The boy and the girl sat up late in the library that night discussing
the two letters which so profoundly concerned them.
Indeed, the old order of things was about to pass away before their
dismayed and saddened eyes--eyes not yet accustomed to the burning grief
which dimmed them--hearts not yet strengthened for the first heavy
responsibilities which they had ever borne.
"I can't bear to leave you, Steve," said the boy, striving to steady his
voice. "What are you going to do about college?"
"Well--I--I'll go back to college and finish the term. Dad wanted it."
Neither dreamed of disobeying the desires expressed in the two letters.
"Will you finish college?" he asked.
"I don't know. I want to do what dad wished me to do.... I wonder what
a course in hospital training is like?"
"Down there at Bayport?"
"Yes.... After all, that is accomplishing something. And I like
children, Jim."
"They're defective children down there."
"Poor little lambs! I--I believe I could do some good--accomplish
something. But do you know, Jim, it almost frightens me when I remember
that you will be away two years----" She began to weep, lying there in
her big chair with her black-edged handkerchief pressed against her
face.
"I wish I could take you to Europe, Steve," he said huskily.
She dried her eyes leisurely.
"Couldn't you? No, you couldn't, of course. Dad would have said so if
it was what he wanted. Well--then I'll finish the term at Vassar. You
won't go before Easter?"
"No, I'll be here, Steve. We'll see each other then, anyway.... Do you
think you'll get along with your aunt?"
"I don't know," said the girl. "She means to be kind, I suppose. But
dad spoiled me. Oh, Jim! I'm--I'm too unhappy to c-care what becomes of
me now. I'll finish the term and then I'll go and learn how to nurse
sick little defective children while you're away----" her voice broke
again.
"I wish you wouldn't cry," said the boy;--"I'm--I can't stand it----"
"Oh, forgive me!" She sprang up and flung herself on the rug beside his
chair.
"I'm sorry! I'm selfish. I'll do everything dad wished, cheerfully.
You'll go abroad and educate yourself by travel, and I'll learn a
profession. And some day I'll find out what I really am fitted to do,
and then I'll go abroad and study, too."
"You'll be twenty, then, Steve--just the age to know what you really
want to do."
She nodded, listlessly, kneeling there beside his chair, her cheek
resting on her clasped hands, her grey eyes fixed on the dying coals.
After a long silence she said:
"Jim, I really don't know what I want to do in life. I am not certain
that I want to do anything."
"What? Not the stage?"
"No--I'm not honestly sure. _Everything_ interests me. I have a
craving to see everything and learn about everything in the world. I
want to know all there is to know; I'm feverishly curious. I want to
see everything, experience everything, attempt everything! It's
silly--it's crazy, of course. But there's a restless desire for the
knowledge of experience in my heart that I can't explain. I love
everything--not any one particular thing above another--but everything.
To be great in any one thing would not satisfy me--it's a terrible thing
to say, isn't it, Jim!--but if I were a great actress I should try to
become a great singer, too; and then a great painter and sculptor and
architect----"
"For Heaven's sake, Steve!"
"I tell you I want to know it all, be it all--see, do, live everything
that is to be seen, done, and lived in the world----!"
She lifted her head and straightened her shoulders, sweeping the tumbled
hair from her brow impatiently: and her brilliant grey eyes met his,
unsmiling.
"Of course," she said, "this is rot I'm talking. But every hour of my
life I'm going to try to learn something new about the wonderful world I
live in--try something new and wonderful--live every minute to the
full--experience everything.... Do you think I'm a fool, Jim?"
He smiled:
"No, but you make me feel rather unambitious and commonplace, Steve.
After all, I merely wish to write a few good novels. That would content
me."
"Oh, Jim," she said, "you'll do it, and I'll probably amount to nothing.
I'll just be a crazy creature flying about and poking my nose into
everything, and stirring it up a little and then fluttering on to the
next thing. Like the Bandar-log--that's what I am--just a monkey,
enchanted and excited by everything inside my cage and determined to
find out what is hidden under every straw."
"Yours is a good mind, Steve," he said, still smiling.
The girl looked up at him wistfully:
"Is it? I wish I knew. I'm going to try to find out. Have I really a
good mind? Or is it just a restless one? Anyway, there's no use my
trying to be an ordinary girl. I'm either monkey or genius; and I am
convinced that the world was made for me to rummage in."
