Chapter XX

At just what point Horatia realized that Anthony still loved her and that his love could be called by no other name was quite cloudy in her own mind. Perhaps her first intimation of it came that very afternoon when he stood looking at her silently after Marjorie slipped away. It was a very revealing look and Horatia would have been stupid indeed not to have felt its quality. She pulled herself alert from the relaxed position she had been indulging in on the cushioned settee and put her hands laughingly to her disheveled hair.

“Please don’t embarrass me, Anthony. I know I’m tousled.”

“I love to look at you tousled. I love to look at you anyway and at any time. It’s all----” he stopped and pulled her to her feet, retrieving himself gaily. “Don’t bewitch me, young woman. Didn’t I get my orders not to be in love with you?”

But there was a tense look in his eyes that set Horatia wondering.

Five months ago she had been filled with humiliation and actual distaste by his declaration of love for her. Two months before, when she had first come to the country, she would have been revolted and frightened away. But the situation was changed. Anthony had grown to be a part of her life. And he was more skilful than he had been in the spring. He was very slow in his love-making, careful not to outrage her feelings, careful not to ask for anything. By words sometimes, but more often by the devotion of actions, by the constant protective care with which he surrounded her, Horatia was brought into consciousness of his love. It was easy for her because he asked for nothing. She could like him as much as she pleased and take comfort in the hundred intangible expressions of his love without feeling that she was involved in a love affair. And Jim was not there and his letters were few and repressed in tone. He was her lover--and she was his, thought Horatia, whether she was disappointed or not. That was her promise, but it seemed one which her mind insisted on rather than a conviction springing from the depth of her heart.

Accepting the love-making of two men is often possible, even to a fine, high-minded virtuous woman, if only fastidious ways save her from any sense of promiscuity. Anthony’s first attack coming in the spring, when Horatia was surrounded by the very present sense of Jim’s love, when she was fresh from his arms, had made her feel indecent. But now, removed from Jim, cooled and drawn little by little into a new atmosphere, Anthony’s love filled her at first with a gentle regret and then little by little, accepting his attentions and never finding the moment when she was both able and willing to tell him that she did not want him to care for her, there came to be a question about Anthony in her mind. It was, for instance, difficult to say to him when he was folding a wrap about her shoulders, “You must not be so considerate of me if your consideration means that you love me.” Yet, accepting publicly a hundred special attentions and thoughtfulnesses, seeing in Maud’s glances and in Marjorie’s what they hoped and expected, the thing lost its repugnant aspect. She could hardly feel that this devotion of Anthony’s which everyone approved of and which was so gentle a thing, could be shameful, especially when she was not reinforced by the expression of Jim’s love. Sometimes an unpleasant thought rose in her mind, contrasting this steady devotion, unreturned and unwelcomed, with the love of Jim which circumstances seemed to have so easily defeated. Yet it was significant that Anthony did not find a chance to make love to her openly and fervently and that she kept him from any declaration. One thing she knew very clearly--that she would hate to put Anthony definitely out of her life and that the moment of doing so could be postponed. Her sister did not plan to return until October. There was still a month before she need face issues. If she dabbled sometimes in the thought of Anthony’s life, that was only natural for he spread his plans before her. It would be an orderly, progressive life, fine, easeful and not selfish so much as concentrated on self-development.

“But Anthony, where does your duty to society come in?”

“In being a decent, useful citizen myself. Not in trying to pauperize other people--or humiliate them. In voting right and standing right on things--sounds awfully priggish, but really I suppose it’s summed up in being an example as far as a very imperfect person can be, and in doing my own job.”

“But somebody has to pioneer for the weak ones.” She was thinking of Langley to whom it could never have occurred to be an example to society but who worked unremittingly on the chance that he might reduce the hypocrisy and selfishness and viciousness around him. It came to her that Anthony’s method was infallible as far as it went and Jim’s dangerously fallible and uncomfortable. Anthony would never have anything to reproach himself with--Jim might have much. He was answering.

“There wouldn’t be so many weak ones if everyone did his job and did it right. The weak ones are the result of bad living and the ones who go out to reform all this weakness--who are they?--old maids--unhealthy and unhappy--freak men, abnormal in their living. I tell you the country needs steadying, Horatia, and steadying by example, not by speech-making.”

“And that method is self-preservation for you, of course--and comfort,” said Horatia, a little caustically.

“Yes--of course. I think it should be. I think--I think it’s much more sensible to preserve yourself, for you and all women to establish homes and families and keep healthy instead of running around city streets and city slums.”

Horatia chuckled. “You’re a divine advocate of woman’s place in the home. You make it seem so tempting.”

The feeling in his face leapt into flame.

“Can I make it tempting enough?”

She drew away a little nervously.

“Oh, personally, I’ll always prefer the streets. I’m a natural born gutter-pup.”

“You’re naturally the most wonderful woman in the world and you’re meant for the truest and best things.”

“Don’t praise me, please, Anthony. I hate it.”

“Then don’t say such silly things.”

He walked up and down and then returned to her, still trying to plead impersonally.

“I’m not a bully or a reactionary--I don’t want to run anybody’s life. I don’t believe in this male superiority stuff either. And I’ve been with you and Marjorie enough to have an enormous respect for women. She’s not tied down. She’s the freest woman I know.”

