That Day at the Beach, as we sit and look back at it; how
Hugo journeys to shield his Love from Harm, and Small
Beginnings can end with Uproars and a Proverb.
Canning arrived at the House of Heth shortly after four. He had had an
all-day journey in summer heat, and a bad night preceding. In the still
watches following his ladies' departure from New York, he had had time
for calm reflection, nothing else but time; and the more he calmly
reflected, the less could he understand his betrothed's singular desire
to pay this tribute to the dead. The thing grew increasingly mystifying;
increasingly unorthodox and undependable, too. Moreover, the second
thought reproached him that, Carlisle being so greatly upset, however
unreasonably, he himself should have accompanied her homeward, in her
most need to go by her side. And thinking these things, the disturbed
young man had tumbled out of bed in the small hours, to make inquiries
regarding trains.
He was received at the House by his future mother-in-law, who was once
more the accredited intermediary. Canning was hot, sooty, and suffering
from want of sleep. There were cinders down the back of his neck. Mrs.
Heth had Moses prepare for him a long iced drink, with rime on the glass
and fragrant mint atop. And then, as the prize of her lifetime sat and
sipped, she seated herself beside him, her strong voice trembling....
All hope of discreet reticence was now ripped to shreds. What chance
remained of rescuing the name of Heth from the scandalous horrors of a
suicide lay all in arousing this stalwart man to the imminence of the
common peril. Mrs. Heth, somersaulting without hesitancy from last
night's caution, flooded the dark places with lurid light.
Canning listened with consternation and chagrin. His moral
sensibilities, indeed, received no particular shock, since Mrs. Heth's
narrative frankly disclaimed any wrong-doing on Carlisle's part, but
attributed the misunderstanding to the excited gossip at the time. And
by the same token, he was not unduly perturbed over the girl's
hysterical ideas of her present duty. What struck Canning most sharply,
indeed, since he was human, was the personal side of the matter: the
stark fact that important developments touching Carlisle's name and
happiness had been running along for some time, wholly without his
knowledge, but under the direct personal superintendency of another man,
this Mr. Somebody's unknown friend. So extraordinary a course of
behavior seemed to reveal a totally new side of his betrothed, hitherto
unsuspected. Canning would have been too saintly for this earth if he
had not learned of these proceedings with the deepest surprise
and vexation.
And yet--what of it? Of course there was some simple and natural
explanation, which she would give when she felt better able. Doubtless
she had been threatened; blackmailed perhaps. And meantime the light
thrown directly and indirectly on Carlisle's distraught mood touched the
lover deeply. He hardly needed Mrs. Heth's frightened hints about the
necessity of gentleness with firmness in dealing with a flare-up. Had he
himself not known the wilful nature of her spirit in excitement, that
never-forgotten evening in the library?
And when the striker of the right note withdrew at last, and Carlisle
herself appeared in the drawing-room, very white and subdued, the last
remnant of a personal grievance vanished from Canning's manner. Nothing
could have exceeded the tenderness of his greeting....
"Did my telegram surprise you?" he said presently. "I got so troubled
about you after you were gone.... I couldn't bear to leave you alone
with this...."
And Cally said, with a quiver in her voice: "Oh, Hugo!... If you only
knew how I've wanted you to-day!..."
She meant it with every fibre of her being. Doubly he had convinced her
now that he could never be shocked or disgusted with her, that in him a
perfect sympathy enfolded her, covering all mistakes. That he might not
understand quite yet how she felt about everything was possible, but
that was nothing now, by the fact that he understood _her_, at any rate,
as mamma never could.
Some discussion of the matter was of course necessary. And presently,
after they had talked a little, quite naturally, of his journey and how
she had slept last night, the lovers drifted on into Mr. Heth's little
study, reopened against this need.
Here they sat down and began to talk. And here, in five minutes,
Carlisle's heart began mysteriously to sink within her....
She had been going through a series of violent emotional experiences in
which he had had not the slightest share, and now required of him that
he should catch up with the results of these experiences, upon a
moment's notice and at a single bound. She could not realize the extreme
difficulty of this feat. Nor, indeed, could Canning himself, confident
by the ease with which his love had appeared to put down all personal
irritations. To his seeming, as to hers, they had met in perfect
spiritual reunion.
