Chapter XVIII: Book SIX: Wilson Avenue (14)

The ground slanted upward from the street, and Felix climbed the stone coping and scrambled up into the back yard. Going up a terrace at the back end of the lot, he could see into the window of the study upstairs. Rose-Ann’s father was sitting at his desk, with an unlighted cigar in his mouth, not reading or writing, but just sitting there, looking at the lamp. Felix watched him. Once he moved abruptly, and shifted his unlighted cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, and then sat quietly as before, looking at the lamp.

Felix moved incautiously, and stumbled off the terrace, covering himself with snow. He stood up and brushed it off, and then went down by the back porch underneath the studio window. A memory of Eddie Silver, throwing dollars at the window of his Canal street home, came into his mind, and he felt in his pocket for a coin and rather cautiously threw it up at the window.

It went wide of the mark. He threw another and it tinkled sharply against the glass. He stepped back, and he could see a shadow on the window-pane where Rose-Ann’s father had moved between it and the lamp.

He waited a half-minute, and threw a third coin. It rapped squarely against the pane, and a moment later the window was raised and Rose-Ann’s father had leaned out. His unlighted cigar was still in his mouth, and a lock of his grey hair fell forward from the back of his head, waving like a plume. He saw Felix standing in the snow.

For a moment the two stared at each other, and then Rose-Ann’s father leaned out still further and pointed downward with an angular arm. Felix pointed toward the porch inquiringly, and Rose-Ann’s father nodded emphatically. Then, it being clear that they understood each other, he shut the window.

Felix went up on the porch, after stamping the snow from his shoes. A light was turned on in the kitchen, and the door opened. Mr. Prentiss came out, closed the door softly behind him, and pressed Felix’s hand.

“Come on up to my study,” he whispered, “but be quiet, so we won’t wake everybody up.”

With an air of two conspirators, they went softly through the kitchen and dining room, into the hall, and up the stairs. When he had closed his study door behind them, Mr. Prentiss spoke aloud:

“It’s all right now. Nobody can hear us up here.” And again he shook hands with Felix. “You look done up,” he said.

“I walked from the station,” said Felix, “and I fell down in your back yard.” He laughed. “I look like a disreputable character—I wonder what Rose-Ann’s brothers would say if they saw me now!”

“Sit down,” said Rose-Ann’s father, and pulled up a chair in front of his own. “Have a cigar? You’ll find it more restful than those cigarettes of yours. Try this one.”

“Thanks,” said Felix.

Rose-Ann’s father threw away his gnawed unlighted cigar and took another. They lighted up, and smoked for a moment in silence.

“So you came to see me...,” said Rose-Ann’s father. “I was thinking about coming up to Chicago to see you....”

“I suppose,” said Felix, “that you know what the situation is?”

“Mm—yes.... Rose-Ann never tells me anything. I have to be a mind-reader. But usually I can figure out what’s going on. When she was here this time it wasn’t hard to guess what the trouble was.”

“I suppose not,” said Felix. “It must seem simple enough to any one on the outside....”

“And then,” said Mr. Prentiss with a guilty look, “I’ve a habit of getting into correspondence with some of Rose-Ann’s friends. They drop a bit of news now and then.... I used to have quite a correspondence with Will Blake at the Community House. That is why I wasn’t so surprised when I heard you two were married.... And lately I’ve been writing to Clive Bangs—very interesting young man: He tells me about a novel he’s writing; and sometimes he puts in a word or two about Rose-Ann; not very much, but then I know Rose-Ann; so I can figure things out.... I had a letter from him today....”

“What does he say?” asked Felix.

“Nothing in particular; just that he hears that Rose-Ann is quite happy about her work in California.”

“You didn’t know she’d gone?”

“No—she never tells me anything. Not until a long time after it’s happened.”

“Well, were you surprised?”

Rose-Ann’s father puffed on his cigar. “No—I can’t say that I was surprised exactly. I’ve known her a long time.”

“And I’ve only known her a little more than two years,” said Felix.

“She always was a difficult child to manage,” said Mr. Prentiss. “Not that I was ever any good at managing her. I just let her have her own way.”

“I seem to be pursuing the same tactics,” said Felix grimly.

