CHAPTER XXI
A SWOOP AND A SCRATCH
When Molly Stillwater heard that Margaret and her "wild man" had goneinto the woods for their honeymoon she said: "Rita's got to tame him andtrain him for human society. So she's taken him where there are noneighbors to hear him scream as--as--" Molly cast about in her stock ofslang for a phrase that was vigorous enough--"as she 'puts the boots'to him."
It was a shrewd guess; Margaret had decided that she could do moretoward "civilizing" him in those few first weeks and in solitude than inyears of teaching at odd times. In China, at the marriage feast, thebride and the groom each struggle to be first to sit on the robe of theother; the idea is that the winner will thenceforth rule. As the Chinesehave been many ages at the business of living, the custom should not bedismissed too summarily as mere vain and heathenish superstition. At anyrate, Margaret had reasoned it out that she must get the advantage inthe impending initial grapple and tussle of their individualities, orchoose between slavery and divorce. With him handicapped by awe of her,by almost groveling respect for her ideas and feelings in all man andwoman matters, domestic and social, it seemed to her that she could beworsted only by a miracle of stupidity on her part.
Never had he been so nearly "like an ordinary man--like a gentleman"--aswhen they set out for the Adirondacks. She could scarcely believe herown eyes, and she warmed to him and felt that she had been greatlyoverestimating her task. He had on one of the suits he had bought readymade that morning. It was of rough blue cloth--dark blue--most becomingand well draped to show to advantage his lithe, powerful frame, itssinews so much more manly-looking than the muscularity of artificiallygot protuberances usually seen in the prosperous classes in our Easterncities. Grant had selected the suit, had selected all the suits, and hadsuperintended the fittings. Grant had also selected the negligee shirtand the fashionable collar, and the bright, yet not gaudy, tie, andGrant had selected the shoes that made his feet look like feet; andGrant had conducted him to a proper barber, who had reduced the mop ofhair to proportion and order, and had restored its natural color andlook of vitality by a thorough shampooing. In brief, Grant had taken agloomy pleasure in putting his successful rival through the machine ofcivilization and bringing him out a city man, agreeable to sight, smelland touch.
"Now," said he, when the process was finished, "for Heaven's sake try tokeep yourself up to the mark. Take a cold bath every morning and a warmbath before dinner."
"I have been taking a cold bath every day since I got my privatebathroom," said Joshua, with honest pride.
"Then you're just as dirty as the average Englishman. He takes a coldbath and fancies he's clean, when in fact he's only clean-looking. Coldwater merely stimulates. It takes warm water and soap to keep a manclean."
"I'll bear that in mind," said Craig, with a docility that flatteredGrant as kindly attentions from a fierce-looking dog flatter the timidstranger.
"And you must take care of your clothes, too," proceeded the arbiterelegantiarum. "Fold your trousers when you take them off, and have thempressed. Get your hair cut once a week--have a regular day for it. Trimyour nails twice a week. I've got you a safety razor. Shave at leastonce a day--first thing after you get out of bed is the best time. Andchange your linen every day. Don't think because a shirt isn't downrightdirty that you can pass it off for fresh."
"Just write those things down," said Josh. "And any others of the samekind you happen to think of. I hate to think what a state I'd be in if Ihadn't you. Don't imagine I'm not appreciating the self-sacrifice."
Grant looked sheepish. But he felt that his shame was unwarranted, thathe really deserved Craig's tactless praise. So he observed virtuously:"That's where we men are beyond the women. Now, if it were one womanfixing up another, the chances are a thousand to one she'd play the cat,and get clothes and give suggestions that'd mean ruin."
