The Dominant Strain Part 34

"To-day. Yesterday, he forgot me entirely; to-day, he cares for me just as he always has done, no more, no less. I wish I could care for him; but I can't. I feel perfectly cold, as if nothing more could ever warm me."

"But, in time--after you have forgotten last night--"

Beatrix shook her head.

"My love for Sidney did not die, last night. It was too strong, too much alive, to be killed by the facts of one single night. No; it had been ailing for months; but it finally died, six weeks ago, and nothing now can ever make it live again. Miss Gannion, I have been very selfish."

"I don't think so, Beatrix."

But Beatrix gently drew herself out of Miss Gannion's arms, rose and stood looking down at her friend. In that moment, confronted by Beatrix's sad, calm face and luminous eyes, the little gray-haired woman suddenly realized that, notwithstanding the difference in their years, Beatrix was looking into mysteries which were far beyond her ken.

"Yes, I was selfish," Beatrix went on steadily. "I loved Sidney; I was happy in his love, and I believed that, through both our loves, I could be strong enough to save him from himself. I knew it was a risk, a terrible risk, but I took it for granted that the risk would come only on myself, and, for both our sakes, I was willing to a.s.sume it. I was nothing but a child, for all I felt so wise, and I stopped there, without looking ahead. I was wrong, woefully, sinfully wrong. I was selfish, for I thought of nothing beyond myself. Now that it is too late, I am beginning to realize what it all may mean to the next generation."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"_O the long and dreary Winter!

O the cold and cruel Winter!_"

Thayer's voice was wonderfully rich and mellow, as he stood at the window softly singing over to himself that haunting, tragic Famine Theme from _The Death of Minnehaha_. Fresh from its weeks of resting, low, yet suggesting an immeasurable reserve power, it had all its old throbbing magnetism; but a new quality had been added to it. It had always had moments of pa.s.sionate appeal; now it had gained a sadness, a depth of melancholy which in the past it had been powerless to express. A year before, Thayer could strike the tragic note, never the pathetic.

Nevertheless, the pathos was apparently merely a matter of the vocal cords. The tall, alert, well-groomed man who stood at the snow-veiled window in no way suggested being a candidate for sympathy. His eyes were clear, his brows unfurrowed. Moreover, one could never dream of condoling with the owner of such a voice. Taken quite by itself, its possession would outweigh an almost infinite number of human woes.

"_Ever thicker, thicker, thicker Froze the ice on lake and river, Ever deeper, deeper, deeper Fell the snow_--"

_Hiawatha's_ wigwam might well have been just beyond the spruce thicket, Thayer reflected. The description was too accurate to be artistic; it amounted to mere photography. As far as his own eyes could see, the earth lay buried in a deep, soft blanket of snow, and the air above was misty with flakes which neither fell nor scurried before the wind, but hung apparently motionless in the still, cold air. All through the preceding night, however, the wind had blown fiercely. The snow lay heaped in heavy, irregular drifts across the open plain; but under the trees it was rolled up into soft waves whose tops curled over as daintily as the waves had curled over on the moonlit beach of Monomoy.

The lake was frozen over and snow-covered; but the creek that came rus.h.i.+ng down to meet it was too swift to be overtaken by the frost, and it showed, an inky-dark, sinuous line of open water, winding away and away among the trees, now losing itself in a thicket of alders, now drawing a straight black mark across an open stretch of meadow where the frost-flowers on its banks offered a delicate subst.i.tute for their summer kin.

Half a mile away to the south, the mountain rose abruptly, its face of sheer rock making a dark scar on the winter landscape, a scar crossed with long white bands and bars of ice which, glacier-wise, were creeping over the edge of the cliff as if seeking to veil its sinister face.

Against the base of the mountain, close to the inky creek, another patch of darkness stood out in bold relief. This patch was the Lorimers'

cottage.

