Thurston

MISS DENBIGH and Driscoll were on the lake for the first time since Driscoll’s return. They had been rather silent, as is permissible with old friends; and after miles of the placid water, their boat was turned toward the shore and its background of brilliant sunset.

It was then that Driscoll mentioned Thurston, and the drifting peace lost its soothing quality to Miss Denbigh. She felt herself thrown back into the old unrest, the old question. She had never, as the phrase is, gotten over Thurston’s death. The fact stung with a fresh sense of explicit loss every time she heard his name. She had to hear it often during the summer following his death, for the people about her were all friends of Thurston’s, and the topic revived frequently, — some fresh incident, some illuminating memory, like fresh stones on a memorial cairn.

Just the summer before, he had been one of the gay little colony, — the best oarsman, the best golfer, — what was it he had not been best in! Knowing him had been the wine and joy of life, and had colored what had grown to be Miss Denbigh’s indifference, to a beautiful expectation. And then suddenly she had lost it. One day he was with them; the next gone to South Africa as war correspondent, to take the place of a man coming home on account of ill health. She had been away the day his telegram had come, so there had been no opportunity to say good-by. If he had come to say it, she had felt she utterly knew he would have said other things as well. And it was of those unspoken things she had thought during the past months,— treasuring the vision of what it would have meant to her as happier women would have done an assured reality Perhaps she had treasured it more; for what dream ever comes ideally true, without losing the exquisite halo that glorified it to the far-off eye ? That it had been merely potential made it seem, in the analysis of some of her moods, more surely hers, — put it outside the shadow of defeat.

Whenever she recalled him, some special grace, some finer significance, seemed to accrue to his every act in regard to herself. She had to define and consider the difference carefully, for he had been — it was one of his charms, and she had fully understood — all things to all people. His deference and chivalry to women had made other men seem awkward and careless in comparison; and yet, with other men, his courtesy and good-fellowship had offered their irresistible and never disallowed appeal. Even her father, who was an invalid and capricious, had appreciated Thurston’s camaraderie, and she had felt that to him Thurston’s lack of fortune would never have appeared as an obstacle. To Miss Denbigh it had appeared of a fortunate fate that she would have been able to supply the complement of wealth. But beyond this the thought of her money had always been outside the question, — something she had known need never trouble her. For Thurston’s strong, fine personality had rebutted the idea of sordid motives, — lifted itself free from such criticism like the splendid growth of a forest tree. His assurance had been of a modesty that defied the implication of conceit, — merely the surety and sense of well-being that seem to belong to the “man of cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows.” His mind, to Miss Denbigh’s recollection, had been quick with the apprehension of beautiful things, and she had felt it a perversion of the natural order of life that the line of his work should have opposed so completely the trend of his characteristics.

He had been all things to all people,— yes; but to her he had been, past all doubt in her mind, himself. How many times she had recalled the long, lazy afternoons drifting across the lake with Thurston at the oars; the sunset on the ripples, on Thurston’s curling hair. Their talk had sounded so many depths, had cast anchor in so many fair harbors of mutual likes, that their companionship had seemed to progress to an intimacy beyond the casual acquaintance of a few summer weeks. She had begun to be tired of the changeless round of her life, — a life that had swept for twenty-six years in the same orbit, with the same pleasures, the same social duties, the same people. It had begun, in spite of the popularity her beauty and her father’s money gave her, to bore and exhaust; to open up perspectives that were only repetitions of the same commonplace conditions.

When Thurston came into her life, the perspective had changed and become of definite value. She had felt he would hesitate because he had so little,comparatively, to offer; and that he had never, after all, spoken, would have left the question always open to many women. But Miss Denbigh, in the poignant remembrance of the early months after his death, had never doubted. Even that he had never written had made no difference; he had meant to come back; and if he had, she felt it would have been to her.

This feeling of possession had grown into a cherished holding that comforted her grief and made her strong to bear the loss she had no right to mourn openly.

