RECONCILIATION
Romer had made one mistake in his calculations. He had forgotten that
Harry was a talker. He fully believed that the young man would go back
and get all possible credit from Valentia for breaking off the
engagement, and would adhere to the very letter of their strange
agreement. This, indeed, Harry fully intended to do. When he first went
back he told her, to her immense joy and satisfaction, merely that he
had broken it off. But when some people who had come to dinner had gone
away and she and Harry could be alone, the habit of confidential gossip,
the habit, especially, of impressing and surprising her, and, above all,
the inability to keep to himself anything so amazing, was too strong for
him.
Picturesquely, vividly, and quite amusingly Harry told her every word of
the story; first exacting a solemn promise not to repeat it.
"Isn't he _impayable_? Isn't he a marvel? No, Valentia, don't look so
grave, or I shall think you've lost your sense of humour."
"But do you believe he really thinks----"
"He doesn't think," said Harry, stopping her. "He won't think. You're
faultless in his eyes. He would never allow himself to imagine you
anything else. Valentia, this is a wonderful situation--you don't
appreciate it! It's unheard of! He particularly wished that everything
should go on as before."
He took her hand. She immediately took it away and drew back coldly.
"A wonderful situation! Do you think Van Buren will enjoy it?" she asked
satirically.
"Van Buren! What on earth do you mean, Val? Do you suppose for a minute
that I'd talk about it?"
"I know you will. You couldn't resist it. It's _impayable_ you say....
Oh, but it was mean of you to tell me!"
"Mean!" cried Harry indignantly. "Why, it was very generous! I might
easily have pleased you very much more by saying I broke it off quite of
my own accord."
"That wasn't why you told me. You wanted me to laugh at Romer and think
him ridiculous."
"I don't at all. I was in the ridiculous position. Be a woman of the
world, Val. Don't talk bosh! We shall soon forget it happened."
"I shall never forget," she answered. "And things _can't_ go on as they
were, because I think he's behaved magnificently, because I think he's
heroic. And if I didn't appreciate the way he spared me I should be....
Why, don't you realise what it must have been for him, Harry, to hear
every word we said? And yet he didn't try to make me suffer for it!"
"He complained that _I_ made you cry!" said Harry with a ghost of a
smile.
"Look here, Harry, it's no good. I see I was right about Romer from the
first. I married him because I thought there was something
remarkable--something finer than other people about him. And I was
right."
"If you talk like that, I shall know you're in love with him," said
Harry tauntingly and angrily. "_I_ was a fool to tell you. You're just
upset, my dear," he added, "at the idea of his knowing of the whole
thing. By to-morrow, when he comes back, everything will have calmed
down."
"I want to be left alone," said Valentia.
Harry was annoyed, for he himself was not just now in the mood for
reverie, and even in the smallest things he disliked giving up his own
wishes.
"Oh, very well," he said ungraciously; "perhaps it's a pity I wrote the
letter."
"Perhaps it is," she answered as she went away and shut the door.
Harry sat up late, swearing at his own indiscretion and the
unaccountability of women. But he was not prepared for what followed.
The next morning, as he was dressing, a note was given to him. It said--
"Dear Harry,
"After what you told me yesterday, I feel I never wish to see you
again. This is not anger; but it's incurable. I can't account for
it, but it is there. How you could have been so stupid as to think
I could remain with both you and Romer in the house with this
knowledge between us, I simply can't understand. How could I help
contrasting his generosity with your self-interested selfishness? I
am not angry any more about Miss Walmer. I'm quite indifferent. If
you married her to-morrow it would give me no pain. The only kind
thing you can do for me now, and the one thing I implore, is to go
away on any pretext you like and without seeing me again. To put it
perfectly plainly, Harry, I have changed entirely since last night.
I see everything differently. Everything _is_ different. Forgive
me, but I don't wish to see you any more. "VALENTIA.
