Cold grew the fever in my veins and the litany died on my lips.
Who and what is she whom I love? There have been days when her eyes have carried in their depths the allurements of a sorceress, when her limbs have woven Venusberg enchantments which it has taken all my strength to withstand. But tonight, when I take the greatest step and claim her as mine till our lives" end, she yields with the complaisance of an ignorant child and raises up between us the barrier of her innocence.
When shall I learn the soul of her?
Well, _jacta est alea_. The events of to-night have precipitated our destiny. In all probability Hamdi is powerless to take her from my protection, and this marriage is unnecessary as a safeguard. I have no notion of the international law on such points--but at any rate it will make the a.s.surance of her safety absolute. No power on earth can take her from me. Great Heaven! The thought of her gone forever out of my life brings the cold sweat to my forehead. Without her, child, enchantress, changeling that she is, how could I face existence?
I shall have my heart"s desire. Why, I should be athrill with the joy and the flame of youth! I should laugh and sing! I should perform the happy antics of love"s exuberance! I should be transported to the realms where the fairy tales end!
Instead, I sit before a dying fire, as I sat last night, and am oppressed with the sense of tragedy. It was not altogether Carlotta"s innocence that formed the barrier between us. That which rendered it impa.s.sable was Judith"s white face.
Judith"s white face will haunt my dreams to-night.
CHAPTER XVI
October 27th
I do not like living. It is thoroughly disagreeable. Today Judith taunted me with never having lived, and I admitted the justice of the taunt and regretted in poignant misery the change from my old conditions. If to live is to have one"s reason cast down and trampled under foot, one"s heart aflame with a besotted pa.s.sion and one"s soul racked with remorse, then am I living in good sooth--and I would far rather be dead and suffering the milder pains of Purgatory. Men differently const.i.tuted get used to it, as the eels to skinning. They say _"mea culpa,"_ "d.a.m.n," or _"Kismet,"_ according to their various traditions, and go forth comforted to their workaday pursuits. I envy them. I enter this exquisite Torture Chamber, and I shriek at the first twinge of the thumbscrew and faint at the preliminary embraces of the scavenger"s daughter.
I envy a fellow like Caesar Borgia. He could murder a friend, seduce his widow, and rob the orphans all on a summer"s day, and go home contentedly to supper; and after a little music he could sleep like a man who has thoroughly earned his repose. What manner of creatures are other men? They area blank mystery to me; and I am writing--or have been writing--a sociological study of the most subtle generation of them that has ever existed! I am an empty fool. I know absolutely nothing. I can no more account for the peaceful slumbers of that marvellous young man of five-and-twenty than I can predicate the priority of the first hen or the first egg. I, with never a murder or a seduction or a robbery on my conscience, could not sleep last night. I doubt whether I shall sleep to-night. I feel as if I shall remain awake through the centuries with a rat gnawing my vitals.
So unhappy looking a woman as Judith, when I called on her early this forenoon, I have never beheld. Gone was the elaborate coquetry of yesterday; gone the quiet roguishness of yesteryear; gone was all the Judith that I knew, and in her place stood a hollow-eyed woman shaking at gates eternally barred.
"I--thought you would come this morning. I had that lingering faith in you."
"Your face haunted me all night," I said. "I was bound to come."
"So, this is the end of it all," she remarked, stonily.
"No," said I. "It only marks the transition from a very ill-defined relationship to as loyal a friendship as ever man could offer woman."
She gave a quivering little shrug of disgust and turned away.
"Oh, don"t talk like that "I can"t offer you bread, but I"ll give you a nice round polished stone." Friendship! What has a woman like me got to do with friendship?"
"Have I ever given you much more?"
"G.o.d knows what you have given me," she cried, bitterly. She stared out of the window at the sodden street and murky air. I went to her side and touched her wrist.
"For heaven"s sake, Judith, tell me what I can do."
"What"s done is done," she said, between her teeth. "When did you marry her?"
I explained briefly the condition of affairs. She looked at me hard and long; then stared out of the window again, and scarce heeded what I said.
"It was to set myself right with you on this point," I added, "that I have visited you at such an hour."
She remained silent. I took a few turns about the familiar room that was filled with the a.s.sociations of many years. The piano we chose together.
