The Window-Gazer

CHAPTER XIII

Desire Spence bent earnestly over the writing pad which lay open upon her knee.

"Mrs. Benis Hamilton Spence," she wrote. And then:

"Mrs. B. Hamilton Spence."

And then:

"Mrs. Benis H. Spence."

Over this last she sucked her pencil thoughtfully.

"One more!" prompted her husband encouragingly. "Don't decide before you inspect our full line of goods."

"Initials, only, lack character," objected Desire. "There is nothing distinctive about 'Mrs. B. H. Spence'. It doesn't balance well, either. I think I'll decide upon the 'Benis H.' I like it—although I have never heard of 'Benis' as a name before."

"You are not supposed to have heard of it," explained its owner complacently. "It is a very exclusive name, a family name. My mother's paternal grandmother was a Benis."

Desire was not attending. "Your nickname, too, is odd," she mused. "How on earth could anyone make 'Beans' out of 'Benis Hamilton?'"

"Very easily—but how did you know that anyone had?"

"Oh, from a touching inscription on one of your books, 'To Beans—from Bones.'"

"Well—there's a whole history in that. It happened by a well defined process of evolution. When I went to school I had to have a name. A school boy's proper name is no good to him. Proper names are simply not done. But the christening party found my combination rather a handful. No one could do anything with Benis and the obvious shortening of Hamilton was considered too Biblical. 'Ham', however, suggested 'Piggy'. This might have done had there not already existed a 'Piggy' with a prior right. 'Piggy' suggested 'Pork', but 'Pork' isn't a name. 'Pork' suggested 'Beans'. And once more behold the survival of the fittest."

Desire laughed.

The professor listened to her laugh with a strained expression which relaxed when no words followed it.

"I was afraid," he admitted penitently, "that you might want to know why 'Pork' is not as much a name as 'Beans'."

"But—it isn't."

"Quite so. Only you are the first member of your delightful sex who has ever perceived it. You are a perceptive person, Mrs. Spence."

It was the fourth day of their Business Honeymoon. Four days ago they had landed from the cheerful little coast steamer whose chattering load of summer campers they had left behind on the route. For four sun-bright days and dew-sweet nights they had found themselves sole possessors of a bay so lovely that it seemed to have emerged bodily from a green and opal dream.

"'Friendly Bay,' they calls it," a genial deckhand told them, grinning. "But you folks will be the only friends anywheres about. There's a sort of farm across the point, though, and maybe you could hit the trail by climbing, if you get too fed up with the scenery."

"Oh, we shan't want any company," said the new Mrs. Spence innocently—a remark so disappointing in its unembarrassed frankness that the deck-hand lost interest and decided that they were "just relations" after all.

They had carried their camp with them, and, from where they now sat, they could see its canvas gleaming ivory white against its background of green. Desire's eyes, as she raised them from her name-building, lingered upon it proudly. It was such a wonderful camp!—her first experience of what money, unconsidered save as a purchasing agent, can do. Even her personal outfit was something of a revelation. How deliciously keen and new was this consciousness of clothes—the smart high-laced boots, the soft, sand-colored coat and skirt, the knickers which felt so easy and so trim, the cool, silk shirt with its wide collar, the dainty, intimate things beneath! She would have been less than woman, had the possession of these things failed to meet some need,—some instinct, deep within, which her old, bare life had daily mortified.

And it had all been so easy, so natural! How could she ever have hesitated to make the change? Even her pride was left to her, intact. He, her friend, had given and she had taken, but in this there had been no spoiling sense of obligation, for, presently, she too was to give and to give unstintedly: new strength and skill seemed already tingling in her firm, quick hands; new vigor and inspiration stirred in her eager brain—and both hands and brain were to be her share of giving—her partnership offering in this pact of theirs. She was eager, eager to begin.

