II
Without a word, we passed together into the drawing-room, and I closed the door. Ispenlove stood leaning against the piano, as though intensely fatigued; he crushed his gibus with an almost savage movement, and then bent his large, lustrous black eyes absently on the flat top of it. His thin face was whiter even than usual, and his black hair, beard, and moustache all dishevelled; the collar of his overcoat was twisted, and his dinner-jacket rose an inch above it at the back of the neck.
I wanted to greet him, but I could not trust my lips. And I saw that he, too, was trying in vain to speak.
At length I said, with that banality which too often surprises us in supreme moments:
‘What is it? Do you know that your tie is under your ear?’
And as I uttered these words, my voice, breaking of itself and in defiance of me, descended into a tone which sounded harsh and inimical.
‘Ah!’ he murmured, lifting his eyes to mine, ‘if you turn against me to-night, I shall—’
‘Turn against you!’ I cried, shocked. ‘Let me help you with your overcoat!’
And I went near him, meaning to take his overcoat.
‘It’s finished between Mary and me,’ he said, holding me with his gaze. ‘It’s finished. I’ve no one but you now; and I’ve come—I’ve come—’
He stopped. We read one another’s eyes at arm’s length, and all the sorrow and pity and love that were in each of us rose to our eyes and shone there. I shivered with pleasure when I saw his arms move, and then he clutched and dragged me to him, and I hid my glowing face on his shoulder, in the dear folds of his overcoat, and I felt his lips on my neck. And then, since neither of us was a coward, we lifted our heads, and our mouths met honestly and fairly, and, so united, we shut our eyes for an eternal moment, and the world was not.
Such was the avowal.
I gave up my soul to him in that long kiss; all that was me, all that was most secret and precious in me, ascended and poured itself out through my tense lips, and was received by him. I kissed him with myself, with the entire passionate energy of my being—not merely with my mouth. And if I sighed, it was because I tried to give him more—more than I had—and failed. Ah! The sensation of his nearness, the warmth of his face, the titillation of his hair, the slow, luxurious intake of our breaths, the sweet cruelty of his desperate clutch on my shoulders, the glimpses of his skin through my eyelashes when I raised ever so little my eyelids! Pain and joy of life, you were mingled then!
I remembered that I was a woman, and disengaged myself and withdrew from him. I hated to do it; but I did it. We became self-conscious. The brilliant and empty drawing-room scanned us unfavourably with all its globes and mirrors. How difficult it is to be natural in a great crisis! Our spirits clamoured for expression, beating vainly against a thousand barred doors of speech. There was so much to say, to explain, to define, and everything was so confused and dizzily revolving, that we knew not which door to open first. And then I think we both felt, but I more than he, that explanations and statements were futile, that even if all the doors were thrown open together, they would be inadequate. The deliciousness of silence, of wonder, of timidity, of things guessed at and hidden....
‘It makes me afraid,’ he murmured at length.
‘What?’
‘To be loved like that.... Your kiss ... you don’t know.’
I smiled almost sadly. As if I did not know what my kiss had done! As if I did not know that my kiss had created between us the happiness which brings ruin!
‘You do love me?’ he demanded.
I nodded, and sat down.
‘Say it, say it!’ he pleaded.
‘More than I can ever show you,’ I said proudly.
‘Honestly,’ he said, ‘I can’t imagine what you have been able to see in me. I’m nothing—I’m nobody—’
‘Foolish boy!’ I exclaimed. ‘You are you.’
The profound significance of that age-worn phrase struck me for the first time.
He rushed to me at the word ‘boy,’ and, standing over me, took my hand in his hot hand. I let it lie, inert.
‘But you haven’t always loved me. I have always loved you, from the moment when I drove with you, that first day, from the office to your hotel. But you haven’t always loved me.’
‘No,’ I admitted.
‘Then when did you—? Tell me.’
‘I was dull at first—I could not see. But when you told me that the end of Fate and Friendship was not as good as I could make it—do you remember, that afternoon in the office?—and how reluctant you were to tell me, how afraid you were to tell me?—your throat went dry, and you stroked your forehead as you always do when you are nervous—There! you are doing it now, foolish boy!’
I seized his left arm, and gently pulled it down from his face. Oh, exquisite moment!
‘It was brave of you to tell me—very brave! I loved you for telling me. You were quite wrong about the end of that book. You didn’t see the fine point of it, and you never would have seen it—and I liked you, somehow, for not seeing it, because it was so feminine—but I altered the book to please you, and when I had altered it, against my conscience, I loved you more.’
‘It’s incredible! incredible!’ he muttered, half to himself. ‘I never hoped till lately that you would care for me. I never dared to think of such a thing. I knew you oughtn’t to! It passes comprehension.’
‘That is just what love does,’ I said.
‘No, no,’ he went on quickly; ‘you don’t understand; you can’t understand my feelings when I began to suspect, about two months ago, that, after all, the incredible had happened. I’m nothing but your publisher. I can’t talk. I can’t write. I can’t play. I can’t do anything. And look at the men you have here! I’ve sometimes wondered how often you’ve been besieged—’
‘None of them was like you,’ I said. ‘Perhaps that is why I have always kept them off.’
I raised my eyes and lips, and he stooped and kissed me. He wanted to take me in his arms again, but I would not yield myself.
‘Be reasonable,’ I urged him. ‘Ought we not to think of our situation?’
He loosed me, stammering apologies, abasing himself.
‘I ought to leave you, I ought never to see you again.’ He spoke roughly. ‘What am I doing to you? You who are so innocent and pure!’
‘I entreat you not to talk like that,’ I gasped, reddening.
