In spite of the deepening dislike between the two egos which struggled
for the possession of Mildred Stewart's bodily personality, they had a
common interest in disguising the fact of their dual existence. Yet the
transformation never occurred without producing its little harvest of
inconveniences, and the difficulty of disguising the difference between
the two was the greater because of the number of old acquaintances and
friends of Milly Flaxman living in Oxford.
This was one reason why, when Ian was offered the headship of the
Merchants' Guild College in London, Mildred encouraged him to take it.
The income, too, seemed large in comparison to their Oxford one; and the
great capital, with its ever-roaring surge of life, drew her with a
natural magnetism. The old Foundation was being reconstructed, and was
ambitious of adorning itself with a name so distinguished as Ian
Stewart's, while at the same time obtaining the services of a man with
so many of his best years still before him. Stewart, although he could
do fairly well in practical administration, if he gave his mind to it,
had won distinction as a student and man of letters, and feared that,
difficult as it was to combine the real work of his life with
bread-and-butter-making in Oxford, it would be still more difficult to
combine it with steering the ship of the Merchants' Guild College. But
he had the sensitive man's defect of too often deferring to the judgment
of others, less informed or less judicious than himself. He found it
impossible to believe that the opinion of the Master of Durham was not
better than his own; and his old friend and tutor was strongly in favor
of his accepting the headship. His most really happy and successful
years had been those later ones in which he had shone as the Head of the
most brilliant College in Oxford, a man of affairs and, in his
individual way, a social centre. Accordingly he found it impossible to
believe that it might be otherwise with Ian Stewart. The majority of
Ian's most trusted advisers were of the same opinion as the Master,
since the number of persons who can understand the conditions necessary
to the productiveness of exceptional and creative minds is always few.
Besides, most people at bottom are in Martha's attitude of scepticism
towards the immaterial service of the world.
Lady Thomson voiced the general opinion in declaring that a man could
always find time to do good work if he really wanted to do it. She
rejoiced when Ian put aside the serious doubts which beset him and
accepted the London offer. Mildred also rejoiced, although she regretted
much that she must leave behind her, and in particular the old panelled
house.
This was, however, the one part of Oxford that Milly did not grieve to
have lost, when she awoke once more from long months of sleep, to find
herself in a new home. For she had grown to be silently afraid of the
old house, with the great chimney-stacks like hollowed towers within it,
made, it seemed, for the wind to moan in; its deep embrasures and
panelling, that harbored inexplicable sounds; its ancient boards that
creaked all night as if with the tread of mysterious feet. Awake in the
dark hours, she fancied there were really footsteps, really knockings,
movements, faint sighs passing outside her door, and that some old
wicked life which should long since have passed away through the portals
of the grave, clung to those ancient walls with a horrible tenacity,
still refusing the great renunciation of death.
It was true that in the larger, more hurried world of London it was
easier to dissimulate her transformations than it had been in Oxford.
The comparative retirement in which Milly lived was easily explained by
her delicate health. It seemed as though in her sojourns--which more and
more encroached upon those of the original personality--the strong,
intrusive ego consumed in an unfair degree the vitality of their common
body, leaving Milly with a certain nervous exhaustion, a languor against
which she struggled with a pathetic courage. She learned also to cover
with a seldom broken silence the deep wound which was ever draining her
young heart of its happiness; and for that very reason it grew deeper
and more envenomed.
That Ian should love her evil and mysterious rival as though they two
were really one was horrible to her. Even her child was not unreservedly
her own, to bring up according to her own ideas, to love without fear of
that rival. Tony was like his father in the sweetness of his
disposition, as well as in his dark beauty, and he accented with
surprising resignation the innumerable rules and regulations which Milly
set about his path and about his bed. But although he was healthy, his
nerves were highly strung, and it seemed as though her feverish anxiety
for his physical, moral, and intellectual welfare reacted upon him and
made him, after a few weeks of her influence, less vigorous in
appearance, less gay and boylike than he was during her absence. Ian
dared not hint a preference for the animal spirits that Mildred
encouraged, with their attendant noise and nonsense, considered by Milly
so undesirable. But one day Tims observed, cryptically, that "A watched
boy never boils"; and Emma, the nurse, told Mrs. Stewart bluntly that
she thought Master Tony wasn't near so well and bright when he was
always being looked after, as he was when he was let go his own way a
bit, like other children. Then a miserable fear beset Milly lest the
boy, too, should notice the change in his mother; lest he should look
forward to the disappearance of the woman who loved him so passionately,
watched over him with such complete devotion, and in his silent heart
regret, invoke, that other. It was at once soothing and bitter to her to
be assured by Ian and by Tims that they had never been able to discover
the least sign that Tony was aware when the change occurred between the
two personalities of his mother.
