The Just and the Unjust Part 20

He paused and regarded her with a wolfish glare.

"It's no d.a.m.ned anemic pa.s.sion!" he burst out.

"Thank you," she mocked. "Really, Marsh, you are outdoing yourself!"

"You have never let me see into your heart,--never once!"

"Perhaps it's just as well I haven't; perhaps it is a forbearance for which you should be only grateful," she jeered.

"If you were the sort of woman I once thought you, I'd want to hide nothing from you; but a woman--she's secretive and petty, she always keeps her secrets; the million little things she won't tell, the little secrets that mean so much to her--and a man wastes his life in loving such a woman, and is bitter when he finds he's given all for nothing!"

His heavy tramping went on.

"Is that the way you feel about it?" she asked.

"Yes!" he cried. "I'm infinitely more lonely than when I married you!

Look here; I came to you, and in six months' time you knew a thousand things you had no right to know, unless you, too, were willing to come as close! But I'm _d.a.m.ned_ if I know the first thing about you--sometimes you are one thing, sometimes another. I never know where to find you!"

"And I am to blame that we are unhappy? Of course you live in a way to make any woman perfectly happy--you are never at fault there!"

"You never really loved me!"

"Didn't I?" she sighed with vague emotion.

"No."

"Then why did I marry you, Marsh?"

"Heaven knows--I don't!"

"Then why did you marry _me_?" She gave him a fleeting smile.

"Because I loved you--because you had crept into my heart with your pretty ways, your charm, and the fascination of you. I hadn't any thought but you; you seemed all of my life, and I was going to do such great things for you. By G.o.d, I was going to amount to something for your sake! I was going to make you a proud and happy woman, but you wouldn't have it! You never got past the trivial things; the annoyances, the need of money, the little self-denials, the little inconveniences; you stopped there and dragged me back when I wanted to go on; you wouldn't have it, you couldn't or wouldn't understand my hopes--my ambitions!"

"Marsh, I was only a girl!" she said.

He put out his hand toward the bottle.

"Don't, Marsh!" she entreated.

He turned away and fell to pacing the floor again.

"What happiness do we get out of life, what good? We go on from day to day living a life that is perfectly intolerable to us both; what's the use of it--I wonder we stand it!"

"I have sometimes wondered that, too," Evelyn half whispered.

"You had it in your power to make our life different, but you wouldn't take the trouble; and see where we have drifted; you don't trust me and I don't trust you--" She started. "What sort of a basis is that for a man and wife, for our life together?"

"It's what we--what you have made it!" she answered.

"No, it isn't; it's what _you_ have made it! I tell you, you were bored to death; you wanted noise and world! Remember how I used to come home from the office every night, and begrudged the moments when any one called? I wanted only you; I talked over my cases with you, my hopes and my ambitions; but you mighty soon got sick of that--you yawned, you were sleepy, and you wanted to go about; you thought it was silly staying cooped up like that, and seeing no one, going nowhere! It was stupid for you, you were bored to death, you wanted noise and excitement, to spend money, to see and be seen,--as if that game was worth the candle in a G.o.d-forsaken hole of a place like Mount Hope! You killed my ambition then and there; I saw it was no use. You wanted the results, but you wouldn't pay the price in self-denial and patience, and so we rushed into debt and it's been a scramble ever since! I've begged and borrowed and cheated to keep afloat!"

"And I was the cause of it all?" she demanded with lazy scorn of him.

"There was a time when I stood a chance of doing something, but I've fooled my opportunities away!"

"What of the promises you made me when we were married--what about them?" she asked.

"You created conditions in which I could not keep them!" he said.

"I seem to have been wholly, at fault; at least from your point of view; but don't you suppose there is something _I_ could say? Do you suppose _I_ sit here silent because I am convinced that it is all my fault?"

He did not answer her at once but continued to pace the floor; at length he jerked out:

"No, I was at fault too. I've a nasty temper. I should have had more patience with you, Evelyn--but it was so hard to deny you anything you wanted that I could possibly give you--I'd have laid the whole world at your feet if I could!"

"I believe you would, Marsh--then!" she said.

"It's a pity you didn't understand me," he answered indifferently.

Nothing he could say led in the direction he would have had it lead, for he wanted her to realize her part in what had happened, to know that the burden beneath which he had gone down was in a measure the work of her hands. His instinct was as primitive as a child's fear of the dark; he must escape from the horror of his isolation; his secret was made doubly terrifying because he knew he dared not share it with any living creature. Yet his mind played strange tricks with him; he was ready to risk much that he might learn what part of the truth he could tell her; he was even ready to risk all in a dumb brute impulse to gather up the remnants of his strength of heart and brain, and be the center of some widespread catastrophe; to put his fear in her soul just as it was in his own. How was she ever to comprehend the horror that held him in its cruel grasp, the thousand subtle shades of thought and feeling that had led up to this thing, from the memory of which he revolted! He turned his bloodshot eyes upon her, something of the old light was there along with the new; he had indeed loved her, but the fruit of this love had been rotten. He was silent, and again his heavy tread resounded in the room as he dragged himself back and forth.

The force in him was stirring her. Sensation of any sort had always made its strong appeal to her. Without knowing what was pa.s.sing in his mind she yet understood that it was some powerful emotion, and her pliant nerves responded. For the moment she forgot that she no longer loved him. She rose and went to his side.

"Is it all my fault, Marsh?" she said.

"What is your fault?" he asked, pausing.

"That we are so unhappy; am I the only one at fault there?"

He looked down into her face relentingly.

"I don't know--I swear I don't know!" he said hoa.r.s.ely.

"What is it, Marsh--why are you so unhappy? Just because you love me?

What an unkind thing to say!"

He turned to the table to pour himself a drink, but she caught his hand.

"For my sake, Marsh!" she entreated.

Again he looked down into her eyes.

"For my sake," she repeated softly.

"By G.o.d, I'll never touch another drop!" he said.

"Oh, you make me so happy!" she exclaimed.