The Restless Sex

"You're like a fussy old hen, Jim! Let that chick alone and take me somewhere to lunch! I've had a strenuous lesson and I'm starved – "

She dodged his demonstration, eluding him with swift grace, and put the desk between them.

"No! No! I chanced, just now, to witness the meeting of the Belters, and that glimpse of conjugal respectability has stiffened my moral backbone… Besides, I'm deeply worried about you, Jim."

"About me?"

"Certainly. It fills me with anxiety that you should so far degrade yourself as to attempt to kiss a respectable married woman – "

She dodged again, just in time, but he vaulted over the desk and she found herself imprisoned in his arms.

"I'll submit if you don't rumple me," she said. "I've such a darling gown on – be very circumspect, Jim – "

She lifted her face and met his lips, retained them with a little sigh, placing her gloved hands behind his head. They became very still, very serious; her grey eyes grew vague under his deep gaze which caressed them; her arms drew his head closer to her face. Then, very slowly, their lips parted, and she laid her hand on his shoulder and drew his arm around her waist.

In silence they paced the studio for a while, slowly, and in leisurely step with each other deeply preoccupied.

"Steve," he said, "it's the first week in June. The city will be intolerable in a fortnight. Don't you think that we ought to open Runner's Rest?"

"You are going up there with Oswald, aren't you?" she asked, raising her eyes.

"Yes, in a day or two. Don't you think we'd better try to get some servants and open the house for the summer?"

She considered the matter:

"You know I've never been there since you went abroad, Jim. I believe we would find it delightful. Don't you?"

"I do, indeed."

"But – is it going to be all right – just you and I alone there? … You know even when we considered each other as brother and sister there was a serious question about our living together unless an older woman were installed" – she laughed – "to keep us in order. It was silly, then, but – I don't know whether it's superfluous now."

"Would Helen come?"

"Like a shot! Of course that's the solution. We can have parties, too… I wonder what is going to happen to us."

"What!"

"To you and me, Jim… It's becoming such a custom – your arm around me this way; and that secret and deliciously uneasy thrill I feel when I come to you alone – and all my increasing load of guilt – "

"There's only one end to it, Steve."

"Jim, I can't tell him. I'm afraid! … Something happened once… I was scarcely eighteen – " She suddenly clung to him, pressing her face convulsively against his shoulder. He could feel the shiver passing over her.

"Tell me," he said.

"Not now… There doesn't seem to be any way of letting you understand… I was not yet eighteen. I never dreamed of – of love – between you and me… And Oswald fascinated me. He does now. He always will. There is something about him that draws me, influences me, stirs me deeply – deeply – "

She turned, looked at him, flung one arm around his neck:

"Will you let me tell you this and still understand? It's a – a different kind of affection… But it's deep, powerful – there are bonds that hold me – that I can't break – dare not… Always he was attractive to me – a strange, sensitive, unhappy boy… And then – something happened."

"Will you tell me what?"

"Oh, Jim, it involves a question of honour… I can't betray confidence… Let me tell you something. Did you know that Oswald, ever since you and he were boys together, cared more for your good opinion than for anything else in the world?"

"That's strange."

"He is strange. He has told me that, as a boy, one of the things that most deeply hurt him was that he was never invited to your house. And I can see that the fact that dad never took any notice of his father mortified him bitterly."

"What has this to do with you and me, Steve?"

"A great deal, unhappily. The seeds of tragedy lay in the boy's soul of Oswald Grismer – a tender sensitiveness almost girlish, which he concealed by assertiveness and an apparent callous disregard of opinion; a pride so deep that in the shock of injury it became morbid… But, Jim, deep in that unhappy boy's soul lay also nobler qualities – blind loyalty, the generosity that costs something – the tenderness that renounces… Oh, I know – I know. I was only a girl and I didn't understand. I was fascinated by the golden, graceful youth of him – thrilled by the deeper glimpse of that mystery which attracts all women – the veiled unhappiness of a man's secret soul… That drew me; the man, revealed, held me… I have told you that I never dreamed there was any question about you. I was obsessed, wrapped up in this man so admired, so talented, so utterly misunderstood by all the world excepting me. It almost intoxicated me to know that I alone knew him – that I alone was qualified to understand, sympathize, advise, encourage, rebuke this strange, inexplicable golden figure about whom and whose rising talent the world of art was gossiping and guessing all around me."

After a long silence he said:

"Is that all you have to tell me?"

"Nearly all… His father died… My aunt died. These facts seem unrelated. But they were not… And then – then – Oswald lost his money… Everything… And I – married him… There was more than I have told you… I think I may tell this – I had better tell you, perhaps… Did you ever know that my aunt employed lawyers to investigate the matter concerning the money belonging to Chiltern Grismer's sister, who was my mother's mother?"

"No."

"She did. I have seen Mr. Grismer at the hospital once or twice. He came to see my aunt in regard to the investigation… The last time he came, my aunt was ill, threatened with pneumonia. I saw him passing through the grounds. He looked frightfully haggard and ill. He came out of the infirmary where my aunt was, in about an hour, and walked slowly down the gravel path as though he were in a daze… He died shortly afterward… And then my aunt died… And Oswald lost his money… And I – married him."

"Is that all you can tell me?"

After a silence she looked up, her lip quivering:

"All except this." And she put her arms around his neck and dropped her head on his breast.

CHAPTER XXIX

In reply to a letter of hers, Cleland wrote to Stephanie the middle of June from Runner's Rest in the Berkshires:

STEVE, DEAR:

The place is charming and everything is ready for you and Helen whenever you care to come. I had the caretaker's wife and daughters here for several days' scrubbing and cleaning woodwork, windows and floors. They've put a vacuum cleaner on everything else and the house shines!

As for the new servants, they seem the usual sort, unappreciative, sure to quarrel among themselves, fairly efficient, incapable of gratitude, and likely to leave you in the lurch if the whim seizes them. They've all come to me with complaints of various sorts. The average servant detests clean, fresh quarters in the country and bitterly misses the smelly and oily animation of the metropolitan slums.

But this unpretentious old place is very beautiful, Steve. You haven't been here since you were a girl, and it will be a surprise to you to find how really lovely are this plain old house and simple grounds.

Oswald has made several sketches of the grounds, and is making others for the pool and fountain. He is anything but melancholy; he strolls about quite happily with the eternal cigarette in his mouth and an enormous rose-scented white peony in his button-hole; and in the evening he and I light a fire in the library – for the evenings are a trifle chilly still – and we read or chat or discuss men and affairs most companionably. The occult charm in this man, of which you are so conscious, I myself can perceive. There seems to be, deep within him, an inexplicable quality which appeals – something latent, indefinable – something that you suspect to be wistful, yet which is too sensitive, too self-distrustful to respond to the very sympathy it seems to draw.

Steve, I have asked him to spend July with us. He seemed quite surprised and a little disconcerted by the invitation – just as he seemed to be when I asked him to do the pool and fountain.

He said he would like to come if he could arrange it – whatever that may mean. So it was left that way.

Do you approve?