CLOSED DOORS The Storyteller CLOSED DOORS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 40, 3 October 1907, Page 3

CLOSED DOORS

The Storyteller

' Yes,, it, seems that it is better so, Alicia, since you wish it. Any arrangement you suggest will be quite proper.' She had not said that she wistied it, but, lawyer-like, he had calmly put the burden on her and had taken her faltering suggestion as a request, In pride there was nothing to be done but to make her way- as best she could to the door, and, heing very careful to close it quietly after her, to stumble dazedly to her own room. Pride, after all, is not much help in one's own room. She knew that she had closed more than the door of that room. She had closed the door of her life, that had been. And he, in the bloodless, polite way in which he had accepted the situation, had Quietly locked her out of that life, for all. His hint at an arrangement, meaning money, had been little less than an insult, for he knew full well that she neither needed nor wanted his money. Even locked doors, though, will not always stay shut. Properly, she should be putting her new house in order, pushing her thoughts ahead to the new life that must be lived somehow. Instead, the door of the old was creaking open, and the man and the girl, thai had been, were drifting together through her thoughts, down the way they had come. There was first a vision of the night at the press association, six years before, when she had seen him first, a-tall, impassive figure of a man, pressing and fairly throw-_ ing his views, hurtling them rough-pointed upon his hearers, and driving them before the logic of his argu.ment. She, a nameless atom in this sea of men and women whose brains forced the thought of their, city, had been attracted and swept along by the glowing personality of the man. She had responded cleverly, later, to a toast of her college, and he had asked to be presented. From this beginning she was tracing now their work together through months of precious, helpful work, in which the power and mastery of his mind had given her new visions of life and in a few months had enabled her to do work which years could not have accomplished. Success came with a promise of which she had never dreamed. Then, in its very bloom, it had turned to nothing in her eyes, for the power of this man had taken a n ew direction, and she found herself whirled from the ways of her life into a love for him that carried away with it every thought and aim of her old self and seemed to create her a new soul, fashioned purely to love him. Everything else had come in just such a clrift of dreams as this she was having now. His wooing, impulsive and boyish enough to be fascinating, but so strong and so sure as to be almost fearful. Their marriage, too, in the retrospect, seemed a drift of tides of emotion, above the surface of which she had risen for only fitting glimpses of reality. The months that had followed had served still more to $reak down every vestige of the woman that had been, to cut her away from every standard and landmark by which she had led her life, to drive from her mind every finger-post pointing to such things as career and work, and to resolve her, in the crucible of emotions, into the very primal elements of womanhood. Yet even then there had been times, she knew, when ;Ehe ghost of all that she had prayed and worked for in the past, independence, freedom, fame, applause, perhaps, rose 'up in haughty jeer at her surrender of her best to this man. But that he had been only for moments, and even now, in the wreck, she 'knew that he had been worth them all to her and more. When the mystery of motherhood had come, enfolding her life and soul in its grip, the ghosts, laid securely by the exorcism, of baby fingers clutching at her hair, and' walked no more. The little Alicia had been left her just long enough to "toddle through the house, to babble ' mamma, 1 to learn to hug the big, grave man who was 'iidadd-a,' to grow herself as a reality into the hearts of these two. She had gone away then. It was a neat little mound in Mpunt Olivet from which the mother had turned away, 'half praying that she might leave her reason there with her heart. In those other months that had .followed he had been kind, trying to spare her things, to make her forget. But she did ndi wish" to forget. For if she did, what else was there to remember ? Everything which" she had ever recognised as . belonging to life had been thrown into this love of hers, and now, when she was asked to forget this, it was to ask her

