Clive would not sit up all night with Helena, but they spent hours of
the day in the forest, and there was nothing funereal in his aspect
when they were alone. One morning Helena’s maid brought her a note when
she came to awaken her.
“My dear Miss Belmont” (it ran),--“I am going away for a few days. I
shall be back on Monday, at four.
“Yours truly,
“OWIN CLIVE.”
Helena stared at the abrupt, formal missive in dismay for a moment;
then laughed. She had seen men struggle in her net before. She knew
that he would keep his word and return, and had perfect faith in the
power of her seductive charm, no matter what good resolve he might
accomplish when away.
It was a hot day, and her guests were too indolent to do anything but
lie about and smoke and read. They did not want to be entertained, and
she let them alone and spent the day in the rose-garden in the shade
of the oaks. She rather enjoyed thinking of Clive, for variety, and
anticipating his return. She concocted clever arguments and convincing
appeals. She saw herself in the gowns she would wear when he was with
her again, and was glad for the wealth that gave such potent aid to
her beauty. She was very happy: the future was so exquisite that she
trembled and grew breathless at the thought of it.
The next day she sat on a ledge below the crest of the cliffs, and
stared at the huge restless waves of the Pacific rearing against the
outlying rocks, falling with their baffled roar. There was neither
peace, nor reason, nor power of anticipation in her. She was insensible
of any instinct beyond an insufferable desire for his physical presence.
That night she went to bed glad with the thought that she should
see him in sixteen hours, and pictured their meeting so often and
variously, and struck a match to look at the clock so many times, that
she slept little. The next morning she was so nervous and apprehensive
that the placid conversation of her guests was intolerable, and she
would not drive with them. After luncheon she went up to a favorite
spot in the forest, directing one of the Chinese servants to conduct
Clive to her when he returned.
As the afternoon wore on her gloom lifted and passed. She grew light
minded and humorous, almost indifferent. She took herself to task
in some dismay: in the fitness of things she should be passionately
serious when he arrived. “Are there really no great crises in life?”
she thought. “Are we all comedians gone wrong, personified jokes?” But
she was helpless; the reaction was inevitable.
Clive was late. He was always late. Helena felt no uneasiness, but sat
idly, wondering how they would meet, her mind occasionally drifting to
other things. She had carried a large hat lined with white and covered
with white plumes, in a box through the damaging brush, and hidden the
box in a hollow redwood. The hat, pushed backward on her brilliant
hair, enhanced the oval colorous beauty of her face. She took it off
suddenly and threw it on the ground; the attempt was too evident; all
men were not consistently dense.
She heard a crackling in the brush on the other side of the creek, then
the Chinaman’s protesting voice.
“Can’t hully when catchee pigtail allee time, Mister Clive. Me got
thlee velly bad sclatches, and clothes allee same no washee.”
There was no answer from Clive, but he was in view presently. The
Chinaman retreated hastily, wrapping his pigtail round his neck. Helena
rose and went forward. She felt suddenly resentful and haughty.
After all, it was presumption in a man to take upon himself the
deciding of a question which was as vital to her as to him. She
wondered if she really did love him; certainly she felt neither
tenderness nor tolerance at the moment.
Clive walked slowly across the felled redwood which served as bridge
between the high banks of the creek. As he approached Helena forgot
herself and her moods.
“He has suffered horribly,” she thought. “What am I that I did not know
he must?”
And then she realized that she could not comprehend his experience of
the past three days; that her mind merely grasped the fact; she had no
profounder, more sympathetic understanding. She drew back, frightened
and chilled.
“I am sorry to see you looking so badly,” she said coldly, as they
shook hands. “Perhaps we had better have it out at once.”
They sat down against two redwoods, facing each other.
