Fidelia/Chapter 22
HE stood in the hot, stuffy booth and was wrenched by what he had done. To do this to Alice, after the rest! He wanted to go to her; he was shaken by a need to comfort her, such as had seized him so inconsistently on that night he left her to go out on the ice for Fidelia. Many times, when he thought of Alice, he had had pangs of this need but never with such sharpness as now when it was doubled by the need within him to check up the account to tally the total of his days which had passed since he had made the decision, against his father, with Alice.
He could not tally them over with Fidelia; she had not shared with him the making of the decision; she had come in only afterwards; she had never known the David Herrick who had followed the ideas of his father and, above all, she had no need to make a tally at all. But Alice had; she and he could go over everything together with complete understanding of all that was involved.
Arriving at the hotel, at his home, Fidelia met him with the announcement that the Vredicks had asked them to a supper-sail. The Vredick's sloop, the I'll Show You, lay with canvas flapping near the hotel; a bit of a breeze was blowing.
"Can't we get out of the party?" David asked.
"Why, I've accepted," Fidelia said, "but I'll tell George we can't go."
"Do you mind?"
"Of course I don't," she said with ready compliance as she always acceded when she gave up what she expected to do. She went up with him to their room and, as soon as the door was closed, she was in his arms, offering her warm lips. He kissed her lips and said, "You had rather a bad time with father this morning, I guess."
"Oh!" she said. "Oh!"
"I'm sorry, Fidel, I know he went for you. I told him it was none of his affair how we live. It's not; it's just yours and mine." And he kissed her again, fiercely.
"David!" she said.
"What?"
"Kiss me again like that. You haven't for so long!"
He kissed her again but it was not like that and he knew it; the fierceness of the other was from the fury of his defense of her against his father. Of course Fidelia felt it was not like the other. She freed herself, but a few moments later, when he had thrown himself down on his bed and was staring at the ceiling, she knelt beside him, touching his cheek with her caressing fingers.
"David, do you think so much about a baby?" she whispered.
He sat up. "So he had the nerve to go after you about that!"
"Do you want a baby so much, David?" she asked.
"Not if you don't, I've told you. That's your affair, if anything is." He reached for her as he saw her trembling. "Don't you let him bother you, Fidel."
She said, hiding her face: "That's nice."
"What?"
"When you call me Fidel."
"I always will, then."
She shook her head. "You don't so much, David." She got up from her knees. "I'll call Gertrude and tell her we won't go sailing. What shall we do to-night?"
That was it; what, better than sailing with the Vredicks, should she and he do to-night or any other night? A voice came cross his conscience: "I'm Alice." Always when he had happened to see Alice, or even when any round-about word of her reached him, he had told Fidelia; but he could not tell her how he had called Alice an hour ago. For he could not tell his wife it was merely a stupid accident; it had not been that; it had been wish for Alice then.
He said: "Don't call Gertrude; we'll go, Fidel."
So they had supper on the smooth deck of the I'll Show You which was scarcely tilted by the breeze as it sailed out into the lake; they had punch and iced champagne because George Vredick, who was a broker in unlisted stocks, wanted to celebrate a great killing he had made in rubber that day.
David drank a little, decidedly less than the other men; Fidelia merely sipped her champagne. After supper, the four men of the party smoked and two of the girls did. Fidelia was one of the two who did not for she cared little for smoking and David preferred her not to smoke. They all sang, rousingly: "Oh, a capital ship for an ocean trip
Was the walloping window-blind;
No wind that blew dismayed her crew
Nor troubled the captain's mind. . . ."
They sang, "The Little Grey Home in the West" and "It's a Long, long Way to Tipperary."
These they sang more solemnly; for voices of young men were singing these in England, which was at war, and behind the battle line where trench faced trench from the Belgian shore to the Swiss frontier.
The afternoon papers on the cabin table of the I'll Show You proclaimed the Russian evacuation of Vilna, the German advance on Brest-Litovsk. The British were landing at Sulva Bay, Gallipoli, and the submarines were continuing their toll. For three months the Lusitania had been under the waves off Kinsale Head; the first rage had lulled. To-day's sinking of the White Star liner Arabic seemed almost an expected event.
George Vredick pronounced upon the war, importantly, since he sold stock and felt himself on the inside on Wall Street. He did some figuring on paper to prove that no matter how the military situation looked, the financiers would call a halt within two months. He said that "Washington" knew it and that was why Wilson watched and wrote notes and waited.
David did not entirely believe this yet it served to lessen the pang of ignobility which he felt at being safe far away from the trenches where the English, the French and the Canadians stood. He knew several men who were in Canadian regiments; some of his classmates were in France; but they were not married and they had not been involved in businesses of their own so that they owed, personally, twenty-five thousand dollars.
That life insurance policy, taken to protect Mr. Fuller from loss, would not be paid if David fell in war, for the war risk was specifically excepted. And so, to the extent that David's debt confined his choice of conduct, it was true that Mr. Fuller owned his body and soul.
Of course Fidelia had money of her own which might have freed him; she had more than twice twenty-five thousand dollars in Mr. Jessop's care and, if David were killed, she might meet his obligation. But David could not suggest this to her. He had said to her once: "If I went and was killed, or put out of business, father would pack my debt to Fuller. I don't know how he'd pay it; but he'd try—he and mother. I can't think of that."
"No," said Fidelia. "You certainly can't." If she had said, "If you don't come back, I'll pay Mr. Fuller," David would have had no choice but to go.
He thought of this as he sat beside her in the dark of the deck and her warm hand softly caressed his. He thought: "If she'd said that, she'd feel she was sending me away. She wouldn't do that."
They went in swimming from the boat and late in the evening the I'll Show You skimmed back toward the hotel, sailing so close to the shore that individual lights became discernible.
There was Alice's home; there, indeed, was Alice's window alight. While David watched it, the light went out and he thought of Alice there.
His mind went to her bonfire; her useless bonfire, which she had burnt on the shore the night Fidelia and he were adrift on the ice. They had been just about here on the lake. As he recalled the callousness with which he had watched that fire, it became incredible to him how he had cast off the dear, confiding friend with whom he could talk things out as with no one else.
He thought: "If I'd married her, and was in the same fix with Mr. Fuller, she'd say, "I'll see to the debts, if anything happens. You must be free to do what you feel right!"