The Common Law

"Build a shanty."

"That's all very well, but there are no models to be had out there."

"Why don't you do some Indians?"

"Because," said John wrathfully, "I haven't any commissions that call for Indians. I've two angels, a nymph and a Diana to do; and I can't do them unless I have a female model, can I?"

After a silence Rita said carelessly:

"I'll go with you if you like."

"You! Out there!"

"I said so."

"To Arizona! You wouldn't stand for it!"

"John Burleson!" she said impatiently, "I've told you once that I'd go with you if you need a model! Don't you suppose I know what I am saying?"

He lay placidly staring at her, the heavy book open across his chest.

Presently he coughed and Rita sprang up and removed the book.

"You'd go with me to Arizona," he repeated, as though to himself—"just to pose for me…. That's very kind of you, Rita. It's thoroughly nice of you. But you couldn't stand it. You'd find it too cruelly stupid out there alone—entirely isolated in some funny town. I couldn't ask it of you—"

"You haven't. I've asked it—of you."

But he only began to grumble and fret again, thrashing about restlessly on the lounge; and the tall young girl watched him out of lowered eyes, silent, serious, the lamplight edging her hair with a halo of ruddy gold.

* * * * *

The month sped away very swiftly for Valerie. Her companionship with Rita, her new friendship for Hélène d'Enver, her work, filled all the little moments not occupied with Neville. It had been a happy, exciting winter; and now, with the first days of spring, an excitement and a happiness so strange that it even resembled fear at moments, possessed her, in the imminence of the great change.

Often, in these days, she found herself staring at Neville with a sort of fixed fascination almost bordering on terror;—there were moments when alone with him, and even while with him among his friends and hers, when there seemed to awake in her a fear so sudden, so inexplicable, that every nerve in her quivered apprehension until it had passed as it came. What those moments of keenest fear might signify she had no idea. She loved, and was loved, and was not afraid.

In early April Neville went to Ashuelyn. Ogilvy was there, also Stephanie Swift.

His sister Lily had triumphantly produced a second sample of what she could do to perpetuate the House of Collis, and was much engrossed with nursery duties; so Stephanie haunted the nursery, while Ogilvy, Neville, and Gordon Collis played golf over the April pastures, joining them only when Lily was at liberty.

Why Stephanie avoided Neville she herself scarcely knew; why she clung so closely to Lily's skirts seemed no easier to explain. But in her heart there was a restlessness which no ignoring, no self-discipline could suppress—an unease which had been there many days, now—a hard, tired, ceaseless inquietude that found some little relief when she was near Lily Collis, but which, when alone, became a dull ache.

She had grown thin and spiritless within the last few months. Lily saw it and resented it hotly.

"The child," she said to her husband, "is perfectly wretched over Louis and his ignominious affair with that West girl. I don't know whether she means to keep her word to me or not, but she's with him every day. They're seen together everywhere except where Louis really belongs."

"It looks to me," said Gordon mildly, "as though he were really in love with her."

"Gordon! How can you say such a thing in such a sympathetic tone!"

"Why—aren't you sorry for them?"

"I'm sorry for Louis—and perfectly disgusted. I was sorry for her; an excess of sentimentality. But she hasn't kept her word to me."

"Did she promise not to gad about with him?"

"That was the spirit of the compact; she agreed not to marry him."

"Sometimes they—don't marry," observed Gordon, twirling his thumbs.

Lily looked up quickly; then flushed slightly.

"What do you mean, Gordon?"

"Nothing specific; anything in general."

"You mean to hint that—that Louis—Louis Neville could be—permit himself to be so common—so unutterably low—"

"Better men have taken the half-loaf."

"Gordon!" she exclaimed, scarlet with amazement and indignation.

"Personally," he said, unperturbed, "I haven't much sympathy with such affairs. If a man can't marry a girl he ought to leave her alone; that's my idea of the game. But men play it in a variety of ways. Personally, I'd as soon plug a loaded shot-gun with mud and then fire it, as block a man who wants to marry."

"I did block it!" said Lily with angry decision; "and I am glad I did."

"Look out for the explosion then," he said philosophically, and strolled off to see to the setting out of some young hemlocks, headed in the year previous.

Lily Collis was deeply disturbed—more deeply than her pride and her sophistication cared to admit. She strove to believe that such a horror as her husband had hinted at so coolly could never happen to a Neville; she rejected it with anger, with fear, with a proud and dainty fastidiousness that ought to have calmed and reassured her. It did not.

Once or twice she reverted to the subject, haughtily; but Gordon merely shrugged:

"You can't teach a man of twenty-eight when, where, and how to fall in love," he said. "And it's all the more hopeless when the girl possesses the qualities which you once told me this girl possesses."

Lily bit her lip, angry and disconcerted, but utterly unable to refute him or find anything in her memory of Valerie to criticise and condemn, except the intimacy with her brother which had continued and which, she had supposed, would cease on Valerie's promise to her.

"It's very horrid of her to go about with him under the circumstances—knowing she can't marry him if she keeps her word," said Lily.

"Why? Stephanie goes about with him."

"Do you think it is good taste to compare those two people?"

"Why not. From what you told me I gather that Valerie West is as innocent and upright a woman as Stephanie—and as proudly capable of self-sacrifice as any woman who ever loved."

"Gordon," she said, exasperated, "do you actually wish to see my brother marry a common model?"

"Is she common? I thought you said—"

"You—you annoy me," said Lily; and began to cry.