Through the Windows: Two Glimpses of a Man's Life

I.

DETACHMENT.

A DAY or two later, Carless made up his mind that he would walk down to the little station, three miles away, that was the only point at which the outside world came in sight. The morning was bitterly cold ; a fine sleet blew in his face, and stung it as with the cutting of a whip, whenever he came for a time to a part of the road where the wind had free play. Still he walked briskly, his head well up, as if to scorn the weather, He must be doing something; he had been eating his heart out long enough, while he watched and waited for some sign from her. Now he would at least come a little nearer to her. If by some chance (he yet told himself there might be a chance) she had written to him, and the letter were on its way, it was surely more fitting that he should go to meet it than that he should wait supinely with folded hands. So it came that he actually rejoiced in the rough, blustering weather, which seemed almost personal in its opposition to him, — as if those powers, equally blind, that stood between him and the desire of his heart were abroad in the storm and inspired its fury.

Soon he came where a swift rushing brook, swollen by melted snow, took its own way by the roadside. Carless thought he had never noticed it before ; perhaps it had never been so loud, masterful, and insistent as it was this day; or it might be that the tension of his mind, after days of brooding, was such that little chance bits of the natural world found a voice now, and spoke aloud of that which they symbolized. It was going to the ocean, this little brawling rivulet; in spite of all the long miles that it must traverse before it could reach its desire and upbear the great ships upon its bosom, it ran on busily, not a moment to spare, glad and confident in the certainty of ultimate attainment. It was as though a share of the brook’s confidence passed into the heart of the man, and for a while he felt that he too must some day reach his goal, out of sight though it lay among the windings of the hills.

All manner of external objects became invested with a strange significance for him this morning. His eye caught an old water-wheel that was stranded out of the way in an angle of rising ground, away from water and from usefulness, as it might have been wedged there by the caprice of a bygone flood ; and he had a positive sympathy with the poor thing whose position seemed so like his own. He wondered if it had forgotten how it felt to spin gayly round and do its work in the world under the impact of the merry, laughing stream. “ No,” he told himself, "it has forgotten no more than I have. It is only waiting for some friendly hand to raise it and set it again in its place ; and who knows how soon that will be ? ”

Then the station came within view. He looked at his watch; the train must be near by this time. He strained his eyes to the southward to catch sight of a puff of white smoke, and the invisible train answered him with a long, warning blast to herald its arrival. Though it came only from the junction, a few miles away, and went another few miles beyond, on the least important of country roads, it had about it all the air of haste and quick alertness that an express bound on a journey across the continent might have worn. It drew up suddenly with a creaking and jarring of brakes on the slippery track. There was not a single passenger to get off or on, yet the conductor and brakeman relaxed nothing of thatactive promptness which marked their demeanor ; and when they leaned out of the door to exchange mail-bags with the station agent, who was postmaster also, and answered on the part of the village to their official actions, they wasted no words even with him. Only the enginedriver, lounging on his elbow in the brief pause, gave back a gesture full of dignified reserve to the half-ironical salutation of a small colored boy who stood watching the proceedings with a lively interest.

In a moment more, with another sharp whistle, the train moved on, and almost instantly disappeared in a fold of the hills. The postmaster withdrew with the mail-bag into his little den, and Carless followed him within the station, standing where he could watch the subsequent processes through the narrow window.

Now that the train had come and gone, the scrutiny of the assembled country folk was concentrated upon the stranger, who represented to them a phase of experience not to be met with every day. What thoughts he suggested to them it is impossible to say. Perhaps they envied him for opportunities denied to them, all unconscious of the price he had had to pay, in quickened powers of suffering, for the use of his trained faculties. Perhaps they despised him as one who was different from themselves, and who in all probability knew nothing of the raising of sheep or of the succession of the crops. They gazed upon him unabashed, with a stolid, ruminating stare which they might have caught from their own cattle. For his part, he was neither disconcerted nor in any way moved by their attentive presence in the room. Awkward country lads of a curiously impersonal type, they had no more suggestion or meaning for him than had the rusty stove about which they huddled, — less than many of the objects he had passed along the road.

He turned from them, and watched the postmaster begin his preparations for the distribution of the mail. Two currents of thought ran in his mind, distinct as Rhone and Saône ; or rather, in the upper part of the score ran an obbligato of fantastic wanderings, while the undertone of the steady bass was constant to the theme that expressed his life, and especially to the anxiety which half longed for the sorting of the mail to be over, half feared it lest it should bring the extinction of his hopes for another day.

