“Rouen seems a long way from here,” he answered quietly. “I’ve only been there once — half a day on business. Except that, I’ve never been further away than Amo or Gainesville, for a convention or to make a speech, since I came here.”
“Wicked!” she exclaimed, “To shut yourself up like this! I said it was fine to drop out of the world; but why have you cut off your old friends from you? Why haven’t you had a relapse, now and then, and come over to hear Ysaye play and Melba sing, or to see Mansfield or Henry Irving, when we have had them? And do you think you’ve been quite fair to Tom? What right had you to assume that he had forgotten you?”
“Oh, I didn’t exactly mean forgotten,” he said, pulling a blade of grass to and fro between his fingers, staring at it absently. “It’s only that I have dropped out of the world, you know. I kept track of every one, saw most of my friends, or corresponded, now and then, for a year or so after I left college; but people don’t miss you much after a while. They rather expected me to do a lot of things, in a way, you know, and I wasn’t doing them. I was glad to get away. I always had an itch for newspaper work, and I went on a New York paper. Maybe it was the wrong paper; at least, I wasn’t fit for it. There was something in the side of life I saw, too, not only on the paper, that made me heart-sick; and then the rush and fight and scramble to be first, to beat the other man. Probably I am too squeamish. I saw classmates and college friends diving into it, bound to come out ahead, dear old, honest, frank fellows, who had been so happy-go-lucky and kind and gay, growing too busy to meet and be good to any man who couldn’t be good to them, asking (more delicately) the eternal question, ‘What does it get me?’ You might think I bad-met with unkindness; but it was not so; it was the other way more than I deserved. But the cruel competition, the thousands fighting for places, the multitude scrambling for each ginger-bread baton, the cold faces on the streets — perhaps it’s all right and good; of course it has to be — but I wanted to get out of it, though I didn’t want to come here. That was chance. A new man bought the paper I was working for, and its policy changed. Many of the same men still wrote for it, facing cheerfully about and advocating a tricky theory, vehement champions of a set of personal schemers and waxy images.”
He spoke with feeling; but now, as though a trifle ashamed of too much seriousness, and justifiably afraid of talking like one of his own editorials, he took a lighter tone. “I had been taken on the paper through a friend and not through merit, and by the same undeserved, kindly influence, after a month or so I was set to writing short political editorials, and was at it nearly two years. When the paper changed hands the new proprietor indicated that he would be willing to have me stay and write the other way. I refused; and it became somewhat plain to me that I was beginning to be a failure.
“A cousin of mine, the only relative I had, died in Chicago, and I went to his funeral. I happened to hear of the Carlow ‘Herald’ through an agent there, the most eloquent gentleman I ever met. I was younger, and even more thoughtless than now, and I had a little money and I handed it over for the ‘Herald.’ I wanted to run a paper myself, and to build up a power! And then, though I only lived here the first few years of my life and all the rest of it had been spent in the East, I was born in Indiana, and, in a way, the thought of coming back to a life-work in my native State appealed to me. I always had a dim sort of feeling that the people out in these parts knew more — had more sense and were less artificial, I mean — and were kinder, and tried less to be somebody else, than almost any other people anywhere. And I believe it’s so. It’s dull, here in Carlow, of course — that is, it used to be. The agent explained that I could make the paper a daily at once, with an enormous circulation in the country. I was very, very young. Then I came here and saw what I had got. Possibly it is because I am sensitive that I never let Tom know. They expected me to amount to something; but I don’t believe his welcome would be less hearty to a failure — he is a good heart.”
“Failure!” she cried, and clapped her hands and laughed.
“I’m really not very tragic about it, though I must seem consumed with self-pity,” he returned, smiling. “It is only that I have dropped out of the world while Tom is still in it.”
“Dropped out of the world!’” she echoed, impatiently. “Can’t you see you’ve dropped into it? That you — —”
“Last night I was honored by your praise of my graceful mode of quitting it!”
“And so you wish me to be consistent!” she retorted scornfully. “What becomes of your gallantry when we abide by reason?”
“True enough; equality is a denial of privilege.”
“And privilege is a denial of equality. I don’t like that at all.” She turned a serious, suddenly illuminated face upon him and spoke earnestly. “It’s my hobby, I should tell you, and I’m very tired of that nonsense about ‘women always sounding the personal note.’ It should be sounded as we would sound it. And I think we could bear the loss of ‘privilege’—”
He laughed and raised a protesting hand. “But we couldn’t.”
“No, you couldn’t; it’s the ribbon of superiority in your buttonhole. I know several women who manage to live without men to open doors for them, and I think I could bear to let a man pass before me now and then, or wear his hat in an office where I happened to be; and I could get my own ice at a dance, I think, possibly with even less fuss and scramble than I’ve sometimes observed in the young men who have done it for me. But you know you would never let us do things for ourselves, no matter what legal equality might be declared, even when we get representation for our taxation. You will never be able to deny yourselves giving us our ‘privilege.’ I hate being waited on. I’d rather do things for myself.”