But already they had been four days in camp without a beginning. So far they had not even looked for the trail which was to lead them to the cabin of Hawk-Eye Charlie whose store of Indian lore had been the reason for their upcoast journey. This delay of the expeditionary party was due to no fault of its secretary. During the past four days she had proposed the search for the trail four times, one proposal per day. And each day the chief expeditioner had voted a postponement. The chief expeditioner was lazy. At least that was the excuse he made. And Desire, who was not lazy, might have fretted at the inaction had she believed him. But she knew it was not laziness which had drawn certain new lines about the expeditioner's mouth and deepened the old ones on his forehead. It was not laziness which lay behind the strained look in his eyes and the sudden return of his almost vanished limp. These things are not symptoms of indolence. They are symptoms of nerves. And Desire knew something of nerves. What she did not know, in the present case, was their exciting cause. Neither could she understand this new reticence on the part of their victim nor his reluctance to admit the obvious. She puzzled much about these problems while the lazy one rested in the sun and the quiet, golden days wrought the magic of their cure.

And Spence, mere man that he was, fancied that she noticed nothing. The pleasant illusion hastened his recovery. It tended to restore a complacency, rudely disturbed by an enforced realization of his own back-sliding. He had been quite furious upon discovering that the "little episode" of the moonlit cottage had filched from him all his new won strength and nervous stamina, leaving him sleepless and unstrung, ready to jump at the rattling of a stone. More and more, there grew in him a fierce disdain of weakness and a cold determination to beat Nature at her own game. Let him once again be "fit" and wily indeed would be the trick which would steal his fitness from him.

Meanwhile, laziness was as good a camouflage as anything and lying on the grass while Desire chose her name was pleasant in the extreme.

"Names," murmured the lazy one dreamily, "are things. When a thing is 'named true' its name and itself become inseparable and identical. That is why all magic is wrought by names. It becomes simply a matter of knowing the right ones."

"Is that a very new idea, or a very old one?"

"All ideas are ageless, so it must be both."

"I wonder how they named things in the very, very first?" mused Desire. "Did they just sit in the sun, as we are sitting, and think and think, until suddenly—they knew?"

"Very likely. There is a legend that, in the beginning, everything was named true—fire, water, earth, air—so that the souls of everything knew their names and were ruled by those who could speak them. But, as the race grew less simple and more corrupt, the true names were obscured and then lost altogether. Only once or twice in all the ages has come some master who has known their secret—such, perhaps, as He who could speak peace to the wind and walk upon the sea and change the water into wine."

Desire nodded. "Yes," she said. "It feels like that—as if one had forgotten. Sometimes when I have been in the woods alone or drifting far out on the water, where there was no sound but its own voice, it has seemed as if I had only to think—hard—hard—in order to remember! Only one never does."

"But one may—there is always the chance. I fancied I was near it once—in a shell hole. The stars were big and close and the earth seemed light and ready to float away. I almost had it then—my lips were just moving upon some mighty word—but someone came. They found me and carried me in ... I say, the sun is climbing up, let's follow it."

Hand in hand they followed the line of the sinking sun up the slippery slope. They both knew where they were going, for every evening of their stay they had wandered there to sit awhile in the little deserted Indian burying-ground which lay, white fenced and peaceful, facing the flaming west. When they had found it first it had seemed to give the last touch of beauty to that beautiful place.

"It is so different," said Desire, searching carefully, as was her way, for the proper word. "It is so—so beautifully dead. It ought to be like that," she went on thoughtfully. "I never realized before why our cemeteries are so sad—it is because we will not let them really die—we dress them up with flowers—a kind of ghastly life in death. But this—"

They looked around them at the little white-fenced spot with its great centre cross, grey and weather-beaten, and all its smaller crosses clustering round. There was warmth here, the warmth of sun upon a western slope. There was life, too, the natural life of grass and vine, the cheerful noise of birds and squirrels and bees. And, for color, there were harmonies in all the browns and greens and yellows of the rocky soil.

