Chapter VIII: Book SIX: Wilson Avenue (4)

He sat down again at the little table, fitted a stub pen into his penholder, lighted a match, and held the steel point in the blaze, to burn off the oil and take out the temper, making it soft and flexible and easy to write with. He uncorked the ink, wiped out the neck of the bottle with a blotter, and dipped his pen in. Yes, the pen held a full sentence’s-worth of ink, as it should. There was nothing the matter with the pen. He took a sheaf of paper from the great pile on the back of the desk, laid it at the proper angle, adjusted his chair, dipped the pen again, poised it above the virgin paper—and remembered that he had only two cigarettes left in the box. One cannot do a good night’s writing without plenty of cigarettes. He went down to the cigar store and returned with five boxes.

Once more he dipped his pen, lifted it ...

An hour later he roused himself from the vague waking dream in which his mind had been immersed. The sheet of paper was covered with lines and circles, stars, geometrical figures, childish pictures of houses with smoke coming out of the chimneys, illegible words, his own initials, and crude attempts to draw the outline of a girl’s arm; and amidst all this, carefully obliterated, so that he could hardly recognize it himself, the name—_Rose-Ann_, _Rose-Ann_, _Rose-Ann_....

He tore the sheet into tiny fragments, brushed them to the floor, and then got down on his hands and knees and carefully picked them up. He must remember to buy a wastebasket for his room tomorrow. He looked at his watch. It was twelve o’clock. He would go in and see Roger and Don; if they were staying up late, they might offer him some coffee.

Roger was lying on the couch reading Flaubert’s “La Tentation de la Saint Antoine,” and Don was sitting in an easy chair reading Flaubert’s “Bouvard et Pecuchet.” They looked up, bade him come in, and went on calmly with their reading. Felix took down a book from the shelf—one of the later works of Henry James—and yawned over it.... Perhaps he had better go to bed after all.

At that moment there was a stumbling up the stairs, and a loud banging at the door.

“That’s Eddie Silver,” said Roger, in a resigned tone.

Felix jumped up and opened the door, and Eddie Silver entered, shouting, “Hello!”—at the same time playfully thrusting against Felix’s stomach an automatic revolver made of tin. But Felix did not know that it was a toy.

He stepped back hastily, with a queer feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“The fool’s got a revolver!” said Roger.

“Here, give me that,” said Don, going over and trying to snatch it.

“Let him alone——he’s drunk,” said Roger.

“No——not drunk!” protested Eddie Silver. “Don’t say I’m drunk!” He tearfully extended his hands in pleading, with the revolver dangling from a finger. “But—” and he beamed at them suddenly——“going to _get_ drunk! Going——” He noticed the revolver, put it carefully in one overcoat pocket, and took out of the other a quart bottle. “Get some glasses, Rojjie!” And taking off his overcoat, with the revolver still in its pocket, he bundled it up and tossed it over into the corner of the room.

There was a moment in which everybody—except Eddie—held himself tense in expectation of a bullet. Then Don started across the room toward the overcoat.

“No, Don—no!——You le’ tha’ o’co’ ’lone. ’S my bes’ o’co’!” And then, very clearly enunciated, “Hurry up with those glasses!”

Felix followed Roger over behind the screen which masked their simple culinary arrangements. “We’ve got to get him drunk enough to get that gun away from him,” whispered Roger.

It took another bottle of whiskey, procured by Don and paid for by Felix, and four hours of time, to kill Eddie Silver’s jealous watchfulness of that overcoat in the corner. Eddie, with a maudlin efficiency, divided his attention between the overcoat and the whiskey. His conversation for the last three of the four hours consisted of a promise to tell them something. “Wo’n’ tell ’nybo’ ’n worl’ ’cep’ you,” he kept saying.

It appeared to have to do with himself and some girl——but whether it was in the nature of a crime or a joke they could not tell, because sometimes he laughed and again he cried about it. But as often as he started to tell what it was, he became diverted, and told instead about somebody else and somebody else’s girl. He confessed many follies that night, but not his own.

At three o’clock, just when he seemed to be really on the point of making that long-delayed confession, he suddenly commenced to laugh. “’Minds me Cli’ Bangs!” he said. “Know Cli’ Bangs?” And becoming articulate again he went on, “I’ll tell you a funny story about him. He’s got a—(come on, everybody have another little drink!)—house out in the country. I te’ you ’bou’ tha’ h-house!”

And with vague relapses into the muffled speech of drunkenness, and startling recoveries of clearness, but always with a thread of coherence, he told the story of Clive Bangs’ house. At times Roger, watchfully listening, had to serve as official interpreter; Roger understood the locutions of drunken speech as if they were a foreign language in which he was versed. And Felix, half-ashamed to listen, but curious, heard it to the end.

It seemed that Clive had built—or rebuilt—that house in Woods Point for a girl he was in love with at the time, years ago, five or six or seven years ago. But, said Eddie Silver, he had neglected to tell the girl that he was in love with her. And so, about the time the house was finished, she married somebody else. Or at least, became engaged to some one else, whom she eventually did marry. The point of this story—to Eddie it was an exquisitely funny story—was that Clive Bangs had kept the house a secret from her, because he wanted it to be a surprise. And it was this secrecy of his which had convinced her that he had another sweetheart; so that, in pique, she became engaged to the other man.

“Cli’s li’l’ secret!” said Eddie Silver, infinitely amused. “Do’ pay to have se-secrets. Tha’s why I go’ tell my li’l’ secret.”

But again he wandered from the point, much to Don’s and Roger’s disappointment.

