Chapter II: Part 2

STORM—I have a son; I don’t know why I should tell you about him, perhaps because I want to prove that I have lived, and perhaps not. My son is a child, I am a man of few years and my son is like what I was at his age. He is thin, I was thin; he is quiet, I was quiet; he has delicate flesh, and I had also—well, then his mother died——

HELENA—The saddle comes down from the horse.

STORM—Well, she died——

HELENA—And that’s over.

STORM—Well, there it is, I have a son——

HELENA—And that’s not over. Do you resent that?

STORM—I don’t know, perhaps. Sometimes I say to myself when I’m sitting by the fire alone—“You should have something to think of while sitting here——”

HELENA—In other words, you’re living for the sake of your fire.

STORM—[_To himself._] Some day I shall be glad I knew you.

HELENA—You go rather fast.

STORM—Yes, I shall have you to think of.

HELENA—When the fire is hot, you’ll be glad to think of me?

STORM—Yes, all of us like to have a few things to tell to our children, and I have always shown all that’s in my heart to my son.

HELENA—How horrible!

STORM—[_Startled._] Why?

HELENA—Would you show everything that made your heart?

STORM—I believe in frankness——

HELENA—[_With something like anger._] Well, some day your son will blow his head off, to be rid of frankness, before his skin is tough.

STORM—You are not making anything easier.

HELENA—I’ve never been callous enough to make things easier.

STORM—You’re a queer woman——

HELENA—Yes, that does describe me.

STORM—[_Taking his leg off the table._] Do you really want to know why I came? Because I need you——

HELENA—I’m not interested in corruption for the many.

STORM—[_Starting as if he had been struck._] By God!

HELENA—Nor in misplaced satisfactions——

STORM—By God, what a woman!

HELENA—Nor do I participate in liberations——

STORM—[_In a low voice._] I could hate you!

HELENA—I limit no man, feel what you can.

STORM—[_Taking a step toward her, the dog lifts its head._] If it were not for those damned dogs of yours—I’d—I’d——

HELENA—Aristocracy of movement never made a dog bite——

STORM—That’s a—strange thing to say—just at this moment.

HELENA—Not for me.

STORM—[_Sulky._] Well, anyway, a cat may look at a King——

HELENA—Oh no, a cat may only look at what it sees.

STORM—Helena Hucksteppe.

HELENA—Yes.

STORM—I’m—attracted—to you.

HELENA—A magnet does not attract shavings.

STORM—[_With positive conviction._] I _could_ hate you.

HELENA—I choose my enemies.

STORM—[_Without warning, seizing her._] By God, at least I can kiss you! [_He kisses her full on the mouth—she makes no resistance._]

HELENA—[_In a calm voice._] And this, I suppose, is what you call the “great moment of human contact.”

STORM—[_Dropping his arms—turning pale._] What are you trying to do to me?

HELENA—I’m doing it.

STORM—[_To himself._] Yet it was you that I wanted——

HELENA—Mongrels may not dig up buried treasure.

STORM—[_In a sudden rage._] You can bury your past as deep as you like, but carrion will out!

HELENA—[_Softly._] And this is love.

STORM—[_His head in his arms._] Oh, God, God!

HELENA—And you who like the taste of new things, come to me?

STORM—[_In a lost voice._] Shall I have no joy?

HELENA—Joy? Oh, yes, of a kind.

STORM—And you—are angry with me?

HELENA—In the study of science, is the scientist angry when the fly possesses no amusing phenomena?

STORM—I wanted—to know—you——

HELENA—I am conscious of your failure.

STORM—I wanted something—some sign——

HELENA—Must I, who have spent my whole life in being myself, go out of my way to change some look in you?

STORM—That’s why you are so terrible, you have spent all your life on yourself.

HELENA—Yes, men do resent that in women.

STORM—Yes, I suppose so. [_Pause._] I should have liked to talk of—myself——

HELENA—You see I could not listen.

STORM—You are—intolerant.

HELENA—No—occupied——

STORM—You are probably—playing a game.

HELENA—[_With a gracious smile._] You will get some personal good out of it, won’t you?

STORM—I’m uncomfortable——

HELENA—Uncomfortable!

STORM—[_Beginning to be really uncomfortable._] Who _are_ you?

HELENA—I am a woman, Gheid Storm, who is _not_ in need.

STORM—You’re horrible!

HELENA—Yes, that too.

STORM—But somewhere you’re vulnerable.

HELENA—Perhaps.

STORM—Only I don’t quite know the spot.

HELENA—Spot?

STORM—Something, somewhere, hidden——

HELENA—Hidden! [_She laughs._] _All_ of me is vulnerable.

STORM—[_Setting his teeth._] You tempt me.

HELENA—[_Wearily._] It’s not that kind.

STORM—I’ve lain awake thinking of you—many nights.

HELENA—That is too bad.

STORM—What is too bad?

HELENA—That you have had—fancies.

STORM—Why?

HELENA—Theft of much, makes much to return——

STORM—The world allows a man his own thoughts.

HELENA—Oh, no——

STORM—At least my thoughts are my own.

HELENA—Not one, so far.

STORM—What does that mean?

HELENA—You’ll know when you try to think them again.

STORM—You mean I’m not making headway—well, you’re right, I’m not——

HELENA—Now tell me what brought you through the window.

STORM—[_Relieved._] I’m glad you ask that, it’s the first human thing that’s happened this afternoon.

HELENA—You have forgotten our great moment of human contact.

STORM—[_Nervously._] Well——

HELENA—You were about to tell me what brought you?

STORM—I don’t know—something no one speaks of—some great ease in your back—the look of a great lover——

HELENA—So—you scented a great lover——

STORM—I am a man—and I love——

HELENA—What have you done for love, Gheid Storm?

