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To
Archer's strained nerves the vision was as soothing as the sight of the blue
sky and the lazy river. They
sat down on a bench under the orange-trees and he put his arm about her and
kissed her. It was like
drinking at a cold spring with the sun on it; but his pressure may have been
more vehement than he had intended, for the blood rose to her face and she
drew back as if he had startled her.
"What
is it?" he asked, smiling; and she looked at him with surprise, and
answered: "Nothing."
A
slight embarrassment fell on them, and her hand slipped out of his.
It was the only time that he had kissed her on the lips except for
their fugitive embrace in the Beaufort conservatory, and he saw that she was
disturbed, and shaken out of her cool boyish composure.
"Tell
me what you do all day," he said, crossing his arms under his
tilted-back head, and pushing his hat forward to screen the sun-dazzle.
To let her talk about familiar and simple things was the easiest way
of carrying on his own independent train of thought; and he sat listening to
her simple chronicle of swimming, sailing and riding, varied by an
occasional dance at the primitive inn when a man-of-war came in.
A few pleasant people from Philadelphia and Baltimore were
picknicking at the inn, and the Selfridge Merrys had come down for three
weeks because Kate Merry had had bronchitis.
They were planning to lay out a lawn tennis court on the sands; but
no one but Kate and May had racquets, and most of the people had not even
heard of the game.
All
this kept her very busy, and she had not had time to do more than look at
the little vellum book that Archer had sent her the week before (the
"Sonnets from the Portuguese"); but she was learning by heart
"How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," because it was
one of the first things he had ever read to her; and it amused her to be
able to tell him that Kate Merry had never even heard of a poet called
Robert Browning.
Presently
she started up, exclaiming that they would be late for breakfast; and they
hurried back to the tumble-down house with its pointless porch and unpruned
hedge of plumbago and pink geraniums where the Wellands were installed for
the winter. Mr. Welland's
sensitive domesticity shrank from the discomforts of the slovenly southern
hotel, and at immense expense, and in face of almost insuperable
difficulties, Mrs. Welland was obliged, year after year, to improvise an
establishment partly made up of discontented New York servants and partly
drawn from the local African supply.
"The
doctors want my husband to feel that he is in his own home; otherwise he
would be so wretched that the climate would not do him any good," she
explained, winter after winter, to the sympathising Philadelphians and
Baltimoreans; and Mr. Welland, beaming across a breakfast table miraculously
supplied with the most varied delicacies, was presently saying to Archer:
"You see, my dear fellow, we camp--we literally camp. I tell my wife
and May that I want to teach them how to rough it."
Mr.
and Mrs. Welland had been as much surprised as their daughter by the young
man's sudden arrival; but it had occurred to him to explain that he had felt
himself on the verge of a nasty cold, and this seemed to Mr. Welland an
all-sufficient reason for abandoning any duty.
"You
can't be too careful, especially toward spring," he said, heaping his
plate with straw-coloured griddle- cakes and drowning them in golden syrup.
"If I'd only been as prudent at your age May would have been
dancing at the Assemblies now, instead of spending her winters in a
wilderness with an old invalid."
"Oh,
but I love it here, Papa; you know I do.
If only Newland could stay I should like it a thousand times better
than New York."
"Newland
must stay till he has quite thrown off his cold," said Mrs. Welland
indulgently; and the young man laughed, and said he supposed there was such
a thing as one's profession.
He
managed, however, after an exchange of telegrams with the firm, to make his
cold last a week; and it shed an ironic light on the situation to know that
Mr. Letterblair's indulgence was partly due to the satisfactory way in which
his brilliant young junior partner had settled the troublesome matter of the
Olenski divorce. Mr.
Letterblair had let Mrs. Welland know that Mr. Archer had "rendered an
invaluable service" to the whole family, and that old Mrs. Manson
Mingott had been particularly pleased; and one day when May had gone for a
drive with her father in the only vehicle the place produced Mrs. Welland
took occasion to touch on a topic which she always avoided in her daughter's
presence.
"I'm
afraid Ellen's ideas are not at all like ours.
She was barely eighteen when Medora Manson took her back to
Europe--you remember the excitement when she appeared in black at her
coming-out ball? Another of
Medora's fads--really this time it was almost prophetic!
That must have been at least twelve years ago; and since then Ellen
has never been to America. No
wonder she is completely Europeanised."
"But
European society is not given to divorce: Countess Olenska thought she would
be conforming to American ideas in asking for her freedom."
