The Plum Tree Part 19

XXI

AN INTERLUDE

My nerves began to feel as if some one were gently sliding his fingers along their bared length--not a pain, but as fear-inspiring as the sound of the stealthy creep of the a.s.sa.s.sin moving up behind to strike a sudden and mortal blow. I dismissed business and politics and went cruising on the lakes with restful, non-political Fred Sandys.

After we had been knocking about perhaps a week, we landed one noon at the private pier of the Lis...o...b..s to lunch with them. As Sandys and I strolled toward the front of the house, several people, also guests for lunch, were just descending from a long buckboard. At sight of one of them I stopped short inside, though I mechanically continued to walk toward her. I recognized her instantly--the curve of her shoulders, the poise of her head, and her waving jet-black hair to confirm. And without the slightest warning there came tumbling and roaring up in me a torrent of longings, regrets; and I suddenly had a clear understanding of my absorption in this wretched game I had been playing year in and year out with hardly a glance up from the table. That wretched game with its counterfeit stakes; and the more a man wins, the poorer he is.

She seemed calm enough as she faced me. Indeed, I was not sure when she had first caught sight of me, or whether she had recognized me, until Mrs. Lis...o...b.. began to introduce us. "Oh, yes," she then interrupted, "I remember Senator Sayler very well. We used to live in the same town. We went to the same school." And with a friendly smile she gave me her hand.

What did I say? I do not know. But I am sure I gave no sign of the clamor within. I had not cultivated surface-calm all those years in vain. I talked, and she talked--but I saw only her face, splendid fulfilment of the promise of girlhood; I hardly heard her words, so greatly was her voice moving me. It was an unusually deep voice for a woman, sweet and with a curious carrying quality that made it seem stronger than it was. In figure she was delicate, but radiant of life and health--aglow, not ablaze. She was neither tall nor short, and was dressed simply, but in the fas.h.i.+on--I heard the other women discussing her clothes after she left. And she still had the mannerism that was most fascinating to me--she kept her eyes down while she was talking or listening, and raised them now and then with a full, slow look at you.

When Mrs. Lis...o...b.. asked her to come to dinner the next evening with the people she was visiting, she said: "Unfortunately, I must start for Was.h.i.+ngton in the morning. I am overhauling my school and building an addition."

It had not occurred to me to think where she had come from or how she happened to be there, or of anything in the years since I was last with her. The reminder that she had a school came as a shock--she was so utterly unlike my notion of the head of a school. I think she saw or felt what was in my mind, for she went on, to me: "I've had it six years now--the next will be the seventh."

"Do you like it?" I asked.

"Don't I look like a happy woman?"

"You do," said I, after our eyes had met. "You are."

"There were sixty girls last year--sixty-three," she went on. "Next year there will be more--about a hundred. It's like a garden, and I'm the gardener, busy from morning till night, with no time to think of anything but my plants and flowers."

She had conjured a picture that made my heart ache. I suddenly felt old and sad and lonely--a forlorn failure. "I too am a gardener," said I.

"But it's a sorry lot of weeds and thistles that keeps me occupied. And in the midst of the garden is a plum tree--that bears Dead Sea fruit."

She was silent.

"You don't care for politics?" said I.

"No," she replied, and lifted and lowered her eyes in a slow glance that made me wish I had not asked. "It is, I think, gardening with weeds and thistles, as you say." Then, after a pause: "Do _you_ like it?"

"Don't ask me," I said with a bitterness that made us both silent thereafter.

That evening I got Fred to land me at the nearest town. The train she must have been on had just gone. In the morning I took the express for the East. Arrived at Was.h.i.+ngton, I drove straight to her school.

A high iron fence, not obstructing the view from the country road; a long drive under arching maples and beeches; a rambling, fascinating old house upon the crest of a hill; many windows, a pillared porch, a low, very wide doorway. It seemed like her in its dark, cool, odorous beauty.

She herself was in the front hall, directing some workmen. "Why, Senator Sayler, this _is_ a surprise," she said, advancing to greet me. But there was no suggestion of surprise in her tone or her look, only a friendly welcome to an acquaintance.

She led the way into the drawing-room to the left. The furniture and pictures were in ghostly draperies; everything was in confusion. We went on to a side veranda, seated ourselves. She looked inquiringly at me.

"I do not know why," was my answer. "I only know--I had to come."

She studied me calmly. I remember her look, everything about her--the embroidery on the sleeves and bosom of her blouse, the buckles on her white shoes. I remember also that there was a breeze, and how good it felt to my hot face, to my eyes burning from lack of sleep. At last she said: "Well--what do you think of my little kingdom?"

"It is yours--entirely?"

"House, gardens--everything. I paid the last of my debts in June."

"I'm contrasting it with my own," I said.

"But that isn't fair," she protested with a smile. "You must remember, I'm only a woman."

"With my own," I went on, as if she had not interrupted. "Yours is--yours, honestly got. It makes you proud, happy. Mine--" I did not finish.

She must have seen or felt how profoundly I was moved, for I presently saw her looking at me with an expression I might have resented for its pity from any other than her. "Why do you tell _me_ this?" she asked.

"There is always for every one," was my answer, "some person to whom he shows himself as he is. You are that person for me because--I'm surrounded by people who care for me for what I can give. Even my children care to a great extent for that reason. It's the penalty for having the power to give the material things all human beings crave.

Only two persons ever cared--cared much for me just because I was myself. They were my mother--and you."

She laughed in quiet raillery. "Two have cared for you, but you have cared for only one. And what devotion you have given him!"

"I have cared for my mother--for my children--"

"Yes--your children. I forgot them."

"And--for you."

She made what I thought a movement of impatience.

"For you," I repeated. Then: "Elizabeth, you were right when you wrote that I was a coward."

She rose and stood--near enough to me for me to catch her faint, elusive perfume--and gazed out into the distance.

"In St. Louis the other day," I went on, "I saw a man who has risen to power greater than I can ever hope to have. And he got it by marching erect in the open."

"Yet you have everything you used to want," she said dreamily.

"Yes--everything. Only to learn how worthless what I wanted was. And for this trash, this dirt, I have given--all I had that was of value."

"All?"

"All," I replied. "Your love and my own self-respect."

"Why do you think you've not been brave?" she asked after a while.

"Because I've won by playing on the weaknesses and fears of men which my own weaknesses and fears enabled me to understand."

"You have done wrong--deliberately?"

"Deliberately."

"But that good might come?"

"So I told myself."