IV

Ten days went by. One morning he woke late, listless and unprepared

for the usual tussle. The June sun was pouring into his rooms, the old

portieres shaking gently in the soft breeze. Outside the world was

flooded with sunlight. The new green grass, the full bushes along the

paths, the warm blue of the sky seemed to mock his petty ardors, his

foolish boyish designs of making prodigious strides. Life was not

accomplished that way. One made a little, a very little step, then

came lassitude; later, one must go over the same ground again. There

were no great strides in nature. All was accomplished by subtle

change. He dressed leisurely and looked about for a comfortable

breakfast. There was something stronger than work in the world,

especially to-day. He longed to meet the sunlight and earthly

blessedness; it was such a small thing to fag one's self out at the

laboratory. Half unconsciously he strolled toward the livery stable

where he kept his nag. And then a quarter of an hour later he found

himself on the turnpike, trotting along the fresh-water meadows,

sniffing the air and the scented brooks. He laughed at himself. His

horse plunged, freakish from his long rest in the stable. Suddenly he

spurred on and rode furiously over the country roads, as if mad to

reach a certain end. A little later, he cantered up the gravelled

drive of the Four Corners, his horse wet and trembling, and he with a

craving unexplained, a desire that had found a swift, brutal

expression.

"You took a long time to think about it," she was looking up at him

reproachfully, cool and fresh, with a morning blitheness about her, a

physical calm that he had not felt before. The horse shivered and

poked his head around to look at her.

He flung himself off the horse, and took her hands; she reached him

two as if one for a handshake would be inexpressive.

"But it is splendid now that you have come! We have a whole, long,

quiet day!" Her tones were calm and slow, full of the summer peace and

warmth. He felt straightway content with himself. "Come," she

continued, smiling. "I will make you a cool drink. Mamma has gone to

town and Ruby is off somewhere in the pony cart." When she had left

him on the veranda he laughed at his prudish fancies that had pestered

him a fortnight ago. This June morning she had exactly the necessary

amount of animation and health. All was well with her, and at peace.

They had much gentle desultory conversation. She took him about the

place, showed him the old orchard where her great-grandmother's pupils

had played--one end was now made into a tennis-court, and the stable

with its traces of the old barn where the Rev. Roper Ellwell had kept

his horse and cow. Then there were little pigs and chickens, the

various gardens that were all dear to her, where she patted and

caressed the plants as if they had been alive. She took him to her own

den, a little room where the grandfatherly sermons had once been

written, and where hung a copy of that oil portrait which Thornton had

seen in the Camberton Hall.

"Am I not like him?" she asked suddenly, placing herself in the same

light as the portrait.

"Yes," Thornton answered, "with a difference."

"What is it?" she pressed him anxiously.

"I don't know, the something that has come in with the three

generations," he answered, slowly.

"Tell me honestly," she persisted, with all the egotism of youth

aroused over a personal verdict.

"Shall I?" he said, seriously. She grew grave, but nodded. Thornton

watched the color leave and a trace of helplessness cross her face.

"The old fellow," he kept looking from the portrait to the woman

before him, "in spite of his stiff board costume and the manner he's

painted in, was a great lump of fire. It burned hard in him, burned

away flesh and common passions; he must have been a restless, fervent

man. You are calmer," he ended, stupidly.

"Yes, you mean that his fire has burnt out; that I am weak as water,

when he was strong."

"No, not that, exactly," Thornton protested.

"Yes, you did," she reiterated, sadly. "And it is so, too. I am

generally so tired. There are only hours like these, when something

flows in and I forget things and am happy. But it fades away, it fades

away."

They stood silent before the portrait. Suddenly she remembered

herself.

"Luncheon must be ready."

Ruby came in for luncheon and made amusing talk. She had been into the

village and was full of the farmers.

"I should think they would go crazy," she ended, scornfully. "What

have they got to live for? I don't wonder that the girls go into the

mills and do anything rather than sit about this little hole."

Later they set out for the fields as the afternoon sun was quietly

going down behind the fringe of pines that skirted the horizon. The

atmosphere of the day had changed and become like the still calm of

perfected life. The little aspirations of the morning, the

fascinations of nature, had given place to a content full of warmth.

