the first sunlit hours of the day fully realized the brave promise of the dawn. the air was fresh and delicious, though inclined to sultriness as one travelled inland away from the coast. the song of the locust was shrill in the trees.
louise's way took her a good distance from sea and then brought her back to it again, circumlocutionary travel being one of the features of point betsey existence. it might fantastically resolve itself into a paradox: to go an inch you must go a mile. her destination was the town of frankfort, situated about four miles south of the great stone light-house and the cottages on the point. the distance could easily be covered on foot, the pedestrian taking his way along the smooth curving beach of the "big lake." but louise was rather a poor walker. she preferred to lie in a hammock, or, if ground must be covered, to depend as largely as possible upon artificial locomotion. those who declined to walk and had no motor, must, to reach frankfort, enlist the respective conveyance of boat and train—an almost complicated journey. there was a regular passenger ferry running on crystal lake, back and forth between the resorts on the west shore and the village[pg 80] of beulah. this ferry boat, propelled by gasoline, was called the pathfinder—a name always preparing passengers new to the route for unimagined nautical adventure. passengers seemed cheerfully and nonchalantly asked quite to take their lives in their hands, or rather, which might be even worse, to sign them over entirely into the precarious keeping of the boat's owner-pilot-engineer-and-fare-collector. and yet, after all, there was nothing so very terrifying about a trip from one end of crystal lake to the other. on the pathfinder louise would doubtless have travelled this morning but for the fact that the official ferry service was never to be depended upon at so early an hour. absence of competition had led to a really deplorable state of independence, so that leslie's little boat was indeed a blessing at such times, in spite of its general decrepitude. he escorted her, as we have seen, the first nine miles of her journey, due east, away from lake michigan. then the train carried her nine miles back again, though somewhere in the proceeding the four miles separating frankfort and point betsey were annihilated. the journey consumed something like an hour and a half.
louise stepped out of the dilapidated coach. the station stood within a few rods of the seashore—a situation once accommodating the convenience of an enormous summer hotel, which a few years previous had taken fire and vanished in smoke. with it had vanished also the fondest hopes of the[pg 81] town. however, the ornate railroad terminus still stood just where it had stood during the days of glory. thank god it was spared, for it had about it a relative magnificence which the impoverished hamlet could ill afford to lose. it might, of course, be more centrally located; still, there was a kind of grace in its sad vigil.
miss needham, with considerable time to waste, surveyed the age-softened ruins of the vast hotel and quite cheerfully revived, for her amusement, memories of the time when she was hilda's age and used to come here to dancing parties and occasional dinners with her family. she paced up and down upon what had once been the walk leading grandly to the hotel from the wharves and the railroad station. now the way was rank with grass and weeds.
ah, yes. she had promenaded here in that long-ago time, nor had she walked alone, as she was walking now. oh, no. and a slight flush, even after all these years, crept into her face as she remembered harold gates. yes, he had walked beside her here, and they had talked together of many things, and laughed a great deal. how she had laughed in the old days! how gay they were! and over there on the channel pier, close to the bowling alley, she had let harold kiss her, also. before the summer was over she had let him kiss her rather a good many times. of course they did not really love each other. they were only just awfully good friends. harold was residing in the hotel with his parents. louise[pg 82] only saw him when the rev. needham decided they would go in to town and dine. harold kept promising that he would come out to the point some day and see her, but he never came. oh, yes—how memories swarm back, once the tide of their return has set in! yes, once he did come; but it was only as a member of a picnic party from the hotel. they brought baskets with them and had a fine revel on the beach, quite near the needham cottage. in the evening they built a fire. but louise saw her hero only for a moment on that occasion, after all. they walked down the dark beach a little way, and he put his arm around her, and she let him kiss her; but when he said he had to go back to the fire again, there was naturally nothing to do but let him go. the trouble was, he seemed to have a special girl in the picnic party on whom his attentions must be lavished. so young, yet already such a dashing man of the world! but for louise it wasn't very satisfying.
