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Wheat in the Ear

Chapter XI. — Behind the Curtain

page 116

Chapter XI.
Behind the Curtain.

The last guest had departed; Miss Goodyear and Joan were alone in the study. Miss Goodyear leaned back wearily in her chair, her brows knit, her eyes gazing vacantly at the lighted stove. Joan sat on the rug at her feet, her hands clasped about her knee, one leg crossed over the other. On the girl's face was a reflective look, as though she were lost in pleasant reverie; it contrasted vividly with the set, almost stern, look of the woman.

A clock in a neighbouring tower struck one. Joan turned her handsome head, looking up and back.

“A new day!” she said, a subdued thrill in her voice.

Miss Goodyear smiled assent, and let her fingers play with her companion's dark soft curls. The look, peculiar to herself, of power and aloofness was very page 117 strong upon her to-night; she seemed by intuition to know the thoughts that worked in Joan's mind.

“When are you going, Joan?”

Joan turned quickly to the fire.

“I have not said that I shall go.”

“But you will. The life of the student is too austere for you; only the scientific mind is satisfied with knowledge; the artistic must have audience—must subordinate others to its imagination.”

Her voice was calm almost to coldness. While Joan hesitated how to frame a reply, Miss Goodyear spoke again, still playing absently with the girl's soft locks.

“The scholar turns his eyes inward; he sees little of the outer world, is indifferent to its opinion. His passion is to know. His enthusiasm and patience are all to unravel the mysterious; there have been some who have spent a life of force over one little knot.”

“Poor martyrs,” said the girl.

“Martyrs, perhaps; but not to be pitied,” came the woman's quick response.

“Not to be pitied, Gertrude? Are you sure? They never feel the pulse of life.”

“They know a rapture, dear, intenser than the page 118 love of man or woman. The isolation of the intellect is not loneliness; it is communion with strength, power, beauty; it is encounter with soul. The senses and body are ungrateful; they demand incessant tendance, and quickly forget that tendance. The mind solicits and retains; its gains are abiding, distinguishable.”

Joan's serenity left her brow; the sweetly animated look passed from her face.

“I have not the instincts of the student,” she said humbly. “I can enter into the passion for fame, but with the passion for knowledge—you are right, Gertrude; I want diversion.”

She drew herself round so that she could look Miss Goodyear full in the face.

“I value knowledge,” she went on quickly, holding the woman's hand in both her own. “I do value it, but as a means to an end; to you it is the end. It sounds cold, cruel, selfish of me to say this in words to you, who are an apostle. You have given seven years to me,” she continued, with a little catch in her breath—“seven long years. See how I reward you. Out of curiosity I have pried a little into the mysteries, taken little jottings, careless sketches. From the very beginning I have asked questions to page 119 have them answered; once answered, I turn to something else. This seems a jest, a mockery of you; I do not mean it so. If I could chain myself to your cause I would—because I honour you.”

Miss Goodyear rose, and, as though seeking refuge, passed over to her book-shelves. Her face was turned from the girl, who watched her with panting breath. She felt that she was striking a blow—felt, too, that she struck for liberty.

“My cause is woman's,” said Miss Goodyear, opening a volume, encouraging her companion not so much as by a glance.

Nothing mattered to Joan just now, except to gain Miss Goodyear's sympathy.

“Gertrude,” she said, with a gulp, “are we to drift apart because I have not your thirst for acquisition? Knowledge enthrals you; appreciation, applause if you will, bewitches me. You are happy in application. I care little for research, if I can achieve the result of penetrating the emotions of mankind. There is a sweetness, an intoxication to me in this. You could suffer poverty and scorn in your efforts to enlighten darkened minds; I don't care anything about any women, except myself and mother and you. I am selfish; I always was.”

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Miss Goodyear turned, and came slowly back. Seating herself once more, she drew Joan to the rug again.

