I scribbled, "Yes," on the same paper and gave it back to the girl.
When I said good night to my mother that night after the opera, I told her where I was going. Peter was standing in the front hall and took me in a hansom to the lady"s house, saying he would wait for me round the corner while I had my interview with her.
It was past midnight and I felt overpoweringly tired. My beautiful rival opened the front door to me and I followed her silently up to her bedroom. She took off my opera-cloak and we sat down facing each other. The room was large and dark but for a row of candles on the mantel-piece and two high church-lights each side of a silver pier-gla.s.s. There was a table near my chair with odds and ends on it and a general smell of scent and flowers. I looked at her in her blue satin nightgown and saw that she had been crying.
"It is kind of you to have come," she said, "and I daresay you know why I wanted to see you to-night."
MARGOT: "No, I don"t; I haven"t the faintest idea!"
THE LADY (LOOKING RATHER EMBARRa.s.sED, BUT AFTER A MOMENT"S PAUSE): "I want you to tell me about yourself."
I felt this to be a wrong entry: she had sent for me to tell her about Peter Flower and not myself; but why should I tell her about either of us? I had never spoken of my love-affairs excepting to my mother and my three friends--Con Manners, Frances Horner, and Etty Desborough--and people had ceased speaking to me about them; why should I sit up with a stranger and discuss myself at this time of night? I said there was nothing to tell. She answered by saying she had met so many people who cared for me that she felt she almost knew me, to which I replied:
"In that case, why talk about me?"
THE LADY: "But some people care for both of us."
MARGOT (RATHER COLDLY): "I daresay."
THE LADY: "Don"t be hard, I want to know if you love Peter Flower . ... Do you intend to marry him?"
The question had come then: this terrible question which my mother had never asked and which I had always evaded! Had it got to be answered now ... and to a stranger?
With a determined effort to control myself I said:
"You mean, am I engaged to be married?"
THE LADY: "I mean what I say; are you going to marry Peter?"
MARGOT: "I have never told him I would."
THE LADY (VERY SLOWLY): "Remember, my life is bound up in your answer ..."
Her words seemed to burn and I felt a kind of pity for her. She was leaning forward with her eyes fastened on mine and her hands clasped between her knees.
"If you don"t love him enough to marry him, why don"t you leave him alone?" she said. "Why do you keep him bound to you? Why don"t you set him free?"
MARGOT: "He is free to love whom he likes; I don"t keep him, but I won"t share him."
THE LADY: "You don"t love him, but you want to keep him; that is pure selfishness and vanity."
MARGOT: "Not at all! I would give him up to-morrow and have told him so a thousand times, if he would marry; but he is not in a position to marry any one."
THE LADY: "How can you say such a thing! His debts have just been paid by G.o.d knows who--some woman, I suppose!--and you are rich yourself. What is there to hinder you from marrying him?"
MARGOT: "That was not what I was thinking about. I don"t believe you would understand even if I were to explain it to you."
THE LADY: "If you were really in love you could not be so critical and censorious."
MARGOT: "Oh, yes, I could! You don"t know me."
THE LADY: "I love him in a way you would never understand. There is nothing in the world I would not do for him! No pain I would not suffer and no sacrifice I would not make."
MARGOT: "What could you do for him that would help him?"
THE LADY: "I would leave my husband and my children and go right away with him."
I felt as if she had stabbed me.
"Leave your children! and your husband!" I said. "But how can ruining them and yourself help Peter Flower? I don"t believe for a moment he would ever do anything so vile."
THE LADY: "You think he loves you too much to run away with me, do you?"
MARGOT (with indignation): "Perhaps I hope he cares too much for you."
THE LADY (not listening and getting up excitedly): "What do you know about love? I have had a hundred lovers, but Peter Flower is the only man I have ever really cared for; and my life is at an end if you will not give him up."
MARGOT: "There is no question of my giving him up; he is free, I tell you ..."
THE LADY: "I tell you he is not! He doesn"t consider himself free, he said as much to me this afternoon ... when he wanted to break it all off."
MARGOT: "What do you wish me to do then? ..."
THE LADY: "Tell Peter you don"t love him in the right way, that you don"t intend to marry him; and then leave him alone."
MARGOT: "Do you mean I am to leave him to you? ... Do you love him in the right way?"
THE LADY: "Don"t ask stupid questions . ... I shall kill myself if he gives me up."
After this, I felt there was nothing more to be said. I told her that Peter had a perfect right to do what he liked and that I had neither the will nor the power to influence his decision; that I was going abroad with my sister Lucy to Italy and would in any case not see him for several weeks; but I added that all my influence over him for years had been directed into making him the right sort of man to marry and that all hers would of necessity lie in the opposite direction. Not knowing quite how to say good- bye, I began to finger my cloak; seeing my intention, she said:
"Just wait one moment, will you? I want to know if you are as good as Peter always tells me you are; don"t answer till I see your eyes ..."
She took two candles off the chimneypiece and placed them on the table near me, a little in front of my face, and then knelt upon the ground; I looked at her wonderful wild eyes and stretched out my hands towards her.
"Nonsense!" I said. "I am not in the least good! Get up! When I see you kneeling at my feet, I feel sorry for you."
THE LADY (getting up abruptly): "For G.o.d"s sake don"t pity me!"
Thinking over the situation in the calm of my room, I had no qualms as to either the elopement or the suicide, hut I felt a revulsion of feeling towards Peter. His lack of moral indignation and purpose, his intractability in all that was serious and his incapacity to improve had been cutting a deep though unconscious division between us for years; and I determined at whatever cost, after this, that I would say good-bye to him.
A few days later, Lord Dufferin came to see me in Grosvenor Square.
"Margot," he said, "why don"t you marry? You are twenty-seven; and life won"t go on treating you so well if you go on treating it like this. As an old friend who loves you, let me give you one word of advice. You should marry in spite of being in love, but never because of it."
Before I went away to Italy, Peter and I, with pa.s.sion-lit eyes and throbbing hearts, had said goodbye to each other for ever.
The relief of our friends at our parting was so suffocating that I clung to the shelter of my new friend, the stranger of that House of Commons dinner.