There were evenings when he sat on some one of the great verandas and watched them trim and string the inters.p.a.ces between the columns with soft, glowing, Chinese lanterns, preparatory to the evening"s dancing. He loved to see the girls and men of the summer colony arrive, the former treading the soft gra.s.s in filmy white gowns and white slippers, the latter in white ducks and flannels, gaily chatting as they came. Christina would come to these affairs with her mother and brother, beautifully clad in white linen or lawns and laces, and he would be beside himself with chagrin that he had not practised dancing to the perfection of the art. He could dance now, but not like her brother or scores of men he saw upon the waxen floor. It hurt him. At times he would sit all alone after his splendid evenings with his love, dreaming of the beauty of it all. The stars would be as a great wealth of diamond seed flung from the lavish hand of an aimless sower. The hills would loom dark and tall. There was peace and quiet everywhere.
"Why may not life be always like this?" he would ask, and then he would answer himself out of his philosophy that it would become deadly after awhile, as does all unchanging beauty. The call of the soul is for motion, not peace. Peace after activity for a little while, then activity again. So must it be. He understood that.
Just before he left for New York, Christina said to him: "Now, when you see me again I will be Miss Channing of New York. You will be Mr. Witla. We will almost forget that we were ever here together. We will scarcely believe that we have seen what we have seen and done what we have done."
"But, Christina, you talk as though everything were over. It isn"t, is it?"
"We can"t do anything like this in New York," she sighed. "I haven"t time and you must work."
There was a shade of finality in her tone.
"Oh, Christina, don"t talk so. I can"t think that way. Please don"t."
"I won"t," she said. "We"ll see. Wait till I get back."
He kissed her a dozen farewells and at the door held her close once more.
"Will you forsake me?" he asked.
"No, you will forsake me. But remember, dear! Don"t you see? You"ve had all. Let me be your wood nymph. The rest is commonplace."
He went back to his hotel with an ache in his heart, for he knew they had gone through all they ever would. She had had her summer with him. She had given him of herself fully. She wanted to be free to work now. He could not understand it, but he knew it to be so.
CHAPTER XXV.
It is a rather dreary thing to come back into the hot city in the summer after a period of beauty in the mountains. The quiet of the hills was in Eugene"s mind, the glisten and babble of mountain streams, the soar and poise of hawks and buzzards and eagles sailing the crystal blue. He felt lonely and sick for awhile, out of touch with work and with practical life generally. There were little souvenirs of his recent happiness in the shape of letters and notes from Christina, but he was full of the premonition of the end which had troubled him on leaving.
He must write to Angela. He had not thought of her all the time he had been gone. He had been in the habit of writing to her every third or fourth day at least; while of late his letters had been less pa.s.sionate they had remained fairly regular. But now this sudden break coming--it was fully three weeks--made her think he must be ill, although she had begun to feel also that he might be changing. His letters had grown steadily less reminiscent of the joys they had experienced together and of the happiness they were antic.i.p.ating, and more inclined to deal with the color and character of city life and of what he hoped to achieve. Angela was inclined to excuse much of this on the grounds of the special effort he was making to achieve distinction and a living income for themselves. But it was hard to explain three weeks of silence without something quite serious having happened.
Eugene understood this. He tried to explain it on the grounds of illness, stating that he was now up and feeling much better. But when his explanation came, it had the hollow ring of insincerity. Angela wondered what the truth could be. Was he yielding to the temptation of that looser life that all artists were supposed to lead? She wondered and worried, for time was slipping away and he was setting no definite date for their much discussed nuptials.
