, spring-like showers again, very mild--real May weather--rather like Indian Spring than Indian Summer. On the second day the showers held about noon. Harold Grey set off with the whole "bunch" of boys for a long-promised jaunt. They were to ride up to the top of Laurel Mountain and spend the night there in an old rubble hut, sleeping on pine boughs. There was to be a camp-fire, they were to cook their own meals. Off they went, all on horseback, laughing and singing:

"_Ole ark a-movin', movin', chillun!_"

Sophy watched Bobby as he rode off on the old Shelty, his face a-shine, and again she felt that it was all worth while if Bobby were so blissfully content. He had never worn that shining face in Newport or New York. That afternoon she went out to look for mushrooms. This was surely ideal mushroom weather. She put on an old corduroy skirt, and stout boots, and borrowed a little basket from Mammy Nan.

A great west wind had suddenly sprung up. Wild tatters of cloud were blown across the sky. Now they veiled, now they revealed the sun. The box hedges glittered darkly, waving their sombre plumes to and fro, up and down. The grass glinted like yellow crystal as the sun caught it. Leaves scurried in flocks through the air. The wet clay was just the colour of a sweating sorrel horse.

Sophy went down to the pasture behind the stable. There were cattle grazing there--a fine black Angus bull, and his harem of forty young heifers. But she was not afraid of them--they were all very gentle, the black Pasha as well as his wives.

The field hollowed in the middle, and a little dark-red path coiled through the soaked green. Sophy dipped under the pasture-bars, and went slowly forward, looking to right and left, for the cool, fleshlike glisten of fungi.

The bull was grazing on a hill at the far end of the field. His splendid, black silhouette stood out against the grey wrack of cloud. Half of his harem grazed near. The other half had discreetly withdrawn to that part of the field where Sophy was now walking. One lovely little heifer, black and soft of pelt as a black Angora cat, regarded her musingly out of lustrous, still eyes that were heavy as with sorrow. Sophy went up to her ... put out her hand, saying: "Coo ... co-o-o...."

The heifer let her stroke her forehead, her ears--let the slim, quick hand run along her sides, play with her glossy pelt. "You sweetheart!..." said Sophy.

She was more like a calm, friendly dog than a cow. Sophy finally gave her a kiss between her tranquil, melancholy eyes, and continued on her quest for mushrooms.

The wind was higher than ever now. It blew in squally gusts. Clouds were sagging dark in the southwest. The sun winked in and out like the light of a great pharos.

Sophy found her first mushroom--small, but a beauty. It nestled low in the grass on its plump, naked leg. Its round, white top was faintly browned like a well-cooked meringue. Then she found another, enormous--a real prize, it seemed. But something about it was _too_ perfect--_too_ white. She nipped it out of its green bed, and looked at the gills. They were snowy white. Its slender leg was cased in a fine, white-silk stocking that was "coming down."

"Oh," said Sophy, looking queerly at the too-lovely creature, "how very like you are to some other mistakes of mine!... And yet ... if I ate you ... you would cure them all," she ended quizzically.

She threw the false mushroom away. It lay, pale and corpse-like, in the wet grass. It was so like damp, dead flesh that Sophy shivered.

Now the wind began really to tussle with her. It blew in wild, _whoorooshing_ blasts. The thickets seethed. The old orchard on the hill above made a harsh rattling with its gnarled boughs. She could see the tree-tops on the lawn, bowing, twisting, lashing wildly, as though trying to wrench their roots free from the grip of earth, as though possessed to follow their flying leaves into the sky. Now came a spat of rain. She ducked her head and began to run.

The bull was proceeding with majestic leisureliness towards his shed. He booed from bass to treble, several times. "My sultanas," said this booing, "I advise you to seek, with me, the shelter of my palace."

All the heifers began moving after him towards the shed. Now the rain came in earnest--big, cold drops. Sophy ran faster and faster. The mushrooms in her basket bounced plumply. She was afraid they would be smashed. She took off her brown velvet cap and pressed it over them as she ran. The rain rather blinded her. She ran full-tilt into some one who emerged suddenly from behind a thicket near the pasture-bars.

