“Don’t go back yet,” Fiesole pleaded.
We crept through ancient waterways, all solitary and silent; past churches blanched in the moonlight, and empty piazzas; under bridges from which some solitary figure leant to observe us. Now a swiftly moving barca would overtake us; as it fled by we had a glimpse through the curtains of a man and a woman sitting close together. Now the door of a tavern would suddenly open, flinging across the water a bar of garish light; cloaked figures would emerge and the door would close as suddenly as it had opened. Overhead in balconies we sometimes detected the stir of life where we had thought there was emptiness, and would catch the rustle of a woman’s dress or see the red flare of a cigarette. We had the haunted sensation one has in a wood in May-time: though he discerns but little with the eye, he is conscious that behind green leaves an anonymous, teeming world is mating and providing for its momentous cares.
Fiesole pressed against me; the darkness seemed to fling out hands, thrusting us together. She slipped off her hood and pushed back her cloak, displaying her arms and throat and hair. The seduction of her beauty enthralled and held me spellbound. The air pulsated with illicit influences. The dreaming city, vague and labyrinthine, was the outward symbol of my state of mind. I had lost my standards; my will-power was too inert to rouse itself for their recovery. I was entranced by a sensuous inner vision of loveliness which exhausted my faculties of resistance. I apprehended some fresh allurement of femininity through each portal of sense. Fiesole’s touch made my flesh burn; her eyes stung me to pity; her voice caressed me. Her body relaxed till it rested the length of mine. Her head lay against my shoulder; her arms were warm about my neck. I tried to think—to think of honor and duty; but I could only think of her.
“You know what you said about Simonetta,” she whispered; “how you thought I was like her and you spent hours beforeThe Kingdom of Venus. You were wrong, all wrong, Dante, in your thoughts about her. The young man in the picture was Giuliano dei Medici and Simonetta was dear to him for many years. So the flowers weren’t broken, Dannie. Instead of broken flowers, they made poetry for Botticelli to paint.”
How could I tell her that there was a difference between love and passion?—that my feeling for her could be only passion, because my love was with Vi? She loved me—that made all her actions pure. Morality would sound like the rasping voice of a tired schoolmaster, scolding a classroom of healthy boys. It was even unsafe for me to pity her; when I drew my coat about her, she kissed my hand. I clasped her closely, gazing straight ahead, not daring to look down. Every quiver of her languorous body communicated itself.
“Fiesole, if I don’t marry her, I will marry you some day. I promise.”
“But I want you now—now—now.” Her whisper was sharp-edged with longing; it beat me down and ran out among the shadows like a darting blade.
We floated under the Bridge of Sighs and drew up at the landing. She leant heavily on my arm. We walked along the quay in silence. Few people were about. I saw mistily; my eyes were burning as if they had gazed too long into a glowing furnace. She drooped against me like a crushed flower.
“You’re breaking my heart, Fiesole. I’d give you anything, but the thing that would hurt you. Let me have time to consider.”
I was saying to myself, “Perhaps it would be right to marry her.” But the memory of her whisper clamored insistently in my ears and prevented me from thinking, “I want you now—now—now.” With her voice she made no reply.
We entered the hotel and stole past the office; the porter was sleeping with his head bowed across his arms. On the dimly lit stairs she dragged on my arm, so that I halted. Suddenly she freed herself and broke from me, running on ahead.
Standing still, almost hiding from her, I listened for her door to open and shut. Nothing stirred. I crept along the naked passage and found her leaning against the wall outside our rooms. Her head was thrown back in weariness, not in defiance; her arms were spread out helplessly; her hands, with palms inward, wandered blindly over the wall’s surface. She was panting like a hunted fawn. Her knees shook under her. Her attitude was horribly that of one who had been crucified.
Made reckless by remorse, I bent over her and kissed her. Because I did not put my arms about her, she made no response.
Something happened, wholly inexplicable, as though we had been joined by a third presence. Not a stair creaked. Everyone was in bed. The air was flooded with the slow, sweet smell of violets. I became aware of a palpitating sense of moral danger.
I drew back from Fiesole. Her physical fascination faded from me; yet I had never felt more tender towards her.
“I’m sorry, dear,” I said.
She met my gaze with a frozen, focusless expression of despair. Her hands ceased their wandering.
I entered my room and, closing the door, stood pressed against the panel, listening. After what seemed an interminable silence, her door opened and shut. I looked out into the passage; it was empty.
I spent a sleepless night and rose with my mind made up; since she wanted it I would marry her.
