exhaustion it was hard to tell whether a thing had happened or whether
he had dreamed it. Ivy was talking as though she had never perjured
herself for Gaymer, as though she had never seen him again—an absurd,
intoxicating child with short black curls and thin white arms, the
immature bud of a woman... Yet there was a table by the bed within
reach of her hand; on the table stood a black Wedgwood bowl; in the
bowl a nodding mass of lilies. Once or twice before, when she was
living with Lady Maitland and dining alone with Gaymer, she had
confessed to inventing fellow-guests to keep her in countenance and to
placate her aunt; she had regarded the lie as amusing and clever,
certainly venial; Eric hoped that she was not going to lie now. Perhaps
he had imagined that nightmare moment in the passage, perhaps the sight
of her frank grey eyes kept his habit of love unbroken; undoubtedly he
loved her still, loved her so desperately that he could not bear to see
her made vile with a lie... But the lilies at least were not
imaginary... Her easy reference to Lashmar shewed that she intended to
confess nothing; she would leave him to find out. One day he would
receive a letter to say that she had run off with Gaymer; in the
meantime she played her double part with outward unconcern, as though
she were already married and had a secret lover....
“At the end of next week,” he repeated.
It was easier to echo her words than to break new ground.
“Are you going back at once? I hope you’re going to stay here,” she
said, beckoning him to a chair.
“I promised my mother to go back to-day.”
“Can’t you telephone? I _do_ so want you to stay... Eric, does your
mother know? I’ve been so afraid she might disapprove of me. Have you
told her?”
He shivered unconsciously; the appealing pose of fidelity was cynical
enough, without her becoming inartistic by overdoing it.
“I gave her a very fair idea of what was in the wind,” he said. “She’s
very fond of you, Ivy. There’d be no difficulty in that quarter.”
“You haven’t seen father yet? When are you going to?”
For a moment Eric was so much disgusted to find himself participating
in this game of make-believe that he did not realize she was asking him
a question and waiting for an answer.
“I don’t know,” he answered at length. “I don’t know whether I _shall_
see him. There are certain rather considerable difficulties... Ivy,
d’you _want_ me to go to him?”
As he spoke, he was conscious that his tone had hardened; there was a
challenge and a warning in it. He waited to see whether she would go on
lying; the hint of menace must shew her that she was underestimating
his knowledge.
A slight frown, a slighter shrug were her only signs of emotion.
“I never _did_ want you to go,” she answered. “My father is nothing in
my life now. I should actually have asked you not to if you hadn’t
frightened me by saying that he might make trouble because I wasn’t of
age.”
Eric nodded and prepared a question which would leave no room for
evasion.
“You’ve thought it over carefully, I hope?,” he said. “You still want
to marry me?”
“Of course.”
She held out her hands to him, but he pretended not to see them. The
last man to kiss her was Gaymer; where he kissed, a fume of liquor and
lasciviousness remained....
“You want to marry me after seeing—him? You’ve satisfied him that it’s
all over?”
Her frown deepened, but there was no indication of embarrassment.
“He still claims that we’re engaged—,” she began.
“Does he still think he’s going to marry you?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve told him you won’t?”
He regretted the question as soon as it was uttered. However
dishonourably Ivy had behaved, there was no pleasure in driving her
inch by inch into a trap; in a world of liars there was never much
satisfaction in convicting any one of a lie.
“Yes, I told him that,” she answered. “I also told him I would... You
won’t understand that, I expect, but I couldn’t help myself. That’s why
I don’t want you to go away and leave me, Eric; that’s why, a month
ago, I didn’t want to wait. I daresay you despise me, but I always feel
he can make me do whatever he wants. I can’t tell you why. That
night... when we came out of a theatre, he said ‘Are you going home, or
are you coming home with me?’ I’d never been home with him so late, I
knew what would happen, I didn’t want it to happen. I was horribly
frightened and I hoped, when he saw I was frightened, that he would
spare me. I should have thought any man would... I couldn’t help
myself; and that’s why I’ve never been as much ashamed as I ought to
be. Even when I thought he’d got tired of me, when I hated him and
could have murdered him, I still felt that he might come back and I
should have to obey him... I don’t want to be left alone, Eric. When
we’re married, it will be all right; I shall have you to protect me.
I’ve been ill—and, before that, I was desperately miserable; perhaps I
haven’t really been accountable for my actions. But, if he’d picked me
up in his arms last night and carried me off, I couldn’t have resisted.
Until we’re married, you mustn’t leave me—”
“And, _when_ we’re married, will it be easier to resist him?”