It may not speak well for Arkwright's capacity for emotion, but itcertainly speaks well for his amiability and philanthropy that doingthese things for Craig had so far enlisted him that he was almost asanxious as the fluttered and flustered bridegroom himself for thesuccess of the adventure. He wished he could go along, in disguise, as asort of valet and prime minister--to be ever near Josh to coach andadvise and guide him. For it seemed to him that success or failure inthis honeymooning hung upon the success or failure of Craig inpractising the precepts that for Grant and his kind take precedence ofthe moral code. He spent an earnest and exhausting hour in neatly andcarefully writing out the instructions, as Craig had requested. Heperformed this service with a gravity that would move some people to thesame sort of laughter and wonder that is excited by the human doings ofa trained chimpanzee. But Craig--the wild man, the arch foe ofeffeteness, the apostle of the simple life of yarn sock and tallowedboot and homespun pants and hairy jaw--Craig accepted the service withheartfelt thanks in his shaking voice and moist eye.
Thus the opening of the honeymoon was most auspicious. Craig, too muchin awe of Margaret to bother her, and busy about matters that concernedhimself alone, was a model of caution, restraint and civility. Margaret,apparently calm, aloof and ladylike, was really watching his discreetconduct as a hawk watches a sheltered hen; she began to indulge inpleasant hopes that Joshua's wild days had come to an abrupt end. Why,he was even restrained in conversation; he did not interrupt her often,instantly apologized and forebore when he did; he poured out none of hiswonted sophomoric diatribes, sometimes sensible, more often inane, asthe prattle of a great man in his hour of relaxation is apt to be. Shehad to do most of the talking--and you may be sure that she directed herconversation to conveying under an appearance of lightness many valuablelessons in the true wisdom of life as it is revealed only to thefashionable idle. She was careful not to overdo, not to provoke, aboveall not to put him at his ease.
Her fiction of ill health, of threatened nervous prostration, alsoserved to free her from an overdose of his society during the long anddifficult days in that eventless solitude. He was all for arduous trampsthrough the woods, for excursions in canoe under the fierce sun. Sheinsisted on his enjoying himself--"but I don't feel equal to any suchexertion. I simply must rest and take care of myself." She was somewhatsurprised at his simplicity in believing her health was anything butrobust, when her appearance gave the lie direct to her hints andregrets. While he was off with one of the guides she stayed at camp,reading, working at herself with the aid of Selina, revolving andmaturing her plans.
When she saw him she saw him at his best. He showed up especially wellat swimming. She was a notable figure herself in bathing suit, and couldswim in a nice, ladylike way; but he was a water creature--indeed,seemed more at home in the water than on land. She liked to watch hislong, strong, narrow body cut the surface of the transparent lake withno loss of energy in splashing or display--as easy and swift as a fish.She began to fear she had made a mistake in selecting a place for herschool for a husband, "He's in his element--this wilderness," thoughtshe, "not mine. I'll take him back with everything still to be done."
And, worst of all, she found herself losing her sense of proportion, herrespect for her fashionable idols. Those vast woods, that infinitesummer sky--they were giving her a new and far from practical point ofview--especially upon the petty trickeries and posturings of theludicrously self-important human specks that crawl about upon the earthand hastily begin to act queer and absurd as soon as they come in sightof each other. She found herself rapidly developing that latent"sentimentality" which her grandmother had so often rebuked and warnedher against--which Lucia had insisted was her real self. Herimagination beat the bars of the cage of convention in which she hadimprisoned it, and cried out for free, large, natural emotions--thosethat make the blood leap and the flesh tingle, that put music in thevoice and softness in the glance and the intense joy of life in theheart. And she began to revolve him before eyes that searched hopefullyfor possibilities of his giving her precisely what her nerves craved.
"It would be queer, wouldn't it," she mused
--she was watching himswim--"if it should turn out that I had come up here to learn, insteadof to teach?"
