Claire Part 23

"Obviously." He laughed, sullenly. "I sha'n't, because you couldn't love a blind man."

Claire only sat and looked at him, thrilled with the knowledge that he was about to tell her he loved her. She was trembling and desperately afraid of herself. She moved uneasily, and against her will; her lips said, "I could love a blind man, Lawrence."

He sat up and clenched his hands together quickly. The tone of her voice in itself was a direct confession. But his deep skepticism of blindness would not let him believe that he was right.

"Do you mean that you do love me?" he demanded.

She wanted to say "Yes," but she thought of Philip and was afraid of what he might do, should he learn of her lie. Then, too, there was her resolution to go back to Howard. Strange that her long-planned friendly explanation of her own att.i.tude did not occur to her, but it did not.

Lawrence rose and came toward her, his hands out. He was determined to know, once and for all. The gathering emotion in his breast was growing into an unbearable pain.

"Claire," he said, coming nearer and nearer. "Could you love me?"

His hands were almost to her. She saw them coming; terror, love, happiness, anguish, and the desire to be his paralyzed her will. She did not move.

"Yes," she whispered, "I could."

He put his arms around her and lifted her until she was crushed against him.

"Do you love me, Claire?" he asked, tensely.

She did not answer, but her head sank against his shoulder.

Outside the cabin, she heard Philip's step in the snow.

"No!" she cried frantically, filled with dread. "No, no! Let me go!"

Lawrence, too, heard, and released her, stepping back indifferently, as though just going toward a chair.

The door opened, and Philip entered.

"Oh, you're back, I see." The artist was coldly cordial in his greeting.

"And I see you, which is more important," Philip laughed.

"I suppose so." Lawrence sat down, thoughtfully. "Claire has just scolded me for going out. She doesn't like to have me add to the bother I am already."

Claire was still under the spell of her own emotion, and she resented Lawrence's sang-froid. He was as cold as a block of stone. Her heart cried out against him because he could not see why she had said "No" to him, because he believed her! She wanted to cry, but did not dare.

"I told him we were worried," she said, indifferently.

"So we were." Philip was cheerful and friendly.

Lawrence buried himself from them both, and sat brooding, clothed in the blackness that blindness brought when it suddenly loomed before him as the wall between him and his life's desires. The brief instant Claire had been in his arms had made him feel that his life was intolerable without her, and that blindness was the curse of a double living death.

She had told him that she did not love him. She had struggled to be free.

Lawrence failed to read Claire aright because he had not seen her, and because his blindness made him uncertain of himself.

That was the truth of it all, the awful truth of his life.

He was always uncertain of himself because he was afraid of blindness.

He strutted, boasted, lied, and above all pretended to himself that he believed his hard philosophy because he was afraid, afraid of failing to do the things he wanted to do. He saw himself clearly now, he was a coward, a deceiving ape, a monkey caught in the terror of tangling roots, and denying it. He barked like a frightened dog, at the thing that was his master. He was gripped by life, tortured by life, denied death by life, and cheated by life of living. His imagination, fired by his pa.s.sion, leaped into play, and he felt himself a thousand times a slave, a chained prisoner in the hand of circ.u.mstance.

Philip was laughing gaily, and talking to Claire, who listened, answered, and was all the while lost in her own thought. When he had entered, Philip had looked quickly at the two to see if there was aught between them, and had found Lawrence colder, more despondent than ever.

He told himself that Lawrence had evidently pleaded with Claire for her love and been denied. At least, this blind man had not been successful, and Philip could afford to be good-humored. The more agreeable he was, the more Claire would turn to him from that dark, ungracious form yonder. His would be the victory of pleasant manners. Therefore he talked, gladly, smilingly, while Claire listened, or seemed to listen.

She was rebellious at the fear which had made her cry "No" to Lawrence, and at the same time glad that she had done so, afraid of the future, exasperated with Philip for coming in at the supreme moment, and angry with Lawrence for his stupidity.

Perhaps these tangled relations might have been cleared had it not been for a piece of folly more stupendous than any they had yet experienced.

This event occurred the day after Lawrence's walk in the snow.

Philip had stepped out for a few minutes to look at a near-by trap, and Claire and the artist were left alone for the first time since her denial. She wanted him to renew his suit, feared that he would, and sat waiting for him to speak.

But he remained silent, and at last she said, "Lawrence."

"Well?" He did not move.

The psychology of woman has been too often commented upon and attempted by those who thought they could explain. Why Claire was doing and saying what she did, she herself could not tell.

"Lawrence, don't you ever, ever act as you did yesterday again."

He smiled. "It would be dangerous if your gallant should come in less slowly." He was filled with a desire to hurt her.

Claire was angry with him for saying what was so utterly far from her mind and so different from what she wanted him to say.

"If my gallant should come in," she thrust coldly, "he would scarcely appreciate the melodrama you are playing."

Lawrence sat up with a jerk, his rage near the boiling point.

"What do you mean?" he demanded. "I have not interfered with your delightful episode, have I?"

"No, and you couldn't. I mean that my husband--he is my lover--for I know that is what you intend by 'gallant'--would scarcely appreciate the type of man who mopes and abuses the woman who does not care to lie in his arms."

Lawrence sat still, while a fierce, uncontrollable rage consumed him. He felt that to take this woman and whip her into submission would be a pleasure. He thought of the lash he had in his studio at home and wished it were in his hand. With the thought he rose and stepped swiftly toward Claire, his teeth set.

She saw him, and rose.

"I have one way of showing you who is master," he began, and stopped.

She had stepped forward and was standing almost against him.

"Even blindness does not allow you the freedom to threaten."

He shrank back and dropped once more into his chair.

Claire was talking rapidly, savagely. Later she was to be thrown into a despairing self-hate that kept her many a night in tears, but now she went on.

"Do you think I will overlook everything in you because I pity you?