_ CHAPTER XIII. AMBITIONS AND LETTERS
Rosalie had departed; Grandcourt followed suit next day; Sylvia's brother, Stuyvesant, had at last found a sober moment at his disposal and had appeared at Roya-Neh and taken his sister away. Duane was all ready to go to New York to find out whether his father was worrying over anything, as the tone of his letters indicated.
The day he left, Kathleen and Geraldine started on a round of August house parties, ranging from Lenox to Long Island, including tiresome week ends and duty visits to some very unpretentious but highly intellectual relatives of Mrs. Severn. So Scott remained in solitary possession of Roya-Neh, with its forests, gardens, pastures, lakes and streams, and a staggering payroll and all the multiplicity of problems that such responsibility entails. Which pleased him immensely, except for the departure of Kathleen.
To play the intellectual country squire had been all he desired on earth except Kathleen. From the beginning White's "Selborne" had remained his model for all books, Kathleen for all women. He was satisfied with these two components of perfect happiness, and with himself, as he was, for the third ingredient in a contented and symmetrical existence.
He had accepted his answer from her with more philosophy than she quite expected or was prepared for, saying that if she made a particular point of it he would go about next winter and give himself a chance to meet as many desirable young girls as she thought best; that it was merely wasting time, but if it made her any happier, he'd wait and endeavour to return to their relations of unsentimental comradeship until she was satisfied he knew his mind.
Kathleen was, at first, a little dismayed at his complacency. It was only certainty of himself. At twenty-two there is time for anything, and the vista of life ahead is endless. And there was one thing more which Kathleen did not know. Under the covering of this Seagrave complacency and self-centred sufficiency, all alone by itself was developing the sprouting germ of consideration for others.
How it started he himself did not know--nor was he even aware that it had started. But long, solitary rambles and the quiet contemplation of other things besides himself had awakened first curiosity, then a dawning suspicion of the rights of others.
In the silence of forests it is difficult to preserve complacency; under the stars modesty is born.
It began to occur to him, by degrees, that his own personal importance among his kind _might_ be due, in part, to his fortune. And from the first invasion of that shocking idea matters progressed rather rapidly with the last of the Seagraves.
He said uneasily to Duane, once: "Are you going in seriously for painting?"
"I _am_ in," observed Duane drily.
"Professionally?"
"Sure thing. God hates an amateur."
"What are you after?" persisted Scott. "Fame?"
"Yes; I need it in my business."
"Are you contemplating a velvet coat and bow tie, and a bunch of the elect at your heels?--ratty men, and pop-eyed young women whose coiffure needs weeding?"
Duane laughed. "Are they any more deadly than our own sort? Why endure either? Because you are developing into a country squire, you don't have to marry Maud Muller." And he quoted Bret Harte:
"For there be women fair as she,
Whose verbs and nouns do more agree."
"You don't have to wallow in a profession, you know."
"But why the mischief do you want to paint professionally?" inquired Scott, with unsatisfied curiosity. "It isn't avarice, is it?"
"I expect to hold out for what my pictures are worth, if that's what you mean by avarice. What I'm trying to do," added Duane, striking his palm with his fist as emphasis, "is not to die the son of a wealthy man. If I can't be anything more, I'm not worth a damn. But I'm going to be. I can do it, Scott; I'm lazy, I'm undecided, I've a weak streak. And yet, do you know, with all my blemishes, all my misgivings, all my discouragements, panics, despondent moments, I am, way down inside, serenely and unaccountably certain that I can paint like the devil, and that I am going to do it. That sounds cheeky, doesn't it?"
"It sounds all right to me," said Scott. And he walked away thoughtfully, fists dug deep in his pockets.
And one still, sunny afternoon, standing alone on the dry granite crags of the Golden Dome, he looked up and saw, a quarter of a million miles above him, the moon's ghost swimming in azure splendour. Then he looked down and saw the map of the earth below him, where his forests spread out like moss, and his lakes mirrored the clouds, and a river belonging to him traced its course across the valley in a single silver thread. And a slight blush stung his face at the thought that, without any merit or endeavour of his own, his money had bought it all--his money, that had always acted as his deputy, fought for him, conquered for him, spoken for him, vouched for him--perhaps pleaded for him!--he shivered, and suddenly he realised that this golden voice was, in fact, all there was to him.
