English people to overhear. I propose to know what you think you are
this morning. You are playing some sort of a part, and a charming enough
part it is, but for complete enjoyment I must be on. I only half
understand. Out with it.”
Julia leaned her head against the wall and smiled.
“I don’t mind telling you in the least. I am just eighteen, and I have
just arrived from Nevis. I never had time to be really young, you know.
So here is my opportunity.”
“You look the rôle, but how—well, you are young enough in any case; but
how do you manage to relight the eighteen candles? You’ve lived _some_
since then. I couldn’t do it!”
Julia smiled mysteriously. “We never really exhaust any phase,
particularly of youth. It is merely stowed away waiting for the current.
Mine leaped up at the first signal. You appeared with the battery, and
presto!”
“You suppressed it mighty well for quite two weeks.”
“Oh, I could have buried it deeper still, but I didn’t choose to. I
deliberately shook it out of its cave where it was comfortably
hibernating, and put all the rest in its place.”
“Why didn’t you do it before? I can’t be the first young and ardent
admirer you have met. You are thirty-four—you have been free eight
years—it is incredible. Is it merely the first good chance you have
had? I don’t know whether I like being your stalking horse or not.”
Julia leaned her elbows on the table and looked him straight in the
eyes.
“That has something to do with it, but not all. If you had come a year
earlier, when I couldn’t have left for a minute, it would have been
different, of course. But there was this sudden lull, and, you see, I am
frightfully in love.”
The shot was so unexpected that Tay turned white, then the red rushed to
his face. He had been lounging. He sat up stiffly and leaned forward.
“Julia!” he said. “Be careful. I shan’t stand for any flirting.”
“Oh, I’m much too young to flirt—I mean I hadn’t heard the word when I
left Nevis. Of course I’m in love with you—fancy I have been for years.
I don’t mind in the least if you no longer are in love with me.”
“I’m in love all right, but I’d like mighty well to know which of the
several Julias you’ve treated me to I’m in love with.”
“Don’t you like this one?”
“I’d like nothing better than to know that you really were eighteen and
that I could teach you all you would ever know.”
“You’ll teach me all I’ll ever know about love.”
“Ah!”
“The past is a blank as far as I am concerned. I can wipe anything off
the slate.”
“I don’t know—I don’t know— Charming as you are now, I found you
enchanting fifteen years ago, and quite as fascinating in another way
when we met again. I don’t think I want the other Julias obliterated.”
“But you can stand this one for a week?”
“I’ll ask for nothing better—for a week. But—somehow—you look almost
too young to know what love is. You look like a child pretending.”
“I am and I’m not. I can’t annihilate the years, but I can send them to
the rear, and put youth, and all that means when it has its rights, in
front—and keep it there as long as I choose.”
Tay stirred uneasily. “I’ve seen women of thirty—forty—in love before
this, and they always look rejuvenated—but—well, I wish you had never
lived those years in the Orient. You’ve got yourself too well in hand.
It’s uncanny.”
“Oh, if you prefer me as the general of a Militant army,” and she drew
herself up, her features arranged themselves in an expression of stern
composure, her eyes were steady and exalted, and her mouth subtly older.
“Drop it!” said Tay, savagely. “Drop it! That at least you are to cut
out for good and all. I’m quite content with you as you are—” Julia’s
face was relaxed and smiling once more. “It is enough to know your
possibilities. Remain as you are until you have developed under my
tuition; and forget your Oriental learning also.”
“That is just the one thing I never would part with. Without it I should
be no match for you.”
“Tell me one thing right here. Do you fancy yourself something more than
mere woman? I mean did those old wiseacres in the East convince you that
you were a soul reincarnated for a purpose, even before they taught you
too much of their psychic lore? I don’t know whether I like the idea or
not. Living with a reincarnated immortal soul several hundred million
years old, developed that much beyond ordinary women, might not be all
that a mortal man desires. How in creation could I ever live up to you?”
“Don’t look so far ahead. Do I look like anything but a very mortal
woman at the present moment?”
“You look so adorable that if there were a little more smoke in this
room I should kiss you. But—you little devil!—you have chosen the most
public place in Munich to tell me all this, and you waited until you got
out of England, where I did have a chance to see you alone—”
“Of course. Love-making would spoil it all. Nothing can ever be as
enchanting as just being in love and asking for no more.”
“Can’t it? Well, you can have your little comedy here, and I’ll take
matters in my own hands when we get back. You’ve got things all your own
way now—hang it! hang it!”
“Can’t you, too, feel young and irresponsible? You really would be
happy, and make me happy. And it would be something to remember!”
“I feel more like going out and getting drunk. However—have your own
way. I’ll play up—”
“No, feel.”
“No doubt I shall. Your utter youth was contagious enough this morning.
I’ve got some will myself. But say it again— Is it possible that you
really love me?”
“Yes, I do,” said Julia, softly. “Never let that worry you.”
IX
THEY spent the following day wandering with the crowds that fill the
Munich streets on bright Sundays, and the Darks arrived at midnight. The
next morning they all went to the lake, this time finding a very
different class of skaters in possession. Munich has a small fashionable
set whose members dress as fashionable people do everywhere. To-day, the
women in their short cloth or tweed frocks and rich furs, their faces
rosy with cold and exercise, enhanced the glittering beauty of the
landscape; and the young officers were quite as decorative.
“Some class,” said Tay. “In Europe there’s no choice between the
aristocrats and the peasants. In my country, now, you couldn’t take your
oath that all these birds of paradise weren’t clever shop-girls, until
you got close enough to take notes. But here even a snub-nosed baroness,
dressed like a housekeeper, shows her class.”
“That’s about all we’ve got left,” said Dark. “You helped yourself to a
sort of ready-made imitation of it, as you did to everything else it
took us twenty centuries to grind out. Think you might be generous and
give us a little hustle in return. Can I help you, Mrs. France?”
He buckled on her skates and they joined the throng on the ice, Tay
following with Ishbel. Lord Dark, something in the fashion of his wife,
was a man of almost romantic appearance covering a practical character
and a keen alert brain. He was as pure a Saxon in type as still
persists, with fair hair and moustache, straight proud features, and
languid blue eyes in thick brown frames. His tall figure was lean and
sinewy, but carried listlessly. Thrown on his own resources, he would
not have been driven on to the stage, out to South Africa, or become a
vague “something in the City”; he would deliberately have applied
himself to the science of money-making and mastered it, his ends
accelerated by his indolent manner, so tempting to sharpers. Having
inherited a considerable fortune, he was content with a career on the
turf. His racing stud was notable, and rarely a year passed without
adding to its reputation. He also amused himself with politics and
society. Devoted to Ishbel for years before he could marry her, he was
now as completely happy as a man may be whose wife is giving a large
part of her energies to a cause of which he fastidiously disapproves.
Broadminded, he was quite willing that all women outside of his
particular circle should vote, but wished that his ancestors had settled
the question and spared his generation. Astute in all things, however,
he not only gave his wife her head up to a certain point, but of late
had done what he could to help rush the thing through and have done with
it. Ishbel, like Julia, was pledged to ignore the detested subject
during this brief vacation.
“Jolly place, Munich,” he observed. “We always come here in August for
the Wagnerfeste. You see all Europe as well as hear good music in
comfort, which is more than you could ever say of Baireuth. We’ve never
been here in winter before. Have you read up a bit? There ought to be
good winter sports in the mountains.”
“Rather. I don’t fancy Mr. Tay was here an hour before he discovered
there was tobogganing (rodelling) and skiing at Partenkirchen. He’s
talked of little else.”
“Good! Then we’ll be really happy for a week.”
Meanwhile Ishbel was gently extracting a declaration of Tay’s intentions
toward Julia by the diplomatic method of assuming all.
“It is too dreadful that you will take Julia from us,” she said
plaintively. “Couldn’t you live in London?”
“Not yet.” Tay turned upon her a face of almost boyish delight. “But if
she’ll really have me, we could come over every summer. Do you think she
will?”
“In the end, of course. I’ve known Julia for sixteen years, and waited
for her to fall in love. She never does anything by halves. But she may
think she can’t leave England yet.”
“I wish these women didn’t take themselves so seriously,” said Tay,
viciously. “One would think the fate of England depended on them.”
Ishbel laughed. “How like Eric! But we are used to the sixteenth century
masculine attitude. It wouldn’t matter so much about me, except that
every one of us helps to swell the total, but Julia is a great leader,
with a wonderful power of attracting attention, making recruits, and
inspiring her followers. We couldn’t spare her if the fight was to go
on, but if it is won this year—well, I have told her to go and leave
the rest to the other women in command.”
