George was not altogether pleased by what had happened during the visit.
He had expected that Constance would be satisfied with exchanging a few
words of no import, and that she would make no attempt to lead him into
conversation. Instead of this, however, she had seemed to be doing her
best to make him talk, and had really been the one to begin the trouble
which had ensued. If she had not allowed herself to refer in the most
direct manner to the past, she would not have exposed herself to Mamie’s
subsequent attack. As for Mamie, though she had successfully affected a
look of perfect innocence, and had spoken in the gentlest and most
friendly tone of voice, there was no denying the fact that her speeches
had made a visible impression upon Constance Fearing. The latter had
done her best to control her anger, but she had not succeeded in hiding
it altogether. It was impossible not to make a comparison between the
two girls, and, on the whole, the comparison was in Mamie’s favour, so
far as self-possession and coolness were concerned.
“You were rather hard on Miss Fearing yesterday,” George said on the
following morning, when they were alone during the quarter of an hour he
allowed to elapse between breakfast and going to work.
“Hard on her? What do you mean?” asked Mamie with well-feigned surprise.
“Why—I mean when you suggested that I should put you both into a book
together. Oh, I know what you are going to say. You meant nothing by it,
you had not thought of what you were going to say, you would not have
said anything disagreeable for the world. Nevertheless you said it, and
in the calmest way, and it did just what you expected of it—it hurt
her.”
“Well—do you mind?” Mamie inquired, with amazing frankness.
“Yes. You made her think that I had been talking to you about her.”
“And what harm is there in that? You did talk about her a little a few
days ago—on a certain evening. And, moreover, Master George, though you
are a great man and a very good sort of man, and a dear, altogether,
besides possessing the supreme advantage of being my cousin, you cannot
prevent me from hating your beloved Constance Fearing nor from hurting
her as much as I possibly can whenever we meet—especially if she sits
down beside you and makes soft eyes at you, and tries to get you back!”
“Do not talk like that, Mamie. I do not like it.”
Mamie laughed, and showed her beautiful teeth. There was a vicious
sparkle in her eyes.
“You want to be taken back, I suppose,” she said. “Tell me the truth—do
you love her still?”
George suddenly caught her by the two wrists and held her before him. He
was annoyed and yet he could not help being amused.
“Mamie, you shall not say such things! You are as spiteful as a little
wild-cat!”
“Am I? I am glad of it—and I am not in the least afraid of you, or your
big hands or your black looks.”
George laughed and dropped her hands with a little shake, half angry,
half playful.
“I really believe you are not!” he exclaimed.
“Of course not! Was she? Or were you afraid of her? Which was it? Oh,
how I would have liked to see you together when you were angry with each
other! She can be very angry, you know. She was yesterday. She would
have liked to tear me to pieces with those long nails of hers. I hate
people who have long nails!”
“You seem to hate a great many people this morning. I wish you would
leave her alone.”
“Oh, now you are going to be angry, too! But then, it would not matter.”
“Why would it not matter?”
“Because I am only Mamie,” answered the girl, looking up affectionately
into his face. “You never care what I say, do you?”
“I do not know about that,” George said. “What do you mean by saying
that you are only Mamie?”
“Mamie is nobody, you know. Mamie is only a cousin, a little girl who
wants nothing of George but toys and picture-books, a silly child, a
foolish, half-witted little thing that cannot understand a great
man—much less tease him. Can she?”
“Mamie is a witch,” George answered with a laugh. There was indeed
something strangely bewitching about the girl. She could say things to
him which he would not have suffered his own sister to say if he had had
one.
“I wish I were! I wish I could make wax dolls, like people I hate, as
the witches used to do, and stick pins into their hearts and melt them
before the fire, little by little.”
“What has got into your head this morning, you murderous, revengeful
little thing?”
“There are many things in my head,” she answered, suddenly changing her
manner, and speaking in an oddly demure tone, with downcast eyes and
folded hands. “There are more things in my head than are dreamt of in
yours—at least, I hope so.”
“Tell me some of them.”
“I dare do all that becomes—a proper little girl,” said Mamie, laughing,
“but not that.”
“Dear me! I had no idea that you were such a desperate character.”
“Tell me, George—if you did what I suggested yesterday and put us both
into a book, Conny Fearing and me, which would you like best?”
“I would try and make you like each other, though I do not know exactly
how I should go about it.”
