it was six hours by train from pittsburgh to new damascus. the last hour was from wilkes-barre down the valley, the railway now running with the turnpike on which agnes passed her wedding night between thane and john over the flying heels of a pair of bays. not one of them had seen it since. surreptitiously watching for signs and landmarks they became silent and solitary. memories in which they were intimately associated instead of drawing them together caused separate states of reverie.
agnes sat at the window with her face averted. john and thane were together in the opposite seat. her eyebrows were a little raised, acutely bent and drawn together, and in her forehead was a gothic cross. this muscular tension never for a moment relaxed, not even when she spoke and smiled. in her eyes was an expression of strained and baffled interrogation, inward looking.
two years were gone since that night of john’s first supper with the thanes in their trial abode. in this time she had changed at the base of her personality. the girl of her had vanished almost without trace.
what becomes of the being we have ceased to be?
that agnes of the tantalizing armor, half of ice and half of flame, part disdain and part desire, who[253] froze the impulse she provoked and singed the pride that saved her,—she was gone, entirely gone. this agnes knew her not. this agnes was a woman who knew bitterness and the taste of dust. when she had been ready ... willing ... dying ... to give her pride to save her love the door was closed. the shop was dark.
the light went out that night she let him stand behind her chair in an agony of longing, pretending not to know he stood there, and then broke him with a hard, glissando “y-e-s?” it was ominous that he did not respond from the top of the staircase to her careless goodnight. she regarded him particularly the next morning and began to wonder. never again did he look at her in that way she ached for and dreaded. the more he didn’t look at her in that way the more she ached for it and the less she dreaded it, until she couldn’t remember why she had dreaded it and forgot why she had ever repulsed him.
she had repulsed because her vanity required it. he had got her to wife without wooing her. she had been thrust upon him. the thought was a sleepless scorpion in her breast. it poisoned her dreams. well ... but before he could touch her he should have to want her and prove it. she would attend to that. to reach her at all he should have to overcome a great barrier. this she resolved and so she repulsed him. each hurt to his pride was a stone added to the barrier, and she set no limit to it, for the higher it was the more it would prove if he ever got over. then she would see what her own feelings were.
[254]
he on his part, after that night, once and for all accepted the only inference he could draw from her behaviour. he was hateful to her; he filled her with loathing and disgust. well ... he could no more help that than he could help the fact of their being married: but he could avoid those moments on the rack. they left him limp and useless for days afterward. he could lock the impulse up. its getting loose was what drew her scorn upon him. so he chained and locked it up.
at first, seeing the door was closed, she walked to and fro before it, thinking he would read in her manner a sign of remorse. he saw nothing. then she began to knock. he did not hear. she thought he was making her pay. she was willing, even greedy, to pay. she went on knocking. presently she realized that he was blind and deaf. in a panic she beat upon the door, hurled her weight against it, crying out her wish to surrender. but she had seared his heart. he could see only with his eyes and hear but with his ears, and totally misapprehended her woman’s gesture.
she imagined that now he repulsed her, not in revenge, not to trample on her,—that she could easily have endured,—but coldly, with undesire.
this completed the irony. thereafter she held aloof and began to fear him. she put away her glittering armor, staining it with tears of rage and chagrin, and he never noticed even that. he was always gentle, always absent, always cold. he grew on her in this aspect, assumed colossal proportions, and began to seem as inaccessible to her as she had seemed[255] to him. they changed places again. she stood in awe of him. what he wished for was. he spoke of a way of living more in keeping with their circumstances. she moved them to a larger house and organized their lives according to such dim suggestions as she could get from him, one of which was that she should “stay out of the kitchen.” there had to be servants. evenings were so much worse on that account that they began to go out more, often alone, sometimes together. by a law of contradiction, the more they concealed themselves from each other in the tatters of their pride and the further they went apart, the more polite they became and the easier it was to be friendly.
her outwardness had changed no less. a wilful, pouting mouth had found the shape of wistfulness. her eyes had lost their defiant glitter; they were softer, deeper and full of recognition. into her movements had come that kind of gentle dignity, loftier than pride, lovelier than loveliness, which is idolized of men above the form and sign of beauty.
“almost there,” she said, settling back in her seat.
“how strange the mill looks!—cold,” said thane.
agnes did not look.
“five years,” said john. “what a long time!”
“six,” said agnes.
“six,” said thane.
the gib carriage was waiting at the station. “i’ll be at the inn,” said john. “it will take no time to bring me if i’m wanted. if enoch—if you don’t stay at the mansion i’d like you to have supper with me.”
“i’ll send you word,” said thane.
