"Your tone," said she, all ice, "makes it impossible for a well- bred person to discuss with you. Let us talk of something else, or of nothing at all."

"No. Let's thresh it out now that we've begun. And do try to keep your temper. There's no reason for anger. We've got to go back to civilization. We've got to live after we get there. We want to live comfortably, as satisfactorily for both as our income permits. Now, what shall we do? How shall we invest our eight thousand a year—and whatever your grandmother allows you? I don't need much. I'll turn the salary over to you. You're entirely welcome to all there is above my board and clothes."

This sounded generous and, so, irritated Margaret the more. "You know very well we can't live like decent people on twelve or fifteen thousand a year in Washington."

"You knew that before you married me. What did you have in mind?"

Silence.

"Why do you find it difficult to be frank with me?"

His courteous, appealing tone and manner made it impossible to indulge in the lie direct or the lie evasive. She continued silent, raging inwardly against him for being so ungenerous, so ungentlemanly as to put her in such a pitiful posture, one vastly different from that she had prearranged for herself when "the proper time" came.

"You had something in mind," he persisted. "What is it?"

"Grandmother wishes us to live with her," she said with intent to flank.

"Would you like that?" he inquired; and her very heart seemed to stand still in horror at his tone. It was a tone that suggested that the idea was attractive!

She debated. He must be "bluffing"—he surely must. She rallied her courage and pushed on: "It's probably the best we can do in the circumstances. We'd have almost nothing left after we'd paid our rent if we set up for ourselves. Even if I were content to pinch and look a frump and never go out, you'd not tolerate it."

"Nothing could be more galling," said he, after reflecting, "than what people would say if we lived off your grandmother. No, going there is unthinkable. I like her, and we'd get on well together—"

Margaret laughed. "Like two cats drowning in a bag."

"Not at all," protested he sincerely. "Your grandmother and I understand each other—better than you and I—at least, better than you understand me. However, I'll not permit our being dependents of hers."

Margaret had a queer look. Was not her taking enough money from the old lady to pay all her personal expenses—was not that dependence?

"We'll return to that later," continued he, and she had an uncomfortable sense that he was answering her thought. "To go back to your idea in marrying me. You expected me to leave politics."

"Why do you think that?" exclaimed she.

"You told me."

"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 space 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 Washington 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 constitutes 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 embarrassed, 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 God, 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 Washington 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 warship 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-abasement 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 bloody 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 principal 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 assured 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 blustering, 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.

Dinner was served, and he fell to like a harvest hand. As he had the habit, when he was very hungry, of stuffing his mouth far too full for speech, she was free to carry out her little program of encouraging talk and action. As she advanced from hesitating compliment to flattery, to admiring glances, to lingering look, she marveled at her facility. "I suppose ages and ages of dreadful necessity have made it second nature to every woman, even the best of us," reflected she. If he weren't a handsome, superior man she might be finding it more difficult; also, no doubt the surroundings, so romantic, so fitting as background for his ruggedness, were helping her to dexterity and even enthusiasm.

It was amusing, how she deceived herself—for the harmless self- deceptions of us chronic mummers are always amusing. The fact was, this melting and inviting mood had far more of nature and sincerity in it than there had been in her icy aloofness. Icy aloofness, except in the heroines of aristocratic novels, is a state of mind compatible only with extreme stupidity or with some one of those organic diseases that sour the disposition. Never had she been in such health as in that camp, never so buoyant, never had merely being alive been so deliciously intoxicating; the scratch he had made on her throat had healed in twenty-four hours, had all but disappeared in seventy-two. Never had she known to such a degree what a delight a body can be, the sense of its eagerness to bring to the mind all the glorious pleasures of the senses. Whatever disinclination she had toward him was altogether a prompting of class education; now that she had let down the bars and released feeling she was in heart glad he was there with her, glad he was "such a MAN of a man."

The guides made a huge fire down by the shore, and left them alone. They sat by it until nearly ten o'clock, he talking incessantly; her overtures had roused in him the desire to please, and, instead of the usual monologue of egotism and rant, he poured out poetry, eloquence, sense and humorous shrewdness. Had he been far less the unusual, the great man, she would still have listened with a sense of delight, for in her mood that night his penetrating voice, which, in other moods, she found as insupportable as a needle-pointed goad, harmonized with the great, starry sky and the mysterious, eerie shadows of forest and mountain and lake close round their huge, bright fire. As they rose to go in, up came the moon. A broad, benevolent, encouraging face, the face of a matchmaker. Craig put his arm round Margaret. She trembled and thrilled.