What had he to identify him on earth among mankind? Only his money. Wherein did he differ from other men? He had more money. What had he to offer as excuse for living at all? Money. What had he done? Lived on it, by it. Why, then, it was the money that was entitled to distinction, and he figured only as its parasite! Then he was nothing--even a little less. In the world there was man and there was money. It seemed that he was a little lower in the scale than either; a parasite--scarcely a thing of distinction to offer Kathleen Severn.
Very seriously he looked up at the moon.
It was the day following his somewhat disordered and impassioned declaration. He expected to receive his answer that evening; and he descended the mountain in a curiously uncertain and perplexed state of mind which at times bordered on a modesty painfully akin to humbleness.
Meanwhile, Duane was preparing to depart on the morrow. And that evening he also was to have his definite answer to the letter which Kathleen had taken to Geraldine Seagrave that morning.
"Dear," he had written, "I once told you that my weakness needed the aid of all that is best in you; that yours required the best of courage and devotion that lies in me. It is surely so. Together we conquer the world--which is ourselves.
"For the little things that seem to threaten our separation do not really alarm me. Even if I actually committed the inconsequential and casual thing that so abruptly and so deeply offended you, there remains enough soundness in me at the core to warrant your charity and repay, in a measure, your forgiveness and a renewal of your interest in my behalf.
"Search your heart, Geraldine; question your intelligence; both will tell you that I am enough of a man to dare love you. And it takes something of a man to dare do it.
"There is a thing that I might say which would convince you, even against the testimony of your own eyes, that never in deed or in thought have I been really disloyal to you since you gave me your heart.... Yet I must not say it.... Can you summon sufficient faith in me to accept that statement--against the evidence of those two divine witnesses which condemn me--your eyes? Circumstantial evidence is no good in this case, dear. I can say no more than that.
"Dearest, what can compare to the disaster of losing each other?
"I ask you to let me have the right to stand by you in your present distress and despondency. What am I for if not for such moments?
"That night you were closer to the danger mark than you have ever been. I know that my conduct--at least your interpretation of it--threw you, for the moment off your guarded balance; but that your attitude toward such a crisis--your solution of such a situation--should be a leap forward toward self-destruction--a reckless surrender to anger and blind impulse, only makes me the more certain that we need each other now if ever.
"The silent, lonely, forlorn battle that has been going on behind the door of your room and the doors of your heart during these last few days, is more than I can well endure. Open both doors to me; leagued we can win through!
"Give me the right to be with you by night as well as by daylight, and we two shall stand together and see 'the day break and the shadows flee away.'" That same evening his reply came:
"My darling, Kathleen will give you this. I don't care what my eyes saw if you tell me it isn't true. I have loved you, anyway, all the while--even with my throat full of tears and my mouth bitter with anger, and my heart torn into several thousand tatters--oh, it is not very difficult to love you, Duane; the only trouble is to love you in the right way; which is hard, dear, because I want you so much; and it's so new to me to be unselfish. I began to learn by loving you.
"Which means, that I will not let you take the risk you ask for. Give me time; I've fought it off since that miserable night. Heaven alone knows why I surrendered--turning to my deadly enemy for countenance and comfort to support my childish and contemptible anger against you.
"Duane, there is an evil streak in me, and we both must reckon with it. Long, long before I knew I loved you, things you said and did often wounded me; and within me a perfectly unreasoning desire to hurt you--to make you suffer--always flamed up and raged.
"I think that was partly what made me do what you know I did that night. It would hurt you; that was my ignoble instinct. God knows whether it was also a hideous sort of excuse for my weakness--for I was blazing hot after the last dance--and the gaiety and uproar and laughter all overexcited me--and then what I had seen you do, and your not coming to me, and that ominous uneasy impulse stirring!
"That is the truth as I analyse it. The dreadful thing is that I could have been capable of dealing our chance of happiness such a cowardly blow.
"Well, it is over. The thing has fled for a while. I fought it down, stamped on it with utter horror and loathing. It--the encounter--tired me. I am weary yet--from honourable wounds. But I won out. If it comes back again--Oh, Duane! and it surely will--I shall face it undaunted once more; and every hydra-head that stirs I shall kill until the thing lies dead between us for all time.
"Then, dear, will you take the girl who has done this thing?
