The big pine was good for one thing, anyhow, if it did keep the house as dark as a cellar with the black shade it made. The side-porch was nice and cool even on a hot summer day, just right for making butter. If it wasn't for the horrid pitch-piny smell the tree wouldn't be so bad. The churning was getting along fine too. The dasher was beginning to go the blob-blob way that showed in a minute or two the butter would be there. It had been a real good idea to get up early and get the work out of the way so that the churning could be done before it got so hot. A thunder-storm was coming, too, probably. You could feel it in the air. There, perhaps the butter had come, now. Nelly pushed the dasher down slowly and drew it back with care, turning her ear to listen expertly to the sound it made. No, not yet, there wasn't that watery splash yet that came after it had separated.
She went on with the regular rhythmic motion, her eyes fixed dreamily on the round hole in the cover of the churn, through which the dasher-handle went up and down and which was now rimmed with thick yellow cream. She loved to churn, Nelly thought. She loved to have milk to look out for, anyhow, from the time it came in from the barn, warm and foamy and sweet-smelling, till the time when she had taken off the thick, sour cream, like shammy-skin, and then poured the loppered milk spatteringly into the pigs' trough. She liked seeing how the pigs loved it, sucking it up, their eyes half shut because it tasted so good. There wasn't anything that was better than giving people or animals what they liked to eat. It made her feel good all over to throw corn to the hens and see how they scrabbled for it. She just loved to get a bag of stick candy at the store, when she went to town, and see how Addie and Ralph and little 'Gene jumped up and down when they saw it.
And then it was so nice to be fore-handed and get the churning out of the way before noon. She would have time this afternoon after the dishes were done, to sit right down with that sprigged calico dress for little Addie. She could get the seams all run up on the machine before supper-time, and have the hand-work, buttonholes and finishing, for pick-up work for odd minutes. She just loved to sit and sew, in a room all nice and picked up, and know the house-work was done.
That would be a real pretty dress, she thought, with the pink sprigs and the pink feather-stitching in mercerized cotton she was going to put on it. Addie would look sweet in it. And if it was washed careful and dried in the shade it wouldn't fade so much. It was a good bright pink to start with. Only Addie ought to have a new hat to wear with it. A white straw with pink flowers on it. But that would cost a couple of dollars, anyhow, everything was so dear now. Oh well, 'Gene would let her buy it. 'Gene would let her do most anything.
She thought with pity of her sisters, mill-hands in West Adams still, or married to mill-hands, men who got drunk on the sly and didn't work regular, and wanted a full half of all they made for themselves. 'Gene and his mother were always scolding about the money they could have had if they'd kept that wood-land on the mountain. They'd ought to ha' been really poor the way she had been, so's you didn't know where the next meal was coming from, or how the rent was going to be paid. She had been awfully lucky to get 'Gene, who let her decide how much money ought to be spent on the children's clothes and hers, and never said a thing, or scolded or bothered. He was kind of funny, 'Gene was, always so sober and solemn, and it was a sort of bother to have him so crazy about her still. That had been all right when they were engaged, and first married. She had liked it all right then, although it always seemed sort of foolish to her. But men were that way! Only now, when there were three children and another one coming, and the house to be kept nice, and the work done up right, and the farmwork and everything going so good, and so much on her mind, why, it seemed as though they'd ought to have other things to think about beside kissings and huggings. Not that 'Gene didn't do his share of the work. He was a fine farmer, as good as anybody in the valley. But he never could settle down, and be comfortable and quiet with her, like it was natural for old married folks to do. If she went by him, close, so her arm touched him, why then, if nobody was there he'd grab at her and kiss her and rumple her hair, and set her all back in her work. With all she had to do and think of, and she did her work as good as anybody if she did say it who shouldn't, she had her day planned before she turned her feet out of bed in the morning. And she liked to have things go the way she planned them. She liked 'Gene all right, only she had her work to get done.
She churned meditatively, looking off towards the mountain where the Eagle Rocks heaved themselves up stiff and straight and high. 'Gene's mother came to the door, asked if the butter was coming all right, looked at her, and said, "My! Nelly, you get better looking every day you live," and went back to her bread-baking.
Nelly went on with her reflections about 'Gene. It was more than just that he bothered her and put her back with her work. She really didn't think it was just exactly nice and refined to be so crazy about anybody as that. Well, there was a streak in the Powerses that wasn't refined. 'Gene's mother! gracious! When she got going, laughing and carrying-on, what wouldn't she say, right out before anybody! And dancing still like a young girl! And that hateful old Mrs. Hewitt, just after they'd moved back to Ashley, didn't she have to go and tell her about 'Gene's being born too soon after his father and mother were married? 'Gene took it from his mother she supposed; he wa'an't to blame, really. But she hoped Addie and Ralph would be like her folks. Not but what the Powerses were good-hearted enough. 'Gene was a good man, if he was queer, and an awful good papa to Addie and Ralph and little 'Gene. None of her sisters had got a man half so good. That sprigged dress would look good with feather-stitching around the hem, too. Why hadn't she thought of that before? She hadn't got enough mercerized thread in the house, she didn't believe, to do it all; and it was such a nuisance to run out of the thread you had to have, and nobody going to the village for goodness knows when, with the farmwork behind the way it was, on account of the rains.
She shifted her position and happened to bring one of her feet into view. Without disturbing a single beat of the regular rhythm of the dasher, she tilted her head to look at it with approbation. If there was one thing she was particular about it was her shoes. She took such comfort in having them nice. They could say what they pleased, folks could, but high heels suited her feet. Maybe some folks, that had great broad feet like that old Indian Touclé, felt better in those awful, sloppy old gunboats they called "Common-sense shoes," but she didn't! It would make her sick to wear them! How they did look! Was there anything so pretty, anyhow, as a fine-leather shoe with a nice pointed toe, and a pretty, curved-in heel? It made you feel refined, and as good as anybody, even if you had on a calico dress with it. That was another nice thing about 'Gene, how he'd stand up for her about wearing the kind of shoes she wanted. Let anybody start to pick on her about it, if 'twas his own mother, he'd shut 'em up short, and say Nelly could wear what she liked he guessed. Even when the doctor had said so strict that she hadn't ought to wear them in the time before the babies came, 'Gene never said a word, when he saw her doing it.