The trouble with Angela"s position was that the delay involved practically everything which was important in her life. She was five years older than Eugene. She had long since lost that atmosphere of youth and buoyancy which is so characteristic of a girl between eighteen and twenty-two. Those few short years following, when the body of maidenhood blooms like a rose and there is about it the freshness and color of all rich, new, lush life, were behind her. Ahead was that persistent decline towards something harder, shrewder and less beautiful. In the case of some persons the decline is slow and the fragrance of youth lingers for years, the artifices of the dressmaker, the chemist, and the jeweller being but little needed. In others it is fast and no contrivance will stay the ravages of a restless, eager, dissatisfied soul. Sometimes art combines with slowness of decay to make a woman of almost perennial charm, loveliness of mind matching loveliness of body, and taste and tact supplementing both. Angela was fortunate in being slow to fade and she had a loveliness of imagination and emotion to sustain her; but she had also a restless, anxious disposition of mind which, if it had not been stayed by the kindly color of her home life and by the fortunate or unfortunate intervention of Eugene at a time when she considered her ideal of love to have fairly pa.s.sed out of the range of possibility, would already have set on her face the signs of old maidenhood. She was not of the newer order of femininity, eager to get out in the world and follow some individual line of self-development and interest. Rather was she a home woman wanting some one man to look after and love. The wonder and beauty of her dream of happiness with Eugene now made the danger of its loss and the possible compulsory continuance of a humdrum, underpaid, backwoods existence, heart-sickening.
Meanwhile, as the summer pa.s.sed, Eugene was casually enlarging his acquaintance with women. MacHugh and Smite had gone back home for the summer, and it was a relief from his loneliness to encounter one day in an editorial office, Norma Whitmore, a dark, keen, temperamental and moody but brilliant writer and editor who, like others before her, took a fancy to Eugene. She was introduced to him by Jans Jansen, Art Director of the paper, and after some light banter she offered to show him her office.
She led the way to a little room no larger than six by eight where she had her desk. Eugene noticed that she was lean and sallow, about his own age or older, and brilliant and vivacious. Her hands took his attention for they were thin, shapely and artistic. Her eyes burned with a peculiar l.u.s.tre and her loose-fitting clothes were draped artistically about her. A conversation sprang up as to his work, which she knew and admired, and he was invited to her apartment. He looked at Norma with an unconsciously speculative eye.
Christina was out of the city, but the memory of her made it impossible for him to write to Angela in his old vein of devotion. Nevertheless he still thought of her as charming. He thought that he ought to write more regularly. He thought that he ought pretty soon to go back and marry her. He was approaching the point where he could support her in a studio if they lived economically. But he did not want to exactly.
He had known her now for three years. It was fully a year and a half since he had seen her last. In the last year his letters had been less and less about themselves and more and more about everything else. He was finding the conventional love letters difficult. But he did not permit himself to realize just what that meant--to take careful stock of his emotions. That would have compelled him to the painful course of deciding that he could not marry her, and asking her to be released from his promise. He did not want to do that. Instead he parleyed, held by pity for her pa.s.sing youth and her undeniable affection for him, by his sense of the unfairness of having taken up so much of her time to the exclusion of every other person who might have proposed to her, by sorrow for the cruelty of her position in being left to explain to her family that she had been jilted. He hated to hurt any person"s feelings. He did not want to be conscious of the grief of any person who had come to suffering through him and he could not make them suffer very well and not be conscious. He was too tender hearted. He had pledged himself to Angela, giving her a ring, begging her to wait, writing her fulsome letters of protest and desire. Now, after three years, to shame her before her charming family--old Jotham, her mother, her sisters and brothers--it seemed a cruel thing to do, and he did not care to contemplate it.
Angela, with her morbid, pa.s.sionate, apprehensive nature, did not fail to see disaster looming in the distance. She loved Eugene pa.s.sionately and the pent-up fires of her nature had been waiting all these years the warrant to express their ardor which marriage alone could confer. Eugene, by the charm of his manner and person, no less than by the sensuous character of some of his moods and the subtleties and refinements of his references to the ties of s.e.x, had stirred her to antic.i.p.ate a perfect fruition of her dreams, and she was now eager for that fruition almost to the point of being willing to sacrifice virginity itself. The remembrance of the one significant scene between her and Eugene tormented her. She felt that if his love was to terminate in indifference now it would have been better to have yielded then. She wished that she had not tried to save herself. Perhaps there would have been a child, and he would have been true to her out of a sense of sympathy and duty. At least she would have had that crowning glory of womanhood, ardent union with her lover, and if worst had come to worst she could have died.