"P.S.--I will send your photographs and other things to the studio.
I should like you to burn mine, but do not send them back. I don't
want to look at anything that reminds me of you. Do not be angry--I
can't help it. I am so unhappy.
V.
"If you don't go I know I shall be seriously ill."
After reading this letter Harry was probably about a thousand times more
in love with Valentia than he had ever been in his life. Indeed, he felt
that he had never cared for her before. He pretended even to himself to
laugh at it, and walked up and down his room, saying to himself: "What a
couple! What a woman! What a man! They're unique. No, they're too
wonderful!"
But he didn't succeed in deceiving himself. He _knew_ that letter was
final. He did not give it up at once. He wrote her three letters. The
first, one of indignant reproach: "_You never really cared for me_," and
so forth, which she did not answer; the second, witty and trivial, with
allusions to mountains and molehills and tragedy queens; the third,
desperately imploring her to see him once before he went away. To the
third one she sent a reply, simply saying--
"Please, please go as soon as possible."
After all his emotion and passionate correspondence it was by this time
only about half-past ten. Harry packed, dressed, and went off to the
station, mad with rage. He left no word for Romer at all. He felt he had
better leave all that to the wife. He had lost her absolutely and for
ever--and Miss Walmer too.
In prompt response to his wire Van Buren met him at the station.
And what a wonderful consolation it was to tell him all about it!
Certainly no man ever had a better audience; no one more impressed,
shocked, delighted, horrified, amused, grieved, pleased and sympathetic
ever listened to a confidence. For Van Buren it was as good as a _cause
célèbre_, a musical comedy, a _feuilleton_ in the _Daily Mail_ and a
series of snapshots from the homes of the upper classes--all in one.
Never in his life had he heard anything so intensely English. The story
gave him the acute, objective, artistic joy that one takes in the best
literature, an intellectual pleasure that is usually more or less
mingled with the merely spiteful satisfaction that we are accused of
taking in the misfortunes of our best friends. And how well Harry told
it!
His style was perfect. It was brilliancy, charm, humour, and pathos; he
laughed at himself, and yet made himself an object of real sympathy,
without losing either his dignity or his dash.
He knew that his confidence aroused enormous interest, and to him that
was a great gratification. And so Harry drowned his sorrows in talk, as
other men drown theirs in wine, or in sport, or in taking some violent
step. He intoxicated and soothed himself with conversation.
But Harry was not an unpractical man--not one of those for whom words
take place of actions--and he could face facts. Valentia was irrevocably
lost to him. To attempt to regain Miss Walmer, although it might perhaps
not be impossible, would make him ridiculous. The letter he had written
at Romer's dictation had been too definite. He would give himself away
hopelessly as a fortune-hunter if he tried to go back on that. Besides,
he was absolutely sick of it all, and if he was more in love with
Valentia than he had ever supposed himself to be because she no longer
wanted him, he disliked the thought of Miss Walmer far more than he ever
had before, because he was convinced she would forgive him and be
devoted to him even now.
Van Buren had taken the knock, as he expressed it, using with relish the
English slang phrase, with regard to Daphne, and he had made up his mind
to return to New York. Under the circumstances he now had little
difficulty in persuading Harry to come out with him right away. He
undertook to provide for his friend's future, and that he should make a
fortune in the Bank, and perhaps when this was agreed upon Van Buren
had never been so happy. He was far more genuinely a man's man than was
Harry. He regarded women from the point of view of the well-bred
American--with deference, a sort of distant tenderness, a most
chivalrous and gentle respect. He looked upon them as ornamental and as
delightful adjuncts to life, like flowers in a ball-room, but not
seriously as part of it. Nor, either, as mere toys. He placed women far
more highly than Harry did; he thought everything should be done for
them, given to them, that they had a right to any position they were
able to hold, that they should be treated with reverence, consideration,
liberality ... and even justice; but--he could do without them. Harry
couldn't. And so they would always continue to fall in love with Harry,
and to find Van Buren a little dull.