There, the butter was just almost there. She could hear the buttermilk begin to swash! She turned her head to call to her mother-in-law to bring a pitcher for the buttermilk, when a sound of galloping hoofs echoed from the road. Nelly frowned, released her hold on the dasher, listened an instant, and ran into the house. She went right upstairs to her room as provoked as she could be. Well, she would make the bed and do the room-work anyhow, so's not to waste all that time. She'd be that much ahead, anyhow. And as soon as Frank had finished chinning with Mother Powers, and had gone, she'd go back and finish her churning. She felt mad all through at the thought of that cream left at just the wrong minute, just as it was separating. Suppose Frank hung round and hung around, the way he did often, and the sun got higher and the cream got too warm, and she'd have to put in ice, and go down cellar with it, and fuss over it all the rest of the day? She was furious and thumped the pillows hard, with her doubled-up fist. But if she went down, Frank'd hang around worse, and talk so foolish she'd want to slap him. He wa'n't more'n half-witted, sometimes, she thought. What was the matter with men, anyhow? They didn't seem to have as much sense as so many calves! You'd think Frank would think up something better to do than to bother the life out of busy folks, sprawling around all over creation the way he did. But she never had any luck! Before Frank it had been that old Mrs. Hewitt, nosing around to see what she could pick fault with in a person's housekeeping, looking under the sink if you left her alone in the kitchen for a minute, and opening your dresser drawers right before your face and eyes. Well, Frank was getting to be most as much of a nuisance. He didn't peek and snoop the way Mrs. Hewitt did, but he bothered; and he was getting so impudent, too! He had the big-head because he was the best dancer in the valley, that was what was the matter with him, and he knew she liked to dance with him. Well, she did. But she would like to dance with anybody who danced good. If 'Gene didn't clump so with his feet, she'd love to dance with him. And Frank needn't think he was so much either. That city man who was staying with the old man next to the Crittendens was just as good a dancer as Frank, just exactly as light on his feet. She didn't like him a bit. She thought he was just plain fresh, the way he told Frank to go on dancing with her. What was it to him! But she'd dance with him just the same, if she got the chance. How she just loved to dance! Something seemed to get into her, when the music struck up. She hardly knew what she was doing, felt as though she was floating around on that thick, soft moss you walked on when you went blue-berrying on the Burning above the Eagle Rocks . . . all springly. . . . If you could only dance by yourself, without having to bother with partners, that was what would be nice.
She stepped to the door to listen, and heard 'Gene's mother cackling away like an old hen. How she would carry on, with anybody that came along! She hadn't never settled down, not a bit really, for all she had been married and was a widow and was old. It wa'n't nice to be so lively as that, at her age. But she wasn't nice, Mother Powers wasn't, for all she was good to Addie and Ralph and little 'Gene. Nelly liked nice people, she thought, as she went back to shake the rag rugs out of the window; refined ladies like Mrs. Bayweather, the minister's wife. That was the way she wanted to be, and have little Addie grow up. She lingered at the window a moment looking up at the thick dark branches of the big pine. How horrid it was to have that great tree so close to the house! It shaded the bedroom so that there was a musty smell no matter how much it was aired. And the needles dropped down so messy too, and spoiled the grass.
Frank's voice came up the stairs, bold, laughing, "Nelly, Nelly, come down here a minute. I want to ask you something!"
"I can't," she called back. Didn't he have the nerve!
"Why can't you?" the skeptical question came from halfway up the stairs. "I saw you on the side-porch, just as I came up."
Nelly cast about for an excuse. Of course you had to have some reason for saying you couldn't see a neighbor who came in. She had an inspiration. "I'm washing my hair," she called back, taking out the hair-pins hastily, as she spoke. The great coils came tumbling down on her shoulders. She soused them in the water pitcher, and went to the door, opening it a crack, tipping her head forward so that the water streamed on the floor. "Can't you ask Mother Powers for whatever it is?" she said impatiently. She wished as she spoke that she could ever speak right out sharp and scratchy the way other people did. She was too easy, that was the trouble.
"Well," said Frank, astonished, "you be, for a fact."
He went back down the stairs, and Nelly shut the door. She was hot all over with impatience about that butter. When it wasn't one thing to keep her from her work, it was another. Her hair all wet now. And such a job to dry it!
She heard voices in the kitchen, and the screen-door open. Thank goodness, Frank was going away! Oh my! Maybe he was going to the village! He could bring some of the pink mercerized cotton on his way back. He might as well be of some use in the world. She thrust her head out of the window. "Frank, Frank, wait a minute!" she called. She ran back to her work-basket, cut a length from a spool of thread, wound it around a bit of paper, and went again to the window. "Say, Frank, get me two spools of cotton to match that, will you, at Warner and Hardy's."
He rode his horse past the big pine, under her window, and stood up in the stirrups, looking up boldly at her, her hair in thick wet curls about her face. "I'd do anything for you!" he said jokingly, catching at the paper she threw down to him.
She slammed the window down hard. How provoking he was! But anyhow she would have enough thread to feather-stitch that hem. She'd got that much out of him. The thought made up to her for some of the annoyance of the morning. She put a towel around her shoulders under her wet hair, and waited till he was actually out of sight around the bend of the road. It seemed to her that she saw something stir in the long grass in the meadow there. Could the woodchucks be getting so close to the house as that? She'd have to tie Towser up by her lettuce, nights, if they were.
Gracious, there it was thundering, off behind the Rocks! She'd have to hustle, if she got the butter done before the storm came. When Frank had really disappeared, she ran downstairs, and rushed out to her churn. She felt of it anxiously, her face clearing to note that it seemed no warmer than when she had left it. Maybe it was all right still. She began to plunge the dasher up and down. Well, it had gone back some, she could tell by the feel, but not so much, she guessed, but what she could make it come all right.
