Short Fiction · A Transaction In Hearts (5/12) (1/2)

IV

The morrow was a blank. Gonfallon attended to his duties with the air of a somnambulist. In the morning at the meeting of the Church-Workers, in the afternoon at the Friendly Aid, the echo of Claire’s laughter rippled through the tidings which it was his office to proclaim; and when the last rite had been performed he shook from him a young licentiate who fain would have passed a moment in Christian converse, and strode out into the gathering dusk and on to the outlying regions of the Park.

Above him was a sky of zinc. Beyond, to the west, the sun had slashed the horizon with belts of amber and agonizing green. The air was chill: he raised the collar of his coat, and as he hurried on unimpressed, unobservant even of the salutations of acquaintances whom he chanced to encounter, never yet had he felt more averse to his cloth. Yet did he relinquish it, what was there left? He was too old to begin life afresh: he lacked that energy which permits and even forces some men to turn from one calling to another; he had a wife to support, and down in a Massachusettsian village was his mother dependent on his wage. Truly it was easier to keep up a brave face and draw ten thousand per annum than to pull a wry one and advertise in the papers for an occupation suited to a man of scholarly attainments. If Bucholz had not gone under, there, indeed, would be a different guitar: he could have leaned on him, he could have entered, if need were, into his employ. As it was, instead of the opulence which Ruth might one day have inherited, it seemed not improbable that he would be called upon to contribute to Bucholz’ support. Not later than the previous day a whisper, a breeze that loiters, had told him that his father-in-law passed his hours in extracting, and not painlessly, either, small loans from former companions of his banditti-days.

No, that dream had gone. There was no one to whom he could turn. However unfitted he might be, the pastorate was a refuge still. Yet, even supposing, for argument’s sake, he relinquished it and another cleric mounted the pulpit in his stead, would the congregation be bettered by the change? He knew his parishioners through and through. Half of them were superstitious as ballads, the other half sceptical as himself. There were those who sat very erect and said “Amen” to impress their neighbors, and there were those who allowed themselves to be impressed thereby; there was a collection of boys and girls to whom the church was indeed a meetinghouse, there was also an assortment of neurosthenes; and did he leave these people, in what manner would their salvation be affected?

The mere query was puerile. He shrugged his shoulders in annoyance at himself. Eastward, a splatter of stars, some livid, some as lights seen through canvas slit, betokened the advance of night. He turned, and, musing still, retraced his steps. When he reached the rectory his eyes were eager and his face was flushed.

The hall was silent, the sitting-room untenanted. He put his hat and coat aside, and ascended the stair. To the left was Claire’s room, the door ajar. At the threshold he lingered a moment and listened. Then, hearing no sound, he pushed the door and entered in.

On the sofa some raiment was strewn⁠—a gown, a petticoat, a corset; from the latter a white string hung pendent, the steel tip idling on the floor. At his feet a rose had fallen. On a table beneath the gas-jets utensils were scattered, instruments for the hands in stained ivory, brushes with silver backs, quaint little boxes, curious of form, a rumpled sachet, stamped Cordova leather, four bonnet-pins, a curling-iron, and a collar. In the air was the aroma which women exhale.

Beyond was a bed, the coverlet smooth as an anapest, surmounted by monogrammed pillows. It was white, virginal as its owner, alluring as spring; and as Gonfallon gazed at it the flush on his face increased. “What am I doing here?” he mused, and held his head as one who listens, fearful of surprise. From afar came the rumble of the Elevated, but the house itself was dumb. For a moment he loitered, his eyes fumbling the counterpane, his pulse fluttering like a bird ensnared, and presently, as he stole from the room, he was conscious of that elation of spirit which had visited him in his youth when on the Beverly sands he had crouched close, yet never close enough, to the swoon and the surge of the sea.

