Introduction
The main argument
Twentieth and twenty-first century philosophy has brought about the need to rethink metaphysics. Onto-theological and theological-political structures that have dominated the philosophical tradition well into modernity have undergone far reaching reevaluations. Spinoza’s thought has often been perceived as the moment in which these structures congealed. Yet, much as Emmanuel Levinas taught us that a rethinking of metaphysics necessitates a reassessment of Descartes as its point of departure, indeed as a thrilling moment of considering the relation between totality and infinity, so too a reassessment of the towering figure of Spinoza at the advent of modernity can bring us to a threshold of renewed metaphysical thought. For no one better than Spinoza articulated the meaning of the advent of a new world while deeply understanding the faded promise of the old. It is in this spirit -
ough projects of modern philosophy. At the core of this project is Spinoza’s attempt to revise the theological concept of God through philosophical criticism. Despite his bold and outright attack on theology’s concept of God, Spinoza did not come to the conclusion that the concept of God is in itself a false concept that should be abolished. On the contrary, Spinoza concludes that the concept of God is indeed true and of the highest importance, but one that had hitherto been imbued with an incorrect and distorted meaning. Therefore, in order to revise the traditional concept of God, Spinoza endeavors to refine it, removing all the dross of superstition, and to cast it in the mold of reason.
Spinoza himself, and subsequently his most prominent interpreters, point out the presence of logical contradictions in the theological concept of God, and the absence of those contradictions in the philosophical concept of God, as the decisive difference between the two. It is due to this difference, though not solely because of it, that the relation between the theological concept of God and the philosophical concept of God is considered to correspond to that between falsehood and truth.
Contrarily, my main argument in the present book will be that Spinoza’s philosophical alternative to the theological concept of God also contains logical
contradictions. These contradictions in the concept of God are found not only in its multitude-oriented version in the first kind of knowledge, but also in its rational and redemptive versions in the second and third kinds of knowledge, respectively. However – and this is the main point – while the theological concept of God is destroyed by the logical contradictions prevalent in it, Spinoza’s concept of God is constructed from the logical contradictions contained within it and is founded upon them in each one of the three kinds of knowledge.
On the surface this argument seems untenable, not only because “the truth does not contradict the truth,” (Letter 21, IV/126) but also because it is “absurd” to claim, as Spinoza explicitly asserts in the Ethics, that “a Being absolutely infinite and supremely perfect,” namely, God, “would involve a contradiction” (I.P11 Alt. Dem. II/53).1 Moreover, this claim is outrageous; for if it were indeed correct, the status of contradiction in Spinoza’s philosophy has been misunderstood for over 300 years.2
Nevertheless, my central argument in this book will be that a careful and meticulous reading of the Theological-Political Treatise (TTP from here on) on the one hand, and the on the other, necessarily leads to the conclusion that Spinoza’s concept of God is based on logical contradictions in each of the three kinds of knowledge. This conclusion will rely on a reading of Spinoza’s writings according to the following methodology.
Methodology
Adhering to the law of contradiction is the basic instinct in reading a philosoph ical text. This instinct is particularly strong when approaching Spinoza’s works, especially the . This is not only because Spinoza gained a reputation as a pure rationalist, but mainly because his choice to present his philosophy by means of the Euclidean model gives the reader the impression that they are facing a strict, consistent philosophical system that necessarily follows from itself.
But truth is indifferent to our instincts in general, and to our instinct of reading in particular. Therefore, my point of departure will challenge the assumption that, because of its form, Spinoza’s philosophy is Euclidean. As long as this assumption is not grounded in the text itself, it is the same as a prejudice; this is why I will be considering content over form in Spinoza’s philosophy. Consequently, definitions, axioms, propositions, proofs, and even scholia that don’t fall in line with adherence to the law of contradiction, will be presented as such. Thus, I will avoid the natural tendency to place the responsibility for the flaws found in canonical texts on the reader; instead, the author – in this case Spinoza – will be held accountable.3
Moreover, the tendency to attribute consistency to Spinoza’s philosophy is prevalent not only among readers of the Ethics but also among readers of the TTP. In this work, Spinoza adopts a writing method of concealment in which he contradicts himself intentionally while making numerous statements as lip service to his different audiences. Consequently, the tendency to attribute
3
consistency to his philosophical system is reinforced, though from an entirely different angle. Given the intended textual obscurity that is prevalent in the TTP, the reader’s natural tendency is to attribute the contradictions encountered in the text to Spinoza’s writing method of concealment, which was intended to protect him and the society in which he lived.
Following Strauss, the prevalent assumption is that all of the contradictions in the TTP are ascribed to rhetorical flourish, which serves Spinoza in concealing his consistent, contradiction-free alternative to the theological concept of God.4 However, this assumption is also unacceptable as long as it is not grounded in the text itself. Even if Spinoza uses intentional contradiction as a method of concealment, we cannot assume a priori that the position Spinoza is concealing does not itself contain contradictions. Therefore, my reading method will not adopt the assumption of any classification or categorization of the contradictions that arise from the TTP.5 Here, as well, I will prefer content over form, even if this preference leads to troubling conclusions regarding the consistency of the arguments in the TTP.
, despite how perplexed we might become from contradictions that arise in our study, we should not attribute them to our own lack of understanding of these canonical texts. Were we to do this,logians of whom Spinoza disapproves, “reason, the greatest gift and the divine ]” (TTP, XV, p. 188 [182], slightly Indeed, no philosopher in the history of Western philosophy has surpassed Spinoza in his opposition to the consecration of texts, canonical though they may be.
Spinoza’s philosophy is conducted below the surface as much as it is above. Therefore, despite its impressive monumental architecture, its proper understanding requires a fundamental and meticulous textual excavation. Although it is not the only motive to conceal his views, Spinoza’s theological-tiousness forces him to adopt a double-layered mode of writing whenever dipping his quill in ink. As Strauss claims in his classic Persecution and the Art of Writing:
[O]ne cannot leave it at the impression that while the TTP is, of course, exoteric, the Ethics is Spinoza’s esoteric work simply, and that therefore the solution to all the riddles of the TTP is presented explicitly and clearly in the Ethics. For Spinoza cannot have been ignorant of the obvious truth which, in addition, had been pointed out to him if not by Plato, at any rate by Maimonides, that every book is accessible to all who can read the language in which it is written; and that therefore, if there is any need at all for hiding the truth from the vulgar, no written exposition can be strictly speaking esoteric.7
According to Strauss, the Euclidean presentation in the Ethics, just like the Scriptural presentation in the TTP, serves Spinoza as a veil behind which he
conceals his true views regarding God. Indeed, as I will aim to demonstrate, just as Spinoza’s concept of God is not biblical, it is also not Euclidean, despite that it is embedded with elements and fundamental insights from Athens on the one hand and Jerusalem on the other.
