Part 13

“Well, if you want a child, Lewis”--she too spoke very quietly--“you’ll have to marry somebody else. I’ll never have one if I can help it--and I guess I _can_ help it.”

“I don’t doubt it.” He turned away.

Netta, however, was not through. She had waited long enough for this issue to define itself. As well now as any other time. He had given her the cue with his reproaches.

“And I’ve got something else to say,” she proceeded. “I love you, Lewis, and you know it. I’ve tried out this idea of yours about living with your mother. You can’t say I haven’t given it a chance--for more than two years. Now, either it gets broken up and you and I take an apartment by ourselves, or I take a job and have a room of my own in town, and you stick with her if you want to. But you can’t have us both any longer. And I wouldn’t live in this house even if she went away. I don’t want a house, anyway, unless I’m a millionaire. It’s up to you.”

His face crimsoned. “You know as well as anything that I can’t run an apartment and this house both.”

“I’m willing to take a job, anyhow,” Netta returned triumphantly.

“It would take all you made in any job to dress you. The kind of thing you put on your back costs money.”

“How about your own clothes?”

“I have to be decent to do business. But I don’t buy myself fur coats and mesh bags--or the sort of thing you’ve got on at the present minute. I’m not blaming you for wanting clothes, Net--I guess every woman does--but unless we live right here I can’t swing it. Even if you earned money yourself, I couldn’t afford to keep mother in this house, with a maid, while we were somewhere else. I’ll be making more money next year. We’ll see. It would be pretty hard on mother to leave her; but maybe if I can afford to keep her here, the way she is....”

“All right,” Netta’s voice trembled. “I’ll look for that job--_and_ that room. It isn’t of any importance to me that your mother should live in this house--or any house or whether she has anybody to work for her or not. I’ve lived with her for two years, and you can take it from me, she’s the limit. You can live with her if you want to. I won’t--not another week! This family stuff doesn’t go down with me--any of it.” She laughed unpleasantly. “If you come to your senses any time and want to treat your wife properly, you’ll know where to find me. I’ve never looked at another man and don’t expect to. There’s nothing gay about me.”

Curiously enough, it was just at the moment when Netta declared herself innocent of intent to wrong him that the idea of divorce first entered, explicitly, Lewis Hunting’s mind. In that tired nervous hour he did not care whether she flirted--or more--with a dozen men. He had come to her that evening after a journey that had reawakened old desires--for peace, for sweetness, for calm domesticity, for affections normally diffused, for passion expressed in ways that were not wholly of the flesh. Netta knew as well as he what he could do and what he could not. She asked of him to forsake all duties and take her to some perfumed lair where they could lie as beasts at ease. He no longer cared much for his mother--Netta had finished off that job very neatly--but her hold on him was immemorial. He had no desire to live with her, but he would never fling her out of doors to die. If Netta would only wait another year--but she wouldn’t wait, she said; and after all (he asked himself) what would they be waiting for? Netta would not have a child, she would not have a home, she would not have anything--except love-making, which must some day cease. In that hour he knew that he could not endure forever the life Netta offered him, and from that moment, really, began his wary plotting for freedom. Standing there delicately clad, flushed and tempting, she was desirable in his eyes ... but, inevitably, after two years she had ceased to be a miracle. She, so prodigal of lures, had neglected every lure she might have spread for his incorporeal imagination. Even passion must be bolstered up, quickened, preserved by something besides itself. Netta, he thought coldly, had counted too much on passion. Oh, yes, he could kiss her and draw her bright head to his shoulder--and like it; but her perfume would destroy the memory of jessamine, her voice the echo of the mocking-bird. Tired, tired he was....

“All right, Netta. Take your job and hire your room. Perhaps you’ll come to feel differently about it.” And already he was hoping that she wouldn’t.

She breathed hard. “You mean it? You’d rather have your mother than me?”

“No, I wouldn’t. I don’t like the way we live. But I’m not willing to kill her to please you. So if you can’t stand it any longer, you’ll have to do as you like. As I say, you may change your mind.”

She wept softly. “I love you so, Lewis. It isn’t fair.”

His lips tightened. “And I love you, Netta. But it doesn’t seem to be enough, does it?” He kept the width of the room between them. He did not wish to be drawn into the quick charm of her proximity. “I shall have to be away a good deal the next months. They’re thinking about a Western branch, and I may have to talk it up out there, more or less. It would be worse than ever for you here, I suppose.”

“And when you come back, Lewis, are you coming to your mother or to me?”