The copy of the Botticelli Tondo--the crowned Madonna of the Uffizi--I gave her in Florence. We had ransacked London together to find the Chippendale bookcase; and on its shelves stood books that had formed a bond between us, and copies of old reviews containing my fugitive contributions. A spurious j.a.panese dragon in faence, an inartistic monstrosity dear to her heart, at which I had often railed, grinned forgivingly at me from the mantel-piece. I have never realised how closely bound up with my habits was this drawing-room of Judith"s. I stopped once more by her side.
"I can"t leave you altogether, dear," I said, gently. "A bit of myself is in this room."
Her bosom shook with unhappy laughter.
"A bit?" Then she turned suddenly on me. "Are you simply dull or sheerly cruel?"
"I am dull," said I. "Why do you refuse my friendship? Our relation has been scarcely more. It has not touched the deep things in us. We agreed at the start that it should not. The words "I love you" have never pa.s.sed between us. We have been loyal to our compact. Now that love has come into my life--and Heaven knows I have striven against it--what would you have me do?"
"And what would you have me do?" said Judith, tonelessly.
"Forgive me for breaking off the old, and trust me to make the new pleasant to you."
She made no answer, but stood still staring out of the window like a woman of stone. Presently she shivered and crossed to the fire, before which she crouched on a low chair. I remained by the window, anxious, puzzled, oppressed.
"Marcus," she said at last, in a low voice. I obeyed her summons. She motioned me to a chair, and without looking at me began to speak.
"You said there was a bit of you in this room. There is everything of you. Your whole being is for me in this room. You are with me wherever I go. You are the beginning and end of life to me. I love you with a pa.s.sion that is killing me. I am an emotional woman. I made shipwreck of myself because I thought I loved a man. But, as G.o.d hears me, you are the only man I have loved. You came to me like a breath of Heaven while I was in Purgatory--and you have been Heaven to me ever since. It has been play to you--but to me--"
I fell on my knees beside her. Each of the low half-whispered words was a red hot iron. I had received last night the message of her white face with incredulity. I had reviewed our past life together and had found little warrant in it for that message. It could not come from the depths. It was staggeringly impossible. And now the impossible was the flaming fact.
I fell on my knees beside her.
"Not play, Judith--"
She put out her hand to check me, and the words died on my lips. What could I say?
"For you it was a detached pleasant sentiment, if you like; for me the deadliest earnest. I was a fool too. You never said you loved me, but I thought you did. You were not as other men, you knew nothing of the ways of the world or of women or of pa.s.sion--you were reserved, intellectual--you viewed things in a queer light of your own. I felt that the touch of a chain would fret you. I gave you absolute freedom--often when I craved for you. I made no demands. I a.s.sented to your philosophic a.n.a.lysis of the situation--it is your way to moralise whimsically on everything, as if you were a disconnected intelligence outside the universe--and I paid no attention to it. I used to laugh at you--oh, not unkindly, but lovingly, happily, victoriously. Oh, yes, I was a fool--what woman in love isn"t? I thought I gave you all you needed. I was content, secure. I magnified every little demonstration.
When you touched my ear it was more to me than the embrace of another man might have been. I have lived on one kiss of yours for a week. To you the kiss was of no more value than a cigarette. I wish," she added in a whisper, "I wish I were dead!"
She had spoken in a low, monotonous voice, staring haggardly at the fire, while I knelt by her side. I murmured some ba.n.a.l apologia, miserably aware that one set of words is as futile as another when one has broken a woman"s heart.
"You never knew I loved you?" she went on in the same bitter undertone.
"What kind of woman did you take me for? I have accepted help from you to enable me to live in this flat--do you imagine I could have done such a thing without loving you? I should have thought it was obvious in a thousand ways."
The fire getting low, she took up the scoop for coals. Mechanically I relieved her of the thing and fulfilled the familiar task. Neither spoke for a long time. She remained there and I went to the window. It had begun to rain. A barrel-organ below was playing some horrible music-hall air, and every vibrant note was like a hammer on one"s nerves. The grinder"s bedraggled Italian wife perceiving me at the window grinned up at me with the national curve of the palm. She had a black eye which the cacophonous fiend had probably given her, and she grinned like a happy child of nature. Men in my position do not blacken women"s eyes; but it is only a question of manners. Was I, for that, less of a brute male than the scowling beast at the organ?
The sudden sound of a sob made me turn to Judith, who had broken down and was crying bitterly, her face hidden in her hands. I bent and touched her shoulder.
"Judith--"
She flung her arms around my neck.
"I can"t give you up, I can"t, I can"t, I can"t," she cried, wildly.