TWO AND A TRIUMPH.
BUT Stilson’s image of her was no longer clear and fine; and in certain
lights, or, rather, shadows, it seemed to have a sinister unloveliness.
He assured himself that he felt toward her as before. But--he respected
her with a reservation; he loved her with a doubt; he believed in
her--did he believe in her at all? He was continually regilding his
idol, which persistently refused to retain the gilt.
After many days and many nights of storms he went to the Park one
morning, and for two hours,--or, until there was no chance of her
coming--he walked up and down near the Seventy-second street entrance.
He returned the second morning and the third. As he was pacing
mechanically, like a sentry, he saw her--her erect, graceful figure,
her red-brown hair that grew so beautifully about her brow and her
ears; then her face, small and delicate, the skin very smooth and
pale--circles under her violet eyes. At sight of him there came a
sudden gleam from those eyes, like, an electric spark, and then a look
of intense anxiety.
“You are ill?” she said, “Or there is some trouble?”
“I’ve been very restless of late--sleeping badly,” he replied,
evasively. “And you?”
They had turned into a side path to a bench where they would not be
disturbed. They looked each at the other, only to look away instantly.
“Oh, I’ve worked too hard and--I fancy I’ve been too much alone.” Emily
spoke carelessly, as of something in the past that no longer matters.
“Alone,” he repeated. “Alone.” When his eyes met hers, neither could
turn away. And on a sudden impulse he caught her in his arms. “My dear,
my dear love,” he exclaimed. And he held her close against him and
pressed her cheek against his.
“I thought you would never come,” she murmured. “How I have reproached
you!”
He only held her the closer for answer. And there was a long pause
before he said: “I can’t let you go. I can’t. Oh, Emily, my Emily--yes,
mine, mine--I’ve loved you so long--you know it, do you not? You’ve
been the light of the world to me--the first light I’ve seen since I
was old enough to know light from darkness. And when you go, the light
goes. And in the dark the doubts come.”
“Doubts?” she said, drawing away far enough to look at him. “But how
can you doubt? You must _know_.”
“And I _do_ know when I see you. But when I’m in the dark and breathing
the poison of my own mind--Forgive me. Don’t ask me to explain, but
forgive me. Even if I had the right to be here, the right to say what
I’ve been saying, still I’d be unfit. How you would condemn me, if you
knew.”
“I don’t wish to know, dear, if you’d rather not tell me,” she said
gently. “And you have a right to be here. And no matter what you have
been or are, I’d not condemn you.” Her voice sank very low. “I’d still
love you.”
“You’d have had to live my life to know what those last words mean to
me,” he said, “how happy they make me.”
“But I know better than you think,” she answered. “For my life has not
been sheltered, as are the lives of most women. It has had temptations
and defeats.”
He turned his eyes quickly away, but not so quickly that she failed
to catch the look of fear in them. “What are you thinking?” she asked
earnestly. “Dear, if there are doubts, may they not come again? I saw
in your eyes just then--what was it?”
“Do not ask me. I must fight that alone and conquer it.”
“No--you must tell me,” she said, resolutely. “I feel that I have a
right to know.”
“It was nothing--a lie that I heard. I’d not shame myself and insult
you by repeating it.”
He looked at her appealingly, saw that she was trembling. “You know
that I did not believe it?” he said, catching her hand. But she drew
away.
“Was it about me and--Marlowe?” she asked.
“But I knew that it was false,” he protested.
She looked at him unflinchingly. “It was true,” she said. “We
were--everything--each to the other.”
He sat in a stupor. At last he muttered: “Why didn’t you deceive me?
Doubt was better than--than this.”
“But why should I? I don’t regret what I did. It has helped to make me
what I am.”
“Don’t--don’t,” he implored. “I admit that that is true. But--you are
making me suffer--horribly. You forget that I love you.”
“Love!” There was a strange sparkle in her eyes and she raised her head
haughtily. “Is _that_ what you call _love_?” And she decided that she
would wait before telling him that she had been Marlowe’s wife.
“No,” he answered, “it is not what I call love. But it is a part of
love--the lesser part, no doubt, but still a part. I love you in all
the ways a man can love a woman. And I love you because you are a
complete woman, capable of inspiring love in every way in which a woman
appeals to a man. And it hurts me--this that you’ve told me.”
“But you, your life, what you’ve been through--I honour you for it,
love you the more for it. It has made me know how strong you are. I
love you best for the battles you’ve lost.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know that those who have lived and learned and
profited are higher and stronger than the innocent, the ignorant. But I
wish--” He hesitated, then went on doggedly, “I’d be lying to you if I
did not say that I wish I did not know this.”
“Then you’d rather I had deceived you--evaded or told a falsehood.”
“No,” he said with emphasis, and he looked at her steadily and proudly.
