VIII
When she had left the room, he put back into its place the volume he was reading: its power over him was gone. All the voices of all his books, speaking to him from lands and ages, grew simultaneously hushed. He crossed the library to a front window opening upon the narrow rocky street and sat with his elbow on the window-sill, the large fingers of one large hand unconsciously searching his brow—that habit of men of thoughtful years, the smoothing out of the inner problems.
The home of Professor Hardage was not in one of the best parts of the town. There was no wealth here, no society as it impressively calls itself; there were merely well-to-do human beings of ordinary intelligence and of kindly and unkindly natures. The houses, constructed of frame or of brick, were crowded wall against wall along the sidewalk; in the rear were little gardens of flowers and of vegetables. The street itself was well shaded; and one forest tree, the roots of which bulged up through the mossy bricks of the pavement, hung its boughs before his windows. Throughout life he had found so many companions in the world outside of mere people, and this tree was one. From the month of leaves to the month of no leaves—the period of long hot vacations—when his eyes were tired and his brain and heart a little tired also, many a time it refreshed him by all that it was and all that it stood for—this green tent of the woods arching itself before his treasured shelves. In it for him were thoughts of cool solitudes and of far-away greenness; with tormenting visions also of old lands, the crystal-aired, purpling mountains of which, and valleys full of fable, he was used to trace out upon the map, but knew that he should never see or press with responsive feet.
For travel was impossible to him. Part of his small salary went to the family of a brother; part disappeared each year in the buying of books—at once his need and his passion; there were the expenses of living; and Miss Anna always exacted appropriations.
"I know we have not much, but then my little boys and girls have nothing; and the poor must help the poorer."
"Very well," he would reply, "but some day you will be a beggar yourself, Anna."
"Oh, well then, if I am, I do not doubt that I shall be a thrifty old mendicant. And I'll beg for you! So don't you be uneasy; and give me what I want."
She always looked like a middle-aged Madonna in the garb of a housekeeper. Indeed, he was wont to call her the Madonna of the Dishes; but at these times, and in truth for all deeper ways, he thought of her as the Madonna of the Motherless. Nevertheless he was resolute that out of this many-portioned salary something must yet be saved.
"The time will come," he threatened, "when some younger man will want my professorship—and will deserve it. I shall either be put out or I shall go out; and then—decrepitude, uselessness, penury, unless something has been hoarded. So, Anna, out of the frail uncertain little basketful of the apples of life which the college authorities present to me once a year, we must save a few for what may prove a long hard winter."
Professor Hardage was a man somewhat past fifty, of ordinary stature and heavy figure, topped with an immense head. His was not what we call rather vaguely the American face. In Germany had he been seen issuing from the lecture rooms of a university, he would have been thought at home and his general status had been assumed: there being that about him which bespoke the scholar, one of those quiet self-effacing minds that have long since passed with entire humility into the service of vast themes. In social life the character of a noble master will in time stamp itself upon the look and manners of a domestic; and in time the student acquires the lofty hall-mark of what he serves.
It was this perhaps that immediately distinguished him and set him apart in every company. The appreciative observer said at once: "Here is a man who may not himself be great; but he is at least great enough to understand greatness; he is used to greatness."
As so often is the case with the strong American, he was self-made—that glory of our boasting. But we sometimes forget that an early life of hardship, while it may bring out what is best in a man, so often wastes up his strength and burns his ambition to ashes in the fierce fight against odds too great. So that the powers which should have carried him far carry him only a little distance or leave him standing exhausted where he began.
When Alfred Hardage was eighteen, he had turned his eyes toward a professorship in one of the great universities of his country; before he was thirty he had won a professorship in the small but respectable college of his native town; and now, when past fifty, he had never won anything more. For him ambition was like the deserted martin box in the corner of his yard: returning summers brought no more birds. Had his abilities been even more extraordinary, the result could not have been far otherwise. He had been compelled to forego for himself as a student the highest university training, and afterward to win such position as the world accorded him without the prestige of study abroad.
It became his duty in his place to teach the Greek language and its literature; sometimes were added classes in Latin. This was the easier problem. The more difficult problem grew out of the demand, that he should live intimately in a world of much littleness and not himself become little; feel interested in trivial minds at street corners, yet remain companion and critic of some of the greatest intellects of human kind; contend with occasional malice and jealousy in the college faculty, yet hold himself above these carrion passions; retain his intellectual manhood, yet have his courses of study narrowed and made superficial for him; be free yet submit to be patronized by some of his fellow-citizens, because they did him the honor to employ him for so much as a year as sage and moral exampler to their sons.
