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diff --git a/9190.txt b/9190.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dbd90dc --- /dev/null +++ b/9190.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6546 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Greater Inclination, by Edith Wharton + +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 + + +Title: The Greater Inclination + +Author: Edith Wharton + + +Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9190] +This file was first posted on September 13, 2003 +Last Updated: April 14, 2013 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREATER INCLINATION *** + + + + +Produced by Anne Soulard, Tiffany Vergon and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + +THE GREATER INCLINATION + + +By Edith Wharton + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + + +THE GREATER INCLINATION + + +I _The Muse's Tragedy_. + +II _A Journey_. + +III _The Pelican_. + +IV _Souls Belated_. + +V _A Coward_. + +VI _The Twilight of the God_. + +VII _A Cup of Cold Water_. + +VIII _The Portrait_. + + + + +THE GREATER INCLINATION + + + + +THE MUSE'S TRAGEDY + + +Danyers afterwards liked to fancy that he had recognized Mrs. Anerton at +once; but that, of course, was absurd, since he had seen no portrait of +her--she affected a strict anonymity, refusing even her photograph +to the most privileged--and from Mrs. Memorall, whom he revered and +cultivated as her friend, he had extracted but the one impressionist +phrase: "Oh, well, she's like one of those old prints where the lines +have the value of color." + +He was almost certain, at all events, that he had been thinking of Mrs. +Anerton as he sat over his breakfast in the empty hotel restaurant, and +that, looking up on the approach of the lady who seated herself at the +table near the window, he had said to himself, "_That might be she_." + +Ever since his Harvard days--he was still young enough to think of them +as immensely remote--Danyers had dreamed of Mrs. Anerton, the Silvia +of Vincent Rendle's immortal sonnet-cycle, the Mrs. A. of the _Life and +Letters_. Her name was enshrined in some of the noblest English verse of +the nineteenth century--and of all past or future centuries, as Danyers, +from the stand-point of a maturer judgment, still believed. The first +reading of certain poems--of the _Antinous_, the _Pia Tolomei_, the +_Sonnets to Silvia_,--had been epochs in Danyers's growth, and the verse +seemed to gain in mellowness, in amplitude, in meaning as one brought +to its interpretation more experience of life, a finer emotional sense. +Where, in his boyhood, he had felt only the perfect, the almost austere +beauty of form, the subtle interplay of vowel-sounds, the rush +and fulness of lyric emotion, he now thrilled to the close-packed +significance of each line, the allusiveness of each word--his +imagination lured hither and thither on fresh trails of thought, and +perpetually spurred by the sense that, beyond what he had already +discovered, more marvellous regions lay waiting to be explored. Danyers +had written, at college, the prize essay on Rendle's poetry (it chanced +to be the moment of the great man's death); he had fashioned the +fugitive verse of his own storm-and-stress period on the forms which +Rendle had first given to English metre; and when two years later +the _Life and Letters_ appeared, and the Silvia of the sonnets took +substance as Mrs. A., he had included in his worship of Rendle the woman +who had inspired not only such divine verse but such playful, tender, +incomparable prose. + +Danyers never forgot the day when Mrs. Memorall happened to mention that +she knew Mrs. Anerton. He had known Mrs. Memorall for a year or more, +and had somewhat contemptuously classified her as the kind of woman who +runs cheap excursions to celebrities; when one afternoon she remarked, +as she put a second lump of sugar in his tea: + +"Is it right this time? You're almost as particular as Mary Anerton." + +"Mary Anerton?" + +"Yes, I never _can_ remember how she likes her tea. Either it's lemon +_with_ sugar, or lemon without sugar, or cream without either, and +whichever it is must be put into the cup before the tea is poured in; +and if one hasn't remembered, one must begin all over again. I suppose +it was Vincent Rendle's way of taking his tea and has become a sacred +rite." + +"Do you _know_ Mrs. Anerton?" cried Danyers, disturbed by this careless +familiarity with the habits of his divinity. + +"'And did I once see Shelley plain?' Mercy, yes! She and I were at +school together--she's an American, you know. We were at a _pension_ +near Tours for nearly a year; then she went back to New York, and I +didn't see her again till after her marriage. She and Anerton spent a +winter in Rome while my husband was attached to our Legation there, +and she used to be with us a great deal." Mrs. Memorall smiled +reminiscently. "It was _the_ winter." + +"The winter they first met?" + +"Precisely--but unluckily I left Rome just before the meeting took +place. Wasn't it too bad? I might have been in the _Life and Letters_. +You know he mentions that stupid Madame Vodki, at whose house he first +saw her." + +"And did you see much of her after that?" + +"Not during Rendle's life. You know she has lived in Europe almost +entirely, and though I used to see her off and on when I went abroad, +she was always so engrossed, so preoccupied, that one felt one wasn't +wanted. The fact is, she cared only about his friends--she separated +herself gradually from all her own people. Now, of course, it's +different; she's desperately lonely; she's taken to writing to me now +and then; and last year, when she heard I was going abroad, she asked me +to meet her in Venice, and I spent a week with her there." + +"And Rendle?" + +Mrs. Memorall smiled and shook her head. "Oh, I never was allowed a +peep at _him_; none of her old friends met him, except by accident. +Ill-natured people say that was the reason she kept him so long. If one +happened in while he was there, he was hustled into Anerton's study, +and the husband mounted guard till the inopportune visitor had departed. +Anerton, you know, was really much more ridiculous about it than his +wife. Mary was too clever to lose her head, or at least to show she'd +lost it--but Anerton couldn't conceal his pride in the conquest. I've +seen Mary shiver when he spoke of Rendle as _our poet_. Rendle always +had to have a certain seat at the dinner-table, away from the draught +and not too near the fire, and a box of cigars that no one else +was allowed to touch, and a writing-table of his own in Mary's +sitting-room--and Anerton was always telling one of the great man's +idiosyncrasies: how he never would cut the ends of his cigars, though +Anerton himself had given him a gold cutter set with a star-sapphire, +and how untidy his writing-table was, and how the house-maid had orders +always to bring the waste-paper basket to her mistress before emptying +it, lest some immortal verse should be thrown into the dust-bin." + +"The Anertons never separated, did they?" + +"Separated? Bless you, no. He never would have left Rendle! And besides, +he was very fond of his wife." + +"And she?" + +"Oh, she saw he was the kind of man who was fated to make himself +ridiculous, and she never interfered with his natural tendencies." + +From Mrs. Memorall, Danyers further learned that Mrs. Anerton, whose +husband had died some years before her poet, now divided her life +between Rome, where she had a small apartment, and England, where +she occasionally went to stay with those of her friends who had been +Rendle's. She had been engaged, for some time after his death, in +editing some juvenilia which he had bequeathed to her care; but that +task being accomplished, she had been left without definite occupation, +and Mrs. Memorall, on the occasion of their last meeting, had found her +listless and out of spirits. + +"She misses him too much--her life is too empty. I told her so--I told +her she ought to marry." + +"Oh!" + +"Why not, pray? She's a young woman still--what many people would call +young," Mrs. Memorall interjected, with a parenthetic glance at the +mirror. "Why not accept the inevitable and begin over again? All the +King's horses and all the King's men won't bring Rendle to life-and +besides, she didn't marry _him_ when she had the chance." + +Danyers winced slightly at this rude fingering of his idol. Was it +possible that Mrs. Memorall did not see what an anti-climax such a +marriage would have been? Fancy Rendle "making an honest woman" of +Silvia; for so society would have viewed it! How such a reparation +would have vulgarized their past--it would have been like "restoring" +a masterpiece; and how exquisite must have been the perceptions of the +woman who, in defiance of appearances, and perhaps of her own secret +inclination, chose to go down to posterity as Silvia rather than as Mrs. +Vincent Rendle! + +Mrs. Memorall, from this day forth, acquired an interest in Danyers's +eyes. She was like a volume of unindexed and discursive memoirs, through +which he patiently plodded in the hope of finding embedded amid layers +of dusty twaddle some precious allusion to the subject of his thought. +When, some months later, he brought out his first slim volume, in which +the remodelled college essay on Rendle figured among a dozen, somewhat +overstudied "appreciations," he offered a copy to Mrs. Memorall; who +surprised him, the next time they met, with the announcement that she +had sent the book to Mrs. Anerton. + +Mrs. Anerton in due time wrote to thank her friend. Danyers was +privileged to read the few lines in which, in terms that suggested the +habit of "acknowledging" similar tributes, she spoke of the author's +"feeling and insight," and was "so glad of the opportunity," etc. +He went away disappointed, without clearly knowing what else he had +expected. + +The following spring, when he went abroad, Mrs. Memorall offered him +letters to everybody, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Louise +Michel. She did not include Mrs. Anerton, however, and Danyers knew, +from a previous conversation, that Silvia objected to people who +"brought letters." He knew also that she travelled during the summer, +and was unlikely to return to Rome before the term of his holiday should +be reached, and the hope of meeting her was not included among his +anticipations. + +The lady whose entrance broke upon his solitary repast in the restaurant +of the Hotel Villa d'Este had seated herself in such a way that her +profile was detached against the window; and thus viewed, her domed +forehead, small arched nose, and fastidious lip suggested a silhouette +of Marie Antoinette. In the lady's dress and movements--in the very turn +of her wrist as she poured out her coffee--Danyers thought he detected +the same fastidiousness, the same air of tacitly excluding the obvious +and unexceptional. Here was a woman who had been much bored and keenly +interested. The waiter brought her a _Secolo,_ and as she bent above it +Danyers noticed that the hair rolled back from her forehead was +turning gray; but her figure was straight and slender, and she had the +invaluable gift of a girlish back. + +The rush of Anglo-Saxon travel had not set toward the lakes, and with +the exception of an Italian family or two, and a hump-backed youth with +an _abbe_, Danyers and the lady had the marble halls of the Villa d'Este +to themselves. + +When he returned from his morning ramble among the hills he saw her +sitting at one of the little tables at the edge of the lake. She was +writing, and a heap of books and newspapers lay on the table at her +side. That evening they met again in the garden. He had strolled out to +smoke a last cigarette before dinner, and under the black vaulting of +ilexes, near the steps leading down to the boat-landing, he found her +leaning on the parapet above the lake. At the sound of his approach she +turned and looked at him. She had thrown a black lace scarf over her +head, and in this sombre setting her face seemed thin and unhappy. He +remembered afterwards that her eyes, as they met his, expressed not so +much sorrow as profound discontent. + +To his surprise she stepped toward him with a detaining gesture. + +"Mr. Lewis Danyers, I believe?" + +He bowed. + +"I am Mrs. Anerton. I saw your name on the visitors' list and wished to +thank you for an essay on Mr. Rendle's poetry--or rather to tell you +how much I appreciated it. The book was sent to me last winter by Mrs. +Memorall." + +She spoke in even melancholy tones, as though the habit of perfunctory +utterance had robbed her voice of more spontaneous accents; but her +smile was charming. They sat down on a stone bench under the ilexes, and +she told him how much pleasure his essay had given her. She thought it +the best in the book--she was sure he had put more of himself into it +than into any other; was she not right in conjecturing that he had been +very deeply influenced by Mr. Rendle's poetry? _Pour comprendre il faut +aimer_, and it seemed to her that, in some ways, he had penetrated the +poet's inner meaning more completely than any other critic. There were +certain problems, of course, that he had left untouched; certain aspects +of that many-sided mind that he had perhaps failed to seize-- + +"But then you are young," she concluded gently, "and one could not wish +you, as yet, the experience that a fuller understanding would imply." + + +II + +She stayed a month at Villa d'Este, and Danyers was with her daily. She +showed an unaffected pleasure in his society; a pleasure so obviously +founded on their common veneration of Rendle, that the young man could +enjoy it without fear of fatuity. At first he was merely one more grain +of frankincense on the altar of her insatiable divinity; but gradually a +more personal note crept into their intercourse. If she still liked +him only because he appreciated Rendle, she at least perceptibly +distinguished him from the herd of Rendle's appreciators. + +Her attitude toward the great man's memory struck Danyers as perfect. +She neither proclaimed nor disavowed her identity. She was frankly +Silvia to those who knew and cared; but there was no trace of the Egeria +in her pose. She spoke often of Rendle's books, but seldom of himself; +there was no posthumous conjugality, no use of the possessive tense, in +her abounding reminiscences. Of the master's intellectual life, of his +habits of thought and work, she never wearied of talking. She knew +the history of each poem; by what scene or episode each image had been +evoked; how many times the words in a certain line had been transposed; +how long a certain adjective had been sought, and what had at last +suggested it; she could even explain that one impenetrable line, the +torment of critics, the joy of detractors, the last line of _The Old +Odysseus_. + +Danyers felt that in talking of these things she was no mere echo of +Rendle's thought. If her identity had appeared to be merged in his it +was because they thought alike, not because he had thought for her. +Posterity is apt to regard the women whom poets have sung as chance pegs +on which they hung their garlands; but Mrs. Anerton's mind was like +some fertile garden wherein, inevitably, Rendle's imagination had +rooted itself and flowered. Danyers began to see how many threads of +his complex mental tissue the poet had owed to the blending of her +temperament with his; in a certain sense Silvia had herself created the +_Sonnets to Silvia_. + +To be the custodian of Rendle's inner self, the door, as it were, to the +sanctuary, had at first seemed to Danyers so comprehensive a privilege +that he had the sense, as his friendship with Mrs. Anerton advanced, of +forcing his way into a life already crowded. What room was there, +among such towering memories, for so small an actuality as his? Quite +suddenly, after this, he discovered that Mrs. Memorall knew better: his +fortunate friend was bored as well as lonely. + +"You have had more than any other woman!" he had exclaimed to her one +day; and her smile flashed a derisive light on his blunder. Fool that +he was, not to have seen that she had not had enough! That she was young +still--do years count?--tender, human, a woman; that the living have +need of the living. + +After that, when they climbed the alleys of the hanging park, resting +in one of the little ruined temples, or watching, through a ripple of +foliage, the remote blue flash of the lake, they did not always talk of +Rendle or of literature. She encouraged Danyers to speak of himself; to +confide his ambitions to her; she asked him the questions which are the +wise woman's substitute for advice. + +"You must write," she said, administering the most exquisite flattery +that human lips could give. + +Of course he meant to write--why not to do something great in his turn? +His best, at least; with the resolve, at the outset, that his best +should be _the_ best. Nothing less seemed possible with that mandate in +his ears. How she had divined him; lifted and disentangled his groping +ambitions; laid the awakening touch on his spirit with her creative _Let +there be light!_ + +It was his last day with her, and he was feeling very hopeless and +happy. + +"You ought to write a book about _him,"_ she went on gently. + +Danyers started; he was beginning to dislike Rendle's way of walking in +unannounced. + +"You ought to do it," she insisted. "A complete interpretation--a +summing-up of his style, his purpose, his theory of life and art. No one +else could do it as well." + +He sat looking at her perplexedly. Suddenly--dared he guess? + +"I couldn't do it without you," he faltered. + +"I could help you--I would help you, of course." + +They sat silent, both looking at the lake. + +It was agreed, when they parted, that he should rejoin her six weeks +later in Venice. There they were to talk about the book. + + +III + +_Lago d'Iseo, August 14th_. + +When I said good-by to you yesterday I promised to come back to Venice +in a week: I was to give you your answer then. I was not honest in +saying that; I didn't mean to go back to Venice or to see you again. +I was running away from you--and I mean to keep on running! If _you_ +won't, _I_ must. Somebody must save you from marrying a disappointed +woman of--well, you say years don't count, and why should they, after +all, since you are not to marry me? + +That is what I dare not go back to say. _You are not to marry me_. We +have had our month together in Venice (such a good month, was it not?) +and now you are to go home and write a book--any book but the one +we--didn't talk of!--and I am to stay here, attitudinizing among my +memories like a sort of female Tithonus. The dreariness of this enforced +immortality! + +But you shall know the truth. I care for you, or at least for your love, +enough to owe you that. + +You thought it was because Vincent Rendle had loved me that there was +so little hope for you. I had had what I wanted to the full; wasn't that +what you said? It is just when a man begins to think he understands +a woman that he may be sure he doesn't! It is because Vincent Rendle +_didn't love me_ that there is no hope for you. I never had what I +wanted, and never, never, never will I stoop to wanting anything else. + +Do you begin to understand? It was all a sham then, you say? No, it was +all real as far as it went. You are young--you haven't learned, as you +will later, the thousand imperceptible signs by which one gropes one's +way through the labyrinth of human nature; but didn't it strike you, +sometimes, that I never told you any foolish little anecdotes about +him? His trick, for instance, of twirling a paper-knife round and round +between his thumb and forefinger while he talked; his mania for saving +the backs of notes; his greediness for wild strawberries, the little +pungent Alpine ones; his childish delight in acrobats and jugglers; his +way of always calling me _you--dear you_, every letter began--I never +told you a word of all that, did I? Do you suppose I could have helped +telling you, if he had loved me? These little things would have been +mine, then, a part of my life--of our life--they would have slipped out +in spite of me (it's only your unhappy woman who is always reticent +and dignified). But there never was any "our life;" it was always "our +lives" to the end.... + +If you knew what a relief it is to tell some one at last, you would bear +with me, you would let me hurt you! I shall never be quite so lonely +again, now that some one knows. + +Let me begin at the beginning. When I first met Vincent Rendle I was not +twenty-five. That was twenty years ago. From that time until his death, +five years ago, we were fast friends. He gave me fifteen years, perhaps +the best fifteen years, of his life. The world, as you know, thinks that +his greatest poems were written during those years; I am supposed +to have "inspired" them, and in a sense I did. From the first, the +intellectual sympathy between us was almost complete; my mind must have +been to him (I fancy) like some perfectly tuned instrument on which he +was never tired of playing. Some one told me of his once saying of me +that I "always understood;" it is the only praise I ever heard of his +giving me. I don't even know if he thought me pretty, though I hardly +think my appearance could have been disagreeable to him, for he hated to +be with ugly people. At all events he fell into the way of spending more +and more of his time with me. He liked our house; our ways suited +him. He was nervous, irritable; people bored him and yet he disliked +solitude. He took sanctuary with us. When we travelled he went with +us; in the winter he took rooms near us in Rome. In England or on the +continent he was always with us for a good part of the year. In small +ways I was able to help him in his work; he grew dependent on me. When +we were apart he wrote to me continually--he liked to have me share in +all he was doing or thinking; he was impatient for my criticism of every +new book that interested him; I was a part of his intellectual life. The +pity of it was that I wanted to be something more. I was a young woman +and I was in love with him--not because he was Vincent Rendle, but just +because he was himself! + +People began to talk, of course--I was Vincent Rendle's Mrs. Anerton; +when the _Sonnets to Silvia_ appeared, it was whispered that I was +Silvia. Wherever he went, I was invited; people made up to me in the +hope of getting to know him; when I was in London my doorbell never +stopped ringing. Elderly peeresses, aspiring hostesses, love-sick girls +and struggling authors overwhelmed me with their assiduities. I hugged +my success, for I knew what it meant--they thought that Rendle was in +love with me! Do you know, at times, they almost made me think so too? +Oh, there was no phase of folly I didn't go through. You can't imagine +the excuses a woman will invent for a man's not telling her that he +loves her--pitiable arguments that she would see through at a glance if +any other woman used them! But all the while, deep down, I knew he had +never cared. I should have known it if he had made love to me every day +of his life. I could never guess whether he knew what people said about +us--he listened so little to what people said; and cared still less, +when he heard. He was always quite honest and straightforward with me; +he treated me as one man treats another; and yet at times I felt he +_must_ see that with me it was different. If he did see, he made no +sign. Perhaps he never noticed--I am sure he never meant to be cruel. He +had never made love to me; it was no fault of his if I wanted more than +he could give me. The _Sonnets to Silvia_, you say? But what are they? A +cosmic philosophy, not a love-poem; addressed to Woman, not to a woman! + +But then, the letters? Ah, the letters! Well, I'll make a clean breast +of it. You have noticed the breaks in the letters here and there, +just as they seem to be on the point of growing a little--warmer? +The critics, you may remember, praised the editor for his commendable +delicacy and good taste (so rare in these days!) in omitting from the +correspondence all personal allusions, all those _details intimes_ which +should be kept sacred from the public gaze. They referred, of course, to +the asterisks in the letters to Mrs. A. Those letters I myself prepared +for publication; that is to say, I copied them out for the editor, and +every now and then I put in a line of asterisks to make it appear +that something had been left out. You understand? The asterisks were a +sham--_there was nothing to leave out_. + +No one but a woman could understand what I went through during those +years--the moments of revolt, when I felt I must break away from it +all, fling the truth in his face and never see him again; the inevitable +reaction, when not to see him seemed the one unendurable thing, and I +trembled lest a look or word of mine should disturb the poise of our +friendship; the silly days when I hugged the delusion that he _must_ +love me, since everybody thought he did; the long periods of numbness, +when I didn't seem to care whether he loved me or not. Between these +wretched days came others when our intellectual accord was so perfect +that I forgot everything else in the joy of feeling myself lifted up +on the wings of his thought. Sometimes, then, the heavens seemed to be +opened.... + + * * * * * + +All this time he was so dear a friend! He had the genius of friendship, +and he spent it all on me. Yes, you were right when you said that I have +had more than any other woman. _Il faut de l'adresse pour aimer_, Pascal +says; and I was so quiet, so cheerful, so frankly affectionate with him, +that in all those years I am almost sure I never bored him. Could I have +hoped as much if he had loved me? + +You mustn't think of him, though, as having been tied to my skirts. He +came and went as he pleased, and so did his fancies. There was a girl +once (I am telling you everything), a lovely being who called his +poetry "deep" and gave him _Lucile_ on his birthday. He followed her to +Switzerland one summer, and all the time that he was dangling after her +(a little too conspicuously, I always thought, for a Great Man), he was +writing to _me_ about his theory of vowel-combinations--or was it his +experiments in English hexameter? The letters were dated from the very +places where I knew they went and sat by waterfalls together and he +thought out adjectives for her hair. He talked to me about it quite +frankly afterwards. She was perfectly beautiful and it had been a pure +delight to watch her; but she _would_ talk, and her mind, he said, was +"all elbows." And yet, the next year, when her marriage was announced, +he went away alone, quite suddenly ... and it was just afterwards that +he published _Love's Viaticum_. Men are queer! + +After my husband died--I am putting things crudely, you see--I had a +return of hope. It was because he loved me, I argued, that he had +never spoken; because he had always hoped some day to make me his wife; +because he wanted to spare me the "reproach." Rubbish! I knew well +enough, in my heart of hearts, that my one chance lay in the force of +habit. He had grown used to me; he was no longer young; he dreaded new +people and new ways; _il avait pris son pli_. Would it not be easier to +marry me? + +I don't believe he ever thought of it. He wrote me what people call "a +beautiful letter;" he was kind; considerate, decently commiserating; +then, after a few weeks, he slipped into his old way of coming in every +afternoon, and our interminable talks began again just where they had +left off. I heard later that people thought I had shown "such good +taste" in not marrying him. + +So we jogged on for five years longer. Perhaps they were the best years, +for I had given up hoping. Then he died. + +After his death--this is curious--there came to me a kind of mirage of +love. All the books and articles written about him, all the reviews of +the "Life," were full of discreet allusions to Silvia. I became again +the Mrs. Anerton of the glorious days. Sentimental girls and dear lads +like you turned pink when somebody whispered, "that was Silvia you were +talking to." Idiots begged for my autograph--publishers urged me to +write my reminiscences of him--critics consulted me about the reading +of doubtful lines. And I knew that, to all these people, I was the woman +Vincent Rendle had loved. + +After a while that fire went out too and I was left alone with my +past. Alone--quite alone; for he had never really been with me. The +intellectual union counted for nothing now. It had been soul to soul, +but never hand in hand, and there were no little things to remember him +by. + +Then there set in a kind of Arctic winter. I crawled into myself as into +a snow-hut. I hated my solitude and yet dreaded any one who disturbed +it. That phase, of course, passed like the others. I took up life again, +and began to read the papers and consider the cut of my gowns. But there +was one question that I could not be rid of, that haunted me night and +day. Why had he never loved me? Why had I been so much to him, and no +more? Was I so ugly, so essentially unlovable, that though a man might +cherish me as his mind's comrade, he could not care for me as a woman? I +can't tell you how that question tortured me. It became an obsession. + +My poor friend, do you begin to see? I had to find out what some other +man thought of me. Don't be too hard on me! Listen first--consider. When +I first met Vincent Rendle I was a young woman, who had married early +and led the quietest kind of life; I had had no "experiences." From the +hour of our first meeting to the day of his death I never looked at any +other man, and never noticed whether any other man looked at me. When +he died, five years ago, I knew the extent of my powers no more than a +baby. Was it too late to find out? Should I never know _why?_ + +Forgive me--forgive me. You are so young; it will be an episode, a mere +"document," to you so soon! And, besides, it wasn't as deliberate, as +cold-blooded as these disjointed lines have made it appear. I didn't +plan it, like a woman in a book. Life is so much more complex than any +rendering of it can be. I liked you from the first--I was drawn to you +(you must have seen that)--I wanted you to like me; it was not a mere +psychological experiment. And yet in a sense it was that, too--I must +be honest. I had to have an answer to that question; it was a ghost that +had to be laid. + +At first I was afraid--oh, so much afraid--that you cared for me only +because I was Silvia, that you loved me because you thought Rendle had +loved me. I began to think there was no escaping my destiny. + +How happy I was when I discovered that you were growing jealous of my +past; that you actually hated Rendle! My heart beat like a girl's when +you told me you meant to follow me to Venice. + +After our parting at Villa d'Este my old doubts reasserted themselves. +What did I know of your feeling for me, after all? Were you capable of +analyzing it yourself? Was it not likely to be two-thirds vanity and +curiosity, and one-third literary sentimentality? You might easily +fancy that you cared for Mary Anerton when you were really in love with +Silvia--the heart is such a hypocrite! Or you might be more calculating +than I had supposed. Perhaps it was you who had been flattering _my_ +vanity in the hope (the pardonable hope!) of turning me, after a decent +interval, into a pretty little essay with a margin. + +When you arrived in Venice and we met again--do you remember the music +on the lagoon, that evening, from my balcony?--I was so afraid you +would begin to talk about the book--the book, you remember, was your +ostensible reason for coming. You never spoke of it, and I soon saw your +one fear was _I_ might do so--might remind you of your object in being +with me. Then I knew you cared for me! yes, at that moment really cared! +We never mentioned the book once, did we, during that month in Venice? + +I have read my letter over; and now I wish that I had said this to you +instead of writing it. I could have felt my way then, watching your face +and seeing if you understood. But, no, I could not go back to Venice; +and I could not tell you (though I tried) while we were there together. +I couldn't spoil that month--my one month. It was so good, for once in +my life, to get away from literature.... + +You will be angry with me at first--but, alas! not for long. What I have +done would have been cruel if I had been a younger woman; as it is, the +experiment will hurt no one but myself. And it will hurt me horribly +(as much as, in your first anger, you may perhaps wish), because it has +shown me, for the first time, all that I have missed.... + + + + +A JOURNEY + + +As she lay in her berth, staring at the shadows overhead, the rush of +the wheels was in her brain, driving her deeper and deeper into circles +of wakeful lucidity. The sleeping-car had sunk into its night-silence. +Through the wet window-pane she watched the sudden lights, the long +stretches of hurrying blackness. Now and then she turned her head and +looked through the opening in the hangings at her husband's curtains +across the aisle.... + +She wondered restlessly if he wanted anything and if she could hear him +if he called. His voice had grown very weak within the last months +and it irritated him when she did not hear. This irritability, this +increasing childish petulance seemed to give expression to their +imperceptible estrangement. Like two faces looking at one another +through a sheet of glass they were close together, almost touching, but +they could not hear or feel each other: the conductivity between them +was broken. She, at least, had this sense of separation, and she +fancied sometimes that she saw it reflected in the look with which he +supplemented his failing words. Doubtless the fault was hers. She was +too impenetrably healthy to be touched by the irrelevancies of disease. +Her self-reproachful tenderness was tinged with the sense of his +irrationality: she had a vague feeling that there was a purpose in +his helpless tyrannies. The suddenness of the change had found her so +unprepared. A year ago their pulses had beat to one robust measure; both +had the same prodigal confidence in an exhaustless future. Now their +energies no longer kept step: hers still bounded ahead of life, +preempting unclaimed regions of hope and activity, while his lagged +behind, vainly struggling to overtake her. + +When they married, she had such arrears of living to make up: her +days had been as bare as the whitewashed school-room where she forced +innutritious facts upon reluctant children. His coming had broken in +on the slumber of circumstance, widening the present till it became the +encloser of remotest chances. But imperceptibly the horizon narrowed. +Life had a grudge against her: she was never to be allowed to spread her +wings. + +At first the doctors had said that six weeks of mild air would set him +right; but when he came back this assurance was explained as having of +course included a winter in a dry climate. They gave up their pretty +house, storing the wedding presents and new furniture, and went to +Colorado. She had hated it there from the first. Nobody knew her or +cared about her; there was no one to wonder at the good match she had +made, or to envy her the new dresses and the visiting-cards which were +still a surprise to her. And he kept growing worse. She felt herself +beset with difficulties too evasive to be fought by so direct a +temperament. She still loved him, of course; but he was gradually, +undefinably ceasing to be himself. The man she had married had been +strong, active, gently masterful: the male whose pleasure it is to clear +a way through the material obstructions of life; but now it was she who +was the protector, he who must be shielded from importunities and given +his drops or his beef-juice though the skies were falling. The routine +of the sick-room bewildered her; this punctual administering of medicine +seemed as idle as some uncomprehended religious mummery. + +There were moments, indeed, when warm gushes of pity swept away her +instinctive resentment of his condition, when she still found his old +self in his eyes as they groped for each other through the dense +medium of his weakness. But these moments had grown rare. Sometimes +he frightened her: his sunken expressionless face seemed that of a +stranger; his voice was weak and hoarse; his thin-lipped smile a mere +muscular contraction. Her hand avoided his damp soft skin, which had +lost the familiar roughness of health: she caught herself furtively +watching him as she might have watched a strange animal. It frightened +her to feel that this was the man she loved; there were hours when to +tell him what she suffered seemed the one escape from her fears. But +in general she judged herself more leniently, reflecting that she +had perhaps been too long alone with him, and that she would feel +differently when they were at home again, surrounded by her robust and +buoyant family. How she had rejoiced when the doctors at last gave their +consent to his going home! She knew, of course, what the decision meant; +they both knew. It meant that he was to die; but they dressed the truth +in hopeful euphuisms, and at times, in the joy of preparation, she +really forgot the purpose of their journey, and slipped into an eager +allusion to next year's plans. + +At last the day of leaving came. She had a dreadful fear that they would +never get away; that somehow at the last moment he would fail her; that +the doctors held one of their accustomed treacheries in reserve; but +nothing happened. They drove to the station, he was installed in a seat +with a rug over his knees and a cushion at his back, and she hung out +of the window waving unregretful farewells to the acquaintances she had +really never liked till then. + +The first twenty-four hours had passed off well. He