Red Fleece Part 5

It was too early to go to Berthe, yet his steps led him to the street of her house, and he had not pa.s.sed it a second time before she opened the blinds above, and called to him. He looked at her sorrowfully, and she met his eyes.

"Come in, Peter. I've been so sorry! If you can forgive me, we'll have coffee together--"

He followed her upstairs. The premonition came that he was to take away the image of Berthe Solwicz at its highest--inimitably enticing to his heart, the girlish and utterly feminine spirit that had captivated the man in his breast. She did not seem to know that she was like the woman of the first meeting, but to him all her grace of that day had returned, as if to complete the circle of the episode; and all that he had loved since was added. The one thing in his life that he was proud of, was that he had chosen this woman from the crowd.... They were in her room. With both hands she held him in his coat, so that he could not remove it, begging him to forget the last of last night before they could be at rest.

"I don't know as I want to, Berthe," he said. "It made me think. There are two kinds of people in the world--the kind who give and the kind who take. We represent each. I'm afraid the difference is intrinsic.

There would be no satisfaction in me trying to be some one else--even trying to be like you. I am what I am--and must be that. But, Berthe, I can hold the suspicion that I am your inferior, and be pleasant about it--"

"Peter, Peter--you don't understand. I don't love myself--nor my way better. I am poor and tortured, carrying about a legacy, or a dream. I need you. I can tell you now--I never needed you so much as last night when I sent you away. I need your brain and balance--your big heart.

It was never so dear to me."

This was too much for him. He sat down before her. All night he had been trying to qualify for a lower place in her heart than his earlier dreams had called for--any place rather than to be apart--for the stuff of adoration was in Peter Mowbray. Half-sitting, half-kneeling, she took her place on the rug before him.

"But first I must tell you the story. I could not tell you at once; and since then we have managed so well. But you must know before you go. I am not Polish, not even in name. My father's mother was a Russian woman, but his father was an Irishman, and the name--my name-- is Wyndham. My father's given name was 'Metz'--"

Peter had caught it all before her last sentence. "Wyndham" had been enough. He saw clearly the natural and excellent reason for the tenderness of Duke Fallows toward the daughter of Metz Wyndham, and recalled the tragic story of the power and fire of this prophet of the people, who was executed by the Russian government in the midst of the turmoil following Red Sunday--"Metz Wyndham, the notorious Red," as he was denoted in the subsidized press of Petersburg, though "Metz Wyndham, the peasants' martyr," was a whisper which seemed destined in the end to silence all such uproar.

"You have heard of him? You knew his story?"

The upturned face shone with a different bloom for his eyes. "Yes," he answered.

"...I was away from Russia for years--in London and Paris," she said quickly. "But at last I felt I could not stay longer. I wanted to come back here--where the struggle is so tense and constant. He worked much here in Warsaw. All of his kind come some time to Warsaw. And so the name _Solwicz_, which I hate; and so the fear when I found you watching me in the street a second time, and my relief to learn that you were not Russian-"

"Of course I understand," said Peter. He put his hand upon her head.

"I was in awe of you before I knew," he added, "and yet, I always saw that in the most vital moments something of him would come out.... I keep seeing you with him now--what a life for a young girl--what a builder, those years, for a young girl--and how brave you are. Berthe, I have it--you are spoiled for common people because you were brought up with that kind of a man. How clearly I understand last night now!"

"There's another side to that," she said huskily.

"Oh, I'm sorry--"

The most consummate plotting could not have endeared him to her as those three words.

"Peter, you must see it--the other side. There was no rest with him.

All his brilliance, all his brilliant companions were one part, but there was a steady pressure of tragedy about us--from outside. And there was tragic pressure from him. He was subject to the most terrible melancholia. He had enough vision to see the wrong everywhere. It was not mania. There _is_ wrong everywhere, if one looks--in judges and cities, in nations, wars, in the kind of amus.e.m.e.nts people plunge into--wrong and coa.r.s.eness and stupidity. He loved men but hated inst.i.tutions. Sometimes, he would see it all so clearly that the sense of his own powerlessness would come. He would cry, 'One man can't do anything. A man like me can't be heard--oh, I can't make myself heard! It is as if I were shut in a tomb.' He would only have been happy pa.s.sing from one great crowd to another-- harrowing, pleading, electrifying men. He would rise--even alone with me--to the heights of his power--and then fall into the valleys because no one could hear. That was his cry, _'I can't make myself heard!_ Then often, when he was waiting to speak, the power would come, and leave him drained when he faced his people. He would tell me afterward, 'If I could only have talked to them yesterday, or an hour before!'

"Then the doubt of self would come to him--the fear that he was wrong or insane. 'Berthe, it can't be that the crowds are wrong; that I am right--against all the crowds. It must be that I am insane.' He would suffer like one d.a.m.ned from that. Worse than all was the fear of his own Ego. He was more afraid of that than any other lion in the way.

'It isn't the cause, it's me--that wants to be heard. It's the accursed me that I am striving for--in agony to relieve. I merely use the Cause. All the time it is myself that I wish to make heard.' That would make him suicidal.

