III.
Bartlett and Cummings.
Bartlett, harshly, after a certain silence which his friend is apparently resolved not to break.—"Sail in, Cummings!"
Cummings.—"Oh, I've got nothing to say."
Bartlett.—"Yes, you have. You think I'm a greater fool and a greater brute than you ever supposed in your most sanguine moments. Well, I am! What then?"
Cummings, turning about from the music at which he has been pretending to look, and facing Bartlett, with a slight shrug.—"If you choose to characterise your own behaviour in that way, I shall not dispute you at any rate."
Bartlett.—"Go on!"
Cummings.—"Go on? You saw yourself, I suppose, how she hung upon every syllable you spoke, every look, every gesture?"
Bartlett.—"Yes, I saw it."
Cummings.—"You saw how completely crushed she was by your tone and manner. You're not blind. Upon my word, Bartlett, if I didn't know what a good, kind-hearted fellow you are, I should say you were the greatest ruffian alive."
Bartlett, with a groan.—"Go on! That's something like."
Cummings.—"I couldn't hear what was going on—I'll own I tried—but I could see; and to see the delicate amende she was trying to offer you, in such a way that it should not seem an amende,—a perfect study of a woman's gracious, unconscious art,—and then to see your sour refusal of it all, it made me sick."
Bartlett, with a desperate clutch at his face, like a man oppressed with some stifling vapour.—"Yes, yes! I saw it all, too! And if it had been for me, I would have given anything for such happiness. Oh, gracious powers! How dear she is! I would rather have suffered any anguish than give her pain, and yet I gave her pain! I knew how it entered her heart: I felt it in my own. But what could I do? If I am to be myself, if I am not to steal the tenderness meant for another man, the love she shows to me because I'm like somebody else, I must play the brute. But have a little mercy on me. At least, I'm a baited brute. I don't know which way to turn, I don't know what to do. She's so dear to me,—so dear in every tone of her voice, every look of her eyes, every aspiration or desire of her transparent soul, that it seems to me my whole being is nothing but a thought of her. I loved her helplessness, her pallor, her sorrow; judge how I adore her return to something like life! Oh, you blame me! You simplify this infernal perplexity of mine and label it brutality, and scold me for it. Great heaven! And yet you saw, you heard how she entered this room. In that instant the old illusion was back on her, and I was nothing. All that I had been striving and longing to be to her, and hoping and despairing to seem, was swept out of existence; I was reduced to a body without a soul, to a shadow, a counterfeit! You think I resented it? Poor girl, I pitied her so; and my own heart all the time like lead in my breast,—a dull lump of ache! I swear, I wonder I don't go mad. I suppose—why, I suppose I am insane. No man in his senses was ever bedevilled by such a maniacal hallucination. Look here, Cummings: tell me that this damnable coil isn't simply a matter of my own fancy. It'll be some little relief to know that it's real."
Cummings.—"It's real enough, my dear fellow. And it is a trial,—more than I could have believed such a fantastic thing could be."
Bartlett.—"Trial? Ordeal by fire! Torment! I can't stand it any longer."
Cummings, musingly.—"She is beautiful, isn't she, with that faint dawn of red in her cheeks,—not a colour, but a coloured light like the light that hangs round a rose-tree's boughs in the early spring! And what a magnificent movement, what a stately grace! The girl must have been a goddess!"
Bartlett.—"And now she's a saint—for sweetness and patience! You think she's had nothing to suffer before from me? You know me better! Well, I am going away."
Cummings.—"Perhaps it will be the best. You can go back with me to-morrow."
Bartlett.—"To-morrow? Go back with you to-morrow? What are you talking about, man?" Cummings smiles. "I can't go to-morrow. I can't leave her hating me."
Cummings.—"I knew you never meant to go. Well, what will you do?"
Bartlett.—"Don't be so cold-blooded! What would you do?"
Cummings.—"I would have it out somehow."
Bartlett.—"Oh, you talk! How?"
Cummings.—"I am not in love with Miss Wyatt."
Bartlett.—"Oh, don't try to play the cynic with me! It doesn't become you. I know I've used you badly at times, Cummings. I behaved abominably in leaving you to take the brunt of meeting General Wyatt that first day; I said so then, and I shall always say it. But I thought you had forgiven that."
Cummings, with a laugh.—"You make it hard to treat you seriously, Bartlett. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to go to Miss Wyatt and explain your case to her?"
Bartlett, angrily.—"No!"
Cummings.—"Perhaps to Mrs. Wyatt?"
Bartlett, infuriate.—"No!"
Cummings.—"To the General?"
Bartlett, with sudden quiet.—"You had better go away from here, Cummings—while you can."
Cummings.—"I see you don't wish me to do anything, and you're quite right. Nobody can do anything but yourself."
Bartlett.—"And what would you advise me to do?"
Cummings.—"I've told you that I would have it out. You can't make matters worse. You can't go on in this way indefinitely. It's just possible that you might find yourself mistaken,—that Miss Wyatt cares for you in your own proper identity."
Bartlett.—"For shame!"
Cummings.—"Oh, if you like!"
Bartlett, after a pause.—"Would you—would you see the General?"
Cummings.—"If I wanted to marry the General. Come, Bartlett; don't be ridiculous. You know you don't want my advice, and I haven't any to give. I must go to my room a moment."
Bartlett.—"Well, go! You're of no advantage here. You'd have it out, would you? Well, then, I wouldn't. I'm a brute, I know, and a fool, but I'm not such a brute and fool as that!" Cummings listens with smiling patience, and then goes without reply, while Bartlett drops into the chair near the easel, and sulkily glares at the picture. Through the window at his back shows the mellow Indian summer landscape. The trees have all dropped their leaves, save the oaks which show their dark crimson banners among the deep green of the pines and hemlocks on the hills; the meadows, verdant as in June, slope away toward the fringe of birches and young maples along the borders of the pond; the low-blackberry trails like a running fire over the long grass limp from the first frosts, which have silenced all the insect voices. No sound of sylvan life is heard but the harsh challenge of a jay, answered from many trees of the nearest wood-lot. The far-off hill-tops are molten in the soft azure haze of the season; the nearer slopes and crests sleep under a greyer and thinner veil. It is to this scene that the painter turns from the easel, with the sullen unconsciousness in which he has dwelt upon the picture. Its beauty seems at last to penetrate his mood; he rises and looks upon it; then he goes out on the gallery, and, hidden by the fall of one of the curtains, stands leaning upon the rail and rapt in the common reverie of the dreaming world. While he lingers there, Cummings appears at the door, and looks in; then with an air of some surprise, as if wondering not to see Bartlett, vanishes again, to give place to General Wyatt, who after a like research retires silently and apparently disconcerted. A few moments later Mrs. Wyatt comes to the threshold, and calling gently into the room, "Constance!" waits briefly and goes away. At last, the young girl herself appears, and falters in the doorway an instant, but finally comes forward and drifts softly and indirectly up to the picture, at which she glances with a little sigh. At the same moment Bartlett's voice, trolling a snatch of song, comes from the gallery without:—