_Wherein Betty walks into the Desert_
Betty was dressed for a journey.
On the floor, near the table whereat she sat writing a letter, lay a
battered old black trunk, strapped and labelled.
The day was chilly grey without.
As she blotted the last lines, there came to her hearing, from the
thoroughfares of the Latin Quarter below, rollicking snatches of song,
and the stir of students in noisy holiday mood.
Betty brushed aside her tears, and read carefully the letter she had
just signed:
“NOLL,
A year ago I was writing you love-letters--delightful deliriousness
more full of meaning than of sense. To-day I am writing farewell.
It is the most eager desire of my life, of my whole being, that you
should be free--to be a man. I came to you, joined my life to yours,
that you should be free to realize yourself, most wholly free--in
body, in intellect, and in conscience. I now take back my life from
yours, that, having failed with me to achieve freedom for yourself or
for me, you shall be free to become free--or as near free as you may
be.
Your life is become full of little secrecies--of half-told tales--of
timid reservations--of pompously withheld mysteries--of little
excuses. I can only live, for close companionship, with a man; and a
man shall not fear himself--nor another.
You must live free from the need to hide yourself from me. Therefore,
to give you back to yourself I withdraw myself.
No man that is master of himself would live with a woman who is not
also free--the free associate only with the free--they do not consort
with curs, whether men or women. It is fools’ cant that speaks of the
woman _obeying_ the man--such a man were only fit to be the father of
a slave people.
And more--the woman in marriage must be free to live her nobility.
I am not of those puling women who, when they are flung aside or
suffer rebuff, cling to the arm of him who strikes the blow--who
whimper and cringe and are content to be content if they but have
occasional consideration. Least of all am I of those women who,
being stung with a man’s neglect and jibe and injustice, walk
through a haggard existence by the man’s shrinking side, keeping his
allegiance by the dread of her crying out upon him to the neighbours,
driving him with scowl or invective along a narrow path where his
unwilling feet are kept from straying only through fear for his petty
dignities--making him a slave to his weaknesses and hers, and herself
a hissing whip and a shame. Such women are of the slave-peoples--they
mother a race of weaklings. For fear is as much through the mother as
the father.
But, you will say, ‘Let us explain, let us make it up and kiss and be
friends, let us bury the past.’ So indeed we might sit by the wayside
of life and babble threadbare platitudes to hide our losses. Would
that be music in our ears? Would it be gain? Even if you hoodwinked
me with pathetic promises of duty and the like, is our strength
increased?
The conventions of the world might be satisfied by my meekly bowing
my head and walking primly by your side. But the past is immortal,
and rises again from the dead. We might take our walks abroad
together, but we should no longer go hand in hand--a ghost strides
between. He smells of the dead most unconscionably, this fawning
spectre of little diplomacies. Pah! how I detest the cringing flunkey
that speaks in apologies!
You would not have me walk along a way of frequent
reconciliations--each reconciliation a humiliation--each humiliation
making that uneasy ghost that stalks between us into a more
tangible figure of Hate. Reconciliations! of what? for what? You
do not think me so little free that I would stoop to call for
explanations--explanations that but explain why explanations should
not be.
What have you or I to do with the conventions of the world, when
all’s said? We are not the hirelings of the world. Are you and I the
timid servants of the gossips?
Life is an affirmation--a great Thou Shalt--not an enfeebling incubus
of belittling Thou Shalt Nots.
Love, like friendship, will not suffer catechism--does not rest on
commandments--does not increase through rebuff.
Life is not a bundle of apologies--how much less then is Love, which
is of the essence of Life! Love is a splendid comrade--not an excuse
for small disdains.
I have given you all my love. I have not bartered it. I do not
haggle over its value. Nor for my part would I hedge you about
with restrictions, nor win your smiles on conditions--for willing
comradeship sunk to dutiful loyalty is become a restriction. I ask
for no paper treaties. I will fling you no Thou Shalt Nots. The
written promise is the least part of a strong man’s honour.
If a man or woman, or the shabby travesties of these, would find
delight in adulteries, will the written bond or public proclamation
of fidelity prevent their secret treacheries?
I can no more stoop to jealousy of the world than of another woman,
even if I were possessed of the mean insanity of jealousy, which is
but a part of the village-idiot’s wits who sits in the winter and
thinks to blow dead ashes into living fire if his rude breath be but
harsh enough.
Nor can I, on the other hand, live in your house as ‘one of three.’
If you and I and Apology essayed to live together, it could not last.
I cannot embrace Apology with effusion; and I cannot brook to see
you yield yourself to shabby excuses. I am not sure that I would not
rather have you committing mean sins with a dairymaid.
