The Soul of a Girl

GRACE sat by the open window, dreaming delicious day-dreams interwoven with the fragrant tendrils of the honeysuckle. Walter was coming; coming, as Grace confidently hoped, to tell her how much he loved her, to put his heart and life between her hands. Dear Walter! how fond she was of him, of his bigness and his strength, his fine face and his skillful hands, of his ideals and his enthusiasms, and, most of all, his love of her; for Grace was assured that he loved her, and that he only sought a fit occasion to tell her so, — would, indeed, come that afternoon, expressly to make a fit occasion.

What should she answer? Well, she told herself, she was not quite sure. Perhaps she loved him enough; perhaps she should bid him wait until she loved him more; perhaps it was all fancy, and she did not care for him at all, and must tell him that, gently, kindly, finally. Then she smiled in her heart and with her lips and eyes. It was not true that she did not know; she knew very well what she would say, and how her heart would rejoice to say it. She would take him to herself and make him altogether her own.

And then? Then would begin their joyful life together. Not at once; not too soon. She would not let him think her too easily won. She must not cheapen t he gift of herself, but must seem to hold back awhile, letting his eagerness overbear her. Not too soon, then; but also not loo long. Dangerous, always, very long engagements: hearts had time to grow cold before they were quite welded; familiarity might make, not contempt, for Walter could never feel for her that, but make them, perhaps, a little too well used to each other. And besides, she did not want to wait — very long. She wanted him soon; wanted to be wholly happy, to sail forth boldly into that new sea of light; to taste all and know all of happiness, to fill her life full; for she had been lonely, often, since father and mother died.

And then she began to embroider the fabric of fancy. Where would they live? Here, surely, in this dear home of hers, with its lovely garden set in velvet lawns. Aunt Estelle might stay, a welcome, gentle guest, ready to come in with little services and amenities where they were needed; or ready to efface herself and remain placidly in the background.

Yes, here they would live, surely, where father and mother had lived; where she herself had been born and passed her childhood, and the long vacations of boarding-school days; the two marvelous summers excepted, when they sailed over the great waters and saw strange lands and many cities. Yes, they would live here, making happy excursions, mayhap, to lovely places: the Thousand Islands, Colorado, Florida; perhaps she would take him to Europe and show him all the wonders. Yes, that would be delightful: to conduct him through the broad galleries of the Louvre, the Uffizzi, the Dresden paiace, Vienna; to watch his wonder at it all; to see the artist in him rejoice in these greater artists, and to know he owed it all to her. Yes, that would be very sweet.

And then they would come home again, to her cosy rooms and lovely garden; and then, perhaps — yes, but not too soon, for they were such little tyrants, and so utterly absorbed one’s life. Afterwards, yes; after they were done with their journeyings and settled down. But he must love her ever so much, just herself, first, with no one at all to share his love; it must be all hers; he must be all hers. And smiling to herself, she made a little motion of opening her arms and raising her lips; and something of the roses stole into her cheeks and neck, and something of the sunlight glistened in her eyes. Oh, how happy she would be, happy, happy happy —

While she was in the very midst of her dreams, Walter was announced. He came in on the heels of the announcement, very confident in his welcome, too absorbed in his own thoughts, indeed, to think of anything but his purpose.

Grace rose to greet him, her cheeks still tinged with the roses, her eyes luminous, making as though to give him both her hands.

‘Oh Walter —' she began, smiling her welcome from a full heart.

Walter grasped her right hand, shook it and let it go again, absorbed, unseeing. There was a little smile on Grace’s lips, but she felt a sudden coldness about her heart.

Still standing, Walter began, —

‘ I have come to tell you something, Grace! ’

She glanced up, quickly, inquiringly. He had come to tell her, after all! Everything was all right, then; and there was a quick return of warm hope to her heart. She was ready, almost, to throw herself into his arms, telling him that she knew already. But his absorbed mood checked her, chilled her, filled her once more with sharp misgiving.

‘Come out on the lake,’ Walter went on. ‘ I ’ll row up to the island and we can talk it all over comfortably. It’s about my future life.’

Was this a doom or a promise of what she so hoped? Grace looked into his face with something showing in her eyes of the doubt and fear that were fighting in her heart; but Walter was too full of his t bought to note any shade of feeling in her.

