Hester Crowdie heard Katharine’s footfall outside, and did not move from
her position at the window until she had listened to the last retreating
echo of the young girl’s light step upon the pavement. It was very still
after that, for Lafayette Place is an unfrequented corner--a quiet
island, as it were, round which the great rivers of traffic flow in all
directions. Only now and then a lumbering van thunders through it, to
draw up at the great printing establishment at the southeast corner, or
a private carriage rolls along and stops, with a discreet clatter, at
the Bishop’s House, on the west side, almost opposite the Crowdies’
dwelling.
But as Hester stood in silence, with her back to the window, her eyes
rested with a fixed look on her husband’s face. He was pale, and his own
beautiful eyes had lost their self-possessed calm. He looked at her, but
his glance shifted quickly from one point to another--from her throat to
her shoulder, from her hair to the window behind her--in a frightened
and anxious way, avoiding her steady gaze.
What he had done was harmless enough, if not altogether innocent, in
itself. That there had been something not exactly right about it, or
about the way in which he had done it, was indirectly proved by
Katharine’s own quick displeasure. But he knew, himself, how much it had
meant to Hester, over, above and beyond any commonly simple
interpretation which might be put upon it. His face and manner showed
that he knew it, long before she spoke the first word of what was to
come.
“Walter!”
She uttered his name in a low tone that quivered with the pain she felt,
full of suffering, and reproach, and disappointment. Instantly his eyes
fell before hers, but he answered nothing. He looked at his own white
hand as it rested on the back of a chair.
“Look at me!” she said, almost sharply, with a rising intonation.
He looked up timidly, and a slight flush appeared on his pale forehead,
but not in his cheeks.
“I don’t know why you make such a fuss about nothing,” he said, in the
colourless voice of a frightened boy, caught in mischief before he has
had time to invent an excuse.
“Don’t use such absurd words!” cried Hester, with sudden energy. “It’s
bad enough as it is. You love her. Say so! Be a man--be done with it!”
“I certainly won’t say that,” answered Crowdie, regaining a little
self-possession under the exaggerated accusation. “It wouldn’t be true.”
“I’ve seen--I know!” She turned from him again and rested her forehead
on her hands against the raised sash of the window.
He gained courage, when he no longer felt her eyes upon him, and he
found words.
“You’ve no right to say that I love Katharine Lauderdale,” he said. “You
saw what I did, and all I did. Well--what harm was there in kissing her
hand--not her hand, her glove, when I had fastened it?”
“What harm!” she repeated, in a low voice, without turning to him, and
moving her head a little against her hands.
“Yes--what harm was there, I ask? Wasn’t it a perfectly natural thing to
do? Haven’t you seen me--”
“Natural!” Hester turned again very quickly and came forward two steps
into the room. “Natural!” she repeated. “Yes--that’s it--it was
natural--oh, too natural! What else could you do? Buttoning her
glove--her hand in yours--and you, loving her--you kissed it! Ah,
yes,--I know how natural it was! And you tell me there was no harm in
it! What’s harm, then? What does the word mean to you? Nothing? Is there
no harm in hurting me?”
“But Hester, love--”
“And as though you did not know it--as though you had not turned white
when you saw me at the door there, looking at you! If there were no
harm, you needn’t have been afraid of me. You’d have smiled instead of
getting pale; you’d have held her hand still, instead of dropping it,
and you’d have kissed it again, to show me how little it meant. No harm,
indeed!”
“Your face was enough to scare any one, sweetheart. I thought you were
ill and were going to faint.”
He spoke softly now, in his golden voice, and threw more persuasion into
the thin excuse than its words held.
