CHAPTER XXXIII
"I said I would not write. And I will not, after I once know that your refusal has been sent. It does not seem to me that I am asking much, it cannot long be kept a secret in any case, and, in my opinion, should not be. Let Aunt Katrina write me what has happened; she won't do you any too much justice – you can be sure of that! I left Gracias that same day, as I said I would. I have come back here and gone to work again; a man can always do that."
This letter of Winthrop's was from New York. He had been there two weeks, and there were now but ten days left of the month which Margaret had said her husband had allowed for her answer. He did not speak of this in his letter; but it engrossed all his thoughts.
On the day when he could have had a reply from East Angels, there was no letter from the South. He waited twenty-four hours to allow for delays or accident.
Still nothing.
Margaret did not then intend to reply; it was a case where she would have written immediately (or asked Aunt Katrina to write), if she had intended to reply at all.
"I am not worthy even to be spoken to, it seems; I am the mud under her feet. But it shall not be so easy as she thinks!"
He took the next train bound for Washington, Richmond, and the St. John's River. It was the third time he had made the long journey within the space of four weeks.
He was in such a fever now – fever of irritation and anxiety – that he did not any longer try to keep up his trust in her, to be certain, as he had endeavored to be during the intervening time, that she had been influenced by what he had said, or by her own more deliberate reflections, and that in any case, whether he was to be informed of it or kept in ignorance, she was not going back to Lanse. It now seemed to him possible that, in her strange self-sacrificing sense of duty, she might go. He ground his teeth at the thought.
The leisurely train was crossing the pine lands of North Carolina, making such long waits at grassy little stations to take on wood that those passengers who had a taste for botany had time to explore the surrounding country for flowers. A new thought came to him; it was that he need not have counted so carefully the days of the month, or depended upon that; perhaps she had not waited for the whole time to pass, perhaps she had gone to Fernandina, was already there. Meanwhile – the train crept.
"Oh, can you tell me – will I reach Fayetteville before dark?" said a girl behind him. He knew it was a girl by the voice. She was speaking, apparently, to some one who shared her seat.
This person, an older woman (again judging by the tone), was well informed as to the methods of reaching Fayetteville, the trains, and the hours. This matter settled, they went on talking.
"I have been up in the mountains teaching," the older woman presently remarked.
"Oh," said the girl, sympathetically (falling inflection).
"I have been there a year, and I trust when I came away I left light behind."
"Oh yes."
"At present I have no situation, though I have one in view. They are most anxious to have me, but I say to myself, 'Will I do the most good there? Is it a place where my influence will carry the most weight?' For we should all do the best we can with our talents, it is a duty; I do the best I can with mine."
"Oh yes, I reckon so. And you speak so beautifully too. Perhaps you've spoken? – I mean before people?"
"Never in public," answered the other voice, reprovingly; "to my pupils, but never in public. I think a woman should always keep her life secluded, she should be the comfort and the ornament of a purely private home. We do not exhibit our charms – which should be sacred to the privacy of the boudoir – in the glare of lecture-rooms; we prefer to be, and to remain, the low-voiced, retiring mothers of a race of giant sons whom the Muse of History will immortalize in the characters of soldier, statesman, and divine."
"Oh yes," said the girl's voice again, in good-natured, if inattentive, acquiescence.
Winthrop glanced back. The young girl was charmingly pretty, with a sweet indifference in her eyes. The older woman – she was over fifty – was of a martial aspect, broad-shouldered, large-boned, and tall; her upper lip was that of a warrior, her high cheek-bones had an air of resolute determination. Comfort and ornament of a purely private home, as she had just proclaimed herself, it seemed almost as if her powers would be wasted there; she was a woman to lead an army through a breach without flinching. The giant sons in her case were presumably imaginary, for she gave her name to her companion as they parted: "Miss Louisa Mearns – they call me Lulette." Her voice was very soft and sweet.
"Southerner, of course, with those lovely tones," was Winthrop's mental comment as she passed, stepping rather delicately, and, tall as she was, without any stride. "But she's got a thorough soul of Maine, though she doesn't dream of it. There must have been transmigration somewhere among her ancestors." And then from sheer weariness and restlessness he went into another car.