She was so earnest in her satire, so full of scorn and so serious in her meaning, and there was such a contrast between what she said and her person; she looked so preeminently the pretty marquise, all silks and softness, the little exquisite, so essentially to be waited on and helped, to have cloaks thrown over the dampness for her to tread upon, to be run about for — he could see half a dozen youths rushing about for her ices, for her carriage, for her chaperone, for her wrap, at dances — that to save his life he could not repress a chuckle. He managed to make it inaudible, however; and it was as well that he did.
“I understand your love of newspaper work,” she went on, less vehemently, but not less earnestly. “I have always wanted to do it myself, wanted to immensely. I can’t think of any more fascinating way of earning one’s living. And I know I could do it. Why don’t you make the ‘Herald’ a daily?”
To hear her speak of “earning one’s living” was too much for him. She gave the impression of riches, not only for the fine texture and fashioning of her garments, but one felt that luxuries had wrapped her from her birth. He had not had much time to wonder what she did in Plattville; it had occurred to him that it was a little odd that she could plan to spend any extent of time there, even if she had liked Minnie Briscoe at school. He felt that she must have been sheltered and petted and waited on all her life; one could not help yearning to wait on her.
He answered inarticulately, “Oh, some day,” in reply to her question, and then burst into outright laughter.
“I might have known you wouldn’t take me seriously,” she said with no indignation, only a sad wistfulness. “I am well used to it. I think it is because I am not tall; people take big girls with more gravity. Big people are nearly always listened to.”
“Listened to?” he said, and felt that he must throw himself on his knees before her. “You oughtn’t to mind being Titania. She was listened to, you — —”
She sprang to her feet and her eyes flashed. “Do you think personal comment is ever in good taste?” she cried fiercely, and in his surprise he almost fell off the bench. “If there is one thing I cannot bear, it is to be told that I am ‘small’ I am not! Every one who isn’t a giantess isn’t ‘small’. I hate personalities! I am a great deal over five feet,
a great deal more than that. I — —”
“Please, please,” he said, “I didn’t — —”
“Don’t say you are sorry,” she interrupted, and in spite of his contrition he found her angry voice delicious, it was still so sweet, hot with indignation, but ringing, not harsh. “Don’t say you didn’t mean it; because you did! You can’t unsay it, you cannot alter it! Ah!” She drew in her breath with a sharp sigh, and covering her face with her hands, sank back upon the bench. “I will not cry,” she said, not so firmly as she thought she did.
“My blessed child!” he cried, in great distress and perturbation, “What have I done? I — I — —”
“Call me ‘small’ all you like!” she answered. “I don’t care. It isn’t that. You mustn’t think me such an imbecile.” She dropped her hands from her face and shook the tears from her eyes with a mournful laugh. He saw that her hands were clenched tightly and her lip trembled. “I will not cry!” she said in a low voice.
“Somebody ought to murder me; I ought to have thought — personalities are hideous — —”
“Don’t! It wasn’t that.”
“I ought to be shot — —”
“Ah, please don’t say that,” she said, shuddering; “please don’t, not even as a joke — after last night.”
“But I ought to be for hurting you, indeed — —”
She laughed sadly, again. “It wasn’t that. I don’t care what you call me. I am small. You’ll try to forgive me for being such a baby? I didn’t mean anything I said. I haven’t acted so badly since I was a child.”
“It’s my fault, all of it. I’ve tired you out. And I let you get into that crush at the circus—” he was going on, remorsefully.
“That!” she interrupted. “I don’t think I would have missed the circus.” He had a thrilling hope that she meant the tent-pole; she looked as if she meant that, but he dared not let himself believe it.
“No,” he continued; “I have been so madly happy in being with you that I’ve fairly worn out your patience. I’ve haunted you all day, and I have — —”
“All that has nothing to do with it,” she said, slowly. “Just after you left, this afternoon, I found that I could not stay here. My people are going abroad, to Dresden, at once, and I must go with them. That’s what almost made me cry. I leave to-morrow morning.”
He felt something strike at his heart. In the sudden sense of dearth he had no astonishment that she should betray such agitation over her departure from a place she had known so little, and friends who certainly were not part of her life. He rose to his feet, and, resting his arm against a sycamore, stood staring away from her at nothing.
She did not move. There was a long silence.
He had wakened suddenly; the skies had been sapphire, the sward emerald, Plattville a Camelot of romance; to be there, enchantment — and now, like a meteor burned out in a breath, the necromancy fell away and he gazed into desolate years. The thought of the Square, his dusty office, the bleak length of Main Street, as they should appear to-morrow, gave him a faint physical sickness. To-day it had all been touched to beauty; he had felt fit to live and work there a thousand years — a fool’s dream, and the waking was to emptiness. He should die now of hunger and thirst in that Sahara; he hoped the Fates would let it be soon — but he knew they would not; knew that this was hysteria, that in his endurance he should plod on, plod, plod dustily on, through dingy, lonely years.