Accordingly, Strauss rightfully demands that the reading of the Ethics should be conducted with the same wariness and extreme caution used when reading the TTP. Meeting this requirement makes reading the Ethics even more exhausting than the TTP;8 not only do the readers of the Ethics constantly feel as though they are about to drown in the thousands of references in the textual ocean that Spinoza left behind, but they are also forced to be on guard throughout the length of the text. Every definition, axiom, proposition, demonstration, and even scholium must be double-checked in search of Spinoza’s true position concealed in a possible alternative subtext.9
Indeed, Strauss focused exclusively on the TTP in his pioneering study of concealment via contradiction in Spinoza’s philosophy, while leaving it to others to investigate the status of contradiction in the Ethics. Moreover, in his study of the TTP, Strauss argues that concealment via contradiction stems from the phi losopher’s obligation to protect himself and the society in which he lives; he posits that the need to speak in a manner intelligible to the multitude (ad captum vulgi loquisophy behind numerous contradictions.
In the following, I aim to complete Strauss’ study on concealment through contradiction in Spinoza’s philosophy in two ways: first, I will extend the frame work of analysis by including , the latter of which has still not been studied in the context of contradiction and concealment; and, second, I will expose additional considerations, aside from theologicalpolitical caution, which justify the contradictions not only in Spinoza’s concept of God in the first kind of knowledge, but also in his concept of God in the second and third kinds of knowledge. The linkage between the three kinds of knowledge and the three corresponding concepts of God arises from Spinoza’s definition of religion, upon which the structure of this book is based.
Spinoza’s definition of religion, the structure of the book and its central arguments
In the fourth part of the Ethics, during the course of the exposition of his moral philosophy, Spinoza defines religion as follows:
whatever we desire and do of which we are the cause insofar as we have the idea of God, or insofar as we know God, I relate to religion [religio].
(IV.P37, Schol 1, II/236)11
Methodologically, Spinoza deviates here from a formal Euclidean system when he frames the definition as a proposition’s scholium, rather than include it where it belongs in one of the other five lexicons found in the Ethics. 12 However, the
location of the definition of religion is not exceptional; as we will soon see, in the Ethics Spinoza presents numerous definitions outside of where one would expect to find them in a Euclidean system.13
In terms of content, however, this definition of religion is exceptional. Spinoza defines religion as action derived from knowledge of God;14 note: knowledge of God, not necessarily true knowledge of God. In other words, for Spinoza religion signifies the entire range of activities that is derived from the idea of God that we possess, whether that idea of God is the result of true knowledge or whether it is the result of false knowledge.
And so, if we link Spinoza’s definition of religion (IV.37, Schol 1, II/236) to the three kinds of knowledge in his philosophical system (II.40, Schol 2, II/122), we can distinguish between three levels of religion accordingly: religion in the first kind of knowledge; religion of the second kind knowledge; and religion of the third kind of knowledge.
Already, at our point of departure, Spinoza’s definition of religion stands out as deviating from a formal Euclidean system in that it underscores divergent and contradictory content. Religion, according to Spinoza’s definition, marks the falsehood of the first kind of knowledge and the truth of the second and third
The core of the structure of this book, which will focus on Spinoza’s revision of religion, is the correlation between religion and knowledge. Each of the three parts of the book explores the way in which Spinoza revises the concept of God, thetively. Structurally, the first part of the book primarily analyzes the TTP, while the . Indeed, these two works constitute the most developed and comprehensive iteration of Spinoza’s revised religion; the focuses on religion in the second and third kinds of knowledge. In the first kind of knowledge, Spinoza aims to revise the superstitious concept of God among the multitude. As 15
On the other hand, in the second and third kinds of knowledge Spinoza seeks to revise the concept of God through reason grounded in strict logical consistency. Therefore, the ascent from the first to the second and third kinds of knowledge completely changes the nature of Spinoza’s revised religion in that it transforms it from a theological-political project to a metaphysical-existential one.
Synopsis
The following is a brief synopsis of the structure of the book and its main arguments.
The central argument in Part I of the book is that Spinoza presents in the TTP, if not explicitly but implicitly, two contradictory models of revised religion whose goal is to ensure the stability of society.
In the first part of the TTP (Chapters 1–15), Spinoza presents a revised religion that is founded on a reduction of the religious to the moral, wherein
obedience to God is reduced to obedience to the laws of morality. In the second part of the TTP (Chapters 16–20), however, Spinoza presents a revised religion that is founded on a reduction of the religious to the political, wherein obedience to God is reduced to obedience to the laws of political authority. The concept of God in the first kind of knowledge contradicts itself because it functions distinctly as a morally oriented concept in the first part of the TTP, but distinctly as a politically oriented concept in the second part.
Furthermore, a careful reading of the TTP reveals five interconnected contradictions which lead to the conclusion that Spinoza puts forth two wholly opposed models of revised religion:
1 In the first part of the TTP the biblical prophet is presented as the ethical hero of the revised religion, while in the second part he is presented as a dangerous political rebel.
2 In the first part of the TTP, Spinoza chooses Jesus to serve as the role model of revised religion since the latter advances ethical excellence. Contrarily, in the second part, Spinoza chooses the Roman military leader Manlius ) – who had his son killed for violating military command – to serve as the role model of revised religion, because
3 In the first part of the TTP, the ecclesiastics of the revised religion are intended to be teachers of morals who aren’t subordinate to the political authority. In the second part of the TTP, however, the ecclesiastics are made
4 In the first part of the TTP the right to interpret the foundations of faith is granted to everyone. In the second part, however, this right is granted to the
5 is defined as “a constant and perpetual 59 [59]), while in the second is defined as “a fixed intention to assign to each person what belongs to them in accordance with civil law” (TTP, XVI, p. 203 [196]). It is impossible to ignore the blatant grafting of the phrase “accordance with civil law” onto the second definition of justice. Whereas in the first part of the TTP justice is defined strictly according to moral standards, in the second part it is defined strictly according to political standards.
I will then turn to demonstrate, through a careful reading of Spinoza’s analysis of the ancient Hebrew state, that the contradiction between the reduction of the religious to the moral on the one hand, and the reduction of the religious to the political on the other, does not destroy the concept of God in the first kind of knowledge but rather constructs it. Indeed, this theoretical contradiction creates a balance between the obligation of citizens to the moral law and their obligation to the laws of the state; and in this way, the concept of God in the first kind of knowledge fulfills its goal as a concept intended to ensure the stability of society.
In Part II, which is the crux of the book, my central argument is that the concept of God in the second kind of knowledge contains numerous logical contradictions. However, these contradictions do not destroy the concept of God but rather construct it. As an absolute concept God must contain all, every thing and its opposite; moreover, as wholly other and completely different in essence God must have His own logic in whose framework contradiction constructs its object instead of destroying it.
