The Wild Olive Part 39

"That was true enough--in its way. In its way, it's still true. Evie still loves the man I was, perhaps, and the man I was loves her. The difference is that the man I was isn't sitting here in front of you."

"One changes with years, of course. I didn't suppose one could change in a few months, like that."

"One changes with experience--above all, with that kind of experience which people generally call--suffering. That's the great Alchemist; and he often trans.m.u.tes our silver into gold. In my case, Evie was silver; but I've found there's something else that stands for--"

"So that," she interposed, quickly, "you're not sorry that Evie--?"

He got up, restlessly, and stood with his back to the empty fireplace.

"It isn't a case for sorrow," he replied, after a minute's thinking, "as it isn't one for joy. It's one purely for acceptance. When I first knew Evie I was still something of a kid. It was so all the more because the kid element in me had never had full play. I was arrogant, and c.o.c.k-sure and certain of my ability to manipulate the world to suit myself. That was all Evie saw, and she liked it. In as far as she had it in her to fall in love with anything, she fell in love with it."

He took a turn or two across the room, coming back to his stand on the hearth-rug.

"I've travelled far since then," he continued; "I've _had_ to travel far.

Evie hasn't been able to come with me; and that's all there is to the story. It isn't her fault; because when I asked her, I had no intention of taking this particular way."

"It was I who drove you into that," she said, with a hint of remorse.

"Yes--you--and conscience--and whatever else I honor most. I give you the credit first of all, because, if it hadn't been for you, I shouldn't have had the moral energy to a.s.sert my true self against the false one. Isn't it curious that, after having made me Herbert Strange, it should be you who turned me into Norrie Ford again? It means that you exercise supreme power over me--a kind of creative power. You can make of me what you care to. It's no wonder that I've come to see----" He paused, in doubt as to how to express himself, while her eyes were fixed on him in troubled questioning. "It's no wonder," he went on again, "that I've come to see everything in a truer light--Evie as well as all the rest of it."

With a renewed impulse to move about, he strode toward the bay-window, where he stood for a few seconds, looking out and trying to co-ordinate his thoughts. Wheeling round again, he drew up a small chair close to hers, seating himself sidewise, with his arm resting on the back. He looked like a man anxious to explain himself.

"You're blaming me, I think, because I don't take Evie's defection more to heart. Isn't that so?"

"I'm not blaming you. I may be a little surprised at it."

"You wouldn't be surprised at it, if you knew all I've been through. It's difficult to explain to you--"

"There's no reason why you should try."

"But I want to try. I want you to know. You see," he pursued, speaking slowly, as if searching for the right words--"you see, it's largely a question of progress--of growth. Trouble has two stages. In the first, you think it hard luck that you should have to meet it. In the second, you see that, having met it, and gone through it, you come out into a region of big experience, where everything is larger and n.o.bler than you thought it was before. Now, you'd probably think me blatant if I said that I feel myself emerging into--_that_."

"No, I shouldn't. As a matter of fact, I know you're doing it."

"Well, then, having got there--out into that new kind of world"--he sketched the vision with one of his Latin gestures--"I discover that--for one reason or another--poor little Evie has stayed on the far side of it.

She couldn't pa.s.s the first gate with me, or the second, or the third, to say nothing of those I have still to go through. You know I'm not criticising, or finding fault with her, don't you?"

She a.s.sured him of that.

"And yet, I must go on, you see. There's no waiting or turning back for me, any more than for a dying man. No matter who goes or who stays, I must press forward. If Evie can't make the journey with me, I can only feel relieved that she's able to slip out of it--but I must still go on. I can't look back; I can't even be sorry--because I'm coming into the new, big land. You see what I mean?"

She signified again that she followed him.

"But the finding of a new land doesn't take anything from the old one. It only enlarges the world. Europe didn't become different because they discovered America. The only change was in their getting to know a country where the mountains were higher, and the rivers broader, and the sunshine brighter, and where there was a chance for the race to expand. Evie remains what she was. The only difference is that my eyes have been opened to--a new ideal."

