LOVE THAT IS LIFE!
"Love that is Life;
Love that is Death,
Love that is mine!"
--GIPSY SONG.
Not until night condemned her to solitude and thought did Honor
frankly confront the calamity that had come upon her with the force of
a blow, cutting her life in two, shattering her pride, her joy, her
inherent hopefulness of heart.
The insignificant fact that her life was broken did not set the world
a hair's breadth out of gear; and through the day she held her head
high, looking and speaking as usual, because she still had faith and
strength and courage; and, having these, the saddest soul alive will
not be utterly cast down.
She spent most of her time with Evelyn; and succeeded in so far
reconciling her to Theo's decision that Evelyn slipped quietly into
the study, where he sat reading, and flinging her arms round him
whispered broken words of penitence into the lapel of his coat; a
proceeding even more disintegrating to his resolution than her
attitude of the morning.
Honor rode out to the polo-ground with them later on in the day,
returning with Paul Wyndham, who stayed to dinner, a habit that had
grown upon him since the week at Lahore. She wondered a little
afterwards what he had talked of during the ride, and what she had
said in reply; but since he seemed satisfied, she could only hope that
she had not betrayed herself by any incongruity of speech or manner.
During the evening she talked and played with a vigour and
cheerfulness which quite failed to deceive Desmond. But of this she
was unaware. The shock of the morning had stunned her brain. She
herself and those about her were as dream-folk moving in a dream while
her soul sat apart, in some vague region of space, noting and
applauding her body's irreproachable behaviour. Only now and then,
when she caught Theo's eyes resting on her face, the whole
dream-fabric fell to pieces, and stabbed her spirit broad awake.
Desmond himself could not altogether shut out anxious conjecture. By
an instinct he could hardly have explained, he spoke very little to
the girl, except to demand certain favourite pieces of music, most of
which, to his surprise, she laughingly refused to play. Only, in
bidding her good-night, he held her hand a moment longer than usual,
smiling straight into her eyes; and the strong enfolding pressure, far
from unsteadying her, seemed rather to revive her flagging fortitude.
For who shall estimate the virtue that goes out from the hand-clasp of
a brave man, to whose courage is added the strength of a stainless
mind?
* * * * *
At last it was over.
She had left the husband and wife together, happy in a reconciliation
of her own making; had dismissed Parbutti, bolted the door behind her,
and now stood like one dazed, alone with God and her grief, which
already seemed old as the stars,--a thing preordained before the
beginning of time.
She never thought of turning up the lamp; but remained standing very
straight and still, her hands clenched, all the pride of her
maidenhood up in arms against that which dominated her, by no will of
her own.
She knew now, past question,--and the certainty crimsoned her face and
neck,--that she had loved him unwittingly from the moment of meeting;
possibly even from that earlier moment when she had unerringly picked
out his face from among many others. Herein lay the key to her
instinctive recoil from too rapid intimacy; the key to the peculiar
quality of her intercourse with him, which had been from the first a
thing apart; as far removed from her friendship with Wyndham as is the
serenity of the foothills from the life-giving breath of the heights.
And now--now that she had been startled into knowledge, the whole
truth must be confronted, the better to be combated;--the truth that
she loved him--with everything in her--with every thought, every
instinct of soul and body. Nay, more, in the very teeth of her shame
and self-abasement, she knew that she was glad and proud to have loved
him, and no lesser man, even though the fair promise of her womanhood
were doomed to go down unfulfilled into the grave.
Not for a moment did she entertain the cheap consolatory thought that
she would get over it; or would, in time, give some good man the husk
of her heart in exchange for the first-fruits of his own. She held the
obsolete opinion that marriage unconsecrated by love was a deadlier
sin than the one into which she had fallen unawares; and which, at
least, need not tarnish or sadden any life save her own. This last
brought her sharply into collision with practical issues. In the face
of her discovery, dared she--ought she to remain even a week longer
under Theo's roof?
