The boy came to the French windows paint-smeared and tired. He had
been to Bonsecours, where the monument of Jeanne D'Arc is now, and
tried to make a study of the landscape from the Cemetery. On the
boat--they had no dream of electric trams then--the immensity of his
failure had filled him with alarm. A tall, slight woman was standing
in the salon, with her back to him. She wore a pale coloured
travelling coat, and a hat with a wing in it. As his step sounded on
the terrace she turned, and he forgot the landscape. He passed
awkwardly, and was troubled afterwards by the thought that he should
have bowed.
He said to his mother: "The most beautiful woman you've ever seen is
downstairs; I wonder if she means to stay."
"She _is_ staying," answered his mother. "She's Grice Adaile's
wife--the man who made that speech in the House the other day. Well,
is Bonsecours worth going to?"
"Rather!" he said. He was still thinking of the woman's delicate,
wistful face.
He thought of it while he dressed for dinner. He had thought of
nothing latterly but that he would be studying art in Paris soon, had
wished for nothing but to escape before his parents could withdraw
their consent. All at once he would have regretted to learn that he
was leaving suddenly.
At table she was opposite him; she sat next to Miss McGuire. He
perceived that they were friends and was dismayed, for Miss McGuire
considered he had been impertinent to her and no longer spoke to him.
He recognised blankly that the beautiful woman would be told he was a
cub.
If he had done wrong his punishment had overtaken him: Mrs. Adaile
vouchsafed no word to him for days. Her disapproval humbled him so
much that he used to leave the salon when she was laughing with his
mother and the rest. He hoped she would observe he was humiliated, and
be stirred with pity; it seemed to him he must awaken her respect by
the course he was adopting. Incongruously there was an element of
unacknowledged joy in his distress; it was not without its exultation,
to think that Mrs. Adaile was being heartless to him--to feel that she
was making him suffer.
But it was with thanksgiving he heard that Miss McGuire had said she
wished he would apologise; she had forbidden him to address her. He
followed her from the dining-room, and begged her pardon in the hall.
She replied: "You're a nice boy really; I'm so glad you've said you're
sorry." He wanted to tell her that he appreciated her kindness, but he
could only falter, and grip her hand. It discomfited him to know that
he was blushing.
In the afternoon he was sitting on the terrace, with a sketching-block
on his knees, and Mrs. Adaile came out through the windows. She
sauntered to and fro. He couldn't lift his eyelids when she
approached, but each time he listened, tense with the frou-frou of her
skirt. All his consciousness was strung to the question whether she
would stop.
"May I look?" she said.
The sensation was in his chest--he felt as if his chest had gone. She
stood there, amused by his symptoms, for two or three minutes, and
moved away. He was incredibly excited, boundlessly happy until he
began to think of the better answers he might have made. Visions of
the evening and the morrow dazzled him; when he went inside it was not
the same hotel to him, they were not the same rooms. It does not take
a woman six days to create a world for any man.
By the end of the week he talked to her often and freely. At the end
of a fortnight:
"I used to be afraid you'd never say anything at all to me," he owned.
"I thought you weren't very nice," she said.
"Miss McGuire told you things about me?"
"She told me as soon as you apologised to her, too. I was pleased you
did that, even if you weren't in the wrong."
"Wouldn't you ever have taken any notice of me if I hadn't?"
"I did notice you," she smiled.
"Did you? But 'ever spoken to me,' I mean?"
"I don't know. We shouldn't have been such good friends as we are.
I've never liked any boy as I like you, Con."
He ached to tell her how infinitely grateful he felt, but he could not
find a word. They walked up and down together. Perhaps she
understood. On a sudden he thought how cruel it was that the end would
come when he went to Paris, or when she went to England. In that
moment instinct taught the lad as remorselessly as experience teaches
man. He _knew_ their friendship was the merest incident to her, and
the hurtfulness of the knowledge squeezed his throat.
"If we meet again one day, you'll give me a stiff little bow and pass
by," he blurted.