STORM—I’ve—never gone to the dogs——

HELENA—So?

STORM—I’ve always respected women.

HELENA—In other words: taken the coals out of the fire with the poker—continue——

STORM—That’s all.

HELENA—And you dared to come to me! [_Her entire manner has changed._]

STORM—No matter what you’ve been—done—I love you.

HELENA—Do not come so near. Only those who have helped to make such death as mine may go a little way toward the ardours of that decay.

STORM—What have I done?

HELENA—You have dared to bring to a woman, who has known love, the whinny of a pauper.

STORM—What am I?

HELENA—[_Softly, to herself._] How sensitively the handles cling to the vase, how delicate is the flesh between the fingers.

STORM—I—I don’t know you.

HELENA—[_Dropping her hands to her sides._] Come here, Gheid Storm—[_Gheid approaches slowly, like a sleep walker_]. Put your hand on me. [_He does so as if in a dream._] So! [_She looks first at his hand, then into his face, making it quite plain that he does not even know how to touch a woman._] Yet you would be my lover, knowing not one touch that is mine, nor one word that is mine. My house is for men who have done their stumbling.

STORM—[_In an inaudible voice._] I am going now——

HELENA—I cannot touch new things, nor see beginnings.

STORM—Helena! Helena!

HELENA—Do not call my name. There are too many names that must be called before mine.

STORM—Shall I die, and never have known you?

HELENA—Death, for you, will begin where my cradle started rocking——

STORM—Shall I have no love like yours?

HELENA—When I am an old woman, thinking of other things, you will, perhaps, be kissing a woman like me——

STORM—[_Moving blindly toward the door._] Now I am going.

HELENA—[_In a quiet, level voice._] The fall is almost here.

STORM—Yes, it’s almost here.

HELENA—The leaves on the mountain road are turning yellow.

STORM—Yes, the leaves are turning.

HELENA—It’s late, your son will be waiting dinner for you.

STORM—Don’t take everything away.

HELENA—You will not even recall having seen me.

STORM—Can memory be taken too?

HELENA—Only that memory that goes past recollection may be kept.

STORM—[_At the door._] Good night——

HELENA—[_Smiling._] There is the window.

STORM—I could not lift my legs now.

HELENA—That’s a memory you may keep.

STORM—Good night.

HELENA—Good-bye, Gheid Storm, and as you go down the hill, will you lock the gate, a dog thief passed in the night, taking my terrier with him.

STORM—The one with the brown spots?

HELENA—Yes.

STORM—That was a fine dog.

HELENA—Yes, she was a fine dog—restless.

STORM—They say any dog will follow any man who carries aniseed.

HELENA—Well, soon I return to the city.

STORM—You look tired.

HELENA—Yes, I am tired.

[_Gheid exits. Helena takes her old position, her back almost square to the audience._]

CURTAIN

BEYOND THE END

Behind two spanking horses, in the heat of noon, rode Julie Anspacher. The air was full of the sound of windlasses and well water, where, from cool abysses, heavy buckets arose; and, too, the air was full of the perfect odour of small flowers. And Julie turned her head, gazing at the familiar line of road that ran away into the still more familiar distance.

The driver, a Scandinavian, who remembered one folk-tale involving a partridge and one popular song involving a woman, sat stiffly on his box holding the reins gently over the shining and sleek backs of the two mares.

He began to whistle the popular song now, swinging a little on his sturdy base, and drifting back with his tune came the tang of horse skin, wet beneath tight leather.

The horses were taking the hill, straining and moving their ears, and reaching the top, bounded forward in a whirl of dust. Still sitting rigid, the driver clucked, snapping his whip, and began talking in a dry deep bass.

“It’s some time since we have seen you, Mrs. Anspacher.”

Julie raised her thin long face from her collar and nodded.

“Yes,” she answered in a short voice, and frowned.

“Your husband has gathered in the corn already, and the orchards are hanging heavy.”

“Are they?” she said, and tried to remember how many trees there were of apple and of pear.

The driver took in another foot of reins, and turning slightly around, so that he could look at her, said:

“It’s good to see you again, Mrs. Anspacher.”

She began to laugh. “Is it?” then with deliberation checked herself, and fixed her angry eyes straight ahead of her.

The child, loose-limbed with excessive youth, who sat at her side, lifted a small sharp face on which an aquiline nose perched with comic boldness. She half held, half dropped an old-fashioned ermine muff, the tails of which stuck out in all directions. She looked unhappy and expectant.

“You remember Mrs. Berling?” he went on. “She is married again.”

“Is she?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He began to tell her about the local office for outgoing mails, where a nephew of her husband, Paytor, had taken a job.

The child sat so still that it was painful and Julie Anspacher moved away, thinking aloud:

“All is corruption.”

The child started, and looked quickly away, as children will at something that they expect but do not understand. The driver beat the horses, until long lines of heavy froth appeared at the edges of the harness.

“What did you say, ma’am?”

“Nothing—I said all is lost from the beginning—if we only saw it—always.”

The child looked at her slowly, puzzled, and looked down.

“Ann,” said Julie Anspacher, suddenly lifting the muff over her hands, “did you ever see two such big horses before?” The child turned its head with brightness, and bending down tried to see between the driver’s arms. Then she smiled.

“Are they yours?” she whispered.

Julie Anspacher took in a deep breath, stretching the silk of her waist across her breasts. “No,” she answered, “they are not mine, but we have two—bigger—blacker.”

“Can I see them?”

“Oh, yes, you shall see them. Don’t be ridiculous.”

The child shrank back into herself, clutching nervously at her muff. Julie Anspacher returned to her reflections.

