SHE was at work in the garden: he had long ago noted that she never idled.
He approached the fence and leaned on it as when they had last talked
together; but his big Jacobin hat was pulled down over his eyes now. He was
afraid of his own voice, afraid of the sound of his knuckles, so that when
at last he had rapped on the fence, he hoped that she had not heard, so that
he could go away.
"Knock louder," she called out from under her bonnet. "I'm not sure that I
heard you."
How sunny her voice was, how pure and sweet and remote from any suspicion of
hovering harm! It unshackled him as from a dreadful nightmare.
He broke into his old laugh--the first time since he had stood there
before--and frankly took off his hat.
"How did you know who it was? You saw me coming!"
"Did I? I don't like to contradict a stranger."
"Am I a stranger?"
"What makes a stranger? How long has it been since you were here?"
"A lifetime," he replied gravely.
"You are still living! Will you walk into my parlour?"
"Will you meet me at the door?"
It was so pleasant to seem gay, to say nothing, be nothing! She came
quietly over to the fence and gave him her hand with a little laugh."
"You have holiday of Saturdays. I have not, you see. But I can take a
recess: come in. You are looking well! Wounds agree with you."
He went trembling round to the gate, passed in, and they sat down on the
bench.
"How things grow in this soil," she said pointing to the garden. "It has
only been five or six weeks since you were here. Do you remember? I was
planting the seed: now look at the plants!"
"I, too, was sowing that afternoon," he replied musingly. "But my harvest
ripened before yours; I have already reaped it."
"What's that you are saying about me?" called out a hard, smooth voice from
over the fence at their back. "I don't like to miss anything!"
Amy had a piece of sewing, which she proceeded to spread upon the fence.
"Will you show me about this, Aunt Jessica?"
She greeted John without embarrassment or discernible remembrance of their
last meeting. Her fine blond hair was frowsy and a button was missing at the
throat of her dress. (Some women begin to let themselves go after marriage;
some after the promise of marriage.) There were cake-crumbs also in one
corner of her mouth.
"These are some of my wedding clothes," she said to him prettily. "Aren't
they fine?"
Mrs. Falconer drew her attention for a moment and they began to measure the
cloth over the back of her finger, counting the lengths under her breath.
Amy took a pin from the bosom of her dress and picked between her pearly
teeth daintily.
"Aunt Jessica," she suddenly inquired with mischievous look at John, "before
you were engaged to uncle, was there any one else you liked better?"
With a terrible inward start, he shot a covert glance at her and dropped his
eyes. Mrs. Falconer's answer was playful and serene.
"It has been a long time; it's hard to remember. But I've heard of such
cases."
There was something in the reply that surprised Amy and she peeped under
Mrs. Falconer's bonnet to see what was going on. She had learned that a
great deal went on under that bonnet.
"Well, after you were engaged to him, was there anybody else?"
"I don't think I remember. But I've known of such cases."
Amy peeped again, and the better to see for herself hereafter, coolly lifted
the bonnet off. "Well, after you were married to him," she said, "was there
anybody else? I've known of such cases," she added, with a dry imitation of
the phrase.
"You have made me forget my lengths," said Mrs. Falconer with unruffled
innocence. "I'll have to measure again."
Amy turned to John with sparkling eyes.
"Did you ever know a man who was in love with a married woman?"
"Yes," said John, secretly writhing, but too truthful to say "no."
"What did he do about it?" asked Amy.
"I don't know," replied John, shortly.
"What do you think he ought to have done? What would you do?" asked Amy.
"I don't know," replied John, more coolly, turning away his confused face.
Neither of you seems to know anything this afternoon," observed Amy, "and
I'd always been led to suppose that each of you knew everything."
As she departed with her sewing, she turned to send a final arrow, with some
genuine feeling.
"I think I'll send for uncle to come and talk tome."
"Stay and talk to us," Mrs. Falconer called to her with a sincere, pitying
laugh. "Come back!"
Amy's questions had passed high over her head like a little flock of
chattering birds they had struck him low, like bullets.