"By Jove!... You're soaked!..." said a voice she knew. It was Loring.

XL

Sophy let him take the basket from her and kiss her rain-wet cheek. She was glad that the rain came between her and that kiss. She could not say anything just at first--her quick running and the suddenness of his appearance had quite taken her breath for the moment.

"But you're sopping ... _sopping!_..." he kept repeating. He, too, could not think of anything more fitting to say. And Sophy began to murmur back:

"But you're getting wet, too ... what a shame!..."

They ran together towards the house. But now the rain ceased, and again the wind came--vicious, blatant. The big hedge of box just in front of them was a dark fury of tossing boughs.

"Oh, the trees!... I'm so afraid some of the trees will go down!..." said Sophy.

They ran on under the dark tunnel of box, and out upon the lawn. As they did so, Sophy gave a cry and halted.

"Look!" she gasped. "The big locust ... oh!... It's going ... it's going...."

She ran towards the middle of the lawn. Loring followed--caught her firmly by the arm.

"Wait...." he said. "Don't go any nearer...."

They stood dumbly watching the giant tree. It was fully a hundred feet high--a monarch shaft crowned with massive branches--wrapped python-like by a huge trumpet-vine. It was the last of its splendid generation--a royal tree. Now it rocked heavily--to and fro--farther and farther each way, each time--a groaning sound came from it. This sound splintered suddenly. It was like the bursting of a human groan into a shriek. The noble crown swept forward--majestically--as it were, deliberately at first--then faster, faster, in a sort of suicidal frenzy. The huge tree toppled, split at its middle fork--went crashing down, ripping loose the snaky folds of vine, shattering the trees next it. Their splintered tops shone suddenly raw and yellow against the grey sky. The remaining half of the fallen locust had a great "blaze" all down one side, as though it had been stripped by lightning. The inner wood, thus disclosed, all torn and riven, had something ghastly, like the revelation of a wound in living flesh.

For a second longer Sophy stood quite still. Then she ran forward again. She was pale as at an accident to a dear friend.

The locust stretched across the gravel driveway. Its crown lay among the crushed branches of a huge box-shrub. The poor box-shrub had a piteous, feminine look, as though it had tried in vain to support the stricken giant on its soft breast. The boughs and leaves of the prone tree still quivered slightly as in a death-throe. The big vine swung its loose, snaky folds over the ruin. The grass was strewn with leaves and broken limbs. Sophy went up and put her hand on the rough trunk in silence. Her lips quivered.

"What an infernal shame!" said Loring.

He stared all about, then at the wrecked tree again.

"Isn't this where the hammocks used to hang?" he asked.

"Yes," said Sophy.

They stood silent again. Both were thinking of how they had swung day after day in those hammocks in their love-time. Then the scarlet bells of the trumpet-vine had hung above them. It had been like their flowering passion swinging scarlet bells above them. Both felt something sad and ominous in the fall of the great tree just as Loring had arrived.

"I'll send the gardener to see about it," Sophy said at last, turning away. They went together to the house.

"When can I see you ... for a long talk?" asked Loring, as they reached the door.

"As soon as I've changed. You'll want to change, too. Is your luggage here?"

"Yes. A darkey drove me up from Sweet-Waters."

"Has Mammy Nan seen to your room?"

"Thanks. Yes. Everything's quite right."

"Then ... in half an hour ... in my study."

Loring told himself that he'd forgotten how beautiful she was. And that black bow on her hair!... He had not seen her wear that black bow since.... Oh, what a fool he'd been! ... what a superlative ass!... That black bow had a queer magic for him. It made the past seem only yesterday. Oddly it set her back where she had been when he first saw her wear it. It shook his lordly sense of possession. She had not belonged to him then. Somehow she did not seem to belong to him now. He felt doubtful ... apprehensive. What if...? Yes. What if...?