Rose-Ann’s father rose and walked across the room and back, his thumbs locked behind his back, the cigar still in his mouth.

He paused before Felix. “Well,” he demanded defensively, “what else can we do?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” said Felix. He laid down his cigar, looked at it with disapproval and lighted one of his own cigarettes.

“Is it—is it all over between you?” asked Rose-Ann’s father softly and rather timidly, looking down at Felix.

“It looks very much that way,” said Felix gloomily.

“I was afraid so,” said Rose-Ann’s father sadly, “I was afraid so.”

He walked away, puffing out fierce clouds of smoke.

“It’s my fault,” said Felix.

“Mm—yes—yes,” said Rose-Ann’s father from the other side of the room where he had halted with his back to Felix. “Yes, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“I was unfaithful to her,” said Felix doggedly.

“Yes, yes,” said Rose-Ann’s father hastily from his corner. “That can happen, too. Women are—they drive you to it.”

Felix looked at him in surprise.

Rose-Ann’s father turned around to face him. “I’m an old man,” he said apologetically, “and a priest. You can’t expect me to take things like that as seriously as you young folks do. I hear about the sins of the flesh too often to be very much impressed with them.”

“I just thought you ought to know,” murmured Felix.

“Well, now, to get to the point,” said Mr. Prentiss, “what are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” said Felix. “I’m trying to consider Rose-Ann’s happiness.... She seems to be able to get along without me....”

“Seems to be? seems to be? You don’t seem so certain of it yourself?”

“If she can be happy with some one else, why should I interfere?” Felix muttered.

“Who is this some one else?” asked Rose-Ann’s father, taking up his march across the room. “Some one in California?”

“Yes, a poet.... I’ve my own little system of espionage, too. I got very chummy with the art editor of the Motion Picture World before he left, and he writes me all the gossip.... Besides I’ve Rose-Ann’s description of him in her last letter to me—we’re still friends, you know. ‘Tall, awkward, black-haired, blazing black-eyed’—sounds quite romantic.”

“Another one of her young geniuses,” said Rose-Ann’s father with a sigh.

“Another?”

“Yes.... She’s always had an eye for young genius. Queer-looking specimens usually ... you should have seen the one she brought home from Chicago once. Name was—Dick, Dick something. A poet. Never heard what became of him, but I imagine that he died of drugs.”

“Was she in love with him?”

“It’s hard to say. I don’t know whether she’s ever been in love.”

“What!”

Rose-Ann’s father came to a halt again. “Oh, yes, she married you; but she ran away from you.... And the nearest I can come to telling you why, is that I suspect she ran away because she was afraid she _would_ love you.... If that sounds foolish, just put it down to the maunderings of an old man.”

“It doesn’t sound foolish to me,” said Felix. “It sounds—true.”

“Well, then, I’ll tell you something else. I imagine she’s nearer to being in love with you _now_ than she was when she married you! What do you think of that?”

“Perhaps it’s only because it’s what I wish to believe,” said Felix, “but it sounds like gospel.”

“There’s such a thing as being afraid of falling in love,” mused Rose-Ann’s father. “I think she married you because she thought she would be safe from that danger—I know it doesn’t sound very complimentary to you, but maybe you know what I mean—and she ran away from you because she found out she was mistaken.”

“I know,” said Felix, “she’s always been afraid of love.... So have I, for that matter.”

“That’s why she chose you.”

“Yes.”

“Well, there you are. I’m afraid this doesn’t help the situation any.” Mr. Prentiss moved away, puffing his cigar.

“So you think it’s no use?”

“The question is,” said Rose-Ann’s father, “can you tame her?”

Tame her! Felix remembered suddenly the conversation he had had with Rose-Ann at their restaurant rendezvous....

Rose-Ann’s father sighed. “I’ve never tried....”

“Neither have I,” said Felix. “It might be worth while!”

Rose-Ann’s father looked at him quizzically, and for the first time Felix felt in his kindly smile the cynical quality which Rose-Ann had referred to more than once.

Rose-Ann’s father shook his head. “You’re too much like me,” he said.

“I’m her husband, confound it,” said Felix, jumping up. “Where is my hat?”

