Anthony The Absolute

“They still mean a good deal to the rest of the world,” said he dryly. “And even the law still has weight.” Then he went on, quite as if I had not interrupted him. “In England it might be possible, in case we could prove that he had openly threatened murder in the presence of competent witnesses, to put him under bonds to keep the peace. But this is n’t England – it is the China Coast. At that, what would bonds mean to a strong, self-willed man in Crocker’s state of mind! A jealous man!” He raised his monocle, held it a few inches before his face, and looked through it at a speck on the ceiling. He even moved it around a little, and squinted his right eye, as if sighting through a transit.

I wanted to strike it from his shaking fingers. Instead, I sat up very straight and clasped my hands tightly together in my lap.

“Do you know,” he continued, in that irritating, musing tone, “I believe the man is still in love with her, or thinks he is.”

“Love!” I sniffed. “You call that love!” He did n’t look at me. He was still squinting at the ceiling. Pretty soon he sighed. “When you come right down to it,” he said, “if a man has no right to protect his home – and that implies some right of control over his wife – ’love, honor and obey,’ you know – what becomes of our institutions! You see, Eckhart, in the eyes of the world Crocker is entitled to a good deal of sympathy. He took care of this woman for years, supported her in some luxury, I take it, gave her a much richer sort of life than she had known before.”

“What do you mean by ‘richer’.” I cried. “More money?”

He waved me back with his monocle, and went on with his argument. “She was unwilling to bear him children. Now, Eckhart, that is serious. She was his wife. She refused there to meet her absolute duty as a wife. English law, at least, is quite definite on that point.”

This was dreadful. I could hardly keep in my chair.

“And following all this” – he was growing emphatic now – “she deliberately leaves his home and attaches herself to another man. There is certainly no doubt there, my boy. That is adultery. She dishonored his home. She dishonored him – ”

Here, I admit, I lost my temper. I sprang up, and for the second time in my acquaintance with this old man, shook my finger under his nose.

“Rot!” I cried, using his own phrase. “Rot! All rot! He had dishonored her home a hundred times.” My voice rang out on that word “dishonored.” I fairly jammed it down Sir Robert’s throat – made h’m eat that word, letter by letter. “For God’s sake, lower your voice!” said he. “Adultery!” I shouted this, too. “Good God – ’adultery’ is a commonplace to Crocker!”

“You don’t know this,” said he. Then, “Lower your voice!”

“But I do know,” I answered him. “He told me himself. ‘Adultery!’ Why, millions of men commit adultery’ – good men, bad men, every sort of men! That’s what the millions of prostitutes are for! And, guilty or innocent, we all lie about it to the women and the children. Lie – lie – lie! I’m sick of it! I’m a scientist, I tell you, and I don’t recognize lies in my business. There’s something wrong somewhere. We’re all playing at life – all pretending – all making believe – when we ought to be studying the facts, working through those facts toward the truth.”

“What did I tell you,” he broke in, talking around my finger – “covering up!”

“We’re afraid of the truth,” I shouted. “So we cling desperately to our lies, and call them beautiful. And the truth – beaten down, perverted – undermines us, saps us, beats us at every turn. God, it’s awful!” My hand fell by my side.

“The worst of it is, probably the truth would be beautiful, if we could only find it.”

Sir Robert again drew a long, long breath. “But what’s the use, Eckhart?” said he. “What you say is of course true. But why make a Quixote of yourself? Why be a dam’ fool! Society does cling to its little lie. Even at a sacrifice of half the women in the world. Admitting that some of our traditions are nothing more than outworn tribal notions, what’s the use of beating your brains out against them. I tell you, my boy, if you talk too much of that sort of truth the world will kill you. And the women who call themselves good will lead the attack, for they are the sheltered, the privileged class. No, we must take it as we find it.”

But I was past all this now – past the influence of all his miserable sophistry. My head and hands were blazing hot.