As she churned, she thought again of Frank Warner. This was the limit! He got so on her nerves, she declared to herself she didn't care if he never danced with her again. She wished she had more spunk, like some girls, and could just send him packing. But she never could think of any sharp things to say to folks, in time. She was too easy, she knew that, always had been. Look how long she had put up with Mrs. Hewitt's snooping around. And then in the end she had got cold feet and had had to sick 'Gene on to her, to tell her they didn't want her sitting around all the time and sponging off them at meal-times.
But somehow she didn't want to ask 'Gene to speak to Frank that way. She was afraid somehow it would get 'Gene excited. Mostly he was so still, and then all of a sudden he'd flare up and she never could see a thing to make him then more than any time. The best thing to do with Gene was to keep him quiet, just as much as she could, not do anything to get him started. That was why she never went close up to him or put her arms around his neck of her own accord. She'd like to pet him and make over him, the way she did over the children, but it always seemed to get him so stirred up and everything. Men were funny, anyhow! She often had thought how nice it would be if 'Gene could only be another woman. They could have such good times together.
Why, here was 'Gene himself come in from cultivating corn right in the middle of the morning. Maybe he wanted a drink. He came up on the porch, without looking at her and went into the house. How heavy he walked. But then he always did. That was the trouble with his dancing. You had to step light, to be a good dancer.
There was a crack of thunder again, nearer than the first one. She heard him ask his mother, "Frank Warner been here?"
And Mother Powers say, "Yes, he come in to ask if we could loan him our compass. He's going to go up tomorrow in the Eagle Rock woods to run out the line between the Warner and the Benson woodlots. The Warners have sold the popple on theirs to the Crittenden mill, and Frank says the blazes are all barked over, they're so old."
Oh goody! thought Nelly, there the butter was, come all at once. The buttermilk was splashing like water. Yes, even there around the hole you could see the little yellow specks. Well, she needn't have got so provoked, after all. That was fine. Now she could get at that sprigged dress for Addie, after all, this afternoon.
'Gene came out on the porch again. She looked at him and smiled. She felt very happy and relieved that the butter had come so that she could finish working it over before noon.
'Gene glowered at her smiling face and at her hair curling and shining all down her back. How cross he looked! Oh bother! Excited too. Well, what could the matter be, now? She should think any man would be satisfied to come in, right in the middle of the morning like that, without any warning, and find his house as spick and span as a pin, and the butter churned and half the day's work out of the way. She'd like to know what more he wanted? Who else could do any better? Oh bother! How queer men were!
Yes, it would really be lots nicer if there were only women and children in the world. Gracious! how that lightning made her jump! The storm had got there quicker'n she'd thought. But the butter had come, so it was all right.
PART III
CHAPTER XVIII
BEFORE THE DAWN
Neale had lain so long with his eyes on the place where the window ought to be, that finally he was half persuaded he could see it, a faintly paler square against the black of the room. Very soon dawn would come in that window, and another day would begin.
At the thought the muscles of his forearms contracted, drawing his fingers into rigidly clenched fists, and for a moment he did not breathe.
Then he conquered it again; threw off the worst of the pain that had sprung upon him when he had wakened suddenly, hours before, with the fear at last there before him, visible in the darkness.
What was this like? Where before had he endured this eternity of waiting? Yes, it was in France, the night when they waited for the attack to break, every man haggard with the tension, from dark till just before dawn.
He lay still, feeling Marise's breathing faintly stirring the bed.
There in France it had been a strain almost beyond human power to keep from rushing out of the trenches with bayonets fixed, to meet the threatened danger, to beat it back, to conquer it, or to die and escape the suspense. Now there was the same strain. He had the weapons in his hands, weapons of passion, and indignation and entreaty and reproach, against which Marise would not stand for a moment.
But there in France that would have meant possibly an insignificant local success and the greater victory all along the line imperiled. And here that was true again. There hadn't been anything to do then but wait. There was nothing to do now but wait.
Yes, but it was harder to wait now! There in France they had at least known that finally the suspense would end in the fury of combat. They would have the chance to resist, to conquer, to impose their will. And now there was no active part for him. He must wait on, and hold back his hand from the attack which would give him the appearance of victory, and which would mean everlasting defeat for him, for Marise, the death and ruin of what they had tried to be for each other, to build up out of their life together.
What did he mean by that? Wasn't he fooling himself with words, with priggish phrases? It was so easy to do that. And he was so mortally fatigued with this struggle in the dark. He had been thinking about it so deeply, so desperately, ever since he had faced it there, squarely, those endless black hours ago. He might have lost his way.
Now, once more, slowly, step by step, once more over the terrible road that led him here. Perhaps there was another way he had overlooked. Perhaps this time it would lead him to something less intolerable. Quiet now, steady, all that he had of courage and honesty and knowledge of Marise, and of life, and of himself, put to work.
His brain began again to plod up the treadmill it had labored on for so many black hours. He set himself to get it clear in his own mind, forcing those fierce, burning thoughts of his into words, as if he had been speaking aloud. "Now, now here I am. What must I do? What ought I to do? There must be some answer if I can only think clearly, feel aright. What is it that I want?"
The answer burst from him, as though in a cry of torture from his brain, his body, his passion, his soul, "I want Marise!"
And at this expression of overmastering desire, memory flooded his mind with a stream of unforgotten pictures of their life together; Marise facing him at the breakfast table; Marise walking with him in the autumn woods; Marise with Paul a baby in her arms; Marise, almost unknown then, the flame-like divinity of her soul only guessed-at, looking into his eyes as the Campagna faded into darkness below them. "What was it she asked me then? Whether I knew the way across the dark plain? I was a confident young fool then. I was sure I could find the way, with her. I've been thinking all these years that we were finding it, step by step . . . till now. And now, what is it I am afraid of? I'm afraid she finds herself cramped, wants a fuller existence, regrets . . . no, that's dodging. There's no use lying to myself. I'm afraid that Marise is in love with Vincent Marsh. Good God! no! It can't be that . . . not Marise! This is all nonsense. This is something left over from sleep and a bad dream. I must wake up. I must wake up and find it not true."