revived a little and +it amused him to look out of the window and to observe the humours of +the car. The second day he began to grow weary and to chafe under the +dispassionate stare of the freckled child with the lump of chewing-gum. +She had to explain to the child's mother that her husband was too ill +to be disturbed: a statement received by that lady with a resentment +visibly supported by the maternal sentiment of the whole car.... + +That night he slept badly and the next morning his temperature +frightened her: she was sure he was growing worse. The day passed +slowly, punctuated by the small irritations of travel. Watching his +tired face, she traced in its contractions every rattle and jolt of the +tram, till her own body vibrated with sympathetic fatigue. She felt the +others observing him too, and hovered restlessly between him and the +line of interrogative eyes. The freckled child hung about him like +a fly; offers of candy and picture-books failed to dislodge her: she +twisted one leg around the other and watched him imperturbably. The +porter, as he passed, lingered with vague proffers of help, probably +inspired by philanthropic passengers swelling with the sense that +"something ought to be done;" and one nervous man in a skull-cap was +audibly concerned as to the possible effect on his wife's health. + +The hours dragged on in a dreary inoccupation. Towards dusk she sat +down beside him and he laid his hand on hers. The touch startled her. He +seemed to be calling her from far off. She looked at him helplessly and +his smile went through her like a physical pang. + +"Are you very tired?" she asked. + +"No, not very." + +"We'll be there soon now." + +"Yes, very soon." + +"This time to-morrow--" + +He nodded and they sat silent. When she had put him to bed and crawled +into her own berth she tried to cheer herself with the thought that in +less than twenty-four hours they would be in New York. Her people would +all be at the station to meet her--she pictured their round unanxious +faces pressing through the crowd. She only hoped they would not tell him +too loudly that he was looking splendidly and would be all right in no +time: the subtler sympathies developed by long contact with suffering +were making her aware of a certain coarseness of texture in the family +sensibilities. + +Suddenly she thought she heard him call. She parted the curtains and +listened. No, it was only a man snoring at the other end of the car. His +snores had a greasy sound, as though they passed through tallow. She lay +down and tried to sleep... Had she not heard him move? She started up +trembling... The silence frightened her more than any sound. He might +not be able to make her hear--he might be calling her now... What made +her think of such things? It was merely the familiar tendency of an +over-tired mind to fasten itself on the most intolerable chance within +the range of its forebodings.... Putting her head out, she listened; but +she could not distinguish his breathing from that of the other pairs of +lungs about her. She longed to get up and look at him, but she knew the +impulse was a mere vent for her restlessness, and the fear of disturbing +him restrained her.... The regular movement of his curtain reassured +her, she knew not why; she remembered that he had wished her a cheerful +good-night; and the sheer inability to endure her fears a moment longer +made her put them from her with an effort of her whole sound tired body. +She turned on her side and slept. + +She sat up stiffly, staring out at the dawn. The train was rushing +through a region of bare hillocks huddled against a lifeless sky. It +looked like the first day of creation. The air of the car was close, and +she pushed up her window to let in the keen wind. Then she looked at +her watch: it was seven o'clock, and soon the people about her would be +stirring. She slipped into her clothes, smoothed her dishevelled +hair and crept to the dressing-room. When she had washed her face and +adjusted her dress she felt more hopeful. It was always a struggle for +her not to be cheerful in the morning. Her cheeks burned deliciously +under the coarse towel and the wet hair about her temples broke +into strong upward tendrils. Every inch of her was full of life and +elasticity. And in ten hours they would be at home! + +She stepped to her husband's berth: it was time for him to take his +early glass of milk. The window-shade was down, and in the dusk of the +curtained enclosure she could just see that he lay sideways, with his +face away from her. She leaned over him and drew up the shade. As she +did so she touched one of his hands. It felt cold.... + +She bent closer, laying her hand on his arm and calling him by name. He +did not move. She spoke again more loudly; she grasped his shoulder and +gently shook it. He lay motionless. She caught hold of his hand again: +it slipped from her limply, like a dead thing. A dead thing? ... Her +breath caught. She must see his face. She leaned forward, and hurriedly, +shrinkingly, with a sickening reluctance of the flesh, laid her hands on +his shoulders and turned him over. His head fell back; his face looked +small and smooth; he gazed at her with steady eyes. + +She remained motionless for a long time, holding him thus; and they +looked at each other. Suddenly she shrank back: the longing to scream, +to call out, to fly from him, had almost overpowered her. But a strong +hand arrested her. Good God! If it were known that he was dead they +would be put off the train at the next station-- + +In a terrifying flash of remembrance there arose before her a scene she +had once witnessed in travelling, when a husband and wife, whose child +had died in the train, had been thrust out at some chance station. She +saw them standing on the platform with the child's body between them; +she had never forgotten the dazed look with which they followed the +receding train. And this was what would happen to her. Within the next +hour she might find herself on the platform of some strange station, +alone with her husband's body.... Anything but that! It was too +horrible--She quivered like a creature at bay. + +As she cowered there, she felt the train moving more slowly. It was +coming then--they were approaching a station! She saw again the husband +and wife standing on the lonely platform; and with a violent gesture she +drew down the shade to hide her husband's face. + +Feeling dizzy, she sank down on the edge of the berth, keeping away from +his outstretched body, and pulling the curtains close, so that he and +she were shut into a kind of sepulchral twilight. She tried to think. At +all costs she must conceal the fact that he was dead. But how? Her mind +refused to act: she could not plan, combine. She could think of no way +but to sit there, clutching the curtains, all day long.... + +She heard the porter making up her bed; people were beginning to move +about the car; the dressing-room door was being opened and shut. She +tried to rouse herself. At length with a supreme effort she rose to her +feet, stepping into the aisle of the car and drawing the curtains tight +behind her. She noticed that they still parted slightly with the motion +of the car, and finding a pin in her dress she fastened them together. +Now she was safe. She looked round and saw the porter. She fancied he +was watching her. + +"Ain't he awake yet?" he enquired. + +"No," she faltered. + +"I got his milk all ready when he wants it. You know you told me to have +it for him by seven." + +She nodded silently and crept into her seat. + +At half-past eight the train reached Buffalo. By this time the other +passengers were dressed and the berths had been folded back for the day. +The porter, moving to and fro under his burden of sheets and pillows, +glanced at her as he passed. At length he said: "Ain't he going to get +up? You know we're ordered to make up the berths as early as we can." + +She turned cold with fear. They were just entering the station. + +"Oh, not yet," she stammered. "Not till he's had his milk. Won't you get +it, please?" + +"All right. Soon as we start again." + +When the train moved on he reappeared with the milk. She took it from +him and sat vaguely looking at it: her brain moved slowly from one idea +to another, as though they were stepping-stones set far apart across a +whirling flood. At length she became aware that the porter still hovered +expectantly. + +"Will I give it to him?" he suggested. + +"Oh, no," she cried, rising. "He--he's asleep yet, I think--" + +She waited till the porter had passed on; then she unpinned the curtains +and slipped behind them. In the semi-obscurity her husband's face stared +up at her like a marble mask with agate eyes. The eyes were dreadful. +She put out her hand and drew down the lids. Then she remembered the +glass of milk in her other hand: what was she to do with it? She thought +of raising the window and throwing it out; but to do so she would have +to lean across his body and bring her face close to his. She decided to +drink the milk. + +She returned to her seat with the empty glass and after a while the +porter came back to get it. + +"When'll I fold up his bed?" he asked. + +"Oh, not now--not yet; he's ill--he's very ill. Can't you let him stay +as he is? The doctor wants him to lie down as much as possible." + +He scratched his head. "Well, if he's _really_ sick--" + +He took the empty glass and walked away, explaining to the passengers +that the party behind the curtains was too sick to get up just yet. + +She found herself the centre of sympathetic eyes. A motherly woman with +an intimate smile sat down beside her. + +"I'm real sorry to hear your husband's sick. I've had a remarkable +amount of sickness in my family and maybe I could assist you. Can I take +a look at him?" + +"Oh, no--no, please! He mustn't be disturbed." + +The lady accepted the rebuff indulgently. + +"Well, it's just as you say, of course, but you don't look to me as if +you'd had much experience in sickness and I'd have been glad to assist +you. What do you generally do when your husband's taken this way?" + +"I--I let him sleep." + +"Too much sleep ain't any too healthful either. Don't you give him any +medicine?" + +"Y--yes." + +"Don't you wake him to take it?" + +"Yes." + +"When does he take the next dose?" + +"Not for--two hours--" + +The lady looked disappointed. "Well, if I was you I'd try giving it +oftener. That's what I do with my folks." + +After that many faces seemed to press upon her. The passengers were on +their way to the dining-car, and she was conscious that as they passed +down the aisle they glanced curiously at the closed curtains. One +lantern-jawed man with prominent eyes stood still and tried to shoot his +projecting glance through the division between the folds. The freckled +child, returning from breakfast, waylaid the passers with a buttery +clutch, saying in a loud whisper, "He's sick;" and once the conductor +came by, asking for tickets. She shrank into her corner and looked out +of the window at the flying trees and houses, meaningless hieroglyphs of +an endlessly unrolled papyrus. + +Now and then the train stopped, and the newcomers on entering the car +stared in turn at the closed curtains. More and more people seemed to +pass--their faces began to blend fantastically with the images surging +in her brain.... + +Later in the day a fat man detached himself from the mist of faces. He +had a creased stomach and soft pale lips. As he pressed himself into +the seat facing her she noticed that he was dressed in black broadcloth, +with a soiled white tie. + +"Husband's pretty bad this morning, is he?" + +"Yes." + +"Dear, dear! Now that's terribly distressing, ain't it?" An apostolic +smile revealed his gold-filled teeth. + +"Of course you know there's no sech thing as sickness. Ain't that a +lovely thought? Death itself is but a deloosion of our grosser senses. +On'y lay yourself open to the influx of the sperrit, submit yourself +passively to the action of the divine force, and disease and dissolution +will cease to exist for you. If you could indooce your husband to read +this little pamphlet--" + +The faces about her again grew indistinct. She had a vague recollection +of hearing the motherly lady and the parent of the freckled child +ardently disputing the relative advantages of trying several medicines +at once, or of taking each in turn; the motherly lady maintaining that +the competitive system saved time; the other objecting that you couldn't +tell which remedy had effected the cure; their voices went on and on, +like bell-buoys droning through a fog.... The porter came up now and +then with questions that she did not understand, but that somehow she +must have answered since he went away again without repeating them; +every two hours the motherly lady reminded her that her husband ought to +have his drops; people left the car and others replaced them... + +Her head was spinning and she tried to steady herself by clutching +at her thoughts as they swept by, but they slipped away from her like +bushes on the side of a sheer precipice down which she seemed to be +falling. Suddenly her mind grew clear again and she found herself +vividly picturing what would happen when the train reached New York. +She shuddered as it occurred to her that he would be quite cold and that +some one might perceive he had been dead since morning. + +She thought hurriedly:--"If they see I am not surprised they will +suspect something. They will ask questions, and if I tell them the +truth they won't believe me--no one would believe me! It will be +terrible"--and she kept repeating to herself:--"I must pretend I don't +know. I must pretend I don't know. When they open the curtains I must go +up to him quite naturally--and then I must scream." ... She had an idea +that the scream would be very hard to do. + +Gradually new thoughts crowded upon her, vivid and urgent: she tried +to separate and restrain them, but they beset her clamorously, like +her school-children at the end of a hot day, when she was too tired +to silence them. Her head grew confused, and she felt a sick fear of +forgetting her part, of betraying herself by some unguarded word or +look. + +"I must pretend I don't know," she went on murmuring. The words had lost +their significance, but she repeated them mechanically, as though they +had been a magic formula, until suddenly she heard herself saying: "I +can't remember, I can't remember!" + +Her voice sounded very loud, and she looked about her in terror; but no +one seemed to notice that she had spoken. + +As she glanced down the car her eye caught the curtains of her husband's +berth, and she began to examine the monotonous arabesques woven through +their heavy folds. The pattern was intricate and difficult to trace; +she gazed fixedly at the curtains and as she did so the thick stuff grew +transparent and through it she saw her husband's face--his dead face. +She struggled to avert her look, but her eyes refused to move and her +head seemed to be held in a vice. At last, with an effort that left her +weak and shaking, she turned away; but it was of no use; close in +front of her, small and smooth, was her husband's face. It seemed to be +suspended in the air between her and the false braids of the woman who +sat in front of her. With an uncontrollable gesture she stretched out +her hand to push the face away, and suddenly she felt the touch of his +smooth skin. She repressed a cry and half started from her seat. The +woman with the false braids looked around, and feeling that she must +justify her movement in some way she rose and lifted her travelling-bag +from the opposite seat. She unlocked the bag and looked into it; but +the first object her hand met was a small flask of her husband's, thrust +there at the last moment, in the haste of departure. She locked the bag +and closed her eyes ... his face was there again, hanging between her +eye-balls and lids like a waxen mask against a red curtain.... + +She roused herself with a shiver. Had she fainted or slept? Hours seemed +to have elapsed; but it was still broad day, and the people about her +were sitting in the same attitudes as before. + +A sudden sense of hunger made her aware that she had eaten nothing since +morning. The thought of food filled her with disgust, but she dreaded a +return of faintness, and remembering that she had some biscuits in her +bag she took one out and ate it. The dry crumbs choked her, and she +hastily swallowed a little brandy from her husband's flask. The burning +sensation in her throat acted as a counter-irritant, momentarily +relieving the dull ache of her nerves. Then she felt a gently-stealing +warmth, as though a soft air fanned her, and the swarming fears relaxed +their clutch, receding through the stillness that enclosed her, a +stillness soothing as the spacious quietude of a summer day. She slept. + +Through her sleep she felt the impetuous rush of the train. It seemed +to be life itself that was sweeping her on with headlong inexorable +force--sweeping her into darkness and terror, and the awe of unknown +days.--Now all at once everything was still--not a sound, not a +pulsation... She was dead in her turn, and lay beside him with smooth +upstaring face. How quiet it was!--and yet she heard feet coming, the +feet of the men who were to carry them away... She could feel too--she +felt a sudden prolonged vibration, a series of hard shocks, and then +another plunge into darkness: the darkness of death this time--a +black whirlwind on which they were both spinning like leaves, in wild +uncoiling spirals, with millions and millions of the dead.... + + * * * * * + +She sprang up in terror. Her sleep must have lasted a long time, for +the winter day had paled and the lights had been lit. The car was in +confusion, and as she regained her self-possession she saw that the +passengers were gathering up their wraps and bags. The woman with the +false braids had brought from the dressing-room a sickly ivy-plant in a +bottle, and the Christian Scientist was reversing his cuffs. The porter +passed down the aisle with his impartial brush. An impersonal figure +with a gold-banded cap asked for her husband's ticket. A voice shouted +"Baig-gage express!" and she heard the clicking of metal as the +passengers handed over their checks. + +Presently her window was blocked by an expanse of sooty wall, and the +train passed into the Harlem tunnel. The journey was over; in a few +minutes she would see her family pushing their joyous way through the +throng at the station. Her heart dilated. The worst terror was past.... + +"We'd better get him up now, hadn't we?" asked the porter, touching her +arm. + +He had her husband's hat in his hand and was meditatively revolving it +under his brush. + +She looked at the hat and tried to speak; but suddenly the car grew +dark. She flung up her arms, struggling to catch at something, and fell +face downward, striking her head against the dead man's berth. + + + + +THE PELICAN + + +She was very pretty when I first knew her, with the sweet straight nose +and short upper lip of the cameo-brooch divinity, humanized by a dimple +that flowered in her cheek whenever anything was said possessing the +outward attributes of humor without its intrinsic quality. For the dear +lady was providentially deficient in humor: the least hint of the real +thing clouded her lovely eye like the hovering shadow of an algebraic +problem. + +I don't think nature had meant her to be "intellectual;" but what can a +poor thing do, whose husband has died of drink when her baby is hardly +six months old, and who finds her coral necklace and her grandfather's +edition of the British Dramatists inadequate to the demands of the +creditors? + +Her mother, the celebrated Irene Astarte Pratt, had written a poem in +blank verse on "The Fall of Man;" one of her aunts was dean of a girls' +college; another had translated Euripides--with such a family, the poor +child's fate was sealed in advance. The only way of paying her husband's +debts and keeping the baby clothed was to be intellectual; and, after +some hesitation as to the form her mental activity was to take, it was +unanimously decided that she was to give lectures. + +They began by being drawing-room lectures. The first time I saw her +she was standing by the piano, against a flippant background of Dresden +china and photographs, telling a roomful of women preoccupied with their +spring bonnets all she thought she knew about Greek art. The ladies +assembled to hear her had given me to understand that she was "doing it +for the baby," and this fact, together with the shortness of her upper +lip and the bewildering co-operation of her dimple, disposed me to +listen leniently to her dissertation. Happily, at that time Greek art +was still, if I may use the phrase, easily handled: it was as simple as +walking down a museum-gallery lined with pleasant familiar Venuses +and Apollos. All the later complications--the archaic and archaistic +conundrums; the influences of Assyria and Asia Minor; the conflicting +attributions and the wrangles of the erudite--still slumbered in the +bosom of the future "scientific critic." Greek art in those days began +with Phidias and ended with the Apollo Belvedere; and a child could +travel from one to the other without danger of losing his way. + +Mrs. Amyot had two fatal gifts: a capacious but inaccurate memory, +and an extraordinary fluency of speech. There was nothing she did not +remember--wrongly; but her halting facts were swathed in so many layers +of rhetoric that their infirmities were imperceptible to her friendly +critics. Besides, she had been taught Greek by the aunt who had +translated Euripides; and the mere sound of the [Greek: ais] and [Greek: +ois] that she now and then not unskilfully let slip (correcting herself, +of course, with a start, and indulgently mistranslating the phrase), +struck awe to the hearts of ladies whose only "accomplishment" was +French--if you didn't speak too quickly. + +I had then but a momentary glimpse of Mrs. Amyot, but a few months +later I came upon her again in the New England university town where the +celebrated Irene Astarte Pratt lived on the summit of a local Parnassus, +with lesser muses and college professors respectfully grouped on +the lower ledges of the sacred declivity. Mrs. Amyot, who, after her +husband's death, had returned to the maternal roof (even during her +father's lifetime the roof had been distinctively maternal), Mrs. Amyot, +thanks to her upper lip, her dimple and her Greek, was already esconced +in a snug hollow of the Parnassian slope. + +After the lecture was over it happened that I walked home with Mrs. +Amyot. From the incensed glances of two or three learned gentlemen who +were hovering on the door-step when we emerged, I inferred that Mrs. +Amyot, at that period, did not often walk home alone; but I doubt +whether any of my discomfited rivals, whatever his claims to favor, was +ever treated to so ravishing a mixture of shyness and self-abandonment, +of sham erudition and real teeth and hair, as it was my privilege to +enjoy. Even at the opening of her public career Mrs. Amyot had a tender +eye for strangers, as possible links with successive centres of culture +to which in due course the torch of Greek art might be handed on. + +She began by telling me that she had never been so frightened in her +life. She knew, of course, how dreadfully learned I was, and when, just +as she was going to begin, her hostess had whispered to her that I was +in the room, she had felt ready to sink through the floor. Then (with +a flying dimple) she had remembered Emerson's line--wasn't it +Emerson's?--that beauty is its own excuse for _seeing_, and that had +made her feel a little more confident, since she was sure that no one +_saw_ beauty more vividly than she--as a child she used to sit for hours +gazing at an Etruscan vase on the bookcase in the library, while her +sisters played with their dolls--and if _seeing_ beauty was the only +excuse one needed for talking about it, why, she was sure I would make +allowances and not be _too_ critical and sarcastic, especially if, as +she thought probable, I had heard of her having lost her poor husband, +and how she had to do it for the baby. + +Being abundantly assured of my sympathy on these points, she went on to +say that she had always wanted so much to consult me about her lectures. +Of course, one subject wasn't enough (this view of the limitations of +Greek art as a "subject" gave me a startling idea of the rate at which +a successful lecturer might exhaust the universe); she must find +others; she had not ventured on any as yet, but she had thought of +Tennyson--didn't I _love_ Tennyson? She _worshipped_ him so that she was +sure she could help others to understand him; or what did I think of a +"course" on Raphael or Michelangelo--or on the heroines of Shakespeare? +There were some fine steel-engravings of Raphael's Madonnas and of the +Sistine ceiling in her mother's library, and she had seen Miss Cushman +in several Shakespearian _roles_, so that on these subjects also she +felt qualified to speak with authority. + +When we reached her mother's door she begged me to come in and talk the +matter over; she wanted me to see the baby--she felt as though I should +understand her better if I saw the baby--and the dimple flashed through +a tear. + +The fear of encountering the author of "The Fall of Man," combined with +the opportune recollection of a dinner engagement, made me evade this +appeal with the promise of returning on the morrow. On the morrow, I +left too early to redeem my promise; and for several years afterwards I +saw no more of Mrs. Amyot. + +My calling at that time took me at irregular intervals from one to +another of our larger cities, and as Mrs. Amyot was also peripatetic it +was inevitable that sooner or later we should cross each other's path. +It was therefore without surprise that, one snowy afternoon in Boston, +I learned from the lady with whom I chanced to be lunching that, as soon +as the meal was over, I was to be taken to hear Mrs. Amyot lecture. + +"On Greek art?" I suggested. + +"Oh, you've heard her then? No, this is one of the series called 'Homes +and Haunts of the Poets.' Last week we had Wordsworth and the Lake +Poets, to-day we are to have Goethe and Weimar. She is a wonderful +creature--all the women of her family are geniuses. You know, of course, +that her mother was Irene Astarte Pratt, who wrote a poem on 'The Fall +of Man'; N.P. Willis called her the female Milton of America. One of +Mrs. Amyot's aunts has translated Eurip--" + +"And is she as pretty as ever?" I irrelevantly interposed. + +My hostess looked shocked. "She is excessively modest and retiring. She +says it is actual suffering for her to speak in public. You know she +only does it for the baby." + +Punctually at the hour appointed, we took our seats in a lecture-hall +full of strenuous females in ulsters. Mrs. Amyot was evidently a +favorite with these austere sisters, for every corner was crowded, and +as we entered a pale usher with an educated mispronunciation was setting +forth to several dejected applicants the impossibility of supplying them +with seats. + +Our own were happily so near the front that when the curtains at the +back of the platform parted, and Mrs. Amyot appeared, I was at once +able to establish a comparison between the lady placidly dimpling to +the applause of her public and the shrinking drawing-room orator of my +earlier recollections. + +Mrs. Amyot was as pretty as ever, and there was the same curious +discrepancy between the freshness of her aspect and the stateness of her +theme, but something was gone of the blushing unsteadiness with which +she had fired her first random shots at Greek art. It was not that the +shots were less uncertain, but that she now had an air of assuming that, +for her purpose, the bull's-eye was everywhere, so that there was no +need to be flustered in taking aim. This assurance had so facilitated +the flow of her eloquence that she seemed to be performing a trick +analogous to that of the conjuror who pulls hundreds of yards of white +paper out of his mouth. From a large assortment of stock adjectives +she chose, with unerring deftness and rapidity, the one that taste and +discrimination would most surely have rejected, fitting out her subject +with a whole wardrobe of slop-shop epithets irrelevant in cut and size. +To the invaluable knack of not disturbing the association of ideas in +her audience, she added the gift of what may be called a confidential +manner--so that her fluent generalizations about Goethe and his place +in literature (the lecture was, of course, manufactured out of Lewes's +book) had the flavor of personal experience, of views sympathetically +exchanged with her audience on the best way of knitting children's +socks, or of putting up preserves for the winter. It was, I am sure, +to this personal accent--the moral equivalent of her dimple--that Mrs. +Amyot owed her prodigious, her irrational success. It was her art of +transposing second-hand ideas into first-hand emotions that so endeared +her to her feminine listeners. + +To any one not in search of "documents" Mrs. Amyot's success was hardly +of a kind to make her more interesting, and my curiosity flagged with +the growing conviction that the "suffering" entailed on her by public +speaking was at most a retrospective pang. I was sure that she had +reached the point of measuring and enjoying her effects, of deliberately +manipulating her public; and there must indeed have been a certain +exhilaration in attaining results so considerable by means involving +so little conscious effort. Mrs. Amyot's art was simply an extension of +coquetry: she flirted with her audience. + +In this mood of enlightened skepticism I responded but languidly to my +hostess's suggestion that I should go with her that evening to see Mrs. +Amyot. The aunt who had translated Euripides was at home on Saturday +evenings, and one met "thoughtful" people there, my hostess explained: +it was one of the intellectual centres of Boston. My mood remained +distinctly resentful of any connection between Mrs. Amyot and +intellectuality, and I declined to go; but the next day I met Mrs. Amyot +in the street. + +She stopped me reproachfully. She had heard I was in Boston; why had I +not come last night? She had been told that I was at her lecture, and +it had frightened her--yes, really, almost as much as years ago in +Hillbridge. She never _could_ get over that stupid shyness, and the +whole business was as distasteful to her as ever; but what could she do? +There was the baby--he was a big boy now, and boys were _so_ expensive! +But did I really think she had improved the least little bit? And why +wouldn't I come home with her now, and see the boy, and tell her frankly +what I had thought of the lecture? She had plenty of flattery--people +were _so_ kind, and every one knew that she did it for the baby--but +what she felt the need of was criticism, severe, discriminating +criticism like mine--oh, she knew that I was dreadfully discriminating! + +I went home with her and saw the boy. In the early heat of her +Tennyson-worship Mrs. Amyot had christened him Lancelot, and he looked +it. Perhaps, however, it was his black velvet dress and the exasperating +length of his yellow curls, together with the fact of his having been +taught to recite Browning to visitors, that raised to fever-heat the +itching of my palms in his Infant-Samuel-like presence. I have since had +reason to think that he would have preferred to be called Billy, and +to hunt cats with the other boys in the block: his curls and his poetry +were simply another outlet for Mrs. Amyot's irrepressible coquetry. + +But if Lancelot was not genuine, his mother's love for him was. It +justified everything--the lectures _were_ for the baby, after all. I had +not been ten minutes in the room before I was pledged to help Mrs. Amyot +carry out her triumphant fraud. If she wanted to lecture on Plato she +should--Plato must take his chance like the rest of us! There was no +use, of course, in being "discriminating." I preserved sufficient reason +to avoid that pitfall, but I suggested "subjects" and made lists of +books for her with a fatuity that became more obvious as time attenuated +the remembrance of her smile; I even remember thinking that some men +might have cut the knot by marrying her, but I handed over Plato as a +hostage and escaped by the afternoon train. + +The next time I saw her was in New York, when she had become so +fashionable that it was a part of the whole duty of woman to be seen at +her lectures. The lady who suggested that of course I ought to go and +hear Mrs. Amyot, was not very clear about anything except that she was +perfectly lovely, and had had a horrid husband, and was doing it to +support her boy. The subject of the discourse (I think it was on Ruskin) +was clearly of minor importance, not only to my friend, but to the +throng of well-dressed and absent-minded ladies who rustled in late, +dropped their muffs and pocket-books, and undisguisedly lost themselves +in the study of each other's apparel. They received Mrs. Amyot with +warmth, but she evidently represented a social obligation like going to +church, rather than any more personal interest; in fact, I suspect that +every one of the ladies would have remained away, had they been sure +that none of the others were coming. + +Whether Mrs. Amyot was disheartened by the lack of sympathy between +herself and her hearers, or whether the sport of arousing it had become +a task, she certainly imparted her platitudes with less convincing +warmth than of old. Her voice had the same confidential inflections, but +it was like a voice reproduced by a gramophone: the real woman seemed +far away. She had grown stouter without losing her dewy freshness, and +her smart gown might have been taken to show either the potentialities +of a settled income, or a politic concession to the taste of her +hearers. As I listened I reproached myself for ever having suspected her +of self-deception in saying that she took no pleasure in her work. I was +sure now that she did it only for Lancelot, and judging from the size of +her audience and the price of the tickets I concluded that Lancelot must +be receiving a liberal education. + +I was living in New York that winter, and in the rotation of dinners I +found myself one evening at Mrs. Amyot's side. The dimple came out at my +greeting as punctually as a cuckoo in a Swiss clock, and I detected the +same automatic quality in the tone in which she made her usual pretty +demand for advice. She was like a musical-box charged with popular airs. +They succeeded one another with breathless rapidity, but there was a +moment after each when the cylinders scraped and whizzed. + +Mrs. Amyot, as I found when I called on her, was living in a sunny flat, +with a sitting-room full of flowers and a tea-table that had the air of +expecting visitors. She owned that she had been ridiculously successful. +It was delightful, of course, on Lancelot's account. Lancelot had been +sent to the best school in the country, and if things went well +and people didn't tire of his silly mother he was to go to Harvard +afterwards. During the next two or three years Mrs. Amyot kept her flat +in New York, and radiated art and literature upon the suburbs. I saw her +now and then, always stouter, better dressed, more successful and more +automatic: she had become a lecturing-machine. + +I went abroad for a year or two and when I came back she had +disappeared. I asked several people about her, but life had closed over +her. She had been last heard of as lecturing--still lecturing--but no +one seemed to know when or where. + +It was in Boston that I found her at last, forlornly swaying to the +oscillations of an overhead strap in a crowded trolley-car. Her face had +so changed that I lost myself in a startled reckoning of the time that +had elapsed since our parting. She spoke to me shyly, as though aware of +my hurried calculation, and conscious that in five years she ought not +to have altered so much as to upset my notion of time. Then she seemed +to set it down to her dress, for she nervously gathered her cloak over a +gown that asked only to be concealed, and shrank into a seat behind the +line of prehensile bipeds blocking the aisle of the car. + +It was perhaps because she so obviously avoided me that I felt for the +first time that I might be of use to her; and when she left the car I +made no excuse for following her. + +She said nothing of needing advice and did not ask me to walk home with +her, concealing, as we talked, her transparent preoccupations under the +guise of a sudden interest in all I had been doing since she had last +seen me. Of what concerned her, I learned only that Lancelot was well +and that for the present she was not lecturing--she was tired and her +doctor had ordered her to rest. On the doorstep of a shabby house she +paused and held out her hand. She had been so glad to see me and perhaps +if I were in Boston again--the tired dimple, as it were, bowed me out +and closed the door on the conclusion of the phrase. + +Two or three weeks later, at my club in New York, I found a letter from +her. In it she owned that she was troubled, that of late she had been +unsuccessful, and that, if I chanced to be coming back to Boston, and +could spare her a little of that invaluable advice which--. A few days +later the advice was at her disposal. She told me frankly what had +happened. Her public had grown tired of her. She had seen it coming on +for some time, and was shrewd enough in detecting the causes. She had +more rivals than formerly--younger women, she admitted, with a smile +that could still afford to be generous--and then her audiences had +grown more critical and consequently more exacting. Lecturing--as she +understood it--used to be simple enough. You chose your topic--Raphael, +Shakespeare, Gothic Architecture, or some such big familiar +"subject"--and read up about it for a