Part 13

“—are all fundamentally related? Yes, I would. I can’t understand love in any other sense, if it’s to be real love. Do you remember how often we’ve talked of the spirit there is in the world that throws dust into our eyes by creating distinctions and confusions where neither confusion nor distinction exists? Well, the same evil imp is forever at work to stultify love by trying to take the meaning from the word. And when it has stultified love it has stultified God, since the one is identical with the other.”

I became argumentative.

“But if all love is identical with God, how do you account for what would commonly be called a wrong love?”

“There’s no such thing as a wrong love. Men are wrong and women are wrong, and they treat love wrongly; but love itself is always right. There a distinction must be made between love and passion; but it’s easy enough to make it. One of these days we’ll take the time to talk that over. At present my point is simply this—that there’s only one love as there’s only one God, and it’s only by understanding the unity of both that we get the significance of either. Moreover, the same pen that wrote, ‘Every one that loveth is born of God,’ wrote, ‘He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God.’ You see then how magical a thing love is, and why any kind of love—remember I’m speaking of love, not of physical passion, which is another thing—but you can see how any kind of love should work wonders.” He asked, suddenly, “Have you written to your mother since your father died?”

I said I had not, that I hadn’t supposed a letter from me would be welcome.

“Don’t ask whether it would be welcome or not. Do your duty—and let other people take care of theirs. Let your mother see that, so far from feeling sore over the provision in your father’s will, you take it in the way I’ve tried to indicate. It will be an amazing comfort to her; and if you want to give your brothers and sisters the surprise of their young lives you’ll be doing it.” He took my hand and pressed it. “Good-by now, old chap. I’ve got to go and see Momma about the meals for to-morrow.”

He passed on to the kitchen, where a Greek named Pappa—nicknamed Momma by the boys—had taken the place of Mouse; but he left me with a new outlook.

Following his instructions, I began almost immediately to get some of the reward he promised me. My mother wrote to me within a week, timidly but tenderly, and with joy at being in touch with me again. A few weeks later my sister wrote, affectionately, if with reserve. When my birthday came in March, and I was thirty-two, I had small presents from them both, and from my two sisters-in-law as well. I noticed that all letters, even from my mother, were hesitatingly expressed, and in something like an undertone of awe. My family, too, felt apparently that I had put an abyss between myself and them, and that in the effort to recross it there was a suggestion of the supernatural. It was as if my father were saying to them, “This, thy brother, was dead, and is alive again”—and they were experiencing some of the strangeness that Mary and Martha must have known when Lazarus came back to the house at Bethany.

But that was not my only reward, though of what I received in addition I find it difficult to tell you. Indeed, I should make no attempt to tell you at all were it not so essential to this small record of a human life. All I want to say is that that thing came to me as a new revelation which is probably an every-day fact to you—that by the simple process of loving I could dwell in God, I could be aware that God was all round me.

I mean that once I understood that love was God the great mystery that had tantalized me all my life was solved. All my life I had been tortured by the questions: Who is God? What is God? What is my relation to Him—or have I any? And now I seemed to have found the answer. When I got back to love—the common, natural love for my father and mother and sisters—when I got back to feeling more gently toward my brothers—I began to see—you must forgive me if I seem blatant, but that is not my intention—I began to see faintly and very inadequately that I was actually in touch with God.

I am far from saying that all my difficulties were overcome. Of course they were not. I mean only that that divine force of which I had been told the universe was full, but which had always seemed apart from me, remote from my needs, actually came, in some measure at least, within my possession. Just as Beady Lamont found the furniture-moving business shiny with it, once he knew where to look for it, so I began to see my work as an architect. It was as if a golden key had been put into my hand which unlocked the richest of life’s secrets.

All at once people whom I had known to be well disposed toward me, and whom I had dismissed at that, began to translate God to me. Ralph Coningsby, Cantyre, Lovey, Christian, Pyn, not to speak of others, were like reflectors that threw the rays of the great Central Sun straight into my soul. I am not declaring that there was no tarnish on the surfaces that caught those beams and transmitted them to me—probably there was—but light and warmth were poured into me for all that. Not that there was a change in their attitude toward me; the change was in my point of view, in my capacity for seeing. What I had thought of only as human aid I now perceived to be the celestial bread and wine; and where I had supposed I was living only with men, I knew I was walking with God.

And yet there was a love with regard to which I could not have this peace of mind. Christian would perhaps have ascribed that defect to the fact that there was passion in it. My own fear was that, having had its inception in a moment of crime, it could never free itself from the conditions that gave it birth.

After the Christmas dinner there was a change toward me in the bearing of Regina Barry and her mother. Without growing colder, they became slightly more formal; and that I understood. As they had come so far in my direction, it was for me to go some of the distance in theirs, and I didn’t.

