I was forced to play! It is at such moments that the old instinct of
superstition that lies dormant in each of us comes insistently back.
I know that in my old worldly wisdom I have scoffed at Sunday-school
morality and have seen as many sinners succeed as fail. Yet at such
moments when fate overtakes me I go back to my childhood terror of
pulpit thunderings and feel the avenging justice of the Old Testament
at my back. It is no use repeating to myself that other men have
done much worse than I have done and, the memory dropping away from
them, become pillars of respectability. I feel the ominous pursuit of
consequences and hear the bitter cry of conscience,--“_The wages of
sin is death_.” Perhaps there are moments so personal in our lives
that all morality returns into one individual experience, and right
and wrong are momentarily but our superstitious estimate of cause and
effect as it suddenly grips us.
Even as, in the bitter nausea of enforced hypocrisy, I stood there in
the darkness, a prey to my remorse, I heard a step and knew that my
brother was seeking me out.
“Is that you, Ben?”
“I saw you leave.”
Then he had been watching us. The tone of his voice warned me. Again, I
should have to lie.
“Couldn’t stand it; had to break away.”
“Why?”
It was black as pitch--thank heaven for that--but I felt as though
through the obscurity his hot eyes were watching the tortured agitation
on my face.
“It’s not in my mood,” I said rapidly. “Should think you’d understand.
My God--with the Governor there--the thought of going back in a few
weeks--of all that is coming to us--this dancing and merry-making
before--”
“David, are you _lying_ to me?”
His hand closed over my wrist, and the phrase died on my lips.
“Ben!”
“For God’s sake, tell me the truth! What was there between you and
Letty?”
What would I not have given to have bared my conscience to him; but it
was not my life alone that was at stake. There was the good name of the
family. For a moment, I felt lost in a sickly weakness, and hideous
possibilities seemed to strike at me out of the darkness. Then I
recovered myself. I began to act. I acted as I had never done before in
my life. I caught him by the shoulders and shook him.
“Ben, don’t be a damn fool!”
“Is that your answer?”
“Answer? How can I answer a crazy man? Do you think if there had been,
I should ever have come back here? Do you?” In my emotion my hands
cut into his shoulders and, driven on by the force of circumstances,
I said fiercely, “No, I don’t approve of your marriage. You are not
happy. I knew you wouldn’t be. Women like Letty never become real
wives. Not that she will do anything she oughtn’t to do--she is too
cold-blooded--she loves her little self more than she can ever love
anybody else--but the breath of her life is flattery and adoration. God
knows, I never wanted to tell you this--but you’ve forced it out of me.”
“You’re telling me nothing new.”
“In heaven’s name, why did you do it, Ben?”
He started back at some thought suggested by this outburst of mine.
“You know something about her, then--over there in Paris?”
I caught myself. Every word, I felt, was dangerous, and anything I
might say a trap.
“Ben, do you realize we are discussing your wife?” I said slowly. “Do
you realize how impossible this conversation is?”
“Damn it! You’re beating around the bush. You’re my brother, and I have
a right to know.”
“Letty is no different from the women of her set, here or over there;
no better, no worse. You have chosen to take one of them for your wife.
If you ask me has there ever been any public scandal attached to her
name, I can say at once, no--absolutely not.”
“You’re telling me the truth?”
“I am.”
“Thank God, at least for that!”
“As for the rest, I repeat, I don’t believe Letty has any heart to give
to you or to any one else. That may be cold comfort, but I believe it.”
“If only I believed it!”
“You can. She is a child playing with toys. She must have her toys,
to play with and to break. Just at present, because she sees she can
torture you, she is amusing herself, just as a child would with a
woolly lamb--twisting its legs. Whether she flirts with me or with a
dozen men, she’s not thinking of us; it’s you.”
“Don’t--”
“Ben, there’s only one thing to do: grin and bear it, or--”
“Well?”
“Separate and divorce,” I said, and no sooner had I said it than hope
flared up in me,--the one hope of ending a ghastly situation.
“It’s not so simple.”
“Do you care--still?”
He stood at my side without an answer.
“Ben, remember one thing.”
“The family--oh, yes--I hope to God I can remember it,” he broke out.
“Davy, sometimes I see so red that--that--”
“Stop talking like a fool,” I said angrily. “You’ve chosen to do what
you’ve done. You didn’t marry to make a home or with the hope of
having children, did you? You married Letty, as half the men we know
marry--just in a blind instinct for possession. Now, whatever happens,
however you work it out, you’re not going to do anything to disgrace
the family. Keep that in mind, Ben.”
“I wish to God I could go back with you and get into it.”
“Why not?”
“If I don’t--I don’t know what’ll happen,” he said, very low. “Davy,
it’s all very well for you to stand here and say what you say. You’ve
got a cold head. Do you think a man in my position is normal? Do you
think that he knows what he is doing half the time? I tell you, Davy,
I’m afraid--afraid.”
My mind was made up on that instant.
“Ben, you know I’d do anything in the world for you, don’t you? Will
you trust me to make the decision for you?”
“Yes,” he said, after a moment.
“You are coming back with me.” I hesitated, and then added: “For I’m
afraid, too.”
So, it is agreed that we go off to France together, though nothing is
to be said of it for the present. That is three weeks ahead; much can
happen before then. Will he hold to his determination? Will he find the
strength to wrench himself free of the slavery of the senses,--for that
is all there is to it? I don’t know. I can only wait, fearful of the
issue. I can only hope and pray.
* * * * *
Letty, I knew, would have noticed our absence and be watching for our
return, and though I didn’t see her when we came into the hall, I was
certain that somewhere in the crowd her sharp, unquiet eyes were on us.
Late in the evening she came to me as I had expected.
“_Eh bien, Davy mio_, you are amusing yourself?”
“And you?”
“I am curious,” she said, looking at me intently.
I raised my hand to my throat significantly and the look in my eyes
must have frightened her, for she attempted no more persiflage but
moved away, rather still and serious for the rest of the evening.
Perhaps, at the bottom of her feline soul, there is a touch of genuine
fear and--a desire to live.
* * * * *
I thought the evening would never end. Anne reproached me for
my gloominess and went off early, hurt, I know, at my seeming
indifference. I do not love her, I am sure of that; and yet I cannot
bear to see a certain wounded look in her eyes!
VIII
To-day, a strange conversation with Molly,--strange, for all at once I
seemed to know the human being with whom I had lived all these years.
Until now, I had thought of her only as a lovely child, something soft
and gentle, a laugh that was good to hear, a smiling face, content, as
you enjoy a graceful animal, a bit of sunshine and the fragrance of the
violet beds. Now, to my astonishment, I perceive a woman; a directness
of vision; a delicate perception of standards and a firmness of purpose.
