WOULD IT BE WELL WITH MY HUSBAND?
It was on their way back from this little dinner-party that Mr.
Courtland confessed to Ella Linton that he had come to think of her
dearest friend as a most charming and original girl; she had never once
referred to his achievements in New Guinea, nor had she asked him to
write his name in her birthday book. Yes, she was not as other girls.
“I’m so delighted to hear you say so much,” said Ella. “Oh, Bertie! why
not make yourself happy with a sweet girl such as she, and give no more
thought to such absurdities as you have been indulging in? Believe me,
you don’t know so well as I do in what direction your happiness lies.”
“I don’t know anything about happiness,” said he. “I don’t seem to care
much, either. When I made up my mind to find the meteor-bird, don’t you
suppose that there were many people who told me that, even if it was
found, it was quite unlikely that it would be more succulent eating than
a Dorking chicken? I’m sure they were right. You see, I didn’t go to New
Guinea in search of a barndoor fowl. I don’t want domestic happiness, I
don’t want anything but you--you are my meteor-bird. I found, after my
first visit to New Guinea, that it was impossible for me to rest until I
had found the meteor-bird. I have found that it is impossible for me to
live without you, my beloved.”
“You will have to learn to live without me,” said she, laying her hand
upon his. They had now reached her house, so that no immediate reply was
possible. He did not attempt to make a reply until they had gone into a
small drawing room, and she had flung off her wrap. They were alone.
Then he knelt on the rug before her and took both her hands in his
own--a hand in each of his hands--as they lay on her dress. His face was
close to hers: she was in a low chair. Each could hear the sound of the
other’s breathing--the sound of the other’s heart-beats. That duet went
on for some minutes--the most perfect music in life--the music which is
life itself--the music by which man becomes immortal.
“Do not hold me any longer, Bertie,” said she. “Kiss me and go
away--away. Oh, why should you ever come back? I believe that, if you
loved me, you would go away and never come back. Oh, what is this farce
that is being played between us? It is unworthy of either of us!”
“A farce? A tragedy!” said he. “I want you, Ella. I told you that I
could not live without you.”
“You want me? You want me, Bertie?” said she. Tears were in her eyes and
in her voice, for there was to her a passion of pathos in those words
of his. “You want me, and you know that it is only my soul that shall be
lost if I give myself to you. God has decreed that only the soul of the
woman pays the penalty of the man’s longing for her.”
“You soul shall be saved, not lost,” said he. “At present it is your
soul that is in peril, when you give your sweetness to the man whom you
have ceased to love--ah! whom you never loved. You will save your soul
with me.”
“I shall lose it for all eternity,” said she. “Do you think that I
complain? Do you fancy for a moment that I grumble at the decree of God,
or that I rail against it as unjust?”
“You are a woman.”
“I am a woman, and therefore you know I will one day be ready to lose my
soul for you, Bertie, my love. Oh, my dear, dear love, you say you want
me?”
“Oh, my God!”
He had sprung to his feet and was pacing the room before her.
“You say that you want me. Oh, my love, my love, do you fancy for a
moment that your longing for me is anything to be compared to my longing
for you?”
“My beloved, my beloved!”
His arms were about her. His lips were upon hers. She kissed him as he
kissed her.
Then she turned her head away so that his kisses fell upon her cheek
instead of her mouth. She turned it still farther and they fell upon her
neck--it was exquisite in its shape--and lay there like red rose-leaves
clinging to a carved marble pillar.
“Wait,” she said. “Wait; let me talk to you.”
She untwined his arms from about her--the tears were still in her eyes
as she tried to face him.
“Why should you still have tears?” said he. “If anything stood between
us and love, there might be room for tears, but nothing stands between
us now. I am yours, you are mine.”
“That is the boast of a man who sees only the beginning of a love; mine
are the tears of a woman who sees its end, and knows that it is not far
off.”
“How can you say that? The end? the end of love such as ours? Oh, Ella!”
“Oh, listen to me, my love! I am ashamed of the part I have played
during the past six months--since we were together on the Arno, and you
are ashamed, too.”
“I am not ashamed. I have no reason to be ashamed.”
“No; you are not ashamed of the part you have played; but you are
ashamed of me, Bertie.”
“Oh you? I--ashamed of you? Oh, my darling, if you talk longer in that
strain I will be ashamed of you.”
“You are ashamed of me--I have sometimes felt it. A man with a heart
such as I know yours to be, cannot but be ashamed of a woman, who,
though the wife of another man, allows him to kiss her--yes, and who
gives him kiss for kiss. Oh, go away--go away! I have had enough of your
love--enough of your kisses, enough shame! Go away! I never wish to see
you again--to kiss you again.”
She had walked to the other end of the room, and stood under a Venetian
mirror--it shone like a monstrous jewel above her head--looking at him,
her hands clenched, her eyes flashing through the tears that had not yet
fallen.
He had had no experience of women and their moods, and he was
consequently amazed at her attitude. He took a step toward her.
