Don't Pick Me

CHAPTER XIX

A long, rainy Sunday inaugurated Christiansen's visit. A cold, damp fog blew in off the Sound, and an open fire proved a comfort. Jerry went off to paint, Bobs disappeared, and Jane found herself alone with Christiansen, in the first intimacy they had known for months.

"How goes the adventure?" he asked.

"Merrily."

"You are glad you started on it?"

"Oh, yes."

"You would be," he granted.

"Why would I be?"

"You belong to the 'Friends of Fate,' as some poet called them. Some of us struggle against Fate, some of us make it an ally. You would do that."

"But Fate, so far, has been my friend."

"Those long lonely years of work by yourself?"

"But I needed them. I learned everything of value that I know, during those years."

"You see, I spoke truly," he smiled, nodding at her.

"You meet life that way, too," she said.

"I've met it all ways, my friend, fighting, acquiescent, not always with valour. Now I have come to a time when I depend upon an armour, which fends off outside troubles, but also keeps in those I already have."

"No one could understand human beings so well, could possess your fierceness and your mercy toward them, without holding the key to suffering."

"Wise Jane Judd," he smiled. "I have had a long journey with Fate. For twenty years I have been paying for youthful folly. Do you know about me, Jane?"

"Jerry told me that you are married, that your wife lives."

"She has moved from one sanatorium to another for twenty years, Jane."

"How dreadful, my friend."

"I go to see her when I can. I have been with her this summer. It is like visiting some little girl I knew when I was a lad.... I wanted you to know."

"Does she suffer?"

"Apparently not. She just is, that's all. No past, no future."

"But your past, your future, Martin?"

"I can have none," he said steadily.

"Did you love her very much?"

"I suppose so, as a boy. What does a child of twenty know of love? She was eighteen when we ran away. After about five years this malady developed, a sort of melancholia at first, then a kind of mental vacuity for all these many years."

"It's unfair; it's cruel!" she cried.

"So it is. There have been times when I have cursed God in fury, but after all it is not left us to choose our own tests. If Fate were only kind, we would not need to woo her. Perhaps I needed my hard years as you needed yours."

"I can't believe that, but I know what they have made of you—what I have reaped from them."

He laid his hand on hers for a second.

"Thank you, Jane. You've been a little flowering place for me, of repose and peace. Tell me about the work."

"It grows in plan, but not in execution. I lie abed until noon, these days, and I spend the time thinking about the book. I make notes; sometimes I write a chapter. But I feel that when my baby comes I shall suddenly enter a new world, I shall know such wonderful things to put in my book."