believe the Christian religion--though of course it is a very nice
religion. I didn’t know I should have to teach it. I knew Roger would
have to, but I supposed I should just stay at home and love him.” Then,
with a stifled desperation (but all so gentle--_pianissimo_): “I haven’t
thought about marriage much. I’ve only thought about Roger. And--forgive
me, Mrs. Twining--if Roger doesn’t mind, need you? He is a missionary
himself, you see. He must know best.” Then she tried for mirth. “If
Roger throws me over--why, then, we shan’t have to bother with asking
father, shall we? It will all be out of the way before he gets back.”
Roger leaned over and grasped Letitia’s hand. Mrs. Twining rose from her
deep chair and paced the wide verandah once, twice, three times the
length of it. Then she stopped before the pair and spoke, and I knew she
was trying not to sound harsh:
“Roger will convert you.”
The two young things started. They had already had time to forget.
“Oh no, I shan’t, Aunt Miriam. I don’t want her different in any way.”
I, of course, said nothing. The idyll was spoiling slowly before my
eyes, attacked first here, then there, by insidious, destructive agents.
But the hero and heroine were perfect still. How long would it be before
the poison ate in--reached the heart of the idyll, and them?
That night I had two sleepless housemates, I knew; I could hear Aunt
Miriam walking about her room. Mrs. Twining was a strong woman. She said
nothing to me; she bade Roger good-bye when he went off to the school as
naturally as if his religious integrity were not threatened. She greeted
Letitia with a serenity that was almost sweetness. Only I, perhaps, knew
how deep was her disturbance, for I caught her replacing _Primitive
Paternity_ on Roger’s shelves with a little disgusted push. I did not
know but that she might call on me to be devil’s advocate; to expound to
her how one might be non-Christian and yet not heathen. But apparently
she was waiting for Quayle’s return before making any move. Twining
himself, that day, seemed untroubled. He had not yet awakened from his
dream. Letitia, too, seemed unconscious. It was only Aunt Miriam and I
who, under a sunny sky, put up helpless hands against the coming storm.
I was not shocked, as she was, by Letitia’s non-religiousness. It hit me
in quite another place. Roger Twining was not any too enamoured of his
profession, as I well knew; it might be that Letitia would ruin it
utterly in his eyes. And if Uncle Ephraim (stout old son of
Kingsborough) was a portentous ghost to me, who had never seen him, what
must he be to Roger, bowed down under his burden of gratitude--and to
Aunt Miriam, who had been flesh of his flesh and soul of his sturdy
soul? Only three days before, I had walked in Eden with the untroubled
pair. And already my fourth-dimensional world was receding into the
original myth. The slow sun gave no sign; but the moon, past the full
and rising later each evening, seemed to be marking off the stages of
the legend. That very night we should sit in darkness, and we should
escort Letitia home, each of us with a lantern in his hand.... Believe
me, the moon is the real timekeeper; it is she who marks our human
intervals.
It came very suddenly, that night, as we sat looking at the stars. By
“it” I mean--oh, it is very hard to tell--the real irruption of the
devil, perhaps. The world and the flesh, with their simultaneous
utterance of the word “marriage,” had had their turn, and they had not
been able to shatter the dream. The devil came in, I suppose, with
Letitia’s paganism (if you can call it that); but that was only his
formal entrance, his conventional cue. We were all breathing a little
hard, but we were not without hope. There was a deep plot among us--the
only time we four conspired together--to put off consideration of the
problem, to pretend that there was no problem. Even Aunt Miriam, with a
quiet hand on Letitia’s knee, seemed to be waiting for it to solve--or
dissolve--itself. But the devil had made a good entrance. He was in fine
form, I may say. None of us helped him, but he did not need our help.
Letitia, as if with a half-thought of explaining herself, of showing the
decency of her impious up-bringing, had given us a wandering narrative
of her youth. Mrs. Quayle had died when Letitia was ten. Since then, her
life had been the interesting and curious thing I have earlier hinted
at. Her stress was not, as it had first been, on the exotic side of that
wandering life; rather, I thought, on the important things Professor
Quayle had done, and the distinguished friends they had had in every
part of the globe. But Letitia was not herself interested--she was
incapable of “side”--and Aunt Miriam asked no eager questions. She had
clasped Letitia’s hand in hers firmly, as if she would hold her bodily
back from Heathenesse. Roger had Letitia’s other hand, and so they sat.
