Together Part 62

When they reached the hall, Isabelle, followed by Cairy, entered from the opposite door. "h.e.l.lo, Tom; when did you get in?" Lane asked in his ordinary equable voice. "I sent your message, Isabelle." And he went to dress for dinner.

The dinner that night of the three men and the woman was tense and still at first. All the radiance had faded from Isabelle's face, leaving it white, and she moved as if she were numb. Vickers, watching her face, was sad at heart, miserable as he had been since he had seen her and Cairy together.

Already it had gone so far! ... Cairy was talkative, as always, telling stories of his trip to the South. At some light jeer over the California railroad situation, Lane suddenly spoke:--

"That is only one side, Tom. There is another."

Ordinarily he would have laughed at Cairy's flippant handling of the topics of the day. But to-night he was ready to challenge.

"The public doesn't want to hear the other side, it seems," Cairy retorted quickly.

Lane looked at him slowly as he might at a mosquito that he purposed to crush. "I think that some of the public wants to hear all sides," he replied quietly. "Let us see what the facts are."...

To-night he did not intend to be silenced by trivialities. Cairy had given him an opening on his own ground,--the vast field of fact. And he talked astonishingly well, with a grip not merely of the much-discussed railroad situation, but of business in general, economic conditions in America and abroad,--the trend of development. He talked in a large and leisurely way all through the courses, and when Cairy would interpose some objection, his judicious consideration eddied about it with a deferential sweep, then tossed it high on the sh.o.r.e of his b.u.t.tressed conclusions. Vickers listened in astonishment to the argument, while Isabelle, her hands clasped tight before her, did not eat, but shifted her eyes from her husband's face to Cairy's and back again as the talk flowed.

... "And granted," Lane said by way of conclusion, having thoroughly riddled Cairy's contentions, "that in some cases there has been trickery and fraud, is that any reason why we should indict the corporate management of all great properties? Even if all the law-breaking of which our roads are accused could be proved to be true, nevertheless any philosophic investigator would conclude that the good they have done--the efficient service for civilization--far outbalances the wrong--"

"Useful thieves and parasites!" Cairy interposed.

"Yes,--if you like to put it in those words," Lane resumed quietly. "The law of payment for service in this world of ours is not a simple one. For large services and great sacrifices, the rewards must be large. For large risks and daring efforts, the pay must be alluring. Every excellence of a high degree costs,--every advance is made at the sacrifice of a lower order of good."

"Isn't that a pleasant defence for crime?" Isabelle asked.

Lane looked at his wife for a long moment of complete silence.

"Haven't you observed that people break laws, and seem to feel that they are justified in doing so by the force of higher laws?"

Isabelle's eyes fell. He had seen, Vickers knew,--not only this afternoon, but all along! ... Presently they rose from the table, and as they pa.s.sed out of the room Isabelle's scarf fell from her neck. Lane and Cairy stooped to pick it up. Cairy had his hands on it first, but in some way it was the husband who took possession of it and handed it to the wife. Her hand trembled as she took it from him, and she hurried to her room.

"If you are interested in this matter of the Pacific roads, Tom," Lane continued, handing Cairy the cigarette box, "I will have my secretary look up the data and send it out here.... You will be with us some time, I suppose?"

Cairy mumbled his thanks.

After this scene Vickers felt nothing but admiration for his brother-in-law. The man knew the risks. He cared,--yes, he cared! Vickers was very sure of that. At dinner it had been a sort of modern duel, as if, with perfect courtesy and openness, Lane had taken the opportunity to try conclusions with the rival his wife had chosen to give him,--to tease him with his rapier, to turn his mind to her gaze.... And yet, even he must know how useless victory was to him, victory of this nature. Isabella did not love Cairy because of his intellectual grasp, though in the matters she cared for he seemed brilliant.

'It's to be a fight between them,' thought Vickers. 'He is giving the other one every chance. Oh, it is magnificent, this way of winning one's wife.

But the danger in it!' And Vickers knew now that Lane scorned to hold a woman, even his wife, in any other way. His wife should not be bound to him by oath, nor by custom, nor even by their child. Nor would he plead for himself in this contest. Against the other man, he would play merely himself,--the decent years of their common life, their home, her own heart.

