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diff --git a/old/42965.txt b/old/42965.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 8649ffa..0000000 --- a/old/42965.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9645 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Shadow of Life, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Shadow of Life - -Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -Release Date: June 17, 2013 [EBook #42965] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHADOW OF LIFE *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - -The Shadow of Life - - - - -The Shadow of Life - -BY - -Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -AUTHOR OF "THE RESCUE," "THE CONFOUNDING OF -CAMELIA," "PATHS OF JUDGEMENT," ETC. - -[Illustration: colophon] - -NEW YORK - -The Century Co. - -1906 - -Copyright, 1906, by -The Century Co. - -_Published February, 1906_ - -THE DE VINNE PRESS - - - - - -THE SHADOW OF LIFE - -[Illustration: colophon] - -PART I - - - - -The Shadow of Life - - - - -I - - -Elspeth Gifford was five years old when she went to live at Kirklands. -Her father, an army officer, died in her babyhood, and her mother a few -years later. The uncle and aunts in Scotland, all three much her -mother's seniors, were the child's nearest relatives. - -To such a little girl death had meant no more than a bewildered -loneliness, but the bewilderment was so sharp, the loneliness so aching, -that she cried herself into an illness. She had seen her dead mother, -the sweet, sightless, silent face, familiar yet amazing, and more than -any fear or shrinking had been the suffocating mystery of feeling -herself forgotten and left behind. Her uncle Nigel, sorrowful and grave, -but so large and kind that his presence seemed to radiate a restoring -warmth, came to London for her and a fond nurse went with her to the -North, and after a few weeks the anxious affection of her aunts Rachel -and Barbara built about her, again, a child's safe universe of love. - -Kirklands was a large white house and stood on a slope facing south, -backed by a rise of thickly wooded hill and overlooking a sea of -heathery moorland. It was a solitary but not a melancholy house. Lichens -yellowed the high-pitched slate roof and creepers clung to the roughly -"harled" walls. On sunny days the long rows of windows were golden -squares in the illumined white, and, under a desolate winter sky, glowed -with an inner radiance. - -In the tall limes to the west a vast colony of rooks made their nests; -and to Eppie these high nests, so dark against the sky in the vaguely -green boughs of spring or in the autumn's bare, swaying branches, had a -weird, fairy-tale charm. They belonged neither to the earth nor to the -sky, but seemed to float between, in a place of inaccessible romance, -and the clamor, joyous yet irritable, at dawn and evening seemed full of -quaint, strange secrets that only a wandering prince or princess would -have understood. - -Before the house a round of vivid green was encircled by the drive that -led through high stone gates to the moorland road. A stone wall, running -from gate to gate, divided the lawn from the road, and upon each pillar -a curiously carved old griffin, its back and head spotted with yellow -lichens, held stiffly up, for the inspection of passers-by, the family -escutcheon. From the windows at the back of the house one looked up at -the hilltop, bare but for a group of pine-trees, and down into a deep -garden. Here, among utilitarian squares of vegetable beds, went -overgrown borders of flowers--bands of larkspurs, lupins, stocks, and -columbines. The golden-gray of the walls was thickly embroidered with -climbing fruit-trees, and was entirely covered, at one end of the -garden, by a small snow-white rose, old-fashioned, closely petaled; and -here in a corner stood a thatched summer-house, where Eppie played with -her dolls, and where, on warm summer days, the white roses filled the -air with a fragrance heavy yet fresh in its wine-like sweetness. All -Eppie's early memories of Kirklands centered about the summer-house and -were mingled with the fragrance of the roses. Old James, the gardener, -put up there a little locker where her toys were stored, and shelves -where she ranged her dolls' dishes. There were rustic seats, too, and a -table--a table always rather unsteady on the uneven wooden floor. The -sun basked in that sheltered, windless corner, and, when it rained, the -low, projecting eaves ranged one safely about with a silvery fringe of -drops through which one looked out over the wet garden and up at the -white walls of the house, crossed by the boughs of a great, dark -pine-tree. - -Inside the house the chief room was the fine old library, where, from -long windows, one looked south over the purples and blues of the -moorland. Books filled the shelves from floor to ceiling--old-fashioned -tomes in leather bindings, shut away, many of them, behind brass -gratings and with all the delightful sense of peril connected with the -lofty upper ranges, only to be reached by a courageous use of the -library steps. - -Here Uncle Nigel gave Eppie lessons in Greek and history every morning, -aided in the minor matters of her education by a submissive nursery -governess, an Englishwoman, High Church in doctrine and plaintive in a -country of dissent. - -A door among the book-shelves led from the library into the morning-room -or boudoir, where Aunt Rachel and Aunt Barbara sewed, read, dispensed -small charities and lengthy advice to the village poor--a cheerful -little room in spite of its northern aspect and the shadowing trunk of -the great pine-tree just outside its windows. It was all faded chintzes, -gilt carvings, porcelain ornaments in corner cabinets; its paper was -white with a fine gilt line upon it; and even though to Eppie it had sad -associations with Bible lessons and Sunday morning collects, it retained -always its aspect of incongruous and delightful gaiety--almost of -frivolity. Sitting there in their delicate caps and neatly appointed -dresses, with their mild eyes and smoothly banded hair, Aunt Rachel and -Aunt Barbara gathered a picture-book charm--seemed to count less as -personalities and more as ornaments. On the other side of the hall, -rather bare and bleak in its antlered spaciousness, were the dining-and -smoking-rooms, the first paneled in slightly carved wood, painted white, -the last a thoroughly modern room, redolent of shabby comforts, with -deep leather chairs, massive mid-century furniture, and an aggressively -cheerful paper. - -The drawing-room, above the library, was never used--a long, vacant -room, into which Eppie would wander with a pleasant sense of -trespassing and impertinence; a trivial room, for all the dignity of its -shrouded shapes and huge, draped chandelier. Its silver-flecked gray -paper and oval gilt picture-frames recalled an epoch nearer and uglier -than that of the grave library and sprightly boudoir below, though even -its ugliness had a charm. Eppie was fond of playing by herself there, -and hid sundry secrets under the Chinese cabinet, a large, scowling -piece of furniture, its black lacquered panels inlaid with -mother-of-pearl. Once it was a quaintly cut cake, neatly sealed in a -small jeweler's box, that she thrust far away under it; and once a -minute china doll, offspring of a Christmas cracker and too minute for -personality, was swaddled mummy fashion in a ribbon and placed beside -the box. Much excitement was to be had by not looking to see if the -secrets were still there and in hastily removing them when a cleaning -threatened. - -The day-nursery, afterward the school-room, was over the dining-room, -and the bedrooms were at the back of the house. - -The Carmichaels were of an ancient and impoverished family, their -estates, shrunken as they were, only kept together by careful economy, -but there was no touch of dreariness in Eppie's home. She was a happy -child, filling her life with imaginative pastimes and finding on every -side objects for her vigorous affections. Her aunts' mild disciplines -weighed lightly on her. Love and discipline were sundered principles in -the grandmotherly administration, and Eppie soon learned that the -formalities of the first were easily evaded and to weigh the force of -her own naughtiness against it. Corporal punishment formed part of the -Misses Carmichael's conception of discipline, but though, on the rare -occasions when it could not be escaped, Eppie bawled heart-rendingly -during the very tremulous application, it was with little disturbance of -spirit that she endured the reward of transgression. - -At an early age she understood very clearly the simple characters around -her. Aunt Rachel and Aunt Barbara were both placid, both pious, both -full of unsophisticated good works, both serenely acquiescent in their -lots. In Aunt Barbara, indeed, placidity was touched with wistfulness; -she was the gentler, the more yielding of the two. Aunt Rachel could be -inspired with the greater ruthlessness of conscientious conviction. It -was she who insisted upon the letter of the law in regard to the Sunday -collect, the Sunday church-going, who mingled reproof with her village -charities, who could criticize with such decision the short-comings, -doctrinal and domestic, of Mr. MacNab, minister of the little -established church that stood near the village. Aunt Barbara was far -less assured of the forms of things; she seemed to search and fumble a -little for further, fuller outlets, and yet to have found a greater -serenity. Aunt Rachel was fond of pointing out to her niece such facts -of geology, botany, and natural history in general as the country life -and her own somewhat rudimentary knowledge suggested to her as useful; -Aunt Barbara, on the contrary, told pretty, allegorical tales about -birds and flowers--tales with a heavy cargo of moral insinuation, to -which, it must be confessed, Eppie listened with an inner sense of -stubborn realism. It was Aunt Barbara who sought to impress upon her -that the inclusive attribute of Deity was love, and who, when Eppie -asked her where God was, answered, "In your heart, dear child." Eppie -was much puzzled by anatomical considerations in reflecting upon this -information. Aunt Rachel, with clear-cut, objective facts from Genesis, -was less mystifying to inquisitive, but pagan childhood. Eppie could not -help thinking of God as somewhat like austere, gray-bearded old James, -the gardener, whose vocation suggested that pictorial chapter in the -Bible, and who, when he found her one day eating unripe fruit, warned -her with such severity of painful retribution. - -The aunts spent year after year at Kirklands, with an infrequent trip to -Edinburgh. Neither had been South since the death of the beloved younger -sister. Uncle Nigel, the general, older than either, was russet-faced, -white-haired, robust. He embodied a sound, well-nurtured type and -brought to it hardly an individual variation. He taught his niece, -re-read a few old books, followed current thought in the "Quarterly" and -the "Scotsman," and wrote his memoirs, that moved with difficulty from -boyhood, so detailed were his recollections and so painstaking his -recording of inessential fact. - -For their few neighbors, life went on as slowly as for the Carmichaels. -The Carstons of Carlowrie House were in touch with a larger outside -life: Sir Alec Carston was member for the county; but the inmates of -Brechin House, Crail Hill, and Newton Lowry were fixtures. These dim -personages hardly counted at all in young Eppie's experience. She saw -them gathered round the tea-table in the library when she was summoned -to appear with tidy hair and fresh frock: stout, ruddy ladies in -driving-gloves and boat-shaped hats; dry, thin young ladies in -hard-looking muslins and with frizzed fringes; a solid laird or two. -They were vague images in her world. - -People who really counted were the village people, and on the basis of -her aunts' charitable relationship Eppie built up for herself with most -of them a tyrannous friendship. The village was over two miles away; one -reached it by the main road that ran along the moor, past the -birch-woods, the tiny loch, and then down a steep bit of hill to the -handful of huddled gray roofs. There was the post-office, the sweet-shop -with its dim, small panes, behind which, to Eppie's imagination, the -bull's-eyes and toffee and Edinburgh rock looked, in their jars, like -odd fish in an aquarium; there was the carpenter's shop, the floor all -heaped with scented shavings, through which one's feet shuffled in -delightful, dry rustlings; there the public-house, a lurid corner -building, past which Miss Grimsby always hurried her over-interested -young charge, and there the little inn where one ordered the dusty, -lurching, capacious old fly that conveyed one to the station, five miles -away. Eppie was far more in the village than her share of her aunts' -charities at all justified, and was often brought in disgrace from -sheer truancy. The village babies, her dolls, and Robbie, her Aberdeen -terrier, were the realities at once serious and radiant of life. She -could do for them, love them as she would. Her uncle and aunts and the -fond old nurse were included in an unquestioning tenderness, but they -could not be brought under its laws, and their independence made them -more remote. - -Remote, too, though by no means independent, and calling forth little -tenderness, were her cousins, who spent part of their holidays each -summer at Kirklands. They were English boys, coming from an English -school, and Eppie was very stanchly Scotch. The Graingers, Jim and -Clarence, were glad young animals. They brought from a home of small -means and overflowing sisters uncouth though not bad manners and an -assured tradition of facile bullying. The small Scotch cousin was at -first seen only in the light of a convenience. She was to be ignored, -save for her few and rudimentary uses. But Eppie, at eight years old, -when the Graingers first came, had an opposed and firmly established -tradition. In her own domain, she was absolute ruler, and not for a -moment did her conception of her supremacy waver. Her assurance was so -complete that it left no room for painful struggle or dispute. From -helpless stupor to a submission as helpless, the cousins fell by degrees -to a not unhappy dependence. Eppie ran, climbed, played, as good a boy -as either; and it was she who organized games, she who invented -wonderful new adventures, all illumined by thrilling recitatives while -in progress, she who, though their ally, and a friendly one, was the -brains of the alliance, and, as thinker, dominated. Brains, at their -age, being rudimentary in the young male, Eppie had some ground for her -consciousness of kindly disdain. She regarded Jim and Clarence as an -animated form of toy, more amusing than other toys because of -possibilities of unruliness, or as a mere audience, significant only as -a means for adding to the zest of life. Clarence, the younger, even from -the first dumb days of reconstruction, was the more malleable. He was -formed for the part of dazzled subjection to a strong and splendid -despotism. Eppie treated her subject races to plenty of pomp and glory. -Clarence listened, tranced, to her heroic stories, followed her -leadership with docile, eager fidelity, and finally, showing symptoms of -extreme romanticism, declared himself forever in love with her. Eppie, -like the ascendant race again, made prompt and shameless use of the -avowed and very apparent weakness. She bartered rare and difficult -favors for acts of service, and on one occasion--a patch of purple in -young Clarence's maudlin days--submitted, with a stony grimace, to being -kissed; for this treasure Clarence paid by stealing down to the -forbidden public-house and there buying a bottle of beer which Eppie and -Jim were to consume as robbers in a cave,--Clarence the seized and -despoiled traveler. Eppie was made rather ill by her share of the beer, -but, standing in a bed-gown at her window, she called to her cousins, in -the garden below, such cheerful accounts of her malady, the slight -chastisement that Aunt Rachel had inflicted, and her deft evasion of -medicines, that her luster was heightened rather than dimmed by the -disaster. Jim never owned, for a moment, to there being any luster. He -was a square-faced boy, with abrupt nose, and lips funnily turning up at -the corners, yet funnily grim,--most unsmiling of lips. He followed -Eppie's lead with the half-surly look of a slave in bondage, and seemed -dumbly to recognize that his own unfitness rather than Eppie's right -gave her authority. He retaliated on Clarence for his sense of -subjection and cruelly teased and scoffed at him. Clarence, when pushed -too far, would appeal to Eppie for protection, and on these occasions, -even while she sheltered him, a strange understanding seemed to pass -between her and the tormentor as though, with him, she found Clarence -ludicrous. Jim, before her stinging reproofs, would stand tongue-tied -and furious, but, while she stung him, Eppie liked the sullen culprit -better than the suppliant victim. - - - - -II - - -When Eppie was ten years old, she heard one day that a boy, a new boy, -was coming to spend the spring and summer--a boy from India, Gavan -Palairet. His mother and her own had been dear friends, and his father, -as hers had been, was in the army; and these points of contact mitigated -for Eppie the sense of exotic strangeness. - -Eppie gathered that a cloud rested upon Mrs. Palairet, and the boy, -though exotic, seemed to come from the far, brilliant country with his -mother's cloud about him. - -"Ah, poor Fanny!" the general sighed over the letter he read at the -breakfast-table. "How did she come to marry that brute! It will be a -heart-breaking thing for her to send the boy from her." - -Eppie, listening with keen interest, gathered further, from the -reminiscent talk that went on between the sisters and brother, that Mrs. -Palairet, for some years of her boy's babyhood, lived in England; then -it had been India and the effort to keep him near her in the hills, and -now his delicacy and the definite necessity of schooling had braced her -to the parting. The general said, glancing with fond pride at his -niece, that Eppie would be a fine playmate for him and would be of great -service in cheering him before his plunge into school. Fanny had begged -for much gentleness and affection for him. Apparently the boy was as -heartbroken as she. - -Eppie had very little diffidence about her own powers as either playmate -or cheerer: she was well accustomed to both parts; but her eagerness to -sustain and amuse the invalid was touched with a little shyness. The sad -boy from India--her heart and mind rushed out in a hundred plans of -welcome and consolation; but she suspected that a sad boy from India -would require subtler methods than those sufficing for a Jim or a -Clarence. From the first moment of hearing about him she had felt, as if -instinctively, that he would not be at all like Jim and Clarence. - -He came on a still, sunny spring day. The general went to meet him at -the station, and while he was gone Eppie made excitement endurable by -vigorous action. Again and again she visited the fresh little room -overlooking the hills, the garden, the pine-tree boughs, standing in a -thoughtful surveyal of its beauties and comforts or darting off to add -to them. She herself chose the delightful piece of green soap from the -store-cupboard and the books for the table; and she gathered the -daffodils in the birch-woods, filling every vase with them, so that the -little room with its white walls and hangings of white dimity seemed -lighted by clusters of pale, bright flames. - -When the old fly rumbled at last through the gates and around the drive, -Miss Rachel and Miss Barbara were in the doorway, and Eppie stood -before them on the broad stone step, Robbie beside her. - -Eppie was a lithe, sturdy, broad-shouldered child, with russet, -sun-streaked hair, dark yet radiant, falling to her waist. She had a -pale, freckled face and the woodland eyes of a gay, deep-hearted dog. -To-day she wore a straight white frock, and her hair, her frock, dazzled -with sunlight. No more invigorating figure could have greeted a jaded -traveler. - -That it was a very jaded traveler she saw at once, while the general -bundled out of the fly and handed rugs, dressing-cases, and cages to the -maid, making a passage for Gavan's descent. The boy followed him, -casting anxious glances at the cages, and Eppie's eyes, following his, -saw tropical birds in one and in the other a quaint, pathetic little -beast--a lemur-like monkey swaddled in flannel and motionless with fear. -Its quick, shining eyes met hers for a moment, and she looked away from -them with a sense of pity and repulsion. - -Gavan, as he ascended the steps, looked at once weary, frightened, and -composed. He had a white, thin face and thick black hair--the sort of -face and hair, Eppie thought, that the wandering prince of one of her -own stories, the prince who understood the rooks' secrets, would have. -He was dressed in a long gray traveling-cloak with capes. The eager -welcome she had in readiness for him seemed out of place before his -gentle air of self-possession, going as it did with the look of almost -painful shrinking. She was a little at a loss and so were the aunts, as -she saw. They took his hand in turn, they smiled, they murmured vague -words of kindness; but they did not venture to kiss him. He did not seem -as little a boy as they had expected. The same expression of restraint -was on Uncle Nigel's hearty countenance. The sad boy was frozen and he -chilled others. - -He was among them now, in the hall, his cages and rugs and boxes about -him, and, with all the cheery bustling to and fro, he must feel himself -dreadfully alone. Eppie, too, was chilled and knew, indeed, the -childish, panic impulse to run away, but her imagination of his -loneliness was so strong as to nerve quite another impulse. Once she saw -him as so desolate she could not hesitate. With resolute gravity she -took his hand, saying, "I am so glad that you have come, Gavan," and, as -resolutely and as gravely, she kissed him on the cheek. He flushed so -deeply that for a moment all her panic came back with the fear that she -had wounded his pride; but in a moment he said, glancing at her, "You -are very kind. I am glad to be here, too." - -His pride was not at all wounded. Eppie felt that at all events the -worst of the ice was broken. - -"May I feed your animals for you while you rest?" she asked him, as, -with Aunt Barbara, they went up-stairs to his room. Gavan carried the -lemur himself. Eppie had the birds in their cage. - -"Thanks, so much. It only takes a moment; I can do it. My monkey would -be afraid of any one else," he answered, adding, "The journey has been -too much for him; he has been very strange all day." - -"He will soon get well here," said Eppie, encouragingly--"this is such a -healthy place. But Scotland will be a great change from India for him, -won't it?" - -"Very great. I am afraid he is going to be ill." And again Gavan's eye -turned its look of weary anxiety upon the lemur. - -But his anxiety did not make him forget his courtesy. "What a beautiful -view," he said, when they reached his room, "and what beautiful -flowers!" - -"I have this view, too," said Eppie. "The school-room has the view of -the moor; but I like this best, for early morning when one gets up. You -will see how lovely it is to smell the pine-tree when it is all wet with -dew." - -Gavan agreed that it must be lovely, and looked out with her at the -blue-green boughs; but even while he looked and admired, she felt more -courtesy than interest. - -They left him in his room to rest till tea-time, and in the library Aunt -Rachel and Aunt Barbara exclaimed over his air of fragility. - -"He is fearfully tired, poor little fellow," said the general; "a day or -two of rest will set him up." - -"He looks a very intelligent boy, Nigel," said Miss Rachel, "but not a -cheerful disposition." - -"How could one expect that from him now, poor, dear child!" Aunt Barbara -expostulated. "He has a beautiful nature, I am sure--such a sensitive -mouth and such fine eyes." - -And the general said: "He is wonderfully like his mother. I am glad to -see that he takes after Claude Palairet in nothing." - -Eppie asked if Captain Palairet were very horrid and was told that he -was, with the warning that no intimation of such knowledge on her part -was to be given to her new playmate; a warning that Eppie received with -some indignation. No one, she was sure, could feel for Gavan as she did, -or know so well what to say and what not to say to him. - -She was gratified to hear that he was not to go down to dinner but was -to share the school-room high-tea with her and Miss Grimsby. But in the -wide school-room, ruddy with the hues of sunset and hung with its maps -and its childish decorations of Caldecott drawings and colored Christmas -supplements from the "Graphic,"--little girls on stairs with dogs, and -"Cherry Ripe,"--he was almost oppressively out of place. Not that he -seemed to find himself so. He made, evidently, no claims to maturity. -But Eppie felt a strange sense of shrunken importance as she listened to -him politely answering Miss Grimsby's questions about his voyage and -giving her all sorts of information about religious sects in India. She -saw herself relegated to a humbler role than any she had conceived -possible for herself. She would be lucky if she succeeded in cheering at -all this remote person; it was doubtful if she could ever come near -enough to console. She took this first blow to her self-assurance very -wholesomely. Her interest in the sad boy was all the keener for it. She -led him, next morning, about the garden, over a bit of the moor, and -into the fairyland of the birch-woods--their young green all tremulous -in the wind and sunlight. And she showed him, among the pines and -heather, the winding path, its white, sandy soil laced with black -tree-roots, that led to the hilltop. "When you are quite rested, we will -go up there, if you like," she said. "The burn runs beside this path -almost all the way--you can't think how pretty it is; and when you get -to the top you can see for miles and miles all about, all over the -moors, and the hills, away beyond there, and you can see two villages -besides ours, and such a beautiful windmill." - -Gavan, hardly noticing the kind little girl, except to know that she was -kind, assented to all her projects, indifferent to them and to her. - -A day or two after his arrival, he and Eppie were united in ministering -to the dying lemur. The sad creature lay curled up in its basket, -motionless, refusing food, only from time to time stretching out a -languid little hand to its master; and when Gavan took it, the delicate -animal miniature lay inert in his. Its eyes, seeming to grow larger and -brighter as life went, had a strange look of question and wonder. - -Eppie wept loudly when it was dead; but Gavan had no tears. She -suspected him of a suffering all the keener and that his self-control -did not allow him the relief of emotion before her. She hoped, at least, -to be near him in the formalities of grief, and proposed that they -should bury the lemur together, suggesting a spot among birch-trees and -heather where some rabbits of her own were interred. When she spoke of -the ceremony, Gavan hesitated; to repulse her, or to have her with him -in the task of burial, were perhaps equally painful to him. "If you -don't mind, I think I would rather do it by myself," he said in his -gentle, tentative way. - -Eppie felt her lack of delicacy unconsciously rebuked. She recognized -that, in spite of her most genuine grief, the burial of the lemur had -held out to her some of the satisfactory possibilities of a solemn game. -She had been gross in imagining that Gavan could share in such divided -instincts. Her tears fell for her own just abasement, as well as for the -lemur, while she watched Gavan walking away into the woods--evidently -avoiding the proximity of the rabbits--with the small white box under -his arm. - -The day after this was Sunday, a day of doom to Eppie. It meant that -morning recitation of hymn and collect in the chintz and gilt boudoir -and then the bleak and barren hours in church. Even Aunt Barbara's -mildness could, on this subject, become inflexible, and Aunt Rachel's -aspect reminded Eppie of the stern angel with the flaming sword driving -frail, reluctant humanity into the stony wilderness. A flaming sword was -needed. Every Sunday saw the renewal of her protest, and there were -occasions on which her submission was only extorted after disgraceful -scenes. Eppie herself, on looking back, had to own that she had indeed -disgraced herself when she had taken refuge under her bed and lain -there, her hat all bent, her fresh dress all crumpled, fiercely -shrieking her refusal; and disgrace had been deeper on another day when -she had actually struck out at her aunts while they mutely and in pale -indignation haled her toward the door. It was dreadful to remember that -Aunt Barbara had burst into tears. Eppie could not forgive herself for -that. She had a stoic satisfaction in the memory of the smart whipping -that she had borne without a whimper, and perhaps did not altogether -repent the heavier slap she had dealt Aunt Rachel; but the thought of -Aunt Barbara's tears--they had continued so piteously to flow while Aunt -Rachel whipped her--quelled physical revolt forever. She was older now, -too, and protest only took the form of dejection and a hostile gloom. - -On this Sunday the gloom was shot with a new and, it seemed, a most -legitimate hope. Boys were usually irreligious; the Grainger cousins -certainly were so: they had once run away on Sunday morning. She could -not, to be sure, build much upon possible analogies of behavior between -Gavan and the Graingers; yet the facts of his age and sex were there: -normal, youthful manliness might be relied upon. If Gavan wished to -remain it seemed perfectly probable that the elders might yield as a -matter of course, and as if to a grown-up guest. Gavan was hardly -treated as a child by any of them. - -"You are fond of going to church, I hope, Gavan," Aunt Rachel said at -breakfast. The question had its reproof for Eppie, who, with large eyes, -over her porridge, listened for the reply. - -"Yes, very," was the doom that fell. - -Eppie flushed so deeply that Gavan noticed it. "I don't mind a bit not -going if Eppie doesn't go and would like to have me stay at home with -her," he hastened, with an almost uncanny intuition of her -disappointment, to add. - -Aunt Rachel cast an eye of comprehension upon Eppie's discomfited -visage. "That would be a most inappropriate generosity, my dear Gavan. -Eppie comes with us always." - -Gavan still looked at Eppie, who, with downcast eyes, ate swiftly. - -"Now I'll be bound that she has been wheedling you to get her off, -Gavan," said the general, with genial banter. "She is a little rebel to -the bone. She knows that it's no good to rebel, so she put you up to -pleading for her"; and, as Gavan protested, "Indeed, indeed, sir, she -didn't," he still continued, "Oh, Eppie, you baggage, you! Isn't that -it, eh? Didn't you hope that you could stay with him if he stayed -behind?" - -"Yes, I did," Eppie said, without contrition. - -"She didn't tell me so," said Gavan, full of evident sympathy for -Eppie's wounds under this false accusation. - -She repelled his defense with a curt, "I would have, if it would have -done any good." - -"Ah, that's my brave lassie," laughed the general; but Aunt Rachel ended -the unseemly exposure with a decisive, "Be still now, Eppie; we know too -well what you feel about this subject. There is nothing brave in such -naughtiness." - -Gavan said no more; from Eppie's unmoved expression he guessed that such -reproofs did not cut deep. He joined her after breakfast as she stood -in the open doorway, looking out at the squandered glories of the day. - -"Do you dislike going to church so much?" he asked her. The friendly -bond of his sympathy at the table would have cheered her heart at -another time; it could do no more for her now than make frankness easy -and a relief. - -"I hate it," she answered. - -"But why?" - -"It's so long--so stupid." - -Gavan loitered about before her on the door-step, his hands in his -pockets. Evidently he could find no ready comment for her accusation. - -"Every one looks so silly and so sleepy," she went on. "Mr. MacNab is so -ugly. Besides, he is an unkind man: he whips his children all the time; -not whippings when they deserve it--like mine,"--Gavan looked at her, -startled by this impersonally just remark,--"he whips them because he is -cross himself. Why should he tell us about being good if he is as -ill-tempered as possible? And he has a horrid voice,--not like the -village people, who talk in a dear, funny way,--he has a horrid, pretend -voice. And you stand up and sit down and have nothing to do for ages and -ages. I don't see how anybody _can_ like church." - -Gavan kicked vaguely at the lichen spots. - -"Do you really _like_ it?" - -"Yes," he answered, with his shy abruptness. - -"But why? It's different, I know, for old people--I don't suppose that -they mind things any longer; but I don't see how a boy, a young -boy"--and Eppie allowed herself a reproachful emphasis--"can possibly -like it." - -"I'm used to it, you see, and I don't think of it in your way at all." -Gavan could not speak to this funny child of its sacred associations. In -church he had always felt that he and his mother had escaped to a place -of reality and peace. He entered, through his love for her, into the -love of the sense of sanctuary from an ominous and hostile world. And he -was a boy with a deep, sad sense of God. - -"But you don't _like_ it," said the insistent Eppie. - -"I more than like it." - -She eyed him gravely. "I suppose it is because you are so grown up. Yet -you are only four years older than I am. I wonder if I will ever get to -like it. I hope not." - -"Well, it will be more comfortable for you if you do,--since you have to -go," said Gavan, with his faint, wintry smile. - -She felt the kindness of his austere banter, and retorting, "I'd rather -not be comfortable, then," joined him in the sunlight on the broad, -stone step, going on with quite a sense of companionship: "Only one -thing I don't so much mind--and that is the hymns. I am so glad when -they come that I almost shout them. Sometimes--I'm telling you as quite -a secret, you know--I shout as loud as I possibly can on purpose to -disturb Aunt Rachel. I know it's wrong, so don't bother to tell me so; -besides, it's partly because I really like to shout. But I always do -hope that some day they may leave me at home rather than have me making -such a noise. People often turn round to look." - -Gavan laughed. - -"You think that wicked no doubt?" - -"No, I think it funny, and quite useless, I'm sure." - -After all, Gavan wasn't a muff, as a boy fond of church might have been -suspected of being. - -Yet after the walk through the birch-woods and over a corner of moor to -the bare little common where the church stood, and when they were all -installed in the hard, familiar pew, a new and still more alienating -impression came to her--alienating yet fascinating. A sense of awe crept -over her and she watched Gavan in an absorbed, a dreamy wonder. - -Eppie only associated prayers with a bedside; they were part of the -toilet, so to speak--went in with the routine of hair-and tooth-brushing -and having one's bath. To pray in church, if one were a young person, -seemed a mystifying, almost an abnormal oddity. She was accustomed to -seeing in the sodden faces of the village children an echo to her own -wholesome vacuity. But Gavan really prayed; that was evident. He buried -his face in his arms. He thought of no one near him. - -It was Eppie's custom to vary the long monotony of Mr. MacNab's dreary, -nasal, burring voice by sundry surreptitious occupations, such as -drawing imaginary pictures with her forefinger upon the lap of her -frock, picking out in the Bible all the words of which her aunts said -she could only know the meaning when she grew up, counting the number of -times that Mr. MacNab stiffly raised his hand in speaking, seeing how -often she could softly kick the pew in front of her before being told to -stop; and then there was the favorite experiment suggested to her by the -advertisement of a soap where, after fixing the eyes upon a red spot -while one counted thirty, one found, on looking at a blank white space, -that the spot appeared transformed, ghost-like and floating, to a vivid -green. Eppie's fertile imagination had seen in Mr. MacNab's thin, red -face a substitute for the spot, and most diverting results had followed -when, after a fixed stare at his countenance, one transferred him, as it -were, to the pages of one's prayer-book. To see Mr. MacNab dimly -hovering there, a green emanation, made him less intolerable in reality: -found, at least, a use for him. This discovery had been confided to the -Graingers, and they had been grateful for it. And when all else failed -and even Mr. MacNab's poor uses had palled, there was one bright moment -to look forward to in the morning's suffocating tedium. Just before the -sermon, Uncle Nigel, settling himself in his corner, would feel, as if -absently, in his waistcoat pocket and then slip a lime-drop into her -hand. The sharply sweet flavor filled her with balmy content, and could, -with discretion in the use of the tongue, be prolonged for ten minutes. - -But to-day her eyes and thoughts were fixed on Gavan; and when the -lime-drop was in her mouth she crunched it mechanically and heedlessly: -how he held his prayer-book, his pallid, melancholy profile bent above -it, how he sat gravely listening to Mr. MacNab, how he prayed and sang. -Only toward the end of the sermon was the tension of her spirit relieved -by seeing humanizing symptoms of weariness. She was sure that he was -hearing as little as she was--his thoughts were far away; and when he -put up a hand to hide a yawn her jaws stretched themselves in quick -sympathy. Gavan's eyes at this turned on her and he smiled openly and -delightfully at her. Delightfully; yet the very fact of his daring to -smile made him more grown up than ever. Such maturity, such strange -spiritual assurance, could afford lightnesses. He brought with him, into -the fresh, living world outside, his aura of mystery. - -Eppie walked beside her uncle and still observed Gavan as he went before -them with the aunts. - -"How do you like your playmate, Eppie?" the general asked. - -"He isn't a playmate," Eppie gravely corrected him. - -"Not very lively? But a nice boy, eh?" - -"I think he is very nice; but he is too big to care about me." - -"Nonsense; he's but three years older." - -"Four, Uncle Nigel. That makes a great deal of difference at our ages," -said Eppie, wisely. - -"Nonsense," the general repeated. "He is only a bit down on his luck; -he's not had time to find you out yet. To-morrow he joins you in your -Greek and history, and I fancy he'll see that four years' difference -isn't such a difference when it comes to some things. Not many chits of -your age are such excellent scholars." - -"But I think that we will always be very different," said Eppie, though -at her uncle's commendation her spirits had risen. - - - - -III - - -Greek and history proved, indeed, a bond. The two children, during the -hours in the library, met on a more equal footing, for Gavan was -backward with his studies. But the question of inequality had not come -up in Gavan's consciousness. "I'm only afraid that I shall bore her," he -hastened, in all sincerity, to say when the general appealed to a -possible vanity in him by hoping that he didn't mind being kind to a -little girl and going about with her. "She's the only companion we have -for you, you see. And we all find her very good company, in spite of her -ten years." - -And at this Gavan said, with a smile that protested against any idea -that he should not find her so: "I'm only afraid that I'm not good -company for any one. She is a dear little girl." - -It was in the wanderings over the moors and in the birch-woods and up -the hillside, where Eppie took him to see her views, that the bond -really drew to closeness. Here nature and little Eppie seemed together -to thaw him, to heal him, to make him unconsciously happy. A fugitive -color dawned in his wasted cheeks; a fragile gaiety came to his manner. -He began to find it easy to talk, easy to be quite a little boy. And -once he did talk, Gavan talked a great deal, quickly, with a sort of -nervous eagerness. There grew, in Eppie's mind, a vast mirage-like -picture of the strange land he came from: the great mountains about -their high summer home; the blue-shadowed verandas; the flowers he and -his mother grew in the garden; the rides at dawn; the long, hot days; -the gentle, softly moving servants, some of whom he loved and told her a -great deal about. Then the crowds, the swarming colors of the bazaars in -the great cities. - -"No, no; don't wish to go there," he said, taking his swift, light -strides through the heather, his head bent, his eyes looking before -him--he seldom looked at one, glanced only; "I hate it,--more than you -do church!" and though his simile was humorous he didn't laugh with it. -"I hate the thought of any one I care about being there." He had still, -for Eppie, his mystery, and she dimly felt, too, that his greater ease -with her made more apparent his underlying sadness; but the sense of -being an outsider was gone, and she glowed now at the implication that -she was one he cared about. - -"It's vast and meaningless," said Gavan, who often used terms curiously -unboyish. "I can't describe it to you. It's like a dream; you expect all -the time to wake up and find nothing." - -"I know that I should never love anything so much as Scotland--as -heather and pines and sky with clouds. Still, I should like to see -India. I should like to see everything that there is to be seen--if I -could be sure of always coming back here." - -"Ah, yes, if one could be sure of that." - -"I shall always live here, Gavan," said Eppie, feeling the skepticism of -his "if." - -"Well, that may be so," he returned, with the manner that made her -realize so keenly the difference that was more than a matter of four -years. - -She insisted now: "I shall live here until I am grown up. Then I shall -travel everywhere, all over the world--India, Japan, America; then I -shall marry and come back here to live and have twelve children. I don't -believe you care for children as I do, Gavan. How they would enjoy -themselves here, twelve of them all together--six boys and six girls." - -Gavan laughed. "Well, I hope all that will come true," he assented. "Why -twelve?" - -"I don't know; but I've always thought of there being twelve. I would -like as many as possible, and one could hardly remember the names of -more. I don't believe that there are more than twelve names that I care -for. But with twelve we should have a birthday-party once a month, one -for each month. Did you have birthday-cakes in India, Gavan, with -candles for your age?" - -"Yes; my mother always had a cake for my birthday." His voice, in -speaking of his mother, seemed always to steel itself, as though to -speak of her hurt him. Eppie had felt this directly, and now, regretting -her allusion, said, "When is your birthday, Gavan?" thinking of a cake -with fifteen candles--how splendid!--to hear disappointingly that the -day was not till January, when he would have been gone--long since. - -On another time, as they walked up the hillside, beside the burn, she -said: "I thought you were not going to like us at all, when you first -came." - -"I was horribly afraid of you all," said Gavan. "Everything was so -strange to me." - -"No, you weren't afraid," Eppie objected--"not really afraid. I don't -believe you are ever really afraid of people." - -"Yes, I am--afraid of displeasing them, trying them in some way. And I -was miserable on that day, too, with anxiety about my poor monkey. I'm -sorry I seemed horrid." - -"Not a bit horrid, only very cold and polite." - -"I didn't realize things much. You see--" Gavan paused. - -"Yes, of course; you weren't thinking of us. You were thinking of--what -you had left." - -"Yes," he assented, not looking at her. - -He went on presently, turning his eyes on her and smiling over a sort of -alarm at his own advance to personalities: "_You_ weren't horrid. I -remember that I thought you the nicest little girl I had ever seen. You -were all that I did see--standing there in the sun, with a white dress -like Alice in Wonderland and with your hair all shining. I never saw -hair like it." - -"Do you think it pretty?" Eppie asked eagerly. - -"Very--all those rivers of gold in the dark." - -"I _am_ glad. I think it pretty, too, and nurse is afraid that I am -vain, I think, for she always takes great pains to tell me that it is -striped hair and that she hopes it may grow to be the same color when -I'm older." - -"_I_ hope not," said Gavan, gallantly. - -Many long afternoons were spent in the garden, where Eppie initiated him -into the sanctities of the summer-house. Gavan's sense of other people's -sanctities was wonderful. She would never have dreamed of showing her -dolls to her cousins; but she brought them out and displayed them to -Gavan, and he looked at them and their appurtenances carefully, gravely -assenting to all the characteristics that she pointed out. So kind, -indeed, so comprehending was he, that Eppie, a delightful project -dawning in her mind, asked: "Have you ever played with dolls? I mean -when you were very little?" - -"No, never." - -"I've always had to play by myself," said Eppie, "and it's rather dull -sometimes, having to carry on all the conversations alone." And with a -rush she brought out, rather aghast at her own hardihood, "I suppose you -couldn't think of playing with me?" - -Gavan, at this, showed something of the bashful air of a young bachelor -asked to hold a baby, but in a moment he said, "I shouldn't mind at all, -though I'm afraid I shall be stupid at it." - -Eppie flushed, incredulous of such good fortune, and almost reluctant to -accept it. "You _really_ don't mind, Gavan? Boys hate dolls, as a rule, -you know." - -"I don't mind in the least," he laughed. "I am sure I shall enjoy it. -How do we begin? You must teach me." - -"I'll teach you everything. You are the very kindest person I ever knew, -Gavan. Really, I wouldn't ask you to if I didn't believe you would like -it when once you had tried it. It is such fun. And now we can make them -do all sorts of things, have all sorts of adventures, that they never -could have before." She suspected purest generosity, but so trusted in -the enchantments he was to discover that she felt herself justified in -profiting by it. She placed in his hand Agnes, the fairest of all the -dolls, golden-haired, blue-eyed. Agnes was good, and her own daughter, -Elspeth, named after herself, was bad. "As bad as possible," said Eppie. -"I have to whip her a great deal." - -Gavan, holding his charge rather helplessly and looking at Elspeth, a -doll of sturdier build, with short hair, dark eyes, and, for a doll, a -mutinous face, remarked, with his touch of humor, "I thought you didn't -approve of whipping." - -"I don't,--not real children, or dolls either, except when they are -really bad. Mr. MacNab whips his all the time, and they are not a bit -bad, really, as Elspeth is." And Elspeth proceeded to demonstrate how -really bad she was by falling upon Agnes with such malicious kicks and -blows that Gavan, in defense of his own doll, dealt her a vigorous slap. - -"Well done, Mr. Palairet; she richly deserves it! Come here directly, -you naughty child," and after a scuffling flight around the -summer-house, Elspeth was secured, and so soundly beaten that Gavan at -last interceded for her with the ruthless mother. - -"Not until she says that she is sorry." - -"Oh, Elspeth, say that you are sorry," Gavan supplicated, while he -laughed. "Really, Eppie, you are savage. I feel as if you were really -hurting some one. Please forgive her now; Agnes has, I am sure." - -"I hurt her because I love her and want her to be a good child. She will -come to no good end when she grows up if she cannot learn to control her -temper. What is it I hear you say, Elspeth?" - -Elspeth, in a low, sullen voice that did not augur well for permanent -amendment, whispered that she was sorry, and was led up, crestfallen, to -beg Agnes's pardon and to receive a reconciling kiss. - -The table was then brought out and laid. Eppie had her small store of -biscuits and raisins, and Elspeth and Agnes were sent into the garden to -pick currants and flowers. To Agnes was given the task of making a -nosegay for the place of each guest. There were four of these guests, -bidden to the feast with great ceremony: three, pink and curly, of -little individuality, and the fourth a dingy, armless old rag-doll, -reverently wrapped in a fine shawl, and with a pathetic, -half-obliterated face. - -"Very old and almost deaf," Eppie whispered to Gavan. "Everybody loves -her. She lost her arms in a great fire, saving a baby's life." - -Gavan was entering into all the phases of the game with such spirit, -keeping up Agnes's character for an irritating perfection so aptly that -Eppie forgot to wonder if his enjoyment were as real as her own. But -suddenly the doorway was darkened, and glancing up, she saw her uncle's -face, long-drawn with jocular incredulity, looking in upon them. Then, -and only then, under the eyes of an uncomprehending sex, did the true -caliber of Gavan's self-immolation flash upon her. A boy, a big boy, he -was playing dolls with a girl; it was monstrous; as monstrous as the -general's eyes showed that he found it. Stooping in his tall slightness, -as he assisted Agnes's steps across the floor, he seemed, suddenly, a -fairy prince decoyed and flouted. What would Uncle Nigel think of him? -She could almost have flung herself before him protectingly. - -The general had burst into laughter. "Now, upon my word, this is too bad -of you, Eppie!" he cried, while Gavan, not abandoning his hold on -Agnes's arm, turned his eyes upon the intruder with perfect serenity. -"You are the most unconscionable little tyrant. You kept the Grainger -boys under your thumb; but I didn't think you could carry wheedling or -bullying as far as this. Gavan, my dear boy, you are too patient with -her." - -Eppie stood at the table, scarlet with anger and compunction. Gavan had -raised himself, and, still holding Agnes, looked from one to the other. - -"But she hasn't bullied me; she hasn't wheedled me," he said. "I like -it." - -"At your age, my dear boy! Like doll-babies!" - -"Indeed I do." - -"This is the finest bit of chivalry I've come across for a long time. -The gentleman who jumped into the lions' den for his mistress's glove -was hardly pluckier. Drop that ridiculous thing and come away. I'll -rescue you." - -"But I don't want to be rescued. I really am enjoying myself. It's not a -case of courage at all," Gavan protested. - -This was too much. He should not tarnish himself to shield her, and -Eppie burst out: "Nonsense, Gavan. I asked you to. You are only doing it -because you are so kind, and to please me. It was very wrong of me. Put -her down as Uncle Nigel says." - -"There, our little tyrant is honest, at all events. Drop it, Gavan. You -should see the figure you cut with that popinjay in your arms. Come, -you've won your spurs. Come away with me." - -But Gavan, smiling, shook his head. "No, I don't want to, thanks. I did -it to please her, if you like; but now I do it to please myself. Playing -with dolls is a most amusing game,--and you are interrupting us at a -most interesting point," he added. He seemed, funnily, doll and all, -older than the general as he said it. Incredulous but mystified, Uncle -Nigel was forced to beat a retreat, and Gavan was left confronting his -playmate. - -"Why did you tell him that you enjoyed it?" she cried. "He'll think you -unmanly." - -"My dear Eppie, he won't think me unmanly at all. Besides, I don't care -if he does." - -"_I_ care." - -"But, Eppie, you take it too hard. Why should you care? It's only funny. -Why shouldn't we amuse ourselves as we like? We are only children." - -"You are much more than a child. Uncle Nigel thinks so, too, I am sure." - -"All the more reason, then, for my having a right to amuse myself as I -please. And I am a child, for I do amuse myself." - -Eppie stood staring out rigidly at the blighted prospect, and he took -her unyielding hand. "Poor Elspeth is lying on her face. Do let us go -on. I want you to hear what Agnes has to say next." - -She turned to him now. "I don't believe a word you say. You only did it -for me. You are only doing it for me now." - -"Well, what if I did? What if I do? Can't I enjoy doing things for you? -And really, really, Eppie, I do think it fun. I assure you I do." - -"I think you are a hero," Eppie said solemnly, and at this absurdity he -burst into his high, shrill laugh, and renewed his supplications; but -supplications were in vain. She refused to let him play with her again. -He might do things for the dolls,--yes, she reluctantly consented to -that at last,--he might take the part of robber or of dangerous wild -beast in the woods, but into domestic relations, as it were, he should -not enter with them; and from this determination Gavan could not move -her. - -As far as his dignity in the eyes of others went, he might have gone on -playing dolls with her all summer; Eppie realized, with surprise and -relief, that Gavan's assurance had been well founded. Uncle Nigel, -evidently, did not think him unmanly, and there was no chaffing. It -really was as he had said, he was so little a child that he could do as -he chose. His dignity needed no defense. - -But though the doll episode was not to be repeated, other and more equal -ties knit her friendship with Gavan. Wide vistas of talk opened from -their lessons, from their readings together. As they rambled through the -heather they would talk of the Odyssey, of Plutarch's Lives, of nearer -great people and events in history. Gavan listened with smiling interest -while Eppie expressed her hatreds and her loves, correcting her -vehemence, now and then, by a reference to mitigatory circumstance. -Penelope was one of the people she hated. "See, Gavan, how she neglected -her husband's dog while he was away--let him starve to death on a -dunghill." - -Gavan surmised that the Homeric Greeks had little sense of -responsibility about dogs. - -"They were horrid, then," said Eppie. "Dear Argos! Think of him trying -to wag his tail when he was dying and saw Ulysses; _he_ was horrid, too, -for he surely might have just stopped for a moment and patted his head. -I'm glad that Robbie didn't live in those times. You wouldn't let Robbie -die on a dunghill if _I_ were to go away!" - -"No, indeed, Eppie!" Gavan smiled. - -"I think you really love Robbie as much as I do, Gavan. You love him -more than Uncle Nigel does. One can always see in people's eyes how much -they love a dog. That fat, red Miss Erskine simply feels nothing for -them, though she always says 'Come, come,' to Robbie. But her eyes are -like stones when she looks at him. She is really thinking about her -tea, and watching to see that Aunt Rachel puts in plenty of cream. I -suppose that Penelope looked like her, when she used to see Argos on the -dunghill." - -Robbie was plunging through the heather before them and paused to look -round at them, his delicate tongue lapping in little pants over his -teeth. - -"Darling Robbie," said Gavan. "Our eyes aren't like stones when we look -at you! See him smile, Eppie, when I speak to him. Wouldn't it be funny -if we smiled with our ears instead of with our mouths." - -Gavan, after a moment, sighed involuntarily and deeply. - -"What is the matter?" Eppie asked quickly, for she had grown near enough -to ask it. And how near they were was shown after a little silence, by -Gavan saying: "I was only wishing that everything could be happy at -once, Eppie. I was thinking about my mother and wishing that she might -be here with you and me and Robbie." His voice was steadied to its cold -quiet as he said it, though he knew how safe from any hurt he was with -her. And she said nothing, and did not look at him, only, in silence, -putting a hand of comradeship on his shoulder while they walked. - - - - -IV - - -Once a week, on the days of the Indian mail, Eppie's understanding -hovered helplessly about Gavan, seeing pain for him and powerless to -shield him from it. Prayers took place in the dining-room ten minutes -before breakfast, and with the breakfast the mail was brought in, so -that Gavan's promptest descent could not secure him a solitary reading -of the letter that, Eppie felt, he awaited with trembling eagerness. - -"A letter from India, Gavan dear," Miss Rachel, the distributer of the -mail would say. "Tell