Her divine and selfless nature had made the offer. He had unequivocally
refused it. The incident was therefore closed. Ostrich-wise he hid his
head from its consequent influences in their relations, and regarded
them as non-existent. That was the humorous aspect of his moral
attitude. On the other hand he believed in himself and in his strength
of will to withstand temptation. He knew that Irene was too strong and
proud a woman to desire marriage with him as a social rehabilitation.
In fact, the thought insulted her. He could not conceive that she loved
him, wanted him for her own sake. As for himself, he could set his teeth
and defy the heart-hunger. Should she speak again, he would disclose to
her the fact of his marriage. He hoped that no necessity would arise.
Some weeks passed. They saw each other frequently, but there were many
little flaws in the frankness of their intercourse to which he wilfully
blinded himself. There were times when a chance sweetness of look or
phrase set his heart beating madly; when, also, a chance wistfulness in
her manner brought back vividly the full meaning of Harroway’s offer,
and made him curse its futility. After a while she appeared to grow less
cheerful. She would regard him with a little tender air of surprised
reproach, which he attributed to the weariness of her lot. One Saturday
night they walked from Bedford Square, where the Cahusacs lived, to Hyde
Park Corner, before they took the omnibus for High Street, Kensington.
In spite of the bright, evening they had just spent, the walk was
singularly silent. Towards the end she leaned on his arm, feeling
tired. Involuntarily he drew her closer to him, but the constraint grew
greater. In the omnibus he asked her whether she felt down-hearted. She
alleged a headache. His ready sympathy sprang to her. Why had she walked
all that distance? To see whether exercise would remedy it, she replied.
“Life is weighing upon you, Renie,” he said, as he parted from her at
her door.
“It is Hugh--a little,” she answered. And the stone-staircase was
not too dimly lighted for him not to perceive once more the curious,
reproachful surprise in her glance.
He went away full of passionate remorse for what he had brought upon
her. Her life was crushing her. A desperate remedy flashed through his
mind. A terrible temptation. Yet keenly sensitive to that within him
which concerned Irene, he perceived an ugly leering selfishness beneath
the surface, and he put the temptation from him.
Meanwhile the series of articles over the signature “Delta” had
attracted attention. Her identity leaked out. A paragraph appearing
in the literary notes of one journal, and copied by several others,
revealed it to the general public. In these modern days a pseudonym is
as effective a disguise as a jacket worn inside out. She was disturbed
in mind, dreading publicity. “Delta” had become as soiled a name as
“Irene Merriam.” Would not that lessen the influence of her work? Men
would pass her articles by with a contemptuous shrug, and her appeals
would be unheeded. To cry in the wilderness is task enough; to cry in a
voice scorned by the few stragglers who hear, would have depressed the
Baptist himself.
Then there came a day, shortly after her walk from Bedford Square with
Hugh, when Jane brought her a gentleman’s card bearing a name with which
she was unfamiliar and a pencilled legend--“Women’s Democratic League.”
She decided to see the visitor. A red-haired man with dubious linen and
persuasive manners was admitted. She motioned him to a chair. He put his
hat on the ground and explained his mission. Her articles had been so
appreciated by the League that he had been deputed to invite her to
lecture on behalf of that body. Irene was gratified but alarmed. Writing
was one thing, lecturing another.
“I am sorry to refuse,” she told the man, “but I have given up my little
attempts at public life.”
“That is a great pity, Mrs. Merriam. So many would welcome you back
again. Do think over it. We can promise you a most enthusiastic
audience. In fact, we might scheme out a short tour--all expenses paid
and a handsome percentage on the takings. Your name would draw.”
“You are mistaken,” said Irene frankly. “Besides----”
“Oh, no,” he interrupted quickly. “Your name is so well known--all over
England. People would run to see you. Putting things on a commercial
basis, so long as people come, their object doesn’t matter.”
Then Irene saw. For a moment, she gasped for breath. It was a calm
proposal to make capital out of her notoriety. She rose and pressed the
electric bell by her side, and turned upon him with flaming cheeks, and
anger in her eyes.
“How dare you!” she cried.
The man took up his hat and broke into apologies. Jane appeared at the
door.
“Show this person out,” said Irene.
