As she finished speaking Eve did not lower her eyes. To her there was no
suggestion of shame in her thoughts or her words; but to Loder, watching
and listening, there was a perilous meaning contained in both.
“Thankfulness?” he repeated, slowly. From his newly stirred sense of
responsibility pity and sympathy were gradually rising. He had never
seen Eve as he saw her now, and his vision was all the clearer for the
long oblivion. With a poignant sense of compassion and remorse, the
knowledge of her youth came to him--the youth that some women preserve
in the midst of the world, when circumstances have permitted them to see
much but to experience little.
“Thankfulness?” he said again, incredulously.
A slight smile touched her lips. “Yes,” she answered, softly.
“Thankfulness that my trust had been rightly placed.”
She spoke simply and confidently, but the words struck Loder more
sharply than any accusation. With a heavy sense of bitterness and
renunciation he moved slowly forward.
“Eve,” he said, very gently, “you don't know what you say.”
She had lowered her eyes as he came towards her; now again she lifted
them in a swift, upward glance. For the first time since he had entered
the room a slight look of personal doubt and uneasiness showed in her
face. “Why?” she said. “I--I don't understand.”
For a moment he answered nothing. He had found his first explanation
overwhelming; now suddenly it seemed to him that his present difficulty
was more impossible to surmount. “I came here to-night to tell you
something,” he began, at last, “but so far I have only said half--”
“Half?”
“Yes, half.” He repeated the word quickly, avoiding the question in her
eyes. Then, conscious of the need for explanation, he plunged into rapid
speech.
“A fraud like mine,” he said, “has only one safeguard, one
justification--a boundless audacity. Once shake that audacity and the
whole motive power crumbles. It was to make the audacity impossible--to
tell you the truth and make it impossible--that I came to-night. The
fact that you already knew made the telling easier--but it altered
nothing.”
Eve raised her head, but he went resolutely on.
“To-night,” he said, “I have seen into my own life, into my own mind,
and my ideas have been very roughly shaken into new places.
“We never make so colossal a mistake as when we imagine that we know
ourselves. Months ago, when your husband first proposed this scheme
to me, I was, according to my own conception, a solitary being vastly
ill-used by Fate, who, with a fine stoicism, was leading a clean life.
That was what I believed; but there, at the very outset, I deceived
myself. I was simply a man who shut himself up because he cherished
a grudge against life, and who lived honestly because he had a
constitutional distaste for vice. My first feeling when I saw your
husband was one of self-righteous contempt, and that has been my
attitude all along. I have often marvelled at the flood of intolerance
that has rushed over me at sight of him--the violent desire that has
possessed me to look away from his weakness and banish the knowledge of
it; but now I understand.
“I know now what the feeling meant. The knowledge came to me to-night.
It meant that I turned away from his weakness because deep within myself
something stirred in recognition of it. Humanity is really much
simpler than we like to think, and human impulses have an extraordinary
fundamental connection. Weakness is egotism--but so is strength.
Chilcote has followed his vice; I have followed my ambition. It will
take a higher judgment than yours or mine to say which of us has been
the more selfish man.” He paused and looked at her.
She was watching him intently. Some of the meaning in his face had found
a pained, alarmed reflection in her own. But the awe and wonder of the
morning's discovery still colored her mind too vividly to allow of other
considerations possessing their proper value. The thrill of exultation
with which the misgivings born of Chilcote's vice had dropped away
from her mental image of Loder was still too absorbing to be easily
dominated. She loved, and as if by a miracle her love had been
justified! For the moment the justification was all-sufficing. Something
of confidence--something of the innocence that comes not from ignorance
of evil but from a mind singularly uncontaminated--blinded her to the
danger of her position.
Loder, waiting apprehensively for some aid, some expression of opinion,
became gradually conscious of this lack of realization. Moved by a fresh
impulse, he crossed the small space that divided them and caught her
hands.
“Eve,” he said, gently, “I have been trying to analyze myself and give
you the results; but I sha'n't try any more; I shall be quite plain with
you.
“From the first moment I took your husband's place I was ambitious. You
unconsciously aroused the feeling when you brought me Fraide's message
on the first night. You aroused it by your words--but more strongly,
though more obscurely, by your underlying antagonism. On that
night, though I did not know it, I took up my position--I made my
determination. Do you know what that determination was?”