"GERALDINE SEAGRAVE." This was his answer on the eve of his departure.
And on the morning of it Geraldine came down to say good-bye; a fresh, sweet, and bewildering Geraldine, somewhat slimmer than when he had last seen her, a little finer in feature, more delicate of body; and there was about her even a hint of the spirituel as a fascinating trace of what she had been through, locked in alone behind the doors of her room and heart.
She bade him good-morning somewhat shyly, offering her slim hand and looking at him with the slight uncertainty and bent brows of a person coming suddenly into a strong light.
He said under his breath: "You poor darling, how thin you are."
"Athletics," she said; "Jacob wrestled with an angel, but you know what I've been facing in the squared circle. Don't speak of it any more, will you? ... How sunburned you are! What have you been about since I've kept to my room?"
"I've painted Miller's kids in the open; I suppose the terrific influence of Sorolla has me in bondage for the moment." He laughed easily: "But don't worry; it will leave nothing except clean inspiration behind it. I'll think out my own way--grope it out through Pantheon and living maze. All I've really got to say in paint can be said only in my own way. I know that, even when realising that I've been sunstruck by Sorolla."
She listened demurely, watching him, her lips sensitive with understanding; and she laughed when he laughed away his fealty to the superb Spaniard, knowing himself and the untried strength within him.
"But when are you coming back to us, Duane?"
"I don't know. Father's letters perplex me. I'll write you every day, of course."
A quick colour tinted her skin:
"And I will write you every day. I will begin to-day. Kathleen and I expect to be here in September. But you will come back before that and keep Scott company; won't you?"
"I want to get into harness again," he said slowly. "I want to settle down to work."
"Can't you work here?"
"Not very well."
"Why?"
"To tell the truth," he admitted, smiling, "I require something more like a working studio than Miller's garret."
"That's what I thought," she said shyly, "and Scott and I have the plans for a studio all ready; and the men are to begin Monday, and Miller is to take the new gate cottage. Oh, the plans are really very wonderful!" she added hastily, as Duane looked grateful but dubious. "Rollins and Calvert drew them. I wrote to Billy Calvert and sent him the original plans for Hurryon Lodge. Duane, I thought it would please you----"
"It does, you dear, generous girl! I'm a trifle overwhelmed, that's all my silence meant. You ought not to do this for me----"
"Why? Aren't we to be as near each other as we can be until--I am ready--for something--closer?"
"Yes.... Certainly.... I'll arrange to work out certain things up here. As for models, if there is nothing suitable at Westgate village, you won't mind my importing some, will you?"
"No," she said, becoming very serious and gravely interested, as befitted the fiancee of a painter of consequence. "You will do what is necessary, of course; because I--few girls--are accustomed in the beginning to the details of such a profession as yours; and I'm very ignorant, Duane, and I must learn how to second you--intelligently"--she blushed--"that is, if I'm to amount to anything as an artist's wife."
"You dear!" he whispered.
"No; I tell you I am totally ignorant. A studio is an awesome place to me. I merely know enough to keep out of it when you are using models. That is safest, isn't it?"
He said, intensely amused: "It might be safer not to give pink teas while I am working from the nude."
"Duane! Do you think me a perfect ninny? Anyway, you're not _always_ painting Venus and Ariadne and horrid Ledas, are you?"
"Not always!" he managed to assure her; and her pretty, confused laughter mingled with his unembarrassed mirth as the motor-car swung up to carry him and his traps to the station.
They said good-bye; her dark eyes became very tragic; her lips threatened to escape control.
Kathleen turned away, manoeuvring Scott out of earshot, who knowing nothing of any situation between Duane and his sister, protested mildly, but forgot when Kathleen led him to an orange-underwing moth asleep on the stone coping of the terrace.
And when the unfortunate Catocala had been safely bottled and they stood examining it in the library, Scott's rapidly diminishing conceit found utterance:
"I say, Kathleen, it's all very well for me to collect these fascinating things, but any ass can do that. One can't make a particular name for one's self by doing what a lot of cleverer men have already done, and what a lot of idle idiots are imitating."
She raised her violet eyes, astonished:
"Do _you_ want to make a name for yourself?"
"Yes," he said, reddening.
"Why not? I'm a nobody. I'm worse; I'm an amateur! You ought to hear what Duane has to say about amateurs!"
