The Brute

CHAPTER VI

Edith came back from her walk very much out of sorts. It seemed to her as though Billy understood her so much better than Donald ever had, or, as far as she could see, ever would understand her, and yet their love, for such she admitted it to herself to be, was leading to nothing. The gloomy entrance of the Roxborough seemed to grate upon her nerves, and her feeling of dissatisfaction persisted throughout the evening. Donald had some work to do after dinner, and sat at his desk in silence for a long time, writing steadily. She, on her part, got out her sewing, and prepared to spend the evening darning Bobbie’s stockings. She hated it – she had always disliked to sew, but in a way it seemed a sort of penance, a duty, whereby she paid for the pleasures of the day.

Donald was more than usually quiet over his letters. Presently he sealed up the last one and, rising, began to walk uneasily up and down the room. She waited for him to speak, guiltily wondering if he suspected anything. Presently he turned to her.

“Edith,” he said, “have you heard from Billy West?”

For a moment she hesitated. To what was this question leading? What had prompted it? Then she dropped her sewing into her lap and faced him. “Yes,” she said slowly. “He was here this afternoon.”

“Then he is back?” He glanced at her suddenly, but without suspicion. “Queer he didn’t let me know.”

“Oh, he just ran in for a moment to say he’d returned. He intended to look you up in the morning. He was very busy – he told me – some man from Boston to entertain – one of the directors of his company, I believe.”

Donald seemed for a moment engrossed in his thoughts. She observed a worried look cross his face, but could not determine its cause.

“I’m glad he’s back,” he said. “I’ve got a matter I want to talk over with him.”

“What is it?” His seriousness for a moment frightened her.

“It’s something I’ve been considering for a long time. I hardly like to speak of it to him, and yet I don’t know anyone else to whom I can turn. It’s about that glass plant of ours, in West Virginia. We’re awfully short of capital, and I have an idea that there is trouble ahead. The money market is getting tighter and tighter. The outlook for business is bad. We are likely to need a little money, before long, to tide us over. I’m thinking of suggesting to Billy that if he wants to invest a few thousands on first-class security – bonds, he might very easily do much worse than put it into our concern.”

She took up her sewing again with a sigh of relief. So it was nothing but a matter of business, after all, with which she was not greatly concerned. Yet, before she replied, a curious pang of conscience smote her. Billy would do this, she knew; do it for her sake, if not, indeed, for Donald’s, and for a brief space she felt ashamed to think that Donald would owe the assistance he needed to the fact that Billy West loved her. The thought was fleeting – elusive – and in a moment was swallowed up in the greater knowledge of their love; yet, for that moment, she had ranged herself beside her husband, resenting the suggestion for his sake, finding in it something that humiliated and hurt her.

“If it is a good investment,” she presently exclaimed, “I don’t see why he should not put some money into it.”

“Of course it’s a good investment. I shouldn’t have my own in it, if it weren’t. We need only a small amount – nothing to West. He can’t begin to spend his income.” He looked moodily about the room. “I’m not envious, but I wish I had a tenth of it. There are so many things I’d like to do for you, dear, if I only could. I’m glad that he has been able to make the past few months more pleasant for you. Billy is one of the best fellows I’ve ever met – generous and unselfish to a fault. I’m very fond of him; I haven’t a friend I think more of.”

Again the pang of conscience smote Edith. The enormity of the deception which she and West had been practicing upon Donald appalled her, and he seemed so unsuspecting, so guileless. His next words, however, drove the thought from her mind.

“I wish he’d marry. He really needs someone to look after him. I wonder that your sister Alice doesn’t get along with him better. What’s the trouble, anyway? She hardly ever sees him. Why don’t you do more to bring them together?”

Edith instinctively resented the suggestion. Billy West was hers, by right of conquest. The thought of turning him over to anyone, even to her sister, annoyed her. “Alice thinks too much of someone else,” she replied primly.

“You mean Hall?”

“Yes. They’ve been as good as engaged for months. Mother objects, of course, but I think Alice loves him.”

Donald smiled. “In that case, we’ll have to find someone else for Billy. Emerson Hall is a splendid fellow, and I’d be glad to see Alice marry him.” He came over to Edith and patted her shoulder affectionately. “I never expected to play the rôle of a matchmaker, but I’d be mighty glad to see Billy fall in love with some nice girl, who would appreciate him, and help him to make something of his life. Just sitting around New York, spending thirty or forty thousand a year, isn’t good for any man. With his money he ought to travel, see the world, take up some hobby, have children – that’s about the most human thing a man can do. With all that money at his command he could do so much for them.”

