CHAPTER XXIII.
A “BETTER SELF.”
EMILY went directly to her room. “Tell Miss Gresham not to wait,” she said to the maid, “and please save only a very little for me.” She slept two hours and awoke free from the headache, but low-spirited. Joan came into the dining-room to keep her company while she tried to eat, then they sat in the library-drawing-room before the fire. For the first time in years Emily felt that she needed advice, or, at least, needed to state her case aloud in hope of seeing it more clearly.
“You are not well this evening,” Joan said presently. “Shall I read to you?”
“No, let us talk. Or, rather, please encourage me to talk about myself. I want to tell you something, and I don’t know how to begin.”
“Don’t begin. I’m sure you’ll regret it. Whenever I feel the confidential mood coming, I always put it off till to-morrow.”
“Yes—but—there are times——”
“Do you wish me to approve something you’ve decided to do, or to dissuade you from doing something you would not do anyhow? It’s always one or the other.”
Joan lit a cigarette and stretched herself among the cushions of the divan. “Well, what is it? Money?”
“No.”
“Then it’s not serious. Money troubles and poor health are about the only serious calamities.”
“No—it’s—Joan, I’ve been making an idiot of myself. I’ve lost my head over a married man.” The words came with a rush.
“But you practically confessed all that the other day. And I told you then what I thought. Either get rid of him straight off, or steady your head and let him hang about until you are sick of him.”
“But—you don’t understand. Of course you couldn’t. No one ever did understand another’s case.”
“I don’t think it’s that, my dear. When one is in love, he or she thinks it’s a peculiar case. And the stronger his or her imagination, the more peculiar seems the case. But when it’s submitted to an outsider, then it is looked at in the clear air, not in the fog of self-delusion. And how it does shrink!”
“I want him and he wants me,” said Emily doggedly. “It may be commonplace and ridiculous, but it’s the fact.”
“Do you think it would last long enough to enable him to get a divorce? If so, he can do that. There’s nothing easier nowadays than divorce. And what a dreadful blow to intrigue that has been! It doesn’t leave either party a leg to stand on. Just say to him: ‘Yes, I love you. You say you love me. Go and get a divorce and then perhaps I’ll marry you. But if not, you’ll at least be free from daily contact with the wife you say or intimate that you loathe.’ It’s perfectly simple. The chances are you’ll never see him again, and you can have a laugh at yourself, and can congratulate yourself on a narrow escape.”
“Good advice, but it doesn’t fit the case.”
“Oh, you don’t wish to marry him?”
“I never thought of it. But I’d rather not discuss the sentiment-side, please. Just the practical side.”
“But there isn’t any practical side. Why doesn’t he get a divorce?”
“Because he’s too conspicuous. There’d be an outcry against him. I don’t believe he could get the divorce.”
Emily was gazing miserably into the fire. Joan looked at her pityingly. “Oh,” she said gently, dropping the tone of banter. “Yes—that might be.”
“And it seems to me that I can’t give him up.”
“But why do you debate it? Why not follow where your instinct leads?”
“That’s just it—where does my instinct lead? If—the—the circumstances—I can’t explain them to you—were different with him about—about his family, I’d probably reason that I was not robbing any one and would try to—to be happy. But——”
She halted altogether and, when she continued, her voice was low and she was looking at her friend, pleadingly yet proudly: “You may be right. We may be deceiving ourselves. But I do not think so, Joan. I believe—and you do too, don’t you?—that there can be high thoughts in common between a man and a woman. I’m sure they can care in such a way that passion becomes like the fire, fusing two metals into one stronger and better than either by itself. And I think—I feel—yes, it seems to me I know, that it is so with us. Oh, Joan, he and I need each the other.”
Joan threw away her cigarette and rested her head upon her arms, so that her face was concealed from Emily. She murmured something.
“What do you say, Joan?”
“Nothing—only—I see the same old, the eternal illusion. And what a fascinating tenacious illusion it is, Emmy dear. We no sooner banish it in one form than it reappears in another.”
“But—tell me, Joan—what shall I do?”
“I, advise you? No, my dear. I cannot. I’d have to know you better than you know yourself to give you advice. You have grown into a certain sort of woman, with certain ideas of what you may and what you may not do. In this crisis you’ll follow the path into which your whole past compels you. And while I don’t know you well enough to give you advice, I do know you well enough to feel sure that you’ll do what is just and honourable. If that means renunciation, you will renounce him. If it means defiance, you will defy. If it means a compromise, why—I don’t think you’ll make it, Emily, unless you can carry your secret and still feel that the look of no human being could make you flinch.”
“Will I?” Emily’s voice was dreary and doubtful. “But, when one is starving, he doesn’t look at the Ten Commandments before seizing the bread that offers.”
