Margaret stood before the cheval-glass in Lydia’s gown, smiling at the
quaint reflection. It showed a figure with slim, pointed waist between
billowy paniers, flounced with Spanish frill after the fashion of a
decade before. The neck was square-cut and the tight sleeves reached
to the elbow, ending in a fall of lace. It was not unbecoming to her.
Her brown eyes had borrowed from the pearl tint a misty violet and the
springing growth of her hair had taken on the shade of wet broom-straw.
A faint glow rose in her cheeks as she surveyed her own stirring image.
She clasped the close necklace of pearls about her throat. Poor Lydia!
Something as fair she must have looked in that old time so rudely
ended! Poor Melwin!
The wide dining-room doors stood open, and she did not pause, but
went directly in. The old butler stood in the hall, and she noticed
wonderingly that he gazed at her with a scared expression and moved
backward, his arms stretched behind him in an instinctive gesture of
fright which puzzled her. Were even the ancient servitors of the house
as incomprehensible as was their master?
Melwin stood leaning against the polished rosewood sideboard,
his unseeing gaze fixed on a glass-prismed candelabra of antique
workmanship, whose pendants vibrated ceaselessly. His lifted stare,
which went beyond, suddenly caught and fastened itself upon her in a
look of startled fascination. His lean fingers gripped the edge of the
wood and he stiffened all over like a wild animal couched to spring.
His shrunken features were marked with a convulsion of fearful anguish.
Margaret shrank back dismayed at the lambent fire that had leaped into
his colorless eyes.
“Lydia!” The cry burst from his lips as he made a quick step toward her.
“Why, Melwin!” she gasped, “what is the matter?”
The table was between them, but she could see that he was shaking.
His eyes turned from her to the opposite wall, then back again. Her
gaze followed his and rested upon a splendid full-length portrait.
She knew at once that it was Lydia. But she saw in that one instant
more than this; she saw her own face, radiant, sparkling, the same
lightened, straw-tinted hair, the same shadowy violet eyes, the same
gown, pearl gray, quaintly cut, that had faced her in the depths of the
cheval-glass.
“Melwin, don’t you know me? Why, it’s I--Margaret!”
His lips lifted from his teeth. Even through the strained agony of his
face, she could have imagined him about to laugh. It seemed a minute
before his voice came, and when it did it scourged her like a sting of
a lash. She cringed under its livid fury.
“How dare you? How _dare_ you come to me like that? Do you think a man
is a stone? Do you think he has no feeling, that you can torture him
like this? Do you think he never remembers or suffers? Is there nothing
in his past that’s too sacred to lay hands upon?”
“It was Lydia, Melwin,” cried Margaret, her fingers wandering
stumblingly along the low neck of the gown; “she asked me to do it. She
thought it would please you. She thought it would remind you of the way
she used to look.”
“She told you?” A softer expression came to his face. The hard lines
fell away; the weary ghost of an unborn smile hovered on his lips,
trembling and pathetic.
“Don’t care! Please, please don’t look so! I didn’t think! I will go
away at once and take the dress off.”
He laid his arms upon the back of a chair and dropped his head upon
them. “Don’t mind me, child,” he said brokenly; “you couldn’t help
it. You didn’t understand. When a man’s flesh has been bruised with
pincers, when his sinews have been wrenched and dragged as mine have,
he does not take kindly to the rack. You could have wrung my heart out
of my body to-night with your hands, and it would not have hurt so
much.”
“I am so sorry!” Margaret breathed, warm gushes of pity sweeping over
her. “You could never guess how sorry I am!”
“I suppose,” he said more calmly, “that I have been a puzzle to you.
You were too young to know me when I _lived_. I am only half alive now.
Life has gone by and left me stranded. Look at that picture, child.
That was Lydia--the Lydia of the best years of my life--the Lydia that
I loved and won and married! Twelve years! How long ago it seems!”
Margaret had seated herself opposite him and leaned forward, her
bare elbows on the table and her locked fingers against her cheek.
“I--understand now.” Her voice was a strenuous whisper.
“You will know what that is some time--to feel one nearer than all the
world--to tremble when her arm presses yours, to listen for the swish
of her skirt, to turn hot and cold at the smell of her hair or the
touch of her lips! She was beautiful--more beautiful to me than any
woman I had ever seen, or ever shall see. She filled every corner of
me! Life was complete. It had nothing left to give me. Can you think
what that means? You know what happened then. It came crashing in upon
my youth like a falling tower. Since then the years have gone by, but
they stopped for me that day.”
An intenser look was in Margaret’s eyes. “But you have Lydia--you love
her!”
He breathed sharply. “Have her!” he repeated. “I have her mind, her
soul, the intellect that answered mine, the soul that leaned to my
soul, but _her_--_her_--the body I held, the woman I caressed, the
fragrant life I touched--where is it? Where? I love her!” he cried with
abrupt passion. “I loved her then; I love her now. I have never loved
another woman! I never think a thought that is not of her. My very
dreams, my imagination are hers! I would rather die than love another
woman!