This painful story about his friend stirred Felix deeply. He felt that it was true—true in essence, however fabricated in detail; it seemed to him indecent to have this stolen glimpse into the secret of Clive Bangs’ heart—and yet he was glad he had heard the story. Yes, it must be true. Rose-Ann had put it in a phrase: “Some girl has hurt him.” And this—this ridiculous and pathetic incident, too ridiculous ever to confess, a secret that must be buried deep and forgotten—was the reason for Clive’s being what he was.... And suddenly Felix understood why that story had moved him so:—for had he not been as ridiculously, as pathetically hurt, in his own episode of moon-calf-love back in Port Royal? And was that incident, too, to affect his whole life, remaining untold, unconfessed, poisoning his courage and his faith?

He jumped up, went to his room, altogether wide awake, and commenced to write—the story of his folly in Port Royal. He commenced it as a letter to Rose-Ann. He did not consider whether he would ever dare to send it to her. He only knew that it must be written so.

An hour later he paused, tired out—and remembered Eddie Silver’s revolver. After all, that was perhaps a life-and-death matter, and this wasn’t. He went back to Don’s and Roger’s room.... Eddie Silver’s confession was again on the point of becoming definite.

“Tell you all about it,” said Eddie. “Lis’n!”

They leaned forward to hear, but Eddie’s head dropped on his arms, and he was asleep.

“Damn!” whispered Roger.

Felix slipped quietly over to the woolly heap in the corner and reached into one pocket and then the other. He found something strangely light to the touch. He pulled it out and gazed at it angrily. A tin revolver!

“F’lix!”

Eddie suddenly awake, was calling to him.

“Go ge’ ’no’er bo’l’ Swinburne!”

Felix looked at his watch. If he went to sleep now, he would never wake up in the morning in time to go to the office. He might as well keep awake the rest of the night. “Make some coffee,” he said to Roger, “and I’ll get some more whiskey for this crazy loon.”

2

That sort of thing—he reflected next evening, when he turned in immediately after dinner—was not the sort of thing he had expected of his Canal street home. He had thought of it as being a quiet backwater, out of reach of the tides of life. And if Eddie Silver was going to come there!... He fell asleep, only to be awakened by the cry,

“F’lix! Oh you F’lix!” and a pounding on his door. “G’ up! We’re having li’l’ Swinburne party!”

Felix lighted a match. It was one o’clock. How had that madman got into the house at this hour? Anyway, there was no sleeping now. Besides, he had had six hours’ sleep.

He rose and dressed, and went into the other room. “Make me a little coffee, Roger,” he pleaded.... And an hour later he managed to slip away, and went back to his room and wrote feverishly on his letter—the letter which he would never send—to Rose-Ann ... falling asleep with his head on the table, and only waking in time to get to the office, without breakfast.

The third evening Eddie Silver came again, and this time Felix felt himself too tired to write, and drank whiskey with the rest. In the morning he was apparently none the worse, except that he had no appetite for anything except a cup of coffee and a cigarette. In the afternoon, for lack of sufficient sleep, he needed more coffee. And of course, the more coffee one drank, the less one seemed to need real food, so that dinner, too, consisted exclusively of coffee. And then he could not sleep, and sat up half the night writing. Fortunately, Eddie Silver did not come again for a while, so there was a lull in the fever of existence. But it took days to get back to normal habits of eating and sleeping again.

And Felix, in the meantime, had commenced, for the sake of companionship and good coffee, to take his dinners with Don and Roger in their room, taking his turn in providing them. These meals were of a delicatessen sort, sometimes chosen because the ingredients reminded Don and Roger of Spain or Italy, and sometimes because they made an interesting colour scheme.

For a while their evenings were quiet. Felix would labour upon that endless letter to Rose-Ann—who had by now come to seem to him an unreal figure, an invention of his own fancy; only becoming real again for a moment, a moment only, when he saw on his desk at the office an envelope addressed to him in her large undisciplined handwriting. Within that envelope would be a friendly note, saying nothing; and he would reply in kind.

One day he dropped in at the little Community Theatre to see how things were getting on; Rose-Ann in her latest note had expressed some curiosity about her old class and its new teacher. He found old Mrs. Perk there.

“It’s pretty bad,” Mrs. Perk whispered. “They don’t like the new one at all. And they miss you, too.” Which somehow pleased him very much, even though he suspected it to be only an old woman’s flattery.

“And how do you like your new place? You don’t look very well fed. No, it’s no use; men can’t keep house by themselves. You’ll have to wait till Miss Rosy comes back, and be taken care of right!”

“I’m afraid Miss Rosy will never come back,” said Felix.

“Don’t you bother yourself about that!—Here, thread this needle for me, with your young eyes.... Why, I asked her for a piece of the wedding cake, the very day she went away so sudden. She’ll be back all right!”

So old Mrs. Perk had been joking with Rose-Ann, too—about him. Felix wondered how she had taken it....

“No, your bachelor hall won’t last much longer, I can promise you that.”

He laughed and went away, amused at the quaint pseudo-wisdom of the old. She thought she knew all about him and Rose-Ann. Two young things hopelessly in love, but too shy to tell each other so! And in this situation the inconveniences of bachelor’s hall would operate as a _deus ex machina_, driving him in despair and her in pity into each other’s arms—and matrimony!

How simple it all seemed to her! And how complex it all was in reality!

Mrs. Perk had the old-fashioned-woman’s naïve confidence in the importance of woman’s cooking; for that matter, how did she know that Rose-Ann could cook? Most probably she couldn’t! Girls like Rose-Ann didn’t nowadays.... And besides, how could Mrs. Perk be expected to understand the pleasures of a man living alone, free, able to keep what hours he chose—the sheer lazy charm of a masculine establishment, however inefficient!

