'Jack, dearest, how long will you be with me? How long is the leave?'
He raised his eyes then and looked at her; a curious look. Something in
it blurred her mind with a sense of some other sort of fear.
'Only till to-night,' he said.
It seemed confusion rather than pain that she felt. 'Only till to-night,
Jack? But Richard Crawley has been back for three days already. I
thought they gave you longer?'
'I know, mummy.' His eyes were dropped again and his hand at the
button--did it tremble?--twisted and untwisted. 'I've been back for
three days already.--I've been in London.'
'In London?' Her breath failed her. The sense of alien fear became a
fog, horrible, suffocating. 'But--Jack--why?'
'I didn't wire, mummy, because I knew I'd have to be there for most of
my time. I felt that I couldn't wire and tell you. I felt that I had to
see you when I told you. Mother--I'm married.--I came back to get
married.--I was married this morning.--O mother, can you ever forgive
me?'
His shaking hands held her and his eyes could not meet hers.
She felt the blood rush, as if her heart had been divided with a sword,
to her throat, to her eyes, choking her, burning her; and as if from far
away she heard her own voice saying, after a little time had passed,
'There's nothing I couldn't forgive you, Jack. Tell me. Don't be afraid
of hurting me.'
He held her tightly, still looking down as he said, 'She is a dancer,
mother, a little dancer. It was in London, last summer. A lot of us came
up from Aldershot together. She was in the chorus of one of those
musical comedies. Mother, you can never understand. But it wasn't just
low and vulgar. She was so lovely,--so very young,--with the most
wonderful golden hair and the sweetest eyes.--I don't know.--I simply
went off my head when I saw her. We all had supper together afterwards.
Toppie knew one of the other girls, and Dollie was there. That's her
name--Dollie Vaughan--her stage name. Her real name was Byles. Her
people, I think, were little tradespeople, and she'd lost her father and
mother, and an aunt had been very unkind. She told me all about it that
night. Mother, please believe just this: it wasn't only the obvious
thing.--I know I can't explain. But you remember, when we read _War and
Peace_,'--his broken voice groped for the analogy,--'you remember
Natacha, when she falls in love with Anatole, and nothing that was real
before seems real, and she is ready for anything. It was like that. It
was all fairyland, like that. No one thought it wrong. It didn't seem
wrong. Everything went together.'
She had gathered his hand closely in hers and she sat there, quiet,
looking at her hopes lying slain before her. Her Jack. The wife who was,
perhaps, to have been his. The children that she, perhaps, should have
seen. All dead. The future blotted out. Only this wraith-like present;
only this moment of decision; Jack and his desperate need the only real
things left.
And after a moment, for his laboring breath had failed, she said, 'Yes,
dear?' and smiled at him.