The Trelawneys spent their honeymoon in Paris; and since June, they
had been stopping at a little village on the coast of Normandy, which
several of Jim’s artist friends had also chosen as headquarters.
Bridget was spending her holiday with them. A fortnight of it had
passed already, when she and Helen spent one brilliant morning on the
cliffs. The August sun blazed royally in a hot blue sky.
On a hill, above the coast, the little gray church of St. Marguerite
overlooked the sea. Below it, clothing the hillside with a sheet of
rose-pink and purple blossoms, a field of clover swept downwards
towards a narrow cleft in the chalk cliffs, by which the shore was
reached.
The sides of the gully were dazzling white in the hot sunshine. A line
of scarlet poppies made a vivid fringe of color along its lip. From
out its white walls great tufts of lavender-colored scabious sprang,
and trails of lady’s-slipper flamed yellow in the sunlight. A drowsy
hum of innumerable bees amongst the clover filled the hot, still air,
mingled with the shrill whirr of grasshoppers. Down far below the blue
sea broke, sparkling and dimpling into millions of flashing gems.
Bridget had thrown herself among the clover blossoms at the edge
of the cliff. Her shade hat lay beside her. A scarlet sunshade was
spread above her head. At some little distance, under the shade of
a straggling elder bush Helen sat, reading. Bridget lay very still,
listening half unconsciously to the whirr of wings, feeling the hot
sunshine wrapping her round, her eyes fixed on the intense blue
sky above the cliffs opposite, where the swallows were darting,
wheeling, skimming in airy dance. In one hand she held a letter. This
she presently drew noiselessly from its envelope. She had read and
re-read it a hundred times; but now she read it once more with careful
deliberation. It was dated the day after her walk with Carey in the
Bushberry woods. She knew by heart the words with which it began.
“... Because I love you,” it went on, “I will not bring more trouble
into your life, rashly, passionately, as, selfish devil that I am,
I long to do. You shall be free to think--free to realize what it
means if we decide to take this step. I start for Spain to-morrow. I
will not even see you again. I _dare_ not see you again. I will not
write to you. It shall be as though I don’t exist for you--for three
months. Dear, think well. I love you as I never yet loved a woman;
but though I shudder at the mere idea of life without you, I will
bear it somehow,--I must bear it, unless you can come to me without a
single fear of consequence. I would gladly die to save you from pain.
Think well; but (I feel a brute to say it, for it sounds as though I
urge it as a plea, yet I cannot leave it unsaid) oh, Bridget! think
also that I am wild for love of you!”
She read the words slowly, then she raised the letter to her lips
before she replaced it in its envelope. For a moment longer she
lay motionless. Then she rose, gathered up her sunshade and hat
deliberately, and crossed the grass towards her friend. She slipped
down beside her, in the shade, and laid her hand across the open page
of her book.
Helen looked up with a start, and their eyes met.
“Bid?” she whispered, and paused. Her face had grown suddenly white.
“Yes,” said Bridget, slowly, “I have decided.”
There was a long silence. The shrill, insistent whirr of the
grasshoppers, mingled with the hum of bees, was the only sound in the
stillness.
Helen bent her head over the book on her lap. On the open page Bridget
presently saw heavy tears falling. She raised herself to her knees,
and put her arms round her friend, and rested her cheek caressingly
against her fair hair.
“Helen,” she said softly, “listen! I want to try to explain. You have
been so good,” she faltered. “You have never worried me. It was so
like you not to harass me,--to let me have it out with myself! But now
I want to tell you. I want to try and make you understand. Helen, you
know I haven’t come to this decision lightly, without thought?” There
was a touch of pained reproach in the last words, for Helen was still
silent.
She turned to her at last.
“Bid,” she whispered brokenly, “you know I trust you. You know what I
think of you! Only--only--I am _afraid_--afraid of the years to come.
Oh, Bid, laws are terrible things to disobey! One suffers--”
“Yes. One suffers. I don’t expect to escape suffering,” Bridget
answered steadily. “I don’t think I even want to.”
“You--you are thinking of your mother?” Mrs. Trelawney hesitated.
Bridget moved restlessly, and frowned. She plucked up a handful of
grass with nervous fingers, looked at it absently, a moment, then threw
it from her, with an impatient gesture.
“Yes. Mother, of course!” she returned, raising her head with a jerk;
“but I have thought it all out, Helen! Mother mustn’t spoil my life.
I have Larry to think of--and myself. It sounds horrible--hateful,
I know!” she went on hastily; “but what am I to do? I realize at
last that it’s hopeless to expect that mother will ever understand.
