Chapter 16

Archer walked down the sandy main street of St. Augustine, toward the house people said was Mr. Welland's. There May Welland stood under a magnolia, a tree with white flowers. The sun was in her hair. He asked himself why he waited so long to come.

Here was the truth. Here was the real thing. Here was the life that belonged to him.

He liked to think that he looked down on foolish rules. Yet he was afraid to leave his desk. What would people say about a stolen holiday?

Her first words were, "Newland, has anything happened?"

He thought a truly "womanly" woman would simply read the reason in his eyes.

"Yes. I found I had to see you," he answered.

Her happy face went red, and the surprise lost its coldness. He saw that she would forgive him easily. Mr. Letterblair might frown, in his mild way. But this kindly family would soon smile even that away.

So early, the main street allowed no more than a formal greeting. Archer longed to be alone with May and pour out his heart. Breakfast at the Wellands' came late, and a whole hour remained. So instead of asking him in, she proposed a walk to an old orange garden beyond the town.

That morning she took a small boat out on the river. The sun made a net of gold on the little waves, and it seemed to catch her too. Her blown hair shone across her warm brown face like silver wire.

Her eyes too looked lighter, almost pale, young and clear. She walked beside Archer with her long swinging step. Her face was calm and empty, like the stone figure of a young runner.

To his tired mind, the sight was as restful as the blue sky and the lazy river. They sat down on a seat under the orange trees, and he put his arm around her and kissed her. It was like drinking at a cold spring with the sun on it.

But perhaps he pressed harder than he meant. The blood rose in her face, and she pulled back, surprised.

"What is it?" he asked, smiling.

She looked at him, surprised, and answered, "Nothing."

Something shy and uncomfortable fell between them, and her hand slipped out of his. He had kissed her lips only once before, in one quick moment among the flowers at the Beauforts' ball. Now he saw that she was shaken out of her cool, boyish calm.

"Tell me what you do all day," he said. He crossed his arms under his head and pushed his hat forward against the sun. While she talked of simple, familiar things, he could follow his own thoughts in peace. So he listened.

She swam, she sailed, she rode horses. Now and then a man-of-war, a great fighting ship, came in. Then the rough little hotel held a dance. A few pleasant Philadelphia and Baltimore people were staying there too. The Selfridge Merrys came down for three weeks, because Kate Merry was ill in her chest.

They planned a lawn tennis court on the sands. Lawn tennis was a new game with a ball and a net. But only Kate and May had racquets, the light tools for hitting the ball. Most people there did not even know the game.

All this kept her very busy. So far she only looked into the book of poems Archer sent the week before, the "Sonnets from the Portuguese." But she was learning by memory, word for word, "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix."

It was one of the first things he ever read to her. And it pleased her that Kate Merry never even heard of a poet called Robert Browning.

Suddenly she jumped up. "We shall be late for breakfast," she cried. They hurried back to the tired, falling-down house where the Wellands passed the winter.

The house had a porch that served no purpose. A porch was a covered open space at the front. Pink and pale blue flowers grew wild and uncut around it.

Mr. Welland could not bear the rough and careless southern hotel. So every year, at great cost and against great difficulties, Mrs. Welland built up a home for him here. Her servants were partly unhappy ones from New York, and partly Black workers from the town.

"The doctors want my husband to feel that he is in his own home," she explained. She said it winter after winter, to the kind people from Philadelphia and Baltimore. "Otherwise he would be so unhappy that the warm air would do him no good."

Mr. Welland himself shone with happiness across the breakfast table. The table, as if by some quiet wonder, carried every kind of fine food. "You see, my dear fellow, we camp here," he told Archer. "We really and truly camp. I tell my wife and May that I want to teach them the hard, simple life."

Mr. and Mrs. Welland were as surprised as their daughter by his sudden coming. But he explained that he felt a bad cold coming on. To Mr. Welland, that seemed reason enough to drop any duty in the world.

"You can't be too careful, especially toward spring," he said. He filled his plate with small pale cakes and covered them in golden syrup, sugar cooked thick and sweet.

"I was not careful at your age, and see the result. May spends her winters in a wild, empty place, with an old invalid. She should be dancing at the Assemblies now, the great winter dances of New York."

"Oh, but I love it here, Papa. You know I do. If only Newland could stay, I would like it a thousand times better than New York."

"Newland must stay till his cold is quite gone," said Mrs. Welland kindly.

The young man laughed and said there was also such a thing as a man's work.

Still, with a few telegrams to his law firm, he made his cold last a week. There was a bitter joke hidden in this kindness. Mr. Letterblair was easy on him because his brilliant young partner settled the troublesome Olenski divorce, and settled it well.

