WHEN Strange got back to town, after baiting man and beast at a little
inn on the outskirts of Weybridge, Tolly’s greeting, which was
blasphemous and amazed, and the unusual look in his green eyes, caused
his master to glance at himself in the glass.
“Heaven!” he thought, turning away, “I’m a nice object to go courting!
One would think I had just emerged from D.T., or Bedlam! Tolly, turn on
the hot water, empty a bottle of vinegar into it, and put out clean
clothes for me. I feel like jelly. Good Lord! has love this limping
effect often?”
He turned into his bedroom. As he was wrestling with one of his shirt
buttons he muttered,
“However this goes, it’s a toss-up what the gain will be, heaven or
hell. Well, a man might do worse than face hell for her.”
He had hardly made this heroic remark when the absurdity of it struck
him; he laughed aloud. “I had better face my bath,” he said.
When he was washed and dressed, he rather thought of the Club and a good
lunch, but the game didn’t seem worth the candle. He felt that his hands
were quite sufficiently full with one woman, he had no desire for men,
more especially at feeding-time.
“I shall have my lunch here,” he said, looking up from his paper, “get
out some bread and cheese, and beer, and anything else you can lay your
hands on.”
In five minutes Tolly had covered a little round table with a cloth, and
had set out on it a mixed assortment of cheese, beer, jam, and a
freshly-opened tin of _foie gras_, and he stood proudly in attendance
with napkin on arm, keeping down with difficulty a grin of
self-satisfaction.
However full he was of himself, Strange never let a new accomplishment
of Tolly’s escape him, if he did, the effect on the boy would have been
disastrous. No sinner ever strove after God as this sinner after his
owner.
“Well done, Tolly, you’ll shine in life yet, the way you flourish that
damask is sublime!”
“Beggin’ your pardon, your wussup,” said Tolly, “Bill, the groom, ’e
were round after ye, a-stormin’ at me because the horse was out. Bill
always lets out at me like when he feels hisself put about in his mind,
and he thought you and the beast were lost,” sniggered Tolly. “I told
him you was big enough to take care of yourself, and that gents often
finds the nights more convenienter than the days,” he remarked
confidentially, pushing the salt under his master’s nose. “Bill is that
ignorant, sir, of loife and sich, he erstonishes me.”
Strange drank his beer with a look at the half-made creature who had
plumbed ‘loife’ from the vantage ground of her sewers.
“Very like his betters,” he thought, “we get lots of our views from a
vantage ground not one whit sweeter or cleaner than Tolly’s.”
He made a fresh dive into the _pâté_ and his thoughts broke out on a new
track.
“I think we’re going off somehow. I believe it is a good deal the
women’s fault; this new craze for advanced talk between the sexes is no
good, the women who affect it are never clever enough nor good enough to
make a success of the thing, it’s a pose mostly, as their smoking is,
just done for effect.—Tolly, pass that jam!”
When he had rounded off his meal with a hunch of bread and strawberry
jam, he stretched himself, went to the window and looked out, drumming
gently on the pane.
“I wonder,” he thought, “I wonder if I am quite a fool or not, but—but,
God! how I love her!”
Then he stopped drumming, and began to wonder vaguely how in the name of
Heaven he was able to eat great hunches of bread and jam not five
minutes before.
He turned and watched Tolly through the door, devouring at his ease,
with a sudden shock of disgust, more at himself than at the fellow, with
his hideous mouth all moist and jammy. He turned again to the window and
tried to steady his brain, but it reeled and everything in the room swam
before him, he dropped his head in his hands and trembled from head to
foot, when he raised it he felt steadier and not so raging hot.
“I shall chance it,” he said, “I shall chance it.”
When he reached Lady Mary’s he was in a much more wholesome frame of
mind. He had gone there by roundabout ways, where he saw a good deal of
stark, staring, naked humanity; this helped to crystallize his emotions,
to sift the dross out and leave the clean stuff.
He never in his life felt clearer-headed than when he went up the stairs
unannounced, and paused to look through the half opened door at Gwen,
sitting near a window in a cloudy dress of soft yellow crêpey stuff and
with her strong, long-fingered, composed hands lying idle in her lap and
the guard dropped from her eyes, showing a good deal more of herself
than he had ever seen before.
He only paused for one minute, he had no right yet to the girl’s
secrets; then he threw open the door with a little bang and brought her
back to the present.
“Oh, is it you?” she said with the ghost of a start, looking up at him.
She felt in a vague way that he knew more of her in that one minute than
he had any business to do, and she was not quite sure if she liked it or
not. He did not offer to shake hands with her but glanced round the room
silently. Gwen laughed.
“You are looking for Lady Mary? She has a bad headache, an abnormally
bad one, and won’t be down till five.”
He offered up a dumb thanksgiving and sat down carefully, then he felt a
horrible desire to say, “Hem!” or to mention the deuce or the weather.