Then I was startled by Roger’s voice, seeming to come from very far
away, from the inmost recesses of the dream in which he walked:
“Do you ever wear blue, Letitia?”
It was the first question he had ever asked her. It brought back to me
all the savor of that woodland miracle when we had met her, garlanded,
in the forest, and Virginia had flung away her dripping mango
unashamed.
“Often. Do you want me in a blue frock?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll put one on to-morrow. White is what I like best. But why?”
Her tone had changed, as it always changed when she spoke to Roger, and
his when he spoke to her. They seemed to strike the same note; their
voices mingled; it had nothing to do with the gamut they kept for the
rest of the world.
“It’s your widow’s peak, I think. I used to play with a little girl who
wore blue and had yellow hair in a widow’s peak. I was very fond of her.
What was her name, Aunty?”
Letitia laughed. “Yes, what was her name?”
Mrs. Twining seemed to rouse herself from deafness. “What is it, my
dear?”
“The girl I used to play with, who had yellow hair and a widow’s peak,
and always wore blue?”
Aunt Miriam answered, slowly, “It must have been Mabel Cheyne, Roger.”
“I remember Minnie Cheyne. She wasn’t like that.”
“Mabel was her little sister who died. You played with her in the very
beginning. I am surprised that you remember her.”
“I don’t, very well. It must have been very far back, when I was tiny. I
can’t say I really remember Mabel, but I do remember the widow’s peak
and the blue dress. Did I go to her funeral?”
“Of course not!” Mrs. Twining’s voice was sharp. “You were far too young
to go to funerals. We went, of course. She was a pretty child, and, in
your baby way, you were very fond of her. You soon got over it, of
course.”
“It is odd that I should remember. But you know I’ve always liked
widow’s peaks, uncannily, since Mabel--if that was her name. And she
must have had blue dresses.”
“And you want me to wear blue in memory of her?” Letitia was totally
without coquetry, I knew, but I thought she would be amused. There was
no amusement in her tone, however--only a blank meekness.
“I don’t really care a bit. Only, somehow, blue fits with your hair. I
seem to see it that way.”
Mrs. Twining turned to her. “He used to play with Mabel every day--such
babies they were. In some queer way, it made an impression.” It was
almost as if she were apologizing for Roger’s vagaries.
“As if I cared a hang, dear!” His tone was the Letitia tone again, pure
and full--the tone he kept for her. Then I heard it sunk to a whisper.
“For me, you are forever and forever in white.” I don’t think Mrs.
Twining heard. She had turned her head away from them.
Though we longed for the moon, she did not rise, and Letitia bravely
made ready to go. A little breeze had sprung up from the forest, and the
scent of ginger struggled with the frangipani in our nostrils. The stars
were very clear. We were all loath, in our own way, I think, to let the
moment go. Far down the tree-smothered slope to the east, a native voice
rose through our silence, piercing it with melancholy song--some late
farer from a feast, winding up a green trail to his village.
“Your father comes back to-morrow?” It was Aunt Miriam who asked it, her
hands on the girl’s shoulders.
“By ten in the morning, he said.”
Aunt Miriam kissed her good-night. “I’ll go down and see him, and fetch
you back with me, if he’ll let me.”
“You? And why not I?” Roger broke in.
“You’ll be busy, my dear, in the morning. Your work--your calling--your
sacred task--must come first of all. Your people mustn’t think you put
even Letitia”--she kissed the girl--“before them. Of course you will see
Professor Quayle--but I must see him, too. Your uncle would have wished
it done in that way.” There was no gainsaying her tone.
“Can’t I bring father up to you?” Even Letitia knew that Mrs. Twining
never left the Mission.
“My dear, I stand in my husband’s place. I must go to him for Roger. And
you children must start at once. It is late, I’m afraid. Good-night.”
She clasped the girl to her, then kissed Roger and went into the house.
I was privately amused that Mrs. Twining’s conservatism should choose to
take, in this instance, so European a form. The gesture didn’t “go” with
her, but her firmness did, and I saw afresh how Roger was both supported
and handicapped. Wonderful Aunt Miriam!