us your news." And before them all, in the midst -of the general's comments on politics, crops, and weather, the rustling -of newspapers, the pouring of tea, he was forced to open and read his -letter and to answer, even during the reading, the kindly triviality of -the questions showered upon him. "Yes, thank you, very well indeed. Yes, -in Calcutta. Yes, enjoying herself, I think, thanks." His pallor on -these occasions, his look of hardened endurance, told Eppie all that it -did not tell the others. And that his eagerness was too great for him to -wait until after breakfast, she saw, too. A bright thought of rescue -came to her at last. On the mornings when the Indian mail was due, she -was up a good hour before her usual time. Long before the quaint, -musical gong sounded its vague, blurred melody for prayers, she was out -of the house and running through the birch-woods to the village road, -where, just above the church, she met the postman. He was an old friend, -glad to please the young lady's love of importance, and the mail was -trusted to her care. Eppie saved all her speed for the return. Every -moment counted for Gavan's sheltered reading. She felt as if, her back -to its door, she stood before the sheltered chamber of their meeting, -guarding their clasp and kiss, sweet and sorrowful, from alien eyes. -Flushed, panting, she darted up to his room, handing his letter in to -him, while she said in an easy, matter-of-fact tone, "Your mail, Gavan." - -Gavan, like the postman, attributed his good luck to Eppie's love of -importance, and only on the third morning discovered her manoeuver. - -He came down early himself to get his own letter, found that the mail -had not arrived, and, strolling disappointedly down the drive, was -almost knocked down by Eppie rushing in at the gate. She fell back, -dismayed at the revelation that must force the fullness of her sympathy -upon him--almost as if she herself glanced in at the place of meeting. - -"I've got the letters," she said, leaning on the stone pillar and -recovering her breath. "There's one for you." And she held it out. - -But for once Gavan's concentration seemed to be for her rather than for -the letter. "My mother's letter?" he said. - -She nodded. - -"It was you, then. I wondered why they came so much earlier." - -"I met the postman; he likes to be saved that much of his walk." - -"You must have to go a long way to get them so early. You went on -purpose for me, I think." - -Looking aside, she now had to own: "I saw that you hated reading them -before us all. I would hate it, too." - -"Eppie, my dearest Eppie," said Gavan. Glancing at him, she saw tears in -his eyes, and joy and pride flamed up in her. He opened the letter and -read it, walking beside her, his hand on her shoulder, showing her that -he did not count her among "us all." - -After that they went together to meet the postman, and, unasked, Gavan -would read to her long pieces from what his mother said. - -It was a few weeks later, on one of these days, that she knew, from his -face while he read, and from his silence, that bad news had come. He -left her at the house, making no confidence, and at breakfast, when he -came down to it later, she could see that he had been struggling for -self-mastery. This pale, controlled face, at which she glanced furtively -while they did their lessons in the library, made her think of the -Spartan boy, calm over an agony. Even the general noticed the mechanical -voice and the pallor and asked him if he were feeling tired this -morning. Gavan owned to a headache. - -"Off to the moors directly, then," said the general; "and you, too, -Eppie. Have a morning together." - -Eppie sat over her book and said that perhaps Gavan would rather go -without her; but Gavan, who had risen, said quickly that he wanted her -to come. "Let us go to the hilltop," he said, when they were outside in -the warm, scented sunlight. - -They went through the woods, where the burn ran, rippling loudly, and -the shadows were blue on the little, sandy path that wound among pines -and birches. Neither spoke while they climbed the gradual ascent. They -came out upon the height that ran in a long undulation to the far lift -of mountain ranges. Under a solitary group of pines they sat down. - -The woods of Kirklands were below them, and then the vast sea of purple, -heaving in broad, long waves to the azure, intense and clear, of the -horizon. The wind sighed, soft and shrill, through the pines above them, -and far away they heard a sheep-bell tinkle. Beyond the delicate -miniature of the village a wind-mill turned slow, gray sails. The whole -world, seemed a sunlit island floating in the circling blue. Robbie sat -at their feet, alert, upright, silhouetted against the sky. - -"Robbie, Robbie," said Gavan, gently, as he leaned forward and stroked -the dog's back. Eppie, too, stroked with him. The silence of his unknown -grief weighed heavily on her heart and she guessed that though for him -the pain of silence was great, the pain of speech seemed greater. - -He presently raised himself again, clasping both hands about his knees -and looking away into the vast distance. His head, with its thick hair, -its fine, aquiline nose and delicately jutting chin, made Eppie think, -vaguely, of a picture she had seen of a young Saint Sebastian, mutely -enduring arrows, on a background of serene sky. With the thought, the -silence became unendurable; she strung herself to speak. "Tell me, -Gavan," she said, "have you had bad news?" - -He cast her a frightened glance, and, looking down, began to pull at the -heather. "No, not bad news, exactly." - -Eppie drew a breath of dubious relief. "But you are so unhappy about -something." - -Gavan nodded. - -"But why, if it's not bad news?" - -After a pause he said, and she knew, with all the pain of it, what the -relief of speaking must be: "I guess at things. I always feel if she is -hiding things." - -"Perhaps you are only imagining." - -"I wish I could think it; but I know not. I know what is happening to -her." - -He was still wrenching away at the heather, tossing aside the purple -sprays with their finely tangled sandy roots. Suddenly he put his head -on his knees, hiding his face. - -"Oh, Gavan! Oh, don't be so unhappy," Eppie whispered, drawing near him, -helpless and awe-struck. - -"How can I be anything but unhappy when the person I care most for is -miserable--miserable, and I am so far from her?" His shoulders heaved; -she saw that he was weeping. - -Eppie, at first, gazed, motionless, silent, frozen with a child's quick -fear of demonstrated grief. A child's quick response followed. Throwing -her arms around him, she too burst into tears. - -It was strange to see how the boy's reserves melted in the onslaught of -this hot, simple sympathy. He turned to her, hiding his face on her -shoulder, and they cried together. - -"I didn't want to make you unhappy, too," Gavan said at last in a -weakened voice. His tears were over first and he faintly smiled as he -met Robbie's alarmed, beseeching eyes. Robbie had been scrambling over -them, scratching, whining, licking their hands and cheeks in an -exasperation of shut-out pity. - -"I'm not nearly so unhappy as when you don't say anything and I know -that you are keeping things back," Eppie choked, pushing Robbie away -blindly. "I'd much rather _be_ unhappy if you are." - -It was Gavan, one arm around the rejected Robbie, who had to dry her -tears, trying to console her with: "Perhaps I did imagine more than -there actually is. One can't help imagining--at this distance." He -smiled at her, as he had smiled at Robbie, and holding her hand, he went -on: "She is so gentle, and so lonely, and so unhappy. I could help her -out there. Here, I am so helpless." - -"Make her come here!" Eppie cried. "Write at once and make her come. -Send a wire, Gavan. Couldn't she be here very soon, if you wired that -she must--_must_ come? I wouldn't bear it if I were you." - -"She can't come. She must stay with my father." - -All the barriers were down now, so that Eppie could insist: "She would -rather be with you. You want her most." - -"Yes, I want her most. But he needs her most," said Gavan. "He is -extravagant and weak and bad. He drinks and he gambles, and if she left -him he would probably soon ruin himself--and us; for my mother has no -money. She could not leave him if she would. And though he is often very -cruel to her, he wants her with him." Gavan spoke with all his quiet, -but he had flushed as if from a still anger. "Money is an odious thing, -Eppie. That's what I want to do, as soon as I can: make money for her." -He added presently: "I pray for strength to help her." - -There was a long silence after this. Gavan lay back on the heather, his -hat tilted over his tired eyes. Eppie sat above him, staring out at the -empty blue. Her longing, her pity, her revolt from this suffering,--for -herself and for him,--her vague but vehement desires, flew out--out; she -almost seemed to see them, like strong, bright birds flying so far at -last that the blue engulfed them. The idea hurt her. She turned away -from the dissolving vastness before which it was impossible to think or -feel, turned her head to look down at the long, white form beside her, -exhausted and inert. Darling Gavan. How he suffered. His poor mother, -too. She saw Gavan's mother in a sort of padlocked palanquin under a -burning sky, surrounded by dazzling deserts, a Blue-beard, bristling -with swords, reeling in a drunken sentinelship round her prison. -Considering Gavan, with his hidden face, the thought of his last words -came more distinctly to her. A long time had passed, and his breast was -rising quietly, almost as if he slept. Conjecture grew as to the odd -form of action in which he evidently trusted. "Do you pray a great deal, -Gavan?" she asked. - -He nodded under the hat. - -"Do you feel as if there was a God--quite near you--who listened?" - -"I wouldn't want to live unless I could feel that." - -Eppie paused at this, perplexed, and asked presently, with a slight -embarrassment, "Why not?" - -"Nothing would have any meaning," said Gavan. - -"No meaning, Gavan? You would still care for your mother and want to -help her, wouldn't you?" - -"Yes, but without God there would be no hope of helping her, no hope of -strength. Why, Eppie," came the voice from behind the hat, "without God -life would be death." - -Eppie retired to another discomfited silence. "I am afraid I don't think -much about God," she confessed at last. "I always feel as if I had -strength already--I suppose, heaps and heaps of strength. -Only--to-day--I do know more what you mean. If only God would do -something for you and your mother. You want something so big to help you -if you are very, very unhappy." - -"Yes, and some one to turn to when you are lonely." - -Again Eppie hesitated. "Well, but, Gavan, while you're here you have me, -you know." - -At this Gavan pushed aside his hat almost to laugh at her. "What a -funny little girl you are, Eppie! What a dear little girl! Yes, of -course, I have you. But when I go away? And even while I'm here,--what -if we were both lonely together? Can't you imagine that? The feeling of -being lost in a great forest at night. You have such quaint ideas about -God." - -"I've never had any ideas at all. I've only thought of Some One who was -there,--Some One I didn't need yet. I've always thought of God as being -more for grown-up people. Lost in a forest together? I don't think I -would mind that so much, Gavan. I don't think I would be frightened, if -we were together." - -"I didn't exactly mean it literally,--not a real forest, perhaps." He -had looked away from her, and, his thin, white face sunken among the -heather, his eyes were on the blue immensities where her thoughts had -lost themselves. "I am so often frightened. I get so lost sometimes that -I can hardly believe that that Some One is near me. And then the fear -becomes a sort of numbness, so that I hardly seem there myself; it's -only loneliness, while I melt and melt away into nothing. Even now, when -I look at that sky, the feeling creeps and creeps, that dreadful -loneliness, where there isn't any I left to know that it's lonely--only -a feeling." He shut his eyes resolutely. "My mother always says that it -is when one has such fancies that one must pray and have faith." - -Eppie hardly felt that he spoke to her, and she groped among his strange -thoughts, seizing the most concrete of them, imitating his shutting out -of the emptiness by closing her own eyes. "Yes," she said, reflecting in -the odd, glowing dimness, "I am quite sure that you have much more -feeling about God when you think hard, inside yourself, than when you -look at the sky." - -"Only then, there are chasms inside, too." Gavan's hand beside him was -once more restlessly pulling at the heather. "Even inside, one can fall, -and fall, and fall." - -The strange tone of his voice--it was indeed like the far note of a -falling bell, dying in an abyss--roused Eppie from her experiments. She -shook his shoulder. "Open your eyes, Gavan; please, at once. You make me -feel horridly. I would rather have you look at the sky than fall inside -like that." - -He raised himself on an arm now, with a gaze, for a moment, vague, -deadened, blank, then sprang to his feet. "Don't let's look. Don't let's -fall. We must pray and have faith. Eppie, I have made you so pale. Dear -Eppie, to care so much. Please forgive me for going to pieces like -that." - -Eppie was on her feet, too. "But I want you to. You know what I mean: -never hide things. Oh, Gavan, if I could only help you." - -"You do. It is because you care, just in the way you do, that I _could_ -go to pieces,--and it has helped me to be so selfish." - -"Please be selfish, often, often, then. I always am caring. And just -wait till I am grown up. I shall do something for you then. _I'll_ make -money, too, Gavan." - -"Eppie, you are the dearest little girl," he repeated, in a shaken -voice; and at that she put her arms around his neck and kissed him. The -boy's eyes filled with tears. They stood under the sighing pines, high -in the blue, and the scent of the heather was strong, sweet, in the -sunny air. Gavan did not return the kiss, but holding her face between -his hands, stammering, he said, "Eppie, how can I bear ever to leave -you?" - - - - -V - - -In looking back, after long years, at their summer, Eppie could see, -more clearly than when she lived in it, that sadness and Gavan had -always gone together. He had, as it were, initiated her into suffering. -Sadness was the undertone of their sweet comradeship. Their happy -stories came to tragic endings. Death and disaster, though in trivial -forms, followed him. - -With his returning strength, and perhaps with a sense of atonement to -her for what he had called his selfishness, Gavan plunged eagerly into -any outer interest that would please her. He spent hours in building for -her a little hut on the banks of the brae among the birches: the dolls' -Petit Trianon he called it, as the summer-house was their Versailles. -They had been reading about the French Revolution. Eppie objected to the -analogy. "I should always imagine that Elspeth's head were going to be -cut off if I called it that." - -Gavan said that Elspeth need not be the queen, but a less exalted, more -fortunate court lady. "We'll imagine that she escaped early from France -with all her family, saw none of the horrors, was a happy _emigree_ in -England and married there," he said; and he went on, while he hammered -at the pine boughs, with a desultory and reassuring account of Elspeth's -English adventures. But poor Elspeth came to as sad an end as any victim -of the guillotine. Eppie was carrying her one day when she and Gavan had -followed Aunt Barbara on some housewifely errand up to the highest attic -rooms. Outside the low sills of the dormer-windows ran a narrow stone -gallery looking down over the pine-tree and the garden. The children -squeezed out through the window to hang in delighted contemplation over -the birds'-eye view, and then Eppie crawled to a farther corner where -one could see round to the moorland and find oneself on a level, almost, -with the rooks' nests in the lime-trees. She handed Elspeth to Gavan to -hold for her while she went on this adventure. - -He had just risen to his feet, looking down from where he stood over the -low parapet, when a sudden cry from Eppie--a great bird sailing by that -she called to him to look at--made him start, almost losing his balance -on the narrow ledge. Elspeth fell from his arms. - -She was picked up on the garden path, far, far beneath, with a shattered -head. Gavan, perhaps, suffered more from the disaster than Eppie -herself. He was sick with dismay and self-reproach. She was forced to -make light of her grief to soothe his. But she did not feel that her -soothing hoodwinked or comforted him. Indeed, after that hour on the -hilltop, when he showed her his sorrow and his fear, Eppie felt that -though near, very near him, she was also held away. It was as if he felt -a discomfort in the nearness, or a dread that through it he might hurt -again or be hurt. He was at once more loving and more reticent. His -resolute cheerfulness, when they could be cheerful, was a wall between -them. - -Once more, and only once, before their childhood together ended, was she -to see all, feel all, suffer all with him. Toward the end of the summer -Robbie sickened and died. For three nights the children sat up with him, -taking turns at sleep, refusing alien help. By candle-light, in Eppie's -room, they bent over Robbie's basket, listening to his laboring breath. -The general, protesting against the folly of the sleepless nights, yet -tiptoed in and out, gruffly kind, moved by the pathos of the young -figures. He gave medical advice and superintended the administering of -teaspoonfuls of milk and brandy. That he thought Robbie's case a -hopeless one the children knew, for all his air of reassuring good -cheer. - -Robbie died early on the morning of the fourth day. A little while -before, he faintly wagged his tail when they spoke to him, raising eyes -unendurably sad. - -Eppie, during the illness, had been constantly in tears; Gavan had shown -a stoic fortitude. But when all was over and Eppie was covering Robbie -with the white towel that was to be his shroud, Gavan suddenly broke -down. Casting his arms around her, hiding his face against her, he burst -into sobs, saying in a shuddering voice, while he clung to her, shaken -all through with the violence of his weeping: "Oh, I can't bear it, -Eppie! I can't bear it!" - -Before this absolute shattering Eppie found her own self-control. -Holding him to her,--and she almost thought that he would have fallen if -she had not so held him,--she murmured, "Gavan, darling Gavan, I know, I -know." - -"Oh, Eppie," he gasped, "we will never see him again." - -She had drawn him down to the window-seat, where they leaned together, -and she was silent for a moment at his last words. But suddenly her arms -tightened around him with an almost vindictive tenderness. "We _will_," -she said. - -"Never! Never!" Gavan gasped. "His eyes, Eppie,--his eyes seemed to know -it; they were saying good-by forever. And, oh, Eppie, they were so -astonished--so astonished," he repeated, while the sobs shook him. - -"We will," Eppie said again, pressing the boy's head to hers, while she -shut her eyes over the poignant memory. "Why, Gavan, I don't know much -about God, but I do know about heaven. Animals will go to heaven; it -wouldn't be heaven unless they were there." - -That memory of the astonishment in Robbie's eyes seemed to put knives in -her heart, but over the sharpness she grasped her conviction. - -In all the despair of his grief, the boy had, in answering her, the -disciplined logic of his more formal faith, more clearly seen fact. - -"Dear Eppie, animals have no souls." - -"How do you know?" she retorted, almost with anger. - -"One only has to think. They stop, as Robbie has." - -"How do you know he has stopped? It's only," said Eppie, groping, "that -he doesn't want his body any longer." - -"But it's Robbie in his body that we want. It's his body, with Robbie in -it, that we know. God has done with wanting him--that's it, perhaps; but -we want him. Oh, Eppie, it's no good: as we know him, as we want him, he -is dead--dead forever. Besides,"--in speaking this Gavan straightened -himself,--"we shall forget him." He turned, in speaking, from her -consolations, as though their inefficiency hurt him. - -"I won't forget him," said Eppie. - -Gavan made no reply. He had risen, and standing now at the widely opened -window, looked out over the chill, misty dawn. Beneath was the garden, -its golden-gray walls rippling with green traceries, the clotted color -of the hanging fruit among them. Over the hilltop, the solitary group of -pines, the running wave of mountain, was a great piece of palest blue, -streaked with milky filaments. The boughs of the pine-tree were just -below the window, drenched with dew through all their fragrant darkness. - -Eppie, too, rose, and stood beside him. - -The hardened misery on his young face hurt her childish, yet -comprehending heart even more than Robbie's supplicating and astonished -eyes had done. She could imagine that look of steeled endurance freezing -through it forever, and an answering hardness of opposition rose in her -to resist and break it. "We won't forget him." - -"People do forget," Gavan answered. - -She found a cruel courage. "Could you forget your mother?" - -Gavan continued to look stonily out of the window and did not answer -her. - -"Could you?" she repeated. - -"Don't, Eppie, don't," he said. - -She saw that she had stirred some black terror in him, and her ignorant, -responsive fear made her pitiless: "Could you forget her if she died? -Never. Never as long as you lived." - -"Already," he said, as though the words were forced from him by her -will, "I haven't remembered her all the time." - -"She is there. You haven't forgotten her." - -"Years and years come. New things come. Old things fade and fade,--all -but the deepest things. They couldn't fade. No," he repeated, "they -couldn't. Only, even they might get dimmer." - -She saw that he spoke from an agony of doubt, and he seemed to wrench -the knife she had stabbed him with from his heart as he added: "But -Robbie is such a little thing. And little things people do forget, I am -sure of it. It's that that makes them so sad." - -"Well, then,"--Eppie, too, felt the relief of the lesser pain,--"they -will remember again. When you see Robbie in heaven you will remember all -about him. But I won't forget him," she repeated once more, swallowing -the sob that rose chokingly at the thought of how long it would be till -they should see Robbie in heaven. - -Gavan had now a vague, chill smile for the pertinacity of her faith. -Something had broken in him, as if, with Robbie's passing, a veil had -been drawn from reality, an illusion of confidence dispelled forever. He -leaned out of the window and breathed in the scent of the wet pine-tree, -looking, with an odd detachment and clearness of observation,--as if -through that acceptation of tragedy all his senses had grown keener,--at -the bluish bloom the dew made upon the pine-needles; at the flowers and -fruit in the garden below, the thatched roof of the summer-house, the -fragile whiteness of the roses growing near it, like a bridal veil blown -against the ancient wall. It was, in a moment of strange, suspended -vision, as if he had often and often seen tragic dawn in the garden -before and was often to see it again. What was he? Where was he? All the -world was like a dream and he seemed to see to its farthest ends and -back to its beginnings. - -Eppie stood silent beside him. - -He was presently conscious of her silence, and then, the uncanny -crystal, gazing sense slipping from him, of a possible unkindness in his -repudiating grief. He looked round at her. The poor child's eyes, heavy -with weeping and all the weight of the dark, encompassing woe he had -shown her, dwelt on him with a somber compassionateness. - -"Poor, darling little Eppie," he said, putting an arm about her, "what a -brute, a selfish brute, I am." - -"Why a brute, Gavan?" - -"Making you suffer--more. I'm always making you suffer, Eppie, always; -and you are really such a happy person. Come, let us go out for a walk. -Let us go out on the moor. It will be delicious in the heather now. I -want to see it and smell it. It will do us good." - -She resented his wisdom. "But you won't forget Robbie, while we walk." - -For a moment, as if in great weariness, Gavan leaned his head against -her shoulder. "Don't talk of Robbie, please. We must forget him--just -now, or try to, or else we can't go on at all." - -Still she persisted, for she could not let it go like that: "I can think -of him and go on too. I don't want to run away from Robbie because he -makes me unhappy." - -Gavan sighed, raising his head. "You are stronger than I am, Eppie. I -must--I must run away." He took her hand and drew her to the door, and -she followed him, though glancing back, as she went, at the little form -under the shroud. - - - - -VI - - -Robbie's death overshadowed the last days of Gavan's stay. Eppie did not -feel, after it, after his avowed and helpless breakdown, the barrier -sense so strongly. He didn't attempt to hide dejection; but that was -probably because she too was dejected and there was no necessity for -keeping up appearances that would only jar and hurt. Eppie gave herself -whole-heartedly to her griefs, and this was her grief as well as his. He -could share it. It was no longer the holding her at arm's length from a -private woe. Yet the grief was not really shared, Eppie knew, for it was -not the same grief that they felt. Of the difference they did not speak -again. Then there came the sadness of the parting, so near now and for -the first time realized in all its aspects. - -Eppie gathered, from chance remarks of the general's, that this parting -was to be indefinite. The summer at Kirklands was no precedent for -future summers, as she and Gavan had quite taken for granted. An uncle -of Gavan's, his father's eldest brother, was to give him his home in -England. This uncle had been traveling in the East this summer, and -Gavan did not formally come under his jurisdiction until autumn. But the -general conjectured that the jurisdiction would be well defined and -tolerably stringent. Sir James Palairet had clearly cut projects for -Gavan; they would, perhaps, not include holidays at Kirklands. The -realization was, for Gavan, too, a new one. - -"Am I not to come back here next summer?" he asked. - -"I'm afraid not, Gavan; we haven't first claim, you see. Perhaps Sir -James will lend you to us now and then; but from what I know of him I -imagine that he will want to do a lot with you, to put you through a -great deal. There won't be much time for this sort of thing. You will -probably travel with him." - -They were in the library and, speaking from the depths of her fear, -Eppie asked: "Do you like Sir James, Uncle Nigel?" She suspected a -pitying quality in the cogitating look that the general bent upon Gavan. - -"I hardly know him, my dear. He is quite an eminent man. A little -severe, perhaps,--something of a martinet,--but just, conscientious. It -is a great thing for Gavan," the general continued, making the best of a -rather bleak prospect, "to have such an uncle to give him a start in -life. It means the best sort of start." - -Directly the two children were alone, both sitting in the deep -window-seat, Gavan said, "Don't worry, Eppie. Of course I'll come -back--soon." His face took on the hardness that its delicacy could so -oddly express. He was confronting his ambiguous fate in an attitude of -cold resolution. For his sake, Eppie controlled useless outcries. "You -have seen your uncle, Gavan?" - -"Yes, once; in India. He came up to Darjeeling one summer." - -"Is he nice--nicer than Uncle Nigel made out, I mean?" - -"He isn't like my father," said Gavan, after a moment. - -"You mean that he isn't wicked?" Eppie asked baldly. - -"Oh, a good deal more than that. He is just and conscientious, as the -general said. That's what my mother felt; that's why she could bear it, -my going to him. And the general is right, you know, Eppie, about its -being a great thing for me. He is a very important person, in his way, -and he is going to put me through. He is determined that my father -sha'n't spoil my life. And, as you know, Eppie, my mother's life, any -chance for her, depends on me. To make her life, to atone to her in any -way for all she has had to bear, I must make my own. My uncle will help -me." - -The steeliness of his resolves made his face almost alien. Eppie felt -this unknown future, where he must fight alone, for objects in which she -had no share, shutting her out, and a child's sick misery of desolation -filled her, bringing back the distant memory of her mother's death, that -suffocating sense of being left behind and forgotten; but, keeping her -eyes on his prospect, she managed in a firm voice to question him about -the arid uncle, learned that he was married, childless, had a house in -the country and one in London, and sat in Parliament. He was vastly -busy, traveled a great deal, and wrote books of travel; not books about -foreign people and the things they ate and wore, as Eppie with her -courageous interest hopefully surmised, but books of dry, colorless -fact, with lots of statistics in them, Gavan said. - -"He wants me to go in for the same sort of thing--politics and public -life." - -"You are going to be a Pitt--make laws, Gavan, like Pitt?" Eppie kept up -her dispassionate tone. - -He smiled at the magnified conception. "I'll try for a seat, probably, -or some governmental office; that is, if I turn out to be worth -anything." - -How the vague vastness shut her out! What should she do, meanwhile? How -carve for herself a future that would keep her near him in the great -outside world? And would he want her near him in it when he was to be so -great, too? This question brought the irrepressible tears to her eyes at -last, though she turned away her head and would not let them fall. But -Gavan glanced at her and leaned forward to look, and then she saw, as -her eyes met his, that the hard resolve was for her, too, and did not -shut her out, but in. - -"I'm coming back, Eppie," he said, taking her hand and holding it -tightly. "Next to my mother, it's _you_,--you know it." - -"I haven't any mother," said Eppie, keeping up the bravery, though it -was really harder not to cry now. He understood where she placed him. - -Eppie was glad that it was raining on the last morning. Sunshine would -have been a mockery, and this tranquilly falling rain, that turned the -hills to pale, substanceless ghosts and brought the end of the moor, -where it disappeared into the white, so near, was not tragic. Gavan was -coming back. She would think only of that. She would not--would not cry. -He should see how brave she could be. When he was gone--well, she -allowed herself a swift thought of the Petit Trianon, its hidden refuge. -There, all alone, she would, of course, howl. There was a grim comfort -in this vision of herself, rolling upon the pine-needle carpet of the -Petit Trianon and shrieking her woes aloud. - -At breakfast Gavan showed a tense, calm face. She was impressed anew -with the sense of his strength, for, in spite of his resolves, he was -suffering, perhaps more keenly than herself. Suffering, with him, -partook of horror. She could live in hopes, and on them. To Gavan, this -parting was the going into a dark cavern that he must march through in -fear. And then, he would never roll and shriek. - -After breakfast, they hardly spoke to each other. Indeed, what was there -to say? Eppie filled the moments in superintending the placing of fruit -and sandwiches in his dressing-case. The carriage was a little late, so -that when the final moment came, there was a hurried conventionality of -farewell. Gavan was kissed by the aunts and shook hands with Miss -Grimsby, while the general called out that there was no time to lose. - -"Come back to us, dear boy; keep your feet dry on the journey," said -Miss Rachel, while Miss Barbara, holding his hand, whispered gently -that she would always pray for him. - -Eppie and Gavan had not looked at each other, and when the moment came -for their farewell, beneath the eyes of aunts, uncle, Miss Grimsby, and -the servants, it seemed the least significant of all, was the shortest, -the most formal. They looked, they held hands for a moment, and Gavan -faltered out some words. Eppie did not speak and kept her firm smile. -Only when he had followed the general into the carriage and it was -slowly grinding over the gravel did something hot, stinging, choking, -flare up in her, something that made her know this smooth parting to be -intolerable--not to be borne. - -She darted out into the rain. Bobbie was dead; Gavan was gone; why, she -was alone--alone--and a question was beating through her as she ran down -the drive and, with a leap to its step, caught the heavy old carriage in -its careful turning at the gate. Gavan saw, at the window, her white, -freckled face, her startled eyes, her tossed hair all beaded with the -finely falling rain--like an apparition on the ghostly background of -mist. - -"Oh, Gavan, don't forget me!" That had been the flaring terror. - -He had just time to catch her hand, to lean to her, to kiss her. He did -not speak. Mutely he looked at the little comrade all the things he -could not say: what she was to him, what he felt for her, what he would -always feel,--always, always, always, his eyes said to hers as she -stepped back to the road and was gone. - - - - -PART II - - - - -I - - -He had never seen Eppie again, and sixteen years had passed. - -It was of this that Gavan was thinking as the Scotch express bore him -northward on a dark October night. - -A yellow-bound, half-cut volume of French essays lay beside him. He had -lighted a cigar and, his feet warmly ensconced on the hot-water tin, his -legs enfolded in rugs, the fur collar of his coat turned up about his -ears, he leaned back, well fortified against the sharp air that struck -in from the half-opened window. - -Gavan, at thirty, had oddly maintained all the more obvious -characteristics of his boyhood. He was long, pale, emaciated, as he had -been at fourteen. His clean-shaved face was the boy's face, matured, but -unchanged in essentials. The broad, steep brow, the clear, aquiline jut -of nose and chin, the fineness and strength of the jaw, sculptured now -by the light overhead into vehement relief and shadow, were more -emphatic, only, than they had been. - -At fourteen his face had surprised with its maturity and at thirty it -surprised with its quality of wistful boyishness. This was the obvious. -The changes were there, but they were subtle, consisting more in a -certain hardening of youth's hesitancy into austerity; as though the -fine metal of the countenance had been tempered by time into a fixed, -enduring type. His pallor was the scholar's, but his emaciation the -athlete's; the fragility, now, was a braced and disciplined fragility. -No sedentary softness was in him. In his body, as in his face, one felt -a delicacy as strong as it was fine. The great change was that hardening -to fixity. - -To-night, he was feeling the change himself. The journey to Kirklands, -after the long gap that lay between it and his farewell, made something -of an epoch for his thoughts. He did not find it significant, but the -mere sense of comparison was arresting. - -The darkness of the October night, speeding by outside, the solitude of -the bright railway carriage, London two hours behind and, before, the -many hours of his lonely journey,--time and place were like empty -goblets, only waiting to be filled with the still wine of memory. - -Gavan had not cast aside his book, lighted his cigar, and, leaning back, -drawn his rugs about him with the conscious intention of yielding -himself to retrospect. On the contrary, he had, at first, pushed aside -the thoughts that, softly, persistently, pressed round him. Then the -languor, the opportunity of the hour seized him. He allowed himself to -drift hither and thither, as first one eddy lapped over him and then -another. And finally he abandoned himself to the full current and, once -it had him, it carried him far. - -It was, at the beginning, as far back as Eppie and childhood that it -carried him, to the sunny summer days and to the speechless parting of -the rainy autumn morning. And, with all that sense of change, he was -surprised to find how very much one thing had held firm. He had never -forgotten. He had kept the mute promise of that misty morning. How well -he had kept it he hadn't known until he found the chain of memory hold -so firm as he pulled upon it. The promise had been made to himself as -well as to her, given in solemn hostage to his own childish fears. Even -then what an intuitive dread had been upon him of the impermanence of -things. But it wasn't impermanent after all, that vision. - -Dear little Eppie. It was astonishing now to find how well he -remembered, how clearly he could see, in looking back,--more clearly -than even his acute child's perception had made evident to him,--what a -dear little Eppie she had been. She lived in his memory, and probably -nowhere else: in the present Eppie he didn't fancy that he should find -much trace of the child Eppie, and it was sad, in its funny way, to -think that he, who had, with all his forebodings, so felt the need of a -promise, should so well remember her who, undoubtedly, had long ago -forgotten him. He took little interest in the present Eppie. But the -child wore perfectly with time. - -Dear child Eppie and strange, distant boy, groping toward the present -Gavan; unhappy little boy, of deep, inarticulate, passionate affections -and of deep hopes and dreads. There they walked, knee-deep in heather; -he smelled it, the sun warm upon it, Eppie in her white, -Alice-in-Wonderland frock and her "striped" hair. And there went Robbie, -plunging through the heather before them. - -Robbie. Eppie had been right, then. He had not forgotten him at all. He -and Eppie stood at the window looking out at the dawn; the scent of the -wet pine-tree was in the air, and their eyes were heavy with weeping. -How near they had been. Had any one, in all his life, ever been nearer -him than Eppie? - -Curious, when he had so well kept the promise never to forget, that the -other promise, the promise to return, he had not been able to keep. In -making it, he had not imagined, even with his foreboding, what manacles -of routine and theory were to be locked upon him for the rest of his -boyhood. He had soon learned that protest, pleading, rebellion, were -equally vain, and that outward conformity was the preservative of inner -freedom. He could not jeopardize the purpose of his life--his mother's -rescue--by a persistence that, in his uncle's not unkind and not -unhumorous eyes, was merely foolish. He was forced to swallow his own -longings and to endure, as best he could, his pangs of fear lest Eppie -should think him slack, or even faithless. He submitted to the treadmill -of a highly organized education, that could spare no time for -insignificant summers in Scotland. Every moment in Gavan's youth was to -be made significant by tangible achievement. The distilled knowledge of -the past, the intellectual trophies of civilization, were to be his; if -he didn't want them, they, in the finished and effective figure of his -uncle, wanted him, and, in the sense of the fulfilment of his uncle's -hopes, they got him. - -During those years Gavan wrote to Eppie, tried to make her share with -him in all the lonely and rather abstract interests of his life. But he -found that the four years of difference, counting for nothing in the -actual intercourse of word and look, counted for everything against any -reality of intercourse in writing. Translated into that formality, the -childish affection became as unlike itself as a pressed flower is unlike -a fresh one. Eppie's letters, punctual and very fond, were far more -immature than she herself. These letters gave accounts of animals, -walks, lessons, very bald and concise, and of the Grainger cousins and -their doings, and then of her new relation, cousin Alicia, whose -daughters, children of Eppie's own age, soon seemed to poor Gavan, in -his distant prison, to fill his place. Eppie went away with these -cousins to Germany, where they all heard wonderful music, and after that -they came to Kirklands for the summer. Altogether, when Gavan's -opportunity came and, with the dignity of seventeen to back his request, -he had his uncle's consent to his spending of a month in Scotland, he -felt himself, even as he made it, rather silly in his determination to -cling at all costs to something precious but vanishing. Then it was that -Eppie had been swept away by the engulfing relative. At the very moment -of his own release, she was taken to the Continent for three years of -travel and study. The final effort of childhood to hold to its own -meaning was frustrated. The letters, after that, soon ceased. Silence -ended the first chapter. - -Gavan glanced out at the rushing darkness on either side. It was like -the sliding of a curtain before the first act of a drama. His cigar was -done and he did not light another. His eyes on that darkness that passed -and passed, he gave himself up to the long vision of the nearer years. -Through them went always the link with childhood, the haunting phrase -that sounded in every scene--that fear of life, that deep dread of its -evil and its pain that he had tried to hide from Eppie, but that, -together, they had glanced at. - -In that first chapter, whose page he had just turned, he had seen -himself as a very unhappy boy--unhappy from causes as apparent as a cage -about a pining bird. His youth had been weighted with an over-mature -understanding of wrong and sorrow. His childish faith in supreme good -had shaped itself to a conception of life as a place of probation where -oneself and, far worse, those one loved were burned continually in the -fiery furnace of inexplicable affliction. One couldn't say what God -might not demand of one in the way of endurance. He had, helpless, seen -his fragile, shrinking mother hatefully bullied and abused or more -hatefully caressed. He had been parted from her to brood and tremble -over her distant fate. Loved things had died; loved things had all, it -seemed, been taken from him; the soulless machinery of his uncle's -system had ground and polished at his stiffening heart. No wonder that -the boy of that first chapter had been very unhappy. But in the later -chapters, to which he had now come, the causes for unhappiness were not -so obvious, yet the gloom that overhung them deepened. He saw himself at -Eton in the hedged-round world of buoyant youth, standing apart, -preoccupied, indifferent. He had been oddly popular there. His -selflessness, his gentle candor, his capacity for a highly keyed -joy,--strung, though it was, over an incapacity for peace,--endeared -him; but even to his friends he remained a veiled and ambiguous -personality. He seemed to himself to stand on the confines of that -artificially happy domain, listening always for the sound of sorrow in -the greater world outside. History, growing before his growing mind, -loomed blood-stained, cruel, disastrous. The defeat of goodness, its -degradation by the triumphant forces of evil, haunted him. The -dependence of mind, of soul, on body opened new and ominous vistas. For -months he was pursued by morbid fears of what a jostled brain-cell or a -diseased body might do to one. One might become a fiend, it seemed, or -an imbecile, if one's atoms were disarranged too much. Life was a tragic -duty,--he held to that blindly, fiercely at times; but what if life's -chances made even goodness impossible? what if it were to rob one of -one's very selfhood? It became to him a thing dangerous, uncertain, like -an insecurely chained wild beast that one must lie down with and rise -with and that might spring at one's throat at any moment. - -Under the pressure of this new knowledge, crude enough in its -materialistic forms, and keen, new thought, already subtle, already -passing from youthful crudity, the skeptical crash of his religious -faith came at last upon him. Religion had meant too much to him for its -loss to be the merely disturbing epoch of readjustment that it is in -much young development. He found himself in a reeling horror of darkness -where the only lights were the dim beacons of science and the fantastic -will-o'-the-wisps of estheticism. In the midst of the chaos he saw his -mother again. He dreaded the longed-for meeting. How could he see her -and hide from her the inner desolation? And when she came, at last, -after all these years, a desperate pity nerved him to act a part. She -was changed; the years had told on her more than even his imagination -had feared. She drooped like a tired, fading flower. She was fading, -that he saw at the first glance. Mentally as well as physically, there -was an air of withering about her, and the look of sorrow was stamped -ineffaceably upon her aging features. To know that he had lost his -faith, his hold on life, his trust in good, would have been, he thought, -to kill her. He kept from her a whisper of his desolation; and to a -fundamental skepticism like his, acting was facile. But when she was -gone, back to her parched life, he knew that to her, as well as to him, -something essential had lacked. Her love, again and again, must have -fluttered, however blindly, against that barrier between them. The years -of separation had been sad, but, in looking back at it, the summer of -meeting was saddest of all. - -The experience put an edge to his hardening strength. He must fail her -in essentials; they could never meet in the blessed nearness of shared -hopes; but he wouldn't fail her in all the lesser things of life. The -time of her deliverance was near. Love and beauty would soon be about -her. He worked at Oxford with the inner passion of a larger purpose than -mere scholarship that is the soul of true scholarship. He felt the -sharp, cold joy of high achievement, the Alpine, precipitous scaling of -the mind. And here he embarked upon the conscious quest for truth, his -skepticism grown to a doubt of its own premises. - -Gavan looked quietly back upon the turmoil of that quest. - -He watched himself in those young years pressing restlessly, eagerly, -pursued by the phantoms of death and nothingness, through spiral after -spiral of human thought: through Spinoza's horror of the meaninglessness -of life and through Spinoza's barren peace; through Kant's skepticism -that would not let him rest in Kant's super-rational assurance; -precipitated from Hegel's dialectics--building their pyramid of paradox -to the apex of an impersonal Absolute--into Schopenhauer's petulant -despair. And more and more clearly he saw, through all the forms of -thought, that the finite self dissolved like mist in the one -all-embracing, all-transcending Subject. Science, philosophy, religion, -seemed, in their final development, to merge in a Monism that conceived -reality as spirit, but as impersonal spirit, a conception that, if in -western thought it did not reduce to illusion every phase of -experience, yet reduced the finite self to a contradiction and its sense -of moral freedom, upon which were built all the valuations of life and -all its sanctions, to a self-deception. His own dual life deepened his -abiding intuition of unreality. There was the Gavan of the river, the -debate, the dinner, popular among his fellows, gentle, debonair; already -the man of the world through the fineness of his perception, his -instinct for the fitting, his perfection of mannerless manner that was -the flower of selflessness. And there was the Gavan of the inner -thought, fixed, always, in its knot of torturing perplexity. To the -inner Gavan, the Gavan of human relations was a wraith-like figure. Now -began for him the strange experience at which childish terrors had -hinted. It was in the exhaustions that followed a long wrench of -thought, or after an illness, a shock of sorrow that left one pulseless -and inert, that these pauses of an awful peace would come to him. One -faced, then, the dread vision, and it seized one, as when, in the deep -stillness of the night, the world drops from one and only a -consciousness, dispassionate and contemplative, seeing all life as -dream, remains. It was when life was thus stilled, its desires quenched -by weakness or great sorrow, that this peace stole into the empty -chambers, and whispered that all pain, all evil, all life were dreams -and that the dreams were made by the strife and restlessness of the -fragmentary self in its endless discord. See oneself as discord, as part -of the whole, every thought, every act, every feeling determined by it, -and one entered, as it were, into the unwilling redemption. Desire, -striving, hope, and fear fell from one. One found the secret of the -Eternal Now, holding in its timelessness the vast vision of a world of -change. But to Gavan, in these moments, the sorrow, the striving, the -agony of life was sweet and desirable; for, to the finite life that -strove, and hoped, and suffered the vision became the sightless gaze of -death, and nothingness was the guerdon of such attainment. To turn, with -an almost physical sickness of horror, from the hypnotic spell, to -forcibly forget thought, to clasp life about him like a loved -Nessus-robe, was a frequent solution during these years of struggle; to -reenter the place of joy and sorrow, taking it, so to speak, at its own -terms. But the specter was never far from the inner Gavan, who more and -more suspected that the longing for reality, for significance, that -flamed up in him with each renewal of personal force and energy, was the -mere result of life, not its sanction. And more and more, when, in such -renewals, his nature turned with a desperate trust to action, as a -possible test of worth, he saw that it was not action, not faith, that -created life and the trust in life, but life, the force and will -incarnated in one, that created faith and action. The very will to act -was the will to live, and the will to live was the will of the Whole -that the particular discord of one's personal self should continue to -strive and suffer. - -Life, indeed, clutched him, and that quite without any artificial effort -of his own, when his mother came home to England to die. - -Gavan had just left Oxford. He was exquisitely equipped for the best -things of life, and, with the achievement, his long dependence on his -uncle suddenly ceased. An eccentric old cousin, a scholarly recluse, who -had taken a fancy to him, died, leaving him a small estate in Surrey and -fifteen hundred pounds a year. - -With the good fortune came the bitter irony that turned it to dust and -ashes. All his life he had longed to help his mother, to smooth her -rough path and put power over fate into her hand. Now he could only help -her to die in peace. - -He took her to the quiet old house, among its lawns, its hedges, its -high-walled gardens and deep woods. He gave her all that it was now too -late to give--beauty, ease, and love. - -She was changed by disease, more changed than by life and sorrow; -gentle, very patient, but only by an effort showing her appreciation of -the loveliness, only by an effort answering his love. - -Of all his fears the worst had been the fear that, with the conviction -of the worthlessness of life, the capacity for love had left him. Now, -as with intolerable anguish, her life ebbed from her, there was almost -relief in his own despair; in feeling it to the full; in seeing the -heartlessness of thought wither in the fierce flame of his agony. - -It seemed to him that he had never before known what it was to love. It -was as if he were more her than himself. He relived her life and its -sorrows. He relived her miserable married years, the long loneliness, -parted from her child, her terror of the final parting, coming so -cruelly upon them; and he lived the pains of her dissolution. He -understood as he had never understood, all that she was and felt; he -yearned as he had never yearned, to hold and keep her with him in joy -and security; he suffered as he had never suffered. - -Such passionate rebellion filled him that he would walk for hours about -the country, while merciful anesthetics gave her oblivion, in a blind -rage of mere feeling--feeling at a white heat, a core of tormented life. -And the worst was that her life of martyrdom was not to be crowned by a -martyr's happy death; the worst was that her own light died away from -before her feet, that she groped in darkness, and that, since he was to -lose her, he might not even have her to the end. - -For months he watched the slow fading of all that had made her herself, -her relapse into the instinctive, almost into the animal. Her lips, for -many days, kept the courage of their smile, but it was at last only an -automatic courage, showing no sweetness, no caress. Her eyes, in the -first tragic joy of their reunion, had longed, grieved, yearned over the -son who hid his sorrow for her sake. Afterward, all feeling, except a -sort of chill resentment, died from her look. For the last days of her -life, when, in great anguish, she never spoke at all, these eyes would -turn on him with a strange immensity of indifference. It was as if -already his mother were gone and as if a ghost had stolen into his life. -She died at last, after a long night of unconsciousness, without a word -or look that brought them near. - -Gavan lived through all that followed in a stupor. - -On the day of her funeral, when all was over, he walked out into the -spring woods. - -The day was sweet and mild. Pools of shallow water shone here and there -in the hollows, among the slender tree-stems. Pale slips of blue were -seen among the fine, gray branches, and pushing up from last year's -leaves were snowdrops growing everywhere, white and green among the -russet leaves, lovely, lovely snowdrops. Seeing them, in his swift, -aimless wandering, Gavan paused. - -The long nights and days had worn him to that last stage of exhaustion -where every sense is stretched fine and sharp as the highest string of a -musical instrument. Leaning against a tree, his arms folded, he looked -at the snowdrops, at their vivid green, and their white, as fresh, as -delicate as flakes of newly fallen snow. - -"Lovely, lovely," he said, and, looking all about him, at the fretwork -of gray branches on the blue, the pale, shining water,--a little bird -just hopping to its edge among the shorter grass to drink,--he repeated, -"Lovely," while the anguish in his heart and the sweet beauty without -combined in the sharp, exquisite tension of a mood about to snap, the -fineness of a note, unendurably high, held to an unendurable length. - -A dimness overtook him: as if the note, no longer keenly singing, sank -to an insect-like buzz, a chaos of minute, whirring vibrations that made -a queer, dizzy rhythm; and, in a daze of sudden indifference, both to -beauty and anguish, he seemed to see himself standing there, collapsed -against the tree, his frail figure outworn with misery,--to see himself, -and the trees, the pools of water, the drinking bird, and the snowy -flowers,--like a picture held before calm, dying eyes. - -"Yes," he thought, "she saw it like this,--me, herself, life; that is -why she didn't care any longer." - -He continued to look, and from the dimness and the buzzing the calm grew -clear--clear as a sharply cut hallucination. He knew the experience, he -had often before known it; but he had never yet felt it so unutterably, -so finally. Something in him had done struggling forever; something was -relinquished; he had accepted something. "Yes, it is like that," he -thought on; "they are all of them right." - -With the cold eye of contemplation he gazed on the illusion of life: -joy, suffering, beauty, good and evil. His individual life, enfranchised -from its dream of a separate self, drifted into the life about him. He -was part of it all; in him, as in those other freed ones, the self -suddenly knew itself as fleeting and unsubstantial as a dream, knew its -own profound irrationality and the suffering that its striving to be -must always mean. - -He was perfectly at peace, he who had never known peace. "I am as dead -as she is," he thought. - -In his peace he was conscious of no emotion, yet he found himself -suddenly leaning his head against the tree and weeping. He wept, but he -knew that it was no longer with grief or longing. He watched the -exhausted machine give way, and noted its piteous desolation of -attitude,--not pitying it,--while he thought, "I shall feel, perhaps -suffer, perhaps enjoy again; but I shall always watch myself from above -it all." - -The mystic experience had come overwhelmingly to him and his mind was -never to lose the effect of that immediacy of consciousness, -untransmissible, unspeakable, ineffaceable. And