MY DILEMMA
It seemed to me during the days that followed that I was confronted
with a problem of more than ordinary complexity. I at any rate found
it so. To live through childhood and girlhood wholly unconscious of
the existence of a living mother, and then to find her like this, with
such a history, was altogether a bewildering and unrealizable
thing. Was I unnatural that I had not fallen into her arms? Ought I
to have heard her story with sympathy, or at least, with simulated
sympathy? At any rate I had not erred on the side of kindness towards
her! I had made her suffer, and suffer very bitterly. Yet was not that
inevitable? The seed was of her own sowing, not of mine. I was her
unconscious agent. The inevitable requital of offences against the
laws of social order had risen up against her in my person. If I had
pretended an affection which I certainly had not felt, I must have
figured as a hypocrite--and she was not the woman to desire that. I
liked her. I had been attracted towards her from the first. Doubtless
that attraction, which was in itself intuitive, was due to the
promptings of nature. In that case it would develop. It seemed to me
that this offer of hers--to go to her with a definite post and
definite duties would be the best of all opportunities for such
development. I was strongly inclined to accept it. I was both lonely
and unhappy. In a certain sense my education and long residence abroad
had unfitted me for this sedentary (in a mental sense) and uneventful
life. The events of the last few weeks had only increased my
restlessness. There was something from which I desired almost
frantically to escape, certain thoughts which I must do my utmost to
drown. At all costs I desired to leave the place. Its environment had
suddenly become stifling to me. The more I considered my mother’s
offer the more I felt inclined to accept it.
And accept it I did. Early one morning I walked down to the Yellow
House, and in a very few words engaged myself as Mrs. Fortress’s
secretary. We were both of us careful, for opposite reasons, not to
discuss the matter in any but a purely businesslike spirit. Yet she
could not altogether conceal the satisfaction which my decision
certainly gave her.
“I only hope that you will not find the life too monotonous,” she
said. “There is a good deal of hard work to be done, of course, and
mine is not altogether interesting labor.”
“Hard work is just what I want,” I assured her. “It will be strange at
first, of course, but I do not mind the monotony of it. I want to
escape from my thoughts. I feel as though I had been living through a
nightmare here.”
She looked at me with a soft light in her eyes.
“Poor child!” she murmured, “poor child!”
I was afraid that she was going to ask me questions which I could not
well have answered, so I rose to my feet and turned away. Yet there
was something soothing in her evident sympathy. She walked to the door
with me.
“When shall you be ready to go to London with me?” she asked, upon the
threshold.
“Any time,” I answered, promptly. “There is nothing I desire so much
as to leave here.”
“I will write to have my little place put in order to-day,” she
said. “It will be ready for us in a week, I dare say. I think that I
too shall be glad to leave here.”
I walked quietly home through the shadowy plantation and across the
little stretch of common. On my way upstairs to my room Mary, our
little housemaid, interrupted me.
“There is a young lady in the drawing room waiting to see you, miss,”
she announced; “she came directly after you went.”
I retraced my steps slowly. Of course I knew who it was. I opened the
door, and found her sitting close to the fire.
She rose at once to her feet, and looked at me a little defiantly. I
greeted her as pleasantly as I could, but she was evidently in a bad
humor. There was an awkward silence for a moment or two. I waited for
her to explain her mission.
“I saw you with Mr. Deville the other day,” she remarked at last.
I nodded.
“It is quite true. I did all that I could to avoid him. That was what
I promised, you know.”
“Is that the first time you have seen him since we made our
arrangement?” she asked.
“The first time,” I answered.
“You have not been with him this afternoon?” she asked, suspiciously.
“Certainly not,” I assured her. “I have only been down to see
Mrs. Fortress for a few minutes.”
“He was not there?”
“No.”
She sighed and looked away from me into the fire, and when she spoke
her voice was thick with rising sobs.
“He does not care for me. I cannot make him! My money does not seem to
make any difference. He is too fierce and independent. I don’t think
that I shall ever be able to make him care.”
I looked steadily down upon the carpet, and set my teeth firmly. It
was ridiculous that my heart should be beating so fiercely.
“I’m sorry for you,” I said, softly.
She fixed her black eyes upon me.
“You are sorry for me,” she repeated. “Very good, you do not care for
him yourself. But listen! I am afraid, I fear that he cares for you.”
“You do not know that,” I faltered. “You----”
“Bah!” she interrupted, scornfully. “I know. But you--there is some
one else. That is our secret. Never mind, you do not care for him at
any rate. You shall help me then. What do you say?”
“How can I help you?” I repeated. “Have I not already done all that I
can by refusing to see him? What more can I do?”