And he--In large presences he was always at his best--in the largesituations of affairs, in these large, tranquillizing horizons ofnature. He, too, began to forget that she was a refined, delicate,sensitive lady, with nerves that writhed under breaks in manners andcould in no wise endure a slip in grammar, unless, of course, it was oneof those indorsed by fashionable usage. His health came flooding androaring back in its fullness; and day by day the difficulty ofrestraining himself from loud laughter and strong, plebeian actionbecame more appalling to him. He would leave the camp, set off at a runas soon as he got safely out of sight; and, when he was sure ofseclusion in distance, he would "cut loose"--yell and laugh and caperlike a true madman; tear off his superfluous clothes, splash and threshin some lonely lake like a baby whale that has not yet had the primarylessons in how to behave. When he returned to camp, subdued in manner,like a bad boy after recess, he was, in fact, not one bit subduedbeneath the surface, but the more fractious for his outburst. Each dayhis animal spirits surged higher; each day her sway of awe and respectgrew more precarious. She thought his increasing silence, his reallyridiculous formality of politeness, his stammering and red-cheeked dreadof intrusion meant a deepening of the sense of the social gulf thatrolled between them. She recalled their conversation about hisrelatives. "Poor fellow!" thought she. "I suppose it's quite impossiblefor people of my sort to realize what a man of his birth and bringing upfeels in circumstances like these." Little did she dream, in herexaltation of self-complacence and superiority, that the "poor fellow's"clumsy formalities were the thin cover for a tempest of wild-man's wildemotion.
Curiously, she "got on" his nerves before he on hers. It was through herhabit of rising late and taking hours to dress. Part of his code ofconduct--an interpolation of his own into the Arkwright manual for ahoneymooning gentleman--was that he ought to wait until she was ready tobreakfast, before breakfasting himself. Several mornings she heardtempestuous sounds round the camp for two hours before she emerged fromher room. She knew these sounds came from him, though all was quiet assoon as she appeared; and she very soon thought out the reason for hisuproar. Next, his anger could not subdue itself beyond surliness on herappearing, and the surliness lasted through the first part of breakfast.Finally, one morning she heard him calling her when she was abouthalf-way through her leisurely toilette: "Margaret! MARGARET!"
"Yes--what is it?"
"Do come out. You're missing the best part of the day."
"All right--in a minute."
She continued with, if anything, a slackening of her exertions; sheappeared about an hour after she had said "in a minute." He was ready tospeak, and speak sharply. But one glance at her, at the exquisitetoilette--of the woods, yet of the civilization that dwells in palacesand reposes languidly upon the exertions of menials--at her cooling,subduing eyes, so graciously haughty--and he shut his lips together andsubsided.
The next morning it was a knock at her door just as she was waking--orhad it waked her? "Yes--what is it?"
"Do come out! I'm half starved."
The voice was pleading, not at all commanding, not at all theaggressive, dictatorial voice of the Josh Craig of less than a monthbefore. But it was distinctly reminiscent of that Craig; it was plainlythe first faint murmur, not of rebellion, but of the spirit ofrebellion. Margaret retorted with an icily polite, "Please don't waitfor me."
"Yes, I'll wait. But be as quick as you can."
Margaret neither hastened nor dallied. She came forth at the end of anhour and a half. Josh, to her surprise, greeted her as if she had notkept him waiting an instant; not a glance of sullenness, no suppressedirritation in his voice. Next morning the knock was a summons.
"Margaret! I say, Margaret!" came in tones made bold and fierce byhunger. "I've been waiting nearly two hours."
"For what?" inquired she frigidly from the other side of the door.
"For breakfast."
"Oh! Go ahead with it. I'm not even up yet."
"You've been shut in there ten hours."
"What of it?" retorted she sharply. "Go away, and don't bother me."
He had put her into such an ill humor that when she came out, two hourslater, her stormy brow, her gleaming hazel eyes showed she was "lookingfor trouble." He was still breakfastless--he well knew how to manipulatehis weaknesses so that his purposes could cow them, could even use them.He answered her lowering glance with a flash of his blue-green eyes likelightning from the dark head of a thunder-cloud. "Do you know it is nineo'clock?" demanded he.
"So early? I try to get up late so that the days won't seem so long."
He abandoned the field to her, and she thought him permanently beaten.She had yet to learn the depths of his sagacity that never gave battleuntil the time was auspicious.
Two mornings later he returned to the attack.
