| CHAPTER II. OF A GIRL'S ANTECEDENTS
Jane Atkinson had come home late that year; she had graduated in the faculty of arts of Toronto University; and consequently she had first waited for convocation and next visited with some eastern relatives, for she expected to remain in the west and to teach.
During the weeks which followed the evening when the Forrests had been guests in her parents' house - holiday weeks - she was inclined to dream and to review in retrospection the life she had lived. She would sit in one of the wicker chairs in the veranda of the house, a book in her hand, without reading; or she would walk, alone, along one of the paths worn into the margin of bush along the fields of the farm. For the first time in her life she felt unsettled, little sure of what lay before her.
Her life, as she reviewed it, had been simple, filled by a single purpose only half realised. She was inclined to think that that purpose had been to discover herself.
She revisualised her childhood and smiled. She had been a "tom-boy", indifferent to her appearance, filled with an ambition which seemed vague now. In the little rural school which she had attended, four miles north of her father's place, at the crossroads, where the trail leading north met the east-west road into the town of Fisher Landing, she had done as well as anyone could be expected to do under the circumstances, with teachers changing two or three times a year. Her studies had come easy to her; it had gone without saying that she led her classes. To her mother's everlasting reproach, she had been a rather untidy child, especially with regard to her long, strong, heavy black hair. For many years her mother had insisted on braiding it tightly, laying it around her head like a turban. But neuralgic head-aches had become a chronic complaint; and Dr. Weatherhead of Fisher Landing had insisted on a single, loose braid hanging down over her back. At the time, she had been a classmate
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of Arthur Forrest's whom she had tortured by just keeping ahead of him in her studies. The two had mostly made the trip to and from school together; sometimes walking, more commonly driving a buggy; for old Mr. Forrest and Jane's father had made an arrangement whereby either the one or the other supplied a horse for the purpose. Thus the two children had grown up almost as brother and sister, liking each other as such, and quarrelling with each other as such.
With her clothes, too, she had been careless. She had resented the fact that, while Arthur wore common-sense garments which enabled him to roam through the bush unimpeded, she was condemned to wear skirts which caught in the thorny branches of the thickets. Why that should be so, she had been unable to understand; the explanation given to her when she protested - that she was a girl had meant nothing to her. If to be a girl was equivalent to wearing skirts instead of breeches, it was a misfortune to be a girl, that was all.
Then, as she grew to be a big girl, awkward by the very reason of her bigness, she had been sent to town to attend high school. There, she had boarded during the winter and met both girls and boys in the mass. Being observant, by the mere fact that she had come from the country, she had soon realised that there was some mysterious relation between the sexes; and it had troubled her. At the same time, strange changes, physical changes, had come over her; and, in the view of all who knew her, she had become "queer". For she had not accepted these things philosophically; nor, as most girls do, with the feeling that she was growing towards a destiny which, though still shrouded in mystery, could not but be very wonderful. She had revolted. For a year or two she had hated herself, going about with an almost perpetual frown and making herself unattractive in various ways.
That period, too, had passed; and when her class-mates had reached the age of vapid flirtations, she had begun to feel reconciled to her fate; but her passionate dissatisfaction with her femininity had been converted into as passionate a contempt of all things male. Meanwhile
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she had gone on doing her work at school with an almost fierce, almost bitter zeal which yet lacked the element of enthusiasm. For, so far, she did the work merely because she was required to do it; and she did it better than others merely because it was her nature to do whatever she did with all her might. Nor had she, so far, singled out any studies for preference. Arithmetic, history, literature, science, it was all one to her. She would have minded it much if anyone, in any subject, had excelled her; and with a grim determination she would have remedied the fact.
During her last high school year, however, all this was suddenly changed. Spiritual ambitions arose in her. She still did the work, in algebra, geometry, physics, and chemistry in such a way as to keep ahead of her class. But she did it now with an admixture of contempt. If she began to revel in romantic enthusiasms for knowledge and learning, the aim which she began to set herself was that of intellectual culture. And intellectual culture meant to her familiarity with the great works of literature.
As she reviewed these things, revisualised her cravings and ambitions now, it all seemed crude, and yet it filled her with a certain pride. She felt as if, at that time, she had somehow been simpler, less complex than she was now. At present she felt troubled, disturbed, involved in life's entanglements from which she must find an issue, hard as it was.