“It was all a mistake--a stupid mistake, that idea of mine,” she
cried, passionately. “Men are such fools. I ought not to have tried to
keep you apart. He has been grim and furious always because he could
not see you. I have had to suffer for it. It has been hateful. Oh, if
you want to escape the greatest, the most hideous torture in this
world,” she cried, passionately, her thin voice quavering with nervous
agitation, “pray to God that you may never love a man who cares
nothing for you. It is unbearable! It is worse than hell! One is
always humiliated, always in the dust.”
I was very sorry for her, and she could not fail to see it.
“If you are so sure that he does not care for you--that he is not
likely to care for you--would it not be better to go away and try to
forget him?” I said. “It can only make you more miserable to stay
here, if he is not kind to you.”
She threw a curious glance at me. It was full of suspicion and full of
malice.
“Oh, yes! of course you would advise me to go away,” she exclaimed,
spitefully. “You would give a good deal to be rid of me. I know. I
wish----”
She leaned over a little nearer to me, and drew in her breath with a
little hiss. Her eyes were fixed upon my face eagerly.
“You wish what?” I asked her, calmly.
“I wish that I understood you; I wish I knew what you were afraid
of. What have you to do with Philip Maltabar? If he is not your lover,
who is he? If he is not your lover, what of Bruce Deville? Oh! if you
have been fooling me!” she muttered, with glistening eyes.
“You are a little enigmatic,” I said, coldly. “You seem to think that
you have a right to know every detail of my private life.”
“I want to know more, at any rate, than you will tell me,” she
answered; “yet there is just this for you to remember. I am one of
those whose love is stronger than their hate. For my love’s sake I
have forgotten to hate. But it may be that my love is vain. Then I
shall put it from me if I can--crush it even though my life dies with
it. But I shall not forget to hate. I came here with a purpose. It has
grown weak, but it may grow strong again. Do you understand me?”
“You mean in plain words that if you do not succeed with Mr. Deville,
you will recommence your search for the man you call Philip Maltabar.”
She nodded her head slowly; her keen eyes were seeking to read mine.
“You will do as you choose, of course,” I answered; “as regards
Mr. Deville, I can do no more for you than I have done.”
She commenced twisting her fingers nervously together, and her eyes
never left my face.
“I think that you could do more than you have done,” she said,
meaningly. “You could do more if you would. That is why I am here. I
have something to say to you about it.”
“What is it?” I asked. “Better be plain with me. We have been talking
riddles long enough.”
“Oh, I will be plain enough,” she declared, with a touch of blunt
fierceness in her tone. “I believe that he cares for you, I believe
that is why he will not think for a moment even of me. When I tell you
that you know of course that I hate you.”
“Oh, yes, I have known that for some time.”
“I hate you!” she repeated, sullenly. “If you were to die I should be
glad. If I had the means and the strength, I believe, I am sure that I
would kill you myself.”
I rose to my feet with a little shudder. She was terribly in earnest.
“I don’t think, unless you have anything more to say, that it is a
particularly pleasant interview for either of us,” I remarked, with my
hand upon the bell. But she stopped me.
“I have something else to propose,” she declared. “You have said that
you do not love him. Very well. Perhaps his not seeing you has
irritated him and made him impatient. See him. Let him ask you--he
will not need much encouragement--and refuse him. Answer him so that
he cannot possibly make any mistake. Be rude to him if you
can. Perhaps then, if he knows that you are not to be moved, he will
come to me. Do you understand?”
“Oh, yes, I understand,” I said, slowly; “I understand
perfectly. There is only one thing you seem to forget. Your idea that
Mr. Deville is interested in me is only a surmise. It is more than
possible that you are altogether mistaken. He and I are almost
strangers. We have not met a dozen times in our lives. He has never
shown any inclination to make any sort of proposal to me; I should
think it most unlikely that he should ever do so. Supposing that you
were right, it would probably be months before he would mention it to
me, and I am going away.”
She smiled at me curiously. How I hated that smile, with its almost
feline-like exhibition of glistening white teeth!
“He will propose to you if you will let him,” she said,
confidently. “If you are really ignorant of that fact, and of your
conquest, I can assure you of it.”
Suddenly she broke off and looked intently out of the window. Across
the park in the distance a tall, familiar figure was coming rapidly
towards us. She turned and faced me.
“He is coming here now,” she declared. “I am going away. You stay here
and see him. Perhaps he will ask you now. Can’t you help him on to
it? Remember, the more decidedly you refuse him the safer is Philip
Maltabar. Be rude. Laugh at him; tell him he is too rough, too coarse
for you. That is what he thinks himself. Hurt his feelings--wound
him. It will be the better for you. You are a woman, and you can do
it. Listen! Do you want money? I am rich. You shall have--I will give
you five--ten thousand pounds if--if--he ever asks me. Ten thousand
pounds, and safety for Philip Maltabar. You understand!”
She glided out of the room with white, passionate face and gleaming
eyes. Whither she went I did not know. I stood there waiting for my
visitor.