XIII
FIND SOUL—FIND SORROW
In the middle of the night that followed his whole holiday Paul woke and cursed himself, at length and with conviction. Years ago, in the good old days when punishment was punishment, with no nonsense talked about reformatory intent, among the toiling groups that tilled the earth, made the road or lightered the harbored vessel, here and there a man was noticed who dragged his left leg a little as he walked. He was not crippled, nor deformed; he was likely, indeed, to be strong and formidable beyond his fellows; he did his day's work and earned his day's wage with the best. But the leg dragged—always would drag. And the reason passed in whispers: this was an old galley slave—a man who had worked at the bagnio. His leg, from force of habit, still paused for the effort that once dragged ball and chain behind it.
I had not known Ingram long before I guessed that, at one period of his life or another, women had meant a great deal for him, but that they had never meant happiness. In what did the impression reside? I can't say. In a regard perhaps—an inflection of voice—an over quickness to catch sorrowful meanings—in what he did not say quite as much as in what he did. But I was as sure of it then when I knew nothing as now when I know everything. He could not always have loved in vain. Partings there had been, tearful, emotional, reluctant, but always partings. Letters reached him even now through changes and redirections, letters filled with bright, helpful gossip, of the new friends—the unimagined husband—the children that might so easily have been his; with only here and there between the lines, for his eye to see and no other, the tenderness that women keep for the man who could win their regard but not their persons. And if Ingram felt sure of anything, I knew he felt sure of this: that the chapter of his life from which they were a legacy was closed and dead—a great stone rolled to the door of its tomb, sealed and mortised, and guarded by a whole cohort of wise intentions. And now, in a week, he had fallen—fallen as precipitately as the greenest of "rash and inconsiderate youth." Relying on his experience and disillusionment, he had broken the covenant of the old, wise king, and, into some unsuspected vacuum of his heart, a pretty face, a plaintive regard, a few surface tricks of dress and manner had rushed and were not to be extricated without endless pain and trouble. Again and again, as he turned from side to side in the night watches, he went over the images of his fall, for so, in all seriousness, this strange man regarded it. He felt the thrill of the young throat stretched to meet him, caught the fragrance, so faint—so faint that he had not noticed it till then—of the orris root in which her clothes had lain folded; heard the little fluttering sigh as his fervor stopped her breath. It had been the first kiss of passion that had ever touched her lips; he knew because——oh! never mind how he knew. What, exactly, he wondered, and was not the first to wonder, did such a kiss signify to a good woman? Board and bed, he surmised dimly, at some future date; home and home circle, taxes and life insurance, doctor's bills, children clapping their hands round Christmas trees. And this from him! He laughed out in the darkness—so loud that the glass shade of the lamp by which he had read himself to sleep vibrated with the sound. From him, a mere embodied intelligence, driven by loneliness and mental suffering to self-expression, doomed now, while life should last, to breed and bear the calamitous offspring of the brain.
He had given her his address because that much seemed called for in decency, but he did not expect a letter for a while. Yet when, after a few more feverish and wakeful hours and the immense solace of a cold tub, he passed into the sitting-room in his bath robe, a letter lay on the breakfast tray that he knew could be from no one else; a square pale mauve envelope, with an ingenious flap, addressed in a straggling schoolgirl hand.
"Dear Mr. Ingram,
"I hope you got home safe and had no haresbreath escapes from motors. I was nearly run over the other day, I only got on the pavement in the knick of time.
"I have put the bird in the conservatery and given him a lot of seed, he throws it about with his beek, but hasn't eaten any. I haven't given him a name because I don't know yet if he is going to live. Ma was crazy, but I smouthed her down.
"No one ever kissed me before, but some one did hold my hand once quite a long time. I couldn't riggle it away.
"Rock is ill, he has eaten a plumb stone I think and will have (to) have some caster oil. If it was one of mine that makes it this year not never. How exciting!