New York
I am here with Ben at the hotel and at noon, day after to-morrow, we sail for France. To me, as to him, it is an escape from a hideous situation. All day I have tramped the streets, seeking in the crowds a glimpse of Bernoline. Twice I came to the steps of St. Rosa’s Convent,—tempted. If I had any doubt as to the lasting wound that is in my heart, I know now. To be in this city, where she walks hidden in the wilderness of human beings, where at every turn I look for her! There is nothing here for me—nothing! I want to get back to the other life—to be from morning to night a pawn in the fingers of fate—to have every decision made for me—to surrender my initiative—to accept what can’t be changed—to perform without question.
*****
But to go back. The leave-taking was hard, the shadow was over it all. If I come back—and who knows?—one place will be empty. But first, Anne.
For days I had not seen her. Each consciously avoided the other. Yet a good deal of what Molly had said haunted me: I could not depart without some explanation. We left Sunday. Friday afternoon I called her up on the telephone, and asked if I might come over,—a strange conversation, full of long pauses and hesitations, where I could not see her face and could only wonder.
“I am going Sunday—you know?”
“Yes, I know.”
“And I really would like to see you before then.”
“But, David, I’m leaving in an hour.”
Curiously enough, this upset me more than I would have thought.
“Leaving? Where?” I asked stupidly.
There was a long silence.
“Anne!”
“Yes?”
“And to-morrow?”
“But I am leaving in an hour for a week end.”
“Oh, then I shan’t see you. I’m sorry.”
“You should have let me know before.”
“Yes, yes, of course. My fault. Well, I suppose it can’t be helped.”
No answer.
“When do you leave?”
“In an hour.”
“Then I’m afraid it’s good-by over the telephone.”
“You haven’t been very friendly, you know.”
“I know.”
Another silence.
“Will you write to me once in a while?”
“Do you want me to, David?”
“Please.”
“Very well—once in a while.”
Now this was not the turn I had wished to give to myparting, but some sudden feeling of the blankness of her eyes caused me to relent.
“So, it’s good-by, Anne, and—I’m sorry it’s to be like this.”
“It is not my fault.”
“No.”
“Then—good-by, and good luck—Davy.”
The last was almost inaudible. I put up the receiver and went to my room and puttered around nervously with my packing, not at all quiet in my mind and frankly missing something out of my day.
In the middle of the afternoon, all at once, I determined to fling on my things and go out for a tramp, to calm my irritation. I had hardly passed the postern when who should come whirling up the road in her cutter, bells jangling, snow clouds flying, but Anne, with her cheeks aflame.
“Jump in.”
I clambered to the seat by her side and we were off so precipitately that I caught at her arm to save myself a tumble. Away we went, skipping over the crinkling snow, the sharp wind whipping at our cheeks, long minutes without a word, until Littledale and the outskirts were left behind in a whirling maze. At Muncie’s Woods she drew in suddenly and under the green canopy of the evergreens we slowed to a walk.
“There was no house party,” she said, staring ahead.
“Of course not.”
“How did you know?”
“I knew.”
“What a spiteful, irrational, idiotic person you must think me.”
“No—very human.”
She shook her head, and I thought her lip trembled a little.
“It’s always so, and I can’t help it. I’m always doing the wrong thing with you.”
I did not answer this, for I was afraid to.
“It’s been a miserably unsatisfactory time,” she said, flicking the horses suddenly with her whip, so that they pranced about for quite a moment before she could control them. “I had looked forward so much to your coming, to going back to the old days, Davy. They were the best—and instead, we have only been fencing with each other. We never say what we mean. And I—I show you my very worst self—my worst! Everything I say to you, you misunderstand.”
“There you are wrong.”
“You do, you do! You are always ascribing to me motives that aren’t there, and so, David, there are two things I can’t bear from you, ridicule, and—pity!”
“Good heavens, nothing is further from my mind.”
“That’s not true,” she said obstinately. “David, why can’t we say the things we think to each other? Is there any reason?”
“It is sometimes rather hard, Anne, isn’t it?”
“There you go! But if we don’t—don’t you see that we lose all that was so wonderful, so rare, so genuine that we once had. And this is what is happening.” Still she had not looked at me. Her mood changed and she drew the lash of her whip over the steaming flank of a horse. When she spoke it was gravely and with determination, the voice of a woman. “David, I do not think any harm can come from being absolutely honest, and sometimes, for not being so, a whole destiny may be changed. David, whatever you think I am—I am not in love with you—”
“But I never—”
“I am not in love with you, but I can imagine—some day—if I did—if I was—well, marrying you.”
The next moment the whip had struck across the glistening back and we shot out into a gallop.
“Stop!” I cried out, but she only shook her head, bending lower to hide her face that was aflame with confusion.
“Stop!”
I caught the reins from her and brought our perilous rocking flight to a halt. Then I turned to her. Poor child, I knew what the suspense of that moment meant to her! I could almost feel her heart stand still; even then, thank heaven, I did not abuse the situation—at least, I think not—and heaven knows how easy it would have been!
“Anne, dear little friend, I think more of you at this minute than I ever have, for saying that.”
“Oh, Davy, I shall want to kill myself to-night for—”
“No, don’t say that. Now, I am going to be just as honest with you.”
I saw her hand steal up to her throat and hurried on to end the suspense.
“I feel just as you do. I am not in love with you, and yet I can imagine, just as you said, that if some day I married you a great happiness would come into my life. Would to God I could say more!”