“So!” I cried. “You tell me to play the coward! Do you not know that every one of the great explorers into the wonderful region of scientific truth has faced the terror and hatred of the world in precisely this way? Do you not know that if those great-hearted men, one after another, had not cut their way through the spiritual horrors of ‘tradition’ We should to-day be living in medieval darkness and filth? Why, Old Man, you yourself can remember when ‘free-thinker’ was a term of obloquy. To-day our right to think is the finest, greatest right we have. – Do you suppose I care if they kill me?” Again I waved my finger under his nose. “Tell me, Old Man, do you really imagine I care? Don’t you know, the scientific mind better than that? Can’t you see that I admit no tradition, no dogma, no authority. I am a scientist! I am of the most wonderful guild of explorers this wretched old world has yet seen – the guild that is exploring for the truth. Tradition has not stopped us yet. It will never stop us.”

I turned away. “Oh, I am disgusted with you,” I said – “with you and your beastly, cowardly mind! I’m sick of you! – Understand that? I’m sick of you!” And I walked straight for the door.

Sir Robert followed me. He had to step fast, too. He put his hand on my shoulder, and checked me. He loomed over me.

“Whatever you do, my boy,” he was saying, “keep your head. That woman has already wrecked two lives that we know of – possibly a third. Don’t let her wreck yours.”

I wrenched away from him, and struck out alone into the narrow, muddy street between the Chinese houses.

I walked twice around the glacis that borders the Legation Quarter on the north, and through the Quarter from end to end on Legation Street. Scenes flitted past me that I only half saw – Peking carts with blue covers and little window’s in the sides, innumerable street merchants uttering musical cries and offering trays of queer-smelling foods, and the usual indolent, good-humored crowds of blue-clad yellow men, with round yellow’ children playing everywhere, underfoot and out in the mud of the street. In the Ha Ta Road a long wedding procession was passing, with an ornate red sedan chair for the poor little bride, and musical instruments that I did not so much as observe. I saw the stiff, cowed German soldiers on sentry duty at the eastern end of Legation Street, and, farther along, the solid masonry building of the Hongkong Bank; and, down a side street, the great, showy, extremely modern Wagon-lits Hotel. I vaguely noted the walls and trees of the British Compound, where centered the defense against the Boxer attack a dozen years ago. I strode by the American Compound, at the western end, and caught a glimpse through the open gate of lounging American boys in their olive drab. And, emerging on the plaza between the great Chien Gate in the Tartar Wall and the entrance to the Imperial City, I came upon a long train of laden camels, just in from Mongolia, each with a string in its ugly nose.

And all the way I knew that the confused forces that have been tearing at me during this disturbing week were merging into a new line of force. I knew, even then, that this meant a new direction for my life – my life that I once thought so simply and clearly outlined, so perfectly centered on a single interest. Now – God knows what is to become of me!

Did Sir Robert do this amazing thing to me? I can not think clearly. I am that way at times – I let another try to bring me to his own point of view, he is more likely than not merely to rouse my own inner voices. I never follow – I lead.

However it be, I only know now that I am a man with blazing fires in me – fires that both sear and illuminate my mind, my emotions, my soul. It is glorious. And terrible.

It was nearly six o’clock when I came into my room. I observed that the connecting door stood part way open. This meant, I had come to know, that she was in, and that I was welcome.

I tiptoed to the door, and tapped on it with the tips of my fingers.

She was sitting by her balcony, sewing.

“Did you have a good walk?” she asked softly.

She seemed less sad. When I had tossed my hat and stick aside and entered her room, it seemed to me even that a smile was hovering on her lovely face. I could not be certain of this, for she kept her head bowed over her work.

I dropped into a chair by her, and looked at her. Yes, she seemed distinctly softer, even more subtly feminine (as we say) than usual, bending over the needle that moved nimbly to and fro. It struck me that sewing brought out the beauty of her hands.

Finally she raised her head and looked at me. She was smiling.

“I’ve got it,” she said. “Listen.”

And with a quick breath and a slight stiffening of her shoulders she began singing the scale upward from middle c– sitting there with her sewing in her lap. I listened closely. Heretofore she had usually begun to miss the eighth-tone intervals when she reached a and b. Now she took them perfectly. I could not detect the slightest inaccuracy of pitch. I noticed that she kept to a marked rhythm, all the way up. The upper c she held, with a sudden triumphant glance at me, and trilled on it, very softly.

