She heard the door-bell ring, and then his quick step. It did not seem
to her this afternoon that she had to master the disquiet of heart that
his coming always brought. It was something steeled and hostile that
waited for him.
When he had entered and stood before her she saw that he intended to be
careful, to be very careful, and the recognition of that attitude in him
gave further bitterness to her cold, her fierce revolt. What right had
he to that bright formal smile, that chill pressure of her fingers, that
air of crisp cheerfulness, as of one injured but willing, magnanimously,
to conceal his hurt? What right--good heavens!--had Gerald to feel
injured? She almost laughed again as she looked at him and at this
unveiling of his sublime self-centredness. He expected to find his world
just as he would have it, his cushion at his head and his footstool at
his feet, the wife in her place fulfilling her comely duties, the
spinster friend in hers, administering balms and counsels; the wife at
Merriston House, and the spinster friend in the little sitting-room
where, for so many years, he had come to her with all his moods and
misfortunes. She felt that her eyes fixed themselves on him with a cold
menace as he stood there on the other side of the fire and, putting his
foot on the fender, looked first at her and then down at the flames. His
very silence was full of the sense of injury; but she knew that hers was
the compelling silence and that she could force him to be the first to
speak. And so it was that presently he said:
'Well, Helen, this is great news.'
'Yes, isn't it?' she answered. 'It has been a year of news, hasn't it?'
He stared, courteously blank, and something in her was pleased to
observe that he looked silly with his affectation of blandness.
'I beg your pardon?'
'You had your great event, and I, now, have mine.'
'Ah yes, I see.'
'It's all rather queer when one comes to think of it,' said Helen.
'Althea, my new friend--whom I told you of here, only a few months
ago--and her friend. How important they have become to us, and how
little, last summer, we could have dreamed of it.' She, too, was
speaking artificially, and was aware of it; but she was well aware that
Gerald didn't find that she looked silly. She had every advantage over
the friend who came with his pretended calm and his badly hidden
rancour. And since he stood silent, looking at the fire, she added,
mildly and cheerfully: 'I am so glad for your happiness, Gerald, and I
hope that you are glad for mine.'
He looked up at her now, and she could not read the look; it hid
something--or else it sought for something hidden; and in its
oddity--which reminded her of a blind animal dazedly seeking its
path--it so nearly touched her that, with a revulsion from any hint of
weakening pity for him, it made her bitterness against him greater than
before.
'I'm afraid I can't say I'm glad, Helen,' he replied. 'I'm too amazed,
still, to feel anything except'--he seemed to grope for a word and then
to give it up--'amazement.'
'I was surprised myself,' said Helen. 'I had not much hope left of
anything so fortunate happening to me.'
'You feel it, then, so fortunate?'
'Don't you think that it is--to marry millions,' Helen asked, smiling,
'and to have found such a good man to care for me?'
'I think it is he who is fortunate,' said Gerald, after a moment.
'Thank you; perhaps we both are fortunate.'
Once more there was a long silence and then, suddenly, Gerald flung
away, thrusting his hands in his pockets and stopping before the window,
his back turned to her. 'I can't stand this,' he declared.
'What can't you stand?'
'You don't love this man. He doesn't love you.'
'What is that to you?' asked Helen.
'I can't think it of you; I can't bear to think it.'
'What is it to you?' she repeated, in a deadened voice.
'Why do you say that?' he took her up with controlled fury. 'How
couldn't it but be a great deal to me? Haven't you been a great
deal--for all our lives nearly? Do you mean that you're going to kick
me out completely--because you are going to marry? What does it mean to
me? I wish it could mean something to you of what it does to me. To give
yourself--you--you--to a man who doesn't love you--whom you don't
love--for money. Oh, I know we've always talked of that sort of thing as
if it were possible--and perhaps it is--for a man. But when it comes to
a woman--a woman one has cared for--looked up to--as I have to you--it's
a different matter. One expects a different standard.'
'What standard do you expect from me?' asked Helen. There were tears,
but tears of rage, in her voice.
'You know,' said Gerald, who also was struggling with an emotion that,
rising, overcame his control, 'you know what I think of you--what I
expect of you. A great match--a great man--something fitting for
you--one could accept that; but this little American nonentity, this
little American--barely a gentleman--whom you'd never have looked at if
he hadn't money--a man who will make you ridiculous, a man who can't
have a thought or feeling in common with you--it's not fit--it's not
worthy; it smirches you; it's debasing.'
He had not turned to look at her while he spoke, perhaps did not dare to
look. He knew that his anger, his more than anger, had no warrant, and
that the words in which it cloaked itself--though he believed in all he
said--were unjustifiable. But it was more than anger, and it must speak,
must plead, must protest. He had no right to say these things, perhaps,
but Helen should understand the more beneath, should understand that he
was lost, bewildered, miserable; if Helen did not understand, what was
to become of him? And now she stood there behind him, not speaking, not
answering him, so that he was almost frightened and murmured on, half
inaudibly: 'It's a wrong you do--to me--to our friendship, as well as to
yourself.'
