The Cup of Trembling, and Other Stories. Foote Mary Hallock
and the breakfast-table still stood in front of the fire. Jack, who since eight o'clock had been chopping wood and "packing" it out of the tunneled snow-drift which was the woodshed into the kitchen, and cooking breakfast, and shoveling snow out of the trenches, sat glowing on his side of the table, farthest from the fire, while Esmée, her chair drawn close to the hearth, was sipping her coffee and holding a fan spread between her face and the flames.
"Jack, I wish you had a fire-screen – one that would stand of itself, and not have to be held."
"Bless you! I'd be your fire-screen, only I think I'm rather hotter than the fire itself. I insist that you take some exercise, Esmée. Come, walk the trench with me ten rounds before I start."
"Why do you start so early?"
"Do you call this early? Besides, it looks like snow."
"Then, why go at all?"
"You know why I go, dearest. The boys went to town yesterday. I've had no mail for a week."
"And can't you exist without your mail?"
"Existence is just the hitch with us at present. It's for your sake I cannot afford to be overlooked. If I fall out of step in my work, it may take years to get into line again. I can't say like those ballad fellows:
'Arise! my love, and fearless be,
For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee.'
"I wish I had. We'll put some money in our purse, and then we'll make ourselves a home where we please. Money is the first thing with us now. You must see that yourself."
"I see it, of course; but it doesn't seem the nearest way to a fortune, going twice a week on snow-shoes to play solo at the Mule Deer mine. Confess, Jack dear, you do not come straight away as soon as you get your mail."
"I do not, of course. I must be civil, after a fashion, to Wilfrid Knight, considering all that he is doing for me."
"What is he doing for you?"
"He's working as hard as he can for me in certain directions. It's best not to say too much about these things till they've materialized; but he has as strong a backing as any man in the Cœur d'Alêne. To tell you the truth, I can't afford not to be civil to him, if it meant solo every day in the week."
Esmée smiled a little, but remained silent. Jack went around to the chimney-piece and filled his pipe, and began to stalk about the room, talking in brief sentences as he smoked.
"And by the way, dearest, would you mind if he should drop in on us some day?" Jack laughed at his own phrase, so literally close to the only mode of gaining access to their cellarage in the snow.
Esmée looked up quickly. "What in the world does he want to come here for? Doesn't he see enough of you as it is?"
"He wants to see something of you; and it's howling lonesome at the Mule Deer. Won't you let him come, Esmée?"
"Why, do you want him, Jack?"
"I want him! What should I want him for? But we have to be decent to a man who's doing everything in the world for us. We couldn't have made it here, at all, without the aid and comfort of the Mule Deer."
"I'd rather have done without his aid and comfort, if it must be paid for at his own price.
"Everything has got to be paid for. Even that inordinate fire, which you won't be parted from, has to be paid for with a burning cheek."
"Not if you had a fire-screen, Jack," Esmée reminded him sweetly.
"We will have one – an incandescent fire-screen on two legs. Will two be enough? A Mule Deer miner shall pack it in on his back from town. But we shall have to thank Wilfrid Knight for sending him. Well, if you won't have him here, he can't come, of course; but it's a mistake, I think. We can't afford, in my opinion, not to see the first hand that is held out to us in a social way – a hand that can help us if it will, but one that is quite as strong to injure us."
"Have him, then, if he's so dangerous. But is he nice, do you think?"
"He's nice enough, as men go. We're not any of us any too nice."
"Some of you are at least considerate, and I think it very inconsiderate of Mr. Wilfrid Knight to wish to intrude himself on me now."
"Dearest, he has been kindness itself, and delicacy, in a way. Twice he has sent a special man to town to hunt up little dainties and comforts for you when my prison fare" —
"Jack, what do you mean? Has Wilfrid Knight been putting his hand in his pocket for things for me to eat and drink?"
"His pocket's not much hurt. Don't let that disturb you; but it is something to send a man fifteen miles down the mountain to pack the stuff. You might very properly recognize that, if you chose."
"I recognize nothing of it. Why did you not tell me how it was? I thought that you were sending for those things."
"How can I send Knight's men on my errands, if you please? I don't show up very largely at the mine in person. You don't seem to realize the situation. Did you suppose that the Mule Deer men, when they fetch these things from town, know whom they are for? They may, but they are not supposed to."
"Arrange it as you like, but I will not take presents from the manager of the Mule Deer."
"He has dined at your table, Esmée."
"Not at my table," said Esmée, haughtily averting her face.
"But you have been nice to him; he remembers you with distinct pleasure."
"Very likely. It is my rôle to be nice to people. I should be nice to him if he came here now; but I should hate him for coming. If he were nice, he would not dream of your asking him or allowing him to come."
"Darling, darling, we can't keep it up like this. We are not lords of fate to that extent. Fellows will pay you attention; they always have and they always will: but you must not, dearest, imply that I am not sensitive on the point of what you may or may not receive in that way. I should make myself a laughing-stock before all men if I should begin by resenting things. I could not insult you so. I will resent nothing that a husband does not resent."
"Jack, don't you understand? I could have taken it lightly once; I always used to. I can't take it lightly now. I cannot have him come here – the first to see us in this solitude à deux, the most intimate, the most awful – "
"Of course, of course," murmured Jack. "It is awful, I admit it, for you. But it always will be. Ours is a double solitude for life, with the world always eying us askance, scoring us, or secretly envying us, or merely wondering coarsely about us. It takes tremendous courage in a woman; but you will have the courage of your honesty, your surpassing generosity to me."
"Generosity!" Esmée repeated. "We shall see. I give myself just five years of this 'generosity.' After that, the beginning of the end. I shall have to eliminate myself from the problem, to be finally generous. But five years is a good while," she whispered, "to dare to love my love in, if my love loves me."
There could be no doubt of this as yet. Esmée could afford to toy sentimentally with the thought of future despair and final self-elimination.
"Come, come," said Waring; "this will never do; we must get some fresh air on this." He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, pocketed it, and marched into an inner room whence he fetched a warm, loose cloak and a pair of carriage boots.
"Fresh air and exercise!"
Esmée, seeing there was to be no escape from Jack's favorite specific for every earthly ill, put out her foot, in its foolish little slipper, and Jack drew on the fur-lined boots, and laced them around the silken ankles.
He followed her out into the snow-walled fosse, and fell into step beside her.
"May I smoke?"
"What affectation! As if you didn't always smoke."
"Well, hardly, when I have a lady with me, in such a public place."
"Oh me, oh me!" Esmée suddenly broke forth, "why did I not meet you when you were in New York the winter before! Well, it would