that with which he found -himself one was far from any human thoughts or emotions; rather it was -the negation of them, the infinite negation of finite restlessness. - -He went back to the house, to the darkened, empty room. The memories -that crowded there, of pity and love and terror, were now part of the -picture he looked at, as near and yet as far, as the vision of the -snowdrops, the bird, and the spring sky. - -All was quiet. She was gone as he would go. The laboring breath was -stilled forever. - - - - -II - - -Gavan did not address himself to an ascetic remodeling of his life. He -pursued the path traced out before him. He yielded placidly to the calls -of life, willing to work, to accomplish, willing even to indulge his -passions, since there could lurk for him no trap among the shows of -life. His taste soon drew back, disdainful and delicate, from his -experience of youthful dissipation; his ironic indifference made him -deaf to the lures of ambition; but he was an accurate and steady worker -and a tolerably interested observer of existence. - -As he had ceased to have value for himself, so others had no value in -his eyes. Social effort and self-realization were, as ideals, equally -meaningless to him; and though pity was always with him, it was a pity -gentle and meditative, hopeless of alleviation: for suffering was life, -and to cure one, one must abolish the other. Material remedies seemed to -him worse than useless; they merely renewed the craving forces. The -Imitation of Christ was a fitter panacea than organized charities and -progressive legislation. - -Physical pain in the helpless, the dumbly conscious, in children or -animals, hurt him and made him know that he, too, lived; and he would -spend himself to give relief to any suffering thing. He sought no -further in metaphysical systems; he desired no further insight. Now and -then, finding their pensive pastures pleasant, he would read some Hindoo -or medieval mystic; but ecstasies were as alien to him as materialism: -both were curious forms of self-deception--one the inflation of the -illusory self into the loss of any sense of relation, and the other the -self's painful concentration into imbecilely selfish aims. The people -most pleasing to him were the people who, without self-doubt and without -self-consciousness, performed some inherited function in the state; the -simply great in life; or those who, by natural gift, the fortunately -finished, the inevitably distinguished, followed some beautifully -complex calling. The mediocre and the pretentious were unpleasing -phenomena, and the ideals of democracy mere barbarous nonsense. - -His own pursuits were those of a fashionable and ambitious man, and, to -the casual observer, the utter absence of any of the pose of -disillusionized youth made all the more apparent what seemed to be a man -of the world cynicism. Those who knew him better found him charming and -perplexing. He seemed to have no barriers, yet one could not come near -him. His center receded before pursuit. And he was much pursued. He -aroused conjecture, interest, attachment. His exquisite head, the chill -sweetness of his manner, the strange, piercing charm of his smile, drew -eyes and hearts to him. Idly amused, he saw himself, all inert, boosted -from step to step, saw friends swarm about him and hardly an enemy's -face. - -It was rare for him to meet dislike. One young man, vaguely known at -Oxford, noticed with interest as a relative of Eppie's, he had, indeed, -by merely being, it seemed, antagonized. Gavan had really felt something -of a shy, derivative affection for this Jim Grainger, a dogged, sullen, -strenuous youth; because of the dear old memory, he had made one or two -delicate, diffident approaches--approaches repulsed with bull-dog -defiance. Gavan, who understood most things, quite understood that to -the serious, the plain, the obviously laborious son of an impecunious -barrister, he might have given the impression, so funnily erroneous, of -a sauntering dilettantism, an aristocratic _flanerie_. At all events, -Grainger was intrenched in a resolute disapproval, colored, perhaps, -with some tinge of reminiscent childish jealousy. When their paths again -crossed in London and Gavan found his suavity encountered by an even -more scowling sarcasm, jealousy, of another type, was an obvious cause. -Grainger, scornful of social dexterities and weapons, had worked himself -to skin and bone in preparation for a career, and a career that he -intended to be of serious significance. And at its outset he found -himself in apparent competition with Gavan for a post that, significant -indeed to him, as the first rung on the political ladder, could only be -decorative to his rival--the post of secretary to a prominent -cabinet-minister. Grainger had his justified hopes, and he was, except -for outward graces, absolutely fitted for the place. - -In his path he found the listless figure of the well-remembered and -heartily disliked Gavan--a gilded youth, pure and simple, and as such -being lifted, by all accounts, onto the coveted rung of the coveted -ladder. Gavan's scholarly fitness for the post Grainger only half -credited. Of the sturdy professional class, with a streak of the easily -suspicious bourgeois about him, he was glad to believe tales of -drawing-room influence. He expressed himself with disgusted openness as -to the fatal effect of a type like Palairet's on public life. Gavan -heard a little and guessed more. He found himself sympathizing with -Grainger; he had always liked him. With an effort that he had never used -on his own behalf, he managed to get him fitted into the pair of shoes -that were standing waiting for his own feet. It had been, indeed, though -in superficial ways, an affair of drawing-room influence. The wife of -the great statesman, as well as that high personage himself, was one of -Gavan's devoted and baffled friends. She said that he made her think of -a half-frozen bird that one longed to take in one's hands and warm, and -she hopefully communed with her husband as to the invigorating effect of -a career upon him. She suspected Gavan--his influence over her -husband--when she found that an alien candidate was being foisted upon -her. - -"Grainger!" she exclaimed, vexed and incredulous. "Why Grainger? Why not -anybody as well as Grainger? Yes, I've seen the young man. He looks -like a pugilistic Broad-Church parson. All he wants is to climb and to -reform everything." - -"Exactly the type for British politics," Gavan rejoined. "He is in -earnest about politics, and I'm not; you know I'm not." His friend -helplessly owned that he was exasperating. Grainger, had he known to -whom he was indebted for his lift, would have felt, perhaps, a -heightened wrath against "drawing-room influence." - -Happily and justifiably unconscious, he proceeded to climb. - -Meanwhile another pair of shoes was swiftly found for Gavan. He went out -to India as secretary to the viceroy. - -Here, in the surroundings of his early youth, the second great moral -upheaval of his life came to him. Three years had passed since his -mother's death. He was twenty-six years old. - -During a long summer among the mountains of Simla, he met Alice Grafton. -She was married, a year older than himself, but a girl still in mind and -appearance--fragile, hesitant, exquisite. Gavan at his very first seeing -of her felt something knocking in his heart. It seemed like pity, -instinctive pity, the bond between him and life, and for some time he -deluded himself with this comparatively safe interpretation. He did not -quite know why he should pity Mrs. Grafton. That she should look like a -girl was hardly a reason, nor that her husband, large, masterful, -embossed with decorations, was uninteresting. She had been married to -him--by all accounts the phrase applied--at nineteen and could not find -him sympathetic; but, after all, many cheerful women were in that -situation. He was a kindly, an admiring husband, and her life was set in -luxurious beauty. Yet piteousness was there. She was all promise and -unfulfilment; and dimly, mutely, she seemed to feel that the promise -would never be fulfilled, as though a too-early primrose smiled -wistfully through a veil of ice. Should she never become consciously -unhappy that would be but another symptom of permanent immaturity. - -Gavan rode with her and talked with her, and read with her in her fresh, -flower-filled drawing-room. Their tastes were not at all alike; but he -did not in the least mind that when she lifted her lovely eyes to him -over poor poetry; and when she played and sang to him her very -ineffectuality added a pathos, full of charm, to the obvious ballads -that she liked. It was sweet, too, and endearing, to watch her, by -degrees, molding her taste to his until it became a delightful and -intuitive echo. - -He almost wondered if it was also in echo that she began to feel for -herself his own appreciation of her. Certainly she matured to -consciousness of lack. She began to confide; not with an open frankness, -but vaguely, as though she groped toward the causes of her sadness. She -shrank, and knew now why she shrank, when her loud-voiced, cheerful -husband came tramping into the room. Then she began to see that she was -horribly lonely. Unconsciously, in the confidences now, she plead for -help, for reassurance. She probed him constantly as to religious hopes -and the real significance of life. Her soft voice, with its endearing -little stammer, grew to Gavan nearer and dearer than all the voices of -the world. At first it appealed, and then it possessed him. He had -thought that what he felt for her was only pity. He had thought himself -too dead to all earthly pangs for the rudimentary one of love to reach -him. But when, one day, he found her weeping, alone, among her flowers, -he took her into his arms and the great illusion seized him once more. - -It seized him, though he knew it for illusion. He laughed at the specter -of nothingness and gloried in the beauty of the rainbow moment. This -human creature needed him and he her: that was, for them, the only -reality; who cared for the blank background where their lives flashed -and vanished? The flash was what mattered. He sprang from the dead self, -as from a tomb, when he kissed her lips. Life might mean sorrow and -defeat, but its tragedy was atoned for by a moment of such joy. - -"Gavan, Gavan, do we love each other? Do we?" she wept. - -He saw illusion and joy where her woman's heart felt only reality and -terror in the joy. - -They obviously loved each other, though it was without a word of love -that they found themselves in each other's arms. Had ever two beings so -lonely so needed love? Her sweet, stunned eyes were a rapture of -awakening to him, and though, under all, ran the deep, buried river of -knowledge, whispering forever, "Vanity of vanities," he was far above it -in the sunlight of the upper air. He felt himself, knew himself only as -the longing to look forever into her eyes, to hold her to him forever. -That, on the day of awakening, seemed all that life meant. - -Later on he found that more fundamental things had clutched him through -the broken barriers of thought--jealousies and desires that showed him -his partaking of the common life of humanity. - -Gavan's skepticism had not come face to face with a moral test as yet, -and he could but contemplate curiously in himself the strong, -instinctive revolt of all the man of hereditary custom and conscience -from any dishonorable form of illegal love. He couldn't justify it, but -it was there, as strong as his longing for the woman. - -It was not that he cared a rap, so he analyzed it, for laws or -conventions: it was merely that he could not do anything that he felt as -dishonorable. - -He told Alice that she must leave her husband and come openly to him. -They would go back to Europe; live in Italy--the land of happy outcasts -from unhappy forms; there they would study and travel and make beauty -grow about them. Holding her hands gently, he put it all before her with -a reverent devotion that gave the proposal a matrimonial dignity. - -"You know me well enough, dear Alice," he said, "to know that you need -fear none of the usual dangers in such cases. I don't care about -anything but you; I never will--ambition, country, family. Nothing -outside me, or inside me, could make me fail you. All I want, or shall -ever want, is to make you happy, and to be happy with you." - -But the things he put away as meaningless dreams the poor woman with the -girl's mind saw as grim realities. It was easy for Gavan to barter a -mirage for the one thing he cared to have; the world was not a mirage to -her, and even her love could not make it so. Her thin young nature knew -only the craving to keep and not the revulsion from a hidden wrong. -Every fiber in her shrank from the facing of a hostile order of things, -the bearing through life of a public dishonor. It was as if it were he -who purposed the worse disgrace, not she. - -She wept and wept in his arms, hoping, perhaps, to weaken him by her -feebleness and her abandonment, so that an open avowal of cowardice, an -open appeal that he should yield to it, might be needless; but at last, -since he would not speak, only stroking her hair, her hand, sharing her -sorrow, she moaned out, "Oh, Gavan, I can't, I can't." - -He only half understood, feeling his heart freeze in the renunciation -that she might demand. But when she sobbed on brokenly, "Don't leave me. -Stay with me. I can't live without you. No one need ever know," he -understood. - -Standing white and motionless, it was he now who repeated, "I can't. I -can't. I can't." - -She wept on, incredulous, supplicating, reproachful. "You will not leave -me! You will not abandon me!" - -"I cannot--stay with you." - -"You win my heart--humiliate me,--see that I'm yours--only yours,--and -then cast me off!" - -"Don't speak so cruelly, Alice. Cast you off? I, who only pray you to -let me take you with me?" - -"A target for the world!" - -"Darling, poor darling, I know that I ask all--all; but what else is -there--unless I leave you?" - -She hid her face on his shoulder, sobbing miserably, her sobs her only -answer, and to it he rejoined: "We can't go on, you know that; and to -stay, to deceive your husband, to drag you through all the baseness, the -ugliness, the degradation, Alice, of a hidden intrigue--I can't do that; -it's the only thing I can't do for you." - -"You despise me; you think me wicked--because I can't have such horrible -courage. I think what you ask is more wicked; I think it hurts everybody -more; I think that it would degrade us more. People can't live like -that--cut off from everything--and not be degraded in the end." - -It was a new species of torture that now tore at Gavan's heart and mind. -He saw too clearly the force of the arguments that underlay her specious -appeal--more clearly, far, than she could see. It was horribly true that -the life of happy outlawry he proposed might wither and debase more than -a conscious sin. The organized, crafty wisdom of life was on her side. -And on his was a mere matter of taste. He could find no sanction for his -resistance to her and to himself except in that instinctive recoil from -what he felt as dishonor. He was sacrificing them both to a silly, -subjective figment. The lurid realization, that burned and froze, went -through him, and with it the unanswerable necessity. He must, he must, -sacrifice them. And he must talk the language of right and wrong as -though he believed in it. He acted as if he did, yet nothing was further -from him than such belief; that was the strange agony that wrenched his -brain as he said: "You are blind, not wicked. Some day you will thank me -if I make it possible for you to let me go." And, he too incredulous, he -cried, "Alice, Alice, will you really let me go without you?" - -She would not consent to the final alternative, and the struggle lasted -for a week, through their daily meetings--the dream-like, deft meetings -under the eyes of others,--and while they rode alone over the -hills--long, sad rides, when both, often in a moody silence, showed at -once their hope and their resistance. - -Her fear won at last. "And I can't even pretend that it's goodness," she -said, her voice trembling with self-scorn. "You've abased me to the -dust, Gavan. Yes, it's true, if you like--my fear is greater than my -love." Irony, a half-felt anger, helped her to bear the blow, for, to -the end, she could not believe that he would find strength to leave her. - -The parting came suddenly. Wringing her hands, looking hard into her -face, where he saw still a fawning hope and a half-stupefied despair, he -left her, and felt that he had torn his heart up by the very roots. - -And he had sacrificed her and himself, to what? Gavan could ask himself -the question at leisure during the following year. - -Yet, from the irrational sacrifice was born a timid, trembling trust, a -dim hope that the unbannered combat had not been in vain, that even the -blind holding to the ambiguous right might blossom in a better life for -her than if he had taken the joy held out to him. The trust was as -irrational as the sacrifice, but it was dear to him. He cherished it, -and it fluttered in him, sweet, intangible, during all the desolate -year. Then, at the year's end, he met Alice, suddenly, unexpectedly, and -found her ominously changed. Her girlhood was gone. A hard, glittering -surface, competent, resourceful, hid something. - -The strength of his renouncement was so rooted that he felt no personal -fear, and for her, too, he no longer felt fear in his nearness. What he -felt was a new pity--a pity suffocating and horrible. Whispers of -discreet scandal enlightened him. Alice was in no danger of what she -most shrank from--a public pillory; but she was among those of whom the -world whispers, with a half-condoning smile and shrug. - -Gavan saw her riding one morning with a famous soldier, a Nietzschian -type of strength, splendor, and high indifference. And now he understood -all. He knew the man. He was one who would have stared light irony at -Gavan's chivalrous willingness to sacrifice his life to a woman; to such -a charming triviality as an intrigue he would sacrifice just enough and -no more. He knew the rules of the game and with him Alice was safe from -any open pillory. People would never do more than whisper. - -A bitter daylight flooded for Gavan that sweet, false dawn, and once -again the cruelty, the caprice at the heart of all things were revealed -to him. He knew the flame of impotent remorse. He had tossed the -miserable child to this fate, and though remorse, like all else, was -meaningless, he loathed himself for his futile, empty magnanimity. - -She had seen his eyes upon her as she rode. She sent for him, and, alone -with him, the glitter, the hardness, broke to dreadful despair. - -She confessed all at his knees. Hardness and glitter had been the shield -of the racked, terror-stricken heart. The girl was a woman and knew the -use of shields. - -"And Gavan, Gavan, worst of all,--far worst,--I don't love him; I never -loved him. It was simply--simply"--she could hardly speak--"that he -frightened and flattered me. It was vanity--recklessness--I don't know -what it was." - -After the confession, she waited, her face hidden, for his reproach or -anger. Neither came. Instead, she felt, in the long silence, that -something quiet enveloped her. - -She looked up to see his eyes far from her. - -"Gavan, can you forgive me?" she whispered. - -Once more he was looking at it all--all the cruel, the meaningless drama -in which he had been enmeshed for a little while. Once more his thought -had risen far above it, and the old peace, the old, dead peace, with no -trembling of the hopes that meant only a deeper delusion, was regained. -He knew how deep must be the reattained tranquillity, when, the woman he -had loved at his feet, he felt no shrinking, no reproach, no desire, -only an immense, an indifferent pity. - -"Forgive you, Alice? Poor, poor Alice. Perhaps you should forgive me; -but it isn't a question of that. Don't cry; don't cry," he repeated -mechanically, gently stroking her hair--hair whose profuse, wonderful -gold he had once kissed with a lover's awed delight. - -"You forgive me--you do forgive me, Gavan?" - -"It isn't a question of forgiveness; but of course I forgive you, dear -Alice." - -"Gavan, tell me that you love me still. Can you love me? Oh, say that I -haven't lost that." - -He did not reply, looking away and lifting his hand from her hair. - -The woman, leaning on his knees, felt a stealing sense of awe, worse -than any fear of his anger. And worse than a vehement disavowal of love, -worse than a spurning of her from him, were his words: "I want you not -to suffer, dear Alice; I want you to find peace." - -"Peace! What peace can I find?" - -He looked at her now, wondering if she would understand and willing to -put it before her as he himself saw it: "The peace of seeing it all, and -letting it all go." - -"Gavan, I swear to you that I will never see him again. Oh, Gavan, what -do you mean? If you would forgive me--really forgive me--and take me -now, I would follow you anywhere. I am not afraid any longer. I have -found out that the only thing to be afraid of is oneself. If I have you, -nothing else matters." - -He looked steadily at her, no longer touching her. "You have said what I -mean. You have found it out. The only thing to be afraid of is -ourselves. You will not see this man again? You will keep that promise -to me?" - -"Any promise! Anything you ask! And, indeed, indeed, I could not see him -now," she shuddered. "Gavan, you will take me away with you?" - -He wondered at her that she did not see how far he was from her--how -far, and yet how one with her, how merged in her through his -comprehension of the essential unity that bound all life together, that -made her suffering part of him, even while he looked down upon it from -an almost musing height. - -He felt unutterable gentleness and unutterable ruthlessness. "I don't -mean that, Alice. You won't lose yourself by clinging to me, by clinging -to what you want." - -"You don't love me! Oh, you don't love me! I have killed your love!" she -wailed out, rising to her feet, pierced by her full realization. She -stepped back from him to gaze at him with a sort of horror. "You talk as -if you had become a priest." - -He appreciated what his attitude must seem to her--priestly indeed, -almost sleek in its lack of personal emotion, its trite recourse to the -preaching of renunciation. And, almost with a sense of humor, that he -felt as hateful at such a moment, the perception came that he might -serve her through the very erroneousness of her seeing of him. The sense -of humor was hateful, and his skilful seizing of her suggestion had a -grotesque aspect as well. Even in his weariness, he was aware that the -cup of contemplation was full when it could hold its drop of realized -irony. - -"I think that I have become a priest, Alice," he said. "I see everything -differently. And weren't you brought up in a religious way--to go to -church, seek props, say your prayers, sacrifice yourself and live for -others? Can't you take hold of that again? It's the only way." - -Her quick flaming was justified, he knew; one shouldn't speak of help -when one was so far away; he had exaggerated the sacerdotal note. "Oh, -you despise me! It is because of that, and you are trying to hide it -from me! What is religion to me, what is anything--anything in the world -to me--if I have lost you, Gavan? Why are you so cruel, so horrible? I -can't understand it! I can't bear it! Oh, I can't! Why are our lives -wrecked like this? Why did you leave me? Why have I become wicked? I was -never, never meant to be wicked." Tears, not of abasement, not of -appeal, but of pure anguish ran down her face. - -He was nearer to that elemental sadness and could speak with a more -human tone. "You are not wicked--no more--no less--than any one. I don't -despise you. Believe me, Alice. If I hadn't changed, this would have -drawn me to you; I should have felt a deeper tenderness because you -needed me more. But think of me as a priest: I have changed as much as -that. And remember that what you have yourself found out is true--the -only thing to be afraid of is oneself, and the only escape from fear is -to--is to"--he paused, hearing the triteness of his own words and -wondering with a new wonder at their truth, their gray antiquity, their -ever-verdant youth--"is to renounce," he finished. - -He was standing now, ready for departure. In her eyes he saw at last the -dignity of hopelessness, of an accepted doom, a pain far above panic. - -"Dear Alice," he said, taking her hand--"dear Alice." And, with all the -delicacy of his shrinking from a too great directness, his eyes had a -steadiness of demand that sank into the poor woman's tossed, unstable -soul, he added, "Don't ever do anything ugly--or foolish--again." - -Her lover lost,--the very slightness of the words "ugly," "foolish," -told her how utterly lost,--a deep thrill of emotional exaltation went -through the emptiness he left. She longed to clasp the lost lover and to -sink at the knees of the priest. - -"I will be good. I will renounce myself," she said, as though it were a -creed before an altar; and hurriedly she whispered, poor child, "Perhaps -in heaven--we will find each other." - -Gavan often thought of that pathetic human clutch. So was the dream of -an atoning heaven built. It kept its pathos, even its beauty, for him, -when the whole tale ended in the world's shrug and smile. He heard first -that Alice had become an emotionally devout churchwoman;--that lasted -for a year;--and then, alas! alas!--but, after all, the smile and shrug -was the best philosophy,--that she rode once more with the Nietzschian -lover. He had one short note from her: he would have heard--perhaps, at -any rate, he would know what to think when he did hear that she saw the -man again. And she wanted him to know from her that it was not as he -might think: she really loved him now--the other; not as she had loved -Gavan,--that would always be first,--but very much; and she needed love, -she must have it in her life, and she was lifting this man who loved -her, was helping his life, and she had broader views now and did not -believe in creeds or in the shibboleths that guided the vulgar. And she -was harming no one, no one knew. Life was far too complicated, the -intricacies of modern civilization far too enmeshing, for duty to be -seen in plain black and white. The whole question of marriage was an -open one, and one had a right to interpret one's duty according to one's -own lights. Gavan saw the hand of the new master through it all. Shortly -after, the death of Alice's husband, killed while tiger-shooting, set -her free, and the new master proved himself at all events a fond one by -promptly marrying her. So ended Alice in his life. - -There was not much more to look back on after that. His return to -England; his entering the political arena, with neither desire nor -reluctance; his standing for the town his uncle's influence marked out -for him; the fight and the very gallant failure,--there had been, for -him, an amused interest in the game of it all. The last year he had -spent in his Surrey home, usually in company with a really pathetic -effigy of the past--his father, poor and broken in health, the old -serpent of Gavan's childhood basking now in torpid insignificance, its -fangs drawn. - -People probably thought that he had been soured by an initial defeat. -Gavan knew that the game had merely ceased to amuse him. What amused him -most was concentrated and accurate scholarship. He was writing a book on -some of the obscurer phases of religious enthusiasm, studying from a -historical and psychological point of view the origin and formation of -queer little sects,--failures in the struggle for survival,--their -brief, ambiguous triumphs and their disintegrations. - -His unruffled stepping-back from the arena of political activity was to -the more congenial activity of understanding and observation. But there -burned in him none of the observer's, the thinker's passion. He worked -as he rode or ate his breakfast. Work was part of the necessary fuel -that kept life's flame bright. While he lived he didn't want a feeble, -flickering flame. But at his heart, he was profoundly indifferent to -work, as to all else. - - * * * * * - -GAVAN'S mind, as he leaned back in the railway carriage, had passed over -the visual aspect of this long retrospect, not in meditation, but in a -passive seeing of its scenes and faces. Eppie's face, fading in the -mist; Robbie, silhouetted on the sky; the sulky Grainger; his uncle; his -mother, and the vision of the spring day where he had wandered in the -old dream of pain and into its cessation; finally, Alice, her pale hair -and wistful eyes and her look when, at parting, she had said that they -might be together in heaven. - -He had rarely known a greater lucidity than in those swift, lonely -hours of night. It was like a queer, long pause between a past -accomplished and a future not yet begun--as though one should sunder -time and stand between its cloven waves. The figures crossed the stage, -and he seemed to see them all in the infinite leisure of an eternal -moment. - -This future, its figures just about to emerge from the wings into full -view, slightly troubled his reverie. It was at dawn that his mind again -turned to it with a conjecture half amused and half reluctant. There was -something disturbing in the linkage he must make between that child's -face on the mist and the Miss Gifford he was so soon to see. That she -would, at all events in her own conception, dominate the stage, he felt -sure; she might even expect a special attention from a spectator whose -memory could join hers in that far first act. He was pretty sure that -his memory would have to do service for both; and quite sure that memory -would not hold for her, as it did for him, a distinct tincture of pain, -of restlessness, as though there strove in it something shackled and -unfulfilled. - -One's thoughts, at four o'clock in the morning, after hours of -sleeplessness, became fantastic, and Gavan found himself watching, with -some shrinking, this image of the past, suddenly released, brought -gasping and half stupefied to the air, to freedom, to new, strong -activity, after having been, for so long, bound and gagged and thrust -into an underground prison. - -He turned to a forecast of what Eppie would probably be like. He had -heard a good deal about her, and he had not cared for what he had -heard. The fact that one did hear a good deal was not pleasing. Every -one, in describing her, used the word charming; he had gathered that it -meant, as applied to her, more than mere prettiness, wit, or social -deftness; and it was precisely for the more that it meant that he did -not care. - -Apparently what really distinguished her was her energy. She traveled -with her cousin, Lady Alicia Waring, a worldly, kindly dabbler in art -and politics; she rushed from country-house to country-house; she worked -in the slums; she sat on committees; she canvassed for parliamentary -friends; she hunted, she yachted, she sang, she broke hearts, and, by -all accounts, had high and resolute matrimonial ambitions. Would Eppie -Gifford "get" So-and-so was a question that Gavan had heard more than -once repeated, with the graceless terseness of our modern colloquialism, -and it spoke much for Eppie's popularity that it was usually asked in -sympathy. - -This reputation for a direct and vigorous worldliness was only thrown -into more pungent relief by the startling tale of her love-affair. She -had fallen in love, helplessly in love, with an impecunious younger son, -an officer in the Guards--a lazy, lovable, petulant nobody, the last -type one would have expected her to lose her head over. He was not -stupid, but he didn't count and never would. The match would have been a -reckless one, for Eppie had, practically, only enough to pay for her -clothes and her traveling expenses. The handsome guardsman had not even -prospects. Yet, deliberately sacrificing all her chances, she had fallen -in love, been radiantly engaged, and then, from the radiance, flung into -stupefying humiliation. He had thrown her over, quite openly, for an -ugly little heiress from Liverpool. Poor Eppie had carried off her -broken heart--and she didn't deny that it was broken--for a year or so -of travel. This had happened four years ago. She had mended as bravely -as possible,--it wasn't a deep break after all,--and on the thrilling -occasion of her first meeting with the faithless lover and his bride was -magnificently sweet and regal to the ugly heiress. It was surmised that -the husband was as uncomfortable as he deserved to be. But this capacity -for recklessness, this picture of one so dauntless, dazed and -discomfited, hardly redeemed the other, the probably fundamental aspect. -She had lost her head; but that didn't prove that when she had it she -would not make the best possible use of it. There was talk now--Eppie's -was the publicity of popularity--of Gavan's old-time rival, Grainger, -who had inherited an immense fortune and, unvarnished and defiantly -undecorative on his lustrous background, was one of the world's prizes. -All that he had was at Eppie's feet, and some more brilliant alternative -could be the only cause for hesitation in a young woman seared by -misfortune and cured forever of folly. - -So the talk went, and Gavan took such gabble with a large pinch of -ironic incredulity; but at the same time the gossip left its trail. The -impetuous and devastating young lady, with her assurance and her aim at -large successes, was to him a distasteful figure. There was pain in -linking it with little Eppie. It stood waiting in the wings and was -altogether novel and a little menacing to one's peace of mind. He really -did not want to see Miss Gilford; she belonged to a modern type -intensely wearisome to him. But she was staying with her uncle and -aunt--only Miss Barbara was left--at Kirklands, and the general, after a -meeting in London, had written begging him to pay them all a visit, and, -since there had seemed no reason for not going, here he was. - -Here he was, and round the corner of the wing the new Eppie stood -waiting. Poor little Eppie of childhood--she was lost forever. - -But all the clearness of the night concentrated, at dawn, into that -vivid memory of the past where they had wandered together, sharing joy -and sorrow. - -That was long, long over. To-morrow was already here, and to-morrow -belonged to the new Eppie. - - - - -III - - -Gavan spent the morning in Edinburgh, seeing an old relative, and -reached Kirklands at six. - -It was a cold October evening, the moors like a dark, sullenly heaving -ocean and a heavy bar of sunset lying along the horizon. - -The windows of the old white house mirrored the dying color, and here -and there the inner light of fire and candle seemed like laughter on a -grave face. With all its loneliness it was a happy-looking house; he -remembered that; and in the stillness of the vast moors and the coming -night it made him think of a warmly throbbing heart filling with courage -and significance a desolate life. - -The general came from the long oak library, book in hand, to welcome -him. Gavan was almost automatically observant of physical processes and -noted now the pronounced limp, the touch of garrulity--symptoms of the -fine old organism's placid disintegration. Life was leaving it -unreluctantly, and the mild indifference of age made his cordiality at -once warmer and more impersonal than of old. - -As he led Gavan to his room, the room of boyhood, near Eppie's, -overlooking the garden and the wooded hills, he told him that Eppie and -Miss Barbara were dressing and that he would have time for a talk with -them before dinner at eight. - -"It's changed since you were here, Gavan. Ah! time goes--it goes. Poor -Rachel! we lost her five years ago. If Eppie didn't look after us so -well we should be lonely, Barbara and I. We seldom get away now. Too old -to care for change. But Eppie always gives us three or four months, and -a letter once a week while she's away. She puts us first. This is home, -she says. She sees clever people at Alicia Waring's, has the world at -her feet,--you've heard, no doubt,--but she loves Kirklands best. She -gardens with me--a great gardener Eppie, but she is good at anything she -sets herself to; she drives her aunt about, she reads to us and sings to -us,--you have heard of her singing, too,--keeps us in touch with life. -Eppie is a wonderful person for sharing happiness," the general -monologued, looking about the fire-lit room; and Gavan felt that, from -this point of view, some of the little Eppie might still have survived. - -"So you have given up the idea of the House?" the general went on. - -"I'm no good at it," said Gavan; "I've proved it." - -"Proved it? Nonsense. Wait till you are fifty before saying that. Why, -you've everything in your favor. You weren't enough in earnest; that was -the trouble. You didn't care enough; you played into your opponents' -hands. The British public doesn't understand idealism or irony. Eppie -told us all about it." - -"Eppie? How did Eppie know?" He found himself using her little name as a -matter of course. - -"She knows everything," the general rejoined, with his air of happy, -derived complacency; "even when she's not in England, she never loses -touch. Eppie is very much behind the scenes." - -The simile recalled to Gavan his own vision of the stage and the waiting -figure. "Even behind my scenes!" he ejaculated, smiling at so much -omniscience. - -"From the moment you came into public life, yes." - -"And she knows why I failed at it? Idealism and irony?" - -"That's what she says; and I usually find Eppie right." The general, -after the half-humorous declaration, had a pause, and before leaving his -guest, he added, "Right, except about her own affairs. She is a child -there yet." - -Eppie's disaster must have been keenly felt and keenly resented at -Kirklands. The general made no further reference to it and Gavan asked -no question. - -There was a fire, a lamp, and several clusters of candles in the long, -dark library when Gavan entered it an hour later, so that the darkness -was full of light; yet he had wandered slowly down its length, looking -about him at the faded tan, russet, and gilt of well-remembered books, -at the massive chairs and tables, all in their old places, all so -intimately familiar, before seeing that he was not alone in the room. - -Some one in white was sitting, half submerged in a deep chair, behind -the table with its lamp--some one who had been watching him as he -wandered, and who now rose to meet him, taking him so unawares that she -startled him, all the light in the dim room seeming suddenly to center -upon her and she herself to throw everything, even his former thoughts -of her, into the background. - -It was Eppie, of course, and all that he had heard of her, all that he -had conjectured, fell back before the impression that held him in a -moment, long, really dazzled, yet very acute. - -Her face was narrow, pale, faintly freckled; the jaw long, the nose -high-bridged, the lips a little prominent; and, as he now saw, a clear -flush sprang easily to her cheeks. Eyes, lips, and hair were vivid with -color: the hair, with its remembered rivulets of russet and gold, piled -high on her head, framing the narrow face and the long throat; the eyes -gray or green or gold, like the depths of a mountain stream. - -He had heard many analogies for the haunting and fugitive charm of Miss -Gifford's face--a charm that could only, apparently, be caught with the -subtleties of antithesis. One appreciator had said that she was like an -angelic jockey; another, that with a statesman's gaze she had a baby's -smile; another, that she was a Flying Victory done by Velasquez. And -with his own dominant impression of strength, sweetness, and daring, -there crowded other similes. Her eyes had the steeplechaser's hard, -smiling scrutiny of the next jump; the halloo of the hunt under a -morning sky was in them, the joyous shouts of Spartan boys at play; yet, -though eyes of heroism and laughter, they were eyes sad and almost -tragically benignant. - -She was tall, with the spare lightness of a runner poised for a race, -and the firm, ample breast of a hardy nymph. She suggested these pagan, -outdoor similes while, at the same time, luxuriously feminine in her -more than fashionable aspect, the last touches of modernity were upon -her: her dress, the eighteenth-century, interpreted by Paris, her -decorations all discretion and distinction--a knot of silver-green at -her breast, an emerald ring on her finger, and emerald earrings, two -drops of smooth, green light, trembling in the shadows of her hair. - -Altogether Gavan was able to grasp the impression even further, to -simplify it, to express at once its dazzled quality and its acuteness, -as various and almost violent, as if, suddenly, every instrument in an -orchestra were to strike one long, clear, vibrating note. - -His gaze had been prolonged, and hers had answered it with as open an -intentness. And it was at last she who took both his hands, shook them a -little, holding them while, not shyly, but with that vivid flush on her -cheek, "_You_," she said. - -For she was startled, too. It _was_ he. She remembered, as if she had -seen them yesterday, his air of quick response, surface-shrinking, deep -composure, the old delicious smile, and the glance swiftly looking and -swiftly averted. - -"And _you_," Gavan repeated. "I haven't changed so much, though," he -said. - -"And I have? Really much? Long skirts and turned up hair are a -transformation. It's wonderful to see you, Gavan. It makes one get hold -of the past and of oneself in it." - -"Does it?" - -"_Doesn't_ it?" She let go his hands, and moving to the fire and -standing before it while she surveyed him, she went on, not waiting for -an answer: - -"But I don't suppose that you have my keenness of memory. It all rushes -back--our walks, our games, our lessons, the smell of the heather, the -very taste of the heather-honey we ate at tea, and all the things you -did and said and looked; your building the Petit Trianon, and your -playing dolls with me that day; your Agnes, in her pink dress, and my -Elspeth, whom I used to whip so." - -"I remember it all," said Gavan, "and I remember how I broke poor -Elspeth." - -"Do you?" - -"All of it: the attic windows and the pine-tree under them, and the -great white bird, and the dreadful, soft little thud on the garden -path." - -"Yes, I can see your face looking down. You were quite silent and -frozen. I screamed and screamed. Aunt Barbara thought that _you_ had -fallen at first from the way I screamed." - -"Poor little Eppie. Yes, I remember; it was horrid." - -Their eyes, smiling, quizzical, yet sad, watched, measured each other, -while they exchanged these trophies from the past. He had joined her -beside the fire, and, turning, she leaned her hands on the mantel and -looked into the flames. So looking, her face had its aspect of almost -tragic brooding. It was as if, Gavan thought, under the light memories, -all those visions of his night were there before her, as if, -astonishingly, and in almost uncanny measure, she shared them. - -"And do you remember Robbie?" she asked presently. - -"I was just thinking of Robbie," Gavan answered. It was her face that -had brought back the old sorrow, and that memory, more than any, linked -them over all that was new and strange. They glanced at each other. - -"I am so glad," said Eppie. - -"Because I remember?" - -"Yes, that you haven't forgotten. You said you would." - -"Did I?" he asked, though he quite remembered that, too. - -"Yes; and I should have felt Robbie more dead if you had forgotten him." - -This was wonderfully not the Miss Gifford, and wonderfully the old -Eppie. She saw that thought, too, answering it with, "Things haven't -really changed so much, have they? It's all so very near--all of that." - -So near, that its sudden sharing was making Gavan a little -uncomfortable, with the discomfort of the night before justified, -intensified. - -He hadn't imagined such familiar closeness with a woman really unknown, -nor that, sweeping away all the formalities that might have grown up -between them, she should call him Gavan and make it natural for him to -call her Eppie. He didn't really mind. It was amusing, charming perhaps, -perhaps even touching--yes, of course it was that; but she was rather -out of place: much nearer than where he had imagined she would be, on -the stage before him. - -Passing to another memory, she now said, "I clung for years, you know, -to your promise to come back." - -"I couldn't come--really and simply could not." - -"I never for a moment thought you could, any more than I thought you -could forget Robbie." - -"And when I could come, you were gone." - -"How miserable that made me! I was in Rome when I had the news from -Uncle Nigel." - -He felt bound fully to exonerate the past. "I had the life, during my -boyhood, of a sumptuous galley-slave. I had everything except liberty -and leisure. I was put into a system and left there until it had had its -will of me. And when I was free I imagined that you had forgotten all -about me. To a shy, warped boy, a grown-up Eppie was an alarming idea." - -"I never thought you had forgotten _me_!" said Eppie, smiling. - -Again she actually disturbed him; but, lightly, he replied with the -truth, feeling a certain satisfaction in its lightness: "Never, never; -though, of course, you fell into a background. You can't deny that _I_ -did." - -"Oh, no, I don't deny it." Her smile met his, seemed placidly to -perceive its meaning. She did not for a moment imply, by her admissions, -any more than he did; the only question was, What did his admissions -imply? - -She left them there, going on in an apparent sequence, "Have you heard -much about me, Gavan?" - -"A good deal," he owned. - -"I ask because I want to pick up threads; I want to know how many -stitches are dropped, so to speak. Since you have heard, I want to know -just what; I often seem to leave reverberations behind me. Some rather -ugly ones, I fear. You heard, perhaps, that I was that rather ambiguous -being, the young woman of fashion, materialistic, ambitious, hard." Her -gaze, with its cool scrutiny, was now upon him. - -"Those are really too ugly names for what I heard. I gathered, on the -whole, that you were merely very vigorous and that you had more -opportunities than most people for vigor." - -"I'm glad that you saw it so; but all the same, the truth, at times, -hasn't been beautiful. I have, often, been too indifferent toward people -who didn't count for me, and too diplomatic toward those who did. You -see, Gavan," she put it placidly before him, not at all as if drawing -near in confidence,--she was much further in her confidences than in her -memories,--but merely as if she unrolled a map before him so that he -might clearly see where, at present, they found themselves, "you see, I -am a nearly penniless girl--just enough to dress and go about. Of course -if I didn't dress and didn't go about I could keep body and soul -together; but to the shrewd eyes of the world, a girl living on her -friends, making capital of her personality, while she seeks a husband -who will give her the sort of place she wants--oh, yes, the world isn't -so unfair, either, when one takes off the veils. And this girl, with the -personality that pays, was put early in a place from where she could see -all sorts of paths at once, see the world, in its ladder aspect, before -her--all the horridness of low rungs and all the satisfaction of high -ones. I have been tempted through complexity of understanding; perhaps I -still am. One wants the best; and when one doesn't see clearly what the -best is, one is in danger of becoming ugly. But echoes are often -distorting." - -Miss Gifford was now very fully before him, as she had evidently -intended to be. It was as if she herself had drawn between them the -barrier of the footlights and as if, on her chosen stage, she swept a -really splendid curtsey. And this frank and panoplied young woman of the -world was far easier to deal with than the reminiscent Eppie. He could -comfortably smile and applaud from his stall, once more the mere -spectator--easiest of attitudes. - -"The echoes, on the whole, were rather magnificent, as if an Amazon had -galloped across mountains and left them calling her prowess from peak to -peak." - -Her eyes, quickly on his, seemed to measure the conscious artificiality, -to compare it with what he had already, more helplessly, shown her. He -felt his rather silly deftness penetrated and that she guessed that the -mountain calls had not at all enchanted him. She owned to her own -acuteness in her next words: - -"And you don't like young ladies to gallop across mountains. Well, I -love galloping, though I'm sorry that I leave over-loud echoes. You, at -all events, are noiseless. You seem to have sailed over my head in an -air-boat. It was hard for me to keep any trace of you." - -"But I don't at all mean that I dislike Amazons to have their rides." - -"Let us talk of you now. I have had an eye on you, you know, even when -you disappeared into the Indian haze; you had just disappeared when I -first came to London. I only heard of lofty things--scholarly -distinction, diplomatic grace, exquisite indifference to the world's -prizes and to noisy things in general. It's all true, I can see." - -"Well, I'm not indifferent to you," said Gavan, smiling, tossing his -appropriate bouquet. - -She had at this another, but a sharper, of her penetrative pauses. It -was pretty to see her, rather like a deer arrested in its careless -speed, suddenly wary, its head high. And, in another moment, he saw that -the quick flush, almost violently, sprang to her cheek. Turning her head -a little from him, she looked away, almost as if his glib acceptance of -a frivolous meaning in her words abashed her--and more for him than for -herself; as if she suddenly suspected him of being stupid enough to -accept her at the uglier valuation of those echoes he had heard. She had -not meant to say that she was one of the world's prizes, and she had -perhaps meant to say, generously, that if he found her noisy she -wouldn't resent indifference. Perhaps she had meant to say nothing of -herself at all. She certainly wasn't on the stage, and in thinking her -so he felt that he had shown himself disloyal to something that she, -more nobly, had taken for granted. The flush, so vivid, that stayed made -him feel himself a blunderer. - -But, in a moment, she went on with a lightness of allusion to his speech -that yet oddly answered the last turn of his self-reproach. "Oh, you are -loyal, I am sure, even to a memory. I wasn't thinking of particulars, -but of universals. My whole impression of you was of something fragrant, -elusive, impalpable. I never felt that I had a glimpse of really _you_. -It was almost gross in comparison actually to see your name in the -papers, to read of your fight for Camley, to think of you in that -earthly scuffle. It was like roast-beef after roses; and I was glad, -because I'm gross. I like roast-beef." - -He was grateful to her for the lightness that carried him so kindly over -his own blunder. - -"It was only the fragrance of the roast, too, you see, since I was -defeated," he said. - -"You didn't mind a bit, did you?" - -"It would sound, wouldn't it, rather like sour grapes to say it?" - -"You can say it. It was so obvious that you might have had the bunch by -merely stretching out your hand--they were under it, not over your head. -You simply wouldn't play the game." She left him now, reaching her chair -with a long stride and a curving, gleaming turn of her white skirts, -suggesting a graceful adaptation of some outdoor dexterity. As she -leaned back in her chair, fixing him with that look of cheerful -hardness, she made him think so strongly of the resolute, winning type, -that almost involuntarily he said, "You would have played it, wouldn't -you?" - -"I should think so! I care for the grapes, you see. It's what I -said--you didn't care enough." - -"Well, it's kind of you to see ineffectuality in that light." Still -examining the steeplechaser quality, he added, "You do care, don't you, -a lot?" - -"Yes, a lot. I am worldly to my finger-tips." Her eyes challenged -him--gaily, not defiantly--to misunderstand her again. - -"What do you mean, exactly, by worldly?" he asked. - -"I mean by it that I believe in the world, that I love the world; I -believe that its grapes are worth while,--and by grapes I mean the -things that people strive for and that the strong attain. The higher -they hang and the harder the climb, the more I like them." - -Gavan received these interpretations without comment. "A seat in the -House isn't very high, though, is it?" he remarked. - -"That depends on the sitter. It might be a splendid or a trivial thing." - -"And in my case, if I'd got it, what would it have been? Can you see -that, too, you very clear-sighted young woman?" - -He stood above her, smiling, but now without suavity or artificiality; -looking at her as though she were a pretty gipsy whose palm he had -crossed with silver. And Eppie answered, quite like a good-natured -gipsy, conscious of an admiring but skeptical questioner, "I think it -would have been neither." - -"But what then? What would this sitter have made of it?" - -"A distraction? An experiment upon himself? I'm sure I don't know. -Indeed, I don't pretend to know you at all yet. Perhaps I will in time." - -Once more he was conscious of the discomfort, slight and stealing, as -though the gipsy knew too much already. But he protested, and with -sincerity: "If there is anything to find you will certainly find it. I -hope that you will find it worth your while. I hope that we shall be -great friends." - -She smiled up at him, clearly and quietly: "I have always been your -great friend." - -"Always? All this while?" - -"All this while. Never mind if you haven't felt it; I have. I will do -for both." - -Her smile, her look, made him finally and completely understand the -application of the well-worn word to her. She was charming. She could be -lavish, pour out unasked bounty upon one, and yet, in no way -undervaluing it, be full of delicacy, of humor, in her generosity. - -"I thought I hadn't any right to feel it," said Gavan. "I thought you -would not have remembered." - -"Well, you will find out--I always remember, it's my strong point," said -Eppie. - - - - -IV - - -Next morning at breakfast he had quite a new impression of her. - -Pale sunlight flooded the square, white room where, in all its dignified -complexity of appurtenance, the simple meal was laid out. From the -windows one saw the clear sky, the moor, its summer purple turned to -rich browns and golds, and, nearer, the griffins with their shields. - -Eppie was a little late in coming, and Gavan, while he and the general -finished their wandering consumption of porridge and sat down to bacon -and eggs, had time to observe by daylight in Miss Barbara, behind her -high silver urn, the changes that in her were even more emphatic than in -her brother. She was sweeter than ever, more appealing, more -affirmative, with all manner of futile, fluttering little gestures and -gentle, half-inarticulate little ejaculations of pleasure, approbation, -or distress. Her smile, rather silly, worked too continually, as though -moved by slackened wires. Her hands defined, described, ejaculated; -over-expression had become automatic with her. - -Eppie, when she appeared, said that she had had a walk, stooping to -kiss her aunt and giving Gavan a firm, chill hand on her way to the same -office for the general. She took her seat opposite Gavan, whistling an -Irish-terrier to her from the door and, before she began to eat, -dropping large fragments of bannock into his mouth. Her loose, frieze -clothes smelled of peat and sunshine; her hair seemed to have the -sparkle of the dew on it; she suggested mountain tarns, skylarks, -morning gladness: but, with all this, Gavan, for the first time, now -that she faced the hard, high light, saw how deeply, too, she suggested -sadness. - -Her face had moments of looking older than his own. It was fresh, it was -young, but it had lived a great deal, and felt things to the bone, as it -were. - -There were little wrinkles about her eyes; her white brow, under its -sweep of hair, was faintly lined; the oval of her cheek, long and fine, -took, at certain angles, an almost haggard sharpness. It was not a faded -face, nor a face to wither with years: every line of it spoke of a -permanent beauty; but, with all the color that the chill morning air had -brought into it, it yet made one think of bleak uplands, of -weather-beaten cliffs. Life had engraved it with ineffaceable symbols. -Storms had left their mark, bitter conflicts and bitter endurances. - -While she ate, with great appetite, she talked incessantly, to the -general, to Miss Barbara, to Gavan, but not so much to him, tossing, in -the intervals of her knife and fork and cup, bits of food to the -attentive terrier. He saw why the old people adored her. She was the -light, the movement of their monotonous days. Not only did she bring -them her life: it was their own that she vivified with her interest. The -interest was not assumed, dutiful. There was no touch of the conscious -being kind. She questioned as eagerly as she told. She knew and cared -for every inch of the country, every individual in the country-side. She -was full of sagacity and suggestion, full of anecdote and a nipping -Scotch humor. And one felt strongly in her the quality of old race. -Experience was in her blood, an inheritance of instinct, and, that so -significant symptom, the power of playfulness--the intellectual -detachment that, toward firm convictions, could afford a lightness -scandalous to more crudely compacted natures, could afford gaieties and -audacities, like the flights of a bird tethered by an invisible thread -to a strong hand. - -Miss Barbara, plaintively repining over village delinquencies, was lured -to see comedy lurking in the cases of insubordination and -thriftlessness, though at the mention of Archie MacHendrie, the local -drunkard and wife-beater, Eppie's brow grew black--with a blackness -beside which Miss Barbara's gloom was pallid. Eppie said that she wished -some one would give Archie a thrashing, and Gavan could almost see her -doing it herself. - -From local topics she followed the general to politics, while he glanced -down the columns of the "Scotsman," so absorbed and so vehement that, -meeting at last Gavan's meditative eye, she seemed to become aware of an -irony he had not at all intended, and said, "A crackling of thorns under -a pot, all this, Gavan thinks, and, what does it all matter? You have -become a philosopher, Gavan; I can see that." - -"Well, my dear, from Plato down philosophers have thought that politics -did matter," said the general, incredulous of indifference to such a -topic. - -"Unless they were of a school that thought that nothing did," said -Eppie. - -"Gavan's not of that weak-kneed persuasion." - -"Oh, he isn't weak-kneed!" laughed Eppie. - -She drove her aunt all morning in the little pony-cart and wrote letters -after lunch, Gavan being left to the general's care. It was not until -later that she assumed toward him the more personal offices of deputy -hostess, meeting him in the hall as she emerged from the morning-room, -her thick sheaf of letters in her hand, and proposing a walk before tea. -She took him up the well-remembered path beside the burn; but now, in -the clear autumnal afternoon, he seemed further from her than last night -before the fire. Already he had seen that the sense of nearness or -distance depended on her will rather than his own; so that it was now -she who chose to talk of trivial things, not referring by word or look -to the old memories, deepest of all, that crowded about him on the -hilltop, not even when, breasting the wind, they passed the solitary -group of pine-trees, where she had so deeply shared his suffering, so -wonderfully comprehended his fears. - -She strode against the twisted flappings of her skirt, tawny strands of -hair whipping across her throat, her hands deeply thrust into her -pockets, her head unbowed before the enormous buffets of the wind, and -he felt anew the hardy energy that would make tender, lingering touches -upon the notes of the past rare things with her. - -In the uproar of air, any sequence of talk was difficult. Her clear -voice seemed to shout to him, like the cold shocks of a mountain stream -leaping from ledge to ledge, and the trivial things she said were like -the tossing of spray upon that current of deep, joyful energy. - -"Isn't it splendid!" she exclaimed at last. They had walked two miles -along the crest of the hill, and, smiling in looking round at him, her -face, all the sky behind it, all the wind around it, made the word match -his own appreciation. - -"Splendid," he assented, thinking of her glance and poise. - -Still bending her smile upon him, she said, "You already look -different." - -"Different from what?" he asked, amused by her expression, as of a -kindly, diagnosing young doctor. - -"From last night. From what I felt of you. One might have thought that -you had lost the capacity for feeling splendor." - -"Why should you have imagined me so deadened?" He kept his cheerful -curiosity. - -"I don't know. I did. There,"--she paused to point,--"do you remember -the wind-mill, Gavan? The old miller is dead and his son is the miller -now; but the mill looks just as it did when we were little. It makes one -think of birds and ships, doesn't it?