THE summer passed, with its monotonous heat. Rain fell in August and
poisoned the campagna with fever for six weeks, and the clear October
breezes blew from the hills, and the second greenness of the late season
was over everything for a brief month of vintage and laughter. Then came
November with its pestilent sirocco gales and its dampness, pierced and
cut through now and then by the first northerly winds of winter.
And then, one day, there was a new life in the little apartment in the
Via della Frezza. Fate, relentless, had brought to the light a little
child, to be the grandson of that fated Maria Braccio who had died long
ago, to have his day of happiness and his night of suffering in his turn
and to be a living bond between Gloria and the man who loved her.
They called the boy Walter Crowdie for a relative of Angus Dalrymple,
who had been the last of the name. It was convenient, and he would never
need any other, nor any third name after the two given to him in
baptism.
For a few days after the child's birth, Griggs left his writing-table.
He was almost too happy to work, and he spent many hours by Gloria's
side, not talking, for he knew that she must be kept quiet, but often
holding her hand and always looking at her face, with the strong, dumb
devotion of a faithful bloodhound.
Often she pretended to be sleeping when he was there, though she was
wide awake and could have talked well enough. But it was easier to seem
to be asleep than to play the comedy now, while she was so weak and
helpless. With the simplicity of a little child Griggs watched her, and
when her eyes were closed believed that she was sleeping. As soon as she
opened them he spoke to her. She understood and sometimes smiled in
spite of herself, with close-shut lids. He thought she was dreaming of
him, or of the child, and was smiling in her sleep.
As she lay there and thought over all that had happened, she knew that
she hated him as she had never loved him, even in the first days. And
she hated the child, for its life was the last bond, linking her to Paul
Griggs and barring her from the world forever. Until it had been there
she had vaguely felt that if she had the courage and really wished it,
she might in some way get back to her old life. She knew that all hope
of that was gone from her now.
In the deep perspective of her loosened intelligence the endless years
to come rolled away, grey and monotonous, to their vanishing point. She
had made her choice and had not found heart to give it up, after she had
made it, while there was yet time. Time itself took shape before her
closed eyes, as many succeeding steps, and she saw herself toiling up
them, a bent, veiled figure of great weariness. It was terrible to look
forward to such truth, and the present was no better. She grasped at the
past and dragged it up to her and looked at its faded prettiness, and
would have kissed it, as though it had been a living thing. But she knew
that it was dead and that what lived was horrible to her.
She wished that she might die, as she had often thought she might during
the long summer months. In those days her eyes had filled with tears of
pity for herself. They were dry now, for the suffering was real and the
pain was in her bodily heart. Yet she was so strong, and she feared Paul
Griggs with such an abject fear, that she played the comedy when she
could not make him think that she was asleep.
"My only thought is for you," she said. "It is another burden on you."
He was utterly happy, and he laughed aloud.
"It is another reason for working," he said.
And even as he said it she saw the writing-table, the poor room, his
stern, determined face and busy hand, and herself seated in her own
chair, with a half-read novel on her lap, staring at the grey future of
mediocrity and mean struggling that loomed like a leaden figure above
his bent head. Year after year, perhaps, she was to sit in that chair
and watch the same silent battle for bare existence. It was too horrible
to be borne. If only he were a man of genius, she could have suffered it
all, she thought, and more also. But he himself said that he had no
genius. His terrible mechanics of mind killed the little originality he
had. His gloomy sobriety over his work made her desperate. But she
feared him. The belief grew on her that if he ever found out that she
did not love him, he would end life then, for them both--perhaps for
them all three.
Surely, hell had no tortures worse than hers, she thought. Yet she bore
them, in terror of him. And he was perfectly happy and suspected
nothing. She could not understand how with his melancholy nature and his
constant assertion that he had but a little talent and much industry for
all his stock in trade, he could believe in his own future as he did. It
was an anomaly, a contradiction of terms, a weak point in the low level
of his unimaginative, dogged strength. She thought often of the poor
book he had written. She had heard that talent was stirred to music by a
great passion that strung it and struck it, till its heartstrings rang
wild changes and breathed deep chords, and burst into rushing harmonies
of eloquence. But his love was dumb and dull, though it might be deadly.
There had been neither eloquence nor music in his book. It had been an
old story, badly told. He had said that he was only fit to be a
newspaper man, and it was true, so far as she could see. His letters to
the paper were excellent in their way, but that was all he could do. And
she had given him, in the child, another reason for being what he was,
hard-working, silent--dull.
She looked at him and wondered; for there was a mystery in his shadowy
eyes and still face, which had promised much more than she had ever
found in him. There was something mysterious and dreadful, too, in his
unnatural strength. The fear of him grew upon her, and sometimes when he
kissed her she burst into tears out of sheer terror at his touch.
"They are tears of happiness," she said, trembling and drying her eyes
quickly.
She smiled, and he believed her, happier every day in her and in the
child.
Then came the realization of the grey dream of misery. Again she was
seated by the window in her accustomed chair, and he was in his place,
pen in hand, eyes on paper, thoughts fixed like steel in that obstinate
effort to do better, while she had the certainty of his failure before
her. And between them, in a straw cradle with a hood, all gauze and
lace and blue ribbons, lay the thing that bound her to him and cut her
off forever from the world,--little Walter Crowdie, the child without a
name, as she called him in her thoughts. And above the child, between
her and Paul Griggs, floated the little imaginary stage on which she was
to go on acting her play over and over again till all was done. She had
not even the right to shed tears for herself without telling him that
they were for the happiness he expected of her.
