I had been entertained at her house the previous winter when I had been studying a play that made me perfectly10 willing to be exploited by Mrs. Franklin Shane, for the sake of what I got out of it to fatten11 my part. There in London she called for me in her car the afternoon of the day that brought her my note. I don't remember that anything was expressly said about it, but it was in the air that Mrs. Franklin Shane had arrived, in her study of Exclusiveness, at knowing that the younger members of it were addicted12 to the society of ladies of my profession, and meant to make the most of me. I thought it might be amusing to see what, supposing with me as a tolerable bait, she could catch a younger son, she would do with him. She was clever enough not to put the use she was to make of me, too obviously. I was invited to an informal reception the next afternoon in which she found herself involved by her husband's business exigencies13; I gathered from her way of speaking of it that the guests were chiefly Americans and that she had made the best of the situation, extracting from it for herself a kernel14 of credit by not turning down her compatriots, now that she was assured of having the English aristocracy to play with.
The house in front of which a hansom deposited me the next day, was notable; one could guess that the Franklin Shanes had been made to pay a pretty penny for the privilege of occupying it. It was stuffed full of the treasures of four hundred years of the selective instinct.
"You must really see the Velasquez," my hostess had confided15 to me as soon as I had shaken hands with her, and I judged from the fact of her not mentioning my name to any other of her guests, that she was saving me for a special introduction.
The Velasquez was very wonderful; there was also an early Holbein and a Titian so black with time that there was only one point in the room from which you could make out what it was about. I was slowly making my way to that point. I had been in the house half an hour and had met but one or two people whom I slightly knew, when I was aware of my hostess piloting toward me through the press, a black-coated male in whom I suspected one of the pegs16 upon which her social venture hung. It occurred to me that she had sent me to look at the pictures so that she might know where to find me. The room was packed with Americans, satisfying in the only way open to them, a natural curiosity as to the shell in which the only kind of society which wasn't open to them, lived, and the man blocking out a passage through it with his shoulders, was so tall that it brought my eyes on a level with his necktie. There was an odd freedom about it that set me at once to correct my impression of him by his face, and the moment I raised my eyes to him I knew him.
I could hear Mrs. Franklin Shane mumbling17 the phrases of introduction, rendered unimportant by the radiant recognition that for the moment enveloped18 us, that burst around us as a flame in which our hostess seemed to shrivel and go out in a thin haze19 of silk and chiffon. I remember looking around for her presently, and wondering how she had got away from us. We began again at the point where we had left off.
"So you did go on the stage then, in spite of Taylorville?"
"And you," I pressed my foot into the velvet20 pile of the carpet to make sure that I stood. "You are an engineer, I suppose?"
"In spite of my uncle!"
Somewhere in the next room some one began to sing. I did not hear the song nor see the Titian. I was back in Willesden pasture and the soft rain of dying leaves was on my face. I was conscious of nothing but his hand which he had laid upon my arm to steady me against the pressure of the crowd which swayed and turned upon itself to let Mrs. Shane through, to drag me to be presented to the singer who was even more of a notability than I was.
There was an interval21 then in which I appeared to be going through the forms of society, and going through them under an intolerable sense of injustice22 in the fact that having found Helmeth Garrett at last, now I had lost him. It was one of those occasions when the inward monitor is so bent23 on its own affairs that the habit of living goes on automatically, or does not go on at all. It went on so with me for half an hour. By degrees, what seemed an immense unbearable24 throbbing25 of the universe, resolved itself at the renewal26 of that electrifying27 touch on my arm, to the thrum of an orchestra in the refreshment28 room. I felt myself carried along by the pressure of the crowd in that direction, but just at the turn of the stair that went down to it I was drawn29 peremptorily30 aside.
