XVII
March 8. Each day I determine to spend my evening usefully, but try as I may, when the time comes I feel too weary to do good work, and so morbidly recur to these memories. I ought to fight the tendency, the more that in reverting to the past I seem only to dwell on its sadness, thus intensifying my own depression. Let me see if I cannot for one night write of the good fortune that has come to me in the last three years.
Pleased with the success of my book of travel and text-books, and knowing of my wish for work, the American publishers offered me the position of assistant editor of their magazine and reader of manuscripts. By hard work and late hours the task could be done in my mornings and evenings, allowing me to continue in Mr. Whitely's employ; so I eagerly accepted the position. I can imagine few worse fates than reading the hopeless and impossible trash that comes to every publisher; but this was not my lot, for I was to read only the manuscripts that had been winnowed of the chaff. Yet this very immunity, as it proved, nearly lost me an opportunity of trying to be of service to you.
Returning a bundle of stuff to the manuscript clerk one day, I saw "M. Walton, 287 Madison Avenue, New York City," in your handwriting, on the cover of a bulky pile of sheets on his desk. Startled, I demanded, "What is this?"
"It's a rejected manuscript I was on the point of wrapping to return," the clerk answered.
Opening the cover, I saw, "A Woman's Problem, a Novel, by Aimez Lawton." It needed little perception to detect your name in the anagram.
"Mrs. Graham has rejected it?" I asked, and he nodded.
"Give me the file about it, please," I requested; and after a moment's search he handed me the envelope, and I glanced over its meagre contents: a brief formal note from you, submitting it, and the short opinion of the woman reader. "Traces of amateurishness, but a work of considerable power and feeling, marred by an inconclusive ending," was the epitome of her opinion, coupled with the recommendation not to accept.
"Register it on my list, and I'll take it and look it over," I said, and went to my little editorial cuddy, feeling actually rich in the possession of the manuscript. Indeed, it was all I could do to go through my morning quota of proof-reading and "making up" dummy forms for the magazine's next issue, I was so eager for your book.
A single reading told me you had put the problem of your life into the story. It is true the heroine was different enough in many respects to make analogy hardly perceptible, though she too was a tender, noble woman. She had never felt the slightest responsive warmth for any of her lovers, but she was cramped by the social conventions regarding unmarried women, and questioned whether her life would not be more potent if she married, even without love. One of her lovers was a man of force, brains, wealth, and ambition, outwardly an admirable match, respected by the world, and, most of all, able to draw about him the men of genius and intellect she wished to know, but whom her society lot debarred her from meeting. Yet your heroine was conscious of faults: she felt in him a touch of the soil that repels every woman instinctively; at times his nature seemed hard and unsympathetic, and his scientific work, for which he was famous, had narrowed his strong mind to think only of facts and practicalities, to the exclusion of everything ideal or beautiful. In the end, however, his persistent wooing convinced her of the strength of his feeling; and though she was conscious that she could never love him as she wished to love, the tale ended by her marrying him. Am I to blame for reading in this the story of Mr. Whitely's courtship of you? I only marveled at how much of his true character you had detected under his veneer.
To me the story was sweet and noble. I loved your heroine from beginning to end. She was so strong even in her weaknesses; for you made her no unsubstantial ideal. I understood her craving something more than her allotted round of social amusements, and her desire for intercourse and friendship with finer and more purposeful people than she daily met. I even understood her willingness to accept love, when not herself feeling it; for my own life was so hungry-hearted that I had come to yearn for the slightest tenderness, no matter who the giver might be.
