Her mother was dead. Her life stood altered.
She would be no poorer, it was not that. She was an orphan, and all
her mother had had came to her. That meant seventy thousand pounds,
plate, linen and the freehold of a fine old house in Lower Seymour
Street, that they had moved into a year before the old lady died.
Things were no more altered socially than they were altered
pecuniarily, for the Damers’ set naturally corresponded, as sets do,
with their postal district, and Miss Alice Damer could therefore
continue to command an entrance into the best circles. Only she
realized that she must henceforth enjoy all these good things to the
tune of a paid companion, having no poor and amenable relations handy
whom she could draft into the household economy, and afterwards snub
into a colourless, bare existence.
She was thirty-five, and her years did not weigh on her, except
mentally. The first faint physical signs of the debacle were, so far,
evident to herself alone, and then only in moods of unusual
depression. She was still young enough to need a companion. Her pretty
red-gold hair was as red as gold, as pretty as ever, her visits to her
dentist as few, her eyes as deep, and her step as elastic, although
she had given up dancing. She had made this sacrifice more from a
sense of fitness, as a concession to the needs of the young girls
coming up all round her, and who deserved their turn on the floor,
than of social necessity. As a matter of fact, she had never been
really fond of that over-energetic, disordering form of amusement. She
loved the world and going up and down in it immensely, and her way of
enjoying parties was to sit out if it was a dance, away from the music
if it was a concert, and in the back of the box if it was a play. She
was a flirt.
Not an outrageous, noisy, ill-bred flirt, but what is known as a quiet
flirt, with many strong and efficient strings to her bow. Did one of
them, being after all only catgut or mere man, snap occasionally--that
is to say, get married out of the circle of her charm--Alice, in her
quiet way, promptly renewed the string, and supplied herself with a
new admirer, as good at fetching and carrying as the old. In her mind
that was the chief use of admirers--to prevent one’s _looking_
neglected--of course one never really was!
She was a woman of many “affairs”; she liked living, not exactly in
hot water, but in water at least warm, and was seldom seen talking to
women, though she was quite nice to them, as intrusive but
law-permitted aliens in the _pays du cœur_. None of her friends would
have dared to ask her to a ladies’ lunch, or any over-womaned party; a
man had always to be “got for Alice,” else she would have been hurt,
and quite unable to play her part properly. She was unused to,
unversed in her own sex.
On the other hand, she played fair and never took other women’s men,
or encouraged their husbands to play the pretty game with her. People
said _that_ for her, that she never made women unhappy, only men. She
was never very sorry for a man’s love-troubles, for she had a theory
that a hopeless passion or two did a man no harm and that the more he
proposed the merrier--for him. She never told any one how many offers
she had refused. Men often did propose to her, and she refused them
all, and boasted that she had never been engaged for even an hour, and
that no man had ever kissed her. The bloom was not off Alice, unless
so much mental coming and going in her courts had produced some such
subtle effect.
“Why should I marry?” she used to say to Everard Jenkyns (good old
Welsh family), when he importuned her to relax her rule in his favour,
and even go so far as making the vast experiment of marriage with him
as her partner. “There is no earthly hurry.”
“No, but perhaps a heavenly one,” he had inanely replied.
“I may never marry at all. Girls, economically, don’t need to marry as
they used to, and at any rate I am independent so far as money goes.”
“So the way is clear for you to marry for love.”
“I don’t think I shall ever fall in love.”
“Then take a man you like--and you like me?” Everard was not at that
time sufficiently far gone in love to make him inattentive to, and
unappreciative of the use and value of “cheek,” in discussing such
matters with his princess.
“Yes, I like you; but, as you know, I don’t love you. And I’m so made
that I must be quite sure in my own mind that I am absolutely,
positively incapable of loving madly before I let myself go with any
one, even you. Don’t you see, in the interests of morality, one must
be sure of oneself, or there might be catastrophe, with a strong
nature like mine?”
“No,” said Everard patiently and earnestly. “There would, I am sure,
be no danger of that with you. Your husband might feel perfectly safe
in your hands.”
“Thanks. Why do you say that?”
“Because the power to flirt never implies the power to love, I am
afraid.”
“Well, Everard, you can’t say that I flirt with you!” she exclaimed
noisily.
“Oh, no. Your knowing that I am desperately, dully serious about you
protects me a little, and you do pay me the doubtful compliment of
taking no trouble to attract me. You honestly never put your best foot
foremost with me, or pose like a heroine to your most humble valet.”
“Yes,” Alice agreed, laughing a little bitterly. “I promise you never
to encourage you in any way. I would let you see me with my hair in
curlers, if I wore them! Anything to convince you of the purity of my
intentions. I simply will not have you say that I lead you on or
encourage you.”