And then, suddenly, she was called on to take Thurston from the inner niches she had given him, and to realize that what he had seemed to her had been of the same fascination to other women; construed by them, as by her, to mean the thing desired. The shock of knowing this had come, six months after Thurston’s death, from an unexpected source. The girl was a cousin of her own who had spent part of the past summer with her, and she closed a letter refusing another invitation of Miss Denbigh’s with the comprehensive paragraph: —

“And you,of all others,dear Margaret, ought to understand why I cannot go to you. You, who saw us together that summer, must have guessed the way we felt to each other. Shall I ever forget it — that summer! I can‛t! I can see him now, — the way he smiled, the meaning he could put into the simplest things. He did n’t have to speak,—you felt it. If he had n’t been called away, I know we would have been engaged. I should have had the right to grieve for him without hiding it. I speak of it to you, for I think you guessed it when he was here. When he was here!”

Miss Denbigh did not fail to recognize, in the midst of the recoil she instinctively felt from this confidence, the tragi-comic replica of her own feelings. She shivered away from the crudity of it,—from her own emotion as seen in another person.

And then there was Thurston! It left him in the balance, — a question to be debated. Had he meant to be misunderstood? Had all the beautiful meanings she had found in their intercourse been due only to his most perfect art of flirtation ? She thought of the girl who had written to her; if he coidd inspire a girl like that! a schoolgirl, sentimental, silly,— what had he himself been ? a poor hero for any woman’s candles of constancy! rather a stalking-horse for other people’s emotions of romance,—behind which he had, perhaps, enjoyed it all. But turning away from his image was not easy, now that it was no longer an entity and of a possible explanation. He had gained the dignity of a remembrance, and the illusion had almost the fixity of a memorial tablet. It had become, as it were, the inscription of an urn to which no one had prescriptive rights, and the loss Thurston sustained in this elision of ownership was of a significance she could only measure by the defeat it gave her own personality. The praise she heard whenever he was spoken of began to reverberate a little strangely, as from alien shores.

The summer dragged. The many repetitions of the summer before offered the comparison in so many phases of the lost pleasure of Thurston’s companionship — what it had meant to her. The completion of her indolent, analytic temperament offered by the vigorous individuality of his, had stimulated, encouraged. In the drop back she had felt the need of him doubly, and the reprisal of her criticism had recoiled upon herself. The time was pricked with disillusion and processional with disappointments, and Driscoll’s return from South Africa, where he had gone with Thurston, again gave the impetus to the analysis of Thurston that so morbidly lingered.

She had known Driscoll sufficiently well to be relatively glad of his return. His mother’s cottage was next door, and he had been by way of making love to her through several indolent seasons. His resumption of what had grown to seem an attitude of provisional privilege was faintly irritating to Miss Denbigh. But this attitude had a certain difference that made itself felt,—a seriousness that was on the edge of intention. She kept it there with her effortless and ever so slightly critical acceptance of friendliness, — a response always so uncharged with sentiment that Driscoll perpetually hesitated in its cooling atmosphere.

“You’ve never asked me of Thurston;” he broke the silence that had held since his last speech and, idle at the oars, let the commonplace go without emphasis.

Miss Denbigh waited. “The others have,” she said at last.

“A great deal,” he acknowledged. “They devoured me ravenously. But you — you have n’t asked a single question.” With a little hesitancy he advanced his clause, “I wish you had.”

“Had” —

“Wanted to know.”

“Why?”

“Because I would have understood then that you did n’t — except reasonably — care.”

“Mr. Driscoll” —

“Wait! — just one moment! ask yourself why I should have pieced this out! You know, don’t you ?”

Leaning forward he looked straight at her, and against her will the color rose in her face.

“You mean” — she said uncertainly, and then looked away, a little angry with herself that the tone of Driscoll’s voice should be able to rout the cool indifference of her manner. If her mind had not been filled with the thought of Thurston, she could have avoided — as she had done many times with other men — the stress of what was coming.