Rose-Ann’s father regarded him sympathetically. “You won’t stay to breakfast?” he said. “Well—good luck, young man!”

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LXII. Theory and Practice

1

AT the end of the second day out on the Santa Fe, Felix had begun to leave winter behind; the desert was blossoming with strange white and scarlet flowers; and the next morning he rode past orange-groves golden with fruit and white with bloom, and quaint little rose-gardens at the way-stations, toward that purple infinite depth along the horizon which began to lift itself into the white peaks of a mountain range. Felix had been vaguely aware that the climate of southern California was supposed to differ from that of the Great Lakes, but to be riding out of a world of ice and snow straight into the heart of spring, seemed to him at once miraculous and auspicious. The green and gold of this new world was significant to him not as a fact of geography, but as a magical response of nature to his heart’s impatience. It was a promise of happiness.

Felix was in need of some such happy auspice to hearten him. The determination with which he had started out had been undermined by two days and nights of solitary thought. Sometimes he felt like a martyr going to the stake; and sometimes like a fool. But he was upheld by a theory.

It was the latest of all his theories concerning life in general and himself and Rose-Ann in particular; and he had resolved to act upon that theory at all costs, no matter how absurd it might at any moment seem.

His theory was this: that he and Rose-Ann were married....

The question of _how_ married, whether by the authority of the State of Illinois, or by their own free will and consent, was not permitted to be raised; for if once one started in considering questions like that, one got nowhere! The _how_ of anything in the world was a question one might debate for ever. Plato and H. G. Wells—St. Paul and Bernard Shaw—Tolstoi and Nietzsche—Dante and Milton—and Edward Bok ... the sages had never agreed what marriage was. Some said it was a social arrangement, some an agreement between two individuals, some a mystical sacrament; others considered it a necessary evil; and still others a damned nuisance. Felix himself had inclined to the view that it was a relic of barbarism, connected in some way with those other barbaric institutions, Private Property and the State. Perhaps it was; but that was not the point. Whether as a survival of the barbaric idea of possession or by common understanding and consent, whether by the majestic force of law or by private agreement, whether by sensual habitude or as an outward and visible sign of some inward and spiritual grace—they were man and wife.

That seemed to simplify the situation immensely. The relations of two individuals, as such, were infinitely complex and incalculable; but the relations of man and wife were something that the mind could comprehend. Thus—what had happened, as an incident in the history of two human bundles of emotions and ideas, was a mystery profound and unfathomable; but as an incident in the history of a marriage, it was no mystery at all—it was just a quarrel.... Married people often quarreled. Why? Perhaps because they were married.... And—generally—they made up. Perhaps for the same reason.

It was a comfort to merge the uniqueness of one’s woes in the ocean of generality—to feel that in this very perturbation he was representative of a vast class; that even here he was simply a husband!

And the solution of his difficulties was—this being the conclusion to which his theory led—to try to behave like any other husband in the same circumstances. Not—he was quite certain of this—not like Felix Fay. Not like a young man who has read learned books on psychology. But like a husband....

He had elaborated his theory in the spare moments of twenty-four hours devoted to arranging his affairs at the office so that he could be gone for an indefinite period. His first impulse had been to take the train and let his job go hang; but a young man who has just discovered that he is a husband realizes the significance of a job in its relation to his marriage. If he failed in his errand, the job did not matter; but it mattered very much if he succeeded.... And yet—he could not explain his predicament to any one; his very dignity as a husband was bound up in his not admitting that anything had gone wrong with his marriage. He had to think up some plausible lie to tell the managing editor. His play—Los Angeles—the moving pictures—five thousand dollars—a chance to direct it personally ... a lie like that was the sort of thing people liked to believe. The mention of five thousand dollars ought to convince any managing editor.... And it did.

The afternoon before he took the train, Felix had gone to see old Mrs. Perk at the Community House Theatre. She was still there, sewing costumes. He threaded a needle for her. They gossiped for a while. Then he asked her suddenly,

“Granny Perk, did you ever run away from your husband?”

A delicious smile of reminiscence stole over her plump old face.

“Yes, bless your heart, I did!” she said. It was as if he had recalled to her some exquisite and delicious adventure.

