years, whose fruitage he had hoped to gather in great peace, he came
again upon tempestuous days. In brief, when past forty, it befell him
to love as he had never loved before, and with an unrest far exceeding
that of youth, for he could not fail to see that the chances were by
rights against him.
“Good Lord!” said Rollinson, when he faced his emotional condition,
“for the heart there _is_ no afterwards!”
But, happily, Bertha did not think so ill of his chances for happiness
as did he himself, and he ventured to hope, although he was terrified
by her calmness and her ability to see from all sides the subject he
could only see from one.
Bertha respected his learning and revered his wisdom--which is learning
hitched to life--and envied his experiences, and exulted in his grasp
of people and things, and in his breadth of vision. She thought such a
grip upon life as he possessed could only come with years. And compared
to these things the disadvantages which also come with years seemed
trifling. Obesity, baldness, and a touch of ancestral gout were the
penalties he had to pay for being what he was. On the whole, the price
did not seem too high. She felt quite sure that she would ultimately
accept him, and that they would marry and live happily ever after.
This impression was still strong in her mind when, some days after the
conversation recorded, she went with her aunt to a little lunch-party
which he gave in his bachelor apartments.
Although he modestly spoke of them as being very simple, Rollinson’s
rooms were really a liberal education. He had been about the world a
great deal and had carried with him fastidious taste and a purse only
moderately filled. As he said once, he had never had so much money that
he could afford to buy trash. The result was very happy. Pictures,
rugs, draperies, brasses, ceramics, all were satisfactory.
“Your things are so delightfully intelligent!” said Bertha, with a
gratified sigh. He found himself by her side as she was inspecting a
bit of antique silver on a cabinet with obvious approval. “It makes me
feel as I have never felt before, what a wonderful thing is taste!”
He smiled. “I am more than repaid if they have pleased you,” he said.
“Will you step this way an instant? I want to show you the thing I am
vain enough to value most of all.”
In the corner which he indicated, hung a picture she had not noticed,
the portrait of a young man about twenty-five. The girl stared at it
with fascinated eyes. “You! Can it be _you_?” she questioned, with an
accent that was almost a reproach. Ah, how splendid he was, the painted
youth in his hunter’s costume who stood there fixed forever in all the
beautiful insolence of his young manhood! What a mass of dark hair
tossed back from his fine forehead, and what soldierly erectness in his
bearing! How the eyes flashed--those eyes that only twinkled now! He
was radiant, courageous, strong. What a hold he had on life--one read
it in the lines of his mouth, in his eyes, his brow. What zest, what
eagerness of spirit! He was more than all that she most admired in her
lover, and he was young--young!
The girl gave a strange look at Rollinson and then turned back to the
picture again. All fulfilment is pitiful compared with its prophecy,
and in that moment she realized this.
“It was painted by my friend Van Anden, who died too early to achieve
the fame he should have had,” said Rollinson. “All that toggery I am
wearing, which paints so effectively, was part of my outfit when I went
to Africa with my cousin.”
“It is very fine,” said Bertha, with constraint, and then, with an
unmistakably final movement, she turned away from it. Rollinson felt a
sudden, wretched pang. If she cared at all for him, would not she also
exult in this fair presentment of his young years?
After the luncheon had been served and before his guests had moved to
go, he saw with a hopeful thrill that she had gone back to the picture
and was standing before it again, intent and questioning.
He went up to her.
“Bertha! Dearest!” he said, beneath his breath. “After all, you like
it, then?”
She turned upon him sharply. “It is wonderful--wonderful! But you
should not have shown it to me! I do not understand. I--I thought I
could have married you. Now I know that I never can. I--I never dreamed
there was youth like that in the world. Oh, why did you let me find it
out?”
Rollinson stood dumfounded.
“But it is I,” he found voice to plead at last. “Bertha, have the
added years of worthy life made me less deserving of your love? Am I to
be punished for becoming what he only promised to be?”
The girl passed her hand over her eyes in a bewildered way.
“It seems to me that one can love promise better than achievement,” she
said, faintly. “To care for what is not, is, I fancy, the very essence
of love.”
“I love you as he never could have done,” urged Rollinson. “As he never
dreamed of caring for any one. His loves were superficial and selfish,
Bertha. I have gained much, and I have lost nothing that--that is
essential.”