Just as in the first kind of knowledge contradiction does not destroy but constructs the concept of God from the point of view of social stability (the only point of view of religion in the first kind of knowledge), in the second kind of knowledge contradiction does not destroy but constructs the concept of God from the point of view of reason (the only point of view of religion in the second kind of knowledge). Just as in the first kind of knowledge the concept of God was constructed by tensions and contradictions in order to ensure social stability, in the second kind of knowledge the concept of God is constructed from the opposite binaries and contradictions embedded within it in order to reflect God existence in its entirety; indeed, for Spinoza God and existence are one and
During the course of Part II, nine crucial contradictions, which I refer to as “contradictions of depth,” will be revealed in the concept of the God of reason. Each of these contradictions individually, and even more so collectively, support the claim that Spinoza intentionally chose the principle of contradiction as the
inition of God (I, D.6, II/45) will serve as a point of departure for revealing the
The second chapter will explore the first two contradictions that arise from Spinoza’s neglecting and contradicting his own axiom of causality (I, A.4, II/46): (1) the contradiction between the finite and the infinite and (2) the contradiction
In the third chapter two additional consequences of Spinoza neglecting and contradicting his axiom of causality will be presented: (3) the contradiction regarding the essence of things that follow from God – Spinoza presents the essence of things that follow from God as one that both involves existence and as an essence that does not involve existence; and (4) the contradiction regarding the perfection of those things that follow from God is presented at once as both absolute and only partial.
In the fourth chapter an additional contradiction will be examined: (5) the contradiction between viewing reality as a static unity on the one hand and viewing it as a dynamic multiplicity on the other. Alongside the strict Parmenidean portrait of existence in the Ethics that presents it distinctly as a barren wasteland of uniform and unchanging infinite existence, Spinoza also offers a Heraclidean portrait of existence that presents it as an entity with infinite parts, caught in an endless stream, not only in the domain of logic, but also in the domains of space and time.
The fifth chapter explores the conatus, a principle situated at the heart of Spinoza’s metaphysical system, and reveals five contradictions embedded in it. Two of these contradictions have already been presented (and therefore will be noted here according to their original numbering): (1) the contradiction between the finite and infinite and (5) the contradiction between the static and dynamic. The three additional contradictions are: (6) the contradiction between the efficient cause and the final cause; (7) the contradiction between the definition of substance (I, “General Definition of the Affects,” II/45, p. 3) and the definition of mode (I, “General Definition of the Affects,” II/45, p. 5); and (8) the contradiction between the good and the evil in God.
The sixth and final chapter of Part II will be dedicated to presenting (9) the contradiction between eternity and time and the circularity between the two; even though Spinoza claims explicitly that eternity and time contradict one another, he also claims that they derive from one another. In the same vein, Spinoza considers existence solely as eternal, and he also considers existence as both eternal and temporal, while positing equivalence between them.
The main claim in Part III is that the contradiction that arises from God’s intellectual love of himself does not destroy the concept of God in the third kind of knowledge, but constructs it in that it ensures God’s salvation, which is none other than the salvation of man, who loves God by means of his intellect. that considers the contradiction caused by the intellectual love of God in Spinoza’s system as the most destructive among all the other contradictions present in it; the love of God turns him into an effect of an external cause, thus completely negating his true knowledge, his infiniteness, and his freedom; additionally, in this framework God is rendered subject to distinct human affect.
By contrast, I will argue that while, on the one hand, all things that follow from God are contradicted and destroyed by an external cause (III.4, II/145), God is, on the other hand, constructed by an external cause (V.35, II/302). God constructs, on the basis of an external cause, his love for himself, which enables him to break his own boundaries and increase his existence or his perfection (according to the definition of love, joy, and perfection; III, DefAff 6, II/192, DefAff 2, II/192, and II, Def 6, II/85, respectively). Transforming the most evidently destructive contradiction for all things following from God into a constructive and redemptive contradiction for God, presents the apex of the uniqueness of God’s existence as sui generis.
This interpretation of the issue of the intellectual love of God will be supported by an analysis of the correspondence between Spinoza and Blijenbergh. Although Spinoza does not break his silence in this exchange of letters regarding the meaning of contradiction in his system (he even explicitly denies its existence), during the course of the correspondence he repeatedly conflates the contradiction in the concept of God with the intellectual love of God. He thus leads us between the lines to the insight that only through proper understanding of the intellectual love of God – one of the more complex and enigmatic issues in Spinoza’s thought – can we grasp the ultimate and complete meaning of contradiction in the concept of God within his system.
A final note: Spinoza takes care to conceal the different contradictions in his system behind a fortified wall of heavy silence. Therefore, not only is he not willing to reveal the meaning of the contradictions embedded in his system, he does not even admit to their existence. Despite this, Spinoza intentionally left behind narrow fissures in this heavy wall of silence through which it is possible to glance at the inner heart of the system. However, as someone who was devoted to the craft of esoteric writing, Spinoza took care that these fissures too would be concealed. Consequently, only those who do not despair from the logical contradictions cast upon them during the course of studying the system are capable of recognizing these fissures; and in order to reveal the hidden secrets of Spinoza’s system, they encircle its wall out of intellectual love for God.
Notes
1 Citations from the Ethics will be formatted according to the abbreviations in Benedic. Edited and translated by
Persecution and the Art of Writing focused specifically on the contradictions and their status in the TTP, saw them only free concept of142–202. Sigad, in presenting his own original philosophy, (among other philosophical works), does consider the contradictions in Spinoza’s concept of God as contradictions thatledge alone. He does not treat the contradictions in the first kind of knowledge, and thinks that in the third kind of knowledge the contradictions destroy Spinoza’s concept of God, thus bringing his philosophical system to the point of total collapse. Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical
The instinctive tendency to attribute consistency to Spinoza’s philosophical system was already prevalent among those with whom he corresponded. Even Blijenbergh, who locates a logical contradiction in Spinoza’s philosophical position, writes to him “I fear here that I must not properly understand your meaning, for your conceptions seem to me too penetrating for you to commit such a grave error” (The Collected Works of Spinoza, Letter 20, IV/109). In a similar vein, Oldenburg writes to Spinoza: “I approve very much of your geometric style of proof, but at the same time I blame my own obtuseness that I do not follow so easily the things you teach so exactly” (ibid., Letter 3, IV/10). For an extended discussion of the Spinoza-Blijenbergh correspondence see the third part of this book, chapter one. See also the discussion of Spinoza’s letters to de Vries and Hudde in Part III, Chapter 7.
4 Strauss passed down this convention, among others, to Shlomo Pines, “Spinoza’s Tractatus Theological-Politicus, Maimonides, and Kant,” in Segal (ed.), Further Studies in Philosophy, Scripta Hierosolymitana, XX, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1968, pp. 3–54; Steven B. Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997; and Aviezer Ravitzky, Religion and State in Twentieth Century Jewish Thought. Jerusalem: The Israel Democracy Institute, 2002.
5 As Akkerman claims in the introduction to the Latin-French edition of the TTP, even if Spinoza compiled the text from excerpts written during different periods and contexts, it is clear that his purpose was to arrange a new and consistent work. See
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Traité Théologico-Politique, Oeuvres III. Texte établi par F. Akkerman. Traductions et note par J. Lagrée et P.-F. Moreau. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999, p. 8. See too Fokke Akkerman, “Studies in the Posthumous Works of Spinoza, On Style, Earliest Translation and Reception, and Modern Editions of Some Texts” (Doctoral dissertation). Groningen: Krips Repro Meppel 1980. Biderman and Kasher suggest that the earliest text embedded within the TTP is the apologia that Spinoza composed close to the date of his excommunication. See Shlomo Biderman and Asa Kasher, “Why Was Baruch de Spinoza Excommunicated?” in David S. Katz and Jonathan I. Israel (eds), Skeptics, Millenarians, and Jews. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990, pp. 98–141.