Usually one of two fates overtakes the obscure professional scholar in this country: either he shrinks to the dimensions of a true villager and deserts the vastness of his library; or he repudiates the village and becomes a cosmopolitan recluse—lonely toiler among his books. Few possess the breadth and equipoise which will enable them to pass from day to day along mental paths, which have the Forum of Augustus or the Groves of the Academy at one end and the babbling square of a modern town at the other; remaining equally at home amid ancient ideals and everyday realities.
It was the fate of the recluse that threatened him. He had been born with the scholar's temperament—this furnished the direction; before he had reached the age of twenty-five he had lost his wife and two sons—that furrowed the tendency. During the years immediately following he had tried to fill an immense void of the heart with immense labors of the intellect. The void remained; yet undoubtedly compensation for loneliness had been found in the fixing of his affections upon what can never die—the inexhaustible delight of learning.
Thus the life of the book-worm awaited him but for an interference excellent and salutary and irresistible. This was the constant companionship of a sister whose nature enabled her to find its complete universe in the only world that she had ever known: she walking ever broad-minded through the narrowness of her little town; remaining white though often threading its soiling ways; and from every life which touched hers, however crippled and confined, extracting its significance instead of its insignificance, shy harmonies instead of the easy discords which can so palpably be struck by any passing hand.
It was due to her influence, therefore, that his life achieved the twofold development which left him normal in the middle years; the fresh pursuing scholar still but a man practically welded to the people among whom he lived—receiving their best and giving his best.
But we cannot send our hearts out to play at large among our kind, without their coming to choose sooner or later playfellows to be loved more than the rest.
Two intimacies entered into the life of Professor Hardage. The first of these had been formed many years before with Judge Ravenel Morris. They had discovered each other by drifting as lonely men do in the world; each being without family ties, each loving literature, each having empty hours. The bond between them had strengthened, until it had become to each a bond of strength indeed, mighty and uplifting.
The other intimacy was one of those for which human speech will never, perhaps, be called upon to body forth its describing word. In the psychology of feeling there are states which we gladly choose to leave unlanguaged. Vast and deep-sounding as is the orchestra of words, there are scores which we never fling upon such instruments—realities that lie outside the possibility and the desirability of utterance as there are rays of the sun that fall outside the visible spectrum of solar light.
What description can be given in words of that bond between two, when the woman stands near the foot of the upward slope of life, and the man is already passing down on the sunset side, with lengthening afternoon shadows on the gray of his temples—between them the cold separating peaks of a generation?
Such a generation of toiling years separated Professor Hardage from Isabel Conyers. When, at the age of twenty, she returned after years of absence in an eastern college—it was a tradition of her family that its women should be brilliantly educated—he verged upon fifty. To his youthful desires that interval was nothing; but to his disciplined judgment it was everything.
"Even though it could be," he said to himself, "it should not be, and therefore it shall not."
His was an idealism that often leaves its holder poor indeed save in the possession of its own incorruptible wealth. No doubt also the life-long study of the ideals of classic time came to his guidance now with their admonitions of exquisite balance, their moderation and essential justness.
But after he had given up all hope of her, he did not hesitate to draw her to him in other ways; and there was that which drew her unfathomably to him—all the more securely since in her mind there was no thought that the bond between them would ever involve the possibility of love and marriage.
His library became another home to her. One winter she read Greek with him—authors not in her college course. Afterward he read much more Greek to her. Then they laid Greek aside, and he took her through the history of its literature and through that other noble one, its deathless twin.
When she was not actually present, he yet took her with him through the wide regions of his studies—-set her figure in old Greek landscapes and surrounded it with dim shapes of loveliness—saw her sometimes as the perfection that went into marble—made her a portion of legend and story, linking her with Nausicaa and Andromache and the lost others. Then quitting antiquity with her altogether, he passed downward with her into the days of chivalry, brought her to Arthur's court, and invested her with one character after another, trying her by the ladies of knightly ideals—reading her between the lines in all the king's idyls.
But last and best, seeing her in the clear white light of her own country and time—as the spirit of American girlhood, pure, refined, faultlessly proportioned in mental and physical health, full of kindness, full of happiness, made for love, made for motherhood. All this he did in his hopeless and idealizing worship of her; and all this and more he hid away: for he too had his crypt.
So watching her and watching vainly over her, he was the first to see that she was loved and that her nature was turning away from him, from all that he could offer—subdued by that one other call.
"Now, Fates," he said, "by whatsoever names men have blindly prayed to you; you that love to strike at perfection, and pass over a multitude of the ordinary to reach the rare, stand off for a few years! Let them be happy together in their love, their marriage, and their young children. Let the threads run freely and be joyously interwoven. Have mercy at least for a few years!"
