Basil King

“ At the end of two months he was still mentally where he was when he left Buenos Aires. His intelligence assured him that he had the right of a man who has no rights to seize and carry off what he can; while that nameless something else within him refused to ratify the statement. What precise part of him raised this obstacle he was at a loss to guess. It could not be his conscience, since he had been free of conscience ever since the night on Lake Champlain. Still less could it be his heart, seeing that his heart was crying out for Evie Colfax more fiercely than a lion roars for food. ”

“ Why should she marry him? At the minute when Conquest was leaving Miriam, he, Ford, was tramping the streets of New York, watching them grow alive with light, in glaring, imaginative ugliness—ugliness so dazzling in its audacity and so fanciful in its crude commercialism that it had the power to thrill. It was perhaps the electric stimulus of sheer light that quickened the pace of his slow mentality from the march of acceptance to the rush of protest, at an instant when he thought he had resigned himself to the facts. ”

“ He could hear its voice already, explaining that since Miriam Strange had given him her word in an excess of self-devotion, it was his duty to let her off. He could see the line of argument; he could hear the applause following on his noble act. He had heard it before—especially in the theatre—and his soul had shaken with laughter. He had read of it in novels, only to toss such books aside. "The beauty of renunciation," he had often said, "appeals to the morbid, the sickly, and the sentimental. It has no function among the healthy and the sane." ”

“ Before speaking, Wayne passed his hand across his brow as though in an effort to clear his mental vision.
"No; you don't seem to be asking much. But, as a matter of fact, you're demanding my pledge to my country. I undertook to administer its laws—"
Ford sprang up.
"You've done it," he cried, "and I'm the result! You've administered the law right up to its hilt, and your duty as a judge is performed. Surely you're free now to think of yourself as a man and to treat me as one." ”

“ She smiled faintly to herself, thinking how she should lead this kindly man, who for her sake had done so much for Norrie Ford, back to a sense of security and self-respect. When Norrie Ford went free she meant to live for nothing else but the happiness of the man who had cleared his name and given him back to the world. It would be a kind of consecration to her, like that of the nun who forsakes the dearest ties for a life of good works and prayer. ”

“ Ford's dip was softer now, as though he feared to disturb that vibrant drowsiness; but when, later, capes and coves began to define themselves through the gray gloaming, and, later still, a shimmer of saffron appeared above the eastern summits, he knew it was time to think of a refuge from the daylight.
The saffron became fire; the fire lit up a heaven of chrysoprase and rose. Where the lake had been as a metal mirror for the stars, it rippled and dimpled and gleamed with the tints of mother-of-pearl. ”

“ With a dash as lithe and sudden as that which had brought him in, Ford was out on the terrace, following the white dress and the waving scarf which were already disappearing down the yew-tree walk. The girl's flight over grass and gravel was like nothing so much as that of a bird skimming through the air. Ford's own steps crunched loudly on the stillness of the night, so that if any one lay in ambush he knew he could not escape. ”

“ From the woman's steely smile and bitter-sweet tones Ford got hints of masculine inefficiency and feminine contempt which he had no wish to follow up. He knew from fragments of talk overheard in the smoking-room that they had tried Mexico, California, and Saskatchewan in addition to South America. From the impatience with which she shook the foot just visible beneath the steamer-rug, while all the rest of her bearing feigned repose, he guessed her humiliation at returning empty to the land she had left with an Anglo-Saxon's pioneering hope, beside a husband who could do nothing but curse luck. ”

“ His name was Green, and though he had been twenty years in Argentine, he haled from Boston. Short and stout, with gray hair, a gray complexion, a gray mustache, and wearing gray flannels, with a gray felt hat, he produced a general impression of neutrality. Strange would have gone on his way unheeding had not the snarling tone arrested him. He had ignored this sort of insult more than once; but he thought the time had come for ending it. He turned on an upper step, looking down on the ashy-faced little man, to whom he had once been subordinate and who was now subordinate to him. ”

