"That demands as much from me, if I play fair with you," he said slowly. "Suppose there was some sort of law that held me back?"
"I have not observed any vast restraint in you!"
"Not at first. Haven"t you gained any better opinion?"
She was one of those able to meet a question with silence. He was obliged to continue.
"Suppose I should tell you that, all the time I was talking to you about what I felt, there was a wall, a great wall, for ever between us?"
"In that case, I should regret G.o.d had made a man so forgetful of honor. I should be glad Heaven had left me untouched by anything such a man could say. Suppose that?--Why, suppose I had cared, and that I had found after all that there was no hope? There comes in conscience, Sir, there comes in honor."
"Then, in such case--"
"In such case any woman would hate a man. Stress may win some women, but deceit never did."
"I have not deceived you."
"Do you wish to do so now?"
"No. It"s just the contrary. Haven"t I said you must go? But since you must go, and since I must pay, I"m willing, if you wish, to bare my life to the very bone, to the heart before you, now--right now."
She pondered for a moment. "Of course, I knew there was something.
There, in that room--in that wardrobe--those were her garments--of another--another woman. Who?"
"Wait, now. Go slow, because I"m suffering. Listen. I"ll not hear a word about your own life--I want no secret of you. I"m content. But I"m willing now, I say, to tell you all about that--about those things.
"I didn"t do that at first, but how could I? There wasn"t any chance. Besides, when I saw you, the rest of the world, the rest of my life, it was all, all wiped out of my mind, as though some drug had done it. You came, you were so sweet, my lack was so horrible, that I took you into my soul, a drug, a balm, an influence, a wonderful thing.
"Oh, I"m awake now! But I reckon maybe that doesn"t mean that I"m getting out of my dream, but only into it, deeper yet. I was mad for you then. I could feel the blood sting in my veins, for you.
Life is life after all, and we"re made as we are. But later, now, beside that, on top of that, something else--do you think it"s--do you suppose I"m capable of it, selfish as I am? Do you reckon it"s love, just big, worthy, _decent_ love, better than anything in the world? Is that--do you reckon, dear girl, that that"s why I"m able now to say good-by? I loved you once so much I could not let you go. Now I love so much I can not let you stay! I reckon this is love. I"m not ashamed to tell it. I"m not afraid to justify it.
And I can"t help it."
It was any sort of time, a moment, an hour, before there was spoken speech between them after that. At last they both heard her voice.
"Now, you begin to pay. I am glad. I am glad."
"Then it is your revenge? Very well. You have it."
"No, no! You must not say that. Believe me, I want you to feel how--how much I admire--no, wait,--how much I admire any man who could show your courage. It"s not revenge, it"s not vanity--"
He waited, his soul in his eyes, hoping for more than this; but she fell silent again.
"Then it is the end," he said.
He held up his fingers, scarred to the bone.
"That"s where I bruised my hands when I clenched on the table, yonder. You wouldn"t think it, maybe, but I love pictures. I"ve spent a lot of time looking for them and at them. I remember one collection--many pictures of the martyrs, horrors in art, nightmares. Here was a man disemboweled--they wound his very bowels about a windla.s.s, before his eyes, and at each turn--I could see it written in the picture--they asked him, did he yield at last, did he agree, did he consent. . . . Then they wound again.
Here another man was on an iron chair, flames under him. Now and then they asked him. Should they put out the flames and hear him say he had foresworn his cause? Again, there was a man whom they had shot full of arrows, one by one, little by little, and they asked him, now and then, if he foreswore his faith. . . . But I knew he would not--I knew these had not. . . .
"That"s the way it is," he said slowly. "That"s what you"re seeing now. These scars on my fingers came cheap. I reckon they"ve got to run deeper, clean down into my heart. Yet you"re saying that now I begin to pay. Yes. When I pay, I"m going to _pay_. And I"m not going to take my martyrdom for immediate sake of any crown, either. There is none for me. I reckon I sinned too far against one of G.o.d"s angels. I reckon it"s maybe just lasting h.e.l.l for me, and not a martyrdom with an end to it some time. That"s how _I"ve_ got to pay.
"Now, do you want me to tell you all the rest?"
She would not answer, and he resumed.
"Do you want me to tell what you"ve maybe heard, about this house?
Do you want me to tell whose garments those were that you saw? Do you want my past? Do you want to see my bowels dragged out before your eyes? Do you want to turn the wheel with your own hands? Do you want me to pay, that way?"