week or so at the Athenaeum or the +Astor Library, and then told your audience what you had read. Now, it +appeared, that simple process was no longer adequate. People had tired +of familiar "subjects"; it was the fashion to be interested in things +that one hadn't always known about--natural selection, animal magnetism, +sociology and comparative folk-lore; while, in literature, the +demand had become equally difficult to meet, since Matthew Arnold +had introduced the habit of studying the "influence" of one author on +another. She had tried lecturing on influences, and had done very well +as long as the public was satisfied with the tracing of such obvious +influences as that of Turner on Ruskin, of Schiller on Goethe, of +Shakespeare on English literature; but such investigations had soon lost +all charm for her too-sophisticated audiences, who now demanded either +that the influence or the influenced should be quite unknown, or that +there should be no perceptible connection between the two. The zest of +the performance lay in the measure of ingenuity with which the lecturer +established a relation between two people who had probably never heard +of each other, much less read each other's works. A pretty Miss Williams +with red hair had, for instance, been lecturing with great success +on the influence of the Rosicrucians upon the poetry of Keats, while +somebody else had given a "course" on the influence of St. Thomas +Aquinas upon Professor Huxley. + +Mrs. Amyot, warmed by my participation in her distress, went on to say +that the growing demand for evolution was what most troubled her. Her +grandfather had been a pillar of the Presbyterian ministry, and the idea +of her lecturing on Darwin or Herbert Spencer was deeply shocking to +her mother and aunts. In one sense the family had staked its literary as +well as its spiritual hopes on the literal inspiration of Genesis: what +became of "The Fall of Man" in the light of modern exegesis? + +The upshot of it was that she had ceased to lecture because she could no +longer sell tickets enough to pay for the hire of a lecture-hall; and as +for the managers, they wouldn't look at her. She had tried her luck all +through the Eastern States and as far south as Washington; but it was of +no use, and unless she could get hold of some new subjects--or, better +still, of some new audiences--she must simply go out of the business. +That would mean the failure of all she had worked for, since Lancelot +would have to leave Harvard. She paused, and wept some of the unbecoming +tears that spring from real grief. Lancelot, it appeared, was to be +a genius. He had passed his opening examinations brilliantly; he had +"literary gifts"; he had written beautiful poetry, much of which his +mother had copied out, in reverentially slanting characters, in a +velvet-bound volume which she drew from a locked drawer. + +Lancelot's verse struck me as nothing more alarming than growing-pains; +but it was not to learn this that she had summoned me. What she wanted +was to be assured that he was worth working for, an assurance which I +managed to convey by the simple stratagem of remarking that the poems +reminded me of Swinburne--and so they did, as well as of Browning, +Tennyson, Rossetti, and all the other poets who supply young authors +with original inspirations. + +This point being established, it remained to be decided by what means +his mother was, in the French phrase, to pay herself the luxury of +a poet. It was clear that this indulgence could be bought only with +counterfeit coin, and that the one way of helping Mrs. Amyot was +to become a party to the circulation of such currency. My fetish of +intellectual integrity went down like a ninepin before the appeal of +a woman no longer young and distinctly foolish, but full of those dear +contradictions and irrelevancies that will always make flesh and blood +prevail against a syllogism. When I took leave of Mrs. Amyot I had +promised her a dozen letters to Western universities and had half +pledged myself to sketch out a lecture on the reconciliation of science +and religion. + +In the West she achieved a success which for a year or more embittered +my perusal of the morning papers. The fascination that lures the +murderer back to the scene of his crime drew my eye to every paragraph +celebrating Mrs. Amyot's last brilliant lecture on the influence of +something upon somebody; and her own letters--she overwhelmed me with +them--spared me no detail of the entertainment given in her honor by +the Palimpsest Club of Omaha or of her reception at the University of +Leadville. The college professors were especially kind: she assured +me that she had never before met with such discriminating sympathy. I +winced at the adjective, which cast a sudden light on the vast machinery +of fraud that I had set in motion. All over my native land, men of +hitherto unblemished integrity were conniving with me in urging their +friends to go and hear Mrs. Amyot lecture on the reconciliation of +science and religion! My only hope was that, somewhere among the number +of my accomplices, Mrs. Amyot might find one who would marry her in the +defense of his convictions. + +None, apparently, resorted to such heroic measures; for about two years +later I was startled by the announcement that Mrs. Amyot was lecturing +in Trenton, New Jersey, on modern theosophy in the light of the Vedas. +The following week she was at Newark, discussing Schopenhauer in the +light of recent psychology. The week after that I was on the deck of an +ocean steamer, reconsidering my share in Mrs. Amyot's triumphs with the +impartiality with which one views an episode that is being left behind +at the rate of twenty knots an hour. After all, I had been helping a +mother to educate her son. + +The next ten years of my life were spent in Europe, and when I came home +the recollection of Mrs. Amyot had become as inoffensive as one of +those pathetic ghosts who are said to strive in vain to make themselves +visible to the living. I did not even notice the fact that I no longer +heard her spoken of; she had dropped like a dead leaf from the bough of +memory. + +A year or two after my return I was condemned to one of the worst +punishments a worker can undergo--an enforced holiday. The doctors who +pronounced the inhuman sentence decreed that it should be worked out in +the South, and for a whole winter I carried my cough, my thermometer and +my idleness from one fashionable orange-grove to another. In the vast +and melancholy sea of my disoccupation I clutched like a drowning man +at any human driftwood within reach. I took a critical and depreciatory +interest in the coughs, the thermometers and the idleness of my +fellow-sufferers; but to the healthy, the occupied, the transient I +clung with undiscriminating enthusiasm. + +In no other way can I explain, as I look back on it, the importance +I attached to the leisurely confidences of a new arrival with a brown +beard who, tilted back at my side on a hotel veranda hung with roses, +imparted to me one afternoon the simple annals of his past. There was +nothing in the tale to kindle the most inflammable imagination, and +though the man had a pleasant frank face and a voice differing agreeably +from the shrill inflections of our fellow-lodgers, it is probable that +under different conditions his discursive history of successful business +ventures in a Western city would have affected me somewhat in the manner +of a lullaby. + +Even at the tune I was not sure I liked his agreeable voice: it had a +self-importance out of keeping with the humdrum nature of his story, as +though a breeze engaged in shaking out a table-cloth should have fancied +itself inflating a banner. But this criticism may have been a mere mark +of my own fastidiousness, for the man seemed a simple fellow, satisfied +with his middling fortunes, and already (he was not much past thirty) +deep-sunk in conjugal content. + +He had just started on an anecdote connected with the cutting of his +eldest boy's teeth, when a lady I knew, returning from her late drive, +paused before us for a moment in the twilight, with the smile which is +the feminine equivalent of beads to savages. + +"Won't you take a ticket?" she said sweetly. + +Of course I would take a ticket--but for what? I ventured to inquire. + +"Oh, that's _so_ good of you--for the lecture this evening. You needn't +go, you know; we're none of us going; most of us have been through it +already at Aiken and at Saint Augustine and at Palm Beach. I've given +away my tickets to some new people who've just come from the North, and +some of us are going to send our maids, just to fill up the room." + +"And may I ask to whom you are going to pay this delicate attention?" + +"Oh, I thought you knew--to poor Mrs. Amyot. She's been lecturing all +over the South this winter; she's simply _haunted_ me ever since I left +New York--and we had six weeks of her at Bar Harbor last summer! One +has to take tickets, you know, because she's a widow and does it for her +son--to pay for his education. She's so plucky and nice about it, and +talks about him in such a touching unaffected way, that everybody is +sorry for her, and we all simply ruin ourselves in tickets. I do hope +that boy's nearly educated!" + +"Mrs. Amyot? Mrs. Amyot?" I repeated. "Is she _still_ educating her +son?" + +"Oh, do you know about her? Has she been at it long? There's some +comfort in that, for I suppose when the boy's provided for the poor +thing will be able to take a rest--and give us one!" + +She laughed and held out her hand. + +"Here's your ticket. Did you say _tickets_--two? Oh, thanks. Of course +you needn't go." + +"But I mean to go. Mrs. Amyot is an old friend of mine." + +"Do you really? That's awfully good of you. Perhaps I'll go too if I +can persuade Charlie and the others to come. And I wonder"--in a +well-directed aside--"if your friend--?" + +I telegraphed her under cover of the dusk that my friend was of too +recent standing to be drawn into her charitable toils, and she masked +her mistake under a rattle of friendly adjurations not to be late, and +to be sure to keep a seat for her, as she had quite made up her mind to +go even if Charlie and the others wouldn't. + +The flutter of her skirts subsided in the distance, and my neighbor, +who had half turned away to light a cigar, made no effort to reopen the +conversation. At length, fearing he might have overheard the allusion to +himself, I ventured to ask if he were going to the lecture that evening. + +"Much obliged--I have a ticket," he said abruptly. + +This struck me as in such bad taste that I made no answer; and it was he +who spoke next. + +"Did I understand you to say that you were an old friend of Mrs. +Amyot's?" + +"I think I may claim to be, if it is the same Mrs. Amyot I had the +pleasure of knowing many years ago. My Mrs. Amyot used to lecture too--" + +"To pay for her son's education?" + +"I believe so." + +"Well--see you later." + +He got up and walked into the house. + +In the hotel drawing-room that evening there was but a meagre sprinkling +of guests, among whom I saw my brown-bearded friend sitting alone on a +sofa, with his head against the wall. It could not have been curiosity +to see Mrs. Amyot that had impelled him to attend the performance, for +it would have been impossible for him, without changing his place, to +command the improvised platform at the end of the room. When I looked at +him he seemed lost in contemplation of the chandelier. + +The lady from whom I had bought my tickets fluttered in late, unattended +by Charlie and the others, and assuring me that she would _scream_ if +we had the lecture on Ibsen--she had heard it three times already that +winter. A glance at the programme reassured her: it informed us (in +the lecturer's own slanting hand) that Mrs. Amyot was to lecture on the +Cosmogony. + +After a long pause, during which the small audience coughed and moved +its chairs and showed signs of regretting that it had come, the door +opened, and Mrs. Amyot stepped upon the platform. Ah, poor lady! + +Some one said "Hush!", the coughing and chair-shifting subsided, and she +began. + +It was like looking at one's self early in the morning in a cracked +mirror. I had no idea I had grown so old. As for Lancelot, he must have +a beard. A beard? The word struck me, and without knowing why I glanced +across the room at my bearded friend on the sofa. Oddly enough he was +looking at me, with a half-defiant, half-sullen expression; and as our +glances crossed, and his fell, the conviction came to me that _he was +Lancelot_. + +I don't remember a word of the lecture; and yet there were enough of +them to have filled a good-sized dictionary. The stream of Mrs. Amyot's +eloquence had become a flood: one had the despairing sense that she had +sprung a leak, and that until the plumber came there was nothing to be +done about it. + +The plumber came at length, in the shape of a clock striking ten; my +companion, with a sigh of relief, drifted away in search of Charlie and +the others; the audience scattered with the precipitation of people who +had discharged a duty; and, without surprise, I found the brown-bearded +stranger at my elbow. + +We stood alone in the bare-floored room, under the flaring chandelier. + +"I think you told me this afternoon that you were an old friend of Mrs. +Amyot's?" he began awkwardly. + +I assented. + +"Will you come in and see her?" + +"Now? I shall be very glad to, if--" + +"She's ready; she's expecting you," he interposed. + +He offered no further explanation, and I followed him in silence. He led +me down the long corridor, and pushed open the door of a sitting-room. + +"Mother," he said, closing the door after we had entered, "here's the +gentleman who says he used to know you." + +Mrs. Amyot, who sat in an easy-chair stirring a cup of bouillon, looked +up with a start. She had evidently not seen me in the audience, and her +son's description had failed to convey my identity. I saw a frightened +look in her eyes; then, like a frost flower on a window-pane, the dimple +expanded on her wrinkled cheek, and she held out her hand. + +"I'm so glad," she said, "so glad!" + +She turned to her son, who stood watching us. "You must have told +Lancelot all about me--you've known me so long!" + +"I haven't had time to talk to your son--since I knew he was your son," +I explained. + +Her brow cleared. "Then you haven't had time to say anything very +dreadful?" she said with a laugh. + +"It is he who has been saying dreadful things," I returned, trying to +fall in with her tone. + +I saw my mistake. "What things?" she faltered. + +"Making me feel how old I am by telling me about his children." + +"My grandchildren!" she exclaimed with a blush. + +"Well, if you choose to put it so." + +She laughed again, vaguely, and was silent. I hesitated a moment and +then put out my hand. + +"I see you are tired. I shouldn't have ventured to come in at this hour +if your son--" + +The son stepped between us. "Yes, I asked him to come," he said to +his mother, in his clear self-assertive voice. "_I_ haven't told him +anything yet; but you've got to--now. That's what I brought him for." + +His mother straightened herself, but I saw her eye waver. + +"Lancelot--" she began. + +"Mr. Amyot," I said, turning to the young man, "if your mother will let +me come back to-morrow, I shall be very glad--" + +He struck his hand hard against the table on which he was leaning. + +"No, sir! It won't take long, but it's got to be said now." + +He moved nearer to his mother, and I saw his lip twitch under his beard. +After all, he was younger and less sure of himself than I had fancied. + +"See here, mother," he went on, "there's something here that's got to be +cleared up, and as you say this gentleman is an old friend of yours +it had better be cleared up in his presence. Maybe he can help explain +it--and if he can't, it's got to be explained to _him."_ + +Mrs. Amyot's lips moved, but she made no sound. She glanced at me +helplessly and sat down. My early inclination to thrash Lancelot was +beginning to reassert itself. I took up my hat and moved toward the +door. + +"Mrs. Amyot is under no obligation to explain anything whatever to me," +I said curtly. + +"Well! She's under an obligation to me, then--to explain something in +your presence." He turned to her again. "Do you know what the people in +this hotel are saying? Do you know what he thinks--what they all think? +That you're doing this lecturing to support me--to pay for my education! +They say you go round telling them so. That's what they buy the tickets +for--they do it out of charity. Ask him if it isn't what they say--ask +him if they weren't joking about it on the piazza before dinner. The +others think I'm a little boy, but he's known you for years, and he must +have known how old I was. _He_ must have known it wasn't to pay for my +education!" + +He stood before her with his hands clenched, the veins beating in his +temples. She had grown very pale, and her cheeks looked hollow. When she +spoke her voice had an odd click in it. + +"If--if these ladies and gentlemen have been coming to my lectures out +of charity, I see nothing to be ashamed of in that--" she faltered. + +"If they've been coming out of charity to _me_," he retorted, "don't you +see you've been making me a party to a fraud? Isn't there any shame +in that?" His forehead reddened. "Mother! Can't you see the shame of +letting people think I was a d--beat, who sponged on you for my keep? +Let alone making us both the laughing-stock of every place you go to!" + +"I never did that, Lancelot!" + +"Did what?" + +"Made you a laughing-stock--" + +He stepped close to her and caught her wrist. + +"Will you look me in the face and swear you never told people you were +doing this lecturing business to support me?" + +There was a long silence. He dropped her wrist and she lifted a limp +handkerchief to her frightened eyes. "I did do it--to support you--to +educate you"--she sobbed. + +"We're not talking about what you did when I was a boy. Everybody who +knows me knows I've been a grateful son. Have I ever taken a penny from +you since I left college ten years ago?" + +"I never said you had! How can you accuse your mother of such +wickedness, Lancelot?" + +"Have you never told anybody in this hotel--or anywhere else in the last +ten years--that you were lecturing to support me? Answer me that!" + +"How can you," she wept, "before a stranger?" + +"Haven't you said such things about _me_ to strangers?" he retorted. + +"Lancelot!" + +"Well--answer me, then. Say you haven't, mother!" His voice broke +unexpectedly and he took her hand with a gentler touch. "I'll believe +anything you tell me," he said almost humbly. + +She mistook his tone and raised her head with a rash clutch at dignity. + +"I think you'd better ask this gentleman to excuse you first." + +"No, by God, I won't!" he cried. "This gentleman says he knows all about +you and I mean him to know all about me too. I don't mean that he +or anybody else under this roof shall go on thinking for another +twenty-four hours that a cent of their money has ever gone into my +pockets since I was old enough to shift for myself. And he sha'n't leave +this room till you've made that clear to him." + +He stepped back as he spoke and put his shoulders against the door. + +"My dear young gentleman," I said politely, "I shall leave this room +exactly when I see fit to do so--and that is now. I have already told +you that Mrs. Amyot owes me no explanation of her conduct." + +"But I owe you an explanation of mine--you and every one who has bought +a single one of her lecture tickets. Do you suppose a man who's been +through what I went through while that woman was talking to you in the +porch before dinner is going to hold his tongue, and not attempt to +justify himself? No decent man is going to sit down under that sort of +thing. It's enough to ruin his character. If you're my mother's friend, +you owe it to me to hear what I've got to say." + +He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. + +"Good God, mother!" he burst out suddenly, "what did you do it for? +Haven't you had everything you wanted ever since I was able to pay for +it? Haven't I paid you back every cent you spent on me when I was in +college? Have I ever gone back on you since I was big enough to +work?" He turned to me with a laugh. "I thought she did it to amuse +herself--and because there was such a demand for her lectures. _Such a +demand!_ That's what she always told me. When we asked her to come out +and spend this winter with us in Minneapolis, she wrote back that she +couldn't because she had engagements all through the south, and her +manager wouldn't let her off. That's the reason why I came all the way +on here to see her. We thought she was the most popular lecturer in the +United States, my wife and I did! We were awfully proud of it too, I can +tell you." He dropped into a chair, still laughing. + +"How can you, Lancelot, how can you!" His mother, forgetful of my +presence, was clinging to him with tentative caresses. "When you didn't +need the money any longer I spent it all on the children--you know I +did." + +"Yes, on lace christening dresses and life-size rocking-horses with real +manes! The kind of thing children can't do without." + +"Oh, Lancelot, Lancelot--I loved them so! How can you believe such +falsehoods about me?" + +"What falsehoods about you?" + +"That I ever told anybody such dreadful things?" + +He put her back gently, keeping his eyes on hers. "Did you never tell +anybody in this house that you were lecturing to support your son?" + +Her hands dropped from his shoulders and she flashed round on me in +sudden anger. + +"I know what I think of people who call themselves friends and who come +between a mother and her son!" + +"Oh, mother, mother!" he groaned. + +I went up to him and laid my hand on his shoulder. + +"My dear man," I said, "don't you see the uselessness of prolonging +this?" + +"Yes, I do," he answered abruptly; and before I could forestall his +movement he rose and walked out of the room. + +There was a long silence, measured by the lessening reverberations of +his footsteps down the wooden floor of the corridor. + +When they ceased I approached Mrs. Amyot, who had sunk into her chair. +I held out my hand and she took it without a trace of resentment on her +ravaged face. + +"I sent his wife a seal-skin jacket at Christmas!" she said, with the +tears running down her cheeks. + + + + +SOULS BELATED + + +Their railway-carriage had been full when the train left Bologna; but at +the first station beyond Milan their only remaining companion--a courtly +person who ate garlic out of a carpet-bag--had left his crumb-strewn +seat with a bow. + +Lydia's eye regretfully followed the shiny broadcloth of his retreating +back till it lost itself in the cloud of touts and cab-drivers hanging +about the station; then she glanced across at Gannett and caught the +same regret in his look. They were both sorry to be alone. + +"_Par-ten-za!_" shouted the guard. The train vibrated to a sudden +slamming of doors; a waiter ran along the platform with a tray of +fossilized sandwiches; a belated porter flung a bundle of shawls and +band-boxes into a third-class carriage; the guard snapped out a brief +_Partensa!_ which indicated the purely ornamental nature of his first +shout; and the train swung out of the station. + +The direction of the road had changed, and a shaft of sunlight struck +across the dusty red velvet seats into Lydia's corner. Gannett did not +notice it. He had returned to his _Revue de Paris,_ and she had to rise +and lower the shade of the farther window. Against the vast horizon of +their leisure such incidents stood out sharply. + +Having lowered the shade, Lydia sat down, leaving the length of the +carriage between herself and Gannett. At length he missed her and looked +up. + +"I moved out of the sun," she hastily explained. + +He looked at her curiously: the sun was beating on her through the +shade. + +"Very well," he said pleasantly; adding, "You don't mind?" as he drew a +cigarette-case from his pocket. + +It was a refreshing touch, relieving the tension of her spirit with the +suggestion that, after all, if he could _smoke_--! The relief was +only momentary. Her experience of smokers was limited (her husband had +disapproved of the use of tobacco) but she knew from hearsay that men +sometimes smoked to get away from things; that a cigar might be the +masculine equivalent of darkened windows and a headache. Gannett, after +a puff or two, returned to his review. + +It was just as she had foreseen; he feared to speak as much as she did. +It was one of the misfortunes of their situation that they were never +busy enough to necessitate, or even to justify, the postponement of +unpleasant discussions. If they avoided a question it was obviously, +unconcealably because the question was disagreeable. They had unlimited +leisure and an accumulation of mental energy to devote to any subject +that presented itself; new topics were in fact at a premium. Lydia +sometimes had premonitions of a famine-stricken period when there would +be nothing left to talk about, and she had already caught herself doling +out piecemeal what, in the first prodigality of their confidences, +she would have flung to him in a breath. Their silence therefore +might simply mean that they had nothing to say; but it was another +disadvantage of their position that it allowed infinite opportunity +for the classification of minute differences. Lydia had learned to +distinguish between real and factitious silences; and under Gannett's +she now detected a hum of speech to which her own thoughts made +breathless answer. + +How could it be otherwise, with that thing between them? She glanced +up at the rack overhead. The _thing_ was there, in her dressing-bag, +symbolically suspended over her head and his. He was thinking of it now, +just as she was; they had been thinking of it in unison ever since they +had entered the train. While the carriage had held other travellers they +had screened her from his thoughts; but now that he and she were alone +she knew exactly what was passing through his mind; she could almost +hear him asking himself what he should say to her.... + + * * * * * + +The thing had come that morning, brought up to her in an +innocent-looking envelope with the rest of their letters, as they were +leaving the hotel at Bologna. As she tore it open, she and Gannett were +laughing over some ineptitude of the local guide-book--they had been +driven, of late, to make the most of such incidental humors of travel. +Even when she had unfolded the document she took it for some unimportant +business paper sent abroad for her signature, and her eye travelled +inattentively over the curly _Whereases_ of the preamble until a word +arrested her:--Divorce. There it stood, an impassable barrier, between +her husband's name and hers. + +She had been prepared for it, of course, as healthy people are said to +be prepared for death, in the sense of knowing it must come without +in the least expecting that it will. She had known from the first +that Tillotson meant to divorce her--but what did it matter? Nothing +mattered, in those first days of supreme deliverance, but the fact that +she was free; and not so much (she had begun to be aware) that freedom +had released her from Tillotson as that it had given her to Gannett. +This discovery had not been agreeable to her self-esteem. She had +preferred to think that Tillotson had himself embodied all her reasons +for leaving him; and those he represented had seemed cogent enough to +stand in no need of reinforcement. Yet she had not left him till she met +Gannett. It was her love for Gannett that had made life with Tillotson +so poor and incomplete a business. If she had never, from the first, +regarded her marriage as a full cancelling of her claims upon life, +she had at least, for a number of years, accepted it as a provisional +compensation,--she had made it "do." Existence in the commodious +Tillotson mansion in Fifth Avenue--with Mrs. Tillotson senior commanding +the approaches from the second-story front windows--had been reduced to +a series of purely automatic acts. The moral atmosphere of the Tillotson +interior was as carefully screened and curtained as the house itself: +Mrs. Tillotson senior dreaded ideas as much as a draught in her back. +Prudent people liked an even temperature; and to do anything unexpected +was as foolish as going out in the rain. One of the chief advantages of +being rich was that one need not be exposed to unforeseen contingencies: +by the use of ordinary firmness and common sense one could make sure +of doing exactly the same thing every day at the same hour. These +doctrines, reverentially imbibed with his mother's milk, Tillotson +(a model son who had never given his parents an hour's anxiety) +complacently expounded to his wife, testifying to his sense of their +importance by the regularity with which he wore goloshes on damp days, +his punctuality at meals, and his elaborate precautions against burglars +and contagious diseases. Lydia, coming from a smaller town, and +entering New York life through the portals of the Tillotson mansion, had +mechanically accepted this point of view as inseparable from having a +front pew in church and a parterre box at the opera. All the people who +came to the house revolved in the same small circle of prejudices. It +was the kind of society in which, after dinner, the ladies compared the +exorbitant charges of their children's teachers, and agreed that, even +with the new duties on French clothes, it was cheaper in the end to get +everything from Worth; while the husbands, over their cigars, lamented +municipal corruption, and decided that the men to start a reform were +those who had no private interests at stake. + +To Lydia this view of life had become a matter of course, just as +lumbering about in her mother-in-law's landau had come to seem the +only possible means of locomotion, and listening every Sunday to a +fashionable Presbyterian divine the inevitable atonement for having +thought oneself bored on the other six days of the week. Before she met +Gannett her life had seemed merely dull: his coming made it appear like +one of those dismal Cruikshank prints in which the people are all ugly +and all engaged in occupations that are either vulgar or stupid. + +It was natural that Tillotson should be the chief sufferer from +this readjustment of focus. Gannett's nearness had made her husband +ridiculous, and a part of the ridicule had been reflected on herself. +Her tolerance laid her open to a suspicion of obtuseness from which she +must, at all costs, clear herself in Gannett's eyes. + +She did not understand this until afterwards. At the time she fancied +that she had merely reached the limits of endurance. In so large a +charter of liberties as the mere act of leaving Tillotson seemed to +confer, the small question of divorce or no divorce did not count. It +was when she saw that she had left her husband only to be with Gannett +that she perceived the significance of anything affecting their +relations. Her husband, in casting her off, had virtually flung her at +Gannett: it was thus that the world viewed it. The measure of alacrity +with which Gannett would receive her would be the subject of curious +speculation over afternoon-tea tables and in club corners. She knew what +would be said--she had heard it so often of others! The recollection +bathed her in misery. The men would probably back Gannett to "do +the decent thing"; but the ladies' eye-brows would emphasize the +worthlessness of such enforced fidelity; and after all, they would +be right. She had put herself in a position where Gannett "owed" her +something; where, as a gentleman, he was bound to "stand the damage." +The idea of accepting such compensation had never crossed her mind; the +so-called rehabilitation of such a marriage had always seemed to her +the only real disgrace. What she dreaded was the necessity of having to +explain herself; of having to combat his arguments; of calculating, in +spite of herself, the exact measure of insistence with which he pressed +them. She knew not whether she most shrank from his insisting too much +or too little. In such a case the nicest sense of proportion might be at +fault; and how easy to fall into the error of taking her resistance +for a test of his sincerity! Whichever way she turned, an ironical +implication confronted her: she had the exasperated sense of having +walked into the trap of some stupid practical joke. + +Beneath all these preoccupations lurked the dread of what he was +thinking. Sooner or later, of course, he would have to speak; but that, +in the meantime, he should think, even for a moment, that there was any +use in speaking, seemed to her simply unendurable. Her sensitiveness on +this point was aggravated by another fear, as yet barely on the level of +consciousness; the fear of unwillingly involving Gannett in the trammels +of her dependence. To look upon him as the instrument of her liberation; +to resist in herself the least tendency to a wifely taking possession of +his future; had seemed to Lydia the one way of maintaining the dignity +of their relation. Her view had not changed, but she was aware of a +growing inability to keep her thoughts fixed on the essential point--the +point of parting with Gannett. It was easy to face as long as she kept +it sufficiently far off: but what was this act of mental postponement +but a gradual encroachment on his future? What was needful was the +courage to recognize the moment when, by some word or look, their +voluntary fellowship should be transformed into a bondage the more +wearing that it was based on none of those common obligations which make +the most imperfect marriage in some sort a centre of gravity. + +When the porter, at the next station, threw the door open, Lydia drew +back, making way for the hoped-for intruder; but none came, and the +train took up its leisurely progress through the spring wheat-fields and +budding copses. She now began to hope that Gannett would speak before +the next station. She watched him furtively, half-disposed to return +to the seat opposite his, but there was an artificiality about his +absorption that restrained her. She had never before seen him read with +so conspicuous an air of warding off interruption. What could he be +thinking of? Why should he be afraid to speak? Or was it her answer that +he dreaded? + +The train paused for the passing of an express, and he put down his book +and leaned out of the window. Presently he turned to her with a smile. +"There's a jolly old villa out here," he said. + +His easy tone relieved her, and she smiled back at him as she crossed +over to his corner. + +Beyond the embankment, through the opening in a mossy wall, she caught +sight of the villa, with its broken balustrades, its stagnant fountains, +and the stone satyr closing the perspective of a dusky grass-walk. + +"How should you like to live there?" he asked as the train moved on. + +"There?" + +"In some such place, I mean. One might do worse, don't you think so? +There must be at least two centuries of solitude under those yew-trees. +Shouldn't you like it?" + +"I--I don't know," she faltered. She knew now that he meant to speak. + +He lit another cigarette. "We shall have to live somewhere, you know," +he said as he bent above the match. + +Lydia tried to speak carelessly. "_Je n'en vois pas la necessite!