It was the day before Friday. Friday, so very near, seemed already
palpably present in the surcharged air of the cottage. No one mentioned
it, but that made its nearness more potent. At his usual hour for
dictation, Professor Spence had come out upon the narrow veranda. But,
although his secretary was there, pencil in hand, he had not dictated.
Instead he had sat contemplating Friday so long that his secretary
tapped her foot in impatience.
"Are you really lazy?" she asked, "Or are you just pretending to be?"
"I am really lazy. All truly gifted people are. You know what Wilde
says, 'Real industry is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to
do.'"
The prompt, "Who is Wilde?" of the secretary did not disconcert him. He
had discovered that her ignorance was as unusual as her knowledge.
"Who is Wilde? Oh, just a little bit of English literature. Christian
name of Oscar. You'll come across him when you go shopping."
A faint pucker appeared between the secretary's eye-brows.
"You are coming shopping, aren't you?" asked Spence, faintly stressing
the verb.
"I--want to."
"That's settled then."
The pucker grew more pronounced. The secretary resigned all hope of
dictation and laid down her pencil.
"Tomorrow," reminded Spence gently, "is Friday."
"Yes, I know. And if I go, do I--we--go tomorrow?"
"It would be advisable."
"The time doesn't matter," mused Desire. "But--do you mind if I speak
quite plainly?"
"Not at all. You have hardened me to plain speaking."
"I have been thinking over what you told me. It does make a difference.
I see that I need not be afraid of--of what I was afraid of. It's as
if--as if we had both had the measles."
"You can take--" began Spence, but stopped him-self. It would never do
to remind her that one may take the measles twice.
"Of course you won't believe it, not for a long time anyway," she went
on in the tone of an indulgent grand-mother, "but love is only an
episode. You are fortunate to be well over it."
Spence sighed. He hadn't intended to sigh. It just happened.
Fortunately it was the correct thing.
"I don't want to distress you," kindly, "but we were rather vague the
other night. I understood the main fact, but that is about all. You
didn't tell me what happened after."
The professor's chair, which had been tilted negligently back, came
down with a thud.
"After?" he murmured meekly. "After--?"
"I mean," prompted Desire gently, "did she marry the other man?"
"The other man? I--I don't know." The professor was willing to be
truthful while he could. But instantly he saw that it wouldn't do.
"You--don't--know?" If ever incredulity breathed in any voice it
breathed in hers. It gave our weak-kneed liar the brace that he needed.
"No," he said sadly, "they were to have been married--I have never
heard."
"Oh! Then, of course, she did not live in your home town."
"Didn't she?" asked Spence, momentarily off guard. "Oh, I see what you
mean--no, naturally not."
"I thought that perhaps you might have been boy and girl together,"
dreamily. "It so often happens."
"It does," said Spence. "But it didn't."
"And is there no one--no friend, from whom you could naturally inquire?
You feel you wouldn't care to ask anyone?"
"Ask? Good heavens, no--certainly not!"
"Men are queer," said Desire naively. "A woman would just simply have
to ask."
"She would."
"You think me inquisitive?" Her quick brain had not missed the dry
implication of his tone. "But you see I had to know something. It's all
right, I'm sure. But it would have been so much--more comfortable if
she were quite married."
(Oh course it would--why in thunder hadn't he thought of that? The
professor was much annoyed with himself.)
"She is probably quite, utterly married long ago," he said gloomily.
"What possible difference can it make?"
"None. Don't look so bitter! Perhaps I should not have asked questions.
I won't ask any more--except one. Would you mind very much telling me
her name?"
Her name!
The harassed man looked wildly around. But there was no escape. Not
even Sami was in sight. Only a jeering crow flapped black wings and
laughed discordantly.
"Just her first name, you know," added Desire reasonably.
"Oh yes--certainly. No, of course I don't mind. I am quite willing to
tell you her name. But--do you mean her real name or--or--the name she
was usually called?" The professor was sparring wildly for time.
"Wasn't she called by her real name?"
"Well--er--not always."
Desire's eyebrows became very slanting. "Any name will do," she said
coldly.
The professor gathered himself together. "Her name," he said
triumphantly, "Was--is Mary."
He had done well for himself this time! His questioner was plainly
satisfied with the name Mary. Perhaps lying gets easier as you go on.
He hoped so.
"My mother's name was Mary," said Desire. "It is a lovely name."
Spence felt very proud of himself. Not only had he produced a lovely
name in the space of three seconds and a half, but he had also provided
a not-to-be-missed opportunity of changing the subject.
"I suppose you do not remember your mother," he said tentatively.
"Oh yes, I do, although I was quite small when she died. Father says I
fancy some of the things I remember. Perhaps I do. I always dream very
vividly. And fact and dream are easily confused in a child's mind. My
most distinct memories are detached, like pictures, without any before
or after to explain them. There is one, for instance, about waking up
in the woods at night, wrapped in my mother's shawl and seeing her
face, all frightened and white, with the moon, like a great, silver
eye, shining through the trees. But I can't imagine why my mother would
be hiding in the woods at night."