* * * * *
When Romer arrived at the Green Gate that afternoon he found Valentia
sitting alone in the drawing-room. Her hands were clasped, she had a
serious, anxious, thoughtful expression that he had never seen before.
He was surprised at the painful start it gave him to see her again, but
he came in defying this sensation.
"Hallo!" he said, in what he meant to be a perfectly easy manner.
He glanced round the room.
"Where's Harry?"
"Harry's gone," said Valentia, in a low voice.
"Oh, has he?"
Romer walked to the window. He looked at her dress, a white dress that
he liked, but did not meet her eyes. Then he said--
"Oh, he's gone. When is he coming back?"
"Never," she said.
Romer didn't answer, nor ask why.
After a minute he said--
"Where's Daphne?"
"Gone to stay with Mrs. Foster for a week."
"Oh! Who's coming down to-day?"
"Nobody. I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind--being alone, I mean." She
spoke without her usual fluency.
He stood staring out of the window into the quiet, damp garden. Then he
turned slowly round and looked at her. He looked at her little feet in
their little white laced shoes; at the slim, narrow line of the white
dress; at the hands clasped in her lap....
And he felt a sudden pang of cruel, realistic jealousy. But he looked at
her eyes and saw tears in them, and, pitying her, he crushed it down for
ever.
The marvellous instinct with which women are usually credited seems too
often to desert them on the only occasions when it would be of any real
use. One would say it was there for trivialities only, since in a crisis
they are usually dense, fatally doing the wrong thing. It is hardly too
much to say that most domestic tragedies are caused by the feminine
intuition of men and the want of it in women. Fortunately, Valentia's
feeling of remorseful tenderness towards Romer enabled her to read him
now. Of course she would have loved to cry, to explain at great length,
to beg him to forgive her and have a reconciliation. But something told
her that he could not have borne it; that the subject must never be
touched; that she must spare him any reference to it--any scene.
So she said nothing.
* * * * *
And, during the curious silence, he gradually and slowly took in the
soothing facts. He regained his sense of proportion, of perspective. He
saw she was disillusioned about Harry; he felt that the infatuation was
over; and, what was more, he realised, to his unutterable relief, that
she was not going to talk about it. How he dreaded that terrible
explicitness of women, their passion for tidying up, their love of
labels! He would not even have to hear it called a sealed subject, and
he would not have to say anything at all.
* * * * *
He looked out of the window again, began to whistle in a slightly
embarrassed way, and then said casually--
"Let's come out, Val. The lawn wants mowing."
THE END
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes
The original spelling and punctuation were retained, except for
a few issues that were believed to be typographical mistakes.
The full list of corrections is as follows:
+------+--------------------+--------------------+-------------------+
| page | original text | corrected to | explanation |
+------+--------------------+--------------------+-------------------+
| 15 | old-fashoned | old-fashioned | a misspelling |
| | | | |
| 32 | ,old chap' | 'old chap' | comma corrected |
| | | | to single quote |
| | | | |
| 142 | of colour | off colour | a misspelling |
| | | | |
| 144 | CAPTER | CHAPTER | a misspelling |
| | | | |
| 153 | darling. | darling." | Double quote |
| | | | added. |
| | | | |
| 181 | on the 'thou.'"... | on the 'thou.'..." | The position of |
| | | | ellipsis was |
| | | | changed. |
| | | | |
| 201 | airdresser's | hairdresser's | a misspelling |
| | | | |
| 220 | "Ha! musical, | "Ha! Musical, | Lowercase |
| | | | corrected |
| | | | to uppercase. |
| | | | |
| 256 | Dicken's | Dickens's | a misspelling |
| | | | |
| 273 | things to you?' | things to you?" | Single quote |
| | | | corrected to |
| | | | double quote. |
+------+--------------------+--------------------+-------------------+