CHAPTER XXI
A VOICE AND A TAPER FLAME
Brent, who for some days had not been gracious to the sight of Jane, went out to meet her in a state of mind so dazed that it bordered on the humorous. At heart most things were jests with this devil-may-care young man (it may have been a trait cultivated through sheer necessity) and whether Dale killed or were killed might some weeks ago have passed into his continuous performance of human comedies and tragedies. But there was a new element about this which shocked him to the foundation of his nature, and the revulsion became more acute as he looked up into her face smiling politely down at him.
He had watched her interest in Dale, and now guessed her depth of disappointment when she were told how the mountaineer's career had gone dashing into the black wall of ruin. But he had watched with a twinge of jealousy which, as jealousy has the knack of doing, exaggerated both the extent and kind of interest she may have felt.
Many opportunities had come to Brent, and it was not all his fault that most of them had been neglected. His capacity for achievement was as an arm perpetually carried in a sling; no one's fingers had untied the knot and massaged the cramped muscles, nor had anyone's lips bidden him strike the right sort of blow. His mother breathed his name when a trained nurse had laid him down beside her on the bed; and that was the only time he might have heard her voice. His father was a man so threaded in the loom of finance that the rearing of a baby boy seemed wasted energy for one of his activities. The governess whom he employed to assume this duty came with recommendations; that was all—came with recommendations. And the boy's days were without intelligent direction of any kind.
The only trait in his character which this governess strongly developed, was a desire to hide from every one his deepest and best impulses. Since one day, when his four-year-old arms had clasped a homeless puppy hurt by a passing wagon, and she had poked her finger and laughed at his tears in order to keep his clothes from becoming worse soiled, his generous side shrank back into itself and froze. Then he began to clasp this newly bruised thing—a little boy's wounded nobility; so jealously guarding it from the cruelty of other laughs, from other curled lips and fingers of scorn, that few might have suspected it lived in him at all.
Later in life there appeared an object he might have cherished—the girl of whom he had told Jane; but this did not leave the regret he tried to make himself believe. He had never been able to rise above a lingering disappointment because her fingers made no effort to untie the knot;—rather, had she drawn it tighter by applauding those things which inherently he realized needed rebuking. For in his soul lived a voice comparing her to an ideal known only to his dreams—a being, somewhere, who would tear off the sling with brave and loving hands, and not be content to see him drift. His closely guarded better nature was persistently pleading with him to face about, while her pouting lips imperiously demanded his mornings and afternoons for her entertainment. Then, very softly, a consciousness began to dawn upon this little romance, showing its glitter to be the veriest tinsel; and, so it was, in a make-believe fervor of self-righteousness, he pressed the pseudo crown of martyrdom upon his brow and "stepped aside."
If the truth were known, his soul had many times craved self-sacrifice—a hunger from which true men and women do not long escape. So he hugged the imitation, knowing it to be an imitation, but pretending it was real; before this false altar he "stepped aside," crying within himself that he had done a noble act, and knowing it was counterfeit. The knowledge, not the sacrifice, was bitter; nevertheless, this false altar sweetly fed his innate hunger—and, to keep the false in an attitude of real, he dreamed more, drank more. In the three years which had passed since then he retained only the love of drifting.
As he now looked seriously up into Jane's face he was swept by one thought: tragedy, cruelty, disappointment were entitled to no place in the atmosphere of her dwelling. With a pang he realized that Dale was bringing them all to her. With a bound, something that was very far from being false, awoke in his heart, whispering how she might be spared. Then he perceived her still smiling down at him.