CHAPTER III.CONFIDENCES AND QUESTIONS.

CHAPTER III.CONFIDENCES AND QUESTIONS.

“Too weak to change, though a mental hellTo me the rôle of clown;A coward bound by a self-wrought spell,I wait the sound of the prompter’s bellWhich rings the curtain down.”

Sunday’s restfulness was in the air. Miss Hill and Westfield sat in the shade of the great tree in the yard, with books and newspapers about them. Nothing was more delightful to Westfield than to hear her read aloud. She had a voice of great natural sweetness, with no artificial notes in it. In truth there was no artifice in her character.

The man beside her to-day was one of whom poor Kendall had often been bitterly jealous, a man of finer fibre than his rival, greater charm and graver defects. Older, he was also wiser, particularly in melancholy wisdom.

“Read me something,” he said, “some wild wail from a tortured poet. There are always plenty, and I like ’en, no matter how woful they are. God bless the poets every one, high and humble. They help us out in the dreary business of life.”

She read:

“White-footed the snow comes,O’er the hills of beauty,Treading like a penitentRough paths of duty.”

“What an exquisite figure,”—he interrupted,—“the personification of the snow, with white feet, like a penitent.” He had once made a bright mark in the world of letters, then ceased to strive and later ceased to care, so it might be supposed that his commendation was of some value.

“Miss Hill,” he said, with sudden animation, “what are you going to do with your life?”

“Live it, if I am permitted.”

“How?”

“I have my dreams.”

“Of what?”

She smiled, looking far away, but kept silence.

“I can’t make you out,” he said, a little peevishly. “I believe you have genius for literature, yet you seem to be perfectly indifferent about cultivating it. Were you like others one might suppose that love and marriage made up your dreams; but you are as indifferent to lovers as to possible fame. I don’t understand you.”

“Well, it isn’t worth while to bother about me,” she said. “I shall be gone some day.”

“I fear you will,” he answered, with feeling; “I have thought of it a thousand times, and dreaded to enter the house, lest I should not find youthere. A sense of your impermanence is always with me. You don’t belong here in any sense, and I fear that Fate will not let you stay much longer. There is an unreality about your being here at all that is like the experiences we have when we sleep, real enough while they are occurring, but unreal to remember. Yes, you will be gone some day. Therefore, I shall take Fate by the forelock and go first, that I may not be here when you leave. I could not endure that. The very sight of the old house and this tree would then be intolerable to me.”

His face and speech were impassioned, but the girl saw it not. That was what made her so exasperating to those whom she fascinated. She seemed incapable of seeing that she could fascinate. The truth was she was self-absorbed.

“You would miss me, I am sure,” she said, in the most matter-of-fact tone, “and I should miss you greatly, if you were gone.”

“Where will you go to when you leave here?” he asked.

“To my own people, I hope,” she answered, dreamily, her eyes wandering away to the horizon.

“Tell me about them,” he begged. “I have often tried to lead you to talk of them, but you never would. You are a tell-all, tell-nothing sort of person. Others do not notice that, but I do, and have woven some theories about it.”

“I dare say they do me great honor, but in all probability they are far from true.”

“Well, then, why will you not tell me about yourself?” he asked, in an injured tone.

“You talk as though I have been making history on this planet for ages. I am young; what could I have to tell that would satisfy your expectation of the extraordinary. You have known me here in this house for more than two years. As the Indians in the old story-books say, we have ‘eaten salt together daily,’ and we have walked and talked together with the freedom of children. What is there of me still unrevealed?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I feel there is something—a part of you and your experiences from which I and others are shut out, and that part is the greatest part of you. I argue that, because, although you attract many, myself, poor moth, among them, no one gets near to you. An invisible but formidable wall surrounds you, from which all our attempted gallantries rebound like arrows which strike rocks. And there you are behind it, always smiling and agreeable, but entirely unmoved and secure. Now, somebody or some experience built that wall, for it is not in the nature of things for it to be there without cause.”

“Go on,” she said, smiling, as he waited for her to speak. “You will end by being a greatarchitect yet. How like magic you put up that wall.”

“You may chaff as much as you please,” he said, a little savagely, “but I am not to be put off that way. Now that I have begun I am going to say some things seriously and you must hear them seriously.”

“I told you to go on,” she said, composedly.