In spite of the haunting melancholy of his song, Thayer looked out at the cottage and at the storm with a feeling of supreme content. Lorimer hated storms with a catlike fervor; it was an old-time peculiarity of his, dating from their student days in Gottingen. There was no likelihood of his leaving the cottage, that day; and, inside the cottage with his man to look out for him, Thayer felt that he was beyond the possibility of danger. It was seven weeks since they had buried themselves in that wilderness, seven weeks that Thayer had voluntarily kept himself under the daily and hourly strain of constant intimate a.s.sociation with the woman he loved, of knowing that she gained strength and courage from her reliance upon him, and of forcing himself to treat her with an offhand good-fellows.h.i.+p which defied a.n.a.lysis for the mere reason that it challenged none.

A weaker man than Thayer would have yielded to the strain, or else have grown fretful under its chafing. Thayer did neither. He felt the chafing, galling burden which he bore; but he kept the scars out of sight of others, and moreover, he conscientiously refrained from looking at them, himself. Self-pity is the surest, yet the most insidious foe to self-poise. When the original Cotton Mather Thayer had stuck a splinter of wood into the palm of his hand, he had pulled out the splinter with his teeth and then, punching his hand into his pocket, he had continued his discussion of the latest election to the General Court. His namesake was proving himself true to the traditions of his blood.

Twice only had Thayer sought outlet for his mood. Twice the almost deserted hotel had vibrated with such singing as it was destined never to have heard, before or since. The piano was pa.s.sable and, shut up alone in the barren parlor, Thayer had sung to the empty chairs as he had never yet sung to any crowded audience. Out in the halls, the people of the house gathered in listening, whispering groups; but Thayer never heeded them. It is not certain that, heeding, he would have cared.

Relief he must have at any cost, and this was the one means at his command. His own voice, laden with pa.s.sionate sadness, came echoing back to him from the unresponsive walls, and in time the echo checked his outcry. It taught him anew the lesson which already he had conned again and again, the lesson that his bitterest plaint fell on no one else's ears with half the compelling fervor with which it reached his own, that his cry for help came beaten back to the one person who could help him, that was--himself. But at least, there was some relief in having made his cry.

He had never allowed himself to regret his answer to the impresario. Day by day, he realized more and more keenly that his presence there was imperative. Beatrix seemed to him far from well. Her nerves had been less steady since the shock of that last supper in New York; she was totally unable to adjust herself to Lorimer's swift alternations of mood, his hours of demonstrative affection, his times of black depression and irritability. Thayer saw that she did her best, that she bravely sought to play a loyal part in the work of reformation. The failure was in no sense that of will, but of mere nervous strength. But there were hours and hours when Thayer stood between them, trying by his sympathy for Lorimer to atone for Beatrix's coldness, trying by his chivalry to Beatrix to make amends for the fractiousness of Lorimer.

There were hours when he mourned acutely for his work. They invariably followed upon the heels of a letter from Arlt and they invariably ended in his going to the cottage and dragging Lorimer out for a tramp in the stinging air. The doctor had ordered much exercise, and Lorimer, who refused to go beyond his door in the society of his man, made long expeditions at Thayer's side, returning weary of body, but of placid mood and healthy appet.i.te, to spend a short evening and a long and restful night.

The day before, they had been out since early morning. The deep-packed snow had lain, hard and solid and tempting, and the sun glittered coldly back into the windless air. Lorimer had been in high spirits. One of his old gay, infectious moods was upon him, and, for the pa.s.sing hour, Thayer let himself yield to it until he forgot Beatrix, forgot the tragedy which overhung them all, forgot even the number of miles they had come. At noon, they had found a wood-choppers' camp and, sitting around the blazing fire, they had mingled their daintily-packed lunch with the cruder fare of their temporary hosts. Lorimer had been the life of the party, and the good-bys had been spoken with real regret. At the top of the hill above the camp, Lorimer had turned back again to wave his cap in boyish farewell. Then the episode had ended, ended more completely than Thayer as yet could realize.