She turned for the first time as I began to speak and her eyes went to mine. I had a strange premonition there in the green light of the forest, in the stillness of the carpeted woods, the stillness that was in her listening face, that beyond the inscrutable future, through what twisted tormented ways I know not, in some final calm, just for the strange incongruous daring of that moment, Anne and I would end as husband and wife. Premonition or illusion,—I write it down as I felt it.
“Will you really believe me?” she said, and her glance went down, “when I say that I should never, never have said even this if—if it were not that you are going back,and everything else seems so little beside that. Will you understand that I can be like this, that without being in love I can look into the future and see what may come? David, it’s—it’s so hard to say—”
“I don’t think so. Say just what you feel, and then I shall be just as honest.”
“You have always been different in my life, David. Other men have just been shells. You I’ve known, and you’ve known me. It isn’t that, oh, since we are talking this way, it’s this: I know my weaknesses, Davy—oh, so well—and I know what I’ll become if I marry a certain type of man. It’s what you bring out in me, the thing I want to be when I’m with you. Of course, it sounds terribly—I’m ashamed to say it. No, don’t look at me; but David, I can say this—when you come back—some day, when it’s all over—I shan’t have changed.”
“Shan’t have what?”
“Changed,” she said, in a whisper.
I felt my eyes blurred. What wouldn’t I have given to have been able at that moment, in perfect honesty, to have taken her into my arms for her sake—and for mine!
“Anne,” I said, “let me tell you this,—for you will want to know this when you look back to-night: never regret what you have done. We have come closer together this afternoon than ever before, and you have done it.”
“Do you mean it, Davy?” she said, looking up, her eyes shining so that it was hard to resist them.
“I do. From now on I shall always know the strength of a woman—a very real woman—that is in you. You have left a memory that I shall hold in great reverence. Between us now there will be always absolute honesty; and that is something to build on. Hold what we have,dear friend, and let us both have some faith in the future.”
“Thank you, David,” she said, with a touch of wistfulness. Then, “And now, tell me—”
“Are you sure you want to hear? It will hurt you.”
“I only know that you are unhappy. And, David, I think that is the reason, the real reason I have come to you.”
It was hard to begin, for I, too, shrunk from the pain I knew I would give her. Presently, she said, looking up at my clouded face:
“There was some one else—”
I nodded.
“Of course, I knew there was.”
“There is.”
“Oh.”
“But it is quite hopeless,” I added hastily.
“Quite hopeless?” she said, looking at me, and so strange are the ways of the heart, that, I believe, that was the only thought she seized upon.
“I only knew her for ten days. I shall never see her again. I have promised.”
“It hurts?”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry.” She laid her hand on my arm and looked away. “Is—is it because she’s married, David?”
Strange to say, the suggestion came to me like a flash of lightning in the darkness of my perplexity. Never once had such an explanation occurred to me. I thought it over and wondered.
“You needn’t answer.”
“I do not think so,” I said, without thinking how strange this must sound. “I don’t know—I hardly know anything about her. We are entirely apart in everything,—race, tradition, faith.”
“And if it were not hopeless, David?”
“Don’t ask me.”
We drove on in silence, each to his own thoughts. In the end it was Anne who spoke.
“Just one question: is—is she there—in France?”
“No. She is here. That I said is true. She is gone utterly out of my life. It was her decision. Why? I don’t even know. It was all very beautiful and very tragic. It is over—all except the forgetting.” I drew a long breath and turned to her. “That is going to be a hard fight, but it must be done. I wonder if I should have told you this.”
“Oh, yes, yes! You should have told me.”
“Of course. Anne—I want you to know this, too. With what we have been to each other—we are now—I should never ask anything of you unless I did love you with my whole heart. That is your right. This is a strange conversation, but I think you know me well enough to believe that!”
“Of course, David.”
She looked at me, and her eyes suddenly were filled with tears.
“I wish I could feel that you needed me a little.”
“Good God! But have I the right!”
Then, she did a thing I shall never forget,—that only comes to the intuition of the woman who loves. She drew off her glove and laid her bare hand in mine. And so, speaking little, we returned.
*****
Is it possible, I wonder, that with one’s heart filled with the ache and anguish of a love that is denied any hope, the soul in its defensive instinct can look ahead and know what some future date may bring? For, to-day, I can say this with perfect honesty: I need to keep Anne in my life.
The last moments in the old home were harder than I had thought. Aunt Janie was the bravest of them all, not excepting the mater, but then, Aunt Janie, bless her heart, is of the heroic line. Molly has come on to see us off, though I begged her not to. The hardest was saying good-by to the Governor. During the weeks of my return he had seemed to pick up famously, until we had almost begun to hope. But, at the last, all the light went out of his face. And when I leaned down suddenly and kissed him, his fingers clung to my hand until I had gently to release them. I had left this till the last minute and hurried out into the hall, where Molly put her arms around me and took me to the sleigh. For one thing I am profoundly thankful: he remembered Alan, and I carry to him the old daguerreotype of the Governor as a young man.
At the station every one in the village waited. The Littledale Band played “The Marseillaise” and other patriotic airs, amid great waving of handkerchiefs and cheering. You would have thought I was a candidate for Governor. But I was too affected to do anything but wave back.
*****
What Ben has said to Letty I do not know. He seldom speaks, but a certain grimness settles over him as he paces up and down. I’m afraid that it has cost him more than he thought to tear himself away from her. To-night everything seems confused and out of joint,—Anne, Bernoline, the Governor, Ben, Letty; myself most of all. Again, the close of another chapter—the wrench of old associations—new hazards, and what beyond?
If only I could seeheronce more!