Going downstairs, I found she had not breakfasted. As a rule she was an earlier riser than myself; usually I found her waiting for me. I went for a stroll on the Piazzetta to give her time. On my return she had not appeared. I was beginning to grow nervous; then it occurred to me that she was postponing the first awkwardness of meeting me by breakfasting in bed.
Taking my place at our table in the window, I told the waiter to carry Fiesole’s rolls and coffee up to her bedroom. He looked a trifle blank, and hurried away without explanation. He returned, followed by the proprietor, who informed me with much secret amusement that the signora had called for her bill at seven o’clock that morning and had departed, taking her baggage. I inquired if she had left any message for me; the proprietor stifled a laugh and shook his head. I immediately looked up trains, to discover which one she had intended catching. There was one which had left Venice at eight for Milan. At the station I found that a lady resembling Fiesole had taken a ticket for the through-journey. By this time it was ten; the next train did not leave till two o’clock. I sent a telegram to catch her at Brescia, to be delivered to her in the carriage. No reply had been returned by the time I left Venice. I reached Milan in the evening and pursued my inquiries till midnight, but could get no trace of her. Either I had been mistaken in her direction, or she had alighted at one of the intermediate stations.
Before my experience at Venice the world had consisted for me of Vi, myself, and other people; now it was only myself and Vi. I spent my days in shadowy unreality; just as a child, waking from a bad dream, sees one face he can trust gazing over the brink of his horror, so out of the blurred confusion of my present I saw the face of Vi.
Fiesole had not shown me love in its purity, but she certainly had taught me something of its courage and selfishness. She had disabused my mind forever of the thought that it was a polite, intensified form of liking. A blazing ship, she had met me in mid-ocean and had set my rigging aflame. I had turned from her, but not in time to get off scatheless. Her wild unrestraint had accustomed my imagination to phases of desire which had before seemed abnormal and foreign to my nature.
When I missed her at Milan, I abandoned my pursuit of her. Now that the temptation was over, I realized how near we had come to wrecking each other’s lives. Physical lassitude overtook me. Because I had withstood Fiesole, I thought myself safe in indulging my fancy with more intimate thoughts of Vi. I excused myself for so doing, by telling myself that it was her memory that had made me strong to escape. It was like saying that because water had rescued me from fire it could no longer drown me.
I traveled northwards into the mountains to Raveno. Each morning I rowed across Maggiore to the island of Isola Madre. Lying beneath the camphor trees, watching the turquoise of the lake filling in the spaces between the yellowing bamboo canes, I gave rein to my longing. Shadowy foliage dripped from shadowy trees, curtaining the glaring light; down spy-hole vistas of overgrown pathways I watched the lazy world drift by. I numbed my cravings with the opiate of voluptuous beauty.
I had been there a fortnight when a letter from home arrived. With its confident domestic chatter, it brought a message of trust. It took from me my sense of isolation. One of them would understand.
Slowly the thought had taken shape within me that I must go to Vi. If I saw her only once again, I believed that I would be satisfied. It would not be necessary to speak to her—that would be unsportsmanlike if she had managed to forget me. All I asked was to be allowed just once to look upon her face. She should not know that I was near her; I would look at her and go away. With that strange sophistry that we practise on ourselves, I tried to be persuaded that, were I to see her in her own surroundings with her husband and Dorrie, it would be a lesson to me of how little share I had in her life. Perhaps I had even idealized her memory; seeing her might cure me. So I reasoned, but I was conscious that my own judgment on the wisdom of such a step was not to be trusted. Ruthita was too young to tell. My father, though I admired him, was not the man to whom a son would willingly betray a weakness. I would speak to the Snow Lady.
As I drove from the station through London, old scenes and memories woke to life. The city had spread out towards Stoke Newington, so that it had lost much of its quaintness; but it retained enough of its old-world quiet to put me in touch with my childhood.
I alighted at the foot of Pope Lane. The wooden posts still stood there to shut out traffic. I walked quickly up the avenue of fragrant limes with the eager expectancy of one who had been years absent instead of days. In the distance I heard the rumble of London. The golden August evening lay in pools upon the pathway. Sensations of the happy past came back. Dead memories stirred, plucking at my heartstrings. I thought of how Ruthita and I had bowled hoops and played marbles on that same gray pavement, making the air ring with our childish voices. I thought of those rare occasions when the Spuffler had carried me away with him into a boy’s world of mysterious small things, which he knew so well how to find. All the comings and goings of school-days, immense exaltations and magnified tragedies, rose before me—Ruthita waiting to catch first sight of me, and Ruthita running beside the dog-cart, with flushed cheeks and hair flying, to share the last of me as I drove away. What had happened since then seemed for the moment but an interlude in the momentous play.