Thus, as he watched the contents of the bag falling into little heaps here and there, his eye unconsciously caught the proportion of the folded newspapers — country newspapers — to the few letters that lurked among them. It needed no more than that to tell him what sort of mental existence these people dragged out in the upland farmhouses. Impersonal, generic, themselves, all that they read must be only a pale, bloodless, impersonal copy from the palpitating masterpiece of Life.

But in a corner of the room sat a girl of eighteen or nineteen, the only one in the little gathering. To the external eye there was no one thing noteworthy about her; she was a fresh-colored, not unpleasing country lass, like any other. If she was dressed a shade more carefully than the youths, it was only the mark of her sex; the smoothly braided hair and such other details merely meant that she was a woman, differing only by so much from the rest. Her hands, the warm gloves removed, showed rough and red from exposure and hard work. And yet — she was a woman. Carless had been living for some weeks as the guest of a halfmonastic community among these northern hills, and this was the first woman he had seen for a week or two. The experience was a novel one. Never since he was a baby, born of a woman, nursed and tended by women, could such a thing have happened to him. But now it gave him the power of seeing her in a singularly detached way, and of divining significances that might have eluded him altogether in the world, where there are so many women, He could study her, as a man of science studies his specimen isolated in a vacuum, as she was in herself ; could see, without feeling, that subtle, indefinable charm which is to her both bow and spear for the making of her captives. Here was das EwigWeibliche crystallized before him, under his very eyes. And so this simple country girl took on an importance which would have strangely puzzled and alarmed her if she could have known how she was being analyzed by the grave, quiet man who seemed to be studying the time-table which hung above her head, flanked on one side by the advertisement of a sale of stock, and on the other by the announcement of a lecture on Persia (in native costume), to be given in the nearest town.

There was something about her, viewed in this light, that was full, for Carless, of suggestions of infinite pathos. She brought up to him Troy flaming for Helen, Antony tossing away the empire of the world for Cleopatra’s love, until he came down, through the monotony of the ages, to his own life, less momentous in the destiny of the nations, to be sure, but fraught with the most important interests to himself and to a few others whose hopes were bound up in his welfare. It had seemed to him as if his own experience were a unique tragedy; not red, like Agamemnon or Macbeth, with blood and violence, but of that blank grayness which is far more terrible. Day after day he must drag on his existence without that which would have been its justification and its crown. He had broken away from all his surroundings, in the hope that, amid new scenes and unfamiliar faces, the sense of loss — pœna damni, which theologians account the most grievous of the torments of hell —might sting him less acutely; but here, everywhere, it dogged his footsteps, and would not let him rest.

Yet in the presence of this girl he knew and felt that he was but as others are. She too had the strange power of marring as well as making the life of a man. To some simple shepherd, — some Daphnis or Corydon of the hills, — only because she lived and breathed and was a woman, she stood for all that was most bright and alluring and desirable in life. If she gave herself to him, she would make him (for a time) the happiest of mortals,—par superis, equal to the gods; if she refused her love, if she raised him up only to dash him down at the last, — well, the vessel might he small, but the largest could be no more than full; and Carless discerned in the rough hind who knew not how to put a name to his feelings a brother in suffering, to be hailed and honored by that title.

He had been so absorbed in following the train of thought which opened before him that he had scarcely heeded the later movements of the postmaster. So it came upon him with a shock all the greater when the man turned to the window, and, with a certain courteous regret, — he had been a little further in the world than the others, — pronounced the formula of disappointment, “ Nothing for you to-day, sir.”

Carless thanked him, and turned away to leave the station and retrace his way among the hills, his mind suddenly fallen into a dullness which contrasted strangely with the temper of quick perception in which he had come to meet one more denial of his hopes.

II.

DISENCHANTMENT.

The days went by, and Carless had almost outgrown the hopes which, intangible and elusive as they were, had yet been with him so constantly during these lonely weeks. Time and again, as they seemed to vanish and dislimn, he had laid hold of their fluttering drapery just before they passed beyond his grasp, and detained them a little longer to keep him company in his solitude. But now they came to visit him at rarer moments, and their faces were grown strangely unfamiliar when they came.

