He made no sort of answer; he went on all day as if she didn’t exist; he
wouldn’t even meet her eye. When he wasn’t going out in the motor to
make speeches for the Friends of France, he was sitting in Polly’s room,
telling her what he had said at the last meeting and what he was going
to say at the next one.
But Angelica was not to be disposed of so simply. She made up her mind
that he would have to speak, he would have to tell her outright that he
didn’t love her.
"He won’t find it hard to get rid of me!" she thought, bitterly. "But
he’s got to _say_. I want to understand. What does he write me a letter
like that for, and then be this way?"
She had a feeble little hope that perhaps it was only his feeling of
duty that kept him from her, that he loved her and didn’t dare to see
her. She felt that if he would just say that he loved her, but that they
must give up all thought of each other, she would be satisfied. She
could go on living, if she had that knowledge. _Something_, however, he
must say.
On the third evening she lay in wait for him. Polly and Mrs. Russell had
gone to bed, and he hadn’t returned yet from a lecture he was giving in
the village; so she turned out the light in her room and sat in the
dark, with the door open, waiting.
It was a melancholy October night. The leaves from the linden rustled
against her window as they were blown from the branches, and a constant,
monotonous, low wind blew, with a sound like rain. She sat as still as a
spider in a web, grim, unhappy, filled with apprehension.
In the course of time he came in. She saw him hurry down the hall in his
wet ulster and cap, and go into his own room. She was after him before
he had time to close the door.
"I want to speak to you!" she said. "Why didn’t you let me? Don’t you
want to see me?"
"No," he said. "No, Angelica, I don’t." He hadn’t even removed his cap.
He put his hand on the knob of the door. "You shouldn’t have come here,"
he said. "Some one might see you."
"I don’t care! I want to know. What’s the matter? What’s happened?"
"I hoped," he said quietly, "that you’d let it drop without an
explanation which is bound to be painful for both of us."
"I want to know where I stand. I want you to _say_."
"Sit down," he said. "I suppose we’ll have to have it out."
She did sit down, and waited while he took off his wet things, brushed
his hair, and put on a smoking-jacket. She was interested by his room;
for a few moments it distracted her unhappy heart. It was a curious room
splendidly furnished in black and gold enamel. There was a sort of
Chinese idea about it, shockingly adulterated by European luxury; long
mirrors, armchairs upholstered in purple, great bookcases, a black and
gray velvet rug on the polished floor, a marvelous lacquer screen
concealing the bed, a little stand on which was a tea-set of pale gray
porcelain with an odd black design. There were pictures on the
wall--shocking, startling things, obscene subjects in brilliant colours;
and in the corner a great ebony crucifix.
This exotic and voluptuous setting dismayed her. It proclaimed a Vincent
of whom she knew nothing, and whom she could never comprehend. How in
Heaven’s name was she to understand the poetic side of the man, she so
unpoetic, so crude? A man with tea-sets and crucifixes and such
pictures!
He sat down opposite to her in a low, cushioned chair, his head bent,
his hands clasped between his knees. Her foolish eyes could see, with
tears, that rough, bright hair, those fine, strong hands.
"Angelica," he began, not looking at her, "I’ve been a coward with you.
I’ve shirked this, because it is so intolerably hard to do."
She waited in anguish, with no idea of what she was to hear.
"You see, Angelica, the war has opened my eyes. I was--just going on,
lost in your beauty and loveliness, not thinking--drifting, drifting to
hell, and taking you with me. And then came this thing, this deafening,
colossal call to self-sacrifice, this monstrous revealment of the glory
and holiness of duty. I’m not callous. I couldn’t help but heed it. I
couldn’t go on in my old gross self-indulgence. Angelica!" he said,
looking up and meeting her eyes. "This war has brought me back to God!"
"But," she faltered, "what does----”
"It means that I must give you up. My love for you is a sin. For me, a
poet, slave and servant of beauty, you are temptation incarnate. You
can’t understand that. You are as cold, as pure, as an angel. You don’t
realize what love like mine is."
