I
BASIL was there on the pier, when, crippled by a mid-Atlantic storm, the ship crept in, a day late. A haze of summer heat hung over the bay and the city; a hot breath came from the land. In the crowd she caught sight of him, a head above his neighbours, his eyes eagerly lifted, searching the crowded deck. He saw her, and waved his straw hat. It was a smart Panama, and his light-grey coat looked new. But Basil was always smart. When they met, with a quick clasp of both hands, in the midst of the crowd, Teresa's glance devoured his face, noting its slight pallor, slight sallowness about the eyes.
"You're well?" she said breathlessly.
"Oh, all right. But it's beastly hot! Must get you and the boy straight out of town"
Smiling, he caught Ronald up and kissed him, laughing with pleasure.
"How you've grown, old man! Forgotten me? Do you know who I am?"
"Papa," said Ronald, with his superior smile.
"Good for you—what a memory you've got! …"
He put Teresa, Ronald, and the nurse into a carriage and sent them to a hotel, staying himself to see the luggage through the Custom-house. It was nearly seven o'clock, and Ronald had been put to bed, when Basil came. Teresa was lying on her bed, her head still whirling from the effect of the voyage. Basil wanted first to see Ronald again. The child was in the next room, not yet asleep. He went in, and Teresa heard his voice—pleasant-toned, fond, and joking—and heard Ronald laugh sleepily. At last Basil came back, shutting the door, and sat down beside Teresa.
"What a splendid fellow he is what a beauty!" he said, with a little shake in his voice. "I'm fond of that boy, Teresa."
"Turn on the light—I want to see you," said Teresa lazily.
Basil turned on the light and took off his coat, showing a pale-blue silk shirt which fastened neatly about his strong throat with a blue tie and a gold pin; then he sat down again on the edge of the bed. Teresa lay looking at him. Her loose dark hair swept across her forehead and cheek, and her lowered eyelids showed a narrow line of blue.
"How hot you look, poor dear," she said softly, looking at his forehead.
"Yes—beastly weather. Must have a bath before dinner. Are you too tired to go out somewhere? I'll find a cool place to eat."
"Tired—no. Only my head's queer yet. We had a rough voyage."
"I know—odd at this time of year."
She touched his sleeve caressingly.
"What a nice rig! Blue's your colour—mine too, oddly. Red suits Ronald best. He's looking well, isn't he?"
"Like a fighting-cock! You've taken good care of him. And you … you're looking very much stronger …"
"You haven't said you're glad to see us back."
"And you … are you glad …?"
"If I'm glad!"
Basil bent to look into her eyes, gathered her up in her loose white dress, and her arms went round him in a clasp that seemed as if it could never loosen. They held one another, silent, for long, long moments, and to Teresa all bitterness, all chance of misunderstanding, seemed to ebb away out of consciousness. Just to have him there, in her arms, was like bread to a gnawing hunger, like water to a biting thirst.
••••••
They dined together at one of their old haunts, on a balcony overlooking a broad street. It was not a fashionable quarter. The restaurant and the street were full of foreign bourgeois people, less noisy because of the heat. Low thunder- clouds hung over the city; it seemed to gasp for breath. Teresa wore the white dress and hat which she had put into her steamer-trunk with an idea of this occasion. Basil studied her face with keen attention.
"You look younger—you look awfully strong and well—it has done you a lot of good. It's too bad to pull you back into this heat—we must get out of town to-morrow. You haven't told me what made you decide so suddenly to come back," he said abruptly.
"Because I wanted to—I was bored there. Are you put out with me for coming so soon?"
"Am I? Did I want you to go? Did I, Teresa?"
"No. But you might have got used to my being away. You look at me as though I'd been gone a year."
"And it seems to me you have. You seem strange to me, Teresa."
"That's it! That's the very way you look at me—as though I were a stranger! You'd forgotten me."
"Forgotten you!"
"Yes, you were forgetting me—if I'd stayed a few months longer, you'd have forgotten how I look! It's true—you said so yourself."
"I didn't. I said you seem strange, and you do. It's as though you were a person that I must begin to know all over again. Don't you like that? Would you rather have me feel that I know you like a book, like an old hat? Drink some of that white wine."
"You were forgetting me," murmured Teresa, as she took up her glass. "Confess that you're surprised to find how nice I really am. Had you forgotten that I'm pretty? Could you tell the colour of my eyes? You've got no memory, Basil, and therefore no soul. All you have is a habit." She smiled at him. "You've a habit of me, or a habit of getting on without me. Oh, I see that you could get on without me, and I shall never give you the chance again!"
"Will you swear to that?"
"By sun and moon I swear!"
"Well, I'm content then. I get on damn badly without you, that's the truth."
"But you get on. And I can't get on at all without you—not at all. I've found that out."
"Then I'm glad you went away, if that's true."
"Yes, only I knew it before."