"what a fool i was!" she cried to herself, almost angrily, even at this comfortable distance. and then she laughed: "what a silly little fool!"
harold gates was all nicely married and settled down now; a chicago girl, and they had a baby. harold had mailed her a postcard with the baby's picture on it, and across the bottom of the picture he had written, in his firm business hand: "merry christmas from the three gates." was it not strongly to be doubted whether harold at length even remembered how lover-like they had been that [pg 83]summer, he and she? well, it was rather to be hoped he didn't remember; and yet, with a queer little pang for just a moment, louise thought she couldn't endure his having entirely forgotten....
well, she had certainly been free enough with her affections in those days! yes, she had been very free. as louise quitted the ruins (which had an odd, symbolic aspect this morning) and wandered off along the beach, snatches of the prodigality of her past flared up, distressing her, thrilling her a little, filling her heart with gloomy though not exactly acute aversion. ah, she thought, the kisses that had been spent in vain! and yet they had not seemed entirely in vain at the time—not all of them, at any rate.
from a glancing inventory of those more trifling indulgences of her early days, she soared to the vastly more vital affair with richard. that, indeed, was different. yes, that was another matter altogether. richard was her first real lover. the others were mere boy-sweet-hearts, or they were, like harold gates, just awfully good friends. richard had always seemed mature to her: a man. she had always felt herself a woman in his presence. their affair, wretchedly as it had turned out, was undeniably animated by the love that flashes between men and women. it had a new tenseness, a new dizziness, a new depth. it was magnificent and gripping; had the true ring of authority and surrender in it. yes, it was a thing of intense intoxication, and maintained,[pg 84] so far, at least, as she was concerned, an unfaltering white heat.
"and yet—for him," she told herself as she walked close beside the little waves, "it wasn't like that. no, it couldn't have been, even—even during those wonderful times, when we...." and she flushed, as though not even solitude were an utterly dependable guardian of her crimson thoughts. she lowered her eyes, lest impartial nature suddenly be caught up into an impersonation which should cry shame against her.
oh, yes. she had given her whole heart to richard. almost, almost.... she shuddered. "what a terrible thing it is!" she told herself. "what a terrible thing, being deceived in a man! but how is one to know? how can one always tell?"
ah, how indeed? she went on a little way, thinking darkly and arriving nowhere.
"and yet," she wavered, a look of intenser and clearer pain drifting into her eyes, "he was—so dear! ah...."
if richard were suddenly to come toward her out of the past; if he were to come toward her here, along this brown beach; if he should hold out his arms to her and bid her to come back.... no, no! she clasped her hands, for it was all so real. "no, no," she whispered. "i would not go back. i would not dare go back." she had seen him coming toward her many times in fancy, stretching out his arms to her, speaking to[pg 85] her after his wont. and she had learned to play out her prohibiting side of the terrible ordeal so faithfully, so often, that at length the only emotion she felt was that sense of dullness that goes with things which are irrevocable.
"no, richard," she would say. "i gave myself to you once. you might have had me then. but not now. it is too late."
she would dismiss him, calmly and sorrowfully; would permit her tongue to utter no words other than these. and yet.... she walked slowly along, pondering her life.
what changes had come with the years! what changes! now her heart was given to another man. this was another sort of love, another sort altogether. lynndal and richard were so unlike! louise wondered whether the love of any two men could be so strikingly unlike as she saw the love of richard and of lynndal to be. indeed, it rather pleased her, as she set them off, one against the other, that the distinction should be so great. it seemed to argue an indeterminate yet quite thrilling variety in herself—not of course, a mere vulgar facility in shifting or adapting herself to types as chance flitted them across her horizon—ah, no!—but a real sense of understanding, a genius for grasping the salient elements in many men, a cleverness in appraising their worth. she bolstered her troubled and ghost-ridden heart.
