The Common Law

That he entertained so confidently the conviction of her ultimate surrender to convention, at moments vexed her to the verge of anger. At times, too, his disposition to interfere with her liberty tried her patience. Again and again she explained to him the unalterable fundamentals of their pact. These were, first of all, her refusal to alienate him from his family and his own world; second, her right to her own individuality and freedom to support herself without interference or unrequested assistance from him; third, absolute independence of him in material matters and the perfect liberty of managing her own little financial affairs without a hint of dependence on him either before or after the great change.

That she posed only in costume now did not satisfy him. He did not wish her to pose at all; and they discussed various other theatres for her business activity. But she very patiently explained to him that she found, in posing for interesting people, much of the intellectual pleasure that he and other men found in painting; that the life and the environment, and the people she met, made her happy; and that she could not expect to meet cultivated people in any other way.

"I don't want to learn stenography and take dictation in a stuffy office, dear," she pleaded. "I don't want to sit all day in a library where people whisper about books. I don't want to teach in a public school or read novels to invalids, or learn how to be a trained nurse and place thermometers in people's mouths. I like children pretty well but I don't want to be a governess and teach other people's children; I want to be taught myself; I want to learn—I'm a sort of a child, too, dear; and it's the familiarity with wiser people and brighter people and pleasant surroundings that has made me as happy as I am—given me what I never had as a child. You don't understand, but I'm having my childhood now—nursery, kindergarten, parties, boarding-school, finishing school, début—all concentrated into this happy year of being among gay, clever, animated people."

"Yet you will not let me take you into a world which is still pleasanter—"

And the eternal discussion immediately became inevitable, tiring both with its earnestness and its utter absence of a common ground. Because in him apparently remained every vital germ of convention and of generations of training in every precept of formality; and in her—for with Valerie West adolescence had arrived late—that mystery had been responsible for far-reaching disturbances consequent on the starved years of self-imprisonment, of exaltations suppressed, of fears and doubts and vague desires and dreams ineffable possessing the silence of a lonely soul.

And so, essentially solitary, inevitably lonely, out of her own young heart and an untrained mind she was evolving a code of responsibility to herself and to the world.

Her ethics and her morals were becoming what wide, desultory, and unrestrained reading was making them; her passion for happiness and for truth, her restless intelligence, were prematurely forming her character. There was no one in authority to tell her—check, guide, or direct her in the revolt from dogmatism, pedantry, sophistry and conventionalism. And by this path youthful intelligence inevitably passes, incredulous of snare and pitfall where lie the bones of many a savant under magic blossoms nourished by creeds long dead.

"To bring no sorrow to any one, Louis—that is the way I am trying to live," she said, seriously.

"You are bringing it to me."

"If that is so—then I had better depart as I came and leave you in peace."

"It's too late."

"Perhaps it is not. Shall we try it?"

"Could you recover?"

"I don't know. I am willing to try for your sake."

"Do you want to?" he asked, almost angrily.

"I am not thinking of myself, Louis."

"I want you to. I don't want you not to think about yourself all the time."

She made a hopeless gesture, opening her arms and turning her palms outward:

"Kelly Neville! What do you suppose loving you means to me?"

"Don't you think of yourself at all when you love me?"

"Why—I suppose I do—in a way. I know I'm fortunate, happy—I—" She glanced up shyly—"I am glad that I am—loved—"

"You darling!"

She let him take her into his arms, suffered his caress, looking at him in silence out of eyes as dark and clear and beautiful as brown pools in a forest.

"You're just a bad, spoiled, perverse little kid, aren't you?" he said, rumpling her hair.

"You say so."

"Breaking my heart because you won't marry me."

"No, breaking my own because you don't really love me enough, yet."

"I love you too much—"

"That is literary bosh, Louis."

"Good God! Can't you ever understand that I'm respectable enough to want you for my wife?"

"You mean that you want me for what I do not wish to be. And you decline to love me unless I turn into a selfish, dependent, conventional nonentity, which you adore because respectable. Is that what you mean?"

"I want the laws of civilisation to safeguard you," he persisted patiently.

"I need no more protection than you need. I am not a baby. I am not afraid. Are you?"

"That is not the question—"

"Yes it is, dear. I stand in no fear. Why do you wish to force me to do what I believe would be a wrong to you? Can't you respect my disreputable convictions?"

"They are theories—not convictions—"

"Oh, Kelly, I'm so tired of hearing you say that!"

"I should think you would be, you little imp of perversity!"

"I am…. And I wonder how I can love you just as much, as though you were kind and reasonable and—and minded your own business, dear."

"Isn't it my business to tell the girl to whom I'm engaged what I believe to be right?"

"Yes; and it's her business to tell you" she said, smiling; and put her arms higher so that they slipped around his neck for a moment, then were quickly withdrawn.

"What a thoroughly obstinate boy you are!" she exclaimed. "We're wasting such lots of time in argument when it's all so very simple. Your soul is your own to develop; mine is mine. Noli, me tangere!"

But he was not to be pacified; and presently she went away to pour their tea, and he followed and sat down in an armchair near the fire, brooding gaze fixed on the coals.

They had tea in hostile silence; he lighted a cigarette, but presently flung it into the fire without smoking.

She said: "You know, Louis, if this is really going to be an unhappiness to you, instead of a happiness beyond words, we had better end it now." She added, with an irrepressible laugh, partly nervous, "Your happiness seems to be beyond words already. Your silence is very eloquent…. I think I'll take my doll and go home."

She rose, stood still a moment looking at him where he sat, head bent, staring into the coals; then a swift tenderness filled her eyes; her sensitive lips quivered; and she came swiftly to him and took his head into her arms.

"Dear," she whispered, "I only want to do the best for you. Let me try in my own way. It's all for you—everything I do or think or wish or hope is for you. Even I myself was made merely for you."

Sideways on the arm of his chair, she stooped down, laying her cheek against his, drawing his face closer.

"I am so hopelessly in love with you," she murmured; "if I make mistakes, forgive me; remember only that it is because I love you enough to die for you very willingly."

He drew her down into his arms. She was never quick to respond to the deeper emotions in him, but her cheeks and throat were flushed now, and, as his embrace enclosed her, she responded with a sudden flash of blind passion—a moment's impulsive self-surrender to his lips and arms—and drew away from him dazed, trembling, shielding her face with one arm.