"I do not know yet. I should like to have gone to a new country, a wild country, and made myself a place there. All doors are shut here. Hedges are up."
"Then why not go?"
"There is someone whom I cannot leave."
"Ah—Mrs. Nando! And she keeps you?"
"No; she has been trying to persuade me to go. But she would be all alone."
"She is too old to go?"
"Yes—and—after all—she gave her best years to me. Ought I not to give her some of mine?"
Mrs. Mariana's eyes were very soft and wonderful, but Jordan did not see them. He was staring out of the window, while she was saying to herself: "You great, big, human, generous thing; I love you." And then she smiled. There was wistfulness in her smile, a twinge of tender humour.
"My friend, it seems to me that you are shut in by women. A man has his life to live, and he has to live it——"
She paused there, and when he turned questioning eyes to her, her face was half averted and elusive.
"You have not finished," he said.
She looked at her hands.
"I—have. Who can choose for someone else? Think, think it over. Most women are born to give. I think most women's last thought would be to give. That is all that I can say to you."
And then he rose to go. He stood a moment, and then bent to kiss her hand.
"Good-bye. You have been so very good to me."
She did not move till he was on his horse, and then she rose and stood at the open window. She wondered whether Jordan would turn and look up at her. He did.
She pressed her hand to her heart.
"Good-bye."
She saw the man in him leap to her from his eyes, and then—he rode away.
XLIII
To Jordan came a season of stress and of struggle, for there were voices in him that warred against each other.
"Your little wife has been dead no more than two months; and you wish to break your promise to her. Already you are eager to forget."
"I shall never forget," said the other voice. "But was the forcing of such a promise fair? Take heed, too, that I married my first wife out of pity. The second shall be for love."
Outwardly, Jordan made no change. He was a little more quiet and graver than he used to be; he moved more slowly; he reflected and took longer to answer a question; he was much more alone. He had entered into the treaty for the lease of a farm that lay about two miles north of the New House, and his life seemed to be approaching its groove, the ruck of routine and habit that leads on to middle age. It might have appeared the most reasonable and pleasant of futures. Mr. March, ex-fencing-master, a man of property, turned farmer, big and buxom, riding over his fields, going out with his gun, putting on a red coat and galloping with the hounds, swilling draughts of beer, growing still more big and prosperous, eventually marrying some strapping, jolly girl, and begetting a dozen children! Surely, it was a sound and solid frame for any man's picture? And yet the frame did not fit him. He was too big for it; too much the son of the man and the woman who had made him.
Women have given Jordan most of his life's surprises, and Mary Nando was to provide him with one of the most dramatic of them. He came home one afternoon with the lease of "Monk's Farm" in his pocket, meaning to read the document over before he signed it. He sat down in Tom Nando's old leather chair. Mrs. Mary was by the window, glancing out now and again at the garden while she stitched away at clothes for somebody's baby.
"What have you got there, my dear?"
"The lease of the farm. Mr. Bowyer sent me home to read it through before signing it."
"May I see it—Jordan?"
"Of course, mother."
He left his chair and took the document across to her, and then wandered away to the window overlooking the grassland and the oak wood—"My park," as Mrs. Mary called it. The trees made him think of Mrs. Mariana, and a word-picture she had once painted for him of the forest lands and mountains of Virginia. Her country! He found himself wondering whether she would go back to it, and what her going would mean to him. She was in his heart and mind now every moment of the day, and her dark dignity seemed to make that other picture grow more dim and distant. He no longer felt his dead wife in his arms; the vivid sense-memories were fading and losing their acute poignancy.
Suddenly he heard the rending of parchment. He turned about and saw Mary Nando slowly and deliberately tearing up the lease. The material was very tough, and she had to tear sheet from sheet, and then to rend each one separately across the middle. Her calm and purposeful way of doing it was the thing that most astonished him.
"Mother!"
She turned her face to him, and it wore an expression of tender severity.
"You will not take that farm, my dear. I forbid you to take it. I think I know what is best."