She thought of the quiet little lake near her home, its gla.s.sy bosom a mirror to the sky, and how, in case of failure, she would have looked lying on its sandy bottom, her pale hair diffused by some aimless motion of the water, her eyes sealed by the end of consciousness, her hands folded. Her fancy outran her daring. She would not have done this, but she could dream about it, and it made her distress all the more intense.
As time went by and Eugene"s ardor did not revive, this problem of her love became more harra.s.sing and she began to wonder seriously what she could do to win him back to her. He had expressed such a violent desire for her on his last visit, had painted his love in such glowing terms that she felt convinced he must love her still, though absence and the excitements of city life had dimmed the memory of her temporarily. She remembered a line in a comic opera which she and Eugene had seen together: "Absence is the dark room in which lovers develop negatives" and this seemed a case in point. If she could get him back, if he could be near her again, his old fever would develop and she would then find some way of making him take her, perhaps. It did not occur to her quite clearly just how this could be done at this time but some vague notion of self-immolation was already stirring vaguely and disturbingly in her brain.
The trying and in a way disheartening conditions of her home went some way to sustain this notion. Her sister Marietta was surrounded by a score of suitors who were as eager for her love as a bee is for the honey of a flower, and Angela could see that they were already looking upon herself as an elderly chaperon. Her mother and father watched her going about her work and grieved because so good a girl should be made to suffer for want of a proper understanding. She could not conceal her feelings entirely and they could see at times that she was unhappy. She could see that they saw it. It was hard to have to explain to her sisters and brothers, who occasionally asked after Eugene, that he was doing all right, and never be able to say that he was coming for her some day soon.
At first Marietta had been envious of her. She thought she would like to win Eugene for herself, and only consideration for Angela"s age and the fact that she had not been so much sought after had deterred her. Now that Eugene was obviously neglecting her, or at least delaying beyond any reasonable period, she was deeply sorry. Once, before she had grown into the age of courtship, she had said to Angela: "I"m going to be nice to the men. You"re too cold. You"ll never get married." And Angela had realized that it was not a matter of "too cold," but an innate prejudice against most of the types she met. And then the average man did not take to her. She could not spur herself to pleasure in their company. It took a fire like Eugene"s to stir her mightily, and once having known that she could brook no other. Marietta realized this too. Now because of these three years she had cut herself off from other men, particularly the one who had been most attentive to her--faithful Victor Dean. The one thing that might save Angela from being completely ignored was a spirit of romance which kept her young in looks as in feelings.
With the fear of desertion in her mind Angela began to hint in her letters to Eugene that he should come back to see her, to express the hope in her letters that their marriage need not--because of any difficulty of establishing himself--be postponed much longer. She said to him over and over that she could be happy with him in a cottage and that she so longed to see him again. Eugene began to ask himself what he wanted to do.
The fact that on the pa.s.sional side Angela appealed to him more than any woman he had ever known was a saving point in her favor at this juncture. There was a note in her make-up which was stronger, deeper, more suggestive of joy to come than anything he had found elsewhere. He remembered keenly the wonderful days he had spent with her--the one significant night when she begged him to save her against herself. All the beauty of the season with which she was surrounded at that time; the charm of her family, the odor of flowers and the shade of trees served to make a setting for her delightfulness which still endured with him as fresh as yesterday. Now, without having completed that romance--a very perfect flower--could he cast it aside?
At this time he was not entangled with any woman. Miriam Finch was too conservative and intellectual; Norma Whitmore not attractive enough. As for some other charming examples of femininity whom he had met here and there, he had not been drawn to them or they to him. Emotionally he was lonely and this for him was always a very susceptible mood. He could not make up his mind that the end had come with Angela.