Mr. Letterblair wrote to Mrs. Welland that Mr. Archer gave "a service beyond price" to the whole family. Old Mrs. Manson Mingott was especially pleased.

One day May drove out with her father in the only carriage the place had. Mrs. Welland saw her chance and turned to a subject she never touched when May was near.

"I'm afraid Ellen's ideas are not at all like ours. She was barely eighteen when Medora Manson took her back to Europe. Remember the excitement when she came to her coming-out ball in black? Another of Medora's strange ideas.

"Really, this time it almost told the future. That was at least twelve years ago. Ellen has never once been back to America. No wonder she is completely European now."

"But European society does not allow divorce," Archer said. "Countess Olenska thought she was following American ideas when she asked for her freedom." He spoke her name for the first time since Skuytercliff, and felt his face turn red.

Mrs. Welland smiled, as if she felt sorry for him.

"That is just like the strange stories foreigners invent about us. They think we eat dinner at two o'clock and approve of divorce. That is why it seems so foolish to open our houses to them. They accept our welcome, then go home and repeat the same stupid stories."

Archer said nothing, and she went on. "But we thank you deeply for persuading Ellen to give up the idea. Her grandmother and her uncle Lovell could do nothing with her. Both wrote that she changed her mind only because of you. She said so herself to her grandmother.

"She admires you beyond measure. Poor Ellen. She was always a child that no one could lead. I wonder what her fate will be?"

A fate is the end that waits for a life. Archer's answer stayed inside him, and burned.

"Her fate is what we have all worked to make it. You would all rather see her as Beaufort's mistress, a lover kept without marriage, than as some good man's wife. Then you have gone just the right way about it."

What would Mrs. Welland say if he spoke those words aloud? He could picture her firm, calm face falling apart. A life of ruling over small things gave it a false air of authority. Authority is the look of the right to rule.

Yet some fresh beauty, like her daughter's, still lay on it. Must May's face too grow thick with middle age? Must it set into this same look of innocence, an innocence no truth could break?

Ah, no. He did not want May to have that kind of innocence. That innocence closes the mind, so it cannot imagine anything new. It closes the heart against experience.

"Thank God the horrible business never reached the newspapers," Mrs. Welland went on. "I truly believe such news would kill my husband. I don't know the details, and I ask not to know them. I told poor Ellen so, when she tried to talk to me about it.

"I care for an invalid, and I must keep my mind bright and happy. But Mr. Welland was deeply upset. He woke a little hot and ill each morning while we waited for the decision.

"The horror of it was that his own girl might learn that such things are possible. But of course, dear Newland, you felt that too. We all knew that you were thinking of May."

"I'm always thinking of May," the young man answered. He rose to cut the talk short.

His plan for this talk was to press Mrs. Welland for an earlier wedding day. But no argument came to him that could move her. It was almost a relief when Mr. Welland and May drove up to the door.

His one hope was to beg May herself, once more. On the day before he left, he walked with her to the broken old garden of the Spanish Mission. The Mission was a church house, built long ago by the Spanish. Among such walls, it was easy to speak of Europe.

May looked her loveliest under a wide hat. Its edge threw a shadow, full of secrets, over her too-clear eyes. He spoke of Granada and the Alhambra, old and beautiful places in Spain. Her face turned bright, hungry to hear more.

"We might see it all this spring," he urged. "Even the great Easter days at Seville." He asked for much, to win at least a small yes.

"Easter in Seville? And Lent begins next week!" she laughed.

"Why shouldn't we be married in Lent?" he answered. But she looked so shocked that he saw his mistake.

"Of course I didn't mean that, dearest. But soon after Easter, so we could sail at the end of April. I know I could arrange it at the office."

She smiled dreamily. But he saw the truth. To dream of it was enough for her. It was like hearing him read aloud from his books of poems. The beautiful things in them could not possibly happen in real life.

"Oh, do go on, Newland. I do love your talk of these places."

"But why should it stay a story? Why shouldn't we make it real?"

"We shall, dearest. Of course. Next year." Her voice rested on the words with love.

"Don't you want it to be real sooner? Can't I persuade you to break away now?"

She bent her head, and her hat's wide edge hid her face, like a friend in the secret.

"Why should we dream away another year? Look at me, dear! Don't you understand how I want you for my wife?"

For a moment she did not move. Then she raised eyes so clear, and so without hope, that he almost let her go. But suddenly her look changed and deepened, in a way he could not read.

"I'm not sure if I *do* understand," she said. "Is it... is it because you're not certain of still caring for me?"