She shook her head.
“It was the desire to stamp out Chilcote's footmarks with my own--to
prove that personality is the great force capable of everything. I
forgot to reckon that when we draw largely upon Fate she generally
extorts a crushing interest.
“First came the wish for your respect; then the desire to stand
well with such men as Fraide--to feel the stir of emulation and
competition--to prove myself strong in the one career I knew myself
really fitted for. For a time the second ambition overshadowed the
first, but the first was bound to reassert itself; and in a moment of
egotism I conceived the notion of winning your enthusiasm as well as
your respect--”
Eve's face, alert and questioning, suddenly paled as a doubt crossed her
mind.
“Then it was only--only to stand well with me?”
“I believed it was only the desire to stand well with you; I believed it
until the night of my speech--if you can credit anything so absurd--then
on that night, as I came up the stairs to the gallery and saw you
standing there, the blindness fell away and I knew that I loved you.” As
he said the last words he released her hands and turned aside, missing
the quick wave of joy and color that crossed her face.
“I knew it, but it made no difference; I was only moved to a higher
self-glorification. I touched supremacy that night. But as we drove home
I experienced the strangest coincidence of my life. You remember the
block in the traffic at Piccadilly?”
Again Eve bent her head.
“Well, when I looked out of the carriage window to discover its cause
the first man I saw was--Chilcote.”
Eve started slightly. This swift, unexpected linking of Chilcote's name
with the most exalted moment of her life stirred her unpleasantly. Some
glimmering of Loder's intention in so linking it, broke through the web
of disturbed and conflicting thoughts.
“You saw him on that night?”
“Yes; and the sight chilled me. It was a big drop from supremacy to the
remembrance of--everything.”
Involuntarily she put out her hand.
But Loder shook his head. “No,” he said, “don't pity me! The sight of
him came just in time. I had a reaction in that moment, and, such as
it was, I acted on it. I went to him next morning and told him that the
thing must end. But then--even then--I shirked being honest with myself.
I had meant to tell him that it must end because I had grown to love
you, but my pride rose up and tied my tongue. I could not humiliate
myself. I put the case before him in another light. It was a tussle of
wills--and I won; but the victory was not what it should have been.
That was proved to-day when he returned to tell me of the loss of this
telegram. It wasn't the fear that Lady Astrupp had found it; it wasn't
to save the position that I jumped at the chance of coming back; it was
to feel the joy of living, the joy of seeing you--if only for a day!”
For one second he turned towards her, then as abruptly he turned away
again.
“I was still thinking of myself,” he said. “I was still utterly
self-centred when I came to this room today and allowed you to talk
to me--when I asked you to see me to-night as we parted at the club. I
sha'n't tell you the thoughts that unconsciously were in my mind when I
asked that favor. You must understand without explanation.
“I went to the theatre with Lady Astrupp ostensibly to find out how the
land lay in her direction--really to heighten my self-esteem. But there
Fate--or the power we like to call by that name--was lying in wait for
me, ready to claim the first interest in the portion of life I had dared
to borrow.” He said this slowly, as if measuring each word. He did
not glance towards Eve as he had done in his previous pause. His whole
manner seemed oppressed by the gravity of what he had still to say.
“I doubt if a man has ever seen more in half an hour than I have
to-night,” he said. “I'm speaking of mental seeing, of course. In this
play, 'Other Men's Shoes,' two men change identities--as Chilcote and I
have done--but in doing so they overlook one fact--The fact that one of
them has a wife! That's not my way of putting it; it's the way it was
put to me by one of Lady Astrupp's party.”
Again Eve looked up. The doubt and question in her eyes had grown
unmistakably. As he ceased to speak her lips parted quickly.
“John,” she said, with sudden conviction, “you're trying to say
something--something that's terribly hard.”
Without raising his head, Loder answered her. “Yes,” he answered, “the
hardest thing a man ever said--”
His tone was short, almost brusque, but to ears sharpened by instinct
it was eloquent. Without a word Eve took a step forward, and, standing
quite close to him, laid both hands on his shoulders.
For a space they stood silent, she with her face lifted, he with averted
eyes. Then very gently he raised his hands and tried to unclasp her
fingers. There was scarcely any color visible in his face, and by a
curious effect of emotion it seemed that lines, never before noticeable,
had formed about his mouth.
