Part 34 (1/2)
Neale sat down heavily in a chair, and hid his face in his hands. ”All that this means,” he said to himself as much as to Martha, ”all that this means, any of it, is that I have not been man enough to make you love me.”
At this she came flying back to him, incarnate tenderness, ”No, no, Neale, I _do_ love you. I know in my heart that even if I should ever marry any one else, I'll never feel for anybody the affection, the trust ... I couldn't ... it's not that. Loving you as I do only makes it more impossible, more utterly impossible. You mustn't think this is just the nervous reaction from any sudden shock of knowledge. I knew ... I knew well enough what marriage is! But I hadn't felt it.”
She moaned aloud in her bewilderment, ”How can I tell you? How can I make you understand? I don't understand, myself. Why can't I give you what Margaret has to give?”
She was bending over him and now s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand and caught it up to her breast, ”Neale, I'd give anything to want to marry you! Anything!
I've tried and tried. It's like a mountain between us.... I can't reach you through it. Neale, perhaps we're too much alike. Perhaps that is what brought us together, but that is what keeps us apart! We can't unite! I thought of so many things! We're like two chemicals that can't combine. They can't! That's the way they're made!”
Neale found himself resisting her certainty, although it had been his own. He sat up, suddenly astounded at all that was being said, and cried roughly, ”Martha, do you know what this means? You are sending me away.
What can I do without you?” He caught at her hand. ”Martha, why hunt for rainbows when we have the pot of gold in our hands?”
She shook her head. ”It wouldn't be the pot of gold,” she said sadly.
”It would be a mess of pottage, and you mustn't sell your heritage for it, any more than I.”
He looked at her hard, and saw that he had no hold on her.
”Oh, it's finished for me!” he cried bitterly, out of all patience. ”If you send me away for some romantic notion, you need have no idea that I will marry any one else. I shall never have anything to do with a woman again.”
She said steadfastly though her lips were trembling, ”I think when it's a question of what's the finest in us, that nothing at all is better than a halting compromise.”
”I don't know what you're talking about,” he said angrily and for the moment truthfully. ”You're ruining our two lives for some hair-spun fancy.”
She grew paler, and said in a deep voice, ”Neale, I have told you that I would hate you if you were my husband.”
He turned away to the door. ”Good-by,” he said coldly.
She did not answer.
He went out of the door, and down the stairs. At the bottom he turned and came up again. He found her standing where he had left her. He said gently, ”You're right, Martha.”
She held out her arms to him. They kissed, sadly, wistfully, like brother and sister parting for a long separation.
Neale went away silently in a confusion so great that from time to time he stopped on the sidewalk till the street straightened itself out before him, and he could see where to take the next step.
CHAPTER x.x.xV
Neale had set the wheels of his business life whirring at such speed and there were so many of them that they continued to turn clatteringly around and around after Martha had gone away, not only from him but from America; for she had sailed at once with her father for Berlin. Neale watched them whirring for weeks before he perceived that they were running down, and for weeks after that before he perceived that he felt no impulse to keep them moving. There didn't seem to be much point to things, any more. Martha had done what in his heart he wanted done. And yet he was far from satisfied. He missed her outrageously, missed having her there, didn't know what to do with himself. And yet he had not been overjoyed at what he had been on the point of doing with himself. He must be hard to suit, he thought, fretting to feel himself still confused and uncertain, with no zest in things. d.a.m.n it, what _did_ he want?
A week after Martha's departure he had a letter from Grandfather, written on blue-lined paper, reading, ”Dear Neale: Wharton just came in to say he wants the Melwin spruce and heard you had bought them. He wanted 'em for twelve hundred (couldn't find out what you'd paid for them I guess). I said fifteen hundred and stuck to it. He squirmed some.
But I knew through Ed that he wanted them for a New York order he's got for big stuff. And there aren't any others around here that'll come up to his specifications. So I made him toe the mark. He left a check for $300 (which I enclose) and will pay spot cash for the rest before beginning to cut.”
Neale sat at his desk, looking hard at the piece of cheap paper which brought him the news that in a short time he would have eight hundred dollars more in the bank than he had had before. And without turning his hand over. All he had done was to know that the Melwin spruce were worth a lot more than was thought by the Iowa cousin who had inherited that distant wood-lot. Easy money! Somebody had paid him high for that piece of knowledge,--who? Wharton, of course, would certainly get it out of somebody's else hide, or he would never have gone in for the deal.
He sat dreaming, remembering his timber-cruising trip, remembering the choppers and woodmen he had known around Grandfather's. Men like that would work all a year around in all weathers, all their days, to get as much as he would have for doing nothing.
He drew a long breath and turned to enter the check in his check-book. A queer sort of a world. And after all, he stood in much the same relation to the Gates family as the lumbermen did to him, working enough sight harder for enough sight less money. That seemed to be the way things were. But it didn't seem quite square.
A hasty mental calculation showed him that with this money he would have over two thousand dollars. Clear. Not so bad! He considered the matter, wondering why he felt no more elation, and decided that it was because he could not for a moment think of anything he specially wanted to do with two thousand dollars. Always before this he had thought he was making money to give to Martha. Was it possible that he had been using Martha as an excuse? No, no, he explained hastily to himself, the point was that Martha had, all women had, some definite use to make of money.
It bought things they wanted and thought important, suburban houses and mahogany twin beds and what not. Martha could easily have spent that sum to buy things that pleased her. The only use he could think of for it was to use it over again to make more money. And then what? It didn't seem much of a life to do that over and over.