"Con!" she murmured. "Why, I've become chummier here with you in a
little while than I am with people I've known at home for years."
Still instinct was heavy in the boy.
He always spent the morning out of doors with his brushes; soon he
found himself restless during the morning, impatient to return to the
hotel. And he did not know he was in love with her. It did not occur
to him as possible he could be in love with her. He had absolutely no
suspicion.
It was still more extraordinary because he had so often thought he was
in love, and gloried in being so; when we are very young, half the
pleasure of being miserable about a girl consists of exciting comment,
and pretending to be offended by it. Yet no idea of falling in love
with Mrs. Adaile had crossed his mind. Perhaps it was because she was
married. Perhaps it was because he was for the first time really in
love.
Through most of the stages the boy went without an inkling of his
complaint. One day his father said to him, "You've caught it very
badly, Con," and laughed a warning. The boy was startled. He went
away bewildered, and asked himself if it was true. When Mrs. Adaile
sat with him on the terrace that night he was self-conscious and husky.
For once her presence was scarcely welcome. It rather frightened him,
though he would have died sooner than admit the shameful word to
himself.
Afterwards he did not know how it came to pass, but she used to confide
to him that her husband wasn't very kind to her. He was in London, and
she sighed when she referred to going home. Her sighs were very
plaintive, and her self-pity was sincere, but it was nothing to the
pity that overwhelmed the boy.
"People don't guess how unhappy I am," she said to him one evening.
"I wish I were a woman," he muttered; "I can never tell you how sorry I
am for you, and if I were a woman I could put my arms round you, and
you'd know."
It was a beautiful thing to say, but he said it badly, because he felt
it too much to make it effective. No woman should deride a boy's love.
It is ludicrous, but it is ludicrous only because it is so genuine. He
has not learnt yet to trick the truth out. He does not know yet that
before one could make converts to the very truths of God they had to be
presented with art.
"Have you any idea when you'll go?" she inquired. He was to travel
with a friend, who was visiting in England.
"I may get a letter any day," he answered.
"Are you in a hurry?"
"No."
"I thought you were?"
He was dumb.
"I've been quite loyal to you--I haven't said a word of what I think to
your people when they've talked of you."
"I knew you wouldn't. It only needs a word to make them back out."
"I wouldn't let you go if _I_ were your mother. Supposing I did spoil
it all for you? How you'd hate me!"
"No, I shouldn't," he said.
"Why? Have you changed your mind, then--don't you want to go after
all?"
"I shouldn't hate you, because I couldn't hate you whatever you did,"
he explained, haltingly. "Yes, of course I want to go, but--but I
don't want to go yet."
They sat down, and there was a pause. In the pause, his consciousness
of her presence grew queerly acute, almost painful.
"What's the scent you've got on?" he asked, unsteadily.
"Chypre," she said; "do you like it?"
She played with a ring she wore, and showed it to him. He touched the
ring--and in a tumult of the spirit was holding her hand. They sat
silent again. He knew that he ought to say something, that she was
waiting for him to say something, that his long silence was
ridiculous--and he could think of nothing to say. He was at once
tremulous with joy and faint with fear--the fear that she would
withdraw her hand before his effort had wrenched out words.
She withdrew it. He gazed before him blankly. When he was a man, and
recalled that evening, he wondered whether the atmosphere had seemed so
much a part of his emotions at the time as it did in looking back. He
wondered whether, in his heartthrobs and his sickness, he had been
acutely conscious of the black shrubs in the moonlight, of all the soft
sounds and odours that stole up on the air. He thought not. Yet long
after her features, which he tried to vitalise, were hazy to him, he
could still see clearly the position that the two chairs had occupied,
could have sketched the terrace almost with the accuracy of a plan, and
felt the night air of Rouen in his throat.
Presently she said:
"The head-waiter thinks some people who came from Italy must have
brought the mosquitoes in their luggage."
"Oh?" said the boy.
"I believe this is a mosquito bite on my cheek," she added. "Look!"
