The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig Part 37

"_I_!"

"You, yourself. Have you not said you could not live on what I get as a public man, and that if I were a gentleman I'd not expect you to?"

Margaret stared foolishly at this unescapable inference from her own statements and admissions during his cross-examination. She began to feel helpless in his hands--and began to respect him whom she could not fool.

"I know," he went on, "you're too intelligent not to have appreciated that either we must live on my salary or I must leave public life."

He laughed--a quiet, amused laugh, different from any she had ever heard from him. Evidently, Joshua Craig in intimacy was still another person from the several Joshua Craigs she already knew. "And," said he, in explanation of his laughter, "I thought you married me because I had political prospects. I fancied you had real ambition.... I might have known! According to the people of your set, to be in that set is to have achieved the summit of earthly ambition--to dress, to roll about in carriages, to go from one fussy house to another, from one showy entertainment to another, to eat stupid dinners, and caper or match picture cards afterward, to grin and chatter, to do nothing useful or even interesting--" He laughed again, one of his old-time, boisterous outbursts. But it seemed to her to fit in, to be the laughter of mountain and forest and infinity of s.p.a.ce at her and her silly friends.

"And you picture ME taking permanent part in that show, or toiling to find you the money to do it with. ME!... Merely because I've been, for a moment, somewhat bedazzled by its cheap glitter."

Margaret felt that he had torn off the mask and had revealed his true self. But greater than her interest in this new personality was her anger at having been deceived--self-deceived. "You asked me how I'd like to live," cried she, color high and eyes filled with tears of rage. "I answered your question, and you grow insulting."

"I'm doing the best I know how," said he.

After a moment she got herself under control. "Then," asked she, "what have you to propose?"

"I can't tell you just now," replied he, and his manner was most disquieting. "To-morrow--or next day."

"Don't you think I'm right about it being humiliating for us to go back to Was.h.i.+ngton and live poorly?"

"Undoubtedly. I've felt that from the beginning."

"Then you agree with me?"

"Not altogether," said he. And there was a quiet sternness in his smile, in his gentle tone, that increased her alarms. "I've been hoping, rather," continued he, "that you'd take an interest in my career."

"I do," cried she.

"Not in MY career," replied he, those powerful, hewn features of his sad and bitter. "In your own--in a career in which I'd become as contemptible as the rest of the men you know--a poor thing like Grant Arkwright. Worse, for I'd do very badly what he has learned to do well."

"To be a well-bred, well-mannered gentleman is no small achievement,"

said she with a sweetness that was designed to turn to gall after it reached him.

He surveyed her tranquilly. She remembered that look; it was the same he had had the morning he met her at the Waldorf elevator and took her away and married her. She knew that the crisis had come and that he was ready. And she? Never had she felt less capable, less resolute.

"I've been doing a good deal of thinking--thinking about us--these last few days--since I inflicted that scratch on you," said he. "Among other things, I've concluded you know as little about what const.i.tutes a real gentleman as I do; also, that you have no idea what it is in you that makes you a lady--so far as you are one."

She glanced at him in fright, and that expression of hers betrayed the fundamental weakness in her--the weakness that underlies all character based upon the achievements of others, not upon one's own. Margaret was three generations away from self-reliance. Craig's speech sounded like a deliberate insult, deliberate attempt to precipitate a quarrel, an estrangement. There had been nothing in her training to prepare her for such a rude, courage-testing event as that.

"Do you remember--it was the day we married--the talk we had about my relatives?"

She colored, was painfully embarra.s.sed, strove in vain to conceal it.

"About your relatives?" she said inquiringly.

He made an impatient gesture. "I know you remember. Well, if I had been a gentleman, or had known what gentleman meant, I'd never have said--or, rather, looked what I did then. If you had known what a gentleman is, if you had been a lady, you'd have been unable to go on with a man who had shown himself such a blackguard."

"You are unjust to us both," she eagerly interrupted. "Joshua--you--"

"Don't try to excuse me--or yourself," said he peremptorily. "Now, you thought what I showed that day--my being ashamed of honester, straighter--more American--people than you or I will ever be--you thought that was the real me. Thank G.o.d, it wasn't. But"--he pointed a fascinating forefinger at her--"it was the me I'd be if you had your way."

She could not meet his eyes.

"I see you understand," said he earnestly. "That's a good sign."

"Yes, I do understand," said she. Her voice was low and her head was still hanging. "I'm glad you've said this. I--I respect you for it."

"Don't fret about me," said he curtly. "Fret about your own melancholy case. What do your impulses of decent feeling amount to, anyway? An inch below the surface you're all for the other sort of thing--the cheap and nasty. If you could choose this minute you'd take the poorest of those drawing-room marionettes before the finest real man, if he didn't know how to wear his clothes or had trouble with his grammar."

She felt that there was more than a grain of truth in this; at any rate, denial would be useless, as his tone was the tone of settled conviction.

"We've made a false start," proceeded he. He rose, lighted a cigarette.

"We're going to start all over again. I'll tell you what I'm going to do about it in a day or two."

And he strolled away to the landing. She saw him presently enter a canoe; under his powerful, easy stroke it shot away, to disappear behind the headland. She felt horribly lonely and oppressed--as if she would never see him again. "He's quite capable of leaving me here to find my way back to Was.h.i.+ngton alone--quite capable!" And her lip curled.

