not a vice. As long as you want the right things.... Specially for
women. An unselfish man might be a hero, but an unselfish woman couldn’t
be anything but a victim.... Like a child.... Imagine an unselfish
child. Of course it couldn’t survive. What you’ve got to do is to learn
to feel for other people so much that it hurts your selfishness--so that
you can’t be comfortable unless the rest are too.”
Claudine found his earnestness a little wearying; she wondered how the
impatient Andrée could endure much of him. He was admirable, and he was
very touching, and not for any Gilbert on earth would she offend him,
but she wished very much that he might be somewhat less obviously there.
He had had his cue to vanish; he could have put such a nice, friendly
end to the acquaintance, and been entirely in the right, but
instead--there he was. She had no objection to Andrée’s talking to him,
but she felt that future walks were to be discouraged.
They crossed the lawn, black and spongy under the pines, and as a matter
of course, she began to mount the steps of the veranda. But Andrée
lingered.
“Come, my dear,” said Claudine. “Edna’s waiting for you.”
“Half a minute,” said Andrée, and her mother entered the house without
her. Andrée leaned against the veranda, her head thrown back, looking up
at the sky; Stephens stood before her, and characteristically, he was
looking down at the earth, very thoughtful. There was a long silence,
which neither of them noticed.
“Good night,” said Andrée, suddenly, and he was startled to see her
holding out her hand. He took it, rather reluctantly, and she gave his a
firm, strong pressure, and didn’t let go. But he drew away almost
roughly.
“Good night,” he said, and walked away.
No other man she had yet seen would have done that; she was accustomed
to having her imperious impulses treated with at least a semblance of
rapture; she went in, more thoughtful than ever.
The truth of it was, that for young Stephens there were no trifles;
everything was significant. He was a man of strong passions and dearly
bought wisdom; he knew no middle course between being indifferent or
quite otherwise. He had been brought up in a class where a friendship
between a man and a woman was unthinkable; or any sort of careless or
meaningless intercourse. If you weren’t in love with a girl, or on the
point of falling in love, you never thought of her. He had developed and
he had learnt much; he had a remarkable command over himself; he would
have been able to go on like this for ever and ever, simply talking and
talking to Andrée, and being quite impersonal, but not if she were going
to hold his hand. He really resented that. Old ideas which he fancied he
had outgrown came back to him now, with force; a venomous distrust for
women of Andrée’s sort. As a boy, when he had seen them in the streets,
exquisitely dressed, in their carriages, it had given him comfort to
believe them all wanton and worthless chaff. Later, when he had begun
to read novels, all this had been confirmed; he had made more than one
fiery and bitter speech to his comrades on that subject; on these
pampered women with their jewels, their furs, their inordinate luxuries.
He was honest enough even then to admit the existence of a leaven of
desire in his sullen resentment.
“It’s the dream of most fellows like me,” he had thought, “to possess a
superior woman. And there’s no chance of it. No matter what we do, or
become, the finest and best of them are always out of reach.”
His candid opinion of the Vincelles would have shocked them one and all.
He had studied the social conditions of his country with thoroughness,
and he knew they weren’t the best, or even the second best. They
belonged in a place he could never get to, but there were places above
to which they could never attain; he was far better aware of this than
they were. He knew that Andrée was half-educated and half-trained, that
she was not useful and not, socially speaking, ornamental. And he had
been able thus dispassionately to judge her because she had seemed so
entirely impossible to him. He knew he loved her, but he had had no
hope, and, obliged to withstand her allurement, he had been able to
analyze it. The intractable and wayward spirit of her was what he loved;
her elusiveness. Always and forever she would do what she wanted; every
breath would sway her, but not the mightiest wind from heaven would
dismay or turn her from her desire. There was no constancy, no
steadfastness in her, but she was honest. She was very largely made up
of faults, and they were faults he loved; wilfulness, recklessness, a
sort of casual and unconscious cruelty, a marvelous selfishness,
innocent, unambitious, like that of a child. She would not strive, never
fight for what she wanted, she would stretch out careless hands for what
passing things took her fancy.