Even so, he was not all unhappy in these later days. He was beginning to organize his life afresh, slowly and haltingly, as one learns to walk with a crutch that can never again be laid aside. Interests that had no meaning for him in the first poignancy of his despair, as in the first flush of his dawning love, came back to him, sober and prosaic, but withal restful and not disquieting.

He had already planned to leave the quiet of the hills for the busy life of the city, and was awaiting an answer to a proposition he had made which was to throw him again into the current of the world’s affairs. On the day when he looked for it the post brought it to him ; and because his mind ran on this matter he scarcely glanced, for the moment, at another letter which lay beneath it on his table. It was not until he had looked through the clear, businesslike phrases of the first that he picked up the other, and looked at it for an instant with uncomprehending eyes. The dainty feminine grace of the handwriting affected him with a vague sense of incongruity, before he recognized, with a sudden shock, a quick rush of blood to the face, what it might mean to him.

Almost appalled by the suddenness of the thing, he opened the letter with fingers that trembled a little.

DEAR LEONARD [it ran], — I can bear it no longer. Night and day, when I have tried my hardest not to think of you, still you have been with me. At last I see there is nothing for me but to do as you wish. Will you have me now, dear, when I have kept you waiting so long ? My heart grieves me when I think of what you have suffered because I could not be brave enough to choose your love at any cost. I shall reach New York on Thursday at four. If you are there to meet me, all will be well with me always ; if not, I can but go back to my prisonhouse, knowing that I have deserved my punishment. Henceforth, if you wish it, I am ever your own

AUDREY.

Carless read the letter through slowly, once, twice, before the full meaning of it could force itself upon his brain, stunned by the unexpected revulsion. Many times he had imagined what his feelings and his demeanor would be when he should get such a message as this, if it ever came. But now that it was actually in his hand, both what he felt and what his outward bearing showed were utterly unlike what he had pictured, He sat for a long while motionless, staring at the paper on which the momentous words were traced, — words which gave him what, through the past year, he had longed for as the most supreme joy, but which at the same time, if he assented to their meaning, would change and shape the whole tenor of his future life. Then he rose, and paced slowly up and down the room, with the letter in his hand ; walking soberly, his head down, like a man brought face to face with a serious and perplexing problem. Yet he was not for a moment in doubt as to his course. His sovereign had summoned him to her service ; for all the gracious, humble words that veiled her command, he would have held himself a recreant knight had he hesitated for an instant to obey.

Still quietly and gravely (like a soldier who has received his orders to go to the front, and, though welcoming the prospect, knows well that life and death hang upon the issue of the next few days), he sat down again at his table and wrote an answer to the letter he had first read, telling his friend that an unforeseen change in his circumstances made it impossible to carry out the plan proposed. Then he went to find his host, the head of the community with which he had been seeking shelter from the stress of events, and told him that a letter he had received would compel his departure on the following day, which was the Thursday. The good man looked at him keenly, though kindly : he was sufficiently versed in reading men to have divined something of what had been passing in Carless’s mind.

“ We shall be sorry to lose you,” he said, with a courteous intonation, “ but I hope you will go away the better for the rest and the country air,”

” I scarcely know yet,” Carless answered : “ if I do not, it will be from no fault of yours, and I shall always look back, wherever I may be, upon the life here as upon that in which, if anywhere, a man may find peace.”

The superior smiled a little sadly, and replied with a quotation which rang strangely in the other’s ears : “ He who knows best how to suffer shall find the greatest peace. This man wins the victory over himself and the lordship of the world, with the friendship of Christ and the inheritance of heaven.”

The next day Carless arrived in New York a little after three, and walked up and down the platform for half an hour, too restless and impatient to do anything but wait for the train that was to bring her to him. All the morning he had been tormented by the fear that her courage would fail her at the last moment; and it was only now and then that his exultation at the final triumph of his love overmastered the unaccountable depression that hovered about him, ready at any moment to settle down upon him and cloud his joy.

At last the train rolled into the station, and he took his stand by the first car, scanning eagerly the faces of the hurrying passengers, grave or gay as anxiety or delight lay before them. The main stream had flowed by, and his heart was already beginning to sink within him, when it suddenly leaped up again at the sight of the slight, graceful figure for which he was watching. There she was, after all, coming along a little timidly, unused to finding herself alone in such surroundings ; and her eyes, too, seemed at first not to find what she was looking for. Carless could see the little start of relief and joy that she gave when she saw him coming towards her with a great gladness shining in his face. The place was too public for any outward demonstrations ; but the confiding pressure of her hand, the way she looked up into his face, and the happy sigh she breathed as she said, “ At last ! “ — these tokens told him all he needed to know.

