David Graham Phillips

“ But if they stay they do not wonder long. For the town in the bare winter is the real town the year round. The town of summer, tricked out in nature’s borrowed finery, is no more changed than was the jackdaw by his stolen peacock plumes. The smile, the gaiety, is on the surface. The prim, solemn old heart of Stoughton is as unmoved as when the frost is biting it.
In the first days of November Emily Bromfield, walking through the wretched streets under bare black boughs and a gray sky, had the full bitterness of her castaway life forced upon her. ”

“ THE HIGHWAY OF HAPPINESS. EMILY often rebelled. Her common sense was always catching her at demanding, with the irrational arrogance of human vanity, that the course of the universe be altered and adjusted to her personal desires. But these moods came only after she and Stilson had not been together for a longer time than usual. When she saw him again, saw the look in his eyes—love great enough to deny itself the delight of expression and enjoyment—she forgot her complaints in the happiness of loving such a man, of being loved by him. ”

“ In winter no one could be deceived as to what living in Stoughton meant—living in it in the sense of being forced there from a city, forced to remain permanently.
But in summer, nature charitably lends Stoughton a corner of the gorgeous garment with which she adorns its country. The sun dries the muddy streets and walks, and the town slumbers in comfort under huge trees, whose leaves quiver with what seems to be the gentle joy of a quiet life. The boughs and the creepers conspire to transform hideous little houses into crystallised songs of comfort and content. ”

“ She said in a faint voice, hardly more than a murmur, “I think so—yes.”
“Will you marry me, Emily?” he asked eagerly, and then he smiled with a little self-mockery. “I’ve always loathed that word ‘marry’—and all other words that mean finality. I’ve always wished to be free to change my mind and my course at any moment. And now——”
She pushed him from her, but left her hand on his shoulder. “Yes, dear, but it isn’t a finality with us. We go through a ceremony because—say, because it is convenient. But if we—either of us—cease to love, each must feel free to go. ”

“ We may be deceiving ourselves. But I do not think so, Joan. I believe—and you do too, don’t you?—that there can be high thoughts in common between a man and a woman. I’m sure they can care in such a way that passion becomes like the fire, fusing two metals into one stronger and better than either by itself. And I think—I feel—yes, it seems to me I know, that it is so with us. Oh, Joan, he and I need each the other.”
Joan threw away her cigarette and rested her head upon her arms, so that her face was concealed from Emily. ”

“ When Emily finished reading the letter, she was crushed. Her pride, her vanity, her future—all stabbed in the vitals. Just when she thought herself most secure, she was overthrown and trampled. She could see Stoughton gloating over her—who would have thought that Stoughton could ever reach and touch her? She could see herself pinioned there, or in some similar Castle Despair, for life.
To be outwitted by such a man—and how? She could not explain it. Her experience of ways masculine had not been intimate enough to give her a clue to the subtle cause of Wayland’s changed attitude. ”

“ Emily did not enter, but went on to her own room—bare, cheerless, proofs of poverty and impending rags and patches threatening to obtrude. She looked out through the trees at the glimpses of the town—every beat of the pulse of her youth was a sullen and hateful protest against it. Beyond were the tall chimneys of the mills, with the black clouds from them smutching the sky—there lived the work-people, the boredom of the town driving them to brutal dissipation. ”

“ Each bit of finery reminded her of pleasures, keen when she enjoyed them, cruelly keen in memory. The gowns were of a kind that would have made Stoughton open its sleepy eyes, but they would not do for Washington again.
The people she knew there were self-absorbed, inclined to snobbishness, to patronising contemptuously those of their own set who were overtaken by misfortunes and could not keep the pace. They tolerated these reminders of the less luxurious and less fortunate phases of life, but—well, toleration was not a virtue which Emily Bromfield cared to have exercised toward herself. ”

“ Emily looked uncomfortable, “I don’t see why,” she said, somewhat irritably. “Don’t you think people can get too much of each other?”
“Certainly—and in marriage they always do; but if it’s to be a marriage, if there’s to be anything permanent about it, they must live together, see each other constantly, become completely united in the same current of life; all their interests must be in common, and they must have a common destiny and must never forget it.”
“But that isn’t love,” objected Emily.
“No, it isn’t love—love of the kind we’re all crazy about nowadays. ”

“ She was proud of Sam’s wildness, full as proud as she was of her father’s sermons. She rattled cheerfully on until it was time for her to go and, as Emily and she were putting on their wraps at the same time, she kissed her impulsively, blushing a little, saying “You’re so beautiful. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Mind?” Emily laughed and kissed her. Evelyn wondered why there were tears in the eyes of this fascinating woman with the musical voice and the expression like a goddess of liberty’s. ”

“ One night they were driving in a hansom after a dinner on the Savoy balcony—he suddenly bent and kissed the long sleeve of her thin summer dress at the wrist. “You light a flame that goes dancing through my veins,” he said. “I wish I could find new words to put it in. But I’ve only the old ones, Emily—I love you and I want your love—I want you. This is an unconditional surrender and I’m begging you to receive it. You won’t say no, will you, Emily?” ”