I didn’t because I couldn’t. I was like a man who would have been glad to walk if paralysis hadn’t nailed him to his seat. As, however, it was emotional paralysis and not physical, there was no means by which they could become aware of it; nor could I make up my mind to tell them.

For quite apart from my damnable secret was the common, every-day fact that I had no income sufficient to maintain a wife in anything like the comfort to which Regina Barry had been accustomed. Though she might have accepted what I had to offer, I felt the usual masculine scruples as to offering it. This, too, was something that couldn’t be explained unless there was some urgent need of the explanation; and so when I was mad to go forward I had, to my shame and confusion, to hang back.

Their retreat was managed with tact and dignity. During the week after Christmas I saw them on a number of occasions, always by invitation, though I had no further talk with Regina Barry alone. Two or three times I guessed she would have been willing to go out to walk with me, but I didn’t suggest it. As she had proposed it once, she could hardly do so a second time, and so we sat tamely in a sitting-room. Like that minute on Christmas Eve when she would have flown into my arms had I opened them, other minutes came and went; and I saw my coldness reacting on her visibly.

At the end of ten days a note told me that they had returned to New York, apologizing for the fact that they had not had time to bid me good-by. Though seeing plainly enough the folly of a correspondence, I wrote in response to that note, hoping that a correspondence might ensue. But I got no answer. I got nothing. Not so much as a message was sent to me on the days when Ralph Coningsby came down.

I did not resent this; I only suffered. I suffered the more because of supposing that she suffered too. And yet when I next saw her I found nothing to support that theory.

When I went to New York for a few days in February I called, but they were not at home. Having left my card, I waited for a message that would name an hour when I should find them; but I waited in vain. During the four days my visit lasted I heard nothing kindlier than what Cantyre repeated, that they were sorry to have been out when I came.

As I sent them flowers before leaving the city, a note from Mrs. Barry thanked me for them cordially; but there was not a syllable in it that gave me an excuse for writing in response. Reason told me that it was better that it should be so, but reason had ceased to be sufficient as a guide.

In March I made an errand that took me to town for a week-end, and on the Sunday afternoon I called again at the house which had so curiously become the focusing-point of my destiny. Miss Barry was at home and receiving. I found her with two or three other people, and she welcomed me as doubtless she had welcomed them. Even when I had outstayed them she betrayed none of that matter-of-course intimacy which had marked her attitude toward me in December. She seemed to have retired behind all sorts of mental fortifications over which I couldn’t at first make my way.

When we were seated in the style of Darby and Joan at the opposite corners of a slumbering fire she told me her father had made one hurried visit from California, and that, now that he had returned to the Pacific coast, she and her mother were thinking of joining him there. Should they do so, they would probably remain till it was time to go to Long Island in June. Two or three protestations against this absence came to my lips, but of course I couldn’t utter them.

I could have sworn that she was saying to herself, “You don’t seem to care!” though aloud it became, “We’ve never been in California, and we want to see what it’s like.”

I seized the opportunity to rejoin, “You’ve a fancy for seeing what things are like, haven’t you?”

She took up the challenge instantly. “Why do you say that?”

“Only because of what you’ve said at different times yourself.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t want to quote. I was thinking of the taste you’ve frequently acknowledged for making experiments.”

“Experiments in things—or people?”

“I was thinking of people.”

She marched right into my camp by saying, boldly, “Oh, you mean the number of times I’ve—I’ve broken engagements?”

“Perhaps I mean rather the number of times you’ve formed them.”

“Did you ever buy a house?”

I replied with some wonder that I had not.

“Well, we’ve bought two—this one and the one at Rosyth. But before buying either we rented each for a season to see whether or not we liked it.”

“And you did.”

“But we’ve rented others which we didn’t. So you see.”

“I see that experiments are justified. Is that what you mean?”

“If one is satisfied with anything that comes along, by all means take it. But if one only wants what one wants—”

“And you know what you want?”

Her eyes were all fire; her lips had the daring scarlet of a poppy.

“I’ve never got beyond knowing what I don’t want.”

“That is, you’ve never taken anything up except in the long run to throw it down?”

“Your expressions are too harsh. One doesn’t throw down everything one doesn’t want. One sets it aside.”

“And would it be discreet to ask why you—why you set certain things—and people—aside?”

She looked at the fire as if considering.

“Do you mean—men?”

“To narrow the inquiry down, suppose I say I do.”

“And”—she threw me a swift, daring glance—“and marriage?”

“That defines the question still further.”

Her words came as the utterance of long, long thoughts.

“One couldn’t marry a man one didn’t trust.”

“No; of course not.”

“Nor a milksop.”

“You couldn’t.”

“Nor a man who wasn’t a thoroughbred.”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“Oh, don’t you know? If not I can’t explain. All I can say is that there are things a thoroughbred couldn’t do.”