His feeling was that this train would be in North Carolina a week. But it got on. It traversed South Carolina and Georgia, it passed through the cotton country, it crossed beautiful rivers rolling slowly towards the sea, then it made a wide detour round Okefinokee swamp, and at last brought him again to the margin of the broad St John's. It seemed to him that half a lifetime had passed since he left it.
He reached East Angels in the afternoon. Cindy appeared. Yes, Mrs. Rutherford and Mrs. Harold were both at home; they were in Mrs. Rutherford's sitting-room up-stairs. But when she had preceded him and opened the door of that apartment, only Aunt Katrina was there.
"Mercy, Evert! where did you come from?" she exclaimed, in a key rather higher than her usual calm tones. It seemed to him that she looked frightened.
"From New York, of course. You are alone? Where is Margaret?" He spoke abruptly.
"Oh, she's here," responded Aunt Katrina, quickly, in a reassuring voice.
But her emphasis told him that it might not be "here" long, it might be some other word. Would that word be "Fernandina?"
At any rate, Margaret was not yet gone.
"What do you mean by 'here?' She's not in the room."
"She doesn't spend every moment with me; I want some time for my own reading and – and meditation. She's in the garden, or the drawing-room, I suppose – somewhere about."
"Aunt Katrina, tell me in so many words – is she going back to Lanse?"
"Why – er – why, yes, I believe so." Aunt Katrina's voice fairly faltered.
"You have had a hand in this: you have urged her."
"Well, Evert, she's Lanse's wife, you know."
"Where is she?"
"I have told you already that I don't know."
"Not gone?" he said, with quick-returning suspicion.
"Oh dear no! What are you thinking of?"
"I'm thinking that I cannot trust either of you! When is she going, then?"
"Well, there has been a good deal about that. Back and forth, you know; letters and – "
"When?" he repeated, imperatively.
"To-morrow," answered Aunt Katrina, in almost the same tone as his own. "How you do storm, Evert!"
But he had left the room before her words were finished.
Margaret was not in the drawing-room, she was not in the garden. He met Pablo. "Do you know where Mrs. Harold is?" he said.
"She's in der yorrange grove, sah. I ben dar myse'f looken' arter der place a little, as I has ter, en I see her dar." Pablo meant the old grove – his grove; the new grove was on the other side of the house, and was as ugly as a new grove always is. Down to this hour old Pablo had never become satiated with the delight of working in the old grove at his own pleasure and according to southern methods alone; poor little Melissa Whiting's voice had long been stilled, but Pablo was rioting yet.
The old grove was in bloom. It was not so productive now as it had been in Mrs. Thorne's day, but it was more beautiful; Pablo's rioting had not included steady labor of any sort, there had been no pruning, and very little digging; the aisles were green and luxuriant, the ground undisturbed. The perfume of the blossoms filled the air; on some of the trees blossoms and ripe fruit were hanging together.
Winthrop walked on under the bright foliage and bride-like bloom. But there was no sign of Margaret.
"Of course she would not be here," he thought, "or at least she would not stay; it's far too sweet."
At length he saw her light dress. She was not in the grove, as he had thought; she was in a glade beyond it. Here there was an old nondescript pillar, crowned by a clumsy vase. She was leaning against this ornament, with her back to the grove; one arm lay across the top. She wore no gloves, and he could see her pretty hand with its single ring, the band of plain gold. In front of her there was the low curb of an old well, overgrown with jessamine; she appeared to be looking at it.
His footsteps had made no sound on the soft earth, he came upon her before she discovered him.
"I don't think you can be much surprised to see me," he said; "you have waited here to the last hour of your allotted time. You might have gone days ago, and then I should not have seen you at all; but you have waited. It looks quite as if you expected me to come, as if you wished to give me one more final thrust before you joined your excellent husband. Of course I deserve nothing better."
CHAPTER XXXIV
"Yes, I have waited. But it was because I have been trying to – to arrange something," Margaret answered.
She had taken her hand from the old pillar, she stood erect now, with the white shawl she was wearing folded closely round her.
"Something nicely calculated to make me suffer more, I suppose; I haven't been punished enough for speaking as I did."