"Do you know what that moon's saying?" asked he. In his voice was that exquisite tone that enabled him to make even commonplaces lift great audiences to their feet to cheer him wildly.

She lifted soft, shining eyes to his. "What?" she inquired under her breath. She had forgotten her schemes, her resentments, her make-believe of every kind. "What—Joshua?" she repeated.

"It's saying: 'Hurry up, you silly children, down there! Don't you know that life is a minute and youth a second?'" And now both his arms were round her and one of her hands lay upon his shoulder.

"Life a minute—youth a second," she murmured.

"Do you think I'd scratch you horribly if I kissed you—Rita?"

She lowered her eyes but not her face. "You might try—Josh."



CHAPTER XXIV

"OUR HOUSE IS AFIRE"

Next morning she was up and in her dressing-room and had almost finished her toilette before he awakened. For the first time in years—perhaps the first time since the end of her happy girlhood and the beginning of her first season in Washington society—she felt like singing. Was there ever such a dawn? Did ever song of birds sound so like the voice of eternal youth? Whence had come this air like the fumes from the winepresses of the gods? And the light! What colors, what tints, upon mountain and valley and halcyon lake! And the man asleep in the next room—yes, there WAS a Joshua Craig whom she found extremely trying at times; but that Joshua Craig had somehow resigned the tenancy of the strong, straight form there, had resigned it to a man who was the living expression of all that bewitched her in these wilds.

She laughed softly at her own ecstasy of exaggeration. "The other Josh will come back," she reminded herself, "and I must not forget to be practical. THIS is episodic." These happy, superhuman episodes would come, would pass, would recur at intervals; but the routine of her life must be lived. And if these episodes were to recur the practical must not be neglected. "It's by neglecting the practical that so many wives come to grief," reflected she. And the first mandate of the practical was that he must be rescued from that vulgar political game, which meant poverty and low associations and tormenting uncertainties. He must be got where his talents would have their due, their reward. But subtly guiding him into the way that would be best for him was a far different matter from what she had been planning up to last night's moonrise—was as abysmally separated from its selfish hypocrisy as love from hate. She would persist in her purpose, but how changed the motive!

She heard him stirring in her—no, THEIR room. Her face lighted up, her eyes sparkled. She ran to the mirror for a final primp before he should see her. She was more than pleased with the image she saw reflected there. "I never looked better in my life—never so well. I'm glad I kept back this particular dress. He's sure to like it, and it certainly is becoming to me—the best-fitting skirt I ever had—what good lines it has about the hips." She startled at a knock upon the door. She rushed away from the mirror. He had small physical vanity himself—she had never known any one with so little. He had shown that he thought she had no vanity of that kind, either, and he would doubtless misunderstand her solicitude about her personal appearance. Anyhow, of all mornings this would be the worst for him to catch her at the glass.

"Yes?" she called.

"Margaret," came in his voice. And, oh, the difference in it!—the note of tenderness—no, it was not imagination, it was really there! Her eyes filled and her bosom heaved.

"Are you joining me at breakfast?"

"Come in," cried she.

When the door did not open she went and opened it. There stood HE! If he had greeted her with a triumphant, proprietorial expression she would have been—well, it would have given her a lowered opinion of his sensibility. But his look was just right—dazzled, shy, happy. Nor did he make one of his impetuous rushes. He almost timidly took her hand, kissed it; and it was she who sought his shoulder—gladly, eagerly, with a sudden, real shyness. "Margaret," he said. "Mine—aren't you?"

Here was the Joshua she was to know thenceforth, she felt. This Joshua would enable her to understand, or, rather, to disregard, so far as she personally was concerned, the Josh, tempestuous, abrupt, often absurd, whom the world knew. But—As soon as they went where the guides were, the familiar Josh returned—boyish, boisterous, rather foolish in trying to be frivolous and light. Still—what did it matter? As soon as they should be alone again—

When they set out after breakfast her Joshua still did not return, as she had confidently expected. The obstreperous one remained, the one that was the shrewdly-developed cover for his everlasting scheming mind. "What an unending ass I've been making of myself," he burst out, "with my silly notions." He drew a paper from his pocket and handed it to her. "And this infernal thing of Grant's has been encouraging me in idiocy."

She read the Arkwright gentleman's gazette and complete guide to dress and conduct in the society of a refined gentlewoman. Her impulse was to laugh, an impulse hard indeed to restrain when she came to the last line of the document and read in Grant's neat, careful-man's handwriting with heavy underscorings: "Above all, never forget that you are a mighty stiff dose for anybody, and could easily become an overdose for a refined, sensitive lady." But prudent foresight made her keep her countenance. "This is all very sensible," said she.

