Part 4

I turned this letter over curiously in my hands, half expecting it to impart to me the secret of how it was that people could think and feel as if the very universe wheeled, glittering, about them and their desires. Also, how could Desire be so guiltless of all the thousand scruples and delicacies that were her birthright? How could she exhibit such poverty of spirit, bravely and unashamed? How did it happen that she, of all people, showed herself so ignorant of the things that cannot be learned?

{99}

V

That evening as I drowsed over the hearth after dinner, still holding Desire's letter in my hand and pondering over it, the card of young Dr. Arnold Ackroyd was brought up to me.

I awoke myself with a start. An interview with Desire's husband was the last thing in the world I wanted. The feeling that I had vicariously injured the Ackroyds was still strong upon me, and I shrank childishly from facing a man whom I could not think of otherwise than as a maimed and wantonly injured creature.

Feeling this, I naturally welcomed him with a mixture of embarrassment and effusion. Dr. Arnold smiled dryly, with perfect comprehension, and took his seat beside the fire in the same winged armchair that had sheltered {100} Lucretia and Mary previously. A fancy seized me that the cumbersome, comfortable piece of mahogany and old brocade might indeed be a veritable witness-seat, a Chair of Truth, that in some fashion impelled its occupant to speak out from the heart the thing he really thought. An apprehensive glance at Arnold's grave, clear-cut, sallow face reassured me. It held no threat of hysteric protest. Whatever he might say, I need not fear that he would break the inmost silence of a deeply humiliated man.

"It is a matter of business that I want to see you about, Mr. Raynie," he said easily. "There is no one but you who can manage it for me."

I expressed my desire to serve him.

"You see, it is just this: if Desire insists upon divorcing me the enterprise must be properly financed. I {101} prefer to pay her expenses myself. I am not going to have her hard up or--depending upon any one else."

"Desire would never take money from any one but Mrs. Greening or me, Ackroyd."

"No--I suppose not. Still, you never can tell how these confounded modern women are going to invert things in their minds. She'd not do it unless she could make it look high-minded and self-sacrificing, of course. But I would rather she ran no risk of doing it. And, if you don't mind my saying so, I would also prefer at present that even you and Mrs. Greening kept your hands out of your pockets. You see, Desire is my wife until she ceases to be so. It is unquestionably my right to provide for her, even in Reno, if I choose. Of course, she would say that, having left my bed and {102} board, she had renounced her claim upon my bank account--that is, she would say it if she thought about the matter at all. But she is so heedless she will probably not question the source of supplies, certainly not if they come through you. Will you do me this favor, Mr. Raynie?"

There was nothing for me to do but assent, but I did so a little irritably. It seemed to me at the moment that it would be excellent discipline to let the winds of heaven beat harshly upon Desire's delicately guarded head, for a short time at least. I intimated as much.

Arnold Ackroyd shook his head.

"It is too late for that kind of discipline to be effective," he said. "I have meant that Desire should have everything that a man can give, but there is one point I will never yield. She shall not have my children!"

{103}

He took out his checkbook and his pen, and, writing on his knee, filled out a check rapidly and neatly.

As he handed it to me I noted that the sum was surprisingly large,-- enough for a divorce _de luxe_. "Pardon me, but are n't you overdoing your generosity, Arnold?" I suggested.

He moved his shoulders very slightly, and I saw his fine, surgeon's fingers stir as though he were involuntarily washing his hands of the whole question of money.

"Desire is accustomed to beauty as well as to comfort," he said. Then he dropped his head on his chest and stared gravely into the fire. "Mr. Raynie, what do the women want? What do they expect in this world, anyhow? If the sun had dropped out of the sky, it wouldn't have surprised me more than this thing has."

{104}

"Nor me," I confessed.

"I have been wondering if I unconsciously neglected Desire? People say that sometimes causes them to fly the track. I am a busy man. I work hard in an exacting profession. But, as I understand the marriage contract, my work is a part of what I endowed her with. It is my life, myself. We are not children. One does not marry for a playmate, does one? But perhaps women do. Do you think I can have been at fault in this matter?"