_ Why +not live everywhere, as we have been doing?" + +"But we can't travel forever, can we?" + +"Oh, forever's a long word," she objected, picking up the review he had +thrown aside. + +"For the rest of our lives then," he said, moving nearer. + +She made a slight gesture which caused his hand to slip from hers. + +"Why should we make plans? I thought you agreed with me that it's +pleasanter to drift." + +He looked at her hesitatingly. "It's been pleasant, certainly; but +I suppose I shall have to get at my work again some day. You know I +haven't written a line since--all this time," he hastily emended. + +She flamed with sympathy and self-reproach. "Oh, if you mean _that_--if +you want to write--of course we must settle down. How stupid of me not +to have thought of it sooner! Where shall we go? Where do you think you +could work best? We oughtn't to lose any more time." + +He hesitated again. "I had thought of a villa in these parts. It's +quiet; we shouldn't be bothered. Should you like it?" + +"Of course I should like it." She paused and looked away. "But I +thought--I remember your telling me once that your best work had been +done in a crowd--in big cities. Why should you shut yourself up in a +desert?" + +Gannett, for a moment, made no reply. At length he said, avoiding her +eye as carefully as she avoided his: "It might be different now; I can't +tell, of course, till I try. A writer ought not to be dependent on his +_milieu_; it's a mistake to humor oneself in that way; and I thought +that just at first you might prefer to be--" + +She faced him. "To be what?" + +"Well--quiet. I mean--" + +"What do you mean by 'at first'?" she interrupted. + +He paused again. "I mean after we are married." + +She thrust up her chin and turned toward the window. "Thank you!" she +tossed back at him. + +"Lydia!" he exclaimed blankly; and she felt in every fibre of her +averted person that he had made the inconceivable, the unpardonable +mistake of anticipating her acquiescence. + +The train rattled on and he groped for a third cigarette. Lydia remained +silent. + +"I haven't offended you?" he ventured at length, in the tone of a man +who feels his way. + +She shook her head with a sigh. "I thought you understood," she moaned. +Their eyes met and she moved back to his side. + +"Do you want to know how not to offend me? By taking it for granted, +once for all, that you've said your say on this odious question and that +I've said mine, and that we stand just where we did this morning before +that--that hateful paper came to spoil everything between us!" + +"To spoil everything between us? What on earth do you mean? Aren't you +glad to be free?" + +"I was free before." + +"Not to marry me," he suggested. + +"But I don't _want_ to marry you!" she cried. + +She saw that he turned pale. "I'm obtuse, I suppose," he said slowly. "I +confess I don't see what you're driving at. Are you tired of the whole +business? Or was _I_ simply a--an excuse for getting away? Perhaps you +didn't care to travel alone? Was that it? And now you want to chuck +me?" His voice had grown harsh. "You owe me a straight answer, you know; +don't be tender-hearted!" + +Her eyes swam as she leaned to him. "Don't you see it's because I +care--because I care so much? Oh, Ralph! Can't you see how it would +humiliate me? Try to feel it as a woman would! Don't you see the misery +of being made your wife in this way? If I'd known you as a girl--that +would have been a real marriage! But now--this vulgar fraud upon +society--and upon a society we despised and laughed at--this sneaking +back into a position that we've voluntarily forfeited: don't you see +what a cheap compromise it is? We neither of us believe in the abstract +'sacredness' of marriage; we both know that no ceremony is needed to +consecrate our love for each other; what object can we have in marrying, +except the secret fear of each that the other may escape, or the secret +longing to work our way back gradually--oh, very gradually--into +the esteem of the people whose conventional morality we have always +ridiculed and hated? And the very fact that, after a decent interval, +these same people would come and dine with us--the women who talk about +the indissolubility of marriage, and who would let me die in a gutter +to-day because I am 'leading a life of sin'--doesn't that disgust you +more than their turning their backs on us now? I can stand being cut by +them, but I couldn't stand their coming to call and asking what I meant +to do about visiting that unfortunate Mrs. So-and-so!" + +She paused, and Gannett maintained a perplexed silence. + +"You judge things too theoretically," he said at length, slowly. "Life +is made up of compromises." + +"The life we ran away from--yes! If we had been willing to accept +them"--she flushed--"we might have gone on meeting each other at Mrs. +Tillotson's dinners." + +He smiled slightly. "I didn't know that we ran away to found a new +system of ethics. I supposed it was because we loved each other." + +"Life is complex, of course; isn't it the very recognition of that fact +that separates us from the people who see it _tout d'une piece?_ If +_they_ are right--if marriage is sacred in itself and the individual +must always be sacrificed to the family--then there can be no real +marriage between us, since our--our being together is a protest against +the sacrifice of the individual to the family." She interrupted +herself with a laugh. "You'll say now that I'm giving you a lecture on +sociology! Of course one acts as one can--as one must, perhaps--pulled +by all sorts of invisible threads; but at least one needn't pretend, for +social advantages, to subscribe to a creed that ignores the complexity +of human motives--that classifies people by arbitrary signs, and puts it +in everybody's reach to be on Mrs. Tillotson's visiting-list. It may +be necessary that the world should be ruled by conventions--but if we +believed in them, why did we break through them? And if we don't believe +in them, is it honest to take advantage of the protection they afford?" + +Gannett hesitated. "One may believe in them or not; but as long as they +do rule the world it is only by taking advantage of their protection +that one can find a _modus vivendi."_ + +"Do outlaws need a _modus vivendi?"_ + +He looked at her hopelessly. Nothing is more perplexing to man than the +mental process of a woman who reasons her emotions. + +She thought she had scored a point and followed it up passionately. +"You do understand, don't you? You see how the very thought of the thing +humiliates me! We are together to-day because we choose to be--don't +let us look any farther than that!" She caught his hands. "_Promise_ me +you'll never speak of it again; promise me you'll never _think_ of it +even," she implored, with a tearful prodigality of italics. + +Through what followed--his protests, his arguments, his final +unconvinced submission to her wishes--she had a sense of his but +half-discerning all that, for her, had made the moment so tumultuous. +They had reached that memorable point in every heart-history when, for +the first time, the man seems obtuse and the woman irrational. It was +the abundance of his intentions that consoled her, on reflection, +for what they lacked in quality. After all, it would have been worse, +incalculably worse, to have detected any over-readiness to understand +her. + + +II + +When the train at night-fall brought them to their journey's end at the +edge of one of the lakes, Lydia was glad that they were not, as usual, +to pass from one solitude to another. Their wanderings during the year +had indeed been like the flight of outlaws: through Sicily, Dalmatia, +Transylvania and Southern Italy they had persisted in their tacit +avoidance of their kind. Isolation, at first, had deepened the flavor of +their happiness, as night intensifies the scent of certain flowers; but +in the new phase on which they were entering, Lydia's chief wish was +that they should be less abnormally exposed to the action of each +other's thoughts. + +She shrank, nevertheless, as the brightly-looming bulk of the +fashionable Anglo-American hotel on the water's brink began to radiate +toward their advancing boat its vivid suggestion of social order, +visitors' lists, Church services, and the bland inquisition of the +_table-d'hote_. The mere fact that in a moment or two she must take her +place on the hotel register as Mrs. Gannett seemed to weaken the springs +of her resistance. + +They had meant to stay for a night only, on their way to a lofty village +among the glaciers of Monte Rosa; but after the first plunge into +publicity, when they entered the dining-room, Lydia felt the relief +of being lost in a crowd, of ceasing for a moment to be the centre of +Gannett's scrutiny; and in his face she caught the reflection of her +feeling. After dinner, when she went upstairs, he strolled into the +smoking-room, and an hour or two later, sitting in the darkness of her +window, she heard his voice below and saw him walking up and down the +terrace with a companion cigar at his side. When he came up he told her +he had been talking to the hotel chaplain--a very good sort of fellow. + +"Queer little microcosms, these hotels! Most of these people live here +all summer and then migrate to Italy or the Riviera. The English are +the only people who can lead that kind of life with dignity--those +soft-voiced old ladies in Shetland shawls somehow carry the British +Empire under their caps. _Civis Romanus sum_. It's a curious +study--there might be some good things to work up here." + +He stood before her with the vivid preoccupied stare of the novelist +on the trail of a "subject." With a relief that was half painful she +noticed that, for the first time since they had been together, he was +hardly aware of her presence. "Do you think you could write here?" + +"Here? I don't know." His stare dropped. "After being out of things so +long one's first impressions are bound to be tremendously vivid, you +know. I see a dozen threads already that one might follow--" + +He broke off with a touch of embarrassment. + +"Then follow them. We'll stay," she said with sudden decision. + +"Stay here?" He glanced at her in surprise, and then, walking to the +window, looked out upon the dusky slumber of the garden. + +"Why not?" she said at length, in a tone of veiled irritation. + +"The place is full of old cats in caps who gossip with the chaplain. +Shall you like--I mean, it would be different if--" + +She flamed up. + +"Do you suppose I care? It's none of their business." + +"Of course not; but you won't get them to think so." + +"They may think what they please." + +He looked at her doubtfully. + +"It's for you to decide." + +"We'll stay," she repeated. + +Gannett, before they met, had made himself known as a successful writer +of short stories and of a novel which had achieved the distinction of +being widely discussed. The reviewers called him "promising," and Lydia +now accused herself of having too long interfered with the fulfilment of +his promise. There was a special irony in the fact, since his passionate +assurances that only the stimulus of her companionship could bring out +his latent faculty had almost given the dignity of a "vocation" to +her course: there had been moments when she had felt unable to assume, +before posterity, the responsibility of thwarting his career. And, after +all, he had not written a line since they had been together: his first +desire to write had come from renewed contact with the world! Was it all +a mistake then? Must the most intelligent choice work more disastrously +than the blundering combinations of chance? Or was there a still more +humiliating answer to her perplexities? His sudden impulse of activity +so exactly coincided with her own wish to withdraw, for a time, from the +range of his observation, that she wondered if he too were not seeking +sanctuary from intolerable problems. + +"You must begin to-morrow!" she cried, hiding a tremor under the laugh +with which she added, "I wonder if there's any ink in the inkstand?" + + * * * * * + +Whatever else they had at the Hotel Bellosguardo, they had, as Miss +Pinsent said, "a certain tone." It was to Lady Susan Condit that they +owed this inestimable benefit; an advantage ranking in Miss Pinsent's +opinion above even the lawn tennis courts and the resident chaplain. It +was the fact of Lady Susan's annual visit that made the hotel what +it was. Miss Pinsent was certainly the last to underrate such a +privilege:--"It's so important, my dear, forming as we do a little +family, that there should be some one to give _the tone_; and no one +could do it better than Lady Susan--an earl's daughter and a person of +such determination. Dear Mrs. Ainger now--who really _ought_, you know, +when Lady Susan's away--absolutely refuses to assert herself." Miss +Pinsent sniffed derisively. "A bishop's niece!--my dear, I saw her once +actually give in to some South Americans--and before us all. She gave +up her seat at table to oblige them--such a lack of dignity! Lady Susan +spoke to her very plainly about it afterwards." + +Miss Pinsent glanced across the lake and adjusted her auburn front. + +"But of course I don't deny that the stand Lady Susan takes is not +always easy to live up to--for the rest of us, I mean. Monsieur +Grossart, our good proprietor, finds it trying at times, I know--he has +said as much, privately, to Mrs. Ainger and me. After all, the poor man +is not to blame for wanting to fill his hotel, is he? And Lady Susan is +so difficult--so very difficult--about new people. One might almost say +that she disapproves of them beforehand, on principle. And yet she's had +warnings--she very nearly made a dreadful mistake once with the Duchess +of Levens, who dyed her hair and--well, swore and smoked. One would +have thought that might have been a lesson to Lady Susan." Miss Pinsent +resumed her knitting with a sigh. "There are exceptions, of course. She +took at once to you and Mr. Gannett--it was quite remarkable, +really. Oh, I don't mean that either--of course not! It was perfectly +natural--we _all_ thought you so charming and interesting from the first +day--we knew at once that Mr. Gannett was intellectual, by the magazines +you took in; but you know what I mean. Lady Susan is so very--well, I +won't say prejudiced, as Mrs. Ainger does--but so prepared _not_ to like +new people, that her taking to you in that way was a surprise to us all, +I confess." + +Miss Pinsent sent a significant glance down the long laurustinus alley +from the other end of which two people--a lady and gentleman--were +strolling toward them through the smiling neglect of the garden. + +"In this case, of course, it's very different; that I'm willing to +admit. Their looks are against them; but, as Mrs. Ainger says, one can't +exactly tell them so." + +"She's very handsome," Lydia ventured, with her eyes on the lady, who +showed, under the dome of a vivid sunshade, the hour-glass figure and +superlative coloring of a Christmas chromo. + +"That's the worst of it. She's too handsome." + +"Well, after all, she can't help that." + +"Other people manage to," said Miss Pinsent skeptically. + +"But isn't it rather unfair of Lady Susan--considering that nothing is +known about them?" + +"But, my dear, that's the very thing that's against them. It's +infinitely worse than any actual knowledge." + +Lydia mentally agreed that, in the case of Mrs. Linton, it possibly +might be. + +"I wonder why they came here?" she mused. + +"That's against them too. It's always a bad sign when loud people come +to a quiet place. And they've brought van-loads of boxes--her maid told +Mrs. Ainger's that they meant to stop indefinitely." + +"And Lady Susan actually turned her back on her in the _salon?_" + +"My dear, she said it was for our sakes: that makes it so unanswerable! +But poor Grossart _is_ in a way! The Lintons have taken his most +expensive _suite_, you know--the yellow damask drawing-room above the +portico--and they have champagne with every meal!" + +They were silent as Mr. and Mrs. Linton sauntered by; the lady +with tempestuous brows and challenging chin; the gentleman, a blond +stripling, trailing after her, head downward, like a reluctant child +dragged by his nurse. + +"What does your husband think of them, my dear?" Miss Pinsent whispered +as they passed out of earshot. + +Lydia stooped to pick a violet in the border. + +"He hasn't told me." + +"Of your speaking to them, I mean. Would he approve of that? I know how +very particular nice Americans are. I think your action might make a +difference; it would certainly carry weight with Lady Susan." + +"Dear Miss Pinsent, you flatter me!" + +Lydia rose and gathered up her book and sunshade. + +"Well, if you're asked for an opinion--if Lady Susan asks you for one--I +think you ought to be prepared," Miss Pinsent admonished her as she +moved away. + + +III + +Lady Susan held her own. She ignored the Lintons, and her little family, +as Miss Pinsent phrased it, followed suit. Even Mrs. Ainger agreed that +it was obligatory. If Lady Susan owed it to the others not to speak to +the Lintons, the others clearly owed it to Lady Susan to back her up. It +was generally found expedient, at the Hotel Bellosguardo, to adopt this +form of reasoning. + +Whatever effect this combined action may have had upon the Lintons, +it did not at least have that of driving them away. Monsieur Grossart, +after a few days of suspense, had the satisfaction of seeing them settle +down in his yellow damask _premier_ with what looked like a permanent +installation of palm-trees and silk sofa-cushions, and a gratifying +continuance in the consumption of champagne. Mrs. Linton trailed her +Doucet draperies up and down the garden with the same challenging air, +while her husband, smoking innumerable cigarettes, dragged himself +dejectedly in her wake; but neither of them, after the first encounter +with Lady Susan, made any attempt to extend their acquaintance. They +simply ignored their ignorers. As Miss Pinsent resentfully observed, +they behaved exactly as though the hotel were empty. + +It was therefore a matter of surprise, as well as of displeasure, to +Lydia, to find, on glancing up one day from her seat in the garden, that +the shadow which had fallen across her book was that of the enigmatic +Mrs. Linton. + +"I want to speak to you," that lady said, in a rich hard voice that +seemed the audible expression of her gown and her complexion. + +Lydia started. She certainly did not want to speak to Mrs. Linton. + +"Shall I sit down here?" the latter continued, fixing her +intensely-shaded eyes on Lydia's face, "or are you afraid of being seen +with me?" + +"Afraid?" Lydia colored. "Sit down, please. What is it that you wish to +say?" + +Mrs. Linton, with a smile, drew up a garden-chair and crossed one +open-work ankle above the other. + +"I want you to tell me what my husband said to your husband last night." + +Lydia turned pale. + +"My husband--to yours?" she faltered, staring at the other. + +"Didn't you know they were closeted together for hours in the +smoking-room after you went upstairs? My man didn't get to bed until +nearly two o'clock and when he did I couldn't get a word out of him. +When he wants to be aggravating I'll back him against anybody living!" +Her teeth and eyes flashed persuasively upon Lydia. "But you'll tell +me what they were talking about, won't you? I know I can trust you--you +look so awfully kind. And it's for his own good. He's such a precious +donkey and I'm so afraid he's got into some beastly scrape or other. If +he'd only trust his own old woman! But they're always writing to him and +setting him against me. And I've got nobody to turn to." She laid her +hand on Lydia's with a rattle of bracelets. "You'll help me, won't you?" + +Lydia drew back from the smiling fierceness of her brows. + +"I'm sorry--but I don't think I understand. My husband has said nothing +to me of--of yours." + +The great black crescents above Mrs. Linton's eyes met angrily. + +"I say--is that true?" she demanded. + +Lydia rose from her seat. + +"Oh, look here, I didn't mean that, you know--you mustn't take one up +so! Can't you see how rattled I am?" + +Lydia saw that, in fact, her beautiful mouth was quivering beneath +softened eyes. + +"I'm beside myself!" the splendid creature wailed, dropping into her +seat. + +"I'm so sorry," Lydia repeated, forcing herself to speak kindly; "but +how can I help you?" + +Mrs. Linton raised her head sharply. + +"By finding out--there's a darling!" + +"Finding what out?" + +"What Trevenna told him." + +"Trevenna--?" Lydia echoed in bewilderment. + +Mrs. Linton clapped her hand to her mouth. + +"Oh, Lord--there, it's out! What a fool I am! But I supposed of course +you knew; I supposed everybody knew." She dried her eyes and bridled. +"Didn't you know that he's Lord Trevenna? I'm Mrs. Cope." + +Lydia recognized the names. They had figured in a flamboyant elopement +which had thrilled fashionable London some six months earlier. + +"Now you see how it is--you understand, don't you?" Mrs. Cope continued +on a note of appeal. "I knew you would--that's the reason I came to you. +I suppose _he_ felt the same thing about your husband; he's not spoken +to another soul in the place." Her face grew anxious again. "He's +awfully sensitive, generally--he feels our position, he says--as if it +wasn't _my_ place to feel that! But when he does get talking there's no +knowing what he'll say. I know he's been brooding over something lately, +and I _must_ find out what it is--it's to his interest that I should. +I always tell him that I think only of his interest; if he'd only trust +me! But he's been so odd lately--I can't think what he's plotting. You +will help me, dear?" + +Lydia, who had remained standing, looked away uncomfortably. + +"If you mean by finding out what Lord Trevenna has told my husband, I'm +afraid it's impossible." + +"Why impossible?" + +"Because I infer that it was told in confidence." + +Mrs. Cope stared incredulously. + +"Well, what of that? Your husband looks such a dear--any one can see +he's awfully gone on you. What's to prevent your getting it out of him?" + +Lydia flushed. + +"I'm not a spy!" she exclaimed. + +"A spy--a spy? How dare you?" Mrs. Cope flamed out. "Oh, I don't mean +that either! Don't be angry with me--I'm so miserable." She essayed +a softer note. "Do you call that spying--for one woman to help out +another? I do need help so dreadfully! I'm at my wits' end with +Trevenna, I am indeed. He's such a boy--a mere baby, you know; he's only +two-and-twenty." She dropped her orbed lids. "He's younger than me--only +fancy! a few months younger. I tell him he ought to listen to me as if I +was his mother; oughtn't he now? But he won't, he won't! All his people +are at him, you see--oh, I know _their_ little game! Trying to get him +away from me before I can get my divorce--that's what they're up to. At +first he wouldn't listen to them; he used to toss their letters over to +me to read; but now he reads them himself, and answers 'em too, I fancy; +he's always shut up in his room, writing. If I only knew what his +plan is I could stop him fast enough--he's such a simpleton. But he's +dreadfully deep too--at times I can't make him out. But I know he's told +your husband everything--I knew that last night the minute I laid eyes +on him. And I _must_ find out--you must help me--I've got no one else to +turn to!" + +She caught Lydia's fingers in a stormy pressure. + +"Say you'll help me--you and your husband." + +Lydia tried to free herself. + +"What you ask is impossible; you must see that it is. No one could +interfere in--in the way you ask." + +Mrs. Cope's clutch tightened. + +"You won't, then? You won't?" + +"Certainly not. Let me go, please." + +Mrs. Cope released her with a laugh. + +"Oh, go by all means--pray don't let me detain you! Shall you go and +tell Lady Susan Condit that there's a pair of us--or shall I save you +the trouble of enlightening her?" + +Lydia stood still in the middle of the path, seeing her antagonist +through a mist of terror. Mrs. Cope was still laughing. + +"Oh, I'm not spiteful by nature, my dear; but you're a little more than +flesh and blood can stand! It's impossible, is it? Let you go, indeed! +You're too good to be mixed up in my affairs, are you? Why, you little +fool, the first day I laid eyes on you I saw that you and I were both in +the same box--that's the reason I spoke to you." + +She stepped nearer, her smile dilating on Lydia like a lamp through a +fog. + +"You can take your choice, you know; I always play fair. If you'll tell +I'll promise not to. Now then, which is it to be?" + +Lydia, involuntarily, had begun to move away from the pelting storm of +words; but at this she turned and sat down again. + +"You may go," she said simply. "I shall stay here." + + +IV + +She stayed there for a long time, in the hypnotized contemplation, +not of Mrs. Cope's present, but of her own past. Gannett, early that +morning, had gone off on a long walk--he had fallen into the habit of +taking these mountain-tramps with various fellow-lodgers; but even had +he been within reach she could not have gone to him just then. She had +to deal with herself first. She was surprised to find how, in the last +months, she had lost the habit of introspection. Since their coming to +the Hotel Bellosguardo she and Gannett had tacitly avoided themselves +and each other. + +She was aroused by the whistle of the three o'clock steamboat as it +neared the landing just beyond the hotel gates. Three o'clock! Then +Gannett would soon be back--he had told her to expect him before four. +She rose hurriedly, her face averted from the inquisitorial facade of +the hotel. She could not see him just yet; she could not go indoors. She +slipped through one of the overgrown garden-alleys and climbed a steep +path to the hills. + +It was dark when she opened their sitting-room door. Gannett was sitting +on the window-ledge smoking a cigarette. Cigarettes were now his chief +resource: he had not written a line during the two months they had spent +at the Hotel Bellosguardo. In that respect, it had turned out not to be +the right _milieu_ after all. + +He started up at Lydia's entrance. + +"Where have you been? I was getting anxious." + +She sat down in a chair near the door. + +"Up the mountain," she said wearily. + +"Alone?" + +"Yes." + +Gannett threw away his cigarette: the sound of her voice made him want +to see her face. + +"Shall we have a little light?" he suggested. + +She made no answer and he lifted the globe from the lamp and put a match +to the wick. Then he looked at her. + +"Anything wrong? You look done up." + +She sat glancing vaguely about the little sitting-room, dimly lit by +the pallid-globed lamp, which left in twilight the outlines of the +furniture, of his writing-table heaped with books and papers, of the +tea-roses and jasmine drooping on the mantel-piece. How like home it had +all grown--how like home! + +"Lydia, what is wrong?" he repeated. + +She moved away from him, feeling for her hatpins and turning to lay her +hat and sunshade on the table. + +Suddenly she said: "That woman has been talking to me." + +Gannett stared. + +"That woman? What woman?" + +"Mrs. Linton--Mrs. Cope." + +He gave a start of annoyance, still, as she perceived, not grasping the +full import of her words. + +"The deuce! She told you--?" + +"She told me everything." + +Gannett looked at her anxiously. + +"What impudence! I'm so sorry that you should have been exposed to this, +dear." + +"Exposed!" Lydia laughed. + +Gannett's brow clouded and they looked away from each other. + +"Do you know _why_ she told me? She had the best of reasons. The first +time she laid eyes on me she saw that we were both in the same box." + +"Lydia!" + +"So it was natural, of course, that she should turn to me in a +difficulty." + +"What difficulty?" + +"It seems she has reason to think that Lord Trevenna's people are trying +to get him away from her before she gets her divorce--" + +"Well?" + +"And she fancied he had been consulting with you last night as to--as to +the best way of escaping from her." + +Gannett stood up with an angry forehead. + +"Well--what concern of yours was all this dirty business? Why should she +go to you?" + +"Don't you see? It's so simple. I was to wheedle his secret out of you." + +"To oblige that woman?" + +"Yes; or, if I was unwilling to oblige her, then to protect myself." + +"To protect yourself? Against whom?" + +"Against her telling every one in the hotel that she and I are in the +same box." + +"She threatened that?" + +"She left me the choice of telling it myself or of doing it for me." + +"The beast!" + +There was a long silence. Lydia had seated herself on the sofa, beyond +the radius of the lamp, and he leaned against the window. His next +question surprised her. + +"When did this happen? At what time, I mean?" She looked at him vaguely. + +"I don't know--after luncheon, I think. Yes, I remember; it must have +been at about three o'clock." + +He stepped into the middle of the room and as he approached the light +she saw that his brow had cleared. + +"Why do you ask?" she said. + +"Because when I came in, at about half-past three, the mail was just +being distributed, and Mrs. Cope was waiting as usual to pounce on +her letters; you know she was always watching for the postman. She +was standing so close to me that I couldn't help seeing a big +official-looking envelope that was handed to her. She tore it open, gave +one look at the inside, and rushed off upstairs like a whirlwind, with +the director shouting after her that she had left all her other letters +behind. I don't believe she ever thought of you again after that paper +was put into her hand." + +"Why?" + +"Because she was too busy. I was sitting in the window, watching for +you, when the five o'clock boat left, and who should go on board, bag +and baggage, valet and maid, dressing-bags and poodle, but Mrs. Cope +and Trevenna. Just an hour and a half to pack up in! And you should +have seen her when they started. She was radiant--shaking hands with +everybody--waving her handkerchief from the deck--distributing bows and +smiles like an empress. If ever a woman got what she wanted just in the +nick of time that woman did. She'll be Lady Trevenna within a week, I'll +wager." + +"You think she has her divorce?" + +"I'm sure of it. And she must have got it just after her talk with you." + +Lydia was silent. + +At length she said, with a kind of reluctance, "She was horribly +angry when she left me. It wouldn't have taken long to tell Lady Susan +Condit." + +"Lady Susan Condit has not been told." + +"How do you know?" + +"Because when I went downstairs half an hour ago I met Lady Susan on the +way--" + +He stopped, half smiling. + +"Well?" + +"And she stopped to ask if I thought you would act as patroness to a +charity concert she is getting up." + +In spite of themselves they both broke into a laugh. Lydia's ended in +sobs and she sank down with her face hidden. Gannett bent over her, +seeking her hands. + +"That vile woman--I ought to have warned you to keep away from her; +I can't forgive myself! But he spoke to me in confidence; and I never +dreamed--well, it's all over now." + +Lydia lifted her head. + +"Not for me. It's only just beginning." + +"What do you mean?" + +She put him gently aside and moved in her turn to the window. Then she +went on, with her face turned toward the shimmering blackness of the +lake, "You see of course that it might happen again at any moment." + +"What?" + +"This--this risk of being found out. And we could hardly count again on +such a lucky combination of chances, could we?" + +He sat down with a groan. + +Still keeping her face toward the darkness, she said, "I want you to go +and tell Lady Susan--and the others." + +Gannett, who had moved towards her, paused a few feet off. + +"Why do you wish me to do this?" he said at length, with less surprise +in his voice than she had been prepared for. + +"Because I've behaved basely, abominably, since we came here: letting +these people believe we were married--lying with every breath I drew--" + +"Yes, I've felt that too," Gannett exclaimed with sudden energy. + +The words shook her like a tempest: all her thoughts seemed to fall +about her in ruins. + +"You--you've felt so?" + +"Of course I have." He spoke with low-voiced vehemence. "Do you suppose +I like playing the sneak any better than you do? It's damnable." + +He had dropped on the arm of a chair, and they stared at each other like +blind people who suddenly see. + +"But you have liked it here," she faltered. + +"Oh, I've liked it--I've liked it." He moved impatiently. "Haven't you?" + +"Yes," she burst out; "that's the worst of it--that's what I can't bear. +I fancied it was for your sake that I insisted on staying--because you +thought you could write here; and perhaps just at first that really was +the reason. But afterwards I wanted to stay myself--I loved it." She +broke into a laugh. "Oh, do you see the full derision of it? These +people--the very prototypes of the bores you took me away from, with the +same fenced--in view of life, the same keep-off-the-grass morality, the +same little cautious virtues and the same little frightened vices--well, +I've clung to them, I've delighted in them, I've done my best to please +them. I've toadied Lady Susan, I've gossiped with Miss Pinsent, I've +pretended to be shocked with Mrs. Ainger. Respectability! It was the +one thing in life that I was sure I didn't care about, and it's grown +so precious to me that I've stolen it because I couldn't get it in any +other way." + +She moved across the room and returned to his side with another laugh. + +"I who used to fancy myself unconventional! I must have been born with +a card-case in my hand. You should have seen me with that poor woman in +the garden. She came to me for help, poor creature, because she fancied +that, having 'sinned,' as they call it, I might feel some pity for +others who had been tempted in the same way. Not I! She didn't know me. +Lady Susan would have been kinder, because Lady Susan wouldn't have been +afraid. I hated the woman--my one thought was not to be seen with +her--I could have killed her for guessing my secret. The one thing that +mattered to me at that moment was my standing with Lady Susan!" + +Gannett did not speak. + +"And you--you've felt it too!" she broke out accusingly. "You've enjoyed +being with these people as much as I have; you've let the chaplain talk +to you by the hour about 'The Reign of Law' and Professor Drummond. +When they asked you to hand the plate in church I was watching you--_you +wanted to accept."_ + +She stepped close, laying her hand on his arm. + +"Do you know, I begin to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people +away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each +other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between +them--children, duties, visits, bores, relations--the things +that protect married people from each other. We've been too close +together--that has been our sin. We've seen the nakedness of each +other's souls." + +She sank again on the sofa, hiding her face in her hands. + +Gannett stood above her perplexedly: he felt as though she were being +swept away by some implacable current while he stood helpless on its +bank. + +At length he said, "Lydia, don't think me a brute--but don't you see +yourself that it won't do?" + +"Yes, I see it won't do," she said without raising her head. + +His face cleared. + +"Then we'll go to-morrow." + +"Go--where?" + +"To Paris; to be married." + +For a long time she made no answer; then she asked slowly, "Would they +have us here if we were married?" + +"Have us here?" + +"I mean Lady Susan--and the others." + +"Have us here? Of course they would." + +"Not if they knew--at least, not unless they could pretend not to know." + +He made an impatient gesture. + +"We shouldn't come back here, of course; and other people needn't +know--no one need know." + +She sighed. "Then it's only another form of deception and a meaner one. +Don't you see that?" + +"I see that we're not accountable to any Lady Susans on earth!" + +"Then why are you ashamed of what we are doing here?" + +"Because I'm sick of pretending that you're my wife when you're +not--when you won't be." + +She looked at him sadly. + +"If I were your wife you'd have to go on pretending. You'd have to +pretend that I'd never been--anything else. And our friends would have +to pretend that they believed what you pretended." + +Gannett pulled off the sofa-tassel and flung it away. + +"You're impossible," he groaned. + +"It's not I--it's our being together that's impossible. I only want you +to see that marriage won't help it." + +"What will help it then?" + +She raised her head. + +"My leaving you." + +"Your leaving me?" He sat motionless, staring at the tassel which lay at +the other end of the room. At length some impulse of retaliation for the +pain she was inflicting made him say deliberately: + +"And where would you go if you left me?" + +"Oh!" she cried. + +He was at her side in an instant. + +"Lydia--Lydia--you know I didn't mean it; I couldn't mean it! But you've +driven me out of my senses; I don't know what I'm saying. Can't you get +out of this labyrinth of self-torture? It's destroying us both." + +"That's why I must leave you." + +"How easily you say it!" He drew her hands down and made her face him. +"You're very scrupulous about yourself--and others. But have you thought +of me? You have no right to leave me unless you've ceased to care--" + +"It's because I care--" + +"Then I have a right to be heard. If you love me you can't leave me." + +Her eyes defied him. + +"Why not?" + +He dropped her hands and rose from her side. + +"Can you?" he said sadly. + +The hour was late and the lamp flickered and sank. She stood up with a +shiver and turned toward the door of her room. + + +V + +At daylight a sound in Lydia's room woke Gannett from a troubled sleep. +He sat up and listened. She was moving about softly, as though fearful +of disturbing him. He heard her push back one of the creaking shutters; +then there was a moment's silence, which seemed to indicate that she was +waiting to see if the noise had roused him. + +Presently she began to move again. She had spent a sleepless night, +probably, and was dressing to go down to the garden for a breath of air. +Gannett rose also; but some undefinable instinct made his movements +as cautious as hers. He stole to his window and looked out through the +slats of the shutter. + +It had rained in the night and the dawn was gray and lifeless. The +cloud-muffled hills across the lake were reflected in its surface as in +a tarnished mirror. In the garden, the birds were beginning to shake the +drops from the motionless laurustinus-boughs. + +An immense pity for Lydia filled Gannett's soul. Her seeming +intellectual independence had blinded him for a time to the feminine +cast of her mind. He had never thought of her as a woman who wept and +clung: there was a lucidity in her intuitions that made them appear to +be the result of reasoning. Now he saw the cruelty he had committed +in detaching her from the normal conditions of life; he felt, too, the +insight with which she had hit upon the real cause of their suffering. +Their life was "impossible," as she had said--and its worst penalty was +that it had made any other life impossible for them. Even had his +love lessened, he was bound to her now by a hundred ties of pity and +self-reproach; and she, poor child! must turn back to him as Latude +returned to his cell.... + +A new sound startled him: it was the stealthy closing of Lydia's door. +He crept to his own and heard her footsteps passing down the corridor. +Then he went back to the window and looked out. + +A minute or two later he saw her go down the steps of the porch and +enter the garden. From his post of observation her face was invisible, +but something about her appearance struck him. She wore a long +travelling cloak and under its folds he detected the outline of a bag or +bundle. He drew a deep breath and stood watching her. + +She walked quickly down the laurustinus alley toward the gate; there +she paused a moment, glancing about the little shady square. The stone +benches under the trees were empty, and she seemed to gather resolution +from the solitude about her, for she crossed the square to the +steam-boat landing, and he saw her pause before the ticket-office at +the head of the wharf. Now she was buying her ticket. Gannett turned his +head a moment to