Sophy told Miss Pickett all about Amaldi. Sometimes she would read her
extracts from his letters when they were unusually delightful.
One day, towards spring, when Sophy had been thus reading to her, she
said thoughtfully:
"Sophy, child--you aren't afraid of preparing a new unhappiness for
yourself?"
Sophy laughed out.
"Oh, Sue," she cried, "that's the first old-maidish thing I ever heard
you say!"
"Old maids are very wise sometimes," returned Miss Pickett calmly. "The
Delphian Oracle was an old maid as far as I can make out."
Sophy said in a disappointed voice:
"Sue ... don't you believe in friendship between men and women?"
"I certainly do. No one has stauncher men friends than I have."
"Then why on earth don't you think I can have them?"
Miss Pickett twinkled.
"'Twasn't a question of _them_," she said demurely. "There's safety in
numbers. I was referring to this particular one."
Sophy said reproachfully:
"Sue ... do you really think I'm the sort of woman to flirt with a man
on paper, while I'm getting a divorce?"
Miss Pickett, still quite calm, replied:
"No, honey, you know I don't think so."
"Then what _do_ you think?" demanded Sophy, beginning to bristle a
little.
"I think," said her cousin, putting down her embroidery on her lap for a
moment, and looking quizzical but profound, "that _sometimes_
congeniality is more dangerous than passion."
Sophy returned her look a little loftily.
"Dear Sue," said she, "haven't you really taken in that all that side of
me is dead ... quite dead?"
"No ... 'playing 'possum,'" flashed Miss Pickett.
"Oh, have your little joke by all means," said Sophy, smiling. "But
after all it's '_my_ funeral' as they say out here.... I suppose the
corpse knows better than any one else whether it's dead or not."
"On the contrary--the corpse doesn't know anything whatever about it,"
said her cousin. "If you were really a corpse, my lamb, you wouldn't
know it."
Sophy looked almost hurt.
"Won't you allow me to know about my own nature, Sue?" she asked.
Now Miss Pickett smiled.
"Nature," said she, "is as fond of revivals as a nigger."
On a hot, gusty, dusty day in summer, having returned to Ontowega, they
set forth with the lawyer to go before the Judge who was to give Sophy a
decree of divorce. The little town looked more hideous than ever in the
glare of summer. Such trees as grew along the board sidewalks were grey
with dust. The pettish wind flung handfuls of grit into their eyes and
nostrils. Sophy followed Mr. Dainton's tall, scraggy figure like a
hypnotised "subject." She had but to follow that round-shouldered,
obstinate looking back into the yellow-brick square of the "Town Hall"
that loomed just ahead, and she would be free. That lank, black figure
with its ravel of grey locks escaping from under a black "wide-awake"
was the Nike that led on to Freedom.
Emerald Dainton, the lawyer's little nine-year-old daughter, skipped at
Sophy's side, clinging tightly to her cold, gloveless hand--for Sophy's
hands were very cold though the thermometer stood at 85 degrees. Emerald
had a "mash" on "pa's last divorce lady." That is what Emerald called
Sophy in her thought. She was a shrewdly intelligent child, not
unattractive, with the most penetrating green-hazel eyes that Sophy had
ever seen. She shrank from these eyes, when they fixed consideringly on
her face. She could feel Emerald wondering how and why she had come to
Ontowega as "pa's" client. She had an insane impulse every now and then
to ask the child her views on divorce. She was sure that she held views
on the subject and that they would be crisp and to the point.
They entered the Court House, and Mr. Dainton showed the ladies into a
dingy room on the left. Emerald skipped in also as a matter of course.
There were some plain wooden chairs, a table, a stove, and in one corner
behind the stove a horsehair sofa.
From one of the wooden chairs rose a mealy tinted but clever looking man
of about forty. Mr. Dainton "presented" him as Mr. Wogram. He was
Loring's representative. Mr. Dainton then excused himself for a moment.
He returned shortly to say that Judge Boiler was just about to dismiss a
case in the Court Room, and would be with them in a few moments.
A desultory conversation on politics then began between Mr. Wogram and
Mr. Dainton. Sue and Sophy sat silently side by side on two of the
wooden chairs. Sue had put one of her hands on Sophy's and was gripping
it tighter than she knew. Emerald had retired to the horsehair sofa
behind the stove.
There was a maple tree just outside of the window. An opening in its
twigs and leaves made a ridiculous profile against the white-blue
dazzling sky. Sophy gazed at this profile, until when she looked away
she saw it swimming in green and red on the whitewashed walls. She
thought in odds and ends. Then Judge Boiler entered and was introduced.
He sat down finally before the bare table and assumed his air of office.
He was a heavy, impassive looking man of fifty with a pale, dyspeptic
skin, pale blue eyes and thick whitey-brown hair going grey.
