MILLIE'S STORY
They walked for a while in silence, side by side, yet not so close but
that there was an interval between them. Millie every now and then
glanced at Tony's face, but she saw only his profile, and with only
the glimmer of the starlight to serve her for a reading-lamp, she
could guess nothing of his expression. But he walked like a man
utterly dispirited and tired. The hopes, so stoutly cherished during
the last few years, had all crumbled away to-night. Perpetually
his thoughts recurred to that question, which now never could be
answered--if he had gone into the house in Berkeley Square on that
distant evening when he had been contented to pace for a little while
beneath the windows, would he have averted the trouble which had
reached its crisis to-night at the _Reserve?_ He thought not--he was
not sure; only he was certain that he should have gone in. He stopped
and turned back, looking towards the _Reserve_. A semicircle of lights
over the doorway was visible, and as he looked those lights were
suddenly extinguished. He heard Millie's voice at his side.
"I will tell you now how the time has passed with me." And he saw that
she was looking steadfastly into his eyes. "The story will sound very
trivial, very contemptible, after what you have told me. It fills me
utterly with shame. But I should have told you it none the less had
you not asked for it--I rather wish that you had not asked for it; for
I think I must have told you of my own accord."
She spoke in a quick, troubled voice, but it did not waver; nor did
her eyes once fall from his. The change in her was swift, no doubt.
But down there in the _Reserve_, where the lights were out, and the
sea echoed through empty rooms, she had had stern and savage teachers.
Terror, humiliation, and the spectacle of violence had torn away a
veil from before her eyes. She saw her own life in its true
perspective. And, that she might see it the more clearly and
understand, she had the story of another life wherewith to compare it.
It is a quality of big performances, whether in art or life, that
while they surprise when first apprehended, they appear upon thought
to be so simple that it is astonishing surprise was ever felt.
Something of that quality Tony's career possessed. It had come upon
Millie as a revelation, yet, now she was thinking: "Yes, that is what
Tony would do. How is it I never guessed?" She put him side by side
with that other man, the warrior of the drawing-rooms, and she was
filled with shame that ever she could have preferred the latter even
for a moment of madness.
They walked slowly on again. Millie drew her lace wrap more closely
about her throat.
"Are you cold?" asked Tony. "You are lightly clothed to be talking
here. We had better perhaps walk on, and keep what you have to tell me
until to-morrow."
"No," she answered quickly, "I am not cold. And I must tell you what I
have to tell you to-night. I want all this bad, foolish part of my
life to end to-night, to be extinguished just as those lights were
extinguished a minute since. Only there is something I should like to
say to you first." Millie's voice wavered now and broke. "If we do not
walk along the road together any more," she went on timidly, "I will
still be glad that you came back to-night. I do not know that you will
believe that--I do not, indeed, see why you should; but I should very
much like you to believe it; for it is the truth. I have learned a
good deal, I think, during the last three hours. I would rather go on
alone--if it is to be so--in this dim, clean starlight, than ever be
back again in the little room with its lights and flowers. Do you
understand me?"
"I think so," said Tony.
"At all events, the road is visible ahead," she went on. "One sees it
glimmering, one can keep between the banks; while, in the little
lighted room it is easy to get lost."
And thus to Millie now, as to Pamela when she rode back from her last
interview with Warrisden at the village of the three poplars, the
riband of white road stretching away in the dusk became a parable.
"Yes," said Tony, "perhaps my path was really the easier one to
follow. It was direct and plain."
"Ah," said Millie, "it only seems so because you have traversed it,
and are looking back. I do not think it was so simple and direct while
you walked upon it." And Tony, remembering the doubts and perplexities
which had besieged him, could not but assent.
"I do not think, too, that it was so easy to discover at the
beginning."
There rose before Tony's eyes the picture of a ketch-rigged boat
sailing at night over a calm sea. A man leaned over the bulwarks, and
the bright glare from a lightship ran across the waves and flashed
upon his face. Tony remembered the moment very clearly when he had
first hit upon his plan; he remembered the weeks of anxiety of which
it was the outcome. No, the road had not been easy to find at the
beginning. He was silent for a minute, and then he said gently--
"I am sorry that I asked you to tell your story--I am sorry that I
did not leave the decision to you. But it shall be as though you told
it of your own accord."
