Chapter VII: Book II: I (4)

“I won’t,” he muttered. He too had lost his head. “I’ll not leave you.” He strove to reach her mouth. She managed to disengage her right arm, and clinching her hand hit him a smart blow in the face. He laughed, and caught her hand, holding it out at arm’s length.

“Ellen!” she cried. As she lifted her head to call he was quick to see his advantage. His mouth closed suddenly on hers.

The room swam round her. She ceased to struggle. Her feet had touched that nether world where the electrical forces of the universe appear to be generated, and its wonder—not the man—conquered her. She shook horribly. She felt a tumultuous impulse to spring upon her ideals and beat them in the face.

Heavy footfalls sounded in the kitchen hall.

“There is Ellen!” she gasped, wrenching herself free. The man stamped his foot. He looked hideous.

“Go!” said Patience. “Go, just as fast as you can, and don’t you ever come here again. If you do, it won’t do you any good, for you’ll not see me.”

And she ran upstairs and locked her door loudly.

XX

For some time she walked rapidly up and down, pressing her hands to her hot face. Chaos was in her. She could not think. She only felt that she wanted to die, and preferred the river. She poured water into a basin and plunged her face into it again and again. The water had the chill of midwinter, and sent the blood from her brain; but she felt no cleaner. Still, her brain was no longer racing like a screw out of water, and she sat down to think. It was her trend of mind to face all questions with the least possible delay, and she looked at herself squarely.

“So,” she thought, “I am the daughter of Madge Sparhawk, after all. The horror of that night left me as I was made. Three years with the best woman the sun ever shone on only put the real me to sleep for a time. All my ideals were the vagaries of my imagination, a sort of unwritten book, of the nature of those that geniuses write, who spend their leisure hours in debauchery. I am no better than Rosita. I have not even the excuse of love—if I had—if it had been Him—I might perhaps—perhaps—look upon passion as a natural thing. Certainly it is not disagreeable,” and she laughed unpleasantly. “But I despised this man. He has not the brain of a calf nor the principle of a savage, and yet it is he that made me forget every ideal I ever cherished. If I met Him now, I would not insult him with the gift of myself. . . .

“If Beverly Peele came in here now I verily believe that I should kiss him again. What—what is human nature made of? I have the blood of refined and enlightened ancestors in my veins—I know that. I have seen nothing of sexual sin that did not make me abhor it. Barring my mother, I had the best of influences in Monterey, and I knew the difference. I have—or had—a natural tendency toward all that was refined and uplifting. I was even sure I had a soul. My brain is better, and better furnished, than that of the average woman of my age. And yet, at the first touch, I crumble like an old corpse exposed to air. I am simply a body with a mental annex, and the one appears to be independent of the other.

“Is the world all vile?” she continued, resuming her restless walk. “This man attacked me as if he had no anticipation of a rebuff. And yet I am the friend of his sister, the adopted daughter of his mother’s cousin, and, he has every reason to think, of irreproachable life. If the world—his mother’s world—were not full of such women as he imagined me to be—he would never have taken so much for granted. He acted as if he thought me a fool, and I appear to be remarkably green. I am certainly learning. Oh—the brute! the brute!” And she flung herself on the bed and burst into violent weeping, which lasted until she was so exhausted that she fell asleep without disrobing.

XXI

The next morning her head ached violently. She started for the woods, but turned back. They held her lost ideals. She sat all day by the window, looking at the Hudson, listless, and mentally nauseated.

During the afternoon a special messenger brought a note of abject apology from Beverly Peele. She burnt it half read and told the man there was no answer. There is only one thing a woman scorns more than a man’s insult, and that is his apology.

The next day he called, but was refused admission by the sturdy Ellen. Patience spent the day on Hog Heights. On the following day he called again, with the same result. The next day Hal came.

“What is the row between you and Bev?” she exclaimed, before she had seated herself. “He says you’ve taken a dislike to him, and is in the most beastly temper about it. I never saw him so cut up. He’s sent me here to patch it up and give you this letter. Do tell me what is the matter?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Patience, grimly. “The idea of his sending his sister to patch it up!” And she gave an account of Mr. Peele’s performance, woman-like omitting her own momentary forbearance.

Hal listened with an amused smile. “So Bev made a bad break,” she remarked when Patience had concluded. “I’m not surprised, for he’s pretty hot-headed, and head over ears in love. You mustn’t take life so tragically. I’ve had several weird experiences myself, although I’m not the kind that men lose their head about as a rule; only given the hour and the occasion, some men will lose their head about any woman. Perhaps I should have said New York men. They are a rare and lovely species. They admire God because he made himself of their gender and knew what he was about when he invented woman. I was out on a sleighing party one moonlight night last winter, and on the back seat with a man I’d never seen out of a ball-room before. The way that man’s legs and arms flew round that sleigh made my hair curl. You see, a lot of us are fast, but then plenty of us are not. The trouble is that the men can’t discriminate, as we look pretty much alike on the outside. They’re not a very clever lot—our society men—and they don’t learn much until they’ve been taught. Then when they are forced to believe in your virtue they feel rather sorry for you, and later on are apt to propose—if you have any money. Bev would propose to you if you were living in a tent and clad in a gunny sack. He would have preferred things the other way—it’s so much less trouble—but as he can’t, he won’t stop at any such trifling nuisance as matrimony. Oh, men are a lovely lot! Still, the world would be a pretty stupid place without them. You’ll learn to manage them in time, and then they’ll only amuse you. They are not really so bad at heart—they’ve been badly educated. I know four married women of the type we call ‘friskies,’ whom my mother would shudder at the thought of excluding from her visiting list, and whom I’d bet my new Paquin trunk, several men I know have had affairs with. So what can you expect of a man?”