Her heart cried out that she must go; that every hour of intercourse
with him was fraught with peril. The fact that his lips were sealed
availed her nothing; for these two had long since passed that danger
point in platonic friendship when words are discarded for more direct
communing of soul with soul. Theo could read every look in her eyes,
every tone of her voice, like an open book, and she knew it; though
she had never acknowledged it till now. All unconsciously he would
wrest her secret from her by force of sympathetic insight; and she,
who implicitly believed in God, who held suicide to be the most
dastardly sin a human being can commit, knew that she would take her
own life without hesitation rather than stand proven disloyal to
Evelyn, disgraced in the eyes of the man she loved. She did not think
this thing in detail. She merely knew it, with the instinctive
certainty of a vehement temperament that feels and knows apart from
all need of words.
Her character had been moulded by men--simple, upright men; and she
had imbibed their hard-and-fast notions of honour, of right and wrong.
She had power to turn her back upon her love, to live out her life as
though it were not, on two conditions only. No one must ever suspect
the truth. No one but herself must suffer because of it. Conditions
hard to be fulfilled.
"Oh, _Theo_!"
The cry broke from her unawares--a throb of the heart made vocal. It
roused her to reality, to the fact that she had been standing rigidly
in the middle of the room,--how long she knew not,--seeing nothing,
hearing nothing, but the voice of her tormented soul.
She went forward mechanically to the dressing-table, and leaning her
hands upon it, looked long and searchingly into her own face. Her
pallor, the ivory sheen of her dress, and the unnatural lustre of her
eyes, gave her reflection a ghostly aspect in the dim light; and she
shuddered. Was this to be the end of her high hopes and ideals,--of
her resolute waiting and longing and praying for the very best that
life and love could give? Was it actually she,--John's sister--her
father's daughter--who had succumbed to this undreamed-of wrong?
At thought of them, and of their great pride in her, all her strained
composure went to pieces. She sank into a chair and pressed both hands
against her face. But no tears forced their way between her fingers. A
girl reared by four brothers is not apt to fall a-weeping upon every
provocation; and Honor suffered the more keenly in consequence.
Suddenly the darkness was irradiated by a vision of Theo, as he had
appeared on entering the drawing-room that morning, in the familiar
undress uniform that seemed a part of himself; bringing with him, as
always, his own magnetic atmosphere of alertness and vigour, of
unquestioning certainty that life was very much worth living. Every
detail of his face sprang clearly into view, and for a moment Honor
let herself go.
She deliberately held the vision, concentrating all her soul upon it,
as on a face that one sees for the last time, and wills never to
forget. It was an actual parting, and she felt it as such--a parting
with the man who could never be her friend again.
Then, chafing against her momentary weakness, she pulled herself
together, let her hands fall into her lap with a slow sigh that was
almost a sob, and wondered, dully, whether sleep would come to her
before morning. Certainly not until she had considered her position
dispassionately,--neither ignoring its terrible possibilities, nor
exaggerating her own sense of shame and disgrace,--and had settled,
once for all, what honour and duty demanded of her in the
circumstances.
One fact at least was clear. Her love for Theo Desmond was, in itself,
no sin. It was a force outside the region of will,--imperious,
irresistible. But it set her on the brink of a precipice, where only
God and the high compulsion of her soul could withhold her from a
plunge into the abyss.
"Mine own soul forbiddeth me: there, for each of us, is the eternal
right and wrong." For Honor there could be no thought, no question of
the false step, or of the abyss; and sinking on her knees she poured
out her heart in a passionate prayer for forgiveness, for light and
wisdom to choose the right path, and power to walk in it without
faltering to the end.
When at last she rose, her lips and eyes had regained something of
their wonted serenity. She knew now that her impulse to leave the
house at once had been selfish and cowardly; that Evelyn must not be
deserted in a moment of bitter need; that these ten days must be
endured for her sake--and for his. On his return, she could find a
reasonable excuse for spending a month elsewhere till John should come
to claim her. Never in all her life had she been called upon to make
so supreme an effort of self-mastery; and never had she felt so
certain of the ultimate result.
She turned up the lamp now, and looked her new life bravely in the
face, strong in her reliance on a Strength beyond her own,--a Strength
on which she could make unlimited demands; which had never failed her
yet, nor ever would to the end of time.