"No. Don't you come. I've got to think things out by myself. I've got
to"--the strained tone in her voice was desperate, almost
hysterical--"Let me go alone. I'll write to you--Cook's. I'm...."
She turned without a word of good-bye and I heard her footsteps on the
stairs of the still quiet house. And presently, perhaps fifteen
minutes, perhaps half an hour, I heard the whistle of a train.
*VII*
After a while I "came to." I went into her room and looked about it.
In her haste to be gone she had forgotten her rucksac, it lay there in
plain sight on the tumbled bed. I went downstairs and drank some coffee
and paid the bill. I remember a foolish desire to cry when I realized
that I must pay for both of us. In all the trip she had scrupulously
insisted in attending to her share. With only our two bags for company
I went up to Paris. She had taken her baggage from the pension an hour
before I arrived, she had left no address. I spent most of my time in
the garden of the Tuileries, going every hour or so to Cook's in quest
of the letter she had promised. There were times when I hoped she would
come back, when it seemed impossible that I should not find her again,
sometimes I despaired. But mostly it was just a dull, stunned pain,
which was neither hope nor despair. After three days the letter came.
It was postmarked Le Havre.
"Dear friend Arnold,
"It has taken me longer than I had thought to be sure of myself. I
cannot marry you. It has never been hard for me to say this before. It
is hard now. I know how much it will hurt you. And I care more than I
ever did before. More, I think, than I ever will care again. For I can
imagine no finer way of being loved than your way.
"If it were not for the pain it has cost you--I would be glad of the
chance which threw us together in Paris. The days which followed were
the most joyous I have ever known--almost the only ones. I have not
found life a happy business. Surely you won't, I doubt if anyone does,
realize how sad the world seems to me. But somehow, out of the
overwhelming misery about us, you helped me to escape awhile, helped me
to snatch some of 'the rarely coming spirit of delight.' They were
perfect--those never-to-be-forgotten days on the open road.
"I can't--even after all this thinking, and I have thought of nothing
else--understand clearly, what happened at Moret. When you began to
talk love to me--well--it was the first time in my life, I did not want
to run away. We all have our woman's dream hidden somewhere within us.
I don't remember what you said to me there on the bridge but suddenly my
dream came big. Love seemed something I had always been waiting for. I
kept asking myself 'can this at last be love'--and because I did not
want to run away I thought it was.
"When you came to my room I was drunk with the dream. That you did not
take advantage of my bewilderment--well--that's what I meant when I said
I could think of no finer love than what you have given me. I could not
have reproached you if you had. God knows what it would have meant. It
might have turned the balance, I might have loved you--in a way. But it
would not have been _you_, and it would not have been what you wanted.
"When you went away, I began to recall your words--I had scarcely heard
them--and then I realized what you wanted. It seemed very beautiful to
me and--will you believe it--I wanted to give it to you, be it for you.
But as the hours slipped by the fear grew that I could not, grew to
certainty. And I was afraid that if I stayed, I would cheat you. And
so, in fear, I ran away.
"I know I must have seemed very cruel to you that morning. And I am
writing all this in the hope that you will understand that I was harsh
because I was afraid, it was the cruelty of weakness. I wanted to put
my arms about you and cry. You will see that it was better that I did
not. For now--with a cool head--it is very clear to me, not only that I
could not be to you what you wish, but that at bottom I do not want to.
I do not love you.
"I would like to make this sound less brutal, but it is true. It's not
only in regard to socialism that our view-points are miles apart, but
also in this matter of love.
"The porter is calling the 'bus for my steamer. I must stop or miss the
tender. It is just as well. If I have not shown you in these few pages
what I feel, I could not in twice as many."
I was not man enough to take my medicine quietly. The letter jerked me
out of my lethargy, threw me into a rage, the worst mood of my life. I
cursed Suzanne, cursed love, cursed Europe. I engaged passage on the
first boat home. I took along Suzanne's rucksac with the intention of
having its contents laundered and returning it to her with a flippant,
insulting note. I occupied most of the time till the boat sailed, on its
composition. On board I drank hoggishly, gambled recklessly--and as
such things often go--won heavily.
But the last night out, anchored off quarantine, the fury and the folly
left me. After all I had been making an amazing tempest in a teapot.
What did it matter whether my love affair went straight or crooked? I
felt so much the spoiled child, that I was ashamed to look up at the
eternal, patient stars. After the vague open spaces of the sea, the
crowded harbor, the distant glow and hum of the great city, seemed real
indeed. A flare of rockets shot up from Coney Island, dazzled a moment
and went out. I laughed. The lower lights along the shore were not so
brilliant--but abiding.
I leaned over the rail and strained my eyes towards the city. And it
seemed as if life came to me through the night as a thing which one
might hold in the hand and study.
