odd went in the same half-dreamy condition through the morning of the next day. he walked and read, but where he walked and what he read he could hardly have told.
he was to fetch hilda from the rue d’assas and go home to tea and dinner with her. his love for hilda had now reached such solemn heights that his late flight seemed degrading.
so loving her, he could not be base.
the rue d’assas was dreary in a fine drizzling rain. in the luxembourg gardens the first young green made a mist upon the trees.
it was only half-past four when odd reached his accustomed post, but hardly had he taken a turn up and down the street when he saw hilda come quickly from the lebon abode. she was fully half-an-hour early, but odd had merely time to note the fact before seeing in a flash that hilda was in trouble. she looked, she almost ran toward him; and he met her half-way with outstretched hands.
“o peter!” it was the first time she had used his name, and odd’s heart leaped as her hands caught his with a sort of desperate relief. “come, come,” she said, taking his arm. “let us go quickly.” peter’s heart after its leap began to thump fast. the white distress of her face gave him a dizzy shock of anger. what, who had distressed her? he asked the question as they crossed the road and entered the gardens. tears now streamed down her face.
he had only once before seen hilda weep, and as she hung shaken with sobs on his arm, the past child, the present hilda merged into one; his one, his only love.
“let us walk here, dear,” he said; “you will be quieter.”
the little path down which they turned was empty, and the fine rain enveloped but hardly wet them. they came to a bench under a tree, circled by an unwet area of sanded path. odd led the weeping girl to it and they sat down. she still held his arm tightly.
“now, what is it?”
“o peter! i can hardly tell you! the brother, the horrible brother.”
“yes?” peter felt the accumulations of rage that had been gathering for months hurrying forward to spring upon, to pulverize “the brother.”
“he made love to me, said awful things!” odd whitened to the lips.
“tell me all you can.”
“i wish i were dead!” sobbed hilda, “i am so unhappy.”
peter did not trust himself to speak; he took her hand and held it to his lips.
“yes; you care,” said hilda. she drew herself up and wiped her eyes. “i never thought he would be unpleasant. at times i fancied that he came a good deal into the studio where we worked and, behind his sister’s back, looked silly. but he never really annoyed me. i thought myself unkindly suspicious. to-day mademoiselle lebon was called away and he came in. i went on painting. i did not dream—! when, suddenly he put his arms around me—and tried to kiss me!” hilda gave an hysterical laugh. “do you know, i had my palette on my hand, and i gave him a great blow with it! you should have seen his head! oh, to think that i can find that funny now! his ear was covered with cobalt!” hilda sobbed again, even while she laughed. “he was very angry and horrible. i said i would call his mother and sister if he did not leave me at once, and then—and then”—hilda dropped her face into her hands—“he jeered at me; ‘you mustn’t play the prude,’ he said.”
odd clenched his teeth.
“hilda, dear,” he said, in a voice cold to severity, “you must go home; i will put you in a cab. i will come to you as soon as i have punished that dog.”
“peter, don’t! i beg of you to come with me. you can do nothing. i must bury it, forget it.” she had risen as he rose.
“yes, bury it, forget it, hilda. he, at least, shall never forget it.”
odd’s fixed look as he led her into the street forced her to helpless silence.
“peter, please!” she breathed, clasping her hands together and gazing at him as he hailed a fiacre.
“i will come to you soon. good-bye.”
and so hilda was driven away.
it was past six when odd reached the rue pierre charron. rosalie opened the door. madame was in bed, she had had a bad day. mademoiselle? she is lying down. she seemed ill. “et bien malade même,” and had said that she wanted no dinner.