"But, Scott, you don't have to be anything in particular except what you are----"
"What am I?" he demanded.
"Why--yourself."
"And what's that?" He grew redder. "I'll tell you, Kathleen. I'm merely a painfully wealthy young man. Don't laugh; this is becoming deadly serious to me. By my own exertions I've never done one bally thing either useful or spectacular. I'm not distinguished by anything except an unfair share of wealth. I'm not eminent, let alone pre-eminent, even in that sordid class; there are richer men, plenty of them--some even who have made their own fortunes and have not been hatched out in a suffocating plethora of affluence like the larva of the Carnifex tumble-bug----"
"Scott!"
"And I!" he ended savagely. "Why, I'm not even pre-eminent as far as my position in the social puddle is concerned; there are sets that wouldn't endure me; there's at least one club into which I couldn't possibly wriggle; there are drawing-rooms where I wouldn't be tolerated, because I've nothing on earth to recommend me or to distinguish me from Algernon FitzNoodle and Montmorency de Sansgallette except an inflated income! What have I to offer anybody worth while for entertaining me? What have I to offer you, Kathleen, in exchange for yourself?"
He was becoming boyishly dramatic with sweeping gestures which amazed her; but she was conscious that it was all sincere and very real to him.
"Scott, dear," she began sweetly, uncertain how to take it all; "kindness, loyalty, and decent breeding are all that a woman cares for in a man----"
"You are entitled to more; you are entitled to a man of distinction, of attainment, of achievement----"
"Few women ask for that, Scott; few care for it; fewer still understand it----"
"You would. I've got a cheek to ask you to marry me--_me!_--before I wear any tag to identify me except the dollar mark----"
"Oh, hush, Scott! You are talking utter nonsense; don't you know it?"
He made a large and rather grandiose gesture:
"Around me lies opportunity, Kathleen--every stone; every brook----"
The mischievous laughter of his listener checked him. She said: "I'm sorry; only it made me think of
'Sermons in stones,
Books in the running brooks,'
and the indignant gentleman who said: 'What damn nonsense! It's "sermons in _books_, _stones_ in the running brooks!"' Do go on, Scott, dear, I don't mean to be frivolous; it is fine of you to wish for fame----"
"It isn't fame alone, although I wouldn't mind it if I deserved it. It's that I want to do just one thing that amounts to something. I wish you'd give me an idea, Kathleen, something useful in--say in entomology."
Together they walked back to the terrace. Duane had gone; Geraldine sat sideways on the parapet, her brown eyes fixed on the road along which her lover had departed.
"Geraldine," said Kathleen, who very seldom relapsed into the vernacular, "this brother of yours desires to perform some startling stunt in entomology and be awarded Carnegie medals."
"That's about it," said Scott, undaunted. "Some wise guy put it all over the Boll-weevil, and saved a few billions for the cotton growers; another gentleman full of scientific thinks studied out the San Jose scale; others have got in good licks at mosquitoes and house-flies. I'd like to tackle something of that sort."
"Rose-beetles," said his sister briefly. In her voice was a suspicion of tears, and she kept her head turned from them.
"Nobody could ever get rid of Rose-beetles," said Kathleen. "But it _would_ be exciting, wouldn't it, Scott? Think of saving our roses and peonies and irises every year!"
"I _am_ thinking of it," said Scott gravely.
A few moments later he disappeared around the corner of the house, returning presently, pockets bulging with bottles and boxes, a field-microscope in one hand, and several volumes on Coleoptera in the other.
"They're gone," he said without further explanation.
"Who are gone?" inquired Kathleen.
"The Rose-beetles. They deposit their eggs in the soil. The larvae ought to be out by now. I'm going to begin this very minute, Kathleen." And he descended the terrace steps, entered the garden, and, seating himself under a rose-tree, spread out his paraphernalia and began a delicate and cautious burrowing process in the sun-dried soil.
"Fame is hidden under humble things," observed Geraldine with a resolute effort at lightness. "That excellent brother of mine may yet discover it in the garden dirt."
"Dirt breeds roses," said Kathleen. "Oh, look, dear, how earnest he is about it. What a boy he is, after all! So serious and intent, and so touchingly confident!"
Geraldine nodded listlessly, considering her brother's evolutions with his trowel and weeder where he lay flat on his stomach, absorbed in his investigations.
