A VERY SHORT CHAPTER, IN ONE SENSE

The next day it rained. Harry shut himself up in his room and wrote violently all the morning, less in the hope of accomplishing valuable work than in the desire to keep his mind off the one absorbing topic. It proved to be of little use. At lunch time he threw all that he had written into the fireplace and resolved to tell the immediate members of his family.

It worked out very well. After lunch he arranged with James to take a walk in the rain. Beatrice, it appeared, would be occupied at a bridge party all the afternoon. There remained Aunt Selina—the easiest, by all odds. Just before starting out with James he walked into the living room, rustling in his raincoat, and found her alone by the fire.

"It's all right, Aunt Selina." He felt himself grinning like a monkey, but couldn't seem to stop himself.

But Aunt Selina herself could do nothing but laugh. Presently she rose from her seat and embraced her nephew.

"That top button has come off," she said. "I'm afraid you'll get your neck wet." Then they looked at each other and laughed again. There was really nothing more to be said.

James' feet sounded on the stairs above.

"I shan't be home for dinner," said Harry, starting toward the door. "And you might tell Beatrice," he added.

He walked with James for three hours or more. It may have been the calming influence of exercise or it may have been the comforting effect that James' society generally had on him; at any rate, when the time came he found himself able to say what he had to without any of the embarrassment he had expected.

He chose the moment when they had all but reached the crossroad that would take him off to the Gilsons'.

"James," he said, breaking a long silence, "I've got something rather important to tell you. I'm engaged."

"To whom?"

"Madge Elliston."

"When?"

"Last night. That was it." They now stood facing each other, at the crossroads. James did not speak for a moment, and Harry scanned his face through the dusk. Its expression was one of bewilderment, Harry thought. Strange, that James should be more embarrassed than he! But that was the way it went.

"Harry! See here, Harry—"

"Yes, James!"

"I ..." He stopped and then slowly raised his hand. "I congratulate you."

"Thanks, awfully. It does sort of take one's breath away, doesn't it?... I'm going there now. Why don't you come too? No? Well, I may be rather late, so leave the door on the latch. I'll walk home." And he walked off down the crossroad.

James knew, perfectly well, the moment Harry said he had something to tell him. His subsequent questions were prompted more by a desire to make the situation between them legally clear, as it were, than by real need of information. His first dominant impulse was to explain the situation to Harry and show him, frankly and convincingly, the utter impossibility of his engagement. The very words formed themselves in his mind:—"See here, Harry, you can't possibly marry Madge Elliston, because I'm in love with her myself—have been for years, before you ever thought of her!" He drew a long breath and actually started in on his speech. But the words would not come. As he looked at his brother standing happy and ignorant before him he realized in an instant that, come what might, he would never be able to utter those words.

There was nothing left to do but mumble his congratulations. As he lifted his hand to that of his brother the thought occurred to him that he might easily raise it higher and put Harry out of his way, once and for all. He knew that he could, with his bare hands, do him to death on the spot; knee on chest, fingers on throat—he knew the place. That was perhaps preferable to the other; kinder, certainly, but equally impossible. It was not even a temptation.

As he walked off he reflected that he had just come through one of the great crises of his whole life, and yet how commonplace, how utterly flat had been its outward guise! He had always vaguely wondered how people acted at such times; now the chance had come to him and he had shown less feeling than he would have at missing a trolley car. In him, at this present moment, were surging some of the most terrific passions that ever swayed human beings—love, jealousy, disappointment, hate of the order of things—and he could not find a physical vent for one of them! Not only that, but he never would be able to; he saw that clearly enough; people of his time and class and type never could. This was what civilization had brought men to! What was the use? What was the meaning of all civilization, all progress, all human development? Here he was, as perfect a physical specimen as his age produced, unable to do more than grit his teeth in the face of the most intolerable emotions known to mankind, under pain of suffering a debasement even more intolerable. Some people did give way to their passions, but that was only because they were less able to think clearly than he. They always regretted it in the end; they always suffered more that way; his knowledge of the world had taught him nothing if it had not taught him that.