“My God, Alice! I don’t say it! I know well enough I am a d----d fool
and have nothing whatever to go on.”
“A fool to love me?”
“A fool because I am a lonely man and don’t like being a lonely man,
and yet this feeling of mine towards you will keep me so, so far as I
can see. I don’t suppose I shall ever marry. I know I shan’t. That’s
what you’ve done, Alice, and I may just as well go away and make my
will in your favour, for I shall never have any wife or child to leave
my money to. I feel that it will be so.”
“Really, my poor Everard”--she tried very hard not to look
flattered--“this is most sad. I couldn’t have believed there was such
fidelity left in this wicked world, and to tell you the truth I don’t
believe it possible, even now. I’m really not vain enough--if I _am_
cruel.”
“Not so very vain, and not a bit cruel. I honestly believe if you
thought you could get up any sort of feeling for me, you’d say so. You
never will say it to me--but to some one else, I suppose. You are
human like every one else. It’s all rot about not being capable of
loving; every woman is or is able to think she is, and that’s enough
in a great many cases. Oh, you’ll find the man sooner or later, and
I--well, I shall wish you every happiness and be godfather to the
kids. Nice little flirt’s kids, with pretty hair like yours. Now, I’d
better go away to the Temple and make that will, as I’ve quite made up
my mind to die a bachelor.”
“Nonsense,” said Alice sharply, more touched than she liked to own; “I
won’t even be friends with you if you go on like that. Leave things
open. Not for me, of course. It must be quite understood that I don’t
accept any such sacrifice of your life as waiting for me would entail.
Believe me, I know myself, and I know, somehow, deep down, that I
shall never fall in love with you. That being the case, don’t you
think I should be really behaving rather badly if I allowed you to
think that you could ever melt me by faithful service, and little
things like that?”
“All right. Beggars don’t choose. You shall have the faithful service
all the same, and it shall not hope to melt you. Will that suit you?”
“We’ll leave it at that, then,” said Alice, permitting the young and
promising barrister to kiss her hand, and devote his wits and energies
and the rest of his life to her use. She could always find work for
him.
He did it all as he had said. He was thus able to be “about the
house.” That was his retaining fee. Whether it was painful to him or
not in his present state of mind to see so much of Alice Damer, it was
a fact that he did have to meet her continually. She sent little
business-like notes round to his chambers nearly every day--short,
sensible, not encouraging notes. He made all the arrangements for
their journeys and their parties and their entertaining of their
friends. He saw her mother and herself off to the Continent every year
when they went to do their cure, was attentive at the carriage door,
bought the railway literature, and pumped up the air cushions. He
could always be counted upon to be odd man at a dinner party, and if
it was humanly possible, and sometimes when it was inhumanly
impossible, threw over any other important engagement that he might
have had--important to himself, be it understood. His clerk thought he
led a “dog’s life.” What Everard thought was never recorded. What
Alice thought was simply this, that Everard liked doing little things
for her and was by temperament a born bachelor, although he still
cultivated that touching delusion that he was lonely and wanted a
companion. It was only that he wanted her, and seeing her this way,
every day off and on, was really the pabulum his soul cried for; other
and more full-blooded men would not have been content with so merely
spiritual a sustenance. At any rate, he never showed any tendency to
stray from the portal and outer courts of this austere temple of
respectful worship. Alice had no cause for jealousy. Her victim never
twisted or wriggled on the hook of her attraction, his ready smile on
seeing her flourished as ever, only there was more “drawing” in it, as
expressed by the hatchet lines of his mouth. In short, Everard grew
thin.
His chest was rather narrow. He coughed often and tiresomely. Lung
symptoms seemed to be developing themselves there. Alice, out of
gracious regard for him, had suggested his accompanying her mother and
herself to the Riviera one winter, instead of seeing them off and
falling back into the fog of Charing Cross as usual. He had refused on
the score of his pressing work, promising, however, to wear a
respirator on the very bad days.
It was a pity he had not gone with them that time. For all that she
was a flirt, and men were her material; Alice didn’t know them at all.
She met a man out at Cap Martin, a man Everard would have seen through
at a glance. This common adventurer made love to her; he managed to
engage the poor flirt’s affections. There was nothing in it, no
magnetism. He was a better flirt than she was, that was all, and while
Alice had money, he had none.
She returned, and confided her woes. Everard had his work cut out for
him. He interviewed this handsome predatory person, and succeeded in
retrieving Alice’s letters for her. It was a supreme bit of service,
and Alice was truly grateful to him. The wretch went out of her life,
leaving her in a rather deplorable condition of nerves and mind.