Just as proceedings were about to open, Sophy noticed Emerald's little
many-buttoned boots and red stockings protruding from behind the stove.
She looked at Dainton and the blood swept over her face.
"Excuse me for interrupting ... but your little girl is still in the
room, Mr. Dainton," she said.
The lawyer jumped up and drew a protesting Emerald from her horsehair
coign of vantage.
"Please, pa ... _lemme_ stay!" she whined. "_I_ might have to get
divorced some time. I want to see how you fix it up. _Please_, pa!"
Mr. Dainton whispered fiercely that he'd "smack her if she didn't shut
up that minute." Father and daughter disappeared into another room. Then
the father reappeared alone, and the case of Loring v. Loring
proceeded....
When it was all over and Mr. Wogram had taken his leave with jerky bows
to friend and foe alike, Mr. Dainton turned to Sophy, with a curious
reminiscence of the facetious manner in which one addresses brides, and
said:
"Allow me to congratulate you ... Mrs. _Chesney_!"
Judge Boiler did likewise.
Sophy had one dreadful moment of fear, regret, grief, distaste--the
awful vertigo of the irrevocable. She tried to smile conventionally. Sue
slipped an arm through hers, held her close without seeming to do so,
and talked for her--nice, easy, well-sounding commonplaces. While she
was thus talking, Mr. Dainton stalked to the inner door and, flinging it
open, called jocosely:
"Come along in, Maldy. The knot's untied...."
Emerald sidled in, looking sulky but curious. She eyed Sophy a moment,
then said in a loud whisper:
"Is she really divorced?"
"Sure thing," replied her parent
"You did it quick as that, pa? Truly?"
"Truly," said he.
"My!" exclaimed Emerald, overcome with admiration. "I guess it takes
longer to hitch 'em up than to unhitch 'em, when _you_ do the
unhitching, pa!"
Then she skipped over to Sophy, and clung to her hand again. Her
green-hazel eyes devoured the tall, pale lady's face. She was fairly
a-quiver to participate in the emotions of the divorced heroine.
"Well...." she said. "Now you're _un_-married. Are you happy?"
Sue looked like a hawk about to pounce, but Sophy answered quietly:
"I really don't know, Emerald," she said.
"But you ain't _sorry_ you did it, are you?" persisted the child.
This was too much for the patience of a childless woman. Miss Pickett
took Miss Dainton by the hand and led her firmly to her father.
"Please explain to your little girl,", said she, "that there are some
occasions where children should not be seen, much less heard."
Mr. Dainton admitted ruddily that "he guessed that was so." But he would
have liked to shake the woman who had snubbed his Emerald.
The child pouted a while, then sidled up to Sophy again as they walked
through the hot, gusty streets towards the hotel. It seemed impossible
for her to resist the double fascination that Sophy exercised over her,
as woman and as _divorcee_. Sophy let the child take her passive hand.
She was hardly conscious of it, so far was she in a world of alien
thought.
Father and daughter escorted them to the Palace Hotel, where they said
final good-bys. The two women went upstairs in silence. Without taking
off her hat Sophy sat down, still in that brown study. Her eyes were
fixed vaguely on the white satin "Regulations" over the door. Miss
Pickett moved about, putting articles into her open trunk. They were to
leave for Virginia on the midnight train. Every now and then she would
glance at Sophy, but she said nothing.
Presently Sophy spoke to her.
"It's very painful ... being born, Sue."
"'Being born'?" said Miss Pickett, stopping on her way to the trunk with
an odd shoe in her hand.
"Yes, Sue.... It's hard. It hurts.... Drawing in the first breaths
hurts.... When I've breathed really deep, it will be different...."
"Yes-- I understand, lamb," said Sue softly.
Sophy went on, her eyes still fixed on the white satin scroll.
"You know, Sue ... it's said that when one dies and wakes up in quite
another state, one doesn't realise that one has died just at first. Well
... I feel something like that. I've come into a queer, new state of
being. I can't seem to realise myself or anything just yet."
"Yes, dear," said her cousin, fitting the shoe into a corner of the
trunk, and coming back to sit down near her. Sophy reached out one hand
mechanically, and Sue took it in both her own, with quiet,
matter-of-fact affection. Sophy still gazed before her, seeing nothing.
"It's a queer thing to say, Sue," she continued after a moment, "but I
don't think I've lived at all yet ... not really."
This _did_ seem odd to Miss Pickett, but she thought it due to a certain
inevitable old-maidishness on her part, and gave no sign.
"I'll try to explain what I mean," said Sophy. "I've loved love all my
life. But love isn't given us just to love ... the love between two
people--a man and a woman ... is only one tiny part of love. Yes...."
She knitted her straight brows trying to bring her thought to clearness
for the other. "That kind of love--if it tries to be an end in itself
_has_ to die ... to wither away. Or, if it does last, then the soul
withers."
