A PRECIPICE.
A WEEK after Evelyn’s call, the hall boy brought Edgar Wayland’s card
to Emily. She was alone in the apartment, Joan having gone to the
theatre with “her professor.” She hesitated, looked an apology to her
writing spread upon the table, then told the boy to show him up. He
was dressed with unusual care even for him, and his face expressed the
intensity of tragic determination of which the human countenance is
capable only at or before twenty-eight.
“I’ve never seen your apartment.” His glance was inspecting the room
and the partly visible two rooms opening out of it. “It is so like you.
How few people have any taste in getting together furniture and--and
stuff.”
“When one has little to spend, one is more careful and thoughtful
perhaps.”
“That’s the reason tenement flats are so tasteful.” Edgar’s face
relaxed at his own humour, then with a self-rebuking frown resumed its
former mournful inflexibility. “But I did not come here to talk about
furniture. I came to talk about you and me. Emmy, was it final? Are you
sure you won’t--won’t have me?”
Emily looked at him with indignant contempt, forgetting that Theresa
had not said he was actually engaged to Evelyn. “I had begun to think
you incapable of such--such baseness--now.”
“Baseness? Don’t, please. It isn’t as bad as all that--only
persistence. I simply can’t give you up, it seems to me. And--I had to
try one last time--because--the fact is, I’m about to ask another girl
to marry me.”
Emily showed her surprise, then remembered and looked relieved. “Why--I
thought you had asked her. I must warn you that I know her, and far too
good she is for you.”
“You know her?”
“Yes--so let’s talk no more about it. I’ll forget what you said.”
“Well, what of it?” Edgar rose and faced her. “You are thinking it
dishonourable of me to come to you this way. But you wrong me. If she
never saw me again, she’d forget me in a year--or less. So I tell
you straight out that I’m marrying her because I can’t get you. I’m
desperate and lonesome and I want to have a home to go to.”
“You couldn’t possibly do better than marry Evelyn. I know her, Edgar.
And I know, as only a woman can know another woman, how genuine she is.”
“But”--Edgar’s eyes had a look of pain that touched her. “I want you,
Emmy. I always shall. A man wants the best. And you’re the best--in
looks, in brains, in every way. You’d have everything and I’d never
bother you. And you can stop this grind and be like other women--that
is--I mean--you know--I don’t mean anything against your work--only it
is unnatural for a woman like you to have to work for a living.”
Emily felt that she need not and must not take him seriously. She
laughed at his embarrassment.
“You don’t understand--and I can’t make you understand. It isn’t that I
love work. I like to sit in the sunshine and be waited upon as well as
any one. But----”
“And you _could_ sit in the sunshine--or in the shade, Emmy.”
“But--let me finish please. Whatever one gets that’s worth while in
this life one has to pay for. The price of freedom--to a woman just
the same as a man--is work, hard work. And if it’s natural for a woman
to be a helpless for-sale, then it’s the naturalness of so much else
that’s nature. And what are we here for except to improve upon nature?”
“Well, I don’t know much about these theories. I hate them--they stand
between you and me. And I want you so, Emmy! You’ll be free. You know
father and I both will do everything--anything for you and----”
Emily’s cheeks flushed and there was impatience and scorn in her eyes
and in the curve of her lips.
“You mean well, Edgar, but you must not talk to me in that way. It
makes me feel as if you thought I could be bought--as if you were
bidding for me.”
“I don’t care what you call it,” he said sullenly. “I’d rather have you
as just a friend, but always near me than--there isn’t any comparison.”
“And I shall always be your friend, Edgar. You will get over this.
Honestly now, isn’t it more than half, nearly all, your hatred of being
baffled? If I were throwing myself at you, as I once was, you’d fly
from me. Six months after you’ve married Evelyn, you’ll be thankful you
did it. You’d not like a woman so full of caprices and surprises as I
am. But I will not argue it.”
“I wonder if you’ll ever fall in love?” he said wistfully.
“I don’t know, I’m sure. Probably I expect too much in a man. Again, I
might care only for a man who was out of reach.”
“You’re too romantic, Emily, for this life. You forget that you’re more
or less human after all, and have to deal with human beings.”
“I wish I could forget that I’m human.” Emily sighed. Edgar looked at
her suspiciously. “No,” she went on. “I’m not happy either, Edgar. Oh,
it takes so much courage to stand up for one’s principles, one’s ideas.”
“But why do it? Why not accept what everybody says is so, and go along
comfortably?”
