When to crown our long acquaintance I accepted his renewed offer of
marriage it was humorously said, I know, that I had made the gift of his
photograph a condition. This was so far true that I had refused to
give him mine without it. At any rate I had him at last, in his
high distinction, on the chimney-piece, where the day she called to
congratulate me she came nearer than she had ever done to seeing him. He
had set her in being taken an example which I invited her to follow; he
had sacrificed his perversity--wouldn’t she sacrifice hers? She too
must give me something on my engagement--wouldn’t she give me the
companion-piece? She laughed and shook her head; she had headshakes
whose impulse seemed to come from as far away as the breeze that stirs a
flower. The companion-piece to the portrait of my future husband was the
portrait of his future wife. She had taken her stand--she could depart
from it as little as she could explain it. It was a prejudice, an
_entêtement_, a vow--she would live and die unphotographed. Now too she
was alone in that state: this was what she liked; it made her so much
more original. She rejoiced in the fall of her late associate and looked
a long time at his picture, about which she made no memorable remark,
though she even turned it over to see the back. About our engagement she
was charming--full of cordiality and sympathy. “You’ve known him even
longer than I’ve _not?_” she said, “and that seems a very long time.”
She understood how we had jogged together over hill and dale and how
inevitable it was that we should now rest together. I’m definite about
all this because what followed is so strange that it’s a kind of relief
to me to mark the point up to which our relations were as natural as
ever. It was I myself who in a sudden madness altered and destroyed
them. I see now that she gave me no pretext and that I only found one in
the way she looked at the fine face in the Bond Street frame. How then
would I have had her look at it? What I had wanted from the first was
to make her care for him. Well, that was what I still wanted--up to the
moment of her having promised me that he would on this occasion really
aid me to break the silly spell that had kept them asunder. I had
arranged with him to do his part if she would as triumphantly do hers. I
was on a different footing now--I was on a footing to answer for him. I
would positively engage that at five on the following Saturday he would
be on that spot. He was out of town on pressing business; but pledged
to keep his promise to the letter he would return on purpose and in
abundant time. “Are you perfectly sure?” I remember she asked, looking
grave and considering: I thought she had turned a little pale. She was
tired, she was indisposed: it was a pity he was to see her after all at
so poor a moment. If he only _could_ have seen her five years before!
However, I replied that this time I was sure and that success therefore
depended simply on herself. At five o’clock on the Saturday she would
find him in a particular chair I pointed out, the one in which he
usually sat and in which--though this I didn’t mention--he had been
sitting when, the week before, he put the question of our future to me
in the way that had brought me round. She looked at it in silence, just
as she had looked at the photograph, while I repeated for the twentieth
time that it was too preposterous it shouldn’t somehow be feasible to
introduce to one’s dearest friend one’s second self. “_Am_ I your dearest
friend?” she asked with a smile that for a moment brought back her
beauty. I replied by pressing her to my bosom; after which she said:
“Well, I’ll come. I’m extraordinarily afraid, but you may count on me.”
When she had left me I began to wonder what she was afraid of, for
she had spoken as if she fully meant it. The next day, late in the
afternoon, I had three lines from her: she had found on getting home
the announcement of her husband’s death. She had not seen him for seven
years, but she wished me to know it in this way before I should hear of
it in another. It made however in her life, strange and sad to say, so
little difference that she would scrupulously keep her appointment. I
rejoiced for her--I supposed it would make at least the difference of
her having more money; but even in this diversion, far from forgetting
that she had said she was afraid, I seemed to catch sight of a reason
for her being so. Her fear as the evening went on became contagious, and
the contagion took in my breast the form of a sudden panic. It wasn’t
jealousy--it was the dread of jealousy. I called myself a fool for not
having been quiet till we were man and wife. After that I should somehow
feel secure. It was only a question of waiting another month--a trifle
surely for people who had waited so long. It had been plain enough she
was nervous, and now that she was free she naturally wouldn’t be less
so. What was her nervousness therefore but a presentiment? She had been
hitherto the victim of interference, but it was quite possible she would
henceforth be the source of it. The victim in that case would be my
simple self. What had the interference been but the finger of providence
pointing out a danger? The danger was of course for poor _me_. It had
been kept at bay by a series of accidents unexampled in their frequency;
but the reign of accident was now visibly at an end. I had an intimate
conviction that both parties would keep the tryst. It was more and more
impressed upon me that they were approaching, converging. We had talked
about breaking the spell; well, it would be effectually broken--unless
indeed it should merely take another form and overdo their encounters as
it had overdone their escapes.
This was something I couldn’t sit still for thinking of; it kept me
awake--at midnight I was full of unrest. At last I felt there was only
one way of laying the ghost. If the reign of accident was over I must
just take up the succession. I sat down and wrote a hurried note which
would meet him on his return and which as the servants had gone to bed
I sallied forth bareheaded into the empty, gusty street to drop into the
nearest pillar-box. It was to tell him that I shouldn’t be able to be at
home in the afternoon as I had hoped and that he must postpone his visit
till dinner-time. This was an implication that he would find me alone.