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The Miller Of Old Church, a novel by Ellen Glasgow |
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Book 2. The Cross-Roads - Chapter 14. The Turn Of The Wheel |
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_ BOOK II. THE CROSS-ROADS CHAPTER XIV. THE TURN OF THE WHEEL Tears blinded her eyes as she crossed the pasture, and when she brushed them away, she could see nothing distinctly except the single pointed maple that lifted its fiery torch above the spectral procession of the aspens in the graveyard. She had passed under the trees at the Poplar Spring, and was deep in the witch-hazel boughs which made a screen for the Haunt's Walk, when beyond a sudden twist in the path, she saw ahead of her the figures of Blossom Revercomb and Jonathan Gay. At first they showed merely in dim outlines standing a little apart, with the sunlit branch of a sweet gum tree dropping between them. Then as Molly went forward over the velvety carpet of leaves, she saw the girl make a swift and appealing movement of her arms. "Oh, Jonathan, if you only would! I can't bear it any longer!" she cried, with her hands on his shoulders. He drew away, kindly, almost caressingly. He was in hunting clothes, and the barrel of his gun, Molly saw, came between him and Blossom, gently pressing her off. "You don't understand, Blossom, I've told you a hundred times it is out of the question," he answered. Then looking up his eyes met Molly's, and he stood silent without defence or explanation, before her. "What is impossible, Jonathan? Can I help you?" she asked impulsively, and going quickly to Blossom's side she drew the girl's weeping face to her breast. "You're in trouble, darling--tell me, tell Molly about it," she said. As they clung together in a passion of despair and of pity--the one appealing by sheer helplessness, the other giving succour out of an abundant self-reliance--Gay became conscious that he was witnessing the secret wonder of Molly's nature. The relation of woman to man was dwarfed suddenly by an understanding of the relation of woman to woman. Deeper than the dependence of sex, simpler, more natural, closer to the earth, as though it still drew its strength from the soil, he realized that the need of woman for woman was not written in the songs nor in the histories of men, but in the neglected and frustrated lives which the songs and the histories of men had ignored. "Tell me, Blossom--tell Molly," said the soft voice again. "Molly!" he said sharply, and as she looked at him over Blossom's prostrate head, he met a light of anger that seemed, while it lasted, to illumine her features. "Blossom and I were married nearly two years ago," he said. "Nearly two years ago?" she repeated. "Why have we never known it?" "I had to think of my mother," he replied almost doggedly. Then driven by a rush of anger against Blossom because she was to blame for it all--because he had ever seen her, because he had ever desired her, because he had ever committed the supreme folly of marrying her, and, most of all, because she had, in her indiscretion, betrayed him to Molly--he added with the cruelty which is possible sometimes to generous and kindly natures--"It was a mistake, of course. I am ready to do anything in my power for her happiness, but it wouldn't be for her happiness for us to start living together." Blossom raised her face from Molly's bosom, and the strong sunlight shining through the coloured leaves, showed the blanched look of her skin and the fine lines chiselled by tears around her eyes. Encircling her mouth, which Gay had once described as looking "as though it would melt if you kissed it," there was now a heavy blue shadow which detracted from the beauty of her still red and voluptuous lips. In many ways she was finer, larger, nobler than when he had first met her--for experience, which had blighted her physical loveliness, appeared, also, to have increased the dignity and quietness of her soul. Had Gay been able to see her soul it would probably have moved him, for he was easily stirred by the thing that was beneath the eyes. But it was impossible to present a woman's soul to him as a concrete image. "I don't want to live with him--I don't want anything from him," responded Blossom, with pride. "I don't want anything from him ever again," she repeated, and putting Molly's arms away from her, she turned and moved slowly down the Haunt's Walk toward the Poplar Spring. "I couldn't help loving you, could I, Molly?" he asked in a low voice. Her face was pale and stern when she answered. "And you couldn't help loving Blossom last year, I suppose?" "If I could have helped, do you think I should have done it? You don't understand such things, Molly." "No, I don't understand them. When love has to cloak cruelty and faithlessness, I can't see that it's any better than the thing it excuses." "But all love isn't alike. I don't love you in the least as I loved Blossom. That was a mere impulse, and incident." "But how was Blossom to know that? and how am I?" "One can't explain it to a woman. They're not made of flesh