The Flesh and the Spirit (Boyce)

Front matter

II — III — IV — V — VI — VII — VIII

The Flesh and the Spirit

By Neith Boyce

II II

Hilda wept herself into comparative calmness and indifference as to what might happen. She was coming to feel really reckless. In the course of the last two months' fascinating pastime of playing with fire, she realized now she had burned her fingers rather badly. There was no doubt that Adrian's attraction and their intimacy had thrown her off her balance and unsettled her feeling for Philip, and conviction that she wanted to marry him. She had begun it frankly enough; full of curiosity about a new and striking personality, and finding a charm in the unstable Adrian's intelligence and temperament which drew her on unheeding. She was not a cautious person; and her gospel of personal freedom made any attempt at caution with Adrian seem absurd to her. Even a fortnight earlier she would have laughed at the idea that Adrian could make any essential difference in her life. And now it had come to this, that his late passionate entreaty of her to break her engagement and marry him had swayed her almost to the point of consenting.

Almost. But Hilda had now set her will against him; though when she woke to the necessity of doing so, it was too late for anything but a divided will. So far in her life her will had been used to obtain what she wanted; now therefore that she was uncertain what she wanted, she was somewhat at a loss. So far as she could calmly judge the two men, she felt that to throw aside Philip for Adrian would be folly. But the mischief was that she could not be calm, and did not even want to be. At the same time she disliked the tumult of emotion that shook her; she resented it, and was angry because she was tormented and unhappy.

She knew that Adrian was waiting his chance to see her alone, and that it would be necessary to see him soon; and after she had been lying motionless for an hour or more, she was aware somehow that he was in the house. Presently Mrs. Lovell was hesitating noiselessly in the doorway. Hilda opened her eyes and said languidly: “Well?”

“I thought you were asleep. Mr. Nicoll is down-stairs, Hilda—here is a note.”

Mrs. Lovell presented the folded scrap of paper with her most neutral expression and manner—which meant that she strongly disapproved. She saw a great deal more of what was going on about her than Hilda supposed or took the trouble to imagine. She observed now that Hilda, after a glance at Adrian's scrawl, tore it up, and that Hilda's voice, as she said, “Very well, I'll come down,” had a menacing hardness. Above all, it was plain that she must still be left alone. Mrs. Lovell did not even venture to stay and help her dress, as she would naturally have done.

Hilda took a good deal of time to dress; and when she went down finally, in a sweeping, ivory-colored gown, with her black hair piled in a mass above her brow, she was overwhelmingly effective. She found Adrian in the library, and greeted him with a direct, unsmiling glance.

“I thought you were going out with Philip,” she said coldly.

“Oh, Priscilla took him in tow—I wasn't wanted. Besides, you know perfectly well that I had to see you.”

“I suppose so. Well, now you see me.”

She looked about the room, rang, and asked for a fire.

“The fog's coming in again,” she said, with a slight shiver.

“Yes—and you're ill, Hilda,” said Adrian abruptly. “You look2”

Hilda shot a sinister glance at him from under her black brows.

“No matter how I look.”

She stood in silence while the Japanese laid and lit the fire; then sat down in the great leather chair, which had been her father's favorite seat, before the hearth; and stared at the climbing flames with level eyes. Adrian stood leaning against the chimneypiece of rough stone, looking down at her.

“Well, Adrian?” she said finally.

He made no response; and she glanced up at him.

“What was it you had to see me for?”

Still no reply, but only that steady gaze at her.

Hilda made an impatient gesture.

“Don't be mysterious!” she said sharply. “I'm not in the mood for Byronics.”

“I'm not aware that I am either,” said Adrian. “Only it struck me that to answer those questions of yours would be rather superfluous.”

“Really? Then if it's superfluous to state what you want, I can't see much use in this interview.”

“Oh, I can state what I want,” murmured Adrian.

He dropped down on the rug at her feet, with the catlike grace that was native to him.

“I've taken passage for two on the next steamer that leaves Vancouver for Japan, and I want you to go with me.”

Hilda stared at him. “You're quite crazy,” she said.

