Fool There Was — In the Garden; Temptation
IN THE GARDEN.
Kathryn stood beside the blossom-laden arbor, culling fragrant tender blossoms from the wealth before her.
Beside her, Muriel, little skirt upheld, received them.
"Mother, dear," said the child, at length.
"Yes, honey?"
"Does God make roses?"
"Yes, dearie."
"Who made God?"
Her mother smiled.
"He made Himself.
God makes everything, dearie."
With troubled brows the little one asked: "Did God sit down when He made His feet?"
Came from the house Elinor.
She moved lithely, swiftly, now.
The old tan had come back to her cheek; she was no longer an invalid.
"More roses, Kate?"
she asked, brightly.
Kathryn nodded.
"Yes," she said.
"It seems almost brutal to cut them, doesn't it?
But I love them in my room; and they won't grow there."
"Then sleep out here.
It's quite the thing, nowadays."
Kathryn smiled a little.
"You're so frightfully lacking in sensibilities, Nell."
"And," returned her practical sister, "a lot more comfortable because I am."
She seated herself.
"Tom's back," she announced.
A quick little gleam of gladness sprang to the violet eyes.
"Is he?"
Elinor nodded, nonchalantly.
"Yes, that floating palace of his dropped anchor about ten minutes ago.
They were lowering a launch as I came downstairs."
"Oh!"
cried Muriel, excitedly dropping the roses to the lawn.
"There he is now!
I can hear him winding up his boat!"
She rang at headlong speed through that arbor way.
Another moment and Blake had entered, carrying her in his arms.
Kathryn extended her hand to him; he took it in warm, firm, friendly clasp.
Elinor nodded.
"'Lo, Tom," was her salutation.
"'Lo, Nell," he returned.
"You're getting fat."
"The same to you, and many of 'em," she replied.
"Have a good time?"
"Oh, the same old sea-saw."
He shrugged broad shoulders.
"This running a sailors' boarding house isn't what it's cracked up to be.
We hit a three- day executive session of a northeast storm off the Banks that kept us exceedingly busy.
Everyone on board was seasick--except the cook."
"Tom," interrupted Kathryn, "I wish you'd come into the library a moment.
My lawyers have sent me some papers to sign and return, and I can't make head nor tail of them."
"Of course you can't," he said, assuringly.
"I never know what my lawyers are doing.
If I did, I'd fire them and do it myself.
And they realize it.
A lawyer can order a fried egg, cooked on one side only, and make it sound like a royal proclamation announcing a total change of the currency system.
They're like doctors and clairvoyants.
Their graft lies in being mysterious.
Why does a doctor call pink eye _muco puerpural conjunctivitis_?
Because pink eye is not worth more than a dollar at the outside; but when he hands you _muco puerpural conjunctivitis_, he can get twenty-five at least before you wake up and say, 'Where am I?'
" His humor, perhaps, was forced; possibly there was nothing funny in what he said; but they laughed.
There was always a tension at "Grey Rocks," now--always a strain.
It needed little to relieve it; it needed that little badly.
Blake gave to that little all that he could.
Even the child felt the tension, and the strain of it.
She could not have told what it was; but she missed something beside her daddy, infinite was her longing for him, and her loneliness without him.
At times she used to beg the dignified Roberts to play buck-jump, and tag, with her, as "daddy used to do."
And this she did while Blake and her mother and her Aunt Elinor were in the library, going over the troublesome papers with their imposing seals and undecipherable writing.
"I've been looking for you everyw'ere, Miss Muriel," the butler announced, impressively.
Everything that Roberts did was impressive.
"Were you, Woberts?"
she queried.
"You didn't want to play hide-and-go seek, did you, Woberts?
Because if you did, I'd like to heaps and heaps."
He opened his lips in protest; but she interrupted: "I'll be it, Woberts, and you can run and hide.
Oh!
Will you?"
What could he say?
It hurt his dignity--it was a distinct prostitution of pride--and yet, what could he say?
What could he do?
For he, too, loved, pitied, and was sorry.