‘But I must talk like that,’ he insisted. ‘I must talk like that. You had everything that a woman can desire, and I come into your life and offer you—what?’
‘I have everything a woman can desire,’ I corrected him softly.
‘Angel!’ he breathed. ‘If I bring you disaster, you will forgive me, won’t you?’
‘My happiness will only cease with your love,’ I said.
‘Happiness!’ he repeated. ‘I have never been so happy as I am now; but such happiness is terrible. It seems to me impossible that such happiness can last.’
‘Faint heart!’ I chided him.
‘It is for you I tremble,’ he said. ‘If—if—’ He stopped. ‘My darling, forgive me!’
How I pitied him! How I enveloped him in an effluent sympathy that rushed warm from my heart! He accused himself of having disturbed my existence. Whereas, was it not I who had disturbed his? He had fought against me, I knew well, but fate had ordained his defeat. He had been swept away; he had been captured; he had been caught in a snare of the high gods. And he was begging forgiveness, he who alone had made my life worth living! I wanted to kneel before him, to worship him, to dry his tears with my hair. I swear that my feelings were as much those of a mother as of a lover. He was ten years older than me, and yet he seemed boyish, and I an aged woman full of experience, as he sat there opposite to me with his wide, melancholy eyes and restless mouth.
‘Wonderful, is it not,’ he said, ‘that we should be talking like this to-night, and only yesterday we were Mr. and Miss to each other?’
‘Wonderful!’ I responded. ‘But yesterday we talked with our eyes, and our eyes did not say Mr. or Miss. Our eyes said—Ah, what they said can never be translated into words!’
My gaze brooded on him like a caress, explored him with the unappeasable curiosity of love, and blinded him like the sun. Could it be true that Heaven had made that fine creature—noble and modest, nervous and full of courage, impetuous and self-controlled, but, above all things, fine and delicate—could it be true that Heaven had made him and then given him to me, with his enchanting imperfections that themselves constituted perfection? Oh, wonder, wonder! Oh, miraculous bounty which I had not deserved! This thing had happened to me, of all women! How it showed, by comparison, the sterility of my success and my fame and my worldly splendour! I had hungered and thirsted for years; I had travelled interminably through the hot desert of my brilliant career, until I had almost ceased to hope that I should reach, one evening, the pool of water and the palm. And now I might eat and drink and rest in the shade. Wonderful!
‘Why were you so late to-night?’ I asked abruptly.
‘Late?’ he replied absently. ‘Is it late?’
We both looked at the clock. It was yet half an hour from midnight.
‘Of course it isn’t—not very,’ I said. I was forgetting that. Everybody left so early.’
‘Why was that?’
I told him, in a confusion that was sweet to me, how I had suffered by reason of his failure to appear. He glanced at me with tender amaze.
‘But I am fortunate to-day,’ I exclaimed. ‘Was it not lucky they left when they did? Suppose you had arrived, in that state, dearest man, and burst into a room full of people? What would they have thought? Where should I have looked?’
‘Angel!’ he cried. ‘I’m so sorry. I forgot it was your evening. I must have forgotten. I forgot everything, except that I was bound to see you at once, instantly, with all speed.’
Poor boy! He was like a bird fluttering in my hand. Millions of women must have so pictured to themselves the men who loved them, and whom they loved.
‘But still, you were rather late, you know,’ I smiled.
‘Do not ask me why,’ he begged, with an expression of deep pain on his face. ‘I have had a scene with Mary. It would humiliate me to tell you—to tell even you—what passed between us. But it is over. Our relations in the future can never, in any case, be more than formal.’
A spasm of fierce jealousy shot through me—jealousy of Mary, my friend Mary, who knew him with such profound intimacy that they could go through a scene together which was ‘humiliating.’ I saw that my own intimacy with him was still crude with the crudity of newness, and that only years could mellow it. Mary, the good, sentimental Mary, had wasted the years of their marriage—had never understood the value of the treasure in her keeping. Why had they always been sad in their house? What was the origin of that resigned and even cheerful gloom which had pervaded their domestic life, and which I had remarked on my first visit to Bloomsbury Square? Were these, too, mysteries that I must not ask my lover to reveal? Resentment filled me. I came near to hating Mary, not because she had made him unhappy—oh no!—but because she had had the priority in his regard, and because there was nothing about him, however secret and recondite, that I could be absolutely sure of the sole knowledge of. She had been in the depths with him. I desired fervently that I also might descend with him, and even deeper. Oh, that I might have the joy and privilege of humiliation with him!
‘I shall ask you nothing, dearest,’ I murmured.
I had risen from my seat and gone to him, and was lightly touching his hair with my fingers. He did not move, but sat staring into the fire. Somehow, I adored him because he made no response to the fondling of my hand. His strange acceptance of the caress as a matter of course gave me the illusion that I was his wife, and that the years had mellowed our intimacy.
‘Carlotta!’
He spoke my name slowly and distinctly, savouring it.
‘Yes,’ I answered softly and obediently.
‘Carlotta! Listen! Our two lives are in our hands at this moment—this moment while we talk here.’
His rapt eyes had not stirred from the fire.
‘I feel it,’ I said.
‘What are we to do? What shall we decide to do?’
He slowly turned towards me. I lowered my glance.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Yes, you do, Carlotta,’ he insisted. ‘You do know.’
His voice trembled.
‘Mary and I are such good friends,’ I said. ‘That is what makes it so—’
‘No, no, no!’ he objected loudly. His nervousness had suddenly increased. ‘Don’t, for God’s sake, begin to argue in that way! You are above feminine logic. Mary is your friend. Good. You respect her; she respects you. Good. Is that any reason why our lives should be ruined? Will that benefit Mary? Do I not tell you that everything has ceased between us?’