to forget her very life. lie had been kind— that had perhaps hurt her more than all, that he could be kind ; that he could come back to their home and go qjuietly into the routine of work ; that he could take up the ordinary interests of life and pass this as an incident which was to her the sum of life. She had passed her days in numb, silent grief, sitting in the little nursery, listening to the spirit voice of her little one ; her nights in fitful dreams, from which she would be awakened by the clutching of little tendril fingers in her ears. He had thrown himself, body and soul, too, as it seemed, into work. She had seen him one day in court, when she had been obliged to wait for him, one moment, watchful, keen, but steady as the walls, and the next crushing, powerful, bearing down upon the commission at whom he was arguing/ as though he would sweep from them every conviction that they had ever owned. She did not know that this was his man's way of carrying sorrow as great as hers, to throw himself at things. She saw only the fact that his mind seemed to be swept clean off everything but his work, and he came to be to" her mind only a mighty. ..engine, crashing through loads of work day and night, and stopping now and then to console her a little, or maybe to try to coax her into forgetfulness. He had finally closed and locked the door of the nursery, telling her that she must not allow herself to be moribid. She knew that he was entirely right. It was the very course that she herself would have taken in another's case. He was truly sympathetic and tender to her, but that was just what she could not bear. He was sorry for her in her grief ; she knew that he would cheerfully have made any sacrifice of self to lighten it if he could. But he did not share her sorrow ; he did not seem to have part in it. She was glad, too, of this, for his sake ; but always This knowledge served to set him apart from her. Where always till now their entity had been one, their emotions single, she saw a rift coming between them and widening, widening, till it placed them farther apart, it seemed, than when they had been strangers. It was not that she was coming to care less for him, for she loved this tower of a man ; the steel and blue light of his eyes was lodestar to her heart of hearts, and would be ever ; but she had come to have to judge him and* think of him, not by the maze and whirl of her"' maiden love in which he had been the man, but as a man bearing things and living in the ways of others of his sex. It was impossible that they could ever reach back to the relations of those early days, when there had been nothing in their world but their two blended selves. Content only, she argued, and such comfort and strength of love as conies to the gray paths of life could be theirs. The three years that had passed since those days had only, day by day, served to widen the rift. The closed door of that little room seemed to place itself even more firmly between them, a barrier to perfect understanding. He had plunged more and more fully, almost viciously, it seemed, into his work as the years followed each other, while she had kept her numb grief near her heart until it had come to be near a passion with her to keep it alive. She did not want it to soften or die, for it seemed the only thing left to her. All things which she had thought meant life had been thrown to him in her love, and now that he did not seem to need that, but seemed to be so sufficient in his crushing work, her place seemed to be gone, her only niche in life to nurse the dying (memory and to walk in unceasing rounds past a closed door. The feeling of being crowded out of his life by injunctions and traction cases, of being so utterly unnecessary to him, had grown into her very soul, till she was almost able to convince herself that he no longjer wanted her, a useless appanage lex his Busy life. His unfailing, even gentleness, too, seemed an argument— a mask it must be, worn by the gentleman of pure honor, which she knew him to be, to hide his impatience with her. Surely he could not but be grieved a^ the failure she was constantly making of Her life and his. "Why would he not sometimes lift the mask and show the real feeling and make her suffer ? It would be better than the dull wearing of his steady, accusing kindness. Lately it had come to that point where she felt that she could not go on longer in this way. With no apparent chords of interest, with nothing but gentle tolerance revealed on his side, to greet him morning after morning and watch his too evident effort towards kindness, to sit evening after evening in silence, watching his head buried in precedents, till she would be forced to go to her own room and to