Helen now spoke, and the tone of her voice arrested his attention even
before the meaning of her words reached him. It was a tone that he had
never heard from her, and it was not so much that it made him feel that
he had lost her as that it made him feel--strangely and
penetratingly--that he had never known her.
'You say all this to me, Gerald, you who in all these years have never
taken the trouble to wonder or think about me at all--except how I might
amuse you or advise you, or help you.' These were Helen's words. 'Why
should I go on considering you, who have never considered me?'
It was so sudden, so amazing, and so cruel that, turning to her, he
literally stared, open-eyed and open-mouthed. 'I don't know what you
mean, Helen,' he said.
'Of course you don't,' she continued in her measured voice, 'of course
you don't know what I mean; you never have. I don't blame you; you are
not imaginative, and all my life I've taken care that you should know
very little of what I meant. The only bit of me that you've known has
been the bit that has always been at your service. There is a good deal
more of me than that.'
'But--what have you meant?' he stammered, almost in tears.
Her face, white and cold, was bent on him, and in her little pause she
seemed to deliberate--not on what he should be told, that was fixed--but
on how to tell it; and for this she found finally short and simple
words.
'Can't you guess, even now, when at last I've become desperate and
indifferent?' she said. 'Can't you see, even now, that I've always loved
you?'
They confronted each other in a long moment of revelation and avowal. It
grew like a great distance between them, the distance of all the years
through which she had suffered and he been blind. Gerald saw it like a
chasm, dark with time, with secrecy, with his intolerable stupidity. He
gazed at her across it, and in her face, her strange, strong, fragile,
weary face, he saw it all, at last. Yes, she had loved him all her life,
and he had never seen it.
She had moved, in speaking to him, away from her place near the fire,
and he now went to it, and put his arms on the mantelpiece and hid his
face upon them. 'Fool--fool that I am!' he uttered softly. He stood so,
his face hidden from her, and his words seemed to release some bond in
Helen's heart. The worst of the bitterness against him passed away. The
tragedy, after all, was not his fault, but Fate's, and to suggest that
he was accountable was to be grotesquely stupid. That he had not loved
her was the tragedy; that he had never seen was, in reality, the
tragedy's alleviation. Absurd to blame poor Gerald for not seeing. When
she spoke again it was in an altered voice.
'No, you're not,' she said, and she seemed with him to contemplate the
chasm and to make it clear for him--she had always made things clear for
him, and there was now, with all the melancholy, a peacefulness in
sharing with him this, their last, situation. Never before had they
talked over one so strange, and never again would they talk over any
other so near; to speak at last was to make it, in its very nearness,
immeasurably remote, to put it away, from both their lives, for ever.
'No, you're not; I shouldn't have said that you were not imaginative; I
shouldn't have said that you had never considered me; you have--you have
been the best of friends; I was letting myself be cruel. It's only that
_I'm_ not a fool. A woman who isn't can always keep a man from
imagining; it's the one thing that even a stupid woman can do. And my
whole nature has been moulded by the instinct for concealment.' She
looked round mechanically for a seat while she spoke; she felt horribly
tired; and she sank on a straight, high chair near the writing-table.
Here, leaning forward, her arms resting on her knees, her hands clasped
and hanging, she went on, looking before her. 'I want to tell you about
it now. There are things to confess. I haven't been a nice woman in it
all; I've not taken it as a nice woman would. I've hated you for not
loving me. I've hated you for not wanting anything more from me and for
your contentment with what I gave you, and for caring as much as you
did, too, for being fonder of me than of any one else in the world, and
yet never caring more. Of course I understood; it was a little comfort
to my pride to understand. Even if I'd been the sort of woman you would
have fallen in love with, I was too near. I had to make myself too near;
that was my shield. I had to give you everything you wanted because
that was the sure way to hide from you that I had so much more to give.
And for years I went on hoping--not that you would see--I should have
lost everything then--but that, of yourself, you would want more.'
Gerald had lifted his head, but his hand still hid his eyes. 'Helen,
dear Helen,' he said, and she did not understand his voice--it was pain,
but more than pain; 'why were you so cruel? why were you so proud? If
you'd only let me see; if you'd only given me a hint. Don't you know it
only needed that?'
She paused over his question for so long that he put down his hand and
looked at her, and her eyes, meeting his unfalteringly, widened with a
strained, suffering look.
'It's kind of you to say so,' she said. 'And I know you believe it now;
you are so fond of me, and so sorry for this horrid tale I inflict on
you, that you have to believe it. And of course it may be true. Perhaps
it did only need that.'