“Don’t--don’t!” she cried. “You’re tearing love to pieces with every
word you say--if you know what you’re saying! I tell you I’ve seen, and
I know! This is the end--not the beginning. I saw it beginning long
ago--last winter, when she sat to you day after day, and I lay in my
corner and watched you watching her, and your eyes lighting up, and that
smile of yours that was only for me--”
“But I was painting her portrait--I had to look at her--”
“Not like that! Oh, no, not like that! There’s no reason, there never
was any reason, why you should look at any woman like that--as you’ve
looked at me. What a fool I was to let it go on, to trust myself, to
believe that I could be the only woman in the world for you! And then,
the other day, when you sang to her before all those people; do you
remember what you once promised me? Do you remember at all that you
swore to me by all you held sacred that you’d never, never sing, unless
I were there to hear you? How you told me that your voice was mine, and
only for me, and for no one else, because that at least you could keep
for me, though you couldn’t keep your art and make that all mine, too?
And then you sang to her--I know, for they told me--you sang my song,
the one I loved, from Lohengrin! Why did you do that?”
“Why--I told you the other day--we talked of it, don’t you remember? Why
do you go back to it now, dear?”
“Because it’s part of it all,” she cried, passionately. “Because it was
only one of so many things that have all led up to this that you’ve done
now. I told you how I hated her, the other day, and I made you say that
you hated her, too, though you didn’t want to say it. But you did, and
you meant it for a little minute--just while it lasted. But you can’t
hate her when she’s here--you can’t because you love her, and one can’t
hate and love at the same time, though I do--but that’s different. You
love her, Walter! You love her--you love her--”
“You’re beside yourself, darling,” said Crowdie, softly. “Don’t talk
like this! Be reasonable! Listen to me, sweet!”
He knelt down beside her as she threw herself into a low chair, and he
tried to take her hands. But she drew them away, wringing them as though
to shake something from her fingers, and turning her face from him, as
she clasped the back of the chair on the opposite side.
“No, no!” she cried, quivering all over. “I’m not mad. I know what I’m
saying--God knows, I wish I didn’t.”
Her voice sank to a whisper, and her head fell against her hands.
Crowdie laid one of his upon her arm, and she quivered again, like a
nervous thoroughbred. Crowdie’s own voice was full of soft pleading as
he spoke to her.
“My sweet--my precious! Listen to me, love; don’t think I don’t love
you, not even for one instant, nor that I ever loved you even a little
less. Hester, look at me, darling--don’t turn your face away as though
you were always going to be angry--it’s all a wretched mistake, dear!
Won’t you try and believe me?”
But Hester would not turn to him.
“What has she got that I haven’t?” she asked, in a low monotonous tone,
as though speaking to herself.
“Nothing, beloved--not half of all you have, not a quarter nor a
hundredth part--”
“Yes--she’s more beautiful, I suppose,” continued Hester, speaking into
the chair as she buried her face. “But surely that’s all--oh, what is
it? What else is it that she has, and that I haven’t, and that you love
in her?”
“But I don’t love her--I don’t care for her--I don’t even like her--I
hate her since she’s come between you and me, dear.”
“No--you love her. I’ve seen it in your eyes--you can’t hide it in your
eyes. You do! You love her!” she cried, suddenly raising her face and
turning upon him for a moment, then looking away again almost instantly.
“Oh, what has she got that I haven’t? What’s her secret--oh, what is
it?”
Crowdie bent over her shoulder and kissed the stuff of her frock softly.
“Darling! Don’t make so much of so very little!” he whispered, close to
her ear. “I tell you I love you, sweet--you must believe me--you shall
believe me! I’ll kiss you till you do.”
“No!” she exclaimed, almost fiercely. “You shan’t kiss me!”
And she rose with a spring, and left him kneeling beside the empty
chair. He struggled to his feet, cut by the ridicule of his own
attitude. But he could not move easily and swiftly as she could, being
badly made. She stood back, looking at him over the chair, and her eyes
flashed angrily. He moved towards her, but she drew further back.
“Don’t come near me!” she cried. “I won’t let you touch me!”
“Hester!” His voice trembled as he uttered her name.
“No--I know what you can do with your voice! I don’t believe you any
longer--you’ve spoken to her just like that--you’ve called her
Katharine, just as you call me Hester! Oh no, no! It’s all false--it
doesn’t ring true any more. Go--I don’t want to see you--I don’t want to
know you’re here--”
But still he tried to get nearer to her with pleading eyes that were
beginning to light up as he moved, making his feet slide upon the
carpet, rather than walking.