“I mean,” Driscoll explained quietly, “ that I only found out how much I loved you when I saw you cared for Thurston.”

The boat, in the rich twilight, drifted a few moments in complete silence. Miss Denbigh broke it.

“Your — confession ” — she smiled with a slight bitterness—“implies one on my part.”

“No!” he interrupted gently, “it does n’t, for you don’t love me.”

Miss Denbigh felt another warm wave of color in her face, but Driscoll missed it; he was looking absently toward the shore. The quick anger of her face changed — clarified to frankness.

“No,” she said at last, “I don’t love you. I could say that you had no right to know anything else. But I can be honest! I did like him,—but I am ashamed of it; for he never cared for me, — not in the least! I was simply one of the many women he was ‘nice ’ to, and who — misunderstood.”

Her beautiful eyes met his truthfully. Her face was a little pale; the line of her lips severe.

Driscoll looked away quickly. “Thank you,” he said.

“ It was n’t easy to say,” she murmured with a deep breath, “but now it’s said, I think I feel better.”

Miss Denbigh followed the pause before Driscoll spoke.

“And since I’ve told you this — no! don’t protest, — I know it wouldn’t be possible for you to break a confidence you‛ve divined beforehand — I will tell you it is n’t the mere fact of having cared for him unasked,” — Driscoll clenched his hand on the oar, — “it is n’t that, that hurts! It’s having allowed one’s self to love what was n’t worth one’s love! That’s the part that hurts, to a woman. A man who had n’t it in him to be worthy any of those” — she bit her lip — “whom he flirted with! and to find one has cared — been attracted to—a man who simply posed — who was fraudulent to the estimate he fascinated people into giving — who could n’t stand for a single trait he simulated, — that’s what hurts terribly! You can’t understand how I feel! Without discrimination, intuition, — lacking altogether.”

Driscoll’s face was grave as she finished. The droop of her head had a pathos; her hands lay in her lap loosely clasped, palms uppermost. He feathered the oars and sent the boat round the point. Less than a mile away to their left, the curve of the shore showed the cottages of the summer colony. A boat filled with enthusiastic fishermen had just reached the little pier. Gay taunts from the friends on shore, and triumphant cries of the day’s catch from the boat, traveled across the still water. Other boats were coming in; from the distance a gay chorus of voices sang a Canadian boat song.

Driscoll, leaning on the oars, lifted a rather determined face to Miss Denbigh.

“Margaret,” he said, “I am going to tell you something.”

“Something about him?”

“Yes. You know — or perhaps you don’t know — that we — he and I — were thrown together a good deal, — at college first, and then in our work. By some chance we got on the same paper in New York.” It was unnecessary from Driscoll’s point of view to explain that the paper in question belonged to his uncle, and that he had been the one to secure Thurston the trial which his cleverness made good. “ He made a splendid record, ” Driscoll went on, “during the SpanishAmerican War. He had the indomitable spirit for adventure, — in fact, there were none of the gifts that make for success that he did n’t have. Not excepting ” — Driscoll’s voice as he paused was not bitter, but quite grave. “When he came back, he was a hero — in spirit and in letter. You remember the rally he made with those soldiers,— how he saved the life of the wounded Spaniard he found and carried nearly a mile to the hospital camp. Then came the Boer War; and when Brown had to come home, Thurston was rushed to fill his place. I went as assistant,—it seemed wiser to have two, — and so I was with him when he died.”

Driscoll felt the strained quality of Miss Denbigh’s attention, and as he continued, his own manner became just tinged with embarrassment.

“He had only a few minutes, — a half hour at most. I was with him until the end, and he left a message.”

“Forme ? ” the words were involuntary.

“No,” Driscoll said gently, “for another woman.”

Miss Denbigh’s face showed the drop back from quick expectation.

“Why do you tell me ? ” she offered the protest.

“Because of what you said, — that you would n’t mind having cared for him, if you could think he was n’t unworthy.”