‘The idea of being false to Mary—’
‘There’s no question of being false. And if there was, would you be false to love rather than to friendship? Between you and me there is love; between Mary and me there is not love. It isn’t her fault, nor mine, least of all yours. It is the fault of the secret essence of existence. Have you not yourself written that the only sacred thing is instinct? Are we, or are we not, to be true to ourselves?’
‘You see,’ I said, ‘your wife is so sentimental. She would be incapable of looking at the affair as—as we do; as I should in her place.’
I knew that my protests were insincere, and that all my heart and brain were with him, but I could not admit this frankly. Ah! And I knew also that the sole avenue to peace and serenity, not to happiness, was the path of renunciation and of obedience to the conventions of society, and that this was precisely the path which we should never take. And on the horizon of our joy I saw a dark cloud. It had always been there, but I had refused to see it. I looked at it now steadily.
‘Of course,’ he groaned, ‘if we are to be governed by Mary’s sentimentality—’
‘Dear love,’ I whispered, ‘what do you want me to do?’
‘The only possible, honest, just thing. I want you to go away with me, so that Mary can get a divorce.’
He spoke sternly, as it were relentlessly.
‘Does she guess—about me?’ I asked, biting my lip, and looking away from him.
‘Not yet. Hasn’t the slightest notion, I’m sure. But I’ll tell her, straight and fair.’
‘Dearest friend,’ I said, after a silence. ‘Perhaps I know more of the world than you think. Perhaps I’m a girl only in years and situation. Forgive me if I speak plainly. Mary may prove unfaithfulness, but she cannot get a decree unless she can prove other things as well.’
He stroked his forehead. As for me, I shuddered with agitation. He walked across the room and back.
‘Angel!’ he said, putting his white face close to mine like an actor. ‘I will prove whether your love for me is great enough. I have struck her. I struck her to-night in the presence of a servant. And I did it purposely, in cold blood, so that she might be able to prove cruelty. Ah! Have I not thought it all out? Have I not?’
A sob, painfully escaping, shook my whole frame.
‘And this was before you had—had spoken to me!’ I said bitterly.
Not myself, but some strange and frigid force within me uttered those words.
‘That is what love will do. That is the sort of thing love drives one to,’ he cried despairingly. ‘Oh! I was not sure of you—I was not sure of you. I struck her, on the off chance.’
And he sank on the sofa and wept passionately, unashamed, like a child.
I could not bear it. My heart would have broken if I had watched, without assuaging, my boy’s grief an instant longer than I did. I sprang to him. I took him to my breast. I kissed his eyes until the tears ceased to flow. Whatever it was or might be, I must share his dishonour.
‘My poor girl!’ he said at length. ‘If you had refused me, if you had even judged me, I intended to warn you plainly that it meant my death; and if that failed, I should have gone to the office and shot myself.’
‘Do not say such things,’ I entreated him.
‘But it is true. The revolver is in my pocket. Ah! I have made you cry! You’re frightened! But I’m not a brute; I’m only a little beside myself. Pardon me, angel!’
He kissed me, smiling sadly with a trace of humour. He did not understand me. He did not suspect the risk he had run. If I had hesitated to surrender, and he had sought to move me by threatening suicide, I should never have surrendered. I knew myself well enough to know that. I had a conscience that was incapable of yielding to panic. A threat would have parted us, perhaps for ever. Oh, the blindness of man! But I forgave him. Nay, I cherished him the more for his childlike, savage simplicity.
‘Carlotta,’ he said, ‘we shall leave everything. You grasp it?—everything.’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Of all the things we have now, we shall have nothing but ourselves.’
‘If I thought it was a sacrifice for you, I would go out and never see you again.’
Noble fellow, proud now in the certainty that he sufficed for me! He meant what he said.
‘It is no sacrifice for me,’ I murmured. ‘The sacrifice would be not to give up all in exchange for you.’
‘We shall be exiles,’ he went on, ‘until the divorce business is over. And then perhaps we shall creep back—shall we?—and try to find out how many of our friends are our equals in moral courage.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We shall come back. They all do.’
‘What do you mean?’ he demanded.
‘Thousands have done what we are going to do,’ I said. ‘And all of them have thought that their own case was different from the other cases.’
‘Ah!’
‘And a few have been happy. A few have not regretted the price. A few have retained the illusion.’
‘Illusion? Dearest girl, why do you talk like this?’
I could see that my heart’s treasure was ruffled. He clasped my hand tenaciously.
‘I must not hide from you the kind of woman you have chosen,’ I answered quietly, and as I spoke a hush fell upon my amorous passion. ‘In me there are two beings—myself and the observer of myself. It is the novelist’s disease, this duplication of personality. When I said illusion, I meant the supreme illusion of love. Is it not an illusion? I have seen it in others, and in exactly the same way I see it in myself and I see it in you. Will it last?—who knows? None can tell.’
‘Angel!’ he expostulated.
‘No one can foresee the end of love,’ I said, with an exquisite gentle sorrow. ‘But when the illusion is as intense as mine, as yours, even if its hour is brief, that hour is worth all the terrible years of disillusion which it will cost. Darling, this precious night alone would not be too dear if I paid for it with the rest of my life.’
He thanked me with a marvellous smile of confident adoration, and his disengaged hand played with the gold chain which hung loosely round my neck.
‘Call it illusion if you like,’ he said. ‘Words are nothing. I only know that for me it will be eternal. I only know that my one desire is to be with you always, never to leave you, not to miss a moment of you; to have you for mine, openly, securely. Carlotta, where shall we go?’
