The frost scouts of the marshalling winter had fallen upon the woods
which skirted the Drennen estate, and the great beeches were crimsoning
in their death flush; the maples enchanting with their fickle foliage,
some still clinging to their green, and others brilliant with blushes
that they must soon stand naked before the cold stare of the sky. Here
and there on some aspiring knoll a slim poplar rose like a splendid
bouquet of starting yellow.
At a turn of the road, which wound leisurely between seamed tree-boles,
Margaret had seated herself upon a lichened slab of stone. Her loosely
braided hair lay against the hood of her scarlet cloak, slipping from
her shoulders, and she seemed, in her vivid beauty, the incarnate
spirit of the blazonry of fall. Her head was bare and her clasped
hands, dropped between her knees, held a slender book, a random
selection from the litter of the library table. It was the story of
Marpessa, and unconsciously she had folded down the leaf at the lines
she had just read:
“I love thee then
Not only for thy body packed with sweet
Of all this world, that cup of brimming June,
That jar of violet wine set in the air,
That palest rose, sweet in the night of life;
Nor for that stirring bosom all besieged
By drowsing lovers, or thy perilous hair;
* * * * *
Not for this only do I love thee, but
Because Infinity upon thee broods,
And thou art full of whispers and of shadows.
Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say
So long, and yearnèd up the cliffs to tell;
Thou art what all the winds have uttered not,
What the still night suggesteth to the heart.
Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth,
Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea;
Thy face remembered is from other worlds;
It has been died for, though I know not when,
It has been sung of, though I know not where.
It has the strangeness of the luring West,
And of sad sea-horizons; beside thee
I am aware of other times and lands,
Of birth far back, of lives in many stars.”
With the broadening half-smile upon her parted lips and that far
splendor in her eyes, she looked as might have looked the earthly
maiden for whom the fair god and the passionate human Idas pledged
their loves before great Zeus.
The deadened trampling of horse’s hoofs upon the soft, shaly road beat
in upon her reverie. The horse, moving briskly, was abreast of her
as she started to her feet. There was a sharp, surprised exclamation
from the rider, a snort of fear from the animal as he shied and
plunged sideways from the flaring apparition. Almost before she could
cry out--so quickly that she could never afterward recall how it
happened--the thing was done. The frantic brute reared white-eyed,
rose and pawed, wheeling, and the rider, with one foot caught and
dragging from the stirrup-iron, was down upon the ground. Margaret,
without reflection, acted instantly. With a single bending spring of
her lithe body she was beside the creature’s head, her slender arms,
like stripped willow branches, straining and tugging at his bit, until
the steel clamps cut into her flesh. She threw all the power of her arm
upon the heavy jaw, and with one hand reached and clasped tight just
above the great steaming, flame-notched nostrils. The fierce head shook
from side to side an instant, then the lifting hoofs became calm, and
he stood still, trembling. Slipping her hand to the bridle, she turned
her head for the first time and was face to face with Daunt.
She gazed at him speechless, with widening eyes. A leaping joy at the
sight of him mixed itself with a realization of his past peril. She
felt her face whiten under his steadfast gaze. A thousand times she had
imagined how they might meet, what she might say, how she would act,
and now, without a breath of warning, Fate had set him there beside
her. His hand lay next hers upon the rein of the animal, which a single
faltering of her finger, a drooping of her eyelash would have left to
drag him helpless to a terrible death. A breathless thanksgiving was in
her soul that she had not swerved in foot or hand.
Suddenly she noticed that his left hand hung limp, and her whole being
flamed into sympathy. “Oh, your poor wrist! You have hurt it!” Her
fingers drew his arm up to her sight. Her look caressed his hand.
“It’s nothing,” he said hastily, but with compressed lips. “I must have
wrenched it when I tumbled. How awkward of me!”
“It was I who frightened your horse; and no wonder, when I jumped up
right under his feet.”
“And in that cloak, too!” he said, his eye noting the buoyancy of her
beauty and its grace of curve.
The rebellious waves of her brown hair had filched rosy lustres from
her garb, and the blood painted her cheeks with a stain like wild
moss-berries. Her eyes chained his own. She had not yet released his
hand, but was touching it with the purring regard of a woman for an
injured pet. The allurement of her physical charm seemed to him to pass
from her finger-tips like pricklings of electricity from a Leyden jar.
Daunt shook off her hand with an uncontrollable gesture, and with his
one arm still thrust through the bridle, drew her close to him and
kissed her--kissed her hair, her forehead, her half-opened eyes, her
mouth, her throat, her neck.
She felt his lips scorch through her cloak. He dropped upon his knees,
still holding her, and showered kisses upon the rough folds of her gown.
“Margaret!” he cried, “you know why I have come! You know what I want!
I want you! Forgive me, but I couldn’t stay away. Do you suppose I
thought you meant what you said in those letters? Why should you run
away from me? Why did you leave me as you did? What is the matter?”
As he looked up at her, he saw that the light had died out of her eyes.
Her lips were trembling. Her face was marked by lines of weariness.
She repulsed him gently and went back a few steps, gazing at him
sorrowfully.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said then. “You ought to have stayed
away! You make it so hard for me!”
“Hard?” His voice rose a little. “Don’t you love me? Have you quit
caring for me? Is that it?”
“No--not that.”
“Do you suppose,” he went on, “that I will give you up, then? You can’t
love a man one day and not love him the next! You’re not that sort!
Do you think I would have written you--do you think for one minute I
would have come here, if I hadn’t known you loved me? What _is_ this
thing that has come between us? What _is_ it takes you from me? Doesn’t
love mean anything? Tell me!” he said, as she was silent. “Don’t stand
there that way!”
“How can I?” she cried. “I tried to tell you in those letters.”
