Chapter 34

Hildreth was very wise and very patient with one who was as yet a mere acolyte in love's ways and uses ... she taught me many things, and I adored her for it--as little by little, day by day, she brought me to the full stature of my manhood....

* * * * *

Of course the two other women of the household immediately sensed what was happening. But Penton remained pathetically blind....

What an incredible man! A mole would have gotten a glimmer of the gradually developing change.

With bravado I acted my part of the triangular drama ... but Hildreth carried off her part with an easiness, a femininely delicate boldness, that compelled my utmost admiration ... she even threw suspicious Ruth and Darrie off the scent--at times.

* * * * *

The night of the performance of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ I shall never forget ... Hildreth as Titania in her green tights ... I sat in the back (she would not allow me in the front because it might fluster her, she pleaded) and enjoyed a sense of blissful ownership in her, as she glided about, through the Shakespearean scenes ...--such a sense of ownership that it ran through my veins with a full feeling, possessed my entire body....

Who was this little, alien man, Penton Baxter, who also dared claim her possession!...

Nonchalantly and with an emotion of inner triumph I let him walk homeward with Hildreth, while I paced along with Ruth and Darrie.

Let him congratulate her now on her triumph ... that she had had, as Titania, there under the wide heaven of stars, in our outdoor theatre ... in the midst of the Chinese lanterns that swayed in the slight breaths of summer air....

Later on, when she was warm in my arms, _I_ would congratulate her ... --tell her she was greater than Bernhardt ... than Duse herself!... tell her every incredible thing that lovers hold as mere, commonplace truths.

* * * * *

Jones had acquitted himself wonderfully as Bottom ... roaring like any suckling dove ... putting real philosophic comedy in his part ... to the applause of even the elder Grahame, who, to do him credit, was not such a bad sport, after all.

* * * * *

"Johnnie, we are having a sing to-night ... there'll be a full moon up. I have informed the committee that you will read a few of your poems by the camp-fire."

"--the first time I ever heard of it," I replied, concealing my pride in the invitation, under show of being disgruntled....

That was Penton's way, arranging things first, telling you afterward.

"But you will do it? I have said you would!"

"Yes, Penton, if you wish me to!"

* * * * *

Hildreth was always insistent on my strength ... my greyhound length of limb, my huge chest ... she stood up and pounded on my chest once....

"Oh, why do I pick out a poor poet, and not a millionaire, for a lover!"

* * * * *

There grew up between us a myth ... we were living in cave-days ... she was my cave-woman ... I was her cave-man....

As I came to her in my bath-robe (for now, bolder with seeming immunity, we threw caution aside, and met often in the little house)--

As I came to her in my bath-robe, unshaven, once ... she called me her Paphnutius ... and she was my Thaïs ... and she told me Anatole France's story of _Thaïs_.

But the cave-legend of our love ... in a previous incarnation ... was what spelled her most ... she doted on strength ... cruel, sheer, brute strength....

That I could carry her, lift her high up with ease, toss her about, rejoiced her to the utmost....

I caught her up in my arms, pleasing this humour, tossing her like a ball ... till my muscles were as sore as if I had fought through the two halves of a foot-ball game....

Out of all this play between us there grew a series of Cave Poems.

One of them I set aside to read at the sing, beside the camp-fire.

* * * * *

They had chorused _Up With the Bonnet for Bonny Dundee_ and _You Take the Highway_....

There ran a ripple of talk while they waited for me.

In the red glow of the camp-fire I towered over the stocky little husband as he introduced me. Hildreth was sitting there ... I must make a good impression before my mate. All I saw was she--too patently, I fear.

I went through poem after poem, entranced with the melody of my verse ... mostly delicate, evanescent stuff ... like this one ...

"THE EMPEROR TO HIS LOVE

"I've a green garden with a grey wall 'round Where even the wind's foot-fall makes no sound; There let us go and from ambition flee, Accepting love's brief immortality. Let other rulers hugely labour still Beneath the burden of ambition's ill Like caryatids heaving up the strain Of mammoth chambers, till they stoop again ... Your face has changed my days to splendid dreams And baubled trumpets, traffics, and trirèmes; One swift touch of your passion-parted lips Is worth five armies and ten seas of ships."

