SOMETHING had happened--something mysterious, quickening; a pulsation
of the inmost harmonies of life. Its tremendous significance Jimmie
dared not conjecture. It was to be interpreted by the wisdom of the
simplest, yet that interpretation he put aside. It staggered reason. It
was enough for them to have met together in an unimagined intimacy of
emotion, to have shared the throb of this spiritual happening.
She was to be married in three days. He set the fact as a block to
further investigation of the mystery. On this side his loyalty
suffered no taint; their relations had but received, in some sense,
sanctification. Beyond the barrier lay shame and dishonour. The two were
to be married; therefore they loved. He disciplined a disordered mind
with a logic of his own invention. It was a logic that entirely begged
the question. Remembered words of Norma, “Do you think much love has
come my way? Yours are the only lips I have ever heard speak of it,”
fell outside his premises. They clamoured for explanation. So did the
rich tremor of her voice. So did the lamentable lack of conviction in
his reply. To these things he closed his intelligence. They belonged to
the interpretation that staggered reason, that threatened to turn his
fundamental conceptions into chaos. And past incidents came before him.
During those last days in Wiltshire he had seen that her life lacked
completion. That memory, too, disturbed his discipline. Fanatically he
practised it, proving to himself that ice was hot and that the sun shone
at midnight. She was happy in her love for Morland. She was happy
in Morland's love for her. She had not identified with herself the
imaginary woman of his adoration. She had not drunk in the outpouring
of his passion. Her breath had not fallen warm upon his cheek. And
the quickening of a wonderful birth had no reference to emotions and
cravings quite different, intangible, inexpressible, existent in a
far-away spirit land.
He was strangely silent during their homeward journey in the omnibus and
the simple evening meal, and Aline, sensitive to his mood, choked down
the eager questions that rose to her lips. It was only after supper in
the studio, when she lit the spill for Jimmie's pipe--her economical
soul deprecating waste in matches--that she ventured to say softly:
“I am afraid you'll miss the picture, Jimmie dear.”
He waited until the pipe was alight, and breathed out a puff of smoke
with a sigh.
“Our happiness is made up of the things we miss,” he said.
“That's a paradox, and I don't believe it,” said Aline.
“Everything in life is a paradox,” he remarked, thinking of his logic.
He relapsed into his perplexed silence. Aline settled herself in her
usual chair with her workbasket and her eternal sewing. This evening she
was recuffing his shirts. Presently she held up a cuff.
“See. I'm determined to make you smart and fashionable. I don't care
what you say. These are square.”
“Are n't you putting a round man into a square cuff, my dear?” he asked.
She laughed. “Why should you be round? You are smart and rectangular.
When you're tidied up--don't you know you are exceedingly good-looking,
almost military?”
She was delighted to get him back to foolish talk. His preoccupation had
disturbed her. Like Connie Deering, she was femininely conscious that
something out of the ordinary had passed between Norma and Jimmie, and
apprehension as to her dear one's peace of mind had filled her with many
imaginings. He returned a smiling answer. She bestirred herself to
amuse. Had he remarked the man in the omnibus? His nose cut it into two
compartments. What would he do if he had such a nose? Jimmie felt that
he had been selfish and fell into the child's humour. He said that he
would blow it. They discussed the subject of noses. He quoted Tristram
Shandy. Did she remember him reading to her “Slawkenbergius's Tale”?
“The silliest story I ever heard in my life!” cried Aline. “It had
neither head nor tail.”
“That is the beauty of it,” said Jimmie. “It is all nose.”
“No. The only story about a nose that is worth anything,” Aline declared
with conviction of her age and sex, “is 'Cyrano de Bergerac.'” She
paused as a thought passed swiftly through her mind. “Do you know, if
you had a nose like that, you would remind me of Cyrano?”
“Why, I don't go about blustering and carving my fellow-citizens into
mincemeat.”
“No. But you--” She began unreflectingly, then she stopped short in
confusion. Cyrano, Roxana, Christian; Jimmie, Norma, Morland--the
parallel was of an embarrassing nicety. She lost her head, reddened, saw
that Jimmie had filled the gap.
“I don't care,” she cried. “You _are_ like him. It's splendid, but it's
senseless. You are worth a million of the other man, and she knows it as
well as I do.”
She vindictively stitched at the cuff. Jimmie made no reply, but lay
back smoking his pipe. Aline recovered and grew remorseful. She had
destroyed with an idiotic word the little atmosphere of gaiety she had
succeeded in creating. She pricked her finger several times At last she
rose and knelt by his side.