It so happened that Marietta, after watching her sister"s love affair some time, reached the conclusion that she ought to try to help her. Angela was obviously concealing a weariness of heart which was telling on her peace of mind and her sweetness of disposition. She was unhappy and it grieved her sister greatly. The latter loved her in a whole-hearted way, in spite of the fact that their affections might possibly have clashed over Eugene, and she thought once of writing in a sweet way and telling him how things were. She thought he was good and kind, that he loved Angela, that perhaps he was delaying as her sister said until he should have sufficient means to marry well, and that if the right word were said now he would cease chasing a phantom fortune long enough to realize that it were better to take Angela while they were still young, than to wait until they were so old that the romance of marriage would for them be over. She revolved this in her mind a long time, picturing to herself how sweet Angela really was, and finally nerved herself to pen the following letter, which she sent.
Dear Eugene: You will be surprised to get a letter from me and I want you to promise me that you will never say anything about it to anyone--above all never to Angela. Eugene, I have been watching her for a long time now and I know she is not happy. She is so desperately in love with you. I notice when a letter does not come promptly she is downcast and I can"t help seeing that she is longing to have you here with her. Eugene, why don"t you marry Angela? She is lovely and attractive now and she is as good as she is beautiful. She doesn"t want to wait for a fine house and luxuries--no girl wants to do that, Eugene, when she loves as I know Angela does you. She would rather have you now when you are both young and can enjoy life than any fine house or nice things you might give her later. Now, I haven"t talked to her at all, Eugene--never one word--and I know it would hurt her terribly if she thought I had written to you. She would never forgive me. But I can"t help it. I can"t bear to see her grieving and longing, and I know that when you know you will come and get her. Don"t ever indicate in any way, please, that I wrote to you. Don"t write to me unless you want to very much. I would rather you didn"t. And tear up this letter. But do come for her soon, Eugene, please do. She wants you. And she will make you a perfectly wonderful wife for she is a wonderful girl. We all love her so--papa and mamma and all. I hope you will forgive me. I can"t help it.
"With love I am yours, "Marietta."
When Eugene received this letter he was surprised and astonished, but also distressed for himself and Angela and Marietta and the whole situation. The tragedy of this situation appealed to him perhaps as much from the dramatic as from the personal point of view. Little Angela, with her yellow hair and cla.s.sic face. What a shame that they could not be together as she wished; as really, in a way, he wished. She was beautiful--no doubt of that. And there was a charm about her which was as alluring as that of any girl barring the intellectually exceptional. Her emotions in a way were deeper than those of Miriam Finch and Christina Channing. She could not reason about them--that was all. She just felt them. He saw all the phases of her anguish--the probable att.i.tude of her parents, her own feelings at being looked at by them, the way her friends wondered. It was a shame, no doubt of that--a cruel situation. Perhaps he had better go back. He could be happy with her. They could live in a studio and no doubt things would work out all right. Had he better be cruel and not go? He hated to think of it.
Anyhow he did not answer Marietta"s letter, and he did tear it up into a thousand bits, as she requested. "If Angela knew no doubt she would feel wretched," he thought.
In the meanwhile Angela was thinking, and her brooding led her to the conclusion that it might be advisable, if ever her lover came back, to yield herself in order that he might feel compelled to take her. She was no reasoner about life in any big sense. Her judgment of affairs was more confused at this time than at a later period. She had no clear conception of how foolish any trickery of this sort would be. She loved Eugene, felt that she must have him, felt that she would be willing to die rather than lose him and the thought of trickery came only as a last resource. If he refused her she was determined on one thing--the lake. She would quit this dreary world where love was crossed with despair in its finest moments; she would forget it all. If only there were rest and silence on the other side that would be enough.
The year moved on toward spring and because of some note of this, reiterated in pathetic phrases, he came to feel that he must go back. Marietta"s letter preyed on his mind. The intensity of Angela"s att.i.tude made him feel that something desperate would happen. He could not, in cold blood, sit down and write her that he would not see her any more. The impressions of Blackwood were too fresh in his mind--the summer incense and green beauty of the world in which she lived. He wrote in April that he would come again in June, and Angela was beside herself with joy.
