"I"m crazy, am I not?" she said, and the foolish, seductive smile blossomed about her lips again.
Drawing a breath of relief, Lilly opened the door to the dining-room.
The table gleamed with snowy damask, strewn with leaves of light formed by the pierced shade of the hanging lamp. The gaily coloured dishes, which Lilly had bought cheap at a sale, were a copy of an old Strasburg pattern. The knives and forks as well as the set of casters and the sugar tongs were of the finest plate, to be distinguished from real silver only by the mark.
When Richard stayed for the evening meal, he should find everything as shining and substantial as at his mother"s.
Mrs. Jula burst into raptures.
"Oh, how beautiful your place is. How dear! How charming! Am I not right in saying you were born to be a married woman? You ought to see my rubbish at home. What"s the use? If my red-head has spoiled his stomach in a restaurant on larded lamb kidneys or turkey _aux truffes_, the next day I have to prepare gruel and toast and I serve it to him directly from the pot. What"s the use of making a lot of fuss and setting a table?"
"Thank the Lord!" thought Lilly. "She"s herself again."
The meal was modest enough--various cold cuts with roasted potatoes, and the remnants of a pastry for dessert. But Mrs. Jula ate as if such delights had not been spread before her for years. And she had to know exactly where Lilly got her supplies.
Lilly informed her accurately. For the sake of cheapness, she said, she got her cold meats from a man in the country, whose address she would be glad to give Mrs. Jula.
"I divined it immediately," said Mrs. Jula, softly, her eyes staring meditatively. After a pause she added more softly: "That"s just the way it was there."
"There--where?" asked Lilly.
"Why, in my home."
Suddenly Mrs. Jula threw her napkin on the table, jumped from her seat, and stepped to the open window, wringing her hands and pressing them to her forehead.
"I"m going to ruin! I"m going to ruin! I"m going to ruin!" she moaned out into the night.
"What"s the matter?" faltered Lilly in fright, and also jumped up.
"I want to go back to my husband. I want to go back to my husband. He"s a cross old piece, I know. And it"s death to live with him. It"s true, it"s true! But I do want to go back to him. I"m going to ruin here. I"m going to ruin here."
Lilly stepped behind her and stroked her neck.
"Why should you go to ruin here?" she comforted her. "You just now gave me such splendid advice about how to keep from going to ruin. Besides, you have a mainstay in your art which I lost long ago." She looked with a sigh at the sample closets, in which the last of her pressed-flower woods reposed unseen. "No, you won"t go to ruin You will reach the heights, from which you will look down on us poor women."
Mrs. Jula sobbed on her shoulder.
"Never again, never again," she wailed. "I can"t pull myself out of this whirlpool. It"s as if I were poisoned. My brain is poisoned. I"m going to ruin. I"m going to ruin."
Lilly clasped her gently under the arm, and led her back to the unlighted drawing-room, and seated her in the corner of the sofa where she had sat before.
"It"s nice and dark here," Mrs. Jula said, whimpering like a child. "So I"m going to confess everything, everything. But close the door. There mustn"t be a ray of light."
Lilly closed the door of the dining-room.
They now sat in darkness. The evening dusk reflected from the ca.n.a.l through the chestnut trees, still thinly leaved, poured a vapoury grey over the tear-stained face.
"Before," began Mrs. Jula, "I told you of a woman who seeks her adventures on the street, and you jumped up in horror. Do you know who that woman is? _I_ am that woman."
"For G.o.d"s sake!" cried Lilly.
"Yes, I am that woman. The evenings my red-head leaves me alone, I put on dark clothes, and go to parts where no one who knows me is likely to meet me. If somebody I come across pleases me, I give him a look--as a rule he turns back and speaks to me--and I go with him to common saloons, or to a little confectionery shop--anywhere he wants to. Or I sit with him on a bench in the dark--and if he pleases me still more--I go with him--wherever else he wants to."
"Oh, how terrible!" cried Lilly, pressing her hands to her eyes. Now she knew why a few months before something had been pulling her to the street all the time, all the time; why a delicious shiver had coursed through her body when a man spoke to her in the dark. She had simply been too fearsome to answer him.