“I'm sorry, Jimmie. Don't be vexed with me.”
He looked at her, wrinkling his forehead half humorously, half sadly,
and patted her cheek.
“No, dear,” he said. “But I think Slawkenbergius's the better tale.
Shall I read it you again?”
“Oh, no, Jimmie,” cried the girl, half crying, half laughing. “Please
don't, for heaven's sake. I've not been as naughty as that!”
She resumed her sewing. They talked of daily things. Theodore Weever's
purchases. The faun--he was sorry to lose it after its companionship for
all these years. He would paint a replica--but it would not be the same
thing. Other times, other feelings. Gradually the conversation grew
spasmodic, dwindled. Jimmie brooded over his mystery, and Aline stitched
in silence.
The whirr of the front door-bell aroused them. Aline put down her work.
“It's Renshaw,” said Jimmie.
Renshaw, a broken-down, out-at-heels, drunken black-and-white artist,
once of amazing talent, was almost the only member of a large Bohemian
coterie who continued to regard Jimmie as at home to his friends on
Sunday evenings. Jimmie bore with the decayed man, and helped him on his
way, and was pained when Aline insisted upon opening the windows after
his departure. Renshaw had been a subject of contention between them for
years.
“He has only come to drink whisky and borrow money. Luckily we have n't
any whisky in the house,” said Aline.
“We can give him beer, my child. And if the man is in need of half a
crown, God forbid we should deny it him. Has Hannah come home yet?”
“I don't think so. It is n't ten o'clock.”
“Then let him in, dear,” said Jimmie, finally.
Aline went upstairs with some unwillingness. She disapproved entirely of
Renshaw. She devoutly hoped the man was sober. As she opened the front
door, the sharp sound of a turning cab met her ears, and the cloaked
tall figure of a woman met her astonished eyes.
“Miss Hardacre!”
“Yes, dear. Won't you let me in?”
The girl drew aside quickly, and Norma passed into the hall.
“You?” cried Aline. “I don't understand.”
“Never mind. Is Mr.--is Jimmie at home?”
“Jimmie!” The girl's heart leaped at the name. She stared wide-eyed at
Norma, whose features she could scarcely discern by the pin-point of gas
in the hall-lamp. “Yes. He is in the studio.”
“Can I see him? Alone? Do you mind?”
In dumb astonishment Aline took the visitor to the head of the stairs,
half lit by the streak of light from the open studio door.
Norma paused, bent forward, and kissed her on the cheek.
“I know my way,” she whispered.
Jimmie heard the rustle of skirts that were not Aline's, and springing
to his feet, hurried towards the door. But before he could reach it
Norma entered and stood before him. Her long dark silk evening cloak
was open at the throat, showing glimpses of white bare neck. Its high
standing collar set off the stately poise of her head. She wore the
diamond star in her hair. To the wondering man who gazed at her she was
a vision of radiant beauty. They held each other's eyes for a second or
two; and the first dazzling glory in which she seemed to stand having
faded, Jimmie read in her face that desperate things had come to pass.
He caught her hands as she came swiftly forward. “Why are you here? My
God, why are you here?”
“I could stand it no longer,” she said breathlessly. “I am not going to
marry Morland. I have cut myself adrift. They all know it. I told them
so this evening. The horror of it was unbearable. I have done with it
forever and ever.”
“The horror of it?” echoed Jimmie.
“Don't you think it a horror for two people to marry who have never even
pretended to love each other? You said so this afternoon.”
He released her hands and turned aside. Even the deep exulting sense of
what her presence there must mean could not mitigate a terrible dismay.
The interpretation that staggered reason was the true and only one. He
had been living in a dream, among shadow-shapes which he himself had
cast upon the wall. Even now he could not grasp completely the extent of
his heroical self-deception.
“There has never been any love between you and Morland? It has been
a cold-blooded question of a marriage of convenience? I thought so
differently.”
“Since when?” she asked. “Since this afternoon?”
“No--not since this afternoon.”
“If it had n't been for you, I should have married him. You made it
impossible. You taught me things. You made me hate myself and my mean
ambitions. That was why I hesitated--put it off till Easter. If I
had n't seen you this afternoon I should have gone through with it on
Wednesday. When I got home I could n't face it. He put some pearls--a
wedding-present--round my neck. They seemed like dead fingers choking
out my soul. At last it grew horrible. I said things I don't remember
now. I could n't stay in the house. It suffocated me. It would have sent
me mad. I think a cab whirled me through the streets. I don't know. I
have burnt my ships.”