"I see your light burning every night until midnight," said he--atbreakfast with her, after the usual wait.
"I read myself to sleep," explained she.
"Do you think that's good for you?"
"I don't notice any ill effects."
"You say your health doesn't improve as rapidly as you hoped."
Check! She reddened with guilt and exasperation. "What a sly trick!"thought she. She answered him with a cold: "I always have read myself tosleep, and I fancy I always shall."
"If you went to sleep earlier," observed he, his air unmistakably thatof the victor conscious of victory, "you'd not keep me raging round twoor three hours for breakfast."
"How often I've asked you not to wait for me! I prefer to breakfastalone, anyhow. It's the dreadful habit of breakfasting together thatcauses people to get on together so badly."
"I'd not feel right," said he, moderately, but firmly, "if I didn't seeyou at breakfast."
She sat silent--thinking. He felt what she was thinking--how common thiswas, how "middle class," how "bourgeois," she was calling it."Bourgeois" was her favorite word for all that she objected to in him,for all she was trying to train out of him by what she regarded as mostartistically indirect lessons. He felt that their talk about his family,what he had said, had shown he felt, was recurring to her. He grew red,burned with shame from head to foot.
"What a fool, what a pup I was!" he said to himself. "If she had been areal lady--no, by gad--a real WOMAN--she'd have shown that she despisedme."
Again and again that incident had come back to him. It had been,perhaps, the most powerful factor in his patience with her airs andcondescensions. He felt that it, the lowest dip of his degradation insnobism, had given her the right to keep him in his place. It seemed tohim one of those frightful crimes against self-respect which can neverbe atoned, and, bad as he thought it from the standpoint of good senseas to the way to get on with her, he suffered far more because it wassuch a stinging, scoffing denial of all his pretenses of personal pride."Her sensibilities have been too blunted by association with thoseWashington vulgarians," he reasoned, "for her to realize the enormity ofmy offense, but she realizes enough to look down at me morecontemptuously every time she recalls it." However, the greater theblunder the greater the necessity of repairing. He resolutely thrust hisself-abasing thoughts to the background of his mind, and began afresh.
"I'm sure," said he, "you'd not mind, once you got used to it."
She was startled out of her abstraction. "Used to--what?" she inquired.
"To getting up early."
"Oh!" She gave a relieved laugh. "Still harping on that. How persistentyou are!"
"You could accomplish twice as much if you got up early and made a rightstart."
She frowned slightly. "Couldn't think of it," said she, in the tone ofone whose forbearance is about at an end. "I hate the early morning."
"We usually hate what's best for us. But, if we're sensible, we do ituntil it becomes a habit that we don't mind--or positively like."
This philosophy of the indisputable and the
sensible brimmed themeasure. "What would you think of me," said she, in her pleasantest,most deliberately irritating way in the world, "if I were to insist thatyou get up late and breakfast late? You should learn to let live as wellas to live. You are too fond of trying to compel everybody to do as youwish."
"I make 'em see that what I wish is what they ought. That's notcompelling."
"It's even more unpopular."
"I'm not looking for popularity, but for success."
"Well, please don't annoy me in the mornings hereafter."
"You don't seem to realize you've renounced your foolish idlers and alltheir ways, and have joined the working classes." His good humor hadcome back with breakfast; he had finished two large trout, much breadand marmalade and coffee--and it had given her a pleasure that somehowseemed vulgar and forbidden to see him eat so vastly, with such obviousdelight. As he made his jest about her entry into the workingclasses--she who suggested a queen bee, to employ the labors of a wholearmy of willing toilers, while she herself toiled not--he was tiltedback at his ease, smoking a cigarette and watching the sunbeams sparklein the waves of her black hair like jewels showered there. "You'resurely quite well again," he went on, the trend of his thought so hiddenthat he did not see it himself.
"I don't feel especially well," said she, instantly on guard.
