They had not quarrelled, these two. Even in the first bitterness of rejection he had recognised that she was not moved by cruel or petty perversity. She had simply faded out of his reach when he was surest of her, retreating behind some barrier which would fall to neither of them. He had certainly been passionately hurt and deeply angry, but he had never been unjust. Unable to see her standpoint, he yet bowed to it; only he could not bring himself to stay and suffer.
“When do you go?” she asked suddenly. He told her, and then: “Need you go?” she added somewhat nervously, Lancaster’s embassy in mind. “There’s your father and mother—you could keep away—need you go?”
He answered briefly, turning his head away from her even in the darkness, and she held her tongue; but after a while she began again in stumbling, disjointed phrases like bodiless thoughts not shaped for the clothing of speech.
“It’s my fault—but why? What is it? You’d be good to me, but I want so much. I’m several people, and all asking. One of me loves you, but not all—no, not all! One of me is afraid—that’s the strongest one. There are so many closed doors. Can anybody be happy in a single room? Or are there new rooms for us to find together that I don’t know of, now, so that the closed doors wouldn’t matter? If only I knew! If only you could tell me! Suppose the one room was a prison for always? How am I to know?”
He moved uneasily, and she pulled herself up and made an attempt at coherence.
“Marriage isn’t just one thing to me; it’s all—love, companionship, understanding for always. How can I face closed doors through Eternity? You love me, but half I say has no meaning for you, half I feel passes you by even when we’re nearest. It isn’t your fault; it isn’t mine. You’re patient with me, but even love and patience are not enough. All the time we’re both of us groping, you for light and I for touch. You’re gentler than your father, but at the bottom you’re alike. You believe in the same things, you feel about them in the same way. You were vexed for my sake when he forced us into each other’s arms over the farm, but you didn’t feel that he caught up our dream in rough hands, and made it coarse and common. It was right and natural to you, perhaps even beautiful. Perhaps it was I who broke the glamour for you—I hadn’t thought of that! But I had to do it. I should do it again. What are the real things—the things that matter?” And for the second time she said: “How am I to know?”
He had been standing looking away from her, but now he turned and took her gently in his arms, with one hand raising her face as if it had been a child’s. Perhaps it came to him that in her doubt and trouble she was indeed a child to his certainty of purpose. All her acquired wisdom could not give her the unclouded sureness that love had taught him long since.
“The real things are the old things,” he said. “They’re all I know, but I reckon you’d find them enough if you’d only believe it. I’d bide if I thought I could learn you, but I doubt you’re a long way off, and I can’t stop on as things are. I’d sooner be shot than have to stand it out—the never knowing when I’d be seeing you, the hearing and feeling you all around me, and not mine. D’you think I’d not know, passing the house, whether it had you inside of it, or turn a bend and not go sick with longing for you and fear to meet you? One of us must shift, and it can’t be you. It’s not for you to leave your folks and fend for yourself—it’s for me. I wish the old man didn’t take it so hard, but this is my job, and I’ve got to quit. As for you, I reckon you’ll see clear some day, when you’re older. You’re only a bit of a lass yet—I forget it, you’re that wise! I don’t rightly know what you mean about closed doors. A man and a woman each has thoughts the other can’t hold with—they’re made different; but when they’re man and wife there’s a lot they can share together as they’d likely have never known, wanting one another. It seems to me that it’s made up that way. I can’t talk to you like Brack. I reckon I’m not sorry, neither, but I’m not that sort, anyway. I’ve my mind a deal on my work, as you don’t need telling, but it’s my heart as really learns me the things that matter. They’re few enough—ay, but they’re big enough too! Just trust in the morning and quiet in the evening, our own folk, and work, and food and sleep—seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night—the things the folks behind us knew afore we were born. The real things are the old things.”
They went back to the beckoning porch in silence.