WILFRID THE LEGISLATOR
Let time and change do their work for six years and six months, their
building and their destroying, their ripening for love, their ripening
for death. Then we take our way to the Capital, for, behold, it is
mid-season; the sun of late June is warm upon the many-charioted
streets, upon the parks where fashion's progress circles to the 'Io
Triumphe' of regardant throngs, even upon the quarters where life knows
but one perennial season, that of toil. The air is voiceful; every house
which boasts a drawing-room gathers its five o'clock choir; every
theatre, every concert-room resounds beneath the summer night; in the
halls of Westminster is the culmination of sustained utterance. There,
last night, the young member for a Surrey borough made his maiden
speech; his name, Mr. Wilfrid Athel.
The speech was better reported than such are wont to be, for it
contained clever things, and quite surprisingly resembled in its tone of
easy confidence and its mastery of relevant facts the deliverances of
men of weight in politics. It had elicited a compliment from a leader of
the opposing party; it had occasioned raisings of the eyebrows in
capable judges, and had led to remarks that a young man so singularly
self-possessed, so agreeably oracular, so remarkably long-headed, might
be expected, in the course of some five-and-twenty years, to go far. He
was, to be sure, a child--not yet thirty--but there were older children
in the House decidedly of less promise. Mr. Wilfrid Athel might go home,
and, if he could, go to sleep, in the assurance that his career had
opened.
The next day, a Saturday, this finished little piece of talk was the
starting-point of a vast amount of less coherent speech in a
drawing-room within sight of Kensington's verdure. Here Mrs. Ashley
Birks did her friends the honour of receiving them; a lady well regarded
in certain discriminating circles. A widow formerly, she had now been
two years married to a barrister new in silk. We have the pleasure of
knowing her; for she once bore the name of Mrs. Rossall.
At half-past five Mrs. Ashley Birks' drawing-room contained some two
dozen people, mostly ladies. Two of the gentlemen present are not
without interest for us. He whom you observe standing, so to speak, the
focus of a concave mirror of three gracious dames, with his back
somewhat difficultly bent, as if under ordinary circumstances he would
be as upright as any Briton who owes not a penny, with very wholesome
cheeks and lips which move in and out as he forms his well-rounded
periods, is, of course, Mr. Athel the elder; he plays with his
watch-guard, and is clearly in hearty mood, not at all disliking the
things that are being said about a certain member of the legislature.
The other is as emphatically an Englishman, but of a different type; his
clothes are good, but he does not wear them with grace; he is tall and
solidly built, but he walks awkwardly, and is not quite at home among
these gracious ladies of the silvern tongue, having much difficulty in
expressing himself on subjects which he perfectly understands, and
absolutely without faculty for speech on subjects unfamiliar to him.
When we saw him last he was in the heat of a contested election; there
has been another election since then, but Mr. Baxendale still represents
Dunfield.
You see his wife at a little distance, still the same smooth-skinned,
well-preserved lady, with goodness declaring itself upon her large and
homely features. For three years now she has been in the habit of
spending her three months in town, finding it lonely in Dunfield, and
even nourishing a late ambition, which has not been altogether futile;
for there re people who have a peculiar liking for the little room in
which she holds her modest gatherings. She is talking at present with a
lady who, by her costume, is of the house, a lady of some
seven-and-twenty years or a little more, and strikingly beautiful.
Beatrice Redwing has not yet changed her name, though often enough
solicited to do so; when her mother died, now rather more than a year
ago, she willingly accepted the shelter of Mrs. Ashley Birks' roof, as
she would else have had to live alone. In one respect she has not
changed, her dress is exquisite; but to judge from her expression as she
talks, she has become somewhat graver. Visitors have a special reason
for regarding her with glances of curiosity and admiration. Though known
to be extremely wealthy, it was rumoured that she was about to appear
before the public as a vocalist, having prepared herself by a long
course of the most rigid study. Her first appearance was looked forward
to as an event of note in the musical world, for her native gifts were
unusual, and the results of her training proportionately significant.
'It must be very gratifying to you,' Mrs. Baxendale had said, as she
came to a chair by her niece and began to talk of Wilfrid's success.
'Yes, I am glad of it,' was the quiet reply.
'Will he be here this afternoon?'
'I'm not sure; I think so. Ah, there he is!'
For at that moment had come the announcement of the name they had on
their lips. Beatrice's exclamation was made in a very subdued voice, but
she moved slightly in her chair, and it was not within her resources to
subdue the glister of her dark eyes and the warmth softly expanding upon
her cheek. Mrs. Birks floated towards her nephew with airs of
rightly-tuned welcome; she could not, of course, make much of him, but
her very familiarity made graceful claim to a share in his glory.