lie in the dark, next to the closed room, listening to the occasional rustling of a paper or to his pacing footstep far into the morning ; it could only be borne to the point of breaking. She knew that she was forcing herself, step by step, in her reasoning to an action which would break their home, and incidentally her heart, if there were any capability of more suffering in that heart. It did not seem to matter, though, for she could no more prevent her mind from moving in .the circles in which it turned than she could prevent herself from thinking. This life, the living presence of its future, was unbearable to her ; how much more so must it not be to him in the constant effort to soften and cover the truth. There seemed but one way —to end it by going quietly away. It was no mock heroics, none of the self-pity of a conscious martyr, only the acknowledgment of a failure and the wish to end an impossible situation. lie neither felt nor understood the sorrow of her life, but had drawn into himself and away from her constantly. He had cared not at all, but had thrown it behind him as an unpleasant happening and had expected her to do the same, ' though he knew it was the fulness of her being. It were better to take from him the depressing presence of her life, with its spent energy. All this she had tried .ho say to him to-night, tried to make him see that for him and for the better of his life she was willing to make a sacrifice 'of her home and of her position, and take upon herself that loneliest of all phases of life, the way "of a separated wife. Maybe, she had thought, there might be some hope in speaking, maybe something of the boyish love of tjiis man for her might come back to him, and it would yet be well. But no, for he had listened without a word and with no helping softness as she had stumbled on from position one to another, until it had come to seem, even to herself, that it was she alone who wished to be released from her life. Then he had accepted the situation with a quiet dignity, which put her own fevered, hurried words in the wrong at once. Not one accent of hurt or regret had he shown. If he had even shown pleasure or relief, it would have been something, for then she would have known that she was right. lie had merely assunred that she wanted to be free to live her own life, and had acquiesced without showing his own feeling, putting the weight of it upon her. In any case, the definite step was taken, and, obviously, there was nothing to be done but to go on, with what plans she might, piecing together such fragments of life as seemed to .be left. But plans' would not come, lor materials were lacking, and the soul of the builder was torn and swept in the rush and swirl of broken hopes and the cinders of burned dreams stuccoed, now and then through the night, by the rustling of papers or the tramp of a man in the room across the hall. Tie was working calmly after the incident ! She might pass from his life, even as her baby had parsed , and he would turn to his work. The morning brought the same man and woman to face each other across the breakfast table ; he urbane and kindly, but lined and a little pallid, as she thought, watching him— she wondered if he had not suffered a little. There were the same commonplaces to be observed before the shrewd eyes of the servant, the same forced turn of observations and show of interest to be kept up, though one's heart might break unheeded while pouring the coffee. She realised this moment, looking at the strong, immobile face opposite, that never in their days had she so abjectly, so absolutely loved this man as she did this morning. Yet he, would let her carry her treasure out of his life without a detaining look. And if she should go to him now and say that she would not go, he would make her welcome 1o stay in the same tone of action, indifference, heartlessness, what you would, that was driving her to wish lo hate him, while the love of her whole heart welled up and beat around this tower of a man. Now he was gone, with a simple good-bye on his lips, as oit any other morning of these three years, down to his work in the city. She was free now to think. At first it seemed that she cared for nothing but to go away quietly with what money she had of her own— fortunately it would be plenty— and live for herself and with the memory of her little one for company. But her knowledge of herself told her that she could never live out a life of that kind. Work she must have, work that would be strong enough and would put demands upon her mind and strength and would taike her out of herself. Curiously enough, the old longings for a name and a position in the world of work, for fame in its measure, things long ago buried in her soul, were the last

solutions of her problem to come to her. When they did coire, however, they showed her, as it seemed, a way through her maze. She could take a few months in Europe ;some sleepy old village of Tuscany, maybe, would serve to drug her mind into comparative order, and then she could come -back and settle somewhere in the East and begin her wdrk. She had had literary association's in >!ew York, and enough of a name in the old days to make a beginning easy; Now, though, with sudden reversion, she saw that she could not make any use of these. She would not' take back the name of her girlhood, and she was too tenderly sensitive of the name she now bore to bring attention to it in the way of notoriety. She must put away every vestige of her identity and make a new name, which should have no meaning to any who had known the old. It would not be easy, this beginning, as she knew, to win success over again for another name ;■ but il could be done. The friends, too, of the, old life must be forgotten entirely in, order that her dropping from the present life might be as noiseless as possible. They were dining that evening at the Fosters, a quiet party, the men, with the exception of Professor ' Jordan, all men of John's world ; forceful, contained men, every one of some note. Unconsciously she was measuring him against them in the easy talk or the occasional deeper word of a basic truth that cropped out, and easily in his simplicity and strength he overtopped them all so completely that her pride in him sang to her heartache. From light to serious ana'' on again the talk ranged, she rising as best she could to the vein of it, until, by some q.uirk of the blind thing that leads people's tongues, it came to a discussion of the arranging of broken homes. Once she had heard John, in kindness to her as she knew, catch the ball and turn the talk in a new direction, but Jordan had perversely brought it back. ' The two should each by every means,' he was saying now, ' get as far from each other as possible. Leaving divorce, of course, out of the question, they should, for peace of mind, cut from their paths everything which would suggest the other.' ' But '—the hostess, looking down from the vantage of twenty years of unclouded marriage, felt called to defend her ideals— ' you are wrong in presuming that they would wish to be rid of • the thought 'of each other. That isn't true at'all. Instead, even though they must admit the impossibility of living together, they would still be each to the other the dearest memory of their souls ; neither would wish to be relieved of the thoughtyof the other.' ' That jus>t runs with my theory '—the professor was now full tilt on one of his hobbies—' that is just it. Their memories and ideals of each other will be, through the shading years, the dearest things in their lives. Therefore, these should be left intact, and should not be marred and ruined by any concrete association or tie whatever. They should never again cross each other's path, for, as we know, it is by contact that ideals are broken, and ideals will be all that they will have. I would even argue that they should, for the sake of never being brought near each other, obtain a legal separation. Kilbrain, you agree with me, I'm sure. It's the only common sense way.' If Alicia, listening with her heart choking her, expected any revelation or expression of personal view from John, she was disappointed. Impassive, as if the question could have no possible interest in him personally, he shelved it, and the whole subject, by ■ ' You seem to forget the personal equation. It would depend altogether on the wishes of one or both of the parties interested.' Again, as though she herself had made the question to him, he placed it upon the head of the one of t"he parties who would suggest the idea. There was no inkling of his own wish in the matter, any more than there had been of a real answer to Jordan's question. The talk had furnished her now with a new phase of her question. It had seemed simple that they should live apart, each going to the work that must take the place of the rest of tKings for them. But now, riding home in silence bieside John, this new idea had its obsession for her. Maybe Jordan was right. Might it . not be better that there should never be any embarrassing ties between them ,? She knew too thoroughly that, once anart, there would never be any possibility of their coming tpgether again, so maybe they had better arrange things in such a way that nothing could ever come up to force them to' meet acain.. Maybe he would' wish it. And while these things were turning her mind to every opening, under it all there was running the consciousness of. her love for this silent man beside her, tingling through every nerve of her fiody. If only she might snuggle up to