"Sensible enough," assented he. "I've learned a lot from it....Did you read that last sentence?"

She turned her face away. "Yes," she said.

"That, taken with everything else, all but got me down," said he somberly. "God, what I've been through! It came near preventing us from discovering that you're not a grand lady but a human being." His mood veered, and it was he that was gay and she glum; for he suddenly seized her and subjected her to one of those tumultuous ordeals so disastrous to toilette and to dignity and to her sense of personal rights. Not that she altogether disliked; she never had altogether disliked, had found a certain thrill in his rude riotousness. Still, she preferred the other Joshua Craig, HER Joshua, who wished to receive as well as to give. And she wished that Joshua, her Joshua, would return. She herself had thought that, so far as she was concerned, those periods of tender and gentle sentiment would be episodic; but it was another thing for him to think so—and to show it frankly. "I feel as if I'd had an adventure with a bear," said she, half-laughing, half-resentful.

"So you did," declared he; "I'm a bear—and every other sort of animal—except rabbit. There's no rabbit in me. Now, your men—the Grant Arkwrights—are all rabbit."

"At least," said she, "do refrain from tearing my hair down. A woman who does her hair well hates to have it mussed."

"I'll try to remember," was his careless answer. "As I was about to say, our discovery that you are not a lady out of a story-book, but a human being and a very sweet one—it came just in the nick of time. We're leaving here to-night."

Now she saw the reason for the persistence of the Craig of noise and bluster—and craft. "To-night?" she exclaimed. "It's impossible."

"Yes—we go at five o'clock. Tickets are bought—sleeper section engaged—everything arranged."

"But Uncle Dan doesn't expect us for four days yet."

"I've sent him a telegram."

"But I can't pack."

"Selina can."

"Impossible in such a little time."

"Then I'll do it," said Craig jovially. "I can pack a trunk twice as quick as any man you ever saw. I pack with my feet as well as with my hands."

"It's impossible," repeated she angrily. "I detest being hurried."

"Hurried? Why, you've got nine hours to get used to the idea. Nine hours' warning for anything isn't haste."

"Why didn't you tell me this yesterday?" demanded she, coming to a full stop and expecting thus to compel him to face her. But he marched on.

"It has been my lifelong habit," declared he over his shoulder, "to arrange everything before disclosing my plans. You'll find, as we get on, that it will save you a lot of fretting and debating."

Reluctantly and with the humiliating sense of helpless second fiddle she followed him along the rough path. "I loathe surprises," she said.

"Then adjust your mind to not being surprised at anything from me."

He laughed noisily at his own humor. She was almost hating him again. He seemed to have eyes in the back of his head; for as she shot a fiery glance at him he whirled round, shook his forefinger maddeningly at her: "Now listen to me, my dear," said he, in his very worst manner, most aggressive, most dictatorial; "if you had wanted an ordinary sort of man you should have married one and not me."

"Don't you think common courtesy required you at least to consult me about such a matter?"

"I do not. If I had I should have done so. I found it was necessary that we go. I went ahead and arranged it. If you saw the house on fire would you wait till you had consulted me before putting it out?"

"But this is entirely different."

"Not at all. Entirely the same, on the contrary. The talk we had day before yesterday convinced me that our house is afire. I'm going to put it out." He shut his teeth together with a snap, compressed his lips, gave her one of those quick, positive nods of his Viking head. Then he caught her by the arm. "Now," said he jocosely, "let's go back to camp. You want to do your packing. I've got to go over to the station and telegraph some more."

She wrenched her arm away pettishly and, with sullen face, accompanied him to the camp. It was all she could do to hide her anger when, in full sight of the guides, he swept her up into his arms and kissed her several times. Possibly she would have been really angered, deeply angered, had she realized that these cyclones were due, as a rule, not so much to appreciation of her as to the necessity of a strong counter-irritant to a sudden attack of awe of her as a fine lady and doubt of his own ability to cope with her. "Good-by, Rita," cried he, releasing her as suddenly as he had seized her and rushing toward the landing. "If I don't get back till the last minute be sure you're ready. Anything that isn't ready will be left behind—anything or anybody!"

