IN the early days of their acquaintanceship Mrs. Harding had felt very
favorably disposed toward Marian, but gradually appreciation had given
place to envy, and liking had been displaced by dislike. She understood
that Marian was her superior not only in beauty, which she would have
forgiven, but in education and social standing, which deeply galled her.
She realized how badly she compared with Marian in conversation and the
amenities of life. At first she laughed, shrugged her sturdy shoulders,
consoling herself with the thought that after all men do not fall in
love with a tongue; but gradually, as she realized that pretty speech is
an excellent support to a pretty face, she began to hate Marian’s dainty
ways and facile talk. More than once, too, Marian had shown by some
little gesture or some uncontrolled look that Mrs. Harding’s coarse
coarseness annoyed and jarred upon her. The latter’s treachery also
filled her with the spite that so often comes to a mean spirit, who has
wronged another. It was not the first time that Davis had called on her
to spy upon a woman with whom she was upon terms of familiarity, but in
other cases the victims had always been those to whom she had not made
any pretense of real friendship and whose confidence she had not sought.
But Marian had trusted her, and the betrayal of this trust, combined
with jealousy, drove her for refuge from compunction to hatred and
malice.
A further point was this. Some of the practices to which Mrs. Harding
was addicted were obviously distasteful to Marian; it was a temptation
to her, therefore, to reduce Marian to her own level, and to this
temptation she now yielded. The episode with Geraldstein pleased her, as
a step in the direction to which she desired to drive Marian.
One of the practices which was at present abhorrent to Marian was
over-indulgence in drink. Once she had been spending the evening at a
rather noisy restaurant with Mrs. Harding; they had met there two young
fellows, of that age when women and wine are temptations all the more
deadly because the yielding to them is held in reprobation by those from
whose authority they have but recently been released. Marian was utterly
bored by the pointless and often indecent jests, and watched with
disgust the quantity of wine which her friend drank and its influence
upon her.
Mrs. Harding saw that she was being watched.
“Don’t mind her,” she said to the youth who sat beside Marian, pestering
her with his plain-spoken attentions. “She’s young and is afraid of
being jolly. Some night she’ll get a bottle of fizzy inside her, and’ll
be all over the place before she knows where she is. Once bitten, never
shy again. Drink up, Marian, it won’t hurt you. Let’s have another
bottle, boys.”
Marian left the party, her departure not meeting with any real protest,
and the next morning received a visit from Mrs. Harding, whose skin was
unwholesome to look at and her eyes blowzed and bloodshot.
“I suppose you’ll tell me it serves me right,” she said, “but my head’s
aching fit to split. I wouldn’t have come down, but I’ve run out of
brandy; don’t preach, dear, but just be good and give me a B. and S.”
For a week or so after the dinner with West, Marian’s life was very
quiet outwardly. Inwardly she lived tossed this way and that by a
turmoil of contrary desires. She realized with terror that she was
losing grip upon herself; that her physical emotions were daily growing
more and more imperious. When she had sundered herself from her old and
had plunged into this new life, she had fully counted on using her
bodily gifts to procure her the ends for which her soul thirsted. But
this life was different to what she had expected it to be, and now her
mental desires were rapidly growing weaker, and the lust of mere
pleasure and excitement was usurping their place.
Her visit to Maddison at Rottingdean and her friendship with West had
stayed for a while this degeneration, and now she had come to look upon
the latter as the one bulwark remaining between her and a life of
promiscuous debauchery.
The time, too, was approaching for her to go down to Rottingdean again,
and the thought of seeing Maddison was very distasteful. His letters
came regularly, full of love and devotion, telling how much he missed
her, how often he thought of her, how difficult he found it to stick to
his work, how dissatisfied he was with the result, and how he counted
the hours to the day when he should see her again. She wrote at less
length and less frequently than he did, and each time the effort was
more laborious to her. She was anxious that he should not discover her
discontent, still more that he should not obtain any inkling that he was
not as dear and as necessary to her as she was to him. Now and again
dread came to her when she thought of what might happen when she
dismissed him.
Her loneliness rendered all these thoughts the more distressing to her;
she was unable to escape from herself, and herself was the very worst
and most hurtful company that she could have.
Broken sleep, which quickly became night-long sleeplessness, was the
inevitable result.
