MASON AS A LOVER
The telegram came to Mason as he sat on the porch of the Herrick
cottage. He read it, and his eyes smiled, but his feeling was not one of
amusement. The significance of that impulsive message struck deep, and
his blood responded to it as if it were an embrace.
It settled all doubt in his mind concerning her. She was as free and
self-reliant as he thought her, and the severe terms of his proposal had
not repelled her, and yet that she loved him in a right human and very
passionate way did not seem to him possible.
He had, also, other misgivings. He wished he had delineated more fully
in his letter the negative side of his character. "She is young and
beautiful," he thought, "and will want to see life. She will value
social affairs--I am done with them. She will want words of tender
protestation, flattery perhaps, which I cannot give.
"My habits are fixed. I like my silent pipe at night after dinner. I
shall undoubtedly get more and more disinclined to social duties as time
goes on.
"In ten years I shall be forty-eight years old, an old man, when she is
just in her splendid June season. She will find the difference between
our ages wider than now. She will be a wife. I can free her when she
asks it, but I cannot give her back her sweet, superb girlhood. I can
give her perception and comprehension of the world and of life, but I
cannot make her young again. I may die after a few years, leaving her a
mother with a hazardous future. Then she will be doubly cursed.
"Again, this marriage may ruin and interrupt her career. With some women
marriage, especially maternity, seems to take away their power as
artists, and to turn them into cooks and nurses; meritorious vocations
of course, but----"
All night long he alternately mused and dozed upon the problem. He
roused up at early daylight with a feeling of doom upon him. He had made
a mistake. He was not fitted to be a husband--he was a poor thing, at
best, who had not had energy enough to get out of a groove nor to demand
adequate pay for grinding in his groove. He lacked "push," and had
dreamed away the best years of his life, at least such parts of the
years as he had saved from the merciless drive of his paper. He was
pulp, squeezed dry.
He groaned, and a curse came upon his lips, and his forehead knit into a
tangle of deep lines. His paper had used him. It had sucked the blood of
his heart. The creative energy of his brain had gone into the impersonal
columns of the editorial page--to what end? To the end that the Evening
Star Publishing Company should be rated high in Bradstreet. Had any
human being been made better by anything he had written in those
columns? Politics? Good God! he had sold his soul, his blood, the grace
of his limbs, the suppleness of his joints, the bloom of his
enthusiasms, to put this or that damned party into power.
And now, when a beautiful young woman, singing her way to fame, had sent
for him, he must go to her, cynical, thin-haired, stiff in joints, bent
in shoulders and reeking with the smell of office life and, worst of
all, worked out, his novel not yet written, and his enthusiasm turned to
indifference and despair.
The problem of the age that morning made him savage. He looked out of
the window at the farmhouses gleaming in the early light, at the smoke
curling up into the still air, at the men going to milk the cows--
"The damn fools!" he said in his heart. "They don't know enough to
vegetate any more than I had sense to know I was becoming a machine. Rot
and rot! So we go like leaves to the muck-heap." The porter rushed in
and shook him.
"Almos' to Bluff Siding, sah."
This put a little resolution into his blood, and he dressed rapidly,
with little thought on anything else. Once or twice he looked out at the
misty blue hills, cool and fresh with recent rains. As the porter came
to get his grip a few minutes later, Mason wondered how he should meet
her, with a hand-shake or a kiss? How would she meet him?
As the train slowed down he saw her at the platform. She sat in a
carriage waiting for him. He had one flashing thought: "There sits my
wife!" It startled him. The tremendous significance of that phrase made
his brain dizzy for a moment.
She was dressed trimly, he noticed, as he came toward her, and she held
her horse firmly--he liked her for that, it showed self-mastery. As for
him, he felt more uncertainty of footing than ever before in his life,
and tried to throw off the stoop in his shoulders.
As he came forward, she flushed, but her steady eyes met his
unwaveringly. He looked into their clear obscurity of depth, wherein
were purity and unworldly womanly ways.
She held out her hand, firm and strong, and he took it in his. Outwardly
it was merely a friendly greeting, yet something subtler than light came
from her to him. He did not speak for an instant, then he said:
"This is good of you! I did not expect this great pleasure."
Her voice trembled as she said:
"I wanted to be the first to greet you, and besides, papa wouldn't know
you."
He smiled for the first time.