“That is not an answer. It is of no use to be clever with me, as I have
often told you. Would you like me better than Conny Fearing? Yes—or no!
Come, I am waiting! How slow you are.”
“Which do you want me to say? I could do either—in a book, so that it
can make no difference.”
“Oh—if it would make no difference, I do not care to know. You need not
answer me.”
“All the better for me,” said George with a laugh. “Good-bye—I am going
to work. Think of some easier question.”
George went away, wondering how it was all going to end. Mamie was
certainly behaving in a very strange way. Her conduct during the visit
on the previous afternoon had been that of a woman at once angry and
jealous, and he himself had felt very uncomfortable. The extreme
gentleness of her manner and expression while speaking with Constance
had not concealed her real feelings from him, and he had felt something
like shame at being obliged to sit quietly in his place while she
wounded the woman he once loved so dearly, and of whom he still thought
so often. He had done everything in his power to smooth matters, but he
had not been able to do much, and his own humour had been already
ruffled by the conversation that had gone before. He was under the
impression that Constance had gone away feeling that he had been
gratuitously disagreeable, and he was sorry for it.
Before very long, he had an opportunity of ascertaining what Constance
felt and thought about his doings. On the afternoon of the Sunday
following the one on which she had been to the Trimms’, George had
crossed to the opposite side of the river, alone, had landed near a
thick clump of trees and was comfortably established in a shady spot on
the shore with a book and a cigar. The day was hot and it was about the
middle of the afternoon. Mamie and her mother had driven to the
neighbouring church, for Totty was punctual in attending to her
devotions, whereas George, who had gone with them in the morning,
considered that he had done enough.
He was not sure to whom the land on which he found himself belonged, and
he had some misgiving that it might be a part of the Fearing property.
But he had been too lazy to pull higher up the stream when he had once
crossed it, and had not cared to drop down the current as that would
have increased the distance he would have had to row when he went home.
He fancied that on such a warm day and at such a comparatively early
hour, none of the Fearings were likely to be abroad, even if he were
really in their grounds.
Under ordinary circumstances he would have been safe enough. It chanced,
however, that Constance had been unusually restless all day, and it had
occurred to her that if she could walk for an hour or more in her own
company she would feel better. The place where George was sitting was
actually in her grounds, and she, knowing it to be a pretty spot, where
there was generally a breeze, had naturally turned towards it. He had
not been where he was more than a quarter of an hour when she came upon
him. He heard a light step upon the grass, and looking up, saw a figure
all in white within five paces of him. He recognised Constance, and
sprang to his feet, dropping his book and his cigar at the same moment.
Constance started perceptibly, but did not draw back. George was the
first to speak.
“I am afraid I am trespassing here,” he said quickly. “If so, pray
forgive me.”
“You are welcome,” Constance answered, recovering herself. “It is one of
the prettiest places on the river,” she added a moment later, resting
her hands upon the long handle of her parasol and looking out at the
sunny water.
There was nothing to be done but to face an interview. She could hardly
turn her back on him and walk away without exchanging a few phrases, and
he, on his part, could not jump into his boat and row for his life as
though he were afraid of her. Of the two she was the one best pleased by
the accidental meeting. To George’s surprise she seated herself upon the
grass, against the root of one of the great old trees.
“Will you not sit down again?” she asked. “I disturbed you. I am so
sorry.”
“Not at all,” said George, resuming his former attitude.
“Why do you say ‘not at all’ in that way? Of course I disturbed you, and
I am disturbing you now, out of false politeness, because I am on my own
ground and feel that you are a guest.”
She was a little confused in trying to be too natural, and George felt
the false note, and was vaguely sorry for her. She was much less at her
ease than he, and she showed it.
“I came here out of laziness,” he said. “It was a bore to pull that
heavy boat any farther up, and I did not care to lose way by going
farther down. I did not feel sure whether this spot was yours or not.”
Constance said nothing for a moment, but she tapped the toe of her shoe
rather impatiently with her parasol.
“You would not have landed here if you had thought that there was a
possibility of meeting me, would you?”
The question was rather an embarrassing one and was put with great
directness. It seemed to George that the air was full of such questions
just now. He considered that his answer might entail serious
consequences and he hesitated several seconds before speaking.