As soon as I realized that the story was your own, I hoped it might tell me something of your thoughts of my father and myself; but that part of your life you passed over as if it never had been. Was the omission due to too much feeling or too little? I have always suspected that I served as a model for one of your minor characters: a dreamy, unsocial being, curiously variable in mood; at times talking learnedly and even wittily, but more often absolutely silent. He was by profession an artist, and you made him content to use his talent on book and magazine illustration, apparently without a higher purpose in life than to earn enough to support himself, in order that he might pass the remainder of his time in an intellectual indulgence scarcely higher in motive than more material dissipation. His evident sadness and lack of ambition was finally discovered to be due to a disappointment in love; and as a cure, your heroine introduced him to her best friend, – a young girl, – and through her influence he was roused to some ambition, and in the end he dutifully fell in love as your heroine wished. It was a sketch that made me wince, and yet at which I could not help but laugh. I suppose it was a true picture, and I am quite conscious that at times I must seem ridiculous to you; for often my mood is such, or my interest in you is so strong, that I forget even the ordinary courtesies and conventions. There is a general idea that a lover is always at his best when with the woman he loves, but, from my own experience, I think he is quite as likely to be at his worst. To watch your graceful movements, to delight in the play of expression on your face, and to catch every inflection in your voice and every word you speak are pleasures so engrossing to me that I must appear to you even more abstracted than I ordinarily am, though a dreamer at best. And yet now and then I have thought you were conscious of a tenderness in me, which, try as I will, I cannot altogether hide.
The main fault of the novel was unquestionably that most accented by the reader, and, recognizing the story as the problem of your life, I understood why you supplied no solution to the riddle. You begged the question you propounded; the fact that your heroine married the hero being no answer, since only by the results of that marriage would it be possible to say if she had chosen the better part. It was this that convinced me you were putting on paper your own thoughts and mood. You were debating this theme, and could carry it in imagination to the point of marriage; but what lay beyond that was unknowable, and you made no attempt to invent a conclusion, the matter being too real to you to be merely a subject for artistic idealism and invention. Hitherto I had classed Mr. Whitely with your other lovers, feeling sure that you could not love him any more than you could any of them; but now for the first time I began to fear his success.
After reading the story three times I carried it back to the manuscript clerk; and when I had allowed sufficient time for it to be returned, I wrote you a long letter, telling how I had come to read the story, and making a careful criticism and analysis of both its defects and its merits. I cannot tell you what a labor of love that letter was, or how much greater pains I took over your book than I have ever taken over any writing of my own. What was perhaps unfair, after pointing out the inconclusiveness of your ending, I sketched what I claimed was the logical end to the story. Thinking as I did that I knew the original in your mind, I was more influenced by my knowledge of him than I was by the character in your book, and therefore possibly my inference was unjust. But in hopes of saving you from Mr. Whitely, I pictured a sequel in which your heroine found only greater loneliness in her loveless union, her husband's love proving a tax, and not a boon; and marriage, instead of broadening her life, only bent and narrowed it by just so much as a strong-willed and selfish man would inevitably cramp the life of one over whom law and public opinion gave him control.
I was richly rewarded by your letter of thanks. You were so winning in your sweet acceptance of all my criticisms, and so lovable in your simple gratitude, that I would have done a thousand times the work to earn such a letter. Yet even in this guerdon I could not escape the sting of my unhappy lot; for, unable to reconcile my distant conduct with the apparent trouble I had taken, you asked me to dinner, leaving me to select the day, and spoke of the pleasure it would give you to have an opportunity to talk over the book with me.
I can think of few greater delights than to have gone over your story, line by line and incident by incident. My love pleaded with me to take the chance, pointing out that it would do you no harm, but on the contrary aid you, and I found a dozen specious reasons; but tempt me as they might, I always came back to the truth that if you knew who I really was you would not invite me, nor accept a favor at my hands. In the end I wrote you that my time was so mortgaged that I must deny myself the pleasure. A small compensation was my offer that if you chose to rewrite the story and send me the manuscript, I would gladly read it over again and make any further suggestions which occurred to me. You thanked me by letter gracefully, but I was conscious of your bewilderment in the very care with which you phrased your note; and when next we met I could see that I had become more an enigma than ever, – for which there is indeed small wonder.
God keep you, my darling.
XVIII
March 9. What seemed my misfortune proved quite the reverse. You evidently mentioned to Agnes my refusing to dine with you, and the next time I saw her she took me to task for it.
"It's too bad of you," she told me, "when I have explained to you how sensitive Maizie is, and how she has the idea that nice men do not like her, that you should go and confirm her in the feeling by treating her so! Why don't you like her?"
"I do," was all I said.
"No, you don't," she denied indignantly. "I suppose men dislike fine women because they make them feel what poor things they are themselves!"
