The room was in a state of bewitching confusion. Trunks, half filled,
yawned open on the floor. On the bed were piles of white garments in
the midst of which here and there a pink or blue ribbon peeped daintily.
Cardboard boxes and tissue paper pervaded space. Hats small and hats
immense lay about in unconsidered attitudes upon chintz-covered chairs
and other resting-places. A pearl-coloured ball-dress, all gauze and
chiffon and foamy nothingness, hung over the bed-rail. A thousand odds
and ends--veils, hatpins, mysterious smooth wooden boxes, and cut-glass
phials--were strewn on the tables. And the pale morning sunshine
streamed in a friendly way into the room.
Ella was superintending her packing. Her maid having gone out for a
moment, she sat on the edge of the bed (leaving, with feminine sureness
of pose, the dainty piles of garments aforesaid unscathed), and gazed
critically at a hat which she held on outstretched fingers thrust into
the crown. In a dark silk blouse and a plain skirt, and with her auburn
hair somewhat ruffled, she looked very simple and girlish. Lady Milmo,
occupying the only vacant chair opposite, also regarded the hat with
the eye of experience. The examination had, however, come to an end,
for Ella, after flicking the great bows with the finger-tips of her
disengaged hand, threw the confection lightly on the top of the pile,
and putting her hands in her lap resignedly, turned to her aunt.
“I am sure Josephine will disappoint me with the blue dress.”
“Oh, no, my dear,” said Lady Milmo, “kingdoms may fall and empires may
decay, but Josephine never fails. A woman of her word, my dear. Don't
you know what she did for La Guira, the singer? La Guira ordered
four dresses to take away with her to Patagonia or somewhere. It was
impossible to finish them before the morning of departure. Josephine
herself raced with them to Waterloo in a hansom just in time to see the
train with La Guira in it steam out of the station; and that woman took
a special there and then, and chased the train and got the dresses on
board all right. Josephine is a marvellous woman.”
Ella laughed. She did not care very much. Her life at that moment was
too full.
“It's quite sweet of the sun to come in and see me, isn't it?” she said.
“Provided he keeps up his good behaviour to-morrow,” said Lady Milmo.
“Oh, I sha'n't mind what he does tomorrow; I shall have too many things
to think of.”
“But what about us poor unfortunates who are not going to be married?”
“You could be married now, fifty times over, auntie, if you chose,” said
Ella, out of her lightness of heart.
“The Lord preserve me!” replied Lady Milmo, vivaciously. “When poor
Howgate died I vowed that when we met in heaven, if there is one, no
other man should stand between us.”
As the late Sir Howgate Milmo, Bart., had been a notoriously evil liver,
Ella did not think there was much chance of her aunt escaping forsworn,
even on her hypothesis.
“One can love heaps of times, you know,” she said, stretching out her
limbs girlishly and looking at the tips of her shoes.
“Love your husband once and for all, my dear,” said her aunt,
sententiously.
Ella rose to her feet and crossed over to her aunt's chair and sat on
the arm, and kissed Lady Milmo. A spontaneous caress like that was rare
with her, and the recipient looked up in pleased surprise. But Ella had
grasped her fate in both hands and felt mistress thereof, and all seemed
right with the world. She had compelled herself into entire happiness.
“Of course I do--or I shall,” she replied. “Do you think I could marry a
man to whom I did not feel I could give all that is in me?”
“It is the fate of women to give,” said Lady Milmo, who was in a
moralising mood.
“We must do something to justify our existence,” laughed Ella. “Women
can't do much. I used to think differently when I was young. Men do all
the real work in the world, but somehow they seem to want something from
women. And it's a great thing to help on the big world by giving oneself
body and soul to a man.”
“Cook his food and wash his clothes and see that there is a proper
supply of Salutaris water when he comes home after a city dinner That
was the whole duty of woman in your grandmother's time, child.”
“I think women are very much the same all through the ages,” said Ella.
“At least,” she added reflectively, “that's the only way the
riddle seems to be solved. A man does, wants, compels. A woman
yields--otherwise--why, well--”
She rose, confused at' her half-confession, and re-examined the hat.
“Otherwise why should I be wanting to meet poor dear Howgate in heaven,”
finished Lady Milmo, coming to her assistance with a humorous curl of
the lip. “Anyhow,” she continued with some irrelevance, “I'm glad you're
going to stay in a decent Christian country, where you can wear your
pretty frocks.”
“So am I, auntie--now,” replied Ella. “But I didn't think I should be.”
