A VERY SHORT CHAPTER, IN ONE SENSE

The next day it rained. Harry shut himself up in his room and wrote violently all the morning, less in the hope of accomplishing valuable work than in the desire to keep his mind off the one absorbing topic. It proved to be of little use. At lunch time he threw all that he had written into the fireplace and resolved to tell the immediate members of his family.

It worked out very well. After lunch he arranged with James to take a walk in the rain. Beatrice, it appeared, would be occupied at a bridge party all the afternoon. There remained Aunt Selina--the easiest, by all odds. Just before starting out with James he walked into the living room, rustling in his raincoat, and found her alone by the fire.

"It's all right, Aunt Selina." He felt himself grinning like a monkey, but couldn't seem to stop himself.

But Aunt Selina herself could do nothing but laugh. Presently she rose from her seat and embraced her nephew.

"That top b.u.t.ton has come off," she said. "I'm afraid you'll get your neck wet." Then they looked at each other and laughed again. There was really nothing more to be said.

James' feet sounded on the stairs above.

"I shan't be home for dinner," said Harry, starting toward the door.

"And you might tell Beatrice," he added.

He walked with James for three hours or more. It may have been the calming influence of exercise or it may have been the comforting effect that James' society generally had on him; at any rate, when the time came he found himself able to say what he had to without any of the embarra.s.sment he had expected.

He chose the moment when they had all but reached the crossroad that would take him off to the Gilsons'.

"James," he said, breaking a long silence, "I've got something rather important to tell you. I'm engaged."

"To whom?"

"Madge Elliston."

"When?"

"Last night. That was it." They now stood facing each other, at the crossroads. James did not speak for a moment, and Harry scanned his face through the dusk. Its expression was one of bewilderment, Harry thought.

Strange, that James should be more embarra.s.sed than he! But that was the way it went.

"Harry! See here, Harry--"

"Yes, James!"

"I ..." He stopped and then slowly raised his hand. "I congratulate you."

"Thanks, awfully. It does sort of take one's breath away, doesn't it?...

I'm going there now. Why don't you come too? No? Well, I may be rather late, so leave the door on the latch. I'll walk home." And he walked off down the crossroad.

James knew, perfectly well, the moment Harry said he had something to tell him. His subsequent questions were prompted more by a desire to make the situation between them legally clear, as it were, than by real need of information. His first dominant impulse was to explain the situation to Harry and show him, frankly and convincingly, the utter impossibility of his engagement. The very words formed themselves in his mind:--"See here, Harry, you can't possibly marry Madge Elliston, because I'm in love with her myself--have been for years, before you ever thought of her!" He drew a long breath and actually started in on his speech. But the words would not come. As he looked at his brother standing happy and ignorant before him he realized in an instant that, come what might, he would never be able to utter those words.

There was nothing left to do but mumble his congratulations. As he lifted his hand to that of his brother the thought occurred to him that he might easily raise it higher and put Harry out of his way, once and for all. He knew that he could, with his bare hands, do him to death on the spot; knee on chest, fingers on throat--he knew the place. That was perhaps preferable to the other; kinder, certainly, but equally impossible. It was not even a temptation.

As he walked off he reflected that he had just come through one of the great crises of his whole life, and yet how commonplace, how utterly flat had been its outward guise! He had always vaguely wondered how people acted at such times; now the chance had come to him and he had shown less feeling than he would have at missing a trolley car. In him, at this present moment, were surging some of the most terrific pa.s.sions that ever swayed human beings--love, jealousy, disappointment, hate of the order of things--and he could not find a physical vent for one of them! Not only that, but he never would be able to; he saw that clearly enough; people of his time and cla.s.s and type never could. This was what civilization had brought men to! What was the use? What was the meaning of all civilization, all progress, all human development? Here he was, as perfect a physical specimen as his age produced, unable to do more than grit his teeth in the face of the most intolerable emotions known to mankind, under pain of suffering a debas.e.m.e.nt even more intolerable.

Some people did give way to their pa.s.sions, but that was only because they were less able to think clearly than he. They always regretted it in the end; they always suffered more that way; his knowledge of the world had taught him nothing if it had not taught him that.

Just in order to prove to himself how ineffectual physical expression of his mental state was he tore a rail off the top of a nearby fence--he had wandered far out into the country again--and, raising it above his shoulders, brought it down with all his strength upon a rock. The rail happened to be a strong one and did not break, and the force of the blow made his hands smart. He took a certain fierce joy in the pain and repeated the blow two or three times, but long before his body tired with the exertion his soul sickened of the business. He threw the rail lightly over the fence and wandered hopelessly on into the hills.

After the first shock of surprise and disappointment had pa.s.sed his feelings boiled down to a slow scorching hate of destiny. The thought of G.o.d occurred to him, among other things, and he laughed. Why did people ever take it into their heads to deny the existence of G.o.d? Of course there was a G.o.d; nothing but a divine will could possibly have arranged that he should be thwarted in an honest love--not merely once, mind you, but twice--by the one person in the world whom he could not oppose. Such things were beyond the realm of chance or reason. During one part of his wanderings he laughed aloud, several separate times, at the monumental humor of it all. A man such as he was, in the full pride of his youth and strength, strong in body, strong in mind, strong in will and character, twitched hither and yon by the lightest whimsical breath of an all-powerful divinity--it was supremely funny, in its coa.r.s.e, horrible way.

"Oh, yes, it's a good joke, G.o.d," he said aloud once or twice; "it's a d.a.m.ned good joke."

