CONFIDENCES AND QUESTIONS.
“Too weak to change, though a mental hell
To me the rôle of clown;
A coward bound by a self-wrought spell,
I wait the sound of the prompter’s bell
Which rings the curtain down.”
Sunday’s restfulness was in the air. Miss Hill and Westfield sat in the
shade of the great tree in the yard, with books and newspapers about
them. Nothing was more delightful to Westfield than to hear her read
aloud. She had a voice of great natural sweetness, with no artificial
notes in it. In truth there was no artifice in her character.
The man beside her to-day was one of whom poor Kendall had often
been bitterly jealous, a man of finer fibre than his rival, greater
charm and graver defects. Older, he was also wiser, particularly in
melancholy wisdom.
“Read me something,” he said, “some wild wail from a tortured poet.
There are always plenty, and I like ’en, no matter how woful they are.
God bless the poets every one, high and humble. They help us out in the
dreary business of life.”
She read:
“White-footed the snow comes,
O’er the hills of beauty,
Treading like a penitent
Rough paths of duty.”
“What an exquisite figure,”--he interrupted,--“the personification of
the snow, with white feet, like a penitent.” He had once made a bright
mark in the world of letters, then ceased to strive and later ceased to
care, so it might be supposed that his commendation was of some value.
“Miss Hill,” he said, with sudden animation, “what are you going to do
with your life?”
“Live it, if I am permitted.”
“How?”
“I have my dreams.”
“Of what?”
She smiled, looking far away, but kept silence.
“I can’t make you out,” he said, a little peevishly. “I believe you
have genius for literature, yet you seem to be perfectly indifferent
about cultivating it. Were you like others one might suppose that love
and marriage made up your dreams; but you are as indifferent to lovers
as to possible fame. I don’t understand you.”
“Well, it isn’t worth while to bother about me,” she said. “I shall be
gone some day.”
“I fear you will,” he answered, with feeling; “I have thought of it a
thousand times, and dreaded to enter the house, lest I should not find
you there. A sense of your impermanence is always with me. You don’t
belong here in any sense, and I fear that Fate will not let you stay
much longer. There is an unreality about your being here at all that
is like the experiences we have when we sleep, real enough while they
are occurring, but unreal to remember. Yes, you will be gone some day.
Therefore, I shall take Fate by the forelock and go first, that I may
not be here when you leave. I could not endure that. The very sight of
the old house and this tree would then be intolerable to me.”
His face and speech were impassioned, but the girl saw it not. That was
what made her so exasperating to those whom she fascinated. She seemed
incapable of seeing that she could fascinate. The truth was she was
self-absorbed.
“You would miss me, I am sure,” she said, in the most matter-of-fact
tone, “and I should miss you greatly, if you were gone.”
“Where will you go to when you leave here?” he asked.
“To my own people, I hope,” she answered, dreamily, her eyes wandering
away to the horizon.
“Tell me about them,” he begged. “I have often tried to lead you to
talk of them, but you never would. You are a tell-all, tell-nothing
sort of person. Others do not notice that, but I do, and have woven
some theories about it.”
“I dare say they do me great honor, but in all probability they are far
from true.”
“Well, then, why will you not tell me about yourself?” he asked, in an
injured tone.
“You talk as though I have been making history on this planet for
ages. I am young; what could I have to tell that would satisfy your
expectation of the extraordinary. You have known me here in this house
for more than two years. As the Indians in the old story-books say,
we have ‘eaten salt together daily,’ and we have walked and talked
together with the freedom of children. What is there of me still
unrevealed?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “but I feel there is something--a part of you
and your experiences from which I and others are shut out, and that
part is the greatest part of you. I argue that, because, although you
attract many, myself, poor moth, among them, no one gets near to you.
An invisible but formidable wall surrounds you, from which all our
attempted gallantries rebound like arrows which strike rocks. And there
you are behind it, always smiling and agreeable, but entirely unmoved
and secure. Now, somebody or some experience built that wall, for it is
not in the nature of things for it to be there without cause.”
“Go on,” she said, smiling, as he waited for her to speak. “You will
end by being a great architect yet. How like magic you put up that
wall.”
“You may chaff as much as you please,” he said, a little savagely, “but
I am not to be put off that way. Now that I have begun I am going to
say some things seriously and you must hear them seriously.”
“I told you to go on,” she said, composedly.