He changed hurriedly and went down to her study. A clear fire of apple-boughs and cedar burned on the hearth. The warmth drew their sweetest scent from the rose-geraniums. There were no fuchsias on the green steps now. It irritated Charlotte that Sophy would not have her splendid fuchsias in this room. But Sophy could not endure the fantastic flowers near her. They were too potent with wild memories.

Before the fire Dhu was lying. He eyed Loring from golden, white-rimmed eyes without moving at first. Then he rose and wagged a languidly polite tail. He had never quite approved of the young man.

Loring sat down and tried to beguile the dog into friendship. Dhu was civil but distant. Sophy came in, and he rushed and reared upon her, putting a paw on either shoulder.

She looked very tall in her black satin tea-gown. The collie was beautifully golden against the black, shining stuff. And this gown Loring recognised as he had recognised the black bow. It was a gown of old days. It had some yellow lace at the throat, and queer, carved silver buttons. How that lace smelt sweet of her! How often he had kissed it in kissing her throat! And those silver buttons ... how cold and hard they had felt to his cheek upon the warmth of her breast!

She came up and sat down in her own low chair on the other side of the hearth.

"Quite Darby and Joan we look...." said Loring, with a nervous laugh. Sophy smiled, but this smile was enigmatic.

"Why didn't you write to me? Why didn't you tell me you were coming, Morris?" she asked gently.

"Oh ... well...." said Loring.

He went red, and fussed with a piece of cedar that had fallen on the hearth. The fragrant smoke got into his eyes--and made them smart.

"You see...." he went on with more assurance, as he hammered the log into place again, "I knew this was the sort of thing that would have to be talked out...."

"Well, then...?" said Sophy.

He glanced at her rather sheepishly.

"Oh, hang it all, Sophy!" he said. "Don't make it _too_ hard. What do you want?... Probation?... Kow-towing? What?"

"No. I don't want anything like that, Morris. What I want is for us both to act like good, sensible friends, and...."

"_Friends!_" he exclaimed.

"Yes ... friends," said she firmly.

"Now look here, Sophy," he protested, red again. "You surely aren't nursing that grievance still? After all these weeks?"

"What 'grievance' do you allude to, Morris?"

He grew redder and redder.

"Why ... you know," he muttered shamefacedly.

"No, Morris. I don't. I really haven't any 'grievance.' You did a thing that seems to me final. It isn't a grievance ... it's just an end."

"Now, Sophy! If you think my ... my ... a ... my idiocy with that girl...."

"Morris ... don't! But while that is one reason of my feeling as I do ... it isn't the thing I mean."

"Then in God's name ... _what_ is?"

He was standing now, looking excited and angry. He came over in front of her.

"_What_ is?" he repeated.

Sophy looked up at him and her nostrils spread a little.

"Have you really forgotten?" she said, in a clear voice. "You accused me of having a lover...."

"Oh, for God's sake!" cried Loring. His chest laboured with his strong excitement. "Haven't I told you I was damned sorry! Haven't I apologised--humbly? Haven't I explained I was out of my wits? Haven't I? Haven't I?"

He stood waiting for her to answer. All up in arms--white now--quite outraged by her unkind obstinacy.

She answered without apparent emotion:

"All that doesn't change what you said then. Of course you apologise--of course you say you were out of your wits. What else could you say? But---- Well, you see, Morris--it happens to be one of those facts that can't be wiped out by apologies and regrets. Some words can't be wiped out by other words," she ended, with a flash of bitterness.

He gazed at her sullenly.

"Can't you make allowances for a man's being mad with jealousy?" he said.

"No. Jealousy--of that kind--is always an insult."

He stood silent for a while. Then suddenly he dropped to his knees beside her. He felt inspired.

"Sophy...." he said very low, a sort of wheedling cunning in his voice. "I wonder ... if _you_ aren't ... just a bit ... jealous, yourself?"

"I?"

"Yes. You. Of ... oh, you know who I mean! But, Sophy ... listen ... I swear to you a man can be ... like that ... about another woman--and yet love his wife ... _really_ love only her ... I swear it to you."

Sophy smiled again.

"Yes. So I've heard," she said.

He was eager in a moment.