“i should like to see her, if only for a moment; she will see me, i think,” said odd, walking into the drawing-room. hilda entered almost immediately.
she had been crying, and the disorder of her hair suggested that she had cried with her head buried in a pillow, after the stifled feminine fashion. her face was most pathetically disfigured by tears; the disfigurement almost charming of youth and loveliness; but she looked ill, too. the white cheek and the heavy eyelids, the unsteady sweetness of her lips showed that an extreme of physical exhaustion, as well as the tempest of grief, had swept her beyond all thought of self-control, beyond all wish for it. the afternoon’s unpleasantness had been merely the last straw. the long endurance of the past month—the past months indeed—that had asked no pity, had been hardly conscious of a claim on pity—was transformed by her knowledge of near love and sympathy to a quivering sensibility. there was no reticence in her glance. he was the one she turned to, the one she trusted, the only one who understood and loved her in the whole world. odd saw all this as the supreme confidence of a supremely reserved nature looked at him from her eyes.
he met her, stooping his head to hers, and, like a child, she put up her face to be kissed. when he had kissed her, he drew back. a sudden horrible weakness almost overcame him.
“sit down, dear; no, i will walk about a bit. i have been playing the fiery jeune premier to such an extent this afternoon that dramatic restlessness is in keeping.”
hilda smiled faintly, and her eyes followed him as he took a few turns up and down the room.
“you look so badly,” he said, pausing before her; “how do you feel?”
“not myself; or, perhaps, too much myself.” hilda tried to smile, stretching out her arms with a long shaken sigh. “i feel weak and foolish,” she added, clasping her hands on her knee.
“it is all right, you know. he apologized profusely.”
“how did you make him do that?”
“i told him the truth, including the fact of his own despicableness.”
“and he believed it?”
“i helped him to the belief by a pretty thorough thrashing.”
“oh!” cried hilda.
“he deserved it, dear.”
“but—i had exposed myself to it; he thought himself justified.”
“i had to disabuse him of that thought. he bawled out something like a challenge under the salutary lesson, but when i promptly seconded the suggestion—insisted on the extreme satisfaction it would give me to have a shot at him—the bourgeois strain came out. he fairly whined. i was disappointed. i had bloodthirsty desires.”
“oh, i am very glad he whined then! don’t speak of such horrors. you know i am hysterical.”
odd still stood before her, and hilda put out her hand.
“how can i thank you?” he put her hand to his lips, not looking at her but down at the heavy folds of her white dress; it had a shroud-like look that gave him a shudder. hilda’s life seemed shroud-like, shutting her out from all brightness, from all love—love hers by right, and only hers.
“you know, you know that i would do anything for you,” he said.
the hand he kissed drew him down beside her, hardly consciously, and he yielded to the longing he felt in her for comforting kindness and nearness; yielded, too, to his own growing weakness; but he still held the hand to his lips, not daring to look at her. this childlike trust, this dependence, were dreadful. the long kiss seemed to his troubled soul a momentary shield. he found her eyes on him when he raised his own.
“i never thought it would come true—in this way,” she said.
“what come true?”
“that you would really care for me.”
her pure look seemed to flutter to him, to fold peaceful wings on his breast; its very contentment constituted a caress. the child was still a child, and yet in the look there were worlds of ignorant revelation. a shock of possibilities made odd dizzy, and the certain strain of weakness in him made it impossible for him to warn and protect her ignorance.
he was conscious of a quick grasp at the transcendental friendship of which alone she was aware.
“my little friend, i care for you dearly, dearly.” but with the words, his hold on the transcendental friendship slipped, fundamental truths surged up; he took both her hands, and clasping them on his breast, said, hardly conscious of his words—
“sweetest, noblest—dearest,” with an emotion only too contagious, for hilda’s eyes filled with tears. the sight of these tears, her weakness, the horrible unfairness of her position, appealed, even at this moment, to all his manliness. he controlled himself from taking her into his arms, and his grasp on her hands held her from him.
“i understand, hilda, i understand it all—all you have suffered; the loneliness, the injustice, the dreary drudgery. i know, dear, i know that you have been unhappy.”
