CHAPTER XV
A few days later I learned that my father had established a small trust fund for my benefit, and that the income was to be paid to me quarterly. He had thus, after all, recognized me as his son, though not on the footing of his other sons. Each of his other sons would have— But I won’t go into that. It is enough to say that for every dollar I should receive Jerry and Jack would have twenty or thirty, and so would my sisters. Even in my mother’s life interest I was not to have a share when she no longer needed it.
Among the many sins I have to confess, that of being specially mercenary is not one. I make this affirmation in order that you may not condemn me too severely when I say that for days I labored under a sense of outrage. Mine was the state of mind common among evil-doers who object to paying the penalty of which they have had fair warning. My father had told me with his own mouth that on account of certain indulgences which I had refused to give up he had cut me off altogether. I had chosen to take my own way and to brave the consequences; and now when the latter proved to be not so bad as I had been bidden to expect I was indignant.
When I informed Andrew Christian of the bequest I added that I had practically made up my mind to refuse it. He gave me that look which always seemed about to tell you a good joke.
“Why do you think he left you anything?”
“I suppose he wanted to feel that if the worse came to the worst I shouldn’t be quite penniless.”
“But why should he want to feel that?”
“Well, hang it all, sir, when everything is said and done I was his son!”
“You were his son, and he—he cared for you.”
“He cared for me to—to that extent.”
“And considering your attitude toward him, could you expect him to care for you more?”
I said, unwillingly, “No, I suppose not.”
“Could you expect him to care for you as much?”
“I—I’d given up thinking he cared for me at all.”
“And this shows he did. In spite of all you made him suffer—and, what was probably worse in his eyes, made your mother suffer—he loved you still. I know you’re not thinking of the money, Frank.”
“No, I’m not; and that’s perfectly sincere.”
“You’re thinking of his affection for you; and now you’re assured of it. The amount of money he left you is secondary. That, and the way in which he left it to you, were determined by something else.”
I looked at him hard as I said, “And what was that?”
His look as he answered me was frank, straight, and fearless.
“The fact that he didn’t trust you.” I suppose he must have seen how I winced, for he went on at once: “That’s about the bitterest pill fellows like us have to swallow. In addition to everything else that we bring on ourselves we forfeit other people’s confidence. There’s the nigger in the woodpile, even when we buck up. Your father was fond of you, Frank; but he was afraid that if he did for you all he would have done if you’d gonestraight it would only send you to the devil. Don’t you see that?”
With some relief as well as some reluctance I admitted that I did.
“It takes years, Frank, old boy, for men who’ve been where you and I have been to build up a life which gives a reasonable promise of making good. In seven or eight months you’ve done splendidly. I don’t know that we’ve ever had a fellow in the club whose been more game—”
“It’s the club that’s been game.”
“True; but you’ve got out of it the best that it can give. I’ll say that for you. Only don’t imagine for a moment that your fight is over.”
“Oh no, sir; I don’t.”
“It’s perfectly true that if you resist the devil he will flee from you; but he can show a marvelous power of coming back. Some of your toughest tussles lie ahead. Now I’m only reminding you of that to show you that your father has perhaps done the very wisest thing for you. A large part of your safety lies in the necessity for your working. If you weren’t absolutely obliged to do it in order to live like a respectable man there’s no telling what tide of suppressed temptations might rush in and engulf you.”
I nodded slowly.
“I see that. Thank you for pointing it out to me.”
“But, Frank, old fellow, that’s not the chief thing I want you to see. What will give you more satisfaction than anything else is the knowledge that what has been done for you has been done in love. Your father has shown his love for you; you show your love for him. Accept this gift graciously. Enjoy it and make the best of it. Your life with him isn’t over.”
My expression must have been one of inquiry, because he went on:
“One of the sublimest and truest things that ever fell from a pen is this, ‘Love is of God; and every one that love is born of God, and knoweth God.’ It’s almost a startling thing to realize that by the sheer act of love we’re sons of God and know Him.”
“Ah, but what kind of love?” I asked, with some incredulity.
“Are there more kinds than one? The kingdom of love is like that of minerals or that of vegetation—one in essence, though multiform in manifestation. Just as one will give us coal and diamonds with much the same ingredients, and another the strawberry, the rose, and the apple-tree, all closely akin, so love shows itself in a million ways, and yet remains always love.”
“And would you say that the love of parents and children, the love of husbands and wives, the love of sweethearts, and the love of God—”
“—are all fundamentally related? Yes, I would. I can’t understand love in any other sense, if it’s to be real love. Do you remember how often we’ve talked of the spirit there is in the world that throws dust into our eyes by creating distinctions and confusions where neither confusion nor distinction exists? Well, the same evil imp is forever at work to stultify love by trying to take the meaning from the word. And when it has stultified love it has stultified God, since the one is identical with the other.”
I became argumentative.
“But if all love is identical with God, how do you account for what would commonly be called a wrong love?”
