Chapter XVI
He sailed in April. When he sailed, he knew he would not come back for many years, if ever. His business here was done, the dream of Europe ended. The cycle of Cathay awaited him in all its acrid crudity.
Yes, the golden web was rent, torn across, destroyed. The shock to his American mind left nothing of the lotus eater in him. He was returning where he belonged.
Married! Steve married! To Oswald Grismer, who, save as a schoolboy and later in college, was a doubtful and unknown quantity to him.
He had never known Grismer well. Since their schoolboy differences, they had been good enough friends when thrown together, which had been infrequently. He had no particular liking for Grismer, no dislike. Grismer had been a clever, adroit, amusing man in college, generally popular, yet with no intimacies, no close friends.
As for Steve, he never dreamed that Stephanie would do such a thing. It was so damnably silly, so utterly unthinkable a thing to do.
And in his angry perplexity and growing resentment, Cleland’s conscience hurt as steadily as a toothache. He ought to have been home long ago. He should have gone back at the end of his two years. His father had trusted him to look out for Steve, and, in spite of her rather bumptious letters proclaiming her independence, he should have gone back and kept an eye on her, whether or not she liked it.
In his astonishment and unhappiness, he did not know what to write her when the cablegram came hurtling into his calm and delightfully ordered life and blew up the whole fabric.
Sometimes, to himself, he called her a “little fool”; sometimes “poor little Steve.” But always he unfeignedly cursed Grismer and bitterly blamed himself.
The affair made him sick at heart and miserable, and ruined any pleasure remaining in his life and work.
He did not cable her; he wrote many letters and tore all of them to bits. It was beyond him to accept the fait accompli, beyond him to write even politely, let alone with any pretense of cordiality.
His resentment grew steadily, increased by self-reproach. What kind of man had Oswald Grismer grown into? What kind of insolence was this—his marrying Steve——
“Damn his yellow soul, I’ll wring his neck!” muttered Cleland, pacing the deck of the Cunarder in the chilly April sunshine.
But the immense astonishment of it still possessed him. He couldn’t imagine Steve married. Why had she married? What earthly reason was there? It was incredible, absurd.
Still in his mind lingered the image of the girl Stephanie whom he remembered as he last had seen her.
Once or twice, too, thinking of that time, and conjuring up all he could picture of her, he remembered the delicate ardour of her parting embrace, the fragrant warmth of her mouth, and her arms around his neck.
It angered him oddly to remember it—to think of her as the wife of Oswald Grismer. The idea seemed unendurable; it threw him into a rage against this man who had so suddenly taken Stephanie Quest out of his life.
“Damn him! Damn him!” he muttered, staring out over the wind-whipped sea. “I’d like to twist his neck! There’s something queer about this. I’ll take her away from him if I can. I’ll do everything I can to take her away from him. I want her back. I’ll get her back if it’s possible. How can she care for Grismer?”
He had nobody, now, to return to; no home, for the house was closed; no welcome to expect.
He had not written her that he was coming; he had no desire to see her at the steamer with Grismer. With a youthful heart full of indefinable bitterness and self-contempt that his own indifference and selfishness had brought Steve and himself to such a pass, he paced the decks day after day, making no acquaintances, keeping to himself.
And one night the great light on Montauk Point stared at him across leagues of unseen water. He was in touch again with his own half of the earth, nearing the edges of the great, raw, sprawling Continent where no delicate haze of tradition softened sordid facts; where there reigned no calm and ordered philosophy of life; where everything was in extremes; where everything was etched sharply against aggressive backgrounds; where there were no misty middle distances, no tranquil spaces; only the roaring silences of deserts to mitigate the yelling dissonance of life.
He saw the sun on the gilded tips of snowy towers piled up like Alpine cliffs; the vast webs of bridges stretching athwart a leaden flood; forests of masts and huge painted funnels; acres of piers and docks; myriads of craft crossing and recrossing the silvery flood flowing between great cities.
On the red castle to the southwest a flag flew, sun-dyed, vivid, lovely as a flower.
His eyes filled; he choked.
“Thank God,” he thought, “I’m where I belong at last!”
And so Cleland came home.