“I don't pretend to misunderstand you,” she replied, linking her arms round Joan's waist, and looking her in the eyes. “You want to go free; you can't link yourself with my life. I shall not ask you. I am not a humble woman, and I don't believe in persuasion. What I see in your face I have seen in other faces before.” She paused for a moment and removed her gaze. “You don't love me well enough to make my cause yours,” she continued coldly. “You don't say it, but your look implies it. I have nothing to do with your future, Johnnie.” She lifted her eyes, and looked searchingly at the face before her. “For me, you can go free.”

She tried to unclasp her hand from Joan's, but the girl would not let it go.

“You don't mean, Gertrude, that you cast me off? That, because I cannot see with your eyes, I must forfeit your friendship? Do you remember the first night I came here?”

Miss Goodyear nodded assent. She waited for page 121 Joan to finish her broken sentence, but Joan's lips quivered; she did not go on.

“You are not crying, are you, Johnnie? That foolish name! it is absurd to call you by it.”

Joan did not reply; she rose instead, and went to the porch door. It was a misty, moonlight night, like that upon which Professor Stanton had first heard her read. The river and trees lay under a haze; the tall, red houses opposite were in darkness, except for one window in a tower. Joan's eyes rested upon it unconsciously; suddenly they brightened. There was sympathy with her art.

Miss Goodyear stole to the girl's side, cast an anxious glance in the direction of Joan's gaze, and, with a movement that was almost timid, folded a white shawl about the slender shoulders. She feared to speak, lest she should irritate, so she contented herself with looking. Joan held her head proudly; her face was sad, her eyes continued to stare blankly at the lighted window.

“I'd better go home with my father and mother,” she said presently. “I was a disappointment and a sorrow to my mother; and now I am a disappointment and a sorrow to you.”

“That is not true, Joan—and you know it.”

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Her tones were those of weariness and pain; she moved away from the girl's side listlessly and went down to the gate, and, leaning upon it, looked up, then down the road. The ghostly trees clustered in weird groups opposite, the stars in the sky were few, but there was a quickening breath in the breeze that stirred the budding branches. She was tired; her hold on the good of life seemed at that moment frail. She was bitter and hurt. The almost agonised care she had given her charge had led to this—Joan panted to relieve her of responsibility! Her strength was spent, her arm nerveless, she told herself; she could not retrace the way again, only to be left once more upon the dreadful border of desertion. Her brain reeled; she sensed what it would be when she stood forsaken. No, no, it was not desertion of self she feared—it was not human flesh that shrank; it was the desertion of her cause, the shame of intellect she dreaded, she told herself.

She gave a hurried backward glance, fearing detection in her conflict; drawing her hooded cloak about her, she slipped lightly through the gate and crossed the belt to the opposite avenue of oaks. The branches were budding with early promise of spring; but their intricate interlacing did not wholly page 123 shut out the pale sky. The isolated stars seemed to look between the branches, curious of the woman's caprice of passion. Their aloofness—the length of their existence—effaced for a moment the remnant of courage left in the woman's spirit.

“Everything disappears; our memory perishes,” she thought, with bitterness; “our work is but a bubble on human history.”

Joan was right to take her pleasure and profit from passing days! Her face was white, her mouth sternly set. She suffered the agony and humiliation that none know but those who give their best in vain, and that not once only. She discerned nothing in that hour except the defeat, felt nothing but the loneliness of one who, pursuing an ideal at the cost of all, finds he has out-distanced those whose companionship is life. Presently she became dimly aware that a figure was approaching from the museum end of the avenue. Her mind was too engrossed for wonder or concern. She kept her stern gaze upon the tall, stooping, steadily on-coming figure, as upon the vision of a dream, and without questioning. Like two sleep-walkers the man and the woman approached each other through the silver mist, then stopped in mutual recognition.