Just in order to prove to himself how ineffectual physical expression of his mental state was he tore a rail off the top of a nearby fence—he had wandered far out into the country again—and, raising it above his shoulders, brought it down with all his strength upon a rock. The rail happened to be a strong one and did not break, and the force of the blow made his hands smart. He took a certain fierce joy in the pain and repeated the blow two or three times, but long before his body tired with the exertion his soul sickened of the business. He threw the rail lightly over the fence and wandered hopelessly on into the hills.

After the first shock of surprise and disappointment had passed his feelings boiled down to a slow scorching hate of destiny. The thought of God occurred to him, among other things, and he laughed. Why did people ever take it into their heads to deny the existence of God? Of course there was a God; nothing but a divine will could possibly have arranged that he should be thwarted in an honest love—not merely once, mind you, but twice—by the one person in the world whom he could not oppose. Such things were beyond the realm of chance or reason. During one part of his wanderings he laughed aloud, several separate times, at the monumental humor of it all. A man such as he was, in the full pride of his youth and strength, strong in body, strong in mind, strong in will and character, twitched hither and yon by the lightest whimsical breath of an all-powerful divinity—it was supremely funny, in its coarse, horrible way.

"Oh, yes, it's a good joke, God," he said aloud once or twice; "it's a damned good joke."

It is significant that he thought very little of Madge now. He experienced none of the sudden sharp twinges of memory that he had known on a former occasion. At that time, as he now realized, only one side of his nature had been stirred, and that a rather silly, unimportant side. Now his whole being, or at least all that was best and strongest in his being, was affected. He had loved Beatrice only with his eyes and his imagination. He loved Madge with the full strength of his heart and soul and mind. And heart, soul and mind being cheated of their right, united in an alliance of hate and revenge against the fate that had cheated them.

He did not return to the house for dinner, and Aunt Selina supposed he had gone with Harry to the Gilsons'. He walked most of the night and when at last he reached home he found the door locked. Harry, of course, not finding him downstairs, had thought he had gone to bed and had locked everything. So he lay down in a cot hammock to await the coming of a hopeless day.

He got some sleep; he did not see that dawn, after all. Awakened shortly after seven by a housemaid opening doors and windows, he slipped unobserved up to his room, undressed and took a cold bath. He supposed nothing would ever keep him from taking a cold bath before breakfast; nothing, that is, except lack of cold water. Strange, that cold water could effect what love, jealousy and company could not. He glanced out of the window. The weather had changed during the night and the day was clear and windy and snapping, a true forerunner of autumn. The sun and wind between them were whipping the sea into all sorts of shades of blue and purple, rimming it with a line of white along the blue coast of Maine over to the left. There was cold water enough for any one, enough to drown all the wretched souls ever born into a world of pain. How strange it was to think of how many unwilling souls that sea drowned every year, and yet had not taken him, who was so eminently willing! He could not deliberately seek death for himself, but he would be delighted to die by accident. No such luck, though; the fate, God, destiny, whatever you chose to call it, that had brought him twice into the same corner of terrestrial hell would see to that....

As he was rubbing himself dry his eye fell on his reflection in a full-length mirror and almost involuntarily stopped there. He still had the pure Greek build of his college days, he noticed; the legs, the loins, the chest, the arms, the shoulders all showed the perfect combination of strength and freedom. He had not even the faults of over-development; his neck was not thick like a prize-fighter's nor did his calves bulge like those of many great athletes. And his head matched the rest of him, within and without. And all this perfection was brought to naught by the vagrant whim of a cynical power! A new wave of hate and rebellion, stronger than any he had yet felt, swept over him. Moved by a sudden impulse he threw aside his towel and advanced a step or two toward the mirror, raising his hands after the manner of a libation-pourer of old.

"I swear to you," he muttered between clenched teeth to the reflection that faced him; "I swear to you that nothing in me shall ever rest until I have got even with the Thing, god, devil or blind chance, that has brought me to this pass. It may come early or it may come late, but somehow, some day! I swear it."

There was something eminently satisfying in the juxtaposition of his nakedness of body to the stark intensity of his passion and the elemental fervor of his agnosticism. For James was now a thorough agnostic; turned into one overnight from a "good" Episcopalian—he had been confirmed way back in his school days—he realized his position and fairly reveled in the hopelessness and magnificence and bravery of it all. For it takes considerable bravery to become an agnostic, especially when you have a simple religious nature. James was in a state where the thought of being eternally damned gave him nothing but a savage joy. It was all very wicked, of course, but strong natures have a way of turning wicked when it becomes impossible for them to be good. There are some things that not even a schÖne Seele can put up with.