"Come," Mr. Garrett insisted, "come out of this. I want to talk to you." There was the old imperiousness in his manner, exclusive of all other considerations. He seemed to know the house. We took a turn through the hall came out presently at the porte cochère where a line of carriages waited, supported by a line of skirt-coated figures like little wooden Noahs before an ark. I let him put me into a closed carriage without a word of protest. I had not taken leave of my hostess; I had not so much as thought of her. I suppose he had been arranging this in the interval in which I had not seen him. The moment the door of the carriage was shut, we clasped hands and laughed shamelessly.
"You had three little freckles31 high up on your cheek, what became of them?" he demanded. All at once his mood changed again. "All the years I've been without you!... I saw a picture of you in a magazine three years ago in Alaska. I came near writing."
"You should have. What were you doing there?"
"Promoting Engineer, Alaska, Russia, Mexico." He began a gesture to include the whole round of the mining world, but left off to take my hand again. "The world is round," he declared, as though he had somewhat doubted it. "It brings us back again to the old starting points."
"They're always the same, I suppose, the places we set out from; but we ... we are never the same."
"Is that a warning?" He looked at me, checked for a moment.
"Only a platitude32." I had thrown it out instinctively33 against his engulfing34 manner, against everything that rose up in me to assure me that nothing whatever had changed, that it would never change. The life of the London streets streamed around us; crossing Piccadilly Circus we were held up with the traffic; the roar of the city islanded us like a sea.
"To your hotel; Mrs. Shane gave me the address. I told her we were old friends. You mustn't be surprised if you find she expects us to have gone to school together. I wanted to get away where we could talk." I gave him an assenting36 smile. Still neither of us showed any disposition37 to begin. He took off his hat in the carriage and ran his fingers through his hair. About the temples it had gone gray a little. Now and then he gave a short contented38 laugh as a man will, put suddenly at ease.
"I'm glad you kept the old name, Olivia Lattimore ... Olivia. I shouldn't have found you without."
"You knew I had lost my husband."
"I read that in the magazine. There's where I have the advantage of you." He dropped his light banter39 for a soberer tone. "My wife died two years ago." We were silent after that until the fact had been put behind us by a space of time.
I don't know why London seems a more homey place than New York. It has been going on so long, perhaps, is so steeped in the essential essence of human living, and the buildings there are smaller, more personal, the mind is able to grasp them to the uttermost. I remember as we stopped at my hotel, being taken suddenly with a tremendous awareness40 of it all, the noble river flowing by, the human stream, miles on miles of homes, and the green countryside. I was aware of a city set in an island and an island in the sea, the wide immortal41 sea going around and around it, the coursing waves—I checked myself in an upward gesture of the arms, as though I had pulsed and surged with it. I caught in my companion's smile a delighted recognition.
"Flora! Oh, Flora wouldn't even think about a play-actor. What would your uncle——"
"He's dead now." He stopped me.
"They are all dead," I told him, "all those that mattered to us."
We had another mood when we came to my rooms. I perceived suddenly what there was in him more than I had known. It was in his manner that he had commanded men. I was pierced through with a sense of his virility43, the quality that goes to make a male. I was glad of an excuse to put away my hat and wrap, to escape for a moment from the effect he produced on me ... from inordinate44 pride in him that he could so produce it. The room was full of the tumult45 we created for one another.
"Will you sit here?" I said at last. I believe I pushed a chair toward him.
"No, you." He must have turned it back toward me, otherwise I do not know how I came to be so near him.
"You know," I said, ... "I never got your letter."
"I guessed as much when it came back to me. I should have come to you the next day, but I quarrelled with my uncle. I walked all the way to the railway station before I remembered. But what had I to offer you?"
"It was so long ago ..."
"No, no, yesterday." His arms were around me. "Olivia ... yesterday and to-day!"
I think I moved a little to be the more completely engulfed46 by him, to lay against his the ache of my empty breast; all these years I had not known how empty. We kissed at last and Joy came upon us. We loved; we kissed again between laughter. I remember little snatches of explanation in the intervals of kissing.
"All this time, Helmeth, I have wanted you so."
"I was on my way to you. All last winter in Alaska ... in the long night, Olivia. I should have come soon."
