It happened in a comfortable room on the ground floor, looking out into
the garden. All afternoon he had been puzzling over what Harriet had
told him. Mrs. Sheerug sat by the fire knitting; he dared not question
her.
Muted by garden walls and distance, a muffin-man passed up and down the
streets, ringing his bell and crying to the night like a troubadour in
search of romance. He crouched against the window, watching the winter
dusk come drifting down. While watching, he fell asleep.
As though he had been coldly touched, he awoke startled, all his senses
on edge. On the other side of the glass, peering in, standing directly
over him, was a figure which he recognized as Harriet’s. At first he
thought that she was trying to attract his attention; then he saw that
she seemed unaware of him and that her attention was held by something
beyond. A voice broke the stillness. It must have been that same voice
that had roused him.
“My God, I’m wretched! For years it’s been always the same: the
restlessness when I’m with her; the heartache when I’m without her.
She won’t send me away and she won’t have me, and--and I haven’t the
strength to go away myself. No, it isn’t strength. It’s something that I
can’t tell even to you. Something that keeps me tortured and binds me to
her.”
Scarcely daring to stir, Teddy turned his eyes away from Harriet, and
stared into the darkness of the room. The air was tense with tragedy. In
the flickering half-circle of firelight a man was crouched against the
armchair--kneeling like a child with his head in the faery-godmother’s
lap. He was sobbing. Teddy had heard his mother cry; this was different.
There was shame in the man’s crying and the dry choking sound of a
horrible effort to regain self-mastery. The faery-godmother bent above
him. Teddy could see the glint of her spectacles. She was whispering
with her cheek against the flaxen head. The voice went on despairingly.
“Sometimes I wonder whether I do love her. Sometimes I feel hard and
cold, so that I wouldn’t care if it were all ended. Sometimes I almost
hate her. I want to start afresh--but I haven’t the courage. I know
myself. If I were certain that I’d lost her, I should begin to idealize
her as I did at first. God, if I could only forget!”
“My dear! My dear!” Mrs. Sheerug’s voice was broken. Her tired hands
wandered over him, patting and caressing. “My poor Hal! To think that
any woman should dare to use you so and that I can’t prevent it! Why,
Hal, if I could bear your burdens, and see you glad, and hear your
laughter in the house, I’d--I’d die for you, Hal, to have you young and
happy as you were. Doesn’t it mean anything to you that your mother can
love you like that?”
He raised his face and put his arms about her neck. “I haven’t been good
to you, mother. It’s like you to say that I have; but I haven’t. I’ve
ignored you and given the best of myself to some one for whom it has
no value. I’ve been sharp and irritable to you. You’ve wanted to ask
questions--you had a right to ask questions; I’ve kept you at arm’s
length. You’ve wanted to do what you’re doing now--to hold me close and
show me that you cared; and I’ve--I’ve felt like striking you. That’s
the way with a man when he’s pitied. You know I have.”
The gray head nodded. “But I’ve always understood, and--and you don’t
want to strike me any longer.”
“You’re dearer than any woman in the world.”
“Dearer, but not so much desired.” She drew back from him, holding his
face between her hands. “Hal, you’re my son, and you must listen to
me. Perhaps I’m only a prejudiced old woman, years behind the times and
jealous for my son’s happiness. Put it down to that, Hal; but let me
have my say out. When I was young, girls didn’t treat men as Vashti
treats you. If they loved a man, they married him. If they didn’t love
him, they told him. They didn’t play fast and loose with him, and take
presents from him, and keep him in suspense, and waste his power of
hoping. It’s the finest moment in a good girl’s life when a good man
puts his life in her hands. If a girl can’t appreciate that, there’s
something wrong with her--something so wrong that she can never make the
most persistent lover happy. Vashti’s beautiful on the outside and she’s
talented, but--but she’s not wholesome.”
There was a pause full of unspoken pleadings and threatenings. The man
jerked sharply away from his mother. Her hands slipped from his face to
his shoulders. They stayed there clinging to him. His attitude was alert
with offense.
“Shall I go on?” she asked tremulously.
His answer came grimly. “Go on.”
