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Max

<h2>CHAPTER XL</h2> <div class="first">THE hour was sped, the day past; night, with its dark wings, covered the eastern sky and, one by one, the stars came forth—stars that gleamed like new silver in the light sharpness of the September air.</div> Having closed eyes to the world at the Pré Catelan, Maxine and Blake had lengthened the coil of their dream as the day waxed. Three o'clock had seen them driving into the heart of the Bois, and late afternoon had found them wandering under the formal, interlaced trees in the gardens of the Petit Trianon. At Versailles they dined, falling a little silent over their meal, for neither could longer hold at bay the sense that events impended—that all paths, however devious, however touched by the enchanter's wand, lead back by an unalterable law to the world of realities. With an unspoken anxiety they clung to the last moment of their meal; and when coffee had been partaken of, Maxine demanded yet another cup and, resting her elbows on the table, took her face between her hands. "Ned! Will you not offer me a cigarette?" He was all confusion at seeming remiss. "My dear one! A thousand pardons! I did not think—" "—That I smoked? Are you disappointed?" He smiled. "It is one charm the more—if there is room for one." He handed her a cigarette and lighted a match, his eyes resting upon her as she drew in the first breath of smoke with a quaint seriousness that smote him with a thought of the boy. "Dearest," he said, suddenly, "I have been so happy to-day that I have thought of no one but ourselves, and now, all at once—" Her eyes flashed up to his; she divined his thought, and it was as though she put forth all her strength to ward off a physical danger. "Oh, mon cher, and was it not your day—our day? Would you have marred it with other thoughts?" "No; but yet—" "No! No!" She put out her hand, she pleaded with eyes and lips and voice. "Look! Until this little cigarette is burned out!" She held up the glowing tip. "When that is over, our day is over; then we return to the world—but not until then. Is it—what do you say—a bargain?" Her white teeth flashed, her glance flashed with the brightness of tears, her fingers rested for a second upon his. The restaurant was practically empty; a few summer tourists were dining at tables close to the door, but Blake had chosen the farthest, dimmest corner and there they sat in semi-isolation, living the last moments of their day with an intensity that neither dared to express and that each was conscious of with every beat of the heart. Maxine laughed as she drew her second puff of smoke, but her laugh had a nervous thinness. Blake filled their liqueur-glasses, but his gesture was uneven and a little of the brandy spilled upon the cloth. "A libation to the gods!" he said. "May they smile upon us!" He lifted his glass and emptied it. Maxine forced a smile. "The gods know best!" she said, but as she raised her glass, her hand, also, trembled. But Blake ignored her perturbation, as she ignored his. The coming ordeal lay stark across their path, but neither would look upon it, neither would see beyond the tip of Maxine's cigarette—the tiny beacon, consuming even as it gave light! A silence fell—a silence of full five minutes—then Blake, yielding once more to the craving for the solace of contact, put his hand over hers. "Dear one, I know nothing of what is coming, but that I am utterly in your hands. But let me say one thing. To-day has been heaven—the golden, the seventh heaven!" She said nothing, she did not meet his eyes, but her cold fingers clasped his convulsively, and two tears fell hot upon their hands. That was all; that was the sum of their expression. No other word was spoken. They sat silent, watching the cigarette burn itself out between Maxine's fingers. She held it to the very last, then dropped it into her finger-bowl and rose. "Now, mon cher!" In the dim light she looked very tall and slight and seemed possessed of a curious dignity. All the animation had left her face, beneath the eyes were shadows, and in the eyes a tragic sadness—the sadness that the soul creates for itself. Blake rose also and, side by side, very quietly, they left the restaurant. In the street outside, the cab that had assisted in the day's adventures still waited their pleasure. He handed her to her place and paused, his foot upon the step. "And now, liege lady—where?" She looked at him gravely and answered without a tremor, "To Max's studio." Surprise—if surprise touched him—showed not at all upon his face. He gave the order quietly and explicitly, and took his place beside her. Down the broad street of Versailles they wheeled, but both were too preoccupied to see the lurking ghosts of a past régime that lie so palpably in the shadows, and presently Blake's hand found hers once more. "You are