It was six hours by train from Pittsburgh to New Damascus. The last
hour was from Wilkes-Barre down the valley, the railway now running
with the turnpike on which Agnes passed her wedding night between Thane
and John over the flying heels of a pair of bays. Not one of them had
seen it since. Surreptitiously watching for signs and landmarks they
became silent and solitary. Memories in which they were intimately
associated instead of drawing them together caused separate states of
reverie.
Agnes sat at the window with her face averted. John and Thane were
together in the opposite seat. Her eyebrows were a little raised,
acutely bent and drawn together, and in her forehead was a Gothic
cross. This muscular tension never for a moment relaxed, not even when
she spoke and smiled. In her eyes was an expression of strained and
baffled interrogation, inward looking.
Two years were gone since that night of John’s first supper with the
Thanes in their trial abode. In this time she had changed at the base
of her personality. The girl of her had vanished almost without trace.
What becomes of the being we have ceased to be?
That Agnes of the tantalizing armor, half of ice and half of flame,
part disdain and part desire, who froze the impulse she provoked and
singed the pride that saved her,--she was gone, entirely gone. This
Agnes knew her not. This Agnes was a woman who knew bitterness and the
taste of dust. When she had been ready ... willing ... dying ... to
give her pride to save her love the door was closed. The shop was dark.
The light went out that night she let him stand behind her chair in
an agony of longing, pretending not to know he stood there, and then
broke him with a hard, glissando “Y-e-s?” It was ominous that he did
not respond from the top of the staircase to her careless goodnight.
She regarded him particularly the next morning and began to wonder.
Never again did he look at her in that way she ached for and dreaded.
The more he didn’t look at her in that way the more she ached for it
and the less she dreaded it, until she couldn’t remember why she had
dreaded it and forgot why she had ever repulsed him.
She had repulsed because her vanity required it. He had got her to wife
without wooing her. She had been thrust upon him. The thought was a
sleepless scorpion in her breast. It poisoned her dreams. Well ... but
before he could touch her he should have to want her and prove it. She
would attend to that. To reach her at all he should have to overcome a
great barrier. This she resolved and so she repulsed him. Each hurt to
his pride was a stone added to the barrier, and she set no limit to it,
for the higher it was the more it would prove if he ever got over. Then
she would see what her own feelings were.
He on his part, after that night, once and for all accepted the only
inference he could draw from her behaviour. He was hateful to her; he
filled her with loathing and disgust. Well ... he could no more help
that than he could help the fact of their being married: but he could
avoid those moments on the rack. They left him limp and useless for
days afterward. He could lock the impulse up. Its getting loose was
what drew her scorn upon him. So he chained and locked it up.
At first, seeing the door was closed, she walked to and fro before it,
thinking he would read in her manner a sign of remorse. He saw nothing.
Then she began to knock. He did not hear. She thought he was making
her pay. She was willing, even greedy, to pay. She went on knocking.
Presently she realized that he was blind and deaf. In a panic she beat
upon the door, hurled her weight against it, crying out her wish to
surrender. But she had seared his heart. He could see only with his
eyes and hear but with his ears, and totally misapprehended her woman’s
gesture.
She imagined that now _he_ repulsed HER, not in revenge, not to trample
on her,--that she could easily have endured,--but coldly, with undesire.
This completed the irony. Thereafter she held aloof and began to fear
him. She put away her glittering armor, staining it with tears of rage
and chagrin, and he never noticed even that. He was always gentle,
always absent, always cold. He grew on her in this aspect, assumed
colossal proportions, and began to seem as inaccessible to her as
she had seemed to him. They changed places again. She stood in awe
of him. What he wished for was. He spoke of a way of living more in
keeping with their circumstances. She moved them to a larger house
and organized their lives according to such dim suggestions as she
could get from him, one of which was that she should “stay out of the
kitchen.” There had to be servants. Evenings were so much worse on
that account that they began to go out more, often alone, sometimes
together. By a law of contradiction, the more they concealed themselves
from each other in the tatters of their pride and the further they went
apart, the more polite they became and the easier it was to be friendly.
Her outwardness had changed no less. A wilful, pouting mouth had found
the shape of wistfulness. Her eyes had lost their defiant glitter; they
were softer, deeper and full of recognition. Into her movements had
come that kind of gentle dignity, loftier than pride, lovelier than
loveliness, which is idolized of men above the form and sign of beauty.
“Almost there,” she said, settling back in her seat.
“How strange the mill looks!--cold,” said Thane.
Agnes did not look.
“Five years,” said John. “What a long time!”
“Six,” said Agnes.
“Six,” said Thane.
The Gib carriage was waiting at the station. “I’ll be at the inn,” said
John. “It will take no time to bring me if I’m wanted. If Enoch--if you
don’t stay at the mansion I’d like you to have supper with me.”
“I’ll send you word,” said Thane.