“What sort of things?”

“Why should you want me to tell you? You know as well as I do. The things that make a man impossible—mean things—ignoble things.”

“Criminal things?”

“Criminal things, too, I suppose. I don’t know so much about them; but I do see a lot of meanness and pettiness and— Oh, well, the sort of lack of the fastidious in honor that—that puts a man out of the question.”

“Aren’t you very hard to please?”

“Possibly.”

“And if you don’t find what—what you’re looking for?”

“I shall do without it, I suppose.”

“And if you think you find it—and then discover that, after all—”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“I don’t know. I’ve never been absolutely disillusioned so far. When disillusion has come to me—as it has—I could see it on the way. But if I—I cared for some one and found I was deceived in him— But what’s the use in talking of it?” she laughed. “Please don’t think I’m putting forth a claim to be treated better than the average. It’s only when I see the average—”

“The average of men?”

“No, the average of women. When I see what they’re willing to take—and marry—and live with—I can only say that I find myself very well off as I am.”

This conversation did not make it easier for me to go back to the starting-point of our acquaintance; but the moment came when I did it.

_CHAPTER XVI_

I did not, however, do it that spring, since the event that compelled me at last to the step took up all my attention.

It was toward the end of April that I received a telegram signed by my sister’s name:

“Mother seriously ill. Wants to see you. Come at once.”

In spite of my alarm at this summons I saw the opportunity of putting up a good front before my relatives. Taking Lovey with me as valet, and stopping at the best hotel, I presented the appearance of a successful man.

Though anxiety on my mother’s account made my return a matter of secondary interest, I could see the surprise and relief my apparent prosperity created. My brothers had been expecting one of whom they would have to be ashamed. Furthermore, they had not been too confident as to my attitude with regard to my father’s will. Looking for me to contest it, they had suspected that behind my acquiescence lay a ruse. When they saw that there was none, that I made no complaint, that I seemed to have plenty of money, that I traveled with a servant, that I had the air of a man of means—a curious note of wonder and respect stole into their manner toward me. I know that in private they were saying to each other that they couldn’t make me out; and I gave them no help in doing so.

I gave them no help during all the month I remained in Montreal. I arranged with Coningsby to take that time, and my little stock of savings was sufficient to finance me. Though I was once more putting up a bluff, it was a bluff that I felt to be justified; and in the end it found its justification.

I have no intention of giving you the details of those four weeks of watching beside a bed where the end was apparent from the first. Now that I look back upon them, I can see that they were not without their element of happiness, since to my mother at least it was happiness to know that I was beside her. The joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth was on her face from the day I appeared, and never left it up to that moment when we took our last look at her dear smiling features.

When the lawyer came to read us her will I found, to my amazement, that she had left me everything she possessed.

It was then that I reaped that which I had sown at Andy Christian’s suggestion. Since with a good grace I had accepted my father’s will, the rest of the family could hardly do otherwise with regard to my mother’s. She left a note saying that, had my father lived a few months longer, he would have seen that I had re-established myself sufficiently to be allowed to share equally with the rest of the family in what he had to leave; but, as it was too late for that, she was endeavoring to right the seeming injustice—which he had not meant as an injustice—as far as lay in her power. These words from her pen being much more emphatic than any I could remember from her lips, my brothers and sisters, whatever they felt inwardly, could only give their assent to them.

What my mother possessed included not only the personal estate she had inherited from her father, considerably augmented by her husband’s careful management, but books, furniture, and jewelry. The books and furniture I made over to my sister to remain in the two houses, the one in Montreal, the other on the Ottawa. Some of the jewelry I gave to her, to my sister in England, and to my two sisters-in-law, though keeping the bulk for my wife—when I got one.

For I was now in a position to marry. Though my mother had had no great wealth, what she left me, together with the trust fund established by my father and what I earned, would assure me enough to live in at least as much comfort as Ralph Coningsby. I could, therefore, propose to Regina Barry and feel I could make a home for her.

I had again come to the conclusion that if I asked her she would accept me. I make no attempt to analyze this feeling on her part, because I saw plainly enough that it was founded on mistake. That is to say, having developed an ideal of the man whom she could marry, she had nursed herself into the belief that I came up to it, when, as a matter of fact, I did not.

Now I had seen enough of husbands and wives to know that in most marriages there is some such illusion as this, and that it can be successfully maintained for years. When the illusion itself has faded it can live on as the illusion of an illusion. By the time there is no illusion or shadow of illusion left at all it has ceased in the majority of cases to matter. Time has welded what mutual distaste might have put asunder, and the married state remains undisturbed.