“Oh, you have! Bully for you! What did she say?”
“She wouldn’t commit herself. If I were you, I’d simply marry her.”
“So I shall, if I’m convinced she really cares for me.”
“You don’t doubt it?”
“I don’t know. She’s a puzzle to me. Sometimes I think she’s the most
natural being on earth, and at others—well—the so-called complex women
aren’t in it.”
“She’s both, but none the less interesting.”
“Oh, she’s interesting, all right. But she’s become such an adept at
bluffing herself that I doubt if she always knows just where she’s at.
Just now she’s bluffed—or hypnotized?—herself into thinking she’s
interested in me. But I have an idea she could switch off in the
opposite direction as easily.”
“Julia is a bit odd,” admitted Ishbel. “Especially since she came back
from the East. Even before she went, she wasn’t much like anybody else,
owing, no doubt, to that strange old mother of hers; but au fond she’s
the most loyal and sincere of mortals. And it takes matrimony—a
love-match—to clear a woman’s brain of cobwebs. Marry Julia and take
her to the young world, and I’ll venture to say she’ll forget all she
learned in the East, and a good part of her inheritance. Then she’ll be
the most charming of women.”
“That’s the way I talk to myself when I’m not in the dumps. But do you
really want her to marry an American? It would be more like you to want
to keep her over here.”
“I did once plot and scheme to make her marry a very dear friend of us
all, Lord Haverfield—Nigel Herbert—you must have read his books.”
“Ah!”
“That was rather imprudent of me. But it’s all over long ago. Julia
never cared for him, and I have always said that when she did care for
any man, I’d turn match-maker in earnest and do all I could to help him
marry her—that is, if I liked him—and we’re all quite in love with
you.” She flashed the sweetness of her charming countenance on him, and
he thought her almost as beautiful as Julia. “I want her to be happy,
for she was once terribly unhappy. Her experience was truly awful—”
“I never want to think of it,” said Tay, hastily. “I refuse to remember
that she has ever been married. Look at here—will you promise to be on
my side if she goes off on one of her tangents?”
“I will!” and she gave his hand a little shake. She longed to tell him
that France might die any minute, but she had once more given her word
to Bridgit, and could only hope that France would take himself off
before Tay left England. “But if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll get
round it somehow,” she thought.
A moment later a rapid change of partners was effected, Tay threw his
arm lightly round Julia’s waist, and they waltzed down the lake to the
amazement of the less agile Germans.
“Suppose you look up,” said Tay. “If you’re blushing because I have my
arm round you for the first time, I’d like to see it.”
Julia laughed and threw back her head. She was blushing, and her eyes
sparkled. “I’ll admit I never felt so happy in my life.”
“Are you as much in love with me as you were two days ago?” he asked
dryly.
“Oh—rather more, I think.”
“If you like the sensation of my arm round you at a temperature of ten
above zero, in full view of all Munich, can you imagine the ineffable
happiness of being kissed by me in the vicinity of one of those tiled
stoves with the door shut?”
“Then if all these people should suddenly disappear, you wouldn’t care
to kiss me in the midst of this enchanted wood?”
“I’d kiss you wherever I got a chance, and what’s more I’ll do it. So
prepare yourself.”
“Your promise!”
“Promise nothing. I absolve myself right here. And you talk Suffrage if
you can!”
“Alas, I don’t want to. But I shan’t let you make love to me.”
“Oh, yes, you will,—when and where I please.”
Julia looked a little frightened. “Oh, no—we mustn’t go that far—”
“You merely want to flirt and make me miserable? Well, I’ve had just as
much of that as I propose to stand. You’re laying up a frightful
retribution, my lady.” He tightened his clasp and drew her as close as
the skates would permit. “Be consistent,” he whispered. “You are
eighteen. You remember nothing. We are really engaged, you know. You are
mine this week. We have four days more. Put that imagination of yours to
some good use. Believe that we are to be married this day fortnight.”
“If I go too far—you would never forgive me.”
He laughed grimly. “If you go that far, you’ll go farther. Of course I
understand you. It’s a proof of the adorable innocence you have managed
to preserve that you don’t know what playing with fire means to the man.
You propose to abandon yourself discreetly, get a certain excitement out
of words and coquetry while we’re here safely chaperoned, and then throw
me down hard in the cause of duty when we return to London. Well, that’s
not my program. Now, we’ll say no more about it.”
They climbed up the interior of the great statue Bavaria, in the
afternoon, to gaze at the tumbled peaks of the Alps glittering through
the haze that promised fine weather. Then the women rested for the opera
of the evening, and Tay and Dark smoked in one of the cafés, talked
horse and business, and, incidentally, drifted into a friendship that
was to lead to strange results. Dark had influential friends in the City
and promised Tay his immediate assistance in bringing his prospective
partners to terms. Tay, who liked sport as well as most American men,
although he had little time to devote to it, forgot that he was in love
while “swapping” stories of the race-track. Both, secretly despising the
other’s nationality, discovered that when men are men they are pretty
much the same the world over. They cemented the bond by cursing Suffrage
with all the epithets, profane, picturesque, savage, and humorous, in
their respective vocabularies, and left the café arm in arm, feeling
that they had talked woman back into her proper sphere and that all was
well with the world.
X
THOSE were the last days of the Munich Opera-house in all its glory.
Mottl, prince of conductors, was alive; Fay, Preuse-Matzenauer, Bosetti,
Bender, Feinhals, the incomparable Fassbender, sang every week, and, now
and again, Knote and Morena. To-day death and disaster have overtaken
that great company, and few are left to make the pilgrimage to Munich
worth while.
“Die Walküre” was given on Monday night, and included nearly all of the
staff. The hotel portier had reserved seats for the English party in the
first row of the balkon, and they had a full view of a typical Wagnerian
audience. In these days, owing no doubt to the American residents, the
entire auditorium, as well as the balkon and loges, was well dressed. No
more did the hausfrau come in her street costume of serviceable stuff
turned in at the neck with a bit of tulle, but made shift to wear a
demitoilette of sorts, and light in color even if of mean material. The
fashionable Müncheners outdressed the Americans and occupied the first
row of the balkon and the loges. Even the royalties presented a far
better appearance than in the old days, and the large number of officers
present alone would have given the house a brilliant appearance. The
upper tiers were picturesque with the girl students in their
Secessionist costumes and bazaar heads, the men with their untidy hair
and flowing ties. But the crowning grace of the “Hof” at all times is
that no one is allowed to enter after the overture begins, nor dares to
speak until the curtain goes down.
Julia had carefully arrayed herself in her most becoming gown, a white
Liberty satin under pale green chiffon, so casual in effect that it
looked as if held together by the sheaf of lilies-of-the-valley on the
corsage. Ishbel was resplendent in black velvet and English pink; and
the party was the cynosure of the audience below, standing with its back
to the stage and frankly inspecting the balkon until the last bell rang
and the lights went out.
The tenor was wrenching the sword from the tree, and Fay was standing
with her famous arms rigidly aloft, in one of the prescribed Wagnerian
attitudes, when Tay saw Julia move restlessly, sit forward with a frown,
and then sink back with an expression of sadness so profound that he
longed to ask what ailed her now, but had no desire to be hissed down or
put out by the fat doorkeeper. When they were in the buffet, however,
during the first pause, and he had walked up two trains and nearly lost
his cufflinks in a determined effort to procure ices, and they were
alone at a table in a corner, he referred to the incident, if only to
prove that no performance, no matter how great, could divert his
attention from her.
“Oh, I was only thinking,” said Julia. “I wonder where the Darks are?”
“Engaged in a wrestling match, probably. Aren’t you always thinking?
What struck you so suddenly in the middle of that alleged dramatic scene
where the fat man, purple in the face, was struggling to get a tin sword
out of a paper tree and trying to sing at the same time? Never was so
excited in my life.”
Julia laughed. “I was sure you were not musical.”
“You insult San Francisco. We are the most musical people in America.
The very newsboys whistle the opera tunes. But I like to see a decent
sense of the proprieties observed. Those two could have said all they
had to say in five minutes. Set to music, it should take about fifteen.
However— Tell me what struck you all of a heap.”
“Oh—well—I—”
“Shoot!”
“What?”
“More slang. Fire away.”
“Do you expect to know all my thoughts?”
“I don’t, but I’d like to.”
“I wonder! However—I don’t mind telling you. It occurred to me rather
forcibly how much simpler women’s problems were in those days. Two young
people, isolated from the world, meet and spontaneously fall in love.
