Mrs. Pole's house stood on the outskirts of the old town of Bedmouth,
facing the narrow road that ran eastward to the Point. In the days of Mrs.
Pole's father the ships passing to and from Bedmouth on the river could be
seen from the front windows. Now the wires of a trolley road disfigured the
old street and cheap wooden houses cut off the view of the river. In the
rear there was a small garden, sloping down to an inlet of the sea, from
which could be seen Bedmouth-way the slender spires of two churches that
rose among the drooping branches of the elms, and seaward the squat outline
of a great summer hotel, bedecked with many flags. In the black mould of
the old garden grew tall syringa bushes, lilacs, pampas grass, and a few
tiger lilies, and over the crumbling brick walls hung dusty leaves of
grapevines. When the gate at the bottom of the garden was open, there was a
view of the inlet, bordered with marsh grass, and farther away a segment of
the open sea, with the lighthouse on Goose Rock.
Here the Judge's wife had come to live when her husband died, forsaking
Washington, which had grown "too busy for an old woman." ...
At the end of the garden, which was shaded by the high wall, Margaret sat,
an uncut book on her knees, her eyes resting on the green marsh to be seen
through the open door. Near by Ned in his little invalid chair was picking
the mortar from the brick wall with a nail he had been able to reach. The
two were often alone like this for hours, silent.
"Mother," the child said at last, as Margaret took up the book.
"What is it, Ned?"
"Must I sit like this always,--forever and ever?"
"I hope not, dear. You must remember Dr. Renault said it would take
patience."
"But I have been patient."
"Yes, I know, dear!"
"If I didn't get any better, should I have to sit like this always?" At
last the question which she feared had come, the child's first doubt. It
had been uncertain, the recovery of the lost power; at times it seemed as
if there were no progress. The mother answered in her slow, deep voice:--
"Yes, dear; you would have to be patient always. But we are going to hope!"
"Mother," the child persisted, "why does it have to be so?"
And the mother answered steadily:--
"I don't know, my boy. Nobody knows why."
Ned resumed his scratching at the wall, pondering this mystery of an
inexplicable world. Presently there was a sound of oars beyond the wall,
and the child exclaimed:--
"There's Big Bob! He said he'd take me for a row."
Falkner carried off the Little Man for his promised boat ride, leaving
Margaret to cut the leaves of her book and to think. It was the week
before, the end of August, that Falkner had put into Bedmouth in his small
sloop. He was staying with his sister at Lancaster, only a short walk on
the other side of the Point. After a few days more at the most he would
have to turn back southwards, and then? ... She threw down her book and
paced slowly back and forth along the garden walk. As the sun sank low, her
mother-in-law appeared, a frail little lady, who looked gently into
Margaret's face.
"I am afraid you feel the heat, Margaret. It has been a very hot day."
"Is it hot?" Margaret asked vaguely, shading her eyes with her hand to look
out over the marsh.
There was the sound of oars and a child's laugh, loud and careless, just
beyond the wall. "Look out!" Ned cried.
"There, you've wet your feet!" The two women smiled. That boyish laugh was
rare these days.
When the grandmother wheeled Ned into the house for his supper, Margaret
and Falkner strolled out of the garden beside the marsh to a rocky knoll
that jutted into the sea. They seated themselves under a scrawny pine whose
roots were bathed by the incoming tide, and watched the twilight stillness
steal across the marshes and the sea. There was no air and yet the ships
out by Goose Island passed across the horizon, sails full set, as though
moved by an unseen hand.
They knew each other so well! And yet in silent times like these their
intimacy seemed always to go deeper, to reveal without the aid of speech
new levels of understanding.
"I had a letter this morning from Marvin," Falkner remarked at last.
Margaret scooped up a handful of pebbles and let them fall through her thin
fingers, waiting for the expected words.
"It is settled. We sail from New York the tenth."
"The tenth?"
"Yes, ... so I must go back soon and get ready."
The decision about Panama had been in the balance when Falkner left New
York, she knew. Another opportunity of work in the States had come
meanwhile; the decision had not been easy to make. When Falkner had written
his wife, Bessie had replied: "You must do what seems best to you, as you
have always done in the past.... Of course I cannot take the children to
Panama." And when Falkner had written of the other work nearer home, Bessie
said: "I don't care to make another move and settle in a new place.... We
seem to get on better like this. Go to Panama if you want to, and we will
see when you get back." So he had debated the matter with himself all the
way up the coast....
"When must you leave?"
"To-morrow," he answered slowly, and again they were silent.
It was as she wished, as she had urged. The new work would reopen the man's
ambition, and that _must_ be. Where a man's work was concerned,
nothing--nothing surely of any woman--should intervene. That was her
feeling. No woman's pining or longing to fetter the man: clear the decks
for action!
"To-morrow!" she murmured. She was smiling bravely, a smile that belied the
tenseness within. Falkner picked the long spines from a pine branch, and
arranged them methodically one by one in a row. They were not all alike,
differing in minute characteristics of size and length and color. Nature at
her wholesale task of turning out these millions of needles varied the
product infinitely. And so with human beings!
They two were at peace together, their inner hunger appeased, with a
sustaining content in life neither had ever known before. When they were
together in this intimate silence, their spirits were freed from all
bondage, free to rise, to leap upwards out of the encircling abysm of
things. And this state of perfect meeting--spiritual equilibrium--must
end....
"To-morrow?" she repeated, raising her eyes and gazing far out to the
sunlit sea. And her heart was saying, "Tomorrow, and to-morrow, and the
days thereafter,--and all empty of this!"
"It is best so," he said. "It could not go on like this!"
"No! We are human, after all!" and smiling wanly she rose to return to the
house. When they reached his boat, Falkner took her hand,--a hand with
finely tapering fingers, broad in the palm and oval,--a woman's hand, firm
to hold, gentle to caress. The fingers tightened about his slowly. He
looked into the blue eyes; they were dry and shining. And in those shining
eyes he read the same unspoken words of revolt that rose within his
heart,--'Why thus too late! too late! Why has life declared itself in all
its meaning--too late? Why were we caught by the mistakes of half
knowledge, and then receive the revelation?' The futile questions of human
hearts.
"You will come to-night--after dinner?" Margaret asked. "Bring the boat. We
will go to Lawlor's Cove. I want to get away--from everything!"
As she mounted the garden steps to the house, she heard the whirr of a
motor in the street. It stopped in front of the house, and as Margaret
waited she heard Mrs. Hillyer's thin voice: "I am so sorry! Please tell
Mrs. Pole that I came over from Lancaster to get her for dinner." Presently
the motor whirled away in the direction of the great hotel, a cloud of dust
following in its wake. Margaret stood for a moment watching the car
disappear into the distance, thankful that she had escaped Mrs. Hillyer and
her new motor just now.... The sun, sinking into the Bedmouth elms across
the green marshes, fell full and golden upon her face. It was still and hot
and brooding, this sunset hour, like the silent reaches of her heart. But
slowly a smile broke from her lips, and she raised her arms to the light.
It had touched her, the Sun God! It had burned her with its heat, its life.
She knew! And she was glad. Nothing could take its fire wholly from her.
"To-night!" she murmured to herself.