They looked at one another, and drank a silent toast. To Teresa the world about her—the stifling night, the breathless air, the crowd of ordinary people—had taken on the colour and glow of the wine, a mysterious radiance. She was eating very little, but the food seemed good. The waiter in his musty black coat, with a tired napkin over his arm, seemed a pathetic and amiable human creature. She glanced at his grave face, as he awaited the order for the entrée, with sympathy. How dreary he must be of people choosing their entrée! But no—he was pleased to suggest that one of those queerly-named dishes was better than the other—he looked interested. How amiable!
She smiled joyously at Basil. "And now tell me what you've been doing with your unchartered freedom—confess how you've enjoyed being a bachelor!"
"You can't be a bachelor when you've been married," said Basil with conviction. "It's living at table d'hôtes when you've had your own house—it ain't the cheese. I hate bumming round."
And he looked at her with deep content in his eyes.
"We'll get a little place in the country somewhere for the autumn, and I shall sit down and do some work. I haven't done anything decent since you went away."
"What have you done, then, you fraud?"
"Oh, I wrote you—those beastly illustrations—and another thing or two. But it's been hot, and every day or so I had to pick up and go out of town. I couldn't settle down to anything. I want my own place—and you in it."
"But, dear boy, you don't like my housekeeping!"
"Bother housekeeping! You do it as well as you can, that's all. I don't care much what I eat."
"Poor, dear Basil! But I will do it better this time—I really will. I want a settled place too, a place where we belong. I'm so tired, as you say, of bumming. I thought when I came home this time that I never wanted to see Europe again. It's the fourteenth time I've crossed that stupid ocean—and oh, I thought of all the years of wandering when I was a child, and how we never had a home. And I'm sick of it. And you and I, Basil, have never had a place of our own. We've lived like two sparrows, building our nest under somebody else's eaves. And I want my own eaves! I want a house somewhere, I don't care if it's in a beastly suburb, or where—and a garden, and about ten acres of trees, and an asparagus-bed, and a cow!"
Basil laughed.
"We'll have it, then—by Jove, that would suit me! But where shall we get the money?"
"Why, we have thirty-five hundred a year, haven't we? We could pay for it in three or four years."
"Yes, but what should we live on, then?"
Teresa looked slightly dashed.
"Oh, we'll make enough to live on," she said, recovering herself. "I can make a good deal if I try—and I won't have any new clothes, and I'll buy all our food at the cheapest shops. I'm sure we can do it."
"Very well, we'll do it. I'll do anything you really want, Teresa."
"Will you?" she murmured.
She drank her wine absently and set the glass down, and looked at him with a strange, passionate expression of doubt.
"Who knows?"
"What do you mean?" asked Basil.
"Who knows what you would do for me? Who knows what I am to you?"
"I know, pretty well, I should think. Try me. I don't think there's much I wouldn't do for you."
"Would you"
She stopped suddenly, made an impatient gesture, and said, "No—that's nothing. I won't say that."
"Won't say what? What is it? Say what you had in your mind."
She refused, but Basil pressed her eagerly. For some ten minutes she resisted, but at last she said:
"Oh, I'll tell you, then. All that came into my mind—that thing about—Mrs. Perry." The name cost her a slight effort. "And I started to ask if you would tell me now all about it. But I don't really care—that's why I stopped. It would make it seem too important to me. I don't care what happened—only tell me this, you didn't care about her?"
"I have told you—not an atom."
"Then she was a fool."
"I suppose she was."
"Oh, well, that's all—keep the rest to yourself. As I should do, in a similar case."
"As you would? How do you mean, Teresa—in my place, you mean?"
"No, I mean in my place."
With her elbows leaning on the table and her chin in her palms, she smiled at him slightly. Basil studied her delicate, subtle face. It struck him suddenly that there was a new force about it. It might only the poise of recovered health and energy—but it seemed more. She looked somehow surer, more experienced, with more reserve. There was a suggestion of malice in her look. He considered her profoundly.
"I don't know what you mean, you little devil," he said caressingly, "but I know you're more charming than ever. It's about time you came back."
"Yes, said Teresa softly. "It was time—if I meant to come back. And, on the whole, I did."
"What do you mean? There's something in your mind—there's something you haven't told me."
"Is there? Is it possible?"
"Now come, Teresa! Don't grill a fellow, and on a night like this—and the first minute you get back, too! You don't hate me, do you? I'm so confoundedly happy to get you back—I've never been so happy in my life."
Basil's voice quavered, and he seized her hand across the table.
Teresa looked at him strangely, and was silent. She smiled as he filled her glass again with the topaz-coloured wine, and gazed out dreamily over the street. The black night, mysterious and ominous, with the roll of thunder coming nearer, seemed now to have left only a core of radiance about them. The low clouds, the flaring lightning, all threats, all uncertainties, pressed in upon the sensuous dream, and seemed to concentrate it into an infinite moment, inexpressibly sweet.