CHAPTER XVI.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, 1 June 1901, Page 685

CHAPTER XVI.

MAN AND WOMAN

Sj^mupT was a glorious morning at tho eu(^ °^ s P l "i"8'- Caroline's garden was a blaze of flowers ; in clamp f shady nooks violets scented the air, and there were many of these fragrant cool corners, for Caroline, with her instinct of protectiveness, trained vines to protect the flowers that withered in the too fierce rays of the sun. She was busy among them now, hut with a preoccupied expression as though her thoughts were elsewhere. She watered and delved with her trowel, then with lingering touch as though she feared to hurt gathered a handful of the blossoms still shining with water drops. As she worked she listened. Again and again she lifted her head expectantly, then returned to her occupation. She was but repeating a daily morning programme — waiting for the mail. And although, morning after morning, the letter she hoped for did not come, still she waited. No time had been given her after her discovery to re-adjust herself to the new idea of her husband, for on the following day lie had abruptly taken his departure. With that sense of supremacy, natural to a strong nature, she had been conscious that, spite of buffeting, she could rise to the emergency. But true to his affirmation that he had " no need for wife," Howard had put the sea between them in that almost savage scorn of his of any other want but his own. Perhaps his absence had simplified matters. Abseuce is sometimes akin to death in that it covers with a haze of indefiniteness much that close contact made Vol. lI.— No. 9.— 4?.

diflieiilt, if not impossible to bear, ami Howard was hard of resistance; it. was like beating against a rock to oppose his will. It had unstrung Caroline, bruised and broken her, for although her hope was inexhaustible, her force had its limits, and it had been something of relief as well as loss when Howard had taken himself off. The heavy scent of the narcissus brought back the memory of three mouths ago, when the disillusioning light, fell upon her that not her trust, not her approval, but that, of another woman, made the strength find sweetness of her husband's heart. Yet that bitter hour had not been all disillusion-— ho had revealed that his dishonesty hud seared and broken him. The thought was intoxication to her. She was wise enough to know that salvation cafne from within, from the basis of character. She did not make the common and pitiful mistake of must women— that of believing that a woman's influence can change the currents of a man's soul. The sunshine of her glamour, her sweetness and light, or her shadow she does throw upon the surface, lint the twinshipof flesh does not constitute twiuship of mind. "As a man thinketh so is he." Her trust was in himself. She looked up with a start. The maid approached her with a letter — the letter. She took it quietly, but her sensitive ffice flushed. She made for the cover of the summer-house, from which her whito cockatoo was screeching invitations. Sho stroked his agitated top-knot with a mesmeric forefinger, then sat down with a beating heart, the bird blinking his approval of his nearness. The garden, with its vivid sunshine and

deep shadow, its abandonment of blossom and perfume, all at once became the loneliest place on earth to Caroline. The dull ache at her heart intensified itself to a passion of longing: was he coming home? Oh, if he might only come through the wicket-gate from the shrubbery ! She longed with heart-sick longing that he might throw off his yoke — a yoke of the senses and the mind, and forsaking all other, return to his best self — and to her. Still the letter lay unopened in her hand. Her fingers shook as she broke the seal ; she felt faint with apprehension and anticipated disappointment. The first words were blurred. " Wahine, are you not lonely there ? Often of late I seem to see you lonely. Would you come to me ? I have been wandering about from place to place tramping off a fit of the blue devils, devils too ugly for your acquaintance, child. It's been pretty rough on both of us— but roughest on y- n. " I am going to Matamata, and have a faney — a sentimental one, perhaps, but you must excuse that, as I am not often sentimental— that if Frank would bring you over, we three might tli ere renew our acquaintance with the place and with one another, and perhaps get clearer understanding of some things unexplained, and of one another. But, child, I have no right to ask a sacrifice. I advance no claim. Should you come, you will find your little cottage ready for you. " Howard." Her heart throbbed, her face grew radiant. He had called her at last. Was the memory of that first time with him when he asked her to meet him there, " and perhaps get clearer understanding of some things unexplained ?" She knew those things, but ■was he about to tell her? Once partner of his thoughts, his hidden self, his acknowledged dishonour, she would defy any other to oust her from her place. When Frank came he found her young. " Of course you will go — we shall both go," he said, eagerly. Howard's estrangement from them both had been wormwood to him.