cold?" She shook her head. Through the cool night they drove, under the jewelled cloak of the sky, rushing forward toward Paris as Max had once rushed in the mysterious north express. Blake did not speak or move again until the city was close about them; then, with a gesture that startled her by its unexpectedness, he drew from his hand the signet ring he always wore—a ring familiar to Max as the stones of the rue Müller—and slipped it over her third finger. "Oh, Ned!" She started as the ring slipped into place, and her voice trembled with fear and superstition. He pressed her hand. "Don't refuse it! The ring is the emblem of the eternal, and all my thoughts for you belong to eternity." No more was said; they skimmed through the familiar ways until Maxine could have cried aloud for grace, and at last they stopped at the corner of the rue André de Sarte. She stood aside as Blake dismissed the cab, she knew that had speech been demanded of her then she could not have brought forth a word, so parched were her lips, so impotent her tongue. Her ordeal confronted her; no human power could eliminate it now. To her was the disentangling of knotted threads, the sorting of the colors in the scheme of things. She averted her face from Blake as they mounted the Escalier de Sainte-Marie, and her hand clung for support to the iron railing. Familiar to the point of agony was the open doorway, the dark hall of the house in the rue Müller. Side by side they entered; side by side, and in complete silence, they made the ascent of the stairs, each step of which was heavy with memories. On the fifth floor she went forward and opened the door of Max's appartement. Within, all was dark and quiet, and Blake, loyally following her, passed without comment through the tiny hall, on into the little salon where the light from the brilliant sky made visible the pathetically familiar objects—the old copper vessels, the dower chest, the leathern arm-chair. This leather chair stood like a faithful sentinel close to the open window, and as his eyes rested on it he was conscious of a pained contraction of the heart, for it stood exactly where it had stood when last he watched the stars and rambled through his dreams and ideals, with the boy for listener. The thought came quick and sharp, goading him as many a puzzled thought had goaded him in his months of solitude, and as at Versailles, he turned to Maxine, a question on his lips. But again she checked that question. Stepping through the shadows, she drew him across the room toward the window. Reaching the old chair, she touched his shoulder, gently compelling him to sit down. "Ned," she said, and to her own ears the word sounded infinitely far away. "I seem to you very mad. But you have a great patience. Will you be patient a little longer?" She had withdrawn behind the chair, laying both her hands upon his shoulders, and as she spoke her voice shook in an unconquerable nervousness, her whole body shook. "My sweet!" He turned quickly and looked up at her. "What is all this? Why are you torturing yourself? For God's sake, let us be frank with each other—" But she pressed his shoulders convulsively. "Wait! wait! It is only a little moment now. I implore you to wait!" He sank back, and as in a dream felt her fingers release their hold and heard her move gently back across the room; then, overwhelmed by the burden of dread that oppressed him, he leaned forward, bowing his face upon his hands. Minutes passed—how few, how many, he made no attempt to reckon—then again the hushed steps sounded behind him, the sense of a gracious presence made itself felt. Instinctively he attempted to rise, but, as before, Maxine's hands were laid upon his shoulders, pressing him back into his seat. He saw her hands in the starlight—saw the glint of his own ring. "Ned!" "Dear one?" "It is dim, here in this room, but you know me? Your soul sees me?" Her voice was shaking, her words sobbed like notes upon an instrument strung to breaking pitch. "My dear one! My dear one!" His voice, too, was sharp and pained; he strove to turn in his chair, but she restrained him. "No! No! Say it without looking. You know me? I am Maxine?" "Of course you are Maxine!" "Ah!" It was a short, swift sound like the sobbing breath of a spent runner. It spoke a thousand things, and with its vibrations trembling upon her lips, Maxine came round the chair and Blake, looking up, saw Max—Max of old, Max of the careless clothes, the clipped waving locks. It is in moments grotesque or supreme that men show themselves. He sprang to his feet; he stared at the apparition until his eyes grew wide, but all he said was 'God!' very softly to himself. 