“Don’t!” she cried. “Don’t come near me! If you touch me--I’ll kill
you!”
Her hands went out to resist him, and her low, passionate cry of warning
vibrated in the little room. Crowdie was startled, even then, and he
paused, checked as though cold water had been thrown in his face. Then,
very much discomfited, he turned and, thrusting his hands into the
pockets of his jacket, began to walk up and down, passing and repassing
her as she stood back against the fireplace. Her eyes followed him
fiercely, and she breathed audibly with a quick, sob-like breath, with
parted lips, between her teeth.
“I don’t know what to say to you,” he said, in a tone of a man who is
at his wit’s end and is debating with himself.
“Say nothing--go--what could you say?”
“I could say a great many things,” he answered, growing calm again in
the attempt to argue the case. “In the first place, it’s all a piece of
the most extraordinary exaggeration on your part--the whole
thing--pretending that a man can’t kiss a girl’s glove without being in
love with her! As though there had been any secret about it! Why, the
door was wide open--of course you might have come in at any moment, just
as you did. And then--the way you talk! You couldn’t be more angry if
I’d run away with the girl. Besides--she can’t abide me. I only did it
to tease her, and she didn’t like it a bit--upon my word, you’re making
a crime out of the merest chaff. It’s not like you to be so
unreasonable.”
He stopped in his walk and stood opposite to her, near the chair in
which she had sat.
“I’m not unreasonable,” she answered. “And you know I’m not. You know
what you meant--”
“I meant nothing!” cried Crowdie, with sudden energy. “You’ve got an
absolutely wrong idea of the whole thing from beginning to end. You
began by saying that I stared at her last winter, when I was painting
her. Of course I did. Do you expect me to turn my back on my sitter, and
imagine a face I can’t see? It’s perfectly absurd. I looked at her, and
stared at her, just as you’ve seen me stare at Mrs. Brett, who’s young
and quite as handsome as your cousin, and at Mrs. Trehearne, who’s old
and hideous. You’re out of your mind, I tell you! You’re ill, or
something! How in the world am I to paint people if I don’t look at
them? As for having sung the other night, I couldn’t help it. It was
aunt Maggie’s fault, and Katharine told me not to, when she heard I’d
made a promise--”
“I know--the little snake!” exclaimed Hester. “She knew well enough that
was the best way--”
“She didn’t know anything of the kind. She spoke perfectly naturally,
and merely didn’t want me to displease you--”
“Then why did you do it?” asked Hester, fiercely. “It wasn’t to delight
poor dear old mamma, nor to charm four or five men, most of whom you
hate--was it? Then it was for Katharine, and for no one else--”
“It was not for Katharine,” answered Crowdie, with emphasis. “It wasn’t
for any one of them. I sang to please myself, because I didn’t choose to
have them laugh at me, as though I were a boy out of school--”
“You mean that you didn’t choose to let them think that you cared enough
for me to give such a promise--to keep your voice for me, instead of
singing about in other people’s houses like a mere amateur, who pays
for his supper with a song. You were afraid they’d laugh at you if you
said you cared for me, and for what I’d asked of you--and you were
really afraid, because you didn’t really care. Oh, I know now--I see it
all, and I know! You can’t deceive me any longer.”
“I tell you, you’re utterly and entirely mistaken!” cried Crowdie,
angrily. “You’re making a mountain out of a mole hill. You’re losing
your temper over it, and working yourself into a passion, till you don’t
know what’s true and what isn’t. It’s madness in you, and it isn’t fair
to me. When have I ever looked at another woman--”
“It had to begin some time--so it’s begun now--in the worst way it could
begin, with Katharine Lauderdale!”
“I hate Katharine Lauderdale--her and the sound of her name! How often
must I say it before you’ll believe me?”
“Oh--saying it won’t make it true! Do you think I didn’t see your
face--just now?”
