Part 3

The crying incompletion, the negative hollowness of it, had smote her. His full life had stopped, like a sluggish stream. His vitality, his energies, could not go ahead. He was bound through all these years to the body of this death. Love had broadened his gaze, lifted his horizon, and then Fate had suddenly reared this crystal, impassable wall, through which he must ever gaze and ever be denied. He was condemned still to love her and to watch agonizedly the slender gradations, the imperceptible stages by which she became less and less of her old self to him.

Margaret gazed out across the velvet edge of the hills, and felt a sense of dissatisfaction in the color harmony. A doubt had darkened the windows of her soul and turned the golden sunlight to a duller chrome. She was so absorbed that she caught a sharp breath as the French window behind her clicked raspingly and swung inward on its hinges. It was Melwin.

He came slowly forward through the window, holding his head slightly on one side as though he listened for something behind him. She found herself wondering how he had acquired the habit. His face was motionless and set, with a peculiar absence of placidity--like a graven image with topaz eyes. To Margaret it suggested a figure on an Egyptian bas-relief, and yet he looked much the same, she thought, as he had ten years before. Perhaps his beard was grayer and he was more stoop-shouldered, and--yes, his temples looked somehow hollower and older. He had a way of pausing just before the closing word of a question, giving it a quaint and unnatural emphasis, and of gazing above and past one when he spoke or answered. When he had first greeted her on her arrival, Margaret had turned instinctively in the belief that he had spoken to some one unperceived behind her.

“Will you go in to--Lydia?” he said, difficultly. “I think she wants you.”

* * * * *

As Margaret came down the stairway a moment later, tying the ribbons of her broad hat under her chin, his look of inquiry met her at the door, and the tinge of eagerness in his lack-lustre eyes faded back into stolidity again as she told him it was only an errand for Lydia.

She jumped from the piazza and raced around the drive toward the stables. Creed, the coachman, whose wool was growing gray in a lifetime of allegiance to the Whiting stock, was standing by the window, holding a harvest apple for the black, reaching lip and white, impatient teeth of his favorite charge inside the stall. He dropped his currycomb as he saw her.

“Mornin’, Miss Marg’et. Want me fur sump’n?”

“No, I only came for Mrs. Drennen to see how Sempire’s foot is. She says he stepped on a stone.”

The black face puckered with a puzzled look, that broadened into a smile the next instant.

“Marse Drennen done tole dat to Miss Liddy ez a skuse fo’ he not ridin’ mo’. She all de time tryin’ to mek he git out an’ gallavant. He ain’t nuver gwine do dat no mo’. Miss Liddy, she al’ays worryin’ feared Marse Drennen moutn’t joy heseff, an’ he al’ays worryin’ cause she worryin’. She mek up all kinds ob things fur he to do dat way, an’ he jes humor her to think he do ’em, an’ she nuver know no diffunce.”

Margaret had seated herself on the step and was looking up. “You’ve always been with her, haven’t you?”

Creed smiled to the limit of his heavy lips. “’Deed I hev. When Miss Liddy wuz married she purty nigh fou’t to fotch me wid her. Her ole maid sister, she wantter keep me wid dee all back dar in New O’leens. You see I knowed Miss Liddy when she warn’t a hour ole an’ no bigger’n a teapot.

“Meh mammy wuz nussin’ de li’l mite in her lap wid a hank’cher ober her, an’ I tip in right sorf to cyar a hick’ry lorg an’ drap on de fiah. Dat li’l han’ upped an’ pull de hank’cher offen her face an’ look at me till I git cl’ar th’oo de do’. She wuz de peartest, forward’st young ’un! An’ she growed up lak she started, too. Marse Drennen he proud lak a peacock when he come down dyar frum de Norf an’ cyared her off wid he.”

“I remember how pretty she was.” Margaret spoke softly.

“Does yo’ sho ’nuff? She wuz jes ’bout yo’ age den. Her ha’r wuz de color ob a gole dollar, an’ her eyes wuz blue ez a catbird’s aig. She wuz strong as a saplin’, an’ she walk high lak a hoss whut done tuck de blue ribbon et de fa’r.”

