Neith Boyce

“ Jeremy nodded fiercely.
“You must see us as we are—and as we may be. You must have faith in our possibilities and cherish us for them. You must take the wilt for the deed and believe in our widest reach as though we had already grasped! You must see us as we want to be. In that way you can help us—in every other way you hurt us, hurt the best in us, you destroy us and we—hate you for it.” ”

“ The sand and the wind together make that strange country of desolation and haunting colour—and to me they make Lorna. Creature of changing mood and impulse, of desire shifting as the wind, yet constant—constant desire for lite, expressed in changing forms—desire too keen perhaps, never to be satisfied, remorseless ... but living! ”

“ Once more sea and sky were deep clear blue. But the sea still rolled great swells up to the foot of our dune, and a jagged rift had been cut in there below the house. And out on the bars we could see the wreck of the schooner, lying on its side, half-buried in the seas that foamed over it and were tearing it to pieces, carrying its splintered timbers towards the shore. ”

“ I don't believe Lorna has. Or they're so slight that a gust of wind breaks them. Like the things that grow here—lightly rooted in the sand.”
Rudolf shook his head.
“That doesn't follow. A woman may be pretty mean to one man and good to another. Besides,” he moved impatiently, “I don't care whether she's what you call good or not. I know she's fond of me, and she'll come back to me.... And I'll just wait for her,” he added slowly. “She flew off, as I did—she was angry about something. But she'll come back.... Lord, what a storm! ”

“ VII I was not at all surprised when, next morning, Lorna announced that she was going to town for a few days, on business—a conference with her lawyer about the divorce. She telephoned for a carriage, packed like lightning and disappeared in a whirl, waving smiling good-byes. She hoped we would all go on exactly as we were till she came back.
“She will never come back,” said Jeremy to me.:
“What do you mean?” I asked, startled.
“I told you,” he said. “Lorna is romantic—she likes lots of glamour! She doesn't like human, fallible, clumsy people..... Rudolf was stupid. ”

“ Jeremy understood women much better than he did men (and liked them less) . He and I disputed hotly about Rudolf—I could not at all share his enthusiasm, his almost worship, of that talented and beautiful youth. I granted Rudolf beauty—of a certain kind—and talent; Jeremy insisted he was a genius, and frail—as he said all genius was. Rudolf frail! And he thought it perfectly natural that Lorna should have fallen madly in love with the wonderful boy, and seized upon him—trust Lorna for that! But he wailed for Adonais—how he did wail!
“A pure artist—if he's left alone! ”

“ As long as they were kept in it they were all right, and we had elbow-room. But now they're too much for us. Soon and late, getting and spending, they lay waste our powers. Nothing we see in nature that is ours. There's hardly a corner anywhere now where we can get away from you! You've knocked all the romance and adventure out of the world—out of us—and now we begin to bore you. You've tamed us—and you don't like us tame! You don't know what's the matter—you think it's our fault that we aren't interesting any more!”
“And you think it's our fault?” said Lorna languidly. ”

“ We can be content, satisfied, and they never can. We have a reason for existence—and they have to find one. Man has to justify his own existence to himself. We don't need to, provided we're useful to somebody. He has to establish a connection between himself and the universe. We don't need to—ours is ready made. Some of us cut it away and live in the sand where nothing grows.”
“As I do, you think?” said Lorna. ”

“ I looked from the windows, but in the wild smother of the storm nothing was visible, no lights at sea or anywhere—only, rather felt than seen, the great black waves lifting themselves at the foot of the dune, with a vague blur for the foam on their crests....
Toward morning he came back, drenched and exhausted. A lumber-schooner had struck on the bar and was breaking up. The life-savers hadn't tried to launch their boat, but had shot a life-line over the ship, and the five men of the crew had been brought ashore in the breeches-buoy. ”

“ I think of her superb vitality, irresistibly attracting those weaker in living force than herself, inevitably disappointed, passing on ... to what I know not, nor whether there is compensation for the suffering of those sensitive souls that crossed her path. But I see that Lorna will remain, in any case, whoever else succumbs. Jeremy was right.
The sand is blown by the wind—but it is stone after all, and will outlast all softer substance. ”