“oh yes! i have been unhappy! so unhappy!” the tears rolled down her cheeks while she spoke, fell on odd’s hands clasping hers. “no one ever cared for me, no one. papa, mamma, katherine even, not really; isn’t it cruel, cruel?” this self-pity, so uncharacteristic, showing as it did the revulsion in her whole nature, filled odd with a sort of helpless terror. “that is what i wanted; some one to care; i thought it must be my fault.” the words came in sighing breaths, incoherent: “i have been so lonely.”
“my child! my poor, poor child!”
“let me tell you everything. i must tell you now since you care for me. i have been so fond of you—always. you remember when i was a child?” odd held her hands tightly and mechanically. poor little hands; they gave him the feeling of light spars clung to in a whirling shipwreck. “even then i was lonely, i see that now; and even then it weighed upon me, that thought that i was not to the people i loved what they were to me. i felt no injustice. i must be unworthy. it seems to me that all my life i have struggled to make people love me, to make them take me near to them. but you! you were near at once. do i explain? it sounds morbid, doesn’t it? but it isn’t, for my loneliness was almost unconscious, and i merely felt that with you i was happy, that things were clear, that you understood everything. you did, didn’t you? only i don’t think you ever quite understood my gratitude, my utter devotion to you.” hilda’s tears had ceased as she went on speaking, and she smiled now at odd, a quivering smile.
“and then you went away, and i never saw you again. ah! i can’t tell you what i suffered.”
odd bent his head upon the hands clasped in his.
“but how could you have known?” said hilda tenderly; “i was really very silly and very unreasonable. i thought you would come back because i needed you. i needed the sunshine. perhaps you were right about the shadow. but for years i waited for you. i felt sure you knew i was waiting. you said you would come back you know; i never forgot that.” she paused a moment: “it all ended in florence,” she went on sadly; “such a bleak, bitter day, just the day for burying an illusion. i see the cold emptiness of the big room now; oh! the melancholy of it! where i was sitting alone. all came upon me suddenly, the reality. you know those crumbling shocks of reality. i realized that i had waited for something that could never come; that you had never really understood, and that it would have been impossible for you to understand. i was a pretty, touching little incident to you, and you were everything to me. i realized, too, how silly it would all seem to any one; how it would be misinterpreted and smiled at as a case of puppy-love perhaps. a sort of cold shame crept through me, and i felt really alone then. do you know what that feeling is?” her hand under his forehead lifted his head a little as though to question his face, but putting both her hands over his eyes he would not look at her.
“you are so sorry?” odd nodded. “but you have had that feeling? imprisoned in oneself; looking, longing for a voice, a smile,—and silence, always, always silence. a thing quite apart from the surface intercourse of everyday life, not touched by it. you have so many friends, so many windows in your prison, you can’t know.”
“i know.”
“really?”
“yes, yes.”
“and you call out for help and no one hears. oh, i can’t explain properly; do you understand?”
“i understand, dear.”
“well, after that day in florence, the last cranny of my prison seemed walled up. and—oh, then our troubles came, worse and worse. responsibilities braced me up—far healthier, of course. and your books! their strength; their philosophy—don’t tell me i might find it all in marcus aurelius; your way of saying it went more deeply in me. just to do one’s duty; to love people and be sorry for them, and not snivel over oneself. ah! if you knew all your books had been to me! would you like it, i wonder?” again the tenderness, almost playful, in her voice. odd raised his head and looked at her.
“and when i came at last, what did you think?”
the loving candor of her eyes dwelt on him.
“when you came?” she repeated. “then i saw at once that you were katherine’s friend, and that your books were the nearest i should ever get to you.” hilda’s voice hesitated a little; a doubt of the exactitude of her perceptions from this point showed itself in a certain perplexity of tone. “and—i don’t quite understand myself, for i didn’t plan anything—but just because i felt so much i was afraid that you would imagine i made claims on you. i was resolved that you should see that i had reached your standpoint—that i had forgotten—that the present had no connection with the past.”
“but i had not forgotten,” odd groaned.