She came in late from a skating party over at the Brinsmades’, where
I had purposely not gone, and, at the first glance of her telltale
countenance, I knew that something had happened. In the hall she caught
my hand.
“Come upstairs with me, Davy, just a minute.”
“Up it is, young lady.”
Much intrigued and a little apprehensive, I followed her into the blue
sitting room and closed the door. The next moment she was in my arms,
weeping out her heart on my shoulder.
“Oh, Davy, Davy, I had to come to some one!”
“But, good heavens, what’s wrong?” I was thinking of Letty and
wondering.
“I am so miserably unhappy!”
“Then talk it out with me. It’ll do you good.”
“Oh, Davy, some one wants to marry me!”
I started to burst out laughing at this and suddenly checked myself.
I held her from me, her shoulders in my hands, and said, with a swift
jealousy:
“You child! What right have you to be thinking of such things!”
“What things, Davy?”
“Falling in love, and marriage.”
“But I’m not in love--and that’s just the awful part of it! It’s of
him I’m thinking. It’s so terrible to think that a man has fallen in
love with you, that he cares as much as all that--when you know you
can’t--you never will. I--I feel as though I had committed a crime!”
I took her into my arms again and I think I never loved her, my little
sister, as I did at that moment. If this were American womanhood, I
felt a sudden thrill of pride!
“Perhaps, it is not so serious--”
“It is, it is,” she protested, hiding her face against my shoulder. “If
you had seen his face! I was so sorry for him, Davy. It’s terrible that
he should come to care like that! Oh, don’t laugh at me--there’s no one
else to go to but you--and do try to understand!”
“I couldn’t laugh at you, bless your honest little heart, and I think I
understand,” I said, wondering a little if she knew her true feelings.
“Is this the first time any man has proposed--”
“Yes, and I saw it coming, and I dreaded it so, and when I couldn’t
prevent it I was so frightened. He was so terribly in earnest, and his
face went so white. I--I couldn’t say a thing,--I just burst into
tears and ran away. Oh, David, I feel so guilty. I can’t bear that any
one should be so unhappy as that--just over me!”
“This is what life means, little sister,” I said, drawing her down
beside me on the old chintz sofa. “These are the things no one can
protect us from. And now, tell me, are you quite sure of your own
feelings?”
She raised her eyes, her eyes clear as Bernoline’s, to me and in
that moment I felt the spiritual kinship of true womanhood that lies
underneath all social divisions.
“It will be a long time before I shall fall in love. I am only a girl
now, Davy. I want to be a woman first, to have read and thought much.
For I want to be fit to be at the head of my home and for the lives
that may come to me.”
“Do you really feel that way, Molly dear?”
“Can any one feel differently about such things?”
I bent over her hand and caught it to my lips.
“That is the only right way--the natural way to think.”
“Oh, David, I do want to talk to you so much! You see, I never can,
with mother: you know how it is. There’s only you, Davy. I don’t love
Ted. I’m sure I never will love him, but it seems so terrible that I
should lose the other--the real friendship--and yet I suppose that’s
not possible--”
“Not quite fair to him.”
“No, and Ted is the only one to think about, isn’t he?”
“Ted?”
“Ted Seaver.”
“Oh, yes, the tall one, with dark hair,” I said, seeing confusedly one
of the many who had passed through the house. “Why, he’s only a boy.
What right had he--”
“That’s just it; but, of course, he’s not such a boy: he’s
twenty-three, and he couldn’t help saying what he did. And I did
respect him for the way he did it. Only--only such things are way off--”
“I should hope so.”
“It would have to be some one--some one very much of a man--whom I
could look up to--some one much stronger than I am--who has been really
tested and come through.” Again she looked at me and, suddenly laying
her hand over mine, said: “Some one like you, Davy.”
The look of clear faith as her face lit up somehow searched into my
heart and left me humble and regretful. I looked down at her white hand
against my dark one, and Jessica’s words came into my mind,
“So shines a good deed in a naughty world.”
“I’m glad you came to me, Molly,” I said, “and I value your confidence
very deeply. Suppose we snuggle up before the fire and talk lots of
things out!”
“Oh, if you only would!”
I touched a match to the tinder, wheeled her into position and sat down
beside her. She leaned forward, her hands clasped over her knees, her
look sunk in the climbing flame.
“It’s such a pity!”
“What, Molly?”
“It is such a sad thing to think, David, that it can’t just remain
a friendship. I am thinking of the friend I have lost. There are
many girls who are terribly excited about men--falling in love with
them. I’m not that way. I only wish--because in the end it’s you who
lose--isn’t it?”
“How long have you known him?”
“Ted? Almost a year.”
She looked, and saw the lingering question in my eye.
“Oh, David, you don’t understand me at all!”
“Yes, yes, I do, but sometimes--”
“If I cared for him, do you think I’d tell any one--even you?”
This brought me up sharp. I laughed, quite amazed, and not at all sure
that I liked it.
“That’s a rather queer way of putting it.”
“Don’t tease me, David. You understand.”
“I suppose that means, young lady,” I said, thinking of something I
had been impelled to write a few days ago, “that when the time comes,
you’ll go whisking out of this house on the arm of some stranger,
without even saying ‘by your leave’.”
“If you mean shall I decide for myself--of course, David!”
“And even a big brother’s advice--”
“No, David; not even you. How can any one else know? And then, think
of the responsibility of deciding such a thing! If I really cared, I
should believe in him, no matter what any one would tell me.”
“Molly,” I said, a bit surprised though to find myself playing the part
of Wisdom, “I am not much worried about you. You will make no mistake.
There’s an honest, direct way you have of facing life that I think I
can trust. Only, I want you to value yourself very high, and I’m afraid
sometimes that just because you are so straightforward and unselfish
you may not realize what you are worth.”
“That’s very dear of you,” she said pensively. “Of course, I won’t
pretend to you that I don’t--well, that I don’t sometimes look ahead
and wonder. Of course, I do. And I have a very high ideal.”
“It is so easy to make mistakes. It’s when you want to love, my dear
little sister, that it is easy to believe you do love. Such awful
mistakes can be made.”
“Now you are thinking of Ben,” she said irrelevantly.
“No, no, I was thinking of myself,” I said hastily, for Letty was a
subject I could not discuss with her. “Do you know, if I hadn’t been
prevented--I would--well, I don’t want to say I would have--I might
have thrown away my whole life on a mad suicidal marriage?”
“I know,” she said, nodding her head.