‘We must travel, mustn’t we?’
‘Travel?’ he repeated, with an air of discontent. ‘Yes. But where to?’
‘Travel,’ I said. ‘See things. See the world.’
‘I had thought we might find some quiet little place,’ he said wistfully, and as if apologetically, where we could be alone, undisturbed, some spot where we could have ourselves wholly to ourselves, and go walks into mountains and return for dinner; and then the long, calm evenings! Dearest, our honeymoon!’
Our honeymoon! I had not, in the pursuit of my calling, studied human nature and collected documents for nothing. With how many brides had I not talked! How many loves did I not know to have been paralyzed and killed by a surfeit in the frail early stages of their existence! Inexperienced as I was, my learning in humanity was wiser than the experience of my impulsive, generous, magnanimous lover, to whom the very thought of calculation would have been abhorrent. But I saw, I felt, I lived through in a few seconds the interminable and monotonous length of those calm days, and especially those calm evenings succeeding each other with a formidable sameness. I had watched great loves faint and die. And I knew that our love—miraculously sweet as it was—probably was not greater than many great ones that had not stood the test. You perceive the cold observer in me. I knew that when love lasted, the credit of the survival was due far more often to the woman than to the man. The woman must husband herself, dole herself out, economize herself so that she might be splendidly wasteful when need was. The woman must plan, scheme, devise, invent, reconnoitre, take precautions; and do all this sincerely and lovingly in the name and honour of love. A passion, for her, is a campaign; and her deadliest enemy is satiety. Looking into my own heart, and into his, I saw nothing but hope for the future of our love. But the beautiful plant must not be exposed to hazard. Suppose it sickened, such a love as ours—what then? The misery of hell, the torture of the damned! Only its rich and ample continuance could justify us.
‘My dear,’ I said submissively, ‘I shall leave everything to you. The idea of travelling occurred to me; that was all. I have never travelled further than Cannes. Still, we have all our lives before us.’
‘We will travel,’ he said unselfishly. ‘We’ll go round the world—slowly. I’ll get the tickets at Cook’s to-morrow.’
‘But, dearest, if you would rather—’
‘No, no! In any case we shall always have our evenings.’
‘Of course we shall. Dearest, how good you are!’
‘I wish I was,’ he murmured.
I was glad, then, that I had never allowed my portrait to appear in a periodical. We could not prevent the appearance in American newspapers of heralding paragraphs, but the likelihood of our being recognised was sensibly lessened.
‘Can you start soon?’ he asked. ‘Can you be ready?’
‘Any time. The sooner the better, now that it is decided.’
‘You do not regret? We have decided so quickly. Ah! you are the merest girl, and I have taken advantage—’
I put my hand over his mouth. He seized it, and kept it there and kissed it, and his ardent breath ran through my fingers.
‘What about your business?’ I said.
‘I shall confide it to old Tate—tell him some story—he knows quite as much about it as I do. To-morrow I will see to all that. The day after, shall we start? No; to-morrow night. To-morrow night, eh? I’ll run in to-morrow and tell you what I’ve arranged. I must see you to-morrow, early.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Do not come before lunch.’
‘Not before lunch! Why?’
He was surprised. But I had been my own mistress for five years, with my own habits, rules, privacies. I had never seen anyone before lunch. And to-morrow, of all days, I should have so much to do and to arrange. Was this man to come like an invader and disturb my morning? So felt the celibate in me, instinctively, thoughtlessly. That deep-seated objection to the intrusion of even the most loved male at certain times is common, I think, to all women. Women are capable of putting love aside, like a rich dress, and donning the peignoir of matter-of-fact dailiness, in a way which is an eternal enigma to men.... Then I saw, in a sudden flash, that I had renounced my individual existence, that I had forfeited my habits and rules, and privacies, that I was a man’s woman. And the passionate lover in me gloried in this.
‘Come as soon as you like, dearest friend,’ I said.
‘Nobody except Mary will know anything till we are actually gone,’ he remarked. ‘And I shall not tell her till the last thing. Afterwards, won’t they chatter! God! Let ’em.’
‘They are already chattering,’ I said. And I told him about Mrs. Sardis. ‘When she met you on the landing,’ I added, ‘she drew her own conclusions, my poor, poor boy!’
He was furious. I could see he wanted to take me in his arms and protect me masculinely from the rising storm.
‘All that is nothing,’ I soothed him. ‘Nothing. Against it, we have our self-respect. We can scorn all that.’ And I gave a short, contemptuous laugh.
‘Darling!’ he murmured. ‘You are more than a woman.’
‘I hope not.’ And I laughed again, but unnaturally.
He had risen; I leaned back in a large cushioned chair; we looked at each other in silence—a silence that throbbed with the heavy pulse of an unutterable and complex emotion—pleasure, pain, apprehension, even terror. What had I done? Why had I, with a word—nay, without a word, with merely a gesture and a glance—thrown my whole life into the crucible of passion? Why did I exult in the tremendous and impetuous act, like a martyr, and also like a girl? Was I playing with my existence as an infant plays with a precious bibelot that a careless touch may shatter? Why was I so fiercely, madly, drunkenly happy when I gazed into those eyes?
‘I suppose I must go,’ he said disconsolately.
I nodded, and the next instant the clock struck.
‘Yes,’ he urged himself, ‘I must go.’
