George did not forget Mamie’s strange behaviour in the boat, and he
devoted much time to the study of the problem it presented. To judge
from the girl’s conduct alone, she must be in love with him, and yet he
did not like the idea and took the greatest pains to keep it out of his
mind. He was not in the humour in which it is a pleasant surprise to a
man to discover unexpected affection for himself in a quarter where he
has not expected to find it. Moreover, if he had once made sure that
Mamie loved him, he would probably have thought it his duty to go away
as quickly as possible. Such a decision would have deprived him of much
that he enjoyed and it was desirable in the interests of his selfishness
that it should be put off as long as possible.
At that time George began to feel the desire for work creeping upon him
once more. During a few weeks only had it been in his power to put away
the habit of writing, and to close his eyes to all responsibility. Those
had been days when the whole world had seemed to be upside down, as in a
dream, while he himself moved in the midst of a disordered creation,
uncertainty, like a soulless creature, without the capacity for
independent action nor the intelligence to form any distinct intention
from one moment to another. He took what he found in his way without
understanding, though not without an odd appreciation of what was good,
very much as Eastern princes receive European hospitality. He was
grateful at least that his life should be made so smooth for the time,
for he was dimly conscious that anything outwardly rough or coarse would
have exasperated him to madness. He believed that he thought a great
deal about the past, but when he attempted to give his meditations a
shape, they would accept none. In reality he was not thinking, though
the mirror of his memory was filled with fleeting reflections of his
former life, some clear and startlingly vivid, others distorted and
broken, but all more or less beautified by the shadowy presence of a
being he had loved better than himself, and from whom he was separated
for ever.
With such a man, however, idleness was as impossible as the desire for
expression was irresistible. Since he had written his first book, and
had discovered what it was that he was born to do, he had taken up a
burden which he could not lay down and had sworn allegiance to a master
from whom he could not escape. Not even the bitter and overwhelming
disappointment that had come upon him could kill the desire to write. He
was almost ashamed of it at first, for he felt that though everything he
loved best in the world were dead before him, he should be driven within
a few weeks to take up his pen again and open his inner eyes and ears to
the play of his mind’s stage.
The power to do certain things is rarely separated from the necessity
for doing them, and the fact that they are well done by no means proves
that the doer has forgotten the blow that recently overwhelmed his heart
in darkness and his daily life in an almost uncontrollable grief. There
are two lives for most men, whatever their careers may be, and the
absence of either of these lives makes a man produce an impression of
incompleteness upon those who know him. When any one lives only by the
existence of the heart, without active occupation, without manifesting
inclination, taste or talent for outward things, we say that he has no
interest in life, and is much to be pitied. But we say that a man is
heartless and selfish who appears to devote every thought to his
occupation and every moment to increasing the chances of his success. In
the lives of great men we search with an especial pleasure for all that
can show us the working of their hearts, and we remember with delight
whatever we find that indicates a separate and inner chain of events, of
which the links have been loves and friendships kept secret from the
world. The more nearly the two lives have coincided, the more happy we
judge the man to have been, the more out of tune and discordant with
each other, the more we feel that his existence must have seemed a
failure in his own eyes; and when we are told only of his doings before
the world, without one touch of softer feeling, we lay aside the book of
his biography and say that it is badly written and that we are surprised
to find that a man so uninteresting in himself should have exercised so
much influence over his times.
George Wood had neither forgotten Constance, nor had he recovered from
the wound he had received, and yet within a day or two of his resuming
his work, he found that his love of it was not diminished nor his
strength to do it abated. It was not happiness to write, but it was
satisfaction. His hesitation was gone now, and his hand had recovered
its cunning. He no longer sat for hours before a blank sheet of paper,
staring at the wall and racking his brain in the hope that a character
of some sort would suddenly start into shape and life from the chaotic
darkness he was facing. Until the first difficulties that attend the
beginning of a book were overcome, he had still a lingering and
unacknowledged suspicion that he could do nothing good without the daily
criticism and unfailing applause he had been accustomed to receive from
Constance during his former efforts. When he was fairly launched, he
felt proud of being able to do without her. For the first time he was
depending solely upon his own judgment, as he had always relied upon his
own ideas, and his judgment decided that what he did was good.