One of the things which helped Eugene to this conclusion was the fact that Christina Channing was not coming back from Europe that year. She had written a few times during the winter, but very guardedly. A casual reader could not have drawn from what she said that there had ever been anything between them. He had written much more ardently, of course, but she had chosen to ignore his eager references, making him feel by degrees that he was not to know much of her in the future. They were going to be good friends, but not necessarily lovers nor eventually husband and wife. It irritated him to think she could be so calm about a thing which to him seemed so important. It hurt his pride to think she could so deliberately throw him over. Finally he began to be incensed, and then Angela"s fidelity appeared in a much finer light. There was a girl who would not treat him so. She really loved him. She was faithful and true. So his promised trip began to look much more attractive, and by June he was in a fever to see her.
CHAPTER XXVI.
The beautiful June weather arrived and with it Eugene took his departure once more for Blackwood. He was in a peculiar mood, for while he was anxious to see Angela again it was with the thought that perhaps he was making a mistake. A notion of fatality was beginning to run through his mind. Perhaps he was destined to take her! and yet, could anything be more ridiculous? He could decide. He had deliberately decided to go back there--or had he? He admitted to himself that his pa.s.sion was drawing him--in fact he could not see that there was anything much in love outside of pa.s.sion. Desire! Wasn"t that all that pulled two people together? There was some little charm of personality above that, but desire was the keynote. And if the physical attraction were strong enough, wasn"t that sufficient to hold two people together? Did you really need so much more? It was logic based on youth, enthusiasm and inexperience, but it was enough to hold him for the time being--to soothe him. To Angela he was not drawn by any of the things which drew him to Miriam Finch and Norma Whitmore, nor was there the wonderful art of Christina Channing. Still he was going.
His interest in Norma Whitmore had increased greatly as the winter pa.s.sed. In this woman he had found an intellect as broadening and refining as any he had encountered. Her taste for the exceptional in literature and art was as great as that of anyone he had ever known and it was just as individual. She ran to impressive realistic fiction in literature and to the kind of fresh-from-the-soil art which Eugene represented. Her sense of just how big and fresh was the thing he was trying to do was very encouraging, and she was carrying the word about town to all her friends that he was doing it. She had even gone so far as to speak to two different art dealers asking them why they had not looked into what seemed to her his perfectly wonderful drawings.
"Why, they"re astonishing in their newness," she told Eberhard Zang, one of the important picture dealers on Fifth Avenue. She knew him from having gone there to borrow pictures for reproduction.
"Witla! Witla!" he commented in his conservative German way, rubbing his chin, "I doand remember seeing anything by him."
"Of course you don"t," replied Norma persistently. "He"s new, I tell you. He hasn"t been here so very long. You get Truth for some week in last month--I forget which one--and see that picture of Greeley Square. It will show you what I mean."
"Witla! Witla!" repeated Zang, much as a parrot might fix a sound in its memory. "Tell him to come in here and see me some day. I should like to see some of his things."
"I will," said Norma, genially. She was anxious to have Eugene go, but he was more anxious to get a lot of things done before he had an exhibition. He did not want to risk an impression with anything short of a rather extensive series. And his collection of views was not complete at that time. Besides he had a much more significant art dealer in mind.
He and Norma had reached the point by this time where they were like brother and sister, or better yet, two good men friends. He would slip his arm about her waist when entering her rooms and was free to hold her hands or pat her on the arm or shoulder. There was nothing more than strong good feeling on his part, while on hers a burning affection might have been inspired, but his genial, brotherly att.i.tude convinced her that it was useless. He had never told her of any of his other women friends and he was wondering as he rode west how she and Miriam Finch would take his marriage with Angela, supposing that he ever did marry her. As for Christina Channing, he did not want to think--really did not dare to think of her very much. Some sense of lost beauty came to him out of that experience--a touch of memory that had a pang in it.