“Is the world rotten?” asked Patience, in disgust.

“It’s just about half and half. I know as many good women as bad. Half the women in society are good wives and devoted mothers. The other half, girls and married women, old and young, are no better than your Rosita. Sometimes their motives are no higher. Usually, though, it’s craving for excitement. I don’t blame those much myself. The most fascinating woman I know is larky. She as much as told me so. Some of the confessions I’ve had from married women would make you gasp. Well—let’s quit the subject. Promise me you’ll forgive Bev.”

“I shall not. I hate him. I shall never look at him again if I can help it.”

“Oh, dear, dear, you are young! And I do so want you for a sister. May is such a fool, and I do hate Honora.”

“You wouldn’t have me loathe myself for the sake of being your sister, I suppose?”

“Of course I wouldn’t have you marry Bev if you couldn’t like him; but I believe you really do, only things haven’t turned out as you planned in that innocent little skull of yours. Bev is a good fellow, as men go. You’ll get used to him and his kind in the course of time, and then you’ll enjoy life in a calm practical way.”

“Is there no other way?” asked Patience, bitterly.

“Not in my experience. And if you stay here in your woods you’ll get tired of your ideals after a while. You can’t live on ideals—the human constitution isn’t made that way. If it was there’d be no such thing as society. We’d live in caves and bay the moon. So you’d better come into the world, Patience dear, and accept it as it is, and drain it for all it’s worth.”

“Oh, hush! You are too good to talk like that.”

“Good?—what is good? I am the result of my surroundings—a little better than some, a little worse than others. So was Cousin Harriet. So is La Rosita. I’m not cynical. I merely see life—my section of it—exactly as it is. If you become a newspaper woman you’ll probably receive a succession of shocks. As nearly as I can make out they’re about like us—half and half. I became quite chummy with a newspaper woman, once, crossing the Atlantic. She was awfully pretty, and, as nearly as one woman can judge of another, perfectly proper. She related some wild and weird experiences she had had with men. Yours would probably be wilder and weirder, as you appear to be possessed of an unholy fascination; and in a year or two you’ll be a beauty. All you want is a little more figure and style—or rather clothes.”

“Well, if I’m to have wild and weird experiences I prefer to have them with men of brains, not with a lot of empty-headed society men.”

“Don’t generalise too freely, my dear. There are newspaper men and newspaper men,—according to this girl I’ve just told you of. Some are brainy, some are merely bright; some are gentlemen, most are common beyond words. And, as she said—after you’ve worked with man in his shirt sleeves, you don’t have many illusions about the animal left.”

“I have not one, and I lost them in an hour. Your brother is supposed to be a gentleman with a long array of ancestors, and he acted like a wild Indian.”

“My dear, he merely lost his head. That was a compliment to you, and you should not be too hard on a man in those circumstances. He won’t do it again, I’m sure of that. He has some control. I warned him before he came not to pun, and he says he didn’t, not once. Now, tell me one thing—Don’t you like him just a little?”

“No,” said Patience; but she flushed to her hair, and Hal, with her uncanny wisdom, said no more.

XXII

The next day Patience went to the woods for the first time since Beverly Peele’s onslaught. A natural reaction had lifted her spirits out of the slough, and she turned to nature, as ever. She could never be the same again, she thought with a sigh; and once more she must readjust herself. She wondered if any girl had ever done so much readjusting in an equal number of years.

The woods were no longer a scene of enchantment. The ice had melted. The trees were grey and naked again. The ground was slush, and nasty to walk upon.

“But the spring must come in time,” she thought; “and then perhaps I’ll feel new too—but not the same, for like the spring I shall have other seasons behind me.

“But—perhaps—who knows?—I may be the better for knowing myself. I was in a fool’s paradise before. Perhaps I was in danger of becoming an egoist, and imagining myself made of finer fibre than other women. Great writers show that the same brute is in all of us, and I can believe it. Some work it off in religion, but the majority don’t. There seems to be some tremendous magnetic force in the Universe that makes the human race nine-tenths Love—for want of a better name. Circumstances and ancestors determine the direction of it. It seems too bad that Civilisation has not done more for us than to give us the analytical mind which understands and rebels, and no more, at the inheritance of the savage. But now that I know myself, perhaps I can go forward more surely on the path to the higher altitudes of life. I should like to be as good as auntie, and worldly-wise beside.

“I suppose my horrid experience with this man will make me more exacting with all men. I think I could not blunder into matrimony, as some women do. I feel as if I never wanted to see another man, but that impression will pass—all impressions appear to pass. I may even want to meet Him after a time, and perhaps he will forgive. Shouldn’t be surprised if he’d want a good deal of forgiveness himself. Meanwhile I can work, and learn all I can of what life means, anyway. I’ll go to Mr. Field—”

The soft ground echoed no footfalls, but Patience suddenly became aware that some one was approaching her. She turned, and saw Beverly Peele.