He bent down, put his hands on the arms of the chair, and kissed me violently, twice. The fire that consumes the world ran scorchingly through me. Every muscle was suddenly strained into tension, and then fell slack. My face flushed; I let my head slip sideways, so that my left cheek was against the back of the chair. Through my drooping eyelashes I could see the snake-like glitter of his eyes as he stood over me. I shuddered and sighed. I was like someone fighting in vain against the sweet seduction of an overwhelming and fatal drug. I wanted to entreat him to go away, to rid me of the exquisite and sinister enchantment. But I could not speak. I shut my eyes. This was love.
The next moment I heard the soft sound of his feet on the carpet. I opened my eyes. He had stepped back. When our glances met he averted his face, and went briskly for his overcoat, which lay on the floor by the piano. I rose freed, re-established in my self-control. I arranged his collar, straightened his necktie with a few touches, picked up his hat, pushed back the crown, which flew up with a noise like a small explosion, and gave it into his hands.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘To-morrow morning, eh? I shall get to know everything necessary before I come. And then we will fix things up.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I can let myself out,’ he said.
I made a vague gesture, intended to signify that I could not think of permitting him to let himself out. We left the drawing-room, and passed, with precautions of silence, to the front-door, which I gently opened.
‘Good-night, then,’ he whispered formally, almost coldly.
I nodded. We neither of us even smiled.
We were grave, stern, and stiff in our immense self-consciousness.
‘Too late for the lift,’ I murmured out there with him in the vast, glittering silence of the many-angled staircase, which disappeared above us and below us into the mysterious unseen.
He nodded as I had nodded, and began to descend the broad, carpeted steps, firmly, carefully, and neither quick nor slow. I leaned over the baluster. When the turns of the staircase brought him opposite and below me, he stopped and raised his hat, and we exchanged a smile. Then he resolutely dropped his eyes and resumed the descent. From time to time I had glimpses of parts of his figure as he passed story after story. Then I heard his tread on the tessellated pavement of the main hall, the distant clatter of double doors, and a shrill cab-whistle.
This was love, at last—the reality of love! He would have killed himself had he failed to win me—killed himself! With the novelist’s habit, I ran off into a series of imagined scenes—the dead body, with the hole in the temples and the awkward attitude of death; the discovery, the rush for the police, the search for a motive, the inquest, the rapid-speaking coroner, who spent his whole life at inquests; myself, cold and impassive, giving evidence, and Mary listening to what I said.... But he lived, with his delicate physical charm, his frail distinction, his spiritual grace; and he had won me. The sense of mutual possession was inexpressibly sweet to me. And it was all I had in the world now. When my mind moved from that rock, all else seemed shifting, uncertain, perilous, bodeful, and steeped in woe. The air was thick with disasters, and injustice, and strange griefs immediately I loosed my hold on the immense fact that he was mine.
‘How calm I am!’ I thought.
It was not till I had been in bed some three hours that I fully realized the seismic upheaval which my soul had experienced.
III
I woke up from one of those dozes which, after a sleepless night, give the brief illusion of complete rest, all my senses sharpened, and my mind factitiously active. And I began at once to anticipate Frank’s coming, and to arrange rapidly my plans for closing the flat. I had determined that it should be closed. Then someone knocked at the door, and it occurred to me that there must have been a previous knock, which had, in fact, wakened me. Save on special occasions, I was never wakened, and Emmeline and my maid had injunctions not to come to me until I rang. My thoughts ran instantly to Frank. He had arrived thus early, merely because he could not keep away.
‘How extremely indiscreet of him!’ I thought. ‘What detestable prevarications with Emmeline this will lead to! I cannot possibly be ready in time if he is to be in and out all day.’
Nevertheless, the prospect of seeing him quickly, and the idea of his splendid impatience, drenched me with joy.
‘What is it?’ I called out.
Emmeline entered in that terrible mauve dressing-gown which I had been powerless to persuade her to discard.
‘So sorry to disturb you,’ said Emmeline, feeling her loose golden hair with one hand, ‘but Mrs. Ispenlove has called, and wants to see you at once. I’m afraid something has happened.’
‘Mrs. Ispenlove?’
My voice shook.
‘Yes. Yvonne came to my room and told me that Mrs. Ispenlove was here, and was either mad or very unwell, and would I go to her? So I got up at once. What shall I do? Perhaps it’s something very serious. Not half-past eight, and calling like this!’
‘Let her come in here immediately,’ I said, turning my head on the pillow, so that Emmeline should not see the blush which had spread over my face and my neck.
It was inevitable that a terrible and desolating scene must pass between Mary Ispenlove and myself. I could not foresee how I should emerge from it, but I desperately resolved that I would suffer the worst without a moment’s delay, and that no conceivable appeal should induce me to abandon Frank. I was, as I waited for Mrs. Ispenlove to appear, nothing but an embodied and fierce instinct to guard what I had won. No consideration of mercy could have touched me.
She entered with a strange, hysterical cry:
‘Carlotta!’
I had asked her long ago to use my Christian name—long before I ever imagined what would come to pass between her husband and me; but I always called her Mrs. Ispenlove. The difference in our ages justified me. And that morning the difference seemed to be increased. I realized, with a cruel justice of perception quite new in my estimate of her, that she was old—an old woman. She had never been beautiful, but she was tall and graceful, and her face had been attractive by the sweetness of the mouth and the gray beneficence of the eyes; and now that sweetness and that beneficence appeared suddenly to have been swallowed up in the fatal despair of a woman who discovers that she has lived too long. Gray hair, wrinkles, crow’s-feet, tired eyes, drawn mouth, and the terrible tell-tale hollow under the chin—these were what I saw in Mary Ispenlove. She had learnt that the only thing worth having in life is youth. I possessed everything that she lacked. Surely the struggle was unequal. Fate might have chosen a less piteous victim. I felt profoundly sorry for Mary Ispenlove, and this sorrow was stronger in me even than the uneasiness, the false shame (for it was not a real shame) which I experienced in her presence. I put out my hands towards her, as it were, involuntarily. She sprang to me, took them, and kissed me as I lay in bed.
