Chapter XIX

Perhaps the modern substitute for the coquetry of the old-fashioned woman before marriage is the introduction of “problems” into her love-making. The man still courts--a little more discreetly than he used to but much after the same plan--but whereas the woman of a generation ago was supposed to lead him a whimsical chase, now giving, now withdrawing her favor, refusing to admit her feelings, the typical woman of today is apt to admit her feelings readily enough, but she preludes her submission to them by the introduction of a host of “problems.”

Sometimes it is the problem of whether she wants to have children or not--sometimes the question of giving up a separate, wage-earning existence, sometimes a theory against the inequality of marital concessions, sometimes this, sometimes that. But questions of this sort have become such common experience that one wonders sometimes if the whole thing is not a development of the old feminine practice of playing with a man from behind a feather-fringed fan. Not that these women of today consciously concoct their problems to trouble their lovers or excite further ardor in them--far be it from the thoughts of most of them to so illegitimately fan a man’s flame, and perhaps the whole suggestion is unworthy and unfair. Still, so many girls have these preliminary problems before they marry--so many courtships are painful, harassed affairs these days--so many moonlit nights are spent in putting questions which do not read, “Will you love me always?” but “Will I be able to maintain my individuality?” or in the bewildering phrase of poor Lady Harmon, “my autonomy,” that this dwelling upon mating problems among women surely looks like a modern group movement. And no reflection either on the honesty or fervor of contemporary women. The same doubts stirring in their minds have always stirred in the minds of courted women--doubts as to whether such happiness, such devoted love as comes in the first fragrant period of love-making can endure and what will happen if it does not endure? Formerly women teased their lovers for assurances of perpetual love. The woman now, more wise, more honest, more skeptical too, about perpetual love, puts a different face on her questions. She asks--“And if this love does not turn out well, what then? Shall I be wrecked? Can I maintain enough of my independence, of my beauty and strength, to play the game through? Will this man be grasping and demanding? Is love an exhilaration worthy of the submission of my body and spirit?”

The woman of today is not miserly. She has no idea--not nearly so much as her old-fashioned sister of doling out her love. She is a marvelous spender. But she is not a spendthrift and she has had enough teaching in the economics of life to demand value received. If love is worth while she is capable of giving everything magnificently. If it is not, she grudges giving, having put permanently behind her the theory that woman’s lot is pitiful and one of resignation. And yet sometimes she does give everything, knowing it is a gamble, just as the girl of the old game gave everything often enough, even when her lover’s “love you always” rang false in her ears.

Horatia’s problem, of course, might have been one of a dozen. The incident of Mrs. Hubbell was analyzed rightly enough by Jim as being merely illustrative of a lack of faith in him. She had neither complete faith in him nor complete faith in marriage and her lack of faith was entirely in consonance with her time. Mrs. Hubbell loomed large in her mind while she was in the midst of her argument with Jim. But she was not in the country for a week before she thought of her problem in terms which almost eliminated Rose.

In the first flush of her love for Jim she had yielded to her temperamental love for romance and to emotional wonder at finding herself beloved and suddenly more important than ever before. But with the approach of the great question of marriage she had found that her mind began to question many things. She soon saw that what she was facing was not a minor point of whether Jim was to see Rose Hubbell or not, but whether her need of Jim and his of her was great enough to supersede all doubts, all fears, all worries about marriage. Little by little she postponed a final consideration of these questions. Life in the country was easy enough but none the less full of events. There was a great deal of lazy intercourse with people, a great deal of exercise, motoring--and Horatia found that she was able to give herself up quite happily to the enjoyment of natural beauty--fresh morning air, sunsets on the little lake and green afternoons in the woods. She was not ashamed of that. The sensations of beauty and the elevation of spirit that came with it were so far from trivial that they justified her for feeling happy so soon after her break with Jim. She withdrew a little from the memories of his love into contemplation of the fact of it.

At this distance it was peaceful to think of his love and in this calmer mood she did not question the depth of feeling of either of them. The questions of outcomes she laid aside for the present and she moved through this setting of natural beauty with heart and head held high. Some time she would move to a solution--not yet. Of course she did not realize how dangerous to her love for Jim all these distractions were nor how dangerous her friends meant them to be. She never thought of Anthony as a lover. A false step from him or Maud would have driven her away in those first days, but Anthony’s attitude was perfect. He was the admirable friend and companion just as Horatia had wished and just as she had asked him to be. He established her confidence in him again. They walked and rode and swam together. No excursion was complete without Anthony.

And they grew very close to one another. There was one silver night when they rode for endless hours under the moonlight--a white road stretching forward over the hill-tops and luring them always farther. The lights went out in the little villages and they became black and mysteriously still.

“Dead little houses,” said Anthony, “why are people so silly as to sleep inside them?”

He was full of life that night. Horatia was close to him--still--happy--his machine quivered and sped under his touch and he had all that he loved most in the world around him. Horatia’s own youth woke in answer to this appetite for life which showed in the man’s firm, vigorous handling of his wheel and the joyous lift of his head.

“Are you happy, Horatia?”

“Quite happy.” She was sincere. There were no problems or worries in her head, the moment was enough.

“We get along pretty well,” said Anthony happily.

“Don’t we.”

Horatia never thought that Anthony might be making love to her. Love to her was already couched in different terms. She liked his phrasing and she liked him. He was such a human companion and they were alone before such vastnesses that she found herself responding to the touch of his shoulder. They were leaning back in the roadster, shoulders touching lightly.

“Life’s queer, Anthony. When we expect to be happy we aren’t and when you don’t expect it, it comes.”

“We don’t know when to expect it,” answered Anthony sagely.