From that time the arrangement of his day took again the definite shape
in which he had always known it, and the mere distribution of his hours
between work and rest gave him back confidence in himself. He began to
see his surroundings from a more intelligent point of view, and to take
a keener interest in things and people. Though he had by no means
recovered from the first great shock of his life, and though in his
heart he was as bitter as ever against her who had inflicted it, yet his
mind was already convalescent and was being rapidly restored to its
former vigour. There was power in his imagination, strength in his
language and harmony in his style. What he thought took shape, and the
shape found expression.
He soon found that under these circumstances life was bearable, and
often enjoyable. Very gradually, as his concentrated attention became
absorbed in his own creations, the face of Constance Fearing appeared
less often in his dreams, and the heartbroken tones of her voice rang
less continually in his ears. He was not forgetting, but the physical
impressions of sight and sound upon his senses were wearing off.
Occasionally indeed they would return with startling force and
vividness, awakening in him for one moment the reality of all he had
suffered. At such times he could see again, as though face to face, her
expression at the instant when she had seemed to relinquish the attempt
to soften him, and he could hear again the plaintive accents of her
words and the painful cadence of her sobbing voice. But such visitations
grew daily more rare and at last almost ceased altogether.
For what he had done himself he felt no remorse. His mind was not made
like hers, and he would never be able to understand that she had done
violence to her own heart in casting him off. He would learn perhaps
some day to describe what she had done, to analyse her motives from his
own point of view, but he would never be able to think of her as she
thought of herself. In his eyes she would always be a little
contemptible, even when time’s charitable mists should have descended
upon the past and softened all its outlines. He was cut off from her by
one of the most impassable barriers which can be raised in the human
heart, by his resentment against himself for having been deceived.
He did not ask himself whether he could ever love again. There was a
strength in his present position, which almost pleased him. He had done
with love and was free to speak of it as he chose, without regard for
any one’s feelings, without respect for the passion itself, if it suited
his humour. There had been nothing boyish in the pure and passionate
affection under which he had lived during two of the most important
years in his life. He had felt all that a man can feel in the deep
devotion to one spotless object. There would never again be anything so
high and noble and untainted in all the years that were to come for him,
and he knew it. The determination he had felt to be necessary in the
first moment of his anger had carried itself out almost without any
direction from his will. The Constance he had loved so dearly, was not
the Constance who had refused to marry him, and who had dealt him such a
cruel blow. The two were separated and he could still love the one,
while hating and despising the other. But although he might meet the
girl whose face and form and look and voice were those of her he had
lost, this second Constance could never take the other’s place. A word
from her could not put fire into his heart, nor raise in his brain the
vision of a magnificent inspiration. A touch from her hand could send no
thrill of pleasure through his frame, there would be no joy in looking
upon her fair face when next he saw it. She might say to him all that he
had once said to her, she might appeal passionately to the love that was
now dead, she might offer him her heart, her body and her soul. He
wanted none of the three now. The break had been final and definite,
love’s path had broken off upon the edge of the precipice, and though
she might stand on the old familiar way and beckon to him to come over
and meet her, there was that between them which no man could cross.
Like all great passions the one through which George Wood had passed had
produced upon him a definite effect, which could be appreciated, if not
accurately measured. He was older in every way now than he had been two
years and a half earlier, but older chiefly in his understanding of
human nature. He knew, now, what men and women felt in certain
circumstances, his instinct told him truly what it had formerly only
vaguely suggested. The inevitable logic of life had taken him up as a
problem, had dealt with him as with a subject fitted to its hand, and
had forced upon him a solution of himself. Where he had entertained
doubts, he now felt certainty, where he had hesitated in expressing the
judgment of his tastes he now found his verdicts already considered and
only awaiting delivery. Many months later, when the book he was now
writing was published it was a new surprise to his readers. His first
attempts had been noticeable for their beauty, his last book was
remarkable for its truth.
Meanwhile his intimacy with Mamie grew unheeded by himself. During the
many hours of each day in which he had no fixed occupation, he was
almost constantly with her, and their conversation was at last only
interrupted each evening to begin again the next afternoon, when he had
done his work and came out of his room in search of relaxation. He had
never found any explanation for her embarrassment on that day when he
had been rowing her about on the river, and after a time he had ceased
to seek for one. His brain was too busy with other things, and what he
wanted when he was with her was rest rather than exercise for his
curiosity in trying to solve the small enigmas of her girlish thoughts.