It was the first time that the young man had pronounced her name
since he had left Skuytercliff, and he felt the colour rise to his cheek.
Mrs.
Welland smiled compassionately. "That
is just like the extraordinary things that foreigners invent about us. They
think we dine at two o'clock and countenance divorce!
That is why it seems to me so foolish to entertain them when they
come to New York. They accept
our hospitality, and then they go home and repeat the same stupid
stories."
Archer
made no comment on this, and Mrs. Welland continued: "But we do most thoroughly appreciate your persuading
Ellen to give up the idea. Her
grandmother and her uncle Lovell could do nothing with her; both of them
have written that her changing her mind was entirely due to your
influence--in fact she said so to her grandmother.
She has an unbounded admiration for you.
Poor Ellen--she was always a wayward child. I wonder what her fate
will be?"
"What
we've all contrived to make it," he felt like answering.
"if you'd all of you rather she should be Beaufort's mistress
than some decent fellow's wife you've certainly gone the right way about
it."
He
wondered what Mrs. Welland would have said if he had uttered the words
instead of merely thinking them. He
could picture the sudden decomposure of her firm placid features, to which a
lifelong mastery over trifles had given an air of factitious authority.
Traces still lingered on them of a fresh beauty like her daughter's;
and he asked himself if May's face was doomed to thicken into the same
middle-aged image of invincible innocence.
Ah,
no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that
seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience!
"I
verily believe," Mrs. Welland continued, "that if the horrible
business had come out in the newspapers it would have been my husband's
death-blow. I don't know any of
the details; I only ask not to, as I told poor Ellen when she tried to talk
to me about it. Having an invalid to care for, I have to keep my mind bright
and happy. But Mr. Welland was
terribly upset; he had a slight temperature every morning while we were
waiting to hear what had been decided.
It was the horror of his girl's learning that such things were
possible--but of course, dear Newland, you felt that too.
We all knew that you were thinking of May."
"I'm
always thinking of May," the young man rejoined, rising to cut short
the conversation.
He
had meant to seize the opportunity of his private talk with Mrs. Welland to
urge her to advance the date of his marriage.
But he could think of no arguments that would move her, and with a
sense of relief he saw Mr. Welland and May driving up to the door.
His
only hope was to plead again with May, and on the day before his departure
he walked with her to the ruinous garden of the Spanish Mission.
The background lent itself to allusions to European scenes; and May,
who was looking her loveliest under a wide-brimmed hat that cast a shadow of
mystery over her too-clear eyes, kindled into eagerness as he spoke of
Granada and the Alhambra.
"We
might be seeing it all this spring--even the Easter ceremonies at
Seville," he urged, exaggerating his demands in the hope of a larger
concession.
"Easter
in Seville? And it will be Lent
next week!" she laughed.
"Why
shouldn't we be married in Lent?" he rejoined; but she looked so
shocked that he saw his mistake.
"Of
course I didn't mean that, dearest; but soon after Easter--so that we could
sail at the end of April. I
know I could arrange it at the office."
She
smiled dreamily upon the possibility; but he perceived that to dream of it
sufficed her. It was like
hearing him read aloud out of his poetry books the beautiful things that
could not possibly happen in real life.
"Oh,
do go on, Newland; I do love your descriptions."
"But
why should they be only descriptions? Why
shouldn't we make them real?"
"We
shall, dearest, of course; next year."
Her voice lingered over it.
"Don't
you want them to be real sooner? Can't
I persuade you to break away now?"
She
bowed her head, vanishing from him under her conniving hat-brim.
"Why
should we dream away another year? Look
at me, dear! Don't you
understand how I want you for my wife?"
For
a moment she remained motionless; then she raised on him eyes of such
despairing dearness that he half-released her waist from his hold.
But suddenly her look changed and deepened inscrutably.
"I'm not sure if I DO understand," she said.
"Is it--is it because you're not certain of continuing to care
for me?"
Archer
sprang up from his seat. "My
God--perhaps--I don't know," he broke out angrily.
May
Welland rose also; as they faced each other she seemed to grow in womanly
stature and dignity. Both were
silent for a moment, as if dismayed by the unforeseen trend of their words:
then she said in a low voice: "If that is it--is there some one
else?"
"Some
one else--between you and me?" He
echoed her words slowly, as though they were only half- intelligible and he
wanted time to repeat the question to himself.
She seemed to catch the uncertainty of his voice, for she went on in
a deepening tone: "Let us
talk frankly, Newland. Sometimes
I've felt a difference in you; especially since our engagement has been
announced."
