III

THEY were married at St. John’s a couple of months after his return. Mr. Preston united them in the bonds of holy matrimony with his still unvarying wooden gravity, through which, however, Milly was able to discern some faint, limited attempt at warmth, and Mrs. Preston folded her in her arms afterwards with a scoffing fondness that rather troubled the bride when she thought of it. She did not want to think now of spoiled lives. Something in Mrs. Preston’s manner implied—could it be pity?

It had been delightful after three years of maiden dreaming and shadowy aspiration to be carried forcibly out of them into a clear, cheerful, masculine territory where things seemed to be exactly what they were. The charm of having a lover who was almost a stranger, yet whom it was taken for granted must be both dear and familiar, was nearly too bewildering. She laughed at absurd jokes, was betrayed into demonstrative foolishness, and could scarcely believe in her own metamorphosis. She was in a state of suppressed excitement which must be happiness.

“I hardly knew you when I saw you coming in the gate,” she confessed one day soon after his arrival. “Think of it! I ran and hid.”

“You did not hide long,” he answered gravely, taking a hairpin from her smooth locks. “Let your hair down, I want to see if it has grown.”

“Norton! how silly. Are you always like this?”

“Certainly.”

“But I want to tell you of so many things that I could not write when you were away. Oh, Norton, the years have been short, yet they were so very, very long, too! There is so much I have to confess to you—how shall I ever begin?”

“Don’t try,” he answered laconically. “Leave all that time out, Milly, I hate it. We’ll begin fresh now.” He drew a long breath. “It was a hard, coarse life out there—you couldn’t even understand it, sweetheart. But one thing I can tell—” he turned around and faced her with steadfast gaze—“I can look you straight in the eyes, dear, and not be ashamed.”

“Why, of course!” said Milly.

And so the new life began. A few months after the wedding they went to live in a narrow street in the great city, away from all the dear lovely hills and fields and sky that had hitherto made Milly’s world. She was surprised to find that the dreary outlook on brick and stone affected her like a physical blow, and that she missed familiar voices strangely. She had often and often thought that she would be willing to live with Norton in a desert, and forego all other companionship than his, which necessarily must be satisfying. Was it? Gradually, very gradually, but surely, a sinking of the heart, a gnawing homesickness began to take possession of her—the homesickness of one transplanted in body and mind to an alien soil; a feeling fiercely combated, fiercely denied, yet conquering insidiously. To many women—to most women, perhaps—there is no medium between worshiping and delicately despising the man they love. They must either look up or down; anything but a level view, with clear eyes meeting, and the honest admission: Dear friend, my insufficiency balances thine. What thou art not to me, that other thing I am not to thee.

But it is torture not to be able to look up! The sense of superiority is only a sting.

Milly took life with intense earnestness. She could not understand Norton’s light, jocular way of looking at things; he cared for nothing “improving,” he simply wanted recreation. He loved her—yes, as much, she thought, sadly, as he could have loved any woman, but not, oh, not as she loved! She missed so much, so much! Each day brought a subtle shock of disappointment with it, a miserable feeling of loss. What could she do about it? She tried vainly to adjust her vision to the man’s point of view. Her husband seemed to her shallow, coarse, with no high standard of honor. It must be her mission to elevate him.

The more unsatisfied her mind became, the more her heart endeavored to make up for it. “You are not what I dreamed—but kiss me, kiss me more passionately that I may forget it!” was the continued inner cry. But kisses do not grow more passionate under the insistent claim.

She prayed for him with a hysterical uplifting of the spirit, followed by fathomless exhaustion and depression. He was always very, very kind to her when she wept—and very glad to get away.

She relapsed into an obedient endurance, a patient and uncomplaining disapproval.

There seemed to be nothing in him of the man she had married except a certain sweet boyishness that had always been one of his charms, and which showed at times through everything, and a bright, yet delicate kindness which other people liked, although to her it had no depth. Sometimes she felt a little envious of his ease with others.

“How you talked to Mrs. Catherwood to-night,” she said one evening after the guests had gone. “You quite monopolized her. I wonder what she thought of you!”

“Oh, that was all right!” he answered somewhat absently. Then he looked up with a smile. “What do you think? I found that she came from the town I used to live in. I knew her sister well. We went back over old times.”

“You never talk to me about them.”

“You—oh, that’s different; you wouldn’t be interested, dear.” He shook his head with a kind of rueful amusement. “I always feel when I tell you of such things that you are wondering how I could enjoy them. It came sort of easy to talk to Mrs. Catherwood—she seemed to understand; some people do make you feel that way, you know.” He looked up a little sadly, and then came over to his wife and kissed her. “You’re a saint, Milly, and saints are not expected to take stock in vain jestings. You have to be good for both of us, you know.”

Milly flushed angrily. “I wish you wouldn’t say such things—you take such a low view! And I wanted you to see something of Professor Stearns to-night, he is such a fine man, so thoroughly high-minded, so firm in principle, he never gives way an inch in what he thinks is right. How people dislike him for it! It’s really splendid.”

Norton looked humorous, but discreetly held his peace.

“I tell you, Jordan,” he said one day to a friend, half sadly, half jestingly, “my wife wants me to be a good woman, to like all the things she likes, and to do all the things she does. I know she mourns over me every day of her life. I suppose it’s a hopeless job for both of us. I never was anything but a commonplace sort of fellow, not near good enough for her.”

“That is the proper frame of mind, old fellow,” said his friend, and they went on riding together in silence.