Passing between the steeply-rising red-brick walls, dotted with gates, I came to the door through which I had been so eager to escape when it had been locked against me. I reflected that I had not gained much from the new things which I had dragged into my life. The narrowness which I had once detested as imprisoned dullness I now coveted as peaceful security.
I found the bell beneath the Virginia creeper. The door was opened by Hetty. Hetty had grown buxom and middle-aged. Her sweetheart had never come for her. The tradesmen no longer made love to her; they left their goods perfunctorily and went out in search of younger faces. Her hips had broadened. The curve between her bust and her waist had vanished. The dream of love was all that she had gained from life. I wondered whether she still told herself impossible stories of the deliverance wrought by marriage. If she did, no signs of her romantic tendencies revealed themselves in her face. Her expression had grown vacantly kind and stolid. To me she was respectful nowadays, and seemed even distressed by the immodesty of the memory that I had once been the little boy whom she had spanked, spoilt, bathed, and dried.
She gave a quick cry at catching sight of me, for I had warned no one of my coming.
“Sh! where are they?” I asked her.
She told me that the master was at work in his study, and that Miss Ruthita and her ma were in the garden.
I walked round the house slowly, lasting out the pleasure of their surprise. Nothing seemed to have changed except we people. Sunflowers kept guard in just the same places, like ranks of lean soldiers wearing golden helmets. Along the borders scarlet geraniums flared among the blue of lobelia and the white of featherfew, just as they had when I was a boy. Pigeons, descendants of those whose freedom I had envied, perched on the housetops opposite, or wheeled against the encrimsoned sky.
I stole across the lawn to where two stooping figures sat with their backs towards me. Halfway across I halted, gazing over my shoulder. Through the study-window, with ivy aslant the pane, I saw my father. His hair was white. In the stoop of his shoulders was the sign of creeping age. He did not look up to notice me; he had never had time. As the years went by I grew proudly sorry for him. I saw him now, as I had seen him so many times when I paused to glance up from my play. He was cramped above his desk, writing, writing. His face was turned away. His head was supported on his hand as though weary.Hewas the prisoner now; it was I who held the key of escape. How oddly life had changed!
Ruthita saw me. Her sewing fell from her lap. In a trice she was racing towards me.
“You! You!” she cried.
Her thin arms went round me. Suddenly I felt miles distant from her because I was unworthy.
“Why did you come back?” she asked me. There was a note of anxiety in her voice. She searched my bronzed face.
“To see you, chickabiddy.”
“No, no. That’s not true,” she whispered; but she pressed her cheek against my shoulder as though she were willing to distrust her own denial. “You can get on quite well without me, Dannie; you would never have come back to see me only.”
The Snow Lady touched me on the elbow. Her eyes were excited and full of questioning. She gazed quickly from me to Ruthita. With a self-consciousness which was foreign to both of us, we dropped our eyes under her gaze and separated. Ruthita excused herself, saying that she would go and tell my father.
The Snow Lady offered me her cheek; it was soft and velvety. Slipping her arm through mine, she led me away to the apple-tree under which they had been sitting. She was still the frail little Madam Favart, half-frivolous, half-saintly; my father’s intense reticence had subdued, but not quite silenced her gaiety. Her silver hair was as abundant as ever and her figure as girlish; but her face had tired lines, especially about the eyes. I sat myself on the grass at her feet.
“How is he?” I asked.
“Your father?”
“Yes.”
“Much the same. He doesn’t change.”
“Is he still at the same old grind?”
She nodded. “But, Dante,” she said, “you look thinner and older.”
“That’s the heat and the rapid traveling. A day or two’s rest’ll put me right.”
She dropped her sewing into her lap and, pressing her cool hand against my forehead, drew me back against her. It was a mothering love-trick of hers that had lasted over from my childhood.
“What brought you home so suddenly, laddie?”
Her hand slipped to my shoulder. I bent aside and kissed it. “To see you and Ruthie. I had something to tell you.” She narrowed her eyes shrewdly. “You’ve been worried for nearly a year now. I’ve noticed it.”
“Have I shown it so plainly?”
“Plainly enough for me to notice. Is it something to do with a woman? But of course it is—at your age only a woman could make you wear a solemn face.”
“Yes. It’s a woman. And I want you to help me, Snow Lady, just as you used to long ago when I couldn’t make things go right.”
The slow tears clouded her eyes; yet my news seemed to make her happy. “When I was as old as you, Ruthie had been long enough with me to grow long curls.” She smiled inscrutably.
