"You wouldn"t have me believe that no pa.s.sion has caught you and dragged you about for the last five years, just as a cat drags a little mouse about?"
"It is strange that you should ask me that, for that is exactly what happened."
"Really?"
"Only that I suffered much more than any mouse ever suffered."
"Doris, tell me. You know how sympathetic I am; you know I shall understand. All things human interest me. If you have loved as much as you say, your story will ... I must hear it."
"Why should I tell it?" and her eyes filled with tears. "I suffered horribly. Don"t speak to me about it. What is the good of going over it all again?"
"Yes, there is good; very much good comes of speaking, if this love story is over, if there is no possibility of reviving it. Tell it, and in telling, the bitterness will pa.s.s from you. Who was this man? How did you meet him?"
"He was a friend of Albert"s. Albert introduced him."
"Albert is the man you are engaged to? The old story, the very oldest.
Why should it always be the friend? There are so many other men, but it is always the friend who attracts." And I told Doris the story of a friend who had once robbed me, and my story had the effect of drying her tears. But they began again as soon as she tried to tell her own story. There could be no doubt that she had suffered. Things are interesting in proportion to the amount of ourselves we put into them; Doris had clearly put all her life into this story; a sordid one it may seem to some, a story of deception and lies, for of course Albert was deceived as cruelly as many another good man. But Doris must have suffered deeply, for at the memory of her sufferings her face streamed with tears. As I looked at her tears I said: "It is strange that she should weep so, for her story differs nowise from the many stories happening daily in the lives of men and women. She will tell me the old and beautiful story of lovers forced asunder by cruel fate, and this spot is no doubt a choice one to hear her story." And raising my eyes I admired once again the drooping sh.o.r.e, the serrated line of mountains sweeping round the bay. And the colour was so intense that it overpowered the senses like a perfume, "like musk," I thought. When I turned to Doris I could see she was wholly immersed in her own sorrow, and it took all my art to persuade her to tell it, or it seemed as if all my art of persuasion were necessary.
"As soon as you knew you loved him, you resolved to see him no more?"
Doris nodded.
"You sent him away before you yielded to him?"
She nodded, and looking at me her eyes filled with tears, but which only seemed to make them still more beautiful, she told me that they had both felt that it was impossible to deceive Albert.
All love stories are alike in this; they all contain what the reviewers call "sordid details." But if Tristan had not taken advantage of King Mark"s absence on a hunting expedition, the world would have been the poorer of a great love story; and what, after all, does King Mark"s happiness matter to us--a poor pa.s.sing thing, whose life was only useful in this, that it gave us an immortal love story?
And if Wagner had not loved Madame Wasendonck, and if Madame Wasendonck had not been unfaithful to her husband, we should not have had "Tristan." Who then would, for the sake of Wasendonck"s honour, destroy the score of "Tristan"? Nor is the story of "Tristan" the only one, nor the most famous. There is also the story of Helen. If Menelaus"s wife had not been unfaithful to him, the world would have been the poorer of the greatest of all poems, the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey." Dear me, when one thinks of it, one must admit that art owes a great deal to adultery. Children are born of the marriage, stories of the adulterous bed, and the world needs both--stories as well as children. Even my little tale would not exist if Doris had been a prudent maiden, nor would it have interested me to listen to her that day by the sea if she had naught to tell me but her unswerving love for Albert. Her story is not what the world calls a great story, and it would be absurd to pretend that if a shorthand writer had taken it down his report would compare with the stories of Isolde and Helen, but I heard it from her lips, and her tears and her beauty replaced the language of Wagner and of Homer; and so well did they do this that I am not sure that the emotion I experienced in listening to her was less than that which I have experienced before a work of art.
"Do you know," she began, "perhaps you don"t, perhaps you"ve never loved enough to know the anxiety one may feel for the absent. We had been together all day once, and when we bade each other good-bye we agreed that we should not see each other for two days, till Thursday; but that night in bed an extraordinary desire took hold of me to know what had become of him. I felt I must hear from him; one word would be enough. But we had promised. It was stupid, it was madness, yet I had to take down the telephone, and when I got into communication what do you think the answer was?--"Thank G.o.d you telephoned! I"ve been walking about the room nearly out of my mind, feeling that I should go mad if the miracle did not happen.""
"If you loved Ralph better than Albert----"
"Why didn"t I give up Albert? Albert"s life would have been broken and ruined if I had done that. You see he has loved me so many years that his life has become centred in me. He is not one of those men who like many women. Outside of his work nothing exists but me. He doesn"t care much for reading, but he reads the books I like. I don"t know that he cares much about music for its own sake, but he likes to hear me sing just because it is me. He never notices other women; I don"t think that he knows what they wear, but he likes my dresses, not because they are in good taste, but because I wear them. One can"t sacrifice a man like that. What would one think of oneself? One would die of remorse. So there was nothing to be done but for Ralph to go away. It nearly killed me."