She went to him swiftly, put a hand on his arm.
"No!" said she. "What I want you to believe is that it"s _life_ makes us pay, that it"s _G.o.d_ makes us pay.
"I want you to believe, too," she went on after a time, "that we need neither of us be cheap. I"m not going to ask you one thing, I"m not going to listen to one word. You must not speak. I must go. It"s just because I must go that I shall not allow you to speak."
"Is my debt to you paid, then?" His voice trembled.
"So far as it runs to me, it is paid."
"What remains?"
"Nothing but the debt of yourself to yourself. I"m going to look back to a strange chapter in my life--a life which has had some strange ones. I"m not going to be able to forget, of course, what you"ve said to me. A woman loves to be loved. When I go, I go; but I want to look back, now and then, and see you still paying, and getting richer with each act of courage, when you pay, to yourself, not me."
"Ah! fanatic. Ah! visionary. Ah! dreamer, dreamer. And you!"
"That is the rest of the debt. Let the wheel turn if need be.
Each of us has suffering. Mine own is for the faith, for the cause."
"For what faith? What cause do you mean?"
"The cause of the world," she answered vaguely. "The cause of humanity. Oh, the world"s so big, and we"re so very little. Life runs away so fast. So many suffer, in the world, so many want! Is it right for us, more fortunate, to take all, to eat in greed, to sleep in sloth, to be free from care, when there are thousands, all over the world, needing food, aid, sympathy, opportunity, the chance to grow?
"Why," she went on, "I put out little plants, and I love them, always, because they"re going to grow, they"re going to live. I love it--that thought of life, of growth. Well, can I make you understand, that was what I felt over yonder, in that revolution, in mid-Europe. I felt it was just like seeing little plants set out, to grow. Those poor people! Those poor people! They"re coming over here, to grow, here in America, in this great country out here, in this West. They"ll grow, like plants extending, like gra.s.s multiplying, going out, edging westward, all the time. Ah, thousands of them, millions yet to come, plants, little human plants, with the right to live born with them. I don"t so much mind about their creed. I don"t so much mind about race--their color, even. But to see them grow--why, I suppose G.o.d up in His Heaven looks down and smiles when He sees that. And we--we who are here for a little time--we who sometimes are given minds and means to fall in tune with G.o.d"s smile--why, when we grow little and selfish, instead of getting in tune with the wish of G.o.d--why, we fail. Then, indeed, we do not pay--we repudiate our debt to ourselves."
"You are shaming me," he said slowly. "But I see why they put you out of Washington."
"But they can not put G.o.d out of Heaven! They can not turn back the stars! They can not stop the rush of those westbound feet, the spread of the millions, millions of blades of gra.s.s edging out, on.
That is what will make you see this "higher law," some time. That is big politics, higher than what you call your traditions. That will shame little men. Many traditions are only egotism and selfishness. There is a compromise which will be final--not one done in a mutual cowardice. It"s one done in a mutual largeness and courage.
"Oh,"--she beat her hands together, as was sometimes her way--"America, this great West, this splendid country where the feet are hurrying on so fast, fast--and the steam now carries men faster, faster, so that it may be done--it may be done--without delay--why, all this America must one day give over war and selfishness--just as we two have tried to give over war and selfishness, right here, right now. Do you suppose this world was made just to hold selfishness and unhappiness? Do you think that"s all there ever was to the plan of life? Ah, no! There"s something in living beyond eating and drinking and sleeping and begetting. Faith--a great faith in something, some plan ahead, some _purpose_ under you--ah, _that"s_ living!"
"But they banished you for that?"
"Yes, that"s why they put me out of Washington, I suppose. I"ve been twice banished. That is why I came here to this country.
Maybe, Sir, that is why I came to you, here! Who shall say as to these things? If only I could feel your faith, your beliefs to be the same as mine, I"d go away happy, for then I"d know it had been a plan, somehow, somewhere--for us, maybe."
His throat worked strongly. There was some struggle in the man.
At last he spoke, and quietly. "I see what separates us now. It is the wall of our convictions. You are specifically an abolitionist, just as you are in general a revolutionist. I"m on the other side. That"s between us, then? An abstraction!"
"I don"t think so. There are _three_ walls between us. The first you put up when you first met me. The second is what you call your traditions, your belief in wasting human life. The third--it"s this thing of which you must not speak. Why should I ponder as to that last wall, when two others, insurmountable, lie between?"