The Window-Gazer

CHAPTER XXXIII

"There is one thing which I simply do not understand." Miss Davis dug the point of a destructive parasol into the well-kept gravel of the drive and allowed a glance of deep seriousness to drift from under the shadow of her hat. Unfortunately, her companion was not attending.

It was the day of Mrs. Burton Jones' garden party, the Bainbridge event for which Miss Davis was, presumably, staying over. Mary, in a new frock of sheerest grey and most diaphanous white, and a hat which lay like a breath of mist against the gold of her hair, had come down early. In the course of an observant career, she had learned that, in one respect at least, men are like worms. They are inclined to be early. Mary had often profited by this bit of wisdom, and was glad that so few other women seemed to realize its importance. One can do much with ten or fifteen uninterrupted minutes.

But today Mary had not done much. She had found Benis, as she expected, on the front steps. They had talked for quite ten minutes without an interruption—but also without any reason to deplore one.

This was failure. And Mary, whose love of the chase grew as the quarry proved shy, was beginning to be seriously annoyed with Benis. He might at least play up! Even now he was not looking at her, and he did not ask her what it was that she simply did not understand. Mary decided that he deserved something—a pin-prick at least.

"Why don't you get a car, Benis?" she asked inconsequently. "If you had one, Desire might ride in it some-times, instead of always in Dr. Rogers'. Can't you see that it's dangerous?"

"One has to take risks," said Spence plaintively. "John is careless. But he has never killed anyone yet."

"You're impossible, Benis."

"Yes, I know. But particularly impossible as a chauffeur. That's why I haven't a car. What would I do with a driver when I wasn't using him? Desire will have a car of her own as soon as she likes to try it. Aunt won't drive and I—don't."

This was the first approach to a personal remark the professor had made. No one was in sight yet and Mary began to hope again. Once more she tried the gently serious gaze.

"Why not?" she asked, not too eagerly.

Yorick, sunning himself by the door, gave vent to a goblin chuckle. "Oh, what a pal was M-Mary! Oh, what a pal—Nothing doing!" he finished with a shriek and began to flap his wings.

The professor laughed. "Yorick gets his lessons mixed," he said. "But isn't he a wonder? Did you ever know a bird who could learn so quickly?"

Mary did not want to talk about birds. "Do tell me why you dislike driving?" she asked with gentle insistence.

"Oh, I like it.-It's not that. I used to drive like Jehu, or John. Never had an accident. But when I came back from overseas I found I couldn't trust my nerve—no quick judgment, no instinctive reaction—all gone to pieces. Rather rotten."

With unerring intuition Mary knew this for a real confidence. Fortunately she was an expert with shy game.

"Quite rotten," she said soberly. He went on.

"It's little things like that that hit hard. Not to be One's own man in a crisis—d'y' see?"

Mary nodded.

"But it's only temporary," he continued more cheer-fully. "I'll try myself out one of these days. Only, of course, arranged tests are never real ones. The crisis must leap on one to be of any use. Some little time ago, when I was at the coast, an incident happened—a kind of unexpected emergency"—he paused thoughtfully as a sudden vision of a moon-lit room flashed before him—"I got through that all right," he added, "so I'm hopeful."

"How thrilling," said Mary. "Won't you tell me what it was?"

His eyes met hers with a placidity for which she could have shaken him.

"It wouldn't interest you," he said. "I hear Aunt coming at last."

Miss Campion's voice had indeed preceded her.

"Oh, there you are, Mary," she said with some acidity. "I told Desire you were sure to be down first."

"I try to be prompt," said Mary meekly. "I have been keeping Benis company until you were ready." She spoke to Miss Campion but her slightly mocking eyes watched for some change upon the face of her young hostess. Desire, as usual, was serene.

"Mary thinks we are all heathens not to have a car," said Benis. "When are you going to choose yours, Desire?"

"Not at all, I think," said Desire.

Men, even clever men, are like that. The professor had seen no possible sting in his idly spoken words. But the sore, hot spot, which now seemed ever present in Desire's heart, grew sorer and hotter. To owe a car to the reminder of another woman! Naturally, Desire could do very well without it.

"But don't you miss a car terribly?" asked Mary with kind concern.

"I cannot miss what I have never had."

"Oh, in the west, I suppose one does have horses still."

"There may be a few left, I think." Desire's slow smile crept out as memory brought the asthmatic "chug" of the "Tillicum." "My father and I used a launch almost exclusively." In spite of herself she could not resist a glance at the professor. His eyes met hers with a ghost of their old twinkle.

"A launch?" Mary's surprise was patent. "Did you run it yourself?"

"We had a Chinese engineer," said Desire demurely. "But I could manage it if necessary."

Further conversation upon modes of locomotion on the coast was cut off by the precipitate arrival of John who, coming up the drive in his best manner, narrowly escaped a triple fatality at the steps.

"You people are careless!" he exclaimed indignantly. "What do you mean by standing on the drive? Some-one might have been hurt! Anyone here like to get driven to the garden party?"

"Do doctors find time for garden parties in Bainbridge?" asked Mary in mock surprise.

