RIVALS
“I didn’t presume to suppose that you could care for me yet,” said Rollinson, humbly.
“I am not at all sure that I cannot,” said the girl, meditatively, “but, then, neither am I at all sure that I can.” She looked at him with clear, untroubled eyes as she spoke, eyes in which he read her interest, her detachment, and her exquisite sincerity. She had not grown fluttered or self-conscious over his avowal. She was a modern woman, and she was young. Nothing had yet happened in her life to disturb her conviction that this was a subject upon which one could reason as upon other subjects. She was not emotional, and she suspected that the poets were not unerring guides in matters of the heart. She liked Rollinson very much, and she was willing to listen to his arguments.
It seemed to her a little strange that he did not proceed with those arguments atonce, when suddenly she perceived that the adoration in his eyes was intended as the chief of them, and this discovery was so disconcerting that she blushed.
“I am twenty years older than you,” murmured Rollinson. As this was the fact he most wished to forget, he felt it his duty to remind her of it.
“Nineteen only,” she answered, calmly, “and, besides, I do not see what that has to do with it. It is not the years but the man one marries.”
“It is very good of you to think so,” he answered, still humbly, “and since there is no one else you care for, perhaps in time—”
He left the sentence hanging in the air, as if afraid to finish it, and neither this modesty nor the yearning tenderness of his accent was lost upon the girl.
“As you say, there is no one else.”
“But—but there might be,” suggested Rollinson, who was strongly possessed by the insane delusion of the lover that all men must needs worship his lady. “Bertha! If you are going to learn to love me, make haste to be kind. I am horribly unreasonable. I see a rival in every man you speak to, dance with, smile at. Until my probation is overI should like to depopulate the world you move in. I want, at least, to be rejected on my own demerits, not because of the merits of another man!”
Bertha regarded him attentively, still with that serious, candid air.
“Indeed, I will try,” she murmured, and for the moment he wisely said no more.
Rollinson had been a thoughtful youth, who early conceived of old age—which he thought began between forty and forty-five—as one of the most desirable periods of life.
“Patience! Afterwards,” he had said to himself during the storm and stress, the confusion and uncertainty of youth—“afterwards, when I am old, when all this fermentation has ceased, when I know what I think, what I feel, what I want and can do, how glorious life will be!”
And in accordance with this conception, as he advanced in years, he looked confidently for the subsidence of the swelling tide of his prejudices, passions, partialities, and for the emergence of reason undefiled as the second Ararat upon which the long-tossed and buffeted ark of his mind might rest.
To say the least, he was taken aback when, in the midst of those ripe years, whose fruitagehe had hoped to gather in great peace, he came again upon tempestuous days. In brief, when past forty, it befell him to love as he had never loved before, and with an unrest far exceeding that of youth, for he could not fail to see that the chances were by rights against him.
“Good Lord!” said Rollinson, when he faced his emotional condition, “for the heart thereisno afterwards!”
But, happily, Bertha did not think so ill of his chances for happiness as did he himself, and he ventured to hope, although he was terrified by her calmness and her ability to see from all sides the subject he could only see from one.
Bertha respected his learning and revered his wisdom—which is learning hitched to life—and envied his experiences, and exulted in his grasp of people and things, and in his breadth of vision. She thought such a grip upon life as he possessed could only come with years. And compared to these things the disadvantages which also come with years seemed trifling. Obesity, baldness, and a touch of ancestral gout were the penalties he had to pay for being what he was. On the whole, the price did not seem too high. Shefelt quite sure that she would ultimately accept him, and that they would marry and live happily ever after.
This impression was still strong in her mind when, some days after the conversation recorded, she went with her aunt to a little lunch-party which he gave in his bachelor apartments.
Although he modestly spoke of them as being very simple, Rollinson’s rooms were really a liberal education. He had been about the world a great deal and had carried with him fastidious taste and a purse only moderately filled. As he said once, he had never had so much money that he could afford to buy trash. The result was very happy. Pictures, rugs, draperies, brasses, ceramics, all were satisfactory.