During that last year at high school she had, for the first time in her life, looked forward; and she had come to the conclusion that she must shape her own future. So far, all she had done had been determined by the decisions of her parents. If her parents had decided not to send her to high school, she would have submitted. Now, one day when she was at home for the week-end, she had almost fiercely announced her determination to take up a college career. The Atkinsons had relatives in Toronto; so, if she was to go to college, it was natural that she should go to the east.
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Her father had sided with her, against her mother who wished to keep her at home. But her mother's opposition had prevailed to the point where she had had to agree to wait till she was fully eighteen years old. In return, she had fought for the permission to teach in the meantime. So, on completing her high school course, she had attended an elementary normal school session and then taught school for two years, in a small, rural district. In spite of her rather extreme youth, she had made a success of her work; the children had liked her because they felt that they were making progress; and, the district being a somewhat puritanical one, the parents had liked her because she thought of nothing but her work and studies. Throughout the two years she had not attended a single one of the many dances which young, frivolous people had held in the school-house.
Once or twice young men had attempted to strike up an acquaintance with her; she had treated them as if they were criminals and the scum of the earth. By this time, there was only one of her enthusiasms left: literature. Tennyson, of course, was her idol; it would be a poor youth to mature into man- or womanhood without having gone through that phase. Next to Tennyson stood Byron whom she transfigured into a blameless, sexless knight, a second Sir Lancelot: did not Missolunghi prove that she was right, against the slander of the wicked world?
By the time she was "fully eighteen", she had refuted her mother's assertion that her intellectual aspirations were mere "vapourings". In a family conclave she had gone so far as to say that, if financial considerations entered into the question, she was content to be independent. She had enough money laid by to put herself through two years of college without help from home; the third year she would teach again in order to return to college whenever she had sufficient money. To this, she knew, her father would never agree though he had nodded approvingly when she had proposed it. As a matter of fact, he had sent her cheques for amounts greatly exceeding her needs, adding
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sometimes in his letters that she had better not acknowledge the receipt of this particular sum; the cancelled cheque would tell him that it had come to her hand.
Up to this point, there was nothing in her life which, at the present stage, in her review of the past, could trouble her. It was different with the things that followed.
For, concurrently, during the two years of her career as a teacher, she had come to a strange conclusion with regard to the opposite sex. In the house where she boarded lived a grown-up daughter who was immune from all persecutions on the part of young men. She was engaged and had been engaged for several years. Her fiancé lived at a distance. Marriage was out of the question, for the chosen one of this girl who was rapidly growing into an old maid was employed in a bank, at a salary which, for the time being, was far from sufficient to support a family; the pair had to wait for his promotion. Now Jane, much to her amazement, was not unaware of the fact that her friend, the prospective bride, resented the long wait; that she grew to be embittered; but the fact remained that she was exempt from the attentions which she, Jane found so irksome.
This observation set her mind to work on a plan; it seemed that young men insisted on troubling her. They would cease to do so if she, too, were engaged.
In this connection, she had thought of her old school-mate, Arthur Forrest. She had never seen him in any other light but that of the comrade of her school-days when she herself had been a "tom-boy". Consequently, in her general condemnation of, and contempt for, all things male, he had come to be the only one who was exempt. He had never been anything but a brother to her. Together they had roamed through the forest of the hills and over the heath-like knolls around their parental farms; yes, he had returned her contempt for all things male by an equal contempt for all things female. He was the very man to whom to go in order to free herself from that sort
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of persecution to which she found herself, exposed. He resembled herself.
In retrospection, she saw that what she had done was dangerous; yes, that it was wrong. But at the time she had seen nothing of the kind.
The very next time she had been at home, before she went east, she had made an appointment with him by slipping him a paper with the hieroglyphic inscription, "5 p.m. Post 54." Which, in the language of their childhood, meant, "Meet me at 5 o'clock, at the fence-post between my father's and your father's farm, in the bush where a piece of board is nailed to a tree bearing an inscription of which nothing is legible any longer except the number 54."