Wilfrid was sensibly changed during the years we have allowed to pass
silently by. To begin with, he had grown a beard. His health seemed
finally to have established itself on a sound basis; his cheeks were
growing sunny, and he showed the proportions of a very complete man. At
the present moment, his consciousness of regards fixed upon him
heightened his colour; his fine eyes danced in light; he checked a
smile, and spoke sparingly here and there. One part of his nature
revelled in the joy of this foretaste of distinction; he had looked
forward to it, had laboured for it, its sweetness was beyond all
telling. Triumph had been his aim as a schoolboy; he held it fitting
that as a man he should become prominent amongst his fellows. This of
politics was the easiest way. To be sure, he told himself that it was a
way he would once have sneered at, that it was to rub shoulders with men
altogether his inferiors in culture, that, had he held to the ideals of
his youth, a longer, a wearier course would have been his, and the
chance of a simpler, nobler crown. But he had the gift of speech, and by
an effort could absorb himself as completely in blue-books as in the
pages of historian or poet. An hour such as this was the first of his
rewards.
Two there were in this assembly who turned their eyes upon him with
adoration which could scarcely have fallen short of Wilfrid's utmost
demands. They were his cousins, Minnie and Patty Rossall. The twins were
'out,' very sweet girls, still too delicate in health, shadows of each
other. Had they regarded Wilfrid as a mere mortal, both would have been
dying for love of him; as it was they drooped before him the veiled eyes
of worshippers; a word from him made their pulses tingle blissfully
throughout the day. Such was their mutual love, that each schemed to win
his kindness for the other, his brotherly kindness, for they never
thought, had never dared to think, of anything else. Wilfrid was very
gracious to them both.
He shook hands with Beatrice, but neither spoke. After a few words with
Mrs. Baxendale, he passed on to other ladies. Wilfrid's manner was now
all that could be desired in a young man who, destined to succeed in
politics, would naturally make a figure in society. He was pliant, he
struck the note of good-breeding, he was unsurpassed in phrasing; with
ladies who chose to be 'superior,' he could find exactly the right tone,
keeping clear of pedantry, yet paying her with whom he spoke the
compliment of uttering serious opinions. With the more numerous class of
ladies, who neither were nor affected to be anything but delightful
chatterboxes, he could frolic on the lightest airs of society gossip. He
was fast making of himself an artist in talk; woe to him, if he began to
discover that exertion of his brain was waste of time, since his more
obvious ends could be gained equally well without it. As yet, though
hints of such a mood had come to him, he did not give way to the
temptations of loquacious idleness; he still worked, and purposed to
work still harder. Just of late he had spent a good deal of time in
rooms not exactly arranged for purposes of study--but for this there was
a special reason.
An hour later, when most of the visitors were departed, he went to
Beatrice's corner of the room.
'When shall I call for you?' he asked, standing before her.
'Oh, but you will dine here?'
She leaned forward, looking up into his face. The gaze would have
intoxicated most men; Wilfrid kept his calm smile.
'No, I am sorry to say I can't,' was his reply. 'I have things to see to
at home. Will 8.15 do?'
'Quite well; I need not be at the hall before a quarter to nine.'
His father came up.
'Walking my way, Wilf?'
'Yes, and in a hurry. I think we must have a hansom.'
Father and son still lived together, in the same house as formerly.
After a brief stretch of pavement, they hailed a conveyance.
'Going to St. James's Hall, I suppose?' Mr. Athel asked, as they drove
on.
Wilfrid gave an affirmative.
'Is it the last time?'
The other laughed.
'I can't say. I fear it troubles you.'
Mr. Athel had, we know, long passed the time when the ardours of youth
put him above the prejudices of the solid Englishman. When it was first
announced to him that Beatrice was going to sing on a public platform,
he screwed up his lips as if something acid had fallen upon them; he
scarcely credited the story till his own eyes saw the girl's name in
print. 'What the deuce!' was his exclamation. 'It would be all very well
if she had to do it for her living, but she certainly owes it to her
friends to preserve the decencies as long as there is no need to violate
them.' The reasons advanced he utterly refused to weigh. Since then
events had come to pass which gave him even a nearer interest in Miss
Redwing, and his protests had grown serious.
'Why, yes,' he answered now, 'it does trouble me, and not a little. I
very strongly advise you to put an end to it. Let her sing in her
friends' houses; there's no objection to that. But to have her name
on--great heavens!--on placards! No, no; it must stop, Wilf. Every day
it becomes more imperative. Your position demands that she should become
a private lady.'
Wilfrid knew well that the question could not be argued, and, in his
secret mind, there was just a little tendency to take his father's view.
He would never have allowed this shade of thought to appear in his
speech; but was he not an Englishman and a member of Parliament?
This which had come about was inevitable. After his departure from
Dunfield on that winter day, when his life seemed crushed, he had for a
long time not even sought to hear of Emily. He did not write to Mrs.
Baxendale, and from her had no letters. Correspondence between them only
recommenced some ten months later, when Wilfrid had finally left Oxford,
and then there was no mention on either side of the old troubles.
Wilfrid began by writing that he had thoughts of taking up politics; his
father advised him to the step, and other friends seconded the
recommendation. 'I really believe I can talk,' he said, and Mrs.
