A whole decade passed after this, before he happened to learn in a conversation overheard between two trappers, that for eleven priceless, irreplaceable years, he had been a free man.
A GREAT LOVE
When my pretty young cousin and god-daughter, Flossie, fell in love with Peter Carr, we all felt rather apprehensive about her future. But Flossie faced the facts with an honest, even a rather grim resolution which surprised us. She said with only a little tremor in her voice that she never expected to occupy the place in Peter’s heart which Eleanor Arling had taken forever, but that she loved him so much she was willing to take whatever he could give her. It wasn’t his fault, she said, with the quaintest chivalric defiance of us, if poor Peter hadn’t more to give. She thought a great love like that “was a noble thing in any one’s life, even if it did make them perfectly miserable.” If Miss Arling felt that personal happiness must be sacrificed for her art, why, that was an exalted attitude to take, and Peter’s sorrow was “sacred in her eyes”; and so on and so forth—the usual things that are said in such cases by people who are in sympathy with that sort of thing.
So they were married, with the understanding that Peter could still go on worshiping the very sound of Eleanor Arling’s name and turning white when he came across a mention of her or of her pictures in the cabled news of the art world in Paris. Flossie was, so we all agreed, a good sport if there ever was one, and she stuck gamely to her bargain. She had transferred the big silver-framed photograph of Miss Arling from Peter’s bachelor quarters to the wall of their new living room, and she dusted it as conscientiously as she did the Botticelli Spring which I gave her for a wedding present. It was not easy for her. I have seen her flush deeply and set her lips hard as Peter looked up at the dusky brooding eyes shadowed by the casque of black braids. Flossie is one of the small, quick, humming-bird women, with nothing to set against Miss Arling’s massive classic beauty, and by her expression at such moments, I know she felt her defenselessness bitterly. But she never let Peter see how she felt. She had taken him, the darkness of his unrequited passion heavy on him, and if she ever regretted it, she gave no sign.
She flashed about the house, keeping it in perfect order, feeding Peter the most delicious food, and after the twins came, caring for them with no strain or nervous tension, with only a bright thankful enjoyment of them that was warm on your heart like sunshine. Peter enjoyed his pretty home and devoted wife and lively babies and excellent food. He began to lay on flesh, and to lose the haggard, gray leanness which, just after Miss Arling had gone away, had made people turn and look after him in the street. Architecture is, even when you are busy and successful as Peter is, a rather sedentary occupation, offering no resistance to such cooking as Flossie’s. Peter’s skin began to grow rosy and sleek, his hair from being rough and bristling, began to look smooth and glossy. It was quite beautiful hair as long as it lasted; but as the years went on and the twins began to be big children, it, unlike the rest of Peter, began to look thinner. Peter with a bald spot was queer enough, but before he was thirty-five it was not a mere spot, but all the top of his head. We thought it very becoming to him as it gave him a beneficent, thoughtful, kindly look, like a philosopher. And his added weight was also distinctly an improvement to his looks. We often said to each other that nobody would ever have thought that crazy-looking boy would make such a nice-looking man.
Flossie had not changed an atom. Those tiny, slight women occasionally remain stationary in looks as though they were in cold storage. She continued to worship Peter, and as he had made a good husband, we had nothing to say, although of course you never can understand what an excessively devoted wife sees in her husband, year after year. Flossie never mitigated in the least the extremity of her attention to Peter’s needs. When he was called away on a business trip she always saw that his satchel was packed with just what he would need; and she would have risen from her grave to put exactly the right amount of cream and sugar into his coffee.
The rest of us had forgotten all about Miss Arling’s connection with Peter, and had grown so used to the big photograph of the big, handsome woman that we did not see it any more, when one morning I found Flossie waiting for me as I came downstairs. She was very pale, with dark circles under her eyes. She was holding a newspaper in her clenched hand—the New York newspaper they had always taken on account of its full, gossipy “Happenings in the World of Art” column. Flossie opened it to that column now, and read in a dry voice: “American art lovers are promised a treat in the visit of the famous Eleanor Arling who arrives on the Mauretania. Miss Arling plans an extensive trip in her native country from which she has been absent for many years. She will visit New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Denver and San Francisco. Her keen artistic memory is shown by her intention of breaking her trip for a few days at ...” Flossie’s voice broke.... “She’s coming here!” she gasped. Then collecting herself, she continued reading, “Miss Arling told our interviewer that she once passed some weeks there and remembers with pleasure a composition of cliff, water, and pine trees. She wishes to see it again.”
“Cliff, water, and pine trees,” repeated Flossie, her eyes blazing. “Of course we know it is nothing in the way of a landscape she is coming to see here!” I saw that her little fists were clenched. “I won’t stand it!” she cried, “I won’t stand it!”