"Well, then ... don't you see?... It was only a ... a flash in the pan--as one might say.... Really, you know, it's true. That one can fancy a woman for a bit like that, yet never dream of loving her as one loves one's wife...."

"Morris...." said Sophy seriously. She leaned her chin on her hand, and looked gravely at him.

"Well?" he said expectantly.

"What would you think of an American who had himself naturalised a German, or a Russian, or a Spaniard ... yet declared that he really loved America best of all!"

"I don't see...." stammered Loring.

"Yes, you do see," smiled Sophy. "And I want to take this opportunity of assuring you that I'm not jealous of Belinda. Only--please don't try to make your love for her a proof of your still greater love for me."

"Sophy...!"

"I'm not one of those people who cut up love into sections--vivisect it ... for it dies, I can tell you, when it's hacked to bits like that!... This part ignoble--that part noble. Love is a whole--a whole--or it is nothing. What you gave to Belinda you could not have given her if you'd loved me really. I don't say _would_ not ... I say _could_ not...."

"But I swear to you...."

".... _Could_ not!" repeated Sophy inflexibly.

He had got to his feet again, and was looking at her with a disturbed, baffled look.

"I _do_ love you, Sophy," he said at last. "Don't you believe I love you?"

"In a way ... yes," said Sophy.

"What do you mean by 'in a way'?".

"Well--in a way that doesn't allow me to interfere with greater pleasures."

He went crimson.

"Oh, I say!" he said. "How unkind ... how awfully hard and unkind of you!"

"There mustn't be anything but truth in this talk between us, Morris. I'm sorry to seem unkind. I only said what I feel and believe."

"God! I didn't know you could be so cruel...." he muttered, staring at the fire.

"It isn't I that am cruel; it's the truth that's cruel," she said.

"You call that 'the truth'? ... God!" he said again.

"Then tell me...." she said. "What pleasure have you ever put second to me?"

"What ... pleasure?" he stammered.

She looked at him steadily.

"Yes ... what pleasure?" she repeated.

"I.... I...."

He was frankly at a loss. She had such a queer, upsetting way of putting things. He stood ruffled, resentful, aggrieved, helpless. Not a pleasure could he think of that he had not put before her. His head buzzed with the effort to recall some small sacrifice that he had made in her behalf. She was speaking in a different voice now--softer, more feeling.

"Ah, Morris," she said, "it is all so sad ... so horribly sad! Though I may seem unkind--my heart aches with it. But this has not come suddenly. A long, long time it's been coming. It began ... yes ... that night ... do you remember?--that night over two years ago ... when you came to my room...."--she hesitated, caught her lip hard for a second, went on in a lower voice--"when you came to me--not yourself ... for drink...."

He had put up one hand over his eyes as he leaned with his elbow on the mantelpiece. He said in a choked voice:

"I've been a beast ... sometimes ... I admit."

She hesitated again; then said, whispering:

"_That_ was a pleasure you always put before me."

"Don't!" he said.

"I won't, then," she answered pityingly.

Her eyes scalded with tears. Her hands, locked hard together, were trembling.

There was a long pause.

"Sophy," he said presently, very low, his hand still over his eyes, "how if I take an oath to you never to drink again?"

She looked with a tender, wise look at his hidden face.

"You would come to hate me for it in the end, dear."

"Oh ... Sophy...."

"Yes, dear. You would."

"I know.... You think I couldn't keep it," he said miserably.

"No. But if you kept it, you would be hating me all the time."

A gush of bitterness rose in him.

"So _that's_ what you think of me?" he said.

"It's what I think your nature would make you feel--bound by such an oath."

There came another pause.

He broke out rather vehemently again:

"At least do me the justice to admit that I was dead set against having Linda visit us...."

"Yes. I remember. But it would have come sooner or later. You would have been thrown with her in other ways."

"You really think I ... a ... care for her?"

Sophy didn't answer for a second or two; then she said:

"Morris ... that morning at Newport ... when you said those words to me ... you told me afterwards--that it was Belinda who had made you ... suspect me."