lynndal was the opposite of richard, in every way[pg 86]—in every way, that is, except that he, too, loved her. no, she would say in every way, for she knew now that richard had never really cared, while lynndal, that was certain, cared very deeply and enduringly.
her heart quickened now as she thought of her lover. she began reviving, in a happy, drifting way, the slender accumulation of noteworthy items in their romance, hers and lynndal's: thought of their first meeting, in the lobby of the hotel in arizona, when she was with her father on one of his infrequent "business" trips. the rev. needham owned a little property in the great dry-farming district of arizona. "this is my good friend mr. barry," her father had said. and she had said she was pleased to make his acquaintance, and she had given him her gloved hand. she had thought little about him at the time. and that, perhaps more tellingly than anything else, argued the palpable differences. for richard she had loved at first sight. he had captured her, madly and hopelessly, alas, quite at the outset. not so lynndal. oh, no.
louise was much given to musing and contemplation of this sort, which often took, as now, an odd conversational expression.
"i didn't love lynndal at all, in the first place," she told herself, as though this were the first really definite understanding of the case. "i didn't begin to care until the week was half over. but i saw he[pg 87] cared. i knew that i attracted him from the beginning."
and then she left the beach and strolled up into the village.
three couples passed by, arm in arm, youth and maiden, going for a promenade on the pier. they deported themselves in just the customary middle western summer resort manner. the couple ahead would confer in whispers. then a simultaneous laugh would disturb the lazy stillness of the street. and then it might be that the girl would turn as she walked and whisper something in the ear of the girl behind her, who would laugh out also, at whatever it was the young man ahead had originally confided to his partner. and the companion of this second young lady would look bored and very much left out, while perhaps the young man behind him might mockingly exclaim that secrets in company weren't polite. then the next minute all six would be singing the chorus of some contemporary rag. and when that was done there would be another chorus. or else the young lady ahead would shout back to the young lady in the rear and demand of her in tones of such vehemence that they could be shared by all the town, whether she'd heard from john yet—or harry or jim or robert, as the case might be. whereupon the young man in the middle, who had been mocked by the young man in the rear, would very likely turn and grin, feeling, if rather obscurely,[pg 88] that the frivolous odds of the hour were now more evenly distributed.
louise glanced at these careless, gay young persons as they passed, and a feeling of comfortable security crept into her heart.
"well, i'm glad i'm past all that!" she thought with a sigh. "they all act this way at one time or another, and it's certainly a blessing when it's over!"
she turned and looked after the noisy spooners as they bent their steps toward the pier. suddenly, it seemed for no reason at all, she thought of leslie. he seemed, quite vividly, to be right here beside her for a moment. it was ever so curious. she wondered why she should think of him so vividly just at this moment. presently it occurred to her the reason was simply that leslie, though so young, wasn't boisterous and silly, like the hoodlums she had just passed. no, she could not fancy his ever having behaved like that in his life. nor could she conceive of his having yet to go through any such gauche, vapid period. with her he had always been very serious. of course, she was a little older. but leslie's whole nature was serious, she argued, and somehow—somehow deep. she was in the mood now, perversely, to do him the most elaborate justice. yes, she thought he might be called, in a way, really deep. certainly she had never known any one like him. she did not, just then, consider that she had never known any one just like richard, either, when it came to that—or even any one like harold[pg 89] gates. all she could seem to think of, for the moment, was that leslie had come to fill a unique place in her life.
a feeling of tenderness crept upon her. yes, they had grown intimate during the short span of their acquaintance. she had been rather lavish. it was leslie's first summer on the point. vaguely she wished it might all have been otherwise, that he might have come into her life sooner, or that.... ah, what was it she wanted?
his voice seemed suddenly ringing in her ears, as it had rung when he cried: "friends!"
and she sighed.
oh, eros, wicked god! she is waiting for one lover, and you torment her with others! you revive for her sweet, irrevocable loves of the past, when one would think the present love enough....
