"No, my dear."
She left her place behind the table and went up to him. Had all the
world gone wrong? Had her foolishness been so colossal that she was to
be broken twice on the same day? "Gilbert," she said. "What is it? What
do you mean? Why do you say these odd things in this queer way?
You're--you're frightening me, Gilbert."
Young? She was a child as she stood there with her lovely face
upturned. It was torture to keep his hands off her and not take her
lips. But he did nothing. He stood steady and waited for his brain to
clear. "Odd things in a queer way? Is that how I strike you?"
"Yes. I've never seen you in this mood before. If you've brought me
here to make me say I'm sorry, I will, because I am sorry. I'd do
anything to have all these days over again--every one since I climbed
out of my old bedroom window. If you said hard things to me all night I
should deserve them all and I'll pay you what I can of my debt, but
don't ask me to pay too much. I trusted you by coming here alone. Don't
go back on me, Gilbert."
He touched her cheek and drew his hand away.
"But I haven't brought you here to make you humble yourself," he said.
"There's nothing small in this. What you've done to me has left its
marks, of course, deep marks. I don't think you ever really understood
the sort of love mine is. But the hour has gone by for apologies and
arguments and regrets. I'm standing on the very edge of things. I'm
just keeping my balance on the lip of eternity. It's for you to draw me
back or go tumbling over with me. That's why you're here. I told you
that. Are you really so young that you don't understand?"
"I'm a kid, I'm a kid," she cried out, going back to her old excuse.
"That's the trouble."
"Then I'll put it into plain words," he said, with the same appalling
composure. "I've had these things in my mind to say to you for hours. I
can repeat them like a parrot. If the sort of unimaginative people who
measure everybody by themselves were to hear what I'm going to say, I
suppose they would think I'm insane. But you won't. You have
imagination. You've seen me in every stage of what I call the Great
Emotion. But you've not treated me well, Joan, or taken me seriously,
and this is the one serious thing of my life."
He was still under control, although his voice had begun to shake and
his hands to tremble. She could do nothing but wait for him to go on.
The crickets and the frogs filled in the short silence.
"And now it's come to this. I can be played with no longer. I can't
wait for you any more. Either you love me, or you don't. If you do, you
must be as serious as I am, tear up your roots such as they are and
come away with me. Your husband, who counts for as little as my wife,
will set the law in action. So will Alice. We will wander among any
places that take your fancy until we can be married and then if you
want to come back, we will. But if you don't and won't love me, I can't
live and see you love any other man. I look upon you as mine. I created
you for myself ten years ago. Not being able to live without you, I am
not made of the stuff to leave you behind me. I shall take you and if
there's another life on the other side, live it with you. If not, then
we'll snuff out together. Like all great lovers, I'm selfish, you see.
That's what I meant when I talked just now about choice."
He moved away, quietly, and piled several cushions into a corner of one
of the pews. The look of exaltation was on his face again.
"Sit here, my dream girl," he added, with the most wonderful
tenderness, "and think it over. Don't hurry. The night belongs to us."
He found a match and lit a cigarette and stood at one of the windows
looking out at the stars.
But Joan was unable to move. Her blood was as cold as ice. As though a
searchlight had suddenly been thrown on to Gilbert, she saw him as he
was. "Unimaginative people will think I'm insane." ... SHE didn't think
he was insane, imaginative as he said she was. She KNEW it. If she had
been able to think of one thing but Martin and that girl and her own
chaos, she must have guessed it at Easthampton from the look in his
eyes when he helped her into his car.... He had lost his balance, gone
over the dividing hue between soundness and unsoundness. And it was her
fault for having fooled with his feelings. Everything was her fault,
everything. And now she stood on what Gilbert had called the lip of
Eternity. "Who Cares?" had come back at her like a boomerang. And as to
a choice between giving herself to Gilbert or to death, what was the
good of thinking that over? She didn't love this man and never could.
She loved Martin, Martin. She had always loved Martin from the moment
that she had turned and found him on the hill. She had lost him, that
was true, He had been unable to wait. He had gone to the girl with the
white face and the red lips and the hair that came out of a bottle. She
had sent him to her, fool that she had been. Already she had decided to
creep back to the old prison house and thus to leave life. Without
Martin nothing mattered. Why put up a fight for something that didn't
count? Why continue mechanically to live when living meant waiting for
death? Why not grasp this opportunity of leaving it actually, at once,
and urge Gilbert on to stop the beating of her wounded and contrite
heart? ... Death, the great consoler. Sleep, endless sleep and peace.
But as she stood there, tempted, with the weight of Martin's discarded
armor on her shoulders and the sense of failure hanging like a
millstone round her neck, she saw the creeper bursting into buds on the
wall beneath the window of her old room, caught the merry glint of
young green on the trees below her hill, heard the piping of birds to
their nesting mates, the eager breeze singing among the waving grasses
and the low sweet crooning of baby voices--felt a tiny greedy hand upon
her breast, was bewildered with a sudden overwhelming rush of
mother-longing ... young, young? Oh, God, she was young, and in the
springtime with its stirring sap, its call to life and action, its urge
to create, to build, its ringing cry to be up and doing, serving,
sowing, tending--the pains of winter forgotten, hope in the warming sun.
She must live. Even without Martin she must live. She was too young for
death and sleep and peace. Life called and claimed and demanded. It had
need of the young for a good spring, a ripe summer, a golden autumn.
She must live and work and justify.
But how?
There was Gilbert watching the stars with a smile, calmly and quietly
and horribly waiting for her to make a choice, having slipped over on
the other side of the dividing line. A scream of fear and terror rose
to her throat. This quiet, exalted man, so gentle and determined, with
the look in his eyes of one who intended to own one way or the
other--Live? How was she to live? He had given her a choice between
something that was impossible and something that all Nature held her
back from. She was locked into a lonely house as far away from help as
though they were out at sea.
"We hold it death to falter not to die." The words seemed suddenly to
stand out in blazing letters over the mantelpiece, as they did in
Martin's room--Martin, Martin.... With a mighty effort she wound the
reins round her hands and pulled herself up. In this erotic and
terrible position she must not falter or show fear or exaggerate this
man's sudden derangement by cries or struggles. He must be humored,
kept gentle and quiet, and she must pray for help. God loved young
things, and if she had forgotten Him until the very moment of great
danger, He might forgive. She must, with courage and practicality, gain
time so that some one might be sent. The servants might return. Harry
Oldershaw might have followed them. He hadn't liked the look of
Gilbert. He had said so. But if that was too good, there was Martin,
Martin...
She saw herself sitting in a dressing gown on the arm of a chair in
Martin's room in the little New York house. She heard Martin come along
the passage with his characteristic light tread and saw him draw up
short. He looked anxious. "You wanted me?" she heard him say.
"I did and do, Marty. But how did you guess?"
"I didn't guess. I knew."
"Isn't that wonderful? Do you suppose I shall always be able to get you
when I want you very much?"
"Yes, always."
"Why?"
"I dunno. It's like that. It's something that can't be explained...."
Gilbert turned and smiled at her. She smiled back. Martin was not far
away, Martin. "How quiet the night is," she said, and went over to a
window. Hope gleamed like a star. And then, with all her strength and
urgency she gave a silent cry. "Martin, Martin. I want you, so much,
oh, so much. Come to me, quickly, quickly. Martin, Martin."