6 All quotations from the TTP are taken from Benedict De Spinoza, TheologicalPolitical Treatise. Translated by Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. This is the language used by Spinoza in opposing Rabbi Jehudah Al-Fakhar, who states that reason “should be subordinate to Scripture and indeed wholly subjected to it” (TTP, XV, p. 187 [181]). The expression “dead letters” (mortuis literis) is explicitly Pauline, and represents Judaism as being subject to the “letter that kills” (littera enim occidit; II Corinthians 3:6). Moreover, in my opinion, by using the expression “dead letters” Spinoza relates to the fact that the Jewish Torah scrolls are written without vocalization. In his Latin book of Hebrew cated not by means of letters but by means of diacritical markings, Spinoza notes: “Among the Hebrews vowels are called ‘souls of letters,’ and letters without vowels Benedict
588). For a discussion of possible kabbalistic sources for Spinoza’s statement in this context, see Menachem Lorberbaum, “The Republic in Iyyun:
187. In a footnote, Strauss adds here a ; to Plato’s (275c). For discussion on
9 This point has been dealt with in different ways and contexts by several of Spinoza’s commentators, including: Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 65; Richard Mason, The God of Spinoza: A Philosophical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 35; and Yermiyahu Yovel in the introduction to his Hebrew translation of the Ethics (Baruch Spinoza, Ethics. Translated by Yermiyahu Yovel, Tel Aviv: HeKibbutz HeMeuhad, 2003 [Heb.], p. 44). For a survey of projects dedicated to a critical analysis of the Euclidean nature of the Ethics, including efforts to formalize it, see Shaul Rosenfeld, “The Possibility of a Philosophical System,” PhD. Diss., Tel Aviv University 2006 [Heb.], pp. 317–321.
10 See Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, pp. 176–186.
11 Porrò quicquid cupimus, et agimus, cujus causa sumus, quatenus Dei habemus ideam, sive quatenus Deum cognoscimus, ad Religionem refero. Neither Yovel nor Guttmann maintain the correspondence between Spinoza’s hierarchization of religion and his precise, systematic hierarchization of knowledge. See Yermiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992, pp. 254–256; and Julius Guttmann, Religion and Science: Essays and Lectures. Translated by Shaul Aish. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1955, [Heb.], pp. 204–205.
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12 Four lexicons appear at the opening of each of the first four parts of the Ethics, and an additional lexicon concludes the third part.
13 From the plethora of examples regarding this issue it will suffice to mention four: “Morality” (pietas) and “Being Honorable” (honestas) are defined in the same scholium in which the definition of religion also appears (IV.37, Schol 1, II/236); “veneration” (veneratio) and “dread” (horror) are defined in III.52, Schol, II/180.
14 From a systematic standpoint, “desire” for Spinoza qualifies an action. Indeed, desire (cupiditas) is defined as “appetite [appetitus] together with consciousness of the appetite” (III.9, Schol, II/148). Desire is conatus, the principle denoting the striving of every thing to preserve its independent action, when relating “to the Mind and Body together” (ibid. II/147).
15 See Lorberbaum, “Spinoza’s Theological-Politcal Problem,” Hebraic Political Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Winter 2006), pp. 203–223.
16 From here on I will deploy the term “contradiction of depth” in order to denote a logical contradiction in a fundamental metaphysical issue, such as the relation between the finite and the infinite, time and eternity, static and dynamic existence, etc.
17 The enumeration of contradictions here refers to the order of their presentation in the second part of the present book.
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“There was hardly any opposition.” It was meager but she could not go on without seeming to run into a forbidden or aching subject.
There they had to stop. Helen had a vision of the closed topics between them, a sudden horror of this cleavage. Suppose he didn’t see that he was foolish, that she was not treating him badly, that she must lay up something for herself as a person against the day when he himself might weary of her as a woman. Fiercely she recast her arguments in her own mind. Yet there was that tired look in his eyes. You can fight rancor but not weariness.
“How is Miss Thorstad getting on?”
“Fine. It was a great hunch. You know she actually saves me a lot of thinking. It shows that a girl with wits is worth half a dozen expert stenographers. She has an air about her that is dignified and calm and yet she’s not a stick.”
“I imagine there’s a volcanic soul under that rather calm exterior.”
“Perhaps.”
“Gage, you look tired.”
He made a visible effort to rouse himself.
“Tired? Why, no, dear. Not especially.”
“What are we to do to-night?”
“I have some work to-night.”
She looked somewhat baffled as the door closed after him a half hour later. Then going to the telephone she called Margaret. Margaret was not at home. Helen read for an hour and went to bed early.
Gage had meant to work. But he was not working. He was fighting on through a cloud of bitterness and of thoughts which he knew were not wholly unreasonable. He was sitting at his littered desk, all the paraphernalia of work strewn about him and a picture of Helen on his desk confronting him, accenting his trouble. There she was. He had only to close his eyes and he saw her even more clearly, breaking through the clouded doubts of his mind as she had done in the first days of his marriage— clearness, peace, the one real beauty in the world, the one real truth in the world—Helen—love. And she had said she wanted to be “clean of sex!” He scowled at the thought but it danced before him defiling his memories. It would not go! From those early days, those days of the “hardening process” there had persisted always in Gage secret faith, fading now to a hope,
flaring now to a conviction that sex was clean, was beautiful until some other agency defiled it. He remembered still his tortured adolescent mind revolving around the problems of the mysteries of birth, stirring him to wonder and the leering clandestine ugly talk which seemed an ugly wrapping around the wonder. He had always thought that his son would have no such tortures. His own proven conviction would carry the boy through all doubts. Now he seemed cast back in the mire of his own old doubts. Had Helen always felt defiled? Had all their life been a hideous mixture of shame and complacencies and hidden revulsions? Had they really conquered nothing? Or was there nothing to conquer? Was he overfastidious, unmanly? Was the necessary thing to blunt once more, this time permanently, these illusions of his—to go home to Helen and play the part of the demanding husband, demanding concession in return for concession? Laugh at her whims, her fads, quarrel with her if necessary. If she must run to her conventions, let her go. And let him coarsen his feeling so it was willing to take what was left of her.
He wiped his forehead impatiently. It was damp and that sign of his intensity shamed him. He had learned that the revealing of emotion was man’s shame, to be hidden at all costs. Helen had given him a final lesson in that. Angrily he flung himself into his work, concentrating actually with his will for hours, mastering the intricacies of the question on which he must give an opinion in the morning. When he had done his notes lay ready. He cleaned up the litter of papers, a little frown on his face and looked at his watch. Nearly midnight. He must go home.
All the practical machinery of locking up, starting the car, steering, driving into the garage, locking the garage, turning out the lights in the library. Nothing was different from other nights. He was a man in his own house. But over the formalism of his actions and his deliberate definiteness of conscious thought his mind was in battle. He was trying to kill the part of him that cried out against going to his wife in such a mood. He was trying deliberately to kill it with a blunt edged thought which read “Be a man—not a neurasthenic.” He cursed himself under his breath. He was no damned temperamental actor to carry on like this (Always, always, that choking necessity for repressing these feelings, concealing the fact of feeling). A married man—seven years—rights—duties—nature—foolish whims—but above that persisted the almost tortured cry of his spirit, struggling with the hotness of desire, begging, for its life—“Don’t go home like a beast to her!”