"Healthiest place you ever saw!" declared Dr. John gloomily. "And anyway, this garden party is a prescription of mine. Naturally I am expected to take my own medicine. I said to Mrs. B. Jones, 'What you need, dear Mrs. Jones, is a little gentle excitement combined with fresh air, complete absence of mental strain and plenty of cooling nourishment.' Did you ever hear a garden party more delicately suggested? Desire, will you sit in front?"

"Husbands first," said Benis. "In the case of a head-on collision, I claim the post of honorable danger."

It was surely a natural and a harmless speech. But instantly the various mistaken thoughts of his hearers turned it to their will. Desire's eyes grew still more clouded under their lowered lids. "He does not dare to sit beside Mary," whispered her particular mental highwayman. "Oho, he is beginning to show human jealousy at last," thought Mary. "He has noticed that she likes to sit beside me," exulted John. Of them all, only Aunt Caroline was anywhere near the truth. "He has taken my warning to heart," thought she. "But then, I always knew I could manage men if I had a chance."

A garden party in Bainbridge is not exciting, in itself. In themselves, no garden parties are exciting. As mere garden parties they partake somewhat of the slow and awful calm of undisturbed nature. One could see the grass grow at a garden party, if so many people were not trampling on it. So it is possible that there were those in Mrs. Burton Jones' grounds that afternoon who, bringing no personal drama with them, had rather a dull time. For others it was a fateful day. There were psychic milestones on Mrs. Burton Jones' smooth lawn that afternoon.

It was there, for instance, that the youngest Miss Keith (the pretty one) decided to marry Jerry Clarkson, junior (and regretted it all her life). It was there that Mrs. Keene first suspected the new principal of the Collegiate Institute of Bolshevik tendencies. (He had said that, in his opinion, kings were bound to go.) And it was there that Miss Ellis spoke to Miss Sutherland for the first time in three years. (She asked her if she would have lemon or chocolate cake—a clear matter of social duty.) It was there also that Miss Mary Sophia Watkins, Dr. Rogers' capable nurse, decided finally that a longer stay in Bainbridge would be wasted time. It was the first time she had actually seen her admired doctor and the object of his supposed regard together, and a certain look which she surprised on Dr. John's face as his eyes followed Desire across the lawn, convinced her so thoroughly that, like a sensible girl, she packed up that night and went back to the city.

Perhaps it was that very look which also decided Spence. For decide he did. There was no excuse for waiting longer. He must "have it out" with John. Desire must be given her freedom. Of John's attitude he had small doubt. His infatuation for Desire had been plain from the beginning. Time had served only to centre and strengthen it. He could not in justice blame John. He didn't blame John. That is to say, he would not officially permit himself to blame John, though he knew very well that he did blame him. A sense of the rights of other people as opposed to one's own rights has been hardly gained by the Race, and is by no means firmly seated yet. Let primitive passions slip control for an instant and presto! good-bye to the rights of other people! The primitive man in Spence would not have argued the matter. Having obtained his mate by any means at all, it would have gone hard with anyone who, however justly, attempted to take her from him. Today, at Mrs. Burton-Jones' garden party, the acquired restraints of character seemed wearing thin. The professor decided that it might be advisable to go home.

Desire and Mary noticed his absence at about the same time. And both lost interest in the party with the suddenness of a light blown out.

"Things are moving," thought Mary with a thrill of triumph. But in spite of her triumph she was angry. It is not pleasant to have the power of one's rival so starkly revealed. Malice crept into her faun-like eyes as she looked across to where Desire sat, a composed young figure, listening with apparent interest to the biggest bore in Bainbridge. What right had she to hold a man's hot heart between her placid hands! Mary ground her parasol into Mrs. Burton-Jones' best sod and her small white teeth shut grindingly behind her lips.

Desire was trying to listen to the little man with the enlarged ego who attempted to entertain her. But she was very much aware of Mary and all her moods. "She is selfish. She will make him miserable," thought Desire. "But she will make him happy first. And, in any case, he must be free."

"Yes, Mrs. Spence," the little man beside her was saying, "a man like myself, however diffident, must be ready to do his full duty by the community in which he lives. That is why I feel I must accept the nomination for mayor of this town—if I am offered it. My friends say to me, 'Miller, you are a man, and we need a man. Bainbridge needs a man.' What am I to do under such circumstances? If there is no man—"

"You might try a woman," said Desire, suddenly losing patience. The garden party was stupid. The egotist was stupid. She was probably stupid too, because she knew that a few weeks ago she would have found both the party and the egotist entertaining. She would have been delighted to peep in at a window where every-thing was labelled "Big I." She would have enjoyed Mrs. Burton-Jones' windows immensely—but now, windows bored her. In the only window that mattered the blinds were down. Desire's life had narrowed as it broadened. It wasn't life that she wanted any more—it was the one thing which could have made life dear.

A great impatience of trivialities came upon her. She hardly heard the injured tones of the little man who had embarked upon a heated repudiation of a feminine mayoralty. It did not amuse her even when he proved logically that women could never be anything because they were always something else. Instead she looked to Dr. John for rescue, and Dr. John, most observant of knights, immediately rescued her.