“I don’t know what you thought you saw--but I know what there was to be
seen, and if you weren’t beside yourself with jealousy you wouldn’t have
thought twice about it. I never knew what jealousy meant before--”
“And you don’t now. I’m not jealous of her--I hate her. I despise her
for trying to steal you from me, but since she’s got you--since you love
her so that you’ll lie for her, and be a coward for her, and be angry
for her--just as it suits you--oh no, indeed! I’m not jealous of
Katharine. That’s quite another thing. Jealous! And you reproach me, and
cast it in my teeth, because I say I hate her, when she’s taken
everything I cared for in this earth, everything I had! Ah--I could kill
her! But I’m not jealous. One must care for oneself to be jealous; one
must be wounded, hurt, insulted, to be jealous! Do you think I want you,
if you don’t want me? How little you’ve ever understood me!”
She drew herself up, leaning back against the shelf of the mantelpiece,
and her lips curled scornfully, though they trembled a little, and she
fixed her eyes upon his face with a strange, frightened fierceness, like
that of a delicate wild animal driven to bay, but determined to resist.
Crowdie met her glance steadily now, leaning with both hands upon the
back of the chair between them and bending his body a little, in the
attitude of a man who means to speak very earnestly.
“I don’t think any one could understand you now,” he began, in a quiet,
but determined tone. “I can’t, I confess. But I know you’re not
yourself, and you don’t know what you’re saying. I’m not going to argue
as to whether you’re jealous of Katharine Lauderdale, or not. It’s too
absurd! You’ve no right to be, at all events--”
“No right!” cried Hester, with a half hysterical laugh. “If ever a woman
had a right to be jealous of another--”
“No, you’ve not--not the shadow of a right. You know how I’ve loved you
for years--well--you know how, and what sort of love there’s been
between us. You’re mad to think that anything I’ve done--”
“That’s all your argument--that I’m mad! You say it again and again, as
though it comforted you! Yes--I am mad in one way--I’m mad not to hate
you ten thousand times more than I do--and I do hate you--for what
you’ve done! You’ve torn up my heart by the roots and thrown it to that
wretched girl--you’ve twisted, and wrenched, and broken everything that
was tender in me, everything that was for you, and was yours--and it
won’t grow again! You’ve taken everything--have I ever refused you
anything? You’ve taken it all, and I thought that you’d never had it
before, and that for its sake you loved me, because I loved you so--that
you’d wear me in your heart, and carry me in your hands, and love me all
your life--and for that girl, that creature with her grey eyes--oh, what
is it? What has she got that I haven’t, and that makes you love
her--what? What?”
She covered her eyes with a desperate gesture, and her voice almost
broke as she repeated the last word. Below her hand her lips trembled,
and Crowdie watched them. Then before she looked at him again, he had
passed the chair and was trying to take her in his arms. For an instant
she struggled with him, holding her face back from him and thrusting him
away. But his small white hands had more strength in them than hers.
“Walter--don’t!” she cried, pushing against him with all her might.
“Don’t! Don’t!” she repeated.
But in spite of her, he got near to her face, and kissed her on the
cheek. She started violently, and then wrenched herself free.
“How dare you?” she exclaimed, angrily, retreating half across the room
with the rush of the effort she had made.
Crowdie laughed, not naturally, and not at all musically. There was a
curious hoarseness in the tone, and his eyes glittered.
“And how dare you laugh at me?” she asked, moving still further back,
towards the door, as he advanced. “Have you no heart, no feeling--no
sense? Can’t you understand how it hurts when you touch me?”
“I don’t want to understand anything so foolish,” answered Crowdie,
suddenly growing coldly angry again. “If you’re afraid of me--well, I
won’t go near you until you see how silly you are. There’s no other
word--it’s silly.”
“Silly! When it’s all my life.” Her voice shook. “Oh, Walter, Walter!
You’re breaking my heart!”
A passionate sob struggled with the words, and she fell into a chair by
the door, covering her face with her hands again. Then came another sob,
and the convulsion of her strength as she tried to choke it down, and it
broke the barrier and burst out with a wild storm of scalding tears.
