Youth Challenges Part 31

"What--what do you mean?" she asked, fearfully, hopefully.

"We'll pretend we aren't married at all," he said. "We'll make believe we're at a house party or something, and I just met you. I'm no end interested in you right off, of course. I haven't any idea how you feel about me....We'll start off as if we just met, and it's up to me to make you fall in love with me....I'll bring out the whole bag of tricks. Flowers and candy and such like, and walks and rides. I'll get right down and pursue you....After a while you'll--maybe--get so far as to call me by my first name." He laughed like a small boy. "And some day you'll let me hold your hand--pretending you don't know I'm holding it at all....And I'll be making love to you to--to beat the band.

Regular crush I'll have on you....What do you think?"

"You mean REALLY?...You mean we'll LIVE like that? That we won't be married, but do like you said?" She was staring at him with big, unbelieving eyes.

"That's the idea exactly....We won't be married till I WIN you. That's the game....And I'll try hard--you haven't any notion how hard I'll try." There was something pleading, pathetic in his voice, that went to her heart.

"Oh," she said, breathlessly, "that's DEAR of you.... You're good--so GOOD.... I--I hate myself.... You'll do THAT?... I didn't--know anybody--could be--so--so good." She swayed, swayed toward him in a storm of tears, and he drew her face down on his shoulder while with awkward hand he patted her shoulder.

"There.... There..." he said, clumsily, happily. She did not draw away from him, but lay there wetting his coat with her tears, her heart swelling with thanks-giving; fear vanished, and something was born in her breast that would never die. The thing that was born was a perfect trust in this man she had married, and a perfect trust is one of the rarest and most wonderful things under the sun.

For so young a man, Bonbright felt singularly fatherly. He held his wife gently, silently, willing that she should cry, with a song in his heart because she nestled to him and wept on his shoulder. If he deluded himself that she clung to him because of other, sweeter emotion than grief, relief, it did not diminish his happiness. The moment was the best he had known for months, perhaps the best he had ever known.

Ruth sat up and wiped her eyes. He looked into them, saw them cleared now of dread, and it was a sufficient reward. For her part, in that instant, Ruth almost loved Bonbright, not as lovers love, but as one loves a benefactor, some one whose virtues have earned affection. But it was not that sort that Bonbright asked of her, she knew full well.

"Now--er--Miss Frazer," he said, briskly, "I don't want to appear forward for a new acquaintance, but if I suggested that there was a bully play in town--sort of tentatively, you know--what would happen to me?"

"Why, Mr. Foote," she replied, able to enter into the spirit of the pretense, "I think you'd find yourself in the awkward position of a young man compelled to buy two seats."

"No chaperons?"

"Where I come from," she said, "chaperons are not in style."

"And we'll go some place after the play....I want to make the most of my opportunity, because I've got to work all day to-morrow. It's a shame, too, because I have a feeling that I'd like to monopolize you."

"Aren't you going a bit fast for a comparative stranger?" she asked, merrily.

He pretended to look crestfallen. "You sha'n't have to put me in my place again," he promised; "but wait--wait till we've known each other a week!...Do you know, Miss Frazer, you have a mighty charming smile!"

"It has been remarked before," she said.

"We mustn't keep our hostess waiting. I'm afraid we'll be late for dinner, now." He chuckled at the idea.

"I never have eaten dinner with a man in evening dress," she said, with a touch of seriousness. "In the country I come from the men don't wear them." How true that was--in the country she came from, the country of widows who kept boarding houses, of laborers, of Dulac and their sort!

She was in another land now, a land she had been educated to look upon with enmity; the land of the oppressor. Little revolutionist--she was to learn much of that country in the days to come and to know that in it bad men and good men, worthy women and trifling women, existed in about the same ratio as in her own familiar land....Bonbright insisted upon buying her violets--the first costly flowers she had ever worn.

They occupied desirable seats--and the few plays Ruth had seen she had seen from gallery heights! Fortunately it was a bright play, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with laughter and gayety, presenting no squalid problems, holding up to the shrinking eyes of the audience no far-fetched, impossible tangles of s.e.x. They enjoyed it. Ruth enjoyed it. That she could do so is wonderful, perhaps, but then, so many human capabilities are wonderful!

Men about to be hanged eat a hearty meal with relish.... How much more might Ruth find pleasure since she had been granted a reprieve!

When the curtain descended they moved toward the exits, waiting for the crowd to clear the way. Bonbright's attention was all for Ruth, but her eyes glanced curiously about, observing the well-fed, well-kept, brilliantly dressed men and women--men and women of the world to which she belonged now. As one approached them and saw them, they were singularly human. Their faces were not different from faces she was accustomed to. Cleaner they were, perhaps, with something more of refinement. They were better dressed, but there she saw the same smiles, the same weariness, the same charm, the same faces that told their tales of hard work and weary bodies.... They were just human beings, all of them, HER sort and these....

Suddenly her fingers tightened on her husband's arm. He heard her draw a quick, startled little breath, and looked up to see his father and mother approaching them, from the opposite direction. Bonbright had not expected this. It was the last place in the world he had thought to encounter his parents--but there they were, not to be avoided. He stopped, stiffened. Ruth stole a glance at his face and saw it suddenly older, tenser.