A carriage turned a corner of the street and was driven to the door. Isabel got out, and entered the hall without ringing.
He met her there and as she laid her hands in his without a word, he held them and looked at her without a word. He could scarcely believe that in a few days her life could so have drooped as under a dreadful blight.
"I have come to say good-by," and with a quiver of the lips she turned her face aside and brushed past him, entering the library.
He drew his own chair close to hers when she had seated herself.
"I thought you and your grandmother were going later: is not this unexpected?"
"Yes, it is very unexpected."
"But of course she is going with you?"
"No, I am going alone."
"For the summer?"
"Yes, for the summer. I suppose for a long time."
She continued to sit with her cheek leaning against the back of the chair, her eyes directed outward through the windows. He asked reluctantly:
"Is there any trouble?"
"Yes, there is trouble."
"Can you tell me what it is?"
"No, I cannot tell you what it is. I cannot tell any one what it is."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"No, there is nothing you can do. There is nothing any one can do."
Silence followed for some time. He smiled at her sadly:
"Shall I tell you what the trouble is?"
"You do not know what it is. I believe I wish you did know. But I cannot tell you."
"Is it not Rowan?"
She waited awhile without change of posture and answered at length without change of tone:
"Yes, it is Rowan."
The stillness of the room became intense and prolonged; the rustling of the leaves about the window sounded like noise.
"Are you not going to marry him, Isabel?"
"No, I am not going to marry him. I am never going to marry him."
She stretched out her hand helplessly to him. He would not take it and it fell to her side: at that moment he did not dare. But of what use is it to have kept faith with high ideals through trying years if they do not reward us at last with strength in the crises of character? No doubt they rewarded him now: later he reached down and took her hand and held it tenderly.
"You must not go away. You must be reconciled, to him. Otherwise it will sadden your whole summer. And it will sadden his."
"Sadden, the whole summer," she repeated, "a summer? It will sadden a life. If there is eternity, it will sadden eternity."
"Is it so serious?"
"Yes, it is as serious as anything, could be."
After a while she sat up wearily and turned her face to him for the first time.
"Cannot you help me?" she asked. "I do not believe I can bear this. I do not believe I can bear it."
Perhaps it is the doctors who hear that tone oftenest—little wonder that they are men so often with sad or with calloused faces.
"What can I do?"
"I do not know what you can do. But cannot you do something? You were the only person in the world that I could go to. I did not think I could ever come to you; but I had to come. Help me."
He perceived that commonplace counsel would be better than no counsel at all.
"Isabel," he asked, "are you suffering because you have wronged
Rowan or because you think he has wronged you?"
"No, no, no," she cried, covering her face with her hands, "I have not wronged him! I have not wronged any one! He has wronged me!"
"Did he ever wrong you before?"
"No, he never wronged me before. But this covers everything—the whole past."
"Have you ever had any great trouble before, Isabel?"
"No, I have never had any great trouble before. At times in my life I may have thought I had, but now I know."
"You do not need to be told that sooner or later all of us have troubles that we think we cannot bear."
She shook her head wearily: "It does not do any good to think of that! It does not help me in the least!"
"But it does help if there is any one to whom we can tell our troubles."
"I cannot tell mine."
"Cannot you tell me?"
"No, I believe I wish you knew, but I could not tell you. No, I do not even wish you to know."
"Have you seen Kate?"
She covered her face with her hands again: "No, no, no," she cried, "not Kate!" Then she looked up at him with eyes suddenly kindling: "Have you heard what Kate's life has been since her marriage?"
"We have all heard, I suppose."
"She has never spoken a word against him—not even to me from whom she never had a secret. How could I go to her about Rowan? Even if she had confided in me, I could not tell her this."
"If you are going away, change of scene will help you to forget it."
"No, it will help me to remember."
"There is prayer, Isabel."
"I know there is prayer. But prayer does not do any good. It has nothing to do with this."
"Enter as soon as possible into the pleasures of the people you are to visit."
"I cannot! I do not wish for pleasure,"
"Isabel," he said at last, "forgive him."
"I cannot forgive him."
"Have you tried?"
"No, I cannot try. If I forgave him, it would only be a change in me: it would not change him: it would not undo what he has done."
"Do you know the necessity of self-sacrifice?"
"But how can I sacrifice what is best in me without lowering myself? Is it a virtue in a woman to throw away what she holds to be as highest?"
"Remember," he said, returning to the point, "that, if you forgive him, you become changed yourself. You no longer see what he has done as you see it now. That is the beauty of forgiveness: it enables us better to understand those whom we have forgiven. Perhaps it will enable you to put yourself in his place."