He lay perfectly still, his fists clenched tight, perspiration standing out on his rigid body. Then sternly he forced his mind to go forward again, step by step.
"I suppose it's possible. Other women have. There's a lot in her that must be starved here. I may not be enough for her. She was so young then. She has grown so greatly. What right have I to try to hold her if she is tired of it all, needs something else?"
He hesitated, shrinking back as from fire, from the answer he knew he must give. At last he forced it out, "I haven't any right. I don't want her to stay if she wants to go. I want Marise. But even more I want her to be happy."
The thought, with all its implications, terrified him like a death-sentence, but he repeated it grimly, pressing it home fiercely, "I want her to be happy."
He realized where this thought would lead him, and in a panic wildly fought against going on. He had tried to hold himself resolute and steady, but he was nothing now save a flame of resentment. "Happy! She won't be happy that way! She can't love that man! She's being carried away by that damnable sensibility of hers. It would be the most hideous, insane mistake. What am I thinking of . . . all these words! What I must do is to keep her from ruining her life."
On the heels of this outcry, there glided in insinuatingly a soft-spoken crowd of tempting, seductive possibilities. Marise was so sensitive, so impressionable, so easily moved, so defenseless when her emotions were aroused. Hadn't he the right, the duty, he who knew her better than anyone else, to protect her against herself? Wasn't he deceiving himself by fantastic notions? It would be so easy to act the ardent, passionate young lover again . . . but when had he ever "acted" anything for Marise! No matter, no matter, this was life or death; what was a lie when life and death hung in the balance? He could play on her devotion to the children, throw all the weight of his personality, work on her emotions. That was what people did to gain their point. Everybody did it. And he could win if he did. He could hold her.
Like the solemn tolling of a great bell there rang, through all this hurried, despairing clutching at the endurable and lesser, a call to the great and intolerable. The immensity of his love for Marise loomed up, far greater than he; and before that sacred thing he hung his head, and felt his heart breaking.
"No, that won't do. Not when it is Marise who is in question. The best, the very best I can conceive is what I must give to Marise. A cage could not hold her, not anything but her body, and to force her decision would be to make a cage. No, I mustn't use the children either. They are hers as much as mine. If all is not right between us, what would it avail them to be with us? They must take what life brings them, like the rest of us. If the years Marise and I have passed together, if what we have been to each other, and are to each other, if that is not enough, then nothing is enough. That would be a trick to play on her . . . to use my knowledge of her vulnerable points to win. That is not what I want. What do I want? I want Marise to be happy."
He had advanced a step since the last time he had told himself this, for now he said it with a dreadful calm, his heart aching but not faltering.
But he could go no further. There were limits to what he could endure. He fell into a trance-like state of passivity, his body and mind exhausted.
As he lay thus, fallen and prostrate, there soared up out of a part of him that was neither mind nor body, but was nevertheless himself, something swift and beautiful and living, something great enough at last to measure its greatness with the immensity of his love for Marise.
What was it?
It was this . . . for a moment he had it all clear, as though he had died and it were something told him in another world . . . he did not want Marise for himself; he did not even want her to be happy; he wanted her to be herself, to be all that Marise could ever grow to be, he wanted her to attain her full stature so far as any human being could do this in this life.
And to do that she must be free.
For an instant he looked full at this, his heart flooded with glory. And then the light went out.
He was there in the blackness again, unhappy beyond any suffering he had thought he could bear.
He lay still, feeling Marise beside him, the slow, quiet rhythm of her breathing. Was she awake or sleeping? What would happen if he should allow the fear and suffering which racked him to become articulate? If he should cry out to her, she would not turn away. He knew Marise. She would never turn away from fear and suffering. "But I can't do that. I won't work on her sympathy. I've promised to be true to what's deepest and truest in us both. I have been, by God! and I will be. If our married life has been worth anything, it's because we've both been free and honest . . . true with one another. This is her ordeal. She must act for herself. Better die than use my strength to force her against her own nature. If I decide . . . no matter how sure I am I'm right . . . it won't be her decision. Nothing would be decided. I must go on just as before . . ." he groaned, "that will take all the strength I have."
It was clear to him now; the only endurable future for them, such as they were to each other, would come from Marise's acting with her own strength on her own decision. By all that was sacred, he would never by word or act hamper that decision. He would be himself, honestly. Marise ought to know what that self was.
He had thought that this resolve would bring to him another of these terrible racking instants of anguish, but instead there came almost a calm upon him, as though the pain had passed and left him in peace, or as though a quiet light had shone out in the darkness. Perhaps the dawn had come. No, the square of the window was still only faintly felt in the blacker mass of the silent room.
Then he knew why the pain had left him. It had been driven away by the certainty that there was a worse fear than any he knew, or ever would know. No matter what risk or catastrophe lay before them, Marise would never look at him out her clear eyes and act a thing that was not true. Marise would always be Marise. Why then, whatever came he could bear it.
Life might be cruel and pitiless, but it was not base, when it had among its gifts such a certainty as that, rock-like under his feet, bearing him up in his pain.
He moved to her in the bed, felt for her hand and put it gently to his lips.
Then, holding it in his, on his breast, he turned his eyes towards the window, waiting for the dawn.
CHAPTER XIX
MR. WELLES LIGHTS THE FUSE
That early morning talk with Mr. Welles had left Marise trembling with helpless sorrow and exasperation. She sat on the bench where he had left her, and felt the nervous tears stinging her eyes. When she looked up and saw Vincent Marsh was standing there, extremely pale, as visibly shaken as she, as visibly little in control of himself, she burst out, "So you too know. He has just told me that he is really going. The very date is set. His cousin has a room in her boarding house engaged for him. He's going to work as a clerk to pay for the extra expenses of the life there. Oh!" She struck her hand on the back of the bench.
Vincent Marsh sat down beside her, his eyes on hers. He said in a curious, low voice, rough and husky, "I wish you would do something for me. I wish you would think with all your might, deeply, just why you are so opposed to his doing what evidently seems to him a very saintly and heroic action; and then tell me why it is."
