The Grain of Dust Part 43

She gave him a sweet smile. "I'm not worth all the trouble you seem to have taken about me," said she.

He laughed; for he knew the intense vanity so pleasantly hidden beneath her shy and modest exterior. "On the contrary," said he good-humoredly, "you in your heart think yourself worth any amount of trouble. It's a habit we men have got you women into. And you--One of the many things that fascinate me in you is your supreme self-control. If the king were to come down from his throne and fall at your feet, you'd take it as a matter of course."

She gazed away dreamily. And he understood that her indifference to matters of rank and wealth and power was not wholly vanity but was, in part at least, due to a feeling that love was the only essential. Nor did he wonder how she was reconciling this belief of high and pure sentiment with what she was doing in marrying him. He knew that human beings are not consistent, cannot be so in a universe that compels them to face directly opposite conditions often in the same moment. But just as all lines are parallel in infinity, so all actions are profoundly consistent when referred to the infinitely broad standard of the necessity that every living thing shall look primarily to its own well being. Disobedience to this fundamental carries with it inevitable punishment of disintegration and death; and those catastrophes are serious matters when one has but the single chance at life, that will be repeated never again in all the eternities.

After their late lunch or early dinner, they drove to her lodgings. He went up with her and helped her to pack--not a long process, as she had few belongings. He noted that the stockings and underclothes she took from the bureau drawers were in anything but good condition, that the half dozen dresses she took from the closet and folded on the couch were about done for. Presently she said, cheerfully and with no trace of false shame:

"You see, I'm pretty nearly in rags."

"Oh, that's soon arranged," replied he. "Why bother to take these things? Why not give them to the maid?"

She debated with herself. "I think you're right," she decided. "Yes, I'll give them to Jennie."

"The underclothes, too," he urged. "And the hats."

It ended in her having left barely enough loosely to fill the bottom of a small trunk with two trays.

They drove to the Knickerbocker Hotel, and he took a small suite, one of the smallest and least luxurious in the house, for with all his desire to make her feel the contrast of her change of circ.u.mstances sharply, he could not forget how limited his income was, and how unwise it would be to have to move in a few days to humbler quarters. He hoped that the rooms, englamoured by the hotel's general air of costly luxury, would sufficiently impress her. And while she gave no strong indication but accepted everything in her wonted quiet, pa.s.sive manner, he was shrewd enough to see that she was content. "To-morrow," he said to himself, "after she has done some shopping, the last regret will leave her, and her memory of that clerk will begin to fade fast. I'll give her too much else to think about."

The following morning, when they faced each other at breakfast in their sitting room, he glanced at her from time to time in wonder and terror.

She looked not merely insignificant, but positively homely. Her skin had a sickly pallor; her hair seemed to be of many different and disagreeable shades of uninteresting dead yellow. Her eyes suggested faded blue china dishes, with colorless lashes and reddened edges of the lids. Her lips had lost their rosy freshness, her teeth their sparkling whiteness.

His heavy heart seemed to be resting nauseously upon the pit of his stomach. Was his infatuation sheer delusion, with no basis of charm in her at all? Was she, indeed, nothing but this unattractive, faded little commonplaceness?--a poor specimen of an inferior order of working girl?

What an awakening! And she was his _wife_!--was his companion for the yet more brilliant career he had resolved and was planning! He must introduce her everywhere, must see the not to be concealed amazement in the faces of his acquaintances, must feel the cruel covert laughter and jeering at his weak folly! Was there ever in history or romance a parallel to such fatuity as his? Why, people would be right in thinking him a sham, a mere bluffer at the high and strong qualities he was reputed to have.

Had Norman been, in fact, the man of ice and iron the compulsions of a career under the social system made him seem, the homely girl opposite him that morning would speedily have had something to think about other than her unhappiness of the woman who has given her person to one man and her heart to another. Instead, the few words he addressed to her were all gentleness and forbearance. Stronger than his chagrin was his pity for her--the poor, unconscious victim of his mad hallucination.

If she thought about the matter at all, she a.s.sumed that he was still the slave of her charms--for, the florid enthusiasm of man's pa.s.sion inevitably deludes the woman into fancying it objective instead of wholly subjective; and, only the rare very wise woman, after much experience, learns to be suspicious of the validity of her own charms and to concentrate upon keeping up the man's delusions.

