"It's been such a wonderful day I'm all wrought up," he said.
"Life is so beautiful here. This place is so sweet and peaceful.
And you! oh, you!" kisses ended his words.
They stood there a little while, then went back into the parlor
where she lighted a lamp. It cast a soft yellow glow over the room,
just enough to make it warm, he thought. They sat first side by
side on two rocking chairs and then later on a settee, he holding
her in his arms. Before supper she had changed to a loose cream
colored house gown. Now Eugene persuaded her to let her hair hang
in the two braids.
Real passion is silent. It was so intense with him that he sat
contemplating her as if in a spell. She leaned back against his
shoulder stroking his hair, but finally ceased even that, for her
own feeling was too intense to make movement possible. She thought
of him as a young god, strong, virile, beautiful—a brilliant future
before him. All these years she had waited for someone to truly
love her and now this splendid youth had apparently cast himself at
her feet. He stroked her hands, her neck, cheeks, then slowly
gathered her close and buried his head against her bosom.
Angela was strong in convention, in the precepts of her parents,
in the sense of her family and its attitude, but this situation was
more than she could resist. She accepted first the pressure of his
arm, then the slow subtlety with which he caressed her. Resistance
seemed almost impossible now for he held her close—tight within the
range of his magnetism. When finally she felt the pressure of his
hand upon her quivering limbs, she threw herself back in a
transport of agony and delight.
"No, no, Eugene," she begged. "No, no! Save me from myself. Save
me from myself. Oh, Eugene!"
He paused a moment to look at her face. It was wrought in lines
of intense suffering—pale as though she were ill. Her body was
quite limp. Only the hot, moist lips told the significant story. He
could not stop at once. Slowly he drew his hand away, then let his
sensitive artists' fingers rest gently on her neck—her bosom.
She struggled lamely at this point and slipped to her knees, her
dress loosened at the neck.
"Don't, Eugene," she begged, "don't. Think of my father, my
mother. I, who have boasted so. I of whom they feel so sure. Oh,
Eugene, I beg of you!"
He stroked her hair, her cheeks, looking into her face as
Abélard might have looked at Héloïse.
"Oh, I know why it is," she exclaimed, convulsively. "I am no
better than any other, but I have waited so long, so long! But I
mustn't! Oh, Eugene, I mustn't! Help me!"
Vaguely Eugene understood. She had been without lovers. Why? he
thought. She was beautiful. He got up, half intending to carry her
to his room, but he paused, thinking. She was such a pathetic
figure. Was he really as bad as this? Could he not be fair in this
one instance? Her father had been so nice to him—her mother—He saw
Jotham Blue before him, Mrs. Blue, her admiring brothers and
sisters, as they had been a little while before. He looked at her
and still the prize lured him—almost swept him on in spite of
himself, but he stayed.
"Stand up, Angela," he said at last, pulling himself together,
looking at her intensely. She did so. "Leave me now," he went on,
"right away! I won't answer for myself if you don't. I am really
trying. Please go."
She paused, looking at him fearfully, regretfully.
"Oh, forgive me, Eugene," she pleaded.
"Forgive me," he said. "I'm the one. But you go now, sweet. You
don't know how hard this is. Help me by going."
She moved away and he followed her with his eyes, yearningly,
burningly, until she reached the door. When she closed it softly he
went into his own room and sat down. His body was limp and weary.
He ached from head to foot from the intensity of the mood he had
passed through. He went over the recent incidents, almost stunned
by his experience and then went outside and stood under the stairs,
listening. Tree toads were chirping, there were suspicious
cracklings in the grass as of bugs stirring. A duck quacked
somewhere feebly. The bell of the family cow tinkled somewhere over
near the water of the little stream. He saw the great dipper in the
sky, Sirius, Canopus, the vast galaxy of the Milky Way.
"What is life anyway?" he asked himself. "What is the human
body? What produces passion? Here we are for a few years surging
with a fever of longing and then we burn out and die." He thought
of some lines he might write, of pictures he might paint. All the
while, reproduced before his mind's eye like a cinematograph, were
views of Angela as she had been tonight in his arms, on her knees.
He had seen her true form. He had held her in his arms. He had
voluntarily resigned her charms for tonight; anyhow, no harm had
come. It never should.
It would be hard to say in what respect, if any, the experiences
of this particular night altered Eugene's opinion of Angela. He was
inclined to like her better for what he would have called her
humanness. Thus frankly to confess her weakness and inability to
save herself was splendid. That he was given the chance to do a
noble deed was fortunate and uplifting. He knew now that he could
take her if he wished, but once calm again he resolved to be fair
and not to insist. He could wait.
