EMBERS.
ON the way across the Atlantic her painful thoughts faded; and,
after the mid-ocean period when the worlds on either side of those
infinite waters dwindle into unreality, she found her imagination
looking forward to her new world as a place where there would be a new
beginning in her work and in her love. At Cherbourg Marlowe came out
on the lighter. “How handsome he is,” she was saying to herself, as
she leaned against the rail, watching his eyes search for her. “And
how well he wears his clothes. His head is set upon his shoulders
just right--what a strong, graceful figure he has.” And she again
felt something resembling her initial interest and pride in him, her
mind once more, as at first, interpreting his character through his
appearance, instead of reading into his appearance the man as she knew
him.
When their eyes met she welcomed and returned the thought he sent her
in his look.
They were soon together, bubbling over with the joy of living like two
children let out into the sunshine to play after a long imprisonment
with lessons. They had a compartment to themselves down to Paris
and sat very near each to the other, with illustrated papers as the
excuse for prolonging the enormous pleasure of the physical sensation
of nearness. They repeated again and again the commonplaces which all
human beings use as public coaches to carry their inarticulate selves a
visiting each other.
She went to sleep for a few minutes, leaning against him; and a
breeze teased his nerves into an ecstasy of happiness with a stray of
her fine red-brown hair. “I’ve never been so happy,” she thought as
she awakened, “I could never be happier.” She did not move until it
became impossible for her to refrain from some outward expression of
her emotions. Then she only looked up at him. And his answer showed
that his mood was hers. As they sank back in the little victoria
outside the station, she gave a long look round the busy, fascinating
scene--strange, infectious of gaiety and good-humour. “Paris!” she
said, with a sigh of content in her dream realised.
“Paris--and Emily,” he replied.
They went to a small hotel in the Avenue Montaigne--“Modern enough,” he
said, “but very French and not yet discovered by foreigners.” At sunset
they drove to d’Armenonville to dine under the trees and to watch the
most interesting groups in the world--those groups of the civilised
through and through, in dress, in manners, in thought. After two days
he was called back to London. When he returned at the end of two weeks
she had transformed herself. A new gown, a new hat, a new way of
wearing her hair, an adaptation of her graces of form and manner to the
fashion of the moment, and she seemed a Parisienne.
“You _have_ had your eyes open,” he said, as he noted one detail after
another, finally reaching the face which bloomed so delicately beneath
the sweeping brim of her hat. “And what a gorgeous hat! And put on at
the miraculous angle--how few women know how to put on a hat.” Of his
many tricks in the art at which he excelled--the art of superficially
pleasing women--none was more effective than his intelligent
appreciation of their dress.
They staid at her pretty little apartment in a maison meublèe
in the Rue des Capucines; in a few days they went down into
Switzerland, and then, after a short pause at Paris, to Trouville.
In all they were together about a month, he neglecting his work in
spite of her remonstrances and her example. For she did her work
conscientiously--and she had never written so well. He tried to stay on
with her at Paris, but she insisted on his going.
“I believe you wish to be rid of me,” he said, irritation close beneath
the surface of his jesting manner.
“This morning’s is the third complaining cable you’ve had from the
office,” she answered.
He looked at her, suspecting an evasion, but he went back to London.
The unpleasant truth was that he had worn out his welcome. She had
never before been with him continuously for so much as a week. Now, in
the crowded and consecutive impressions of these thirty uninterrupted
days, all the qualities which repelled her stood out, stripped of the
shimmer and glamour of novelty. And as she was having more and more
difficulty in deceiving herself and in spreading out the decreasing
area of her liking for him over the increasing gap where her love for
him had been, he, in the ironical perversity of the law of contraries,
became more and more demonstrative and even importunate. Many times
in her effort to escape him and the now ever-impending danger of open
rupture, she was driven to devices which ought not to have deceived
him, perhaps did not really deceive him.
When he was gone she sat herself down to a “good cry”--an expression of
overwrought nerves rather than of grief.
