3
Miriam, who had watched Louise as one watches an acrobat,—with excitement and dread,—felt herself in a sense frustrated by Louise’s continued apathy. If it had been punctuated by new verbal heresies, new feats of talk with Trenholme Dare, now the dominating figure at Hillside, Miriam, like Keble, would at least have been able to account for it even had she failed to sympathize. But Louise’s indifference seemed to have spread even to the realm of ideas, and there had been very few acrobatic displays of late. Possibly Louise was in love; but if so, it would have been much more like her to say so, flatly.
The effect of this on Miriam was to make her more sharply conscious of the anomaly of her rôle. More than once she had argued that her mission was at an end, but in each instance Louise had induced her to remain. Having yielded at first with a faint sense of guilt, Miriam had come through custom to accept her position with all its ambiguities. As Keble’s activities increased, she had stepped into the breach and relieved him of many daily transactions, delighted at being able to offer a definite service for the cheque which was left on her dressing table every month. Keble ended by turning over to her his ledgers and most of his correspondence.
But her feeling of guilt recurred at moments when the house seemed to be an armed camp, with Keble and herself deep in their estimates; and Louise inciting Dare to phantastic metaphysical speculation. At such moments her mind persisted in criticizing Louise. It was not exactly that she lacked confidence in her, for Louise was in her own fashion surefooted and loyal. But Miriam was a little appalled at the extensity of the ground Louise could be surefooted on, the sweeping nature of her conception of loyalty. Louise, scorner of the ground, was all for steering in a direct line to her goal and ignoring the conventional railway routes whose zigzags were conditioned by topographical exigencies not pertinent to fliers. Her loyalty would not fail Keble, for she could cherish him in the spirit without subscribing to him in the letter. Louise’s loyalty might be expressed in idioms which were not to be found in Keble’s moral vocabulary. Just as there were some eternal truths which could be expressed more adequately in French than in English, so, conceivably, there might be vital experiences which Louise could obtain more adequately through the agency of some man other than Keble; certainly she would not acknowledge any law that attempted to prevent her doing so, had she a mind to it.
There were times when Miriam felt herself to be an interpreter; more than once in tête-à-têtes with Keble she had found herself de-coding some succinct remark of Louise’s to explain away a worried line in his forehead, and it was on those occasions that she had felt especially guilty,—not because she ran the risk of giving an unfair interpretation, but because it was conceivable that, had she not been there to decipher, Louise would have taken more pains to employ a language Keble could understand.
This qualm she could dispel by reminding herself that at the time of her advent Louise and Keble had been drifting apart through very lack of an interpreter. Then it was Keble’s language which had been too precious for his wife, and Louise herself had taken energetic steps to increase her vocabulary to meet the demand. Would Keble take steps to learn her new words? At least there was evidence that he suffered at not being able to speak them. But after all Keble was a man, and no man should be expected to grope in the irrational mazes of a woman’s psychology. It was a woman’s duty to make herself intelligible to the man who loved her; Miriam was tenaciously sure of this. Yet Louise nowadays made no effort to share her ideas with Keble; she merely challenged him to soar with her, and when he, thinking of Icarus, held back, she went flying off with Dare, who certainly made no effort to bear any one aloft, but whose powerful rushing ascensions either filled you with a desire to fly or bowled you over.
Dare, for all his impetuosity, was, like Louise, prodigiously conscientious; but like her he was more concerned with the sense of a word than with its orthography. He was too certain of the organic and creative nature of experience to live according to any formula. You felt unwontedly safe with him, just as you did with Louise, but safe from dangers that only he had made you see, dangers on a remote horizon. As you ambled along, with nothing more ominous than a cloud of dust or a shower of rain to disturb your pedestrian serenity, Louise and Dare would swoop down, armed to the teeth, gleefully to assure you that nothing fatal would happen, that accidents to limb held no terrors for moral crusaders worthy the name; then, leaving you to stand there in bewilderment, they would swoop off again to catch up with unknown squadrons beyond the rim of vision, whence, for the first time, a muffled sound of bombing came to your ears. And your knees would begin to tremble, not on their account,—oh dear no, they could take care of themselves,—but on your own. Suddenly your pedestrian course seemed drab to you,—long, weary, prosaic; but you lacked wings, weapons, zeal, and endurance.