It was almost five years since she had been home. Five years before in just such an Autumn the doctors had given her six months to live. One lung gone and the other going. They called it sometimes the White Death, and, sometimes, the love disease. She coughed a little, remembering, and the child at her side coughed too in echo, and the driver, puckering his forehead, reflected that Mrs. Anspacher was not cured.

She was thirty-nine—she should have died at thirty-four. In those five years Paytor had seen her five times, coming in over fourteen hours of the rails at Christmas. He cursed the doctors, called them fools.

The house appeared dull white between the locust trees, and the smoke, the same lazy Autumn smoke, rose in a still column straight into the obliterating day.

The driver reined in the horses until their foaming jaws struck against their harness, and with a quick bound Julie Anspacher jumped the side of the cart, the short modish tails of her jacket dancing above her hips. She turned around and thrusting her black gloved hands under the child, lifted her out. A dog barked. She began walking the ascent toward the house.

A maid, in dust cap, put her head out of an upstairs window, clucked, drew it in and slammed the sash, and Paytor, with slow and deliberate steps, moved toward the figure of his wife and the child.

He was a man of middle height, with a close-cropped beard that ended in a grey wedge on his chin. He was sturdy, a strong man, almost too pompous, but with kindly blue eyes and a long thin mouth. As he walked he threw his knees out, which gave him a rocking though substantial gait. He was slightly surprised and raised the apricot-coloured veil that covered the keen newness of her face, and leaning down kissed her twice upon both cheeks.

“And where does the child come from?” he inquired, touching the little girl’s chin.

“Come along, don’t be ridiculous!” Julie said impatiently, and swept on toward the house.

He ran after her. “I’m glad to see you,” he went on, warmly, trying to keep up with her rapid strides, that swung the child half off the ground, stumbling, trotting.

“Tell me what the doctors said—cured?”

There was a note of happiness in his voice. “Not that I really give a damn what they think, I always told you you would live to a ripe old age, as they say. What did they do to Marie Bashkirtseff? Locked her up in a dark room, shut all the windows—and of course she died—that was their method then—and now it’s Koch’s tuberculin—all nonsense.”

“It worked well with some people,” she said, going ahead of him into the living room. “There was one boy there—well—of that later. Will you have someone put Ann to bed—the trip was bad for her. See how sleepy the child is—run along, Ann,” she added, pushing her slightly but kindly toward the maid. Then when they had disappeared, she stood looking about her, drawing off her gloves.

“I’m glad you took down the crystals—I always hated them.”—She moved to the windows.

“I didn’t, the roof fell in—just after my last visit in December. You’re looking splendid, Julie.” He coloured. “I’m glad, you know—awfully glad. I began to think—well, not that the doctors know anything,” he said, laughing: “but it’s a drop here of about fifteen hundred feet, but your heart is good—always was.”

“What do you know about my heart, Paytor?” Julie said, angrily. “You don’t know what you are talking about at all. The child——”

“Well, yes——?”

“Her name is Ann,” she finished sulkily.

“It’s a sweet name—it was your mother’s, too. Whose is she?”

“Oh, good heavens!” Julie cried, moving around the room. “Mine, mine, mine, of course, whose would she be if not mine?”

He looked at her. “Yours—why, Julie—how absurd!” Slowly the colour left his face.

“I know—we have got to talk it over—it’s all got to be arranged, it’s terrible. But she is nice, a bright child, a good child.”

“What in the world is all this about?” he demanded, stopping in front of her. “What are you in this mood for—what have I done?”

“Good heavens! What have you done? What a ridiculous man you are. Why nothing, of course, absolutely nothing!” She waved her arm. “That’s not it—why do you bring yourself in? I’m not blaming you, I’m not asking to be forgiven. I’ve been down on my knees, I’ve beaten my head on the ground, abased myself, but,” she said in a terrible voice, “it is not low enough, the ground is not low enough, to bend is not enough; to ask forgiveness is not enough, to receive it is nothing. There isn’t the right kind of misery in the world for me to suffer, nor the right kind of pity for you to feel, there isn’t the right word in the world to heal me up. It’s good to forgive, to be forgiven, but that’s for ordinary things. This is beyond that—it’s something you can experience but never feel—there are not enough nerves, blood cells, flesh—to feel it. You suffer insufficiently; it’s like drinking insufficiently, sleeping insufficiently. I’m not asking anything because there is nothing that I can receive—how primitive to be able to receive——”

“But, Julie——”

“It’s not that,” she said roughly, tears swimming in her eyes. “Of course I love you. But think of it, a danger to everyone excepting those like yourself. Curious, involved in a problem affecting only a small per cent of humanity, sick, frightened, filled with fever and lust perhaps—with nothing, nothing coming after, whatever you do, but death—then you go on—it goes on—then the child—and life probably, for a time.”

“Well——”

“I couldn’t tell you. I thought, ‘Well, I’ll die next month,’ and finally I didn’t want to go off—although I did, you know what I mean. Then her father died—they say her lungs are weak—death, death perpetuating itself, that’s funny you see—and the doctors——” She swung around: “You’re right—they lied, and I lived through—all the way—all the way!”

He turned his face from her.

“The real thing,” she went on in a pained voice, “is to turn our torment toward the perfect design. I didn’t want to go beyond you—that was not my purpose. I thought there was not to be any more me. I wanted to leave nothing behind but you, only you. You must believe this or I can’t bear it—and still,” she continued, walking around the room impatiently, “there was a somehow hysterical joy in it too. I thought, if you had real perception, that ‘something’ that we must possess, that must be at the bottom of us somewhere—or there wouldn’t be such an almost sensuous desire for it, that ‘something’ that, at times, is so near us that it becomes obscene, well, I thought, if Paytor has this—and mind you, I knew all the time that you didn’t have it—that you would understand. And when you had been gone a long time I said, ‘Paytor understands’—and I would say to myself—‘Now, at this moment—at ten-thirty precisely, if I could be with Paytor he would say “I see,”’ but so soon as I had the time table in my hand I knew that there was no such feeling in your bosom—nothing at all.”