Marise felt this as a challenge. He was always challenging everything. This time she was more than ready. "I don't need any time to think of reasons!" she cried. "It's obvious to anyone with any sense for the reality of human values, who isn't fooled by threadbare old words. It's one of those wasteful, futile, exasperating tricks people play on themselves in the name of 'duty.' He's throwing away something real and true, something that could add to the richness of human life, he's throwing away the happiness that comes of living as suits his nature, and so creating a harmony that enriches everybody who touches him. And what's he doing it for? To satisfy a morbid need for self-sacrifice. He's going to do harm, in all probability, mix up a situation already complicated beyond solution, and why is he? So that he can indulge himself in the perverse pleasure of the rasp of a hair-shirt. He doesn't really use his intelligence to think, to keep a true sense of proportions; he takes an outworn and false old ideal of self-sacrifice, and uses it not to do anybody any real good, but to put a martyr's crown on his head."
She became conscious that her words were having a singular effect upon Vincent. A dark flush had come over all his face. His gaze on her was extraordinary in its intentness, in its eagerness, in its fierceness. She stopped suddenly, as though he had broken in on what she was saying.
He did not stir from his place, but to her he seemed to tower taller. Into his dark, intent face came an exultant look of power and authority which fell on her like a hot wind. With a loud knocking of her heart she knew. Before he spoke, she knew what he would say. And he saw that.
He opened those burning lips and said in the same low voice, rough with its intensity, "You see what you have done. You have spoken for me. You have said at last what I have been silently and desperately calling out to you. You know what has happened. You have said it, it is obvious to anyone with any sense of human values. Make an end! Make an end! Come away from a position where only an outworn old ideal holds you to futility and waste. Come away where you will really live and know the fullness of life. Come away from that false notion of duty which makes you do for the children what you know is not best for them, only because it is the traditional thing to do, only because it gives you a martyr's crown to wear. I don't say anything now, as I would to any other woman in the world, as I would have said to you weeks ago before I knew all that you are . . . I don't say anything about the imbecility of keeping such a woman as you are here in this narrow, drab hole, this sordid prison . . . you born, if ever a human being was, to rich and warm and harmonious living! It is your birthright. Let me give it to you. All that, even that, a whole world of beauty and fullness waiting for you to create it to glorious being, all that is nothing compared to what has come to pass between us, you and me; compared to that other world of impassioned living existence that is waiting for you. Come away from the man who is nothing more to you than the house you live in . . . nothing but a habit."
She started at this, moving out of the stony immobility in which she gazed at him, listened to him. She did not know that she had moved, was incapable of willing to do so. It had been a mere reflex start as though she had been struck. But at the sight of it, the flame in his eyes leaped up. "No, no, no!" he cried with an insistent triumph, "he is nothing more to you than a habit. And you are nothing more to him. You were right, on that evening when you shrank away from the sight of the place in Italy where in your ignorant youth you made the mistake of trying to join your life to his. There is not a breath you draw, not a turn of your head or body . . . I know them all . . . that does not prove that he is nothing to you now. I have seen you take a handkerchief from his pocket as you would take it from a bureau-drawer. I have seen him set you on one side, to pass through a door, as he would set a chair on one side. You don't even see him any more when you look at him, and he doesn't see you. Whatever there may have been between you, if there was ever anything real, it is dead now, dead and buried . . . and you the most living woman who ever wore flesh and blood! And I am a living man! You know, I don't need to say it, you know what happens when our looks meet. Our looks only! Life flares up like a torch in both of us. You know if I but brush against your skirt, how I cannot speak! You know how when our hands touch, every drop of blood in our two bodies burns! You are a grown woman. You know life as well as I do. You know what this means. You are no longer even a part of his life. You are all of mine. Look at me now."
He flung out his hands, shaking uncontrollably. "Do you see how I show this, say this anywhere, tell this to you here, now, where anyone could hear me? I am not ashamed of it. It is not a thing to hide. It is a thing to glory in. It is the only honestly living thing in all our miserable human life, the passion of a man and a woman for each other. It is the only thing that moves us out of our cowardly lethargy of dead-and-alive egotism. The thing that is really base and false is to pretend that what is dead is still alive. Your marriage is dead. Your children do not need you as you pretend. Let yourself go in this flood that is sweeping us along. I had never thought to know it. I could fall down and worship you because you have shown it to me. But I will show it to you, that and the significance of what you will be when you are no longer smothered and starved. In all this scrawling ant-heap of humanity, there are only a handful of human beings who ever really live. And we will be among them. All the rest are nothing, less than nothing, to be stamped down if they impede you. They have no other destiny. But we have! Everything comes down to that in the end. That is the only truth. That . . . and you and I!"
In the distance, someone called Marise's name. He thought she made a move, and said, leaning towards her, the heat of his body burning through to her arm where he touched her, "No, no, none of those trivial, foolish interruptions that tie you hand and foot, can tie us any longer. They have no real strength. They can't stand for an instant against something alive. All that rattles in your ears, that keeps you from knowing what you really are . . ."
Someone was hurrying down the walk towards them, hidden by the hedge. Marise could not have turned her head if her life had hung on the action.
Vincent looked straight at her, straight and deep and strong into her eyes, and for an instant his burning lips were pressed on hers. The contact was terrible, momentous.
When he went on speaking, without haste, unafraid although the hurrying steps were almost there, she could scarcely hear his voice, although it was urgent and puissant as the impact of his eyes. "You can't get away from this now. It is here. It has been said. It lives between us, and you are not strong enough, no power on earth is strong enough, to put it down."
And then the outer world broke in on them, swept between them with an outcry. Someone was there, someone who drew short sobbing breaths, who caught at her and clung to her. It was Cousin Hetty's old Agnes . . . why in the world was she here? . . . and she was saying in a loud voice as though she had no control of it, "Oh, oh! Come quick! Come quick!"
Marise stood up, carrying the old woman with her. She was entirely certain now that she was in a nightmare, from which she would presently awake, wet with cold sweat.
