<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></SPAN>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
<p>When they had talked for ten minutes Stuart abruptly exclaimed,
"Dearest, it was not far from this spot that you once told me you loved
me in every way you knew how to love: that you wanted to be, to me, all
that a woman could be to a man. Have you forgotten? I told you that my
love was always yours ... have you forgotten that?"</p>
<p>Her hands went spasmodically to her breast and her eyes glowed with the
fire of struggle. Suddenly the physical impulses, which she could not
control, deserted the rallying strength of her mind, and she trembled
visibly.</p>
<p>"The two men who say they love me," she broke out vehemently, "are
succeeding between them in driving me mad."</p>
<p>"Because," he as emphatically answered, "you are trying to reconcile a
true and a false allegiance—because—"</p>
<p>"This isn't a time," she broke in on him desperately, "for preaching
theories to me. I'm hardly sane enough just now to stand that."</p>
<p>"I'm not preaching," he protested. "I'm asserting that no amount of
bigotry can white-wash a living sepulcher."</p>
<p>"I told you I wanted to be alone.... I told you—" Her voice broke. "I
told you that I <i>must</i> be alone."</p>
<p>"You defied me to attack when and where and how I chose," came his
instant rejoinder. "I'm fighting for your salvation from the undertow."</p>
<p><span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_270" id="Page_270"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>His eyes met hers and held them under a spell like hypnosis, and hers
were wide and futile of concealment so that her heart and its secrets
were at last defenseless.</p>
<p>"I—I will go back to the house," she said, and for the first time her
voice openly betrayed her broken self-confidence.</p>
<p>"<i>Can</i> you go?" he challenged with a new and fiery assurance of tone.
"Don't you know that I can hold you here, without a word, without a
touch? Don't you realize that I can stretch out my arms and force you,
of your own accord, to come into them?"</p>
<p>She seemed striving to break some spell of lethargy, but she only
succeeded in swaying a little as she stood pallid and wraith-like in the
moonlight. Her lips moved, but she failed to speak.</p>
<p>"I will never leave you again." Farquaharson's voice leaped suddenly
with the elation of certain triumph. "Because you are mine and I am
yours. I said once with a boy's assurance that they might surround you
with regiments of soldiers but that I would come and claim you. Now I've
come. There is no more doubt. Husband or lover—you may decide—but you
are mine."</p>
<p>Her knees weakened and as she tried to retreat before his advance she
tottered, reaching out her hands with a groping uncertainty. It was then
that he caught her in his arms and crushed her close to him, conscious
of the wild flutter that went through her soft body; intoxicated by the
fragrant softness of the dark hair which he was kissing—and at first
oblivious to her struggle for freedom from his embrace.</p>
<p>"Stuart ... Stuart...!" she pleaded in the wildly agitated whisper of a
half-recovered voice. "Don't—for God's sake, don't!"</p>
<p>But as she turned up her face to make her final plea, he smothered the
words with his own lips upon hers.</p>
<p><span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_271" id="Page_271"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>For years she had dwelt for him on the most remote borderland of
unattainable dreams. Now her heart was throbbing against his own and he
knew exultantly that whatever her mind might say in protest, her heart
was at home there. In his brain pealed a crescendo of passion that
drowned out whispers of remonstrance as pounding surf drowns the cry of
a gull.</p>
<p>But at last her lips were free again and her panting protests came to
him, low but insistent. "Let me go—don't you see?... It's my last
chance.... The tide is taking me." Then feebly and in postscript, "I'll
call for help." But the man laughed. "Call, dearest," he dared her.
"Then I can break silence and be honest again. Do you think I'm not
willing to fight for you?"</p>
<p>The moment had come which she had faithfully and long sought to avoid:
the moment which nature must dominate. Even as she struggled, with an
ebbing strength of body and will she realized that in the wild moment of
his triumph she was a sharer. If he were to release her now she would
crumple down inertly at his feet. Almost fainting under the sweep of
emotion, her muscles grew inert, her struggles ended. The tide had taken
her.</p>
<p>Slowly, as if in obedience to a command from beyond her own initiative,
she reached up the arms that had failed to hold him off and clasped her
hands behind his head and when again their lips met hers were no longer
unresponsive. Slowly she said in a voice of complete surrender, "Take
me—my last gun is fired. I tried—but I lost—Now I can't even make
terms."</p>
<p>"You have won," he contradicted joyously. "You've conquered the
undertow. 'The idols are broken in the Temple of Baal.'"</p>
<p>She was still dependent upon the support of his arms: still too
storm-tossed and unnerved to stand alone and her words came faintly.</p>
<p><span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_272" id="Page_272"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"I surrender. I am at your mercy.... There is in all the world nothing
you can ask that I can refuse you."</p>
<p>"You have chosen—finally?" he demanded and he spoke gravely, unwilling
that she should fail to understand. "There will be no turning back?"</p>
<p>"You have chosen—not I," she replied, her eyes looking up into his.