“And so I will,” he grumbled, “though I know perfectly well that it would be manlier if I kept silence. As you say, we have eaten and walked and talked together as freely as children for more than two years. In that time we have become well acquainted—not the poor, shallow acquaintance of formal society, but the near, intimate association of two human beings who honestly express themselves to each other. The result of this comradeship is that I love you. I will not say I have learned to love you, for something of the fact was clear to me the very first time I saw you. In all probability you don’t remember the incidents of that day at all, but I do. Brooks, our good host, as you know, is my old friend. I had drifted to this city in an aimless way, as I had been drifting for years. He met me and brought me home to dinner with him. I have always adored intellect in man or woman. One look into your eyes told me that you are of uncommon endowments. Then, along with a beautiful but simple stateliness of manner, youhave certain childish graces of which you are unconscious. You have never put your childhood entirely away from you. I particularly noticed the correct school-girlish arrangement of your knife and fork at the end of the dinner, and was charmed by it. After we left the table I said to Brooks that you had wonderful eyes. He agreed with me, but warned me not to let them undo me, because he said you were constructed on a novel plan, one man being the same as another to you, and all being as nothing.

“I paid no attention to his warning, as you see. On the contrary, when he went to theTimesoffice and secured me a situation, I accepted it gratefully, because I could then become a member of his household and see you every day. I have loved you ever since, and have had much quiet joy in it, and it has bettered me in many ways. I know perfectly well—I have always known—that you do not love me, and in my least selfish moments I am glad of it, because I have nothing to offer you that is fit for you to accept. I would not tell you that I love you—never a word of it—were I not sure that it will not hurt you. In the years to come the memory of it may comfort you. It is a great comfort to me now, hopeless as it is. It helps me only to tell it. O my child, my heart has long been sick and sore from bruises the like of which I pray you may never know. We men are set up to beso strong and pretend to be so self-satisfied, but we are only grown-up children after all. When we are sore in spirit we long for some loving woman soul to take us to her arms and pet and soothe us mother-like, yet we often live our lives without it.

“I am fifteen years older than you, and know the world well—better than I wish I did—so well that I should like to protect you from its ugly phases. Yet I am powerless to do it. Never did I so deeply lament my aimless, wasted life as now, when I see myself with nothing to offer you and yet loving you with all my heart. Sometimes, since I have known you, I have dreamed that with your help I could pull myself together and make something of my life yet; but the dream is only temporary—it flees, the reaction comes and I sink back to therôleof a nobody which I have long been playing, and doubtless shall play to the end—an end that I may make for myself any day.

“To say that I despise myself for being the wretched failure I am is to express myself but lamely. My love has in it an element of the paternal. I am not thinking so much of what you might be to me, but of what I earnestly wish I might be to you. I long to shield you from the infinite horror of the experience we call life, as it is revealed to many. You are like a tall young pine-tree standing alone on a high ruggedand rocky mountain side, enjoying the sunshine and swaying gently in the summer breeze, not knowing that the winter of the future will bring storms that may tear its roots from the earth. You know not your own value, that is the danger. Some day you may give your love and have your heart broken. That’s what happens to strong souls usually, and you are one of them. I know the answer to the woman poet’s question:

“‘Is it so, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer most?That the strongest wander farthest, and most hopelessly are lost?That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain,And the anguish of the singer, makes the sweetness of the strain?“‘I have many things to tell you, but ye cannot bear them now.’

“Yes, I know the answer to that, and it makes me anxious about your future. Behold the pitiful spectacle of a man who loves a woman, tells her of it, and yet confesses himself a hopeless failure.”

“But why do you insist upon considering yourself a failure?” asked Miss Hill. “You are not old, you have good health, education, ability, the necessary ingredients for achievement.”

“Child, you do not understand. How could you? the ruin is within, not visible on the outer walls.”

“No; I do not understand,” she said.

“I will tell you,” he said, “how I came to be a loiterer in the race, what

“‘——wrought my woe,In the diamond morning of long ago,’

as the song says. You see I began by asking you about yourself, and, with the artless art that distinguishes you, with scarcely a word, you have switched me off the track I had taken and set me talking about myself instead. I shall lose in your respect after I tell my story, as a matter of course, but I would rather you knew it.

“Years ago, in the days when the earth was new and sweet to me—in the mountain-moving period of life, the tragedy began. I loved, and like the lover of Annabel Lee I may say that the angels of heaven coveted the love of her and me. I was one of the editors of the most prosperous daily newspaper in the city that was my home, my uncle being its proprietor. He had no children of his own, and had brought up my brother and me, our parents having died, when we were very little.

“A sensational criminal trial was before the courts of a distant city, and it was arranged that I was to attend it and send daily letters to my journal. As it promised to last several weeks, the separation from Emma looked unendurable. I must marry her and take her with me. But when I told my plan to her she said she couldn’tleave her father, who was old, feeble and almost blind, with nobody else to care for him. In my selfishness I had forgotten him. ‘I cannot go with you,’ she said, ‘but I am willing to marry you before you go. It will comfort me while you are gone just to know that I am your wife.’

