I AM convinced now. Roger loves her. Until that supper I had ups and
downs--times when I felt unsure, hours when I argued myself into the
belief that I was mistaken. But when I came down to my rooms that night
my uncertainties were ended. As I lay in the dark I saw everything as
clear as crystal. It seemed as if I was clairvoyant, caught up above
myself, the whole situation visualized before me like a picture.
Since then there’s been only one question--what ought I to do?
Apart from my own feeling for Roger--supposing he was only the friend
he used to be--should I let him give his heart and his name to a woman,
whom, if he knew the truth, he would put away from him like a leper?
Every ideal and instinct that make up the sum of his being would
revolt, if he knew about Lizzie and John Masters. I know this, I don’t
just think it because I want to. According to his code all women must
be chaste and all men honest, and if they’re not, he doesn’t want to
have anything to do with them. It may not be generous, but that’s not
to the point. He is so made and so will remain. He has been kinder to
me than any one in the world--kind and just, as far as he knew. Should
I, who could prevent it, stand by and watch him--the illustration isn’t
flattering but it’s apt--rushing toward the precipice like the Gadarene
swine?
And then Lizzie is entirely unfitted to be the wife of such a man.
She belongs to another world that he doesn’t understand and couldn’t
tolerate. He would think the people she foregathers with were savages.
He hasn’t seen her with them, he doesn’t know how blind she is to
the niceties of manners and breeding that to him are essentials. I
try to fit her into his environment, put her up in a niche beside
Mrs. Ashworth--Lizzie, with her tempests, her careless insults, her
impossible friends! Suppose there had never been any John Masters, that
she was as pure as Diana, could she ever be tamed to the Clements’
standard?
Memories of her keep coming up, throwing oranges out of the window,
listening hungrily to Mrs. Stregazzi (fancy Mrs. Stregazzi at Mrs.
Ashworth’s tea table talking about her corsets and her cigarettes!)
facing Masters like an enraged lioness, weeping against his shoulder
and pleading with him to come back. Good heavens, if no man had even
touched her hand except in the clasp of friendship, she is not the
woman for Roger. And she lived, willingly, proudly, without a twinge of
conscience, with John Masters!
That’s one side and here’s the other:
Lizzie’s happiness, Lizzie placed beyond all need, Lizzie the wife of
a man so high-thinking and right-doing that everything in her that was
fine must answer to his call. Under his influence she might change,
become what he now imagines her to be. Women have done that often,
grown to love the man they marry and molded themselves to his ideal.
Have I the right to stand between her and such a future, bar the way to
Eden, an angel with a flaming sword?