Ella's maid came in, and the work of packing was resumed. Her mistress
tried on the much-considered hat before the pier-glass, while Lady Milmo
arranged the rumpled hair beneath, so that the hat should produce its
due effect. Then one of the bridesmaids came, ostensibly to see if
she could help; really to feast her innocent eyes upon the articles of
attire everywhere displayed. The time slipped by pleasantly. At twelve
o'clock the parlour-maid tapped at the door and entered with the
announcement that Mr. Usher was downstairs and desired to see Miss Ella
on most urgent business.
Lady Milmo threw up her hands. What could he want? Men were a positive
nuisance at weddings! They ought to be chained up for days before and
only let loose at the church door.
“I'm in such a mess,” cried Ella. But she sent down a message to
Roderick that she would see him directly.
The servant smiled and departed. Ella gave herself those anxious
feminine tidying touches before her glass, whose effect the eternal
irony decrees shall never be noticed by man, and ran happily down the
stairs to meet her lover. She turned the handle of the morning-room door
and stood before him, in the heyday of her youth and her charm. All the
anxieties of the past year had fallen from her. Her cheeks flushed a shy
welcome. Her eyes, honest and clear, smiled upon him. She moved quickly
forward, her lips already parted in happy speech, when suddenly she felt
him come upon her and encircle her with strong, resistless arms and rain
passionate kisses upon her mouth and cheeks.
“Oh, my God, I love you, I love you!” he murmured hoarsely. “I can't let
you go. You are soul of my soul and blood of my blood. No, Ella, no,” he
continued, as, confused and blushing, she strove to release herself; “I
must keep you here. Heaven knows when I may hold you in my arms again.
Listen, something terrible has happened,--a thing that may part our
lives. Are you strong enough to bear it? Brave and strong and heroic,
like the woman I think you?”
He relaxed his clasp and stood with hands on her shoulders, forcing
her to look at him. She met his passion-filled eyes fearlessly, but her
colour had gone.
“Part our lives! I don't understand what you mean, Roderick.”
“Are you brave enough to face a terrible calamity?”
“I shall not faint, if you mean that,” she replied. “What is it?”
“I must leave England to-night,” he said in a quick voice. “How long
I shall have to stay away, I do not know. It may be weeks, it may be
months, it may be years.”
She looked at him with perplexed brows and a dawning fear in her eyes.
“But to-morrow--” she began.
“There will be no to-morrow--for me. Unless----”
“Unless what?”
He turned away and paced across the room and back again. He had
thrown off the gold pince-nez, and now they swung by the cord over his
waistcoat, and his small blue eyes, usually obscured by them, glowed
strangely and the pupils were dilated. Where the actor, the inveterate
_poseur_, ended and the man began, it were impossible to tell. He was
playing a part, but playing it in desperate earnestness. The words, the
gestures, were false; but the yearning folly of love that vibrated in
his voice was as real a thing as had ever entered into the man's life.
“I must be plain with you, Ella. It's as much as my life, my honour,
your fair happiness, is worth for me to stay in England over to-night.
There can be no wedding to-morrow. I have done all that a man could do
to avert things. The suspense has been a torturing agony above words.
But the inevitable, the inexorable, has come. Oh, God, Ella, if you knew
what living hell it is to me to tell you this!”
She put her hands before her face, feeling dazed and sick, and when
she drew them away, her face was very white. Like every pure woman, her
thoughts of late had been absorbed by the sweet vanities of the morrow's
ceremony, with just a warm, tremulous sub-consciousness of the beyond.
The sudden fall about her ears of this structure of vanities bewildered
her. Her brain seemed to be an avalanche of telegrams and letters. Faces
of bidden guests swam lurid before her. Roderick, a long way off, faded
into infinite mist. A pang of disappointment, humiliation, she knew not
what, ached in her breast. She scarcely heard or heeded what the man was
saying. He stopped, seeing her so white, and looked at her, breathless.
Then suddenly a cloud seemed to roll away before her, and she was
conscious of him standing there with haggard eyes and features drawn
in pain. Scorn of her first imaginings drove them into the limbo of all
vain things; the thrill of a proud courage nerved her; she drew herself
up and faced realities. And the first reality was a rush through her
being of yearning pity for the man so stricken. With an impulse of
consolation she went up to him, and again his arms closed swiftly round
her. He murmured burning incoherences. He could not live without her
love, the crown and joy of earthly things. Life would be a purgatorial
flame. He loved her. He worshipped her, so brave, so loyal, so adorable.
His voice was vibrant with elemental passion.
A woman, young and ardent, with rich blood running through her veins,
is, above all things, a primitive human being. It were an ill day for
the pride and vigour of the race if she were not. There are moments when
the world's music surges like the roar of the sea in her ears, and the
heart within her is lifted to her lips; when her limbs are as water, and
her body is carried in the unfaltering arms of a god through illimitable
space. She has yielded, is swept away by the man's passion, deliriously
lost.