"That's true. But it's very early--quite in the small hours."
"Oh, that's nothing; I'm a farmer's girl, you know. But put your valise
in, we must be off."
How strong and supple she looked! and how becoming her silk waist and
straw hat! She could drive, too. Some way she seemed quite another sort
of person here in her own land and in her own carriage. She was so much
more composed. "She has imagination," he repeated to himself.
They turned into the road before he spoke again.
"So this is your 'coolly'?"
"No, this is our valley. The coolly is over there where you see that
cloud shadow sliding down."
He looked about slowly at the hills and fields.
"It's very fine; much finer than Oconomowoc and Geneva."
"We like it ... papa and I."
They were both talking around the bush, as the saying goes, but he
finally said:
"I was very glad to receive your telegram. Am I to take it as an
affirmative answer?"
She said with effort:
"I wanted you to see how poor and humble we all are before--before I--"
He studied her profile. Her lips quivered, and a tear glistened through
the veil.
"On my part," he said, "I regretted that I did not further set forth my
general cussedness and undesirability.--How well you drive!" he said, by
way of relieving the stress of the moment.
He took command now, and there were no more tender allusions. He sniffed
the smell of the grass and the way-side trees, and remarked upon the
cattle, and inquired the names of several birds whose notes reached
across the field.
"Do you know, I'm no wild lover of the country, and I don't admire the
country people unreservedly. There are exceptions, of course--but my
experience with them has not been such as to make them heroic sufferers,
as the new school of fiction sets 'em forth. They are squalid enough and
poor enough, heaven knows, but it is the squalor of piracy--they do as
well as I should under the same circumstances, no doubt."
Rose looked at him narrowly, as if to find his real thought. He stopped
abruptly at her glance.
"I beg your pardon for boring you; but these disagreeable phases of my
character should be known to you. I'm full of whims and notions, you'll
find."
She looked away and a moment later said: "There is our farm; that house
in the grove is ours."
"Cattle I hate, so I hope your father will not expect me to be
interested in stock."
This was the first time he had mentioned her father, and it moved her
unaccountably. It would be so dreadful if he should not understand her
father. His perverse attitude toward her and toward the country had
brought her from exalted singleness of emotion down to a complexity of
questionings and forebodings.
As they whirled in the yard Mason saw a new house of the ambitious
pork-pie order, standing in a fairly well-kept sward, with a background
of barns, corncribs, pigsties and beehives. A well-to-do farmstead of
the more fortunate sort, and the thought that the man coming out of the
barn to meet them was to be his father-in-law struck him like a gust of
barnyard air. Really could it be that he had made this decision?
As the man came nearer he appeared a strong-armed, gentle-faced farmer
of sixty. His eyes were timid, almost appealing. His throat was brown
and wrinkled as leather. His chin beard was a faded yellow-grey, and his
hands were nobbed and crooked in the fingers. He peered at Mason through
dimmed eyes.
"Father," said Rose, and her voice trembled a little, "this is Mr.
Mason."
John Dutcher put up his hand heartily.
"How do you do, sir?" His timid smile touched Mason, but there was
something else in the man which made him return the hand-clasp.
"I am glad to see you, Mr. Dutcher," he said, and his tone was so
genuine it brought a gush of tears to the daughter's eyes. Her lover
understood her father after all.
"Won't you 'light out, sir?" continued John with elaborate hospitality.
"Well, yes, I think I will," said Mason, and Rose's spirits shook off
their cowls.
Suddenly she heard every bird singing, the thrush in the poplar top, the
catbirds in the willows, the robin on the lawn; the sun flooded the
world with magical splendor. It was morning in the world and morning in
her life, and her lover was walking up the path by her side.
It was splendid beyond belief to show him to his room, to bring him
water and towels and to say from the doorway, with a smile:
"Breakfast is ready!"
The picture that she made lingered pleasantly on Mason's interior eye.
She was so supple of form and so radiant of color, and so palpitant with
timid joy.
She sat alone at the table when he came out. She explained as she showed
him his seat, "Father and my aunt had breakfast long ago."
Mrs. Diehl brought the coffee in and bowed awkwardly to Mason. The whole
thing seemed like a scene in a play to him. It was charming, all the
same, to sit alone at the table with such a girl; it was just the least
bit exciting. His hands shook a little, he noticed.
