IN PAIN
Hour after hour David read on, dead to all things in the world but to
the soul in pain in that book and to his hope that, if only once, she
had written the name of her home. Every time he came upon that letter
R (by which she meant Rigsworth) he groaned; and anon he looked with
eyes of despair and something of fond reproach at her face over the
mantelpiece.
He read of her leaving the stage, because of the necessity that was now
upon her, and then of the months of heaviness and tears. The worst trial
of all in her lot seemed to be the constant separations, due to the
tyranny of one "Mrs. S.," who ever drew her husband from her. She wrote:
I actually should be jealous, if she wasn't old! From Paris to
Homburg, from Homburg to Siena: and everywhere poor Harry
dragged at her chariot-wheels! I should like to have one peep
at her in the flesh, just to see what she is really like. Her
photographs show a fat, cross-looking old thing, but she can't
be quite like that, with her really good affectionate heart.
Has she not been the best of mothers to Harry? From the time
she adopted him, he says, when he was a quite poor boy of
fifteen, she has never been able to live a month without seeing
him, even when he was at Heidelburg University. I must be
content only to share him with her, but just now I think I have
the stronger claim, unless she is really so very ill. I have
heard that tale before of her "dying state," but that sort of
old things don't die so easily. I believe that I write as if I
wished her to! God forbid! I don't allow all Harry's dreams of
the grandeurs to be enjoyed after her death to excite me much.
I hope that I shall take it as coldly as doing up my hair when
the letter comes, "Mrs. S. is dead! you are a millionaire."
Mercenariness is not one of my faults, anyway. It is true that
since I have ceased to earn anything, I do sometimes feel a wee
pinch of scarcity, and wish that he could send me even a few
shillings a week more. But if that was only all of my trouble!
No, Mrs. S., may you live as long as Heaven wills. If I thought
that in any part of me there lurked one little longing to hear
of that good woman's death, I should never forgive myself.
Still, I don't think it right of her to play the despot over
Harry to the extent to which she carries it. A man thirty-eight
years old has surely the right to marry, if he wishes to. If it
hadn't been for her, my marriage could have been made public
from the first, and all that woe at R. would have been spared.
Harry says that she hates the very word "marriage," and that if
she was to get the least scent of his marriage, she would cut
him off with a shilling.
He has run a risk, poor old Hal, for my sake, and if now and
again he can't help longing to be rich and free, it is hard to
blame him. The day he is rich and free there will be a spree,
Gwen! It is wrong to anticipate it, but see if I don't make the
street of R. glow, if not with the wine of France, at least
with beer, and if I don't teach a certain staid Miss Violet
Mordaunt how to do the high-kick, girls! I wonder if all will
be over by then, and if I shall go back to dear old R. not only
a wife but a mother?
Then again, a month later:
What a thing! to be a mother! Sometimes the thought hits me
suddenly between the eyes, and I can't believe it is I
myself--that same powerlessness to recognize myself which I had
for fully a week after the marriage. But this is greater still,
to have something which will be to me what I have been to my
own mother. Gwen, Gwen, how exquisitely droll! How one grows
into something else quite different, without at all noticing
how and when! But will it never be over? It is like heaving a
sigh a century long. Won't it be nice to dance again, and fling
one's limbs? But meantime, such a weight of care, strange
fears, gazings into I don't know what abyss, and never a day
without its flood of tears. I want my mother. It is no good; I
want to go back to where I was born. I am not strong enough to
bear this. But after Tuesday's promise to him, what can I do? I
have said now that I won't write until after, and I won't if
God gives me strength.
For two months there was no entry, and then came joy that a son was
born; but from the time of that birth, the diary which had before been
profuse and daily became short and broken.
A deadlock seemed to have arisen. "Harry" allowed one letter to be
written home to tell of the birth; but would not permit any direct
statement as to the marriage, nor any meeting, nor any further letter,
until "Mrs. S.," who was now "near her end," should be dead. She wrote:
To-day is six weeks since I have seen him, and altogether he
has seen baby only twice. Yesterday's letter was divided into
"heads," like a sermon, giving the reason why I may not go to
him in Paris, why I may not write home, even without giving my
address, and why he cannot come back yet. But it is a year now,
and I have a mother and a sister. There is no certainty that
Mrs. S. may not live ten years longer; and in last night's
letter I said that on the 4th of July, one month from now, if
nothing has then happened to change the situation, I shall be
compelled to risk displeasing him, and I shall go to R. That's
crossing the Rubicon, Gwen, and I'm awfully frightened now. He
will call it defiance, and rave, I know. "Be bold, be bold, be
not too bold." But, then, I can always tame the monster with
one Delilah kiss. I think I know my man, and can conquer my
conqueror, and it is time now to begin to assert myself a
little. . . .
Isn't there something queerish in his relation with "Mrs. S."?
He stands in such mortal fear of her! I don't think it is quite
pretty for a man to have such tremors for any earthly reason.
One day I asked him why he could not introduce me to her as--a
friend? She might take a fancy to me, I said, since I am
generally popular. He looked quite frightened at the mere
suggestion of such a thing. . . .
That last night, coming home from the theater, he said
something about "Anna." I asked him who Anna was. He said: "I
mean Mrs. S.," looking, it seemed to me, rather put out. I had
never heard him call her Anna before. . . .