Sempire arched his shining neck and whinnied gently for another apple. Creed stroked the intelligent face affectionately. “Whut mek yo’ go juckin’ dat way?” he said. “Cyarn’t you see I’se talkin’ to de ledy?”

He looked into the fresh young face beneath the straw hat with its nodding poppies and drew a deep breath.

“It do hurt me, honey, to see de change! Don’t keer how hard I wucks, I feels lonesome to see how de laugh an’ song done died in her froat. ’Twuz jes one stumble dat done it. She an’ Marse Drennen wuz gallopin’ on befo’ de yuthers. Pres’n’y she look back to see ef I wuz comin’. De win’ wuz blowin’ her purty ha’r ’bout ev’y way, an’ her eyes wuz sparklin’ jes lak de sun on de ice in de waggin ruts. Jes dat minit de hoss slip, an’ I holler an’ he done drap in er heap on he knees, an’ Miss Liddy she fall er li’l way off an’ lay still.

“Seem lak meh heart jump up in meh mouf. I wuz de fust one dyar. She wuz layin’ wid her ha’r ober her face an’ her po’ li’l back all bent up agin de groun’!

“Marse Drennen he go on turrible. He kneel down dyar in de road an’ kiss her awful, an’ beg her to open her eyes, an’ say he gwine kill dat hoss sho’. Den we cyared her back to de house, an’ she nuver know nuttin’ fo’ days an’ days. De gre’t doctors do nuttin’ fer her. She jes lay an’ lay, an’ et seem lak she couldn’t move, only her haid. Marse Drennen he nuver leabe her. He jes set in de cheer an’ rock heseff back an’ forf lak a baby an’ look at her an’ moan same’s he feelin’ et too.

“He don’ nuver git ober et no mo’. Peers lak she’d git erlong better now ef he didn’t grieve so. He hole he haid up al’ays when he roun’ her. He wuz bleeged to do dat, to keep her from seein’ he disapp’inted, ’cause she wuz al’ays sickly an’ in baid to nuver rekiver. He face sorter light up wid her lookin’ on, an’ he try to cheer her up, meckin’ out dat tain’ meek no diffunce. Hit did, do’! He git out o’ her sight, he look so moanful; he ain’t jolly an’ laughin’ lak when he wuz down Souf co’tin’, an’ I hole he hoss till way late.

“She al’ays thinkin’ ob him now, an’ he don’ keer fer nuttin’--jes sit wid he chin in bofe han’s on de po’ch lookin’ down. He heart done got numbed. Seems lak de blood done dried up in he veins an’ some time he gwine to shribble up lak er daid tree whut nuver gwine show no red an’ yaller leabes no mo’. He jes live al’ays lak he done los’ sump’n he couldn’ fin’ nowhar.”

Margaret arose from the step as he paused and turned his dusky face away to pick up the fallen currycomb.

As she walked back to the house Melwin’s figure as she had seen him on the porch rose before her memory--the face of a sleeper, with the look of another man in another life. Before her misty eyes it hung like a suspended mask against the background of the drab stone walls.

VI.

The frost scouts of the marshalling winter had fallen upon the woods which skirted the Drennen estate, and the great beeches were crimsoning in their death flush; the maples enchanting with their fickle foliage, some still clinging to their green, and others brilliant with blushes that they must soon stand naked before the cold stare of the sky. Here and there on some aspiring knoll a slim poplar rose like a splendid bouquet of starting yellow.

At a turn of the road, which wound leisurely between seamed tree-boles, Margaret had seated herself upon a lichened slab of stone. Her loosely braided hair lay against the hood of her scarlet cloak, slipping from her shoulders, and she seemed, in her vivid beauty, the incarnate spirit of the blazonry of fall. Her head was bare and her clasped hands, dropped between her knees, held a slender book, a random selection from the litter of the library table. It was the story of Marpessa, and unconsciously she had folded down the leaf at the lines she had just read:

“I love thee then Not only for thy body packed with sweet Of all this world, that cup of brimming June, That jar of violet wine set in the air, That palest rose, sweet in the night of life; Nor for that stirring bosom all besieged By drowsing lovers, or thy perilous hair;

* * * * *

Not for this only do I love thee, but Because Infinity upon thee broods, And thou art full of whispers and of shadows. Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say So long, and yearnèd up the cliffs to tell; Thou art what all the winds have uttered not, What the still night suggesteth to the heart. Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth, Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea; Thy face remembered is from other worlds; It has been died for, though I know not when, It has been sung of, though I know not where. It has the strangeness of the luring West, And of sad sea-horizons; beside thee I am aware of other times and lands, Of birth far back, of lives in many stars.”

