All the whole I must admit it was not a situation that lent itself to
eloquence. I lay on my back and talked through bandages, and with some
little difficulty, for my tongue and mouth had swollen. But I was
feverish and in pain, and the emotional suspense I had been in so long
with regard to her became now an unendurable impatience.
“Comfortable?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Shall I read to you?”
“No. I want to talk.”
“You can’t. I’d better talk to you.”
“No,” I said, “I want to talk to you.”
She came and stood by my bedside and looked me in the eyes. “I don’t—I
don’t want you to talk to me,” she said. “I thought you couldn’t talk.”
“I get few chances—of you.”
“You’d better not talk. Don’t talk now. Let me chatter instead. You
ought not to talk.”
“It isn’t much,” I said.
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“I’m not going to be disfigured,” I said. “Only a scar.”
“Oh!” she said, as if she had expected something quite different. “Did
you think you’d become a sort of gargoyle?”
“L’Homme qui Rit!—I didn’t know. But that’s all right. Jolly flowers
those are!”
“Michaelmas daisies,” she said. “I’m glad you’r not disfigured, and
those are perennial sunflowers. Do you know no flowers at all? When I
saw you on the ground I certainly thought you were dead. You ought to
have been, by all the rules of the game.”
She said some other things, but I was thinking of my next move.
“Are we social equals?” I said abruptly.
She stared at me. “Queer question,” she said.
“But are we?”
“H’m. Difficult to say. But why do you ask? Is the daughter of a
courtesy Baron who died—of general disreputableness, I believe—before
his father—? I give it up. Does it matter?”
“No. My mind is confused. I want to know if you will marry me.”
She whitened and said nothing. I suddenly felt I must plead with her.
“Damn these bandages!” I said, breaking into ineffectual febrile rage.
She roused herself to her duties as nurse. “What are you doing? Why are
you trying to sit up? Sit down! Don’t touch your bandages. I told you
not to talk.”
She stood helpless for a moment, then took me firmly by the shoulders
and pushed me back upon the pillow. She gripped the wrist of the hand I
had raised to my face.
“I told you not to talk,” she whispered close to my face. “I asked you
not to talk. Why couldn’t you do as I asked you?”
“You’ve been avoiding me for a month,” I said.
“I know. You might have known. Put your hand back—down by your side.”
I obeyed. She sat on the edge of the bed. A flush had come to her
cheeks, and her eyes were very bright. “I asked you,” she repeated,
“not to talk.”
My eyes questioned her mutely.
She put her hand on my chest. Her eyes were tormented.
“How can I answer you now?” she said.
“How can I say anything now?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She made no answer.
“Do you mean it must be ‘No’?”
She nodded.
“But” I said, and my whole soul was full of accusations.
“I know,” she said. “I can’t explain. I can’t. But it has to be ‘No!’
It can’t be. It’s utterly, finally, for ever impossible.... Keep your
hands still!”
“But,” I said, “when we met again—”
“I can’t marry. I can’t and won’t.”
She stood up. “Why did you talk?” she cried, “couldn’t you _see?_”
She seemed to have something it was impossible to say.
She came to the table beside my bed and pulled the Michaelmas daisies
awry. “Why did you talk like that?” she said in a tone of infinite
bitterness. “To begin like that!”
“But what is it?” I said. “Is it some circumstance—my social position?”
“Oh, _damn_ your social position!” she cried.
She went and stood at the further window, staring out at the rain. For
a long time we were absolutely still. The wind and rain came in little
gusts upon the pane. She turned to me abruptly.
“You didn’t ask me if I loved you,” she said.
“Oh, if it’s _that!_” said I.
“It’s not that,” she said. “But if you want to know—” She paused.
“I do,” she said.
We stared at one another.
“I do—with all my heart, if you want to know.”
“Then, why the devil—?” I asked.
She made no answer. She walked across the room to the piano and began
to play, rather noisily and rapidly, with odd gusts of emphasis, the
shepherd’s pipe music from the last act in “Tristan and Isolde.”
Presently she missed a note, failed again, ran her finger heavily up
the scale, struck the piano passionately with her fist, making a feeble
jar in the treble, jumped up, and went out of the room....
The nurse found me still wearing my helmet of bandages, partially
dressed, and pottering round the room to find the rest of my clothes. I
was in a state of exasperated hunger for Beatrice, and I was too
inflamed and weakened to conceal the state of my mind. I was feebly
angry because of the irritation of dressing, and particularly of the
struggle to put on my trousers without being able to see my legs. I was
staggering about, and once I had fallen over a chair and I had upset
the jar of Michaelmas daisies.
I must have been a detestable spectacle. “I’ll go back to bed,” said I,
“if I may have a word with Miss Beatrice. I’ve got something to say to
her. That’s why I’m dressing.”
My point was conceded, but there were long delays. Whether the
household had my ultimatum or whether she told Beatrice directly I do
not know, and what Lady Osprey can have made of it in the former case I
don’t imagine.
At last Beatrice came and stood by my bedside. “Well?” she said.
“All I want to say,” I said with the querulous note of a misunderstood
child, “is that I can’t take this as final. I want to see you and talk
when I’m better, and write. I can’t do anything now. I can’t argue.”
I was overtaken with self-pity and began to snivel, “I can’t rest. You
see? I can’t do anything.”
She sat down beside me again and spoke softly. “I promise I will talk
it all over with you again. When you are well. I promise I will meet
you somewhere so that we can talk. You can’t talk now.
“I asked you not to talk now. All you want to know you shall know...
Will that do?”
“I’d like to know”
She looked round to see the door was closed, stood up and went to it.
Then she crouched beside me and began whispering very softly and
rapidly with her face close to me.
“Dear,” she said, “I love you. If it will make you happy to marry me, I
will marry you. I was in a mood just now—a stupid, inconsiderate mood.
Of course I will marry you. You are my prince, my king. Women are such
things of mood—or I would have behaved differently. We say ‘No’ when we
mean ‘Yes’—and fly into crises. So now, Yes—yes—yes. I will. I can’t
even kiss you. Give me your hand to kiss that. Understand, I am yours.
Do you understand? I am yours just as if we had been married fifty
years. Your wife—Beatrice. Is that enough? Now—now will you rest?”
“Yes,” I said, “but why?”
“There are complications. There are difficulties. When you are better
you will be able to—understand them. But now they don’t matter. Only
you know this must be secret—for a time. Absolutely secret between us.
Will you promise that?”
“Yes,” I said, “I understand. I wish I could kiss you.”
She laid her head down beside mine for a moment and then she kissed my
hand.
“I don’t care what difficulties there are,” I said, and I shut my eyes.