Hildreth's applause was sweet. My heart almost burst with happiness within me, as those tiny hands, that had run through my hair and been so wonderful with me ... hands that I had kissed and fondled in secret--joined in unison with Penton's and Darrie's and Ruth's hand-claps.

"And now I will finish with the _Song of Kaa, the Cave-Man_," I announced ... it seemed that the poem was not, after all, in the bunch of MSS. I had brought along with me....

At last I found it--and read:

"THE SONG OF KAA

"Beat with thy club on a hollow tree While I chant the song of Kaa for thee: I lived in a cave, alone, at first, Till into a neighbouring valley I burst Wild and bearded and seeking prey, And I came on Naa, and bore her away ... Away to my hole in the crest of the hill, Where I broke her body to my fierce will....

* * * * *

"My fellow cave-men, fell in a rage: 'What hast thou done?' cried Singh, the Sage, 'For I hear far off a battle-song, And the tree-men come, a hundred strong ...' Long the battle and dread the fight; We hurled rocks down from our mountain height"--

I copy this from memory alone ... Hildreth has all my cave-poems. I gave them to her, holding no transcripts of them--

The upshot--

"All of our tribe were slain ... Naa and I alone escaped-- going far off-- To start another people and clan: She, the woman, and I, the man!"

In my love-drunkenness, I looked directly at Hildreth as I read the last lines ... she lowered her head and picked at her sandal....

The applause was tumultuous....

Penton Baxter rose to his feet, as chairman of the occasion....

"I'm sure we all thank Mr. Gregory--"

* * * * *

Events trod rapidly on one another's heels. Though Penton had gone on frequent walks with Darrie, after his day's work,--chiefly because Hildreth had not wanted to go on walks with him herself, or had not wanted to accompany them both--yet she and I seized on the precedent Penton and Darrie had set, and we were abroad most of the time ... roaming idyllically in the fields, the woods ... passionate ... mad with the new love that had come to us ... unseeing, in our absorption in each other's arms ... praying with devout lover's prayers that we were as unseen as unseeing....

We were abroad in the fields so much that even Penton himself must notice it....

So we developed the flimsiest of all flimsy pretexts ... pretended to be engrossed, together, in of all things, the study of--toadstools and mushrooms ... taking with us Neltje Blanchan's book on _Mushrooms and Toadstools_, with its beautiful coloured illustrations ... and we did learn a lot about these queer vegetations that grow without the need of chlorophyll ... entering into a world of new colours in the vegetable kingdom ... exquisite pinks and mauves and greys ... blues ... purples ... reds ... russets ... in the darkest spots of the woods we sought and found strange species of these marvellous growths ... that grow more readily in the dark and obscurity, the twilights of nature, than in the open sunlight of green summer days....

* * * * *

Down vistas of forest we often pursued each other ... often got lost so that it took hours for re-orientation ... once, for awhile, to our great fright, we could not re-discover our clothes, that we had lightly tossed aside on the bank of a brook lost and remote,--that had never before laved a human body in its singing recesses of forest foliage ... for I had been playing satyr to her nymph, pursuing her....

* * * * *

And each day saw us a little more reckless, more bold and open in our love, our passion, for each other.

* * * * *

"How handsome love is making you, my Paphnutius!"

I was wearing my bath-robe, had stopped at her cottage a moment, in the morning, where she sat, in an easy chair, reading peacefully ... I was on my way for my morning dip in a nearby brook....

My bath-robe, that made me, somehow, feel so aristocratic, so like a member of the leisure class ... I forgot to tell how I had brought it all the way from Kansas, together with my MSS.

* * * * *

As I swam about in the brook, not over four feet deep, I sang and shouted. I had never been so happy in my life....

I dried myself in the sun, using its morning heat for a towel....

As I sat there on a rock, I heard a crackling of twigs, and Penton thrust his way through the intervening branches to my bare rock and my bare self ... I hastily, I do not know why, put on my bathrobe....