The Tombs and all its people, corrupt judges and upright criminals. In
a few days I would drop back into the rut among them. What had become
of Sammy Swartz? A pick-pocket of parts, he had, when I left, been
virtuously scrubbing floors in an office building--a deadly grind,
compared to the dash and adventure of his old life. What held him to
it? Was it only fear of prison or some vague reaching out for
rectitude? Was he still "on the square" or had he gone back to the
"graft?"
The Teepee, Norman, Nina and little Marie. What were they doing?
Probably wondering when I would return--planning some fete. My
questionings shot back to the old home in Tennessee. The Father and
Margot--what were they doing, what had been done to them? And Ann? I
would have to hurt her in the morning, with my news. Life had driven a
wedge in between us.
And Suzanne? She was somewhere in the city. I pictured her in council
with her comrades in some grimy committee room, some tenement
parlor--the light of the glorious vision in their eyes--planning the
great reconstruction, plotting the coronation of justice. She had turned
her back on the love I offered that some greater love might be made
manifest. It seemed to me wrong. But right or wrong, I loved her
better that night than ever before. It was as though a comet had become
a fixed star.
And I was sorry for her--while admiring. Like all the rest of us, she
was caught in the vast spider web of life, beating her wings to pieces
in the divine effort to reach the light. All the people I could think
of seemed in the same plight--admirable and pitiable. Is not this
immense, spawning, struggling family of ours as much alike in the
uncertainty of life as in the certainty of death?
Once ashore, I called up Ann on the telephone. Her laboratory had been
moved into the city, and so we could arrange to lunch together. I was
glad of the public restaurant, I would have found it harder to tell her
about Suzanne, if we had been alone. When once Ann understood, she made
it as easy for me as possible.
"And so," she said at last as we reached the entrance to her laboratory,
"you won't be coming out to Cromley?"
"I would be a decidedly glum guest, I'm afraid,"
She stood for a moment on the step, her brows puckered.
"Well," she said, "If you really want her--go after her. Hit her on the
head and drag her to your cave. Oh, I know. I'm too matter of fact and
all that. But it's the way to get her--beat her a little."
"I had my chance to do that," I said, "and couldn't. Perhaps you're
right--but I love her a bit too much. I shan't go after her."
Ann sniffed.
"If I was a man, I'd go after what I wanted." Then her eyes softened.
"But I'm only a woman. All I can do is to tell you--you're always
welcome at Cromley."
She turned and ran up the steps to her laboratory.
In this conversation I realized the basic difference between Ann's point
of view and mine, more clearly than before. Her philosophy taught her
to be, if not satisfied, at least content, with half things. If she
could not get just what she wanted, nor all of it, she tried to be happy
with what was available. Doubtless she found life better worth living
than I did. But such an attitude towards Suzanne would have seemed to
me a desecration. Perhaps if I had sought her out, argued with her,
tried to dominate her will--tried figuratively to "beat her a little"--I
might have persuaded her to marry me. Perhaps. But what I might have
won in this way, would not only have been less than what I wanted, but
something quite different.
It had taken no "persuading" to make me love Suzanne. I had seen
numberless women, had met, I suppose, several thousands. Many I had
known longer than Suzanne. But she stood out from the rest, not as
"another" woman, not as a more beautiful, or cleverer or more earnest
woman--although she was all these--but as something quite different--my
woman. If she did not recognize me, in the same sudden, unarguable way
as her man, there was nothing I could do about it. She did not.
The wise man of Israel said that the way of a man with a maid is past
all finding out. It would be truer to say that the ways of men with
maidens are too varied and numerous for any classifying. My way was
perhaps insane. Very likely I was asking of life more than is granted
to mortals. But that is small comfort.
Perhaps Suzanne did love me and had, in running away, obeyed some
age-old, ineradicable instinct of her sex. It is possible that she
mourned because I did not play the venerable game of pursuit. Perhaps
if I had taken advantage of the hour when she was wholly mine, it might
have "turned the balance." I might have entered into the glory. I do
not understand the forces of life which rule our mating. But one thing
I know--I was not in love with any Suzanne who could have been
"persuaded."
I sat for some time on a bench in Union Square, thinking this out, after
I left Ann. I had a strange reluctance to plunge back into the old
life. I remember watching with envy two tramps who sat in contemplative
silence on a bench opposite me. I was tempted to wander away, out of
the world of responsibilities, out into that strange land where nothing
matters. There are two sorts of wanderlust; the one which pushes the
feet and the one which pushes the spirit. But at last I shook this
cowardly lassitude from me and walked downtown to the Teepee.
Nina threw her arms about my neck. Norman pounded me on the back, the
little lassie Marie kissed me shyly, and Guiseppe hobbled in from the
kitchen to complete the welcome. While they were still storming me with
questions, Norman went back to his work. He had a large sheet of drawing
paper thumbtacked to the table and was sketching an advertisement for a
new brand of pickles. When the rest of them disappeared to kill the
fatted calf, he put a hand on my shoulder and looked me over carefully.
"Been on the rocks?" he said.