loved her, I swear to you, if need be, that I rejoiced. I was glad
that she would have you to make the future smooth for her. Later I
grew to envy you. It was for your safety, as well as mine and hers,
that I decided to see neither of you again until she had been some
time your wife. No word of love, no confidence of any kind, had ever
passed between us. When I wrote you that I should not be here to see
you married, and when not even your reproaches could move me, I had
already engaged my passage on a sailing ship bound for the Azores. I
had planned to put a long uncertain voyage between you and any
possibility that I might mar your chances for happiness, for the
nearer the day came, the more--in spite of myself--I resented it!
"My good intentions were thwarted by--Fate.
"For some reason, forgotten and unimportant, the Captain deferred
lifting anchor for a whole week. I called myself unpretty names for
thinking that I could not even see her without danger. I despised
myself for the judgment that accused me of being such a scamp as to
think I would do anything to rob her of the protection and safety you
could give her, and I could not, and an egoist for being possessed
with the idea that I could if I would.
"Suddenly I felt quite sure of myself.
"Yet I had meant to see her without being seen, when I hurried so
unexpectedly down here on your wedding night. I fancied I only longed
to see what a lovely bride she would make--she who as a child, a girl,
a maiden, had been in your eyes the most exquisite creature you had
ever known; she whom I had avoided for years, because I, of all men,
could least afford to take a place in her life! I longed to see those
eyes, still so pure, under her bridal veil.
"I came in secret! I saw her--and all prudence fled out of me, leaving
but one instinct.
"Was it my fault that, alone, she fled from the house? That, with her
veil thrown over her arm, she ran directly by me, like a sprite in the
moonlight, to this spot?
"The rest you know.
"It is not you who need pity!
"You have the pain of an imperishable loyalty in your soul. It is like
a glory in your face, in spite of all you have suffered. As I look at
you, it seems but yesterday that all was well between us.
"I lost much in losing you.
"Nor am I sure that you were right to go! But that was for your own
nature to decide. In your place I should have fought Fate, I expected
you to do it.
"I loved her first, because she satisfied my eyes. I loved her the
more that she was denied to me! Yet I knew always that this love was
not in me what it was in you. With me it was, like many other emotions
of a similar sort--a sentiment that would pass. I tried to think
otherwise. But I had awakened her heart, and you, to whom the law had
given her, were gone!
"I waited long for your return, or for some sign.
"You neither came nor spoke.
"I argued that something must be done. I owed it to her to offer her
my protection.
"I came back here. I met her on this very spot. I said to her, 'You
are alone in the world--your mother has married--she has other
children. I have saddened your life with my love. Let me at least help
to cheer it again. You need affection. Here it is--in my arms!'
"And, while I waited for her answer, I prayed with all my soul that
she might deny me.
"God bless her! She did! I turned away from her with a glad heart, and
in that heart I enshrined this woman, who, loving me, had denied me.
There I set up her image, pure and inviolate. Two long years I stayed
away from her, and as I worked, I worshipped her, and out of that
worship I wrought a great thing.
"With time, however, her real image grew faint within me. Other
emotions, other experiences seemed to blur and dim it. In spite of
myself, I returned here. Once more I stood on this spot, within the
gaze of her deep eyes. I began to believe that a love everlasting, all
enduring, had been given me! But still it was passion that pleaded for
possession, and still it was self-knowledge that looked on in fear.
"Passion bade me plead: 'You love me! You need me! Come to me!' And
fear kept my heart still, in dread of her consent.
"But she looked up into my face with eyes that seemed to widen under
mine, and simply whispered, 'My mother.' The heart that knew and
understood now all that sad history seemed to feel that her act might
re-open the mother's old wound; that the verdict 'like mother, like
daughter' would turn virtue back to sin again.
"Once more I went out into the world with a light heart! Her virtue,
her strength, seemed to be mine. I went back to my work with renewed
spirit, back to my life with no new self-reproach.
"But once more I swung round the circle. With a perversity that,
dreading success, and conscious of fear, yet longs to strive for what
it dreads to win, I returned to her again. The death of her mother was
my new excuse.
"She came to me--here, as usual. But this time she came leading by the
hand her little sister, and I felt her armored against me even before
I spoke.