--with the beauty that it stays and -doesn't pass. When I was a child--did I ever confide it to you?--my -dream was to catch one of the sails as it came down and let it carry me -up, up, and right around. What fun it would have been! I suppose that -one could have held on." - -"In pretty grim earnest, after the first fun." - -"It would be the sense of coming grimness that would make the desperate -thrill of it." - -"You are fond of thrills and perils." - -"Not fond, exactly; the love of risk is a deeper thing--something -fundamental in us, I suppose." - -She had walked on, down the hillside, where gorse bushes pulled at her -skirts, and he was putting together last night's impressions with -to-day's, and thinking that if she embodied the instinctive, the -life-loving, it wasn't in the simple, unreflecting forms that the words -usually implied. She was simple, but not in the least guileless, and her -directness was a choice among recognized complexities. It was no -spontaneous child of nature who, on the quieter hillside, where they -could talk, talked of India, now, of his life there, the people he had -known, many of whom she too knew. He knew that he was being managed, -being made to talk of what she wanted to hear, that she was still -engaged in penetrating. He was quite willing to be managed, -penetrated,--for as far as she could get; he could rely on his own -deftness in retreat before too deep a probe, though, should she discover -that for him the lessons of life had resulted in an outlook perhaps the -antipodes from her own, he guessed that her own would show no wavering. -Still, she should run, if possible, no such risk. They were to be -friends, good friends: that was, as she had said, not only an -accomplished, but a long-accomplished fact; but, even more than in -childhood, she would be a friend held at arm's-length. - -Meanwhile, unconscious, no doubt, of these barriers, Eppie walked beside -him and made him talk about himself. She knew, of course, of his -mother's death; she did not speak of that: many barriers were her -own--she was capable of most delicate avoidances. But she asked after -his father. "He is still alive, I hear." - -"Yes, indeed, and gives me a good deal of his company." - -"Oh." She was a little at a loss. He could guess at what she had heard -of his father. He went on, though choosing his words in a way that -showed a slight wincing behind his wish to be very frank and friendly -with her, for even yet his father made him wince, standing, as he did, -for the tragedy of his mother's life: "He is very much alive for a -person so gone to pieces. But I can put up with him far more comfortably -than when he was less pitiable." - -"How much do you have to put up with him?" she asked, trying to image, -as he saw, his menage in Surrey, in the house he had just been -describing to her, its old bricks all vague pinks and mauves, its -high-walled gardens clustering near it, its wonderful hedges, that, he -said, it ruined him to keep up to their reputation of exquisite -formality; and, within, its vast library--all the house a brain, -practically, the other rooms like mere places for life's renewal before -centering in the intellectual workshop. She evidently found it difficult -to place, among the hedges, the lawns, the long walls of the library, a -father, gone to pieces perhaps, but displaying all the more helplessly -his general unworthiness. Even in lenient circles, Captain Palairet was -thought to have an undignified record. - -"Oh, he is there for most of the time. He is there now," said Gavan, -without pathos. "He has no money left, and now that I've a little I'm -the obvious thing to retire to." - -"I hope that it's not very horrid for you." - -"I can't say that it's horrid at all. I don't see much of him, and, in -many respects, he has remained, for the onlooker, rather a charming -creature. He gives me very little trouble--smokes, eats, plays -billiards. When we meet, we are very affable." - -Eppie did not say, "You tolerate him because he is piteous," but he -imagined that she guessed it. - - - - -V - - -He was awakened early next morning by the sound of singing in the garden -below. - -His windows were widely opened and a cold, pure air filled the room. He -lay dreamily listening for some moments before recognizing Eppie's -voice--recognizing it, though he had never heard her sing. - -Fresh and strong, it put a new vitality into the simple sadness of an -old Scotch ballad, as though in the very sorrow it found joy. It was not -an emotional voice. Clearly and firmly it sounded, and seemed a part of -the frosty, sunny morning, part of the sky that was like a great chalice -filled with light, of the whitened hills, the aromatic pine-woods, and -the distant, rushing burn. He had sprung up after the first dreamy -listening and looked out at it all, and at her walking through the -garden, her dog at her heels. She went out by the little gate sunken -deep in the wall, and disappeared in the woods; and still the voice -reached him, singing on, and at each repetition of the monotonous, -departing melody, a sadder, sweeter sense of pain strove in his heart. - -He listened, looking down at the pine-tree beneath the window, at the -garden, the summer-house, the withered tangle of the rose upon the wall, -and up at the hilltop, at the crystalline sky; and such a sudden pang of -recollection pierced him that tears came to his eyes. - -What was it that he remembered? or, rather, what did he not? Things deep -and things trivial, idle smiles, wrenching despairs, youth, sorrow, -laughter,--all the past was in the pang, all the future, too, it seemed, -and he could not have said whether his mother, Alice, Eppie with her -dolls, and little Robbie, or the clairvoyant intuition of a future -waiting for him here--whether presage or remembrance--were its greater -part. - -Not until the voice had died, in faintest filaments of sound, far away -among the woods, did the pain fade, leaving him shaken. Such moods were -like dead things starting to life, and reminded him too vividly of the -fact that as long as one was alive, one was, indeed, in danger from -life; and though his thought was soon able to disentangle itself from -the knot of awakened emotions that had entwined it for a moment, a vague -sense of fear remained with him. Something had been demanded of -him--something that he had, involuntarily, found himself giving. This it -was to have still a young nature, sensitive to impressions. He -understood. Yet it was with a slight, a foolishly boyish reluctance, as -he told himself, that he went down some hours later to meet Eppie at -breakfast. - -There was an unlooked-for refuge for him when he found her hardly -noticing him, and very angry over some village misdemeanor. The anger -held her far away. She dilated on the subject all during breakfast, -pouring forth her wrath, without excitement, but with a steady -vehemence. It was an affair of a public-house, and Eppie accused the -publican of enticing his clients to drink, of corrupting the village -sobriety, and she urged the general, as local magistrate, to take -immediate action, showing a very minute knowledge of the technicalities -of the case. - -"My dear," the general expostulated, "indeed I don't think that the man -has done anything illegal; we are powerless about the license in such a -case. You must get more evidence." - -"I have any amount of evidence. The man is a public nuisance. Poor Mrs. -MacHendrie was crying to me about it this morning. Archie is hardly ever -sober now. I shall drive over to Carlowrie and see Sir Alec about it; as -the wretch's landlord he can make it uncomfortable for him, and I'll see -that he makes it as uncomfortable as possible." - -Laughingly, but slightly harassed, the general said: "You see, we have a -tyrant here. Eppie is really a bit too hard on the man. He is an -unpleasant fellow, I own, a most unpleasant manner--a beast, if you -will, but a legal beast." - -"The most unpleasant form of animal, isn't it? It's very good of Eppie -to care so much," said Gavan. - -"You don't care, I suppose," she said, turning her eyes on him, as -though she saw him for the first time that morning. - -"I should feel more hopeless about it, perhaps." - -"Why, pray?" - -"At all events, I shouldn't be able to feel so much righteous -indignation." - -"Why not?" - -"He is pretty much of a product, isn't he?--not worse, I suppose, than -the men whose weakness enriches him. It's a pity, of course, that one -can't painlessly pinch such people out of existence, as one would -offensive insects." - -Eppie, across the table, eyed him, her anger quieted. "He is a product -of a good many things," she said, now in her most reasonable manner, -"and he is going to be a product of some more before I'm done with -him,--a product of my hatred for him and his kind, for one thing. That -will be a new factor in his development. Gavan," she smiled, "you and I -are going to quarrel." - -"Dear Eppie!" Miss Barbara interposed. "Gavan, you must not take her -seriously; she so often says extravagant things just to tease one." -Really dismayed, alternately nodding and shaking her head in reassurance -and protest, she looked from one to the other. "And don't, dear, say -such unchristian things of anybody. She is not so hard and unforgiving -as she sounds, Gavan." - -"Aunt Barbara! Aunt Barbara!" laughed Eppie, leaning her elbows on the -table, her eyes still on Gavan, "my hatred for Macdougall isn't nearly -as unchristian as Gavan's indifference. I don't want to pinch him -painlessly out of life at all. I think that life has room for us both. I -want to have him whipped, or made uncomfortable in some way, until he -becomes less horrid." - -"Whipped, dear! People are never whipped nowadays! It was a very -barbarous punishment indeed, and, thank God, we have outgrown it. We -will outgrow it all some day. And as to any punishment, I don't know, I -really don't. Resist not evil," Miss Barbara finished in a vague, -helpless murmur, uncertain as to what course would at once best apply to -Macdougall's case and satisfy the needs of public sobriety. - -"Perhaps one owes it to people to resist them," Eppie answered. - -"Oh, Eppie dear, if only you cared a little more for Maeterlinck!" -sighed Miss Barbara, the more complex readings of whose later years had -been somewhat incongruously adapted to her early simple faiths. "Do you -remember that beautiful thing he says,--and Gavan's attitude reminds me -of it,--'_Le sage qui passe interrompt mille drames'?_" - -"You will be quoting Tolstoi to me next, Aunt Barbara. I suspect that -such sages would interrupt a good deal more than dramas." - -"I hope that you care for Tolstoi, Gavan," said Miss Barbara, not -forgetful of his boyish pieties. "Not the novels,--they are very, very -sad, and so long, and the characters have such a number of names it is -most confusing,--but the dear little books on religion. It is all there: -love of all men, and non-resistance of evil, and self-renunciation." - -"Yes," Gavan assented, while Eppie looked rather gravely at him. - -"How beautiful this world would be if we could see it so--no hatred, no -strife, no evil." - -Again Gavan assented with, "None." - -"None; and no life either," Eppie finished for them. - -She rose, thrusting her hands into alternate pockets looking for a -note-book, which she found and consulted. "I'm off for the fray, Uncle -Nigel, for hatred and strife. You and Gavan are going to shoot, so I'll -bring you your lunch at the corner of the Carlowrie woods." - -"So that you and Gavan may continue your quarrel there. Very well. I -prefer listening." - -"Gavan understands that Eppie must not be taken seriously," Miss Barbara -interposed; but Eppie rejoined, drawing on her gloves, "Indeed, I intend -to be taken seriously. I quarrel with people I like as well as with -those I hate." - -"You are going to be a factor in my development, too?" said Gavan. - -"Of course, as you are in mine, as we all are in one another's. We can't -help that. And my attack on you shall be conscious." - -These open threats didn't at all alarm him. It was what was unconscious -in her that stirred disquiet. - -When Eppie had departed and the general had gone off to see to -preparations for the morning's shoot, Miss Barbara, still sitting rather -wistfully behind her urn, said: "I hope, dear Gavan, that you will be -able to influence Eppie a little. I am so thankful to find you unchanged -about all the deeper things of life. You could help her, I am sure. She -needs guidance. She is so loving, so clever, a joy to Nigel and to me; -but she is very headstrong, very reckless and wilful,--a will in -subjection to nothing but her own sense of right. It's not that she is -altogether irreligious,--thank Heaven for that,--but she hasn't any of -the happiness of religion. There is no happiness, is there, Gavan--I -feel sure that you see it as I do,--but in having our lives stayed on -the Eternal?" - -Gavan, as it was very easy to do, assented again. - -He spent the morning with the general in shooting over the rather scant -covers, and at two, in a sheltered bend of the woods, where the sunlight -lay still and bright, Eppie joined them, bringing the lunch-basket in -her dog-cart. - -She was in a very good humor, and while, sitting above them, she -dispensed rations, announced to her uncle the result of her visit to Sir -Alec. - -"He thinks he can turn him out if any flagrant ease of drunkenness -occurs again. We talked over the conditions of his lease." - -"Carston, I am sure, doesn't care a snap of his fingers about it." - -"Of course not; but he cares that I care." - -"You see, Gavan, by what strings the world is pulled. Carston hasn't two -ideas in his head." - -"Luckily I am here to use his empty head to advantage. I wheedled Lady -Carston, too,--the bad influence Macdougall had on church-going. Lady -Carston's one idea, Gavan, is the keeping of the Sabbath. Altogether it -was an excellent morning's work." Eppie was cheerful and triumphant. She -was eating from a plate on her knees and drinking milk out of a little -silver cup. "Do you think me a tiresome, managing busybody, Gavan?" She -smiled down at him, and her lashes catching the sunlight, an odd, misty -glitter half veiled her eyes. "You look," she added, "as you used to -look when you were a little boy. The years collapsed just then." - -He was conscious that, under her sudden glance, he had, indeed, looked -shy. It was not her light question, but the strange depth of her -half-closed eyes. - -"I find a great deal of the old Eppie in you: I remember that you used -to want to bully the village people for their good." - -"I'm still a bully, I think, but a more discreet one. Won't you have -some milk, Gavan? You used to love milk when you were a little boy. Have -you outgrown that?" - -"Not at all. I should still love some; but don't rob yourself." - -"There 's heaps here. I've no spare glass. Do you mind?" She held out to -him the silver cup, turning its untouched edge to him, something -maternal in the gesture, in the down-looking of her sun-dazed eyes. - -He felt himself foolishly flushing while he drank the milk; and when, -really seized by a silly childish shyness, he protested that he wanted -no more, she placidly, with an emphasizing of her air of sweet, -comprehending authority, said, "Oh, but you must; it holds almost -nothing." - -For the second time that day, as he obediently took from her hand the -innocent little cup, Gavan had the unreasoning impulse of tears. - -The sunny afternoon was silent. Overhead, the sky had its chalice look, -clear, benignant, brimmed with light. The general, the lolling dogs, -were part of the background, with the heather and the wood of larches, -the finely falling sprays delicately blurred upon the sky. - -It was again something sweet, sweet, simple and profound, that brought -again that pang of presage and of pain. But the pain was like a joy, and -the tears like tears of happiness in the sunny stillness, where her firm -and gentle hand gave him milk in a silver cup. - -The actual physical sensation of a rising saltness was an alarm signal -that, with a swift reversal of mental wheels, brought a revulsion of -consciousness. He saw himself threatened once more by nature's -enchantments: wily nature, luring one always back to life with looks -from comrade eyes, touches from comrade fingers, pastoral drinks all -seeming innocence, and embracing sunlight. Wily Circe. With a long -breath, the mirage was seen as mirage and the moment's dangerous -blossoming withered as if dust had been strewn over it. - - - - -VI - - -To see his own susceptibility so plainly was, he told himself, to be -safe from it; not safe from its pang, perhaps, but safe from its power, -and that was the essential thing. - -It was not to Eppie, as he further assured himself, that he was -susceptible. Eppie stood for life, personified its appeals; he could -feel, yet be unmoved, by all life's blandishments. - -Meanwhile on a very different plane--the after all remote plane of -mental encounters and skirmishes--he felt, with relief, that he was -entirely master of his own meaning. There were many of these skirmishes, -and though he did not believe any of them planned, believe that she was -carrying out her threat of conscious attack, he was aware that she was -alert and inquisitive, and dexterously quick at taking any occasion that -offered for further penetration. - -The first of these occasions was on Sunday evening when, after tea and -in the gloaming, they sat together in the deep window-seat of one of the -library windows and listened to Miss Barbara softly touching the chords -of a hymn on the plaintive old piano and softly singing--a most -unobtrusive accompaniment, at her distance and with her softness, for -any talk or any thoughts of theirs. They had talked very little, -watching the sunset burn itself out over the frosty moorland, and Gavan -presently, while he listened, closed his eyes and leaned his head back -upon the oak recess. Eppie, looking now from the sunset to him, observed -him with an open, musing curiosity. His head, leaning back in the dusk, -was like the ivory carving of a dead saint--a saint young, beautiful, at -peace after long sorrow. Peace; that was the quality that his whole -being expressed, though, with opened eyes, his face had the more human -look of patience, verging now and then on a quiet dejection that would -overspread his features like a veil. In boyhood, the peace, the placid -dejection, had not been there; his face then had shown the tension of -struggle and endurance. - - "Till in the ocean of thy love - We lose ourselves in heaven above," - -Miss Barbara quavered, and Gavan, opening his eyes at the closing -cadence, found Eppie's bent upon him. He smiled, and looked still more, -she thought, the sad saint, all benediction and indifference, and an -impulse of antagonism to such sainthood made her say, though smiling -back, "How I dislike those words." - -"Do you?" said Gavan. - -"Hate them? Why, dear child?" asked Miss Barbara, who had heard through -the sigh of her held-down pedal. - -"I don't want to lose myself," said Eppie. "But I didn't mean that I -wanted you to stop, Aunt Barbara. Do go on. I love to hear you sing, -however much I disapprove of the words." - -But Miss Barbara, clasping and unclasping her hands a little nervously, -and evidently finding the moment too propitious to be passed over, -backed as she was by an ally, rose and came to them. - -"That is the very point you are so mistaken about, dear. It's the self, -you know, that keeps us from love." - -"It's the self that makes love possible," said Eppie, taking her hand -and looking up at her. "Do you want to lose me, Aunt Barbara? If you -lose yourself you will have to lose me too, you know." - -Miss Barbara stood perplexed but not at all convinced by these -subtleties, turning mild eyes of query upon Gavan and evidently -expecting him to furnish the obvious retort. - -"We will all be at one with God," she reverently said at length, finding -that her ally left the defense to her. - -Eppie met this large retort cheerfully. "You can't love God unless you -have a self to love him with. I know what you mean, and perhaps I agree -with what you really mean; but I want to correct your Buddhistic -tendencies and to keep you a good Christian." - -"I humbly hope I'm that. You shouldn't jest on such subjects, Eppie -dear." - -"I'm not one bit jesting," Eppie protested. And now Gavan asked, while -Miss Barbara looked gratefully at him, sure of his backing, though she -might not quite be able to understand his methods, "Are they such -different creeds?" - -Still holding her aunt's hand and still looking up into her face, Eppie -answered: "One is despair of life, the other trust in life. One takes -all meaning out of life and the other fills it with meaning. The secret -of one is to lose life, and the secret of the other to gain it. There is -all the difference in the world between them; all the difference between -life and death." - -"As interpreted by Western youth and vigor, yes; but what of the -mystics? I suppose you would call them Christians?" - -"Yes, dear, they are Christians. What of them?" Miss Barbara echoed, -though slightly perturbed by this alliance with heathendom. - -"Buddhists, not Christians," Eppie retorted. - -"That's what I mean; in essentials they are the same creed: the -differences are only the differences of the races or individuals who -hold them." - -At this Miss Barbara's free hand began to flutter and protest. "Oh, but, -Gavan dear, there I'm quite sure that you are wrong. Buddhism is, I -don't doubt, a very noble religion, but it's not the true one. Indeed -they are not the same, Gavan, though Christianity, of course, is founded -on the renunciation of self. 'Lose your life to gain it,' Eppie dear." - -"Yes, to gain it, that's just the point. One renounces, and one wins a -realer self." - -"What is real? What is life?" Gavan asked, really curious to hear her -definition. - -She only needed a moment to find it, and, with her answer, gave him her -first glance during their battledore colloquy with innocent Aunt Barbara -as the shuttlecock. "Selves and love." - -"Well, of course, dear," Miss Barbara cried. "That's what heaven will -be. All love and peace and rest." - -"But you have left out the selves; you won't get love without them. And -as for rest and peace--Love is made by difference, so that as long as -there is love there must be restlessness." - -"Isn't it made by sameness?" Gavan asked. - -"No, by incompleteness: one loves what could complete oneself and what -one could complete; or so it seems to me." - -"And as long as there are selves, will there be suffering, too?" - -Her eyes met his thought fearlessly. - -"That question, I am sure, is the basis for all the religions of -cowardice, religions that deny life because of their craving for peace." - -"Isn't the craving for peace as legitimate as the craving for life?" - -"Nothing that denies life can be legitimate. Life is the one arbitrator. -And restlessness need not mean suffering. A symphony is all -restlessness--a restlessness made by difference in harmony; forgive the -well-worn metaphor, but it is a good one. And, suppose that it did mean -suffering, all of it. Isn't it worth it?" Her eyes measured him, not in -challenge, but quietly. - -"What a lover of life you are," he said. It was like seeing him go into -his house and, not hastily, but very firmly, shut the door. And as if, -rather rudely, she hurled a stone at the shut door, she asked, "Do you -love anything?" - -He smiled. "Please don't quarrel with me." - -"I wish I could make you quarrel. I suspect you of loving everything," -Eppie declared. - -She didn't pursue him further on this occasion, when, indeed, he might -accuse himself of having given her every chance; but on the next day, as -they sat out at the edge of the birch-wood in a wonderfully warm -afternoon sun, he, she, and Peter the dog (what a strange, changed echo -it was), she returned, very lightly, to their discussion, tossing merely -a few reconnoitering flowers in at his open window. - -She had never, since their remeeting, seemed to him so young. Holding a -little branch of birch, she broke off and aimed bits of its bark at a -tall gorse-bush near them. Peter basked, full length, in the sunlight at -their feet. The day had almost the indolent quiet of summer. - -Eppie said, irrelevantly, for they had not been talking of that, but of -people again, gossiping pleasantly, with gossip tempered to the day's -mildness: "I can't bear the religions of peace, you see--any faith that -takes the fight out of people. That Molly Carruthers I was telling you -about has become a Christian Scientist, and she is in an imbecile -condition of beatitude all the time. 'Isn't the happiness that comes of -such a faith proof enough?' she says to me. As if happiness were a -proof! A drunkard is happy. Some people seem to me spiritually tipsy, -and as unfit for usefulness as the drunkard. I think I distrust anything -that gives a final satisfaction." - -She amused him in her playing with half-apprehended thoughts. Her -assurance was as light as though they were the bits of birch-bark she -tossed. - -"You make me think a little of Nietzsche," he said. - -"I should rather like Nietzsche right side up, I think. As he is -standing on his head most of the time, it's rather confusing. If it is a -blind, unconscious force that has got hold of us, we get hold of it, and -of ourselves, when we consciously use it for our own ends. But I'm not a -bit a Nietzschian, Gavan, for, as an end, an Overman doesn't at all -appeal to me and I don't intend to make myself a bridge for him to march -across. Of course Nietzsche might reply, 'You are the bridge, whether -you want to be or not.' He might say, 'It's better to walk willingly to -your inevitable holocaust than to be rebelliously haled along; whatever -you do, you are only the refuse whose burning makes the flame.' I reply -to that, that if the Overman is sure to come, why should I bother about -him? I wouldn't lift my finger for a distant perfection in which I -myself, and all those I loved, only counted as fuel. But, on the other -hand, I do believe that each one of us is going to grow into an -Overman--in a quite different sense. Peter, too, will be an Overdog, and -will, no doubt, sometime be more conscious than we are now." - -Gavan glanced at her and at Peter with his vague, half-unseeing glance. - -"Why don't you smile?" Eppie asked. "Not that you don't smile, often. -But you haven't a scrap of gaiety, Gavan. Do stop soaring in the sky and -come down to real things, to the earth, to me, to dear little -rudimentary Overdogs." - -"Do you think that dear little rudimentary dogs are nearer reality than -the sky?" He did smile now. - -"Much nearer. The sky is only a background, an emptiness that shows up -their meaning." - -She had brought him down, for his eyes lingered on her as she leaned to -Peter and pulled him up from his sun-baked recumbency. "Come, sit up, -Peter; don't be so comfortable. Watch how well I've trained him, Gavan. -Now, Peter, sit up nicely. A dog on all fours is a darling heathen; but -a dog sitting up on his hind legs is an ethical creature, and well on -his way to Overdogdom. Peter on his hind legs is worth all your tiresome -Hindoos--aren't you, dear, Occidental dog?" - -He knew that through her gaiety she was searching him, feeling her way, -with a merry hostility that she didn't intend him to answer. It was as -if she wouldn't take seriously, not for a moment, the implications of -his thought--implications that he suspected her of already pretty -sharply guessing at. To herself, and to him, she pretended that such -thoughts were a game he played at, until she should see just how -seriously she might be forced to take them. - - - - -VII - - -For the next few days he found himself involved in Eppie's sleuth-hound -pursuit of the transgressing publican, amused, but quite -willing,--somewhat, he saw, to her surprise,--to help her in her -crusade. Not only did he tramp over the country with her in search of -evidence, and expound the Gothenberg system to Sir Alec, to the general, -to the rather alarmed quarry himself,--not unwilling to come to -terms,--but the application of his extraordinarily practical good-sense -to the situation was, she couldn't help seeing, far more effective than -her own not altogether temperate zeal. - -She was surprised and she was pleased; and at the same time, throughout -all the little drama, she had the suspicion that it meant for him what -that playing of dolls with her in childhood had meant--mere kindliness, -and a selfless disposition to do what was agreeable to anybody. - -It was on the Saturday following the talk in the library that an -incident occurred that made her vision of his passivity flame into -something more ambiguous--an incident that gave margins for -possibilities in him, for whose bare potentiality she had begun to -fear. - -They were at evening in the gray, bleak village street, and outside one -of the public-houses found a small crowd collected, watching, with the -apathy of custom, the efforts of Archie MacHendrie's wife to lead him -home. Archie, a large, lurching man, was only slightly drunk, but his -head, the massive granite of its Scotch peasant type, had been -brutalized by years of hard drinking. It showed, as if the granite were -crumbling into earth, sodden depressions and protuberances; his eye was -lurid, heavy, yet alert. Mrs. MacHendrie's face, looking as though -scantily molded in tallow as the full glare of the bar-room lights beat -upon it, was piteously patient. The group, under the cold evening sky, -in the cold, steep street, seemed a little epitome of life's -degradation; the sordid glare of debasing pleasure lit it; the mean -monotony of its daily routine surrounded it in the gaunt stone cottages; -above it was the blank, hard sky. - -Gavan saw all the unpleasing picture, placed it, its past, its future, -as he and Eppie approached; saw more, too, than degradation: for the -wife's face, in its patience, symbolized humanity's heroism. Both -heroism and degradation were results as necessary as the changes in a -chemical demonstration; neither had value: one was a toadstool growth, -the other, a flower; this was the fact to him, though the flower touched -him and the toadstool made him shrink. - -"There, there, Archie mon," Mrs. MacHendrie was pleading, "come awa -hame, do." - -Archie was declaiming on some wrong he had suffered and threatened to do -for an enemy. - -That these flowers and toadstools were of vital significance to Eppie, -Gavan realized as she left him in the middle of the street and strode to -the center of the group. It fell aside for her air of facile, friendly -authority, and in answer to her decisive, "What's the matter?" one of -the apathetic onlookers explained in his deliberate Scotch: "It's nobbut -Archie, Miss Eppie; he's swearin' he'll na go hame na sleep gin he's -lickit Tam Donel'. He's a wee bit the waur for the drink and Tam'll soon -be alang, and the dei'll be in it gar his gudewife gets him ben." - -"Well, she must get him ben," said Eppie, her eye measuring Archie, who -shook a menacing fist in the direction of his expected antagonist. - -"We must get him home between us, Mrs. MacHendrie. He'll think better of -it in the morning." - -"Fech, an' it's that I'm aye tellin' him, Miss Eppie; it's the mornin' -he'll hae the sair head. Ay, Miss Eppie, he's an awfu' chiel when he's a -wee bittie fou." Mrs. MacHendrie put the fringe of her shawl to her -eyes. - -Archie's low thunder had continued during this dialogue without a pause, -and Eppie now addressed herself to him in authoritative tones. "Come on, -Archie. Go home and get a sleep, at all events, before you fight Tom." - -"It's that I'm aye tellin' you, Archie mon," Mrs. MacHendrie wept. - -Archie now brought his eye round to the speakers and observed them in an -ominous silence, his thoughts turned from more distant grievances. From -his wife his eye traveled back to Eppie, who met it with a firm -severity. - -"Damn ye for an interferin' fishwife!" suddenly and with startling force -he burst out. "Ye're no but a meddlesome besom. Awa wi' ye!" and from -this broadside he swung round to his wife with uplifted fists. Flinging -herself between them, Eppie found herself swept aside. Gavan was in the -midst of the sudden uproar. Like a David before Goliath, he confronted -Archie with a quelling eye. Mrs. MacHendrie had slipped into the dusk, -and the bald, ugly light now fell on Gavan's contrasting head. - -"_Un sage qui passe interrompt mille drames_," flashed in Eppie's mind. -But on this occasion, the sage had to do more than pass--was forced, -indeed, to provide the drama. He was speaking in a voice so -dispassionately firm that had Archie been a little less drunk or a -little less sober it must have exerted an almost hypnotic effect upon -him. But the command to go home reached a brain inflamed and hardly -dazed. Goliath fell upon David, and Eppie, with a curious mingling of -exultation and panic, saw the two men locked in an animal struggle. For -a moment Gavan's cool alertness and scientific resource were overborne -by sheer brute force; in another he had recovered himself, and Archie's -face streamed suddenly with blood. Another blow, couched like a lance, -it seemed, was in readiness, wary and direct, when Mrs. MacHendrie, from -behind, seized Gavan around the neck and, with a shrill scream, hung to -him and dragged him back. Helpless and enmeshed, he received a savage -blow from her husband, and, still held in the wife's strangling clutch, -he and she reeled back together. At this flagrant violation of fair play -the onlookers interposed. Archie was dragged off, and Eppie, catching -Gavan as he staggered free of his encumbrance, turned, while she held -him by the shoulders, fiercely on Mrs. MacHendrie. "You well deserve -every thrashing you get," she said, her voice stilled by the very force -of its intense anger. - -Mrs. MacHendrie had covered her face with her shawl. "My mon was a' -bluid," she sobbed. "I couldna stan' an' see him done to death." - -"Of course you couldn't; it was most natural of you," said Gavan. The -blood trickled over his brow and cheek as, gently freeing himself from -Eppie, he straightened his collar and looked at Mrs. MacHendrie with -sympathetic curiosity. - -"Natural!" said Eppie. "It was dastardly. You deserve every thrashing -you get. I hope no one will interfere for you next time." - -"My dear Eppie!" Gavan murmured, while Mrs. MacHendrie continued to weep -humbly. - -"Why shouldn't I say it? I am disgusted with her." Eppie turned almost -as fierce a stillness of look and tone upon him as upon Mrs. MacHendrie. -"Let me tie up your head, Gavan. Yes, indeed, you are covered with -blood. I suppose you never thought, Mrs. MacHendrie, that your husband -might kill Mr. Palairet." She passed her handkerchief around Gavan's -forehead as she spoke, knotting it with fingers at once tender and -vindictive. - -"I canna say, Miss Eppie," came Mrs. MacHendrie's muffled voice from -the shawl. "The wan's my ain mon. It juist cam' ower me, seein' him a' -bluid." - -"Well, you have the satisfaction now of seeing Mr. Palairet a' bluid." -Eppie tied her knots, and Gavan, submitting a bowed head to her -ministrations, still kept his look of cogitating pity upon Mrs. -MacHendrie. "You see how your husband has wounded him," Eppie went on; -"the handkerchief is red already. Come on, Gavan; lean on me, please. -Let her get her husband home now as best she can." - -But Gavan ignored his angry champion. Mrs. MacHendrie's sorrow, most -evidently, interested him more than Eppie's indignation. He went to her, -putting down the hand that held the shawl to the poor, disfigured, -tallow face, and made her look at him, while he said with a gentle -reasonableness: "Don't mind what Miss Gifford says; she is angry on my -account and doesn't really mean to be so hard on you. I'm not at all -badly hurt,--I can perfectly stand alone, Eppie,--and I'm sorry I had to -hurt your husband. It was perfectly natural, what you did. Don't cry; -please don't cry." He smiled at her, comforted her, encouraged her. -"They are taking your husband home, you see; he is going quite quietly. -And now we will take you home. Take my arm. You are the worst off of us -all, Mrs. MacHendrie." - -Eppie, in silence, stalked beside him while he led Mrs. MacHendrie, -dazed and submissive, up the village street. A neighbor's wife was in -kindly waiting and Archie already slumbering heavily on his bed. Eppie -suspected, as they went, that she saw a gold piece slipped from Gavan's -hand to Mrs. MacHendrie's. - -"Poor thing," he said, when they were once more climbing the steep -street, "I 'm afraid I only made things worse for her"; and laughing a -little, irrepressibly, he looked round at Eppie from under his oddly -becoming bandage. "My dear Eppie, what a perfect brute you were to her!" - -"My dear Gavan, I can't feel pity for such a fool. Oh, yes I can, but I -don't want to. Please remember that I, too, have impulses, and that I -saw you 'a' bluid.'" - -"Well, then, I'm the brute for scolding you, and you are another poor -thing." - -"Are you incapable of righteous indignation, Gavan?" - -"Surely I showed enough to please you in my treatment of Archie." - -"You showed none. You looked supremely indifferent as to whether he -killed you or you him." - -"Oh, I think I was quite anxious to do for him." - -They were past the village now and upon the country road, and in the -darkness their contrasting voices rang oddly--hers deep with its -resentful affection, his light with its amusement. It was as if the -little drama, that he had made instead of interrupting, struck his sense -of the ridiculous. Yet, angry with him as she was, a thrill of -exultation remained, for Eppie, in the thought of his calm, deliberate -face, beautiful before its foe, and with blood upon it. - - - - -VIII - - -Gavan's hurt soon healed, though it made him languid for a day or -two--days of semi-invalidism, the unemphatic hours, seemingly so -colorless, when she read to him or merely sat silently at hand occupied -with her letters or a book, drawing still closer their odd intimacy; it -could hardly be called sudden, for it had merely skipped intervening -years, and it couldn't be called a proved intimacy, the intervening -years were too full, too many for that. But they were very near in their -almost solitude--a solitude surrounded by gentle reminders of the closer -past, reminders, in the case of living personalities, who seemed to find -the intimacy altogether natural and needing no comment. What the general -and Miss Barbara might really be thinking was a wonder that at moments -occupied both Gavan and Eppie's ruminations; but it wasn't a wonder that -needed to go far or deep. What they thought, the dear old people, made -very little difference--not even the difference of awkwardness or -self-consciousness under too cogitating eyes. Even if they thought the -crude and obvious thing it didn't matter, they would so peacefully -relapse from their false inference once time had set it straight for -them. Eppie couldn't quite have told herself why its obviousness was so -crude; in all her former experience such obviousness had never been so -almost funnily out of the question. But Gavan made so many things almost -funnily out of the question. - -It was this quality in him, of difference from usual things, that drew -intimacy so near. To talk to him with a wonderful openness, to tell him -about herself, about her troubles, was like sinking down in a pale, -peaceful church and sighing out everything that lay heavily on one's -heart--the things that lay lightly, too, for little things as well as -great, were understood by that compassionate, musing presence--to the -downlooking face of an imaged saint. - -No claim upon one remained after it; one was freed of the load of -silence and one hadn't in the least been shackled by retributory -penances. And if one felt some strange lack in the saint, if his -sacerdotal quality was more than his humanity, it was just because of -that that one was able to say anything one liked. - -At moments, it is true, she had an odd, fetish-worshiper's impulse to -smash her saint, and perhaps the reason why she never yielded to it was -because, under all the seeing him as image, was the deep hoping that he -was more. If he was more, much more, it might be unwise to smash him, -for then she would have no pale church in which to take refuge, and, -above all, if he were more he mustn't find it out--and she -mustn't--through any act of her own. The saint himself must breathe into -life and himself step down from his high pedestal. That he cared to -listen, that he listened lovingly,--just as he had listened lovingly to -Mrs. MacHendrie,--she knew. - -One day when he was again able to be out and when they were again upon -the hilltop, walking in a mist that enshrouded them, she told him all -about the wretched drama of her love-affair. - -She had never spoken of it to a human being. - -It was as if she led him into an empty room, dusty and dark and still, -with dreary cobwebs stretching over its once festal furniture, and there -pointed out to him faded blood-stains on the floor. No eyes but his had -ever seen them. - -She told him all, analyzing the man, herself, unflinchingly, putting -before him her distracted heart, distorted in its distraction. She had -appalled herself. Her part had not been mere piteous nobility. She would -have dragged herself through any humiliation to have had him back, the -man she had helplessly adored. She would have taken him back on almost -any terms. Only the semblance of pride had been left to her; beneath it, -with all her scorn of him, was a craving that had been base in its -despair. - -"But that wasn't the worst," said Eppie; "that very baseness had its -pathos. Worst of all were my mean regrets. I had sacrificed my ambitions -for him; I had refused a man who would have given me the life I wanted, -a high place in the world, a great name, power, wide issues,--and I love -high places, Gavan, I love power. When I refused him, he too married -some one else, and it was after that that my crash came. Love and faith -were thrown back at me, and I hadn't in it all even my dignity. I was -torn by mingled despairs. I loathed myself. Oh, it was too horrible!" - -His utter lack of sympathetic emotion, even when she spoke with the -indignant tears on her cheeks, made it all the easier to say these -fundamental things, and more than ever like the saint of ebony and ivory -in the pale church was his head against the great wash of mist about -them. - -"And now it has all dropped from you," he said. - -"Yes, all--the love, the regret certainly, even the shame. The ambition, -certainly not; but in that ugly form of a loveless marriage it's no -longer a possible temptation for me. My disappointment hasn't driven me -to worldly materialism. It's a sane thing in nature, that outgrowing of -griefs, though it's bad for one's pride to see them fade and one's heart -mend, solidly mend, once more." - -"They do go, when one really sees them." - -"Some do." - -"All, when one really sees them," he repeated unemphatically. "I know -all about it, Eppie. I've been through the fire, too. Now that it's -gone, you see that it's only a dream, that love, don't you?" - -Eppie gazed before her into the mist, narrowing her eyes as though she -concentrated her thoughts upon his exact meaning, and she received his -casual confidence with some moments of silence. - -"That would imply that seeing destroyed feeling, wouldn't it?" she said -at last. "I see that _such_ love is a dream, if you will; but dreams may -be mirrors of life, not delusions; hints of an awakened reality." - -He showed only his unmoved face. This talk, so impersonal, with all its -revealment of human pathos and weakness, so much a picture that they -both looked at it together,--a picture of outlived woe,--claimed no more -than his contemplation; but when her voice seemed to grope toward him, -questioning in its very clearness of declaration, he felt again the -flitting fear that he had already recognized, not as danger, but as -discomfort. It flitted only, hardly stirred the calm he showed her, as -the wings of a flying bird just skim and ruffle the surface of still, -deep waters. That restless bird, always hovering, circling near, its -shadow passing, repassing over the limpid water--he saw and knew it as -the water might reflect in its stillness the bird's flight. Life; the -will to live, the will to want, and to strive, and to suffer in -striving. All the waters of Eppie's soul were broken by the flight of -this bird of life; its wings, cruel and beautiful, furrowed and cut; its -plumage, darkly bright, was reflected in every wave. - -He said nothing after her last words. - -"You think all feelings delusions, Gavan?" - -"Not that, perhaps, but very transitory; and to be tied to the -transitory is to suffer." - -"On that plan one ends with nothingness." - -"Do you think so?" - -"Do _you_ think so?" She turned his question on him and her eyes, with -the question, fixed hard on his face. - -He felt suddenly that after all the parrying and thrusting she had -struck up his foil and faced him with no mask of gaiety--in deadly -earnest. There was the click of steel in the question. - -He did not know whether he were the more irritated, for her sake, by her -persistency, or the more fearful that, unwillingly, he should do her -faith some injury. - -"I think," he said, "more or less as Tolstoi thinks. You understood all -that very well the other evening; so why go into it?" - -"You think that our human identity is unreal--an appearance?" - -"Most certainly." - -"And that the separation between us is the illusion that makes hatred -and evil, and that with the recognition of the illusion, love would come -and all selfish effort cease?" - -"Yes." - -"And don't you see that what that results in is the Hindoo thing, the -abolishing of consciousness, the abolishing of life--of individual -life?" - -"Yes, I see that," Gavan smiled, "but I'm a little surprised to see that -you do. So many people are like Aunt Barbara." - -But Eppie was pushing, pushing against the closed doors and would not be -lured away by lightness. "Above all, Gavan, do you see that he is merely -an illogical Hindoo when he tries to bridge his abyss with ethics? On -his own premises he is utterly fatalistic, so that the very turning from -the evil illusion, the very breaking down of the barrier of self, is -never, with him, the result of an effort of the will, never a conscious -choice, but something deep and rudimentary, subconscious, an influx of -revelation, a vision that sets one free, perhaps, but that can only -leave one with emptiness." - -Above all, as she had said, he saw it; and now he was silent, seeking -words that might rid him of pursuit, yet not infect her. - -She had stopped short before his silence. Smiling, now, on the -background of mist, her eyes, her lips, her poise challenged him, -incredulous, actually amused. "Don't you think that _I_ have an -identity?" she asked. - -He was willing at that to face her, for he saw suddenly and clearly,--it -seemed to radiate from her in the smile, the look,--that he, apparently, -couldn't hurt her. She was too full of life to be in any danger from -him, and perhaps the only way of ending pursuit was to fling wide the -doors and, since she had said the word, show her the emptiness within. - -"You force me to talk cheap metaphysics to you, Eppie, but I'll try to -say what I do think," he said. "I believe that the illusion of a -separate identity, self-directing and permanent, is the deepest and most -tenacious of all illusions--the illusion that makes the wheels go round, -the common illusion that makes the common mirage. The abolishing of the -identity, of the self, is the final word of science, and of philosophy, -and of religion, too. The determinism of science, the ecstatic immediacy -of the mystic consciousness, the monistic systems of the Absolutists, -all tend toward the final discovery that,--now I'm going to be very glib -indeed,--but one must use the technical jargon,--that under all the -transitory appearance is a unity in which, for which, diversity -vanishes." - -Eppie no longer smiled. She had walked on while he spoke, her eyes on -him, no longer amused or incredulous, with an air now of almost stern -security. - -"Odd," she said presently, "that such a perverse and meaningless Whole -should be made up of such significant fragments." - -"Ah, but I didn't say that Reality was meaningless. It has all possible -meaning for itself, no doubt; it's our meaning for it that is so -unpleasantly ambiguous. We are in it and for it, as if we were the -kaleidoscope it turned, the picture it looked at; and we are and must be -what it thinks or sees. Your musical simile expressed it very nicely: -Reality an eternal symphony and our personalities the notes in -it--discords to our own limited consciousness, but to Reality necessary -parts of the perfect whole. Reality is just that will to contemplate, to -think, the infinite variety of life, and it usually thinks us as wanting -to live. All ethics, all religions, are merely records of the ceasing of -this want. A man comes to see himself as discord, and with the seeing -the discord is resolved to silence. One comes to see as the Reality -sees, and since it is perfectly satisfied, although it is perhaps quite -unconscious,--or so some people who think a great deal about it -say,--we, in partaking of its vision, find in unconsciousness the goal, -and are satisfied." - -"You are satisfied with such a death in life?" Eppie asked in her steady -voice. - -"What you call life is what I call death, perhaps, Eppie." - -"Your metaphysics may be very cheap; I know very little about them. But -if all that were true, I should still say that the illusion is more real -than that nothingness--for to us such a reality would be nothingness. -And I should say, let us live our reality all the more intensely, since, -for us, there is no other." - -"How you care for life," said Gavan, as he had said it once before. He -looked at her marching through the mist like a defiant Valkyrie. - -"Care for it? I've hated it at times, the bits that came to me." - -"Yet you want it, always." - -"Always," she repeated. "Always. I have passed a great part of my life -in being very unhappy--that is to say, in wanting badly something I've -not got. Yet I am more glad than I can say to have lived." - -"Probably because you still expect to get what you want." - -"Of course." She smiled a little now, though a veiled, ambiguous smile. -And as they began the steep descent, the mist infolding them more -closely, even the semblance of the smile faded, leaving a new sadness. - -"Poor Gavan," she said. - -He just hesitated. "Why?" - -"Your religion is a hatred, a distrust of life; mine is trust in it, -love of it. You see it as a sort of murderous uncle, beckoning to the -babes in the wood; I own that I wouldn't stir a step to follow it if I -suspected it of such a character. And I see life--" She paused here, -looking down, musing, it seemed, on what she saw, and the pause grew -long. In it, suddenly, Gavan knew again the invasion of emotion. Her -downcast, musing face pervaded his consciousness with that sense of -trembling. "You see life as what?" he asked her, not because he wanted -to know, but because her words were always less to him than her -silences. - -Eppie, unconscious, was finding words. - -"As something mysterious, beautiful. Something strange, yet near, like -the thought of a mother about her unborn child, but, more still, like -the thought of an unborn child about its unknown mother. We are such -unborn children. And this something mysterious and beautiful says: Come; -through thorns, over chasms, past terrors, and in darkness. So, one -goes." - -Gavan was silent. Looking up at him, her eyes full of her own vision, -she saw tears in his. - -For a moment the full benignity, sweet, austere, of a maternal thing in -her rested on him, so that it might have been she who said "Come." Then, -looking away from him again, knowing that she had seen more than he had -meant to show, she said, "Own that if it's all illusion, mine's the best -to live with." - -He had never seen her so beautiful as at this moment when she did not -pursue, but looked away, quiet in her strength, and he answered -mechanically, conscious only of that beauty, that more than beauty, -alluring when it no longer pursued: "No; there are no thorns, nor -chasms, nor terrors any longer for me. I am satisfied, Eppie." - -She was walking now, a little ahead of him, down the thread-like path -that wound among phantom bracken. The islet of space where they could -see seemed like a tiny ship gliding forward with them into a white, -boundless ocean. Such, thought Gavan, was human life. - -In a long silence he felt that her mood had changed. Over her shoulder -she looked round at him at last with her eyes of the spiritual -steeplechaser. "It's war to the knife, Gavan." - -She hurt him in saying it. "You only have the knife," he answered, and -his gentleness might have reproached the sudden challenge. - -"You have poison." - -"I never put it to your lips, dear." - -She saw his pain. "Oh, don't be afraid for me," she said. "I drink your -poison, and it is a tonic, a wine, that fills me with greater ardor for -the fight." - - - - -IX - - -They were on the path that led to the deeply sunken garden gate, and -they had not spoken another word while they followed it, while they -stooped a little under the tangle of ivy that drooped from the stone -lintel, while they went past the summer-house and on between the rows of -withered plants and the empty, wintry spaces of the garden; only when -they were nearly at the house, under the great pine-tree, did Eppie -cheerfully surmise that they would be exactly on time for tea, and by -her manner imply that tea was far more present to her thoughts than -daggers or poison. - -He felt that in some sense matters had been left in the lurch. He didn't -quite know where he stood for her with his disastrous darkness about -him--whether she had really taken up a weapon for open warfare or -whether she hadn't wisely fallen back upon the mere pleasantness of -friendly intercourse, turning her eyes away from his accompanying gloom. - -He was glad to find her alone that evening after dinner when he had left -the general in the smoking-room over a review and a cigar. Miss Barbara -had gone early to bed, so that Eppie, in her white dress, as on the -night of his arrival, had the dark brightness of the firelit room all to -herself. He was glad, because the sense of uncertainty needed defining, -and uncertainty, since that last moment of trembling, had been so acute -that any sort of definition would be a relief. - -An evening alone with her, now that they were really on the plane of -mutual understanding, would put his vague fears to the test. He would -learn whether they must be fled from or whether, as mere superficial -tremors, tricks of the emotions, they could not be outfaced smilingly. -He really didn't want to run away, especially not until he clearly knew -from what he ran. - -Eppie sat before the fire on the low settle, laying down a book as he -came in. In her aspect of exquisite worldliness, the white dress -displaying her arms and shoulders with fashionable frankness, she struck -him anew as being her most perfectly armed and panoplied self. Out on -the windy hillside or singing among the woods, nature seemed partially -to absorb and possess her, so that she became a part of the winds and -woods; but indoors, finished and fine from head to foot, her mastered -conventionality made her the more emphatically personal. She embodied -civilization in her dress, her smile, her speech, her very being; the -loose coils of her hair and the cut of her satin shoe were both -significant of choice, of distinctive simplicity; and the very bareness -of her shoulders--Gavan gave an amused thought to the ferociously -sensitive Tolstoi--symbolized the armor of the world-lover, the -world-user. It was she who possessed the charms and weapons of the -civilization that crumbled to dust in the hand of the Russian mystic. He -could see her confronting the ascetic's eye with the challenge of her -radiant and righteous self-assurance. Her whole aspect rebuilt that -shattered world, its pomp and vanity, perhaps, its towering scale of -values; each tier narrowing in its elimination of the lower, cruder, -less conscious, more usual; each pinnacle a finely fretted flowering of -the rare; a dazzling palace of foam. She embodied all that; but, more -than all for Gavan, she embodied the deep currents of trust that flowed -beneath the foam. - -Her look welcomed him, though without a smile, as he drew a deep chair -to the fire and sat down near her, and for a little while they said -nothing, he watching her and she with gravely downcast eyes. - -"What are you thinking of?" he asked at last. - -"Of you, of course," she answered. "About our talk this afternoon; we -haven't finished it yet." - -She, too, then, had felt uncertainty that needed relief. - -"Are you sharpening your knife?" - -She put aside his lightness. "Gavan, we are friends. May I talk as I -like to you?" - -"Of course you may. I've always shown you that." - -"No, you have tried to prevent me from talking. But now I will. I have -been thinking. It seems to me that it is your life that has so twisted -your mind; it has been so joyless." - -"Does that make it unusual?" - -"You must love life before you can know it." - -"You must love it, and lose it, before you can know it. I have had joy, -Eppie; I have loved life. My experience has not been peculiarly -personal; it is merely the history of all thought, pushed far enough." - -"Of all mere thought, yes." - -She rested her head on her hand as she looked at him, seeming to wonder -over him and his thought, his mere thought, dispassionately. "Don't be -shy, or afraid, for me. Why should you mind? I've given you my story; -give me yours. Tell me about your life." - -He felt, suddenly, sunken there in his deep chair, passive and peaceful -in the firelight, that it would be very easy to tell her. Why shouldn't -she see it all and understand it all? He couldn't hurt her; it would be -only a strange, a sorrowful picture to her; and to him, yes, there would -be a relief in the telling. To speak, for the first time in his life--it -would be like the strewing of rosemary on a grave, a commemoration that -would have its sweetness and its balm. - -But he hesitated, feeling the helplessness of his race before verbal -self-expression. - -Eppie lent him a hand. - -"Begin with when you left me." - -"What was I then? I hardly remember. A tiresome, self-centered boy." - -"No; you weren't self-centered. You believed in God, then, and you loved -your mother. Why have both of them, as personalities, become illusions -to you?" - -She saw facts clearly and terribly. She was really inside the doors at -last, and though it would be all the easier to make her understand the -facts she saw, Gavan paled a little before the sudden, swift presence. - -For, yes, God was gone, and yes,--worse, far worse, as he knew she felt -it,--his mother, too--except as that ghost, that pang of memory. - -She saw his pallor and helped him again, to the first and easier avowal. - -"How did you lose your faith? What happened to you when you left me?" - -"It's a commonplace enough story, that." - -"Of course it is. But when loss of faith becomes permanent and -permanently means a loss of feeling, it's not so commonplace." - -"Oh, I think it is--more commonplace than people know, in temperaments -as unvital and as logical as mine." - -"You are not unvital." - -"My reason isn't often blurred by my instincts." - -"That is because you are strong--terribly strong. It's not that your -vitality is so little as that your thought is so abnormal." - -"No, no; it's merely that I understand my own experience." - -But she had put his feet upon the road, and, turning his eyes from her -as he looked, he contemplated its vista. - -It was easy enough, after all, to gather into words that retrospect of -the train; it was easy to be brief and lucid with such a comprehending -listener,--to be very impersonal, too; simply to hold up before her eyes -the picture that he saw. - -His eyes met hers seldom while he told her all that was essential to her -true seeing. It was wonderful, the sense of her secure, strong life that -made it possible to tell her all. - -The stages of his young, restless, tortured thought were swiftly -sketched for an intelligence so quick, and the growing intuition of the -capriciousness, the suffering of life. He only hesitated when it came to -the reunion with his mother, the change that had crept between them; and -her illness, her death; choosing his words with a reticence that bit -them the more deeply into the listening mind. - -But, in the days that followed the death,--days ghost-like, yet -sharp,--he lingered, so that she paused with him in that pause of -stillness in his life, that morning in the spring woods when everything -had softly, gently shown an abiding strangeness. He told her all about -that: about the look of the day, not knowing why he so wanted her to see -it, too, but it seemed to explain more than anything else--the pale, -high sky, the gray branches, the shining water and the little bird that -hopped to drink. He himself looked ghost-like while he spoke--sunken, -long, dark, impalpable, in the deep chair, his thin white fingers -lightly interlocked, his face showing only the oddity of its strange yet -beautiful oval and its shadowy eyes and lips. All whiteness and shadow, -he might have been a projection from the thought of the woman, who, -before him, leaned her head on her hand, warm, breathing, vivid with -color, her steady eyes seeing phantoms unafraid. - -After that there wasn't much left to explain, it seemed--except Alice, -that last convulsive effort of life to seize and keep him; and that -didn't take long--made, as it were, a little allegory, with nameless -abstractions to symbolize the old drama of the soul entrameled and -finally set free again. The experience of the spring woods had really -been the decisive one. He came back to that again, at the end of his -story. "It's really, that experience, what in another kind of -temperament is called conversion." - -Her eyes had looked away from him at last. "No," she said, "conversion -is something that gives life." - -"No," he rejoined, "it's something that lifts one above it." - -The fundamental contest spoke again, and after that they were both -silent. He, too, had looked away from her when the story was over, and -he knew, from her deep, slow breathing, that the story had meant a great -deal to her. It was not a laboring breath, nor broken by pain to sighs; -but it seemed, in its steady rhythm, to accept and then to conquer what -he had put before her. That he should so hear it, not looking at her, -filled the silence with more than words; and, as in the afternoon, he -sought the relief of words. - -"So you see," he said, in his lighter voice, "thorns and precipices and -terrors dissolve like dreams." She had seen everything and he was -ushering her out. But his eyes now met hers, looking across the little -space at him. - -"And I? Do I, too, dissolve like a dream?" she said. - -His smile now was lighter than his voice had been. "Absolutely. Though I -own that you are a highly colored phantom. Your color is very vivid -indeed. Sometimes it almost masters my thought." - -He had not, in his mere wish for ease, quite known what he meant to say, -and now her look did not show him any deepened consciousness; but, -suddenly, he felt that under his lightness and her quiet the current ran -deeply. - -"I master your thought?" she repeated. "Doesn't that make you distrust -thought sometimes?" - -"No," he laughed. "It makes me distrust you, dear Eppie." - -There were all sorts of things before them now. What they were he really -didn't know; perhaps she didn't, either. At all events he kept his eyes -off them, and shaking his crossed foot a little, he still looked at her, -smiling. - -"Why?" she asked. - -He felt that he must now answer her, and himself, in words that wouldn't -imply more than he could face. - -"Well, the very force of your craving for life, the very force of your -will, might sweep me along for a bit. I might be caught up for a whirl -on the wheel of illusion; not that you could ever bind me to it: it -would need my own will, blind again, for that." - -Her eyes had met his so steadily that he had imagined only contemplation -or perhaps that maternal severity behind the steadiness. But the way in -which they received these last tossed pebbles of metaphor showed him -unrealized profundities. They deepened, they darkened, they widened on -him. They seemed to engulf him in a sudden abyss of pain. And pain in -her was indeed a color that could infect him. - -"How horrible you are, Gavan," she said, and her voice went with the -words and with the look. - -"Eppie!" he exclaimed on a tense, indrawn breath, as if over the sudden -stab of a knife. "Have I hurt you?" - -Her eyes turned from him. "Not what you say, or do. What you are." - -"You didn't see, before, what I am?" - -"Never--like this." - -He leaned toward her. "Dear Eppie, why do you make me talk? Let me be -still. I only ask to be still." - -"You are worse still. Don't you think I see what stillness means?" - -She had pushed her low seat from him,--for he stretched his hands to her -with his supplication,--and, rising to her feet, stepping back, she -stood before the fire, somberly looking down at him. - -Gavan, too, rose. Compunction, supplication, a twist of perplexity and -suffering, made him careless of discretion. Face to face, laying his -hands on her shoulders, he said: "Don't let me frighten you. It would be -horrible if I could convince you, shatter you." - -Standing erect under his hands, she looked hard into his face. - -"You could frighten me, horribly; but you couldn't shatter me. You are -ambiguous, veiled, all in mists. I am as clear, as sharp--." - -Her dauntlessness, the old defiance, were a relief--a really delicious -relief. He was able to smile at her, a smile that pled for reassurance. -"How can I frighten you, then?" - -Her somber gaze did not soften. "Your mists come round me, chill, -suffocating. They corrode my clearness." - -"No; no; it's you who come into them. Don't. Don't. Keep away from me." - -"I'm not so afraid of you as that," she answered. - -His hands were still on her shoulders and their eyes on each other--his -with their appealing, uncertain smile, and hers unmoved, unsmiling; and -suddenly that sense of danger came upon him: as if, in the mist, he felt -upon him the breathing, warm, sweet, ominous, of some unseen creature. -And in the fear was a strange delight, and like a hand drawn, with slow, -deep pressure, across a harp, the nearness drew across his heart, -stirring its one sad note--its dumb, its aching note--to a sudden -ascending murmur of melody. - -He was caught swiftly from this inner tumult by its reflection in her -face. She flushed, deeply, painfully. She drew back sharply, pushing -his hands from her. - -Gavan sought his own equilibrium in an ignoring of that undercurrent. - -"Now you are not frightened; but why are you angry?" he asked. - -For a moment she did not speak. - -"Eppie, I am so sorry. What is it? You are really angry, Eppie!" - -Then, after that pause of speechlessness, she found words. - -"If I think of you as mist you must not think of me as glamour." This -she gave him straight. - -Only after disengaging her train from the settle, from his feet, after -wheeling aside his chair to make a clear passage for her departure, did -she add: "I have read your priggish Schopenhauer." - -She gave him no time for reply or protestation. Quite mistress of -herself, leaving him with all the awkwardness of the situation--if he -chose to consider it awkward--upon his hands, very fully the finished -mondaine and very beautifully the fearless and assured nymph of the -hillside, she went to the piano, turned and rejected, in looking over -it, some music, and sitting down, striking a long, full chord, she began -to sing, in her voice of frosty dawn, the old Scotch ballad. - -He might go or listen as he liked. She had put him away, him and his -mists, his ambiguous hold upon her, his ambiguous look at her. She sang -to please herself as much as when she had gone up through the woodlands. -And if the note of anger still thrilled in her voice she turned it to -the uses of her song and made a higher triumph of sadness. - -She was still singing when the general came in. - - * * * * * - -SHE had been quite right; she had seen with her perfect sharpness and -clearness indeed, and no wonder that she had been angry. He himself saw -clearly, directly the hand was off the harp. It was laughably simple. He -was a man, she a woman; they were both young and she was beautiful. That -summed it up, sufficiently and brutally; and no wonder, again, that she -had felt such summing an offense. It wasn't in the light of such -summings that she regarded herself. - -With him she had never, for a moment, made use of glamour. His was the -rudimentary impulse, and Gavan's sensitive cheek echoed her flush when -he thought of it. Never again, he promised himself, after this full -comprehension of it, should such an impulse dim their friendship. He -would make it up to her by helping her to forget it. - -But for all that, it was with the strangest mixture of relief and dismay -that he found upon the breakfast-table next morning an urgent summons -for his return home. It was the affable little rector of the parish in -Surrey who wrote to tell him of his father's sudden breakdown,--softening -of the brain. When Eppie appeared, a little grave, but all clear -composure, he was able to show her the letter and to tell her of his -immediate departure with a composure as assured as her own, but he -wondered, while he spoke, if to her also the parting would mean any form -of relief. At all events, for her, it couldn't mean any form of wrench. - -Looking in swift glances at her face, while she questioned him about his -father, suggested trains and nurses, and gave practical advice for his -journey, he was conscious that the relief was the result of a pretty -severe strain, and that though it was relieved it hadn't stopped aching. - -The very fact that Eppie's narrow face, the hair brushed back from brow -and temples, showed, in the clear morning light, more of its oddity than -its beauty, made its charm cling the more closely. Her eyes looked -small, her features irregular; he saw the cliff-like modeling of her -temples, the cheeks, a little flat, pale, freckled; the long, queer -lines of her chin. Bare, exposed, without a flicker of sunlight on her -delicate analogies of ruggedness, of weather-beaten strength, she might -almost have been called ugly; and, with every glance, he was feeling her -as sweetness, sweetness deep and reticent, embodied. - -The general and Miss Barbara were late. She poured out his coffee, saw -him embarked on a sturdy breakfast, insisted, now with the irradiating -smile that in a moment made her lovely, that he should eat a great deal -before his journey, made him think anew of that maternal quality in -her,--the tolerance, the tenderness. And in the ambiguous relief came -the sharpened dismay of seeing how great was the cause for it. - -He wanted to say a word, only one, about their little drama of last -night, but the time didn't really seem to come for it; perhaps she saw -that it shouldn't come. But on the old stone steps with their yellow -lichen spots, his farewells over to the uncle and aunt, and he and Eppie -standing out there in a momentary solitude, she said, shaking his hand, -"Friends, you know. Look me up when you are next in London." She had her -one word to say, and she had said it when and how she wished. It wasn't -anything so crude as reassurance; it was rather a sunny assurance, in -which she wished him to share, that none was needed. - -He looked, like the boy of years ago, a real depth of gratitude into her -eyes. She had given him his chance. - -"I'll never frighten you again; I'll never displease you again." - -"I know you won't. I won't let you," Eppie smiled. - -"I wish I were more worth your while--worth your being kind to me." - -"You think you are still--gloomy, tiresome, self-centered?" - -"That defines it well enough." - -"Well, you serve my purpose," said Eppie, "and that is to have you for -my friend." - -She seemed in this parting to have effaced all memory of glamour, but -Gavan knew that the deeper one was with him. - -It was with him, even while, in the long journey South, he was able to -unwrap film after film of the mirage from its central core of reality, -to see Eppie, in all her loveliness, in all her noblest aspects, as a -sort of incarnation of the world, the flesh, and the devil. He could -laugh over the grotesque analogy; it proved to him how far from life he -was when its symbol could show in such unflattering terms, and yet it -hurt him that he could find it in himself so to symbolize her. It was -just because she was so lovely, so noble, that he must--he must--. For, -under all, was the wrench that would take time to stop aching. - - - - -X - - -Captain Palairet had gone to pieces and was now as unpleasant an object -as for years he had been a pleasant one. - -Gavan's atrophied selfishness felt only a slight shrinking from the -revolting aspects of dissolution, and his father's condition rather -interested him. The captain's childish clinging to his son was like an -animal instinct suddenly asserting itself, an almost vegetable instinct, -so little more than mere instinct was it. It affected Gavan much as the -suddenly contracting tentacles of a sea-anemone upon his finger might -have done. He was not at all touched; but he felt the claim of a -possible pang of loneliness and desolation in the dimness of decay, and, -methodically, with all the appearances of a solicitous kindness, he -responded to the claim. - -The man, immersed in his rudimentary universe of sense, showed a host of -atavistic fears; fears of the dark, of strange faces, fears of sudden -noises or of long stillness. He often wept, leaning his swollen face on -Gavan's shoulder, filled with an abject self-pity. - -"You know how I love you, Gavan," he would again and again repeat, his -lax lips fumbling with the words, "always loved you, ever since you were -a little fellow--out in India, you know. I and your dear mother loved -you better than life," and, wagging his head, he would repeat, "better -than life," and break into sobs--sobs that ceased when the nurse brought -him his wine-jelly. Then it might be again the tone of feeble whining. -"It doesn't taste right, Gavan. Can't you make it taste right? Do you -want to starve me between you all?" - -Gavan, with scientific scrutiny, diagnosed and observed while he soothed -him or engaged his vagrant mind in games. - -In his intervals of leisure he pursued his own work, and rode and walked -with all his usual tempered athleticism. He did not feel the days as a -strain, hardly as disagreeable; he was indifferent or interested. At the -worst he was bored. The undercurrent of pity he was accustomed to living -with. - -Only at night, in hours of rest, he would sink into a half-dazed -disgust, find himself on edge, nearly worn out. So the winter passed. - -He was playing draughts with his father on a day in earliest spring, -when he was told that Mrs. Arley and Miss Gifford were below. - -Gavan was feeling dull and jaded. The conducting of the game needed a -monotonous patience and tact. The captain would now pick up a draught -and gaze curiously at it for long periods of time, now move in a -direction contrary to all the rules of the game and to his own -advantage. When such mistakes were pointed out to him he would either -apologize humbly or break into sudden peevish wrath. To-day he was in a -peculiarly excitable condition and had more than once wept. - -Gavan, after the servant's announcement, holding a quietly expectant -draught in his thin, poised fingers, looked hard at the board that still -waited for his father's move. He then felt that a deep flush had mounted -to his face. - -In spite of the one or two laconic letters that they had interchanged, -Eppie had been relegated for many months to her dream-place--a dream, in -spite of its high coloring, more distant than this nearer dream of ugly -illness. It was painful to look back at the queer turmoil she had roused -in him during the autumnal fortnight, and more painful to realize, as in -his sudden panic of reluctance now, that, though a dream, she was an -abiding and constant one. - -Mrs. Arley he knew, and her motor-car had recently made her a next-door -neighbor in spite of the thirty miles between them. She was a friend -with whom Eppie had before stayed on the other side of the county. -Nothing could be more natural than that she and Eppie should drop in -upon a solitude that must, to their eyes, have all the finished elements -of pathos. Yet he was a little vexed by the intrusion, as well as -reluctant to meet it. - -His father broke into vehement protest when he heard that he was to be -abandoned at an unusual hour, and it needed some time for Gavan and the -nurse to quiet him. Twenty minutes had passed before he could go down to -his guests, and he surmised that they would feel in this delay yet -further grounds for pity. - -They were in the hall, before a roaring fire, Eppie standing with her -back to it, in a familiar attitude, though her long, caped cloak and -hooded motoring-cap, the folds of gray silk gathered under her chin and -narrowly framing her face, gave her an unfamiliar aspect. Her eyes met -his as he turned the spacious staircase and came down to them, and he -felt that they watched his every movement and noted every trace in him -of fatigue and dejection. - -Mrs. Arley, fluent, flexible, amazingly pretty, for all the light -powdering and wrinkling of her fifty years, came rustling forward. - -"Eppie is staying with me for the week-end,--I wrench her from her slums -now and then,--and we wanted to hear how you are, to see how you are. -You look dreadfully fagged; doesn't he, Eppie? How is your father?" - -Eppie gave him her hand in silence. - -"My father will never be any better, you know," he said. "As for me, I'm -all right. I should have come over to see you before this, and looked -you up, too, Eppie, but I can't get away for more than an hour or so at -a time." - -He led them into the library while he spoke,--Mrs. Arley exclaiming that -such devotion was dear and good of him,--and Eppie looked gravely round -at the room that he had described to her as the room that he really -passed his life in. The great spaces of ranged books framed for her, he -knew, pictures of his own existence. He knew, too, that her gravity was -the involuntary result of the impression that he made upon her. She was -sorry for him. Poor Eppie, their relationship since childhood seemed to -have consisted in that--in the sense of her pursuing pity and in his -retreat before it, for her sake. He retreated now, as he knew, in his -determination to show her that pity was misplaced, uncalled for. - -Mrs. Arley had thrown off her wrap and loosened her hood in a manner -that made it almost imperative to ask them to stay with him for -lunch--an invitation accepted with an assurance showing that it had been -expected, and it wasn't difficult, in conventional battledore and -shuttlecock with her, to show a good humor and frivolity that -discountenanced pathetic interpretations. What Mrs. Arley's -interpretations were he didn't quite know; her eyes, fatigued yet fresh, -were very acute behind their trivial meanings, and he could wonder if -Eppie had shared with her her own sense of his "horribleness," and if, -in consequence, her conception of Eppie's significance as the opponent -of that quality was tinged with sentimental associations. - -Eppie's gaze, while they rattled on, lost something of its gravity, but -he was startled, as if by an assurance deeper than any of Mrs. Arley's, -when she rose to slip off her coat and went across the room to a small -old mirror that hung near the door to take off her cap as well. - -In her manner of standing there with her back to them, untying her -veils, pushing back her hair, was the assurance, indeed, of a person -whose feet were firmly planted on certain rights, all the more firmly -for "knowing her place" as it were, and for having repudiated mistaken -assumptions. She might almost have been a new sick-nurse come to take up -her duties by his side. She passed from the mirror to the writing-table, -examining the books laid there, and then, until lunch was announced, -stood looking out of the window. Quite the silent, capable, significant -new nurse, with many theories of her own that might much affect the -future. - -The dining-room at Cheylesford Lodge opened on a wonderful old lawn, -centuries in its green. Bordered by beds, just alight with pale spring -flowers, it swept in and out among shrubberies of rhododendron and -laurel, the emerald nook set in a circle of trees, a high arabesque on -the sky. - -Eppie from her seat at the table faced the sky, the trees, the lawn. -What a beautiful place, she was thinking. A place for life, sheltered, -embowered. How she would have loved, as a child, those delicious -rivulets of green that ran into the thick mysteries of shadow. How she -would have loved to play dolls on a hot summer afternoon in the shade of -the great yew-tree that stretched its dark branches half across the sky. -The house, the garden, made her think of children; she saw white -pinafores and golden heads glancing in and out among the trees and -shrubs, and the vision of young life, blossoming, growing in security -and sunlight, filled her thought with its pictured songs of innocence, -while, at the same time, under the vision, she was feeling it all--all -the beauty and sheltered sweetness--as dreadful in its emptiness, its -worse than emptiness: a casket holding a death's-head. She came back -with something of a start to hear her work in the slums enthusiastically -described by Mrs. Arley. "I thought it was only in novels that children -clung to the heroine's skirts. I never believed they clung in real life -until seeing Eppie with her ragamuffins; they adore her." - -This remark, to whose truth she assented by a vague smile, gave Eppie's -thoughts a further push that sent them seeing herself among the golden -heads and white pinafores on the lawn at Cheylesford Lodge; and though -the vision maintained its loving aunt relationship of the slums, there -was now a throb and flutter in it, as though she held under her hand a -strange wild bird that only her own will not to look kept hidden. - -These dreams were followed by a nightmare little episode. - -In the library, again, the talk was still an airy dialogue, Eppie, her -eyes on the flames as she drank her coffee, still maintaining her -ruminating silence. In the midst of her thoughts and their chatter, the -door opened suddenly and Captain Palairet appeared on the threshold. - -His head neatly brushed, a sumptuous dressing-gown of padded and -embroidered silk girt about him, he stood there with moist eyes and -lips, faintly and incessantly shaking through all his frame, a troubling -and startling figure. - -Gavan had been wondering all through the visit how his father was -bearing the abandonment, and his appearance, he saw now, must have been -the triumphant fruit of contest with the nurse whose face of helpless -disapprobation hovered outside. - -Gavan went to his side, and, leaning on his son's arm, the captain said -that he had come to pay his respects to Mrs. Arley and to Miss Gifford. - -Taking Mrs. Arley's hand, he earnestly reiterated his pleasure in -welcoming her to his home. - -"Gavan's in fact, you know; but he's a good son. Not very much in -common, perhaps: Gavan was always a book-worm, a fellow of fads and -theories; I love a broad life, men and things. No, not much in common, -except our love for his mother, my dear, dead wife; that brought us -together. We shook hands over her grave, so to speak," said the captain, -but without his usual sentiment. An air of jaunty cheerfulness pervaded -his manner. "She is buried near here, you know. You may have seen the -grave. A very pretty stone; very pretty indeed. Gavan chose it. I was in -India at the time. A great blow to me. I never recovered from it. I -forget, for the moment, what the text is; but it's very pretty; very -appropriate. I knew I could trust Gavan to do everything properly." - -Gavan's face had kept its pallid calm. - -"You will tire yourself, father," he said. "Let me take you up-stairs -now. Mrs. Arley and Miss Gifford will excuse us." - -The captain resisted his attempt to turn him to the door. - -"Miss Gifford. Yes, Miss Gifford," he repeated, turning to where Eppie -stood attentively watching father and son, "But I want to see Miss -Elspeth Gifford. It was that I came for." He took her hand and his -wrecked and restless eyes went over her face. "So this is Miss Elspeth -Gifford." - -"You have heard of me?" Eppie's composure was as successful as Gavan's -own and lent to the scene a certain matter-of-fact convention. - -The captain bowed low. "Heard of you? Yes. I have often heard of you. I -am glad, glad and proud, to meet at last so much goodness and wit and -beauty. You have a name in the world, Miss Gifford. Yes, indeed, I have -heard of you." Suddenly, while he held her hand and gazed at her, his -look changed. Tears filled his eyes; a muscle in his lip began to shake; -a flush of maudlin indignation purpled his face. - -"And you are the girl my son jilted! And you come to our house! It's a -noble action. It's a generous action. It's worthy of you, my dear." He -tightly squeezed her hand, Gavan's attempt--and now no gentle one--to -draw him away only making his clutch the more determined. - -"No, Gavan, I will not go. I will speak my mind. This is my hour. The -time has come for me to speak my mind. Let's have the truth; truth at -all costs is my motto. A noble and generous action. But, my dear," he -leaned his head toward her and spoke in a loud whisper, "you're well rid -of him, you know--well rid of him. Don't try to patch it up. Don't come -in that hope. So like a woman--I know, I know. But give it up; that's my -advice. Give it up. He's a poor fellow--a very poor fellow. He wouldn't -make you happy; just take that from me--a friend, a true friend. He -wouldn't make any woman happy. He's a poor creature, and a false -creature, and I'll say this," the captain, now trembling violently, -burst into tears: "if he has been a false lover to you he has been a bad -son to me." - -With both hands, sobbing, he clung to her, while, with a look of sick -distress, Gavan tried, not too violently, to draw him from his hold on -her. - -Eppie had not flushed. "Don't mind," she said, glancing at the helpless -son, "he has mixed it up, you see." And, bending on the captain eyes -severe in kindly intention, like the eyes of a nurse firmly -administering a potion, "You are mistaken about Gavan. It was another -man who jilted me. Now let him take you up-stairs. You are ill." - -But the captain still clung, she, erect in her spare young strength, -showing no shrinking of repulsion. "No, no," he said; "you always try to -shield him. A woman's way. He won your heart, and then he broke it, as -he has mine. He has no heart, or he'd take you now. Give it up. Don't -come after him. Sir, how dare you! I won't submit to this. How dare you, -Sir!" Gavan had wrenched him away, and in a flare of silly passion he -struck at him again and again, like a furious child. It was a wrestle -with the animal, the vegetable thing, the pinioning of vicious -tentacles. Mrs. Arley fluttered in helpless consternation, while Eppie, -firm and adequate, assisted Gavan in securing the wildly striking hands. -Caught, held, haled toward the door, the captain became, with amazing -rapidity, all smiles and placidity. - -"Gently, gently, my dear boy. This is unseemly, you know, very childish -indeed. Temper! Temper! You get it from me, no doubt--though your mother -could be very spiteful at moments. I'll come now. I've said my say. Well -rid of him, my dear, well rid of him," he nodded from the door. - -"Eppie! My dear!" cried Mrs. Arley, when father and son had disappeared. -"How unutterably hateful. I am more sorry for him than for you, Eppie. -His face!" - -Eppie was shrugging up her shoulders and straightening herself as though -the captain's grasp still threatened her. - -"Hateful indeed; but trivial. Gavan understands that I understand. We -must make him feel that it's nothing." - -"He's quite mad, horrible old man." - -"Not quite; more uncomfortably muddled than mad. We must make him see -that we think nothing of it," Eppie repeated. She turned to Gavan, who -entered as she spoke, still with his sick flush and showing a speechless -inability to frame apologies. - -"This is what it is to have echoes, Gavan," she said. "My little -misfortunes have reached your father's ears." She went to him, she took -his hand, she smiled at him, all her radiance recovered, a garment of -warmth and ease to cover the shivering the captain's words might have -made. "Please don't mind. I wasn't a bit bothered, really." - -He could almost have wept for the relief of her smile, her sanity. The -linking of their names in such an unthinkable connection had given him -the nausea qualm of a terrifying obsession. He could find now only trite -words in which to tell her that she was very kind and that he was more -sorry than he could say. - -"But you mustn't be. It was such an obvious muddle for a twisted mind. -He knew," said Eppie, still smiling with the healing radiance, "that I -had been jilted, and he knew that I was very fond of you, and he put -together the one and one make two that happened to be before him." She -saw that his distress had been far greater than her own, that she now -gave him relief. - -Afterward, as she and Mrs. Arley sped away, her own reaction from the -healing attitude showed in a rather grim silence. She leaned back in the -swift, keen air, her arms folded in the fullness of her capes. - -But Mrs. Arley could not repress her own accumulations of feeling. "My -dear Eppie," she said, her hand on her shoulder, and with an almost more -than maternal lack of reticence, "I want you to marry him. Don't glare -Medusa at me. I hate tact and silences. Heaven knows I would have -scouted the idea of such a match for you before seeing him to-day. But -my hard old heart is touched. He is such a dear; so lonely. It's a nice -little place, too, and there is some money. Jim Grainger is too -drab-colored a person for you,--all his force, all his sheckles, can't -gild him,--and Kenneth Langley is penniless. This dear creature is not a -bit drab and not quite penniless. And you are big enough to marry a man -who needs you rather than one you need. _Will_ you think of it, Eppie?" - -"Grace, you are worse than Captain Palairet," said Eppie, whose eyes -were firmly fixed on the neat leather back of the chauffeur in front of -them. - -"Don't be cross, Eppie. Why should you mind my prattle?" - -"Because I care for him so much." - -"Well, that's what I say." - -"No; not as I mean it." - -"_He_ of course cares, as I mean it." - -Eppie did not pause over this. - -"It's something different, quite different, from anything else in the -world. It can't be talked about like that. Please, Grace, never, never -be like Captain Palairet again. _You_ haven't softening of the brain. I -shall lose Gavan if my friends and his father have such delusions too -openly." - - - - -XI - - -Gavan went down the noisy, dirty thoroughfare, looking for the turning -which would lead him, so the last policeman consulted said, to Eppie's -little square. - -It was a May day, suddenly clear after rain, liquid mud below, and above -a sharply blue sky, looking its relentless contrast at the reeking, -sordid streets, the ugly, hurrying life of the wide thoroughfare. - -All along the gutter was a vociferous fringe of dripping fruit-and -food-barrows, these more haphazard conveniences faced by a line of -gaudy, glaring shops. - -The blue above was laced with a tangle of tram-wires and cut with the -jagged line of chimney-pots. - -The roaring trams, the glaring shops, seemed part of a cruel machinery -creative of life, and the grim air of permanence, the width and solidity -of the great thoroughfare, were more oppressive to Gavan's nerves, its -ugliness fiercer, more menacing, than the narrower meanness of the -streets where life seemed to huddle with more despondency. - -In one of these he found that he had, apparently, lost his way. - -A random turn brought him to a squalid court with sloping, wet pavement -and open doors disgorging, from inner darkness, swarms of children. They -ran; tottered on infantile, bandy legs; locked in scuffling groups, -screaming shrilly, or squatted on the ground, absorbed in some game. - -Gavan surveyed them vaguely as he wandered seeking an outlet. His eye -showed neither shrinking nor tenderness, rather a bleak, hard, unmoved -pity, like that of the sky above. He was as alien from that swarming, -vivid life as the sky; but, worn as he was with months of nervous -overstrain, he felt rising within him now and then a faint sense of -nausea such as one might feel in contemplating a writhing clot of -maggots. - -He threaded his way among them all, and at a corner of the court found a -narrow exit. This covered passage led, apparently, to another and fouler -court, and emerging from it, coming suddenly face to face with him, was -Eppie. She was as startling, seen here, as "a lily in the mouth of -Tartarus," and he had a shock of delight in her mere aspect. For Eppie -was as exquisite as a flower. Her garments had in no way adapted -themselves to mud and misery. Her rough dress of Japanese blue showed at -the open neck of its jacket a white linen blouse; her short, kilted -skirt swung with the grace of petals; her little upturned cap of blue -made her look like a Rosalind ready for a background of woodland glade, -streams, and herds of deer. - -And here she stood, under that cruel sky, among the unimaginable -ugliness of this City of Dreadful Night. - -In her great surprise she did not smile, saying, as she gave him her -hand, "Gavan! by all that's wonderful!" - -"You asked me to come and see you when I was next in London." - -"So I did." - -"So here I am. I had a day off by chance; some business that had to be -seen to." - -"And your father?" - -"Slowly going." - -"And you have come down here, for how long?" - -"For as long as you'll keep me. I needn't go back till night." - -Her eye now wandered away from him to the maggots, one of whom, Gavan -observed, had attached itself to her skirt, while a sufficiently dense -crowd surrounded them, staring. - -"You have a glimpse of our children," said Eppie, surveying them with, -not exactly a maternal, but, as it were, a fraternal eye of affectionate -familiarity. - -"What's that, Annie?" in answer to a husky whisper. "Do I expect you -to-night? Rather! Is that the doll, Ada? Well, I can't say that you've -kept it very tidy. Where's its pinafore?" She took the soiled object -held up to her and examined its garments. "Where's its petticoat?" - -"Please, Miss, Hemly took them." - -"Took them away from you?" - -"Yes, Miss." - -"For her own doll, I suppose." - -"Yes, Miss." - -Eppie cogitated. "I'll speak to Emily about it presently. You shall have -them back." - -"Please, Miss, I called her a thief." - -"You spoke the truth. How are you, Billy? You look decidedly better. -Gavan, my hands are full for the next hour or so and I can't even offer -to take you with me, for I'm going to sick people. But I shall be back -and through with all my work by tea-time, if you don't mind going to my -place and waiting. You'll find Maude Allen there. She lives down here, -and with me when I am here. She is a nice girl, though she will talk -your head off." - -"How do I find her? I don't mind waiting." - -"You follow this to the end, take the first turning to the right, and -that will bring you to my place. I'll meet you there at five." - -Gavan, thus directed, made his way to the dingy little house occupied by -the group of energetic women whom Eppie joined yearly for her three -months of--dissipation? he asked himself, amused by her variegated -vigor. - -The dingy little house looked on a dingy little square--shell of former -respectable affluence from which the higher form of life had shriveled. -The sooty trees were thickly powdered with young green, and uneven -patches of rough, unkempt grass showed behind broken iron railings. A -cat's-meat man called his dangling wares along the street, and Gavan, -noticing a thin and furtive cat, that stole from a window-ledge, stopped -him and bought a large three-penny-worth, upon which he left the cat -regaling itself with an odd, fastidious ferocity. - -He entered another world when he entered Eppie's sitting-room. Here was -life at its most austerely sweet. Books lined the walls, bowls of -primroses and delicate Japanese bronzes set above their shelves; -chintz-covered chairs were drawn before the fire; the latest reviews lay -on a table, and on the piano stood open music; there were wide windows -in the little room, and crocuses, growing in flat, earthenware dishes, -blew out their narrow chalices against the sunlit muslin curtains. - -Miss Allen sat sewing near the crocuses, and, shy and voluble, rose to -greet him. She was evidently accustomed to Eppie's guests--accustomed, -too, perhaps, to taking them off her hands, for though she was shy her -volubility showed a familiarity with the situation. She was almost as -funny a contrast to Eppie as the slum children had been an ugly one. She -wore a spare, drab-colored skirt and a cotton shirt, its high, hard -collar girt about by a red tie that revealed bone buttons before and -behind. Her sleek, fair hair, relentlessly drawn back, looked like a -varnish laid upon her head. Her features, at once acute and kindly, were -sharp and pink. - -She was sewing on solid and distressingly ugly materials. - -"Yes, I am usually at home. Miss Gifford is the head and I am the hands, -you see," she smiled, casting quick, upward glances at the long, pale -young man in his chair near the fire. "Miss Henderson, Miss Grey, and I -live here all year round, and I do so look forward to Miss Gifford's -coming. Oh, yes, it's a most interesting life. Do you do anything of the -sort? Are you going to take up a club? Perhaps you are going into the -Church?" - -Miss Allen asked her swift succession of questions as if in a mild -desperateness. - -Gavan admitted that his interest was wholly in Miss Gifford. - -"She _is_ interesting," Miss Allen, all comprehension, agreed. "So many -people find her inspiring. Do you know Mr. Grainger, the M.P.? He comes -here constantly. He is a cousin, you know. He has known her, of course, -ever since she was a child. I think it's very probable that she -influences his political life--oh, quite in a right sense, I mean. He is -such a conscientious man--everybody says that. And then she isn't at all -eccentric, you know, as so many fashionable women who come down here -are; they do give one so much trouble when they are like that,--all -sorts of fads that one has to manage to get on with. She isn't at all -faddish. And she isn't sentimental, either. I think the sentimental ones -are worst--for the people, especially, giving them all sorts of foolish -ideas. And it's not that she doesn't _care_. She cares such a lot. -That's the secret of her not getting discouraged, you see. She never -loses her spirit." - -"Is it such discouraging work?" Gavan questioned from his chair. With -his legs crossed, his hat and stick held on his knee, he surveyed Miss -Allen and the crocuses. - -"Well, not to me," she answered; "but that's very different, for I have -religious faith. Miss Gifford hasn't that, so of course she must care a -great deal to make up for it. When one hasn't a firm faith it is far -more difficult, I always think, to see any hope in it all. I think she -would find it far easier if she had that. She can't resign herself to -things. She is rather hot-tempered at times," Miss Allen added, with one -of her sharp, shy glances. - -Gavan, amused by the idea that Eppie lacked religious faith, inquired -whether the settlement were religious in intention, and Miss Allen -sighed a little in answering no,--Miss Grey, indeed, was a Positivist. -"But we Anglicans are very broad, you know," she said. "I can work in -perfectly with them all--better with Miss Grey and Miss Gifford than -with Miss Henderson, who is very, very Low. Miss Gifford goes in more -for social conditions and organization--trades-unions, all that sort of -thing; that's where she finds Mr. Grainger so much of a help, I think." -And he gathered from Miss Allen's further conversation, from its very -manner of vague though admiring protest, a clearer conception of Eppie's -importance down here. To Miss Allen, she evidently embodied a splendid, -pagan force, ambiguous in its splendor. He saw her slightly shrinking -vision of an intent combatant; no loving sister of charity, but a young -Bellona, the latest weapons of sociological warfare in her hands, its -latest battle-cry on her lips. And all for what? thought Gavan, while, -with a sense of contrasting approval, he looked at Miss Allen's tidy -little head against the sunlit crocuses and watched the harmless -occupation of her hands. All for life, more life; the rousing of desire; -the struggling to higher forms of consciousness. She was in it, the -strife, the struggle. He had seen on her face to-day, with all its -surprise, perhaps its gladness, that alien look of grave preoccupation -that passed from him to the destinies she touched. In thinking of it all -he felt particularly at peace, though there was the irony of his -assurance that Eppie's efforts among this suffering life where he found -her only resulted in a fiercer hold on suffering. Physical degradation -and its resultant moral apathy were by no means the most unendurable of -human calamities. Miss Allen's anodynes--the mere practical petting, -soothing, telling of pretty tales--were, in their very short-sightedness, -more fitted to the case. - -Miss Allen little thought to what a context her harmless prattle was -being adjusted. She would have been paralyzed with horror could she have -known that to the gentle young man, sitting there so unalarmingly, she -herself was only a rather simple symptom of life that he was quietly -studying. In so far from suspecting, her shyness went from her; he was -so unalarming--differing in this from so many people--that she found it -easy to talk to him. And she still had a happy little hope of a closer -community of interest than he had owned to. He looked, she thought, very -High Church. Perhaps he was in the last stages of conversion. - -She had talked on for nearly an hour when another visitor was announced. -This proved to be a young man slightly known to Gavan, a graceful, -mellifluous youth, whose artificiality of manner and great personal -beauty suggested a mingling of absinthe and honey. People had rather -bracketed Gavan and Basil Mayburn together; one could easily deal with -both as lumped in the same category,--charming drifters, softly -disdainful of worldly aims and efforts. Mayburn himself took sympathy -for granted, though disconcerted at times by finding his grasp of the -older man to be on a sliding, slippery surface. Palairet had, to be -sure, altogether the proper appreciations of art and literature, the -rhythm of highly evolved human intercourse; the aroma distilled for the -esthete from the vast tragic comedy of life; so that he had never quite -satisfied himself as to why he could get no nearer on this common -footing. Palairet was always charming, always interested, always -courteous; but one's hold did slip. - -And to Gavan, Basil Mayburn, with his fluent ecstasies, seemed a -sojourner in a funny half-way house. To Mayburn the hallucination of -life was worth while esthetically. His own initial appeal to life had -been too fundamentally spiritual for the beautiful to be more to him -than a second-rate illusion. - -Miss Allen greeted Mr. Mayburn with a coolness that at once -discriminated for Gavan between her instinctive liking for himself and -her shrinking from a man who perplexed and displeased her. - -Mayburn was all glad sweetness: delighted to see Miss Allen; delighted -to see Palairet; delighted to wait in their company for the delightful -Miss Gifford; and, turning to Miss Allen, he went on to say, as a thing -that would engage her sympathies, that he had just come from a service -at the Oratory. - -"I often go there," he said; "one gets, as nowhere else that I know of -in London, the quintessence of aspiration--the age-long yearning of the -world. How are your schemes for having that little church built down -here succeeding? I do so believe in it. Don't let any ugly sect steal a -march on you." - -Miss Allen primly replied that the plans for the church were prospering; -and adding that Miss Gifford would be here in a moment and that she must -leave them, she gathered up her work and departed with some emphasis. - -"Nice, dear little creature, that," said Mayburn, "though she does so -dislike me. I hope I didn't say the wrong thing. I never quite know how -far her Anglicanism goes; such a pity that it doesn't go a little -further and carry her into a nunnery of the Catholic Church. She is the -nun type. She ought to be done up in their delicious costume; it would -lend her the flavor she lacks so distressingly now. Did you notice her -collar and her hair? Astonishing the way that Eppie makes use of all -these funny, _guindee_ creatures whom she gets hold of down here. Have -you ever seen Miss Grey?--dogmatic, utilitarian, strangely ugly Miss -Grey, another nun type corrupted by our silly modern conditions. She -reeks of Comte and looks like a don. And all the rest of them,--the -solemn humanitarians, the frothy socialists, the worldly, benign old -ecclesiastics,--Eppie works them all; she has a genius for -administration. It's an art in her. It almost consoles one for seeing -her wasted down here for so much of the year." - -"Why wasted?" Gavan queried. "She enjoys it." - -"Exactly. That's the alleviation. Wasted for us, I mean. You have known -her for a long time, haven't you, Palairet?" - -Gavan, irked by the question and by the familiarity of Mayburn's -references to their absent hostess, answered dryly that he had known -Miss Gifford since childhood; and Mayburn, all tact, passed at once to -less personal topics, inquiring with a new earnestness whether Palairet -had seen Selby's Goya, and expatiating on its exquisite horror until the -turning of a key in the hall-door, quick steps on the stairs leading up -past the sitting-room, announced Eppie's arrival. - -She was with them in a moment, cap and jacket doffed, her muddy shoes -changed for slender patent-leather, fresh in her white blouse. She -greeted Mayburn, turning to Gavan with, "I'm so glad you waited. You -shall both have tea directly." - -With all her crisp kindliness, Gavan fancied a change in her since the -greeting of an hour and a half before. Things hadn't gone well with her. -And he could flatter himself, also, with the suspicion that she was -vexed at finding their tete-a-tete interrupted. - -Mayburn loitered about the room after her while she straightened the -shade on the student's lamp, just brought in, and made the tea, telling -her about people, about what was going on in the only world that -counted, telling her about Chrissie Bentworth's astounding elopement, -and, finally, about the Goya. "You really must see it soon," he assured -her. - -Eppie, adjusting the flame of her kettle, said that she didn't want to -see it. - -"You don't care for Goya, dear lady?" - -"Not just now." - -"Well, of course I don't mean just now. I mean after you have burned out -this particular flame. But, really, it's a sensation before you and you -mustn't miss having it. An exquisite thing. Horror made beautiful." - -"I don't want to see it made beautiful," Eppie, with cheerful rudeness, -objected. - -"Now that," said Mayburn, drawing up to the tea-table with an -appreciative glance for the simple but inviting fare spread upon -it--"now that is just where I always must argue with you. Don't you -agree with me, Palairet, that life is beautiful--that it's only in terms -of beauty that it has significance?" - -"If you happen to see it so," Gavan ambiguously assented. - -"Exactly; I accept your amendment--if you happen to have the good -fortune to see it so; if you have the faculty that gives the vision; if, -like Siegfried, the revealing dragon's-blood has touched your lips. -Eppie has the gift and shouldn't wilfully atrophy it. She shouldn't -refuse to share the vision of the Supreme Artist, to whom all horror and -tragedy are parts of the picture that his eternal joy contemplates; she -should not refuse to listen with the ear of the Supreme Musician, to -whom all the discords that each one of us is, before we taste the -dragon's-blood,--for what is man but a dissonance, as our admirable -Nietzsche says,--to whom all these discords melt into the perfect -phrase. All art, all truth is there. I'm rather dithyrambic, but, in -your more reticent way, you agree with me, don't you, Palairet?" - -Eppie's eye, during this speech, had turned with observant irony upon -Gavan. - -"How do you like your echo, Gavan?" she inquired, and she answered for -him: "Of course he agrees, but in slightly different terms. He doesn't -care a fig about the symphony or about the Eternal Goya. There isn't a -touch of the 'lyric rapture' about him. Now pray don't ask him to define -his own conceptions, and drink your tea. And don't say one word to me, -either, about your gigantic, Bohemian deity. You have spoken of -Nietzsche, and I know too well what you are coming to: the Apollonian -spirit of the world of Appearances in which the Dionysiac spirit of -Things-in-Themselves mirrors its vital ecstasy. Spare me, I'm not at all -in the humor to see horror in terms of loveliness." - -"_Ay de mi!