THE THING OR THE MAN.
"Well?"
It was the morning of the next day, Mrs. Dennison sat in her place in
the little garden on the cliff, and Willie Ruston stood just at the turn
of the mounting path, where Marjory had paused to look at her friend.
"Well, here I am," said he.
She did not move, but held out her hand. He advanced and took it.
"I met your children down below," he went on, "but they would hardly
speak to me. Why don't they like me?"
"Never mind the children."
"But I do mind. Most children like me."
"How is everything?"
"In London? Oh, first-rate. I saw your husband the----"
"I mean, how is Omofaga?"
"Capital; and here?"
"It has been atrociously dull. What could you expect?"
"Well, I didn't expect that, or I shouldn't have come."
"Are the stores started?"
"I thought it was holiday time? Well, yes, they are."
She had been looking at him ever since he came, and at last he noticed
it.
"Do I look well?" he asked in joke.
"You know, it's rather a pleasure to look at you," she replied. "I've
been feeling so shut in," and she pushed her hair back from her
forehead, and glanced at him with a bright smile. "And it's really going
well?"
"So well," he nodded, "that everything's quiet, and the preparations
well ahead. In three months" (and his enthusiasm began to get hold of
him) "I shall be off; in two more I hope to be actually there, and
then--why, forward!"
She had listened at first with sparkling eyes; as he finished, her lips
drooped, and she leant back in her chair. There was a moment's silence;
then she said in a low voice,
"Three months!"
"It oughtn't to take more than two, if Jackson has arranged things
properly for me."
Evidently he was thinking of his march up country; but it was the first
three mouths that were in her mind. She had longed to see the thing
really started, hastened by all her efforts the hour that was to set him
at work, and dreamt of the day when he should set foot in Omofaga. Now
all this seemed assured, imminent, almost present; yet there was no
exultation in her tone.
"I meant, before you started," she said slowly.
He looked up in surprise.
"I can't manage sooner," he said, defending himself. "You know I don't
waste time."
He was still off the scent; and even she herself was only now, for the
first time and as yet dimly, realising her own mind.
"I have to do everything myself," he said. "Dear old Carlin can't walk a
step alone, and the Board"--he paused, remembering that Harry Dennison
was on the Board--"well, I find it hard to make them move as quick as I
want. I had to fix a date, and I fixed the earliest I could be
absolutely sure of."
"Why don't they help you more?" she burst out indignantly.
"Oh, I don't want help."
"Yes, but I helped you!" she exclaimed, leaning forward, full again of
animation.
"I can't deny it," he laughed. "You did indeed."
"Yes," she said, and became again silent.
"_Apropos_," said he. "I want to bring someone to see you this
afternoon--Baron von Geltschmidt."
"Who?"
"He was the German capitalist, you know."
"What! Why, what's he doing here?"
"He came to see me--so he says. May I bring him?"
"Why, yes. He's a great--a great man, isn't he?"
"Well, he's a great financier."
"And he came to see you?"
"So he says."
"And don't you believe him?"
"I don't know. I want your opinion," answered Ruston, with a smile.
"Are you serious?" she asked quickly. "I mean, do you really want my
opinion, or are you being polite?"
"I don't think _you_ a fool, you know," said Willie Ruston.
She flashed a glance of understanding, mingled with reproach, at him,
and, leaning forward again, said,
"Has he come about Omofaga?"
"That you might tell me too--or will you want all Omofaga if you do so
much?"
For a moment she smiled in recollection. Then her face grew sad.
"Much of Omofaga I shall have!" she said.
"Oh, I'll write," he promised carelessly.
"Write!" she repeated in low, scornful tones. "Would you like to be
written to about it? It'll happen to you, and I'm to be written to!"
"Well, then, I won't write."
"Yes, do write."
Willie Ruston smiled tolerantly, but his smile was suddenly cut short,
for Mrs. Dennison, not looking at him but out to sea, asked herself in a
whisper, which was plainly not meant for him though he heard it,
"How shall I bear it?"
He had been tilting his chair back; he brought the front legs suddenly
on to the ground again and asked,
"Bear what?"
She started to find he had heard, but attempted no evasion.
"When you've gone," she answered in simple directness.