“Yes,” she assented, not daring to look at him.

“What I’m afraid of is that he’ll fall in love with some woman who’ll ruin his life – somebody that won’t have an idea above clothes, and automobiles, and physical enjoyment. There are so many like that, here in New York, and, if he should happen to care for one of them, it would spoil his whole future. Billy is really quite simple in his tastes. He’d love a big country place, and horses, and dogs, and all that. This gay New York life attracts him now, because he’s been away from it for so long, but in another six months he’ll be sick of it. I’m going to have a talk with him.”

Edith said nothing. What, indeed, was there for her to say? Donald’s words cut deep. For a brief space she almost hated herself. Was West’s love for her going to spoil his whole life? She shivered at the thought. Then the picture of the man, his smiling face, his attractive and alluring personality, rose before her, and drove away the doubts which had for the moment chilled her heart. She rose and put away her sewing. “Perhaps you had better let Billy West manage his own love-affairs,” she remarked quietly.

Donald, busily engaged in refilling his pipe, failed to see the trace of resentment which accompanied her words. “Oh, I don’t mean to interfere,” he said. “I’m not a fool. But Billy and I have been friends for a long time, and I don’t think he’d mind a little advice from me.”

“You are going to ask him about this – this money, to-morrow?” Edith inquired presently.

“Perhaps. I may sound him out, at least. We sha’n’t need the money for some weeks – may not need it at all, in fact, but I want to be prepared.”

He did talk the matter over with West the next day, and the latter fell in with the plan at once. He felt a deep sense of shame at the injury he was doing his friend, and was anxious to make amends in any way that he could. It occurred to him, also, that perhaps in this way he might, indirectly at least, help Edith. Deep down in his soul he despised himself, felt himself a traitor, in thought at least, if not yet in deed, to this man who loved and trusted him. For a moment he almost made up his mind to tell Edith at once that he could not see her again, that they must part forever. The intention was an honest one, at the time. Even he did not admit, that one smile from her – one touch of her hand – would consign it to the paving operations in hell which is the destiny of so large a proportion of all good intentions.

He refused Donald’s invitation to luncheon, explaining that he meant to take Edith out for a drive in the car. Donald even thanked him for this. “You are a brick, Billy,” he said, gripping his hand at parting. “Since you’ve been back, Edith has been like another woman. I believe she’s gained ten pounds, and all her nervousness is gone. Being out in the air so much, I suppose. But we can’t let her monopolize you. Why don’t you get married, Billy?”

The suddenness of the question threw West for the moment off his guard. “Married!” he exclaimed. “Why – I – what do you mean?” He looked at his friend narrowly.

“It’s plain enough, isn’t it? Here you are, a young and good-looking chap with plenty of money. What more natural than to marry, and have a home, and children? It’s the only way to be really happy. All this” – he waved his hand toward the vista of roofs and pinnacles which stretched endlessly northward – “doesn’t really get you anywhere. You know that, as well as I.”

“I – I guess you’re right. I’d be glad enough to get away from it all – with a woman I loved. I’d never want to see New York again. But – I – ” he hesitated, faltered – “I guess I won’t marry yet awhile, Don – not yet awhile.”

“Better think it over, old man,” he heard Donald call out to him, as he turned away.

All the way up-town he hated himself, hated the circumstances which had placed him in this horrible situation, with love on the one side, duty on the other, tearing at his heart. He felt so depressed that he stopped on the way and drank two highballs. They served to drive away the fog of doubts which had begun to envelop him.

By the time he reached the Roxborough, his spirits had commenced to revive. The presence of Edith, her happy, smiling face, her unconcealed joy at seeing him, completed the change. After all, he was only taking for a spin in the country the woman he loved, the woman he had always loved. There was nothing wrong in that. He had not been false to Donald by any overt act. God had put this love into his heart, and he had only responded as his nature made him respond. The futility of blaming the whole affair upon God did not at the moment occur to him. It was a convenient way of shifting the responsibility, and one that has been much utilized since the days of Adam.