“You know? What do you mean?” I said, startled.
“Don’t be angry, David. I guessed. It was Jenny Barnett, wasn’t it?”
I laughed, to cover my confusion and my amazement,--a not very
successful laugh.
“Yes, it was Jenny; and that’s why I say be very sure, just at first.”
“But, David, I am not like you. You have always been so impulsive, so
intense.”
“I impulsive?” I cried, forgetting how the conversation had switched.
And I was genuinely amazed, for frankly, it had never occurred to me to
look at myself as such. Though I am not sure but what she is right, but
how she learned to see me so clearly is beyond me.
“Yes, you are! I never know what you’re going to do; whereas I--I am
really quite sensible and matter-of-fact. Why haven’t _you_ married,
David? You ought to.”
“I thought, young lady, we were here to discuss your affairs,” I said
warily.
“Please, David, let me talk to you,” she said, raising her eyes to
mine. “I love you very much, more than any one else in the world. And
we ought to be very close to each other, real confidants.”
“Now, what’s coming?” I thought to myself, but, putting on a brave
front, I answered, “Fire away, then.”
“I feel you are unhappy. I feel it so strongly.”
“I am neither happy nor unhappy,” I said, being on my guard. “All I am
thinking about now is going back and doing my duty, because it is quite
immaterial, so long as the war lasts, what I plan to do.”
“I am thinking of Anne.”
“Now, we have it! Young lady, there is such a thing as imagining you
see too much.”
“Don’t you think, David,” she said, not paying the slightest attention
to me, “that it would be kinder, more honest, if you told her--”
“Told her what?”
“That you love some one else.”
I jumped at this, in great wrath.
“Extraordinary! Child, where did you imagine--”
“Don’t be angry, David. You needn’t tell me if you don’t want to--but
I know. I’ve seen it in your face too often, these days. Only, I think
it’s hard on Anne.”
I decided on another course.
“My dear Molly, Anne isn’t in the slightest doubt as to my feelings
towards her. I wish I did love her, sometimes. I don’t. And if I did, I
shouldn’t tell her so--just as I was going off to war.”
“Why not?”
“Because a man has no right to take a woman’s heart when it may mean an
empty life for the rest of her existence.”
“But why, David? If you men are willing to give your lives, why should
we women not have our part of sorrow?”
“Each as he feels: that’s my point of view,” I said. Yet, as I look at
it now, I wonder why I said it, for no such compunction had arrested my
impulse toward Bernoline. “However, that’s all academic and don’t get
it into your romantic little head that I’m not telling you the truth
about Anne. Furthermore, she understands.”
She shook her head.
“I’m inclined to shake you!” I said, vexed.
The next moment her arms closed about me.
“David, I can’t bear to see you unhappy; that’s all.”
As I look back on this conversation, I am the more amazed. Where did
she get such uncanny insight into my thoughts? What had not her child’s
eyes divined?--if they had ever been the eyes of a child! I suppose my
irritation arose from the fact that she had come too close to my own
misgivings. No, I am not quite sure that I have been honest with Anne,
even when I assured myself that I was. Before I leave I shall see Anne
again. To-night, I know what I shall say: but I am not sure what it
will be at the time.
IX
_New York_
I am here with Ben at the hotel and at noon, day after to-morrow, we
sail for France. To me, as to him, it is an escape from a hideous
situation. All day I have tramped the streets, seeking in the crowds
a glimpse of Bernoline. Twice I came to the steps of St. Rosa’s
Convent,--tempted. If I had any doubt as to the lasting wound that is
in my heart, I know now. To be in this city, where she walks hidden in
the wilderness of human beings, where at every turn I look for her!
There is nothing here for me--nothing! I want to get back to the other
life--to be from morning to night a pawn in the fingers of fate--to
have every decision made for me--to surrender my initiative--to accept
what can’t be changed--to perform without question.
* * * * *
But to go back. The leave-taking was hard, the shadow was over it all.
If I come back--and who knows?--one place will be empty. But first,
Anne.
For days I had not seen her. Each consciously avoided the other. Yet a
good deal of what Molly had said haunted me: I could not depart without
some explanation. We left Sunday. Friday afternoon I called her up on
the telephone, and asked if I might come over,--a strange conversation,
full of long pauses and hesitations, where I could not see her face and
could only wonder.
“I am going Sunday--you know?”
“Yes, I know.”
“And I really would like to see you before then.”
“But, David, I’m leaving in an hour.”
Curiously enough, this upset me more than I would have thought.
“Leaving? Where?” I asked stupidly.
There was a long silence.
“Anne!”
“Yes?”
“And to-morrow?”
“But I am leaving in an hour for a week end.”
“Oh, then I shan’t see you. I’m sorry.”
“You should have let me know before.”
“Yes, yes, of course. My fault. Well, I suppose it can’t be helped.”
No answer.
“When do you leave?”
“In an hour.”
“Then I’m afraid it’s good-by over the telephone.”
“You haven’t been very friendly, you know.”
“I know.”
Another silence.
“Will you write to me once in a while?”
“Do you want me to, David?”
“Please.”
“Very well--once in a while.”
Now this was not the turn I had wished to give to my parting, but some
sudden feeling of the blankness of her eyes caused me to relent.
“So, it’s good-by, Anne, and--I’m sorry it’s to be like this.”
“It is not my fault.”
“No.”
“Then--good-by, and good luck--Davy.”
The last was almost inaudible. I put up the receiver and went to my
room and puttered around nervously with my packing, not at all quiet in
my mind and frankly missing something out of my day.
In the middle of the afternoon, all at once, I determined to fling on
my things and go out for a tramp, to calm my irritation. I had hardly
passed the postern when who should come whirling up the road in her
cutter, bells jangling, snow clouds flying, but Anne, with her cheeks
aflame.
“Jump in.”
I clambered to the seat by her side and we were off so precipitately
that I caught at her arm to save myself a tumble. Away we went,
skipping over the crinkling snow, the sharp wind whipping at our
cheeks, long minutes without a word, until Littledale and the outskirts
were left behind in a whirling maze. At Muncie’s Woods she drew in
suddenly and under the green canopy of the evergreens we slowed to a
walk.
“There was no house party,” she said, staring ahead.
“Of course not.”
“How did you know?”
“I knew.”
“What a spiteful, irrational, idiotic person you must think me.”
“No--very human.”
She shook her head, and I thought her lip trembled a little.
“It’s always so, and I can’t help it. I’m always doing the wrong thing
with you.”
I did not answer this, for I was afraid to.
