CHAPTER XXIII
Now began a phase of Kendall Ware’s life which was to continue for a matter of six weeks, a period full of conflict between anomalies, of indecisions, of procrastinations. There stood out high moments of happiness, and there were dark descents into unlighted realms of self-distrust. He questioned everything, doubted everything, and most especially did he doubt his own ability to weigh events and to choose between the better and the worse. He almost doubted if he had the power of choice and felt a dour leaning toward predestination. Much of this was self-deception, and conscious self-deception. He was becoming increasingly aware of a day when he would have to make a choice and reach a decision, but he was afraid of that day. He knew the choice was his, and could belong to no other individual or force. He must choose. The event was in his keeping.
Three major questions presented themselves: First, what was he going to do about Andree? Second, what was he going to do about Maude Knox? And, third, which was interwoven with the first, what about the vestibule of the Presbyterian church?
Ken had not the least doubt that he loved Andree. That was the one sure fact in the whole confused mass. He loved Andree and Andree loved him. To many young men, perhaps to most, this alone would have answered all his questions. Perhaps the ordinary young man would have thought of nothing else, but, perceiving that Andree was essential to him, he would have taken her and made her his own in permanence with due forms of marriage. This would have been the natural step for youth to take—disregarding consequences and challenging the future. But Ken was not an ordinary young man. He was a young man who was afraid of the future, who had been brought up to know a lively fear of the opinion of the community among which he lived. “What will folks say?” was a question he had heard propounded from his earliest childhood, until the thing that “they” would say had assumed a place of importance in his affairs second to nothing. It had almost confused his perceptions of right and wrong, for, even as a small boy, it had been made to appear to him that his mother was not so much concerned with the righteousness of any given act as she was by the effect of that act upon her circle of neighbors. Undoubtedly this was a mistaken notion, but it had at least the color of truth.
He recalled vividly how a certain prominent member of his church had become an absconder and the coming of the news of it into his household. He remembered how his father had said: “Mother, we don’t know all the ins and outs of it. Maybe he’s more sinned against than sinning. We don’t know....” His mother had rejected that view harshly. “Whatever will people say about him? It’ll be terrible on his wife, and him so prominent in the church.” She had not said, “What will God say about him?” but, “What will people say?” His sin, so it had seemed to Ken’s young mind, had not been so much in absconding with money as it had been in creating adverse talk.... This attitude of mind had altered somewhat with years, but never had his fear of clacking tongues diminished. It stood for the supreme punishment of evil ... not hell, but gossip.
So his first and third questions stood together, and he dared not force himself to answer them. The second question could not be answered until he had satisfied the other two.... There came a fourth question, upon which, ultimately, must hang the answers to all, and that was, “Can a man marry a woman with whom he has had such a relation as I have had with Andree?” In other words, could he, by his own act, unfit Andree to become his own wife? This question did not present itself poignantly for some time, but it was beginning to formulate in the back of his mind. As yet he was considering only the expediency of matters; later he would find trouble with their moral and sociological aspects.
Matters further complicated themselves when Maude Knox informed him that she had been assigned permanently to an administrative position in Paris. He would be compelled to see her frequently. He would want to see her frequently. Somehow this seemed unfair to Andree, but he knew that Maude could not remain in the city without his seeing a great deal of her. Andree would discover this, and what would Andree do about it? With Maude Knox absent her importance receded, was held in abeyance; if she were here she would grow increasingly important—and what would come of it?
“You don’t seem overjoyed,” she said.
“I’m glad you’re going to be here,” he said, “but just the same, I wish you weren’t.”
“Why? You aren’t compelled to have anything to do with me if you don’t want to.”