He crossed over to her with a look of appeal in his eyes.
"Then—what am I to do? I am not made for an idle life."
"Do—what your heart bids you do, my dear."
In that moment Jordan had a vision of a love that transcended itself, of the mother spirit sacrificing itself for the sake of the child. He thought of poor Douce's clinging, possessive passion, and her wish to hold him with her dead hands.
"Mother, we are making it very hard for each other."
"O, no, my dear. Is it not easier for me to think of you as a man who is happy?"
"But I shall be happy here."
She made a movement with her hands, and understanding her, he knelt down at her knees as though he were a child about to say his prayers.
"No—my dear. Life is yours; you must take it. I think I know that you would not be happy here, not as a man should be. I am an old woman, but I have my memories—good memories."
She took his face between her hands.
"Do what your heart bids you do, my Jordan. Only by doing that can one do things well."
Her unselfishness was a revelation to him, and more than a revelation, for if Mary Nando did not grudge him his liberty, then it was human and right of him to desire it. Two living women were pointing him to the new life; it was the dead woman who held him back. He left Mary Nando weeping a few sacrificial tears over the baby-linen in her lap, and went forth into the glow of a summer evening, feeling solemn and troubled and full of a great tenderness towards all women. The mood took him to that quiet burial ground where Thomas Nando and little Douce lay near each other not far from a very old yew tree. He looked at both graves. Nando's had been turfed, but Douce's was a mound of smooth earth waiting to be grassed over when the autumn came. Both graves had fresh flowers upon them, flowers from old Nando's garden.
Jordan stood by his wife's grave. He felt a great tenderness towards her, but it was a reproachful tenderness.
"Little thing—need your love have asked me for that promise?"
He sat down on an older mound beside her grave and remained there for a long while, bare-headed, and deep in thought. So absorbed was he in trying to fit the past to the future that he forgot Mary Nando's evening visit, for she came daily to the sacred place to put flowers on her man's grave. And so, it happened that she surprised Jordan there, sitting with his head in his hands, with the shadow of the yew tree upon him.
Mary Nando sat down beside him. He had dropped his hands, and she took one of them in hers.
"Is it that you loved her so much, my dear?"
"No," he said; "no. That is the tragedy of it. I loved someone else, and yet I loved Douce, too—but in a different way."
Mrs. Mary's eyes seemed to fill with understanding.
"Then—it was pity, Jordan, that made you marry her?"
"Yes, pity. You remember that night, mother."
"My dear, I remember how I loved you. But I did not know. But—tell me—is she——"
"The woman I love?"
"Yes."
"She is not very far away, mother. But I said good-bye to her—because of the promise I made to Douce, but when I had said good-bye——"
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"You wanted her, Jordan, as you have never wanted anything else in your life before?"
"Yes," he said; "yes."
She was silent for a little while, and then she spoke, pressing his big hand between her small ones.
"Let us speak no ill of the dead, my son, but that promise cannot hold. Surely you realize it?"
"I was beginning to realize it, mother."
"You gave what you had to give. Has any mortal creature the right to claim more?"
"That is what my heart tells me."
"My dear, go to her. Your heart is right."
XLIV
Jordan let a week pass before he set out for Garter Street on a clear September evening. Many times he had gone over in his mind the things he would say to his dear lady, but as he drew near to the familiar street all the grave and considered phrases fell away from him, and he was left with a few simple words, the inevitable words of the lover.
On turning into Garter Street he paused on the footway and stood at gaze, filling his eyes with all the details of the street and its houses, and seeing in it something eternally familiar and eternally strange. It was the beginning of enchantment, the highway leading towards another world. The sunset was warming the red walls, and at the further end of the street three great elms stood out against a huge, piled-up cloud that glowed like a snow-mountain flushing with the dawn. The street was empty. From some window came the thin, tingling notes of a harpsichord and the sound of a woman singing.
Jordan's eyes were very solemn.
"What am I," he thought, "that I should speak of love to her? What will she say to me? What shall I know before the sun has set?"