Lorimer's mood changed on the way home. He grumbled about the softening snow, about the gathering dusk, about the length of the road. His exasperation reached its height when, ignoring Thayer's advice in regard to the path, he struck out across an open snowfield, only to go cras.h.i.+ng down through its insecure foundation of baby spruces whose l.u.s.ty little branches bore up the snow like myriad arms. When Lorimer emerged from the shallow caverns beneath, his temper was of the blackest, and, all the rest of the way home, he had stalked along in gloomy silence, ten feet in the rear of his companion's heels.

Thayer had judged that it would he well to invite himself to stay to dinner at the cottage. Lorimer had been in one of his worst moods, and even Thayer had found it wellnigh impossible to keep the talk brisk and amicable. He had remained until he had seen that Lorimer was at last yielding to the inevitable drowsiness of his long day in the open air; then he had started back to the hotel. Once outside the cottage, however, he had squared his shoulders and drawn a deep breath of relief.

He needed mental ozone; but even physical ozone was better than mental nitrous oxide.

And now he was standing at the snow-veiled window, looking across at the cottage while he hummed to himself the recurring, haunting Famine Theme,--

"_O the famine and the fever!

O the wasting of the famine!

O the blasting of the fever!_"

He had no notion of the truth of his words. Had he done so, the cottage, not the hotel, would have held him, that day, and the tragedy, so long averted, might have been warded off a little longer. But fate willed otherwise. To Thayer's mind, Lorimer, storm-bound and weary from his tramp of the day before, would spend the day, drowsing, novel in hand, before the open fire. Thayer, in his own absolute integrity, could never imagine the truth: that Lorimer's trusty attendant had at last yielded to the temptation of the oft-repeated bribe and had given into Lorimer's hands the bottle from which he was used to measure out, medicine-wise, the daily lessening allowance of brandy. He could not know how often, all that day, Beatrix went to the window and looked out across the storm in the hope of seeing him come striding to her through the snow. Had it been possible, she would have sent for him; but it was a day when women are safest inside a house, and she dared not remove either Lorimer's man or the old butler from their close guard over her husband. She had been utterly opposed to bringing the faithful old butler with them; but now she was glad that she had yielded to his begging. He had been with her father since her childhood, and had insisted upon following "Miss Beatrix" into her new home. Without him now, she would have been absolutely, hopelessly alone.

Thayer spent a quiet, contented day. For the time being, he had dismissed Lorimer from his mind, and he gave himself up to the luxury of taking thought for no one but himself. The sensation was very luxurious from its very novelty. He wrote a long letter to Arlt, responded to a dozen notes of invitation which had pursued him from the city, loitered about the office and ended the day with a novel which had reached him when the mail came in, that noon. It was still early when he went to bed. As he drew the shades, from sheer force of habit he glanced across at the cottage. Its lights were burning brightly, their quiet steadiness giving no hint of the hideous carnival within.

No healthy man can go to bed, two hours before his usual time, and expect to sleep peacefully till dawn. At four o'clock, Thayer waked suddenly, with the firm belief that his slumber must have reached quite around the clock. He struck a match and looked at his watch.

Restlessly he rose and began to walk up and down the room. The storm had increased during the night. He could hear the snow sifting against the windows and, far off at a distant corner of the house, a loosened blind was beating to and fro in the wind. The sound echoed drearily through the almost deserted barracks, and added infinitely to the loneliness of the wilderness, and of the night, and of the storm.

Thayer paused at the window, raised the shade and peered out into the night. At first, he could see only the darkness, no longer black, but gray with the swirling snow. The ceaseless, pitiless fall of the flakes fascinated him, and he stood long, watching them take shape in the distance, come whirling against the gla.s.s and slide aimlessly down the pane, as so many had fallen before them. Then, as the storm lost something of its fury, he glanced up and out across the night. The next instant, his face was pressed against the pane, while his clasped fingers s.h.i.+elded his eyes from the light within the room. In the Lorimers' cottage, half a mile away, the lights were still burning. On such a night and at such an hour, those lights meant trouble: illness, or perhaps something infinitely worse.

