The Moth Decides: A Novel

by Edward Alden Jewell

Louise stepped out of the dilapidated coach. The station stood within a few rods of the seashore—a situation once accommodating the convenience of an enormous summer hotel, which a few years previous had taken fire and vanished in smoke. With it had vanished also the fondest hopes of the town. However, the ornate railroad terminus still stood just where it had stood during the days of glory. Thank God it was spared, for it had about it a relative magnificence which the impoverished hamlet could ill afford to lose. It might, of course, be more centrally located; still, there was a kind of grace in its sad vigil.

Miss Needham, with considerable time to waste, surveyed the age-softened ruins of the vast hotel and quite cheerfully revived, for her amusement, memories of the time when she was Hilda's age and used to come here to dancing parties and occasional dinners with her family. She paced up and down upon what had once been the walk leading grandly to the hotel from the wharves and the railroad station. Now the way was rank with grass and weeds.

Ah, yes. She had promenaded here in that long-ago time, nor had she walked alone, as she was walking now. Oh, no. And a slight flush, even after all these years, crept into her face as she remembered Harold Gates. Yes, he had walked beside her here, and they had talked together of many things, and laughed a great deal. How she had laughed in the old days! How gay they were! And over there on the channel pier, close to the bowling alley, she had let Harold kiss her, also. Before the summer was over she had let him kiss her rather a good many times. Of course they did not really love each other. They were only just awfully good friends. Harold was residing in the hotel with his parents. Louise only saw him when the Rev. Needham decided they would go in to town and dine. Harold kept promising that he would come out to the Point some day and see her, but he never came. Oh, yes—how memories swarm back, once the tide of their return has set in! Yes, once he did come; but it was only as a member of a picnic party from the hotel. They brought baskets with them and had a fine revel on the beach, quite near the Needham cottage. In the evening they built a fire. But Louise saw her hero only for a moment on that occasion, after all. They walked down the dark beach a little way, and he put his arm around her, and she let him kiss her; but when he said he had to go back to the fire again, there was naturally nothing to do but let him go. The trouble was, he seemed to have a special girl in the picnic party on whom his attentions must be lavished. So young, yet already such a dashing man of the world! But for Louise it wasn't very satisfying.

"What a fool I was!" she cried to herself, almost angrily, even at this comfortable distance. And then she laughed: "What a silly little fool!"

Harold Gates was all nicely married and settled down now; a Chicago girl, and they had a baby. Harold had mailed her a postcard with the baby's picture on it, and across the bottom of the picture he had written, in his firm business hand: "Merry Christmas from the three Gates." Was it not strongly to be doubted whether Harold at length even remembered how lover-like they had been that summer, he and she? Well, it was rather to be hoped he didn't remember; and yet, with a queer little pang for just a moment, Louise thought she couldn't endure his having entirely forgotten....

Well, she had certainly been free enough with her affections in those days! Yes, she had been very free. As Louise quitted the ruins (which had an odd, symbolic aspect this morning) and wandered off along the beach, snatches of the prodigality of her past flared up, distressing her, thrilling her a little, filling her heart with gloomy though not exactly acute aversion. Ah, she thought, the kisses that had been spent in vain! And yet they had not seemed entirely in vain at the time—not all of them, at any rate.

From a glancing inventory of those more trifling indulgences of her early days, she soared to the vastly more vital affair with Richard. That, indeed, was different. Yes, that was another matter altogether. Richard was her first real lover. The others were mere boy-sweet-hearts, or they were, like Harold Gates, just awfully good friends. Richard had always seemed mature to her: a man. She had always felt herself a woman in his presence. Their affair, wretchedly as it had turned out, was undeniably animated by the love that flashes between men and women. It had a new tenseness, a new dizziness, a new depth. It was magnificent and gripping; had the true ring of authority and surrender in it. Yes, it was a thing of intense intoxication, and maintained, so far, at least, as she was concerned, an unfaltering white heat.

"And yet—for him," she told herself as she walked close beside the little waves, "it wasn't like that. No, it couldn't have been, even—even during those wonderful times, when we...." And she flushed, as though not even solitude were an utterly dependable guardian of her crimson thoughts. She lowered her eyes, lest impartial nature suddenly be caught up into an impersonation which should cry shame against her.

Oh, yes. She had given her whole heart to Richard. Almost, almost.... She shuddered. "What a terrible thing it is!" she told herself. "What a terrible thing, being deceived in a man! But how is one to know? How can one always tell?"

Ah, how indeed? She went on a little way, thinking darkly and arriving nowhere.