“He’ll leave me alone. He may go abroad... _Do_ you understand? Or do
you just despise me?”
She smiled wistfully and held out her hands to him again. Though he had
not kissed her on coming into the room, she had not commented on the
omission; perhaps she had not noticed it. Their relationship had been
wholly passionless. When he brought her back from Maidenhead and saw
her for the first time in ecstasy, the glory in her eyes was spiritual;
it was gratitude, admiration, love and a great amazement; if she then
begged him to kiss her, it was because a kiss was her readiest symbol
of love. For Gaymer she had once felt passion; when he ordered her to
kiss him, knowing the degree and source of his power, she obeyed. That
would pass in a few months; the strength of sex was only equalled by
its transience; and they would find nothing to put in its place. While
it was there, it was all-powerful; she could only escape it by running
away, by surrounding herself with a bodyguard, by reminding the flesh
that she owned claims of the spirit also. In so far as Eric could
analyse her mind, she yearned to be with Gaymer; and she resisted the
yearning, because she owed a spiritual debt to some one else. She would
be happier with Gaymer—for a time; no doubt she fancied that she would
always be happier. But she was prepared to sacrifice that for honour,
for gratitude....
“I’m trying to understand,” he answered. “_I_ once thought that I was
utterly helpless in one woman’s hands. There was nothing I wouldn’t
do... But I found it was a thing one could overcome. If I went up in
blue smoke here and now, you’d marry Gaymer? You remember there was a
time when you wouldn’t look at him.”
“I didn’t know everything then.”
“And, if I _don’t_ go up in blue smoke and if he _got_ enough money, if
we stood side by side before you, and you had a perfectly free choice?”
Ivy laughed with a dove’s coo of devotion:
“My darling, I should choose you!”
“And if Gaymer tried to entice you away?”
“But you wouldn’t let me go!”
Eric shook his head sadly:
“Aren’t you strong enough to stand by yourself without wanting a man
always to dominate you?”
The conversation was tiring her, and her voice became faintly petulant:
“When you’re lying in bed like this, all your will-power goes. And I
couldn’t sleep last night. I kept thinking of Johnnie, I was
frightened. You oughtn’t to have left me, Eric. Everything would have
been all right, if you’d stayed here.”
“Gaisford thought I wanted a change,” he reminded her. “And I’m afraid
I shall have to leave you again. He wants me to go abroad.”
“Oh, Eric, why? Are you ill?”
Her eyes were filled with concern; he wondered how much came from
sympathy with him and how much from fear for herself.
“Apparently I am. He wants to rest me and fatten me up.”
“But how long will you be away?”
“A couple of years, I should think.”
Ivy drew herself upright in bed and stared at him, with parted lips:
“Eric, you must explain!”
“There’s nothing much _to_ explain. It’s out of the question for me to
marry at present...” He hesitated and looked away. “It’s not fair to
ask you to wait two years.”
For a moment she did not answer. Then she cried:
“Of course I’ll wait! You know that!”
It was easier to keep his eyes on the ground than to meet hers. The
valiant words were inevitable—at such a time and in such an atmosphere;
the moment’s hesitation was not. And that, more than anything that she
had said or hinted, cleared his mind of doubt.
“Well, we won’t talk about it any more at present,” he suggested.
“Gaisford’s going to examine me again, and then we shall know rather
better where we are. Don’t worry, Ivy. I’ve no intention of dying yet
awhile. I only heard about it last night, so I haven’t had time to
think much about the future.”
In the afternoon Eric returned to Wimpole Street for the further
examination. The second report was fuller, but not materially
different: one lung was affected, and with reasonable care he would be
cured in a year or eighteen months. He again begged the doctor to say
nothing at present to his parents or Ivy.
“There’s a lot to take into consideration,” he explained vaguely.
“I’m sorry about this business, Eric,” said Gaisford. “But I’m telling
you the truth. If you’ll be patient—”
“Everything will come right. _I_ see... D’you think your man would like
to send a message to Lashmar to say I shan’t be down to-night?”
He walked into Oxford Street and through Hyde Park to Piccadilly. Once
before, after bidding Barbara good-bye, he had bade good-bye to London,
wandering from his flat to the theatre, from the theatre to, his club,
almost pinching himself in the effort to remember that he was seeing
them all for the last time. One could never reproduce an emotion in its
first breathless perfection; though he went through the same emotions,
the earlier shock had numbed him protectively against any that might
come later. And, as it proved, it was not the last time. In another two
years he might return to find Ivy married to Gaymer, as he had found
Barbara married to George Oakleigh; he would be two years older, twenty
years more disillusionized, with a bitter heart for women and a dread
of the blank emptiness before him.
