Robert Herrick

“ It seemed to reach farther than her husband’s. A mist gathered in her eyes, and she lowered her head that he might not see the possible tears and the quivering lips....
Would her fate have been thus cruel, if, in the years gone by, in the Sicilian garden, she had preferred this man,—if this man, who loved her, had been bound with her? Would she have known the clutch of terror and felt the wound from the arms of her son? The child who was hers and another’s—might he not have been wholly hers?
[70] She thought bitterly how the male heart had its escape from misery,—such an easy, common one! ”

“ She must grope her way to the understanding of the riddle; she must begin, alone, the struggle with the future....
The maid poured Simmons a second glass of whiskey and water, and handed him a box of cigars. He leaned back in his chair, stretching forward his feet in physical comfort, emphasized by the roar of the summer tempest, which had finally broken in full fury outside. Forked streaks of light illumined the pallid curtains; furious bursts of rain hit sharply the casement windows, as with the thongs of whips. ”

“ Mrs. Simmons glanced up at the doctor, surprised [80] and annoyed at his conduct. Did he not understand? How could he anger the child, perhaps provoke one of his frightful paroxysms? It was disagreeable in him to dwell thus on her misery, to play with the child.
“Go away, Oscar,” she said, leading him away from the terrace.
At the same moment Dr. Vessinger walked toward the mother and child. Oscar stood still, his limbs stiffening, his under lip trembling. Tears began to gather in the mother’s eyes. She was frightened, and she hated the imperious man. ”

“ I am tired. Oscar wants to go to bed.”
His eyelids fell and rose, as though the long search for the mysterious thing in his mind had put him into a doze.
“He does not seem to know what he has done. What is it? Olaf, what is the matter with him?”
“Ssh, hush! Don’t rouse him. Get him to bed. Don’t let him know. I’ll look after Dora—she’s coming around now—and then I’ll call Vessinger, if it is necessary.”
“No! no! not him,” she protested vehemently. “I don’t want him to see, to know anything about it,—no one, but he least of all.”
Simmons looked mystified by her vehemence. ”

“ Her woman’s life was woven with the little intimacies of the seven married years. Their life together, their passion and joy,—it blazed before her in the stillness. She had thought it was to go on like that always, for many years, fading perchance when they were old into something gentler, less abundant. ”

“ He was often away, but he worked the more fiercely to get back to her. Once he had come wilfully, without warning, from British Columbia, three thousand six hundred miles, without a pause, hurled on his course by an irresistible desire to know that his joy was real, to see that she lived on the earth still and was his. He had arrived after dinner, and found her dressed to go out,—tall, white, beautiful,—more wonderful than in the camp he had dreamed she was. ”

“ He was just a man, like one-half creation.
“Yes,” she replied steadily to the doctor. “I am miserable. Does it make you happy to know that?”
She did not comprehend what inferences he might draw from the juxtaposition of acts and words.
“In a way, it does,” he answered calmly. “But I shouldn’t let that bother you. Our hostess, good woman, loves a laughing guest, and your husband is colossal. The best of men forget themselves, you know, and on the morrow they are ashamed. A good wife forgives—that is her métier.” ”

“ Across the iron cot at one side of the room was stretched the inert form of the nurse.
“Look at her, Olaf,” said Mrs. Simmons. “He has—cut her—stabbed her with the knife.”
As Simmons approached the bed, he kicked something with his foot. It fell upon the tiled fireplace with the tinkle of steel. The woman on the bed groaned. Simmons turned on the electric light, and hastily examined the nurse.
“She’s not badly hurt, Evelyn. A scratch along the neck. She fainted at the sight of blood, I guess. But what was the knife?” ”

“ It’s the night of all others I’d go somewhere—get something. No! I won’t give in. I’ll get away from it, forget it, and be happy again. I will—see me do it.... They dine at half-past eight. Have the carriage at eight. I shall be ready.”
He walked to and fro in the dressing-room, wishing to say something that could soften her mood. At last he put his hand gently on her beautiful bare shoulders and lowered his face to hers.
“We must take this together, love,” he whispered simply.
“Don’t speak of it!” she cried, drawing herself from his touch. “Don’t touch me. I shall go mad, mad! ”