There was a rumble of thunder far out on the western prairie. A cold breath stole through the hot stillness, and an arm of vapor reached out between the moon and the quiet earth. Darkness fell. The man and the girl kept silence between them. They might have been two sad guardians of the black little stream that splashed unseen at their feet. Now and then an echo of far away lightning faintly illumined them with a green light. Thunder rolled nearer, ominously; the gods were driving their chariots over the bridge. The chill breath passed, leaving the air again to its hot inertia.
“I did not want to go,” she said, at last, with tears just below the surface of her voice. “I wanted to stay here, but he — they wouldn’t — I can’t.”
“Wanted to stay here?” he said, huskily, not turning. “Here?”
“Yes.”
“In Rouen, you mean?”
“In Plattville.”
“In Plattville?” He turned now, astounded.
“Yes; wouldn’t you have taken me on the ‘Herald’?” She rose and came toward him. “I could have supported myself here if you would — and I’ve studied how newspapers are made; I know I could have earned a wage. We could have made it a daily.” He searched in vain for a trace of raillery in her voice; there was none; she seemed to intend her words to be taken literally.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean that I want to stay here; that I ought to stay here; that my conscience tells me I should — but I can’t and it makes me very unhappy. That was why I acted so badly.”
“Your conscience!” he cried.
“Oh, I know what a jumble and puzzle it must seem to you.”
“I only know one thing; that you are going away to-morrow morning, and that I shall never see you again.”
The darkness had grown heavy. They could not see each other; but a wan glimmer gave him a fleeting, misty view of her; she stood half-turned away from him, her hand to her cheek in the uncertain fashion of his great moment of the afternoon; her eyes-he saw in the flying picture that he caught — were adorably troubled and her hand trembled. She had been irresistible in her gaiety; but now that a mysterious distress assailed her, the reason for which he had no guess, she was so divinely pathetic; and seemed such a rich and lovely and sad and happy thing to have come into his life only to go out of it; and he was so full of the prophetic sense of loss of her — it seemed so much like losing everything — that he found too much to say to be able to say anything.
He tried to speak, and choked a little. A big drop of rain fell on his bare head. Neither of them noticed the weather or cared for it. They stood with the renewed blackness hanging like a thick drapery between them.
“Can — can you — tell me why you think you ought not to go?” he whispered, finally, with a great effort.
“No; not now. But I know you would think I am right in wanting to stay,” she cried, impulsively. “I know you would, if you knew about it — but I can’t, I can’t. I must go in the morning.”
“I should always think you right,” he answered in an unsteady tone, “Always!” He went over to the bench, fumbled about for his hat, and picked it up.
“Come,” he said, gently, “I am going now.”
She stood quite motionless for a full minute or longer; then, without a word, she moved toward the house. He went to her with hands extended to find her, and his fingers touched her sleeve. Then together and silently they found the garden-path; and followed its dim length. In the orchard he touched her sleeve again and led the way.
As they came out behind the house she detained him. Stopping short, she shook his hand from her arm. She spoke in a single breath, as if it were all one word:
“Will you tell me why you go? It is not late. Why do you wish to leave me, when I shall not see you again?”
“The Lord be good to me!” he broke out, all his long-pent passion of dreams rushing to his lips, now that the barrier fell. “Don’t you see it is because I can’t bear to let you go? I hoped to get away without saying it. I want to be alone. I want to be with myself and try to realize. I didn’t want to make a babbling idiot of myself — but I am! It is because I don’t want another second of your sweetness to leave an added pain when you’ve gone. It is because I don’t want to hear your voice again, to have it haunt me in the loneliness you will leave — but it’s useless, useless! I shall hear it always, just as I shall always see your face, just as I have heard your voice and seen your face these seven years — ever since I first saw you, a child at Winter Harbor. I forgot
for a while; I thought it was a girl I had made up out of my own heart, but it was you — you always! The impression I thought nothing of at the time, just the merest touch on my heart, light as it was, grew and grew deeper until it was there forever. You’ve known me twenty-four hours, and I understand what you think of me for speaking to you like this. If I had known you for years and had waited and had the right to speak and keep your respect, what have I to offer you? I, couldn’t even take care of you if you went mad as I and listened. I’ve no excuse for this raving. Yes, I have!”
He saw her in another second of lightning, a sudden, bright one. Her back was turned to him; she had taken a few startled steps from him.
“Ah,” he cried, “you are glad enough, now, to see me go! I knew it. I wanted to spare myself that. I tried not to be a hysterical fool in your eyes.” He turned aside and his head fell on his breast. “God help me,” he said, “what will this place be to me now?”
The breeze had risen; it gathered force; it was a chill wind, and there rose a wailing on the prairie. Drops of rain began to fall.
“You will not think a question implied in this,” he said more composedly, and with an unhappy laugh at himself. “I believe you will not think me capable of asking you if you care — —”
“No,” she answered; “I — I do not love you.”
“Ah! Was it a question, after all? I — you read me better than I do, perhaps — but if I asked, I knew the answer.”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 12