Arthur had come to this appointment, frowning and apparently unwilling; and she had said to him - it appeared incredible to her now that she should have been able to do so, "Arthur, for reasons of my own I want to be engaged to you. You don't need to ask me what those reasons are. I want to be able to say I'm engaged to you, that is all. I don't mean at home. But where I'm going. Would you mind?" "Mind?" Arthur had replied. "Not at all. So we're engaged to be married now, are we? Well, you will have to let me kiss you, that's all." It had indeed seemed so simple. The very place of this meeting had seemed to restore between them the simple, unsophisticated, uninvolved relationship of childhood: a comradeship intimate yet cool; staunch yet sexless. It was that fact which had enabled her to go through with her plan. At his answer, she had bent over the fence that separated them and presented her brow. The troubling thing, in retrospection, was that they both had blushed when his lips had touched her skin.
Shortly after, she had left for the east, to go to college.
As for her studies, they had continued to be easy for her; and had they not been easy, the dogged determination with which she worked at them would have ensured success. At every examination she carried away the highest honours, always ranking first. That, by the way, had
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remained the unbroken rule throughout the four years that followed. After her first and her second year she had taken two scholarships; after the third, a gold-medal; and now, in her final year, she had wound up with the highest total of marks which had been attained in her university within the last ten years. What is more, contrary to the general rule, she was not intellectually fagged, not spiritually disappointed; she had not lost her ambitions.
But she was troubled. She had, of course, repeatedly seen Arthur, during the three summers when she had come home for the holidays. The first time, he had been somewhat ironic; it had been shortly after the death of his parents who had followed each other into the grave within two months. She had already begun to avoid being alone with him; but they had run into each other unexpectedly, both blushing deeply. But Arthur had quickly recovered. He had made no attempt to touch her; but he had looked up with a curious smile. "You know," he had said, "about that engagement of ours. I am ready, of course, any time. All you need to do is to say the word, and I'll speak to your father." - "I am much too young," she had said. "It doesn't mean anything anyway."- "It doesn't ?" he had replied, still smiling as if he enjoyed her discomfiture. "Well, let me tell you, it means a great deal to me."
Meanwhile, at college, she had occasionally been disturbed by the consciousness of a strange ignorance. Why should she have blushed in meeting Arthur? Bah, she must not think of it at all. She felt sure that he never gave it any real thought, especially now that the work of the farm, through the death of his parents, had suddenly fallen on his own, unaided shoulders. Fiercely, she plunged back into her studies. But she had, in the beginning of the previous year, confided in one of her "chums" and told her that she was engaged to be married. The fact, within the college, had soon been a matter of common knowledge; and that had had the desired effect; none of the young students of the opposite sex had importuned her with his attentions.
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She met with the idea of love in her studies. It meant nothing to her. Even
such books as Adam Bede did not fundamentally pierce that armour which
she seemed to wear. Even now, when she thought of these things in retrospection,
she was aware of the fact that there were things, of vast importance in human
life, of which she knew nothing. She loved her parents; she had been fond of
Arthur; but she knew that there was, that there must be something else. Yet,
what it was she could not tell. She thought of certain of her "chums", of Ann,
for instance. Did they know? They did. Jane could not doubt of it, from the
way in which Ann had once shrugged her shoulders and turned away, saying, "Oh
Jane, you innocence!"
Why had nobody enlightened her? But that she could easily explain to herself. There had been something in her attitude which had kept even her chums from making themselves the mouth-piece of enlightenment. In her ponderings at the present time, she went so far as to acknowledge to herself that she was still pretty much in the dark with regard to the essential difference between male and female. So far she had never cared; she would not have cared now, were it not for that troubling complication with Arthur.
She thought of certain evenings in the lounging room at college, certain moments when she had realised her ignorance as a disability; in a sort of exasperation at the puzzling nature of certain things she had then thought of taking a course in biology, of buying certain books to gain the information which must be missing. She knew that this occasional curiosity had been a purely intellectual one; for she had not been able to live through four years of a more or less constant association with various types of young people of her own age without becoming aware of the fact that there is such a thing as pruriency. If it had been possible to acquire this missing information as she might have looked up an unknown word in the dictionary, she would probably have done so. But it involved facing that sort of astonishment which Ann had occasionally betrayed; and deliberately to
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do so was beyond her powers.
As she thought of it now, she realised that, in some strange way, hers was an exceptional life. By some strange coincidences, knowledge that came to others in some apparently spontaneous way had not come to her. She was inclined to regard it as a case of retarded development. She sometimes even feared that it might have disastrous consequences. At other times she had the very peculiar feeling that this very defect marked her off from other human beings of her sex: that it was, not a defect at all, but a virtue.
