NATURE’S FAULT
Claudia was leisurely dressing for the dinner _à quatre_ at Frank’s
studio, leisurely, because there was something in the warm May air,
stealing in through the windows, that made her dawdle and dream. She
and Pat had motored out into the country that morning, and lunched at a
quaint old inn covered with wistaria, just outside Penshurst, and the
spell of the country, with its riot of scent and song, still possessed
her. She thought of the hedges, with their tender greens; the young grass
studded with gold and silver, for the buttercups and daisies were gaily
blooming; the lilac in the cottage-gardens, just bursting into exquisite
flower; the primroses with their pale beauty, nestling at the roots of
the trees; the fruit blossom making a poem in delicate pinks and whites.
She looked at the bowl of wild hyacinths she and Pat had gathered as
excitedly as a couple of Cockney children, and she wished that she could
have stayed in fairyland a little longer. She had been so happy for a
few hours, for she loved the country. She had put away all the problems
that beset her, and she had let the sweet perfection of Nature soothe her
into something closely resembling peace. She had given herself up to its
healing, and she was still between it and noisy nerve-racking London as
she donned her clothes. In accordance with her mood, she had chosen to
wear a simple, almost girlish dress of faint pinks, that reminded her of
the orchards they had passed through, and, as a finishing touch to remind
her of their excursion, she pinned some primroses on her corsage. Their
delicate perfume was like fresh honey.
Her maid noticed that she looked very young that night, with the dreams
in her eyes and on her lips, even younger than her twenty-three years.
Usually she looked much older, for her self-possessed manner, inherited
from her mother, her dignified carriage and air of _savoir faire_ might
have belonged to a woman of twenty-eight. To-night she almost had the
illusion that she was still an unmarried girl, with The Great Choice
before her. The soft, warm air seemed to breathe love, to say, “Take your
fill of its sweetness, your life is still to make.” The impassioned song
of the birds, the riot and colour, the bursting life in bud and blossom,
what did it all say, but:
“Come, all lovers, to the feasting,
Where the wine of life is yeasting,
Soul of human, brute or flower,
This your purest, fullest hour
Drink your fill of Love’s own brew.”
Even Rhoda Carnegie’s cynical words the previous evening at the Prime
Minister’s dinner-party seemed part of the day. “Is love to be confined
within the small circlet of a wedding-ring? Why, it would be like trying
to pour the sea into a thimble.” After all, most intelligent people
nowadays scoffed at the wedding-service, with its “forevers” and “till
death.” Those ideas had all been swept away.
As she rearranged the wild hyacinths for the mere pleasure of touching
them, she asked herself if there still lingered any belief in those
“forevers.” Honestly, no. She did realize that love is too big a thing
to be confined within a wedding-ring. It was not that kind of scruple
that held her back. Love, as she had once said before her marriage, was
the only convention she owned. She recalled the words of James Hinton.
“Love, and do as you please.” Many people had taken this as their text
for lax morality, but they had not understood him rightly. It was not an
easy saying, but a hard one. Love! How often did one love in a lifetime?
She had thought she loved Gilbert, and she really had at the time. But
his neglect and coldness had killed her love. Could a great love be
killed? “Many waters cannot quench love——” was that not merely the high
standard which we should all try and uphold, but can never attain to? An
impossible standard, surely, except for rare, ethereal beings without
sexual instincts, strong human needs.
“And I don’t want an ethereal love,” she said aloud.
The dachshund, who had been slumbering peacefully on the couch, awoke,
and looked at her interrogatively. His faithful soul was afraid she had
called him.
“Only talking to myself, Billiken,” she said, smiling at him. “Why,
even you, Billie—I am your little world, your sun and your moon and
your stars, but you like me to stroke and pat you. Oh, Billie! I must
be _first_ with someone. I don’t belong to anyone really, not of my own
free will, and I want to so much, so much. I’m not strong enough to stand
alone. I don’t want to stand alone.”
She was first with Frank, the only thing that mattered in his life. He
had told her so often and often. Perhaps, yes, perhaps she would give
herself to him, and make him happy, make herself happy. Stupid Jack
had said that illicit relations with a man would never make her happy.
But he was an ass, anyway. Why should not Frank make her happy? Why
should Circe’s daughter not be happy as, apparently, her mother had
been? Perhaps Circe had gone through a similar period of happiness and
hesitation before she—— No, she could not honestly follow that line of
argument. Her mother had only made a marriage of convenience, her father
had never counted at all, and she knew instinctively, without any harsh
judgment, that Circe had an entirely different nature from her own.