It brought me to my feet. “Come,” I said gruffly, “we’ll take that down on the machine.” She followed into my room, explaining eagerly as she watched me putting on the cylinder – “You see, to-day, I realized all at once that I’ve been downright stupid about it. It occurred to me that singing with a rhythm might carry me right along through it. And then besides I just stopped fussing, and made up my mind that of course I could do it. I can do it again, too. You’ll see.”

She promptly did it again. Again and again, as rapidly as I could put on new cylinders. I seized the occasion to make twelve records. Then we both listened attentively while I played them all over. There was not the slightest doubt that ten were perfect – or so nearly perfect that they satisfied us. And that is near enough. My hands trembled as I put each cylinder back in its box and carefully wrote the labels. Oh, it has been a tremendous day, this day!

She stood right over the machine throughout this performance – and we must have been an hour at it. I asked her to sit, but she laughed a little and said she was too excited.

When the labeled boxes were all carefully put away in a drawer of my bureau, where no accident short of fire could reach them, I came to her and took her two hands. Then suddenly I could not say anything at all.

But she looked right at me, and returned, very frankly, the pressure of my hands, and smiled, though there were tears in her own eyes.

“I’m so glad,” she said. “You just don’t know – I’ve wanted so to be of use– ”

She gently tried to withdraw her hands. I released one, but, still unable to speak, clung to the other; and hand in hand we walked to the French window and stepped out, side by side, on the narrow balcony. Then I let her hand go, and we leaned on the railing and breathed in the sweet April air.

It was evening now. Electric lights were twinkling. Gay paper lanterns hung out from nearby buildings. The confusion of street cries floated up faintly to our ears.

My time had come.

But it was hard to speak directly. First I told her how wonderfully she has helped me, and to what a practical end.

All she said to this was – very softly, gazing off at the lights – “I’m glad.”

I rambled on. Which would not do. My time had come, and I was letting it slip away. It was characteristic of me, I thought almost bitterly – always, except in the one narrow channel of my work, blundering ineffectually, missing the realities of life.

I gathered my forces, with a great effort. I felt sober, stem, all at once.

“Listen, please,” I began.

Instantly I knew that she had caught the change in me. I thought I felt her nerves tighten, though I was not touching her. I blundered on.

“You have come to know me,” I said.

“Yes,” she breathed, “I have come to know you.”

“And by this time you know just about the sort of man I am. I must assume that you know that, because I expect you to take all of me into account in what I am going to say. I know I shall say it badly. I doubt if I shall succeed at all in saying even what I mean. Yet, you’ve got to understand me.”

She kept silent; but it seemed to me, in the subtle understanding we had somehow reached, that she assented to this preliminary condition.

“I am going to put it bluntly,” I rushed on “It’s the only way I can say it at all. I see two facts, as regards you and me. One is that you are a wonderful woman. You have great gifts. You have what we call temperament – a silly word, but there is no other for the precise meaning. It is an absurd waste to keep you here. You must go to Berlin or Paris – Paris, I think, for the French music is the most stimulating of any today. You must be prepared for opera just as rapidly as possible. There is no time to lose.”

Her mouth twisted into a fleeting half-smile. “It is quite out of the question,” she murmured.

“No, it is not out of the question!” My voice was rising, and she had to give me a warning look. “I do not know quite how it is to be managed, but I can see a beginning, at least.”

She seemed surprised at this, so I talked more and more rapidly. “First, you must consider my second fact. Remember, I am speaking only as a practical scientist – quite impersonally.” God forgive me, this seemed true at the moment! “What you have done for me has a value that I dare not even estimate. Though my income is not great, even from my text books, I would gladly have traveled thousands of miles and devoted months of work to the securing of the phonographic close-interval scale that now is securely mine.”