Grace felt thwarted, baffled; she had planned that there, in the lovely room with its soft luxury, with its diamondpaned windows giving on the garden, she would listen to him telling her — everything. But he was bidding her go out on the lake.

‘But, Walter,’ she began,hesitantly, holding to her plan, in part because she had made it, in part because it had been the prologue of her dream; ‘it’s so cool and pleasant here, so quiet and dreamy — ’

‘No!’ interrupted Walter. ‘I need a row! I want the exercise! There’s such a lot to talk of, to plan, to decide! I’ve got to let off steam. Get a hat and come!’

Brusque and domineering, yes; she did not mind that; perhaps she even liked it, in him; but the whole tone and manner of his speech threatened her dream with ruin, filling her heart with cold desolation. His words: the future, so much to plan, something to tell her, — all this could mean — just what she longed for. The words, yes; but not the tone, not the spirit. That was hopelessly far away.

‘Walter,’ she began again, hesitating, catching at the vanishing dream.

‘Get your hat and come! It’s awfully important to me! I’ll go ahead and get the boat out. Don’t be long!’ And he turned his back on her, and strode out on the lawn and down the green terrace to the lake.

Grace stood quite still, looking after him. She felt chilled and breathless, the very life gone out of her. A rush of tears would have been welcome; but there were none. Her heart and mind stopped. All things were ended. She was too stunned even to suffer yet. She had read of travelers on the great ice frozen so swiftly that death outstripped pain. That flashed into her mind, as what had happened to her. Yet there was a sharp fierce misery in the numbness of her heart.

In the tumbling darkness of the storm there remained one positive thought: Walter had told her to get a hat and go to the boat. So catching up a broad-brimmed sun-hat of soft straw, she slowly followed his path across the lawn and down to the blue water blinking in the sunlight.

Walter was ready at the landing.

‘All aboard!’ and he steadied the boat against the stage with a firm hand and leaned out to the far side, to counterbalance her weight as she stepped. She noticed also that he had gathered an armful of cushions for her, on the stern seat. She felt a curious stab of pain in noting that.

Slowly, with a certain bodily numbness, she stepped into the boat and sat down among the cushions, haunted and terrified by the thought that her benumbed heart might suddenly break forth in uncontrollable grief.

‘Hurry up! Take the rudder-lines!’ Walter commanded. ‘Up the right side of the island! Steer carefully, and don’t speak till I do. I want to think!’

Even in her misery, she saw the ludicrousness of that. But all feelings were instantly submerged in the tense dread of tears.

He swung forward, straightened his back, dipped the oars squarely, swung clear back again, pulling them well up to his chest, then skillfully feathered as his hands shot forward again. Everything Walter did with his hands, he did well. Grace watched them with mingled pride and pain. She could not raise her eyes to his face.

A full mile he rowed, up the long blue lake, rippled and glistering in the sun; then, coming near the island, he dropped into a slower stroke. The scent of the balsams came to them across the water, the fragrance of green branches bathed in warm sunshine.

‘Steer up there under the trees!’ Walter directed. ‘We can talk there!’

The cool, green shadow of the branches fell on them, as he drew in the oars and methodically crossed them on the thwarts, and they came gradually to rest in the quiet, limpid water.

‘Grace,’ said Walter, ‘suppose you had been wanting something awfully, all your life almost, and you suddenly found it within reach, how would you feel?’

And resting his elbows on the crossed oars before him, he set his chin on his hands, and looked full into her face with honest eyes.

Grace felt a sharp catch of pain at her heart, a hot wire tightened across her breast. She had been longing for something; had wanted it awfully; and now, it was suddenly out of reach? She did not know. Then came the horrible thought, keen torture, that he had brought her there to tell her he loved some other woman and had won her love. She felt her very lips grow white; but for the numbing of all her powers, she would have cried out with pain.

Walter broke the tension prosaically by leisurely drawing from his pocket a cigarette-case she had given him, and lighting a cork-tipped cigarette. In a way, that curiously relieved her. It laid the phantom of the other woman. Walter was too full of his thoughts to notice her silence, or anything of what lay beneath it.

‘What has happened,’ he began, blowing the smoke in a fine stream from his lips, his eyes very frankly fixed on her face, ‘is this: Uncle Eddie is giving me a thousand dollars for six months in Paris, with more to come if I need it! I’m going at once!’