“Your things are so delightfully intelligent!” said Bertha, with a gratified sigh. He found himself by her side as she was inspecting a bit of antique silver on a cabinet with obvious approval. “It makes me feel as I have never felt before, what a wonderful thing is taste!”
He smiled. “I am more than repaid if they have pleased you,” he said. “Will you step this way an instant? I want to showyou the thing I am vain enough to value most of all.”
In the corner which he indicated, hung a picture she had not noticed, the portrait of a young man about twenty-five. The girl stared at it with fascinated eyes. “You! Can it beyou?” she questioned, with an accent that was almost a reproach. Ah, how splendid he was, the painted youth in his hunter’s costume who stood there fixed forever in all the beautiful insolence of his young manhood! What a mass of dark hair tossed back from his fine forehead, and what soldierly erectness in his bearing! How the eyes flashed—those eyes that only twinkled now! He was radiant, courageous, strong. What a hold he had on life—one read it in the lines of his mouth, in his eyes, his brow. What zest, what eagerness of spirit! He was more than all that she most admired in her lover, and he was young—young!
The girl gave a strange look at Rollinson and then turned back to the picture again. All fulfilment is pitiful compared with its prophecy, and in that moment she realized this.
“It was painted by my friend Van Anden, who died too early to achieve the fame heshould have had,” said Rollinson. “All that toggery I am wearing, which paints so effectively, was part of my outfit when I went to Africa with my cousin.”
“It is very fine,” said Bertha, with constraint, and then, with an unmistakably final movement, she turned away from it. Rollinson felt a sudden, wretched pang. If she cared at all for him, would not she also exult in this fair presentment of his young years?
After the luncheon had been served and before his guests had moved to go, he saw with a hopeful thrill that she had gone back to the picture and was standing before it again, intent and questioning.
He went up to her.
“Bertha! Dearest!” he said, beneath his breath. “After all, you like it, then?”
She turned upon him sharply. “It is wonderful—wonderful! But you should not have shown it to me! I do not understand. I—I thought I could have married you. Now I know that I never can. I—I never dreamed there was youth like that in the world. Oh, why did you let me find it out?”
Rollinson stood dumfounded.
“But it is I,” he found voice to plead atlast. “Bertha, have the added years of worthy life made me less deserving of your love? Am I to be punished for becoming what he only promised to be?”
The girl passed her hand over her eyes in a bewildered way.
“It seems to me that one can love promise better than achievement,” she said, faintly. “To care for what is not, is, I fancy, the very essence of love.”
“I love you as he never could have done,” urged Rollinson. “As he never dreamed of caring for any one. His loves were superficial and selfish, Bertha. I have gained much, and I have lost nothing that—that is essential.”
“You have lost comprehension—he would have understood what I mean,” answered the girl, quickly.
“But—Bertha! This is unreasonable. How can you expect me to comprehend?”
“I have been too reasonable!” she cried, with sudden passion. “That is my discovery. Love is not reasonable, youth is not—and they belong together. Oh, don’t, don’t make me say any more!”
For an instant there was a heavy silencebetween them; then Rollinson found voice to say:
“It shall be as you please. Your aunt seems to be looking for you. Shall we go over to her?”
When his guests were gone at last, Rollinson came back to the picture. He took it down and placed it upon a chair where the light fell full upon it. Truly, he did not look like that to-day.
Although it was himself, he hated it, for it had cost him something dearer than the young strength which it portrayed. Of all the irrational humiliations of the long, wayward years of life this seemed to him the most hideous.
He took his knife from his pocket, opened it and put the point against the canvas. It would be easy to satisfy the brute anger in his soul by two sharp cross-cuts which should effectually destroy that remote, insolent beauty which had once been his own and now was his no longer.
He hesitated a moment, then dropped the knife and shook his head. He could not possibly do such a melodramatic, tawdry thing as that.
He knew that the day might yet comewhen he should not remember the bitterness of this hour; he might even grow to be glad again that he had once walked the earth in the likeness of this picture, but just now—just now he must forget it for awhile.
With one short sigh, Rollinson lifted the portrait of his rival and set it down, the face against the wall.