him ! If only he would show the least sign that he wanted her or that he cared whether she went or stayed ! She could not .gather courage to-n.ight to open this question to him, and she knew that the suggestion would never come from him, no matter how much he might wish for the result. Hiis attitude of calmly agreeing to every proposal from her, assuming that it was her desire," left every initiative to her. Yet he must see that this very stand of his was just the one to drive her from one ground to another. It must be that he saw this, and was deliberately taking this stand to force her onward. It was not like John to do .that, and to seem to lay everything to her, but what else could it,. mean? Anyway, she would not "say anything to him until the next night ; that/ would be her last night in her home ; she would be leaving the day following for New York. The morning of what was to be their last day together brought no change in him. He went away with the same kind word, a little subdued, perhaps, on his lips. She had not told him of her immediate departure, leaving everything to- the last interview of this evening. Her packing was merely the gathering of the few treasures for which, in her rather detached life, she had come to care for— a matter of a few hours. The door of the room which had been locked on the memory of the little Alicia she "would not open. Everything that had belonged to the life of the two of them, that had been theus in common, or at least should have been, she would leave as it had been, taking only herself, as gently as might be, out from the midst of it. He wuuld not care, of course, if she should take the keepsakes of her little room, but she would not do so. She would not tear up nor seem to disturb the sacred memories of the dead years as they lay about the home. Her baby's little shoes, she thought, she would like to. have, but no, she would leave them all. Not that it would matter to him, for probably he would never -notice, but merely to leave, untouched the life of the past. Their dinner was the same subdued effort to be at ease that so many others had been. From it they passed up the stairs together, going to their separate roorrs, she to finish packing and to give her final instructions to Sarah, who was to go with her, he to his nightly work. As the evening wore on she was nerving herself to the interview with him, for since he seemed to insist that she should take the initiative, there was no course but to blunder bravely into the matter and leave the outcome to the odd chance that seems to rule the end of all human crises. What she could say on the question of legal separation sho was not sure. The prejudice they both fiad against the public profanation of their life, which, though it was a too obvious failure, was still sacred to botli ; the apnearance of scandal which it would have to those outside their own Church, and even to many within it, for the world does not stop for distinctions— everything, in fact, in their training and atmosphere of Ih ought was against it. Yet it might be that he would wish it, and, too, it really did seem that neither could bear to be forced to any relations with the other in future. (To be concluded next week.)

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