She heard him catch his breath, and then they sat motionless for a long
while, just as they had been sitting when she spoke. Now that she had
wrenched the fact out, the poignancy of her suffering subsided; even
by degrees she realised that, after this, her leaving the town was
inevitable, and her thoughts began to concern themselves vaguely with
her future. In him consciousness could never waver from the sound of
what she had said. She was impure. She had known passion and shame--she
herself! The landscape lost its proportion as he stared; the clouds of
the sky and the hue of the distance, everything had altered--she was
impure.
The laboured minutes passed; he turned and looked slowly down at her
averted profile. The curve of cheek was colourless; her hands were
still lying clasped on her knee. He watched her for a moment, striving
to connect the woman with her words. Something seemed bearing on his
brain, so that it did not feel quite near. It did not feel so alive,
nor so much his own, as before the vileness of this thing was uttered.
"I have never told you a falsehood," she murmured, "I didn't tell you
any falsehood in London. Don't think me all deceit--every word of what
I said that day was true."
"I dare say," he answered dully; "I have not accused you."
The change in his tone was pregnant with condemnation to her, and she
wondered if he was believing her; but, indeed, he hardly recognised
that she had said anything requiring belief. Her assurance appeared
juvenile to him, incongruous. There was an air almost of unreality
about their being seated here as they were, gazing at the blur of
churchyard. Something never to be undone had happened and she was
strange.
The service had ended, and, trooping out, the Sunday-school pupils
clattered past their feet, shiny and clamorous, and eyeing them with
sidelong inquisition. She rose nervously, and, rousing himself, he went
with her through the crowd of children as far as the gate. There their
steps flagged to a standstill, and for a few seconds they remained
looking down the lane in silence.
To her, stunned by no shock to make reality less real, these final
seconds held the condensed humiliation of the hour. The rigidity
with which the man waited beside her seemed eloquent of disgust, and
she mused bitterly on what she had done, how she had abased herself
and destroyed his respect; she longed to be free of his reproachful
presence. On the gravel behind them one of the bigger girls whispered
to another, and the other giggled.
She made a slight movement, and he responded with something impossible
to catch. She did not offer her hand; she did not immediately pity him.
Had a stranger told him this thing of her, she would have pitied and
understood; told him by herself, she understood only that she was being
despised. They separated with a mechanical "good-afternoon," quietly
and slowly. The two girls, who watched them with precocious eagerness,
debated their relationship.
The road lay before him long and bare, and lethargically he took it.
He continued to hear her words, "There used to be another man," but he
did not know he heard them--he did not actively pursue any train of
thought. It was only in momentary intervals that he became aware that
he was thinking. The sense of there being something numbed within him
still endured, and as yet his condition was more of stupor than of pain.
"There used to be another man!" The sentence hummed in his ears, and as
he went along he awoke to it, the persistence of it touched him; and
he began to repeat it--mentally, difficultly, trying to spur his mind
into comprehension of it and take it in. He did not suffer acutely
even then. There was nothing acute in his feelings whatever. He found
it hard to realise, albeit he did not doubt. She was what she had said
she was; he knew it. But he could not see her so; he could not imagine
her the woman that she had said she used to be. He saw her always as
she had been to him, composed and self-contained. The demeanour had
been a mask, yet it clung to his likeness of her, obscuring the true
identity from him still. He strove to conceive her in her past life,
contemning himself because he could not; he wanted to remember that he
had been loving a disguise; he wanted to obliterate it. The fact of its
having been a disguise and never she all the time was so hard to grasp.
He tried to look upon her laughing in dishonour, but the picture would
not live; it appeared unnatural. It was the inception of his agony: the
feeling that he had known her so very little that it was her real self
which seemed the impossible.
And that other man had known it all--seen every mood of her, learned
her in every phase!
"Mary!" he muttered; and was lost in the consciousness that actually he
had never known "Mary."
He perceived that the man was moving through his thoughts as a dark
man, short and suave, and he wondered how the fancy had arisen.
Vaguely he began to wonder what he had been like indeed. It was too
soon to question who he was--he wondered only how he looked, in a dim
mental searching for the presence to associate her with. Next, the
impression vanished, and sudden recollections came to him of men he was
accustomed to meet.
The manner and mien of these riveted his attention. It was not by his
own will that he considered them; the personalities were insistent.
He did not suppose that any one of them had been her lover; he knew
that it was chimerical to view any one of them as such; but his brain
had been groping for a man, and these familiar men obtruded themselves
vividly. The lurking horror of her defilement materialised, so that the
sweat burst out on him; the significance of what he had heard flared
red upon his vision. To think that it had pleased her to lend herself
for the toy of a man's leisure, that some man had been free to make her
the boast of his conceit, twisted his heart-strings.