He laughed.
"Anyway," she said, "I've amused you and cheered you up. Good night,
Jim dear."
*CHAPTER XIII*
Stephanie, looking very slim and young in her deep mourning, went back
to college unreconciled and in tears. Jim drove her to the station.
They stood together in the Pullman vestibule for a few minutes before
the train departed, and she clung to him, both black-gloved hands
holding tightly to his shoulders.
"Everything familiar in life seems to be ending," she said tremulously.
"I'm not very old yet, and I didn't really wish to begin living
seriously so soon--no matter what nonsense I talked about
self-expression. All I want now is to get off this train and go back
home with you."
"Poor little Steve," he said under his breath. "But it's better for you
to return to college. The house would be too sad for you. Go back to
college and study hard and play basket ball and skate----"
"Oh, I will," she said desolately. "I'll see the wretched term through.
I was merely telling you what I'd rather do--go home and just live there
all alone with you."
"You'd become tired of it pretty soon, Steve. Don't you think so?"
They looked at each other intently for a moment, then an odd expression
came into the girl's grey eyes:
"It's you who would tire of it, Jim," she said. "I'm not old enough to
amuse you yet. I'm still only a child to you."
"What nonsense----!"
"No. You've been wonderful to me. But you are older. I've bored you
sometimes."
He protested; but she shook her head.
"A girl knows," she said. "And a man can't make a comrade of a girl who
has no experiences to swap with him, no conclusions to draw, none of
life's discoveries to compare with his.... Don't look so guilty and
distressed; you have always been a perfect dear. But, oh, if you knew
how hard I've tried to catch up with you!--how desperately I try to be
old enough for you----"
"Steve, you _are_ an ideal sister! But you know how it is--when a man
has such a lot to think about----"
"I _do_ know! And that is exactly what I also am determined to have--a
lot to think about!" Her colour was high and her grey eyes brilliant.
"In two years you shall see. I shall be an interesting woman to you
when you come back! I vow and declare I shall be interesting enough to
be friends with you on equal terms! Wait and see!"
"But, Steve," he protested, smiling, yet bewildered by the sudden fiery
animation of the girl, "I never supposed you felt that I
condescended--patronized----"
"How could you help it!--a little fool who doesn't know anything!" She
was laughing unnaturally, and her nervous fingers tightened and relaxed
on his shoulders. "But when you come back after two years' travel, I
shall at least be able to take your temperature, and keep you
entertained if you're ill----! Oh, Jim, I don't know what I'm saying!
I'm just heart-broken at going away from you. You do care a lot for me,
don't you?"
"Of course I do."
"And I promise to be a very interesting woman when you come back from
abroad.... Oh, dear, the train is moving. Good-bye, Jim dear!" She
flung her veil aside and put both slim arms around his neck in a passion
of adoration and farewell.
He dropped to the platform from the slowly moving train and walked back
toward the station. And he was uneasily conscious, for the first time
in his life, of the innocent abandon of this young girl's
embrace--embarrassed by the softness of her mouth--impatient of himself
for noticing it.
When he arrived at the house Miss Quest's luggage had gone and that
capable and determined lady was ready to depart for Bayport in a large,
powerful automobile bearing her monogram, which stood in front of the
house.
"Mr. Cleland," she said, "before I go, I have several things to say to
you. One is that I like you."
He reddened with surprise, but expressed his appreciation pleasantly and
without embarrassment.
"Yes," continued Miss Quest, reflectively, "you're much like your
father. He and I began our acquaintance by differing: we ended friends.
I hope his son and I may continue that friendship."
"I hope so," he said politely.
"Thank you. But the keynote to friendship is frankness. Shall I sound
it?"
"Certainly," he replied, smiling.
"Very well: my niece ought to have a woman companion when she returns
from college at Easter."
"Why?" he asked, astonished.
"Because she isn't your sister, and she's an attractive girl."
After a silence she went on:
"I know that you and Stephanie regard each other as brother and sister.
But you're not. And the world knows it. It's an absurd world, Mr.
Cleland."
"It's rather a rotten world if Steve and I can't live here alone
together without gossip," he said hotly.
