Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

“ The intervals between love-making would never drag; she had heard that they were sometimes trying. And then the pictures between those framing intervals—when the fierce, hot tide of passion within her would leap like a tidal wave, lashed into might by the convulsion at its heart. And Cryder! To see the tiger in the man fling off its shackles and look through the calm brown of his eyes! (Like all girls, Hermia believed that every man had a tiger chained up inside him, no matter how cold he might be exteriorly.) What a triumph to break down that cool self-control! ”

“ Ennui was her worst enemy. Sometimes she got tired of the very sound of Cryder’s voice—it ceased so seldom. She longed for variety of any sort, for something to assure her that she was not as flatly married as Bessie and her husband. One day when she was more bored than usual Helen Simms came in.
“How brilliant you look!” she exclaimed. “What is the matter with you?”
“Ennui; life is a burden.”
“Where is Ogden Cryder? I thought he had put ennui to flight.”
“He is charming,” said Hermia, “and I am having that flirtation with him that you advised; but even that is getting a little monotonous.” ”

“ The man is not much of a point. I simply want to be married that I may be free,” and she heaved a sigh.
“Free of what?” asked Hermia, sarcastically. “Of freedom?”
“Oh, this is not freedom, my dear. A girl always has to be chaperoned. A married woman chaperones. Oh, the difference!”
“But where do you propose to keep the future Mr. Helen Simms?” asked Cryder, laughing.
“At his club, or in a rose-colored boudoir. Mine will be blue.”
“Helen Simms! you are the most immoral young woman I ever—ever——.” The wrathful voice broke down, and all turned to Miss Starbruck with amused sympathy. ”

“ She looked about her with a smile which had little fear in it.
“These stern gray walls and that vaulted ceiling carry you out of Second Avenue, I admit; and those stained-glass windows and all that tapestry and antique furniture waft me back to the days of my struggles with somebody or other’s history of England. But, Hermia mia, I think it would be good for you to have a modern drawing-room in your house, and to sit in it occasionally. It is this semblance of past romance which makes you discontented with the world as you find it.” ”

“ Hermia felt herself paling, but she exclaimed impatiently: “Don’t talk to me of ideals—those poor, pale photographs of ourselves, who have neither mind nor will nor impulse; who jump out like puppets as the strings are pulled; who respond to every mood and grin to every smile! They are born of the supreme egoism of human nature, which admits no objective influence to any world of its own creating—an egoism which demands vengeance for the humiliation of spirit one is called upon to endure in the world of men. ”

“ Hermia leaned forward. “Did not you love Mrs. Maitland?” she asked.
The color mounted to Quintard’s face.
“My dear Miss Suydam, this is the nineteenth century—the latter quarter. Love of that sort is an episode, a detached link.” He leaned forward and smiled. “I suppose you think I talk like the villain in the old-fashioned novel,” he said. “But codes of all sorts have their evolutions and modifications. The heroes of the past would cut a ridiculous figure in the civilization of to-day. I am not a villain. I am merely a man of my prosaic times.” ”

“ I have sulked in the lap of my own egoism all my life. That a human soul might get outside of itself has never occurred to me—until now. I will live and rejoice in my own abnegation, for the sacrifice will give me something the better to offer you. I have suffered, and I shall suffer as long as I live—but I believe you will be the happier for it.”
He stood up and grasped her hands. “Hermia!” he exclaimed beneath his breath, “Hermia, promise it! Promise me that you will live, that you will never kill yourself. ”

“ When I first met you, I decided that you were commonplace.”
“You will allow a man to have two sides, at least,” said Quintard, smiling. “I cannot always be walking on the ramparts of imagination. I enjoy being prosaic at intervals, and there are times when I delight to take a hammer and smash my ideals to atoms. I like to build a castle and raze it with a platitude, to create a goddess and paint wrinkles on her cheek, to go up among the gods and guy them into common mortals, to kiss a woman and smother passion with a jest.” ”

“ While he amused himself with the many rare volumes on the library shelves, Hermia read the introduction and the four tales with equal interest and astonishment. They had a vital power which seemed to grip her mind as with a palpable hand and hold it until she had read the last of the sheets. Quintard had reproduced the style and spirit of the age with remarkable fidelity—the unbridled passions, the coarse wit, the stirring deeds of valor. He made no attempt at delicate pathos or ideality. When a man suffered, he raged like a wounded boar; every phase of his nature was portrayed in the rough. ”

“ She marry Quintard and live with him as the woman he loved and honored above all women! She try to scale those heights where was to be garnered something better worth offering her lover than any stores in her own sterile soul! That hideous, ineffaceable brand seemed scorching her breast with letters of fire. If she had but half loved Cryder—but she had not loved him for a moment. With her right hand she had cast the veil over her eyes; with her left, she had fought away all promptings that would have rent the veil in twain. ”

