FAINT HEART AND FAIR LADY.
Claire heard Philip leave the house, and she sat down on her bed to wait
and think. It seemed ages that she sat there, her imagination busy with
a hundred possible calamities. When she finally heard the door open she
was almost afraid to look.
"Lawrence!" Her voice was full of warm gladness.
He was hanging his hat in its place.
"Hello, Claire. Back, are you?" His voice held the impersonal, sullen
note that he used of late. "Where is Philip?"
"Why, didn't he find you?"
Lawrence was immediately angry. He thought, "Why should Philip be
hunting for me? I don't need his care. Can't I even go out without a
guardian?"
"I didn't see him," he returned, aloud.
"I sent him to find you." She was standing looking at him, her whole
figure expressing love and relief at his return.
He was too angry to catch the fine warmth of her voice, and his
inability to see handicapped him more at that moment than at any time in
his life.
"I sent him to find you," she said again.
"He didn't. I came back as I went, alone."
"Lawrence, what is the matter with you?" she asked, pleadingly, with
tears in her voice.
He felt the emotion in her words, and was suddenly contrite. If he had
known it, he was acting like the sentimentalists whom he ridiculed, but
he suffered from the egotist's fate, he did not recognize his own
failing.
"I don't know that there is anything the matter, Claire. It angered me
to think that you still imagine that because I am blind I need a
guardian," he said, dropping into a chair.
She came over toward him, impulsively.
"That isn't the idea at all," she said, still very worried. "It was
simply that you told me yourself that you were helpless in the snow."
"I didn't ask to be cared for," he snapped.
"I wasn't caring for you--nor about you," she retorted, in sudden
irritation. "I didn't want you to be lost, that's all."
"I should think you'd be glad to see me gone." He was a little ashamed
of his own words, but he did not try to remedy the speech.
"What do you mean?"
He smiled ironically. "Even a blind man sometimes sees too much of
lovers."
Claire sank into a chair and struggled against the starting sobs. It
seemed to her that her whole life was becoming one continual argument
wherein she was accused and in return forced to demand explanations.
"What in the world do you mean?" she faltered. "Are you saying that
Philip and I are lovers?"
"Aren't you?"
"Of course not! It isn't like you to say that. And what if we were?"
"It wouldn't be any of my business, would it?" He was bitter.
"I suppose not," she said, weakly.
"You needn't be hesitant about admitting it. It's true," he went on.
"Why shouldn't it be? I am a mere piece of excess baggage which you are
too kind-hearted to eliminate. I know that, too. Why shouldn't you
eliminate me?" He smiled, satirically. "If I were Philip Ortez, loving
you and loved in return, I would feel like killing the blind man, whose
presence hampered."
She stared at him, wondering if he were in earnest.
"Then it's fortunate that you haven't the opportunity to feel that way."
"Obviously." He laughed, sullenly. "I sha'n't, because you couldn't love
a blind man."
Claire only sat and looked at him, thrilled with the knowledge that he
was about to tell her he loved her. She was trembling and desperately
afraid of herself. She moved uneasily, and against her will; her lips
said, "I could love a blind man, Lawrence."
He sat up and clenched his hands together quickly. The tone of her voice
in itself was a direct confession. But his deep skepticism of blindness
would not let him believe that he was right.
"Do you mean that you do love me?" he demanded.
She wanted to say "Yes," but she thought of Philip and was afraid of
what he might do, should he learn of her lie. Then, too, there was her
resolution to go back to Howard. Strange that her long-planned friendly
explanation of her own attitude did not occur to her, but it did not.
Lawrence rose and came toward her, his hands out. He was determined to
know, once and for all. The gathering emotion in his breast was growing
into an unbearable pain.
"Claire," he said, coming nearer and nearer. "Could you love me?"
His hands were almost to her. She saw them coming; terror, love,
happiness, anguish, and the desire to be his paralyzed her will. She did
not move.
"Yes," she whispered, "I could."
He put his arms around her and lifted her until she was crushed against
him.
"Do you love me, Claire?" he asked, tensely.
She did not answer, but her head sank against his shoulder.
Outside the cabin, she heard Philip's step in the snow.
"No!" she cried frantically, filled with dread. "No, no! Let me go!"
Lawrence, too, heard, and released her, stepping back indifferently, as
though just going toward a chair.
The door opened, and Philip entered.
"Oh, you're back, I see." The artist was coldly cordial in his greeting.
"And I see you, which is more important," Philip laughed.
"I suppose so." Lawrence sat down, thoughtfully. "Claire has just
scolded me for going out. She doesn't like to have me add to the bother
I am already."
Claire was still under the spell of her own emotion, and she resented
Lawrence's sang-froid. He was as cold as a block of stone. Her heart
cried out against him because he could not see why she had said "No" to
him, because he believed her! She wanted to cry, but did not dare.
"I told him we were worried," she said, indifferently.