"Let's take it as we find it and be practical. Shall I look up a
companion for Stephanie, or shall I return here at Easter?"
He pondered the suggestion, frowning. Miss Quest said pleasantly:
"Please, I don't mean to interfere. You are of age, and over. But the
world, if it cares to think, will remember that you and Stephanie are
not related. In two years, when you return from Europe, Stephanie will
be twenty and you twenty-four. And, laying aside the suggestion that an
older woman's presence might be advantageous under the circumstances,
who is going to control Stephanie?"
"Control her?"
"Yes, control, guide, steady her through the most critical period of her
life?"
The young fellow, plainly unconvinced, looked at Miss Quest out of
troubled eyes.
"Come," she said briskly, "let's have a heart-to-heart talk and find out
what's ahead of us. Let's be business-like and candid. Shall we?"
"By all means."
"Then we'll begin at the very beginning:
"Stephanie is a dear. But she's very young. And at twenty she will
still be very, very young. What traits and talents she may have
inherited from a clever, unprincipled father--my own nephew, Mr.
Cleland--I don't know. God willing, there's nothing of him in her--no
tendencies toward irregularities; no unmoral inclination to drift,
nothing spineless and irresponsible.
"As for Stephanie's mother, I know little about her. I think she was
merely a healthy young animal without education, submitting to and
following instinctively the first man who attracted her. Which happened
to be my unhappy nephew."
She shook her head and gazed musingly at the window where the sunshine
fell.
"There are the propositions; this is the problem, Mr. Cleland. Now, let
us look at the conditions which bear directly on it. Am I boring you?"
"No," he said. "It's very necessary to consider this matter. I'm just
beginning to realize that I'm really not fitted to guide and control
Stephanie."
She laughed.
"What a confession! But do you know that, all over the world, men are
beginning to come to similar conclusions? Conditions absolutely without
precedent have arisen within a few brief years. And Stephanie, just
emerging into womanhood, is about to face them. The day of the woman
has dawned.
"Ours is a restless sex," continued Miss Quest grimly. "And this is the
age of our opportunity. I don't know just what it is that animates my
enfranchised sex, now that the world has suddenly flung open doors which
have confined us through immemorial ages--each woman to her own narrow
cell, privileged only to watch freedom through iron bars.
"But there runs a vast restlessness throughout the world; in every
woman's heart the seeds of revolution, so long dormant, are germinating.
The time has come when she is to have her fling. And she knows it!"
She shrugged her trim shoulders:
"It is the history of all enfranchisement that license and excess are
often misconstrued as freedom by liberated prisoners. To find ourselves
free to follow the urge of aspiration may unbalance some of us. Small
wonder, too."
She sprang to her feet and began to march up and down in front of the
fireplace, swinging her reticule trimmed with Krupp steel. Cleland
rose, too.
"What was all wrong in our Victorian mothers' days is all right now,"
she said, smilingly. "We're going to get the vote; that's a detail
already discounted. And we've already got about everything else except
the right to say how many children we shall bring into the world. That
will surely come, too; that, and the single standard of morality for
both sexes. Both are bound to come. And then," she smiled again
brightly at Cleland, "I have an idea that we shall quiet down and
outgrow our restlessness. But I don't know."
"What you say is very interesting," murmured the young fellow.
"Yes, it's interesting. It is significant, too. So is the problem of
making something out of defectives. After a while there won't be any
defectives when we begin to breed children as carefully as we breed
cattle. Sex equality will hasten sensible discussion; discussion will
result in laws. A, B and C may have babies; D, E and F may not. And,
after a few generations, the entire feminine alphabet can have and may
have babies. And if, here and there, a baby is not wanted, there'll be
no sniveling sectarian conference to threaten the wrath of Mumbo-Jumbo!"
Miss Quest halted in her hearth-rug promenade:
"The doom of hypocrisy, sham and intolerance is already in sight. Hands
off and mind your business are written on the wall. So I suppose
Stephanie will think we ought to keep our hands off her and mind our
business if she wishes to go on the stage or dawdle before an easel in a
Washington Mews studio some day."
Her logic made Cleland anxious again.
"The trouble lies in this intoxicating perfume we call liberty. We
women sniff it afar, and it makes us restless and excitable. It's a
heady odour. Only a level mind can enjoy it with discretion.
