Some days later when Jarvis Thornton took the familiar turnpike road
he had not recovered from the serious mood his father's talk had
brought about. It hung on him like a weight. He did not ride at a
lover's pace; rather, cool and determined, with a spice of pride in
following his own judgment. But the old man's prophecy met an
answering fear in his own mind--it was dangerous to pluck roses from
some ruins.
His father's sweetness in the matter got hold of him, and he began to
appreciate, in a vague way, the yearning that old men have to witness
fulfilment on the part of the younger generation. Mere age, he saw,
reduces the complexity of desire, but renders it single and intense.
Whether his father was right or not in his gloomy analysis, he was
deeply convinced and foiled. His last method of success had turned out
illusive, yet he had not reproached, nor domineered, nor dictated, nor
appealed. He had expressed a little of his keen sorrow, but
insidiously this attitude had tainted the young man's ecstasy.
Would _she_ comprehend his father's nobility? He could hardly explain
the situation to her in all its bearings, even if she were fitted to
understand. And he felt that hers would be a woman's sympathy, so
ready, yet on the surface. It needed a man, with his less expressive
nature, to comprehend deep down the bearings of this case. However, if
she loved him--it was pleasant to feel that she _did_ love him--she
must plan with him to defeat the old man's prophecy. They would cut
loose from the conditions, come what might. He closed his mouth
firmly. Manlike he planned as if he knew all the elements of the
question.
His horse trotted up the little gravel way to the Four Corners.
Suddenly she appeared standing on the big grooved millstone which
served as a horse-block. Her white dress had an under bodice of pink,
that gave her more than ever the appearance of an opening water-lily.
"I have a new walk for you to-day."
Her greeting betrayed no surprise. She was evidently sure of the
outcome. As Thornton flung himself from his horse, he had a sensation
of yielding--to the pre-arranged.
"But you must be so hot," she added, taking in his solemn face. "Come
into the pantry while I make you a cocktail. Papa says I could get a
place as a bar-maid."
With a ripple of contented laughter she led the way to the little
pantry over the wine-cellar. It was stocked and arranged like a
miniature bar; a high side-board was carefully crowded with polished
cut-glass, and the little room exhaled aromatic odors from the various
wines and bitters. He sat down near the open window while she busied
herself in crushing ice to a flaky coolness and gathering the
materials. To see her at this job seemed to put all of the solemnity
of the occasion far away. Yet he sneered at himself for his prudery.
The sun blazed down outside on the scorched lawn; here the summer heat
brought out all the pungent odors of the place, permeated, so it
seemed, by the stock-broker, by the kind of American who could endure
life only when his nerves were soothed in some way. Pfa! The
atmosphere of the Four Corners' swine! They reminded him of the
bondage to the flesh that in his masterful mood he hated. He sipped
his cocktail and lit a cigarette, inhaling it with deliberation,
noting with idle curiosity how his pulses responded by sharp little
beats.
The escape from reality! He had always liked blunt reality, and
believed in it professionally. You must have a sane mind and a normal
body to believe in reality, and hence few cared for that kind of
bitter bread. The mob tried to escape. Would he too, perhaps, try to
escape? What a time he was losing from that slow methodical task he
had set himself? Three months ago had occurred the first break in his
regular current of thought, and now he was drifting about aimlessly in
a mess of passions and desires.
"Do you like it?" Miss Ellwell asked, anxiously. He had it on his lips
to say:
"I hate it." That would sound silly and incomprehensible, like an
impromptu lecture on the sins of strong drink. His eyes wandered over
her, resting on one white arm that lolled across the side-board.
"I like you," his eyes said. A wave of brutal indifference to
everything but immediate desire surged in the man. However, tossing
away his cigarette, he nodded.
A little dash of pink in her face and neck answered his eyes.
"Now come." She put back the last glass and pulled down the shade,
shutting in the heavy odors.
They sauntered out through the orchard to the wood-road that led
eastward from the Four Corners.
