"Oh but--but," cried Elfrida, tragic-eyed, "you don't
understand, my friend. And these pretences of mine are
unendurable--I won't make another. This is the real
reason why I can't go to your house: Janet knows
--everything there is to know. I told her--I myself--in
a fit of rage ten days ago, and then she said things and
I said things, and--and there is nothing now between us
any more!"
Lawrence Cardiff looked grave. "I am sorry for that," he
said.
A middle-aged gentleman in apparently hopeless love does
not confide in his grown-up daughter, and Janet's father
had hardly thought of her seriously in connection with
this new relation, which was to him so precarious and so
sweet. Its realization had never been close enough for
practical considerations; it was an image, something in
the clouds; and if he still hoped and longed for its
materialization there were times when he feared even to
regard it too closely lest it should vanish. His first
thought at this announcement of Elfrida's was of what it
might signify of change, what bearing it had upon her
feeling, upon her intention. Then he thought of its
immediate results, which seemed to be unfortunate. But
in the instant he had for reflection he did not consider
Janet at all.
"Ah, yes! It was contemptible--but _contemptible!_ I did
it partly to hurt her, and partly, I think, to gratify
my vanity. You would not have thought anything so bad of
me perhaps?" She looked up at him childishly. They were
strolling about the quiet spaces of the Temple Courts.
It was a pleasant afternoon in February, the new grass
was pushing up. They could be quite occupied with one
another--they had the place almost to themselves.
Elfrida's well-fitting shabby little jacket hung unbuttoned,
and she swung Cardiff's light walking-stick as they
sauntered. He, with his eyes on her delicately flushed
face and his hands unprofessorially in his pockets, was
counting the minutes that were left them.
"You wouldn't have, would you?" she insisted.
"I would think any womanly fault you like of you," he
laughed, "but one--the fear to confess it."
Elfrida shut her lips with a little proud smile. "Do
you know," she said confidingly, "when you say things
like that to me I like you very much--but _very much!_"
"But not enough," he answered her quickly, "never enough,
Frida?"
The girl's expression changed. "You are not to call me
'Frida,'" she said, frowning a little. "It has an
association that will always be painful to me. When
people--disappoint me, I try to forget them in every way
I can." She paused, and Cardiff saw that her eyes were
full of tears. He had an instant of intense resentment
against his daughter. What brutality had she been guilty
of toward Elfrida in that moment of unreasonable jealousy
that surged up between them? He would fiercely like to
know. But Elfrida was smiling again, looking up at him
in wilful disregard of her wet eyes.
"Say 'Elfrida' please--all of it."
They had reached the Inner Temple Hall. "Let us go in
there and sit down," he suggested. "You must be tired--dear
child."
She hesitated and submitted. "Yes, I am," she said.
Presently they were sitting on one of the long dark
polished wooden benches in the quiet and the rich light
the ages have left in this place, keeping a mutual moment
of silence. "How splendid it is!" Elfrida said restlessly,
looking at the great carved wooden screen they had come
through.
"The man who did that had a joy in his life, hadn't he?
To-day is very cheap and common, don't you think?"
He had hardly words to answer her vague question, so
absorbed was he in the beauty and the grace and the
interest with which she had suddenly invested the
high-backed corner she sat in. He felt no desire to
analyze her charm. He did not ask himself whether it was
the poetry of her eyes and lips, or her sincerity about
herself, or the joy in art that was the key to her soul,
or all of these, or something that was none of them. He
simply allowed himself to be possessed by it and Elfrida
saw his pleasure in his eager look and in every line of
his delicate features. It was delicious to be able to
give such pleasure, she thought. She felt like a thrice
spiritualized Hebe, lifting the cup, not to Jove, but to
a very superior mortal. She wished in effect, as she
looked at him, that he were of her essence--she might be
cup-bearer to him always then. It was a graceful and
unexacting occupation. But he was not absolutely, and
the question was how long--She started as he seemed to
voice her thought.
"This can't go on, Elfrida!"
Cardiff had somehow possessed himself of her hand as it
lay along the polished edge of the wooden seat. It was
a privilege, she permitted him sometimes, with the tacit
understanding that he was not to abuse it.
"And why not--for a little while? It is pleasant, I
think."
"If you were in love you would know why. You are not, I
know--you needn't say so. But it will come, Elfrida--only
give it the chance. I would stake my soul on the certainty
of being able to make you love me." His confidence in
the power of his own passion was as strong as a boy's of
twenty.
"If I were in love!" Elfrida repeated slowly, with an
absent smile. "And you think it would come afterward.
That is an exploded idea, my friend. I should feel as
if I were acting out an old-fashioned novel--an
old-fashioned _second-rate_ novel."
