2
Not until Dare had been driven to Witney, there to entrain for the coast, did Louise give in to the weariness with which she had been contending for many days prior to Keble’s election. Only her determination to spare Dare the knowledge that she had overtaxed her strength for him kept her from yielding sooner. On the day of his departure she retired to her bedroom, drew the blinds, got into bed, and gave an order that nobody should be admitted. They might interpret her retirement as grief at Dare’s departure if they chose; for the moment she didn’t care a tinker’s dam what any one thought.
Aunt Denise discouraged Keble’s immediate attempt to telephone for Dr. Bruneau. “She doesn’t need medicine,” she said, “but rest. Leave her to me; I understand her temperament.”
Once more Keble and Miriam could only pool their helplessness.
“We had better leave matters in her hands,” Miriam decided. “The Bruneaus seem to be infallible in cases of illness.”
Keble was only half reassured. “Usually when Louise has a headache that would drive any ordinary person mad, she goes out and climbs Hardscrapple. I have a good mind to telephone in spite of Aunt Denise.”
“If you do,” said Miriam, “Louise will be furious, and that will only make matters worse. It’s merely exhaustion. Even I have seen it coming.”
“I wish to God I’d fetched a nurse from Harristown when Dare was ill.”
“Louise wouldn’t have given up her patient if you had imported a dozen.”
Keble was vexed and bitterly unhappy. “What are you going to do with a woman like that!” he cried. “I don’t mind her having her own way; but damn it all, I object to her doing things that half kill her. That’s stupid.”
One of the most difficult lessons Miriam had learnt in her long discipleship under Louise was how and when to be generous. She saw an opportunity and breathed more freely. “I think it’s cruel of you to call her sacrifice stupid. If she breaks down it is not that she has undertaken too much; but that other people undertake so little. When Louise resolved to nurse Dare she did it because there was, as she said to me, no one else. But during that period she was putting the best brain-work into our campaign. The minute she was free she went to the Valley, worked like a horse, and turned the tide single-handed because, as she might have put it, there was nobody else. She thinks and acts for us all. It isn’t our fault if we are not alert enough to live up to her standard, but the least we can do when she becomes a victim to our sluggishness is to refrain from blaming her.”
“Well, Miriam, I give it up! I don’t understand Louise; I don’t understand Aunt Denise; I don’t even understand you. You women have one set of things to say for publication, and then disclose amendments which alter the color of the published reports. Each new disclosure rings true, yet they don’t piece together into anything recognizable. I no sooner get my sails set than the breeze shifts. . . . There’s only one thing left for me to do, and that is to go on as I began, just crawling along like a tortoise, colliding into everything sooner or later. By the time I’m eighty I may have learned something and got somewhere. If not I’ll just stumble into my grave, and on my tombstone they can write, ‘Poor devil, he meant well’.”
Miriam had been laughing at the funny aspect of his misery, but her smile became grim. “That isn’t a bad epitaph. I wish I could be sure that I’ll be entitled to one as good.”
Keble glanced at her curiously. “You’re morbid, Miriam. I don’t wonder, with the monotony of our life here.”
“No,” she corrected, despite the tyrant. “The life here has done more than anything to cure me of morbidness. Although, to tell the truth, I wasn’t conscious of the morbid streak in me until after I’d been here for a while.” To herself Miriam explained the matter with the help of a photographic metaphor: Keble’s personality had been a solution which brought out an alluring but reprehensible image on the negative of her heart; Louise’s character had been a solution which had gradually brought out a series of surrounding images which threw the reprehensible image into the right proportion, subordinating it to the background without in any way dimming it. Miriam was now forced to admit that one overture on Keble’s part, one token of a tyrant within him that reciprocated the desire of her tyrant, would have sufficed to overthrow all her scruples.
“I don’t see what you mean,” said Keble.
Miriam thought for a moment. “You deserve an explanation. I can’t explain it all; it’s too personal.” She had almost said too humiliating. “But I’ll make a partial confession. Louise imported me here long ago as a sort of tutor, at her expense. You weren’t to know; but it can’t do any harm to give the game away now. While I was supposed to be tutoring her, I was really learning. By watching Louise I’ve learned the beauty of unselfishness, trite as that may sound. I can’t be unselfish on Louise’s scale, for I can’t be anything on her scale, good, bad, or indifferent. But like you I can mean well, and since I’ve known Louise I can mean better.
“You sometimes speak of Louise’s play-acting. When your people were here we once said that she was having a lovely time showing off. I know better now. I’m convinced that she was trying, in her own way, to reflect distinction on you, just as I’m convinced that when she jerrymandered the proletariat she was going it in the face of bodily discomfort and your disapproval simply because she couldn’t bear the thought of your being disappointed. I don’t think either of us has given Louise enough credit for disinterestedness, chiefly because she doesn’t give herself credit for it. She prates so much about her individual rights, that we assume her incapable of sacrificing them. At times we’ve mistaken her pride for indifference. Do look back and see if that isn’t so. I’m inclined to think that even her present illness is merely the nervous strain consequent upon some splendid reticence.”
Miriam paused, unable to confess that the reticence had to do with herself, as she suspected it had. She saw that she had permission to go on.
“Then her interest in Dare. That, you and I have avoided referring to, and I think we were a little hypocritical. But the core of the secret is connected with Dare, and I can’t do Louise the injustice of not telling you. It was unpardonable of me to listen, but I did. I was in the sun-parlor, in the hammock, dozing, and she and Dare came and sat by the fire in the hall. The door was open.”
