Tom Lupton got over to see the Vantons at least twice a week through
the summer. And whether she was on the wide veranda or sitting under a
beach parasol on the sand while the children bathed in the surf, Mary
Vanton was always glad to see him. Sometimes she found herself looking
forward to his coming, and then she had a moment of hesitation and
self-rebuke. Yet ... why should she not? She expected a visitor in
September and contemplated his coming with a pleasurable interest, as
she told Tom Lupton.
“You’ll be glad to see Dick Hand again, won’t you?” she asked, as they
sat on the beach together.
“Why, sure,” Tom answered, with some surprise. “Is he coming out?” Dick
was still in New York, a chemical engineer of tremendous reputation.
His latest feat had been to develop some old and neglected patents
that were his father’s. The rights had nearly expired when Dick got to
work at them and made improvements that enabled him to re-patent them.
He thought he was going to make a fortune--or another fortune. He had
several already.
“What are those patents of his, anyway?” asked Tom Lupton, rather
perfunctorily.
“Why, they are processes with oyster shells by which he makes a sort of
concrete that can be used for flooring, and some other substance that
is good for roofs.”
Tom Lupton grew interested.
“Are those the patents he got from your aunt?” he inquired. “I mean the
ones his father got from her?”
“I don’t know. What were those?”
Mary Vanton had never heard the story, but Tom Lupton had, and he
related how Keturah Smiley, later Keturah Hand, had bested Richard
Hand, Sr.
Mary Vanton heard it through and then exclaimed: “Wasn’t that like
Aunt Keturah? I’m glad, though, that Dick is going to make something
out of the patents.”
“It seems almost as if you really had a stake in them,” commented
Keeper Tom. “Your aunt gave them away, practically, if they are worth
anywhere near what Dick seems to think they are.”
“Oh, no; I have no right of any sort in them,” she disclaimed, quickly.
“Aunt Keturah must have parted with them with the full consciousness of
their possible value. She would never have realized anything from them
nor would I. Besides, the greater part of their value has probably come
as a result of the work Dick has done.”
“I suppose he is married and has children,” said Tom, absently. Mary
glanced at him with equal indifference as she responded carelessly:
“No.”
V
Dick Hand at forty-two had, as has been said, a tremendous reputation
and an equally tremendous dissatisfaction. The one had no perceptible
relation to the other. Of the one the world was thoroughly aware, of
the other it was not. His dissatisfaction was known to Richard Hand
alone.
There were times when it swayed him absolutely, When it “came over
him,” and he could not get away from it. He could not have told you
what it was, really; for sometimes he felt it to be one thing,
sometimes another. Now it was an immense discontent with all he had
done or was doing, now it was an unreasonable irritation with life
itself.
Everything, he found at such times, was worthless.
One day, in a fit of absolute disgust, he went to a specialist. He had
no expectation that the man could help him, but he had got where he
must do something.
He had expected to be shown into a darkened room where a fellow more or
less dressed for a part would take his hand gravely, as if performing a
rite, and then, retreating to the distance and becoming semi-invisible,
would intone questions in a ceremonial voice while the conversation was
written down on the wax tablets of a silently travelling phonograph.
But the office was as unlike that as possible, and so was the
specialist.
A bright room with a sort of sun-parlour on the south side, a place
of wicker furniture and cretonnes, with books and magazines lying
about and tobacco on the table. With his eyeglasses and a sober
seriousness of face when in repose, the man who received him was hardly
distinguishable from a business man of comfortable habit, moderately
large affairs, and fairly frequent preoccupations. They shook hands;
the specialist offered Mr. Hand a cigarette and took one himself.
“Let’s come out here,” he said, indicating the sun-parlour. “It’s
pleasanter and the chairs are better to lounge in.”
They disposed themselves and puffed away for a moment or two.
“I’ve come to see if you can help me,” explained Dick Hand, rather
desperately. The other nodded.
“I get fairly sick of--existence,” Dick went on. “I’m restless and
rottenly dissatisfied, and I don’t know why. Nothing seems to mean
anything. I have these spells, and they are commoner than they used to
be.”
“Tell me all about yourself,” suggested the other. “Only what you call
to mind and only what you care to tell.”
Dick hesitated. “I thought,” he said, “that you people asked
questions--to get at certain things hidden from us of whom you ask
them.”
“Well, we do that,” admitted the specialist. “But it usually is better
to hear a man’s own story first. After we have got the things a man
readily recalls, comes the problem of getting at the things he doesn’t
recall.”
“I suppose the idea is the relief afforded by making a clean breast of
things,” hazarded Dick.