‘How beautiful you look—like that!’ she exclaimed wildly, and with a hopeless and acute envy in her tone.
‘But why—’ I began to protest, astounded.
‘What will you think of me, disturbing you like this? What will you think?’ she moaned. And then her voice rose: ‘I could not help it; I couldn’t, really. Oh, Carlotta! you are my friend, aren’t you?’
One thing grew swiftly clear to me: that she was as yet perfectly unaware of the relations between Frank and myself. My brain searched hurriedly for an explanation of the visit. I was conscious of an extraordinary relief.
‘You are my friend, aren’t you?’ she repeated insistently.
Her tears were dropping on my bosom. But could I answer that I was her friend? I did not wish to be her enemy; she and Frank and I were dolls in the great hands of fate, irresponsible, guiltless, meet for an understanding sympathy. Why was I not still her friend? Did not my heart bleed for her? Yet such is the power of convention over honourableness that I could not bring myself to reply directly, ‘Yes, I am your friend.’
‘We have known each other a long time,’ I ventured.
‘There was no one else I could come to,’ she said.
Her whole frame was shaking. I sat up, and asked her to pass my dressing-gown, which I put round my shoulders. Then I rang the bell.
‘What are you going to do?’ she demanded fearfully.
‘I am going to have the gas-stove lighted and some tea brought in, and then we will talk.
Take your hat off, dear, and sit down in that chair. You’ll be more yourself after a cup of tea.’
How young I was then! I remember my naïve satisfaction in this exhibition of tact. I was young and hard, as youth is apt to be—hard in spite of the compassion, too intellectual and arrogant, which I conceived for her. And even while I forbade her to talk until she had drunk some tea, I regretted the delay, and I suffered by it. Surely, I thought, she will read in my demeanour something which she ought not to read there. But she did not. She was one of the simplest of women. In ten thousand women one is born without either claws or second-sight. She was that one, defenceless as a rabbit.
‘You are very kind to me,’ she said, putting her cup on the mantelpiece with a nervous rattle; ‘and I need it.’
‘Tell me,’ I murmured. ‘Tell me—what I can do.’
I had remained in bed; she was by the fireplace. A distance between us seemed necessary.
‘You can’t do anything, my dear,’ she said. ‘Only I was obliged to talk to someone, after all the night. It’s about Frank.’
‘Mr. Ispenlove!’ I ejaculated, acting as well as I could, but not very well.
‘Yes. He has left me.’
‘But why? What is the matter?’
Even to recall my share in this interview with Mary Ispenlove humiliates me. But perhaps I have learned the value of humiliation. Still, could I have behaved differently?
‘You won’t understand unless I begin a long time ago,’ said Mary Ispenlove. ‘Carlotta, my married life has been awful—awful—a tragedy. It has been a tragedy both for him and for me. But no one has suspected it; we have hidden it.’
I nodded. I, however, had suspected it.
‘It’s just twenty years—yes, twenty—since I fell in love,’ she proceeded, gazing at me with her soft, moist eyes.
‘With—Frank,’ I assumed. I lay back in bed.
‘No,’ she said. ‘With another man. That was in Brixton, when I was a girl living with my father; my mother was dead. He was a barrister—I mean the man I was in love with. He had only just been called to the Bar. I think everybody knew that I had fallen in love with him. Certainly he did; he could not help seeing it. I could not conceal it. Of course I can understand now that it flattered him. Naturally it did. Any man is flattered when a woman falls in love with him. And my father was rich, and so on, and so on. We saw each other a lot. I hoped, and I kept on hoping. Some people even said it was a match, and that I was throwing myself away. Fancy—throwing myself away—me!—who have never been good for anything! My father did not care much for the man; said he was selfish and grasping. Possibly he was; but I was in love with him all the same. Then I met Frank, and Frank fell in love with me. You know how obstinate Frank is when he has once set his mind on a thing. Frank determined to have me; and my father was on his side. I would not listen. I didn’t give him so much as a chance to propose to me. And this state of things lasted for quite a long time. It wasn’t my fault; it wasn’t anybody’s fault.’
‘Just so,’ I agreed, raising my head on one elbow, and listening intently. It was the first sincere word I had spoken, and I was glad to utter it.
‘The man I had fallen in love with came nearer. He was decidedly tempted. I began to feel sure of him. All I wanted was to marry him, whether he loved me a great deal or only a little tiny bit. I was in that state. Then he drew away. He scarcely ever came to the house, and I seemed never to be able to meet him. And then one day my father showed me something in the Morning Post. It was a paragraph saying that the man I was in love with was going to marry a woman of title, a widow and the daughter of a peer. I soon found out she was nearly twice his age. He had done it to get on. He was getting on very well by himself, but I suppose that wasn’t fast enough for him. Carlotta, it nearly killed me. And I felt so sorry for him. You can’t guess how sorry I felt for him. I felt that he didn’t know what he had missed. Oh, how happy I should have made him! I should have lived for him. I should have done everything for him. I should have ... You don’t mind me telling you all this?’
I made an imploring gesture.
‘What a shame!’ I burst out.
‘Ah, my dear!’ she said, ‘he didn’t love me. One can’t blame him.’
‘And then?’ I questioned, with an eagerness that I tried to overcome.
‘Frank was so persevering. And—and—I did admire his character. A woman couldn’t help admiring his character, could she? And, besides, I honestly thought I had got over the other affair, and that I was in love with him. I refused him once, and then I married him. He was as mad for me as I had been for the other one. Yes, I married him, and we both imagined we were going to be happy.’