_" Mayburn murmured, "you make me feel that I'm still a -dissonance when you talk like this." - -"A very wholesome realization." - -"You are cross with life to-day, and therefore with me, its poor little -appreciator." - -"I'm never cross with life." - -"Only with me, then?" - -"Only with you, to-day." - -Mayburn, folding his slice of bread-and-butter, took her harshness with -Apollonian serenity. "At least let me know that I've an ally in you," he -appealed to Gavan, while Eppie refilled her cup with the business-like -air of stoking an engine that paused for a moment near wayside -trivialities. - -Gavan had listened to the dithyrambics with some uneasiness, conscious -of Eppie's observation, and now owned that he felt little interest in -the Eternal Goya. - -"Don't, don't, I pray of you, let him take the color out of life for -you," Mayburn pleaded, turning from this rebuff, tea-cup in hand, to -Eppie; and Eppie, with a rather grim smile, again full of reminiscences -for Gavan, declared that neither of them could take anything out of it -for her. - -She kept, after that, the talk in pleasant enough shallows; but Mayburn -fancied, more than once, that he heard the grating of his keel on an -unpropitious shore. Eppie didn't want him to-day, that was becoming -evident; she wasn't going to push him off into decorative sailing. And -presently, wondering a little if his tact had already been too long at -fault, wondering anew about the degree of intimacy between the childhood -friends, who had, evidently, secrets in which he did not share, he -gracefully departed. - -Eppie leaned back in her chair, folded her arms, and closed her eyes as -though to give herself the relief of a long silence. - -Her hair softly silhouetted against the green shade and the flickering -illumination of the firelight upon her, her passive face showed a stern -wistfulness. Things had gone wrong with her. - -Looking at her, Gavan's memory went back to the last time they had been -together, alone, in firelight, to his impulse and her startlingly acute -interpretation of it. Her very aspect now, her closed eyes and folded -arms, seemed to show him how completely she disowned, for both of them, -even the memory of such an unfitting episode. More keenly than ever he -recognized the fineness in her, the generosity, the willingness to -outlive trifles, to put them away forever; and the contagion of her -somber peace enveloped him. - -She remarked presently, not opening her eyes: "I should like to make a -bon-fire of all the pictures in the world, all the etchings, the -carvings, the tapestries, the bric-a-brac in general,--and Basil -Mayburn, in sackcloth and ashes, should light it." - -"What puritanic savagery, Eppie!" - -"I prefer the savage puritan to the Basil Mayburn type; at least I do -just now." - -"What's the matter?" Gavan asked, after a little pause. - -"Do I show it so evidently?" she asked, with a faint smile. "Everything -is the matter." - -"What, in particular, has gone wrong?" - -Eppie did not reply at first, and he guessed that she chose only to show -him a lesser trouble when she said, "I've had a great quarrel with Miss -Grey, for one thing." - -"The positivistic lady?" - -"Yes; did Maude tell you that? She really is a very first-rate -person--and runs this place; but I lost my temper with her--a stupid -thing to do, and not suddenly, either, which made it the less -excusable." - -"Are your theories so different that you came to a clash?" - -"Of course they are different, though it was apparently only over a -matter of practical administration that we fought." Eppie drew a long -breath, opening her eyes. "I shall stay on here this spring--I usually -go to my cousin Alicia for the season. But one can't expect things to go -as one wants them unless one keeps one's hand on the engine most of the -time. She has almost a right to consider me a meddling outsider, I -suppose. I shall stay on till the end of the summer." - -"And smash Miss Grey?" - -Eppie, aware of his amusement, turned an unresentful glance upon him. - -"No, don't think me merely brutally dominant. I really like her. I only -want to use her to the best advantage." - -At this he broke into a laugh. "Not brutally dominant, I know; but I'm -sorry for Miss Grey." - -"Miss Grey can well take care of herself, I assure you." - -"What else has gone wrong?" - -Again Eppie chose something less wrong to show him. "The factory where -some of my club-girls work has shut down half of its machinery. There -will be a great deal of suffering. And we have pulled them above a -flippant acceptance of state relief." - -"And because you have pulled them up, they are to suffer more?" - -"Exactly, if you choose to put it so," said Eppie. - -He saw that she had determined that he should not frighten her again, -or, at all events, that he should never see it if he did frighten her; -and he had himself determined that his mist should never again close -round her. She should not see, even if she guessed at it pretty clearly, -the interpretation that he put upon the afternoon's frictions and -failures, and, on the plane of a matter-of-fact agreement as to -practice, he drew her on to talk of her factory-girls, of the standards -of wages, the organization of woman's labor, so that she presently said, -"What a pleasure it is to hear you talking sense, Gavan!" - -"You have heard me talk a great deal of nonsense, I'm sure." - -"A great deal. Worse than Basil Mayburn's." - -"I saw too clearly to-day the sorry figure I must have cut in your eyes. -I have learned to hold my tongue. When one can only say things that -sound particularly silly that is an obvious duty." - -"I am glad to hear you use the word, my dear Gavan; use it, even though -it means nothing to you. _Glissez mortel, n'appuyez pas_ should be your -motto for a time; then, after some wholesome skating about on what seems -the deceptive, glittering surface of things you will find, perhaps, that -it isn't an abyss the ice stretches over, but a firm meadow, the ice -melted off it and no more need of skates." - -He was quite willing that she should so see his case; he was easier to -live with, no doubt, on this assumption of his curability. - -Eppie, still leaning back, still with folded arms, had once more closed -her eyes, involuntarily sighing, as though under her own words the -haunting echo of the abyss had sounded for her. - -She had not yet shown him what the real trouble was, and he asked her -now, in this second lull of their talk, "What else is there besides the -factory-girls and Miss Grey?" - -She was silent for a moment, then said, "You guess that there is -something else." - -"I can see it." - -"And you are sorry?" - -"Sorry, dear Eppie? Of course." - -"It's a child, a cripple," said Eppie. "It had been ill for a long time, -but we thought that we could save it. It died this morning. I didn't -know. I didn't get there in time. I only found out after leaving you -this afternoon. And it cried for me." She had turned her head from him -as it leaned against the chair, but he saw the tears slowly rolling down -her cheeks. - -"I am so sorry, dear Eppie," he said. - -"The most darling child, Gavan." His grave pity had brought him near and -it gave her relief to speak. "It had such a wistful, dear little face. I -used to spend hours with it; I never cared for any child so much. What I -can't bear is to think that it cried for me." Her voice broke. Without a -trace, now, of impulse or glamour, he took her hand, repeating his -helpless phrase of sympathy. Yes, he thought, while she wept, here was -the fatal flaw in any Tolstoian half-way house that promised peace. Love -for others didn't help their suffering; suffering with them didn't stop -it. Here was the brute fact of life that to all peace-mongers sternly -said, Where there is love there is no peace. - -It was only after her hand had long lain in his fraternal clasp that she -drew it away, drying her tears and trying to smile her thanks at him. -Looking before her into the fire, and back into a retrospect of sadness, -she said: "How often you and I meet death together, Gavan. The poor -monkey, and Bobbie, and Elspeth even, ought to count." - -"You must think of me and death together," he said. - -He felt in a moment that the words had for her some significance that he -had not intended. In her silence was a shock, and in her voice, when she -spoke, a startled thing determinedly quieted. - -"Not more than you must think of me and it together." - -"You and death, dear Eppie! You are its very antithesis!" - -She did not look at him, and he could not see her eyes, but he knew, -with the almost uncanny intuition that he so often had in regard to her, -that a rising strength, a strength that threatened something, strove -with a sudden terror. - -"Life conquers death," she said at last. - -He armed himself with lightness. "Of course, dear Eppie," he said; "of -course it does; always and always. The poor baby dies, and--I wonder how -many other babies are being born at this moment? Conquers death? I -should think it did!" - -"I did not mean in that way," she answered. She had risen, and, looking -at the clock, seemed to show him that their time was over. "But we won't -discuss life and death now," she said. - -"You mean that it's late and that I must go?" he smiled. - -"Perhaps I mean only that I don't want to discuss," she smiled back. -"Though--yes, indeed, it is late; almost seven. I have a great many -things to do this evening, so that I must rest before dinner, and let -you go." - -"I may come again?" - -"Whenever you will. Thank you for being so kind to-day." - -"Kind, dear Eppie?" - -"For being sorry, I mean." - -"Who but a brute would not have been?" - -"And you are not a brute." - -The shaded light cast soft upward shadows on her face, revealing sweet -oddities of expression. In their shadow he could not fathom her eyes; -but a tenderness, peaceful, benignant, even a recovered gaiety, hovered -on her brow, her upper lip, her cheeks. It was like a reflection of -sunlight in a deep pool, this dim smiling of gratitude and gaiety. - -He had a queer feeling, and a profounder one than in their former moment -when she had repudiated his helpless emotion, that she spared him, that -she restrained some force that might break upon this fraternal nearness. -For an instant he wondered if he wanted to be spared, and with the -wonder was once more the wrench at leaving her there, alone, in her -fire-lit room. But it was her strength that carried them over all these -dubious undercurrents, and he so relied on it that, holding her hand in -good-by, he said, "I will come soon. I like it here." - -"And you are coming to Kirklands this summer. Uncle expects it. You -mustn't disappoint him, and me. I shall be there for a month." - -"I'll come." - -"Jim Grainger will be there, too. You remember Jim. You can fight with -him from morning till night, but you and I will fight about nothing, -absolutely nothing, Gavan. We will--_glisser_. We will talk about Goya! -We will be perfectly comfortable." - -He really believed that they might be, so happily convincing was her -tone. - -"Grainger is a great chum of yours, isn't he?" he asked. - -"You remember, he and his brother were old playmates; Clarence has -turned out a poor creature; he's a nobody in the church. I'm very fond -of Jim. And I admire him tremendously. He is the conquering type, you -know--the type that tries for the high grapes." - -"You won't set him at me, to mangle me for your recreation?" - -"Do I seem such a pitiless person?" - -"Oh, it would be for my good, of course." - -"You may come with no fear of manglings. You sha'n't be worried or -reformed." - -They had spoken as if the captain were non-existent, but Gavan put the -only qualifying touch to his assurance of seeing her at Kirklands. "I'll -come--if I can get there by then." - - - - -XII - - -But he did not go to her again in the slums. The final phases of his -father's long illness kept him in Surrey, and he found, on thinking it -over, that he was content to rest in the peace of that last seeing of -her. - -It was clear to him that, were it not for that paralysis of the heart -and will, he would have been her lover. Like a veiled, exquisite -picture, the impossible love was with him always; he could lift the veil -and look upon it with calmness. That he owed something of this calmness -to Eppie he well knew. She loved him,--that, too, was evident,--but as a -sister might love, perhaps as a mother might. He was her child, her sick -child or brother, and he smiled over the simile, well content, and with -an odd sense of safety in his assurance. Peace was to be their final -word, and in the long months of a still, hot summer, this soft, -persistent note of peace was with him and filled a lassitude greater -than any he had known. - -Monotonously the days went by like darkly freighted boats on a sultry -sea--low-lying boats, sliding with the current under sleepy sails. - -He watched consciousness fade from his father's body and found strange, -sly analogies (they were like horrid nudges in the dark)--with his -mother's death, the worthless man, the saintly woman, mingling in the -sameness of their ending, the pitifulness, after all, of the final -insignificance that overtook them both. And so glassy was the current, -so sleepy the wind, that the analogy shook hardly a tremor of pain -through him. - -In the hour of his father's death, a more trivial memory came--trivial, -yet it lent a pathos, even a dignity, to the dying man. In the captain's -eyes, turned wonderingly on him, in the automatic stretching out of his -wasted hand for his,--Gavan held it to the end--was the reminiscence of -the poor monkey's far-away death, the little tropical creature that had -drooped and died at Kirklands. - -On the day of the funeral, Gavan sat in the library at dusk, and the -lassitude had become so deep, partly through the breakdown of sheer -exhaustion, that the thought of going on watching his own machinery -work--toward that same end,--the end of the monkey, of his father, his -mother,--was profoundly disgusting. - -It was a positively physical disgust, a nausea of fatigue, that had -overtaken him as he watched the rooks, above the dark yet gilded woods, -wheel against a sunset sky. - -Almost automatically, with no sense of choice or effort, he had unlocked -a drawer of the writing-table beside him and taken out a case of -pistols, merely wondering if the machine were going to take the final -and only logical move of stopping itself. - -He was a little interested to observe, as he opened the case, that he -felt no emotion at all. He had quite expected that at such a last moment -life would concentrate, gather itself for a final leap on him, a final -clinging. He had expected to have a bout with the elemental, the thing -that some men called faith in life and some only desire of life, and, -indeed, for a moment, his mind wandered in vague, Buddhistic fancies -about the wheel of life to which all desire bound one, desire, the -creator of life, so that as long as the individual felt any pulse of it -life might always suck him back into the vortex. The fancy gave him his -one stir of uneasiness. Suppose that the act of departure were but the -final act of will. Could it be that such self-affirmation might tie him -still to the wheel he strove to escape, and might the drama still go on -for his unwilling spirit in some other dress of flesh? To see the fear -as the final bout was to quiet it; it was a fear symptomatic of life, a -lure to keep him going; and, besides, how meaningless such surmises, on -their ethical basis of voluntary choice, as if in the final decision one -would not be, as always, the puppet of the underlying will. His mind -dropped from the thread-like interlacing of teasing metaphysical -conjecture to a calm as quiet and deep as though he were about to turn -on his pillow and fall asleep. - -Now, like the visions in a dreamy brain, the memories of the day trooped -through the emptiness of thought. He was aware, while he watched the -visions, of himself sitting there, to a spectator a tragic or a morbid -figure. Morbid was of course the word that a frightened or merely stupid -humanity would cast at him. And very morbid he was, to be sure, if life -were desirable and to cease to desire it abnormal. - -He saw himself no longer in either guise. He was looking now at his -father's coffin lowered into the earth of the little churchyard beside -his mother's grave; the fat, genial face of the sexton, the decorous -sadness on the little rector's features. Overhead had been the quietly -stirring elms; sheep grazed beyond the churchyard wall and on the -horizon was the pastoral blue of distant hills. He saw the raw, new -grave and the heave of the older grave's green sod, the old stone, with -its embroidery of yellow lichen and its text of eternal faith. - -And suddenly the thought of that heave of sod, that headstone, what it -stood for in his life, the tragic memory, the love, the agony,--all -sinking into mere dust, into the same dust as the father whom he had -hated,--struck with such unendurable anguish upon him that, as if under -heavy churchyard sod a long-dead heart strove up in a tormented -resurrection, life rushed appallingly upon him and, involuntarily, as a -drowning man's hand seizes a spar and clings, his hand closed on the -pistol under it. Leave it, leave it,--this dream where such -resurrections were possible. - -He had lifted the pistol, pausing for a moment in an uncertainty as to -whether head or heart were the surer exit, when a quiet step at the -door arrested him. - -"Shall I bring the lamps, sir?" asked Howson's quiet voice. - -Gavan could but admire his own deftness in tossing a newspaper over the -pistol. He found himself perfectly prepared to keep up the last -appearances. He said that he didn't want the lamps yet and that Howson -could leave the curtains undrawn. "It's sultry this evening," he added. - -"It is, sir; I expect we'll have thunder in the night," said Howson, -whose voice partook of the day's decorous gloom. He had brought in the -evening mail and laid the letters and newspapers beside Gavan, slightly -pushing aside the covered pistol to make room for them, an action that -Gavan observed with some intentness. But Howson saw nothing. - -Left alone again, Gavan, not moving in his chair, glanced at the letters -and papers neatly piled beside his elbow. - -After the rending agony of that moment of hideous realization, when, in -every fiber, he had felt his own woeful humanity, an odd sleepiness -almost overcame him. - -He felt much more like going to sleep than killing himself, and, -yawning, stretching, he shivered a little from sheer fatigue. - -The edge of the newspaper that covered the pistol was weighted down by -the pile of papers, and in putting out his hand for it, automatically, -he pushed the letters aside, then, yawning again, picked them up instead -of the pistol. He glanced over the envelops, not opening them,--the -last hand at cards, that could hold no trumps for him. It was with as -mechanical an interest as that of the condemned criminal who, on the way -to the scaffold, turns his head to look at some unfamiliar sight. But at -the last letter he paused. The post-mark was Scotch; the writing was -Eppie's. - -He might have considered at that moment that the shock he felt was a -warning that life was by no means done with him, and that his way of -safety lay in swift retreat. - -But after the wrench of agony and the succeeding sliding languor, he did -not consider anything. It was like a purely physical sensation, what he -felt, as he held the letter and looked at Eppie's writing. Soft, -recurrent thrills went through him, as though a living, vibrating thing -were in his hands. Eppie; Kirklands; the heather under a summer sky. Was -it desire, or a will-less drifting with a new current that the new -vision brought? He could not have told. - -He opened the letter and read Eppie's matter-of-fact yet delicate -sympathy. - -He must be worn out. She begged him to remember his promise and to come -to them at once. - -At once, thought Gavan. It must be that, indeed, or not at all. He -glanced at the clock. He could really go at once. He could catch the -London train, the night express for Scotland, and he could be at -Kirklands at noon next day. He rose and rang the bell, looking out at -the darker pink of the sky, where the rooks no longer wheeled, until -Howson appeared. - -"I'm going to Scotland to-night, at once." He found himself repeating -the summons of the letter. "Pack up my things. Order the trap." - -Howson showed no surprise. A flight from the house of death was only -natural. - -Gavan, when he was gone, went to the table and closed the box of pistols -with a short, decisive snap--a decision in sharp contrast to the mist in -which his mind was steeped. - -The peace the pistols promised, the peace of the northern sky and the -heather: why did he choose the latter? But then he did not choose. -Something had chosen for him. Something had called him back. Was it that -he was too weary to resist? or did all his strength consist in yielding? -He could not have told. Let the play go on. Its next act would be sweet -to watch. Of that he was sure. - - - - -PART III - - - - -I - - -The moor was like an amethyst under a radiant August sky, and the air, -with its harmony of wind and sunlight, was like music. - -Eppie walked beside him and Peter trotted before. The forms were -changed, but it might almost have been little Eppie, the boy Gavan, and -Robbie himself who went together through the heather. The form was -changed, but the sense of saneness so strong that it would have seemed -perfectly natural to pass an arm about a child Eppie's neck and to talk -of the morning's reading in the Odyssey. - -Never had the feeling of reality been so vague or the dream sense been -so beautiful. His instinctive choice of this peace, instead of the -other, had been altogether justified. It was all like a delightful game -they had agreed to play, and the only rule of the game was to take each -other's illusions for granted and, in so doing, to put them altogether -aside. - -It was as if they went in a dream that tallied while, outside their -dream, the sad life of waking slept. It was all limpid, all effortless, -all clear sunlight and clear wind: limpid, like a happy dream, yet -deliciously muddled too, as a happy dream is often muddled, with its -mazed consciousness that, since it is a dream, ordinary impossibilities -may become quite possible, that one only has to direct a little the -turnings of the fairy-tale to have them lead one where one will, and yet -that to all strange happenings there hovers a background of -contradiction that makes them the more of an enchanted perplexity. - -In the old white house the general and Miss Barbara would soon be -expecting them back to tea, both older, both vaguer, both, to Gavan's -appreciation, more and more the tapestried figures, the background to -the young life that still moved, felt, thought in the foreground until -it, too, should sink and fade into a tapestry for other dramas, other -fairy-tales. - -The general retold his favorite anecdotes with shorter intervals between -the tellings; cared more openly, with an innocent greediness, about the -exactitudes of his diet; was content to sit idly with an unremembering, -indifferent benignancy of gaze. All the sturdier significances of life -were fast slipping from him, all the old martial activities; it was like -seeing the undressing of a child, the laying aside of the toy trumpet -and the soldier's kilt preparatory to bed. Miss Barbara was sweeter than -ever--a sweetness even less touched with variations than last year. And -she was sillier, poor old darling; her laugh had in it at moments the -tinkling, feeble foolishness of age. - -Gavan saw it all imperturbably--how, in boyhood, the apprehension of it -would have cut into him!--and it all seemed really very good--as the -furniture to a fairy-tale; the sweet, dim, silly tapestry was part of -the peace. How Eppie saw it he didn't know; he didn't care; and she -seemed willing not to care, either, about what he saw or thought. Eppie -had for him in their fairy-tale all the unexacting loveliness of summer -nature, healing, sunny, smiling. He had been really ill, he knew that -now, and that the peace was in part the languor of convalescence, and, -for the sake of his recovery, she seemed to have become a part of -nature, to ask no questions and demand no dues. - -To have her so near, so tender, so untroubling, was like holding in his -hands a soft, contented wild bird. He could, he thought, have held it -against his heart, and the heart would not have throbbed the faster. - -There was nothing in her now of the young Valkyrie of mists and frosts, -shaking spears and facing tragedy with stern eyes. She threatened -nothing. She saw no tragedy. It was all again as if, in a bigger, more -beautiful way, she gave him milk to drink from a silver cup. Together -they drank, no potion, no enchanted, perilous potion, but, from the cup -of innocent summer days, the long, sweet dream of an Eternal Now. - -To-day, for the first time, the hint of a cloud had crept into the sky. - -"And to-morrow, Eppie, ends our tete-a-tete," he said. "Or will Grainger -make as little of a third as the general and Miss Barbara?" - -"He sha'n't spoil things, if that's what you mean," said Eppie. - -She wore a white dress and a white hat wreathed with green; the emerald -drops trembled in the shadow of her hair. She made him think of some -wandering princess in an Irish legend, with the white and green and the -tranquil shining of her eyes. - -"Not our things, perhaps; but can't he interfere with them? He will want -to talk with you about all the things we go on so happily without -talking of." - -"I'll talk to him and go on happily with you." - -It was almost on his lips to ask her if she could marry Grainger and -still go on happily, like this, with him, Gavan. That it should have -seemed possible to ask it showed how far into fairy-land they had -wandered; but it was one of the turnings that one didn't choose to take; -one was warned in one's sleep of lurking dangers on that road. It might -lead one straight out of fairy-land, straight into uncomfortable waking. - -"How happily we do go on, Eppie," was what he did choose to say. "More -happily than ever before. What a contrast this--to East London." - -She glanced at him. "And to Surrey." - -"And to Surrey," he accepted. - -"Surrey was worse than East London," she said. - -"I didn't know how much of a strain it had been until I got away from -it." - -"One saw it all in your face." - -"'One' meaning a clever Eppie, I suppose. But, yes, I had a bad moment -there." - -The memory of that heave of sod had no place in fairy-land, even less -place than the forecast of an Eppie married to Jim Grainger, and he -didn't let his thought dwell on it even when he owned to the bad -moment, and he was thinking, really with amusement over her -unconsciousness, of the two means of escape from it that he had found to -his hand,--the pistol and her letter,--when she took up his words with a -quiet, "Yes, I knew you had." - -"Knew that I had had a strain, you mean?" - -"No, had a bad moment," she answered. - -"You saw it in my face?" - -"No. I knew. Before I saw you." - -He smiled at her. "You have a clairvoyant streak in your Scotch blood?" - -She smiled back. "Probably. I knew, you see." - -Her assurance, with its calm over what it knew, really puzzled him. - -"Well, what did you know?" - -She had kept on quietly smiling while she looked at him, and, though she -now became grave, it was not as if for pain but for thankfulness. "It -was in the evening, the day after I wrote to you, the day your father -was buried. I went to my room to dress for dinner, my room next yours, -you know. And I was looking out,--at the pine-tree, the summer-house -where we played, and, in especial, I remember, at the white roses that I -could smell in the evening so distinctly,--when I knew, or saw, I don't -know which, that you were in great suffering. It was most of all as if I -were in you, feeling it myself, rather than seeing or knowing. Then," -her voice went on in its unshaken quiet, "I did seem to see--a grave; -not your father's grave. You were seeing it, too,--a green grave. And -then I came back into myself and knew. You were in some way,--going. I -stood there and looked at the roses and seemed only to wait intensely, -to watch intensely. And after that came a great calm, and I knew that -you were not going." - -She quietly looked at him again,--her eyes had not been on him while she -spoke,--and, though he had paled a little, he looked as quietly back. - -He found himself accepting, almost as a matter of course, this deep, -subconscious bond between them. - -But in another moment, another realization came. He took her hand and -raised it to his lips. - -"I always make you suffer." - -"No," she answered, though she, now, was a little pale, "I didn't -suffer. I was beyond, above all that. Whatever happened, we were really -safe. That was another thing I knew." - -He relinquished the kissed hand. "Dear Eppie, dear, dear Eppie, I am -glad that this happened." - -It had been, perhaps, to keep the dream safely around them that she had -shown him only the calm; for now she asked, and he felt the echo of that -suffering--that shared suffering--in it, "You had, then, chosen to go?" - -Somehow he knew that they were safe in the littler sense, that she would -keep the dream unawakened, even if they spoke of the outside life. -"Yes," he said, "you saw what was happening to me, Eppie. I had chosen -to go. But your letter came, and, instead, I chose to come to you." - -She asked no further question, walking beside him with all her -tranquillity. - -But, to her, it was not in a second childhood, not in a fairy-tale, that -they went. She was tranquil, for him; a child, for him; healing, -unexacting nature, for him. But she knew she had not needed his -admission to know it, that it was life and death that went together. - -Sometimes, as they walked, the whole glory of the day melted into a -phantasmagoria, unreal, specious, beside the intense reality of their -unspoken thoughts, his thoughts and hers; those thoughts that left them -only this little strip of fairy-land where they could meet in peace. -Thoughts only, not dislikes, not indifferences, sundered them. Their -natures, through all nature's gamut, chimed; they looked upon each -other--when in fairy-land--with eyes of love. But above this accord was -a region where her human breath froze in an icy airlessness, where her -human flesh shattered itself against ghastly precipices. To see those -thoughts of Gavan's was like having the lunar landscape suddenly glare -at one through a telescope. His thoughts and hers were as real as life -and death; they alone were real; only--and this was why, under its -burden, Eppie's heart throbbed more deeply, more strongly,--only, life -conquered death. No, more still,--for so the strange evening vision had -borne its speechless, sightless witness,--life had already conquered -death. She had not needed him to tell her that, either. - -And these days were life; not the dream he thought them, not the -fairy-tale, but balmy dawn stealing in, fresh, revivifying, upon his -long, arctic night; the flush of spring over the lunar landscape. So -she saw it with her eyes of faith. - -The mother was strong in her. She could bide her time. She could see -death near him and, so that he should not see her fear, smile at him. -She could play games with him, and wait. - - - - -II - - -Jim Grainger arrived that evening, and Gavan was able to observe, at the -closest sort of quarters, his quondam rival. - -His condition was so obvious that its very indifference to observation -took everybody into its confidence. Nobody counted with Mr. Grainger -except his cousin, and since he held open before her eyes--with angry -constancy, gloomy patience--the page of his devotion, the rest of the -company were almost forced to read with her. One couldn't see Mr. -Grainger without seeing that page. - -He held it open, but the period of construing had evidently passed. All -that there was to understand she understood long since, so that he was, -for the most part, silent. - -In Eppie's presence he would wander aimlessly about, look with an oddly -irate, unseeing eye at books or pictures, and fling himself into deep -chairs, where he sat, his arms folded in a sort of clutch, his head bent -forward, gazing at her with an air of dogged, somber resolve. - -He was not by nature so taciturn. It was amusing to see the vehemence of -reaction that would overtake him in the smoking-room, where his -volubility became almost as overbearing and oppressive as his silences. - -He was a man at once impatient and self-controlled. His face was all -made up of short, resolute lines. His nose, chopped off at the tip; his -lips, curled yet compressed; the energetic modeling of his brows with -their muscular protuberances; the clefted chin; the crest of chestnut -hair,--all expressed a wilful abruptness, an arrested force, the more -vehement for its repression. - -And at present his appearance accurately expressed him as a determined -but exasperated lover. - -"Of course," Miss Barbara said, in whispered confidence to Gavan, -mingled pity and reprobation in her voice, "as her cousin he comes when -he wishes to do so. But she has refused him twice already--he told me so -himself; and, simply, he will not accept it. He only spoke of it once, -and it was quite distressing. It really grieved me to hear him. He said -that he would hang on till one or the other of them was dead." -Grainger's words in Miss Barbara's voice were the more pathetic for -their incongruity. - -"And you don't think she will have him,--if he does hang on?" Gavan -asked. - -Miss Barbara glanced at him with a soft, scared look, as though his -easy, colloquial question had turned a tawdry light on some tender, -twilight dreaming of her own. - -He had wondered, anew of late, what Miss Barbara did think about him and -Eppie, and what she had thought he now saw in her eyes, that showed -their little shock, as at some rather graceless piece of pretence. He -was quite willing that she should think him pretending, and quite -willing that she should place him in Grainger's hopeless category, if -future events would be most easily so interpreted for her; so that he -remained silent, as if over his relief, when she assured him, "Oh, I am -sure not. Eppie does not change her mind." - -Grainger's presence, for all its ineffectuality, thus witnessed to by -Miss Barbara, was as menacing to peace and sunshine as a huge -thunder-cloud that suddenly heaves itself up from the horizon and hangs -over a darkened landscape. But Eppie ignored the thunder-cloud; and, -hanging over fairy-land, it became as merely decorative as an enchanted -giant tethered at a safe distance and almost amusing in his huge -helplessness. - -Eppie continued to give most of her time to Gavan, coloring her manner -with something of a hospital nurse's air of devotion to an obvious duty, -and leaving Grainger largely to the general's care while she and Gavan -sat reading for hours in the shade of the birch-woods. - -Grainger often came upon them so; Eppie in her white dress, her hat cast -aside, a book open upon her knees, and Gavan, in his white flannels, -lying beside her, frail and emaciated, not looking at her,--Grainger -seldom saw him look at her,--but down at the heather that he softly -pulled and wrenched at. They were as beautiful, seen thus together, as -any fairy-tale couple; flakes of gold wavering over their whiteness, -the golden day all about their illumined shade, and rivulets from the -sea of purple that surrounded them running in among the birches, making -purple pools and eddies. - -Very beautiful, very strange, very pathetic, with all their serenity; -even the unimaginative Grainger so felt them when, emerging from the -gold and purple, he would pause before them, swinging his stick and -eying them oddly, like people in a fairy-tale upon whom some strange -enchantment rested. One might imagine--but Grainger's imagination never -took him so far--that they would always sit there among the birches, -spellbound in their peace, their smiling, magic peace. - -"Come and listen to Faust, Jim. We are polishing up our German," Eppie -would cheerfully suggest; but Grainger, remarking that he had none to -polish, would pass on, carrying the memory of Gavan's impassive, upward -glance at him and the meaning in Eppie's eyes--eyes in which, yes, he -was sure of it, and it was there he felt the pathos, some consciousness -seemed at once to hide from and to challenge him. - -"Is he ill, your young Palairet?" he asked her one day, when they were -alone together in the library. His rare references to his own emotions -made the old, cousinly intimacy a frequent meeting-ground. - -He noticed that a faint color drifted into Eppie's cheek when he named -Gavan. - -"He is as old as you are, Jim," she remarked. - -"He looks like a person to be taken care of, all the same." - -"He has been ill. He took care of some one else, as it happens. He -nursed his father for months." - -"Um," Grainger gave an inarticulate grunt, "just about what he's fit -for, isn't it? to help dying people out of the world." - -Eppie received this in silence, and he went on: "He looks rather like a -priest, or a poet--something decorative and useless." - -"Would you call Buddha decorative and useless?" - -"After all, Palairet isn't a Hindoo. One expects something more normal -from a white man." - -His odd penetration was hurting her, but she laughed at his complacent -Anglo-Saxondom. "If you want a white man, what do you make of the one -who wrote the Imitation?" - -"Make of him? Nothing. Nor any one else, I fancy. What does your young -Palairet do?" Grainger brought the subject firmly back from her -digression. - -Eppie was sitting in the window-seat, and, leaning her head back, framed -in an arabesque of creepers, she now owned, after a little pause, and as -if with a weariness of evasion she was willing to let him see as she -did: "Nothing, really." - -"Does he care about anything?" Grainger placed himself opposite her, -folding his arms with an air of determined inquiry. - -And again Eppie owned, "He believes in nothing, so how can he care?" - -"Believes in nothing? What do you mean by that?" - -"Well," with a real sense of amusement over the inner icy weight, she -was ready to put it in its crudest, most inclusive terms, "he doesn't -believe in immortality." - -Grainger stared, taken aback by the ingenuous avowal. - -"Immortality? No more do I," he retorted. - -"Oh, yes, you do," said Eppie, looking not at him but out at the summer -sky. "You believe in life and so you do believe in immortality, even -though you don't know that you do. You are, like most energetic people, -too much preoccupied with living to know what your life means, that's -all." - -"My dear child,"--Grainger was fond of this form of appellation, an -outlet for the pent-up forces of his baffled tenderness,--"any one who -is alive finds life worth while without a Paradise to complete it, and -any one who isn't a coward doesn't turn from it because it's also -unhappy." - -"If you think that Gavan does that you mistake the very essence of his -skepticism, or, if you like to call it so, of his faith. It's not -because he finds it unhappy that he turns from it, but because he finds -it meaningless." - -"Meaningless?--a place where one can work, achieve, love, suffer?" - -Grainger jerked out the words from an underlying growl of protest. - -Eppie now looked from the sky to him, her unconscious ally. "Dear old -Jim, I like to hear you. You've got it, all. Every word you say implies -immortality. It's all a question of being conscious of one's real needs -and then of trusting them." - -"Life, here, now, could satisfy my needs," he said. - -She kept her eyes on his, at this, for a grave moment, letting it have -its full stress as she took it up with, "Could it? With death at the end -of it?" and without waiting for his answer she passed from the personal -moment. "You said that life was worth while, and you meant, I suppose, -that it was worth while because we were capable of making it good rather -than evil." - -"Well, of course," said Grainger. - -"And a real choice between good and evil is only possible to a real -identity, you'll own?" - -"If you are going to talk metaphysics I'll cut and run, I warn you. -Socratic methods of tripping one up always infuriate me." - -"I'm only trying to talk common-sense." - -"Well, go on. I agree to what you say of a real identity. We've that, of -course." - -"Well, then, can an identity destroyed at death by the destruction of -the body be called real? It can't, Jim. It's either only a result of the -body, a merely materialistic phenomenon, or else it is a transient, -unreal aspect of some supremely real World-Self and its good and its -evil just as fated by that Self's way of thinking it as the color of its -hair and eyes is fated by nature. And if that were so the sense of -freedom, of identity, that gives us our only sanction for goodness, -truth, and worth, would be a mere illusion." - -Her earnestness, as she worked it out for him, held his eyes more than -her words his thoughts. He was observing her with such a softening of -expression as rarely showed itself on his virile countenance. - -"You've thought it all out, haven't you?" he said. - -"I've tried to. Knowing Gavan has made me. It has converted me," she -smiled. - -"So that's your conversion." - -"Oh, more than that. I know that I'm _in_ life; _for_ it, and that's -more than all such reasoning." - -"And you believe that you'll go on forever as you are now," he said. His -eyes dwelt on her: "Young and beautiful." - -"_Forever_; what queer words we must use to try to express it. We are in -Forever now. It's just that one casts in one's lot, open-eyed, with -life." - -"And has Palairet cast in his with death?" - -Again the change of color was in her cheek, but it was to pallor now. - -"He thinks so." - -"And he doesn't frighten you?" - -She armed herself to smile over Gavan's old question. "Why should he?" - -Grainger left her for some moments of aimless, silent wandering. He came -back and paused again before her. He did not answer her. - -"I throw in my lot with life, too, Eppie," he said, "and I ask no more -of it than the here and the now of our human affair. But that I do ask -with all my might, and if might can give it to me, I'll get it." - -She looked up at him gravely, without challenge, with a sympathy too -deep for pity. - -"At all events," he added slowly, "at all events, in so far, our lots -are cast together." - -"Yes," she assented. - -His eyes studied hers; his keen mind questioned itself: Could a woman -look so steadily, with such a clear, untroubled sympathy, upon such a -love as his, were there no great emotion within her, controlling her, -absorbing her, making her indifferent to all lesser appeals? Had this -negative, this aimless, this ambiguous man, captured, without any fight -for it, her strong, her reckless heart? So he questioned, while Eppie -still answered his gaze with eyes that showed him nothing but their -grave, deep friendship. - -"So it's a contest between life and death?" he said at last. - -"Between me and Gavan you mean?" - -The shield of their personal question had dropped from her again, and -the quick flush was in her cheek. - -"Oh, I come into it, too," he ventured. - -"You don't, in any way, depend on it, Jim." - -"So you say." His eyes still mercilessly perused her. "That remains to -be seen. If you lose, perhaps I shall come into it." - -Eppie found no answer. - - - - -III - - -It was night, and Eppie, Gavan, and Jim Grainger were on the lawn before -the house waiting for a display of fireworks. - -Grainger was feeling sore for his own shutting-out from the happy -child-world of games and confidences that the other two inhabited, for -it had been to Gavan that she had spoken of her love for fireworks and -he who had at once sent for them. - -Grainger was sore and his heart heavy, and not only it seemed to him, on -his own account. Since the encounter in the library there had been a -veil between him and Eppie, and through it he seemed to see her face as -waiting the oncoming of some unknown fate. Grainger could not feel that -fate, whatever the form it took, as a happy one. - -She stood between them now, in her white dress, wrapped around with a -long, white Chinese shawl, and the light from the open window behind -them fell upon her hair, her neck, her shoulders, and the shawl's soft, -thick embroideries that were like frozen milk. - -Gavan and Grainger leaned against the deep creepers of the old walls, -Gavan's cigarette a steady little point of light, the glow of -Grainger's pipe, as he puffed, coming and going in sharp pulses of -color. - -Aunt Barbara sat within at the open window, and beyond the gates, at the -edge of the moor, the general and the gardener, dark figures fitfully -revealed by the light of lanterns, superintended the preparations. - -The moment was like that in which one watches a poised orchestra, in -which one waits, tense and expectant, for the fall of the conductor's -baton and for the first, sweeping note. - -It seemed to break upon the stillness, sound made visible, when the -herald rocket soared up from the dark earth, up to the sky of stars. - -Bizarre, exquisite, glorious, it caught one's breath with the swiftness, -the strength, the shining, of its long, exultant flight; its languor of -attainment; its curve and droop; the soft shock of its blossoming into -an unearthly metamorphosis of splendor far and high on the zenith. - -The note was struck and after it the symphony followed. - -Like a ravished Ganymede, the sense of sight soared amazed among -dazzling ecstasies of light and movement. - -Thin ribbons of fire streaked the sky; radiant sheaves showered drops of -multitudinous gold; fierce constellations of color whirled themselves to -stillness on the night's solemn permanence; a rain of stars drifted -wonderfully, with the softness of falling snow, down gulfs of space. And -then again the rockets, strong, suave, swift, and their blossoming -lassitude. - -Eppie gazed, silent and motionless, her uplifted profile like a child's -in its astonished joy. Once or twice she looked round at Gavan and at -Grainger,--always first at Gavan,--smiling, and speechless with delight. -Her folded arms had dropped to her sides and the shawl fell straightly -from her shoulders. She made one think of some young knight, transfixed -before a heavenly vision, a benediction of revealed beauty. The trivial -occasion lent itself to splendid analogies. The strange light from above -bathed her from head to foot in soft, intermittent, heavenly color. - -Suddenly, in darkness, Grainger seized her hand. She had hardly felt the -pressure, short, sharp with all the exasperation of his worship, before -it was gone. - -She did not turn to look at him. More than the unjustifiableness of the -action, its unexpectedness, she felt a pain, a perplexity, as for -something mocking, incongruous. And as if in instinctive seeking she -turned her eyes on Gavan and found that he was looking at her. - -Was it, then, her eyes, seeking and perplexed, that compelled him; was -it his own enfranchised impulse; was it only a continuation of -fairy-land fitness, the child instinct of sharing in a unison of touch a -mutual wonder? In the fringes of her shawl his hand sought and found her -hand. Another rose of joy had expanded on the sky; and they stood so, -hand in hand, looking up. - -Eppie looked up steadily; but now the outer vision was but a dim symbol, -a reflection, vaguely seen, of the inner vision that, in a miracle of -accomplished growth, broke upon her. She did not think or know. Her -heart seemed to dilate, to breathe itself away in long throbs, that -worshiped, that trembled, that prayed. Her strength was turned to -weakness and her weakness rose to strength, and, as she looked up at the -sky, the stars, the dream-like constellations that bloomed and drifted -away, universes made and unmade on the void, her mind, her heart, her -spirit were all one prayer and its strength and its humility were one. - -She had known that she loved him, but not till now that she loved him -with a depth that passed beyond knowledge; she had known that he loved -her, but not till now had she felt that all that lived in him was hers -forever. His voice, his eyes, might hide, might deny, but the seeking, -instinctive hand confessed, dumbly, to all. - -She had drawn him to her by her will; she had held him back from death -by her love. His beloved hand clasped hers; she would never let him go. - -Looking up at the night, the stars, holding his hand, she gave herself -to the new life, to all that it might mean of woe and tragedy. Let it -lead her where it would, she was beside him forever. - -Yet, though her spirit held the sky, the stars, her heart, suffocated -and appalled with love, seemed to lie at his feet, and the inarticulate -prayer, running through all, said only, over and over, "O God, God." - -Meanwhile Grainger leaned against the wall, puffing doggedly at his -pipe, unrepentant and unsatisfied. - -"There, that is the end," Miss Barbara sighed. "How very, very pretty. -But they have made me quite sleepy." - -A few fumes still smoldered at the edge of the moor, and the night, like -an obscure ocean, was engulfing the lights, the movements; after the -radiance the darkness was thick, oppressive. - -Eppie knew, as Gavan released her hand, that his eyes again sought hers, -but she would not look at him. What could they say, here and now? - -He went on into the house, and Grainger, lingering outside, detained her -on the steps. "You forgive me?" he said. - -She had almost forgotten for what, but fixing her eyes and thoughts upon -him, she said, "Yes, Jim, of course." - -"I couldn't stand it,--you were so lovely," said Grainger; "I didn't -know that I was such a sentimental brute. But I had no business not to -stand it. It's my business in life to stand it." - -"I am so sorry, Jim," Eppie murmured. "You know, I can do -nothing--except forgive you." - -"I am not ungrateful. I know how good it is of you to put up with me. Do -I bother you too much, Eppie?" - -"No, Jim dear; you don't." - -He stood aside for her to enter the house. He saw that, with all her -effort to be kind, her thought passed from him. Pausing to knock the -ashes of his pipe against the wall, he softly murmured, "Damn," before -following her into the house. - -Eppie, in her own room, put out her candle and went to the window. - -Leaning out, she could see the soft maze of tree-tops emerge from the -dim abyss beneath. The boughs of the pine-tree made the starlit sky pale -with their blackness. - -This was the window where she and Gavan had stood on the morning of -Robbie's death. Here Gavan had shuddered, sobbing, in her arms. He had -suffered, he had been able to love and suffer then. - -The long past went before her, this purpose in it all, her purpose; in -all the young, unconscious beginnings, in the reunion, in her growing -consciousness of something to oppose, to conquer, to save. And to-night -had consecrated her to that sacred trust. What lived in him was hers. -But could she keep him in life? The memory, a dark shadow, of the deep -indifference that she had seen in his contemplative eyes went with a -chill over her. - -Leaning out, she conquered her own deep fear, looking up at the stars -and still praying, "O God, God." - - - - -IV - - -She could not read his face next day. It showed a change, but the -significance of the change was hidden from her. He knew that she knew; -was that it? or did he think that they could still pretend at the -unchanged fairy-tale where one clasped hands simply, like children? Or -did he trust her to spare them both, now that she knew? - -When they were alone, this, more than all, the pale, jaded face seemed -to tell her, it would be able to hide nothing; but its strength was in -evasion; he would not be alone with her. - -All the morning he spent with the general and in the afternoon he went -away, a book under his arm, down to the burn. - -From the library window Eppie watched him go. She could see for a long -time the flicker of his white figure among the distant birches. - -She sat in a low chair in the deep embrasure of the window-seat, silent -and motionless. She felt, after the night's revelation, an apathy, -mental and physical; a willing pause; a lull of the spirit, that rested -in its accepted fate, should it be joyful or tragic. The very fact of -such acceptance partook of both tragedy and joy. - -Grainger was with her, walking, as usual, up and down the room, glancing -at her as he passed and repassed. - -He felt, all about him, within and without, the pressure of some crisis; -and his ignorance, his intuitions, struggling within him, made a -consciousness, oddly mingled, of sharp pain, deep dread, and, -superficially, a suffocating irritation, continually rising and -continually repressed. - -Eppie's aspect intensified the mingled consciousness. Her figure, in its -thin dress of black and white, showed lassitude. With her head thrown -back against the chair, her hands, long, white, inert, lying along the -chair-arms, she looked out from the cool shadow of the room at the day, -fierce in its blue and gold, its sunlight and its wind. - -He had seen Gavan pass, so strangely alone; he had watched her watching -of him. She was languid; but she was patient, she was strong. That was -part of the suffocation, that such strength, such patience, should be -devoted to ends so undeserving. More than by mere jealousy, though that -seethed in him, he was oppressed by the bitter sense of waste, of the -futile spending of noble capacity; for, more than all, she was piteous; -there came the part of pain and dread, the presage of doom that weighed -on his heart. - -In her still figure, her steady look out at the empty, splendid vault of -blue, the monotonous purple stretches of the moor, his unesthetic, -accurate mind felt, with the sharp intuition that carried him so much -further than any conscious appreciation, a symbol of the human soul -contemplating the ominous enigma of its destiny. She made him dimly -think of some old picture he had seen, a saint, courageous, calm, -enraptured, in the luminous pause before a dark, accepted martyrdom. He -did violence to the simile, shaking it off vehemently, with a clutch at -the sane impatience of silly fancies. - -Stopping abruptly before her, though hardly knowing for what end, he -found himself saying, and the decisive words, as he heard, rather than -thought them, had indeed the effect of shattering foolish visions, "I -shall go to-day, Eppie." - -In seeing her startled, pained, expostulatory, he saw her again, very -sanely, as an unfortunate woman bent on doing for herself and unable to -hide her situation from his keen-sightedness. For really he didn't know -whether a hopeless love-affair or a hopeless marriage would the more -completely "do" for her. - -"My dear Jim, why to-day?" Eppie asked in a tone of kindest protest. - -He was glad to have drawn her down to the solid ground of his own -grievances. She hurt him less there. - -"Why not to-day?" he retorted. - -She replied that, if for no better reason, the weather was too lovely -not to be enjoyed by them all together. - -"Thanks, but I don't care about the weather. Nor do I care," Grainger -went on, taking the sorry comfort that his own mere ill-temper afforded -him, "to watch other people's enjoyment--of more than weather. I'm not -made of such selfless stuff as that." - -She understood, of course; perhaps she had all along understood what he -was feeling more clearly than clumsy he had, and she met all that was -beneath the mannerless words with her air of sad kindliness. - -"You can share it, Jim." - -"No, I can't share it. I share nothing--except the weather." - -She murmured, as she had the night before, that she was sorry, adding -that she must have failed; but he interrupted her with: "It's not that. -You are all right. You give me all you can. It's merely that you can't -give me anything I want. I came to see if there was any chance for me, -and all I do see is that I may as well be off. I do myself no good by -staying on,--harm, rather; you may begin to resent my sulkiness and my -boorish relapses from even rudimentary good manners." - -"I have resented nothing, Jim. I can't imagine ever resenting -anything--from you." - -"Ah, that's just the worst of it," Grainger muttered. - -"For your own sake," Eppie went on, "you are perhaps wise to go. I own -that I can't see what happiness you can find in being with me, while you -feel as you do." - -"While I feel as I do," he repeated, not ironically, but as if weighing -the words in a sort of wonder. "That 'while' is funny, Eppie. You are -right. I don't find happiness, and I came to seek it." The "while" had -cut deep. He paused, then added, eying her, "So I'll go, and leave -Palairet to find the happiness." - -Eppie was silent. Paler than before, her eyes dropped, she seemed to -accept with a helpless magnanimity whatever he might choose to say. "You -find me impertinent,"--Grainger, standing before her, clutched his arms -across his chest and put his own thought of himself into the -words,--"brutal." - -Without looking up at him she answered: "I am so fond of you, so near -you, that I suppose I give you the right." - -The patient words, so unlike Eppie in their patience, the downcast eyes, -were a torch to his exasperation. - -"I can take it, then--the right?" he said. "I am near enough to say the -truth and to ask it, Eppie?" - -She rose and walked away from him. - -With the sense of hot pursuit that sprang up in him he felt himself as -ruthless as a boy, pushing through the thickets of reticence, through -the very supplications of generosity, to the nest of her secret. It was -not joy he sought, but his own pain, and to see it clearly, finally. He -must see it. And when Eppie, her back to him, leaning her arm on the -mantel and looking down into the empty cavern of the great -chimney-place, answered, accepting all his implications, "Gavan hasn't -found any happiness," he said, "He finds all that he asks for." - -It was as if he had wrenched away the last bough from the nest, and the -words gave him, with their breathless determination, an ugly feeling of -cruel, breaking malignity. - -Eppie's face was still turned from him so that he could not see how she -bore the rifling, but in the same dulled and gentle voice she answered, -"He doesn't ask what you do." - -At that Grainger's deepest resentment broke out. - -"Doesn't ask your love? No, I suppose not. The man's a mollusk,--a -wretched, diseased creature." - -He had struck at last a flash from her persistent gentleness. She faced -him, and he saw that she tried to smile over deep anger. - -"You say that because Gavan is not in love with me? It is a sick fancy -that sees every man not in love with me as sick too." - -She had taken up a weapon at last, she really challenged him; and he -felt, full on that quivering nerve of dread, that she defended at once -herself and the man she loved from her own and from his unveiling. - -It made a sort of rage rise in him. - -"A man who cares for you,--a man who depends on you,--as he does,--a man -whom you care for,--so much,--is a bloodless vampire if he -doesn't--respond." - -When he had driven the knife in like that, straight up to the hilt, he -hardly knew whether his anger or his adoration were the greater; for, as -if over a disabling wound, she bent her head in utter surrender, quite -still for a moment, and then saying only, while she looked at him as if -more sorry for him than for herself, "You hurt me, Jim." - -Tears of fury stood in his eyes. "You hurt, too. My love for you--a -disease. _My_ love, Eppie!" - -"Forgive me." - -"Forgive you! I worship everything you say or do!" - -"It was that it hurt too much to see--what you did, with your eyes." - -"Then--then--you don't deny it,--if I have eyes to see, he too must -see--how much you care?" - -"I don't deny it." - -"And if I have courage enough to ask it, you have courage enough to -answer me? You love him, Eppie?" - -He had come to her, his eyes threatening her, beseeching her, adoring -her, all at once. She saw it all--all that he felt, and the furious pity -that was deeper than his own deep pain. She could resent nothing, deny -nothing. As she had said, he was so near. - -She put her hand on his shoulder, keeping him from her, yet accepting -him as near, and then all that she found to say--but it was in a voice -that brought a rapt pallor to his face--was, "Dear Jim." - -He understood her--all that she accepted, all that she avowed. Her hand -was that of a comrade in misfortune. She forgave brutality from a heart -as stricken as his. She forgave even his cruelly clear seeing of her own -desperate case--a seeing that had revealed to her that it was indeed -very desperate. But if she too was stricken, she too was resolute, and -she could do no more for him than look with him at the truth. Their -eyes recognized so many likenesses in each other. - -He took the hand at last in both his own, looking down at it, pressing -it hard. - -"Poor darling," he said. - -"No, Jim." - -"Yes; even if he loves you." - -"Even if he doesn't love me--and he does love me in a strange, unwilling -way; but even if he doesn't love me,--as you and I mean love,--I am not -piteous." - -"Even if he loves you, you are piteous." All his savagery had fallen -from him. His quiet was like the slow dropping of tears. - -"No, Jim. There is the joy of loving. You know that." - -"You are more piteous than I, Eppie. You, _you_, to sue to such a man. -He is the negation of everything you mean. To live with him would be -like fighting for breath. If you marry him,--if you bring him to -it,--he'll suffocate you." - -"No, Jim," she repeated,--and now, looking up, he saw in those beloved -eyes the deep wells of solemn joy,--"I am the stronger." - -"In fighting, yes, perhaps. Not in every-day, passive life. He'll kill -you." - -"Even if he kills me he'll not conquer me." - -He shook away the transcendentalism with a gentle impatience, "Much good -that would do to me, who would only know that you were gone. Oh, -Eppie!