The idea of revolt, of refusing to go, appealed to her first anger strongly. But, on consideration, she saw that merely asserting her rights would not be enough—that she must train him to respect them. If she refused to go he would simply leave her; yes, he was just the man, the wild man, to do precisely that disgraceful thing. And she would be horribly afraid to spend the night alone in those woods with only the guides and Selina, not to speak of facing the morrow—for he might refuse to take her back! Where would she turn in that case? What would her grandmother say? Who would support her in making such a scandal and giving up a husband for reasons that could not be made impressive in words though they were the best of all reasons in terms of feeling? No, if she gave him up she would be absolutely alone, condemned on every hand, in the worst possible position. Then, too, the break was unattractive for another reason. Though she despised herself for her weakness, she did not wish to give up the man who had given her that brief glimpse of happiness she had dreamed as one dreams an impossibility. Did not wish? Could not—would not—give him up. "I belong to him!" she thought with a thrill of ecstasy and of despair.

"But he'd better be careful!" she grumbled. "If I should begin to dislike him there'd be no going back." And then it recurred to her that this would be as great a calamity of loss for her as for him —and she went at her packing in a better humor. "I'll explain to him that I yield this once, but—" There she stopped herself with a laugh. Of what use to explain to him?—him who never listened to explanations, who did not care a fig why people did as he wished, but was content that they did. As for warning him about "next time"—how ridiculous! She could hear his penetrating, rousing voice saying: "We'll deal with 'next time' when it comes."



CHAPTER XXV

MRS. JOSHUA CRAIG

"We change at Albany," said he when they were on the train, after a last hour of mad scramble, due in part to her tardiness, in the main to the atmosphere of hysteric hustle and bustle he created as a precaution.

"At Albany!" she exclaimed. "Why, when do we get there?"

"At midnight."

"At midnight!" It was the last drop in the cup of gall, she thought. "Why, we'd get to Lenox, or to some place where we'd have to change again, long before morning! Josh, you must be out of your senses. It's a perfect outrage!"

"Best I could do," said he, laughing uproariously and patting her on the back. "Cheer up. You can sleep on my shoulder until we get to Albany."

"We will go on to New York," said she stiffly, "and leave from there in the morning."

"Can't do it," said he. "Must change at Albany. You ought to learn to control your temper over these little inconveniences of life. I've brought a volume of Emerson's essays along and I'll read to you if you don't want to sleep."

"I hate to be read aloud to. Joshua, let's go on to New York. Such a night of horror as you've planned will wear me out."

"I tell you it's impossible. I've done the best thing in the circumstances. You'll see."

Suddenly she sprang up, looked wildly round. "Where's Selina?" she gasped.

"Coming to-morrow or next day," replied he. "I sent her to the camp for some things I forgot."

She sank back and said no more. Again she was tempted to revolt against such imbecile tyranny; and again, as she debated the situation, the wisdom, the necessity of submitting became apparent. How would it sound to have to explain to her grandmother that she had left him because he took an inconvenient train? "I'd like to see him try this sort of thing if we'd been married six months instead of six weeks," she muttered.

She refused to talk with him, answered him in cold monosyllables. And after dinner, when he produced the volume of Emerson and began to read aloud, she curtly asked him to be quiet. "I wish to sleep!" snapped she.

"Do, dear," urged he. And he put his arm around her.

"That's very uncomfortable," said she, trying to draw away.

He drew her back, held her—and she knew she must either submit or make a scene. There was small attraction to scene-making with such a master of disgraceful and humiliating scenes as he. "He wouldn't care a rap," she muttered. "He simply revels in scenes, knowing he's sure to win out at them as a mongrel in a fight with a"—even in that trying moment her sense of humor did not leave her—"with a lapdog."

She found herself comfortable and amazingly content, leaning against his shoulder; and presently she went to sleep, he holding the book in his free hand and reading calmly. The next thing she knew he was shaking her gently. "Albany," he said. "We've got to change here."

She rose sleepily and followed him from the car, adjusting her hat as she went. She had thought she would be wretched; instead, she felt fine as the sharp, night air roused her nerves and freshened her skin. He led the way into the empty waiting-room; the porter piled the bags on the bench; she seated herself. "I must send a telegram," said he, and he went over to the window marked "Telegraph Office." It was closed. He knocked and rattled, and finally pounded on the glass with his umbrella handle.

Her nerves went all to pieces. "Can't you see," she called impatiently, "that there's no one there?"

"There will be some one!" he shouted in reply, and fell to pounding so vigorously that she thought the glass would surely break. But it did not; after a while the window flew up and an angry face just escaped a blow from the vibrating umbrella handle. A violent altercation followed, the operator raging, but Craig more uproarious than he and having the further advantage of a more extensive and more picturesque vocabulary. Finally the operator said: "I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself. Don't you see there's a lady present?"

"It's my wife," said Craig. "Now take this message and get it off at once. You should thank me for not having you dismissed."

The operator read the message. His face changed and he said in a surlily apologetic manner: "I'll send it off right away, Mr. Craig. Anything else?"