“Why not? I often ask myself. But--well, I can’t.”
“Emmy, do you think it’s right for me to marry Evelyn, feeling as I do?”
“Do _you_?” She answered this difficult question in morals by turning
it on him, because she wished to escape the dilemma. How could she
decide for another? Why should she judge what was right for Edgar, what
best for Evelyn?
“Well--not unless I told her. Not too much, you know. But enough to----”
“You mustn’t talk to me about Evelyn,” Emily interrupted. “It’s not
fair to her. You compel me to seem to play the traitor to her. I must
not know anything about your and her affairs.”
There was a moment’s silence, then she went on: “She is my friend,
and, I hope, always shall be. It would pain me terribly if she should
suspect; and it would be an unnecessary pain to her. A man ought never
to tell a woman, or a woman a man, anything, no matter how true it is,
if it’s going to rankle on and on, long after it’s ceased to be true.
And your feeling for me isn’t important even now. If you marry her,
resolve to make her happy. And if you never create any clouds, there’ll
never be any for her--and soon won’t be any for you.”
He left her after a few minutes, and his last look--all around the
room, then at her--was so genuinely unhappy that it saddened her
for the evening. “Fate is preparing a revenge upon me,” she thought
dejectedly. “I can feel it coming. Why can’t I, why won’t I, put Arthur
out of my mind?” And then she scoffed at herself unconvincingly for
calling Stanhope, Arthur, for permitting herself to be swept off her
feet by the middle-aged husband of a middle-aged wife, the father of
grown children. “How Evelyn would shrink from me if she knew--and
yet----”
What kind of honour, justice, is it, she thought, that binds him
to his wife, that holds us apart? With one brief life--with only a
little part of that for intense enjoyment--and to sacrifice happiness,
heaven, for a mere notion. “What does God care about us wretched little
worms?” she said to herself. “Everywhere the law of the survival of the
fittest--the best law after all, in spite of its cruelty. And _I_ am
the fittest for him. He belongs to me. He is mine. Why not?--Why can’t
I convince myself?”
* * * * *
Evelyn asked Emily to go with her to the opera the following Saturday
afternoon. They met in the Broadway lobby of the Metropolitan, and
Emily at once saw that Evelyn was “engaged.” She was radiant with
triumph and modest importance. “You’re the first one I’ve told outside
the family. I haven’t even written to Catherine Folsom--she’s to be my
maid of honour, you know. We promised each other at school.”
“He will make you happy, I’m sure.” Emily was amused at Evelyn’s
child-like excitement, yet there were tears near her eyes too. “What an
infant she is,” she was thinking, “and how unjust it is, how dangerous
that she should have to get her experience of man after she has
pledged herself not to profit by it.”
“Oh, I’m sure I shall be,” said Evelyn. “We’ll have everything to make
us happy. And I shall be free. I do _hate_ being watched all the time
and having to do just what mamma says.”
“Yes, you will be very free,” agreed Emily, commenting to herself:
“What do these birds bred in captivity ever know about freedom? She has
no idea that she’s only being transferred to a larger cage where she’ll
find a companion whom she may or may not like. But--they’re often
happy, these caged birds. And I wonder if we wild birds ever are?”
Evelyn was prattling on. “He asked me in such a nice way and didn’t
frighten me. I’d been afraid he’d seize me--or--or something, when the
time came. And he had such a sad, solemn look. He’s so experienced! He
hinted something about the past, but I hurried him away from that. Sam
says men all have knowledge of the world, if they’re any good. But I’m
sure Edgar has always been a nice man.”
“Don’t bother about the past,” said Emily. “The future will be quite
enough to occupy you if you look after it properly.”
The opera was La Bohème and Evelyn, busy with her great event, gave
that lady and her sorrows little attention. “It’s dreadfully unreal,
isn’t it?” she chattered. “Of course a man never could really care for
a woman who had so little self-respect as that, could he? I’m sure
a real man, like Edgar, would never act in that way with a woman who
wasn’t married to him, could he?”
“I’m sure he’d despise all such women from the bottom of his heart,”
said Emily, looking amusedly at the “canary, discoursing from its
cage-world of the great world outside which it probably will never see.”
“I’ve had a lot of experience with that side of life,” continued the
“canary.”
“Goodness gracious!” exclaimed Emily in mock horror. “Do they lead
double lives in the nursery nowadays?”
