“Good-bye,” he said.
She lifted her face from her hands; it was white as a flower.
He said, quietly: “I shall return anyway. When I come again give me your answer. If you find that you cannot care for me — that way — it will be all right. Our friendship will endure anyway.... Will it not?”
She made a tremulous sound of assent.
“Then — good-bye.”
He leaned forward and took her narrow hand between his. It lay there, lifeless; and he touched it with his lips. “Dearest — dearest—” he whispered. Suddenly she strained away from him, wrenched her hand free, covering her eyes again, breathless, trembling: “No,” she stammered, “no, no no! You must not come back! I can’t see you again — after this. I can not! — I can not. Oh — oh — you don’t know — you never can know — what you have done — what you have done!—”
He stood a moment looking at her where she had shrunk aside cowering against the back of the wagon seat.
Then he turned and ran for the track, the Emma’s raucous warning filling his ears.
VI
He wrote her when he reached New York. She did not answer his letter.
In October he wrote again from San Francisco, saying that he was unable to go to Anne’s Bridge for the shooting and that business matters were likely to detain him for some weeks yet.
She did not reply.
In November he wrote again from New Orleans, a gay, optimistic, cheerful letter, gently rallying her on her talent for voluminous correspondence, pretending that he found it physically impossible to answer all her letters.
Then, in more serious vein, he told her that his business interests were likely to detain him for some time; that as far as regarded the business transaction in which she was concerned, she need have no apprehensions because the deal was nearly ready for closing.
Nor need you remain under any unhappy apprehension regarding my friendship for you. It is a solid, sane, enduring friendship, unshakable, ineradicable.
Merely because you may not care to become my wife is no reason that our friendship should falter or become less firm. There are many days ahead of us — many forests to invite us, many streams to lure and welcome the two comrades who gave such a good account of themselves and of the trout at Anne’s Bridge.
You are my ideal of a comrade, of a companion. And if, also, you happen to be my ideal as a wife, is that anything to make you unhappy?
You need have no fear that I shall not know how to accept any answer you care to make me. Love is not to be commandeered, nor persuaded, nor implored. Love is, or is not; love offers and is offered; but love never merely accepts.
Strong characters know whether or not they love. Yours is a strong character. You know already; you know now, at this moment, whether or not you love me.
If love is denied to us, then there remains as noble a sentiment, as fine, as lofty for us to thank God for. I mean our comradeship with all it implies of unselfish friendship and disinterested desire for each other’s happiness and content.
Two such people as you and I ought to be worth something in the world, and to the world.
And so you must not be unhappy if you cannot give me what I have asked. Nor shall I remain unhappy in losing what I have desired of you, and of no other woman I have ever seen.
Because — except for that single miracle — if it must be denied me — there remains so much — everything in you that I care for, desire, admire, and need.
My business is going well. I never told you, I think, what my business is. It is this: when people want to build any sort of a railway they sometimes come and confer with me and with several of my acquaintances. And it is our business to find the ways and means to build and finance the road.
And here is a bit of news that will amuse you. This client of mine who is to take over practically the entire township of Anne’s Bridge desires to have a better track, better equipment, and better service on that line which is now presided over by the solitary and capricious Emma.
So I’m afraid the Emma’s casual days are numbered, and I’m very sure that, in future, the trout under the iron bridge may remain there in security, undisturbed by engineers.
On my way North I am obliged to stop for a while in the various towns where people seem to desire to construct electric roads and that sort of thing. But I am slowly heading for New York; and after that my path leads to Anne’s Bridge.
Everything necessary to conclude the transaction involving your property is now ready. You and I can drive over to Sagamore City with the deed and have everything made right and tight whenever you desire to do so after my arrival at Anne’s Bridge.
And the minute the title passes a certified cheque will be placed in your hands.
I hope this letter will make you happy — as happy as it has made me to write it.
If you care to write me a line, you know how glad I’d be to have it.
You know, too, deep in your loyal heart that our friendship is worth while — well worth whatever breath of fire may pass over it to make it strong, pure, and abiding.
If that chastening fire must pass over it, or if the pure flame of love refine it, either way it shall be well for us.
You must never doubt it.
Your friend, JAMES DEAN, JR.
Toward the end of December he arrived in New York. There was a letter from her at his office:
It is better after all that you come to Anne’s Bridge. Not for the reason you may desire. But I cannot write you — I cannot write down what must be said to you — what you must be made to understand.
God has been kind since I knew you — as kind as you are. And the most wonderful things He has given me are these letters from you. Nobody can take them away; nobody now can take away from me the moments I have passed with them here alone in the house.
All that has become part of my life. It must remain as part — with the moments I have lived with your letters — even if our friendship ever falters and the days come when we see each other no more.
But it is better for you to come here once. It seems to be the only way. I have tried to write you what I must say, but I cannot. Yet, it must be said; it is necessary that you understand.
When you come, drive over in a sleigh from Sagamore City. I have no sleigh and the snow is too deep in the woods for my wagon.
This is all I can write.
Your friend, ANGELINA ALLENDE.
