Perhaps Douglas would not remember about the crackers, after all?—with the blood heating and chilling in her face, as she looked out of the window, and then at the clock,—her nervous fingers shaking, as she arranged them on the plate. She wished she had some other way of making him welcome; but what could poor Dode do? She could not talk to him, had read nothing but the Bible and Jay's "Meditations"; she could not show glimpses of herself, as most American women can, in natural, dramatic words. Palmer sang for her,—sometimes, Schubert's ballads, Mendelssohn: she could not understand the words, of course; she only knew that his soul seemed to escape through the music, and come to her own. She had a strange comprehension of music, inherited from the old grandfather who left her his temper,--that supernatural gift, belonging to but few souls among those who love harmony, to understand and accept its meaning. She could not play or sing; she looked often in the dog's eyes, wondering if its soul felt as dumb and full as hers; but she could not sing. If she could, what a story she would have told in a wordless way to this man who was coming! All she could do to show that he was welcome was to make crackers. Cooking is a sensual, grovelling utterance of feeling, you think? Yet, considering the drift of most women's lives, one fancies that as pure and deep love syllables itself every day in beefsteaks as once in Sapphic odes. It is a natural expression for our sex, too, somehow. Your wife may keep step with you in keen sympathy, in brain and soul; but if she does not know whether you like muffins or toast best for breakfast, her love is not the kind for this world, nor the best kind for any.
She waited, looking out at the gray road. He would not come so late?—her head beginning to ache. The room was too hot. She went into her chamber, and began to comb her hair back; it fell in rings down her pale cheeks,—her lips were crimson,—her brown eyes shone soft, expectant; she leaned her head down, smiling, thanking God for her beauty, with all her heart. Was that a step?—hurrying back. Only Coly stamping in the stable. It was eight o'clock. The woman's heart kept time to the slow ticking of the clock, with a sick thudding, growing heavier every moment. He had been in the mountains but once since the war began. It was only George he came to see? She brought out her work and began to sew. He would not come: only George was fit to be his friend. Why should he heed her poor old father, or her?—with the undefinable awe of an unbred mind for his power and wealth of culture. And yet—something within her at the moment rose up royal—his equal. He knew her, as she might be! Between them there was something deeper than the shallow kind greeting they gave the world,—recognition. She stood nearest to him,—she only! If sometimes she had grown meanly jealous of the thorough-bred, made women, down in the town yonder, his friends, in her secret soul she knew she was his peer,—she only! And he knew it. Not that she was not weak in mind or will beside him, but she loved him, as a man can be loved but once. She loved him,—that was all!
She hardly knew if he cared for her. He told her once that he loved her; there was a half-betrothal; but that was long ago. She sat, her work fallen on her lap, going over, as women will, for the thousandth time, the simple story, what he said, and how he looked, finding in every hackneyed phrase some new, divine meaning. The same story; yet Betsey finds it new by your kitchen-fire to-night, as Gretchen read it in those wondrous pearls of Faust's!
Surely he loved her that day! though the words were surprised, half-accident: she was young, and he was poor, so there must be no more of it then. The troubles began just after, and he went into the army. She had seen him but once since, and he said nothing then, looked nothing. It is true they had not been alone, and he thought perhaps she knew all: a word once uttered for him was fixed in fate. She would not have thought the story old or certain, if he told it to her forever. But he was coming to-night!
Dode was one of those women subject to sudden revulsions of feeling. She remembered now, what in the hurry and glow of preparing his welcome she had crushed out of sight, that it was better he should not come,—that, if he did come, loyal and true, she must put him back, show him the great gulf that lay between them. She had strengthened herself for months to do it. It must be done to-night. It was not the division the war made, nor her father's anger, that made the bar between them. Her love would have borne that down. There was something it could not bear down. Palmer was a doubter, an infidel. What this meant to the girl, we cannot tell; her religion was not ours. People build their faith on Christ, as a rock,—a factitious aid. She found Him in her life, long ago, when she was a child, and her soul grew out from Him. He was a living Jesus to her, not a dead one. That was why she had a healthy soul. Pain was keener to her than to us; the filth, injustice, bafflings in the world,—they hurt her; she never glossed them over as "necessity," or shirked them as we do: she cried hot, weak tears, for instance, over the wrongs of the slaves about her, her old father's ignorance, her own cramped life; but she never said for these things, "Does God still live?" She saw, close to the earth, the atmosphere of the completed work, the next step upward,—the kingdom of that Jesus; the world lay in it, swathed in bands of pain and wrong and effort, growing, unconscious, to perfected humanity. She had faith in the Recompense, she thought faith would bring it right down into earth, and she tried to do it in a practical way. She did do it: a curious fact for your theology, which I go out of the way of the story to give you,—a peculiar power belonging to this hot-tempered girl,—an anomaly in psychology, but you will find it in the lives of Jung Stilling and St. John. This was it: she and the people about her needed many things, temporal and spiritual: her Christ being alive, and not a dead sacrifice and example alone, whatever was needed she asked for, and it was always given her. Always. I say it in the full strength of meaning. I wish every human soul could understand the lesson; not many preachers would dare to teach it to them. It was a commonplace matter with her.
Now do you see what it cost her to know that Palmer was an infidel? Could she marry him? Was it a sin to love him? And yet, could she enter heaven, he left out? The soul of the girl that God claimed, and the Devil was scheming for, had taken up this fiery trial, and fought with it savagely. She thought she had determined; she would give him up. But—he was coming! he was coming! Why, she forgot everything in that, as if it were delirium. She hid her face in her hands. It seemed as if the world, the war, faded back, leaving this one human soul alone with herself. She sat silent, the fire charring lower into glooming red shadow. You shall not look into the passion of a woman's heart.
She rose at last, with the truth, as Gaunt had taught it to her, full before her, that it would be crime to make compact with sin or a sinner. She went out on the porch, looking no longer to the road, but up to the uncertain sky. Poor, simple Dode! So long she had hid the thought of this man in her woman's breast, clung to it for all strength, all tenderness! It stood up now before her,—Evil. Gaunt told her to-night that to love him was to turn her back on the cross, to be traitor to that blood on Calvary. Was it? She found no answer in the deadened sky, or in her own heart. She would give him up, then? She looked up, her face slowly whitening. "I love him," she said, as one who had a right to speak to God. That was all. So, in old times, a soul from out of the darkness of His judgments faced the Almighty, secure in its own right: "Till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me."
Yet Dode was a weak woman; the trial went home to the very marrow. She stood by the wooden railing, gathering the snow off of it, putting it to her hot forehead, not knowing what she did. Her brain was dull, worn-out, she thought; it ached. She wished she could sleep, with a vacant glance at the thick snow-clouds, and turning to go in. There was a sudden step on the path,—he was coming! She would see him once more,—once! God could not deny her that! her very blood leaping into hot life.
"Theodora!" (He never called her the familiar "Dode," as the others did.) "Why, what ails you, child?"—in his quiet, cordial fashion, "Is this the welcome you give me? The very blood shivers in your hand! Your lips are blue!"—opening the door for her to go in, and watching her.
His eye was more that of a physician than a lover, she felt, and cowered down into a chair he put before the fire for her,—sheltering her face with her hands, that he might not see how white it was, and despise her. Palmer stood beside her, looking at her quietly; she had exhausted herself by some excitement, in her old fashion; he was used to these spasms of bodily languor,—a something he pitied, but could not comprehend. It was an odd symptom of the thoroughness with which her life was welded into his, that he alone knew her as weak, hysteric, needing help at times. Gaunt or her father would have told you her nerves were as strong as a ploughman's.