Chapter XIV: A Farewell

WHEN his mother had gone to bed, Norman sat up smoking and thinking.

So Lucinda--and Vickley in general, no doubt--thought he ought not to marry Isabel!

Well, perhaps Vickley was right, at that.

Why should she be given another chance? Why should she be allowed to have the son she had deserted?

“No, by God--he’s mine!” thought Norman, rocked with an emotion of jealous hatred.

He went to bed. But presently he got up and turned on the light and brought back to bed with him the Apocrypha he had picked up. He turned to the story of Thecla.... This apocryphal girl saint was to him a queer parable. When he had first read its opening sentences he had been reminded of something Isabel had told him that day in the hospital--how she had broken her engagement, at eighteen, for the love of art.... St. Thecla here in the Apocrypha had broken hers for the love of God.... It was all different enough and yet as he read it had seemed to him that Isabel’s rebellious career was a queer, perverse, modern echo of that old tale. For “the gospel of Paul” one need only put “the gospel of Modern Art.”

He read it again, now, to allay his hatred of Isabel. For when he thought of Isabel, it was with love or hatred, and both were torments. He was safer in hating her, safer from the danger of more pain; but hating her hurt him. And in this parable he found something to make him sorry for her....

The story he read told of how when Paul was preaching in Iconium a girl named Thecla, who was betrothed to a young man named Thamyris, sat in the window of her mother’s house and listened to this new gospel; nor would she depart from the window. And her mother, when she could not be prevailed upon, sent for Thamyris, who came with exceeding pleasure, as hoping now to marry her. He said to her mother, “Where is my Thecla?”

Her mother replied: “Thamyris, I have a strange thing to tell you. For the space of three days my daughter has not moved from the window, not so much as to eat or drink, but is intent on hearing the artful and delusive discourses of a certain foreigner. Thamyris, this stranger causes trouble throughout the whole city of the Iconians, for the young men and girls listen to him and will not marry. And my daughter too, caught as in a spider’s web at the window, is possessed by a new desire and a fearful passion. But go you and speak to her, for she is betrothed to you.”

And Thamyris went to her, desiring her, and yet alarmed because of her strange ecstasy, and said: “Thecla, why do you sit thus? What strange passion holds you in its power? Turn to your Thamyris and be ashamed of yourself!” And her mother likewise: “Thecla, why do you look down and answer nothing, as if you had lost your wits?” And they mourned, Thamyris for his betrothed and her mother for her child, and Thecla paid no heed to them but listened only the while to the new gospel.

And Thamyris leapt up and went away ... and brought officers with staves to arrest Paul, and had him led to the proconsul, saying: “This is the stranger who keeps girls from marrying.” And Paul was taken to prison.

But Thecla that night took off her bracelets and gave them to the doorkeeper and went into the prison and sat at Paul’s feet and listened to his words, and kissed his chains.

And they were brought before the governor, who asked: “Thecla, why will you not marry Thamyris, according to the law of the Iconians?” But she looked only upon Paul and answered not, and her own mother cried: “Burn the lawless one, burn her that will not be a bride, so that the women of Iconium may be made afraid to follow these new teachings!”

And she was brought naked to the stake, but God had compassion on her, and sent a rain to quench the fire. And she was set free, and went to Paul and said: “I will cut my hair, and follow you wherever you go.”

But he said: “The time is ill-favored, and you are comely. I fear a harder trial may come, which you will not be able to withstand.”

But she cut her hair and went with him to Antioch. And there a magistrate named Alexander saw her and was enamored of her, and sent Paul presents....

(Norman thought: “I became interested in pictures just to please Isabel.”...)

But Paul said: “I know not this woman of whom you speak, neither does she belong to me.”

And Alexander seized her in the street, but she rent his cloak and took the wreath from his head, and made him a laughing-stock before the whole town....

“That’s me,” thought Norman.

He did not go on to read the rest of Thecla’s triumphant career. He stopped there with poor Alexander, who had been made a laughing-stock before the whole town.

Nobody, he reflected, would ever write the inglorious story of Alexander. The sympathies of storytellers were always with the girl.

Not, to be sure, precisely with a girl like Isabel, though. They didn’t understand a girl’s being faithful to her art, in spite of a moonstruck moment in the woods--in spite of having a baby at her breast--in spite of confusion, complications, tormented and conflicting emotions. Legend, if she became famous, would simplify her story; and he alone would know what a troubled soul she had been....

She was waiting now for her answer. She was trusting him to decide her life for her. Too tired, sick, discouraged, to know any more what she wanted, she was leaving it to him to say whether she should be an artist or a mother. He could take her in this moment of weakness. But he would never be content with what she had to give....

No, he would trouble her no more with his human demands for love. He’d let her go on to her own destiny....

It seemed to him that he had forgiven her. At least, he did not hate her now. And if he still, in a way loved her, yet he did not want her for his own. He had let her go. She was remote, now, in his imagination, above the reach of desire, shining from the abode where things that seem eternal find refuge.... And at the same time, it seemed to him that he had put aside his youth for ever.