Part 2
“A man somewhat tall and comely, his hair the color of a ripe chestnut, curling and waving.” The description recurred to her, not as though written to the Roman Senate by Lentulus, Governor of Judea, but as if printed in bossed letters about the rim of the picture. “In the middle of his head a seam parteth it, after the manner of the Nazarites. His forehead is plain and very delicate, his face without spot or wrinkle, beautified with a lovely red; his nose and mouth of charming symmetry. His look is very innocent and mature; his eyes gray, clear and quick. His body is straight and well proportioned, his hands and arms most delectable to behold.”
“His eyes gray, clear and quick.” From the window they followed her--the eyes that had looked into hers on the beach, full of longing light--the eyes that had charmed her and had seemed to draw up her soul to look back at them.
She dragged her gaze away with a quick shudder, to a realization of her surroundings. A paining recoil seized her at the temerity of her thought, and her imaginings shrank within themselves. A vivid shame bathed her soul. She felt half stifled.
The dulled and droning intonation of the reader came to her as something banal and shop-worn. He was large and heavy-voiced. His hair was sandy and thin, and his skin was of that peculiar pallor and pursiness bred of lack of exercise and a full diet. It reminded her irresistibly of pink plush. He had a double chin, and he intoned with eyes cast down, and his large hands clasped before him, after the fashion affected by the higher church. His monotonous and nasal utterance glossed the periods with unctuous and educated mispronunciation. The congregation was punctuated with nodding heads.
To Margaret, listening dully, there seemed to be an inexpressible incongruity between the man and the office, between the face and the robes, which should have lent a spirituality. She looked about her furtively. Surely, surely she must see that thought reflected from other faces; but her range of vision took in only countenances overflowing with conscious Sabbath rectitude, heads nodding with rhythmic sleepiness and eyes shining with churchly complacency. Suddenly through the rolling periods the meaning struck through to Margaret, and her wandering mind was instantly arrested.
“_For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are of the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace._”
She heard the words with painful eagerness. Her mind seemed suddenly as acute, as quick to record impressions as though she had just awakened from a long sleep.
A woman in a pew to Margaret’s right dropped her prayer-book with a smart crash onto the wooden floor. The smooth brows drew together sharply and his voice, pauseless, took on a note of asperity, of irritated displeasure. Reading was a specialty of his, and to be interrupted spoiled the general effect and displeased him.
“_Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be._”
“_So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God._”
An old man, bent and deaf, sat close up under the reader’s desk. He leaned forward with elbow on knee and one open palm behind a hairy ear. His eyes were raised, and his look was rapt. Margaret could see his side-face from where she sat. He saw only the sanctified figure of the priest and heard no human monotone, but the voice of God, speaking through the lips of His anointed. He was a real worshipper. For her the spiritual was swallowed up. That one bodily image stood before her inner self. It had blotted out her diviner view; it had even thrust itself behind the flowing robes and sandaled feet and had dared to usurp the place of the eternal symbol of human spirituality!
She locked her hands about her prayer-book, pinching them between her knees. The woman directly in front of her wore a hot, figured silk and a drab mull boa that looked dreadfully like bunched caterpillars. The riotous rose-odor made her faint and sick, and she had a horrible feeling that the carved heads of the jutting stone work were laughing evilly at her.
A strangling terror of herself seized her--a terror of this new and hideous darkness that had descended upon her spirit--a terror of this overmastering impulse which threatened her soul. It was part of the dominance of the flesh that its senses should be opened only to itself, only to the earthy and the lower. This penalty was already upon her; of all in that congregation, she, only she, must see the bestial lurking everywhere, even in God’s house, and in the vestments of His minister.
“_So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God._”
It was part of their punishment that they could no longer please themselves. Out from every shape of nature and art, from the shadows of grove and the sunshine of open plain, from the crowded street and from the silent church must start forever this spectre, this unsightly comrade of fleshly imagination. This was what it meant to be carnally minded. Margaret’s soul was weak and dizzy with pain.
* * * * *
For in some such way will every woman cry. The very purity of her soul will rise to bar out the love that is of earth, earthy--the beautiful human love so young, so tender-eyed and warm-fingered, and with the lovely earth-light that is about its brows. And then, when the soul grows weary of the pallid thoughts, when the chill of the shadows strikes through--when the walls grow cold and the soul lifts iron bar and chain to let in the human sunshine, then the pale images that throng the house gather and are frightened at the very joy of the sun, and they try to shut the door again against the shining, and sit sorrowful in a trembling dark.
The cry of the woman is, “Give me soul! Give me spirituality!” Oh, loved hand! Oh, eyes! Oh, kissed lips and fondled hair! The woman’s love gives to each of you a soul. You will shine for her in her nethermost heaven.