“It seems to me,” he answered at last, “that although I have but little
reason to seek a meeting with you, I have none whatever for avoiding
one.”
“I hope not, indeed,” said Constance, in a low voice. “I hope you will
never try to avoid me.”
“I have never done so.”
“I think you have,” said the young girl, not looking at him. “I think
you have been unkind in never taking the trouble to come and see us
during all these months. Why have you never crossed the river?”
“Did you expect that after what has passed between us I should continue
to make regular visits?” George spoke earnestly, without raising or
lowering his tone, and waited for an answer. It came with some
hesitation.
“I thought that—after a time, perhaps, you would come now and then. I
hoped so. I cannot see why you should not, I am sure. Are we enemies,
you and I? Are we never to be friends again?”
“Friendship is a relation I do not understand,” George answered. “I
think I said as much the other day when you mentioned the subject.”
“Yes. Somebody interrupted the conversation. I think,” said Constance,
blushing a little, “that it was your cousin. I wanted to say several
things to you then, but it was impossible before all those people. Since
we have met by accident, will you listen to me? If you would rather not,
please say so and I will go away. But please do not say anything unkind.
I cannot bear it and I am very unhappy.”
There was something simple and pathetic in her appeal to his
forbearance, which moved him a little.
“I will do whatever you wish,” he said, in a tone that reminded her of
other days. He folded his hands upon one knee and prepared to listen,
looking out at the broad river.
“Thank you. I have longed for a chance of saying it to you, ever since
we last met in New York. It has always seemed very easy to say until
now. Yes. It is about friendship. Last Sunday I was trying to speak of
it, and you were very unkind. You laughed at me.”
“I am sincerely sorry, if I did. I did not know that you were in
earnest.”
“I was, and I am, very much in earnest. It is the only thing that can
make my life worth living.”
“Friendship?” asked George quietly. He meant to keep his word and say
nothing that could hurt her.
“Your friendship,” she answered. “Because I once made a great mistake,
is there to be no forgiveness? Is it impossible that we should ever be
good friends, see each other often and talk together as we did in the
old days? Are you always to meet me with a stony face and hard, cruel
words? Was my sin so great as that?”
“You have not committed any sin. You should not use such words.”
“Oh, do not find fault with the way I say it—it is so hard to say it at
all! Try and understand me.”
“I do understand you, I think, but what you propose does not look
possible to me. There has been that between us which makes it very hard
to try such experiments. Do you not think so?”
“It may seem hard, but it is not impossible, if you will only try to
think more kindly of me. Do you know what my mistake was—where I was
most wrong? It was in not telling you—what I did—a year sooner. Let us
be honest. Break through this veil there is between us, if it is only
for to-day. What is formality to you or me? You loved me once—I could
not love you. Is that a reason why you should treat me like a stranger
when we meet, or why I should pick and choose my words with you, as
though I feared you instead of—of being very fond of you? Think it all
over, even if it pains you a little. You would have done anything for my
sake once. If I had told you a year earlier—as I ought to have told
you—that I could never love you enough to marry you, would you then have
been so angry and have gone away from me as you did?”
“No. I would not,” said George. “But there was that difference——”
“Wait. Let me finish what I was going to say. It was not what I did, it
was that I did it far too late. You would not have given up coming to
see me, if it had all happened a year earlier. My fault lay in putting
it off too long. It was very wrong. I have been very sorry for it. There
is nothing I would not do for you—I am just what I always was in my
feelings towards you—and more. Can I humiliate myself more than I have
done before you? I do not think there are many women who would have done
what I have done, what I am doing now. Can I be more humble still? Shall
I confess it all again?”
“You have done all that a woman could or should,” George said, and there
was no bitterness in his voice. It seemed to him that the old Constance
he had loved was slowly entering into the person of the young girl
before him, whom he had of late treated as a stranger and who had been
so really and truly one in his sight.
“And yet, will you not forgive?” she asked in a low and supplicating
tone.
He gazed at the river and did not speak. He was not conscious that she
was watching his face intently. She saw no bitterness nor hardness
there, however, but only an expression of perplexity. The word
forgiveness did not convey to him half what it meant to her. She
attached a meaning to it, which escaped him. She was morbid and had
taken an unreal view of all that had happened between them. His mind was
strong, natural and healthy, and he could not easily understand why she
should lend such importance to what he now considered a mere phrase, no
matter how he had regarded it in the heat and anger of his memorable
interview with her.
