Down among men

by Will Levington Comfort

She laughed, repeating that she was not ill.... She was always thinner in summer, she said. In her withholding, there was destructiveness for the zeal he had brought; and that which she set herself resolutely to impart—the sense of their separateness—found its lodgment in his nature. It would always be there now, she thought; it would augment, like ice about a spring in early winter, until the frost sealed the running altogether. The lover was stayed, though his mind would not yet believe.

“Is it really possible,” he said, sitting before her restlessly, “that I am here in your house, and that I can stay, and talk with you, and see you and hear you play? I have thought about it so much that it’s hard to realize.”

“It is quite what a lover would say,” she thought.... She had to watch her words. Her heart went out to him, but her mind remembered the work to do.... Self-consciousness, and a weighing of words—how horrible between them!

“And what made you come? I had just read your letter, when the telephone rang——”

“I shouldn’t have sent that letter,” he answered. “I must have sent it because of the things I thought, and didn’t write.... The night before, I had come home to the cabin—after Markheim and the city. It was dreadful—with the work gone. Yesterday was too much for me—the Spring day—alone—not ready to begin again—you here.... I got to thinking about you so fast—and the shame of it, for us to be apart—that I couldn’t endure it.... I thought of going to you in a month—in a week; and then when the letter was mailed, I thought of it being with you this morning.... A thousand things poured into my mind. It seemed finally as if everything was wrong between us; as if I had already remained too long from you. It was like fighting devils.... And then I tried to beat the letter to you, but it got here by an earlier train this morning.”

He was like a child to her, telling about something that had frightened him.

Their silences were strained. His eyes had a sleepless look. Betty saw it working upon him—the repulsion that had gone from her. She wished she might go to his arms and die. It suddenly came over her—the uselessness of it all—the uselessness of being a woman, of waiting, of final comprehension—all for this rending.... Yet she saw what would happen if she followed her heart. He would take her. There would be a radiant season, for the lover within him was not less because his work was for other men. But there was also within him (his Guardian had made her believe it) her rival, a solitary stranger come to the world for service, who would not delay long to show him how he had betrayed his real work, how he had caged his greater self, his splendid pinions useless.... Morning would hear the world calling for work he could not do.

“There seem all about me invisible restraints.”

This from the letter of the morning—alone remained with her. It expressed it all. The sentence uprose in her mind. It was more dominant to her than if a father had forbade his coming, or even if by his coming another was violated.

All the forbiddings that Society can bring against desire are but symbols compared to the invisible restraints of a full man’s nature. Men who are held by symbols, ruled by exterior voices and fears, are not finished enough to be a law unto themselves.... It wasn’t the terror of these thoughts, but tenderness in answer to his hurried tumble of explanation regarding his coming, that had filled Betty’s eyes. He caught the sparkle of a tear in profile, and came to her.