“Don’t you feel horror?” he asked in a loud voice, suddenly.

“No, I don’t feel horror—horror is conflict—and I have none—I’m alien to life.”

“Have you a religion, Julie?” he asked, still in the same loud voice, as if he were addressing someone a little raised, yet invisible, as one tries to see a choir.

“I don’t know—I don’t think so. I’ve tried to believe in something external, something that might envelop this and carry it beyond—that’s what we demand of our faiths, isn’t it? But I always return to a fixed notion that there is something more fitting than a possible release.”

He put his hands to his head. “You know,” he said, “I’ve always thought that a woman, because she can have children, ought to know the truth—the very fact that she can do something so really preposterous ought to make her equally capable of the other preposterous thing—well——”

She coughed, her handkerchief before her face—she laughed with brightness. “One learns to be careful about death—but never, never about——” She didn’t finish but stared before her.

“Why did you bring the child here—why did you return at all then—after so long a time—it seems all so mixed up?”

“I don’t know—— Perhaps because there is a right and a wrong, and a good and an evil. I had to find out—and if there’s such a thing as everlasting mercy—I want to find out about that also—there’s a flavour of unfamiliar intimacy about it all, though, this Christian treatment——” She had a way of lifting up the side of her face, closing her eyes. “I thought—Paytor may know.”

“Know what?”

“Will know—well, will be able to divide me against myself—— Personally I don’t feel divided—I seem to be a sane and balanced whole—a hopelessly mixed, but perfect design. So I said Paytor will be able to see where this divides and departs. Though all the time I never for a moment felt that there was a system working on a this for that basis, but that there was only this _and_ that—in other words—I wanted to be set wrong.... You understand?”

“And you yourself,” he inquired, in the same loud voice, “cannot feel the war? Well, then, what about me?—you must realize what you have done—turned everything upside down—oh, I won’t even say betrayed me—it’s much less than that, what most of us do, we betray circumstances—well, I can’t do anything for you,” he said sharply. “I can’t do anything at all—I’m sorry, I’m very sorry—but there it is”—he began to grimace and twitch his shoulders.

“The child has it too,” Julie Anspacher said, looking up at him. “I shall die soon.—It’s ridiculous,” she added, with the tears streaming down her face. “You are strong, always were—and so were all your family before you—not one of them in their graves under ninety—it’s all wrong—it’s quite ridiculous.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s not ridiculous. One must be very careful not to come, too hastily, to a conclusion.” He began searching for his pipe. “Only you know yourself, Julie, how I torment myself, if it’s a big enough thing, for days, weeks, years; and the reason is, the real reason is, that I come to my conclusions instantly, and then fight to destroy them.” He seemed to Julie a little pompous now. “It’s because first I’m human, and second, logical. Well, I don’t know—perhaps I’ll be able to tell you something later—give you a beginning at least—later——” He twitched his shoulders and went out, closing the door after him. She heard him climbing the familiar creaking stairs, the yellow painted stairs that led up into the roof—she heard him strike a match—then silence.

The dark had begun, closing in about bushes and barn, and filling the air with moist joyousness, the joyousness of autumn that trusts itself to the darkness, and Julie leaned on her hand by the shelf and listened.

She could hear, far away and faint, the sound of dogs on heavy chains. She tried to stop, listening to the outside, but her thoughts rotted away like clouds in a wind.

The sense of tears came to her, but it was only a sentimental memory of her early childhood, and it brought a smile to her long face. She had cried once when they made her kiss a dead priest—“Qui habitare facit sterilem—matrem filiorum laetantem”—then “Gloria Patri—” and she had wept then, or thought she had, because he was not only beyond glory and all mercy, but beyond the dubious comfort of the feeling.

She heard Paytor walking above, and the smoke of his pipe crept down between loose boards and uneven plaster and laths.

She went—quite mechanically—over to a chest in one corner, and opened the lid. A shirt waist, of striped taffeta, one she had worn years before, some old Spanish lace—her mother’s—the child——

Paytor did not seem to like the child—“How ridiculous!” she thought. “She is good, quiet, gentle—but that’s not enough now.” She removed her hat. Living with Paytor and the child—Paytor so strong,—always was, and so was his family—and she sickly, coughing. Perhaps she had made a mistake in coming back. She went toward the steps to tell this to Paytor but thought better of it. That wasn’t what she wanted to say.

The hours drew out and Julie Anspacher, sitting now at the window overlooking the garden—nodded without sleep—long dreams—grotesque and abominable—stupid irrelevances dull and interminable. Somewhere little Ann coughed in her sleep. Julie Anspacher coughed also, and in between, the sound of Paytor walking up and down, and the smell of tobacco growing stronger.

To take her own life, that was right, if only she had not the habit of fighting death—“but death is past knowing, and to know is better than to make right——” She shook her head. “That’s another detour on the wrong side,” she told herself. “If only I had the power to feel pain as unbearable, a gust of passion, of impatience, and all would be over—but I’ve stood so much so long, there is no too long.” She thought what she would not give for any kind of feeling, anything that was vital and sudden and determining. “If Paytor will have patience I will get around to it.”

Then it seemed that something must happen, must inevitably happen.

“If I could only think of the right word before it happens,” she said to herself, over and over, and over. “It’s because I’m cold and I can’t think, I’ll think soon——” She would take her jacket off, put on her coat——

She got up, running her hand along the wall. Or had she left it on the chair? “I can’t think of the word,” she said to keep her mind on something.

