Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-01-30
CHAPTER v.

CHAPTER v.
Tomorrow for the states-for me Eng
land and sterday.'-murmured Frances
Gambler as she stood at her window look
ing down over the tangle and tumult OF
the Strand. "For me England and yester-
dayv' she repeated; and 1t was not until
she had said the lines twice over that she
remembered how she had first copied them
into her daybook during her early home
sick weeks in New York.
It was the lassitude of her week at sea
and the loneliness Of her second week in a
London hotel, she told herself. that had
brought about the change. If there were
deeper and more dormant reasons, she was
content to let sleeping dogs lie. But she
did not deceive herself as to the mean
ing Of the move 1t was more than flight;
1t was surrender. 1t was. indeed, the bitter
and desperate remedy for bitter and des-
perate condition. For, inappositely. on the
very brink of what seemed the waiting and
widening vista of all her life, she had de-
cided to go back to Oxford and her uncle
home. < $3.50 - :
The steps that led to this determination
were no longer clear to her questioning
mind. She was also able, hour by brood
ing hour, to pile UP against 1t ever new
objections. But she chung to 1t blindiy,
with foriorn tenacity of spirit that swept
aside all momentary issues and all dread
of the future. For out of that seeming
defeat. she contended. she would wiring her
belated and her inner victory, even while
her active Imagination, playing lambently
ahead of dragging reality, showed her how
painful would be that return to old condi-
tons and outgrown surroundings.
For woman who has known the world
to go back to such roof is always sign
and a confession of defeat. Yet the sweep
of her strong and aggressive mind once
made up flung blindly aside each half
accumulated bar of indecision.
But was it fair to them?-she suddenly
demanded of herself as she pictured the
scenes and the faces that would confront
her. the gentle and mild-mannered women,
the venerable and upright-hearted curate,
so jealous of equity and honor, with his
| unbending singleness and narrowness OF
outlook And as she asked this question
each familiar figure seemed to stalk grimly
from it's muf1ing childhood memories and
| confront her. a challenging sentinel at the
very threshold of that Quiet little home
her, as always a harbor of ultimate refuge.
But now. could she face the unspoken
deceit, the daily attrition of it, month after
month and year after year? For clearly
| she foresaw what her life would be. from
| sunrise to sunset, from youth to old age,
| from the moment the quiet parsonage gate
! closed between her and the outer world.
| She foresaw it plainly. distinctly and
| In black and white before her eyes-the
| long and narrow and grimly defined path
| leading from narrow and weather beaten
gate to a still narrower open grave. In
summer time. in the quiet grounds behind
the shielding gray walls, there would be
the Provence roses 10 tend and the border
flowers to cut and trim. the sedate visit
ing and receiving, the frugal jamnlaking.
the regular Bible readings and the family
prayers the careful mending and remak-
ing, the hemming of the clerical old-fash-
toned white cravats, the lonely caWing of
the rocks through the quiet mornings and
fto 10Dr or N
there would be the wooden jackets and
cough mixtures to distribute throughout
the parish, the stockings to be knit for the
workhouse children, the long, Silent games
of chess in the mullion- Widowed study,
the lettering and numbering of the new
books for the parish lending library. the
pathetically threadbare suit of respectable
broadcloth to press and repair, the sum-
mer linens and serges to be made over,
the discussions of impending disestablish-
ment and the deceased wife's sister bill.
the languid flow of life within doors and
the gentle diversions of life without. pune
tuated by long Sundays, in gloomy high
partitioned pews, with faded crimson
cushions.
oh it is useless! 1t is too late. now!"
she cried. hopelessly. as she paced the floor,
and the weight of her past life hung heavy
upon her. The roots of it lay too deep, she
told herself. to be torn out. She was al
ready too tainted with the dust of that outer
world, too febrile. too passionately avid of
movement and change. The contrast was
too great. They would make 1t too hard
for her, too rigidly exacting. For what did
they know of the dark and complicated and
compelling currents of the real world, lap
ped in their gentle backwaters of old-world
clerical ife, secluded and sheltered and I'M
tried! She would still have been one of
them, if her paths had been theirs, il she
had only breathed the quiet air they
breathed!
at is too hard!' she moaned. in her mis-
cry. The test of life itself was SO crucial
that was the thought that kept recurring to
her-the ordeal by fire was foredoomed to
be so exacting! All their old lessons and
creeds, which she had once chimed so inno-
Gently and so cordially, now seemed to fall
empty and enigmatic on Der older and
wiser heart They seemed to solve none of
her imminent problems. Their mysticism
only bewildered her. And she sat amid the
roar of London, idle and sick at heart, un-
hearing and unseeing.
Il will do it!' she at last said aloud 'It
will be my punishment" She could no
longer demand SO much of life. She looked
on existence, now, with older and disilu-
stoned eyes. For what she had taken she
must stand ready to pay. 1t would be her
penance and penalty for past transgressions.
And it would have to be borne; 1t was OBJ
ligatory. 1t was not happiness or we'll
being that was at stake, she argued, in
that new mood of amendment; it was some
thing vast and undying and eternal within
her. something that came before happiness
itself. something she had seen her defiant
and broken and dying father ignore and
surrender and suffer for!
While this new expiatory passion was still
warm in her blood she packed her boxes,
soberly, and then as soberly wrote to Dur
kin. It was not long letter. but she spent
much time and thought in its composition.
In it. too. she seemed to cast off her last
vestige of hesitation. For she felt that the
very note of impersonallty In its unnatural
stiffness of phrasing was a new means of
support. It was a support as clumsy and
retarding as a child's walking chair. but
she was willing enough to catch at 1t, whim-
sically, in those first tottering steps of re-
nuncation.
my Dear JIM she began. after much
hesitation. and with many long and thought
full pauses as she wrote, ut will surprise
you, know, but have decided to go back
to Oxford-to the Oxford have so often
told you about. Do not think it is only
cruelty on my part or cowardice or self
interest. I have thought over everything
long and carefully. And 1t has led. always
led, to one end-that end is: Neither you
nor must go on leading the lives we have
been leadingi 1t will hurt me. and it will
hurt you, believe. to break the ties that
time has made. But there is today, all the
width of the Atlantic between us-and it is
there, think that am the coward. For
1t is only this that makes it possible for me
to do what I'm doing. With you, / would