And once she said: ‘I was a sly, awful little girl, Dan. Ever since I can remember, I’ve known that if I did some things to men they would do anything I wanted. My father was big, Dan, a big man; bigger than you; and he would have been fine if I hadn’t been so sly and clever and cruel, driving him to do crazy, awful things till he hated himself and wanted to die. Oh, Dan, Dan, Dan . . .’
But she was not always thus contrite. Sometimes she spoke with a dry, rancorous bitterness, mocking him, mocking John, scorning them all; and sometimes, when her friends had been here to see her, she talked to Dan about them, deriding them, hating them. ‘The silly fools, thinking me so fine and generous and brave. The silly fools! The silly fools!’ There was a sudden violent passion in her tones against these simple decent folk who liked her well. ‘I’d like to spit in their smug faces! I’d like to tell them . . .’ Her eyes narrowed with a sudden thought and she spoke under her breath. ‘I’d like to tell them that other, too! Oh, I’d like to tell them that and see their faces. Most of all I’d like to tell them that!’
But then caution checked her and she looked at him shrewdly and said: ‘Dan, you don’t believe I’m wicked, do you?’ And then in scorn again: ‘No, indeed, you’re too like John to think evil of anyone! But don’t ever believe me when I say terrible things about myself, will you, Dan!’ There were many such hours. There was no day from his home-coming till she died when he was not for at least part of the time with her; and the months were for him a long crucifixion. To endure the ordeal he drew strength from his father, and more and more from Beth; but always, too, he tried to help his mother, to bring her some faint cheer. When in October he first came to her without his crutches she was for a moment almost gay, till he told her that it was Aunt Meg and Beth who had helped him learn to walk again, and then she sulked like a sullen child.
VII
Before Dan had been a month at home he knew he wished to marry Beth, but he told himself he could not. She was so young and so perfect, and he was maimed. To turn to her could make him forget his dreadful hours with Jenny, yet, since he recognized more and more certainly Beth’s feeling for him, he thought he should avoid seeing her so often. But because he hoped to be assured this was not true, one day in late fall—he had found her alone—he said to Aunt Meg:
‘You know, I’ve been thinking. I’m afraid I—ought not to be so much with Beth.’
Meg hesitated for a moment, carefully not smiling; then asked quietly: ‘Aren’t you happier here than anywhere?’
‘Yes. But—Beth ought to be seeing more of—younger people. I take all her time.’
She said, half to herself and half to him: ‘Of course you know Beth’s loved you since she was a baby, Dan.’
‘I know the way you mean, but she’ll be a young woman, soon, ready to fall really in love with someone.’
‘She’s a young woman now, Dan,’ Meg told him simply. ‘And she’s in love with you.’
He knew this was true, and he said in sudden, half-angry challenge: ‘But see here, would you be willing for her to marry a—wreck like me?’
Meg smiled. ‘I’d be proud and happy, Dan; but I don’t think what I felt would matter. Beth has a mind of her own. You’d have to ask her. Whatever she wanted, I would want too.’
He considered this, asked uneasily: ‘What do you think she’d say?’
‘What do you think, yourself?’
‘But she’s not old enough to know her own mind, Meg,’ he protested. ‘Of course I’m a soldier, crippled and home from the war, and that sort of thing means a lot to a girl her age; but I have to be fair to her.’
‘I don’t think Beth’s a silly little fool,’ Meg assured him, almost sternly. ‘I think she knows her own mind—and her heart, too.’ And suddenly her eyes warmed and she said slowly: ‘I wouldn’t tell you to ask her, Dan, unless I were sure what the answer would be. I wouldn’t want you hurt, my dear.’
Yet Dan still lacked the courage and the will to speak, till one day Meg came to see Jenny, and when he went downstairs to meet her she told him to go to Beth. ‘I said I’d send you,’ she explained. ‘I’ll stay with Jenny. Go along, Dan. You need a rest from things here.’ And after an instant, smiling, she rose on tiptoe to kiss him. ‘Run along, my dear,’ she said, and went away up the stairs.
Dan when she was gone began to tremble uncontrollably, and he stared in wonder at his shaking hands. He was at once passionately eager and doubtfully uncertain, half-desiring and half-dreading this hour that was to come. He decided after a moment to walk to town. He might have driven, but the crisp November day was fine, so he took his cane and set out. He walked by this time with some certainty.
On the way he met old friends and stopped and spoke with them; yet when he left them he hurried on. Only at the very end did his steps lag and he came halting to Beth’s door.
She must have been watching for him, for before he could lift the knocker she opened the door and bade him in. ‘Did you walk?’ she asked, in a smiling excitement.
‘All the way.’ It was the first time he had walked so far.
‘Oh, fine!’ she said happily. They turned into the sitting room and she made him sit down, but she herself stood by the hearth, by the blazing fire. For a moment neither of them spoke, yet watching her he felt a deep excitement warm him. Then she asked how Jenny was, and he told her soberly:
‘Why—she suffers more all the time. And she’s weaker every day.’
‘It’s hard on you, being so much alone with her.’
‘It’s what she wants.’
They were silent then again. She asked incuriously: ‘Do you—just sit and talk together all day long?’