"Let us sit here. They won't mind. They are all sleeping so happily," Desire had declared. "And the crosses make it seem like one large family—see how that wild rose vine has spread itself over a whole group of graves! It is so friendly."

Spence had fallen in with her humor, and had come indeed to love this place where even the sun paused lingeringly before the mountains swallowed it up.

This afternoon he flung himself down beside their favorite rose-vine with the comfortable sense of well-being which comes with returning health. Even more than Desire, he wondered that he had ever hesitated before an arrangement so eminently satisfying. If ever events had justified an impulse, his impulse, he felt, had been justified. He stole a glance at Desire as she sat in pleasant silence gazing into the sunset. She was happier already, and younger. Something of that hard maturity was fading from her eyes—the tiny dented corners of her lips were softer.... Oh, undoubtedly he had done the right thing! And everything had run so smoothly. There had been no trouble. No unlocked for Nemesis had dogged his steps even in the matter of that small strategy concerning his unhappy past. He had been unduly worried about that, owing probably to early copy-book aphorisms. Honesty is the best policy. Yes, but—nothing had happened. Mary, bless her, was already only a memory. She had played her part and slipped back into the void from whence she came. He could forget her very name with impunity. A faint smile testified to a conscience lulled to warm security.

But security is a dangerous thing. It tempts the fates. Even while our strategist smiled, the girl who sat so silently beside him was wondering about that smile—and other things. He was much better, she reflected, if he could find his passing thoughts amusing. Amusement at one's own fancies is a healthy sign. And today she had noticed, also, that his laziness was almost natural. Perhaps it might be safe now to say what she had made up her mind should be said. But not too abruptly. When next she spoke it was merely to continue their previous discussion.

"Do you think people may have 'true' names, too?" she asked presently. "Just ordinary people, like you and me?"

Spence nodded. "Always noting," he added, "that you and I are not ordinary people."

"Then if anyone knew another's true name, and used it, the other could not help responding?"

"Um-m. I suppose not."

"Perhaps that is what love is," said Desire.

Even then no presentiment of coming trouble stirred beneath Spence's dangerous serenity. Perhaps it was because the air had made him comfortably drowsy. He merely nodded, deftly swallowing a yawn. Desire went on:

"Then love is only complete understanding?"

"Always thought it might be some trifle like that," murmured the drowsy one. "But don't ask me. How should I know? That is," rousing hastily, "I do know, of course. And it is. There's a squirrel eating your hat."

Desire changed the position of the hat. But the subject remained and she resumed it dreamily.

"Then in order that it might be quite complete, the understanding would have to be mutual. If only one loved, there would always be a lack."

"Not a doubt of it!" said Spence firmly.

"Well, then—don't you see?"

"See? See what? That squirrel's eating your hat again."

"Go away!" said Desire to the squirrel. And, when it had gone, "Don't you see?" she repeatedly gravely.

The professor always loved her gravity. And he had not seen. He was, in fact, almost asleep. "You tell me," he said, rushing upon destruction.

Then Desire said what she had made up her mind to say. He never knew exactly what it was because before she actually said the word "Mary," he was too sleepy, and afterwards he was too dazed.

Mary! The word went through him like an electric shock. It tingled to his criminal toes. It whirled through his cringing brain like a pinwheel suddenly lighted. It exploded like a bomb in the recesses of his false content.

Desire was talking about Mary! Talking about her in that frank and unembarrassed way which he had always admired. But good heavens! didn't she realize that Mary was dead and buried? No. She evidently did not. Far from it. When he was able to listen intelligently once more, Desire was saying:

"... and, to a man like you, philosophy should be such a help. I feel you will be far, far less unhappy if you do not shut yourself up with your memories. Do you suppose I have not noticed how nervous and worn out you have been since the night we came away? Why have you tried to hide it?"

"I haven't—"

"Yes you have. Please, please don't quibble. And hidden things are so dangerous. It isn't as if I would not understand. You ought to give me credit for a little knowledge of human nature. I knew perfectly well that when you married me—you would think of Mary. You could hardly help it."