She was a very pleasant companion, and that was all he cared to know.
She brought about him an atmosphere of genuine and affectionate
admiration that gave him confidence in himself and smoothed the furrows
of his imagination when he had been giving that faculty more to do than
was good for it.
Mamie, too, was happier than she had been a month earlier. She had no
longer to suffer the humiliation of taking her mother’s advice about
what she should do, and she could enjoy George’s company without feeling
that she had been told to enjoy it in her own interest. As she learned
to love him more and more, she was quick also to understand his ways.
Signs that had formerly escaped her altogether were now as clear to her
comprehension as words themselves. She knew, now, almost before he knew
it himself, whether he wanted her to join him, or not, whether he
preferred to talk or to be silent, whether he would like this question
or that which she thought of asking him, or whether he would resent it
and make her feel that she had made a mistake. One day, she ventured to
mention Constance’s name.
George had never visited the Fearings in their country-place, and was
not aware until he came to stay with his cousin that they lived on the
opposite shore of the river. Their house was not visible from the
Trimms’ side, as it was surrounded by trees, and the stream was at that
point nearly two miles in width. Totty, however, who always had a view
to avoiding any possibility of anything disagreeable, had very soon
communicated the information to George in an unconcerned way, while
pointing out and naming to him the various country-seats that could be
seen from her part of the shore. George did not forget what he had been
told, and if he ever crossed the river and rowed along the other bank,
he was careful to keep away from the Fearings’ land, in order to guard
against any unpleasant meetings.
Now it chanced that on a certain afternoon he was pulling leisurely up
stream towards a place where the current was slack, and where he
occasionally moored the wherry to an old landing in order to rest
himself and talk more at his ease. Mamie of course was seated in the
stern, leaning back comfortably amongst her cushions and holding the
tiller-ropes daintily between the thumb and finger of each hand. She
could steer very well when it was necessary, and she could even row well
enough to make some headway against the stream, but George had been
accustomed to being alone in a boat, and gave her very little to do when
he was rowing.
Mamie watched him idly, as his hands shot out towards her, crossed as he
drew them steadily back and turned at the wrist to feather the oar as
they touched his chest. Then her gaze wandered down stream towards the
other shore, and she tried to make out the roof of the Fearings’ house
above the trees.
“George,” she said suddenly, “will you be angry?”
“I am never angry,” answered her cousin. “What are you going to do now?
If you mean to jump out of the boat I will have a line ready.”
“No. I am not going to jump out of the boat. But I am so afraid you will
be angry, after all. It is something I want to ask you. I am sure you
will not like it!”
“One way of not making me angry would be not to ask the question,”
observed George, with a quiet smile.
“But I want to ask you so much!” exclaimed the young girl, with an
imploring look that made George’s smile turn into a laugh. He had
laughed more than once lately, in a very natural manner.
“Out with it, Mamie!” he cried, pulling his sculls briskly through the
water. “I shall not be very angry, I daresay, and I have fallen out of
the habit of eating little girls. What is it?”
“Why do you never go and see the Fearings, George? You used to be there
so much.”
George’s expression changed, though he continued to row with the same
even stroke. His face grew very grave and he unconsciously glanced
across the river toward the place at which Mamie had looked.
“I knew you would be angry!” she said in a repentant tone.
“No,” George answered, “I am not angry. I am thinking.”
He was, indeed, wondering how much of the truth the girl knew, and he
was distrustful enough to fancy that she might have some object in
putting the question. But Mamie was not diplomatic like her mother. She
was simple and natural in her thoughts, and unaffected in her manner. He
glanced at her again and saw that she was troubled by her indiscretion.
“Did your mother never tell you anything about it all?” he asked after a
long pause.
“No. I only heard what everybody heard—last May, when the thing was
talked about. I wondered—that is all—I wondered whether you had cared
very much—for her.”
Again there was a long silence, broken only by the even dipping of the
oars and the soft swirl as they left the water.
“I did care,” George answered at last. “I loved her very dearly.”
He did not know why he made the confession. He had never said so much to
any one except his own father. If he had guessed what Mamie felt for
him, he would assuredly not have answered her question.
“Are you very unhappy, still?” asked the young girl in a dreamy voice.