"But I accept ... your choice ... there will be no turning back."</p>
<p>"You are ready to repudiate, for all time this life ... Eben Tollman ...
the undertow? You will be big enough and strong enough to break these
shackles?"</p>
<p>"I am ready—" she said falteringly.</p>
<p>"And you will not feel that you have proven a traitor—to the memory of
your father?"</p>
<p>That was a hard question to ask, but it must be asked. He felt a shiver
run through her body and <i>he</i> saw in her eyes a fleeting expression of
torture.</p>
<p>"I am ready," she repeated dully. Somehow he remembered with a shudder
hearing a newspaper acquaintance describe an execution. The poor wretch
who was the law's victim went to the chair echoing in a colorless
monotony words prompted into his ear by the priest at his side. Then he
heard her voice again.</p>
<p>"Are you through questioning me, Stuart? Because if you are ... I have
something to say."</p>
<p>"I am listening, dearest."</p>
<p>"You see you must understand. You have conquered. I have
surrendered—unconditionally. But it's not a victory to be very proud of
or a surrender to be proud of. Once I could have given you
everything—with a glory of pride—but not now." He had to bend his ear
to catch her words so faintly were they breathed. "I'm overwhelmed, but
not convinced. I'm ready to choose because your will has proven the
stronger—but I know that it's only a triumph of<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_273" id="Page_273"></SPAN></span> passion over right.
Some day we may both realize that—and hate each other."</p>
<p>"But you have chosen! You've risen above the bigotry of your blood!"</p>
<p>"No. I'm just conquered—whipped into submission. I told you you might
attack when you liked.... I thought I was strong ... and I wasn't. It
isn't a victory over my strength—but over my weakness. To-night I was
utterly helpless."</p>
<p>She seemed stronger now, and in a sudden bewilderment the man released
her and she stood before him pale but no longer inert.</p>
<p>"Then—then," he spoke with a new note of misgiving, "your decision is
not final after all?"</p>
<p>That word "helpless" was ringing like a knell over his late triumph. It
tinged victory with a hideous color of rapacity and brutality.</p>
<p>"Yes—it's final." She spoke slowly and laboriously. "It's final because
I've confessed my helplessness. If I rallied and resisted you to-night
... I know now ... that I'd surrender again to-morrow. There's only one
way I can be saved now."</p>
<p>"Saved—but you've saved yourself. What do you mean?"</p>
<p>"No, I've lost myself. You've won me ... but that's over. I can't fight
any more.... I tell you I'm helpless." After a moment she added with a
ghost of new-born hopefulness: "unless you can do my fighting for me."</p>
<p>"What would you have me do?" His words came flatly and with no trace of
their recent elation.</p>
<p>"It is for you to say, Stuart. I'm yours.... I have no right to ask
mercy ... when I lost ... when I love you so that ... that I can't
resist you."</p>
<p>"So, the code of your fathers still holds you," he said miserably. "The
undertow."</p>
<p>"I believe in what I've always believed," she told him.<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_274" id="Page_274"></SPAN></span> "Only I can't
go on fighting for it any longer. It's for you to decide now ... but you
inherited a code, too ... a code that has honor for its cornerstone, and
that might be able to put generosity above victory.... I wonder if it
could ... or if I'm worth the effort."</p>
<p>"Honor!" he exclaimed with deep bitterness. "A word with a thousand
meanings and no single meaning! A tyrant that smugly rides down thought
and tramps on happiness!"</p>
<p>"Honor has a single meaning for a woman." She laid both hands on his
shoulders and looked into his eyes. Her own held a mute appeal stronger
than words, and her voice was infinitely tender.</p>
<p>"Stuart, whatever you do, I love you. I love you in every way that I
know how to love ... but in the name of my God and yours and of my love
for you and your love for me ... I ask you—if you can—take me back to
the house—and don't enforce your victory."</p>
<p>The man straightened up and stood for a while, very drawn of feature and
pallid. He lifted a hand vaguely and the arm dropped again like dead
weight at his side. Without seeing them, he looked at the mirrored stars
in the fresh-water lake across the way and twice his lips moved, but
succeeded in forming no words.</p>
<p>At last his head came up with a sudden jerk and his utterance was
difficult.</p>
<p>"So you put it up to me, in the name of your God: to me who acknowledge
no God. You ask it in the name of generosity."</p>
<p>"No," she corrected him. "I'm not in a position to ask anything.... I
only suggest it. I'm too helpless even to plead."</p>
<p>She moved over a few paces and leaned for support against the gnarled
trunk of a scrub pine, watching him with a fascinated gaze as he stood
bracing himself<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_275" id="Page_275"></SPAN></span> against the inward storm under which his own world and
hers seemed rocking.</p>
<p>With the heavy and dolorous insistence of a muffled drum two thoughts
were hammering at his brain: her helplessness: his honor.</p>
<p>But he had never put honor underfoot, he argued against that voice; only
an arbitrary and little conception of honor.... Yet she could not rid
herself of that conception ... and she was helpless. If he took her now
into the possession of his life, he must take her, not with triumph but
