The Sisters In Law Part 55

"Sometimes I think I'll buy this house. I could for a song. Heavens!

_How_ I have longed for solitude in the last four years! I could have it here with my books, and go to Paris as often as I wished. It would be an ideal life. I could afford a car, and to make this house very livable. And that garden ... between those gray high walls ... in there ... that would...."

She had forgotten Kirkpatrick and was staring through the long windows at the dripping trees and the riot of green. "There is something about the old world ... in its byways like this ... not in its hateful capitals...."

"Do you mean there's something you want to forget? That this place would be consolin' like?"

She met Kirkpatrick's sharp dilated eyes with smiling composure. "This war, and much that has happened--incidental to it; yes."

"You could forget it easier in California."

"I should forget too much."

"It's awful to think of you not comin' back, though I understand well enough. Europe suits you all right. But ... but...."

He rose abruptly almost overturning his fragile chair.

"Good-by, and as I guess it _is_ good-by I'll tell you something I wouldn't if there was any chance of my seein' you like I used to. It's this: If I'm more of a socialist than ever it's because of _you_! If my cla.s.s hatred's blacker than ever _you're_ the cause! _You'd_ have made me a socialist if I wasn't one before. _Jesus Christ_! When I think what I might have had if we'd all been born alike! Had the same chances! If you hadn't been born at the top and I down at the bottom ... common ... not even educated except by myself after I was too old to get what a boy gets that goes to school long enough. I wouldn't mind bein' born ugly. There's plenty of men at the top that's ugly enough, G.o.d knows. But just one generation with money irons out the commonness.

That's it! I'm common! Common! Common. _Democracy_! Oh, G.o.d!"

He caught up his cap and rushed out of the room,

Alexina ran after him and caught him at the garden door. Like all beautiful women who have listened to many declarations of love (or avoided them) she was inclined to be cruel to men that roused no response in her. But she felt only pity for Kirkpatrick.

She had intended merely to insist upon shaking hands with him, but when she saw his contorted face she slipped her arm round his neck and kissed him warmly on the cheek.

Then she pushed him gently through the door and locked it.

CHAPTER X

I

Alexina had finished giving tea to two officers, a surgeon and a medecin major, and, enchanted almost as much by the sugar and the white bread as by their hostess, refreshingly beautiful and elegant in her velvet gown of pervenche blue, they had lingered until nearly six. As the concierge had gone out on an errand of her own Alexina had opened the garden door for them, and after they disappeared she stood looking at the street, which always fascinated her.

It was very narrow and crooked and gray. Her house was the only one with a garden in front; the others rose perpendicularly from the narrow pavement, tall and close and rather imposing. Each was heavily shuttered, the shutters as gray as the walls. The town had been evacuated during the first Battle of the Marne and only the poor had returned. The well-to-do provincials in this street had had homes elsewhere, perhaps a flat in Paris; or they had established themselves in the south.

The street had an intensely secretive air, brooding, waiting. Soon all these houses would be reopened, the dull calm life of a provincial town would flow again, the only difference being that the women who went in and out of those narrow doors and down this long and twisted street would wear black; but for the most part they would sit in their gardens behind, secluded from every eye, as indifferent to their neighbors as of old, with that ingrained unchangeable bourgeois suspicion and exclusiveness; and the facades, the street itself, would look little less secretive than now.

II

Nowhere could she find such seclusion if she wished for it. This house was the only one in the street that belonged to a member of the n.o.blesse, and the bourgeoisie had as little "use" for the n.o.blesse as the n.o.blesse for the bourgeoisie.

For the moment Alexina felt that the house was hers, and the street itself. She was literally its only inhabitant. As she stood looking up and down its misty grayness she felt more peaceful than she had felt for many days. There were certain fierce terrible emotions that she never wanted to feel again, and one of them was ruthlessness. She had done much good in the past four years; she had been, for the most part, high-minded, self-sacrificing, indifferent to the petty things of life, even to discomfort, and it had given her a sense of elevation--when she had had time to think about it. It was only certain extraordinary circ.u.mstances that brought other qualities as inherent as life itself surging to the top. It was demoralizing even to fight them, for that involved recognition. Better that she protect herself from their a.s.saults. True, she was young, but she had had her fill of drama. All her old cravings, never satisfied in the old days of peace without and insurgence within, had been surfeited by this close personal contact with the greatest drama in history.

Why return to Paris at all? Why not settle down here at once, live a life of thought and study, and give abundant help where help was needed? There were villages within a few miles where the inhabitants were living in the ruins. (The Germans in their first retreat had been too hard pressed to linger long enough to set fire to this large town and they had not been able to reach it during their second drive.)

That had been a last flicker of romance at the emba.s.sy ... a last resurgence of the evil the war had done her, as she sat in her cold room ... a last blaze of sheer femininity when she discovered that Gora had come to Paris in search of Gathbroke....

She felt as if she had escaped from a bottomless pit.... a.s.suredly she had the will and the character to make herself now into whatever she chose to be ... let Gora have him if she could find him and keep him.... Better that than hating herself for the rest of her life ...

love, far from being enn.o.bling, seemed to her the most demoralizing of the pa.s.sions ... there had been something enn.o.bling, expanding, soul-stirring in hating the brutal mediaeval race that had devastated France ... but in the reaction from her fierce registered vow to s.n.a.t.c.h a man from a forlorn unhappy woman no matter what her claims and have him for her own, she had shrunk from this new revelation of her depths in horror.... One could not live with that....

III

A man in khaki was walking quickly down the long crooked street. As he approached she saw the red on his collar. He was a British officer. In another moment she was shaking hands with Gathbroke.

She was far more composed than he, although she felt as if the world had turned over, and there was a roar in her ears like the sound of distant guns. She had a vague impression that the war had begun again.

"You are the last person I should have expected to meet here. There is no British--"

"I came here to see you. I got your address from Madaine de Morsigny. I saw her last night at a reception and recognized her. She was at that ball in San Francisco. I introduced myself at once and asked her if you were in Paris. I was sure it was you ... that night...."

"Will you come in!"

He followed her into the salon, softly lit by candles. She felt that fate for once had been kind. It was difficult to imagine surroundings or conditions in which she would look lovelier, be seen to greater advantage. But her hands were cold.

"It is too late for tea but perhaps you will share my frugal supper."

"If it won't inconvenience you too much. Thanks."

She sat down in the wide brocaded chair with its tarnished back. He stood looking at her for a moment, then took a turn up and down the long room.

Certainly she could not object to him to-day on the score of youth and freshness. His hair had lost its brightness. His face was very brown and thin and the lines if not deep were visible even in the candle light. His nose and mouth had the hard determination that life, more especially life in war time, develops; it was no casual trick of Nature with him. His eyes were still the same bright golden hazel, but their expression was keen and alert, and commanding. She fancied they could look as hard as those features more susceptible to modeling.

IV

"Smoke if you like."

"Thanks. I don't want to smoke."

Finally when Alexina was gripping the arms of the chair he began to speak.

"I feel rather an a.s.s. I hardly know how to begin. I'm no longer twenty-three. I've lived several lifetimes since this war began, and made up my mind twice that I was going out. I should feel ninety.

Somehow I don't feel vastly different from that day when I grabbed you like a brute because I wanted you more than anything on earth....