Ivy was not to blame for meeting a force too strong for her; she was
ready to risk everything, even what she fancied to be her own
happiness, for loyalty and the honourable observance of her promise. If
he felt sore, it was because he had come to love her; she had made him
forget Barbara and had given him the hope of a new life. But
throughout, from the first night when he discussed her with Gaisford,
he had made her his spiritual anaesthetic; while there was an
opportunity of offering her himself, his money and reputation, his
devotion and care, he had looked with the eyes of a fanatic on this
single act of sacrifice which was to give value and meaning to his
life. In trying to face the future, it was the meaninglessness of life
that appalled him....
He had been trying, ever since their talk in the morning, to banish
himself in imagination to California and to consider what was best for
her. Gaymer would ruin her life; he would be unfaithful after six
months and brutal after a year. And she knew it. Should she be saved
from that? Was it ever worth trying to save man or woman from the woman
or man that they desired? Yet it was a poor proof of love to stand
aside and let her go to certain misery. If he mounted guard over her,
he could still keep her from Gaymer....
And from her phantom of happiness.
He turned into the Green Park and walked in the shade of the trees
towards Lancaster House. A woman bowed to him; he returned the bow
without seeing who she was, but there was a scrape of gravel under her
heel as she stopped, and he heard his name called.
“I _thought_ it was you, but you had your chin so much on your chest...
Thinking out a new play?”
“Mrs. O’Rane? I hope you didn’t think I was trying to cut you! No, I
hardly know what I _was_ thinking about. How’s your husband?”
“If you go on for about a hundred yards, you’ll find him. I have to
rush off to a committee. Good-bye!”
He shaded his eyes and looked down the pathway until he saw a Saint
Bernard asleep with his head on his paws and the paws pressed in gentle
protection against the feet of his master. Eric walked on and greeted
O’Rane.
“That’s—wait a bit! that’s Eric Lane’s voice. Am I right?”
“First shot. You’re marvellous, Raney.”
“It’s patience, you know. And I’ve been thinking about you a lot
lately. How’s the patient? Lady John Carstairs told me of your
troubles. I wanted you to come and have a shake-down with us, but she
said you preferred to stay where you were. I hear the operation went
off all right.”
“Oh, yes. She’s out of danger, I’m glad to say.”
“So Gaymer told me. It all happened within a few hours of our coming up
from Croxton, apparently.”
“Yes.”
Eric wondered when and why O’Rane had been talking to Gaymer, but his
speculation was cut short by a question:
“By the way, is it true...? I heard an interesting piece of news about
you.”
“Oh?”
“I heard you were engaged.”
“Now where did you hear that?”
Eric’s laugh seemed to ring shrilly, but O’Rane did not notice it.
“Tell me first if it’s true,” he said. “I’m the soul of discretion.”
He held out his hand, smiling and eager to congratulate. Eric hesitated
and again laughed nervously.
“That ought to be an easy enough question for me to answer,” he said,
“but, as a matter of fact, I can’t.”
The neglected hand reached out and felt for Eric’s arm.
“I nearly came round to see you,” said O’Rane gently, “but I thought
you’d wonder what business it was of mine. You remember our talk on
board the _Lithuania_... I know a good deal about you, and we’re very
old friends... So I was glad, more than glad, when I heard you were
actually engaged. Then I heard—”
His fingers slacked their grip on Eric’s arm; and his voice died away.
“That I _wasn’t_,” Eric suggested.
“Well, no. I heard—at least, I gathered that it wouldn’t be all plain
sailing. I gathered it from Gaymer himself. D’you remember at Croxton
that I said I thought I should have to take him in hand? He was
drinking too much, he wanted pulling up. He’s been living in my pocket
the last day or two. I can make something of him. But I’m afraid his
interests cuts across yours.”
“Would it bore you to hear the whole story?,” Eric asked.
There was a welcoming nod of encouragement. Eric tried to speak
dispassionately, though he knew that he was appealing for sympathy and
help; and the appeal grew stronger as he saw his companion’s expression
becoming more grave.
