Chapter XIX

It would be hard to say in what respect, if any, the experiences of this particular night altered Eugene's opinion of Angela. He was inclined to like her better for what he would have called her humanness. Thus frankly to confess her weakness and inability to save herself was splendid. That he was given the chance to do a noble deed was fortunate and uplifting. He knew now that he could take her if he wished, but once calm again he resolved to be fair and not to insist. He could wait.

The state of Angela's mind, on the contrary, once she had come out of her paroxysm and gained the privacy of her own room, or rather the room she shared with Marietta at the other extreme of the house, was pitiable. She had for so long considered herself an estimable and virtuous girl. There was in her just a faint trace of prudery which might readily have led to an unhappy old maid existence for her if Eugene, with his superiority, or non-understanding, or indifference to conventional theories and to old-maidish feelings, had not come along and with his customary blindness to material prosperity and age limitations, seized upon and made love to her. He had filled her brain with a whirlwind of notions hitherto unfamiliar to her world and set himself up in her brain as a law unto himself. He was not like other men—she could see that. He was superior to them. He might not make much money, being an artist, but he could make other things which to her seemed more desirable. Fame, beautiful pictures, notable friends, were not these things far superior to money? She had had little enough money in all conscience, and if Eugene made anything at all it would be enough for her. He seemed to be under the notion that he needed a lot to get married, whereas she would have been glad to risk it on almost anything at all.

This latest revelation of herself, besides tearing her mind from a carefully nurtured belief in her own virtuous impregnability, raised at the same time a spectre of disaster in so far as Eugene's love for her was concerned. Would he, now that she had allowed him those precious endearments which should have been reserved for the marriage bed only, care for her as much as he had before? Would he not think of her as a light minded, easily spoiled creature who was waiting only for a propitious moment to yield herself? She had been lost to all sense of right and wrong in that hour, that she knew. Her father's character and what he stood for, her mother's decency and love of virtue, her cleanly-minded, right-living brothers and sisters,—all had been forgotten and here she was, a tainted maiden, virtuous in technical sense it is true, but tainted. Her convention-trained conscience smote her vigorously and she groaned in her heart. She went outside the door of her own room and sat down on the damp grass in the early morning to think. It was so cool and calm everywhere but in her own soul. She held her face in her hands, feeling her hot cheeks, wondering what Eugene was thinking now. What would her father think, her mother? She wrung her hands more than once and finally went inside to see if she could not rest. She was not unconscious of the beauty and joy of the episode, but she was troubled by what she felt she ought to think, what the consequences to her future might be. To hold Eugene now—that was a subtle question. To hold up her head in front of him as she had, could she? To keep him from going further. It was a difficult situation and she tossed restlessly all night, getting little sleep. In the morning she arose weary and disturbed, but more desperately in love than ever. This wonderful youth had revealed an entirely new and intensely dramatic world to her.

When they met on the lawn again before breakfast, Angela was garbed in white linen. She looked waxen and delicate and her eyes showed dark rings as well as the dark thoughts that were troubling her. Eugene took her hand sympathetically.

"Don't worry," he said, "I know. It isn't as bad as you think." And he smiled tenderly.

"Oh, Eugene, I don't understand myself now," she said sorrowfully. "I thought I was better than that."

"We're none of us better than that," he replied simply. "We just think we are sometimes. You are not any different to me. You just think you are."

"Oh, are you sure?" she asked eagerly.

"Quite sure," he replied. "Love isn't a terrible thing between any two. It's just lovely. Why should I think worse of you?"

"Oh, because good girls don't do what I have done. I have been raised to know better—to do better."

"All a belief, my dear, which you get from what has been taught you. You think it wrong. Why? Because your father and mother told you so. Isn't that it?"

"Oh, not that alone. Everybody thinks it's wrong. The Bible teaches that it is. Everybody turns his back on you when he finds out."

"Wait a minute," pleaded Eugene argumentatively. He was trying to solve this puzzle for himself. "Let's leave the Bible out of it, for I don't believe in the Bible—not as a law of action anyhow. The fact that everybody thinks it's wrong wouldn't necessarily make it so, would it?" He was ignoring completely the significance of everybody as a reflection of those principles which govern the universe.

"No-o-o," ventured Angela doubtfully.

"Listen," went on Eugene. "Everybody in Constantinople believes that Mahomet is the Prophet of God. That doesn't make him so, does it?"

"No."

"Well, then, everyone here might believe that what we did last night was wrong without making it so. Isn't that true?"

"Yes," replied Angela confusedly. She really did not know. She could not argue with him. He was too subtle, but her innate principles and instincts were speaking plainly enough, nevertheless.

"Now what you're really thinking about is what people will do. They'll turn their backs on you, you say. That is a practical matter. Your father might turn you out of doors—"

"I think he would," replied Angela, little understanding the bigness of the heart of her father.