But the scorn was all upon the surface. Beneath there was fear and respect--the fear and respect which those demoralized by unearned luxury and by the purposeless life always feel when faced by strength and self-reliance in the crises where externals avail no more than its paint and its bunting a wars.h.i.+p in battle. She knew she had been treating him as no self-respecting man who knew the world would permit any woman to treat him. She knew her self-respect should have kept her from treating him thus, even if he, in his ignorance of her world and awe of it, would permit. But more than from shame at vain self-abas.e.m.e.nt her chagrin came from the sense of having played her game so confidently, so carelessly, so stupidly that he had seen it. She winced as she recalled how shrewdly and swiftly he had got to the very bottom of her, especially of her selfishness in planning to use him with no thought for his good. Yet so many women thus used their husbands; why not she? "I suppose I began too soon.... No, not too soon, but too frigidly." The word seemed to her to illuminate the whole situation. "That's it!" she cried. "How stupid of me!"

CHAPTER XXIII

WHAT THE MOON SAW AND DID

Physical condition is no doubt the dominant factor in human thought and action. State of soul is, as Doctor Schulze has observed, simply the egotistic human vanity for state of body. If the health of the human race were better, if sickness, the latent and the revealed together, were not all but universal, human relations would be wonderfully softened, sweetened and simplified. Indigestion, with its various ramifications, is alone responsible for most of the crimes, catastrophes and cruelties, public and private discord; for it tinges human thought and vision with pessimistic black or b.l.o.o.d.y red or envious green or degenerate yellow instead of the normal, serene and invigorating white.

All the world's great public disturbers have been diseased. As for private life, its bad of all degrees could, as to its deep-lying, originating causes, be better diagnosed by physician than by psychologist.

Margaret, being in perfect physical condition, was deeply depressed for only a short time after the immediate cause of her mood ceased to be active. An hour after Joshua had revealed himself in thunder and lightning, and had gone, she was almost serene again, her hopefulness of healthy youth and her sense of humor in the ascendent. Their stay in the woods was drawing to an end. Soon they would be off for Lenox, for her Uncle Dan's, where there would be many people about and small, perhaps no, opportunity for direct and quick action and result. She reviewed her conduct and felt that she had no reason to reproach herself for not having made an earlier beginning in what she now saw should have been her tactics with her "wild man." How could she, inexpert, foresee what was mockingly obvious to hindsight? Only by experiment and failure is the art of success learned. Her original plan had been the best possible, taking into account her lack of knowledge of male nature and the very misleading indications of his real character she had got from him. In her position would not almost any one have decided that the right way to move him was by holding him at respectful distance and by indirect talk, with the inevitable drift of events doing the princ.i.p.al work--gradually awakening him to the responsibilities and privileges which his entry into a higher social station implied?

But no time must now be lost; the new way, which experience had revealed, must be taken forthwith and traveled by forced marches. Before they left the woods she must have led him through all the gradations of domestic climate between their present frosty if kindly winter, and summer, or, at least, a very balmy spring. From what she knew of his temperament she guessed that once she began to thaw he would forthwith whirl her into July. She must be prepared to accept that, however--repellent though the thought was--she a.s.sured herself it was most repellent. She prided herself on her skill at catching and checking herself in self-deception; but it somehow did not occur to her to contrast her rather listless previous planning with the energy and interest she at once put into this project for supreme martyrdom, as she regarded it.

When he came back that evening she was ready. But not he; he stalked in, sulking and bl.u.s.tering, tired, ignoring her, doing all the talking himself, and departing for bed as soon as dinner was over. She felt as if he had repulsed her, though, in fact, her overtures were wholly internal and could not, by any chance, have impressed him. Bitter against him and dreading the open humiliation she would have to endure before she could make one so self-absorbed see what she was about, she put out her light early, with intent to rise when he did and be at breakfast before he could finish. She lay awake until nearly dawn, then fell into a deep sleep. When she woke it was noon; she felt so greatly refreshed that her high good humor would not suffer her to be deeply resentful against him for this second failure. "No matter," reflected she. "He might have suspected me if I'd done anything so revolutionary as appear at breakfast. I'll make my beginning at lunch."

She was now striving, with some success, to think of him as a tyrant whom she, luckless martyr, must cajole. "I'm going the way of all the married women," thought she. "They soon find there's no honorable way to get their rights from their masters, find they simply have to degrade themselves." Yes, he was forcing her to degrade herself, to simulate affection when the reverse was in her heart. Well, she would make him pay dearly for it--some day. Meanwhile she must gain her point. "If I don't, I'd better not have married. To be Mrs. is something, but not much if I'm the creature of his whims."

She put off lunch nearly an hour; but he did not come, did not reappear until dinner was waiting. "I've been over to town," he explained, "doing a lot of telegraphing that was necessary." He was in vast spirits, delighted with himself, volubly boastful, so full of animal health and life and of joy in the prospect of food and sleep that mental worries were as foreign to him as to the wild geese flying overhead.

He snuffed the air in which the odor of cooking was mingled deliciously with the odor of the pines. "If they don't hurry up dinner," said he, "I'll rush in and eat off the stove. We used to at home sometimes. It's great fun."

She smiled tolerantly. "I've missed you," said she, and she was telling herself that this statement of a literal truth was the quintessence of hypocritical cajolery. "You might have taken me along."

He gave her a puzzled look. "Oh," said he finally, "you've been thinking over what I said."

This was disconcerting; but she contrived to smile with winning frankness. "Yes," replied she. "I've been very wrong, I see." She felt proud of the adroitness of this--an exact truth, yet wholly misleading.

His expression told her that he was congratulating himself on his wisdom and success in having given her a sharp talking to; that he was thinking it had brought her to her senses, had restored her respect for him, had opened the way for her love for him to begin to show itself--that love which he so firmly believed in, egotist that he was! Could anything be more infuriating? Yet--after all, what difference did it make, so long as he yielded? And once she had him enthralled, then--ah, yes--THEN!

Meanwhile she must remember that the first principle of successful deception is self-deception, and must try to convince herself that she was what she was pretending to be.