“ She had a protesting sense of being defrauded; it was all very well to realize one’s imaginings, but how much sweeter if some foreign hand had cunningly woven details within and glamour above, of which she had never dreamed. The supreme delight of atmospheric architecture is the vague, abiding sense that high on the pinnacle we have reared, and which has shot above vision’s range, is a luminous apex, divine in color, wondrous in form, a will-o’-the-wisp fluttering in the clouds of imagination.
Hermia sighed, but shrugged her shoulders. Had not life taught her philosophy? ”

“ Hermia leaned back against a pile of cushions, and, clasping her hands behind her head, gazed about her with half-closed eyes. There was a sense of familiarity about it all that cast a shadow over her content. It was a remarkably close reproduction of an ideal, considering that the ideal had been filtered through the practical brain of a nineteenth century decorator—but therein lay the sting. She had dreamed of this room, lived in it; it was as familiar as Bessie’s parlor in Brooklyn, with its tidies and what-nots; it wanted the charm of novelty. ”

“ Cryder went on; “for your beauty, which appeals to the senses of men, yet which at the same time frightens them, because of the tragic element which is as apparent as the passionate; for your romantic surroundings, which appeal to their sentiment; for the glamour which envelops you as one of the most sought-after women in New York; for your intellect; and for your incomprehensibility to the average mind, which has the fascination of mystery. But I doubt if any man has ever known or cared whether you have a psychic side. If I fall in love with you, I shall love your soul, primarily. ”

“ She is not drawn to God in the least. She is drawn to the idealized abstraction of her lover, who, in the mists of her white-heated imagination, assumes the lineaments of the being most exalted by tradition. If there were a being more exalted still than God, her lover’s phantom would be re-christened with his name instead. It is to her lover that she prays—the intermediate being is a pretty fiction—and she revels in prayer, because it gives her a dreamy and sensuous nearness to her lover.”
Hermia sprang to her feet and paced the narrow platform with rapid steps. ”

“ This was the first man who had shown the faintest insight into her contradictory personality and complicated nature. For the moment she forgot where she was, and she gave a little sigh which brought the blood to her face. To love would not be so difficult as she had imagined.
“What is it?” asked Cryder, gently. He had been watching her covertly. “I want to amend something I said a moment ago. You have not lived in fact but you have in imagination, and the men your fancy has created have made those of actual, prosaic life appear tame and colorless.”
Hermia’s heart gave a bound. ”

“ Miss Starbruck shuddered, but felt that the conversation had gone out of her depth, and made no reply. Hermia looked at Quintard with a feeling of unconscious pride. Until he finished speaking, she did not realize how she would hate to have him beaten.
Cryder rose and began walking up and down the room. “When you argue,” he said fretfully, “I always feel as if you were hammering me about my ears. You have such a way of pounding through a discussion! One never knows until the next day whether you are right or whether you have simply overwhelmed one by the force of your vitality. ”

“ It is not to be supposed that Hermia’s imagination was faithful to the Orient. Her nature had great sensuous breadth and wells of passion which penetrated far down into the deep, hard substratum of New England rock; but her dreams were apt to be inspired by what she had read last. She loved the barbarous, sensuous, Oriental past, but she equally loved the lore which told of the rugged strength and brutal sincerity of mediæval days, when man turned his thoughts to love and war and naught besides ”

“ Take the advice of one who knows; money is the one thing that makes life worth living. Everything else goes—youth, beauty, love. Money—if you take care that does not go too—consoles for the loss of all, because it buys distractions, amusement, power, change. It plates ennui and crystallizes tears to diamonds. It smoothes wrinkles and keeps health in the cheek. It buys friends and masks weakness and sin. You are young, but the young generation is wiser than the old; my advice, I feel sure, will not be thrown away.”
“And this!” exclaimed Miss Starbruck, hoarsely; “this is what life has come to! ”

“ Langley, Cryder’s publisher, and Ralph Embury, a noted young journalist. Helen Simms was there to chatter serious thought to ambush, and Miss Starbruck, primly alert, and waiting to be shocked.
Poor Miss Starbruck! She drifted like a gray shadow through Hermia’s rooms, and longed for her modest cottage at Nantucket. She had been an active member of sewing-circles and reading-clubs, and the farther down her past’s perspective did this unexciting environment retreat, the oftener did she sigh as she contrasted its cool shadows with the hot glare into which fate’s caprice had suddenly cast her. ”