“No--no,” she cried angrily. “I will not have any more of you. I tell
you that I have had enough. I find now that what I mistook for love was
just the opposite. I believe that I hate you. No--no, Bertie, not that,
it cannot be that, only----Oh, I know now that it is not hate for you
that I feel--it is hate for myself, hate for the creature who is hateful
enough to stand between you and the happiness which you have earned by
patience, by constancy, by self-control. Yes, I hate the creature who is
idiotic enough to put honor between us, to put religion between us, to
put her soul’s salvation between us.”
“Ella, Ella, why will you not trust me?” he said, when she had flung
herself into a chair. He was standing over her with his hands clasped
behind him. He was beginning to understand something of her nature; of
the nature of the woman to whom love has come as a thief in the night.
He was beginning to perceive that she had, in her ignorance, been ready
to entertain love without knowing what was entailed by entertaining him.
“If you would only trust me, all would be well.”
She almost leaped from her chair.
“Would it?” she cried. “Would all be well? Would it be well with my
soul? Would it be well with both of us in the future? Would it be well
with my husband?”
He laughed.
“I know your husband,” he said.
“And I know him, too,” said she. “He cares for me no more than I care
for him, but he has never been otherwise than kind to me. I think of
him--I think of him. I know the name that men give to the man who tries
to make his friend’s wife love him. It is not my husband who has earned
that name, Mr. Courtland.”
He looked into her face, but he spoke no word. Even he--the lover--was
beginning to see, as in a glass, darkly, something of the conflict that
was going on in the heart of the woman before him. She had uttered words
against him, and they had stung him, and yet he had a feeling that, if
he had put his arms about her again, she would have held him close to
her as she had done before; she would have given him kiss for kiss as
she had done before. It is the decree of nature that the lover shall
think of himself only; but had he not told Phyllis that his belief
was that Nature and Satan were the same? He was sometimes able to say,
“_Retro me, Sathana_”--not always. He said it now, but not boldly, not
loudly--in a whisper. The best way of putting Satan behind one is to run
away from him. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Yes, but, on
the whole, it is safer to show him a clean pair of heels than to enter
on an argument with him, hoping that he will be amenable to logic.
Herbert Courtland said his, “_Retro me_,” in a whisper, half hoping, as
the gentlewoman with the muffins for sale hoped, that he would escape
notice. For a few moments he ceased to think of himself. He thought of
that beautiful thing before him--she was tall, and her rosy white flesh
was as a peach that has reached its one hour of ripeness--he thought of
her and pitied her.
He had not the heart to put his arms about her, though he knew that to
do so would be to give him all the happiness for which he longed. What
was he that he should stand by and see that struggle tearing her heart
asunder?
“My poor child!” said he, and then he repeated his words, “My poor
child! It would have been better if we had never come together. We are
going to part now.”
She looked at him and laughed in his face.
He did not know what this meant. Had she been simply acting a part all
along? Had she been playing a comedy part all the while he was thinking
that a great tragedy was being enacted? Or was it possible that she
was mocking him? that her laugh was the laugh of the jailer who hears a
prisoner announce his intention of walking out of his cell?
“Good-by,” said he.
She fixed her eyes upon his face, then she laughed again.
He now knew what she meant by her laugh.
“Perhaps you may think that you have too firm a hold upon me to give me
a chance of parting from you,” said he. “You may be right; but if you
tell me to go I shall try and obey you. But think what it means before
you tell me to leave you forever.”
She did think what it meant. She looked at him, and she thought of his
passing away from her forever more. She wondered what her life would be
when he should have passed out of it. A blank? Oh, worse than a blank,
for she would have ever present with her the recollection of how he had
once stood before her as he was standing now--tall, with his brown hands
clenched, and a paleness underlying the tan of his face. “The bravest
man alive”--that was what Phyllis had called him, and Phyllis had been
right. He was a man who had fought his way single-handed through such
perils as made those who merely read about them throb with anxiety.
This was the man of whom she knew that she would ever retain a
memory--this was the man whom she was ready to send back to the
uttermost ends of the earth.
And this was to be the reward of his devotion to her! What was she
that she could do this thing? What was she that she should refrain from
sacrificing herself for him? She had known women who had sacrificed
themselves to men--such men! Wretched things! Not like that man of men
who stood before her with such a look on his face as it had worn, she
knew, in the most desperate moments of his life, when the next moment
might bring death to him--death from an arrow--from a wild beast--from a
hurricane.
What could she do?
She did nothing.
She made no effort to save herself.
If he had put his arms about her and had carried her away from her
husband’s house to the uttermost ends of the earth, she would not have
resisted. It was not in her power to resist.
And it was because he saw this he went away, leaving her standing with
that lovely Venetian mirror glittering in silver and ruby and emerald
just above her head.
“You have been right; I have been wrong,” said he. “Don’t try to speak,
Ella. Don’t try to keep me. I know how you love me, and I know that if
I ask you to keep me you will keep me until you die. Forgive me for my
selfishness, my beloved. Good-by.”