"I like you, Miss Blodgett," I replied.
"I don't believe it," she retorted, "or you would be nice to my best friend. Besides, the idea of mentioning me in the same breath as Maizie! Men are born geese."
"Then you should pity rather than upbraid us," I suggested.
"I'll tell you what I intend to do," went on Agnes. "You promised us a visit this summer, and I am going to arrange for Maizie to be there at the time, so that you can really get to know her. And then, if you don't like her, I'll never forgive you."
"Now, Agnes," ordered Mrs. Blodgett crossly, "stop teasing the doctor. I'm fond of Maizie, but I'm fairly tired with men falling in love with her, and I am glad to find one who hasn't."
All last spring and summer, as I toiled over the proof sheets of my history, I was waiting and dreaming of that promised fortnight with you. I was so eager in my hope that when I found Agnes at the station, it was all I could do not to make my greeting a question whether you were visiting them. Luckily, she was almost as eager as I was, and hardly was I seated in the trap when she announced, —
"Mamma wanted to ask you when we were alone, and wouldn't hear at first of even Maizie being with us; but I told papa of my plan, and he insisted that Maizie should be invited. Wasn't he an old love? And now, Dr. Hartzmann, you'll try to like Maizie, won't you? And even if you can't, just pretend that you do, please."
If the groom had not mounted the rumble at this point, I believe I should have told her of my love for you, the impulse was so strong, in my gratitude and admiration for the unselfish love she had for you.
A result of this misunderstanding was an amusing game of cross-purposes between mother and daughter. Agnes was always throwing us together, scarcely attempting to veil her wishes, while Mrs. Blodgett, thinking that I did not care for you, was always interfering to save me from your society. She proposed that I should teach Agnes chess, and left us playing; but when you joined us, Agnes insisted that she could learn more by watching us, only to play truant the moment you had taken her place. I shall never forget Mrs. Blodgett's amazement and irritation, on her return, at finding us playing, and Agnes not to be seen. Equally unsuccessful was an attempt to teach Agnes fencing, for she grew frightened before the foils had really been crossed, and made you take her place. At first I imagined she only pretended fear, but Mrs. Blodgett became so very angry over her want of courage that I had to think it genuine. When we went to drive as a party there was always much discussion as to how we should sit; and in fact my two friends kept at swords' points most of the time, in their endeavors to make me tolerate or save me from the companionship of the woman I loved. Even I could see the comedy of the situation.
In one of our conversations you reverted to your novel, and questioned my view of the impossibility of the heroine being happy in her marriage, evidently influenced, but not convinced, by my opinion.
"To me it is perfectly conceivable," you argued, "that, regardless of her loving, a woman can be as happy married as single, and that it all depends upon what she makes of her own life."
"But in marriage," I contended, "she is not free to make her life at all."
"Surely she is if her husband truly loves her."
"Less so than if he does not."
"You are not in earnest?"
"Yes. Love makes women less selfish, but with many men it often has the opposite effect. The man you drew, Miss Walton, was so firm that he would not be other than selfish, and if my reading of your heroine is correct, she was a woman who would resign her own will, rather than lower her self-respect by conflicts with her husband."
"But he loved her."
"In a selfish man's way. If women knew better what that meant, there would be fewer unhappy marriages."
"Then you are sure my heroine did wrong?"
"I think she did what thousands of other women have done, – she married the love rather than the lover."
"No. I did not intend that. She married for quite other things than love: for greater freedom, for" —
"Would she have married," I interrupted, "if she had not been sure that the hero loved her?"
You thought an instant, and then said, "No, I suppose not – and yet" – You stopped, and then continued impulsively, "I wonder if I shall shock you very much if I say that I have no faith in what we call love?"
"You do not shock me, Miss Walton, because I do not believe you."
"It is true, nevertheless. Perhaps it is my own fault, but I have never found any love that was wholly free from self-indulgence or self-interest."
"If you rate love so low, why did you make your heroine crave it?"
"One can desire love even when one cannot feel it."
"Does one desire what one despises?"
"To scorn money does not imply a preference for poverty."
