The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative. A
large amount of reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to the
drowning man; and it is not past belief that one may review an entire
courtship while removing one’s gloves.
That is what Trysdale was doing, standing by a table in his bachelor
apartments. On the table stood a singular-looking green plant in a red
earthen jar. The plant was one of the species of cacti, and was
provided with long, tentacular leaves that perpetually swayed with the
slightest breeze with a peculiar beckoning motion.
Trysdale’s friend, the brother of the bride, stood at a sideboard
complaining at being allowed to drink alone. Both men were in evening
dress. White favors like stars upon their coats shone through the gloom
of the apartment.
As he slowly unbuttoned his gloves, there passed through Trysdale’s
mind a swift, scarifying retrospect of the last few hours. It seemed
that in his nostrils was still the scent of the flowers that had been
banked in odorous masses about the church, and in his ears the
lowpitched hum of a thousand well-bred voices, the rustle of crisp
garments, and, most insistently recurring, the drawling words of the
minister irrevocably binding her to another.
From this last hopeless point of view he still strove, as if it had
become a habit of his mind, to reach some conjecture as to why and how
he had lost her. Shaken rudely by the uncompromising fact, he had
suddenly found himself confronted by a thing he had never before
faced—his own innermost, unmitigated, arid unbedecked self. He saw all
the garbs of pretence and egoism that he had worn now turn to rags of
folly. He shuddered at the thought that to others, before now, the
garments of his soul must have appeared sorry and threadbare. Vanity
and conceit? These were the joints in his armor. And how free from
either she had always been—But why—
As she had slowly moved up the aisle toward the altar he had felt an
unworthy, sullen exultation that had served to support him. He had told
himself that her paleness was from thoughts of another than the man to
whom she was about to give herself. But even that poor consolation had
been wrenched from him. For, when he saw that swift, limpid, upward
look that she gave the man when he took her hand, he knew himself to be
forgotten. Once that same look had been raised to him, and he had
gauged its meaning. Indeed, his conceit had crumbled; its last prop was
gone. Why had it ended thus? There had been no quarrel between them,
nothing—
For the thousandth time he remarshalled in his mind the events of those
last few days before the tide had so suddenly turned.
She had always insisted upon placing him upon a pedestal, and he had
accepted her homage with royal grandeur. It had been a very sweet
incense that she had burned before him; so modest (he told himself); so
childlike and worshipful, and (he would once have sworn) so sincere.
She had invested him with an almost supernatural number of high
attributes and excellencies and talents, and he had absorbed the
oblation as a desert drinks the rain that can coax from it no promise
of blossom or fruit.
As Trysdale grimly wrenched apart the seam of his last glove, the
crowning instance of his fatuous and tardily mourned egoism came
vividly back to him. The scene was the night when he had asked her to
come up on his pedestal with him and share his greatness. He could not,
now, for the pain of it, allow his mind to dwell upon the memory of her
convincing beauty that night—the careless wave of her hair, the
tenderness and virginal charm of her looks and words. But they had been
enough, and they had brought him to speak. During their conversation
she had said:
“And Captain Carruthers tells me that you speak the Spanish language
like a native. Why have you hidden this accomplishment from me? Is
there anything you do not know?”
Now, Carruthers was an idiot. No doubt he (Trysdale) had been guilty
(he sometimes did such things) of airing at the club some old, canting
Castilian proverb dug from the hotchpotch at the back of dictionaries.
Carruthers, who was one of his incontinent admirers, was the very man
to have magnified this exhibition of doubtful erudition.
But, alas! the incense of her admiration had been so sweet and
flattering. He allowed the imputation to pass without denial. Without
protest, he allowed her to twine about his brow this spurious bay of
Spanish scholarship. He let it grace his conquering head, and, among
its soft convolutions, he did not feel the prick of the thorn that was
to pierce him later.
How glad, how shy, how tremulous she was! How she fluttered like a
snared bird when he laid his mightiness at her feet! He could have
sworn, and he could swear now, that unmistakable consent was in her
eyes, but, coyly, she would give him no direct answer. “I will send you
my answer to-morrow,” she said; and he, the indulgent, confident
victor, smilingly granted the delay. The next day he waited, impatient,
in his rooms for the word. At noon her groom came to the door and left
the strange cactus in the red earthen jar. There was no note, no
message, merely a tag upon the plant bearing a barbarous foreign or
botanical name. He waited until night, but her answer did not come. His
large pride and hurt vanity kept him from seeking her. Two evenings
later they met at a dinner. Their greetings were conventional, but she
looked at him, breathless, wondering, eager. He was courteous, adamant,
waiting her explanation. With womanly swiftness she took her cue from
his manner, and turned to snow and ice. Thus, and wider from this on,
they had drifted apart. Where was his fault? Who had been to blame?
Humbled now, he sought the answer amid the ruins of his self-conceit.
If—
The voice of the other man in the room, querulously intruding upon his
thoughts, aroused him.
“I say, Trysdale, what the deuce is the matter with you? You look
unhappy as if you yourself had been married instead of having acted
merely as an accomplice. Look at me, another accessory, come two
thousand miles on a garlicky, cockroachy banana steamer all the way
from South America to connive at the sacrifice—please to observe how
lightly my guilt rests upon my shoulders. Only little sister I had,
too, and now she’s gone. Come now! take something to ease your
conscience.”
“I don’t drink just now, thanks,” said Trysdale.
“Your brandy,” resumed the other, coming over and joining him, “is
abominable. Run down to see me some time at Punta Redonda, and try some
of our stuff that old Garcia smuggles in. It’s worth the trip. Hallo!
here’s an old acquaintance. Wherever did you rake up this cactus,
Trysdale?”
“A present,” said Trysdale, “from a friend. Know the species?”
“Very well. It’s a tropical concern. See hundreds of ’em around Punta
every day. Here’s the name on this tag tied to it. Know any Spanish,
Trysdale?”
“No,” said Trysdale, with the bitter wraith of a smile—“Is it Spanish?”
“Yes. The natives imagine the leaves are reaching out and beckoning to
you. They call it by this name—Ventomarme. Name means in English, ‘Come
and take me.’”