Just at the moment, he took her fancy. Well, he wasn’t going to have it
that way. He was going away, to forget her, before there was any more to
forget. He wanted not to see that dark, mutinous face again, or to hear
that nervous and exquisite voice, that seemed always to have a sob in
it. Because he _was_ constant and steadfast, and he had no wish to give
so very much and to get nothing in return.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE THING IS ON THEM
§ i
There was a very great deal that young Stephens didn’t know about
himself, some of it that was obvious to other eyes. He did not go away
the next morning; Edna met him after breakfast and entreated him not to
do so.
“We’re so dull and miserable here,” she said. “And you’re the only hope.
Do you know what Mother calls you? The Breath of Life! Now after that
you can’t go, can you?”
He smiled, a little inattentively. There she stood, so pretty and
serene, one of those women who considered it their right to make
outrageous demands upon men.... He saw suddenly how difficult it must be
to withstand their demands. He did not want to refuse Edna; he liked her
very much, because she was frank and friendly; he didn’t suspect that
her frankness held a hundred times more reserve than Andrée’s silences,
that she, so smiling and affable, was infinitely more aloof, more
mysterious, more unknowable, than her dark sister.
“The Breath of Life!” he said. “Why?”
“Because we’re all very nearly dead, and you’re so much alive,” she
said, tranquilly. “Can’t we have one more nice day together?”
“I don’t see ...” he said, doubtfully. “After--well--your father, you
know....”
He had no clear conception of Gilbert’s position; he had certainly seen
many husbands and fathers who were bullies, but in a more primitive
society this bullying carried weight and was not defied. He knew little
of the civilized expedients of women; he didn’t imagine that Claudine
would stoop to deceive. Yet he didn’t think her quite capable of
independence.
“Oh, Father!” said Edna, carelessly. “He’s just melodrama.... And we
won’t tell Mother, and she’ll pretend not to know where we’ve gone. We
can--”
“But I don’t like it!” he protested. “It’s a humiliating position for
me.”
“It really isn’t, Mr. Stephens. We’re the humiliated, deceitful ones,
and we don’t care. Do you know the country round here?”
“I was born a few miles down the river,” he answered, soberly. “In
Brownsville Landing.”
Andrée came sauntering out of the house, and caught his words.
“I’d like to hear about you,” she said, but he shook his head.
“No,” he said. “That’s a mistake. What used to be me isn’t me now.
It’s--well, it’s like these books--they start off when the fellow’s a
baby, and they tell you all the things he thought and all the ways he
grew and changed, until you can’t see him at all. I’m darned glad you
never saw me or heard of me before, and you’ve got to see only what I am
now.” He smiled ingenuously. “It’s not much,” he said, “but it’s what
I’ve worked twenty-eight years on, anyway.”
“Come on; let’s start somewhere,” said Edna. “Or Mother’ll come out and
have to not ‘countenance’ it. Let’s take a ‘ramble’; that’s what Father
calls a walk.”
“It is a ‘ramble,’ too, with him,” said Andrée.
“Well,” said Stephens, “there’s a nice place up the road five or six
miles--nursery for all kinds of evergreens, and a little hotel. If you
think you can do it--? It’s a steep climb.”
Edna ran in to leave a message for her mother with Mrs. Dewey, and they
set off. It was a sultry, hazy morning; it seemed unaccountably
oppressive to Stephens. He felt unpleasantly like a new toy to these
greedy children; they looked to him to provide amusement; they weren’t
interested in his ideas, which were his life, and they had no faint idea
of the wonder of him. He glanced down at his white flannel legs and
buckskin shoes; he thought of his appearance in general, his immaculate
cleanliness, the comfort of fine raiment, of himself strong, confident,
carrying a cigarette case of purest gold and walking by these fabulous
girls. And he thought of a sallow youth, ten years ago, lounging outside
a pool room in Brownsville Landing, in a dirty grey flannel shirt and a
villainous cap, dazed and stupid with incessant cigarettes, engaging in
candid persiflage with the mill girls who passed. He had bridged that
gulf all alone....
The making of his money he regarded as a minor achievement. It was the
regeneration of his spirit that was so remarkable; that, he felt, was
little less than a miracle; he would have liked to tell that.
He had been in the hospital with a broken head, justifiably got in a
saloon brawl; he had lain in the ward two days, suffering and resentful
because he couldn’t smoke. No one came to see him; who was there to
come? His father, who worked in the brick yards, was always drunk when
he wasn’t busy, and he had no other relatives; he didn’t know what a
friend was. He went about in a pack, a gang of youths of his own age,
bound by no other tie than that of the pack instinct, all of them more
or less vicious, in a pitiful way. They lacked ambition, that is, at
eighteen or so, they showed a lamentable disinclination to work every
day and all day in mill or factory. They wanted something better, and
even now Stephens fancied that their sordid distractions _were_ better,
had a little more of the stuff of life in them.