“No, Hilda. On the contrary, I was never so much in my right mind. I never knew so well what I want.”

“But, Adrian, I can't see why it matters to me—what you want.”

“Only if it happens to be what you want, too.”

“But it doesn't, Adrian.”

“I rather think it does, Hilda. Else I should hardly be here.”

She shook her head, looking somberly at the fire.

“There's no use in your being here,” she said.

“Ah, yes, there is. You do care for me, Hilda.”

“Of course I do. But not to the extent that you seem to count on. Not to the extent of changing my whole plan of life for you.”

“Your plan of life! As though one could plan one's life!”

“Some people do. The best ones, I think—the most interesting ones.”

“People like Philip, perhaps. Gad, he's exactly what he used to be at college—blue Puritan! Gad, Hilda, he's as hard as nails!”

“Of course you'd dislike him.”

“Dislike him? I hate him—always did.”

“Therefore, of course, you're unjust to him. But I can't see that it matters particularly whether you hate him or not.”

“But that you—you—should ever have thought you cared for him—good heavens!”

“Ah, but I do. And what's more, I admire him. What you call his Puritanism is just discipline—self-control—will. And honestly, I think I admire that more than anything else—perhaps because I've seen so little of it in my own life.”

“Yes! You 'think' you admire it, because you don't know what it is. Exactly. It's a novelty. Wait till you've lived with it, and found out what it means—that Blue Law sort of thing!”

“Well, I suppose I shall find out,” said Hilda musingly.

“No! No, Hilda, you sha'n't marry him! You can take me or not, as you like, but I won't stand it to see you throw yourself away2”

“Oh, Adrian, it can't be helped. I mean what you call throwing myself away. I shall do it.”

“But why, Hilda, why?” He caught her hand roughly. “For the Lord's sake, give me one reason why!”

“Well—it wouldn't be a reason to you, I suppose, that I promised, and that he loves me. … The real reason is this, that I think it's what I really want to do. … I do care for him, in spite of anything you may think. And I trust him; and I like what he is. You can't deny his intelligence. And as for the things you dislike about him—what you call hardness and Puritanism and asceticism—truly, Adrian, I think that's a better way of living than our paganism.”

“Ours, Hilda? Yes, we're more alike, you and I.”

He put her hand to his lips; she drew it away abruptly.

“Yes, we are more alike,” she added slowly. “But I'm not so sure, Adrian, that I like the sort of thing we are. That I approve it, I mean. I've seen so much—so much of it! I've never had any control, you know, or discipline, any more than you have. And in my family—you know how my father's life was wrecked, and my mother, long before he died, made so unhappy—and by the same sort of thing—self-indulgence, the rule of 'chance desires,' the haphazard, happy-go-lucky, take no thought for the morrow sort of thing. That was his temperament; and he let it rule him—just as we do—only not on principle, as we do!”

Hilda got up and walked to the window. The fog was creeping in, and had covered the sun; the fog-horn sounded its melancholy, long-drawn note. She turned and looked round the dusky room. The firelight shimmered on her white dress and touched her hair and her shadowy, tragic gray eyes.

“It was here he died,” she said. “You know he drank himself to death. And for months before he died he scarcely stirred from here. He sat in that chair before the fire, or he walked up and down here, and he would quote poetry and some of the big speeches—Burke or Webster—to us by the hour. That is, when he was—himself. He was passionately fond of Shakespeare—I can hear his big voice rolling out even now!”

Hilda came slowly back to the fire. Adrian got to his feet, and she faced him, leaning on the back of the great chair.

“He sat here,” she said, “the night before he died. There was a fire of driftwood, just as there is now, and he sat looking at it with his great hollow eyes. And then he bowed his head, and, after a long time, he whispered: 'Shadows, shadows, shadows.' Those were the last words I heard him speak.”

The tears brimmed over Hilda's eyes.