In the morning Helen was again worried by his appearance.
“What time did you come in, Gage?”
“About midnight.”
“You look as if you’d slept wretchedly. Did you?”
“Well, enough.” His tone was surly. He could not bear to look at her, shining haired, head held high, confidence, strength, balance of mind, justice, radiating from her. He knew what a contrast he made—she did not need to tell him of his heavy, encircled eyes, his depressed mouth.
She pushed his hair back from his forehead, standing beside his chair. It was a familiar gesture between them.
“Gage, you mean more than anything else to me. You know that?”
He mumbled an answer.
“But don’t resent it so awfully because I can’t believe that loving is a woman’s only job. We mustn’t absorb each other.”
Quoted, he thought bitterly, from Margaret Duffield. Quite reasonable too. Very reasonable. He suddenly hated her for her reasoning which was denied to his struggling instincts. All desire, all love in his heart had curdled to a sodden lump of resentment.
He picked up the paper. There was Helen, marching across the page, smiling into the camera’s eyes. Curious men with hats and crowding women showed in the blurred background. He looked from the picture to the real Helen.
“Very good picture.”
His tone was disagreeable. And he had not answered her appeal.
“Be fair, Gage.”
Very well, he would be fair.
“I haven’t the smallest sympathy with all this, Helen. I know you regard that as unreasonable. It may be that I am. But I don’t believe you’re bigger or better because of all this. You’ve done it from no spirit of conviction but because you were flattered into doing it. The Duffield girl is simply using you for her own convictions. With her they at least are convictions. But with you they’re not.”
“That’s quite enough, thanks, Gage.”
He was cruelly glad he had hurt her. How it helped the ache in his own heart!
Helen thought: “He’s jealous of Margaret. Terribly jealous. It’s abnormal and disgusting. What has happened to him?” She let him leave the house with what was almost a little life of spirits when he had gone. She had not time to sift these feelings of Gage now. Later, if they persisted. She wondered if he should see a doctor, thought for a moment of psychoanalysis, speculating as to whether that might set him straight. But the telephone began ringing frantically.
CHAPTER XII
GREGORY LECTURES
TIHE committee on entertainment of visiting lecturers had called upon Gregory at his hotel and been pleased. He had the ear-marks of eccentricity, to be sure, but in their capacity of hostesses they were used to that. Geniuses might not live in St. Pierre but they were frequently imported thither and as a matter of fact several had grown there, though their wings had been only budding when they had taken themselves to the denser air of the great cities.
They had met him now and he pleased them. His fine courtesy, the slight exaggeration of his manner, his deference to their arrangements and his lack of pompousness charmed them. They withdrew after he had politely but firmly refused invitations for either lunch or dinner saying that he must concentrate before his talk. He neglected to mention that he was concentrating on Freda and was planning to meet her at a lunch room outside her office where she had said they would have a chance to talk.
A clean, white table needing no cloths to cover its shining metal surface with two bowls of oyster stew, steaming very hot, furnished him and Freda their occasion.
She told him Margaret had asked for him.
“And you told her?”
“That I was having dinner with you to-night. I didn’t mention lunch. Wasn’t that ridiculously secretive?”
“It was deliciously secret.”
“I don’t think I should monopolize all your time, though,” she demurred.
“Freda!” He was frowning now. “You aren’t going to waste time like that, are you? You aren’t going to hint at cheapness and little crippled conventions, are you?”
“No, I’m not. I was just saying—words. I wasn’t thinking. I suppose I was trying to hold you off for a minute for some obscure reason.”
He glanced at her very tenderly.
“You needn’t hold me off, darling. But it’s such a short time. And there’s nothing in the world as wise as to seize the cup of joy when it’s full. There’s an undiscoverable leak in that cup and it empties if you dawdle over it. It may be accident—death—or human perversity—almost anything. I’m so sure our cup is full now that I want to drink it with you quickly. Listen— there’s nothing in the world against it except that some person whom neither of us cares about at all might say we weren’t considered—were too hasty. For the sake of that obscure person whom we don’t know, you aren’t going to send me away, are you?”
She was hesitant.
“It doesn’t trouble you longer that I came out here to see Margaret Duffield, does it?”
“A little,” she answered honestly.
“It shouldn’t. It shouldn’t and it mustn’t. With her it was all argument and all tangle—with you it was like a flash of light.”
“I don’t want her to matter,” said Freda, “I always have wanted my love to come like this. Without question. Fearlessly.”
“Then you will, darling?”
“I don’t care about the rest, but there’s father. I hate to not tell him.”
“Will he hate it when you’re happy?”
“He’ll love it.”
“Then—listen. I shall tell him—later. I’ll tell him that I always prayed that when I married I wouldn’t have to have the eyes of the world on the coming of my bride. That my wedding should be secret and holy. If we could tell him without the rest knowing—but he would tell your mother, wouldn’t he?”
“And mother would want a wedding,” said Freda, a little drearily.
He leaned across to touch her hand.
“You don’t think it’s furtive—clandestine?”
“Oh, no!”
“Do you want me to go?”
“No—”
“I must go on, you see—those damned lectures. I must have the money. And I must go through to Spokane. I could ask you to wait until I got back but, darling—what’s the use of waiting? What’s the use of waiting? We could be married to-morrow—and have Sunday together. Then—then—we could wait for each other. Or you could come with me—”
“No, we couldn’t, Gregory. It’s too expensive. You know we couldn’t.”
She was so definite that his face fell. At the sight of it she smiled and reassured him.
“I shan’t mind a bit not having any money.”
“Money’s a nuisance. But I want enough of it—I’ll earn enough of it to take you to Ireland with me, when I come back in six weeks.”
Her forehead was a little knit. He went on eagerly.
“I’ve never been so practical. You wouldn’t believe what a man of affairs—American affairs—I’ve been. I looked up the name of a little hamlet where we could go to-morrow afternoon and be married by sundown. And then, sweetheart, an eternity of a day before us—and immortality to look forward to.”
“And no one to know.”
“Unless you wish it—no one.”
“I don’t wish it. It sounds dangerous and mad—but if I don’t, Gregory, I know I’ll regret it all the rest of my life. It’s my chance to prove life. It’s not as if I had the faintest doubt of you—”
“Never have I been married,” he laughed, “I’m poor and that’s the worst of me. You can read all about me in the papers to-day. They tell the worst.”
“Freda, darling, I’ve always wanted to steal the secret of life. Come with me—and we can do it.”
There was a flame in her eyes—a response as urgent as his call.
“That’s what I’ve wanted too—all my life.”
The waitress at their table glanced at them impatiently. They dallied too long—this gawky, skinny, black haired young fellow and the girl in the dark blue cape. Making love, all right. She was a pretty girl too, but no style. All that heavy, yellow hair half slipping down her neck. She’d do with a bob.
She had a still greater impatience as she searched the table in vain for the tip they had forgotten.
