How could it be otherwise after all these years? But I don't want to
give up my whole life to you any more. I don't love you. I haven't
loved you for years. I think Lance took all the love I had after he
was born. And so I don't want to be always with you. Why should I be?
Men when they are friends aren't always together. I want to be free,
to do some of the things independent women are doing. There are so
many things women can do now. I see no reason for our staying always
together. I don't want to stay with anyone always."
"Then you don't love me any more?"
"No, of course I don't--and you don't love me. You know that. For ever
so long now you haven't felt anything about me at all. You've pretended
to because you thought it was right, but I've been a shadow to you."
She was so right that he could only stare dumbly at her wisdom.
"You're not a shadow any longer," he said.
She laughed.
"That's only because we've just had a scene. I shall be a shadow again
in a day or two."
They waited. At last he said, "Well, you won't go at once, will you?
Please, promise me that. Stay until we've straightened everything out.
Promise me."
She shook her head.
"No, I'll promise nothing any more. I should only break my promises.
But I'll tell you before I'm going."
There began then for him the strangest time. Slowly an entirely new
woman stole into his life, a woman whom he did not know at all, a
creation as strange and novel as though he had but now met her for the
first time. Every evening, when he returned to the flat, it was with
the expectation of finding her gone. He questioned her about nothing.
She continued as she had done before to look after the flat and his
clothes and his food. He did not touch her; he did not kiss her. They
sat in the evening in their little sitting-room reading. They discussed
the events of the day.
Soon he realised that it was beginning to be a passionate determination
with him that he must keep her. He did not know how to set about it.
He found that he was beginning to woo her again, to woo her as he had
never wooed anybody before. He did not let her see it. He fancied that
he was the last word in tact. One evening he brought her some roses.
He tried to speak casually about it. His voice trembled. One night he
kissed her, but very indifferently as though he were thinking of other
things.
And how mysterious she was becoming to him! Not in the old way. He
could not believe that there had ever been a time when he had known her
so well that he could not see her. He saw her continually now, through
all his work, through every moment of the day. His heart beat when he
thought of her. He would wait for a moment outside the door in the
evening, his hands trembling with the thought that he might look inside
and find her gone.
He never questioned her now as to where she went, but he was forced
to admit that she did not go out any more than she had done in the old
days. It was strange when you came to think of it, that she had not
followed up more completely her fine declaration of independence.
They went one evening to a theatre, together. They sat close to one
another in the dark, and he longed to take her hand, but did not dare.
He felt like a boy again, and she was surely young too--younger than he
had ever known her.
There were times when he fancied that after all she was quite contented
with her domesticity. But he did not dare to believe that. If he once
caught the golden ball and held it, what would happen?
There came at last an evening when imprudence overcame him. He caught
her in his arms and kissed her--kissed her as he had not done for
years. The first wonderful thing that he knew was that she responded,
responded with all the passion of their first days of courtship.
He heard her murmur:
"Poor old Sam--you poor, blind, silly old Sam."
A moment later she was out of his arms and across the floor.
"But don't imagine," she cried, "that I'm sure that I'm going to stay.
I may be off at any minute. This very night perhaps!"
He was alone staring at the closed door. The golden balls were still
dancing. He wanted to follow her. He got up. He stopped. He had a
moment of intense disappointment.
Then--"By Jove, I believe I'm glad. I don't want to be sure of her. I
hope I'll never be sure of her again!"
And on that flash of self-realisation he began his new life.
X
LIZZIE RAND
Lizzie RAND was just forty-six years of age when old Mrs. Roughton
McKenzie died leaving her all her money. Months later she had not
thoroughly realised what had happened to her.
Until that day of Mrs. McKenzie's death she had never had any money.
She had spent her life, her energies, her pluck and her humour in the
service of one human being after another, and generally in the service
of women. It seemed to her to be really funny that the one who had
during her life begrudged her most should in the end be the one who
had given her everything; but no one had ever understood old Mrs.
