IN WHICH CERTAIN DEEP MATTERS OF THE HEART ARE PRESENTED
Ed Smith and Nort must have tried Anthy terribly in these days, Nort
probably far more than Ed, because he was a more complicated human
being, less broken to any sort of harness, and blest (or cursed) with an
amazing gift of intimacy. Like many people who live most vividly within,
he never seemed to have any proper idea of the lines which separate
human beings. To some conventional natures the most refined meanings
attach to their "Good mornings" and "How-d'ye does," and their
confidences, shut away in a close inner sanctum, like the high court of
a secret society, are only to be approached ceremonially by those who
have the insignia and the password; and where, having arrived and
expecting hidden wonders and beauties, you discover only still more
ceremonial. A truly conventional person cuts the same at the core as at
the rind.
Nort never seemed to remember that most people one meets love to fence
politely about the weather or the state of their health, but
incontinently whacked them at once on their raw souls with whatever
poker he might then be mending the fires of his heart. And he did it
all, never crudely, but with such irrepressible and beguiling spirits,
with such confidence that whatever interested him most at the moment
must also interest you--as it usually did--that he was not to be
resisted.
Now I do not believe that Nort at this time had any conscious idea of
making love to Anthy, certainly not of falling in love with her. He was
entirely too much absorbed in Nort. But he turned toward her as
instinctively as a flower turns to the sun, and was a hundred times more
dangerous to a girl like Anthy for being just what he was. He liked to
be with her, felt comfortable with her, thought of his place in the
office as her employee, when he thought of it at all, as a rather
uncomfortable joke, and stepped irresistibly within the defences of her
reserve, and in spite of everything remained there. He told her what he
thought about newspapers, baseball, the immortality of the soul, dress
clothes, and the novels of H. G. Wells, looking at her sometimes with a
little wrinkle of earnestness between his eyes, but oftener with a look
of amusement--yes, of deviltry--which said to her as plainly as words
could have framed it: "You and I have a wonderful secret between us,
haven't we?"
He was apparently oblivious to the fact that she was a woman at all, and
yet away down within him, as the ocean knows of the primeval monsters
hidden in its depths, he knew that Anthy was a woman: knew it with a
dumb and swelling strength he himself had never fathomed; and he knew,
too, with that instinctive knowledge which is the deepest of all--such
is the trickiness of the human spirit--that this was the way of all ways
to reach Anthy.
When I think of the Nort of those days, all the lawless possibilities
of his ardent temperament, I wonder and I tremble! I wonder sometimes at
the miracle by which youth _ever_ escapes destruction. And in Nort's
case, as in Anthy's, it was a narrow, narrow margin, as I know better
than any one else. Poor Nort!
Happy Nort! No such close confidences existed between Anthy and him as
between Anthy and me. Nort knew nothing of the deep and beautiful life
within which she had shown to me--and me alone--could not at that time
have understood it, if he had known of it (so I think), and yet there he
was, a mere boy, a stranger almost, closer to her than I was. A strange
thing, life!
[Illustration]