“Miss Fearing—” he began. He hardly knew why he called her by name,
unless it was that he was about to make a categorical statement. So soon
as the syllables had escaped his lips, however, he repented of having
pronounced them. He saw a shade of pain pass over her face, and at the
same time it seemed a childish way of indicating the distance by which
they were now separated. It reminded him of George the Third’s “Mr.
Washington.”
“Constance,” he said after another moment’s hesitation, “we do not speak
in the same language. You ask me for my forgiveness. What am I to
forgive? If there is anything to be forgiven, I forgive most freely. I
was very angry, and therefore very foolish on that day when I said I
would not forgive you. I am not angry now. What I feel is very
different. I bear you no malice, I wish you no evil.”
Constance was silent and looked away. She did not understand him, though
she felt that he was not speaking unkindly. What he offered her was not
what she wanted.
“Since we have come to these explanations,” George continued after a
pause, “I will try and tell you what it is that I feel. I called you
Miss Fearing just now. Do you know why? Because it seems more natural.
You are not the same person you once were, and when I call you
Constance, I fancy I am calling some one else by the name of your old
self, of the Constance I loved, and who loved me—a little.”
“It is not I who have changed,” said the young girl, looking down. “I am
Constance still, and you are my best and dearest friend, though you be
ever so unkind.”
“A change there is, and a great one. I daresay it is in me. I was never
your friend, as you understand the word, and you were mistaken in
thinking that I was. I loved you. That is not friendship.”
“And now, since I am another person—not the one you loved—can you not be
my friend as well as—as you are of others? Why does it seem so
impossible?”
“It is too painful to be thought of,” said George in a low voice. “You
are too like the other, and yet too different.”
Constance sighed and twisted a blade of grass round her slender white
finger. She wished she knew how to do away with the difference he felt
so keenly.
“Do you never miss me?” she asked after a long silence.
“I miss the woman I loved,” George answered. “Is it any satisfaction to
you to know it?”
“Yes, for I am she.”
There was another pause, during which George glanced at her face from
time to time. It had changed, he thought. It was thinner and whiter than
of old and there were shadows beneath the eyes and modellings—not yet
lines—of sadness about the sensitive mouth. He wondered whether she had
suffered, and why. She had never loved him. Could it be true that she
missed his companionship, his conversation, his friendship, as she
called it? If not, why should her face be altered? And yet it was
strange, too. He could not understand how separation could be painful
where there was no love. Nevertheless he was sorry that she should have
suffered, now that his anger was gone.
“I am glad you loved me,” she said at last.
“And I am very sorry.”
“You should not say that. If you had not loved me—more than I knew—you
would not have written, you would not be what you are. Can you not think
of it in that way, sometimes?”
“What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own
soul?” said George bitterly.
“You have not lost your soul,” answered Constance, whose religious
sensibilities were a little shocked, at once by the strength of the
words as by the fact of their being quoted from the Bible. “You have no
right to say that. You will some day find a woman who will love you as
you deserve——”
“And whom I shall not love.”
“Whom you will love as well as you once loved me. You will be happy,
then. I hope it may happen soon.”
“Do you?” asked George, turning upon her quickly.
“For your sake I hope so, with all my heart.”
“And for yours?”
“I hope I should like her very much,” said Constance with a forced
laugh, and looking away from him.
“I am afraid you will not,” George answered, almost unconsciously. The
words fell from his lips as a reply to her strained laughter which told
too plainly her real thoughts.
“You should not ask such questions,” she said, a moment later. “Do you
find it hard to talk to me?” she asked, suddenly turning the
conversation.
“I think it would be hard for you and me to talk about these things for
long.”
“We need not—if we meet. It is better that we should have said what we
had to say, and we need never say it again. And we shall meet more
often, now, shall we not?”
“Does it give you pleasure to see me?” There was a touch of hardness in
the tone.
Constance looked down and the colour came into her thin face. Her voice
trembled a little when she spoke.
“Are you going to be unkind to me again? Or do you really wish to know?”
“I am in earnest. Does it give you pleasure to see me?”
“After all I have said—oh, George, this has been the happiest hour I
have spent since the first of May.”
“Are you heartless or are you not?” asked George almost fiercely. “Do
you love me that you should care to see me? Or does it amuse you to give
me pain? What are you, yourself, the real woman that I can never
understand?”