“ Herrick has done a great deal of work on more or less professional topics. Magazine articles about methods of teaching rhetoric, introductions and notes for school editions of classics, one or two text-books on rhetoric,—these items give an idea of the sort of work which has occupied Mr. Herrick’s attention apart from fiction. He is one of the few modern American writers who have the courage and the strength to paint life [4] exactly as they see it,—in its joy, its beauty, its sombreness, and its sorrow alike,—without making it seem happier or nearer the ideal than it is. ”

“ You can’t line such men up with meeting-house folk. I’ll tell you how he saved the Irish family off Keepsake trail, all alone. But it is stifling here. Come out to the terrace, now the rain has stopped.”
There they sat together on a bench in the corner of the terrace, while he told the story of old Oscar’s magnificent courage and will. The big Norwegian had ploughed his way ten miles up the mountains in a blinding snowstorm to carry food to a woman and some children. The woman’s husband was too cowardly to leave the camp. ”

“ He threw away his cigarette and joined her.
“You men are all alike!” she continued musingly. “You are all at the bottom brutal; you don’t care for anything but—what it means to you. I wonder if there was ever a man born who could care for a woman more than for himself?”
“If there were, the woman would tire of him in a week.”
“Mamma! You here?”
[79] Oscar came skipping out of the house, making one long leap from the drawing-room window to the railing of the veranda. Then he ran toward his mother, arms stretched out to hug her.
“Nice little fellow,” Dr. Vessinger remarked propitiatingly. ”

“ Bellflower, there are real clouds in the sky out there. What do you think of our chances with the rain?”
“You mustn’t go!” their host and hostess protested. Mrs. Simmons added in an undertone: “I wonder if it could be the thunder-storm that upset poor little Oscar so completely? Thunder affects me, always.”
[14] Dr. Vessinger was at her elbow to say good-by.
“It is charming to find you again,” he said, taking her hand and looking boldly into her face. “To find you in this—this splendid scene, with your charming child and your husband. ”

“ I was so mad that a moment more and I should have had my hands about his windpipe, no matter whether they cut me into mince-meat the next minute. Do you know what it is to feel like doing murder? It’s the drunkest kind of feeling [22] you can have—you don’t know yourself at all—”
“I should like to try that!” sighed Mrs. Bellflower.
At this point there seemed to come somewhere from the rooms above a frightened cry.
“Mercy!” exclaimed the young woman, “what’s that?”
Mrs. Simmons sprang up, and stood listening. ”

“ She smiled pleasantly at him, unmoved, confident, and in another world of feeling than his.
“You are not well,” he stammered, “not yourself!”
“Who can tell what is yourself? Last night I wanted the freedom of my youth. [84] Now I am ready to take the other thing, which makes us old,—pain. Good-by.”
He still held her hand, and she smiled at him, aloof. Just then a man’s voice sounded from inside the house, and Simmons poked his head out of the drawing-room window.
“Oh! You here, Evelyn?”
Perceiving Vessinger, he added gruffly:
“Where is Jane or some one? ”

“ On the eastern piazza of the Simmons house, as the sun sank, there appeared two people. Mrs. Simmons moved here and there restlessly, her face pale with the heat of the day, dark circles beneath her blue eyes. She looped up the wilted tendrils of the climbing vine, patting the [77] belated blossoms with her soft, plump hands. Behind her in the shade of the long house Dr. Vessinger lounged on a chair, smoking a cigarette.
“Evelyn!”
The doctor’s low voice just reached to her. She started and turned her face to him. He was a slight man, with an active, well-proportioned body. ”

“ Mrs. Simmons answered coldly. As the man stood irresolute, she added vehemently:
“Why do you tease the child? Go back!”
The doctor turned back to his chair sulkily. The mother kissed the boy’s face, gently loosening the grasp of the [82] strong little arm about her neck. “Come, Oscar,” she whispered. “We will go together!”
She led him from the terrace, he looking backward constantly and scowling at the unacceptable guest.
“Send him away, mamma,” he said. “I don’t like him.” ”