They are creatures of instinct, and ignorant of any law except Might. A
sleeping potion in the savage husband’s nightly horn settles that
question, and they run away into the forest and are happy—would be
happy forever more if let alone. But in these complicated days—all our
obstacles are inside of us! Any one can find courage to defy the
primitive and obvious—”
“Plenty of primitive people right in the midst of civilization,”
interposed Tay, grimly.
“Yes, I know, and in your country divorce is easy. But for the highly
civilized, life, even with divorce, is anything but easy. Women question
that condition called happiness when it would appear to offer itself,
examine it on all sides. They know men too well—life—above all,
themselves. Or they have assumed impersonal duties and responsibilities.
Or their brains have become so complex that love alone cannot satisfy.
They would have love plus far more! If the choice must be made, they
dare not cast for love, in their fear of disaster. Nothing is so
dishonest as the so-called psychological novel, which leaves two
thinking moderns in each other’s arms at the end of a forced situation,
with their natures unchanged, all their problems—their inner
problems—unsolved. They never can be solved by love, marriage,
children, the good old way. The sort for whom all problems can be
treated by the conventional recipe are not worth writing about. But it
is a terrible proposition; for these highly civilized women have the
automatic desires of their sex for love and happiness—intensified by
imagination! But—they know that a greater need still is to fill their
lives and use their brains.”
Tay had turned pale. “The modern man, unless he is an ass, gives his
wife her head.”
“That is beside the question. The real trouble doesn’t sound
particularly attractive when put into plain English: it is the raising
of the ego to the _n_th power that makes these women want to stand
alone, resent the idea of finding completion in a man.”
“Then let us pray that they will all die old maids, and their race die
with them.”
“No hope! Children of the most commonplace parents are the products of
their times. Heredity is modified from generation to generation.
Otherwise, we should all be Siegmunds and Sieglindes. Their little
brains are impregnated by forces seen and unseen. Hadji Sadrä would
explain it by the theory of reincarnation, or by planetary conditions at
birth—the only reasonable explanation of Shakespeare, by the way, if he
wasn’t Bacon. But although, no doubt, many of the great do return to
complete their work, there are not enough to go round. And there is a
simpler explanation. In these vibrating days the very air is flashing
and humming with secrets for those that have the magnet in their brains.
Bright minds learn from life, not from their old-fashioned parents. Oh,
the breed will increase, not diminish! Happiness, old style, is about
done for. Women will be happier in consequence—or in another way. I
don’t know about men. They have reigned too long. And then they are
simple ingenuous creatures, the most tyrannical of them, and
pathetically dependent upon women. Women are growing more independent
every day, more indifferent to that sex ‘management’ of men, which so
far has constituted a large part of man’s happiness.”
Tay was angry, therefore more jocular than ever. “Don’t forget the
adaptability of even the male animal, also that man is born of woman;
also brought up by her. I don’t worry one little bit about the future
happiness of man. As for the Home—apartment-houses and the decline and
fall of servants have about relegated it to the last stronghold of the
old-fashioned love story—the country town. I said just now that I’d
like to know all your thoughts. Well, I shouldn’t. My idea of happiness
is a lifetime with a woman who would always be more or less of a
mystery, who would have her own life—inner and outer—as I should have
mine. And I’m not so sure that mine would be simple and ingenuous.
Marriage with her would be a sort of intense personal partnership, with
separations of irregular recurrence and length. Then, my lady, there
would be a constant ache; passion would never wear itself out; and
neither would be looking for novel affinities elsewhere.”
Julia smiled. “It sounds very enticing. But that isn’t the point. The
subtlest enemy—it is that desire to find our highest completion alone.”
“A bully good phase for the next world. Something to look forward to.
The Fool’s Paradise in this life is the grandest failure on record. Men
and women are not constituted to perfect by their lonesomes. Otherwise
the mutual attraction of sex would not be what it is. No woman that a
man wants was ever intended to complete herself; nor can she become so
highly developed in this life as not to find it quite safe to follow her
instincts on her own plane.”
The second bell had rung and the buffet was nearly empty. He leaned
across the table and brought his face close to hers. “If you are dead
sure that I never could make you happy, that you never could love me,
that you haven’t a human instinct that I could gratify, then chuck me.
But if you are only psychologizing on general principles, then chuck
that as fast as you can. I don’t want to hear any more of it, and I
shan’t pay any more attention to it hereafter than if you were
speculating about possible grandchildren inheriting a taste for drink
from your brother. Switch off! You are eighteen.”
Julia sprang to her feet with a laugh, her seriousness routed. “Right
you are! Come, or we’ll be locked out.”
Both Dark and Tay stolidly refused to remain for the last act, and the
party went to the best of the restaurants for the supper, which was to
take the place of dinner; the opera had begun at six o’clock. The meal
was cooked by a chef, and they lingered over it until long after the
Wagnerites were in bed. Dark and Tay were in the best of spirits, for
however they might love music, they loved dinner more; Julia and Ishbel,
who were disposed to be sulky, soon recovered, and the party was so gay
that even the yawning waiters smiled and felt sure of recompense. When
they finally left the restaurant, Munich might have been the tomb of its
history. Not a cab was on the rank. Not a policeman was to be seen. When
they reached the small paved square before the loggia, Dark threw his
arm about Julia, and they waltzed until Tilly must have longed to step
down and join them. A delighted giggle did come from the sentry-boxes
before the side portals of the palace as Tay and Ishbel followed the
example of their companions. It is not often that the Munich night is
disturbed by anything more original than roistering students. The moon
was out, the cold air crisp. They could have danced for an hour, but
Ishbel suddenly reminded them that they were to start for Partenkirchen
in a few hours, and they raced one another to their hotel.
XI
THEY spent the rest of their week at Partenkirchen, a village in a
mountain valley, surrounded by a chain of glittering peaks. The village
was little more than one steep street bordered by inns and shops, but
there were farms in the valley and on the nearer hillsides. The natives
wore high fur caps, not unlike the cossack headgear, and seemed to exist
for decorative purposes only, although alive to the lure of tourist
silver. The hotel at the top of the street was very modern, with a good
cook, little balconies for those that would enjoy the view, and many
nooks in the rooms downstairs for those that would talk unhindered if
not unseen. At this season there were no other English or Americans, but
a sufficient number of Europeans of the leisure class to make the
dining-room brilliant at night and animated at all times.
Julia and Ishbel had provided themselves with short white skirts of
thick material, white men’s sweaters, and white Tam o’ Shanters. The men
couldn’t wear white, but looked their best, as men always do, in rough
mountaineering costume. They climbed, skated, skied, and tobogganed;
and, under Julia’s gentle manipulation, kept close together. It was
natural that Tay should fall to Ishbel in their outings, and only once
or twice did he manage to drag Julia’s sled up the hill, or direct her
uncertain footsteps when on the snow-shoes. Then she was so excited with
the new sport that she paid little attention to him. She threw herself
into it with the zest of a child, and he couldn’t flatter himself that
her merry laugh was forced, nor the dancing lights in her eyes. Nor was
he depressed himself by any means; the tonic air went to the heads of
all of them, and they enjoyed themselves with an abandon possible only
to those that have seen too much of life.
But on the last day, Ishbel, who saw through Julia’s manœuvres,
deliberately stayed in bed with a headache, and Dark, without warning of
his intention, departed early with a guide. Tay and Julia met alone at
the breakfast table.
“Now!” he said gayly. “I’ve got you. What are you going to do about it?
If you shut yourself up in your room, I’ll break the door down.”
“As if I’d do anything so silly. How I wish we could stay here a month.”
“Why not?”
“I left no address, and I may have stayed too long already—”
“Sh-h!”
“You could not, either.”
“Oh, yes, I could. Dark has been pulling wires, and I’m dead sure now
that the thing will go through.”
“I’m so glad! But no doubt you could have managed it by yourself sooner
or later. I fancy you’ll always be a success in business.”
“Thanks. If you mean to insinuate that business and cards are in the
same class, I’m not a bit discouraged.”
“Pour me out another cup of coffee. I believe American men like to wait
on women.”
“It’s part of our game. You see how honest I am. You’ll marry me without
illusions.”
“Shall you boss me frightfully?” Julia looked at him over her cup, and
he nearly dropped his. He kept his bantering tone, however.
“The more you do for me, the more I’ll spoil you. It will be quite an
exciting race. How should you like being spoiled for a change?”
“It would be glorious. So irresponsible.”
“Exactly. That’s what makes many a man get drunk. Few sensations so
delightful as that of complete irresponsibility.”