He answered, cheerfully but briefly, saying that he’d be up in a few days.
A day or two later came a telegram from him. The rural deliverer brought it on Christmas Eve.
She had been sitting all day by the kitchen window looking out at the woods across the snow. As usual one of his letters lay in her lap, her hands were clasped over it.
When the jingle of bells in the early dusk aroused her she rose, swaying a trifle, one hand pressed to her heart; then steadying herself she walked to the snow-choked front door, took the telegram, thanked the carrier in a faint voice, and returned to the kitchen to read it by candle light.
He would be there in an hour or so: that was the purport of the scribbled lines which blurred under her eyes.
After a while she rose as though very tired, and went slowly out to the barn.
His dogs greeted her frantically, and she petted them and turned them loose. For a few moments she watched them playing about like foxes in the snow; then she went slowly into the house and entered her bedroom.
There was a locked trunk there. When she found the key she unlocked it, raised the lid, knelt down, and drew from its depths a folded gown of gray wool.
There were cuffs there, too, and a collarette, and an apron, and a cap such as is worn by young girls at a fashionable cooking school — a rather pretty, round cap of some sheer stuff relieved by two starched wings.
She rose to her feet and undressed, letting the worn garments fall to the floor around her feet. Then, stepping clear of them, she dressed herself in the gray wool gow
n, collar, cuffs, apron, cap, and all.
There was a pair of low, square-toed, steel buckled shoes in the bottom of the trunk and an armful of copybooks.
She put on the shoes, took the books in her arms, closed the trunk, and went into the kitchen.
There was a chair by the white pine table. She seated herself, placed the copybooks on the table, and, folding her arms over them, dropped her head in the hollow of her elbow.
And here she waited his coming, her head bowed in her arms under the candle light.
It seemed a long time to wait. She had been afraid of tears; but none fell.
And at last she heard sleigh-bells very near, and then the snort and stamp of horses; heard his dogs’ loud greeting, and his laughter; heard his voice bidding the driver a Merry Christmas in gay farewell.
For an instant she was afraid that her knees were giving way, but she managed to rise. Then she moved toward the door, gained it, rested a moment, laid a shaking hand on the knob, dragged it open. And he stepped in out of the starry darkness with his dogs leaping about him, and very quietly took her into his arms.
For a moment her head lay on his shoulder, white face uplifted very still.
“Do you love me?” he said.
She looked up into his face, dumbly.
“Dear,” he said, “could you care for me that way?”
She summoned every atom of strength; her voice was only a whisper:
“Look at me,” she said— “look at these clothes I wear! Do you know what they are?”
He did not appear to comprehend. She released herself from his arms and stepped back, unsteadily.
“Have you never seen a woman dressed as I am?” she stammered. “This is the uniform of the Samaritan Reformatory for Women. Do you understand? I wore it for three years. Now do you understand?”
She turned and stretched out her arm toward the kitchen where the candle gleamed above the pile of copy books.
“There are my prison books,” she said,— “under the candle there. My name is on them. The Reformatory stamp is on them, too. Now do you — understand!—” Her voice broke and she turned blindly away; and was in his arms again with her first swaying step.
“Child,” he said gently, “I knew all that long ago. If that is what has troubled you let it trouble you no longer.”
She trembled so violently that he held her closer and half supported.
There was a silence, then a faint scratching on the stairs; and a hoarse voice from the darkness:
“Trouble! Plenty of trouble. Oh, my God!”
“Oh, my God!” he repeated staring at the parrot, suddenly and terribly aware where the bird had learned his dreary monologue of despair.
He gazed around him at the shadows in that sad and ancient house; glanced down at the trembling girl in his arms. Her prison cap had fallen back, and the dark hair clustered to her shoulders framing her pale face and throat.
“Dear,” he whispered, “look at me.” After a long while her dark eyes opened. He bent his head; their lips touched tremulously.
“Do you want me, now?” she breathed.
“Yes; on this Christmas Eve I have come here to Anne’s Bridge for the only gift I desire — to the only being in all the world who has the power to give it.”
“How can you — love me?”
“How can I refrain from loving you?”
Suddenly the tears blinded her. “Dearest,” he said under his breath,— “dearest — dearest!” and drew her arms to his neck.
They stood so, very still, her wet cheek against his breast, her little weather-roughened hands clutching his coat, tightening there as though it were the Cross.
There came a voice from the darkness of the stairs:
“Trouble — plenty of trouble, plenty of trouble! I wish you a Merry Christmas!”
THE END
BETWEEN FRIENDS
CONTENTS
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
I
Like a man who reenters a closed and darkened house and lies down; lying there, remains conscious of sunlight outside, of bird-calls, and the breeze in the trees, so had Drene entered into the obscurity of himself.
Through the chambers of his brain the twilit corridors where cringed his bruised and disfigured soul, there nothing stirring except the automatic pulses which never cease.
Sometimes, when the sky itself crashes earthward and the world lies in ruins from horizon to horizon, life goes on.
The things that men live through — and live!
But no doubt Death was too busy elsewhere to attend to Drene.
