IN THE DARK.
"Well, Dora," he began, "this has been an exciting day."
"Yes," she said softly, and added with tender anxiety, "I hope
you have quite recovered? I hope you do not feel any bad effects
of--of--of--what happened to you, Jack?" She did not know how he would
take even this solicitous reference to his fainting.
"I feel quite well, dearest. Do not let us talk of that affair again.
That cabman brought you quite safe?"
"Oh, quite safe," she said gently. "Tell me what happened after you
left me?" It gratified her that he thought of her. She had accused him
of selfishness, now he was showing that his first thought was of her.
With the self-sacrificing spirit of her sex she was satisfied with a
little sympathy on her own account. She wanted to give him all her
sympathy now. "Of course, I know you found Mr. Leigh. What an
extraordinary man. Is he a little mad, do you think?"
"A good deal mad, I fancy, with conceit," he said impatiently. Leigh,
personally, had been a misfortune, and now the memory of him was
exasperating and a bore.
The ungentleness of the answer jarred upon the girl's heart. Leigh had
suffered such miserable wrongs at the hand of fate, that surely he was
deserving of all consideration and compassion. His bodily disabilities
made him more helpless and piteous than a lonely, deserted child.
"Tell me all," she said. "It was so good of you to bring him here. I
felt quite proud of you when I saw you coming with him. Many men would
have been afraid to trust so uncouth a man with so unpleasant a secret
into this room of a Thursday." She spoke to encourage Hanbury, by
anticipating in part his account of the generous thing she fancied he
had done.
He twisted and turned uneasily on his chair. Whatever Dora or anyone
else might think of him, he was not going to pose in plumes that were
not his by right. It was very gratifying in one sense that she should
give him credit for such extravagant, such Quixotic good nature; but
she must not be allowed to run away with the story.
"The fact is, Dora," said he in a tone of deliberation and
dissatisfaction, "I did not bring him here of my own free will.
Indeed, I do not know how you could imagine I would invite such a man.
I found him contemplating a paragraph for the papers, and he promised
he would say nothing about what had occurred if I would introduce him
to you. He seems to have conceived a romantic interest in you, because
of your likeness to some one he knows." Later this evening he should
tell her all about this "some one."
"I see," she said, her spirits declining. It was not out of good
nature or generosity, but cowardice, moral cowardice, Jack had brought
Leigh. The principle which had made Jack flee from Welbeck Place after
sending Leigh for the cab, and then made him fly back there again when
he learned that the little man knew their names, had forced him
against his will to bring Leigh to her mother's At home. She was in
the most indulgent and forgiving of humours, but--but--but--"Oh, Jack,
I am so sorry!" was all she could think of saying. She was sorry for
him, for John Hanbury, who either was not, or would not be, too big to
be troubled by such paltry fears, and irritated by such paltry
annoyances.
"Sorry! Sorry for what?" he cried. He gathered from her tone and
manner that she was not speaking out fully. He could not guess what
was in her mind. He had a little lecture or exhortation prepared to
deliver her, and in addition to the unpleasantness of not knowing
exactly what she meant when she said she was sorry, he had the
confusing and exasperating sense of repression, of not being able to
get on the ground he intended occupying.
She did not speak for a while. She was looking out into the dark blue
air of the street. She had formed a high ideal of what he, her hero,
ought to be, nearly was. But now and then, often, he did not reach the
standard she had raised. Her ideal was the man of noble thought
certainly, but he should still more be the man of noble action. She
would have laid down her life freely in what she believed to be a good
cause, and to her mind the noblest cause in which a woman could die
would be for a noble man whom she loved. She believed the place of
woman was by the side of man, not independent of man. She held that in
all matters man and wife should be, to use words that had been
employed in acts, to think of which rent her heart with agony, one and
undivisible. She regarded strong-minded women as wrong-minded women.
Strength and magnanimity were the attributes of men; love and
gentleness of women. She wanted this man beside her to shine bright in
the eyes of men by reason of his great and rare gifts. No one doubted
his abilities as a man; she wanted him to treat his abilities as only
the foundation of his character. She wanted not only to know that he
possessed great gifts and precious powers, but to feel as well that he
was fit to be a god. She yearned to pass her life by the side of a man
who could force the world to listen to his words, and fill the one
pedestal in her earthly temple. She wanted him to be a hero and a
conqueror in the face of the world, and she wanted to give him the
whole loyal worship of her woman's heart, that she might live always
in the only attitude which rests a woman's spirit, the attitude of
giving service of the hand and largess of the heart, and homage of the
soul. She wanted to give this man all her heart and soul unceasingly.
To give him everything that was hers to give, under Heaven.
It was necessary to make some reply, and she had none ready. In the
pause she had not been thinking. She had been seeing visions, dreaming
dreams, from which occupations thought is always absent.
He became still more uneasy. Her hand was in his. He pressed it
slightly, to recall her attention to him, "What are you sorry for,
Dora? What are you thinking of, dear? Are you angry with me still?"
She started without turning her eyes away from the blue duskness of
the street, and in a tone of wonderful tenderness and sadness, said:
"I don't know exactly what I was thinking of, Jack. The evening is so
fresh and still it is not necessary for one to think. Angry with you,
dear! Oh, no! Oh, no! Angry with you for what?"
"About the harsh words I said of Leigh. It seems to me your manner
changed the moment I mentioned his name. Let us not speak of him any
more this evening."
He pressed her hand, and stole his arm round her waist. She returned
the pressure of his hand, but did not turn her eyes inward from the
still street.
"But why should we not speak of him, Jack?"
"Because, dear, we are here together, and we are much more interesting
to one another than he can be to either."
"Yes, dear, in a way more interesting to one another than all the
world besides; but in another way not nearly so interesting as this
poor clockmaker," she said slowly, in a dreamy voice.
"I own," he said testily, "I do not see the matter as you put it. How
can he, a mere stranger, and a mere stranger who might have done us
harm, be more interesting in any light than we are to one another?" He
was a man, and thought as the average man thinks, of getting not
giving. He was here alone with this beautiful girl who was to be his
wife one day, and his chief concern was to get the most pleasure out
of her presence by his side, the sound of her voice, the assurance of
her love, the contemplation of their future happiness, the sense that
she was his very own, that she would be bound to render him obedience
which would, of course, never be exacted, and that he was about to lay
before her his views of what her conduct ought to be, of where she had
declined to accept his advice with regard to their walk of that day,
and above all of his determination as to his future course, and the
desirableness of their early marriage. He wanted in fact to get her
disapproval of the expedition which had led to the unpleasantness of
that day, her disapproval of her venturesome overruling of his
judgment and her approval of all his plans for the future. He did not
state his position thus. He simply wanted certain things, and never
thought of referring his wants to any principle.
"In this way," she answered softly, "all about us is happy and
assured. For ourselves we have everything that is necessary not only
for mere life, but for enjoyment. The things we lack are only
luxuries----"
"Luxuries!" he cried. "Do you consider the ardours of a public life
luxuries? Do you not yet know me better than to believe I would lead
an existence of idle pleasure? Why, a public man now-a-days works
harder than a blacksmith, and generally without necessity or reward!"
He spoke indignantly. She had attacked his class, she was showing
indifference to the usefulness and disinterestedness of his order.
Neither his words nor his manner roused her. "I am not at all
forgetting what you speak of. I am thinking, Jack dear, of things more
common and essential than fame or the reputation of a benefactor to
man. You know I hold that the first sphere of woman is her home.
People like us are rarely grateful for food or shelter, or even
health, and no people of any kind are grateful for the air they
breathe." She paused and sighed. She did not finish her thought in
words.
"Well," said he, withdrawing his arm from her waist and taking a chair
opposite her in the window-place, "how does this apply? Of course,
when you realize the fact that you could not live without air, you are
grateful for it. I don't see what you are driving at."
"I cannot help thinking of the man and pitying him. He will go into
his grave having missed nearly everything in the world."
"Why, the man has enough conceit to make a battalion of Guards happy.
He is a greater man in his own opinion than the Premier, the Lord
Chancellor and the Commander-in-Chief rolled into one."
"But even if he is, Jack, that is not all. The Premier and the Lord
Chancellor and the Commander-in-Chief, over and above their great
successes and fame, have the comforts ordinary men enjoy as well. They
are not afflicted in their forms as he is. You say he is interested in
me because I remind him of some one. How must it be with an ordinary
human heart beating in such a body? Would it not be better for such a
man to be born blind than to find his Pallas-Athena, as he calls her?"