McKenzie, and as likely as not she had left her money to Lizzie Rand
just to spite her numerous relations. Lizzie had expected nothing. She
never did expect anything, which was as well perhaps, because no one
ever gave her anything. She was not a person to whom one naturally gave
things; she had a pride, a reserve, an assertion of her own private
liberty that kept people away and forbade intimacy. That had not always
been so. In the long ago days when she had been Adela Beaminster's
secretary she had given herself. She had loved a man who had not loved
her, and out of the shock of that she had won a friendship with
another woman, which was still perhaps the most precious thing that she
had. But that same shock had been enough for her. She guarded, with an
almost bitter ferocity, the purity and liberty of her soul.
All the women whose secretaries she had afterwards been had felt
this in her, and most of them had resented it. Old Mrs. McKenzie
had resented it more than any of them. She was a selfish, painted,
over-decorated old creature, a widow with no children and only nephews
and nieces to sigh after her wealth. One of Lizzie's chief duties had
been to keep these nephews and nieces from the door, and this she had
done with a certain grim austerity, finding that none of them cared
for the aunt and all for the money. The outraged relations decided,
of course, at once that she was a plotting, despicable creature; it
is doing her less than justice to say that the idea that the money
would be left to her never for a single instant entered her head. Mrs.
McKenzie taunted her once for expecting it.
"Of course you're waiting," she said, "like all of them, to pick the
bones of the corpse."
Lizzie Rand laughed.
"Now is that like me?" she asked. "And, more important, is it like you?"
Mrs. McKenzie sniggered her tinkling, wheezy snigger. There was a
certain honesty between them. They had certain things in common.
"I don't like you," she said. "I don't see how anyone could. You're too
self-sufficient--but you certainly have a sense of humour."
There had been a time once when many people liked Lizzie, and she
reflected now, with a little shudder, that perhaps only one person in
the world, Rachel Seddon, the woman friend before-mentioned, liked and
understood her. Why had she shut herself off? Why presented so stiff,
so immaculate, so cold a personality to the world? She was not stiff,
not cold, not immaculate. It was, perhaps, simply that she felt that it
was in that way only that she could get her work done, and to do her
work thoroughly seemed to her now to be the job best worth while in
life.
During the war she had almost broken from her secretaryship and gone
forth to do Red Cross work or anything that would help. A kind of
timidity that had grown upon her with the years, a sense of her age and
of her loneliness, held her back. Twenty years ago she would have gone
with the first. Now she stayed with Mrs. McKenzie.
Mrs. McKenzie died on the day of the Armistice, November 11, 1918.
Her illness had not been severe. Lizzie had had, at the most, only a
week's nursing; it had been obvious from the first that nothing could
save the old lady. Mrs. McKenzie had not looked as though she were
especially anxious that anything should save her. She had lain there in
scornful silence, asking for nothing, complaining of nothing, despising
everything. Lizzie admitted that the old woman died game.
There had followed then that hard, bewildering period that Lizzie knew
by now so well where she must pull herself, so reluctantly, so heavily
towards the business of finding a new engagement. She did not, of
course, expect Mrs. McKenzie to leave her a single penny. She stayed
for a week or two with her friend Rachel Seddon. But Rachel, a widow
with an only son, was so tumultuously glad at the return of her boy,
safe and whole, from the war, that it was difficult for her just then
to take any other human being into her heart. She loved Lizzie, and
would do anything in the world for her; she was indeed for ever urging
her to give up these sterile companionships and secretaryships and come
and make her home with her. But Lizzie, this time, felt her isolation
as she had never done before.
"I'm getting old," she thought. "And I'm drifting off ... soon I shall
be utterly alone." The thought sent little shivering ghosts climbing
about her body. She saw in the gay, happy, careless, kindly eyes of
young Tom Seddon how old she was to the new generation.
He called her "Aunt Liz," took her to the theatre, and was an angel ...
nevertheless an angel happily, almost boastfully, secure in another,
warmer planet than hers.
Then came the shock. Mrs. McKenzie had left her everything--the
equivalent of about eight thousand pounds a year.
At first her sense was one of an urgent need of rest. She sank back
amongst the cushions and pillows of Rachel's house and refused to
think ... refused to think at all.... She considered for a moment the
infuriated faces of the McKenzie relations. Then they, too, passed from
her consciousness.