“Yes, because she is doing what she wants to do.”

Gradually in this way a choice was placed before Horatia, a choice of lives. She evaded the main issue, the issue which would ultimately make choice for her--that must be which man drew her most. She compared lives as if it were a problem in sociology she had before her. Anthony had respected her desire to have him keep from definite questions but she knew that he was laying his life before her. And she reviewed it. She saw that she and Anthony together and others like them, mental aristocrats, secure in material things, could take their places in a society of flux and uncertainty, and be beacon lights of strength and security, she as a woman, raising woman’s functions to fine dignity, strong in love and content and purpose. She saw herself taking up the burdens which other cheaper women laid down, dignifying a home and wifehood and maternity.

And on the other side stretched life with Jim, a life of puzzles, inquiries, unsolved problems, a life among the problems of the world, solving them not by keeping unsullied but by enduring with them, by growing weary and impatient and often arriving at no solution. And the domestic side of life with Jim would be a life without great regularity or great certainty of ease--how could she fit Jim into domestic routine and how could she fit in these strange friends of Jim’s whom he refused to give up, into a life of dignity and order? Even against his protests, the work would call her back to it and she would have to adjust her wifehood and child-bearing to all this--and there would never be enough money so that they could live in the careless ease which took money for granted. Jim’s side seemed to suffer in comparison with the other life and yet why was it that she did not make a decision against it and put it out of her mind?

Maud came out into the open a little more. She talked Anthony. And once she became rather fundamental in her talk--for Maud.

“I haven’t said much about Jim Langley,” she said. “And since I saw him, I’ll admit that he is fascinating. But there are things no girl understands, Horatia. And you don’t realize what a tremendous thing it is to try to change a man’s habits. Langley isn’t a domestic sort and if you marry a man you’re bound to live his life. In the end most women want a regular kind of home. I don’t want to force you, Horatia, but it does seem as if Anthony were so exactly the right man.”

Unexpectedly Horatia kissed her.

“Poor Maud,” she said, “you do want me to be comfortable, don’t you? But if Jim had Anthony’s money I wonder what you’d feel about the right man?”

“Don’t be silly,” Maud returned, with her pragmatism rising to the surface at once. “He hasn’t the money, has he? My dear, if you knew more about things! If you could see the scraping to get along! I don’t see as much of it as I used to, but Heaven knows there are plenty of people who have to do it. There are such a lot of women trying to get along on too little and keep things up.”

“Their trouble is that they are always trying to throw a bluff.”

“Well,” her sister answered reflectively, “you must admit that some things--babies now, for instance--take money. Of course if you don’t want children you get along without that. But even then there are clothes and houses--and illness.”

Horatia had an impulse to make herself understood on that point.

“As for babies,” she said, “I want babies. Marriage without them isn’t worth bothering about. They weight marriage--make it of consequence.”

“They hold a man,” said Maud. “Now there never was a better man than Harvey. But there have been times when I’ve seen women look at him, wondering just how much married he was and I’ve been glad I had Jackie and the baby. Men are funny in their feelings towards women but they are pretty certain about their children. I’ve known women who didn’t have children who were precious sorry before they got through.”

“You’re strictly utilitarian in your use of emotion, aren’t you, Maud?”

But Maud looked vague at that and turned to the final ordering of her living-room. It was really all in order, deep, willow chairs with bright cushions in their most comfortable hollows, a tea-table before the empty fireplace and tall glasses already on it. Maud was expecting guests for tea. She had informally asked a few important matrons and chosen this date with much care. The last dance of the summer--the only semiformal one, was to be held in a week at the Country Club. Maud wanted to be sure of enjoying herself on that occasion and to be on an easy familiar footing with the summer residents. Hence this very informal, extremely important preceding afternoon at her cottage.

Maud was all a-flutter as her first guests came but as more arrived until at length most of the hoped-for were assembled, her asurance rose. The last comer was Mrs. Stanley Clifford in white organdie and a broad-brimmed hat.

“I brought my guest, Mrs. Hill,” she said to Maud in gracious explanation and Maud bubbled with welcomes. But as she turned to introduce Horatia, a sudden constraint was in the air.

“I have met Miss Grant,” said Mrs. Hill, “when she was working on _The Journal_. She went to great pains to frustrate my plan for a soldiers’ and sailors’ memorial.”

She spoke quite clearly. Horatia looked at her with cool gravity, conscious that the eyes of everyone in the room were on her.

“I remember,” she said, without the faintest apology.

Marjorie’s laugh came to the rescue.

“Now don’t scold dear Horatia,” she pleaded gaily, “none of us really wanted that memorial job. And Horatia had sense enough to see it.” She moved Mrs. Hill off and the incident passed over. But Horatia felt a little chilled. This was part of the society to which it had seemed so dignified to belong. This woman with her ill-bred onslaught was part of it. Her mind brushed aside these contacts, these people; they were illusions. The strong virility of the life in the newspaper office--the personal freedom--flashed before her. Here she was not quite free--here she could not be quite straightforward. She could not turn to Mrs. Hill and say again what she thought of that preposterous plan. She must let the matter rest. It was part of the game.

She forgot certain limitations in the newspaper office. For a moment it stood out richly against a paler background.

“Odious creature, she is,” whispered Maud over the tea-table. “Glad you let it pass like a good sport.”