“And so I will,” he grumbled, “though I know perfectly well that it
would be manlier if I kept silence. As you say, we have eaten and
walked and talked together as freely as children for more than two
years. In that time we have become well acquainted--not the poor,
shallow acquaintance of formal society, but the near, intimate
association of two human beings who honestly express themselves to each
other. The result of this comradeship is that I love you. I will not
say I have learned to love you, for something of the fact was clear to
me the very first time I saw you. In all probability you don’t remember
the incidents of that day at all, but I do. Brooks, our good host, as
you know, is my old friend. I had drifted to this city in an aimless
way, as I had been drifting for years. He met me and brought me home to
dinner with him. I have always adored intellect in man or woman. One
look into your eyes told me that you are of uncommon endowments. Then,
along with a beautiful but simple stateliness of manner, you have
certain childish graces of which you are unconscious. You have never
put your childhood entirely away from you. I particularly noticed the
correct school-girlish arrangement of your knife and fork at the end
of the dinner, and was charmed by it. After we left the table I said
to Brooks that you had wonderful eyes. He agreed with me, but warned
me not to let them undo me, because he said you were constructed on a
novel plan, one man being the same as another to you, and all being as
nothing.
“I paid no attention to his warning, as you see. On the contrary, when
he went to the _Times_ office and secured me a situation, I accepted
it gratefully, because I could then become a member of his household
and see you every day. I have loved you ever since, and have had much
quiet joy in it, and it has bettered me in many ways. I know perfectly
well--I have always known--that you do not love me, and in my least
selfish moments I am glad of it, because I have nothing to offer
you that is fit for you to accept. I would not tell you that I love
you--never a word of it--were I not sure that it will not hurt you.
In the years to come the memory of it may comfort you. It is a great
comfort to me now, hopeless as it is. It helps me only to tell it. O
my child, my heart has long been sick and sore from bruises the like
of which I pray you may never know. We men are set up to be so strong
and pretend to be so self-satisfied, but we are only grown-up children
after all. When we are sore in spirit we long for some loving woman
soul to take us to her arms and pet and soothe us mother-like, yet we
often live our lives without it.
“I am fifteen years older than you, and know the world well--better
than I wish I did--so well that I should like to protect you from its
ugly phases. Yet I am powerless to do it. Never did I so deeply lament
my aimless, wasted life as now, when I see myself with nothing to offer
you and yet loving you with all my heart. Sometimes, since I have known
you, I have dreamed that with your help I could pull myself together
and make something of my life yet; but the dream is only temporary--it
flees, the reaction comes and I sink back to the _rôle_ of a nobody
which I have long been playing, and doubtless shall play to the end--an
end that I may make for myself any day.
“To say that I despise myself for being the wretched failure I am is
to express myself but lamely. My love has in it an element of the
paternal. I am not thinking so much of what you might be to me, but
of what I earnestly wish I might be to you. I long to shield you from
the infinite horror of the experience we call life, as it is revealed
to many. You are like a tall young pine-tree standing alone on a high
rugged and rocky mountain side, enjoying the sunshine and swaying
gently in the summer breeze, not knowing that the winter of the future
will bring storms that may tear its roots from the earth. You know not
your own value, that is the danger. Some day you may give your love and
have your heart broken. That’s what happens to strong souls usually,
and you are one of them. I know the answer to the woman poet’s question:
“‘Is it so, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer most?
That the strongest wander farthest, and most hopelessly are lost?
That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain,
And the anguish of the singer, makes the sweetness of the strain?
“‘I have many things to tell you, but ye cannot bear them now.’
“Yes, I know the answer to that, and it makes me anxious about your
future. Behold the pitiful spectacle of a man who loves a woman, tells
her of it, and yet confesses himself a hopeless failure.”
“But why do you insist upon considering yourself a failure?” asked Miss
Hill. “You are not old, you have good health, education, ability, the
necessary ingredients for achievement.”
“Child, you do not understand. How could you? the ruin is within, not
visible on the outer walls.”
“No; I do not understand,” she said.
“I will tell you,” he said, “how I came to be a loiterer in the race,
what
“‘----wrought my woe,
In the diamond morning of long ago,’
as the song says. You see I began by asking you about yourself, and,
with the artless art that distinguishes you, with scarcely a word, you
have switched me off the track I had taken and set me talking about
myself instead. I shall lose in your respect after I tell my story, as
a matter of course, but I would rather you knew it.
“Years ago, in the days when the earth was new and sweet to me--in
the mountain-moving period of life, the tragedy began. I loved, and
like the lover of Annabel Lee I may say that the angels of heaven
coveted the love of her and me. I was one of the editors of the most
prosperous daily newspaper in the city that was my home, my uncle being
its proprietor. He had no children of his own, and had brought up my
brother and me, our parents having died, when we were very little.
“A sensational criminal trial was before the courts of a distant city,
and it was arranged that I was to attend it and send daily letters to
my journal. As it promised to last several weeks, the separation from
Emma looked unendurable. I must marry her and take her with me. But
when I told my plan to her she said she couldn’t leave her father, who
was old, feeble and almost blind, with nobody else to care for him. In
my selfishness I had forgotten him. ‘I cannot go with you,’ she said,
‘but I am willing to marry you before you go. It will comfort me while
you are gone just to know that I am your wife.’