Miss Ellwell took a winding wood-road that led first across the

meadow, then over the pine-needles to a little pond. As they sauntered

along Thornton watched his companion draw in the saturated air of the

summer afternoon, as if consciously living thereon. She seemed to him

detached, like a plant that drew its best power away from man, in

fields and woods, a kind of parasite.

"You love this?" he said, idly.

"Love it! I live on it. I come out here and sit down under the trees

and close my eyes. Then the odor from the earth seems to enter me and

make me over. Do you suppose grandfather Roper ever had such desires,

such coarse joys in nature?"

"No, his ancestors had lived that for him. He had it stored up in him,

and he gave it out in moral passion."

"And--they have gone on giving it out in passion----"

She raised her heavy lids questioningly, dreamily.

"So I must be planted again, for I am exhausted. Ah, well, she is a

kindly mother, is old nature, and I like to lie down in her arms."

A little brook flowed sluggishly about big tufts of meadow-grass. The

late violets and swamp pinks sent up heavy odors, mixed with a strong

earthy smell. They seemed to be in the midst of nature's housekeeping

and walked lightly as unannounced guests. They wandered on to an open

patch in the woods and sat down, sinking into the dry, heated

wood-moss. Thornton had no desire to talk; she, who had listened to

him the other time, now took him in charge.

"You are so far away, here, in the heat and the earth; so far away

from the world. One gets tired always trying to catch up, and always

being tired."

As she talked he felt his limbs heavy in obedience to her words. His

mind became tranquil as under the influence of a narcotic; it seemed

such a little thing what he did over there in Camberton, and so far

removed from the strong pulse that beat beneath his body deep down in

the earth.

"Why are men so foolish," she whispered on. "We want really a few

things only; quiet, rest, peace, tranquil bodies, and this great earth

to shimmer and change forever." His eyes followed her face. Her skin

was so transparent that each word seemed to make a dot of flashing

color; her bosom gently moved in rhythm to her words, and her eyes

with the heavy falling lids smiled at him in conspiracy with the

mouth.

"But that is not all the story--repose!" his words sounded hollow,

like a lesson he had learned by rote and propriety had obliged him to

repeat.

"No!" her voice was lower yet than ever; "then comes love, and with

love will flow in the passion and energy of life!"

The words moved her body. What she said seemed to him intensely true

for the moment. Again propriety offered protest.

"And the other things--success and reputation and the good that the

world needs."

She moved her hands carelessly.

"You would not need them." There was great scorn in that _them_. They

lay quietly for several minutes while the earth murmured about. She

had drawn him passively into her net. Like some parasitic growth she

was taking her strength from him. But it was a new side to him, this

yielding, and so in a few moments he remembered that hard, angular

self that went about the week in his clothes. He jumped up.

"I must ride back."

She followed without protest. She seemed to swim beside him, happy in

elemental, very simple thoughts, a thin color flushing over her face.

"We have been so happy. It has been such a long, full day. Will you

ever come again?" They stood in the shadows on the lawn. He was minded

to say, _no_, but as he took her hand the Ellwell carriage drove up

the country road. After glancing at it she blanched. Ellwell got out

of the carriage unsteadily, with his large handsome face flushed and

distorted. He was half drunk, and in a great passion. Seizing the

carriage whip in one hand and taking the bridle of the horse by the

other, he lashed the trembling beast for some seconds. Mrs. Ellwell

slipped out of the rear seat and half ran into the house. Bradley got

out of the carriage slowly, with a sneer on his face, and nodded to

Thornton. He smiled, as if to say: "Badly jagged, old fool."

"Go, there is Pete with your horse!" Miss Ellwell whispered. He was

about to put his foot in the stirrup, and get away from the

uncomfortable scene, when old Ellwell turned toward him.

"Don't let me scare you, young man," he said, with his regulation

courtesy, the air of the old Ellwells. Thornton shook hands with him,

noticing his bloodshot eyes, the puffy folds under the eyelids, the

general bloat of an ill-regulated human animal. "Are you going before

dinner?" Ellwell continued. Thornton murmured something about duties

and engagements. Ellwell bowed and lifted his hat. Miss Ellwell

advanced as if to say good-by, then stopped. Her face was sad.