“You have lost comprehension--he would have understood what I mean,”
answered the girl, quickly.
“But--Bertha! This is unreasonable. How can you expect me to
comprehend?”
“I have been too reasonable!” she cried, with sudden passion. “That is
my discovery. Love is not reasonable, youth is not--and they belong
together. Oh, don’t, don’t make me say any more!”
For an instant there was a heavy silence between them; then Rollinson
found voice to say:
“It shall be as you please. Your aunt seems to be looking for you.
Shall we go over to her?”
When his guests were gone at last, Rollinson came back to the picture.
He took it down and placed it upon a chair where the light fell full
upon it. Truly, he did not look like that to-day.
Although it was himself, he hated it, for it had cost him something
dearer than the young strength which it portrayed. Of all the
irrational humiliations of the long, wayward years of life this seemed
to him the most hideous.
He took his knife from his pocket, opened it and put the point against
the canvas. It would be easy to satisfy the brute anger in his soul
by two sharp cross-cuts which should effectually destroy that remote,
insolent beauty which had once been his own and now was his no longer.
He hesitated a moment, then dropped the knife and shook his head. He
could not possibly do such a melodramatic, tawdry thing as that.
He knew that the day might yet come when he should not remember the
bitterness of this hour; he might even grow to be glad again that he
had once walked the earth in the likeness of this picture, but just
now--just now he must forget it for awhile.
With one short sigh, Rollinson lifted the portrait of his rival and set
it down, the face against the wall.
AT THE END OF THE WORLD
“And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.”
She was sitting quietly in the sleeper, writing a letter to a friend.
She had got as far as “I feel it my duty to tell you,” when the pencil
flew out of her fingers. She had an instantaneous impression, grotesque
in its horror, that all the natural laws were being unsettled with a
terrible, grinding noise; for the pencil was falling toward the ceiling
instead of the floor, and the man in front of her was following it,
and even she herself. Then something struck her head and she lost
consciousness.
When she came to herself she was lying on a cot in one corner of a
large, unfamiliar room. As her gaze wandered slowly from object to
object on the whitewashed walls, she concluded, from the combination
of railway maps, time-cards, dusty windows filled with geraniums in
pots, and a large, rusty Bible chained to a wall-pocket, that she was
in a country railroad station; but when she turned her head she saw
that it also resembled a hospital. She felt bruised and sore, but was
not in much pain, and only an indefinable sensation of great weakness
warned her not to move.
Presently some one noticed that her eyes were open and, drawing near,
asked her some questions. She answered them with ease, and then in her
turn asked a few. The man, obviously a physician, answered briefly but
definitely. Then he drew a note-book from his pocket, took down some
addresses that she gave him, and moved away softly in the direction of
the telegraph window. She lay, looking after him incredulously. So this
was death! She had at farthest two more hours on earth. It was part
of her creed that one may permit one’s self to be surprised but never
startled. She was not startled now, but, decidedly, she was sorry. Her
best work was yet undone, and she had not meant to leave earth while
there still remained so much to do.
The sounds and sights of the hastily improvised hospital were
unpleasant to her, and she turned her head away from them. There was
one cot between her and the corner. She recognized the profile of that
bandaged head as belonging to the man who had sat across the aisle in
the sleeper. She had jotted down a description of him in her note-book,
thinking she might use it some day. It ran:
“Sallow skin, soft, brown hair, fine eyes, but an iron mouth with a
devil-may-care expression. He has the get-up of a man who is too busy
being prosperous to take time to be comfortable. His face, a singular
combination of sensitiveness and stolidity, the latter leading. Neither
hard enough for this world nor tender enough for the next. An Achilles
with a dozen vulnerable spots, he sheds two drops of his own blood for
every one he draws in his battles; so, whether he wins or not, they are
always losing fields for him.”
She lay, looking at his profile, thinking that never, so long as she
lived, could she see the other side of that anguished countenance, and
the thought irritated her. This, she reflected, was an instance of the
strength of the ruling passion. She had always been thirstily curious
about life, even to its least details. Now the opportunities for
quenching that thirst were at an end. There was no more for her in this
world of that friction of spirit upon spirit which she loved. She was
dying in a corner. Between herself and the immensity of eternity hung
only that one white face.