Chicago in June was just a little dreary to him with its hurry of life, its breath of past experience, the Art Inst.i.tute, the Daily Globe building, the street and house in which Ruby had lived. He wondered about her (as he had before) the moment he neared the city, and had a strong desire to go and look her up. Then he visited the Globe offices, but Mathews had gone. Genial, cheerful Jerry had moved to Philadelphia recently, taking a position on the Philadelphia North American, leaving Howe alone, more finicky and picayune than ever. Goldfarb, of course, was gone and Eugene felt out of it. He was glad to take the train for Blackwood, for he felt lonesome. He left the city with quite an ache for old times in his heart and the feeling that life was a jumble of meaningless, strange and pathetic things.
"To think that we should grow old," he pondered, "that things that were as real as these things were to me, should become mere memories."
The time just before he reached Blackwood was one of great emotional stress for Angela. Now she was to learn whether he really loved her as much as he had. She was to feel the joy of his presence, the subtle influence of his att.i.tude. She was to find whether she could hold him or not. Marietta, who on hearing that he was coming, had rather plumed herself that her letter had had something to do with it, was afraid that her sister would not make good use of this opportune occasion. She was anxious that Angela should look her best, and made suggestions as to things she might wear, games she might play (they had installed tennis and croquet as part of the home pleasures since he had been there last) and places they might go to. Marietta was convinced that Angela was not artful enough--not sufficiently subtle in her presentation of her charms. He could be made to feel very keen about her if she dressed right and showed herself to the best advantage. Marietta herself intended to keep out of the way as much as possible when Eugene arrived, and to appear at great disadvantage in the matter of dress and appearance when seen; for she had become a perfect beauty and was a breaker of hearts without conscious effort.
"You know that string of coral beads I have, Angel Face," she asked Angela one morning some ten days before Eugene arrived. "Wear them with that tan linen dress of mine and your tan shoes some day for Eugene. You"ll look stunning in those things and he"ll like you. Why don"t you take the new buggy and drive over to Blackwood to meet him? That"s it. You must meet him."
"Oh, I don"t think I want to, Babyette," she replied. She was afraid of this first impression. She did not want to appear to run after him. Babyette was a nickname which had been applied to Marietta in childhood and had never been dropped.
"Oh, pshaw, Angel Face, don"t be so backward! You"re the shyest thing I know. Why that"s nothing. He"ll like you all the better for treating him just a little smartly. You do that now, will you?"
"I can"t," replied Angela. "I can"t do it that way. Let him come over here first; then I"ll drive him over some afternoon."
"Oh, Angel Face! Well, anyhow, when he comes you must wear that little rose flowered house dress and put a wreath of green leaves in your hair."
"Oh, I won"t do anything of the sort, Babyette," exclaimed Angela.
"Yes, you will," replied her sister. "Now you just have to do what I tell you for once. That dress looks beautiful on you and the wreath will make it perfect."
"It isn"t the dress. I know that"s nice. It"s the wreath."
Marietta was incensed by this bit of pointless reserve.
"Oh, Angela," she exclaimed, "don"t be so silly. You"re older than I am, but I know more about men in a minute than you"ll ever know. Don"t you want him to like you? You"ll have to be more daring--goodness! Lots of girls would go a lot farther than that."
She caught her sister about the waist and looked into her eyes. "Now you"ve got to wear it," she added finally, and Angela understood that Marietta wanted her to entice Eugene by any means in her power to make him declare himself finally and set a definite date or take her back to New York with him.
There were other conversations in which a trip to the lake was suggested, games of tennis, with Angela wearing her white tennis suit and shoes, a country dance which might be got up--there were rumors of one to be given in the new barn of a farmer some seven miles away. Marietta was determined that Angela should appear youthful, gay, active, just the things which she knew instinctively would fascinate Eugene.
Finally Eugene came. He arrived at Blackwood at noon. Despite her objections Angela met him, dressed smartly and, as urged by Marietta, carrying herself with an air. She hoped to impress Eugene with a sense of independence, but when she saw him stepping down from the train in belted corduroy travelling suit with a grey English travelling cap, carrying a green leather bag of the latest design, her heart misgave her. He was so worldly now, so experienced. You could see by his manner that this country place meant little or nothing to him. He had tasted of the world at large.