“no?” hilda smiled rather lightly; “it would have been very strange if you hadn’t. besides, as i say, i saw at once that you were katherine’s, and that it was right and natural. your books taught me, too, the true peace of renunciation, you see! not that this called for renunciation exactly,” and again hilda paused with the faint look of perplexity. “there was nothing to renounce since you were hers, except i must have felt a certain disappointment. i felt a little frozen. such dull egotism!” she turned her eyes away, looking vaguely out into the dusky room. “but even on that first day i meant that you should see, and that she should see, that i knew that the past made no bond: in my heart it might, not in yours, i knew, for all your kindness.”
“go on, hilda,” said odd, as she paused.
“well, you know all the rest. when you were engaged and she more than friend, i had hoped for it, and i saw that my turn might come; that i might step into kathy’s vacated shoes, so to speak; that we might be friends, and all my dreams be fulfilled after all. i began then to let myself know that i did care, for i had tried to help myself before by pretending that i didn’t. i wouldn’t do anything to make you like me. if you were to like me, you would of yourself; all the joy of having you care for me would be in having made no effort. and the dream did come true. i saw more and more that you cared. to-day i feel it, like sunshine.” odd still stared at her, and again through sudden tears she smiled at him. “only—isn’t it strange?—things are always so; it must be, too, that i am weak, overwrought, for i feel so sad, as though i were at the bottom of the sea, and looking up through it at the sun.”
“great heavens!” muttered odd. he looked at her for a silent moment, then suddenly putting his arm around her neck, he drew her to him.
he did not kiss her, but he said, leaning his head against hers—
“and i—so unworthy!”
“no, no,” said hilda, and with a little sigh, “not unworthy, dear peter.”
“i, dully stumbling about your exquisite soul,” peter went on, pressing her head more closely to his. “ah, hilda! hilda!”
“what, dear friend?”
“i cannot tell you.”
“unkind; i tell you everything.”
“you can tell me everything. you can tell me how much you have cared for me, how much you care. i cannot tell you how much i care. i cannot tell you how infinitely dear you are to me.” he had spoken, her face hidden from him in its nearness; now, turning his head he kissed her hair, and frowning, he looked at her and kissed her on the lips. hilda drew back and rose to her feet. a subtle change, perplexity deepened, crossed her face, but, standing before him, she looked down at him and he saw that her trust rose as to a test. she put her hands out as though from an impulse to lay them on his shoulders; then, as an instinct within the impulse seemed to warn her, though leaving her clear look untouched, she clasped them together and said gravely—
“you may tell me. you are infinitely dear to me.”
odd still frowned. her terrible innocence gave him a sense of helpless baseness.
“i may tell you how much i love you?” and he too rose and stood before her.
“i have always loved you,” said hilda, with her grave look. “i love you now as much as i did when i was a child.”
the impossible height where she placed him beside her made odd’s head swim. he felt himself caught up for a moment into the purity of her eyes, and looking into them he came close to her.
“my angel! my angel!” he hardly breathed.
“dear peter,” and the tears came into the pure eyes. and, at the sight, the heaven brimmed with loveliest human weakness, the love unconscious but all revealed, odd was conscious only of a dizzy descent from impossibility, the crash of the inevitable.
one step and he had taken her into his arms, seeing as he did so, in a flash, the white wonder of her face; he could almost have smiled at it—divinely dull creature! holding her closely, the white folds of the shroud-like dress crushed against his breast, his cheek upon her hair, he could not kiss her and he could not speak, and in a silence as unmistakable as word or kiss, his long embrace forgot the past and defied the future.
the painful image of a bird he had once seen, wings broken, dying of a shot and feebly fluttering, came to him as he felt her stir; her hands pushing him away.
“dearest—dearest—dearest.”
her effort faltered to resistless helplessness.
stooping his head he looked at her face; it wore an almost tranquil, a corpse-like look. her eyes were closed and the eyebrows drawn up a little in a faint, fixed frown; but the childlike line of her mouth had all the sad passivity of death. odd tremblingly kissed the gentle sternness of the lips.
she loved him, but how cruel he was.