He walked on up the street, keeping to the side on which her house stood. He did not dare to look up at her window, and when he had put his hand to the knocker, he stood close in to the door, waiting for his knock to be answered. He expected the dusky shine of Sambo's face, but when the door opened he saw instead of it the face of an old woman, mottled, dead-eyed, eyelids and cheeks pendulous and flabby.
She kept the door half closed, and waited for Jordan to state his business.
"Is Mrs. Merris at home?"
"Mrs. Merris! Why—bless you, she sailed for America three days ago."
Jordan stood dumb. He looked over the old woman's head into the dark hall of the house. His eyes seemed to be searching for a light that had been extinguished.
"I did not know. I was here three weeks ago. She did not say——"
He half turned as though to go, but the old figure of fate in the doorway picked up the cut ends of his life's thread.
"Begging your pardon, sir, but may you be Mr. Jordan March?"
"I am," he said.
She opened the door wide and smiled at him.
"It was very sudden like—her going. Most of the furniture was Sir Grandison's and o' course that made it easier. She left me and my old man to look after the place until Sir Grandison comes back, but I must say I would rather have had the lady. She had a way with her, and a voice as——"
Jordan, white and tense, broke in on her monologue.
"Was there a message?"
"Sure, sir, she left you a letter."
"Where is it?"
"Bless you, sir, you shall have it. Come in. She left the letter on a table in the long drawing-room, with orders to me that if you called at the house I was to take you up for you to get the letter for yourself. But if you didn't come before Sir Grandison's return I was to take the letter to your house at St. Pancras. I've got it all writ down."
Jordan was moving towards the stairs. He did not wait for her, but went up swiftly while she closed the street door. The beloved room was much as he remembered it, with the garden window framing the sunset, and fingers of light touching the brilliant colours of the rugs and the polished boards of the floor. The parrot had gone, and so had Miss Stamford's embroidery frame, but on the table where Mariana had kept her books he saw something white—her letter.
The old woman followed him into the room.
"I wish to be alone here," Jordan said to her, and when the piece of gold passed from his hand to hers, she curtsied and closed the door on him.
Jordan stood and looked at the letter, that white oblong upon the mottled black and brown of the walnut table. "Mr. Jordan March. To be delivered to him should he not come to Garter Street. From Mrs. Merris of Cherry Manor—Virginia." She had written that letter before she had left him, three days ago, three little but desolating days! Why had she left England so suddenly? Why had she not told him? Why had he delayed in his fateful visit to her? What did the letter contain? What had she said to him?
He picked it up reverently, and seemed to hesitate. Then he crossed to the garden window, threw up the lower sash and sitting there in the sunlight, he opened and read her letter.
Jordan,—I am going away to my old home. I wonder whether you will understand the manner of my going and the reason for it? If you are the man I take you to be I think you will.
Let me recall to you an old legend, the tale of the Islands of the West, and the Gardens of the Hesperides where the Golden Apples grew. Hercules was strong, and the apples of gold fell to him.
My Jordan, it seems to me that the tale is true to-day. Has not adventure turned its wings most often to the West? Why does the West lure us, Drake, Raleigh, the Men of the Mayflower, and those who come to this land of mine? Strong men, seeking the apples!
Think of it! Wild country, noble country for a man to take and make his own.
But the man must choose. Has he the courage, the desire, the supreme self-confidence? Does it seem to him worth while?
And I? If you cross the sea, my Jordan, you will find me. Where? Why, in the Garden of the Hesperides where the Apples of Gold grow, and if you are the man of my heart we shall pluck them together.
I have said it.
Mariana.
Jordan raised his face toward the sunset.
"God bless my most dear lady. Was there ever a woman so wise in the trying of a man?"
He kissed the letter and held it up into the sunlight.
"The Apples of Gold. Mariana—I come!"
* * *
Printed by Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.4
[The end of Apples of Gold by Warwick Deeping]
Apples of Gold Page 37