I must take my own path in spite of her, if I don’t want my life
spoiled--incomplete--of no use to me or any one else!” There was
silence. “I dread to tell her,” Bridget said at last. She stirred again
restlessly, and the frown on her face deepened. There was a note of
half reckless defiance in her tone that Helen did not understand.
“You see,” she went on after a pause, and her face cleared, “I have
at least no religious scruples to overcome. Dear!” she broke off
earnestly, putting out her hand towards her friend with a deprecatory
movement. “You understand how I say this? I know what you believe,
and I’m glad you believe it, if it makes you happier. I don’t say it
arrogantly, Helen, but simply as a fact. I won’t even pretend to be
sure there _is_ a God, and so--”
Helen raised her head, as if to speak.
“Ah, yes. I know what you are going to say!” Bridget exclaimed, “that
from my standpoint life is too terrible--too full of despair! It
may be. But because one feels that to be true, must one necessarily
believe? _I_ can’t. We’ve talked of this often before. It is only one
other awful fact in this life of ours which holds so much that is
terrible. But,” she added immediately, with a smile, “I won’t abuse
life, or the world. It _is_ awful; but it’s beautiful too.”
She paused. Her eyes travelled over the sea of sweet-scented flowers,
up to the little gray church on the hill, and beyond it to the burning
blue of the sky.
“It is a beautiful world,” she repeated, “and life holds possibilities
of joy too. But we are afraid; we hesitate; we haven’t the courage to
take our happiness! I don’t _know_ that there is any life but just this
one. Why should I starve my nature? Why should I refuse the chance of
a great happiness? I don’t say the certainty, you see, but the chance,
even! If I don’t take it I shall be forever in a gray land, tortured
with the thought that it’s my own fault, my doing, my cowardice,
perhaps. If I do--”
“Yes--if you do?” Helen repeated.
“I don’t say we shall not both suffer,” Bridget answered slowly. “I
can’t say that. One says contemptuously, ‘Mere prejudice,’ ‘stupid
conventions,’ and the rest; but I know enough by experience--of the
actual living of a life--to tell me that theories are of no value
beside practice. Oh! I know; but I accept the risk.”
“For him too?” Helen murmured.
“No. He must accept or refuse it for himself, as I do for myself,”
Bridget replied quickly. “How can one human being accept or refuse
a risk for another? We stand, each of us, alone. We have not rushed
blindly into this, Helen. He left me absolutely free, to make my own
decision. He wouldn’t even see me again for fear he should urge me.”
Her voice shook, “Helen, if you only knew what his gentleness and
tenderness are to me! I don’t think you can realize it till you have
had to endure the other sort of love. _Love!_--I mean the mere selfish
passion.”
The last words were almost inaudible. She held her hands tightly
clasped on her lap; but Helen saw they were shaking.
“My dear, I do, I do!” she said tenderly. “Bid, you know I only want
your happiness. If this--this will give it to you, then take it. You
have thought, you have struggled--and you are _Bridget_!” she ended,
with a burst of proud confidence.
There was a moment’s silence.
“Bid, have you considered,” Helen began again hesitatingly, “that there
may be other lives for which you _will_ be responsible? Perhaps you
are right about Mr. Carey. You are two grown-up reasonable, beings; you
have a right to judge for yourselves. But your children?”
“Yes, I have thought of that,” she said gravely.
“Well?”
“If we have children,” she went on in a low voice, “they will be
born into a world which is slowly freeing itself from the chains of
prejudice, and of hateful, perverted morality. By the time they are
old enough to understand, there will be still more free men and women
than there are now, who dare to face realities. _They_ will be their
friends. But in any case,” she raised her big eyes, and looked full
at her friend, “I can’t help believing, Helen, that his children and
mine, would rather be born of a man and woman who love each other, than
of a legal marriage where contempt was the strongest feeling, on one
side, at least! Would you care to see me with a child, the child of a
father I could only pray it might never love? If I have a child now, it
will have no legal right to its father’s name, certainly; but I shall
not bear it with shame, with self-reproach, with terrible pity for the
burden of life I have laid upon it!” Her face was flushed with vivid
color.
“If he--if Mr. Travers--divorces you, shall you--?” Helen faltered.
“Marry? No. What will be the use?” Bridget answered. “Haven’t we agreed
a thousand times that marriage _is_ only a marriage so long as there
is love and tenderness on both sides? So long as Larry’s love and
tenderness lasts for me, I shall be his wife,” she added softly.
“And--if it fails?”