She turned around. All his family—long lives. “And me too, me too,” she murmured. She became dizzy. “It is because I must get on my knees—but it isn’t low enough.” She contradicted herself. “Yet if I put my head down—way down—down——”

Then she heard the shot. “He has quick warm blood” went through her mind—and her blood was cold.

Her forehead had not quite touched the boards, now she touched them, but she got up immediately, stumbling over her dress.

PASTORAL

A frog leaps out across the lawn,
And crouches there—all heavy and alone,
And like a blossom, pale and over-blown,
Once more the moon turns dim against the dawn.

Crawling across the straggling panoply
Of little roses, only half in bloom,
It strides within that beamed and lofty room
Where an ebon stallion looms upon the hay.

The stillness moves, and seems to grow immense,
A shuddering dog starts, dragging at its chain,
Thin, dusty rats slink down within the grain,
And in the vale the first far bells commence.

Here in the dawn, with mournful doomèd eyes
A cow uprises, moving out to bear
A soft-lipped calf with swarthy birth-swirled hair,
And wide wet mouth, and droll uncertainties.

The grey fowls fight for places in the sun,
The mushrooms flare, and pass like painted fans:
All the world is patient in its plans—
The seasons move forever, one on one.

Small birds lie sprawling vaguely in the heat,
And wanly pluck at shadows on their breasts,
And where the heavy grape-vine leans and rests,
White butterflies lift up their furry feet.

The wheat grows querulous with unseen cats;
A fox strides out in anger through the corn,
Bidding each acre wake and rise to mourn
Beneath its sharps and through its throaty flats.

And so it is, and will be year on year,
Time in and out of date, and still on time
A billion grapes plunge bleeding into wine
And bursting, fall like music on the ear.

The snail that marks the girth of night with slime,
The lonely adder hissing in the fern,
The lizard with its ochre eyes aburn—
Each is before, and each behind its time.

OSCAR

Before the house rose two stately pine trees, and all about small firs and hemlocks. The garden path struggled up to the porch between wild flowers and weeds, and looming against its ancient bulk the shadows of out-houses and barns.

It stood among the hills, and just below around a curve in the road, lay the placid grey reservoir.

Sometimes parties would cross the fields, walking slowly toward the mountains. And sometimes children could be heard murmuring in the underbrush of things they scarcely knew.

Strange things had happened in this country town. Murder, theft, and little girls found weeping, and silent morose boys scowling along in the ragweed, with half-shut sunburned eyelids.

The place was wild, deserted and impossible in Winter. In Summer it was over-run with artists and town folk with wives and babies. Every Saturday there were fairs on the green, where second-hand articles were sold for a song, and flirting was formidable and passing. There were picnics, mountain climbings, speeches in the townhall, on the mark of the beast, on sin, and democracy, and once in a while a lecture on something that “everyone should know,” attended by mothers, their offspring left with servants who knew what everyone shouldn’t.

Then there were movies, bare legs, deacons, misses in cascades of curls and on Sunday one could listen to Mr. Widdie, the clergyman, who suffered from consumption, speak on love of one’s neighbour.

In this house and in this town had lived, for some fifteen years or so, Emma Gonsberg.

She was a little creature, lively, smiling, extremely good-natured. She had been married twice, divorced once, and was now a widow still in her thirties.

Of her two husbands she seldom said anything. Once she made the remark: “Only fancy, they never did catch on to me at all.”

She tried to be fashionable, did her hair in the Venetian style, wore gowns after the manner of Lady de Bath entering her carriage; and tried to cultivate only those who could tell her “where she stood.”

Her son Oscar was fourteen or thereabouts. He wore distinctly over-decorative English clothes, and remembered two words of some obscure Indian dialect that seemed to mean “fleas,” for whenever he flung these words defiantly at visitors they would go off into peals of laughter, headed by his mother. At such times he would lower his eyes and show a row of too heavy teeth.

Emma Gonsberg loved flowers, but could not grow them. She admired cats because there was “nothing servile about them,” but they would not stay with her; and though she loved horses and longed to be one of those daring women who could handle them “without being crushed in the stalls,” they nevertheless ignored her with calm indifference. Of her loves, passions and efforts, she had managed to raise a few ill-smelling pheasants, and had to let it go at that.

In the Winter she led a lonely and discriminating life. In the Summer her house filled with mixed characters, as one might say. A hot melancholy Jew, an officer who was always upon the point of depreciating his medals in a conceited voice, and one other who swore inoffensively.

Finally she had given this sort of thing up, partly because she had managed, soon after, to get herself entangled with a man called Ulric Straussmann. A tall rough fellow, who said he came from the Tyrol; a fellow without sensibilities but with a certain bitter sensuality. A good-natured creature as far as he went, with vivid streaks of German lust, which had at once something sentimental and something careless about it; the type who can turn the country, with a single gesture, into a brothel, and makes of children strong enemies. He showed no little audacity in putting things into people’s minds that he would not do himself.

He smelled very strongly of horses, and was proud of it. He pretended a fondness for all that goes under hide or hair, but a collie bitch, known for her gentleness, snapped at him and bit him. He invariably carried a leather thong, braided at the base for a handle, and would stand for hours talking, with his legs apart, whirling this contrived whip, and, looking out of the corner of his eyes would pull his moustache, waiting to see which of the ladies would draw her feet in.

He talked in a rather even, slightly nasal tone, wetting his lips with a long outthrust of tongue, like an animal. His teeth were splendid and his tongue unusually red, and he prided himself on these and on the calves of his legs. They were large, muscular and rather handsome.