She stopped, panting, with her hands on her bosom. His exultation grew,
and fear with it. He was like a child trembling before a joy too great
to be realised, frightened lest it should vanish. He said without
looking at her:
“Why have you come here?”
“Where else should I go? Unless--” She halted on the word.
“Unless what?”
She broke into an impatient cry.
“Oh, can't you speak? Do you want me to say everything? There is no need
for you to be silent any longer.” She faced him. “Who was the woman--the
picture woman we spoke of this afternoon?”
“You,” he said. “You. Who else?” There was a quiver of silence. Then he
caught her to him. He spoke foolish words. Their lips met, and passion
held them.
“Had I anywhere else to go?” she whispered; and he said, “No.”
She released herself, somewhat pale and shaken. Jimmie, scarcely knowing
what he did, took off her cloak and threw it on the long deal table.
The sudden fresh chill on arms and neck made her realise that they were
bare. It was his doing. She blushed. A delicious sense of shyness crept
over her. It soon passed. But evanescent though it was, it remained long
in her memory.
Jimmie took her in his arms again. He said:
“You madden me. I have loved you so long. I am like a parched soul by a
pool of Paradise.”
He took her by the hand, led her to his chair near the stove, and knelt
by her side. She looked at him, the edges of her white teeth together,
her lips parted. She was living the moment that counts for years in a
woman's life. She can only live it once. Great joy or endless shame may
come afterwards, but this moment shall ever be to her comfort or her
despair.
He asked her how she had known.
“You told me so.”
“When?”
“At Heddon. Do you think I shall ever forget your words?” She laughed
divinely at the puzzledom on his face. “No. You were too loyal to tell
me--but you told Connie Deering. Hush! Don't start. Connie did not
betray you. She is the staunchest soul breathing. You and she were on
the slope by the croquet lawn--do you remember? There was a hedge of
clipped yew above--”
“And you overheard?”
She laughed again, happily, at his look of distress. “I should be
rather pleased--now--if I were you,” she said in the softer and deeper
tones of her voice.
A few moments later he said, “You must give me back the portrait. I
shall burn it.”
“Why?”
“You are a million times more beautiful, more adorable.” He asked her
when she had begun to think of him--the eternal, childlike question. She
met his lover's gaze steadily. Frankness was her great virtue.
“It seems now that I have cared for you since the first day. You soon
came into my life, but I did n't know how much you represented. Then I
heard you speaking to Connie. That mattered a great deal. When that man
shot you, I knew that I loved you. I thought you were dead. I rushed
down the slope and propped you up against my knees--and I thought I
should go mad with agony.”
“I never heard of that,” said Jimmie in a low voice.
He became suddenly thoughtful, rose to his feet and regarded her with a
changed expression, like that of a man awakened from a dream.
“What is going to be the end of this?” he asked.
Norma, for once unperceptive and replying to a small preoccupation
of her own, flushed to her hair.
“I know Connie well enough to look her up and ask her for hospitality.”
“I wasn't thinking of that,” said Jimmie. “We have been like children
and had our hour of joy, without thinking of anything else. Now we must
be grown-up people. After what has passed between us, I could only ask
you to be my wife.”
“I came here for you to ask me,” she said.
“I have no right to do so, dear. I bear a dishonoured name. The wonder
and wild desire of you made me forget.”
She looked at him strangely, her lips working in the shadow of her old
smile of mockery.
“That proves to me that it is your name and not yourself that is
dishonoured. If it had been yourself, you would not have forgotten.”
Jimmie drew himself up, and there was a touch of haughtiness in his
manner that Norma in her woman's way noted swiftly. In spite of his
homeliness there was the undefinable spirit of the great gentleman in
Jimmie.
“I am dishonoured. The matter was public property. I discuss it with no
one, least of all with you.”
“Very well,” she said. “Let it never be mentioned again between us. I
range myself with Aline. I shall believe what I like. You can't prevent
my doing that, can you? I choose to believe you are the one thing God
made in which I can find happiness. That's enough for me, and it ought
to be enough for you.”
Jimmie put his hand on her shoulder, deeply moved.
“My dearest, you must n't say things like that.” He repeated the words,
“You mustn't say things like that.” Then he was conscious of the warm
softness on which his hand rested. She raised her arm and touched his
fingers. It was a moment of deep temptation. He resisted, drew his hand
away gently.