When she faced the world again, she faced it with the old common sense
that had always been her most prominent characteristic. She had eight
thousand a year. Well, she would do the very best with it that she
could. Rachel, who had appeared to be more deeply excited than she over
the event, had various suggestions to offer, but Lizzie had her own
ideas. She could not remember the time when she had not planned what
she would do when somebody left her money.
She took one of the most charming flats in Hortons, bought beautiful
things for it, etchings by D. T. Cameron, one Nevinson, and a John
drawing, some Japanese prints; she had books and soft carpets and
flowers and a piano; and had the prettiest spare room for a friend.
Then she stopped and looked about her. There were certain charities
in which she had been always deeply interested, especially one for
Poor Gentlewomen. There was a home, too, for illegitimate babies. She
remembered, with a happy irony, the occasion when she had tried to
persuade Mrs. McKenzie to give something to these charities and had
failed.... Well, Mrs. McKenzie was giving now all right. Lizzie hoped
that she knew it.
There accumulated around her all the business that clusters about an
independent woman with means. She was on committees; many people who
would not have looked twice at her before liked her now and asked her
to their houses.
Again she stopped and looked about her.
Still there was something that she needed. What was it? Companionship?
More than that. Affection, a centre to her life; someone who needed
her, someone to whom she was of more importance than anyone else in the
world. Even a dog....
She was forty-six. Without being plain she was too slight, too
hard-drawn, too masculine, above all too old to be attractive to
men. An old maid of forty-six. She faced the truth. She gave little
dinner-parties, and felt more lonely than ever. Even it seemed there
was nobody who wanted to make her a confidante. People wanted her
money, but herself not at all. She was not good conversationally. She
said sharp sarcastic things that frightened people. People did not want
the truth; they wanted things to be wrapped up first, as her mother and
sister had wanted them years ago.
She was a failure socially, in spite of her money. She could not be
genial, and yet her heart ached for love.
At this moment Mr. Edmund Lapsley appeared. Lizzie met him at a party
given by Mrs. Philip Mark in Bryanston Square. Mrs. Mark was an old
friend of Rachel's, a kindly and clever woman with an ambitious husband
who would never get very far.
Her parties were always formed by a strange mixture dictated first
by her kind heart and second her desire to have people in her house
who might possibly help her husband. Edmund Lapsley originated in the
former of these impulses. He was not much to look at--long, lanky, with
a high bony head, a prominent Roman nose and large, cracking fingers.
He was shabbily dressed, awkward in his manner, and apprehensive.
It was his eyes that first attracted Lizzie's attention. They were
beautiful large brown eyes, with the expression of a lost and lonely
dog seated deep in their pupils. He sat with Lizzie in a corner of the
crowded drawing-room to arrange his long legs so that they should not
be in the way, cracked his long fingers together and endeavoured to be
interested in the people whom Lizzie pointed out to him.
"That's Henry Trenchard," Lizzie said, "that wild-looking boy with the
untidy hair.... He's very clever. Going to be our great novelist....
That's his sister, Millie. Mrs. Mark's sister, too. Isn't she pretty?
She's the loveliest of the family. That stout clergyman is a Trenchard
cousin. They all hang together in the most wonderful way, you know. His
wife ran away and never came back again. I don't think I wonder; he
looks heavy...." And so on.
Lizzie wondered to herself why she bothered. It was not her habit to
gossip, and Mr. Lapsley was obviously not at all interested.
"I beg your pardon," she said; "you don't want to know who these people
are."
"No," he said in a strange, sudden, desperate whisper. "I don't. I lost
my wife only three months ago. I'm trying to go out into the world
again. I can't. It doesn't do any good." He gripped his knee with one
of his large bony hands.
"I'm so sorry," Lizzie said. "I didn't know. How tiresome of me to have
gone on chattering like that! You should have stopped me."
He seemed himself to be surprised at the confession that he had made.
He stared at her in a bewildered fashion like an owl suddenly flashed
into light. He stared, saying nothing. Suddenly in the same hurried,
husky whisper he went on: "Do you mind my talking to you? I want to
talk to somebody. I'd like to tell you about her."
