At the end of the garden, which was shaded by the high wall, Margaret sat, an uncut book on her knees, her eyes resting on the green marsh to be seen through the open door. Near by Ned in his little invalid chair was picking the mortar from the brick wall with a nail he had been able to reach. The two were often alone like this for hours, silent.
"Mother," the child said at last, as Margaret took up the book.
"What is it, Ned?"
"Must I sit like this always,--forever and ever?"
"I hope not, dear. You must remember Dr. Renault said it would take patience."
"But I have been patient."
"Yes, I know, dear!"
"If I didn"t get any better, should I have to sit like this always?" At last the question which she feared had come, the child"s first doubt. It had been uncertain, the recovery of the lost power; at times it seemed as if there were no progress. The mother answered in her slow, deep voice:--
"Yes, dear; you would have to be patient always. But we are going to hope!"
"Mother," the child persisted, "why does it have to be so?"
And the mother answered steadily:--
"I don"t know, my boy. n.o.body knows why."
Ned resumed his scratching at the wall, pondering this mystery of an inexplicable world. Presently there was a sound of oars beyond the wall, and the child exclaimed:--
"There"s Big Bob! He said he"d take me for a row."
Falkner carried off the Little Man for his promised boat ride, leaving Margaret to cut the leaves of her book and to think. It was the week before, the end of August, that Falkner had put into Bedmouth in his small sloop. He was staying with his sister at Lancaster, only a short walk on the other side of the Point. After a few days more at the most he would have to turn back southwards, and then? ... She threw down her book and paced slowly back and forth along the garden walk. As the sun sank low, her mother-in-law appeared, a frail little lady, who looked gently into Margaret"s face.
"I am afraid you feel the heat, Margaret. It has been a very hot day."
"Is it hot?" Margaret asked vaguely, shading her eyes with her hand to look out over the marsh.
There was the sound of oars and a child"s laugh, loud and careless, just beyond the wall. "Look out!" Ned cried.
"There, you"ve wet your feet!" The two women smiled. That boyish laugh was rare these days.
When the grandmother wheeled Ned into the house for his supper, Margaret and Falkner strolled out of the garden beside the marsh to a rocky knoll that jutted into the sea. They seated themselves under a scrawny pine whose roots were bathed by the incoming tide, and watched the twilight stillness steal across the marshes and the sea. There was no air and yet the ships out by Goose Island pa.s.sed across the horizon, sails full set, as though moved by an unseen hand.
They knew each other so well! And yet in silent times like these their intimacy seemed always to go deeper, to reveal without the aid of speech new levels of understanding.
"I had a letter this morning from Marvin," Falkner remarked at last.
Margaret scooped up a handful of pebbles and let them fall through her thin fingers, waiting for the expected words.
"It is settled. We sail from New York the tenth."
"The tenth?"
"Yes, ... so I must go back soon and get ready."
The decision about Panama had been in the balance when Falkner left New York, she knew. Another opportunity of work in the States had come meanwhile; the decision had not been easy to make. When Falkner had written his wife, Bessie had replied: "You must do what seems best to you, as you have always done in the past.... Of course I cannot take the children to Panama." And when Falkner had written of the other work nearer home, Bessie said: "I don"t care to make another move and settle in a new place.... We seem to get on better like this. Go to Panama if you want to, and we will see when you get back." So he had debated the matter with himself all the way up the coast....
"When must you leave?"
"To-morrow," he answered slowly, and again they were silent.
It was as she wished, as she had urged. The new work would reopen the man"s ambition, and that _must_ be. Where a man"s work was concerned, nothing--nothing surely of any woman--should intervene. That was her feeling. No woman"s pining or longing to fetter the man: clear the decks for action!
"To-morrow!" she murmured. She was smiling bravely, a smile that belied the tenseness within. Falkner picked the long spines from a pine branch, and arranged them methodically one by one in a row. They were not all alike, differing in minute characteristics of size and length and color. Nature at her wholesale task of turning out these millions of needles varied the product infinitely. And so with human beings!
They two were at peace together, their inner hunger appeased, with a sustaining content in life neither had ever known before. When they were together in this intimate silence, their spirits were freed from all bondage, free to rise, to leap upwards out of the encircling abysm of things. And this state of perfect meeting--spiritual equilibrium--must end....