"So we were." Philip was cheerful and friendly.
Lawrence buried himself from them both, and sat brooding, clothed in the
blackness that blindness brought when it suddenly loomed before him as
the wall between him and his life's desires. The brief instant Claire
had been in his arms had made him feel that his life was intolerable
without her, and that blindness was the curse of a double living death.
She had told him that she did not love him. She had struggled to be
free.
Lawrence failed to read Claire aright because he had not seen her, and
because his blindness made him uncertain of himself.
That was the truth of it all, the awful truth of his life.
He was always uncertain of himself because he was afraid of blindness.
He strutted, boasted, lied, and above all pretended to himself that he
believed his hard philosophy because he was afraid, afraid of failing to
do the things he wanted to do. He saw himself clearly now, he was a
coward, a deceiving ape, a monkey caught in the terror of tangling
roots, and denying it. He barked like a frightened dog, at the thing
that was his master. He was gripped by life, tortured by life, denied
death by life, and cheated by life of living. His imagination, fired by
his passion, leaped into play, and he felt himself a thousand times a
slave, a chained prisoner in the hand of circumstance.
Philip was laughing gaily, and talking to Claire, who listened,
answered, and was all the while lost in her own thought. When he had
entered, Philip had looked quickly at the two to see if there was aught
between them, and had found Lawrence colder, more despondent than ever.
He told himself that Lawrence had evidently pleaded with Claire for her
love and been denied. At least, this blind man had not been successful,
and Philip could afford to be good-humored. The more agreeable he was,
the more Claire would turn to him from that dark, ungracious form
yonder. His would be the victory of pleasant manners. Therefore he
talked, gladly, smilingly, while Claire listened, or seemed to listen.
She was rebellious at the fear which had made her cry "No" to Lawrence,
and at the same time glad that she had done so, afraid of the future,
exasperated with Philip for coming in at the supreme moment, and angry
with Lawrence for his stupidity.
Perhaps these tangled relations might have been cleared had it not been
for a piece of folly more stupendous than any they had yet experienced.
This event occurred the day after Lawrence's walk in the snow.
Philip had stepped out for a few minutes to look at a near-by trap, and
Claire and the artist were left alone for the first time since her
denial. She wanted him to renew his suit, feared that he would, and sat
waiting for him to speak.
But he remained silent, and at last she said, "Lawrence."
"Well?" He did not move.
The psychology of woman has been too often commented upon and attempted
by those who thought they could explain. Why Claire was doing and saying
what she did, she herself could not tell.
"Lawrence, don't you ever, ever act as you did yesterday again."
He smiled. "It would be dangerous if your gallant should come in less
slowly." He was filled with a desire to hurt her.
Claire was angry with him for saying what was so utterly far from her
mind and so different from what she wanted him to say.
"If my gallant should come in," she thrust coldly, "he would scarcely
appreciate the melodrama you are playing."
Lawrence sat up with a jerk, his rage near the boiling point.
"What do you mean?" he demanded. "I have not interfered with your
delightful episode, have I?"
"No, and you couldn't. I mean that my husband--he is my lover--for I
know that is what you intend by 'gallant'--would scarcely appreciate the
type of man who mopes and abuses the woman who does not care to lie in
his arms."
Lawrence sat still, while a fierce, uncontrollable rage consumed him. He
felt that to take this woman and whip her into submission would be a
pleasure. He thought of the lash he had in his studio at home and wished
it were in his hand. With the thought he rose and stepped swiftly toward
Claire, his teeth set.
She saw him, and rose.
"I have one way of showing you who is master," he began, and stopped.
She had stepped forward and was standing almost against him.
"Even blindness does not allow you the freedom to threaten."
He shrank back and dropped once more into his chair.
Claire was talking rapidly, savagely. Later she was to be thrown into a
despairing self-hate that kept her many a night in tears, but now she
went on.
"Do you think I will overlook everything in you because I pity you?
There have been times when your impositions, so carelessly thrust upon
me, because you were selfish, because you knew I must accept them from
you, were almost unbearable. The touch of your thief-trained hands to
steal from everything its beauty and self-respect has galled me beyond
all endurance. My body has received its last vile grasp from you."
She stopped, appalled at his expression. She did not know, neither of
them knew, that love, the ever-changing impulse of creation within men
and women, speaks its desire through bitter scorn and abuse, when softer
words are too slow in finding their way.
He was sitting there, white, anguished, cowering under her tongue, his
whole life shaken. Her words made him feel that the thing she said was
true. He had always feared it, realizing that in a measure it was
inevitable, and his great strength was now turned against himself,
against his bitter handicap, and he was in that tremendous upheaval that
requires a rebuilding of one's faith. His belief in himself was broken.
His belief in his power was gone. Coming after weeks of thought and fear
about blindness, Claire's words tore him asunder and made him feel that
there was nothing for him but abject misery and dependence upon charity.