Crowdie was a very sensitively organized man in one direction, but
singularly hard to move in another. So long as the passions of others
appealed to his own, the response was ready and impulsive. But in him
mere sympathy was not easily roused. Once freed from self, his faculties
were critical, comparative, quick to seek causes and explain their
connection with effects. Hester’s words wakened his love, roused his
anger, called out his powers of opposition, and touched him to the quick
by turns; but her tears said nothing to him at first, except that she
was suffering. He was only with her in happiness, never in unhappiness.
He stood still for a moment watching her, and asking himself with
considerable calmness what was best to be done.
It is not always easy to judge and decide exactly how far a woman could
control herself if she thought it wise to do so, and for that reason the
genuineness of her tears often seems doubtful. It would be as fair to
doubt that a tortured man suffers if he does not groan in his agony, or
because he does.
But although at that moment he felt no sympathy with her, though he
loved her in his own way, yet his instinct and experience of women told
him that with the tears there must come a change of mood. He went slowly
to her side, and though she did not look up he knew that she felt his
presence, and would not drive him from her again just then. He bent over
her, laying his arm upon her shoulders, and looking at the hands that
covered her eyes. He did not speak at once, but waited for her to look
up. She was sobbing as though her heart would really break. At last,
between the sobs, words began to come at last.
“Oh, Walter, Walter!” she wailed, repeating his name.
“Yes--sweetheart--look at me, dear,” he answered, pressing her to him.
Her head rested against him as she sobbed. Then one hand left her eyes
and sought his hand, but was instantly withdrawn again. He found it and
brought it, resisting but a little, to his lips. In all such actions he
had the gentleness, almost boyish, which some women love so well, and
which is so kingly in the very strong--for they say that it is sweeter
to be caressed by the hand that could kill, than by one that at its
worst and strongest could only scratch.
Presently she uncovered her eyes and looked up to his face, and the
sobbing almost stopped. Her cheeks were flushed through their whiteness
and were wet, and her eyes were dark and shadowy, but the light in them
was not hard. The tide of anger had ebbed as the tears flowed, and its
wave was far off.
“Tell me you really love me, dear,” she said, still tearfully.
“Ah, sweet! You know I do--I love you--so! Is that right? Doesn’t it
ring true now?” He laughed softly, looking into her face. “When did I
ever sing false?”
A shade of returning annoyance passed over her features, as her brow
contracted at the allusion to his singing, and though she still allowed
her head to rest against his side, her face was turned away once more.
“Don’t speak of singing, dear,” she said, trying to smile, though he
could not see whether she did or not.
“No, darling--forgive me. I’ll never speak of it again. I’ll never sing
again as long as I live, if you don’t want me to.”
“I didn’t mean that,” she answered. “It’s only now--till I forget. And,
Walter, dear--I don’t want you to promise it any more--I’d rather not,
really.”
Still she turned away, but he bent over, drawing her closer to him, and
he lifted her face with his hand under her chin. The eyelids drooped as
she suffered her head to fall back over his arm, and she shut out the
sight of his eyes from her own. He murmured soft words in his low voice,
in golden tones.
“Darling--precious--sweet one!”
And he repeated the words and others, as her features softened, and her
parted lips smiled at his. And still he pressed her to him, and spoke to
her, and looked at her with burning eyes. So they might have been
reconciled then and there, had Fate willed it. But Fate was there with
her little creeping hand full of the tiny mischief that decides between
life and death when no one knows.
Fate willed that at that moment Crowdie should be irritated by something
in his throat. Just as he was speaking so softly, so sweetly that the
exquisite sound almost lulled her to sleep, while the passionate tears
still wet her cheek,--just as his face was near hers, he felt it coming,
insignificant in itself, ridiculous by reason of the moment at which it
came, yet irresistible in its littleness. He struggled against it, and
grew conscious of what he was saying, and his voice lost its passionate
tenderness. He strove to fight it down, that horrible little tickling
spasm just in the vocal chords, for he knew how much it might mean both
to her and to him, that her forgiving mood should carry them both to
the kiss of peace. But Fate was there, irresistible and little, as
surely as though she had stalked gigantic, sword in hand, through the
door, to smite them both. In the midst of the very sweetest word of all,
it came--the word rang false, he turned his face away and coughed to
clear his throat. But the false note had rung.