“ I saw them land, saw Lorna standing up, saw the group of men round Rudolf. When we finally got up to them they were working violently over him, doubling him up, pumping his arms up and down, beating him. He was unconscious and blue in the face and making awful noises. Lorna looked white and sick.
“Is he dead?” I cried.
“I don't know,” she said, looking strangely at me.
“Can't tell yet,” growled Captain Kirby, down on his knees in the sand.
It is a terrible thing to see a dead person brought to life—What struggles, what grotesque cruelty to the inert body!... ”

“ One marvellous day after another, unfolding from its faintly chill dawn into the caressing warmth of noon, sank by slow melting changes to a clear sunset—then lingering afterglow, twilight, a night glittering full of stars, dawn again.
*****
At last one day a haze gathered over the sea and lay in a dark bank along the horizon. The roll of the surf lengthened and deepened, sinking to a lower key. A moaning sound began far-off, a faint wailing. ”

“ After all, for her Rudolf's only a boy—a charming youth. She doesn't really care for the artist in him.”
Jeremy patted and moulded the sand before him into a fantastic female outline.
“I won't believe it!” I assured him angrily. “Lorna isn't as light-minded as that!”
“She's not light-minded at all,” he returned serenely. “Quite the contrary. If anything she's too intense, too piercing. She's geared at too high a speed for most people, you see, she wears them out—gets what she can from them—and goes on. When she can't get any more she has to go on.” ”

“ It's too bad of Lorna!”
“He's an egotistic boy!” I contradicted sulkily. “Lorna loves him to distraction, and he takes it all as if it were his right!... There's Ellery, a man worth dozens of Rudolf—thrown aside—and Lorna determined to marry this stripling! He'll spend her money and break her heart—it will be the old story of an older woman loving a boy—”
“Ha!” cried Jeremy, divided between anger and mirth. “Rudolf doesn't care a hang for money. And as for her heart—break Lorna's heart! ”

“ She said that it was perfectly ridiculous of Rudolf to jump off after her when she called for help, instead of pulling her in by the rope. The whole affair was utterly absurd, she said.... All this fuss for nothing ... tiresome ... it bored her ... stupid..... A man ought to have more sense—presence of mind. She was vicious about it.
That evening she was gloomily silent. Rudolf lay on a couch by the fire and talked radiantly, though he was still very weak. You might say he babbled—and he sent warm, anxious glances at Lorna, to which she did not respond in the least. She was cold as a stone. ”

“ But the moral atmosphere didn't clear up; there was storm in the air. The nervous tension between those two continued and broke out occasionally in a word or a look. Rudolf looked gloomy and sulky and Lorna was positively malign. What had happened? Jeremy said airily:
“They're getting on each other's nerves, that's all. What can you expect—shut up together like this? No man can stand it.” He scowled and added, “Rudolf can't work any more. If he doesn't clear out he's lost.” ”

“ They must dream and try to realize their dreams. But it's at our peril if we dream! You've been dreaming, Lorna.”
“Then love is a dream?” she asked.
“Nothing else—the sort of love you mean—and with a bitter wakening. You will never find the lover you seek. You will never find a man to love you for yourself, only for what you give him. ”

“ That's what she's doing to Rudolf. But is that the kind of a world for an artist to live in? It kills him!... What he needs is a perfectly simple human background, if any—something warm, comforting, not too obvious, not too absorbing. What can Lorna do for him, except blow down all over him and smother him?”
We were sitting on the sand in the hollow, and I suppose the tops of the desiccated trees before us suggested the simile.
“There's nothing to hold Lorna,” Jeremy went on. “She has to go on. And in my opinion she'll finish Rudolf next—yes, finish him,” he repeated gloomily. ”