"I think he wouldn't," said Eugene, "but that's neither here nor there. Men might refuse to marry you. Those are material considerations. You wouldn't say they had anything to do with real right or wrong, would you?"

Eugene had no convincing end to his argument. He did not know any more than anyone else what was right or wrong in this matter. He was merely talking to convince himself, but he had enough logic to confuse Angela.

"I don't know," she said vaguely.

"Right," he went on loftily, "is something which is supposed to be in accordance with a standard of truth. Now no one in all the world knows what truth is, no one. There is no way of telling. You can only act wisely or unwisely as regards your personal welfare. If that's what you're worrying about, and it is, I can tell you that you're no worse off. There's nothing the matter with your welfare. I think you're better off, for I like you better."

Angela wondered at the subtlety of his brain. She was not sure but that what he said might be true. Could her fears be baseless? She felt sure she had lost some of the bloom of her youth anyhow.

"How can you?" she asked, referring to his saying that he liked her better.

"Easily enough," he replied. "I know more about you. I admire your frankness. You're lovely—altogether so. You are sweet beyond compare." He started to particularize.

"Don't, Eugene," she pleaded, putting her finger over her lips. The color was leaving her cheeks. "Please don't, I can't stand it."

"All right," he said, "I won't. But you're altogether lovely. Let's go and sit in the hammock."

"No. I'm going to get you your breakfast. It's time you had something."

He took comfort in his privileges, for the others had all gone. Jotham, Samuel, Benjamin and David were in the fields. Mrs. Blue was sewing and Marietta had gone to see a girl friend up the road. Angela, as Ruby before her, bestirred herself about the youth's meal, mixing biscuit, broiling him some bacon, cleaning a basket of fresh dewberries for him.

"I like your man," said her mother, coming out where she was working. "He looks to be good-natured. But don't spoil him. If you begin wrong you'll be sorry."

"You spoiled papa, didn't you?" asked Angela sagely, recalling all the little humorings her father had received.

"Your father has a keen sense of duty," retorted her mother. "It didn't hurt him to be spoiled a little."

"Maybe Eugene has," replied her daughter, turning her slices of bacon.

Her mother smiled. All her daughters had married well. Perhaps Angela was doing the best of all. Certainly her lover was the most distinguished. Yet, "well to be careful," she suggested.

Angela thought. If her mother only knew, or her father. Dear Heaven! And yet Eugene was altogether lovely. She wanted to wait on him, to spoil him. She wished she could be with him every day from now on—that they need not part any more.

"Oh, if he would only marry me," she sighed. It was the one divine event which would complete her life.

Eugene would have liked to linger in this atmosphere indefinitely. Old Jotham, he found, liked to talk to him. He took an interest in national and international affairs, was aware of distinguished and peculiar personalities, seemed to follow world currents everywhere. Eugene began to think of him as a distinguished personality in himself, but old Jotham waved the suggestion blandly aside.

"I'm a farmer," he said. "I've seen my greatest success in raising good children. My boys will do well, I know."

For the first time Eugene caught the sense of fatherhood, of what it means to live again in your children, but only vaguely. He was too young, too eager for a varied life, too lustful. So its true import was lost for the time.

Sunday came and with it the necessity to leave. He had been here nine days, really two days more than he had intended to stay. It was farewell to Angela, who had come so close, so much in his grasp that she was like a child in his hands. It was farewell, moreover, to an ideal scene, a bit of bucolic poetry. When would he see again an old patriarch like Jotham, clean, kindly, intelligent, standing upright amid his rows of corn, proud to be a good father, not ashamed to be poor, not afraid to be old or to die. Eugene had drawn so much from him. It was like sitting at the feet of Isaiah. It was farewell to the lovely fields and the blue hills, the long rows of trees down the lawn walk, the white and red and blue flowers about the dooryard. He had slept so sweetly in his clean room, he had listened so joyously to the voices of birds, the wood dove and the poet thrush; he had heard the water in the Blue's branch rippling over its clean pebbles. The pigs in the barnyard pen, the horses, the cows, all had appealed to him. He thought of Gray's "Elegy"—of Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" and "The Traveller." This was something like the things those men had loved.

He walked down the lawn with Angela, when the time came, repeating how sorry he was to go. David had hitched up a little brown mare and was waiting at the extreme end of the lawn.

"Oh, Sweet," he sighed. "I shall never be happy until I have you."

"I will wait," sighed Angela, although she was wishing to exclaim: "Oh, take me, take me!" When he was gone she went about her duties mechanically, for it was as if all the fire and joy had gone out of her life. Without this brilliant imagination of his to illuminate things, life seemed dull.

And he rode, parting in his mind with each lovely thing as he went—the fields of wheat, the little stream, Lake Okoonee, the pretty Blue farmhouse, all.

He said to himself: "Nothing more lovely will ever come again. Angela in my arms in her simple little parlor. Dear God! and there are only seventy years of life—not more than ten or fifteen of true youth, all told."