He hadn’t thought of that. But of course he couldn’t plan anything yet. “We could both come here, at those times, couldn’t we?” he temporized.

Her anger flared up. “No! When I’m once out of this house, I’ll never set foot in it again--except for a funeral.”

That was the end, he thought. Funny that she shouldn’t know it was the end--which was not reasonable of Lewis, for cruel things had been said before and ignored if not truly forgotten.

“We’ll talk tomorrow. I’m awfully tired now. Good-night.” He slipped into his bed, leaving her to put out the lamp and raise the windows. His tone was utterly spent, and beyond “Good-night” she did not speak to him again.

That was the most explicit talk they had. Earlier there had been bickerings, but all the quarrels were intended to be--and were--smoothed out and composed. These particular statements and retorts were never cancelled.

Netta, who really wanted Lewis more than anything else, had made the mistake of permitting herself, temporarily, to want something else more: freedom, frank expression of her hatred and weariness, the luxury of a defiant gesture. Lewis, at the same moment, came to the belief that what he wanted was peace--and love only if it brought peace in its train. Alas! he wanted even more than peace: seemliness in the ordering of his life, beauty in its texture--intimations of immortality, perhaps. But peace was what he called it. “A man has a right to some peace”--thus he cloaked, or approximated, his yearning.

Destiny then made, in his direction, a few positively affectionate gestures. He wanted to get away, and it became his professional duty to get away. His firm decided to establish a connection on the Coast and kept Lewis for some months traveling between Far Western cities. Twice, in the interval, he came East for hasty visits to the home office. He worked hard on this job; put his very best into it; for he intended to demand, when arrangements were completed, a Western post. Out there, it seemed to him, he could create life anew. Time enough to make domestic plans when he got his business completed.

Netta had found her job--she made not at all a bad secretary--and had duly given Lewis the address of her office. On his first arrival in the East he telephoned to her. Over the telephone she spoke eagerly--caressed him, as it were; and Lewis, exhilarated by Western air, soothed by long absence of domestic fret, found tenderness creeping back into his own voice--almost, indeed, into his heart. He could see her vivid figure across the channeled space between them. He told her he must go to his mother’s for the night, asked her to join him. It was good tactics, though at the moment he was not thinking of tactics; he merely wanted every one to be happy. Perhaps, once out there in another atmosphere, all three of them.... But Netta’s voice slid sharply into reproach, and he felt again all the menace that lay in her vividness.

“Indeed I will not, Lewis. You can go and see her, of course, but I’m not going to. I should think you’d want to see me first, but if you don’t, you can go and have dinner with her and then come back and meet me. I can’t spring you on my landlady very well, since she’s never seen you, but we can live at a hotel while you’re here.”

His voice changed too. “We can talk about that later. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be decent and go out with me, just for tonight.”

She did not know that it was an ultimatum; she misread his annoyance, taking it for impatience, and laughed harshly. “Not much, Lewis! When you want me, you’ll come to me. I’m a good wife, but I’m a darned poor daughter-in-law.... Where do I meet you tonight?”

“You don’t meet me anywhere--tonight.”

He hung up the receiver, and she heard its sharp click. Even then she did not suspect. She was still gloating over the first warmth of his voice and could not know that the warmth had meant very little--that her chance had been very small and that she had thrown that chance away. Lewis did not so much blame Netta for her attitude to his mother as accuse her, in his heart, of being a person who would make no sacrifices to any situation that might arise. Mrs. Hunting was not so much a special case as the sort of thing that, in a hundred forms, might happen to any one. Netta was hard and always would be. Even suppose his mother were dead: there would always be this or that thing to strike Netta as intolerable. It was the principle of the thing. No; they would never find that peace which, more than ever in an unfamiliar and beautiful landscape, had seemed every man’s right. Netta waited in vain for a sign from him. She got none.

Netta, unaware that Hunting was expecting to be definitely settled in the West, thought a waiting game the wisest. If he once came back to living in his mother’s house, he wouldn’t be able to bear her absence. He’d come running, she believed. But he never did live there without her, and the place never had a chance to stir old memories. He was continuously away and, except in connection with divorce, Netta did not enter his mind. Her clutch was finally off him. He seemed to himself to know her wholly, to be completely aware of her character and to spurn it with reason. He did not know Netta wholly, as he was later to discover; but at this time he felt supremely capable of judging her.