--" - -He pressed and let fall her hand. - -The words of the crisis were over. Anything else would be only, as it -were, the filling in of the grave. - -He had walked away from her to the window, and said presently, while he -looked out: "And I thought that you were ambitious. I loved you for it, -too. I didn't want a wife who would acquiesce in the common lot or make -a virtue of incapacity. I wanted a woman who would rather fail, -open-eyed, in a big venture than rest in security. You would have -buckled the sword on a man and told him that he must conquer high places -for you. You would have told him that he must crown you and make you -shine in the world's eyes, as well as in his own. And I could do it. You -are so worthy of all the biggest opportunities and so unfit for little -places. It's so stupid, you know," he finished, "that you aren't in love -with me." - -"It is stupid, I own it," Eppie acquiesced. - -He found a certain relief in following these bitterly comic aspects of -their case and presently took it up again with: "I am so utterly the man -for you and he is so utterly not the man. I don't mean that I'm big -enough or enough worth your while, but at least I could give you -something, and I could fight for you. He won't fight, for you, or for -anything." - -"I shall have to do all the fighting if I get him." - -"You want him so that you don't mind anything else. I see that." - -"Exactly. For a long time I didn't know how I loved him just because I -had always taken all that you are saying for granted, in the funniest, -most naively conceited way; I took it for granted that I was a very big -person and that the man I married must stand for big opportunities. Now, -you see," she finished, "he is my big opportunity." - -He was accepting it all now with no protest. "Next to no money, I -suppose?" he questioned simply. - -"Next to none, Jim." - -"It means obscurity, unless a man has ambition." - -"It means all the things I've always hated." She smiled a little over -these strange old hatreds. - -Again a silence fell, and it was again Grainger who broke it. - -"You may as well let me have the last drop of gall," he said. "Own that -if it hadn't been for him you might have come to care for me." - -Still he did not look at her, and it was easier, so, to let him have the -last gulp. - -"I probably should." - -He meditated the mixed flavor for some moments; pure gall would have -been easier to swallow. And he took refuge at last in school-boy -phraseology. "I should like to break all the furniture in the room." - -"I should like to break some, too," she rejoined, but she laughed out -suddenly at this anticlimax, and, even before the unbroken heaviness of -the gaze now turned on her, that comic aspect of their talk, the dearly, -sanely comic, carried her laugh into a peal as boyish as his words. - -Grainger still gazed at her. "I love that in you," he said--"your laugh. -You could laugh at death." - -"Ah, Jim," she said, smiling on, though with the laughter tears had come -to her eyes, "it's a good deal more difficult to laugh at life, -sometimes. And we both have to do a lot of living before we can laugh at -death." - -"A lot of living," he repeated. His stern, firm face had a queer grimace -of pain at the prospect of it, and again she put out her hand to him. - -"Let me count for as much as I can, always," she said. "You will always -count for so much with me." - -He had taken the hand, and he looked at her in a long silence that -promised, accepted, everything. - -But an appeal, a demand, wistful yet insistent, came into his silence as -he looked--looked at the odd, pale, dear face, the tawny, russet hair, -the dear, deep eyes. - -"I'm going now," he said, holding to his breast the hand she had given -him. "And I will ask one thing of you--a thing I've never had and never -shall, I suppose, again." - -"What is it, Jim?" But before his look she almost guessed and the -guessing made her blanch. - -"Let me take you in my arms and kiss you," said Grainger. - -"Ah, Jim!" Seeing herself as cruel, ungenerous, she yet, in a recoil of -her whole nature, seemed to snatch from him a treasure, unclaimed, but -no longer hers to give. - -Grainger eyed her. "You could. You would--if it weren't for him." - -"You understand that, too, Jim. I could and would." - -"He robs me of even that, then--your gift of courageous pity." - -His comprehension had arrested the recoil. And now the magnanimity she -felt in him, the tragic force of the love he had seen barred from her -forever, set free in her something greater than compassion and deeper -than little loyalties, deeper than the lesser aspects of her own deep -love. It was that love itself that seemed, with an expansion of power, -to encircle all life, all need, all sorrow, and to find joy in -sacrificing what was less to what was greater. - -He saw the change that, in its illumined tenderness, shut away his -craving heart yet drew him near for the benison that it could grant, and -as she said to him, "No, Jim, he shall not rob you," his arms went round -her. - -She shut her eyes to the pain there must be in enduring his passion of -gratitude; but, though he held her close, kissing her cheeks, her brow, -her hair, it was with a surprising, an exquisite tenderness. - -The pain that came for her was when,--pausing to gaze long into her -face, printing forever upon his mind the wonderful memory of what she -could look like, for him--he kissed her lips; it came in a pang of -personal longing; in a yearning, that rose and stifled her, for other -arms, other kisses; and, opening her eyes, she saw, an ironic answer to -the inner cry, Gavan's face outside, turned upon her in an instant of -swift passing. - -Grainger had not seen. He did not speak another word to her. The kiss -upon her lips had been in farewell. He had had his supreme moment. He -let her go and left her. - - - - -V - - -Gavan came up from the burn, restless and dissatisfied. - -He had wanted solitude, escape; but when he was alone, and walking -beside the sun-dappled water, the loneliness weighed on him and he had -seemed to himself walking with his own ghost, looking into eyes familiar -yet alien, with curiosity and with fear. Was it he or that phantom of -the solitude who smiled the long, still smile of mockery? - -How he wanted something and how he wanted not to want; to be freed from -the intolerable stirring and striving within him, as of a maimed thing, -with half-atrophied wings, that could never rise and fly to its goal. It -was last night that had wakened this turmoil, and as he walked his -thought turned and turned about those moments under the dazzling sky -when he had found her hand in the fringes of her shawl. - -He knew that there had been a difference in the yielding of her hand, as -he had known, in his own helpless stretching out for it in the darkness, -another impulse than that of childlike tenderness. It had been as if -some deep, primeval will beneath his own had stretched his hand out, -searching in the dark; and with the strange blissfulness of so standing -with her beneath the stars, there came a strange, new fear, as though he -no longer knew himself and were become an automaton held by some -incalculable force. - -Wandering through the woods in the hope of reentering nature's -beneficent impersonality, he felt no anodynes--only that striving and -stirring within him of maimed limbs and helpless wings. - -There was no refuge in nature, and there was none in himself. The -thought of Eppie as refuge did not form itself, but it was again in -seeking, as if through darkness for he knew not what, that he turned to -the house. And then, on all his tangled mood, fell the vibrating shock -of that vision at the window. - -With his quick looking away he did not know whether Eppie had seen him -see. He went on, knowing nothing definite, until, suddenly, as if some -fierce beast had seized him, he found himself struggling, choking, torn -by a hideous, elemental jealousy. - -He stood still in the afternoon sunlight as he became aware of this -phenomenon in himself, his hands involuntarily clenched, staring as if -at a palpable enemy. - -The savage, rudimentary man had sprung up in him. He hated Grainger. He -longed to beat him into the earth, to crush the breath out of him; and -for a moment, most horrible of all,--a moment that seemed to set fangs -in his throat,--he could not tell whether he more hated Eppie or more -desired to tear her from the rival, to seize her and bear her away, with -a passion untouched by any glamour. - -And Gavan was conscious, through it all, that only inhuman heights made -possible such crumbling, crashing falls into savagedom; conscious that -Grainger could not have known such thoughts. They were as ugly as those -of a Saint Anthony. Wholesome manhood would recoil from their -debasement. He, too, recoiled, but the debasement was within him, he -could not flee from it. The moment of realization, helpless realization, -was long. Ultra-civilization stood and watched barbarian hordes swarm -over its devastated ruins. Then, with a feeling of horrible shame, a -shame that was almost a nausea, he went on into the house. - -In his own room he sat down near the window, took his head in his hands, -the gesture adding poignancy to his humiliation, and gazed at the truth. -He had stripped himself of all illusion only to make himself the more -helpless before its lowest forms. More than the realized love was the -realized jealousy; more than the anguish at the thought of having lost -her was the rage of the dispossessed, unsatisfied brute. Such love -insulted the loved woman. He could not escape from it, but he could not -feel the added grace and piety that, alone, could make it tolerable. -From the fixed contemplation of his own sensations his mind dropped -presently to the relief of more endurable thoughts. To feel the mere -agony of loss was a dignifying and cleansing process. For, apparently, -he had lost her. It was strange, almost unthinkable, that it should be -so, and stranger the more he thought. He, who had never claimed, had no -right to feel a loss. But he had not known till now how deep was his -consciousness of their union. - -She had long ago guessed the secret of the voiceless, ambiguous love -that could flutter only as far as pain, that could never rise to -rapture. She had guessed that behind its half-tortured, momentary smile -was the impersonal Buddha-gaze; and because she so understood its -inevitable doom she had guarded herself from its avowal--guarded herself -and him. He had trusted her not to forget the doom, and not to let him -forget it, for a moment. But all the time he had known that in her eyes -he was captive to some uncanny fate, and that could she release him from -his chains her love would answer his. He had been sure of it. Hence his -present perplexity. - -Perplexity began to resolve itself into a theory of commonplace -expediency, and, feeling the irony of such resentment, he resented this -tame sequel to their mute relationship. - -Unconsciously, he had assumed that had he been able to ask her to be his -wife she would have been able to consent. Her courage, in a sense, would -have been the reward of his weakness, for what he would see in himself -as weakness she would see as strength. Courage on her part it certainly -would have needed, for what a dubious offering would his have been: -glamour, at its best,--a helpless, drugged glamour,--and, at its worst, -the mere brute instinct that, blessedly, this winding path of thought -led him away from. - -But she had probably come to despair of releasing him from chains, had -come to see clearly that at the end of every avenue she walked with him -the Buddha statue would be waiting in a serenity appalling and -permanent; and, finding last night the child friendship dangerously -threatened, discovering that the impossible love was dangerously real -and menaced both their lives, she had swiftly drawn back, she had -retreated to the obvious safeguards of an advantageous marriage. He -couldn't but own that she was wise and right; more wise, more -right,--there was the odd part of it, the unadjusted bit where -perplexity stung him,--than he could have expected her to be. Ambition -and the common-sense that is the very staff of life counted for much, of -course; but he hadn't expected them to count so soon, so punctually, as -it were. - -Perhaps,--and his mind, disentangled from the personal clutch where such -an interpretation might have hurt or horrified, safe once more on its -Stylites pillar, dwelt quite calmly on this final aspect,--perhaps, with -her, too, sudden glamour and instinct had counted, answering the appeal -of Grainger's passion. He suspected the whole fabric of the love between -men and women to be woven of these blind, helpless impulses,--impulses -that created their own objects. Her mind, with its recognition of -danger, had chosen Grainger as a fitting mate, and, in his arms, she had -felt that justification by the senses that people so funnily took for -the final sanctification of choice. - -This monkish understanding of the snares of life was quite untouched by -monkish reprobation; even the sense of resentment had faded. And it -spoke much for the long training of his thought in the dissecting and -destroying of transitory desires that he was presently able to -contemplate his loss--as he still must absurdly term it--with an icy -tranquillity. - -A breathlessness, as from some drastic surgical operation, was beneath -it, but that was of the nature of a mere physical symptom, destined to -readjust itself to lopped conditions; and with the full turning of his -mind from himself came the fuller realization of how well it was with -Eppie and a cold, acquiescent peace that, in his nature, was the -equivalent for an upwelling of religious gratitude, for her salvation. - -But the stress of the whole strange seizure, wrench and renouncement had -told on him mentally and physically. Every atom of his being, as if from -some violent concussion, seemed altered, shifted. - -The change was in his face when, in the closing dusk of the day, he went -down to the library. It was not steeled to the hearing of the news that -must await him: such tension of endurance had passed swiftly into his -habitual ease; but a look of death had crossed and marked it. It looked -like a still, drowned face, sinking under deep waters, and Eppie, in her -low chair near the window, where she had sat for many hours, saw in his -eyes the awful, passionless detachment from life. - -After his pause at the unexpected sight of her, sitting there alone, a -pause in which she did not speak, although he saw that her eyes were on -him, he went on softly down the room, glancing out at each window as he -passed it; and he looked, as he went, like an evening moth, drifting, -aimless, uncanny. - -Outside, the moor stretched like a heavily sighing ocean, desolate and -dark, to the horizon where, from behind the huge rim of the world, the -sun's dim glow, a gloomy, ominous red, mounted far into the sky. - -Within the room, a soft, magical color pervaded the dusk, touching -Eppie's hair, her hands, the vague folds and fallings of her dress. - -He waited for her to speak, though it seemed perfectly fitting that -neither should. In the silence, the sadness of this radiant gloom, they -needed no words to make more clear the accepted separation, and the -silence, the sadness, were like a bleeding to quiet, desired death. - -The day was dying, and the instable, impossible love was dying, too. - -She had let go, and he quietly sank. - -But when she spoke her words were like sharp air cutting into drowned -lungs. - -"I saw you pass this afternoon, Gavan." - -From the farthest window, where he had paused, he turned to her. - -"Did you, Eppie?" - -"Didn't you see that I did?" - -"I wasn't sure." He heard the flavor of helplessness in his own voice -and felt in her a hard hostility, pleased to play with his helplessness. - -"Why did you not speak of what you saw?" Her anger against him was -almost like a palpable presence between them in the dark, glowing room. -He began to feel that through some ugly blunder he was very much at her -mercy, and that, for the first time, he should find little mercy in her; -and, for the first time, too, a quick hostility rose in him to answer -hers. It was as if he had tasted too deeply of release; all his strength -was with him to fight off the threat of the returning grasp. - -"Why should I?" he asked, letting her see in his gaze at her that just -such a hard placidity would meet any interpretation she chose to give. - -"Didn't you care to understand?" - -"I thought that I did understand." - -"What did you think, then?" Eppie asked. - -He had to give her the helpless answer. "That you had accepted him." - -He knew, now, that she hadn't, and that for him to have thought so was -to have cruelly wronged her; and she took it in a long silence, as -though she must give herself time to see it clearly, to adjust herself -to it and to all that it meant--in him, for her. - -What it meant, in her and for him, was filling his thoughts with a dizzy -enough whirl of readjustment, and there mingled with it a strange -after-flavor of the jealousy, and of the resentment against her; for, -after all, though he had probably now an added reason for considering -himself a warped wretch, there had been some reason for his mistake: if -she hadn't accepted him, why had he seen her so? - -"Jim is gone," she said at last. - -"Because--It was unwillingly, then?" - -The full flame of her scorn blazed out at that, but he felt, like an -echo of tears in himself, that she would have burst into tears of -wretchedness if she had not been able so to scorn him. - -"Unwillingly! Why should you think him insolent and me helpless? Can -you conceive of nothing noble?" she said. - -"I am sorry, Eppie. I have been stupid." - -"You have--more than stupid. He was going and he asked me for that. And -I gave it--proudly." - -"I am sorry," Gavan repeated. "I see, of course. Of course it was -noble." - -"You should be more than sorry. You knew that I did not love him." - -"I am more than sorry. I am ashamed," he answered gravely. - -He had the dignity of full contrition; but under it, unshaken after all, -was the repudiation of the nearness that her explanation revealed. His -heart throbbed heavily, for he saw, as never before, how near it was; -yet he had never feared her less. He had learned too much that afternoon -to fear her. He was sure of his power to save her from what he had so -fully learned. - -He looked away from her and for long out at the ebbing red, and it was -the unshaken resolve that spoke at last. "But all the same I am sorry -that it was only that. He would have made you happy." - -"You knew that I did not love him," Eppie repeated. - -"With time, as his wife, you might love him." Facing her, now, folding -his arms, he leaned back against the mantel at his far end of the room. -"I know that I've seemed odiously to belittle and misunderstand you, and -I am ashamed, Eppie--more ashamed than you can guess; but, in another -way, it wasn't so belittling, either. I thought you very wise and -courageous. I thought that you had determined to take the real thing -that life offered you and to turn your back, for once and for all, -on--on unreal things." He stopped at that, as though to let it have its -full drop, and Eppie, her eyes still fixed on him from her distant -chair, made no answer and no sign of dissent. - -As he spoke a queer, effervescent blitheness had come to him, a light -indifference to his own cruelty; and the hateful callousness of his -state gave him a pause of wonder and interest. However, he couldn't help -it; it was the reaction, no doubt, from the deep disgust of his -abasement, and it helped him, as nothing else would have done, -thoroughly to accomplish his task. - -"He can give you all the things you need," he went on, echoing poor -Grainger's _naif_ summing up of his own advantages. "He has any amount -of money, and a very big future before him; and then, really above all, -you do care for him so much. You see the same things in life. You -believe in the same things; want the same things. If you would take him -he would never fail you in anything." - -Still her heavy silence was unbroken. He waited in vain for a sign from -her, and in the silence the vibration of her dumb agony seemed to reach -him, so that, with all the callousness, he had to conquer an impulse to -go to her and see if she wept. But when he said, "I wish you would take -him, Eppie," and she at last answered him, there were no tears in her -voice. - -"I will never take him." - -"Don't say that," he replied. "One changes." - -"Is that a taunt?" - -"Not a taunt--a reminder." - -She rose and came to him, walking down the long room, past the somber -illuminations of the windows, straight to him. They stood face to face, -bathed in the unearthly light. All their deep antagonism was there -between them, almost a hatred, and the love that swords clashed over. - -"You do not believe that of me," she said. - -He was ready and unfaltering, and was able to smile at her, a bright, -odd smile. "I believe it of any one." - -It was love that eyed him--love more stern, more relentless in its -silence than if she had spoken it, and never had she been so near as -when, sending her clarion of open warfare across the abyss, she said, "I -will never change--to you." - -The words, the look,--a look of solemn defiance,--shattered forever the -palace of pretence that they had dwelt in for so long. Till now, it -might have stood for them. In its rainbow chambers they might still have -smiled and sorrowed and eluded each other, only glanced through the -glittering casements at the dark realities outside; but when the word of -truth was spoken, casements, chambers, turrets, fell together and -reality rushed in. She had spoken the word. After that it was impossible -to pretend anything. - -Gavan, among the wreck, had grown pale; but he kept his smile fixed, -even while he, too, spoke the new language of reality. - -"I am afraid of you, then." - -"Of course you are afraid of me." - -Still he smiled. "I am afraid _for_ you." - -"Of course you are. You have your moments of humanity." - -"I have. And so I shall go to-morrow," said Gavan. - -She looked at him in silence, her face taking on its haggard, -unbeautiful aspect of strange, rocky endurance. And never had his mind -been more alert, more mocking, more aloof from any entanglement of -feeling than while he saw her love and his; saw her sorrow and his -sorrow--his strange, strange sorrow that, like a sick, helpless child, -longed, in its darkness, its loneliness, to hide its head on her breast -and to feel her arms go round it. Love and sorrow were far, far away--so -far that it was as if they had no part at all in himself, as if it were -not he that felt them. - -"Are you so afraid as that?" Eppie asked. - -"After last night?" he answered. "After what I felt when I saw you here, -with him? After this? Of course I am as afraid as that. I must flee--for -your life, Eppie. I am its shadow--its fatal shadow." - -"No, I am yours. Life is the shadow to you." - -"Well, on both sides, then, we must be afraid," he assented. - -She made no gesture, no appeal. Her face was like a rock. It was only -that deep endurance and, under it, that deep threat. Never, never would -she allure; never draw him to her; never build in her cathedral a -Venusberg for him. He must come to her. He must kneel, with her, before -her altar. He must worship, with her, her God of suffering and triumph. -And, the dying light making her face waver before his eyes with a -visionary strangeness, stern and angelic, he seemed to see, deep in her -eyes, the burning of high, sacramental candles. - -That was the last he saw. In silence she turned and went. And what she -left with him was the sad, awed sense of beauty that he knew when -watching kneeling multitudes bowed before the great myth of the -Church,--in silence, beneath dim, soaring heights. He was near humanity -in such moments of self-losing, when the cruder myth of the great world, -built up by desire, slipped from it. And Eppie, in this symbolic seeing -of her, was nearer than when he desired or feared her. Beauty, supreme -and disenfranchising, he saw. He did not know what he felt. - -Far away, on the horizon, in the gloomy waste of embers, the sun's deep -core still burned, and in his heart was a deep fatigue, like the sky's -slow smoldering to gray. - - - - -VI - - -Grainger had gone, and Gavan announced his departure for the next -morning. The situation was simplified, he felt, by Eppie's somber -preoccupation. He was very willing that she should be seen as a gloomy -taker of scalps and that his own should be supposed to be hanging at her -girdle. The resultant muteness and melancholy in the general and Miss -Barbara were really a comfort. The dear old figures in the tapestry -seemed fading to-night into mere plaintive shadows, fixing eyes of sad -but unquestioning contemplation upon the latent tragedies of the -foreground figures. - -It was a comfort to have the tapestry so reticent and so submissive, -but, all the same, it made the foreground tragedy, for his eyes, -painfully distinct. He could look at nothing else. Eppie seemed to -stand, with her broken and bleeding heart, in the very center of the -design. For the first time he saw what the design was--saw all of it, -from the dim reaches of the past, as working to this end. - -The weaving of fate was accomplished. There she stood, suffering, -speechless, and he, looking at her, fatal shuttle of her doom that he -was, felt under all the ashes a dull throbbing. - -After dinner he smoked a cigar with the general, who, tactfully, as to -one obviously maimed, spoke only of distant and impersonal matters. -Gavan left him over some papers in the quiet light of the smoking-room -and went to the library. Eppie, with her broken heart, was not there. -The night was very hot. By an open window Miss Barbara sat dozing, her -hands upturned with an appealing laxity on her knees, sad even in her -sleep. - -Eppie was not there and she had not spoken one word to him since those -last words of the afternoon. Perhaps she intended to speak no more, to -see him no more. Pausing on the threshold, he was now conscious of a -slow, rising misery. - -If he was to be spared the final wrench, he was also to be robbed of -something. He hadn't known, till then, of how much. He hadn't known, -while she stood there before him, this fully revealed Eppie, this Eppie -who loved far beyond his imagining, far beyond prudence, ambition, even -happiness, what it would be not to see her again, to part from her -speechlessly, and with a sort of enmity unresolved between them. - -The cathedral simile was still with him, not in her interpretation of -it, as the consecration of human love, but in his own, as a place of -peace, where together they might still kneel in farewell. - -But she barred him out from that; she wouldn't accept such peace. He -could only submit and own that she was perhaps altogether right in -risking no more battles and in proudly denying to him the opportunity of -any reconciling. She was right to have it end there; but the core among -the embers ached. - -He wandered out into the dark, vague night, sorrowfully restless. - -It was not a radiant night. The trees and the long undulations of the -moorland melted into the sky, making all about a sea of enveloping -obscurity. The moor might have been the sky but for its starlessness; -and there were few stars to-night, and these, large and soft, seemed to -float like helpless expanded flowers on a still ocean. - -A night for wandering griefs to hide in, to feel at one with, and, with -an instinct that knew that it sorrowed but hardly knew that it sought, -Gavan went on around the house, through the low door in the garden wall, -and into the garden. - -Here all the warmth and perfume of the summer day seemed still to exhale -itself in a long sigh like that of a peaceful sleeper. Earth, trees, -fruit, and flowers gave out their drowsy balms. Veiled beauty, dreaming -life, were beneath, above, about him, and the high walls inclosed a -place of magic, a shadow paradise. - -He walked on, past white phlox, white pansies, and white foxglove, -through the little trellis where white jasmine starred its festoons of -frail, melancholy foliage, and under the low boughs of the small, -gnarled fruit-trees. Near the summer-house he paused, looking in at the -darkness and seeing there the figures of the past--two children at play. -His heart ached on dully, the smoldering sorrow rising neither to -passionate regret nor to passionate longing, acquiescing in its own -sorrow that was part of the vision. Moved by that retrospect, he stepped -inside. - -The sweet old odor, so well remembered, half musty, half fresh, of -cobwebbed wood, lichened along the lintels and doorway beams, assailed -him while he groped lightly around the walls, automatically reaching out -his hand to the doll's locker, the little row of shelves, the low, -rustic bench and the table that, he remembered as it rocked slightly -under his touch, had always been unsteady. All were in their old, -accustomed places, and among them he saw himself a ghost, some -sightless, soundless creature hovering in the darkness. - -The darkness and the familiar forms he evoked from it grew oppressive, -and he stepped out again into the night, where, by contrast with the -uncanny blindness, he found a new distinctness of form, almost of color, -and where a memory, old and deep, seemed to seize him with gentle, -compelling hands, in the fragrance of the white roses growing near the -summer-house. Wine-like and intoxicating, it filled the air with magic; -and he had gone but a few steps farther when, like a picture called up -by the enchantment, he saw the present, the future too, it seemed, and, -with a shock that for all its quiet violence was not unexpected, stood -still to gaze, to feel in the one moment of memory and forecast all his -life gathered into his contemplation. - -Eppie sat on a low garden bench in the garden's most hidden corner. With -the fresh keenness of sight he could see the clustering white roses on -the wall behind her, see against them the darkness of her hair, the -whiter whiteness of her dress, as she sat there with head a little bent, -looking down, the long white shawl folded about her. - -It was no longer the Eppie of the past, not even the Eppie of the -present: the present was only that long pause. It was the future that -waited there, silent, motionless, almost as if asleep; waited for the -word and touch that would reveal it. - -She had not heard his light step, and it seemed to be in the very -stillness of his pause that the sense of his presence came to her. -Raising her head she looked round at him. - -He could only see the narrow oval of her face, but he felt her look; it -seized him, compelling as the fragrance had been--compelling but not -gentle. He felt it like firm hands upon him while he walked on slowly -toward her, and not until he was near her, not until he had sat down -beside her, did he see as well as feel her fixed and hostile gaze. - -All swathed and infolded as she was, impalpable and unsubstantial in the -darkness, her warm and breathing loveliness was like the aroma of a -midnight flower. She was so beautiful sitting there, a blossoming of the -darkness, that her beauty seemed aware of itself and of its appeal; and -it was as if her soul, gazing at him, dominated the appeal; menaced him -should he yield to it; yet loved, ah, loved him with a love the greater -for the courage, the will, that could discipline it into this set, stern -stillness. - -Yes, here was the future, and what was he to do with it? or, rather, -what was it to do with him? He was at her mercy. - -He had leaned near her, his hand on the bench, to look into her eyes, -and in a shaken, supplicating voice he said, "Eppie, Eppie, what do you -want?" - -Without change, looking deeply at him, she answered, "You." - -That crashed through him. He was lost, drowned, in the mere sense of -beauty--the beauty of the courage that could so speak and so hold him at -the point of a sword heroically drawn. And with the word the future -seized him. He hid his face upon her shoulder and his arms went round -her. Her breast heaved. For a moment she sat as if stricken with -astonishment. Then, but with sternness, as of a just and angry mother, -she clasped him, holding him closely but untenderly. - -"I did not mean this," she said. - -"No; but you _are_ it," Gavan murmured. - -She held him in the stern, untender clasp, her head drawn back from him, -while, slowly, seeking her words over the tumult she subdued, she said: -"It's _you_ I want--not your unwilling longing, not your unwilling love. -I want you so that I can be really myself; I want you so that you can be -really yourself." - -He strained her to him, hiding his face on her breast. - -"Can't you live? Can't you be--if I help you?" she asked him. - -For a long time he was silent, only pressing closely to her as though -to hide himself from her questions--from his own thoughts. - -He said at last: "I can't think, Eppie. Your words go like birds over my -head. Your suffering, my longing, hurt me; but it's like the memory of a -hurt. I am apart from it, even while I feel it. Even while I love -you--oh, Eppie! Eppie!--I don't care. But when we are like this--at last -like this--I am caught back into it all, all that I thought I'd got over -forever, this afternoon,--all the dreadful dream--the beautiful dream. -It's for this I've longed--you have known it: to hold you, to feel your -breath on me, to dream with you. How beautiful you are, how sweet! Kiss -me, Eppie,--darling, darling Eppie!" - -"I will not kiss you. It would be real to me." - -He had raised his head and was seeing now the suffering of her shadowy -eyes, the shadowy lips she refused him tragically compressed lest they -should tremble. Behind her pale head and its heavy cloud of hair were -the white roses giving out--how his mind reeled with the memory of -it--the old, sweet, wine-like fragrance. - -He closed his eyes to the vision, bending his lips to her hand, saying: -"Yes, that's why I wanted to spare you--wanted to run away." - -In the little distance now of his drawing from her, even while he still -held her, his cheek on her hand, she could speak more easily. - -"It is that that enrages me,--your mystic sickness. I am awake, but you -aren't even dreaming. You are drugged--drugged with thought not strong -enough to find its real end. You have paralyzed yourself. No argument -could cure you. No thought could cure you. Only life could cure you. You -must get life, and to get it you must want it." - -"I don't want it. I can't want it. I only want you," said Gavan, with -such a different echo. - -She understood, more fully than he, perhaps, the helpless words. - -Above his bowed head, her face set, she looked out into the night. Her -mind measured, coldly it seemed to her, the strength of her own faith -and of his negation. - -Her love, including but so far transcending all natural cravings, had -its proud recoil from the abasement--oh, she saw it all!--that his -limitation would bring to it. Yet, like the mother again, adapting truth -to the child's dim apprehension, leading it on by symbols, she brooded -over her deep thoughts of redemption and looked clearly at all dangers -and all hopes. Faith must face even his unspiritual seeing. Faith must -endure his worse than pagan love. Bound to her by every natural tie, her -strength must lift him, through them, to their spiritual aspect, to -their reality. Life was her ally. She must put her trust in life. She -consecrated herself to it anew. Let it lead her where it would. - -The long moment of steady forecast had, after its agony of shame and -fear, its triumph over both. - -He felt the deep sigh that lifted her breast--it was almost a sob; but -now her arms took him closely, gently, to her and her voice had the -steadfastness, no longer of rejection, but of acceptance. - -"Gavan, dream with me, then; that's better than being drugged. Perhaps -you will wake some day. There, I kiss you." - -She said it, and with the words his lips were on hers. - -In the long moment of their embrace he had a strange intuition. -Something was accomplished; some destiny that had led them to this hour -was satisfied and would have no more to do with them. He seemed almost -to hear this thought of finality, like the far, distant throbbing of a -funeral bell, though the tolling only shut them the more closely into -the silence of the wonderful moment. - -Drugged? No, he was not drugged. But was she really dragging him down -again, poor child, into her own place of dreams? - -After the ecstasy, in the darkness of her breast and arms, he knew again -the horrible surge of suffering that life had always meant to him. He -saw, as though through deep waters, the love, the strife, the clinging -to all that went; he saw the withering of dreams, and death, and the -implacable, devouring thought that underlay all life and found its joy -in the rending sorrow of the tragedy it triumphed over. - -It was like a wave catching him, sucking him down into a gulf of -blackness. The dizziness of the whirlpool reeled its descending spiral -through his brain. Eppie was the sweet, the magical, the sinister -mermaid; she held him, triumphing, and he clung to her, helpless; while, -like the music of rushing waters, the horror and enchantment of life -rang in his ears. But the horror grew and grew. The music rang on to a -multitudinous world-cry of despair,--the cry of all the torments of the -world turning on their rack of consciousness,--and, in a crash of -unendurable anguish, came the thought of what it all would mean; what it -all might mean now--now--unless he could save her; for he guessed that -her faith, put to the test, might accept any risk, might pay any price, -to keep him. And the anguish was for her. - -He started from her, putting away her arms, yet pinioning her, holding -her from him with a fierceness of final challenge and looking in the -darkness into her darker eyes. - -"Suppose I do," he said. "Suppose I marry you,"--for he must show her -that some tests she should not be put to. "Suppose I take you and -reenter the dream. Look at it, Eppie. Look at your life with me. It -won't stay like this, you know. Look far, far ahead." - -"I do," she said. - -"No, no. You don't. You can't. It would, for a year, perhaps, perhaps -only for a day, be dream and ecstasy,--ah, Eppie, don't imagine that I -don't know what it would be,--the beauty, the joy, the forgetfulness, a -radiant mist hanging over an abyss. Your will could keep me in it--for a -year, perhaps. But then, the inevitable fading. See what comes. Eppie, -don't you know, don't you feel, that I'm dead--dead?" - -"No; not while you suffer. You are suffering now--for me." - -"The shadow of a shadow. It will pass. No, don't speak; wait; as you -said, we can't argue, we can't, now, go into the reasons of it. As you -said, thought can't cure me; it's probably something far deeper than our -little thought: it's probably the aspect we are fated to be by that one -reality that makes and unmakes our dreams. And I'm not of the robust -Western stuff that can work in its dream,--create more dream, and find -it worth while. I've not enough life in me to create the illusion of -realities to strive for. Action, to me, brings no proof of life's -reality; it's merely a symptom of life, its result, not its cause or its -sanction. And the power of action is dead in me because the desire of -life is dead,--unless you are there to infect me with it." - -"I am here, Gavan." - -"Yes, you are,--can I forget it? And I'm yours--while you want me. But, -Eppie, look at it; look at it straight. See the death that I will bring -into the very heart of your life. See the children we may have; see what -they would mean to you, and what they would mean to me: Transient -appearances; creatures lovely and pathetic, perhaps, but empty of all -the significance that you would find in them. I would have no love for -our children, Eppie, as you understand love. We will grow old, and all -the glamour will go--all the passion that holds us together now. I will -be kind--and sorry; but you will know that, beside you, I watch you -fading into listlessness, indifference, death, and know that even if I -am to weep over you, dead, I will feel only that you have escaped -forever, from me, from consciousness, from life. Eppie, don't delude -yourself with one ray of hope. To me your faith is a mirage. And it all -comes to that. Have you faith enough to foresee all the horror of -emptiness that you'll find in me for the sake of one year of ecstasy?" - -She had not moved while he spoke--spoke with a passion, a vehemence, -that was like a sudden rushing into flame of a forest fire. There was -something lurid and terrible in such passion, such vehemence, from him. -It shook him as the forest is shaken and was like the ruinous force of -the flames. She sat, while he held her, looking at it, as he had told -her, "straight." She knew that she looked at everything. Her eyes went -back to his eyes as she gave him her answer. - -"Not for the sake of the year of ecstasy; in spite of it." - -"For what, then?" he asked, stammering suddenly. - -Her eyes, with their look of dedication, held him fast. - -"For the sake of life--the long life--together; the life without the -glamour, when my faith may altogether infect you." - -"You believe, Eppie, that you are so much stronger than I?" - -"It's not that I'm strong; but life is stronger than anything; life is -the only reality. I am on the winning side." - -"So you will hope?" - -"Hope! Of course I hope. You could never make me stop hoping--not even -if you broke my heart. You may call it a mirage if you like--that's -only a word. I'll fill your trance with my mirage, I'll flood your -whiteness with my color, and, God grant, you will feel life and know -that you are at last awake. You are right--life _is_ endless contest, -endless pain; it's only at that price that we can have it; but you will -know that it's worth the price. I see it all, Gavan, and I accept. I -accept not only the certainty of my own suffering, but the certainty of -yours." - -Through the night they gazed at each other, his infinite sadness, her -infinite valor. Their faces were like strange, beautiful dreams--dreams -holding in their dimness such deep, such vivid significance. They more -saw the significance--that sadness, that valor--than its embodiment in -eyes and lips. - -It was finally with a sense of realization so keen that it trembled on -the border of oblivion, of the fainting from over-consciousness, that -Gavan once more laid his head upon her breast. He, too, accepting, held -her close,--held her and all that she signified, while, leaning above -him, her cheek against his hair, she said in a voice that over its depth -upon depth of steadiness trembled at last a little: "I see it all. -Imagine what a faith it is that is willing to make the thing it loves -most in the whole world suffer--suffer horribly--so that it may live." - -He gave a long sigh. At its height emotion dissolved into a rapt -contemplation. "How beautiful," he said. - -"Beautiful?" she repeated, with almost a gentle mockery for the word. -"Well, begin with beauty if you will. You will find that--and more -besides--as an end of it all." - - - - -VII - - -She left him in the garden. They had talked quietly, of the past, of -their childhood, and, as quietly, of the future--their immediate -marriage and departure for long, wonderful voyages together. His head -lay on her breast, and often, while they spoke of that life together, of -the homecoming to Cheylesford Lodge and when he heard her voice tremble -a little, he kissed the dear hand he held. - -When she rose at last and stood before him, he said, still holding her -hands, that he would sit on there in the darkness and think of her. - -She felt the languor of his voice and told him that he was very tired -and would do much better to go to bed and forget about her till morning; -but, looking up at her, he shook his head, smiling: "I couldn't sleep." - -So she left him; but, before she went, after the last gazing pause in -which there seemed now no discord, no strife, nothing to hide or to -threaten, she had suddenly put her arms around his neck, bending to him -and murmuring, "Oh, I love you." - -"I seem to have loved you forever, Eppie," he said. - -But, once more, in all the strange oblivion of his acceptance, there had -been for him in their kiss and their embrace the undertone of anguish, -the distant tolling--as if for something accomplished, over forever--of -a funeral bell. - -He watched her figure--white was not the word for it in this midnight -world--pass away into the darkness. And, as she disappeared, the bell -seemed still to toll, "Gone. Gone. Gone." - -So he was alone. - -He was alone. The hours went by and he still sat there. The white roses -near him, they, too, only a strange blossoming of darkness, symbolized, -in their almost aching sweetness, the departed presence. He breathed in -their fragrance; and, as he listened to his own quiet breaths, they -seemed those of the night made conscious in him. The roses remembered -for him; the night breathed through him; it was an interchange, a -mingling. Above were the deep vaults of heaven, the profundities of -distance, the appalling vastness, strewn with its dust of stars. And it, -too, was with him, in him, as the roses were, as his own breath came and -went. - -The veils had now lifted from the night and it was radiant, all its -stars visible; and veil after veil seemed drifting from before his soul. - -A cool, light breeze stirred his hair. - -Closing his eyes, at last, his thought plunged, as his sight had -plunged, into gulf under gulf of vacancy. - -After the unutterable fatigue, like the sinking under anaesthesia, of his -final yielding, he could not know what was happening to him, nor care. -It had often happened before, only never quite like this. It was, once -more, the great peace, lapping wave after wave, slow, sliding, -immeasurable waves, through and through him; dissolving thought and -feeling; dissolving all discord, all pain, all joy and beauty. - -The hours went by, and, as they went, Eppie's face, like a drift of -stars, sank, sank into the gulf. What had he said to her? what promised? -Only the fragrance of the roses seemed to remember, nothing in himself. -For what had he wanted? He wanted nothing now. Her will, her life, had -seized him; but no, no, no,--the hours quietly, in their passing seemed -to say it,--they had not kept him. He had at last, after a lifelong -resistance, abandoned himself to her, and the abandonment had been the -final step toward complete enfranchisement. For, with no effort now of -his own at escape, no will at all to be free, he had left her far behind -him, as if through the waters of the whirlpool his soul, like a light -bubble, had softly, surely, risen to the air. It had lost itself, and -her. - -He thought of her, but now with no fear, no anguish. A vast indifference -filled him. It was no longer a question of tearing himself from her, no -longer a question of saving himself and her. There was no question, nor -any one to save. He was gone away, from her, from everything. - -When the dawn slowly stole into the garden, so that the ghosts of day -began to take shape and color, Gavan rose among them. The earth was damp -with dew; his hair and clothes were damp. Overhead the sky was white, -and the hills upon it showed a flat, shadowless green. Between the -night's enchantments of stillness, starriness, veiled, dreaming beauty -and the sunlit, voluble enchantments of the day,--songs and flights of -birds, ripple and shine of water, the fugitive, changing color of land -and sky,--this hour was poor, bare, monotonous. There wasn't a ray of -enchantment in it. It was like bleak canvas scenery waiting for the -footlights and a decorated stage. - -Gavan looked before him, down the garden path, shivering a little. He -was cold, and the sensation brought him back to the old fact of life, -that, after all, was there as long as one saw it. The coming of the -light seemed to retwist once more his own palely tinted prism of -personality, and with the cold, with the conscious looking back at the -night and forward to the day, came a long, dull ache of sadness. It was -more physical than mental; hunger and chill played their part in it, he -knew, while, as the prism twined its colors, the fatiguing faculty of -analysis once more built up the world of change and diversity. He looked -up at the pale walls of the old house, laced with their pattern of -creepers. The pine-tree lay like an inky shadow across it, and, among -the branches, were the windows of Eppie's room, the window where he and -she had stood together on the morning of Robbie's death--a white, -dew-drenched morning like this. There she slept, dear, beautiful, the -shadow of life. And here he stood, still living, after all, in their -mutual mirage; still to hurt her. He didn't think of her face, her -voice, her aspect. The only image that came was of a shadow--something -darkly beautiful that entranced and suffocated, something that, -enveloping one, shut out peace and vacancy. - -His cold hands thrust into his pockets, he stood thinking for a moment, -of how he would have to hurt her, and of how much less it was to be than -if what they had seen in the night's glamour had been possible. - -He wondered why the mere fact of the night's revelation--all those -passing-bell hours--had made it so impossible for him to go on, by sheer -force of will, with the play. Why couldn't he, for her sake, act the -lifelong part? In her arms he would know again the moments of glamour. -But, at the mere question, a sickness shuddered through him. He saw now, -clearly, what stood in the way: suffering, hideous suffering, for both -of them--permanent, all-pervading suffering. The night had proved too -irrevocably that any union between them was only momentary, only a -seeming, and with her, feeling her faith, her hope, her love, he could -know nothing but the undurable discord of their united and warring -notes. - -Could life and death be made one flesh? - -The horror of the thought spurred him from his rigor of contemplation. -That, at least, had been spared her. Destiny, then, had not meant for -them that final, tragic consummation. - -He threaded his way rapidly among the paths, the flower-beds, under the -low boughs of the old fruit-trees. She had left the little door near -the morning-room open for him, and through it he entered the still -house. - -It wasn't escape, now, from her, but from that pressing horror, as of -something, that, unless he hastened, might still overtake them both. Yet -outside her door he paused, bent his head, listened with a strange -curiosity, helpless before the nearness of that loved, that dreaded -being, the warring note that he sought yet fled from. - -She slept. Not a sound stirred in the room. - -He closed his eyes, seeing, with a vividness that was almost a -hallucination, her face, her