look at the clock: the boat was due in five minutes. He +had time to jump into his clothes and overtake her-- + +He made no attempt to move; an obscure reluctance restrained him. If any +thought emerged from the tumult of his sensations, it was that he must +let her go if she wished it. He had spoken last night of his rights: +what were they? At the last issue, he and she were two separate beings, +not made one by the miracle of common forbearances, duties, abnegations, +but bound together in a _noyade_ of passion that left them resisting yet +clinging as they went down. + +After buying her ticket, Lydia had stood for a moment looking out across +the lake; then he saw her seat herself on one of the benches near the +landing. He and she, at that moment, were both listening for the same +sound: the whistle of the boat as it rounded the nearest promontory. +Gannett turned again to glance at the clock: the boat was due now. + +Where would she go? What would her life be when she had left him? She +had no near relations and few friends. There was money enough ... but +she asked so much of life, in ways so complex and immaterial. He thought +of her as walking bare-footed through a stony waste. No one would +understand her--no one would pity her--and he, who did both, was +powerless to come to her aid.... + +He saw that she had risen from the bench and walked toward the edge of +the lake. She stood looking in the direction from which the steamboat +was to come; then she turned to the ticket-office, doubtless to ask the +cause of the delay. After that she went back to the bench and sat down +with bent head. What was she thinking of? + +The whistle sounded; she started up, and Gannett involuntarily made a +movement toward the door. But he turned back and continued to watch her. +She stood motionless, her eyes on the trail of smoke that preceded +the appearance of the boat. Then the little craft rounded the point, a +dead-white object on the leaden water: a minute later it was puffing and +backing at the wharf. + +The few passengers who were waiting--two or three peasants and a snuffy +priest--were clustered near the ticket-office. Lydia stood apart under +the trees. + +The boat lay alongside now; the gang-plank was run out and the peasants +went on board with their baskets of vegetables, followed by the priest. +Still Lydia did not move. A bell began to ring querulously; there was a +shriek of steam, and some one must have called to her that she would +be late, for she started forward, as though in answer to a summons. She +moved waveringly, and at the edge of the wharf she paused. Gannett saw +a sailor beckon to her; the bell rang again and she stepped upon the +gang-plank. + +Half-way down the short incline to the deck she stopped again; then she +turned and ran back to the land. The gang-plank was drawn in, the bell +ceased to ring, and the boat backed out into the lake. Lydia, with slow +steps, was walking toward the garden.... + +As she approached the hotel she looked up furtively and Gannett drew +back into the room. He sat down beside a table; a Bradshaw lay at his +elbow, and mechanically, without knowing what he did, he began looking +out the trains to Paris.... + + + + +A COWARD + + +"My daughter Irene," said Mrs. Carstyle (she made it rhyme with +_tureen_), "has had no social advantages; but if Mr. Carstyle had +chosen--" she paused significantly and looked at the shabby sofa on +the opposite side of the fire-place as though it had been Mr. Carstyle. +Vibart was glad that it was not. + +Mrs. Carstyle was one of the women who make refinement vulgar. She +invariably spoke of her husband as _Mr. Carstyle_ and, though she had +but one daughter, was always careful to designate the young lady by +name. At luncheon she had talked a great deal of elevating influences +and ideals, and had fluctuated between apologies for the overdone mutton +and affected surprise that the bewildered maid-servant should have +forgotten to serve the coffee and liqueurs _as usual_. + +Vibart was almost sorry that he had come. Miss Carstyle was still +beautiful--almost as beautiful as when, two days earlier, against the +leafy background of a June garden-party, he had seen her for the first +time--but her mother's expositions and elucidations cheapened her beauty +as sign-posts vulgarize a woodland solitude. Mrs. Carstyle's eye was +perpetually plying between her daughter and Vibart, like an empty cab in +quest of a fare. Miss Carstyle, the young man decided, was the kind +of girl whose surroundings rub off on her; or was it rather that Mrs. +Carstyle's idiosyncrasies were of a nature to color every one within +reach? Vibart, looking across the table as this consolatory alternative +occurred to him, was sure that they had not colored Mr. Carstyle; but +that, perhaps, was only because they had bleached him instead. Mr. +Carstyle was quite colorless; it would have been impossible to guess his +native tint. His wife's qualities, if they had affected him at all, had +acted negatively. He did not apologize for the mutton, and he wandered +off after luncheon without pretending to wait for the diurnal coffee +and liqueurs; while the few remarks that he had contributed to the +conversation during the meal had not been in the direction of abstract +conceptions of life. As he strayed away, with his vague oblique step, +and the stoop that suggested the habit of dodging missiles, Vibart, +who was still in the age of formulas, found himself wondering what life +could be worth to a man who had evidently resigned himself to travelling +with his back to the wind; so that Mrs. Carstyle's allusion to her +daughter's lack of advantages (imparted while Irene searched the house +for an undiscoverable cigarette) had an appositeness unintended by the +speaker. + +"If Mr. Carstyle had chosen," that lady repeated, "we might have had +our city home" (she never used so small a word as town) "and Ireen could +have mixed in the society to which I myself was accustomed at her age." +Her sigh pointed unmistakably to a past when young men had come to +luncheon to see _her_. + +The sigh led Vibart to look at her, and the look led him to the +unwelcome conclusion that Irene "took after" her mother. It was +certainly not from the sapless paternal stock that the girl had drawn +her warm bloom: Mrs. Carstyle had contributed the high lights to the +picture. + +Mrs. Carstyle caught his look and appropriated it with the complacency +of a vicarious beauty. She was quite aware of the value of her +appearance as guaranteeing Irene's development into a fine woman. + +"But perhaps," she continued, taking up the thread of her explanation, +"you have heard of Mr. Carstyle's extraordinary hallucination. Mr. +Carstyle knows that I call it so--as I tell him, it is the most +charitable view to take." + +She looked coldly at the threadbare sofa and indulgently at the young +man who filled a corner of it. + +"You may think it odd, Mr. Vibart, that I should take you into my +confidence in this way after so short an acquaintance, but somehow +I can't help regarding you as a friend already. I believe in those +intuitive sympathies, don't you? They have never misled me--" her lids +drooped retrospectively--"and besides, I always tell Mr. Carstyle that +on this point I will have no false pretences. Where truth is concerned +I am inexorable, and I consider it my duty to let our friends know +that our restricted way of living is due entirely to choice--to +Mr. Carstyle's choice. When I married Mr. Carstyle it was with the +expectation of living in New York and of keeping my carriage; and there +is no reason for our not doing so--there is no reason, Mr. Vibart, why +my daughter Ireen should have been denied the intellectual advantages +of foreign travel. I wish that to be understood. It is owing to her +father's deliberate choice that Ireen and I have been imprisoned in the +narrow limits of Millbrook society. For myself I do not complain. If Mr. +Carstyle chooses to place others before his wife it is not for his wife +to repine. His course may be noble--Quixotic; I do not allow myself to +pronounce judgment on it, though others have thought that in sacrificing +his own family to strangers he was violating the most sacred obligations +of domestic life. This is the opinion of my pastor and of other valued +friends; but, as I have always told them, for myself I make no claims. +Where my daughter Ireen is concerned it is different--" + +It was a relief to Vibart when, at this point, Mrs. Carstyle's discharge +of her duty was cut short by her daughter's reappearance. Irene had been +unable to find a cigarette for Mr. Vibart, and her mother, with beaming +irrelevance, suggested that in that case she had better show him the +garden. + +The Carstyle house stood but a few yards back from the brick-paved +Millbrook street, and the garden was a very small place, unless +measured, as Mrs. Carstyle probably intended that it should be, by the +extent of her daughter's charms. These were so considerable that Vibart +walked back and forward half a dozen times between the porch and the +gate, before he discovered the limitations of the Carstyle domain. It +was not till Irene had accused him of being sarcastic and had confided +in him that "the girls" were furious with her for letting him talk to +her so long at his aunt's garden-party, that he awoke to the exiguity +of his surroundings; and then it was with a touch of irritation that he +noticed Mr. Carstyle's inconspicuous profile bent above a newspaper in +one of the lower windows. Vibart had an idea that Mr. Carstyle, while +ostensibly reading the paper, had kept count of the number of times +that his daughter had led her companion up and down between the +syringa-bushes; and for some undefinable reason he resented Mr. +Carstyle's unperturbed observation more than his wife's zealous +self-effacement. To a man who is trying to please a pretty girl there +are moments when the proximity of an impartial spectator is more +disconcerting than the most obvious connivance; and something about Mr. +Carstyle's expression conveyed his good-humored indifference to Irene's +processes. + +When the garden-gate closed behind Vibart he had become aware that +his preoccupation with the Carstyles had shifted its centre from +the daughter to the father; but he was accustomed to such emotional +surprises, and skilled in seizing any compensations they might offer. + + + +II + +The Carstyles belonged to the all-the-year-round Millbrook of +paper-mills, cable-cars, brick pavements and church sociables, while +Mrs. Vance, the aunt with whom Vibart lived, was an ornament of the +summer colony whose big country-houses dotted the surrounding hills. +Mrs. Vance had, however, no difficulty in appeasing the curiosity which +Mrs. Carstyle's enigmatic utterances had aroused in the young man. +Mrs. Carstyle's relentless veracity vented itself mainly on the "summer +people," as they were called: she did not propose that any one within +ten miles of Millbrook should keep a carriage without knowing that she +was entitled to keep one too. Mrs. Vance remarked with a sigh that Mrs. +Carstyle's annual demand to have her position understood came in as +punctually as the taxes and the water-rates. + +"My dear, it's simply this: when Andrew Carstyle married her years +ago--Heaven knows why he did; he's one of the Albany Carstyles, you +know, and she was a daughter of old Deacon Ash of South Millbrook--well, +when he married her he had a tidy little income, and I suppose the bride +expected to set up an establishment in New York and be hand-in-glove +with the whole Carstyle clan. But whether he was ashamed of her from the +first, or for some other unexplained reason, he bought a country-place +and settled down here for life. For a few years they lived comfortably +enough, and she had plenty of smart clothes, and drove about in a +victoria calling on the summer people. Then, when the beautiful Irene +was about ten years old, Mr. Carstyle's only brother died, and it turned +out that he had made away with a lot of trust-property. It was a horrid +business: over three hundred thousand dollars were gone, and of course +most of it had belonged to widows and orphans. As soon as the facts were +made known, Andrew Carstyle announced that he would pay back what his +brother had stolen. He sold his country-place and his wife's carriage, +and they moved to the little house they live in now. Mr. Carstyle's +income is probably not as large as his wife would like to have it +thought, and though I'm told he puts aside, a good part of it every +year to pay off his brother's obligations, I fancy the debt won't be +discharged for some time to come. To help things along he opened a law +office--he had studied law in his youth--but though he is said to be +clever I hear that he has very little to do. People are afraid of him: +he's too dry and quiet. Nobody believes in a man who doesn't believe in +himself, and Mr. Carstyle always seems to be winking at you through a +slit in his professional manner. People don't like it--his wife +doesn't like it. I believe she would have accepted the sacrifice of the +country-place and the carriage if he had struck an attitude and talked +about doing his duty. It was his regarding the whole thing as a matter +of course that exasperated her. What is the use of doing something +difficult in a way that makes it look perfectly easy? I feel sorry for +Mrs. Carstyle. She's lost her house and her carriage, and she hasn't +been allowed to be heroic." + +Vibart had listened attentively. + +"I wonder what Miss Carstyle thinks of it?" he mused. + +Mrs. Vance looked at him with a tentative smile. "I wonder what _you_ +think of Miss Carstyle?" she returned, + +His answer reassured her. + +"I think she takes after her mother," he said. + +"Ah," cried his aunt cheerfully, "then I needn't write to _your_ mother, +and I can have Irene at all my parties!" + +Miss Carstyle was an important factor in the restricted social +combinations of a Millbrook hostess. A local beauty is always a useful +addition to a Saturday-to-Monday house-party, and the beautiful Irene +was served up as a perennial novelty to the jaded guests of the summer +colony. As Vibart's aunt remarked, she was perfect till she became +playful, and she never became playful till the third day. + +Under these conditions, it was natural that Vibart should see a good +deal of the young lady, and before he was aware of it he had drifted +into the anomalous position of paying court to the daughter in order to +ingratiate himself with the father. Miss Carstyle was beautiful, +Vibart was young, and the days were long in his aunt's spacious and +distinguished house; but it was really the desire to know something +more of Mr. Carstyle that led the young man to partake so often of that +gentleman's overdone mutton. Vibart's imagination had been touched by +the discovery that this little huddled-up man, instead of travelling +with the wind, was persistently facing a domestic gale of considerable +velocity. That he should have paid off his brother's debt at one stroke +was to the young man a conceivable feat; but that he should go on +methodically and uninterruptedly accumulating the needed amount, +under the perpetual accusation of Irene's inadequate frocks and +Mrs. Carstyle's apologies for the mutton, seemed to Vibart proof of +unexampled heroism. Mr. Carstyle was as inaccessible as the average +American parent, and led a life so detached from the preoccupations of +his womankind that Vibart had some difficulty in fixing his attention. +To Mr. Carstyle, Vibart was simply the inevitable young man who had been +hanging about the house ever since Irene had left school; and Vibart's +efforts to differentiate himself from this enamored abstraction were +hampered by Mrs. Carstyle's cheerful assumption that he _was_ the young +man, and by Irene's frank appropriation of his visits. + +In this extremity he suddenly observed a slight but significant change +in the manner of the two ladies. Irene, instead of charging him with +being sarcastic and horrid, and declaring herself unable to believe a +word he said, began to receive his remarks with the impersonal +smile which he had seen her accord to the married men of his aunt's +house-parties; while Mrs. Carstyle, talking over his head to an +invisible but evidently sympathetic and intelligent listener, debated +the propriety of Irene's accepting an invitation to spend the month of +August at Narragansett. When Vibart, rashly trespassing on the rights of +this unseen oracle, remarked that a few weeks at the seashore would make +a delightful change for Miss Carstyle, the ladies looked at him and then +laughed. + +It was at this point that Vibart, for the first time, found himself +observed by Mr. Carstyle. They were grouped about the debris of a +luncheon which had ended precipitously with veal stew (Mrs. Carstyle +explaining that poor cooks _always_ failed with their sweet dish when +there was company) and Mr. Carstyle, his hands thrust in his pockets, +his lean baggy-coated shoulders pressed against his chair-back, sat +contemplating his guest with a smile of unmistakable approval. When +Vibart caught his eye the smile vanished, and Mr. Carstyle, dropping his +glasses from the bridge of his thin nose, looked out of the window with +the expression of a man determined to prove an alibi. But Vibart was +sure of the smile: it had established, between his host and himself, +a complicity which Mr. Carstyle's attempted evasion served only to +confirm. + +On the strength of this incident Vibart, a few days later, called at +Mr. Carstyle's office. Ostensibly, the young man had come to ask, on his +aunt's behalf, some question on a point at issue between herself and the +Millbrook telephone company; but his purpose in offering to perform the +errand had been the hope of taking up his intercourse with Mr. Carstyle +where that gentleman's smile had left it. Vibart was not disappointed. +In a dingy office, with a single window looking out on a blank wall, he +found Mr. Carstyle, in an alpaca coat, reading Montaigne. + +It evidently did not occur to him that Vibart had come on business, and +the warmth of his welcome gave the young man a sense of furnishing the +last word in a conjugal argument in which, for once, Mr. Carstyle had +come off triumphant. + +The legal question disposed of, Vibart reverted to Montaigne: had Mr. +Carstyle seen young So-and-so's volume of essays? There was one on +Montaigne that had a decided flavor: the point of view was curious. +Vibart was surprised to find that Mr. Carstyle had heard of young +So-and-so. Clever young men are given to thinking that their elders have +never got beyond Macaulay; but Mr. Carstyle seemed sufficiently familiar +with recent literature not to take it too seriously. He accepted +Vibart's offer of young So-and-so's volume, admitting that his own +library was not exactly up-to-date. + +Vibart went away musing. The next day he came back with the volume of +essays. It seemed to be tacitly understood that he was to call at the +office when he wished to see Mr. Carstyle, whose legal engagements did +not seriously interfere with the pursuit of literature. + +For a week or ten days Mrs. Carstyle, in Vibart's presence, continued +to take counsel with her unseen adviser on the subject of her daughter's +visit to Narragansett. Once or twice Irene dropped her impersonal smile +to tax Vibart with not caring whether she went or not; and Mrs. Carstyle +seized a moment of _tete-a-tete_ to confide in him that the dear child +hated the idea of leaving, and was going only because her friend Mrs. +Higby would not let her off. Of course, if it had not been for Mr. +Carstyle's peculiarities they would have had their own seaside home--at +Newport, probably: Mrs. Carstyle preferred the tone of Newport--and +Irene would not have been dependent on the _charity_ of her friends; but +as it was, they must be thankful for small mercies, and Mrs. Higby was +certainly very kind in her way, and had a charming social position--for +Narragansett. + +These confidences, however, were soon superseded by an exchange, between +mother and daughter, of increasingly frequent allusions to the delights +of Narragansett, the popularity of Mrs. Higby, and the jolliness of +her house; with an occasional reference on Mrs. Carstyle's part to the +probability of Hewlett Bain's being there as usual--hadn't Irene heard +from Mrs. Higby that he was to be there? Upon this note Miss Carstyle +at length departed, leaving Vibart to the undisputed enjoyment of her +father's company. + +Vibart had at no time a keen taste for the summer joys of Millbrook, and +the family obligation which, for several months of the year, kept him +at his aunt's side (Mrs. Vance was a childless widow and he filled the +onerous post of favorite nephew) gave a sense of compulsion to the light +occupations that chequered his leisure. Mrs. Vance, who fancied herself +lonely when he was away, was too much engaged with notes, telegrams and +arriving and departing guests, to do more than breathlessly smile upon +his presence, or implore him to take the dullest girl of the party for a +drive (and would he go by way of Millbrook, like a dear, and stop at the +market to ask why the lobsters hadn't come?); and the house itself, +and the guests who came and went in it like people rushing through +a railway-station, offered no points of repose to his thoughts. Some +houses are companions in themselves: the walls, the book-shelves, the +very chairs and tables, have the qualities of a sympathetic mind; but +Mrs. Vance's interior was as impersonal as the setting of a classic +drama. + +These conditions made Vibart cultivate an assiduous exchange of books +between himself and Mr. Carstyle. The young man went down almost daily +to the little house in the town, where Mrs. Carstyle, who had now an +air of receiving him in curl-papers, and of not always immediately +distinguishing him from the piano-tuner, made no effort to detain him on +his way to her husband's study. + + +III + +Now and then, at the close of one of Vibart's visits, Mr. Carstyle put +on a mildewed Panama hat and accompanied the young man for a mile or two +on his way home. The road to Mrs. Vance's lay through one of the most +amiable suburbs of Millbrook, and Mr. Carstyle, walking with his slow +uneager step, his hat pushed back, and his stick dragging behind him, +seemed to take a philosophic pleasure in the aspect of the trim lawns +and opulent gardens. + +Vibart could never induce his companion to prolong his walk as far as +Mrs. Vance's drawing-room; but one afternoon, when the distant hills lay +blue beyond the twilight of overarching elms, the two men strolled on +into the country past that lady's hospitable gateposts. + +It was a still day, the road was deserted, and every sound came sharply +through the air. Mr. Carstyle was in the midst of a disquisition on +Diderot, when he raised his head and stood still. + +"What's that?" he said. "Listen!" + +Vibart listened and heard a distant storm of hoof-beats. A moment later, +a buggy drawn by a pair of trotters swung round the turn of the road. +It was about thirty yards off, coming toward them at full speed. The man +who drove was leaning forward with outstretched arms; beside him sat a +girl. + +Suddenly Vibart saw Mr. Carstyle jump into the middle of the road, in +front of the buggy. He stood there immovable, his arms extended, his +legs apart, in an attitude of indomitable resistance. Almost at the same +moment Vibart realized that the man in the buggy had his horses in hand. + +"They're not running!" Vibart shouted, springing into the road and +catching Mr. Carstyle's alpaca sleeve. The older man looked around +vaguely: he seemed dazed. + +"Come away, sir, come away!" cried Vibart, gripping his arm. The buggy +swept past them, and Mr. Carstyle stood in the dust gazing after it. + +At length he drew out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. He was +very pale and Vibart noticed that his hand shook. + +"That was a close call, sir, wasn't it? I suppose you thought they were +running." + +"Yes," said Mr. Carstyle slowly, "I thought they were running." + +"It certainly looked like it for a minute. Let's sit down, shall we? I +feel rather breathless myself." + +Vibart saw that his friend could hardly stand. They seated themselves +on a tree-trunk by the roadside, and Mr. Carstyle continued to wipe his +forehead in silence. + +At length he turned to Vibart and said abruptly: + +"I made straight for the middle of the road, didn't I? If there _had_ +been a runaway I should have stopped it?" + +Vibart looked at him in surprise. + +"You would have tried to, undoubtedly, unless I'd had time to drag you +away." + +Mr. Carstyle straightened his narrow shoulders. + +"There was no hesitation, at all events? I--I showed no signs +of--avoiding it?" + +"I should say not, sir; it was I who funked it for you." + +Mr. Carstyle was silent: his head had dropped forward and he looked like +an old man. + +"It was just my cursed luck again!" he exclaimed suddenly in a loud +voice. + +For a moment Vibart thought that he was wandering; but he raised his +head and went on speaking in more natural tones. + +"I daresay I appeared ridiculous enough to you just now, eh? Perhaps +you saw all along that the horses weren't running? Your eyes are younger +than mine; and then you're not always looking out for runaways, as I am. +Do you know that in thirty years I've never seen a runaway?" + +"You're fortunate," said Vibart, still bewildered. + +"Fortunate? Good God, man, I've _prayed_ to see one: not a runaway +especially, but any bad accident; anything that endangered people's +lives. There are accidents happening all the time all over the world; +why shouldn't I ever come across one? It's not for want of trying! At +one time I used to haunt the theatres in the hope of a fire: fires in +theatres are so apt to be fatal. Well, will you believe it? I was in the +Brooklyn theatre the night before it burned down; I left the old Madison +Square Garden half an hour before the walls fell in. And it's the same +way with street accidents--I always miss them; I'm always just too late. +Last year there was a boy knocked down by a cable-car at our corner; I +got to my gate just as they were carrying him off on a stretcher. And so +it goes. If anybody else had been walking along this road, those horses +would have been running away. And there was a girl in the buggy, too--a +mere child!" + +Mr. Carstyle's head sank again. + +"You're wondering what this means," he began after another pause. "I was +a little confused for a moment--must have seemed incoherent." His voice +cleared and he made an effort to straighten himself. "Well, I was a +damned coward once and I've been trying to live it down ever since." + +Vibart looked at him incredulously and Mr. Carstyle caught the look with +a smile. + +"Why not? Do I look like a Hercules?" He held up his loose-skinned hand +and shrunken wrist. "Not built for the part, certainly; but that doesn't +count, of course. Man's unconquerable soul, and all the rest of it ... +well, I was a coward every inch of me, body and soul." + +He paused and glanced up and down the road. There was no one in sight. + +"It happened when I was a young chap just out of college. I was +travelling round the world with another youngster of my own age and an +older man--Charles Meriton--who has since made a name for himself. You +may have heard of him." + +"Meriton, the archaeologist? The man who discovered those ruined African +cities the other day?" + +"That's the man. He was a college tutor then, and my father, who had +known him since he was a boy, and who had a very high opinion of him, +had asked him to make the tour with us. We both--my friend Collis and +I--had an immense admiration for Meriton. He was just the fellow to +excite a boy's enthusiasm: cool, quick, imperturbable--the kind of man +whose hand is always on the hilt of action. His explorations had led +him into all sorts of tight places, and he'd shown an extraordinary +combination of calculating patience and reckless courage. He never +talked about his doings; we picked them up from various people on our +journey. He'd been everywhere, he knew everybody, and everybody had +something stirring to tell about him. I daresay this account of the man +sounds exaggerated; perhaps it is; I've never seen him since; but at +that time he seemed to me a tremendous fellow--a kind of scientific +Ajax. He was a capital travelling-companion, at any rate: good-tempered, +cheerful, easily amused, with none of the been-there-before superiority +so irritating to youngsters. He made us feel as though it were all as +new to him as to us: he never chilled our enthusiasms or took the bloom +off our surprises. There was nobody else whose good opinion I cared as +much about: he was the biggest thing in sight. + +"On the way home Collis broke down with diphtheria. We were in the +Mediterranean, cruising about the Sporades in a felucca. He was taken +ill at Chios. The attack came on suddenly and we were afraid to run +the risk of taking him back to Athens in the felucca. We established +ourselves in the inn at Chios and there the poor fellow lay for weeks. +Luckily there was a fairly good doctor on the island and we sent +to Athens for a sister to help with the nursing. Poor Collis was +desperately bad: the diphtheria was followed by partial paralysis. The +doctor assured us that the danger was past; he would gradually regain +the use of his limbs; but his recovery would be slow. The sister +encouraged us too--she had seen such cases before; and he certainly did +improve a shade each day. Meriton and I had taken turns with the sister +in nursing him, but after the paralysis had set in there wasn't much to +do, and there was nothing to prevent Meriton's leaving us for a day or +two. He had received word from some place on the coast of Asia Minor +that a remarkable tomb had been discovered somewhere in the interior; +he had not been willing to take us there, as the journey was not a +particularly safe one; but now that we were tied up at Chios there +seemed no reason why he shouldn't go and take a look at the place. The +expedition would not take more than three days; Collis was convalescent; +the doctor and nurse assured us that there was no cause for uneasiness; +and so Meriton started off one evening at sunset. I walked down to the +quay with him and saw him rowed off to the felucca. I would have given a +good deal to be going with him; the prospect of danger allured me. + +"'You'll see that Collis is never left alone, won't you?' he shouted +back to me as the boat pulled out into the harbor; I remembered I rather +resented the suggestion. + +"I walked back to the inn and went to bed: the nurse sat up with Collis +at night. The next morning I relieved her at the usual hour. It was a +sultry day with a queer coppery-looking sky; the air was stifling. In +the middle of the day the nurse came to take my place while I dined; +when I went back to Collis's room she said she would go out for a breath +of air. + +"I sat down by Collis's bed and began to fan him with the fan the sister +had been using. The heat made him uneasy and I turned him over in +bed, for he was still helpless: the whole of his right side was numb. +Presently he fell asleep and I went to the window and sat looking down +on the hot deserted square, with a bunch of donkeys and their drivers +asleep in the shade of the convent-wall across the way. I remember +noticing the blue beads about the donkeys' necks.... Were you ever in +an earthquake? No? I'd never been in one either. It's an indescribable +sensation ... there's a Day of Judgment feeling in the air. It began +with the donkeys waking up and trembling; I noticed that and thought it +queer. Then the drivers jumped up--I saw the terror in their faces. Then +a roar.... I remember noticing a big black crack in the convent-wall +opposite--a zig-zag crack, like a flash of lightning in a wood-cut.... I +thought of that, too, at the time; then all the bells in the place began +to ring--it made a fearful discord.... I saw people rushing across the +square ... the air was full of crashing noises. The floor went down +under me in a sickening way and then jumped back and pitched me to the +ceiling ... but where _was_ the ceiling? And the door? I said to myself: +_We're two stories up--the stairs are just wide enough for one_.... +I gave one glance at Collis: he was lying in bed, wide awake, looking +straight at me. I ran. Something struck me on the head as I bolted +downstairs--I kept on running. I suppose the knock I got dazed me, for I +don't remember much of anything till I found myself in a vineyard a mile +from the town. I was roused by the warm blood running down my nose and +heard myself explaining to Meriton exactly how it had happened.... + +"When I crawled back to the town they told me that all the houses near +the inn were in ruins and that a dozen people had been killed. Collis +was among them, of course. The ceiling had come down on him." + +Mr. Carstyle wiped his forehead. Vibart sat looking away from him. + +"Two days later Meriton came back. I began to tell him the story, but he +interrupted me. + +"'There was no one with him at the time, then? You'd left him alone?' + +"'No, he wasn't alone.' + +"'Who was with him? You said the sister was out.' + +"'I was with him.' + +"'_You were with him?_' + +"I shall never forget Meriton's look. I believe I had meant to +explain, to accuse myself, to shout out my agony of soul; but I saw the +uselessness of it. A door had been shut between us. Neither of us spoke +another word. He was very kind to me on the way home; he looked after +me in a motherly way that was a good deal harder to stand than his open +contempt. I saw the man was honestly trying to pity me; but it was no +good--he simply couldn't." + +Mr. Carstyle rose slowly, with a certain stiffness. + +"Shall we turn toward home? Perhaps I'm keeping you." + +They walked on a few steps in silence; then he spoke again. + +"That business altered my whole life. Of course I oughtn't to have +allowed it to--that was another form of cowardice. But I saw myself only +with Meriton's eyes--it is one of the worst miseries of youth that one +is always trying to be somebody else. I had meant to be a Meriton--I saw +I'd better go home and study law.... + +"It's a childish fancy, a survival of the primitive savage, if you like; +but from that hour to this I've hankered day and night for a chance to +retrieve myself, to set myself right with the man I meant to be. I +want to prove to that man that it was all an accident--an unaccountable +deviation from my normal instincts; that having once been a coward +doesn't mean that a man's cowardly... and I can't, I can't!" + +Mr. Carstyle's tone had passed insensibly from agitation to irony. He +had got back to his usual objective stand-point. + +"Why, I'm a perfect olive-branch," he concluded, with his dry indulgent +laugh; "the very babies stop crying at my approach--I carry a sort of +millennium about with me--I'd make my fortune as an agent of the Peace +Society. I shall go to the grave leaving that other man unconvinced!" + +Vibart walked back with him to Millbrook. On her doorstep they met Mrs. +Carstyle, flushed and feathered, with a card-case and dusty boots. + +"I don't ask you in," she said plaintively, to Vibart, "because I can't +answer for the food this evening. My maid-of-all-work tells me that +she's going to a ball--which is more than I've done in years! And +besides, it would be cruel to ask you to spend such a hot evening in our +stuffy little house--the air is so much cooler at Mrs. Vance's. Remember +me to Mrs. Vance, please, and tell her how sorry I am that I can no +longer include her in my round of visits. When I had my carriage I saw +the people I liked, but now that I have to walk, my social opportunities +are more limited. I was not obliged to do my visiting on foot when I was +younger, and my doctor tells me that to persons accustomed to a carriage +no exercise is more injurious than walking." + +She glanced at her husband with a smile of unforgiving sweetness. + +"Fortunately," she concluded, "it agrees with Mr. Carstyle." + + + + +THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD + + +I + +_A Newport drawing-room. Tapestries, flowers, bric-a-brac. Through the +windows, a geranium-edged lawn, the cliffs and the sea_. Isabel Warland +_sits reading_. Lucius Warland _enters in flannels and a yachting-cap_. + +_Isabel_. Back already? + +_Warland_. The wind dropped--it turned into a drifting race. Langham +took me off the yacht on his launch. What time is it? Two o'clock? +Where's Mrs. Raynor? + +_Isabel_. On her way to New York. + +_Warland_. To New York? + +_Isabel_. Precisely. The boat must be just leaving; she started an hour +ago and took Laura with her. In fact I'm alone in the house--that is, +until this evening. Some people are coming then. + +_Warland_. But what in the world-- + +_Isabel_. Her aunt, Mrs. Griscom, has had a fit. She has them +constantly. They're not serious--at least they wouldn't be, if +Mrs. Griscom were not so rich--and childless. Naturally, under the +circumstances, Marian feels a peculiar sympathy for her; her position is +such a sad one; there's positively no one to care whether she lives or +dies--except her heirs. Of course they all rush to Newburgh whenever she +has a fit. It's hard on Marian, for she lives the farthest away; but she +has come to an understanding with the housekeeper, who always telegraphs +her first, so that she gets a start of several hours. She will be at +Newburgh to-night at ten, and she has calculated that the others can't +possibly arrive before midnight. + +_Warland_. You have a delightful way of putting things. I suppose you'd +talk of me like that. + +_Isabel_. Oh, no. It's too humiliating to doubt one's husband's +disinterestedness. + +_Warland_. I wish I had a rich aunt who had fits. + +_Isabel_. If I were wishing I should choose heart-disease. + +_Warland_. There's no doing anything without money or influence. + +_Isabel (picking up her book)_. Have you heard from Washington? + +_Warland_. Yes. That's what I was going to speak of when I asked for +Mrs. Raynor. I wanted to bid her good-bye. + +_Isabel_. You're going? + +_Warland_. By the five train. Fagott has just wired me that the +Ambassador will be in Washington on Monday. He hasn't named his +secretaries yet, but there isn't much hope for me. He has a nephew-- + +_Isabel_. They always have. Like the Popes. + +_Warland_. Well, I'm going all the same. You'll explain to Mrs. Raynor +if she gets back before I do? Are there to be people at dinner? I don't +suppose it matters. You can always pick up an extra man on a Saturday. + +_Isabel_. By the way, that reminds me that Marian left me a list of the +people who are arriving this afternoon. My novel is so absorbing that +I forgot to look at it. Where can it be? Ah, here--Let me see: the Jack +Merringtons, Adelaide Clinton, Ned Lender--all from New York, by seven +P.M. train. Lewis Darley to-night, by Fall River boat. John Oberville, +from Boston at five P.M. Why, I didn't know-- + +_Warland (excitedly)_. John Oberville? John Oberville? Here? To-day at +five o'clock? Let me see--let me look at the list. Are you sure you're +not mistaken? Why, she never said a word! Why the deuce didn't you tell +me? + +_Isabel_. I didn't know. + +_Warland_. Oberville--Oberville--! + +_Isabel_. Why, what difference does it make? + +_Warland_. What difference? What difference? Don't look at me as if you +didn't understand English! Why, if Oberville's coming--(a pause) Look +here, Isabel, didn't you know him very well at one time? + +_Isabel_. Very well--yes. + +_Warland_. I thought so--of course--I remember now; I heard all about it +before I met you. Let me see--didn't you and your mother spend a winter +in Washington when he was Under-secretary of State? + +_Isabel_. That was before the deluge. + +_Warland_. I remember--it all comes back to me. I used to hear it said +that he admired you tremendously; there was a report that you were +engaged. Don't you remember? Why, it was in all the papers. By Jove, +Isabel, what a match that would have been! + +_Isabel_. You _are_ disinterested! + +_Warland_. Well, I can't help thinking-- + +_Isabel_. That I paid you a handsome compliment? + +_Warland (preoccupied)_. Eh?