“It was such a waste!” she cried. “Such a cruel thing, that he should go down like that, before our eyes. And after he was gone, my mother had no will nor spirit left, and I had to manage things; and manage myself, too. I've had to do it for eight years, and I'm tired of it, Adrian! I'm tired of seeing people drift along, living according to chance and without reason; thinking of nothing but pleasure or what indulgence they can get—I don't want to live that way! Sometimes I've felt like joining a sisterhood—really going in for the other sort of thing!”

Adrian laughed harshly at that.

“You'd be very picturesque in the garb,” he said. “And you'd have about as much joy of life as you'll get with Philip. Lord, Hilda, do you expect me to stand here calmly and talk about your marrying him?”

“No. It isn't to be talked about any more. I think we've talked enough.” Hilda closed her eyes wearily. “I think you must go now, Adrian,” she said.

But Adrian made no move.

“This thing is making you ill,” he said, with abrupt conviction. “I've never seen you look so played out. What idiocy, to try to force yourself like this, for the sake of keeping a promise that has lost all the reason it ever had! What infernal folly!”

“No, not folly,” said Hilda dully.

“And the last month is to go for nothing, then; and all I feel for you is to go for nothing? I am nothing at all—you've just amused yourself2”

“Amused myself! Yes, it began that way, I suppose—with you, too.”

“You've known a long time that I love you. I know you care more for me than you do for him—you've no love for him. Great Scott, Hilda! what do you think you want, anyway?”

“I don't want to be a weakling,” said Hilda passionately. “There's been too much of that. And now, Philip's mother—I despise that sort of thing—a woman of fifty!”

“Have you ever seen his father?—yes, you have, I know. Philip is exactly like him. You'll never be able to stand it, any more than she could. You'll come to me in the end.”

Hilda stood up, pale and frowning.

“This is the end, Adrian,” she said. “If you take my advice, you'll go away from this place now—or no, since we are going, it won't matter. But this is the end, for you and me.”

Adrian looked at her steadily.

“I'm going with you, unless you shut me out,” he said.

“I shall not shut you out. I am not afraid to see you. Come if you want to.”

“I do want to.”

“But I hope you'll understand, and—not worry me.”

“I don't think I shall worry you,” he said, with the same peculiar steadiness of look and tone.

Hilda looked at him earnestly, lingeringly. Her full lips were firmly set, her eyes showed the dimming touch of tears.

“Good-by, then,” she said, and went out of the room.

III III

All night the thunder had crashed and volleyed and reverberated through the valley—mere cleft as it was, high up on the mountainside. Fierce bursts of rain had swept through the pine-tops, and the wind in them was a continuous deep roar. Lying in bed Hilda could see from her windows the great trunks of the trees blotted against the glare of the lightning, so incessant that there seemed to be merely flashes of darkness between. The crests of the pines, spreading loftily far above the roof of the inn, were in wild motion; and she got up now and then to look at their writhing blackness. One window stood half-open; and the balsam breath of the forest poured in upon her like a flood. It was not cold, but wildly fresh and full of crushed wet sweetness. Hilda breathed it in; bathed herself in it as she lay or walked about, sleepless.

Once she went out into the narrow hall and opened her mother's door softly. Mrs. Lovell was sitting up in bed, huddled in a cloak.

“Hilda! Are you awake, too? What a night!” she moaned.

“I like it,” said Hilda exultantly. “But I wish you could sleep.”

“Sleep! I never heard such noise. It seems as though these trees must come down on the roof—and one of them would crush it like an egg-shell.”

“No, no, there's no danger.”

“And think of Philip and Adrian out in this weather!”

“Oh, they won't be 'out.' There's the lodge, you know—they'll be as cozy as possible.”

“Well, go back to bed, dear. There's no use in your catching cold, anyway.”

Hilda laughed, and went back to her room. She leaned against the rattling window, and wondered at each pale, flickering glow behind the tree-trunks if it were the dawn approaching. She had no idea what time it could be. She had not slept well for many nights; sleeplessness was getting to be the normal thing with her. She thought her brain must be getting accustomed to it, for she did not feel tired.