"The scorn of money is as genuine as your incapacity to love, Miss Walton."
"You do not believe me?"
"A person incapable of love does not crave it. It is only a loving nature which cares for love."
"But if one cannot love, how can one believe in it?"
"The unlighted torch does not believe in fire."
"But some substances are incombustible."
"The sun melts anything."
"The sun is trans-terrestrial."
"So is love."
You looked at me in silence for a moment, and then asked, "Is love so much to you?"
"Love is the only thing worth striving for in this life," I replied.
"And if one fails to win it?"
"One cannot fail, Miss Walton."
"Why not?"
"Because the best love is in one's own heart and depends only on one's self."
"And if one has loved," you responded hurriedly, with a mistiness in your eyes which proved how deeply you were feeling, "if one gives everything – only to find the object base – if" – You stopped speaking and looked away.
"One still has the love, Miss Walton; for it is that which is given, and not that which is received, that is worth the having." I faltered in my emotion, and then, almost unconscious of what I said, went on: "For many years I have loved, – a love from the first impossible and hopeless. Yet it is the one happiness of my present life, and rather than" – I recovered control of myself, and became silent as I heard Mrs. Blodgett coming along the veranda.
You leaned forward, saying softly, "Thank you for the confidence." Then, as Mrs. Blodgett joined us, you said, "I envy you your happiness, Dr. Hartzmann."
"What happiness is that?" asked Mrs. Blodgett, glancing from one to the other curiously.
"Dr. Hartzmann," you explained calmly, without a trace of the emotion that had moved you a moment before, "has been proving to me that all happiness is subjective, and as I have never been able to rise to such a height I am very envious of him."
"I don't know what you mean," remarked Mrs. Blodgett. "But if the doctor wants to know what real happiness is, he had better marry some nice girl and have his own home instead of living in a boarding-house."
You laughed, and added, "Now our happiness becomes objective. Perhaps it is the best, after all, Dr. Hartzmann."
"Do you think so, Miss Walton?" I asked, unable to prevent an emphasis in the question.
You rose, saying, "I must dress for dinner." But in the window you turned, and answered, "I have always thought it was, but there are evident exceptions, Dr. Hartzmann, and after what you have told me I think you are one of them."
"And not yourself?" I could not help asking.
You held up your hand warningly. "When the nature of dolls is too deeply questioned into, they are found to contain only sawdust."
"And we often open the oyster, to find sometimes a pearl."
"The result of a morbid condition," you laughed back.
"Better disease and a pearl than health without it."
"But suppose one incapable of the ailment? Should one be blamed if no pearl forms?"
"An Eastern poet said: —
Diving and finding no pearl in the sea,
Blame not the ocean, – the fault is in thee.
Have you ever tried to find a pearl, Miss Walton?"
You hesitated a moment. "Like the Englishman's view of the conundrum," you finally parried archly, "that would be a good joke if there only wasn't something to 'guess' in it."
"Do you know what Maizie is talking about?" demanded Mrs. Blodgett discontentedly.
"Better than Miss Walton does herself, I think," I averred.
You had started to go, but again you turned, and asked with interest, "What do I mean?"
"That you believe what you think you don't."
You stood looking at me for a moment. "We are becoming friends, Dr. Hartzmann," you affirmed, and passed through the window.
Good-night, dear friend.
XIX
March 10. For the remainder of my visit, it seemed as if your prophecy of friendship were to be fulfilled. From the moment of my confidence to you, all the reserves that had been raised by my slighting of your invitations disappeared, perhaps because the secret I had shared with you served to make my past conduct less unreasonable; still more, I believe, because of the faith in you it evidenced in me. Certain I am that in the following week I felt able to be my true self when with you, for the first time since we were boy and girl together. The difference was so marked that you commented on the change.
"Do you remember," you asked me, "our conversation in Mr. Whitely's study, when I spoke of how little people really knew one another? Here we have been meeting for over three years, and yet I find that I haven't in the least known you."
It is a pleasure to me to recall that whole conversation, for it was by far the most intimate that we ever had, – so personal that I think I should but have had to question to learn what I long to know. In response to my slight assistance, to the sympathy I had shown, you opened for the moment your heart; willing, apparently, that I should fathom your true nature.
