MRS. ESSINGTON SAYS “NO”
SHE wore a gown of sheer white, with a mantle of Spanish lace drawn
close over her sloping shoulders and the flowing lines of her arms.
Above it her large gray eyes looked out luminously.
“What is it?” she asked. Her face was full of queries. She divined her
crisis already upon her.
Without a word he handed her the letter.
She read it through, dwelt on it a frowning space—looked at him while
the frown smoothed itself.
His full under lip twitched with a suggestion half cruel, half
sensitive. She saw he was suffering, but there was a confusion of
feeling, something with which the letter had nothing to do.
“Let us go somewhere else,” she said. Her glance had traveled toward the
open door.
He followed her through the library, dreading lest she pause there; but
she went on into the conservatory.
He closed the door, shutting them into the room of glass. In the midst
of the transparent walls, searched by the sun, they were alone. The
north end where the outer door opened, the south end looking on the lift
of the hill lawn, were screened thick with heliotrope and passion-vine.
The west fronted the skirts of the terrace, the somber, lonely
oak-plantation, the distant sea. They saw through glass the
out-of-doors, spacious, fresh, moved by the wind. Within, the air was
motionless, too hot, too sweet, with scents of newly watered flowers.
She handed the letter back to him as though it were a mere nothing,
saying simply, “Hawtry was against us from the first. He had more
influence than we.” She put it plural from habit.
“Hawtry was on the spot, not dawdling on the other side of the
continent,” he answered sullenly. The way he put it was brutal to her.
“_I_ know the thing’s all right,” he said half to himself; “but the rest
of ’em have to know it, too! I’ve got to make ’em! _That’s_ my failure.
Florence—as a force I’m nothing. Lord! How I hate the public—and I’m
just one of the least of ’em! That’s it,” he said. His chin was sunk on
his breast.
“The public is slow to see and quick to change. What they think doesn’t
matter with good work.”
Her mind was busy beyond mere saying. She had never heard him talk in
this strain before. She could remember when he had not known that his
work was good; and he said “_I_,” not “_we_.” She saw that marked an
end. More—he not only separated himself from her, but he divided that
self: the musician—the man, and called the man a failure. The letter was
not responsible for that.
“I’d like to give _you_ a better proof than this of what you’ve done.
For, Florence, you have done everything!” That was what he was saying.
She put up her hand, warning the words away. “I don’t need proof of what
you can do.”
“_Don’t_ you?” he questioned, looking at her. “Haven’t you begun lately
to suspect I wasn’t worth what you’ve given?”
“Tony!” her reproach was a cry. “You know—I couldn’t! But I have taken
more than I have given!” An insane passion for confession was on her.
But he was following his one idea.
“Then why have you avoided me so lately?” She had been expecting it.
“Have we ever been much together among people?”
He looked at her, baffled, but with something dogged and determined in
his face. She had never seen such a look on it before. And she was going
to refuse what he was about to ask. How broad his shoulders bulked on
the glare of glass!
“Do you regret what you said at the dance, then?” he persisted.
“No!” She said it with such vehement impulse that he straightened, took
a step toward her.
“But now you know what a failure I am—?”
“Oh, Tony—one failure isn’t failure!”
“But,” he gloomed at her, “it is if there’s never anything else!”
“There will be,” she said steadily; “but _if_ there never were, who was
ever loved for his successes!”
“Florence,” he said, “you are—you—oh, I don’t deserve it!” He took her
gently by the shoulders. “_Will_ you marry me?”
The question was between them, but left each cold. She was a long time
looking out through the begonia leaves before she answered—“No.”
His hands dropped from her shoulders. She saw with a sort of shock how
sure he had been of her! He could hardly take in what she meant.
“Do you remember what you said?” His voice, coming after a minute,
sounded at a distance to her.
She couldn’t speak. She nodded.
“Then why—now—this?”
“Because—” her voice broke. She waited a minute, fighting for
self-control; then went on more quietly—“because you don’t love me,
Tony.”
She startled him. “Florence,” he said earnestly, “you wrong us both. You
know you’ve always been the only one!”
“I only know,” she said, “that you do not love me now—because you once
did. Think! Am I what I was to you six months ago? Then think of
marriage! A lifetime! You will be still a young man when I am an old
woman. It was inevitable this should end.”
“But why do you talk like this?” He had her by the shoulders again.
“What has age to do with it? You knew that three nights ago as well as
now. It’s an excuse! Don’t you love me?”
Her voice was almost listless. “I love you so much that I’m not afraid
even of ending it.”
“Florence, if you knew how I need you!” How he touched her vulnerable
point! “If you knew how I have lost the only faith I had in myself!”
“You have _not_!” she made passionate denial. She freed herself, and
stepped back from him; but he came on until he was close in front of her
as she pressed back among the ferns. He looked bewildered—furious.
“You don’t need me!” she denied him. “We have given all we can. It is
different. I have nothing more for you.” She put her hands behind her.
“Florence, Florence!” He spoke her name threateningly. “That is just
talk! Why didn’t you say at once you were tired of me!”
“I have told you the truth.”
“Oh, the truth! Words! Good God, what woman ever talked reason to the
man she loved!”
She gave a little, bitter shrug, as if his words had frozen her in the
midst of the sun and flowers.
“_You_ have nothing to regret!” he said, savage with self-pity. “There’s
no blame—Lord, I don’t _blame_ you! But why didn’t you tell me—” he
stared at her, white with his dreadful realization—“why didn’t you tell
me before?”
Scarcely less pale, she looked back at him. What was it that had already
happened? Had everything been done too late?
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