"One cannot fail, Miss Walton."
"Why not?"
"Because the best love is in one"s own heart and depends only on one"s self."
"And if one has loved," you responded hurriedly, with a mistiness in your eyes which proved how deeply you were feeling, "if one gives everything--only to find the object base--if"--You stopped speaking and looked away.
"One still has the love, Miss Walton; for it is that which is given, and not that which is received, that is worth the having." I faltered in my emotion, and then, almost unconscious of what I said, went on: "For many years I have loved,--a love from the first impossible and hopeless.
Yet it is the one happiness of my present life, and rather than"--I recovered control of myself, and became silent as I heard Mrs. Blodgett coming along the veranda.
You leaned forward, saying softly, "Thank you for the confidence." Then, as Mrs. Blodgett joined us, you said, "I envy you your happiness, Dr.
Hartzmann."
"What happiness is that?" asked Mrs. Blodgett, glancing from one to the other curiously.
"Dr. Hartzmann," you explained calmly, without a trace of the emotion that had moved you a moment before, "has been proving to me that all happiness is subjective, and as I have never been able to rise to such a height I am very envious of him."
"I don"t know what you mean," remarked Mrs. Blodgett. "But if the doctor wants to know what real happiness is, he had better marry some nice girl and have his own home instead of living in a boarding-house."
You laughed, and added, "Now our happiness becomes objective. Perhaps it is the best, after all, Dr. Hartzmann."
"Do _you_ think so, Miss Walton?" I asked, unable to prevent an emphasis in the question.
You rose, saying, "I must dress for dinner." But in the window you turned, and answered, "I have always thought it was, but there are evident exceptions, Dr. Hartzmann, and after what you have told me I think you are one of them."
"And not yourself?" I could not help asking.
You held up your hand warningly. "When the nature of dolls is too deeply questioned into, they are found to contain only sawdust."
"And we often open the oyster, to find sometimes a pearl."
"The result of a morbid condition," you laughed back.
"Better disease and a pearl than health without it."
"But suppose one incapable of the ailment? Should one be blamed if no pearl forms?"
"An Eastern poet said:--
Diving and finding no pearl in the sea, Blame not the ocean,--the fault is in thee.
Have you ever tried to find a pearl, Miss Walton?"
You hesitated a moment. "Like the Englishman"s view of the conundrum,"
you finally parried archly, "that would be a good joke if there only wasn"t something to "guess" in it."
"Do you know what Maizie is talking about?" demanded Mrs. Blodgett discontentedly.
"Better than Miss Walton does herself, I think," I averred.
You had started to go, but again you turned, and asked with interest, "What _do_ I mean?"
"That you believe what you think you don"t."
You stood looking at me for a moment. "We are becoming friends, Dr.
Hartzmann," you affirmed, and pa.s.sed through the window.
Good-night, dear friend.
XIX
_March 10._ For the remainder of my visit, it seemed as if your prophecy of friendship were to be fulfilled. From the moment of my confidence to you, all the reserves that had been raised by my slighting of your invitations disappeared, perhaps because the secret I had shared with you served to make my past conduct less unreasonable; still more, I believe, because of the faith in you it evidenced in me. Certain I am that in the following week I felt able to be my true self when with you, for the first time since we were boy and girl together. The difference was so marked that you commented on the change.
"Do you remember," you asked me, "our conversation in Mr. Whitely"s study, when I spoke of how little people really knew one another? Here we have been meeting for over three years, and yet I find that I haven"t in the least known you."
It is a pleasure to me to recall that whole conversation, for it was by far the most intimate that we ever had,--so personal that I think I should but have had to question to learn what I long to know. In response to my slight a.s.sistance, to the sympathy I had shown, you opened for the moment your heart; willing, apparently, that I should fathom your true nature.
We had gone to dinner at the Grangers" merely to please Mrs. Blodgett, for we mutually agreed that in the country formal dinners were a weariness of the flesh; and I presume that with you, as with me, this general objection of ours was greatly strengthened when we found Mrs.
Polhemus among the guests. It is always painful to me to be near her, and her dislike of you is obvious enough to make me sure that her presence is equally disagreeable to you. It is a strange warp and woof life weaves, that I owe to one for whom we both feel such repulsion the most sympathetic, the tenderest conversation I have ever had with you.
I was talking with Miss Granger, and thus did not hear the beginning of my mother"s girds at you; but Agnes, who sat on my left, told me later that, as usual, Mrs. Polhemus set out to bait you by remarks superficially inoffensive, but covertly planned to embarra.s.s or sting.
The first thing which attracted my notice was her voice distinctly raised, as if she wished the whole table to listen, and in fact loud enough to make Miss Granger stop in the middle of a sentence and draw our attention to the speaker.
"--sound very well," Mrs. Polhemus was saying, "and are to be expected from any one who strives to be thought romantically sentimental."
"I did not know," you replied in a low voice, "that a "romantically sentimental" nature was needed to produce belief in honesty."
"It is easy enough to talk the high morals of honesty," retorted your a.s.sailant, "and I suppose, Miss Walton, that for you it is not difficult to live up to your conversational ideals. But we unfortunate earthly creatures, who cannot achieve so rarefied a life, dare not make a parade of our ethical natures. The saintly woman is an enormously difficult role to play since miracles went out of style."
"Oh, leave us an occasional ideal, Mrs. Polhemus," laughed a guest. "I for one wish that fairy rings and genii were still the vogue."
"But we have some kinds of miracles," a.s.serted Mrs. Granger. "Remember the distich,--
"G.o.d still works wonders now and then: Behold! two lawyers, honest men!""
"With all due deference to Miss Walton"s championing of absolute perfection," continued my mother, with a cleverly detached manner, to veil what lay back of the sneer, "I find it much easier to accept the miracle of an honest lawyer than that of an absolutely uncattish woman,"--a speech which, like most of those of Mrs. Polhemus, drew a laugh from the men.
"That"s because you don"t know Miss Walton!" exclaimed Agnes warmly, evidently fretted by such conduct towards you.
"On the contrary," answered my mother, speaking coolly and evenly, "I presume I have known Miss Walton longer and better than any one else in this room; and I remember when her views of honesty were such that her ideal was personified by a pair of embezzlers."
You had been meeting her gaze across the table as she spoke, but now you dropped your lids, hiding your eyes behind their long lashes; and nothing but the color receding from your cheeks, leaving them as white as your throat and brow, told of what you felt.
"Oh, say something," appealed Agnes to me in a whisper. "Anything to divert the"--