“ An edging of gold fired the black mass from time to time.
“Grand place you have here, Simmons,” Dr. Vessinger observed. “The top of a hill not too high,—that’s the right place for a country house.”
[16] “If Olaf were only here oftener,” the wife remarked. “He’s just come home, and he says he must leave soon again.”
“Yes, those Jews I work for, the Techheimer Brothers, mean that I shall earn my salary. They are dickering for some new mines in Mexico, and want me to look them over.”
“But you are promised to me for the tenth,” Mrs. Bellflower protested. ”

“ They tell stories about men. Such a fellow as old Oscar Svenson you must make allowances for, take the good with the bad. There were plenty of better men than he at his worst, but few as good as he at his best. ”

“ Soon they heard his voice in the meadow, ringing with the joy of living, the animal utterance of life.
“It was this afternoon,” the mother explained. “The Porters’ children and the Boyces’ boy were playing on the terrace. Dora was away. I was reading in my bedroom—I had told Dora I would look after the children. I must [53] have dropped asleep with the heat—perhaps a minute, perhaps longer. Suddenly, I felt something fearful. I seemed to hear a choking, a gurgling. When I jumped up, awake, everything was still, quiet,—too quiet, I thought; and I ran to the window over the terrace.” ”

“ You aren’t going to slip away on any such easy excuse as that,” burst in Simmons. [15] “See, your storm is passing around. And if it comes, what could be finer than a gallop back in the clear air after the rain has washed the dirt out? It will lay the dust, too.”
“No, no!” delivered Mrs. Bellflower. “We don’t want to go yet, doctor. Maybe we can stay to dinner if it rains. Let’s go out to the terrace.” ”

“ Simmons, red with annoyance. “It has come all of a sudden, too. He was so gentle as a baby, so sweet. I think it must be the nurse, Dora.”
The company looked sympathetic, and she continued apologetically: “She is a good woman, but she is so tactless. She doesn’t know how to manage the little fellow. She should appeal to his reason, I think.”
“It is sometimes difficult to get a quiet hearing,” observed the doctor. ”

“ She started involuntarily, but the doctor restrained her.
[73] “They will take him away,” he whispered, “in a minute.”
Evidently that was what his companions were endeavoring to do, but Simmons with drunken obstinacy persisted in his point.
“Yes,” he said, in his loud, confident voice, “I’ll go with you all right, just as soon as I find my wife. Never left my wife. It wouldn’t be right, you know!”
She slipped her arm from her companion, and walked rapidly toward the terrace, Vessinger following her.
“I am here, Olaf,” she said, going up to the knot of men. “Are you looking for me?” ”

“ Don’t mind going home alone, do you, Evelyn?”
[74] “I will take Mrs. Simmons to her carriage,” Vessinger offered, stepping forward.
“Excuse me!” Simmons replied, waving him back. “Will you take my arm, Evelyn?”
Together in some fashion, they reached the porte-cochère, and there again Vessinger tried to put Mrs. Simmons in the carriage, to whisper a word privately to her.
“Shan’t I drive back with Mrs. Simmons?” he asked. Simmons wavered unsteadily, looking at Vessinger all the time. Then he said very distinctly:
“No thank you, Vessinger. We can trust the coachman,—good man, the coachman.” ”

“ Simmons started, and twisted her hands nervously. But she controlled herself.
“Go on!”
“When he was drunk, he didn’t shoot—that wasn’t his way. He would use his knife, or take up a man in his arms and crush him like a bear with his two hands. That day—but, pshaw! It’s all nonsense, my sitting here and telling [41] you fool stories to make you creepy. The rain has stopped. I’ll tell Tom to harness up, and we’ll drive over to the Country Club to see if they’ve got the election returns yet. Come, dear! Try to be strong and patient.” ”