“So we married, telling no one but Emma’s father. The secrecy was
needless and foolish, but when young we are all more or less enslaved
by the ways of others, and this was too violent a departure from custom
to be proclaimed just then.
“Ours was an unusual but not unhappy honey-moon. We wrote every day,
long, glowing letters, and annihilated distance with our thought.
“But one day a telegram came announcing that my wife had been
murdered--struck down in her own home, in the light of day, in the
presence of her helpless old father.
“Behind the dreadful deed was the usual crazy rejected suitor. I knew
the wretched boy well--he was but a boy--but never dreamed of the
ghastly possibilities within his crooked mind. But what know we of any
one? Who is safe from treating the community to a hideous sensation?
“He had long been fond of Emma, but lost hope when he saw that my
attitude toward her was an assured one. But after I went away he got
it into his crazy head that we had quarreled, and took heart again.
When he implored her to marry him, and she refused without telling him
that she was already married, he shot her dead and then shot himself.
“Horror, grief, and remorse overwhelmed me. I blamed myself. Why had
I not announced the marriage at once? Had the wretched boy known that
Emma was my wife, he would have let her alone, I am sure. What did
it avail that I put a tablet at her grave bearing the name of Emma
Westfield? Humble as was the name it might have protected her had it
been openly bestowed upon her.
“This happened ten years ago, before my friend Brooks, our host, ever
met me. He knows nothing of it--doesn’t dream that I ever was married.
To speak of it would oblige me to enter into explanations, to uncover
my heart to gratify curiosity, which, however kindly meant, is always
painful to a sore spirit. I tell you that you may understand I have
at least the shadow of an excuse for being what I am, a man without
purpose, a withered, useless branch of the human tree, waiting for the
man with the pruning knife to come and cut me down.
“See the irony of fate. A few days after my wife’s death, my uncle
died, leaving all his property to my brother and me. We were now owners
of the newspaper on which we had worked as employees, and of other
valuable interest besides. It only emphasized my misery. Of all my
possessions I could give nothing to the woman I loved--nothing but a
stone at the end of a little heap of earth.
“It might have been better for me had I not inherited my uncle’s
property, for it enabled me to idle away my time and indulge my selfish
grief, until my will became enfeebled, and that means the crumbling of
the whole character, which goes to pieces like an old wall.
“I went away, wandering over the earth aimlessly, not trying to benefit
by travel, only hoping to make new scenes blot out the old, unbearable
ones. I spent years in the vain effort to run away from myself. I am
still engaged in that hopeless effort, though I have learned that it
can’t be done. We take our world with us wherever we go--heaven and
hell bring both within us.
“I am but a morbid idler, who has lost the qualities that give a man a
place among men. Though I never tried to stifle memory and misery in
debauchery, my money melted away. The coarse pleasures many men pursue
never had charms for me, but my destruction was none the less sure. It
has come without degradation, I am thankful to say, save that which any
man must feel who has let himself slide down hill so far he never can
climb up again.
“Once only since that dreadful thing happened have I accomplished
anything. I braced myself against my inner foes long enough to write
the little book you know. It gave me fame enough for a foundation for
future work, had I followed it up; but I didn’t. I fell immediately
back into the clutches of the miserable devils who possessed me--made a
complete and inglorious surrender to them for all time, caring naught
who wins the prizes in the hateful race of life.
“My story proves me a contemptible weakling. I know I am not a whit
above the cheap hero of the old-time, pirate novel, the fellow who does
the gloomy, manages to look as though the hand of Fate was ever upon
him, and has a secret sorrow as big as an omnibus, which he wants all
the world to know. I am not made of the right kind of stuff or I should
not have given up at the first blow of Destiny. ‘Man yields himself not
to the angels nor even unto Death itself, save through the weakness of
his own poor will.’
“Had Emma’s father lived, the care of him might have proved a prop to
me, but the shock killed him, and he died a few weeks after she did.
I had my brother, younger than myself, and we loved each other, but I
argued that he did not need me, and left him. He loves me still and
follows me with the kindest, dearest letters, and is always begging
me to come back to him; but I will not be a cloud upon his happiness
and prosperity. Yet his sympathy and yours are all that is left in the
world precious to me.
“My love for you is different from my early love. In that day the
castles I constructed were very worldly ones. Now, I have no worldly
ambitions whatever. It seems to me that by some kind of kinship of
soul, if there is such a thing as soul, you belong to me, and never
can be taken from me, though our lives may be widely separated. If you
were the vilest and most degraded creature in the world and yet were
yourself, I should love you just the same.