"Hello, Penton."

"Good morning, Johnnie. I felt you'd be down here for your morning bath ... I came to have a serious talk with you."

"Yes?"

"I want you to take calmly what I am about to say!"

Penton was much impressed with my stories of tramp days and tales of adventure on land and sea, which you may be sure my sense of the dramatic had encouraged me to lay on thick--and he, plainly, did not desire any heat in the discussion which was to follow....

"Recently it has come to my attention that there has been a lot of gossip about you and Hildreth ... your conduct together." He drew his lips together tightly, settled himself for a long siege....

"Why, Penton," I began, protestingly and hypocritically,--I had planned far other and franker conduct in such an emergency--but here I was, deprecating the truth--

"Why, Penton, God knows--"

"Never mind ... if it is true, I am very sorry for you--for Hildreth's sake, for yours, for mine ... but I want to warn you, if it is not true, to look out ... you, as a friend, owe me some obligations ... I have taken you in here, accepted you as one almost of my family, and--"

"But, Penton, this is unfair," I lied, "unfair even to suspect me--"

"If it had been anybody but you, Johnnie, I would have been suspicious weeks ago ... Oh, I know, Hildreth ... she is giving all the manifestations ... how her face shines, how beautiful she has grown, as she does, with a new heart interest!... and her taking my little cottage ... ousting me from it....

"If it was anyone else," and he fetched a deep sigh, with tears standing in his eyes, leaving the sentence incomplete.

At that moment I was impelled almost to cast myself at his feet, to confess, and beg forgiveness....

"I want to warn you," he went on, "of Hildreth ... once before this has happened ... she is a varietist by nature, as I am essentially a monogamist."

"--and the free love idea, it was you who taught her this, brought her into contact with Havelock Ellis, Ellen Key, Rosa Von Mayerreder?"

"I deny that. I believe in human freedom ... divorce ... remarriage ... but not in extreme sex-radicalism ... Hildreth has misinterpreted me ... the people you mention are great idealists, but in many ways they go too far ... true--I brought Hildreth into contact with these books; but only that she might use her own judgment, not accept them wholly and blindly, as she has done...."

I looked at the man. He was sincere. An incredible, naïve, almost idiotic purity shone in his face....

Again I was impelled to confess. Again I held my tongue. Again I lied.

"Penton, what you have just said about you and Hildreth and your lives together, I shall consider as sacred between us."

He gave me his hand.

"Promise me one thing, that you will not take Hildreth as your sweetheart ... be true to our friendship first, Johnnie."

"Penton, I am only flesh and blood; I will promise, if anything happens, to tell you, ultimately, the truth."

He looked at me with close scrutiny again, at this ambiguous speech.

"Johnnie, _have_ you told me the absolute truth?"

"Yes!" evading his eyes.

"--because there is a wild strain in Hildreth that only needs a little rousing--" He paused.

* * * * *

"Johnnie," as we walked away, "don't you think you had better pack up and leave? _The next time_ I am going to sue for a divorce."

* * * * *

We walked home arm in arm. I simulated so well that it was Baxter who begged pardon for even suspecting me.

But I felt like a dog. I, for my part, determined to bid farewell to Hildreth that very evening, before she retired for the night, in her cottage--take train to New York, and so to Paris, without first finishing my _Judas_, as I had intended.

We would bury forever in the secret places of our hearts what had already happened between us ... this was my first impulse....

My next was--that we should up and run away together, and defy Penton Baxter and the world.

* * * * *

Hildreth could see by the strangeness in my behaviour, as I came into the cottage, to kiss her good-night ... and stay a little while--a new custom of ours, as we grew bolder--could see that I had something on my mind.

I related to her all that had taken place between me and Penton that morning....

"The cad," she cried, "the nasty cad, to talk to you so about me ... I would have told you myself because you are my lover ... but he had no right to tell you ... as far as he has proof positive, you are merely a mutual friend....

"But that's the way with him. He has mixed his own life up so that it is all public, to him.