The last shadow of hope, of lingering uncertainty, was driven from her heart, and all was darkness. He had brought her there to say, not, ‘I love you!’ but, ‘I am going at once!’

That was the end. His sunny serenity, his deep satisfaction, buried the hope his words had killed.

In a confused way, from the depths of her dumb misery, she heard his plan: ten weeks in Dumont’s atelier; six weeks with Marrais; the figure with one; landscape with another; six glorious months of work. Only at the end would he choose his own line.

‘And the galleries, Grace!’ he continued, enthusiastically; the Louvre; Cluny; Versailles! Is n’t it splendid?’

There, as Grace thought, her heart broke. The very halls she had planned to show him, an affianced lover, he was hurrying off to view alone, without regret, without a thought of her. She sat quite still, in pain and despair so deep, so bitter, so heartrending, that she felt her very life die in agony. Only now, when hope was in ruins, did she know how much she loved him — had loved him; for love is life and she was dead.

In the cold stillness of that death she heard his eager words; heard the little ripples against the side of the boat; heard a wood thrush singing up on the hillside across the lake; noted it all, without feeling, without hope, abject, desperate.

There was no more of her. Her life had fallen in ruins, broken and burnt to ashes; and the ashes were blown away into the desert. From deep within her soul, that could suffer no more, she viewed herself as dead.

As he talked, for ages it seemed, detailing his plan, she listened. And a little spark of the life that had been hers before she died — so she expressed it to herself — began to glow again, no longer in her but in him.

The tiniest spark, at first; no more than the simplest attention, so that, if asked, she might answer consistently; then, from attention, a gray dawn of interest, a faint play of imagination around the details; a feeling, very painful yet, but living, like a wound beginning to heal, very sensitive still; a questioning of this or that particular, in thought only, for as yet she had no words.

Her intuition began to stir about his plan, his life, his inner nature. She began to see him in that new light, as he was to his own soul: the fiery aspiration, the tense will, that made him brusque and domineering; the man in him, longing, striving, for honor, for perfection; the little child, too, that would often get tired and depressed, and need to be petted and mothered; the soul, working for its own deep life through these powers, building the immortal in him. In this intimate inner life of his, till then wholly unknown to her, who thought she had known him so well, she grew strangely interested; so deeply, that she forgot her own pain in thinking of his life, its rich and radiant hope, its fiery energy, its sovereign possibilities for him and for many. Here was a man who, through his art, could reveal a new nobility and lift men’s hearts up to a life suffused with joy.

At last, as she heard him in rapt wonder, wide-eyed, with parted lips, he talked himself out, and was sensible, for a moment, of a shade of weakness and doubt. Then, for the first time Grace spoke, instilling into her tones some of the new secret that had been born in her heart:

‘O Walter! How splendid! How glad I am that you are going!’

She caught the echo of her own words with wonder. Yes, she had said that. And she knew, as she said it, that it was true. She was glad. More than that, she could still rejoice for him, even if she knew she should never see his face again, never know the issue of his high adventure. She did not need to know. The secret power would take care of him.

Then she added, —

‘Oh, I do so wish I could do something to help you!’ and her luminous eyes said even more than her words and the tone of eager, tender sympathy in which they were uttered.

For the first time Walter really heard her and saw her. Hitherto, every faculty had been absorbed in his dream. He raised himself from the oars and looked at her keenly.

‘Why, Grace!’ he said, slightly flushing, ‘you can! In ever so many ways!’

The enthusiasm in his tone was for his plan and for every least chance of furthering it. She knew it, and loved him the more for his singleness of heart.

‘Yes?’ she met him eagerly, glad beyond measure.

‘Why, yes!’ He lit a new cigarette, and inhaled the smoke, blowing it out slowly in a thin blue stream, pondering. ‘In two ways that I can think of already, and I’m sure in lots more. First, there are things to get: shirts and socks and heaps of things. I always did hate that sort of thing. But then you couldn’t do that!’ And he laughed softly, in a way that was very winning.

‘Oh, but I could!’ she answered quickly. ‘You may even trust me with buying your neckties. And you know how dangerous that is! Things to buy, then; including, I suppose, something to put them in. That is settled! And now the second thing?’