‘She does most of the talking. She likes to talk to me.’ His fists for a moment clenched as he remembered some of the things his mother had said. ‘She’s really not talking to me,’ he explained. ‘It’s more as if she were thinking aloud, about all her life, and about when we were children.’ He said: ‘She’s terribly unhappy sometimes.’
‘I know,’ she assented. ‘She’s never been happy since Tom and Mat went South. I wish they hadn’t gone, Dan. It hurt her so. Because of course she was always against the South.’ He nodded, and she said pityingly: ‘It isn’t fair that she should be unhappy, and should suffer so. She’s always been so good, doing so much for so many people. Everyone loves her.’
It seemed to him incredible that Beth could believe this; but he remembered that everyone who knew his mother would have said the same. ‘She’s fine,’ he assented. ‘And she’s so brave, Beth. It breaks my heart to watch her.’
‘I wish it didn’t have to come so hard on you.’
‘I’m glad I can help her.’ He said thoughtfully: ‘She has something on her mind, something she wants people to know.’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know. She’s said, several times, speaking of people here in town: “I wish I could tell them that.”
‘Why doesn’t she tell you?’
He repeated: ‘I don’t know. I think it’s some sort of joke. She always sort of laughs when she speaks of it.’ He hesitated, remembering his impression of malicious amusement in his mother when she spoke of this secret matter, warily said no more.
Beth did not question him. She turned, looking down into the fire, her head bowed; and he watched her, content to be silent here with her, remembering that Meg had sent him here today, sure there had been a purpose in that sending, thinking of the things he wished to say and dared not. Beth spoke again of casual matters, not looking at him; and he answered her, and this meaningless talk ran awhile and died and between them silence lay again.
She had been standing with her eyes upon the fire, but she turned at last to face him, and met his eyes and smiled. For what may have been a long time they spoke no word. She stood with her back to the fire, and their eyes held, at last unsmilingly, and he knew she was waiting for him to speak, waiting in a fine serenity. He remembered moments long ago when, seeing his father and mother
happy together, he himself had felt warm and comfortable and full of a fine delight, sharing their happiness; and meeting Beth’s eyes a like sense of calm content began to fill him now.
But he did not speak, and after a moment she stood more erectly, with a lifting of her shoulders as though in decision. Then she came toward him across the room in a steady way that made him remember how he and the men of the regiment had walked calmly across that bloody field between the turnpike and the railroad cut, never faltering. Nor did she falter now. She stopped just in front of him, looking down into his eyes; and he saw that she was as if transfigured, her eyes melting, her cheeks warm.
For a moment more that was all. She stood before him, waiting, grave and serene and sure; and her eyes held his, and this glance between them was enough without words. There was in him no need for speech. It seemed to Dan all was determined in that marriage of their eyes.
But for her this was not enough. She moved one hand in a little gesture almost of appeal, smiling again. ‘Hello, Dan.’ she said, in a low tone, half-mirthful.
He chuckled, felt his heart lift its beat. ‘Hello, Beth.’
She folded her arms tightly, as though her hands were trembling and she must quiet them. She said: ‘Remember when I was little?’
‘Yes, Beth.’
She nodded vigorously. ‘So do I. I remember all about everything. All about us.’ Something like fear swept him; a strange fear that this could not be true, that if he moved she would vanish, that this moment was too fragile to endure. She said: ‘I’ve always thought you were wonderful.’
‘You’ve been mighty sweet to me.’
She nodded. ‘I asked Mother to send you today.’
There was no more fear, yet he did not speak. Almost he forgot her, while out of his mind and heart the ghosts of dark memories withdrew; memories of dreadful battlefields; older memories of his boyhood when he had been unhappy; memories of hours with his mother in the months since he came home. Beth, standing here before him, by her nearness banished them all; swept the innermost parts of him clean of everything that cast a shadow there. She was like a healing flood sweeping through his soul. He had no wish to speak, no need of words.
She still stood with arms folded. ‘Dan,’ she said bravely, ‘I asked mother to send you to me because she says you want me to marry you.’ He thought that to look at her was like looking at the brightness of full dawn. She asked, still steadily: ‘Do you, Dan?’
He spoke gladly. ‘I want it more than anything, Beth.’
She nodded in a slow way. ‘I know it,’ she said. Then she laughed, with a soft, chuckling sound, and pressed her hands to her burning cheeks. ‘Am I terrible?’ she whispered. ‘Mother said I might have to make you ask me. Well, I did, I guess.’ Then, in sudden rueful pleading: ‘Only you haven’t really asked me yet, Dan!’
He tried to rise, but there was no need; for at his first move she was on her knees, pressing close between his knees, her arms around him, drawing his head down upon her bosom, laughing with happy tears, crying: ‘Oh Dan, Dan, Dan!’ Just to speak his name at first contented her, and she whispered over and over: ‘Dan, Dan, Dan!’ holding him close and cherishingly; till he found her cool lips and silenced her and felt her happy tears upon his cheek where it pressed hers.
They stayed there for a long time, she at his feet, he bent above her, murmuring many things. Once he said: ‘But you’re so young, so wonderfully young, Beth; and I feel old, old.’