“There is another reason why it cannot be,” he said. “You belong to
a world of wealth and luxury, I have been in poverty all my life. God
forbid I should complain. I have never done so. But it is a life of
struggle for daily bread. Aline and I are used to it. We laugh. We often
dine with Duke Humphrey. We make believe like the marchioness. What the
discipline of life and a sort of gipsy faith in Providence have made
us regard as a jest, would be to you a sordid shift, an intolerable
ugliness stripping life of its beauty--”
“Oh, hush!” she pleaded.
“No, I must talk and you must listen,” he said with a certain masterful
dignity. “Look at you now, in the exquisite loveliness of your dress,
with that diamond star in your hair, with that queenly presence of
yours. Do you fit in with all this? Your place is in great houses, among
historic pictures, rare carpets, furniture that is invested with the
charm of an artist's touch. The chair you are sitting in--the leather
is split and the springs are broken.” He was walking now backwards
and forwards across the studio, fulfilling his task bravely, scarcely
trusting himself to look at her. “Your place,” he continued, “is among
the great ones of the earth--princes, ambassadors, men of genius. Here
are but the little folk: even should they come, as they used to do:
homely men with rough ways and their wives--sweet simple women with a
baby and a frock a year, God help them! I can't ask you to share this
life with me, my dear. I should be a scoundrel if I did. As it is, I
have fallen below myself in letting you know that I love you. You must
forgive me. A man is, after all, a man, whether he be beggar or prince.
You must go back into your world and forget it all. The passion-flower
cannot thrive in the hedge with the dog-rose, my dearest. It will pine
and fade. We must end it all. Don't you see? You don't know what poverty
means. Even decent poverty like ours. Look--the men you know have valets
to dress them--when you came Aline was sewing new cuffs on my shirts. I
don't suppose you ever knew that such things were done. Mere existence
is a matter of ever anxious detail. I am a careless fellow, I am a
selfish brute, like most men, and give over to the women folk around me
the thousand harassing considerations of ways and means for every day in
every year. But I see more than they think. Aline can tell you. I dare
n't, my dear, ask you to share this life with me. I dare n't, I dare
n't.”
He came to a stop in front of her; saw her leaning over the arm of the
chair away from him, her face covered by her hands. Her white shoulders
twitched in little convulsive movements.
“Why, my dear--my dear--” he said in a bewilderment of distress; and
kneeling by her, he took her wrists and drew them to him. The palms of
her hands and her cheeks were wet with miserable tears.
“What must you think of me? What futile, feeble creature must you think
me? Heaven knows I'm degraded enough--but not to that level. Do you
suppose I ever thought you a rich man? Oh, you have hurt me--flayed me
alive. I did n't deserve it! I would follow you in rags barefoot through
the world. What does it matter so long as it is you that I follow?”
What could mortal man do but take the wounded woman of his idolatry
into his arms? The single-hearted creature, aghast at the havoc he had
wrought, bitterly reproached himself for want of faith in the perfect
being. He had committed a horrible crime, plunged daggers, stab after
stab, into that radiant bosom. She sobbed in his embrace--a little
longer than was strictly necessary. Tears and sobs were a wonder to her,
who since early childhood had never known the woman's relief of weeping.
It came upon her first as a wondrous new-found emotion; when his strong
arms were about her, as an unutterably sweet solace. And the man's voice
in her ears was all that has nearly been said but never been quite said
in music.
Presently she drew herself away from him.
“Do you think I am such a fool that I can't sew?”
He sank back on his heels. She rose, helping herself to rise by a hand
on his arm, an action wonderfully sweet in its intimacy, and crossed
over to Aline's cane-bottomed, armless easy-chair. She plucked the shirt
from the basket on the top of which Aline had thrust it, groped among
the wilderness of spools, tape, bits of ribbon, scissors, needle-cases,
patterns and year-old draper's bills for a thimble, found the needle
sticking in the work, and began to sew with a little air of defiance.
Jimmie looked on, ravished. He drew nearer.
“God bless my soul,” he said. “Do you mean to say you can do that?”
There was nothing she could not do in this hour of exaltation. She had
found herself--simple woman with simple man. It was her hour. Her feet
trod the roots of life; her head touched the stars.
“Sit in your chair and smoke, and let us see what it will be like,” she
commanded.
He obeyed. But whether it was tobacco or gunpowder in his old briarwood
pipe he could not have told. The poor wretch was mazed with happiness.
“Poor little Aline is all by herself upstairs,” said Norma, after a
while.
“Heaven forgive me,” cried Jimmie, starting up. “I had n't thought about
her!”