“There’s no such thing as a wrong love. Men are wrong and women are wrong, and they treat love wrongly; but love itself is always right. There a distinction must be made between love and passion; but it’s easy enough to make it. One of these days we’ll take the time to talk that over. At present my point is simply this—that there’s only one love as there’s only one God, and it’s only by understanding the unity of both that we get the significance of either. Moreover, the same pen that wrote, ‘Every one that loveth is born of God,’ wrote, ‘He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God.’ You see then how magical a thing love is, and why any kind of love—remember I’m speaking of love, not of physical passion, which is another thing—but you can see how any kind of love should work wonders.” He asked, suddenly, “Have you written to your mother since your father died?”
I said I had not, that I hadn’t supposed a letter from me would be welcome.
“Don’t ask whether it would be welcome or not. Do your duty—and let other people take care of theirs. Let your mother see that, so far from feeling sore over the provision in your father’s will, you take it in the way I’ve tried to indicate. It will be an amazing comfort to her; and if you want to give your brothers and sisters the surprise of their young lives you’ll be doing it.” He took my hand and pressed it. “Good-by now, old chap. I’ve got to go and see Momma about the meals for to-morrow.”
He passed on to the kitchen, where a Greek named Pappa—nicknamed Momma by the boys—had taken the place of Mouse; but he left me with a new outlook.
Following his instructions, I began almost immediatelyto get some of the reward he promised me. My mother wrote to me within a week, timidly but tenderly, and with joy at being in touch with me again. A few weeks later my sister wrote, affectionately, if with reserve. When my birthday came in March, and I was thirty-two, I had small presents from them both, and from my two sisters-in-law as well. I noticed that all letters, even from my mother, were hesitatingly expressed, and in something like an undertone of awe. My family, too, felt apparently that I had put an abyss between myself and them, and that in the effort to recross it there was a suggestion of the supernatural. It was as if my father were saying to them, “This, thy brother, was dead, and is alive again”—and they were experiencing some of the strangeness that Mary and Martha must have known when Lazarus came back to the house at Bethany.
But that was not my only reward, though of what I received in addition I find it difficult to tell you. Indeed, I should make no attempt to tell you at all were it not so essential to this small record of a human life. All I want to say is that that thing came to me as a new revelation which is probably an every-day fact to you—that by the simple process of loving I could dwell in God, I could be aware that God was all round me.
I mean that once I understood that love was God the great mystery that had tantalized me all my life was solved. All my life I had been tortured by the questions: Who is God? What is God? What is my relation to Him—or have I any? And now I seemed to have found the answer. When I got back to love—the common, natural love for my father and mother and sisters—when I got back to feeling more gently toward my brothers—I began to see—you must forgive me if I seem blatant,but that is not my intention—I began to see faintly and very inadequately that I was actually in touch with God.
I am far from saying that all my difficulties were overcome. Of course they were not. I mean only that that divine force of which I had been told the universe was full, but which had always seemed apart from me, remote from my needs, actually came, in some measure at least, within my possession. Just as Beady Lamont found the furniture-moving business shiny with it, once he knew where to look for it, so I began to see my work as an architect. It was as if a golden key had been put into my hand which unlocked the richest of life’s secrets.
All at once people whom I had known to be well disposed toward me, and whom I had dismissed at that, began to translate God to me. Ralph Coningsby, Cantyre, Lovey, Christian, Pyn, not to speak of others, were like reflectors that threw the rays of the great Central Sun straight into my soul. I am not declaring that there was no tarnish on the surfaces that caught those beams and transmitted them to me—probably there was—but light and warmth were poured into me for all that. Not that there was a change in their attitude toward me; the change was in my point of view, in my capacity for seeing. What I had thought of only as human aid I now perceived to be the celestial bread and wine; and where I had supposed I was living only with men, I knew I was walking with God.
And yet there was a love with regard to which I could not have this peace of mind. Christian would perhaps have ascribed that defect to the fact that there was passion in it. My own fear was that, having had its inception in a moment of crime, it could never free itself from the conditions that gave it birth.
After the Christmas dinner there was a change toward me in the bearing of Regina Barry and her mother. Without growing colder, they became slightly more formal; and that I understood. As they had come so far in my direction, it was for me to go some of the distance in theirs, and I didn’t.
I didn’t because I couldn’t. I was like a man who would have been glad to walk if paralysis hadn’t nailed him to his seat. As, however, it was emotional paralysis and not physical, there was no means by which they could become aware of it; nor could I make up my mind to tell them.
For quite apart from my damnable secret was the common, every-day fact that I had no income sufficient to maintain a wife in anything like the comfort to which Regina Barry had been accustomed. Though she might have accepted what I had to offer, I felt the usual masculine scruples as to offering it. This, too, was something that couldn’t be explained unless there was some urgent need of the explanation; and so when I was mad to go forward I had, to my shame and confusion, to hang back.
Their retreat was managed with tact and dignity. During the week after Christmas I saw them on a number of occasions, always by invitation, though I had no further talk with Regina Barry alone. Two or three times I guessed she would have been willing to go out to walk with me, but I didn’t suggest it. As she had proposed it once, she could hardly do so a second time, and so we sat tamely in a sitting-room. Like that minute on Christmas Eve when she would have flown into my arms had I opened them, other minutes came and went; and I saw my coldness reacting on her visibly.
