"When I looked at you in the pulpit you seemed so far from me, I could scarcely bear it. As if I had no share in you, as if you had already gone to a place beyond, where I could not go, where I never could. Oh, you will take me with you, now,--you won"t leave me behind!"
To this cry every fibre of his soul responded. He had thought himself, in these minutes, to have known all feelings, all thrills, but now, as he gathered her to him again, he was to know still another, the most exquisite of all. That it was conferred upon him to give this woman protection, to shield and lift her, inspire her as she inspired him--this consciousness was the most exquisite of all, transcending all conception of the love of woman. And the very fulness of her was beyond him. A lifetime were insufficient to exhaust her....
"I wanted to come to you now, John. I want to share your failure, if it comes--all your failures. Because they will be victories--don"t you see?
I have never been able to achieve that kind of victory--real victory, by myself. I have always succ.u.mbed, taken the baser, the easier thing." Her cheek was wet. "I wasn"t strong enough, by myself, and I never knew the stronger one....
"See what my trust in you has been! I knew that you would not refuse me in spite of the fact that the world may misunderstand, may sneer at your taking me. I knew that you were big enough even for that, when you understood it, coming from me. I wanted to be with you, now, that we might fight it out together."
"What have I done to deserve so priceless a thing?" he asked.
She smiled at him again, her lip trembling.
"Oh, I"m not priceless, I"m only real, I"m only human--human and tired.
You are so strong, you can"t know how tired. Have you any idea why I came out here, this summer? It was because I was desperate--because I had almost decided to marry some one else."
She felt him start.
"I was afraid of it;" he said.
"Were you? Did you think, did you wonder a little about me?" There was a vibrant note of triumph to which he reacted. She drew away from him.
a little. "Perhaps, when you know how sordid my life has been, you won"t want me."
"Is--Is that your faith, Alison?" he demanded. "G.o.d forbid! You have come to a man who also has confessions to make."
"Oh, I am glad. I want to know all of you--all, do you understand? That will bring us even closer together. And it was one thing I felt about you in the beginning, that day in the garden, that you had had much to conquer--more than most men. It was a part of your force and of your knowledge of life. You were not a s.e.xless ascetic who preached a mere neutral goodness. Does that shock you?"
He smiled in turn.
"I went away from here, as I once told you, full of a high resolution not to trail the honour of my art--if I achieved art--in the dust. But I have not only trailed my art--I trailed myself. In New York I became contaminated,--the poison of the place, of the people with whom I came in contact, got into my blood. Little by little I yielded--I wanted so to succeed, to be able to confound those who had doubted and ridiculed me! I wasn"t content to wait to deny myself for the ideal. Success was in the air. That was the poison, and I only began to realize it after it was too late.
"Please don"t think I am asking pity--I feel that you must know. From the very first my success--which was really failure--began to come in the wrong way. As my father"s daughter I could not be obscure. I was sought out, I was what was called picturesque, I suppose. The women petted me, although some of them hated me, and I had a fascination for a certain kind of men--the wrong kind. I began going to dinners, house parties, to recognize, that advantages came that way.... It seemed quite natural. It was what many others of my profession tried to do, and they envied me my opportunities.
"I ought to say, in justice to myself, that I was not in the least cynical about it. I believed I was clinging to the ideal of art, and that all I wanted was a chance. And the people I went with had the same characteristics, only intensified, as those I had known here. Of course I was actually no better than the women who were striving frivolously to get away from themselves, and the men who were fighting to get money.
Only I didn"t know it.
"Well, my chance came at last. I had done several little things, when an elderly man who is tremendously rich, whose name you would recognize if I mentioned it, gave me an order. For weeks, nearly every day, he came to my studio for tea, to talk over the plans. I was really unsophisticated then--but I can see now--well, that the garden was a secondary consideration.... And the fact that I did it for him gave me a standing I should not otherwise have had.... Oh, it is sickening to look back upon, to think what an idiot I was in how little I saw....
"That garden launched me, and I began to have more work than I could do.
I was conscientious about it tried--tried to make every garden better than the last. But I was a young woman, unconventionally living alone, and by degrees the handicap of my s.e.x was brought home to me. I did not feel the pressure at first, and then--I am ashamed to say--it had in it an element of excitement, a sense of power. The poison was at work.
I was amused. I thought I could carry it through, that the world had advanced sufficiently for a woman to do anything if she only had the courage. And I believed I possessed a true broadness of view, and could impress it, so far as I was concerned, on others....
"As I look back upon it all, I believe my reputation for coldness saved me, yet it was that very reputation which increased the pressure, and sometimes I was fairly driven into a corner. It seemed to madden some men--and the disillusionments began to come. Of course it was my fault--I don"t pretend to say it wasn"t. There were many whom, instinctively, I was on my guard against, but some I thought really nice, whom I trusted, revealed a side I had not suspected. That was the terrible thing! And yet I held to my ideal, tattered as it was..."
Alison was silent a moment, still clinging to his hand, and when she spoke again it was with a tremor of agitation.
