Howells_A_Forgone_Conclusion.txt topic ['13', '324', '378', '393']
street-door; the people before the other
picture had apparently yielded to their craving for lunch, and
had vanished.
" have very little to tell you of my own life," began
awkwardly. " came home soon after you started, and went to
to find you, but you had not got back."
stopped him and looked perplexedly into his face, and then
moved on.
" went into the army. wrote once to you."
" never got your letter," she said.
were now in the lower hall, and near the door.
"," said , abruptly, "'m poor and disabled; 've no more
right than any sick beggar in the street to say it to you; but loved
you, must always love you. ---by!"
halted him again, and " said," she grieved, "that you doubted
me; you said that had made your life a"--
", said that; know it," answered .
" thought could be such a false and cruel girl as that!"
", yes: thought it all, help me!"
" was only sorry for him, when it was you that "--
", know it," answered in a heartsick, hopeless voice. "
knew it, too. told me so the day before he died."
" didn't you believe him?"
could not answer.
" you believe him now?"
" believe anything you tell me. look at you, can't believe
ever doubted you."
"?"
"--because-- love you."
"! 's no reason."
" know it; but 'm used to being without a reason."
looked gravely at his penitent face, and a brave red color
mantled her own, while she advanced an unanswerable argument: "
what are you going away for?"
world seemed to melt and float away from between them. returned
and solidified at the sound of the janitor's steps as he came towards
them on his round through the empty building. caught her hand;
she leaned heavily upon his arm as they walked out into the street.
was all they could do at the moment except to look into each other's
faces, and walk swiftly on.
last, after how long a time he did not know, cried: "
are we going, ?"
", don't know!" she replied. "'m stopping with those friends of
ours at the . _were_ going on to
to-morrow. landed yesterday; and we stayed to do some shopping"--
" may ask why you happened to give your first moments in
to the fine arts?"
" fine arts? ! thought might find something of yours, there!"
the hotel she presented him to her party as a friend whom her mother
and she had known in ; and then went to lay aside her hat.
people received him with the easy, half-southern warmth of
manner which seems to have floated northward as far as their city on
the bathing the shores. matron of the
party had, before came back, an outline history of their
acquaintance, which she evolved from him with so much tact that he was
not conscious of parting with information; and she divined indefinitely
more when she saw them together again. was charming; but to
's thinking she had a fault, she kept him too much from ,
though she talked of nothing else, and at the last she was discreetly
merciful.
" you think," whispered , very close against his face, when
they parted, "that 'll have a bad temper?"
" hope you will--or shall be killed with kindness," he replied.
stood a moment, nervously buttoning his coat across his breast.
" mustn't let that picture be sold, ," she said, and by this
touch alone did she express any sense, if she had it, of his want of
feeling in proposing to sell it. winced, and she added with a soft
pity in her voice, " did bring us together, after all. wish you had
believed him, dear!"
" do ," said , most humbly.
* * * * *
are never equal to the romance of their youth in after life,
except by fits, and especially could not keep himself at what he
called the operatic pitch of their brief betrothal and the early days
of their marriage. his help, or even his encouragement, his wife
might have been able to maintain it. had a gift for idealizing him,
at least, and as his hurt healed but slowly, and it was a good while
before he could paint with his wounded arm, it was an easy matter for
her to believe in the meanwhile that he would have been the greatest
painter of his time, but for his honorable disability; to hear her, you
would suppose no one else had ever been shot in the service of his
country.
was fortunate for , since he could not work, that she had
money; in exalted moments he had thought this a barrier to their
marriage; yet he could not recall any one who had refused the hand of a
beautiful girl because of the accident of her wealth, and in the end he
silenced his scruples. might be said that in many other ways he was
not her equal; but one ought to reflect how very few men are worthy of
their wives in any sense. his fashion he certainly loved her
always,--even when she tried him most, for it must be owned that she
really had that hot temper which he had dreaded in her from the first.
