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Together, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Part Three - Chapter 34 |
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_ PART THREE CHAPTER XXXIV IN the weeks that followed the accident Margaret Pole saw much of Falkner. The engineer would come up the hill to the old house late in the afternoon after his work, or ride up on his bicycle in the morning on his way to the dam he was building. Ned--"the Little Man" as Falkner called him--came to expect this daily visit as one of his invalid rights. Several times Falkner stayed to dinner; but he bored Larry, who called him "a Western bounder," and grumbled, "He hasn't anything to say for himself." It was true that Falkner developed chronic dumbness in Larry's conversational presence. But Margaret seemed to like the "bounder." She discovered that he carried in his pocket a volume of verse. An engineer who went to his job these days with a poetry book in his coat pocket was not ordinary, as she remarked to her husband.... Falkner's was one of those commonplace figures to be seen by the thousands in an American city. He dressed neither well nor ill, as if long ago the question of appearances had ceased to interest him, and he bought what was necessary for decency in the nearest shop. His manners, though brusque, indicated that he had always been within that vague line which marks off the modern "gentleman." His face, largely covered by beard and mustache, was pale and thoughtful, and his eyes were tired, usually dull. He was merely one of the undistinguished units in the industrial army. Obviously he had not "arrived," had not pushed into the circle of power. Some lack of energy, or natal unfitness for the present environment? Or was he inhibited by a twist of fate, needing an incentive, a spur? At any rate the day when Margaret met him, the day when he had brought her boy home in his arms, the book of life seemed closed and fastened for him forever. The fellow-units in the industrial scheme in which he had become fixed, might say of him,--"Yes, a good fellow, steady, intelligent, but lacks push,--he'll never get there." Such are the trite summaries of man among men. Of all the inner territory of the man's soul, which had resolved him in its history to what he was, had left him this negative unit of life, his fellows were ignorant, as man must be of man. They saw the Result, and in the rough arithmetic of life results are all that count with most people. But the woman--Margaret,--possessing her own hidden territory of soul existence, had divined more, even in that first tragic moment, when he had borne her maimed child into the house and laid his burden tenderly on the lounge. As he came and went, telephoning, doing the little that could be done, she saw more than the commonplace figure, clothed in ready-made garments; more than the dull, bearded face, the strong, thin hands, the rumpled hair. Something out of that vast beyond which this stranger had in common with her had spoken through the husk, even then.... And it had not ended there, as it would have ended, had Falkner been the mere "bounder" Larry saw. It was Falkner to whom the mother first told the doctors' decision about the boy. Certain days impress their atmosphere indelibly; they have being to them like persons, and through years the odor, the light, the sense of their few hours may be recalled as vividly as when they were lived. This May day the birds were twittering beside the veranda where Margaret was reading to the Little Man, when Falkner came up the drive. The long windows of the house were opened to admit the soft air, for it was already summer. Margaret was dressed in a black gown that relieved the pallor of her neck and face like the dark background of an old portrait. As the boy called, "There's big Bob!" she looked up from her book and smiled. Yet in spite of the placid scene, the welcoming smile, Falkner knew that something had happened,--something of moment. The three talked and the birds chattered; the haze of the gentle brooding day deepened. Far away above the feathery treetops, which did their best to hide the little houses, there was the blue line of sea, gleaming in the sun. It seemed to Falkner after the long day's work the very spot of Peace, and yet in the woman's controlled manner there was the something not peace. When Falkner rose to go, Margaret accompanied him to the steps. "It's like the South to-day, all this sun and windless air. You have never been in the South? Some days I ache for it." In the full light she seemed a slight, worn figure with a blanched face. "Bring me my puppy, please, Bob!" the child called from his couch. "He's in the garden." Falkner searched among the flower-beds beneath the veranda and finally captured the fat puppy and carried him up to the boy, who hugged him as a girl would a doll, crooning to him. Margaret was still staring into space. "What has happened?" Falkner asked. She looked at him out of her deep eyes, as if he might read there what had happened. They descended the steps and walked away from the house. "He hears so quickly," she explained; "I don't want him to know yet." So they kept on down the drive. "Dr. Rogers was here this morning.... He brought two other doctors with him.... There is no longer any doubt--it is paralysis of the lower limbs. He will never walk, they think." They kept on down the drive, Falkner looking before him. He knew that the woman was not crying, would never betray her pain that watery way; but he could not bear to see the misery of those eyes. "My father the Bishop has written me ... spiritual consolation for Ned's illness. Should I feel thankful for the chastening to my rebellious spirit administered to me through my poor boy? Should I thank God for the lash of the whip on my stubborn back?" Falkner smiled. "My father the Bishop is a good man, a kind man in his way, yet he never considered my mother--he lived his own life with his own God.... It would surprise him if he knew what I thought about God,--_his_ God, at least."