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Professor Stanton lifted his hat with his accustomed deference. Miss Goodyear bowed in unembarrassed response. They turned by common instinct of companionship and paced slowly on together. The woman felt his presence grateful. There was a pleasant self-possession, an aloofness from mortal passion, in his contact, that checked her tempestuous thought. He, in his way, was as aloof from distracting contradictions as those pale stars above. He was a savant indeed; the ordinary emotions of mankind passed him by completely; her hot anger and hungry yearning were appeased. They paced the length of the avenue in silence, and turned to retrace their way.

“thank you,” said the Professor, with his slow, deliberate speech, uncovering his head and bowing. “I felt myself in need of companionship. To-night I have been oppressed.”

Gertrude Goodyear started. There was a look of care on the man's strenuous face, an accent of suffering in his voice. Was he not then invulnerable? He did not see her quick look of questioning; he was gazing far off—far as his desire.

“To-night I found it easy to understand the sensations of the dying; my previous existence all seemed blank.”

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“Ah!” ejaculated Miss Goodyear, with quick comprehension.

The man brought his gaze to her attentive face.

“You also have experienced that?” he asked, surprised. They turned to walk again, by common impulse. “Renunciation—intellectual renunciation—is annihilation. I cannot renounce,” he continued, clasping his hands together behind his back in a sort of agony. “I cannot abandon effort, although I pursue an hallucination. I strive continually for perfectibility of expression,” he added, in an explanatory tone, remembering that he had not stated his case. “I must strive, though I am profoundly conscious that I shall always fail.”

There was a grandeur about his humility, a pathos in his hopelessness that went straight to the heart of the woman. If he had cried out about any other thing, she would have thought him weak; this mental torture she understood—so she thought. In reality, it was the human suffering and not its cause that stirred her. Here was one whom, a moment before, she had believed remote from the common lot—one whose endowments she revered—humbled and sore as she.

“I am a failure,” said the Professor simply. “My page 126 life has been a longing for speech, and I am dumb. We live in an age of echoes. If I cannot create—and I cannot—I will not add to tawdry reproduction. Your friend Miss Jefferies is happy to voice perfectly perfect words. The sorrow of my life is to see perfection and reach mediocrity.”

“You study your poets for style,” answered Miss Goodyear, with that ring in her voice that meant encouragement; “let them talk to you more.”

An hour ago she had been despairing; incentive to sublime daring there had seemed none. The despair of another lighted her lamp of faith once more; she held it to throw a light on the darkened path of the man allied to her in intellect.

“I honour you for your endurance. It is sublime to be thrown and stand; overthrown again and re-stand. I cannot recite like Johnnie”—she hesitated endearingly over the pet name—“but let Browning talk to you. What does he make the ‘Faultless Painter’ say?

“‘Well, less is more.
… There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed, beating, stuffed-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes to prompt
This low-pulsed, forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
Their works drop downward; but themselves, I know,
page 127 Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me:
Enter and take their place there sure enough,
Though they come back and cannot tell the world.’”

“—Cannot tell the world!” echoed the Professor in his soft whisper. The reiteration vibrated with a note of despair on the quiet night.

Miss Goodyear's voice was strong with courage as she concluded:

“‘Ah! but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?’”

The woman had escaped from her own despondency in lifting his. She played her old hope and enthusiasm upon him to be played upon in return. She was talking and dealing with a living soul, not an abstract fact, and the discourse edified her own spirit. The affirmations of strength strengthened her. Her eyes were brilliant; she bent forward in bestowal. Teaching was her art—sometimes her great art—when she let herself overflow with a sort of divinity she had a large perception and penetration. She was above the consideration just then that the hour and conversation were unusual.

She went over to her garden and went back to page 128 her study, forgetful of self. Then, with a shock, she remembered her own need, for, wearied with waiting, Joan had fallen asleep. Her transparent skin was guiltless of shadows; her dark lashes rested upon her tinted cheeks. Miss Goodyear's horizon narrowed; the exaltation died from her face. She looked down at the sleeping girl yearningly and tenderly.