The fresh breeze blew gently over the downs of Matamata, rustling the rushes and flax. Among the grass little blue and red wild flowers opened their eyes to the purple sky, which was flecked on the hoi'izon and above the snow peaks with white clouds, one of which occasionally took wing and sailed over the dazzling expanse. The great foam tipped river swept majestically between its barriers to the fuller, nobler life of the sea* At ever} step Howard disturbed a nested lark, which rose with carolling protest into the still air. Did Nature lie with its promise of renewal F Was human life the only cruelty with its denial of regeneration ? To-day Howard's mood was bitter ; the spirit that had stirred him to appeal had been saddened by Caroline's silence. Allowing for reasonable delay, this morning should have brought her answer, and none had come. With man's exactitude he had hoped for good tidings — it is born in men, weak and strong alike, outcome of generations of submission, expectation of woman's pardon. She had always been sympathetic to him ; her finely tempered strength had propped him many a time. Just now Howard Grey wanted a prop sadly. He had barely found the feet of his new impulses. His impression of Caroline had been strong in this place on two occasions, first when he met her here, and afterwards when the thought of her had held him to fealty. Could she the third time not only hold her place, but eradicate from it the haunting memory of another woman ? Well, she had not come, had not even answered, and in his loneliness he renewed his mistaken thought of her — he was to her but a figurehead. In her brother she had stored her treasures. Well, it was just, quite just ! But the worst of justice is that it is usually meted out to the man in the dock, and finds him in the mood to receive it. Howard was not disposed to smile on the sentence of alienation passed upon him. He was harrassed by fears that he had mistaken his vocation. He had volunteered

himself as a pioneer to the race, and he himself wanted considerable bolstering. Nature had, in fact, endowed him with large protective faculty, implanted in him the instinct of the husband and father; these instincts he had denied and starved, and Nature has an implacable way of taking revenge. The truth which he had denied to himself so long seemed impossible now of belief — a whole-souled invincible love, creating its reality among unrealities. He took the way beside the river. It was not in full flood, for there had been no rain to melt its snow source ; its song was subdued, and the green ferns fringing its rim dabbled in its waters confidently, the white spray where it leapt over the boulders rose like the smoke from incense. Howard noticed these things, for Caroline had taught him observation. It would have been very good to have had her beside him on this live morning in her old spirit of comradeship, which he had missed more than he had missed anything in his life except He stooped to raise a stone from the crushed heads of a tuft of wild flowers that were getting decidedly the worst of it in a trial of strength. A passionless memory forbade him to pursue that particular line of thought, but a succession of pictures presented to him were of pessimistic hue. And this happiness of the world, whence came it ? — from faith which led to light and force ? Who knew whether this love, against which he had fought, which he had repressed, might not have led to the harmony of life ? He had been a spendthrift of his own manhood without real joy. The tragedy of his loneliness rose as a harsh savage menace — the very flowers of the field grew in company ; the insects swarming under the stones were in colonies ; the mated birds were singing from the trees — he only in all that matchless space was alone. It was 'not good for man to be alone ! Existence lost its best meaning, lost utility. He had lost the mastery of himself ; his execution had become spasmodic. How could he produce an impression of beauty