My only answer was an impatient snort of protest.

"I supposed she desired companionship with me as I am. Certainly that was what I thought I asked of her. She has such a way of making life seem vivid and interesting that her companionship was good to have," he said.

{105}

Something clutched at my heart strings as I saw the look of inextinguishable longing in his eyes.

"We spoiled her between us, I suspect," he said. "On our heads be it, for it is spoiled that she is. Mr. Raynie, I think of Desire as undisciplined, wayward--not as wanton.--Well, I have a dozen patients yet to see to-night. I must say good night, and thank you."

As he closed the door, I spoke aloud to myself and the witness-chair.

"There goes a gentleman," I said. "It seems they still exist. Confound that niece of mine!"

VI

After Desire departed for Reno, the winter dragged along, heavy-footed.

Mary Greening heard from her often, {106} and brought me the letters. She rented a cottage in Reno, and began housekeeping bravely, but, presently, the servant question drove her temporarily to a hotel.

Very shortly we saw in the papers an account of a fire in the same hotel. This was followed by a telegram from Desire to the effect that she was as right as possible, and had only suffered the loss of a few garments.

A week later as I sat in my usual place, the wheeled chair by the study fire, I heard a carriage stop at my door. It was ten o'clock of a wild January night, furious with wind and snow. There were voices in the hall below; surprised ejaculations from Lena, the housemaid; at last a rap on my door, which swung inward to admit--Desire!

"Will you take me in, Uncle Ben?" {107} she inquired cheerfully. "It is such a frightful night! The cabman won't try to get me to Aunt Mary. He wanted to leave me at a hotel. But this was no farther--and I wanted to talk with you, anyhow."

I said the appropriate things, consumed meanwhile with wonder as to what this reappearance meant. Desire threw off her long wrap and her furs, vibrated about the room a little, then settled, like every one else, in the winged chair across the hearth, and smiled at me tremulously.

"Uncle Ben, something has happened to me."

"I judge it is something important, Desire."

"A big thing," she said gravely. "So big I don't understand it. I can only tell you how it is."

I waited quietly, but there was that {108} in her voice which made me catch my breath.

She seemed to find it hard to begin.

"I hated Reno," she said at last, abruptly. "The streets were so full of plump, self-satisfied blonde women, overdressed and underbred. The town was overrun with types one did n't like. It was--horrid! But it did n't concern me, so I stayed in the little house and wrote a great many letters to Aunt Mary and--Arthur Markham, and read, and amused myself as best I could. Then I lost my maids and moved to the hotel until I could arrange matters.

"You heard about the fire? The hotel was a wooden building with two wings, and my room was in the wing that burned. It was all very exciting, but I got out with my valuables and most of my wardrobe tied {109} up in a sheet, and they put the fire out.

"The rest of the building was unhurt, so the occupants opened their doors to the people who had been burned out. The manager asked me if I would accept the hospitality of a Mrs. Marshall, 'a very nice lady from up North!' I said I would be thankful for shelter of any description, so he took me to her door and introduced us."

Desire paused reflectively.

"I'd like to make it as clear as possible to you, Uncle Ben, if you don't mind my talking a lot. This Mrs. Marshall was just a girl, and very good-looking indeed in a way. She had well-cut features, a strong chin, blue eyes under dark lashes, and a great deal of vitality. So far as looks went, I might have met her anywhere.

{110}

"The big room was strewn with her things, for she had expected to be burned out, too; but she began to put them away at once, offering me closet room, and talking excitedly as she moved about.

"The place was full of department-store luxury, if you know what I mean. Her toilet-table was loaded with silver in a pattern of flamboyant, curly cupids,--I've often wondered who bought such things,--and there were gorgeous, gaudy garments lying about. Her belongings, all but a few frocks, were expensive and tasteless to the last degree. So much extravagance and so little beauty! It seemed so strange to me that it was interesting.

"She talked a good deal, showing me this and that. Her slangy speech had a certain piquancy, because she looked finer than her words. She was {111} absolutely sure of herself, and at ease. I made out that this was because she was conscious of no standards save those of money, and there, as she would have said, she could 'deliver the goods.' Were n't the evidences of her worth right under my eyes?