She shook her head. “I was young,” she said, as if that explained much. “I was a girl as liked to have my own way. And so,” she said proudly, “one day, I took the bit in my teeth and ran away!”

She put her chin in her plump hand and contemplated her memories.

“It sounds very exciting,” said Felix.

“Exciting’s no name for it,” said Granny Perk. “It was just regular sinful!”

“What did you do, Granny Perk?” he asked curiously.

She straightened up, and looked at him severely.

“I wouldn’t be putting ideas into the heads of young folks that are well brought up and content with things as they find them,” she said. “Nowadays the boys and girls talk as they should not, but they behave proper enough. It was different in my time. I wouldn’t say Boo to a goose—but I was a wild one for all that. But I’m not one to corrupt the youth of the land. So ask me no questions!”

“Tell me one thing,” said Felix. “What did your husband do when you ran away?”

“Why, he came after me, to be sure, and brought me home.”

“And you lived happily ever after?” asked Felix, laughingly.

“Oh, well now, I guess we got along as well as most,” she said. “I’ve nothing to complain of....”

Did human life go to that pattern, Felix wondered. And if so, what was the use of all his speculations and emotions? He wished he could go after Rose-Ann in the mood of Granny Perk’s husband, to whom it had been the most inevitable thing in the world. As it was, he had to brace himself against intellectual doubts for two days and nights with an intellectual theory: the theory that he was Rose-Ann’s husband after all.

If he could just remember that—whatever happened!

How does a husband behave on such an occasion? With firmness? That seemed rather absurd. With a tactful brutality? Felix sighed. It would be hard to enact this difficult rôle....

But it was spring—miraculously spring in the dead of winter, and he was going to Rose-Ann! Yucca-blooms and cactus-blossoms, roses and oranges, warm sunlight and the green of riotous vegetation—spring!

It was noon on Saturday that he reached Los Angeles. He went to a hotel, and lunched. Then he took the Pacific Electric to Santa Monica.... Rose-Ann lived in Santa Monica.

2

When Rose-Ann reached her apartment in Santa Monica, after a leisurely lunch in Los Angeles, and turned her key in the lock, she heard some one inside spring up and come to the door. It was opened for her, and Felix stood there smiling.

“How did you get in?” she demanded in surprise.

“Never mind how I got in,” he said. “I’m here.”

“It’s a matter of some importance to me how you got in,” she retorted, edging around him into the room and putting her purse on the little table. “I am known here as Miss Prentiss. The people here suppose me to be unmarried....” she paused. “How _did_ you get in?”

“I walked in.... You had left your door unlocked.”

“Oh!”

“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

She relaxed her attitude of defence, and came over to give him her hand. “Forgive me, Felix, for being so sensitive. I _am_ glad to see you. As well as surprised.”

Her last remark was a demand for explanations.... Should he tell her why he had come? Or dissemble his intentions? Courage!

“You know why I came,” he said.

She was on guard again instantly at the challenge in his voice.

“No.... Why?”

“Guess!”

He had only his theory to uphold him. Never had she seemed more utterly alien than she became in that moment. There was a cool surprise in her manner, and he felt as though he had committed some stupid insolence.

She did not reply, but only looked at him. He was making up his mind.... Now was the time when any husband in the world would assert his mastery of the situation. A contemptuous phrase came into his mind: “cave-man stuff!”

As if she were reading the thoughts in his mind, her cheeks grew red and then white, and her eyes blazed dangerously. Every muscle was taut.

He took one step toward her; and in that instant a wild frightened look came into her eyes ... like that in an animal’s caught in a trap. He turned away, saw a chair before him, and sat down, sick at heart. No, he would rather fail, than succeed—that way.

When he looked up, she was standing, a little dizzily, beside the table, steadying herself with her hand.

His theory had been wrong.... It wasn’t husband and wife—it was himself and Rose-Ann.

And yet—was she despising him? Well, let her.

“How long have you been in town?” she asked, quite naturally.

“I arrived this noon,” he answered quietly.

“Then you haven’t seen anything yet.”

“No.”

“There are some lovely places.”

“I suppose so.”

“I’ll show you about, if I may. I’d like to.”