that her imperiousness directly affected him. a long time after
their marriage, she seemed to have no other desire than to lose her
outwearied will in his. was something a little pathetic in this;
there was a kind of bewilderment in her gentleness, as though the
relaxed tension of her long self-devotion to her mother left her
without a full motive; she apparently found it impossible to give
herself with a satisfactory degree of abandon to a man who could do so
many things for himself. her children came they filled this
vacancy, and afforded her scope for the greatest excesses of self-
devotion. laughed to find her protecting them and serving them
with the same tigerish tenderness, the same haughty humility, as that
with which she used to care for poor . ; and he perceived
that this was merely the direction away from herself of that intense
arrogance of nature which, but for her power and need of loving, would
have made her intolerable. she chiefly exacted from them in return
for her fierce devotedness was the truth in everything; she was content
that they should be rather less fond of her than of their father, whom
indeed they found much more amusing.
went to some years after their marriage, revisiting
, but sojourning for the most part in . had once
imagined that the tragedy which had given him his wife would always
invest her with the shadow of its sadness, but in this he was mistaken.
is nothing has really so strong a digestion as love, and this is
very lucky, seeing what manifold experiences love has to swallow and
assimilate; and when they got back to , found that the
customs of their joint life exorcised all the dark associations of the
place. simply formed a sombre background, against which their
wedded happiness relieved itself. talked much of the past, with
free minds, unashamed and unafraid. it is a little shocking, it is
nevertheless true, and true to human nature, that they spoke of
as if he were a part of their love.
had never ceased to wonder at what he called the unfathomable
innocence of his wife, and he liked to go over all the points of their
former life in , and bring home to himself the utter simplicity
of her girlish ideas, motives, and designs, which both confounded and
delighted him.
"'s amazing, ," he would say, "it's perfectly amazing that you
should have been willing to undertake the job of importing into
that poor fellow with his whole stock of helplessness, dreamery, and
unpracticality. _were_ you about?"
", 've often told you, . thought he oughtn't to continue a
priest."
", yes; know." he would remain lost in thought, softly
whistling to himself. one of these occasions he asked, " you think
he was really very much troubled by his false position?"
" can't tell, now. seemed to be so."
" story he told you of his childhood and of how he became a priest;
didn't it strike you at the time like rather a made-up, melodramatic
history?"
", no! can you say such things, ? was too simple not to
be true."
", well. so. he baffles me. always did, for that
matter."
came another pause, while lay back upon the gondola
cushions, getting the level of the just under his hat-brim.
" you think he was very much of a skeptic, after all, ?"
. turned her eyes reproachfully upon her husband. ",
, how strange you are! said yourself, once, that you used to
wonder if he were not a skeptic."
"; know. for a man who had lived in doubt so many years, he
certainly slipped back into the bosom of mother church pretty suddenly.
't you think he was a person of rather light feelings?"
" can't talk with you, my dear, if you go on in that way."
" don't mean any harm. can see how in many things he was the soul of
truth and honor. it seems to me that even the life he lived was
largely imagined. mean that he was such a dreamer that once having
fancied himself afflicted at being what he was, he could go on and
suffer as keenly as if he really were troubled by it. mightn't it
be that all his doubts came from anger and resentment towards those who
made him a priest, rather than from any examination of his own mind?
don't say it _was_ so. don't believe he knew quite what he
wanted. must have felt that his failure as an inventor went deeper
than the failure of his particular attempts. once thought that
perhaps he had a genius in that way, but question now whether he had.
he had, it seems to me he had opportunity to prove it--certainly, as
a priest he had leisure to prove it. when that sort of sub-
consciousness of his own inadequacy came over him, it was perfectly
natural for him to take refuge in the supposition that he had been
baffled by circumstances."
. remained silently troubled. " don't know how to answer
you, ; but think that you're judging him narrowly and harshly."
" harshly. feel very compassionate towards him. now, even as
to what one might consider the most real thing in his life,--his caring
for you,--it seems to me there must have been a great share of imagined
sentiment in it. was not a passion; it was a gentle nature's dream
of a passion."
" didn't die of a dream," said the wife.
", he died of a fever."
" had got well of the fever."
"'s very true, my dear. whatever his head was, he had an
affectionate and faithful heart. wish had been gentler with him.
must often have bruised that sensitive soul. knows 'm sorry for
it. he's a puzzle, he's a puzzle!"
lapsing more and more into a mere problem as the years have
passed, has at last ceased to be even the memory of a man
with a passionate love and a mortal sorrow. this final effect
in the mind of him who has realized the happiness of which the poor
priest vainly dreamed is not the least tragic phase of the tragedy of
.