“Well, if it fails, will it be any comfort, any compensation to me that
I am his legal wife? On the contrary, how awful--how terrible to think
that he hates the bond; chafes under it. Oh, I know, I _know_! I’m
not saying that doing away with marriage is any cure for the sorrows
which may come. It will happen a thousand times, of course, that love
lasts on one side and not on the other. But that is the tragedy of
life,--terrible, but inevitable. And how does the legal bond which
holds two people chained together, when one loves and the other hates,
mend matters? I know if I loved my husband, but he wished to be free,
though it killed me, I would say--go. Wouldn’t it be better to endure
separation, once for all, than to bear the daily, hourly agony of
seeing his indifference, his impatience, or, worse still, of watching
him trying to disguise it?”
There was a long silence. Helen turned to her at last. Her eyes were
wet with tears, but she smiled.
“I’ve been trying to put myself in your place,” she said gently. “From
your point of view I think you are right. I,” she hesitated, “_I_
recognize a higher law; you don’t. Oh, Bid, understand me! I know
yours is no cheap, unthinking unbelief. You can’t help it. Perhaps,
after all, belief or unbelief is a matter of temperament. Anyhow, I
understand, I sympathize. You are doing what you believe to be right.
If only,” she faltered, “I knew you were going to be happy! But, as
you say, we must leave that. In any case, God bless you, dear!” she
whispered huskily.
* * * * *
They walked home through the sunny fields, where the poppies and
daisies were shed broadcast in sheets of white and scarlet. The larks
sang madly in the dazzling blue, and the steady pulsing of the sea
made a deep, slow music. They reached the little pine-surrounded café
where they were staying, and strolled slowly up the garden, in which
the grass grew long and rank, and purple and red zinnias blazed in the
overgrown flower-beds.
Madame Leroux came to the door, with a letter in her hand.
“Pour Madame!” she said, with her large smile, giving it to Bridget.
She glanced at the envelope. “I think I will read it out here,”
she said, turning to Helen. Her voice was calm, but there was an
undercurrent of excitement in it. She turned back a few steps to a
vine-shaded arbor, where there was a wooden table and some forms.
Breakfast was usually served out of doors at the Café des Sapins.
Helen went into the house. As she was crossing the flagged passage
leading to the salon, ten minutes later, Bridget stood on the
threshold. She held the letter clasped in one hand.
“He is coming to-morrow,” she said, as she passed her friend on the way
upstairs. Helen had a glimpse of her happy eyes, and turned aside into
the garden, with a half smile and a sigh.
* * * * *
After they had gone upstairs that night, Mrs. Trelawney knocked at
Bridget’s bedroom door.
“Come in,” she called, turning as the door opened. She was sitting at
the toilet-table, in a little white wrapper, with her hair all loose
about her face.
“You look like a little girl again, with your hair down,” Helen said,
seating herself on the bed, and watching her as she brushed and
arranged it.
“I’ve been thinking of myself as I was, as a little girl, to-night,”
she answered, pausing, brush in hand, to glance at herself in the
glass. Her face was grave.
“Helen, when this is settled I want to be quiet and peaceful for a
little while,” she said wistfully. “We shall live abroad a great deal,
I think. I wonder if I ever _shall_ be peaceful and content,” she went
on musingly. “I’m afraid not. What an awful thing it is to have so many
moods, and to want fresh things and people to appeal to them! Why, in
some of my moods lately, I’ve even wanted the type of person I used to
hate and despise so intensely, just as an antidote to the simple life
I was wild to lead, when I hadn’t the chance of doing it!” She laughed
a little. “Poor Larry!” she murmured, half laughing, half in earnest.
“Will he put up with me, I wonder?”
“You’re an aggravating person, but most people put up with you,” Helen
returned.
“Yes, it’s a charming way they have; I love them for it!
It’s--it’s--rather a tremendous thing to have come to this point in
one’s life, isn’t it?” she went on presently. She rested one elbow upon
the table, and pushed back her thick hair with the other hand. “I’ve
found myself going over all my past life to-night, as they say you do
when you’re dying, you know. It seems to me that I’ve always been
rebellious, always struggling against something,--kicking against the
pricks, in fact. When I left school, I used to lie awake night after
night, and listen to the shouts of drunken men outside, divided between
an agony of shame that we had anything to do with their drunkenness,
and contempt of myself for hating my father’s business. That was bad to
bear. Then the next rebellion was against the dreary, loveless teacher
life; after that, followed revolt against the degrading existence of a
woman who doesn’t love her husband, but is forced to be his slave. Now,
I am up in arms against social prejudice, which makes two people suffer
a lifetime (perhaps their only lifetime) for a mistake which one of
them has made! When will it end, Helen?”
“Never, while you are alive, with that restless mind of yours,” Helen
said, a little sadly. “You, and women like you, are born into the wrong
age for peaceful happiness, I’m afraid. A transition age is surely the
most difficult one for a woman to live in, well,--worthily. There’s
only one thing that comforts me, Bid,” she added after a pause, “a
great thing. You _love_ this man,--I see it, I know it. You have never
loved any man before.”