"Did you see that?" asked Mrs. Keene (the same who discovered the Bolshevik principal). She touched Miss Davis significantly on the arm.

Mary, who had seen perfectly well, looked blank.

"Of course you are not one of us," went on Mrs. Keene. "So you can scarcely be expected.... Still, living in the same house ... and knowing the dear professor so well."

"Did you wish to speak to him? He has gone home, I think," said Mary, innocently. "I fancy he doesn't suffer garden parties gladly."

"No—such a pity! With a wife so young and, if I may say so, so different. One feels that she has not been brought up amongst us. So sad. I always say 'Let our young men marry at home.' So sensible. One knows where one is then, don't you think?"

Mary agreed that, in such a position, one might know where one was.

"And book writing," said Mrs. Keene, "so fatiguing! So liable to occupy one's attention—to the exclusion of other matters.... The dear professor.... So bound up in the marvels of the human brain!"

"Not brain, mind," corrected Mary gently. "The professor is a psychologist."

"Well, of course if you wish to separate them, in a scriptural sense. But what I mean is that such biological studies are dangerous. So absorbing. When one examines things through a microscope—"

"One doesn't—in psychology."

"Well, perhaps not so much as formerly, especially since vivisection is so looked down upon. But it is terribly absorbing, as I say. And one can hardly expect an absorbed man to see things. And yet—"

"What is it," asked Mary bluntly, "that you think Professor Spence ought to see?"

This was entirely too blunt for Mrs. Keene. She, in her turn, looked blank. What did Miss Davis mean? She was not aware that she had suggested the professor's seeing anything. Probably there was nothing at all to see. Young people have such latitude nowadays. She herself was not a gossip. She despised gossip. "What I always say," declared she, virtuously, "is 'do not hint thing's.' Say them right out and then we shall know where we are. Don't you think so?"

Mary agreed that, under these conditions also, one might be fairly sure of one's position in space. "Unless," she concluded maliciously, "there is anything in the Einstein theory."

This latter shot had the effect intended, for Mrs. Keene said hurriedly, "Oh, of course in that case—" and moved away.

"I'm going home, Mary," said Aunt Caroline, coming up. Aunt Caroline had had enough garden party. She had noticed both the rescue of Desire by John, and the conversation of Mary with Mrs. Keene—the "worst old gossip in Bainbridge."

Desire was quite ready to go. So was Mary. The centre of attraction for them both had shifted itself. John too, felt that he ought to turn up at the office. But all three ladies politely declined a lift home in his car.

"It is so hot," he pleaded.

"It is not hot," said Aunt Caroline.

Mary smiled mockingly and murmured something about the great distances of small towns. Desire said, "No, thank you, John," in her detached way—a way which drove him mad even while he adored it.

So the Burton-Jones garden party faded into history. But history-in-the-making caught up its effects and carried them on....

It was a lovely night. But indoors it was hot with the accumulated heat of the day. Instead of going to bed, Mary slipped out into the garden. It was fresher there, and she was restless. The front of the house lay in darkness, but, from the library window at the side, stretched a ribbon of light. Benis must be still at work. With slippers which made no sound upon the grass, Mary crossed over to the window and looked in.

What she saw there stung her already fretted soul to unreasoning anger, and for once the circumspect Miss Davis acted upon impulse undeterred by thought. Entering the house softly, she ran upstairs to the west room which she entered without knocking.

Desire, seated at the dressing table, turned in surprise. She was ready for bed, but lingered over the brushing of her hair. With another spasm of anger, Mary noticed the hair she brushed—hair long and lustrous and lifted in soft waves. A pink kimona lay across the back of her chair, a pretty thing—but not at all French.

"Put it on," said Mary, "and come here. I want to show you something."

Desire did not ask "What?" Nor did she keep Mary waiting. Pleasant or unpleasant, it was not Desire's way to delay revelation. Together the two girls hurried out into the dew-sweet garden. As they went, Mary spoke in gusty sentences.

"I don't care what you do." (She was almost sobbing in her anger.) "I don't understand you.... I don't want to.... But you're not going to get away with it ... that cool air of yours ... pretending not to see.... If you are human at all you'll see ... and remember all your life."

They were close to the library window now. Desire looked in.

She looked so long and stood so still that Mary had time to get back a little of her breath and something of her common sense. An instinct which her selfish life had pretty well buried began to stir.

"Come away," she whispered, "I shouldn't have ... it wasn't fair ... he would never forgive us if he knew we had seen him like this!"

Desire drew back instantly.

"No," she said. Her voice was toneless. Her face in the darkness gleamed wedge-shaped and unfamiliar between the falling waves of her hair.

"I'm sorry," said Mary sulkily. "But I thought you ought to know what you are doing. It takes a lot to break up a man like that."

"Yes," said Desire. "All the same I had no right—"

"You will have," said Desire evenly.

They were at her door now. She paused with her hand on the knob.

"I knew he cared," she said in the same level voice, "but I didn't know that he cared like that."

"You know now," said Mary. Her irritation was returning.

"Yes," said Desire. "Good-night."

She opened the door and went in.