He looked at her with raised eyebrows. There was no embarrassment in her
face, and no tremble in her voice; and no passion could he detect in
either.
"How flat it will all be," she added in a tone of utter weariness.
He was half-pleased, half-piqued at the way she seemed to look at him.
It not only failed to satisfy him, but stirred a new dissatisfaction. It
hinted much, but only, it seemed to him, to negative it. It left Omofaga
still all in all, and him of interest only because he would talk of and
work for Omofaga, and keep the Omofaga atmosphere about her. Now this
was wrong, for Omofaga existed for him, not he for Omofaga; that was the
faith of true disciples.
"You don't care about me," he said. "It's all the Company--and only the
Company because it gives you something to do. Well, the Company'll go on
(I hope), and you'll hear about our doings."
She turned to him with a puzzled look.
"I don't know what it is," she said with a shake of her head. Then, with
a sudden air of understanding, as though she had caught the meaning that
before eluded her, she cried, "I'm just like you, I believe. If I went
to Omofaga, and you had to stay----"
"Oh, it would be the deuce!" he laughed.
"Yes, yes. Well, it is--the deuce," she answered, laughing in return.
But in a moment she was grave again.
Her attraction for him--the old special attraction of the unknown and
unconquered--came strongly upon him, and mingled more now with pleasure
in her. Her silence let him think; and he began to think how wasted she
was on Harry Dennison. Another thought followed, and to that he gave
utterance.
"But you've lots of things you could do at home; you could have plenty
to work at, and plenty of--of influence, and so on."
"Yes, but--oh, it would come to Mr. Belford! Who wants to influence Mr.
Belford? Besides, I've grown to love it now, haven't you?"
"Omofaga?"
"Yes! It's so far off--and most people don't believe in it."
"No, confound them! I wish they did!"
"Do you? I'm not sure I do."
She was so absorbed that she had not heard an approaching step, and was
surprised to see Ruston jump up while her last sentence was but half
said.
"My dear Miss Valentine," he cried, his face lighting up with a smile of
pleasure, "how pleasant to meet you again!"
There was no mistaking the sincerity of his greeting. Marjory blushed as
she gave him her hand, and he fixed his eyes on her in undisguised
approval.
"You're looking splendid," he said. "Is it the air or the bathing or
what?"
Perhaps it was both in part, but, more than either, it was a change that
worked outwards from within, and was giving to her face the expression
without which mere beauty of form or colour is poor in allurement. The
last traces of what Lord Semingham meant by "insipidity" had been chased
away. Ruston felt the change though he could not track it.
Marjory, a bad dissembler, greeted him nervously, almost coldly; she was
afraid to let her gaze rest on him or on Mrs. Dennison for long, lest it
should hint her secret. Her manner betrayed such uneasiness that Ruston
noticed it. Mrs. Dennison did not, for something in Ruston's face had
caught her attention. She had seen many expressions in his eyes as he
looked at her--of sympathy, amusement, pleasure, even (what had pleased
her most) puzzle, but never what she saw now. The look now was a man's
homage to beauty--it differs from every other--a lover hardly seems to
have it unless his love be beautiful--and she had never yet seen it when
he looked at her. She turned away towards the sea, grasping the arm of
her chair with a sudden grip that streaked her fingers red and white.
Marjory also saw, and a wild hope leapt up in her that her task needed
not the doing. But a moment later Ruston was back in Omofaga--young Sir
Walter being his bridge for yet another transit.
"How's Mr. Dennison?" asked Marjory, when he gave her an opportunity.
"Oh, he's all right. You'd have heard, I suppose, if he hadn't been?"
It was true. Marjory recognised the inappropriateness of her question,
but Mrs. Dennison came to the rescue.
"Marjory wants a personal impression," she said. "You know she and my
husband are great allies!"
"Well," laughed Ruston, "he was a little cross with me because I would
come to Dieppe. I should have felt the same in his place; but he's well
enough, I think."
"I was going down to find Lady Semingham," said Marjory. "Are you coming
down this morning, Maggie?"
"Maggie" was something new--adopted at Mrs. Dennison's request.
"I think not, dear."