“I suppose people pity me and think how hard it was that Lydia’s
accident couldn’t have happened before we were married instead of
afterward. Fools! _Fools!_ As though that would make it different! If
it must have been, I wouldn’t have it otherwise. Not to possess wholly
the woman one loves is the cruelty of Love; the pain of knowing that no
other love can possess you is the mercy of Love. Such misery is dearer
than all other joys. She is _mine_, and with every breath that I curse
Fate with I thank God for her!”
“Isn’t that happiness?”
He laughed, a short, jarring, mirthless laugh that hurt her. “Do you
think,” he said, “that that is all a man craves? Can a man--a living,
breathing man--live on soul alone? Can you feed a starving human
being on philosophy? His stomach cries for bread! You can quench his
spiritual thirst while his heart dries up with physical drought. He
wants both sides. With one unsatisfied, he goes halting, crippled. I
live in my past and feed on the husks of it. Do you think they fill me?
I tell you, I go always hungry--always famishing for what other men
have!”
Margaret felt as if she were being wafted through some intangible
inferno of suffering. She felt smothered, as by the dust of some dead
thing into whose open grave she had unwittingly stumbled. The real
Melwin that she had waked terrified her. The glimpse through the torn
mask, into the distorted face, with its marks of branding, shook the
depths of her nature. She had always thought of Melwin abstractly, as
of a beautiful personality, crowned with spiritual stars and haloed
with pain; now she saw him as he was--a half-man, decrepit, moribund,
his passion no living glow, but a flitting and unreal fox-fire, which
he must follow, follow, grasping at, but never gaining. The dreadful
unfulfilment of his life’s promise sat upon his brow and cried to her
from every word and gesture. She felt as if she was gazing at some
mysterious and but half-indicated problem to which there could be no
answer.
* * * * *
That was a meal which Margaret never afterward remembered without a
recoil. A chilling self-consciousness had fallen upon her and clogged
her tongue. Melwin ate hastily and almost fiercely, saying nothing, and
once half rising, it seemed in utter forgetfulness of her presence,
and then sitting down again. She excused herself before the coffee
and slipped away, running hastily up the stair to her room, her feet
catching in the unaccustomed tightness of the old-fashioned skirt.
As she turned the key in the lock, she fancied she heard a moan
through the thick walls of Lydia’s room, and she tore off the garments
with feverish haste, shutting them from her sight in the carved Dutch
chest which filled one corner, releasing, as she did so, a pungent odor
of cedar; not the fresh, resinous smell of sappy forest-growth, but
the dead-faint aroma of the past--the perfume that belonged to Lydia’s
gown, to Melwin, and to that gloomy house and all it contained.
She pushed open the heavy blinds and leaned across the window ledge,
questioning. Melwin was a man--but Lydia? Had she also this inner
buried side, which in him had been shocked into betrayal? Were men
and women alike? Were their longings and cravings the same? Was there
something in the one which felt and answered the every need of the
other? Was spiritual attraction forever dependent for its completion
upon physical love? The thought came to her that in the long years
Melwin had become less himself; that his brooding mind had perhaps
lost its balance; that what to a healthier mind would be but a shadow
had grown for him a threatening phantom. Her heart was full of a vague
protest against the suggestion which had thrust itself upon her.
Her spiritual side reached out groping hands for comfort and sustenance.
Drawing down the window, she turned into the room. A ponderous Bible
in huge blocked leathern covers lay on the low table, its antiquated
silver clasps winking in the light from the pronged candlestick. With
a sudden impulse, she threw it open, leaning forward, her fingers
nervously ruffling its edges. This was the soul-comforter of the ages.
It must help her.
“Hadad died also. And the dukes of Edom were; duke Timnah, duke
Aliah, duke Jetheth,
“Duke Aholibamah, duke Elah, duke Pimon.”
The musty chronicle meant nothing. She turned again, parting the leaves
near to the end.
“Salute Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus.
“Erastus abode at Corinth: but Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick.”
She almost laughed at the banality of her haphazard choice. She knew
the pages full of condemnation for the unworthy thought. Now they
mocked her. Impatiently she opened the huge volume wide in the middle.
A new and intense eagerness illumed her face as her eyes rested on the
page:
“Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast
doves’ eyes.
“My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one,
and come away.
“By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him,
but I found him not.
“My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.
“His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as
a raven.
“His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed
with milk, and fitly set.
“His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like
lilies, dropping sweet-smelling myrrh.* * *
“His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely.”
She looked up startled, her breath struggling in her breast; a deep,
vivid blush spread over her face and neck, glowing crimson against the
whiteness of her apparel.
The room seemed suddenly dense with a dank, spicy smell of roses
mixed with salty wind. It spread from the pages of the book and hung
wreathing about her till the air was filled with fiery flowers. She
felt herself burning hot, as if a flame were scorching her flesh. In
the emptiness of the room, she caught her hands to her cheeks shamedly,
lest the world could see that tell-tale color. Even the dim candles’
light angered her, and she blew them out, creeping into the soft bed
hastily, as though into a hiding-place.