"Yes," she cried impetuously and passionately ... "it's true ... I have not been faithful to him before...."

"--and you returned to him? wasn't that weak?"

I took her hands in mine, with mind and soul made up at last....

"This time you can go through with it. Here's a man who will stand by you forever. I can earn a living for both of us, and--"

"Don't let's discuss the horrid old subject any more to-night ... I'm tired of discussing ... as you love me, read some poetry to me ... or I shall scream!"

"Have you ever read the sonnets of George Santayana?... I know most of them by heart ... let me quote you his best ...

'O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart Save one that faith deciphered in the skies To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art. Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine That lights the pathway but one step ahead Across a void of mystery and dread. Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine!'"

* * * * *

"I wish I had written that!" I said, in a hushed, awed voice, after a moment's silence....

* * * * *

"Now kiss me good-night and go to your tent ... I feel restless, troubled in spirit, to-night," she said, continuing:

"Perhaps I have been too harsh with Penton....

"He is steering on a chartless sea with no compass....

"No wonder he, and all radicals and pioneers in human thought, blunder ridiculously....

"The conservative world has its charts, its course well mapped out....

"I suppose I am not strong enough, big enough, for him."

"Hush! now it is you who're just talking!" I replied.

"You're jealous!"

"By God, yes. I _am_ jealous, though I suppose I ought to be ashamed of it."

* * * * *

She sat in bed, propped up with pillows. She had been reading Shakespeare's sonnets aloud to me. The big green-shaded reading lamp cast a dim light that pervaded the room.

She reached out both arms to me, the wide sleeves falling back from them, and showing their feminine whiteness....

I sat down beside her, caught her to me, kissed her till she was breathless....

"There ... there ... please! _Please!_"

"What! you're not tiring of my kisses?"

"No, dearest boy, but I have a curious feeling, I tell you ... maybe we're being watched...."

"Nonsense ... he believes I told him the truth."

And I caught her in my arms again, half-reclining on the bed.

"Sh!" she flung me off with a sudden impulse of frightened strength, "I hear someone."

"It's only the wind."

"Quick!... my God!"--

* * * * *

I snatched up a volume of Keats. It fell open at "St. Agnes Eve." I hurled myself into a chair ... gathering my breath I began aloud, as naturally as I could--

"St. Agnes' Eve! ah, bitter chill it was; The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold--"

At that very instant, Penton burst in at the door.

He paused a dramatic moment, his back to it, facing us.

I stopped reading, in pretended astonishment.

"Well, Penton?" acted Hildreth languidly....

The look of defeat and bewilderment on the husband's face would have been comic if it had not been pitiable.

I rose, laying the book down carefully.

"I think I'll go now, Hildreth ... you wish to see Penton alone." I put all the calm casual deference in my voice possible. I started to walk easily to the door.

"No! stop! I wish you to stay here, John Gregory ... since you've got yourself into this--"

"I'd like to know what you mean by 'got yourself into this'?"

"Oh, Gregory, let's not talk nonsense any longer."

"You don't believe what I assured you this morning?"

"Johnnie, it's not human ... I can't make myself, and I've tried and tried, God knows!"

"I'd like to know, for my part, just what you mean, Penton Baxter, spying on me this way--bursting in on poor Johnnie Gregory and me like a maniac, while we were only reading poetry together."

"--reading poetry together!" he echoed bitterly, almost collapsing, as he went into a chair.

Again I tried to make my exit.

"Johnnie, I want you to stay. I want to have all this out right here and now," snapped Baxter decisively.

"Very well ... if you put it that way."

"--a nice way to treat your guest," Hildreth interposed, "the way you've been raving about him, too. 'Johnnie Gregory' this, and 'Johnnie Gregory' that!--and the minute he arrives, first you try to make him put up at the community inn; and now you accuse him of--of--"

Hildreth began to weep softly....

And then began a performance at which I stood aside, mentally, in admiration ... the way that little woman handled her husband!

She wept, she laughed, she upbraided, she cajoled ... at one moment swore she wanted nothing better than to die, at the other, vowed eternal fidelity till old age overtook them both....