The democratic delegate retired ignominiously. Irene walked about the
room, mechanically rearranging perfectly orderly arranged trifles,
in the feminine way, dazed with wrath and humiliation. A short while
afterwards, she did not know whether to rage against the abandoned
cynicism of the proposal, or to laugh cynically at her own touching
simplicity in the matter of her former mental disquietude. In the midst
of her anger arrived Elinor Cahusac on a flying call. Irene related
the scene midway between tears and laughter. Mrs. Cahusac listened,
sympathised, and, as soon as she reached her home, informed her husband
of the insult that had been offered to Irene. And the next afternoon
Cahusac, meeting Hugh by chance, in the Strand, repeated his wife’s
story. An hour later Hugh was ringing furiously at Irene’s door.
He found her sitting before the fire, with her writing-board on her
lap. She raised startled eyes as he entered, laid his hat and stick on
a table, and came to her side. She rose instinctively, leaving the board
on the broad arm of the chair.
“Is what Cahusac tells me true, Renie?” he cried impetuously--“about
that scoundrel insulting you yesterday?”
“I told Elinor something.”
“And why did you not tell me last evening?”
“What use would there be in worrying you for nothing?” she replied
evasively.
The light of the chandelier beneath which she was standing fell upon her
averted face. The heaviness of her eyelids struck him; a crumpled ball
of a handkerchief in her hand confirmed the betraying lids.
“And I come in unexpectedly and find you crying. You would not have told
me the cause of that either.”
“I have no right to worry you,” she replied again.
“I wish to God I had the right to make you,” he cried passionately,
goaded by the insult offered her and by the evidence of her unhappiness.
“I don’t think you do,” she said in a low voice.
“I?” he queried.
Taking her by the wrist, he impulsively led her to the sofa and seated
her by his side.
“This state of things cannot go on,” he said harshly. “We are losing
each other. I must explain. I will tell you about that woman, the one
you know of.”
Irene started away from him, as though the word were a lash.
“Is she between us? I don’t want to hear a breath of her. I won’t
listen. What is she to me? Let us continue in the old way.”
“We have come to the end of it,” said Hugh.
“Do you love her?” she asked, fiercely.
“I have every reason to hate and despise her,” said Hugh between his
teeth. “You know very well that I love you with every fibre of my
being.”
Irene held him with her eyes. The few seconds seemed an incalculable
time.
“And you know that I love you with all my heart and soul. So why will you not
take me?” she said slowly.
He sprang to his feet.
“You love me--like that?”
The great wonder of glory that suddenly held his soul in awe, shone
from his eyes, dazzling and confusing the woman, whose own lowered
tremulously.
“Like that?” he repeated. “Say it again.”
“I have told you too much already,” she murmured. And then the woman’s
tears and tenderness all gushed forth, and she raised swimming eyes to
him.’ “Oh, Hugh dear, why did you make me tell you?” In a moment she was
sobbing in his arms, clinging to him, yielding herself to the ecstatic
solace. Half shamed, she drooped her head and hid her face against his
breast, and he held her tightly to him. Then there was a long great
silence. The woman’s heart drank thirstily of the intoxicating flood
of happiness. But the man’s burned white hot in the stress of agonising
conflict. She could not see his drawn face. His short sharp breathing
only told her of emotion too deep for words. Its pain did not pierce
through her bliss. Her fair head rested contentedly against the molten
furnace. Through such brief, fierce, soul-scorching fires come the
tremendous decisions of life.
“Will you marry me, Irene?” he said at last.
She moved her head for a moment, like a child. Then she raised it, and
drew herself gently from him.
“Do you know why I was crying--a woman is a fool, Hugh dear--when you
came in?”
“Why?”
“I thought you did not want me. It was bitter. A turning of the tables.”
“Since when have you loved me?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Always, perhaps,” she replied, turning away. “It’s a
question you must never ask me.”