He liked to boast that there was nothing that he could not do and be forgiven, because, as he expressed it, “I have always left people satisfied.” If it were hate or if it were love, he seemed to have come off with unusual success. “Most people are puny,” he would add, “while I am large, strong, healthy. Solid flesh through and through,” whereat he would pound his chest and smile.

He was new to the town and sufficiently insolent to attract attention. There was also something childishly naïve in him, as there is in all tall and robust men who talk about themselves. This probably saved him, because when he was drinking he often became gross and insulting, but he soon put the women of the party in a good humour by giving one of them a hearty and good-natured slap on the rear that she was not likely to forget.

Besides this man Emma had a few old friends of the less interesting, though better-read, type. Among them, however, was an exception, Oliver Kahn, a married man with several children one heard of and never saw. A strange, quiet man who was always talking. He had splendid eyes and a poor mouth—very full lips. In the beginning one surmised that he had been quite an adventurer. He had an odour about him of the rather recent cult of the “terribly good.” He seemed to have been unkind to his family in some way, and was spending the rest of his life in a passion of regret and remorse. He had become one of those guests who are only missed when absent. He finally stayed for good, sleeping in an ante-room with his boots on,—his one royal habit.

In the beginning Emma had liked him tremendously. He was at once gentle and furious, but of late, just prior to the Straussmann affair, he had begun to irritate her. She thought to herself, “He is going mad, that’s all.” She was angry at herself for saying “that’s all,” as if she had expected something different, more momentous.

He had enormous appetites, he ate like a Porthos and drank like a Pantagruel, and talked hour after hour about the same thing, “Love of one’s neighbour,” and spent his spare time in standing with his hands behind him, in front of the pheasants’ cage. He had been a snipe hunter in his time, and once went on a big game hunt, but now he said he saw something more significant here.

He had, like all good sportsmen, even shot himself through the hand, but of late he pretended that he did not remember what the scar came from.

He seemed to suffer a good deal. Evil went deep and good went deep and he suffered the tortures of the damned. He wept and laughed and ate and drank and slept, and year by year his eyes grew sweeter, tenderer, and his mouth fuller, more gross.

The child Oscar did not like Kahn, yet sometimes he would become extraordinarily excited, talk very fast, almost banteringly, a little malignly, and once when Kahn had taken his hand he drew it away angrily. “Don’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because it is dirty,” he retorted maliciously.

“As if you really knew of what I was thinking,” Kahn said, and put his own hands behind him.

Emma liked Kahn, was attached to him. He mentioned her faults without regret or reproval, and this in itself was a divine sort of love.

He would remark: “We cannot be just because we are bewildered; we ought to be proud enough to welcome our enemies as judges, but we hate, and to hate is the act of the incurious. I love with an everlasting but a changing love, because I know I am the wrong sort of man to be good—and because I revere the shadow on the threshold.”

“What shadow, Kahn?”

“In one man we called it Christ—it is energy; for most of us it is dead, a phantom. If you have it you _are_ Christ, and if you have only a little of it you are but the promise of the Messiah.”

These seemed great words, and she looked at him with a little admiring smile.

“You make me uneasy for fear that I have not said ‘I love you with an everlasting love,’ often enough to make it an act of fanaticism.”

As for Oscar, he did what he liked, which gave him character, but made him difficult to live with.

He was not one of those “weedy” youths, long of leg, and stringy like “jerked beef, thank God!” as his mother said to visitors. He was rather too full-grown, thick of calf and hip and rather heavy of feature. His hands and feet were not out of proportion as is usually the case with children of his age, but they were too old looking.

He did not smoke surreptitiously. On the contrary he had taken out a pipe one day in front of his mother, and filling it, smoked in silence, not even with a frightened air, and for that matter not even with a particularly bold air;—he did it quite simply, as something he had finally decided to do, and Emma Gonsberg had gone off to Kahn with it, in a rather helpless manner.

Most children swing in circles about a room, clumsily. Oscar on the contrary walked into the four corners placidly and officially, looked at the backs of the books here and a picture there, and even grunted approvingly at one or two in quite a mature manner.

He had a sweetheart, and about her and his treatment of her there were only a few of the usual signs—he was shy, and passionately immersed in her, there was little of the casual smartness of first calf love about it, though he did in truth wave her off with a grin if he was questioned.

He took himself with seriousness amounting to a lack of humour—and though he himself knew that he was a youth, and had the earmarks of adolescence about him—and know it he certainly did—once he said, “Well, what of it—is that any reason why I should not be serious about everything?” This remark had so astonished his mother that she had immediately sent for Kahn to know if he thought the child was precocious—and Kahn had answered, “If he were, I should be better pleased.”

“But what is one to expect?”

“Children,” he answered, “are never what they are supposed to be, and they never have been. He may be old for his age, but what child hasn’t been?”

In the meantime, she tried to bring Straussmann and Kahn together—“My house is all at odds,” she thought, but these two never hit it off. Straussmann always appeared dreadfully superficial and cynical, and Kahn dull and good about nothing.

“They have both got abnormal appetites,” she thought wearily. She listened to them trying to talk together of an evening on the piazza steps. Kahn was saying:

“You must, however, warn yourself, in fact I might say arm yourself, against any sensation of pleasure in doing good; this is very difficult, I know, but it can be attained. You can give and forgive and tolerate gently and, as one might say, casually, until it’s a second nature.”

“There you have it, tolerate—who wants tolerance, or a second nature? Well, let us drop it. I feel like a child—it’s difficult not to feel like a child.”

“Like Oscar—he has transports—even at his age,” Emma added hesitatingly. “Perhaps that’s not quite as it should be?”

“The memory of growing up is worse than the fear of death,” Kahn remarked, and Emma sighed.