"Oh," I cried, "I have been drawn across the sea to you. All the way I felt you calling!"
"We had to meet again; had to!"
After a time I insisted that he should sit down. "You haven't had any tea." I tried to get control of myself. I was crossing the room to ring when he swept me up again.
"Look here, Olivia, I don't want any tea. I want you. God!" he said, "do you know how I want you?" All at once I was crying on his breast.
"Oh, Helmeth, Helmeth, do you know you have only seen me twice in your life."
"And both times," he insisted, "I've wanted to marry you."
It was two or three days before we spoke47 of marriage again. I believe I scarcely thought of it; we had all the past to account for, and the present. We had moments of strangeness, and then we would kiss, and all the years would seem to each of us as full of the other as the very hour.
"Where were you, Helmeth, the second summer after we met?" I had told him of my visit to Chicago and the dream of him I had had there.
"Out in Arizona, carrying a surveyor's chain, dreaming of you! Often when the moonlight was all over that country like a lake, I would walk and walk. I had long talks with you; they were the only improving conversation I had."
"For years," I said, "that dream of you was the only thing that kept my Gift awake. Times I would lose it, and then I would dream again and it would come back. I know now when I lost it completely, it was about a year before I saw you that time in Chicago." I had told him of that, too.
"That year I married." I could see that there was something in the recollection always that weighed upon him.
"I didn't," he said, "until after my aunt had told me about you. I went back there when she died; she was always good to me. You know, don't you, Olive, that in spite of everything ... everything ... there is only you."
"Let us not talk of it." I do not know how it is proper to feel on such occasions, but I supposed that he must have had as I had, stinging tears to think of the dead and how their love was overmatched by this present wonder. I would have had, somehow, Tommy and my boy to share in it.
"My dear! you needn't expect me to be surprised at anything Helmeth Garrett does." She talked habitually49 in italics. "My husband says that it is only because he so generally does right, that it is at all possible to get along with him." I snapped up crumbs50 like this with avidity.
"His wife, too, you must have known her." I hinted. This was at the end of a rather complete account of Helmeth's business relations with Mr. Shane.
"Oh, well," I could see Christian51 charity struggling with Mrs. Shane's profound conviction of the rectitude of her own way of life. "She was a good woman, but no—imagination." She was so pleased to have hit upon a word which carried no intrinsic condemnation52 that she repeated it. "No imagination whatever. One feels," she modified the edge of her judgment53 still further, "that so much might have been made out of Mr. Garrett. These self-made men are so difficult."
"I suppose so; anyway I am self-made. She is right so far; I dare say it is badly done. You'll have to take a few tucks in me."
"Not a tuck. I like you the way you are. Oh, I like you ... I like you so!" There was an interval after this before we could go on again.
"Tell me how you made yourself, Helmeth. Don't leave anything out, not a single thing."
"By mistakes mostly. Every time I had made one I knew it was a mistake and I didn't do it again. I don't know that I'm much of a success anyway, but I've got a large assortment55 of things not to do."
"That was the way I learned how to act; filling in behind!"
"I thought that came by instinct. What counts with a man, is not so much getting to know how to do it, but getting a chance to prove to other people that he knows how."
"I've been through that too," I told him, but he was bent on making himself clear.
"I suppose I ought to tell you, Olivia, I'm only a sort of scab engineer. I haven't any papers."
"But if you can do the work? Mrs. Shane said——"
"Oh, Shane will trust me; he's learned. What hurts is to have worked up a scheme to the point where it is necessary to have outside capital, and then have one of the outsiders stick out for a certificated engineer. That's what comes of my uncle's notion that a man should 'pick up' his professional training." There was the core of that old bitterness rankling56 in him still; he could not yield himself quite to consolation57.