He talked well that night and from that night on as she thought of her future Horatia began to compare and contrast Anthony’s plan of life. On this ride he left out most of his vehement, laughable sociology, and talked of business. He had been fascinated, startled by the vast machinery of moving grain across the world. The great scale on which it was done thrilled him. “Feeding the world,” he said, with no great humanitarian feeling but as if the magnificence of the act had gripped his imagination. He was going to take charge of part of the business after he had seen the eastern end of it.

“I thought you wanted to travel before you began work.”

“I’ve changed my mind. I want to be a man--a mature man soon--and a mature man must have a job.”

Self-absorbed Horatia, who did not guess from those words of what else he was thinking! But she did not trouble about Anthony much. She generalized Anthony.

“Yes--we--all men and women must work.”

“Not women always and not as hard as men.”

Horatia waived the point. It was a nice gallantry, she thought. She was not ready to work anyway, just yet.

They passed a strange light half hidden in the bushes just then, and whatever else Anthony had meant to say was quite forgotten for the moment. He was suddenly alert. Without a word he went into reverse and backed up to the roadside.

“Stay where you are, Horatia,” he said briefly and decisively.

She leaned forward. He was beside the light and suddenly she saw what Anthony had seen at once. It was an overturned roadster--its tail light gleaming in the marshy grass. She saw Anthony peering around, then bending. With a leap she was beside him and he gave her a quick, appraising glance.

“When I lift,--pull.”

Amazingly she was pulling, pulling and brushing aside obstacles that felt like the overturned paraphernalia of the car. She was pulling a woman--a girl awkwardly thrown prostrate and still. And then they found the man. Anthony seemed to know exactly what to do. He was almost professional.

“We’ll leave him--it’s no use,” he said. “And carry her. Hold her in your lap and I’ll drive. We can’t waste a minute.”

The inert body of the girl hung heavily over the side of the car and Horatia’s lap.

“How far must we go?”

“Five or six miles. I saw the man’s letters--he seems to come from there--Winchester.”

At the Winchester hospital they found after an anxious hour that the girl was only stunned and bruised. She would be all right. She was easily identified--a girl about town.

The young man seemed to be a person of prominence. An odd stiffness of local scandal hung over the necessary inquiries. Evidently the association of the man and girl was not discussible. The police notified the man’s father and a party set out for the wreck with Anthony as guide.

Horatia had a glimpse of a white, stricken, elderly man bending over the body and heard him groan in horrified pain. There was nothing left for them to do. They turned towards home.

“Poor devil,” said Anthony, “he’s gone and there’s an awful gap somewhere. Because he wanted to be a bounder. Nice-looking fellow he was, too.”

“Let’s get home quickly,” begged Horatia.

Anthony turned to look at her.

“Sorry it happened,” he said briefly, “but you were game, Horatia. Lord, but you were game.”

She tried to smile and only succeeded in turning very faint.

“I never saw a dead person before except my mother, and I can’t remember that.”

“You never----” Anthony stopped the car and put a quick arm about her shoulders. “What a damned shame! Just rest--just forget it.”

From that night they were closer comrades than ever before. And it was during the weeks that followed that Horatia found herself writing less and less to Jim. It was very hard to write. She couldn’t put all she wanted to say in one letter and she didn’t know whether he would understand all the things she was thinking unless she wrote him very fully. That could all come later, she told herself--now she wanted strength and calmness. Nothing, according to Marjorie Clapp, was so worth while as strength and health. And more and more she found Marjorie and Anthony establishing standards by which she measured life.

They were so sure, and yet not sure as Maud was sure--with aggressiveness and assertiveness. They did not try to decide everything for everyone and they were slow of condemnation in most respects and rather open to new beliefs.

“Have you no imperfections?” wailed Horatia to Marjorie.

Marjorie stared at her. “What have I been assuming?” she asked in horror. “What sort of prig----”

“It’s because you don’t assume. Because you are modern without bragging of it and conservative when it is for the safety of things. Because you are actually getting somewhere.”

“Well,” said Marjorie, “one of my imperfections is that I fairly soak in such talk about myself. I’ve been through the mill, Horatia. I’ve wondered and puzzled and hated being called a reactionary. There was a time when bobbing my hair and taking a lover instead of a husband seemed the brave thing to do. And then I decided that it wasn’t, after all. That it was my fear of being called stupid and not my conviction of what was progress that was holding me back from the commonplaces of being a wife and mother. Inwardly I approved of lots of things and outwardly I was afraid to give in to them for fear of being ordinary. But I’m sure now. I’ve burned my bridges. I want to give my children the best of the old régime. The new régime will unavoidably make advances to them and they may accept a lot of them. That’s all right too--the old and the new make a fine blend. And I try to keep in touch with things so nothing will shock or frighten me. Why are you so worried?”

“I’m not really, just now. I’m as content as a cat. But I suppose I ought to know where I stand and as a matter of fact I don’t. I ought to know what people I want to run with. I’ve seen a lot of kinds. And I don’t really fit in anywhere. Someone told me that I was only fit to do lip service to modernism, the other day. That bothered me. I had taken it for granted that I was a modern. It seemed indecent not to be.”

“But you are. Anyone who sees you knows that you are carrying on into the future.”

“This person didn’t think so.” And for the second time, omitting her personal connection, Horatia told Grace’s story.

“Poor Grace,” said Marjorie.

“That’s just it. I didn’t feel ‘poor Grace.’ I felt ‘plague-stricken--unclean Grace.’ And it began in me a lot of uncertainties. If she was like that--if marriage was as wretched and unreliable as she claimed--where can I turn for faith? You help restore faith but what if you are a shining exception?”

Anthony came in and stood against the door looking tall and immensely confident. Perhaps Marjorie felt he was the answer to Horatia’s appeal. Anyway she went away and sent them iced tea and sandwiches.