“Very well,” said Clive, “I have been a scoundrel and nothing I can say
is the least excuse. I can only state the facts.... The average girl
who is an avowed flirt expects to be made love to, and a man finds it
no task to do what a charming woman exacts of him.... I took you in
the beginning for a spoilt beauty, a coquette, above the average as
far as brain was concerned, but still suggesting little more than an
unusually spirited flirtation. Of course, I was far more fascinated
than I realized or I should not have come to your house, nor should I
have asked you to give me these two weeks.... That it might mean life
or death to either of us I did not realize until that day among the
ferns.”
The fight was on. Helena threw back her head. “Can you not explain to
Mary Gordon? Surely she would release you.”
“I never could explain to Mary Gordon. She would comprehend that after
four years I had thrown her over for a prettier woman whom I had known
two weeks. Women like that--simple, good, loyal women--don’t reason and
analyze as a clever woman does. And the hurt lasts--not because the man
is worth it, any more than any man is good enough for such women--but
because they are what they are.”
“But she was not the woman for you; therefore she would find another
man.”
“She would live on an isolated ranch in Southern California for several
years, then go back to England and live in her old home, among the
people she has known all her life. Those women don’t seek distraction.
They are the slaves of an idea. If the right man did come she wouldn’t
know it.”
“All of which means that you think it your duty to marry her.”
“I mean to marry her. There is nothing else to be done. If there were
no other reason I have no right to make her ridiculous.”
Helena caught her breath. For the first time she mentally appreciated
the strength in the man which had captivated her woman’s instincts. But
she did not lose courage.
“And I am not to be considered at all? I say nothing about being made
ridiculous. If I am it is my own fault, and I don’t care, anyhow; that
seems to me a very insignificant matter. Now that I have found you am I
to be left alone--thirty, forty years? You know that I have about equal
possibilities of good and bad in me. If I married you I could become
as wholly good as any mortal can. I never realized what possibilities
there are in any of us as I did in the last few days before you went
away. The principal reason that I love you is because I always feel
that there is something in you to climb to and that you could lift me
up to you. If you leave me I’ll become a bad woman. Why not? It must be
very interesting, and I have nothing more in life to look forward to.
If I lived with you I might grow into your belief; you could carry me
anywhere; but alone I cannot. Moreover, I want to live in this life.
I cannot sit down and wait patiently for a mythical and unsubstantial
hereafter. I am too much of a savage, I suppose, but at all events, I
can’t.”
“There will be no excuse for you to become a bad woman. You have too
much brain and money--too many methods of distraction. You can travel
and make any life you choose. The world is an interesting place; you
don’t know the A B C of it.”
“You are cruel.”
“Yes,” he said. “More so than you realize just now.”
“I’m not doubting that you love me. If I did do you suppose I would
argue with you? I’m not in a tender or sympathetic mood. There is too
much to be said. I _must_ talk it out now; we are not an ordinary pair
of fools.” She paused a moment and looked straight at him. “We have a
more imperative duty to ourselves than to traditions. You are in the
new world now, almost in a new civilization. Smash such outworn ideals.
They are nothing, nothing to human happiness.”
“Such traditions as honor and faith and pity for the weaker are in the
bone and blood of the older civilization. If we tore them out there is
not much we’ve got that’s worth anything that wouldn’t follow.”
“I would not care--not a straw. I should love you whether you were
satisfied with yourself or not, and I could make you forget.”
“No; you could not.”
“Oh, you are way above me,” she said bitterly. “I don’t mean to say
that I haven’t known plenty of honorable men, but they would find a way
out of it--for me. You seem to be welded together so compactly that
every characteristic is bound up with every other. Nothing is acquired,
separate. Probably I’d never reach you, after all. Perhaps it is as
well we don’t marry----”
“I wish you would not talk as if I were an infernal prig. Can’t you
imagine what an ass a man feels when a woman rots to him like that? I
am the most ordinary person you will probably ever know. If I were not
we wouldn’t be where we are to-day. Now that I have made such a mess
of things I can only see one way out of it, and I don’t feel a hero, I
assure you.”
“Have you thought of yourself at all during the last three days?”