"Why hiding?"
"There is a sense of hiding that comes with the memory--without
anything to account for it But, although I do not remember connected
incidents very well, I remember her--the feeling of having her with me.
And the terrible emptiness afterwards. If she had gone quite away, all
at once, I couldn't have borne it."
"Do you mean that she had a long illness?" asked Spence, greatly
interested.
"No. She died suddenly. It was just--you will call it silly
imagination--" she broke off uncertainly.
"I might call it imagination without the adjective."
"Yes. But it wasn't. It was real. The sense, I mean, that she hadn't
gone away. Nothing that wasn't real would have been of the slightest
use."
"It all depends on how we define reality. What seems real at one time
may seem unreal at another."
She nodded.
"That is just what has happened. I am not sure, now. The sense of
nearness left me as I grew up. But at that time, I lived by it. Do you
find the idea absurd?"
"Why should I? Our knowledge of our own consciousness is the absurdity.
All we know is that our normal waking consciousness is only one special
type. Around it lie potential forms of consciousness entirely
different, and quite as real. Sometimes we, or it, or they, break
through. I am paraphrasing James. Do you know James?"
"I have read 'Daisy Miller.'"
"This James was the Daisy Miller man's brother."
"Did he believe in the possibility of the dead helping the living?"
"He believed in all kinds of possibilities. But I don't think he
considered that possibility proven."
"It couldn't be proved, could it?" asked Desire thoughtfully.
"Experiences like that are so intensely individual. One cannot pass
them on."
"Can you describe yours at all?"
"Hardly. It was just a feeling of Presence. A sense of her being there.
It came at all sorts of times and in all sorts of places. We lived in
Vancouver when mother died. It was a much smaller town then, not like
the city you have seen. But after her death we moved about a great
deal, never staying very long anywhere, until we came here. There
were--experiences." Her eyes hardened. "But, as long as I had that
sense I am speaking of, I was safe. I used to have long crying fits in
the dark, a kind of blind terror of everything. And after one of them
it nearly always came. I never questioned it. Never once did I ask
myself, 'Is it mother?'. I just knew that it was. There seemed nothing
unusual about it."
"Was there no one, no woman, to take care of you?"
"There were--women." Desire's lips tightened into a thin red line. "We
did not travel alone. Once I remember terrifying a--a friend of
father's who was 'looking after' me. She heard me crying in my little,
dark room one night, and as soon as she could slip away, came in. She
was a kindly sort. But when she got there I was quite content and
happy--which surprised her much more than the crying had done. She
asked me what had 'shut me up,' and I said 'My mother is here--go
away.' She turned quite pasty-white and the candle shook so that the
hot grease fell upon my hands."
"What a life for a child!" exclaimed Spence in sudden rage. "Desire
dear, you must come with me! I couldn't--couldn't leave you here.
I--oh, dash it! I mean, it's so evident, isn't it, that we need each
other?"
"You really and truly need me?" doubtfully.
"Really and truly."
"But if I come, you ought to know something of the life I have lived.
You must realize that I am not an innocent young girl."
"Aren't you?" The professor found it difficult to say this with the
proper inflection. It did not sound as business-like as he could have
wished. But she was too much absorbed to notice.
"No. I've seen things which young girls do not see. I have heard things
which are never whispered before them. No one cared particularly what I
saw or heard. When I was smaller there was always someone--some
'housekeeper.' They were all kinds. None of them ever stayed long.
Looking back, it seems as if they passed like lurid shadows. Only one
of them seemed a real person. The others were husks. Her name was Lily.
She was very stout, her face was red and her voice loud. But there was
something real about Lily. And she was fond of children. She liked me.
She went out of her lazy way to teach me wisdom--oh, yes, it was
wisdom," in answer to Spence's horrified exclamation, "hard, sordid
wisdom, the only wisdom which would have helped me through the back
alleys of those days. I am unspeakably grateful to Lily. She spared me
much, and once she saved me--I can't tell you about that," she finished
simply.
Spence bit his lip on a word to which the expression of his face gave
force and meaning. But Desire was not looking at him.
"Do you see why I am different from other girls?" She asked gravely.
The professor restrained himself. "I see that you are different," he
said. "I don't care why. But I'm glad that you have told me what you
have. It explains something that has bothered me--" he paused seeking
words. But she caught up his thought with lightning intuition.
"You mean it explains why marriage isn't beautiful to me, like it may
be to a sheltered girl? Yes. I wanted you to see that. It may be holy,
but it isn't holy to me. I want to live my life apart from all that. To
me it is smirched and sodden and hateful. And now, do you still wish me
to come and be your secretary?"
"Now more than ever," said Spence. It was only the sealing of a
business transaction. But greatly to his annoyance he could not
entirely control a certain warmth and eagerness.
Desire held out a frank hand.
"Then I will marry you when you are ready," she said.