Yes, Felix really enjoyed this happy-go-lucky kind of existence. As long as there was plenty of good coffee, and cigarettes, nothing else mattered very much—not even Eddie Silver.

He had commenced to come again. At first his visits were welcome as a relief from the monotony of Canal street life. But he was becoming a nuisance.... He would come in at all hours, but preferably when they had just gone to bed—pounding on the doors until they awoke and let him in. If the hall-door downstairs chanced to be locked, he would stand in the street and call to them, and throw pebbles—or dollars—against their front windows.... They would be drifting peacefully into dreams when something would wrench violently and painfully at their attention—they would try to ignore it and go on dreaming, but it would come again, determined, familiar, insistent—and they would reluctantly awake enough to become conscious of a voice in the street calling out their names. “Don! Roger! F’li-i-ix!”

“It’s that damned Eddie Silver!” they would groan, and finally somebody, with a brain aching for sleep, would stumble down the stairs and let him in.

“Wake up there, F’lix—I brought you nice li’l’ bo’l’ Swinburne!” he would call, rattling Felix’s doorknob, until he rose and joined in the festivities.

So strong is the power of association that Felix came to loathe the poetry of Swinburne—it had the smell of whiskey on it....

It was increasingly hard to keep awake in the afternoons, however much he drugged himself with coffee. Getting up in the morning became a tragedy—his whole being cried out for the sleep he could not have. Sometimes during the day, in the midst of a story, his mind would suddenly go blank for a minute. His appetite failed, and there were pains in his stomach that nothing but whiskey would relieve. He caught a bad cold, and had a cough that would not go away. And then, one morning in the eighth week of his stay in the Canal street menage, he found himself too ill to go to the office.

3

Roger and Don ministered to him with hot coffee, and called in a doctor who lived in the same building. The doctor had long white locks that fell picturesquely about the collar of his coat. He stuck a thermometer in Felix’s mouth, took out his watch and held Felix’s wrist, then shook his head gravely.

“What do you want to do with him?” he asked.

“We can’t very well take care of him here,” said Don.

“Any folks in town?” asked the doctor.

“No.”

“H’m. How about the County Hospital? They’ll look after him all right.”

“I suppose that is the correct thing to do with a sick person,” said Roger.

“H’m. Yes.... Has to be pretty serious, though, to get him in.”

“Well,” asked Roger, “how serious is it?”

“H’m. Can’t tell just yet. May be very serious—may not be. Better not take any chances.... Well, what do you want to do? County Hospital?”

Roger and Don looked at each other. Felix tried to get the thermometer out of his mouth so as to protest, but commenced to cough instead.

“Yes,” said Roger, “County Hospital.”

“All right,” said the doctor cheerfully, pulling his thermometer out of Felix’s mouth and putting it in his pocket without looking at it, “I’ll diagnose pneumonia. Where’s the telephone? I’ll call up the hospital right away, and stay here till they come.”

So Felix was taken to the County Hospital—first addressing to Rose-Ann a large envelope in which he put his long, unfinished letter, and giving it to Don to mail.... And at the hospital, after the doctor got round to him, the night nurse told him that there didn’t seem to be anything the matter with him except a bad cold, but the doctor thought he ought to stay in bed a week and rest up.

“He says you need to make up about a month’s sleep, and get some of that booze out of your system.” She grinned at him sympathetically, “You ain’t used to it, are you?”

He rather wished, since he wasn’t going to die after all, that he hadn’t sent Rose-Ann that foolish letter. Still—he didn’t care. He couldn’t care very much about anything. He was weak, and tired, and very sleepy.

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XIII. In Hospital

1

THE ward in which Felix lay was a great room with a hundred beds in it, only a few feet apart.

It was a restful place, after Canal street. Even the delirium of a man on the other side of the room was, after the first night, easy to disregard. Those yells had no relation to Felix’s life; at least, they were not Eddie Silver’s yells. He did not have to wake up and join in any painful festivities with that man.... In their utter aloofness from his own life, those yells seemed actually soothing, and he went to sleep to their music as to a lullaby.

2

Every morning, at five o’clock, he was awakened, and a cup was put to his lips. It was merely hot tea with milk and sugar in it; but Felix had never tasted any drink so good as this—so invigorating, so life-giving, so nourishing.... A wonderful drink! And when he had drained the last drop, he sank back again into a drowsy slumber like that of childhood.

It was so good to know that he did not have to get down to the office at eight o’clock. He could just stay in bed all day, and sleep, and sleep, and sleep.

His friends came ... bringing him messages from still other friends. He never had any idea that he had so many friends in Chicago. He was touched by their remembering him, and caring about him. People from the settlement, and the boys from the office. Clive came the first day, bringing word that Mr. Devoe, the managing editor, was anxious about him. His pay, Clive assured him, would go on just the same while he was sick.... It seemed quite wonderful. Felix had never realized how good people were....

His friends brought books for him to read. Clive brought him “The Island of Doctor Moreau,” which he had long ago promised to lend him. Paul came with a slender volume entitled “The Complete Works of Max Beerbohm.” Roger brought him “The Confessions of a Young Man,” and Don appeared with Dowson’s poems. Eddie Silver did not come, though Felix rather expected him to bring a volume of Swinburne....

Very nice of them, too, to think up such exotic and sophisticated books for him to read—a tribute, doubtless, to his superior tastes. But he felt, as he glanced languidly into their pages, that these were not just the kind of books a sick person wants to read. He wished somebody would bring him the Saturday Evening Post—or the Bab Ballads.