"Dear--what
madness!" he recovered himself to exclaim.
She
met his protest with a faint smile. "If
it is, it won't hurt us to talk about it."
She paused, and added, lifting her head with one of her noble
movements: "Or even if
it's true: why shouldn't we speak of it? You might so easily have made a mistake."
He
lowered his head, staring at the black leaf-pattern on the sunny path at
their feet. "Mistakes are
always easy to make; but if I had made one of the kind you suggest, is it
likely that I should be imploring you to hasten our marriage?"
She
looked downward too, disturbing the pattern with the point of her sunshade
while she struggled for expression. "Yes,"
she said at length. "You
might want-- once for all--to settle the question: it's one way."
Her
quiet lucidity startled him, but did not mislead him into thinking her
insensible. Under her hat-brim
he saw the pallor of her profile, and a slight tremor of the nostril above
her resolutely steadied lips.
"Well--?"
he questioned, sitting down on the bench, and looking up at her with a frown
that he tried to make playful.
She
dropped back into her seat and went on:
"You mustn't think that a girl knows as little as her parents
imagine. One hears and one
notices--one has one's feelings and ideas.
And of course, long before you told me that you cared for me, I'd
known that there was some one else you were interested in; every one was
talking about it two years ago at Newport.
And once I saw you sitting together on the verandah at a dance-- and
when she came back into the house her face was sad, and I felt sorry for
her; I remembered it afterward, when we were engaged."
Her
voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and she sat clasping and unclasping her
hands about the handle of her sunshade.
The young man laid his upon them with a gentle pressure; his heart
dilated with an inexpressible relief.
"My
dear child--was THAT it? If you
only knew the truth!"
She
raised her head quickly. "Then
there is a truth I don't know?"
He
kept his hand over hers. "I
meant, the truth about the old story you speak of."
"But
that's what I want to know, Newland--what I ought to know.
I couldn't have my happiness made out of a wrong--an unfairness--to
somebody else. And I want to
believe that it would be the same with you. What sort of a life could we
build on such foundations?"
Her
face had taken on a look of such tragic courage that he felt like bowing
himself down at her feet. "I've
wanted to say this for a long time," she went on.
"I've wanted to tell you that, when two people really love each
other, I understand that there may be situations which make it right that
they should--should go against public opinion.
And if you feel yourself in any way pledged . . . pledged to the
person we've spoken of . . . and if there is any way . . . any way in which
you can fulfill your pledge . . . even by her getting a divorce . . .
Newland, don't give her up because of me!"
His
surprise at discovering that her fears had fastened upon an episode so
remote and so completely of the past as his love-affair with Mrs. Thorley
Rushworth gave way to wonder at the generosity of her view. There was
something superhuman in an attitude so recklessly unorthodox, and if other
problems had not pressed on him he would have been lost in wonder at the
prodigy of the Wellands' daughter urging him to marry his former mistress. But he was still dizzy with the glimpse of the precipice they
had skirted, and full of a new awe at the mystery of young-girlhood.
For
a moment he could not speak; then he said: "There is no pledge--no
obligation whatever--of the kind you think.
Such cases don't always--present themselves quite as simply as . . .
But that's no matter . . . I love your generosity, because I feel as you do
about those things . . . I feel that each case must be judged individually,
on its own merits . . . irrespective of stupid conventionalities . . . I
mean, each woman's right to her liberty--"
He pulled himself up, startled by the turn his thoughts had taken,
and went on, looking at her with a smile:
"Since you understand so many things, dearest, can't you go a
little farther, and understand the uselessness of our submitting to another
form of the same foolish conventionalities?
If there's no one and nothing between us, isn't that an argument for
marrying quickly, rather than for more delay?"
She
flushed with joy and lifted her face to his; as he bent to it he saw that
her eyes were full of happy tears. But in another moment she seemed to have
descended from her womanly eminence to helpless and timorous girlhood; and
he understood that her courage and initiative were all for others, and that
she had none for herself. It
was evident that the effort of speaking had been much greater than her
studied composure betrayed, and that at his first word of reassurance she
had dropped back into the usual, as a too-adventurous child takes refuge in
its mother's arms.
Archer
had no heart to go on pleading with her; he was too much disappointed at the
vanishing of the new being who had cast that one deep look at him from her
transparent eyes. May seemed to
be aware of his disappointment, but without knowing how to alleviate it; and
they stood up and walked silently home.
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