“After Emma went away I tried hard to tear from Death its well-guarded
secret. I wanted to know if the dark hole in the ground is the end
of us all. I pounded fiercely on the very doors of the tomb, begging
piteously for an answer. None came. No; never a word came out of the
silence into which she had gone. The people who say they believe in
a hereafter quote at us those exasperating scriptural questions: ‘O
Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’ I can answer
them. The sting is here, in my heart. The victory is over all my hopes,
dreams and ambitions. People who believe! Are there any such? They only
say they believe. It is all mere mouthing. Can any man believe that
which he does not know? Their twaddle about faith and heaven enraged
me. I wanted proof, proof--though but a whispered word, the faintest
touch of a vanished hand, or the tiniest scratch of a familiar pen.
Proof! Proof! Oh for the proof that she lived somewhere. Had I had that
I could have laughed long and loud at Death, the liar and the cheat.
The merest thread of a rope would have served for me to hold to, I was
so eager to believe. But nobody let it down to me--not then, nor in all
the years since.
“Yet now, in spite of all that, when I look at you, I cannot persuade
myself that you are to die--to cease from living. You carry with you
a conviction of immortality. Your intense individuality seems like a
deathless thing. It reminds me of the words of the young Greek in the
drama of Ion. When his life was to be sacrificed, his beloved asks if
they shall meet again. He says, ‘I have asked that dreadful question of
the hills that look eternal--of the streams that flow forever--of the
stars among whose fields of azure my raised spirit has walked in glory.
All are dumb. But as I gaze upon thy living face, I see something in
the love that lights its beauty which cannot wholly perish. We shall
meet again, Clemanthe?’
“What answer have you for the question? ‘If a man die shall he live
again?’”
“About that I think much, hope a little sometimes, but know nothing,”
she said.
“No; we know nothing,” he echoed, with a sigh; “but it is something to
hope. I have a fancy that the road is not long ahead of me here, and
I may soon have a chance to know what there is or know nothing. If we
have an existence beyond this objective one, I may be able to help you
from there. It would be helping you could I but come and tell you that
I lived, would it not?”
“What greater service could you do me?”
“If I could do that I might do more. Who knows? Of course it is absurd
to speak of helping you without explaining what I mean. Apparently you
need nobody’s help. You are strong of character, self-poised, capable,
successful and fearless. I see all that, yet I cannot rid myself of the
fear that you are destined to suffer much and will need the service and
sympathy of all who love you. From life I have learned a little. When
great strength is given I know it will be needed. And you are stronger
in character than you know. I should like to save you from suffering,
but were I ever so rich and powerful, I know I could not do it. You
must meet your destiny, whatever it may be. As the Scotch say, ‘must
dree your weird.’ Nobody else can live your life for you, for, alas!
life admits of no proxy. I have woven many fanciful theories about you
and your past, present and future.”
“Tell me one,” she said.
“I will give you my favorite. You are not what you seem to be--not less
but more than you pretend to be. You have been tenderly reared and much
loved. You are not here earning your bread because of necessity, but
for some purpose not thought of by those with whom you come in contact.
Having demonstrated your ability to stand alone, you will go back home
some day and be done with it. You are supported in whatever otherwise
would be hard, by the knowledge that you are free to turn your back
upon it whenever you wish. Am I not a good clairvoyant?”
“Permit me to ask why you think as you do about me?”
“Because you give me the impression of not belonging where I find you.
You seem to be playing a part and doing it with exceeding skill; but
your real self is not in it. As you say, you will be gone some day to
your own people. And now that I have confessed myself a failure and a
fool, I too, shall go away.”
“Why?” she asked, regretfully. “Why must the men and women who find
each other companionable be lovers or nothing to each other? I am fond
of you, very, not in the sentimental fashion, but as good comrade and
friend. Why can’t we go on just as we have been doing? That talk about
loving me need make no difference.”
“You are like a child about these things,” he said. “You know not the
creature man in his bondage to selfishness. You credit us with the
strength of gods, and we are mostly such poor, ill-developed wretches
that if we want what we cannot have we must run away to avoid showing
how little we are masters of ourselves. But tell me what are you going
to do with your life?”
“I have my dreams.”
“Of what?”
“Happiness.”
“Would it be offensive if I asked upon what particular brand of the
article you have set your heart?”
“The most commonplace one in the world,--the love and companionship of
him who is dearest.”
Westfield was too astonished to say anything. Was the riddle so simple?
Was this self-contained, independent girl following the same everyday
illusion that lured all other women? While apparently caring nothing
for lovers was she worshiping the one she carried ever in her heart?
“I will tell you all there is to tell,” she said, after a moment, “and
then you will understand.”
He nodded assent, but felt his heart sinking.