Again, she reviewed in retrospection the way in which her purely verbal engagement
to Arthur had begun to trouble her during the years that had followed. With
a sinking, disquieting realisation of things only dimly interglimpsed she had
come to see that perhaps this verbal engagement might mean more to him than
a merely verbal thing. Many a times, at Toronto, when he was far away, she had
fully made up her mind to settle this matter once and for all when she went
home the next time. But when she did go home at last, the very fact that she
had come to look upon her action as frivolous, as involving perhaps vastly more
than she had thought, seemed to make it impossible for her to undo the thing
done. She had at first procrastinated; then, in a sort of panic, shrunk within
herself and simply avoided him; avoided, at least, being alone with him; for
she could not decline to meet him in her father's house where he was a welcome
guest. She had almost come to look upon this verbal engagement as a final bond,
a shackle fettering her for all time to come.
Yet, even that was not the most disquieting thing of all. In some mysterious way a merely adumbrated new knowledge had come to her: the knowledge that indeed her real, her most intimately personal life was only just unfolding; that in this unfolding life of hers some great, enormous experience was in store, normal to mankind. And if that was true, then, she felt, that experience was not to be with him. It even seemed as if she had known that beforehand; as if she
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had, when she entered upon the engagement, consciously noted the fact that this engagement was to give her a breathing space of four years; that it was to enable her to postpone the very consideration of that enormous experience for that length of time. Four years in the past of her child-life had been equivalent to half an eternity. Now she reflected that she had erroneously assumed that four years of semi-adult life would be equivalent in extent to four years of child-life. But, hardly realised in their passage, the four years had gone by: now, one way or another, that question between Arthur and herself had to be settled. She must face it at last; she must act.
But still, instead of acting, she dreamed. Concurrently with the development of the consciousness of her responsibilities in this connection, still another development had gone on. More and more, as her studies proceeded, widening and deepening her emotional reactions to all sorts of things in life, vicariously realised, her enthusiasm for art and literature as things almost divorced from actuality had grown and grown. But it had become consciously eclectic; she had begun consciously to ignore certain things in Byron, certain poems even of Tennyson's. She ignored them, not intellectually, for they were there, and she was a searcher after truth; but emotionally and with her judgment suspended. She applied the same process of selection even to Shakespeare; yes, to the dramatists of the Restoration. She contrived to find purity in Congreve. What she ignored, she ascribed to the fact that perfection lies beyond the human plane. And yet - yet she remained conscious of the fact that her view of the world was a partial view; disquietingly conscious of it.
Physically, she had during these years grown into an almost perfect specimen of virgin womanhood; and she knew it; she even began to suspect that the only flaw in her beauty was that very fact that she knew herself to be beautiful. The strange thing was, that she had somehow come to look upon life as upon an altar; upon herself as a victim that must keep itself pure for the sacrifice. Even her ignorances
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she had begun to exalt and idealise; to her secret self, she had begun to call her emotional immaturity purity. And, as the antique priest used to adorn the sacrificial animal before leading it to the altar, she had begun to take extraordinary care of herself, had groomed herself like a jaded society woman; and she had learned to dress with consummate skill and painstaking exactitude. She had been able to do so because her own father was more or less in love with his child whenever she came home for the holidays. It had come to the point where she created a sort of sensation whenever she showed herself in a public place.
And thus she had become what she was at present.
She knew that certain strangers, friends of her father's in the little city of Stockton, twenty miles south, looked upon her with wonderment; she made the impression, on them, as if she were a fully matured woman, of thirty perhaps. She was twenty-two.
She did not feel happy. There was, besides the entanglement with Arthur, another reason. She could not have said, so far, what it was. It resembled the moon rising in a summer night over an horizon of forest. But it made it imperative that she should bring the question between her and Arthur to a speedy issue.
The opportunity offered a few weeks after the night on which she had, for the first time within a year, met Arthur again in her father's house. It was haying time; and Arthur called to talk certain matters of business over with her father. Jane had seen him enter the house, not, this time, dressed for company, but in his working clothes. That seemed to give her the courage to address him once more as if the old comradeship of their childhood were still a reality.