“I love you, dear,” she murmured. “It is you, you, you I covet. I am jealous of your voice, because its music is sweeter to you than I am. I own it to-night; I have had a lesson in honesty.”

The next morning brought Mother, hungry for satisfaction, in a subdued whirlwind of excitement, for the answer to her question:

“When was the maid coming home?”

The maid sat sideways on her chair, swinging her leg over the rail, as in the days of long ago. Janet smiled on the blooming girl, the happy roses stealing into her own cheeks, for Joan looked then little older than she had looked when under maternal restraint. But there was a startled expression in the girl's eyes. Was it to be teaching, or nothing? Was the farm the only alternative if she abandoned Miss Goodyear?

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“It won't be so lonesome for you as it used to be; there'll be a boy about the farm,” said Mother, smiling a little sadly. “Father finds it more than he can manage, so he is taking a young man to help him—the son of a gentleman in the Old Country. He wants to get an insight into colonial farming before taking a farm of his own.”

“I suspect you and he are great friends,” said Joan, with a softening face. “You always wanted a son, didn't you?”

There was a quick look of apprehension in the woman's eyes. Did her child think a stranger could take her place? A quiver of emotion shook her lips. She dropped the subject of the young man.

“The old place will look beautiful in the spring,” she pleaded.

Joan swung her foot slowly for a silent moment or two; then, looking up quickly, said with determination:

“Very well, dear; I will come with the spring.’

The mother's jealous torments were at an end. Joan was saying to herself that she had a few weeks for special study before her holiday. She did not for a moment imagine that she should stay. The suggestion had been a shock to her. The instincts page 130 astir in her did not tend to seclusion. Things would work right somehow. The energy she felt within her moved to progress in her art. She knew that Father would be on her side. Miss Goodyear would, she hoped, be softened by degrees. While she was at home she might win Mother to the thought of a public life for her daughter. At present she must make concessions.

Miss Goodyear and Janet were left alone to their farewell. Miss Goodyear showed no sign of last night's irritability or discomfort. She was pale and calm. The absent-minded expression of her eyes was inexplicable to Janet, who had a strong distaste for being ignored in all affairs concerning Joan. She sought a distinct understanding as soon as possible.

“Joan is coming home in the late spring,” said she, with almost aggressive hardness in her voice, looking searchingly at the face before her.

“Ah!” exclaimed Miss Goodyear, stooping forward and gazing past Janet, perhaps at the lonely days ahead. She had almost despised the farm-woman at the first. She had dreaded to be bored; she still had a nervous distaste for Janet's prim, superior air, and would have avoided this page 131 interview could she have done so courteously. She was conscious of a feeble wish, through her overpowering weariness, that it would end as little awkwardly as possible.

Janet gave a loose and little jarring laugh.

“She's been a sight of trouble to you, I'm sure. You will be glad to get her off your hands.”

Miss Goodyear brought her gaze to Janet's face.

She drew herself straight and held her head up.

“I have all a mother's love without a mother's rights,” she said.

“Aye, the maid is mine,” responded Janet, hardening her heart to the sadness in the other woman's voice, remembering, instead, her own years of waiting.

Miss Goodyear flushed slightly, and put out her hand almost timidly.

“All yours?” she asked covetously. “You are her flesh mother; am I not, perhaps, the mother of her intellectuality?”

“Its nurse,” replied Janet, with curt cruelty. “Her intellect comes from her father.”

Gertrude Goodyear remained in her study for the rest of the day. She walked round her shelves with new affection.

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“There is peace here,” she said.

Then she sat down and leaned her golden head upon the cushion of her chair.

“Self-government,” she murmured once; and again, “The girl would have stood between me and reality.”

When Joan came to search for her towards evening, Miss Goodyear roused from her dull stupor. The two pairs of grey eyes looked interrogatingly at each other.

“Dear,” said the woman humbly, “can we not be friends?”