From where we sat we could watch the house. While we had been talking, I had seen through the study-window how Ruthita stole to my father’s chair. He looked up irritably at being disturbed. Her attitude was all meekness and apology as she explained her intrusion. He seemed to sigh at having to leave his work. She withdrew while he completed his sentence. He laid his pen carefully aside, glanced out into the garden shortsightedly, rose, and melted into the shadows at the back of his cave. The door at the top of the steps opened. He descended slowly and gravely, as though his brain was still tangled in the web of thought it had been weaving.
We sat together beneath the apple-tree while the light faded. Little ovals of gold, falling flaky through leaves on the turf, paled imperceptibly into the twilight grayness. My father’s voice was worn and unsteady. It came over me that he had aged; up till now I had not noticed it. Beyond the wall in a neighboring garden children were playing; a woman called them to bed; a lawn-mower ran to and fro across the silence. He questioned me eagerly as to where I had been in Italy, punctuating my answers and descriptions with such remarks as, “I always wanted to go there—never had time—always felt that such a background would have made all the difference.”
It was noticeable that Ruthita and the Snow Lady suppressed themselves in his presence; if they ventured anything, it was only to keep him interested or to lead his thoughts in happier directions. Presently he told them that they would be tired if they sat up later. Taking the hint as a command, they bade us good-night.
Darkness had gathered when they left us; to the southward London waved a torch against the clouds. We watched the lights spring up in the bedrooms, and saw Ruthita and then the Snow Lady step to their windows and draw down their blinds. Presently the lights went out.
“Lord Halloway’s been here again.” When I waited for further explanation my father added, “Didn’t like the fellow at first; he improves on acquaintance.”
Then I spoke. “Depends how far you carry his acquaintance.”
My father fidgeted in his chair. “He’s got flaws in his character, but he’s honest in keeping back nothing. Most people in our position wouldn’t hesitate two minutes over such a match.” Then, after a long pause, “And what’s to become of Ruthita when I die?”
I took him up sharply. I was young enough to fear the mention of death. “You’ll live for many years yet. After that, I’ll take care of her if she doesn’t marry.”
My father sat upright. I wondered how I had hurt him. He spoke stiffly. “You’ll inherit Sir Charles’s money. When I married a first and a second time, I didn’t consult his convenience, and the responsibilities I undertook are mine. Ruthita’s only your sister by accident; already you’ve been too much together. We must consider this offer apart from sentiment. He’s sowed his wild oats—well, he’s sorry. And he’ll be the Earl of Lovegrove by and by. To stand in her way would be selfishness.”
His argument took me by surprise. “Is Ruthita anxious for it? What does she say?”
“She knows nothing of the world. She takes her coloring from you. She’s afraid to speak out her mind. She thinks you would never forgive her.”
His voice was high-strung and challenging.
“I don’t believe it,” I said quietly. “She doesn’t love him—she’d be selling herself for safety.”
In the interval that followed I could feel the grimness of his expression which the darkness hid from my eyes. “You’re young; you don’t understand. For years I’ve had to struggle to make ends meet. I’m about done—I’m tired. If Ruthita were settled, I could lie down with an easy mind. There’s enough saved to see me and her mother to our journey’s end.”
He rose to his feet suddenly. “You think I’m acting shabbily. Good-night.”
He walked away, a gaunt shadow moving through the silver night. The awe I had of him kept me from following. I sat there and tried to puzzle out how this thing might be avoided. I could help financially; but my help would be refused because it was Sir Charles’s money.
Next morning I woke at six and dressed. Dew was on the turf; it sparkled in the gossamer veils of spider-webs caught among the bushes. Blackbirds and thrushes in trees were calling. A cock crew, and a cock in the distance echoed. The childish thought came back to me—how much grown-ups miss of pleasure in their anxiety for the morrow. There is so much to be enjoyed for nothing!
A window-sash was raised sharply. Looking up I saw Ruthita in her white night-gown, with her hair tumbled like a cloud about her breast. I watched her, thinking her lovely—so timid and small and delicate. I called to her softly; she started and drew back. I waited. Soon she came down to me in the garden. I must have eyed her curiously.
“You’ve heard?”
She held out her hand pleadingly, afraid that I would judge her. “They’re making me,” she cried, “and I don’t—don’t want to, Dannie.”
I led her away behind the tool-shed at the bottom of the garden; it was the place where I had discovered Hetty in her one flirtation.
“I’m not wanted,” moaned Ruthita; “I cost money. So they’re giving me to a man I don’t love.”
“They shan’t,” I told her, slipping my arm about her. “You shall come to me—I don’t suppose I shall ever marry.”
She nestled her head against my shoulder, saying, “You were always good to me; I don’t know why. I’m not much use to anybody.”