“ Knowing himself too old to be dominated by a passion, and too experienced to be snared by wiles, he estimated his feelings as being those of love, as he understood the word. He conceded the fact that love, like every other desire, must work to win, and proceeded to set about his task according to his usual methods of persistent, unobtrusive siege. It was long before Miriam became aware of what he was doing, and her surprise as she drew back was not quite so great as his to see her do it. ”

“ Other women, wiser women, women behind whom there was a long, moderation-loving past, might obey the laws that prompt to the economy of one's self; she could only follow those blind urgings which drove her forefathers to fight when they might have remained at peace, or whipped them forth into the wild places of the earth when they could have stayed in quiet homes. The hard way in preference to the easy way was in her blood. She could no more have resisted taking it now than she could have held herself back eight years ago from befriending Norrie Ford against the law. ”

“ The thought that she was keeping her true self locked against him had, during the last twenty-four hours, become an obsession, making it impossible for him to eat or to sleep. In her serene, impeccable bearing he saw nothing but the bars up and the blinds drawn down. An instant of faltering or self-betrayal would have admitted him to at least a glimpse of what was passing within; but through this well-balanced graciousness it was as difficult to get at her soul as to read the mind of the Venus of Milo in the marble nobility of her face. ”

“ Unable to bear his gaze any longer, she got up brusquely from her chair, retreating into the bay-window, where—the curtains being undrawn—she stood looking down on the sea of lights, as beings above the firmament might look down on stars. He waited a minute, and came near her only when he judged that he might do so discreetly.
"You're unnerved," he said, with tender kindliness. "That's why you're upset. You've had too much on your mind. You're too willing to take all the care on your own shoulders, and not let other people hustle for themselves." ”

“ At the very instant when she was saying to Mary Pole, across Philip Wayne's white waistcoat, that she had always thought of endowed institutions of creative art as belonging to the races of weaker individual initiative—at the very instant when she was saying that, she was repeating to herself that the directness, the high-handedness, and the success of this kind of exploit was exactly what she would have expected of Norrie Ford. ”

“ The issues raised by Evie's overwhelming announcement were so confusing that she must postpone their consideration. She must postpone everything but her own tumultuous passion, which had to be faced and mastered instantly. She was fighting with herself, with her own wild inward cries of protest, anger, jealousy, and self-pity, trying to distinguish each from the others and to silence it by appeal to her years of romantic folly, when suddenly Wayne spoke, in the cheery tone of a man who has unexpectedly passed a pleasant evening. ”

“ Strange stole an occasional glance into the delicate, clear-cut face, where the thin lips were compressed into permanent lines of pain, and the sunken brown eyes looked out from under scholarly brows with the kind of hopeful anguish a penitent soul might feel in the midst of purifying flames. He remembered again that the flippant young Frenchman had said, "Un ancien curé, qui a fait quelque bêtise." Was it possible that some tragic sin lay under this gentle life? And was the four-funnelled, twin-screwed Parana but a ghostly ship bearing a cargo of haunted souls into their earthly purgatory? ”

“ Even the hand that rested on the woodwork of the window became tense. Lambent fire in her eyes—the light that he used to call non-Aryan—took the place of the fugitive glance of the woodland animal; but she kept her composure.
"Well, what then?"
"Then you'd be committing a sacrilege against yourself—if you married any one else but me."
If her heart bounded at the words, she did nothing to betray it.
"You say that, because it seems so to you. I take another view of it. Love to me does not necessarily mean marriage, any more than marriage necessarily implies love. ”

“ He knew the risk he was running that some one else might snatch it up; but his principle had always been to let everything, no matter how coveted, go, rather than buy in haste.
Lest such an attitude toward Miriam Strange should seem cold-blooded, it should be said in his defence that he considered the aggregate of his sentiments to be—love. She was to be more than "something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse," more than the living, responsive soul among his chattels. ”

