Part 22 (1/2)

XIII

Lydia did not think she dreaded seeing him next morning. The fabric they had begun to weave together looked too splendid for covering trivial little fears like that. Or was it strong enough to cover anything? Yet when he came into the room where they were at breakfast she could not look at him with the same unwavering eyes. She had, strangely, and sadly too, the knowledge of life. But if she had looked at him she would have seen how he was changed. He had pulled himself together. Whether what happened or what might happen had tutored him, he was on guard, ready--for himself most of all. And after breakfast where Anne and the colonel had contributed the mild commonplaces useful at least in breaking such constraints, he followed the colonel into the library and sat down with him. The colonel, from his chair by the window, regarded his son in a fond approval. Even to his eyes where Jeff was always a grateful visitant, the more so now after he had been so poignantly desired, he was this morning the more manly and altogether fit. But Jeff was not going to ingratiate himself.

”Father,” said he, ”I've got to get out.”

Trouble of a wistful sort sprang into the colonel's face. But he spoke with a reasonable mildness, desirous chiefly of meeting his boy half way.

”You said so. But not yet, I hope.”

”At once,” said Jeffrey. ”I am going at once. To-day perhaps. To-morrow anyway. I've simply got to get away.”

The colonel, rather impatiently, because his voice would tremble, asked as Lydia had done:

”Have you seen Esther?”

This Jeff found unreasonably irritating. Bitter as the sight of her had been and unspeakable her repudiation, he felt to-day as if they did not pertain. The thing that did pertain with a biting force was to remove himself before innocent young sisterly girls idealised him to their harm. But he answered, and not too ungraciously:

”Yes, I've seen Esther. But that's nothing to do with it. Esther is--what she's always been. Only I've got to get away.”

The colonel, from long brooding over him, had a patience comparable only to a mother's. He was bitterly hurt. He could not understand. But he could at least attain the only grace possible and pretend to understand.

So he answered with a perfect gentleness:

”I see, Jeff, I see. But I wish you could find it possible to put it off--till the end of the week, say.”

”Very well,” said Jeff, in a curt concession, ”the end of this week.”

He got up and went out of the room and the house, and the colonel, turning to look, saw him striding down the slope to the river. Then the elder man's hands began to tremble, and he sat pathetically subject to the seizure. Anne, if she had found him, would have known the name of the thing that had settled upon him. She would have called it a nervous chill. But to him it was one of the little ways of his predestined mate, old age. And presently, sitting there ignominiously shuddering, he began to be amused at himself, for he had a pretty sense of humour, and to understand himself better than he had before. Face to face with this ironic weakness, he saw beyond the physiologic aspect of it, the more deeply into his soul. The colonel had been perfectly sure that he had taken exquisite care of himself, these last years, because he desired to see his son again, and also because Jeff, while suffering penalty, must be spared the pain of bereavement. So he had formed a habit, and now it was his master. He had learned self-preservation, but at what a cost!

Where were the sharp sweet pangs of life that had been used to a.s.sail him before he anch.o.r.ed in this calm? Daring was a lost word to him. Was it true he was to have no more stormy risings of hot life, no more pa.s.sions of just rage or even righteous hate, because he had taught himself to rule his blood? Now when his heart ached in antic.i.p.atory warning over his son's going, why must he think of ways to be calm, as if being calm were the aim of man? Laboriously he had learned how not to waste himself, and the negation of life which is old age and then death had fallen upon him. He laughed a little, bitterly, and Anne, coming to find him as she did from time to time, to make sure he was comfortable, smiled, hearing it, and asked:

”What is it, Farvie?”

He looked up into her kind face as if it were strange to him. At that moment he and life were having it out together. Even womanly sweetness could not come between.

”Anne,” said he, ”I'm an old man.”

”Oh, no, Farvie!” She was smoothing his shoulder with her slender hand.

”No!”

But even she could not deny it. To her youth, he knew, he must seem old.

Yet her service, her fostering love, had only made him older. She had copied his own att.i.tude. She had helped him not to die, and yet to sink into the ambling pace of these defended years.

”d.a.m.n it, Anne!” he said, with suddenly frowning brow, and now she started. She had never heard an outbreak from courtly Farvie. ”I wish I'd been more of a man.”

She did not understand him, and her eyes questioned whether he was ill.

He read the query. That was it, he thought impotently. They had all three of them been possessed by that, the fear that he was going to be ill.

”Yes,” he said, ”I wish I'd been more of a man. I should be more of a man now.”

She slipped away out of the room. He thought he had frightened her. But in a moment she was back with some whiskey, hot, in a gla.s.s. The colonel wanted to order her off and swear his nerves would be as taut without it. But how could he? There was the same traitorous trembling in his legs, and he put out his hand and took the gla.s.s, and thanked her. The thanks sounded like the courteous, kind father she knew; but when she had carried the gla.s.s into the kitchen she stood a moment, her hand on the table, and thought, the lines of trouble on her forehead: what had been the matter with him?