In his restlessness and misery, he had turned his attention to the man
in the next bed, a portly, pallid fellow of forty-five or so, with a
black beard and a severe and dignified manner. He looked like a
physician, some sort of professional man; he was actually a mill hand,
an Englishman named Simms, a Manchester Socialist of the old school,
austere and fanatic. He sat propped up in bed reading Huxley, but he was
very willing to talk. And in five days he had expounded the world to the
sallow “corner boy.” Gesturing forcibly with his bandaged hand--he had
been badly mangled at his machine--he set forth his Quixotic and
beautiful doctrines. He had little humanity, no flexibility; he was
uncompromising and stern as a Calvinist.
They had lived together for two years. It was Simms who had shown young
Stephens the charm of cleanliness; he had a bare little room on the
outskirts of the town which he scrubbed himself; his habits were
fastidious and ascetic. He taught young Stephens sobriety and
continence and his own worth, and he taught him to read. His pupil was
not docile; he joined the Y. M. C. A., which was anathema to Simms; he
took courses in everything, he frequented the gymnasium. He made use of
what the older man disdained; his ideas were more practical and less
sublime.
He felt now that he was justified and he wished poor Simms were alive,
to be argued with. He stole a glance at Andrée, and he felt a curious
mixture of despair and defiance. He _was_ good enough--but she would
never think so.
§ ii
Claudine had watched them go from her window, with some uneasiness.
People of his sort were so hard to handle! Why hadn’t he the tact to go
away? It was so difficult to keep a middle course between offending him
and offending Gilbert; she dwelt with dismay, not for the first time, on
the uncompromising nature of men, how rudely they upset all feminine
niceties. Nothing might be implicit or vague with them. Even Bertie, her
marvelous boy, had to tell her things, and be frank about his feelings,
in a way Andrée and Edna never were.
She spent a peaceful day, reading and writing letters. The letters did
her good, put her in touch with her own little world again, restored to
her some measure of complacency. She was unhappy and her life very
futile and insignificant, but it might have been so much worse; it might
have been harmful. She re-read Lizzie Wiley’s letter, full of the
atrocious Bernardine Perceval, who had left her husband.
“I saw Bernardine,” she wrote, “on the street car with the little girl.
What she will drag the child into I don’t know. I thank God there are
still a few like yourself left.” And so on. Lizzie Wiley was a wealthy
spinster of passionate moral views and her approval was not without
weight. Claudine thought with a faint smile of her own bad moment,
twenty years before, when she had wanted to leave Gilbert; she had a
fairly definite idea that those moments occurred in most marriages; for
an instant she wondered what had made her resist it. Duty? Fear? Lance?
She didn’t much want to know, and put the thought aside. The fact
remained that she had stayed and done well, for Gilbert, for herself,
for her children.
She wrote a plaintively humorous letter to Nina Sidell, whose Violet was
just Andrée’s age. Violet was a frightful worry, in a way her daughters
would never be. Wasn’t that something else to her credit? Then there was
Connie Martinsburgh, whose four exuberant and handsome children were all
troublesome. Perhaps, although she seemed to herself so entirely
negative, she did after all exert a good influence over her family....
That absurd young Stephens had upset her, with his terrific vitality; he
had made her feel so pallid, so helpless, so useless. Poor Breath of
Life, with his gold cigarette case!
§ iii
They returned from their “ramble” early in the afternoon, and the girls
at once went upstairs to lie down. They were much more fatigued than
they cared to admit.
“Lord! What a cyclone!” said Edna, taking the pins from her crisp,
reddish hair and letting it fall about her bare shoulders. “He can do
everything and he knows everything. That lecture about coniferous trees
...! And yet he’s amusing.”
Andrée was stretched flat on her back on the bed.
“He’s more than amusing,” she said, with a frown. “He’s very fine. He’s
a man.”
“Oh, hardly that!” said Edna, slipping into her kimono. She was startled
by her sister suddenly sitting upright.
“You silly little snob!” she cried. “You make me tired! You don’t know
anything--you can’t see anything!”