The sentence was a concession, no less in the manner of its utterance
than in the words themselves. Millie took heart, and told him the
whole story of her dealings with Lionel Callon, without excuses and
without concealments.
"I seemed to mean so much to him, so little to you," she said. "You
see, I did not understand you at all. You were away, too, and he was
near. I do not defend myself."
She did not spare herself, she taxed her memory for the details of her
days; and as she spoke the story seemed more utterly contemptible and
small than even she in her abasement had imagined it would be. But she
struggled through with it to the end.
"That night when you stood beneath the windows in Berkeley Square,"
she said, "he was with me. He ran in from Lady Millingham's party and
talked with me for half an hour. Yes, at the very time when you were
standing on the pavement he was within the house. I know, for you were
seen, and on the next day I was told of your presence. I was afraid
then. The news was a shock to me. I thought, 'Suppose you had come
in!'"
"But, back there, in the room," Tony interrupted, "you told me that
you wished I had come in."
"Yes," she answered. "And it is quite true; I wish now that you had
come in."
She told him of the drive round Regent's Park, and of the consent she
gave that night to Lionel Callon.
"I think you know everything now," she said. "I have tried to forget
nothing. I want you, whatever you decide to do, to decide knowing
everything."
"Thank you," said Tony, simply. And she added--
"I am not the first woman I know who has thrown away the substance for
the shadow."
Upon the rest of that walk little was said. They went forward beneath
the stars. A great peace lay upon sea and land. The hills rose dark
and high upon their left hand, the sea murmured and whispered to them
upon the right. Millie walked even more slowly as they neared the
hotel at Eze, and Tony turned to her with a question--
"You are tired?"
"No," she answered.
She was thinking that very likely she would never walk again on any
road with Tony at her side, and she was minded to prolong this last
walk to the last possible moment. For in this one night Tony had
reconquered her. It was not merely that his story had filled her with
amazement and pride, but she had seen him that night strong and
dominant, as she had never dreamed of seeing him. She loved his very
sternness towards herself. Not once had he spoken her name and called
her "Millie." She had watched for that and longed for it, and yet
because he had not used it she was the nearer to worship. Once she
said to him with a start of anxiety--
"You are not staying here under your own name?"
"No," he replied. "A friend has taken rooms in Monte Carlo for both of
us. Only his name has been given."
"And you will leave France to-morrow?"
"Yes."
"Promise!" she cried.
Tony promised, with a look of curiosity at his wife. Why should she be
so eager for his safety? He did not understand. He was wondering what
he must do in this crisis of their lives. Was he to come, in spite of
all his efforts, to that ordinary compromise which it had been his
object to avoid?
They reached the door of the hotel, and there Tony halted.
"Good night!" he said; he did not hold out his hand. He stood
confronting Millie with the light from the hall lamp falling full upon
his face. Millie hoped that he would say something more--just a little
word of kindness or forgiveness--if only she waited long enough
without answering him; and she was willing to wait until the morning
came, he did indeed speak again, and then Millie was sorry that she
had waited. For he said the one really cruel thing amongst all the
words he had said that night. He was not aware of its cruelty, he was
only conscious of its truth.
"Do you know." he said--and upon his tired face there came a momentary
smile--"to-night I miss the Legion very much." Again he said "Good
night."
This time Millie answered him; and in an instant he was gone. She
could have cried out; she could hardly restrain her voice from calling
him back to her. "Was this the end?" she asked of herself. "That one
cruel sentence, and then the commonplace Good night, without so much
as a touch of the hands. Was this the very end?" A sharp fear stabbed
her. For a few moments she heard Tony's footsteps upon the flags in
front of the hotel, and then for a few moments upon the gravel of the
garden path; and after that she heard only the murmur of the sea. And
all at once for her the world was empty. "Was this the end?" she asked
herself again most piteously; "this, which might have been the
beginning." Slowly she went up to her rooms. Sleep did not visit her
that night.