Rough-Hewn/Chapter 34
CHAPTER XXXIV
Martha came into the room with a little rush as though she had been waiting impatiently to see Neale, and yet when she saw him she gave a little quavering "oh!" as of fright, and stood stock-still near the door.
Neale, conscious of nothing but his own heavy heart, was so startled that he had for an instant the fantastic notion that his mountain colloquy with himself was perhaps written on his face, and that Martha had read it at a glance. But before he could move, she had moved herself and come towards him as swiftly as she had first entered the room. She spoke swiftly too, as though she were afraid of losing her breath before she could say what she had to say; and yet she had already lost her breath, and was panting.
"Neale, dear, dear Neale …" her voice was quavering and very low, "I must tell you quickly. Neale, I'm afraid I've done you a great wrong. Neale, I love you better than any one I ever saw, but," her voice sank so low Neale could scarcely hear her, "I don't want to marry you."
Her lips began to tremble. She hung her head, and Neale could see the dark red flooding up to the roots of her hair.
He was for a moment literally incapable of speech. She went on falteringly, "Out in Cleveland, at Margaret's wedding you know, everybody talking about getting married, and Margaret … she's like my sister … we're so near each other … and we talked. She was just going to be married, and she thought I was, too. And I thought so. Truly, Neale, I'd never dreamed of anything else. And she talked to me as one woman about to be married talks to another—not girls' talk."
She began to cry a little now, though she made a great effort to control herself, drawing long, long breaths, and halting between her words, trying to bring them out quietly, "Neale, I'm afraid you won't understand. I don't know how to tell you, I don't know how to tell you! You see I never knew my mother and I never liked to talk intimately with other girls about .… about … but Margaret is so fine and" She cried out what she had to say in one burst, in a loud voice of pain, "Oh, Neale, when I saw Margaret with her lover I knew, I knew, I'd never loved you at all. I knew I'd hate you if we were married."
She turned away and leaned against the wall, sobbing, her face hidden in the crook of her arm. "What's the matter with me!" she cried desperately, brokenly. "Why don't I? Am I different from other women? I can't bear to hurt you so! I want to love you! What can I do with myself if I don't?"
The two stood there, the broken pieces of their life lying in a heap between them.
Over the heap, Neale took one long step and put his arms around Martha, so tenderly, so quietly, that she did not start or shrink away. She stopped sobbing, she stood still in his arms, breathlessly still as though she were listening intently, as though she were taking in some knowledge from a source not articulate.
She turned her face to his, and said abruptly, "Neale, it's just come to me.… I hadn't thought of that … perhaps you don't really love me either, not in that way … perhaps you never did. Perhaps I've just found all of it out in time."
Neale was startled, frightened, unutterably desolate but he made no pretense of being taken by surprise. "I can't bear to give you up, Martha," he said looking down at her. "Perhaps what we have is all we could ever have. We may lose this and have nothing. Perhaps there really is nothing else. What we have is … is … very good to have." His face contracted in a pain that really did surprise him by its keenness. He was horrified at the idea of losing Martha altogether.
Martha gazed steadily into his face as if trying to understand what he said, their old habit of sharing things, of talking things over, strong on her. He noted how pale and drawn her face was, with dark rings under her eyes. She had been suffering, she too had had broken nights. And as he looked he saw from her eyes that she was no longer seeing him, but some inner vision.
She shivered and drew away from him. "Yes, there is something else … something we haven't … and it's what makes it all right," she said. "I'd rather have nothing at all … nothing … ever! than something that would make part of me shrink away from you. I couldn't stand that! I couldn't stand that!"
She had said the last words wildly, and she was back by the door now, as if ready for flight.
Neale sat down heavily in a chair, and hid his face in his hands. "All that this means," he said to himself as much as to Martha, "all that this means, any of it, is that I have not been man enough to make you love me."
At this she came flying back to him, incarnate tenderness, "No, no, Neale, I do love you. I know in my heart that even if I should ever marry any one else, I'll never feel for anybody the affection, the trust … I couldn't … it's not that. Loving you as I do only makes it more impossible, more utterly impossible. You mustn't think this is just the nervous reaction from any sudden shock of knowledge. I knew … I knew well enough what marriage is! But I hadn't felt it."
She moaned aloud in her bewilderment, "How can I tell you? How can I make you understand? I don't understand, myself. Why can't I give you what Margaret has to give?"
She was bending over him and now snatched his hand and caught it up to her breast, "Neale, I'd give anything to want to marry you! Anything! I've tried and tried. It's like a mountain between us … I can't reach you through it. Neale, perhaps we're too much alike. Perhaps that is what brought us together, but that is what keeps us apart! We can't unite! I thought of so many things! We're like two chemicals that can't combine. They can't! That's the way they're made!"
Neale found himself resisting her certainty, although it had been his own. He sat up, suddenly astounded at all that was being said, and cried roughly, "Martha, do you know what this means? You are sending me away. What can I do without you?" He caught at her hand. "Martha, why hunt for rainbows when we have the pot of gold in our hands?"
She shook her head. "It wouldn't be the pot of gold," she said sadly. "It would be a mess of pottage, and you mustn't sell your heritage for it, any more than I."
He looked at her hard, and saw that he had no hold on her.
"Oh, it's finished for me!" he cried bitterly, out of all patience. "If you send me away for some romantic notion, you need have no idea that I will marry any one else. I shall never have anything to do with a woman again."
She said steadfastly though her lips were trembling, "I think when it's a question of what's the finest in us, that nothing at all is better than a halting compromise."
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said angrily and for the moment truthfully. "You're ruining our two lives for some hair-spun fancy."
She grew paler, and said in a deep voice, "Neale, I have told you that I would hate you if you were my husband."
He turned away to the door. "Good-by," he said coldly.
She did not answer.
He went out of the door, and down the stairs. At the bottom he turned and came up again. He found her standing where he had left her. He said gently, "You're right, Martha."
She held out her arms to him. They kissed, sadly, wistfully, like brother and sister parting for a long separation.
Neale went away silently in a confusion so great that from time to time he stopped on the sidewalk till the street straightened itself out before him, and he could see where to take the next step.