The Web of Life Part 39

As the afternoon wore on, her mind turned to the larger thoughts of their union. She saw with sudden clearness what she had done to this man she loved. She had taken him from his proper position in the world; she had forced him to push his theories of revolt beyond sane limits. She had isolated him, tied him, and his powers would never be tested. A man like him could never be happy, standing outside the fight with his equals. Worse yet, she had soiled the reverences of his nature. What was she but a soiled thing! The tenderness of his first pa.s.sion had sprung amid the rank growth of her past with its sordid little drama. And the soil in her fate had tarnished their lives ever since, until this grievous...

And what had she given him? Love,--every throb of her pa.s.sionate body, every desire and thought. Was this enough? There sounded the sad note of defeat: it was not, could not be, would never be enough! No man ever lived from love alone. Pa.s.sion was a torrid desert. Already she had felt him fading out of her life, withdrawing into the mysterious recesses of his soul. He did not know it; he did not willingly put her away. But as each plant of the field was destined to grow its own way, side by side with its fellows, so human souls grew singly by themselves from some irresistible inner force. And she was but the parasite that fed upon this soul.

The room stifled her. She fetched her cape and hat. They were lying upon his table, and as she took them she could see the sheets of an unfinished letter. The writing was firm and fine, with the regular alignment and s.p.a.cing of one who is deft about handwork. Her eye glanced over the page; the letter was in answer to a doctor in Baltimore, who had asked him to cooperate in preparing a surgical monograph. "I should like extremely to be with you in this," ran the lines, like the voice of the speaking man, "but--and the refusal pains me more than you know--I cannot in honesty undertake the work. I have not suitable conditions. It is eighteen months since I entered a hospital, and I am behind the times. And, for the present, I see no prospect of being in a condition to undertake the work. I advise you to try Muller, or--" There the letter broke off, unfinished. She raised it to her lips and kissed it. This was another sign, and she would heed it. To be a full man he must return to the poor average world, or be less than the trivial people he had always despised.

When she opened the door, the level rays of the western sun blinded her.

There was no wind. Eastward the purple shadows had thickened, effacing the line of light along the horizon. The frozen lake stretched, ridged and furrowed, into the gloom. Toward it she walked,--slowly, irresistibly drawn by its limitless bosom.

She had boasted to Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k, "I will take myself out of his life, if need be." It was not an empty, woman's boast. She was strong enough to do what she willed. The time had come. She would not see him again. To break with words the ties between them would but dishonor them both. They must not discuss this thing. At the sh.o.r.e of the pool where they had put on their skates in the morning she paused, shaken with a new thought. The woman would come back on the morrow, and, without one word of denial from her, would tell him that terrible lie, confirming his old suspicions. She must see him,--she could not leave him with that foul memory,--and she returned to the temple in the hope that he was already there. The little building, however, was empty and desolate, and she sat down by the fire to wait.

The story, the denial of it, no longer seemed important. She would write him what she had to say, and go away. She would tell him that she had not poisoned her husband like a sick dog, and he would believe the solemn last words. She took a sheet of paper from his table and wrote hesitatingly:

"Dear Howard: I am leaving you----forever." Then she began again and again, but at last she came back to the first words and wrote on desperately: "I cannot make you understand it all. But one thing I must tell you, and you must believe it. That horrible woman, Mrs. Ducharme, was here this morning and told me that I had given opiates to my husband when he was ill in the cottage, and had killed him, _and that you knew it_. Somehow I remembered things that made me know you thought so, had always thought so.

Perhaps you will still think it must have been so, her story is so terribly probable.

"O Howard, you used to think that it would be right--but I couldn't. I might have in time, but I couldn't then. I did nothing to hasten his death.

Believe this, if you love me the least.

"That isn't the sole reason why I leave you. But it is all like that. I ruin the world for you. Love is not all,--at least for a man,--and somehow with me you cannot have the rest and love. We were wrong to rebel--I was wrong to take my happiness. I longed so! I have been so happy!

"Alves."