Mr. and Mrs. Foote approached slowly. Ruth knew the moment Mrs. Foote saw her husband, for the stately woman bit her lip and spoke hurriedly to Bonbright's father, who glanced at Bonbright and then at her uncertainly. Ruth saw that Mrs. Foote held her husband's arm, did not allow him to turn aside, but led him straight toward them.... Bonbright stood stiff, expectant. On came his father and mother, with no quickening of pace. Bonbright's eyes moved from one face to the other as they approached. Now they were face to face. Mrs. Foote's eyes encountered Ruth's, moved away from the girl to her son, moved on--giving no sign of recognition. Mr. Foote looked stonily before him....And so they pa.s.sed, refusing even a bow to their son, the only child that had been given them....That others had seen the episode Ruth knew, for she saw astonished glances, saw quick whisperings.

Then she looked up at her husband. He had not turned to look after his parents, but was staring before him, his face white, his eyes burning, little knots of muscle gathered at the points of his jaw. She pressed his arm gently and heard his quick intake of breath--so like a sob.

"Come," he said, harshly. "Come."

"It was cruel--heartless," she said, fiercely, quickly partisan, making his quarrel her own, with no thought that the slight had been for her as well as for him.

"Come," he repeated.

They went out into the street, Bonbright quivering with shame and anger, Ruth not daring to speak, so white, so hurt was his face, so fierce the smolder in his eyes.

"You see..." he said, presently. "You see...."

"I've cost you THAT," she said.

"That," he said, slowly, as if he could not believe his words, "that was my father and--my mother."

Ruth was frightened. Not until this moment did she realize what she had done; not until now did the teeth of remorse clench upon her. To marry her--because he loved her--this boy at her side must suffer THIS. It was her doing....She had cheated him into it. She had cost him this and was giving nothing to pay for it. He had foreseen it. Last night he had cut adrift from his parents because of her--willingly. She knew he would have made, would make, any sacrifice for her....And she had married him with no love in her heart, married him to use him for her own ends!

She dared not doubt that what she had done was right. She dared not question her act, nor that the end justified the means she had used.

...But the end was not to be attained. By the act of marrying Bonbright she had made it impossible for herself to further the Cause....It was a vicious circle of events.

As she watched his face she became all woman; revolutionist and martyr disappeared. Her heart ached for him, her sympathy went out to him.

"Poor boy!..." she said, and pressed his arm again.

"It was to--be expected," he said, slowly. "I'm glad it's over....I knew what would happen, so why should the happening of it trouble me?...There have been six generations in my family that would do that thing.... Ruth, the Foote Tradition is ended. It ended with me. Such things have no right to exist.... Six generations of it...."

She did not speak, but she was resolving silently: "I'll be good to him. I'll make him happy. I'll make up to him for this...."

He shook himself. "It doesn't matter," he said. "We sha'n't let it interfere with our evening....Come, Miss Frazer, where shall we lunch?"

CHAPTER XXI

All of Ruth's life had been spent in contact with the abnormal, the ultraradical. The tradition which time had reared about HER family--as powerful in its way as the Foote Tradition, but separated from it by a whole world--had brought acquaintanceship and intimacy with strange people and strange cults. In the parlor of her home she had listened to frank, fantastic discussions; to lawless theories. These discussions, beginning anywhere, ended always with the reform of the marriage relation. Anarchist, socialist, nihilist, atheist, Utopian, altruist--all tinkered with the family group, as if they recognized that the civilization they were at war with rested upon this and no other foundation.

So Ruth was well aware how p.r.o.ne the individual is to experiment with the processes of forming and continuing the relations between men and women which have for their cardinal object the peopling of the earth.

But in spite of the radicalism which was hers by right of inheritance and training, she had not been attracted by any of them. A certain basic sense of balance had enabled her to see these things were but vain gropings in the dark; that they might flower successfully in abnormal individual cases--orchid growths--but that each was doomed to failure as a universal solution. For mankind in bulk is normal, and its safety lies in a continuance of normality. Ages had evolved the marriage relation as it existed; ages might evolve it into something different as sudden revolution could not. It was the one way, and she knew it to be the one way.

Therefore she recognized that Bonbright and herself were embarked on one of these unstable, experimental craft. She saw, as he did not, that it was unseaworthy and must founder at the first touch of storm. She pinned no false hopes to it; recognized it as a makeshift, welcome to her only as a reprieve--and that it must soon be discarded for a vessel whose planking was reality and whose sails were woven of normal stuff.

As the days went by and they were settled in their little flat, living the exotic life which temporarily solved their problem, she knew it could not last; feared it might dissolve at any moment. Inevitable signs of the gust that should destroy it had been apparent...and her dread returned. Even Bonbright was able to see that his plan was not a perfect success.

If it had not been for Dulac.... He complicated the thing unendurably.... If Bonbright were still heir apparent to the Foote dynasty, and her plan might be carried out.... She felt a duty toward Dulac--she had promised to hold him always in her thoughts, felt he was ent.i.tled to a sort of spiritual loyalty from her. And, deprived of him, she fancied her love for him was as deep as the sea and as enduring as time....

Long days alone, with only the slightest labor to occupy her hands and mind, gave her idle time--fertile soil for the raising of a dark crop of morbid thoughts. She brooded much, and, brooding, became restless, unhappy, and she could not conceal it from Bonbright when he came home eagerly for his dinner, ready to take up with boyish hope the absurd game he had invented. She allowed herself to think of Dulac; indeed, she forced herself to think of him....

Five days she had been married, when, going to the door in answer to the bell, she opened it, to find Dulac standing there. She uttered a little cry of fright and half closed the door. He held it open with his knee.

Sudden terror, not of him, but of herself, caused her to thrust against the door with all her strength, but he forced it open slowly and entered.