Archer sprang up from the seat. "My God... perhaps... I don't know," he broke out angrily.

May rose too, and they faced each other. She seemed to grow before him, no longer a girl but a woman, quiet and strong. Both were silent for a moment, as if their own words frightened them. Then she said in a low voice, "If that is it... is there someone else?"

"Someone else... between you and me?" He repeated her words slowly, as if he needed time to ask himself the same thing.

She heard how unsure his voice was, and her own voice deepened. "Let's talk openly, Newland. Sometimes I have felt a difference in you. Most of all since everyone learned that we are engaged."

"Dear, what madness!" he cried.

She met his words with a small smile. "If it is madness, talking will not hurt us." She paused, and lifted her head in her high, fine way. "Or even if it's true, why shouldn't we speak of it? A man can so easily make a mistake."

He looked down at the black pattern of leaves on the sunny path. "Mistakes are always easy to make," he said. "But if I made the kind you speak of, would I beg you now to hurry our marriage?"

She looked down too. With the point of her sunshade she troubled the pattern of leaves and searched for words. A sunshade was a light cover on a stick, carried against the sun.

"Yes," she said at last. "You might want to settle the question, once and for all. It is one way."

Her quiet, clear sense surprised him. But he did not make the mistake of thinking her cold. Under her hat's edge he saw how pale her face was. Her lips were held quiet and steady. But just above them a small shaking would not stop.

"Well?" he asked. He sat down again and looked up at her. His face was serious, though he tried to make it playful.

She dropped back into her place beside him and went on. "You mustn't think that a girl knows as little as her parents imagine. One hears things, and one notices. One has one's own feelings and ideas."

"And I knew about someone else long before you told me that you cared for me. Everyone was talking about it, two years ago at Newport.

"Once, at a dance, I saw you two sitting together outside on the porch. When she came back into the house, her face was sad, and I felt sorry for her. I remembered it afterward, when we became engaged."

Her voice sank almost to a whisper. She sat closing and opening her hands around the handle of her sunshade. The young man laid his hand gently on hers. His heart swelled with a relief too great for words.

"My dear child, was *that* it? If you only knew the truth!"

She raised her head quickly. "Then there is a truth I don't know?"

He kept his hand over hers. "I meant the truth about that old story you speak of."

"But that's what I want to know, Newland. What I ought to know. I could not build my happiness on a wrong, an unfairness, to somebody else. And I want to believe that you feel the same. What sort of life could we build on such ground?"

Her face wore a look of such sad, high courage that he wanted to bow down at her feet.

"I have wanted to say this for a long time," she went on. "When two people really love each other, I understand this. There may be times when it is right to go against public opinion."

"If you feel yourself promised to the person we have spoken of..." she said slowly. "If there is any way to keep that promise... even by her getting a divorce... Newland, don't give her up because of me!"

So her fear pointed at that old story, his romance with Mrs. Thorley Rushworth. Surprise came first, for that story lay completely in the past. Then wonder came, at the largeness of her offer. She stood ready to break every rule her world lived by.

At any other time, this alone would fill him with wonder. The Wellands' daughter was urging him to marry his former mistress.

But his head was still turning. For one moment they had stood at the edge of a great drop, and he saw over it. He felt a new wonder, close to fear, at the hidden world of young girls.

For a moment he could not speak. Then he said, "There is no promise. There is no duty of the kind you think."

"Such cases don't always... they don't come as simply as... but that doesn't matter."

"I love your great heart, because I feel as you do about those things. Each case must be judged by itself, on its own, apart from the stupid old rules. I mean... each woman has a right to her freedom..."

He pulled himself up short, surprised at the road his own words were taking. Then he looked at her with a smile.

"You understand so many things, dearest. Can't you go a little farther? Waiting is only another form of the same foolish old rules. Can't you see how useless it is to obey them? If there is no one and nothing between us, isn't that a reason to marry quickly, and not to wait?"

Her face filled with color and joy, and she lifted it to his. As he bent toward it, he saw that her eyes were full of happy tears. But a moment later the woman in her seemed to fall away. She came down from that high place, back into being a helpless, fearful girl.

Her courage, he saw, was all for others, and for herself she had none. Speaking out had cost her far more than her careful calm showed. At his first word of comfort, she dropped back into the usual. She was like a child that runs too far, then hurries back to its mother's arms.

Archer had no heart to go on begging. He was too deeply disappointed. For one moment a new being looked at him, deeply, out of May's clear eyes. Now that being was gone.

May seemed to feel his sadness, but did not know how to soften it. They stood up and walked home in silence.