“I sha’n’t be here long,” he said. “Only a few days.” Since he had failed, he might as well go back quickly.

“I’m sorry you can’t stay longer,” she said—wistfully, it seemed.

That silly lie he had told to the managing editor to save his dignity, came into his mind. It would save his dignity here too.

“I came to see the moving picture people about my play,” he said.

“Oh, did Winters write you about it?”

“Winters? No.”

“I told him about it, and he was very much interested.”

How utterly absurd! His play a movie!... Still, under the circumstances, he could hardly say that to her....

“You haven’t settled anything finally, have you?” she went on. “Because you really ought to see Winters. I’ll introduce you, if you wish.”

“That will be fine,” he said mechanically. He wished he could tell her it was a lie; but that would be a confession of his purpose in coming—and his failure.

“What are you doing this afternoon?” she pursued.

“Nothing,” he said.

She laughed. “You might be sociable and invite me to tea!”

He pulled himself together. He must play this thing out somehow. It was only for a few days.

“Tea?” he repeated stupidly.

“Can’t you come? Then how about dinner?—No—” she bit her lip. “I forgot—I’ve an engagement for dinner. But—I suppose I can break it ... if you’d like me to.”

“No, don’t break your dinner engagement. I can come to tea,” he said.

She hesitated, and then said appealing, “I want to be good friends with you, Felix!”

“I see no reason why we shouldn’t be,” he said.... That wasn’t very well done—he ought to be able to do better than that.... “It will be very nice to have tea with you.”

“Have you seen the Palisades?” she asked.

“No.”

“No, of course not....”

“The Palisades?” He appeared inquiringly interested.

“Pergolas and palm-trees. You’ll like it. We’ll go there for a walk.”

He smiled. “That will be lovely!”

Rose-Ann put on her hat, and looked at it in the mirror. It did not satisfy her, and she went to a closet for another. She viewed herself with dissatisfaction, and then turned to him and said lightly,

“Wait for me downstairs, Felix, while I change into some fresh things—I get so tired of my work-clothes.”

He was swept with a sudden uncontrollable anger, so that he trembled as he stood up.... It was strange that this petty humiliation, and not the thought of losing her for ever, should destroy his self-possession! He was ashamed of himself. He went toward the door.... Once outside, he would go away and go home and never see her again....

She followed him to the door and put her hands on his shoulders; and then they were in one another’s arms.

3

Rose-Ann began to cry.

“We’ve spoiled it all,” she said.

“How have we spoiled it?” he asked tenderly but troubledly. “You love me....”

“I love you.... I think so. Or at least I was terribly lonely for you. But—”

“But what?”

“This only makes it so much harder. This—_this_ hasn’t changed my mind, Felix.” She sat up on the couch.

“I shall never let you leave me now.”

“I’m afraid—you’ll have to find some other way of keeping me.”

“I shall,” he said defiantly.

“I—hope so, Felix.... I wish I could feel that I was really and truly your wife. I don’t—yet.”

“Then,” he said slowly, “play at being my wife—for a while. Can you do that?”

“I’ve played at it for nearly two years. It was nice enough. I guess I can—a little longer. Do you suppose that is what it will come to?—just playing at being married, Felix?”

“No. Never. We’ll find the answer this time.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to talk everything out....”

“We’ve talked so often, Felix!”

“Once more!”

“Yes ... but not now. Let’s play at being happy first. Shall we go outdoors?”

“Yes.”

“And have our tea.... Felix, you will love the palm-trees! I’ll put on my prettiest frock—for you.”

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LXIII. In Play

1

BY an unspoken agreement they postponed their discussion from hour to hour. They were too happy to want to question that happiness. For the moment all was well.

They were playing at being married; playing that everything was all right.... And the very fear which lurked in the back of their minds of that impending hour when they must reopen old wounds, heightened the beauty of the present moment.

They loitered on “the Palisades,” under palm-trees, in the hot sunshine, and drank in the cold breeze from the ocean—into whose waters, still winter-cold, only the seagulls dared to dive.