‘And why haven’t you been?’ I asked.
‘This is my shame,’ she said. ‘I could not forget the other one. We soon found that out.’
‘Did you talk about it, you—and Frank?’ I put in, amazed.
‘Oh no!’ she said. ‘It was never mentioned—never once during fifteen years. But he knew; and I knew that he knew. The other one was always between us—always, always, always! The other one was always in my heart. We did our best, both of us; but it was useless. The passion of my life was—it was invincible. I tried to love Frank. I could only like him. Fancy his position! And we were helpless. Because, you know, Frank and I are not the sort of people that go and make a scandal—at least, that was what I thought,’ she sighed. ‘I know different now. Well, he died the day before yesterday.’
‘Who?’
‘Crettell. He had just been made a judge. He was the youngest judge on the bench—only forty-six.’
‘Was that the man?’ I exclaimed; for Crettell’s character was well known in London.
‘That was the man. Frank came in yesterday afternoon, and after he had glanced at the paper, he said: “By the way, Crettell’s dead.” I did not grasp it at first. He repeated: “Crettell—he’s dead.” I burst into tears. I couldn’t help it. And, besides, I forgot. Frank asked me very roughly what I was crying for. You know, Frank has much changed these last few months. He is not as nice as he used to be. Excuse me talking like this, my dear. Something must be worrying him. Well, I said as well as I could while I was crying that the news was a shock to me. I tried to stop crying, but I couldn’t. I sobbed. Frank threw down the paper and stamped on it, and he swore. He said: “I know you’ve always been in love with the brute, but you needn’t make such a damn fuss about it.” Oh, my dear, how can I tell you these things? That angered me. This was the first time in our married life that Crettell had been even referred to, and it seemed to me that Frank put all the hatred of fifteen years into that single sentence. Why was I angry? I didn’t know. We had a scene. Frank lost his temper, for the first time that I remember, and then he recovered it. He said quietly he couldn’t stand living with me any more; and that he had long since wanted to leave me. He said he would never see me again. And then one of the servants came in, and—’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. I sent her out. And—and—Fran didn’t come home last night.’
There was a silence. I could find nothing to say, and Mary had hidden her face. I utterly forgot myself and my own state in this extraordinary hazard of matrimony. I could only think of Mary’s grief—a grief which, nevertheless, I did not too well comprehend.
‘Then you love him now?’ I ventured at length.
She made no reply.
‘You love him—is that so?’ I pursued. ‘Tell me honestly.’
I spoke as gently as it was in me to speak.
‘Honestly!’ she cried, looking up. ‘Honestly! No! If I loved him, could I have been so upset about Crettell? But we have been together so long. We are husband and wife, Carlotta. We are so used to each other. And generally he is so good. We’ve got on very well, considering. And now he’s left me. Think of the scandal! It will be terrible! terrible! A separation at my age! Carlotta, it’s unthinkable! He’s mad—that’s the only explanation. Haven’t I tried to be a good wife to him? He’s never found fault with me—never! And I’m sure, as regards him, I’ve had nothing to complain of.’
‘He will come back,’ I said. ‘He’ll think things over and see reason.’
And it was just as though I heard some other person saying these words.
‘But he didn’t come home last night,’ Mary insisted. ‘What the servants are thinking I shouldn’t like to guess.’
‘What does it matter what the servants think?’ I said brusquely.
‘But it does matter. He didn’t come home. He must have slept at a hotel. Fancy, sleeping at a hotel, and his home waiting for him! Oh, Carlotta, you’re too young to understand what I feel! You’re very clever, and you’re very sympathetic; but you can’t see things as I see them. Wait till you’ve been married fifteen years. The scandal! The shame! And me only too anxious to be a good wife, and to keep our home as it should be, and to help him as much as I can with my stupid brains in his business!’
‘I can understand perfectly,’ I asserted. ‘I can understand perfectly.’
And I could. The futility of arguing with Mary, of attempting to free her ever so little from the coils of convention which had always bound her, was only too plainly apparent. She was—and naturally, sincerely, instinctively—the very incarnation and mouthpiece of the conventionality of society, as she cowered there in her grief and her quiet resentment. But this did not impair the authenticity of her grief and her resentment. Her grief appealed to me powerfully, and her resentment, almost angelic in its quality, seemed sufficiently justified. I knew that my own position was in practice untenable, that logic must always be inferior to emotion. I am intensely proud of my ability to see, then, that no sentiment can be false which is sincere, and that Mary Ispenlove’s attitude towards marriage was exactly as natural, exactly as free from artificiality, as my own. Can you go outside Nature? Is not the polity of Londoners in London as much a part of Nature as the polity of bees in a hive?
‘Not a word for fifteen years, and then an explosion like that!’ she murmured, incessantly recurring to the core of her grievance. ‘I did wrong to marry him, I know. But I did marry him—I did marry him! We are husband and wife. And he goes off and sleeps at a hotel! Carlotta, I wish I had never been born! What will people say? I shall never be able to look anyone in the face again.’
‘He will come back,’ I said again.
‘Do you think so?’
This time she caught at the straw.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And you will settle down gradually; and everything will be forgotten.’
I said that because it was the one thing I could say. I repeat that I had ceased to think of myself. I had become a spectator.
‘It can never be the same between us again,’ Mary breathed sadly.
At that moment Emmeline Palmer plunged, rather than came, into my bedroom.
‘Oh, Miss Peel—’ she began, and then stopped, seeing Mrs. Ispenlove by the fireplace, though she knew that Mrs. Ispenlove was with me.