“ We're at home there—and man is only a wandering visitor, for ever trying to make himself at home. He had no secure base. Shall we imitate him?”
“Men are absurd,” said Lorna darkly.
“Certainly they are,” I agreed, “and wonderful—like children. They are always children and we never are. So we ought to love them like children. We are their mothers and nothing else. It's enough. But you, Lorna, have never been a mother to anything.”
“Perhaps,” she said with a question. “But I have been devoted to Rudolf—I wanted him to work—”
“No, I think you just took possession of him,” I interrupted. ”

“ Anybody that wants to go, can go.”
“I won't go yet,” said Jeremy cautiously, casting a glance out to sea, where the fog-bank loomed. “But you weren't here when we had the last storm, Lorna.”
“All the more reason why I want to stay now. I like storms,” she announced.
The Captain sent us over the men, and I packed the trunks for them to transport, and arranged the loft over the studio as a bedroom for Lorna and me. Jeremy had a hammock below. By afternoon, when this was done, the sky was overspread with dull haze, and the moaning of the wind in the distance had risen to a shrill whistle. ”

“ I was as nice as I could be to Rudolf—I want to be friends with him—but he won't be. So I had to leave him up there, that's all.”
“Yes, yes,” murmured Jeremy. “As you say, very unreasonable of him. But people are unreasonable, I've noticed, Even you, Lorna. You were a bit unreasonable yourself this summer, about Rudolf. When he ran away, for instance, and you had to have him back.... So you ought to understand it.”
“Oh, yes,” she admitted darkly.
“But, as: somebody or other says,” pursued Jeremy, “it may not be so hard to leave a person, but it's the deuce and all to be left!... ”

“ And she always spoke so affectionately to me of Ellery that until lately I had believed that they might make it up. But now they were discussing divorce. Ellery's letters to me were full of misery. He was a conventional man, with deep family pride and feeling. He was cut to the quick. Why had she left him?
It was not because of Rudolf, for he came afterward. Lorna had left her husband because, as she said to me, she was “bored.” She was independent of him as to money, they had no children, so it was easy—for her. But I could not make out her feeling—or her complete lack of feeling. ”

“ There was a dreaming silence over everything—and for some time we, too, were silent. At last he spoke of Lorna, saying that he intended soon to go abroad, that the divorce suit would be undefended, and that he would like to be sure that she was going to be all right.
“I don't think she's been very kind to me,” he said, switching at the underbrush with his stick. “But all the same I have a feeling for her—I'd rather she wouldn't come to harm.... I suppose she'll marry again,” he said abruptly.
It was the first time he had ever indicated that he knew about Rudolf. ”

“ Jeremy and I are here alone now, you know. Lorna is coming back—”.
“Alone?” he interrupted.
“Yes, I imagine so—in fact, I'm sure. I don't know how long she'll want to stay.”
He sighed, I saw that he wanted to question me, but couldn't bring himself to it. So I said:
“I think she doesn't care much for anyone, and never will. It isn't her nature. She would like to, she tries to—but she can't.”
“She's lucky,” said Ellery drily. “She'd better not try. It's all nonsense caring about people—except in the way of friendship,” and he laid his and on mine with a gentle caress. ”

“ Something had happened while Rudolf was away; Lorna was jealous. She would fling out biting comments on the nature of men. Rudolf would retort, withering remarks on the nature of women. Then they would patch it up again.
Jeremy sulked, spending more time than ever in his studio, often working there in the evening. I would go in and sit with him sometimes, but he didn't talk much. He would rumple his hair fiercely or toss up his hands with a gesture of total rejection.
“I wash my hands of them,” he would say. “But mark my words, it will end in a smash—a big smash ... ”

“ She would burn down a house to warm her hands.... Yes, she liked destruction.... When we cannot create, we must destroy, that is power.... Oh, the luxury of tears for another's woe! The aesthetic thrill of a tragedy working itself out before our eyes in a human soul! We can feel that, at least....
Half asleep, in an uneasy dream that the walls were falling in upon us, I heard the crash, and sprang up. Lorna had just come in. She dropped her cloak and came to the fire, shivering, her hair blown in wet strings across her face. Jeremy sat up with a jerk.
“Hello!... Where's Rudolf?” ”