“I don’t know; the country was made for children, they say—I could tell you a story about that,” Straussmann broke off, whistling to Oscar. “Shall I tell Oscar about the country—and what it is really like?” he asked Emma, turning his head.

“Let the boy alone.”

“Why, over there in that small village,” Straussmann went on, taking Oscar by the arm. “It is a pretty tale I could tell you—perhaps I will when you are older—but don’t let your mother persuade you that the country is a nice, healthful, clean place, because, my child, it’s corrupt.”

“Will you let the boy alone!” Emma cried, turning very red.

“Ah, eh—I’ll let him alone right enough—but it won’t make much difference—you’ll see,” he went on. “There is a great deal told to children that they should not hear, I’ll admit, but there wasn’t a thing I didn’t know when I was ten. It happened one day in a hotel in Southampton—a dark place, gloomy, smelling frightfully of mildew, the walls were damp and stained. A strange place, eh, to learn the delights of love, but then our parents seldom dwell on the delights,—they are too taken up with the sordid details, the mere sordid details. My father had a great beard, and I remember thinking that it would have been better if he hadn’t said such things. I wasn’t much good afterwards for five or six years, but my sister was different. She enjoyed it immensely and forgot all about it almost immediately, excepting when I reminded her.”

“Go to bed, Oscar,” Emma said abruptly.

He went, and on going up the steps he did not let his fingers trail along the spindles of the banisters with his usual “Eeny meeny miny mo,” etc.

Emma was a little troubled and watched him going up silently, hardly moving his arms.

“Children should be treated very carefully, they should know as much as possible, but in a less superficial form than they must know later.”

“I think a child is born corrupt and attains to decency,” Straussmann said grinning.

“If you please,” Emma cried gaily, “we will talk about things we understand.”

Kahn smiled. “It’s beautiful, really beautiful,” he said, meaning her gaiety. He always said complimentary things about her lightness of spirit, and always in an angry voice.

“Come, come, you are going mad. What’s the good of that?” she said, abruptly, thinking, “He is a man who discovered himself once too often.”

“You are wrong, Emma, I am not worthy of madness.”

“Don’t be on your guard, Kahn,” she retorted.

Oscar appeared before her suddenly, barefoot. She stared at him. “What is it?” she at last managed to ask in a faint almost suffocated voice.

“I want to kiss you,” he whispered.

She moved toward him slowly, when, half way, he hurried toward her, seized her hand, kissed it, and went back into the house.

“My God,” she cried out. “He is beginning to think for himself,” and ran in after him.

She remembered how she had talked to him the night before, only the night before. “You must love with an everlasting but a changing love,” and he became restless. “With an everlasting but a changing love.”

“What do you mean by ‘changing’?” His palms were moist, and his feet twitched.

“A love that takes in every detail, every element—that can understand without hating, without distinction, I think.”

“Why do you say, ‘I think’?”

“I mean, I know,” she answered, confused.

“Get that Kahn out, he’s a rascal,” he said, abruptly, grinning.

“What are you saying, Oscar?” she demanded, turning cold. “I’ll never come to your bed again, take your hands and say ‘Our Father.’”

“It will be all right if you send that man packing,” he said, stressing the word “packing.”

She was very angry, and half started toward the door. Then she turned back. “Why do you say that, Oscar?”

“Because he makes you nervous—well, then—because he crouches”; he saw by his mother’s face that she was annoyed, puzzled, and he turned red to his ears. “I don’t mean that, I mean he isn’t good; he’s just watching for something good to happen, to take place——” His voice trailed off, and he raised his eyes solemn and full of tears to her face. She leaned down and kissed him, tucking him in like a “little boy.”

“But I’m not a little boy,” he called out to her.

And tonight she did not come down until she thought Kahn and Straussmann had gone.

Kahn had disappeared, but Straussmann had taken a turn or two about the place and was standing in the shadow of the stoop when she came out.

“Come,” he said. “What is it that you want?”

“I think it’s religion,” she answered abruptly. “But it’s probably love.”

“Let us take a walk,” he suggested.

They turned in toward the shadows of the great still mountains and the denser, more arrogant shadows of the out-houses and barns. She looked away into the silence, and the night, and a warm sensation as of pleasure or of something expected but intangible came over her, and she wanted to laugh, to cry, and thinking of it she knew that it was neither.

She was almost unconscious of him for a little, thinking of her son. She raised her long silk skirts about her ankles and tramped off into the dampness. A whippoorwill was whistling off to the right. It sounded as if he were on the fence, and Emma stopped and tried to make it out. She took Ulric’s arm presently, and feeling his muscles swell began to think of the Bible. “Those who take by the sword shall die by the sword. And those who live by the flesh shall die by the flesh.”

She wished that she had someone she could believe in. She saw a door before her mental eye, and herself opening it and saying, “Now tell me this, and what it means,—only today I was thinking ‘those who live by the flesh’”—and as suddenly the door was slammed in her face. She started back.

“You are nervous,” he said in a pleased whisper.

Heavy stagnant shadows sprawled in the path. “So many million leaves and twigs to make one dark shadow,” she said, and was sorry because it sounded childishly romantic, quite different from what she had intended, what she had meant.

They turned the corner of the carriage-house. Something moved, a toad, grey and ugly, bounced across her feet and into the darkness of the hedges. Coming to the entrance of the barn they paused. They could distinguish sleeping hens, the white films moving on their eyes—and through a window at the back, steam rising from the dung heap.

“There don’t seem to be any real farmers left,” she said aloud, thinking of some book she had read about the troubles of the peasants and landholders.

“You’re thinking of my country,” he said smiling.