She thought of the two men who, with the guide, had started in the afternoon up the mountain. They meant to sleep that night in a log-shelter built for the deer-hunters' use, so as to be on the stalking-ground at dawn. She thought of them, together, and knew that she made a third; that she was with them; stood between them; was carried about in the consciousness of each, even as they both lived in her consciousness, tormenting her.

But they would not talk of her; they would not talk of what was in their minds. There, too, she stood between them. They must meet in the ordinary conventional fashion; and there could be no speech until she said the word.

She was by no means minded to say it, so long as it could be avoided. With all her liking for frankness, she had not been able as yet to be frank with Philip about the situation and her feeling. She meant to be, but she had kept putting it off. She knew that he saw and partly understood and was waiting for her to speak. And she had not spoken, partly, at least, because, tormenting as her present state was, she could not bear absolutely to put an end to it, absolutely to lose Adrian.

Of the two men, she thought most about Philip. He was now the unfamiliar, the unknown element. She had not realized till of late how absence and distance had weakened his hold on her interest; had dimmed his image. She could hardly make him seem real to herself; and for this very reason her imagination was fascinated by him. She wondered now what he was thinking, feeling; what he would do; what lay behind that terrible power of patience that he had. She knew of him already that he could wait, wait, wait indefinitely—not a passive waiting, but with an active perception that this was the thing to do in the circumstances. And this was what he was doing now—waiting for some expression from her.

She fully meant to tell him the truth, some time, about her feeling for Adrian. But, as she meant not to let that feeling make any practical difference, as she meant to go on and marry Philip in spite of it, she had tacitly put off the explanation till “afterward.” Now she began to feel with bitterness that she had made a mistake in not telling him at once. For even if it was to make no practical difference, it had already made an emotional difference between them, and that might have practical results. Philip might not want to marry her if he knew!

This idea occurred to her now for absolutely the first time. And at once she saw that she had been completely ignoring him in her calculations. She had looked at the situation simply and entirely from her own point of view.

He was a strong man, and she feared him. That was in her heart, too. She feared his power of will and of self-control—she feared the thing that had kept him so quiet during these past days. She knew that he loved her, and she felt that he could put her out of his life and go on without her.

It had been her wish, her intention, to be absolutely fair and frank to both these men. To deceive, to lie and sneak, was the one crime in her eyes. But she had thought that she could ignore the attraction that Adrian had had for her; that if she willed it to be of no account it would be so; that it could not be serious. And now it appeared to her that it had been serious in its effect on her, and that she had fallen away from her ideal of directness and fair dealing.

She wept as she thought these things, and walked restlessly about the room; and the night wore away in storm. Toward morning the lightning and thunder stopped, the rain settled into a quiet fall, and at dawn, when the sky cleared, Hilda was asleep.

The sun woke her, pouring through the unshaded windows an actual jubilance of light. She lost no time in getting out of doors. It was like a world new-made, and she, losing herself in the solitude of the forest, had for the first time in weeks a feeling of happiness. This was what she had wanted, instinctively, deeply—to be absolutely alone; and she had managed it with the practical cleverness—the art of managing other people—which was her special gift. Mrs. Lovell would be content indefinitely, sitting on the porch of the inn with her woolwork and a book. Beside their party there were three other people stopping there—two hunters, who had gone off before day-break, and a consumptive doctor from the East, who slept out of doors under a pine shelter, and whose intelligent and tragic face had interested Hilda at breakfast.

If this air could not cure him, she thought now, he must be already a dead man. To breathe it was to breathe in life. The undulating floor of the valley was covered with a deep, red-brown layer of pine-needles, already almost dry and glistening in the sun. Between were the clean, straight tree-trunks, free of underbrush and straggling branches. There were no paths.

Hilda wandered aimlessly on, careful only to keep in hearing the whir of a rough sawmill, which stood near the inn, and which blended at a distance with the tap-tapping of innumerable woodpeckers.

Her thoughts went back to the hunters, and she wondered how they had spent the night. She wondered if—together there, with no possibility of being at ease with so much unspoken between them—they might not speak out. If they did, the initiative would come from Adrian. Philip, she was sure, would come first to her. Adrian—there was no predicting what he would do. He might do impossible things.