“It’s been a miserably unsatisfactory time,” she said, flicking the
horses suddenly with her whip, so that they pranced about for quite a
moment before she could control them. “I had looked forward so much
to your coming, to going back to the old days, Davy. They were the
best--and instead, we have only been fencing with each other. We never
say what we mean. And I--I show you my very worst self--my worst!
Everything I say to you, you misunderstand.”
“There you are wrong.”
“You do, you do! You are always ascribing to me motives that aren’t
there, and so, David, there are two things I can’t bear from you,
ridicule, and--pity!”
“Good heavens, nothing is further from my mind.”
“That’s not true,” she said obstinately. “David, why can’t we say the
things we think to each other? Is there any reason?”
“It is sometimes rather hard, Anne, isn’t it?”
“There you go! But if we don’t--don’t you see that we lose all that was
so wonderful, so rare, so genuine that we once had. And this is what
is happening.” Still she had not looked at me. Her mood changed and
she drew the lash of her whip over the steaming flank of a horse. When
she spoke it was gravely and with determination, the voice of a woman.
“David, I do not think any harm can come from being absolutely honest,
and sometimes, for not being so, a whole destiny may be changed. David,
whatever you think I am--I am not in love with you--”
“But I never--”
“I am not in love with you, but I can imagine--some day--if I did--if I
was--well, marrying you.”
The next moment the whip had struck across the glistening back and we
shot out into a gallop.
“Stop!” I cried out, but she only shook her head, bending lower to hide
her face that was aflame with confusion.
“Stop!”
I caught the reins from her and brought our perilous rocking flight to
a halt. Then I turned to her. Poor child, I knew what the suspense of
that moment meant to her! I could almost feel her heart stand still;
even then, thank heaven, I did not abuse the situation--at least, I
think not--and heaven knows how easy it would have been!
“Anne, dear little friend, I think more of you at this minute than I
ever have, for saying that.”
“Oh, Davy, I shall want to kill myself to-night for--”
“No, don’t say that. Now, I am going to be just as honest with you.”
I saw her hand steal up to her throat and hurried on to end the
suspense.
“I feel just as you do. I am not in love with you, and yet I can
imagine, just as you said, that if some day I married you a great
happiness would come into my life. Would to God I could say more!”
She turned for the first time as I began to speak and her eyes went
to mine. I had a strange premonition there in the green light of the
forest, in the stillness of the carpeted woods, the stillness that was
in her listening face, that beyond the inscrutable future, through
what twisted tormented ways I know not, in some final calm, just for
the strange incongruous daring of that moment, Anne and I would end as
husband and wife. Premonition or illusion,--I write it down as I felt
it.
“Will you really believe me?” she said, and her glance went down,
“when I say that I should never, never have said even this if--if it
were not that you are going back, and everything else seems so little
beside that. Will you understand that I can be like this, that without
being in love I can look into the future and see what may come? David,
it’s--it’s so hard to say--”
“I don’t think so. Say just what you feel, and then I shall be just as
honest.”
“You have always been different in my life, David. Other men have
just been shells. You I’ve known, and you’ve known me. It isn’t that,
oh, since we are talking this way, it’s this: I know my weaknesses,
Davy--oh, so well--and I know what I’ll become if I marry a certain
type of man. It’s what you bring out in me, the thing I want to be when
I’m with you. Of course, it sounds terribly--I’m ashamed to say it. No,
don’t look at me; but David, I can say this--when you come back--some
day, when it’s all over--I shan’t have changed.”
“Shan’t have what?”
“Changed,” she said, in a whisper.
I felt my eyes blurred. What wouldn’t I have given to have been able at
that moment, in perfect honesty, to have taken her into my arms for her
sake--and for mine!
“Anne,” I said, “let me tell you this,--for you will want to know this
when you look back to-night: never regret what you have done. We have
come closer together this afternoon than ever before, and you have done
it.”
“Do you mean it, Davy?” she said, looking up, her eyes shining so that
it was hard to resist them.
“I do. From now on I shall always know the strength of a woman--a very
real woman--that is in you. You have left a memory that I shall hold in
great reverence. Between us now there will be always absolute honesty;
and that is something to build on. Hold what we have, dear friend, and
let us both have some faith in the future.”
“Thank you, David,” she said, with a touch of wistfulness. Then, “And
now, tell me--”
“Are you sure you want to hear? It will hurt you.”
“I only know that you are unhappy. And, David, I think that is the
reason, the real reason I have come to you.”
It was hard to begin, for I, too, shrunk from the pain I knew I would
give her. Presently, she said, looking up at my clouded face:
“There was some one else--”
I nodded.
“Of course, I knew there was.”
“There is.”
“Oh.”
“But it is quite hopeless,” I added hastily.
“Quite hopeless?” she said, looking at me, and so strange are the ways
of the heart, that, I believe, that was the only thought she seized
upon.
“I only knew her for ten days. I shall never see her again. I have
promised.”
“It hurts?”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry.” She laid her hand on my arm and looked away. “Is--is it
because she’s married, David?”
Strange to say, the suggestion came to me like a flash of lightning
in the darkness of my perplexity. Never once had such an explanation
occurred to me. I thought it over and wondered.
“You needn’t answer.”
“I do not think so,” I said, without thinking how strange this must
sound. “I don’t know--I hardly know anything about her. We are entirely
apart in everything,--race, tradition, faith.”
“And if it were not hopeless, David?”
“Don’t ask me.”
We drove on in silence, each to his own thoughts. In the end it was
Anne who spoke.
“Just one question: is--is she there--in France?”
“No. She is here. That I said is true. She is gone utterly out of my
life. It was her decision. Why? I don’t even know. It was all very
beautiful and very tragic. It is over--all except the forgetting.”
I drew a long breath and turned to her. “That is going to be a hard
fight, but it must be done. I wonder if I should have told you this.”
“Oh, yes, yes! You should have told me.”
“Of course. Anne--I want you to know this, too. With what we have been
to each other--we are now--I should never ask anything of you unless I
did love you with my whole heart. That is your right. This is a strange
conversation, but I think you know me well enough to believe that!”
“Of course, David.”
She looked at me, and her eyes suddenly were filled with tears.
“I wish I could feel that you needed me a little.”
“Good God! But have I the right!”
Then, she did a thing I shall never forget,--that only comes to the
intuition of the woman who loves. She drew off her glove and laid her
bare hand in mine. And so, speaking little, we returned.
* * * * *
Is it possible, I wonder, that with one’s heart filled with the
ache and anguish of a love that is denied any hope, the soul in its
defensive instinct can look ahead and know what some future date may
bring? For, to-day, I can say this with perfect honesty: I need to keep
Anne in my life.