And Everard threw himself into the situation as no man who is not
deeply attached to a woman unpicturesquely lovesick for another could
have done. He visited her every day, and comforted and consoled her by
allowing her to talk about it all. Alice’s grief furnished the theme
for many a dreary summer’s afternoon, when Everard used to take her up
the river to distract her mind. It was a trip she had always firmly
refused to take with him in the old days on the score of propriety, an
excuse that masked dread of boredom. Boredom was not in it now--it was
acute tragedy. Poor Alice forgot all propriety when once she was towed
well out into mid stream. There she gave way and allowed the echoes of
Datchet and Laleham to echo with her sobs. For she had been awfully
hard hit. Once, indeed, Everard remembered, but with no pleasurable
sense of a lover’s guerdon gained, she had leaned forward in the boat
with the abandon of despair and kissed her patient confidant. It was
the only woman’s kiss Everard had ever received in his life, and it
had tasted of salt tears! Still, it was a love symbol, the nearest
Alice could do in the line he wished, or had wished, for perhaps he
did not now desire her quite so urgently as he had done.
Everard had never been handsome at the best of times, but that summer
season rang the final knell of his good looks. His crow’s feet and his
cheek and jaw lines were awful--Alice herself noticed them.
“I believe it is you, Everard, who are going to break down now!” she
said to him once when it was all over, her misbegotten love buried
fathoms deep, and she cared to look round her a little and notice what
other people were doing.
The very violence of her passion had perhaps caused the flame to burn
itself out in this young lady of the world, this parlour warrior, this
heroine of a hundred ball-room fights. At any rate, her emotional
crisis passed away, leaving her who was already hard a little harder
than before to Everard’s business precautions and his adroit playing
of animated safety-valve to the deserted one. Alice, luckily for her,
had not needed to confide in a member of her own sex.
Her zest for “the noble game” of flirtation had died down, too. She
was less interested in men, and rather more interested in herself than
she had been, and condescended to enjoy a party, even if she came away
from it without the tendrils of a heart of sorts reaching after her.
Her superficial bloom returned; she had never lost, only temporarily
mislaid it. She was a fundamentally good-looking woman, with neat,
regular features, a good figure and perfect constitution to fall back
on. To Everard’s satisfaction she now proved the validity of these
fine assets of beauty.
But she had spoken a true word in jest. Everard Jenkyns went and had a
bout of brain fever. He was popularly supposed to have broken down
from overwork.
Alice Damer and her mother were most kind and solicitous, and as fussy
about him as they could be without setting the public tongue
a-wagging. Alice now worshipped on the altar of convention again, and
would not have been seen up the river with Everard or near his rooms
in Paper Buildings for anything. Her mother was old and unwieldy. So
they “wrote.” They were quite careful--but as it was, old friends
opined that Miss Damer was going to settle down and take up with her
old and tried suitor. When taxed with this by the ill-bred privileged
she maintained boldly that there was nothing in it, that she and Mr.
Jenkyns thoroughly understood each other. So they did. Everard was
grateful without any expectation of favours to come, and thanked her
prettily for grapes and books and things.
He recovered, and went about his own business as usual. Alice’s
business was not pressing just now, so the two rather lost sight of
each other, Alice holding him in reserve for future extremity. She
supposed, sometimes aloud, that he was “busy getting on” and making up
for the time lost in his illness. There could be no woman in it?
“Rather a wreck--poor old Jenks!” his friends observed with affection,
for he was a general favourite with men, and most unfairly persisted
in attributing his state, not to the illness he had undergone, but to
Alice Damer’s fast-and-loose playing. She heard this, but tossed her
head, confident in the good understanding that subsisted between her
and her slave.
“I have never encouraged Everard. He knows I haven’t,” she declared to
her mother.
“He says so. I think you have been quite horrid to him, Alice!” was
the old lady’s single solitary pronouncement on the situation. She
said this lying on her bed during what was to prove her last illness.
Alice was gentle and kind, but repressed all sentimental leanings on
the part of the invalid, who had a mother’s natural wish to see a
vagrant-hearted daughter settled in love and marriage before she died.
“Mother, how often must I tell you that Everard--Mr. Jenkyns--and I
understand each other?” she repeated coldly. She had never chosen to
call Everard by his Christian name, though her mother, who was fond of
him, always insisted on doing so, and Everard obviously liked it, and
clung to this side entry into the intimacy of Alice’s family. It did
not matter. Alice and he, as before said, understood each other, and
old ladies, every one knows, have a way of attaching themselves to
young men, and selecting their daughters’ suitors for them by the
light of their own predilections.