‘Anything wrong?’ I asked, affecting a complete calm.
It was evident that the good creature had lost her head, as she sometimes did, when I gave her too much to copy, or when the unusual occurred in no matter what form. The excellent Emmeline was one of my mistakes.
‘Mr. Ispenlove is here,’ she whispered.
None of us spoke for a few seconds. Mary Ispenlove stared at me, but whether in terror or astonishment, I could not guess. This was one of the most dramatic moments of my life.
‘Tell Mr. Ispenlove that I can see nobody,’ I said, glancing at the wall.
She turned to go.
‘And, Emmeline,’ I stopped her. ‘Do not tell him anything else.’
Surely the fact that Frank had called to see me before nine o’clock in the morning, surely my uneasy demeanour, must at length arouse suspicion even in the simple, trusting mind of his wife!
‘How does he know that I am here?’ Mary asked, lowering her voice, when Emmeline had shut the door; ‘I said nothing to the servants.’
I was saved. Her own swift explanation of his coming was, of course, the most natural in the world. I seized on it.
‘Never mind how,’ I answered. ‘Perhaps he was watching outside your house, and followed you. The important thing is that he has come. It proves,’ I went on, inventing rapidly, ‘that he has changed his mind and recognises his mistake. Had you not better go back home as quickly as you can? It would have been rather awkward for you to see him here, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes, yes,’ she said, her eyes softening and gleaming with joy. ‘I will go. Oh, Carlotta! how can I thank you? You are my best friend.’
‘I have done nothing,’ I protested. But I had.
‘You are a dear!’ she exclaimed, coming impulsively to the bed.
I sat up. She kissed me fervently. I rang the bell.
‘Has Mr. Ispenlove gone?’ I asked Emmeline.
‘Yes,’ said Emmeline.
In another minute his wife, too, had departed, timorously optimistic, already denying in her heart that it could never be the same between them again. She assuredly would not find Frank at home. But that was nothing. I had escaped! I had escaped!
‘Will you mind getting dressed at once?’ I said to Emmeline. ‘I should like you to go out with a letter and a manuscript as soon as possible.’
I got a notebook and began to write to Frank. I told him all that had happened, in full detail, writing hurriedly, in gusts, and abandoning that regard for literary form which the professional author is apt to preserve even in his least formal correspondence.
‘After this,’ I said, ‘we must give up what we decided last night. I have no good reason to offer you. The situation itself has not been changed by what I have learnt from your wife. I have not even discovered that she loves you, though in spite of what she says, which I have faithfully told you, I fancy she does—at any rate, I think she is beginning to. My ideas about the rights of love are not changed. My feelings towards you are not changed. Nothing is changed. But she and I have been through that interview, and so, after all, everything is changed; we must give it all up. You will say I am illogical. I am—perhaps. It was a mere chance that your wife came to me. I don’t know why she did. If she had not come, I should have given myself to you. Supposing she had written—I should still have given myself to you. But I have been in her presence. I have been with her. And then the thought that you struck her, for my sake! She said nothing about that. That was the one thing she concealed. I could have cried when she passed it over. After all, I don’t know whether it is sympathy for your wife that makes me change, or my self-respect—say my self-pride; I’m a proud woman. I lied to her through all that interview.
‘Oh, if I had only had the courage to begin by telling her outright and bluntly that you and I had settled that I should take her place! That would have stopped her. But I hadn’t. And, besides, how could I foresee what she would say to me and how she would affect me? No; I lied to her at every point. My whole attitude was a lie. Supposing you and I had gone off together before I had seen her, and then I had met her afterwards, I could have looked her in the face—sorrowfully, with a heart bleeding—but I could have looked her in the face. But after this interview—no; it would be impossible for me to face her with you at my side! Don’t I put things crudely, horribly! I know everything that you will say. You could not bring a single argument that I have not thought of.
‘However, arguments are nothing. It is how I feel. Fate is against us. Possibly I have ruined your life and mine without having done anything to improve hers; and possibly I have saved us all three from terrible misery. Possibly fate is with us. No one can say. I don’t know what will happen in the immediate future; I won’t think about it. If you do as I wish, if you have any desire to show me that I have any influence over you, you will go back to live with your wife. Where did you sleep last night? Or did you walk the streets? You must not answer this letter at present. Write to me later. Do not try to see me. I won’t see you. We mustn’t meet. I am going away at once. I don’t think I could stand another scene with your wife, and she would be sure to come again to me.
‘Try to resume your old existence. You can do it if you try. Remember that your wife is no more to blame than you are, or than I am. Remember that you loved her once. And remember that I act as I am acting because there is no other way for me. C’est plus fort que moi, I am going to Torquay. I let you know this—I hate concealment; and anyway you would find out. But I shall trust you not to follow me. I shall trust you. You are saying that this is a very different woman from last night. It is. I haven’t yet realized what my feelings are. I expect I shall realize them in a few days. I send with this a manuscript. It is nothing. I send it merely to put Emmeline off the scent, so that she shall think that it is purely business. Now I shall trust you.—C. P.’
I commenced the letter without even a ‘Dear Frank,’ and I ended it without an affectionate word.
‘I should like you to take these down to Mr. Ispenlove’s office,’ I said to Emmeline. ‘Ask for him and give them to him yourself. There’s no answer. He’s pretty sure to be in. But if he isn’t, bring them back. I’m going to Torquay by that eleven-thirty express—isn’t it?’
‘Eleven-thirty-five,’ Emmeline corrected me coldly.
When she returned, she said she had seen Mr. Ispenlove and given him the letter and the parcel.