He would not leave her. He had scarcely been out of the house for weeks,
though the only perceptible effect of remaining indoors so long was that
he had grown a little paler. She implored him to go out. In a few days
she would be able to go with him, and meanwhile there was no reason why
he should be perpetually at her side. He yielded to her importunity at
last, and she was left alone with the child.
It was a relief even greater than she had anticipated. She could cry,
she could laugh, she could sing, and he was not there to ask questions.
For one moment after she had heard the outer door close behind him she
almost hesitated as to which she should do, for she was half hysterical
with the long outward restraint of herself while, inwardly, she had
allowed her thoughts to run wild as they would. She stood for a moment,
and there was a vague, uncertain look in her face. Then her breast
heaved, and she burst into tears, weeping as never before in her short
life, passionately, angrily, violently, without thought of control, or
indeed of anything definite.
Before an hour had passed Griggs came back. She was seated quietly in
her chair, as when he had left her. The light was all behind her, and he
could not see the slight redness of her eyes. Pale as she was, he
thought she had never been more beautiful. There was a gentleness in her
manner, too, beyond what he was accustomed to. He believed that perhaps
she might be the better for being left to herself for an hour or two
every day, until she should be quite strong again. On the following day
she again suggested that he should go out for a walk, and he made no
objection.
Again, as soon as he was gone, she burst into tears, almost in spite of
herself, though she unconsciously longed for the relief they had brought
her the first time. But to-day the fit of weeping did not pass so soon.
The spasms of sobbing lasted long after her eyes were dry, and she had
less time to compose herself before Griggs returned. Still, he noticed
nothing. The tears had refreshed her, and he found that same gentleness
which had touched him on the previous day.
Several times, after that, he went out and left her alone in the
afternoon. Then, one day, while he was walking, a heavy shower came on,
and he made his way home as fast as he could. He opened the door quickly
and came upon her to find her sobbing as though her heart would break.
He turned very pale and stood still for a moment. There was terror in
her face when she saw him, but in an instant he was holding her in his
arms and kissing her hair, asking her what was the matter.
"I am a millstone around your neck!" she sobbed. "It is breaking my
heart--I shall die, if I see you working so!"
He tried to comfort her, soothing her and laughing at her fears for him,
but believing her, as he always did. Little by little, her sobs
subsided, and she was herself again, as far as he could see. He tried to
argue the case fairly on its merits.
She listened to him, and listening was a new torture, knowing as she did
what her tears were shed for. But she had to play the comedy again, at
short notice, not having had the time to compose herself and enjoy the
relief she found in crying alone.
It was a relief which she sought again and again. When she thought of it
afterwards, it was as an indescribable, half-painful, half-pleasant
emotion through which she passed every day. When she felt that it was
before her, as soon as Griggs was out of the house, she made a slight
effort to resist it, for she was sensible enough to understand that it
was becoming a habit which she could not easily break.
Even after she was quite strong again, Griggs often left her to herself
for an hour, and he did not again come in accidentally and find her in
tears. He thought it natural that she should sometimes wish to be alone.
One day, when she had dried her eyes, she took a sheet of paper from his
table and began to write. She had no distinct intention, but she knew
that she was going to write about herself and her sufferings. It gave
her a strange and unhealthy pleasure to set down in black and white all
that she suffered. She could look at it, turn it, change it, and look at
it again. Constantly, as the pen ran on, the tears came to her eyes
afresh, and she brushed them away with a smile.
Then, all at once, she looked at the clock--the same cheap little
American clock which had ticked so long on the mantelpiece in Griggs's
old lodging upstairs. She knew that he would be back before long, and
she tore the sheets she had covered into tiny strips and threw them into
the waste-paper basket. When Griggs returned, she was singing softly to
herself over her needlework.
But she had enjoyed a rare delight in writing down the story of her
troubles. The utter loneliness of her existence, when Griggs was not
with her, made it natural enough. Then a strange thought crossed her
mind. She would write to Reanda and tell him that she had forgiven him,
and had expiated the wrong she had done him. She craved the excitement
of confession, and it could do no harm. He might, perhaps, answer her.
Griggs would never know, for she always received the letters and sorted
them for him, merely to save him trouble. The correspondence of a
newspaper man is necessarily large, covering many sources of his
information.
It was rather a wild idea, she thought, but it attracted her, or rather
it distracted her thoughts by taking her out of the daily comedy she was
obliged to keep up. There was in it, too, a very slight suggestion of
danger; for it was conceivable, though almost impossible, that some
letter of hers or her husband's might fall into Griggs's hands. There
was a perverseness about it which was seductive to her tortuous mind.
At the first opportunity she wrote a very long letter. It was the letter
of a penitent. She told him all that she had told herself a hundred
times, and it was a very different production from the one she had sent
to her father nearly a year earlier. There were tears in the phrases,
there were sobs in the broken sentences. And there were tears in her own
eyes when she sealed it.
She was going to ring for the woman servant to take it, and her hand
was on the bell. She paused, looked at the addressed envelope, glanced
furtively round the room, and then kissed it passionately. Then she
rang.
Griggs came home later than usual, but he thought she was preoccupied
and absent-minded.
"Has anything gone wrong?" he asked anxiously.
"Wrong?" she repeated. "Oh no!" She sighed. "It is the same thing. I am
always anxious about you. You were a little pale before you went out and
you had hardly eaten anything at breakfast."
"There is nothing the matter with me," laughed Griggs. "I am
indestructible. I defy fate."
She started perceptibly, for she was too much of an Italian not to be a
little superstitious.