She went upstairs into her room, took a slip of paper, wrote on it certain hieroglyphic symbols, - "10 p.m. 54"- folded the paper up, and, having waited to give him time to leave the house, descended into the hall. She had hesitated so long that she hoped he would be gone. If he was not, she was going to take that as a sign that she
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must act indeed. She was not her usual self; she felt flushed and uncomfortable; her heart pounded. Yes, she hoped for another reprieve; if only he were gone!
But he was not gone; she had descended about three quarters of the stairway when the door from the parlor opened and Arthur appeared in the hall.
"Very well, then," her father was saying, "We'll leave it at that." And Arthur turned as if to go to the door; but he had seen her from the corner of his eye and, turning once more, confronted her.
With a sinking feeling as if she were doing something unworthy of herself, something that savoured of intrigue, she held out her hand; and he took it with an awkward motion, blushing in spite of the formal courtesy which he tried to impart to his gesture. When, in the palm of her hand, he felt the folded slip, he seemed to lose his composure completely and began to stammer.
Jane stood as if enveloped by a fiery flood. She neither heard nor saw. Her father, aware of Arthur's double turn, opened the door somewhat wider, smiled, nodded, said, "Oh, it's you, Jane, is it?" and seemed to invite her to enter.
Jane was conscious only of the fact that the young man had turned once more and was leaving. Then, as her father looked at her, not understanding what was going on, she veered and ran up the stairs back to her room where she sank down on her bed, sobbing.
At night, the chores being done, the family assembled, as usual, in the parlor; and, as usual, after a desultory conversation, everybody settled down to reading. At half past nine, the twins who, during the holidays, did all the work on the farm, emitted each a yawn; and the circle broke up. Jane alleged that she was not sleepy and would take a short walk along the fields. In spite of her unusual manner she aroused no suspicion; though her mother said, "I'd put on a veil if I were you. The mosquitoes are bad to-night."
"I will, mother," Jane answered and went out into the hall.
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As soon as she was alone, she began to hesitate once more. She felt that what she was about to do was in some way unfair. But she could not help herself; it would be still unfairer not to do it. She could not allow things to drift on. For the first time she understood that during the last year she had had a dim hope, unavowed, that some new development would rid her of the bond without her having to do anything at all. She knew now what that hope had been; for it had remained unfulfilled. It had been that Arthur would break the scarcely real bond by getting married. For the first time in her life she began to realise that life does not help us out by lucky chances.
She delayed till she heard the big clock strike ten; and then, in another sudden rush of panic, she went out and almost ran to the fence along the north edge of the yard. Thence she issued through a gate to the field, following its grassy margin which was wet with dew till she reached the point where a bluff of second-growth aspen boles reached across the line between the two farms.
Arthur was there, standing close to the fence and leaning against one of the posts. A greenish light streamed down through the broken foliage of the aspens. The grassy floor of the bluff was dappled with white flakes of light from the moon which was riding high in the sky.
"I am late," Jane said, breathless from her run.
Arthur did not reply.
Jane glanced at him; he looked as competent as ever; but his face was strangely distorted with the anticipation of what was to come. She stepped close up to him and, touching him with a fluttering hand on his shoulder, faltered, a sob in her voice, "Arthur, will you ever forgive me? I did not know what I was doing, four years ago. I am still fond of you. But I cannot marry you. And I had to tell you, dear."
Nothing seemed to betray that this was a hard blow to the man. Now that it had been said, his very face seemed to smooth out. The girl
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seemed to be vastly more agitated than he. But it was several minutes before he spoke. "There was no need. Of course, the moment you want to be so, you are free."
"Thanks, Arthur, thanks!"
He cleared his throat. "But I want you to know, Jane, that, if ever you change your mind, I shall be here as if I had been waiting for you."
"No," she cried in profound distress. "That would make it worse instead of better."
"Jane," he said, "there is no cause for you to reproach yourself. I have known all along that you were not for me. But that does not alter the fact..." And, as if suddenly realising the futility of speech, he shrugged his shoulders and held out his hand. "Good-by," he said. "You have given me a dream, Jane. That is much."
A moment later Jane was alone. She was sobbing as she turned away to go home. - -
Two weeks later, she applied for and obtained the position as teacher of French in the high schools of the little city of Stockton.
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