--Ah, yes--exactly. What was I saying? +Oh--about the report of your engagement. _(Playfully.)_ He was awfully +gone on you, wasn't he? + +_Isabel_. It's not for me to diminish your triumph. + +_Warland_. By Jove, I can't think why Mrs. Raynor didn't tell me he +was coming. A man like that--one doesn't take him for granted, like the +piano-tuner! I wonder I didn't see it in the papers. + +_Isabel_. Is he grown such a great man? + +_Warland_. Oberville? Great? John Oberville? I'll tell you what he +is--the power behind the throne, the black Pope, the King-maker and all +the rest of it. Don't you read the papers? Of course I'll never get on +if you won't interest yourself in politics. And to think you might have +married that man! + +_Isabel_. And got you your secretaryship! + +_Warland_. Oberville has them all in the hollow of his hand. + +_Isabel_. Well, you'll see him at five o'clock. + +_Warland_. I don't suppose he's ever heard of _me_, worse luck! (_A +silence_.) Isabel, look here. I never ask questions, do I? But it was so +long ago--and Oberville almost belongs to history--he will one of these +days at any rate. Just tell me--did he want to marry you? + +_Isabel_. Since you answer for his immortality--(_after a pause_) I was +very much in love with him. + +_Warland_. Then of course he did. (_Another pause_.) But what in the +world-- + +_Isabel (musing)_. As you say, it was so long ago; I don't see why +I shouldn't tell you. There was a married woman who had--what is +the correct expression?--made sacrifices for him. There was only one +sacrifice she objected to making--and he didn't consider himself free. +It sounds rather _rococo_, doesn't it? It was odd that she died the year +after we were married. + +_Warland_. Whew! + +_Isabel (following her own thoughts)_. I've never seen him since; +it must be ten years ago. I'm certainly thirty-two, and I was just +twenty-two then. It's curious to talk of it. I had put it away so +carefully. How it smells of camphor! And what an old-fashioned cut it +has! _(Rising.)_ Where's the list, Lucius? You wanted to know if there +were to be people at dinner tonight-- + +_Warland_. Here it is--but never mind. Isabel--(_silence_) Isabel-- + +_Isabel_. Well? + +_Warland_. It's odd he never married. + +_Isabel_. The comparison is to my disadvantage. But then I met you. + +_Warland_. Don't be so confoundedly sarcastic. I wonder how he'll feel +about seeing you. Oh, I don't mean any sentimental rot, of course... but +you're an uncommonly agreeable woman. I daresay he'll be pleased to see +you again; you're fifty times more attractive than when I married you. + +_Isabel_. I wish your other investments had appreciated at the same +rate. Unfortunately my charms won't pay the butcher. + +_Warland_. Damn the butcher! + +_Isabel_. I happened to mention him because he's just written again; +but I might as well have said the baker or the candlestick-maker. The +candlestick-maker--I wonder what he is, by the way? He must have more +faith in human nature than the others, for I haven't heard from him yet. +I wonder if there is a Creditor's Polite Letter-writer which they all +consult; their style is so exactly alike. I advise you to pass through +New York incognito on your way to Washington; their attentions might be +oppressive. + +_Warland_. Confoundedly oppressive. What a dog's life it is! My poor +Isabel-- + +_Isabel_. Don't pity me. I didn't marry you for a home. + +_Warland (after a pause_). What _did_ you marry me for, if you cared for +Oberville? _(Another pause_.) Eh? + +_Isabel_, Don't make me regret my confidence. + +_Warland_. I beg your pardon. + +_Isabel_. Oh, it was only a subterfuge to conceal the fact that I have +no distinct recollection of my reasons. The fact is, a girl's motives in +marrying are like a passport--apt to get mislaid. One is so seldom asked +for either. But mine certainly couldn't have been mercenary: I never +heard a mother praise you to her daughters. + +_Warland_. No, I never was much of a match. + +_Isabel_. You impugn my judgment. + +_Warland_. If I only had a head for business, now, I might have done +something by this time. But I'd sooner break stones in the road. + +_Isabel_. It must be very hard to get an opening in that profession. So +many of my friends have aspired to it, and yet I never knew any one who +actually did it. + +_Warland_. If I could only get the secretaryship. How that kind of life +would suit you! It's as much for you that I want it-- + +_Isabel_. And almost as much for the butcher. Don't belittle the circle +of your benevolence. (_She walks across the room_.) Three o'clock +already--and Marian asked me to give orders about the carriages. Let me +see--Mr. Oberville is the first arrival; if you'll ring I will send word +to the stable. I suppose you'll stay now? + +_Warland_. Stay? + +_Isabel_. Not go to Washington. I thought you spoke as if he could help +you. + +_Warland_. He could settle the whole thing in five minutes. The +President can't refuse him anything. But he doesn't know me; he may +have a candidate of his own. It's a pity you haven't seen him for so +long--and yet I don't know; perhaps it's just as well. The others don't +arrive till seven? It seems as if--How long is he going to be here? Till +to-morrow night, I suppose? I wonder what he's come for. The Merringtons +will bore him to death, and Adelaide, of course, will be philandering +with Lender. I wonder (_a pause_) if Darley likes boating. (_Rings the +bell_.) + +_Isabel_. Boating? + +_Warland_. Oh, I was only thinking--Where are the matches? One may smoke +here, I suppose? _(He looks at his wife.)_ If I were you I'd put on that +black gown of yours to-night--the one with the spangles.--It's only that +Fred Langham asked me to go over to Narragansett in his launch to-morrow +morning, and I was thinking that I might take Darley; I always liked +Darley. + +_Isabel (to the footman who enters)_. Mrs. Raynor wishes the dog-cart +sent to the station at five o'clock to meet Mr. Oberville. + +_Footman_. Very good, m'm. Shall I serve tea at the usual time, m'm? + +_Isabel_. Yes. That is, when Mr. Oberville arrives. + +_Footman (going out)_. Very good, m'm. + +_Warland (to Isabel, who is moving toward the door)_. Where are you +going? + +_Isabel_. To my room now--for a walk later. + +_Warland_. Later? It's past three already. + +_Isabel_. I've no engagement this afternoon. + +_Warland_. Oh, I didn't know. (_As she reaches the door_.) You'll be +back, I suppose? + +_Isabel_. I have no intention of eloping. + +_Warland_. For tea, I mean? + +_Isabel_. I never take tea. (_Warland shrugs his shoulders_.) + + +II + +_The same drawing-room. _Isabel_ enters from the lawn in hat and gloves. +The tea-table is set out, and the footman just lighting the lamp under +the kettle_. + +_Isabel_. You may take the tea-things away. I never take tea. + +_Footman_. Very good, m'm. (_He hesitates_.) I understood, m'm, that Mr. +Oberville was to have tea? + +_Isabel_. Mr. Oberville? But he was to arrive long ago! What time is it? + +_Footman_. Only a quarter past five, m'm. + +_Isabel_. A quarter past five? (_She goes up to the clock_.) Surely +you're mistaken? I thought it was long after six. (_To herself_.) I +walked and walked--I must have walked too fast ... (_To the Footman_.) +I'm going out again. When Mr. Oberville arrives please give him his tea +without waiting for me. I shall not be back till dinner-time. + +_Footman_. Very good, m'm. Here are some letters, m'm. + +_Isabel (glancing at them with a movement of disgust)_. You may send +them up to my room. + +_Footman_. I beg pardon, m'm, but one is a note from Mme. Fanfreluche, +and the man who brought it is waiting for an answer. + +_Isabel_. Didn't you tell him I was out? + +_Footman_. Yes, m'm. But he said he had orders to wait till you came in. + +_Isabel_. Ah--let me see. (_She opens the note_.) Ah, yes. (_A pause_.) +Please say that I am on my way now to Mme Fanfreluche's to give her the +answer in person. You may tell the man that I have already started. Do +you understand? Already started. + +_Footman_. Yes, m'm. + +_Isabel_. And--wait. (_With an effort_.) You may tell me when the man +has started. I shall wait here till then. Be sure you let me know. + +_Footman_. Yes, m'm. (_He goes out_.) + +_Isabel (sinking into a chair and hiding her face)_. Ah! (_After a +moment she rises, taking up her gloves and sunshade, and walks toward +the window which opens on the lawn_.) I'm so tired. (_She hesitates and +turns back into the room_.) Where can I go to? (_She sits down again by +the tea-table, and bends over the kettle. The clock strikes half-past +five_.) + +_Isabel (picking up her sunshade, walks back to the window)_. If I +_must_ meet one of them... + +_Oberville (speaking in the hall)_. Thanks. I'll take tea first. (_He +enters the room, and pauses doubtfully on seeing Isabel_.) + +_Isabel (stepping towards him with a smile)_. It's not that I've +changed, of course, but only that I happened to have my back to the +light. Isn't that what you are going to say? + +_Oberville_. Mrs. Warland! + +_Isabel_. So you really _have_ become a great man! They always remember +people's names. + +_Oberville_. Were you afraid I was going to call you Isabel? + +_Isabel_. Bravo! _Crescendo!_ + +_Oberville_. But you have changed, all the same. + +_Isabel_. You must indeed have reached a dizzy eminence, since you can +indulge yourself by speaking the truth! + +_Oberville_. It's your voice. I knew it at once, and yet it's different. + +_Isabel_. I hope it can still convey the pleasure I feel in seeing +an old friend. (_She holds out her hand. He takes it_.) You know, I +suppose, that Mrs. Raynor is not here to receive you? She was called +away this morning very suddenly by her aunt's illness. + +_Oberville_. Yes. She left a note for me. (_Absently_.) I'm sorry to +hear of Mrs. Griscom's illness. + +_Isabel_. Oh, Mrs. Griscom's illnesses are less alarming than her +recoveries. But I am forgetting to offer you any tea. (_She hands him a +cup_.) I remember you liked it very strong. + +_Oberville_. What else do you remember? + +_Isabel_. A number of equally useless things. My mind is a store-room of +obsolete information. + +_Oberville_. Why obsolete, since I am providing you with a use for it? + +_Isabel_. At any rate, it's open to question whether it was worth +storing for that length of time. Especially as there must have been +others more fitted--by opportunity--to undertake the duty. + +_Oberville_. The duty? + +_Isabel_. Of remembering how you like your tea. + +_Oberville (with a change of tone)_. Since you call it a duty--I may +remind you that it's one I have never asked any one else to perform. + +_Isabel_. As a duty! But as a pleasure? + +_Oberville_. Do you really want to know? + +_Isabel_. Oh, I don't require and charge you. + +_Oberville_. You dislike as much as ever having the _i_'s dotted? + +_Isabel_. With a handwriting I know as well as yours! + +_Oberville (recovering his lightness of manner)_. Accomplished woman! +(_He examines her approvingly_.) I'd no idea that you were here. I never +was more surprised. + +_Isabel_. I hope you like being surprised. To my mind it's an overrated +pleasure. + +_Oberville_. Is it? I'm sorry to hear that. + +_Isabel_. Why? Have you a surprise to dispose of? + +_Oberville_. I'm not sure that I haven't. + +_Isabel_. Don't part with it too hastily. It may improve by being kept. + +_Oberville (tentatively)_. Does that mean that you don't want it? + +_Isabel_. Heaven forbid! I want everything I can get. + +_Oberville_. And you get everything you want. At least you used to. + +_Isabel_. Let us talk of your surprise. + +_Oberville_. It's to be yours, you know. (_A pause. He speaks gravely_.) +I find that I've never got over having lost you. + +_Isabel (also gravely)_. And is that a surprise--to you too? + +_Oberville_. Honestly--yes. I thought I'd crammed my life full. I didn't +know there was a cranny left anywhere. At first, you know, I stuffed in +everything I could lay my hands on--there was such a big void to fill. +And after all I haven't filled it. I felt that the moment I saw you. (_A +pause_.) I'm talking stupidly. + +_Isabel_. It would be odious if you were eloquent. + +_Oberville_. What do you mean? + +_Isabel_. That's a question you never used to ask me. + +_Oberville_. Be merciful. Remember how little practise I've had lately. + +_Isabel_. In what? + +_Oberville_. Never mind! (_He rises and walks away; then comes back and +stands in front of her_.) What a fool I was to give you up! + +_Isabel_. Oh, don't say that! I've lived on it! + +_Oberville_. On my letting you go? + +_Isabel_. On your letting everything go--but the right. + +_Oberville_. Oh, hang the right! What is truth? We had the right to be +happy! + +_Isabel (with rising emotion)_. I used to think so sometimes. + +_Oberville_. Did you? Triple fool that I was! + +_Isabel_. But you showed me-- + +_Oberville_. Why, good God, we belonged to each other--and I let you go! +It's fabulous. I've fought for things since that weren't worth a crooked +sixpence; fought as well as other men. And you--you--I lost you because +I couldn't face a scene! Hang it, suppose there'd been a dozen +scenes--I might have survived them. Men have been known to. They're not +necessarily fatal. + +_Isabel_. A scene? + +_Oberville_. It's a form of fear that women don't understand. How you +must have despised me! + +_Isabel_. You were--afraid--of a scene? + +_Oberville_. I was a damned coward, Isabel. That's about the size of it. + +_Isabel_. Ah--I had thought it so much larger! + +_Oberville_. What did you say? + +_Isabel_. I said that you have forgotten to drink your tea. It must be +quite cold. + +_Oberville_. Ah-- + +_Isabel_. Let me give you another cup. + +_Oberville (collecting himself)_. No--no. This is perfect. + +_Isabel_. You haven't tasted it. + +_Oberville (falling into her mood) _. You always made it to perfection. +Only you never gave me enough sugar. + +_Isabel_. I know better now. (_She puts another lump in his cup_.) + +_Oberville (drinks his tea, and then says, with an air of reproach)_. +Isn't all this chaff rather a waste of time between two old friends who +haven't met for so many years? + +_Isabel (lightly)_. Oh, it's only a _hors d'oeuvre_--the tuning of the +instruments. I'm out of practise too. + +_Oberville_. Let us come to the grand air, then. (_Sits down near her_.) +Tell me about yourself. What are you doing? + +_Isabel_. At this moment? You'll never guess. I'm trying to remember +you. + +_Oberville_. To remember me? + +_Isabel_. Until you came into the room just now my recollection of you +was so vivid; you were a living whole in my thoughts. Now I am engaged +in gathering up the fragments--in laboriously reconstructing you.... + +_Oberville_. I have changed so much, then? + +_Isabel_. No, I don't believe that you've changed. It's only that I +see you differently. Don't you know how hard it is to convince elderly +people that the type of the evening paper is no smaller than when they +were young? + +_Oberville_. I've shrunk then? + +_Isabel_. You couldn't have grown bigger. Oh, I'm serious now; you +needn't prepare a smile. For years you were the tallest object on my +horizon. I used to climb to the thought of you, as people who live in +a flat country mount the church steeple for a view. It's wonderful how +much I used to see from there! And the air was so strong and pure! + +_Oberville_. And now? + +_Isabel_. Now I can fancy how delightful it must be to sit next to you +at dinner. + +_Oberville_. You're unmerciful. Have I said anything to offend you? + +_Isabel_. Of course not. How absurd! + +_Oberville_. I lost my head a little--I forgot how long it is since we +have met. When I saw you I forgot everything except what you had once +been to me. (_She is silent_.) I thought you too generous to resent +that. Perhaps I have overtaxed your generosity. (_A pause_.) Shall I +confess it? When I first saw you I thought for a moment that you +had remembered--as I had. You see I can only excuse myself by saying +something inexcusable. + +_Isabel (deliberately)_. Not inexcusable. + +_Oberville_. Not--? + +_Isabel_. I had remembered. + +_Oberville_. Isabel! + +_Isabel_. But now-- + +_Oberville_. Ah, give me a moment before you unsay it! + +_Isabel_. I don't mean to unsay it. There's no use in repealing an +obsolete law. That's the pity of it! You say you lost me ten years ago. +(_A pause_.) I never lost you till now. + +_Oberville_. Now? + +_Isabel_. Only this morning you were my supreme court of justice; there +was no appeal from your verdict. Not an hour ago you decided a case +for me--against myself! And now--. And the worst of it is that it's not +because you've changed. How do I know if you've changed? You haven't +said a hundred words to me. You haven't been an hour in the room. And +the years must have enriched you--I daresay you've doubled your capital. +You've been in the thick of life, and the metal you're made of brightens +with use. Success on some men looks like a borrowed coat; it sits on you +as though it had been made to order. I see all this; I know it; but +I don't _feel_ it. I don't feel anything... anywhere... I'm numb. (_A +pause_.) Don't laugh, but I really don't think I should know now if you +came into the room--unless I actually saw you. (_They are both silent_.) + +_Oberville (at length)_. Then, to put the most merciful interpretation +upon your epigrams, your feeling for me was made out of poorer stuff +than mine for you. + +_Isabel_. Perhaps it has had harder wear. + +_Oberville_. Or been less cared for? + +_Isabel_. If one has only one cloak one must wear it in all weathers. + +_Oberville_. Unless it is so beautiful and precious that one prefers to +go cold and keep it under lock and key. + +_Isabel_. In the cedar-chest of indifference--the key of which is +usually lost. + +_Oberville_. Ah, Isabel, you're too pat! How much I preferred your +hesitations. + +_Isabel_. My hesitations? That reminds me how much your coming has +simplified things. I feel as if I'd had an auction sale of fallacies. + +_Oberville_. You speak in enigmas, and I have a notion that your riddles +are the reverse of the sphinx's--more dangerous to guess than to give +up. And yet I used to find your thoughts such good reading. + +_Isabel_. One cares so little for the style in which one's praises are +written. + +_Oberville_. You've been praising me for the last ten minutes and I find +your style detestable. I would rather have you find fault with me like a +friend than approve me like a _dilettante_. + +_Isabel_. A _dilettante_! The very word I wanted! + +_Oberville_. I am proud to have enriched so full a vocabulary. But I am +still waiting for the word _I_ want. (_He grows serious_.) Isabel, look +in your heart--give me the first word you find there. You've no idea how +much a beggar can buy with a penny! + +_Isabel_. It's empty, my poor friend, it's empty. + +_Oberville_. Beggars never say that to each other. + +_Isabel_. No; never, unless it's true. + +_Oberville (after another silence)_. Why do you look at me so curiously? + +_Isabel_. I'm--what was it you said? Approving you as a _dilettante_. +Don't be alarmed; you can bear examination; I don't see a crack +anywhere. After all, it's a satisfaction to find that one's idol makes a +handsome _bibelot_. + +_Oberville (with an attempt at lightness)_. I was right then--you're a +collector? + +_Isabel (modestly)_. One must make a beginning. I think I shall begin +with you. (_She smiles at him_.) Positively, I must have you on my +mantel-shelf! (_She rises and looks at the clock_.) But it's time to +dress for dinner. (_She holds out her hand to him and he kisses it. They +look at each other, and it is clear that he does not quite understand, +but is watching eagerly for his cue_.) + +_Warland (coming in)_. Hullo, Isabel--you're here after all? + +_Isabel_. And so is Mr. Oberville. (_She looks straight at Warland_.) I +stayed in on purpose to meet him. My husband--(_The two men bow_.) + +_Warland (effusively)_. So glad to meet you. My wife talks of you so +often. She's been looking forward tremendously to your visit. + +_Oberville_. It's a long time since I've had the pleasure of seeing Mrs. +Warland. + +_Isabel_. But now we are going to make up for lost time. (_As he goes to +the door_.) I claim you to-morrow for the whole day. + +_Oberville bows and goes out_. + +_Isabel_. Lucius... I think you'd better go to Washington, after all. +(_Musing_.) Narragansett might do for the others, though.... Couldn't +you get Fred Langham to ask all the rest of the party to go over there +with him to-morrow morning? I shall have a headache and stay at home. +(_He looks at her doubtfully_.) Mr. Oberville is a bad sailor. + +_Warland advances demonstratively_. + +_Isabel (drawing back)_. It's time to go and dress. I think you said the +black gown with spangles? + + + + +A CUP OF COLD WATER + + +It was three o'clock in the morning, and the cotillion was at its +height, when Woburn left the over-heated splendor of the Gildermere +ballroom, and after a delay caused by the determination of the drowsy +footman to give him a ready-made overcoat with an imitation astrachan +collar in place of his own unimpeachable Poole garment, found himself +breasting the icy solitude of the Fifth Avenue. He was still smiling, +as he emerged from the awning, at his insistence in claiming his own +overcoat: it illustrated, humorously enough, the invincible force of +habit. As he faced the wind, however, he discerned a providence in his +persistency, for his coat was fur-lined, and he had a cold voyage before +him on the morrow. + +It had rained hard during the earlier part of the night, and the +carriages waiting in triple line before the Gildermeres' door were still +domed by shining umbrellas, while the electric lamps extending down the +avenue blinked Narcissus-like at their watery images in the hollows +of the sidewalk. A dry blast had come out of the north, with pledge of +frost before daylight, and to Woburn's shivering fancy the pools in +the pavement seemed already stiffening into ice. He turned up his +coat-collar and stepped out rapidly, his hands deep in his coat-pockets. + +As he walked he glanced curiously up at the ladder-like door-steps which +may well suggest to the future archaeologist that all the streets of New +York were once canals; at the spectral tracery of the trees about St. +Luke's, the fretted mass of the Cathedral, and the mean vista of the +long side-streets. The knowledge that he was perhaps looking at it all +for the last time caused every detail to start out like a challenge +to memory, and lit the brown-stone house-fronts with the glamor of +sword-barred Edens. + +It was an odd impulse that had led him that night to the Gildermere +ball; but the same change in his condition which made him stare +wonderingly at the houses in the Fifth Avenue gave the thrill of an +exploit to the tame business of ball-going. Who would have imagined, +Woburn mused, that such a situation as his would possess the priceless +quality of sharpening the blunt edge of habit? + +It was certainly curious to reflect, as he leaned against the doorway +of Mrs. Gildermere's ball-room, enveloped in the warm atmosphere of the +accustomed, that twenty-four hours later the people brushing by him with +looks of friendly recognition would start at the thought of having seen +him and slur over the recollection of having taken his hand! + +And the girl he had gone there to see: what would she think of him? He +knew well enough that her trenchant classifications of life admitted no +overlapping of good and evil, made no allowance for that incalculable +interplay of motives that justifies the subtlest casuistry of +compassion. Miss Talcott was too young to distinguish the intermediate +tints of the moral spectrum; and her judgments were further simplified +by a peculiar concreteness of mind. Her bringing-up had fostered this +tendency and she was surrounded by people who focussed life in the same +way. To the girls in Miss Talcott's set, the attentions of a clever man +who had to work for his living had the zest of a forbidden pleasure; but +to marry such a man would be as unpardonable as to have one's carriage +seen at the door of a cheap dress-maker. Poverty might make a man +fascinating; but a settled income was the best evidence of stability +of character. If there were anything in heredity, how could a nice +girl trust a man whose parents had been careless enough to leave him +unprovided for? + +Neither Miss Talcott nor any of her friends could be charged with +formulating these views; but they were implicit in the slope of every +white shoulder and in the ripple of every yard of imported tulle +dappling the foreground of Mrs. Gildermere's ball-room. The advantages +of line and colour in veiling the crudities of a creed are obvious to +emotional minds; and besides, Woburn was conscious that it was to the +cheerful materialism of their parents that the young girls he admired +owed that fine distinction of outline in which their skilfully-rippled +hair and skilfully-hung draperies cooeperated with the slimness and +erectness that came of participating in the most expensive sports, +eating the most expensive food and breathing the most expensive air. +Since the process which had produced them was so costly, how could they +help being costly themselves? Woburn was too logical to expect to give +no more for a piece of old Sevres than for a bit of kitchen crockery; +he had no faith in wonderful bargains, and believed that one got in +life just what one was willing to pay for. He had no mind to dispute the +taste of those who preferred the rustic simplicity of the earthen crock; +but his own fancy inclined to the piece of _pate tendre_ which must be +kept in a glass case and handled as delicately as a flower. + +It was not merely by the external grace of these drawing-room ornaments +that Woburn's sensibilities were charmed. His imagination was touched +by the curious exoticism of view resulting from such conditions; He had +always enjoyed listening to Miss Talcott even more than looking at her. +Her ideas had the brilliant bloom and audacious irrelevance of those +tropical orchids which strike root in air. Miss Talcott's opinions had +no connection with the actual; her very materialism had the grace of +artificiality. Woburn had been enchanted once by seeing her helpless +before a smoking lamp: she had been obliged to ring for a servant +because she did not know how to put it out. + +Her supreme charm was the simplicity that comes of taking it for +granted that people are born with carriages and country-places: it never +occurred to her that such congenital attributes could be matter for +self-consciousness, and she had none of the _nouveau riche_ prudery +which classes poverty with the nude in art and is not sure how to behave +in the presence of either. + +The conditions of Woburn's own life had made him peculiarly susceptible +to those forms of elegance which are the flower of ease. His father +had lost a comfortable property through sheer inability to go over his +agent's accounts; and this disaster, coming at the outset of Woburn's +school-days, had given a new bent to the family temperament. The father +characteristically died when the effort of living might have made it +possible to retrieve his fortunes; and Woburn's mother and sister, +embittered by this final evasion, settled down to a vindictive war with +circumstances. They were the kind of women who think that it lightens +the burden of life to throw over the amenities, as a reduced housekeeper +puts away her knick-knacks to make the dusting easier. They fought mean +conditions meanly; but Woburn, in his resentment of their attitude, did +not allow for the suffering which had brought it about: his own tendency +was to overcome difficulties by conciliation rather than by conflict. +Such surroundings threw into vivid relief the charming figure of Miss +Talcott. Woburn instinctively associated poverty with bad food, ugly +furniture, complaints and recriminations: it was natural that he should +be drawn toward the luminous atmosphere where life was a series of +peaceful and good-humored acts, unimpeded by petty obstacles. To spend +one's time in such society gave one the illusion of unlimited credit; +and also, unhappily, created the need for it. + +It was here in fact that Woburn's difficulties began. To marry Miss +Talcott it was necessary to be a rich man: even to dine out in her set +involved certain minor extravagances. Woburn had determined to marry +her sooner or later; and in the meanwhile to be with her as much as +possible. + +As he stood leaning in the doorway of the Gildermere ball-room, watching +her pass him in the waltz, he tried to remember how it had begun. First +there had been the tailor's bill; the fur-lined overcoat with cuffs +and collar of Alaska sable had alone cost more than he had spent on +his clothes for two or three years previously. Then there were +theatre-tickets; cab-fares; florist's bills; tips to servants at the +country-houses where he went because he knew that she was invited; the +_Omar Khayyam_ bound by Sullivan that he sent her at Christmas; the +contributions to her pet charities; the reckless purchases at fairs +where she had a stall. His whole way of life had imperceptibly changed +and his year's salary was gone before the second quarter was due. + +He had invested the few thousand dollars which had been his portion of +his father's shrunken estate: when his debts began to pile up, he took +a flyer in stocks and after a few months of varying luck his little +patrimony disappeared. Meanwhile his courtship was proceeding at an +inverse ratio to his financial ventures. Miss Talcott was growing tender +and he began to feel that the game was in his hands. The nearness of the +goal exasperated him. She was not the girl to wait and he knew that it +must be now or never. A friend lent him five thousand dollars on his +personal note and he bought railway stocks on margin. They went up and +he held them for a higher rise: they fluctuated, dragged, dropped +below the level at which he had bought, and slowly continued their +uninterrupted descent. His broker called for more margin; he could not +respond and was sold out. + +What followed came about quite naturally. For several years he had been +cashier in a well-known banking-house. When the note he had given his +friend became due it was obviously necessary to pay it and he used +the firm's money for the purpose. To repay the money thus taken, he +increased his debt to his employers and bought more stocks; and on these +operations he made a profit of ten thousand dollars. Miss Talcott rode +in the Park, and he bought a smart hack for seven hundred, paid off his +tradesmen, and went on speculating with the remainder of his profits. He +made a little more, but failed to take advantage of the market and lost +all that he had staked, including the amount taken from the firm. He +increased his over-draft by another ten thousand and lost that; he +over-drew a farther sum and lost again. Suddenly he woke to the fact +that he owed his employers fifty thousand dollars and that the partners +were to make their semi-annual inspection in two days. He realized then +that within forty-eight hours what he had called borrowing would become +theft. + +There was no time to be lost: he must clear out and start life over +again somewhere else. The day that he reached this decision he was to +have met Miss Talcott at dinner. He went to the dinner, but she did not +appear: she had a headache, his hostess explained. Well, he was not to +have a last look at her, after all; better so, perhaps. He took leave +early and on his way home stopped at a florist's and sent her a bunch of +violets. The next morning he got a little note from her: the violets had +done her head so much good--she would tell him all about it that evening +at the Gildermere ball. Woburn laughed and tossed the note into the +fire. That evening he would be on board ship: the examination of the +books was to take place the following morning at ten. + +Woburn went down to the bank as usual; he did not want to do anything +that might excite suspicion as to his plans, and from one or two +questions which one of the partners had lately put to him he divined +that he was being observed. At the bank the day passed uneventfully. He +discharged his business with his accustomed care and went uptown at the +usual hour. + +In the first flush of his successful speculations he had set up bachelor +lodgings, moved by the temptation to get away from the dismal atmosphere +of home, from his mother's struggles with the cook and his sister's +curiosity about his letters. He had been influenced also by the wish for +surroundings more adapted to his tastes. He wanted to be able to give +little teas, to which Miss Talcott might come with a married friend. She +came once or twice and pronounced it all delightful: she thought it _so_ +nice to have only a few Whistler etchings on the walls and the simplest +crushed levant for all one's books. + +To these rooms Woburn returned on leaving the bank. His plans had taken +definite shape. He had engaged passage on a steamer sailing for Halifax +early the next morning; and there was nothing for him to do before going +on board but to pack his clothes and tear up a few letters. He threw his +clothes into a couple of portmanteaux, and when these had been called +for by an expressman he emptied his pockets and counted up his ready +money. He found that he possessed just fifty dollars and seventy-five +cents; but his passage to Halifax was paid, and once there he could +pawn his watch and rings. This calculation completed, he unlocked his +writing-table drawer and took out a handful of letters. They were notes +from Miss Talcott. He read them over and threw them into the fire. +On his table stood her photograph. He slipped it out of its frame and +tossed it on top of the blazing letters. Having performed this rite, +he got into his dress-clothes and went to a small French restaurant to +dine. + +He had meant to go on board the steamer immediately after dinner; but a +sudden vision of introspective hours in a silent cabin made him call for +the evening paper and run his eye over the list of theatres. It would be +as easy to go on board at midnight as now. + +He selected a new vaudeville and listened to it with surprising +freshness of interest; but toward eleven o'clock he again began to +dread the approaching necessity of going down to the steamer. There was +something peculiarly unnerving in the idea of spending the rest of the +night in a stifling cabin jammed against the side of a wharf. + +He left the theatre and strolled across to the Fifth Avenue. It was now +nearly midnight and a stream of carriages poured up town from the +opera and the theatres. As he stood on the corner watching the familiar +spectacle it occurred to him that many of the people driving by him in +smart broughams and C-spring landaus were on their way to the Gildermere +ball. He remembered Miss Talcott's note of the morning and wondered if +she were in one of the passing carriages; she had spoken so confidently +of meeting him at the ball. What if he should go and take a last look +at her? There was really nothing to prevent it. He was not likely to run +across any member of the firm: in Miss Talcott's set his social standing +was good for another ten hours at least. He smiled in anticipation of +her surprise at seeing him, and then reflected with a start that she +would not be surprised at all. + +His meditations were cut short by a fall of sleety rain, and hailing a +hansom he gave the driver Mrs. Gildermere's address. + +As he drove up the avenue he looked about him like a traveller in a +strange city. The