There were no subtle shades of feeling in her mother, no understanding
of intellectual and emotional heights. Claudia had discovered that as
a child. Her mother never shared her enthusiasm for books or pictures,
she would have looked with but languid interest that morning at the
blue mist of the hyacinths stretching far away under the trees. Claudia
had felt like shouting as she and Pat turned the corner and saw the
beautiful carpet at their feet, but her mother would only have feared
that she might be getting her feet damp on the grass. No, the example of
Circe taught her nothing. They were mother and daughter, but they were
different.
She went to the window and leaned out, looking up at the darkly blue
sky and the steady stars, which watched in remote peacefulness over the
traffic of Knightsbridge.
Her only justification now or at any time would be the strength of
her love. She had her heritage of passion, but something that had not
restrained her mother would always restrain her. Did she love Frank?
He loved her, she never doubted that, but did she love him? She asked
herself if the secrecy of such relationship would not harass her? Would
the stolen meetings be the sweeter for the necessary secrecy, or would
there not be a certain degradation in the whispered rendezvous? She
could hear herself as a girl calling it, with fine youthful dogmatism, a
“hole-and-corner” business. Did love save it from that reproach?
At the back of her Billie barked sharply, and withdrawing her head from
the window, Claudia heard two voices raised in unusual excitement
outside her door. She went across to it and threw it open.
She just caught the end of a sentence spoken by her husband in his most
dictatorial, angry tones. “ ... you can take a month’s notice. I refuse
to overlook the matter. I have enough affairs on my hands without keeping
a man I cannot rely on. You can go.”
The man, who was an excellent valet, answered with considerable
conviction. “You did not tell me, sir. I know you did not. You may have
thought you did, but you did not say anything about the suit-case.”
The man went towards the servants’ quarters, and Gilbert, turning, saw
her in the doorway. His face was very unbeautiful in its anger. He looked
almost apoplectic, his skin was so red and mottled. He had grown lately
to look many years older than his age.
“Gilbert, did I hear you giving Marsh notice to go? He is such an
excellent servant. What has he done?”
He came inside and sat down on the couch, breathing rather heavily. For a
moment he seemed unable to answer.
“Forgot some instructions I gave him this morning, and then had the
impertinence to say I never gave them. How”—irritably—“could I forget
such an important thing?”
He was pulling himself together by an effort, but his mouth twitched.
“Was it very important?”
“Yes. I told him to send my dress-suit to my chambers. I was going down
to a political dinner at Wynnstay”—Wynnstay was his father’s home—“I
thought the bag was there, and when I went to catch the train—Imbecile!
Most important. I haven’t told you. I expect to stand for Parliament
shortly. Father finds the responsibility too much, and, of course, the
seat is safe.”
“But, Gilbert,” expostulated Claudia, contrary to her latter custom of
listening, if not in agreement, in non-disagreement, “you have too much
to do already. Don’t you think——”
“Oh, don’t rub it in, for heaven’s sake.... Besides, I’ve promised
Neeburg to take a holiday.... I’m certain I told Marsh about packing my
clothes.”
“He is usually very reliable.”
“Oh, well! have it as you like. But _any_ man with as many things to
remember as I have, would be liable to forget—trifles. Doctors are so
ridiculously bigoted.” His face was slowly becoming an unhealthy white,
the redness was fading away. He looked at her obviously asking her
to agree with him. Neeburg _had_ scared him a little ... but Neeburg
didn’t understand the strain of a barrister’s work. Claudia was only a
woman and, of course, she wouldn’t understand either.... No good trying
to explain. A long sea voyage ... six months’ rest ... ridiculous!
A fortnight at Le Touquet would set him up ... a man knew his own
constitution best. But perhaps it was just as well he had been prevented
from going to Wynnstay that evening.... He was a little tired. He would
have an early dinner and go to bed by ten.
He became aware that she was regarding him in a critical, impersonal
way, which, though he was relieved she had ceased to expect wildly
enthusiastic responses to her exalté moods, somehow annoyed him. No
woman, especially a wife, had any right to look so at a man.
“Why are you staring at me?” he asked, with a frown.
“I was wondering why Nature took the trouble to bring us together. I
have been in the country all day, and there she seemed so gentle, so
beneficent, so sympathetic. You felt like throwing yourself down among
the daisies on the grass and saying, ‘Take me, everything you do must be
good and wise.’ And in reality Nature is so cruel, so horribly cruel.
Passion is Nature’s greatest force after self-preservation, and I wonder
how many thousands of lives it ruins. I never realized until recently
that ‘Love is cruel as the grave’ meant that.”
“Are you blaming me for our marriage? I never persuaded you into it
against your will.”