"Go on," she said quietly, when they were seated again, "what was it about
the harvest?"
He could not reply at once; and she let him sit in silence, looking across
the garden while she took up her knitting from the end of the bench, and
leaning lightly toward him, measured a few rows of stitches across his
wrist. It gave way under her touch.
"These are your mittens for next winter," she said softly, more softly than
he had ever heard her speak. And the quieting melody of her mere tone!--how
unlike that other voice which bored joyously into you as a bright gimlet
twists its unfeeling head into wood. He turned on her one quick, beautiful
look of gratitude.
"What was it about the harvest?" she repeated, forbearing to return his
look, and thinking that all his embarrassment followed from the pain of
having thus met Amy.
He began to speak very slowly:
"The last time I was here I boasted that I had yet to meet my first great
defeat in life . . . that there was nothing stronger in the world than a
man's will and purpose . . . that if ideals got shattered, we shattered them
. . . that I would go on doing with my life as I had planned, be what I
wished, have what I wanted."
"Well?" she urged, busy with her needles.
"I know better now."
"Aren't you the better for knowing better?"
He made no reply; so that she began to say very simply and as a matter of
course:
"It's the defeat more than anything else that hurts you! Defeat is always
the hardest thing for you to stand, even in trifles. But don't you know that
we have to be defeated in order to succeed? Most of us spend half our lives
in fighting for things that would only destroy us if we got them. A man who
has never been defeated is usually a man who has been ruined. And, of
course," she added with light raillery, "of course there are things stronger
than the strongest will and purpose: the sum of other men's wills and
purposes, for instance. A single soldier may have all the will and purpose
to whip an army, but he doesn't do it. And a man may have all the will and
purpose to whip the world, walk over it rough-shod, shoulder it out of his
way as you'd like to do, but he doesn't do it. And of course we do not
shatter our ideals ourselves--always: a thousand things outside ourselves do
that for us. And what reason had you to say that you would have what you
wanted? Your wishes are not infallible. Suppose you craved the forbidden?"
She looked over at him archly, but he jerked his face farther away. Then he
spoke out with the impulse to get away from her question:
"I could stand to be worsted by great things. But the little ones, the low,
the coarse, the trivial! Ever since I was here last--beginning that very
night--I have been struggling like a beast with his foot in a trap. I don't
mean Amy!" he cried apologetically.
"I'm glad you've discovered there are little things," she replied. "I had
feared you might never find that out. I'm not sure yet that you have. One of
your great troubles is that everything in life looks too large to you, too
serious, too important. You fight the gnats of the world as you fought your
panther. With you everything is a mortal combat. You run every butterfly
down and break it on an iron wheel; after you have broken it, it doesn't
matter: everything is as it was before, except that you have lost time and
strength. The only things that need trouble us very much are not the things
it is right to conquer, but the things it is wrong to conquer. If you ever
conquer in yourself anything that is right, that will be a real trouble for
you as long as you live--and for me!"
He turned quickly and sat facing her, the muscles of his face moving
convulsively. She did not look at him, but went on:
"The last time you were here, you told me that I did not appreciate Amy;
that I could not do her justice; but that no woman could ever understand why
a man loved any other woman."
"Did I say that?" he muttered remorsefully.
"It was because you did not appreciate he--it was because you would never be
able to do her justice--that I was so opposed to the marriage. And this was
largely a question of little things. I knew perfectly well that as soon as
you married Amy, you would begin to expect her to act as though she were
made of iron: so many pieces, so many wheels, so many cogs, so many
revolutions. All the inevitable little things that make up the most of her
life--that make up so large a part of every woman's life--the little moods,
the little play, little changes, little tempers and inconsistencies and
contradictions and falsities and hypocrisies which come every morning and go
every night,--all these would soon have been to you--oh! I'm afraid they'd
have been as big as a herd of buffalo! There would have been a bull fight
for every foible."
She laughed out merrily, but she did not look at him.
"Yes," she continued, trying to drain his cup for him, since he would not do
it himself, "you are the last man in the world to do a woman like Amy
justice. I'm afraid you will never do justice to any woman, unless you
change a good deal and learn a good deal. Perhaps no woman will ever
understand you--except me."