My voice is certainly not what it was, and not through any want
of practise, I'm sure. People so hopelessly worried as I am at
present can't sing really well. For the second time yesterday I
wrote that I shall really go to mother after the fourth of next
month, and I mean it, I do mean it! I owe something to her,
too, and to myself, and I still don't see what harm it can do
to Harry. Poor dear, he is awfully frightened! "If you persist
in this wild notion, you will compel me to take a step which
will be bitter to you and to myself." I don't know what step he
can mean. That's only talk. I'll do it just to see what
happens, for one oughtn't to threaten a woman with penalties
which she can't conceive, or her curiosity will lead her to do
the very thing. It was an ill-understood threat that made Eve
eat the apple, my Hal. "Thou shalt surely die"; but, not
knowing what "to die" was like, she thought to herself: "Well,
just to see." There's no particularly "bitter step" that he can
take, and the time is really come for me to assert myself a
little now. Men love a woman better when she is not all milk
and honey. . . .
It is near now, Vi! He has her chin, her hands, her dark grave
eyes, her very smile. I am on the point at last of seeing him
in her arms. How will she look? What will she think of me, the
little girl whom she used to guide with her eye, beating her a
hundred miles, an old experienced mummie while she is still a
maid! I can no more resist it than I could fly! I shall do it!
I am going to do it! I told Harry that I should. There's no
danger, and I can't resist it any longer. I am just back from
P. He is looking too sweet now for anything, and can blow the
whistle of the rattle. I told Mrs. C. that in three days' time
I shall be taking him from her for at least ten days, perhaps
for good. Only three days! Sarah is beginning to get things
ready....
Yes, it was "a bitter step" enough, poor Hal! God help you and
me, and all the helpless!...
I told poor Sarah just now: "I am not married. You only think
that I am; but I am not. I have a child; but I am not married.
Sarah, this is no fit place for a girl like you." She thinks
that I am mad, I know, but I keep quite sane and myself. I am
only sorry for poor old Hal. He loves me and I loved him when
I had a heart....
I thought of seeing the boy once more, but I haven't the
energy. I don't seem to care. If I should care, or love, or
hate, or eat, it wouldn't be so horrible. But I am only a
ghost, a sham. I am really dead. My nature is akin with the
grave, and has no appetite but for that with which it is akin.
Well, I will soon come. It shall be to-morrow night, just after
Sarah is gone. But I must rouse myself first to do that which
is my duty. I ought, as a friend, to cover up poor Hal's
traces, and yet I must be just to the boy, too. He ought to
know when he grows up that, if his mother was unfortunate, she
was not abandoned, and it is my duty to leave for him the
proofs of it. But how to do that, and at the same time protect
Harry, is the question, for I suppose that the police will
search the flat. It is very wearisome. I doubt if my poor head
is too clear to-day....
It shall be like this: I'll hide the things somewhere where the
police won't readily find them. I'll invent a place. Then I
shall write to Vi, not telling her what is going to happen to
me, but telling her that if in a few months' time she will
thoroughly search a certain flat in London, she will find what
will be good for her and mother and the boy. And I shall give
the address; but I won't tell her exactly where I hide the
things; for fear of the police getting hold of the letter and
arresting Harry. And I will post it after Sarah is gone
to-morrow night, just before I do it. That's what I shall do.
I'm pretty artful, my brain is quite clear and calm. I don't
know yet where I shall hide the things; but I shall find a
place, I shall hoodwink them all, and manage everything just
nicely. Sarah thinks that I'm mad, but I'm not. It is she who
is raving mad, and people who are mad think that every one is,
except themselves.
I'll hide the diary in one place, the certificates in another,
and the photograph of the boy's father in another. That's what
I'll do. Then I'll tear up all other papers small. No, I'll
hide as well the letter in which he says that he is Mrs. S.'s
husband, and that I'm not his legal wife; for some day I should
like Vi to know that I did not take my life for nothing, but
was murdered before I killed myself. Then I'll do it. It isn't
bitter; it's sweet. Death's a hole to creep in for shelter for
one's poor head. Harry will be in England in five days' time,
so I'll write him a letter to the Constitutional to say
good-by. He loves me. He didn't mean to kill me. He only told
me in order to stop me from going home. It is such a burden to
write to him, but it is my duty to give him one last word of
comfort, and I will.
Then, when all this world of business is over and done, I'll do
it. It isn't bitter; it's sweet. God, I couldn't face them!
Forgive me! I know that it is wicked; but it is nice, is death.
Things are as they are. One can't fight against the ocean. It
is sweet to close one's eyes, and drown.
That word "drown" was the last. David closed the book with a blackness
in his heart and brain.
The reading of it had brought him only grief and little light for
practical purposes. That "Mrs. S." meant "Mrs. Strauss" he had no doubt,
nor any doubt that "Harry" meant Henry Van Hupfeldt. Still, there was no
formal proof of it. The name of her home, to learn which he had dared to
open the diary, appeared only as "R." The only pieces of knowledge which
the reading brought him were, firstly, that there were a photograph
and a letter still hidden in the flat--certainly, not in any of the
pictures, for he had searched them all; and secondly that "Harry" was a
member of the Constitutional Club. As for the child, it was, or had
been, at "P.," in the care of one "Mrs. C."