“The only good that comes out of what is past, as far as I can see,”
Bridget replied, turning her shining eyes upon her friend, “is that
I can compare it with this new feeling--and trust myself. But”--she
smiled with quivering lips--“I always was an extravagant person. My
experiences, even, cost more than most people’s!”
When Helen left her, she went to the window and drew back the
curtains. The moon hung like a great white flower in the clear sky;
she fancied the sweet scent which came floating into the room, as
she pushed open the casement, streamed from its shining heart. There
were mystic silver pathways through the pine woods round the house,
and between the black motionless trees the distant sea shone like a
lake enchanted. The silver radiance of the night held her spellbound.
She covered her eyes with both hands at last, and shut out the white
glitter of the moonlight. She was intoxicated with the beauty of the
world, with the joy at her heart,--alive, clamorous, insistent. The
cup of life, brimming and honey sweet, was at her lips at last. “_At
last!_” she repeated, whispering to herself in ecstasy, “this is my
moment--this--and to-morrow. And I thought life had cheated me,--that
it held nothing I had dreamt of!--that I should die without--” She
sank on her knees before the window, and hid her happy, smiling eyes
against her folded arms.
A moment or two later, the breathless stillness, which seemed to
encircle her, and hold her delight at its heart, was broken. Somewhere
in the distance, the silence was cut by the sudden hoarse barking of
a dog. She raised her head slowly, with a long sigh, to find the room
in shadow. A cloud had floated across the moon. There was a glint of
silver on the distant sea, but the glamour had gone from the landscape.
In a moment’s space it had grown gray and dim. The mysterious, silver
pierced wood, was just a clump of pine-trees, overhanging the darkening
sea.
She felt a sudden, inexplicable contraction of the heart. Her exalted
mood was evaporating, escaping, melting away from her. It was as though
a cloud had passed also over her mind. She wondered vaguely why she had
felt so deliriously happy a moment since. There were troubles,--there
was suffering in store, of course. She had said so to Helen that very
day. There was her mother, for instance. She paused. Her forehead
contracted into a frown. She had thought out this question so many
times, why need she go through it all again? She shrugged her shoulders
impatiently. Why couldn’t she have even one perfect hour, unspoilt by
misgivings, by self-torturing scruples? She had decided. The thing was
settled. Why couldn’t she give herself up to her joy? She was possessed
by an impatient, impotent sense of anger at her inability to recapture
the mood of ten minutes ago. It evaded her; it was gone. Instead,
unrest, a vague troubled sense that she was considering the question
for the first time, filled her mind. The first time!--when she had gone
through it all, reasoned with herself every day for months, and had
finally made her decision!
With a sigh she turned away from the window at last, from the sight of
the darkened wood, and the slowly lessening streak of silver on the sea.
The noise of barking was renewed; it was answered presently by the
voice of Zut, the dog belonging to the café. Bridget paused to listen
as she unbuttoned her dressing-jacket. Zut’s clamor increased; he
was barking furiously, and she fancied she heard a step along the
road. There was a stir, and the sound of subdued voices overhead, and
presently some one went softly down the creaking stairs outside her
door, just as the garden gate slammed. There was a whispered colloquy
below, and then a retreating step on the gravel path. A moment later,
there was a gentle tap at her door.
Bridget drew her dressing-jacket on to her shoulders again, in
surprise, and softly crossed the room and opened it.
Madame Leroux, in wrapper and bedroom slippers, was standing outside.
There was an envelope in her hand.
“For Madame,” she explained--“a telegram. There had been an error,
a wrong address. It had gone to Veules; but a telegram perhaps was
important? Monsieur Grouet’s Alphonse, who slept at St. Marguerite’s,
had brought it therefore, at this late hour.”
Bridget took it from her outstretched hand, and slowly shut the door,
her eyes fixed on the envelope. She crossed to the bed, and sat down.
Her heart began to beat violently, and then stood still with nameless
fear.
“If Larry--” she opened it slowly. A moment later, the paper fluttered
out of her hand to the floor. For a long time she sat motionless,
looking straight in front of her towards the open window. Then she rose
noiselessly. She crossed the room to the chair she had left beside it.
She was careful not to let her dress make the slightest rustle as she
sat down. (When people were dead, you were always quiet.) She rested
her elbows on the sill presently, still holding her breath lest she
should make the smallest sound. There was a stunned, dazed look in her
eyes. She noticed that all but a thin streak of silver was gone from
the sea. Heavy clouds were drifting over the sky, and the air was close
and oppressive.
Bridget wondered idly whether the storm would come in the night,
or next day. “To-morrow, I should think,” she murmured vaguely;
“to-morrow, perhaps.”