"It wasn't anything that concerned you."
"That everlasting self-possession of yours, Margaret! Here I come upon you suddenly; you're not a hard-hearted woman at all, and yet, thanks to that, you can receive me without a change of expression, you can see all my trouble and grief, and talk to me about 'arrangements!'"
"You asked me – you accused me – " Her calmness was not as perfect as he had represented it.
"What are the arrangements?" he said, abruptly.
"Do you think we had better discuss them?"
"We will discuss everything that concerns you. But don't be supposing I haven't heard; I have seen Aunt Katrina, and forced it out of her, I know you intend to go back to Lanse – intend to go to-morrow."
She did not reply.
"You don't deny it?"
"No, I don't deny it."
"And the arrangements?"
"I – I had thought of living here."
"Here, at East Angels, you mean? Oh, you wish to bring him here? An excellent idea; Aunt Katrina would not be separated longer from her dear boy, and Lanse and his retinue would fit in nicely among all the comforts and luxuries we have between us collected here. Yes; I see."
There was a quiver for an instant in Margaret's throat, though her face did not alter. "My only thought was that perhaps it would be more of a home for me," she answered, looking off over the green open space and the thicket beyond it.
His hardness softened a little. "Of course it would. You surely cannot have had the idea of living at Fernandina?"
"That would be as Lanse says."
"You are determined to go back to him?"
"Yes."
He changed his position so that he could have a better view of her face. "Bring him here, then!" he exclaimed. "Anything is better than to have you wandering about the world, homeless!"
"You would let me come and see you now and then?" he said, beginning again. He spoke in what he himself would have called a reasonable tone. "I could help you in a good many ways; of course, in saying this, you understand that I agree to accept Lanse – as well as I can."
"You must never come."
"Do you mean that?"
"I mean it unalterably."
"It's because I spoke as I did – this is my punishment. But if I promise never to speak in that way again?"
"You must not come."
"Tell me just what it is you intend to do – we'll have it out now. Tell me the whole, you needn't spare."
"After to-day, I wish – I intend – never to see you again – that is, alone. It is hard that you should make me speak it out in this way."
"Oh – make; you are capable of saying whatever you please without being made; whatever will do me the most good and hurt me the most – the two are synonymous in your opinion – that is what you delight in."
She had turned away with bent head.
"You are not as strong as you thought you were; it does hurt you, Margaret, after all, to say such things to me."
There was an old stone seat, with a high back, near the pillar; she sank down upon it.
"What you wish is to have me leave you – tire you and vex you no more. But I cannot go quite yet. I tell you that I will accept Lanse, as well as I can; I promise never again to open my lips as I did that last day; and still you are going to shut your door in my face, and keep it shut; and you assure me it is forever. This is unreasonable – a woman's unreason. Why shouldn't I come occasionally? – what are you afraid of? You will be surrounded by all your safeguards, your husband at the head. But your own will is a safeguard no human power could break; you are unassailable, taken quite by yourself, Mrs. Lansing Harold."
She did not look up.
"And you wouldn't be able, either, to carry it out – any such system of blockade," he went on. "Aunt Katrina would send for me; leaving that aside, Lanse himself would send; Lanse doesn't care a straw what my real opinion of him may be, so long as he can get some talk, some entertainment out of me, and it will be more than ever so now that he is permanently laid up. And if you should tell him of my avowal even, what would he say? 'Of course you know how to take rubbish of that sort' – that is what he would say! And he would laugh delightedly to think of my being caught."
Still she did not move.
He walked off a few paces, then came back. "And here, again, Margaret, even if you should be able to influence both Aunt Katrina and Lanse against me, do you think that would prevent my seeing you – I don't mean constantly, of course, but occasionally? Do you suppose I should obey your rules – even your wishes? Not the least in the world! I should always see you, now and then, in some way. I shouldn't make myself a public annoyance; but – I give you warning – I shall never lose sight of you as long as I breathe, as long as I am alive."
She stirred at last, she looked up at him.
"Yes, I see you are frightened; you wish to go – escape, go back to the house and shut yourself up out of my reach, as you usually do. But this time I'm merciless, I feel that it's my last chance; you cannot go (you needn't try to pass me) until you have told me why it is that you wish not to see me again, never again, in spite of the safety, the absolute unapproachableness of your position."