Otherwise, it incites to excess. That's all. We're simply not yet used
to liberty. And _that_ is what concerns me about Stephanie--with her
youth, and her intelligence, her undoubted gifts and--her possible
inheritance from a fascinating rascal of a father.
"Well, that is the girl; there are the conditions; this is the
problem.... And now I must be going."
She held out her smartly gloved hand; retained his for a moment:
"You won't sail before Stephanie's Easter vacation?"
"No; I'll probably sail about May first."
"In that case, I'll come on from Bayport, and you won't need to find a
companion for Stephanie. After you sail, she'll come to me, anyway."
"For hospital training," he nodded.
"For two years of it. It's her choice."
"Yes, I know. She prefers it to college."
Miss Quest said very seriously:
"For a girl like Stephanie, it will be an excellent thing. It will give
her a certain steadiness, a foundation in life, to have a profession on
which she may rely in case of adversity. To care for and to be
responsible for others develops character. She already seems
interested."
"She prefers it to graduating from Vassar."
Miss Quest nodded, then looking him directly in the eyes:
"I want to say one thing. May I?"
"Certainly."
"Then, above all, be patient with Stephanie. Will you?"
"Of course!" he replied, surprised.
"I am looking rather far into the future," continued Miss Quest. "You
will change vastly in two years. She will, too. Cherish the nice
friendship between you. A man's besetting sin is impatience of women.
Try to avoid it. Be patient, even when you differ with her. She's going
to be a handful--I may as well be frank. I can see that--see it plainly.
She's going to be a handful for me--and you must always try to keep her
affections.
"It's the only way to influence any woman. I know my sex. You're a
typical man, entirely dependent on logic and reason--or think you are.
All men think they are. But logic and reason are of no use in dealing
with us unless you have our affections, too. Good-bye. I do like you.
I'll come again at Easter."
Alone in the quiet house, with his memories for companions, the young
fellow tried to face the future;--tried to learn to endure the
staggering blow which his father's death had dealt him,--strove
resolutely to shake off the stunned indifference, the apathy through
which he seemed to see the world as through a fog.
Gradually, as the black winter months passed, and as he took up his work
again and pegged away at it, the inevitable necessity for distraction
developed, until at last the deadly stillness of the house became
unendurable, driving him out once more into the world of living men.
So the winter days dragged, and the young fellow faced them alone in the
sad, familiar places where, but yesterday, he had moved and talked with
his only and best beloved.
Perhaps it was easier that way. He had his memories to himself, sharing
none. But he did not share his sorrow, either. And that is a thing
that undermines.
At first he was afraid that it would be even harder for him when
Stephanie returned at Easter. The girl arrived in her heavy mourning,
and he met her at the station, as his father used to meet him.
She lifted her rather pale face and passively received her kiss, but
held tightly to his arm as they turned away together through the
hurrying crowds of strangers.
Each one tried very hard to find something cheerful to talk about; but
little by little their narratives concerning the intervening days of
absence became spiritless and perfunctory.
The car swung into the familiar street and drew up before the house;
Stephanie laid one hand on Jim's arm, stepped out to the sidewalk, and
ran up the steps, animated for a moment with the natural eagerness for
home. But when old Meacham silently opened the door and her gaze met
his:
"Oh--Meacham," she faltered, and her grey eyes filled.
However, she felt her obligations toward Jim; and they both made the
effort, at dinner, and afterward in the library, fighting to keep up
appearances.
But silence, lurking near, crept in upon them, a living intruder whose
steady pressure gradually prevailed, leaving them pondering there under
the subdued lamplight, motionless in the depths of their respective
armchairs, until endurance seemed no longer possible--and speech no
longer a refuge from the ghosts of what-had-been. And the girl, in her
black gown, rose, came silently over to his chair, seated herself on the
arm, and laid her pale face against his. He put one arm around her,
meaning to let her weep there; but withdrew it suddenly, and released
himself almost roughly with a confused sense of her delicate fragrance
clinging to him too closely.
The movement was nervous and involuntary; he shot a perplexed glance at
her, still uneasily conscious of the warmth and subtle sweetness which
had so suddenly made of this slender girl in black something unfamiliar
to his sight and touch.