Baxendale smiled at the confession. Three months more went by; then
Wilfrid at length asked plainly whether Emily had sent any news of
herself, or whether the suspicions had proved grounded. The reply was
this:--
'As I knew perfectly well, as soon as I came to my senses, Emily had
told us the truth. I heard from her for the first time nearly half a
year ago, but, as she appealed to my honour not to disclose the place of
her abode, I thought it needless to speak to you on the subject before
you yourself seemed desirous of hearing. She is teaching in a school,
and I am convinced that the story we together concocted was based on
some utter mistake; I don't think she was ever related to that man in
the way we thought. But it is more than probable that there was some
mystery about her father's death, in which Mr. D. was concerned. I
cannot imagine what it could be. Something it was which, to Emily's
mind, imposed upon her a necessity of breaking her engagement. I have
spoken to her of you, have asked her directly if she still thinks her
decision final; she assures me most solemnly that it is. I therefore
advise you once for all to accept this; I am convinced she will never
waver. Try to forget her; there is no choice. I don't think I am likely
to see her again for a very long time, if ever, and our correspondence
will be very slight, for I know she wishes it so. Let this, then, close
a sad, sad story.'
There was indeed no choice, as far as outward relations went, but so
profound a passion was not to be easily outgrown. The view which makes
first love alone eternally valid derives from a conception of the nature
of love which, out of the realm of poetry, we may not entertain; but it
sometimes happens that the first love is that which would at any period
of life have been the supreme one, and then it doubtless attains a
special intensity of hold from the fact of its being allied with the
earliest outburst of physical passion. Above all it is thus if the
attachment has been brought about by other charms than those of mere
personal beauty. Emily could not be called beautiful, in the ordinary
acceptation of the word; for all that, her face grew to possess for
Wilfrid a perfection of loveliness beyond anything that he would ever
again see in the countenance of fairest woman. Had he been markedly
susceptible to female beauty, it is certain that he would have fallen in
love with Beatrice Redwing long before he ever saw Emily, for Beatrice
was fair to look upon as few girls are. He had not done so; he had
scarcely--a strange thing--been tempted to think of doing so. That is to
say, it needed something more to fire his instincts. The first five
minutes that he spent in Emily's presence made him more conscious of
womanhood than years of constant association with Beatrice. This love,
riveting itself among the intricacies of his being, could not be torn
out, and threatened to resist all piecemeal extraction. Wilfrid regained
the command of his mind, and outwardly seemed recovered beyond all
danger of relapse; but he did not deceive himself into believing that
Emily was henceforth indifferent to him. He knew that to stand again
before her would be to declare again his utter bondage, body and soul.
He loved her still, loved her as his life; he desired her as
passionately as ever. She was not often in his thoughts no more is the
consciousness of the processes whereby our being supports itself. But he
had only to let his mind turn to her, and he scoffed at the hope that
any other could ever be to him what Emily had been, and was, and would
be.
He saw very little of Beatrice, but it came to his ears that her life
had undergone a change in several respects, that she spent hours daily
in strenuous study of music, and was less seen in the frivolous world.
No hint of the purpose Beatrice secretly entertained ever reached him
till, long after, the purpose became action. He felt that she shunned
him, and by degrees he thought he understood her behaviour. Wilfrid had
none of the vulgarest vanity; another man would long ago have suspected
that this beautiful girl was in love with him; Wilfrid had remained
absolutely without a suspicion of the kind. He had always taken in good
faith her declared aversion for his views; he had believed that her
nature and his own were definitely irreconcilable. This was
attributable, first of all to his actual inexperience in life, then to
the seriousness with which he held those views which Beatrice vowed
detestable. He, too, was an idealist, and, in many respects, destined to
remain so throughout his life; for he would never become, on the one
hand, the coldly critical man who dissects motives--his own and those of
others--to the last fibre, nor yet the superficial cynic who professes,
and half-believes, that he can explain the universe by means of a few
maxims of cheap pessimism. So he took, and continued to take, Beatrice's
utterances without any grain of scepticism, and consequently held it for
certain that she grew less friendly to him as she grew older.
Was it Mrs. Baxendale or Mrs. Birks who at length gave him the hint
which set his mind at work in another direction? Possibly both about the
same time, seeing that it was the occasion of Mrs. Baxendale's first
making acquaintance with his aunt that dated the beginning of new
reflections In Wilfrid. One or other of these ladies--of course it was
managed so delicately that he really could not have determined to which
of them he owed the impulse--succeeded in suggesting to him that he had
missed certain obvious meanings in Beatrice's behaviour whilst he
resided with her at Dunfield. Certainly, when he looked back at those
days from his present standpoint, Beatrice did appear to have conducted
herself singularly, the mode of her departure and leave-taking being
above all curious. Was it possible that--? The question formed itself at
last, and was the beginning of conviction. He sought Beatrice's society,
at first merely for the sake of resolving his doubts, and behold, she no
longer shrank from him as formerly. Of course he might take it for
granted that she knew the details of his story, seeing that her closest
intimates, Mrs. Baxendale and Mrs. Birks, were ignorant of none of them.
