THE GATE INTO PARADISE
The girl looked up from her seat wonderingly. His coming had been a
little precipitate. His appearance, too, betokened a disturbed mind.
"There is a front door," she reminded him. "There are also bells."
"I could not wait," he answered simply. "I saw the flutter of your gown
as I came along the lane, and I climbed the wall. All the way down I
fancied that you might be wearing blue."
A slight air of reserve which she had carefully prepared for him, faded
away. What was the use? He was such an extraordinary person! It was
not possible to measure him by the usual standards. She was obliged to
smile.
"You find blue--becoming?"
"Adorable," he replied, fervently. "I have dreamed of you in blue. You
wore blue only the night before last, when I wrote my little sketch of
'The Pavements of Bond Street on a Summer Afternoon.'"
She pointed to the journal which lay at her feet.
"I recognized myself, of course," she declared, trying to speak
severely. "It was most improper of you."
"It was nothing of the sort," he answered bluntly. "You came into the
picture and I could not keep you out. You were there, so you had to
stay."
"It was much too flattering," she objected.
Again he contradicted her.
"I could not flatter if I tried," he assured her. "It was just you."
She laughed softly.
"It is so difficult to argue with you," she murmured. "All the same, I
think that it was most improper. But then everything you do is
improper. You had no right to climb over that wall, you had no right to
walk here with me the other afternoon, even though you had driven away a
tame cow. You have no right whatever to be here to-day. What about
your wife?"
"I have been to Garden Green," he announced. "I offered her
emancipation, the same emancipation as that which I myself have
attained. She refused it absolutely. She is satisfied with Garden
Green."
"You mean," the girl asked, "that she refuses the--the--"
"Beans," he said. "Precisely! She did more than refuse them--she threw
them out of the window. She has no imagination. From her point of view
I suppose she behaved in a perfectly natural fashion. She told me to go
my own way and leave her alone."
Edith sighed.
"It is very unfortunate," she declared, "that you were not able to
convince her."
"Is it?" he replied. "I tried my best, and when I had failed I was
glad."
She raised her eyes for a moment but she shook her head.
"I am afraid that it doesn't make any difference, does it?
"Why not? It makes all the difference," he insisted.
"My dear Mr. Burton," she expostulated, making room for him to sit down
beside her, "I cannot possibly allow you to make love to me because your
wife refuses to swallow a bean!"
"But she threw them out of the window!" he persisted. "She understood
quite well what she was doing. Her action was entirely symbolical. She
declared for Garden Green and the vulgar life."
For a girl who lived in an old-fashioned garden, and who seemed herself
to be part of a fairy story, Edith certainly took a practical view of
the situation.
"I am afraid," she murmured, "that the Divorce Courts have no
jurisdiction over your case. You are therefore a married man, and
likely to continue a married man. I cannot possibly allow you to hold
my hand."
His head swam for a moment. She was very alluring with her pale face
set in its clouds of golden hair, her faintly wrinkled forehead, her
bewitchingly regretful smile--regretful, yet in a sense provocative.
"I am in love with you," he declared.
"Naturally," she replied. "The question is--" She paused and looked
intently at the tip of her slipper. It was very small and very pointed
and it was quite impossible to ignore the fact that she had a remarkably
pretty foot and that she wore white silk stockings. Burton had never
known any one before who wore white silk stockings.
"I am very much in love with you," he repeated. "I cannot help it. It
is not my fault--that is to say, it is as much your fault as it is
mine."
The corners of her mouth twitched.
"Is it? Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"I am going to take you down to the orchard, through the little gate,
and across the plank into the hayfield," he announced, boldly. "I am
going to sit with you under the oak tree, where we can just catch the
view of the moor through the dip in the hills. We will lean back and
watch the clouds--those little white, fleecy, broken-off pieces--and I
will tell you fairy stories. We shall be quite alone there and perhaps
you will let me hold your hand."
She shook her head, gently but very firmly. "Such things are
impossible."
"Because I have a wife at Garden Green?"
She nodded.
"Because you have a wife, and because--I had really quite forgotten to
mention it before, but as a matter of fact I am half engaged to someone
myself."
He went suddenly white.
"You are not serious?" he demanded. "Perfectly," she assured him. "I
can't think how I forgot it."
"Does he come here to see you?" Burton asked, jealously.
"Not very often. He has to work hard." Burton leaned back in his seat.
The music of life seemed suddenly to be playing afar off--so far that he
could only dimly catch the strains. The wind, too, must have
changed--the perfume of the roses reached him no more.
"I thought you understood," he said slowly.
She did not speak again for several moments. Then she rose a little
abruptly to her feet.
"You can walk as far as the hayfield with me," she said.
They passed down the narrow garden path in single file. There had been
a storm in the night and the beds of pink and white stocks lay dashed
and drooping with a weight of glistening rain-drops. The path was
strewn with rose petals and the air seemed fuller than ever of a fresh
and delicate fragrance. At the end of the garden, a little gate led
into the orchard. Side by side they passed beneath the trees.
"Tell me," he begged in a low tone, "about this lover of yours!"