"Ah ... don't put it that way!..."

"What other way can I put it? You did tell me it was Belinda, didn't you?"

"Yes. And a more...."

"Wait, Morris. I want to ask you something. Whether you answer it or not, I must ask it. It's this: You had been with Belinda--before you came to me. Had you been together--like lovers?"

He dropped his face into his two hands. She could see the hot flush on it between his fingers.

"Oh ... but you're hard ..." he groaned.

Now Sophy had her moment of bitterness.

"I know," she said, "that the perfect wife is supposed to be motherly when her husband's fancy strays--and lover-like when it turns home again. But I am not perfect in any way. And I don't think I'm hard when I ask for truth between us."

Loring dropped his hands and uncovered eyes ablaze with a helpless fury of regret and vindictiveness.

"I wish to God the girl had never been born!" he cried.

"You haven't answered me yet," said Sophy.

He gazed at her with a sort of braggadocio of defiance for an instant, then dropped his face into his hands again.

"Oh ... it's no use!..." he lamented. "We are low brutes ... men are low brutes.... Passion is a low thing...."

"No--real passion is not low," Sophy broke in on him.

"You know what I mean...." he muttered.

"Yes. I do. But don't call mere sensuality passion. Real passion is like a great, flowering tree. Its roots strike deep into the earth ... its crown is among the stars. Do you call a red rose 'low' because it springs from the earth?"

"How you catch one up!" protested Loring moodily.

She rushed on:

"I do hate so to hear that word misused--abused! Sensual fancies are low because they have no soul ... no flowering. They are like truffles ... all of the earth earthy. Yes ... there are truffle-loves," she ended bitterly.

"And men, you think, are like swine rooting for truffles!" he muttered.

"Sometimes ... when Circe is about...." she admitted.

Morris got up and leaned again upon the mantelpiece. He heaved a disconsolate sigh.

"Oh, Lord!... What a talk for a man to have with his wife!" he said heavily.

XLI

Sophy sat watching him, and her heart yearned over him. In spite of her flash of bitterness, she did feel truly mother-like towards him. He seemed to her so young--so very, touchingly young as he leaned there against the old, smoke-toned ivory of the carved mantelpiece, grasping the ledge, his forehead on the back of his hand. She knew how crushingly he was realising that he had "made a mess of things." But then--he _had_ made a mess of things. She was powerless to comfort him there. If she could only show him how much better it would be not to try to rearrange this tangle--but to step free of it, and begin over ... that there was no real adjustment of their two lives--their two utterly different natures, possible.... Could she show him? Well ... she could at least try....

"Morris," she said softly. "Suppose we try to look at it all from another angle? Suppose we try to see it all as though _we_ weren't concerned in it--as if some one had asked our impartial advice? Don't you think that would be a good way to get at it?"

"But what is it you want to 'get at,' Sophy? What is it you want me to do? God knows I'm ready to do anything...."

"Anything?"

"Yes ... anything in reason," he hedged nervously.

"Would you call it reasonable for us both to be free?"

He started--eyed her suspiciously.

"How 'free'? Free in what way?"

"Quite, quite free, Morris."

He paled.

"Divorce...?" he said.

"Yes."

"You want to divorce me?"

"I want us both to have our own lives wholly in our own hands again--that is the only way."

He stared at her, whiter and whiter.

"Didn't you ever ... love me ... at all?" he managed, at last.

"Ah!--you know whether I loved you...."

"You ... you mean ... I ... I've killed it?"

"Yes, dear."

"Oh, you are cruel ... you are cruel!..." he burst out. He stared at her, his face working. "You're the crudest woman God ever made!" he said huskily.

Sophy was white too. She, too, stammered a little.

"I ... I think ... that truth ... is nearly always cruel," she said. "But it's only truth that will make us free----"

His hands were gripping the sides of the chair into which he had sunk again, so that his arms trembled.

"Damn the truth, then...!" he said slowly and thickly.

"You'd want to keep a wife who doesn't love you as a wife should?"

"Yes, I want to keep you.... I want to keep you if you _hate_ me!... Yes. Yes."