* * * * * * *
And now, her dear, silly old mother was dead and buried, and the
proud, sensible daughter sat all alone in the big Seymour Street
drawing-room, with the three large windows that needed so much stuff
for their curtains, and the beautiful Adams mantelpiece whose shelf
Alice could hardly see over. The Damers had only been in the house a
year; it was freehold, and Alice’s. It was rather a large and dreary
abode for one young woman to inhabit permanently, yet the young woman
thought she meant to do so!
A companion, she sadly supposed, in that case must be procured sooner
or later--later, preferably; if she could have her way, not at all!
Alice was nearly forty, though she looked younger. Why should she not
use her age for all it was worth and establish herself on the easy
footing of years of discretion? Nay, there would be complications
there; her womanly instincts rebelled against the aspersion of
“discretion” and the constant assertion of her maturity which would be
involved in her adoption of that attitude. She would be asked to play
chaperon herself, she would have to “dress old.” No, she looked so
young for her age, it would be ridiculous, when she could as easily
carry the other theory through and pose as a breakable, compromisable
commodity.
She must make up her mind to accept the duenna--she must get in a
woman to quarrel with! It came very hard! She had been used to going
about alone and receiving guests by herself in this house; for the
last year Mrs. Damer had been unable to dine down or preside at her
own table. She appeared beautifully capped and lappeted, to set the
seal of chaperonage for a few minutes before dinner, and then prettily
said good-night to her young guests when dinner was announced. Alice
was quite equal to it, and always invited another woman, preferably
married, to her charming dinners.
A companion would, by the conditions of her office, take part in every
function, “quiet” dinners as well as noisy ones. It would be far worse
than a husband, for a husband would at least leave the tea-hour free.
All Alice’s serious _tête-à-têtes_ had been used to come off then,
in the little room off the stairs, that was really part of the hall
and in no way shut off, but so delightfully private. Little, soft,
rosy cosy late teas had been Alice’s great social weapon; all the more
fetching were these free and easy interviews in that she wasn’t in the
least like an American, though she did see young men alone, with a
mother stowed away somewhere in the upper fastnesses of the house.
This problem of the companion was associated with the first glimmering
in Alice Damer’s mind, of the possibility of a husband’s suiting at
this juncture. The notion of a companion precipitated him. He came in
by the door of convenience.
A husband! Well, who was it wanted to marry her at that moment?
Men’s names, long shelved, came into her mind, but not Everard’s. Like
the poor, she had him always with her. He was always available, but
the others, unaccountably enough, did not rush into the arena of her
requirements at once.
She must be growing old! Did people think her old? She had not noticed
that they did, she could see no sign of “the coming of the crows’
feet,” of which this “backward turn of beaus’ feet” was supposed to be
ominous. For surely, a year ago, plenty of potential husbands lay
ready to her hand?…
The signs of age, if there were any signs, were on the outside. Alice,
internally, felt as fit as ever. She was still game for anything in
the way of social folly, she could sit up as late as any one and dozed
off happily the moment she got home and her head touched the pillow.
She did not have to read in bed or play “patiences” to induce sleep.
Her figure showed no fatal early inclination to “spread,” she didn’t
know what it was to “sit over a fire,” and she proudly refused to
avoid lobster salad or anything else indigestible at supper.…
Unless, indeed, the craving for marriage itself was a sign of age, a
subtle token of the need for support, the birth of an instinct for
clinging?
She rose and looked at herself in the old, unbecoming Empire mirror
that Everard had got for her at a sale at Christie’s once, for he was
a connoisseur. No, very few lines, no look of fatigue, even in a bad
glass! And as much colour in her hair, that poor Everard admired so,
as ever there was!
Poor dear Everard!… No, not poor dear Everard. He had been growing
rather slack lately, and forgot her flowers and fish and game now and
then. He had been kind, of course, and considerate over her mother’s
death, had continually called to inquire, though the presence of
authorized relations in the house had rendered his visits nugatory as
far as she was concerned. Alice was formal about death. She had seen
much of it. Still, she had liked to see his card in the hall, though
unable to ask him to come in because of Aunts Polly and Gertrude. It
had been an awful, unmentionable time, the sort of life that everybody
must lead at times, when Death is in the house; but now it was over
and the aunts had gone home, making her promise to give them a month
at Taunton next week, when she had got things a little straight and
done seeing lawyers. And that was over, too. Her nerves, that had been
a little upset, though she had expected her mother’s death, had
righted themselves, too. She cried about her mother every day, but
only once in the day, and she began to think she should like to see
some one who wasn’t “family.” Why should she not begin with Everard?
When the companion had come, or the husband, she would have very
little opportunity for _tête-à-têtes_ with him. Unless he was that
husband? Well, we should see!…
She settled that it was to be to-morrow, a quite impromptu invitation.
If it were ceremonious she could not have him alone, and she wanted
him alone. She set about ordering a nice little dinner for him,
consonant with his tastes, which unluckily she did not know. Everard
had dined in Seymour Street before, but only on big formal occasions,
never alone, so far as she remembered.