'God!' And then again, 'God!' It was Maxine who opened the flood-gates of emotion; Maxine who, with wild gesture and broken voice, dressed the situation in words. "Now it is over! Now it is finished—the whole foolish play! Now you have your sight—and your liberty to hate me! Hate me! Hate me! I am waiting." "God!" whispered Blake again, not hearing her, piecing his thoughts together as a waking man tries to piece a dream. 'God!' The reiteration tortured her. She suddenly caught his arm, forcing him into contact with her. "Do not speak to yourself!" she cried. "Speak to me! Say all you think! Hate me! Hate me!" Then at last he broke through the confusion of his mind, startling her as such men will always startle women by their innate singleness of thought. "Hate you?" he said. "Why, in God's name, should I hate you?" "Because it is right and just." "That I should hate you, because I have been a fool? I do not see that." "But, Ned!" she cried; then, suddenly, at its sharpest, her voice broke; she threw herself upon her knees beside the chair and sobbed. And then it was that Blake showed himself. Kneeling down beside her, he put both arms about the boyish figure and, holding it close, poured forth—not questions, not reproaches, not protestations—but a stream of compassion. "Poor child! Poor child! Poor child! What a fool I've been! What a brute I've been!" But Maxine sobbed passionately, shrinking away from him, as though his touch were pain. "My child! My child! How foolish I have been! But how foolish you have been, too—how sweetly foolish! You gave with one hand and took away with the other. But now it is all over. Now you are going to give with both hands—- I am to have my friend and my love as well. It is very wonderful. Oh, sweet, don't fret! Don't fret! See how simple it all is!" But Maxine's bitter crying went on, until at last it frightened him. "Maxine, don't! Don't, for God's sake! Why should you cry like this? What is it, when all's said and done, but a point of view? And a point of view is adjusted much more quickly than you think. At first I thought the earth was reeling round me, but now I know that 'twas only my own brain that reeled; and I know, too, that subconsciously I must always have recognized you in Max—for I never treated Max as a common boy, did I? Did I, now? I always had a queer—a queer respect for him. Dear one, see it with me! Try to see it with me?" His appeal was pathetic; it was he who was the culprit—he who extenuated and pleaded. The position struck Maxine, wounding her like a knife. "Oh, don't!" she cried in her own turn. "Don't, for the sake of God!" "But why? Why? My sweet! My love! My little friend! Max—Maxine!" It was not to be borne. She wrenched herself free and sprang to her feet, confronting him with a pale face down which the tears streamed. "Because I am not your love! I am not your friend! I am not your Max—or your Maxine!" Swift as she, he was on his feet, his bearing changed, his manhood recognizing the challenge in her voice, his instinct of possession alive to combat it. "Not mine?" he said; and to Maxine, standing white and frail before him, the words seemed to have all the significance of life itself. Now at last they confronted each other—man and woman; now at last the issue in the war of sex was to be put to the test. She had always known that this moment would arrive—always known that she would meet it in some such manner as she was meeting it now. "Not mine?" Blake said again. She shook her head, throwing back her shoulders, clasping her hands behind her, unconsciously taking on the attitude of defiance. "And why not?" It was curt, this question, as man's vital questions ever are; it was an onslaught that clove to the heart of things. She trembled for an instant, then met his eyes. "Because I will belong to no one. I must possess myself." He stared at her. "But it is not given to any one to possess himself! How can you separate an atom from the universal mass?" "An atom may detach itself—" "And fall into space! Is that self-possession? But, my God, are we going to split hairs? Maxine! Maxine!" He came close to her and put out his arms, but with a fierce gesture she evaded him; then, as swiftly, caught his hand. "Oh, Ned! Oh, Ned! Can't you see?" "No!" said Blake, simply. "I cannot." "Listen! Then listen! I know myself for an individual—for a definite entity; I know that here—here, within me"—she struck her breast—"I have power—power to think—power to achieve. And how do you think that power is to be developed?" She paused, looking at him with burning eyes. "Not by the giving of my soul into bondage—not by the submerging of myself in another being. That night in Petersburg I saw my way—the hard way, the lonely way! Oh, Ned!" She stopped again, searching his face, but his face was pale and immobile—curiously, unnaturally immobile. With a passionate gesture, she flung his hand from her. "Oh, it is so cruel! Can't you see? Can't you understand? I left Russia to make a new life; I made myself a man, not for a whim, but as a symbol. Sex is only an accident, but the