We had gone to dinner at the Grangers' merely to please Mrs. Blodgett, for we mutually agreed that in the country formal dinners were a weariness of the flesh; and I presume that with you, as with me, this general objection of ours was greatly strengthened when we found Mrs. Polhemus among the guests. It is always painful to me to be near her, and her dislike of you is obvious enough to make me sure that her presence is equally disagreeable to you. It is a strange warp and woof life weaves, that I owe to one for whom we both feel such repulsion the most sympathetic, the tenderest conversation I have ever had with you.
I was talking with Miss Granger, and thus did not hear the beginning of my mother's girds at you; but Agnes, who sat on my left, told me later that, as usual, Mrs. Polhemus set out to bait you by remarks superficially inoffensive, but covertly planned to embarrass or sting. The first thing which attracted my notice was her voice distinctly raised, as if she wished the whole table to listen, and in fact loud enough to make Miss Granger stop in the middle of a sentence and draw our attention to the speaker.
" – sound very well," Mrs. Polhemus was saying, "and are to be expected from any one who strives to be thought romantically sentimental."
"I did not know," you replied in a low voice, "that a 'romantically sentimental' nature was needed to produce belief in honesty."
"It is easy enough to talk the high morals of honesty," retorted your assailant, "and I suppose, Miss Walton, that for you it is not difficult to live up to your conversational ideals. But we unfortunate earthly creatures, who cannot achieve so rarefied a life, dare not make a parade of our ethical natures. The saintly woman is an enormously difficult rôle to play since miracles went out of style."
"Oh, leave us an occasional ideal, Mrs. Polhemus," laughed a guest. "I for one wish that fairy rings and genii were still the vogue."
"But we have some kinds of miracles," asserted Mrs. Granger. "Remember the distich, —
'God still works wonders now and then:
Behold! two lawyers, honest men!'"
"With all due deference to Miss Walton's championing of absolute perfection," continued my mother, with a cleverly detached manner, to veil what lay back of the sneer, "I find it much easier to accept the miracle of an honest lawyer than that of an absolutely uncattish woman," – a speech which, like most of those of Mrs. Polhemus, drew a laugh from the men.
"That's because you don't know Miss Walton!" exclaimed Agnes warmly, evidently fretted by such conduct towards you.
"On the contrary," answered my mother, speaking coolly and evenly, "I presume I have known Miss Walton longer and better than any one else in this room; and I remember when her views of honesty were such that her ideal was personified by a pair of embezzlers."
You had been meeting her gaze across the table as she spoke, but now you dropped your lids, hiding your eyes behind their long lashes; and nothing but the color receding from your cheeks, leaving them as white as your throat and brow, told of what you felt.
"Oh, say something," appealed Agnes to me in a whisper. "Anything to divert the" —
"And I really think," went on Mrs. Polhemus, smiling sweetly, with her eyes on you, "that if you were as thoroughly honest with us as, a moment ago, you were insistent on the world's being, you would confess to a tendresse still felt for that particular form of obliquity."
I shall recall the moment which followed that speech if it shall ever fall to me to sit in the jury-box and pass judgment on a murderer, for I know that had I been armed, and my mother a man, I should have killed her; and it taught me that murder is in every man's heart. Yet I was not out of my head, but was curiously clear-minded. Though allusion to my shame had hitherto always made me dumb, I was able to speak now without the slightest difficulty; I imagine because the thought of your pain made me forget my own.
"Which is better, Mrs. Polhemus," I asked, with a calmness I marveled at afterwards, "to love dishonesty or to dishonestly love?"
"Is this a riddle?" she said, though not removing her eyes from you.
"I suppose, since right and wrong are evolutionary," I rejoined, "that every ethical question is more or less of a conundrum. But the thought in my mind was that there is only nobility in a love so great that it can outlast even wrongdoing." Then, in my controlled passion, I stabbed her as deeply as I could make words stab. "Compare such a love, for instance, with another of which I have heard, – that of a woman who so valued the world's opinion that she would not get a divorce from an embezzling husband, because of the social stigma it involved, yet who remarried within a week of hearing of her first husband's death, because she thought that fact could not be known. Which love is the higher?"