As he took his cup of coffee from her he said whimsically:
"I expect to wake up soon."
"Does it seem like a dream to you too?"
"Well, it isn't my everyday life, I must confess."
To her he seemed handsomer and more refined than in the city. He seemed
simpler, too, though he was still complex enough to keep her wondering.
The slope of his shoulders and the poise of his head were splendid to
her. It could not be possible that he was here to see her; to be served
by her; to spend the days with her; to be her husband if she should say
so.
And yet she retained her dignity. She did not grow silly nor hysterical
as a lesser woman might have done. She was tremulous with happiness and
wonder, but she sat before him mistress of her hands and voice. Her very
laughter pleased him; if she had giggled--heavens, if she had giggled!
John also went busily, apparently calmly, about his work. Mason was
pleased at that; it showed astonishing reserve in the man.
Again that keen, sweet feeling of companionship--wifehood--came to Rose
as they walked out side by side into the parlor. He had come to her;
that was the marvelous thing! She was doing wifely things for him; it
was all more intimate, more splendid than she thought!
They sat down in the best room and faced each other. It was their most
potential moment. Breakfast was eaten and the day was before them, and
an understanding was necessary.
"Now, I can't allow you to be hasty," Mason said. "I'll tell you what I
think you had better do; defer your answer until two weeks from today,
when I shall return to the city. That will give us time to talk the
matter over, and it will give you time to repent."
A little shadow fell over her and the sunlight was not quite so
brilliant. The incomprehensible nature of the man came to her again, and
he seemed old, old as a granite crag, beyond song, beyond love, beyond
hope.
Then he smiled: "Well, now, I'm ready to go see the world; any caves,
any rocking boulders, any water tower?"
She took up the cue for gaiety: "No, but I might take you to see the
cemetery, that is an appropriate Sunday walk; all the young people walk
there."
"The cemetery! I'm a believer in crematories. I'll tell you what we'll
do. After you've hung out the wash-boiler to dry we'll go down under the
trees, and I'll listen to some of your verse. Now, that is a tremendous
concession on my part. I hope you value it to the full."
"I do, indeed."
"You do? good! We'll put the matter in movement at once."
"The dew is still on the grass," she said warningly.
"So it is. I thank you for remembering my growing infirmities. Well,
let's go out and see the pigs. As I told you, I hate cattle and swine,
they act out so frankly the secret vices of man--but, never mind, I'll
go out and have it out with your father."
The moment he began in that tone she was helpless.
They moved out into the barnyard, but John was not in sight.
"I guess he's with his bees," Rose said. "He likes to sit out there and
watch them when he is resting."
They peered over the fence, and their eyes took in a picture they will
never forget while they live. John Dutcher sat before his bees in the
bloom of the clover, his head bowed in his hands. He was crying for his
lost daughter.
There came a gripping pain in the girl's throat, the hot tears rushed to
her eyes, and she cried in a voice of remorseful agony:
"Father--pappa John!"
He lifted his head and looked at her, his eyes dim with tears, his lips
quivering.
The girl rushed through the gate, and Mason turned and walked away like
a man discovered thieving from an altar.
CONCLUSION
THE WIND IN THE TREETOPS
Mason freshened magically under her sweet and self-contained
companionship. She did not coddle him, nor bore him by attentions, but
seemed to do the right thing instinctively. She assumed command over him
in certain ways--that is, she insisted on his taking long walks and
drives with her--though he sturdily refused to climb hills. "Bring me to
them gradually," he said, "for I am from Egypt."
One Sunday afternoon he consented to try an easy one and they started
out--she in radiant, laughing exultation, he in pretended dark
foreboding of the outcome.
She led the way with swift, steady swing of skirts, her smiling face a
challenge to him when he fell too far behind. He never ceased to admire
her powerful, decisive movement and her radiant color, though he said
nothing about it to her.
She stopped at a spring which came silently to light beneath an
overhanging sandstone. There was no dipper, and Rose, with a new daring,
dropped on her knees and dipped some of the cool, sweet water in her
palm.
"Do you thirst, Sir Guy?"
He kneeled beside her with a comical groan, and drank from her hand.
"Thanks, a sweeter draught from fairer hand was never quaffed."
Rose was highly elated at the success of her trick. She dipped another
palm full. He shook his head.
"With your permission I'll use my hat brim."