Louise was a Spartan both morally and physically. She could ignore transgressions of the social code as easily as she could ignore bodily discomforts. Recently Miriam had seen an example of each. When Pearl Beatty, the schoolteacher, had been made the topic of scandalous gossip which echoed through the Valley, Louise in defiance of her husband and the public had fetched Pearl to the ranch for a week-end, and said to her in effect, “Pearl dear, I’ll see that you don’t lose your job, provided you don’t lose your head. If it’s a man you want, wait till you find the right one, then bring him here and I’ll protect you both. But if it’s a lot of men you want you can’t go on teaching school in our Valley; it’s too complicated. The only way to play that game with pleasure and profit,—and I doubt whether you’re really vicious enough,—is to save your money, go to a big city, buy some good clothes, and sit in the lobby of the leading commercial hotel until fate’s finger points.” As a result of this manoeuvre some of Pearl’s thoughtless exuberance rushed into a channel of devotion to Louise, who seized the occasion to build up in the girl a sense of her own value and then bullied the Valley into respecting it.
As for physical courage, only a few days previously Louise, uttering an occasional “Oh damn!” to relieve her agony, had stoically probed with a needle deep under her thumb-nail to release a gathering that had formed as a result of rust poisoning, while Miriam stood by in horror.
Far deeper than her dread of anything Louise might do was a dread engendered by lack of confidence in herself. Within herself there was some gathering of emotion for which, unlike Louise, she hadn’t the courage to probe. As she had told Louise at their first meeting, responsibility could frighten her; and she now shrank before the responsibility of her inclinations. The most she dared admit to herself was that she was growing too fond of the life around her. In her first youth she had fancied herself a real person in a pleasantly artificial setting, mildly enamoured of glittering symbols of life; in this faraway corner, renovated by solitude, physical exertion, and obligatory self-analysis, she saw herself as an artificial person in a pleasantly real setting, enamoured of life itself. She had come to teach, and had remained to learn. In the old days a horse had been a sleek toy upon which one cantered in Rock Creek Park or Rotten Row or the Monte Pinchio gardens until a motor came and fetched one home to lunch. A dog had been a sort of living muff. Camping expeditions had been an elaborate means of relaxing overwrought nerves. Nowadays a horse was a friend who uncomplainingly bore one great distances, who discovered the right path when one was lost. A dog was a companion who escorted one through fearsome trails, who retrieved the grouse one hit, and kept watch by night at the cabin door. Camping expeditions were a serious means to some explorative end; one slept on the hard ground under a raincoat simply because there was nothing else to sleep on, and eagerly looked forward to doing it again. Men and women whom one would once have sent down to the kitchen for a cup of tea were now one’s convives. And far from losing caste on this level, one acquired a useful perspective of society and a new conception of one’s identity. Association with a girl like Pearl Beatty, for instance, not only opened one’s eyes at last to some blunt facts about one’s own nature, but also furnished the clue to scandals concerning which one had been stupidly supercilious in the days when life consisted in the automatic fulfilment of projects announced beforehand on pieces of cardboard.
Yet for the first time in a dozen years she was not sure of herself. So far she had been loyal in thought as well as deed, but the present inventory of herself revealed claims for which she had also little rebellious gusts of loyalty. Louise herself counted for something in this development, since however much one might deprecate Louise’s bold convictions, one couldn’t deny that they were often ingratiating. “It’s more honorable to hoist your own sail and sail straight on a reef than it is to be towed forever!” When Louise tossed off remarks of that sort one was tempted to lengths of experiment that one would once have drastically disapproved. Louise’s philosophy might end by producing inedible fruits, but meanwhile there was no denying the charm of the blossoms she flaunted under one’s windows and virtually defied one not to smell.
As long as Louise was plying at verbal thunder and lightning, Miriam’s confidence in herself underwent to qualms. For at such times, she, in comparison with Louise, personified all that was discreet. But when Louise’s effervescences died down, when the last waterspout of her exultant proclamations had collapsed on a lake of apathy too deep and dark to be penetrated, Miriam felt the wavelets radiating to the shore at her feet, gently communicating a more daring rhythm to her own desires.
The first definite effect of these reflections was Miriam’s decision to leave. Otherwise she would be forced to come to an understanding with herself and run the risk of discovering that she was ready to—steal.
It was late in September. Dare’s army of workmen were fighting against time to complete the exteriors of the new house and outbuildings before winter. Miriam drew rein as her horse reached the top of the hill from which she had obtained her first glimpse of the lake more than a year ago. The sun was not yet up, but the world was expecting it. The lake which only yesterday had been an emerald was now a long, flat pearl encircled in a narrow, faintly amethystine mist which like a scarf of gauze broke the perpendicular lines of the farthermost shore. In it were mirrored the colossal rocks forming the jagged V of the canyon, and threadbare clouds of pale rose and jade, lemon and amber. The oily brown log cottages silhouetted near the outlet had the pictorial value of black against the living pearl of the water, and Louise’s flower beds were banked with something mauve dulled by dew. Frost-bitten, orange-red geraniums in wooden urns raised high on crooked tree-stumps made hectic blurs on each side of the main cottage. Farther off, and higher than the tops of the pine trees which rose above the pervasive lavender mist, were clusters of yellow and crimson foliage and slender tree trunks that stood out like strokes of Chinese white. Higher yet were stretches of rusty gorse which finally straggled off to bare patches of buff-hued turf ending in the rock walls of Hardscrapple, whose irregular peaks, four thousand feet above, were faintly edged with silver light.