Edith, on her part, felt that the time had come for an understanding of some sort between West and herself. It would be unfair to all concerned, she decided, to allow matters to drift as they had been drifting. If West should tell her that he loved her, it would give her a reason for not seeing him, an excuse for driving him away. Until he did speak, she could do nothing. She was by no means certain that, should he declare himself, she would forthwith proceed to put him out of her life. That question she left for the emotions of the moment to decide. But she believed that, until the moment arrived, she was quite helpless, for either good or ill. To break with West, her husband’s friend and her own, now, without apparent reason, would be to assume that he loved her, and loved her wrongfully – she was not certain that this was true, not sufficiently certain, at least, to deny herself the joy of finding out.

For all these reasons she decided to do her best to force West to declare himself. Then she would have a crisis to face – a reality, not a mere supposition. And whatever course she then decided upon, whether love, or duty, it would at least be definite and final, and the present state of affairs was neither.

By this complex system of reasoning Edith Rogers justified herself in her intention to force from West a declaration of his love, and justified herself so completely that, when she joined him at the entrance to the apartment, she had almost convinced herself that she was about to commit a most laudable and praiseworthy act.

CHAPTER VII

It is a curious, but undeniable, fact that there is something in the effect of rapid motion upon the senses that generates love. Possibly it is the poetry of movement which attunes the mind to thoughts of a less practical nature. The dance, the swift motion of an ocean liner, the whirl of a motor car, are they not responsible for a multitude of sins; else why the ballroom flirtations, the love-affairs on shipboard, the eloping heiress and the chauffeur? Certain it is that there was something in the drive to Garden City at Edith’s side that morning, which engendered in West a more passive attitude, a more willing yielding to their growing love for each other, than he had felt while walking with her in the park the day before. She, on her part, dismissed all unpleasant thoughts from her mind, and reveled in the joy of the moment. The day was brilliant, though somewhat cold. The heavy fur-lined coat she wore had been purchased a short time before by West, for her especial use; she appreciated the motive which had prompted him to do this – he thought so continually of her comfort, her happiness.

She turned and glanced at him, and noted with pleasure, even with a secret glow of happiness, the strong, handsome lines of his face, ruddy in the sharp wind, the strength of his arms, the poise of his shoulders. Through the coat which enveloped her she could feel the subtle warmth of his body – she nestled closer to him, and basked in a delightful realization of his strength, his mastery over the on-rushing car, his steady, unfailing nerves, which alone stood between her and death. It seemed so fine to know that her life rested in his hands, that a momentary weakness, a trifling slip on his part might hurl them both to destruction against some tree, or rock, or ever present telegraph pole. She began to wonder, after all, how she had ever lived these years without love, real, dominating love, such as she believed this to be, to illumine and glorify her life. Everything, indeed, with Donald seemed so sordid. There was the everlasting talk of money, the continual effort to make ends meet, the constant fear lest she spend a little more than his income would justify. All this had passed from her, to-day. She moved along in a cloud of wonderful, waking dreams, and life seemed once more a joyous, sentient thing. She even forgot Bobbie, and it almost seemed as though, if she could spend all the rest of her life by West’s side, anything else would be of but minor importance.

West interrupted her day-dreams. “Are you warm enough, dear?” he asked suddenly.

“Oh, yes, quite,” she gasped against the wind and wondered if he realized how in using that term of endearment he had caused a glow of happiness to flood her until her faced burned. It was something he had never done before, yet it did not seem strange to her. Their personalities seemed vibrant, attuned to each other and to some great harmony of love which was a part of the rushing wind, the brilliant sunshine, the blue sky. She felt that he was going to say something to her – something that she dreaded, yet waited for as a bride for her bridegroom. Somehow all thought of disloyalty to Donald had vanished. It was not that she put it aside, or trampled upon it – in this glorified atmosphere of love it simply no longer existed.

Presently he turned to her, as they were slowly mounting a long stretch of hill. “I wish we could go on and on, and never stop, for all the rest of our lives,” he said, looking at her hungrily. She met his gaze with a glad smile and they told each other with their eyes what had been growing in their hearts for all these months. The road stretched before them, gray and lonely. West put his left arm about her with a caressing motion that seemed to embrace within it not only herself, but all her hopes and fears, her troubles and her joys. She did not passively yield herself to his embraces, she leaped to him, her brain on fire, her soul in her eyes. When their lips met, she hardly knew it, all the music of the heavenly choirs seemed singing in her ears, and in that moment of supreme happiness neither future nor past for her existed. In an instant he had turned from her and, with his hands on the steering wheel, swept the road ahead with cautious eyes. The whole thing seemed like a dream – a fantasy of the imagination, yet she knew it was the realest thing in her life at the moment, the one great experience that eclipsed all lesser experiences as though they had never been at all.