It is significant that he thought very little of Madge now. He experienced none of the sudden sharp twinges of memory that he had known on a former occasion. At that time, as he now realized, only one side of his nature had been stirred, and that a rather silly, unimportant side.

Now his whole being, or at least all that was best and strongest in his being, was affected. He had loved Beatrice only with his eyes and his imagination. He loved Madge with the full strength of his heart and soul and mind. And heart, soul and mind being cheated of their right, united in an alliance of hate and revenge against the fate that had cheated them.

He did not return to the house for dinner, and Aunt Selina supposed he had gone with Harry to the Gilsons'. He walked most of the night and when at last he reached home he found the door locked. Harry, of course, not finding him downstairs, had thought he had gone to bed and had locked everything. So he lay down in a cot hammock to await the coming of a hopeless day.

He got some sleep; he did not see that dawn, after all. Awakened shortly after seven by a housemaid opening doors and windows, he slipped un.o.bserved up to his room, undressed and took a cold bath. He supposed nothing would ever keep him from taking a cold bath before breakfast; nothing, that is, except lack of cold water. Strange, that cold water could effect what love, jealousy and company could not. He glanced out of the window. The weather had changed during the night and the day was clear and windy and snapping, a true forerunner of autumn. The sun and wind between them were whipping the sea into all sorts of shades of blue and purple, r.i.m.m.i.n.g it with a line of white along the blue coast of Maine over to the left. There was cold water enough for any one, enough to drown all the wretched souls ever born into a world of pain. How strange it was to think of how many unwilling souls that sea drowned every year, and yet had not taken him, who was so eminently willing! He could not deliberately seek death for himself, but he would be delighted to die by accident. No such luck, though; the fate, G.o.d, destiny, whatever you chose to call it, that had brought him twice into the same corner of terrestrial h.e.l.l would see to that....

As he was rubbing himself dry his eye fell on his reflection in a full-length mirror and almost involuntarily stopped there. He still had the pure Greek build of his college days, he noticed; the legs, the loins, the chest, the arms, the shoulders all showed the perfect combination of strength and freedom. He had not even the faults of over-development; his neck was not thick like a prize-fighter's nor did his calves bulge like those of many great athletes. And his head matched the rest of him, within and without. And all this perfection was brought to naught by the vagrant whim of a cynical power! A new wave of hate and rebellion, stronger than any he had yet felt, swept over him. Moved by a sudden impulse he threw aside his towel and advanced a step or two toward the mirror, raising his hands after the manner of a libation-pourer of old.

"I swear to you," he muttered between clenched teeth to the reflection that faced him; "I swear to you that nothing in me shall ever rest until I have got even with the Thing, G.o.d, devil or blind chance, that has brought me to this pa.s.s. It may come early or it may come late, but somehow, some day! I swear it."

There was something eminently satisfying in the juxtaposition of his nakedness of body to the stark intensity of his pa.s.sion and the elemental fervor of his agnosticism. For James was now a thorough agnostic; turned into one overnight from a "good" Episcopalian--he had been confirmed way back in his school days--he realized his position and fairly reveled in the hopelessness and magnificence and bravery of it all. For it takes considerable bravery to become an agnostic, especially when you have a simple religious nature. James was in a state where the thought of being eternally d.a.m.ned gave him nothing but a savage joy. It was all very wicked, of course, but strong natures have a way of turning wicked when it becomes impossible for them to be good.

There are some things that not even a _schone Seele_ can put up with.

Having thus taken pact with himself he experienced a sense of relief and became almost cheerful. He had breakfast alone with Harry--both ladies customarily preferring to take that intimate meal in their own rooms--and talked with him quite normally about various matters, chiefly golf. He became almost garrulous in explaining his theories concerning the proper use of the niblick. Harry was going to play golf that morning with Madge. He looked extremely fresh and attractive in his suit of tweed knickers; James did not blame Madge in the least for falling in love with his brother rather than him. Nor was he in the least inclined to find fault with Harry for falling in love with Madge. Only ... but what was the use in going over all that again?

He walked briskly down to the town after breakfast and engaged a berth on the New York express for that night. Living in immediate propinquity to the happy lovers would of course be intolerable. Then he walked back to the house. It was rather a long walk; the house stood on a height at some distance back of the town. A feeling of la.s.situde overcame him before he reached home; the exertions of last night were beginning to tell on him. Oh, the horror of last night! The memory of it was almost more oppressive than the dreadful thing itself.

He supposed he ought to go up and begin to pack, but he did not feel like it. Instead he wandered out on the verandah to lie in the sun and watch the sea for a while. He came at last to a hexagonal tower-like extension of the verandah built over an abutment of rock falling sharply away on all sides except that toward the house. There was a drop of perhaps twenty-five feet from the broad railing of this extension to the ground below. Harry, who knew the house from his early days, had dubbed its peak-roofed excrescence the chamber up a tower to the east that Elaine guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot in; it was sometimes more briefly referred to as Elaine. It was a pleasant place to sit, but very windy on a day like this, and James was rather surprised to discover Beatrice sitting in one angle of the railing gazing silently out over the sea.

"Hullo," he said, listlessly sinking into a chair. "You've heard, I suppose?"

"Yes, I've heard."

"Fine, isn't it?"

"Oh, splendid."

"I'm going to New York to-night," said James after a moment.

"I'm going home next month," said Beatrice.

Neither spoke for a while and then it began to dawn on them both that those two carelessly spoken sentences had much more to them than their face-value. They both had the uneasy sensation of being forced into a "situation."

"What for?" asked James at last.

"For good."

"But why?" he persisted, knowing perfectly well why, at bottom.