Chapter XIII: “Please, Jim,” begged Rose Hubbell, “you will come with me today?”

She was proposing a walk in the country and Jim was demurring. It was Sunday in May and a beautiful day of golden greens which he had longed to share with Horatia. But Horatia had gone to a family dinner party at Aunt Caroline’s and refused to include him, because it was such a very family party “with antique aunts and uncles who’d watch us and speculate with the most indecent curiosity.” He was bored but disinclined to see Rose Hubbell. If he could not be with Horatia, he could get pleasure out of the thought of her anyway. But Mrs. Hubbell insisted.

“Please, Jim, don’t leave me alone today. It’s a bad anniversary for me. Let’s go for a long country walk and get all this sunshine. Will you?”

He remembered with a shock that it must be a bad anniversary for her. Just three years ago on just such a day, Jack Hubbell had shot the bottom out of his world. And hers too--and Jim’s own, for a while. The bitter reminiscence awakened a keen pity in him for her. Yes, he would go. He promised, and half an hour later was on his way to meet her at the station. They were to ride to the country and then start walking along the lake shore.

She was dressed simply and suitably in a short skirt and jacket and he saw at a glance that she had been weeping. Jim’s gallantry was always greater than his cynicism, and though he had had ample proof that Rose had not let her husband’s suicide blight her life, still this evidence of feeling on her part touched him and made him sorry for her and very kind. They rode along silently--she thoughtful and unwontedly sweet. He saw again in her the mood that had seemed such sweet spirituality and that had seemed to him to be her dominating mood when he had first known her. She was frail and her profile, turned to the light, was very wistful and drooped a little as it contemplated her past sorrows.

“Dear Jim,” she said softly, “I was a wretch to make you share my depression today. But when this time comes around all the gayety with which I can surround myself at other times falls flat. I have all I can do to keep from----” her voice trailed into silence and she stretched her hands forward on her lap, clasping them tightly. Jim said nothing. He had had previous dealings with hysterical women and had learned not to add either the fuel of comfort or of contradiction to their self-musings. And she said nothing more.

They dismounted at their little station. It was only a station house with a country road leading away into light woods, and the road was one which they knew led to a high bluff overlooking miles on miles of lake. Jim had often thought that he would like to bring Horatia here, but the place was too overclouded by certain memories.

“Do you remember the last time we were here?” she asked.

“Look here, Rose, I don’t think this is a wise place to come today. Let’s go back to town and go to supper some place. Or to a concert. This will only work you all up.”

She refused by a gesture and then, seeming to realize a misstep, quickly changed her mood or at least her manner. She was gay. She saw all sorts of interesting things along the path. Her feet almost danced along and when they came into full sight of the lake, she stepped and flung out her arms with a gesture of joyous abandon, which even in its slight theatricalness was lovely to see. Langley adapted himself to her mood. They sat on a rock and flung stones into the water, and, being entirely human, Langley found himself appreciative of the way the wind could rumple her soft yellow hair without making it ugly or disorderly. An hour passed. It had been late afternoon when they reached the lake and the water was no longer dancing in the sunlight but grey and moving as if turned to severer purposes. Rose lay stretched on a rock, a slim delicate figure, exaggerated against its bareness.

“Are you in love with Horatia Grant?” she asked suddenly.

The question came unpleasantly to Jim. He hesitated, unwilling to drag Horatia’s name into a tête-à-tête with Rose and then answered, briefly--almost brusquely,

“Yes.”

“Is she going to marry you?”

Mrs. Hubbell did not seem to be aware of his hesitation. She put the second question as directly as the first.

“Yes--we are going to be married. Come, Rose, it is late.”

“She is lovely looking,” contributed Mrs. Hubbell, contemplatively.

“I don’t want to discuss her, Rose. It’s--impossible.”

She continued to lie there very quietly, non-resistant.

“Of course you don’t want to discuss her. But you see it matters so much to me that I couldn’t help asking.”

How could one tread upon such meekness?

“Oh, nonsense, Rose. There’s no reason on earth why you should feel that way. We decided long ago that there was no possible--emotion--between us. We continue to be good friends just as we always have been.”

“I wish we could, Jim.”

“Why can’t we?”

“Because Horatia probably wouldn’t want it.”

“Of course Horatia would. Of course she would.” But he repeated it as if not quite sure of himself.

And still Rose lay there, immobile, her delicate arms outstretched, a perfect picture of resignation.

“The last link is snapping which binds me to the things which I loved. A wasted life--and yet not altogether my fault, was it? Just because we were friends--you and I--before that horrible thing happened. And then--you go--and I am alone--with nothing at all except a future that is as empty as--that hand.” She lifted her lovely open hand to the wind.

“Don’t be morbid, Rose.”

“Oh, I’m not--not a bit,” she assured him. “Of course I’ve always known you’d marry some time. I perhaps might have wished--indelicacies.”

Langley was pacing up and down with embarrassment and his face showed mingled pity and anger, but she did not seem to see him.

“But you don’t love me. There was a day when you thought you did. Do you remember that day when you had tea with me--a winter afternoon and the snow was coming down outside and it was so warm in the little yellow living-room--do you remember my little yellow living-room?--and you leaned down over me at the tea-table and kissed me--because you said you couldn’t help it--just once?”

“Oh, damn it all, Rose--what’s the sense in this? That nonsense was long ago. It was so damned foolish.”

“It was nonsense,” she answered quietly, “nonsense, I suppose, to you. Just a whim to you--just as Jack’s suicide was an impulse to him--and so for whims and impulses, I’ve wasted all my life.”