One night she lay awake, restlessly shifting her position from time to
time; striving to rest her mind by fixing it upon matters of
indifference, but without success. Then of a sudden there swept down
upon her a terror that had often stricken her when a child, but from
which she had not suffered of recent years. What if this sleeplessness
should prove incurable and kill her? Or the beginning of a dangerous
illness? She turned cold and faint with the horror of the thought of
death. Not of the physical pain with which it might be accompanied, but
of the thing itself. She could not lie there any longer in the dark;
turning up the light brought no comfort, only rendering the idea of
death more real. She imagined herself lying there, a nurse in the room,
Maddison, perhaps, by her side. She knowing, they knowing, that Death
stood outside the door, his grisly knuckle sounding for the admission
that could not be denied. There was added an oppressive sense of being
alone; she refrained with difficulty from shrieking, just for the sake
of hearing some living response.
She recalled how once, soon after their marriage, her husband had
suffered from a long spell of sleeplessness, brought upon him by
over-work, and how she had told him again and again that if he would
only exert his will he could overcome his trouble. She remembered, too,
that the doctor had ordered him to set aside his teetotal scruples, and
drink each night before going to bed a glass of brandy and water, and
how much she had disliked the smell of the spirit.
She slipped out of bed, shivering, for the night was bitter cold, and
having wrapped herself in her dressing gown made her way to the dining
room. She poured out about a wineglassful of brandy into a tumbler,
added water, and drank it hastily. She shuddered as she put the glass
down, but the quick warmth of the liquor comforted her, running like
heat through her frame.
After a while she slept heavily, wakening late in the morning, parched
and unrefreshed. She was not hungry, but drank her tea eagerly, feeling
refreshed for a time.
The following night she placed the decanter of brandy and the water
carafe on the table by her bedside, and as soon as she became restless
had recourse to them. This time the spirit did not soothe but excited
her; wild, aimless thoughts chased one another rapidly, until it seemed
as if her brain would burst. She drank again, pouring out a larger
amount of the brandy than before; stupor, then restless slumber
resulting.
The thought of each approaching night came to be a terror by day. She
sat up late reading—reading until her eyes fell heavy with sleep. Then
to bed and to sleeplessness.
She saw no one; Geraldstein had dropped her; West did not come, and she
did not see anything of Mortimer. Mrs. Harding came in once or twice,
but her presence was an irritation.
Then came the appointed day for her going to Maddison, and, to her
surprise, it was with a sense almost of relief that she found herself in
the train, speeding away from London.
He met her at the station, and although he said little, she could not
but discern in his face the intense joy it was to him to see her again.
He looked tired and troubled; even the light of love that sprang into
his eyes as they rested on her did not dispel from them the curious look
that shows in them when a man is eagerly searching after that which he
cannot find. As it was raining they drove the whole way to the cottage,
not talking much as they went, he seemingly content to be quiet, holding
her hand tightly in his own.
Mrs. Witchout greeted Marian cordially.
“You don’t lookaswell, though, as when you went away,” she said
critically; “does she, Mr. Maddison? I do hear as rosy cheeks ain’t the
fashun in Lunnon. But, there, Lunnon fashuns ain’t the onlyonesworth
follering. Lunch is ready; Mr. Maddison says I ought to call it
luncheon, but I don’t see that it matters what you callthingso long as
peopleknows whatyermeans.”
“And how’s the work getting on?” Marian asked, as they went into the
studio.
“Lamely. Only hobbling. I’ve finished Mrs. West. What do _you_ think of
it?”
“What does she is more to the point?”
“No; what do you?”
Marian looked long at the portrait before she answered. It was evidently
very like the original, but there was something in the face that puzzled
her.
“You told me she was a doll!” she exclaimed.
“Yes, but I’ve discovered that dolls have hearts as well as sawdust in
them.”
“Oh!”
“Is that all you notice?”
“Ye-es, I think so,” she answered. “I like it.”
He laid his hands on her shoulders, and moved her so that the light fell
full upon her face; then scanned her features closely.
“I’m right,” he said, “right. Go and look in the glass there, then look
at the picture again, and see if _you_ don’t find something of yourself
reflected in what I meant to be a portrait of another woman.”