"That's all, my friend," said Josh. He returned to his wife's side. She was all confusion and doubt again. Here they were back in civilization, and her man of the woods was straightway running amuck. What should she do? What COULD she do? WHAT had she got herself into by marrying?

But he was speaking. "My dear," he was saying in his sharp, insistent voice, that at once aroused and enfeebled the nerves, "I must talk fast, as the train comes in fifteen or twenty minutes— the train for Chicago—for Minneapolis—for Wayne—for home—OUR home."

She started up from the seat, pale, quivering, her hands clinched against her bosom.

"For home," he repeated, fixing her with his resolute, green-blue eyes. "Please, sit down."

She sank to the seat. "Do you mean—" she began, but her faltering voice could not go on.

"I've resigned from office," said he, swift and calm. "I've told the President I'll not take the Attorney-Generalship. I've telegraphed your people at Lenox that we're not coming. And I'm going home to run for Governor. My telegrams assure me the nomination, and, with the hold I've got on the people, that means election, sure pop. I make my first speech day after to-morrow afternoon—with you on the platform beside me."

"You are mistaken," she said in a cold, hard voice. "You—"

"Now don't speak till you've thought, and don't think till I finish. As you yourself said, Washington's no place for us—at present. Anyhow, the way to get there right is to be sent there from the people—by the people. You are the wife of a public man, but you've had no training."

"I—" she began.

"Hear me first," he said, between entreaty and command. "You think I'm the one that's got it all to learn. Think again. The little tiddledywinks business that I've got to learn—all the value there is in the mass of balderdash about manners and dress—I can learn it in a few lessons. You can teach it to me in no time. But what you've got to learn—how to be a wife, how to live on a modest income, how to take care of me, and help me in my career, how to be a woman instead of, largely, a dressmaker's or a dancing- master's expression for lady-likeness—to learn all that is going to take time. And we must begin at once; for, as I told you, the house is afire."

She opened her lips to speak.

"No—not yet," said he. "One thing more. You've been thinking things about me. Well, do you imagine this busy brain of mine hasn't been thinking a few things about you? Why, Margaret, you need me even more than I need you, though I need you more than I'd dare try to tell you. You need just such a man as me to give you direction and purpose—REAL backbone. Primping and preening in carriages and parlors—THAT isn't life. It's the frosting on the cake. Now, you and I, we're going to have the cake itself. Maybe with, maybe without the frosting. BUT NOT THE FROSTING WITHOUT THE CAKE, MARGARET!"

"So!" she exclaimed, drawing a long breath when he had ended. "So! THIS is why you chose that five o'clock train and sent Selina back. You thought to—"

He laughed as if echoing delight from her; he patted her enthusiastically on the knee. "You've guessed it! Go up head! I didn't want you to have time to say and do foolish things."

She bit her lip till the blood came. Ringing in her ears and defying her efforts to silence them were those words of his about the cake and the frosting—"the cake, maybe with, maybe without frosting; BUT NOT THE FROSTING WITHOUT THE CAKE!" She started to speak; but it was no interruption from him that checked her, for he sat silent, looking at her with all his fiery strength of soul in his magnetic eyes. Again she started to speak; and a third time; and each time checked herself. This impossible man, this creator of impossible situations! She did not know how to begin, or how to go on after she should have begun. She felt that even if she had known what to say she would probably lack the courage to say it—that final-test courage which only the trained in self- reliance have. The door opened. A station attendant came in out of the frosty night and shouted:

"Chicago Express! Express for—Buffalo! Chicago! Minneapolis! St. Paul!—the Northwest!—the Far West! All—a—BOARD!"

Craig seized the handbags. "Come on, my dear!" he cried, getting into rapid motion.

She sat still.

He was at the door. "Come on," he said.

She looked appealingly, helplessly round that empty, lonely, strange station, its lights dim, its suggestions all inhospitable. "He has me at his mercy," she said to herself, between anger and despair. "How can I refuse to go without becoming the laughing- stock of the whole world?"

"Come on—Rita!" he cried. The voice was aggressive, but his face was deathly pale and the look out of his eyes was the call of a great loneliness. And she saw it and felt it. She braced herself against it; but a sob surged up in her throat—the answer of her heart to his heart's cry of loneliness and love.

"Chicago Express!" came in the train-caller's warning roar from behind her, as if the room were crowded instead of tenanted by those two only. "All aboard! ...Hurry up, lady, or you'll get left!"

Get left! ... Left!—the explosion of that hoarse, ominous voice seemed to blow Mrs. Joshua Craig from the seat, to sweep her out through the door her husband was holding open, and into the train for their home.

THE END