She turned her cheek, and leant forward. He leant forward too. Her
face had never been so close to him, his fingers craved its
softness--he only realised that, with courage, he might touch it with a
finger. And the courage was not there.
"My hand is cold," he said, hoarsely. And afterwards, too, he used to
wonder whether he had been excusing his cowardice to himself, or to her.
And yet it was with no abashment that he tramped his bedroom later. It
was with an exaltation that panted for vast solitudes. The whirl of
the unexpected was in his being. The marvel of her hand, the marvel
that she had let him hold her hand, uplifted him beyond belief. And
through all the turbulence of his pulses and his mind there was not a
carnal thought, not an instant's base imagining. He adored her without
desire, without reflection, without asking what he adored.
When he was alone with her once more during some minutes he tried,
trembling, to examine the ring again.
"No," she said gently; "it's wrong."
And in the next few days nothing happened, one day was like another.
Then the date of his departure was settled. He looked for her as soon
as he read the news, sought her dismayed because he was to go, and
twice unhappy because on his last evening she would be out. She was
shopping, and he met her at the corner of la Rue Thiers, where the
horlogerie is.
"I'm going," he said; "and my chum can't stay here!"
"Is it fixed?" Her eyes were startled. He had never known her eyes
were quite so blue.
"Yes, he's travelling at night, and won't break the journey. I'm to be
at the station."
At six in the morning he was to be at the station--the next morning but
one. The train reaches Rouen at an earlier hour now, but the service
was a tidal one twenty years ago. When she had scanned the letter
neither of them spoke for--it seemed a long time to him. They had
crossed the road into the Solférino Garden, and he stood beside her
with his hands thrust in his jacket pockets, staring at the little lake.
"So we shall soon be saying 'good-bye,'" she said at last.
He nodded miserably. "To-morrow evening about nine o'clock," he said.
"Why so early?"
"Have you forgotten you're going to a dance with Miss McGuire to-morrow
night? _I_ didn't forget; I thought of it directly I saw the date.
What time shall you begin to dress?"
"You don't know me very well, Con, after all," she murmured.
His heart leapt; he pretended not to understand what she meant.
"Don't I?" he asked; "why not?"
"How could you think I'd go out on your last night here?" she answered.
"You won't go? ... Oh, Mrs. Adaile!"
And as they moved away under the horse-chestnut blossom, it was less
dreadful to him that he was going to leave her.
Why did she do it? It could not have been to test her power over him;
it could not have been to wound him wantonly. Who shall say why she
did it! A woman is often unable to define her motive to herself. Two
men came into the hotel after dinner--acquaintances both--and she
became engrossed by them, and sent up little peals of laughter, and
seemed to like their admiration, which was presumptuously barefaced.
He sat tongue-tied in a corner, unwittingly providing equal
entertainment for other women in the room. Though she knew he was
suffering, she threw no glance to him. And that evening the boy
entered on another stage--the stage of jealousy.
The fires of jealousy are always horrible, and there is none they
ravage more fiercely than the lad whose torture the world finds comic.
There is none, because no man, nor woman, nor young girl in such a
pass, is so totally defenceless as a lad; to none other than a lad,
when his love is outraged, does nature forbid even the resource of
simulated dignity. His torments are intensified by the knowledge of
his ineptitude. Always present is the thought that he ought to adopt
an attitude which he is too raw to discover, and he is prostrated in
perceiving that beside his glib rival he looks ridiculous and a lout.
After a clock had struck many times, "She makes herself too cheap,"
Mrs. Van Buren said _sotto voce_, and Madame de Lavardens assented by a
grimace. The boy overheard, and got up, and wandered away. A new
misery tightened his throat, and burned behind his eyeballs. She had
been disdained! his world rocked. He was degraded, vicariously--for
her sake, degraded that his Ideal should afford these people the
opportunity to disparage her. Resentment beat in him; he longed to
vindicate, to lay down his life for her--and knew himself a cipher, and
that the tempest in his soul would be thought absurd. Disdained! It
was paramount, bitterest. The humiliation of neglect dwindled; all his
pain, all his consciousness was the hurricane of humiliation that he
felt for _her_.