“It’s the truth I’m telling you, Hal--the truth, as any one can see it
except yourself. Beneath her charm she’s cold and selfish. Selfishness
is like frost; it kills everything. In time it would kill your passion.
She’s gracious till she gets a man in her power, then she’s capricious.
You haven’t told me what she’s done to you, my dear. I’m a woman; I can
guess--I can guess. She doesn’t love you. She loves to be loved;
she never thinks of loving in return. She’s kept you begging like a
dog--you, who are my son, of whom any girl might be proud. Perhaps
you think that, if she were your wife, it would make a difference. It
wouldn’t. You’d spend all your life sitting up like a dog, waiting for
her to find time to pet you. You’re my son--the best son a mother ever
had. It’s a woman’s business to worship her man, even though she blinds
herself to do it You shan’t be a vain woman’s plaything.”
She waited for him to say something. She would have preferred the most
brutal anger to this silence. It struck her down. He knelt before her
rigid, breathing heavily, his face hard and set.
She spoke again, slowly. “If ever Vashti were to accept you, it would be
the worst day’s work. The gods you worship are different. Hers are--hers
are worthless.”
He sprang to his feet, pushing aside his mother’s hand. His voice was
low and stabbing. “Worthless! I won’t hear you say that. You don’t
know--don’t understand. I ought to have gone on keeping this to
myself--ought not to have spoken to you. No, don’t touch me. She’s
good, I tell you. It’s my fault if I’m such a fool that I can’t make her
care.”
He spoke like a man in doubt, anxious to convince himself.
“It’s not your fault, Hal. The finest years of life! Could any man give
more? You’re belittling yourself that you may defend her. You’re
the little baby I carried in my bosom. I watched you grow up. I know
you--all your strength and weakness. You’re the kind of man for whom
love is as necessary as bread. Where there’s no kindness, you flicker
out You lose your confidence with her and her friends; their flippancy
stifles you. I don’t even doubt that you appear a fool. She’s a
beautiful, heartless vampire; if she married you, she’d absorb your
personality and leave you shrunken--a nonentity. She’s no standards,
no religion, no sense of fairness; she wants luxury and a career and
independence--and she wants you as well. Doesn’t want you as a comrade,
but as an _et cetera_. She’s willing to accept all love’s privileges,
none of its duties. She has plenty of self-pity, but no tenderness.
Oh, my poor, poor Hal, what is it that you love in her? Is it her
unresponsiveness?”
She seized both his hands, dragging herself up so that she leaned
against his breast. “Hal, I’m afraid for you.” She kissed his mouth.
“She’ll make you bad. She will. Oh, I know it. She’ll break your heart
and appear all the time to be good herself. Can’t you see what your life
would be with her?”
“I can see what it would be without her,” he said dully.
His mother’s voice fell flat “You can’t see that. God hides the future.
There are good girls in the world. Life for you with her would be
bitterness, while she went on smiling. She’s a woman who’ll always have
a man in love with her--always a different man. She’ll never mean any
harm, but every affection she breathes on will lose its freshness. She’s
given you your chance to free yourself.”
She tried to draw him down to her. “Take it,” she urged.
He stooped, smoothed back the gray hair and kissed her wrinkled
forehead.
“You’re going to?”
He loosed himself. “Mother, it’s shameful that we should speak so of a
girl.”
Crossing the room, he opened the door and halted on the point of
departure.
“Are you going to?”
“I can’t There are things I haven’t told you.”
As the door closed, she extended her arms to him, then buried her face
in her hands. When the sound of his footsteps had died out utterly, she
followed.
Teddy turned from gazing into the darkened room. The window was empty.
The other silent witness had departed.
As if coming to uphold him in his allegiance to romance, the Invincible
Armada of dreamers sailed out: cresting the sullen horizon of housetops,
the white moon swam into the heavens--the admiral ship of illusion, with
lesser moons of faint stars following. He remembered that through all
his years that white fleet of stars would be watching, riding steadily
at anchor. Nothing of bitterness could sink one ship of that celestial
armada. He clenched his hands. And nothing that he might hear of
bitterness should sink one hope of his great belief in the goodness and
kindness of the world.