"You, who used to believe in a merciful God, can you explain to me why
he has left in the nature of man, created--so you believe--in His own
image--that impulse to destroy that which he loves? I loved her for
exactly what she was. I loved her because she had the courage to
resist me. Yet from each denial so ardently desired, so thankfully
received, my soul sprang up strengthened in desire. Safe above me I
worshipped her. Once in my arms, I knew, only too well, that even that
love would pass as all other emotions had done. I knew I should put
her aside, gently if I could, urgently, if I must, and pass on. That
is my Fate! Everything that enters my life leaves something I
need--and departs! For what I have not, I hunger. What I win soon
wearies me. It is the price life exacts for what it gives me.
"So, when August of this year came round, I found myself once more
standing here.
"Ten years had passed since we stood here with her between us--ten
years that had laid their richest gifts on her beauty. This time she
was indeed alone. As I looked into her face, I somehow thought of
Agamemnon's fair daughter doomed to die a virgin. You can see my
'Iphigenia' in the spring, if you chance to be in Paris.
"This time, self-knowledge deserted me. The past was forgotten. The
future was undreaded. The passion in my heart spoke without reserve
or caution! I no longer said: 'You need me! You love me!' I cried out:
'I can no longer live without you!' I no longer said, 'Come to me!' I
pleaded, 'Take me to your heart. There, where my image is, let me rest
at last. I have waited long, be kind to me.'
"I saw her sway toward me as once before she had done. It was too late
to look backward or forward. I had conquered. In my weakness I
believed it was thus ordained--that I deserved some credit for waiting
so long.
"Yet, when she left me here alone, having promised, with downcast eyes
that avoided mine, to place her hand in mine, and walk boldly beside
me down the forbidden path of the world, I fell down on the spot her
feet had pressed, and wept bitterly, as I had never done before in all
my life. Wept over the shattered ideal, the faith I had so wilfully
torn down, the miserable victory of my meanest self.
"I thought the end was come. Fate was merciful to me, however!
"I had myself fixed the following Thursday as the day for our
departure. As I dated a letter to her that night my mind
involuntarily reckoned the days, and I was startled to find that
Thursday fell on that fatal tenth of August.
"I had not thought I could be so tortured in my mind as I was by the
dread that she should notice the dire coincidence.
"She did!
"The hour that should have brought her to me, brought a note instead.
It was dated boldly 'August tenth.' It was without beginning or
signature. It said--I can repeat every word--'Of the two roads to
self-destruction open to me, I have chosen the one that will, in the
end, give the least pain to you. I love you. I have always loved you
since I was a child. I do not regret anything yet! Thank God for me
that I depart without ever having seen a look of weariness in the eyes
that gazed so lovingly into mine when we parted, and thank Him for
yourself that you will never see a look of reproach in mine. I know no
time so fitting to say a long farewell for both of us as
this--Farewell, then.'
"I knew what I should find when I went up the hill.
"The doctors said 'heart disease.' She had been troubled with some
such weakness. I alone knew the truth! As I had known myself, she had
known me!
"You think you suffer--you, who might, but for me, have made her
happy, as such women should be, in a world of simple natural joys! My
friend, loss without guilt is pain--but it is not without the balm of
virtuous compensation. You have at least a right to grieve.
"But I! I am forced to know myself. To feel myself borne along in
spite of myself; and to realize that she who should have worn a crown
of happy womanhood, lies there a sacrifice, to be bewailed like
Jepthah's one fair daughter; and to sit here in full dread of the
ebbing of even this great emotion, knowing too well that it will pass
out of my life when it shall have achieved its purpose, leaving only
as evidence _this_--another great work, crystalized into immortality
in everlasting stone. I know that I cannot long hold it here in my
heart. The day will come--perhaps soon--when I shall stand outside
that door, and recognize this as my work, and be proud of it, without
the power to grieve, as I do now; when I shall approve my own
handiwork, and be unable to mourn for her who was sacrificed to
achieve it. What is your pain to mine?"
And I saw the hot tears drop from his eyes. I saw them fall on the
marble floor, and they watered the very spot where his name was so
soon to spring up in pride to confess his handiwork.
I looked on her calm face. I knew she did not regret her part! I rose,
and, without a word, I passed out at the wide door, and, without
looking back, I passed down the slope in the dusk, and left them
together--the woman I had loved, and the friend I had lost!