“Confidence for confidence,” said O’Rane, when he had done. “Quite soon
after I married, there came a time when it seemed possible that Sonia
and I had made a mistake, a time when I felt that, if I wanted her to
be happy, I should have to say, ‘Think this over carefully; you’ve only
one life and, if you believe you’ll make more of a success of it with
another man, you know I’ll not stop you’... I said that, Eric, and I’ve
always felt it was the right thing to do. I won’t pretend it was easy,
but the right thing seldom is. As it happens, everything’s turned out
well... I believe it’s a question that a great many men ought to put to
their wives, instead of exercising harem-rights over a human creature,
made in God’s image, that they’ve bought or attached to themselves. Do
you want to love a woman or to enjoy a slave?... I tell you this,
because you must give that girl the opportunity of slipping out of your
grasp—”
He stopped at the touch of a hand laid deprecatingly on his knee.
“I can’t keep her, if she wants to go,” said Eric.
“Indeed you can. Use your imagination, man! After all you’ve done for
her, with the knowledge that you’re ill—Put it on the lowest ground;
she wouldn’t dare to have it said of her that she’d thrown over a man
with consumption because she couldn’t wait two years for him to get
well. Probably you agree with me that a man who is a man doesn’t make
capital out of his physical infirmities. You must persuade her that
she’s under no obligation to you; and, if the decision goes against
you, you must accept it with a good grace. You behaved well in coming
to her rescue; you may have an opportunity of behaving even better in
giving up all claim on her.”
Eric sat for some moments digging at the gravel with his stick. Then he
touched O’Rane’s arm and stood up.
“Let’s move on,” he suggested. “It’s—it’s hot here... Raney, I’m not
going to give her up. I don’t see why I should.”
“I hope you won’t have to.”
“No one can compel me, if she says she’ll wait.”
“No one would need to compel you. Dear man, your devotion to her is a
very beautiful thing, it’s a thing you’ve better reason to be proud of
than anything you’ve ever done. You wouldn’t degrade a devotion like
that by keeping her against her will.”
Eric said nothing for several moments, but he laughed to himself, and
O’Rane gripped his arm as though the sneer in the laugh stung him.
“And I wonder what you think would be left for me, if I did give her
up!” he resumed. “It’s no good trying to make me live in too rarified
air. All this business about ‘the right thing’—I’m not cut out for
Cyrano de Bergerac or for Sidney Carton; a good conscience, a glow of
magnanimity—it does me no sort of good, Raney. I know what I want, I
know how badly I want it. I can imagine pretty clearly what the next
two years are going to be like—vegetating on a verandah in Arizona.
She’s all I have left... But if there’s nothing to come back to... I’m
the one that has to go through this and I want you to tell me what’s
left.”
O’Rane laughed and linked arms with him.
“I’ll change lungs, if you’ll change eyes,” he murmured.
“I’m sorry! My outlook’s a bit jaundiced. I expected too much of life,
I’d had a pretty fair hammering in one way or another and I thought it
was going to change, to end.”
O’Rane stopped short and sighed with whimsical regret.
“Like your novels and plays,” he suggested. “Life differs from romance
in that there are no happy endings. And, when you’ve learned that
lesson, you must learn that life has no endings of any kind short of
death. We try to divide our lives into dramatic phases, but you know
that there’s no finality about your first disappointment in love; it
modifies the texture of your spirit and prepares you for something else
just when the dramatist scrawls his ‘Curtain’ and the novelist writes
‘The End.’ Perhaps it prepares you for another and a different love,
perhaps for marriage: no one but a fool would stop his play or novel
with the clash of wedding-bells. It’s not the end of anything except
one stage of an endless development; it’s not the beginning of anything
except the next stage of development. These dramatic and literary forms
destroy our sense of continuity. Hundreds of generations have gone to
the preparation of your personality; you will enrich it in a thousand
ways and hand it on by blood or teaching or example to thousands of
generations unborn. You ask what is left... I should answer: your
personality, your ego. You have that left to build up, fortify,
perfect. I don’t say that the next two years will be particularly
happy, but you can come out of them a deeper, broader, bigger man...
You’ll give this girl her chance?”
Eric walked on without answering. They left the Park and passed along
Cleveland Row to St. James’ Street. The wind was blowing from the
river, and they paused to hear Big Ben strike.
“Seven o’clock. I’d no idea we’d been talking so long,” said O’Rane.
“My wife’s dining out and going to the ballet. I suppose you wouldn’t
care to take pot-luck with me?”
“I should love it, when I’ve been home. Ivy’ll be wondering what’s
happened to me. Raney, what would you do in my place, if you felt
certain that, by giving a woman up, you’d be sentencing her to utter
misery?”
“To begin with, no one can ever be certain of that.”