But after a few weeks she began to be lonely. The men she met were
of two kinds--those she did not like, all of whom were willing to
be friends with her on her terms; those she did like more or less,
none of whom was willing to be with her on any but his own terms. And
so she found herself often spending the most attractive part of the
day--the evening--dismally shut up at home, alone or with some not very
interesting girl. She had never been so free, yet never had she felt so
bound. With joy all about her, with joy beckoning her from the crowded,
fascinating boulevards, she was a prisoner. She needed Marlowe, and she
sent for him.
She was puzzled by the change in him. She had only too good reason to
know that he loved her as insistently as ever, but there was a strain
in his manner and speech, as if he were concealing something from her.
She caught him looking at her in a peculiar way--as if he were angry
or resentful or possibly were suspecting her changed and changing
feelings toward him. And he had never been less interesting--she had
never before heard him talk stupidities and lifeless commonplaces or
break long silences with obvious attempts to rouse himself to “make
conversation.”
She was not sorry when he went--he stayed four days longer than he
had intended; but she was also glad to get a message from him ten
days later, announcing a week-end visit. The telegram reached her
at _dejeuner_ and afterward, in a better mood, she drove to the
Continental Hotel, where she sometimes heard news worth sending. She
sat at a long window in the empty drawing-rooms and watched a light and
lazy snow drift down.
As it slowly chilled her to a sense of loneliness, of disappointment
in the past, of dread of the future, she became conscious that a man
was pointedly studying her. She looked at him with the calm, close, yet
repelling, stare which experience gives a woman as a secure outlook
upon the world of strange men. This strange man was not ungracefully
sprawled in a deep chair, his top hat in a lap made by the loose
crossing of his extremely long and extremely strong legs. His feet
and hands were proportionate to his magnitude. His hands were white
and the fingers in some way suggested to her a public speaker. He had
big shoulders and a great deal of coat--a vast overcoat over a frock
coat, all made in the loosest English fashion. She had now reached his
head--a large head with an aggressive forehead and chin, the hair dark
brown, thin on top and at the temples, the skin pallid but healthy. His
eyes were bold and keen, and honest. He looked a tremendous man, and
when he rose and advanced toward her she wondered how such bulk could
be managed with so much grace. “An idealist,” she thought, “of the kind
that has the energy to be very useful or very dangerous.”
“You are alone, mademoiselle,” he said, in French that was fluent but
American, “and I am alone. Let us have an adventure.”
Emily’s glance started up his form with the proper expression of icy
oblivion. But by the time it reached the lofty place from which his
eyes were looking down at her it was hardly more than an expression
of bewilderment. To give him an icy stare would have seemed as futile
as for the valley to try to look scorn upon the peak. Before Emily
could drop her glance, she had seen in his eyes an irresistible
winning smile, as confiding as a boy’s, respectful, a little nervous,
delightfully human and friendly.
“I can see what you are,” he continued in French, “and it may be that
you see that I am not untrustworthy. I am lonely and shall be more so
if you fail me. It seemed to me that--pardon me, if I intrude--you
looked lonely also--and sad. Why should we be held from helping each
the other by a convention that sensible people laugh at even when they
must obey it?”
His voice pleaded his cause as words could not; and there was a
certain compulsion in it also. Emily felt that she wished to yield,
that it would be at once unkind and absurd not to yield, and that she
must yield. The impression of mastering strength was new and, to her
surprise, agreeable.
“Why not?” she said slowly in French, regarding him with unmistakable
straightforwardness and simplicity. “I am depressed. I am alone. I have
been looking inside too much. Let us see. What do you propose?”
“We might go to the Louvre. It is near, and perhaps we can think of
something while we are there.”
They walked to the Louvre, he talking appreciatively of France and the
French people. He showed that he thought her a Frenchwoman and she did
not undeceive him. She could not decide what his occupation was, but
felt that he must be successful, probably famous, in it. “He is not so
tall after all,” she said to herself, “not much above six feet. And he
must be about forty-five.”