That evening Gonfallon broke bread in solitude. Claire had been bidden somewhere⁠—to Miss Pickett’s, the housemaid thought; and Ruth, whom neuralgia had seized again, was lying in darkness, waiting the release of sleep. By his plate was a telegram, which he pushed aside, his thoughts occupied with other things; but when the maid removed the dishes he opened it and read the message it contained:

“We are sorely visited,” it ran. “The Bishop entered into rest this noon. Your brother in Christ,

The yellow slip fell from him undetained. It was so pregnant with intimations that the restless current of his thought was changed. For the time being he forgot all things, even to Claire, and sat, one finger just separating the lips, staring after the retreating past and far out into the chartless morrow. The bishop he had known well. He was one of the few whom he had really revered, a man simple and sincere, earnest for the best, indulgent to the worst, a man who had but one creed, Charity, but one text, Goodwill⁠—a man whose face was so luminous with spiritual reflections that whoso saw him thought he truly walked with God. And now he was gone. The grave would open and close again: tomorrow he would be forgot.

“I wonder,” mused Gonfallon, “that He who made space for the infinite and eternity for time should not have created a being capable of mounting sheerly to some fringe of His mantle of stars, instead of a groping phantom incompetent to leave behind so much as a shadow on a wall. I wonder⁠—”

And as he mused he was visited by an idea which at first he repulsed and then beckoned back. It was that however ephemeral life might be, it was yet clothed with radiant possibilities. Throughout the length and breadth of the diocese there was no ecclesiastic more prominent than himself: it was he who would be nominated for the bishopric. While he still mused, the door opened, and Claire appeared.

“Did you miss me, Chris?”

She was in street-costume, a trim skirt, a cloth jacket descending to her waist, her hands cased in suede, her face unveiled, and on her head a low-crowned hat of felt.

“Did you miss me, Chris?”

As she spoke, her lips parted as a flower opens to the sun: he could see the edges of her teeth, and in the lamplight they seemed to reflect the rose of her mouth and tongue.

“And Ruth? Is she no better?”

Her hat she removed and tossed pin-pierced aside. Her jacket she had already unbuttoned, and as she raised her arm to divest herself of it Gonfallon sprang to her aid.

“There, let me help you,” he said.

As he caught at the sleeve, he touched her wrist. From her hair came the clean smell of acorns and of pines that had greeted him the night before; and as he bent to aid her, there was a cleft in her neck which might have tempted a saint.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” he added.

“Thanks, put it anywhere. Oh, didn’t you? I have a key, you know. Pickett came in this afternoon and wanted me to dine with her: her people have gone to Lakewood, and she was alone. What of Ruth?”

She had turned to Gonfallon, who stood, her jacket in his hand. At the question he made a gesture indicative of discouragement.

“Give it me,” she continued. “I will go to her now.” And as she stretched her hand, Gonfallon caught it in his own.

“Sit with me a moment, Claire.”

“I might have a cigarette, don’t you think? Pickett,”⁠—and she ushered a memory with the ripple of her laugh⁠—“Pickett was afraid to have me smoke, on account of the servants.”

She moved from him and drew out a case, a toy of fair gold, on the mirror-like surface of which she glanced at her own reflection.

“Try one,” she added, and extended the case.

“No, Claire, I do not smoke, nor should you. But there,” he continued, hastily, for on the girl’s lips a sudden pout had appeared. “Do as you will.”

“What’s gone wrong? The ten commandments are gayer than you, sir.” And to her lips, from which the pout had retreated, a smile returned.

“You were not annoyed at me last night, were you, Claire?” And as the girl, answering nothing, stood gazing at him, her virginal eyes a trifle dilated, her lips just parted, her head drawn back, he added, huskily, “You know I love you,” and hesitated⁠—for encouragement, perhaps, or else rebuke.

Then, as she seemed about to move from him, he detained her with a gesture that was at once an apology and a plea, the gesture of a mendicant accustomed to rebuff. “Claire, let me tell you. I know, none better, that it is wrong for me to speak to you as I do. I have no excuse. Yet when you came⁠—see, it is but a month ago⁠—you brought a gladness and a sorcery. At first I did not understand, but last night it was as a sense recovered: I knew that all my life I had hungered for you. You were the odor of a feast at which I had longed to sit, the shadow of a hope which I had dreamed to claim. Claire, listen to me. It is not years that make our age: I was old at twenty, I am young today, and it is youth that loves best and most. Let me love you. There, I will ask nothing in return, but I have such need of you! Each emotion I compressed expands to you, every illusion that I lost you can restore. You are to me the fulfilment of an anterior promise, the requital of an earlier mistake. Were I free I would speak to you less gravely, but I am bound as never Tantalus was. I can ask nothing, I can take nothing, I can only give. And there the misery of it is; for my power of giving is slight indeed. Were I master of fate instead of slave, and had you a wish, like a spaniel that wish should nestle at your feet. But this is idle speech; forgive it me. The fact remains, I love you, not alone with all my heart, but as no other has loved you yet, as no other can love you now.”