“Oh, Gosh!” thought Edna, in alarm. “I _do_ see something now!”
Andrée went on, to point out to her younger sister the mental or moral
excellencies of young Stephens; all in vain. She neglected to mention
his endearing smile, that odd, tender look in his blue eyes.
Edna kept whatever she thought to herself.
“He said he was absolutely going away to-morrow,” she reflected. “And
she’ll forget.”
And by the light of this, the relations between Andrée and the Breath of
Life seemed rather funny than anything else. Edna didn’t mention her
discovery to her mother, nor did she attempt to stop them or to go with
them when they left the veranda that evening. She looked after them as
they crossed the lawn, with a benevolent smile.
“That poor man’s going to get a jolt,” she reflected. “I dare say Andrée
’ll get engaged to him this evening, just as she did to Johnnie
Martinsburgh last winter. Then she’ll get into a panic, and I’ll very
probably have to get her out of it, the same way. Well! It can’t be
helped! That’s Andrée, all over. She’s so darned sincere every time.”
“Let’s take a walk over to your Fern Glen,” Andrée was saying.
“I don’t think--” he began, doubtfully.
“Yes,” she insisted. “There’ll be a moon, won’t there, later on?”
“Your mother--”
“It’s your last evening.”
“I know,” he said. “But we can talk here--”
“I believe you’re afraid of me,” she said, laughing.
“I am,” he answered, and she suddenly stopped laughing.
“You’d better let me alone,” he went on. “I don’t understand your ways.
Things you think are funny make me miserable.”
“I don’t want a bit to make you miserable, and I certainly don’t see
anything funny in--in this thing. Do come on! Mother and Edna will be
home, and then we can’t go.”
She went on, and he reluctantly followed her white figure. They went
along the road, walking quietly on its grassy border, he always a little
behind her. It was a mild beautiful night, a night on which one could
walk forever. Behind the pine trees there was a marvelous faint
radiance, the path of the coming moon. The breeze blowing across the
apple orchard they were passing brought a wine-like perfume and an
exquisite rustling of leaves. The young man looked steadfastly down at
his white tennis shoes moving soundlessly over the grass.
They came to the pasture through which Andrée had once refused to go,
and they saw the great, dim shapes of the cows standing motionless in
there.
“I suppose you want to go around--” said he.
“No; I shan’t be afraid, if you’ll stay near me,” she answered.
He let down the bars, and carefully replaced them when they had gone
through.
“Don’t run,” he said, “and they won’t pay any attention to you.”
To his surprise she took his arm and held it lightly.
“I do hate them!” she said. “What would you do if they were to run after
us?”
“They never do,” he answered, briefly, and fell silent. But she was
amazed to feel his arm, his firm, strong arm, tremble beneath her touch.
She smiled to herself in the dark.
They came at last to the glen, and sat down on a rock. The moon had
risen just above the crags; the air was tremulous with its light.
“It’s too bad there are nothing but owls here,” she said. “I’d love to
hear a nightingale sing.”
“I’ve heard ’em, in England. I was there four years.”
“Now, you see! With all the interesting things you’ve got to tell me,
and that I want so much to hear, you talk about going away to-morrow.
You can’t!”
“I must!”
“Are you--going to write to me?”
“No. What would be the use?”
“Don’t you want to go on being friends?”
“Look here--are you going to make me say--what I don’t want to say?”
“Yes, if I can! I want everything clear and plain between us. You’re the
first real friend I’ve ever had, and I’m not going to lose you through
any stupid misunderstanding.”
“Well, then; I _couldn’t_ go on being friends. I’d ... it would have to
go on--to something else.”
She was perfectly still.
“You know what I mean, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes ... I know,” she answered, in an odd, flat voice.
“And you don’t want that....”
“I don’t know,” she said, “whether I do or not.”
He was so startled that he sprang to his feet.
“What!” he cried. “I don’t believe you do understand!”
“I do! You mean you think--you might--later on--fall in love with me.”
Her sublime candour touched him almost beyond endurance. He walked a few
paces away from her, to the very edge of the pool, and tried to calm his
heart with that unutterable beauty, that fall of water, like bright
silver hair in the moonlight, like a stream from the moon itself, over
the face of the cliff, without sound, into the radiant brightness of the
pool. If there had been a nightingale to sing there, he thought, it
would have broken his heart.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, in a low voice, “I am in love with you
now. I shouldn’t have told you if you’d let me alone.”