The state of Angela's mind, on the contrary, once she had come
out of her paroxysm and gained the privacy of her own room, or
rather the room she shared with Marietta at the other extreme of
the house, was pitiable. She had for so long considered herself an
estimable and virtuous girl. There was in her just a faint trace of
prudery which might readily have led to an unhappy old maid
existence for her if Eugene, with his superiority, or
non-understanding, or indifference to conventional theories and to
old-maidish feelings, had not come along and with his customary
blindness to material prosperity and age limitations, seized upon
and made love to her. He had filled her brain with a whirlwind of
notions hitherto unfamiliar to her world and set himself up in her
brain as a law unto himself. He was not like other men—she could
see that. He was superior to them. He might not make much money,
being an artist, but he could make other things which to her seemed
more desirable. Fame, beautiful pictures, notable friends, were not
these things far superior to money? She had had little enough money
in all conscience, and if Eugene made anything at all it would be
enough for her. He seemed to be under the notion that he needed a
lot to get married, whereas she would have been glad to risk it on
almost anything at all.
This latest revelation of herself, besides tearing her mind from
a carefully nurtured belief in her own virtuous impregnability,
raised at the same time a spectre of disaster in so far as Eugene's
love for her was concerned. Would he, now that she had allowed him
those precious endearments which should have been reserved for the
marriage bed only, care for her as much as he had before? Would he
not think of her as a light minded, easily spoiled creature who was
waiting only for a propitious moment to yield herself? She had been
lost to all sense of right and wrong in that hour, that she knew.
Her father's character and what he stood for, her mother's decency
and love of virtue, her cleanly-minded, right-living brothers and
sisters,—all had been forgotten and here she was, a tainted maiden,
virtuous in technical sense it is true, but tainted. Her
convention-trained conscience smote her vigorously and she groaned
in her heart. She went outside the door of her own room and sat
down on the damp grass in the early morning to think. It was so
cool and calm everywhere but in her own soul. She held her face in
her hands, feeling her hot cheeks, wondering what Eugene was
thinking now. What would her father think, her mother? She wrung
her hands more than once and finally went inside to see if she
could not rest. She was not unconscious of the beauty and joy of
the episode, but she was troubled by what she felt she ought to
think, what the consequences to her future might be. To hold Eugene
now—that was a subtle question. To hold up her head in front of him
as she had, could she? To keep him from going further. It was a
difficult situation and she tossed restlessly all night, getting
little sleep. In the morning she arose weary and disturbed, but
more desperately in love than ever. This wonderful youth had
revealed an entirely new and intensely dramatic world to her.
When they met on the lawn again before breakfast, Angela was
garbed in white linen. She looked waxen and delicate and her eyes
showed dark rings as well as the dark thoughts that were troubling
her. Eugene took her hand sympathetically.
"Don't worry," he said, "I know. It isn't as bad as you think."
And he smiled tenderly.
"Oh, Eugene, I don't understand myself now," she said
sorrowfully. "I thought I was better than that."
"We're none of us better than that," he replied simply. "We just
think we are sometimes. You are not any different to me. You just
think you are."
"Oh, are you sure?" she asked eagerly.
"Quite sure," he replied. "Love isn't a terrible thing between
any two. It's just lovely. Why should I think worse of you?"
"Oh, because good girls don't do what I have done. I have been
raised to know better—to do better."
"All a belief, my dear, which you get from what has been taught
you. You think it wrong. Why? Because your father and mother told
you so. Isn't that it?"
"Oh, not that alone. Everybody thinks it's wrong. The Bible
teaches that it is. Everybody turns his back on you when he finds
out."
"Wait a minute," pleaded Eugene argumentatively. He was trying
to solve this puzzle for himself. "Let's leave the Bible out of it,
for I don't believe in the Bible—not as a law of action anyhow. The
fact that everybody thinks it's wrong wouldn't necessarily make it
so, would it?" He was ignoring completely the significance of
everybody
as a reflection of those principles which govern
the universe.
"No-o-o," ventured Angela doubtfully.
"Listen," went on Eugene. "Everybody in Constantinople believes
that Mahomet is the Prophet of God. That doesn't make him so, does
it?"
"No."
"Well, then, everyone here might believe that what we did last
night was wrong without making it so. Isn't that true?"
"Yes," replied Angela confusedly. She really did not know. She
could not argue with him. He was too subtle, but her innate
principles and instincts were speaking plainly enough,
nevertheless.
"Now what you're really thinking about is what people will do.
They'll turn their backs on you, you say. That is a practical
matter. Your father might turn you out of doors—"
"I think he would," replied Angela, little understanding the
bigness of the heart of her father.
"I think he wouldn't," said Eugene, "but that's neither here nor
there. Men might refuse to marry you. Those are material
considerations. You wouldn't say they had anything to do with real
right or wrong, would you?"
Eugene had no convincing end to his argument. He did not know
any more than anyone else what was right or wrong in this matter.
He was merely talking to convince himself, but he had enough logic
to confuse Angela.
