“Yes,” Charlie went on, after a moment’s thought, “I’m glad, mighty glad, I came here when I did.” He gave a short mirthless laugh. “I doubt if my satisfaction is inspired by any moral scruple,” he added hastily, as the other nodded. “Say, can you understand how I feel when I say I believe all moral scruple has somehow decayed, rotted, died in me? I don’t mean that I don’t want to be decent. I do; but that’s because decency appeals to me from some sort of artistic feelings which have survived the wreck I made of life years ago. No, moral scruples were killed stone dead when I was chasing through Europe hunting Art, searching for it with eyes too young to gaze upon anything more beautiful than a harsh life of strict discipline.
“Now I have to follow inclinations that have somehow got the better of all the best qualities in me. That’s how I’m fixed now. And, queer as it may seem, that’s been my salvation—if you can call it salvation. When I first came here I was ready to drift any old way. I did drift into every muck-hole that appealed to me. I didn’t care. As I said, moral scruples were dead in me. Then this same self-indulgence did me a good turn. The only good turn it’s ever done me.”
The eyes gazing across the valley grew very soft.
“Say, Bill,” he began again, after a brief, reflective pause, “I came here, and—and found a woman. The greatest, the best woman God ever created. She was strong, big-spirited, beautiful. She’d come out here to earn a living with her sister. She’d left the East for no better reason than her big spirit of independence, and a desire to live beyond the narrow confines of convention. Say, I think I went crazy about that woman.”
The man was smiling very softly. All Bill’s senses were alert. His slow brain was groping for the subtle comprehension which he felt was needed for a full understanding.
“That woman came near to saving me—from myself,” Charlie went on, with a tenderness he was unaware of. “And it was through that very weakness of self-indulgence. I love her that bad it’s bigger than anything else in my life. Say, I’d rather have her good opinion, and—and liking—than anything in life. It’s more to me than any of those desires that have always claimed me. But there are times when even her influence isn’t quite big enough. There are times when even she can’t hold me up. There are things back of my head I can’t beat—even through her—at times. That’s why I say she’s come near saving me. Not quite—but near.
“Bill, guess you can’t understand. Guess no one can. I fight, fight, fight. She fights, too. She fights without knowing it, too, because always in my mind is a picture of her handsome face, and eyes of disapproval. That picture wins most times—but not always. Wait till you see Kate, Bill, then you’ll understand. I just love her to death—and that’s all there is to it. She only likes me. She’ll never feel for me same as I do for her. How can she?—I’m—but I guess you know what I am. Everybody who knows me knows that I’m a hopeless drunkard.”
The man’s final admission came without any self-pity or bitterness. It is doubtful if there was any shame in him at the acknowledgment. Bill marveled. He could not understand. He tried to picture himself making such an admission, and to estimate his feelings at it. Shame, unutterable shame, was all he could think of, and his good-natured face flushed with shame for his brother, who had somehow so squandered all his better feelings.
Charlie saw the flush, and the tenderness died out of his eyes. He shook his head.
“Don’t feel that way about it,” he cried bitterly. “I’m not worth it. Besides, I can’t stand it from—you. Only—from Kate. I know what you’re thinking. You’re bound to think that way. You were born with a man’s body—a big, strong man’s body. I was born weak and puny. I was born all wrong. I don’t say it in excuse. I merely state a fact. Look at me beside you, both children of the same parents. I’m like a woman, I can’t even grow the hair of a man on my face. My mother reveled in what she regarded as the artistic beauty of my features, my hands”—he held out his thin hands with their long tapering fingers—“and my love for all those softer things of life that should only be found in female nature. She gloried in those things and fostered them. She did her best, all unknowingly, bless her, to kill the last vestige of manhood in me. And all the time it was crying out, crying out bitterly. It was growing stronger and stronger, as my physique remained undeveloped. Finally it became too great to withstand. Then, when it turned loose, I was without power to check it. My moral strength was not equal to the tide, and all my passions swayed me whithersoever they chose. Again I say this is no excuse; it is merely fact as I see it. I was powerless to resist temptation. The woman who once looses her hold on her moral nature can never recover herself. That is nature—her nature—and, by the curse of fate, it is also mine.”