"Let's try to be cheerful," he muttered, scarcely understanding what he
said.
It was the first time he had ever repulsed her or failed to respond to
her in their mutual loneliness. And why he did it he himself did not
understand.
He left the arm-chair and went and stood by the mantel, resting one
elbow on it and looking down into the coals; she slipped into the depths
of the chair and lay there looking at him.
For something in the manner of this man toward her had set her thinking;
and she lay there in silence, watching his averted face, deeply intent
on her own thoughts, coming to no conclusions.
Yet somehow the girl was aware that, in that brief moment of their grief
when she had sought comfort in his brotherly caress and he had offered
it, then suddenly repulsed her, a profound line of cleavage had opened
between him and her; and that the cleft could never be closed.
Neither seemed to be aware that anything had happened. The girl
remained silent and thoughtful; and he became talkative after a while,
telling her of his plans for travel, and that he had arranged for
keeping open the house in case she and Miss Quest wished to spend any
time in town.
"I'll write you from time to time and keep you informed of my
movements," he said. "Two years pass quickly. By the time I'm back
I'll have a profession and so will you."
She nodded.
"Then," he went on, "I suppose Miss Quest had better come here and live
with us."
"I'm not coming back here."
"What?"
"I'm going about by myself--as you are going--to to observe and learn."
"You wish to be foot-free?"
"I do. I shall be my own mistress."
"Of course," he said drily, "nobody can stop you."
"Why should anybody wish to? I shall be twenty-one--nearly; I shall
have a profession if I choose to practise it; I shall have my
income--and all the world before me to investigate."
"And then what?"
"How do I know, Jim? A girl ought to have her chance. She ought to
have her fling, too, if she wants it--just as much as any man. It's the
only way she can learn anything. And I've concluded," she added,
looking curiously at him, "that it's the only way she can ever become
really interesting to a man."
"How?" he demanded. "By having what you call her fling?"
"Yes. Men aren't much interested in girls who know nothing except what
men permit them to know. A girl at college said that the one certain
source of interest to any man in any woman is his unsatisfied curiosity
concerning her. Satisfy it, and he loses interest."
Cleland laughed:
"That's college philosophy," he said.
Stephanie smiled:
"It is what a man doesn't know about a woman that keeps his interest in
her stimulated. It isn't her mind which is merely stored with the
conventional--the conventional being determined and prescribed by men.
It isn't even her character or her traits or her looks which can keep
his interest unflagging. What deeply interests a man is an educated,
cultivated girl who has had as much experience as he has, and who is
likely to have further experience in the world without advice from him
or asking his permission. No other woman can hold the interest of a man
for very long."
"That's what you've learned at Vassar, is it?"
"It's one of the things," said Stephanie, smiling faintly.
*CHAPTER XIV*
The boy--for as yet he was only a boy--sailed in May. The girl--who was
swiftly stripping from her the last rainbow chiffons of girlhood--was at
the steamer to see him off--down from Poughkeepsie for that purpose.
And the instant she arrived he noticed what this last brief absence had
done for her; how subtly her maturing self-confidence had altered the
situation, placing her on a new footing with himself.
There was a little of the lean, long-legged, sweet-faced girl left: a
slender yet rounded symmetry had replaced obvious joints and bones.
"What is it--basket ball?" he inquired admiringly.
"You like my figure?" she inquired guilelessly. "Oh, I've grown up
within a month. It's just what was coming to me."
"Nice line of slang they give you up there," he said, laughing. "You're
nearly as tall as I am, too. I don't know you, little sister."
"You never did, little brother. You'll be sorry some day that you
wasted all the school-girl adoration I lavished on you."
"Don't you intend to lavish any more?" he inquired, laughing, yet very
keenly alert to her smiling assurance, which was at the same time
humourous, provocative and engaging.
"I don't know. I'm over my girlhood illusions. Men are horrid pigs,
mostly. It's a very horrid thing you're doing to me right now," she
said, "--going off to have a wonderful time by yourself for the next two
years and leaving me to work in a children's hospital! But I mean to
make you pay for it. Wait and see."
"If you'll come to Europe with me I'll take you," he said.
"You wouldn't. You'd hate it. You want to be free to prowl. So do I,
and I mean to some day."