buildings which had been so unobtrusively familiar +stood out with sudden distinctness: he noticed a hundred details which +had escaped his observation. The people on the sidewalks looked like +strangers: he wondered where they were going and tried to picture +the lives they led; but his own relation to life had been so suddenly +reversed that he found it impossible to recover his mental perspective. + +At one corner he saw a shabby man lurking in the shadow of the side +street; as the hansom passed, a policeman ordered him to move on. +Farther on, Woburn noticed a woman crouching on the door-step of a +handsome house. She had drawn a shawl over her head and was sunk in the +apathy of despair or drink. A well-dressed couple paused to look at her. +The electric globe at the corner lit up their faces, and Woburn saw the +lady, who was young and pretty, turn away with a little grimace, drawing +her companion after her. + +The desire to see Miss Talcott had driven Woburn to the Gildermeres'; +but once in the ball-room he made no effort to find her. The people +about him seemed more like strangers than those he had passed in the +street. He stood in the doorway, studying the petty manoeuvres of the +women and the resigned amenities of their partners. Was it possible +that these were his friends? These mincing women, all paint and dye and +whalebone, these apathetic men who looked as much alike as the figures +that children cut out of a folded sheet of paper? Was it to live among +such puppets that he had sold his soul? What had any of these people +done that was noble, exceptional, distinguished? Who knew them by name +even, except their tradesmen and the society reporters? Who were they, +that they should sit in judgment on him? + +The bald man with the globular stomach, who stood at Mrs. Gildermere's +elbow surveying the dancers, was old Boylston, who had made his pile in +wrecking railroads; the smooth chap with glazed eyes, at whom a pretty +girl smiled up so confidingly, was Collerton, the political lawyer, who +had been mixed up to his own advantage in an ugly lobbying transaction; +near him stood Brice Lyndham, whose recent failure had ruined his +friends and associates, but had not visibly affected the welfare of his +large and expensive family. The slim fellow dancing with Miss Gildermere +was Alec Vance, who lived on a salary of five thousand a year, but whose +wife was such a good manager that they kept a brougham and victoria and +always put in their season at Newport and their spring trip to Europe. +The little ferret-faced youth in the corner was Regie Colby, who wrote +the _Entre-Nous_ paragraphs in the _Social Searchlight_: the women were +charming to him and he got all the financial tips he wanted from their +husbands and fathers. + +And the women? Well, the women knew all about the men, and flattered +them and married them and tried to catch them for their daughters. It +was a domino-party at which the guests were forbidden to unmask, though +they all saw through each other's disguises. + +And these were the people who, within twenty-four hours, would be +agreeing that they had always felt there was something wrong about +Woburn! They would be extremely sorry for him, of course, poor devil; +but there are certain standards, after all--what would society be +without standards? His new friends, his future associates, were the +suspicious-looking man whom the policeman had ordered to move on, and +the drunken woman asleep on the door-step. To these he was linked by the +freemasonry of failure. + +Miss Talcott passed him on Collerton's arm; she was giving him one of +the smiles of which Woburn had fancied himself sole owner. Collerton was +a sharp fellow; he must have made a lot in that last deal; probably she +would marry him. How much did she know about the transaction? She was +a shrewd girl and her father was in Wall Street. If Woburn's luck had +turned the other way she might have married him instead; and if he had +confessed his sin to her one evening, as they drove home from the opera +in their new brougham, she would have said that really it was of no use +to tell her, for she never _could_ understand about business, but that +she did entreat him in future to be nicer to Regie Colby. Even now, if +he made a big strike somewhere, and came back in ten years with a beard +and a steam yacht, they would all deny that anything had been proved +against him, and Mrs. Collerton might blush and remind him of their +friendship. Well--why not? Was not all morality based on a convention? +What was the stanchest code of ethics but a trunk with a series of false +bottoms? Now and then one had the illusion of getting down to +absolute right or wrong, but it was only a false bottom--a removable +hypothesis--with another false bottom underneath. There was no getting +beyond the relative. + +The cotillion had begun. Miss Talcott sat nearly opposite him: she was +dancing with young Boylston and giving him a Woburn-Collerton smile. So +young Boylston was in the syndicate too! + +Presently Woburn was aware that she had forgotten young Boylston and +was glancing absently about the room. She was looking for some one, and +meant the some one to know it: he knew that _Lost-Chord_ look in her +eyes. + +A new figure was being formed. The partners circled about the room and +Miss Talcott's flying tulle drifted close to him as she passed. Then +the favors were distributed; white skirts wavered across the floor like +thistle-down on summer air; men rose from their seats and fresh couples +filled the shining _parquet_. + +Miss Talcott, after taking from the basket a Legion of Honor in red +enamel, surveyed the room for a moment; then she made her way through +the dancers and held out the favor to Woburn. He fastened it in his +coat, and emerging from the crowd of men about the doorway, slipped his +arm about her. Their eyes met; hers were serious and a little sad. How +fine and slender she was! He noticed the little tendrils of hair about +the pink convolution of her ear. Her waist was firm and yet elastic; +she breathed calmly and regularly, as though dancing were her natural +motion. She did not look at him again and neither of them spoke. + +When the music ceased they paused near her chair. Her partner was +waiting for her and Woburn left her with a bow. + +He made his way down-stairs and out of the house. He was glad that he +had not spoken to Miss Talcott. There had been a healing power in their +silence. All bitterness had gone from him and he thought of her now +quite simply, as the girl he loved. + +At Thirty-fifth Street he reflected that he had better jump into a car +and go down to his steamer. Again there rose before him the repulsive +vision of the dark cabin, with creaking noises overhead, and the cold +wash of water against the pier: he thought he would stop in a cafe and +take a drink. He turned into Broadway and entered a brightly-lit cafe; +but when he had taken his whisky and soda there seemed no reason +for lingering. He had never been the kind of man who could escape +difficulties in that way. Yet he was conscious that his will was +weakening; that he did not mean to go down to the steamer just yet. What +did he mean to do? He began to feel horribly tired and it occurred to +him that a few hours' sleep in a decent bed would make a new man of him. +Why not go on board the next morning at daylight? + +He could not go back to his rooms, for on leaving the house he had taken +the precaution of dropping his latch-key into his letter-box; but he was +in a neighborhood of discreet hotels and he wandered on till he came to +one which was known to offer a dispassionate hospitality to luggageless +travellers in dress-clothes. + + +II + +He pushed open the swinging door and found himself in a long corridor +with a tessellated floor, at the end of which, in a brightly-lit +enclosure of plate-glass and mahogany, the night-clerk dozed over a +copy of the _Police Gazette_. The air in the corridor was rich in +reminiscences of yesterday's dinners, and a bronzed radiator poured a +wave of dry heat into Woburn's face. + +The night-clerk, roused by the swinging of the door, sat watching +Woburn's approach with the unexpectant eye of one who has full +confidence in his capacity for digesting surprises. Not that there +was anything surprising in Woburn's appearance; but the night-clerk's +callers were given to such imaginative flights in explaining their +luggageless arrival in the small hours of the morning, that he fared +habitually on fictions which would have staggered a less experienced +stomach. The night-clerk, whose unwrinkled bloom showed that he throve +on this high-seasoned diet, had a fancy for classifying his applicants +before they could frame their explanations. + +"This one's been locked out," he said to himself as he mustered Woburn. + +Having exercised his powers of divination with his accustomed accuracy +he listened without stirring an eye-lid to Woburn's statement; merely +replying, when the latter asked the price of a room, "Two-fifty." + +"Very well," said Woburn, pushing the money under the brass lattice, +"I'll go up at once; and I want to be called at seven." + +To this the night-clerk proffered no reply, but stretching out his hand +to press an electric button, returned apathetically to the perusal of +the _Police Gazette_. His summons was answered by the appearance of a +man in shirt-sleeves, whose rumpled head indicated that he had recently +risen from some kind of makeshift repose; to him the night-clerk tossed +a key, with the brief comment, "Ninety-seven;" and the man, after a +sleepy glance at Woburn, turned on his heel and lounged toward the +staircase at the back of the corridor. + +Woburn followed and they climbed three flights in silence. At each +landing Woburn glanced down, the long passage-way lit by a lowered +gas-jet, with a double line of boots before the doors, waiting, like +yesterday's deeds, to carry their owners so many miles farther on the +morrow's destined road. On the third landing the man paused, and after +examining the number on the key, turned to the left, and slouching past +three or four doors, finally unlocked one and preceded Woburn into a +room lit only by the upward gleam of the electric globes in the street +below. + +The man felt in his pockets; then he turned to Woburn. "Got a match?" he +asked. + +Woburn politely offered him one, and he applied it to the gas-fixture +which extended its jointed arm above an ash dressing-table with a +blurred mirror fixed between two standards. Having performed this office +with an air of detachment designed to make Woburn recognize it as an +act of supererogation, he turned without a word and vanished down the +passage-way. + +Woburn, after an indifferent glance about the room, which seemed to +afford the amount of luxury generally obtainable for two dollars and a +half in a fashionable quarter of New York, locked the door and sat down +at the ink-stained writing-table in the window. Far below him lay the +pallidly-lit depths of the forsaken thoroughfare. Now and then he heard +the jingle of a horsecar and the ring of hoofs on the freezing pavement, +or saw the lonely figure of a policeman eclipsing the illumination of +the plate-glass windows on the opposite side of the street. He sat thus +for a long time, his elbows on the table, his chin between his hands, +till at length the contemplation of the abandoned sidewalks, above which +the electric globes kept Stylites-like vigil, became intolerable to him, +and he drew down the window-shade, and lit the gas-fixture beside the +dressing-table. Then he took a cigar from his case, and held it to the +flame. + +The passage from the stinging freshness of the night to the stale +overheated atmosphere of the Haslemere Hotel had checked the +preternaturally rapid working of his mind, and he was now scarcely +conscious of thinking at all. His head was heavy, and he would have +thrown himself on the bed had he not feared to oversleep the hour fixed +for his departure. He thought it safest, instead, to seat himself once +more by the table, in the most uncomfortable chair that he could find, +and smoke one cigar after another till the first sign of dawn should +give an excuse for action. + +He had laid his watch on the table before him, and was gazing at the +hour-hand, and trying to convince himself by so doing that he was still +wide awake, when a noise in the adjoining room suddenly straightened him +in his chair and banished all fear of sleep. + +There was no mistaking the nature of the noise; it was that of a woman's +sobs. The sobs were not loud, but the sound reached him distinctly +through the frail door between the two rooms; it expressed an utter +abandonment to grief; not the cloud-burst of some passing emotion, but +the slow down-pour of a whole heaven of sorrow. + +Woburn sat listening. There was nothing else to be done; and at least +his listening was a mute tribute to the trouble he was powerless to +relieve. It roused, too, the drugged pulses of his own grief: he was +touched by the chance propinquity of two alien sorrows in a great city +throbbing with multifarious passions. It would have been more in keeping +with the irony of life had he found himself next to a mother singing her +child to sleep: there seemed a mute commiseration in the hand that had +led him to such neighborhood. + +Gradually the sobs subsided, with pauses betokening an effort at +self-control. At last they died off softly, like the intermittent drops +that end a day of rain. + +"Poor soul," Woburn mused, "she's got the better of it for the time. I +wonder what it's all about?" + +At the same moment he heard another sound that made him jump to his +feet. It was a very low sound, but in that nocturnal silence which gives +distinctness to the faintest noises, Woburn knew at once that he had +heard the click of a pistol. + +"What is she up to now?" he asked himself, with his eye on the door +between the two rooms; and the brightly-lit keyhole seemed to reply with +a glance of intelligence. He turned out the gas and crept to the door, +pressing his eye to the illuminated circle. + +After a moment or two of adjustment, during which he seemed to himself +to be breathing like a steam-engine, he discerned a room like his own, +with the same dressing-table flanked by gas-fixtures, and the same table +in the window. This table was directly in his line of vision; and beside +it stood a woman with a small revolver in her hands. The lights +being behind her, Woburn could only infer her youth from her slender +silhouette and the nimbus of fair hair defining her head. Her dress +seemed dark and simple, and on a chair under one of the gas-jets lay a +jacket edged with cheap fur and a small travelling-bag. He could not see +the other end of the room, but something in her manner told him that she +was alone. At length she put the revolver down and took up a letter that +lay on the table. She drew the letter from its envelope and read it +over two or three times; then she put it back, sealing the envelope, and +placing it conspicuously against the mirror of the dressing-table. + +There was so grave a significance in this dumb-show that Woburn felt +sure that her next act would be to return to the table and take up the +revolver; but he had not reckoned on the vanity of woman. After putting +the letter in place she still lingered at the mirror, standing a little +sideways, so that he could now see her face, which was distinctly +pretty, but of a small and unelastic mould, inadequate to the expression +of the larger emotions. For some moments she continued to study herself +with the expression of a child looking at a playmate who has been +scolded; then she turned to the table and lifted the revolver to her +forehead. + +A sudden crash made her arm drop, and sent her darting backward to the +opposite side of the room. Woburn had broken down the door, and stood +torn and breathless in the breach. + +"Oh!" she gasped, pressing closer to the wall. + +"Don't be frightened," he said; "I saw what you were going to do and I +had to stop you." + +She looked at him for a moment in silence, and he saw the terrified +flutter of her breast; then she said, "No one can stop me for long. And +besides, what right have you--" + +"Every one has the right to prevent a crime," he returned, the sound of +the last word sending the blood to his forehead. + +"I deny it," she said passionately. "Every one who has tried to live and +failed has the right to die." + +"Failed in what?" + +"In everything!" she replied. They stood looking at each other in +silence. + +At length he advanced a few steps. + +"You've no right to say you've failed," he said, "while you have breath +to try again." He drew the revolver from her hand. + +"Try again--try again? I tell you I've tried seventy times seven!" + +"What have you tried?" + +She looked at him with a certain dignity. + +"I don't know," she said, "that you've any right to question me--or to +be in this room at all--" and suddenly she burst into tears. + +The discrepancy between her words and action struck the chord which, in +a man's heart, always responds to the touch of feminine unreason. She +dropped into the nearest chair, hiding her face in her hands, while +Woburn watched the course of her weeping. + +At last she lifted her head, looking up between drenched lashes. + +"Please go away," she said in childish entreaty. + +"How can I?" he returned. "It's impossible that I should leave you in +this state. Trust me--let me help you. Tell me what has gone wrong, and +let's see if there's no other way out of it." + +Woburn had a voice full of sensitive inflections, and it was now +trembling with profoundest pity. Its note seemed to reassure the girl, +for she said, with a beginning of confidence in her own tones, "But I +don't even know who you are." + +Woburn was silent: the words startled him. He moved nearer to her and +went on in the same quieting tone. + +"I am a man who has suffered enough to want to help others. I don't want +to know any more about you than will enable me to do what I can for you. +I've probably seen more of life than you have, and if you're willing to +tell me your troubles perhaps together we may find a way out of them." + +She dried her eyes and glanced at the revolver. + +"That's the only way out," she said. + +"How do you know? Are you sure you've tried every other?" + +"Perfectly sure, I've written and written, and humbled myself like a +slave before him, and she won't even let him answer my letters. Oh, but +you don't understand"--she broke off with a renewal of weeping. + +"I begin to understand--you're sorry for something you've done?" + +"Oh, I've never denied that--I've never denied that I was wicked." + +"And you want the forgiveness of some one you care about?" + +"My husband," she whispered. + +"You've done something to displease your husband?" + +"To displease him? I ran away with another man!" There was a dismal +exultation in her tone, as though she were paying Woburn off for having +underrated her offense. + +She had certainly surprised him; at worst he had expected a quarrel over +a rival, with a possible complication of mother-in-law. He wondered +how such helpless little feet could have taken so bold a step; then he +remembered that there is no audacity like that of weakness. + +He was wondering how to lead her to completer avowal when she added +forlornly, "You see there's nothing else to do." + +Woburn took a turn in the room. It was certainly a narrower strait than +he had foreseen, and he hardly knew how to answer; but the first flow of +confession had eased her, and she went on without farther persuasion. + +"I don't know how I could ever have done it; I must have been downright +crazy. I didn't care much for Joe when I married him--he wasn't exactly +handsome, and girls think such a lot of that. But he just laid down and +worshipped me, and I _was_ getting fond of him in a way; only the life +was so dull. I'd been used to a big city--I come from Detroit--and +Hinksville is such a poky little place; that's where we lived; Joe +is telegraph-operator on the railroad there. He'd have been in a much +bigger place now, if he hadn't--well, after all, he behaved perfectly +splendidly about _that_. + +"I really was getting fond of him, and I believe I should have realized +in time how good and noble and unselfish he was, if his mother hadn't +been always sitting there and everlastingly telling me so. We learned in +school about the Athenians hating some man who was always called just, +and that's the way I felt about Joe. Whenever I did anything that wasn't +quite right his mother would say how differently Joe would have done it. +And she was forever telling me that Joe didn't approve of this and that +and the other. When we were alone he approved of everything, but when +his mother was round he'd sit quiet and let her say he didn't. I knew +he'd let me have my way afterwards, but somehow that didn't prevent my +getting mad at the time. + +"And then the evenings were so long, with Joe away, and Mrs. Glenn +(that's his mother) sitting there like an image knitting socks for the +heathen. The only caller we ever had was the Baptist minister, and he +never took any more notice of me than if I'd been a piece of furniture. +I believe he was afraid to before Mrs. Glenn." + +She paused breathlessly, and the tears in her eyes were now of anger. + +"Well?" said Woburn gently. + +"Well--then Arthur Hackett came along; he was travelling for a big +publishing firm in Philadelphia. He was awfully handsome and as clever +and sarcastic as anything. He used to lend me lots of novels and +magazines, and tell me all about society life in New York. All the girls +were after him, and Alice Sprague, whose father is the richest man in +Hinksville, fell desperately in love with him and carried on like a +fool; but he wouldn't take any notice of her. He never looked at anybody +but me." Her face lit up with a reminiscent smile, and then clouded +again. "I hate him now," she exclaimed, with a change of tone that +startled Woburn. "I'd like to kill him--but he's killed me instead. + +"Well, he bewitched me so I didn't know what I was doing; I was like +somebody in a trance. When he wasn't there I didn't want to speak to +anybody; I used to lie in bed half the day just to get away from folks; +I hated Joe and Hinksville and everything else. When he came back the +days went like a flash; we were together nearly all the time. I knew +Joe's mother was spying on us, but I didn't care. And at last it seemed +as if I couldn't let him go away again without me; so one evening he +stopped at the back gate in a buggy, and we drove off together and +caught the eastern express at River Bend. He promised to bring me to New +York." She paused, and then added scornfully, "He didn't even do that!" + +Woburn had returned to his seat and was watching her attentively. It +was curious to note how her passion was spending itself in words; he saw +that she would never kill herself while she had any one to talk to. + +"That was five months ago," she continued, "and we travelled all through +the southern states, and stayed a little while near Philadelphia, where +his business is. He did things real stylishly at first. Then he was sent +to Albany, and we stayed a week at the Delavan House. One afternoon I +went out to do some shopping, and when I came back he was gone. He +had taken his trunk with him, and hadn't left any address; but in my +travelling-bag I found a fifty-dollar bill, with a slip of paper on +which he had written, 'No use coming after me; I'm married.' We'd been +together less than four months, and I never saw him again. + +"At first I couldn't believe it. I stayed on, thinking it was a joke--or +that he'd feel sorry for me and come back. But he never came and never +wrote me a line. Then I began to hate him, and to see what a wicked fool +I'd been to leave Joe. I was so lonesome--I thought I'd go crazy. And I +kept thinking how good and patient Joe had been, and how badly I'd +used him, and how lovely it would be to be back in the little parlor +at Hinksville, even with Mrs. Glenn and the minister talking about +free-will and predestination. So at last I wrote to Joe. I wrote him the +humblest letters you ever read, one after another; but I never got any +answer. + +"Finally I found I'd spent all my money, so I sold my watch and my +rings--Joe gave me a lovely turquoise ring when we were married--and +came to New York. I felt ashamed to stay alone any longer in Albany; I +was afraid that some of Arthur's friends, who had met me with him on +the road, might come there and recognize me. After I got here I wrote +to Susy Price, a great friend of mine who lives at Hinksville, and she +answered at once, and told me just what I had expected--that Joe was +ready to forgive me and crazy to have me back, but that his mother +wouldn't let him stir a step or write me a line, and that she and the +minister were at him all day long, telling him how bad I was and what +a sin it would be to forgive me. I got Susy's letter two or three days +ago, and after that I saw it was no use writing to Joe. He'll never +dare go against his mother and she watches him like a cat. I suppose I +deserve it--but he might have given me another chance! I know he would +if he could only see me." + +Her voice had dropped from anger to lamentation, and her tears again +overflowed. + +Woburn looked at her with the pity one feels for a child who is suddenly +confronted with the result of some unpremeditated naughtiness. + +"But why not go back to Hinksville," he suggested, "if your husband is +ready to forgive you? You could go to your friend's house, and once your +husband knows you are there you can easily persuade him to see you." + +"Perhaps I could--Susy thinks I could. But I can't go back; I haven't +got a cent left." + +"But surely you can borrow money? Can't you ask your friend to forward +you the amount of your fare?" + +She shook her head. + +"Susy ain't well off; she couldn't raise five dollars, and it costs +twenty-five to get back to Hinksville. And besides, what would become of +me while I waited for the money? They'll turn me out of here to-morrow; +I haven't paid my last week's board, and I haven't got anything to give +them; my bag's empty; I've pawned everything." + +"And don't you know any one here who would lend you the money?" + +"No; not a soul. At least I do know one gentleman; he's a friend of +Arthur's, a Mr. Devine; he was staying at Rochester when we were there. +I met him in the street the other day, and I didn't mean to speak to +him, but he came up to me, and said he knew all about Arthur and how +meanly he had behaved, and he wanted to know if he couldn't help me--I +suppose he saw I was in trouble. He tried to persuade me to go and stay +with his aunt, who has a lovely house right round here in Twenty-fourth +Street; he must be very rich, for he offered to lend me as much money as +I wanted." + +"You didn't take it?" + +"No," she returned; "I daresay he meant to be kind, but I didn't care to +be beholden to any friend of Arthur's. He came here again yesterday, but +I wouldn't see him, so he left a note giving me his aunt's address and +saying she'd have a room ready for me at any time." + +There was a long silence; she had dried her tears and sat looking at +Woburn with eyes full of helpless reliance. + +"Well," he said at length, "you did right not to take that man's +money; but this isn't the only alternative," he added, pointing to the +revolver. + +"I don't know any other," she answered wearily. "I'm not smart enough to +get employment; I can't make dresses or do type-writing, or any of the +useful things they teach girls now; and besides, even if I could get +work I couldn't stand the loneliness. I can never hold my head up +again--I can't bear the disgrace. If I can't go back to Joe I'd rather +be dead." + +"And if you go back to Joe it will be all right?" Woburn suggested with +a smile. + +"Oh," she cried, her whole face alight, "if I could only go back to +Joe!" + +They were both silent again; Woburn sat with his hands in his pockets +gazing at the floor. At length his silence seemed to rouse her to the +unwontedness of the situation, and she rose from her seat, saying in a +more constrained tone, "I don't know why I've told you all this." + +"Because you believed that I would help you," Woburn answered, rising +also; "and you were right; I'm going to send you home." + +She colored vividly. "You told me I was right not to take Mr. Devine's +money," she faltered. + +"Yes," he answered, "but did Mr. Devine want to send you home?" + +"He wanted me to wait at his aunt's a little while first and then write +to Joe again." + +"I don't--I want you to start tomorrow morning; this morning, I mean. +I'll take you to the station and buy your ticket, and your husband can +send me back the money." + +"Oh, I can't--I can't--you mustn't--" she stammered, reddening and +paling. "Besides, they'll never let me leave here without paying." + +"How much do you owe?" + +"Fourteen dollars." + +"Very well; I'll pay that for you; you can leave me your revolver as a +pledge. But you must start by the first train; have you any idea at what +time it leaves the Grand Central?" + +"I think there's one at eight." + +He glanced at his watch. + +"In less than two hours, then; it's after six now." + +She stood before him with fascinated eyes. + +"You must have a very strong will," she said. "When you talk like that +you make me feel as if I had to do everything you say." + +"Well, you must," said Woburn lightly. "Man was made to be obeyed." + +"Oh, you're not like other men," she returned; "I never heard a voice +like yours; it's so strong and kind. You must be a very good man; you +remind me of Joe; I'm sure you've got just such a nature; and Joe is the +best man I've ever seen." + +Woburn made no reply, and she rambled on, with little pauses and fresh +bursts of confidence. + +"Joe's a real hero, you know; he did the most splendid thing you ever +heard of. I think I began to tell you about it, but I didn't finish. +I'll tell you now. It happened just after we were married; I was mad +with him at the time, I'm afraid, but now I see how splendid he was. +He'd been telegraph operator at Hinksville for four years and was hoping +that he'd get promoted to a bigger place; but he was afraid to ask for +a raise. Well, I was very sick with a bad attack of pneumonia and one +night the doctor said he wasn't sure whether he could pull me through. +When they sent word to Joe at the telegraph office he couldn't stand +being away from me another minute. There was a poor consumptive boy +always hanging round the station; Joe had taught him how to operate, +just to help him along; so he left him in the office and tore home for +half an hour, knowing he could get back before the eastern express came +along. + +"He hadn't been gone five minutes when a freight-train ran off the rails +about a mile up the track. It was a very still night, and the boy heard +the smash and shouting, and knew something had happened. He couldn't +tell what it was, but the minute he heard it he sent a message over +the wires like a flash, and caught the eastern express just as it was +pulling out of the station above Hinksville. If he'd hesitated a second, +or made any mistake, the express would have come on, and the loss of +life would have been fearful. The next day the Hinksville papers +were full of Operator Glenn's presence of mind; they all said he'd be +promoted. That was early in November and Joe didn't hear anything from +the company till the first of January. Meanwhile the boy had gone home +to his father's farm out in the country, and before Christmas he was +dead. Well, on New Year's day Joe got a notice from the company saying +that his pay was to be raised, and that he was to be promoted to a +big junction near Detroit, in recognition of his presence of mind in +stopping the eastern express. It was just what we'd both been pining for +and I was nearly wild with joy; but I noticed Joe didn't say much. He +just telegraphed for leave, and the next day he went right up to Detroit +and told the directors there what had really happened. When he came back +he told us they'd suspended him; I cried every night for a week, and +even his mother said he was a fool. After that we just lived on at +Hinksville, and six months later the company took him back; but I don't +suppose they'll ever promote him now." + +Her voice again trembled with facile emotion. + +"Wasn't it beautiful of him? Ain't he a real hero?" she said. "And I'm +sure you'd behave just like him; you'd be just as gentle about little +things, and you'd never move an inch about big ones. You'd never do a +mean action, but you'd be sorry for people who did; I can see it in your +face; that's why I trusted you right off." + +Woburn's eyes were fixed on the window; he hardly seemed to hear her. At +length he walked across the room and pulled up the shade. The electric +lights were dissolving in the gray alembic of the dawn. A milk-cart +rattled down the street and, like a witch returning late from the +Sabbath, a stray cat whisked into an area. So rose the appointed day. + +Woburn turned back, drawing from his pocket the roll of bills which he +had thrust there with so different a purpose. He counted them out, and +handed her fifteen dollars. + +"That will pay for your board, including your breakfast this morning," +he said. "We'll breakfast together presently if you like; and meanwhile +suppose we sit down and watch the sunrise. I haven't seen it for years." + +He pushed two chairs toward the window, and they sat down side by side. +The light came gradually, with the icy reluctance of winter; at last +a red disk pushed itself above the opposite house-tops and a long cold +gleam slanted across their window. They did not talk much; there was a +silencing awe in the spectacle. + +Presently Woburn rose and looked again at his watch. + +"I must go and cover up my dress-coat", he said, "and you had better put +on your hat and jacket. We shall have to be starting in half an hour." + +As he turned away she laid her hand on his arm. + +"You haven't even told me your name," she said. + +"No," he answered; "but if you get safely back to Joe you can call me +Providence." + +"But how am I to send you the money?" + +"Oh--well, I'll write you a line in a day or two and give you my +address; I don't know myself what it will be; I'm a wanderer on the face +of the earth." + +"But you must have my name if you mean to write to me." + +"Well, what is your name?" + +"Ruby Glenn. And I think--I almost think you might send the letter right +to Joe's--send it to the Hinksville station." + +"Very well." + +"You promise?" + +"Of course I promise." + +He went back into his room, thinking how appropriate it was that she +should have an absurd name like Ruby. As he re-entered the room, where +the gas sickened in the daylight, it seemed to him that he was returning +to some forgotten land; he had passed, with the last few hours, into a +wholly new phase of consciousness. He put on his fur coat, turning up +the collar and crossing the lapels to hide his white tie. Then he put +his cigar-case in his pocket, turned out the gas, and, picking up his +hat and stick, walked back through the open doorway. + +Ruby Glenn had obediently prepared herself for departure and was +standing before the mirror, patting her curls into place. Her eyes were +still red, but she had the happy look of a child that has outslept its +grief. On the floor he noticed the tattered fragments of the letter +which, a few hours earlier, he had seen her place before the mirror. + +"Shall we go down now?" he asked. + +"Very well," she assented; then, with a quick movement, she stepped +close to him, and putting her hands on his shoulders lifted her face to +his. + +"I believe you're the best man I ever knew," she said, "the very +best--except Joe." + +She drew back blushing deeply, and unlocked the door which led into +the passage-way. Woburn picked up her bag, which she had forgotten, +and followed her out of the room. They passed a frowzy chambermaid, +who stared at them with a yawn. Before the doors the row of boots still +waited; there was a faint new aroma of coffee mingling with the smell of +vanished dinners, and a fresh blast of heat had begun to tingle through +the radiators. + +In the unventilated coffee-room they found a waiter who had the +melancholy air of being the last survivor of an exterminated race, and +who reluctantly brought them some tea made with water which had not +boiled, and a supply of stale rolls and staler butter. On this meagre +diet they fared in silence, Woburn occasionally glancing at his watch; +at length he rose, telling his companion to go and pay her bill while +he called a hansom. After all, there was no use in economizing his +remaining dollars. + +In a few moments she joined him under the portico of the hotel. The +hansom stood waiting and he sprang in after her, calling to the driver +to take them to the Forty-second Street station. + +When they reached the station he found a seat for her and went to buy +her ticket. There were several people ahead of him at the window, and +when he had bought the ticket he found that it was time to put her in +the train. She rose in answer to his glance, and together they walked +down the long platform in the murky chill of the roofed-in air. He +followed her into the railway carriage, making sure that she had her +bag, and that the ticket was safe inside it; then he held out his hand, +in its pearl-coloured evening glove: he felt that the people in the +other seats were staring at them. + +"Good-bye," he said. + +"Good-bye," she answered, flushing gratefully. "I'll never +forget--never. And you _will_ write, won't you? Promise!" + +"Of course, of course," he said, hastening from the carriage. + +He retraced his way along the platform, passed through the dismal +waiting-room and stepped out into the early sunshine. On the sidewalk +outside the station he hesitated awhile; then he strolled slowly down +Forty-second Street and, skirting the melancholy flank of the Reservoir, +walked across Bryant Park. Finally he sat down on one of the benches +near the Sixth Avenue and lit a cigar. The signs of life were +multiplying around him; he watched the cars roll by with their +increasing freight of dingy toilers, the shop-girls hurrying to their +work, the children trudging schoolward, their small vague noses red with +cold, their satchels clasped in woollen-gloved hands. There is nothing +very imposing in the first stirring of a great city's activities; it +is a slow reluctant process, like the waking of a heavy sleeper; but +to Woburn's mood the sight of that obscure renewal of humble duties was +more moving than the spectacle of an army with banners. + +He sat for a long time, smoking the last cigar in his case, and +murmuring to himself a line from Hamlet--the saddest, he thought, in the +play-- + + _For every man hath business and desire_. + +Suddenly an unpremeditated movement made him feel the pressure of Ruby +Glenn's revolver in his pocket; it was like a devil's touch on his +arm, and he sprang up hastily. In his other pocket there were just four +dollars and fifty cents; but that didn't matter now. He had no thought +of flight. + +For a few minutes he loitered vaguely about the park; then the cold +drove him on again, and with the rapidity born of a sudden resolve he +began to walk down the Fifth Avenue towards his lodgings. He brushed +past a maid-servant who was washing the vestibule and ran up stairs to +his room. A fire was burning in the grate and his books and photographs +greeted him cheerfully from the walls; the tranquil air of the whole +room seemed to take it for granted that he meant to have his bath and +breakfast and go down town as usual. + +He threw off his coat and pulled the revolver out of his pocket; for +some moments he held it curiously in his hand, bending over to examine +it as Ruby Glenn had done; then he laid it in the top drawer of a small +cabinet, and locking the drawer threw the key into the fire. + +After that he went quietly about the usual business of his toilet. In +taking off his dress-coat he noticed the Legion of Honor which Miss +Talcott had given him at the ball. He pulled it out of his buttonhole +and tossed it into the fire-place. When he had finished dressing he saw +with surprise that it was nearly ten o'clock. Ruby Glenn was already two +hours nearer home. + +Woburn stood looking about the room of which he had thought to take +final leave the night before; among the ashes beneath the grate he +caught sight of a little white heap which symbolized to his fancy the +remains of his brief correspondence with Miss Talcott. He roused himself +from this unseasonable musing and with a final glance at the familiar +setting of his past, turned to face the future which the last hours had +prepared for him. + +He went down stairs and stepped out of doors, hastening down the street +towards Broadway as though he were late for an appointment. Every now +and then he encountered an acquaintance, whom he greeted with a nod and +smile; he carried his head high, and shunned no man's recognition. + +At length he reached the doors of a tall granite building honey-combed +with windows. He mounted the steps of the portico, and passing through +the double doors of plate-glass, crossed a vestibule floored with mosaic +to another glass door on which was emblazoned the name of the firm. + +This door he also opened, entering a large room with wainscotted +subdivisions, behind which appeared the stooping shoulders of a row of +clerks. + +As Woburn crossed the threshold a gray-haired man emerged from an inner +office at the opposite end of the room. + +At sight of Woburn he stopped short. + +"Mr. Woburn!" he exclaimed; then he stepped nearer and added in a low +tone: "I was requested to tell you when you came that the members of the +firm are waiting; will you step into the private office?" + + + + +THE PORTRAIT + + +It was at Mrs. Mellish's, one Sunday afternoon last spring. We were +talking over George Lillo's portraits--a collection of them was being +shown at Durand-Ruel's--and a pretty woman had emphatically declared:-- + +"Nothing on earth would induce me to sit to him!" + +There was a chorus of interrogations. + +"Oh, because--he makes people look so horrid; the way one looks on board +ship, or early in the morning, or when one's hair is out of curl and one +knows it. I'd so much rather be done by Mr. Cumberton!" + +Little Cumberton, the fashionable purveyor of rose-water pastels, +stroked his moustache to hide a conscious smile. + +"Lillo is a genius--that we must all admit," he said indulgently, +as though condoning a friend's weakness; "but he has an unfortunate +temperament. He has been denied the gift--so precious to an artist--of +perceiving the ideal. He sees only the defects of his sitters; one might +almost fancy that he takes a morbid pleasure in exaggerating their weak +points, in painting them on their worst days; but I honestly believe he +can't help himself. His peculiar limitations prevent his seeing anything +but the most prosaic side of human nature-- + + "'_A primrose by the river's brim + A yellow primrose is to him, + And it is nothing more._'" + +Cumberton looked round to surprise an order in the eye of the lady whose +sentiments he had so deftly interpreted, but poetry always made her +uncomfortable, and her nomadic attention had strayed to other topics. +His glance was tripped up by Mrs. Mellish. + +"Limitations? But, my dear man, it's because he hasn't any limitations, +because he doesn't wear the portrait-painter's conventional blinders, +that we're all so afraid of being painted by him. It's not because he +sees only one aspect of his sitters, it's because he selects the real, +the typical one, as instinctively as a detective collars a pick-pocket +in a crowd. If there's nothing to paint--no real person--he paints +nothing; look at the sumptuous emptiness of his portrait of Mrs. Guy +Awdrey"--("Why," the pretty woman perplexedly interjected, "that's the +only nice picture he ever did!") "If there's one positive trait in a +negative whole he brings it out in spite of himself; if it isn't a nice +trait, so much the worse for the sitter; it isn't Lillo's fault: he's no +more to blame than a mirror. Your other painters do the surface--he does +the depths; they paint the ripples on the pond, he drags the bottom. He +makes flesh seem as fortuitous as clothes. When I look at his portraits +of fine ladies in pearls and velvet I seem to see a little naked +cowering wisp of a soul sitting beside the big splendid body, like a +poor relation in the darkest corner of an opera-box. But look at his +pictures of really great people--how great _they_ are! There's plenty of +ideal there. Take his Professor Clyde; how clearly the man's history is +written in those broad steady strokes of the brush: the hard work, the +endless patience, the fearless imagination of the great _savant_! Or the +picture of Mr. Domfrey--the man who has felt beauty without having the +power to create it. The very brush-work expresses the difference between +the two; the crowding of nervous tentative lines, the subtler gradations +of color, somehow convey a suggestion of dilettantism. You feel what a +delicate instrument the man is, how every sense has been tuned to the +finest responsiveness." Mrs. Mellish paused, blushing a little at the +echo of her own eloquence. "My advice is, don't let George Lillo paint +you if you don't want to be found out--or to find yourself out. That's +why I've never let him do _me_; I'm waiting for the day of judgment," +she ended with a laugh. + +Every one but the pretty woman, whose eyes betrayed a quivering +impatience to discuss clothes, had listened attentively to Mrs. Mellish. +Lillo's presence in New York--he had come over from Paris for the first +time in twelve years, to arrange the exhibition of his pictures--gave to +the analysis of his methods as personal a flavor as though one had been +furtively dissecting his domestic relations. The analogy, indeed, is not +unapt; for in Lillo's curiously detached existence it is difficult to +figure any closer tie than that which unites him to his pictures. In +this light, Mrs. Mellish's flushed harangue seemed not unfitted to the +trivialities of the tea hour, and some one almost at once carried on +the argument by saying:--"But according to your theory--that the +significance of his work depends on the significance of the sitter--his +portrait of Vard ought to be a master-piece; and it's his biggest +failure." + +Alonzo Vard's suicide--he killed himself, strangely enough, the day +that Lillo's pictures were first shown--had made his portrait the chief +feature of the exhibition. It had been painted ten or twelve years +earlier, when the terrible "Boss" was at the height of his power; and if +ever man presented a type to stimulate such insight as Lillo's, that man +was Vard; yet the portrait was a failure. It was magnificently composed; +the technique was dazzling; but the face had been--well, expurgated. +It was Vard as Cumberton might have painted him--a common man trying +to look at ease in a good coat. The picture had never before been +exhibited, and there was a general outcry of disappointment. It wasn't +only the critics and the artists who grumbled. Even the big public, +which had gaped and shuddered at Vard, revelling in his genial villany, +and enjoying in his death that succumbing to divine wrath which, as a +spectacle, is next best to its successful defiance--even the public felt +itself defrauded. What had the painter done with their hero? Where +was the big sneering domineering face that figured so convincingly in +political cartoons and patent-medicine advertisements, on cigar-boxes +and electioneering posters? They had admired the man for looking his +part so boldly; for showing the undisguised blackguard in every line of +his coarse body and cruel face; the pseudo-gentleman of Lillo's picture +was a poor thing compared to the real Vard. It had been vaguely expected +that the great boss's portrait would have the zest of an incriminating +document, the scandalous attraction of secret memoirs; and instead, it +was as insipid as an obituary. It was as though the artist had been in +league with his sitter, had pledged himself to oppose to the lust for +post-mortem "revelations" an impassable blank wall of negation. The +public was resentful, the critics were aggrieved. Even Mrs. Mellish had +to lay down her arms. + +"Yes, the portrait of Vard _is_ a failure," she admitted, "and I've +never known why. If he'd been an obscure elusive type of villain, one +could understand Lillo's missing the mark for once; but with that face +from the pit--!" + +She turned at the announcement of a name which our discussion had +drowned, and found herself shaking hands with Lillo. + +The pretty woman started and put her hands to her curls; Cumberton +dropped a condescending eyelid (he never classed himself by recognizing +degrees in the profession), and Mrs. Mellish, cheerfully aware that she +had been overheard, said, as she made room for Lillo-- + +"I wish you'd explain it." + +Lillo smoothed his beard and waited for a cup of tea. Then, "Would there +be any failures," he said, "if one could explain them?" + +"Ah, in some cases I can imagine it's impossible to seize the type--or +to say why one has missed it. Some people are like daguerreotypes; in +certain lights one can't see them at all. But surely Vard was obvious +enough. What I want to know is, what became of him? What did you do with +him? How did you manage to shuffle him out of sight?" + +"It was much easier than you think. I simply missed an opportunity--" + +"That a sign-painter would have seen!" + +"Very likely. In fighting shy of the obvious one may miss the +significant--" + +"--And when I got back from Paris," the pretty woman was heard to wail, +"I found all the women here were wearing the very models I'd brought +home with me!" + +Mrs. Mellish, as became a vigilant hostess, got up and shuffled her +guests; and the question of Yard's portrait was dropped. + +I left the house with Lillo; and on the way down Fifth Avenue, after one +of his long silences, he suddenly asked: + +"Is that what is generally said of my picture of Vard? I don't mean in +the newspapers, but by the fellows who know?" + +I said it was. + +He drew a deep breath. "Well," he said, "it's good to know that when one +tries to fail one can make such a complete success of it." + +"Tries to fail?" + +"Well, no; that's not quite it, either; I didn't want to make a failure +of Vard's picture, but I did so deliberately, with my eyes open, all the +same. It was what one might call a lucid failure." + +"But why--?" + +"The why of it is rather complicated. I'll tell you some time--" He +hesitated. "Come and dine with me at the club by and by, and I'll tell +you afterwards. It's a nice morsel for a psychologist." + +At dinner he said little; but I didn't mind that. I had known him for +years, and had always found something soothing and companionable in his +long abstentions from speech. His silence was never unsocial; it was +bland as a natural hush; one felt one's self included in it, not left +out. He stroked his beard and gazed absently at me; and when we had +finished our coffee and liqueurs we strolled down to his studio. + +At the studio--which was less draped, less posed, less consciously +"artistic" than those of the smaller men--he handed me a cigar, and fell +to smoking before the fire. When he began to talk it was of indifferent +matters, and I had dismissed the hope of hearing more of Vard's +portrait, when my eye lit on a photograph of the picture. I walked +across the room to look at it, and Lillo presently followed with a +light. + +"It certainly is a complete disguise," he muttered over my shoulder; +then he turned away and stooped to a big portfolio propped against the +wall. + +"Did you ever know Miss Vard?" he asked, with his head in the portfolio; +and without waiting for my answer he handed me a crayon sketch of a +girl's profile. + +I had never seen a crayon of Lillo's, and I lost sight of the sitter's +personality in the interest aroused by this new aspect of the master's +complex genius. The few lines--faint, yet how decisive!--flowered out of +the rough paper with the lightness of opening petals. It was a mere hint +of a picture, but vivid as some word that wakens long reverberations in +the memory. + +I felt Lillo at my shoulder again. + +"You knew her, I suppose?" + +I had to stop and think. Why, of course I'd known her: a silent handsome +girl, showy yet ineffective, whom I had seen without seeing the winter +that society had capitulated to Vard. Still looking at the crayon, I +tried to trace some connection between the Miss Vard I recalled and the +grave young seraph of Lillo's sketch. Had the Vards bewitched him? By +what masterstroke of suggestion had he been beguiled into drawing the +terrible father as a barber's block, the commonplace daughter as this +memorable creature? + +"You don't remember much about her? No, I suppose not. She was a +quiet girl and nobody noticed her much, even when--" he paused with a +smile--"you were all asking Vard to dine." + +I winced. Yes, it was true--we had all asked Vard to dine. It was some +comfort to think that fate had made him expiate our weakness. + +Lillo put the sketch on the mantel-shelf and drew his arm-chair to the +fire. + +"It's cold to-night. Take another cigar, old man; and some whiskey? +There ought to be a bottle and some glasses in that cupboard behind +you... help yourself..." + + +II + +About Vard's portrait? (he began.) Well, I'll tell you. It's a queer +story, and most people wouldn't see anything in it. My enemies might +say it was a roundabout way of explaining a failure; but you know better +than that. Mrs. Mellish was right. Between me and Vard there could be no +question of failure. The man was made for me--I felt that the first time +I clapped eyes on him. I could hardly keep from asking him to sit to me +on the spot; but somehow one couldn't ask favors of the fellow. I +sat still and prayed he'd come to me, though; for I was looking for +something big for the next Salon. It was twelve years ago--the last +time I was out ere--and I was ravenous for an opportunity. I had the +feeling--do you writer-fellows have it too?--that there was something +tremendous in me if it could only be got out; and I felt Vard was the +Moses to strike the rock. There were vulgar reasons, too, that made +me hunger for a victim. I'd been grinding on obscurely for a good many +years, without gold or glory, and the first thing of mine that had made +a noise was my picture of Pepita, exhibited the year before. There'd +been a lot of talk about that, orders were beginning to come in, and I +wanted to follow it up with a rousing big thing at the next Salon. Then +the critics had been insinuating that I could do only Spanish things--I +suppose I _had_ overdone the castanet business; it's a nursery-disease +we all go through--and I wanted to show that I had plenty more shot in +my locker. Don't you get up every morning meaning to prove you're equal +to Balzac or Thackeray? That's the way I felt then; _only give me a +chance_, I wanted to shout out to them; and I saw at once that Vard was +my chance. + +I had come over from Paris in the autumn to paint Mrs. Clingsborough, +and I met Vard and his daughter at one of the first dinners I went to. +After that I could think of nothing but that man's head. What a type! +I raked up all the details of his scandalous history; and there were +enough to fill an encyclopaedia. The papers were full of him just then; +he was mud from head to foot; it was about the time of the big viaduct +steal, and irreproachable citizens were forming ineffectual leagues to +put him down. And all the time one kept meeting him at dinners--that was +the beauty of it! Once I remember seeing him next to the Bishop's wife; +I've got a little sketch of that duet somewhere... Well, he was simply +magnificent, a born ruler; what a splendid condottiere he would have +made, in gold armor, with a griffin grinning on his casque! You remember +those drawings of Leonardo's, where the knight's face and the outline of +his helmet combine in one monstrous saurian profile? He always reminded +me of that... + +But how was I to get at him?--One day it occurred to me to try talking +to Miss Vard. She was a monosyllabic person, who didn't seem to see an +inch beyond the last remark one had made; but suddenly I found myself +blurting out, "I wonder if you know how extraordinarily paintable your +father is?" and you should have seen the change that came over her. Her +eyes lit up and she looked--well, as I've tried to make her look there. +(He glanced up at the sketch.) Yes, she said, _wasn't_ her father +splendid, and didn't I think him one of the handsomest men I'd ever +seen? + +That rather staggered me, I confess; I couldn't think her capable of +joking on such a subject, yet it seemed impossible that she should be +speaking seriously. But she was. I knew it by the way she looked at +Vard, who was sitting opposite, his wolfish profile thrown back, +the shaggy locks tossed off his narrow high white forehead. The girl +worshipped him. + +She went on to say how glad she was that I saw him as she did. So many +artists admired only regular beauty, the stupid Greek type that was made +to be done in marble; but she'd always fancied from what she'd seen +of my work--she knew everything I'd done, it appeared--that I +looked deeper, cared more for the way in which faces are modelled +by temperament and circumstance; "and of course in that sense," she +concluded, "my father's face _is_ beautiful." + +This was even more staggering; but one couldn't question her divine +sincerity. I'm afraid my one thought was to take advantage of it; and I +let her go on, perceiving that if I wanted to paint Vard all I had to do +was to listen. + +She poured out her heart. It was a glorious thing for a girl, she said, +wasn't it, to be associated with such a life as that? She felt it so +strongly, sometimes, that it oppressed her, made her shy and stupid. She +was so afraid people would expect her to live up to _him_. But that +was absurd, of course; brilliant men so seldom had clever children. +Still--did I know?--she would have been happier, much happier, if he +hadn't been in public life; if he and she could have hidden themselves +away somewhere, with their books and music, and she could have had it +all to herself: his cleverness, his learning, his immense unbounded +goodness. For no one knew how good he was; no one but herself. Everybody +recognized his cleverness, his brilliant abilities; even his enemies had +to admit his extraordinary intellectual gifts, and hated him the worse, +of course, for the admission; but no one, no one could guess what he +was at home. She had heard of great men who were always giving gala +performances in public, but whose wives and daughters saw only the empty +theatre, with the footlights out and the scenery stacked in the wings; +but with him it was just the other way: wonderful as he was in public, +in society, she sometimes felt he wasn't doing himself justice--he was +so much more wonderful at home. It was like carrying a guilty secret +about with her: his friends, his admirers, would never forgive her if +they found out that he kept all his best things for _her!_ + +I don't quite know what I felt in listening to her. I was chiefly taken +up with leading her on to the point I had in view; but even through my +personal preoccupation I remember being struck by the fact that, though +she talked foolishly, she didn't talk like a fool. She was not stupid; +she was not obtuse; one felt that her impassive surface was alive +with delicate points of perception; and this fact, coupled with her +crystalline frankness, flung me back on a startled revision of my +impressions of her father. He came out of the test more monstrous than +ever, as an ugly image reflected in clear water is made uglier by the +purity of the medium. Even then I felt a pang at the use to which fate +had put the mountain-pool of Miss Vard's spirit, and an uneasy sense +that my own reflection there was not one to linger over. It was odd that +I should have scrupled to deceive, on one small point, a girl already +so hugely cheated; perhaps it was the completeness of her delusion that +gave it the sanctity of a religious belief. At any rate, a distinct +sense of discomfort tempered the satisfaction with which, a day or two +later, I heard from her that her father had consented to give me a few +sittings. + +I'm afraid my scruples vanished when I got him before my easel. He was +immense, and he was unexplored. From my point of view he'd never +been done before--I was his Cortez. As he talked the wonder grew. His +daughter came with him, and I began to think she was right in saying +that he kept his best for her. It wasn't that she drew him out, or +guided the conversation; but one had a sense of delicate vigilance, +hardly more perceptible than one of those atmospheric influences that +give the pulses a happier turn. She was a vivifying climate. I had meant +to turn the talk to public affairs, but it slipped toward books and art, +and I was faintly aware of its being kept there without undue pressure. +Before long I saw the value of the diversion. It was easy enough to get +at the political Vard: the other aspect was rarer and more instructive. +His daughter had described him as a scholar. He wasn't that, of course, +in any intrinsic sense: like most men of his type he had gulped his +knowledge standing, as he had snatched his food from lunch-counters; the +wonder of it lay in his extraordinary power of assimilation. It was +the strangest instance of a mind to which erudition had given force and +fluency without culture; his learning had not educated his perceptions: +it was an implement serving to slash others rather than to polish +himself. I have said that at first sight he was immense; but as I +studied him he began to lessen under my scrutiny. His depth was a false +perspective painted on a wall. + +It was there that my difficulty lay: I had prepared too big a canvas +for him. Intellectually his scope was considerable, but it was like +the digital reach of a mediocre pianist--it didn't make him a great +musician. And morally he wasn't bad enough; his corruption wasn't +sufficiently imaginative to be interesting. It was not so much a means +to an end as a kind of virtuosity practised for its own sake, like a +highly-developed skill in cannoning billiard balls. After all, the point +of view is what gives distinction to either vice or virtue: a morality +with ground-glass windows is no duller than a narrow cynicism. + +His daughter's presence--she always came with him--gave unintentional +emphasis to these conclusions; for where she was richest he was naked. +She had a deep-rooted delicacy that drew color and perfume from the very +centre of her being: his sentiments, good or bad, were as detachable +as his cuffs. Thus her nearness, planned, as I guessed, with the tender +intention of displaying, elucidating him, of making him accessible in +detail to my dazzled perceptions--this pious design in fact defeated +itself. She made him appear at his best, but she cheapened that best by +her proximity. For the man was vulgar to the core; vulgar in spite of +his force and magnitude; thin, hollow, spectacular; a lath-and-plaster +bogey-- + +Did she suspect it? I think not--then. He was wrapped in her impervious +faith... The papers? Oh, their charges were set down to political +rivalry; and the only people she saw were his hangers-on, or the +fashionable set who had taken him up for their amusement. Besides, +she would never have found out in that way: at a direct accusation her +resentment would have flamed up and smothered her judgment. If the +truth came to her, it would come through knowing intimately some +one--different; through--how shall I put it?--an imperceptible shifting +of her centre of gravity. My besetting fear was that I couldn't count on +her obtuseness. She wasn't what is called clever; she left that to +him; but she was exquisitely good; and now and then she had intuitive +felicities that frightened me. Do I make you see her? We fellows can +explain better with the brush; I don't know how to mix my words or lay +them on. She wasn't clever; but her heart thought--that's all I can +say... + +If she'd been stupid it would have been easy enough: I could have +painted him as he was. Could have? I did--brushed the face in one day +from memory; it was the very man! I painted it out before she came: +I couldn't bear to have her see it. I had the feeling that I held her +faith in him in my hands, carrying it like a brittle object through a +jostling mob; a hair's-breadth swerve and it was in splinters. + +When she wasn't there I tried to reason myself out of these subtleties. +My business was to paint Vard as he was--if his daughter didn't mind his +looks, why should I? The opportunity was magnificent--I knew that by +the way his face had leapt out of the canvas at my first touch. It would +have been a big thing. Before every sitting I swore to myself I'd do it; +then she came, and sat near him, and I--didn't. + +I knew that before long she'd notice I was shirking the face. Vard +himself took little interest in the portrait, but she watched me +closely, and one day when the sitting was over she stayed behind and +asked me when I meant to begin what she called "the likeness." I guessed +from her tone that the embarrassment was all on my side, or that if she +felt any it was at having to touch a vulnerable point in my pride. Thus +far the only doubt that troubled her was a distrust of my ability. Well, +I put her off with any rot you please: told her she must trust me, must +let me wait for the inspiration; that some day the face would come; +I should see it suddenly--feel it under my brush... The poor child +believed me: you can make a woman believe almost anything she doesn't +quite understand. She was abashed at her philistinism, and begged me not +to tell her father--he would make such fun of her! + +After that--well, the sittings went on. Not many, of course; Vard was +too busy to give me much time. Still, I could have done him ten times +over. Never had I found my formula with such ease, such assurance; there +were no hesitations, no obstructions--the face was _there_, waiting for +me; at times it almost shaped itself on the canvas. Unfortunately Miss +Vard was there too ... + +All this time the papers were busy with the viaduct scandal. The outcry +was getting louder. You remember the circumstances? One of Vard's +associates--Bardwell, wasn't it?--threatened disclosures. The rival +machine got hold of him, the Independents took him to their bosom, and +the press shrieked for an investigation. It was not the first storm Vard +had weathered, and his face wore just the right shade of cool vigilance; +he wasn't the man to fall into the mistake of appearing too easy. His +demeanor would have been superb if it had been inspired by a sense of +his own strength; but it struck me rather as based on contempt for +his antagonists. Success is an inverted telescope through which one's +enemies are apt to look too small and too remote. As for Miss Vard, +her serenity was undiminished; but I half-detected a defiance in her +unruffled sweetness, and during the last sittings I had the factitious +vivacity of a hostess who hears her best china crashing. + +One day it _did_ crash: the head-lines of the morning papers shouted the +catastrophe at me:--"The Monster forced to disgorge--Warrant out against +Vard--Bardwell the Boss's Boomerang"--you know the kind of thing. + +When I had read the papers I threw them down and went out. As it +happened, Vard was to have given me a sitting that morning; but there +would have been a certain irony in waiting for him. I wished I had +finished the picture--I wished I'd never thought of painting it. I +wanted to shake off the whole business, to put it out of my mind, if I +could: I had the feeling--I don't know if I can describe it--that there +was a kind of disloyalty to the poor girl in my even acknowledging +to myself that I knew what all the papers were howling from the +housetops.... + +I had walked for an hour when it suddenly occurred to me that Miss Vard +might, after all, come to the studio at the appointed hour. Why should +she? I could conceive of no reason; but the mere thought of what, if +she _did_ come, my absence would imply to her, sent me bolting back to +Twelfth Street. It was a presentiment, if you like, for she was there. + +As she rose to meet me a newspaper slipped from her hand: I'd been fool +enough, when I went out, to leave the damned things lying all over the +place. + +I muttered some apology for being late, and she said reassuringly: + +"But my father's not here yet." + +"Your father--?" I could have kicked myself for the way I bungled it! + +"He went out very early this morning, and left word that he would meet +me here at the usual hour." + +She faced me, with an eye full of bright courage, across the newspaper +lying between us. + +"He ought to be here in a moment now--he's always so punctual. But my +watch is a little fast, I think." + +She held it out to me almost gaily, and I was just pretending to compare +it with mine, when there was a smart rap on the door and Vard stalked +in. There was always a civic majesty in his gait, an air of having just +stepped off his pedestal and of dissembling an oration in his umbrella; +and that day he surpassed himself. Miss Vard had turned pale at the +knock; but the mere sight of him replenished her veins, and if she now +avoided my eye, it was in mere pity for my discomfiture. + +I was in fact the only one of the three who didn't instantly "play up"; +but such virtuosity was inspiring, and by the time Vard had thrown off +his coat and dropped into a senatorial pose, I was ready to pitch into +my work. I swore I'd do his face then and there; do it as she saw it; +she sat close to him, and I had only to glance at her while I painted-- + +Vard himself was masterly: his talk rattled through my hesitations and +embarrassments like a brisk northwester sweeping the dry leaves from +its path. Even his daughter showed the sudden brilliance of a lamp from +which the shade has been removed. We were all surprisingly vivid--it +felt, somehow, as though we were being photographed by flash-light... + +It was the best sitting we'd ever had--but unfortunately it didn't last +more than ten minutes. + +It was Vard's secretary who interrupted us--a slinking chap called +Cornley, who burst in, as white as sweetbread, with the face of a +depositor who hears his bank has stopped payment. Miss Vard started up +as he entered, but caught herself together and dropped back into her +chair. Vard, who had taken out a cigarette, held the tip tranquilly to +his fusee. + +"You're here, thank God!" Cornley cried. "There's no time to be lost, +Mr. Vard. I've got a carriage waiting round the corner in Thirteenth +Street--" + +Vard looked at the tip of his cigarette. + +"A carriage in Thirteenth Street? My good fellow, my own brougham is at +the door." + +"I know, I know--but _they_'re there too, sir; or they will be, inside +of a minute. For God's sake, Mr. Vard, don't trifle!--There's a way out +by Thirteenth Street, I tell you"-- + +"Bardwell's myrmidons, eh?" said Vard. "Help me on with my overcoat, +Cornley, will you?" + +Cornley's teeth chattered. + +"Mr. Vard, your best friends ... Miss Vard, won't you speak to your +father?" He turned to me haggardly;--"We can get out by the back way?" + +I nodded. + +Vard stood towering--in some infernal way he seemed literally to rise +to the situation--one hand in the bosom of his coat, in the attitude of +patriotism in bronze. I glanced at his daughter: she hung on him with a +drowning look. Suddenly she straightened herself; there was something +of Vard in the way she faced her fears--a kind of primitive calm we +drawing-room folk don't have. She stepped to him and laid her hand on +his arm. The pause hadn't lasted ten seconds. + +"Father--" she said. + +Vard threw back his head and swept the studio with a sovereign eye. + +"The back way, Mr. Vard, the back way," Cornley whimpered. "For God's +sake, sir, don't lose a minute." + +Vard transfixed his abject henchman. + +"I have never yet taken the back way," he enunciated; and, with a +gesture matching the words, he turned to me and bowed. + +"I regret the disturbance"--and he walked to the door. His daughter was +at his side, alert, transfigured. + +"Stay here, my dear." + +"Never!" + +They measured each other an instant; then he drew her arm in his. She +flung back one look at me--a paean of victory--and they passed out with +Cornley at their heels. + +I wish I'd finished the face then; I believe I could have caught +something of the look she had tried to make me see in him. Unluckily I +was too excited to work that day or the next, and within the week the +whole business came out. If the indictment wasn't a put-up job--and +on that I believe there were two opinions--all that followed was. You +remember the farcical trial, the packed jury, the compliant judge, the +triumphant acquittal?... It's a spectacle that always carries +conviction to the voter: Vard was never more popular than after his +"exoneration"... + +I didn't see Miss Vard for weeks. It was she who came to me at length; +came to the studio alone, one afternoon at dusk. She had--what shall I +say?--a veiled manner; as though she had dropped a fine gauze between +us. I waited for her to speak. + +She glanced about the room, admiring a hawthorn vase I had picked up at +auction. Then, after a pause, she said: + +"You haven't finished the picture?" + +"Not quite," I said. + +She asked to see it, and I wheeled out the easel and threw the drapery +back. + +"Oh," she murmured, "you haven't gone on with the face?" + +I shook my head. + +She looked down on her clasped hands and up at the picture; not once at +me. + +"You--you're going to finish it?" + +"Of course," I cried, throwing the revived purpose into my voice. By +God, I would finish it! + +The merest tinge of relief stole over her face, faint as the first thin +chirp before daylight. + +"Is it so very difficult?" she asked tentatively. + +"Not insuperably, I hope." + +She sat silent, her eyes on the picture. At length, with an effort, she +brought out: "Shall you want more sittings?" + +For a second I blundered between two conflicting conjectures; then the +truth came to me with a leap, and I cried out, "No, no more sittings!" + +She looked up at me then for the first time; looked too soon, poor +child; for in the spreading light of reassurance that made her eyes +like a rainy dawn, I saw, with terrible distinctness, the rout of her +disbanded hopes. I knew that she knew ... + +I finished the picture and sent it home within a week. I tried to make +it--what you see.--Too late, you say? Yes--for her; but not for me or +for the public. If she could be made to feel, for a day longer, for an +hour even, that her miserable secret _was_ a secret--why, she'd made it +seem worth while to me to chuck my own ambitions for that ... + + * * * * * + +Lillo rose, and taking down the sketch stood looking at it in silence. + +After a while I ventured, "And Miss Vard--?" + +He opened the portfolio and put the sketch back, tying the strings with +deliberation. Then, turning to relight his cigar at the lamp, he said: +"She died last year, thank God." + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Greater Inclination, by Edith Wharton + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREATER INCLINATION *** + +***** This file should be named 9190.txt or 9190.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/9/1/9/9190/ + +Produced by Anne Soulard, Tiffany Vergon and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + +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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