... Falkner looked at her at last, and they stopped. Afterwards he knew that he already loved Margaret Pole. He, too, had divined that the woman, stricken through her child, was essentially alone in the world, and in her hungry eyes lay the story of the same dreary road over which he had passed. And these two, defeated ones in the riotous world of circumstance, silently, instinctively held out hands across the void and looked at each other with closed lips. Among the trees the golden haze deepened, and the birds sang. Down below in the village sounded the deep throbs of an engine: the evening train had come from the city. It was the only disturbing note in the peace, the silence. The old house had caught the full western sun, and its dull red bricks glowed. On the veranda the small boy was still caressing the puppy. "Mother!" a thin voice sounded. Margaret started. "Good-by," Falkner said. "I shall come to-morrow." At the gate he met Pole, lightly swinging a neat green bag, his gloves in his hand. Larry stopped to talk, but Falkner, with a short, "Pleasant afternoon," kept on. Somehow the sight of Pole made the thing he had just learned all the worse. Thus it happened that in the space of a few weeks Margaret knew Falkner more intimately than Isabelle had ever known him or ever could know him. Two beings meeting in this illusive, glimmering world of ours may come to a ready knowledge of each other, as two travellers on a dark road, who have made the greater part of the stormy journey alone. It would be difficult to record the growth of that inner intimacy,--so much happening in wordless moments or so much being bodied forth in little words that would be as meaningless as newspaper print. But these weeks of the child's invalidism, there was growing within them another life that no one shared or would have understood. When Larry observed, "That bounder is always here," Margaret did not seem to hear. Already the food that the "bounder" had given her parched self was too precious to lose. She had begun to live again the stifled memories, the life laid away,--to talk of her girlhood, of her Virginia hills, her people. And Falkner had told her something of those earlier years in the Rockies, when he had lived in the world of open spaces and felt the thrill of life, but never a word of what had passed since he had left the canons and the peaks. Sometimes these days there was a gleam in his dark eyes, a smile on the bearded lips that indicated the reopening of the closed book once more. His fellow-units in the industrial world might not see it; but Margaret felt it. Here was a human being pressed into the service of the machine and held there, at pay, powerless to extract himself, sacrificed. And she saw what there was beneath the mistake; she felt the pioneer blood, like her own, close to the earth in its broad spaces, living under the sky in a new land. She saw the man that should be, that once was, that must be again! And in this world of their other selves, which had been denied them, these two touched hands. They needed little explanation. Rarely Margaret spoke of her present life, and then with irony, as if an inner and unsentimental honesty compelled utterance: "You see," she remarked once when her husband called her, "we dress for dinner because when we started in New York we belonged to the dining-out class. If we didn't keep up the habit, we should lose our self-respect.... My neck is thin and I don't look well in evening dress. But that makes no matter.... We have prayers on Sunday morning; religion is part of the substantial life."... Conny had said once, hearing Margaret rail like this: "She ought to make a better bluff, or get out,--not guy old Larry like that; it isn't decent, embarrasses one so. You can't guy him, too."... But Falkner understood how the acid of her daily life eating into her had touched, at these times, a sensitive nerve and compelled such self-revelations. * * * * * It was Falkner who first spoke to the Poles about Dr. Renault. In some way he had heard of the surgeon and learned of the wonderful things he had done. "Anyhow it is worth while seeing him. It is best to try everything." "Yes," Margaret assented quickly; "I shall not give up--never!" Through a doctor whom he knew Falkner arranged the visit to the surgeon, who was difficult of access. And he went in the evening after the visit to learn the result. "He thinks there is a chance!" and Margaret added more slowly: "It is a great risk. I supposed it must be so." "You will take it?" "I think," she said slowly, "that Ned would want me to. You see he is like me. It may accomplish nothing, Dr. Renault said. It may be partially