"Why does he get so grubby?" she said. "All his coat-pockets are permanently out of shape. The other day I was looking through them, at his request, to find one of my own handkerchiefs which he had taken, and oh, horrors! a caterpillar, forgotten, had spun a big cocoon in one of them!"
She shuddered, but in Kathleen's laughter there was a tremor of tenderness born of that shy pride which arises from possession. For it was now too late, if it had not always been too late, for any criticism of this boy of hers. Perfect he had always been, wondrous to her, as a child, for the glimpses of the man developing in him; perfect, wonderful, adorable now for the glimpses of the child which she caught so constantly through the man's character now forming day by day under her loyal eyes. Everything masculine in him she loved or pardoned proudly--even his egotism, his slapdash self-confidence, his bullying of her, his domination, his exacting demands. But this new humility--this sudden humble doubt that he might not be worthy of her, filled her heart with delicious laughter and a delight almost childish.
So she watched him from the parapet, chin cupped in both palms, bright hair blowing, one shoulder almost hidden under the drooping scarlet nasturtiums pendant from the carved stone urn above; a fair, sweet, youthful creature, young as her guiltless heart, sweet as her conscience, fair as the current of her stainless life.
And beside her, seated sideways, brown eyes brooding, sat a young girl, delicately lovely, already harassed, already perplexed, already bruised and wearied by her first skirmishes with life; not yet fully understanding what threatened, what lay before--alas! what lay behind her--even to the fifth generation.
They were to motor to Lenox after luncheon. Before that--and leaving Scott absorbed in his grubbing, and Kathleen absorbed in watching him--Geraldine wandered back into the library and took down a book--a book which had both beguiled and horrified the solitude of her self-imprisonment. It was called "Simpson on Heredity."
There were some very hideous illustrated pages in that book; she turned to them with a fearful fascination which had never left her since she first read them. They dealt with the transmission of certain tendencies through successive generations.
That the volume was an old one and amusingly out of date she did not realise, as her brown eyes widened over terrifying paragraphs and the soft tendrils of her glossy hair almost bristled.
She had asked Kathleen about it, and Kathleen had asked Dr. Bailey, who became very irritated and told Geraldine that anybody except a physician who ever read medical works was a fool. Desperation gave her courage to ask him one more question; his well-meant reply silenced her. But she had the book under her pillow. It is better to answer such questions when the young ask them.
And over it all she pondered and pored, and used a dictionary and shuddered, frightening herself into a morbid condition until, desperately scared, she even thought of going to Duane about it; but could not find the hardihood to do it or the vocabulary necessary.
Now Duane was gone; and the book lay there between her knees, all its technical vagueness menacing her with unknown terrors; and she felt that she could endure it alone no longer.
She wrote him:
"You have not been gone an hour, and already I need you. I wish to ask you about something that is troubling me; I've asked Kathleen and she doesn't know; and Dr. Bailey was horrid to me, and I tried to find out from Scott whether he knew, but he wasn't much interested. So, Duane, who else is there for me to ask except you? And I don't exactly know whether I may speak about such matters to you, but I'm rather frightened, and densely ignorant.
"It is this, dear; in a medical book which I read, it says that hereditary taints are transmissible; that sometimes they may skip the second generation but only to appear surely in the third. But it also says that the taint is very likely to appear in _every_ generation.
"Duane, is this _true_? It has worried me sick since I read it. Because, my darling, if it is so, is it not another reason for our not marrying?
"Do you understand? I can and will eradicate what is threatening _me_, but if I marry you--you _do_ understand, don't you? Isn't it all right for me to ask you whether, if we should have children, this thing would menace them? Oh, Duane--Duane! Have I any right to marry? Children come--God knows how, for nobody ever told me exactly, and I'm a fool about such things--but I summoned up courage to ask Dr. Bailey if there was any way to tell before I married whether I would have any, and he said I would if I had any notion of my duty and any pretence to self-respect. And I don't know what he means and I'm bewildered and miserable and afraid to marry you even when I myself become perfectly well. And that is what worries me, Duane, and I have nobody in the world to ask about it except you. Could you please tell me how I might learn what I ought to know concerning these things without betraying my own vital interest in them to whomever I ask? You see, Kathleen is as innocent as I.
"Please tell me all you can, Duane, for I am most unhappy."