"I am only telling you these moods. He was a child, a playmate, the loveliest companion a girl ever had--seeing the beauty and a.n.a.logy in all nature and outdoors--full of jest and delights. I just wanted to show you the other side----"

It was all of breathless interest.

"There came a day," she added, as Peter watched her raptly, "when he did make himself heard, even as he dreamed...."

Peter thought of his reading the story--a boy at school, and was struck with the memory of its appeal to him in the light of the present.

"...The sustaining of his friends was taken from us at the last. They dared not come, of course. 'Berthe, little heart, it's all right,' he would say. 'You will have to go on alone, but the way will be shown you. You have the strength. You have been heaven and earth to me. I must go and leave you, but that's only a temporary matter. It will be hard--but it has been hard _with_ me.... This is all right. It's good for what ails the world--but you are only a little girl! My G.o.d, I dare not think of it....'

"I remember the dawn and the cold rain and the stone buildings--and then to find the world's relation to his daughter. That had been spared before. He kept it from me, and there was such a sustaining from his friends and power. Those most concerned are slowest to learn exactly what the world thinks of them.... It did not come until afterward, and then it almost killed me. I was clinging to a sorrow almost sacred, and I found that the world saw only the shame and madness of my plight. I suddenly saw it in the eyes of the people--how they drew apart from me.... He had only wanted to make them better. He said that all evil was the result of men hating one another. He did not hate men, but predatory inst.i.tutions, false fatherlands, and all slave-drivers. They hanged him for that hatred, but what was more shocking was to find that the people whom he loved and served were horrified at his daughter...."

It did not detract from Peter's ardor that his intellect was away for an instant in a rather skeptical study of Metz Wyndham's life. To Peter had come glimpses of the magnificent selfishness of this prophet of the people. Did all great men have such an ego? If their lives were closely examined would they all reveal, in their intimate and familiar relations, the most subtle and insidious forms of self-service? In fact, was not the mighty _ego_ the source of their record-making in the world? ... Peter banished this rush of conjectures. Whatever the father, the whole art of the life of Metz Wyndham's daughter was the loss of the love of self.

"I feel before you," he said, "as I once felt in the vineyards beneath Vesuvius."

She smiled at him. "There are several ways to take that."

"Just one that I mean--and no explanation."

"... Peter, our last day together--all shadowy background to be put away--"

"And breakfast to occupy the immediate fore."

He went out into the street to purchase certain essentials, found some tall white flowers, and a copper vase to put them in. They were hungry, after the long night, and their happiness was the exquisite moments which they found between the darkenings. They would not permit the parting altogether to pervade. Her face was l.u.s.trous white; her eyes made him think of those gray days on the ocean, in which one can see great distances. More of a girl than ever she seemed to him, with her black hair combed loosely back and hanging in a pair of braids.

The flowers stood tall between them.

"War weather like this makes one grow quickly," he said. "To think how easy and content we thought ourselves--even three days ago. Now, I want to say, 'Come, Berthe--come with me....' I want to take you to some quiet place, back in the States, in the country by the water.

Yes, north country--by some lake that would be frozen when we got there. That's where the silence is, that winter silence. A cabin, a roaring fire--you and I together, alone. It seems you would be safe there, and I could begin to be satisfied--".

"Peter, Peter--don't make heavens to-day!"

"It's your particular heaven. No other would ever have made me think of _winter_--of something austere and silent for you to ignite."

"I wonder, shall it ever come to me--to have peace and abundance of nature? I have always had the cities, and now it is more war again-- the opposite to nature--but I shall think every hour of that winter cabin. That is my place," she added. "Another would have made you think of the South--or the seas. I shall think of your being there with me--every day--no matter where I am---"

Her words had grown vague to his ears. Her lips were so red that for the time he saw them only. He arose and went to her around the tall flowers.

"What did you say?" he asked, after a moment.

"I don't know--oh, yes--perhaps, if we are very good in this war, and do all we can to make orderly our little circle of things in the great chaos--perhaps we may earn that winter cabin and the fireplace and the stillness. To plan our garden in the winter days---"

"I wish I hadn't spoken of it. It's almost unearthly far--in such a time. But, Berthe, will you ever be satisfied with one who hasn't the white fire of pa.s.sion--as you have, in the cause of the peasants?"

"Oh, that's what I wanted to tell you. We are to be separated. We are grown up--a man and a woman. We dare speak to each other. At least, I dare.... Peter, I couldn't love you if you were all that--all that---"

She hesitated.

"All that you missed in me last night?" he suggested.

"Yes, but I didn't miss it exactly. I was excited and overwrought. You are splendid with me. It is when others are near, that you are--cold and unemotional. I know it's your training--that thing you Americans have from the English. You are that way with men. You are not so with me. But, if you were like Fallows, or like my father, I could not love you. I would not dare---"

"Why?"

"First, I could not--and then I would not dare. First, that which we are, we do not love. We love another kind--for completion----"

"Clearly said. That must be true," he answered quickly. "And why would you not dare?"

"Because we should have a little baby, and it would suffer so in coming years. Peter, the poise and the balance--the very qualities I need in you, and which I love, the little baby would require as his gift from his father."