3

But it was all right—he didn’t want very much to read, anyway. It was pleasanter to lie and day-dream—or watch the pretty head-nurse, who was exactly like a pretty nurse on the cover of a magazine—or think. He had a lot of time to think, now. Hours. Funny, how one never seemed to get time to think, outside of a hospital.

His thoughts were slow and long, reaching to places where it seemed he had not been in thought for a great while. Really, a hospital was a fine place. People ought to go there once a year for a long, long week of thinking. These thoughts of his own, for instance—how glad he was about them! They would make a great difference in his life, once he got out of the hospital....

The only trouble was that when he did get out of the hospital, he never could remember what any of those thoughts were.... They had vanished, leaving apparently no trace upon his mind. And that seemed queer, too. Thoughts that took such hours upon hours to think, and that seemed so wonderful at the time, oughtn’t to disappear like that....

The only thought that remained was a very small and insignificant thought, not worthy of being remembered. It was not really a thought at all, but only a memory: it went back to the time when he was a little boy in Maple, and there was a syringa bush in front of the house, growing up to the second-story window; and he would lean out of the window to see the bird’s nest in the syringa bush, and smell the perfume of the syringa blossoms; and he would watch the mother-bird, sitting on her speckled eggs and looking back at him with bright, sharp eyes, not at all afraid of him.... Out of all those profound thoughts, that was all he could ever remember.

4

On Saturday morning, his fifth day at the hospital, Clive came, bringing Felix his pay-envelope from the Chronicle.

“When do you get out?” he asked.

“Some time today,” said Felix. “The doctor has to formally discharge me, or something. This afternoon, I guess.”

“Well, come out to my place in Woods Point, and rest up for a week before you go back to the office.... I’ll have something special for dinner tonight in your honour. I have a neighbour woman come in, you know, to cook for me whenever I dine at home; you needn’t be afraid you’ll have to depend on my culinary abilities. All right? Good!... I must get to the office now and finish some work. Oh, I forgot, here’s a letter for you. Good-bye—see you this afternoon!”

The letter was from Rose-Ann.

“_I couldn’t write_,” it opened abruptly, “_till today. Mother died Sunday. There is something very strange about death—you can’t quite believe it, or adjust yourself to it. I’ve had all sorts of queer feelings about it all. But I know now why people go through the ceremonial of funerals—it always seemed to me absurd before. But in some queer pagan way it seems to make up for all one’s ingratitude to the dead—for all the things you’ve forgotten, and only remember when it’s too late. It is, as people say, ‘all you can do.’ And in some queer way, it suffices. It enables you to think of other things again—to go back to ordinary life._

“_I shan’t have to ever quarrel with my brothers again now—that’s one of the other things I think of. I mean—I’ve a tiny legacy, enough at any rate to make me independent of them forever. Father was very nice to me—I don’t think I’ve ever told you about my father; he’s a clergyman, and I suppose perhaps I didn’t want to be known as a clergyman’s daughter. But he does understand me._

“_Felix, I am worried about you. I suppose it’s absurd, but I keep thinking you’re in trouble of some kind. And your letters tell me nothing at all—except—But we will talk about that when I see you._

“_I’m coming back to Chicago as soon as ever I can._”

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Book Three
Woods Point

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XIV. Heart and Hand

1

ROSE-ANN came to the hospital that afternoon—when he first saw her, she was walking down the aisle with the young hospital doctor, and he was pointing casually in Felix’s direction. She nodded, said something to the doctor, and ran quickly over to Felix’s bedside.

“Are you really all right, Felix?” she asked, sitting down on the bed and taking both his hands.

He spoke without premeditation: “Oh, Rose-Ann, I’m so glad you’ve come!”

“Why?” she asked breathlessly.

“Because I love you,” he said. It was an immense relief to have said it.

“Do you?” she said. “I’m so glad.” They looked at each other a moment, and then she bent and kissed him softly.

They were presently aware of the smiling doctor standing beside the bed. Rose-Ann turned to him.

“I want to take him away,” she said.

“You’re welcome to him,” said the doctor. “He’s perfectly well.”

“Can he leave—right away?”

“This moment, if you like.”

“Good. I’ll go and call a taxi. Be ready as soon as you can, Felix.”

“But where are we going,” Felix asked. He did not want to go back to the settlement, which he felt that he had in a way deserted; and he had an idea that Rose-Ann would not let him go back to Canal street.

“I don’t know. I forgot—” said Rose-Ann, sitting down on the bed again with a helpless air. Then she burst out laughing. “I was going to take you home—I was under the impression for the moment that we were married!”

“We can _get_ married,” said Felix, uncomfortably, feeling that an important matter was being disposed of rather cursorily.

She laughed again. “We can, yes. And I’m afraid that is what is going to happen to us; aren’t you, Felix?”

The doctor smiled and left them.

“I know,” she said. “It’s an unfair advantage to take of an invalid. But what else can we do?”

“I only want to be sure—” said Felix.

“Of what?”

“You read my letter, didn’t you—that terribly long letter, about that girl back in Iowa....”

“Yes, dear.”

“Well, you can see from that—I mean, I’m afraid you will think I’m not the sort of person who—”

“Who what, Felix?”

“Who makes a good husband. But, Rose-Ann—”

“Oh, I know that, Felix dear. And—I don’t want a good husband. I want you.”

“But—” He wanted to tell her that that was all over now—that he would try to be all that she wished....

“I understand,” Rose-Ann was saying. “You told me in that letter that there was something in you that rebelled against reality. Irresponsible—unstable—you used those words. ‘Too unstable for ordinary domestic happiness,’ I think you said. Well ... who wants ordinary domestic happiness?”