Lewis, whom marriage and discontent had greatly matured, did good work for his firm. When he demanded his promotion and his transfer, he got them both. He had worked overtime for many months, giving to his business not only all his mind but all his secret stores of energy. He was not working for a woman this time, but to get rid of one. The spur was equally effective. When the “flu” hit him in San Francisco, it found him ready prey. Later, facing a limp and helpless convalescence, he asked for a long leave of absence, and it was granted. The length of the holiday he asked was the period needed for a divorce under Nevada laws.

In spite of increases and promotions, in spite of the absence of Netta’s bills, Lewis had not a large store of money with which to buy his freedom. He would have, he realized, to send less money to his mother, and he wrote her frankly to that effect. He rather dreaded her answer, though he was grim enough about his own intentions. He need not have been afraid. Mrs. Hunting, who could not have lived in an apartment and fended for herself in order to give his youth more scope or his career more chance, could find both strength and money when it came to getting rid of the daughter-in-law she detested. She could even find the old adoration for Lewis, which had been much obscured by jealous resentment. She saw herself once more--with Netta out of the way--playing a winning game with her son; and her heart overflowed with kindness to him. When these troubles were over, she and her darling boy were going to be happy once more as they used to be. There is no doubt that she meant what she said. She really believed that they had been happy before his marriage; she thought of him as her darling boy. When she dismissed her expensive maid, got an ancient cousin in to keep her dismal company, bade Lewis send her no money until he was free and, in addition, sent him a handsome check, she felt these actions right and natural, a duty and a pleasure. Mrs. Hunting had despaired, and now she had hope. Lewis would now be bound forever to his self-sacrificing, generous, devoted mother.

Most people’s emotions are even more muddled than their minds; and there can be no question that Mrs. Hunting, playing her unanswerable trumps, loved Lewis more than she had ever loved him. His emotional rejection of Netta she took for an emotional acceptance of herself. She saw herself preferred: and it warmed her confused heart. Lewis was misread by his mother as he had been by his wife. He knew perfectly that they had not been happy before Netta came, and he thought his mother’s sacrifices belated. Though he was grateful for her assistance, the past could not be undone, and no new relation could be built up. He was grateful that she helped instead of hindering, as he was grateful for fine weather in place of storm. His loyalty was perhaps increased by gratitude, but the quantity of his affection for her had long since been fixed. He wrote to her regularly and with the utmost kindness; but it was too late for her to push any further into his heart.

Perhaps he was the happier that no intimate relation needed readjusting. For the first three months of Lewis Hunting’s sojourn in the little Nevada town were by all odds the happiest of his life. He saw his future clear, and for once he saw it bright. He had been afraid--though reassured by his lawyer--that Netta would put up a fight; but the fact was that Netta could not. She had no money with which to fight the case; and she discovered very soon that, though New York would have held her a virtuous wife, from the point of view of the more sensitive state of Nevada she had sinned. She had refused to live under what was legally her husband’s roof; she had explicitly refused to give him children or a home, even to speak to his aged mother; she had indulged, indeed, in an absolute orgy of mental cruelty. These things were easily proved. It would have taken money to deprive Lewis of his decree, and money she had not. Nor did Lewis have enough to tempt any lawyer to take her case “on spec.” Netta knew that she was beaten. Yet--had she but known it--she had allies dimly mustering on her side. Netta was all instinct, and fate looks on instinct with a kindly eye.

Until strength flowed back into him Lewis was content to lie on the tiny porch of his tiny apartment, staring at the Sierras; and the exertion of going out to his meals and seeing his lawyer, when necessary, was sufficient to his weakened body. After some weeks, however, he tired of watching, in solitude and silence, the dwindling snow patches. Energy returned, subtly heightened by the hope that was his. As the months counted themselves off, he felt Netta a lesser and lesser burden--slipping, slipping from his back. His shoulders ached less with the weight of her. Cheerfulness returned, and he began to welcome the ordinary human contacts. He was not looking for excitement, of which he well knew there was plenty. Neither poker, roulette, bad whiskey, nor rash divorcées appealed to him. Though not over-fastidious, he did not care to seize the day. He hoped, instead to seize the whole of life. Certainly he intended sometime to marry again--some girl opposed at every point to Netta; intended to have a home, and kids, and a car, and a radio set, and (so far had he become infected with the West) a view. He didn’t know just what she would be like, but he would not find her here.

