Marise told him. "Just wait till old Nate strikes up the opening bars of 'The Whirlwind' and see the roof of the house fly off. See here," she laid her hand on his arm. "This is leap-year. I solemnly engage you to dance 'The Whirlwind' with me." She made the gesture of the little-boy athlete, feeling the biceps of one arm, moving her forearm up and down.

"I'm in good health, and good muscle, because I've been out stirring up the asparagus bed with a spading-fork. I can shove you around as well as old Mrs. Powers, if I do say it who shouldn't."

Vincent looked down at her, bubbling with light-hearted merriment, and thought, "There is no end to the variety of her moods!"

She glanced up at him, caught his eyes on her and misinterpreted their wondering expression. "You think I'm just silly and childish, don't you?" she told him challengingly. "Oh, don't be such an everlasting adult. Life's not so serious as all that!"

He stirred to try to protest, but she went on, "It's dancing that sets me off. Nelly Powers and I are crazy about it. And so far as my observation of life extends, our dances here are the only social functions left in the world, that people really _enjoy_ and don't go to merely because it's the thing to. It always goes to my head to see people enjoy themselves. It's so sweet."

Mr. Welles gave her one of his affectionate pats on her hand. Vincent asked her casually, "What's the idea of making a family party of it and bringing the children too?"

She answered dashingly, "If I answer you in your own language, I'd say that it's because their households are in such a low and lamentably primitive condition that they haven't any slave-labor to leave the children with, and so bring them along out of mere brute necessity. If I answer you in another vocabulary, I'd say that there is a close feeling of family unity, and they _like_ to have their children with them when they are having a good time, and find it pleasant to see mothers dancing with their little boys and fathers with their little girls."

Without the slightest premonition of what his next question was to bring out, and only putting it to keep the talk going, Vincent challenged her, "Why don't you bring your own, then?" He kept down with difficulty the exclamation which he inwardly added, "If you only knew what a relief it is to see you for once, without that intrusive, tiresome bunch of children!"

"Why, sometimes I do," she answered in a matter-of-fact tone. "But I just had a telegram from my husband saying that he is able to get home a little sooner than he thought, and will be here early tomorrow morning.

And the children voted to go to bed early so they could be up bright and early to see him."

Vincent continued looking down on her blankly for an instant, after she had finished this reasonable explanation. He was startled by the wave of anger which spurted up over him like flame.

He heard Mr. Welles make some suitable comment, "How nice." He himself said, "Oh really," in a neutral tone, and turned away.

For a moment he saw nothing of what was before him, and then realized that he had moved next to Frank Warner, who was standing by Nelly Powers, and asking her to dance with him again. She was shaking her head, and looking about the room uneasily. Vincent felt a gust of anger again. "Oh, go _to_ it, Frank!" he said, in a low fierce tone. "Take her out again, as often as you like. Why shouldn't you?"

Nelly gave him one of her enigmatic looks, deep and inscrutable, shrugged her shoulders, put her hand on Frank's arm, and walked off with him.

"They're the handsomest couple in the room," said Vincent, at random to a farmer near him, who looked at him astonished by the heat of his accent. And then, seeing that Nelly's husband was in possible earshot, Vincent raised his voice recklessly. "They're the handsomest couple in the room," he repeated resentfully. "They ought always to dance together."

If 'Gene heard, he did not show it, the granite impa.s.sivity of his harsh face unmoved.

Vincent went on towards the door, his nerves a little relieved by this outburst. He would go out and have another cigarette, he thought, and then take his old man-child home to bed. What were they doing in this absurd place?

The music began to skirl again as he stepped out and closed the door behind him.

He drew in deeply the fresh night-air, and looking upward saw that the clouds had broken away and that the stars were out, innumerable, thick-sown, studding with gold the narrow roof of sky which, rising from the mountains on either side, arched itself over the valley. He stood staring before him, frowning, forgetting what he had come out to do. He told himself that coming from that yelling confusion inside, and the glare of those garish lamps, he was stupefied by the great silence of the night. There was nothing clear in his mind, only a turmoil of eddying sensations which he could not name. He walked down to the huge dark pine, the pine which 'Gene Powers loved like a person, and which his wife wished were cut down. What a ghastly prison marriage was, he thought, a thing as hostile to the free human spirit as an iron ball-and-chain.

He looked back at the little house, tiny as an insect before the great bulk of the mountains, dwarfed by the gigantic tree, ridiculous, despicable in the face of Nature, like the human life it sheltered. From its every window poured a flood of yellow light that was drunk up in a twinkling by the vastness of the night's obscurity.

He leaned against the straight, sternly unyielding bole of the tree, folding his arms and staring at the house. What a beastly joke the whole business of living!

A thousand ugly recollections poured their venom upon him from his past life. Life, this little moment of blind, sensual groping and grabbing for something worth while that did not exist, save in the stultification of the intelligence. All that you reached for, so frantically, it was only another handful of mud, when you held it.

