It was while the Australian was telling Amber the story which had
interested her so greatly that Ernest Clifton was listening to something
that Josephine had to say to him--something that caused him a good deal
of spare thought all the time he was driving to his rooms in St. James’s
Street, and even after he had settled himself in his chair with a small
tumbler half filled with Apollinaris on a table at his elbow.
The words that she had spoken to him at that time of soft sounds and
lights and garden scents were not such as he had been accustomed to hear
from her; though he could not but acknowledge to himself--he now and
again acknowledged something to himself; never to any one else--that he
had noticed signs of readiness on her part to say those very words. It
had needed all his adroitness--and he had usually a pretty fair share at
his command--to prevent her from saying them long ago.
“_I wonder if you know how great a strain it is upon me to adhere to the
compact which we made last year._”
Those were the words that she had spoken in his ear when the Terrace had
become almost deserted, only Amber and Pierce Win wood remaining in the
seats they had occupied while drinking their coffee, and she had spoken
in so low a tone that, even with the band playing so soft and low as it
was, no word could be heard by any one passing their chairs.
He had been slightly startled by her words--he thought now that he had
time to think over the matter, that perhaps he should have seemed when
in her presence to have been more startled than he actually was. But the
fact was that he had been so startled as to be unable to discriminate
exactly how startled he should seem.
It required a trained intelligence such as his to appreciate so delicate
a train of thought as this. He felt that it would have been more
flattering to her if he had seemed more surprised when she had spoken.
It would have allowed her to feel that his confidence in her fidelity
was absolute and therefore--the logic was his--she would have felt
flattered. When a young woman has secretly promised eventually to marry,
and in the meantime to love, a certain man, and when in the cool of the
evening of a delightful day and a tranquillising dinner she confesses
to him that the keeping of the “meantime” clause in her compact subjects
her to a great strain, the man should of course seem greatly surprised.
If he were to seem otherwise, he would in effect be saying to the girl,
“I took it for granted that the strain upon you would be great.”
He could not accuse himself of any deficiency of cleverness in his
attitude towards her after she had spoken that surprising sentence. He
knew that there was a proper amount of feeling in the way he breathed
a sibilant “H’sh--h’sh!” while turning wondering eyes upon her--their
expression of surprise being not without a certain element of pain.
“H’sh--for heaven’s sake--my dearest! Oh, Josephine! But... ah, you
cannot mean that--that...”
He reflected now that those jerked-out words--those unfinished sentences
could scarcely have been surpassed in effect. He hoped that she felt
that the hand which he had then laid upon hers, was trembling. He had
meant that it should tremble. And yet now when he came to think over it,
he was not quite sure that his hand should have trembled. It was just
possible that a girl after speaking as she had spoken, would have been
more impressed by a thoroughly firm hand touching hers--a hand whose
firmness would have given her confidence, compelling her to realise the
confidence which he had--well, in himself.
(He was certainly a man of exquisite judgment in subtle shades of
expression.)
She had, however, not withdrawn her hand for some seconds--several
seconds: the dusk had cast its friendly and fascinating shade over them:
the seeming incaution of his attitude was purely imaginary. No one could
see the direction taken by his hand or hers.
“I tell you, it is the truth,” she had said, withdrawing her hand. “It
is a great strain that you have put upon me, Ernest. I sometimes feel
like a criminal--exactly like a criminal--in the presence of my father
and my mother.”
“Ah, I thought that you saw with my eyes,” he said, and the pained
expression in his voice increased. “I thought that we agreed that it
would be madness--your father--he would never give his consent--you
yourself said so.”
“I said so--I admit; but--please don’t think that I want to--to--break
it off--oh, no; I only mean to say that--that--well, I have said all
that I mean to say--it is a great strain upon me and I sometimes feel
very miserable about it. You can understand that it should be so,
Ernest.”
“I can understand, dearest--heaven knows that I feel how----”
“I don’t know how I ever came to agree to--to all that you put
upon me--I really don’t.” She had actually interrupted him with her
vehemence. It seemed as if she had not heard that he had begun to speak.
And her eyes were turned, he could see, in the direction of Pierce
Winwood--the man who had sat beside her at dinner and who was now
sitting beside Amber Severn.