Constance was frightened by the sudden outbreak of passion, and turned
pale.
“What are you saying? What do you mean?” she asked in an uncertain
voice.
“What I say? What I mean? Do you think it is pleasure to me to talk as
we have been talking? Do you suppose that my love for you was a mere
name, an idea, a thing without reality, to be discussed and dissected
and examined and turned inside out? Do you fancy that in three months I
have forgotten, or ceased to care, or learned to talk of you as though
you were a person in a book? What do you think I am made of?”
Constance hid her face in her hands and a long silence followed. She was
not crying, but she looked as though she were trying to collect her
thoughts, and at the same time to shut out some disagreeable sight. At
last she looked up and saw that his lean, dark face was full of sadness.
She knew him well and knew how much he must feel before his features
betrayed what was passing in his mind.
“Forgive me, George,” she said in a beseeching tone. “I did not know
that you loved—that you cared for me still.”
“It is nothing,” he answered bitterly. “It will pass.”
Poor Constance felt that she had lost in a moment what she had gained
with so much difficulty, the renewal of something like unconstrained
intercourse. She rose slowly from the place where she had been sitting,
two or three paces away from him. He did not rise, for he was still too
much under the influence of the emotion to heed what she did. She came
and stood before him and looked down into his face.
“George,” she said slowly and earnestly, “I am a very unhappy woman—more
unhappy than you can guess. You are dearer to me than anything on earth,
and yet I am always hurting you and wounding you. This life is killing
me. Tell me what you would have me do and say, and I will do it and say
it—anything—do you understand—anything rather than be parted from you as
I have been during these last months.”
She meant every word she said, and in that moment, if George had asked
her to be his wife she would have consented gladly. But he did not
understand that she meant as much as that. He seemed to hesitate a
moment and then rose quickly to his feet and stood beside her.
“You must not talk like that,” he said. “I owe you much, Constance, very
much, though you have made me very unhappy. I do not understand you. I
do not know why you should care to see me. But I will come to you as
often as you please if only you will not talk to me about what is past.
Let us try and speak of ordinary things, of everyday matters. I am
ashamed to seem to be making conditions, and I do not know what it all
means, because, as I have said, I cannot understand you, and I never
shall. Will you have me on those terms?”
He held out his hand as he spoke the last words, and there was a kindly
smile on his face.
“Come when you will and as you will—only come!” said Constance, her face
lighting up with gladness. She, at least, was satisfied, and saw a
prospect of happiness in the future. “Come here sometimes, in the
afternoon, it will be like——”
She was going to say that it would be like the old time when they used
to meet in the Park.
“It will be like a sort of picnic, you know,” were the words that fell
from her lips. But the blush on her face told plainly enough that she
had meant to say something else.
“Yes,” said George with a grim smile, “it will be like a sort of picnic.
Good-bye.”
“Good-bye—when will you come?” Constance could not help letting her hand
linger in his as long as he would hold it.
“Next Sunday,” George answered quickly. He reflected that it would not
be easy to escape Mamie on any other day.
A moment later he was in his boat, pulling away into the midstream.
Constance stood on the shore watching him and wishing with all her heart
that she were sitting in the stern of the neat craft, wishing more than
all that he might desire her presence there. But he did not. He knew
very well that he could have stayed another hour or two in her company
if he had chosen to do so, but he had been glad to escape, and he knew
it. The meeting had been painful to him in many ways, and it had made
him dissatisfied and disappointed with himself. It had shown him what he
had not known, that he loved the old Constance as dearly as ever, though
he could not always recognise her in the strange girl who did not love
him but who assured him that her separation from him was killing her. He
had hoped and almost believed that he should never again feel an emotion
in her presence, and yet he had felt many during that afternoon. Nor did
he anticipate with any pleasure a renewal of the situation on the
following Sunday, though he was quite sure that he had no means of
avoiding it. If he had thought that Constance was merely making a
heartless attempt to renew the old relations, he would have given her a
sharp and decisive refusal. But she was undoubtedly in earnest and she
was evidently suffering. She had gone to the length of reminding him
that he owed the beginning of his literary career to her influence. It
was true, and he would not be ungrateful. Courtesy and honour alike
forbade ingratitude, and he only hoped that he might become accustomed
to the pain of such meetings.