It seemed to him that he scarcely tasted the full pleasure of his attainment until, the stains of travel removed, and the throng of questions and answers that crowded one upon another put away, they sat down to dinner. As he looked at her across their table, bright with its flowers and silver and cut glass, to mark the love-light shining brighter than all in her radiant face, he felt that life was at last offering him a full reward for the hollowness and the disappointment which summed up his thoughts of the years that were gone, He took delight in remembering her little likes and dislikes, and was repaid for his thoughtfulness by the look of gratitude that she gave him as she noted each evidence of his study of her tastes. Once, when they were left alone for a moment, she put out her hand impulsively across the table, and laid it on his with a gesture alike of confidence and of appeal. “ Oh, Leonard,”she said in a low voice, “ it is so strange to me to have a man care to please me. I have been unused to it so long! ” A great wave of tenderness swelled up in Carless’s breast, and while he could answer her only by a look more eloquent than words, he vowed to her silently a lifelong devotion which should more than atone for all that she had suffered in the past.

When the dinner was over, they decided that their first evening should be spent simply and quietly together, as a greater enjoyment than all the amusements of the commonplace world. Leonard brought a large armchair close to the cheerful open fireplace, — the evenings were still chilly, and spring delayed upon its way, — making, as he said playfully, a throne for his queen. Carrying out his whim, which she humored because it was his, he placed himself at her feet. Neither spoke much, for words were of little help to the sharing of their thoughts; but as her soft hand played caressingly over his hair, with the touch there seemed to pass into his spirit, so often restless and troubled in the past, that deep peace for which he had long sought in vain.

On the following day, since they had planned to escape from the keen east winds to the gentle air of Florida, Carless was obliged to leave her for a while, that he might see his bankers and one or two other people, the thought of whom jarred upon the idyllic harmony to which his mind was attuned, and brought in a discordant note of which he was scarcely conscious at the first. No sooner were his affairs set in order than he hastened to return to Audrey ; but the freshness of the morning tempted him to walk across the Park once more before they should leave New York, instead of going directly to her side.

It could have made but little difference, after all ; yet he was sorry before he had reached their house. “ To the end, spring winds will sow disquietude, “ it is written in one of the wisest of booksWas it that vague uncertainty of the future, which seems to be almost a note of spring, and makes it sadder than the autumn, despite the falling leaves ? Was it that inexorable law of the unhappy nature of men, by which they are condemned to spend their days in the pursuit of a bubble flashing with all the colors of the rainbow, that breaks and disappears at the very instant when it floats within their grasp ? Carless stopped in the path, with a little shiver that was not from the fresh breeze, and stood still for a moment, with the air of a man seeking to recall an association or a memory. He knew that he ought to be supremely happy. He had asked of Fate only one thing, out of all the objects of desire with which the world is filled ; and Fate had heard his prayer. The woman he loved with all the passionate intensity of his strong nature was now irrevocably his. The whole air should have been full of brightness, and each little bird that sang in the trees should have seemed as if inspired by the one great theme of his gladness. Was it so? He dared not face the question ; some day it would come back, knocking at his door again, and would not be denied. But now, at least, on the first day of his new life, there was no room for doubts. He walked on again more quickly; soon he came where Audrey was listening for his footstep ; she rose to greet him with outstretched arms. He had a sort of feeling that he should find her changed, but it was not so. There was every detail of her lovely face and form, more perfect, if that were possible, than ever ; and better than all, her eyes spoke of a love that grew hourly more deep and enthralling. After the closeness of the first embrace, she held him at arm’s length, while she looked into his face with a gaze of supreme devotion and trust. Yet, as she looked long at him, a shade of trouble came into her eyes, and she asked him anxiously, her hands clasped upon his arm, “ What is the matter, dearest ? Are you not well this morning ? ”

“ Yes, sweetheart,” he answered, striving to throw an entire sincerity into his voice, “ I am perfectly well ; only perhaps a thought tired with my morning’s work.” Was it well with him ? Would it be so always ? Let those who have staked their all at the game of love speak and tell the answer.

Francis Edmund Lester.