The last moments in the old home were harder than I had thought. Aunt
Janie was the bravest of them all, not excepting the mater, but then,
Aunt Janie, bless her heart, is of the heroic line. Molly has come
on to see us off, though I begged her not to. The hardest was saying
good-by to the Governor. During the weeks of my return he had seemed to
pick up famously, until we had almost begun to hope. But, at the last,
all the light went out of his face. And when I leaned down suddenly and
kissed him, his fingers clung to my hand until I had gently to release
them. I had left this till the last minute and hurried out into the
hall, where Molly put her arms around me and took me to the sleigh. For
one thing I am profoundly thankful: he remembered Alan, and I carry to
him the old daguerreotype of the Governor as a young man.
At the station every one in the village waited. The Littledale Band
played “The Marseillaise” and other patriotic airs, amid great waving
of handkerchiefs and cheering. You would have thought I was a candidate
for Governor. But I was too affected to do anything but wave back.
* * * * *
What Ben has said to Letty I do not know. He seldom speaks, but a
certain grimness settles over him as he paces up and down. I’m afraid
that it has cost him more than he thought to tear himself away from
her. To-night everything seems confused and out of joint,--Anne,
Bernoline, the Governor, Ben, Letty; myself most of all. Again, the
close of another chapter--the wrench of old associations--new hazards,
and what beyond?
If only I could see _her_ once more!
X
_New York_
I have seen her, by some miracle of coincident, or by a destiny which
never seems to leave me. It is midnight, and I have been sitting here,
my head in my hands, my brain galloping, going over and over every
word, every look. I have seen her, talked to her, held her in my arms!
What is the trick destiny has played on me? What is my mood to-night?
Exaltation, or the sense of having bound myself irrevocably to tragedy?
At one moment the wildest hopes surge up in me: I live in fantastic
daydreams with a belief in some miraculous, healing Providence. At
the next I am dropped into bottomless despair, and I see no end but
unfulfilled longing and the emptiness of denial. And so, what I have
longed for, to see her once again, has come, and I don’t know which is
the stronger,--the joy of hoping or the pain of certainty.
All day long I had sought her, aimlessly, without a plan, weary of
spirit, without a hope, but with a prayer on my lips, as even men of
no faith pray in a last hope, when all other means have failed them.
Towards evening the thought came to me to seek her in the calm of
vaulted spaces, and I went into the Cathedral, and, from there, into
the Church of the Dominican Fathers. Then the inspiration came to me
that if she were anywhere it would be in the little French Church of
the Franciscans. No sooner had this idea come to me than a strange
sense of certainty possessed me. I went there, absolutely convinced
that I would find her.
Yet, at my entrance, as I stood with incredulous, blinded eyes, peering
into the hollow obscurity, my heart sank. And then I saw her!
How I knew that the kneeling figure by the little altar of the Virgin
was Bernoline, I do not know, but I knew. My heart seemed to stop. I
leaned against a pillar and waited. The great vaulted supports rose up
and closed above me somewhere in the night. Far off I heard a slipping
step. Through the church a dozen tiny lights burned silently. At her
altar the Mother of Sorrows looked down out of the shadow of the ages.
She was on her knees, the mellow points of the votive candles lighting
her uplifted face in a glow of serene radiance. So I saw her again, as
I had imagined her a hundred times, when I knew she returned to me in
her prayers.
There are pictures which remain in memory’s galleries. This will never
fade.
* * * * *
Something of my presence she must have felt, for all at once her hand
was arrested in mid-air, and she turned and met my look. Instantly I
came forward and knelt at her side. I saw her lips open and over her
face the wonder of a living miracle. I know now that my name was on
her lips at that very moment, and that in her simple faith she saw the
answer. Her great dark eyes met mine. I saw her breast rise. Her pale
slender hand went to her throat, and in that first unwavering look I
knew at last how I was loved.
“Bernoline, it is God’s will.”
“It is you. I prayed that I might see you once again.”
She laid her hand on mine, bidding me wait, and went off into the stony
vastness. Presently I heard the step I knew from all others returning.
A pervading sense of happiness such as I had never known filled my
whole being at the knowledge that she was drawing near, that she whom I
loved was coming back to me. When I raised my eyes she was at my side,
tenderness and pride in her face, and in her hand a thin white taper.
She knelt again.
“Mother, I thank thee,” she said.
She rose and, lighting the wick at the wavering crown of tiered tapers,
placed it so that it dominated all the rest.
“Your light, _mon ami_,--above the crowd, always; strong, proud and
true.”
Then kneeling, she made the sign of the cross, and as a smile of
thankfulness touched her lips, I knew that she prayed for me.
I forgot all the complex world of realities: actions and reactions of
our mortal nature; doubts, questionings, logic and tradition. There, in
the silence and the shadows, purity at my side, mystery above me, my
spirit took wings with the faith that was hers. I do not think that I
uttered a prayer, yet it was a prayer, for at that moment I believed as
a child believes.
When she touched my arm I rose and followed her. At the end of the
aisle, a mutual impulse made us turn. The candle, my candle, shone out
bravely above the rest.
“You will remember?”
“Always.”
* * * * *
When we emerged into the strange, jarring world, the healing dusk was
stealing over the hard outlines. For a moment we walked silently, our
hearts too full, unable to speak to each other.
“To-morrow I sail for France.”
“To-morrow?” she cried, with a little catch in her voice.
“You will walk a little way with me? A last time?”
“How could I help it, _mon ami_?”
She looked at me and smiled her sad little smile, and I saw in her eyes
the weariness of the struggling against the call of her heart. A great
hope came to me.
“I thought you would wait for America,” she said, and now her eyes no
longer avoided mine but seemed never to leave my face.
“I’m going back to the Legion and, of course, the moment we go in, and
that can’t be long, I shall be transferred.”
“You are well?”
“Entirely.”
What did it matter what we said? I think neither of us really knew.
I saw only the light that shone in her eyes, and in the joy of being
together neither the past nor the future nor the things about us
existed. I took her arm and slowed my pace to the meditative step I
knew so well, and together, heads bowed and still too happily oppressed
by all we had to say to each other, we went silently towards the Park,
each content with the knowledge of the other’s presence. It was the
hour when the city, like another Cinderella, steps out of the drab and
homespun of the day into the beaded fairy raiment of the twilight; when
through the hard and hazy battlements something soft and gentle tempers
the air; when the clamor of strident sounds lingers faintly in the
drowsy distance and polyglot ugliness masks itself behind half-shadows
and fleeting forms.