“What is it?” Eve asked, apprehensively. “What is it?”
By a swift, involuntary movement she had tightened the pressure of
her fingers; and, without using force, it was impossible for Loder to
unloose them. With his hands pressed irresolutely over hers, he looked
down into her face.
“As I sat in the theatre to-night, Eve,” he said, slowly, “all the
pictures I had formed of life shifted. Without desiring it, without
knowing it, my whole point of view was changed. I suddenly saw things
by the world's search-light instead of by my own miserable candle. I
suddenly saw things for you--instead of for myself.”
Eve's eyes widened and darkened, but she said nothing.
“I suddenly saw the unpardonable wrong that I have done you--the
imperative duty of cutting it short.” He spoke very slowly, in a dull,
mechanical voice.
Eve--her eyes still wide, her face pained and alarmed--withdrew her
hands from his shoulders. “You mean,” she said, with difficulty,
“that it is going to end? That you are going away? That you are giving
everything up? Oh, but you can't! You can't!” she exclaimed, with sudden
excitement, her fears suddenly overmastering her incredulity. “You
can't! You mustn't! The only proof that could have interfered--”
“I wasn't thinking of the proof.”
“Then of what? Of what?”
Loder was silent for a moment. “Of our love,” he said, steadily.
She colored deeply. “But why?” she stammered; “why? We have done no
wrong. We need do no wrong. We would be friends--nothing more; and
I--oh, I so need a friend!”
For almost the first time in Loder's knowledge of her, her voice broke,
her control deserted her. She stood before him in all the pathos of her
lonely girlhood--her empty life.
The revelation touched him with sudden poignancy; the real strength that
lay beneath his faults, the chivalry buried under years of callousness,
stirred at the birth of a new emotion. The resolution preserved at such
a cost, the sacrifice that had seemed wellnigh impossible, all at once
took on a different shape. What before had been a barren duty became
suddenly a sacred right. Holding out his arms, he drew her to him as if
she had been a child.
“Eve,” he said, gently, “I have learned to-night how fully a woman's
life is at the mercy of the world--and how scanty that mercy is. If
circumstances had been different, I believe--I am convinced--I would
have made you a good husband--would have used my right to protect you as
well as a man could use it. And now that things are different, I want--I
should like--” He hesitated a very little. “Now that I have no right
to protect you--except the right my love gives--I want to guard you as
closely from all that is sordid as any husband could guard his wife.
“In life there are really only two broad issues--right and wrong.
Whatever we may say, whatever we may profess to believe, we know that
our action is always a choice between right and wrong. A month ago--a
week ago--I would have despised a man who could talk like this--and have
thought myself strong for despising him. Now I know that strength
is something more than the trampling of others into the dust that we
ourselves may have a clear road; that it is something much harder
and much less triumphant than that--that it is standing aside to let
somebody else pass on. Eve,” he exclaimed, suddenly, “I'm trying to do
this for you. Don't you see? Don't you understand? The easy course, the
happy course, would be to let things drift. Every instinct is calling to
me to take that course--to go on as I have gone, trading on Chilcote's
weakness and your generosity. But I won't do it! I can't do it!” With a
swift impulse he loosed his arms and held her away from him. “Eve, it's
the first time I have put another human being before myself!”
Eve kept her head bent. Painful, inaudible sobs were shaking her from
head to foot.
“It's something in you--something unconscious--something high and fine,
that holds me back--that literally bars the way. Eve, can't you see that
I'm fighting--fighting hard?”
After he had spoken there was silence--a long, painful silence--during
which Eve waged the battle that so many of her sex have waged before;
the battle in which words are useless and tears of no account. She
looked very slight, very young, very forlorn, as she stood there. Then,
in the oppressive sense of waiting that filled the whole room, she
looked up at him.
Her face was stained with tears, her thick, black lashes were still wet
with them; but her expression, as her eyes met Loder's, was a strange
example of the courage, the firmness, the power of sacrifice that may be
hidden in a fragile vessel.
She said nothing, for in such a moment words do not come easily, but
with the simplest, most submissive, most eloquent gesture in the world
she set his perplexity to rest.
Taking his hand between hers, she lifted it and for a long, silent space
held it against her lips.