Читать книгу The Seven Darlings - Gouverneur Morris - Страница 9

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Even on going into the open air from a warmed room, it would not have struck you as a cold day. But thermometers marked a number of degrees worse than zero. The sky was bright and blue. Not a breath of wind stirred. In the woods the underbrush was hidden by the smooth accumulations of snow, so that the going was open.

The Adirondack winter climate is such that a man runs less risk of getting too cold than of getting too warm. Arthur, moving swiftly in a great circle so that at some point he should come upon the tracks of his culprit sisters, shed first his mittens and then his coat. The former he thrust into his trousers pocket, and he hung the latter to a broken limb where he could easily find it on his return.

"There would be some sense in running away in summer," he thought. "It would take an Indian or a dog to track them then, but in winter—I gave them credit for more sense."

He came upon the outgoing marks of their snow-shoes presently, just beyond Phyllis's garden, to the north of the camp. In imagination he saw the two lithe young beauties striding sturdily and tirelessly over the snow, and then and there the extreme pinnacles of his anger toppled and fell. There is no occupation to which a maiden may lend herself so virginal as woodmanship. And he fell to thinking less of his young sisters' indiscretion than of the extreme and unsophisticated innocence which had led them into it. What could girls know of men, anyway? What did his sisters know of him? That he had been extravagant and rather fast. Had they an inkling of what being rather fast meant? His smooth forehead contracted with painful thoughts. Even Mary's indignation upon the discovery of the photograph in The Four Seasons had not matched his own. She had been angry because she was a gentlewoman, and gentlewomen shun publicity. She had not even guessed at the degradation to which broadcast pictures of beautiful women are subjected. His anger turned from his sisters presently and glowered upon the whole world of men; his hands closed to strike, and opened to clutch and choke. That Lee and Gay had done such a thing was earnest only of innocence coupled with mischief. They must know that what they had done was wrong, since they had fled from any immediate consequences, but how wrong it was they could never dream, even in nightmares. Nor was it possible for him to explain. How, then, could any anger which he might visit upon them benefit? And who was he, when it came to that, to assume the unassailable morality of a parent?

It came to this: That Arthur followed the marks of Lee's and Gay's snow-shoes mechanically, and raged, not against them, not against the world of men, but against himself. He had said once in jest that many an artistic impulse had been crushed by the camera and the pianola. But how pitifully true this had been in his own case! If he had been born into less indulgence, he might have painted, he might have played. The only son in a large family of daughters, his father and mother had worshipped the ground upon which his infant feet had trod. He had never known what it was to want anything. He had never been allowed to turn a hand to his own honest advantage. He was the kind of boy who, under less golden circumstances, would have saved his pocket-money and built with his own hands a boat or whatever he needed. There is a song: "I want what I want when I want it." Arthur might have sung: "I get what I'm going to want and then I don't want it."

His contemporaries had greatly envied him, when, as a mere matter of justice, they should have pitied him. All his better impulses had been gnarled by indulgence. He had done things that showed natural ability; but of what use was that? He was too old now to learn to draw. He played rather delightfully upon the piano, or any other instrument, for that matter. To what end? He could not read a note.

There was nothing that Arthur could not have done, if he had been let alone. There were many things that he would have done.

At college he had seen in one smouldering flash of intuition how badly he had started in the race of life. When others were admiring his many brilliancies, he was mourning for the lost years when, under almost any guidance save that of his beloved father, he might have laid such sturdy foundations to future achievements—pedestals on which to erect statues.

Self-knowledge had made him hard for a season and cynical. As a tired sea-gull miscalculates distance and dips his wings into the sea, so Arthur, when he thought that he was merely flying low the better to see and to observe, had alighted without much struggling in a pool of dissipation and vice.

The memory was more of a weariness to him than a sharp regret. Of what use is remorse—after the fact? Let it come before and all will be well.

At last, more by accident than design, he drew out of the muddy ways into which he had fallen and limped off—not so much toward better things as away from worse.

Then it was that Romance had come for him, and carried him on strong wings upward toward the empyrean.

Even now, she was only twenty. She had married a man more than twice her age. He had been her guardian, and she had felt that it was her duty. Her marriage proved desperately unhappy. She and Arthur met, and, as upon a signal, loved.

For a few weeks of one golden summer, they had known the ethereal bliss of seeing each other every day. They met as little children, and so parted. They accepted the law and convention which stood between them, not as a barrier to be crossed or circumvented but with childlike faith as a something absolutely impassable—like the space which separates the earth and the moon.

They remained utterly innocent in thought and deed, merely loved and longed and renounced so very hard that their poor young hearts almost broke.

Not so the "old man."

It happened, in the autumn of that year, that he brought his wife to New York, in whose Wall Street he had intricate interests. He learned that she was by way of seeing more of Arthur than a girl of eighteen married to a man of nearly fifty ought to see. He did not at once burst into coarse abuse of her, but, worldly-wise, set detectives to watch her. He had, you may say, set his heart upon her guilt. To learn that she was utterly innocent enraged him. One day he had the following conversation with a Mr. May, of a private detective bureau:

"You followed them?"

"To the park."

"Well?"

"They bought a bag of peanuts and fed the squirrels."

"Go on."

"Then they rode in a swan-boat. Then they walked up to the reservoir and around it. Then they came back to the hotel."

"Did they separate in the office?"

"On the sidewalk."

"But last night? She said she was dining with her sister and going to the play. What did she do last night?"

"She did what she said. Believe me, sir—if I know anything of men and women, you're paying me to run fool's errands for you. They don't need any watching."

"You have seen them—kiss?"

"Never."

"Hold hands?"

"I haven't seen any physical demonstration. I guess they like each other a lot. And that's all there is to it."

But the "old man" made a scene with her, just such a scene as he would have made if the detective's report had been, in effect, the opposite of what it was. He assumed that she was guilty; but, for dread of scandal, he would not seek a divorce. He exacted a promise that she would not see Arthur, or write to him, or receive letters from him.

Then, having agreed with certain magnates to go out to China upon the question of a great railroad and a great loan, he carried her off with him, then and there. So that when Arthur called at the hotel, he was told that they had gone but that there was a note for him. If it was from the wife, the husband had dictated it:

Don't try to see me ever any more. If you do, it will only make my life a hell on earth.

That had been the tangible end of Arthur's romance. But the intangible ends were infinite and not yet. His whole nature had changed. He had suffered and could no longer bear to inflict pain.

He lifted his head and looked up a little slope of snow. Near the top, wonderfully rosy and smiling, sat his culprit sisters. He had forgotten why he had come. He smiled in his sudden embarrassment.

"Don't shoot, colonel," called Gay, "and we'll come down."

"Promise, then," he said, "that you'll never be naughty again."

"We promise," they said.

And they trudged back to camp, with jokes and laughter and three very sharp appetites.