It is hard for the young to understand that the world which seems to
stop with their disaster is going on with smooth indifference, and that
a little time will carry them so far from any fateful event that when
they gather courage to face it they will find it curiously shrunken in
the perspective. Nothing really stops the world but death, and that
only for the dead. If we live, we must move on, we must change, we must
outwear every motion, however poignant or deep. Cornelia's shame failed
to kill her; she woke the next morning with a self-loathing that seemed
even greater than that of the night before, but it was actually less;
and it yielded to the strong will which she brought to bear upon
herself. She went to her work at the Synthesis as if nothing had
happened, and she kept at it with a hard, mechanical faithfulness which
she found the more possible, perhaps, because Charmian was not there,
for some reason, and she had not her sympathy as well as her own
weakness to manage. She surprised herself with the results of her
pitiless industry, and realized for the first time the mysterious
duality of being, in the power of the brain and the hand to toil while
the heart aches.
She was glad, she kept assuring herself, that she had put an end to all
hope from Ludlow; she rejoiced bitterly that now, however she had
disgraced herself in her violent behavior, she had at least disgraced
no one else. No one else could suffer through any claim upon her, or
kindness for her, or had any right to feel ashamed of her or injured by
her. But Cornelia was at the same time puzzled and perplexed with
herself, and dismayed with the slightness of her hold upon impulses of
hers which she thought she had overcome and bound forever. She made the
discovery, which she was yet far too young to formulate, that she had a
temperament to deal with that could at any time shake to ruins the
character she had so carefully built upon it, and had so wholly
mistaken for herself. In the midst of this dismay she made another
discovery, and this was that perhaps even her temperament was not what
she had believed it, but was still largely unknown to her. She had
always known that she was quick and passionate, but she certainly had
not supposed that she was capable of the meanness of wondering whether
Mr. Ludlow would take her note as less final than she had meant it, and
would perhaps seek some explanation of it. No girl that she ever heard
or read of, had ever fallen quite so low as to hope that; but was not
she hoping just that? Perhaps she had even written those words with the
tacit intention of calling him back! But this conjecture was the mere
play of a morbid fancy, and weak as she was, Cornelia had the strength
to forbid it and deny it.
At the end of the afternoon, she pretended that she ought to go and see
what had happened to Charmian, and on the way, she had time to
recognize her own hypocrisy, and to resolve that she would do penance
for it by coming straight at the true reason of her errand. She was
sent to Charmian in her studio, and she scarcely gave her a chance to
explain that she had staid at home on account of a cold, and had
written a note for Cornelia to come to dinner with her, which she would
find when she got back.
Cornelia said, "I want to tell you something, Charmian, and I want you
to tell me what you really think--whether I've done right, or not."
Charmian's eyes lightened. "Wait a moment!" She got a piece of the
lightwood, and put it on the fire which she had kindled on the hearth
to keep the spring chill off, and went and turned Ludlow's sketch of
herself to the wall. "I know it's about him." Then she came and
crouched on the tiger-skin at Cornelia's feet, and clasped her hands
around her knees, and fixed her averted face on the blazing pine. "Now
go on," she said, as if she had arranged the pose to her perfect
satisfaction.
Cornelia went on. "It's about him, and it's about some one else, too,"
and she had no pity on herself in telling Charmian all about that
early, shabby affair with Dickerson.
"I knew it," said Charmian, with a sigh of utter content, "I _told_
you, the first time I saw you, that _you_ had lived. Well: and has
he--turned up?"
"He has turned up--three times," said Cornelia.
Charmian shivered with enjoyment of the romantic situation. She reached
a hand behind her and tried to clutch one of Cornelia's but had to get
on without it. "And well: have they met?"
"No, they haven't," said Cornelia crossly, but not so much with
Charmian as with the necessity she was now in of telling her about her
last meeting with Ludlow. She began, "They almost did," and when
Charmian in the intensity of her interest could not keep turning around
to stare at her, Cornelia took hold of her head and turned her face
toward the fire again. Then she went on to tell how it had all
happened. She did not spare herself at any point, and she ended the
story with the expression of her belief that she had deserved it all.
"It wasn't boxing that little wretch's ears that was the disgrace; it
was having brought myself to where I _had_ to box them."
"Yes, that was it," sighed Charmian, with deep conviction.
"And I had to tell _him_ that I could never care for him, because I
couldn't bear to tell him what a fool I had been."
"No, no; you never could do that!"
"And I couldn't bear to have him think I was better than I really was,
or let him care for me unless I told him all about that miserable old
affair."
"No, _you_ couldn't, Cornelia," said Charmian solemnly. "_Some_ girls
might; _most_ girls _would_. They would just consider it a flirtation,
and not say anything about it, or not till after they were engaged, and
then just laugh. But you are different from other girls--you are so
_true_! Yes, you would have to tell it if it killed you; I can see
that; and you couldn't tell it, and you had to break his heart. Yes,
you _had_ to!"
"Oh, Charmian Maybough! How cruel you are!" Cornelia flung herself
forward and cried; Charmian whirled round, and kneeling before her,
threw her arms around her, in a pose of which she felt the perfection,
and kissed her tenderly.
"Why didn't you let me see how you were looking? How I have gone
on----"
Cornelia pulled herself loose. "Charmian! Do you _dare_ to mean that I
want him to ever speak to me again--or look at me?"
"No, no----"
"Or that I'm sorry I did it?"
"No; it's this cold that's making me so stupid."
"If he were to come back again this instant, I should have to tell him
just the same, or else tell him about that--that--and you know I
couldn't do that if I lived a thousand years."
Now she melted, indeed, and suffered Charmian to moan over her, and
fortify her with all the reasons she had urged herself in various forms
of repetition. Charmain showed her again how impossible everything that
she had thought impossible was, and convinced her of every conviction.
She made Cornelia's tragedy her romance, and solemnly exulted in its
fatality, while she lifted her in her struggle of conscience to a
height from which for the present at least, Cornelia could not have
descended without a ruinous loss of self-respect. In the renunciation
in which the worshipper confirmed her saint, Ludlow and his rights and
feelings were ignored, and Cornelia herself was offered nothing more
substantial than the prospect that henceforth she and Charmian could
live for each other in a union that should be all principle on one side
and all adoration on the other.