Had she, then, waited for signs of his freedom? Did his revival of the
old tone in their conversations strike her as something meant to be
significant, meant to convey to her certain suggestions? It was so in
point of fact, and Wilfrid could not be long, his eyes now open, without
convincing himself that the girl loved him ardently, that it cost her
struggles with herself to avoid a revelation of her feeling. How did it
affect him?
Naturally, he was flattered. It afforded another instance of his
lordship among men; a woman whom others longed for desperately and in
vain was his when he chose to extend his hand to her. He saw, too, an
appropriateness in the chance which offered him such a wife; Beatrice
was in harmony with the future to which he aspired. Her property joined
to his would make him so wealthy that he might aim almost at anything;
political and social progress would aid each other, both rapid. Beatrice
was in many respects brilliant; there was no station that she would not
become; she had the tastes and habits of society. He compared her with
his career; she represented worldly success, the things which glitter on
the outside--action, voice; even her magnificent powers of song he used
as parallel--the gods forgive him!--to his own forensic abilities.
Supposing he must marry early, and not rather expect the day when he
might bid for a partner from a rank considerably above his own, Beatrice
was clearly the one wife for him. She would devote herself with ardour
to his worldly interests--for he began to understand that the
divergence of her expressed views meant little in comparison with her
heart's worship--and would enable him immediately to exchange the social
inferiority of bachelor life for the standing of a man with his own very
substantial roof-tree; she would have her drawing-room, which might be
made a _salon_, where politics and art might rule alternately.
This was doing injustice to Beatrice, and Wilfrid felt it; but it was
thus he regarded her as in distinction from the woman who should have
been his wife. She typified his chosen career; that other path which had
lain open to him, the path of intellectual endeavour, of idealism
incompatible with loud talk, of a worship which knew no taint of
time-serving, that for ever was represented by the image of the woman he
had lost. Her memory was encompassed with holiness. He never heard the
name she bore without a thrill of high emotion, the touch of exalted
enthusiasm; 'Emily' was written in starlight. Those aspects of her face
which had answered to the purest moments of his rapturous youth were as
present as if she had been his daily companion. He needed no picture to
recall her countenance; often he had longed for the skill of an artist,
that he might portray that grave sweetness, that impassioned faith, to
be his soul's altar-piece. Lost, lost! and, with her, lost the
uncompromising zeal of his earliest manhood. Only too consciously he had
descended to a lower level; politics tempted him because they offered a
field in which he could exercise his most questionable faculty, and earn
with it a speedy return of the praise to which he was so susceptible. It
marks his position to state that, when politics began seriously to hold
his thoughts, he was with difficulty able to decide to which party he
should attach himself. To be sure, if names could be taken as
sufficient, he was a Liberal, a Radical; but how different his
interpretation of such titles from that they bore to men of affairs!
Respect for the masses he had none; interest in their affairs he had
none either. On the other hand, the tone of uninstructed
Conservatism--that is to say, of the party so stamped--he altogether
despised. The motive which ultimately decided him to declare himself a
Liberal was purely of sentiment; he remembered what Mrs. Baxendale had
said about the hardships of poor Hood, and consequently allied himself
with those who profess to be the special friends of the toiling
multitude.
From the first he talked freely with Beatrice of his projects; he even
exaggerated to her the cynicism with which he framed and pursued them.
He could never have talked in this way to Emily. With Beatrice the tone
did not injure him in the least, partly because she did not take it
altogether seriously, yet more owing to the habit of mind whereby women
in general subordinate principle to the practical welfare of the
individual. If Wilfrid found a sphere for the display of his talents,
Beatrice eared nothing to dwell upon abstract points. Politics were a
recognised profession for gentlemen, and offered brilliant prizes; that
was enough. She was pleased, on the whole, that his line should be one
of moderation; it was socially advantageous; it made things pleasant
with friends of the most various opinions. That Wilfrid took her into
his confidence was to her a great happiness. In secret she felt it would
be the beginning of closer intimacy, of things which women--heaven be
praised!--esteem of vastly more importance than intellectual convictions
or the interest of party.
But it was long, very long, before Wilfrid could bring himself to pass
the line which separates friendship from lovemaking. Of passion his
nature had no lack, but it seemed to be absorbed in memory; he shrank
from the thought of using to another those words he had spoken to Emily.
One of the points of intense secret sympathy between Emily and himself
was this chastity of temperament. Constitutionally incapable of vice, he
held in repugnance even that degree of materialism in the view of sexual
relations which is common to men who have grown their beards. Not only
had a coarse word never passed his lips; he intensely disliked the
frivolous way of discussing subjects which to him were more sacred than
any other. When he had decided with himself that it was his destiny to
wed Beatrice, he had a positive fear of taking this step from which
there would be no return. Before he could do so, he must have utterly
broken with the past, and how could that ever be I He had not even
moments of coldness in his thought of Emily; it was beyond his power to
foresee the day when she would have become to him a mere symbol of
something that was. Suppose that some day, when married, he again met
her? In spite of everything, he did not believe that she had ceased to
love him; somewhere she still kept her faith, martyred by the
incomprehensible fate which had torn her from his arms. To meet her
again would be to forget every tie save that holiest which made one of
his spirit and of hers.
One day--it was during the second season which Mrs. Baxendale passed in
London--he went to his friend and asked her where Emily was. Mrs.
Baxendale was too quick for him; Wilfrid thought he had put his question
unexpectedly, but the lady was ready for such a question at any moment,
and she replied, with appearance of absolute sincerity, that she had no
knowledge of Emily's place of abode.
'Where was she last--when you last heard from her?' Wilfrid asked, in
surprise at an answer so unanticipated.
Mrs. Baxendale named a town in Yorkshire. She had begun with a
calculated falsehood, and had no scruple in backing it up by others.
'What can it concern you, Wilfrid?' she continued. 'Shall I confess my
weakness? I mentioned your name in a letter to her; the result was this
complete ending of our correspondence. Now, will not even that satisfy
you?'
He did not doubt what he was told; Mrs. Baxendale's character for
veracity stood high. It was solely out of regard for Wilfrid that she
allowed herself to mislead him, for by this time it seemed obvious that
Beatrice was drawing near to her reward, and Mrs. Baxendale, with
pardonable error, took this last inquiry about Emily for a piece of
conscientiousness, which, once satisfied, Wilfrid would hold on his
course to a happy haven. 'She has given him up,' was her
self-justification. 'Beatrice now would suffer no less than she has
done.'
'Then tell me one thing more,' Wilfrid pursued. 'What has become of that
man Dagworthy?'
'That I can easily do. Long ago he married a young lady of Dunfield.'
'Then what did it mean? what _did_ it mean?'
Mrs. Baxendale merely shook her head.
A few months later, Beatrice astonished everyone by her first appearance
as a public singer. Wilfrid had as little anticipated such a step as any
other of Beatrice's friends. What was about to happen only became known
a day or two in advance. Mrs. Ashley Birks was paralysed with horror;
she implored, she reasoned, she put on her face of cold anger. Mr. Athel
cried 'What the deuce!' and forthwith held a serious colloquy with his
son. Wilfrid experienced a certain joy, only tempered with anxiety as to
the result of the experiment. If it proved a success, he felt that the
effect upon himself would be to draw him nearer to Beatrice; but it must
be a great success. He calculated on imaginative influences as other men
do on practical issues. Beatrice, acknowledged as more than an amateur,
perchance publicly recognised as really a great singer, would impress
him in a new way; he might overcome his impartial way of regarding her.
The result, outwardly, answered his fullest hopes. Beatrice had not idly
risked what would have been a deplorable fiasco; she had the
encouragement of those who did not speak in vain, and her ambition had
fired itself as she perceived the results of her conscientious labour.
Her nervousness throughout the day of the concert was terrible, but
little less than her life depended on the result, and at the hour of
trial she was strong to conquer. Very far behind her, as she stepped out
to that large audience, were the dilettante successes of drawing-room
and charitable concerts; she smiled at all that flow; since then she had
unlearnt so much and wrought with such humility. But what she strove for
was won; she knew it in the grasp of Wilfrid's hand when he led her to
her carriage. Her veil was down; behind it she was sobbing.
'Am I nothing more than a frivolous woman now?' she said, leaning to him
from the carriage.
Wilfrid could make no answer, and she was whirled away from him.
He went to her the next day, and asked her to be his wife. Beatrice
looked him in the face long and steadily. Then she asked:
'Do you love me, Wilfrid?'
'I love you.'
Another word trembled on her tongue, but the temptation of her bliss was
too great; the contained ardour of long years had its way, sweeping
doubt and memory before it.
'For your sake I have done it all. What do I care for a whole world's
praise, compared with one word of recognition from you! You remember the
morning when you told me of my faults, when we all but seemed to
quarrel? Ah! I have faults in abundance still, but have I not done one
thing worth doing, done it thoroughly, as net everyone could? I am not
only a woman of the world, of society and fashion? Do I not know how
contemptible that is? But only you could raise me above it.'
He left her, in a bewildered state; she had excited, impassioned him;
but how strange it all was after those other scenes of love! It seemed
so of the earth; the words he had spoken rang over again in his ears,
and stirred his blood to shame. He could not say whether in truth he
loved her or not; was it enough to feel that he could cherish her with
much tenderness, and intoxicate himself in gazing on her perfect face?
Women are so different! Emily had scarcely spoken when he made known to
her his love; could he ever forget that awe-struck face, dimly seen in
the moonlight? Her words to the end had been few; it was her eyes that
spoke. Beatrice was noble, and had a heart of gold; was there not heaven
in that ardour of hers, if only it had been his soul's desire?
Henceforth it must be; she loved him, and he must not wrong her. Alas!
the old name, the old name alone, was still star-written....