world has made man the independent creature—and I desired independence. Sex is only an accident. Mentally, I am as good a man as you are." "Ten times a better man," said Blake, startingly. "But not near so good a woman. For I know the highest thing—and you do not." "The highest thing?" "Love." "Ah!" She threw up her hands in despair and walked to the window, looking up blankly at the stars. Then, suddenly, she spoke again, tossing her words back into the room. "I suppose you think I am happy in all this?" He was silent. "I suppose you think I find this heaven?" At last he answered. He came across to her; he stood looking at her with his strange new expression of inscrutability. "Oh, Maxine!" he said, "why must you misjudge me? Little Maxine, who could be taken in my arms this minute and carried away to my castle, like a princess of long ago—but who would break her heart over the bondage! I haven't much, dear one, to justify my existence—but the gods have given me intuition. I do not think you are in heaven." He waited a moment, while in the sky above them the stars looked down impartially upon the white domes of the church and the beacons of pleasure in the city below. "Maxine! Shall I say the things for you that you want to say?" She bent her head. "Well, first of all, God help us, the world is a terrible tangle; and then you have a strange soul that has never yet half revealed itself. You sent me away from you because you feared love; you called me back because you feared your fear—" "No! No! You are reasoning now, not justifying! You are entrapping me!" "Am I?" "Yes, and I refuse to be entrapped! I know love—I know all the specious things that love can say; the talk of independence, the talk of equality! But I know the reality, too. The reality is the absolute annihilation of the woman—the absolute merging of her identity." "So that is love?" "That is love." He stood looking at her with a long profound look of deep restraint, of great sadness. "Maxine," he said, at last, "you have many gifts—a high intelligence, a young body, a strong soul, but in the matter of love you are a little child. To you, love is barter and exchange; but love is not that. Love is nothing but a giving—an exhaustless giving of one's very best." She tried to laugh. "I understand! I should give!" "No, sweet, you should not. You cannot know the privileges of love, for you do not know love." "Oh, Ned! How cruel! How cruel!" "You do not know love," he spoke, very gently, without any bitterness, "and I do know it; for it has grown in me, day by day, in these long months away from you. I am not to be praised, any more than you are to be blamed. But I do love you—with my heart and my soul—with my life and my strength. I would die for you, if dying would help you; and as it won't, I will do the harder thing—live for you." Her lips were parted, but they uttered no sound; her eyes, dark with thought, searched his face. "Oh, Maxine!" He caught her hand. "How low you have rated me—to think I would wrest you from yourself! Is it my place to make life harder for you?" Still she gazed at him. "I do not understand," she said, in a frightened whisper. "Never mind, sweet! It doesn't matter if you never understand. Just give me credit for one saving grace." He spoke lightly, as men speak when they are bankrupt of hope, then with a sudden breaking of his stoicism, he caught her in his arms, straining her close, kissing her mouth, talking incoherently to himself. "Oh, Maxine! Little faun of the green groves! If you could know! But what am I that I should possess the kingdom of heaven?" His ecstasy frightened her; she struggled to free herself. "What is it?" she asked. "What is it?" "Just love—no more, no less! Good-bye! Take your life—make it what you will; but know always that one man at least has seen heaven in your eyes." Again he held her to him, his whole life seeming to flow out upon his thoughts and to envelop her, then his arms relaxed and very soberly he took, first one of her hands, and then the other, kissing each in turn. "Maxine!" "Ned!" The word faltered on her lips. "That's right!" he whispered. "I only wanted you to say my name. Good-bye now! Don't fret for me! After all, everything is as it should be." She stood before him, the conqueror. All preconceptions had been scattered; she had not even won her laurels, they had been placed at her feet; and all the pomp and circumstance she could summon to her triumphing was a white face, a drooping head, and speechless lips. "Good-bye, Maxine!" The words cried for response, and by a supreme effort she summoned her voice from some far region. "Good-bye!" He did not kiss her hand again, but bending his head, he solemnly kissed his own ring, lying cold upon her finger. <hr style='width: 65%;'> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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