"That is not right, Belle; you know he is not that kind of animal."
"If a man cares for a woman, he hasn"t such G.o.dlike control! ... No, John wants to preserve appearances, to have things around him smooth,--he"s too cold to care!"
"That"s ungenerous."
"Haven"t I lived with him years enough to know what is in his heart? He hates scandal. That"s his nature,--he doesn"t want unpleasant words, a fuss. There won"t be any, either.... But I"m not the calculating kind, Vick. If I do it, I do it for the whole world to know and to see. I"m not Conny,--no sneaking compromises; I"ll do it as you did it,--for the whole world to see and know."
"But you"ll not do it!"
"You think I haven"t the courage? You don"t know me, Vick. I am not a girl any longer. I am thirty-two, and I know life _now_, my life at any rate....
It was all wrong between John and me from the beginning,--yes, from the beginning!"
"What makes you say that! You don"t really believe it in your heart. You loved John when you married him. You were happy with him afterwards."
"I don"t believe that any girl, no matter what experience she has had, can really love a man before she is married to him. I was sentimental, romantic, and I thought my liking for a man was love. I wanted to love,--all girls do. But I didn"t know enough to love. It is all blind, blind! I might have had that feeling about other men, the feeling I had for John before.... Then comes marriage, and it"s luck, all luck, whether love comes, whether it is right--the thing for you--the only one. Sometimes it is,--often enough for those who don"t ask much, perhaps. But it was _wrong_ for John and me. I knew it from the first days,--those when we tried to think we were happiest. I have never confessed this to a human being,--never to John. But it was so, Vick! I didn"t know then what was the matter--why it was wrong. But a woman suspects then.... Those first days I was wretched,--I wanted to cry out to him: "Can"t you see it is wrong? You and I must part; our way is not the same!" But he seemed content. And there was father and mother and everything to hold us to the mistake. And of course I felt that it might come in time, that somehow it was my fault. I even thought that love as I wanted it was impossible, could never exist for a woman.... So the child came, and I went through the motions. And the gap grew between us each year as I came to be a woman. I saw the gap, but I thought it was always so, almost always, between husbands and wives, and I went on going through the motions.... That was why I was ill,--yes, the real reason, because we were not fitted to be married. Because I tried to do something against nature,--tried to live married to a man who wasn"t really my husband!"
Her voice sank exhausted. Never before even to herself had she said it all,--summed up that within her which must justify her revolt. Vickers felt the hot truth to her of her words; but granted the truth, was it enough?
Before he could speak she went on wearily, as if compelled:--
"But it might have gone on so until the end, until I died. Perhaps I could have got used to it, living like that, and fussed around like other women over amus.e.m.e.nts and charities and houses,--all the sawdust stuffing of life--and become a useless old woman, and not cared, not known."
She drew a deep breath.
"But you see--I know _now_--what the other is! I have known since"--her voice sank to a whisper--"that afternoon when I kissed him for the first time." She shuddered. "I am not a stick, Vick! I--am a woman! ... No, don"t say it!" She clasped his arm tightly. "You don"t like Tom. You can"t understand. He may not be what I feel he is--he may be less of a man for men than John. But I think it makes little difference to a woman so long as she loves--what the man is to others. To her he is _all_ men!"
With this cry her voice softened, and now she spoke calmly. "And you see I can give him something! I can give HIM love and joy. And more--I could make it possible for him to do what he wants to do with his life. I would go with him to some beautiful spot, where he could be all that he has it in him to be, and I could watch and love. Oh, we should be enough, he and I!"
"Dear, that you can never tell! ... It was not enough for us--for her. You can"t tell when you are like this, ready to give all, whether it"s what the other most needs or really wants."
In spite of Isabelle"s doubting smile, Vickers hurried on,--willing now to show his scar.
"I have never told you how it was over there all these years. I could not speak of it.... I thought _we_ should be enough, as you say. We had our love and our music.... But we weren"t enough, almost from the start. She was unhappy. She really wanted those things we had given up, which she might have had if it had been otherwise--I mean if she had been my wife. I was too much of a fool to see that at once. I didn"t want divorce and marriage--there were difficulties in the way, too. We had thrown over the world, defied it. I didn"t care to sneak back into the fold.... Our love turned bad. All the sentiment and lofty feeling somehow went out of it. We became two animals, tied together first by our pa.s.sion, and afterwards by--the situation. I can"t tell you all. It was killing.... It did kill the best in me."