* * * * *
As his voice died away, he sat upright quickly, threw a glance about
the circle, and, with another fine gesture said: "_Et voila_!"
The Doctor was the only one to really laugh, though a broad grin ran
round the circle.
"Well," remarked the Doctor, who had been leaning against a tree, and
indulging in shrugs and an occasional groan, which had not even
disconcerted the story teller, "I suppose that is how that very great
man, your governor, did the trick. I can see him in every word."
"That is all you know about it," laughed the Sculptor. "That is not a
bit how the governor did it. That is how I should have done it, had I
been the governor, and had the old man's chances. I call that an ideal
thing to happen to a man."
"Not even founded on fact--which might have been some excuse for
telling it," groaned the Critic. "I'd love to write a review of that
story. I'd polish it off."
"Of course you would," sneered the Sculptor. "That's all a critic is
for--to polish off the tales he can't write. I call that a nice
romantic, ideal tale for a sculptor to conceive, and as the Doctor
said the other night, it is a possible story, since I conceived it,
and what the mind of mortal can conceive, can happen."
"The trouble," said the Journalist, "with chaps like you, and the
Critic, is that your people are all framework. They're not a bit of
flesh and blood."
"I'd like to know," said the Sculptor, throwing himself back in his
chair, "who has a right to decide that?"
"What I'd like to know," said the Youngster, "is, what did she do
between times? Of course he sculpted, and earned slathers of money.
But she--?"
"Oh, ouch--help!" cried the Sculptor. "Do I know?"
"Exactly!" answered the Critic, "and that you don't sticks out in
every line of your story."
"Goodness me, you might ask the same thing about Leda, or Helen of
Troy."
"Ha! Ha!" laughed the Doctor. "But we know what they did!"
"A lot you do. It is because they are old classics, and you accept
them, whereas my story is quite new and original--and you were
unprepared for it, and so you can't appreciate it. Anyway, it's my
first-born story, and I'll defend it with my life."
Only a laugh replied to the challenge, and the attitude of defense he
struck, as he leaped to his feet, though the Journalist said, under
his breath, "It takes a carver in stone to think of a tale like that!"
"But think," replied the Doctor, "how much trouble some women would
escape if they kept on saying A B C like that--for the A B C is
usually lovely--and when it was time to X Y Z--often terrible, they
just slipped out through the 'open door.'"
"On the other hand, they _risk_ losing heaps of fun," said the
Journalist.
"What I like about that story," said the Lawyer, "is that it is so
aristocratic. Every one seems to have plenty of money. They all three
do just what they like, have no duties but to analyze themselves, and
evidently everything goes like clockwork. The husband enjoys being
morbid, and has the means to be gloriously so. The sculptor likes to
carve Edgar Allan Poe all over the place, and the fair lady is able to
gratify the tastes of both men."
"You can laugh as much as you please," sighed the Sculptor, "I wish it
had happened to me."
"Well," said the Doctor, "you have the privilege of going to bed and
dreaming that it did."
"Thank you," answered the Sculptor. "That is just what I am going to
do."
"What did I tell you last night?" said the Doctor, under his breath,
as he watched the Sculptor going slowly toward the house. "Bet he has
been telling that tale to himself under many skies for years!"
"I suppose," laughed the Journalist, "that the only reason he has
never built the tomb is that he has never had the money."
"Oh, be fair!" said the Violinist. "He has not built the tomb because
he is not his father. The old man would have done it in a minute, only
he lacked imagination. You bet he never day-dreamed, and yet what
skill he had, and what adventures! He never saw anything but the facts
of life, yet how magnificently he recorded them."
"It is a pity," sighed the Violinist, "that the son did not seek a
different career."
"What difference does it make after all?" remarked the Doctor. "One
never knows when the next generation will step up or down, and, after
all, what does it matter?"
"It is all very well for you to talk," said the Critic.
"I assure you that the great pageant would have been just as
interesting from any other point of view. It has been a great
spectacle,--this living. I'm glad I've seen it."
"Amen to that," said the Divorcée. "I only hope I am going to see it
again--even though it hurts."
VI
THE DIVORCÉE'S STORY
ONE WOMAN'S PHILOSOPHY
THE TALE OF A MODERN WIFE
As I look back, I remember that the next night was one of the most
trying of the week.