"I"m afraid I can give you no such love; my affection for you will prove very tepid after such violent emotions."
"I don"t want such emotions again; I could not bear them, they would kill me; even a part would kill me. Two months after Ralph left I was but a little shadow. I was thinner than I am now, I was worn to a thread, I could hardly keep body and skirt together."
We laughed at Doris"s little joke; and we watched it curling and going out like a wreath of cigarette smoke.
"But did you get no happiness at all out of this great love?"
"We were happy only a very little while."
"How long?"
Doris reflected.
"We had about six weeks of what I should call real happiness, the time while Albert was away. When he came back the misery and remorse began again. I had to see him--not Albert, the other--every day; and Albert began to notice that I was different. We used to go out together, we three, and at last the sham became too great and Albert said he could not stand it any longer. "I prefer you should go out with him alone, and if it be for your happiness I"ll give you up.""
"So you nearly died of love! Well, now you must live for love, liking things as they go by. Life is beautiful at the moment, sad when we look back, fearful when we look forward; but I suppose it"s hopeless to expect a little Christian like you to live without drawing conclusions, liking things as they go by as the nymphs do. Dry those tears; forget that man. You tell me it is over and done. Remember nothing except that the sky and the sea are blue, that it is a luxury to feel alive here by the sea-sh.o.r.e. My happiness would be to make you happy, to see you put the past out of your mind, to close your eyes to the future. That will be easy to do by this beautiful sea-sh.o.r.e, under those blue skies with flowers everywhere and drives among the mountains awaiting us. We create our own worlds. Chance has left you here and sent me to you. I want you to eat a great deal and to sleep and to get fatter and to dream and to read Theocritus, so that when we go to the mountains we shall be transported into antiquity. You must forget Albert and him who made you unhappy--he allowed you to look back and forwards."
"I think I deserve some happiness; you see I have sacrificed so much."
At these words my hopes rose--shall I say like a balloon out of which a great weight of ballast has been thrown?--and so high did they go that failure seemed like a little feather swimming in the gulf below.
"She deserved some happiness," and intends to make me her happiness.
Her words could bear no other interpretation; she had spoken without thought, and instinctively. Albert was away; why should she not take this happiness which I offered her? Would she understand that distance made a difference, that it was one thing to deceive Albert if he were with her, and another when she was a thousand miles away? It was as if we were in a foreign country; we were under palm trees, we were by the Mediterranean. With Albert a thousand miles away it would be so easy for her to love me. She had said there was no question of her marrying any one but Albert--and to be unfaithful is not to be inconstant.
These were the arguments which I would use if I found that I had misunderstood her; but for the moment I did not dare to inquire; it would be too painful to hear I had misunderstood her; but at last, feeling she might guess the cause of my silence, I said, not being able to think of anything more plausible:
"You spoke, didn"t you, of going for a drive?"
"We were speaking of happiness--but if you"d like to go for a drive.
There"s no happiness like driving."
"Isn"t there?"
She pinched my arm, and with a choking sensation in the throat I asked her if I should send for a carriage.
"There will be time for a short drive before the sun setting. You said you admired the hills--one day we will go to a hill town. There is a beautiful one--Florac is the name of it--but we must start early in the morning. To-day there will be only time to drive as far as the point you have been admiring all the morning. The road winds through the rocks, and you want to see the ilex trees."
"My dear, I want to see you."
"Well, you"re looking at me. Come, don"t be disagreeable."
"Disagreeable, Doris! I never felt more kindly in my life. I"m still absorbed in the strange piece of luck which has brought us together, and in such a well-chosen spot; no other would have pleased me as much."
"Now why do you like the landscape? Tell me."
"I cannot think of the landscape now, Doris: I"m thinking of you, of what you said just now."
"What did I say?"
"You said--I tried to remember the words at the time, but I have forgotten them, so many thoughts have pa.s.sed through my mind since--you said--how did you word it?--after having suffered as much as you did, some share of happiness----"
"No, I didn"t say that; I said, having sacrificed so much, I thought I deserved a little happiness."
"So she knew what she was saying," I said to myself. "Her words were not casual," but not daring to ask her if she intended to make me her happiness, I spoke about the landscape. "You ask me why I like the landscape? Because it carries me back into past times when men believed in nymphs and in satyrs. I have always thought it must be a wonderful thing to believe in the dryad. Do you know that men wandering in the woods sometimes used to catch sight of a white breast between the leaves, and henceforth they could love no mortal woman?
The beautiful name of their malady was nympholepsy. A disease that every one would like to catch."
"But if you were to catch it you wouldn"t be able to love me, so I"ll not bring you to the mountains. Some peasant girl----"
"Fie! Doris, I have never liked peasant girls."
"Your antiquity is eighteenth-century antiquity. There are many alcoves in it."