“Mamma kept us close, you know. We live in such a dreadful
neighbourhood--down in Grand Street. I was usually at grandfather’s up
at Tarrytown when I wasn’t in school. But I had to come home sometimes.
And I used to peep into the streets from the windows, and then I’d see
the most _awful_ women going by. It made me really sick. It must be
dreadful for a woman ever to forget herself.”
“Dreadful,” assented Emily, resisting with no difficulty the feeble
temptation to try to broaden this narrow young mind. “It would take
years,” she thought, “to educate her. And then she probably wouldn’t
really understand, would only be tempted to lower herself.”
The distinction between license and broad-mindedness was abysmal, Emily
felt; but she also admitted--with reluctance--that the abyss was so
narrow that one might inadvertently step across it, if she were not an
Emily Bromfield, and, even then, very, very watchful.
She was turning into the Park at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth
Street a few evenings later, on her way home from the office, when
Stanhope, driving rapidly downtown, saw her, stopped his cab, got
out and dismissed it. She had been revolving a plan for resuming her
self-respect and her peace of mind, how she would talk with him when
she saw him, would compel him to aid her in--then she saw him coming;
and her face, coloured high by the sharp wind, flushed a hotter
crimson; and her resolve fled.
“May I walk through the Park with you?” he said abruptly; and without
waiting for her to assent, he set out with her in the direction in
which she had been going. In a huge, dark overcoat, that came to within
a few inches of the ground, he looked more tremendous than ever. And
as Emily walked beside him, the blood surged deliriously through her
veins. “This is the man of all men,” she thought. “And he loves me,
loves _me_. And I was thinking that I must give him up. As if I could
or would!”
“A man might have all the wealth in the world, and all the power, and
all the adulation,” his voice acted upon her nerves like the low notes
of a violin, “and if he were a man--if he were a real human being--and
did not have love----” He paused and looked at her. “Without it life is
lonelier than the grave.”
Emily was silent. She could see the grave, could hear the earth
rattling down upon the coffin. Was he not stating the truth--a truth to
shrink from?
He said: “I was born on a farm out West--the son of a man who was
ruined in the East and went West to hide himself and to fancy he was
trying to rebuild. He was sad and silent. And in that sad silence I
grew up with books and nature for my companions. I longed to be a
leader of men. I admired the great moral teachers of the past. I _felt_
rather than understood religion--God, a world of woe, man working
for his salvation through helping others to work out theirs. I cared
nothing for theology--only for religion. I could feel--I never could
reason; I cannot learn to reason. It isn’t important how I worked my
way upward. It isn’t important how long the way or how painful. I went
straight on, caring for nothing except the widest chances to help the
march upward. You know what the parish downtown is--what the work is,
how it has been built. But----” He paused, and when he spoke it was
with an effort. “One by one I have lost my inspirations. And when I saw
you there in Paris I saw as in a flash--it was like a miracle--what was
the cause, why I was beaten in the very hour of victory.”
Emily had ceased to fight against the emotions which surged higher and
higher under the invocation of his presence and his voice.
“A man of my temperament may not work alone,” he went on. “He must
have some one--a woman--beside him. And they together must keep the
faith--the faith in the here and the now, the faith in mankind and in
the journey upward through the darkness, the fog, the cold, up the
precipices, with many a fall and many a fright, but always upward and
onward.”
He drew a long breath, and, looking down at her, saw her looking up at
him, her eyes reflecting the glow of his enthusiasm.
“Yes,” she said, “by myself I am nothing. But with another I could do
much, for I, too, love the journey upward.”
He stopped and caught both her hands in his. “I need you--need you,” he
said. They were standing at the turn of the path near the Mall, facing
the broad, snow-draped lawns. “And I feel that you need me. I am no
longer alone. Life has a meaning, a purpose.”
“A purpose?” She drew her hands away and suddenly felt the cold and the
sharp wind, and saw the tangled lines of the bare boughs, black and
forbidding against the sunset sky. “What purpose? You forget.”
“No, I remember!” He spoke defiantly. “I have been permitting that
which is dead to cling to me and shut out sunlight and air and growth.
But I shall permit it no longer. I _dare_ not.”
“No, _we_ dare not,” she said, dreamily. “You are right. The ghosts
that wave us back are waving us not from, but to destruction. But--even
if it were not so, I’m afraid I’d say, ‘Evil, be thou my good’.”
“It is true--true of me also.”
At the entrance to her house they parted, their eyes bright with
visions of the future. As she went up in the elevator, her head began
to ache as if she were coming from the delirium of an opium dream.