He had felt intensely reasonable the minute before, but he was confused
by the beauty of the girl sitting so close to him, with the flickering
sunshine running golden threads in and out her twisted russet hair, and
clothing her in pale molten gold.
“She shall have nothing to add to her beauty,” he thought, “I shall not
make a beast of myself to desire the least of her when it is the
greatest I want.”
He started up, and asked if he might draw down the blinds.
“Yes,” said Gwen wonderingly, as she saw his big brown hand tremble on
the blind line.
Then a sudden certainty of his intention came upon her with a burst of
angry horror, but she swept this off and waited coolly, with a sort of
sneering excitement.
Strange drew his chair farther forward and sat facing her.
“Miss Waring,” he said, “I have come to ask if you will listen to the
shady side of a man’s life.”
There was no more tremble or hesitation about him now, he looked as cool
as she did.
“It is a side that men as a rule keep to themselves and to their male
companions, no matter how near a man and a woman come to each other,
this impalpable barrier keeps them apart. This has always struck me as a
rather low form of lie and distinctly dishonourable, especially
practised, as it is, by the stronger on the presumably weaker. If a
woman is not strong and pure and magnanimous enough to bear this
knowledge, a man should find it out and go his way before he has dared
to touch her life; if she is strong enough she should be given the
opportunity of gaining this knowledge at first hand, and taking her
subsequent course accordingly. You are immeasurably nobler than any
other woman who has crossed my path.”
Involuntarily he lowered his head as he spoke, in a reverential way that
touched Gwen and forced her to hear him. After the first disgusted shock
her impulse had been to send him about his business. She had half risen
from her seat on the spur of this impulse, but somehow she had sat down
again, and in spite of herself she had let him speak.
“No decent man could deceive you,” he went on, “even if every word he
spoke were to cut his own throat. May I speak to you as man to man?”
He watched the palpitations of her throat—which unfortunately were
beyond her control—with a sort of choking sensation—
“Or more,” he added simply, “as if you were God.”
Gwen’s colour neither increased nor left her, she neither trembled nor
stirred. For a minute she was quite silent except for one quick little
swallowing sound, she was fighting with a concentrated restrained frenzy
of despair against her fate, against the overpowering longing to hear
this man, as he sat there ready to spoil his own life sooner than lie to
her even in a fashion recognized by the use of generations.
She was quite aware she had nothing whatsoever to give him in exchange,
she knew perfectly well she was about to do him a grievous wrong, and
yet her whole being was concentrated into one imperative demand to hear
what he had to say.
“You may speak,” she said in a hard emotionless voice.
Then he told her simply, with neither condonation nor reservation, the
whole truth about his life.
It is all very well to talk glibly about the advantages of calling a
spade a spade, but when it comes to giving dozens of spades their
unvarnished titles in the presence of one virgin clean woman, and when
every fresh spade may be about to dig up the heart you would foster, the
matter is no joke.
By the time that Strange had arrived at the end of his unadorned record,
his smooth, brick-dust cheeks looked gray and haggard, and his voice
sounded tired.
Once during the recital Gwen had lost guard over herself and had let a
flash of half-triumphant interest escape from her eyes. It was when he
had said—“Thank Heaven! I never loved one of these women, that is,
taking love in its all-round, large sense.”
When he had finished he stood up and looked at her, waiting.
She had herself still in her power, she felt, with a wild leap of her
spirit, she could yet ward off her fate and his; “his,” she thought with
a wave of soft unaccustomed pity. She had nothing to give this man,
nothing, not even the germs of a possible something—something called
Love.
She laughed aloud and looked in his face when the empty word stirred her
brain, then she lowered her eyes and turned all her thoughts in on
herself, moving a small pearl ring up and down her finger with a swift
rhythmic movement.—This man would take her for mere hope—hope that had
no foundation in fact,—it was a mean exchange, nothing for
everything,—mean and unjust; for the minute she was hideous to herself,
with her own whole life a protest against the injustice of others.
She looked at him again, and a horrible power seemed to drag and bind
her to him, she turned her eyes away angrily and made a little
involuntary sound of trouble.
“Oh, if I only could treat him as I did the others!” she muttered under
her breath, “but I can’t, I can’t!”
She was frightened at herself—at the power which drove her to the man
inexorably,—she looked at the door and stirred in her seat, half-rising,
but she sat down again and began to move her ring with the old movement,
only quicker and with tenser fingers.
Then a cold feeling of finality came on her, she knew she must say
something and she knew she was going to say the wrong thing; an
inexplicable smile flickered across her face and touched her mouth, she
grew quite calm and ceased to move her ring.
“You have done me a very high honour,” she said; “thank you.”
He came nearer and looked down on her.
“I have tried to be perfectly honest,” he said, “and you have no idea
what an awful grind it has been. It would be quite impossible for me to
give you any idea of how I honour you, and as for love—” he stopped,
breathing hard, “I have a heart full for you, dear, I don’t think I know
myself how much I love you.”