"There is so little to tell," she answered. "He is a member of the firm
who publish books for my father. He is quite kind to us both. He used
to come down here more often, even, than he does now, and one night he
asked my father whether he might speak to me."
"And your father?"
"My father was very much pleased," she continued. "We have little money
and father is not very strong. He told me that it had taken a weight
off his mind."
"How often does he come?" Burton asked.
"He was here last Sunday week."
"Last Sunday week! And you call him your lover!"
"No, I have not called him that," she reminded him gently. "He is not
that sort of man. Only I think that he is the person whom I shall
marry--some day."
"I am sure that you were beginning to like me," he insisted.
She turned and looked at him--at his pale, eager face with the hollow
eyes, the tremulous mouth--a curiously negative and wholly indescribable
figure, yet in some dim sense impressive through certain unspelt
suggestions of latent force. No one could have described him, in those
days, though no one with perceptions could have failed to observe much
that was unusual in his personality.
"It is true," she admitted. "I do like you. You seem to carry some
quality with you which I do not understand. What is it, I wonder? It
is something which reminds me of your writing."
"I think that it is truthfulness," he told her. "That is no virtue on
my part. It is sheer necessity. I am quite sure that if I had not been
obliged I should never have told you that it was I who stared at you
from the Common there, one of a hideous little band of trippers. I
should not even have told you about my wife. It is all so humiliating."
"It was yourself which obliged yourself," she pointed out,--"I mean
that the truthfulness was part of yourself. Do you know, it has set me
thinking so often. If only people realized how attractive absolute
simplicity, absolute candor is, the world would be so much easier a
place to live in, and so much more beautiful! Life is so full of small
shams, so many imperfectly hidden little deceits. Even if you had not
told me this strange story about yourself, I think that I should still
have felt this quality about you."
"I should like," he declared, "to have you conceive a passion for the
truth. I should like to have you feel that it was not possible to live
anyhow or anywhere else save in its light. If you really felt that it
would be like a guiding star to you through life, you would never be
able even to consider marriage with a man whom you did not love."
"This evening," she said slowly, "he is coming down. I was thinking it
all over this afternoon. I had made up my mind to say nothing about
you. Since you came, however, I feel differently. I shall tell him
everything."
"Perhaps," Burton suggested, hopefully, "he may be jealous."
"It is possible," she assented. "He does not seem like that but one can
never tell."
"He may even give you up!"
She smiled.
"If he did," she reminded him, "it would not make any difference."
"I will not admit that," he declared. "I want your love--I want your
whole love. I want you to feel the same things that I feel, in the same
way. You live in two places--in a real garden and a fairy garden, the
fairy garden of my dreams. I want you to leave the real garden and let
me try and teach you how beautiful the garden of fancies may become."
She sighed.
"Alas!" she said, "it is because I may not come and live always in that
fairy garden that I am going to send you away."
"Don't!" he pleaded,--"not altogether, at any rate. Life is so short,
so pitifully incomplete. We live through so many epochs and each epoch
has its own personality. It was not I who married Ellen. It was
Burton, the auctioneer's clerk. I cannot carry the burden of that
fellow's asinine mistakes upon my shoulders forever."
"I am afraid," she murmured, "that however clever the Mr. Burton of
to-day may be, he will never be able to rid himself altogether of his
predecessor's burdens."
They were leaning over the gate, looking into the deserted hayfield.
The quiet of evening had stolen down upon them. He drew a little nearer
to her.
"Dear," he whispered, "there isn't really any Ellen, there isn't really
any woman in the world of my thoughts, the world in which I live, save
you."
She was almost in his arms. She did not resist but she looked a little
pitifully into his face. "You will not--please!" she begged.
Once more the music passed away into the clouds. It was the gate into
Paradise over which he had leaned, but the gate was locked, and as he
stood there it seemed to grow higher and higher, until he could not even
see over the top. Almost roughly he turned away.
"Quite right," he muttered. "I must not touch the Princess of my fairy
garden. Only let us go back now, please. I cannot stay here any
longer."
She obeyed at once. There was a queer, pathetic little droop at the
corners of her lips, and she avoided his eyes.
"Good-bye!" he said.
His tone was dull and spiritless. Something, for the moment, seemed to
have passed from him. He seemed, indeed, to lack both inspiration and
courage. Her fingers clung slightly to his. She was praying, even,
that he might laugh to scorn her unspoken appeal. He moved a yard away
and stood looking at her. Her heart began to beat wildly. Surely her
prayer would be granted! The light of adoration was coming back to his
eyes.
"I cannot see the truth!" he cried hoarsely. "You belong to me--I feel
that you belong to me! You are part of the great life. I have found
you--you are mine! And yet . . . I feel I mustn't touch you. I
don't understand. Perhaps I shall come back."
He turned and hurried off. She watched him until he was a speck upon
the road; watched him, even then, from among the shadows of the trees.
There was a lump in her throat and a misty light in her eyes. She had
forgotten everything that had seemed absurd to her in this strange
little romance. Her eyes and her arms, almost her lips, were calling
him to her.