So, depressed and tormented, with the images of Edgerton and Ned Angell inimically before his mind's eye, he came to Hope's door. She answered his ring herself. She wore a big white linen apron; she had a smudge of charcoal on her nose and her hair in a braid; and she walked through the mist of his brooding reflections straight to him. They vanished; there remained only a little girl with a smudged nose and trustful eyes; and he kissed her and gave himself up to the moment. It was impossible to detect the flavour of anything intrigante about her; her sweet stupidity — the obverse of a directness which was itself as much a defect as a virtue—her very plainness, made the idea ridiculous. For, on analysis, she was plain; one cannot defend a title to beauty on the strength of a pair of pretty ears, a lovely throat, the sea mist colour of her round sleepy eyes, and a braid of hay-tinted hair, from which two short feathery curls escaped at the nape of her neck.
A tiny dent in her upper lip, a delicate depression at the apex of her collar bone, delighted him; he kissed them, and cuddled her like a pet kitten. She was always grave with him, undemonstrative, like a too thoughtful child. Mostly he loved that reserve, but to-day it exasperated him. It was typical of the thing that troubled him. What was beneath it all? What was she thinking? More, what was she?
"I don't believe you care for me at all," he said at last, half teasingly, half in too much earnest. "You're the coldest creature. You just love being loved."
"No, no—I don't—I'm not..." She struggled visibly for words. The best she could offer was, "I'd— love you just as much, if I could never touch you. If you didn't care for me. If I could just see you sometimes. You don't understand."
To his horrified surprise, he perceived two tears forcing themselves between her lashes. He comforted her, almost alarmed, ready for once to admit to a woman, with no reservation of a smile, that he certainly did not understand. She made no more effort to explain, and he muttered again, half resentful of her admission that his caresses were not essential:
"But you are cold!" and owned to himself that he had tried in vain to melt her. To turn the subject, he inquired for Mary Dark.
"She's at the office yet," said Hope. "Edgerton is going away to-morrow, I believe, and they are tremendously busy with—with some new scheme or something."
"The Kenatchee Falls business?" asked Tony, eager for news.
"Maybe," said Hope, dissembling badly.
It was clear to him that she knew something of the matter. But it might be from Mary.
"If he'll only take it up," said Tony, and walked about the room nervously. "You know, lady-bird, it means a lot to me—to us. If it goes—we needn't wait any longer. I'll carry you off in a minute." The faint red ran into her face; she nodded. "Have you any idea how he stands? You're pretty good friends, aren't you?" His tone was elaborately casual.
"Yes, in a way," she assented. "But I don't really know anything about his affairs." That was not true, and it distressed her to have to lie to Tony, but she could not betray confidences.
She thought it not quite fair of him to try to pump her, and was still more astounded when she caught his actual intent. He wanted her to help sway Edgerton in his favour! He did not say that exactly; his words were covered with an "if" and other indirections. But that was the meaning. At first she did not know why it hurt, but two reasons crystallised out of the inward refusal that surged up. First, she really know nothing of the project, so far as its intrinsic merits went. It would be absurd of her to recommend it. Besides, Edgerton certainly knew both his own mind and his own business. She could not imagine him as moved by her pleading. And then, Tony should not ask help of that kind from her; it was not a man's part, He ought to stand on his own feet. In truth, she was dangerously unsophisticated; no one had ever told her just how much more than kissing went by favour.
"Oh, I couldn't do anything," she murmured. Her choice of phrase conveyed the exact truth.
"Well, I hope we'll get him anyway," said Tony, but somehow he felt as if he had come up against a blank wall, and the mists gathered again. Hope had shut him off from something in her mind. What was it? The door had closed in his face, just as once before. When she had spoken of Jim Sanderson! He wanted to ask her about that, but she had been so exceedingly definite in the first instance. A question would be pointedly meaningless, and he could not think of a plausible excuse for bringing in Jim's name.
"Yes, I hope so," said Hope, and she did, most earnestly. She wanted him to have what he wanted, but she wanted him to get it for himself—and for her. He had said it was for her.
"If it falls through," said Tony, suddenly moody— a rare phase with him—"it might mean waiting for years. Could you give me up, Hope?"