“Of course I’ve thought of myself. What a question. And thinking of
myself meant thinking of you.”
“But you have thought more of Mary Gordon--I mean you have considered
her more.”
“Yes; I have.”
She got up and went over and sat down on the edge of the bluff. He
filled his pipe. She smiled as the smoke drifted to her. She thought
that she had never seen the creek look so beautiful. The stones under
the clear water shone like opaque jewels. Great bunches of feathery
maiden-hair clung to every boulder. The long delicate strands of the
ice-grass trailed far over the water. Tiny trees sprouted from rocks in
mid-stream, where moss had gathered. Red lilies and ferns grew close to
the brink. The ugly brown roots of a pine clung, squirming, down the
bluff.
On the mountain above the plateau a deer leaped once, crashing through
the brush, tossing his white horns in terror at sight of man. A
squirrel chattered high up in a redwood, where he was packing acorns
for the winter. A school of salmon swam serenely down the creek and
disappeared in the dark perspective.
Helena sat there for a half-hour. Then she went back to Clive, but did
not sit down. He rose also.
“I understand you a little better, I think,” she said. “You won’t
like what I am going to say, but I shall say it, anyhow. You have so
much good in you. I never thought I should love a good man, but I
believe that is really the reason I love you so much. The raw material
in me responds to the highly developed in you. You are capable of
so much that is way beyond me. I have fine impulses, but they are
shallow; lofty ideals, but in a little while they bore me. And you are
consistent. Even when you do what you know to be wrong, you never vary
in your ideals and faith. I am new and crude and heterogeneous. It is
the difference between the Old and the New.”
“You have the richest possibilities of any woman I have ever known----”
“Tell me something. Is it not because Mary Gordon is the more helpless
and appeals more to your chivalry?--although you love me more; although
I have more beauty and brains and passion, and could make you far
happier?”
“That is one reason.”
“Then will the manliest and best of men continue to be captured by the
best and simplest of women? It will produce a better race, I suppose.
If I had been your mother you would not be half what you are. It is
enough for the man to have the brain, I suppose. We are a forced growth
and abnormal--but what is to become of us?”
His reserve left him then and he caught her in his arms. She clung to
him desperately, and for a while forgot that the victory was still
to be won. Then she cried, and coaxed, and pleaded, and lavished
endearment, and was far more difficult for the man to combat than when
he had stood his ground with a brain alone.
“Come,” he said finally; “can’t you understand? You might help me a
little. Can’t you see that I want to let everything go and stay with
you? Don’t you think I know what I should find with you? You do know
that? Well, then, you should also know that I have made up my mind to
do the only decent thing a man could do.”
“Well, give me a month longer. Let me have that much, at least.”
“I shall go to-morrow. If I go now all these people will quickly forget
me, and regard what has passed between us as one of your flirtations.
But if I stayed on I should make you ridiculous, and perhaps compromise
you--you are so reckless. And for other reasons the sooner I get away
from here the better.”
“What are the other reasons?”
“We’ve discussed the subject enough. Come, let us go.”
“I never knew that a man could be so obstinate with a beautiful woman
he loved.”
“You have a woman’s general knowledge of men, but you know nothing of
any type you haven’t encountered. I believe you could make any man
love you; but certain men are greater cowards before certain inherited
principles than they are before the prospect of parting from the woman
they most love----”
“I said that you were the victim of traditions.”
“Perhaps I am, but I am also unable to eat raw fish or human flesh.
What are any of us but the logical results of traditions? Just look at
this fog. Let me put your shawl round you.”
Helena turned. A fine white mist was pouring out of the forest on the
other side of the creek. It had passed them, and was puffing slowly
onward. It lay softly on the creek, covering the bright water. It
swirled about the trees and moved lightly through the dark arbors
above. It fled up the mountain beyond, and the forest showed through
the silver veil like grey columns with capitals and bases of frozen
spray.
“Yes, we must go,” said Helena, “or we shall be lost.”