The doctor whom he felt obliged to consult suggested a car and long drives in the open. He finally bought a small one out of his mother’s check, knowing that he could sell it again. But to face the inhuman beauty of that landscape one needs a human companion; some one who is equally dwarfed and conquered by the uncaring peaks and the hostile desert. Rather diffidently--you must remember that Lewis was not vain; he undervalued his charm, indeed, since it had brought him only Netta--he asked Mona Jeffers to drive with him; once, and then again and again.

The girl--a poor relation--was companioning a cousin who soon found that she need not depend on Mona for excitement. Indeed, Mona was a mere hindrance to Mrs. Tilton on most occasions. She needed the girl there on general principles and would not send her home; but she wanted her out of the flat a large part of the time. Mona’s insipidity, to Mrs. Tilton’s mind, was complete. She used her as she needed her, but she used her less and less--especially after she discovered roulette and acquired a rather shady lover. So the colorless Mona was free to sit beside Lewis while they drove afar. Her quietness, her decency, her very lack of good looks soothed him who was tired alike of Venus and the Furies. Love never entered his head. He expected that shadowy future bride to be handsomer than Mona--for men demand everything and are not satisfied until sex blinds them into thinking they have got it. They were blithe days for Lewis: health recovered, hope enlarging itself on his horizon, the weeks passing swiftly by, the little car for magic carpet, and Mona to exorcise the demons of the hills. Every one was civil to him, and he rejected far more advances than he accepted. All pointed to his being, through a long life, a happy and useful citizen. Lewis, who was an unimaginative creature, found sanctions all about him for his content. He called them omens or “hunches.”

Without being superstitious or sentimental one may suspect that Nature lays traps for mortals, and that the trap is no less a trap for being seldom sprung. No doubt, for that matter, a man often comes through unscathed. There is a spot--a sharp turn of the precipitous road, where a man is uplifted for an instant, defenseless and naked to his stalkers above him on all sides--which goes (not without reason) by the name of Dead Man’s Point. The term inherits from the days when those who fetched gold from Virginia City were apt to lose it--and necessarily their lives--at this place. For a few moments as he toiled past a man became, in the nature of things, a target; his best friend would have taken imaginary sight and aim. When you had finished him--in the old days--the disposal of the body offered no difficulties. You rolled him over the precipice into the trackless gorge, and sheriffs were thereby confounded. Booty on that road is now as rare as bandits. Nature, however, pays little attention to the infinitesimal changes of human history: her traps remain traps. Some spots are forever sinister, and this is one of them. The gold may have gone, but, for a softer generation, the view remains; and a foolish youth with bad liquor inside him, driving a car too fast, is as perilous as two guns and a total lack of morals ever were.

There was nothing in Lewis Hunting’s heart to cope with that view, which is desolate and terrifying--and beautiful--beyond most. He was not in its class; nor was Mona. But the mere size and scale and arrangement of it impose themselves. You _must_ turn back to look, at Dead Man’s Point, before you forsake that range for others. Lewis and Mona turned to look--and Johnny Stevens, innocent of everything but that foolish drink, crashed into them at a curious tangent. Mona was flung free, falling, with infinite bruising of her tender flesh, upon rock; but the tilt of the car was such that Lewis was half caught beneath it. It rocked horridly like a hanging stone--one of those natural wonders that attract tourists--and then, rolling over, slid down the path of the corpses. Lewis, whose hands had stretched out instinctively and caught themselves with desperation in a stiff clump of sage, was left--though precariously--behind buttressed for the moment by a few stones of which the car in its final plunge had made nothing. They could not deter the machine, but they sufficed to deter him until Johnny Stevens, sobered by the shock, had dragged him to what is known as safety. Mona came later--half fainting, half crying, but not badly injured. By the time a fresh car came over the pass and picked them up, Lewis was luckily unconscious. They wound slowly home, and Nature--a beast, first, last, and all the time except when she is broke to the service of God--resumed her wise, incomparable smile. A little thing like loose wreckage cannot mar a view like that.

Science, which loves the part more than the whole, took hold of Lewis Hunting and made him one of her choicest fragments. No one could have blamed those able surgeons for being proud of themselves; but, true to type, they were not that: they were proud of Lewis. Half a healthy man is better than a whole man with a trace of sepsis; and Lewis--both legs neatly shorn off between knee and hip--was Exhibit A, a victory, an exultation. His blood was pure, his heart strong, his constitution magnificent, his recovery just what the recovery of the normal man should be. He had not hampered either Nature or Science in any way. The doctors felt affection for him because of his strong heart and untainted blood, and assured him earnestly that there was no reason why he should not live for fifty years. Lewis heard the words but did not measure their full significance until later.