It was striking twelve when Bridget and her husband reached home. She
pushed open a door on the left of the hall, and touched the button of
the electric light. The fire was still smouldering on the hearth. She
moved towards it, shivering a little, as she wrapped her cloak closer
round her, and drew up an easy chair, into which she sank wearily. Her
husband came in a moment later. “Why doesn’t Smithers leave a decent
fire?” he asked irritably, kicking the logs together with his heel,
till he had stirred them into a blaze.
There was silence. Travers took some whiskey from the spirit stand on
the table, and half filled a glass with it.
“Beastly dull evening!” he remarked, taking his cigar-case out of his
pocket, and examining its contents.
“I wasn’t bored,” Bridget said, shortly.
“No? You haven’t lost the faculty, my dear,--deliciously fresh, if a
trifle _bourgeois_,--of swearing eternal friendship on an evening’s
acquaintance. There is something very _piquant_ about you, Bridget.
In the midst of this jaded, effete civilization, you often remind me
of the rustic beauty,--the Miller’s, or the Village Innkeeper’s lovely
daughter!”
He cut off the end of his cigar with great deliberation as he spoke.
Bridget watched with interest the sharp, direct thrust of the
pen-knife. He glanced furtively at her, but her face was apparently
unmoved. He could not decide whether the momentary curl of the lip
which he fancied he detected was a trick of the firelight.
“This _is_ the first time you have met that man, Carey, of course?” he
observed after a moment, in the same lazy, mocking voice.
“No, it is not the first time.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Indeed? He only landed on Monday, or so I was
informed to the point of exhaustion to-night. It seemed to be generally
understood that the fact was interesting. I’m sorry it failed to thrill
me. Yet you have met him, you say?”
“I knew him five years ago, before he left England.”
“Really? This interests me,” he turned his face towards her. “I always
understood that your distinguished friends in those days were not
numerous. Were you at Rilchester? Ah! I see. Yet I should hardly have
thought that a man like Carey-- Still--when the daughter is pretty--”
He paused, smiling with half closed eyes.
Bridget flushed. The slow color began to mount in her cheeks; it spread
to her neck. The man watched her carefully. His smile became a little
more pronounced.
“I met Mr. Carey at a concert,” she said, and rose as she spoke,
resting her elbow on the mantel-piece, and facing him. Her voice was
still perfectly cool.
“And dispensed with the ceremony of an introduction?” He tapped the
tips of his fingers together languidly in applause. “Charming! so
idyllic, so _natural_. What a pity it is that so also do even the
costers. Well? and then? Please go on, I’m really not in the least
bored. That was not the extent of your acquaintance, of course?”
“No, I met him again,” she went on quietly, fixing her eyes on her
husband’s face.
“By request, of course?”
“Yes, by request. It was through Mr. Carey that my stories were
published.” She paused--“and through him therefore, indirectly, that I
met you.”
He glanced sharply at her. “I owe Mr. Carey a thousand thanks,” he
said, ironically. “To him, then, I--and the world--owe a great
pleasure; I can’t conscientiously say a great _literary_ pleasure, for
from what I remember of them the stories were entirely free from any
taint of literary quality whatever; but they were described, I think,
as _powerful_ and _vital_, full of human interest, weren’t they? It
sounds a little exhausting. Power and vitality always strike me as
exhausting, but then the masses have so much energy. It is Mr. Carey I
must thank, then, for my wife? I have no adequate words to express my
indebtedness.”
Bridget was silent. She stood absolutely motionless. Her face was like
a mask.
“Then, if it is not an impertinent question to put to one’s wife, I
gather that you and Carey were great friends?--and the rest possibly?”
Bridget broke into a short, scornful laugh.
“Since you ask me, I think the question _is_ a little impertinent!” she
said, lightly.
The man’s face darkened. “Why?” he asked.
“Well! I have long since ceased to inquire what is the relationship
between you and _your_ many friends.”
“You recognize no difference in our relative positions, then?”
“Not the slightest. Why should I?” she returned, calmly.
“Then you refuse to answer my question?”
“Absolutely.”
“There can be only one interpretation to put on your silence.”
“I know, of course, the interpretation you will put upon it. But that
it would be the same one whether I speak or am silent, I am equally
convinced.”
“You flatter me!” Travers exclaimed. He flung away the end of his
cigar, and rose. “There’s a fire in the smoking room, I suppose?”
“Yes,--one moment, before you go,” Bridget said. She was very pale.
“I should like to go home to-morrow,” she began.
He shrugged his shoulders. “My dear, I’m perfectly willing. Why consult
me about such a trifle? Indeed, if I must choose between having my
mother-in-law here, or your departure, ungallant though it seems, I
prefer the latter evil. Though my acquaintance with Mrs. Ruan has been
very limited,--I met her twice at lunch, I think, the last time she
paid us a visit,--I have already exhausted her as a type. I’m afraid I
can get nothing further out of her.”
“I should like to go home to-morrow,” Bridget repeated, mechanically,
“and I shall not come back.”
There was a moment’s pause. The clock ticked loud and insistently in
the silence.
Travers slowly raised his eyes to his wife’s face, and looked her
deliberately up and down before he laughed.
“Carey doesn’t waste his time, evidently,” he said.
Bridget moved back a step abruptly. She locked her hands tightly
together before she spoke.