They walked, under the eaves of that low cliff-wall along the shore, among the few early holiday-makers, and the mothers who had brought their children down to play on the beach. They watched the children feeding the seagulls—throwing their remnants of sandwiches out into the water, for the friendly birds to swoop down and take; and the children would clap their hands and venture down closer to the water’s edge until some icy wave would sweep in and send them scampering barelegged back over the sand—a lovely game of children and birds and waves that one could watch for ever....

Further down the beach they came to an Inn, where they sat on a balcony and drank tea with rice-cakes, and watched the sun sink lingeringly through bank after bank of cloud into the very ocean, taking with it suddenly the day.

They went to one of the play-places on the beach, and danced and dined, and rode on childish and breath-taking roller-coasting journeys. And at midnight, still unwearied, still flooded with the joy of being alive and together, they wandered back up the shore, to its remoter haunts, past the piers gleaming with lights, into the darkness wanly illumined by a young moon that climbed up behind the ragged rocks to shoreward.

“Let’s come here tomorrow night and build a bonfire,” said Rose-Ann. “And bring our supper.”

They lay on the sand, still warm from the blaze of day, under the cool wind from the sea, glad to have put off the testing of their happiness another day.

They went back to her apartment.

“What about this alleged poet of yours, Rose-Ann?” he asked casually.

“Eugene?”

“I didn’t know his name....”

“Well ... he doesn’t count, if that’s what you mean.”

And she kissed him, as if anxious to prove herself all his. Tonight there should be no cloud on their happiness.

2

They breakfasted lazily Sunday noon at a tea-shop in Santa Monica, kept by three quaint little Englishwomen; they dawdled over their shirred eggs and toast and coffee until mid-afternoon, talking. Their table was on a porch under a stucco archway, half screened from the road by a trellis covered with roses.

“Everything is too beautiful,” said Rose-Ann. “What have we done to deserve this?”

“Would you like to live here—always?” he asked.

“I’d like to have been a child here,” she said. “But the mid-western winter has got into my blood. I guess I want to see snow again!”

“It does seem immoral,” he laughed, “—flowers in February!”

“I may go away,” she said. “Soon.... But not back to Chicago.”

“Why?” he asked in surprise.

“This—this magazine adventure—is over.... I was working to become editor. And now they’ve offered me the position. And I don’t want it. Isn’t it funny? It just doesn’t mean anything to me.... I shall try something different....”

“So shall I,” he said unexpectedly. “I’m tired of my job, too.”

She smiled. “When you’ve made your fortune in the movies—”

“That was all a damned lie, Rose-Ann. I haven’t the slightest idea of selling anything to the movies.”

“You’ve no idea how easy it is,” she said.

“Then that’s another reason for my not being interested,” he said. “I’m tired of easy things.... I lied to the managing editor to get to come out here. It was too easy. It’s all too easy.... No, I’m in earnest about it.—I came to Chicago expecting to have to fight my way. Chicago was too damned nice to me. I’ve been living in a pasteboard world ever since. Look at my job—I come and go when I please; and I can say anything I like.”

“The Fortunate Youth!” she murmured.

“The Intellectual Playboy,” he said. “I can say what I like—because nobody cares. That’s the truth. There’s nothing heroic in differing with the crowd when the crowd pays you to do it.”

“Do you want to be heroic, Felix?”

“Yes. I’d like to live in a world where ideas counted for something—where people might put you in jail if you disagreed with them. Then it would be worth while to have opinions of one’s own. One could find out whether one really believed in one’s ideas!”

“Find out—how?”

“By suffering for them a little.”

“You _are_ a Puritan!”

“It’s not that.... I want the feeling of other minds resisting the impact of my own, as sword clashes with sword. How can I know whether my ideas are true unless they are put to that test? But I’m let think as I please. It’s not a battle, it’s a sleight-of-hand performance. It’s vaudeville.”

“I didn’t know you felt that way about your work, Felix.”

“You want to throw up your job, Rose-Ann. Why shouldn’t I?”

She could not quite tell whether he meant it or not.

“And write?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. But that’s not enough. I’m going to do something hard.—Oh, I could be what’s called a literary artist ... the _mot juste_ and all that; that’s easy, too. One has only to be sufficiently bored or unhappy.... No, I want to deal with something harder than words. I want to build something with my hands—a house, for instance. Why not?”