The solidity of the hospital confronted him on the slope that he had
begun to mount. Beneath him stretched the herbage of cottage gardens
somnolent in Sabbath calm. Out of the silence came the quick yapping of
a shop-boy's dog, the shrillness of a shop-boy's whistle. They were the
only sounds. Then he went in.
That evening Miss Brettan told Mrs. Kincaid that she wished to leave
her.
The old lady received the announcement without any mark of surprise.
"You know your own mind best," she said meditatively; "but I'm sorry
you are going--very sorry."
"Yes," said Mary; "I must go. I'm sorry too, but I can't help myself.
I----"
"I used to think you'd stop with me always; we got on so well together."
"You've been more than kind to me from the very first day; I shall
never forget how kind you have been! If it were only possible. But it
isn't; I----"
Once more the pronoun as the stumbling-block on delicate ground.
"I can't stop!" she added thickly; "I hope you'll be luckier with your
next companion."
"I shan't have another; changes upset me. And you must go when it
suits you best, you know; don't stay on to give me time to make fresh
arrangements, as I haven't any to make. Study your own convenience
entirely."
"This week?"
"Yes, very well; let it be this week."
They said no more then. But the following afternoon, Mrs. Kincaid
broached the subject abruptly.
"What are you going to do, Miss Brettan?" she inquired. "Have you
anything else in view?"
"No," said Mary hesitatingly; "not yet."
The suppression of her motive made plain speaking difficult to both.
"I've no doubt, though," she added, "that I shall be all right."
"What a pity it is! What a pity it is, to be sure!"
"Oh, you mustn't grieve about me!" she exclaimed; "it isn't worth that;
_I'm_ not worth it. You know--you know, so many women in the world have
to make a living; and they do make it, somehow. It's only one more."
"And so many women find they can't! Tell me, _must_ you go? Are you
quite sure you're not exaggerating the necessity? I don't ask you your
reasons, I never meddle in people's private affairs. But are you sure
you aren't looking on anything in a false light and going to extremes?"
"Oh!" responded Mary, carried into sudden candour, "do you suppose I
don't shiver at the prospect? Do you suppose it attracts me? I'm not a
girl, I'm not quixotic; I _can't_ stop here!"
The elder woman sighed.
"Why couldn't you care for such a good fellow as my son?" she thought.
"Then there would have been none of this bother for any of us!"
"I hope you'll be fortunate," she said gently. "Anything I can do to
help you, of course, I will!"
"Thank you," said Mary.
"I mean, you mustn't scruple to refer to me; it's your only chance.
Without any references----"
"Yes, I know too well how indispensable they are; but----"
"You have been here two years. I shall say I should have liked it to
remain your home."
"Thank you," said Mary, again. But she was by no means certain that
she could avail herself of this recommendation given in ignorance of
the truth. It was precisely the matter that she had been debating. If
she attempted to avail herself of it, the doctor might have something
to say; and she was loath to be indebted for testimony from the mother
which the son would know to be undeserved, whether he interfered, or
not; she wanted her renunciation to be complete. Yet, without this
source of aid----She trembled. How speedily the few pounds in her
possession would vanish! how soon there would be a revival of her past
experience, with all its heartlessness and squalor! In imagination she
was already footsore, adrift in the London streets.
"Mrs. Kincaid----" she cried. A passionate impulse seized her to
declare everything. If she had been seventeen, she would have knelt at
the old woman's feet, for it is not so much the vehemence of our moods
that diminishes with time as the power of restraint that increases.
"Mrs. Kincaid, you must know? You must guess why----"
"I know nothing," said the old woman, quickly; "I don't guess!" The
colour sank from her face, and Mary had never heard her speak with so
much energy. "My son shall tell me--I have a son--I will not hear from
you!"
"I beg your pardon," said Mary; and they were silent.
The same evening Mrs. Kincaid sent a message to the hospital, asking
her son to come round to see her.
She had not mentioned that she was going to do so, and it was with a
little shock that Mary heard the order given. She supposed, however,
that it was given in her presence by way of a hint, and when the
time-approached for him to arrive, she withdrew.
He came with misgivings and with relief. The last twenty-four hours had
inclined him to the state of tension in which the unexpected is always
the portentous, but in which one waits, nevertheless, for something
unlooked-for to occur. He did not know what he dreaded to hear, but the
summons alarmed him, even while he welcomed it for permitting him to
go to the house.