"But you have got on, Helmeth, you got here." What "here" meant to me exactly, was more than my lover, more than the pleasant room behind us, the obsequious58 servitors, more even than the sleek59, silvered river and the towered banks that took on shapes of romance under the London gray. There was something in the word to me of fulfilment, the knowledge of things done, the certainty of an unassailed capacity for doing. We were sitting with the broad window flung open, the top of a lime tree tapping the sill of it with soft shouldering touches, as of some wild creature against its mate, creaking a little in somnolent60 content. I put out my hand to touch his knee—oh, as I might have done it if the "here" had been the point toward which we had travelled together all these years. He laughed then as he often did when I touched him, a man's short full laugh of repletion61. He thrust out his knee quite frankly62 till it touched mine, and closed his hand over my fingers; he returned to what had been in the air the previous moment with an effort. The suspicion that it was an effort, was all I had to prepare me for what was about to leap upon me.
"Oh, I've pulled through, I've pulled through. But I'm not where I might have been. And I'm not rich, Olivia. Not what is called rich."
"Is being called rich one of the things that goes with—what was it you called yourself—a promoting engineer?"
"It goes with it if you are any good at it. Not that I care about money except for what it stands for ... and then there are the girls."
"You have—girls." It struck me as absurd that I hadn't thought of it until that moment.
"I thought Mrs. Shane would have told you. I have two. It isn't going to make any difference with you, Olivia?"
"Ah, what difference should it make!" I was apprised63 within me by the haste I made to cover my consternation64, that there was more difference in it than my words allowed. "Children of yours?" I said. "So much more of you for me to love." The apprehension65 was whelmed in the possessing movement with which he drew me to his breast.
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strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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lurked
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| vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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saluting
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| v.欢迎，致敬( salute的现在分词 )；赞扬，赞颂 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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fatten
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| v.使肥，变肥 | |
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addicted
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| adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的 | |
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exigencies
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| n.急切需要 | |
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kernel
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| n.(果实的)核，仁；(问题)的中心，核心 | |
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confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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pegs
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| n.衣夹( peg的名词复数 )；挂钉；系帐篷的桩；弦钮v.用夹子或钉子固定( peg的第三人称单数 )；使固定在某水平 | |
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mumbling
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的现在分词 ) | |
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enveloped
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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unbearable
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| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
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throbbing
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| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
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renewal
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| adj.(契约)延期，续订，更新，复活，重来 | |
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electrifying
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| v.使电气化( electrify的现在分词 )；使兴奋 | |
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refreshment
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| n.恢复，精神爽快，提神之事物；（复数）refreshments:点心，茶点 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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peremptorily
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| adv.紧急地，不容分说地，专横地 | |
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freckles
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| n.雀斑，斑点( freckle的名词复数 ) | |
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platitude
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| n.老生常谈，陈词滥调 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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engulfing
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| adj.吞噬的v.吞没，包住( engulf的现在分词 ) | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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assenting
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| 同意，赞成( assent的现在分词 ) | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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banter
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| n.嘲弄，戏谑；v.取笑，逗弄，开玩笑 | |
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awareness
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| n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智 | |
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immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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flora
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| n.(某一地区的)植物群 | |
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virility
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| n.雄劲，丈夫气 | |
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inordinate
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| adj.无节制的；过度的 | |
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tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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46
engulfed
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| v.吞没，包住( engulf的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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47
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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48
tardily
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| adv.缓慢 | |
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49
habitually
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| ad.习惯地，通常地 | |
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50
crumbs
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| int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式 | |
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51
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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52
condemnation
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| n.谴责; 定罪 | |
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53
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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54
retailed
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| vt.零售（retail的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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55
assortment
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| n.分类，各色俱备之物，聚集 | |
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56
rankling
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| v.（使）痛苦不已，（使）怨恨不已( rankle的现在分词 ) | |
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consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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58
obsequious
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| adj.谄媚的，奉承的，顺从的 | |
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sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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somnolent
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| adj.想睡的，催眠的；adv.瞌睡地；昏昏欲睡地；使人瞌睡地 | |
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repletion
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| n.充满，吃饱 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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apprised
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| v.告知，通知( apprise的过去式和过去分词 )；评价 | |
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64
consternation
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| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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65
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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