THE REPAIR OF A BROKEN STRAND
We sat there for some long minutes, in silence. Gordon was thinking
deeply. His expression, the abandonment shown in the looseness of his
limbs and the falling forward of his head, were instinct with something
that represented to me a forgetting of pose and calculated conduct.
"I've seen so much suffering," he suddenly said. "That sort of thing
either hardens a man into stone or softens his heart till he can cry out
in hatred of the idea of inflicting pain that can be spared."
I made no answer. It was best to chance no interruption of his mood. My
thoughts were of the meeting that would take place in a few minutes.
Indeed, I felt that I ought not to be there, that my presence might
hinder some cry of the heart, words a woman's soul might dictate. But I
was compelled to remain, since Gordon wished me to. He was now like a
child needing the comfort of a friendly hand before entering a place of
darkness. But I would seize the first opportunity of leaving them alone.
At any rate, I could cross the long studio and go into the next room, if
needed.
Then the bell rang. I think it startled Gordon. The old woman went to
the door, and we heard the girl asking for Mr. McGrath, in her pleasant
and assured voice. I rose to meet her, lifting one of the portieres to
one side.
She looked at me, slightly surprised, but put out her hand, smiling
rather vaguely, her eyes belying the calmness of her voice, her
movements showing slight nervousness. Gordon was standing. I expected
him to come forward, but he remained where he was, rather helplessly,
and she stepped forward toward him, swiftly.
"Hello, Gordon!" she exclaimed. "I'm so glad to see you again. What a
bad boy you've been not to write to me! That--that only letter of yours
implied that you gave me back my freedom, and so I suppose I am at
liberty to consider myself as a little sister--or a pretty big one, and
greet you as one."
With a swift motion of her hand she pushed up the tiny transparent veil
she wore, put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him, quickly, as if
he really had been a brother she was delighted to see again. Then she
sat down on the stool he had used to put his palette and tubes on and
turned to me.
"It isn't very conventional, Mr. Cole," she said, with a little laugh
that sounded forced. "Gordon and I have already kissed one another a few
times. Once more will make no difference. I have done nothing to prevent
him from at least continuing to consider me as a good friend, perhaps as
the sister I've been playing at. Of course we'll have to give it up,
now, because--because people can't keep on playing all the time and--and
others wouldn't understand. I don't mind you, because you wrote that
wonderful book and--and you seem to know so many things."
Then she turned to him again.
"Now tell me about yourself, Gordon," she said pleasantly, folding her
hands upon her lap.
He had remained standing. An instinct of shyness, something like the
humiliation of the man imperfectly clad or conscious of an ugly blemish,
made him keep his right arm behind him.
"There--there's not much to tell," he began, rather haltingly, though he
soon regained control. "I've come back because I could no longer be any
good over there and--and because I became hungry for a sight of old
things--and of old friends, I suppose. You--you're awfully kind,
you--you've always been a splendid woman--a proud one, too, but now you
come here and put out your hand in friendship to--to a fellow who has
behaved rottenly to you. No, don't say anything! Dave used that word. He
sometimes speaks to the point. I'll tell you everything. It will hurt
you, I'm afraid, as it hurts me, but I've got to do it and I will beg
your pardon afterwards. It was all a plan on my part, at first. You were
a wonderful, gorgeous creature, one to whom any man would be attracted,
and I thought you would make a grand wife and a great stepping-stone to
the ambitions that filled my stupid head. And then, somehow, these all
went by the board, and a passion came to me--yes, a passion like the
week's or the month's insanity that comes to some, for another woman.
She is a good woman and a very beautiful one also, the sort of woman
who, like yourself, deserves the best and noblest in the man whose love
she may return. And she refused me, quickly, sharply, with just a word
or two. I think she also thought I was insane; I remember that she
looked frightened. And then I wrote to you, a beastly letter. I tore up
a score of them and sent the worst, I'm afraid. Then I took the steamer
and went off to drive up and down those roads. It--it has, perhaps, been
good for me, for I've seen how little a man himself amounts to, and how
great and noble his heart and soul may be. And that passion passed away,
so that I no longer thought of her, but always I grew hot and angry at
myself, when I remembered you. I've seen you before me a good many
times, yes, even in that hospital they took me to, a few weeks ago,
during the nights when I couldn't sleep. It was a great vision of a fine
woman, big-hearted and strong, too good for such a cad as I. No, don't
interrupt! I felt that it was fortunate for you, the best thing that
ever happened, that I had shown myself to you under my true colors and
saved you--saved you from marrying me. That madness has gone long ago,
and there's no trace of it left in me, I swear, but I'm the same
impossible Gordon, I daresay, except for that missing hand."
He slowly brought the maimed limb forward, but she never looked at it.
Her eyes were upon his, very shiny with unshed tears.
"Yes, the same old Gordon, with perhaps a little of his silly pose gone,
with a realization of his uselessness and worthlessness. And now I
humbly beg your pardon, Sophia--I mean Miss Van Rossum, for I have
forfeited every title to your forbearance--I no longer deserve it.