She leaned forward, smiling. It was sufficiently clear that he was not in earnest. “Where will you build your house?”

“Not in this golden land where it is always afternoon. And not too near Chicago, either. Do you remember the Dunes where we picnicked last summer? There, perhaps. Away from everything.”

“I know where you mean. Yes. What kind of house will you build?”

“I suppose that depends to some extent on how much money I have. Let me see, I had thrown up my job a moment ago! I take it back again. Now that I have a house to build, I shall need it. How much do houses cost?”

“It depends on how large they are.”

“This will be large, but not too large, I should say.”

“Then it will take a small, but not too small, sum of money.”

“Just as I thought. And if anybody should be so foolish as to want my play—”

“But do you really mean all this, Felix?”

“Why not? Why can’t I have a house like other people? I realize more and more as time goes on that I am not essentially different from other people. They want houses. Why shouldn’t I?”

“If you’re in earnest about it, then it isn’t a house you mean, Felix. It’s a studio. That wouldn’t cost very much.”

“No. A house!” he insisted.

“But why a house?” she asked.

“Why do people want houses?” he countered.

“But—” she said.

“Yes?”

“You want a place to write in, Felix.”

“I shall write in the barn,” he said.

“Oh, is there to be a barn?”

“Don’t you think a barn would be nice?”

“I think a barn would be lovely. But then what is the house for?”

“I don’t know, exactly. You see, I’ve never had a house. But people seem to have found uses for them. I would settle down in mine and await developments. In the meantime, I could live in it. People do, don’t they?”

She laughed. “Yes. People do.... But won’t you be lonely in such a big house?”

“No,” he said, “I sha’n’t be lonely. Not in this house! If I am I shall go talk to the cook.”

They looked at each other, smiling, and remembering the first morning of their marriage. And for a moment Felix felt that they had drawn nearer than they had ever been in their lives—as if in this foolish dream of house-building he had by some inspired accident touched upon the secret of happiness.... And then, in his doubting mind, there rose the fear that this was an emotion shared only in play. It was too trivial a thing to bear the burden of his need of reassurance. No, the hurts which they had inflicted upon each other could not be healed by a jest....

For another moment their gaze still met, suspiciously, as he sought to surprise in her eyes the thoughts, the wishes, that lay mockingly hidden behind that impenetrable curtain. And then they looked away.

The moment in which they had seemed to understand each other had vanished, leaving him with the certainty that it had never existed.

“Come,” Rose-Ann cried gaily, “we must go on our picnic.”

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LXIV. In Earnest

1

SHE had never seemed more dazzling to him, and more remote, than in the hours that followed. They lay on the beach and watched the sunset, and wandered arm in arm through the brief twilight into the darkness. She was happy; and her happiness was a mockery to him. She was tender and passionate—and in that very excess of tenderness and passion seemed to confess to him that this was the end.

She was playing at marriage.

In the vast night the moon rose slowly behind the hills, unseen but palely tinging the sky. They went past stray bonfires far up the shore until they could see it, a slender crescent, cradled between two hills.

Its light faintly touched the edges of the waves with silver.

“What would it be like,” Rose-Ann wondered, “to bathe in icy moonlight? Shall we?”

He remembered the time at Woods Point, the first morning of their marriage when she had slipped from their warm bed while he slept, to plunge into the snow. He remembered the sudden loneliness with which he had awakened, and her naked footprints in the snow.... It seemed profoundly characteristic of all her strangeness.

What other woman in the world would have left, at dawn, the bed of happy love, to keep such an icy tryst! It was like their whole married life: the warmth of mere human happiness had not satisfied her; she must go out into the bleak strange arctic spaces of emotion; and he must go, too.... Well, let her keep her cold assignation with the moonlight alone, this time!

“No,” he said resentfully, and gathered driftwood for a fire, while she undressed in the darkness.... He saw her go in, crying out with delight at the water’s bitter coldness, and emerge, white and slender and dripping with silver moonlight, from the waves.... And this was the creature he had tried to make his wife! This seeker after strange and impossible beauty!

He remembered that he had offered her, in some playful madness that day, a house. A house in the environs of Chicago! Thank heaven, she would never know that he had been in earnest.