"To-morrow?" she repeated, raising her eyes and gazing far out to the sunlit sea. And her heart was saying, "Tomorrow, and to-morrow, and the days thereafter,--and all empty of this!"
"It is best so," he said. "It could not go on like this!"
"No! We are human, after all!" and smiling wanly she rose to return to the house. When they reached his boat, Falkner took her hand,--a hand with finely tapering fingers, broad in the palm and oval,--a woman"s hand, firm to hold, gentle to caress. The fingers tightened about his slowly. He looked into the blue eyes; they were dry and shining. And in those shining eyes he read the same unspoken words of revolt that rose within his heart,--"Why thus too late! too late! Why has life declared itself in all its meaning--too late? Why were we caught by the mistakes of half knowledge, and then receive the revelation?" The futile questions of human hearts.
"You will come to-night--after dinner?" Margaret asked. "Bring the boat. We will go to Lawlor"s Cove. I want to get away--from everything!"
As she mounted the garden steps to the house, she heard the whirr of a motor in the street. It stopped in front of the house, and as Margaret waited she heard Mrs. Hillyer"s thin voice: "I am so sorry! Please tell Mrs. Pole that I came over from Lancaster to get her for dinner." Presently the motor whirled away in the direction of the great hotel, a cloud of dust following in its wake. Margaret stood for a moment watching the car disappear into the distance, thankful that she had escaped Mrs. Hillyer and her new motor just now.... The sun, sinking into the Bedmouth elms across the green marshes, fell full and golden upon her face. It was still and hot and brooding, this sunset hour, like the silent reaches of her heart. But slowly a smile broke from her lips, and she raised her arms to the light.
It had touched her, the Sun G.o.d! It had burned her with its heat, its life.
She knew! And she was glad. Nothing could take its fire wholly from her.
"To-night!" she murmured to herself.
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII
She had written him in that fierce honesty which spoke in every penstroke on the paper:--
... "Yes, I love you! I am proud when I say it over to myself, when I see it written here. I want you to know just how it is with me and my husband.... So our marriage was a mistake, one of the millions women make out of the girlish guess. Ignorance, blind ignorance of self and life! And my husband knows how it is between us. He knows that when the man comes to me whom I can love, I shall love him.... The man has come.... When it is time, I shall go to him and tell him honestly what has happened. I hate the little, lying women,--those who are afraid. I am not afraid! But these last hours I will have my heart"s joy to myself,--we will draw a circle about ourselves."...
"As I kiss you, I love you with that spirit you have given me," she said to Falkner. "That is right, and this is right. You have given me life, and thus I give it back to you."...
When they were alone beside the sea this last evening, Margaret said: "Dearest, you must know as I know, that nothing which we have had together is sin. I would not yield even to you where I felt the right. To my father the Bishop, this would be Sin. To that dear old lady over there in Bedmouth, who suffered all her life from a bullying husband and from a selfish son,--and who is now too broken to think for herself,--it would be Sin, anything not suffering would be Sin! But I know!" She raised her head proudly from his arms. "I know within me that this is the rightest thing in all my life. When it came, I was sure that I should take it, and that it would save me from worse than death.... It came ... and we were strong enough to take it, thank G.o.d!"
On the other side of the shingle rampart, which rose sheer behind them, the slow swells of the sea fell at distant intervals with solemn resonance, the only sound that broke the stillness of the night. This surge rising and falling on the land from out the great body of the sea was like a deep voice in the woman"s soul, echoing her instinct of a reason beyond reasons that compelled.
But the man, holding her close to him, his lips upon her lips, did not heed her hot words of justification. His was the hunger which took what satisfied it without debate.
"It makes little difference, the right and the wrong, after to-night," he replied grimly, "in all the days to come.... We have lived and we have loved, that is enough."
"No, no,--we are not weak, blind fools!" she spoke on swiftly. "I will not have it so! I will not have you leave me to-night with the thought that some day you will feel that of me. You must understand--you must always remember through all the years of life--that I--the woman you love--am sinless, am pure.... I can go with your kisses upon my lips to my children, to little Ned, and hold them tight, and know that I am pure in the sight of G.o.d! ...