With the broadening half-smile upon her parted lips and that far splendor in her eyes, she looked as might have looked the earthly maiden for whom the fair god and the passionate human Idas pledged their loves before great Zeus.

The deadened trampling of horse’s hoofs upon the soft, shaly road beat in upon her reverie. The horse, moving briskly, was abreast of her as she started to her feet. There was a sharp, surprised exclamation from the rider, a snort of fear from the animal as he shied and plunged sideways from the flaring apparition. Almost before she could cry out--so quickly that she could never afterward recall how it happened--the thing was done. The frantic brute reared white-eyed, rose and pawed, wheeling, and the rider, with one foot caught and dragging from the stirrup-iron, was down upon the ground. Margaret, without reflection, acted instantly. With a single bending spring of her lithe body she was beside the creature’s head, her slender arms, like stripped willow branches, straining and tugging at his bit, until the steel clamps cut into her flesh. She threw all the power of her arm upon the heavy jaw, and with one hand reached and clasped tight just above the great steaming, flame-notched nostrils. The fierce head shook from side to side an instant, then the lifting hoofs became calm, and he stood still, trembling. Slipping her hand to the bridle, she turned her head for the first time and was face to face with Daunt.

She gazed at him speechless, with widening eyes. A leaping joy at the sight of him mixed itself with a realization of his past peril. She felt her face whiten under his steadfast gaze. A thousand times she had imagined how they might meet, what she might say, how she would act, and now, without a breath of warning, Fate had set him there beside her. His hand lay next hers upon the rein of the animal, which a single faltering of her finger, a drooping of her eyelash would have left to drag him helpless to a terrible death. A breathless thanksgiving was in her soul that she had not swerved in foot or hand.

Suddenly she noticed that his left hand hung limp, and her whole being flamed into sympathy. “Oh, your poor wrist! You have hurt it!” Her fingers drew his arm up to her sight. Her look caressed his hand.

“It’s nothing,” he said hastily, but with compressed lips. “I must have wrenched it when I tumbled. How awkward of me!”

“It was I who frightened your horse; and no wonder, when I jumped up right under his feet.”

“And in that cloak, too!” he said, his eye noting the buoyancy of her beauty and its grace of curve.

The rebellious waves of her brown hair had filched rosy lustres from her garb, and the blood painted her cheeks with a stain like wild moss-berries. Her eyes chained his own. She had not yet released his hand, but was touching it with the purring regard of a woman for an injured pet. The allurement of her physical charm seemed to him to pass from her finger-tips like pricklings of electricity from a Leyden jar.

Daunt shook off her hand with an uncontrollable gesture, and with his one arm still thrust through the bridle, drew her close to him and kissed her--kissed her hair, her forehead, her half-opened eyes, her mouth, her throat, her neck.

She felt his lips scorch through her cloak. He dropped upon his knees, still holding her, and showered kisses upon the rough folds of her gown.

“Margaret!” he cried, “you know why I have come! You know what I want! I want you! Forgive me, but I couldn’t stay away. Do you suppose I thought you meant what you said in those letters? Why should you run away from me? Why did you leave me as you did? What is the matter?”

As he looked up at her, he saw that the light had died out of her eyes. Her lips were trembling. Her face was marked by lines of weariness. She repulsed him gently and went back a few steps, gazing at him sorrowfully.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said then. “You ought to have stayed away! You make it so hard for me!”

“Hard?” His voice rose a little. “Don’t you love me? Have you quit caring for me? Is that it?”

“No--not that.”

“Do you suppose,” he went on, “that I will give you up, then? You can’t love a man one day and not love him the next! You’re not that sort! Do you think I would have written you--do you think for one minute I would have come here, if I hadn’t known you loved me? What _is_ this thing that has come between us? What _is_ it takes you from me? Doesn’t love mean anything? Tell me!” he said, as she was silent. “Don’t stand there that way!”

“How can I?” she cried. “I tried to tell you in those letters.”

