Jim and Marie Ducharme took the north road out of Diversity. There were
eyes that saw them and tongues that wagged when they were gone. Many
supper-tables were supplied with a topic of conversation that had been
barren without.
“Some day,” said Jim, “I’m going to have a farm, and raise red pigs and
black cows and white chickens.”
“Horrors!” exclaimed Marie; but there was just a note of playfulness in
her voice, the first Jim ever had heard there. “Some day I’m going to
have an apartment in a hotel, where there’s a Hungarian orchestra at
dinner, and servants to answer pushbuttons, and taxicabs in front that
take you to theaters. And I’m going to raise—well, not pigs and cows
and chickens.”
“I shall come in off my farm twice a year to eat with you while the
orchestra plays and the pushbuttons buzz and the taxicabs click off
exorbitant miles on their meters as we go to those theaters. Pigs and
cows and chickens wear, they’re durable company; the other thing is too
heady for me. Like champagne once in a while. But one prefers water as a
steady diet.”
“I’ve only read about champagne,” she said, the sullen mask dropping
across her face for an instant.
“I’m going to have my farm near the lake,” he said, “so I can lie with
my back against a tree and watch it. It is a hundred different lakes
every day, and I’d like to get acquainted with all of them.”
“And I’d like to be aboard the most palatial steamer that floats, and
ride past you, on my way to great cities.”
“I’d be happiest,” he said.
“I’d be—most excited,” she replied.
“The most pitifully bored faces in the world are to be seen in Broadway
cafes after midnight.”
“But don’t you like to be where things are flashing? Where life is
moving so fast you can hardly follow it? Doesn’t it spell happiness for
you to be where a new thrill is always at hand for the asking?”
“That sort of thing is bully for dessert, but I want it after a long,
satisfying meal of quiet contentment.”
“Such as you have in Diversity?”
“Such as can be had in Diversity,” he replied.
“What makes contentment? I should like to have it.”
“Contentment,” he said, slowly, selecting his words cautiously, “means
to me the quiet feeling of decency and satisfaction and restfulness that
comes to a man who is busy with a worth-while job. To have it fully
there must be a home, a real home with a wife in it, and lads, and a dog
and cat. All of them must be glad to see you come home at night, and
sorry to see you leave in the morning. To have it your wife must believe
in you more than you deserve, and you must trust her, and confide in
her, and advise with her on all your concerns, sure of her interest.
Yes, I think that is the indispensable element—marriage. The right sort
of marriage—the sort the majority of folks are blessed with.”
“It all sounds rather tame,” she said. “Marriage. Must I marry to be
contented?”
“To be so perfectly.”
She laughed shortly. “I shall depend on a steady routine of excitement
to make me forget I’m not contented,” she said. “Marriage!” She spoke
almost savagely. “Of course marriage is the solution of everything.
Women are taught to look forward to it from the cradle as—as their
means of support. We’re trained to please men; we’re dressed to attract
men; our whole lives are aimed at men. We catch one at twenty or at
twenty-five, and our career is over. We’ve succeeded in life. Then we
live on till sixty.”
“You’ve read only the introduction to the story,” he said, soberly. “The
book doesn’t begin to get interesting until you pass that.”
“Very well, then. I must marry to be contented. But whom? Diversity
isn’t swarming with husbands of any sort. Among the few available male
inhabitants, how many would you pick out as welcome husbands for a girl
with ambitions above turnips and the number of eggs a day? If you were a
girl, with reasonable intelligence, reasonable capabilities to
appreciate what we consider it cultured to appreciate, what man here
would you pick out from Diversity’s young men who wouldn’t be a constant
horror to you?”
“You’re not limited to Diversity.”
“But that is exactly what I am.”
There was no obvious answer to this, and Jim drove on in silence. He
sensed something of the girl’s position; appreciated, as he had not
before appreciated, the feeling almost of despair that came over her as
she looked into the future and found it gray, without gleaming lights or
frightening shadows. She was a bird imprisoned among frogs.
Presently they came to a little bridge over a stream which added its
little flow to the volume of the lake. It was one of those reed-bordered
streams which travel with a soothing lilt, winding along leisurely,
contentedly.
It was not such a boisterous stream as the speckled trout loves; it was
the sort where tiny turtles sun themselves on root or log, to slide off
with a startled splash as you approach. Cows would have loved to wade in
it of a hot day.
“Wouldn’t you rather be a stream like that,” Jim asked, “than to go
plunging and leaping and bruising yourself down the rocks of a
mountainside?”
She smiled, but did not answer. The picture had soothed her; it lay
gently on her spirit, softening her mood.
“There’s a cat-boat,” Jim exclaimed. “Wonder if we can’t borrow it.
It’ll be just a cat-boat to me, but you can turn it into your palatial
steamer, if you want to. Shall we try?”
“I’d love it,” she said. “I have never sailed.”
Never sailed! Yet she had spent her whole life in sight of Lake
Michigan.
“Then,” said Jim, “you’ll sail now if I have to turn pirate and steal us
a craft.”
But the transaction went smoothly. The little boat was rented, the horse
unharnessed and stabled; they embarked their provisions, and with a
brisk sailing breeze headed out for distant, invisible Wisconsin.
Jim handled sheet and tiller; Marie half reclined at his side. And
because she was happy, for the hour she seemed beautiful to him—she was
beautiful. Jim felt the force of her, not exerted in futile rebellion,
wasted, but to be reclaimed by a wise hand and directed to the great
work which falls to the lot of all good women. He saw her superior in
mind to the women he knew; quickened by ambition. He saw her as she
might be, indeed as she was at the moment. Her appeal was powerful. He
compared her with women he had known; she made them seem faded,
colorless. He glanced at her; his glance became a scrutiny of which she
was unconscious. She seemed very desirable to him. It came over him
suddenly that he must have her; that she was the necessary woman. It was
as if he had known it always.