Instinctively, his hand went up as if to shield him from a blow, and he
murmured, "For God's sake, Claire!"
There was to come a time, later, when experience would have taught him
that there is a wild strain in the nature of human hearts which abuses
out of a desire to be conquered. He did not yet realize that he had
spoken truly when he said that this woman had hidden in her the savage
warring sexed tumult of all the struggling ages.
She saw him there, his hand up, and suddenly her emotion changed. It was
love, still love crying out for expression, but now she was all
compassion, tenderness, and fear. She read in his face what she had
done, and her heart was gray with the pain at her own failure.
Now all love for her was buried, perhaps dead, under his shattered
selfhood, slain in the wrecking earthquake that she had brought to pass
with the ardor of her passion. She had meant to sting him into taking
her in his arms and forcing her to love him, and instead--"Oh, God!" she
whispered, and slipped behind the curtain to throw herself on her bed
and weep with heart wrung by self-condemnation and loving pity for the
man whom she had clubbed with his own dread weakness. She had shattered
into chaos the strong soul of the man she loved, with the only weapon he
would have felt, and she realized now that it was her love, her desire
to be his, to be his utterly, that had led her to do it.
Lawrence was too hurt to move. His mind repeated again and again the
words she had spoken. He kept saying to himself: "Blindness has made me
that, an egotist beggar." He did not reproach Claire. She had swept him
too far from his habitual moorings for that. There was no rebellion
against her, none, indeed, against life. Over him rolled wave after wave
of self-contempt, distrust, and anguish that shook him with an agony
that only the assured man knows when the one he loves most of all on
earth strikes dead his faith in himself. He thought of a multitude of
things that stabbed anew, but not once did he move in the interminable
period that passed before Philip returned.
When he did come, the Spaniard was amazed at the crouching, white-faced
man whom he found before a dying fire. There was something so sad in the
blind face that Philip felt no suspicion and no anger. He looked for
Claire, but she was not visible. He stirred the fire and set about
preparing supper while his mind began digging at the problem which he
saw in the attitude of the man there in the chair. Claire did not come
out to help. She was too exhausted from the storm that had swept over
her. In her bed she could hardly smother the scream that kept rising to
her lips. She wanted to spring up and cry aloud to Lawrence for
forgiveness. She was scarcely aware of Philip as he moved about.
She could have thrown herself at Lawrence's feet and pleaded with him.
She was discovering that her whole wild outbreak was a strange
expression of her physical desire for this man whom she loved, and the
discovery made her as self-detesting as she had been violent in her
outbreak. It seemed to her that there was nothing, nothing she would not
do to make amends to Lawrence for what she had said. She wanted to tell
him what it had been that prompted her, but she dared not lest in
revulsion at her viciousness he turn on her and kill her.
"God, God," she muttered, "what have I done!"
Philip was calling her to supper. She steadied her voice, and said
humbly: "I can't come out. I'm not feeling very well. Go on without me,
please."
She heard him speak to Lawrence, and she strained her ears to catch the
answering movement toward the table, but there was none. At last Philip
spoke again in a voice that was full of anxiety: "Lawrence, what in
God's name has happened?"
Lawrence was moving now, and she waited with bated breath for his
answer. He walked to the table and sat down. His voice was heavy. "I've
found myself out, Philip. That's all. I know what I am."
There was a moment of silence. Claire covered her mouth with her hand to
suppress a cry. She wanted to shout: "No, no, no, not that, but what I
am, my beloved, my adored one."
"What do you mean?" Philip's voice seemed stern.
"I mean that I am indebted to you and Claire for the truth I needed."
Behind the curtain Claire turned on her face and burst into sobs.
Philip arose abruptly. "Lawrence," he said quietly, "I do not know what
has happened to you this afternoon; I do not know what you mean; but
this I do know: I am deeply sorry if anything I have done or said has
made you feel that you are an unwelcome guest in my home."
Lawrence stood up and gathered his scattered senses.
"Philip, I beg your pardon, old man. It isn't that at all. The truth
is"--and his voice broke--"I have lied to myself and to the world these
many years. Much of it hasn't been my fault, but I must pay the price
just the same. I am blind. That has led me to a sort of clamorous egoism
which carried me on and on until I came to feel that I was really doing
something. At last, I know that I am a narrow human parasite, worthless,
utterly worthless. A blind, clinging, grasping, vagrant beast, fed upon
the mercy of too kind-hearted humanity. I am sorry. It isn't my fault,
but it is so."
Philip stood for a few minutes in silence. "You're ill, Lawrence," he
said finally. "Get back to yourself if you can. Things do not stay at
this point in human abasement. I know of what I speak. I have been
through that myself. I cannot say anything comforting. No one can."
They went to bed with but a few commonplace remarks, and the cabin
became silent. Lawrence lay awake through that night. Claire, unknown to
him, spent her vigil in a great readjustment of her life.