"It is hard, to tell you this, but I wish you to know. At last I met a man, comparatively young, who was making his own way in New York, achieving a reputation as a lawyer. Shall I tell you that I fell in love with him? He seemed to bring a new freshness into my life when I was beginning to feel the staleness of it. Not that I surrendered at once, but the reservations of which I was conscious at the first gradually disappeared--or rather I ignored them. He had charm, a magnificent self-confidence, but I think the liberality of the opinions he expressed, in regard to women, most appealed to me. I was weak on that side, and I have often wondered whether he knew it. I believed him incapable of a great refusal.
"He agreed, if I consented to marry him, that I should have my freedom--freedom to live in my own life and to carry on my profession.
Fortunately, the engagement was never announced, never even suspected.
One day he hinted that I should return to my father for a month or two before the wedding.... The manner in which he said it suddenly turned me cold. Oh," Alison exclaimed, "I was quite willing to go back, to pay my father a visit, as I had done nearly every year, but--how can I tell you?--he could not believe that I had definitely given up-my father"s money....
"I sat still and looked at him, I felt as if I were frozen, turned to stone. And after a long while, since I would not speak to him, he went out... Three months later he came back and said that I had misunderstood him, that he couldn"t live without me. I sent him away.... Only the other day he married Amy Grant, one of my friends....
"Well, after that, I was tired--so tired! Everything seemed to go out of life. It wasn"t that I loved him any longer,--all had been crushed. But the illusion was gone, and I saw myself as I was. And for the first time in my life I felt defenceless, helpless. I wanted refuge. Did you ever hear of Jennings Howe?"
"The architect?"
Alison nodded. "Of course you must have--he is so well known. He has been a widower for several years. He liked my work, saw its defects, and was always frank about them, and I designed a good many gardens in connection with his houses. He himself is above all things an artist, and he fell into the habit of coming to my studio and giving me friendly advice, in the nicest way. He seemed to understand that I was going through some sort of a crisis. He called it "too much society." And then, without any warning, he asked me to marry him.
"That is why I came out here--to think it over. I didn"t love him, and I told him so, but I respected him.
"He never compromised in his art, and I have known him over and over to refuse houses because certain conditions were stipulated. To marry him was an acknowledgment of defeat. I realized that. But I had come to the extremity where I wanted peace--peace and protection. I wanted to put myself irrevocably beyond the old life, which simply could not have gone on, and I saw myself in the advancing years becoming tawdry and worn, losing little by little what I had gained at a price.
"So I came here--to reflect, to see, as it were, if I could find something left in me to take hold of, to build upon, to begin over again, perhaps, by going back to the old a.s.sociations. I could think of no better place, and I knew that my father would, be going away after a few weeks, and that I should be lone, yet with an atmosphere back of me,--my old atmosphere. That was why I went to church the first Sunday, in order to feel more definitely that atmosphere, to summon up more completely the image of my mother. More and more, as the years have pa.s.sed, I have thought of her in moments of trouble. I have recovered her as I never had hoped to do in Mr. Bentley. Isn"t it strange," she exclaimed wonderingly, "that he should have come into both our lives, with such an influence, at this time?"
"And then I met you, talked to you that afternoon in the garden. Shall I make a complete confession? I wrote to Jennings Howe that very week that I could not marry him."
"You knew!" Hodder exclaimed: "You knew then?"
"Ah, I can"t tell what I knew--or when. I knew, after I had seen you, that I couldn"t marry him! Isn"t that enough?"
He drew in his breath deeply.
"I should be less than a man if I refused to take you, Alison. And--no matter what happens, I can and will find some honest work to support you. But oh, my dear, when I think of it, the n.o.bility and generosity of what you have done appalls me."
"No, no!" she protested, "you mustn"t say that! I needed you more than you need me. And haven"t we both discovered the world, and renounced it?
I can at least go so far as to say that, with all my heart. And isn"t marriage truer and higher when man and wife start with difficulties and problems to solve together? It is that thought that brings me the greatest joy, that I may be able to help you.... Didn"t you need me, just a little?"
"Now that I have you, I am unable to think of the emptiness which might have been. You came to me, like Beatrice, when I had lost my way in the darkness of the wood. And like Beatrice, you showed me the path, and h.e.l.l and heaven."
"Oh, you would have found the path without me. I cannot claim that.
I saw from the first that you were destined to find it. And, unlike Beatrice, I too was lost, and it was you who lifted me up. You mustn"t idealize me."... She stood up. "Come!" she said. He too stood, gazing at her, and she lifted her hands to his shoulders.... They moved out from under the tree and walked for a while in silence across the dew-drenched gra.s.s, towards Park Street. The moon, which had ridden over a great s.p.a.ce in the sky, hung red above the blackness of the forest to the west.
"Do you remember when we were here together, the day I met Mr. Bentley?
And you never would have spoken!"
"How could I, Alison?" he asked.
"No, you couldn"t. And yet--you would have let me go!"
He put his arm in hers, and drew her towards him.
"I must talk to your father," he said, "some day--soon. I ought to tell him--of our intentions. We cannot go on like this."
"No," she agreed, "I realize it. And I cannot stay, much longer, in Park Street. I must go back to New York, until you send for me, dear. And there are things I must do. Do you know, even though I antagonize him so--my father, I mean--even though he suspects and bitterly resents any interest in you, my affection for you, and that I have lingered because of you, I believe, in his way, he has liked to have me here."
"I can understand it," Hodder said.