* * * * *

"I _must_ go," I cried, quite ashamed of myself in my heart. Baxter's credulity had expanded again, in the sun of Hildreth's _forgiveness_ of him for his unjust suspicions!...

For the first time in my life I perceived how a desperate woman can twist a man any way she wants.

"No, you must not go! it is I who am going--to show that I trust you."

"Good God!" I protested--this was too much! "no, no ... good-night, both of you ... good-night, Penton! good-night, Hildreth!"

Penton Baxter stepped in my way, took hold of one of my hands in both of his....

"Please, Johnnie, please, dear friend ... I wish you to stay while I myself go. Finish reading the poem to Hildreth ... I think I have been too harsh in my judgment of both of you ... only please do be more discreet, if only for appearance's sake, in the future....

"Sit down where you were. I wish to show that I trust you both....

"Good-night, Hildreth!" and he kissed his wife in fond contrition.

"Good-night, Johnnie ... forgive me!"

And he wavered out at the door, his face set in pain.

* * * * *

As soon as he had gone I rose swiftly.

"And now I must go."

"If you men aren't the funniest things!" she caught me by the hand, detaining me ... "not yet ... wait a minute. Read more of that poem you began, if only for a blind."

I picked up the book, started reading again ... strangely a rush of tears flooded my eyes and blurred the type....

I began to sob, heart-sick. I did love the absurd little man. My heart ached, broken over my lies....

"Oh! Oh!" I sobbed, "Hildreth, my woman, my sweetheart--he trusted me, Hildreth ... he trusted me!"

I knelt by the bed, thrusting my head into the lap of my First Woman.

She kissed me on top of the head.

"You're both two big, silly babies, that's all you are."

* * * * *

It was dawn when I returned to my tent, pulled the flap aside, fell, exhausted, on my cot in dreamless sleep....

* * * * *

How was it all going to end?

It seemed to me that I had tapped violent, subterranean currents in life and passion, that I had not hitherto known existed....

Free Love, Marriage, Polygamy, Polyandry, Varietism, Promiscuity--these were but tossing chips of nomenclature, bits of verbal welter, upborne by deep terrible human currents that appalled the imagination!

The man who prated glibly of any ready solution, orthodox or heterodox, radical or conventional, of the problem of the relationships between men and women was worse than a fool, he was a dangerous madman!

* * * * *

Hildreth and I, a-field, had found a bed of that exceptionally poisonous mushroom named _Pallida_ something or other ... the book said its poison was kin to that of the poison in the rattlesnake's bite. My eyes met with Hildreth's ... we needed say no word, both thinking the same thought that frightened us!... "how easy it would be--!"

* * * * *

Now we were plumbing the darker side of passion. Something that Carpenter does not write of in his _Love's Coming of Age_.

* * * * *

A night of wind, shifting into rain. Hildreth I knew would be afraid, alone.

I stepped into her cottage, in my bath-robe. She almost screamed at my sudden appearance. For I came in at the door like a shadow, the wind and rain making such a tumult that a running horse would not have been heard.

"Dearest ... you're all wringing wet ... you're dripping all over the floor. Throw off that robe. Dry yourself--there's a towel there!"

She flung me her kimono. "Here, put this on, till you're comfortable again."

I came out in her kimono, which I was bursting through ... my arms sticking out to my elbow.

She laughed herself almost into hysteria at my funny appearance.

* * * * *

"It will be quite safe to-night. I don't think he'd venture out. This is a hurricane, not a rainstorm ... besides, I believe he's a little afraid of you, Johnnie ... I was watching him rather closely, while I handled him, the other night ... he kept an uneasy eye on you all the time."

"God, but you were superb, Hildreth ... if you could only act that way on the stage!--"

"I _could_ act that way on the stage," she replied unexpectedly, a trifle put out....

Then--

"A woman has to do many things to save herself--"

"Oh, I swear that you are the most marvellous, the most beautiful woman in the world ... I love you ... I adore you ... I'd die for you ... right here ... now!"

* * * * *