She was beginning to stir restlessly. But I would not let her speak. “Take your copying and clerical work alone – perhaps, I should not say this – I could not possibly get such devoted and expert assistance anywhere in the world without paying a reasonable price by the week. Now hear me! You must not close your mind to what I am saying!” For I knew she was doing just that, as women will. I caught her arm – and her hand – in my two hands and clung to her. She did not resist. Nor did she respond – merely looked soberly off over the city, and seemed, all the time, to be drifting away from me. My head was burning hot. My forehead was dripping wet, and I had to shake the drops of sweat out of my eyes. Great, wild thoughts were gripping my mind, that had been so confused. I knew then that I must get her out of Peking, away from that ugly, persistent old man across the hall, away from the drink-crazed younger man who thought he could by a violent act restore what he called his honor. I knew that I must be equal to this task. I must find the way. And I must persuade her.

So I cried —

“You must listen! I will not place you in my debt. But you have placed me in yours. You must be fair to me. You must let me help you by paying my debt to you. I promise you I will do more than that. But oh, you must be fair to me!”

She would not look at me. I had her right forearm and hand in the grip of my hot, trembling hands. Her left elbow rested on the iron railing of the balcony, her chin on her hand. And her eyes roved off over the roofs of the Chinese houses, over the walls and trees of the Legation Quarter, off southward toward the temple of Heaven that stood somewhere there behind the trees and the starlit sky above it.

More and more my thoughts were slipping out of control. I struggled to hold them, but could not. I had never in my life felt like this.

“You must not let the fact that I love you confuse your sense of justice,” I went on, quite as if she and I had long known and admitted my love for her. “That is another matter altogether. Except in this – I know now that as long as I live I shall want to help you. This is quite beyond your control, or mine. It simply happens to be so. And it does seem to me that since it is so, you can at least let me help you to the extent that is practically and impersonally fair.”

It was curious how the mere utterance of those three words, “I love you,” cleared my mind. It explained everything. It relieved me by extricating me from all uncertainty of thought and feeling. It thrilled me, deeply and solemnly. I wanted to say it over and over and over. I wanted to take her into my arms and whisper it into one ear and then into the other. I wanted to whisper it to the stars up there, the stars that have heard so much. I wanted to go over to the big hotel in the Quarter, where there would be bright lights and tourists and gilded military folk and gay ladies, and say it so that all might hear and share the thrill of it.

My talk dwindled out. What part had more argument in this? My grip on her arm relaxed; I held only to her unresponsive hand, and leaned on the railing beside her.

For a long, long time we were still there. Then, finally she withdrew her hand.

I looked at her and saw that her eyes were shining, and there were tears on her cheek.

“Oh,” she murmured, “why – why – could n’t we have gone on!”

“You don’t mean that we can’t go on!” said I.

She looked full at me, and inclined her head. To-day she has had more color, her face has not had so much of the worn, tired look. But now, by the half-light that fell on her from the window, I saw that it had all returned. She was very sad, very tired.

“You have spoken.” she said, “of money – and of love. Oh, I wish you had n’t!”

Then she must have read my feelings on my face, for she put her hand on my arm and added —

“I did not mean to hurt you. It has been beautiful. You don’t know – even you, you don’t know. You almost made life mean something again. Nothing that I could ever do would pay you back for that. It made me almost happy – just to be useful. All my life I have wanted to be that. And they have made a toy of me. Or they have wanted me to do something I could n’t do. You have helped me to do what I can do.”

“It has been beautiful,” I thought. Or perhaps I said it aloud, for she inclined her head again.

“It has been like a dream,” she said. “I know it could n’t be so, but oh, how I have clung to it! I have blundered so with my life… but this seemed real.”

“It is real,” said I.

She looked away.

Again for a time we stood silently there, and looked out over the curving tile roofs.

And again I felt that she was slipping away from me. It was good that I had spoken my love.

That would stay in her thoughts. Perhaps it would grow there. Perhaps the magic that was stirring wonderfully in my heart would touch and stir her heart. I knew at that moment that I loved her more than all the world – more than my work, more than my life. I knew, with exultation, that I was plunging out into uncharted ways, where lives are as often wrecked as not. And I did not care. I was glad.