“Rubbish!” I retorted. “None of us could get along without you.”
Then I told her that if the pressure became unbearable she must come to me. She promised.
The Snow Lady found us sitting there together; we made room for her beside us. Shortly after her coming Ruthita made an excuse to vanish.
I turned to the Snow Lady abruptly. “She’s not going to marry Halloway.”
She raised her brows, laughing with her eyes. “Why not? Why so positive?”
“Because it’s an arranged marriage.”
“Mine with her father was arranged; it was very happy.”
Somehow I knew she was not serious.
“You don’t want it?” I challenged.
“No, I don’t want it; but Ruthita’s growing older. No one else has asked for her. It would be a shame if she became an old maid.”
“She won’t.”
“She won’t, if you say so,” said the Snow Lady.
During breakfast my father was silent. He seemed conscious of a conspiracy against him. When the meal was ended, he retired to his study, where he shut himself up, working morosely. I sought opportunities to tell the Snow Lady what I had come to say, but I could never find an opening to introduce the name of Vi. Whenever we were alone together she insisted on discussing Ruthita’s future, stating and re-stating the reasons for and against the proposed match. The atmosphere was never sympathetic for the broaching of my own perplexities. Gradually I came to see that I must make my decision unaided; then I knew that I should decide in only one way. I engaged a passage to Boston provisionally, telling myself that it could be canceled. That I think was the turning-point, though I still pretended to hesitate.
The day before the boat sailed, my father announced at table, avoiding my eyes, that Lord Halloway had written that he would call next day. I went to my bedroom and commenced to pack. Ruthita followed.
“You’re going?”
“Yes.”
“Because he’s coming?”
“Partly.”
Her eyes were blinded with tears; she sank against the wall in a fit of sobbing. “Oh, I wish you could take me—I wish you could take me!” she cried.
I comforted her, telling her to be brave, reminding her of her promise to come to me if they used pressure. She dabbed her eyes. “You and I’ve always stood together, little sister; you mustn’t be afraid,” I told her.
I carried my bags downstairs into the hall. The Snow Lady met me.
“What’s this? You’re going?” Her voice reflected dismay and bewilderment.
“Yes, going.”
“But not for long! You’ll be back shortly?”
“That depends.”
I entered my father’s study. He looked up from his writing. “I’m going away.”
He held my hand in silence a moment; his throat was working; he would not look me in the eyes. “Won’t you stay?” he asked hoarsely.
I shook my head.
“Good-by,” he muttered. “Don’t judge us harshly. Come back again.”
Ruthita accompanied me to the end of the lane. She did not come further; she was grown up now and ashamed to be seen crying. At the last minute I wanted to tell her. I realized that she would understand—she was a woman. The knowledge came too late. She said she would write me at Oxford, and I did not correct her. I looked back as I went down the road and waved. I turned a corner; she was lost to sight.
Next day I sailed.
Asleepy, contented little town, overshadowed by giant elms, sprawled out along the banks of a winding river, surrounded for miles by undulating woodlands—that is how I remember Sheba. The houses were for the most part of timber, and nearly all of them were painted white. They sat each in its unfenced garden, comfortably separate from neighbors, with a green lawn flowing from the roadway all about it, and a nosegay of salvias, hollyhocks, and lavender, making cheerfulness beside the piazza. I suppose unkind things happened there, but they have left no mark on my memory. When I think of Sheba there comes to me the sound of bees humming, woodpeckers tapping, frogs croaking, and the sight of blue indolent smoke curling above quiet gables, butterflies sailing over flowers, a nodding team of oxen on a sunlit road hauling fagots into town and, after sunset hour, the indigo silence of dusk beneath orchards where apples are dropping and fireflies blink with the eyes of goblins.
Sheba was one of those old New England towns from which the hurry of life has departed; it cared more for its traditions than for its future, and sat watching the present like a gray spectacled grandmother, pleased to be behind the times, with its worn hands folded.
I arrived there with only a small sum of money and the price of my return passage. I had limited my funds purposely, so that I might not be tempted to prolong my visit.
The day after my arrival my calculations were upset; I discovered that the Carpenter house was shut, and that Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter had not yet returned from the coast. This made me careful. I was unwilling to draw on my bank in London lest my whereabouts should be discovered, which would necessitate awkward explanations to my family and the association of Vi’s name with doubtful circumstances.
In my search for cheap lodgings I had a strange stroke of luck. Randall Carpenter’s house stood in an old-world street, which at this time of the year was a tunnel through foliage. I waited until the gardeners had departed. Evening came; pushing open the gate, I entered the grounds.
