"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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d"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 pa.s.sionately, unashamed, like a child.
I could not bear it. My heart would have broken if I had watched, without a.s.suaging, 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.