"Why not come now and prowl with me? I'll take care of you."
The girl looked at him with smiling intentness:
"If dad hadn't expressed his wishes, and even if my aunt would let me
go, I wouldn't--now."
"Why not?"
"Because I shall do no more tagging after you."
"What?"
"No. And when you return I mean that you shall come and ask my
permission to prowl with me.... And if I find you interesting enough
I'll let you. Otherwise, I shall prowl by myself or with some other
man."
He was laughing, and her face, also, wore a bright and slightly
malicious smile.
"You don't believe that's possible, do you, Jim?--a total reversal of
our roles? You think little sister will tag gratefully after you
always, don't you? Wouldn't it astonish you if little sister grew up
into a desirable and ornamental woman of independent proclivities and
tastes, and with a mind and a will of her own? And, to enjoy her
company, you'd have to seek her and prove yourself sufficiently
interesting; and that you would have to respect her freedom and
individuality as you would any man's!"
"I think, little sister," he said, laughing, "that you've absorbed a
vast deal of modern nonsense at Vassar; that you're as pretty as a
peach; and that you'll not turn into a maid errant, but will become an
ornament to your sex and to society, and that you'll marry in due time
and do yourself proud."
"In children, you mean? Numerically?"
"Quantitatively and qualitatively. Also, you'll do yourself proud in
the matronly example you'll set to all women of this great Republic."
"That's what you think, is it?"
"I know it."
She smiled:
"Watch the women of my generation, Jim--when you can spare a few moments
of your valuable time from writing masterpieces of fiction."
"I certainly shall. I'll study 'em. They're material for me. They
_are_ funny, you know."
"They are, indeed," she said, her grey eyes full of malice, "funnier
than you dream of! You are going to see a generation that will endure
no man-devised restrictions, submit to no tyrannical trammels, endure no
masculine nonsense. You'll see this new species of woman coming faster
and faster, thicker and thicker, each one knowing her own mind or intent
on knowing it. You'll see them animated by a thousand new interests,
pursuing a thousand new vocations, scornful of masculine criticism,
impervious to admonition, regardless of what men think and say and do
about it.
"That's what you'll see, Jim, a restless sex destroying their last
barriers; a world of women contemptuous of men's opinions, convinced of
their own rights, going after whatever they want, and doing it in their
own way.
"If they wish to marry and bother with children they'll pick out a
healthy man and do it; if not, they won't. Love plays a very, very
small part in a man's life. Love, sentiment, domesticity, and the
nursery were once supposed to make up a woman's entire existence. Now
the time is coming very swiftly when love will play no more of a role in
a woman's life than it does in a man's. She'll have her fling, first,
if she chooses, just as freely as he does. And some day, if she finds
it worth the inconvenience, she'll marry and take a year or two off and
raise a few babies. Otherwise, decidedly not!"
"These are fine sentiments!" he exclaimed, laughing, yet not too
genuinely amused. "I'm not sure that I'd better go and leave you here
with that exceedingly pretty little head of yours stuffed and seething
with this sort of propaganda!"
"You might as well. The whole world is beginning to seethe with it.
After all, what does it mean except equality of the sexes? Hands
off--that's all it means."
"Are you a suffragette, Steve?" he inquired, smilingly.
"Oh, Jim, that's old stuff! Everybody is. All that is merely a matter
of time, now. What interests us is our realization of our own
individual independence. Why, I can't tell you what a delightful
knowledge it is to understand that we can do jolly well what we please
and not care a snap of our fingers for masculine opinion!"
"That's a fine creed," he remarked. "What a charming bunch you must be
training with at Vassar! I think I'll get off this steamer and remain
here for a little scientific observation of your development and
conduct."
"No use," she said gaily. "I've promised to learn to be a hospital
nurse. After that, perhaps, if you return, you'll find me really worth
observing."
"Is that a threat, Steve?" he asked, not too sincerely amused, yet still
taking her and her chatter with a lightness and amiable condescension
entirely masculine.
"A threat?"
"Yes. Do you mean that when I return I shall find my little sister a
handful?"