“Not at the Ten Commandments—no. But at the one—‘Thou shalt not kill thy self-respect.’ And don’t forget, dear, that if you aren’t valuable to the world without love, you’ll be worth very little to it with love.”
“Joan’s Professor” came, and Emily went away to bed.
On her “lazy day” she went into the Park and seated herself under an elm high among the rocks. Several squirrels were playing about her and a fat robin was hopping round and round in a wide circle, pretending to be interested only in the food supply but really watching her. The path leading to her retreat turned abruptly just before reaching it, then turned again for the descent. She did not hear a footstep but, looking up as she was shifting her glance from one page of her novel to the next, she saw a child before her—a tall child with slim legs and arms, and a body that looked thin but strong under a white dress. She had a pink ribbon at her throat. Her hair was almost golden and waved defiantly around and away from a large pink bow. Her eyes were large and gray and solemn. But at each corner of her small mouth there was a fun-loving line which betrayed possibilities of mischief and appreciation of mischief. This suggestion was confirmed by her tilted nose.
Emily smiled at this vision criss-crossed with patches of sun and shadow. But the vision did not smile in return.
“Good morning, Princess Pink-and-white,” said Emily. “Did you come down out of the sky?”
“No,” answered the child, drawing a little nearer. “And my name is not—not that, but Mary. Do you live here?”
“Yes—this is my home,” answered Emily. “I’m the big sister of the squirrels and a cousin to the robins.”
The child looked at her carefully, then at the squirrels and then at the robin. “You are not truthful,” she said, her large eyes gazing straight into Emily’s. “My uncle says that it is dishon’able not to tell the truth.”
“Even in fun, while you are trying to make friends with Mary, Princess Pink-and-white?” Emily said this with the appearance of anxiety.
“It’s bad not to always tell the truth to young people.” She came still nearer and stood straight and serious, her hands behind her. “My uncle says they ought to hear and say only what is true.”
“Well then—what does he tell you about fairies?”
“He doesn’t tell me about them. Mamma says there are fairies, but he says he has never seen any. He says when I am older I can find out for myself.”
“And what do the other children say?”
“I don’t know. There aren’t any other children. There’s just uncle and mamma and nurse. And when mamma is ill, I go to stay with nurse. And I only go out with uncle or mamma.”
“That is very nice,” said Emily, taking one of the small, slender hands and kissing it. But in reality she thought it was the reverse of nice, and very lonely and sad.
“I was going away across the ocean where there are lots of children waiting to play with me. But mamma—she hadn’t been sick for a long, long time—most two years, I think—and then she was sick again and I’m not to go. But I’m not sorry.”
“Why?”
“I’m a great comfort to uncle, and he wasn’t going along. And I’m glad to stay with him. He says I’m a great comfort to him. I sing to him when he is feeling bad. Would you like for me to sing to you? You look as if you felt bad.”
Emily did feel like tears. It was not what the child said, but her air of aloneness, of ignorance of the pleasures of childhood and its companionships. She seemed never to have been a child and at the same time to be far too much a child for her years—apparently the result of an attempt by grown persons to bring her up in a dignified way without destroying the innocence of infancy.
“Yes, I should like to hear you sing,” said Emily.
The child sat, folded her hands in her lap and began to sing in French—a slow, religious chant, low and with an intonation of ironic humour. As Emily heard the words, she looked at “Princess Pink-and-White” in amazement. It was a concert-hall song, such as is rarely heard outside the cafés chantants of the boulevards—a piece of subtle mockery with a double meaning. The child sang it through, then looked at her for approval.
“It’s in French,” was all Emily could say, and the child with quick intuition saw that something was wrong.
“You don’t like it,” she said, offended.
“You sing beautifully,” replied Emily. She wished to ask her where she had got the song, but felt that it would be prying.
“Mamma taught it me the last time she was being taken ill. It was hard to learn because I do not speak French. I had to go over it three times. She said I wasn’t to sing it to uncle. But I thought you might like it.”
“No, I shouldn’t sing it to uncle, if I were you,” said Emily.
Just then the child rose and her face lighted up. Emily followed her glance and saw Stilson at the turn of the path, standing like a statue. He was looking not at the child, but at her. The child ran toward him and he put his hand at her neck and drew her close to him.
“Why, how d’ye do, Mr. Stilson,” said Emily, cordially. “This is the first time I’ve seen you since I was leaving for Paris. As soon as I came back I asked for you, but you were on vacation. And I thought you were still away.”
Stilson advanced reluctantly, a queer light in his keen, dark-gray eyes. He shook hands and seated himself. Mary occupied the vacant space on the bench between him and Emily, spreading out her skirts carefully so that they should not be mussed. “I am still idling,” said Stilson. “I hate hotels and I loathe mosquitoes. Besides, I think if I ever got beyond the walls of this prison I’d run away and never return.”