“ Hermia interrupted him harshly: “There is no marriage or giving in marriage in my kingdom. I hate the word! Are you very much shocked?”
Cryder smiled. “No,” he said, “one is surprised sometimes to hear one’s own dearest theories in the mouth of another, but not shocked. It only needed that to make you the one woman I have wanted to know. You have that rarest gift among women—a catholic mind. And it does not spring from immorality or vulgar love of excitement—you are simply brave and original.” ”

“ But she shrank from telling Cryder that he must go and not return. He loved her, not as she had wanted to be loved, perhaps, but with his heart, his sentiment. She liked him—very much indeed—and had no desire to give him pain. He might suffer the more keenly because of the fineness of his sensibilities. Suppose he should kill himself? Men so often killed themselves for women who did not love them. She remembered that she had dreamed of men dying for hopeless love of her; but, now that it seemed imminent, the romance was gone. ”

“ As she came down the broad staircase, in a gown that made her look as if she had stepped from some old French canvas, Cryder stood gazing at her for a moment, then without a word sat down before the organ and began to play. The organ needs only a skillful hand; its own rich, sonorous tones pour soul through cold, calm fingers. Cryder played Tristan’s Death Song, and Hermia sank into a chair and felt that naught existed but glory of color and surge of sound. ”

“ It sprang from the cushions and pressed itself close to her cheek! The room was peopled with Cryder!
She sprang to her feet and threw her arms above her head. “O God!” she cried; “it was but for a night! for a night!”
She fled down the room, Cryder, in augmenting swarm, pursuing her. She flew up the stairs and into her room, and there flung herself on the floor in such mortal agony as she could never know again, because the senses must be blunted ever after. Last night, in Quintard’s arms, as heaven’s lightning flashed through her heart, every avenue in it had been rent wide. ”

“ Cryder was the first who had any of the qualities you demanded. And there was much about Cryder to please; he was one of the most charming men I ever met. You found it delightful to be with a man who, you thought, understood you, and whose mind was equal to your own. You were lonely, too—you wanted a companion. If Quintard had come first, there would have been no question of mistake; but, as the case stands, it was perfectly natural for you to imagine yourself in love with Cryder.”
Hermia turned her head listlessly against the back of the chair and stared at the wall. ”

“ But I have some private reasons for going a step beyond agnosticism, and believing in the persistence of personality. Do you want to hear them?”
“Yes,” said Hermia, “but it all comes down to the same proposition. Religion has its stronghold in Ego the Great. La vie, c’est moi! I am, therefore must ever be! Now and forever! World without end!”
“I refuse to be snubbed beforehand. Why are children so frequently the ancestors of their family’s talent? When heredity cannot account for genius, what better explanation than that of the re-embodiment of an unquenchable individuality? ”

“ You think you have exhausted life, whereas you have not begun to live. You simply don’t even know what you are thinking about. You know less about the world than any woman of brain and opportunities I ever met in my life, and it is because you have deliberately blinded yourself by false and perverted views.”
Hermia’s teeth were clinched and her bosom was heaving. “You may as well finish,” she said, in a voice ominously calm.
“Just to mention one point. You have said you do not believe in matrimony—particularly when people love each other. ”

“ The green tiles of the floor were painted with a rank growth of grasses and ferns. Through the palms and tropical shrubs that crowded the conservatory glared the wild beasts of far-off jungles, marvelously stuffed and poised. The walls were forgotten behind a tapestry of reeds and birds of the Orient. In one corner was a fountain, simulating a pool, and on its surface floated the pink, fragrant lilies that lie on eastern lakes. Few people had seen this jungle—before its completion, Hermia had learned that it was dangerous to test her city’s patience too far. ”

“ Those who walk on the plane above, shiver under the frozen smile of the great god Bore as well—but they can avert it. The ennui that kills love is born of dispelled illusions, of the death of the dramatic principle, which is buried at the foot of the altar. When a man is attempting to win a woman he is full of surprises which fascinate her; he never tarries a moment too long; he is always planning something to excite her interest; he watches her every mood and coddles it, or breaks it down for the pleasure of teaching her the strength of his personality ”

“ Hermia took no interest in her uncle’s death; she was even past the regret that she would be the poorer by twenty-five dollars a year. When she received the letter from Suydam’s lawyer, informing her that she was heiress to a million dollars, her hands shook for an hour.
At first she was too excited to think connectedly. She went out and took a long walk, and physical fatigue conquered her nerves. She returned home and sat down on the edge of her bed and thought it all out. The world was under her feet at last. With such a fortune she could materialize every dream of her life. ”

“ They passed under a lamp at the moment, and a ray of light fell on Quintard’s face, to which Hermia had lifted her eyes. The color sprang to it, and his eyes flashed. He bent his head until she shrank under the strong, angry magnetism of his gaze. “It is time you opened your eyes,” he said harshly, “and learned to know one man from another. And it is time you began to realize what you have to expect.” ”