At the end of ten days a note told me that they had returned to New York, apologizing for the fact that they had not had time to bid me good-by. Though seeing plainly enough the folly of a correspondence, I wrote in response to that note, hoping that a correspondence might ensue. But I got no answer. I got nothing. Not so much as a message was sent to me on the days when Ralph Coningsby came down.
I did not resent this; I only suffered. I suffered the more because of supposing that she suffered too. And yet when I next saw her I found nothing to support that theory.
When I went to New York for a few days in February I called, but they were not at home. Having left my card, I waited for a message that would name an hour when I should find them; but I waited in vain. During the four days my visit lasted I heard nothing kindlier than what Cantyre repeated, that they were sorry to have been out when I came.
As I sent them flowers before leaving the city, a note from Mrs. Barry thanked me for them cordially; but there was not a syllable in it that gave me an excuse for writing in response. Reason told me that it was better that it should be so, but reason had ceased to be sufficient as a guide.
In March I made an errand that took me to town for a week-end, and on the Sunday afternoon I called again at the house which had so curiously become the focusing-point of my destiny. Miss Barry was at home and receiving. I found her with two or three other people, and she welcomed me as doubtless she had welcomed them. Even when I had outstayed them she betrayed none of that matter-of-course intimacy which had markedher attitude toward me in December. She seemed to have retired behind all sorts of mental fortifications over which I couldn’t at first make my way.
When we were seated in the style of Darby and Joan at the opposite corners of a slumbering fire she told me her father had made one hurried visit from California, and that, now that he had returned to the Pacific coast, she and her mother were thinking of joining him there. Should they do so, they would probably remain till it was time to go to Long Island in June. Two or three protestations against this absence came to my lips, but of course I couldn’t utter them.
I could have sworn that she was saying to herself, “You don’t seem to care!” though aloud it became, “We’ve never been in California, and we want to see what it’s like.”
I seized the opportunity to rejoin, “You’ve a fancy for seeing what things are like, haven’t you?”
She took up the challenge instantly. “Why do you say that?”
“Only because of what you’ve said at different times yourself.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t want to quote. I was thinking of the taste you’ve frequently acknowledged for making experiments.”
“Experiments in things—or people?”
“I was thinking of people.”
She marched right into my camp by saying, boldly, “Oh, you mean the number of times I’ve—I’ve broken engagements?”
“Perhaps I mean rather the number of times you’ve formed them.”
“Did you ever buy a house?”
I replied with some wonder that I had not.
“Well, we’ve bought two—this one and the one at Rosyth. But before buying either we rented each for a season to see whether or not we liked it.”
“And you did.”
“But we’ve rented others which we didn’t. So you see.”
“I see that experiments are justified. Is that what you mean?”
“If one is satisfied with anything that comes along, by all means take it. But if one only wants what one wants—”
“And you know what you want?”
Her eyes were all fire; her lips had the daring scarlet of a poppy.
“I’ve never got beyond knowing what I don’t want.”
“That is, you’ve never taken anything up except in the long run to throw it down?”
“Your expressions are too harsh. One doesn’t throw down everything one doesn’t want. One sets it aside.”
“And would it be discreet to ask why you—why you set certain things—and people—aside?”
She looked at the fire as if considering.
“Do you mean—men?”
“To narrow the inquiry down, suppose I say I do.”
“And”—she threw me a swift, daring glance—“and marriage?”
“That defines the question still further.”
Her words came as the utterance of long, long thoughts.
“One couldn’t marry a man one didn’t trust.”
“No; of course not.”
“Nor a milksop.”
“You couldn’t.”
“Nor a man who wasn’t a thoroughbred.”
“Just what do you mean by that?”
“Oh, don’t you know? If not I can’t explain. All I can say is that there are things a thoroughbred couldn’t do.”
“What sort of things?”
“Why should you want me to tell you? You know as well as I do. The things that make a man impossible—mean things—ignoble things.”
“Criminal things?”
“Criminal things, too, I suppose. I don’t know so much about them; but I do see a lot of meanness and pettiness and— Oh, well, the sort of lack of the fastidious in honor that—that puts a man out of the question.”
“Aren’t you very hard to please?”
“Possibly.”
“And if you don’t find what—what you’re looking for?”
“I shall do without it, I suppose.”
“And if you think you find it—and then discover that, after all—”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been absolutely disillusioned so far. When disillusion has come to me—as it has—I could see it on the way. But if I—I cared for some one and found I was deceived in him— But what’s the use in talking of it?” she laughed. “Please don’t think I’m putting forth a claim to be treated better than the average. It’s only when I see the average—”
“The average of men?”
“No, the average of women. When I see what they’re willing to take—and marry—and live with—I can only say that I find myself very well off as I am.”
This conversation did not make it easier for me to go back to the starting-point of our acquaintance; but the moment came when I did it.