Having thus taken pact with himself he experienced a sense of relief and became almost cheerful. He had breakfast alone with Harry—both ladies customarily preferring to take that intimate meal in their own rooms—and talked with him quite normally about various matters, chiefly golf. He became almost garrulous in explaining his theories concerning the proper use of the niblick. Harry was going to play golf that morning with Madge. He looked extremely fresh and attractive in his suit of tweed knickers; James did not blame Madge in the least for falling in love with his brother rather than him. Nor was he in the least inclined to find fault with Harry for falling in love with Madge. Only ... but what was the use in going over all that again?

He walked briskly down to the town after breakfast and engaged a berth on the New York express for that night. Living in immediate propinquity to the happy lovers would of course be intolerable. Then he walked back to the house. It was rather a long walk; the house stood on a height at some distance back of the town. A feeling of lassitude overcame him before he reached home; the exertions of last night were beginning to tell on him. Oh, the horror of last night! The memory of it was almost more oppressive than the dreadful thing itself.

He supposed he ought to go up and begin to pack, but he did not feel like it. Instead he wandered out on the verandah to lie in the sun and watch the sea for a while. He came at last to a hexagonal tower-like extension of the verandah built over an abutment of rock falling sharply away on all sides except that toward the house. There was a drop of perhaps twenty-five feet from the broad railing of this extension to the ground below. Harry, who knew the house from his early days, had dubbed its peak-roofed excrescence the chamber up a tower to the east that Elaine guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot in; it was sometimes more briefly referred to as Elaine. It was a pleasant place to sit, but very windy on a day like this, and James was rather surprised to discover Beatrice sitting in one angle of the railing gazing silently out over the sea.

"Hullo," he said, listlessly sinking into a chair. "You've heard, I suppose?"

"Yes, I've heard."

"Fine, isn't it?"

"Oh, splendid."

"I'm going to New York to-night," said James after a moment.

"I'm going home next month," said Beatrice.

Neither spoke for a while and then it began to dawn on them both that those two carelessly spoken sentences had much more to them than their face-value. They both had the uneasy sensation of being forced into a "situation."

"What for?" asked James at last.

"For good."

"But why?" he persisted, knowing perfectly well why, at bottom.

"You ought not to have to ask that," she replied. "You, of all people.—Why are you going away to-night?" she added, turning toward him with sudden passion.

James' first impulse was to make a sharp reply, his second was to get up and walk away, and then his glance fell upon her face.... Oh, was there no end to mortal misery?

"I'm sorry, Beatrice," he said wretchedly; "I'm sorry—I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Oh, it's all right," she answered in his own tone of voice. Then for a long time neither of them moved nor spoke.

The situation was on them now in full force, and it was a sufficiently terrific one, for actual life; one which under other circumstances they would both have made every effort to break up. Yet neither of them thought of struggling against it now—there was so much else to struggle against. Great misfortunes inoculate people to small embarrassments; no one in the throes of angina pectoris has much time to bother about a cold in the head. Then, as their silence wore on, they began to be conscious of a certain sense of companionship.

"I suppose it's pretty bad?" ventured James at last, on a note of tentative understanding.

"I suppose it is...."

An idea occurred to James. "At least you're better off than I am, though. You can try to do something about it. You see how my hands are tied. You can fight against it, if you want. That's something."

Beatrice gazed immovably out over the sea. "You can't fight against destiny," she said at last.

James pricked up his ears; his whole being became suddenly alert. Couldn't one? Had he not dedicated his whole future to that very thing? "I'm not so sure of that," he answered slowly. "Have you ever tried?"

"I've tried for seven years."

Well, that was something. He became curious; seven years' experience in the art of destiny-fighting would surely contain knowledge that would be valuable to a novice like himself. And in the manner of getting this he became almost diabolically clever. Guessing that all direct inquiries in the matter would merely flatten themselves against the stone wall of her reticence he determined to approach her through the avenue of her pride.

"I find it hard to believe that," he remarked; "I haven't seen the slightest indication of such a thing."

"No, of course not. How should you? I haven't advertised it, like a prize fight!"