She looked up at him now with the clearest fondness in her exquisite eyes.
With a groan he suddenly leaned over and buried his face in his hands. His
hat fell over on the grass. Her knitting dropped to her lap, and one of her
hands went out quickly toward his big head, heavy with its shaggy reddish
mass of hair, which had grown long during his sickness. But at the first
touch she quickly withdrew it, and stooping over picked up his hat and put
it on her knees, and sat beside him silent and motionless.
He straightened himself up a moment later, and keeping his face turned away
reached for his hat and drew it down over his eyes.
"I can't tell you! You don't understand!" he said in a broken voice.
"I understand everything. Amy has told me-poor little Amy! She is not wholly
to blame. I blame you more. You may have been in love with your idea of her,
but anything like that idea she never has been and never will be; and who is
responsible for your idea, then, but yourself? It is a mistake that many a
man makes; and when the woman disappoints him, he blames her, and deserts
her or makes her life a torment. Of course a woman may make the same
mistake; but, as a rule, women are better judges of men than men are of
women. Besides, if they find themselves mistaken, they bear their
disappointment better and show it less: they alone know their tragedy; it is
the unperceived that kills."
The first tears that he had ever seen gathered and dimmed her eyes. She was
too proud either to acknowledge them or to hide them. Her lids fell quickly
to curtain them in, and the lashes received them in their long, thick
fringes. But she had suffered herself to go too far.
"Ah, if you had loved her! loved her!" she cried with an intensity of
passion, a weary, immeasurable yearning, that seemed to come from a life in
death. The strength of that cry struck him as a rushing wind strikes a young
eagle on the breast, lifting him from his rock and setting him afloat on the
billows of a rising storm. His spirit mounted the spirit of her unmated
confession, rode it as its master, exulted in it as his element and his
home. But the stricken man remained motionless on the bench a few feet from
the woman, looking straight across the garden, with his hands clinched about
his knees, his hat hiding his eyes, his jaws set sternly with the last grip
of resolution.
It was some time before either spoke. Then her voice was very quiet.
"You found out your mistake in time; suppose it had been too late? But this
is all so sad; we will never speak of it again. Only you ought to feel that
from this time you can go on with the plans of your life uninterrupted.
Begin with all this as small defeat that means a larger victory! There is no
entanglement now, not a drawback; what a future! It does look as though you
might now have everything that you set your heart on."
She glanced up at him with a mournful smile, and taking the knitting which
had lain forgotten in her lap leaned over again and measured the stitches
upon his wrist.
"When do you start?" she asked, seeing a terrible trouble gathering in his
face and resolved to draw his thoughts to other things.
"Next week."
The knitting fell again.
"And you have allowed all this time to go by without coming to see us! You
are to come everyday till you go: promise!"
He had been repeating that he would not trust himself to come at all again,
except to say good-bye.
"I can't promise that."
"But we want you so much! The major wants you, I want you more than the
major. Why should meeting Amy be so hard? Remember how long it will be
before you get back. When will you be back?"
He was thinking it were better never.
"It is uncertain," he said.
"I shall begin to look for you as soon as you are gone. I can hear your
horse's feet now, rustling in the leaves of October. But what will become of
me till then? Ah, you don't begin to realize how much you are to me!"
"Oh!"
He stretched his arms out into vacancy and folded them again quickly.
"I'd better go."
He stood up and walked several paces into the garden, where he feigned to be
looking at the work she had left. Was he to break down now? Was the strength
which he had relied on in so many temptations to fail him now, when his need
was sorest?
In a few minutes he wheeled round to the bench and stopped full before her,
no longer avoiding her eyes. She had taken up the book which he had laid on
his end of the seat and was turning the pages.
"Have you read it?"
"Over and over."
"Ah! I knew I could trust you! You never disappoint. Sit down a little
while."
"I'd--better go!"
"And haven't you a word? Bring this book back to me in silence? After all I
said to you? I want to know how you feel about it--all your thoughts."