“Letters!” There was a rasp in Daunt’s voice. “What did they tell me?
Only that there was some occult reason--Heaven only knows what--why it
was all over; why I was not to see you again. Do you suppose that’s
enough for me? You don’t know me!”
“No, but I know myself.”
“Well, then, I know you better than you know yourself. You said you
didn’t want to see me again! That was a lie! You _do_ want to see me
again! You’re nursing some foolish self-deception. You’re fighting your
own instincts.”
“I’m fighting myself,” she said; “I’m fighting what is weak and
miserably wrong. I can’t explain it to you. It isn’t that I don’t know
what you think. I don’t know where I stand with myself.”
“You loved me!” he burst forth, in a tone almost of rage. “You _loved_
me! You know you did! Great God! you don’t want me to think you didn’t
love me that day, do you?” he said, a curiously hard expression coming
into his eyes.
“I don’t know.” She spoke wearily. “I--don’t--know. How _can_ I know?
Don’t you see, it isn’t what I thought then--it isn’t what I did.
It’s what was biggest in my thought. Oh--” she broke off, “you can’t
understand! You _can’t_! It’s no use. You’re not a woman.”
“No,” he said roughly, “I’m not a woman. I’m only a man, and a man
feels!”
“I know you think that of me,” she said humbly. “But, indeed, indeed, I
don’t mean to be cruel--only to myself.”
“No, I suppose not!” retorted Daunt bitterly. “Women never mean things!
Why should they? They leave that to men! Do you suppose,” he said with
quick fierceness, “that there is anything left in life for me? Is it
that I’ve fallen in your estimation? You thought I was strong, perhaps,
and now you have come to the conclusion that I’m weak! And the fact
that it was _you_ and that _you_ felt too makes no difference. I’ve
heard of women like that, but I never believed there were any! You wash
your feeling entirely out of your conscience, and I’m the one who must
hang for it. And in spite of it all, you’re human! Do you think I don’t
know that?”
She put out her hands as if to ward off a tangible blow. “Don’t,” she
said weakly, “please don’t!”
“Don’t?” he repeated. “Does it hurt to speak of it? Do you want to
forget it? Do you think I ever shall? I don’t want to. It’s all I shall
have to remind me that once you had a heart!”
“No! no!” she cried vehemently. “You _must_ understand me better than
that! Don’t you see that I want to do what you say? Don’t you see that
my only way is to fight it? It is I who am weak! Oh, it seems in the
past month I have learned so much! I am too wise!”
“Wait,” he said; “can you say truly in your heart that you do not love
me?”
“That--isn’t it,” she stammered.
“It is!” he flamed. “Tell me you don’t love me and I will go away.”
She was silent, twisting up her fingers with a still intensity.
“Tell me!”
“But there’s so much in loving. It has so many parts. We love so many
ways. We have more of us than our bodies. We have souls.”
“I’m not a disembodied spirit,” he broke in. “I don’t love you with
any sub-conscious essence. I don’t believe in any isms. I love you
with every fibre of my body--with every beat of my heart--with every
nerve and with every thought of my brain! I love you as every other
man in all the world loves every other woman in the world. I’m human;
and I’m wise enough to know that God made us human with a purpose. He
knows better than all the priests in the world. How do you _want_ to be
loved? I tell you I love you with all--_all_--body and mind and soul!
Now do you understand?”
“It’s not that!” she cried. “It’s how I love you. Oh, no; I don’t mean
that!”
“I don’t care how you love me!” he retorted. “I’ll take care of that!
You loved me enough that once.”
“Ah, that’s just it! I forgot everything. I forgot myself and you! I
wanted the touch of your hands--of your face! There was nothing else in
the whole world! Oh!” she gasped, “do you think I thought of my soul
then?”
“Listen!” he said, coming toward her so that she could feel his hot
breaths. “You’re morbid. You’re unstrung. You have an idea that one
ought to love in some subtle, supernatural, heavenly way. That’s
absurd. We are made with flesh-and-blood bodies. We have veins that run
and nerves that feel. You are trying to forget that you have a heart.
We are not intended to be spirits--not until after we die, at any rate.”
“But we _have_ spirits.”
“Yes,” he answered, “but it’s only through our hearts, through our
mind’s hopes, through our affections, that we know it. All our soul’s
nourishment comes through the senses. That’s what they were given us
for.”
“But one must rule--one must be master.”
Daunt leaned toward her and caught both her hands in his one. “Ardee,
dear,” he said more softly, “don’t push me off like this! Don’t resist
so! I love you--you know I do. This is only some unheard-of experiment
in emotion. Let it go! There’s nothing in the world worth breaking both
our hearts for this way. There can’t be any real reason! Come to me,
dear! Come back! Come back! Won’t you?”
At the softness of his tone her eyes had filled slowly with tears.
“I mustn’t! Oh, I mustn’t! The happiness would turn into a curse. You
mustn’t ask me!”
Daunt struggled between a rising pity for her suffering and a helpless
frenzy of irritation. Between the two he felt himself choking. There
seemed in her a resistance and an implacable hostility that he was
as powerless to combat as to understand. He began to comprehend the
terrible strength that lies in consistent weakness. There was something
far worse in her silent mood than there could have been in a storm of
reproaches or of vehement denial. He felt that if he spoke again he
could but raise higher the barrier between them, which would not be
beaten down by sheer force. He mounted, stumblingly and blindly, his
left hand awkwardly swinging, and, turning his horse’s head, spurred
him into a vicious trot.
A bit of golden-rod had dropped from his button-hole when he had
crushed her in his embrace, and as he disappeared down the curved road,
under the passionate foliage, Margaret slipped upon her knees and
caught the dusty blossom to her face in agonized abandon. Tears came
to her in a gusty whirl of longing, and strangling sobs tore at her
throat.