as he might pick up a fallen dove, fluttering and wounded at his
feet—as an exquisitely fashioned vase which his hand had shattered.</p>
<p>He remembered their first meeting in Virginia and his wrath when she had
laughed at his narrative of the Newmarket cadets.</p>
<p>The Newmarket cadets!</p>
<p>His father had been one of them at fifteen. There came again to his
ears, across the interval of years, the voice of the old gentleman, so
long dead, telling that story in a house where traditions were strong
and hallowed.</p>
<p>Across a wheat field lay a Union battery which must be stormed and taken
at the bayonet's point. Wave after wave of infantry had gone forward and
broken under its belching of death. The line wavered. There must be a
steady—an unflinching—unit upon which to guide. The situation called
for a morale which could rise to heroism. General Breckenridge was told
that only the cadets from the Virginia Military Institute could do the
trick: the smooth-faced boys with their young ardor and their
letter-perfect training of the parade grounds. Appalled at the thought
of this sacrifice of children, the Commander was said to have exclaimed
with tears in his eyes, "Let them go then—and may God forgive me!"</p>
<p>And they had gone! Gone because there burned in<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_276" id="Page_276"></SPAN></span> their boyish hearts
this absurd idea that honor is a word of a single meaning: a meaning of
sacrifice. They had gone in the even unwavering alignment of a
competitive drill, closing-up, as those who fell left ugly gaps in their
formation, until those who did not fall had taken the gun which the
veterans had not been able to take.</p>
<p>That had been the honor of his fathers, the honor which he had been
declaring himself too advanced to accept blindly. Suddenly his boyhood
ideals and his mature ideas fell into the parallel of contrast—and
beside that which he had inherited, his acquired thought seemed tawdry.
Of course, charging a field gun was an easy and uncomplicated thing in
comparison with his own problem, but his father would have met the
larger demand, too, with the same obedience to simple ideas of honor.</p>
<p>His own contention had been right and Conscience's wrong. That he still
believed. So the spirit of the French Revolution had been perhaps a
forward-moving colossus of humanity: a triumph of right over
aristocratic decadence. And yet the picture of a slender queen going to
the guillotine in a cart, with her chin held high under the jeers of the
rabble, made the big thing seem small, and her own adherence to code
magnificent.</p>
<p>Slowly Stuart went back and spoke in tones of level resolution.</p>
<p>"To make war on you when you defied me was one thing ... to fight you
when you are helpless is another.... I wasn't fighting you then but the
rock-bound bigotries of your ancestors." He paused, finding it hard to
choose words because of the chaotic things in his mind.</p>
<p>She had confronted him with a splendid Amazonian spirit of war and a
declaration of strength which he could never break, and the cause for
which she had<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_277" id="Page_277"></SPAN></span> stood was the cause of a cramped standard which he
repudiated. Now she no longer seemed a militant incarnation, but a
woman, softly vibrant: a woman whom he loved and who was helpless.</p>
<p>He added shortly:</p>
<p>"You win, Conscience. I can't accept what you can't freely give."</p>
<p>"Stuart—" she exclaimed, and this time the ring of revived hope
thrilled in her voice, but he lifted a hand, very wearily to stop her.</p>
<p>"I've complained that when the crisis comes we react to the undertow. If
you are the exponent of your code, that code is good enough for me. I
bow to a thing bigger than myself.... Your God shall be mine, too ...
to-morrow I leave, and I won't come back."</p>
<p>"Now, Stuart, my love," she declared, "you can say it truly: 'The idols
are broken in the Temple of Baal.'"</p>
<p>But the renewed life of her voice faltered with the sudden realization
of the other thing: of the bleakness of her future when he had gone, and
suddenly she broke out in undisguised terror.</p>
<p>"But even until you go, Stuart ... even until to-morrow, protect me
against myself, because ... I am totally helpless, and I love you rather
madly."</p>
<p>Instinctively her arms came out and her eyes burst once more into the
fires of passion, but she made an effort and drew back, and as she did
so the stress of the fight prevailed and, had he not caught her, she
would have fallen. She had fainted.</p>
<p>Farquaharson picked her up in his arms, and, distrusting himself to
remain there, started to the house, carrying her like a sleeping child.</p>
<p>The sight of the man going up the path with the woman in his arms was
the only portion of the entire interview which Eben Tollman saw, but it
served his<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_278" id="Page_278"></SPAN></span> imagination adequately as an index to the rest. He had,
after a long wait on the terrace, followed them to the pines, but had
not announced himself. His arrival had been too tardy to give him a view
of their first—and only—embrace, and his distance had been too great
to let him hear any of their words. When, after a circuitous return, he
reached the terrace, his wife was sitting, pale, but with recovered
consciousness, in a chair, and he himself went direct to his study.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_279" id="Page_279"></SPAN></span></p>
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