Part 49 (1/2)

Sylvia flushed a deep crimson and paid with a moment of bitter, shamed resentment for the other bygone moments of calculation. ”Yes, yes, of course.” She spoke with a stern impatience. ”Did you suppose it was for his fortune that--” She paused and said humbly, ”Of course, it's natural that you should think that of me.”

Arnold attempted no self-exculpation. He sat down by her, his riding-crop across his knees. ”Could you--do you feel like telling me about it?” he asked.

She nodded. It came to her like an inspiration that only if she opened her heart utterly to Arnold, could he open his sore heart to her.

”There's not much to tell. I don't know where to begin. Perhaps there's too much to tell, after all, I didn't know what any of it meant till now. It's the strangest thing, Arnold, how little people know what is growing strong in their lives! I supposed all the time I only liked him because he was so rich. I thought it must be so.

I thought that was the kind of girl I was. And then, besides, I'd--perhaps you didn't know how much I'd liked Felix Morrison.”

Arnold nodded. ”I sort of guessed so. You were awfully game, then, Sylvia. You're game now--it's awfully white to fall in love with a man because he's rich and then stick to him when he's--”

Sylvia waved her hand impatiently. ”Oh, you don't understand. It's not because I think _I ought_ to--Heavens, no! Let me try to tell you.

Listen! When the news came, about this Colorado business--I was about crazy for a while. I just went to pieces. I knew I ought to answer his letter, but I couldn't. I see now, looking back, that I had just crumpled up under the weight of my weakness. I didn't know it then.

I kept saying to myself that I was only putting off deciding till I could think more about it, but I know now that I had decided to give him up, never to see him again--Felix was there, you know--I'd decided to give Austin up because he wasn't rich any more. Did you know I was that base sort of a woman? Do you suppose he will ever be willing to take me back?--now after this long time? It's a month since I got his letter.”

Arnold bent his riding-crop between his thin, nervous hands. ”Are you sure now, Sylvia, are you sure now, dead sure?” he asked. ”It would be pretty hard on Austin if you--afterwards--he's such a square, straight sort of a man, you ought to be awfully careful not to--”

Sylvia said quickly, her quiet voice vibrant, her face luminous: ”Oh, Arnold, I could never tell you how sure I am. There just isn't anything else. Over there in Paris, I tried so hard to think about it--and I couldn't get anywhere at all. The more I tried, the baser I grew; the more I loved the things I'd have to give up, the more I hung on to them. Thinking didn't do a bit of good, though I almost killed myself thinking--thinking--All I'd done was to think out an ingenious, low, mean compromise to justify myself in giving him up. And then, after Judith's cablegram came, I started home--Arnold, what a journey that was!--and I found--I found Mother was gone, just gone away forever--and I found Father out of his head with sorrow--and Judith told me about--about her trouble. It was like going through a long black corridor. It seemed as though I'd never come out on the other side. But when I did--A door that I couldn't ever, ever break down--somehow it's been just quietly opened, and I've gone through it into the only place where it's worth living. It's the last thing Mother did for me--what n.o.body but Mother could have done. I don't want to go back. I couldn't if I wanted to. Those things don't matter to me now. I don't think they're wrong, the ease, the luxury, if you can have them without losing something finer. And I suppose some people's lives are arranged so they don't lose the finer. But mine wouldn't be. I see that now. And I don't care at all--it all seems so unimportant to me, what I was caring about, before. Nothing matters now but Austin. He is the only thing that has lived on for me. I'm down on my knees with thankfulness that he just exists, even if he can't forgive me--even if he doesn't care for me any more--even if I shouldn't ever see him again--even if he should die--he would be like Mother, he couldn't die, for me. He's there. I know what he is.

Somehow everything's all right--because there's Austin.”

She broke off, smiling palely and quietly at the man beside her. He raised his eyes to hers for an instant and then dropped them. Sylvia went on. ”I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs of this Colorado business. It may be that it was quixotic on Austin's part.

Maybe it _has_ upset business conditions out there a lot. It's too complicated to be _sure_ about how anything, I suppose, is likely to affect an industrial society. But I'm sure about how it has affected the people who live in the world--it's a great golden deed that has enriched everybody--not just Austin's coal-miners, but everybody who had heard of it. The sky is higher because of it. Everybody has a new conception of the good that's possible. And then for me, it means that a man who sees an obligation n.o.body else sees and meets it--why, with such a man to help, anybody, even a weak fumbling person like me, can be sure of at least loyally _trying_ to meet the debts life brings.

It's awfully hard to know what they are, and to meet them--and it's too horrible if you don't.”

She stopped, aware that the life of the man beside her was one of the unpaid debts so luridly present to her mind.

”Sylvia,” said Arnold, hesitating, ”Sylvia, all this sounds so--look here, are you sure you're in _love_ with Austin?”