II
The committee in the ante-room glanced cheerfully in at the crowd gathering for Gregory’s lecture. They had hoped for a big audience but it was a bad week. The town was full of the Convention delegates and in little mood for lectures, they had feared. But people came. Fully a thousand people had gathered to hear the lecture on Ireland and its Poetry.
They wondered a little at some of the people who bought tickets at the door—men whom they were sure never had attended any lecture under their auspices before. That was because they did not know that Gregory Macmillan’s name was one familiar to other circles than the literary poetic ones—that his vigor in the Irish Republican cause had been told even on this side of the Atlantic. There were those who would have come to hear a lecture of no other subject—Irishmen who had heard his name and subject announced at their meeting of the Knights of Columbus. The literaryminded, the students, the people who patronized the lectures of the Collegiate Alumnae as they did all semi-social affairs, sat side by side in the hall and watched Gregory as he came out from the faded wings at one side of the amateur stage.
Margaret Duffield, Carpenter, Helen and a rather unwilling Gage had adjoining seats. Gage had been extremely disrespectful in his characterization of the lecture, the society which gave it and the presumable character of the man who was to give it, especially as he learned that he was a friend of Margaret’s.
Yet it was Gage who enjoyed the lecture most. From the opening sentence it was clear that the discussion of Irish Poetry was to Gregory merely a discussion of Ireland. In Ireland to be a poet meant that one thought deeply enough to be a patriot. All his poets were patriots.
He made no specific indictment of England except as he read with passionate fervor the translation of Padraic Pearse from the old Irish—
“The world hath conquered, the wind hath scattered like dust Alexander, Cæsar, and all that shared their sway.
Tara is grass, and behold how Troy lieth low, And even the English, perchance their hour will come!”
It was a quotation and he did not comment on its content. But he sketched the lives of some of his poets—his friends—his leaders. He made their dream clear—their simple idealism—their ignoring of the politics of
expediency—their lives so chaste and beautiful. He told of their homes, their schools,—and sometimes when he ended simply, “He was killed in the attack of ——, shot by the military”—or more briefly, “He was executed on ——,” a shudder ran through his audience.
He would show the gayety of Ireland, the joy of the people, their exuberance—and end with a simple “Of course it is not like that now. There is much grief and mourning.”
It was not politics. It was a prose poem composed by a poet. One could not take exception to it as political but the hearers would forever have their standpoints colored by what he said. It was like a picture which, once seen, could never be forgotten.
Margaret listened, her ready mind taking exception to some of the things he said, seeing how he played upon his audience—Walter and Helen listened with intellectual appreciation. But Gage, slouched down in his seat felt envy grow in him. There was before him what he had always wanted. A man who had something indestructible, something immortal to care for. A conviction—and an ideal—an outlet for his soul. He felt himself cheated.
He liked too to listen to the poems about women. No controversial tirades these poems—but verses soft and sweet and pliable as the essence of women—once had been. He checked his running thoughts and looked at his wife, sitting beside him with her head high, “conscious of herself, every minute now,” he thought bitterly.
CHAPTER XIII
LIFE ENTRUSTED
FIREDA worked until noon the next day. Saturday was a half holiday with the employees of the firm so there was no question of her remaining in the office longer. All morning she worked steadily, almost absorbedly. It was as if she held her ecstasy off from her, unwilling to even think about it yet.
She had spent the night before, after the lecture to which she went alone, in writing a letter to her father. It was a long intimate letter, telling of the kind of work she was doing, the way she was living and of what she was thinking. She wrote as if she were talking to him, on and on, and her ending was like the conclusion of a talk, as if she asked for his blessing. “So you see, father dear, I’m all right. And I want you to know that I never forget what you’ve said to me—that I must live so that I’ll never be ashamed of having had life entrusted to me.”
She was really not afraid at all. Her demurring had been only the mechanical reactions of conventions which sat lightly on her. In her heart she knew that she was at home with Gregory and that the completeness of their mutual understanding could mean only that they belonged together. Gregory, like her father, reassured her. In the midst of his impetuousness, his driving thinking, she felt the purity without which he could not have been quite so free. She felt his kindness too, and the gentleness of his hands. He was like her father, she thought. Her father had perhaps had the glory of adventure in him too once, but it had been made submissive to circumstance. It had left its residue of understanding. She felt very sure that when he knew he would be glad.
Physically her fine fearlessness and eager nerves kept her from any reaction, or from any of the terrors, real or assumed, which women have come to believe right and modest at the approach of marriage. And minor faults of Gregory she never paused to consider. It would not have occurred to her that it was a fitting time to look for them. Little problems, living
difficulties troubled her serene health not at all. She would have been ashamed to measure them up against her love. The latent spirit of adventure in her, her fine romantic training, taken from books and preserved because of her limited knowledge of people, were like winds blowing her on to the heart of her romance.
With all this strength and surety, this Ali Baba’s cave of beauty to explore, it was yet characteristic of her that she could work. She had been in the office four days and already her place was made. It was easy to see that she was intelligently competent and to know that her efficiency was not a matter of making a first impression. They all liked her and she already was beginning to lighten work for various people.
Flandon was not at the office at all on Saturday. He called up in the course of the morning and speaking briefly to Freda told her to tell Mr. Sable that he was going out of town over the week-end and would be back for the hearing of the Kraker case on Monday morning. That made it easier for Freda. She had a little fear that there might have been some extra duty for her on this Saturday afternoon which would wreck the golden plans. So at noon she put her desk in order—she was beginning to feel her proprietorship in a desk now—and went back to her room to get her bag, packed the night before.
She had meant to leave a note for Miss Duffield, but by chance she met her on the stairs. Margaret looked at the bag and made her own quick deduction.
“Going home for the week-end?”
“I’ll be back Monday,” said Freda, feeling rather rotten as she let Margaret’s misunderstanding pass.
But she forgot about that. She forgot everything as she went out in the street full of May sunshine and ran for the street-car which would take her to the railway station. There, in the noon crowd, she put her bag between her feet and hung on to the strap above her head, unable to keep the smile from her face any longer.
Gregory was there waiting for her. And at the first word he spoke, his spirit of exalted happiness carried Freda up into the heights. He had a word of endearment for her and then with her bag and his held in one hand, he managed with the other to hold her close to his side and they went to find their train.
There was an empty seat. That was the first piece of luck, when the train already looked impossibly full of men and women and families, setting out with baggage which overflowed from the seats to the aisles. But there was the seat, at the end of the coach, undiscovered yet, or perhaps miraculously set apart for them—made invisible to other searchers—its red plush surface cleanly brushed for the journey and a streak of sunlight like a benison across the back of it.
Freda slipped in beside the window and, placing their baggage in the little rack, with a touch that was almost reverent for Freda’s bag, Gregory sat down beside her.
“We have an hour and forty minutes,” he declared, “and look, my darling.” He took out of his pocket a tiny white box, but, as she stretched her hand, he put it away again.
“You mustn’t see it. Not yet. But I wanted you to know I had it. It’s the most divine circlet of gold you ever saw. The halo of my wife.”
His voice was very soft and tender, the contact of his body against hers caressing.