wonderful face, asleep, with the dark -rivers of her hair flowing about it. - -And, fixed as he was in his frozen certainty of truth, he felt, once -more like the striking of a hand across a harp, a longing, wild and -passionate, to enter, to take her, sleeping, in his arms, to see her -eyes open on him; to hide himself in life, as in the darkness of her -breast and arms, and to forget forever the piercing of inexorable -thought. - -He found that his hand was on the lock and that he was violently -trembling. - -It was inexorable thought, the knowledge of the horror that would await -them, that conquered the leap of blind instinct. - -Half an hour later a thin, intense light rimmed all the eastern hills, -and a cold, clear cheerfulness spread over the earth. The moors were -purple and the sky overhead palely, immaculately blue. About the tall -lime-trees the rooks circled, cawing, and a skylark sang far and high, -a floating atom of ecstasy. - -And in the clearness Gavan's figure showed, walking rapidly away from -the white house, down the road that led through the heather and past the -birch-woods, walking away from it forever. - - - - -VIII - - -Grainger stood in Eppie's little sitting-room, confronting, as Gavan had -confronted the spring before, Miss Allen's placidly sewing figure. - -The flowers against which her uneventful head now bent were autumnal. -Thickly growing Michaelmas daisies, white and purple, screened the lower -section of the square outside. Above were the shabby tree-tops, that -seemed heavily painted upon an equally solid sky. The square was dusty, -the trees were dusty, the very blue of the sky looked grimed with dust. - -The hot air; the still flowers, not stirred by a breath of breeze; Miss -Allen's figure, motionless but for its monotonously moving hand, were -harmonious in their quiet, and in contrast to them Grainger's pervasive, -restless, irritable presence was like a loud, incessant jangling. - -He walked back and forth; he picked up the photographs on the -mantel-shelf, the books on the table, flinging them down in a succession -of impatient claps. He threw himself heavily into chairs,--so heavily -that Miss Allen glanced round, alarmed for the security of the -furniture,--and he asked her half a dozen times if Miss Gifford would be -in at five. - -"She is seldom late," or, "I expect her then," Miss Allen would answer -in the tone of mild severity that one might employ toward an unseemly -child over whom one had no authority. - -But though there was severity in Miss Allen's voice, the acute glances -that she stole at the clamorous guest were not unsympathetic. She placed -him. She pitied and she rather admired him. Even while emphasizing the -dismay of her involuntary starts when the table rattled and the chairs -groaned, she felt a satisfaction in these symptoms of passion; for that -she was in the presence of a passion, a hopeless and rather magnificent -passion, she made no doubt. She associated such passions with Eppie,--it -was trailing such clouds of glory that she descended upon the arid life -of the little square,--and none had so demonstrated itself, none had so -performed its part for her benefit. She was sorry that it was hopeless; -but she was glad that it was there, in all its Promethean wrathfulness, -for her to observe. Miss Allen felt pretty sure that this was the -nearest experience of passion she would ever know. - -"In at five, as a rule, you say?" Grainger repeated for the fourth time, -springing from the chair where, with folded arms, he had sat for a few -moments scowling unseeingly at the pansies. - -He stationed himself now beside her and, over her head, stared out at -the square. It was at once alarming and delightful,--as if the Titan -with his attendant vulture had risen from his rock to join her. - -"You've no idea from which direction she is coming?" - -"None," said Miss Allen, decisively but not unkindly. "It's really no -good for you to think of going out to meet her. She is doing a lot of -different things this afternoon and might come from any direction. You -would almost certainly miss her." And she went on, unemphatically, but, -for all the colorless quality of her voice, so significantly that -Grainger, realizing for the first time the presence of an understanding -sympathy, darted a quick look at her. "She gets in at five, just as I go -out. She knows that I depend on her to be here by then." - -So she would not be in the way, this little individual. She made him -think, now that he looked at her more attentively, as she sat there with -her trimly, accurately moving hand, of a beaver he had once seen swiftly -and automatically feeding itself; her sleek head, her large, smooth -front teeth, were like a beaver's. It was really very decent of her to -see that he wanted her out of the way; so decent that, conscious of the -link it had made between them, he said presently, abruptly and rather -roughly, "How is she?" - -"Well, of course she has not recovered," said Miss Allen. - -"Recovered? But she wasn't actually ill." Grainger had a retorting air. - -"No; I suppose not. It was nervous prostration, I suppose--if that's not -an illness." - -"This isn't the place for her to recover from nervous prostration in." -He seemed to fasten an accusation, but Miss Allen understood perfectly. - -"Of course not. I've tried to make her see that. But,"--she was making -now quite a chain of links,--"she feels she must work, must lose herself -in something. Of course she overdoes it. She overdoes everything." - -"Overwork, do you think? The cause, I mean?" - -Grainger jerked this out, keeping his eyes on the square. - -Miss Allen, not in any discreet hesitation, but in sincere uncertainty, -paused over her answer. - -"It couldn't be, quite. She was well enough when she went away in the -summer, though she really isn't at all strong,--not nearly so strong as -she looks. She broke down, you know, at her uncle's, in Scotland"; and -Miss Allen added, in a low-pitched and obviously confidential voice, "I -think it was some shock that nobody knows anything about." - -Grainger stood still for some moments, and then plunging back into the -little room, he crossed and re-crossed it with rapid strides. Her -guessing and his knowledge came too near. - -Only after a long pause did Miss Allen say, "She's really frightfully -changed." The clock was on the stroke. Rising, gathering up her work, -dropping, with neat little clicks, her scissors, her thimble, into her -work-box, she added, and she fixed her eyes on him for a moment as she -spoke, "Do, if you can, make her--" - -"Well, what? Go away?" he demanded. "I've no authority--none. Her people -ought to kidnap her. That's what I'd do. Lift her out of this hole." - -Miss Allen's eyes dwelt on his while she nerved herself to a height of -adventurous courage that, in looking back at it, amazed her. "Here she -is," she said, and almost whispering, "Well, kidnap her, then. That's -what she needs--some one stronger than herself to kidnap her." - -She slid her hand through his, a panic of shyness overtaking her, and -darted out, followed by the flutter of a long, white strip of muslin. - -Grainger stood looking at the open door, through which in a moment Eppie -entered. - -His first feeling was one of relief. He did not, in that first moment, -see that she was "frightfully changed." Even her voice seemed the same, -as she said with all the frank kindness of her welcome and surprise, -"Why, Jim, this is good of you," and all her tact was there, too, giving -him an impression of the resource and flexibility of happy vitality, in -her ignoring by glance or tone of their parting. - -She wore, on the hot autumn day, a white linen frock, the loose bodice -belted with green, a knot of green at her throat, and, under the white -and green of her little hat, her face showed color and its dear smile. - -Relief was so great, indeed, that Grainger found himself almost clinging -to her hand in his sudden thankfulness. - -"You're not so ill, then," he brought out. "I heard it--that you had -broken down--and I came back. I was in the Dolomites. I hadn't had news -of you since I left." - -"So ill! Nonsense," said Eppie, giving his hand a reassuring shake and -releasing her own to pull off her soft, loose gloves. "It was a -breakdown I had, but nothing serious. I believe it to have been an -attack of biliousness, myself. People don't like to own to liver when -they can claim graceful maladies like nervous prostration,--so it was -called. But liver, only, I fear it was. And I'm all right now, thank -goodness, for I loathe being ill and am a horrid patient." - -She had taken off her hat, pushing back her hair from her forehead and -sinking into a chair that was against the light. The Michaelmas daisies -made a background for the bronze and white of her head, for, as she -rested, the color that her surprise and her swift walking had given her -died. She was glad to rest, her smile said that, and he saw, indeed, -that she was utterly tired. - -Suddenly, as he looked at her, seeing the great fatigue, seeing the -pallor, seeing the smile only stay as if with determination, the truth -of Miss Allen's description was revealed to him. She was frightfully -changed. Her smile, her courage, made him think of a _danse macabre_. -The rhythm, the gaiety of life were there, but life itself was gone. - -The revelation came to him, but he felt himself clutch it silently, and -he let her go on talking. - -She went on, indeed, very volubly, talking of her breakdown, of how good -the general and her aunt had been to her, and of how getting back to her -work had picked her up directly. - -"I think I'll finally pitch my tent here," she went on. "The interest -grows all the time,--and the ties, the responsibility. One can't do -things by half measures; you know that, thorough person that you are. I -mustn't waste my mite of income by gadding about. I'm going to chuck all -the rest and give myself altogether to this." - -"You used to think that the rest helped you in this," said Grainger. - -"To a certain extent it did, and will, for I've had so much that it will -last me for a long time." - -"You intend to live permanently down here?" - -"I shall have my holidays, and I shall run up to civilization for a -dinner or two now and then. It's not that I've any illusions about my -usefulness or importance. It's that all this is so useful to me. It's -something I can do with all my might and main, and I've such masses of -energy you know, Jim, that need employment. And then, though of course -one works at the wrong side of the tapestry and has to trust that the -pattern is coming right, I do believe that, to a certain extent, it does -need me." - -He leaned back in his chair opposite her, listening to the voice that -rattled on so cheerfully. With his head bent, he kept that old gaze upon -her and clutched the clearer and clearer revelation: Eppie--Eppie in -torment; Eppie shattered;--Eppie--why, it was as if she sat there before -him smiling and rattling over a huge hole in her chest. And, finally, -the consciousness of the falsity in her own tone made her falter a -little. She couldn't continue so glibly while his eyes were saying to -her: "Yes; I see, I see. You are wounded to death." But if she faltered -it was only, in the pause, to look about for another shield. - -"And you?" she said. "Have you done a great deal of climbing? Tell me -about yourself, dear Jim." - -It was a dangerous note to strike and the "dear Jim" gave away her sense -of insecurity. It was almost an appeal to him not to see, or, at all -events, not to tell her that he saw. - -"Don't talk about me," he said very rudely. She knew the significance of -his rudeness. - -"Let us talk of whatever you will." - -"Of you, then. Don't try to shut me out, Eppie." - -"Am I shutting you out?" - -"You are trying to. You have succeeded with the rest, I suppose; but, as -of course you know, you can't succeed with me. I know too much. I care -too much." - -His rough, tense voice beat down her barriers. She sat silent, oddly -smiling. - -He rose and came to her and stood above her, pressing the tips of his -fingers heavily down upon her shoulder. - -"You must tell me. I must know. I won't stand not knowing." - -Motionless, without looking up at him, she still smiled before her. - -"That--that coward has broken your heart," he said. There were tears in -his voice, and, looking up now, the smile stiffened to a resolute -grimace, she saw them running down his cheeks. But her own face did not -soften. With a glib dryness she answered: - -"Yes, Jim; that's it." - -"Oh--" It was a long growl over her head. - -She had looked away again, and continued in the same crisp voice: "I'd -lie if I could, you may be sure. But you put it so, you look so, that I -can't. I'm at your mercy. You know what I feel, so I can't hide it from -you. I hate any one, even you, to know what I feel. Help me to hide it." - -"What has he done?" Grainger asked on the muffled, growling note. - -"Gavan? Done? He's done nothing." - -"But something happened. You aren't where you were when I left you. You -weren't breaking down then." - -"Hope deferred, Jim--" - -"It's not that. Don't fence, to shield him. It's not hope deferred. It's -hope dead. Something happened. What was it?" - -"All that happened was that he went, when I thought that he was going to -stay, forever." - -"He went, knowing--" - -"That I loved him? Yes; I told him." - -"And he told you that he didn't love you?" - -"No, there you were wrong. He told me that he did. But he saw what you -saw. So what would you have asked of him?" - -"Saw what I saw? What do you mean?" - -"That he would suffocate me. That he was the negation of everything I -believed in." - -"You mean to tell me," said Grainger, his fingers still pressing down -upon her shoulder, "that it all came out,--that you had it there between -you,--and then that he ran away?" - -"From the fear of hurting my life. Yes." - -"From the fear of life itself, you mean." - -"If that was it, wasn't it enough?" - -"The coward. The mean, bloodless coward," said Jim Grainger. - -"I let you say it because I understand; it's your relief. But he is not -a coward. He is only--a saint. A saint without a saint's perquisites. A -Spinoza without a God. An imitator of Christ without a Christ. I have -been thinking, thinking it all out, seeing it all, ever since." - -"Spinoza! What has he to do with it! Don't talk rot, dear child, to -comfort yourself." - -"Be patient, Jim. Perhaps I can help you. It calms one when one -understands. I have been reading up all the symptoms. Listen to this, if -you think that Spinoza has nothing to do with it. On the contrary, he -knew all about it and would have seen very much as Gavan does." - -She took up one of the books that had been so frequently flung down by -Grainger in his waiting and turned its pages while he watched her with -the enduring look of a mother who humors a sick child's foolish fancies. - -"Listen to Spinoza, Jim," she said, and he obediently bent his lowering -gaze to the task. "'When a thing is not loved, no strife arises about -it; there is no pang if it perishes, no envy if another bears it away, -no fear, no hate; yes, in a word, no tumult of soul. These things all -come from loving that which perishes.' And now the Imitation: 'What -canst thou see anywhere which can continue long under the sun? Thou -believest, perchance, that thou shalt be satisfied, but thou wilt never -be able to attain unto this. If thou shouldst see all things before thee -at once, what would it be but a vain vision?' And this: 'Trust not thy -feeling, for that which is now will be quickly changed into somewhat -else.'" - -Her voice, as she read on to him,--and from page to page she went, -plucking for him, it seemed, their cold, white blossoms, fit flowers to -lay on the grave of love,--had lost the light dryness as of withered -leaves rustling. It seemed now gravely to understand, to acquiesce. A -chill went over the man, as though, under his hand, he felt her, too, -sliding from warm life into that place of shadows where she must be to -be near the one she loved. - -"Shut the books, for God's sake, Eppie," he said. "Don't tell me that -you've come to see as he has." - -She looked up at him, and now, in the dear, deep eyes, he saw all the -old Eppie, the Eppie of life and battle. - -"Can you think it, Jim? It's because I see so clearly what he sees that -I hate it and repudiate it and fight it with every atom of my being. -It's that hatred, that repudiation, that fight, that is life. I believe -in it, I'm for it, as I never believed before, as I never was before." - -He was answering her look, seeing her as life's wounded champion, -standing, shot through, on the ramparts of her beleaguered city. She -would shake her banner high in the air as she fell. The pity, the fury, -the love of his eyes dwelt on her. - -And suddenly, under that look, her eyes closed. She shrank together in -her chair; she bowed down her head upon her knees, covering her face. - -"Oh, Jim," she said, "my heart is broken." - -He knew that he had brought her to this, that never before an onlooker -had she so fallen into her own misery. He had forced her to show the -final truth that, though she held the banner, she was shot through and -through. And he could do nothing but stand on above her, his face set to -a flintier, sharper endurance, as he heard the great sobs shake her. - -He left her presently and walked up and down the room while she wept, -crouched over upon her knees. It was not for long. The tempest passed, -and, when she sat in quiet, her head in her hands, her face still -hidden, he said, "You must set about mending now, Eppie." - -"I can't mend. I'll live; but I can't mend." - -"Don't say it, Eppie. This may pass as--well--other things in your life -have passed." - -"Do you, too, talk Spinoza to me, Jim?" - -"Damn Spinoza! I'm talking life to you--the life we both believe in. I'm -not telling you to turn your back on it because it has crippled you. You -won't, I know it. I know that you are brave. Eppie, Eppie,"--before her, -now, he bent to her, then knelt beside her chair,--"let me be the -crutch. Let me have the fragments. Let's try, together, to mend them. I -ask nothing of you but that trying, with my help, to mend. He isn't for -you. He's never for you. I'll say no more brutalities of him. I'll use -your own words and say that he can't,--that his saintship can't. So -won't you, simply, let me take you? Even if you're broken for life, let -me have the broken Eppie." - -She had never, except in the moment of the kiss, seen this deepest thing -in him, this gentleness, this reverent tenderness that, under the -bullying, threatening, angry aspects of his love, now supplicated with a -beauty that revealed all the angel in humanity. Strange--she could think -it in all her sorrow--that the thing that held him to her was the thing -that held her to Gavan, the deep, the mysterious, the unchangeable -affinity. For him, as for her, there could be but one, and for that one -alone could these depths and heights of the heart open themselves. - -"Jim, dear, dear Jim, never, never," she said. "I am his, only his, -fragments, all of me, for as long as I am I." - -Grainger hid his face on the arm of her chair. - -"And he is mine," said Eppie. "He knows it, and that is why he fears me. -He is mine forever." - -"I am glad for your sake that you can believe that," Grainger muttered, -"and glad, for my own, that I don't." - -"Why, Jim?" - -"I could hardly live if I thought that you were going to love him in -eternity and that I was, forever, to be shut away. Thank goodness that -it's only for a lifetime that my tragedy lasts." - -She closed her eyes to these perplexities, laying her hand on his. - -"I don't know. We can only think and act for this life. It's this we -have to shape. Perhaps in eternity, really in eternity, whatever that -may mean, I won't need to shut you out. Dear, dear Jim, it's hard that -it must seem that to you now. You know what I feel about you. And who -could feel it as I do? We are in the same boat." - -"No, for he, at least, loves no one else. You haven't that to bear. As -far as he goes,--and it isn't far,--he is yours. We are not at all in -the same boat. But that's enough of me. I suppose I am done for, as you -say, forever." - -He had got upon his feet, and, as if at their mutual wreckage, looked -down with a face that had found again its old shield of grimness. - -"As for you," he went on, "I sha'n't, at all events, see you -suffocating. You must mend alone, then, as best you can. Really, you're -not as tragic as you might have been." - -Then, after this salutary harshness, and before he turned from her to -go, he added, as once before, "Poor darling." - - - - -IX - - -Grainger hardly knew why he had come and, as he walked up the deep -Surrey lane from the drowsy village station, his common-sense warred -with the instinct, almost the obsession, that was taking him to -Cheylesford Lodge. Eppie had been persistently in his thoughts since -their meeting of the week before, and from his own hopelessness had -sprung the haunting of a hope for her. Turn from it as he would, accuse -himself angrily of madness, morbidity, or a mere tendency to outrageous -meddling,--symptomatic of shattered nerves,--he couldn't escape it. By -day and night it was with him, until he saw himself, in a lurid vision, -as responsible for Eppie's very life if he didn't test its validity. For -where she had failed might not a man armed with the strength of his -selfless love succeed? - -He had said, in his old anger, that as Gavan's wife Gavan would kill -her; but he hadn't really meant that literally; now, literally, the new -fear had come that she might die of Gavan's loss. Her will hadn't -snapped, but her vitality was like the flare of the candle in its -socket. To love, the eremite of Cheylesford Lodge wouldn't -yield--perhaps for very pity's sake; but if he were made to see the -other side of it?--Grainger found a grim amusement in the paradox--the -lover, in spite of love, might yield to pity. Couldn't his own manliness -strike some spark of manliness from Gavan? Couldn't he and Eppie between -them, with their so different appeals,--she to what was soft, he to what -was tough,--hoist his tragically absurd head above water, as it were, -into the air of real life, that might, who knew? fill and sustain his -aquatic lungs? It gave him a vindictive pleasure to see the drowning -simile in the most ludicrous aspects--Gavan, draped in the dramatic -robes of his twopenny-halfpenny philosophies, holding his head in a -basin of water, there resolved to die. Grainger felt that as far as his -own inclinations were concerned it would have given him some pleasure to -help to hold him under, to see that, while he was about it, he did it -thoroughly; but the question wasn't one of his own inclinations: it was -for Eppie's sake that he must try to drag out the enraptured suicide. It -was Eppie, bereft and dying,--so it seemed to him in moments of deep -fear,--whose very life depended on the submerged life. And to see if he -could fish it up for her he had come on this undignified, this -ridiculous errand. - -Very undignified and very ridiculous he felt the errand to be, as he -strode on through the lane, its high hedge-rows all dusty with the -autumn drought; but he was indifferent enough to that side of it. He -felt no confusion. He was completely prepared to speak his mind. - -Coming to a turning of the lane, where he stood for a moment, -uncertain, at branching paths, he was joined by an alert little parson -who asked him courteously if he could direct him on his way. They were -both, it then appeared, going to Cheylesford Lodge; and the Reverend -John Best, after introducing himself as the rector of Dittleworth -parish, and receiving Grainger's name, which had its reverberations, -with affable interest, surmised that it was to another friend of Mr. -Palairet's that he spoke. - -"Yes. No. That is to say, I've known him after a fashion for years, but -seen little of him. Has he been here all summer?" Grainger asked, as -they walked on. - -It seemed that Gavan had only returned from the Continent the week -before, but Mr. Best went on to say, with an evidently temperamental -loquacity, that he was there for most of the time as a rule and was -found a very charming neighbor and a very excellent parishioner. - -This last was a role in which Gavan seemed extremely incongruous, and -Grainger looked his perplexity, murmuring, "Parishioner?" - -"Not, I fear, that we can claim him as an altogether orthodox one," Mr. -Best said, smiling tolerantly upon his companion's probable narrowness. -"We ask for the spirit, rather than the letter, nowadays, Mr. Grainger; -and Mr. Palairet is, at heart, as good a Christian as any of us, of that -I am assured: better than many of us, as far as living the Christian -life goes. Christianity, in its essence, is a life. Ah, if only you -statesmen, you active men of the world, would realize that; would look -past the symbols to the reality. We, who see life as a spiritual -organization, are able to break down the limitations of the dry, -self-centered individualism that, for so many years, has obscured the -glorious features of our faith. And it is the spirit of the Church that -Mr. Palairet has grasped. Time only is needed, I am convinced, to make -him a partaker of her gifts." - -Grainger walked on in a sardonic silence, and Mr. Best, all -unsuspecting, continued to embroider his congenial theme with -illustrations: the village poor, to whom Mr. Palairet was so devoted; -the village hospital, of which he was to talk over the plans to-day; the -neighborly thoughtfulness and unfailing kindness and charity he showed -toward high and low. - -"Palairet always seemed to me very ineffectual," said Grainger when, in -a genial pause, he felt that something in the way of response was -expected of him. - -"Ah, I fear you judge by the worldly standard of outward attainment, Mr. -Grainger." - -"What other is there for us human beings to judge by?" - -"The standard of our unhappy modern plutocratic society is not that by -which to measure the contemplative type of character." - -Grainger felt a slight stress of severity in the good little parson's -affability. - -"Oh, I think its standards aren't at all unwholesome," he made reply. He -could have justified anything, any standard, against Gavan and his -standards. - -"Unwholesome, my dear Mr. Grainger? That is just what they are. See the -beauty of a life like our friend's here. It judges your barbarous -Christless civilization. He lives laborious, simple days. He does his -work, he has his friends. His influence upon them counts for more than -an outside observer could compute. Great men are among them. I met Lord -Taunton at his house last Sunday. A most impressive personality. Even -though Mr. Palairet has abandoned the political career, one can't call -him ineffectual when such a man is among his intimates." - -"The monkish type doesn't appeal to me, I own." - -"Ah, there you touch the point that has troubled me. It is not good for -a man to live alone. My chief wish for him is that he may marry. I often -urge it on him." - -"Well done." - -"One did hear," Mr. Best went on, his small, ruddy face taking on a look -of retrospective reprobation, "that there was an attachment to a certain -young woman--the tale was public property--only as such do I allude to -it--a very fashionable, very worldly young woman. I was relieved indeed -when the rumor came to nothing. He escaped finally, I can't help -fancying it, this summer. I was much relieved." - -"Why so, pray?" - -"I am rural, old-fashioned, my dear young man, and that type of young -woman is one toward which, I own it, I find it difficult to feel -charitably. She represents the pagan, the Christless element that I -spoke of in our modern world. Her charm could not have been a noble -one. Had our friend here succumbed to it, she could only have meant -disaster in his life. She would have urged him into ambition, -pleasure-seeking, dissipation. Of course I only cite what I have heard -in my quiet corner, though I have had glimpses of her, passing with a -friend, a very frivolous person, in a motor-car. She looked completely -what I had imagined." - -"If you mean Miss Gifford," said Grainger, trying for temperateness, "I -happen to know her. She is anything but a pleasure-seeker, anything but -frivolous, anything, above all, but a pagan. If Palairet had been lucky -enough to marry her it would have been the best thing that ever happened -to him in his life, and a very dubious thing for her. She is a thousand -times too good for him." - -"My dear Mr. Grainger, pardon me; I had no idea that you knew the lady. -But," Mr. Best had flushed a little under this onslaught, "I cannot but -think you a partisan." - -"Do you call a woman frivolous who spends half of her time working in -the slums?" - -"That is a phase, I hear, of the ultra-smart young woman. But no doubt -rumor has been unjust. I must beg you to pardon me." - -"Oh, don't mind that. You heard, no doubt, the surface things. But no -one who knows Miss Gifford can think of them, that's all." - -"And if I have been betrayed into injustice, I hope that you will -reconsider a little more charitably your impression of Mr. Palairet," -said Mr. Best, in whom, evidently, Grainger's roughness rankled. - -Grainger laughed grimly. "I can't consider him anything but a thousand -times too bad for Miss Gifford." - -They had reached the entrance to Cheylesford Lodge on this final and -discordant phrase. Mr. Best kept a grieved silence and Grainger's -thoughts passed from him. - -He had had in his life no training in appreciation and was indifferent -to things of the eye, but even to his insensible nature the whole aspect -of the house that they approached between high yew hedges, its dreaming -quiet, the tones of its dim old bricks, the shadowed white of paneled -walls within, spoke of pensive beauty, of a secure content in things of -the mind. He felt it suddenly as oppressive and ominous in its assured -quietness. It had some secret against the probes of feeling. Its magic -softly shut away suffering and encircled safely a treasure of -tranquillity. - -That was the secret, that the magic; it flashed vaguely for -Grainger--though by its light he saw more vividly his own errand as -ridiculous--that a life of thought, pure thought, if one could only -achieve it, was the only _safe_ life. Where, in this adjusted system of -beauty and contemplation, would his appeals find foothold? - -He dashed back the crowding doubts, summoning his own crude forces. - -The man who admitted them said that Mr. Palairet was in the garden, and -stepping from opened windows at the back of the house, they found -themselves on the sunny spaces of the lawn with its encompassing trees -and its wandering border of flowers. - -Gavan was sitting with a book in the shade of the great yew-tree. In -summer flannels, a panama hat tilted over his eyes, he was very white, -very tenuous, very exquisite. And he was the center of it all, the -secret securely his, the magic all at his disposal. - -Seeing them he rose, dropping his book into his chair, strolling over -the miraculous green to meet them, showing no haste, no hesitation, no -surprise. - -"I've come on particular business," Grainger said, "and I'll stroll -about until you and Mr. Best are done with the hospital." - -Mr. Best, still with sadness in his manner, promised not to keep Mr. -Palairet long and they went inside. - -Grainger was left standing under the yew-tree. He took up Gavan's book, -while the sense of frustration, and of rebellion against it, rose in -him. The book was French and dealt with an obscure phase of Byzantine -history. Gavan's neat notes marked passages concerning some contemporary -religious phenomena. - -Grainger flung down the book, careless of crumpled leaves, and wandered -off abruptly, among the hedges and into the garden. It was a very -different garden from the old Scotch one where a sweet pensiveness -seemed always to hover and where romance whispered and beckoned. This -garden, steeped in sunlight, and where plums and pears on the hot rosy -walls shone like jewels among their crisp green leaves, was unshadowed, -unhaunted, smiling and decorous--the garden of placid wisdom and -Epicurean calm. Grainger, as he walked, felt at his heart a tug of -strange homesickness and yearning for that Northern garden, its dim -gray walls and its disheveled nooks and corners. Were they all done with -it forever? - -By the time he had returned to the lawn Gavan was just emerging from the -house. They met in the shadow of the yew. - -"I'm glad to see you, Grainger," Gavan said, with a smile that struck -Grainger as faded in quality. "This place is a sort of harbor for tired -workers, you know. You should have looked me up before, or are you never -tired enough for that?" - -"I don't feel the need of harbors, yet. One never sees you in London." - -"No, the lounging life down here suits me." - -"Your little parson doesn't see it in that light. He has been telling me -how you live up to your duties as neighbor and parishioner." - -"It doesn't require much effort. Nice little fellow, isn't he, Best? He -tells me that you walked up together." - -"We did," said Grainger, with his own inner sense of grim humor at the -memory. "I should think you would find him rather limited." - -"But I'm limited, too," said Gavan, mildly. "I like being with people so -neatly adapted to their functions. There are no loose ends about Best; -nothing unfulfilled or uncomfortable. He's all there--all that there is -of him to be there." - -"Not a very lively companion." - -"I'm not a lively companion, either," Gavan once more, with his mild -gaiety, retorted. - -Grainger at this gave a harsh laugh. "No, you certainly aren't," he -agreed. - -They had twice paced the length of the yew-tree shadow and Gavan had -asked no question; and Grainger felt, as the pause grew, that Gavan -never would ask questions. Any onus for a disturbance of the atmosphere -must rest entirely on himself, and to disturb it he would have to be -brutal. - -He jerked aside the veils of the placid dialogue with sudden violence. -"I've seen Eppie," he said. - -He had intended to use her formal name only, but the nearer word rushed -out and seemed to shatter the magic that held him off. - -Gavan's face grew a shade paler. "Have you?" he said. - -"You knew that she had been ill?" - -"I heard of it, recently, from General Carmichael. It was nothing -serious, I think." - -"It will be serious." Grainger stood still and gazed into his eyes. "Do -you want to kill her?" - -It struck him, when he had said it, and while Gavan received the words -and seemed to reflect on them, that however artificial his atmosphere -might be he would never evade any reality brought forcibly into it. He -contemplated this one and did not pretend not to understand. - -"I want Eppie to be happy," he said presently. - -"Happy, yes. So do I," broke from Grainger with a groan. - -They stood now near the great trunk of the yew-tree, and turning away, -striking the steel-gray bark monotonously with his fist, he went on: "I -love her, as you know. And she loves you. She told me--I made her tell -me. But any one with eyes could see it; even your gossiping little fool -of a parson here had heard of it--was relieved for your escape. But who -cares for the cackling? And you have crippled her, broken her. You have -tossed aside that woman whose little finger is worth more to the world -than your whole being. I wish to God she'd never seen you." - -"So do I," Gavan said. - -"I'd kill you with the greatest pleasure--if it could do her any good." - -There was relief for Grainger in getting out these fundamental things. - -"Yes,--I quite understand that. So would I," Gavan acquiesced,--"kill -myself, I mean,--if it would do her any good." - -"Don't try that. It wouldn't. She's beyond all help but one. So I am -here to put it to you." - -The still, hot day encompassed their shadow and with its quiet made more -intense Grainger's sense of his own passion--passion and its negation, -the stress between the two. Their words, though they spoke so quietly, -seemed to fill the world. - -"I am sorry," Gavan said; "I can do nothing." - -Grainger beat at the tree. - -"You love her." - -"Not as she must be loved. I only want her, when I am selfish. When I -think for her I have no want at all." - -"Give her your selfishness." - -"Ah, even that fades. That's what I found out. I can't count on my -selfishness. I've tried to do it. It didn't work." - -Grainger turned his bloodshot eyes upon him; these moments under the -yew-tree, that white figure with its pale smile, its comprehending -gravity confronting him, would count in his life, he knew, among its -most racking memories. - -"I consider you a madman," he now said. - -"Perhaps I am one. You don't think it for Eppie's happiness to marry a -madman?" - -"My God, I don't know what to think! I want to save her." - -"But so do I," Gavan's voice had its first note of eagerness. "_I_ want -to save her. And I want her to marry you. That's her chance, and -yours--and mine, though mine really doesn't count. That's what I hope -for." - -"There's no hope there." - -"Have patience. Wait. She will, perhaps, get over me." - -Grainger's eyes, with their hot, jaded look of baffled purpose, so -selfless that it transcended jealousy and hatred, were still on him, and -he thought now that he detected on the other's face the strain of some -inner tension. He wasn't so dead, then. He was suffering. No, more yet, -and the final insight came in another vague flash that darkly showed the -trouble at the heart of all the magic, the beauty, he, too, more really -than Eppie, perhaps, was dying for love. Madman, devoted madman that he -was, he was dying for love of the woman from whom he must always flee. -It was strange to feel one's sane, straightforward mind forced along -this labyrinth of dazed comprehension, turning in the cruelly knotted -paradox of this impossible love-story. Yet, against his very will, he -was so forced to follow and almost to understand. - -There wasn't much more to say. And he had his own paradoxical -satisfaction in the sight of the canker at the core of thought. So, at -all events, one wasn't safe even so. - -"She won't get over you," he said. "It isn't a mere love-affair. It's -her life. She may not die of it; that's a figure of speech that I had no -right, I suppose, to use. At all events, she'll try her best not to die. -But she won't get over you." - -"Not even if I get out of the way forever?" - -Gavan put the final proposition before him, but Grainger, staring at the -sunlight, shook his head. - -"The very fact that you're alive makes her hold the tighter. No, you -can't save her in that way. I wish you could." - - - - -X - - -Grainger had had his insight, but, outwardly, in the year that followed, -Gavan's life was one of peace, of achieved escape. - -The world soon ceased to pull at him, to plead or protest. With a kindly -shrug of the shoulders the larger life passed him by as one more proved -ineffectual. The little circle that clung about him, as the flotsam and -jetsam of a river drift from the hurrying current around the stability -and stillness of a green islet, was, in the main, composed of the -defeated or the indifferent. One or two cynical fighters moored their -boats, for a week-end, at his tranquil shores, and the powerful old -statesman who believed nothing, hoped nothing, felt very little, and -who, behind his show-life of patriotic and hard-working nobleman, smiled -patiently at the whole foolish comedy, was his most intimate companion. -To the world at large, Lord Taunton was the witty Tory, the devoted -churchman, the wise upholder of all the hard-won props of civilization; -to Gavan, he was the skeptical and pessimistic metaphysician; together -they watched the wheels go round. - -Mayburn came down once or twice to see his poor, queer, dear old -Palairet, and in London boasted much of the experience. "He's too, too -wonderful," he said. "He has achieved a most delicate, recondite -harmony. One never heard anything just like it before, and can't, for -the life of one, tell just what the notes are. Effort, constant effort, -amidst constant quiet and austerity. Work is his passion, and yet never -was any creature so passionless. He's like a rower, rowing easily, -indefatigably, down a long river, among lilies, while he looks up at the -sky." - -But Mayburn felt the quiet and austerity a little disturbing. He didn't, -after all, come to look at quiet and austerity unless some one were -there to hear him talk about them; and his host, all affability, never -seemed quite there. - -So a year, more than a year, went by. - -It was on an early spring morning that Gavan found on his -breakfast-table a letter written in a faltering hand,--a hand that -faltered with the weeping that shook it,--Miss Barbara's old, faint -hand. - -He read, at first, hardly comprehending. - -It was of Eppie she wrote: of her overwork--they thought it must be -that--in the winter, of the resultant fragility that had made her -succumb suddenly to an illness contracted in some hotbed of epidemic in -the slums. They had all thought that she would come through it. People -had been very kind. Eppie had so many, many friends. Every one loved -her. She had been moved to Lady Alicia's house in Grosvenor Street. She, -Aunt Barbara, had come up to town at once, and the general was with -her. - -It was with a fierce impatience that he went on through the phrases that -were like the slow trickling of tear after tear, as if he knew, yet -refused to know, the tragedy that the trivial tears flowed for, knew -what was coming, resented its insufferable delay, yet spurned its bare -possibility. At the end, and only then, it came. Her strength had -suddenly failed. There was no hope. Eppie was dying and had asked to see -him--at once. - -A bird, above the window open to the dew and sunlight, sang and whistled -while he read, a phrase, not joyous, not happy, yet strangely full of -triumph, of the innocent praise of life. Gavan, standing still, with the -letter in his hand, listened, while again and again, monotonously, -freshly, the bird repeated its song. - -He seemed at first to listen quietly, with pleasure, appreciative of -this heraldry of spring; then memory, blind, numbed from some dark -shock, stirred, stole out to meet it--the memory of Eppie's morning -voice on the hillside, the voice monotonous yet triumphant with its -sense of life; and at each reiteration, the phrase seemed a dagger -plunged into his heart. - -Oh, memory! Oh, cruel thought! Cruel life! - -After he had ordered the trap, and while waiting for it, he walked out -into the freshness and back and forth, over and over across the lawn, -with the patient, steady swiftness of an animal caged and knowing that -the bars are about it. So this was to be the end. But, though already he -acquiesced, it seemed in some way a strange, inapt ending. He couldn't -think of Eppie and death. He couldn't see her dead. He could only see -her looking at death. - - * * * * * - -The early train he caught got him to London by eleven, and in twenty -minutes he was in Grosvenor Street. He had wired from the country, and -Miss Barbara met him in the drawing-room of the house, hushed in its -springtime gaiety. She was the frail ghost of her shadowy old self, her -voice tremulous, her face blurred with tears and sleepless nights. Yet -he saw, under the woe, the essential listlessness of age, the placidity -beneath the half-mechanical tears. "Oh, Gavan," she said, taking his -hand and holding it in both her own--"Oh, Gavan, we couldn't have -thought of this, could we, that she would go first." And that his own -face showed some sharp fixity of woe he felt from its reflection on -hers--like a sword-flash reflected in a shallow pool. - -She told him that it was now an affair of hours only. "I would have sent -for you long ago, Gavan; I knew--I knew that you would want it. But she -wouldn't--not while there was hope. I think she was afraid of hurting -you. You know she had never been the same since--since--" - -"Since what?" he asked, knowing. - -"Since you went away. She was so ill then. Poor child! She never found -herself, you see, Gavan. She did not know what she wanted. She has worn -herself out in looking for it." - -Miss Barbara was very ignorant. He himself could not know, probably -Eppie herself didn't know, what had killed her, though she had so well -known what she wanted; but he suspected that Grainger had been right, -and that it was on him that Eppie's life had shattered itself. - -Her will, evidently, still ruled those about her, for when Miss Barbara -had led him up-stairs she said, pausing in the passage, that Eppie would -see him alone; the nurse would leave them. She had insisted on that, and -there was now no reason why she should not have her way. The nurse came -out to them, telling him that Miss Gifford waited; and, just before she -let him go, Miss Barbara drew his head down to hers and kissed him, -murmuring to him to be brave. He really didn't know whether he were more -the felon, or more the victim that she thought him. Then the door closed -behind him and he was alone with Eppie. - -Eppie was propped high on pillows, her hair twisted up from her brows -and neck and folded in heavy masses on her head. - -In the wide, white room, among her pillows, so white herself, and -strange with a curious thinness, he had never received a more prodigious -impression of life than in meeting her eyes, where all the forces of her -soul looked out. So motionless, she was like music, like all that moves, -that strives and is restless; so white, she was like skies at dawn, like -deep seas under sunlight. In the stillness, the whiteness, the emptiness -of the room she was illusion itself, life and beauty, a wonderful -rainbow thing staining "the white radiance of eternity." And as if, -before its final shattering, every color flamed, her whole being was -concentrated in the mere fact of its existence--its existence that -defied death. A deep, quiet excitement, almost a gaiety, breathed from -her. In the tangled rivers of her hair, the intertwined currents of dark -and gold winding in a lovely disorder,--in the white folds of lawn that -lay so delicately about her; in the emerald slipping far down her -finger, the emeralds in her ears, shaking faintly with her ebbing -heart-beats, there was even a sort of wilful and heroic coquetry. She -was, in her dying, triumphantly beautiful, yet, as always, through her -beauty went the strength of her reliance on deeper significances. - -She lay motionless as Gavan approached her, and he guessed that she -saved all her strength. Only as he took the chair beside her, horror at -his heart, the old familiar horror, she put out her hand to him. - -He took it silently, looking up, after a little while, from its -marvelous lightness and whiteness to her eyes, her smile. Then, at last, -she spoke to him. - -"So you think that you have got the better of me at last, don't you, -Gavan dear?" she said. Her voice was strange, as though familiar notes -were played on some far-away flute, sweet and melancholy among the -hills. The voice was strange and sad, but the words were not. In them -was a caress, as though she pitied his pity for her; but the old -antagonism, too, was there--a defiance, a willingness to be cruel to -him. "I did play fair, you see," she went on. "I wouldn't have you come -till there was no danger, for you, any more. And now this is the end of -it all, you think. You will soon be able to say of me, Gavan, - - "her words to Scorn - Are scattered, and her mouth is stopt with Dust!" - -His hand shut involuntarily, painfully, on hers, and as though his -breath cut him, he said, "Don't--don't, Eppie." - -But with her gaiety she insisted: "Oh, but let us have the truth. You -must think it. What else could you think?" and, again with the note of -pity that would atone for the cruel lightness, "Poor Gavan! My poor, -darling Gavan! And I must leave you with your thoughts--your empty -thoughts, alone." - -He had taken a long breath over the physical pang her words had -inflicted, and now he looked down at her hand, gently, one after the -other, as though unseeingly, smoothing her fingers. - -"While I go on," she said. - -"Yes, dear," he assented. - -"You humor me with that. You are so glad, for me, that I go with all my -illusions about me. Aren't you afraid that, because of them, I'll be -caught in the mill again and ground round and round in incarnations -until, only after such a long time, I come out all clean and white and -selfless, not a scrap of dangerous life about me--Alone with the Alone." - -He felt now the fever in her clearness, the hovering on the border of -hallucination. The colors flamed indeed, and her thoughts seemed to -shoot up in strange flickerings, a medley of inconsequent memories and -fancies strung on their chain of unnatural lucidity. - -He answered with patient gentleness, "I'm not afraid for you, Eppie. I -don't think all that." - -"Nor I for myself," she retorted. "I love the mill and its grindings. -But what you think,--I know perfectly what you think. You can't keep it -from me, Gavan. You can't keep anything from me. And I found something -that said it all. I can remember it. Shall I say it to you?" - -He bowed his head, smoothing her hand, not looking up at her while, in -that voice of defiance, of fever, yet of such melancholy and echoing -sweetness, she repeated: - - "Ne suis-je pas un faux accord - Dans la divine symphonie, - Grace a la vorace Ironie - Qui me secoue et qui me mord? - - "Elle est dans ma voix, la criarde! - C'est tout mon sang, ce poison noir! - Je suis le sinistre miroir - Ou la megere se regarde! - - "Je suis la plaie et le couteau! - Je suis le soufflet et la joue! - Je suis les membres et la roue, - Et le victime et le bourreau!" - -She paused after it, smiling intently upon him, and he met the smile to -say: - -"That's only one side of it, dear." - -"Ah, it's a side I know about, too! Didn't I see it, feel it? Haven't I -been all through it--with you, for you, because of you? Ah, when you -left me--when you left me, Gavan--" - -Still she smiled, with brilliant eyes, repeating, - - "Qui me secoue et qui me mord." - -He was silent, sitting with his pallid, drooping head; and suddenly she -put her other hand on his, on the hand that gently, mechanically, -smoothed her fingers. - -"You caress me, you try to comfort me,--while I am tormenting you. It's -strange that I should want to torment you. Is it that I'm so afraid you -sha'n't feel? I want you to feel. I want you to suffer. It is so -horrible to leave you. It is so horrible to be afraid--sometimes -afraid--that I shall never, never see you again. When you feel, when you -suffer, I am not so lonely. But you feel nothing, do you?" - -He did not answer her. - -"Will you ever miss me, Gavan?" - -He did not answer. - -"Won't you even remember me?" she asked. - -And still he did not answer, sitting with downcast eyes. And she saw -that he could not, and in his silence, of a dumb torture, was his reply. -He looked the stricken saint, pierced through with arrows. And which of -them was the victim, which the executioner? - -With her question a clearness, quieter, deeper, came to her, as though -in the recoil of its engulfing anguish she pushed her way from among -vibrating discords to a sudden harmony that, in holy peace, resolved -them all in unison. Her eyelids fluttered down while, for an instant, -she listened. Yes, under it all, above it all, holding them all about, -there it was. She seemed to see the pain mounting, circling, flowing -from its knotted root into strength and splendor. But though he was with -her in it he was also far away,--he was blind, and deaf,--held fast by -cruel bonds. - -"Look at me," she commanded him gently. - -And now, reluctantly, he looked up into her eyes. - -They held him, they drew him, they flooded him. With the keenness of -life they cut into his heart, and like the surging up of blood his love -answered hers. As helpless as he had ever been before her, he laid his -head on her breast, his arms encircling her, while, with closed eyes, he -said: "Don't think that I don't feel. Don't think that I don't suffer. -It's only that;--I have only to see you;--something grasps me, and -tortures me--" - -"Something," she said, her voice like the far flute echo of the voice -that had spoken on that night in the old Scotch garden, "that brings you -to life--to God." - -"Oh, Eppie, what can I say to you?" he murmured. - -"You can say nothing. But you will have to wake. It will have to -come,--the sorrow, the joy of reality,--God--and me." - -It was his face, with closed eyes, with its stricken, ashen agony, that -seemed the dying face. Hers, turned gently toward him, had all the -beneficence, the radiance of life. But when she spoke again there was in -her voice a tranced stillness as though already it spoke from another -world. - -"You love me, Gavan." - -"I love you. You have that. That is yours, forever. I long for you, -always, always,--even when I think that I am at peace. You are in -everything: I hear a bird, and I think of your voice; I see a flower, -or the sky, and it's of your face I think. I am yours, Eppie--yours -forever." - -"You make me happy," she said. - -"Eppie, my darling Eppie, die now, die in my arms, dearest--in your -happiness." - -"No, not yet; I can't go yet--though I wish it, too," she said. "There -are still horrid bits--dreadful dark places--like the dreadful poem--the -poem of you, Gavan--where I lose myself; burning places, edges of pain, -where I fight to find myself again; long, dim places where I -dream--dream--. I won't have you see me like that; you might think that -you watched the scattering of the real me. I won't have you remember me -all dim and broken." - -Her voice was sinking from her into an abyss of languor, and she felt -the swirl of phantom thoughts blurring her mind even while she spoke. - -As on that far-away night when he held her hand and they stood together -under the stars, she said, speaking now her prayer, "O God! God!"; and -seeming in the effort of her will to lift a weight that softly, -inexorably, like the lid of a tomb, pressed down upon her, "I am here," -she said. "You are mine. I will not be afraid. Remember me. So good-by, -Gavan." - -"I will remember," he said. - -His arms still held her. And through his mind an army seemed to rush, -galloping, with banners, with cries of lamentations, agony, regret, -passionate rebellion. It crashed in conflict, blood beneath it, and -above it tempests and torn banners. And the banners were desperate -hopes riddled with bullets; and the blood was love poured out and the -tempest was his heart. It was, he thought, even while he saw, listened, -felt, the last onslaught upon his soul. She was going--the shadow of -life was sliding from her--and from him, for she was life and its terror -and beauty. Above the turmoil was the fated peace. He had won it, -unwillingly. He could not be kept from it even by the memory that would -stay. - -But though he knew, and, in knowing, saw his contemplative soul far from -this scene of suffocating misery, Eppie, his dear, his beautiful, was in -his arms, her eyes, her lips, her heart. He would never see her again. - -He raised his head to look his last, and, like a faint yet piercing -perfume, her soul's smile still dwelt on him as she lay there -speechless. For the moment--and was not the moment eternity?--the -triumph was all hers. The moment, when long, long past, would still be -part of him and her triumph in it eternal. To spare her the sight of his -anguish would be to rob her. Anguish had been and was the only offering -he could make her. He felt--felt unendurably, she would see that; he -suffered, he loved her, unspeakably; she had that, too, while, in their -last long silence, he held her hands against his heart. And her eyes, -still smiling on him with their transcendent faith, showed that her -triumph was shadowless. - - * * * * * - -He heard next day that she had died during the night. - -Peace did not come to him for long; the wounds of the warring interlude -of life had been too deep. He forgot himself at last in the treadmill -quiet of days all serene laboriousness, knowing that it could not be for -many years that he should watch the drama. She had shattered herself on -him; but he, too, had felt that in himself something had broken. And he -forgot the wounds, except when some sight or sound, the song of a bird -in Spring, a spray of heather, a sky of stars, startled them to deep -throbbing. And then a hand, stretched out from the past, would seize -him, a shudder, a pang, would shake him, and he would know that he was -alone and that he remembered. - - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Shadow of Life, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHADOW OF LIFE *** - -***** This file should be named 42965.txt or 42965.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/9/6/42965/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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