“Do you get drunk?” asked Julia, in mock alarm.
“Gorgeously. Am I not a good San Franciscan? Not too often, however. Bad
for business.”
“You never told me if you went on that spree when you got those ten
thousand dollars. Or didn’t you get it? Perhaps you anticipated, and
your father wouldn’t—what did you call it—plunk?”
“I didn’t, and he did, and I did. I whooped it up for just five days. To
tell you the truth, I didn’t find as much in it as I expected, but felt
I owed it to myself. Wish now I’d come over and eloped with you.”
“Ah!” Julia made a rapid mental calculation. He would have arrived at
about the time Nigel was laying his last desperate siege. Poor Nigel!
Julia could picture Tay’s wooing and methods. Would he have won where
her more courtly knight had failed?
“Suppose I had never turned up?” asked Tay, abruptly. “That husband of
yours can’t live forever, is many years older than you, anyhow. Do you
fancy you would have eventually married Herbert? Corking books! He must
be some man.”
Julia had flushed to her hair. “How did you know I was thinking of him?”
she stammered.
“Were you? Well, those flashes happen, you know. You haven’t answered my
question.”
“It is quite impossible for me to tell, even to imagine, what I might
have done if you—well, if you had not come over again. I’ve never
really thought of marrying Nigel, but there would be a certain rest in
it—not now, but later, perhaps. And we think and work with much the
same objects.”
“Nothing in rest till you’ve had the other thing first. How much
thinking did you expend on that other thing before you were submerged in
the unmentionable?”
Julia blushed again, then laughed. “Oh, well—some day, I’ll tell you a
funny experience I had in India.”
“Tell me now.”
“Over empty coffee-cups and fragments of buttered rolls? Not I. What
shall we do first? Skate?”
“If you like. Do you want to toboggan afterward?”
“I think I’d like a tramp through the woods. We’ve never really
investigated them.”
“Good. Come along.”
They found the lake deserted and skated in silence until Tay remembered
her promise.
“This is a sufficiently romantic spot for confidences,” he observed.
“And in full view of the waiters of the hotel, who appear to have
nothing to do but watch us. Tell me your Indian experience. Whom did you
think you were in love with over there?”
“Nobody. That was the trouble.”
“Did he love and ride away, perhaps? That’s just the sort of experience
you need.”
“Well, I’ve never had it,” said Julia, indignantly.
“A man never minds telling when he’s been left, but I doubt if a woman
ever admits it even to herself. You’re weak-kneed creatures, the best of
you, and need nine-tenths of all the vanity there is in the world to
keep going.”
“I believe you really despise women. But you’re just the sort that
couldn’t live without them.”
“Right and wrong. I shan’t explain that cryptic statement. Fire away.”
“You’ll laugh at me.”
“If I really could laugh at you, I’d be half cured. I try, but it does
no good. What would be funny in another woman is tragic in you—and
pathetic.”
“Ah?” She was prepared to be indignant again, but met a new expression
in the eyes with which he was intently regarding her. “What do you mean
by that? I am not to be pitied.”
“You poor isolated child! I’ve never felt sorrier for anybody in my
life. But never mind. Tell me your Indian experience.”
“Well—one night—a warm heavenly Indian night—I was alone in a boat on
a lake. There was a great marble palace at one end. The nightingales
were singing in the forest; and such perfumes!”
“Gorgeous! Why wasn’t I there? Some fun, love-making in southern Asia.
But this is just the setting for real enjoyment of the story. Go ahead.”
“Yes, I never could be in a sentimental mood in this temperature. Well,
I was completely happy—I had been happy for nearly a year in India,
enjoying its strange beauty and never wishing for a companion. It was
happiness enough to be alone and free. But that night—suddenly—I felt
furious—”
“Ah! I begin to catch on.”
“I wish you wouldn’t always guess what I’m going to say.”
“Shows I’m the real thing. Go on.”
“I did wish with all my soul—every part of me—that I had a lover and
that he was there. Heavens, how I could have loved him! I felt
abominably treated by fate. Up to that time I hadn’t even thought about
love. My experience had been too dreadful. I had felt sure that all
capacity for love had been withered up at the roots. When a man looked
at me as men do look at women they admire very much, it was enough to
make me hate him. But I suddenly realized all that had passed. I had
come to the conclusion that Harold had been mad from the beginning, so I
could do no less than forgive him. That seemed to wipe it all out.”
“When did this happen?” asked Tay, abruptly. “What year?”
“It must have been—in 1903.”
“Oh! Cherry hadn’t been to England for two or three years. She went that
year and came back with a good deal of your story—got it from your
aunt, of course. I remember I thought about you pretty hard for a time.
Was on the brink of falling in love with another girl, and it all went
up in smoke. What time of the year was it?”
“Late autumn.”
“Yes! I told myself it was tomfoolery. That you had forgotten me; and I
had pretty well forgotten you. Nevertheless, I couldn’t get you out of
my head. You believe in that sort of thing, I suppose!”
“Oh, yes. I wonder!”
They were both pale and staring at each other. “Well, go on,” said Tay.
“What next?”
“I made up my mind that I would find some one to love; and take the
consequences. I went down to Calcutta, and for a whole winter tried to
fall in love. There were many charming men, but it was no use.”
“Now are you convinced?”
There was a bend in the lake, which Julia had artfully avoided. Tay
swung her suddenly around it, and in spite of her desperate attempt to
free herself, caught her in his arms.
“Now,” he said, “I propose to show you that temperature has nothing to
do with it. Keep quiet. You are on skates, remember.” And he kissed her.
“You can kiss me again,” said Julia, after a moment or two.
“I thought so.” And he kissed her for several minutes.
“You look quite different,” murmured, Julia finally.
“I can look more so. Skates and worsted collars that take your ears off
are infernally in the way.”
“Will you always joke?”
“My dear child, if I didn’t joke, I might really frighten you.”
Julia shivered. “I’ve been frightened for days. I knew this would come.
If I’d been really wise, I’d have run away.”
“It wouldn’t have done you one bit of good. Never try that game. If you
do, I’ll jump right up on the platform in Albert Hall and kiss you in
the presence of ten thousand suffragettes—damnable word!”
“I believe you would.”
“I would.” And he kissed her again.
This time she didn’t respond, and he gave her a little shake. “Forget
it. You’re to think of nothing but me this long day we have all to
ourselves. Time enough in London for you to set up your ninepins for me
to bowl over. You’ve shown what you can do. Lady Dark told me that you
did nothing by halves, and you’ve just proved it. To-day for love. Do
you hear?”
Julia smiled radiantly. “I couldn’t think of anything but you for more
than a minute if I would. That was one thing that terrified me at
night—when I had time to think— I had switched off with a vengeance!
The past seemed blotted out. I wonder! I wonder!”
“I don’t. And I never saw a mortal woman look so happy. Your faculty of
living in the moment is a grand asset, my dear. Ten months— Good lord!
It takes all of that time to establish a residence in Nevada, and all
the rest of it. However— Well, let us go for a walk in the woods.” He
glanced about with a quickening breath. “Blessed spot! We’ll come back
to it one of these days.”
XII
“IT shows how much in love we are that we don’t mind this luncheon,”
said Tay, who made a face, nevertheless. They had decided to remain away
from the hotel all day, and were fortifying themselves at the inn on the
lake. The meal was the usual one of watery veal, fried potatoes, and
pastry. “I remember eating ‘kalb’ when I was in Germany before until I
choked. Can any one explain why there are more calves in Germany than
anywhere else on the face of the globe? You don’t see so many cows. The
offspring must arrive in litters like pigs.”
“And the German, true to his creed, is furious if you flout his
commonest staple.” Julia smiled, but, in truth, her mind was deeply
perturbed, and she spoke mechanically. There had been no more
love-making, for guests and peasants had met them at every turn of the
woods. Her Hindu master had once told her that profound as were the
suggestions he had given her, and systematic as was the control she had
been taught to acquire over herself, either might suffer interruption
unless she lived in India for many years longer. A violent awakening of
the primal emotions, the assault of a mind and nature, temporarily, at
least, stronger than her own, and that devil that lives in the
subconsciousness would sit on his hind legs and chuckle.
During the hours that had succeeded those moments of unquestioning
surrender on the lake, her thirty-four years with their highest
accomplishment had crept back, and she had ceased forever to feel
eighteen. The immediate future rose before her like a black wall pricked
out with menacing fingers. There was no question as to where her duty
lay for the moment, as to what she must accomplish before she could
think of happiness. All the steel in her nature had reasserted itself,
her brain was cold and keen. She would put an end to the present state
of affairs this very day. But how? How?