Everard replied in fairly good time. He did not say he was previously
engaged--for he knew that she would never forgive him for not throwing
the other people for her--but ill. At least, not ill, but with a very
bad cold. As the dinner, she had said, was quite informal, might he
ask her to postpone it a day or two until he had a little got the
better of his cough, which would make him a rather tiresome guest,
apart from the danger of chill, to which he found himself more liable
than formerly. He would like to suggest Saturday night--his birthday?…
“What a funny old-maidish letter,” was Alice’s comment; “all about his
cold and that! I never knew Everard notice a cold before? I suppose a
man gets finnicky, living so much alone. He’s no exception to the
rule. I’ll have to wake him up a little.”
His cool deferring of her invitation afforded him just that touch of
masterful self-assertiveness Everard had always lacked in his dealings
with this young woman. She now firmly made up her mind to marry him,
that is, if he continued to carry things off so well. He would be
better than a companion, and--there seemed to be nobody else!
At a quarter to eight on Saturday evening she was all ready, dressed
in black and looking very handsome, on one side of the brightly
burning fire, for there was a slight touch of frost in the air. Her
senses were alert, she found herself actually listening for the sound
of his hansom driving up to the door. Quite loverlike, she thought,
with a little laugh, to herself! She remembered the last sentence in
Everard’s old-maidish letter, which she passed over on first reading.
He had informed her that this was his birthday. She welcomed this as a
touch of sentiment--the sentiment she had not in the old days been
solicitous to cultivate in him, but had carelessly let die. She wished
she could remember exactly how old he was to-day? If she had been able
to allude to it it would have pleased him.…
No use, she could not recapture the knowledge. She supposed he might
be somewhere about forty? And he was late! How dared he be late, for
her? Was there a fog perhaps?
She went to the window, parted the heavy curtains, and looked out.
Rather misty--but not enough to prevent Everard from keeping time, if
he had started early enough to dress! How rude if he hadn’t? She
remained drumming on the pane with her long, slender fingers, looking
down into the empty roadway.
She had not heard the door of the drawing-room open, but suddenly,
before she had time to turn away from the window, Everard stood beside
her with his handkerchief held up to his face, a familiar gesture of
his for which she had often reproved him.
“How are you?” she asked him, rather frigidly. “What a draught you
seem to have brought in with you!”
“May I shut the door?” Everard said, suiting his action to the words.
“Come to the fire, won’t you? You are cold.”
She spoke more cordially, but, in spite of her definite intention to
propose herself to Everard that evening, the curious sense of physical
alienation which she knew now had held them apart all these years,
returned to her with tenfold vigour. Her instinct had been right.
Physical leanings counted for something, and there was no real
affinity between them. Alice shivered a little, for she was a
sensible, business-like woman, and she firmly meant to over-ride the
absurd and awkward shrinking, and marry him. Her mind once made up,
she never went back.
He was holding his thin, blue-veined hands to the blaze. His eyes
seemed to avoid hers.
“Yes, that’s right,” she said. “I hope you have got a good appetite? I
have ordered such a nice little dinner for you.”
“How kind of you! But really, I eat very little except fish. My doctor
has cut me down remorselessly.”
“And do you attend to him? You never used.”
“I have to attend to his orders. I am in rather a bad way, Alice. The
base of one lung is quite solid… and the other is gone.”
“Nonsense! I believe you’re as right as I am, barring this little bit
of a cold, that you’ll soon get rid of. You haven’t coughed once since
you were in the room, do you know? I fancy that living alone as you
do, you go and get ideas about yourself, and then rush out and call in
a doctor who frightens you.”
“May be,” he said slowly. “Loneliness certainly doesn’t improve one’s
perspective. And I haven’t been inside any one else’s house for a
month.”
“There now, what did I say? And what do you do, when you are at home?
Sit over the fire and grizzle, and think of your sins--and mine, eh?”
“Not yours--much!” said he, with a chilling effect of partial
forgiveness which benumbed Alice, whose fighting spirit was up in arms
to bring him to her feet again.
The maid announced dinner, and Alice took his recalcitrant arm, which
gave her the sense of being glued to his side. On the way downstairs
she thought, “Poor dear, he will want civilizing all over again!”
“You’ll drink champagne?” she suggested, when they were both seated.
“No, water, please.” He added, speaking to the maid, “Thanks, no
soup!”
He allowed a helping of fish to be placed on his plate, but he did not
eat a mouthful, that Alice could see.
The dreary dinner progressed. Alice Damer ate for two, and every now
and then looked furtively at the man she had made.