The professor sat up. He was not at all sleepy now. Mary had "murdered sleep." But he was still dazed.

"Wait a moment." He raised a restraining hand. "Let me get this right. You say you have noticed a certain lack of energy in my manner of late?"

"Anyone must have noticed it."

"But I explained it, didn't I?"

"Yes?" The slight smile on Desire's lips was sufficient comment on the explanation. The professor began to feel injured.

"Then I gather, further, that you do not accept the explanation?"

"Don't be cross! How could I? I have eyes. And my point is simply that there is no need for any concealment between us. You promised that we should be friends. Friends help friends when they are in trouble."

The professor rumpled his hair The pinwheel in his brain was slowing down. Already the marvelous something which accepts and adjusts the unexpected was hard at work restoring order. Mary was not dead. He had to reckon with Mary. Very well, let Mary look to her-self. Let her beware how she harassed a desperate man! Let her—but he was not pushed to extremes yet.

"I thought," he said slowly, "that we had tacitly agreed not to reopen this subject."

Desire looked surprised.

"And I still think that it would be better, much better to ignore it altogether."

"Oh, but it wouldn't," said Desire. "See how dreadfully dumpy you have been since Friday."

"I have not been dumpy. But supposing I have, there may be other reasons. What if I can honorably assure you that I have not been thinking of the past at all?"

"Then I should want to know what you have been thinking of."

"But supposing I were to go further and say that my thoughts are my own property?"

"That would be horridly rude, don't you think? And you are not at all a rude person. If you'll risk it, I will."

Her smile was insufferably secure.

"You are willing to risk a great deal," snapped Spence. "But if it's truth you want—"

He almost confessed then. The temptation to slay Mary with a few well chosen words almost overpowered him. But he looked at the expectant face beside him and faltered. Mary would not die alone. With her would die this newborn comradeship. And Desire's smile, though insufferable, was sweet. How would it feel to see that bright look change and pale to cold dislike? Already in imagination he shivered under the frozen anger of that frank glance.

He could not risk it!

Should he then, ignoring Mary, ascribe his symptoms to their true cause? By dragging out the horror of that moonlit night, he could account for any vagary of nerves. But that way of escape was equally impossible. He could not let that shadow fall across her path of new-found freedom. Nor would he, in any case, gain much by such postponement. The wretched professor began to realize that the devil is indeed the father of lies and that he who sups with him needs a long spoon.

Meanwhile, Desire was waiting.

He felt that he would like to shake her—sitting there with untroubled air and face like an inquiring sphinx—to shake her and kiss her and tell her that there wasn't any Mary and—he brought himself up with a start. What nonsense was this!

"Look here," he said irritably, "you are all wrong. You really are. It's perfectly true I've been feeling groggy. But there doesn't have to be a reason for that, unfortunately. Old Bones warned me that I might expect all kinds of come-backs. But I'm almost right again now. Another day or two of this heavenly place and I shan't know that I have a nerve."

"Yes," critically. "You are better. I should say that the worst was over."

"I'm sure it is. Supposing we leave it at that."

Desire smiled her shadowy smile. "Very well. But I wanted you to know that I understand. It's so silly to go on pretending not to see, when one does see. And it's only natural that things should seem more poignant for a time. Only you will recover much more quickly if you adopt a sensible attitude. I do not say, 'do not think of Mary,' I say 'think of her openly.'"

"How," said Spence, "does one think openly?"

"One talks."

"You wish me to talk of Mary?"

"It will be so good for you!" warmly.

They looked for a moment into each other's eyes. And Spence was conscious of a second shock. Was there, was there the faintest glint of something which was not all sympathy in those grey depths of hers? Before his conscious mind had even formulated the question, his other mind had asked and answered it, and, with the lightning speed of the subconscious, had acted. The professor became aware of a complete change of outlook. His remorse and timidity left him. His brain worked clearly.

"Very well," said the professor.

The worm had turned!