She smiled suddenly, turning her eyes on her cousin.
"I think the Serpent was really kinder to Adam and Eve, when he got them
turned out of Eden, than Jehovah was when he shut them up in it," she
said.
"How's that?" asked Miss Pickett, startled, for she was rather orthodox
in her views on religious form, though her big heart made her more
unconventional in practise.
"Why, just think of it for a moment," Sophy answered. "If the Serpent
hadn't interrupted their _tete-a-tete_--there they would be to this
day--wandering love-sick among fadeless flowers, with nothing, nothing,
nothing before them but an eternity of love-making!" Her pale face
alight with mingled whimsicality and sadness, she added, leaning closer:
"Sue ... I'll whisper you something.... _The Serpent was Jehovah in
disguise, Sue!_"
A second later she said:
"Don't be vexed, dear, will you?... It's such a comfort thinking aloud
to you like this...."
"No, indeed. Go on. I won't be vexed," Miss Pickett assured her warmly.
"You always were an irreverent monkey--but then the Lord made monkeys.
He knows how to allow for their antics."
But Sophy was intent upon her own train of thought again and only smiled
absently at this indirect reproof.
"Two lessons...." she then said slowly. "It took two bitter lessons to
teach me the truth about love--the sort of love that I always dreamed of
as supreme--the love that is 'like an Archangel beating his iridescent
wings in the void'...."
Miss Pickett could not follow the subtleties of Sophy's musing, she
could only feel the pain that underlay it. She said gently:
"You mustn't deny love, honey, just because it's failed you. I don't
ever want to see my child grow bitter."
"It's only one kind of love that I'm denying, Sue--not Eros, but Anteros
... the false god.... He comes in a lovely glamour. He's the rainbow on
the foam of breaking waves. When the sea is still he vanishes. My
bitterness is only against myself--for having worshipped a false god."
"Well, child--maybe you have. But thank the Lord! no mistake is final at
your age...."
"My mistakes have been very final for me, Sue. I've laid all my
frankincense and myrrh on the altar of Anteros, I've nothing to offer
the true god. But there's my son ... my defeat shall make his victory.
There shall be one man in the world who knows the true god from the
false. Some woman shall be glad through my pain. Some day, when a woman
loves my Bobby, she shall be able to say: 'This is my beloved and this
is my _friend_!'"
Sue glanced quickly at her, but her expression was wholly unconscious.
She was not thinking of Amaldi in that moment. She was only thinking
that love to be real, to be perfect, to be lasting must include
friendship, comradeship, understanding, mutual endeavour. That to retain
its fulness it must give out to others besides the one, give
incessantly, untiringly, without stint, without grudging. That instead
of raising magic walls of enclosure, it should level all barriers.
She took another tone suddenly.
Colour came into her face. She looked with darkened eyes at her cousin.
"Sue...." she said. "The fact is that all these years I've been nothing
but a miserable happiness-hunter!"
"Nonsense!" said Miss Pickett.
"Just that ... a happiness-hunter," repeated Sophy.
"Well ... and what is everybody else doing but hunting happiness, I'd
like to know?" retorted her cousin. "Even the martyrs were after it! If
they hadn't found happiness in martyrdom they wouldn't have sought it,
you may be sure. Don't be morbid, child, for goodness' sake!"
"I'm not morbid. And what you say is true in a way. But there is selfish
happiness and unselfish happiness, and what I've wanted was the selfish
kind. I wanted love _all to myself_. What do I know of life really?...
What do I know of what's going on in the real world?... Oh, 'it is good
for me that I have been afflicted!' It is something, at least, that I
can say that from my soul--with all my might. It is good ... it is
_good_ for me.... I'm glad the Serpent has come into Eden.... I'm glad
that I've eaten of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil!... Now
I'm going out into the wilderness of life, and I'm going to learn how to
live. I'm just born, but I'm going to 'put aside childish things' ...
that toy called happiness, with all the rest!"
Miss Pickett gazed at the ardent face, with affection. Then she smiled
wisely.
"Perhaps, honey," she said, "you'll find happiness in doing without it.
At any rate--you seem right happy at the prospect of not being happy."
Sophy rose and, kneeling down beside her, leaned her head on that kind
breast.
"Do you know, Sue," she said dreamily, "after all, it's rather wonderful
to feel that one has done with love, and yet finds life worth while."
"Is it, dear?" said Sue.
"Yes, it is. You know Socrates was glad when he had passed the age of
love. Now I understand why that was. I never did before."
Sue Pickett said nothing, only stroked the dark head upon her breast.
But a rather cryptic smile stirred her lips. She was thinking that from
all she had read and heard, two beings could hardly differ more
essentially than Sophy and the Sage of Athens.