At last he rose and kissed her on the brow and let his hand rest gently on her shoulder--what a difference between those caresses and the caresses that had made her beg him to be "kind" to her! Said he:

"Do you mind if I leave you alone for a while? I ought to go to the club and have the rest of my things packed and sent. I'll not be gone long--about an hour."

"Very well," said she lifelessly.

"I'll telephone my office that I'll not be down to-day."

With an effort she said, "There's no reason for doing that. I don't want to interfere with your business."

"I'm neglecting nothing. And that shopping must be done."

She made no reply, but went to the window, and from the height looked down and out upon the mighty spread of the city. He observed her a moment with a dazed pitying expression, took his hat and departed.

It was nearly two hours before he got together sufficient courage to return. He had been hoping--had been saying to himself with vigorous effort at confidence--that he had simply seen one more of the many transformations, each of which seemed to present her as a wholly different personality. When he should see her again, she would have wiped out the personality that had shocked and saddened him, would appear as some new variety of enchantress, perhaps even more potent over his senses than ever before. But a glance as he entered demolished that hope. She was no different than when he left. Evidently she had been crying, and spasms of that sort always accentuate every unloveliness. He did not try to nerve himself to kiss her, but said:

"It'll not take you long to get ready?"

She moved to rise from her languid rest upon the sofa. She sank back.

"Perhaps we'd better not go to-day," suggested she.

"Don't you feel well?" he asked, and his tone was more sympathetic than it would have been had his sympathy been genuine.

"Not very," replied she, with a faint deprecating smile. "And not very--not very----"

"Not very what?" he said, in a tone of encouragement.

"Not very happy," she confessed. "I'm afraid I've made a--a dreadful mistake."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Evidently she had been crying."]

He looked at her in silence. She could have said nothing that would have caused a livelier response within himself. His cynicism noted the fact that while he had mercifully concealed his discontent, she was thinking only of herself. But he did not blame her. It was only the familiar habit of the s.e.x, bred of man's a.s.siduous cultivation of its egotism. He said: "Oh, you'll feel differently about it later. Let's get some fresh air and see what the shops have to offer."

A pause, then she, timidly: "Would you mind very much if I--if I didn't--go on?"

"You mean, if you left me?"

She nodded without looking at him. He could not understand himself, but as he sat observing her, so young, so inexperienced and so undesirable, a pity of which he would not have dreamed his nature capable welled up in him, choking his throat with sobs he could scarcely restrain and filling his eyes with tears he had secretly to wipe away. And he felt himself seized of a sense of responsibility for her as strong in its solemn, still way as any of the paroxysms of his pa.s.sion had been.

He said: "My dear--you mustn't decide anything so important to you in a hurry."

A tremor pa.s.sed over her, and he thought she was going to dissolve in hysterics. But she exhibited once more that marvelous and mysterious self-control, whose secret had interested and baffled him. She said in her dim, quiet way:

"It seems to me I just can't stay on."

"You can always go, you know. Why not try it a few days?"

He could feel the trend of her thoughts, and in the way things often amuse us without in the least moving us to wish to laugh, he was amused by noting that she was trying to bring herself to stay on, out of consideration for _his_ feelings! He said with a kind of paternal tenderness:

"Whenever you want to go, I am willing to arrange things for you--so that you needn't worry about money. But I feel that, as I am older than you, I ought to do all I can to keep you from making a mistake you might soon regret."

She studied him dubiously. He saw that she--naturally enough--did not believe in his disinterestedness, that she hadn't a suspicion of his change, or, rather collapse, of feeling. She said:

"If you ask it, I'll stay a while. But you must promise to--to be kind to me."

There was only gentleness in his smile. But what a depth of satirical self-mockery and amus.e.m.e.nt at her innocent young egotism it concealed!

"You'll never have reason to speak of that again, my dear," said he.

"I--can--trust you?" she said.

"Absolutely," replied he. "I'll have another room opened into this suite. Would you like that?"

"If you--if you don't mind."

He stood up with sudden boyish buoyance. "Now--let's go shopping. Let's amuse ourselves."

She rose with alacrity. She eyed him uncertainly, then flung her arms round his neck and kissed him.