“Letters!” There was a rasp in Daunt’s voice. “What did they tell me? Only that there was some occult reason--Heaven only knows what--why it was all over; why I was not to see you again. Do you suppose that’s enough for me? You don’t know me!”

“No, but I know myself.”

“Well, then, I know you better than you know yourself. You said you didn’t want to see me again! That was a lie! You _do_ want to see me again! You’re nursing some foolish self-deception. You’re fighting your own instincts.”

“I’m fighting myself,” she said; “I’m fighting what is weak and miserably wrong. I can’t explain it to you. It isn’t that I don’t know what you think. I don’t know where I stand with myself.”

“You loved me!” he burst forth, in a tone almost of rage. “You _loved_ me! You know you did! Great God! you don’t want me to think you didn’t love me that day, do you?” he said, a curiously hard expression coming into his eyes.

“I don’t know.” She spoke wearily. “I--don’t--know. How _can_ I know? Don’t you see, it isn’t what I thought then--it isn’t what I did. It’s what was biggest in my thought. Oh--” she broke off, “you can’t understand! You _can’t_! It’s no use. You’re not a woman.”

“No,” he said roughly, “I’m not a woman. I’m only a man, and a man feels!”

“I know you think that of me,” she said humbly. “But, indeed, indeed, I don’t mean to be cruel--only to myself.”

“No, I suppose not!” retorted Daunt bitterly. “Women never mean things! Why should they? They leave that to men! Do you suppose,” he said with quick fierceness, “that there is anything left in life for me? Is it that I’ve fallen in your estimation? You thought I was strong, perhaps, and now you have come to the conclusion that I’m weak! And the fact that it was _you_ and that _you_ felt too makes no difference. I’ve heard of women like that, but I never believed there were any! You wash your feeling entirely out of your conscience, and I’m the one who must hang for it. And in spite of it all, you’re human! Do you think I don’t know that?”

She put out her hands as if to ward off a tangible blow. “Don’t,” she said weakly, “please don’t!”

“Don’t?” he repeated. “Does it hurt to speak of it? Do you want to forget it? Do you think I ever shall? I don’t want to. It’s all I shall have to remind me that once you had a heart!”

“No! no!” she cried vehemently. “You _must_ understand me better than that! Don’t you see that I want to do what you say? Don’t you see that my only way is to fight it? It is I who am weak! Oh, it seems in the past month I have learned so much! I am too wise!”

“Wait,” he said; “can you say truly in your heart that you do not love me?”

“That--isn’t it,” she stammered.

“It is!” he flamed. “Tell me you don’t love me and I will go away.”

She was silent, twisting up her fingers with a still intensity.

“Tell me!”

“But there’s so much in loving. It has so many parts. We love so many ways. We have more of us than our bodies. We have souls.”

“I’m not a disembodied spirit,” he broke in. “I don’t love you with any sub-conscious essence. I don’t believe in any isms. I love you with every fibre of my body--with every beat of my heart--with every nerve and with every thought of my brain! I love you as every other man in all the world loves every other woman in the world. I’m human; and I’m wise enough to know that God made us human with a purpose. He knows better than all the priests in the world. How do you _want_ to be loved? I tell you I love you with all--_all_--body and mind and soul! Now do you understand?”

“It’s not that!” she cried. “It’s how I love you. Oh, no; I don’t mean that!”

“I don’t care how you love me!” he retorted. “I’ll take care of that! You loved me enough that once.”

“Ah, that’s just it! I forgot everything. I forgot myself and you! I wanted the touch of your hands--of your face! There was nothing else in the whole world! Oh!” she gasped, “do you think I thought of my soul then?”

“Listen!” he said, coming toward her so that she could feel his hot breaths. “You’re morbid. You’re unstrung. You have an idea that one ought to love in some subtle, supernatural, heavenly way. That’s absurd. We are made with flesh-and-blood bodies. We have veins that run and nerves that feel. You are trying to forget that you have a heart. We are not intended to be spirits--not until after we die, at any rate.”

“But we _have_ spirits.”

“Yes,” he answered, “but it’s only through our hearts, through our mind’s hopes, through our affections, that we know it. All our soul’s nourishment comes through the senses. That’s what they were given us for.”