Suddenly a thought came into her mind. Why should she not talk to
him--while she was waiting?
“Are you badly hurt?” she asked, softly.
He groaned. “I am a dead man.”
“They tell me I am dying, too,” she said. “Why have they put us here in
this corner, away from the others?”
“Because neither of us is in great pain, and we are both hopeless
cases. They have no time to waste on us.”
“It is very strange to think that this is really the last of it. Are
you prepared to die?”
“Prepared? What is prepared?” he answered. “One is never ready to stop
living. And there were a great many things I wanted to do yet.”
“Were any of them important?”
An ironic smile twisted the corner of his lips. “Now that you mention
it--no. I wanted to make a good deal more money. I was going to turn
over two or three pieces of real estate next week that I expected a
profit upon. I meant to build a finer house for my wife--a big, new
one, with all the modern wrinkles of architecture and furnishing. Then,
if I had known she was going to have charge of things so soon, I should
have altered one or two investments”----
His pain grew sharper and he groaned. When he was still she spoke again.
“If I had met you yesterday I should have said that your interests in
life were very much less fine and spiritual than my own. I wrote things
that people praised. They said I was clever, ingenious, witty; but they
never said I was an artist. I meant to make them say it. I was going to
write a novel next winter that should show”--She stopped, but presently
went on, musingly: “It is very odd, but somehow it doesn’t seem as
important as it did this morning. Do you care that your house will
never be built?”
“No.”
“And I don’t care about my novel. I called my interest in life art,
and you called yours business; but neither of them seems to count any
more. The question is, What does count?”
“Close your eyes and lie still for five minutes, and note what you find
yourself unable to avoid thinking of. That will show you what counts.”
“You have been trying it?”
He made a motion of assent.
“Well,” he asked, after a silence on her part that seemed long, “does
it work?”
“Yes,” she said, in a tense way; “it works too well. What did _you_
see?”
Again the ironic smile twisted the visible corner of his mouth. “Shall
we exchange confidences--last confessions, and all that? I’d just as
soon. Reticence isn’t worth much now. Only--you begin.”
“I saw,” she said, slowly, “my husband’s eyes. I had forgotten how they
looked when he found that I really meant to insist on a separation.
He could not bear it, for he adored the ground I walked on. It was
five years ago. I had no presentable reason for leaving him. He was so
horribly good-natured that it used to irritate me. And I didn’t care
for the domestic life. It interfered with my work, although he had
promised that it should not. I wanted to be free again. He let me have
the child. He was very good about the whole business--painfully good,
in fact. But it did hurt him cruelly. I have been very much happier
since, but I don’t suppose he has.”
“Did he have brown eyes--the big, faithful, dog-like kind?” asked the
man.
“How did you know?”
“That good sort often do. The girl I jilted did. We had been engaged
almost from our cradles. There was an accident with horses, and she got
hurt. She limped a little afterward, and there were scars on her face
and neck--not very bad scars, but still they were there. She had been
a little beauty before that; but she never at any time thought much
about her looks, and it hadn’t occurred to her that I minded. But I did
mind. I fretted over it until I fancied that I didn’t love her, after
all; but I did. One day I told her so. You know how she looked at me.
She asked if the accident made any difference, and I hadn’t the skill
to lie about it so that she believed me. She rose at once, as if to put
an end to our interview. All she said was, ‘I thought you knew better
what love was.’ I can hear how her voice sounded. She was badly cut
up; lost her health and all that. And I never could pretend I wasn’t to
blame. The girl I married later was faultlessly pretty, but there was
nothing in the world to her.”
“We seem to be a nice sort, don’t we?” said the woman, reflectively.
“We are no worse than others. Unselfishness is out of fashion.
Everybody takes what he wants nowadays.”
“My husband didn’t.”
“I respect your husband. But you did it. We did the same sort of thing,
you and I; only I think you are the worse of the two. It is natural for
a man to want a wife who isn’t disfigured.”
“It is natural for a clever woman to want to live unfettered.”
“Perhaps. But I erred through the worser part of my nature, and you
through the better. My revolt against unselfishness was physical, and
yours intellectual. Therefore you fell farther than I, by as much as
the mind is better than the body; don’t you see?”