"I talked, too, as effusively as I knew how. I tried to meet her halfway. She was evidently a perfectly well-placed and admired person in her own world. I was excited and tired and lonely. It seemed good just to speak to some one.

"Presently the room was cleared, and we began to think of sleeping. I have n't forgotten a word of the conversation that followed.

"'It's very good of you to take me in. I hope I shan't disturb you very much,' I said.

"'Oh, I'm glad to have somebody to talk to. I think this living in Reno {112} is deadly, but it seems to be the easiest way to get results,' she answered. 'How long you been here?'

"I told her.

"'Well, I'm a good deal nearer my freedom than you are. Don't it seem perfectly ridiculous that when you want to shake a man you can't just _shake_ him, without all this to-do?' she said. 'It makes me so mad to think I've got to stay down here six months by myself, just to get rid of Jim Marshall! Say, what does your husband do?'

"What could I say, Uncle Ben? It seemed sacrilegious to mention Arnold in that room, but I was her guest and dependent upon her for shelter and a bed.

"'He is a doctor,' I said.

"'That so? Jim's superintendent of a mine. Up in the mountains. It's {113} the lonesomest place you ever saw. Twenty miles from nowhere, with just a little track running down to the rail road, and nothing worth mentioning when you get there.

"'Jim was awfully gone on me. Put up a spiel that he could n't live without me, and all that. That was two years ago, and I was young and tender hearted. Father had just dropped a whole bunch of money, and I thought, 'Well, if any man wants to pay my bills as bad as that, I guess I'll let him.' It looked like easy meal-tickets to me. Say! There's no such thing as a soft snap in married life. You got to work for your living, whoever he is. And I got so bored up in the mountains I did n't know what to do. Any man's a bore if you see too much of him. Jim's awful soft--wants to be babied all the time. Thought I did n't love {114} him unless I looked just so and talked just so. Jerusalem! How can you love anybody when you're a hundred miles from a matinee? People have got to have what they're used to, even if they are married, and that's a cinch. I used to go down to the city by myself once in a while to visit Jim's sister, but there was n't anything in that. She and I did n't get on. She never took me to a show once all the time I was there. These in-laws are always looking at you through a microscope. Ain't it awful? I don't claim my complexion will stand that scrutiny. Did you have any in-laws?'

"'A few,' I said, thinking how Madam Ackroyd would look if she could hear this conversation.

"'Well, anybody can have mine!' she said. 'Gee! How I hate to be bored! I guess I'd be up on that mountain yet {115} if it hadn't been for that. Last spring the son of the man who owns the mine took to coming up to see about the output. I had him going in forty winks. I was just amusing myself, but Jim got frightfully jealous. "See here," I says, "I ain't going to let no mining man dictate to me, see? I'll tell you that right now!" I was sore. To think he could n't let me have a bit of fun, after the stupid winter I'd put in, frying his bacon. It seemed plain selfish. So things ran along, and I got huffier and huffier. Finally, when Joe volunteered he'd like to put up for me to take this trip to Reno, I packed my suit-case and came away. It served Jim right for being such an old grouch. What'd you think?

"I just opened my mouth and gasped. I could n't help it. Such callousness!

"The girl looked at me queerly when {116} I did n't answer. 'What's got _you_ that you did n't stay put?' she demanded. 'Here I've had a rush of words to the mouth and told you all I know and I don't know a thing about you.'

"I found my voice sufficiently to tell her my case was very different.

"'Huh!' she said, 'I may n't know much, but I'm wise to this; the folks that have real reasons for a smash-up don't have to come to Reno. They mostly can get their papers on the spot. I guess we're all in the same boat out here. We're just taking what we want.'

"I felt as if I had been struck with a sledge-hammer when she said that, and her eyes seemed to be boring through me like gimlets. I thought I should scream if she said another word.

"'Let's talk about it in the morning,' I said, 'if you'll excuse me. I'm so tired I simply can't keep my eyes open.'