"Please," said Lizzie, looking into his eyes, they were tender and
beautiful, so unlike his ugly body, and full of unhappiness.
He talked; the words tumbled out in an urgent, tremulous confusion.
They had been married, it appeared, ten years, ten wonderful happy
years. "How she can have cared for me, that's what I never understood,
Miss--Miss----"
"Rand," said Lizzie.
"I beg your pardon. Difficult to catch ... when you are introduced....
Never understood. I was years older than she. I'm fifty now--forty
when I married her, and she was only twenty. Thirty when she--when she
died. In childbirth it was. The child, a boy, was born dead. Everyone
prophesied disaster. They all told her not to marry me, she was so
pretty, and so young, and so brilliant. She sang, Miss Rand, just like
a lark. She did, indeed. She was trained in Paris. I oughtn't to have
proposed to her, I suppose. That's what I tell myself now, but I was
carried off my feet, completely off my feet. I couldn't help myself
at all. I loved her from the first moment that I saw her. You know
how those things are, Miss Rand. And, in any case, I don't know. Ten
perfect years, that's a good deal for anyone to have, isn't it? And
she was as happy as I was. It may seem strange to you, looking at
me, but it was really so. She thought I was so much cleverer than I
was--and better too. It used to make me very nervous sometimes lest she
should find me out, you know, and leave me. I always expected that to
happen. But she was so charitable to everyone. Never could see the bad
side of people, and they were always better with her than with anyone
else. We'd always hoped for a child, and then, as the years went on, we
gave it up. Edmund, she said to me, we must make it up to one another.
And then she told me it was going to be all right. You wouldn't have
believed two ordinary people could be so happy as we were when we knew
about it. We made many plans, of course. I was a little apprehensive
that I'd be rather old to bring up a child, but she was so young that
made it all right--so wonderfully young.... Then she died. It was
incredible, of course. I didn't believe it ... I don't believe it now.
She's not dead. That's absurd. You'd feel the same if you'd seen her,
Miss Rand. So full of life, and then suddenly ... nothing at all. It's
impossible. Nature isn't like that. Things gradually die, don't they,
and change into something else. Not suddenly...."
He broke off. He was clutching his knees and staring in front of him.
"I don't know why I talk to you like this, Miss Rand ... I hope you'll
forgive me. I shouldn't have bothered you."
"I'm pleased that you have, Mr. Lapsley." She got up. She felt that
he would be glad now to escape. "Won't you come and see me? I have a
flat in Hortons Chambers in Duke Street, No. 42.... Do come. Just
telephone."
He looked up at her, not rising from his seat. Then he got up.
"I will," he said. "Thank you."
He was still staring at her, and she knew that he had something further
to say. She could see it struggling in his eyes. But she did not
want him to confess any more. He would be the kind of man to regret
afterwards what he had done. She would not burden his conscience. And
yet she had the knowledge that it was something very serious that he
wanted to tell her, something that had been, in reality, at the back of
all his earlier confession.
She refused the appeal in his eyes, said good-night, took his hand for
a moment and turned away.
Afterwards she was talking to Katherine Mark.
"I see you were kind to poor Mr. Lapsley," Katherine said.
"How sad about his wife!" Lizzie answered.
"Yes. And she really was young and beautiful. No one understood why she
married him, but I've never seen anything more successful.... I didn't
think he'd come to-night, but I'm fond of him. Philip doesn't care
for him much, but he reminds me of a cousin of ours, John Trenchard,
who was killed in Russia in the second year of the war. But John was
unhappier than Mr. Lapsley. He never had his perfect years."
"Yes, that's something," Lizzie acknowledged.
It was strange to her afterwards that Edmund Lapsley should persist
so vividly in her mind. She saw him with absolute clarity almost as
though he were with her in her flat. She thought of him a good deal. He
needed someone to comfort him, and she needed someone to comfort. She
hoped he would come and see her.