“You agreed to my suggestion because--well, because you knew what you
still know--that is, that you loved a man whose hope it is to become
worthy of you, Josephine. I admit that I had no right to ask you to
listen to me--to hear me tell you that I loved you--when I had nothing
to offer you--nothing but years of waiting--years of struggle--years of
hope. And now... Josephine, do you wish to be released from your part
in the compact which we made a year ago?”
“No, no; I do not wish to be released. What, can it be possible that you
have so misunderstood me--that you fancy I am the sort of woman who does
not know her own mind--her own heart from one day to another?”
“I know that you are steadfastness itself--only--if I have placed you in
an equivocal position--if you feel that the years of waiting... what
I feel exactly, my dearest, is that it would be better for both of us to
separate now than for----”
“You cannot understand much of my nature if you think for a moment that,
after giving you my promise, I would ask you to free me from all that
the giving of that promise entailed. But I was thinking that it might be
better for us to be frank.”
“Have I ever kept anything from you?”
“I mean that it might be better if you had gone to my father and told
him what were your hopes--your prospects--told him that I had given you
my promise, and that we meant that nothing should come between us.”
“That would have separated us in a moment--you agreed with me.”
“It might have prevented our meeting and corresponding; but if we were
sure of ourselves, would it have separated us in reality? The only
separation possible would be brought about by either of us loving some
one else; and that we know would be impossible.”
“Dearest, that is the confession which comes from my heart
daily--hourly--giving me strength to annihilate time and space, so that
the years of our waiting seem no more than hours.”
“Oh, I know my own heart, Ernest; and that is why I feel that what I say
is true: even though my father should refuse to listen to us, we should
still not be separated. In fact I really feel that there would not be so
great a barrier between us as there is now when we meet.”
“I think I know how you feel,” he said; but he had not the smallest
notion of how she felt. Barrier? What barrier was she thinking of? He
had not the smallest notion of what was in her mind--or for that matter,
her heart.
And it seemed that she knew this for she made an attempt to explain
herself.
“I mean that the secret which we share together forms a barrier between
us--a sort of barrier. I feel every time that I see you, with my mother
sitting by not knowing the compact which we have made--every one else
too sitting by, having no idea that we are otherwise than free--I feel
that I am treating them badly--that I am mean--underhanded--deceitful.”
“Ah, my Josephine... Do you fancy that any one suspects?--your friend,
Miss Severn?--she is clever--she has been saying something that has
frightened you?”
“Oh, cannot you even see that it would be a positive relief if any one
was to suspect anything--if any one were to speak out?”
“Good heavens! What a state of nervousness you must have allowed
yourself to fall into when you would feel ruin to be a relief to you.”
“Ruin?”
“Ruin, I say; because I know that in such a case I should have no chance
of getting your father’s consent--yes, and not only so: when he came to
learn the truth--to be made aware of my presumption he would turn his
party against me, and my career would be ruined. Do you think that I am
not capable of doing something in the world, Josephine, that you would
stand by and see my career ruined?”
“I have every belief in your ability, only--I am not sure that a man
should think so much of his career--no, I don’t mean that--I only mean
that prudence and--and a career may be bought too dearly.”
“Prudence--bought too dear?”
“I wonder if, after all, I am so very different from other women in
thinking that love is more to be preferred than a career.”
“Of course it is, my dearest; but--heavens above, Josephine, would you
do me the injustice to believe that I would ask you to make what all the
world would call an idiotic match--well, at least an imprudent match?”
“Imprudence? Who is there that can say what is a prudent marriage or
what is an imprudent! If people love each other truly... psha! I have
actually fallen into the strain of that detestable person--the Other
Woman. I dare say that you are right and I am wrong. You see, you are
a man and can reason these things out--prudent marriages and so forth;
whereas I am only a woman--I cannot reason--I cannot even think--I can
only feel.”