"If you weren't so young I should think you were trying to insult me,
Conrad. Please don't speak to me any more," she said next morning,
when he had made tactless, seventeen-year-old reproaches to her.
Her voice and gaze were cold, as if he were a stranger. She rose and
left him. The grace of the slender figure had no mercy in it as he
watched. The sun was streaming, and the birds chirped loud, and he
thought his heart was broken as he watched. He sat looking the way
that she had gone for long after the terrace was bare. And heavy hours
passed emptily, and he was still bereft. And it was his last day here.
Half of it was lost when wretchedness waylaid her at a door. "I'm
sorry," he gulped. She bent her head, and moved by him without
speaking. In the group about the tea-table she was no gentler. The
glare of sunshine mellowed. His father claimed him, and talked with
unusual earnestness of ambition and of life; his mother wrapt his arm
about her waist, and was pathetic and confident by turn. In the
chatter of the salon he heard that Mrs. Adaile was going to the dance.
From herself he had still no word or look. The flush in the sky faded.
A relentless star peered forth. And it was his last day here.
She went. Until the final minutes he could not feel that she would go,
could not believe it until he saw her in the triumphant cruelty of her
ball gown with the lilies at her dazzling breast--saw her giddily with
the long gloves and the fan in her hands.
The room was full of animation, of movement. The boy sat mute, his
gaze fastened on her face. The fiacre grated to the curb. Miss
McGuire asked her if she was ready. "Yes, I'm ready." Colonel Van
Buren put the cape about her shoulders. She turned carelessly, her
hand outstretched: "Well, I'll say 'good-bye,' Con; you've all my good
wishes." "Good-bye, Mrs. Adaile," he faltered. His eyes implored her,
but her touch was fleeting. The fiacre rattled--she had gone.
And upon the hotel fell a profound and deathly silence. He heard
nothing. Damp he was, and blind.
He had seen her for the last time. He kept saying it. It seemed
unreal--an impossible thing--though the harrowing of it was so actual.
His mind wouldn't seize it, even while the weight of it was grinding
his youth.
For the last time! Outside, he bit hard upon his nether lip, to check
its silly quivering. A myriad stars glittered over Rouen now; a breeze
was blowing across the river. There was a roll of wheels approaching.
Foolish as he knew the hope to be, he waited strained till they rolled
past. At the piano Miss Digby-Smith was playing Ascher's "Alice." His
mother joined him, and sat there with him--and scarcely spoke. She
took his hand. He thought she didn't guess.
"It's late, Con," she said at last. "Hadn't you better go to bed?"
"I'm not tired," said the boy.
"You'll come to my room as soon as you're dressed in the morning?"
"You won't be able to go to sleep again."
"I want you to. Your father's going to the station with you, do you
know?"
"Yes, he told me ... What time"--the indifference of his tone!--"what
time do you think Miss McGuire and--er--Mrs. Adaile will be back?"
"Not for hours yet," she said; "I daresay it will be three or four
o'clock." She looked away from him. He thought she didn't guess!
Presently the lights were turned out. People said "good-night," and
bade him "good-bye." But for very shame he would have sat alone in the
salon till it was time for him to start--sat there just to see the
woman pass through the hall.
In his bed he listened--he lay in the darkness listening, holding his
breath. He wanted to hear her come home; to hear her would be
something. The wind was rising, and alternately it tricked and
terrorised him; he trembled lest a gust should drown the faint stir of
her return. It was a long, long while that he had listened. Sleep
pressed upon his eyelids, but he would not yield. Once it was
mastering him, and he twitched to wide wakefulness in the guilty fear
that he had missed her.
The blustering wind, and the clock of St. Ouen made the only sounds.
He saw the door opening with the dim notion that he was being called
too soon. For a mere vague moment, which seemed dishonour to him in
the next, he beheld without realising her. He raised himself slowly on
his elbows, and it thrilled through him that she was moving to his side.