“But,” Felix said earnestly, raising himself up on one elbow, “a girl wants—more than an interesting lover. She wants ... some certainties in her life. A home, children, and the promise of security for them. I—”

He wanted to be brave—to offer those certainties. But it was too rash, too bold a promise. How did he know he could fulfil it?

“I’d have to become very different, wouldn’t I?” he said hesitantly.

Rose-Ann spoke very quietly. “I don’t want you to be different, Felix. I’m not that girl back in Iowa. I’m—me. I don’t want to be supported—I don’t need to be; I told you I’ve a tiny but sufficient income of my own now. And I don’t want the kind of home you speak of, Felix—I want to go on living my own life outside the home. And—I think, Felix ... that perhaps there are enough children in the world without—without vagabonds and dreamers like us taking on such—interesting but unnecessary—responsibilities.... I really don’t want us to be married at all, Felix; but I’m not brave enough to dispense with the—rigmarole. I want you to have your freedom, and I mine. I don’t ask any promises of you—any at all. I know what we are like. Freedom—for each other and ourselves—that’s what we want, Felix. Isn’t it?”

2

He pressed her hand, and remained silent. He had not dreamed of this....

“Isn’t that what we want, Felix?” she asked softly.

“I guess so,” he replied dully, looking away from her.... He knew he ought to be grateful to her; but he was sad rather, with the wish that he had had the courage to promise rash, mad, impossibly beautiful things.

Instead, he was to give her—uncertainty, insecurity....

Did she understand?

“Do you remember,” he asked, staring outward as if into the darkness, “what Garibaldi offered his soldiers? ‘_Danger and wounds_’”—

He paused. “That seems a queer sort of offer for a man to make to the girl he loves,” he said grimly. “But, Rose-Ann—”

“I enlist,” she said softly.

They pressed each other’s hand, looking away from each other, silently each in a separate world of dream. Then she smiled, coming back a little bewildered to the world of immediate fact. “I must call that taxi,” she said.

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XV. Pre-Nuptial

1

THE streets outside were full of dirty melting snow, and there was a cold drizzly rain falling.

“We still don’t know where we are going,” said Rose-Ann, as they stood in the doorway, waiting for the taxi. “Isn’t it amusing? What are we going to tell the driver?”

“City Hall, what else?” said Felix.

Rose-Ann shrugged her shoulders. “It’s an abode, a place of residence—a home, if you like—some place to take you besides Community House or that dreadful place that I’ve heard about on Canal Street: it’s that I’m thinking of, rather than the legal process. It’s rather absurd, isn’t it, that neither of us has anything resembling a home! We just _are_ vagabonds, that’s a fact.... And—somehow I don’t want to be married at the City Hall and have a fat alderman offer to ‘kiss the bride.’ ... If you don’t mind, I want some place to go where we can have a moment to consider what to do. After all, even vagabonds have their self-respect to take care of! Let’s not be rushed into an ugly and stupid performance that has no significance or beauty for either of us. I want to have something to say about the way I get married! And if there isn’t some way of getting married that’s _our_ way, so that we don’t have to feel like fools and cowards, why—” she finished in a mournful voice, “I think I’d rather not be married at all.”

Felix patted her arm reassuringly. “That’s all right,” he said. “I know what we’ll do. We’ll go to Clive’s place.”

“Clive Bangs? Up at Woods Point?”

“Yes.” And he told her of Clive’s invitation. “You needn’t worry, it’s not a bachelor’s den, it’s a real house, with all the appurtenances thereto appertaining, and a woman to come in to do the cooking. And we’ll be married there. Clive will help us arrange it.”

The taxi had swung up beside the curb. Rose-Ann still hesitated a moment, then said, “All right!” and climbed in.

“Northwestern station!” said Felix to the driver.

“No!” said Rose-Ann. “To Community House first!—If I’m to be married, Felix, at least I must change my clothes; there’s no need for me to be married in this”—and she looked down at the grey suit she was wearing. “I’m just as I came from the train.”

“All right,” said Felix. “But let’s not stop there long. And—I do hope they won’t suspect what we are up to ... it will be rather a give-away, our dashing in together and out again!”

She laughed. “You mean it will look like an elopement? Well, you can wait for me in the taxi.”

He waited, impatiently, smoking a cigarette, for what seemed a long time. At last she came, dressed now in some soft creamy thing under her grey cloak, and carrying a suitcase.

“I think one person suspected me,” she said.

“Mrs. Perk?”

“Yes. Old women think they know so much, don’t they? Why should she imagine—? just because I—! It’s my own fault, for making a last sentimental visit to the theatre. But I wanted to—sort of—say good-bye!”

At the station, Rose-Ann hesitated again, and urged Felix at least to call Clive up and tell him they were coming. Felix refused. “Let’s make it a surprise,” he said.

“I don’t know!” Rose-Ann said, when they were aboard the train. “To tell the truth, I’m a little afraid of your friend Clive.”

“Afraid of him?”

“I mean—I’m in awe of him, a little.”

“Nothing awe-ful about Clive. He’s a nice fellow. I’ve always wanted you to meet him.”

“I wondered why you kept us so carefully apart,” said Rose-Ann. “I thought perhaps you felt that I didn’t measure up to his specifications. Do you think I will?”

He laughed tenderly, and looked at her. She was very sweet, and, it seemed, very tired despite the buoyant vivacity that always made her lovely. “You are wonderful,” he said. “But,” and he put his arm about her, to the amusement of two adolescent girls across the aisle, “it doesn’t make any difference what anybody in the world thinks about you, except me!”

“How possessive you are, of a sudden!” said Rose-Ann. But she relaxed deep within his caressing and protecting gesture, and closed her eyes.