“Thank heaven for that, Josephine. Ah, believe me, I have looked at this
matter from every standpoint, and I long ago came to see that there was
nothing for it but to do as we are doing. Believe me, my dear girl,
if you were content to marry me to-morrow just as I am, I would not be
content to accept such a sacrifice on your part. And for heaven’s
sake, dearest, do not let any one suspect that there exists between
us this--this understanding. Ah, Josephine, you will agree with me in
thinking that prudence is everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything--next, of course, to love. But above all, no one must be led
to have the least suspicion----”
“Oh, have I not been prudence itself up to the present?” There was
a suspicion in her voice--a suspicion of scorn,--he remembered that
distinctly as he sat in his rooms recalling the whole scene an
hour after it had been enacted. With that note--that half tone of
scorn--their little chat ceased, for Guy Overton had come up and after
him Lady Severn and Mr. Shirley, so that all that remained for him to do
was to give a tender pressure with a look of courteous carelessness that
was meant to prevent the possibility of any one with eyes fancying that
there was tenderness in his pressure of Miss West’s fingers.
And now he was asking himself the question:
“_Who is the Other Man?_”
Ernest Clifton had a pretty good working acquaintance with the motives
of men and women--not perhaps, quite so complete an acquaintance with
these motives as he fancied he had, but still a very fair knowledge; and
therefore he was asking himself that question:
“_Who is the Other Man?_”
He had had a good deal of trouble persuading Josephine during the
preceding autumn to agree to engage herself to marry him. It had
not been done in a minute. He had never before had such difficulty
persuading a girl to give him such a promise. She was what physicians
call “an obstinate case.” Hers was psychologically an obstinate case;
but she had yielded at last to his treatment, and had given him her
promise.
He flattered himself that it was his own cleverness--his own cleverness
of argument--his own personality, for was not cleverness part of his
personality?--that had brought her to perceive that she would be doing
well to promise to marry him and at the same time to keep that promise
a secret from her own father and mother and all the world besides. He
remembered how he had impressed her by his story of his early struggles.
He had appealed to her imagination by telling her how humble his career
had been in its beginning--how, being the third son of a doctor in a
village in Warwickshire, he had been thrown on the world to shift for
himself when he was sixteen years of age--how he had, while working as
a reporter on the staff of a Birmingham newspaper, starved himself in
order to have money enough to pass University examinations and take a
degree and, later on, to get called to the Bar. He told her how he
had given up much of his time when practically behind the scenes at
Birmingham to the study of the political machinery of a great party,
with the result that he had worked himself into the position of the
Secretary of the Organisation, becoming a power in his political
party--a man with whom in critical times, the Head of the Cabinet had
conferred before venturing upon legislation that might have a tendency
to alienate a considerable proportion of his friends.
And Josephine had listened to him, and had fully appreciated his
contention that for such a man as he hoped to become, the choice of a
wife was a matter of supreme importance. He had given her to understand
that his ideal woman was one to whom her husband would apply for counsel
when he needed it--one who would be her husband’s right hand in all
matters. He had seen enough, he said, to make him aware of the fact that
those men who were willing to relegate their wives to a purely domestic
position were the men who were themselves eventually relegated by their
party to a purely domestic position: they became the domestics of
their party mainly, he believed, because they had been foolish
enough--conceited enough, for there is no such fool as your conceited
politician--to fancy that nowadays--nay, that at any time in the history
of the country, the wife of the political leader should occupy a humbler
place than the political leader himself.
He had prevailed upon her, first, by stimulating her interest in
himself, and secondly, by stimulating her ambition--he knew that she had
ambition--and she had agreed, but only after considerable difficulty on
his part, to accept his assurance that for some time at least, it would
be well for their engagement to remain a secret, even from her father
and mother. He had reason for knowing, he told her, that her
father was antagonistic to him, on account of his alleged
interference--“interference” was the word that Mr. West had freely
employed at the time--with the constituency which he represented at a
rather critical time. He knew, he said, that it would require time to
clear the recollection of this unhappy incident from her father’s
mind, so that to ask him for his consent to their engagement would be
hopeless.
Well, she had, after great demur, consented to give him her promise, and
to preserve the matter a secret.
And now he was sitting in his chair asking himself the question:
“Who is the Other Man?”
He was unable to answer the question; all that he could do was to keep
his eyes open.
But as this was the normal state of his eyes he knew that he was not
subjecting them to any condition that threatened astygia.