I was, therefore, obliged to face the consideration that if I married the woman I loved she would probably never discover what I felt it my duty to confess. Was it really, then, my duty to confess it? Since no one knew it but myself, was it not rather my duty to keep it concealed? Other men had secrets from their wives—especially those that concerned the days when they were unmarried—and all were probably the happier for the secrecy. Even Ralph Coningsby, who was the most model husband I could think of, had said that if he were to tell his wife all he could tell her about himself he would be ashamed to go home. There were weeks when I debated these questions every day and night, arriving at one conclusion by what I may call my rough horse sense, and at another by my instinct. Horse sense said, “Marry her and keep mum.” Instinct warned, “You can never marry her and be safe and happy with such a secret as this to come between you.”

Throughout this wavering of opinion I knew that when the time came I should act from instinct. It wasn’t merely that I wanted to be safe; it was also that, all pros and cons apart, there was such a thing as honor. Not even to be happy—not even to make the woman I cared for happy—could I ignore that.

I am not sure how much Andrew Christian understood of the circumstances when, without giving him the facts or mentioning a name, I asked his advice. He only said:

“You’ve had some experience, Frank, of the potency of love, haven’t you? Well, love has a twin sister—truth. In love and truth together there’s a power which, if we have the patience to wait for its working out, will solve all difficulties and meet all needs.”

My experiences during the past few months having given me some reason to believe this, I decided, so far as I came actively to a decision, to let it rule my course; but in the end the critical moment came by what you would probably call an accident.

It was the last Sunday in June. My work in Atlantic City being over, Mrs. Grace had asked me to come down for the week-end to her little place in Long Island. It was not exactly a party, though there were two or three other people staying in the house. My chief reason for accepting the invitation—as I think it was the chief reason for its being given—was that the Barry family were in residence on the old Hornblower estate, which was the adjoining property.

As a matter of fact, Mrs. Grace and her guests were all asked to Idlewild, as the late Mrs. Hornblower had named her house, to Sunday lunch.

The path from the one dwelling to the other was down the gentle slope of Mrs. Grace’s gardens, across a meadow, at the other side of which it joined the Idlewild avenue, and then up a steep hill to the rambling red-and-yellow house. Here one dominated the Sound for a great part of the hundred and twenty miles between Montauk Point and Brooklyn.

Sauntering idly through the hot summer noon, I found myself beside Mrs. Grace, while the rest of the party straggled on ahead. As my hostess was not more free than other women from the match-making instinct, it was natural that she should give to the conversation a turn that she knew would not be distasteful to me.

“She’s a wonderful girl,” she observed, “with just that danger to threaten her that comes from being over-fastidious.”

“I know what you mean by her being over-fastidious; but why is it a danger?”

“In the first place, because people misunderstand her. They’ve ascribed to light-mindedness what has only been the thing that literary people call the divine searching for perfection.”

“And do you know the kind of thing she’d consider perfect?”

It was so stupid a question that I couldn’t be surprised to see a gleam of quiet mischief in her glance as she replied, “From little hints she’s dropped to me, quite confidentially, I rather think I do.”

Fair men blush easily, but I tried to ignore the fact that I was doing it as I said, “That’s quite a common delusion at one stage of the game; but suppose she were to find that she was mistaken?”

The answer shelved the question, though she did it disconcertingly: “Oh, well, in the case she’s thinking of I don’t believe she will.”

I was so eager for data that I pushed the inquiry indiscreetly.

“What makes you so sure?”

“One can tell. It isn’t a thing one can put into words. You know by a kind of intuition.”

“Know what?”

“That a certain kind of person can never have had any but a certain kind of standard.” She gave me another of those quietly mischievous glances. “I’ll tell you what she said to me one day not long ago. She said she’d only known one man in her life—known him well, that is—of whom she was sure that he was a thoroughbred to the core.”

“But you admitted at the beginning that that kind of conviction is a danger.”

“It would be a danger if her friends couldn’t bear her out in believing it to be justified.”

Unable to face any more of this subtle flattery, I was obliged to let the subject drop.

The lunch was like any other lunch. As an unimportant person at a gathering where every one knew every one else more or less intimately, I was to some extent at liberty to follow my own thoughts, which were not altogether happy ones. For telling what I had to tell, the necessity had grown urgent. What was lacking, what had always seemed to be lacking, was the positive opportunity. This I resolved to seek; but suddenly I found it before me.

This was toward the middle of the afternoon, when the party had broken up. It had broken up imperceptibly by dissolving into groups that strolled about the lawns and descended the long flights of steps leading to the beach below. As I had not been seated near Miss Barry at table, it was no more than civil for me to approach her when the party was on the veranda and the lawn. Our right to privacy was recognized at once by a withdrawal of the rest of the company. It was probably assumed that I was to be the fourth in the series of experiments of which Jim Hunter and Stephen Cantyre had been the second and the third; and, though my fellow-guests might be sorry for me, they would not intervene to protect me.