"_That_ is cruelty...."

"Is it? Then I'm cruel, too."

Sophy sat with her eyes on his suffused, lowering face. Her hand went to and fro over the collie's head. She sat so long thus, without speaking, that he said gruffly:

"Well? What now? Why do you stare so?"

"I'm trying to imagine how it would be to feel like that. I'm trying to get your point of view."

"How ... my point of view?"

"The wanting to hold a woman against her will. But I can't understand it. I never understood how a man or woman could want to hold another when love had gone ... the love that is the only reason for marriage."

"You rub it in, don't you?"

She said sadly:

"Why do you speak so roughly and bitterly to me--as if it were my love only that had failed? Do you think I didn't know when first your love began to wane?"

He tried to brave it out.

"And why did it 'wane,' as you call it? Can a man be snubbed day in, day out, and yet keep at concert pitch forever?"

"You mean that I would not respond to you when you had been drinking?"

"Well--put it that way."

Sophy gave a tired sigh.

"Why must we go over it and over it?" she asked. "It is not me that you want, Morris--it is your own way. You never want what is yours--only what is out of reach. You have turned on Belinda now, only because she came to you too easily. If I came back to you--you would not want me any longer."

He sneered.

"It's easy to say what I would or wouldn't do. It's easy to arraign me. But what of yourself? I thought you were so great on unselfishness! Where's the unselfishness in all this, I'd like to know?"

"I'm not trying to be unselfish, Morris. I've been unselfish so long that I've nearly lost my best self. I find it's better to keep one's best self than to be selfless."

He looked startled at this heresy against the great Credo of Man's-Ideal-Woman.

"Good Lord!... You _have_ changed!" he said, in blank dismay. "It doesn't seem to be you talking...."

"It's a 'me' that you don't know, perhaps...."

"I certainly don't know this side of you."

"It isn't a side of me--it's the core of me."

They were both silent again. Loring was the first to take it up.

"Look here ... have you spoken to Judge Macon and your sister about all this?"

"Yes."

He reddened angrily.

"A pleasant position for me, isn't it?"

"It's odious for both of us, Morris," she said, with feeling.

"Did you tell them about ... about...?"

He couldn't bring it out.

"I told them about you and Belinda. I didn't tell them ... that other thing. I couldn't tell any one that...."

"Oh ... thanks!" he sneered.

Sophy flashed out:

"It wasn't for your sake I didn't tell them--it was for my own!"

He looked staggered. He was so used to her forbearance and gentleness that he could almost have believed in the old tales of "possession." It was as though Sophy's body had become "possessed" by a strange, heretic spirit that denied all her former religion of abnegation in one strange speech after the other. He was humiliatingly at a loss in dealing with this new, essential Sophy. He felt something as the Miltonian Adam might have felt if his docile Eve had announced her intention of leaving him and Eden in the companionship of the serpent. Indeed, these new ideas of hers hissed like a whole nestful of serpents. And all the time, just because--in spite of his angry denials--she seemed slipping farther and farther from him--he desired her as he had never desired her. Not beautifully, as of old--but desperately, bitterly, blindly!

He sprang up suddenly, and took a few turns about the room. He went and stood at the window, gazing out into the twilight. The fire reflected in the window-panes seemed flickering among the dark leaves of the magnolia.

Joycie came in with the tea things. He sat sullenly nursing one leg upon the other while Sophy made tea. He wouldn't have any.

They could hear Charlotte's voice here and there about the house. The Judge rode past the window on Silvernose. But no one interrupted them. Only Joycie came in after a little, to clear away the tea things. She went out with the tray, Dhu following her, and they were alone, once more. Sophy rose as Joycie went out, and herself lighted the lamp on her writing-table.

"Why didn't you ask me to do that?" he said irritably.

"I didn't think," she answered.

Now in the lamplight he could see how very white and tired she looked. His heart softened. He went over impulsively and stood close to her.

"Sophy," he said, "what is it you really want?"

Her answer gushed quick and hot like heart's blood: