Part 19 (1/2)

Borrowing with Jim is just like asking for a smoke. He's queer. If he made a bet with you and lost he'd pay up promptly, if he had to p.a.w.n his clothes and mine too. Borrowed money, however, seems to come in a different category. When this estate comes into his hands perhaps I shall be able to return some of this money that we wasted. I think that--and the fact that I'm just a little afraid to break away and face the world alone--is chiefly what keeps me faithful to him now.”

”Is it as bad as that?” Hollister asked.

”Don't misunderstand me, Robin,” she protested. ”I'm not an abused wife or anything like that. He's perfectly satisfied, as complacent as an English gentleman can be in the enjoyment of possession. But he doesn't love me any more than I love him. He blandly a.s.sumes that love is only a polite term for something else. And I can't believe that--yet. Maybe I'm what Archie Lawanne calls a romantic sentimentalist, but there is something in me that craves from a man more than elementary pa.s.sion. I'm a woman; therefore my nature demands of a man that he be first of all a man. But that alone isn't enough.

I'm not just a something to be petted when the fit is on and then told in effect to run along and play. There must be men who have minds as well as bodies. There must be here and there a man who understands that a woman has all sorts of thoughts and feelings as well as s.e.x.

Meanwhile--I mark time. That's all.”

”You appear,” Hollister said a little grimly, ”to have acquired certain definite ideas. It's a pity they didn't develop sooner.”

”Ideas only develop out of experience,” she said quietly. ”And our pa.s.sions are born with us.”

She rose, shaking free the snow that clung to her coat.

”I feel better for getting all that steam off my chest,” she said.

”It's better, since we must live here, that you and I should not keep up this game of pretence between ourselves. Isn't it, Robin?”

”Perhaps. I don't know.” The old doubts troubled Hollister. He was jealous of what he had attained, fearful of reviving the past, a little uncertain of this new turn.

”At any rate, you don't hold a grudge against me, do you?” Myra asked.

”You can afford to be indifferent now. You've found a mate, you're playing a man's part here. You're beating the game and getting some real satisfaction out of living. You can afford to be above a grudge against me.”

”I don't hold any grudge,” Hollister answered truthfully.

”I'm going down to the house, now,” Myra said. ”I wanted to talk to you openly, and I'm glad I did. I think and think sometimes until I feel like a rat in a trap. And you are the only one here I can really talk to. You've been through the mill and you won't misunderstand.”

”Ah,” he said. ”Is Charlie Mills devoid of understanding, or Lawanne?”

She looked at him fixedly for a second.

”You are very acute,” she observed. ”Some time I may tell you about Charlie Mills. Certainly I'd never reveal my soul to Archie Lawanne.

He'd dissect it and gloat over it and a.n.a.lyze it in his next book. And neither of them will ever be quite able to abandon the idea that a creature like me is something to be pursued and captured.”

She turned away. Hollister saw her go into the house. He could picture the two of them there together. Doris and Myra bending over young Robert, who was now beginning to lie with wide-open blue eyes, in which the light of innocent wonder, of curiosity, began to show, to wave his arms and grope with tiny, uncertain hands. Those two women together hovering over his child,--one who was still legally his wife, the other his wife in reality.

How the world would p.r.i.c.k up its donkey ears--even the little cosmos of the Toba valley--if it knew. But of course no one would ever know.

Hollister was far beyond any contrition for his acts. The end justified the means,--doubly justified it in his case, for he had had no choice. Harsh material factors had rendered the decision for him.

Hollister was willing now to abide by that decision. To him it seemed good, the only good thing he had laid hold of since the war had turned his world upside down and inside out.

He went about his work mechanically, deep in thought. His mind persisted in measuring, weighing, turning over all that Myra had said, while his arms pushed and heaved and twisted the pike pole, thrusting the blocks of cedar into an orderly arrangement within the boom-sticks.

CHAPTER XVI

Hollister had gone down to Lawanne's with a haunch of venison. This neighborly custom of sharing meat, when it is to be had for the killing, prevails in the northern woods. Officially there were game seasons to be observed. But the close season for deer sat lightly on men in a region three days' journey from a butcher shop. They shot deer when they needed meat. The law of necessity overrode the legal p.r.o.nouncement in this matter of food, as it often did in other ways.

While Hollister, having duly pleased Lawanne's China-boy by this quarter of venison, sat talking to Lawanne, Charlie Mills came in to return a book.

”Did you get anything out of that?” Lawanne asked.