I
The second evening with Trenton was very like the first except that
after dinner at the Sycamore they attended a concert given by a
world-famous violinist. Again as under the spell of Bob Cummings’
playing at Miss Reynolds’, Grace was caught away into a wonder-world,
where she wandered like a disembodied spirit seeking some vestige of a
personality that had not survived her transition to another realm. She
was assailed by new and fleeting emotions, in which she studied Trenton
and tried to define her attitude toward him, conscious that the time
might be close at hand when some definition would be necessary. Now and
then she caught a glimpse of his rapt look and saw the lines about his
mouth tighten. Once he clasped his hands as though, in response to some
inner prompting, he were attempting by a physical act to arrest some
disturbing trend of his thoughts.
There was a fineness in his face that she had not before fully
appreciated, and it was his fineness and nobility, Grace assured
herself, that appealed to her. Then there were moments when she was
undecided whether she loved or hated him, not knowing that this is a
curious phase which women of highly sensitive natures often experience
at the first consciousness of a man’s power over them. She saw man as
the hunter and woman as his prey. Then with a quick revulsion she freed
herself of the thought and drifted happily with the tide of harmony.
When they left the theatre Trenton asked whether she felt like
walking. The night was clear and the air keen and stimulating.
“Of course; it would be a shame to ride! That music would carry me a
thousand miles,” she answered.
As soon as they were free of the crowd he began to talk of music, its
emotional appeal, its power to dissociate the hearer from material
things.
“I never felt it so much before,” he said. “I’m afraid there’s not much
poetry in me. I’m not much affected by things that I can’t reduce to a
formula, and I’m a little suspicious of anything that lifts me off the
earth as that fiddle did. If I exposed myself to music very often it
would ruin me for business.”
“Oh, never that! I feel music tremendously; everybody must! It wakes up
all manner of hopes and ambitions even if they don’t live very long.
That violin really made me want to climb!”
“Yes; I can understand that. For a few minutes I was conscious myself
of reaching up the ladder for a higher round. It’s dangerous to feel
so keenly. I wonder if there ever comes a time when we don’t feel any
more--really feel a desire to bump against the stars; when the spirit
goes dead and for the rest of our days we just settle into a rut with
no hope of ever pulling out? I have a dread of that. It’s ghastly to
think of. Marking time! Going through the motions of being alive when
you’re really dead!”
“Oh, don’t even think of it! You could never be like that!”
“Maybe I’m like that now!”
“You’re clear off the key!” she cried. “Of course you’re not at the end
of things. It’s wicked to talk that way.”
“Do you really think that?” he asked eagerly. “Do you see any hope
ahead for me?”
“You know you see it yourself! We wouldn’t any of us go on living if we
didn’t see some hope ahead.” Then with greater animation she added:
“You’re not a man to sit down at the roadside and burst into tears
because things don’t go to suit you! I don’t believe you’re that kind
at all. If you are--well, I’m disappointed!”
“Now you’ve got me with my back to the wall!” he laughed. “No man ever
wants a woman to think him a coward. I’ll keep away from all music
hereafter except the snappiest jazz. But give music the benefit of the
doubt; it may not have been the fiddle at all!”
“More likely you ate too much dinner!”
“Impossible! The ostrich has nothing on me when it comes to digestion.
Maybe you’re the cause of my depression! Please consider that for a
moment!”
“Oh, that’s terribly unkind! If I depress you this must be our last
meeting.”
“You know I didn’t mean that, it’s because----”
“Don’t begin becausing! You know you’re in a tight corner; you hint
that I’ve given you a bad evening just by sitting beside you at a
concert--and a very beautiful concert at that.”
“The mistake is mine! You haven’t the slightest respect for my
feelings. I show you the wounds in my very soul and you laugh at them.”
“I certainly am not going to weep my eyes out merely because you let
a few bars of music throw you. I had a fit of the blues too; several
times I thought I was going to cry. How embarrassed you’d have been!”
“No; I should have held your hand until you regained your composure!”
“Then we’d both have been led out by the ushers!”
He joined with her in playing whimsically upon all the possibilities
of their ejection. They would have been arrested for disturbing a
public gathering and their names would have figured in the police
reports, probably with pictorial embellishments. This sort of fooling
was safe; she thought perhaps he meant to maintain the talk on an
impersonal plane but in a moment he said:
“I’m going away tomorrow, first home to Pittsburgh for about a week;
then to New York. I may not get back here for two or three weeks; I’m
mixed up in some things that I can’t neglect. I’d like to think you’ll
miss me!”
“Oh, I always miss my friends when they go away,” she replied. Then
realizing the banality of this she laughed and added: “How silly that
sounded!”
“Then you mean you wouldn’t miss me?”
“Of course I didn’t mean that!”