He looked down, touching softly with his glance the delicate surface of her cheek as it slanted away from the high cheek-bones, and the forehead half hidden under the drooping tangle of red gold hair. Yes, she was very tired, and strangely enough he was glad to have her so, glad to feel her restless and vivid life relax to peace in the shelter of his arm. She had gone through a good deal of late; he thought of her home, and of that death-bed from which she had come, and the jarring family hostilities only half-repressed by the solemnity of that scene; it was strange to think of her—this lovely child made for happiness—emerging from those troubled shadows....

She was free now. And he too was free—free from dubieties and hesitations, strange and foolish suspicions of her—free from fear. How simple everything was, after all! By what strange ways they had come, to find each other—not knowing until this last moment the real meaning of their lives....

2

“It’s beginning to snow again,” said Rose-Ann, rousing herself and looking out of the window. And then—“What have you told Clive Bangs about me?”

“Not very much,” he confessed. “I suppose because of Clive’s manner about his own girls—or girl, I should say; it’s been a particular one for a long time now. He alludes to her, discusses her in an impersonal way, but he has never even told me her name. A queer sort of futile secrecy—Which reminds me of a curious story about him.” And he told her Eddie Silver’s drunken tale of the building of the house.

“This house we are going to?”

“Yes—if the story’s true.”

“So that’s why he became a woman-hater.”

“Perhaps not quite so bad as that. I should say it made him a Utopian.”

“It’s the same thing,” said Rose-Ann. “It’s curious,” she added, “how many men nowadays—particularly interesting men—are afraid of women; afraid that being really in love will ruin their career, commercialize their art, or something—Are you afraid of me, Felix?”

“Not any more,” he laughed.

“Why, were you ever?”

“Afraid you didn’t really care for me,” he said.

“Yes, you _were_ rather shy! But I liked you for it. And it was just as well, until I had made up my own mind.”

“How did you come to make up your mind? Why did you decide to marry me?”

“Shall I tell you?”

“Yes, tell me.”

“It was partly your love-letters—”

“Did I write love-letters to you? I suppose I did—but I tried awfully hard not to!”

“Beautiful love-letters! And then—being at home: that more than anything else made me realize that I was in love with you. I had thought so before, but then I was sure of it. And—well, it seemed stupid not to make something of our two lives. Why should we keep on being afraid to try?...”

“Were you afraid, too, Rose-Ann?”

“Yes. But I’m not any more. We’re going to be very happy, and you’re going to be a very great man and write wonderful things....”

He stirred uneasily. “Don’t put our happiness on that basis, please. Suppose I don’t write wonderful things!”

“But you will!”

He sighed. “That makes me realize that I am a little afraid of you, Rose-Ann. Afraid you will make me have a career!”

“Don’t you want a career? I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to.”

“That’s just it. I’m afraid you are going to make me do all the things I do want to! Things I would otherwise just dream of doing!”

“Is that prospect so terrifying?”

“Yes, rather.”

“Poor dear!” She pressed his hand in hers. “I suppose I _am_ a terrible person. I can’t do the things I want to do myself; and so I’m going to insist on your doing them—is that it?”

“I have the feeling that you expect a terrible lot from me,” he said.

“It’s true—I do think you’re rather a wonderful person.”

“I wish you wouldn’t!”

“I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to help it, Felix. You’ll have to take me, enthusiasm and all, my dear! For I’m in love with you, and I _do_ think you are going to be a great man, and I shall continue to, no matter how miserable it makes you feel—so there! I won’t marry a commonplace man, and you’ll have to agree to let me think you out of the ordinary, or the marriage is off!” She tilted her chin defiantly.

“All right, Rose-Ann,” he said. “You may think me as wonderful as you like, if only you’ll not say so out loud. Praise upsets me. I thrive only on contumelious blame! So if you want to put me at my ease, tell me something bad about myself.”

“That’s easy enough,” she said. “You’re quite the shabbiest-looking man that ever went to his own wedding, vagabond or not. You seem to have packed off to the hospital in your oldest shirt—look at those cuffs!” Felix looked at them, and pulled down his coat-sleeves over their frayed edges. He looked at his dusty shoes, and tucked them out of sight under the seat.

“Does Felix feel himself again?” she asked maliciously.

“Quite,” he said. “Now I know it’s true I’m going to be married.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XVI. Clive’s Assistance

1

THE snow had fallen more and more heavily while they were on the train, and the air was crisp when they emerged into the dusk at Woods Point. “I think I’m going to like my wedding,” said Rose-Ann.

They found a car at the nearest garage to take them to Clive’s place, some two miles away. The driver halted at the edge of a steep ravine that cut down toward the lake. He pointed over to the gleam of a lighted window. “There it is,” he said. “And here’s the path. It goes right along the edge of the ravine, but Mr. Bangs keeps it pretty clean of snow, and there’s a railing by the worst places. I guess you can make it all right. Everybody seems to.” He backed the car about, and left them.

Recent footprints, not yet quite obliterated, defined the path for them. They went up toward the house, laughing. Rose-Ann had urged him again at the station to call Clive up and tell him they were coming, and again he had refused. Now, as they edged the ravine, holding on to the railings that guarded the most precarious moments of the path, they were feeling a little foolish and very happy about their adventure. It was thus, they read plainly in each other’s eyes, that they should be married.

A little out of breath at the end of the path, they faced a suddenly opened door, and Clive standing there, laughing and puzzled as he tried to make them out. “Felix?” he said. “And who else?”

“And Rose-Ann!” cried Felix. “We’ve come to Woods Point to be married!”

“No!” cried Clive, astonished, unconsciously blocking the doorway.

“Yes!” said Felix gaily.