“So we married, telling no one but Emma’s father. The secrecy was needless and foolish, but when young we are all more or less enslaved by the ways of others, and this was too violent a departure from custom to be proclaimed just then.

“Ours was an unusual but not unhappy honey-moon. We wrote every day, long, glowing letters, and annihilated distance with our thought.

“But one day a telegram came announcing that my wife had been murdered—struck down in her own home, in the light of day, in the presence of her helpless old father.

“Behind the dreadful deed was the usual crazy rejected suitor. I knew the wretched boy well—he was but a boy—but never dreamed of the ghastly possibilities within his crooked mind. But what know we of any one? Who is safe from treating the community to a hideous sensation?

“He had long been fond of Emma, but lost hope when he saw that my attitude toward her was an assured one. But after I went away hegot it into his crazy head that we had quarreled, and took heart again. When he implored her to marry him, and she refused without telling him that she was already married, he shot her dead and then shot himself.

“Horror, grief, and remorse overwhelmed me. I blamed myself. Why had I not announced the marriage at once? Had the wretched boy known that Emma was my wife, he would have let her alone, I am sure. What did it avail that I put a tablet at her grave bearing the name of Emma Westfield? Humble as was the name it might have protected her had it been openly bestowed upon her.

“This happened ten years ago, before my friend Brooks, our host, ever met me. He knows nothing of it—doesn’t dream that I ever was married. To speak of it would oblige me to enter into explanations, to uncover my heart to gratify curiosity, which, however kindly meant, is always painful to a sore spirit. I tell you that you may understand I have at least the shadow of an excuse for being what I am, a man without purpose, a withered, useless branch of the human tree, waiting for the man with the pruning knife to come and cut me down.

“See the irony of fate. A few days after my wife’s death, my uncle died, leaving all his property to my brother and me. We were now owners of the newspaper on which we hadworked as employees, and of other valuable interest besides. It only emphasized my misery. Of all my possessions I could give nothing to the woman I loved—nothing but a stone at the end of a little heap of earth.

“It might have been better for me had I not inherited my uncle’s property, for it enabled me to idle away my time and indulge my selfish grief, until my will became enfeebled, and that means the crumbling of the whole character, which goes to pieces like an old wall.

“I went away, wandering over the earth aimlessly, not trying to benefit by travel, only hoping to make new scenes blot out the old, unbearable ones. I spent years in the vain effort to run away from myself. I am still engaged in that hopeless effort, though I have learned that it can’t be done. We take our world with us wherever we go—heaven and hell bring both within us.

“I am but a morbid idler, who has lost the qualities that give a man a place among men. Though I never tried to stifle memory and misery in debauchery, my money melted away. The coarse pleasures many men pursue never had charms for me, but my destruction was none the less sure. It has come without degradation, I am thankful to say, save that which any man must feel who has let himself slide down hill so far he never can climb up again.

“Once only since that dreadful thing happened have I accomplished anything. I braced myself against my inner foes long enough to write the little book you know. It gave me fame enough for a foundation for future work, had I followed it up; but I didn’t. I fell immediately back into the clutches of the miserable devils who possessed me—made a complete and inglorious surrender to them for all time, caring naught who wins the prizes in the hateful race of life.

“My story proves me a contemptible weakling. I know I am not a whit above the cheap hero of the old-time, pirate novel, the fellow who does the gloomy, manages to look as though the hand of Fate was ever upon him, and has a secret sorrow as big as an omnibus, which he wants all the world to know. I am not made of the right kind of stuff or I should not have given up at the first blow of Destiny. ‘Man yields himself not to the angels nor even unto Death itself, save through the weakness of his own poor will.’

“Had Emma’s father lived, the care of him might have proved a prop to me, but the shock killed him, and he died a few weeks after she did. I had my brother, younger than myself, and we loved each other, but I argued that he did not need me, and left him. He loves me still and follows me with the kindest, dearest letters, and is always begging me to come back to him; but I will not be a cloud upon his happinessand prosperity. Yet his sympathy and yours are all that is left in the world precious to me.

“My love for you is different from my early love. In that day the castles I constructed were very worldly ones. Now, I have no worldly ambitions whatever. It seems to me that by some kind of kinship of soul, if there is such a thing as soul, you belong to me, and never can be taken from me, though our lives may be widely separated. If you were the vilest and most degraded creature in the world and yet were yourself, I should love you just the same.