“ He would have reproached himself for disloyalty if the intensity of each minute as he had to meet it had not been an excuse for him. The time would come when the pressure of the instant would be less great, and he should be able to get back the emotion with which he left her. Perhaps if she had been "his type of girl," her image would not have faded so quickly.
There was but one thing for which he was not grateful to her. She had fixed the name of Herbert Strange upon him in such a way that he was unable to shake it off. ”

“ It was out of many a poignant bit of domestic history, of which his profession had made him the confidant, that he had distilled the observation made to Ford earlier in the evening: "It isn't often that a woman's heroism works in a straight line, like a soldier's or a fireman's." Notwithstanding her directness, he could see Miriam Strange as just the type of woman to whom these words might be applicable. If by marrying a man whom she did not love she thought she could help another whom she did love, a culpable sacrifice was just the thing of which she would be capable. ”

“ Of the middle height and slender, with hair just turning from iron-gray to gray, immaculate in white duck, and wearing a dignified Panama, he stood looking at Strange—who, tall and stalwart in his greasy overalls, held his head high in conscious pride in his position in the shed—as Capital might look at Labor. It seemed a long time before Mr Jarrott spoke—the natural harshness of his voice softened by his quiet manner. ”

“ Moreover, he was still too new to his position to do other than glory in the fact that he was a free being, doing a man's work, and earning a man's wage. Out in the Camp he had been too desolate to feel that, but here in Buenos Aires, at the very moment when the great city was waking to the knowledge of her queenship in the southern world—when the commercial hordes of the north were sweeping down in thousands of ships across the equator to outdo each other in her markets, it was an inspiring thing merely to be alive and busy. ”

“ He had come to the little fringe of towns that clings to the borders of Champlain, here with the Adirondacks behind him, and there with the mountains of Vermont, but keeping close to the great, safe waterway, as though distrusting the ruggedness of both.
It was a moment at which to renew his alarm in this proximity to human dwellings. Like the tiger that has ventured beyond the edge of the jungle, he must slink back at the sight of fire. ”

“ With his combined advantages, personal and otherwise, it was not astonishing that a woman should be in love with him; and if that woman proved to be Miriam Strange, one could only say that the unexpected had happened, as it often does. If, in view of all the circumstances, he dressed better than ever, and gave his little dinners more frequently, while happiness toned down the sharpness of his handsome profile to a softer line, he had little in common with Malvolio. ”

“ In a situation alive with claims and counter-claims, with yearnings of the heart and promptings of the higher law, he could preserve his rights only by a walk as wary as the treading of a tight-rope.
This became clearer to him later in the night, when Ford had gone away, and he was left free to review the circumstances with that clarity of co-ordination he had so often brought to bear on other men's affairs. Out of the mass of data he selected two conditions as being the only ones of importance.
If Miriam Strange was marrying him because she loved him, nothing else needed to be considered. ”

“ Each morning she came early, bringing him food, and such articles of clothing as she thought he could wear. By degrees she provided him with a complete change of raiment, and though the fit was tolerable, they laughed together at the transformation produced in him. It was the first time he had seen her smile, and even in the obscurity of the inner room where she still kept him secluded he noted the vividness with which her habitually grave features lighted up. Micmac, too, became friendly, inferring with the instinct of his race that Ford was an object to be guarded. ”

“ Jarrott's right, and opposite Miss Queenie Jarrott, the sister of the head of the house. The host, as his manner was, spoke little. Miss Jarrott, too, only looked at Strange across the table, smiling at him with her large, thin, upward-curving smile, comic in spite of itself, and with a certain pathos, since she meant it to be charged with sentiment. Over the party at table, over the elderly men-servants who waited on them, over the room, over the patio, there was—except for the singing of the birds—the hush that belongs to a household that never hears the noise or the laughter of youth. ”

“ The tree of the knowledge of good and evil dangled its fruit right before his eyes in the person of Mademoiselle Hortense, who sang at the Café Florian, while the clients, of whom he was sometimes one, smoked and partook of refreshments. She was just the little round, soft, dimpling, downy bundle of youth and love he so often saw in his mind's eye, and so rarely in reality, and he was ready to fall in love with any one. ”