Her shoulder brushed mine, as we leaned side by side on the railing. There was sheer intoxication in that contact. I raised my arm, fairly holding my breath, and put it about her shoulders. I caught her two hands, there by her chin. I saw lights, trees, sky in a swirl of happy things. A voice was thrilling in my heart. I gripped her tightly, and tried to kiss her. But she struggled. She tried to push me away. She fought me.

And then, as I staggered back, the tears came from my own eyes, blinding me.

She ran back into my room, and stood there.

I followed. “It was in my heart to do it!” I was saying, like a fool. “It was in my heart to do it!”

She dropped on a chair, very limp and white. She motioned me to take another.

“You must not be like the others,” she was saying, in a desperate, choking voice – “you must not! I can’t bear it!”

I could not think. “I am not,” I replied, low – “I am not. I love you. You shall see.”

This was getting us nowhere. Her eyes were dry now, and oh, so sad and tired. She was slowly shaking her head at me.

“You are killing – everything!” she said. But she said it gently.

I could not speak, I only looked at her – looked and looked. Then I went over to the phonograph and worked aimlessly over it. I think I wound it up.

She still sat there, her hands limp in her lap.

Finally she said, in a low voice that was y et steady – “I wish I could love you.”

“You can,” I muttered. “You shall!”

She slowly shook her head. “No,” she breathed.

“But you must,” I went on. “It is the only thing now. It is the one way out for you and me.”

This had some effect on her. She pursed her lips, and thought.

But after a little she shook her head again, and made that listless gesture of her left hand that she had made that first day, when I broke into her room.

“Something has died in me,” she said. “I don’t believe I can ever love a man again.”

She rose, and moved toward her own room. On the sill she paused, and picked at the flaking paint of the door frame.

“I do not believe it is the only way out,” she said. “You will get over it, of course.” Then, at the shake of my head, she corrected – “At least, you will have your work, and the feeling that you are getting somewhere with your life. I should think that would be the one great thing, after all. And I shall at least know that I am not hurting another life. I hurt everybody, that cares for me. If I could – love you, I should undoubtedly hurt you.”

“Wait,” said I, “we will go on with our work, at least – in the morning.”

She pursed her lips again. “I don’t know,” she replied, as if she were thinking aloud, “whether that is possible.”

“It must be possible!”

She shook her head. “You will have to let me think about that.”

Then she closed the door, and was gone.

I had meant to give her my life. I had only succeeded in taking away from her that part of it that had been helpful to her.

I find it difficult to reconstruct the hour that followed. I remember standing a long while by the window. Once I went to her door, just so that I might hear her moving about her room. But as I stood there it seemed like an intrusion, and I came away.

Many, many things that I might have said to her came rushing to my thoughts. I wanted to say them now. I wanted to go right into her room and say them.

All the time my heart was beating very rapidly, and my blood was hot. Love, it seems, is like a fever. I never knew this before. I have always thought it a weakness when I have seen what men call love apparently devastating a life. Now I see that I must correct this judgment. For love is a force that operates beyond the jurisdiction of reason or will. I begin to think that I must expect less assistance from my own reason than heretofore.

That long, wild hour of my solitude somehow passed. It occurred to me to go outdoors. I picked up my hat and stick. Then, irresolute, I moved to the window and looked out over the city.

While I stood there Sir Robert came up the stairs. I heard his ponderous step, more hurried than usual, come along the corridor. There was a silence while, I knew, he was fumbling for his key. Then a jingling, and the sound of his door opening.

I think that an old man is the structure his younger self has built. How badly this man has built. Myself, often when tempted to do this or that, I have thought – “Will it make toward a sweet old age?”

He had talked to me cynically of love, had Sir Robert, only a few hours ago. What would he say now if he knew the immensity of the forces he had stirred and brought to the surface of my consciousness. I smiled as I thought that perhaps I owe much to that old man. I almost wanted to thank him.

So I stood there by the window, thinking many things. And the April air was sweet.

After a little time I started for my walk, my second walk this day under stress of great emotion. But in the course of the few hours intervening I had crossed a line. The man who was now about to step lightly down the stairs and stroll out through the shabby office of the hotel was a new man, one who had never before gone down those stairs or out through that office.