Accordingly, when he proposed that the matter be allowed to rest quiet
for a day or two, till they were all in a little better frame of mind to
view it calmly, he offered a temporary solution which he felt certain
would seem to her as reasonable and as tactfully considerate as it
did to him.
"In this moment of shock and distress," he said, with admirable
restraint, "you are not quite in the best frame of mind, you see, to
decide such a serious matter. Fortunately, to wait a little while and
think it over quietly can do no harm to anybody now. And then, if you
still feel the same way about it, of course I shall want to do what
you wish."
He had had Carlisle's feelings only at second-hand, through a medium
perhaps wanting in transparence. Her hesitancy considerably surprised
him. To Carlisle, as was almost equally inevitable, it was as if in the
solid rock of their mutual understanding there had suddenly appeared a
tiny crack. She felt the reasonableness as well as the tenderness with
which Hugo spoke; she wanted nothing in the world but to do what he
wanted. And yet it seemed somehow a physical impossibility for her now
to say that she would unsettle and postpone it all,--something, say, as
if Hugo had asked her to step back into last year or the year before.
And she tried to make him understand this, saying--what seemed a feeble
reply to his logic:
"You see, I--I've already thought about it a good deal, Hugo ... And
putting it off would only make me--miserable and ill. I can't explain
very well.... I think I could begin to--to forget about it if--when...."
This she said over several times, in different ways, as the necessary
discussion proceeded....
It was naturally hard for Hugo to grasp the grounds on which she
rejected a mere deferment of painful discussion till to-morrow morning
(for he reduced his proposal to that), or even to see why, though
opposed herself, she would not readily be guided in so small a matter by
his wishes. The soft chimes in the hall had rung five before it
definitely came over him that the preliminaries had oddly, indeed
incredibly, gone against him.
He faced the fact frankly, without perceptible sign of annoyance.
"Well, then, my dearest girl, I'm afraid we shall have to talk about it
a little now...."
They sat side by side on papa's faded old lounge, where they had spent
many an hour together in happier days. Canning held Carlisle's hand in a
reassuring grasp. Her heart warmed to him anew: if he did not quite seem
to understand--what wonder when she hardly did herself?--his was a love
that drew its roots deeper than understanding. Nevertheless she flinched
from a discussion which promised to be carried on chiefly by her
over-strung nerves; and all at once she felt that she must know
instantly what threatened, exactly what he thought about it.
"Hugo ... do you--don't you think I--I ought to tell?"
Far readier and surer was his voice in reply: "Frankly, darling, I can't
as yet see any necessity."
How could he possibly see?--Ought to tell what? Had not her mother told
him that he had to deal with the nightmare illusions of a
disordered mind?...
Canning added with great considerateness: "I've thought it all over from
every point of view--and you know I'm better able to think
dispassionately to-day than you are--and I simply can't persuade myself
that we have any such obligation."
Carlisle thought, with a little hopeful leap, that Hugo _must_ know. It
was all irrevocably settled; and yet at the same time it may have been
that, woman-wise, she had left ajar a little door somewhere, through
which his man's wisdom might yet storm, and possess all....
"But--but doesn't it seem that if I--did him a wrong, I ought to be
willing to set it straight?"
"Well, naturally!" said Canning, and smiled a little, sadly, to see how
white and sorrowful-eyed she looked. "If you did him a wrong. But that's
just the point. I'm afraid I can't agree with the somewhat extreme view
this friend of the poor fellow's seems to have put forward.... By the
way," he added, finding the natural question popping in so suitably
here, "who is this man that has talked with you about it, Carlisle? Your
mother didn't go into particulars."
Carlisle felt some surprise. "Oh--I supposed she told you. Dr.
Vivian--you remember--who ..."
The name took Canning completely aback.
"Vivian?--no!... _That_ chap!..."
Both remembered in the same moment his quizzical complaint that this man
was his hoodoo. Both felt that the pleasantry had a somewhat gritty
flavor just now.
"I hadn't thought of him," said Canning, at once putting down his
surprise and explaining it, "because I didn't think you knew him at all.
In fact, I didn't know you'd ever seen him but once, or perhaps
twice...."
Carlisle regretted that mamma had not explained all this. "I haven't
more than three or four times.... Twice when I was with you, you
remember, and then I met him again at Mr. Beirne's and the
Cooneys'--some cousins of mine. You see--he was a great friend
of--his...."