There was a section of Middleton dominated by a high hill, with a
country pond at its foot, that possessed an air of distinction, of
being apart from the flat village and the small barren farms. High
stone-walls ribbed its green surfaces, meeting in a heap at the top,
where also a few wind-blown apple-trees maintained their stunted
growth. A little below the crown of the hill there was a thick
cluster of nut-trees. From this height one could see the Hampton hills
to the east, outlined by a thin row of trees drawn as if with a heavy
brush along the margin of the landscape. Elsewhere the hills were
rounded bare mounds. Farther north this undulating line dipped into a
green plain, and there, so the tradition ran, you could see on a clear
day the white sails of coasting schooners and a shimmer of eastern
light that might be the marshes of Essex, or indeed the blue sea
itself. This apple-tree crowned peak was a kind of lookout from the
dead country to the living sea.
Miss Ellwell brought Thornton out at the mound of stones on the crest;
they rested their arms on the wall, looking east searchingly for the
bit of blue coast and the sails.
"There, there, I can see it," she cried. He looked at her
incredulously. There was nothing but a nebulous mass of blue. "Well, I
have seen it," she protested, "two or three times. To-day it is a bit
hazy."
"Why do you want to see it?" he asked, idly.
"Oh, it is so different! It is big and strange and unfamiliar; don't
you like it?"
"'There is a world beyond!'" He answered without direct appositeness.
They turned to the shade of the nut-trees. In the July sun the woods
seemed asleep, merely soothed by a wandering breeze, and they flung
themselves down on the warm ground. All about the air swam with
pleasant, heated, drowsy, earthy odors.
As she took off her hat and nestled back into the undergrowth,
Thornton felt her anaemic body, pale from the fatigue of the hot walk,
as if the water-lily were drooping in the mid-day sun. Yet she was
somehow intimately connected with the brooding earth. There were two
bodies--the body of flesh that had come with fatigue and feebleness
into the world, and the body of passion that was blooming into power.
She talked of the thousand trivialities that go to make the
conversation between a man and a woman. Thornton lay silently,
stretched on the warm leaves at her feet, feeling her bloodless face
with its sharp blue veining. Each was conscious of a dynamic something
in the air; their minds had a frank understanding while the talk
skipped in and out among nothings. When she began once more to talk of
the sea that lay down there beyond the green meadows and the blue
haze, a faint rose-color of animation darted over the pallor and made
the moist eyes flash. The sea! That stood in her mind for the
mysteries of change, of the unknown. Thornton knew that this
wistfulness after change had nothing definite in it, was merely a
girl's hunger for motion; yet that had divided her in his mind from
her kind.
"There is a world beyond," she murmured, in wondering repetition of
his words. The branches of the nut-trees swayed in the odorous wind as
if whispering, "Yes, yes, we know of it. That world beyond ... over
the hills of flesh, and the tedious wastes of tired bodies, there _is_
a world of peace beyond!"
Her eyes came to his face wistfully. He held the keys of that
beyond.... Something had snapped in his well-ordered mechanism, and he
was going, going, drifting will-lessly into feeling and longing. And
the next moment he held her, looking into a face that burned with
love. There were no words. Life had been too strong for his little
plans; it had mocked him and driven him passionward, like a bit of
straw caught in a gale. The hours swam on unheeded, while they rested
there face to face. Then came the going home across the afternoon
woods; she silent and content, he trying to account for himself. When
he had speculated about such matters, he had seen himself discussing,
quite properly, the serious affairs of life with some tall girl of
distinguished carriage, some one of the many young women whose
acquaintance had made up his Boston parties. He had expected that
their conversation would grow more serious as this intimacy deepened,
and that at last, having found themselves of one accord on the sober
ideals of life, he should broach to her this final proposition
involving both their lives. He had half imagined such a situation with
several fine young women; the scene had always been played out in a
drawing-room filled with bric-a-brac and heavy hangings, he in his
long black afternoon coat. There had been a touch of solemnity in it,
a weighty sense of responsibility that would have made their first
kiss a little sepulchral.
Now, this! Her hand touched his; his mind left these bizarre images,
and suddenly it seemed that life was one wilderness of woods in the
late afternoon sun, down which he was fated to wander in a lethargic
dream. One dominant feeling of tenderness; one indifference to the
baying of reason--merely love, and the soft, warm earth, and the
greenness of living things, and the woman whose dress brushed his arm.
Ah! that was sweet and precious at any price.