As they went through the long rooms, she found that he knew the
paintings and statuary. “You paint?” she asked.
“No,” he replied with an impatient shrug. “I only talk--talk,
talk, talk, until I am sick of myself. Again, I am compelled to
listen--listen to the outpourings of vanity and self-excuse and
self-complacence until I loathe my kind. It seems to me that it is only
in France that one finds any great number of people with a true sense
of proportion.”
“But France is the oldest, you know. It inherited from Greece and Rome
when the rest of Europe was a wilderness.”
“And we inherited a little from France,” he said. “But, unfortunately,
more from England. I think the strongest desire I have is to see my
country shake off the English influence--the self-righteousness, the
snobbishness. In England if a man of brains compels recognition, they
hasten to give him a title. Their sense of consistency in snobbishness
must not be violated. They put snobbishness into their church service
and create a snob-god who calls some Englishmen to be lords, and others
to be servants.”
“But there is nothing like that in America?”
“Not officially, and perhaps not among the mass of the people. But in
New York, in one class with which my--my business compels me to have
much to do, the craze for imitating England is rampant. It is absurd,
how they try to erect snobbishness into a virtue.”
Emily shrugged her shoulders. “What does it matter?” she said. “Caste
is never made by the man who looks down, but always by the man who
looks up.”
“But it is evil. It is a sin against God. It----”
“I do not wish to dispute with you,” interrupted Emily. “But let us not
disturb God in his heaven. We are talking of earth.”
“You do not believe in God?” He looked at her in astonishment.
“Do you?”
“I--I think I do. I assume God. Without Him, life would be--monstrous.”
“Yet the most of the human race lives without Him. And of those who
profess to believe in Him, no two have the same idea of Him. Your God
is a democrat. The Englishman’s God is an autocrat and a snob.”
“And your God?”
Emily’s face grew sad. “Mine? The God that I see behind all the
mischance and stupidity and misery of this world--is--” She shook her
head. “I don’t know,” she ended vaguely.
“It seems strange that a woman so womanly--looking as you do, should
feel and talk thus.”
“My mode of life has made me see much, has compelled me to do my
own thinking. Besides, I am a child of this generation. We suspect
everything that has come down to us from the ignorant past. Even so
ardent a believer as you, when asked, ‘Do you believe?’ stammers, ‘I
_think_ I do.’”
“I am used to one-sided arguments,” said the stranger with a laugh.
“Usually, I lay down the law and others listen in silence.”
Emily looked at him curiously. Could he be a minister? No, it was
impossible. He was too masculine, too powerful.
“Oh, I was not arguing,” she answered lightly. “I was only trying to
suggest that you might be more charitable.”
“I confess,” he said, “that I am always talking to convince myself.
I do not know what is right or what is wrong, but I wish to know. I
doubt, but I wish to believe. I despair, but I wish to hope.”
She had no answer and they were silent for a few minutes. Then he began:
“I have an impulse to tell you what I would not tell my oldest and
dearest friend--perhaps because we are two utter strangers whose paths
have crossed in their wanderings through infinity and will never cross
again. Do you mind if I speak of myself?”
“No.” Emily intensely wished to hear. “But I warn you that our paths
_may_ cross again.”
“That does not matter. I am obeying an instinct. It is always well to
obey instincts. I think now that the instinct which made me speak to
you in the first place was this instinct to tell you. But it is not a
tragic story or even exciting. I am rather well known in the community
where I live. I am what we call in America a self-made man. I come
from the people--not from ignorance and crime and sensuality, but from
the real people--who think, who aspire, who advance, who work and
take pleasure and pride in their work, the people who have built our
republic which will perish if they decline.”