Angela had stayed in her buggy at the end of the depot platform and she soon caught Eugene"s eye and waved to him. He came briskly forward.
"Why, sweet," he exclaimed, "here you are. How nice you look!" He jumped up beside her, surveying her critically and she could feel his examining glance. After the first pleasant impression he sensed the difference between his new world and hers and was a little depressed by it. She was a little older, no doubt of that. You cannot hope and yearn and worry for three years and not show it. And yet she was fine and tender and sympathetic and emotional. He felt all this. It hurt him a little for her sake and his too.
"Well, how have you been?" he asked. They were in the confines of the village and no demonstration could be made. Until the quiet of a country road could be reached all had to be formal.
"Oh, just the same, Eugene, longing to see you."
She looked into his eyes and he felt the impact of that emotional force which governed her when she was near him. There was something in the chemistry of her being which roused to blazing the ordinarily dormant forces of his sympathies. She tried to conceal her real feeling--to pretend gaiety and enthusiasm, but her eyes betrayed her. Something roused in him now at her look--a combined sense of emotion and desire.
"It"s so fine to be out in the country again," he said, pressing her hand, for he was letting her drive. "After the city, to see you and the green fields!" He looked about at the little one-storey cottages, each with a small plot of gra.s.s, a few trees, a neat confining fence. After New York and Chicago, a village like this was quaint.
"Do you love me just as much as ever?"
She nodded her head. They reached a strip of yellow road, he asking after her father, her mother, her brothers and sisters, and when he saw that they were un.o.bserved he slipped his arm about her and drew her head to him.
"Now we can," he said.
She felt the force of his desire but she missed that note of adoration which had seemed to characterize his first lovemaking. How true it was he had changed! He must have. The city had made her seem less significant. It hurt her to think that life should treat her so. But perhaps she could win him back--could hold him anyhow.
They drove over toward Okoonee, a little crossroads settlement, near a small lake of the same name, a place which was close to the Blue house, and which the Blue"s were wont to speak of as "home." On the way Eugene learned that her youngest brother David was a cadet at West Point now and doing splendidly. Samuel had become western freight agent of the Great Northern and was on the way to desirable promotion. Benjamin had completed his law studies and was practising in Racine. He was interested in politics and was going to run for the state legislature. Marietta was still the gay carefree girl she had always been, not at all inclined to choose yet among her many anxious suitors. Eugene thought of her letter to him--wondered if she would look her thoughts into his eyes when he saw her.
"Oh, Marietta," Angela replied when Eugene asked after her, "she"s just as dangerous as ever. She makes all the men make love to her."
Eugene smiled. Marietta was always a pleasing thought to him. He wished for the moment that it was Marietta instead of Angela that he was coming to see.
She was as shrewd as she was kind in this instance. Her appearance on meeting Eugene was purposely indifferent and her att.i.tude anything but coaxing and gay. At the same time she suffered a genuine pang of feeling, for Eugene appealed to her. If it were anybody but Angela, she thought, how she would dress and how quickly she would be coquetting with him. Then his love would be won by her and she felt that she could hold it. She had great confidence in her ability to keep any man, and Eugene was a man she would have delighted to hold. As it was she kept out of his way, took sly glances at him here and there, wondered if Angela would truly win him. She was so anxious for Angela"s sake. Never, never, she told herself, would she cross her sister"s path.
At the Blue homestead he was received as cordially as before. After an hour it quite brought back the feeling of three years before. These open fields, this old house and its lovely lawn, all served to awaken the most poignant sensations. One of Marietta"s beaux, over from Waukesha, appeared after Eugene had greeted Mrs. Blue and Marietta, and the latter persuaded him to play a game of tennis with Angela. She invited Eugene to make it a four with her, but not knowing how he refused.