She sat there, her eyes on his hard, insistent face.
"Why do you make me more wretched than I am?" she asked.
"Because I can't help it! There is a reason, then?"
"Yes." She had bent her head down again.
"I thought so. And I am prepared to hear it," he went on.
His voice had altered so as he brought this out that she looked up. "What is it you expect to hear?" she asked in a whisper.
"It's a new idea, I admit – something that has just come to me; but it explains everything – your whole course, conduct, which have been such a mystery to me. You love Lanse, you have always loved him; that is the solution! In spite of the insult of his long neglect of you, his second desertion, you are glad to go back to him; there have been such cases of miserable infatuation among women, yours is one of them. But you do not wish me to see the process of your winning him over, or trying to; so I am to be sent away."
She got up. "And if I should say yes to this, acknowledge it, that would be the end? You would wish to see me no more?"
"Don't flatter yourself. Nothing of the kind. Recollect, if you please, that I love you; with me, unfortunately, it's for life. You may be weak enough – depraved enough, I might almost call it – to adore Lanse, – do you suppose that makes any difference in my adoring you? Do you think it's a matter of choice with me, my caring for you as I do? That I enjoy being mastered in this way by a feeling I can't overcome?"
"I am going to tell you my life," she said, abruptly.
"I know it already. – How beautiful you look!"
"I ought to look hideous." She walked about for a moment or two, and finally stopped, facing him, behind the old stone seat.
"It will make no difference what you say, I can tell you that now," he said, warningly.
"I think it will make a difference. You are not cruel."
"Yes, I am."
"I never loved Lanse," she began, hurriedly. "In one way it was not my fault; I was too young to appreciate what love meant, I was peculiarly immature in my feelings – I see that now.
"When the blow came, the blow of my discovering – what Lanse has already told you, I was crushed by it, – I had never known anything of actual evil.
"He told me to 'take it as a lady should.' I didn't know what he meant.
"I had no mother to go to. I felt even then that Aunt Katrina wouldn't be kind. In the overthrow of everything, the best I could think of to do was to hold on to one or two ideas that were left – that seemed to me right, and one of these was silence; I determined to tell nobody what had really happened; I would be loyal to my husband, as far as I could be, no matter what my husband was to me.
"So I went back to Aunt Katrina (as Lanse preferred). And I told nothing.
"I have no doubt I appeared cold enough. In the beginning there was a good deal of coldness, though there was always suffering underneath; but later it wasn't coldness, it was the constant effort to hide – I had thought my life difficult. But I had yet to learn that there was something more difficult still. I had not loved Lanse – no; but now I was finding out what love meant, for – for I began to love – you."
Winthrop started, the color rushed up and covered his face in a flood; in his eyes shone the transforming light of a happiness which had never been there before. For this man, in spite of his successes, had never attained much positive happiness for himself in life; Lanse, Lucian, many another idler, attained more. Happiness is an inconsistent goddess, by no means has she always a crown for strenuous effort; very often she seems to dwell longest with those who do not think beyond the morrow; there she sits and basks. However, she had come to Winthrop now, and royally, bringing him that which he cared the most for. He thanked her by his glowing face, his ardent eyes.
"It's nothing to be glad about," Margaret had said, quickly, when she saw the change in his face. "I tell you because I cannot endure that you should believe of me what you thought – about Lanse. And also because I am weak – yes, I confess it. You said you intended to see me, follow me; but now that you know how it is with me, you won't do that."
Winthrop's face remained triumphant. "Odd reasoning, Margaret."
"The best reasoning. So long as it was only you, you could do as you pleased. But now that you know that – that others will suffer too – " She paused. "I am sure I have not trusted you in vain?" she said, appealingly.
But he shook his head, the triumph still animated him. "You can trust me in one way; I won't take advantage, that is, not now. But you needn't try to make me think, Margaret, that it's not something to be glad about – to know that you care for me." He laughed a little from his sheer satisfaction; then, in his old way, he put his hands compactly down in the pockets of his coat, and stood there looking at her.