He threw a rapid glance round the parlour, and replied to his mother's
greeting with quick interrogation.
"What has happened?"
"Nothing of grave importance has happened. I want to speak to you."
"I was afraid something was the matter," he said, more easily. "What is
it?"
He took the seat opposite to her, and she was dismayed to observe the
alteration in him. She contemplated him a few seconds irresolutely.
"Philip," she said, "this afternoon Miss Brettan was anxious to tell
me something; she was anxious to make me her confidant. And I wouldn't
listen to her."
"Oh?" he said.... "And you wouldn't listen to her?"
"No, I wouldn't listen to her. I said, 'My son shall tell me, or I
won't hear.' This afternoon I had no more idea of sending for you than
you had of coming. But I have been thinking it over; she's in your
mother's house, and she's the woman you love. You do love her, Philip?"
"I asked her to be my wife," he answered simply.
"I thought so. And she refused you?"
"Yes, she refused me. If I haven't told you before, it was because
she refused me. To have spoken of it to you would have been to give
pain--needless pain--to you and to her."
Mrs. Kincaid considered.
"You are quite right," she admitted; "your mistake was to suppose I
shouldn't see it for myself." She turned her eyes from him and looked
ostentatiously in another direction. "Now," she added, "she is going
away! Perhaps you already knew, but----"
"No," he replied, "I didn't know; I thought it likely, but I didn't
know. I understand why you sent for me."
He got up and went across to her, and kissed her on the brow.
"I understand why it was you sent for me," he repeated. "What a tender
little mother it is! And to lose her companion, too!"
Where he leant beside her, she could not see how white his face had
grown.
"Are we going to let her go, Phil?"
He stroked her hand.
"I am afraid we must let her go, mother, as she doesn't want to stop."
"You don't mean to interfere, then? You won't do anything to prevent
it?"
"I am not able to prevent it," he rejoined coldly. "I have no
authority."
"Indeed?" murmured Mrs. Kincaid. "It seems I might have spared my
pains."
"No," said her son; "your pains were well taken. I'm very glad you
have spoken to me--or rather I'm very glad to have spoken to you--for
you know now I meant no wrong by my silence."
"But--but, Philip----"
"But Miss Brettan must go mother, because she wishes to!"
"I don't understand you," exclaimed Mrs. Kincaid, bewildered. "I never
thought you would care for any woman at all--you never struck me as the
sort of man, somehow; but now that you do care, you can't surely mean
that you think it right for the woman to leave the only place where she
has any friends and go out into the world by herself? Don't you say you
are in love with her?"
"I asked Miss Brettan to marry me," he answered. "Since you put the
question, I do think it right for her to leave the place; I think every
woman would wish to leave in the circumstances. I think it would be
indelicate to restrain her."
"Your sense of delicacy is very acute for a lover," said the old lady
grimly; "much too fine a thing to be comfortable. And I'll tell you
what is greater still--your pride. Don't imagine you take me in for a
moment; look behind you in the glass and ask yourself if it's likely!"
He had moved apart from her now and was lounging on the hearth, but he
did not attempt to follow her advice. Nor did he deny the implication.
"I look pretty bad," he acknowledged, "I know. But you're mistaken, for
all that; my pride has nothing to do with it."
"You're making yourself ill at the prospect of losing her, and yet you
won't----Not but what she must be mad to reject you, certainly I am
not standing up for her, don't think it! I don't say I wanted to see
you fond of her--I should have preferred to see you marry someone who
would have been of use to you and helped you in your career. You might
have done a great deal better; and I am sure I understand your having a
proper pride in the matter and objecting to beg her to remain. But, for
all that, if you do find so much in this particular woman that you are
going to be miserable without her, why, _I_ can say something to induce
her to stop!"
"To the woman you would prefer me not to marry?" he said wearily. "But
you mustn't do it, mother."
"I do want to see you marry her, Philip; I want to see you happy. You
don't follow me a bit. Since the dread of her loss can make you look
like that, you mustn't lose her; that's what I say."
"I _have_ lost her," he returned; "I follow you very well. You think I
might have married a princess, and you would have viewed that with a
little pang too. You would give me to Miss Brettan with a big pang, but
you'd give me to her because you think I want her."
"That is it--not a very big pang, either; I know every man is the best
judge of his own life. Indeed, it oughtn't to be a pang at all; I don't
think it is a pang, only a tiny A sweet-heart is always a mother's
rival just at first, Phil; and I suppose it's always the mother's
fault. But one day, when you're married to Mary, and a boy of your own
falls in love with a strange girl, your wife will tell you how she
feels. She'll explain it to you better that I can, and then you'll know
how _your_ mother felt and it won't seem so unnatural."