I passed down a rough path under apple-trees, where fruit kept falling. In stables to the left, horses chafed in their stalls and snorted. To the right in the vegetable garden, birds of brilliant plumage flashed and darted, and fat gray squirrels sat up quivering to watch me. Overhead, near and far, the air vibrated with incessant twittering. The golden haze of sunset was over everything; the whole world seemed enkindled. The path descended to low, flat meadows where haymaking was in progress. Farm implements stood carelessly about, ready for the morrow. In one field the hay was cocked, in another gathered, in a third the cutting had commenced. I told myself I was with her, and shivered at the aching loneliness of reality.
Circling the meadows was a narrow stream, which at a little distance joined the main river; on the farther side stood scattered cottages, with gardens straggling down a hill to its banks. In one of these a gray-haired woman was working. She wore a sunbonnet and print-dress of lavender. In my idleness I threw myself down in the grass and observed her. She grew conscious that she was being watched, and cast sly glances across her shoulder. At first I thought she was suspicious of my trespassing; she came lower down the hill and nodded in shy friendly fashion.
“Good-evening,” I called to her over the stream.
She drew herself erect and eyed me. “Guess you’re a stranger?” she questioned, having found something foreign in my English accent.
I told her that I was, and then, for the sake of conversation, asked her if she knew of any rooms to rent. “Guess I do,” she called back, “me and my sisters have one room to spare.”
That was how I came to take lodgings with the three Misses Januaries. I paid them ten dollars weekly and had everything found. My room lay at the back; from my window I could see much of what went on in Randall Carpenter’s grounds.
From the three Misses Januaries I learnt many things. They were decayed ladies and eked out a livelihood by bringing home piece-work to do for the jewelry factories. Every other day Miss Priscilla, the eldest, went to deliver the finished task and to take further orders. Miss Priscilla was proud, angular, and bent. Miss Julia was round and jolly, but crippled with rheumatism. Miss Lucy, the youngest, had a weak spine and was never dressed; day after day she lay between white sheets dreamily smiling, small as a child, making hardly any mound in the bed.
At first they hid from me the fact that they worked. Then they pretended that they did it to occupy their leisure. Sewing was so useless, Miss Priscilla said. At last they admitted the truth to the extent of letting me sit with them in Miss Lucy’s bedroom, even allowing me to help them with the fastening of the interminable links that went to the making of one chain-bag.
It was during these meetings that they gossiped of their neighbors and themselves. By delicate manouvering I would lead the conversation round to Vi. I found that for them Sheba was the one and only town, and Randall Carpenter was its richest citizen. He stood behind all its thriving institutions. He was president of the Sheba National Bank. He had controlling interest in the jewelry factory. He owned the cotton-works. He had been Senator at Washington. Vi was the social leader and the mirror of local fashion. They spoke of her as though she embodied for them all that is meant by romance. They told me the story, which I had already heard, of how Randall Carpenter had saved her father from ruin.
While such matters were being discussed and fresh details added, Miss Lucy would smile up at the ceiling, with her thin arms stretched straight out and her fingers plucking at the coverlet. I discovered later that long years before, Randall Carpenter had kept company with her; then her spine trouble had commenced and their money had gone from them, and it had been ended. As a middle-aged bachelor he had married Vi, and now Miss Lucy re-lived her own girlhood in listening to stories of Vi’s reported happiness.
Three weeks after my arrival in Sheba Vi returned. The evening before I had seen from my window that lights had sprung up in the house; early next morning I saw Dorrie in the garden, a white, diminutive, butterfly figure fluttering beneath the boughs. After breakfast I saw Vi come out, walking with a portly man. An eighth of a mile separated us—by listening intently I could hear her voice when she called, “Dorrie, Dorrie.”
Twice I came near to her, though she did not know it. One Sunday morning I waited till service had commenced, and followed her to church. I slipped into a seat at the back. There were few people present. From where I sat I could get a clear view of her and her husband across empty pews. Mr. Carpenter was a squarely-built, kindly-looking man—unimaginative and mildly corpulent. His face was clean-shaven and ruddy. He had an air of benevolent prosperity; his hair was grizzled, the top of his head was bald and polished. When he offered me the plate in taking the collection, I noticed that his fingers were podgy. I remembered Vi’s continually reiterated assertion that he was so kind to her. I knew what she had meant—kind, but lacking subtlety in expressing the affections. I judged that he was the sort of person to whom life had scattered largesse—he had never been tested, and consequently accepted all good fortune as something merited. His wide shrewd eyes had a steely gleam of justice; the puckered eye-lids promised humor. He was lovable rather than likable—a big boy, a mixture of naïve self-complacency and masterfulness. Before the benediction was pronounced, I left.