We stood, the three of us, looking at the stars for a moment before
starting down the trail. A faint radiance in the east showed that the
moon was on her way to us. How I wish we had waited for her--defied the
world, the flesh, and the devil; prolonged that moment, and seen her
rise! But we did not. We plunged into the forest on our downward path--I
in front, like a link-boy; Letitia and Roger (the darlings!), hand in
hand, behind me. My heart was very light over the little matter of
creeds; they were so beautiful, those two, together. That, of course,
was the devil getting well down to his part--my lightness of heart, I
mean.
The next day was, as it were, the last; and I hardly know how to
chronicle it for you. I will at least leave out every irrelevant thing,
though it was packed, wilfully, with irrelevancies. The native boy who
came running to Roger at dawn, because his father was dying; the snake I
killed after breakfast in the garden; the sudden shower that came
drenchingly down and delayed Mrs. Twining’s expedition to the town--all
those things were irrelevant, though they figured in the general
irritation of our hearts. Personally, I could hardly wait for the old
ex-chief to die, leaving Roger free, or until Aunt Miriam should return,
leading Letitia as a bride. I could not read; it was too wet to stroll;
I was of no use to any human being. The time seemed very long before
Mrs. Twining came back from her unusual journey--gray as wood-ash, and
without Letitia. Roger had not yet returned.
She faced me as I met her at the steps, then flung up her hands above
her noble head, and passed by me without speaking. Inside the house I
heard one low groan. I rushed to her, for I was frightened. “Take care
of Roger. Keep him away from me,” she said, in a voice that sounded
rusty with age, and passed on to her own room. I heard the key turn.
When Roger did come back, an hour later, exhausted and eager, I could
not help him. Letitia had not come. His aunt was locked in her own room,
and a terrible silence brooded over the scene. Even Loo seemed to be
performing his tasks in a vacuum, for I had neither seen nor heard him.
Roger got admittance to Mrs. Twining’s room, and I spent the longest
half-hour I have ever lived, while I waited for him on the headland amid
the cocoa-palms, looking out to sea. I say “waited.” I had no knowledge
of whether he would come to me; but there I could be either reached or
avoided, and even a madman would know that I was discreetly out of
earshot of the house.
Finally Roger stood before me, white from head to foot--even his face
and his hands were white as the linen he wore. I held out my hand; he
took it, and with sudden violence pulled me to my feet. The devil had
got in his work.
“Has she told you?”
“Nothing.” I was trembling--physically, I mean. But the young athlete
before me stood like a rock.
“Will you go down at once and see Letitia?”
“For God’s sake, go yourself!” I did not know what was the matter, but I
felt sure that neither man nor woman, neither science nor creed, could
withstand Roger Twining when he looked like that.
“She lied to me last night.”
“Who? What?”
“Aunt Miriam. About Mabel Cheyne.”
“Mabel Cheyne?” I had forgotten the name. I tried to pull my hand from
his, to get far enough away from him to focus him, to define his
aberration. But his hand was a trap for mine.
“There was no Mabel Cheyne.”
“What of it?”
“Letitia is my sister.”
I sank back so suddenly that, involuntarily, he let me go. There was
nothing to add to that statement; no need to trace its birth and growth
from Aunt Miriam’s sudden fear, the night before, to the corroboration
she had received that morning from Professor Quayle. No need to assemble
the evidence; it had been assembled, put together, with tense accuracy,
by two suffering, gray-haired people that morning.
Roger Twining had no great desire for speech, I could see. But a few
more words were wrung from him: “Letitia never knew until to-day that
she was an orphan, that she had been adopted. I’m older. I remembered
her, you see, without realizing. You must go to her and talk to her, I
am going off to be alone.” And he turned from me toward the forest. Just
once he looked back: “Don’t be afraid; I’ll be back in a few hours. Not
to lunch. I don’t want any.” He disappeared among the huge
breadfruit-trees.
I didn’t go to Letitia. I would in time, I thought, if Roger insisted;
but not now, not until I had some notion of what to say. I felt, too,
that I must not leave at once. I did not wish to go farther away from
Roger, or farther away from Mrs. Twining. Each pulled me with invisible
cords, as though I were their defender. When I could think of ten words
I could say to Letitia Quayle without touching on a raw wound, I would
go. Just now I could not stir.
All sense of time left me. In my retreat I was blind to the sun that
might have told me how the hours were passing. Forward and back, forward
and back, I went in my dreary mind, from one impossible course of action
to another. All through those hours I grew at once more inert and more
ashamed of my inertia. My will rose with great gasps to lift me from
where I sat; then fell back paralyzed before this or that clear
perception of my helplessness. It was the heat of early afternoon,
penetrating my high palm roof, that drove me back at last to the house.
