P.S. Will you send nurse up with Jane Amoret within the week? Not
at once, please; that would look rather foolish.
With the accumulated weight of absurdity, relief, dismay, she had sunk
down into her chair, still gazing at the letter, and it was dismay that
grew. As if with a violent jolt back to earth, Rhoda seemed to show her
that life was not docile to nobilities. She hated to think that he must
feel with her that shattering fall. There was nothing for them to do now
for each other; no contest and no sacrifice. Rhoda had settled
everything.
She spoke to him at last, and, as he came to her, not looking around at
him, she held out the note. He stood behind her to read it; and after
that he did not speak.
She heard him move presently, vaguely, and then, vaguely, he drifted to
and fro. He walked here and there; he paused, no doubt to feel his bones
and to count how many had been broken, and then, with a start, he went
on again.
“Please come where I can see you,” she said at last.
He came at once, obediently, standing as he had stood a little while ago
before the fire, his hands locked behind him, but now with face bent
down, fixed in its effort to see clearly what had happened to them.
“You see, it was over. You see, you couldn’t have made anything of it.”
It was almost with tears that she besought him not to suffer too much.
“You have nothing to regret, except having believed in her. Tell me that
you are not too unhappy.”
“I don’t know what I am,” Christopher said. “But I know I’ve more to
regret than having believed in her. I’ve all the folly and mischief I’ve
made.” He had thought it out and she could not deny what he had seen,
not even when he went on, "If it could have been in our way,--yours and
mine, or, at least, what was yours this morning, when you thought you
had kept her with me,--everything might have been atoned for. It might
have meant a certain kind of beauty, and a certain kind of happiness,
even, perhaps. But in this way, the way she’s chosen, it only means just
that--folly, mischief,"--he turned to the fire and looked down into
it,--“sin,” he finished.
She could not deny it, even to give him comfort; but she could find
something else. “It was Rhoda who chose. You, whatever your mistakes,
chose very differently. I'm not trying to shift responsibility; to make
mistakes is to be foolish and mischievous. But can’t even sin be atoned
for? Doesn’t it all now depend on you? That you should make yourself
worth it. You are the only one of us who can do that.”
He turned to her and his eyes studied her with an unaccepting
gentleness.
“You mean because I’m a poet? It isn’t like you, really, to say that.
You don’t believe in poets and their mission in that sense. It’s too
facile.”
“Not only because you are a poet. I wasn’t thinking so much of that,
although your gift helps. But simply because you are young and good.”
“I’m not good enough,” said Christopher. “And I’m too young. You’ve
shown me that. I am afraid of myself. I see what one can do while
meaning the best.”
She watched him with grave tenderness, feeling again, in his
dispassionate capacity for accepted experience, his strange maturity.
And knowing all that might be difficult, yet knowing that it would be,
after all, to a decision like her own, the merest gossamers of
convention that she must brave, she said,--and as she looked up at him
his face seemed to blend with the face of her little, sleeping, lost
Jane Amoret,--“Don’t you think I, perhaps, could be of help, while you
are so young?”
He did not understand her at all. He, too, was absorbed in his inner
image of loss, yet he, too, was almost as aware of her as she of him,
and his eyes, with their austere gentleness, dwelt on her, as if
treasuring, of this last encounter, his completed vision of her.
“Yes, you will be. I shall never forget you and what you’ve been to me.
I’ll do my best,” he promised her. “But I seem to have lost everything.
I could be strong for her; I don’t know that I can be strong enough for
myself.”
“That’s what I mean,” said Mrs. Delafield. “It takes years to be strong
enough for one’s self, and even when one’s old one hasn’t sometimes
learned how to be. I’m not sure, after this morning, that I’ve learned
yet. But I know that I could be strong for you. Will you let me try?
Will you let me take care of you a little and guard you from the Rhodas
until the right person comes?”
“What do you mean?” he asked; and, answering the look in her face, tears
sprang to his eyes.
“We belong to each other. Didn’t you say it?” she smiled. “We are
friends. We ought not to lose each other now.”
“Oh! But--” He gazed at her. “How could you! After what I’ve done!”
“You’ve done nothing that makes me like you less.”
“Oh--I can’t! I can’t!” said Christopher Darley. “How could I accept it
from you? Already you’ve been unbelievably beautiful to me. It’s not as
if you were a Bohemian sort of creature, like me. Appearances must count
for you. And the appearance of being friends with your niece’s discarded
lover--no--I can’t see it for you. I can imagine you being above the
law, but I can’t imagine you being above appearances. I don’t think that
I should want you to be. I care about appearances, too, when they are
yours.”
It crossed her mind, with almost a mirthful sense of the sort of
appearances she would have to deal with, that Parton’s face would be
worth watching. Poor Tim’s hovered more grievously in the background.
But, after all, it would be a Tim with wounds well salved.
“It’s just because mine are so secure and recognized, don’t you see,
that I can do what I like with them,” she said. “It’s not for me a
question of appearances, but of realities. After all, my dear young man,
what am I going to get out of it all? My roots have been torn up too,
you know.”
“Because of me! Because of me!” Christopher groaned. “Do you think you
need remind me of that? Shall I ever forgive myself for it? Get out of
it? You’ll get nothing. You’ve been tormented between us all, and you
lose Jane Amoret.”
“Then don’t let me lose you too,” said Mrs. Delafield.
Again, with the tears, his blush sprang to his face, and he stood there
incredulous, looking down at her, almost as helpless in the shyness the
unexpected gift brought upon him as he had been when he first came in to
her.
“Really you mean it?” he murmured. “Really I can do something for you,
too? Because, unless I can, I couldn’t accept it.”
“You can make me much less lonely, when she’s gone,” said Mrs.
Delafield.
She knew that this was to give the gift in such a way as to ensure its
acceptance; but he murmured, stung again intolerably by the thought of
Jane Amoret, “Oh--I can’t bear it for you!”
“You can help me to bear it.”
Still he pressed upon her what he saw as her sacrifice.
“You mean that I may see you when I like? I may always write and you’ll
always answer? I can sometimes, even, come and stay, like any other
friend? Please realize that if you let me come down on you like that, I
may come hard. I’m frightfully lonely, too.”
“As hard as you like. I want you to come hard. Like any friend. Yes.”
She was smiling up at the young man, and, as she had promised herself
years for Jane Amoret, she promised herself now years--though not so
many would be needed--for Christopher Darley. It was in the thought of
what she could do for Christopher Darley that she saw Rhoda’s
punishment. Not for having left him, but for having taken him; for not
having known what to do with him without taking him. And Rhoda would see
it with her, if no one else did.
“Come, you must quite believe in me,” she said. “Give me your hand, dear
Christopher, and tell me that you take this meddling, commanding old
woman to be your friend.”
He had no words as he took the hand she gave him, but from his look it
might have been as if he at last received into his keeping the great
gift, the precious casket of the future; and his eyes, like those of a
devout young knight, dedicated themselves to her service.
It was again gift and miracle; and though in her mind was the thought of
all her mournings, and of the lost Jane Amoret, she felt, rooting itself
in the darkness and sorrow, yet another flower.
“And now,” she said, for they must not both begin to cry, “please ring
the bell for me. The time has not quite come for your first visit; but,
before you go, we will have our first tea together.”
[Illustration: decorative bar]