"Come! Come!" cried the old woman, beating her hands on Marise's arm. "Perhaps it ain't too late. Perhaps you can do something."
"What has happened?" asked Marise, making her voice sharp and imperative to pierce the other's agitation.
"I don't know. I don't know," sobbed Agnes. "She didn't come down for breakfast. I went up to see . . . oh, go quick! Go quick!"
She went down, half on the bench, half on the ground.
Marise and Marsh stood for an instant, petrified.
There was only the smallest part of Marise's consciousness which was alive to this. Most of it lay numbed and bewildered, still hearing, like a roll of thunder, the voice of Vincent Marsh.
Then she turned. "Look out for her, will you," she said briefly. "No, don't come with me. I'll go by the back road. It's the quickest, but it's too narrow for a car. You drive to Ashley and bring the doctor in your car."
She ran down the path and around the house to the road, not feeling the blinding heat of the sun. She ran along the dusty road, a few steps from the house before the turn into the narrow lane. She felt nothing at all but a great need for haste.
As she ran, putting all her strength into her running, there were moments when she forgot why she was hurrying, where she was going, what had happened; but she did not slacken her pace. She was on the narrow back road now, in the dense shade of the pines below the Eagle Rocks. In five minutes she would be at Cousin Hetty's. That was where she was going.
She was running more slowly now over the rough, uneven, stony road, and she was aware, more than of anything else, of a pain in her chest where she could not draw a long breath. It seemed to her that she must be now wholly in the bad dream, for she had the nightmare sensation of running with all her strength and not advancing at all. The somber, thick-set pines seemed to be implacably in the same place, no matter how she tried to pass them, to leave them behind, to hurry on. Everything else in the silent, breathless, midsummer forest was rooted immovably deep in the earth. She alone was killing herself with haste, and yet futilely . . . not able to get forward, not able to . . .
And then, fit to turn her brain, the forest drew aside and showed her another nightmare figure, a man, far away to her right, running down the steep incline that sloped up to the Rocks. A man running as she had been wishing she could run, a powerful, roughly dressed man, rapt in a passion of headlong flight, that cast him down the rough slope, over the rocks, through the brambles, as though his flight were part of an endless fall.
Marise stopped stock-still, shocked out of every sensation but the age-old woman's instinct of fear and concealment.
The man plunged forward, not seeing her where she stood on the road across which he now burst, flinging himself out of the pines on one side and into the thicket of undergrowth on the other.
Far from him as she was, Marise could hear, through the forest hush, the terrible sound of his breathing as he ran, as he stumbled, as he struggled to his feet, fighting crazily with the thick undergrowth. Those loud hoarse gasps . . . it was as though he were being choked to death by a hand on his throat.
He was gone, down the slope towards the valley road. The leaves closed together behind him. The forest was impenetrably silent again. Marise knew who he was, then, recognized him for 'Gene Powers beyond any doubt.
She felt a strange mixture of pity and scorn and envy. To be so primitive as that . . . to think, even for an instant's madness, that you could run away on your own two poor human feet from whatever life brought to you!
She herself was hurrying forward again. What was she going to? What had she left behind? The passage of the other runner had not taken a single moment's time. She was now at the path which led to Cousin Hetty's side-door.
She darted along this, and found herself in the yard before the door, open as Agnes had left it when she rushed out for help.
A tea-kettle on the kitchen-stove sang in a low murmur. The clock ticked loudly, wagging its pendulum back and forth. The cat, stretched at full length on the floor in a yellow square of sunlight, lifted a drowsy head and looked at her. There was a smell of freshly made coffee in the air. As she stood there for an instant till the whirling in her head should stop, a stick of wood in the fire broke and fell together.
Marise went through into the dining-room where the table laid for breakfast stood in a quiet expectancy. The old house, well-kept and well-loved, wore a tranquil expression of permanence and security.
But out in the dusky hail, the white stairs stood palely motioning up. There Marise felt a singular heavy coolness in the stagnant air. She went up the stairs, leaning on the balustrade, and found herself facing an open door.
Beyond it, in a shuttered and shaded room, stood a still white bed. And on the bed, still and white and distant, lay something dead. It was not Cousin Hetty. That austere, cold face, proud and stern, was not Cousin Hetty's. It was her grandmother's, her father's, her uncle's face, whom Cousin Hetty had never at all resembled. It was the family shell which Cousin Hetty had for a time inhabited.
Marise came forward and crossed the threshold. Immediately she was aware of a palpable change in the atmosphere. The room was densely filled with silence, which folded her about coldly. She sank down on a chair. She sat motionless, looking at what lay there so quiet, at the unimaginable emptiness and remoteness of that human countenance.
This was the end. She had come to the end of her running and her haste and her effort to help. All the paltry agitations and sorrows, the strains and defeats and poor joys, they were all hurrying forward to meet this end.
All the scruples, and sacrifices, and tearing asunder of human desires to make them fit words that were called ideals, all amounted to this same nothingness in the end.
What was Cousin Hetty's life now, with its tiny inhibitions, its little passivities? The same nothingness it would have been, had she grasped boldly at life's realities and taken whatever she wanted.
And all Cousin Hetty's mother's sacrifices for her, her mother's hopes for her, the slow transfusion of her mother's life to hers; that was all dead now, had been of no avail against this nothingness. Some day Elly would lie like that, and all that she had done for Elly, or could do for her, would be only a pinch of ashes. If she, if Cousin Hetty, if Cousin Hetty's mother, if Elly, if all of them, took hotly whatever the hours had to give, they could not more certainly be brought to nothingness and oblivion in the end. . . .
Those dreams of her . . . being one with a great current, sweeping forward . . . what pitiful delusions! . . . There was nothing that swept forward. There were only futile storms of froth and excitement that whirled you about to no end, one after another. One died down and left you becalmed and stagnant, and another rose. And that would die down in its turn. Until at the end, shipwreck, and a sinking to this darkly silent abyss.