The girl looked at him curiously, the simple intensity of his manner
struck her, then her eyes fell and she sighed.
“Love is such a mere name to me,” she said, “it seems such a collapsable
bubbly thing and put to such feeble uses. You want me to be your wife
then, and you offer me a whole heart full of love, whatever that may
mean. I must be honest too, and tell you that I shouldn’t know how to
dispose of a whole heart full of love. I know nothing at all practically
about the matter, and theoretically it has never interested me. My
situation is hard to explain,” she exclaimed, with a petulant sweeping
movement of her hand, “in the face of all this I want to accept your
offer, I don’t know why, I really believe it is not I, Gwen Waring, that
wants this, it is something outside me that wants it for me. I never
felt so impersonal in all my life.”
He winced, her honesty, to say the least of it, was a trifle bald.
“Perhaps I am more concerned in it than I think,” she went on with a
queer intense serenity, dissecting herself audibly, “I like new
sensations, I am curious, most things are so flat and boring.”
Strange started forward and was about to speak, she raised her hand
imperiously.
“Stop!” she cried, “I must finish, I want you quite clearly to
understand that if I take you at your word and become your wife—wife,”
she repeated, “how astonishing the word sounds in connection with me!”
She laughed in an untranslatable way and went on,
“Remember and understand that I am doing it as an experiment.”
He flushed, it was his own precise thought but it seemed less hideous
when thought than when spoken.
“An experiment,” she repeated, “but whether it is fair to try
experiments in lives is another matter. I wish—” she cast a
half-wistful, half-provoked look at him, “I wish you were sufficiently
clear and reasonable yourself to help me to answer the question—I am so
ignorant in these matters.”
A sudden crimson rushed to her cheeks, she was furious. What right had
she to blush like a dairy-maid and mislead the man?
“I’m not blushing properly, as girls ought to blush,” she explained, “I
am merely angry, I feel caught in a trap. Why can’t I tell you to begone
and leave me at peace?” she demanded, looking at him with curious swift
repulsion, “I have never found any difficulty before,—why don’t you help
me?”
In spite of his love, Strange shook with laughter.
It was no laughing matter for Gwen, she kept her eyes fixed on him,
angry and full of pain.
“You stand there and laugh—laugh! I wish to mercy I could. Don’t you
know I am going to accept you—I, who don’t know what love means—I, who
am, I believe, sexless, don’t you know you’re mad and don’t you think
it’s rather degrading to give all you offer me for nothing? After all,
it is not absolutely necessary to my salvation that I should make
experiments on you.”
She felt a sudden tiredness come on her and nestled back in her
cushions.
“I am ready to take you with open eyes, Gwen; you are very honest, dear;
you will lose some of that when you have suffered a little,” he added,
with a ring of sadness in his voice, as he looked tenderly down on her.
She raised her head quickly. “Suffer! Why should I suffer?”
He watched her for a minute with sombre eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said half-absently, “but you will. Then this is our
betrothal, is it, dear?”
She bowed her head.
“Oh, my darling!” he said suddenly.
“Will he often say it?” she thought curiously, “can I stand this?”
“My darling, you have no idea how I shall enjoy giving you lessons in
love.”
“Will you?” she said grimly, “I doubt it, I tell you I have no taste for
the cult. Well, it is at least fortunate that one can be honest and that
it isn’t necessary for me to befool you for the sake of your income.
This marriage is the very perfection of an alliance from all such points
of view, and yet—do you know, Sir Humphrey, I wish quite intensely, we
were both of us in another position, in quite a low, unknown one, then
we need not marry. Engagements are nothing; I know as much of you now as
any engagement can teach me. We might then try a preliminary experiment
as to how life together goes; if it did not do, we might each go our own
way and bury the past. I never wished for such a thing before, it
follows, I suppose,” she added with a mirthless little laugh, “that I
care this much for you or for my experiment. Have you grasped the whole
situation?” she demanded, turning her troubled eyes full on him.
“My child, you have been very explicit, I think I have quite grasped it.
When will you marry me?”
She gave a little start.
“I was wondering,” she said at last, “if this was final?”
“It is final,” he said, “you know it is.”
“Yes, I know; it was rather paltry to pretend I didn’t—oh!—”
She looked up at him with her face held in both her hands. “Final? yes,
so it is. I am one section of a puzzle moved by fate, you’re another. It
is humiliating when one comes to think of it.”
“Well?”
“I will marry you when you like.”
“The end of next month?”
“Won’t it interfere with the shooting?”
“I had forgotten that—I don’t think I shall mind—the end of July, then.”
He took her hands and kissed them, and he thought as he got out into the
street that he had felt them tremble. It was a pleasant surprise, on
which he felt inclined to congratulate himself.
The knowledge had a quite other effect on his betrothed. She smote her
clenched fists angrily together and scorned herself for the feebleness
of her extremities.
“Mean deceitful wretch,” she cried, “to mislead that man, when I am only
tired and wanting my tea!”