And--and now I stand before you with my soul naked and ashamed, and--and
Dave will see you to the door, for--for he's a good man, fit to touch
any woman's hand!"
His legs seemed to weaken under him. His left hand sought the
window-ledge behind him, and he sank on the seat beneath. She rose from
the stool and went to him, sitting down at his side, and put her hand on
his right arm.
"You have been very unhappy, Gordon," she said gently. "I am not sure
that you have the right perspective as yet, and I don't see in all this
anything to prevent our remaining good friends. We've had so many of the
good things of life, you and I, and, perhaps, it is good for one to pay
for them with a little sorrow. It may prevent one from getting too
conceited. And you're so much better off than if this--this hurt had
come just in wrecking a motor, or in being stepped on by a polo pony,
because you will always realize that it happened while you were giving
the best of yourself towards helping others, towards doing big things.
And perhaps, some day, you might be able to paint again. They--they make
such wonderful artificial things, I have heard, with aluminum and--and
stuff that's ever so light. It might take you a whole year of practice
before you could do anything; but what is a year when one's heart isn't
too sad and weary. Even if you can't draw as well as you used to, you
could take to landscapes, done broadly and strongly. There is no one who
can mass colors and produce such effects as you are able to find. When
you get confidence, I know you will be able to draw also, ever so well,
and, perhaps, for your first trial, you will let me come and sit here
and we'll chat together as we used to, and you'll paint again."
"Never!" he exclaimed.
"Oh, yes, sometime, I'm sure, when you feel better, Gordon, because you
will forgive yourself after a time. That's so much harder for a man to
do than to obtain the pardon of a woman! If you really think you want
mine, it is yours, with all my heart, and----"
But she stopped, looking at him wistfully, her long lashes wet, her
voice faintly tremulous. I knew that she would have granted him not only
the pardon he had sued for, but also her strong and noble self, if he
had begged for it.
He probably forgot his missing hand, for he swept the silk-wrapped thing
across his eyes.
"You must think again, Sophia," he said very slowly. "You can't really
mean it. Do you indeed feel that you can forgive me? Is it true that in
your heart there is such charity?"
"It--I don't think it's charity, Gordon. I--I'm afraid it's something
more than that. Perhaps you don't know as much as you think about
women's hearts. Ask our friend David, here, he has looked into them very
wisely, or he couldn't have written 'Land o' Love.' And now I think I
must be going away. You mustn't use that word charity again, it is one
that hurts just the least little bit. It's so dreadfully inexpressive,
you know! And--and you'll write to me when you want me, won't you?"
"I want you now!" he cried. "I'd give the last drop of my blood for a
shred of hope, for the knowledge that things might again, some day----"
"One moment, Gordon dear," she said, smiling through her tears, and
looked into a tiny gold-meshed bag from which she pulled out a ring with
a glistening stone. "I have always kept it. Do you mean that you would
like me to put it on again?"
"Do, for the love of God!" he cried.
"Yes, and of dear old Gordon," she consented gently.
So I rose, quickly, with something very big and uncomfortable in my
throat, and looked at my watch.
"I must run," I said. "I am ever so late. I'll come in again to-morrow,
Gordon! God bless you both!"
I only heard, confusedly, the word or two with which they sought to
detain me, but I ran away.
She had said that I knew women's hearts. God forgive her! What man on
earth can penetrate such things, can ever gauge the depths of them, see
all the wondrous beauty that may hide in them and blossom forth, full of
awe and wonder. Every one must worship something, if it be but an idea,
and my reverence goes out to the woman who exalts, to the mother of men,
to the consoler, for, when she is at her highest and best, she becomes
an object of veneration among such earthly things as we may bend a knee
to.
The man had remained strong in his abasement, and the woman had seen it.
She had been unembarrassed by my presence. Hers was the strength that
spurns all pettiness. She knew that I loved Gordon and was assured of my
regard for herself. If in her words there had been renunciation and the
casting away of wounded pride, if in them there had been the surging of
the great love that had long filled her heart, the whole world was
welcome to hear them and to behold her while she gave her troth again
into the man's keeping. She had risen above the smallness of
recrimination, and, with a gesture, had swept away the past since in it
there was nothing really shameful, nothing that could soil her ermine
coat of fair and clean womanhood. Her faith in the man had returned,
and, with it, the confidence born of her instinctive knowledge of a pure
woman's mastery over men. She knew that Gordon had beheld those visions
of hell that strengthen a man's dire need of heaven, and so, in all
simplicity and with the wondrous openhandedness of a Ceres sowing abroad
a world's supply of germinating seed, she had cast the treasure of
herself before him.
I jumped into a taxi and drove over to the little apartment where Baby
Paul was to lie motherless for a few days. I rang the bell and heard
Eulalie's heavy steps, hurrying to the door.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I am so glad you have come, but I was hoping it
was Monsieur the doctor!"
Whereat I rushed in, filled with alarm.