I
She did not wish any supper and she sank forgetfully back into the
stately oak chair. One of her hands lay palm upward on her white
lap; in the other, which drooped over the arm of the chair, she
clasped a young rose dark red amid its leaves--an inverted torch of
love.
Old-fashioned glass doors behind her reached from a high ceiling to
the floor; they had been thrown open and the curtains looped apart.
Stone steps outside led downward to the turf in the rear of the
house. This turf covered a lawn unroughened by plant or weed; but
over it at majestic intervals grew clumps of gray pines and
dim-blue, ever wintry firs. Beyond lawn and evergreens a flower
garden bloomed; and beyond the high fence enclosing this, tree-tops
and house-tops of the town could be seen; and beyond these--away in
the west--the sky was naming now with the falling sun.
A few bars of dusty gold hung poised across the darkening spaces of
the supper room. Ripples of the evening air, entering through the
windows, flowed over her, lifting the thick curling locks at the
nape of her neck, creeping forward over her shoulders and passing
along her round arms under the thin fabric of her sleeves.
They aroused her, these vanishing beams of the day, these arriving
breezes of the night; they became secret invitations to escape from
the house into the privacy of the garden, where she could be alone
with thoughts of her great happiness now fast approaching.
A servant entered noiselessly, bringing a silver bowl of frozen
cream. Beside this, at the head of the table before her
grandmother, he placed scarlet strawberries gathered that morning
under white dews. She availed herself of the slight interruption
and rose with an apology; but even when love bade her go, love also
bade her linger; she could scarce bear to be with them, but she
could scarce bear to be alone. She paused at her grandmother's
chair to stroke the dry bronze puffs on her temples--a unique
impulse; she hesitated compassionately a moment beside her aunt,
who had never married; then, passing around to the opposite side of
the table, she took between her palms the sunburnt cheeks of a
youth, her cousin, and buried her own tingling cheek in his hair.
Instinct at that moment drew her most to him because he was young
as she was young, having life and love before him as she had; only,
for him love stayed far in the future; for her it came to-night.
When she had crossed the room and reached the hall, she paused and
glanced back, held by the tension of cords which she dreaded to
break. She felt that nothing would ever be the same again in the
home of her childhood. Until marriage she would remain under its
dear honored roof, and there would be no outward interruption of
its familiar routine; but for her all the bonds of life would have
become loosened from old ties and united in him alone whom this
evening she was to choose as her lot and destiny. Under the
influence of that fresh fondness, therefore, which wells up so
strangely within us at the thought of parting from home and home
people, even though we may not greatly care for them, she now stood
gazing at the picture they formed as though she were already
calling it back through the distances of memory and the changes of
future years.
They, too, had shifted their positions and were looking at her with
one undisguised expression of pride and love; and they smiled as
she smiled radiantly back at them, waving a last adieu with her
spray of rose and turning quickly in a dread of foolish tears.
"Isabel."
It was the youthful voice of her grandmother. She faced them again
with a little frown of feigned impatience.
"If you are going into the garden, throw something around your
shoulders."
"Thank you, grandmother; I have my lace."
Crossing the hall, she went into the front parlor, took from a
damask sofa a rare shawl of white lace and, walking to a mirror,
threw it over her head, absently noting the effect in profile. She
lifted this off and, breaking the rose from part of its stem,
pinned that on her breast. Then, stepping aside to one of the
large lofty windows, she stood there under the droop of the
curtains, sunk into reverie again and looking out upon the yard and
the street beyond.
Hardly a sound disturbed the twilight stillness. A lamplighter
passed, torching the grim lamps. A sauntering carrier threw the
evening newspaper over the gate, with his unintelligible cry. A
dog-cart rumbled by, and later, a brougham; people were not yet
returned from driving on the country turnpikes. Once, some belated
girls clattered past on ponies. But already little children,
bare-armed, bare-necked, swinging lanterns, and attended by proud
young mothers, were on their way to a summer-night festival in the
park. Up and down the street family groups were forming on the
verandas. The red disks of cigars could be seen, and the laughter
of happy women was wafted across the dividing fences and shrubbery,
and vines.
Breaking again through her reverie, which seemed to envelop her,
wherever she went, like a beautiful cloud, she left the window and
appeared at the front door. Palms stood on each side of the
granite steps, and these arched their tropical leaves far over
toward her quiet feet as she passed down. Along the pavement were
set huge green boxes, in which white oleanders grew, and flaming
pomegranates, and crepe myrtle thickly roofed with pink. She was
used to hover about them at this hour, but she strolled past,
unmindful now, the daily habit obliterated, the dumb little tie
quite broken. The twisted newspaper lay white on the shadowed
pavement before her eyes and she did not see that. She walked on
until she reached the gate and, folding her hands about one of the
brass globes surmounting the iron spikes, leaned over and probed
with impatient eyes the long dusk of the street; as far as he could
be seen coming she wished to see him.