It was her fault; she saw it now. This man had been her slave; she had
been his inhuman master. She had laid him on the rack, she had starved
his heart, for bread she had given him a stone. This was what their
famous understanding had amounted to; the ruin of a man, a pale, thin,
hectic mask, sitting opposite her, pretending to eat--the play of his
thin wrists that manipulated his knife and fork drove her frantic--his
sullen eyes refusing to meet hers, as in tones that only faintly
represented the rich, soft, legal, measured voice she used to know, he
responded gently but dully to all her conventional openings, and
allowed the subjects she started so painstakingly to drop one by one.
What would the servants think? Little pearly drops of dismay and
effort broke out on her own white forehead; the effort she was making
was too much for even her social fortitude. Yes, she knew she had
behaved badly to him, but he might let her down more easily! Vexing of
him! For what she had to do, must be done, in spite of difficulties.
The last course had been removed, two punctilious, slightly shocked
maids had disappeared, and the couple were left alone over the walnuts
and the wine.
She spoke to him quite crossly, in a voice she could hardly command.
“Aren’t you interested in _anything_, Everard?”
“Yes, dear, in some things--for instance in your calling me by my
Christian name--for the first time,” he replied quietly.
Alice felt uncomfortable. Such a direct thrust from this petrifaction
suggested that he had seen through her, who hardly realized herself,
and what she was doing.
“Oughtn’t I?--I forgot.”
“Oh, don’t apologize, it doesn’t matter.… I wanted you to badly, once,
do you remember? Strange, when it does come--one is more or less past
caring----”
“Coffee?” she asked. “I make it myself now, as you see!”
“Yes, please.”
She made it. She handed it. She even let her fingers graze his as she
passed him the cup. It was literally the first time she had ever
practised her own special art of flirtation in Everard’s connection.
Then there fell a silence between them. The patent coffee machine
ceased to bubble. Its duties were sped.… Alice, sipping a restorative
draught of the tonic liquid, broke the silence bravely. She felt that
she owed it to him to take the initiative.
“I am feeling very lonely--now,” she said softly.
“Poor child, you must be,” he answered gravely.
“And I think I--I understand a little better how you must have felt
all these years.”
He lifted his fishy eyes for the first time to hers. “Yes, but I am
used to it, now.”
“But, Everard, it hasn’t done you any good?”
“No, I daresay not.”
“Everard, do you think--now--do you believe we--you and I, I mean,
would have got on together?”
“How do you mean? In what relation?”
“I mean--in the usual relation--if I had wanted what you wanted?”
“Well, you know, I thought so, then.”
“Not now?”
“No, not now. Did I not tell you that I had grown philosophical?
Whatever is, is good.”
“Oh, dear! Then you tell me that you think it is good, your living
alone, with not a soul to talk to, or exchange an idea with, no one to
look after you when you are ill, as you are now, but just to sit
mooning over a dying fire----”
The ghost of a shrug was vouchsafed her. “Oh, I keep my fire up, and I
mix my own grog and drink it, and warm my own slippers. It isn’t so
bad.”
“Everard!” She rose to her feet and he imitated her, supposing that a
move to the drawing-room was contemplated. “No, I am not going up yet,
not till we have had this out. You do make it very difficult for me.
It is as if you had lost the key--you will not understand _à
demi-mot_!”
“Why should it be _à demi-mot_?” he repeated after her, catching,
however, none of her fire. He sat down again and motioned her to do
the same. Then he spoke, dully, but very clearly.
“Let us talk quietly, and not get excited over it. A man in my
condition has no time for vagueness. I do understand, quite well, and
I will show you that I do. You are willing to marry me now?”
“Yes,” she cried breathlessly. “Yes, poor Everard! And you--you don’t
want me to any more?”
“I want nothing! Don’t think of me. Let us consider only you. Now tell
me, would this marriage be of any use to you?”
“Use to me to be married to you, Everard?” She started.
“Sorry, but I can only put it from the point of view of utility. My
personal desires are dead.”
“Ah, I killed them.”
“Yes, my dear, you killed them. I can’t pretend to any extravagant
feelings of joy at what I suppose we must call your capitulation. You
know, they give better terms to beleaguered fortresses the sooner they
surrender? You, Alice, in your pride and impregnability left it too
long. The wine got musty in the bottle, the cord got frayed and
rotten. I am no good to you or anybody. My life is done. I thought all
this out as I lay there--wrote some of it down even. I never thought I
should get a chance of telling it all to you in person. I could not
rest. In my delirium----”
“Delirium! Oh, Everard, what nonsense!”
He put her exclamations aside. “Well, I have told it you now, and I
shall rest in peace.”
“If it’s any consolation to you, you have had a good scold--a good go
at me!” Alice cried angrily, adding with bitterness, “And plus the
satisfaction of refusing me!”