Past the yellow squares of the windows, he saw the shapes of the dancers, insect-tiny, footing it to and fro. And in one of those silhouettes he recognized Marise Crittenden.

He turned away from the sight and struck his fist against the rough bark of the tree. What an insane waste and confusion ruled everywhere in human life! A woman like that to be squandered ... an intelligence fine and supple, a talent penetrating and rare like hers for music, a strange personal beauty like that of no other woman, a depth one felt like mid-ocean, a capacity for fun like a child's and a vitality of personality, a power for pa.s.sion that pulsed from her so that to touch her hand casually set one thrilling ... ! And good G.o.d! What was destiny doing with her? Spending that gold like water on three brats incapable of distinguishing between her and any good-natured woman who would put on their shoes and wash their faces for them. Any paid Irish nurse could do for them what their mother bent the priceless treasure of her temperament to accomplish. The Irish nurse would do it better, for she would not be aware of anything else better, which she might do, and their mother knew well enough what she sacrificed ... or if she did not know it yet, she would, soon. She had betrayed that to him, the very first time he had seen her, that astonishing first day, when, breathing out her vivid charm like an aureole of gold mist, she had sat there before him, quite simply the woman most to his taste he had even seen ... _here_! That day when she had spoken about the queerness of her feeling "lost" when little Mark went off to school, because for the first time in years she had had an hour or so free from those ruthless little leeches who spent their lives in draining her vitality. He had known, if she had not, the significance of that feeling of hers, the first time she had had a moment to raise her eyes from her trivial task and see that she had been tricked into a prison. That very day he had wanted to cry out to her, as impersonally as one feels towards a beautiful bird caught in a net, "Now, _now_, burst through, and spread your wings where you belong."

It was like wiping up the floor with cloth of gold. In order that those three perfectly commonplace, valueless human lives might be added to the world's wretched population, a nature as rare as a jewel was being slowly ground away. What were the treasures to whom she was being sacrificed? Paul, the greasy, well-intentioned, priggish burgher he would make; Elly, almost half-witted, a child who stared at you like an imbecile when asked a question, and who evidently scarcely knew that her mother existed, save as cook and care-taker. And Mark, the pa.s.sionate, gross, greedy baby. There were the three walls of the prison where she was shut away from any life worthy of her.

And the fourth wall ...

The blackness dropped deeper about him, and within him. There they were dancing, those idiots, dancing on a volcano if ever human beings did, in the little sultry respite from the tornado which was called the world-peace. Well, that was less idiotic than working, at least. How soon before it would break again, the final destructive hurricane, born of nothing but the malignant folly of human hearts, and sweep away all that they now agonized and sweated to keep? What silly weakness to spend the respite in anything but getting as much of what you wanted as you could, before it was all gone in the big final smash-up, and the yellow or black man were on top.

With a bitter relish he felt sunk deep in one of his rank reactions against life and human beings. Now at least he was on bed-rock. There was a certain hard, quiet restfulness in scorning it all so whole-heartedly as either stupid or base.

At this a woman's face hung suddenly there in the blackness. Her long eyes seemed to look directly into his, a full revealing look such as they had never given him in reality. His hard quiet was broken by an agitation he could not control. No, no, there was something there that was not mud. He had thought he would live and die without meeting it.

And there it was, giving to paltry life a meaning, after all, a troubling and immortal meaning.

A frosty breath blew down upon him from the mountains. A long shudder ran through him.

The sensation moved him to a sweeping change of mood, to a furious resentment as at an indignity. G.o.d! What was he doing? Who was this moping in the dark like a boy?

The great night stood huge and breathless above him as before, but now he saw only the lamp-lit house, tiny as an insect, but vibrant with eager and joyous life. With a strong, resolute step he went rapidly back to the door, opened it wide, stepped in, and walked across the floor to Marise Crittenden. "You're going to dance the next dance with _me_, you know," he told her.

CHAPTER X

AT THE MILL

I

_An Afternoon in the Life of Mr. Neale Crittenden, aet. 38_

May 27.

The stenographer, a pale, thin boy, with a scarred face, and very white hands, limped over to the manager's desk with a pile of letters to be signed. "There, Captain Crittenden," he said, pride in his accent.

Neale was surprised and pleased. "All done, Arthur?" He looked over the work hastily. "Good work, good work." He leaned back, looking up at the other. "How about it, anyhow, Arthur? Is it going to work out all right?"

The stenographer looked at him hard and swallowed visibly. "I never dreamed I'd be fit to do anything I like half so well. I thought when I was in the hospital that I was done for, for sure. Captain Crittenden, if you only knew what my mother and I think about what you've done for ..."

Neale dodged hastily. "That's all right. That's all right. If you like it, that's all that's necessary. And I'm not Captain any more."

"I forget, sir," said the other apologetically.

"Can you sit down and take a second batch right now? I want to get through early. Mrs. Crittenden's going to bring some visitors to see the place this afternoon, and I'll have to be with them more or less."