and blood as men are." "They've had to drill their flesh and blood," she replied, stern rather than scornful. "I might have known you'd be hard, Molly." When she spoke again her voice had softened. "Jonathan, it's no use thinking of me--go back to Blossom," she said. "Not thinking of you won't make me go back to Blossom. When that sort of thing is over, it is over once for all." "Even if that is true you mustn't think of me--because I belong--every bit of me--to Abel." He stared at her for a moment in silence. "Then it's true," he said at last under his breath. "It has always been true--ever since anything was true." "But you didn't always know it." "I had to grow to it. I believe I have been growing to it forever. Everything has helped me to it--even my mistakes." She spoke quite simply. Her earnestness was so large that it had swept away her shyness and her self-consciousness, as a strong wind sweeps away the smoke over the autumn meadows. And yet this very earnestness, this passionate sincerity, added but another fold to the luminous evil of mystery in which she was enveloped. He could not understand her when she tried to tear the veil away and the terrible clearness of her soul blinded his sight. Therein lay her charm for him--he could never reach her, could never possess her even should she seek to approach him. Behind the mystery of darkness which he might penetrate, there was still the mystery of light. "If you really care about him like that I don't see why you gave him up and went away from him," he said helplessly. "You wanted to go. Nobody urged you. It was your own choice." "Yes, that's what you could never understand. I wasn't really going away from him when I went. I was going to him. It was a long and a roundabout road, but it was safer." "You mean it brought you back in the end?" "It not only brought me back, it showed me things by the way. It made me understand about you and Blossom." "By Jove!" he exclaimed, and was silent. The pang of his loss was swallowed up in the amplitude of his wonder. "Are you going to marry him, Molly?" he asked when the silence had become unbearable. "If he wants me. I'm not quite sure that he wants me. I know he loves me," she added, "but that isn't just the same." He did not answer, and they stood looking beyond the thick foliage in the Haunt's Walk, to the meadows, over which a golden haze shimmered as though it were filled with the beating of invisible wings. "Molly," he said suddenly. "Shall I go after Blossom?" "Oh, if you would, dear Jonathan," she answered. Without a word, he turned from her and walked rapidly down the path Blossom had followed. When he had disappeared, Molly went up the walk to the Italian garden, and then ascending the front steps passed into the drawing room, where Kesiah and Mrs. Gay sat in the glow of a cedar fire, reading a new life of Lord Byron. Kesiah's voice, droning monotonously like the loud hum of bees, rose above the faint crackling of the logs, on which Mrs. Gay had fixed her soft, unfathomable eyes, while she reconstructed, after the habit of her imagination, certain magnificent adventures in the poet's life. "Have you seen Jonathan, Molly?" asked Kesiah, laying aside her book while Mrs. Gay wiped her eyes. "Yes, I left him in the Haunt's Walk." "He has not seemed well of late," said Mrs. Gay softly, "I am trying to persuade him to leave us and go back to Europe." "He is anxious about your health and doesn't like to go so far away from you," replied Molly, sitting on an ottoman beside her chair. Taking her hand, Mrs. Gay caressed it while she answered. "I can never think of myself when Jonathan's happiness is to be considered." Then dropping her voice still lower, she added tenderly, "You are a great comfort to me, dear, a very great comfort." What she meant, and Molly grasped her meaning as distinctly as if she had put it into words, was that she was comforted, she was reassured by the girl's obvious indifference to Jonathan's passion. Like many persons of sentimental turn of mind, she found no great difficulty in reconciling a visionary romanticism with a very practical regard for the more substantial values of life. "I should never allow the question of my health to interfere with Jonathan's plans," she repeated, while her expression grew angelic in the light of her sacrificial fervour. "I don't think he wants to go," retorted Kesiah rather snappily, and opening the book again she began to read. For an hour her voice droned steadily in the firelight, while Molly, with her head against Mrs. Gay's knee, looked through the casement window to where the October roses bloomed and dropped in the squares of the Italian garden. Then at the sound of hurried footsteps on the walk outside, the girl rose from the ottoman and went out, closing the door after her. In the hall the blanched face of Uncle Abednego confronted her like the face of a spectre. "I ain't a-gwine ter tell Miss Angela--I ain't a-gwine ter tell Miss Angela," he moaned, "Marse Jonathan, he's been shot down yonder at Poplar Spring des like Ole Marster!" _ |
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