“That,” she replied, in a low distinct voice, “is a cowardly
insinuation, and you know it to be a false one. Will you deny that
I have spoken of this to you before? that I have urged it upon you
as best for both of us? The fact that you have always treated the
matter contemptuously doesn’t alter the case at all. I have lived
this life too long,” she went on. “I see, I realize every day, every
hour, that I’ve been weak and cowardly not to have insisted upon my
freedom before! But--but--” her low passionate voice broke a little--“I
_dreaded_ to do it, for mother chiefly, and I always thought, hoped I
was to blame, that I hadn’t tried enough, that--” she paused. “Heaven
_knows_ I have tried!” she cried, with a change of voice, raising her
head, and looking him full in the face. “Paul! speak honestly. If you
can, for one moment, lay aside that sneering, cynical, _hateful_ trick
of speech of yours; speak like a human being for once, and say if there
is in your heart one spark of love or affection for me any more!”
He quailed for one moment before her brilliant eyes. Then he recovered
himself.
“Love? My dear child, you are remarkably young! You are a very
beautiful woman, Bridget,” he said critically, turning his head
languidly on one side, with an impartial air. “It’s a pity you waste
yourself upon Adelphi melodrama. Why not try Ibsen even? Ibsen is dull,
but not altogether meretricious.”
“You have answered my question,--in your own way, of course, but
you have answered it,” she said, slowly. “You have no love for me,
yet you are unwilling to let me go. Because people say--because
some people praise my looks, it pleases you to think of me as your
property,--_yours_, exclusively. You have taken care to try to
crush everything that is best in me,--everything that makes me an
_individual_, a _person_, my work, my hopes, my ideals. It is my beauty
only you want to keep! That is your side of the matter. As for me--”
she stopped. “I have only one active feeling left towards you.”
He bent a little towards her.
“And that is?”
“Contempt!” she answered swiftly, with a deep breath. “You will
admit, I think (except of course that the case admits of an excellent
opportunity for a paradox), that with these as the predominant feelings
on either side, our marriage can hardly be described as a success! I
never realized so terribly as to-night,” she went on, after a moment,
the scorn in her voice giving place to intense earnestness, “how
terribly, how irrevocably, we two people have drifted apart. Why, I
scarcely notice your insults now! I hardly noticed them to-night. I
am indifferent. Words which, three years ago, I think I should have
_died_ to hear from your lips, don’t touch me, don’t affect me. Oh,
I feel degraded, hateful in my own sight, to have lived with you, as
your wife, so long! I’m no better than any poor woman in the street out
there!” she cried with a gesture. “Better? I’m worse--_worse!_ Perhaps
they don’t always despise and hate the men who-- But I will be vile no
longer. I can’t breathe in this life.” Her hand went swiftly to her
throat, as though she felt physical suffocation. “For the sake of this
cowardly keeping up of appearances, I’ve filled the house with people
I dislike, I’ve had to listen to and learn their empty, meaningless,
surface-clever talk--to lead their artificial, unnatural life. I’m
tired of it--weary of it all--already; and here I am,”--she flung out
her hands with a quick, vivid gesture,--“young and strong, with years
and years before me perhaps. I will not waste my life like this! I too
am an individual! I too have my art to think of--you and your friends,
with that word forever on your lips, till one sickens at the sound
of it, cannot reasonably deny my right to its expression. But I must
have freedom--real, natural life. I must touch what is vital, enduring,
again.”
She paused, shaken and trembling, resting her hand against the
mantel-piece to steady herself.
“I’m really sorry to interrupt you; for though it’s a style I don’t
admire, you do it well--excellently well. Still, there are a few
practical points to be considered when you descend from the rarefied
atmosphere, which seems already to have affected your breathing.” He
regarded her with an air of mild curiosity as he spoke, adjusting his
eye-glasses with precision.
“In the first place, is it a legal separation you require? Secondly,
how do you propose to live? You will return to your parents possibly?
At Rilchester you will, of course, get what you require in the way
of natural life,” he continued impartially. “There is something very
vital and enduring about beer, for instance.” He paused, took off his
eye-glasses and wiped them carefully before he held them up to the
light.
“I shall go home first,” Bridget said. Her voice was quiet and steady
again. “Possibly afterwards I shall stop with the Mansfields for a
time, and try to get some teaching. In any case, I shall write. I am
not afraid that I shall be unable to earn a living--enough for me, at
least,” she added with calmness.
“And--suppose I object?”
“It is too late for you to object,” she replied quickly. “I am
determined. I will not live with you. If you had any love for me, any
love whatever,” she repeated, “I would stay. I would try to make you
love me more. I would do _anything_ for you,” she said brokenly. “But,
as it is, all that is left to me is to get back my self-respect. From
this moment I mean that we shall be strangers to each other.”
She drew her cloak, with its fleecy white fur, round her shoulders, and
turned from the fire as though to leave the room.
The man rose and swiftly caught her hands.
“Really?” he whispered. “I _don’t_. You’re much too beautiful to part
with easily, Bridget!”
He grasped both her hands roughly in one of his, and with the other
drew her to him. His face was close to hers. Bridget’s eyes met his
glittering ones, as she raised them, startled and incredulous.
She tore herself free with all the strength of her slender arms,
and stood confronting him, her eyes blazing, her breath coming in
quick, panting sighs. “I think I am the most miserable fool alive!”
she whispered, with fierce self-scorn. “I once mistook you for a
_gentleman_, at least. I can’t forgive myself! Stay where you are!”
she cried sharply, raising her voice. “You will not _dare_ to touch me.
I’m going to leave this house now, at once, since you are not to be
trusted.”
She gathered her cloak over her gleaming dress, still keeping her eyes
on his face, and crossed the room, closing the door behind her.
Travers stood where she had left him. He heard the sharp imperative
whistle for a cab. The jingle of harness followed almost immediately;
there was a dance at the opposite house in the Square--he remembered
seeing the row of hansoms waiting, as they drove up. A moment later, he
stood, his head thrust forward, listening mechanically to the beat of
horses’ hoofs on the frosty road.