Under a street lamp she saw in his face once more the grave troubled
look that she had observed at intervals during the concert. It was
foolish to question now that his interest in her was something more
than a passing fancy. Her thoughts flew to the other woman, the wife of
whom he had spoken at The Shack only to apologize for it in his letter
from St. Louis. He was thinking of her of course; it was impossible
for him to ignore the fact that he had a wife. And again as so many
times before she speculated as to whether he might not still love this
woman and be seeking diversion elsewhere out of sheer loneliness. But
as they passed into the shadows again, her hand resting lightly on his
arm, she experienced suddenly a strong desire to be kind to him. She
was profoundly moved by the thought that it was in her power to pour
out to him in great measure the affection and comradeship which he had
confessed he hungered for.
They had crossed the canal bridge and were nearing the Durland house.
Trenton was accommodating himself perforce to her rapid pace. The tonic
air kept her pulses throbbing. She was sure that she loved this man;
that the difference in their years was as nothing weighed against his
need for her. Tonight, she knew, marked a crisis in their relationship.
If she parted from him without making it clear that she wished never
to see him again she would be putting herself wholly at the mercy of a
fate that might bear her up or down. With only a block more to traverse
she battled with herself, summoned all her courage to resist him, only
to find that her will was unequal to the contest.
Deep in her heart she did not want to send him away with no hope of
seeing him again. He was her one link with the great world beyond the
city in which, without his visits to look forward to, she was doomed to
lead a colorless, monotonous existence. She was moved by a compassion
for him, poignantly tender, that swept away all sense of reality and
transcended the bounds of time and space. The very thought of losing
him, of not knowing where he would be in the endless tomorrows, only
that she would never see him again, was like a pain in her heart.
The need in him spoke to the need in her--for companionship, help,
affection.
They seemed vastly isolated in the quiet street, as though the world
had gone away and left them to settle their affairs with only the stars
for witnesses. It had been easy to parry Bob Cummings’s attempts to
assume a lover-like attitude toward her. But with Trenton this would
be impossible. With him it would be necessary to state in the plainest
terms that their acquaintance must end.
Nothing had been said since her last remark and if she meant to thrust
him away from her she must act quickly. In a winning fashion of his own
he was frank and forthright. She found it difficult to anticipate him
and prepare her replies. There was no leer in him and he did not take
refuge in timid gallantries; he addressed her as a man who felt that he
had a right to a hearing. And this, in her confused, bewildered senses,
gave dignity to the situation. He loved her and she loved him--she was
sure she loved him--and her heart was in a wild tumult. She was afraid
to speak lest the merest commonplace might betray her eagerness to
confess her love for him.
He stepped in front of her and clasped the hand that lay lightly on his
arm.
“I’ve got to say it; I must say it now,” he said in grave even tones.
“No woman ever meant to me what you mean. The first night I met you
I knew it had come--the thing I had hoped for--and sometimes had
dreaded,--a woman I could know as I’ve never known any woman, not my
wife or any other! After I left you I couldn’t get you out of my mind.”
He paused for an instant, then went on hurriedly with undisguised
intensity of feeling. “You may think me mad when I’ve seen you so
little; and I know I have no right to love you at all! But I do love
you! I want you to belong to me!”
A gust of wind caught up a mass of leaves from the gutter and flung
them about their feet as though to remind them of the mutability of all
things. He had said that he loved her; almost savagely he had demanded
that she give herself to him. It was incredible that he cared so much,
that his desire for her could be so great.
He released her hand as though in sign that he wanted her to speak
without compulsion. He waited quietly, his shoulders thrown a little
forward, and in the dim starlight she saw his eyes, bright and eager,
searching her own.
“You know I care,” she said softly.
The words fell from her lips inevitably; no other reply was possible,
and it seemed that a great weight had lifted from her heart and that
in entrusting herself to him she had found security and peace. She
questioned nothing, feeling his arms about her, his kiss warm on her
lips. All her doubts were lost in the joy of the moment in which he had
confessed his love for her. It was a strange place for the pledging of
love and the moment was not to be prolonged.
“We must go on, dear,” she said laying her cheek against his for an
instant. The touch of her face caused him to clasp her again.
“Oh, my dearest one!” he cried hoarsely.
As they went on, loitering to delay the moment of parting, they caught
hands like happy children.
“I don’t see how you can love me,” she said with the anxiety of new
love for confirmations and assurances. “I don’t belong to your world.”
“There’s the strangest thing of all!” he exclaimed. “We are born into a
new world that is all ours. We have inherited all the kingdoms tonight.”
“And the stars up there--do they shine just for us?” she asked,
bringing herself closer to him. “And can we keep every one else out
of our world? I want it all to be our very own. Oh, it’s so sweet, so
wonderful!”
“It’s a miracle beyond any words,” he said, “to know that you care.
It’s easy for me to love you; I loved you in that very first hour we
spent together. We don’t account for things like that, that come so
suddenly and without warning; we merely accept them. I’ve fought this;
I want you to know that I’ve fought it.”
“Oh, so have I! But--why did you fight it?”
Her voice betrayed her confused emotions. Her sense of right was as
nothing against the belief that he loved her and that she loved him.
A masterful tide had caught them up and borne them far, leaving them
islanded on territory remote and touched with a mystical light that
souls had never known before.