"Oh," he said, "hush! Don't! I shall never be married to Mary."
"Yes," she declared, "you will. When you say that, you're not the 'best
judge' any longer; it isn't judgment, it's pique, and I'm not going to
have your life spoiled by pique and want of resolution. Phil, Phil,
you're the last man I should have thought would have allowed a thing he
wanted to slip through his fingers. And a woman--women often say 'no,'
to begin with. It's not the girls who are to be had for the asking who
make the best wives; the ones who are hardest to win are generally the
worthiest to hold. Don't accept her answer, Phil! I'll persuade her
to stay on, and at first you needn't come very often--I won't mind any
more, I shall know what it means; and when you do come, I'll help you
and tell you what to do. She _shall_ get fond of you; you _shall_ have
the woman you want--I promise her to you!"
"Mother," he said--the pallor had touched his lips--"don't say that!
Don't go on talking of what can't be. It's no misunderstanding to be
made up; it isn't any courtship to be aided. I tell you you can no more
give me Mary Brettan for my wife than you can give my childhood back to
me out of eternity."
"And I tell you I will!" said she. "'Faint-heart----' But you _shall_
have your 'fair lady'! Yes, instead of--you remember what we used to
say to you when you were a little boy? 'There's a monkey up your back,
Phil!'--you shall have your fair lady instead of the monkey that's up
your back. It's a full-grown monkey to-night and you're too obstinate
to listen to reason. By-and-by you'll see you were wrong. She is suited
to you; the more I think about it, the more convinced I am she would
make you comfortable. You might have thrown yourself away on some silly
girl without a thought beyond her hats and frocks! And she's interested
in your profession; you've always been able to talk to her about it;
she understands these things better than I do."
"Listen," exclaimed Kincaid with repressed passion, "listen, and
remember what you said just now--that I am a man, to judge for myself!
You mustn't ask Miss Brettan to stay, and you are not to think that it
is her going that makes me unhappy. My hope is over. Between her and me
there would never be any marriage if she remained for years. Everything
was said, and it was answered, and it is done."
He bit the end from a cigar, and smoked a little before he spoke any
more. When he did speak, his tones were under control; anyone from whom
his face had been hidden would have pronounced the words stronger than
the feeling that dictated them.
"Something else: after to-night don't talk to me about her. I don't
want to hear; it's not pleasant to me. If you want to prove your
affection, prove it by that! While she's here I can't see you; when
she's gone, let us talk as if she had never been!"
The aspect of the man showed of what a tremendous strain this affected
calmness was the outcome. Indeed, the deliberateness of the words, even
more than the words themselves, hushed her into a conviction of his
sincerity, which was disquieting because she found it so inexplicable.
She smoothed the folds of her dress, casting at him, from time to time,
glances full of wistfulness and pity; and at last she said, in the
voice of a person who resigns herself to bewilderment:
"Well, of course I'll do as you wish. But you have both very queer
notions of what is right, that's certain; help seems equally repugnant
to the pair of you."
"Why do you say that?" inquired Kincaid. "What help has Miss Brettan
declined?"
"She was reluctant to refer anybody to me, I thought, when I mentioned
the matter to-day. I suppose that was another instance of delicacy over
my head."
"The reference? She won't make use of it?"
"She seemed very doubtful of doing so. I said: 'Without any reference,
what on earth will become of you?' And she said, 'Yes, she understood,
but----' But something; I forget exactly what it was now."
"But that's insane!" he said imperatively.
"She'll be helpless without it. She has been your companion, and you
have had no fault to find with her; you can conscientiously say so."
He rose, and shook his coat clear of the ash that had fallen in a lump
from the cigar.
"Nothing that has passed between Miss Brettan and me can affect her
right to your testimony to the two years that she has lived with you; I
should like her to know I said so."
"I will tell her," affirmed his mother. "What are you going to do?"
"It's getting late.... By the way, there's another thing. It will be
a long while before she finds another home, at the best; she mustn't
think I have anything to do with it, but I want her to take some money
before she goes, to keep her from distress.... Where did I leave my
hat?"
"You want me to persuade her to take some money, as if it were from me?"
"Yes, as if it were from you--fifty pounds--to keep her from
distress.... Did I hang it up outside?"
His mother went across to him and wound her arms about his neck.
"Can you spare so much, Philip?"
"I have been putting by," he said, "for some time."