She continued pleasantly.
“Perhaps it would have been better to go back to the hotel.”
“Not much. The hotel is associated with three evenings of fruitless
manœuvrings to get you alone in one of those corners. Besides, Lady Dark
may have recovered. I’ll take no chances. You are to be mine alone for
an entire day.”
“We could stay a few days longer.”
“No, on the whole, I want to wind up London as quickly as possible. So
must you. I shall send you on a steamer ahead to make sure of you.”
Julia laughed. “How like a man. We could hardly be happier than we are
now. Why not let well enough alone, for a bit?”
“Well, you see, I am a man, and therefore differ from you as to what
constitutes real happiness. I want to get the cursed Reno matter over as
quickly as possible. Besides, I am due at home. The business might wait,
but there’s a big piece of political work to pull off, and I must do my
share in prying my poor rotten state out of the slough.”
Julia’s mind took a leap. “I believe you are really ambitious,” she
said, with bright sympathetic eyes. “Politicians don’t work for nothing.
Do you know you never have told me a word of your ultimate intentions?”
“I’ve been too busy talking about you. I was only too glad to side-track
my own affairs for a time. We were all so strung up during the graft
prosecution that we jumped at anything that would give us a chance to
forget it, and recuperate our energies.”
“Well, you have had a change! Do tell me how you have planned out your
life. Do you look forward to being President of the United States?”
“Not as much as when I was fifteen.”
“Oh, you will always joke! Can’t you fancy what your future is to me?
You are capable of great things, and I don’t for a moment believe that
you care for nothing but money making, varied by an occasional rush at
reform. Do be serious.”
“My dear, I never felt more serious than I do at this moment. God knows
I’m only too grateful for your interest. It struck me as ominous that
you never asked me.”
“I didn’t dare,” murmured Julia. “A man’s career is a so much more
brilliant thing than a woman’s ever can be, for he has two distinct
sides. We women are bound by our physical limitations to one side. We
must make new traditions—and new bodies to transmit—”
“Hold on! Let us avoid that subject as long as possible.”
“But tell me.”
“Well, here is the way I am fixed: I am for reform, my father is not. I
am a full partner in the firm, but I can’t use the firm’s money for an
object to which my father is bitterly opposed. But I have been making
money on the outside, investing and reinvesting, and, in two years at
most, I shall have an independent fortune, irrespective of my father’s
large estate. Then I intend to go in for politics, doing all I can
meanwhile to educate the people in the precepts of the true democracy
and to keep the Reform party on top. I intend to hold conspicuous office
in California, then go to Congress. You can call this ambition, if you
like; no doubt ambition is mixed up with all deep sense of personal
usefulness. It takes a good-sized ego to permit you to fancy yourself
able to reform long-existing conditions; and egoism and ambition are
good working partners. I shall work for my own state first, and then for
the country at large. That is the way for Americans to begin, or, at all
events, the way we do begin, our country being what it is. State pride
is almost as strong as national. Moreover, a man must prove himself in
his own state before he can get a chance to command the attention of the
nation. If a man happens to belong to a notoriously corrupt state like
California, and manages to shine by contrast, his opportunities are so
much the greater! But the nation is the thing. Every Union man during
the Civil War fought for his flag, not for his section. But our country
is now a republic only in name. We are piling up problems our founders
could not anticipate, and if they go on unchecked, they will land us
either in an autocracy, or in the worst form of tyranny known to
history,—mob rule. It is the business of a few of us to avert a French
Revolution. Just at present we are between two camps, Monopoly and
Labor-Unionism, and have almost forgotten that we are citizens of a free
country. Our skins have been safe so far, owing to the lack of brains
and initiative in the masses; also, because they are far from
starvation. But let that condition arise—before the Money Power has
been made to open its eyes, or has been controlled by legislation—then
horrors beside which the French Revolution will be mere picturesque
material for novelists. A few thinking men with money enough to give
them weight with the solid moneyed class at the top—where the reform
must begin—as well as to place them above suspicion, and who have
cultivated common-sense and patriotism instead of greed, must do the
business. Let’s get out of this.”
XIII
WHEN they were walking over the crisp snow in the woods—now deserted,
for hotel guests and peasants alike were at the long midday meal—he
resumed the subject. Her vivid sympathy and interest had brought back
the bitter struggle of the past two years with a rush.
“How I wish you had been with me when we made our graft fight,” he said,
looking at her with fond eager eyes. “What a mate you would have been.
When the whole town is howling at a man because he is trying to do the
right thing, he needs just such a woman as you to keep the courage in
him. The concerted opinion of the majority has an insidious power!
Sometimes we wondered if we could be right, if we were not all dreamers,
unpractical, doing our city more harm than good. The whole country was
aghast at our exposures, business was almost dead, capital refused to
come our way; the poor old city that had been wrecked by the most
fearful natural calamity of modern times—$500,000,000 went up in
smoke—seemed to cry out against us for holding her down, to beg for a
chance to limp out of her bog. But we looked ahead, convinced that there
could be no permanent prosperity for San Francisco until the sore was
scraped to the bone and sterilized; in other words, until the political
scoundrels and the get-rich-quick element, that obtained their crushing
franchises by corrupting a packed Board of Supervisors, and bought
everybody, from the boss and the mayor down to the man in the street
with a vote to sell, were either gaoled or so discredited that they
would be forced into private life or out of the state. We unseated the
boss and the mayor, the supervisors having come through, and we were
able to indict several of what we call the higher-ups—the men that had
done the buying. I never had much hope of convicting these men, for in
California, in its present state of moral development, it is next to
impossible to convict a rich man. If you get an honest judge, there are
always men in the jury that have got in for no purpose but to be bribed.
But we won out in another way. The long trial aired the abominable
practices of these corporations, and, together with the many sensational
episodes—the shooting of the prosecuting attorney in court, and the
suicide of the would-be murderer in prison before he could be put on the
stand, the kidnapping of the only editor that fought with us,—woke up
the state; it talked of little else, and talking, thought, and was
ashamed. The city machine got ahead of us, for the mayor we had managed
to seat was too virtuous to build up a machine of his own; but we hope
for great things in the state itself when our Reform candidate runs for
the office of governor this year. Perhaps it was unreasonable to hope
for more at the beginning, and it was a tough fight to get that much.
“Oh, God!” he cried bitterly, “the rottenness of young communities with
potentialities of wealth. Human nature in the raw, when it is still in
the ingenuous stage of greed, is a damnable thing. It has never shown
any originality since the world began. Socialism may clip its wings, if
it ever gets control, but—here is the cursed anomaly: you can’t hope
for Socialism until a miracle eliminates greed from the nature of man;
for it is men that must grant Socialism, and Socialism means the balking
of greed. Even if some unforeseen set of circumstances forced it upon
us, I doubt if it would last. You can no more eliminate greed from men
than you could eliminate sex by forcing men and women to dress alike,
shave their heads, and say their prayers three times a day. But the
world is better in some respects than it was a century ago, and this is
primarily due to the untiring efforts of the minority. But, again, the
work must be done by a few men—the few that are awake and can see
farther than their noses. Well, my dear, I hope and pray that I am one
of those men. There you have my program, so far as a mere finite mind
can project it.”
“Now I know why I have been permitted to love you,” said Julia, softly,
and looking at him with glowing eyes. “Hadji Sadrä told me that he
should watch over me, and that if I dared love a man who would pull me
down, instead of being far greater than I could ever hope to be, he
would blast me, transform me into a mere commonplace female, but haunted
by the memory of what I had been—”
“How much of all that do you believe?”
“Ah! I saw marvellous exhibitions of power. They are common enough in
the East, but one would hardly dare relate them in this part of the
world. If I longed with all the concentrated powers of my mind for Hadji
Sadrä, he would come to me in a flash—with that secondary material body
they call the astral, and we call the ghost. If I were terribly
perplexed, I should send for him—”
“I want no go-betweens, particularly Mohammedan ghosts.”
But Julia had no intention of letting him down.
“I wonder I could remember him, or any one else! It was only because I
suddenly realized what all this means—that I may have another and far
greater part to play—”
“You see that at last! Perhaps I should have appealed to you before.