"I am," said Ruston, taking up his walking stick. "I shall be up with
the Baron this afternoon, Mrs. Dennison. Come along, Miss Valentine.
We've been having no end of palaver about Omofaga," and as they
disappeared down the cliff Mrs. Dennison heard his voice talking eagerly
to Marjory.
She felt her heart beating quickly. She had to conquer a strange
impulse to rise and hurry after them. She knew that she must be
jealous--jealous, she said to herself, trying to laugh, that he should
talk about Omofaga to other people. Nonsense! Why, he was always talking
of it! There was a stronger feeling in her, less vague, of fuller force.
It had come on her when he spoke of his going to Africa, but then it was
hard to understand, for with all her heart she thought she was still
bent on his going. It spoke more clearly now, stirred by the threat of
opposition. At first it had been the thing--the scheme--the idea--that
had caught her; she had taken the man for the thing's sake, because to
do such a thing proved him a man after her pattern. But now, as she sat
in the little garden, she dimly traced her change--she loved the scheme
because it was his. She did not shrink from testing it. "Yes," she
murmured, "if he gave it up now, I should go on with him to something
else." Then came another step--why should he not give it up? Why should
he go into banishment--he who might go near to rule England? Why should
he empty her life by going? But if he went--and she could not persuade
herself that she had power to stop his going--he must go from her side,
it must be she who gave him the stirrup-cup, she towards whom he would
look across the sea, she for whom he would store up his brief, grim
tales of victory, in whose eyes he would see the reflection of his
triumphs. Could she fill such a place in his life? She knew that she did
not yet, but she believed in herself. "I feel large enough," she said
with a smile.
Yet there was something that she had not yet touched in him--the thing
which had put that look in his eyes, a thing that for the moment at
least Marjory Valentine had touched. Why had she not? She answered, with
a strong clinging to self-approbation, that it was because she would
not. She told herself that she had asked nothing from her intercourse
with him save the play of mind on mind--it was her mind and nothing else
that her own home failed to satisfy. She recalled the scornful disgust
with which she had listened to Semingham when he hinted to her that
there was only one way to rule a man. It seemed less disgusting to her
now than when he spoke. For, in the light of that look in his eyes,
there stood revealed a new possibility--always obvious, never hitherto
thought of--that another would take and wield the lower mighty power
that she had disdained to grasp, and by the might of the lower wrest
from her the higher. Was not the lower solidly based in nature, the
higher a fanciful structure resting in no sound foundation? The moment
this spectre took form before her--the moment she grasped that the
question might lie between her and another--that it might be not what
she would take but what she could keep--her heart cried out, to ears
that shrank from the tumultuous reckless cry, that less than all was
nothing, that, if need be, all must be paid for all. And, swift on the
horror of her discovery, came the inevitable joy in it--joy that will be
silenced by no reproofs, not altogether abashed by any shame, that no
pangs can rob utterly of its existence--a thing to smother, to hide, to
rejoice in.
Yet she would not face unflinchingly what her changing mind must mean.
She tried to put it aside--to think of something, ah! of anything else,
of anything that would give her foothold.
"I love my husband," she found herself saying. "I love poor old Harry
and the children." She repeated it again and again, praying the
shibboleth to show its saving virtue. It was part of her creed, part of
her life, to be a good wife and mother--part of her traditions that
women who were not that were nothing at all, and that there was nothing
a woman might take in exchange for this one splendid, all-comprehending
virtue. To that she must stand--it was strange to be driven to argue
with herself on such a point. She mused restlessly as she sat; she
listened eagerly for her children's footsteps mounting the hill; she
prayed an interruption to rescue her from her thoughts. Just now she
would think no more about it; it was thinking about it that did all the
harm. Yet while she was alone she could not choose but surrender to the
thought of it--to the thought of what a price she must pay for her
traditions and her creed. The payment, she cried, would leave life an
empty thing. Yet it must be paid--if it must. Was it now come to that?
Was this the parting of the roads?
"I must, yet I cannot! I must not, yet I must." It was the old clash of
powers, the old conflict of commands, the old ruthless will of nature
that makes right too hard and yet fastens anguish upon sin--that makes
us yearn for and hate the higher while we love and loathe the lower.