They did not say much for a long time, for each seemed to feel the irrevocability of the thing that had befallen them. It was not as though West had kissed her, as a man might kiss a flirtatiously inclined woman. She knew that to him, at least, that kiss had meant a seal of love; what it had meant to her she had not yet in her own mind decided.

After what seemed to her hours, he spoke again. “I am thinking of going away, Edith,” he said, and his voice seemed to come to her from a long way off, and wake her from happy dreams.

“Going away?” she asked, with a new timidity. “Where?”

“To Europe, to Cairo, to the East.”

“Why?”

“Because I cannot stay here any longer.”

“Why not?” she found herself asking. “Why not?”

“Because I love you, dear, and because, if I stay here, I am afraid of what might happen. I want to go away, to get out into the great, wide places of the world, where air, and sunshine, and love are free and God-given. I hate New York and all it means. I cannot stay in it any longer – as things are.”

“Then I shall not see you – any more?” she asked in a voice from which she was unable to keep a quivering sense of loss, of pain.

“Not unless you will go with me,” he said suddenly, turning and looking into her face.

“Go with you – go with you?” She repeated the words mechanically, as though the thought suggested by them had not yet found a place in her mind. “How could I?”

“Why not?” His voice became suddenly intense, trembling with feeling. “I love you, and I want you, always, close by my side. I cannot think of going on, all the years of my life, without you. I know how wrong, how disloyal it all must seem to you, but I cannot help it. I love you – I love you – what more is there for me to say? If you wish it, I will go away from you at once – to-day, and never see you again, if it breaks my heart. Shall I?”

She gave a faint cry. The thought hurt her, in its unexpected cruelty. “How can you ask me that?”

The car was running very slowly now, along a stretch of road bordered by high trees, faintly green in their early spring garb. He let the machine come to a standstill beside the road and took her fiercely into his arms. “Edith, I cannot go without you – my God – I cannot. Come with me, dearest, come, and forget all the troubles and cares of your life here.” He pressed her to him with quivering muscles and kissed her. “Will you? Will you?” he demanded, and his voice seemed to her a command, rather than a question.

She yielded to his embrace gladly, with a joyous sense of freedom. “Yes – yes!” she cried, and lay still in his arms.

Presently they heard, far behind them, the sound of another car ascending the hill. West put her from him, started the machine, and they rushed along against the southeast wind, their hearts big with their new-formed plan.

Then a long silence came upon them. Perhaps they were both thinking of the pain which their love must cause to Donald, the inevitable consequences which must flow from it. It was a natural reaction from the exaltation of the moment before. Edith, too, was thinking of Bobbie, and already in her inmost soul had begun to resent the demands of this new emotion, which required her to tear out of her heart all that now lay within it, that there might be room for her love for West alone. Yet so strange are the ways of love, that, while resenting the result, she did not resent the love which caused it – to her Billy West was, for the time being at least, the sum of all earthly existence.

It was after one o’clock when they reached the hotel at Garden City, and in a few moments they had secured a table and were ordering luncheon. West suggested a cocktail, which seemed very grateful after the long ride. Edith did not feel hungry, but ate mechanically, hardly knowing what was set before her. She looked timidly at him, and felt her cheeks redden with a sudden flush. Somehow he seemed so big, so masterful, so different from Donald, and she knew that whenever he desired, from now on, to take her in his strong arms, she would not resist him, but would be glad. She seemed to feel toward him an intense physical attraction, something that she had never felt toward her husband, an unreasoning instinct, that made her long to be near him, to hear his voice, to put her hand in his, and forget everything else in the blessed knowledge that this man of her desire possessed her completely and utterly.

These thoughts came to her as an undercurrent, far below the ripple of conversation with which the meal passed. Only once did they look over the precipice upon the edge of which they walked so lightly. She ventured, half-afraid, to ask him when he thought of leaving New York. His answer showed that he, too, had been thinking deeply of the matter which lay nearest their hearts.