“No, I wasn’t,” she said. “I was wondering what it is about the country that makes it seem so terrible?”

“It’s your being a Puritan—a tight-laced delightful little Puritan.”

She winced at the words, and decided to remain silent.

It was true, Straussmann was in a fever of excitement—he was always this way with women, especially with Emma. He tried to conceal it for the time being, thinking, rightly, that a display of it would not please her just at the moment—“but it would be only a matter of minutes when she would welcome it,” he promised himself, and waited.

He reflected that she would laugh at him. “But she would enjoy it just the same. The way with all women who have had anything to do with more than one man and are not yet forty,” he reflected. “They like what they get, but they laugh at you, and know you are lying——”

“Oh, my God!” Emma said suddenly, drawing her arm away and wiping her face with her handkerchief.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, it’s the heat.”

“It is warm,” he said dismally.

“I despise everything, I really despise everything, but you won’t believe—— I mean everything when I say everything—you’ll think I mean some one thing—won’t you?” she went on hurriedly. She felt that she was becoming hysterical.

“It doesn’t matter,” he rejoined, walking on beside her, his heart beating violently. “Down, you dog,” he said aloud.

“What is that?” She raised her eyes and he looked into them, and they both smiled.

“That’s better. I wish I were God.”

“A desire for a vocation.”

“Not true, and horrid, as usual,” she answered, and she was hot and angry all at once.

He pulled at his moustache and sniffed. “I can smell the hedges—ah, the country is a gay deceiver—it smells pleasant enough, but it’s treacherous. The country, my dear Emma, has done more to corrupt man, to drag him down, to turn him loose upon his lower instincts, than morphine, alcohol and women. That’s why I like it, that’s why it’s the perfect place for women. They are devils and should be driven out, and as there’s more room in the country and consequently less likelihood of driving them out in too much of a hurry, there is more time for amusement.” He watched her out of the corner of his eye as he said these things to note if they were ill advised. They seemed to leave her cold, but tense.

A little later they passed the barns again.

“What was that?” Emma asked suddenly.

“I heard nothing.”

But she had heard something, and her heart beat fearfully. She recognized Oscar’s voice. She reached up signing Straussmann to be quiet. She did not want him to hear; she wished that the ground would yawn, would swallow him up.

“See that yellow flower down there,” she said, pointing toward the end of the path they had just come. “I want it, I must have it, please.” He did as he was bid, amiably enough.

She listened—she heard the voice of Oscar’s little sweetheart:

“It seems as if we were one already.”... It was high, resolute, unflagging, without emotion, a childish parroting of some novel. Oscar’s voice came back, half smothered:

“Do you really care—more than you like Berkeley?”

“Yes, I do,” she answered in the same false treble, “lots more.”

“Come here,” he said softly—the hay rustled.

“I don’t want to—the rye gets into my hair and spoils it.”

“Dolly, do you like the country?”

“Yes, I do,”—without conviction.

“We will go to the city,” he answered.

“Oh, Oscar, you’re so strong,” she giggled, and it sent a cold shudder through Emma’s being.

Then presently, “What’s the matter, Oscar—why, you’re crying.”

“I’m not—well, then yes, I am—what of it?—you’ll understand, too, some day.”

She was evidently frightened, because she said in a somewhat loosened key, “No one would ever believe that we were as much in love as we are, would they, Oscar?”

“No, why do you ask that?”

“It’s a great pity,” she said again with the false sound, and sighed.

“Do you care? Why do you care?”

Straussmann was coming back with the yellow flower between thumb and forefinger. Emma ran a little way to meet him.

“Come, let us go home the other way.”

“Rather, let us not go home,” he said, boldly, and took her wrist, hurting her.

“Ah,” she said. “Vous m’avez blessée d’amour”—ironically.

“Yes, speak French, it helps women like you at such moments,” he said, brutally, and kissed her.

But kissing him back, she thought, “The fool, why does Oscar take her so seriously when they are both children, and she is torturing him.”

“My love, my sweet, my little love,” he was babbling.

She tried to quench this, trembling a little. “But tell me, my friend—no, not so hasty—what do you think of immortality?” He had pushed her so far back that there was no regaining her composure. “My God, in other words, what of the will to retribution!”

But she could not go on. “I’ve tried to,” she thought.

Later, when the dawn was almost upon them, he said: “How sad to be drunk, only to die. For the end of all man is Fate, in other words, the end of all man is vulgar.”

She felt the need of something that had not been.

“I’m not God, you see, after all.”

“So I see, madam,” he said. “But you’re a damned clever little woman.”

When she came in, she found Kahn lying flat on his back, his eyes wide open.

“Couldn’t you sleep?”

“No, I could not sleep.”

She was angry. “I’m sorry—you suffer.”

“Yes, a little.”

“Kahn,” she cried in anguish, flinging herself on her knees beside him. “What should I have done, what shall I do?”

He put his hand on her cheek. “My dear, my dear,” he said, and sighed. “I perhaps was wrong.”

She listened.

“Very wrong, I see it all now; I am an evil man, an old and an evil being.”

“No, no!”

“Yes, yes,” he said gently, softly, contradicting her. “Yes, evil, and pitiful, and weak”; he seemed to be trying to remember something. “What is it that I have overlooked?” He asked the question in such a confused voice that she was startled.

“Is it hate?” she asked.

“I guess so, yes, I guess that’s it.”

“Kahn, try to think—there must be something else.”

“Madness.”

She began to shiver.

“Are you cold?”

“No, it’s not cold.”

“No, it’s not cold,” he repeated after her. “You are not cold, Emma, you are a child.”

Tears began to roll down her cheeks.

“Yes,” he continued sadly. “You too will hear: remorse is the medium through which the evil spirit takes possession.”