Hester sprang to her feet, and thrust him from her. To her it had all
been false,--the words, the tone, the caresses. How could a man in the
earnestness of passion, midway in love’s eloquence, wish to stop--and
cough? She did not think nor reason, as she turned upon him in the
anguish of her disappointment.
“How could I believe you--even for a moment?” she cried, standing back
from him. “Oh, what an actor you are!”
But he had not been acting, save that he had done what his instinct had
at first told him was wisest, in beginning to speak to her when she had
burst into tears. With the first word, the first caress, with the touch
of her, and the sweet, unscented, living air of her, the passion that
had truly ruled his faultful life for years took hold of him with
strength and main, and rang the leading changes of his being. And then
she broke it short.
As he stood up before her, he shook with emotion stronger than hers,
such as women rarely feel, and such as even strong men dread.
Unconsciously he held out his hands towards her and uttered a half
articulate cry, trying once more to catch her in his arms.
“Kiss me--love me--oh, Hester!”
But he met her angry eyes, for she had lost the hand of reality in the
labyrinth of her own imaginings and disappointments and jealousies, and
she knew no longer the good from the evil, nor the truth from the acted
lie.
“No--you’re acting,” she answered, cruelly--trying to be as cruel as the
hurt she felt.
And she stared hardly at him. But even as she looked, a deep, purple
flush rose in his white cheeks, and overspread his face, even to his
forehead, and darkened all his features. And his eyes turned upwards in
their sockets, as he fell forward against her, with wet, twisted lips
and limp limbs--a hideous sight for woman or man to look upon.
She uttered a low, broken cry as she caught him in her arms, and he
dragged her down to the floor by his weight. There he lay, almost black
in the face, contorted and stiffened, yet not quite motionless, but far
more repulsive by the spasmodic and writhing motion of his body than if
he had lain stiff and stark as a dead body.
She had seen him thus once before now, on a winter’s night, upstairs in
the studio. She did not know that it was epilepsy. She knelt beside
him, horror-struck, now, for a few moments. It seemed worse in the
evening glow than it had looked to her before, under the soft,
artificial light in the great room.
She only hesitated a few seconds. Then she got a cushion and thrust it
under his head, using all her strength to lift him a little with one arm
as she did so. But she knew by experience that the unconsciousness would
last a long time, and she was glad that it had come at once. On the
first occasion the convulsion that preceded it had been horrible. Her
own face was drawn with the anguish of intense sympathy, and she felt
all the horror of her last cruel words still ringing in her ears.
She did not rise from her knees, but bent over him, and looked at him,
seeing himself, as she dreamed him, through the mask of his hideous
face. She touched his hands, and tried to draw them out of their
contortion, but the in-turned thumbs and stiffened joints were too rigid
for her to move. But she lifted his body again, straining her strength
till she thought his weight must tear the slight sinews of her arms at
the elbow, and she tried to turn his head to a comfortable position on
the silken pillow, and stroked his silk-fine hair with gentle hands. As
she did her best for him, her throat was parched, and she felt her dry
lips cleaving to her teeth, and the sight of her eyes was almost
failing, being burned out with horror. But no tears came to put out the
fire.
At last she rose to her feet, steadying herself against the chair in
which she had last sat, for she was dizzy with pain and with bending
down. She gazed at him an instant; then turned and went and closed the
open windows, and pulled down the shades and drew the thick curtains
together. After that, groping, she found matches and lit one candle, and
set it so that the light should not fall upon his eyes, if by any chance
their conscious sight returned. Then she looked at him once more and
left the room, softly closing the door behind her, and turning the key
with infinite pains, lest any servant in the house should hear the
sound. She took the key with her and went upstairs.