This was the first time I had seen him at close quarters. I had come prepared to find faults in the man; I was surprised at my lack of anger. His comfortable amiability disarmed me.
The second time I came near to her was at nightfall. It was November. A touch of frost had nipped the leaves to blood-red; the Indian Summer had commenced. The air was pungent with the walnut fragrance of decaying foliage; violet mist trailed in shreds from thickets, like a woman’s scarf torn from her throat in the passage. I had wandered out into the country. An aimless restlessness was on me—a sense of defiant self-dissatisfaction.
Occupied with my thoughts, I was strolling moodily along with hands in pockets, when I chanced to look up. She was coming down the road towards me. She was alone; her trim, clean-cut figure made a silhouette against the twilight. She was whistling like a boy as she approached; her skirt was short to the ankles; she carried a light cane in her hand. I wanted to stand still till she had come up with me and then to catch her in my arms before she was aware. For a moment I halted irresolute; then I turned into the woods to the left.
I could not understand how she could be so near to me and not know it. It seemed to me that I would raise clenched hands against the coffin-lid, were she to approach me, though I was buried deep underground.
As the year drew towards a close my uncertainty of mind became a torture. I knew that I ought to return to England; I was breaking the promise I had made to myself. My friends must be getting anxious. By this time Sir Charles must have heard of my disappearance. I was imperiling my future by stopping. Worse still, the longer I lived near Vi, the more difficult was I making it for myself to take up the threads of my old life without her. I continually set dates for my departure, and I continually postponed them. At last I booked my passage some way ahead for the first week in January. In order to prevent myself from altering my decision, I told Miss Priscilla that I was going.
I fought a series of never finished battles with myself. As the time of my respite shortened, I grew frenzied. Was I to go away forever without speaking to her? Was I to give her no sign of my presence? Was I to let her think that I had forgotten her and had ceased to care? I kept myself awake of nights on purpose to make my respite go further; from where I lay on the pillow with my face turned to the snow-covered meadows, I could see the blur which was her house. Sometimes in the darkness, when one loses all standards, I determined to risk everything and go to her. With morning I mastered myself and saw clearly—to go to her would be basest selfishness.
In one of my long tramps I had come upon a pond in a secluded stretch of woodland on the outskirts of Sheba. On the last evening before my departure I remembered it. I was in almost hourly fear of myself—afraid that I would seek her out. I planned diversions of thought and action for my physical self, so that my will might keep it in subjection. This evening, when I was at a loss what to do, the inclination occurred to go there skating.
As I walked along the road, sleighs slid by with bells jingling. The merry golden windows of white houses in white fields brought a sense of peacefulness. The night was blue-black; the sky was starry; the air had that deceptive dryness which hides its coldness. Beneath the woods trees cast intricate sprawling traceries of shadows. Every now and then the frozen silence was shattered by the snapping of some overladen bough; then the whole wood shook and shivered as though it were spun from glassy threads.
Picking my way through bushes, I came to the edge of the pond and sat down to adjust my skates. It was perhaps four hundred yards in extent and curved in the middle, so that one could not see from end to end. To the right grew a plantation of firs almost large enough for cutting; on the other three sides lay tangled swamp and brushwood.
I had risen to my feet and was on the point of striking out, when I heard a sound which was unmistakable,rrh! rrh! rrh!—the sharp ring of skates cutting against ice.
From a point above me at the edge of the fir-grove a figure darted out and vanished round the bend. The moon was just rising; behind bars of tall trunks I could see its pale disk shining—the pond had not yet caught its light.
I felt foolishly angry and disappointed that I was not to have my last evening to myself. I was jealous that some stranger, to whom it would lack the same intensity, should share this memory. Unreasonable chagrin held me hesitant; I was minded to steal away unnoticed.
The intruder had reached the far end of the pond—there was silence. Then therrh! rrh! rrh!commenced again, coming back. I set out to meet it; it was eerie for two people to be within earshot, but out of sight in that still solitude. We swung round the corner together; the moon peered above the tree-tops. For an instant we were face to face, staring into one another’s eyes; then our impetus carried us apart into the dusk.
I listened, and heard nothing but the brittle shuddering of icicles as boughs strained up to free themselves. Stealing back round the bend, I came upon her standing fixed and silent; as I approached her, she spread her hands before her eyes in a gesture of terror.
“Vi, Vi,” I whispered, “it’s Dante.”
She muttered to herself in choking, babbling fashion.