“But one must rule--one must be master.”

Daunt leaned toward her and caught both her hands in his one. “Ardee, dear,” he said more softly, “don’t push me off like this! Don’t resist so! I love you--you know I do. This is only some unheard-of experiment in emotion. Let it go! There’s nothing in the world worth breaking both our hearts for this way. There can’t be any real reason! Come to me, dear! Come back! Come back! Won’t you?”

At the softness of his tone her eyes had filled slowly with tears.

“I mustn’t! Oh, I mustn’t! The happiness would turn into a curse. You mustn’t ask me!”

Daunt struggled between a rising pity for her suffering and a helpless frenzy of irritation. Between the two he felt himself choking. There seemed in her a resistance and an implacable hostility that he was as powerless to combat as to understand. He began to comprehend the terrible strength that lies in consistent weakness. There was something far worse in her silent mood than there could have been in a storm of reproaches or of vehement denial. He felt that if he spoke again he could but raise higher the barrier between them, which would not be beaten down by sheer force. He mounted, stumblingly and blindly, his left hand awkwardly swinging, and, turning his horse’s head, spurred him into a vicious trot.

A bit of golden-rod had dropped from his button-hole when he had crushed her in his embrace, and as he disappeared down the curved road, under the passionate foliage, Margaret slipped upon her knees and caught the dusty blossom to her face in agonized abandon. Tears came to her in a gusty whirl of longing, and strangling sobs tore at her throat.

VII.

Nightshade and wistaria. The lusty poison-vine and the delicate climbing tendrils. The evil and the pure. Their snake-like stems wound about each other, twining in sinuous intimacy, the cardinal berries flaunting alone where the fragrant purple blooms had long since fallen. They clung to each other, the enmeshed and alien branches veiling a sightless trunk, whose rotted limbs, barkless and neglected, projected bare knobs complainingly from the vagrant tangle. It drew Margaret’s steps, and she went closer. The dogs that had followed yelping at her heels, after she had tired of throwing sticks for them to fetch, now went nosing off across the orchard in canine unsympathy with her reflective mood. She stood a monochrome, in roughish brown tweed, under the dappling shadows.

“Miss Langdon, I believe?”

The deep, resonant voice recalled her. She saw a smooth-shaven face with the rounded outline that belongs to youth, and is but rarely the heritage of age, surmounted by the striking incongruity of perfectly milk-white hair. His lips were thin and firm, suggesting at one time strength and firmness, and the glance which met her from the frank, hazel eyes was one of open friendliness. His clerical coat was close-buttoned to his vigorous chin.

“I am Dr. Craig,” he said, “rector of Trinity parish. I heard that Mrs. Drennen had a cousin visiting her, and I came out to ask you to come to our Sabbath services. We haven’t as ambitious a choir, perhaps, as you have in your city church,” he said, smiling, “--though we have one tenor voice which I think quite remarkable--but we offer the same message and just as warm a welcome.”

Her loneliness had wanted just such a greeting. “I shall be glad to come!” she answered. “I passed the church only yesterday and sat awhile in the porch to rest. It is so peaceful, set among the trees!”

“You seemed entirely out of the world as I walked up the path,” he said. “I could almost see you think.”

“I was looking at this.” She pointed to the clustering vines.

“What an audacious climber! Its berries have the color of rubies. And a wistaria, too!”

“I was thinking when you came,” she continued hesitatingly, “what a pity it was that the two should have ever grown together. The wistaria has an odor like far-away incense, and its leaves are tender and delicate-veined, like a climbing soul. The nightshade is dark green and its berries are sin-color. They don’t belong together, and now nobody in the world could ever pull them apart without killing them both. Isn’t it a pity?”

“Ah, there is where I think you err! That bold, aspiring sap is just what the pallid wistaria needs. Its perfume is less insipid for the mingling earth-smell of the other. It climbs higher and reaches further for the other’s strength. The flora of nature follows the same great law as humanity. Opposite elements combine to make the strongest men and women. One of the most valuable, I think, of the suggestions we get from the vegetable creation is the thought of its comprehensive good. Nothing that is useful is bad, and there is nothing that has not its use. What we know is, the higher grows and develops by means of the lower.” His fine face lifted as he spoke with conscious dignity.