It was too early. So she filled her eyes with pictures of the
daylight fading over woods and fields far out in the country. But
the entire flock of wistful thoughts settled at last about a large
house situated on a wooded hill some miles from town. A lawn
sloped upward to it from the turnpike, and there was a gravelled
driveway. She unlatched the gate, approached the house, passed
through the wide hall, ascended the stairs, stood at the door of
his room--waiting. Why did he not come? How could he linger?
Dreamily she turned back; and following a narrow walk, passed to
the rear of the house and thence across the lawn of turf toward the
garden.
A shower had fallen early in the day and the grass had been cut
afterwards. Afternoon sunshine had drunk the moisture, leaving the
fragrance released and floating. The warmth of the cooling earth
reached her foot through the sole of her slipper. On the plume of
a pine, a bird was sending its last call after the bright hours,
while out of the firs came the tumult of plainer kinds as they
mingled for common sleep. The heavy cry of the bullbat fell from
far above, and looking up quickly for a sight of his winnowing
wings under the vast purpling vault she beheld the earliest stars.
Thus, everywhere, under her feet, over her head, and beyond the
reach of vision, because inhabiting that realm into which the
spirit alone can send its aspiration and its prayer, was one
influence, one spell: the warmth of the good wholesome earth, its
breath of sweetness, its voices of peace and love and rest, the
majesty of its flashing dome; and holding all these safe as in the
hollow of a hand the Eternal Guardianship of the world.
As she strolled around the garden under the cloudy flush of the
evening sky dressed in white, a shawl of white lace over one arm, a
rose on her breast, she had the exquisiteness of a long past,
during which women have been chosen in marriage for health and
beauty and children and the power to charm. The very curve of her
neck implied generations of mothers who had valued grace.
Generations of forefathers had imparted to her walk and bearing
their courage and their pride. The precision of the eyebrow, the
chiselled perfection of the nostril, the loveliness of the short
red lip; the well-arched feet, small, but sure of themselves; the
eyes that were kind and truthful and thoughtful; the sheen of her
hair, the fineness of her skin, her nobly cast figure,--all these
were evidences of descent from a people, that had reached in her
the purity, without having lost the vigor, of one of its highest
types.
She had supposed that when he came the servant would receive him
and announce his arrival, but in a little while the sound of a step
on the gravel reached her ear; she paused and listened. It was
familiar, but it was unnatural--she remembered this afterwards.
She began to walk away from him, her beautiful head suddenly arched
far forward, her bosom rising and falling under her clasped hands,
her eyes filling with wonderful light. Then regaining composure
because losing consciousness of herself in the thought of him, she
turned and with divine simplicity of soul advanced to meet him.
Near the centre of the garden there was an open spot where two
pathways crossed; and it was here, emerging from the shrubbery,
that they came in sight of each other. Neither spoke. Neither
made in advance a sign of greeting. When they were a few yards
apart she paused, flushing through her whiteness; and he, dropping
his hat from his hand, stepped quickly forward, gathered her hands
into his and stood looking down on her in silence. He was very
pale and barely controlled himself.
"Isabel!" It was all he could say.
"Rowan!" she answered at length. She spoke under her breath and
stood before him with her head drooping, her eyes on the ground.
Then he released her and she led the way at once out of the garden.
When they had reached the front of the house, sounds of
conversation on the veranda warned them that there were guests, and
without concealing their desire to be alone they passed to a rustic
bench under one of the old trees, standing between the house and
the street; they were used to sitting there; they had known each
other all their lives.
A long time they forced themselves to talk of common and trivial
things, the one great meaning of the hour being avoided by each.
Meanwhile it was growing very late. The children had long before
returned drowsily home held by the hand, their lanterns dropped on
the way or still clung to, torn and darkened. No groups laughed on
the verandas; but gas-jets had been lighted and turned low as
people undressed for bed. The guests of the family had gone. Even
Isabel's grandmother had not been able further to put away sleep
from her plotting brain in order to send out to them a final
inquisitive thought--the last reconnoitring bee of all the
In-gathered hive. Now, at length, as absolutely as he could have
wished, he was alone with her and secure from interruption.