It was Sudden Jim who spoke.
“Marie,” he said, and at the sound of his voice, the tremor in it, she
turned, startled. “Marie,” he repeated. No other word came for a moment,
but his face, his eyes, were eloquent. The color left her face, left her
lips first. “Marie, won’t you be a part of that contentment? Won’t you
help me to it—and let me help you to it? I want you. I—love you,
Marie. I want the right to love you always—and to take care of you and
make you happy. I want you to love me.”
She sat stiffly erect, unbelief in her eyes. Her hands gripped each
other in her lap. She was amazed; not frightened, but something akin to
it.
“I want you to let me try to make you smile, always, as you have smiled
once to-day. I want to make the world sing for you, so that you will
love the world, too. I want to take that look, that hunger look, out of
your eyes forever, and put something else in its place. I want every act
of mine, as long as I shall live, to add something to your happiness.
You! You! Just you!” He held the sheet and tiller with one hand,
stretched the other to touch her fingers gently.
“Marie, can’t you—won’t you—take me into your life? Will you marry
me—very soon?”
“Marry you!” she said, in a whisper.
She looked about her as if searching for a way of escape. Then she stood
up abruptly and ran forward to the very peak of the little craft, and
crouched there on her knees, her chin in her hands, her eyes closed, or
opening to peer off across the reaches of the lake. Jim could see her
shiver now and again as though a chill wind blew over her. She did not
speak.
After a time he called to her.
“Marie, I did not mean to frighten you. I—I was abrupt—”
“You did not frighten me,” she said.
He plucked up heart. “I can’t come to you,” he said, yearningly. “I
can’t talk to you so far away. Won’t you come back to me?”
She shook her head. “Not now,” she said. “I—Oh, let me think. Let me be
quiet.”
He was patient. That much wisdom was given him in this hour. It grew
dusk. Jim could only see the dark huddle of her body beyond the mast. It
stirred. She was at his side again.
“You don’t love me. You can’t love me. I am not lovable, I know.”
“Your word shall be my law—except for this one time. I do love you.”
“No! No! It is pity, sympathy, something. I told you once what love
would be if it came to me. It would be no gentle thing. It would make
you hate me. You do not want my love.”
“It is the one thing I want.”
“I mustn’t,” she whispered to herself. “I mustn’t.” Then to Jim: “I
don’t love you. You would repent it if you had made me love you. While I
was up there”—she pointed to the bow—“I thought of marrying you—to
escape from Diversity. Yes, I thought of that—without love. But it
would be no escape. You are tied to Diversity. It would be the same as
before. I hate Diversity. It smothers me. If I loved you I wouldn’t
marry you. Diversity would stand between us.”
Jim sat quietly. He had no hope on which to base expectation of any
other answer. How could she love him? He had not tried to win her love;
had pounced suddenly with talk of love.
“How could you love me?” he said, repeating his thought. “But won’t you
let me work for your love? I should try to earn it. If love came you
would forget that Diversity was hateful to you. It would be a garden to
you as it is to me—for my love had blossomed there.”
“No,” she said, sharply. “If I worshiped you, and you asked me to live
in that miserable town, with its miserable people, I should refuse. It
would torture me, but I could not live there.”
“Think,” he urged. “Take time to think. This has come to you
unexpectedly. Wait before you set your will against my love. Give me my
chance.”
“No. You must not speak of it again. I am only an incident in your life.
Set me aside. Forget this afternoon. You must forget it.”
“You won’t consider? You won’t wait for another day’s judgment?”
“No.”
Jim turned away his face, turned it away from her lest the embers of the
sunset should show how gray, how tired, how discouraged it was.
“I—I’m sorry,” she said, softly.
He turned and smiled. “I am glad,” he said. “Glad I love you, no matter
what comes between now and the end. I shall not worry you again with it,
but I want you to know, to be sure in your heart, day by day, every
hour, that I do love you and am longing for you. I have spoiled your
evening.”
“No,” she said. “It has been—sweet. So sweet!”
He was startled to see her burst into tears, and sob with great,
wrenching sobs that shook her small body.
Presently she became calm, dried her eyes, smiled, and her smile was the
ghost of a spirit of wistfulness.
“If only,” she said, tremulously, “I were like other girls. But I’m not.
I’m me. I’m selfish. I despise myself.”
“No, no,” he said; “don’t remember this with a thought of pain. And do
not withdraw from me altogether. Let us cancel to-night to start
to-morrow on a new basis—as friends. You are lonely; I am lonely. I’ll
not worry you with love. But I’ll try to be a dependable friend to you.
Can we do that?”
“It sounds impossible,” she said, “but we can try.”
Love finds encouragement in trifles. The weight of Jim’s heaviness
became less. He hoped. If Pandora had not loosed hope into the world the
lovers’ portion would be miserable indeed.
It was late when they reached the Widow Stickney’s, but she was waiting
for them in her parlor. Her old eyes with their years of seeing were not
to be deceived. She saw what she saw.
Marie went quickly to her room. They said good night at the foot of the
stairs. Jim extended his hand, held her little one in his grasp.
“Good night, friend,” he said, and smiled into her face.
She sat beside her window without undressing, motionless, even her eyes
seeming without motion. She was wrestling, even as Jacob had wrestled,
with an angel. But her angel had no divine touch of the finger to
conquer her as the patriarch had been conquered.
The angel met defeat.
Marie lay face downward on the bed, tearless, passing through the agony
she had brought on herself.
“I love him,” she whispered. “I love him. But I can’t. I can’t.”