"Not as long as you want me." She too felt that cloud of unanswered queries, things unspoken, between them. "Must I, ever? I could go on working, you know."
"Good Lord, I should hope not," he said, positively startled by her point of view. What on earth would the people he knew think of such a proceeding?
She was wistful when he left: she felt as if she were reaching out to him over some gulf; they strained to each other, and yet in spite of clasped hands and meeting lips the gulf remained. He had not said that nothing should keep them apart.
Mary, arriving late and weary, brought Hope a farewell note, and observed that she barely troubled to read it through.
"Tired, dear?" she asked, reading her own sensations into the faint cloud on the girl's brow.
"Oh, no. No," said Hope absently. "I'll write to-morrow." She was talking to herself. "Mary, is he going to buy in the Kenatchee Company?"
Mary would have answered the question to no one else, but she knew Edgerton told Hope all the girl cared to hear, perhaps as a relief after keeping his own counsel with everybody else.
"I don't really know," she said. "He has an ace up his sleeve. He's playing them; but I don't know why. I asked him to-day, and he only laughed. He knows what he's doing, I'm sure; but I don't. These alleged business men here are babes in arms compared to him. None of them ever really made any money, as he has. They simply sat still till it grew up round them. He has the gift. It is a gift—like a strawberry mark!" She laughed. "Hope, I'm tired of this town."
"But you told me..." Hope began.
"I was raving," said Mary. "Or I lied. The fact is, my child, I'm making too much money. I wax fat and kick, like Jeshurun. To have money and no place to spend it is almost as bad as having none and every place to spend it. I am tired of this particular treadmill. I'm tired of setting springes for woodcocks. Every time I write a new rhapsody to lure some unsuspecting farmer into our toils I have to go out and tell the absolute truth to some of my best friends to square my conscience. As a result, Mrs. Manners won't speak to me, and Cora Shane has been telling everyone that Johnny Walters must have thrown me over and soured my disposition. Dear Johnny heard it himself, and came to me with tears in his eyes to ask if it was true." She laughed again. "And I'm afraid of going to Eleanor Travers's dance for fear I may ask her about her brother. You know he has low tastes, wouldn't go to college, and drives a truck for a living. He is the family skeleton; he weighs two hundred pounds. I always liked him, but half the town doesn't know there is such a person."
"I didn't know she was giving a dance," said Hope, still absently. "I wonder if Kenatchee Falls wouldn't be a good investment?"
To which Mary answered lucidly:
"Ah, I think I shall have to settle with Cora Shane." She went to the telephone, called up Miss Travers and asked herself to tea the next day.
Shortly after, Hope received a card to the dance. She looked at it listlessly, as she had at Edgerton's letter—which was yet unanswered—and said at last that she did not want to go anywhere.
"But you ought to," said Mary.
She could not give a reason when Hope asked why.
Tony stayed away for two weeks.
CHAPTER XII
HE had not meant to. He did not want to. He wanted to see her; he craved the delight,
the full, tender tide of emotion—half-sensuous, half-spiritual—that she stirred in him. But there was the cloud between them; when he would go to her, he seemed to be walking into it. He could not get away from it, even in thought, without dismissing her with it; unconsciously, he found himself wishing to put her image from his mind. Then he sought for a way through, and harked back to Jim Sanderson as the only possible solution. Edgerton was a solution, but not in that sense possible. Sanderson was away.
Other worries crowded on him; his financial affairs were by no means in order; there were numberless petty irritations about money, the more exasperating because release from them was in plain sight but remained just out of reach. And yet in this case the association of ideas which kept him away from Hope failed to operate in wonted sequence. He should have begun to dislike Edgerton, as being connected with both his anxieties, but he did not. It would have been counter to both his training and his instincts. Edgerton was still Success, and he still respected Success, and liked those who had achieved it. So he honestly liked Edgerton, none the less because his one or two letters to him, touching the Kenatchee Falls business, went unanswered.
But, since nothing lasts, gradually he began to lose that sense of separation from Hope, the more because a small sum of money came in opportunely and eased the other pressure. And when at last he turned into her front gate, he walked joyfully.