Marian looked closely again at the picture; it was true; as he said
there was a distinct semblance of herself, a fleeting likeness which it
was impossible to define, but unmistakable.
“You see, Marian, I’ve tried doing without you and I cannot; we must
never leave each other again—why should we? We love each other—you do
love me still, dear, don’t you?”
“Yes, George, of course I do.”
“Of course you do! That sounds so cold. It seems to me this way,” he
said, sitting down, drawing her on to his knee and resting his head
against her shoulder; “life’s so short, and there’s only one thing in it
worth having; your love’s just all to me. So why waste any of our time
by being apart? We can go away and live quite quietly somewhere, or live
here—it’s cheap enough; and if I only paint a picture a year we shall
be well off, even if they’re not my best,” he added, sighing and looking
at the portrait.
She did not answer him, but fondled his hair and pressed him close to
her, which she knew would speak to him more eloquently than any words
she could put together. Never before had she felt quite so helpless to
deal with this love of his, which had grown so much more intense than
she had counted upon its becoming. At any rate the time was not yet come
for her to show him anything of coldness, and her cool fingers ran
through his thick dark hair and he was comforted.
“I must put you into another picture; make myself immortal by painting
you always; you must be my Emma. What shall it be next? As a Bacchante?
Your eyes wild with excitement and your cheeks glowing like red roses?
Your lips just parted and your little teeth peeping out between? I
_could_ do it; by Jove, I will do it. We’ll begin to-morrow; we mustn’t
work to-day. That’s my mistake! I ought never to have tried to paint
without you as my model.”
“You’re forgetting me!” she said, an idea coming to her, which held out
promise of sufficient excuse for leaving him again soon.
“Forgetting you—do you think that I ever forget you for a single
moment? You know—I often used to think myself in love, but it never
lasted. Then I began to believe that love wasn’t very much after all,
and that people were fools or ignorant who said it was the only thing in
life worth having. You’ve taught me better, dear. But what did you mean
by saying I’d forgotten you?”
“You’ve—left me out of your plans!”
“Left you out? Why, you’re just everything!”
“Not quite. You couldn’t go on loving a woman who had no pride, could
you?”
“I could love you whatever you were.”
“But that’s not right, George. When I—came to you, you were a great
man, but not nearly so great as you were going to be. And now I have
spoiled all your future and you don’t seem to have any ambition left.
No,” she said, forcing herself away from him and with a gesture
forbidding him to follow her, “I’m _not_ going to spoil your life. If I
come between you and your work—I’ll—leave you.”
“Leave me!”
The agony in his voice startled her.
“Leave me!” he repeated, striding across to her and holding her fiercely
to him. “I think I’d kill you before I’d let you do that.”
“Don’t, George, don’t,” she gasped; “you’re frightening me.”
“I’m so sorry, love, but—why do you say such horrid things to me?”
“What I said was right. If I can’t help you with your work, George, I’ll
do this; if in a few days you can’t begin a picture without me in it,
can’t prove that you can work with me near you—I’ll go away and I’ll
stay away until you can tell me that I can come back safely to you.”
“So that’s your plan! But it will take two to carry it out, and I won’t
make the second. I simply _won’t_ let you go. So that’s settled.”
“You don’t want me to be happy? Is your love so selfish as all that?”
“So selfish!” he said, freeing her, dropping his arms, standing amazed.
“Selfish! Oh, my love, you’re right, right. It was damnably selfish; I
was just thinking of myself. But—are you happy when you’re not with
me?”
“You know I’m not, George. But—I’m so proud of you, and I should hate
myself if I knew I was standing in your way. I should be unhappy with
you then. Besides, dear, is—is——”
“Yes?”
“Is it right to love me like that? Love ought to help you, not harm
you.”
“Help me! It has helped me to understand what happiness is. I didn’t
know that before.”
“Well, George, you mustn’t kill my pride; keep me proud of you, proud of
having helped you, proud of myself. There, we’ll talk no more about it
now, and to-morrow, or the next day, you shall start another picture,
only I will not be your model.”
“But——”
“No! We’re not going to argue the first day we are together. Look, the
rain’s over and the sun’s trying to come out. I’ll run up and put on my
country boots and hat, and we’ll go for a walk over the downs.”