“So you too grow tired of your work?” said Emily. “Yet you are editor-in-chief now, and— Oh, I should think it would be fascinating.”
“It would have been a few years ago. But everything comes late. One has worked so hard for it that one is too exhausted to enjoy it. And it means work and care—always more and more work and care. But, pardon me. I’m in one of my depressed moods. And I didn’t expect any one—you—to surprise me in it.”
Emily looked at him, her eyes giving, and demanding, sympathy. “I often wish that life would offer something worth having, not as a free gift—I shouldn’t ask that, and not at a bargain even, but just at a fair price.”
“I’m surprised to find such parsimony in one so young—it’s unnatural.” Stilson’s expression and tone were good-humoured cynicism. “Why, at your age, with your wealth—youth is always rich—you ought never to look at or think of price marks.”
“But I can’t help it. I come from New England.”
“Ah! Then it’s stranger still. With the aid of a New England conscience you ought to cheat life out of the price.”
“I do try, but—” Emily sighed—“I’m always caught and made pay the more heavily.”
Stilson studied her curiously. He was smiling with some mockery as he said. “You must be cursed with a sense of duty. That sticks to one closer than his shadow. The shadow leaves with the sunshine. But duty is there, daylight or dark.”
“Especially dark,” said Emily. “What a slavery it is! To tramp the dusty, stony highway close beside gardens that are open and inviting; and not to be able to enter.”
His strong, handsome face became almost stern. “I don’t agree with you. Suppose that you entered the gardens, would they seem good if you looked back and saw your better self lying dead in the dust?” He seemed to be talking to himself not to her.
“But don’t you ever wish to be free?” she asked.
“I am free—absolutely free,” he said proudly. “One does not become free by license, by cringing before the stupidest, the most foolish impulses there are in him. I think he becomes free by refusing to degrade himself and violate the law of his own nature.”
“But—What is stupid and what isn’t?”
“No one could answer that in a general way. All I can say is—” Stilson seemed to her to be looking her through and through. “Did you ever have any doubt in any particular case?”
Emily hesitated, her eyes shifting, a faint flush rising to her cheeks. “Yes,” she said.
“Then that very doubt told you what was foolish and what intelligent. Didn’t it?”
Stilson was not looking at her now and she studied his face—mature yet young, haughty yet kind. Strong passions, good and bad, had evidently contended, were still contending, behind that interesting mask.
“No,” he went on, “if ever you make up your mind to do wrong,”—His voice was very gentle and seemed to her to have an undercurrent of personal appeal in it—“don’t lie to yourself. Just look at the temptation frankly, and at the price. And, if you will or must, why, pay and make off with your paste diamonds or gold brick or whatever little luxury of that kind you’ve gone into Mr. License’s shop to buy. What is the use of lying to one’s self? We are poor creatures indeed, it seems to me, if there isn’t at least one person whom we dare face with the honest truth.”
Emily had always had a profound respect for Stilson. She knew his abilities; and, while Marlowe had usually praised his friend with discreet reservations, she had come to know that Marlowe regarded him as little, if at all, short of a genius in his power of leading and directing men. As he talked to her, restating the familiar fundamentals of practical morals, she felt a strong force at work upon her. Like Stanhope he impressed her with his great personal power; but wholly unlike him, Stilson seemed to be using that power to an end which attracted her without setting the alarm bells of reason and prudence to ringing.
“I’m rather surprised to find you so conventional,” said Emily, by way of resenting the effect he and his “sermon” were having upon her.
“Conventional?” Stilson lifted his eyebrows and gave her an amused, satirical look. “Am I? Then the world must have changed suddenly. No, I wasn’t pleading for any particular code of conduct. Make up your code to suit yourself. All I venture to insist is that you must live up to your own code, whatever it is. Be a law unto yourself; but, when you have been, don’t become a law breaker.”
“Do you think mamma will be well enough for me to go home to-morrow?” It was the little girl, weary of being unnoticed and bursting into the conversation.
Stilson started as if he had forgotten that she was there. “Perhaps—yes—dear,” he said and rose at once. “We must be going.”
“Good-bye,” said Mary. Emily took her hand and kissed it. But the child, with a quaint mingling of shyness and determination, put up her face to be kissed, and adjusted her lips to show where she wished the kiss to be placed. “Good-bye,” she repeated. “I know who you are now. You are the Violet Lady Uncle Robert puts in the stories he tells me.”
“Come, Mary,” said Stilson severely. And he lifted his hat, but not his eyes, and bowed very formally.
Emily sat staring absently at the point at which they had disappeared.