CHAPTER XX
A PRIMAEVAL HERITAGE
Cousin Hetty lay coldly dead; and Marise felt herself blown upon by an icy breath that froze her numb. The doctor had come and gone, queerly, and bustlingly alive and full of talk and explanations; Agnes had come back and, silently weeping, had walked endlessly and aimlessly around the house, with a broom in her idle hand; one after another of the neighbors had come and gone, queerly alive as usual, they too, for all their hushed and awkward manners; Neale had come, seeming to feel that cold breath as little as the others.
And now Neale was gone, after everything had been decided, all the incredibly multitudinous details that must be decided. The funeral was set for the day after tomorrow, and until then, everything in everybody's life was to stop stock-still, as a matter of course. Because Agnes was in terror of being left alone for an instant, Marise would not even leave the house until after the funeral, and one of the thousand petty unescapable details she and Neale had talked of in the hushed voice which the house imposed on all in it, was the decision as to which dress and hat were to be sent to her from the wardrobe at home.
She was to stay there with Agnes, she, who was all the family old Cousin Hetty had left, for the last watch over what lay up there on the bed in her bedroom. Neale would look out for the children (there was no one else for the moment, Touclé was gone, Eugenia quite useless), would telegraph the few old friends who would care to know the news, would see Mr. Bayweather about the funeral, would telephone the man in West Ashley who dug graves, would do what was to be done outside; and she would do what was to be done inside, as now, when she sat on the stairs waiting in case the undertaker needed something.
She was glad that the undertaker was only quiet, white-bearded old Mr. Hadley, who for so many, many years had given his silent services to the dead of Ashley that he had come to seem not quite a living figure himself, hushed and stilled by his association with everlasting stillness. Marise, cold and numbed with that icy breath upon her, knew now why the old undertaker was always silent and absent. A strange life he must have had. She had never thought of it till she had seen him come into that house, where she and Agnes waited for him, uncertain, abashed, not knowing what to do. Into how many such houses he must have gone, with that same quiet look of unsurprised acceptance of what everybody knew was coming sometime and nobody ever expected to come at all. How extraordinary that it had never occurred to her that Cousin Hetty, old as she was, would some day die. You never really believed that anybody in your own life was ever going to die, or change; any more than you really believed that you yourself were ever going to grow old, or change; or that the children were ever really going to grow up. That threadbare old phrase about the death of old people, "it always comes as a shock," that was true of all the inevitable things that happened in life which you saw happen to everyone else, and never believed would happen to you.
This was the last tie with the past gone, the last person disappeared for whom she was still the little girl she felt herself now, the little girl who had lost her way and wanted someone to put her back in the path. She had a moment of very simple, sweet sorrow, sitting there alone in the hall, warm tears streaming down her cheeks and falling on her hands. Cousin Hetty gone, dear old Cousin Hetty, with her bright living eyes, and her love for all that was young. How much she owed her . . . those troubled years of her youth when Cousin Hetty and the old house were unfailing shelter. What shelter had she now?
The pendulum of her mind swung back . . . of course this was silly traditional repeating of superstitious old words. There was no shelter; there could be none in this life. No one could show her the path, because there was no path; and anyone who pretended to show it was only a charlatan who traded on moments of weakness like this.
Mr. Hadley opened the door quietly and asked in that seldom-heard voice of his for a couple of soft, clean towels. Where did Cousin Hetty keep her towels? In the chest of drawers at the end of the hall. An odor of cloves came up spicily into the air as Marise opened the drawer. How like Cousin Hetty to have that instead of the faded, sentimental lavender. She had perhaps put those towels away there last night, with her busy, shaking old hands, so still now. All dead, the quaintness, the vitality, the zest in life, the new love for little Elly, all dead now, as though it had never been, availing nothing. There was nothing that did not die.
She handed in the towels and sat down again on the stairs leaning her head against the wall. What time could it be? Was it still daylight? . . . No, there was a lamp lighted down there. What could she have been doing all day, she and Agnes and the doctor and Mr. Hadley? She wondered if the children were all right, and if Neale would remember, when he washed Mark's face, that there was a bruise on his temple where the swing-board had struck him. Was that only yesterday morning! Was it possible that it was only last night that she had lain awake in the darkness, trying to think, trying to know what she was feeling, burning with excitement, as one by one those boldly forward-thrusting movements came back to her from the time when he had cried out so angrily, "They can't love her. They're not capable of it!" to the time when they had exchanged that long reckless gaze over Elly's head! And now there was the triumphant glory of security which had been in his kiss . . . why, that was this morning, only a few hours ago! Even through her cold numbed lassitude she shrank again before the flare-up of that excitement, and burned in it. She tried to put this behind her at once, to wait, like all the rest, till this truce should be over, and she should once more be back in that mêlée of agitation the thought of which turned her sick with confusion. She was not strong enough for life, if this was what it brought, these fierce, clawing passions that did not wait for your bidding to go or come, but left you as though you were dead and then pounced on you like tigers. She had not iron in her either to live ruthlessly, or to stamp out that upward leap of flame which meant the renewal of priceless youth and passion. Between these alternatives, she could make no decision, she could not, it would tear her in pieces to do it.
The pendulum swung back again, and all this went out, leaving her mortally tired. Agnes came to the foot of the stairs, a little, withered, stricken old figure, her apron at her eyes. From behind it she murmured humbly, between swallowing hard, that she had made some tea and there was bread and butter ready, and should she boil an egg?
A good and healing pity came into Marise's heart. Poor old Agnes, it was the end of the world for her, of course. And how touching, how tragic, how unjust, the fate of dependents, to turn from one source of commands to another. She ran downstairs on tip-toe and put her arm around the old woman's shoulder. "I haven't said anything yet, Agnes," she told her, "because this has come on us so suddenly. But of course Mr. Crittenden and I will always look out for you. Cousin Hetty . . . you were her best friend."
The old woman laid her head down on the other's shoulder and wept aloud. "I miss her so. I miss her so," she said over and over.
"The thing to do for her," thought Marise, as she patted the thin heaving shoulders, "is to give her something to work at." Aloud she said, "Agnes, we must get the front room downstairs ready. Mr. Hadley wants to have Cousin Hetty brought down there. Before we eat we might as well get the larger pieces of furniture moved out."