{117}

"That was n't true. She went to sleep almost instantly, and slept like a baby. I lay beside her, wide awake for hours. What she was, and what she said, had turned a key in my brain. A host of thoughts I didn't know I had came trooping out of some hidden room, and they marched and counter-marched across my mind all night."

Desire got up and began to walk about the room restlessly in her absorption as she recalled all this.

"It was wonderful, Uncle Ben. I wish I could make you understand. First of all, I recognized that what she said was absolutely true. I said to myself, Desire, you are a civilized, cultivated, mature, distinguished-looking person, well born and well reared--but what has it all done for you? It has, precisely, conducted you to Reno, Nevada. This girl beside you is {118} uncivilized, uneducated, crude, young, clearly of very common clay. And what has it all done for her but conduct her to Reno, Nevada,--where she finds you, daughter of the Pilgrims. Well met, sister!'

"It was very bitter to think that of myself," said my niece, stopping by my chair. "It may sound foolish, Uncle Ben, but my friends have always insisted I was a _schoene Seele_. I, a beautiful soul! I, a soul at all! A white light that I could not shut my eyes against seemed to beat down into my brain. I saw that I was just like the girl beside me in her incredible callousness,--even like the fat, self-satisfied, blonde women I had seen in the town. Oh, those common, common people! I had thought myself as fine as silk, as tempered as steel, yes, and as pure as flame! But I, too, was a brute.

{119}

"I thought and thought. I thought of Arnold, Arthur, and myself; we are all proud, we are all fastidious, yet we had come to this. We had drifted on the rocks. Pride had n't saved us, nor training, nor intelligence. I had lived in and for these things, and they had not prevented my doing the commonest things like the commonest creatures. Uncle Ben, I seemed horrible to myself--I can't tell you.

"More doors opened in my mind, and I began to think of you, and mother, and Aunt Mary, and of all the stories you used to tell me of the good Raynies and the bad, the weak Withacres and the strong ones, and what good fighters there were among them. And it seemed to me that I could see and feel--like the flight of wings in the dark over my head-- the passing of the struggling generations of my fathers, each one {120} achieving a little more; going from decency to good repute, and from repute to renown, keeping faith with one another and with God, from father to son.

"And all at once I saw that the dignity of my race did not consist in its honors, nor even in its character, but--forever and always--in its fight for character! It was the struggle that had made us. And I had never struggled--so--I was not made. I was still unformed, shapeless,--and a cheaper thing with all my pretensions than the girl asleep beside me.

"Then there came on me a great desire to be one with my own people. One life is nothing--somehow I saw it very clearly. Families build righteousness as coral insects build a reef. I felt the yearning to be built into a structure of honesty and honor. Even as I wished {121} this, I saw, in that fierce light beating down upon my brain, that there was something deep within me that forbade me to do the thing I had been planning. It lay at the core of being, dark and stern; it said _No_ to my desires. And I knew it for the strength of every _No_ my fathers ever uttered. It was my inheritance. And as I looked, it seized my will. It shook me free from my longing for Arthur, free from my impatience with Arnold, free from my wish to have my way!

"So--I have come back. It was strong enough to bring me back; it is strong enough to hold me here. I don't care what happens to me after this. _I don't care._ I may not be happy, but I don't seem to want to be happy: I want to do the seemly, fitting things, the decent things. I don't care if they are stupid; I don't care if I am bored! {122} I wish just what I say. I want to be one with my race. It is they who have brought me back. They held up the torch. I let it fall. Uncle Ben, do you think it has gone out? Suppose one of my children's children should stumble and then say, 'It is not my fault. I inherited this. There was grandmamma who went her willful way so long ago!' I know my dust would shiver in the ground. I can't add any more to the weaknesses and follies that will crush them down. Having my own way costs too much when they must pay. That's it. I have n't the price. I refuse to let them pay.--Will you help me, Uncle Ben? Will you ask Arnold to let me try again? I will be good. I will be humble--almost! For I must have my children if only that I may pass this on. The thing is to abolish our complacency. Why--it's {123} what the old religionists meant when they talked about getting down in the dust before their God! It really, really, is the thing we have to do. And-- my children will never learn it here, among you, where everybody is so happy and self-satisfied. They will never learn it even from the righteous Arnold. If they know it, they will have to learn it from me-- for I am the only repentant sinner of us all! So--I have come back."