He passed with her the afternoon of each Sunday. Mrs. Birks' house was a
large one, and Beatrice had abundance of room to herself. Thither
Wilfrid took his way on the Sunday which we have reached, the day
following his drawing-room triumph. Already he was a little ashamed of
himself; he was experiencing again the feeling which had come over him
after his first speech to a political meeting. As he went home that
night, a demon in his head kept crying 'Clap-trap! clap-trap!' and there
was no silencing the voice. He had talked to the intelligence of the
mob. Now his talk had been addressed to--the representatives of the mob;
if the demon did not cry so loudly, it was only because he was weary of
his thankless task.
Beatrice was a superb coquette--but only for the man she loved. For
these Sunday afternoons she attired herself divinely; Wilfrid had learnt
to expect a new marvel at each of his comings. To-day she wore her
favourite colour, a dark-blue. Her rising to meet him was that of a
queen who bath an honoured guest. The jewels beneath her long dark
lashes were as radiant as when first she heard him say, 'I love you.'
All the impulses of her impetuous character had centred on this one end
of her life. Her eccentricities had tamed themselves in the long
discipline of frustrated desire. The breath of her body was love. About
her stole a barely perceptible perfume, which invaded the senses, which
wrapped the heart in luxury.
Wilfrid dropped on one knee before her and kissed her hand.
'You are in a happy mood,' Beatrice said. 'Who has been telling you the
last flattery?'
'I have seen no one to-day. If I look happy--should I not?'
She drew her finger along the line of his eyebrow.
'How does your picture get on?'
'I have to give two sittings next week. Thank goodness they are the
last.'
'Oh! why wasn't it in time for the Academy! But it must go next year.'
Wilfrid laughed as he seated himself opposite to her.
'I am not sure, after all, that you are happy,' she said, leaning her
head a little aside as she gazed at him. 'Now you are thoughtful. I
suppose you will be more and more thoughtful.'
'Deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat, and public care--'
quoted Wilfrid, with a little wrying of the lips. 'This, you know, is
one of the penalties of greatness.'
She seemed about to rise, but it was only to slip forward and sink upon
her knees by his side, her arms embracing him. It was like the fall of
fair waters, so gracefully impulsive, so self-abandoning.
'Not one kiss to-day?' she murmured, her voice like the dying of a
flute.
And she raised to him a face lit from the inmost sanctuary of love.
'You are as beautiful,' he said, 'as any woman of whom fable ever told.
Your beauty frightens me. It is sometimes more than human--as though the
loveliest Greek goddess suddenly found breath and colour and the light
of eyes.'
Beatrice threw her head far back, laughing silently; he saw the laughter
dance upon her throat.
'My love! my own!' she whispered. 'Say you love me!'
'Dearest, I love you!'
'Ah! the words make my heart flutter so! I am glad, glad that I have
beauty; but for that you would never have loved me. Let me hide my face
as I tell you. I used to ask myself whether I was not really fairer than
other women--I thought--I hoped! But you were so indifferent. Wilfrid,
how long, how long I have loved you! I was quite a young girl when I
loved you first. That, I said, shall be my husband, or I will never have
one. And I knew so little how to win your thought. How ashamed it makes
me to think of things I said and did in those days!'
She was silent, leaning her head against his shoulder.
'Do you ever think of me as I was at Dunfield?' she asked presently,
with timid utterance, hardly above her breath, risking what she had
never yet dared.
'No,' he answered, 'I think of the present.'
His voice was a little hard, from the necessity of commanding it.
'You did not know that I loved you then? Think of me! Pity me!'
He made no answer. Beatrice spoke again, her face veiled against him,
her arms pressing closer.
'You love me with perfect love? I have your whole heart?'
'I love you only, Beatrice.'
'And with love as great as you ever knew? Say that to me--Wilfrid, say
that!' She clung to him with passion which was almost terrible. 'Forgive
me! Only remember that you are my life, my soul! I cannot have less than
that.'
He would have been cased in triple brass if music such as this had not
melted into his being. He gave her the assurance she yearned for, and,
in giving it, all but persuaded himself that he spoke the very truth.
The need of affirming his belief drew from him such words as he had the
secret of; Beatrice sighed in an anguish of bliss.
'Oh, let me die now! It is only for this that I have lived.'
Wilfrid had foreseen and dreaded this questioning. From any woman it was
sooner or later to be expected, and Beatrice was as exacting as she was
passionate. She knew herself, and strove hard to subdue these
characteristics which might be displeasing to Wilfrid; her years of
hopelessness, of perpetual self-restraint, were of aid to her now; three
months had passed without a word from her which directly revived the old
sorrows. Her own fear of trenching on indiscretion found an ally in
Wilfrid's habitual gravity; her remark, at their meeting, on his mood
was in allusion to a standing pleasantry between them; she had
complained that he seldom looked really happy in her presence. It was
true; his bearing as a rule was more than sober. Beatrice tormented
herself to explain this. He was not in ordinary intercourse so
persistently serious, though far more so than he had been in earlier
years, the change dating, as Beatrice too well had marked, from the time
of his supreme misery. With the natural and becoming gravity of mature
age there mingled a very perceptible strain of melancholy. You felt it
in his laugh, which was seldom hearty; it made his sprightliness in
social hours more self-conscious than it might have been. Beatrice had
always felt towards him a very real humility, even when the goading of
her unrequited love drove her into a show of scornful opposition.