But—it is only to-day that I have felt really close to you—really
loved you, perhaps. I fancy I was merely infatuated before.” He took her
in his arms, and she looked up at him with the deepest sympathy a woman
can express, particularly when gifted with eyes that are the dazzling
headlights of a finished and powerful machine behind. “Oh, if you could
only know,” he continued in tones of intense feeling, “what it will mean
to me to have you, not only to love, but to work with! I really want
with all my soul to be of use to my country, to be one of the few that
are willing to work for her unselfishly, to leave a decent name behind
me. It is thankless work, fighting the majority, battling for an ideal
nobody wants, to be the butt of the press, accused of sordid motives,
balked at every turn. The only sort of patriotism the average American
understands is sounding promises by ambitious politicians and huge
donations from repentant millionnaires. To raise the morale of a people,
and in the process prevent them from growing too rich, may mean the
respect of posterity, but it also means the hatred of your
contemporaries. The Big Voice! It confuses the mind and the standards.
The constant failures, the recurring sense of hopelessness, of futility,
the inevitable contempt for the masses you are striving to emancipate
from themselves,—many a man that has started out with the loftiest and
most selfless ideals loses courage, shrugs his shoulders, and falls
back. I am no better and stronger than many of them. I have dreamed one
minute, the next wondered how far I would go, how long my enthusiasm
would last. Material success is easy enough, and always rewarded by
approbation and respect! _What is the use?_ I am young still, but I
asked myself that question more than once, for even my family were all
against me. My father was furious. He is honest, but his business has
been his god. I left home and went to a hotel—to avoid the everlasting
discussions at table. My old friends cut me on the street. I was
regarded as an enemy of society, and society cast me out. The rest of
our little group shared the same fate. We were obliged to keep one
another’s courage up. That we carried our lives in our hands and were
liable to assassination at any moment was the least of our trials. The
Big Voice! We felt as if we were at the foot of an avalanche, or some
other inexorable enemy in Nature herself, trying to push it back with
our hands. Inevitably there were black moments when we felt we were
fools, especially when we faced certain defeat. And it’s all to do
again, not once, but many times. Do you wonder that the light side of my
nature has given me many cynical moments, or that I have seethed with
disgust, or wondered if I would last? But with you—ah! If I had ever
dreamed you lived, I believe I never should have despaired for a moment.
But my only memory of you was of a charming and lovely child. And it is
only to-day, here, that I have realized what it means for any of us to
stand alone. With your faith and your brain, with you always beside me,
sympathizing, helping—I never shall lose courage for a moment. I could
accomplish anything—everything—”
This sudden vehement disclosure of the serious depths of his nature
under its surface gayety, with more than one glimpse of heights and
powers she had barely divined, had thrilled Julia even more than his
passionate love-making. All her own greatness responded, and for a
moment or two she had been swept irresistibly on that tide of
self-revealing words. She had a vision of the complete passion, the
perfect union. But her brain remained cool. She never lost sight of her
purpose.
She sprang from him suddenly and flung out her arms. Her eyes looked
black. Her skin shone with a peculiar radiance like white fire. So she
had looked more than once on the platform during her last moments of
irresistible appeal; when her bewildered audiences had felt as if
dissolving in a crucible from which there was no escape. “Oh,” she cried
in low vibrating tones of intense passion, “now I know you—the real
You! I’ll never fail you. You are wonderful, and I worship you! I
believe we can be happier than any two mortals have ever been. But, Dan,
I must go to you free, with a conscience as clean as your own. You must
see that. You are too great not to see it. I must be tormented with no
regrets, no remorse. If I should leave at this moment—‘rat’ like any
scoundrelly selfish politician—desert these women publicly while all
the world is watching them, make them ridiculous—oh, I don’t mean that
I am indispensable; there are too many great women among them for that—
But don’t you see that if I threw them over to follow an American to the
other side of the world, now, while their fate hangs in the
balance—why, it would amount to nothing less than a cynical declaration
that we are all alike when it comes to a man—that we fight for a great
impersonal cause only so long as no man comes along to play the old tune
on our passions—why—Good God!—they would be the butt of every
malicious wit in the kingdom. Their cause would be set back a
generation. And I? I should be execrated by women the world over. I, who
am now a sort of goddess. My immense following is due as much to the
youth and beauty which I have appeared to immolate so indifferently, as
to all my talents put together. What use should I be to you if I
scuttled the ship and deserted it? What place could I take among the
women of your country? Do you think they would listen to me, that I
could teach them, help them? They would laugh in my face!”
She caught him by the shoulders, her eyes piercing into his, which
stared at her full of sombre perplexity. She went on in a rapid
monotonous voice, which fell on his brain like a rain of fire: “Why
didn’t you come for me, as you promised? I should have gone. Four years
ago! I was free. Something was always knocking at my mind. I knew that I
had useful energies of some sort. They were always groping to find vent.
If you had come, if you had told me then what you have told me to-day, I
should not have hesitated a moment. I should have known that my work was
to be done with you. But you forgot your promise. The bond was not
strong enough. Why did you wait until I had become a public figure,
written about daily—until I had hopelessly compromised myself? Oh,
can’t you see that you have made me the most tragic figure among women?
I love you so that I long with all those other and far greater forces
within me—that you have brought to life—to go, to be happy, to give
you all you want and deserve, to become truly great—with you! Oh, I am
the most unhappy woman on earth—and the happiest!”
Tay had tried to interrupt her several times. But he was dazed. She
looked like a sibyl. He felt disjointedly that he had less desire to
claim her as a woman than to ascend with her to the plane whither she
seemed to have borne herself. He had been shaken out of his own reserve
and bared his soul for the first time in his life; his defences were
down, she seemed to have entered his mind and taken possession. Human
passion would appear to have fallen to ashes. His senses felt numb, he
was vaguely conscious of a material dissolution that left his soul free
to mingle with hers.
She gave him no chance to speak. Her words flowed on with the same fiery
monotony.
“You have taught me what duty means. I believe I never was really
capable of the sacrifice of self before. I worked to fill my time, to
forget my depths. Then because the greatness of that work really put my
womanhood to sleep! But you! I have not a personal ambition left, not a
want apart from you, but this terrible duty. I want to live in you, for
you. You! You! You!” Tay had a confused idea that he was turning into a
demi-god. “But I must go to you free—that I may never look back—that I
may know and give complete happiness. I must be all woman, not a mere
brain, humiliated, ashamed, tortured by regrets. _And you must go at
once, at once, at once._ If you stay, if you prove too strong for me, if
you force me to go with you—and I love you so I might go—then we never
shall know the meaning of happiness for a moment. I will follow you
before long. If we don’t win the battle early this year, I will train
some one to take my place. I shall speak, appear in public less and
less, drop out by degrees. I shall soon be forgotten—long before I can
marry you. But to leap from the front rank of these women straight into
a divorce court in a city whose name is a synonym for vulgarity, that is
never mentioned without a laugh or a sneer— Oh, you see! You see! What
an anticlimax to all these years on a pedestal! What a wife for you, a
public man! Oh, God! I should be the ruin of your own career—”
“Julia!” exclaimed Tay, trying to get his breath.
She fell back limply against a tree, as if exhausted with her own
passion, but neither voice nor eyes lost their power.
“Oh, go! Go! Go! If you don’t, I shall be in the dust. I shall be
incapable of love in my abasement. I know myself. To love, to be happy,
I must be free. I must have my self-respect. I can’t love, tortured by
shame and remorse. I want love and you more than anything on earth, but
I want them utterly. Oh, go!”
For a moment or two Tay had been conscious of an angry struggle in the
depths of his mind. He suddenly became master of himself. He shot a
glance at Julia as piercing as her own, and she gasped and flung herself
face downward on the snow and began to sob. He made no attempt to pick
her up for the moment.
“You have strange powers, Julia,” he said. “If I were weaker than I
am,—and God knows I am weak enough,—I should be slinking through the
woods with my tail between my legs, hypnotized out of my manhood, and
ready to lick your hand for the rest of my life.” Julia stopped sobbing
and listened intently. Tay walked up and down before he spoke again.
“But mind you, I don’t question your sincerity, your love, whatever the
devilish arts you tried to practise on me. Every leader of a great
revolution is a fanatic and a Jesuit. And, methods aside, every word you
spoke was sound common-sense. I don’t care to assume the responsibility
of injuring those women, and I believe you would be incapable of
happiness if you handed their enemies another weapon—a pretty deadly
one it would be!”
He picked her up and dusted her off. “I am going,” he went on grimly,
“and I shall wait exactly six months. Or rather—” He caught her hands
in his powerful grip, his eyes blazing into hers. “I shall never see you
again, not even with your royal consent, unless you swear to me here
that you’ll not try that on again. That you’ll be woman to my man from
this time forth—that and nothing more. I’ll be damned if I’ll live with
a woman who doesn’t play a square game. Swear it.”