It seemed pitifully inadequate--a few wavering lines--to tell the tale of the volumes in her heart. But with a sigh she pushed back the chair and gathered her hat and cape. Once more she hesitated, and seeing that the fire in the stove was low, replenished it. Then she turned swiftly away, locked the door,--putting the key where they hid it, in the hollow of a pillar,--and walked rapidly in the direction of the lake.

It was already nearly dusk. Little groups of skaters were sauntering homeward from the lagoons and the patches of insh.o.r.e ice. The lake was gray and stern. She gained the esplanade, with a vague purpose of walking into the city, of taking the train for Wisconsin. But as she pa.s.sed the long pier, the desire to walk out on the ice seized her once more. With some difficulty she gained the black ice after scrambling over the debris piled high against the beach. When she reached the clear s.p.a.ces she walked slowly toward the open lake. The gloom of the winter night was already gathering; as she pa.s.sed the head of the pier, a park-guard hailed her, with some warning cry. She paid no attention, but walked on, slowly picking her way among the familiar ice hills, in and out of the floes.

Once beyond the head of the pier she was absolutely alone in the darkening sea of ice. The cracks and creva.s.ses were no longer steaming; instead, a thin sh.e.l.l of ice was coating over the open surfaces. But she knew all these spots and picked her way carefully. The darkness had already enveloped the sh.o.r.e. Beyond, on all sides, rose small white hills of drifted ice, making a little arctic ocean, with its own strange solitude, its majestic distances, its t.i.tanic noises; for the fields of ice were moving in obedience to the undercurrents, the impact from distant northerly winds. And as they moved, they shrieked and groaned, the thunderous voices hailing from far up the lake and pealing past the solitary figure to the black wastes beyond. This tumult of the lake increased in fury, yet with solemn pauses of absolute silence between the reports. At first Alves stood still and listened, fearful, but as she became used to the noise, she walked on calm, courageous, and strangely at peace in the clamor. Once she faced the land, where the arc lights along the esplanade made blue holes in the black night. Eastward the radiant line of illumined horizon reappeared, creating a kind of false daybreak.

So this was the end as she had wished it--alone in the immensity of the frozen lake. This was like the true conception of life--one vast, ever darkening sphere filled with threatening voices, where she and others wandered in sorrow, in regret, in disappointment, and, also, in joy. Oh!

that redeemed it. Her joy had been so beautiful, so true to the promise of G.o.d in the pitiful heart of man. She said to herself that she had tasted it without sin, and now had the courage to put it away from her before it turned to a draught bitter to her and to others. There were more joys in this life than the fierce love for man: the joy over a child, which had been given to her and taken away; the joy of triumph, the joy--but why should she remember the others? Her joy had its own perfection. For all the tears and waste of living, this one pa.s.sion had been given--a joy that warmed her body in the cold gloom of the night.

There loomed in her path a black wall of broken ice. She drew herself slowly over the crest of the ma.s.sed blocks. Beyond lay a pleasant blackness of clear water, into which she plunged,--still warm with the glow of her perfect happiness.

CHAPTER IX

Webber had a well-developed case of typhoid, and Sommers had him moved to St. Isidore's. The doctor accompanied him to the hospital, and once within the doors of his old home, he lingered chatting with the house physician, who had graduated from the Philadelphia school shortly after Sommers had left. The come and go of the place, the air of excitement about the hospital, stirred Sommers as nothing in months had done. Then the attention paid him by the internes and the older nurses, who had kept alive in their busy little world the tradition of his brilliant work, aroused all the vanity in his nature. When he was about to tear himself away from the pleasant antiseptic odor and orderly bustle, the house physician pressed him to stay to luncheon. He yielded, longing to hear the talk about cases, and remembering with pleasure the unconventional manners and bad food of the St. Isidore mess-table. After luncheon he was urged to attend an operation by a well-known surgeon, whose honest work he had always admired.

It was late in the afternoon when he finally started to leave, and then a nurse brought word that Webber was anxious to see him about some business.

He found Webber greatly excited and worried over money matters. To his surprise he learned that the foppish, quiet-mannered clerk had been dabbling in the market. He held some Distillery common stock, and, also, Northern Iron--two of the new "industrials" that were beginning to sprout in Chicago.