A boy went by with sandwiches. They surprised each other by regarding him intently and then it occurred to Freda why they did so.
“Did you forget lunch too?” she cried.
So they lunched on ham sandwiches and Peters’ milk chocolate and water in sanitary paper cups and the train creaked into action, joltingly, as befitted a day coach in a local train.
Little stations twinkled by with sudden life and between them lay fields and valleys where life pushed quietly to the sun. They watched the villages with tenderness. Each one unexplored was a regret. There were so many things to be happy with. A child came running up to get a drink of water and leaned on the edge of their seat, staring at them curiously. They liked that. It seemed as if the child guessed their riot of joy and peace.
They had found that it was necessary for the haste of their marriage to go over the borderline of the state, a matter of forty miles. And they alighted in a little town of which they knew nothing. It was impressive as they looked about. Straight neat roads led away from the red roofed station.
“I’d like to walk into the country,” said Freda.
“So we shall. But first we must be married.”
He left her in the parlor of the little hotel while he went to find the justice of the peace. In half an hour he was back, exultant.
“Nothing dares to hamper us,” he declared. “Now, beloved.”
So they were married, in the little bare office of the justice of the peace, with a clerk from the court called in to witness that they were made man and wife by law. Gregory slipped the “circlet of gold” on the finger of his wife and as he made answers to the questions put to him, his eyes were on Freda as if he spoke to her alone, as if to her alone was he making this pledge of faith and loyalty and love. Freda did not look at him. For the moment she was fulfilling her pledge to life and Gregory was its instrument.
Then they were out again in the sunlight, choked with emotion, silent. Vaguely they walked back to the hotel. It was mid-afternoon.
“Shall we stay at the hotel?” asked Gregory.
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all. Only it would be nicer in the country, wouldn’t it?”
“There should be inns,” said Gregory, frowning for the first time that day as he looked at the square, ugly, frame building which was before them, a knot of curious loafers on the porch. “In Ireland we have inns. They’re somehow different.”
“I truly don’t care where we are,” smiled Freda and for that his eyes glanced down to hers with admiration.
None the less he went to inspect the little rooms of the hotel and came down depressed.
“I don’t want you to go up there, darling. Let’s see if there isn’t some other place.”
The hotel keeper, clerk and manager, reflected on the inquiry which Gregory tried to make polite.
“Of course there’s the Roadside Inn if you’re looking for style. Five miles out. Jitney take you there.”
“I know that place,” said Freda, “That’s lovely, Gregory. Oh, I think you’d like it. Only it may be noisy. They dance there at night.”
The proprietor misunderstood.
“So far as dancing goes here we dance here till midnight too,” he said, full of pride.
Gregory laughed.
“Well, sir, we think we’d like to be in the country to-day. We’ll try the inn you so kindly speak of.”
The jitney ride gave them further sense of adventure and when they stopped in front of the little inn with its quiet air and its stiff little flowerbeds aglow with red geraniums, they were enchanted. Their room pleased them too. A little low-ceilinged room with bright chintzes and painted furniture and a casement window that stood a little open. The colored man who played the fiddle at night, carried up their bags. When he had left them, Gregory kissed his wife.
Ten minutes later they went down the brown road where the dust lay soft under their feet. White birches and young elders all fresh and green with early summer foliage surrounded them. Then from the road a little trodden path slipped back into the woods.
“Shall we try it?”
The woods closed behind them. The little path led a faltering way between trees where long streams of sunlight fell. Under their feet grass rustled. Branches leaned to touch them. All the woods seemed to know that lovers were passing and whispered tremulously.
Gregory heard the whispers and turned to the girl at his side. Each heart heard the other as he stopped to hold her in his embrace until they grew faint with joy.
“I love you, Freda,” said the man, ever restless.
Freda smiled at him. It was all she could do. Demonstrations of love were new to her. She was unbent, ready for caresses but not yet quite responsive except in the fine clarity of her mind. It was Gregory who must stop to bring her hand to his lips, to hold her against him for a silent moment.
The woods grew thinner.
“Ah, look,” cried Freda, “the enchanted woods end in a farmhouse yard!” She was standing on a little knoll and beneath them could be seen the farmhouse and its buildings, a group of children, perhaps the very ones who had trodden the path on their daily way to school.
“I like it,” said Gregory. “It’s love bending into life. Don’t you like to see it from here—like a pastoral picture? Children, kittens, the thin woman
going to carry the scraps to the chickens. See, Freda—isn’t life beautiful?” Freda saw it through his poet’s vision for a moment. It was truly beautiful— the group held together by the common interest of procreation and maintenance—but she saw that more beautiful still were the eyes of Gregory. She had a sudden feeling that she must never dim his vision. Whatever might come she must protect that vision even though, as now, she might see that the farm below was full of signs of neglect and that the children quarreled.
They turned back and sat on the trunk of a fallen tree and he took off her hat and stroked her hair gently as she lay against his arm. They did not talk much. Incomplete little phrases in constant reiteration of their own happiness. Those were all.
The dusk came early and damply in the woods. They went back to the Inn, a little chilled, and Freda brushed her hair into neatness and went down to meet her husband in the dining-room. It was a strange and familiar feeling to see him standing by the door waiting for her. They were very hungry and talkative now. With the darkness outside, intimacy pressed closer upon them and they were shy of it, deliciously shy, enticing it closer to them by their evasion of it.
So after their dinner they sat in the little guest parlor of the Inn and watched each other, talking about irrelevancies until the whiz of a motor outside made Freda start.
“You know, Gregory, I’d sooner go upstairs. I know some of the people who sometimes come here. I’d rather not see them to-night.”
“Yes, darling.”
In their bed-room the muslin curtains were tugging at their sashes, trying to pull themselves free. A breeze of thick soft coolness came through the room. Freda felt as if her heart would burst with very wonder. Life to be known so deeply—so soon. And, as was strange and frequent with her she lost the sense of everything except Life, a strange mystery, a strange progress, of which she was an inevitable part, spreading about her, caressing her, absorbing her. She was not thinking of Gregory, until he came, knocking so absurdly, so humbly on the fragile door that her mind leapt into sudden pity, and personal love.
“You are like a white taper before the altar of love,” breathed Gregory.
Around them in the soft darkness the breeze played lightly. Beneath was the sound of dance music, of occasional laughter. They heard nothing to distress them in their complete isolation. Only when the music became tender, falling into the languorous delicacy of a waltz it added witchery to their rapture.
II
In the morning it was Gregory who was the practical one—Freda the mystic. Her mind was filled with mystery and dulled with the pervading sense of her husband. He was inconceivably more to her than he had been. She was infinitely rich with thought and revelation and too languorous to think. Gregory overwhelmed her. In his spirited tenderness, declaring her the miracle bride of the world, talking an unending poem of love to her, he was active now—she dreamy and spent. He brought her breakfast and sat beside her while she ate it. And suddenly it became clear to them that their time was slipping quickly by.
It had been the plan to return to the city that night but they found it impossible to leave each other.
“If we rose with the dawn, we could motor back,” said Gregory, “and I could take the train of abomination that is bearing me somewhere or other into a barren country and you could be rid of me for a little. Oh, my darling, the eternity of the next weeks!”