“No. I do not think I am unhappy. I am different from what I was—that is
all. I was at first,” he continued, without looking at his companion, of
whose presence, indeed, he seemed scarcely conscious. “I was
unhappy—yes, of course I was. I had loved her long. I had thought she
would marry me. I found that she was indifferent. I shall never go and
see her again. She does not exist for me any more—she is another person,
whom I do not wish to know. I have loved and been disappointed, like
many a better man, I suppose.”
“Loved and been disappointed!” repeated the young girl in a very low
voice, that hardly reached his ear. She was looking down, carelessly
tying and untying the ends of the tiller-ropes.
“Yes. That is it,” he said as though musing on something very long past.
“You know now why I do not go there.”
Then he quickened his stroke a little, and there was a sombre light in
his dark eyes that Mamie could not see, for she was still looking down.
She was glad that she had asked the question, seeing how he had answered
it. There was something in his tone which told her that he was not
mistaken about himself, and that the past was shut off from the present
in his heart by a barrier it would be hard to break down.
“Do you think you can ever love again?” she asked, after a while,
looking suddenly into his face.
“No,” he answered, avoiding her eyes. “I shall never love any woman
again—in the same way,” he added after a moment’s pause.
When he looked at her, she was very pale. He remembered all at once how
she had changed colour and burst into tears some weeks earlier, sitting
in that same place before him. Something was passing in her mind which
he could not understand. He was very slow to imagine that she loved him.
He was so dull of comprehension that he all at once began to fancy she
might be more fond of Constance Fearing than he had guessed, that she
might be her friend, as Totty was, and that the two had brought him to
their country-house in the hope of soothing his anger, reviving his
hopes, and bringing him once more into close relations with the young
girl who had cast him off. The idea was ingenious in its folly, but his
ready wrath rose at it.
“Are you very fond of her, Mamie?” he asked, bending his heavy brows and
speaking in a hard metallic voice.
The blood rushed into the girl’s face as she answered, and her grey eyes
flashed.
“I? I hate her! I would kill her if I could!”
George was completely confused. His explanation of Mamie’s behaviour had
flashed upon him so suddenly that he had believed it the true one
without an attempt to reason upon the matter. Now, it was destroyed in
an instant by the girl’s angry reply. When one young woman says that she
hates another, it is tolerably easy to judge from her tone whether she
is in earnest or not. Though he was still sorely puzzled, the cloud
disappeared from George’s face as quickly as it had come.
“This is a revelation!” he exclaimed. “I thought you and your mother
were devoted to them both.”
“It would be like me, would it not?” Mamie emphasised her words with an
angry little laugh.
“It is not like you to hate people so savagely,” George observed,
looking at her closely.
“I should always hate anybody who hurt you—and I can hate, with all my
heart!”
“Are you so fond of me as that?”
George thought that the girl was becoming every moment harder to
understand. It had seemed a very natural question, since they had known
each other and loved each other like brother and sister for so long. But
he saw that there was something the matter. There was a frightened look
in Mamie’s grey eyes which he had never seen before, as though she had
come all at once upon a great and unexpected danger. Then all the
outline of her face softened wonderfully with a strange and gentle
expression under the young man’s gaze. She had never been pretty, save
for her eyes and her alabaster skin. For one moment, now, she was
beautiful.
“Yes,” she said in an uncertain voice, “I am very fond of you—more fond
of you than you will ever know.”
Her secret was out, though she did not realise it. Then for the first
time in George’s life, though he was nearly thirty years of age, he
looked on the face of a woman who loved him with all her heart, and he
knew what love meant in another, as he had known it in himself.
The sun was going down behind the western hills and the dark water was
very smooth and placid as he dipped his sculls noiselessly into the
surface. He rowed evenly on for some minutes without speaking. Mamie was
looking into the stream and drawing her white, ungloved hand along the
glassy mirror.
“Thank you, Mamie,” he said at last, very gently and kindly.
Again there was silence as they shot along through the purple shadows.
“And you, are you fond of me?” asked the young girl, looking furtively
towards him, then blushing and gazing once more into the depths of the
stream. George started slightly. He had not thought that the question
would come.
“Indeed I am,” he answered. He thought he heard a sigh on the rising
evening breeze. “I grow more fond of you every day,” he added quietly,
though he felt that he was very far from calm.