He hesitated, then went on with increasing energy: “I am a clergyman. I
went into the ministry because I ardently believed in it, saw in it an
opportunity to be a leader of men in the paths which I hoped it would
help me to follow. I have been a clergyman for twenty-five years. And
I have ceased to believe that which I teach. Louder than I can shout
to my congregation, louder than my conscience can shout to me, a voice
continually gives me the lie.” He threw out his arm with a gesture
that suggested a torrent flinging aside a dam. “I preach the goodness
of God, and I never make a tour among the poor of my parish that I do
not doubt it. I preach the immortality of the soul, and I never look
out upon a congregation and remember what an infinite multitude of
those same commonplace, imperfect types there have been, that I do not
think: ‘It is ridiculous to say that man, the weak, the insignificant,
the deformity, is an immortal being, each individual worth preserving
through eternity.’ I preach the conventional code of morals, and----”
“You ought not to tell me these things,” said Emily, as he paused. She
felt guilty because she was permitting him to think her a Frenchwoman,
when she was of his own country and city.
“Well--I have said enough. And how much good it has done me to confess!
You could not possibly have a baser opinion of me than I deserve.
Telling such things is nothing in comparison with living them. I have
lied and lied and lied so long that the joy of telling the truth
intoxicates me. I am like a man crawling up out of years in a slimy
dungeon to the light. Do you suppose it would disturb his enjoyment to
note that spectators were commenting upon his unlovely appearance?”
“After all, what you tell me is the commonplace of life. Who doesn’t
live lies, cheating himself and others?”
“But I do not wish the commonplace, the false, the vulgar. There
is something in me that calls for higher things. I demand a _good_
God. I demand an _immortal_ soul. I demand a _right_ that is clear
and absolute. And I long for real love--ennobling, inspiring. Why
have I all these instincts when I am compelled to live the petty,
swindling, cringing life of a brute dominated by the passion for
self-preservation?”
Emily thought a moment, then with a twinkle of mockery in her eyes, yet
with seriousness too, quoted: “Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it
shall be opened unto you.”
He smiled as the waters of his own fountain thus unexpectedly struck
him in the face. “But my legs are weary, and my knuckles sore,” he
replied. “Still--what is there to do but to persist? One must persist.”
“Work and hope,” said Emily, musingly. And she remembered Marlowe’s
“work and love”; love had gone, but hope--she felt a sudden fresh
upspringing of it in her heart.
When they set out from the hotel she had been in a reckless mood of
despondency. She had lost interest in her work, she had lost faith in
her future--was not the heart-interest the central interest of life,
and what had become of her heart-interest? This stranger to whose
power she had impulsively yielded in the first instance, had a magical
effect upon her. His pessimism was not disturbing, for beneath it lay
a tremendous belief in men and in destiny. It was his energy, his
outgiving of a compelling masculine force, that aroused her to courage
again. She looked at him gratefully and at once began to compare him
with Marlowe. “What a child this man makes him seem,” she thought.
“This is the sort of man who would inspire one. And what inspiration to
do or to be am I getting from my husband?”
“You are disgusted with me.” The stranger was studying her face.
“No--I was thinking of some one else,” she replied--“of my own
troubles.” And then she flushed guiltily, as if she had let him into
her confidence--“a traitor’s speech” she thought. Aloud she said: “I
must go. I thank you for the good you have done me. I can’t tell you
how or why, but--” She ended abruptly and presently added, “I mustn’t
say that I hope we shall meet again. You see, I have your awful secret.”
He laughed--there was boyishness in his laugh, but it was not
boisterous. “You terrify me,” he exclaimed. Then, reflectively, “I have
an instinct that we shall meet again.”
“Perhaps. Why not? It would be far stranger if we did not than if we
did?”
He went with her to a cab and, with polite consideration, left her
before she could give her address to the cabman. “I wish he had asked
to see me again,” she thought, looking after his tower-like figure as
he strode away. “But I suspect it was best not. There are some men
whom it is not wise to see too much of, when one is in a certain mood.
And I must do my duty.” She made a wry face--an exaggeration, but the
instinct to make it was genuine.