Herself conscious of but average intelligence, and without studious
inclinations, she endowed him with acquisitions as vast as they were
vague to her discernment; she knew that it would always lie beyond her
power to be his intellectual companion. Therefore she desired to be
before everything womanly in his eyes, to make the note of pure
sentiment predominate in their private relations to each other. She had
but won him by her artistic faculty; she could not depend upon that to
retain and deepen his affection. Her constant apprehension was lest
familiarity should diminish her charm in his eyes. Wilfrid was no less
critical than he had ever been; she suspected that he required much of
her. Did he seek more than she would eventually be able to give? Was she
exhausting the resources of her personal charm? Such thoughts as these
made curious alternations in her manner towards him; one day she would
endeavour to support a reserve which should surpass his own, another she
lost herself in bursts of emotion. The very care which she bestowed upon
her personal appearance was a result of her anxiety on this point; in
the last resort she knew herself to be beautiful, and to her beauty he
was anything but insensible. Yet such an influence was wretchedly
insufficient; she must have his uttermost love, and never yet had she
attained full assurance of possessing it.
Little did Wilfrid suspect the extent to which her thoughts were
occupied with that faint, far-off figure of Emily Hood. It was her
despair that she had known Emily so slightly; she would have desired to
study to the depths the woman who had possessed such a secret of power.
In personal charm Emily could not compare with her; and yet--the
distinction struck her hard--that was perhaps only true if personal
charm merely meant charm of person, for she herself had experienced
something of the strange impressiveness which men--men of
imagination--submitted to in Emily's presence. Where did it lie, this
magic? It was indefinite, indefinable; perhaps a tone of the voice
represented it, perhaps a smile--which meant, of course, that it was
inseparable from her being, from her womanhood. Could one attribute to
Emily, even after the briefest acquaintance, a thought, an instinct,
which conflicted with the ideal of womanly purity? Was not her
loveliness of the soul? Moreover, she was intellectual beyond ordinary
women; for Wilfrid that must have been a rich source of attraction.
Scarcely less than the image of Wilfrid himself was that of Emily a
haunting presence in Beatrice's life. Recently she had spoken of her
both with Mrs. Birks and Mrs. Baxendale; it cost her something to do so,
but both of these had known Emily with intimacy, and might perhaps tell
her more than she herself remembered or could divine. Mrs. Birks was
disposed to treat Emily with little seriousness.
'You make the strangest mistake,' she said, 'if you think that was
anything but a boy's folly. To be sure the folly got very near the point
of madness--that was because opposition came in its way. Wilfrid has
for years thought as little of her as of the man in the moon's wife--if
he has one. You are surely not troubling yourself--what?'
Beatrice had thereupon retired into herself.
'You misunderstand me,' she said, rather coldly. 'It was only a
recollection of something that had seemed strange to me at the time.'
Mrs. Baxendale held another tone, but even she was not altogether
sincere--naturally it was impossible to be so. To begin with, she gave
Beatrice to understand, even as she had Wilfrid, that she had now for
some time lost sight of Emily, and, consequently, that the latter was
less actually interesting to her than was in fact the case. With her
aunt Beatrice could be more unreserved; she began by plainly asking
whether Mrs. Baxendale thought Wilfrid's regret had been of long
endurance--a woman in Beatrice's position clearly could not, in talking
to another, even suppose the case that the regret still endured. Her
aunt honestly replied that she believed he had suffered long and
severely.
'But,' she added, with characteristic tact, 'I did not need this
instance, my dear, to prove to me that a first love may be only a
preparation for that which is to last through life. I could tell you
stories--but I haven't my grandmother's cap on at present.'
(Mrs. Baxendale was, in truth, a grandmother by this time, and professed
to appreciate the authority she derived from the circumstance.)
That had drawn Beatrice out.
'She was strong-minded?'
'Or very weak, I really don't know which.'
'Yes,' mused Beatrice, 'she was a problem to you. You never troubled
yourself to puzzle over my character, aunt.'
'When a stream is of lovely clearness, Beatrice, we do not find it hard
to determine the kind of ground it flows over.'
'I will owe you a kiss for that,' said the girl, blushing hot with very
joy. 'But you are a flatterer, dear aunt, and just now I am very humble
in spirit. I think great happiness should make us humble, don't you? I
find it hard to make out my claim to it.'
'Be humble still, dear, and the happiness will not be withdrawn.'
'I do like to talk with you,' Beatrice replied. 'I never go away without
something worth thinking of.'