As in a dream, standing there in his embrace, she heard him whisper:--
“There is one way--to scoff at destiny--to rise triumphant above it--to
be married tomorrow in spite of all things. Not here. In Holland where
I am summoned--I have the license--we can explain the urgency of our
flight--the English Consul or Chaplain at Amsterdam will marry us. Come
with me tonight--Ella--for God's sake, Ella, say that you will.”
She smiled up at him without replying. The mad proposal seemed at
the dreamy moment the sweetest of sanities. He continued in hurried
intensity,--
“All will be so easy. You can say you are going to Ayresford--what more
natural?--to stay here would be pain--there is a train for Ayresford
about the time--half-past eight at Liverpool Street. I will meet you
there with a ticket,--and then we shall be carried off to happiness--you
and I--alone together--to conquer the world.... There--it must be.”
He took her hands, kissed them both, and released her. She stood for
a while with downcast eyes and heaving bosom, recovering her mental
balance.
“You have not yet told me,” she said presently, in a calmer voice, “why
there should be this upheaval. I have said perhaps I might help you.
Why do your life and honour and my happiness depend upon your leaving
England to-night, Roderick?”
The supreme moment had come. He braced every nerve to meet the
inevitable question. Summoning up an extraordinary dignity subtly tinged
with sadness, he said with grave deliberation,--
“I cannot tell you.”
Ella recoiled involuntarily, staggered by the unexpectedness of the
reply. She could only regard him in mute but anxious questioning.
“You must trust me, child,” he said. “It is another's secret.”
“So grave as to be withheld even from me?”
“Even so,” he replied. “I know,” he continued gravely, “I am asking you
the ultimate thing a man can ask a woman,--blind trust. It is a thing
that only the great soul, like you, can give. Put your hand in mine and
trust in me!”
“Let me think,” she said in a low voice.
She sat down on a couch, baffled. If she looked up, she met the man's
burning eyes fixed upon her, and the depths of her being were stirred.
If she looked away, her life seemed fragmentary chaos, unrealisable,
incomprehensible. She breathed fast from a heaving bosom. Roderick's
mystery hovered between the grotesque and the tragic. To run away
clandestinely with the man to whom she was to have been married with all
the pomp of publicity on the morrow was an idea of comic opera. On the
other hand, the blind trust required raised the proceeding to the heroic
plane. Again, Nature within her shrank from mystery; she was a
child appalled by the dark, and fear was upon her. But the sensitive
gentlewoman felt the appeal to honour in every fibre of her pride.
Generosity swelled against doubt. A strange physical coldness enwrapped
her. To start to-night, with Roderick, surrendering herself utterly;
the maiden in her piteously sought refuge from the thought. She glanced
tremulously up at him, and her face flamed pink, and warmth entered her
heart. She covered her cheeks with her hands and shrank into the corner
of the couch.
“Oh, could I not join you afterwards?” she moaned. He fell at her feet
and clasped her knees, broke into impassioned pleading. It was a
matter of life or death. His unbalanced artistic temperament burst all
restraints of conventional forms of speech. He raved of his consuming
need. He was less a man than a shaking passion.
The eternal mystery to woman is man's desire of her. It transcends her
thought, it looms immense, inscrutable, and irresistible before her. She
is the everlasting Semele beneath the fiery glory of Zeus. It is
decreed that when brought face to face with it (a chord within her
being responsive, be it understood), she shall lose all sense of the
proportion between it and the infinite passions of the universe. Life
resolves itself into an amazement that she, with a whisper, a touch of
her hand, can raise a man from hell to heaven. In the piteous, glorious,
tragi-comedy of life, which has been played on millions of stages for
millions of years, this elemental fact is so commonplace that it escapes
our notice. We are apt to judge from externals, from the results of
adherence to ethical systems, from social conventions; and when the
actions of men and women are not provided for in artificial canons, we
are baffled or are shocked by a sense of the immoral, the abnormal, or
the preposterous. But men will desire and women will yield till the end
of the human race.
And Ella yielded. She bound herself to meet him that evening and go with
him into the darkness, whithersoever he should lead; and Roderick
left the house, holding his head high, exultant in the sense of having
conquered destiny.
But when he had gone, Ella threw herself face downwards on the couch in
all the abandonment of exhaustion. For a while she could not think; she
could only be conscious of the flow and ebb, and again the flow and ebb,
and once more the flow of emotion, during the past hour. She had entered
the room in light-hearted happiness; there had come the shock of an
awful dismay. Then she had been lifted in the tide of the man's passion;
there had followed the cold numbness of doubt; again passion had swept
away reason. Now was reaction. She felt physically prostrated, and her
body ached as if it had been beaten. Her eyelids burned. She would have
liked to cry miserably, but she could not. She suffered the woman's
torment of unshed tears. Suddenly she rose and drew herself together,
despising her weakness. She had pledged herself to do a certain thing.