"Now that you know what I am, you won"t want me to stay sitting here on your sofa," cried Mrs. Jula. "Be perfectly frank. I"m ready to go." She reached out pleadingly for Lilly"s hands.
Lilly seemed to herself like a Good Samaritan who has met one who is grievously ill and must render that a.s.sistance which the moment requires.
"But why do you do it?" she asked gently. "You are not so lonely. How did it come about?"
"Yes, how did it come about? Do you know how _your_ life turned out as it did? It"s all very well and good for people to reproach us with weakness. One necessity always holds out its hand to another. Each wish gives birth to another. And you always think you"re doing what is right and what fate has prescribed."
"That"s true," faltered Lilly, recalling the decisive moments of her own life.
"This is what I"ve always said to myself: my poetry requires it. I must have experiences, pictures, that _frisson_, as the French say. But all that"s a mere pretext. The truth is, we hunt and hunt and hunt. Your husband"s not the right one. Your red-head"s not the right man, and none of the rest of them--your sporting business man, or your eh-eh-lieutenant. But he must be _somewhere_! The stranger sitting at the next table, he"s the one, surely. So you come to an understanding with him--after all he"s _not_ the right one. It is most certainly not the fine ones. Because they take the trouble to possess us without taking the trouble to find out whether there"s anything fine in us, too.
So you keep on hunting. Perhaps you will meet him on the street. Finally it turns into fever, which wholly consumes you. Sometimes I can scarcely fall asleep in antic.i.p.ation of the next dark evening when I shall rove about again. Now, do you see, I must be going to my ruin? When I saw your beautifully set table, all of a sudden a longing for my home and my husband came over me again. Yes, I sometimes have that longing. He has bleared eyes and he smells of carbolic acid. Oh, that vile smell! I"d like so to smell it again For all I care, he may even throw the stethoscope at me again. Besides, he wrote to me I should return to him If I want to, I can. _But_--I will remain here--and go to my ruin.
Life"s funny."
She rose and groped for her hat and hatpins lying on the table.
Lilly did not want to let her go in such a state of mind.
"If you feel it is driving you to your ruin, that it"s a poison in your blood, why don"t you try to resist? Why don"t you pluck it out of your system? Mere force of will must help some."
"I"ve said that to myself," rejoined Mrs. Jula. "But I"ve never had anyone to whom I could speak about it and who could help me. Now I"ve found you, it will be easier for me. Now I feel I might be able to.
Maybe I will."
"Do you want to give me your promise?" asked Lilly, holding out her hand to her.
"Yes, I promise," Mrs. Jula cried, and delightedly clapped her hand in Lilly"s. "You will be my saviour. You are already. I feel it. To show my thanks I will stand guard over you and see to it that no one spoils you.
You shan"t get to be what I am, or the others."
"Oh, I"ll take care of myself," faltered Lilly.
"Yes, that"s what you say! But when the dreary void comes--and "he"
grows more and more insipid--just you see! You"ve nothing left to say to yourself--and you mustn"t have children--for G.o.d"s sake!--we _don"t_ have them--all of us know how to prevent them from coming. You mustn"t share his activities with him either. He acquaints you with as many of them as he is compelled to. And behind it all you feel the hostility of his family, who look upon you as a species of harpy. Then those cursed schemes of his for marrying that he dishes up whenever he"s angry. Above all, the longing. It"s like a steady toothache. That"s it--like the toothache. You don"t want to think of it, but wherever you go, it tortures you. For life _cannot_ end that way. Something _must_ happen.
It"s much worse than if you"re married. Just you wait and see."
Mrs. Jula"s wild words increased the pain at Lilly"s heart. A desolate mournfulness threatened to attack her.
"Stop," she said. "If it must come, it will come soon enough. I don"t care to think of it beforehand."
"Right you are, my dear. It doesn"t help any, either."
Mrs. Jula now took leave.
"Will you remember your promise?" asked Lilly from the hall door.