Clive laughed. “Welcome!” he said, ushering them inside. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have met you at the station and guided you to the house. You weren’t afraid of breaking your neck?” And then, as Rose-Ann emerged from her snowy cloak, he took her hand. “So this is Rose-Ann! I’m delighted. You know, Felix isn’t very good at descriptions, and I never got the right idea of you at all.”

Felix felt vaguely annoyed. All this was beside the point.

“I suppose we _can_ get married here, can’t we?” he asked.

Clive looked at him, and then back at Rose-Ann. “How solemn you both are!” he said. “Why, I really believe—Felix, what is this about getting married?”

“That’s what we’ve come for,” said Felix patiently.

“You mean—” Clive appeared incredulous.

“I mean, married. Preacher! License! Ceremony! Didn’t you ever hear of anybody getting married before?”

“Not really?”

“Yes, really. And right away. Tonight. Is your mind capable of taking all that in, or must I spell it out for you. You seem dazed.”

This was not exactly the reception he had expected for his news.

“I’m more than dazed. I’m shocked,” said Clive. He turned again to Rose-Ann. “Tell me—when did this—when did you children decide on this rash deed?”

“This afternoon,” said Rose-Ann. “It is rash, isn’t it? Do you really think we shouldn’t?”

Felix made an impatient movement. What difference did it make what Clive Bangs thought?

“Come in by the fire,” said Clive. “You—you bewilder me, you two.”

He put a hand, with some kind of vague paternal gesture, on Rose-Ann’s shoulder. “In here”—and he showed them into a room where a coal fire glowed in an open Franklin stove. He arranged three big chairs. “Sit there.... Bad weather outdoors.”

“No,” said Rose-Ann, “it’s beautiful! It’s snowing....”

“I’ll get you something warm to drink,” and Clive left them.

They sat there a moment, silent.

“Do you—do you think—?” Rose-Ann began in a troubled voice.

“I think Clive is a little upset,” he said. “Poor devil!”

“You don’t—?” She stopped again.

“What?” he asked dreamily, reaching out and finding her fingers as they drooped over the arm of the chair.

“Nothing,” she said.

Presently he looked up, and met her eyes. A look he had never seen before glowed in them, and it was as if she had shown him some secret part of herself always hidden before. That look seemed to reveal to him, as if for the first time, dazzlingly, by the real truth of their love. It was as if everything they had said to each other had been in some way false and evasive. This was the truth—this ultimate surrender, this faith-beyond-reason, this something deeper than pride and joy in her eyes. He was strangely exalted. He thought: “This—_this_—is marriage....”

In an instant the revelation had passed. Rose-Ann bent down swiftly to shake out a fold in her skirt—and to hide that revealing look, it seemed. Clive was at the door, coming in with their hot drinks.

“And now,” said Clive, settling down comfortably in the third big chair, “tell me about it.”

2

Rose-Ann looked at Felix.

“We’re going to be married, that’s all,” said Felix.

“Yes,” said Clive reflectively, “people do.”

“You think we oughtn’t to?” asked Rose-Ann.

Clive rubbed his chin. “I really think it is my duty to make one last, however futile, attempt to dissuade you!”

“Why?” asked Felix.

“Because,” said Clive smiling, “you are so obviously in love with each other now—so obviously happy, just as you are.”

“And you think marriage will spoil that?” Rose-Ann asked.

Clive regarded them. “Well,” he said, “how many people do you know whose marital happiness you would be willing to take as your own?”

They were silent, Felix annoyed.

“I’ don’t know anybody whose happiness _I_ would want,” said Rose-Ann at last. “But—”

“But you hope to have something different, and very much better,” said Clive gently, as if speaking to a child.

“I suppose it’s foolish,” said Rose-Ann.

“I don’t see anything foolish about it,” said Felix defiantly. “What’s your objection to marriage?”

Clive turned upon him with mild surprise. “Is this the young man with whom I have had a number of luncheon discussions—in which, if I remember rightly, you spoke eloquently on this same subject?”

Rose-Ann turned to Felix inquiringly. “I don’t think you’ve ever told me your views of marriage, Felix,” she said.

Clive laughed. “That is what is known in fiction as a sardonic laugh,” he observed. “I trust you recognized it. I will repeat it for you: _Ha, ha!_ Now, Mr. Fay, is your opportunity to explain to your prospective bride your views of marriage.”

Felix flushed. “As a matter of fact, Rose-Ann and I have discussed them,” he said.

“‘Relic of barbarism,’” quoted Clive with gentle malice.

“Of barbarism?” Rose-Ann repeated, puzzled.

“Clive and I have the habit of orating to each other on these subjects,” said Felix, “at lunch and whenever we haven’t anything better to do.”

“I’ve heard of those luncheon discussions,” said Rose-Ann, “and wished I could have been present. I’d like to hear you,” she said, looking at Clive and then back to Felix. It was, subtly, her defiance to Clive.

“Our discussions,” said Felix, “are devastatingly theoretical. We are accustomed to refer to everything we don’t like as a relic of barbarism. Marriage, for instance.... It’s essentially an intrusion by the Elders of the Tribe into the private affairs of the young. The Old People always think they know what is best. Originally, of course, their power to rule the lives of the young was far greater. Rose-Ann and I wouldn’t have been allowed to select a mate for ourselves. The choice would be made for us by the Elders; in their infinite wisdom they would choose for her a lord and master, and she would settle down at once to her proper womanly business of cooking his meals and bringing up his babies. Me they would doubtless have mated with some possessive young hussy who would efficiently smother and drug to sleep with her own physical charms any desire of mine for an impersonal intellectual life. And thus we would both have been made safe and harmless—Rose-Ann with her cooking and babies, and I with my harem of one. Both of us tied down body and soul, and thus presenting no menace to established institutions!”