Thornton's horse wheeled impatiently. He grasped the saddle, and a

moment later he was down the road out into the self-respecting fields

and woods, where all had the sanctified peace of a starlight night.

"She did not like to ask me again, poor girl," he murmured.

V

Whether Jarvis Thornton would have yielded again of his own accord to

the impulse to travel Four Corners-ward remained unsolved. He had on

hand some experiments that he was undertaking for a paper which he had

to deliver at the close of the month. His day of dissipation seemed to

spur him on once more along the accustomed path, and only in the few

lazy moments at the end of the day did his mind recur to the still

meadows baked in the June sun, and to the woman who had tempted him

into a dangerous world. One evening, when he was speculating

luxuriously on that day of impulse, Roper Ellwell knocked at his door

and entered.

Ellwell had never been there before. Jarvis Thornton had seen him from

time to time at the A. O.; but a fast set, the Roper-Ellwell

crowd, having made the club over into a drinking and poker-playing

establishment, he had ceased to go there frequently. Ellwell was

considerably battered, Thornton noticed, as he invited him, coolly, to

take a seat and help himself to a cigar. He had come to pour himself

out, and a dirty enough story there was to tell. He had been dropped

from Camberton for general inadequacy; but that was the least of his

troubles.

"I could go to the old man and tell him that," he explained, "his own

record at Camberton wasn't any too fine, and he has a grudge against

the old place. I am in here for a lot of money, which he will have to

stand. But----"

Thornton looked at him unsympathetically, without commenting on his

story. Why should he be troubled with the Ellwell excesses in the

fourth generation? He failed yet to see the point to all these

confidences.

"Your break-up is fairly complete," he said at last, coldly. "Many go

down here, make a slip and bark their shins, but you have used two

years in doing for yourself altogether."

Roper Ellwell hung his head.

"So the Dean said; and there's something else." Jarvis Thornton ceased

to smoke as he went on. "I am married; the old man will never stand

that, and it will break up the mater and my sisters fearfully." In

short, he had come to Thornton, with the confidence that an

acquaintance with an older man inspires, to beg him to break the news

to his people. Imbeciles gravitate to the strong.

"Why don't you go yourself?" Thornton inquired, sick of the foolish

affair. But one glance at the drooping, disjointed, miserable figure

before him answered his question. He sat for some minutes debating the

point with himself. He could make a conventional excuse, and play the

man of the world, who did not involve himself with unpleasant people.

But his imagination presented the picture of the two sad women; their

last hope knocked away by this cropping out of the family blight.

Perhaps he could put it to them in a better light than either Roper or

his father. He saw again the girl's face standing on the lawn in the

summer twilight--a face that must be constantly sad.

"Well," he said, "is she a bad lot, the woman you have induced to

share your future?"

Young Ellwell was too miserable to take fire at this brutality.

"No, she isn't their sort though; she is a Swedish girl; she is a

nurse in a hospital."

"You were forced to marry her?" the older man asked.

Ellwell nodded assent.

"And now she is making it uncomfortable for you."

"I am trying to find something to do," the young fellow protested.

"Then I won't trouble them; but if I go down there the old man will

fling me out of the house."

In short, Jarvis Thornton rose early the next morning, and before the

sun had heated the road, was on his way to the Four Corners. There was

not much that he could do, after all, in his pitiful errand; at least,

for the mother. One more insult for her to accept, to be borne in

stupid passivity. But for the daughter who had to live, it would be a

different question; and by the time he had reached Middleton, he had

not made up his mind how the tale was to be told.

It was warm when he walked his horse over the gravelled drive at the

Four Corners. Mrs. Ellwell and her elder daughter were sitting on the

piazza sewing. Pete was washing carriages; the dogs were asleep in the

grass. The place was quiet and in peace. The women received him

cordially; a bright color spread over the girl's face with a contented

smile that seemed to speak intimately to him. He plunged into his

business quickly, putting the case sympathetically before them. They

listened without a word, the girl's face trembling and twitching

slightly. Ruby had joined them, and Thornton interrupted his story,

but Mrs. Ellwell motioned him to go ahead. While he was talking he

hunted about for some bit of light to throw on the situation at the

end. "He wants to go away, and it might be best, if we can find

something for him. I have an uncle in Minnesota on a railroad. He

might find a little place to transplant him to." He stopped.