and harmony when his fibre and foreo wcro consumed by this fevor of unrest. F He found himself on the spot whore ho had picked up Frank's cap. Ho rehearsed again the reasons why men with irrepnrablo dishonour — outlaws from hope, for whom there is no happiness — should not fling themselves into oblivion and be done with it, and cry "quits " once for all. The recurring discord of life, its exaggeration, its lurid combinations, its strained, spasmodic passions, were these, after all, worth the keeping ? He stooped for a stono, and dropped it into the pool. With set mouth and gloomy half-shut eyes, he watched the circles spread. To his excited imagination the ripples were made by the escaping breath of a man — a human soul was being choked out of existence down among the river weeds. into his moment of madness there came the rustlo as of a woman's skirts trailing over the grass. He turned sharply and stood speechless with amazement, his right hand clutching a stone. " I saw you from the distance. I know I could not be mistaken, and have recovored from my surprise," said Greraldine. She looked fresh and fragrant, tho very embodiment of womanly charm and beauty. The light of the morning was in her eyes, its flush on her cheeks. Her perfect mouth curved in a smile, the dusky tendrils of her hair curled and waved under her hat with the red roses. "Why. are you here?" ho demanded almost sternly. It seemed to him that she was an apparition come to lure him from oblivion, that her beauty was illusion, her smile mockery. But her smile faded, her eyes grew troubled as they rested on his ravaged face. He threw away the stone, and came a step from the brink. As though remembering, he lifted his hat, and she saw that the grey had spread from his temples and powdered his head. "I am staying at the Mill," she said, with the resumption of her earlier tone of

friendliness. "After Melbourne I had a fancy for a little idling, and I came back here. But I found 'The Whare ' was not to let, so Polly took me in." She did not look at him as she spoke ; she had taken in that first impression of his appearance, the tired, wild expression of his eyes, and while she sought for a solution in any knowledge she had of him, he gave her, as she believed, a clue. " I am afraid," he said, thanking her in his heart for the ordinary tone she had taken, while he struggled back from the void and darkness in which she had appeared to him, " I am afraid that I am to blame — indirectly — for the cause of yonr disappointment — if you were disappointed — in not being able to get possession of ' The Whare.' The cottage belongs to my wife, and as I had asked her to join me here with her brother, it was not to let." " You are not alone then ?" "At present I am; they have not yet arrived. Did Frank Osmond tell you that this was the scene of his first literary efforts." "No," she replied. "I understood he wrote his play in Melbourne." "His play — yes." A short silence ensued. Instinctively they had left the river bank and taken to the open. She wished him to take it for granted that she accepted his presence — as she desired him to accept hers — as a casual and natural incident. The gaps he had left unfilled in their past intercourse she had filled, if not satisfactorily, at least understandably to herself. His wife — that cold plain woman with prim stiff manners, whose strange eyes had something uncanny in their light — had failed him to-day as she had doubtless failed him all their married life. But she, Geraldine Ward, who had refused the absolute adoration of men, whose love had been hers in its completeness, was not the one to fill the gaps left by another woman. The question, " Why are you here ?" she had not answered hei*self. She was not humble-minded ; she had worshipped this

man from afar. She had acknowledged him her intellectual superior — he had acknowledged himself a blunderer. And what was of more significance — he had proved himself one. That wife of his put him beyond comprehension ! She could understand his moods ; they were permissible to the artist his fiercest self-denunciation did but go to prove consciousness that he had fallou short of his ideal — but a commonplace wife ? It made the situation difficult of solution, unless he were at heart what he had protested — a commonplace man. As such she addressed him. She talked the topics of the day, political, artistic, social. A sort of panic seized Howard. He had earnestly desired to bui"y the thought of her, with an inscription sacred to the memory of what she had signified to him — but a tawdry resurrection ? He rose up in arms against it. " Geraldine !" His tone was stern, peremptory. In their intercourse, intimate as its short converse had been, he had not called her by her name before. She realised in every tingling norve that she had hurt him, touched roughly some fibre of the temperament she did not understand. " Geraldine !" His tone was intercession now. It called to her from man's humility, cat right through the reasons and unreasons, distinctions, etiquette, ethics, honours, which divided them. It was the cry of manhood to womanhood. " Geraldine !" She turned her head with proud reluctance, fighting all the time for those reserves which he had ignored. Her clearcut profile, with its proud and teudor curves, was turned to him, but she withheld her eyes. They had come now to the bend of the river, that doubling which shut iii-the pool among the briar roses and fern, where he had first seen her. Instinctively they both had sought the spot, and the little physical difficulty with which she had to push through