"And I suppose he has worried you about this every time he got anywhere
near you?"
"No," Carlisle answered, laboriously, "I don't think he has ever
mentioned it--since the first. Of course I've had hardly any
conversation with him--and it's always been about the Works. You know, I
told you he usually talked to me about that--"
He said that he remembered; and each was then aware that the harmony of
a moment ago had somehow slipped away from them. Canning, indeed,
instead of being enlightened by the explanation, was more bewildered
than ever. How could it be that this man, her father's assailant in the
newspapers, the religious fellow whom Carlisle had never mentioned but
to belittle, should have been the recipient of intimate confidences
which she had withheld from him, her future husband? Naturally he could
not understand in the least. However, glancing at her still face, he
forbore to put another question.
"Well, that's got nothing to do with it anyway," he said, lightly,
dismissing the side-issue. "Now, let's see.... Sit back comfortably, my
dear, and we'll take it all quietly from the beginning...."
Hugo had got his facts from Mrs. Heth, and nothing had happened yet to
suggest that they were in any way inaccurate. On the contrary, they
seemed to have received subtle moral corroboration, so instinctive was
it for the lover to lean backward from the views foisted upon Carlisle
by her singular and religious confidant. That he himself was capable of
coloring the case, attorney-wise, to suit the common interest did not
really cross his mind.
The whole issue in the singular muddle, he pointed out, seemed to be
whether or not the poor fellow had known that the boat was upset. Well,
who could say what he knew, an intoxicated man in a blind passion? Not
Carlisle, certainly, plunged suddenly into the sea and intensely
occupied with saving her life. How, for instance, could she know it if,
in the instant when she was under water, the man had glanced back
and--deadened by his drunken anger, admit that for him--had not returned
for her? Of the dozens of people who had witnessed the disaster, not one
had doubted that the unfortunate chap's desertion of her had been
deliberate.... However, imagine that it hadn't been, exactly, imagine
that the women in their excitement and resentment, and through
misunderstanding of each other's statements, had failed to give him the
full benefit of the doubt. It was still a great mistake to assume that
what they had said or left unsaid had been decisive. Public opinion,
knowing the unstable character of the man, had already judged him. Did
his later life and behavior indicate, really, that that judgment was far
wrong? And as to that night of excitement long ago, the world's
rough-and-ready justice would hardly have taken much account of
Carlisle's generous theory that perhaps the man didn't know what he was
doing. By the same token, it would scarcely reopen the case now to admit
that kind conjecture....
"I honor from the bottom of my heart, Carlisle," said Canning, "your
wish to do the strictest justice. Need I say that I'm with you there,
against the world? But what is the strictest justice? Perhaps you might
bring a ray of relief to the poor man's father, and that's all. Is that
really so great an object to move heaven and earth for, at the cost of
much pain and distress to all who love you?..."
Having spoken at some length, Canning paused for a reply. The pause ran
longer than he found encouraging. However, he was no more sensitive to
it, to Carlisle's strange unresponsiveness as he talked, than was the
girl herself. Indeed, it tore Cally's heart to seem to oppose her lover,
pleading so strongly and sweetly for her against herself. Yet she had
several times been tempted to interrupt him, so clear did it seem to her
that he did not understand even now all that she had supposed was fully
plain to him last night.
She said with marked nervousness, and a kind of eagerness, too: "You're
so good and dear in the way you look at it, Hugo. You don't know--how
sweet.... But it all comes down to whether he knew--doesn't it--just as
you said. Well, you see I really _know_ he didn't--"
"You're mistaken there, my dear! Only God Almighty knows that. Don't you
think we had better leave the judgment to him?"
That Canning spoke quite patiently was a great credit to his
self-control. His failure to move her had filled him with a depressing
and mortifying surprise. To say nothing of the regard she might be
supposed to have for his wishes, he knew that he had spoken
unanswerably.
"But you see--I really do know he wasn't such a coward, Hugo," said
Carlisle, with the same nervous eagerness to accuse herself. "I--I knew
him quite well--at one time. He was a wonderful swimmer, never
afraid.... Perhaps it's only a feeling--but, indeed, I _know_ he
wouldn't have swum off and left me--if--"
"My dear girl, if you were really so certain of that, why didn't you say
so at the time?"