The color blazed up in my mother's cheeks, as she turned from you to look at me, with eyes that would have killed if they could; and it was her manner, far more than even the implication of my words, which told the rest of the table that my nominally impersonal case was truly a thrust of the knife. A moment's appalling pause followed, and then, though the fruit was being passed, the hostess broke the terrible spell by rising, as if the time had come for the ladies to withdraw.
When, later, the men followed them, Agnes intercepted me at the door, and whispered, "Oh, doctor, it was magnificent! I was so afraid Maizie would break down if – I never dreamed you could do it so splendidly. You're almost as much of a love as papa! It will teach the cat to let Maizie alone! Now, do you want to be extra good?"
"So long as you don't want any more vitriol-throwing," I assented, smiling. "Remember that a hostess deserves some consideration."
"I told Mrs. Granger that you did it at my request, and there wasn't a woman in the room who didn't want to cheer. We all love Maizie, and hate Mrs. Polhemus; and it isn't a bit because you geese of men think she's handsome and clever, either. Poor Maizie wanted to be by herself, and went out on the veranda. I think she's had time enough, and that it's best for some one to go to her. Won't you slip out quietly?"
I nodded, and instantly she spoke aloud of the moon, and we went to the French window on the pretense of looking at it, where, after a moment, I left her. At first I could not discover you, the vines so shadowed your retreat; and when I did, it was to find you with bowed head buried in your arms as they rested on the veranda rail. The whole attitude was so suggestive of grief that I did not dare to speak, and moved to go away. Just as I turned, however, you looked up, as if suddenly conscious of some presence.
"I did not intend to intrude, Miss Walton, and don't let me disturb you. I will rejoin" —
"If you came out for the moonlight and quiet, sit down here," you said, making room for me.
I seated myself beside you, but made no reply, thinking your allusion to quiet perhaps voiced your own preference.
"It seems needless," you began, after a slight pause, "to ignore your kindness, even though it was veiled. I never felt so completely in another's power, and though I tried to – to say something – to strike back – I couldn't. Did my face so betray me that you knew I needed help?"
"Your face told nothing, it seemed to me."
"But that makes it positively uncanny. Over and over again you appear to divine my thoughts or moods. Do you?"
"Little more than any one can of a person in whom one is interested enough to notice keenly."
"Yet no one else does it with me. And several times, when we have caught each other's eyes, we have – at least I have felt sure that you were laughing with me, though your face was grave."
"Who was uncannily mind-reading then?"
"An adequate tu quoque," you said, laughing; then you went on seriously; "Still, to be frank, as now I think we can be, I have never made any pretense that I wasn't very much interested in you – while you – well – till very lately, I haven't been able to make up my mind that you did not actually – no, not dislike – for I knew that you – I could not be unconscious of the genuine esteem you have made so evident – yet there has always been, until the last two weeks, an indefinable barrier, of your making, as it appeared to me, and from that I could only infer some – I can give it no name."
"Were there no natural barriers to a friendship between a struggling writer and Miss Walton?"
"Surely you are above that!" you exclaimed. "You have not let such a distinction – Oh no, for it has not stood in the way of friendship with the Blodgetts."
A moment's silence ensued, and then you spoke again: "Perhaps there was a motive that explains it. Please don't reply, if it is a question I ought not to put, but after your confidence of last week I feel as if you had given me the privilege to ask it. I have always thought – or rather hoped – that you cared for Agnes? If" —
"And so you married me to her in the novel," I interrupted, in an effort to change the subject, dreading to what it might lead.
You laughed merrily as you said, "Oh, I'm so glad you spoke of that. I have often wondered if you recognized the attempted portrait, – which now I know is not a bit of a likeness, – and have longed to ask you. I never should have dared to sketch it, but I thought my pen name would conceal my criminality; and then what a fatality for you to read it! I never suspected you were the publisher's reader. What have you thought of me?"
"That you drew a very pleasant picture of my supposed mental and moral attainments, at the expense of my ambition and will. My true sympathy, however, went out to the girl whom you offered up as a heart-restorer for my earlier attachment."