the undergrowth and brambles gave her the excuse she sought to escape from the moment. She did not know her own mood. She was thrilled by an emotion altogether new. She tried to shake off the command of the man beside her, but Fate, in the form of a briar bush, thwarted her purpose ; it caught her white linen dress and held her prisoner. There were two things for her to do, one to expose her loss of composure and tear herself free like a hoyden inviting pursuit from Hodge, or stand still for the courtesy of release. She stood still smilingly while Howard knelt the second time in her service, his hands trembling with the thorns. The fragrance of the briar roses tilled the air; the woman standing captive among them was beautiful and tremulous with that new expansivenoss which covered her horizon just then. There was nothing real to her except the kneeling man, with his grey bent head an<! capable though trembling hands. In the silence the breaking of the twigs between his fingers sounded loud and sharp, distinct notes of punctuation in a wordless eloquence. I\> break the strain, (Jeraldine, released from her thorn bonds, stooped to a tuft of wild violets, which came up by the root. Her look and tone were remorseless. " I hold you hero, root and :il], in my hand," she quoted, " Little flower, but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in al 1 , T should know what God and man is." He looked up, still kneeling. "I would to God!" he said, "I knew what you are, ' root and all, and all in all.' " She looked down at him silently. For a moment their eyes met, a tremor passed over her face, then she turned away from his prayer. " Geraldine," he whispered, his breath breaking his words. " I must know what you are — must." He rose as he spoke and stood beside her. "Yes," he continued, "I know you think me mad — perhaps I am. I accept my madness if so, for I am tired of being sane. But if you cannot accept it

also, go now. I have vouched my limit, so now, Geraldine, please go." Sin* smiled gently ; the flattery of his weakness appealed to her. At, last he had broken down. His pride, his sternness, all the barriers had fallen before her influence. And it was not coquetry that made Geraldine exalt. Oilier men had worshipped; this man had defied. lie defied still. " Go," he commanded. "No," slio answered, quietly, "I shall not go." She moved to the edge of the pool as though to give him time to recover himsell, if snch had been his desire, but bis pent-up passion had got the mastery of him. " You know that I love you,' he said, hoarsely. "You alone in all the world great God! that I can betray like this, and feel no shame in it! Hut the thought- ot you is, and has been, dearer to me than honour " " Than my honour ?" She turned to him with irony in the bitterness of her tone, and some scorn in her beautiful lace. Whether it was gall to her that, his love for her meant betrayal oi another woman, or the; wormwood lay in the fact that he had fallen short, of her highest conception of hint, she did not show, but he fell her scorn. It lushed him to a fury. He grew desperate. " I do not find myself at this moment," lie declared, "capable of any nice distinctions. I asked you not to stay ! L would have loved you in any other way if L knew how ; I only love you. With all my life I love you. I have been fighting against it since the first moment I saw yon, denying your right, re-adjusting my thought of you, putting other claims before yours, treading on my own heart — meaning to give up to throw the whole thing overboard sooner than give in — then when I saw you I couldn't bear it any more. Every man Imh his limit, as 1 said before, and this is mine." She turned to him then with that fine enthusiasm which, to him just then hungering for human affection, seemed like ft stone. Her eyes were alight, the delicate mouth