“Ah, Davy, I did want to see you again,” she said, without subterfuge,
in the honesty of her nature, as only her nature could be honest. “I
wanted to see you strong--yourself. I wanted to know that I had not
brought you weakness and sorrow. _Mon ami_, tell me that it is so.”
We had wandered into the Park, through obscure winding paths, the
argus-eyed city receding against the darkling sky, the lake at our
feet, and only an occasional passer-by hurrying on his way. At the
bridge we stopped, leaning over, shoulder to shoulder, each of us under
the spell of the silence which visited us, and afraid of the test that
words would bring.
“I cannot tell you anything that is not true,--even for your sake,” I
said at last.
“No, David.”
“But first, you. How has it gone with you? It has been hard, Bernoline?”
“No, no.”
“That is the truth?”
“Yes, _mon ami_. It has not been hard. I have found great kindness. I
am companion in the family of a true gentlewoman.”
“Bernoline, I cannot bear to think of you--”
“Hush; it is so little when you think of what has come to other women.”
“Bernoline, you do not know how I have fought to keep my promise.
I’ve gone by St. Rosa’s Convent a dozen times, and twice I wrote you
letters,--only to tear them up.”
“But you won out, _mon ami_. I knew you would.”
“Yes, but there is no happiness in it.”
“Must I always hurt you, Davy?” she said sadly, “I who only long to
protect you? Dear friend, all I have done--believe me, though you
cannot understand it--has been done for you.”
“Yes, Bernoline.”
I felt that the moment had come when the happiness of my whole life was
there in my hands to fight for. We were no longer man and woman, but
two atoms in the wavering sea of multitudes,--atoms gravitating towards
each other, cleaving together despite opposition and circumstance,
despite all the forces of society that laboriously and fruitlessly lay
their inhibitions against the great sweeping instincts of race.
“Night and day, David, I have had you in my prayers. I have prayed
that our meeting--our knowing each other--would leave no wound in you.
Ah, _mon ami_, if I do this strange thing, to be here alone with you,
it is because I must know that I am not to carry that remorse through
all my life.” She stopped, as though dreading what she might be led to
say, and then, staring down at the stars that swam in the dark waters
below us, she added slowly: “I shall never be sure--never--until I know
that you are in your own home, married and happy.”
Then I broke out.
“Bernoline, are you quite honest with yourself?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that is not the true reason. Bernoline, if you are here,
to-night, alone at my side, it is because you cannot help it--because
you love me. Oh, why hide from ourselves what is?”
“No, no! Don’t say that!”
“Bernoline, Bernoline, why deny it?” I cried, bending over her. “You
don’t deceive me; you don’t deceive yourself! What stands between us?
What can stand? What do we care? What else counts but this thing we
feel, here, now, at this very moment! We know. You know, as I know.
Happiness, Bernoline? Do you think in the whole world there is any
happiness for me away from you--from the longing for you, day and
night! Bernoline, I tell you, you have never been an hour away from me.
I have had you before my eyes; I have talked with you; lived over a
thousand times each moment spent with you. Bernoline, turn to me, look
at me, tell me--”
Do I know what I said, there in the deep pool of the night! It is not
words, but accents, that we hear at such times. I don’t know that she
heard me any more than I can remember the torrent of pleading that
surged to my lips, but I know that she, too, felt the snapping of
cords, the longing of my arms to reach out and draw her up to me, the
wild triumphant force beating down all our little struggling, closing
about us and confounding us in one impulse, one desire, for, all at
once, she swayed from me and began to tremble, crying: “Don’t touch me,
David. I can’t stand it--don’t!”
“But why, in heaven’s name, why?” Her voice stirred all my compassion,
but the thought that I was fighting for my happiness, her happiness,
was stronger. I came closer. “Bernoline, what is it? Pride? Is
that all? Do you think I care who you are, what you are, what was
your family, or anything else? You are you. And now, listen to me,
Bernoline. To-morrow, I go back. Marry me to-night; be my wife. Let me
take that with me in my heart!”
“If I could, if I only could!” she burst out suddenly.
“You can, you will,” I said, with a sudden sense of triumphant victory,
pitiless, as in love we are driven to show no mercy. “Bernoline,
whatever it is, I have the right to share it. Yes, the right. Nothing
else matters but you in my life. Do you understand? You are life!”
She turned to me, struggling against herself, her hands clasped, and
again the terror in her eyes.
“I can’t. I can’t.”
“But why, _why_?”
Suddenly, like a flash, I remembered the first instinctive question of
Anne’s. My heart contracted so sharply that for a moment I could not
voice the terrible doubt.
“Bernoline--is there--any one else--who has a right?”
She stood, staring at me. Twice her lips moved, parted, trembled, and
refused to utter the answer. Her hands gripped the coping, and I saw
her arms stiffen.
“Bernoline, you are--married!” I said, in a whisper. “Is it that?”
Still she did not answer.
“Bernoline, for God’s sake, say it is not that.”
“Yes, yes--it is--that!”
I should not have known her voice.
“Good God! Why didn’t you tell me before?”
I was stunned; yet it seemed as though I had always known--that it
could have been nothing else. The world went black before me.
“He is alive?” I said, at last.
“Yes.”
“You must go back to him, some day?”
“Never.”
“Ah, Bernoline, why--why didn’t you tell me?”
She waited a moment.
“It is not my secret alone. It is terrible that I cannot tell you any
more than that. Yes, yes, I have done wrong: I have been weak. But
don’t you reproach me, David; that would break my heart!”
“Oh, no, I don’t reproach you!” I blurted out. “I don’t know your
reasons. I know if you’ve done what you’ve done, there is a reason,
and--it will always be right. Never, dear, could I have any other
feeling towards you but of reverence for the loveliest and purest thing
I have known.”
“You can still think so, David?” she cried with a little sob.
“Always. Nothing that you or I can do will ever change that--and
nothing that has gone before.”
She looked up at me so swiftly, with her sad, sweet smile, that before
I knew it she was in my arms, trembling against my heart, her head
buried against my shoulder. I knew nothing more, what I did or said,
only this: that we were united--that this soft, gentle body in my arms
was the woman who, whatever intervened, loved me now and irrevocably.
“_Ah, mon bien aimé--ayez de la force pour moi--je n’en peux
plus--non--non--je n’en peux plus!_”
But even as she cried to me to be strong for her, she clung to me, her
arms strained about me, and her body collapsed in my grip.
“Bernoline, look into my eyes, dear!”
She raised her head, her eyes met mine, all struggling at an end.
Another moment, and our impending lips would have closed in the first
kiss. Yet, by some inexplicable miracle, it was I who was the stronger.