“ Comparison is the life and also the death of love. As soon as she began to compare him with Stilson and to admit that he was the lesser, she began to neglect love, to leave it to the alternating excessive heat and cold of passion.
But all these causes of a curious decline were subordinate to one great cause—she discovered that he was a coward, that he was afraid of her. The quality which she admired in a man above every other was courage. She had thought Marlowe had it. ”

“ Murderers! Murderers! killing honest workingmen and women!”
And as Emily crouched there, too weak to lift herself, yet longing to see those corpse-strewn, bloodstained stones—the stage of that triple tragedy of courage, self-sacrifice, love and death—Camp raved on, poured out curses upon capitalists and militia. Camp!—who that very morning had been trying to impress Emily with his superiority to his origin, his contempt of these “mere machines for the use of men of brains.” ”

“ And she decided that she would wait before telling him that she had been Marlowe’s wife.
“No,” he answered, “it is not what I call love. But it is a part of love—the lesser part, no doubt, but still a part. I love you in all the ways a man can love a woman. And I love you because you are a complete woman, capable of inspiring love in every way in which a woman appeals to a man. ”

“ While Emily had been sitting there, so near him, hearing his clear, resolute voice, noting his fascinating mannerisms of strength, gentleness and simplicity, she felt again the charm of power and persuasion that had conquered her when first she saw him. “He makes me feel that he is important, and at the same time that I am important in his eyes,” she thought, analysing her vanity as she yielded to it.
“Friends?” she said aloud with a smile. “That means better opportunities for petty treachery, and the chance to assassinate in a crisis. It’s a serious matter—friendship, don’t you think?” ”

“ Marlowe was not so tall, but his personality seemed to her as vivid and sincere as Demorest’s seemed colourless and false. He had the self-possession of one who is well acquainted [51] with the human race. His eyes were gray-green, keen, rather small and too restless—Emily did not like them. He spoke swiftly yet distinctly. Demorest seemed a man of the world, Marlowe a citizen of the world.
They got into Demorest’s open automobile, Marlowe and Emily in the back seat, and set out for Clairmont. For the first time in nearly two years Emily was experiencing a sensation akin to happiness. ”

“ Parrott interposed with a remonstrance or a suggestion which Emily was acute enough to appreciate. She laughed at these “hypocrisies” but—she always had circulation in mind. She liked to startle, but she knew that she must startle in ways that would attract, not frighten away.
But conscientious though she was in her work, and careful to have her evenings occupied, she was still forlorn. Life was purposeless to her. She was working for self alone, and she who had never cared to excess for self, now cared nothing at all. In her own eyes her one value was her value to Stilson. ”

“ Her smile was dreamy, her soul apparently wrapped in the delirium of the dance. Her whole body was in constant motion. It seemed to Stilson that at every movement of shoulders or hips, of small round arms or tapering legs, at every swing of that little head crowned with glittering waves of golden light, a mysterious, thrilling energy was flung out [259] from her like an electric current. He who had not cared for women of the stage watched this girl as a child at its first circus watches the lady in tights and tarlatan. ”

“ Emily stopped and when she began again, talked of the faces and clothes in the passing carriages. She had intended to go on to denounce herself for weakness in being unable to follow reason and altogether shake off ideas which she regarded as false and foolish and discreditable. “As if,” she thought “any toil in making my own living could possibly equal the misery of being tied to a commonplace fellow like Edgar, with my life one long denial of all that I believe honest and true. ”

“ He grew to like her, to regard her as an ideal woman for a wife. But—he did not want a wife. And as the new feeling developed, the old feeling died away.
Emily had gained a friend. But she had lost a lover.
Two weeks after her mother’s funeral, Wayland kissed her good-night as calmly as if he had been her brother. At the gate he paused and looked [35] back at the house, already dark except in one second-story room, where Emily’s aunt was waiting up for her. “I am not worthy of her,” he said to himself. “I am not fit to marry her. I should be miserable trying to live up to such a woman. ”

“ THE DESERT ISLAND. THREE months later—August, September, and October, the months of Stoughton’s glory—gave Emily Bromfield a minute acquaintance with all that lay within her new horizon. She was as familiar with Stoughton as Crusoe with his island—and was in a Crusoe-like state of depression. She thought she had found the lowest despond of which human nature is capable on the day she saw the top of the Washington monument disappear, saw the last of the city of her enjoyments and her hopes. ”

“ Emily at once understood and reproached herself for her selfishness. What must Stilson be enduring, shut in with the [310] cause and centre of his wretchedness—that unfortunate woman through whom he was expiating, not his crimes but his follies. “How wicked life is,” she thought bitterly. “How intelligent its malice seems. To punish folly more severely than crime, and ignorance more savagely than either—it is infamous!” And as she brooded over his wrecked life and her aloneness, her courage failed her. ”

“ Emily’s smile was delightfully natural—and relieved.
“He’s got love and marriage on the brain, and he’s broken-hearted, you know. And in those cases if it can’t be the woman it’s bound to be a woman.”
Emily was in the mood to be completely resigned to giving up to another that which she did not want herself. She studied Miss Stanhope without prejudice against her and found her sweet but as yet colourless, a proper young person for Edgar to marry, one toward whom she could not possibly have felt the usual dog-in-the-manger jealousy. ”