She looked at him with eyes that invited him to share
their laughter, but the smile he gave her was pitiful,
if she could have known it. The strain she had bee putting
upon him, and promised indefinitely to put upon him, was
growing greater than he could bear.
"I am afraid I most ask you to decide," he said. "You
have been telling me two things, dear. One thing with
your lips and another thing with your eyes--and ways of
doing. You tell me that I, must go, but you make it
possible for me to stay. For God's sake let it be one or
the other."
"I am so sorry. We could be friends of a sort, I think,
but I can't marry you."
"You have never told me why."
"Shall I tell you truly, literally--brutally?"
"Of course!"
"Then it is not only because I don't love you--that there
is not for me the common temptation to enter a form of
bondage which, as I see it, is hateful. That is enough,
but it is not all; it is not even the principal thing.
It is"--she hesitated--"it is that--that we are different,
you and I. It would-be preposterous," she went on hastily,
"not to admit that you are infinitely superior--of
course--and cleverer and wiser and more important in the
world. And that will make me absurd in your eyes when I
tell you that my whole life is wrapped up in a sense
which I cannot see or feel that you have at all. You have
much--oh, a great deal--outside of it, and I have nothing.
My life is swayed in obedience to laws that you do not
even know of. You can hardly be my friend, completely.
As your wife I should suffer and you would suffer, in a
false position which could never be altered."
She paused and looked at him seriously, and he felt that
she believed what she had said. She had, at all events,
given him full permission to go. And he was as far from
being able to avail of himself of it as he had been
before--further, for every moment those slender fingers
rested in his made it more impossible to relinquish them,
for always. So, he persisted, with a bitter sense of
failure that would not wholly, honestly recognize itself.
"Is Golightly Ticke your friend--completely?"
"More--pardon me--than you could ever be," she answered
him, undaunted by the contempt in his tone.
There was silence for a moment between them. Elfrida's
wide-eyed gaze wandered appreciatively over the dusky
interior, which for the man beside her barely existed.
"What a lot of English character there is here," she said
softly. "How dignified it is, and conscientious, and
restrained!"
It was as if she had not spoken. Cardiff stared with knit
brows into the insoluble problem she had presented to
him a moment longer. "_How_ are we so different, Elfrida?"
he broke out passionately. "You are a woman and I am a
man; the world has dealt with us, educated us, differently,
and I am older than I dare say I ought to be to hope for
your love. But these are not differences that count,
whatever their results may be. It seems to me trivial to
speak of such things in this connection, but we like very
much the same books, the same people. I grant you I don't
know anything about pictures; but surely," he pleaded,
"these are not the things that cut a man off from the
happiness of a lifetime!"
"I'm afraid--" she began, and then she broke off suddenly.
"I _am_ sorry--sorrier than I have ever been before, I
think. I should have liked so well to keep your friendship;
it is the most chivalrous I know. But if you feel like--like
this about it I suppose I must not. Shall we say good-by
here and now? Truly I am sorry."
She had risen, and he could find no words to stay her.
It seemed that the battle to possess her was over, and
that he, had lost. Her desire for his friendship had all
the mockery of freedom in it to him--in the agony of the
moment it insulted him. With an effort he controlled
himself--there should be no more of the futility of words.
He must see the last of her some time--let it be now,
then. He bent his head over the slender hand he held,
brought his lips to it, and then, with sudden passion,
kissed it hotly again and again, seeking the warm,
uncovered little spot above the fastening. Elfrida snatched
it away with a little shiver at the contact, a little
angry shiver of surprised nerves. He looked at her
piteously, struggling for a word, for any word to send
away her repulsion, to bring her back to the mood of the
moment before. But he could not find it; he seemed to
have drifted hopelessly from her, to have lost all his
reckonings.
"Well?" she said. She was held there partly by her sense
of pity and partly by her desire to see the last, the
very last of it.
"Go!" he returned, with a shrinking of pain at the word,
"I cannot."
"_Pauvre ami!_" she said softly, and then she turned,
and her light steps sounded back to him through the length
of the hall.
She walked more slowly when she reached the pavement
outside, and one who met her might have thought she
indulged in a fairly pleasant reverie. A little smile
curved about the corners of her mouth, half compassionate,
half amused and triumphant. She had barely time to banish
it when she heard Cardiff's step beside her, and his
voice.
"I had to come after you," he said; "I've let you carry
off my stick."
She looked at him in mischievous challenge of his
subterfuge, and he added frankly, with a voice that shook
a little notwithstanding--
"It's of no use--I find I must accept your compromise.
It is very good of you to be willing to make one. And I
can't let you go altogether, Elfrida."
She gave him a happy smile. "And now," she said, "shall
we talk of something else?"