* * * * *
"The house is very still and full of sunlight and cut flowers. Scott is meditating great deeds, lying flat in the dirt. Kathleen sits watching him from the parapet. And I am here in the library, with that ghastly book at my elbow, pouring out all my doubts and fears to the only man in the world--whom God bless and protect wherever he may be--Oh, Duane, Duane, how I love you!" She hurriedly directed and sealed the letter and placed it in the box for outgoing mail; then, unquiet and apprehensive regarding what she had ventured to write, she began a restless tour of the house, upstairs and down, wandering aimlessly through sunny corridors, opening doors for a brief survey of chambers in which only the shadow-patterns of leaves moved on sunlit walls; still rooms tenanted only by the carefully dusted furniture which seemed to stand there watching attentively for another guest.
Duane had left his pipe in his bedroom. She was silly over it, even to the point of retiring into her room, shredding some cigarettes, filling the rather rank bowl, and trying her best to smoke it. But such devotion was beyond her physical powers; she rinsed her mouth, furious at being defeated in her pious intentions, and, making an attractive parcel of the pipe, seized the occasion to write him another letter.
"There is in my heart," she wrote, "no room for anything except you; no desire except for you; no hope, no interest that is not yours. You praise my beauty; you endow me with what you might wish I really possessed; and oh, I really am so humble at your feet, if you only knew it! So dazed by your goodness to me, so grateful, so happy that you have chosen me (I just jumped up to look at myself in the mirror; I _am_ pretty, Duane, I've a stunning colour just now and there _is_ a certain charm about me--even I can see it in what you call the upcurled corners of my mouth, and in my figure and hands)--and I am so happy that it is true--that you find me beautiful, that you care for my beauty.... It is so with a man, I believe; and a girl wishes to have him love her beauty, too.
"But, Duane, I don't think the average girl cares very much about that in a man. Of course you are exceedingly nice to look at, and I notice it sometimes, but not nearly as often as you notice what you think is externally attractive about me.
"In my heart, I don't believe it really matters much to a girl what a man looks like; anyway, it matters very little after she once knows him.
"Of course women do notice handsome men--or what we consider handsome--which is, I believe, not at all what men care for; because men usually seem to have a desire to kick the man whom women find good-looking. I know several men who feel that way about Jack Dysart. I think you do, for one.
"Poor Jack Dysart! To-day's papers are saying such horridly unpleasant things about the rich men with whom he was rather closely associated in business affairs several years ago. I read, but I do not entirely comprehend.
"The New York papers seem unusually gloomy this summer; nothing but predictions of hard times coming, and how many corporations the attorney-general is going to proceed against, and wicked people who loot metropolitan railways, and why the district-attorney doesn't do his duty--which you say he does--oh, dear; I expect that Scott and Kathleen and I will have to take in boarders this winter; but if nobody has any money, nobody can pay board, so everybody will be ruined and I don't very much care, for I could teach school, only who is to pay my salary if there's no money to pay it with? Oh, dear! what nonsense I am writing--only to keep on writing, because it seems to bring you a little nearer--my own--my Duane--my comrade--the same, same little boy who ran away from his nurse and came into our garden to fight my brother and--fall in love with his sister! Oh, Fate! Oh, Destiny! Oh, Duane Mallett!
"Here is a curious phenomenon. Listen:
"Away from you I have a woman's courage to tell you how I long for you, how my heart and my arms ache for you. But when I am with you I'm less of a woman and more of a girl--a girl not yet accustomed to some things--always guarded, always a little reticent, always instinctively recoiling from the contact I really like, always a little on the defensive against your lips, in spite of myself--against your arms--where, somehow, I cannot seem to stay long at a time--will not endure it--_cannot_, somehow.
"Yet, here, away from you, I so long for your embrace, and cannot imagine it too long, too close, too tender to satisfy my need of you.
"And this is my second letter to you within the hour--one hour after your departure.
"Oh, Duane, I do truly miss you so! I go about humming that air you found so quaint:
"'Lisetto quittee la plaine,
Moi perdi bonheur a moi,
Yeux a moi semblent fontaine,
Depuis moi pas mire toi,'
and there's a tear in every note of it, and I'm the most lonely girl on the face of the earth to-day.
"GERALDINE QUI PLEURE."
"P.S.--Voici votre pipe, Monsieur!" _