"You must ask the brokers to sell if the market is going against me," the clerk exclaimed feverishly. "Perhaps, if I am to be tied up here a long time, they'd better sell, anyway."

"Yes," Sommers a.s.sented; "you must get it off your mind."

So, with a promise to see White and Einstein, the brokers, at once, and look after the stock, he soothed the sick man.

"You're a good fellow," Webber sighed. "It's about all I have. I'll tell you some time why I went in--I had very direct information."

Sommers cut him short and hastened away. By the time he had found White and Einstein's office, a little room about as large as a cigar shop in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a large building on La Salle Street, the place was deserted. A stenographer told him, with contempt in her voice, that the Exchange had been closed for two hours. Resolving to return the first thing in the morning, he started for the temple. He had two visits to make that he had neglected for Webber's case, but he would wait until the evening and take Alves with him. He had not seen her for hours. For the first time in months he indulged himself in a few petty extravagances as he crossed the city to get his train. The day had excited him, had destroyed the calm of his usual controlled, plodding habits. The feverish buoyancy of his mood made it pleasant to thread the chaotic streams of the city streets. It was intoxicating to rub shoulders with men once more.

At Sixtieth Street he left the train and strode across the park, his imagination playing happy, visionary tunes. He would drop in to-morrow at St. Isidore's on his way back from White and Einstein's. He must see more of those fellows at Henry's clinic; they seemed a good set. And he was not sure that he should answer the Baltimore man so flatly. He would write for further details. When he reached the temple, he found the place closed, and he thought that Alves had gone to see one of his cases for him. The key was in its usual hiding-place, and the fire looked as if it had been made freshly. He had just missed her. So he filled a pipe, and hunted along the table for the unfinished letter to the Baltimore man. It was blotted, he noticed, and he would have to copy it in any case. As he laid it aside, his eyes fell upon a loose sheet of note-paper covered with Alves's unfamiliar writing. He took it up and read it, and then looked around him to see her, to find her there in the next room. The letter was so unreal!

"Alves!" he called out, the pleasant glow of hope fading in his heart. How he had forgotten her! She must be suffering so much! Mechanically he put on his hat and coat and left the temple, hiding the key in the pillar. She could not have been gone long,--the room had the air of her having just left it. He should surely find her nearby; he must find her. Whipped by the intolerable imagination of her suffering, he pa.s.sed swiftly down the sandy path toward the electric lights, that were already lamping silently along the park esplanade. He chose this road, unconsciously feeling that she would plunge out that way. What had the Ducharme woman said? What had made her take this harsh step, macerating herself and him just as they were beginning to breathe without fear? He sped on, into the gullies by the foundations of the burnt buildings, up to the new boulevard. After one moment of irresolution he turned to the right, to the lake. That icy sea had fascinated her so strongly! He s.h.i.+vered at the memory of her words.

Once abreast of the pier he did not pause, but swiftly clambered out over the ice hills and groped his way along the black piles of the pier. The vastness of the field he had to search! But he would go, even across the floes of ice to the Michigan sh.o.r.e. He was certain that she was out there, beyond in the black night, in the gloom of the rending ice.

Suddenly, as he neared the end of the pier, the big form of a man, bearing, dragging a burden, loomed up out of the dark expanse. It came nearer, and Sommers could make out the uniform of a park-guard. He was half-carrying, half-dragging the limp form of a woman. Sommers tried to hail him, but he could not cry. At last the guard called out when he was within a few feet:

"Give me a hand, will you. It's a woman,--suicide, I guess," he added more gently.

Sommers walked forward and took the limp form. The drenched garments were already frosting in the cold. He turned the flap of the cape back from the face.

"It is my wife," he said quietly.

"I saw her from the pier goin' out, and I called to her," the guard replied, "but she kept on all the faster. Then I went back to the sh.o.r.e and got on the ice and followed her as fast as I could, but--"

Together they lifted her and carried her in over the rough sh.o.r.e ice up to the esplanade.

"We live over there." Sommers pointed in the direction of the temple. The man nodded; he seemed to know the young doctor.