He was suddenly kinder. Perhaps the appeal of that inert figure made him sorry for her just as anger on her part would have aroused every inch of him to masculine resentment. He sat down beside her.

“You mustn’t talk like that, Rose. You’re young, lovely. Of course you had a rotten deal, but you’ve everything in the world ahead of you yet and if you’re brave you’ll have it all coming to you.”

“With a woman when love is gone or has become hopeless, everything is gone.”

Subtle playing on the chords of man’s vanity! Rose Hubbell had not developed her technique for nothing. Langley’s softening and his discomfort showed in every line of his restless figure. And Rose sat up, to advantage, a little more tense.

“Jim, I want you to be happy above everything. And Horatia is wonderful and beautiful. Only don’t let her absorb you. She is so strong--so much stronger than most women or men that she tends to absorb people. I feel myself shrinking into nothing beside her. I am only warning you as an old friend and a wise woman. A woman’s greatest attraction to a man is a man’s strength and she likes to be dominated--not to dominate.”

Strange that Jim, who had avowed to Horatia that Mrs. Hubbell was possibly dangerous and who had himself so few illusions, should have been listening to her so seriously and so intently. She did not press the point but began to talk of Horatia--of her beauty, her grace, her mind, and Langley drank it all in. And the lake grew a darker grey as he bathed in the thoughts of the woman he loved and the woman who watched him saw that he was so far away from her that she grew heedless about her own expressions and let them grow a little more hard and bitter and angry. At last she jumped to her feet.

“Getting dark, Jimmy. We must go.”

Jim rose. He had been having a delightful time for that last half hour and was ready to go--go back to Horatia.

“I’m glad you like her so much, Rose,” he said gratefully and awkwardly.

“I admire her more than I can tell you,” said Rose, “and if she would let me love her I would be happy indeed.”

Langley did not answer that. He gave her his hand to help her over the rocks and they went down the deserted country road. In the last stretch before they came in sight of the station he felt her hand suddenly hot in his and as he turned she put her hands on his shoulders.

“Let me kiss you once, Jimmy boy,” she asked, “just for good luck.”

The name woke a host of memories in him which he would not have willingly called forth. He bent his head a little to her swift caress and then they went on, his mind back, uncontrollably back, in the past. He walked in reverie, and she helped him a little in it. What they talked of now was those early days of her married life when Jim and Jack Hubbell had spent long evenings with her, the three of them in ardent conversation--or so it had seemed then to them. Skillfully Mrs. Hubbell recreated those past days, playing now on chords of sentiment, now on humorous notes, and Jim slid back into the past with her. On the train and on the way to her home she held up the conversation constantly, always maintaining the effect that she wanted of reviving a happy memory about to be relegated to the past forever. It was at her own door, when, after vainly urging him to come in, she gave him her hand in farewell and said:

“I wonder if I dare ask you something.”

It may have been because he was so pleased at the happy turn she had given her melancholy, but in any case his smile was friendly and promising.

“I should almost think so.”

“Don’t just drop me cold, Jim. Let me see you sometimes. I don’t think you have ever guessed how I need you. There’s a black mood comes over me sometimes and you are the only person who can dispel it. I don’t want to meddle--to interfere--to be anything--but don’t hurt me by just dropping me cold. Come to see me now and then--once in a long while--only when Horatia doesn’t want you--promise.”

“Why--of course I will--of course, Rose--don’t be so silly. You know that without a promise.”

“No--promise--it will make me feel so much happier just to have the words to comfort me when I feel awfully outside and alone.”

He hesitated, being a man and naturally reluctant to bind himself too tightly, and then, being a gentleman, he laughed and promised. She asked nothing more and took no advantage of his feeling but bent to open her door and then, waving to him from the dark threshold, was gone.

At his rooms, Jim found a note under his door. It was a little note written on a page out of a familiar notebook. “Where do you run to when I can not find you? I have disposed of the stupidest party in the world because I can not bear my Sunday without the sight of you. I have brazenly rung your door-bell and there came no answer. If you get back, call me at Maud’s to say good night and if it is early enough, come to see me and say it properly.”

He looked at his watch. It was eleven o’clock--too late for a call. He sat down at his telephone and almost lovingly called the number of Maud’s house.

“What were you doing?” asked Horatia. “All this heavenly afternoon?”

Langley did not make any attempt to evade the question.

“Oh, I went out in the country with Rose Hubbell. She was a bit down and needed to be cheered up, she thought.”

“Oh.”

A kind of blankness checked the warmth in Horatia’s voice.

“Well, you must have had a nice time,” she said. “It must have been lovely in the country. But I thought Rose didn’t care for that sort of thing.”

“Oh, once in a while she seems to. I’m sorry you had a dull dinner. And so awfully sorry that I missed you when you called. If I had dreamed that there was a chance that you might come in I wouldn’t have stirred from the place.”

“Oh, I’m glad you did,” answered Horatia, resolutely trying to hide her hurt that he had been happy without her when she had longed so for him.

“Please talk to me a while, dear. You don’t have to go to bed just yet.”

“What did you do in the country?”

“Why, just walked and talked and longed for you.”

“You’re flattering me.”

“Please don’t say that, darling.”

“I’m glad you missed me and I’m sorry I missed you. I’m so silly, Jim. I want you to have a good time and yet I want it to be had with me. Isn’t that silly and disgustingly feminine?”

“It’s most beautiful.”

“Good night, Jim, dear.”

The telephone clicked on the hook. Horatia turned to go up the stairs--but the smile on her lips did not match the look in her eyes, that was not quite one of satisfaction.