The moon came up royally as they took their coffee on the terrace. Without any one suggesting it, they strolled down the lawn and along the river. Great trees stretched their branches overhead across the stream. It was a warm night, and many boats were out. Their gay lanterns glistened over the water. Here and there a song floated through the dusk. The predominant note of the scene was laughter.
But the riverside did not seem beautiful to Isadore; Beatrice had never cared less for it. Walter and Yetta were walking on ahead.
Beatrice found a sort of whimsical sympathy for her companion – realizing that he also was troubled by the turn things had taken. The unrest of each infected the other. It required all the social tact she could command to keep up the semblance of a conversation.
Yetta had taken Walter's arm, and for a while they walked in silence. But somehow the constraint suddenly fell away, and she felt in him the old friend to whom it had always been so easy to talk.
"It's strange," she said, "how very often I have taken your advice and found it good. More and more I realize what a big factor you've been in my life. A dozen times I've been on the point of writing to you. But it's so hard to put on paper the deeper sort of thanks."
Walter tried to protest.
"Oh, yes," she insisted. "I've lots of things to thank you for. It's hard to put it into words. But now that it's ancient history, now that the wounds have healed, I want to talk about it. When you told me to marry Isadore, it seemed like the cruelest words that could be spoken. You were right in smashing up my romance. But of all the lessons you ever set me, that was the hardest to learn, the bitterest. I could not take your word for it. I had to learn it for myself. But if you had not driven me to it, I would have been a romanticist still – always weaving dreams. I would never have found the wonder and beauty of life as it is.
"I guess any suffering is worth while that teaches a real lesson. I can be philosophic about those tear-stained months now. But they were dreary enough – and sometimes worse. I don't believe there was anything that Job said about the day he was born that I did not echo.
"Isadore was wonderful those days. He didn't give me any advice nor try to comfort me. He just called me up in the morning and gave me enough work for six people. I did have a little sense left. I could see that work was my only hope of pulling through. The Clarion office was the busiest place I could find – so I cut loose from the League and went down there.
"But Mabel has never forgiven me for leaving her. I've hardly seen her since."
They walked on for a moment in silence, and then she took up her story again.
"My real ignorance used to be that I thought there could be no love without romance. I thought they were the same thing. And that's the wonder of reality, it calls out something so immensely deeper than dream-love. I see Isadore's crooked shoulder as clearly as any one. I know the words he insists on mispronouncing. I know the little, uncontrolled hooks of his temper that things are always catching on. I don't for a moment think he's a god. Perhaps it is just the fact that I know him so very much better than other people do that would make me laugh at any one who said I didn't truly love him! And then the babies! Think of it, Walter. I've got two of them. My very own! You said something like this once – that flesh and blood were more wonderful than any dream. It was a hard, painful lesson to learn, but I guess it's the one I want to thank you for most."
"It's a truth," Walter replied, "which Beatrice has helped me to rediscover very often these last years. We love each other with a big E. It certainly didn't start with the romantic capital L. It's just the opposite of that proposition – of the flaming beginning that gradually peters out. It's something with us that's alive – growing every day."
Her hand on his arm gave him a friendly, understanding squeeze.
"It's so wonderful a world," she said, "it almost hurts! There's so very, very much to do. The minutes are so amazingly full. And somehow it all seems to centre around the babies. They've given Socialism a new meaning to me, have brought it all nearer, made it more intimate and personal, more closely woven into myself. Isadore and I were used to the tenements, they'd ceased to impress us – till the babies came. I'm glad my little brood can grow up in the sunlight and fresh air, with a little grass to play on. But the thought of all the millions of babies in the slums has become the very corner-stone of my thinking. It's for them. We've just got to win Socialism for the babies! I wish you could see mine. I'll send you a photograph."
Her mind switched off to more concrete problems; she talked of immediate plans and hopes. Meanwhile, Isadore kept looking at his watch, and each time he pulled it out, Beatrice asked him what time it was. At last it was necessary to turn back to catch the train.
* * * * *
Conversation lagged as the Longmans walked home from the station. Walter was wrapped up in some line of thought and Beatrice's first efforts fell flat. The silence became oppressive to her as they entered their house.
"Walter," she said, "I'd bid as high as three shillings for your thoughts."
"Keep your money. These are jewels beyond price." He tumbled himself lazily into a big leather chair. "What they tell about that paper of theirs is amazing. I'm beginning to see some reason for the hostility which the working-class has for the 'intellectuals.' If Isadore had asked my advice, – or any of the college-bred Socialists in New York, – he'd have been told that it was absolutely impossible to pull through with a daily. Well, the working-class knew what they wanted and darned if they didn't get it! It's amazing!"
"Walter, if I really believed that was what you'd been thinking about, I'd kiss you."
"I don't see why you shouldn't do both," he said, making room for her in the chair beside him. But seeing a suspicious glitter in her eyes, he sprang up. "Why, B.! You're crying! What's the matter?"
She put her hands on his shoulders and looked searchingly in his face.
"Honest? Cross your heart to die? Weren't you thinking about Yetta?"
"You little idiot," he said, with the glow which comes to a man who is being indirectly flattered. "Been jealous, have you?"
He picked her up in his arms.
"Let's go out on the porch. I'll tell you everything she said to me – and then we'll look up at the moon."
* * * * *
"Well," Yetta said, settling herself in the compartment of the train, as the lights of Oxford slipped past the windows, "I'm glad we visited them."
Isadore moved uneasily.
"It wasn't unpleasant?" he asked in Yiddish – so that the other passengers might not understand. "I don't feel as if I showed up very well in comparison to Walter."
She leaned forward so she could look him squarely in the face.
"Isadore!" she said in an aggrieved tone, "can't men ever understand women – not even the very simplest things? Three years I wasted dreaming – no; I won't say 'wasted.' I haven't any quarrel with my girlhood. Three years I dreamed about him. But it's four years now – four years – that I've lived with you. Can't you understand how immense that difference seems to a woman? There are some of my ideas, perhaps, some of my intellect that he's father of. But, Isadore, you're the father of my children."
"Yes," he said, somewhat comforted. "I think I can understand a little of that – but – well, I never wished I had money so much before. I wish I could give you the things Walter would have."
"Don't you do any mourning about that," she said brazenly, "till I begin it."
She slipped her hand into his, indifferent to the other passengers. Her conscience hurt a little on this score, for after all she had envied Beatrice's opportunity to be beautiful. They sat silent for quite a long interval.
"I'm glad we visited them," she went on. "But I'm gladder that we're started home again. I'm crazy to get back."
"Worrying about the kids?"
"Oh, yes! Of course, I worry about them all the time. Aunt Martha's as good to them as she knows how, but she's so old-fashioned. But I'm glad for another reason. I never realized before the real difference between Walter and me. It's a wonderfully beautiful life, that cottage of theirs, the books, the old colleges, and the river. You can't deny that there's a graciousness about it. But it would kill me. He's happy thinking about things. But I'd die if I wasn't doing things! Love isn't enough by itself. I'd starve. I'm hungry to get back to work. That's the Real Thing, we got, Isadore. It makes our Love worth while. Our Work."