She was now fully persuaded that henceforth her life was to be bound
up with his; that until death took one or the other they would never
face separation. Space and distance were as nothing; if he went to far
and waste places there would be still the strong spiritual tie which it
pleased her to think was the real bond between them--something which,
in her absolute surrender, she felt to be above all laws of men and of
kinship with heavenly things. It struck her as odd that she was able so
thoroughly to analyze her sensations, seeking and finding explanation
and justification cleansed of all passion.
“I know I have no right to your love; none whatever,” he said steadily.
“There are people who would call me a scoundrel for saying what I have
just said to you. But every man in my plight feels that his case is
different. I’ve thought of all this in the plainest terms, not sparing
myself.”
“It would be like you to do that,” she replied.
Now that she had taken him for her lover she saw him as a paragon of
generosity and nobility. He would not spare himself; she was anxious to
apply balm to his conscience, to make him understand that her happiness
was so complete that nothing else mattered.
“Just so you love me!” she said gently. “Nothing could be so dear as
just knowing that you care. Oh, do I mean so much to you?”
“Everything,” he exclaimed and lifted her hand and kissed it.
“That’s the way it has to be--everything or nothing. I never loved any
one before.”
“I’m so glad! I was afraid to ask you that. I had even thought there
might be some one else--some younger man----”
“Stop! We’re not going to talk of ages,” she laughed, with a quick
gesture laying her hand for a moment against his lips. “It must be
understood right now that you’re not a day over twenty-five.”
“You’re going to spoil me! And you don’t know how much I want to be
spoiled.”
“You poor dear! I’m going to love petting and spoiling you!”
Instantly it occurred to her that the other woman, the unknown wife of
her frequent conjecture, had neither petted nor spoiled him and that
this accounted for his eagerness for a new experience. A cloud crossed
the bright heaven of her happiness. His wife was not to be relegated to
oblivion merely because he had found another object for his affections.
The wife had a very real existence in Grace’s imagination; to Trenton’s
lightly limned sketch the girl had added a line here and there until
she fancied she possessed a very true portrait of Mrs. Trenton.
Somewhere there existed a Mrs. Ward Trenton, who wrote books and
lectured and otherwise advertised herself as a vital being.
“Dear little girl!” said Trenton tenderly. “You are all the world to
me. Do you understand?”
“I must believe that,” she said.
“There’s nothing I can offer you now--neither a home nor the
protection of my name. It’s got to be just love that’s our tie. I’m not
going to deceive you about that.”
“Yes, I understand what it means,” she answered.
“You must believe that I’ll do the best I can to make you happy. Love
that doesn’t bring happiness is an empty and worthless thing. You don’t
know how much I count on you. I’m laying a burden on you; I’m clutching
at you for all the things I’ve missed out of my life.”
“Yes; I know dear.”
“There’s something not fair about it--about casting myself upon you as
I’m doing,” he said doggedly.
“I’m proud that you want me! I want to fill your heart and your life.”
“You can; you do even now! But first of all I want you to be sure--sure
of yourself, dear. There must be no regrets afterward. I can’t see you
again before I go, but I’ll write.”
“I shall miss you so! You _will_ write to me!” she cried, feeling
already the loneliness of the days of his impending absence. His
calmness was disconcerting but she readily forgave this as she would
have forgiven him anything. He was thinking of the long future no
doubt, planning ways of seeing her.
“Promise me you’ll consider everything.”
“It’s enough that we love each other!” she replied softly.
“You’re not a child but a woman, able to see it all in every light. You
must be very sure that you care; that you do love me.”
“I’m very sure, dear,” she said, not a little disturbed by his
solicitude, fearing that he himself might now be a prey to misgivings.
“You can write to me at the addresses I’ll send. And then wire me when
you’re quite sure--not till then!”
“Yes; I’ll do as you say. But tell me again that you love me! I shall
be so lonely without you!”
“With all my heart I love you. I wish we need never part again. Some
day that will be. Some day I can have you with me always! But now----”
The sentence died on his lips. What could be now he did not say, shrank
from saying perhaps. It was not for her to express in words what could
be now. She felt a sudden strong impulse to speak of his wife; to ask
him whether he did not still care for her. But it was in her heart, the
battleground of many and confused emotions, to give him the benefit of
every doubt. Her forces of defense had mutinied and left her powerless
even to question him. The joy of the knowledge that he loved her and
that she returned his love thrilled her like the song of triumphant
bugles.
Her heart was throbbing as they passed through the Durland gate. At the
door he took her in his arms.
“My dearest! I wouldn’t lie to you; I love you with all my heart. You
will write me; and don’t forget the telegram. I shall come flying at
the first possible moment after I get that. And don’t trouble about
anything. I want you to say you trust me and are sure of me.”
His kisses smothered her replies.
“Promise to be careful of yourself, dear. I should die without you!”
There were tears in her eyes as she fumbled for her latch key. She
watched him as he struck out with a long stride toward the city. She
thought that he looked back and waved his hand out of the shadows just
as she opened the door.