Black is White

by George Barr McCutcheon

He arose in the mornings, haggard from lack of reposeful sleep. In a way, he slept with one ear open, constantly striving to catch himself with the dream-name on his lips. He would awake with a start many times in the night, and always there seemed to be the vague, ghostlike whisper of a name dying away in the stillness that greeted his return to wakefulness.

Now he confessed to himself that his dreams were of Matilde, as they had been during all the years. Heretofore they had been mere impressions upon his intelligence, and seldom remembered. They did not represent pictures or incidents in which she appeared as a potent factor, but brief monodies, with her name as the single note, her face a passing, yet impressive, vision. He had not realised how frequent, how real these dreams were until now.

He sometimes lay perfectly still after these awakenings, wondering if Yvonne was listening at his closed door, straining his ears for the sound of a creaking board that would betray her presence as she stole back to her own bed.

What surprised and puzzled him most was her serenity in the face of these involuntary revelations. She did not appear to be disturbed by the fact that his dreams, his most secret thoughts, were of another woman. There was nothing in her manner to indicate that she suffered any of the pangs of jealousy, humiliation, dismay, or doubt that might reasonably have been expected under the circumstances. She seemed to put the matter entirely out of her mind as trivial, unimportant, unvexing. He found himself wondering what his own state of mind would be if the conditions were reversed and it was she who cried out in her sleep.

Frederic was alert, shifty, secretive. He knew himself to be the link in the chain that would offer the least resistance of any if it came to the question of endurance. He realised that the slightest tug at the chain would cause it to snap, and that the break would never be repaired. His stepmother for the present fortified the weak spot in the chain; but would her strength be sufficient to support the strain that was to be imposed upon both links in the end?

He watched her like a hawk, ever on the lookout for the slightest signs of commendation, reproof, warning, encouragement. She alone stood between him and what appeared to be the inevitable. The truce was a mask that hid none of the real features of the situation. When would it be discarded?

After that illuminating hour in her boudoir he saw himself in a far from noble position. The situation was no longer indefinite. He had taken a step that could not be recalled. His loyalty to Lydia had been tested, and the sickening truth came out—he was a traitor! He knew in his soul that he loved the girl. His conscience told him so. But his conscience suddenly had become an elastic thing that stretched over a pretty wide scope of emotions. These he tried to analyse and, failing to do so with credit to himself, settled back into a state of apathy better described as sullen self-pity. He even went so far as to blame his father for the new blight that had been put upon him.

Of the three, Lydia alone faced the situation with courage. She was young, she was good, she was inexperienced, but she saw what was going on beneath the surface with a clarity of vision that would have surprised an older and more practised person; and, seeing, was favoured with the strength to endure pain that otherwise would have been insupportable.

She knew that Frederic was infatuated. She did not try to hide the truth from herself. The boy she loved was slipping away from her, and only chance could set his feet back in the old path from which he blindly strayed. Her woman's heart told her that it was not love he felt for Yvonne. The strange mentor that guides her sex out of the ignorance of youth into an understanding of hitherto unpresented questions revealed to her the nature of his feeling for this woman.

He would come back to her in time, she knew, chastened; the same instinct that revealed his frailties to her also defended his sense of honour. The unthinkable could never happen!