"It was _her_ fault. The woman makes the kind of love always."
"No, she might have been different, another way! But I tell you the facts.
She became dissatisfied, restless. She was unfaithful to me. I knew it, and I shielded her--because in part I had made her what she was. But it was awful. And at the end she went away with that other man. He will leave her.
Then she"ll take another.... Love turns sour, I tell you--love taken that way. Life becomes just curdled milk. And it eats you like poison. Look at me,--the marrow of a man is all gone!"
"Dear Vick, it was all _her_ fault. Any decent woman would have made you happy,--you would have worked, written great music,--lived a large life."
His story did not touch her except with pity for him. To her thinking each case was distinct, and her lips curved unconsciously into a smile, as if she were picturing how different it would be with _them_....
The fog had broken, and was rising from the meadows below, revealing the trees and the sun. The birds had begun to sing in the beeches. It was fresh and cool and moist before the warmth of the coming day. Isabelle drew deep breaths and loosened her scarf.
Vickers sat silent, miserable. As he had said to Alice, the wreck of his life, where he had got knowledge so dearly, availed nothing when most he would have it count for another.
"No, Vick! Whatever happens it will be our own fate, n.o.body"s else--and I want it!"
There was cool deliberation in her tone as if the resolve had been made already.
"Not John"s fate, too?"
"He"s not the kind to let a thing like this upset him long. While the railroad runs and the housekeeper stays--"
"And Molly"s fate?"
"Of course I have thought about Marian. There are ways. It is often done.
She would be with me until she went to school, which won"t be long, now."
"But just think what it would mean to her if her mother left her father."
"Oh, not so much, perhaps! I have been a good mother.... And why should I kill the twenty, thirty, maybe forty years left of my life for a child"s sentiment for her mother? Very likely by the time she grows up, people will think differently about marriage."
She talked rapidly, as if eager to round all the corners.
"She may even decide to do the same thing some day."
"And you would want her to?"
"Yes! Rather than have the kind of marriage I have had."
"Isabelle!"
"You are an old sentimental dreamer, Vick. You don"t understand modern life. And you don"t know women--they"re lots more like men, too, than you think. They write such fool things about women. There are so many silly ideas about them that they don"t dare to be themselves half the time, except a few like Margaret. She is honest with herself. Of course she loves Rob Falkner. He"s in Panama now, but when he gets back I have no doubt Margaret will go and live with him. And she"s got three children!"
"Isabelle, you aren"t Margaret Pole or Cornelia Woodyard or any other woman but yourself. There are some things _you_ can"t do. I know you. There"s the same twist in us both. You simply can"t do this! You think you can, and you talk like this to me to make yourself think that you can.... But when it comes to the point, when you pack your bag, you know you will just unpack it again--and darn the stockings!"
"No, no!" Isabelle laughed in spite of herself; "I can"t--I won"t.... Why do I sniffle so like this? It"s your fault, Vick; you always stir the pathetic note in me, you old fraud!"
She was crying now in long sobs, the tears falling to his hand.
"I know you because we are built the same foolish, idiotic way. There are many women who can play that game, who can live one way for ten or a dozen years, and then leave all that they have been--without ever looking back.
But you are not one of them. I am afraid you and I are sentimentalists.
It"s a bad thing to be, Belle, but we can"t help ourselves. We want the freedom of our feelings, but we want to keep a halo about them. You talked of cutting down these beeches. But you would never let one be touched, not one."
"I"ll have "em all cut down to-morrow," Isabelle murmured through her tears.
"Then you"ll cry over them! No, Belle, it"s no use going dead against your nature--the way you were made to run. You may like to soar, but you were meant to walk."
"You think there is nothing to me,--that I haven"t a soul!"
"I know the soul."
Isabella flung her arms about her brother and clung there, breathing hard.
The long night had worn her out with its incessant alternation of doubt and resolve, endlessly weaving through her brain.
"Better to suffer on in this cloudy world than to make others suffer," he murmured.