Humility she strove to nourish. It was a prime virtue of woman, and
'would sweeten her being. Unlike Emily, she was not inspired with an
ardent idealism independently of her affections; with love had begun her
conscious self-study, and love alone exalted her. Her many frivolous
tendencies she had only overcome by dint of long endeavour to approach
Wilfrid's standard. If in one way this was an item of strength, in
another it indicated a very real and always menacing weakness. Having
gained that to which her every instinct had directed itself, she made
the possession of her bliss an indispensable factor of life; to lose it
would be to fall into nether darkness, into despair of good. So widowed,
there would be no support in herself; she knew it, and the knowledge at
moments terrified her. Even her religious convictions, once very real
and strong, had become subordinate; her creed--though she durst not
confess it--was that of earthly love. Formerly she had been thrown back
on religious emotion as a solace, an anodyne; for that reason the
tendencies inherited from her mother had at one time reached a climax of
fanaticism. Of late years, music had been her resource, the more
efficient in that it ministered to hope. By degrees even her charitable
activity had diminished; since her mother's death she had abandoned the
habit of 'district visiting.' As confidence of the one supreme
attainment grew in her, the mere accessories of her moral life were
allowed to fall away. She professed no change of opinion, indeed under.
went none, but opinion became, as with most women, distinct from
practice. She still pretended to rejoice as often as she persuaded
Wilfrid to go to church, but it was noticeable that she willingly
allowed his preference for the better choral services, and seemed to
take it for granted that the service was only of full efficacy when
performed together with her....
'Let me die now! It is only for this that I have lived!'
The cry came from her very heart. For once Wilfrid had been overcome,
had thrown off his rather sad-coloured wooing, had uttered such words as
her soul yearned for. Yet she had scarcely time to savour her rapture
before that jealousy of the past mingled itself with the sensation. Even
such words as these he must have used to _her_, and had they not
perchance come more readily to his lips? Was he by nature so reserved?
Or, the more probable thing, was it that she failed at other times to
inspire him? How had _she_ been used to behave, to speak?
In her incessant brooding upon the details of Wilfrid's first affection,
Beatrice had found one point which never lost its power to distract her;
it was the thought of all the correspondence that must have passed
between him and Emily. What had become of those letters? Had they been
mutually returned? It was impossible to discover. Not even to her aunt
could she put such a question as that; and it might very well be that
Mrs. Baxendale knew nothing certainly. If the story as she, Beatrice,
had heard it was quite accurate, it seemed natural to suppose that Emily
had requested to have her letters returned to her when she declared that
the engagement must be at an end; but Wilfrid had refused to accept that
declaration, and would he not also have refused to let the writing which
was so precious to him leave his hands? In that case he probably had the
letters still; perhaps he still read them at times. Would it be
possible, even after marriage, to speak of such a subject with Wilfrid?
She had constantly tried to assure herself that, even if he had kept the
pledges through all these years, a sense of honour would lead Wilfrid to
destroy them when he gave and received a new love. In moments when it
was her conscious effort to rise to noble heights, to be as pure a woman
as that other--for Beatrice never sought the base comfort of refusing
to her rival that just homage--she 'would half persuade herself that no
doubt lingered in her mind; it was right to destroy the letters, and
whatever was right Wilfrid must have done. But she could not live at all
hours in that thin air; the defects of her blood were too enduring.
Jealousy came back from its brief exile, and was more insinuating than
ever, its suggestions more maddening. By a sort of reaction, these
thoughts assailed her strongly in the moments which followed her
outburst of passion and Wilfrid's response. Yet she could not--durst
not--frame words to tell him of her suffering. It was to risk too much;
it might strike a fatal blow at his respect for her. Even those last
words she had breathed with dread, involuntarily; already, perhaps, she
had failed in the delicacy he looked for, and had given him matter for
disagreeable thought as soon as he left her. She rose at length from her
kneeling attitude, and leaned back in her chair with a look of trouble
scarcely veiled.
Wilfrid did not notice it; he had already begun to think of other
matters.
'Beatrice,' he began, 'there's a subject I have avoided speaking of,
thinking you might perhaps be the first to mention it. Do you wish to
continue your singing?'
She smiled, and did not seem to attach great importance to the question.
'It is for you to decide,' she answered. 'You know why I began it; I am
ready to say my farewell whenever you bid me.'
'But what is your own feeling? I suppose you would in any case cease at
our marriage?'
'You are not ashamed of it?'
'It is true,' he replied humorously, 'that I am a member of the British
House of Commons, but I beg you won't think too meanly of me. I protest
that I have still something of my old self.'
'That means you are rather proud than ashamed. How' long,' she went on
to ask, lowering her eyes, 'is the British House of Commons likely to
sit?'
'Probably the talk will hold out for some seven or eight weeks longer.'
'May I sing the two remaining engagements, if I take no more after
those?'
'To be sure, you must. Let it stand so, then.'
She fell back into her brooding.
'Now I, too, have something to ask,' she said, after a short silence.
'Whatever you ask is already granted.'
'Don't be too hasty. It's more than you think.'
'Well?'
'I want you to give me some work to do for you--to let me come and sit
with you in your study some mornings and 'write things for you.'
Wilfrid laughed cheerily.
'If I had a regard for my dignity,' he said, 'I certainly shouldn't let
you. What will become of my pretence of work when you are let into the
secrets? But come, by all means. You shall digest a blue-book for me.'
'When? To-morrow morning?'
'If you will.'
Beatrice was satisfied.