She came to his arms, like a nesting bird, too happy to speak.
They never were fluent with each other since the definite engagement. They had exhausted the generalities available for first acquaintance. The significance of the fact escaped them. It was not jealousy, but the mere search for a topic led her to ask him if he had been busy.
"Very busy," he said. "And then I thought I'd square a few other accounts and I paid all my old calls. I thought I'd surely meet you, somewhere." His own words flew back and stung him. Why did he not meet her, somewhere?
"I've only been lazy," she said bravely. Though she would cloister herself, wear the willow for him in solitude, she would never, never have told him so, nor even let him guess it. "Mary tried to drag me to the Travers dance. I don't think I want people, just now."
"Most of 'em are plain nuisances," he said, smiling, "but I need some of them in my business. Got to be nice to them."
"I don't see how you do it," she said, in honest wonder. "Have you got any further with Kenatchee?"
His mention of business had suggested that, but immediately she was sorry, because he had told her that it meant their marriage. She had almost a horror of seeming to wish that it might be hastened. She wanted him not only to approve the plans, but to originate them. She wanted to be the Princess of the Glass Tower, and he should climb eagerly to the very top for her.
"No," he answered, with sudden gloom. "Can't do anything till Edgerton comes back. I hope he hurries."
"I don't think he will be, for several months," she said, qualifying it only with, "I am not sure, though."
"Did he tell you so?"
"Why, no, not exactly. But he is going to New York first, maybe to Europe."
"Did he write to you?" was what he wanted to ask. It was as if he could hardly see her now for the returning cloud. But he said nothing. There was something at the back of all this. Why, if she were so close to Edgerton, could she not help him, Tony? It would be only natural, unless—unless she could ask nothing for a rival, and hope for success.
He was cold. His pride as a man and a lover was stabbed; also, he suffered more simply. Then she leaned to him hesitantly, and he kissed her, and found it hurt; something base had crept into his delight. He did not believe her absolutely. Thereafter he went looking for flaws, for discrepancies. Still making conversation, he asked:
"Is Miss Edgerton coming back with him?"
"Yes, I think so. Mary had a letter from her; she wants to come back. She's going to Europe too."
Was that it? His relief was immeasurable. Emily had written.
But that answer was only a question too. He saw that after he had left her.
To his own creeping shame, he found himself perpetually setting traps for her. And he knew he was waiting for Jim Sanderson to come back. He hated it all so much that sometimes he hated himself. And sometimes he almost hated Hope. He did not know whether his shame was for doubting her or for ever having believed her.
It was not comfortable. And he hated discomfort above everything.
Once in a while he forgot by drinking more than enough. There were still moments when Hope herself could banish it from his mind. And increasingly he found himself at ease with Cora Shane. The absurd reason underlying that fact was that to Cora Shane he had denied Hope. So with her the whole entanglement did not exist. Hope did not exist. Mrs. Shane, needing no more information than she got from other sources, never spoke of her.
The long room, with the flowers on the grand piano and Cora welcoming him from the depths of her basket chair, was Tom Tiddler's Ground. It took him out of himself. He was there very often.
So of course he saw Hope less. Yet he was more loving than before when he did see her. He was trying to shut out the cloud from between them. They were both aware of it. Only Hope did not know what it was.
She moped, and tried to hide it. Ned Angell became a nuisance to her. He covertly accused her of something near the truth. Her secret unhappiness had for him a morbid fascination. He was sentimental, in a word. He wanted to sympathise. She could have slain him for it cheerfully; figuratively, she threw him out of the house of her soul, neck and crop. And then he hovered. It was awful; only Mary's pungent cynicism and sharp, unsparing laughter saved her from running amuck in some way.
Mary knew. But her every word and action insisted that she did not know. Hope was grateful.
She hardly saw anyone but those two and-occasionally Allen Kirby. She would not go anywhere, except for aimless, prowling walks in the dusk. A weight of uncertainty clung to her. What was the matter? She repeated the question to herself until it became meaningless with iteration, like the mutterings of a fever patient. And then one day something about it made her laugh, some burlesque touch of Mary's, so sly it could not be returned nor acknowledged. That cleared her brain. There was nothing the matter, except that she was a fool, and probably Tony was still worried over his business affairs.