She had dried her body miraculously on the tiny tea-towel from their lunch-basket and resumed her clothes by the time his fire was alight, and she came up laughing and hungry, demanding food. He unpacked from the little basket the supper which their hosts of the tea-shop had prepared for them. She munched sandwiches while he broiled bacon on a stick over the blaze.

“We could do this every night on the Dunes,” she said—and his heart leaped.

“Rose-Ann,” he said. “Don’t torment me.”

She took his hand. “Do I torment you?” she asked. “I don’t mean to. I’m sorry!”

Was it surrender? he wondered—or some new evasion?

“Our marriage—” he said.

“Oh! Must we talk about it?” Her voice was wistful. “We’re so happy—as we are.”

“As we are.... But what are we?” he demanded painfully.

“Together....” she said.

And then, when he did not speak, she asked, a little coldly,

“What do you want me to say, Felix?”

“I don’t know.... There are so many things to say.... All the things we haven’t said....”

“Must we say them, Felix? Well, then—I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For everything.... Felix, if we had met each other for the first time _now_—”

“Yes....”

“We could be very happy, I think. Oh, I know we could!”

“Have we hurt each other so much, then?” he asked sadly.

“It’s not that.... All that was my fault.”

“No,” he said.

“Yes. I’ve thought everything out. And sometimes I think I’m not sorry that it happened. Because I’ve learned some things I didn’t know—about myself.”

“Tell me.”

“I’d rather not.... Felix, I’m not the same person I was. I’ve found things in myself I’m frightened of. Don’t make me tell them....”

“I wish you would.”

“They’re not nice things, Felix.... I woke up last night hating you....”

Her voice was shaken.

“I’m sorry, Rose-Ann,” he said contritely. “You have a right to hate me.”

“No,” she said. “It’s not what you think. It’s something else—something you’d never guess.”

Suddenly she threw herself face down on the sand and began to cry.

He put his hand on her shoulder. She drew herself away from his touch with a convulsive movement. He looked on, hurt and baffled and frightened.

She sat up, seized his hand and pressed it desperately. “Why can’t I trust you?” she asked.

He had lost all clue to her thoughts. “I wish I could help you,” he said.

“I don’t know—perhaps I’m trying to fool myself again.... What are you really like, Felix?”

She was looking away from him, gripping his hand, staring blindly into the darkness. She seemed not to be speaking to him. He did not answer.

Her hand relaxed its grip upon his, and she said, drying her tears,

“I despise myself....”

“For crying?” he asked.

“No—for what we’ve done.”

He thought he knew what she meant. “For—playing at marriage?”

“Yes,” she said strangely, “playing at marriage....”

He had a moment of clairvoyance, a moment in which his mind saw into the one same realm of memory with hers.... He saw them, beside another camp-fire, talking....

“_Not afraid_,” he repeated aloud the words she had said to him then, “_not afraid of life or of any of the beautiful things life may bring us...._”

“Felix!” she cried out. “Don’t!”

He was seeing another picture, of themselves walking in a park under great trees that lifted their shivering glooms to the sky. “Everything,” she had said, “is all right now.” What mockery! And he felt, again, forces that he did not understand hurling themselves on his heart crushing and stunning it....

“We were afraid of life,” he said. “We were cowards. Despise me, too.”

“Felix!” she cried, “you did care!... I never knew!”

2

They looked into the dying embers of the fire.

His mind, as by a shadowy wing, was touched with a faint regret ... for what?... for an old dream, beautiful in its way—a dream of freedom; but a dream only—and worthy only the farewell tribute of a faint and shadowy regret.

“What shall we do?” she whispered.

“Let’s build our house, Rose-Ann. Will you?”

“Yes.”

THE END

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● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ In chapter XVII, the sections are numbered 1, 2, 4. There is no 3,
and no obvious place to insert another section number. Section 4
on page 132 was renumbered to 3.
○ Page 235, the third and fourth lines were swapped.
○ Page 240, the section number 4 was corrected to 5.
○ Page 289, there is a page break after section 2 and the following
section is also numbered 2. The page break was deleted and the
following two sections renumbered.
○ Page 295, the section number 2 was corrected to 3.
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).