Luncheon lay on the table, untasted and undisturbed, hardened into a
disgusting effigy of food. Mrs. Twining met me in another room. Her face
was drawn and twisted, as though she had had a “stroke,” but she spoke
clearly:
“Where is Roger?”
I shrugged my shoulders vaguely. “Safe--off there, somewhere--alone.”
“Go and find him.”
This seemed to be just the urge I needed. I started off obediently. She
must have divined that I knew, for as I left the porch she said, in a
very low voice:
“I knew there was a little sister, though until to-day I never knew who
took her. But when Roger remembered, last night, I suddenly grew afraid.
Just for an instant they looked alike. So I lied.”
I walked slowly, hardly directing my footsteps, except that of course I
went the way I had seen Roger go. My feet dragged; but by this time my
brain was blessedly numb, and I was no longer afraid to present myself
with my errand undone. I had lost the sense of faithlessness to duty.
I found him at last beside the musical waterfall, in the deep-shaded,
vine-hung ravine. He had wandered back to that scene of passionate
innocence, and now sat by the pool where, a few days before, I had seen
her drink from the cup he held. He did not question me as I sat down
beside him; in silence, in our respective ways, we pieced together the
rent fragments of that most beautiful dream. We must both have been very
tired, for Twining did not speak at all and I found my eyes drowsily
closing to match that blessed anæsthesia of the spirit. The only sounds
I heard were the unchanging sounds of Nature, and the remembered voices
of my two friends at play in Eden. I saw the green dazzle of leaves, the
tender vividness of blossoms, and, now and then, moving as by right
among those natural sweetnesses, the white figure of Letitia. I must
almost have dreamed in earnest, for during a little space of time I
recaptured the unrecapturable. It was as it had been, and we were
happy, out of the world.
Finally Roger stirred violently, and I shook myself awake to see him
standing, with that face of rock, beside me, staring. Just for a moment
I thought it was a dream come true, for, though the things about me were
sharp with reality, Letitia stood there before us in the flesh, and
spoke--the same white Letitia who had come to us laughing from behind a
palm-tree.
“I ran away,” she said, very quietly. “Father doesn’t know. I thought
you would be here. So I came, straight.”
She smiled at me--wonderful child!--and held out her hand to Roger. The
blood came back into his face, but he did not take her hand. He folded
his arms instead, and bent his dark eyes on the ground.
The girl shook her head very sadly, and smiled more sadly still. “May I
sit down?” And she went to the rock where she had sat drinking from the
cup he held.
If I had not been able to obey Roger’s earlier command to go and talk to
Letitia Quayle, I could still less talk to her there, before him. I
turned, in silence, to go up the trail down which the white figure had
just come.
“Don’t go.” She stopped me. “Roger and I don’t mind. And I’d rather you
would hear what I have to say. It’s better so. Come, Roger, sit down.”
She placed me, by her tone, where they had always tacitly placed me in
the days now so diabolically reproduced. I was again their faithful
fool. She did not touch him, but she beckoned him to sit near her. To my
surprise, he sank down in the exact spot she pointed to. I drew off to a
little distance, my heart near to breaking.
“Father means to take me away on the _Rarotonga_ to-morrow,” she said,
“and of course he didn’t think I’d want to see you again. But I had to
say good-bye, didn’t I?”
She tucked her feet up under her like a little girl, and, like a little
girl, began plaiting the fronds of a fern. Roger still had not spoken. I
did not wonder. How could he speak to a child like that of the dark
things that lay between them? What words could he use? And as I looked
once more, stealthily, at him, my pity gushed out afresh; for he, too,
seemed unready for life, a beautiful young body with soul scarce budded.
Yet if he had been the unformed lad I felt him, he would have stretched
out his hand and taken hers--as of old.
“It is good-bye, Roger, dear, I suppose.” She had thrown off her hat,
and now she bent her head so low over her frond-weaving that I could not
see the little peak of hair. “And never again, until we are very
old....” Oh, how softly her words came, scarce audible above the
waterfall! “I didn’t know anything could hurt so. But we’re hurt
together. That’s one thing, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s one thing.” It was the first time he had spoken, but his
voice struck the very note of hers. I turned my head away.
“You won’t even take my hand, will you?” she went on, in her gentle,
wondering tone.
He shook his head.