As we came down to dinner we all had visions of the destruction of
Louvain, and the burning of the famous library. It is hard enough to
think of lives going out; still, as the Doctor was so fond of saying,
"man is born to die, and woman, too," but that the great works of men,
his bequest to the coming generations, should be wantonly destroyed,
seemed even more horrible, especially to those who love beauty, and
the idea of the charred leaves of the library flying in the air above
the historic city of catholic culture, made us all feel as if we were
sitting down to a funeral service rather than a very good dinner.
Matters were not made any gayer because Angéle, who was waiting on
table, had rings round her eyes, which told of sleepless nights. And
why? We were mere spectators. We had been interested to dispute and
look on. But she knew that somewhere out there in the northeast her
man was carrying a gun.
Yet all about us the country was so lovely and so tranquil, horses
were walking the fields, and, even as we sat at dinner, we could hear
the voices and the heavy feet of the peasant women as they went home
from their work. The garden had never been more beautiful than it was
that evening, with the silver light of the moon through the trees, and
the smell of the freshly watered earth and flowers.
We had no doubt who was to contribute the story. The Divorcée was
dressed with unusual care for the rôle, and carried a big lace bag on
her arm, and, as she leaned back in her chair, she pulled one of the
big old fashioned candles in its deep glass toward her, and said with
a nervous laugh:
"I shall have to ask you to let me read my story. You know I am not
accustomed to this sort of thing. It is really my very 'first
appearance,' and I could not possibly tell it as the rest of you more
experienced people can do," and she took the manuscript out of her
lace bag, and, settling herself gracefully, unrolled it. The Youngster
put a stool under her pretty feet, and the Doctor set a cushion behind
her back, while the Journalist, with a laugh, poured her a glass of
water, and the Violinist ceremoniously leaned over, and asked, "Shall
I turn for you?"
She could not help laughing, but it did not make her any the less
nervous, or her voice any the less shaky as she began:
* * * * *
It was after dinner on one of those rare occasions when they dined
alone together.
They were taking coffee in Mrs. Shattuck's especial corner of the
drawing-room, and she had just asked her husband to smoke.
She was leaning back comfortably in a nest of cushions, in her very
latest gown, with a most becoming light falling on her from the tall,
yellow-shaded lamp.
He was facing her--astride his chair, in a position man has loved
since creation.
He was just thinking that his wife had never looked handsomer, finer,
in fact, in all her life--quite the satisfactory, all-round,
desirable sort of a woman a man's wife ought to be.
She was wondering if he would ever be any less attractive to all women
than he was now at forty-two--or any better able to resist his own
power.
As she put her coffee cup back on the tiny table at her elbow, he
leaned forward, and picked up a book which lay open on a chair near
him, and carelessly glanced at it.
"Schopenhauer," and he wrinkled his brows and glanced half whimsically
down the page. "I never can get used to a woman reading that
stuff--and in French, at that. If you took it up to perfect your
German there would be some sense in it."
Mrs. Shattuck did not reply. When a moment later, she did speak it was
to ignore his remark utterly, and ask:
"The _Kaiser Wilhelm_ got off in good season this morning--speaking of
German things?"
"Oh, yes," was the indifferent reply, "at ten o'clock, quite
promptly."
"I suppose she was comfortable, and that you explained why I could not
come?"
"Certainly. One of your beastly head-aches. She understood."
"Thank you."
Shattuck yawned lazily, and changed the subject, which did not seem to
interest him.
"Do you mean to say," he asked, still turning the leaves of the book
he held, "that this pleases you?"
"Not exactly."
"Well, amuses you? Instructs you, if you like that better?"
"No, I mean to say simply--since you insist--that he speaks the truth,
and there are some--even among women--who must know the truth and
abide by it."
"Well, thank Heaven," said the man, pulling at his cigar, "that most
women are more emotional than intelligent--as Nature meant them to
be."
Mrs. Shattuck examined her daintily polished nails, rubbed them
carefully on the palm of her hand, as women have a trick of doing, and
then polished them on her lace handkerchief, before she said, "Yes, it
is a pity that we are not all like that,--a very great pity--for our
own sakes. Yet, unluckily, some of us _will_ think."