The moon had sunk so low that its rays fell in a silvery stream on
her white figure; only a waving bough of the tree overhead still
brushed with shadow her neck and face. As the evening waned, she
had less to say to him, growing always more silent in new dignity,
more mute with happiness.
He pushed himself abruptly away from her side and bending over
touched his lips reverently to the back of one of her hands, as
they lay on the shawl in her lap.
"Isabel," and then he hesitated.
"Yes," she answered sweetly. She paused likewise, requiring
nothing more; it was enough that he should speak her name.
He changed his position and sat looking ahead. Presently he began
again, choosing his words as a man might search among terrible
weapons for the least deadly.
"When I wrote and asked you to marry me, I said I should come
to-night and receive your answer from your own lips. If your
answer had been different, I should never have spoken to you of my
past. It would not have been my duty. I should not have had the
right. I repeat, Isabel, that until you had confessed your love
for me, I should have had no right to speak to you about my past.
But now there is something you ought to be told at once."
She glanced up quickly with a rebuking smile. How could he wander
so far from the happiness of moments too soon to end? What was his
past to her?
He went on more guardedly.
"Ever since I have loved you, I have realized what I should have to
tell you if you ever returned my love. Sometimes duty has seemed
one thing, sometimes another. This is why I have waited so
long--more than two years; the way was not clear. Isabel, it will
never be clear. I believe now it is wrong to tell you; I believe
It is wrong not to tell you. I have thought and thought--it is
wrong either way. But the least wrong to you and to myself--that
is what I have always tried to see, and as I understand my duty,
now that you are willing to unite your life with mine, there is
something you must know."
He added the last words as though he had reached a difficult
position and were announcing his purpose to hold it. But he paused
gloomily again.
She had scarcely heard him through wonderment that he could so
change at such a moment. Her happiness began to falter and darken
like departing sunbeams. She remained for a space uncertain of
herself, knowing neither what was needed nor what was best; then
she spoke with resolute deprecation:
"Why discuss with me your past life? Have I not known you always?"
These were not the words of girlhood. She spoke from the emotions
of womanhood, beginning to-night in the plighting of her troth.
"You have trusted me too much, Isabel."
Repulsed a second time, she now fixed her large eyes upon him with
surprise. The next moment she had crossed lightly once more the
widening chasm.
"Rowan," she said more gravely and with slight reproach, "I have
not waited so long and then not known the man whom I have chosen."
"Ah," he cried, with a gesture of distress.
Thus they sat: she silent with new thoughts; he speechless with his
old ones. Again she was the first to speak. More deeply moved by
the sight of his increasing excitement, she took one of his hands
into both of hers, pressing it with a delicate tenderness.
"What is it that troubles you, Rowan? Tell me! It is my duty to
listen. I have the right to know."
He shrank from what he had never heard in her voice
before--disappointment in him. And it was neither girlhood nor
womanhood which had spoken now: it was comradeship which is
possible to girlhood and to womanhood through wifehood alone: she
was taking their future for granted. He caught her hand and lifted
it again and again to his lips; then he turned away from her.
Thus shut out from him again, she sat looking out into the night.
But in a woman's complete love of a man there is something deeper
than girlhood or womanhood or wifehood: it is the maternal--that
dependence on his strength when he is well and strong, that passion
of protection and defence when he is frail or stricken. Into her
mood and feeling toward him even the maternal had forced its way.
She would have found some expression for it but he anticipated her.
"I am thinking of you, of my duty to you, of your happiness."
She realized at last some terrible hidden import in all that he had
been trying to confess. A shrouded mysterious Shape of Evil was
suddenly disclosed as already standing on the threshold of the
House of Life which they were about to enter together. The night
being warm, she had not used her shawl. Now she threw it over her
head and gathered the weblike folds tightly under her throat as
though she were growing cold. The next instant, with a swift
movement, she tore it from her head and pushed herself as far as
possible away from him out into the moonlight; and she sat there
looking at him, wild with distrust and fear.
He caught sight of her face.
"Oh, I am doing wrong," he cried miserably. "I must not tell you
this!"
He sprang up and hurried over to the pavement and began to walk to
and fro. He walked to and fro a long time; and after waiting for
him to return, she came quickly and stood in his path. But when he
drew near her he put out his hand.
"I cannot!" he repeated, shaking his head and turning away.
Still she waited, and when he approached and was turning away
again, she stepped forward and laid on his arm her quivering
finger-tips.