I got up softly, meaning to leave them--to lose myself, at least, just
beyond in the trail. I could not endure to be there. A terrible altar
was slowly being raised by that secret waterfall; terrible as the altar
that legend said had once abided in that spot. It was not meant for me
to see the rearing of that sacrificial stone.
But Letitia held me with a gesture of her little hand. “No, you must not
go. We must not be alone. I ran away.... It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Then you must come with me.” I knew only that this poignancy must not
be prolonged.
“I will.” And she got up, flinging her fronds away. “Good-bye, Roger.”
She did not hold out her hand. He stood five paces away from her, his
leaden eyes still seeking the ground.
“Not just my hand--once?” she pleaded with him.
And again he shook his head.
“Because it _is_ good-bye.”
Nothing broke the silence.
Then suddenly she moved to his side--close to him, although she did not
touch him. I heard her voice change utterly. I saw her face flush, and
her eyes draw his unwilling eyes to her. “Because--listen, Roger--if you
choose, I’ll stay forever. I don’t understand anything; I don’t believe
anything; and nothing they say makes any difference. I love you better
than the whole world, or what you call God, or anything. No one is real
but you--the rest is just what people get out of books!”
She had flung her head back as she spoke, and I saw her face
unforgettably there before me--changed as her voice was changed, the
face of a woman hard beset, tragic with passion, beautiful with utter
unconsciousness of self. The rite was being accomplished before me. I
stood, rooted.
Then Roger Twining did a strange thing. He leaned to her and passed his
shaking hand over her beautiful, ageless face as you would pass your
hand over a mask. She closed her eyes to his touch, bending forward in
complete docility. When he took his hand away, she opened her eyes and
smiled up at him as she had smiled of old. The face that had leaped out
at us as from an immemorial dark myth was gone, and there again stood
the fresh apparition of the forest.
“Good-bye, Letitia. Malcolm will take you back. Good-bye, dear.” And
Roger grew young again before my eyes, a boy, biting his lips not to
cry.
“Good-bye!” Her voice chimed in with his, and I led her away from the
storied spot. Before the bushes closed over us I looked back once. Roger
was lying face down on the ground, his shoulders heaving. Letitia’s eyes
inquired of mine.
“He’s all right, dear,” I soothed her. “I’ll take care of him. It’s just
hell for a little. Don’t look back. Don’t do anything that would be
cruel to him.”
I spoke as to a child, and like a child she followed me,
unquestioningly, up the trail.
VIII
SEA-GREEN
The first night, I remember, was not so bad. One braces oneself, I
suppose, for a first encounter with people who have power over one. I
was a free man, according to any legal fiction that may prevail; but I
was young, and poor, and ambitious. Youth, poverty, and ambition put you
in the clutch of the older, richer, and devilishly detached people who
dally with the notion of giving you a living wage in return for services
rendered. If I had refused to be in the Fenbys’ power, I should
presently have been in the clutch of a bony allegorical figure you might
call Destitution. So I use the phrase advisedly. Poor Ralph had taken my
last cent--my last ten-dollar bill, anyhow--so that it was important for
me to get on with these Fenbys. Old Crowninshield had recommended me to
them as tutor for their grandson. It was the first and last thing old
Crowninshield ever did for me; and I have never known whether to be
grateful or not.
My drive from the station was accomplished in the leisurely twilight of
late May; but there was afterglow enough to show me that the region had
neither physical charms nor social resources. The mansion seemed to have
been left high and dry by the retreating human wave. We passed one
darkened factory and a bunch of gaunt wooden tenements--stuck in the
fields a mile beyond the station, with the casual gesture industry
sometimes makes in our older Eastern states. There was not a hill, not
a lake, not a brook, even, for all it was such open country. The man who
drove me had a kind of taciturn humor. I placed him at once: an old
Irish dependent who had by this time forgotten all about Ireland. His
type was so familiar to me (I had been brought up in the next state)
that I could almost foretell the drawing-room furniture. It would not,
of course, be called the “drawing-room.” The carriage was comfortable
and had once had style. After three-quarters of an hour I alighted at
the steps of an ugly stone house, built evidently in the ’fifties. The
figure on the threshold was obviously my employer. A lantern swinging
from the porch roof enabled me to decide that at once. He leaned on a
gold-headed stick--of course. Any man to whom Old Crowninshield
confidently recommended you would lean on a gold-headed stick.