“Tell me not of my love,” she cries, “that it is corporeal and must fade! Tell me only that it is of the spirit, a fond and heavenly light, such as never was in earthly sunrise or in evening star! A soul, but not a body! An essence, but no substance! It is too lovely to be of earth, too sweet to be only of this failing human frame. Its speech is the speech of angels, and its eyes are like the cherubim. Tell me not that it is not all of the soul!” So, until she dreams the last dream of love in earth-gardens, until she closes her soul’s eyes to dream of the humanity of love, the dignity of human passion, until then she perfumes the lily and paints the rose.
When the temperament that loves much and is oversensitive opens the gates of its sense to human passion, if its spiritual side recoils, it recoils with self-renunciation and with tears. The pain of such renunciation makes woman’s soul weak. Its self-probings and the whips of its conscience, made a very inquisitor, form for her a present horror. She cries out for the old dream, the old ideal, the old faith! It is the tears she sheds for this which drop upon the wall of the world’s convention and temper it to steel.
“_Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh to live after the flesh. For, if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live._”
The droning voice of the reader hummed in Margaret’s ears. She came to herself again, almost with a start, dimly conscious that the woman in crêpe in the next pew was watching her narrowly. She must sit out the service. She fell to studying the pattern of the embroidery on the altar cloths. It was in curiously woven arabesques, grouped about the monogram of Christ. Anything to withdraw her eyes from the face of the reader, for which she was beginning to feel a growing and unreasoning repulsion.
Throughout the remainder of the sermon she kept her gaze upon her open Bible, turning up mechanically all the cross references to the word “flesh.” She followed the contradistinction of flesh and spirit through the New Testament. It was the _flesh_ lusting against the _spirit_, and the _spirit_ against the _flesh_, contrary the one to the other. The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life--these all of the world.
The voice of the priest ran along in pauseless flow. It seemed to Margaret that he was repeating, with infinite variations, the same words over and over: “So they that are in the flesh cannot please God.”
As she rose for the final benediction, her knees felt weak and she trembled violently. She remembered what happened afterward only confusedly. The next thing she really knew was the sense of a moist apostolic palm pressed against her forehead as she half sat on the stone bench to the right of the entrance, and a smooth, rounded voice saying:
“Mrs. Atherton! Mrs. Starr! will you come back here a moment? This dear young woman appears to be overcome with the heat!”
IV.
Daunt to Margaret.
“NEW YORK, Sunday Morning.
“My Very Own!--Is that the way to begin a love letter? Anyhow, it is what I want to say. It is what I have called you a thousand times, to myself, since a one day far back--which I shall tell you about some time--when I made up my mind that you should love me. Does that sound conceited? Did you ever guess it? Over a year I have carried the thought with me; you have loved me only half that time.
“How I have watched your love unfolding! How I have hugged and treasured every new little leaf! I have been afraid so long to touch it; I wanted every petal full-blown, before I picked it, to be mine--mine, only mine, all mine, as long as I lived.
“Since I left you yesterday, to come up to this dismal city, I have been so happy that I have almost pinched myself to see if I were not asleep. To think that all my richest dreams have come true all at once!
“When I think of it, it makes me feel very humble. I shall be more ambitious. I am going to write better and truer. I must make you proud of me! I am going to work hard. No other man ever had such an incentive to grow--to catch up with ideals--as I have, because no other man ever had you to love.
“Yesterday I went directly from the train to the club. I pulled one of the big chairs into a shaded corner and closed my eyes to feel over and over again the deliciousness of the afternoon. I could feel your body in my arms and your head hard against my shoulder and--that first kiss. It has been on my lips ever since! I haven’t dared even to smoke for fear it might vanish!
“All the while I had a curious, vivid, tumultuous sense as though I were in especially close touch with you. It seemed almost as if you wanted to tell me something, and that _I couldn’t quite hear_.
“After I went to bed I could not sleep for happiness; I wondered what you had been doing, saying, thinking, dreaming--whether you thought of me much, and, most of all, when you knelt down that night! Shall I always be in the ‘Inner Room,’ and shall you look in often?
“A letter is such a pitiful makeshift! I could go on writing pages! I want to put my arms around you and whisper it in your ear!
“The church-bells are ringing now. I can picture you sitting in the chapel, just as you do every Sunday, and, maybe sometimes, just a minute of course, stealing a little backward thought of me!
“Always in my mind, you will be linked with red roses, such as you wore _then_. To-day I am sending you down a hamper of them. I should like to think of you to-night as sleeping nestled up in them, and dreaming their perfume. I am longing to see you. I feel as though I wanted to roll the day up and push it away to get into to-morrow quicker.
“You will hardly be able to read this--my pen runs away with me; but I know you can read what is written over it all and between every two lines--that I love you, I love you wholly, unalterably.
“God keep you, safe and sound, dearest, always, always--for me!
“RICHARD.”
Margaret to Daunt.