Two years passed in London, two years out of which the original owner
enjoyed a total share of only nine months; and this, indeed, she could
not truly have been said to have enjoyed, since happiness was far from
her. Death would have been a sad but simple catastrophe, to be met with
resignation to the will of God. What resignation could be felt before
this gradual strangulation of her being at the hands of a nameless yet
surely Evil Thing? Her love for Ian was so great that his sufferings
were more to her than her own, and in the space of those two years she
saw that on him, too, sorrow had set its mark. The glow of his good
looks and the brilliancy of his mind were alike dulled. It was not only
that his shoulders were bent, his hair thinned and touched with gray,
but his whole appearance, once so individual, was growing merely
typical; that of the middle-aged Academic, absorbed in the cares of his
profession. His real work was not merely at a stand-still, but a few
more such years and his capacity for it would be destroyed. She felt
this vaguely, with the intuition of love. If the partnership had been
only between him and her, he surely would have yielded to her prayer to
give up the headship of the Merchants' Guild College after a set term;
but he put the question by. Evidently that Other, who cared for nothing
but her own selfish interests and amusements, who spent upon them the
money that he ought to be saving, would never allow him to give up his
appointment unless something better offered. It was not only her own
life, it was the higher and happier part of his that she was struggling
to save in those desperate hours when she sought around her for some
weapon wherewith to fight that mortal foe. She turned to priests,
Anglican, Roman Catholic; but they failed her. Both believed her to be
suffering under an insane delusion, but the Roman Catholic priest would
have attempted to exorcise the evil spirit if she would have joined his
Communion. She was too honest to pretend to a belief that was not hers.
When she returned from her last vain pilgrimage to the Church of the
Sacred Heart and stood before the glass, removing a thick black veil
from the pale despair of her face, she was suddenly aware of a strange,
unfamiliar smile lifting the drooped lines of her lips--an elfish smile
which transformed her face to something different from her own. And
immediately those smiling lips uttered words that fell as unexpectedly
on her ears as though they had proceeded from the mouth of another
person.
"Never mind," they said, briskly. "It wouldn't have been of the least
use."
For a minute a wild terror made her brain swim and she fled to the door,
instinctively seeking protection; but she stayed herself, remembering
that Ian, who was sleeping badly at night, was now asleep in his study.
Weak and timid though she was, she would lay no fresh burden on him, but
fight her battle, if battle there was to be, alone.
She walked back deliberately to the glass and looked steadily at her
own reflection. Her brows were frowning, her eyes stern as she had never
before seen them, but they were assuredly hers, answering to the mood of
her own mind. Her lips were cold, and trembled so that although she had
meant solemnly to defy the Power of Evil within her she was unable to
articulate. As she looked in the glass and saw herself--her real
self--so evidently there, the strange smile, the speech divorced from
all volition of hers which had crossed her lips, began to lose reality.
Still her lips trembled, and at length a convulsion shook them as
irresistible as that of a sob. Words broke stammeringly out which were
not hers:
"Struggle for life--the stronger wins. I'm stronger. It's no use
struggling--no use--no use--no use!"
Milly pressed her lips hard against her teeth with her hands, stopping
this utterance by main force. Her heart hammered so loud it seemed as
though some one must hear it and come to ask what was the matter. But no
one came. She was left alone with the Thing within her.
It may have been a long while, it may have been only a few seconds that
she remained standing at her dressing-table, her hands pressed hard
against her convulsed mouth. She had closed her eyes, afraid to look
longer in the glass, lest something uncanny should peer out of it. She
did not pray--she had prayed so often before--but she fought with her
whole strength against the encroaching power of the Other. At length she
gradually released her lips. They were bruised, but they had ceased to
move. It was she herself who spoke, low but clearly and with
deliberation:
"I shall struggle. I shall never give in. You think you're the stronger.