“Not entirely. It goes beyond that. It aims at relieving unsuspected
pressures. There’s a sort of an analogy in a physical injury, such as a
fracture. The man who has the fracture knows that something is wrong,
he suffers intense pain, but he doesn’t know that a bone is broken,
or, if he does, he doesn’t know just where, nor how to set it. And he
suffers too much to be able to find out.”
“Well, there’s certainly a fracture somewhere in my life,” said Dick
Hand, grimly. “And I suffer. And I don’t know where it is or how to set
it.”
After a little pause he entered upon his story. It was when he had
entirely finished and sat silent that the specialist spoke again.
“You say you were once in love?”
“It was the only time I ever was in love,” replied Richard Hand. “She
was two years younger than I. We more or less grew up together. We were
both in our twenties when she refused me for good and all. She was
already in love with another man and she was married to him a little
later.”
“You use the past tense. Is she dead?”
“No, she isn’t. She is alive and has four children. Her husband has
disappeared lately, left her and the children. By the way, he would
make a case for you! If you could cure him I’d say you could cure
anybody.”
“It isn’t we who cure,” explained the other man patiently. “We no more
cure a man than does the surgeon who sets a broken bone. We just try,
like him, to get things straightened out so they can cure themselves.
Tell me about her husband, who has disappeared.”
Dick recounted Guy Vanton’s story. It was a long recital but the
specialist seemed interested. At the end Dick asked: “What do you make
of it?”
“It is a bad case,” thoughtfully, “but it isn’t hopeless. It might even
come out all right. I’m afraid not, though. If she--if his wife could
not straighten things out for him there isn’t much likelihood that
anybody else can. She must be a very fine woman. And they genuinely
loved each other. No doubt of that. Love--and children. They are the
ultimate satisfaction of most men and women, but not of all. I imagine
that he is an exception to the general rule. There was something else
that he hadn’t got. Perhaps he will find it.”
“A fine woman.... Love--and children ... the ultimate satisfaction.”
The words struck something in Richard Hand. He looked up suddenly and
spoke in a harsh voice:
“I suppose if I had got her and if--if they were my children...?”
The adviser looked at him gravely.
“I think there is no doubt about it,” he answered.
They sat there in the gathering twilight for some time in a silence
fraught with the pain of a deep revelation. Richard Hand struggled with
the thing that stood revealed to him and within him. After a while
he said, in words that seemed to choke him: “But what shall I do?
What--what _can_ I do--about it--now?”
“Look the thing full in the face, as you are doing now, and conquer
it,” the other counselled.
After a pause he went on to explain: “You love her, you have always
loved her. And because you love her you will love her children, as a
part of her. As long as you suppressed your love for her, as long as
you refused to acknowledge it even to yourself, so long it continued
to punish you in other ways. It did not so act upon you as to prevent
you doing good work and profiting by it; but when you had done great
work and had profited by it this suppressed longing stepped in and
robbed you of the reward you had earned by destroying all the beauty
and meaning of life for you, by turning your victories to ashes in your
mouth, by making everything you were doing or had done or might do,
pointless and futile. For you the final satisfaction would have lain
exclusively in doing all these things for her.
“Why haven’t you done them for her? Why don’t you? You can. You
can make her yours and her children your own. I’m not, of course,
suggesting anything disgraceful or dishonourable. I am suggesting that
you look the truth in the face like an honest man--though you haven’t
been intentionally dishonest with yourself. Outward conventions are
responsible for most of the ingrowing minds. Look the truth in the face
like an honest man and fight the good fight like a brave man.
“Say to yourself--you won’t have to say it to her--just this: ‘I love
her; I have always loved her. I always shall. I have done everything
I have done for her, always, though I didn’t perhaps know it, and
certainly did not admit it. It isn’t wrong to recognize it and it’s
not wrong to admit it to myself; it’s merely a piece of honesty, and
it’s an outlet for what would otherwise be suppressed and denied until
it fouled and poisoned my whole life. At the same time this thing
must be kept under control, just as any outlet must be controlled. I
mustn’t let it, in its flow, do damage as great as it would in its
stagnation--and a worse. I must be as honest as the day about it and as
strong as I am honest.’”
It was quite dark. The two sat there motionless for a while. Then
Richard Hand got up and came toward the other man, offering him his
hand.
“Thank you,” he said, and his voice was boyish and alive. “I think you
have shown me a way out--if I am strong enough to take it and hold to
it. I--I think I shall go and visit her--and find out.”
The adviser gripped his hand and shook it warmly.
“Go, by all means,” he declared. “Nothing is gained by denial of the
truth; nothing is gained by suppression. Everything worth winning is
won by fighting, and there is no impulse in us which cannot be bitted
and bridled and curbed and made to serve us for a righteous end.”