He laughed. "You'd not dare say that to yourself in the mirror. You havewonderful color. Your eyes--there never was anything so clear. You werealways straight--that was one of the things I admired about you. Butnow, you seem to be straight without the slightest effort--the naturalstraightness of a sapling."
This was most agreeable, for she loved compliments, liked to discoverthat the charms which she herself saw in herself were really there. Butencouraging such talk was not compatible with the course she had laidout for herself with him. She continued silent and cold.
"If you'd only go to sleep early, and get up early, and drop all thatthe railway train carried us away from, you'd be as happy as the birdsand the deer and the fish."
"I shall not change my habits," said she tartly. "I hope you'll drop thesubject."
He leaned across the table toward her, the same charm now in his faceand in his voice that had drawn her when she first heard him in publicspeech. "Let's suppose I'm a woodchopper, and you are my wife. We'venever been anywhere but just here. We're going to live here all ourlives--just you and I--and no one else--and we don't want any one else.And we love each other--"
It was very alluring, but there was duty frowning upon her yieldingsenses. "Please don't let that smoke drift into my face," said shecrossly. "It's choking me."
He flung away the cigarette. "Beg pardon," he muttered, between angerand humility. "Thought you didn't mind smoking."
She was ashamed of herself, and grew still angrier. "If you'd only thinkabout some one beside yourself once in a while," said she. "You quitewear people out, with your everlasting thinking and talking aboutyourself."
"You'd better stop that midnight reading," flared he. "Your temper isgoing to the devil."
She rose with great dignity; with an expression that seemed to send himtumbling and her soaring she went into the house.
In some moods he would have lain where he fell for quite a while. Buthis mood of delight in her charms as a woman had completely eclipsed hisdeference for her charms as a lady. He hesitated only a second, thenfollowed her, overtook her at the entrance to her room. She, hearing himcoming, did not face about and put him back in his place with onehaughty look. Instead, she in impulsive, most ill-timed panic, quickenedher step. When the woman flees, the man, if there be any manhood in him,pursues. He caught her, held her fast.
"Let me go!" she cried, not with the compelling force of offendeddignity, but with the hysterical ineffectiveness of terror. "You arerough. You hurt."
He laughed, turned her about in his arms until she was facing him. "Theodor of those pines, out there," he said, "makes me drunk, and the odorof your hair makes me insane." And he was kissing her--those fierce,strong caresses that at once repelled and compelled her.
"I hate you!" she panted. "I hate you!"
"Oh, no, you don't," retorted he. "That isn't what's in your eyes." Andhe held her so tightly that she was almost crying out with pain.
"Please--please!" she gasped. And she wrenched to free herself. One ofhis hands slipped, his nail tore a long gash in her neck; the bloodspurted out, she gave a loud cry, an exaggerated cry--for the pain,somehow, had a certain pleasure in it. He released her, stared vacantlyat the wound he had made. She rushed into her room, slammed the door andlocked it.
"Margaret!" he implored.
She did not answer; he knew she would not. He sat miserably at her doorfor an hour, then wandered out into the woods, and stayed there untildinner-time.
When he came in she was sitting by the lake, reading a French novel. Tohim, who knew only his own language, there was something peculiarlyrefined and elegant about her ability at French; he thought, as did she,that she spoke French like a native, though, in fact, her accent wasalmost British, and her understanding of it was just about what can beexpected in a person who has never made a thorough study of anylanguage. As he advanced toward her she seemed unconscious of hispresence. But she was seeing him distinctly, and so ludicrous a figureof shy and sheepish contrition was he making that she with difficultyrestrained her laughter. He glanced guiltily at the long, red scratch onthe pallid whiteness of her throat.
"I'm ashamed of myself," said he humbly. "I'm not fit to touch a personlike you. I--I--"
She was not so mean as she had thought she would be. "It was nothing,"said she pleasantly, if distantly. "Is dinner ready?"
Once more she had him where she wished--abject, apologetic, conscious ofthe high honor of merely being permitted to associate with her. Shecould relax and unbend again; she was safe from his cyclones.