XVIII
Theystarted out without objective, left the train at a little station far down the southern part of Long Island and walked miles through a flat country of stunted woods and sandy, almost deserted roads.
It was toward the end of a coppery afternoon, the hazy air aflame with the sun taking on the colour of the burnished trees. To Moira, it had been an unreal day too, for her thoughts were running upon revolutionary impulses, plans that would have seemed impossibly romantic a few months before. Was it only because of this suddenly important comradeship with Miles Harlindew that she had quite painfully realized a sense of loss? She needed much more than life was giving her, much more than her mere comfort and independence, even than her painting. Their half year together had been full of a strangely wide sympathy. But it had also been casual, without purpose and without end. The first tang and odour of Autumn cold always brought a stirring of unreasonable energy in her, a sense of dissatisfaction ... a prophecy of change. But now it was like nothing she had ever known before, a stifling in the midst of limitless air to breathe.
“Seasons must be responsible for a great dealin life,” she said. “I wonder if anything would get itself done at all, if it were not for them, for the urging they give us to act.”
“I have thought that too,” replied Miles. “You could almost live, simply by letting the time of the year do what it will with you. I shouldn’t be shocked if some one told me I had lived that way myself, most of my life.”
He drew out a pipe, filled and lighted it, and the fragrant smell was pleasing to her nostrils. She liked his agreeable, easy ways. He needed little to be happy, his thoughts, his books, tobacco, clothes that seemed to have grown older with him. Since that diffused night he had spent in her rooms in June, his life had run along in a quiet groove, free from excitement or discontent—a period during which, as he told her, weeks seemed so much longer because they were filled with so many more and varied impressions, and these impressions were caught and relished and fixed as they passed. Excitement and sprees were monotonous, not varied, and one lost almost all of one’s impressions.... She had shared this slow magic with him, and she understood what he meant. Suddenly she found herself asking him to marry her.
“But, child,” he said, with amusement in his face and voice, “you couldn’t do that.”
“I’m not a child,” she replied, with unmistakable seriousness, “and I could. I love you.”
He stopped walking and faced her, holding his pipe halfway to his mouth and looking at her in blank amazement.
“My dear Mary!” he exclaimed.
“My name isn’t Mary,” she broke in. “It’s Moira. Do you like it?”
“Moira? Why haven’t you told me that?”
“There’s even more to tell, Miles.”
“But what do you mean?”
“I suppose you won’t answer my question, until you hear the rest?”
“I shall be glad to hear anything you want to tell,” he replied slowly. “But first, my dear girl, do you know you are the stars in the sky? Do you know you are a prize for sultans, for emperors, for decent people, for people infinitely better than I am? I’m a stopping place in your passage. Not that.... I’m as worthless as a man can very well be. I think, in short, something has made you a little mad.”
“You’renotworthless,” she replied vehemently. “I’m tired of hearing you say you are.... If all this means you don’t love me and don’t want me, there’s nothing more to be said. If it means that you think you are not good enough for me, that’s foolish. And in that case—thereis—more to be said.”
She trembled a little. Both were under the stress of a new and powerful feeling.... She wanted more than anything else in the world totake hold of him, to shake him, to keep on shaking him, because he had not been equal to asking of her what she had just now asked of him. She wanted to love him as nobody had ever loved him; to love him until he respected himself. It needed no more than a spur, something to make him so proud that he could scarcely believe in his happiness. She could do that for him, she was equal to it, because she did love him and she was beautiful and desirable. She thought of herself, in that instant, as Moira Seymour of Thornhill. But in the next she did not. It was so terribly hard to say what she had to tell him.
Moira’s persistence in her reckless proposal had given rise to a tempest of forces in Miles Harlindew. The notion of marrying her had never even formed in his dispirited brain. Now it swept through him like a cleansing and strengthening hope. He faced her with the uncertainty of a man who is still afraid to trust his own understanding.
“Wait, Miles!” she said, “I’ve something more to tell you.” She began hurriedly, like a guilty child, but as she went on her voice became firm. “I don’t know who my father was. I was told his name was Williams, but I don’t know whether he is alive or dead. I’m the child of a servant who was never married. You see if you married me, it might be said that I wanted the protection of your name. I’ve none of my own.”
It was his turn to be impatient, and he had animpulse now to laugh and take her in his arms. But he held back.
“Mary,” he said seriously, “in the first place what has all that to do with it?”
“But it’s true. And you’ve forgotten my name is Moira.”
“I don’t care. It’s all beside the point. I’ve never been strong for relatives, my own kin into the bargain. I might not enjoy yours. But do you suppose it makes any difference to any one who your father is? Your father and mother are your face, your beautiful, glorious face. Your birthright is yourself, your incredible perfection. Don’t you see, it isn’t your father or your mother you’re giving up, but yourself, all this miracle? You can’t give all that to me. I’m not worth it. I can’t count on myself. How can I ask you to count on me?”
“You don’t know yourself. You never have.”
“Mary!” he cried, and she let him continue using the old name which came so naturally. She felt his intense desire to be honest, while it angered and annoyed her. Why should he decide these things for her? But he went on, “Don’t you see? This is just a—a sentiment, a ridiculous illusion about your birth.”
“It’strue,” she replied. “I must know that you believe it’s true—or nothing can go on.”
“If it were a thousand times true it wouldn’t make me good enough for you.”
She sat down beside the road. Tears were coming to her eyes, and she hated to have him see them.
“Miles,” she said, “I thought once I couldn’t love again, but you’ve seemed like something lost to me and come back. It’s the same thing in my heart, only older and more real. If you don’t mind my being what I am, if you want me, please come and take me. Only don’t argue.”
His close embrace was like the end of a journey she had been travelling all these last weeks quite unconsciously. His passion, the fierce, sudden, exacting eagerness of the luckless taken unaware by great good fortune, could not hurt her too much.
“You must forgive me if I am quite mad,” he stammered. “Look at me. Am I sane, Madonna beloved?”
She did look at him, but she saw, beyond the cadaverous face and humble eyes, a man who carried, she hoped, the power of change within him. She was completely happy to have that job for her own. Yesterday she had had loneliness, a heavy secret, futility. Now she had everything that she had ever lost; and more, the knowledge of her own strength. What if it did fail, it would be this while it lasted....