“And you want to reestablish my” —

“ I want you to feel as you would wish to feel about it,” he interrupted; “that’s why I tell you, — and it’s justice to Thurston, too.”

“Well?”

Again Driscoll looked away.

“She was a girl in the South,—he was Southern, you know, — and they had n’t seen each other for several years. They had been engaged, but after a while that spirit of his — temperament, I suppose would give the modern extenuation — made him fall in love with another woman. He was n’t really in love, you understand — it was just” —

“Flirtation.”

Driscoll let it go.

— “And the girl broke the engagement. It was then Thurston found she had the permanent place,— he really belonged to her; but he could n’t in the least help his devotion to a beautiful face — to a brilliant mind. He responded always in equal measure with that charm of his — Don’t! ” he added sharply, for Miss Denbigh had covered her face with her hands.

“He couldn’t help it,” Driscoll continued. “ He was one of those people who are born under a fortunate star, and he assisted his birthright in every way. But he always wanted to go back — the better part of him, his real self — to the girl in the South, and ask her to forgive him. To tell her all that was good in him was hers. And that was what he asked me to tell her, before he died.”

The girl in the boat leant forward with parted lips,— with beautiful, wide eyes.

“And you told her?”

“Yes,” he said gravely. “I took his message to her as soon as I came back. He had a picture of her in his watch. He wanted it buried with him.”

“And the girl ?” — Miss Denbigh questioned.

“She was n’t in the least pretty. She was shy, appealing, gentle; perhaps of a type a little old-fashioned, — not one to interest many, — but she was Thurston’s ideal. He said she was the sweetest woman he had ever known.”

One or two stars were beginning to show, burning purely through the velvet dusk, and the shore as they drew near had a many-windowed gleam from its cottages. Behind them the lake spread, dim and inscrutable. Driscoll wondered if he had been wise.

Suddenly Miss Denbigh spoke: —

“ Did it make her happy — to know ? ”

“I shall never forget how happy,” he answered. “She — she broke down, you know. She told me life had been hard before — everything; but his message to her made his memory hers — nothing, she said, could be bitter to her again.”

Other things he did not speak of were in Driscoll’s mind, — the girl’s hysterical sobbing, her childlike face, the way she had kissed his hands because they had held Thurston’s as he lay dying on the burnt African grass. “ I think I’d like for you to hold my hand,” had been Thurston’s last words. To be loved as that girl had loved Thurston —

He pushed aside his thoughts and looked at the girl he loved. Would Thurston, dead, always be paramount? he wondered. As he looked, she turned and met his eyes; there were conflicting emotions in the expression of her face. Seemingly they crystallized under his gaze into something very near relief.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said; “ it was good of you. I have been abasing myself, — but now I don’t mind; I was n’t so far wrong after all! He did have the finer quality, — even if it was only for another woman.”

“And so I’ve justified you to continue”

— the boat grated on the sandy shore in front of her cottage, breaking his speech in two.

“No,” she said gently, “only to say good-by to him — for good!”

“And if it’s good-by to him ?” Driscoll said.

The quality of his voice touched her for the first time — past the old barrier

— with the significance she discovered his personality could assume.

The flash of interest it conveyed was sudden, and she felt a new, scarcely definable sensation that held her silent.

He looked at her with intentness in the half light; his straightforward face, neither handsome nor ugly, in no way recalled Thurston’s. The power of this moment was Driscoll’s, and it made him dominant.

“If it’s good-by to him?” he persisted.

Miss Denbigh hesitated a little in the grasp of a strange shyness.

“Why — do you” — she paused.

“Why do I love you?” he said with directness. “Because” — he broke off, and with an effort brought his voice back from declarative passion to a gentleness.

“ Promise me, Margaret, that you ’ll listen some day when I try to tell you!”

He held out his hand, and after a moment’s hesitation she put hers into it. As his strong, brown fingers closed over hers, Driscoll bent his head and touched them with his lips.

“Until then!” he said.