“When was this?”
“Only yesterday. They were talking about the elections. ‘When I saw all those idiots wavering between Oat Swigger and Keble,’ she said, ‘something snapped. From that moment I had only one determination: to make them feel the worth of all the things Keble stood for in the universe’ . . . The conversation swung around to the monkey. She told Dare, as she had long ago told me, that before the monkey arrived she hoped he would be a boy, not for her sake, but to gratify his grandfathers. Then when he did turn out a boy, she was amazed to find herself thankful for your sake. The grandfathers were forgotten, but she was indifferent. Then after the elections she was for the first time conscious of cherishing the monkey for her own sake. That feeling grew until she suddenly resented your rights in him. Then yesterday she took it into her head to bathe the monkey, and had an insane delusion that she could wash off his heredity,—scrubbed like a charwoman till the poor darling howled. ‘Then,’ she said, ‘I was sorry, and by the time I had got on all his shirts I felt that I had put his heredities on again, and was glad and kissed him and he flapped his arms and squealed. Then I cried, because, deep down, I was terrified that perhaps Keble might some day, if he hasn’t already, resent my contribution to the monkey’.”
Miriam waited. “I couldn’t resist passing on that monologue to you, for it seems the most complete answer to many criss-cross questions, and Louise might never have brought herself to let you see. It would be impudent of me to say all this had we not formed a habit out here of being so criss-crossly communicative, and if you hadn’t tacitly given me a big sister’s licence. Anyway, there it is, for what it’s worth. At least I mean well.”
Keble was too strangely moved to trust his voice, and walked out of the house to ride over the rain-soaked roads.
That was the most bitter moment that Miriam had ever experienced. She had come to know that Keble had no emotion to spare for her; but that he should fail to see into her heart, or, seeing, refuse her the barest little sign of understanding and compassion,—it was really not quite fair.
She had letters to write. She had decided to leave, but apart from that her plans were uncertain. Her most positive aim was to avoid living with her old-fashioned aunt in Philadelphia. Grimly she looked forward to a process of gradual self-effacement. In two or three years she would probably not receive invitations to the bigger houses. Then there would be some hot little flat in Washington, on the Georgetown side, with occasional engagements to give lessons in something,—at best a post as social secretary to the wife of some new Cabinet Member full of her importance. Something dependent, and dingy. Each year would add its quota to an accumulation of dust on the shelves of her heart. And with a sigh she would take down from a shelf and from time to time reread this pathetic romance in the wilderness. From time to time she would receive impulsive invitations from Louise, and would invent excuses for declining. Perhaps, some years hence, when she could view the episode with some degree of impersonality and humor, she would write a long letter of confession to Louise. In advance she was sure of absolution. That was her only comfort.
Dare had guessed her secret, and she had been too hypocritical to take him into her confidence. Now that he was gone she regretted that she had not been flexible enough to enter into the spirit of his overture. By evading, she had not only screened her own soul, but denied commiseration to him. In future she would try to be more alert to such cues. She wondered whether inflexibility might not have had a good deal to do with the barrenness of her life. She even wondered whether at thirty-five one would be ridiculous in vowing to become flexible,—would that be savoring too strongly of the old maids in farces?
From her window, as she was patting her hair into place before going down to tea, she caught sight of Keble’s tall, clean figure dismounting at the edge of the meadow. Katie was passing along the road with the perambulator, and Keble went out of his way to greet the monkey. His high boots were splashed with mud. His belted raincoat emphasized the litheness of his body. The face that bent over the carriage glowed from sharp riding against the damp air. The monkey was trying to pull off the peak of his father’s cap, and Keble was pretending to be an ogre. Katie looked on indulgently.
“Even Katie,” thought Miriam, “puts more into life than I do.” A few months before, Miriam would have thought, “gets more out of it.”
The mail had been delayed by the state of the roads. Miriam found a letter from London. When tea was poured she read as follows:
“My dear Miss Cread: I don’t know whether you are still at Hillside or whether you will be at all interested in the suggestion I am about to make, but I am writing on the off chance. My old friend Aurelie Graybridge is leaving soon on a visit to America. Yesterday, during a chat with her, I happened to mention your name. She recalled having met you some years ago, and inquired minutely after you. She has been looking for a companion to help her keep the run of her committees, and so forth. For several years a cousin was with her, but her cousin married and that leaves her with no one. I suggested that you might be induced to go to her, and she asked me to sound you.
“You would divide your time between England and the continent. The duties would be light, chiefly correspondence. A good deal of spare time; travelling and all expenses provided, and a decent allowance.
“Aurelie plans to sail next week. I’m enclosing her address. Please write her if the idea appeals to you. I hope it may, for that will mean that I shall be likely to see you from time to time. You may of course have much more interesting plans, in which case don’t mind this gratuitous scrawl.”
It was signed by Alice Eveley. Miriam restored the letter to its envelope, and was thankful that Keble and Aunt Denise were too occupied to notice her face.
Her anger was redoubled by the realization that the offer was too good to be turned down. She knew she would end by despatching an amiably worded letter to Mrs. Graybridge, then write Keble’s sister a note thanking her for her kind thoughtfulness.
“The cat! Oh, the cat!” she was saying under her breath.