She looked at him, her eyes steady as stars. ”Aren't there as many ways of being in love, as there are people?” she asked. ”I don't know--I don't know if it's what everybody would call being in love--but--” She met his eyes, and unashamed, regally, opened her heart to him with a look. ”I can't live without Austin,” she said quickly, in a low tone.

He looked at her long, and turned away. ”Oh yes, you're in love with him, all right!” he murmured finally, ”and I don't believe that the Colorado business or any of the rest of what you're saying has much to do with anything. Austin's a live man and you're in love with him; and that's all there is to it. You're lucky!” He took out his handkerchief, and wiped his forehead and the back of his neck. Sylvia, looking at him more closely, was shocked to see how thin and haggard was his face. He asked now, ”Did you ever think that maybe what Austin was thinking about when he chucked the money was what you'd say, how you'd take it? I should imagine,” he added with a faint smile,' ”that he is hard to please if he's not pretty well satisfied.”

Sylvia was startled. ”No. Why no,” she said, ”I thought I'd looked at every single side of it, but I never dreamed of that.”

”Oh, I don't mean he did it _for_ that! Lord, no! I suppose it's been in his mind for years. But afterwards, don't you suppose he thought ... he'd been run after for his money such a terrible lot, you know ... don't you suppose he thought he'd be sure of you one way or the other, about a million times surer than he could have been any other way; if you stuck by him, don't you see, with old Felix there with all his fascinations, plus Molly's money.” He turned on her with a sudden confused wonder in his face. ”G.o.d! What a time he took to do it! I hadn't realized all his nerve till this minute. He must have known what it meant, to leave you there with Felix ... to risk losing you as well as--Any other man would have tried to marry you first and then--!

Well, what a dead-game sport he was! And all for a lot of dirty Polacks who'd never laid eyes on him!”

He took his riding-cap from his head and tossed it on the dried pine-needles. Sylvia noticed that his dry, thin hair was already receding from his parchment-like forehead. There were innumerable fine lines about his eyes. One eyelid twitched spasmodically at intervals.

He looked ten years older than his age. He looked like a man who would fall like a rotten tree at the first breath of sickness.

He now faced around to her with a return to everyday matters. ”See here, Sylvia, I've just got it through my head. Are you waiting here for that five-fifteen train to West Lydford and then are you planning to walk out to the Austin Farm? Great Scott! don't do that, in this heat. I'll just run back to the village and get a car and take you there in half an hour.” He rose to his feet, but Sylvia sprang up quickly, catching at his arm in a panic. ”No! no! Arnold, you don't understand. I haven't written Austin a word--he doesn't know I'm coming. At first in Paris I couldn't--I was so despicable--and then afterwards I couldn't either,--though it was all right then. There aren't any words. It's all too big, too deep to talk about. I didn't want to, either. I wanted to _see_ him--to see if he still, if he wants me now. He could _write_ anything. He'd feel he'd have to. How would I ever know but that it was only because he thought he ought to?

I thought I would just go to him all by myself, without his knowing I was coming. _I_ can tell--the first moment he looks at me I can tell--for all my life, I'll be sure, one way or the other. That first look, what's in him will show! He can't hide anything then, not even to be kind. I'll know! I'll know!”

Arnold sat down again with no comment. Evidently he understood. He leaned his head back against the rough bark of the pine, and closed his eyes. There was a painful look of excessive fatigue about his whole person. He glanced up and caught Sylvia's compa.s.sionate gaze on him. ”I haven't been sleeping very well lately,” he said very dryly.

”It breaks a fellow up to lose sleep.” Sylvia nodded. Evidently he was not minded to speak of his own troubles. He had not mentioned Judith.

She looked up thoughtfully at the well-remembered high line of the mountain against the sky. Her mother's girlhood eyes had looked at that high line. She fell into a brooding meditation, and presently, obeying one of her sure instincts, she sat down by Arnold, and began to talk to him about what she divined for the moment would most touch and move him; she began to talk about her mother. He was silent, his worn, sallow face impa.s.sive, but she knew he was listening.

She told one incident after another of her mother's life, incidents which, she told him, she had not noted at the time, incidents which were now windows in her own life, letting in the sunlight her mother loved so well. ”All the time I was growing up, I was blind, I didn't see anything. I don't feel remorseful, I suppose that is the way children have to be. But I didn't see her. There were so many minor differences between us ... tastes, interests. I always said hatefully to myself that Mother didn't understand me. And it was true too. As if it matters! What if she didn't! She never talked morality to us, anyhow. She never talked much at all. She didn't need to. She was herself. No words would express that. She lived her life. And there it is now, there it always will be for me, food for me to live on. I thought she had died. But she has never been so living for me. She's part of me now, for always. And just because I see the meaning of her life, why, there's the meaning of mine as clear as morning. How can poor Father crave those 'messages' from her! Everything is a message from her. We've lived with her. We have her in our hearts. It's all brightness when I think of her. And I see by that brightness what's in my heart, and that's Austin ... Austin!” On the name, her voice rose, expanded, soared, wonderfully rang in the ensuing silence....