quivered. Whether she took her stand on moral or artistic grounds, feeling the man to be too big to fit himself to a small part and throw, as he had hinted, his career and its possibilities overboard for a turbulent moment of passion, or whether underlying everything was the feeling that his wife held the place of honour, he could give but to one woman in the world, she did not clearly understand. " Howard Grrey, you forget yourself — Avhat is due to yourself as to me — but in spite of it, I have abundant faith in you. I do not judge you by a moment, for which neither I nor you have any explanation to offer. The fact in dispute is not permissible. The great truth of your life is your work." Pushing his thick hair off his forehead with one hand, he held the other out to her. "No, no!" he cried. "You are my truth. All else besides is false." She made a gesture of repudiation. She had grown pale in the morning sunlight; a sudden chill seemed to be in the air; the pungent scent of the briar and gorse seemed from funeral flowers. Was she to bury her ideal of him — would no man leave her but compassionate memory ? There was something in Howard's manner that invested his words with deeper meaning than a man's passion. He walked a pace away, then came bick again, pleading in his eyes. 'Don't put me from you with pulseless misunderstanding," ho implored. " Greraldine, don't stand there so serene, don't mock me. Give me just this hour out of your full life — of kindness and a woman's heavenly sympathy — then I will go away again, redeemed by your pardon. Geraldine, save my soul !" " Pardon !" she cried, facing him with anger and compassion blended in her tone, her eyes large and dark with pain. "Does it always come to that between a man and a woman ? Is that always the end by whatever voad they come, hill or valley ? When a woman asks for strength, a man offers her a heart ! In the hour of her pride in him, he kneels in repentance!" He moved to the brink of the pool across

which her shadow had just fallen, and stooping for a stone let it drop into the transparent depths, startling a hundred small creatures intent on their own business. His head was turned away ; he did not see her eyes were full of tears, nor did he know she spoke to him from long unsatisfied want of heart. " Can woman love with love diviner than she has loved ? Or can faith be higher than hers has proved ? And yet men make appeal ! Is it her blame or his shame that still he must sue ?" " His blame. I've made you sad, dear heart." His face with its hunger, his humility, the tones of his voice were so hopeless that it was as much as she could do to bear it. " I've made you sad." " The sadness is in part the world's — the other part my own. I'm not alone in it. There is a demand for all we women have or are — our youth, talent, force, beauty — everything is demanded by the world, except our own sad heart, and that we may keep," she added, bitterly. " Well, keep," he answered. "If only I were free as honest men are free ! I dare not tell you about it — you could not understand. It has been a blind struggle; I have been in hell, not one of your aesthetic hells where the fire is tinted to suit the complexion of the sinner, but real bad -smelling brimstone." His voice softened and faltered. "I had given up the thought of you — when your coming this morning upset my calculation. But when you re-adjust some of your ideas of me — as you will do before the day is over — don't ignore my love for you ; believe in me as far as possible. What has been truth to me among falsehood — • don't scorn as another dishonour, a lie — " His voice rose, his head was lifted proudly, he took on some of the insistent strength that had appealed to her so forcibly at the first. "My love for you is the only thing of winch I am not ashamed, except, perhaps, my first struggling years. If I were free " — he met her troubled eyes — " I would make you know whether you loved me or

not. You should answer me. You should decide between me and the ideal you have set up, but lam not free. lam bound by a law of my own making. Has it ever occurred to you, Miss Ward, that wheu a man defies existing laws, he creates others for himself more rigid and severe than those from which he breaks away ? ' It is a mean world," ' he concluded, " ' peopled by a mean race.' " She did not know that his scorn was selfscorn. She carried on his quotation. " ' To console ourselves we must think of the exceptions, of the noble and generous souls. There are such ! What do the rest matter ' ?" "True!" He walked away and left her. The pause was filled with memory, with regret. " It doesn't much matter," he said quietly, " except perhaps to the mean souls themselves. But even the most commonplace wriggle hurts. Perhaps if the autobiography of a worm were written it would put on record some quite decent — or indecent — woes, its experience of the early bird, for instance, and destiny in the shape of a foot!" She smiled in welcome of his lighter mood. She dared not. try to get nearer to the desolation at his heart, either by question or comment to bridge the space between them — that new inrushing sense of compassionate sweetness — she called it compassion — warned her that she must not go to his deliverance. There could be no liberty for him if she must set him free. Once cross to him, and she might not return. And that other side ! She was not prepared to stay there. Her artistic realization had been vivid enough to grasp its sacrifices. But on this side was there nothing that she could be to him? The resources of her speech were at a loss ; she could not fall back again on trivialities, and he was in no mood for intellectual joys. His feet were dragging heavily as he walked up and down among the scented grass. She obeyed a sudden impulse, and went to his side and touched him.