To what end had the higher life been Milly’s? In five years she and Norton had been drifting slowly but surely ever further apart. Had companionship with her elevated him? Impossible not to see that he had deteriorated, that the lax hold on former ideals had lapsed entirely!

Can any human soul thrive in an atmosphere of doubt?

It was when this knowledge of further separation lay heaviest upon her, that word came to Milly one morning in the bright sunlight that Norton had been arrested for embezzlement and was in jail. Her heart stood still. This, then, was what she had been foreboding all along; the instantaneous conviction of his guilt was the cruel blow. Oh, the awful, awful wrench of the heart, when disgrace lays its hand on one we love! Death seems an honest, joyful thing in comparison. Yet she could think of a thousand extenuations for him—she found herself yearning over him as she might have done over the children that had never been hers.

She prayed all the way to jail. How often she had read of similar journeys—the prisoner was always “sitting on the side of his bed,” in the cell. Norton was sitting on the side of his bed; his face was turned away as she came in. She sat down beside him and took his hand. “Norton!” she said and yet again, “Norton!” and he turned and looked at her.

“I knew you would come,” he said, “and I knew—you would think—I had done it.”

“Oh, Norton, Norton! Say only that you did not, and I will believe you.”

“You will believe—if I tell you—that I am not—a thief? What would a thief’s word be good for, Milly? Do I have to tell such a thing to my own wife? Why, even that poor Irish woman you can hear crying in the next cell believes in her husband; you should have heard her talking before you came—and he’s a brute.”

Milly gasped painfully, the tears were running down her cheeks. “You know you always thought some things honest that I did not—some transactions—we have often talked—how could I tell—”

“You had your ideas and I had mine,” he interrupted. “It’s mighty hard to conduct business on abstract principles—perhaps—I don’t deny it! My ways weren’t always what they ought to have been. But this is stealing. It somehow kills me to think that you—” he stopped short with a gesture, and hid his face in his hands.

Milly longed to put her arms around him, to kiss the hands that hid him from her, to do anything to show her love and grief, and her faith in him, but she did not dare. This was her husband, but she did not dare.

He spoke quite calmly after a few minutes. “You had better go back to the house now. My arrest was all a stupid blunder; I sent for Catherwood at once, and he saw Forrest. They are on the right track and I will be set free as soon as possible, to-morrow, probably; the charge is to be withdrawn. And don’t feel so badly, dear, I suppose it’s all my fault that you have never believed in me since we were married—for you never have, Milly.” He stooped and kissed her good-by, saying gently, “You must go now, dear.”

Three days after that he came home very ill. All that Milly had been longing to say to him, all that she had been longing to hear, must wait until the morrow—until the next week—until the next month; and then, and then, could it be? Until the next life!

He was so very ill from the beginning that there was nothing else to be considered; for the first time her own wishes and feelings were as naught. In the delirium he did not even know her. But there came a time before the end when she was startled as she sat by him in the twilight, holding his wasted hand to see his conscious eyes fixed upon her through the shadows. Her own responded with a depth of piteous eager love in them as she bent closer to him. Still the eyes gazed at her—what, oh, what were they saying?

“Darling,” she whispered.

His lips did not move, but the fingers of the hand which lay in hers felt feebly for something—touched the golden circle on her finger, and held it as if contented at last.

And still the eyes—

It was again the moment of their betrothal, and God was with them as in the garden.

LATE in the moonlight, the tender moonlight of June, Milly sat alone by a grave. The soft night wind touched her face, the smell of countless budding flowers was around her. It was again the beautiful youth of the year, the time of love, and for her youth and love were done. Such a little while ago it seemed since she had been looking forward to it, and now it was done. Oh, what did it all mean, the love, the yearning, the striving, that it should end in such bitter loss; how had they made such a failure of marriage—marriage, that could have been so beautiful! Why was it that that last moment with Norton had been the first to show it to her?

In the utter solitude she thought and thought, with strained brow, with hands tightly clasped. She searched her soul as if it were the judgment day. Death held up the lamp by which she saw her husband at last clearly—all that he was, all that he might have been if she had not used her higher thought to build up a barrier between them. The sense of his maimed life, the loss of all the joy and trust there might have been, pierced her to the heart. His nature, lower than hers, had yet held in it the capacity to be more than hers—had seen more clearly, and had been more generous. Could it be that, after all, she who had loved so much had not loved enough?

Oh, what was it that was expected of love; to desire utterly the good of the best beloved, the development along lines where one cannot follow, on which one has no claim, which touch no answering chord of self—no one poor human being can love perfectly, as perfectly as that! If one were only God—

But there was God.

Milly raised her head, and the moonlight fell on her face.

“Oh, far beyond this poor horizon’s bound” shone the answer to all her thought. The capability of endless growth, the mating of two souls beyond the spheres and through all ages was the message of high emprise that called her like the voice of a star. With the heart of love, with the wings of immortality came the third revelation, reaching to infinite depths and heights, revealing the ineffable space where self is lost in the divine. The secret of life and death, of loss and reprisal, of the seen and the unseen, of thou and I, was there in the oneness of all that our mortal sense divides. Oh, the great, free, beautiful vision!

In the long silence—in the blowing of the night wind—when the clouds veiled the moon—spirit to spirit she stood with her beloved at last, as never, oh, never before upon this earth, and repeated aloud once more the words of eternal might:

“The Lord watch between thee and me—between thee and me—when we are parted the one from the other.”

The End

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS

GARDEN CITY, N. Y.