She felt a certain indifference now as to what he might do, what might happen; it was partly fatigue, partly the physical stimulus of air and exercise. But she felt that life was good, no matter what happened. It was infinitely interesting, at least! Things could not be very bad, when one was young, strong, able! At the back of her mind was a resolution: “I will tell him when he comes back, and then it will all be straight.” And it seemed as simple as that. At any rate, why worry and distress one's self, in such a world of beauty and energy?

She smiled to herself, as she felt the glow of life in her body; that was hope and joy in itself! She was happy in that she was intensely alive; and this feeling, the strongest she had yet known, had been roused in her by Adrian. When she thought, she thought about Philip. When she dreamed, it was of a brief yielding to an impulse that she had rejected and denied.

IV IV

Hilda knew, as soon as she saw her mother standing on the veranda, that something was wrong. Mrs. Lovell held her shawl tightly about her with one hand; with the other she shaded her eyes from the oblique sun—it was now long past midday—and peered through the trees, turning one way and another in nervous agitation.

“Hilda! Hilda!” she cried, beckoning. “Where have you been? They've been out looking for you—we thought you were lost.”

“Well, what is the matter?” demanded Hilda, as she came up on the porch.

Her mother's face frightened her. Mrs. Lovell was terribly pale, her eyes dilated. This was more than mere anxiety.

“Oh, Hilda2” She stopped, and put her arm about the girl's shoulder.

“Well, what is it? Why can't you say?”

“Oh, Hilda, Philip—Philip has been hurt—an accident2”

“Hurt how? Where is he?”

“He is up there—in the camp—he was shot.”

Hilda started, put her mother's arms away from her, and stood straight and still.

“How is he hurt? Badly? Tell me quick!”

“We don't know yet. The doctor is just starting with Adrian. Adrian is here.”

“Where is he?”

Hilda went through the house like a flash—straight through and out on the back porch, seeing no one by the way. There was Adrian, down on his knees, strapping hastily some blankets and linen into a long bundle. He was bare-headed, his hair rumpled, and she saw that his eyes, as he glanced up, were deeply bloodshot. He tugged fiercely at the straps and bit his lips as she questioned him; he stammered his answer.

“Yes, he is badly hurt—shot through the lungs—we can't move him—the guide is there.”

The doctor came out on the porch, hurriedly scribbling something on a leaf of paper. The hotel-keeper's wife was with him.

“You'll send a man down for these at once? We mustn't lose any chance. Is the horse ready?”

“In a minute, doctor. I must get the other things ready.”

The young woman looked terrified, half-distracted. As her eyes fell on Hilda, she uttered a cry. Hilda was studying the doctor's face. He was young; he seemed very ill. He was bent and emaciated. But now for the moment he stood erect, he appeared full of energy. His hollow eyes were lighted by a sudden glow of life. He spoke in a quick, curt, decided voice, and his look at Hilda was resolute and cool.

“I am going with you,” she said.

“How can you go? There's only one horse here, and I cannot walk so far.”

“But I can. I am very strong.”

“You will be in the way. There is only one small cabin—one room.”

“No matter; I am going.”

He looked at her an instant longer, shrugged his shoulders, and turned to Adrian.

“Do you think you can find the way back there?”

“Yes.”

Adrian spoke without looking up again, without heeding Hilda. His fingers trembled so that he could not buckle the straps of his bundle. Beads of sweat stood on his forehead, and his face was streaked with dirt. His rough blouse and knickerbockers looked as though he had been rolled on the wet earth. He seemed physically almost exhausted, yet strung to an intense nervous pitch. Hilda stood gazing at him with piercing eyes. The doctor had gone into the house. The hotel-keeper came up to the steps leading a bronco with a heavy Mexican saddle on its piebald back.

“Adrian, is he much hurt?”

At that low question he started and got to his feet.

“Hurt? Yes. I think he's going to die.”

“How? How did it2”

His look of terror and anguish struck her like a blow.

Mrs. Lovell appeared in the doorway, and Hilda instantly went in.