"I'll show you how to do it," she said. She rose and leaped the little
stream, and flung herself down full length on the ground, and resting
her palms on two flat stones, she drank from the pool, like an Indian.
"There!" she cried triumphantly. "That's the way to drink. All my life
I've done this way at this spring--when there wasn't anyone to see."
Mason felt a wild charm in this. Most other women would have tumbled to
pieces doing such a thing, while she sprang up a little flushed, but
with no other sign of exertion.
There was something primeval, elemental, in being thus led by a
beautiful woman through coverts of ferns and hazel. Every shadow seemed
to wash away some stain or scar of the city's strife. He grew younger.
"I almost like this sort of thing," he said.
They came at last to the smooth slope of the peak where grass stood tall
in bunches on a gravelly soil, and wild flowers of unusual kinds grew.
As they mounted now, the landscape broke over the tree tops, and the
valleys curved away into silent blue mist.
On every side low wooded ridges lay, with farms spread like rugs
half-way up their deep green clearings. On the further slope a pasture
came nearly to the summit, and the tinkle of a bell among the bushes
sounded a pastoral note. A field of timothy farther on to the left
glowed with a beautiful pink-purple bloom.
"Isn't it beautiful," asked Rose.
Mason dropped full length on the grass before replying.
"Yes, it is lovely--perfectly pastoral. Worthy a poem."
"I've written three, right on this spot," she said a little shyly.
He seemed interested.
"Have you? Haven't one with you?"
"No."
"Always go armed. Now here's a golden opportunity gone to waste."
She smiled shyly.
"I can repeat one though."
"Can you? Better yet! Recite one."
She sat down near him, but not too near, and began in a soft hesitant
voice to repeat a poem which was full of feminine sadness and
wistfulness. As she went on Mason turned his face toward her, and her
eyes fell and her voice faltered.
"That's glorious!" he said. "Go on."
The wind swept up the slope and through the leaning white bodies of the
birches with a sadness like the poem. The wild barley bowed and streamed
in the wind like an old man's beard; the poem struck deep into secret
moods, incommunicable in words--and music came to carry the words. The
girl's eyes were sweet and serious and the lovely lines of her lips
shifted and wavered.
Mason suddenly reached out and took the girl's right hand. Her voice
died out and her eyes met his. He drew her hand toward him and laid his
lips upon it.
"You're a poet," he said. "You have found your voice, and I--I love you
because you are a poet and because you are a beautiful woman."
The touch of his bearded lips upon her hand was the event of her life,
and the whole world reshaped itself. His praise of her poem, her victory
over him as a critic was great, but his final words drowned in fierce
light the flame of her art's enthusiasm.
Once more a man's voice came to her, filled with entreaty and command,
but in this case she had no reservations. It was well, it was
inevitable, and it was glorious to set her face toward wifehood and fame
with such a man as companion, friend and lover.
A couple of weeks later, Mason came down from his room with a grim look
on his face. He stepped out on the porch and stood there feeling the
change in the air. The summer was over.
Rose came out, and he put his arm about her.
"Hark!" he commanded. "Do you hear the wind in the tree-tops? It brings
me the roar of the city this morning. I hear the grind of cars, the roar
of mills, the throb of presses; the city calls me and I must go. My
vacation is over. I must say good-by tonight."
"It's very beautiful up here now," she said a little wistfully. "The
sumac is beginning to turn and the hills are like jewels."
"Oh yes, it is beautiful," he said smiling a little. "But down there
life is. Infinite novelty, ceaseless change. As you love the country, so
I love the city. It is a greater pleasure to me to meet men than trees,
and concerts are more than winds in the pines. Artist souls, poets,
people who do and think, are there, and so I must go."
"When shall I go?" she asked.
"When you please," he said. "I have no commands. You are perfectly free
to do as you like. I need you always now."
"Then I will go tonight," she said firmly.
He turned his eyes upon her in a look she never forgot.
"My dearest girl, do you realize what you are doing? Do you realize that
you are entering upon a problematical line of action--that you are
inviting pain and sorrow and care, that you are leaving girlhood and
leisure behind--that you are entering gates that never swing outward. Do
you know this--once more and finally, do you realize all this?"
She stood before him stronger than he; he felt it. She knew him at last
since that touch of his lips to her arm, since that look in his
eyes--and she said: "I realize it all, and I choose it."