"I’m not!" she cried, pitifully. "I do understand! I’m not cold!"
"Compared to me you are. My love for you was madness. I couldn’t think
of anything else. It wasn’t the gentle affection you felt."
"I didn’t feel a gentle affection!" she cried, in tears. "You _couldn’t_
love me more than I love you!"
"Do you?" he asked, in a sort of stealthy triumph.
She didn’t see that. She was utterly sincere; and her beautiful
sincerity, her tears, suddenly moved him to one of those tempests of
remorse to which he was so prone.
"Oh, God!" he cried. "What a brute I am! I talk about giving you up, and
all the time I’m watching your face for signs of love. How can I find
the strength to let you go?"
"Don’t!" said Angelica, with streaming eyes. "Don’t let me go, Vincent
darling! Oh, if only we have each other!"
"We can’t have each other. It’s a sin!" he said. "Don’t you _see_? Oh,
Angelica! Beautiful Angelica! Why don’t you help me? Why do you try to
draw me down, and ruin me, and destroy me?" He sprang up, his fine face
distorted with grief and passion. "You don’t know!" he cried. "Oh, my
God! I have sinned! I have sinned! You don’t know after what sufferings,
what weary wanderings, I have come back to God! You cannot imagine!
There is nothing I have not done; no infamy I have not committed!"
And then he began his awful catalogue. He told her of his sins, his
vices--vile enough in reality, but exaggerated by his hysteria. He had
no medium between ingenious self-excuse and the wildest self-accusation.
He took a monstrous sort of joy in his horrible recital. He remembered
incidents from his boyhood, of cruelty, bestiality, lust, drunkenness,
theft, every sort of dishonour.
"I’ve been in prison," he said. "No one knows. They thought I was in
Canada that year. I’ve stolen from my own wife and spent the money on
vile women. I’ve been kicked out of disreputable hotels."
It went on and on, a nightmare, things that Angelica had never imagined,
all told in his coarse and vivid language which impressed his images
upon her mind forever.
"Good God!" he cried. "I’m appalled! How can even the God of mercy
forgive such things? Angelica! I am _lost_!"
He threw himself on his knees before her and buried his head in her lap.
"I have been in hell!" he cried. "What am I to do? God, who sees my
heart, knows that I repent; but is it enough?"
A feeling new to Angelica came over her, a divine kindliness and pity.
She stroked his ruffled hair, and tried, in her blindness, her
bewilderment, to find words to comfort him.
"Of course!" she said. "If you’re sorry, it’ll be all right. You can
start all over again."
With his head still buried, he flung his arms about her waist and began
to sob, hoarse, terrible sobs. She couldn’t bear it.
"Oh, don’t! Don’t, darling!" she cried.
He raised his head.
"I must be mad!" he said. "I’m so tortured. I long so, I yearn so, after
God. I want to be alone with Him, to contemplate Him forever, in
solitude--in a desert--to pray to Him--to make my songs to Him. Almost
all my verses are of God, Angelica. And then I see a lovely face--I
drink another glass of wine--I read a line of voluptuous beauty--and I
am lost again. How will it end? Oh, my merciful God, how will it end?"
She spent almost all the night trying to quiet and console Vincent. She
drew his head against her breast and kissed his forehead while she
talked to him. She found, almost miraculously, words and ideas which
gave him comfort, but with an effort which was torment for her. She had
a sensation of fishing in the depths of her mind, and painfully hauling
out some thought which she had not been conscious of having there. Her
love lent her insight; she discerned the grain of terror that lay
beneath the chaff of his theatrical eloquence. She was able to talk to
him with piety--she who had no religion, and had never given a thought
to such matters. She assured him that his repentance would wipe out his
sins.
"Why, Vincent!" she said. "_I_ could forgive anything you did; and you
know God must be more forgiving than me."
Steadfast, gentle, patient as an angel, she sat with him, listened to
his confessions, his self-accusations, and absolved him in her love. Who
could hold the man to blame for those faults which were his essence? Not
God--not she!