"You have an uncle in Minnesota," Mrs. Ellwell repeated, mechanically,

her dry eyes staring idealess at him. "You are very, very kind." She

rose and walked into the house.

"Fool," Ruby muttered; her dark face flamed up angrily. Thornton

noticed how much she resembled her handsome father. She had more fire

in her than Roper second. "I suppose he hadn't pluck enough to come

home with his own story. Father will be pretty mad. What did he

_marry_ that woman for!"

"Well," Thornton answered, calmly. "Perhaps we can build on that, the

fact that he _did_ marry her. That seems to me the most promising part

of it."

The young girl cast a contemptuous glance at him and rustled into the

house after her mother. Miss Ellwell had not uttered a word; her face

was bent over her work; and he noticed a few suspicious spots on the

dark linen cloth she was hemming. He turned his face away to the

sunny lawn and the dark, full-leaved trees that lay beyond the road. A

flock of sparrows were rowing in sharp tones among the leaves. The

house-dog picked himself up lazily and walked over to Thornton,

placing a wet muzzle on his trousers. The place was so peaceful, such

a nest of an old Puritan! And here were the demons that the divine had

warred against holding his home as their arsenal. When he permitted

himself to turn his face to the girl at his side, she was grave and

pale, and somehow exhausted. All the weariness of the struggle between

flesh and will seated itself in her heavy-lidded, sad eyes.

"You must be a brave woman and help him," Thornton said, feeling the

conventionality and silliness of any remark. "He mustn't be hounded

out of here like a dog, but made to feel that he can make a decent

future." She nodded. "It isn't the money," she said at last. "Though I

can't see where it will come from. Nor the marriage, but the perpetual

disgrace. It goes on increasing. We are all bad, worn out; dear old

grandpapa was the last good one. It is what you call a curse, a

disintegration. Why struggle? If we could all go to sleep and sleep it

off? There is nothing ahead, nothing ahead!"

"That is folly," Thornton explained. "We have all been held in thrall

by this curse of heredity. It has been talked at us, and written at

us, and proved to us, until it makes us cowards!"

She looked at him sadly.

"'The sins of the fathers unto the third and fourth generation,'" she

repeated.

"Damn!" He rose excitedly. "That is the most awful doctrine in the

Bible, and we have believed it like sheep until we really make it

true. When a weak man wants to go to thunder, he thinks of an uncle

who was a drunkard, or a father who was a thief, and he goes and does

likewise. Naturally! And now science comes along and says it isn't so,

or at any rate there is strong doubt about it. In a few years we may

prove that it isn't so and free mankind from that superstitious

curse."

The girl comprehended him but half. "Why, I think that old grandfather

Roper must have been a very passionate man, who fought against himself

and conquered."

"Yes," Thornton admitted, "there was a lot of vice bottled up among

the Puritan saints. It has been spilling out ever since, but that

makes no difference," he went on vehemently to explain his theories.

Somehow, now that his heart was touched, he put passion and conviction

into what his sober reason held as speculation. He made clear to her

the newest theories from Germany. He had come out as a diplomat in a

distasteful cause; he became a pleader full of conviction. His

imagination woke into a flame, and he saw anew, vitally, all the old

problems that he had handled coldly in the laboratory. The woman sat

dumbly, sucking in his statements and arguments. Then, as they stood

on the grass waiting for Pete to bring up his nag, she said:

"We are free, you think." Her mind was laboring with his words.

"In a large measure, we can start fresh: the die is not cast

beforehand." He added less warmly.

"But we copy what is about us. If we can't escape from what you call

the current of ideals we are born in, what difference does it make? It

amounts to the same thing!"

She, the woman, pleaded with him, the man, to free her, to take her

away. He answered, tenderly:

"We can; each one can live his own life as a stranger to his

shipmates. You have done so."

"It means a sacrifice. Some one must lift us. From some other life we

could get the strength, and that other one loses--just so much as he

gives."

Thornton's brows contracted. She read the comment of reason that ran

beside his text.

"Who knows? Everything can't be weighed in scales."

She did not ask him if he would return; she knew in her heart that he

would.