She put her hands to her eyes with a shudder: "You do not know what you are saying," she cried, and rose.
"Then trust it all to time," he said finally, "that is best! Time alone solves so much. Wait! Do not act! Think and feel as little as possible. Give time its merciful chance. I'll come to see you."
They had moved toward the door. She drew off her glove which she was putting on and laid her hand once more in his.
"Time can change nothing. I have decided."
As she was going down the steps to the carriage, she turned and came back.
"Do not come to see me! I shall come to you to say good-by. It is better for you not to come to the house just now. I might not be able to see you."
Isabel had the carriage driven to the Osborns'.
The house was situated in a pleasant street of delightful residences. It had been newly built on an old foundation as a bridal present to Kate from her father. She had furnished it with a young wife's pride and delight and she had lined it throughout with thoughts of incommunicable tenderness about the life history just beginning. Now, people driving past (and there were few in town who did not know) looked at it as already a prison and a doom.
Kate was sitting in the hall with some work in her lap. Seeing Isabel she sprang up and met her at the door, greeting her as though she herself were the happiest of wives.
"Do you know how long it has been since you were here?" she exclaimed chidingly. "I had not realized how soon young married people can be forgotten and pushed aside."
"Forget you, dearest! I have never thought of you so much as since
I was here last."
"Ah," thought Kate to herself, "she has heard. She has begun to feel sorry for me and has begun to stay away as people avoid the unhappy."
But the two friends, each smiling into the other's eyes, their arms around each other, passed into the parlors.
"Now that you are here at last, I shall keep you," said Kate, rising from the seat they had taken. "I will send the carriage home. George cannot be here to lunch and we shall have it all to ourselves as we used to when we were girls together."
"No," exclaimed Isabel, drawing her down into the seat again, "I cannot stay. I had only a few moments and drove by just to speak to you, just to tell you how much I love you."
Kate's face changed and she dropped her eyes. "Is so little of me so much nowadays?" she asked, feeling as though the friendship of a lifetime were indeed beginning to fail her along with other things.
"No, no, no," cried Isabel. "I wish we could never be separated."
She rose quickly and went over to the piano and began to turn over the music. "It seems so long since I heard any music. What has become of it? Has it all gone out of life? I feel as though there were none any more."
Kate came over and looked at one piece of music after another irresolutely.
"I have not touched the piano for weeks."
She sat down and her fingers wandered forcedly through a few chords. Isabel stepped quickly to her side and laid restraining hands softly upon hers: "No; not to-day."
Kate rose with averted face: "No; not any music to-day!"
The friends returned to their seat, on which Kate left her work.
She took it up and for a few moments Isabel watched her in silence.
"When did you see Rowan?"
"You know he lives in the country," replied Isabel, with an air of defensive gayety.
"And does he never come to town?"
"How should I know?"
Kate took this seriously and her head sank lower over her work: "Ah," she thought to herself, "she will not confide in me any longer. She keeps her secrets from me—me who shared them all my life."
"What is it you are making?"
Isabel stretched out her hand, but Kate with a cry threw her breast downward upon her work. With laughter they struggled over it; Kate released it and Isabel rising held it up before her. Then she allowed it to drop to the floor.
"Isabel!" exclaimed Kate, her face grown cold and hard. She stooped with dignity and picked up the garment.
"Oh, forgive me," implored Isabel, throwing her arms around her neck. "I did not know what I was doing!" and she buried her face on the young wife's shoulder. "I was thinking of myself: I cannot tell you why!"
Kate released herself gently. Her face remained grave. She had felt the first wound of motherhood: it could not be healed at once. The friends could not look at each other. Isabel began to draw on her gloves and Kate did not seek to keep her longer.
"I must go. Dear friend, have you forgiven me? I cannot tell you what was in my heart. Some day you will understand. Try to forgive till you do understand."
Kate's mouth trembled: "Isabel, why are you so changed toward me?"
"Ah, I have not changed toward you! I shall never change toward you!"
"Are you too happy to care for me any longer?"
"Ah, Kate, I am not too happy for anything. Some day you will understand."
She leaned far out and waved her hand as she drove away, and then she threw herself back into the carriage. "Dear injured friend! Brave loyal woman'" she cried, "the men we loved have ruined both our lives; and we who never had a secret from each other meet and part as hypocrites to shield them. Drive home," she said to the driver. "If any one motions to stop, pay no attention. Drive fast."
Mrs. Osborn watched the carriage out of sight and then walked slowly back to her work. She folded the soft white fabric over the cushions and then laid her cheek against it and gave it its first christening—the christening of tears.