They had both now looked away again, Gerald gazing unseeingly into the
mirror, Helen at the opposite wall. 'It may be true,' she repeated. 'I
had only, perhaps, to be instinctive--to withdraw--to hide--create the
little mysteries that appeal to men's senses and imaginations. I had
only to put aside my pride and to shut my eyes on my horrible, hard,
lucid self-consciousness, let instinct guide me, be a mere woman, and
you might have been in love with me. It's true. I used often to think
it, too. I used often to think that I might make you fall in love with
me if I could stop being your friend. But, don't you see, I knew myself
far too well. I _was_ too proud. I didn't want you if you only wanted me
because I'd lured you and appealed to your senses and imagination. I
didn't want you unless you wanted me for the big and not for the little
things of love. I couldn't pretend that I had something to hide--I know
perfectly how it is done--the air of evasion, of wistfulness--all the
innocent hypocrisies women make use of; but I couldn't. I didn't want
you like that. There was nothing for it but to look straight at you and
pretend, not that there was anything to hide, but that there was
nothing.'
Again, his eyes meeting hers, she looked, indeed, straight at him and
smiled a little; for there was, indeed, nothing now to hide; and she
went on quietly, 'You see now, how I've been feeling for these last
months, when everything has gone, at last, completely. I'd determined,
long ago, to give up hope and marry some one else. But I didn't know
till this autumn, when you decided to marry Althea, I didn't know till
then how much hope there was still left to be killed. When a thing like
that has been killed, you see, one hasn't much feeling left for the rest
of life. I don't care enough, one way or the other, not to marry as I'm
doing. There is still one's life to live, and one may as well make what
seems the best of it. I've not succeeded, you see, in marrying your
great man, and I've fallen back very thankfully on my dear, good
Franklin, who is not, let me tell you, a nonentity in my eyes; I'm
fonder of him than of any one I've ever known except yourself. And it
was too much, just the one touch too much, to have you come to me to-day
with reproaches and an air of injury. But, at the same time, I ask your
pardon for having spoken to you like that--as though you'd done _me_ a
wrong. And if I've been too cruel, if the memory rankles and makes you
uncomfortable, you must keep away from me as long as you like. It won't
be for ever, I'm sure. In spite of everything I'm sure that we shall
always be friends.'
She got up now, knowing in her exhaustion that she was near tears, and
she found her cigarette-case on the writing-table; it was an automatic
relapse to the customary. She felt that everything, indeed, was over,
and that the sooner one relapsed on every-day trivialities the better.
Gerald watched her light the cigarette, the pulsing little flicker of
yellow flame illuminating her cheek and hair as she stood half turned
from him. She was near him and he had but one step to take to her. He
was almost unaware of motive. What he did was nearly as automatic, as
inevitable, as her search for the cigarette. He was beside her and he
put his arms around her and took the cigarette from her hand. Then,
folding her to him, he hid his face against her hair.
It was, then, not excitement he felt so much as the envelopment of a
great, a beautiful necessity. So great, so beautiful, in its peace and
accomplishment, that it was as if he had stood there holding Helen for
an eternity, and as if all the miserable years that had separated them
were looked down at serenely from some far height.
And Helen had stood absolutely still. When she spoke he heard in her
voice an amazement too great for anger. It was almost gentle in its
astonishment. 'Gerald,' she said, 'I am not in need of consolation.'
Foolish Helen, he thought, breathing quietly in the warm dusk of her
hair; foolish dear one, to speak from that realm of abolished time.
'I'm not consoling you,' he said.
She was again silent for a moment and he felt that her heart was
throbbing hard; its shocks went through him. 'Let me go,' she said.
He kissed her hair, holding her closer.
Helen, starting violently, thrust him away with all her strength, and
though blissfully aware only of his own interpretation, Gerald half
released her, keeping her only by his clasp of her wrists.
His kiss had confirmed her incredible suspicion. 'You insult me!' she
said. 'And after what I told you! What intolerable assumption! What
intolerable arrogance! What baseness!'
Her eyes seemed to burn their eyelids; her face was transformed in its
wild, blanched indignation.
'But I love you,' said Gerald, and he looked at her with a candour of
conviction too deep for pleading.
'You love me!' Helen repeated. She could have wept for sheer fury and
humiliation had not her scornful concentration on him been too intent to
admit the flooding image of herself--mocked and abased by this
travesty--which might have brought the fears. 'I think that you are
mad.'
'But I do love you,' Gerald reiterated. 'I've been mad, if you like; but
I'm quite sane now.'
'You are a simpleton,' was Helen's reply; she could find no other word
for his fatuity.
'Be as cruel as you like; I know I deserve it,' said Gerald.
'You imagine I'm punishing you?'
'I don't imagine anything, or see anything, Helen, except that we love
each other and that you've got to marry me.'
Helen looked deeply into his eyes, deeply and, he saw it at last,
implacably. 'If your last chance hadn't been gone, can you believe that
I would ever have told you? Your last chance is gone. I will never marry
you.' And hearing steps outside, she twisted her hands from his, saying,
'Think of appearances, please. Here is Franklin.'