How or when it had come she knew not. What woman does? Often she may
point back to some spring morning of the heart, when love burst into
blossom, and say: “Then I knew.” But she is aware that the petals had
long lain delicately folded in the sheaths, and is dimly reminiscent
of growth and expansion. To the how and when of that she can return no
answer. But Irene looked back and found strange tendernesses working
darkly through all the years. Could it have been possible----? Her
womanhood shrank frightened from the suggestion--then tiptoed, with held
breath, up to it again. The union of the two men in her affection had
dated from the first day they had spoken to her on the P. & O. steamer,
and it had existed continuously until one broke away, leaving the other
untouched. Hugh’s loyal love for her had been one of the inner glories
of her life. She had felt it to be the complement of Gerard’s. So much
was clear. But was her own affection for Hugh complementary to her love
for Gerard? Could her feelings towards Gerard have maintained their
homogeneousness without the other influence? Was it, in brief, an
inextricable dual love? She found no answers. All was a mystery--like
the colour of an opal, with an elusive white of shame. Yet no thought
of longing unsatisfied had ever tinged the purity of her wifely worship.
There her soul was free from doubt. Yet again, on the other hand, Hugh
had ever been inexpressibly dear to her. The cult of their idealised
brotherhood had further fused these complex emotions together, thereby
rendering the mystery more inscrutable.
“I can never tell you,” she repeated. “Never. Oh, Hugh dear, I have been
so lost and lonely.”
His arm closed protectingly round her.
“Forgive me, dear,” she said. “I once thought you a weak man--perhaps
that is why I did not love you at first. But now I know that you are
strong--and I need your strength.”
That was the deep key-note of her happiness. Once she had compared the
two men; rock and shifting sand. Idolatry had inverted her vision. It
had been shifting sand and rock. She was safe on the rock now. Often,
lately, had she looked back, in sickened wonder, upon that idolatry.
The whole of her true life with Gerard had revealed itself: the dull
taciturnity she had revered as strength, the ungracious compliances she
had raised to tendernesses or noble actions, the hundred faults she had
transfigured to virtues. In vain she looked for one sparkling deed,
one act of unselfishness, one spontaneous loving caress that she had
treasured, even one proof of more than common mental attainment. In the
very work-a-day business of life he had deceived her; his practice
at the bar was worth little or nothing. She was stupefied at her own
delusion.
But now she was safe. Now she looked back upon Hugh’s life, and saw it
filled with innumerable deeds of devotion and loyalty. His brilliance in
the world was a matter not of blind faith but of direct testimony. His
heroism had not been potential but actually displayed. Twice she had
known him to face death. Once to save his friend’s life. Once to save a
woman’s honour. Of the latter she was convinced. Convinced also of his
impeccability as regards the woman. On the part this creature had played
in his life she was too proud to speculate. He did not love her. That
was certain. It sufficed the hungering woman. The strong soul refused to
seek further. Yes, she was safe; the foundations of her life laid on the
living rock. The overwhelming happiness of it!
She stood before him radiant. A black silk blouse, with frilled
upstanding collar lightly caressing her throat, heightened the glow in
her face. He had studied its infinite variety of expression, and knew it
in all its phases, enthusiasm, anger, sorrow, gentleness. To-day it was
a revelation. To only one man in her life can a woman reveal the full
glory of her soul and sex. The last shreds of his compunction were swept
away by a mighty wave of pride.
“I would have gone through hell-fire to win you,” he said.
She smiled, happily unconscious of his allusion, and replied in tender
raillery.
“You have only had to go through the hollow form of asking me. Was it so
hard?”
“I should never have asked you to marry me out of pity.”
“I knew that,” she replied. “And now--are you sure that you will be
happy?”
“Happy?” he echoed.
He laughed, walked across the room, back again, and ran his fingers
through his hair. The happiness began to intoxicate him. He stopped
before her and took both her hands.
“Do you know what a man’s love is?” he cried.
*****
He paced his room that night in a hot fever of joy, with pulses
throbbing and nerves vibrating. Irene’s love was his at last, his for
ever, to change life from an ill-weeded garden to glittering fields
of an unimagined heaven beyond hyperbole of speech. To preserve the
ineffable gift, he would take upon himself the burden of a hundred
crimes. In this hour of rapture the burden of the one he had resolved to
commit sat lightly on his shoulders. She ran no risk. The secret of the
marriage was safe. It had lain buried in the Brighton Registrar’s office
through all the lurid publicity of the trial. Minna would keep it beyond
the shadow of a doubt. Anna Cassaba was bound body and soul to Minna.
And then the crime was for the adored one’s greater happiness. It would
lift from her the crushing weight of social loneliness. It would flood
her life with the passion of a man’s worship. The vision of the full
harmonious days to come rose up before him. He laughed aloud. There are
times when a man feels strong enough to defy Fate.