“Monday.
“I am leaving this morning for a long visit. I cannot see you again. I have made up my mind suddenly--since I saw you Saturday afternoon, I mean. You will think this incomprehensible, I know, but, believe me, I _must_ go.
“Think of me as generously as you can. This will hurt you, and to hurt you is the hardest part of it. Do not think that I have treated our association lightly. I could go upon my knees to beg you not to believe that I have been deliberately heartless. Remember me, not as the one who writes you this now, but as the girl who walked with you on the beach and who, for that one hour, thought she saw heaven opened.
“MARGARET LANGDON.”
Daunt to Margaret.
“Dear:--You must let me write you. You _must_ listen! What does your letter mean? What is the reason? If there had been anything that could come between us, I know you well enough to believe you would have told me before. How can you expect me to accept such a dismissal? I don’t understand it. What is it that has changed you? What takes you from me? Surely I have a right to know. Tell me! You can’t intend to stay away. It’s monstrous! It’s unthinkable! Explain this mystery!
“I could not believe, when I received your letter to-day in the city, that you had written it. It seemed an evil dream that I must wake up from. Yet I have come back here to our summer haunt to find it true and you gone. You have even left me no address, and I must direct this letter to your city number, hoping it will be forwarded you.
“How can you ask me to submit to a final sentence like this? I feel numbed and stung by the suddenness of it! I can’t find myself. I can do nothing but wrestle with the unguessable why of your going. It’s beyond me.
“After that one afternoon on the sands, after that delicious day of realization that my hopes were true--that you loved me--to be flung aside in a moment like an old glove, like a burnt-out match, with no word of explanation, of reason--nothing! It shan’t stay so! You can’t mean it! You are a woman, a true, sweet woman; you _shan’t_ make me believe you a soulless flirt! There is something else--something I must know!
“I feel so helpless, writing to you. Space is a monster. If I could only see you for a single moment, I know it would be all right. Write to me. Tell me what I want to know. Until I hear something from you, I shall be utterly, endlessly miserable.
“R. D.”
Margaret to Daunt.
“I cannot come back, Richard. I cannot even explain to you why. Don’t humiliate me by writing me for reasons. You would not understand me. What good would it do to explain, when I can hardly explain it to myself? I only _feel_, and I am wretched.
“You must forget that afternoon! I am trying to do the right thing--the thing that seems right to myself. I must believe in my instinct; that is all a woman has. I know this letter doesn’t tell you anything--I can’t--there is no use--I _can’t_!
“You know one thing. You must know that that last day, when I kissed you, I did not think of this. I did not intend to go away then. That was all afterward. I had no idea of hurting or wronging you--not the slightest!
“I know this is incoherent. I read over what I have written and the lines get all jumbled up. Somehow it seems to mean nothing. And yet it means so much--oh, so horribly much!--to me.
“M.”
Daunt to Margaret.
“Dearest:--Please, please let me reason with you. Don’t think me ungenerous; bear with me a little. I _must_ make you see it my way! I cheat myself with such endless guessing. Can I have grieved you or disappointed you? Have I shocked those beautiful white ideals of yours in any way? If that walk on the shore had been a month ago, if we had been together since, I might believe this; but we have not. That was the last, _and you loved me then_! I brought my naked heart to you that afternoon--it had been yours for long!--and laid it in your hand. You took it and kissed me, and I went away without it. Have you weighed it in the balance and found it wanting? Do you doubt what it could give you? Dear, let it try!
“To-day I walked up the old glen where the deserted cabin is. The very breeze went whispering of you and the rustling of every bush sounded like your name. The sky was duller and the grass less green. Even the squirrels sat up to ask where you were with the chestnuts you always brought them. Nothing is the same; I am infinitely lonely here, and yet I stay on where everything means you! When I walk it seems as if you must be waiting, smiling, just around every bend of the rock--just behind every clump of ferns--to tell me it was all a foolish fancy, that you love me and have not gone away! You are all things to me, dear. I cannot live without you. I want you--I need you so! I never knew how much before.
“Only tell me what your letters have not, that you do not love me--that you were mistaken--that it was all a folly, a madness--and I will never ask again! Ah, but I know you will not; you cannot. You do! _You do!_ I have that one moment to remember when I held you in my arms, when your throat throbbed against my cheek, when your lips were on mine, when your arms went up around my head, and when I could feel your heart beating quick against me. Your breath was trembling and your eyes were like stars! Can you ask me to forget that, the moment that I seemed to have always lived and kept myself for?
“It’s impossible! This must be a passing mood of yours which will vanish. Love is a stronger thing than that! I don’t know the thing that is troubling you--I can’t guess it--but I am sure of _you_. I know you in a larger, deeper way, and in the end you will never disappoint me in that!
“I am hoping, longing, waiting. Let me come to you! Let me see you face to face, and read there what the matter is!