" Howard — Groy," sho said softly, so softly aud gently find with ko long a pause between the first and the second name that it almost seemed as though she called him by his Christian name alone, and her eyes were eloquent with appeal. " Will you let me remind you that, you are not your own ; no great soul, no great mind belongs to itself. You may bo broken and brought low— bright spirits have descended into hell, but not to stay — after that comes the resurrection !" His eyes were on her hand; he would not touch it till she knew. Ah, heavenly sweet compassion ! Her breath was on his check, the fragrance of her flesh, her clothes, the violets at her breast allured him. He had barely caught the meaning of her words ; all meaning to him at that moment was her nearness, her touch, the bright tear-dimmed eyes. " Resurrection ?" he said vaguely, and looked up with infinite trust, with a man's appeal to woman's tenderness. '■ Resurrection," she reiterated. He did not take advantage of her hand upon his arm. He was feasting on the new thought she had given him. He caught glimpses of the new life where he should stand' self-confessed, and take no love, no honour, no gain, no friendship that whs not his own. "It is the eternal that distinguishes : eternal labour, eternal love, eternal faith. You said that." " No," he answered, " not I ; another man. ' Was he mad ? He looked very quiet, quieter than he had looked all the morning. His head was erect, bat his eyes were on her. His face was terse. All hope of pardon, resurrection lay in the next few moments. A bird on a bough near broke into inconsequent song, a breeze rustled the leaves as though a breath of apprehension had passed over them. The hand on Howard's arm was withdrawn. " My wife's brother wrote those words. He is the author of Under the Goad. I

thought him dead.* I stole it. I found you on this spot a year ago entranced with his work." Geraldine's pulses seemed to stop. The shock caused her physical pain. Not only the woman but the artist had given him allegiance, arid both woman and artist had been tricked. In the silence that followed a bird seemed to call from a sweet briar : " Sweet, sweet, sweet ! I knew it, knew it, knew it!" Then in a tone of expostulation, " Joey ! Joey ! Joey !" She laughed mockingly. "You!" she said at last, and covered her face with her hands as though to shut the sight of him out. He remembered another time when turning to him with longing and pride, delight and outstretched hands, she had exclaimed : "You!" That word had elected him — this banished. She was crying. That was an awful thing. "Oh, damn the birds!' ho muttered, for their singing was sacrilege, then out loud : " ' What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?' She turned upon him with wet eyes. " Sometimes," she said, " the loss is not great. There are souls and souls !" " Don't weep," he said. " 1 am not worthy of tears."

" I am not weeping for you," she answered. "My tears are for my loss — ray belief. No other man came half so near. But it was not you — it was the man I thought you. Women, you know, from dairymaids to the Queen, love to be ruled by a man. Every true woman submits when recognising the right, 'He shall rule over thee.' You talk to me of love," she continued, drawing herself up in pride, her beauty enhanced by her emotion, " to an artist who was humble to you because of your art. How you have shamed me !" He would not remind her of anything to which he had claim before or after the day by which she judged him. It seemed she did not credit him with anything save his dishonour. " ' He who steals my purse steals trash . . . but ln> who robs me <>f my good name She turned away. " Then there is no pardon ? You can't forgive me ?" she heard Howard say. She turned, merciless in her scorn. " Can't I make you understand, I shall not suffer; shall not even blame you? Mine was the fault for having mistaken a craven for a king ! Despise I do. Pity may follow in a softer mood, and if I never see your face again, [ may learn even gratitude that you yourself have saved me from the madness which you taught."