At the end of the pine ridge to the right of the lake, surmounting a broad meadow, standing out from the wooded slope of the mountain, and bringing the whole landscape to a focus, was the Castle with its severe lines, its broad balconies and high windows. One terrace dominated the lake, while another looked over the top of the pine ridge towards the distant valley where the river twisted its way for thirty miles through a grey-green sage plain broken by occasional dark islands of pine and bounded on the farther side by patchy brown and green risings culminating in a lumpy horizon.
Everything visible for fifty miles had been stained bright with the hues of the changing season, only to be softened by the clinging mist, which seemed to hush as well as to veil.
From three kitchens,—Louise’s, Mrs. Brown’s, and the workmen’s encampment,—white ribbons of smoke rose straight up as though to reinforce the pale, exhausted clouds. Grendel, Miriam’s retriever, was standing in the wet grass, one paw held up and tail motionless as though awaiting confirmation of a hint of jack-rabbits. An acrid odour gave body to the air: an odour whose ingredients included the damp earth, the bark of the firs, the bunches of rust-colored berries, the leather of the saddle, and the warm vitality of the horse. Once there was a sound of whinnying from the slopes beneath, and once a distant sound of splashing,—Keble or Dare at his morning plunge in the lake.
How splendid to be a man, with a man’s vigorous instincts! Even the pipes they smoked at night were condonable, when you thought of the strong teeth that clenched their stems, the strong fingers that twisted the stems out during the cleaning process, and the earnestness that went into the filling and lighting, the contented bodily collapse, as of giants refreshed, that followed the first puff.
Splendid to be a man, certainly. But how much more wonderful to be at the disposal of some clean, earnest, boyish creature who would be comfortingly gigantic when one felt helpless, enticingly indolent when one felt strong. As for being a victim to a capacity for tenderness which one had no right to indulge,—that was simply unfair.
The sound of loose planks disturbed by running feet came up to her on the motionless air. It was Keble, in sandals and dressing gown, returning from the boat-slip to the cottage. She leaned forward and patted her horse.
Near the foot of the winding road she drew rein again. Grendel had dashed ahead to play practical jokes on a colony of hens. Joe was chopping wood. Mona was moving tins in the dairy. Annie Brown was at the pump, getting water on her “pinny”. Some one was whistling. Grendel barked at the top of his lungs and came bounding back through the grass. The sun was beginning to turn the mountain peaks into brass and bronze. The flat pallid clouds were trailing away. A flush of blue crept over the sky.
Miriam’s throat ached with the kind of happiness that is transformed at birth into pain. She remembered the remark she had made to Louise on first descending this road: “You very lucky woman!”
Half an hour later, at the breakfast table, she was struck by the pallor of Louise’s cheeks, which normally glowed. Louise was chatting with a show of good spirits that failed to hoodwink her. She broke open an egg with a slight feeling of vexation, for it was nerve-racking to be faced daily with a human puzzle. She was more than willing to be sorry for Louise, but one couldn’t quite be sorry until one knew why.
A moment later their eyes met. Louise gave her a characteristically friendly smile, and suddenly Miriam guessed. She was assailed by a nameless envy, a nameless resentment, sincere compassion, then, by a strange relief that left her almost comically weak.
When breakfast was finished and the men were out of the room she went to Louise, grasped her by the shoulders, looked into her eyes with kindly inquiry, then, having been assured, said, “My dear, why didn’t you tell me? Or rather, how could I have failed to see!”
To Miriam’s amazement Louise bit her lips and trembled,—Louise, the Spartan! Miriam kissed her cold cheek and gave her arm an affectionate pat. She felt awkward. “What’s there to be afraid of?” she scoffed. “You of all people!”
“It’s not fear,” Louise quietly contradicted. “It’s disgust.”
“How does Keble take it?”
“He is as blind as you were. And I haven’t been able to bring myself to telling him. That explains better than anything my state of mind. He will be so odiously glad.”
Miriam was shocked.
“Yes, odiously,” Louise petulantly repeated. “I know it’s abominable of me to talk like this. But he will be so suffocatingly good and kind . . . Oh Miriam!”
She burst into tears and let Miriam’s arms receive her. “I loathe hysterical women,” she sobbed, then turned to Miriam with appealing eyes. “You will stay won’t you?”
Miriam hesitated. The decision she had come to on her solitary ride broke down as other similar decisions had done.
“Why, yes, dear,—yes, of course I’ll see you through it,” she replied, and allowed Louise’s grateful caress to silence a little exulting voice within her.