Thus it was that, returning from the library, Kathryn, Elinor and Blake came upon a red-faced and puffing butler engaged in giving a most realistic imitation of a bear, while a delighted little girl, clapping tiny hands in glee, adjured him to growl as bears growl, not as cows growl.
It was another welcome little break in the tension.
And for that it was welcome; welcome, that is, to all but him of the outraged dignity.
And even he, though he puffed and huffed below stairs, deep down in his heart was glad that he had sacrificed his most precious possession in such a cause.
[Illustration] CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE.
TEMPTATION.
Elinor VanVorst swung around in her chair, and eyed her sister.
"Well, Kate?"
she asked.
Kate raised violet eyes in protest.
"Please, Nell, don't insist," she begged.
"I don't want to talk about it."
Her sister continued, firmly: "It must be talked of....
You must divorce him, Kate."
"No!"
"But I say, 'Yes!'
You should hear what people are saying about you."
"What do I care what people are saying about me?
It's what I think of myself that counts."
"That may be true," her sister retorted; "but it's too idealistic for this world....
Moreover, you're not consistent."
Kathryn looked up, quickly.
"What do you mean?"
she demanded.
Elinor shrugged her shoulders, a little and answered: "You're compromising.
You're hedging.
If he isn't good enough to live with, he isn't good to be married to."
"But," Kathryn protested.
"I can't live with him, Nell!
You know as well as I how impossible that is."
"Then," returned Elinor, rising, "divorce him."
Kathryn shook her head, wearily.
"I can't do that, either."
The other turned.
"Then what are you going to do?"
she demanded.
"Are you going on forever being honest neither with him nor with yourself--compromising on the one hand with your womanhood, on the other with your selfishness?
How long has it been since you made the slightest effort to see him, or to send anyone to him?"
Kathryn answered, slowly: "Not since the time I tried to go, and Tom went before me.
I--I have thought, often, of going....
But, somehow, I've been--afraid."
In almost a whisper, she repeated, "Yes....
Afraid!"
Elinor VanVorst raised her shoulders in an expressive gesture.
It conveyed more plainly than could words that her end of the argument was done--her case was rested.
Kathryn considered long, earnestly, in silence.
Divorce him!
Divorce John Schuyler!
It had occurred to her--it had occurred to her in the long silences of the night--in the thousands of aeons that had lain, ofttimes, between the setting of the sun and the rising thereof....
Divorce him!
...
It was a thought that stung.
He had been to her all that any man could have been.
He had been a man of whom her head was proud and her heart fond with the great love that lies in the heart of a good woman.
He it was, and God, who had given her the little child that she could see from where she sat, rolling, a tumbled little heap of white lace and whirling brown legs on the broad expanse of the green lawn.
He it was who had taken the first of her life--who had shown her what it was to live....
And then this thing had come--this awful, hideous thing that had stretched even her very life to the breaking point, and drained from it the wealth of sweetness to the uttermost drop....
She felt resentment, yes, and horror, and disgust.
Yet there were other things, she knew, though she could not have told how she knew.
There was something that was hidden--something unknown and unknowable....
Long, she thought, and earnestly--as she had thought so many, many times before--times without end....
At length she rose.
Firm little chin was set; violet eyes were firm.
She said, slowly: "I think I see your point, Nell.
You're right.'
"And you'll divorce him?"
Kathryn shook her head.
"No," she replied softly, "I'll go to him."
Elinor started.
"What!"
she cried, untrustful of her own ears.
"I have failed in my duty; you have shown me wherein I have failed.
I'll go to him."
Elinor caught her hand.
"Kate!"
she pleaded.
"Kate, dear, listen to me!
I haven't shown you your duty if that's what you consider your duty....
I'll tell you something that you haven't thought of....
Muriel."
In almost a gasp, her sister cried: "Muriel!
...
Muriel!"
"Can you take her with you?"
demanded Elinor.
Kathryn shook her head.
"No," she replied.
"Of course not.
I shall leave her here, with you."
Her sister shook her head.
"Do you see?"
she queried.
"Can you go to him, and live with him, as wife?"