He was speaking quickly, with a feeling that it was all very absurd, this speech-making at large upon a subject which interested them now only in its specific and unique aspects. “But times have changed,” he went on. “This form of tribal control now exists only as a rudimentary survival—a custom to which one must superficially conform, and nothing more. So long as Rose-Ann and I _are_ allowed to choose each other, and decide for ourselves how we are going to live, we can very well permit the Tribe to come in, in the person of its official representative, for ten minutes, and ratify our choice!... There, those are my views, expressed in the uncouth intellectual dialect which Clive and I affect in these discussions. That’s just the way we talk.”

“Very clever,” said Clive. “You shift your ground easily....”

“A wedding _is_ an awfully tribal thing, isn’t it?” said Rose-Ann soberly. “Especially,” she added more cheerfully, “the old-fashioned kind. With the families and all. And the usher asking you which side you are on, the bride’s or the groom’s! I went to one when I was back in Springfield.”

“I went to one,” said Clive, “once upon a time, in Chicago.... I had a sense of the girl’s having been recaptured by her family, after a temporary escape—recaptured and subdued. In her white veil, at her father’s side, coming down the aisle, she was so unlike the free wild thing I had known.—Somehow it seemed like a funeral to me—a triumphant and solemn burial of her individuality. I remember that I went away from church saying over to myself that little poem of Victor Plarr’s, that ironic little funeral poem—do you know it? It begins—

“_Stand not uttering sedately
Trite, oblivious praise above her—
Rather say you saw her lately
Lightly kissing her last lover!_”

They laughed, interrupting Clive as he began on the next stanza, and then they stopped, waiting for him to go on. They exchanged a swift glance, wondering if this was the girl of the story they had heard.

“I forget just how it goes,” he said confusedly. “But it ends something like this—

“_She is dead: it were a pity
To o’erpraise her, or to flout her.
She was wild and sweet and witty—
Let’s not say dull things about her._”

Having finished, he began to poke the fire.

“A lovely poem,” said Rose-Ann softly.

“But,” said Felix vigorously, “it doesn’t discourage me a bit. I think Rose-Ann can be just as wild and sweet and witty after marriage as before. Her individuality, if that is what you’re worrying about, is not in the least danger of being buried by marriage.”

Clive turned to her. “You aren’t afraid the Tribe will get you at last?” he asked. “That would be too bad.”

She flushed, as at a compliment. “This marriage will be one final defiance and farewell to the particular tribe to which I belong,” she said. “No, I—I guess I’m not afraid. What do you think, Felix?”

“Bring on the Tribal Ceremony!” said Felix.

“Well,” said Clive, “I’ve done my duty.... And now I’ll see about getting you married.”

Felix sighed with relief, and reflected that it was about time Clive began to take the occasion seriously.

“I suppose,” said Clive, “that it hasn’t occurred to you that this is Saturday afternoon, and the county clark’s office is closed. And you can’t be married without a license.”

Felix looked his chagrin. Of course, he would have forgotten something essential! He glanced sheepishly at Rose-Ann, who seemed merely amused. But why must he be, always, and even in his getting married, a moon-calf?

“However,” said Clive, suddenly transformed into the efficient and practical personage that Felix had so often admired, “I think it can be fixed up! I’ll telephone my friend Judge Peabody. And—” he paused for a moment and frowned—“we’ll need another witness. I’ll fix that up, too.”

“I’m sorry I forgot about the license,” said Felix as Clive briskly left the room.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I forgot, too. It makes no difference.”

Clive came back in a few minutes. “It’s all right!” he said. “Judge Peabody says the city council is in session tonight at Waukegan, and the county clark will be there. Judge Peabody will ’phone up there and tell the clark you’re coming. You’ll go there at eight o’clock, right after dinner. I’ve arranged for a car to take you—it’s only a few miles further on. Judge Peabody will be here at nine, and perform the ceremony. The other witness is on the way here, to join us at dinner. And Mrs. Cowan says the dinner will be ready on time. How is that for management?”

“You with your objections to marriage!” said Rose-Ann, laughing. “You’re a fraud!”

“No,” said Clive. “Merely a born compromiser!”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XVII. Charivari

1

IT appeared that Mrs. Cowan, the plump neighbour who was cooking Clive’s dinner, had heard his telephonic arrangements for a wedding, and was, according to Clive, much flustered. A few minutes later she disappeared from the kitchen, with a brief warning to Clive to keep his eye on the oven, and presently returned, breathless and sparkling-eyed, wearing her Sunday shawl, and bearing one of her own cakes.

“We’ll give them the best wedding we can, Mr. Bangs!” she said.

Clive came in to report this speech, and thus reminded that Mrs. Cowan was a human being, and a woman, with a prescriptive right to share in this occasion, he took the bridal pair to the kitchen and introduced them. Mrs. Cowan’s warm friendliness pleased as well as embarrassed them. Rose-Ann exclaimed over the cake, and putting on an apron, commenced to help with the last stages of dinner.

Clive and Felix wandered back to the Franklin stove. “Oh, yes,” said Clive. “I must build a fire in your room. Come along,” and he set Felix to chopping kindling in the woodshed while he carried up a load of cannel coal. Felix followed him to the great room at the top of the stairs, occupying almost the whole of the upstairs space, with a fireplace at one end. “I built that fireplace myself when I had the house remodeled,” said Clive. “It’s quite an art, building a fireplace so that it will draw properly. I’m very proud of it.”

Felix knelt and stuffed the kindling into the grate. “No,” said Clive, “let me do it—you don’t know how.”