"A handful? For whose hand? Jim, dear, you are old-fashioned. Girls
aren't on or in anybody's hands any more after they're of age. Do you
think you'll be responsible for me? Dear child, we'll be comrades or
nothing at all to each other. You really must grow up, little brother,
before you come back, or I'm afraid--much as I love you--I might find
you just a little bit prosy----"
The call for all ashore silenced her. She stood confronting Cleland
with high colour and pretty, excited grey eyes, for a moment more, then
the gay defiance faded in her face and her attitude grew less resolute.
"Oh, Jim!" she said under her breath, "--I adore you----" And melted
into his embrace.
As he held her in his arms, for a moment the instinct to repel her and
disengage himself came over him swiftly. A troubled idea that her lips
were very soft--that he scarcely knew this girl whose supple figure he
held embraced, left him mute, confused.
"Dear Jim," she whimpered, "I love you dearly. I shall miss you
dreadfully. I'll always be your own little sister Steve, and you can
come back and bully me and I'll tag after you and adore you. Oh,
Jim--Jim--my own brother--my own--my _own_----!"
It was a bright, sunny, windy May day. He could still distinguish her
in her black gown on the crowded pier which was all a-flutter with
brilliant gowns and white handkerchiefs.
After the distant pier had become only a square of colour like a
flower-bed, he still stood on the hurricane deck of the huge liner
looking back at where he had last seen her. The fragrance of her still
clung to him--seemed to have been inhaled somehow and to have subtly
permeated him--something of the warm, fresh, pliant youth of
her--unspoiled, utterly unawakened to anything more delicate or complex
than the frank, vigorous passion of her affection.
Yet, as her breathless, tearful lips had clung to his, so the perfume of
the embrace clung to him still, leaving him perplexed, vaguely
disturbed, yet intensely conscious of new emotion, unfamiliar in his
experience with this girl who yesterday had been what she always had
been to him--a growing child to be affectionately looked after and
chivalrously cherished and endured.
"I couldn't be in love with Steve," he said to himself incredulously.
The thought amazed and exasperated him. "I'm a fine sort of man," he
thought bitterly, "if I can't kiss Steve as innocently as she kisses me.
There's something wrong with me. I must be a sort of dog--or crazy----"
He went below.
Stephanie went back in the car, alone. She staunched her tears with her
black-edged handkerchief until they ceased to fill the wonderful grey
eyes.
Later, detaching the limousine hand-mirror, she inspected her
countenance, patted her chestnut-tinted hair, smoothed out her mourning
veil, and then, in order, lay back in the corner of the car and gave
herself up to passionate memory of this boy whom she had adored from the
first moment she ever laid eyes on him.
Two years' absence? She tried to figure to herself what that meant, but
could not compass it. It seemed like a century of penance to be
endured, to be lived through somehow.
She wanted him dreadfully already. She had no pride left, no purpose,
no threats. She just wanted to tag after him--knowing perfectly well
that there could be no real equality of comradeship where youth and
inexperience fettered her. She didn't care; she wanted him.
No deeper sentiment, nothing less healthy and frank than her youthful
adoration for him, disturbed her sorrow. The consanguinity might have
been actual as far as her affections had ever been concerned with him.
That she had, at various intervals, made of him a romantic figure,
altered nothing. Stainlessly her heart enshrined him; he was her ideal,
hers; her brother, her idol, her paladin--the incarnation of all that
was desirable and admirable in a boy, a youth, a young man. Never in all
her life had any youth interested her otherwise--save, perhaps,
once--that time she had met Oswald Grismer after many years, and had
danced with him--and was conscious of his admiration. That was the only
time in her life when her attitude toward any man had been not quite
clear--not entirety definable. She wrote many pages to Cleland that
night. And cried herself to sleep.
The next day her aunt came up from Bayport. And, a week later, she went
away to Bayport with Miss Quest to begin what seemed to her an endless
penance of two years' hospital training.
The uniform was pink with white cuffs, apron, and cap. She never forgot
the first blood that soiled it--from a double mastoid operation on a
little waif of twelve who had never been able to count more than six.
She held sponges, horrified, crushing back the terror that widened her
grey eyes, steeling herself to look, summoning every atom of strength
and resolution and nerve to see her through.
They found her lying across the corridor in a dead faint.