"Is it anything to be glad about – my wretchedness?" she asked, strengthening herself for the contest.
"It makes you wretched? Strange!"
"I am so wretched – I have been wretched so long – that only my firm belief that my Creator knows best has enabled me to live on, has kept me from ending it."
"Why should you be more unhappy than I am? Nothing could make me end my life now."
She looked at him in silence.
"If you look at me in that way – " Winthrop began.
She left her place. He stood where he was, watching her, but he was not paying much heed to what she was saying, now. He had the great fact, man-like, he was enjoying it; it was enough for the present – after all these years.
She seemed to see how little impression she had made. She came back to the old stone a second time to complete her story. "I tried so hard – I was so glad when I saw how you disliked me," she began.
"It wasn't dislike."
"I thought it was; and I was miserably glad. What did I take charge of Garda for but because I thought you loved her? That should be my penance, she should be like my own sister, and I would do everything that I possibly could for her, for her sake and yours. She was so very beautiful – "
He interposed here. "Yes, she was beautiful; but beautiful for everybody. Your beauty is dearer, because it is kept, in its fullest sweetness, for the man you love."
But no blush rose in her face, she was too unhappy for that; she was absorbed, too, in trying to reach him, to touch him, so that he would see what must be, as she saw it. "I did all I could for her," she went on, earnestly – "you know I did; I tried to influence her, I tried to love her; and I did love her. I was sure, too, that she cared for you – "
"It isn't everybody, you must remember, that has your opinion of me," interrupted her listener, delightedly.
"But she herself had told me – Garda had told me that she – However, I begin to think that I have never comprehended Garda."
"Don't try."
"I love her all the same. That afternoon when she was on her way to Madam Giron's to see Lucian, and I took her place, it seemed to me that day that an opportunity had been given to me to complete my penance to the full, and crush out my own miserable folly. I could save her in your eyes, and I could lose myself; for, after that, you could have, of course, only contempt for me. I believed that you loved her, I didn't see how you could help it (I don't see very well even now). And I believed, too, that under all her fancies, her real affection was yours; or would come back to you."
"All wrong, Margaret, the whole of it. Overstrained, exaggerated."
"It may be so, I was very unhappy, I had brooded over everything so long. Next, Lanse came back. And that was a godsend."
"Godsend!" said Winthrop, his face darkening.
"Yes. It took me away from you."
"To him."
"You have never understood – I was only the house-keeper – he wished to be made comfortable, that was all. It was a great deal better for me there."
"Was it, indeed; you looked so well and happy all that time!" His joyousness was gone now; anger had come again into his eyes.
"I could not be happy, how could I be? But at least I was safe. Then he left me that second time. And you were there; that was the hardest of all."
"You bore it well! I remember I found it impossible to get a word with you. The truth is, Margaret, I have never known you to falter, you are not faltering in the least even now. I can't quite believe, therefore, that you care for me as you say you do; you certainly don't care as I care for you, perhaps you can't. But the little you do give me is precious; for even that, small as it is, will keep you from going back to Lanse Harold."
"Keep me from going back? What do you suppose I have told you this for? Don't you see that it is exactly this – my feeling for you– that sends me, drives me back to him? On what plea, now, could I refuse to go? The pretense of unhappiness, of having been wronged?" She paused. Then rushed on again. "The law – of separation, I mean – is founded upon the idea that a wife is outraged, insulted, by her husband's desertion; but in my case Lanse's entire indifference to me, his estrangement – these have been the most precious possessions I have had! If at any time since almost the first moment I met you he had come back and asked for reconciliation, promised to be after that the most faithful of husbands, what would have become of me? what should I have said? But he did not ask – he does not now; I can only be profoundly grateful."
"Yes, compare yourself with a man of that sort – do; it's so just!"
"It is perfectly just. I am a woman, surrounded by all a woman's cowardice and nervousness and fear of being talked about; and he is a man, and not afraid; but at heart – at heart– how much better am I than he? You do not know – " She stopped. "I consider it a great part of my offense against my husband that I have never loved him," she added.
"The old story! Go on now and tell me that if you had loved him, he himself would have been better."
"No, that I cannot tell you; even if I had cared for him, I might have had no influence." She spoke with humility.