He had become very lean by the time it was all over. Gray glinted on his temples; gray softened his sandy mustache: youth was finished as far as he was concerned.
An odd idea persisted in his mind that it had been winter for many years. And the world thawed out very slowly for him.
But broken trees leaf out, and hewed roots sprout; and what he had so long mistaken for wintry ashes now gleamed warmly like the orange and gold of early autumn. After a while he began to go about more or less — little excursions from the dim privacy of mind and soul — and he found the sun not very gray; and a south wind blowing in the world once more.
Quair and Guilder were in the studio that day on business; Drene continued to modify his composition in accordance with Guilder’s suggestions; Quair, always curious concerning Drene, was becoming slyly impudent.
“And listen to me, Guilder. What the devil’s a woman between friends?” argued Quair, with a malicious side glance at Drene. “You take my best girl away from me—”
“But I don’t,” remarked his partner dryly.
“For the sake of argument, you do. What happens? Do I raise hell? No. I merely thank you. Why? Because I don’t want her if you can get her away. That,” he added, with satisfaction, “is philosophy. Isn’t it, Drene?”
Guilder intervened pleasantly:
“I don’t think Drene is particularly interested in philosophy. I’m sure I’m not. Shut up, please.”
Drene, gravely annoyed, continued to pinch bits of modeling wax out of a round tin box, and to stick them all over the sketch he was modifying.
Now and then he gave a twirl to the top of his working table, which revolved with a rusty squeak.
“If you two unusually intelligent gentlemen ask me what good a woman the world—” began Quair.
“But we don’t,” interrupted Guilder, in the temperate voice peculiar to his negative character.
“Anyway,” insisted Quair, “here’s what I think of ‘em—”
“My model, yonder,” said Drene, a slight shrug of contempt, “happens to be feminine, and may also be human. Be decent enough to defer the development of your rather tiresome theory.”
The girl on the model-stand laughed outright at the rebuke, stretched her limbs and body, and relaxed, launching a questioning glance at Drene.
“All right; rest a bit,” said the sculptor, smearing the bit of wax he was pinching over the sketch before him.
He gave another twirl or two to the table, wiped his bony fingers on a handful of cotton waste, picked up his empty pipe, and blew into the stem, reflectively.
Quair, one of the associated architects of the new opera, who had been born a gentleman and looked the perfect bounder, sauntered over to examine the sketch. He was still red from the rebuke he had invited.
Guilder, his senior colleague, got up from the lounge and walked over also. Drene fitted the sketch into the roughly designed group, where it belonged, and stood aside, sucking meditatively on his empty pipe.
After a silence:
“It’s all right,” said Guilder.
Quair remarked that the group seemed to lack flamboyancy. It is true, however, that, except for Guilder’s habitual restraint, the celebrated firm of architects was inclined to express themselves flamboyantly, and to interpret Renaissance in terms
of Baroque.
“She’s some girl,” added Quair, looking at the lithe, modeled figure, and then half turning to include the model, who had seated herself on the lounge, and was now gazing with interest at the composition sketched in by Drene for the facade of the new opera.
“Carpeaux and his eternal group — it’s the murderous but inevitable standard of comparison,” mused Drene, with a whimsical glance at the photograph on the wall.
“Carpeaux has nothing on this young lady,” insisted Quair flippantly; and he pivoted on his heel and sat down beside the model. Once or twice the two others, consulting before the wax group, heard the girl’s light, untroubled laughter behind their backs gaily responsive to Quair’s wit. Perhaps Quair’s inheritance had been humor, but to some it seemed perilously akin to mother-wit.
The pockets of Guilder’s loose, ill-fitting clothes bulged with linen tracings and rolls of blue-prints. He and Drene consulted over these for a while, semi-conscious of Quair’s bantering voice and the girl’s easily provoked laughter behind them. And, finally:
“All right, Guilder,” said Drene briefly. And the firm of celebrated architects prepared to evacuate the studio — Quair exhibiting symptoms of incipient skylarking, in which he was said to be at his best.
“Drop in on me at the office some time,” he suggested to the youthful model, in a gracious tone born of absolute self-satisfaction.
“For luncheon or dinner?” retorted the girl, with smiling audacity.
“You may stay to breakfast also—”
“Oh, come on,” drawled Guilder, taking his colleague’s elbow.
The sculptor yawned as Quair went out: then he closed the door then celebrated firm of architects, and wandered back rather aimlessly.
For a while he stood by the great window, watching the pigeons on neighboring roof. Presently he returned to his table, withdrew the dancing figure with its graceful, wide flung arms, set it upon the squeaky revolving table once more, and studied it, yawning at intervals.
The girl got up from the sofa behind him, went to the model-stand, and mounted it. For a few moments she was busy adjusting her feet to the chalk marks and blocks. Finally she took the pose. She always seemed inclined to be more or less vocal while Drene worked; her voice, if untrained, was untroubled. Her singing had never bothered Drene, nor, until the last few days, had he even particularly noticed her blithe trilling — as a man a field, preoccupied, is scarcely aware of the wild birds’ gay irrelevancy along the way.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 744