When I had put my arms about her, she ceased to speak, but her body was shaken with sobbing. She made no sound, but a deep convulsive trembling ran through her. I talked to her soothingly, trying to convince her I was real. Slowly she relaxed against me sighing, and trusted herself to look up at me, letting her fingers wander over my face and hands. I had brought her the bitterness of remembrance. Stooping, I kissed her mouth. “Just once,” I pleaded, “after all these months of loneliness. I’m going to-morrow.”
“You must,” she said, freeing herself from my embrace and clasping her arms about my neck; “oh, it’s wrong, but I’ve wanted you so badly.”
I led her to the edge of the pond and removed her skates. The moon had now sailed above the spear-topped firs and the ice was a silver mirror. Walking through the muffled woods I told her of my coming to Sheba, of the window from which I had watched her, and of all that had happened. From her I learnt that she also had been going through the same struggle between duty and desire ever since we parted.
“Sometimes I felt that it was no use,” she said; “I couldn’t fight any longer—I must write or come to you. Then something would happen; I would read or hear of a woman who had done it, and in the revulsion I felt I realized how other people would feel about myself. And I saw how it would spoil Randall’s life, and especially what it would mean to Dorrie. You can’t tell your personal excuses to the world; it just judges you wholesale by what you do, and I couldn’t bear that. It’s so easy to slip into temptation, Dante, especially our kind of temptation; because we love one another, anything we might do seems good. You can only see what sin really is when you picture it in the lives of others.”
We were walking apart now; she had withdrawn her arm from mine. “I shall always love you,” I said.
“And I you.”
“I shall never marry any other woman,” I told her; “I shall wait for you.”
“Poor boy,” she murmured, “it isn’t even right for you to think of that.”
Then, because there were things we dared not mention, we fell to talking about Dorrie, how she was growing, how she was losing her lisp, and all the tender little coaxing ways she had of making people happy.
We came out of the woods on the road which led back to Sheba. The lights twinkling ahead and the occasional travelers passing, robbed us of the danger of being alone together. I think she had been waiting for that.
“Dante,” she said, smiling at me bravely, “there is only one thing for you to do—you must marry.”
“Marry,” I exclaimed, “some woman whom I don’t love!”
“Not that,” she said; “but many men learn to love a second woman. I’ve often thought you should be happy with Ruthita; you love her already. After you had had children, you’d soon forget me. You’d be able to smile about it. Then it would be easier for me to forget.”
My answer was a tortured whisper. “It’s impossible; I’m not made like that. For my own peace of mind I almost wish I were.”
We came to the gate of her house. Across the snow, beneath the gloom of elms lighted windows smote the darkness with bars of gold. Within one of the rooms a man was stirring; he came to the panes and looked out, watching for her return.
“He’s always like that; he can’t bear to be without me. I had one of my moods this evening, when I want to be alone—he knew it.”
“When you wanted to think of me; that’s what you meant—why didn’t you say it?”
“One daren’t say these things, when they’re saying good-by, perhaps for ever.”
She had her hand on the gate, preparing to enter; we neither of us knew what to say at parting. The things that were in my heart I must not utter, and all other things seemed trivial. I looked from her to the burly figure framed in the glowing window. I pitied him with the proud pity of youth for age, a pity which is half cruel. After all, she loved me and we had our years before us. We could afford disappointment, we whose lives were mostly in the future; his life was two-thirds spent, and his years were running out.
Looking up the path in his direction, I asked, “Shall you tell him?”
“He has known for a year; it was only fair.”
“And he was angry? He blamed you?”
“He was sorry. I wish he had blamed me. He blames himself, which is the hardest thing I have to bear.”
“Vi,” I said, “he’s a good man—better than I am. You must learn to love him.”
She held out her hand quickly; her voice was muffled. “Good-night, my dearest, and good-by.”
The gate clanged. As she ran up the path, I saw that her husband had moved from the window. He opened the door to her; in the lighted room I saw him put his arms about her. By the way she looked up at him and he bent over her, I knew she was confessing.
Then I shambled down the road, feeling very old and tired. I was so tired that I hardly knew how to finish my packing; I was cold, bitterly cold. I dragged myself to bed; in order to catch the boat in Boston, I had to make an early start next morning. My teeth were chattering and my flesh was burning. Several times in the night I caught myself speaking aloud, saying stupid, tangled things about Vi. Then I thought that what I had said had been overheard. I shouted angrily to them to go away, declaring, that I had not meant what I said.
When my eyes closed, the stars were going out. “It will soon be morning,” I told myself; “I must get up and dress.”
I tried to get up, but my head would stick to the pillow and my body refused to work. “That’s queer,” I thought; “never mind, I’ll try later.”