“The eternity that will come after!” she said smiling.
So they decided to spend another night in the little inn. There were several other guests there but they had a feeling of owning the place. The lean, colored waiter in the dining-room smiled at them and their absorption, and gave them the attention he usually reserved for those too drunk to tip wisely. The chambermaid found pins for a forgetful Freda and smirked at her as she gave them, with full knowledge of the honeymoon. Even the manager on being told they would stay another night, smiled.
Every one smiled. They went for a long walk in the evening and a carter gave them a ride back to the inn. What was that but the charm of luck which was upon them?
It was Sunday night but though there was no dancing, people dropped in on motoring parties, ready to be warmed by hot suppers before they took the last stretch of the ride back to the city. And it was as Freda was going
upstairs, still in that rapt absorption which had held her day that one of the incomers saw her and stopped still in amazement. She was in profile before him, her head held high and she was turning the curve of the stairs, walking slowly.
The observer walked up to the desk and spoke to the manager who sat making out bills behind it. There was no visible register, though his eyes cast about for one.
“Who was the lady who was going upstairs?” he asked unwisely. His manner did not recommend him.
“A lady who is stopping here,” said the Swedish lady with some hostility, affronted by the casual question of this young gay fellow. She had observed Freda and was unlikely to give out information to young loafers.
“I thought I knew her.” Ted Smillie tried to get on firmer ground. His interlocutor seemed to grunt in dubiousness.
He gave it up and went into the dining-room, trying to find out more from the waiter. But the waiter was not too free. He had not been in a roadhouse inn three years without learning a kind of discretion.
“Lady and her husbun’, suh. Several couples here. Couldn’t make sure, suh.”
But Ted knew whom he had seen. He knew there had been no mistake. After all, except for a flare of jealousy, even that not too keen in his increasingly tasteless emotions, he would have felt that the man did not matter. But if she was that kind, why on earth had she turned him down? That would be his reasoning. And, flavoring the whole, that vitiated detective instinct which makes gossips of little minded men, was interested, and he was anxious to tell his story. He did not choose the two men with whom he was supping for confidants. He managed to get one of them to ask to see the register, just on the chance that it might throw light on Freda’s companion. But it did not help him. A party of young men and women had sprawled twenty or thirty names on the register last night. Ted did not know them and where that party began or ended he could not tell. There was not a recorded name familiar to him for the last three days. He went back to the city with his friends and the Roadside Inn grew quiet.
Freda and Gregory could not sleep. There seemed a million new thoughts in the mind of each of them, contending with the few hours they
were to be together.
“I can’t bear to have morning come—and the end—” said Freda softly. She was more dependent now.
“Say the word and I’ll cancel the contracts.”
“You couldn’t. You know you said there’d be a forfeit. We’d be paying your bureau the rest of our lives. No—you must go. And I’ll be happy. But when you come back you’ll never go again. I’ll be no modern woman, I feel. I’ll be the sort of woman who cries when her husband goes to work.”
It was delightful nonsense.
“I don’t understand modern woman,” said Gregory, “you’re not modern. Modern is fashionable—that’s the most of it. You are eternal, darling. You only happen once in a thousand years and then only in the dream of a poet. I hate your modern woman, living by her little codebook of what she shall give and what she shall not give—what children she will bear, what income she must have—who shall earn it. One can’t measure life that way. It’s got to be measured by freedom or slavery. Either you’re free and brave, ready to sound depths of life if they’re worth sounding or you’re a slave and too cowardly to do anything but obey the rules.”
She did not answer. She was in no mood for discussion.
CHAPTER XIV
WHAT WAS TO BE EXPECTED I
MONDAY was busy in Sable and Flandon’s office. Conferences, a dinning of telephones, a vast opening of mail. Every one was conscious of important work in transaction. The Laidlaw case was having its first hearing before the District Court and it was understood to be worrying, ticklish business. The Judge was irascible and his point of view of the case important from this first hearing. Both the partners were at the office by half past nine and left together, one of the younger lawyers accompanying them, much as young doctors are present at a skillful operation, to learn and observe.
Freda, watching and hearing much of the office talk, discreet as it was, wished she could have gone along too. She was feeling very fit, buoyed up by the first strength of separation when it is a delight to feel one’s capacity for cheerfulness and bravery in the midst of loneliness. She wanted to plunge very hard into work, to do something important, to get thoroughly absorbed in her work and not to dawdle into dreams. So she told herself strongly. At night, when she was alone, she would live with her memories and her dreams. It was youth’s swagger in the presence of emotion. She was busy until Flandon left the office, making memoranda of things to be done, getting papers for him, keeping him from telephone interruptions. But after ten o’clock the office settled down and became quiet. The clerks were hammering away endlessly at their typewriters, the few clients who came in were quickly taken care of, and Freda found herself harder to control. She was looking up a list of references that Mr. Flandon wanted ready by noon and answering his telephone. It was not absorbing work. Try as she would, her mind slipped away from her and concentrated on amazing facts.
She was a married woman. A week ago she had been a girl visiting at the home of the Brownleys’. Rapid enough the events which had led to her working here—but this other secret whirlwind—how strange it all was. She wondered if lives were like that. Going along placidly enough until they
struck the edge of the waterfall of circumstance and then—. All lives must have secret strange places. She had loved, in Mohawk, to reflect on those sometimes. Spoon River had never quite gone out of her mind. She had always, since she had read it, seen people as other than the reflection of their acts and seeming—speculating on the curious contradictions of appearances and motives. Here she sat, working, Gage Flandon’s clerk, Eric Thorstad’s daughter. And those two things mattered not at all—gave no key to her. It mattered only that she was the wife, the secret wife of a man whom she had known six days. Physically, chemically, actually she was altered. That was life. When you found it, you held it to you secretly. You never told. That was why you couldn’t tell about people. Life might be caressing them, making itself known to them, biting them. Over it all the vast illusion of action. It was illusion.
The morning drifted by. At a little after twelve Mr. Sable and Mr. Flandon came in together. It was easy to see that things had not gone well. They were self-contained, sober, but the lines of Gage’s face were ugly and those of his partner disapprovingly set. They went into Mr. Sable’s office and closed the door. Freda, getting on her hat and coat, heard the young lawyer who had accompanied them, speaking to a colleague.
“Didn’t go well. Flandon got Judge Pratt mad. Something got under Flandon’s skin and he didn’t play the old judge very well.”
That was all she heard.
At the moment Gage was hearing the same thing. Sable was walking about the office in some irritation explaining it.
Gage had continued to handle his work badly at the office. Like many a man with a hobby he took his hobby into business hours. But the concession which might be made to a man on account of golf, on account of curling, were not to be made for a man who had a boresome way of bringing in the eternal question of whether women were progressing or “actually retrogressing,” “whether all this woman movement weren’t a mistake,”—and so on. Needing support, comfort, consolation, encouragement and direction, Gage, as he felt about for them, only became somewhat absurd.
Men are not tolerant of those who bore them, except sometimes in the family, where such things are endured for practical reasons. They moved away from Gage, so to speak, while he talked on.
