"How can we be your very own when--you don't know anything about _me_?"
Gussie and Gladys had gone up to get some sleep. Jennie was crouched,
not against the arm of the chair, as before, but against Bob's knee.
Still pressing back the instincts of his passion, he did no more than
let his hand rest lightly on her hair.
"I know this much about you, Jennie--that after all we've gone through
we're welded together. Nothing can separate us now--no past--nor
anything you could tell me."
"Is that why you don't want to know?"
"I don't want to know _now_. That's all I'm saying. Things are settled
for us. They're settled and sealed. It's what we get out of so much
that's terrible, that we don't have to debate that point any more. We
may have to adapt ourselves to conditions we don't know anything about
as yet--but it will be a matter of adapting, not of cutting loose. What
should I be if I were to cut loose from you and the girls now, Jennie?
What should you be if you were to cut loose from me?"
She pressed her cheek against his knee.
"We'd die," she said, simply.
"So there you are! I know what you mean. I'd die, too. That is, we
mightn't die outwardly; but something would be so killed in us that we'd
never be really alive again. So why try to pull apart what life has
soldered into one?"
"But you don't _know_!"
"Yes, I do. I know more than you think. I know that the things that
trouble you are dreams and that our life together is reality. You'll
tell me the dreams as we go on--a little at a time--and I'll show you
that you've waked from them. I know there are things to explain; but I
know, too, that there's an explanation. But I don't want the explanation
yet. I'm--I'm too tired, Jennie. I want to rest. And I can't rest unless
we all rest together--you with me--and the girls with us--in a kind of
quiet acceptance of the things that have happened--and in the--I hardly
know how to express it--but in the tranquillity of love. I wonder if you
understand me?"
She murmured:
"I don't know that I understand you, Bob--quite--but I do--I do love
you. It's--it's different from love--it's--it's more. It's like--like
melting into you--"
"That's love, Jennie. It isn't anything different. It's just--_love_."
"But you're so big--"
"And you're so little--so wee. Don't you see?--that's it! That's the
compensating thing in nature. It's because we're different that we need
each other and complete each other. I can't explain it as you'd explain
a sum in arithmetic. I only _know_. You complete me, Jennie. As I've
said so often, you're the other half of me--"
"And you're all of me--and more."
"Then since we know that, why not do as I said--just rest awhile? We've
come up to our next ledge, as I was trying to explain to you a few
months ago; I know we can camp here a bit; and if we've had some
scratches in the climb we can talk of them by and by. We've learned the
one big thing we needed to know--that we belong together, that we can't
be torn apart. Just for now, why can't that be enough for us?"
"It will be enough if you will let me tell you that--that what I've said
about Hubert wasn't--wasn't as bad as perhaps you think. I don't say it
mightn't have been; it was as bad as that in--in intention; but the
magic cloak of your love which you used to write about seemed to hang
round me--that's the only way I can put it--"
"That'll do, Jennie. Don't try to say any more now. It's only what--in
some way--I can't tell you how--I know already."
He knew she was crying, but he let her cry. He would have cried himself,
only that, since the vision at Bond's Corner, he felt this extraordinary
happiness. While his reason would have striven to accept the
psychologist's explanation his inner self was convinced of Teddy's
delight in beginning his next experiment. He himself was tired, but at
peace--tired, but no longer with a need of sleep--only with the need of
being quiet with a sense of fulfillment.
There were tears in her voice as she whispered, brokenly:
"Is it wrong, Bob, to feel so--so comforted--when momma is lying
upstairs--and darling Teddy is--"
"We can't choose the way by which comfort comes to us, Jennie darling.
Things happen which we don't want to have happen, and yet they _can_
work together for good if we only give them half a chance--"
He was interrupted by the loud, sweet thrilling of a thrush. Jennie
raised her head in surprise, looking at the pallid shimmer through the
curtained window.
"It's day!"
They were both on their feet.
"Yes, Jennie; it's day--again. Let's go out."
They went as they were, bareheaded like children, into the purity of
morning. Pansy, disturbed by the many strange auras in the house,
scampered ahead of them, relieved by the escape. The street was still
asleep, empty, clean, with every lawn patch and garden bed drenched with
dew. Only the birds and the flowers were waking to the light.
Turning toward the cliffs and the river, their talk became more
practical. Bob suggested to Jennie what his father had suggested to him.
Mr. Huntley was going to Europe in connection with some new European
loan. The proposal was that Bob should go with him. The trip might last
six months.
"And if I go," he added, "we both go. We should have a few weeks to
settle things finally here--"
"Oh, but, Bob--how could I go and--and leave the two girls? They need me
more than ever now. I'm not only their sister, but their mother."
"Why shouldn't they come with us? I'd love having them. Six months over
there would make a break with what they've been through here; and when
we come back, Edith has things she's going to suggest--"
"That would be heavenly, Bob; but--but the money?"
"The money's all right. In my new job at the bank I've a bigger
salary--five thousand; and now that dad's giving Edith ten thousand a
year as allowance, he's giving me the same. That's a pretty good income
to begin with, besides which, dad--you'll have to know dad, Jennie--he
doesn't want me to spare any money while we're--we're passing through
this--this crisis."
"And your mother's lovely. I know _that_."
"Yes; mother's splendid, too. So's Edith. You'll find that they all
want--want to make up to you--and to the girls--for--"
But he didn't say for what because they came to where they saw above the
cloud-wrapt city the glory of chrysoprase, turquoise, and topaz which
precedes the sunrise and takes the breath away.
"Oh, look!"
"Oh, look!"
Instinctively they clasped hands as they stood on the edge of the
flowery precipice, watching the chrysoprase yellow into saffron, and the
turquoise melt into sapphire, while the topaz became light.
Then silently, above the wraithlike towers and cubes and battlements,
slipped the rim of gold.
"There it is, Bob!"
He drew her to him, holding her close.
"Yes; there it is again, Jennie--always coming back to us! The last time
we were here we had only the moonrise; and now it is the sun--the sun!"
Her head lay against his shoulder; and as the rim became an orb the
cloud-built vision of Manhattan was touched with flecks of fire. Within
its heart lay Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, and the Bowery,
shops, churches, brothels, and banks, all passions, hungers, yearnings,
and ambitions, all national impulses worthy and detestable, all human
instincts holy and unclean, all loveliness, all lust, all charity, all
cupidity, all secret and suppressed desire, all shameless exposure on
the housetops, all sorrow, all sin, all that the soul of man conceives
of as evil and good--and yet, with no more than these few miles of
perspective, and this easy play of light, translated into beauty,
uplifting, unearthly, and ineffable.
THE END