Angela changed to her tennis suit and Eugene opened his eyes to her charms. She was very attractive on the court, quick, flushed, laughing. And when she laughed she had a charming way of showing her even, small, white teeth. She quite awakened a feeling of interest--she looked so dainty and frail. When he saw her afterward in the dark, quiet parlor, he gathered her to his heart with much of the old ardour. She felt the quick change of feeling. Marietta was right. Eugene loved gaiety and color. Although on the way home she had despaired this was much more promising.
Eugene rarely entered on anything half heartedly. If interested at all he was greatly interested. He could so yield himself to the glamour of a situation as to come finally to believe that he was something which he was not. Thus, now he was beginning to accept this situation as Angela and Marietta wished he should, and to see her in somewhat the old light. He overlooked things which in his New York studio, surrounded by the influences which there modified his judgment, he would have seen. Angela was not young enough for him. She was not liberal in her views. She was charming, no doubt of that, but he could not bring her to an understanding of his casual acceptance of life. She knew nothing of his real disposition and he did not tell her. He played the part of a seemingly single-minded Romeo, and as such he was from a woman"s point of view beautiful to contemplate. In his own mind he was coming to see that he was fickle but he still did not want to admit it to himself.
There was a night of stars after an evening of June perfection. At five old Jotham came in from the fields, as dignified and patriarchal as ever. He greeted Eugene with a hearty handshake, for he admired him. "I see some of your work now and then," he said, "in these monthly magazines. It"s fine. There"s a young minister down here near the lake that"s very anxious to meet you. He likes to get hold of anything you do, and I always send the books down as soon as Angela gets through with them."
He used the words books and magazines interchangeably, and spoke as though they were not much more important to him than the leaves of the trees, as indeed, they were not. To a mind used to contemplating the succession of crops and seasons, all life with its mult.i.tudinous interplay of shapes and forms seemed pa.s.sing shadows. Even men were like leaves that fall.
Eugene was drawn to old Jotham as a filing to a magnet. His was just the type of mind that appealed to him, and Angela gained by the radiated glory of her father. If he was so wonderful she must be something above the average of womanhood. Such a man could not help but produce exceptional children.
Left alone together it was hardly possible for Angela and Eugene not to renew the old relationship on the old basis. Having gone as far as he had the first time it was natural that he should wish to go as far again and further. After dinner, when she turned to him from her room, arrayed in a soft evening dress of clinging texture--somewhat low in the neck by request of Marietta, who had helped her to dress--Eugene was conscious of her emotional perturbation. He himself was distraught, for he did not know what he would do--how far he would dare to trust himself. He was always troubled when dealing with his physical pa.s.sion, for it was a raging lion at times. It seemed to overcome him quite as a drug might or a soporific fume. He would mentally resolve to control himself, but unless he instantly fled there was no hope, and he did not seem able to run away. He would linger and parley, and in a few moments it was master and he was following its behest blindly, desperately, to the point almost of exposure and destruction.
Tonight when Angela came back he was cogitating, wondering what it might mean. Should he? Would he marry her? Could he escape? They sat down to talk, but presently he drew her to him. It was the old story--moment after moment of increasing feeling. Presently she, from the excess of longing and waiting was lost to all sense of consideration. And he-- "I shall have to go away, Eugene," she pleaded, when he carried her recklessly into his room, "if anything happens. I cannot stay here."
"Don"t talk," he said. "You can come to me."
"You mean it, Eugene, surely?" she begged.
"As sure as I"m holding you here," he replied.
At midnight Angela lifted frightened, wondering, doubting eyes, feeling herself the most depraved creature. Two pictures were in her mind alternately and with pendulum-like reiteration. One was a composite of a marriage altar and a charming New York studio with friends coming in to see them much as he had often described to her. The other was of the still blue waters of Okoonee with herself lying there pale and still. Yes, she would die if he did not marry her now. Life would not be worth while. She would not force him. She would slip out some night when it was too late and all hope had been abandoned--when exposure was near--and the next day they would find her.
Little Marietta how she would cry. And old Jotham--she could see him, but he would never be really sure of the truth. And her mother. "Oh G.o.d in heaven," she thought, "how hard life is! How terrible it can be."