The pain with which my hand writes these lines it would be wanton
cruelty to inflict upon you, Noll; yet I will tell you that since
I collected a few belongings together into my poor weather-beaten
trunk--indeed, I have never before realized how shabby a dowry I
brought to you, dear heart (I have scarred the dear walls with as
little brigandage as I might, so that they shall stare upon you with
no eyeless sockets and be the less lonely home for you when I am
gone)--since I have taken a last look round the rooms where I have
known the best days of my life, as I sit waiting for the vehicle
which is to take me out into the desert again, I find it hard to
keep back the tears from blotting out my handwriting. Scalding
tears, Noll; yet I have wept tears also that did not scald, happy
tears--indeed, I have but this moment kissed the pillows of our
marriage-bed....
But there are wheels that stop outside the courtyard gate. Just
one more round of our old home amidst the stars, to touch the dear
surrounding things I have loved so well--_we_ have loved so well--and
I am gone.
BETTY.
P.S.--Ah, Noll; there are no flowers upon the balcony now! Not even a
little one to take in remembrance that the balcony was once a garden.”
There was a rustle of skirts on the landing without--a knock at the
door.
Betty uttered no sound. She thrust the letter into an envelope and
sealed it.
There was another knock, and a panting voice cried from without:
“It is I, madame--Madelaine.”
Betty went to the door and opened it.
“Ah, Madelaine--you are back!”
Madelaine, daintily dressed, and her slim being looking charming and
refined, entered the room and shut the door.
“Madelaine!” exclaimed Betty, “what a pretty frock!”
“Ah, madame--I go to a dressmaker’s by day now--the old miser is
content to have me work for her at night.” She shrugged her slender
shoulders. “It saves her my meals.”
She had not become a dressmaker for nothing. Every stitch and flounce
told, bringing out the beauty and lithe grace of the girl.
She was panting:
“Yes, madame. But--mon Dieu, you are of a surety amongst the stars
here!” Her pretty scarlet lips smiled. “Amongst the stars--as the
angels always are. But--ah, yes--I went and put on decent clothes and
took your letter to Mademoiselle Babette, madame; but she was out--she
is preparing for the Bal des Quatz Arts to-night--has gone out with
Monsieur Horace and the others.... Mon Dieu, yes; you live amongst the
stars, madame.”
“Madelaine, have you kept the carriage waiting?”
“Yes, madame--it is below.”
Betty arose wearily from her seat:
“Will you help me to carry down my trunk?”
Madelaine looked at her sharply:
“Mon Dieu, no, madame,” said she. “_I_ will carry it. No--Hodendouche
shall carry it--he grows fat. Yes, madame; do not interfere with me--I
will call him----”
She skipped out on to the landing with swift light step, and hailed
Hodendouche from below.
She came back, her lips parted with the exertion.
“Madelaine,” said Betty--“will you come to the station and see me off?”
“Mon Dieu, yes, madame. I would have gone if I had walked--in tight new
shoes.”
Betty laughed sadly. She went to her and put her hands on the girl’s
shoulders. She held her off at arm’s length. There was a lovely glow on
the girl’s beautiful dark Southern face.
“Madelaine, you are all a-tremor! What has happened?”
Madelaine laughed gaily:
“Ah, madame; it was intoxicating,” she said. She hesitated--almost
shyly for Madelaine. “When I drove through the streets--in the
carriage--it was splendid.... All the world thought I was some man’s
mistress----”
“Oh, Madelaine!”
“Come, madame,” said Madelaine--“here’s Hodendouche.”
Hodendouche entered the room with a set smile, and took off his cap.
Madelaine turned to him:
“Ah, Hodendouche,” said she--“what a climb to reach the stars!... But
now you are here, pick up that box and take it downstairs; Madame will
follow us in a minute.”
As the grunting Hodendouche shouldered the trunk, and, followed by
Madelaine, left the room, Betty went to the bed and put the letter upon
the white coverlet; and for awhile she lingered there.
She sat down on the side of the bed.
Ah, youth’s couch! what limitless imaginings hath thy pillow known!
what vasty ambitions have burnt out upon thee! what schemings and
plannings for the payments of the bare needs of life! Tears thou hast
known, and sighs--but the stars glittered ever in the firmament even
when it was darkest; and at every rebuff Resolution reborn put out
wounded hands to the heights.
What hath he known of youth who peered through eyes so dullard that
they saw but the dingy finger-marks upon the stairways to the attics of
the palaces in the bohemia of his teens?
Who so weak of spirit that disdained to climb the stairs to the topmost
garrets when the need was! For did we not sit there under the roof,
expectant amidst the splendid galaxies whilst the workaday world did
blink its myriad utilitarian street-lamps at our feet!
Ah, those gipsy days of our wander-years, when we strolled, careless of
the infinities, along the blithe alleys of our youthful wayfarings, and
every garret was the topmost chamber of a palace, and the rough bed but
an excuse for splendid dreams!
Betty stooped and kissed the pillow where Noll would sleep.
She let herself out of the room, shut the door softly, and hurriedly
followed the others down the stairs....
The fat little concierge, as she bent over her morning coffee-making
in her dark little den by the gateway, was startled by a vision which
appeared to her, kissed her rough old cheek, slipped a gold piece into
her hand, ran out to a carriage, and was gone.