He did come, one afternoon, quite unexpectedly and without telephoning
first. Fortunately she was there, alone, and wanting someone to talk
to. At first he was shy and self-conscious. They talked stiffly about
London, and the weather, and the approaching Peace, and whether there
would ever be a League of Nations, and how high prices were, and how
impossible it was to get servants and when they got them they went....
Lizzie broke ruthlessly in upon this. "It isn't the least little
good, Mr. Lapsley," she said, "our talking like this. It's mere waste
of time. We both know plenty of people to whom we can chatter this
nonsense. Either we are friends, or we are not. If we are friends, we
must go a little further. Are we friends?"
He seemed to be at a loss. He blinked at her.
"Yes," he said.
"Well, then," she looked at him and smiled. "I don't want to force your
confidence, but there was something that you were anxious to tell me
about the other night, some way in which I could help you. I stopped
you then, but I don't want to stop you now. I'll be honoured indeed if
there's anything I can do."
He gulped, stammered, then out it came. At the first hint of his
trouble it was all that Lizzie could do to repress an impatient
gesture. His trouble was--spiritualism.
Of all the tiresome things, of all the things about which she had no
patience at all, of all the idiotic, money-wasting imbecilities! He
poured it all out. He had read books, at last a friend had taken him
... a Dr. Orloff, a very wonderful medium, a very trustworthy man, a
man about whom there could be no question.
On the first occasion the results had been poor--on the second occasion
his Margaret had spoken to him, actually spoken to him. Oh! but there
could be no doubt! Her very voice.... His own voice shook as he spoke
of it.
Since then he had been, he was forced to admit, a number of
times--almost every day ... every day ... every afternoon. He talked to
Margaret every day now for half an hour or more.
He was sure it was right, he was doing nobody any harm ... they two
together ... it could not be wrong, but.... He stopped. Lizzie gave
him no help. She sat there looking in front of her. She despised him;
she was conscious of a deep and bitter disappointment. She did not
know how he could betray his weakness, his softness, his gullibility.
She had thought him.... She looked up suddenly, knowing that his voice
had stopped. He was gazing at her in despair, his eyes wide with an
unhappiness that struck deep to his heart.
"You despise me!" he said.
"Yes," she answered. "I do." But she was aware at the same time that
she could have gone across to him and put her hand on his head and
comforted him. "That's all false! You know it is. You're only deluding
yourself because you want to persuade yourself--it's weak of you. Your
wife can't come to you that way."
"Don't take it from me!" His voice was an agonised cry. "It's all I
have. It's true. It's true. It must be true!"
They were suddenly in contact ... she felt a warm sense of protection
and pity, a longing to comfort and help so strong that she
instinctively put her hand to her heart as though she would restrain it.
"Oh, I didn't mean," she cried, "that I'd take anything away from you.
No, no--never that. If you thought that I meant that, you're wrong.
Keep anything you've got. Perhaps I'm mistaken. The mediums I've known
have been charlatans. That's prejudiced me. Then I don't think I want
my friends to come back to me in quite that way.... If it's true, it
seems to be forcing them, against their will, as it were. Oh! I know a
great many people now are finding it all true and good. I don't know
anything about it. I shouldn't have said what I did. And then you see
I've never lost anyone whom I loved very much."
"Never?" Mr. Lapsley asked, staring at her with wide-open eyes.
"No, never, I think."
He got up and came across to her, standing near to her, looking down
upon her. She saw that she had aroused his interest, that she had
suddenly switched his attention upon herself.
She had aroused him in the only way that he could be aroused, by
stirring his pity for her. She knew exactly how suddenly he saw her--as
a lonely, unhappy, deserted old maid. She did not mind; that the
attention of any one single human being should be centred upon her for
herself was a very wonderful, touching thing.
Silence fell between them; the pretty room, grey and silver in the
half-light, gathered intimately around them. When at last he went away
it seemed that the last ten minutes had added years to their knowledge
of one another.
A strange time for Lizzie followed. Edmund Lapsley had rushed into her
life with a precipitate urgency that showed how empty before it had
been. But there was more than their mere contact in the affair. She
was fighting a battle; all her energies were in it; she was ruthless,
savage, tooth-and-nail; he should be snatched from this spiritualism.