“Go on,” I said; “do not spare me. Tell me everything. It is madness
indeed; but we may kill it, when we both know it.”
“Oh, if we could!” she cried, with a poignancy which was heart-breaking
to hear. “If we could!”
“Do you doubt our ability?” I said, trying to be patient and calm. “You
are unreasoning, like all women. Be sensible for a moment. You do me a
wrong in cherishing these feelings. I have the capacity for cruelty in
me. I may have been--I have been--cruel in the past, but never to you.
You have no right to treat me as you have done lately. If you examine
your feelings, and compare them with facts, you will see their
absurdity.”
“But,” she interposed, with a woman’s fatal quickness, “that will not do
away with their reality.”
“It must. Look into their faces until they fade like ghosts, seen only
between light and darkness. They are founded upon nothing; they are bred
without father or mother; they are hysterical; they are wicked. Think a
little of me. You are not going to be conquered by a chimera, to allow a
phantom created by your imagination to ruin the happiness that has been
so beautiful. You will not do that! You dare not!”
She only answered:
“If I can help it.”
A passionate anger seized me, a fury at my impotence against this child.
I pushed her almost roughly from my arms.
“And I have married this woman!” I cried bitterly. I got up.
Margot had ceased crying now, and her face was very white and calm; it
looked rigid in the faint candle-light that shone across the bed.
“Do not be angry,” she said. “We are controlled by something inside of
us; there are powers in us that we cannot fight against.”
“There is nothing we cannot fight against,” I said passionately. “The
doctrine of predestination is the devil’s own doctrine. It is the
doctrine set up by the sinner to excuse his sin; it is the coward’s
doctrine. Understand me, Margot, I love you, but I am not a weak fool.
There must be an end of this folly. Perhaps you are playing with me,
acting like a girl, testing me. Let us have no more of it.”
She said:
“I only do what I must.”
Her tone turned me cold. Her set face frightened me, and angered me, for
there was a curious obstinacy in it. I left the room abruptly, and did
not return. That night I had no sleep.
I am not a coward, but I find that I am inclined to fear that which
fears me. I dread an animal that always avoids me silently more than an
animal that actually attacks me. The thing that runs from me makes me
shiver, the thing that creeps away when I come near wakes my uneasiness.
At this time there rose up in me a strange feeling towards Margot.
The white, fair child I had married was at moments--only at
moments--horrible to me. I felt disposed to shun her. Something within
cried out against her. Long ago, at the instant of our introduction, an
unreasoning sensation that could only be called dread had laid hold
upon me. That dread returned from the night of our explanation, returned
deepened and added to. It prompted me to a suggestion which I had no
sooner made than I regretted it. On the morning following I told
Margot that in future we had better occupy separate rooms. She assented
quietly, but I thought a furtive expression of relief stole for a moment
into her face.
I was deeply angered with her and with myself; yet, now that I knew
beyond question my wife’s physical terror of me, I was-half afraid of
her. I felt as if I could not bring myself to lie long hours by her side
in the darkness, by the side of a woman who was shrinking from me, who
was watching me when I could not see her. The idea made my very flesh
creep.
Yet I hated myself for this shrinking of the body, and sometimes
hated her for rousing it. A hideous struggle was going on within me--a
struggle between love and impotent anger and despair, between the lover
and the master. For I am one of the old-fashioned men who think that a
husband ought to be master of his wife as well as of his house.
How could I be master of a woman I secretly feared? My knowledge of
myself spurred me through acute irritation almost to the verge of
madness.
All calm was gone. I was alternately gentle to my wife and almost
ferocious towards her, ready to fall at her feet and worship her or to
seize her and treat her with physical violence. I only restrained myself
by an effort.
My variations of manner did not seem to affect her. Indeed, it sometimes
struck me that she feared me more when I was kind to her than when I was
harsh.
And I knew, by a thousand furtive indications, that her horror of me was
deepening day by day. I believe she could hardly bring herself to be in
a room alone with me, especially after nightfall.
One evening, when we were dining, the butler, after placing dessert upon
the table, moved to leave us. She turned white, and, as he reached the
door, half rose, and called him back in a sharp voice.
“Symonds!” she said.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“You are going?”
The fellow looked surprised.
“Can I get you anything, ma’am?”
She glanced at me with an indescribable uneasiness. Then she leaned back
in her chair with an effort, and pressed her lips together.
“No,” she said.
As the man went out and shut the door, she looked at me again from
under her eyelids; and finally her eyes travelled from me to a small,
thin-bladed knife, used for cutting oranges, that lay near her plate,
and fixed themselves on it. She put out her hand stealthily, drew it
towards her, and kept her hand over it on the table. I took an orange
from a dish in front of me.
“Margot,” I said, “will you pass me that fruit-knife?”
She obviously hesitated.
“Give me that knife,” I repeated roughly, stretching out my hand.
She lifted her hand, left the knife upon the table, and at the same
time, springing up, glided softly out of the room and closed the door
behind her.
That evening I spent alone in the smoking-room, and, for the first time,
she did not come to bid me good-night.
I sat smoking my cigar in a tumult of furious despair and love. The
situation was becoming intolerable. It could not be en-dured. I longed
for a crisis, even for a violent one. I could have cried aloud that
night for a veritable tragedy. There were moments when I would almost
have killed the child who mysteriously eluded and defied me. I could
have wreaked a cruel vengeance upon the body for the sin of the mind. I
was terribly, mortally distressed.
After a long and painful self-communion, I resolved to make another wild
effort to set things right before it was too late; and when the clock
chimed the half-hour after ten I went upstairs softly to her bedroom and
turned the handle of the door, meaning to enter, to catch Margot in my
arms, tell her how deep my love for her was, how she injured me by her
base fears, and how she was driving me back from the gentleness she had
given me to the cruelty, to the brutality, of my first nature.
The door resisted me: it was locked. I paused a moment, and then tapped
gently. I heard a sudden rustle within, as if someone hurried across the
floor away from the door, and then Margot’s voice cried sharply:
“Who’s that? Who is there?” “Margot, it is I. I wish to speak to you--to
say good-night.”
“Good-night,” she said. “But let me in for a moment.” There was a
silence--it seemed to me a long one; then she answered:
“Not now, dear; I--I am so tired.” “Open the door for a moment.” “I
am very tired. Good-night.” The cold, level tone of her voice--for the
anxiety had left it after that first sudden cry--roused me to a sudden
fury of action. I seized the handle of the door and pressed with all my
strength. Physically I am a very powerful man--my anger and despair
gave me a giant’s might. I burst the lock, and sprang into the room. My
impulse was to seize Margot in my arms and crush her to death, it might
be, in an embrace she could not struggle against. The blood coursed like
molten fire through my veins. The lust of love, the lust of murder even,
perhaps, was upon me. I sprang impetuously into the room.
No candles were alight in it. The blinds were up, and the chill
moonbeams filtered through the small lattice panes. By the farthest
window, in the yellowish radiance, was huddled a white thing.
A sudden cold took hold upon me. All the warmth in me froze up.