"I don't mean that; I mean that I haven't ever discovered anything in your character to make me believe you were—that sort of person. That sort of thing takes more than strength of character and intellect; it takes passion, capacity for feeling. And I shouldn't have said there was much of that in you. You have always seemed to me—well, rather aloof from such things. Cold, almost—I don't mean in the sense of being ill-natured, but...."

James was perfectly right; it is a curious trait of human character, that sensitiveness on the point of capacity for feeling. People who will sincerely disclaim any pretensions to strength of mind, body or character will flare into indignant protest when their strength of heart is assailed. It was so with Beatrice now.

"Cold?" she interrupted with a slight laugh. "Me—cold?... Yes, I suppose I might seem so. I daresay I appear to be a perfect human icicle...." She laughed again, and then turned directly toward James. "See here, James, it's more than likely that we shall never see each other again after to-day, isn't it?"

"I suppose not, if you intend to go—"

"The first moment I can. Consequently it doesn't matter particularly what I say to you now or what you think of me afterward. I should just like to give you an idea of what these years have been to me. It may amuse you to know that the pursuit of your brother has been the one guiding passion of my life since I was eighteen. I was in love with him before he left England and I've wanted him from that time on—wanted him with all the strength of my soul and body! Wanted him every living moment of the day and night!... Can you conceive of what that means for a woman? A woman, who can't speak, can't act, can't make the slightest advance, can't give the least glimmering of her feeling?—not only because the world doesn't approve but because her game's all up if the man gets a suspicion that she's after him.... I suppose I knew it was hopeless from the start, though I couldn't bring myself to admit it. At any rate, as soon as the chance came I made up my mind to come over here and just sit around in his way and wait—the only thing a woman can do under the circumstances...."

"I never—I didn't realize quite all that," stammered James. "Though I knew—I guessed about the other.... You mean you deliberately came to America—"

"With that sole purpose."

"And you—you...." He fairly gasped.

"I wormed my way into a place in your family with that one end in view, if that's what you mean. And I've remained here with that one end in view ever since."

"And all your work—the League—"

"I had to do something, in the meanwhile—No, that's not true either; that was another means to the same end. Intended to be." She smiled with the same quiet intensity of bitterness that had struck James before.

"But what about you and Aunt Selina? I always thought—"

The smile faded. "Aunt Selina might lie dead at my feet, for all I should care," she answered with another sudden burst of passion. "Oh, no, not quite that. I suppose I like her as well as I can like any one. But that's the way it is, comparatively."

"Yes. I know that feeling," said James meditatively.

"So you see how it is with me. I'm glad, in a way, that it's all up now. Any end—even the worst—is better than waiting—that hopeless, desperate waiting. Yet I never could bring myself to give up till I heard—what I heard yesterday. I've expected it, really, for some time; I've watched, I've seen. Oh, that horrible watching—waiting—listening! That's all over, at least...."

She had sunk into a chair near the edge of the verandah and sat with her elbows on the broad rail, gazing with sightless eyes over the variegated expanse of the sea. The midday sun fell full upon her unprotected face and even James at that moment could not help thinking how few complexions could bear that fierce light as hers did. She was, indeed, perhaps more beautiful at that moment than he had ever seen her before. Her expression of quiet hopeless grief was admirably suited to the high-bred cast of her features; she would have made a beautiful model for a Zenobia or a classisized type of pietÀ. Beauty is never more willing to come to us than when we want it least.

It had its effect on James, though he did not realize it. He came over and sat down on the rail, where he could look directly down at her.

"Beatrice," he said, "I don't mind saying I think it was rather magnificent of you."

She looked up at him a moment and then out to sea again. "Well, I must say I don't. I'm not proud of it. If I had been man enough to go my own way and not let it interfere with my life in the very least, that might have been magnificent. But this.... It was simply weak. I always knew there was no hope, you know."

"No, that's not the way to look at it. You devoted your whole life to that single purpose.... After all, you did as much as it was possible to do, you know. You went about it in the very best way—you were right when you said the worst thing you could do was to let him see."

"I'm not so sure. No, I don't know about that. Sometimes I think that if I had been brave enough simply to go to him and say, 'I love you; here I am, take me; I'll devote my life to making a good wife for you,' it would have been much better. But I wasn't brave enough for that."