“But not at all!” he said, turning surprised, lack-lustre eyes on her.
“If you think a marriage with me would do you any earthly good, you
shall have it. I ought to have made that clear----”
“I wanted to do good to _you_!” she wailed.
“Too late for that. I won’t pretend, even to salve your conscience,
Alice, that I care anything at all about it. Besides, your conscience
has no need of salving. You were perfectly right not to marry me, in
your heyday and mine, if you could not love me; you are very kind and
perfectly in order to suggest it now, as a way of making me useful to
you, as you have done in the past. I am at your service now, as ever.
I am reserved to your use, as good as married to you already, though
not you to me, and quite ready to go to church with you to-morrow, if
you decide that we shall do so. I am your property.… Only, my dear, it
is a pity you tied me up in brown paper and left me on the shelf so
long. Fatal delay! Unused, I deteriorated! You have had me warehoused
so many years that now, when you choose to untie me and take me down,
you find that you have to make allowance for depreciation of stock. I
think I wrote that to you--or said it!… How it did amuse Mrs.
Clarkson!”
“Who’s Mrs. Clarkson?” she asked through her tears.
He did not answer, but rose, and took her in his arms. Pale flickers
of posthumous triumph lighted up his kind, lined face. Weakly
victorious, he enfolded her, and she shrunk and shivered out of his
embrace.
“What is it, dear?”
“Nothing, oh, nothing! Only, I don’t believe I _can_ marry you,
Everard, after all!”
He did not ask her why, and she could hardly have told him that the
momentary contact had affirmed the sense of physical aversion she had
always thought she felt for him. Now she was sure. Oh, what was she to
do?…
She stood timorously away from him, as it were freed from the clasp of
a corpse. How could she tell him that? And then she reflected
consolingly that according to his own words marriage meant so little
to him now, that she need perhaps never kiss him when they were
married.
Her colour returned a little as she formulated this evasion.… Many a
conscientious woman has forced herself before now to marry a wreck, to
pay conscience money.
There was a good fire burning, she motioned him to one of two
leather-covered chairs drawn up on opposite sides of the fireplace.
“It’s warm here. We won’t go upstairs. I am really getting rather
frightened about you, Everard. I was incredulous at first, but I do
believe now, that you _have_ been ill.”
“Yes, I have been very ill.”
“But why come out? Why didn’t you send an excuse--ask me to come to
you?”
“Would you have come? Well, as a matter of fact, a telegram was sent
you. Mrs. Clarkson _said_ she had sent it.”
“Mrs. Clarkson--your landlady--your bedmaker? Oh, dear, how unkind you
must have thought me!”
“No, I don’t know that I thought anything about it. I said she might
send it, and then it passed out of my mind entirely. Everything did go
clean out all at once, somehow… it’s a most unusual sensation--very
like death, I should think.”
“Everard, I believe you ought to be in bed now, you ought not to be
here--pleasant as it is. Go home, and I’ll come and nurse you
to-morrow. I can safely do that. I am--engaged to you!” She spoke with
mouth awry, putting the greatest constraint upon herself.
He smiled. “Awfully kind of you, dear, but I’ve got a nurse already.
Mrs. Clarkson is a nurse.”
“Everard! you’re dreaming! Do you mean a white-capped creature, with
starched cuffs? How could you be here if that were so?”
“I don’t know, but I _am_ here, you see. Mrs. Clarkson certainly did
send you a wire to say I couldn’t come. She asked you to come to me, I
believe, though I forbade her. As I told you”--he sighed--“I forgot it
all.…”
“But then why have you come, and why haven’t I got the wire?”
“Wrongly addressed, I fancy. I was too ill to speak much. She looked
the address up in my book and I have only your old one there.”
“It shows how I’ve neglected you.”
“But it’s as well you didn’t come. The nurse is excellent. These hired
people do best because they have no feelings, whether it’s merely
putting on a poultice, or finally laying you out----”
“Oh, don’t, Everard!”
He rose. He looked preoccupied.
“It’s after midnight. Do you realize how late we have been talking,
right into the night? The daylight will surprise us in a minute!… Oh,
dear me! I must be off.” He rose, and stood, wavering like a
wind-blown taper. “Good-night, dear Alice, I shan’t forget you have
kissed me--once in your life. Oh, no, twice; once on the river--that
day, the twelfth of July. I loved you--I wish you had loved me too!”
“I did--I do,” she averred, her lips chattering.
“Too late!” said he, taking a woollen comforter out of his pocket.
“Everard, I don’t think you are fit to go home alone. Let me send some
one with you. Or stay here, the servants are not gone to bed, and
there’s a spare room, slept in only last night. Aunt Polly----”
“And your reputation?”