“oh, my precious,” he said, “look at me. forgive me; i love you.”
he had freed her hands, and she raised them and bent her face upon them.
“you don’t hate me for telling you the truth?” and as she made no sign: “no, no, you don’t hate me; you love me and i love you. i have loved you from the beginning. oh, my child, my child, why did you let me think you did not care? look at me, dearest.”
“what have i done?” said hilda. she still kept her face hidden in her hands.
“you have done nothing; it is i, i who have done it!”
“i never could have believed it of you,” she said, and he felt it to be the simple statement of a fact.
“o hilda—i have only told you the truth, that is my crime.”
“you told me because of what i said? you love me because of what i said?”
“good god! i have been madly in love with you for months!”
“for months?” she repeated dully.
“for years, perhaps, who knows!”
“i did not know that i—that you—“
“you knew nothing, my poor angel.”
he enfolded her again. her look seemed to stumble and grope for an entreaty; her very powerlessness in the grasp of her realized love enchanted him.
“how base! how base!” she moaned.
“am i a cruel brute? ah! hilda, you love me, and i cannot help myself.”
“no—you cannot help yourself. i love you and i told you so.”
“you did not mean this.”
“i did not mean it. oh, i trusted you. i did not doubt myself. i am wicked.” the strange revulsion from her long selflessness had reached its height in poor hilda; but, in her eyes, the discovered self was indeed wicked, a terrible revelation.
her head fell helplessly against his shoulder.
“o peter, peter!”
“what, my darling child?”
“that we should be so base!”
“not we, hilda. not you!”
“yes, i—for i am happy—think of it, happy! peter, i love you so much.” she wept, her head upon his shoulder. “keep me for a moment, only a moment longer. as i am wicked, let me have the good of it. i am glad that you love me. no; don’t kiss me. tell me again that you have loved me for a long time.”
“from the moment i saw you again, i think. i knew it when i began meeting you after your lessons. do you remember that first day in the rain? i do; and your little hat with the bow on it, the hole in your little glove, your white little face. i went away to the south because i could not trust myself with you. i did not dream that you loved me, but i felt—ah! i felt—that i could have made you love me!”
“and yet—you loved katherine!”
the anguish of the broken words pierced him.
“hilda, you cannot find me baser than i find myself. i did not love her.”
“peter! peter!”
“believe me, my precious child, when i tell you that you are the only one—my only love!”
“o peter!”
“i never thought that i loved katherine, but i had no fear of injustice to her, for i never thought that love would come into my life; and, hardly was the cruel stupidity consummated, when the truth crept upon me. friendly comradeship on the one hand, and on the other—o hilda!—a passion that has transformed my life. the truth fell upon you like a thunderbolt; my love for you crashed in upon your heavenly dreaming; but you see—be brave enough to acknowledge what it all means, your dream and my love that needed no thunderbolt to wake it,—be brave enough to own that it is inevitable, that from the time that you put your hand in mine ten years ago, dated that rarest, that divinest thing, a love, a sympathy infinite. dear child, be brave enough to own that before it, mistakes may be put aside without dishonor.”
“peter, peter, let me go. without dishonor! we are both already dishonorable, and oh! it is that that breaks my heart; that you, that you who should have helped me, protected me from the folly of my ignorance, that you should be dishonorable!”
“o hilda!”
“yes,” she said wildly, “yes, yes, peter; and i am wicked—wicked, for i love you. yes—kiss me; there, now i am thoroughly wicked. now let me go.”
odd, white and shaken, still locked his arms about her.
“i was base if you will, too base for your loveliness; but you, my darling, have not a shadow on you; you were impossibly noble. remember, that if there is dishonor, i am dishonored, not you; remember that i have done this!”
as he spoke, holding hilda in his arms, the door opened and katherine entered.