"Lanse knew perfectly that I did not love him, he knew it when I didn't," she went on. "And I really think – yes, I must say it – that if I had cared for him even slightly, he would have been more guarded, would have concealed more, spared me more; in little things, Lanse is kind. But he knew that I shouldn't suffer, in that way at least. And it was quite true; my real suffering – the worst suffering – has not come from him at all; it has come from you. At first I had plans – I was too young to give up all hope of something brighter some time. But my plans soon came to an end; when I knew – discovered – that I was beginning to care for you, all my hope turned to keeping in the one straight track that lay before me. I did not think I should fail – "
"I can well believe that!" he interrupted.
"Oh, do not be harsh to me! you do not know – You think my will is strong. But oh! it isn't – it isn't. When Lanse left me that second time, and you were there with me, I knew then that there was nothing for it but to go as far away from you as possible, and to go instantly; anything less, no matter how I should disguise it, would be staying because I wished to stay. And I did try to go; I would not enter that hotel when I saw you on the shore – I went back to the empty house. I dared not stay then. I will not now."
"You do well to change the terms," he answered, with unsparing bitterness, "it's nothing but will to-day, whatever it may once have been. I don't believe about your not daring; I don't, in fact, believe – that is, fully – anything you have said."
"Why, then, should I stay here talking longer?" She left the place and entered the orange grove, which she was obliged to pass through on her way to the house.
But he overtook her, he stepped in front and barred the way. "You have been remarkably skilful. I demanded an explanation, I was evidently going to make trouble. So you gave me this one: you said that you had, unfortunately for yourself, begun to love me, that was the explanation of everything; you threw me this to stop me, like a bone to a dog, so that you could get comfortably away. But I have this to tell you: if you had really loved me, you couldn't have argued quite so well! And you couldn't go now, either, so self-complacently, leaving me here in my pain."
"So be it," she said. She looked through the blossoming aisles to the right, to the left, as if in search of some rescuer, some one.
"But what does a woman like you know of love, after all – real love?" he went on, with angry scorn. "As a general thing, the better she is, the less she knows. And I have never denied that you were good, Margaret."
She moved to pass him.
"Not yet. You have reasoned the whole case out too well, there was rather too much reason; a lawyer couldn't have done it better."
"I have had time to think of the reasons. How often each day do you suppose I have gone over everything – over and over? And how many days have there been in these long years?"
"It isn't the time. It's your nature."
"Very well. It's my nature."
"But you needn't suppose that your having that nature will stop me," he said, with a certain violence of tone roused by her agreement with these accusations. "You have confessed to some sort of liking for me, I shall take advantage of it as far as it goes (not far, I fear); I shall make it serve as the foundation of all I shall constantly attempt to do."
Her arms dropped by her sides. "Constantly? I believe there is nothing in the world so cruel as a man when he pretends to care for you." She moved off a step or two. "I do not love you, you say? I adore you. From almost the first day I saw you – yes, even from then. It is the one love of my life, and remember I am not a girl, it's a woman who tells you this – to her misery. And it is everything about you that I love – that makes it harder; not only what you say and how you say it, what you think and do, but what you are– oh! what you are in everything. The way you look at me, the tone of your voice, the turn of your head, your eyes, your hands – I love them, I love them all. I suffer every moment, it has been so for years. I am so miserable away from you, so desperate and lonely! And yet when I am with you, that is harder. Whichever way I turn, there is nothing but pain, it is so torturing that I wonder how I can have lived! Yet would I give it up? Never."
The splendor of her eyes, as she poured forth these words, her rapt expression, the slight figure, erect and tense – he could no more have dared to touch her then than he could have touched a shining seraph that had lighted for an instant in his path.
Her eyes suddenly changed. "When I have hurt you," she went on, "it has been so hard to do it – so hard!" She was the woman now; a mist had suffused the blue.
He came towards her, he sank down at her feet. "I am not worthy," he murmured, in real self-abasement.
"No, you are not. But – I love you."
He sprang up. "I will be worthy. You shall do all you think right, and I – will help you."
"Yes, help me by leaving me."
"For the present – I will go."
"For always."
"Margaret, do not be hard. And now, when I know – "