For what I saw in her dear eyes was so innocent and so full of trust
that I could not tarnish the ideal. My arms loosed and slowly I put her
from me.
She caught her breath, and her hands went to my shoulders.
“Yes, you are as I knew you were,” she said proudly. “Never shall I
forget, _David mon ami, mon ami adoré_.”
“Thank God!” I said, drawing a deep breath.
“And now, believe me, a last time--if I could--if I only had the right
to say what you want to hear, how gladly my heart would go to you! But
David, I can say this: in all my life, I have never for one instant
loved any other man--and I never will. That is a promise.”
“Bernoline, I have done everything as you wished, more than I would
have believed I could do. This I ask: during those months of loneliness
and trial, write to me, and let me write to you!”
“Is that wise, I wonder?” she said, yet already wishing to be convinced.
“You cannot leave me utterly. I am not strong enough for that! Anything
else--but not that!”
“Nor I.” Her eyes filled with tears and then, at last, through the
tears, the smile came bravely forth. “Until the end of the war, then.
And now--” She stopped, looked at me, and shook her head slowly.
“So soon?”
“It is best not to try ourselves beyond our strength,” she said.
“But--we will not go too fast.”
I do not remember much what she said. For I was silent, once the
great test passed, all at once weak and rebellious. She spoke to me,
recalling our first meeting, speaking of the home she had found. My
head was turning. All the complications, all the tragic incidents of
our meeting and parting, the fatality that lay between us; all was
nothing to the knowledge of the love that had looked at me out of the
great dark eyes. My instincts revolted. I could not believe, I would
not believe that this was the end. Somewhere, somehow, the future would
be ours, if we had to wait--for twenty years!
We came to the end and, as I stood, all choked up, she took my hand and
laid it against her heart--a moment.
“_Mon ami_, you will be there, always.”
The light in her eyes is still before me as I write and the dear face,
transformed with all the pure happiness of a child.
“And now--” she began reluctantly.
“No--no! Not that word!” I blurted out.
“As you wish,” she said gravely. “Courage, and God keep you, my dear.”
She went up the steps slowly, looking back, and her eyes for a moment
lingered, smiling down on me, before she could find courage to end a
look that might be the last. The door closed and shut her out from me.
* * * * *
And from these moments, sanctified in my memory, by the perverse turns
of my fate, that seems to entangle all the skeins of my life, the good
and the evil, I came back to meet--Letty.
She was in the salon that separated our rooms when I entered, and
from the look on Ben’s face I saw that his soul was being torn to its
foundations. At my entrance they stopped, in a sudden telltale silence.
“You here, Letty?” I said, stupidly enough. God knows that no more
unwelcome figure could have come before me at that moment.
She nodded curtly, but did not speak. She looked quite worn despite
her artifice, and in her cold face the eyes burned forth as they did
only when she was roused to some fury of obstinate determination. The
conversation had been at a high tension, as I could see by Ben’s ugly
frown. I went into my bedroom and closed the door and, overcome by
the moral nausea of this malignant intrusion across the clean memory
of the evening’s exaltation, I sank on the bed and, taking my head in
my hands, cursed her from the bitterness of my heart as I have never
cursed another human being.
Not that she had come to see me. I knew too well the only genuine
impulse of which in her tired experience she was capable. It was only
the prey which was escaping her that could rouse the female in her. I
did not know how far Ben had gone in his revolt,--though I suspected
that he had given an ultimatum. But I knew this, that Letty would never
let him go without a struggle. What to do? My lips were sealed: the
slightest false move might precipitate a tragedy. An hour passed, while
I listened to the falling and rise of their contending voices, when,
suddenly, the door opened and banged, and Ben came into the room.
“For God’s sake, David, get her away!”
I sprang up, half expecting Letty to rush in--but she did not--and
after a moment I went over to my brother and laid my hand on his
shoulder to steady him.
“Ben, do you mean that?”
“Get her away--quick!”
“That’s a big responsibility to take,” I said slowly. “Your mind’s made
up?”
He dug his fingers into his arms and, in the breath that went through
him, I felt a sudden vacillation.
“Ben,” I said, sternly. “Stick to your guns. Care for you? All she
cares is to know she can make you suffer. Sit down.”
I went on tiptoe to the door and flung it open. As I had known, she
was there, listening. But it is dangerous to try such a woman as Letty
too far, and the blind rage I saw in her face at this exposure so
frightened me that, closing the door behind me, I clapped my hand over
her mouth and picked her up bodily.
“The scene is over, and out you go,” I said, savagely. She did not
struggle but suddenly became quiet and inert and, with the devilish
instinct that was in her to wound me, her arms closed softly about my
neck. I wrenched myself free, loathing the hated perfume of her body,
and set her down in the hall.
“So, you have told him?” she said quickly, keen for the pretense at
dramatics.
“If I had, you wouldn’t be alive now,” I said, and closed and locked
the door and, for further security, slipped the key into my pocket.
* * * * *
It is four o’clock in the morning now, as I finish these lines. I can
hear Ben in the next room, walking up and down.
XI
_At Sea_
We sailed at noon. Molly and Anne were on the deck to see us
off,--Letty, to plant a final sting. Anne came in after breakfast
with her father and with Molly we went down to the boat. I do not
know when I have been so sorry for any one as for Anne. What fatality
ever impelled her to come into my life at just that moment? She came
in so happily that immediately my heart fell, for I saw that our last
interview in Littledale had left the way to the future open to her.
Yet she had not been ten minutes with me before her woman’s intuitions
had warned her. I saw the light manner change to a sudden meditation
and always when I turned my head her eyes were on me in anxious
interrogation. Poor child--I would have spared her the pain, but it
was not to be. The moment we were left alone together on the dark and
pungent wharf, she turned to me and said:
“David, you have seen her?”
“Yes.”
I took her arm and led her a little apart, to a nook where we were
hidden from the crowd.
“Anne, for God’s sake, put me out of your life,” I said, taking her
hand. “There is only misery and unhappiness if you don’t. This is
honest, because I must be honest with you.”
“I can’t put you out of my life,” she said, shaking her head, “and if
you are unhappy--all the more reason for me to stay in yours.”
“Anne, it is not fair to you, to what your life may be.”
“Let me be the judge of that, David,” she said soberly, her hand on
my arm. “Have I the right to know this? Is it--the other--still quite
hopeless?”
“Quite,” I said gloomily.
“David, my heart goes out to you. If I could only help. No, no--Wait a
moment, I can’t go back yet.”
“All right now?”
“All right, David.”