“Remember that I am still
“Your own, “R.”
Margaret to Daunt.
“‘THE BEECHES,’ WARNE.
“I have been touched by your last letter. I had not intended to write again, yet somehow it seems as if I must. Can you read between these lines that I am unhappy? I have been to blame, Richard, so much to blame; but I didn’t know it till afterward.
“I can’t answer your question; it isn’t whether I love you--it’s _how_. Doesn’t that tell you anything? I mustn’t be mistaken in the _way_. You must not try to see me; it would only make me more wretched than I am now, and that is a great deal more than I could ever tell you.
“M.”
Daunt to Margaret.
“If you won’t have any pity for yourself, for heaven’s sake have some for me! What am _I_ to do? _I_ haven’t any philosophy to bear on the situation. I can’t understand your objections. Your way of reasoning your emotions is simply ghastly. The Lord never intended them to be reasoned with! We can’t think ourselves into love or out of it either. At least _I_ can’t. I’ve gone too far to go backward. Since you went I have been one long misery--one long, aching homesickness.
“You ask me not to ‘humiliate’ you by asking for your reasons. Don’t you think _I_ am humiliated? Don’t you think _I_ suffer, too? And yet it isn’t that; my love isn’t so mean a thing that it is my vanity that is hurt most. If I believed you didn’t love me, that might be; but if you could leave me as you have--without a chance to speak, with nothing but a line or two that only maddened me--you wouldn’t hesitate to tell me the truth now.
“You _do_ love me, Margaret! You’re torturing yourself and torturing me with some absurd hallucination. Forgive me, dear--I don’t mean that--only it’s all so puzzling and it hurts me so! I’m all raw and bleeding. My nerves are all jangles.
“I can only see one thing clearly--that you are wrong, and you’ll see it. Only somehow I can’t make you see it yet!
“DAUNT.”
V.
The warm October weather lay over the Drennen homestead at Warne. This was a house gigantic and austere, its gray stone walls throwing into relief its red brick porch, veined with ivy stems, like an Indian’s face, whose warrior blood is raging, leant against a rock boulder.
Under the shade of the falling vine-fringe Margaret sat, passive and quiet, on the veranda. From under drooping lids, long-lashed, her brown eyes looked out with a sort of sweet and sober studiousness. Her reddish-brown hair appeared the color of old metal beaten by the hammer here and there into a lighter flick of gold, rolling back from her straight forehead and caught in a loose, low knot. The corners of her mouth were lifted a little, giving an extra fulness to sensitive lips, and the long rise of her cheek, from chin to temple, was without a dimple.
The haze hung an opal tint over the blue hillsides and lent to nearer objects a dreamy unreality. The atmosphere reflected Margaret’s mood. She was conscious of a certain tired numbness. Her acts of the past few weeks had a sort of elusiveness in perspective, and the old house at Warne, with its gloomy stables, taciturn servants, its familiar occupants--even she herself--seemed to possess a curious unreality.
Across the field ran the wavering fringe of willow which marked the little sluggish brook with the foot-log, where often she had waded, slim-legged, as a child. There was the old stable loft from which she had once fallen, hunting for pigeons’ eggs. There were the same gloomy holes under the eaves, from which awful bat shapes had issued for her childish shuddering. Only the master of the house was changed, and he was Melwin Drennen, Lydia’s husband. As a child, he had carried her on his shoulders over the fields when she had visited the place. She had liked him unaffectedly, and the great sorrow of his life had hurt her also.
She was a mere child then, and had heard it with a vague and wondering pain. It had been a much-talked-of match--that between her cousin and this man--and it was only a week after the wedding, at this same old place, that the accident had happened. Lydia had been thrown from her horse. She was carried back to a house of mourning. The decorations were taken from the walls, and great surgeons came down from the city to ponder, shake their heads, and depart. He, loving much, had hoped against hope. Margaret remembered hearing how he had sat all one night outside her door, silent, with his head against the wainscoting and his hands tight together--the night they said she would die.
And that was twelve years ago! She had bettered slightly, grown stronger, walked a little, then declined again. Now for five years past her life had been a colorless exchange of bed and reclining-chair, and, in this period, she had never left the house.
Margaret shivered in the sun as she thought. At intervals she had heard of his life. “Such a _lovely_ life!” people said. She had thought of his self-sacrifice and devotion as something very beautiful. It had been an ever-present ideal to her of spiritual love. In her own self-dissatisfaction she had flown to this haven instinctively, as to a dear example. A strange desire to stab herself with the visual presence of her own lack had possessed her. But in some way the steel had failed her. She was conscious now of a vague self-reproach that her greater sorrow was for Melwin and not for the invalid. Surely Lydia was the one to be sorry for, and yet there was an awfulness about the life he led that she was coming to feel acutely.