The initial phrases of this address had come from Gonfallon haltingly, but as he warmed to the work they fell from him in rounded periods, as they were wont to when he preached. And that magnetism which was in him, the electricity which he diffused and which had made him what he was, the foremost ecclesiastic in the largest of provincial cities, seemed now to be coercing the girl, despite herself, to his mood. Her eyes drooped, her lips were compressed, in her cheeks the color rose and subsided, vacillating as it were with retroacting and contending currents. And Gonfallon, as he scanned her face, felt an exultant throb. With a movement of the arm that would have encircled an oak he caught her in his embrace. The jacket had gone from her, the gold toy had disappeared. For a second that was an eternity he was conscious of her emollient mouth on his, his fingers intertwisted with her own. In that second he really lived⁠—perhaps he really loved.

Undulantly she disengaged and freed herself. She stooped for her jacket, and when she stood up again there was no sign of vacillation in her face. The back of her hand she drew across her lips, but whether to brush away the kiss that had been placed on them, or the smile that hovered in their moisture, Gonfallon was unable to decide. She had retreated a little, and he made a step to her, but as he moved she retreated yet farther away.

“Claire⁠—” he murmured.

“Oh, I say, Chris,” she interrupted, “drop all that.” The curtain parted, and she had gone.

In a second he was in the hall, but already she had reached the floor above, and, foreseeing the futility of pursuit, he entered his study and threw himself on a chair.

For a while he sat palpitant in alternations of elation and remorse. His path, doubtless, was straight, but it was by no means clear. The mystic penumbra of accepted tenets was still about him, yet through them shone the wonder of landscapes undivined. He was as one who awakes at dawn and finds the night still there. And as he alternately detained and dismissed now elation, now regret, he was aware of that confusion of purpose which visits those that puzzle over a problem they are in haste to solve. The signification of his own attitude was that which stirred him most. At the moment it seemed to him impossible that he should have acted to the girl as he had, and not impossible alone, but cowardly as well. Of the two, was not he the stronger? was it not for him to guide, to protect her, if need be, even from herself? And yet, without even the excuse of celibacy, without receiving from her so much of an invitation as can be conveyed in the quiver of an eyelid, he had performed the most ignoble role that man can play. Had it been love that had impelled him, some excuse might there be. But it was not that. Love would have slit his lips to the ears rather than let him touch her own. There would have been no elation then, no remorse, only an abandonment in spirit, the escape of a dream that might have come true, and then oblivion which is the novitiate of death. But no; it was not that. He needed no one to prompt him that in his heart were none of those choirs which love awakes; not a hymn had been summoned, not a harmony evoked. No, it was not that; it was the beast that is in us all, lashed down, kept cowering and hidden in the deepest cavern of our being, till in the inadvertent moment it leaps into light and claims its prey at last.

Through the silence of the house he heard a door open and another shut. From above, overhead, came the faint fall of moving feet. She had left Ruth, he knew; she had gone to her room. Now she had latched the door; now she was at the window, he heard the shutters close. The footfalls seemed to cross the room, and for the moment he pictured her standing as he had seen her once, before the glass, her arms raised, the fingers interlocked behind her head. What was it, after all, he wondered, that had impressed him so? It was not the refinement of her nature: there were times when he thought her almost coarse. Her mind was a rendezvous of platitudes; and as for her beauty, he could have sent a prayerbook skimming from the pulpit and in whatever aisle of Gethsemane it chanced to fall would be a girl fairer, more feminine, more appetizing yet, than she. But would there, though?

An almost imperceptible footfall from the room above aroused him from his revery. The sound was fainter than before; the feet that stirred were unshod, stockingless perhaps. Their faint tinkle ushered a fresh vision into the chambers of his mind: he saw her in a fabric so delicate of texture that it could be drawn through a ring, a garment immaterial as a moonbeam, her neck uncovered, and about her half-closed eyes and red moist lips the subtle smile of a faun.