Walter did not answer at once. In the stillness Grace suddenly realized, with startled wonder, that she, who, a few minutes before, had been despairing and dead at heart, was radiantly happy; happy for him; not concerned with herself at all.

‘The other way is this,’ he began, after a long pause. ‘ I don’t go over for a month or six weeks. Things don’t begin there in the ateliers before that, you know. And in six weeks, you can do a tremendous lot! Studying, preparing, getting my hand in. I need some one to paint! You would do!

Grace found herself smiling; first, at the bluntness of the last little phrase, due not at all, as she divined, to unconscious man-egotism, but rather to his selfless devotion, to the burning fire of his ideal. She smiled, too, with a deeper happiness, to know that she ‘would do,’ even for that. It was balm to her woman’s heart, lacerated so cruelly, so unknowingly, such a little while, yet such ages, ago.

He went on, —

‘Your hair, you know! I’d like to try that!’

Grace found herself flushing at his directness, then smiling with happiness.

‘Very well, Walter!’ she answered, ‘ try! ’

Then, with a sudden sense that the new life was almost bursting her heart, she rose, —

‘Change scats, Walter,’ she said. ‘I’ll row. Round the island first!’

And she in turn began a firm, even stroke, as Walter curled up contentedly, gratefully, in the cushions in the stern, dreamy now that the pent-up hopes had been breathed forth.

Grace rowed slowly round the end of the island, close to the shingle. She too felt the reaction from the agony and fever of her mood; felt it in a painful happiness, a trouble coming upon her, that must find vent in tears. Her eyes following the shore of the island as she rowed, she suddenly saw a way of escape, and caught at it with almost fevered eagerness.

‘Walter,’ she said, with great difficulty steadying her voice, ‘ there is one of those lovely scarlet columbines! I must get a spray of it! ’ and she turned the bow of the boat inshore. A strong pull or two, and it ran up the smooth sand, grounding firmly, so that she could easily land. Walter watched her, making no motion to move.

Grace turned her back on him, to leap ashore; and the very instant that she turned, the strain was too much for her and the tears began to flow. She leaped almost blindly forward, daring to make no sudden motion with her hands, that might betray. But what infinite relief in those swiftly falling tears, as she felt her way, stepping through the soft grass toward the red spray of columbine.

It grew beside a boulder covered with warm green moss. Kneeling down beside the lovely flower, she laid her forehead on the soft green cushion, and gave way altogether to the flood of tears that swept over her. For a minute or two she was submerged. Then, by a strong effort, fearful that Walter might leap ashore and discover her weeping, she regained control of herself, and, still kneeling over the flower, with her back to him, she dried her tears, removing their traces so far as might be.

Plucking a spray of the scarlet columbine, she held it up, and began to count the petals with her finger-tip, girl-like reciting the old charm: ‘He loves me, loves me not.’ Then she smiled in sudden sunshine, remembering that the columbine has five petals, pointed liberty-caps packed together, so that the oracle was certain to say, ‘Yes!’

With the red spray of blossom pressed against her chin, she came back to the boat, found a handy stepping-stone, and was back in her seat. Walter saw the flower, and, charmed with the beauty of it, held out his hand. Slightly rising, she threw it to him.

‘You looked as if you were praying!’ Walter said, ‘with that green stone for altar!’

‘I was,’ she answered, ‘for your success ! ’

Then once more she began to row, rounding the island and turning homeward. After a space of restorative silence, she said, —

‘Now begin and tell it to me all over again; every syllable, you know!’

And she began to row slowly, firmly, steadily, making the most of the golden hour.

He told his story again, point by point, as he had told it already; yet with this difference: though he knew it not at all, Grace had slipped into all his plans; so that, at the last, he designed that, when his six magical months were drawing to their close, she should come over, to see the galleries and ateliers with him; and then they would make their happy way home together.

Walter knew not. Grace knew: recognized, with quiet happiness, what the unconscious boy did not divine; but she hid her knowledge deep in her heart; rejoicing that, because of this, she could help him more deeply, more powerfully, more delicately; help that fiery soul to find its wings and soar.

That night, Grace added to her petitions a little prayer of thanksgiving, —

‘ — If he had asked me first, I should never have found out —! Oh, thank you, thank you, for helping me to know, even by breaking my heart!’