"No," insisted James; "that wasn't why you didn't do it. You knew Harry. It might have worked with some men, but not with him. Can't you see him screwing himself to be polite and saying, 'Thank you very much, Beatrice, but I don't think I could make you a good enough husband, so I'm afraid it won't do'?... No, you picked out the best way to get at him and made that your one purpose in life, and I admire you for it. It wasn't your fault it didn't succeed; it was just—just the damned, relentless way of things...."

"What are you going to do now?" he asked after a pause. "After you get home, I mean?"

"I don't know. Work, I suppose, at something."

"What—slums?"

"Oh, I suppose so.—No, I'd rather do something harder, like stenography—something with a lot of dull, grinding routine. That's the best way."

"A stenographer!"

"Or a matron in a home.—Why not? I must do something. I won't live with Mama, that's flat."

"You think you must go home, do you?"

"You wouldn't expect me to stay here and—?"

"No, but couldn't you find something to do here as well as there?"

"Yes, but why? I suppose I want to go home, things being as they are. If I've got to live somewhere, I'd rather live among my own people. I didn't come here because I liked America best...."

"But are you sure you don't like America best now? You can't have lived here all these years without letting the place have its effect on you, however little you may have thought about it. Why, your very speech shows it! And what about your friends—haven't you got as many on this side as the other? You've practically admitted it.... And do you realize what construction is sure to be put on your leaving just now...?"

"What are you driving at?" She looked quickly up at him, curious in spite of herself to discover the trend of his arguments, in themselves scarcely worth answering. He did not reply for a moment, but stared gravely back at her, and when he spoke again it was from a different angle.

"Beatrice, why have you been telling me all these things...?"

He knew what he was going to do now, what he was striving toward with the whole strength of his newly-forged determination. And if at the back of his brain there struggled a crowd of lost images—ghosts of ideals which at this time yesterday had been the unquestioned rulers of his life—stretching out their tenuous arms to him, giving their last faint calls for help before taking their last backward plunge into oblivion, he only went on the faster so as to drown their voices in his own.

"Beatrice, why did you think of confiding in me? Why did you pick out this particular time? You never have before; you're not the sort of person that makes confidences. It wasn't because you were going away; that was no real reason at all.... Beatrice, don't you see? Don't you see the bond that lies between us two? Don't you see what's going to happen to us both?"

"No—I don't know what you're talking about. James, don't be absurd!" She rose to her feet as if to break away, but she stood looking at his face, fascinated and possibly a little frightened by the onward rush of his words. James rose too and stood over her.

"Beatrice, we've both had a damned dirty trick played on us, the same trick at the same time. Are you going to take it lying down—spread yourself out to receive another blow, or are you going to stand up and make a fight—assert your independence—prove the existence of your own soul? I'm not, whatever happens! I'm going to make a fight, and I want you to make it with me. Beatrice, marry me! Now—to-day—this instant! Don't you see that's the only thing to do?..."

"No! James, stop! You don't know what you're saying!" She broke away from him, asserting her strength for the moment against even his impetuous onrush. "James, you're mad, stark mad! Haven't you lived long enough to know that you always regret words spoken like that? Try to act like a sensible human being, if you can't be one!"

That was all very well, but why did she weaken it by adding "I won't listen to any more such talk," which admitted the possibility that there might be more such talk very soon? And if she was determined not to listen, why did she not simply walk away and into the house? James did not put these questions to himself in this form, but the substance of their meaning worked its way through his excitement and lent him courage for an attack from a new quarter. He dropped his impetuosity and became very quiet and keen.

"You ask me to act like a sensible person; very well, I will. Let's look at things from a practical point of view. There's no love's young dream stuff about this thing, at all. We've lost that; it's been cut out of both our lives, forever. All there is left for us to do is to pick up the pieces and try to make something of ourselves, as we are. How can we possibly do that better than by marrying? Don't you see the value of a comradeship founded on the sympathy there must be between us?"

He stopped for a moment and stood calmly watching her. No need now to use violence against those despairing voices in the background of his thoughts; they had been hushed by the strength of a determination no longer hot with the joy of self-discovery but taking on already something of the chill irrevocability of age. He watched Beatrice almost with amusement; he knew so well what futile struggles were going on within her. He had no more doubt of the outcome now than he had of his own determination.