“Gaymer’s a brute and a cad and a drunkard,” said Eric hotly.
“He’s given up drinking for good. As for the rest, when you see so many
estimable men turning into brutes and cads on marriage, it’s not
unreasonable to hope that a brute and cad may be converted by marriage
into something better. As a matter of fact, Gaymer’s neither. I saw him
when, to use his own phrase, he thought you’d jumped his claim; it was
the time when the girl’s life was in danger. Gaymer’s very fond of her,
too, though he’s English enough to hide it from everybody but a man who
has ears even if he’s no eyes... Gaymer’s no fool. He knows that all
his nervous organism has gone to pieces in the war, he recognizes that
he’s left the rails and that, if he doesn’t pull up, he’ll go downhill
with a run. He wants some one to keep him steady; and this girl—the
only living creature in the world that he cares for—is the only one who
can do it. He’s fighting for her, because she’s his one anchor. He
can’t afford to lose her.”
“I can’t afford to lose her.”
“Perhaps you mayn’t. I only want her to have a free choice.”
“Freedom to marry a blackguard? He _is_ a blackguard, Raney, to have
taken advantage of a girl’s youth and ignorance. He’s a blackguard
right through to the end! He solemnly promised me not to go near her
and then bursts in the moment my back’s turned. He’s a libertine, a
liar—”
“That’s no objection in a woman’s eyes. Every corespondent is all that
and perhaps a good deal more.”
“I’m not going to give her up.”
They turned into Ryder Street and walked up the stairs to Eric’s flat.
O’Rane waited in the hall while Eric went into Ivy’s bedroom. She was
sitting up, writing on her knees, and, as he came in, she laid down her
pencil and handed him the letter. Her eyelids flickered, and he could
see that she spoke with an effort.
“It’s to Johnnie,” she explained. “He called immediately after you’d
gone, but I told the nurse to say I couldn’t see him. He’s just sent me
a note... What did the doctor say, Eric?”
“He didn’t add much to what he told me last night. Do you want me to
read this, Ivy?”
“I think you’d better. I told Johnnie that I didn’t know what I was
saying last night, when I promised to marry him. I’ve begged him not to
worry me—”
Eric fingered the letter without reading it.
“If I told you that the doctor didn’t know if I could marry even in two
years, what would you say?,” he propounded.
“Even!...? What do you mean? Did he say that? Eric, tell me! You
frighten me when you won’t say what’s the matter with you.”
He pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down, holding her hand.
“I can’t tell you anything very definite,” he answered. “But I’m trying
to look at all possibilities. I feel responsible for you, Ivy. I want
to think what’s the best for you. If Gaisford says I must never marry,
what will you do?”
She looked at him with frightened eyes, and he saw that her lips were
trembling. Two slow tears rolled down her cheeks and splashed on to his
hand. So she had cried once at the opera, and her tears had melted him.
Now they seemed to eat into his hand like acid.
“I shan’t die, if I can help it, Ivy,” he added. “If I did, or if I
couldn’t marry you, what would you do? Would you marry Gaymer?”
“Oh, Eric, don’t be cruel! Are you doing this just to frighten me?”
“No! I’m thinking of your future. If you married him, do you feel that
you’d both be happy?”
“I should never be happy, if anything happened to you.”
“Darling Ivy, leave me out for a minute! Imagine you’d never met me. Do
you feel that you’d be happy with him?”
“If I’d never met you?... But, Eric—”
“You really love him, Ivy? Do you love him more than me?”
“Don’t torture me! I could never love any one as I love you. Johnnie’s
quite different; I _feel_ quite differently about him... Eric, it isn’t
kind not to tell me.”
She drew her hand back and leaned forward, throwing her arms round his
neck. He kissed her forehead and dried the tear-rivulets on her cheeks.
Then he unlocked her fingers and stood up, turning half away.
“I’ll tell you, Ivy,” he said. “I asked you this morning whether you’d
wait two years—”
“I will! You know I will!”
“I know you will! Bless you! But two years are no good. I hope to be
very much better by then, but I shall never be well enough to marry...
Gaisford t-told me so this afternoon,” he added with deliberation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
VIGIL
“He could not, Himself, make a second self
To be His mate; as well have made Himself:
He would not make what He mislikes or slights,
An eyesore to Him, or not worth His pains:
But did, in envy, listlessness or sport,
Make what Himself would fain, in a manner, be—
Weaker in most points, stronger in a few,
Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while,
Things he admires and mocks too,—that is it.
Because, so brave, so better though they be,
It nothing skills if He begin to plague....