I won't let you be. I'm fighting for my husband's happiness--do you
hear?--as well as my own. You're strong, but we shall be stronger, he
and I, in the end."
There was no answer, the sense of struggle was gone from her; and
suddenly she felt how mad it was to be talking to herself like that in
an empty room. She took off the little black toque which sat on her
bright head with an alien smartness to which she was now accustomed, and
forced herself to look in the glass while she pinned up a stray lock of
hair. Beyond an increased pallor and darker marks under her eyes, she
saw nothing unusual in her appearance.
It was five o'clock, and Ian would probably be awake and wanting his
tea. She went softly into the study and leaned over him. Sleep had
almost smoothed away the lines of effort and worry which had marred the
beauty of his face; in the eyes of her love he was always the same
handsome Ian Stewart as in the old Oxford days, when he had seemed as a
young god, so high above her reach.
She went to an oak table behind the sofa, on which the maid had set the
tea-things without awakening him, and sat there quietly watching the
kettle. The early London twilight began to veil the room. Ian stirred on
the sofa and sat up, with his back to her, unconscious of her presence.
She rose, vaguely supposing herself about to address some gentle word
to him. Then suddenly she had thrown one soft hand under his chin and
one across his eyes, and with a _brusquerie_ quite unnatural to her
pulled him backwards, while a ripple of laughter so strange as to be
shocking in her own ears burst from her lips, which cried aloud with a
defiant gayety:
"Who, Ian? Guess!"
Ian, with a sudden force as strange to her as her own laughter, her own
gay cry, pulled her hands away, held them an instant fast; then,
kneeling on the sofa, he caught her in his long arms across the back of
it, and after the pressure of a kiss upon her lips such as she had never
felt before, breathed with a voice of unutterable gladness: "Mildred!
Darling! Dearest love!"
A hoarse cry, almost a shriek, broke from the lips of Milly. The woman
he held struggled from his arms and stared at him wildly in the veiling
twilight. A strange horror fell upon him, and for several seconds he
remained motionless, leaning over the back of the sofa. Then, groping
towards the wall, he switched on the electric light. He saw it plainly,
the white mask of a woman smitten with a mortal blow.
"Milly," he uttered, stammeringly. "What's the matter? You are ill."
She turned on him her heart-broken look, then pressing her hand to her
throat, spoke as though with difficulty.
"I love you very much--you don't know how much I love you. I've tried
so hard to be a good wife to you."
Ian perceived catastrophe, yet dimly; sought with desperate haste to
remember why for a moment he had believed that that Other was come back;
what irreparable thing he had said or done.
Meantime he must say something. "Milly, dear! What's gone wrong? What
have I done, child?"
"You've let her take you--" She spoke more freely now, but with a
startling fierceness--"You've let her take you from me."
"Ah, the old trouble! My poor Milly! I know it's terrible for you. I can
only say that no one else really exists; that you are always you
really."
"That's not true. You don't believe it yourself. That wicked creature
has made you love her--her own wicked way. You want to have her instead
of me; you want to destroy your own wife and to get her back again."
The cruel, ultimate truth that Milly's words laid bare--the truth which
he constantly refused to look upon, in mercy to himself and
her--paralyzed the husband's tongue. He tried to approach her with vague
words and gestures of affection and remonstrance, but she motioned him
from her.
"No. Don't say you love me; I can't believe it, and I hate to hear you
say what's not true."
For a moment the fierce heart of Primitive Woman had blazed up within
her--that fire which all the waters of baptism fail to quench. But the
flame died down as suddenly as it had arisen, and appealing with
outspread hands, as to some invisible judge, she wailed, miserably:
"Oh, what am I to do--what am I to do? I love you so much, and it's all
no use."
Ian was as white as herself.
"Milly, my poor girl, don't break our hearts."
He stretched his arms towards her, but she turned away from him towards
the door, made a few steps, then stopped and clutched her throat. He
thought her struggling with sobs; but when once more, as though in fear,
she turned her face towards him, he saw it strangely convulsed. He moved
towards her in an alarmed silence, but before he could reach her and
catch her in his arms, her head drooped, she swayed once upon her feet,
and fell heavily to the ground.