Desire's words stirred me strangely. I had sometimes suspected that I allowed my modest pride of descent to feed complacency rather than effort. As she talked, I, too, saw the long procession of the valiant men and women of my race moving forward through the years; I saw how I had lightly arrogated credit to myself for their hard-won excellencies, and reckoned {124} myself a finer gentleman for the battles they had fought. Where were my battles? Where my victories?

Then--I remembered that the Withacres always could talk like angels from heaven. But I looked into Desire's eyes, and that thought shriveled before the flame in them. They met mine exultantly, as steel meets steel. This was no lip eloquence. She was eager for her battles.

"So," I said with wonder, "you have capitulated--to Them."

"Yes--to Them. Oh, it is n't needful, Uncle Ben, that to show my kinship I should work as they did, live as plainly, think as narrowly. It is all here just the same. I am their child. I will not go against their will. Before ever I was born, they wrote their desires in my flesh. They made the blood to flow in my veins after their ways. {125} And--I am glad! For my children shall be their children.--Uncle Ben, will Arnold take me home?"

I looked at Desire's glowing face that seemed afire with aspiration for the life she had tossed aside. I thought of Arnold's grave lips, steady shoulders, and longing eyes. There fell upon me a vivid sense of the wonderful ingenuity and richness of life's long processes. This diverse pair had traveled devious ways to the end that, after all their married years, they might at last be not unequally mated. My elderly heart sang a canticle of rejoicing, but my speech was circumspect.

"I incline to believe that he will," I admitted.

{126}

{127}

CLARISSA'S OWN CHILD

{128}

{129}

CLARISSA'S OWN CHILD

I

It was half-past three o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon in April when Associate Professor Charleroy (of the Midwest University at Powelton) learned that he was to lose his wife and home.

For April, the day was excessively hot. The mercury stood at eighty-nine degrees on the stuffy little east porch of the Charleroy home. There was no ice in the refrigerator, the house-cleaning was not finished, and the screens were not in. The discomfort of the untimely heat was very great.

Clarissa Charleroy, tired, busy, and flushed of face, knew that she was nervous to the point of hysteria. This {130} condition always gave her a certain added clearness of vision and fluency of speech which her husband, with justice, had learned to dread. Indeed, she dreaded it herself. In such moods she often created for herself situations which she afterwards found irksome. She quite sincerely wished herself one of the women whom fatigue makes quiet and sodden, instead of unduly eloquent.

Paul Charleroy, coming from a classroom, found his wife in the dining-room, ironing a shirt-waist. The door was open into the little kitchen beyond, where the range fire was burning industriously, and the heat poured steadily in.

"I thought it would be cooler in here," Clarissa explained wearily, "but it is n't. I have to get these waists ready to wear, and a gingham dress {131} ironed for Marvel. The child is simply roasted in that woolen thing. But the starch _will_ stick to the irons!"

Professor Charleroy shut the door into the kitchen. He frowned at the ironing-board, balanced on two chairs in front of the window. Small changes in the household arrangements were likely to discompose him. In his own house he was vaguely conscious always of seeking a calm which did not exist there.

"Can't the washerwoman do that ironing?" he inquired.

Clarissa dropped her iron and confronted him dramatically.

"Doubtless--if I could afford to pay her," she responded. "As you are already aware, the salary of associate professors in the Midwest University is fourteen hundred dollars a year. When steak was a shilling a pound {132} and eggs fifteen cents a dozen and the washerwoman asked a dollar a day, one could afford to have her help longer. Now it is different."

Professor Charleroy moved quietly over to the ironing-board and put the flatiron, which was still hot enough to scorch, upon its stand. Then he arranged, in a glass, the handful of daffodils he was carrying, and set them where the April sunshine fell across them.