*CHAPTER XV*
The usual happened to James Cleland; for the first two months in Paris
he was intensely lonely. Life in an English-speaking pension near the
Place de l'Etoile turned out to be very drab and eventless after he
returned to his rooms, fatigued from sight-seeing and exploration. The
vast silver-grey city seemed to him cold, monotonously impressive and
oppressive; he was not in sympathy with it, being totally unaccustomed
to the splendour of a municipal ensemble with all its beauty of
reticence and good taste. The vast vistas, the subdued loveliness of
detail, the stately tranquillity of this capital, he did not understand
after the sham, the ignorance, the noisy vulgarity of his native
municipality.
Here were new standards; the grey immensity of the splendid capital gave
him, at first, an impression of something flat and almost featureless
under the horizon-wide sweep of sky. There were no sky-scrapers. With
exquisite discretion, Notre Dame dominated the east, the silvery majesty
of the Pantheon the south; in the west the golden bubble of the
Invalides burned; the frail tracery of the Eiffel Tower soared from the
city's centre.
And for the first two months he was an alien here, depressed, silenced,
not comprehending, oblivious of the subtle atmosphere of civil
friendliness possessing the throngs which flowed by him on either hand,
unaware that he stood upon the kindly hearthstone of the world itself,
where the hospitable warmth never grew colder, where the generous glow
was for all.
He went to lectures at the Sorbonne; he attended a class in philology in
the Rue des Ecoles; he studied in the quiet alcoves of the great Library
of Ste. Genevieve; he paced the sonorous marble pavements of the Louvre.
And the austere statues seemed to chill him to the soul.
All was alien to him, all foreign; the English-speaking landlady of his
pension, with her eternal cold in the head and her little shoulder
shawl; the dreary American families from the Middle West who gathered
thrice a day at the pension table; passing wayfarers he saw from the
windows; red-legged soldiers in badly fitting uniforms, priests in
shovel hats and black soutanes, policemen slouching by under cowled
cloaks, their bayonets dangling; hatless, chattering shop girls, and the
uninteresting types of civilian citizens; men in impossible hats and
oddly awful clothes; women who all looked smart from the rear and
dubious from the front.
He found an annoying monotony in the trees of the Bois, a tiresome
sameness in square and circle and park and boulevard. He found the
language difficult to understand, more difficult to speak. Food,
accommodations, the domestic regime, were not to his liking. French
economies bored him.
At lectures his comrades seemed merely superficially polite and not very
desirable as acquaintances. He felt himself out of place, astray from
familiar things, out of touch with this civilization, out of sympathy
with place and people. He was intensely lonely.
In the beginning he wrote to Stephanie every other day. That burst of
activity lasted about two months.
Also, in his rather dingy and cheerless suite of rooms, he began a
tragedy in five acts and a pessimistic novel called "Out of the Depths."
Also, he was guilty of a book of poems called "Day Dreams."
He missed his father terribly; he missed his home; he missed the noisy,
grotesque, half-civilized and monstrous city of his nativity. And he
missed Stephanie violently.
He told her so in every letter. The more letters he wrote the warmer
grew this abrupt affection for her. And, his being a creative talent,
with all its temperamental impulses, exaggerations and drawbacks, he
began to evolve, unconsciously, out of Stephanie Quest a girl based on
the real girl he knew, only transcendentally endowed with every
desirable and ornamental quality abstractly favoured by himself.
He began to create an ideal Stephanie to comfort him in his loneliness;
he created, too, a mutual situation and a sentimental atmosphere for
them both, neither of which had existed when he left America.
But now, in his letters, more and more this romantic and airy fabric
took shape. Being young, and for the first time in his life thrown upon
his own resources--and, moreover, feeling for the first time the
pleasures of wielding an eloquent, delicate and capricious pen to voice
indefinable aspirations, he began to lose himself in romantic
subtleties, evoking drama out of nothing, developing it by implication
and constructing it with pensive and capricious humour hinting of dreamy
melancholy.
Until the Stephanie Quest of his imagination had become to him the fair,
and exquisitely indifferent little renaissance figure of his fancy; and
he, somehow or other, her victim. And the more exquisite and
indifferent he created her, the more she fascinated him, until he
completely hypnotized himself with his own cleverly finished product.
A letter from her woke him up more or less, jolting him in his trance so
that the jingle and dissonance of the real world filled, for a moment,
his enchanted ears.