Part 11 (1/2)
She got up, lit the gas, shutting out the stars, and wrote: ”I am coming back to make one more and one last effort. _Won't you_?”
If he would only try!
Sam met her with the magnanimity of forgiveness, the consciousness of kind forgetting. Her redeemed valuables were all in place. Everything should be the same, in spite of--And she put the back of her hand against his lips!
When he dressed for dinner the salvage of the three b.a.l.l.s, the spoils of war, were piled in his bureau drawer.
Still he hoped better for the roses by her plate. She had the maid carry them out, explaining in her absence, ”No gifts, please, Sam.
Subst.i.tutes will not do any longer.”
Sam played with his fork, smiling, with lips only. How shockingly she showed suffering. Separation had made her appearance unfamiliar; he thought the change all recent. He took pains to compliment the immediate improvement in the pastry, to give her the servants' money unreminded as soon as they were alone.
How characteristic! Judith thought, wearily, letting the bills lie where he laid them.
”That's one of the things for us to settle, Sam,” she said, in her new freedom and self-respect discarding the familiar little diplomacies by which she was used to soothe, prepare, manage, the lord of the hearth.
”I am not going to ask for money in the future, nor depend on what you happen to give.” The manner was a simple statement of fact. ”You must make me an allowance through your bookkeeper.”
Sam was lounging through his cigar. ”So that's it? Still?” He smiled confidentially at the smoke, puffing it from his lower lip. ”As accurately as I can recollect, my dear, I have told you seven thousand and three times that I am not on a salary, and don't know from month to month what I will make.”
How unchanged everything was! Her determination stiffened. ”But you know what you have made. Base it on the year before. Or have a written statement mailed me every month, and file my signature at the bank.”
Not quite unchanged; for Sam took the cigar from his mouth and turned slowly to look at her. If he had taken her return for capitulation and had met it according to his code, things were not fitting in. ”Really, my dear! Really! What next? Evidently I have never done you justice; you have positive genius in the game--of monopoly; first thing, _I'll_ be begging from _you_.”
Well, why not, as fairly? and why should he think better of her than of himself? But it was too old to go over again. For a breath she waited to see her further way. She had not planned this as the issue, but the moment was obviously crucial, and offered what, in international politics already awry, would const.i.tute a good technical opportunity. If her mirage of regeneration, her hope of an understanding, perhaps even her love, had flung up any last afterglow in this home-coming, it was over now. Indeed, now it seemed an old grief, the present but confirmation concerning a lover ten years lost at sea. She saw the whole man now clearly, the balance of her accusations and excuses; he had neither the modern spirit of equality, nor the medieval quixotism of honor and chivalry; appeal merely stirred the elemental tyranny of strength and masculinity, held as a ”divine right”; weakness tempted an instinctive cruelty, half unconscious, half defiant.
It was Sam who spoke first, abruptly, not laughing. Sam who was never angry, was angry now. ”I never have understood you in some ways. How a woman like you can forever bring money between us! How you got tainted with this modern female anarchy! You seem to forget that _I_ made the money, it is _mine_. There is bound to be discussion; I never knew any one so determined to have everything his own way. All the same,” the defence rested its case, ”it takes two to quarrel, and I won't.”
No, his defence was only admission of conscious weakness. He was afraid--of the solution she had discarded. She did not go back to it now. But now she saw the way, the only way, to accomplish reconstruction.
Judith looked at him steadily. Her voice was deadly quiet. ”I am sure I have made myself quite plain. We will never discuss this again. You can let me know in the morning which arrangement you choose.”
They faced each other with level eyes.
And Sam's s.h.i.+fted.
He never had real nerve, she realized; they didn't--that kind. How had she managed to love him so long?
Late that night he knocked at her door with a formal proposition: Would that do?--dumbly. She changed a point or two: _That_ would do, and signified good night. Sam, looking at her face, turned away from it, hesitated, turned back, broke. Fear increased his admiration, and, to do him justice, the fear was not wholly for conventions and comforts; the man had certain broad moralities and loyalties. A reflex muscular action had set in to regain what he had lost. ”Judith!
Judith!” he begged.
Her raised hand stopped him. ”You are too late, Sam.”
”My dear, you mustn't get the idea that I don't love you still.”
”Love has nothing to do with it any more. Besides, it is never any use to talk of love without justice.”
He went out, dazed and aggrieved. He had always thought they got along as well as most people. _He_ had not been cheris.h.i.+ng grudges.
Womanlike, having met the emergency gallantly, after it was all over Judith collapsed. The day of reckoning for which she had so long been running up an account was on her. But the growing a.s.surance rallied her, that her going away and her coming back were equally means to her success in failure.