It was impossible for her not to guess at what he meant. Independently of words, his earnest eyes told their tale, while he bent toward her like a man not quite able to restrain himself. In the ensuing seconds of silence she had time to be aware of three distinct phases of emotion within her consciousness, following each other so rapidly as to seem simultaneous. A throb of reckless joy in the perception that he loved her was succeeded by the knowledge that loyalty to Conquest must make rejoicing vain, while it flashed on her that, having duped herself once in regard to him, she must not risk the humiliating experience a second time. It was this last reflection that prevailed, keeping her still and unresponsive. After all, his new ideal might be something--or some one--quite different from what her fond imagining was so ready to believe.

"I suppose," she said, vaguely, for the sake of saying something, "that trial is the first essential to maturity. We need it for our ripening, as the flowers and fruit need wind and rain."

"And there are things in life," he returned, quickly, "that no immature creature can see. That's the point I want you to notice. It explains me.

In a way, it's an excuse for me."

"I don't need excuses for you," she hastened to say, "any more than I require to have anything explained."

"No; of course not. You don't care anything about it. It's only I who do.

But I care so much that I want you to understand why it was that--that--I didn't care before."

She felt the prompting to stop him, to silence him, but once more she held herself back. There was still a possibility that she was mistaking him, and her pride was on its guard.

"It was because I didn't know any better," he burst out, in nave self-reproach. "It was because I couldn't recognize the high, the fine thing when I saw it. I've had that experience in other ways, and with just the same result. It was like that when I first began to hear good music. I couldn't make it out--it was nothing but a crash of sounds. I preferred the ditties and dances of a musical comedy; and it was only by degrees that I began to find them flat. Then my ear caught something of the wonderful things in the symphonies that used to bore me. You see, I'm slow--I'm stupid--"

"Not at all," she smiled. "It's quite a common experience."

"But I'm like that all through, with everything. I've been like that--with women. I used to be attracted by quite an ordinary sort. It's taken me years--all these years, till I'm thirty-three--to see that there's a perfect expression of the human type, just as there's a perfect expression of any kind of art. And I've found it."

He bent farther forward, nearer to her. There was a light in his face that seemed to her to denote enthusiasm quite as much as love. To her wider experience in emotions this discovery of himself, which was involved in his discovery of her, was rather youthful, provoking a faint smile.

"You're to be congratulated, then," she said, with an air of distant friendliness. "It isn't every one who's so fortunate."

"That's true. There's only one man in the world who's more fortunate than I. That's Conquest."

"Oh!"

In the brusqueness with which she started she pushed her chair slightly back from him. It was to conceal her agitation that she rose, steadying herself on the back of the chair in which she had been seated.

"Conquest saw what I didn't--till it was too late."

He was on his feet now, facing her, with the chair between them.

"I wish you wouldn't say any more," she begged, though without overemphasis of pleading. She was anxious, for her own sake as well as for his, to keep to the tone of the colloquial.

"I don't see why I shouldn't. I'm not going to say anything to shock you.

I know you're going to marry Conquest. You told me so before I went away, and----"

"I should like to remind you that Mr. Conquest is the best friend you have. When you hear what he's done for you, you will see that you owe him more than you do any man in the world."

"I know that. I'm the last to forget it. But it can't do any harm to tell the woman--who's going to be his wife--that I owe her even more than I do him."

"It can't do any harm, perhaps; but when I ask you not to----"

"I can't obey you. I shouldn't be a man if I went through life without some expression of my--grat.i.tude; and now's the only time to make it.

There are things which I wasn't free to say before, because I was bound to Evie--and which it will soon be too late for you to listen to, because you'll be bound to him. You're not bound to him yet----"

"I _am_ bound to him," she said, in a tone in which there were all the regrets he had no reason to divine. "I don't know what you think of saying; but whatever it is, I implore you not to say it."

"It's precisely because you don't know that I feel the necessity of telling you. It's something I owe you. It's like a debt. It isn't as if we were just any man and any woman. We're a man and a woman in a very special relation to each other. No matter what happens, nothing can change that.

And it isn't as if we were going to live in the same world, in the same way. You will be Conquest's wife--a great lady in New York. I shall be--well, Heaven only knows what I shall be, but nothing that's likely to cross your path again. All the same, it won't hurt you, it wouldn't hurt any woman, however good, to hear what I'm going to tell you. It wouldn't hurt any man--not even Conquest--that it should be said to his wife--in the way that I shall say it. If it could, I wouldn't----"