Having settled on that explanation, she was peaceful again. But she was not again so happy; she hoped, where before she felt she had won to the end.
She should have been haughty, and exacting. So she would have fared much better. Tony thought her patient with him when her patience was for events; in him she believed still, absolutely. He, taking the world's valuation of the world, took love's outward valuation of love. But Hope asked only the crumbs from the table; she did not think anyone—except Tony, perhaps—splendid enough to command the whole feast. This is no more than a rather idealistic folly, to make of it a feast rather than daily fare— but how should she know? Tony actually thought her a little Griselda, a Laetitia Dale. Always, of course, she would be there. So he need never hasten to her. He needed a spur. What jealousy he had felt was a thorn instead. Yet he loved her. We must all love as best we can.
Mary knew at last that she had failed. There was only luck to hope for now. Hope shrunk with obvious distress from any questions. Quite shamelessly, Mary broke her word and told Lisbeth.
"But why won't she announce it?" asked Mrs. Patten, with simple bewilderment.
"Because it's hers," said Mary thoughtfully. "Primitive instinct. As far as decency goes, we know she's perfectly right. But organised society doesn't really care a fig for decency; it's bent only on self-protection. Just reverse that, and you have Hope. Now watch the irresistible force strike her, head on."
"It will," said Mrs. Patten with regretful conviction. "Why, Tony himself is a cause of gossip now. Can't you fancy him learning that? He'll be in a terrible predicament—won't know whether to believe it or not! I mean, to believe if there's any truth in it. Mary, can't
you ask her to do it for you? She lives with you; you can't afford to have..."
"Oh, bunk," said Mary inelegantly. "As long as my uncle is Minister of Mines at Ottawa I can afford seven scandals a week. If the Government doesn't fall before the next Birthday he'll have a nice shiny knighthood, and I can afford a dozen. I do like the British system we've taken over with the Birthday Honours of being inalienably respectable once established, unless we get into the newspapers. Why, even the fact that uncle can't get on with me for half an hour doesn't make any difference. No, your suggestion is really awfully good—only it won't work. If I told her exactly what you've said, she'd feel worse than if she were in the stocks before the whole town. If I didn't, she would not understand, but would probably insist on leaving me in genuine sorrow at having done whatever-it-might-be that injured me. Why, she wouldn't even hate me! I can only think of putting an announcement in the paper, and then virtually daring Tony to deny it. It would be amusing— but no, I don't dare." '
"Then take her out more."
"Lisbeth, I haven't the heart for that either. Wait till she's five years older, over with all this, and has grown a skin. I did take her out last week, to the Lockwoods'. Mrs. Lockwood was just plain catty curious to see the girl she'd heard so much about. But I took her. It was funny. After the weather, someone said something about books. Hope brightened, her eye positively gleamed with intelligence. She made a remark—I forget what—and Mrs. Lockwood said that, for her part, she thought Marie Corelli wrote beautifully. Hope sat with her mouth open for a full minute; simply floored. She was squirming inside, checkmated. You know, she really had expected conversation. Well, you've spoiled her. I suppose Mr. Lockwood himself must have noticed her hunted look. He brought her the last collection of Christy stiffs to look over, a tribute to her artistic endowments! Then she sat turning the leaves in a kind of trance for awhile, and the rest of us talked scandal, over her head, until Dr. Wilton brought in Viola Marsten's name. Hope said she thought Viola exceedingly pretty. The sound of her voice created a mild sensation, she'd been sitting so mumchance. And Dr. Wilton—you know what a gossiping cad he is— started to tell a story about Viola. Of course you've heard it. I was afraid she'd get up and go out. She told me afterward that she'd never dreamed a man would tear a girl's name to pieces like that, for sheer vicious pleasure. Well, of course a man wouldn't. She was unhappy; she was lost. I took her away. 'She can't talk at all, can she?' Mrs. Lockwood said afterward. 'I should think Tony would be bored to death.' Now, what could I do?"
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