"I've come to say 'good-bye' to you, Con."
"Mrs. Adaile!" The name was all that he could whisper. "Oh, Mrs.
Adaile!"
"I've been horrid to you. Haven't I?"
"No, no," he said strenuously, "it was I; I want to beg your pardon.
Forgive me! Oh, you do forgive me, don't you? It's been awful."
Her hands were swift and live; he held them fast. The ghostliness of
daybreak was in the room. In the pallor she sat at the edge of the
bed, the ball gown wan, and the faded lilies drooping at her breast.
Being so young, he was shy that his hair was on end and the collar of
his nightshirt crumpled.
"I'm sorry," she said; "I've been sorry all the night."
Her penitence started his tears, and blinking wouldn't keep them back.
He wanted to smear them away, but he didn't want to let go her hands.
He turned his head. He was ashamed--but less ashamed than he would
have expected--that she should see him blub.
"Don't!" she said, and he had never heard that note before. "You'll
make me hate myself."
"I love you," he exclaimed, "I love you."
"Sh! You mustn't say that, Con," she murmured.
"I love you, I love you," cried the boy.
"I know," she said, "I know you do."
And, wonderfully, there was nothing wonderful to his mind that he had
owned it to her. At the instant there was nothing but perfect peace.
"You've made me so happy," he breathed.
Afterwards that sounded to her a little funny, but as she heard him say
it she thought it only strange and beautiful. Something tenderer than
liking, something graver came into her gaze as she looked down at him.
"I've not been a nice woman to you, Con," she said. "One day you'll
think so."
"I shall never think so," he vowed, "never. I deserved you should
punish me."
But that wasn't what she had meant. "You will think so." She nodded.
"Only you won't mind then, because you'll laugh at it all."
"You're cruel," he choked. "Because I'm not a man you think I can't
love you really. No man could love you better than I do. If I could
only tell you what I feel! I'd die for you, I'd do anything for you.
Oh, Mrs. Adaile, I shall never see you any more--for God's sake let me
kiss you once!"
Quick as her compassion was, the misgiving of a boy was quicker--in the
dizzy second that he saw her bending to him he wondered how he ought to
hold her. Then her bosom fell upon his breathlessness, and he went to
Heaven against her lips.
"I must go," she said, freeing herself.
"Oh, don't," he begged, "not yet."
"I must; I oughtn't to have come up."
"What shall I do?" he groaned. "Oh, it's awful to be leaving you!"
"I wish I hadn't made you fond of me," she sighed.
"You didn't; you couldn't help it. But what shall I do? My life's no
good to me; I shall be thinking of you, and longing for you when you've
forgotten all about me."
She smoothed the ruffled hair.
"Think of me sometimes when you've got over it," she said; "think of me
when you're going to do anything that isn't worthy of you now."
"I shall be true to you as long as I live," said the boy,
understanding. "Mrs. Adaile----"
It was odd to her ear that he called her that a moment after she had
been in his arms. "What?" she asked.
"When you go down to breakfast, _I_ shall be in Paris."
"Yes," she said.
"Shall you read the papers by the window this morning?"
"Do you want me to?"
"Yes--I should be able to know where you were."
"I will then."
"I shall be imagining you all the time.... What shall you do this
evening?"
"Reproach myself," she said.
"No, you mustn't; what for? Will you think of me?"
"Yes. After dinner I'll go on the terrace, Con, and I'll sit there
alone, wondering what you're doing, and thinking of--just now.
And--well, perhaps I'll say a little prayer for you. I _must_ go now.
Say 'good-bye' to me."
"I can't," he gasped, "I can't."
"Con, I must."
"Give me something," he stammered; "give me something you've got on."
She broke off a handful of the flowers they had crushed, and, stooping,
took his strained face between her palms, and kissed him twice--once on
the lips, and, by impulse, on the brow. Then she opened the door
cautiously. She smiled back at him, and stole away into the passage.
And in the loneliness she left behind her, the boy lay kissing her
lilies, and sobbing with his great despair.