“I’ll risk that,” she said. “I’ve behaved too badly to you not to make
you some amends.”
“But it’s all nonsense. I am all right. Strength has been given
me----”
“How funnily you talk! Well, since you _will_ be foolhardy and go back
to your nurse--is she pretty? You know I don’t believe in her. You are
thinking of your landlady, who’s been mothering you a little, as she
should.” She put out her hand and rang the bell. “A hansom, please,
for Mr. Jenkyns.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “I meant to walk.”
“Well, you aren’t going to be allowed to walk! You must take no risk.
Have a good night’s rest, and be well enough to marry me to-morrow--by
special licence.” She looked up in his face with terror-stricken
audacity. How could she do it!
“Would you really?” He was out in the hall by now, and the maid was
whistling for a cab. “Well, we’ll see!”
“I’ll come to you at eleven in Paper Buildings. I know the way. I’ve
been there once.”
“Dear Alice, how unmaidenly you are grown all of a sudden! I like it,
though. It is some compensation----”
“But will you really marry me if I come?”
“If I can,” he answered gravely.
The hansom had come rattling up. She gave a twist to the comforter.
“Keep it well over your mouth.…”
“I will kiss your hand first.”
She controlled herself. His touch was pain to her. She wailed, as the
hall door closed--
“Oh, I don’t love him! He is dead. I have killed him! I’ll marry him,
that is my vow!”
* * * * * * *
The strayed telegram was brought her next morning on the tray with her
tea. It had been as Everard had surmised, wrongly addressed to the old
house. It ran--
“Mr. Jenkyns unable to go to you to-night. Ill. Come if prefer.”
“She must have been in a rare fright when she wrote that, whoever she
is!” thought Alice, who could not bring herself to believe in the
presence of a nurse in 82 Paper Buildings.
Her exaltation of last night had left her. Everard was such a wreck,
poor dear! Every bit of charm, and he never had much, had departed and
left him sear, dry, stupid and unsympathetic. But she meant to marry
him, and repair her sins, and be able to live without a companion.
Even an invalid husband was better than a hired solacium. She would go
and see him this morning, but of course they could not really be
married at once, out of hand, like that. In a week or so, after a few
preparations had been made and when he had been nursed up and made to
look a little less ghastly. She could not allow a ghost to lead her to
the altar. Then they would go off somewhere warm for the honeymoon, to
the Riviera or Egypt, and Everard would revive under the combined
influences of sun and agreeable society, and love--that is, if he was
still capable of feeling the kindly glow of a delayed, but at last
gratified passion.
Perhaps he was not quite so dead after all; perhaps in time she would
find herself able to submit to his kisses without a politely
suppressed shudder? Though she could easily account for that symptom
of hers. Starved physically and mentally, as he seemed to be, what
wonder that all the magnetism had gone from him? Alice, none other,
would nurse him back to life, make a charming, attentive, affectionate
husband of him, one whose kisses she would get not to mind so much.
She drove down to the Temple and dismissed her carriage at the gate on
the Embankment, and walked up, quite unnecessarily, for Everard’s
rooms in Paper Buildings had a road in front where a carriage might
stand. But she did not mind walking. It was a lovely morning. The
famous fountain in the court was playing merrily, and suggested
springing hopes of all sorts--and possibilities of revival. She walked
along to Everard’s rooms with a light step, laughing a little to
herself at the thought that she was going to earn for him the
reputation of being “a dog.” She did not suppose many young ladies
sought out the dry student lawyer in his rooms! His landlady, or
laundress, whichever it was, would be shocked, and a good thing too.
His character was altogether too immaculate, and a picturesque smudge
or so would improve it in the eyes of men. Alice had all the sweet,
headlong depravity of mind of the excessively innocent. Using her
tortoise-shell pince-nez, she read the name of Everard Jenkyns printed
on the wall on the right-hand side of the open door of number
eighty-two, and plunging into the dimness, began to ascend. She met a
man on the first landing who looked like a doctor. He seemed in a
hurry to get to his hansom, which she had observed standing there. He
merely peered in her face and passed on before she could ask him if he
was the doctor, and if so, how Mr. Jenkyns was?
She went on ascending till she found the right door, knocked, and
stood there, breathless.…
A foolish fear assailed her as she waited. She found herself dreading
the first sight of Everard as he would appear on opening the door to
her; she remembered with annoyance the poor, lank, gawky face, which
always made her think, as she used to tell her mother, of a boy’s
compendious clasp-knife, with all the blades open! He would smile, of
course, and look pleased to see her; it was a strong step for haughty
Alice Damer, whom he had sighed for so long, to visit a man in his
rooms at half-past eleven and ask him to marry her!