She moved quickly, freeing herself, facing him, still on her knees, yet thus, since he was seated, as tall as he. Her eyes were flashing. ‘You’re not! Oh, you’re not!’ she cried. She caught his shoulders with her hands, protesting in tender wrath: ‘Why, sometimes you seem just like my baby, Dan, and I have to take care of you!’ Then, as he smiled, wishing to be reassured in turn, she cried: ‘But I’m awfully young, Dan. I don’t know anything. You’ll have to teach me, darling, how to be all the things you want me to be.’
He drew her close again. ‘I want you what you are, forever and ever.’
‘Oh, no!’ she protested. ‘No one can stay the same, dear.’ She laughed up at him. ‘You wouldn’t want that. Think, when you’re old and gray and ever so dignified, how silly we’d look if I were the way I am now!’ They laughed together at the picture she drew; and she said with mischievous amusement: ‘I know women like that, who keep on acting like young girls when they’re old enough to know better. I always think how their husbands must just shrivel up, being so embarrassed by the way they act. So many women don’t ever grow up. Men keep maturing and developing as they grow older. I want to grow up with you, Dan.
He held her tenderly, laughing in a rich content; and then more thoughtfully he said: ‘You’re so wise. Father used to tell us, when we were youngsters, that a sensible young man would always be sure to marry someone wiser than he—and then try to live up to her. Well, that’s what I’m doing! You’re worth a dozen of me!’
She smiled, her head on one side, her eyes dancing. ‘Do you really think so?’
‘I know it!’
‘Then that makes thirteen of us,’ she pointed out. ‘One of you and twelve of me! Because there aren’t—there isn’t any “you and me” any more. There’s just us!’ And she cried in a swift, unsmiling ardor, breathless in his arms: ‘But Dan, if I were a hundred times what you think, all of. me would still be always yours. I’m glad there are twelve of me, because twelve of me can be so much sweeter to you than just one of me could be.’ And she whispered, pressing close to him: ‘If we live a thousand years, I’ll never be able—the whole twelve of me will never be able—to show you how completely I’m all yours, Dan. Forever and ever, Amen!’
He whispered: ‘Forever and ever, Beth. Forever and forevermore!’
VIII
Dan was sure that his mother must not know what had happened, sure that she would resent losing to another any part of him; and Beth agreed that he was right, that they must wait. They did not say they must wait till she should die, though this was in both their minds. So they waited, but the waiting was not hard. They had time to grow together, to come happily nearer one another, to weld between them an even firmer bond.
They told Aunt Meg and John, but no one else; and from his hours with Beth, Dan drew strength to support him through long days by his mother’s side.
When winter had laid its bonds upon the city and while the months took their slow way, Jenny grew weaker day by day. She could no longer lie motionless through the worst spasms of her torment. Sometimes Dan heard her teeth chatter behind her closed lips, and saw the vibration of her jawbone; and little by little she began to surrender under stress of pain to small writhing movements when her knees rose under the coverlets, and her fists clenched and lifted, to fall back again in a sort of submission as the worst passed. Also, as her sufferings increased, she became more rancorous toward John. Whenever he came to her, as he did daily, his presence seemed to awake in her a mocking strength. If she spoke to him at all, it was heartlessly and with a dry scorn in her tones, and she never urged him to stay.
But she clung to Dan, and when sometimes he rose, unable to endure watching her, wishing to go, she might whisper through clattering teeth: ‘Stay, Dan, stay! Don’t go away!’
There was no longer any flesh upon her bones. Her countenance was a skull-like mask on which her skin, too large, hung in sagging folds and wrinkles. As she lay on her back—her position seldom changed—there was a deep wrinkle beneath a skin flap in front of her ears; and below her chin, dry yellowed skin lay in slack folds. Once she saw in Dan’s eyes as he watched her something of the horror he could not help feeling, and she said, almost teasingly, answering his thoughts:
‘Yet I was pretty once, Dan; lovely and desirable. But I was more than that. There was something inside me that many men felt, and it set them burning. No one looked at me then as you are looking at me now.’ And she whispered half to herself: ‘You know, Dan, I was always two people, two women; and one of them was go
od and true and generous and fine, and one was ugly and terrible. The good one is gone now, Dan. The bad one used to hide inside her, but now the good one’s gone, and only the bad one is left. It’s the worst of me you see.’ But then she pleaded in those straining, husky tones: ‘Yet there’s some good left in me, Dan. That part that always loved you.’
She had, alone with him, rare moments of breathless sweetness when her intonations and her words made him weep with an almost forgotten love for her, made him forget the wreck of skin and bone and straggling lifeless hair which she had become; and sometimes, when he and the servingmaid tended her, to see the emaciation of her tormented body, her legs no more than knobby bones, her arms so thin and small, was unbearably pitiful.
One day in March, as the long winter neared its end, a letter came from Will with news which gladdened and excited Dan and his father to a new hope; and that day Dan spoke to her for a while of the years when he and the others were boys together here, and when he named Tom and Mat she heard him without protest so he risked reading Will’s letter to her. Will had written:
Dear Mother and Father and Dan—
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