He had stood at the window longer than he had realized, and the clock in the office struck five as Thayer, fully dressed, stepped out into the hall. With the waning of the night, the storm was increasing again and, strong man as he was, Thayer faltered as he opened the door and went out into the darkness.

Four times he tried to beat his way against the wind, to force a path through the wet, heavy drifts. Four times, buffeted and almost spent, he was driven back to the shelter of the veranda. The office clock struck six, as he went inside the house to find a s.h.i.+vering servant sweeping out the office.

"Get me some snowshoes," he ordered briefly. "The lights have burned all night in Mr. Lorimer's cottage; I am afraid they may be ill and in need of help. I thought I could get to them; but in this storm it is impossible, unless I can have some shoes."

By some trick of the brain, anxious and impatient as he was, the Famine Theme recurred to his mind, and the servant, coming back with the shoes, found him singing it softly to himself. The words died away into inarticulate humming, as Thayer bent over to fasten the straps. Then, b.u.t.toning his coat closely and pulling his cap down over his eyes, Thayer opened the door for the second time and went striding away across the gray, tempestuous darkness which had shut down again impenetrably between himself and those steady, ominous lights.

CHAPTER TWENTY

"It has all been a hideous mistake!"

Abruptly, defiantly Beatrix threw out the words at Thayer, as he entered. Then her head dropped on her arms which rested on the table before her.

Breathless from his struggle with the storm and astounded at her greeting, Thayer halted just across the threshold and looked at her in silence. The silence grew irksome to her. She changed the form of her words.

"I couldn't help it. I have tried." The defiance in her voice suddenly gave place to desperation. She pushed back her chair, rose and crossed the room to the fire. There she turned and stood facing Thayer, her head erect, her cheeks scarlet, her hands, palms downward, tightly clasped.

"I have tried my best and failed. It is a total, absolute failure," she went on fiercely. "I know it, and you know it, too. You have watched it coming on, growing and overpowering me. We may as well admit it; I made a mistake when I married Sidney Lorimer."

Thayer met her eyes steadily, rallying all his forces to face her in this new mood. This sudden change in her baffled his powers of comprehension. Weakened and torn and shaken by her endless hours alone in the whistling, roaring storm, listening moment by moment to the hideous noises of delirium coming from the next room, the level nerves of Beatrix had at last given way completely. The noises had stopped now, and an ominous stillness lay over the room; but in Beatrix's ears they still were ringing, beating a terrible accompaniment to the crowding measures of her thoughts. Hour after hour as she had sat alone, her fingers in her ears, her eyes fixed on the snow-draped landscape outside the window, her mind had worked ceaselessly, arbitrarily. For the time being, she had felt herself unable to control the direction of her thoughts, and the direction had been fraught with danger.

She went back to her first meeting with Lorimer. She went over each detail of their friends.h.i.+p and of their married life. She tried in vain to connect the genial, fascinating man she had first known with the man whose ravings found their way under her fingers pressed against her ears. She recalled his old-time devotion and chivalry; she contrasted it with his moodiness and the brutal petulance which of late had marked his manner to her. At no one point had there been a sudden change in him. The transition had been slow, insidious. At last she had wakened to it in all its bald reality.

Now and then she rose and went to the window in the hope of seeing Thayer's familiar figure coming towards her through the storm. Each time she did so, her thoughts lingered a little upon him, upon his power to hold Lorimer, upon his constant thoughtfulness for her. Each time she thought of him, her mind rested there longer, until she found herself going over their acquaintance much as, a few hours earlier, she had gone over her life with Lorimer. Then, all at once, she dropped her head on the table with a little moan. Her will was powerless longer to blind her to the truth. Her loyalty to Lorimer, her traditions, her training had made her fight for months, a fight no less bitter because it was subconscious. Now her fighting strength was gone. The truth had a.s.serted itself at the instant when her nervous force was at its weakest. It had a.s.serted itself, and it had mastered her.