The eyes of the girl could not be seen in the darkness of the room;
they were full of tears and there were tears in her voice.
Hanbury started, he could not tell why. He exclaimed: "Good Heavens,
Dora! you do not mean to tell me that you feel seriously concerned in
the love affairs, if there are such things, of this man?"
"No, dear, but I am saddened when I think of them. However absurd it
may seem, I cannot help believing this finding of his ideal must be a
dreadful misfortune to him."
"Even if you yourself were the ideal, Dora?"
"Even so. But you tell me he had found it before he came here. Of
course, dear, my mind is influenced only for the moment by the thought
of him and his affairs; but ever since I heard him speak, grotesque as
it may seem, my heart has been feeling for him with his poor deformed
body and his elaborate gallantry of manner and his Pallas-Athena."
Now was the time to tell Dora of this Miss Grace, but it seemed to him
the story was too long for so late an hour, and that it could be told
with pleasanter effect when Dora was less exercised about the dwarf.
The conversation was too sentimental for him. He had matters of
practical moment to speak about, and this subject obstinately blocked
the way. The best thing for him to do was to give the matter an
every-day aspect at once. "Well, Dora, in any case, Leigh isn't in the
first glory of youth, and if he ever does fall in love and marry, it
will, I am sure, be no Pallas-Athena, but a barmaid, with practical
views, and a notion of keeping an hotel, or something of that kind."
"But how do you think a man with his imagination, his Pallas-Athena,
and his incomparable clock and his miracle gold----?"
"Which is nonsense, of course. You don't mean that you believe in
transmutation in this end of the nineteenth century?" he said
impatiently.
"I do not know. I am not scientific. I suppose more wonderful things
have been done. If there ever was a time for making gold it is now.
All the wonders that poets dreamed of long ago are coming true in
prose to-day. Why not the great dream of the alchemists too? At all
events, the fancies are bad for him. Suppose there is to be no
Pallas-Athena or wonderful clock or miracle gold in his life, what is
there left to him? It seems to me he is all the poorer for his
delusions. Jack, I will not try to disguise it. I am intensely
interested in this poor clockmaker, this mad visionary, if you prefer
to call him that."
This was not at all the kind of preface Hanbury wanted to the
communications he had to make to her. He felt disconcerted, clumsy,
petulant. "I have been so unfortunate as to introduce the cause of all
this anxiety to you. It would have been much better for every sake I
had not gone back and met the man the second time, much better I
should cut a ridiculous figure before all the town to-morrow!" He was
growing angry as his speech went on. His own words were inflaming his
mind by the implication of his wrongs.
She placed her hand gently on his, and said in a reproachful voice, a
voice quite different from the meditative tones in which she had been
speaking, "Jack, I did not mean that. You know I did not mean that.
Why do you reproach me with thoughts you ought to know I could not
harbour?" She had turned in from the window, and was looking at him
opposite her in the dim darkness. She was now fully alive to his
presence and everything around her.
"No doubt," he said bitterly, "I am ungenerous to you. I am unjust. I
am afraid, Dora, I am but an ill-conditioned beast----"
"Jack, that is the most unjust thing you could possibly say to me. In
saying it you seem to use words you fancy I would like to use, only I
am not brave enough."
"I know you are brave enough for anything. I know it is I who am the
coward."
"Jack! Oh, Jack!"
"You told me so yourself to-day. You cannot say I am putting that word
into your mouth." He was taking fire.
"Have you no mercy for me, Jack; my Jack?"
"You told me with your own lips I had no thought but of my miserable
self in the miserable thing that happened."
"Jack, have you no pity. My Jack, have you no pity for your own Dora."
She seized his hands with both her own. There were no tears in her
voice now, there was the blood of her heart.
"Ay, and when I, yielding to my cowardly heart----"
"Oh God!" She took her hands away from his and covered her face with
them.
"--And brought that man here as the price of his silence, you--knowing
the chicken-livered creature I am--absolutely asked him to come next
week. To come here where his presence is to cure me of my cowardice or
accustom me to the peril of ridicule which you know I hate worse than
death!" He was blazing now.
"Good night."
"After this, how can I be sure that you may not consider it salutary
to betray me yourself?" He was mad.
"Good bye, Jack. Oh God, my heart is broken!"
"I tell you----" He turned around. He was alone.