“That is speciously put, but I doubt its truth.”
Both were silent for a space.
“I have it!” she breathed suddenly, and her voice was stronger; for
even in the clutches of death a new insight into the meaning of things
had power to stimulate her whole being. “It is this way. Our error was
the same. We both betrayed their trust in us. We grieved love. And the
reason that we remember now is that love and God are one, and this is
the judgment. That is why we see their eyes rebuking us. It comes to
us, now that we die. That is all life is for--to learn not to grieve
love. Why did I never know it before? Oh, if I had put that in my
books!”
“If you had put it in your life it would have been better,” interrupted
the man; but she went on, unheeding:
“That must be what they meant when they said my work lacked conviction.
It is the heart that takes sides. One man said I was too clever to be
interesting. I never understood what he meant before, but I see now. It
was that I had mind enough but too little heart. I wanted to become as
one of the gods by knowing, and the appointed path is by loving. To be
human and to love is to be divine.”
“Oh, wise conclusion!” mocked the man. “What does it profit you to
know it--now?”
She was silent, spent with the effort of her eager speech. The maps
on the opposite wall whirled before her eyes. She felt herself
slipping--slipping. Yet, though she found no words to tell him why,
there came to her a sudden, sweet assurance that it profited her much,
even at this last hour, to know the thing she had just spoken.
It was a long time before she found strength to ask: “Shall you be here
after I am gone?”
“Why?”
“I gave them my husband’s name. I knew he would be glad to come. He
lives a hundred miles from here, and it will only take him four hours
at the longest. I shall not last that long. If you would tell him”--
“Tell him what?”
“Tell him,” said the woman, slowly, “that I saw; that I am sorry I
grieved love and him; that I wish I had been wiser about what life
meant; that love is always best.”
“The fact is,” said the man, reluctantly, “I did not mean to stay. I
dabbled in medicine a little once, and I know that I can last this way
a day or two. But I am in pain now, and it will grow worse. What is the
use of staying? They tied an artery for me; it might easily get untied,
you know.”
“Aren’t you going to wait until your wife comes?” she asked,
wonderingly.
“Better not,” answered the man, briefly. “It would hurt her less this
way, and me too. Scenes worry me, and her nerves are delicate.”
“What farces such marriages as yours are!”
“Better a farce than a tragedy. My wife has been happier than your
husband. She has been very comfortable, and she will continue to be so,
for my estate is reasonably large.”
“Then Arthur will never know that I am sorry, and I want him to. Oh,
God! I want him to.”
The man lay, frowning sharply at the ceiling. The ineffectual anguish
of her cry had touched him, but his pain was growing worse. At last he
spoke.
“Look here. If I will stay and deliver that message for you, will you
do something for me?”
“I? What can I do for any one?”
“You are a woman, though not, it seems, a very loving one. You can tell
me if there is any forgiveness for the hurt I gave that girl, and if
there is, absolve me in love’s name! I cannot bear her eyes.”
“Love forgives everything,” she answered, simply. “Wait until you see
Arthur’s face when you tell him I was sorry. That will show you.”
“Say it!” murmured the man, peremptorily. “Let me hear the words, as
she might say them.”
She turned upon her side to smile at him. Her voice had grown so faint
that it seemed but a disembodied, yearning tenderness that spoke.
“In love’s name, then, and hers, _absolvo te_”--And the thread of sound
dropped into a silence that was to remain unbroken.
The man lay still, clenching his hands and unclenching them. The
thrusts of pain had grown very sharp, but he grimly set his teeth. He
might ask for morphine; but if he took it “Arthur” might come and go
while he lay in stupor, and the message remain forever undelivered. He
looked at the clock on the opposite wall. Perhaps he had still three
hours to wait. What should he do? That last dart was keenest of them
all. What did people do in torture, people who had made promises that
they must stay to keep? Surely there was something. Ah, that was it. Of
course. They prayed. Then why not he, as well?
His lips moved feverishly.
“Christ, thou who suffered for love’s sake, give me--give me the pluck
to hold out three hours more.”
Transcriber’s Notes
Minor punctuation errors have been corrected.
Page 115: “at at the corner” changed to “at the corner”
Page 151: “the amenites” changed to “the amenities”