She felt him approach her and she felt the hands that he laid upon her
bare shoulders--one on each side of her neck. She closed her eyes as
he put his face down to hers and kissed her on the mouth--not with
rapturous, passionate lips, but still with warm and trembling lips. She
did not know where the kiss ended, she did not know when his hands were
taken off her shoulders. She kept her eyes closed and her mouth sealed.
She did not even give him a farewell kiss.
When she opened her eyes she found herself alone in the room.
And then there came to her ears the sound of the double whistle for
a hansom. She stood silently there listening to the driving up of the
vehicle--she even heard the sound of the closing of the apron and then
the tinkling of the horse’s bells dwindling into the distance.
A sense of loneliness came to her that was overwhelming in its force.
“Fool! fool! fool!” she cried, through her set teeth. “What have I done?
Sent him away? Sent him away? My beloved!--my best beloved--my man of
men. Gone--gone! Oh, fool! fool!”
She threw herself on a sofa and stared at the Watteau group of
masquerading shepherds and shepherdesses on the great Sevres vase that
stood on a pedestal near her. The masks at the joining of the handles
were of grinning satyrs. They were leering at her, she thought. They
alone were aware of the good reason there was for satyrs to grin. A
woman had just sent away from her, forever, the bravest man in all the
world--those were Phyllis’ words--a king of men--the one man who loved
her and whom she loved. She had pretended to him that she was subject to
the influences of religion, of honor, of duty! What hypocrisy! They
knew it, those leering creatures--they knew that she cared nothing for
religion, that she regarded honor and duty as words of no meaning when
such words as love and devotion were in the air.
She looked at the satyr masks, and had anyone been present in the room,
that one would have seen that her lovely face became gradually distorted
until the expression it wore was precisely the same as that upon the
masks--an expression that had its audible equivalent in the laugh which
broke from her.
She lay back on her broad cushions. One of the strands of her splendid
hair had become loose, and after coiling over half a yard of the
brocaded silk of a cushion, twisted its way down to the floor. She lay
back, pointing one finger at the face on the vase and laughing that
satyr-laugh.
“We know--we know--we know!” she cried, and her voice was like that of
a drunken woman. “We know all--you and I--we know the hypocrisy--the
pretense of religion--of honor--duty--a husband! Ah, a husband! that is
the funniest of all--that husband! We know how little we care for them
all.”
She continued laughing until her cushion slipped from under her head.
She half rose to straighten it, and at that instant she caught a glimpse
of her face in the center silvered panel of the Venetian mirror. The cry
of horror that broke from her at that instant seemed part of her laugh.
It would not have occurred to anyone who might have heard it that it
was otherwise than consistent with the incongruity, so to speak, of
the existing elements of the scene. The hideous leer of the thing
with horns, looking down at the exquisite picture of the _fete
champetre_--the distorted features of the woman’s face in the center
of the ruby and emerald and sapphire of the Venetian mirror--the cry
of horror mixed with the laugh of the woman who mocked at religion and
honor and purity--all were consistently incongruous.
In another instant she was lying on the sofa with her face down to the
cushion, trying to forget all that she had seen in the mirror. She wept
her tears on the brocaded silk for half an hour, and then she slipped
from where she was lying till her knees were on the floor. With a hand
clutching each side of the cushion she got rid of her passion in prayer.
“Oh, God! God! keep him away from me! keep him away from me!” was her
prayer; and it was possibly the best that she could have uttered. “Keep
him away from me! keep him away from me! Don’t let my soul be lost! Keep
him away from me!”
When she struggled to her feet, at last, she stood in front of the
mirror once again.
She now saw a face purified of all passion by tears and prayer, where
she had seen the soulless face of a Pagan’s orgy.
She went upstairs to her bed and went asleep, thanking God that she had
had the strength to send him away; that she had had strength sufficient
to stand where she had stood in the room, silent, while he had put
his arms on her bare shoulders and kissed her on the mouth, saying
“Good-by.”
She felt that she had every reason to thank God for that strength, for
she knew that it had been given to her at that moment; it had not sprung
from within her own heart; her heart had been crying out to him, “Stay,
stay, stay!” her heart took no account of honor or purity or a husband.
Yes, she felt that the strength which had come to her at that moment had
been the especial gift of God, and she was thankful to God for it.
That consciousness of gratitude to God was her last sensation before
falling asleep; and, when morning came, her first sensation was that of
having a letter to write. Before she had breakfasted she had written her
letter and sent it to be posted.
This was the letter:
“MY ONE LOVE: I was a fool--oh, such a fool! How could I have done it?
How could I have sent you away in such coldness last night? Believe me,
it was not I who did it. How could I have done it? You know that my love
for you is limitless. You know that it is my life. I tell you that my
love for you laughs at such limits as are laid down by religion and
honor. Why should I protest? My love is love, and there can be no love
where there are any limits.
“Come to me on Thursday. I shall be at home after dinner, at nine, and
see if I am not now in my right mind. Come to me; come to me, Bertie, my
love.”