And he was losing,--Vickers felt sure of that.

CHAPTER LII

Did he know that he had virtually lost when at the end of his brief vacation he went back to the city, leaving his rival alone in the field?

During those tense days Vickers's admiration for the man grew. He was good tempered and considerate, even of Cairy. Lane had always been a pleasant host, and now instead of avoiding Cairy he seemed to seek his society, made an effort to talk to him about his work, and advised him shrewdly in a certain transaction with a theatrical manager.

"If she should go away with Cairy," Vickers said to himself, "he will look out for them always!"

Husband and wife, so Vickers judged, did not talk together during all this time. Perhaps they did not dare to meet the issue openly. At any rate when Isabelle proposed driving John to the station the last night, he said kindly, "It's raining, my dear,--I think you had better not." So he kissed her in the hall before the others, made some commonplace suggestion about the place, and with his bag in hand left, nodding to them all as he got into the carriage. Isabelle, who had appeared dazed these days, as if, her heart and mind occupied in desperate inner struggle, her body lived mechanically, left the two men to themselves and went to her room. And shortly afterwards Cairy, who had become subdued, thoughtful, pleaded work and went upstairs.

When Vickers rose early the next morning, the country was swathed in a thin white mist. The elevation on which the house stood just pierced the fog, and, here and there below, the head of a tall pine emerged. Vickers had slept badly with a suffocating sense of impending danger. When he stepped out of the drawing-room on the terrace, the coolness of the damp fog and the stillness of the June morning not yet broken by bird notes soothed his troubled mind. All this silent beauty, serenely ordered nature--and tumultuous man! Out of the earthy elements of which man was compounded, he had sucked pa.s.sions which drove him hither and yon.... As he walked towards the west garden, the window above the terrace opened, and Isabelle, dressed in her morning clothes, looked down on her brother.

"I heard your step, Vick," she said in a whisper. Her face in the gray light was colorless, and her eyes were dull, veiled. "Wait for me, Bud!"

In a few moments she appeared, covered with a gray cloak, a soft saffron-colored veil drawn about her head. Slipping one hand under his arm,--her little fingers tightening on his flesh,--she led the way through the garden to the beech copse, which was filled with mist, then down to the stone bench, where she and Cairy had sat that other afternoon.

"How still it is!" she murmured, shivering slightly. She looked back to the copse, vague in the mist, and said: "Do you remember the tent we had here in the summers? We slept in it one night.... It was then I used to say that I was going to marry you, brother, and live with you for always because n.o.body else could be half so nice.... I wish I had! Oh, how I wish I had!

We should have been happy, you and I. And it would have been better for both of us."

She smiled at him wanly. He understood the reference she made to his misadventure, but said nothing. Suddenly she leaned her head on his shoulder.

"Vick, dear, do you think that any one could care enough to forgive everything? Do you love me enough, so you would love me, no matter what I did? ... That's real love, the only kind, that loves because it must and forgives because it loves! Could you, Vick? Could you?"

Vickers smoothed back her rumpled hair and drew the veil over it.

"You know that nothing would make any difference to me."

"Ah, you don't know! But perhaps you could--" Then raising her head she spoke with a harder voice. "But that's weak. One must expect to pay for what one does,--pay everything. Oh, my G.o.d!"

The fog had retreated slowly from their level. They stood on the edge looking into its depth. Suddenly Vickers exclaimed with energy:--

"You must end this, Isabelle! It will kill you."

"I wish it might!"

"End it!" and he added slowly, "Send him away--or let me take you away!"

"I--I--can't,--Vick!" she cried. "It has got beyond me.... It is not just for myself--just me. It's for _him_, too. He needs me. I could do so much for him! And here I can do nothing."

"And John?"

"Oh, John! He doesn't care, really--"

"Don't say that!"

"If he did--"

"Isabelle, he saw you and Tom, here, the afternoon Tom came!"

She flushed and drew herself away from her brother's arms.

"I know it--it was the first time that--that anything happened! ... If he cared, why didn't he say something then, do something, strike me--"