And when we went back, there was Letty, her arm through Molly’s, as
pretty and as enticing as could be, coquetting with Mr. Brinsmade. From
her face one would never have had the slightest suspicion that there
was the least flaw in the serene content of her day. I held myself on
my guard, fearing her purpose, but at the last she caught me as, of
course, she had intended. The whistle blew and with it the time to say
good-by. Molly, little trump, held up with forced gayety and so did
Anne, though I saw such suffering in her eyes that it was all I could
do not to take her impulsively in my arms: for, no matter what I had
protested for her sake, to know that she cared was a great consolation.
When it came Letty’s turn, quite as the most natural thing in the world
(as, of course, to the others it was), she flung her arms about me and
kissed me; there--before Ben. Then she went off, protesting it was bad
luck to see a ship out of port, thoroughly pleased with having planted
a last dart. And Ben and I, with that kiss between us, went up the
gangway.
“I hope to God I never lay eyes on her again!” he said, with an oath.
If only that may be true!
We went to the promenade deck and stood over the stern, gazing back at
the shores that began to recede. The waters rushed in between the wharf
and us. I saw Molly and Anne in the crowd and raised my hat, swinging
it slowly back and forth. And as I looked into that fading throng,
my heart leaped a little at the thought that perhaps she, Bernoline,
might be standing there, come down for a last look--a quite irrational
thought--yet I did feel her there, in that human mass, unrecognizable,
now nothing more than a spotted shadow against the pier. Then the pier
ran back into the oblivion of the city and the city faded into the sky.
I do not remember since boyhood to have felt the utter empty loneliness
of life as at that moment. But a few months before I had been
self-sufficient, a curious traveler, emerging from one experience,
eager for others, satisfied and interested with the contact of my kind.
Now, for what had come into my life in one short week, for an hour in
the twilight, for a look given and taken, a voice remembered, I felt
at once rudely lifted out of the companionship of men, doomed to carry
with me a solitude from which there could be no escape.
In this weakness of the spirit I even rebelled against the call which
took me back; the inexorable call of duty and honor which, after all,
is only our yielding to what others may think of us: at least, in this
moment of rebellion, this is what I feel! For, now that life has grown
so precious to me, even though I but cling to ashes of hope, I wonder
how in the coming days of battle I shall stand the test? Yet now that I
write with a clearer discipline, a new feeling of reverence comes to me
as I think on the men of France who fought beside me, with memories and
hopes in their hearts. What others have done, I can do. All our vaunted
courage is sometimes no more than that.
* * * * *
New York was but a haze in the distance as I stood by my brother’s
side, with the dread feeling of the irrevocable in life closing down on
me, wondering when--where--and how, again?
* * * * *
As we stood there, a cabin boy hailed us: “Mr. Littledale? Special
delivery for you, sir.”
We both turned hastily.
“Which Mr. Littledale?”
“David Littledale, sir.”
“That’s right. It’s for me.”
I took the letter and at the first glance, though I had never seen her
handwriting, I knew it was from Bernoline.
“David?”
Ben’s hand closed over my wrist, and I looked up to see his eyes ablaze
with jealousy and suspicion.
“David, show me that letter!”
I held it before him, and he gave it one wild look and turned away.
“Ben, old fellow, get hold of yourself!”
“I feel like jumping over and swimming for it,” he said miserably.
“To-morrow you’ll be thanking God from the bottom of your heart,” I
said, linking my arm under his. “Do you remember once when you came
between me and making a fool of myself, and how we fought and rolled
on the ground? Well, my turn, now. It’s a queer world, and we’ve both
got to grin and bear things. But it isn’t a question of love, Ben. It’s
just been slavery, weak, unnatural, humiliating slavery. Better now
than later!”
“Right! Sorry I made such an ass of myself. It’s over, and, David,
that’s the last I’ll ever see of her.”
But I am not so sure of that.
* * * * *
The letter was crumpled in my hand. To have given courage to Ben gave
me a sort of courage, which I sadly needed. I did not at once open and
read it. I was afraid. I was afraid of a hundred nameless imagined
fears, but most of all of the sure reaction I knew must come in her
woman’s heart, once the irresistible spell of our coming together had
been broken. I went below, into the saloon, and laid her letter before
me on the desk. Then, with a sudden inspiration, I found a sheet of
paper and wrote:
_Sailing down the Harbor_
Bernoline, dear:
Your letter is here, before my eyes: and I am still afraid to open
it. I shall not read it until I have written this. For I feel
already what you will say. Bernoline, no matter what the obstacle
which stands between us, it can alter nothing. While you live and I
live, we are powerless to change what fate has laid upon us. As for
me, just to know your love is to me so great a thing that if I had
to choose again with open eyes, I would choose all I have suffered
and all that may come to me, all the heart-burnings and all the
daily, hourly longing, the cruelty of separation,--all just to have
seen your eyes at parting. Be to each other what is right that we
should be,--the rest is beyond our knowledge. I have strength for
everything but one thing,--not to hear from you again.
DAVID.
Then I took up her letter, and read:
_Midnight_
_Mon seul ami_:
I have prayed on my knees for hours to see my way clear. For I no
longer know myself. I, who thought myself so strong, have had so
little strength. All that I have determined not to do, I have done.
And yet, when you were at my side I could not do otherwise. When
you are near me all my courage leaves me and I do not know what I
do or say. And it is I who am so much older than you in experience
and suffering who ought to protect you. But you,--is it not your
whole life I am wrecking? Would it not be better to have you
hate me than to do what I am doing? Is it not a great crime I am
committing? For David, my dear David,--it _cannot_ be. There is no
hope for us, now, or ever. What shall I do? To-night, my heart is
torn--I cannot think. I have given my promise, and yet--Oh, David,
I want to do what is best for you, and what seems cruel now may be
the kindest later. I cannot decide. What shall I do? Have courage
for us both. Be strong for me.
B.
I read this through once, with heavy heart,--then many times. To give
her up was beyond my strength, though something within me admitted the
truth of what she wrote. I took up my letter again, and added this
postscript:
P. S.--I have read your letter, and I would not change a word of
this. You leave the decision to me. I make it, and I take on my
shoulders all that may come. I cannot do otherwise. I need your
strength. I shall always need it. The fate that has sent us to each
other is more mysterious than our little reason can fathom. Yet
in it there must be some purpose. We can never harm each other.
One thing is life; the other, worse than death. Write to me, dear
little friend. Give me only what it is right for you to give me. I
shall ask no more.
DAVID.
I put the letter into the bag myself and watched the pilot go over
the side of the ship. Then, I went down to my cabin and got out my
_poilu’s_ uniform. Another milestone passed.