So far as he had spoken, his words had been truthful. He was becoming
more attached to Mamie every day, and she was beginning to take the
place that Constance had occupied in his doings if not in his thoughts.
But there was not a spark of love in his growing affection for her, and
the discovery he had just made disturbed him exceedingly. He had never
blamed himself for anything he had done in his intercourse with
Constance Fearing, but he accused himself now of having misled the
innocent girl who loved him and of having then, by a careless question,
drawn from her a confession of what she felt. It flashed upon him
suddenly that he had taken Constance’s place, and Mamie had taken his;
that he had been thoughtless and cruel in all he had said and done
during the last two months, and that she might well reproach him with
having been heartless. A thousand incidents flooded his memory and
crowded together upon his brain, and each brought with it a sting to his
sense of honour. He had inadvertently done a great harm, and it had been
done since his coming to the country. Before that, Mamie had felt for
him exactly what he still felt for her, a simple, open-hearted
affection. Remembering the brief struggle that had taken place in his
mind before he had accepted Totty’s invitation, he accused himself of
having known beforehand what would happen, and of having weakly yielded
because he had liked the prospect of leading so luxurious an existence.
What surprised him, however, and threw all his reflections out of
balance was that Totty herself should not have foreseen the disaster,
Totty the diplomatic, Totty the worldly, Totty the covetous, who would
as soon have given her daughter to one of her servants as to penniless
George Wood! It was past comprehension. Yet, in spite of his distress,
he could hardly repress a smile as he imagined what Totty’s rage would
be, should he marry Mamie and carry her off before the eyes of her
horrified parent. Sherrington Trimm, himself, would be as well satisfied
with him as with any other honest man, if he were sure of Mamie’s
inclinations.
Now, however, something must be done at once. He was not a weak
creature, like Constance Fearing, to hesitate for months and years,
practising a deception upon himself which he had not the courage to
carry to the end. He even regretted the last words he had spoken, and
which had been prompted by a foolish wish not to hurt the girl’s
feelings. It would have been better if he had left them unsaid. The
situation must be defined, the harm arrested, if it could not be undone,
and should it seem necessary, as it probably would, he himself must
leave the place on the following morning. He opened his mouth to speak,
but the blood rushed to his face and he could not articulate the words.
He was overcome with shame and remorse and he would have chosen to do
anything, to undergo any humiliation rather than this. But in a moment
his strong nature gathered itself and grew strong, as it always did in
the face of great difficulties. He hated hesitation and he would not
hesitate, cost what it might. He was not cowardly, and he would not be
afraid.
“Mamie,” he said, suddenly, and he wondered how his voice could be so
gentle, “Mamie, I do not love you.”
He had expected everything, except what happened. Mamie looked into his
eyes, and once again in the evening light the expression of her love
transfigured her half pretty face and lent it a completeness of beauty
such as he had never seen.
“Have you not told me that, dear?” she asked, half sadly, half lovingly.
“It is not new. I have known it long.”
George stared at her for a moment.
“I feared I had not said it clearly,” he answered in low tones.
“Everything you have done and said has told me that, for two months
past. Do not say it again.”
“I must go away from this place. I will go to-morrow.”
She looked up with startled eyes.
“Go away? Leave me? Ah, George, you will not be so unkind!”
The situation was certainly as strange as it was new, and George was
very much confused by what was happening. His resolution to make
everything clear was, however, as unbending as before.
“Mamie,” he said, “we must understand each other. Things must not go on
as they have gone so long. If I were to stay here, do you know what I
should be doing? I should be acting towards you as Constance Fearing
acted with me, only it would be much worse, because I am a man, and I
have no right to do such things, as women have.”
“It is different,” said the young girl, once more looking down into the
water.
“No, it is not different,” George insisted. “I have no right to act as
though I should ever love you, to make you think by anything I do or
say, that such a thing is possible. I am a brute, I know. Forgive me,
Mamie, dear. It is so much better that everything should be clearly
understood now. We have known each other so long, and so well——”
“Nothing that you can say will make it seem right to me that you should
go away——”
“It is right, nevertheless, and if I do not do it, as I should, I shall
never forgive myself——”
“I will forgive you.”
“I shall hate myself——”
“I will love you.”
“I shall feel that I am the most miserable wretch alive.”
“I shall be happy.”