“No. Nature persuaded me into it, and Nature made these soft, delicate
primroses.” She touched the flowers at her breast. “Surely it seems
strange that so much gentle beauty and sordid cruelty should go
hand-in-hand?”
He raised his thick, heavy eyebrows. He was feeling better now. Perhaps,
after all, he would go down to the club on the chance of seeing Mathews
about that case on Tuesday.
“Nature has only one object in bringing men and women together,” he said
slowly. Her words had reminded him of his father’s and mother’s grievance
and hints. His father had mentioned it when he suggested giving up his
seat in Parliament to him, and made it the text for a diatribe against
the modern woman and her absent sense of duty. After all, his father
was right. A man ought to have a son. “You know, Claudia, while we are
speaking on this matter, my father and mother are very disappointed
that——”
“Don’t!” she said sharply, the girlish, wistful look gone from her face.
“How can you talk about that—now. Have you no sense of delicacy—of—of
decency——?” She drew in her breath with a jerk. “Don’t ever speak
again, please, of your parents’ disappointment. I know you have always
considered them before me, but this is the limit.... You don’t love
me—you never did love me. I will not bear children to a man who does not
love me.”
He shrugged his shoulders and rose from the sofa. She had turned away
from him, only her back was visible. The dress was cut in a low, V-shaped
opening, and there were two pretty dimples that invited a man’s kisses.
But her husband did not notice them, he had never noticed them, and he
saw only the back of a neurotic, unreasonable woman. He was going towards
the door when she stopped him.
“Gilbert, do you remember that afternoon at Wargrave, when I asked you if
I came first.... I asked if you loved me a great deal.... Why did you lie
to me? Your work, your ambition, have always come first, and after the
first few months of our marriage, I have meant nothing to you.” She spoke
quite calmly, with none of the heat and excitement she had shown on the
night she had come back from the Rivingtons. “Gilbert, please answer a
straight question. Why did you tell me that lie?”
“It wasn’t a lie. I meant it. Only you women are so exacting and——”
She slowly inclined her head.
“I see. Perhaps you weren’t aware at the time it was a lie. You never
have analysed your emotions. You meant it—at the moment. Passion had got
both of us by the throat. I loved you, but although I didn’t realize
it, passion blinded my eyes to your real character and how unsuitable
we were to one another. And passion urged you on to marry me, when you
ought to have married a nice, tame woman who would have been content with
occasional crumbs. Oh! why does Nature bring the wrong people together!
Why! Why! Gilbert, I wish we had been lovers instead of husband and wife,
then—then the mistake would not have been irrevocable.”
He was genuinely shocked. “Claudia, I would rather not listen to such
things. Really, the licence women allow themselves nowadays—— I can’t
think how such ideas enter your head.”
She smiled, with a touch of amusement as well as a tinge of sadness, as
she answered him:
“All sorts of unorthodox ideas get into women’s heads nowadays. I know
you can’t understand, and that’s the trouble. You were made one way and I
another, and then there came a whirlwind and threw us together.” She held
out her hand. “Don’t let’s quarrel any more. I begin to see things more
clearly.... I was cheated by Nature, not by you. But ... certain things
you were—going to speak about, are quite impossible. Those days are gone
for ever. We must each in our own way make the best of the remainder of
our life.... Have you decided to go to Le Touquet at once?”
He was puzzled by her new attitude and the calmness of the frank brown
eyes that confronted him.
“Yes, I promised Fritz to get away as soon as possible. I’ve asked Colin
to go over with me. I knew you wouldn’t want to leave town just now, at
the beginning of the season.” He had not considered the possibility of
her going with him, but something in her new, almost friendly, attitude,
made him add the last sentence.
“I will come if you wish it, Gilbert.”
He hesitated. She played golf much better than he. So did Colin, but that
was different. The primitive man was strong in Gilbert.
“I think it’s hardly worth while disarranging your plans. You’ve got
heaps of engagements, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but——”
“If Colin can come, we’ll just take it quietly; golf all day and go to
bed early. A fortnight of that will soon pick me up. Later on in the
summer we’ll go for a holiday together.”
“Very well.”
He went towards the door again, and Claudia picked up a light wrap for
her shoulders. She would be rather late for Frank’s dinner-party.
At the door he fidgeted with the handle and finally turned to her.
“Perhaps I did forget to tell Marsh, Claudia. Smooth him over, will you?
You’re good at that kind of thing. Tell him that—er—I’ve come to the
conclusion that—he didn’t hear me.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him why he did not tell Marsh
himself. Then she remembered her newborn resolution, and let him go his
own road.
“I’ll see what I can do in the morning. Good-night, Gilbert.”