"I don't know," she said vaguely.
"Right," he went on loftily, "is something which is supposed to
be in accordance with a standard of truth. Now no one in all the
world knows what truth is, no one. There is no way of telling. You
can only act wisely or unwisely as regards your personal welfare.
If that's what you're worrying about, and it is, I can tell you
that you're no worse off. There's nothing the matter with your
welfare. I think you're better off, for I like you better."
Angela wondered at the subtlety of his brain. She was not sure
but that what he said might be true. Could her fears be baseless?
She felt sure she had lost some of the bloom of her youth
anyhow.
"How can you?" she asked, referring to his saying that he liked
her better.
"Easily enough," he replied. "I know more about you. I admire
your frankness. You're lovely—altogether so. You are sweet beyond
compare." He started to particularize.
"Don't, Eugene," she pleaded, putting her finger over her lips.
The color was leaving her cheeks. "Please don't, I can't stand
it."
"All right," he said, "I won't. But you're altogether lovely.
Let's go and sit in the hammock."
"No. I'm going to get you your breakfast. It's time you had
something."
He took comfort in his privileges, for the others had all gone.
Jotham, Samuel, Benjamin and David were in the fields. Mrs. Blue
was sewing and Marietta had gone to see a girl friend up the road.
Angela, as Ruby before her, bestirred herself about the youth's
meal, mixing biscuit, broiling him some bacon, cleaning a basket of
fresh dewberries for him.
"I like your man," said her mother, coming out where she was
working. "He looks to be good-natured. But don't spoil him. If you
begin wrong you'll be sorry."
"You spoiled papa, didn't you?" asked Angela sagely, recalling
all the little humorings her father had received.
"Your father has a keen sense of duty," retorted her mother. "It
didn't hurt him to be spoiled a little."
"Maybe Eugene has," replied her daughter, turning her slices of
bacon.
Her mother smiled. All her daughters had married well. Perhaps
Angela was doing the best of all. Certainly her lover was the most
distinguished. Yet, "well to be careful," she suggested.
Angela thought. If her mother only knew, or her father. Dear
Heaven! And yet Eugene was altogether lovely. She wanted to wait on
him, to spoil him. She wished she could be with him every day from
now on—that they need not part any more.
"Oh, if he would only marry me," she sighed. It was the one
divine event which would complete her life.
Eugene would have liked to linger in this atmosphere
indefinitely. Old Jotham, he found, liked to talk to him. He took
an interest in national and international affairs, was aware of
distinguished and peculiar personalities, seemed to follow world
currents everywhere. Eugene began to think of him as a
distinguished personality in himself, but old Jotham waved the
suggestion blandly aside.
"I'm a farmer," he said. "I've seen my greatest success in
raising good children. My boys will do well, I know."
For the first time Eugene caught the sense of fatherhood, of
what it means to live again in your children, but only vaguely. He
was too young, too eager for a varied life, too lustful. So its
true import was lost for the time.
Sunday came and with it the necessity to leave. He had been here
nine days, really two days more than he had intended to stay. It
was farewell to Angela, who had come so close, so much in his grasp
that she was like a child in his hands. It was farewell, moreover,
to an ideal scene, a bit of bucolic poetry. When would he see again
an old patriarch like Jotham, clean, kindly, intelligent, standing
upright amid his rows of corn, proud to be a good father, not
ashamed to be poor, not afraid to be old or to die. Eugene had
drawn so much from him. It was like sitting at the feet of Isaiah.
It was farewell to the lovely fields and the blue hills, the long
rows of trees down the lawn walk, the white and red and blue
flowers about the dooryard. He had slept so sweetly in his clean
room, he had listened so joyously to the voices of birds, the wood
dove and the poet thrush; he had heard the water in the Blue's
branch rippling over its clean pebbles. The pigs in the barnyard
pen, the horses, the cows, all had appealed to him. He thought of
Gray's "Elegy"—of Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" and "The
Traveller." This was something like the things those men had
loved.
He walked down the lawn with Angela, when the time came,
repeating how sorry he was to go. David had hitched up a little
brown mare and was waiting at the extreme end of the lawn.
"Oh, Sweet," he sighed. "I shall never be happy until I have
you."
"I will wait," sighed Angela, although she was wishing to
exclaim: "Oh, take me, take me!" When he was gone she went about
her duties mechanically, for it was as if all the fire and joy had
gone out of her life. Without this brilliant imagination of his to
illuminate things, life seemed dull.
And he rode, parting in his mind with each lovely thing as he
went—the fields of wheat, the little stream, Lake Okoonee, the
pretty Blue farmhouse, all.
He said to himself: "Nothing more lovely will ever come again.
Angela in my arms in her simple little parlor. Dear God! and there
are only seventy years of life—not more than ten or fifteen of true
youth, all told."