It was to be done, and practical commonplaces had to be faced. First
was the breaking of the news to Lady Milmo. The girl's heart was smitten
with pity for the kindly lady who had entered so wholeheartedly into
these wedding preparations. It would be a keen disappointment to
countermand the feast, put off the guests, make lame excuses. And that
would not be the end. There would be the scandal of her flight, of which
Lady Milmo would have to bear the brunt. It was cruel to treat her so.
She went to the window and looked out at the sunny houses on the other
side of Pont Street; wondered whether they all were cages for women
bound as she was in invisible chains. Her course had been marked out
with scrupulous exactness; to deviate from it a hair's breadth would be
not only breaking a solemn pledge, but perhaps endangering the life or
honour, she knew not how, of the man she was to marry. Yet her frank
soul rebelled against the deception. The hour of Roderick's departure
was to be kept secret; her elopement with him not to be whispered of.
She was to give out a journey to Ayresford, to escape from the painful
associations of the house in Pont Street, filled with all the vain
preparations for the morrow. She had never lied barefacedly in her life,
and for a moment she hated Roderick for compelling her to falseness. But
then the lingering echoes of his voice hummed in her ears, and the blood
rushed back into her cheeks, and she felt strong for the sacrifice of
her honour.
Did she love him? She answered the self-put question with a passionate
affirmative. Else why was she doing this preposterous thing? Was not
the blindness of her trust the very banner of her love? A phrase of
Roderick's crossed her mind. “Life is merely the summation of moments
of keen living.” She caught at it as a plank with the drowning man's
thrill. She was living keenly; that alone was sufficient to justify
everything. She was defying the set uses of the tame world. “Each man
must batter down for himself the doors that hide life's inner glory” was
another of his sayings. Was she not even now battering at the door?
Her soul clutched at every supporting straw. Yet, in spite of these
aphoristic comforts, it was with a strange, dull sense of fatality that
she saw herself sitting by Roderick's side in the train that night,
being carried away further and further into the inscrutable darkness.
*****
The first part of her task was over. She had told Lady Milmo. It had
been an interview of pain and self-reproach. Lady Milmo had gasped,
wept, waxed indignant. All her kindly woman's motherliness had poured
itself out upon the girl, whom she considered infamously treated. It
was in vain for Ella to plead the matter of life and death that called
Roderick away. Lady Milmo had her prejudices. She had cordially approved
of Ella's immediate retirement to Ayresford. How could the poor child
stay in the house where every surrounding would be a pain to her? She
had sent Ella off to lie down in peace upon her own bed, away from the
half-packed litter of finery in the girl's room; and while Ella lay
there with a splitting headache, helplessly counting the slow hours,
Lady Milmo sat heroically before her writing-table immersed in lists and
telegraph forms.
The slow hours passed. A little difficulty arose. Lady Milmo had taken
it for granted that Ella's maid would accompany her to Ayresford. Ella,
alarmed, announced her intention of leaving her behind. She did not even
wish her to come to the station to see after the luggage. She had
to insist that solitude was essential. Lady Milmo yielded the point
reluctantly. At last the time came. Ella's luggage had been placed on
the fourwheeled cab. The door was open; the white-capped maid stood on
the pavement. Ella turned with a sudden rush of emotion and kissed Lady
Milmo, who had come with her to the hall.
“If I ever hurt you, dear, God knows it's because I cannot help it,” she
said. But before the other could reply, a telegraph boy entered with
a telegram. Name of Defries. Ella tore it open, with a spasm of
anticipation, half fear, half hope, that it came from Roderick. But it
ran:--
“_Your coming a joy. Your uncle dangerously ill. Is crying
for you. Agatha._”
Speechless she handed the paper to her aunt. Lady Milmo glanced at it.
“Doesn't it all work out for the best, dear?” she said gently. “Agatha
Lanyon would not have wired if to-morrow's affair had not been broken
off.”
“How did she know?” asked Ella, with white lips.
“Why, I sent them a message,” said Lady Milmo.
Ella bade her good-bye again. The parlour maid shut the cab-door and
gave the word “Waterloo” to the driver. The cab drove off, and then
Ella, spreading out the crumpled telegram, broke for the first time into
a flood of passionate tears.
But some moments later she called to the driver,--
“I fancy the servant made a mistake. It is Liverpool Street I want to go
to.”
And to Liverpool Street was she driven.