“Oh, I do, I do! Oh, Dan!” The tears were running down her face, honest
tears, for she was frightened, while rejoicing. “Do believe that I was
only doing my best—I knew that you wouldn’t listen—I had only one
object—”
“Oh, as I told you, I have never questioned your queer complicated
honesty. Only, being a perfectly normal person myself, I prefer to
postpone occult trickery until I reach the next world. No doubt it will
be all in the day’s work there. But I’ve got my job cut out in this,
matching my earthly wits against the next man’s. Now, you’ve given me
your word! If you ever go back on it—”
“Oh, never!” Julia was now really limp, and looked wholly feminine. Tay
took her in his arms once more and dried her tears. “It’s my fate to
love you,” he said, with a sigh. “And that’s about the size of it. I’m
sorry you ever went to your East, but live in the hope I can make you
forget it.”
“And do you love me as much as ever?” asked Julia, unintellectually.
Tay laughed outright, the ancient formula almost routing the memory of
those moments when the same woman that uttered them automatically had
launched her ruthless will into his relaxing brain. “Oh, yes,” he said,
“I love you, all right, and for good and all. Now, we’ll be practical. I
shall leave England the day I wind up my affairs in London. That should
be in less than a week. I am going to ask you to stay here until I sail.
I am resigned to going without you, am willing to admit that a
separation of a few months is inevitable—but, all the same, the less
temptation, the better. Besides, I shall need all my wits in London— If
you were there—”
“Oh, I’d rather stay, far, far rather! I don’t think I could stand it,
either. Here, at least, I can keep out of doors, exercise until I am
past thought—”
“Well, don’t change your mind. I _insist_ that you stay here. If you
return to London while I am there—well, I’ll not say just what I won’t
do. Enough that I should not return to America alone. Come, let’s get
back to the hotel.”
XIV
JULIA went at once to Ishbel’s room. She found that conspirator sitting
on the little balcony enjoying the view of ice peak and forest. Ishbel
sprang to her feet when she saw Julia’s face.
“Oh— Ah— So—”
“Quite so,” said Julia, dryly. “But never mind. I have won out for a
bit. He has promised to go to California at once and wait while I
eliminate myself by degrees. I have promised to follow in six months. Of
course I shall if I can. If I can’t—well, I must make him listen to
reason again. But I hope—”
“Of course, you can’t bolt,” said Ishbel, who was burning with sympathy
for both. “But surely you can manage to let yourself out in six months.
Your vice-president is an efficient woman; and then we are sure to win
this session—”
“I don’t know! If we did, of course I’d make some excuse and go at once.
But—otherwise—I can’t leave them for a divorce court until I have
taught them to forget me—disassociated myself from them—”
She dropped on the edge of the bed, face and body expressing utter
discouragement. Ishbel half opened her lips, then went out upon the
balcony lest she break her word and tell Julia that France was dying.
But a moment’s reflection convinced her that this information would only
complicate matters at present. She thought hard for a few minutes, then
ran back into the room.
“Julia!” she exclaimed, “I have an idea! Why not go to Nevis? Your
mother is very old. You haven’t seen her for many years. You can give
out that she is ill—or I will if you won’t. My conscience wouldn’t hurt
me a bit, for old people are always ill. No doubt you’ll find her with
rheumatism, lumbago, dropsy, Bright’s disease, diabetes, tumors, or a
few other ills incident to old age. It would make just the break you
need; and it’s just the time to go, for your officers can attend to
everything. Also—you could stay on and on.”
Julia looked up with some return of animation in her heavy eyes.
“It’s not a bad idea, if I could go.”
“Of course you could, and the minute I get to London I’ll set the whole
shop to work on your tropic wardrobe. You can get many things
ready-made, anyhow—people are always going out to India on a moment’s
notice.”
“I’ll think it over while I’m here. I’m to stay until he sails.”
“Ah!—I hate to leave you alone. Shall I stay with you?”
“I think I’d rather be alone.”
“Yes, I understand.” She sat down on the bed and put her arm about
Julia’s relaxed form. “I want you to promise me that you will marry Mr.
Tay, whatever happens. You’ve a right to happiness, if ever a woman had,
and this is your only chance, my dear. There’s only one real man in
every woman’s life, and happiness is the inalienable right of all of us.
Even Bridgit was forced to admit that.”
“Oh, I intend to marry him. But when? That is the question!”
“As soon as possible. You have given four uninterrupted years to this
work, and you have done great things for it. That is enough—”
“We have all gone in—that inner band—to devote a lifetime to it if
necessary.”
“Don’t you suspect that those women have an extra something in their
make-up that the rest of us lack?”
“I have accomplished as much as any of them—”
“Quite so. And enough. Don’t you feel that the spring has gone out of
you?”
“Just now, yes.”
“You’ll never work with the same spirit again, for you never can be
impersonal again. You would feel a hypocrite, for you would always be
resenting the loss of what you really want most in life. You’ve a duty
to yourself, to say nothing of Mr. Tay; and you’re not going to a
frivolous useless life—not with him! No one is indispensable to any
real cause, and in ours there are too many to carry on the work without
the supreme sacrifice on your part. Promise me, at least, that you will
go at once to Nevis. It would be the beginning of the solution.”
“I’d like to go.”
“You really must want to see your mother, and your old home,” continued
Ishbel, insinuatingly. “One’s mother and one’s birthplace are the great
refuges in time of trouble. You were very fond of your mother when you
were a child.”
“I’m fond of her now, but she seems to have lost all affection for me.”
“Never believe it. She is a strange proud old woman, but she has always
loved you. Go back to her. There is your refuge.”
“You are playing on my deepest feelings, but you are right. Nevis! When
you are crushed, your own land calls you. And, as you say, I haven’t
much work in me at present.”
“Then you’ll go?”
“When you get to London, telegraph me how matters stand. If it looks as
if the truce would be a long one—yes, I’ll go. I believe I want to go
more than anything else in the world—except one! Perhaps I’ll get a
grip on myself down there. Perhaps I’ll find that—well, that I love
this great cause best, after all.”
“Not a bit of it!” cried Ishbel, in alarm. “Don’t try to persuade
yourself of anything so unnatural and foolish. Do you realize how few
women have complete happiness offered them? I could shake you.”
Then she reflected that Nevis was a tropical island; and another scheme
was forming in her agile brain. “Well, never mind all that. You are worn
out now. It is not a matter to discuss, anyhow. Stay out of doors here,
and I will prepare your wardrobe. Then you can start as soon as you
return to England. I will tell Collins to pack your other things. Eric
will secure your accommodations on the first steamer that sails after
Mr. Tay’s. Now lie down. Or shall you come down to our last dinner?”
“No, I am not going to see him again. I’ll be glad when he has gone, and
that, at least, is over. But I’ll go to Nevis, if all is quiet in
England.”
XV
THEY left on the evening train in order to catch the morning train out
of Munich. Julia, who had been sitting inertly in her room, too listless
to go to bed, heard the carriage rattle down the street, and sprang to
her feet with a wild sense of protest and despair. It required all her
self-control to refrain from ringing for a droschke and following before
it was too late. Then, angry at this complete surrender to her
femininity, she undressed and went to bed.
Here, she discovered to her dismay that California was not farther off
than sleep. Perversely, she would not relax, nor go through any of the
other forms with which she had always been able to summon sleep when
excited. She doubted if they would conquer these new impressions, but
refused to give them a trial. She lay awake until nearly dawn, the
events of the day marching through her brain with maddening reiteration.
She dreaded sleep, also, for now at least her brain was stimulated, and
she guessed that it would be correspondingly depressed upon awakening.
So it was. The weather, also, had changed. It was raining.
When Julia heard the heavy raindrops splashing on her balcony, she sat
up with a gasp of horror, then laughed grimly. But this conspiracy of
Nature gave her a certain obstinate fortitude, and she rose at once,
took a cold bath, and dressed. But when she opened her door to go down
to the dining-room, her courage failed her, and she rang and ordered
breakfast to be brought upstairs.
“What am I to do?” she thought in terror. “What am I to do?”
It rained all day. Julia had brought no storm clothes. She prowled about
the halls, getting what exercise she could, but dared not go downstairs.
She sent for books from the library, but they might have been written in
Greek. She summoned resolution to go to the dining-room at seven
o’clock, but turned at the door, and ran back to her room. She saw Tay
at every turn, and to sit alone at the table with his empty chair
opposite, was beyond her endurance. Nor could she eat the food brought
to her room. She went to bed again, and slept fitfully.