"But the thinking woman is so rarely logical, so unable to take life
impersonally, that Schopenhauer does her no good. He only fills her
mind with errors, mistrust, unhappiness."
"You men always argue that way with women--as if life were not the
same for us as for you. Pass me the book. I wager that I can open it
at random, and that you cannot deny the truth of the first sentence I
read."
He passed her the book.
She took it, laid it open carelessly on her knees, bending the covers
far back that it might stay open, and she gave her finger tips a final
rub with her handkerchief before she looked at the page. She paused a
bit after she glanced at it, then picked up the book and read:
"'_L'homme est par Nature porté à l'inconstance dans l'amour, la femme
à la fidelité. L'amour de l'homme baisse d'une façon sensible à partir
de l'instant où il a obtenu satisfaction: il semble que toute autre
femme ait plus d'attrait que celle qu'il possède._'"
She laid the book down, but she did not look at him.
"Rubbish," was his remark.
"Yes, I know. You men always find it so easy to say 'rubbish' to all
natural truths which you prefer not to discuss."
"Well, my dear Naomi, it seems to me that if you are to advocate
Schopenhauer, you must go the whole length with him. The fault is in
Nature, and you must accept it as inevitable, and not kick against
it."
"I don't kick against Nature--as you put it--I kick against
civilization, which makes laws regardless of Nature, which
deliberately shuts its eyes to all natural truths in regard to the
relations of men to women,--and is therefore forced to continually
wink to avoid confessing its folly."
"Civilization seems to me to have done the best it could with a very
difficult problem. It has not actually allowed different codes of
morals to men and women, and it may have had to wink on that account.
Right there, in your Schopenhauer, you have a primal reason, that is,
if you chose to follow your philosopher to the extent of actually
believing that Nature has deliberately, from the beginning, protected
women against that sin of which so much is made, and to which she has,
as deliberately, for economic reasons of her own, tempted men."
"I do believe it, truly."
"You are no more charitable toward my sex than most women are. Yet
neither your teacher nor you may be right. A theoretic arguer like
Schopenhauer makes good enough reading for calm minds, but he is bad
for an emotional temperament, and, by Jove, Naomi, he was a bad
example of his own philosophy."
"My dear Dick, I am afraid I read Schopenhauer because I thought what
he writes long before I ever heard of him. I read him because did I
not find a clear logical mind going the same way my mind will go, I
might be troubled with doubts, and afraid that I was going quite
wrong."
"Well, the deuce and all with a woman when she begins to read stuff
like that is her inability to generalize. You women take everything
home to yourselves. You try to deduct conclusions from your own lives
which men like Schopenhauer have scanned the centuries for. The
natural course of your life could hardly have provided you with the
pessimism with which--I hope you will pardon my remark, my dear--you
have treated me several times in the past few months. Chamfort and
Schopenhauer did that. But these are not subjects a man discusses
easily with his wife."
"Indeed? Then that is surely an error of civilization. If a man can
discuss such matters more easily with a woman who is not his wife, it
is because there is no frankness in marriage. Dick, did it ever occur
to you that a man and woman, strongly attracted toward one another,
might live together many years without understanding each other?"
"God forbid!"
"How easily you say that!"
"I have heard that most women think they are not understood, but I
never reflected on the matter."
"You and I have not troubled one another much with our doubts and
perplexities."
"You and I have been very happy together--I hope." There was a little
pause before the last two words, as if he had expected her to
anticipate them with something, and there was a half interrogative
note in his voice. She made no response, so he went on, "I've surely
not been a hard master--and I hope I've not been selfish. I know I've
not been unloving."
"And I hope you've not suffered many discomforts on my account. I
think, as women go, I am fairly reasonable--or I have been."
For some reason Shattuck seemed to find the cigar he was smoking most
unsatisfactory. Either it had been broken, or he had unconsciously
chewed the end--a thing which he detested--and there was a pause while
he discarded the weed, and selected a fresh one. He appeared to be
reflecting as he lighted it, and if his mind could have been read, it
would have probably been discovered that he was wondering how it had
happened that the conversation had taken this turn, and mentally
cursing his own stupidity in making any remarks on the Schopenhauer.
He was conscious all the time that his wife was looking rather
steadily at him, and he knew that at least a conventional reply was
expected of him.