Agnes stood up, docilely submitting herself to the command, stopped crying, and went with Marise into the dim old room, in which nothing had been changed since the day, twenty years ago, when the furniture had been put back in place after Cousin Hetty's old mother had lain there, for the last time.
The two women began to work, and almost at once Agnes was herself again, stepping about briskly, restored by the familiarity of being once more under the direction of another. They pulled out the long haircloth sofa, moved the spindle-legged old chairs into the dining-room, and carried out one by one the drawers from the high-boy in the corner. From one of these drawers a yellowed paper fell out. Marise picked it up and glanced at it. It was a letter dated 1851, the blank page of which had been used for a game of Consequences. The foolish incoherencies lay there in the faded ink just as they had been read out, bringing with them the laughter of those people, so long dead now, who had written them down in that pointed, old-fashioned handwriting. Marise stood looking at it while Agnes swept the other room. Cousin Hetty had been ten years old in 1851, just as old as Paul was now. Her mother had probably left something she wanted to do, to sit down and laugh with her little daughter over this trivial game. A ghostly echo of that long-silent laughter fell faintly and coldly on her ear. So soon gone. Was it worth while to do it at all? Such an effort, such a fatigue lay before those children one tried to keep laughing, and then . . .
Someone came in behind her, without knocking or ringing. People had been coming and going unannounced in that house all the day as though death had made it their own home. Agnes came to the door, Marise looked up and saw Nelly Powers standing in the door-way, the second time she had been there. "I come over again," she said, "to bring you some hot biscuit and honey. I knew you wouldn't feel to do much cooking." She added, "I put the biscuits in the oven as I come through, so they'd keep warm."
"Oh, thank you, Nelly, that's very kind and thoughtful," said Marise. As she spoke and looked at the splendid, enigmatic woman standing there, the richness of her vitality vibrating about her, she saw again the nightmare vision of 'Gene and heard the terrible breathing that had resounded in the Eagle Rock woods. She was overwhelmed, as so often before in her life, by an amazement at the astounding difference between the aspect of things and what they really were. She had never entirely outgrown the wildness of surprise which this always brought to her. She and Nelly, looking at each other so calmly, and speaking of hot biscuits!
She listened as though it were an ironically incongruous speech in a play to Agnes' conscientious country attempt to make conversation with the caller, "Hot today, ain't it? Yesterday's storm didn't seem to do much good." And to Nelly's answer on the same note, "Yes, but it's good for the corn to have it hot. 'Gene's been out cultivating his, all day long."
"Ah, not all day! Not all day!" Marise kept the thought to herself. She had a vision of the man goaded beyond endurance, leaving his horses plodding in the row, while he fled blindly, to escape the unescapable.
An old resentment, centuries and ages older than she was, a primaeval heritage from the past, flamed up unexpectedly in her heart. There was a man, she thought, who had kept the capacity really to love his wife; passionately to suffer; whose cold intelligence had not chilled down to . . ."
"Well, I guess I must be going now," said Nelly in the speech of the valley. She went away through the side-door, opening and shutting it with meticulous care, so that it would not make a sound. . . . As though a sound could reach Cousin Hetty now!
"I don't like her biscuits," said Agnes. "She always puts too much sody in." She added, in what was evidently the expression of an old dislike, "And don't she look a fool, a great hulking critter like her, wearing such shoes, teeterin' along on them heels."
"Oh well," said Marise, vaguely, "it's her idea of how to look pretty."
"They must cost an awful sight too," Agnes went on, scoldingly, "laced halfway up her leg that way. And the Powerses as poor as Job's turkey. The money she puts into them shoes'd do 'em enough sight more good if 'twas saved up and put into a manure spreader, I call it."
She had taken the biscuits out of the oven and was holding them suspiciously to her nose, when someone came in at the front door and walked down the hall with the hushed, self-conscious, lugubrious tip-toe step of the day. It was Mr. Bayweather, his round old face rather pale. "I'm shocked, unutterably shocked by this news," he said, and indeed he looked badly shaken and scared. It came to Marise that Cousin Hetty had been of about his age. He shook her hand and looked about for a chair. "I came to see about which hymns you would like sung," he said. "Do you know if Miss Hetty had any favorites?" He broke off to say, "Mrs. Bayweather wished me to be sure to excuse her to you for not coming with me tonight to see if there was anything she could do. But she was stopped by old Mrs. Warner, just as we were leaving the house. Frank, it seems, went off early this morning to survey some lines in the woods somewhere on the mountain, and was to be back to lunch. He didn't come then and hasn't showed up at all yet. Mrs. Warner wanted my wife to telephone up to North Ashley to see if he had perhaps gone there to spend the night with his aunt. The line was busy of course, and Mrs. Bayweather was still trying to get them on the wire when I had to come away. If she had no special favorites, I think that 'Lead, Kindly Light, Amid th' Encircling Gloom' is always suitable, don't you?"
Something seemed to explode inside Marise's mind, and like a resultant black cloud of smoke a huge and ominous possibility loomed up, so darkly, so unexpectedly, that she had no breath to answer the clergyman's question. Those lines Frank Warner had gone to survey ran through the Eagle Rock woods!
"Or would you think an Easter one, like 'The Strife Is O'er, the Battle Won,' more appropriate?" suggested Mr. Bayweather to her silence.
Agnes started. "Who's that come bursting into the kitchen?" she cried, turning towards the door.
It seemed to Marise, afterwards, that she had known at that moment who had come and what the tidings were.
Agnes started towards the door to open it. But it was flung open abruptly from the outside. Touclé stood there, her hat gone from her head, her rusty black clothes torn and disarranged.
Marise knew what she was about to announce.
She cried out to them, "Frank Warner has fallen off the Eagle Rocks. I found him there, at the bottom, half an hour ago, dead."
The savage old flame, centuries and ages older than she, flared for an instant high and smoky in Marise's heart. "There is a man who knows how to fight for his wife and keep her!" she thought fiercely.