"I shall not need your help," Sommers continued, wrapping the stiff cape about the yielding form. He took her gently in his arms, staggered under the weight, then started slowly along the esplanade. The guard followed for a few steps; but as the doctor seemed able to carry his burden alone, he turned back toward the city.

Sommers walked on slowly. The stiff cape slipped back from Alves's head, revealing in the blue electric light the marble-white pallor of the flesh, the closed eyes. Sommers stopped to kiss the cold face, and with the movement Alves's head nestled forward against his hot neck. Tears rose to his eyes and fell against her cheek; he started on once more, tracing carefully the windings of the path.

So this was the end! The little warmth and love of his cheris.h.i.+ng arms about her cold body completed the pittance of happiness she had craved.

The story was too dark for him to comprehend now--from that first understanding moment in St. Isidore's receiving room to this. Here was his revolt, in one cold burden of dead love. She had left him in some delusion that it would be better thus, that by this means he would find his way, free and unshackled, back to the world of his fellows. And, perhaps, like a creature of love, she had blindly felt love's slow, creeping paralysis, love's ultimate death. Even now, as he staggered along the lighted avenue of the park, in the silence of death and of night, that pregnant reproach oppressed his heart. He had not loved her enough! She had felt a wall that was building impalpably between them, a division of thought and of feeling.

She had put her arms against his man's world of secret ambition and desire and had found it cold.

She had struggled for her bit of happiness, poor, loving woman! She had suffered under her past error, her marriage with Preston, and had endured, until, suddenly relieved, she had embraced her happiness, only to find it slowly vanis.h.i.+ng in her warm hands. He had suspected her of grasping this happiness without scruple, clamorously; but her sweet white lips spoke out the falseness of this accusation. It was bitter to know that he had covered her with this secret suspicion. He owed her a sea of pardons!

So he labored on into the dark stretches of the park, among the debris of the devastated buildings, up the little sandy hills, out of the park to the lonely temple. Already his self-reproach seemed trivial. He knew how little his concealed suspicions had to do with bringing about this catastrophe.

That misunderstanding was but a drop in the stream of fate, which was all too swift for her strength. He paused at the last turn of the road and rested, settling his burden more closely in his arms, drawing her to him in the unavailing embrace of regret. Another kind of life, he said,--some average marriage with children and home would have given her more fully the human modic.u.m of joy. But his heart rejected also this reproach. In no other circ.u.mstance could he place her justly. She was so amply made for joy--so strong to love, to endure; so true to the eternal pa.s.sions. But not mere household love, the calm minutes of interlude in the fragments of a busy day! They would not satisfy the deep thirst for love in her heart. He had given the best he had--all, nearly all, as few men could give, as most men never give. He must content himself there.

He started again and strode on to the end of the journey. Within the temple he placed her on their bed, taking off her stiff clothes and preparing her for sleep. Then he remade the fire, and opening a window for the low night wind to draw across her face as she liked to have it, he sat down for his vigil.

Yes, it was the end! It was the end of his little personal battle with the world, the end of judging and striving, the end of revolt. He should live on, strangely enough, into many years, but not as they had tried to live in self-made isolation. He should return to that web of life from which they had striven to extricate themselves. She bade him go back to that fretwork, unsolvable world of little and great, of domineering and incompetent wills, of the powerful rich struggling blindly to dominate and the weak poor struggling blindly to keep their lives: the vast web of petty greeds and blind efforts. He should return, but humbly, with the crude dross of his self-will burnt out. They had rebelled together; they had had their wills to themselves; and that was ended. It could not have been otherwise. They could never have known each other in the world; they had to withdraw themselves apart. He looked at her afresh, lying on the pillow by his side, her hair twining carelessly about the white arm. She was infinitely greater than he,--so undivided and complete a soul! She had left him for the commoner uses of life. And all the stains of their experience had been removed, washed out by the pure accomplishment of her end.

Already so cold, so sweetly distant, that face,--so done with life and with him! He leaned over it and burst into tears. The dream of the summer night had pa.s.sed away.

CHAPTER X