“Mother, I'm going up there with them. I must have something to eat. Come and help me.”

They went into the dining-room, and Hilda ate some bread and butter and cold meat, while Mrs. Lovell poured out distracted questions and entreaties and tears.

“Oh, Hilda, you can't go up there alone, and how am I to go with you? My poor child, what can I do?”

“Nothing, mother,” said Hilda, in a dry voice. “But I can't stay here—you see that, don't you? They say he's dying.”

“Hilda! How did it happen?”

Hilda shook her head and averted her eyes. As Mrs. Lovell approached her, she bent her body sharply away.

“Don't touch me, mother,” she said, in the same quiet, expressionless tone.

In a few moments she got up and went into her room.

“Bring me your brandy, mother, if you have any,” she called.

Mrs. Lovell brought her small flask, always carried for medicinal purposes, and Hilda put it into a satchel which she had filled with linen and now slung over her shoulder by a strap. She moved quickly, decisively, and in five minutes she was ready. Her short, tweed dress, heavy shoes, and gaiters needed no change. She looked equal to the task before her, in spite of her extreme pallor and the strained brightness of her eyes. There was at any rate not a shade of hesitation about her, nothing that could give Mrs. Lovell an excuse for detaining her.

“Hilda, how am I to hear? When will you come back?” she cried.

“I don't know, mother. I will send word if I can, if there is any one to send. Some one will be coming up from here to-morrow.”

“You will want me to come, too, Hilda? Surely I can help2”

“I don't know. I will send word. We know nothing yet.”

She went hastily out on the veranda. The doctor was already mounted, with various bundles strapped on the peaks of his saddle. He gave some last orders to the innkeeper, Donohoe, in a tone of military curtness, then with a glance at Hilda picked up his bridle, and the bronco moved off into the trail which led up the mountainside.

Adrian followed. He carried a heavy knapsack. As Hilda joined him he looked at her dully, without surprise, and drew a long breath.

“At last—I thought we'd never get off,” he said.

“When did you get here?” asked Hilda.

“I don't know—half an hour ago, I think. I lost my way coming down. I ran all the way—but I lost several hours.”

He looked up in a bewildered way at the sky through the pine-tops.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“I think it's about three,” said Hilda. “How long will it take us?”

“Three hours, at least, and if it gets dark2” he glanced about uneasily with restless eyes.

Since the first moment he had not met Hilda's look squarely. He looked half-distracted—furtive, frightened, completely off his balance. He took Hilda's coming as a matter of course, made no protest nor comment; in fact, he hardly noticed her. The one idea in his mind seemed to be the necessity for speed. He leaped up by the side of the trail, and with long strides overtook and passed the doctor on his horse, and so took the lead. Hilda found it hard to keep up with him.

“When did it happen?” she demanded ruthlessly.

“This morning—about noon, I think.”

“And you—Adrian—you2

“It was an accident!” he cried, with a sullen, defensive glance at her.

“You did it.”

“I tell you it was an accident. We were stalking—he was some distance away—I saw his gray coat—I was frightfully nervous, and I fired2”

He strode on still faster, as though he were trying to get away from her. And Hilda let him go. She stopped for a moment, with a sudden feeling of faintness. She was out of breath, for they had been climbing a steep grade; she leaned against a tree and waited for the doctor to come up with her. It all seemed strange, far away, unreal—the light through the trees, the feeling of haste, of distress, Adrian's terror—all belonged to something she could not realize.

In a kind of dull dream she waited the approach of the horse. It seemed ages long—that stumbling progress up the slippery slope. Finally it came abreast of her; the rider, shaken by a sudden fit of coughing, bent forward over the saddle-peak, pressing his handkerchief to his lips. His eyes were closed, and Hilda thought that in spite of his clutch on the saddle-peak, he was going to fall from the horse. She went on by his side, watching him anxiously. In a few moments the coughing ceased; he opened his eyes and looked at her. She saw in them deadly weariness, physical pain; then the waking of pride, the instinct of self-control, of self-obliteration.