“Why shouldn’t I know?”
“Because--I don’t feel like amusing you that way.”
“Oh, but I don’t--really I don’t look at it like that! How can you
always think so of me? I’m not trivial and shallow,” she cried, very
much wounded. “You ought to have seen that I wasn’t!”
“All right!” he said, grimly. “Now you know.”
“And you’re going away?” she asked.
“I am.”
“Suppose I don’t want you to go?”
“That would make me go all the quicker.”
“You have a--a rather funny way of being in love,” she said. “I should
think--”
“Now, see here,” he said, with a sort of desperation. “Won’t you let me
alone? I’ve told you. I didn’t want to, but you made me. You can have
all the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve--hurt me and humiliated me.
And nothing’s going to be any good any more.”
“Why?” she enquired, in a reasonable tone. “There are so many things in
your life.”
“I don’t want them. I don’t want anything but you. I’m--of course you
don’t know and you don’t care. You’ll go home and laugh at the impudence
of that vulgar--”
Andrée faced him, very angry.
“That _is_ vulgar, if you like,” she said. “To imagine my doing
that--laughing at you.”
She had come down to the edge of the water, beside him, very near him.
She was contemptuous, she was indignant and hurt. And suddenly all that
went. There, in that enchanted glen, with the moon on him, he was
transfigured, or it may be revealed. There was nothing mean about him;
his sensitiveness was no longer paltry, but tragic. He was no more and
no less than a man; forlorn in his strength and his youth; betrayed by
the world he fancied he had conquered. Tears came into her eyes; she
laid her hand on his shoulder.
“Oh ...! _I_--laugh at _you_!” she said.
He started away suddenly.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t do that!”
A fatal and overmastering curiosity possessed her; her arm went round
his neck, her fingers gently touching his cheek. She was amazed,
delighted to feel him tremble under that shadow of a caress; she was
exultant with a sense of her miraculous power, never before suspected.
In all innocence, she could comprehend his passion, in a great measure
because she herself was quite devoid of passion, was able to look on at
this. She was impressionable, terribly susceptible to the magic of love
in others, intoxicated by the emotion she could so easily inspire in
others; but within her was always a grain of something hard and cold,
never to be touched. An artist, was Andrée, always a little aloof; she
could never lose herself.
But she loved him then, humanly enough, with an immature and cruelly
exacting love. If he had said one word, made one gesture, to offend her
critical and fastidious spirit, she would have hated him. Fortunately he
didn’t know this, and was not on his guard, not wary. He was as much
concerned with his own feelings as she with hers; they were scarcely
aware of each other.
“You can’t really like me,” he said, miserably.
“I do!” she said. “I do!”
“But not--love?” he said, looking at her with profound anxiety. Her
glance fell and with eyes veiled, she was no longer so august. “You
don’t love me?” he insisted. “That couldn’t be!”
She had no answer to make, but the very droop of her shoulders was
acquiescent. He was astounded, incredulous, more appealing to her in his
humility than in any other attitude he could have taken.
“Be honest with me!” he entreated. “I don’t ask you for anything but
that.”
“I love you,” she said, quietly. It was to them both a priceless boon
conferred.
“But think what I am!” cried the pitifully honest lover. “I’m not
in--your class. I don’t know your ways. I couldn’t live like you--”
Their arms were about each other, and what did all that matter? The
strength and tenderness of his embrace, the reassurance she felt in his
unalterable sympathy and kindness, made her weep. He was not strange to
her; he was dearer and more familiar, even than her mother. There was
security in him, and her deepest instinct required security.
“Don’t cry, darling little Andrée,” he said. “Are you afraid we can’t be
happy?”
He was, very greatly.
“No!” she said, scornfully. “Of course I’m not afraid.”
They sat down, side by side, on a fallen log; he looked into her dark
eyes, glittering with tears; he didn’t know how to tell her how
precious, how adorable she was.
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “Tell me just what you want, and what you
don’t like.... I can’t help making you happy, when I love you so, can I,
darling Andrée? I’ll be the best kind of friend and lover I can to you,
always. I’ll never interfere.”
“If you only won’t,” she said, eagerly. “I’ve grown to rather hate the
idea of ever marrying, because it means so much interfering. I want to
be myself.”