§ iii
Andrée went back into the room where the little man was sitting, under the Christmas tree. She fancied he looked a little disconsolate and forlorn, and her heart smote her.
“Al!” she said. “Are you happy?”
“Not so very!” he answered, candidly.
“But why? Haven’t we had a lovely, happy time?”
“I feel—a million miles away from you,” he said. “I wonder if I’ll ever get any nearer to you.”
She sat down beside him and drew his head down on her shoulder.
“I wish you wouldn’t!” she cried. “It—chills me so! I want us to be so very near to each other. I must have it so! I can’t bear it if you don’t understand everything about me. Why did you say that?”
“To-night,” he said, “with this Christmas tree and all—I don’t know—but you—it seemed to me that you were like a child—just playing at life.... And I can’t play! I never did, in my life. I can tell you, that chilled me! You seem so very young and so pretty, and so—heedless—that it makes me feel so very old and worn—”
“You idiot!” she cried, laughing. “It’s just the other way! You’re a little boy; you’re always talking and thinking about such new things, things that come and go. It makes me feel such a wise woman, a sort of Sibyl. I think that’s why I love you—because you’re so awfully earnest and serious about things that I know don’t matter.”
“What things don’t matter? Human wretchedness and cruelty and pain?”
“You don’t even know what makes human wretchedness. It isn’t poverty. Why, Al, if you could make everyone perfectly comfortable this very night, if you could take away all hunger and want and injustice, it wouldn’t give one little bit of happiness to any of the people who had lost someone they loved. It wouldn’t help a woman who had lost her man, or a mother who’d lost a baby. That’s what you don’t know. Nothing can ever, ever be done to spare people their anguish.... I always know—it comes across me in my very happiest moments—that the day is coming nearer and nearer when we’ll have to part—one of us to leave the other forever.... What do you think you can do for that?”
“That’s morbid,” he said, curtly. “No healthy person thinks about death like that.”
But he caught her close to his heart and looked down at her bent head with troubled eyes, stroked her soft hair with an uncertain hand.
“I’ve never heard you talk like this,” he said. “I don’t like it, darling! Don’t you believe that we’ll meet again—afterward?”
“It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t do any good, even if we knew. People who do believe that suffer just as much. More, I think, because they haven’t as much fortitude as the ones who don’t believe. Look at you. You think all these miserable people are going to be made happy somewhere after they’re dead, but it doesn’t seem to give you much comfort.”
“I don’t look at it that way, Andrée. The world seems to me like a—sort of school, and I want to see everyone get a chance to learn all there is to know, in decency and—dignity, before it’s over.”
“Maybe your way isn’t a good way. Maybe they learn more as things are.”
“Injustice never teaches anyone anything but resentment and malice.”
“I’m going to play!” she said, suddenly. “Oh, Al! Al! Why didn’t you let me be happy? It may be only for such a little while!”
“I didn’t mean to make you unhappy! I wouldn’t for anything in the world. I’m sorry! Don’t play! That damned music sets you all on edge. Stay here and talk to me!”
“I’m tired of talking.... Al, you take up too much time! I’ll never amount to anything with you around. You’re always bursting into my nice, quiet little art world, and you’re so earnest and busy and disturbing!”
“I know it!” he said, contritely. “It’s one of my limitations, old girl. I don’t appreciate art in any shape. I don’t take it seriously. But I do take you and your development seriously. Very seriously. You go ahead with your own work, and I’ll try to shut up about mine. We’ll let each other alone, and just love each other.”
“Love’s a terrible disturbance!”
“It shouldn’t be. It ought to be peace and completion. It’s a help to me. Why, do you know, I have ten years’ work planned out—three books. I have the data ready, but I haven’t begun them yet. I’ve never worked so well in my life. And it’s simply because I’ve found you, after looking for you all my life.”
She smiled at him.
“But you see, I never expected you!” she said. “I never looked for you! You’re a surprise—and a nuisance!”
She seized his hair in both hands and pulling down his head, kissed him roughly.
“And yet I suppose you’re a sort of help,” she said. “Because I’m determined to astonish you. I’m going to spoil all your nice peace and satisfaction, and trouble you and worry you and make you think about me and nothing else!”
“Perhaps I’m still a little dazzled and stupid by having got you,” he said. “But don’t think for a moment I take you for granted. You’re the greatest wonder in the world to me. You’re not the companion woman I thought I wanted. You’re not a pal. You’ll never be a friend. You’re strange to me, and you always will be. When I look at you, I see some sense in poetry. I know what those fellows mean with that woman-worship I used to hate so.”
“I am a friend to you!”
“Oh, no, you’re not! You don’t care a rap about my work and my plans. I don’t exactly want you to. You haven’t anything to do with everyday life. You’re—you’re my love.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to be awfully nice,” she said, “not to spoil all that.”
“No. It doesn’t matter what you do. You couldn’t change what I love so in you. It’s eternal.”
“Till death do us part!” she said, with a sombre little smile.