“After Emma went away I tried hard to tear from Death its well-guarded secret. I wanted to know if the dark hole in the ground is the end of us all. I pounded fiercely on the very doors of the tomb, begging piteously for an answer. None came. No; never a word came out of the silence into which she had gone. The people who say they believe in a hereafter quote at us those exasperating scriptural questions: ‘O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’ I can answer them. The sting is here, in my heart. The victory is over all my hopes, dreams and ambitions. People who believe! Are there any such? They only say they believe. It is all mere mouthing. Can any man believe that which he does not know? Their twaddle about faith and heaven enraged me. I wanted proof, proof—though but a whisperedword, the faintest touch of a vanished hand, or the tiniest scratch of a familiar pen. Proof! Proof! Oh for the proof that she lived somewhere. Had I had that I could have laughed long and loud at Death, the liar and the cheat. The merest thread of a rope would have served for me to hold to, I was so eager to believe. But nobody let it down to me—not then, nor in all the years since.

“Yet now, in spite of all that, when I look at you, I cannot persuade myself that you are to die—to cease from living. You carry with you a conviction of immortality. Your intense individuality seems like a deathless thing. It reminds me of the words of the young Greek in the drama of Ion. When his life was to be sacrificed, his beloved asks if they shall meet again. He says, ‘I have asked that dreadful question of the hills that look eternal—of the streams that flow forever—of the stars among whose fields of azure my raised spirit has walked in glory. All are dumb. But as I gaze upon thy living face, I see something in the love that lights its beauty which cannot wholly perish. We shall meet again, Clemanthe?’

“What answer have you for the question? ‘If a man die shall he live again?’”

“About that I think much, hope a little sometimes, but know nothing,” she said.

“No; we know nothing,” he echoed, with asigh; “but it is something to hope. I have a fancy that the road is not long ahead of me here, and I may soon have a chance to know what there is or know nothing. If we have an existence beyond this objective one, I may be able to help you from there. It would be helping you could I but come and tell you that I lived, would it not?”

“What greater service could you do me?”

“If I could do that I might do more. Who knows? Of course it is absurd to speak of helping you without explaining what I mean. Apparently you need nobody’s help. You are strong of character, self-poised, capable, successful and fearless. I see all that, yet I cannot rid myself of the fear that you are destined to suffer much and will need the service and sympathy of all who love you. From life I have learned a little. When great strength is given I know it will be needed. And you are stronger in character than you know. I should like to save you from suffering, but were I ever so rich and powerful, I know I could not do it. You must meet your destiny, whatever it may be. As the Scotch say, ‘must dree your weird.’ Nobody else can live your life for you, for, alas! life admits of no proxy. I have woven many fanciful theories about you and your past, present and future.”

“Tell me one,” she said.

“I will give you my favorite. You are not what you seem to be—not less but more than you pretend to be. You have been tenderly reared and much loved. You are not here earning your bread because of necessity, but for some purpose not thought of by those with whom you come in contact. Having demonstrated your ability to stand alone, you will go back home some day and be done with it. You are supported in whatever otherwise would be hard, by the knowledge that you are free to turn your back upon it whenever you wish. Am I not a good clairvoyant?”

“Permit me to ask why you think as you do about me?”

“Because you give me the impression of not belonging where I find you. You seem to be playing a part and doing it with exceeding skill; but your real self is not in it. As you say, you will be gone some day to your own people. And now that I have confessed myself a failure and a fool, I too, shall go away.”

“Why?” she asked, regretfully. “Why must the men and women who find each other companionable be lovers or nothing to each other? I am fond of you, very, not in the sentimental fashion, but as good comrade and friend. Why can’t we go on just as we have been doing? That talk about loving me need make no difference.”

“You are like a child about these things,” he said. “You know not the creature man in his bondage to selfishness. You credit us with the strength of gods, and we are mostly such poor, ill-developed wretches that if we want what we cannot have we must run away to avoid showing how little we are masters of ourselves. But tell me what are you going to do with your life?”

“I have my dreams.”

“Of what?”

“Happiness.”

“Would it be offensive if I asked upon what particular brand of the article you have set your heart?”

“The most commonplace one in the world,—the love and companionship of him who is dearest.”

Westfield was too astonished to say anything. Was the riddle so simple? Was this self-contained, independent girl following the same everyday illusion that lured all other women? While apparently caring nothing for lovers was she worshiping the one she carried ever in her heart?

“I will tell you all there is to tell,” she said, after a moment, “and then you will understand.”

He nodded assent, but felt his heart sinking.

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