She awoke in the small hours to hear it still raining, and this time she
fell into a fury over her demoralization.
“And this is love!” she thought. “Terrors! Ignominy! A will turned to
water. I’d not be more helpless if I were in a hospital with typhoid
fever.”
Her mind suddenly flew to the conversation with her friends on the night
she had last dined with Ishbel. Should she go to Paris and rid herself
of the disease once for all? What prospect of happiness if love were
able to induce a misery keener than any of its compensations? If she
could feel like this now, knowing that he loved her, and that the
separation was but a matter of time, what might she not suffer if he
ceased to love her, if he gave her cause for jealousy, if she found
herself disappointed in him? It would be worse, far worse. Now, at
least, she was—not free; no one ever felt more of a slave—but at least
with the power to attain freedom. There would be a deep satisfaction, to
say nothing of relief, in the knowledge that she never need think of him
again—this man that had destroyed her fine poise, her remarkable
powers, made her the slave of the race, the victim of the ancient
instinct, a mere instrument upon which Nature was playing her old tune
in contemptuous disregard of those years in which she had dwelt on
impersonal heights seldom attained by young and beautiful women. She
almost hated him. Better have done with it at once. In all her life with
France she had never known depression like this, for love adds the sense
of impotence to calamity.
She got out of bed, without ringing for her bath, and began to pack her
trunk. She didn’t care if she never took a bath again. She hated
herself, and she hated Tay. Above all she hated the rain.
But in the midst of her packing she sat back on the floor and scowled.
To receive suggestions one must be perfectly amenable. There must be no
reserve at the back of the head. Although she ground her teeth, she
admitted that she would permit no man, no science, to destroy the image
of Tay in her mind, root him out of her life. Nor would she confess
herself a coward—nor violate the jealous instincts of her sex. If the
time came when she must banish him, she would do it herself. Good God!
She was female all through. Suffering was a part of her birthright. She
would give up not the least of the accompaniments of love.
Cursing herself for a fool, she rang for her bath, dressed herself, and
determined to walk out of doors, if the valley had turned into a lake.
But by the time she had swallowed her coffee and rolls the skies had
cleared, and she started out with a guide and a sled. There was always
excitement in tobogganing. For a bit the keen air revived her, but the
hills and valley had new terrors, for every step reminded her of her
lover. Black protest left her, but was followed by a sadness so profound
that she feared to dissolve in the presence of her guide, and sent him
home. She had planned to visit the lake, but she found that it would be
as easy to break her word and follow Tay to London.
A new and horrid fear had begun to haunt her. Did he really love her as
he had loved her before she had made him, for a few moments, at least,
the plaything of her will and her science? He had forgiven her, but must
not such a memory rankle, eventually induce a permanent
resentment—fear—hatred possibly?
She returned to her room, the only place unassociated with him. But
although it was a refuge in a sense, she found little comfort in it, for
the very atmosphere was thick with her long hours of misery. She sat
down and made a deliberate attempt to banish her depression, that
manifest of Nature’s resentment at even the temporary balking of her
desires.
“The ancient instinct!” she thought bitterly. “We are all the same fools
when it comes to a man—_the_ man—when the race is trying to struggle
on through its victims.” She looked back upon the past eight years as
upon a period of transcendent happiness. More than ever she was
convinced that the only unmitigated happiness lay in self-completion, in
independence of the sex in man. Love was a splendid disease induced by
Nature to further her one end; accompanied by moments of hallucination
called happiness, but which in the last analysis were but the prelude to
a lifetime of every variety of sorrow and disillusion. On the other
hand, the women that steered safely clear of this smiling island with a
thousand jagged teeth beneath the rippling waters, and elected to stand
alone, were free to accept the other great gifts of life, to attain to a
form of serenity and content, beside which love and its delusions were
the earthly hell. In the last four years she had never cast a thought to
love, the future had loomed as perfect as the present. And she had
weakly slid down into chaos!
The immortal women! Oh, lord! Oh, lord!
She reviewed her life from the time when, the wife of an abhorred
husband, she had begun, unconsciously at first, to build up that
strength, which, when the crucial tests came, enabled her to control, in
a measure, the present, to exult in the knowledge that she had proved
herself stronger than life; instead of losing her mind, or becoming the
plaything of men. She had even dismissed Nigel Herbert when he came with
freedom and something like happiness in his hand; proud of her strength
to work out her destiny unaided.
Strength! Her mind flew from this vision of past solidarity to her years
at the feet of the wise men of Benares. It was not pleasant to dwell
upon the compliments of Hadji Sadrä, but she recalled his initiations
and suggestions, and those of Swani Dambaba; they had given her a power
over herself and others seldom possessed by Occidentals. But she could
hardly formulate them; they were enveloped in a haze, as elusive and
remote as dreams. Had she been but cunningly equipped to play her part
in the great battle; and, the part played, was she perchance set free to
follow the commoner destiny of woman? There was some satisfaction in the
thought, but her ego felt slapped in the face. She had fancied her
destiny mightily, and this anticlimax was no part of the program of the
immortal women. Still, why not? Her inner vision, sharpened though it
might have been by her masters, could not pierce the future, nor her
judgment, while captive in the gray matter of the mortal brain, presume
to determine exactly what destinies those immortal women had mapped out
for themselves on earth. For all she knew Tay might have been composed
to save his country, and hers the glorious part to help him.
But at this point she sat down on the floor once more and finished the
packing of her trunk. None knew better than she the distinguished powers
of the human mind for self-deception. With her own personal gift for
subtle reasoning, to say nothing of her imagination, she could persuade
herself in another fifteen minutes that it was her duty to take the
first steamer for New York and await Tay in the facile state of Nevada.
She should reason no more, but be guided by events. Meanwhile let love
devour her, burn her up, torment her with fears, exalt her with visions
of the perfect union. But not in Partenkirchen. She should amuse herself
in Berlin until Tay’s final telegram set her free to go to Nevis. “The
dog to its kennel,” she thought grimly. “That’s the place for me. I’ll
find my balance there if anywhere.”
XVI
ON the evening of Julia’s departure for Nevis, Ishbel entered her
husband’s study and perched herself on the arm of his chair.
“Eric,” she said, “when you have made a promise you can’t break, is it
wrong to get round it, if it is for the good of some one you are very
fond of?”
“What are you driving at? Nothing more interesting than the workings of
the female conscience under fire.”
“You like Mr. Tay?”
“Rather. Never liked a man more. Deuced good chap all round.”
“You think that he and Julia should marry?”
“I do. But am not so sure they will. Julia’s a hard nut to crack.”
“Quite so. But I want her to be as happy as I am.”
“Right you are. Tay’s the man.”
“There’s something I promised Bridgit not to tell either Julia or Mr.
Tay. But I didn’t promise not to tell you.”
Dark laughed. “I begin to see daylight. I suppose even Bridgit doesn’t
encourage you to have secrets from your husband.”
“You _are_ a dear! Well, it’s this. France is very low, has a bad case
of heart and may go any minute.”
Dark whistled. “That would simplify matters.”
“Yesterday I called at Kingsborough House and gently wormed the whole
truth out of the duchess. The attacks are growing more and more
frequent. The doctors don’t give him a fortnight.”
Dark stood up, “I see! I see!”
“I didn’t dare tell you until Mr. Tay and Julia had both left. If you
had told him, he wouldn’t have gone, and Julia would hold out, here in
England. But on Nevis, on a tropical island! All these associations and
duties will seem like a dream down there, and one hasn’t much energy in
the tropics, anyhow, to say nothing of being steeped in an atmosphere of
romance. I want you to cable Mr. Tay—so that he will get your message
when he arrives in New York day after to-morrow—that France is dying,
that Julia has sailed for Nevis, and that if he is wise, he will go
there at once—he can get there first, I should think, for the Royal
Mail takes eighteen days—and marry her the moment he gets another cable
from you announcing France’s death. Do you mind?”
“Rather not!”
“Tell him to say nothing to Julia about France’s condition until he is
quite certain she is free—”
“Do you want me to go stony—”
“Oh, what do a few pounds matter—”
“When arranging people’s destinies! Well, go on.”
“Julia must not return to England. If she did, Mr. Tay would have to
begin all over again. I don’t like anything that looks like treachery to
the women, but still—”
“I do,” said Dark, dryly. “Permit me to take the whole matter over to my
own conscience. That’s what a man is made for, among other things. Tay
shall marry Julia if I can help him manage it, and the women can go
where I’ve consigned them several times already. Now, I’ll go out and
send that cablegram.”