Kathryn made no answer.
Again Elinor shook her head, gently.
"Don't you understand," she asked.
"It's compromise on compromise-- hedging on hedging.
Can't you see how impossible it all is?
...
how utterly impossible?"
Torn of anguish, of inability to solve the problems that God had laid before her, Kathryn turned beseeching eyes to her sister.
"But what shall I do, Nell?"
she asked, beseechingly.
"What can I do....
Wasn't it hard enough, even that way?"
Elinor replied, gently: "Too hard.
I want to make it easier.
I want you to leave him irrevocably.
Then you can forget him; but not until then."
Kathryn was silent.
"What does Tom say?"
she asked, at length.
She had learned to depend much upon the big-bodied, big-hearted, big-minded friend of late.
"I haven't asked him," returned her sister.
"But I will, now."
She rose, quickly, and went to the rose-strewn arbor-way.
She could see Blake, out upon the broad lawn, playing with the child that he loved, boyish, natural, whole-souled, with all the enthusiasm unspoiled that God gives not to many who are grown.
"Tom!"
she called.
"Yes?"
he answered.
"Will you come here, to us, for a moment?
Let Muriel stay with Mawkins."
"Right, oh!"
he called, cheerily.
In another moment he stood in the opening of the arbor, hair rumpled, clothing awry.
"Well?"
he asked, inquiringly.
Elinor began, slowly: "Tom, Kate and I have been talking, seriously.
I want her to leave John Schuyler--legally leave him--leave him for all time.
It's the only fair-- the only right--thing to do.
I'm not going to argue.
It is all sufficiently plain.
She can't live with him; and yet, as long as she is his wife, she has no right to be away from him.
And she can never go to him."
"She wants your opinion, Tom," she went on.
"She's always respected your judgment more than mine--more than that of anyone save the man upon whom she may never depend again."
Kathryn had wandered to where the white blooms clustered thickest.
She was thinking--thinking deeply, bitterly.
Elinor drew closer to Blake.
"I like you, Tom," she said, softly.
"You're a good man--a decent man--a clean man--and they're mighty scarce these days....
All that Kate may have owed to John Schuyler, she long since paid to the last sad penny....
All your life you have been paying the things that you did not owe....
There is happiness, somewhere; a happiness that can be found."
She thrust out her hand.
"Tell her what to do," she said.
"Tell her the right thing to do--the thing that should be done."
And she turned on her heel, and went away.
For a long, long time Blake stood motionless.
Of that which was going on within his soul, no one might know.
The expression of his face remained the same, and of his body.
Only his hands clenched, and unclenched, and clenched again.
It was a difficult position in which he found himself-- how difficult only he might know.
There lay before him a vast, spreading vista of golden possibility--a possibility of which he had never dared to think--even to dream.
Possibly it were but a possibility--and yet surely it was that.
A word from him would so make it.
That he knew.
On the other hand-- For yet a longer time, he stood, hands clenching, unclenching, clenching....
Slowly he went to where the woman he loved stood, slender white fingers plucking nervously at bending blossoms of fragrant whiteness.
She turned, a little.
Violet eyes slowly lifted....
He looked into their depths....
His hands clenched, and unclenched more swiftly.
"Kate," he said, at length, slowly, very slowly, "do you want me to tell you what to do?"
She answered, with infinite weariness: "I--I don't know, Tom....
I'm tired--so, so tired...."
And then, abruptly: "Tell me....
Yes, tell me.
What shall I do?"
She waited, deep eyes lifted, little head poised wearily upon white, rounded throat.
He answered, very slowly--with effort that even he could not conceal: "Kate, do you remember that day in June, eight years ago, when you walked down the aisle of Old Trinity.
Do you remember how the sun shone in at the windows, flecking the darkness of the old pews with golden motes?
John Schuyler met you at the altar; and to him you said, 'For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death us do part.'
" Gently he laid his hand upon her shoulder, with great tenderness.
"Stick, Kate," he advised, softly.
"Stick."
And that was all.
[Illustration] CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR.