"You must," she said. "You _shall_ tell me!" and if there was
anger in her voice, if there was anguish in it, there was the
authority likewise of holy and sovereign rights. But he thrust her
all but rudely away, and going to the lower end of the pavement,
walked there backward and forward with his hat pulled low over his
eyes--walked slowly, always more slowly. Twice he laid his hand on
the gate as though he would have passed out. At last he stopped
and looked back to where she waited in the light, her face set
immovably, commandingly, toward him. Then he came back and stood
before her.
The moon, now sinking low, shone full on his face, pale, sad, very
quiet; and into his eyes, mournful as she had never known any eyes
to be. He had taken off his hat and held it in his hand, and a
light wind blew his thick hair about his forehead and temples.
She, looking at him with senses preternaturally aroused, afterwards
remembered all this.
Before he began to speak he saw rush over her face a look of final
entreaty that he would not strike her too cruel a blow. This, when
he had ceased speaking, was succeeded by the expression of one who
has received a shock beyond all imagination. Thus they stood
looking into each other's eyes; then she shrank back and started
toward the house.
He sprang after her.
"You are leaving me!" he cried horribly.
She walked straight on, neither quickening nor slackening her pace
nor swerving, although his body began unsteadily to intercept hers.
He kept beside her.
"Don't! Isabel!" he prayed out of his agony. "Don't leave me like
this--!"
She walked on and reached the steps of the veranda. Crying out in
his longing he threw his arms around her and held her close.
"You must not! You shall not! Do you know what you are doing,
Isabel?"
She made not the least reply, not the least effort to extricate
herself. But she closed her eyes and shuddered and twisted her
body away from him as a bird of the air bends its neck and head as
far as possible from a repulsive captor; and like the heart of such
a bird, he could feel the throbbing of her heart.
Her mute submission to his violence stung him: he let her go. She
spread out her arms as though in a rising flight of her nature and
the shawl, tossed backward from her shoulders, fell to the ground:
it was as if she cast off the garment he had touched. Then she
went quickly up the steps. Before she could reach the door he
confronted her again; he pressed his back against it. She
stretched out her hand and rang the bell. He stepped aside very
quickly--proudly. She entered, closing and locking noiselessly the
door that no sound might reach the servant she had summoned. As
she did so she heard him try the knob and call to her in an
undertone of last reproach and last entreaty:
"_Isabel!--Isabel!--Isabel_!"
Hurrying through the hall, she ran silently up the stairs to her
room and shut herself in.
Her first feeling was joy that she was there safe from him and from
every one else for the night. Her instant need was to be alone.
It was this feeling also that caused her to go on tiptoe around the
room and draw down the blinds, as though the glimmering windows
were large eyes peering at her with intrusive wounding stare. Then
taking her position close to a front window, she listened. He was
walking slowly backward and forward on the pavement reluctantly,
doubtfully; finally he passed through the gate. As it clanged
heavily behind him, Isabel pressed her hands convulsively to her
heart as though it also had gates which had closed, never to reopen.
Then she lighted the gas-jets beside the bureau and when she caught
sight of herself the thought came how unchanged she looked. She
stood there, just as she had stood before going down to supper,
nowhere a sign of all the deep displacement and destruction that
had gone on within.
But she said to herself that what he had told her would reveal
itself in time. It would lie in the first furrows deepening down
her cheeks; it would be the earliest frost of years upon her hair.
A long while she sat on the edge of the couch in the middle of the
room under the brilliant gaslight, her hands forgotten in her lap,
her brows arched high, her eyes on the floor. Then her head
beginning to ache, a new sensation for her, she thought she should
bind a wet handkerchief to it as she had often done for her aunt;
but the water which the maid had placed in the room had become
warm. She must go down to the ewer in the hall. As she did so,
she recollected her shawl.
It was lying on the wet grass where it had fallen. There was a
half-framed accusing thought that he might have gone for it; but
she put the thought away; the time had passed for courtesies from
him. When she stooped for the shawl, an owl flew viciously at her,
snapping its bill close to her face and stirring the air with its
wings. Unnerved, she ran back into the porch, but stopped there
ashamed and looking kindly toward the tree in which it made its
home.
An old vine of darkest green had wreathed itself about the pillars
of the veranda on that side; and it was at a frame-like opening in
the massive foliage of this that the upper part of her pure white
figure now stood revealed in the last low, silvery, mystical light.
The sinking of the moon was like a great death on the horizon,
leaving the pall of darkness, the void of infinite loss.
She hung upon this far spectacle of nature with sad intensity,
figuring from it some counterpart of the tragedy taking place
within her own mind.