successful.... Or it may be--fatal. He was very kind,--spent all the afternoon here. I liked him immensely; he was so direct.' "When will it be?" "Next week." The operation took place, and was not fatal. "Now we shall have to wait," the surgeon said to the mother,--"and hope! It will be months before we shall know finally what is the result." "I shall wait and hope!" Margaret replied to him. Renault, who had a chord in common with this Southern woman, stroked her hand gently as he left. "Better take the little chap away somewhere and get a change yourself," he said. It was a still, hot night of late June, the last time that Falkner climbed the hill to the old place. The summer, long delayed, had burst these last days with scorching fury. Margaret was to leave on the morrow for Bedmouth, where she would spend the summer with old Mrs. Pole. She was lying on the veranda couch. She smiled as Falkner drew a chair to her side, the frank smile from the deep blue eyes, that she gave only to her children and to him, and there was a joyous note in her voice:-- "At last there is a sign. I have a little more hope now!" She told him of the first faint indications of life in the still limbs of the child. "It will be months before we can tell really. But tonight I have strong hope!" "What we need most in life is hope," he mused. "It keeps the thing going." "As long as a man can work, he has hope," she replied stoutly. "I suppose so,--at least he must think so." Margaret knew that the work the engineer was engaged on was nearly finished. It might last at the most another six weeks, and he did not know where he should go then; but it was altogether unlikely that the fall would find him at Dudley Farms. "I was in the city to-day," he said after a time, "and in the company's office I ran across my old chief. He's going to Panama in the fall."... Margaret waited with strange expectancy for what Falkner might say next. She rarely asked questions, sought directly to know. She had the power of patience, and an unconscious belief that life shaped itself largely without the help of speech. Here and there in the drama of events the spoken word might be called for--but rarely. "They have interesting problems down there," Falkner continued; "it is really big work, you know. A man might do something worth while. But it is a hole!" She still waited, and what she expected came:-- "He asked me to go with him,--promised me charge of one of the dams, my own work,--it is the biggest thing that ever came my way." And then the word fell from her almost without her will:-- "You must go! _Must_ go!" "Yes," he mused on; "I thought so. There was a time when it would have made me crazy, such a chance.... It's odd after all these years, when I thought I was dead--" "Don't say dead!" "Well, rutted deep in the mire, then,--that this should happen." She had said "go," with all the truth of her nature. It was the thing for him to do. But she did not have the strength to say another word. In the moment she had seen with blinding clearness all that this man meant in her little firmament. 'This was a Man!' She knew him. She loved him! yes, she loved him, thank God! And now he must go out of her life as suddenly as he had come into it,--must leave her alone, stranded as before in the dark. "It isn't so easy to decide," Falkner continued. "There isn't much money in it,--not for the under men, you know." "What difference does that make!" she flashed. "Not to me," he explained, and there was a pause. "But I have my wife and child to think of. I need all the money I can earn." It was the first time any reference had been made to his family. After a time Margaret said:-- "But they pay fair salaries, and any woman would rather be pinched and have her husband in the front ranks--" And then she hesitated, something in Falkner's eyes troubling her. "I shall not decide just yet.... The offer has stirred my blood,--I feel that I have some youth left!" They said little more. Margaret walked with him down the avenue. In her summer dress she looked wasted, infinitely fragile. "This is not good-by," he said at last. "I shall go down the coast in a boat for a week, as I used to do when I was a boy, and my sister has a cottage at Lancaster. That is not far from Bedmouth?" "No, it isn't far," she answered softly. They paused and then walked back, as if all was not said yet. "There is another reason," Falkner exclaimed abruptly, "why I did not wish to go--and you must know it." She raised her head and looked at him, murmuring,-- "Yes! I know it! ... But _nothing_ should keep you here." "No, not keep me.... But there is something infinitely precious to lose by going.... You have made me live again, Margaret. I was dead, dead,--a dead soul." "We were both dead ... and now we live!" "It were better not said, perhaps--" "No!" she interrupted passionately. "It ought to be said! Why not?" "There can be nothing for us," he muttered dully. "No!" and her hands touched his. "Don't say that! We are both in the world,--don't you see?" His face drew near to hers, they kissed, and she clung to him for the moment, then whispered: "Now go! You must live, live,--live greatly,--for us both!" Margaret fled to her room, knelt down beside the boy's bed, with clasped hands, her eyes shining down on the sleeping child, a smile on her face. _ |
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