“I can’t imagine you telling me a falsehood or making any pretense
whatever. At least I can honestly say that after the first purely
physical impulse of anger, I didn’t for an instant suspect you of any
baseness. And whenever an ugly thought about you has shown itself in my
mind, it has been--choked to death before it had a chance to speak.”
“I know that,” she said, “I know it, dear.” And she put her hand on his.
“And--I wouldn’t have you different from what you are. You are a
certain kind of human being--_my_ kind--the kind I admire through and
through--yes, through and through. And--you are the only one of the
kind in all this world, so far as I have seen. I don’t care by what
processes you became what you are. You say you love me for the battles
I’ve lost. Honestly, would you like to hear, even like to have me tell
you, in detail, all that I’ve been through? Aren’t you better satisfied
just to know the results?”
“Yes,” she admitted, and she remembered how she had hated Marguerite
Feronia that day at the Astor House, how she never saw a lithograph of
her staring from a dead wall or a bill board or a shop window that she
did not have a pang.
“Then how can you blame me?” he urged.
“I--I guess--I don’t,” she said with a little smile.
“But I blame myself,” he went on. “I--yes, I, the immaculate, arraigned
you at the bar for trial and----”
“Found me guilty and recommended me to the mercy of the court?”
“No--not quite so bad as that,” he replied. “But don’t think I’m not
conscious of the colossal impudence of the performance--one human being
sitting in judgment on another!”
“It’s done every minute,” she said cheerfully. “And we make good judges
of each other. All we have to do is to look inside ourselves, and we
don’t need to listen to the evidence before saying ‘Guilty.’ But what
was the verdict at my trial?”
“It hadn’t gone very far before we changed places--you became the
accuser and I went into the prisoner’s pen. And I could only plead
guilty to the basest form of that base passion, jealousy. I couldn’t
deny that you were noble and good, that it was unthinkable that you
could be guilty of anything low. I was compelled to admit that if you
had been--married--”
“Was any evidence admitted on that point?” she asked with a sly smile
at the corners of her mouth.
“No,” he said, then gave her a quick, eager glance. At sight of the
quizzical expression in her eyes, he blushed furiously but did not
look away.
“You know,” he said, and he put his arm about her shoulders, “that I
love you in the way you wish to be loved. I don’t deny that I’m not
very consistent. My theory is sound, but--I’m only a human man, and I’d
rather my theory were not put to the test in your case.”
“But it has been put to the test,” she replied, “and it has stood the
test.” And then she told him the whole story.
He called her brave. “No one but you, only you, would have had the
courage to end it when you did--away off there, alone.”
“I thought it was brave myself at the time,” she said. “Then afterwards
I noticed that it would have taken more courage to keep on. Any woman
would have freed herself if she had been independent as I was, and with
no conventionalities to violate.”
Stilson said thoughtfully after a pause: “It did not enter my head that
you had been married. And even now, the fact only makes the whole thing
more vague and unreal.”
“It took two minutes to be married,” replied Emily, “and less to be
divorced--my lawyer wrote proudly that it was a record-breaking case
for that court, though I believe they’ve done better elsewhere in
Dakota.”
“What a mockery!”
“Oh, I don’t think so. The marriage isn’t made by the contract and the
divorce isn’t made by the court. The mere formalities that recognise
the facts may be necessary, but they can’t be too brief.”
“But it sets a bad example, encourages people to take flippant views of
serious matters.”
“I wonder,” said Emily doubtingly, “do the divorced people set so bad
an example as those who live together hating each the other, degrading
themselves, and teaching their children to quarrel. And haven’t
flippant people always been flippant, and won’t they always continue to
be?”
“It may be so, but men and women ought to know what they are about
before they--” Stilson paused and suddenly remembered. “I shan’t finish
that sentence,” he said, with a short laugh. “I don’t know what you
know about me, and I don’t want to. I can’t talk of my affairs where
they concern other people. But I feel that I must----”
“You need not, dear,” said Emily. “I think I understand how you are
situated. And--I--I--Well, if the time ever comes when things are
different, then--” She dropped her serious tone--“Meanwhile, I’m ‘by
the grace of God, free and independent’ and----”
“I love you,” he said, the hot tears standing in his eyes as he kissed
her hand. “Ever since the day you came back from the mines, I’ve known
that I loved you. And ever since then, it’s been you, always you. The
first thought in the morning, the last thought at night, and all day
long whenever I looked up--you, shining up there where I never hope to
reach you. Not shining _for_ me, but, thank God, shining _on_ me, my
Emily.”
“And now--I’ve come down.” She was laughing at him in a loving way.
“I’m no longer your star but--only a woman.”
“_Only_ a woman!” He drew a long breath and his look made her blood
leap and filled her with a sudden longing both to laugh and to cry.