Have you ever, on a railway journey, or in a packed public meeting, from which there was no escape without unwelcome comment, fought against deadly faintness? How the landscape crawled past the spinning, flashing, wheels! How the sermon, the address pelted on, a meaningless torrent of vocables, against the brain that was tense and taut for one thing only—that thing deliverance! In such a mood Fenella hurried through the streets and parks toward her home. She had forgotten her purse at setting out, and the cheapest, slowest amelioration of her journey was denied her. Another woman! Another woman! No defeat could have been more complete. Everything had been imaginable but this. Against every aspect that the annihilation of her suspense could have shown her she would have done battle—save only this. Women are taught by their whole life's training to seek concrete motives for action and, when found, to respect them. To principle they concede little, and they expect as little from it. If they fight selfishly, at least they fight bravely, naked and unambushed—warrior, weapon and reward in one. Auguring nothing from past treacheries, so the treachery be not to them, betrayal always finds them unprepared, as, once shattered, nothing really rebuilds their faith. Could it be otherwise? What value to them in a love or a devotion whose incentive lies outside of them and beyond them?
She reached home at last. Her mother had been watching for her from the window and ran to open the door. She had a letter in her hand. Where had the girl been? How ill she looked! There was news for her, brought by a boy messenger half an hour ago. The poor child could only shake her head and, taking her letter, seek refuge once more in her own room. During her absence her trunk had been unpacked; all the silver vanities were ranged, with snowy doylies beneath them, on the woman's altar of her dressing-table. The bed on which she had tossed and moaned all night was spread white and cool and smooth. A little breeze was rising, and fluttered the curtains at the open windows.
After what she had seen no letter could matter much; but she read it through dutifully, with a little sigh as each page fluttered from her hands to the floor. It was long and kind and tender; the letter of a man who would select his language at the very judgment seat of God; a fair copy, without blot or erasure, product of a night no less sleepless than her own. If the balance lay all at one side of the account, at least he had ruled the ledger straight. The old arguments were reiterated, the old impossibilities pressed home. The dilemma, evaded once before, had confronted Ingram again, harder, crueller for the delay, as is the manner of evaded dilemmas. He had had to choose again between wounding her pride or wounding her heart—to death this time—and with the anxiety such a man will always have to preserve a woman's good opinion at all costs, which is half fine feeling and half vanity, he had chosen the second. Wisely? Who shall say? At least his end was gained. He was loved at the last. She pressed the sheet which bore his signature madly, unrestrainedly against her mouth, blurring the ink with her moist lips. She would have kissed his hand so—holding the knife at her throat.
And with the kiss her childhood ended. Then and there the thorn-plaited crown of her womanhood was proffered her. She put it on bravely and unflinchingly. She did not despair of life nor of life's end. Flowers, laurels, she felt might crown her yet, but under blossom or bay leaf she would always know where to look for the old scars. And, finding them, she would bless them for his sake.
An hour later Mrs. Barbour, trembling a little at her own temerity, knocked at the door, and, getting no answer, opened it. Nelly was sitting on the bed, dry-eyed, sucking her thumb. The pages of her lover's last letter were littered over the quilt and on the floor.
The mother asked no question. She closed the sash softly, drew down the blind, and, going to her daughter without a word, held her close—held her for two long hours, while the Sabbath baked meats went to grease and the gong roared unheeded below; held her through a tempest so deep at life's sources that she trembled and prayed as the frail body shook against her breast. But the green tree bears the hurricane because it is green. The storm was passing away in sobs that grew fainter and fainter, the stained cheek was beginning to move restlessly upon her drenched shoulder, when she spoke:
"Was it bad news?—from him?" she asked, and compressed her lips.
"Mother," said the girl, with a fresh outburst of tears that was only the leaves shaking off the rain, "don't blame him! It's not quite his fault. He's so unhappy. We shall never see Paul again. And oh, mummy, I've been a bad, undutiful, careless child to you—but I'll be better now."
"You've been my dearest child, always," Mrs. Barbour answered. "It will be the old times over again for both of us. I ask nothing more."