SHE loved him. Of that there was no doubt. To her he was the man of
men. The half angel, half fool of her original conception had melted
into an heroic figure capable of infinite tendernesses. The lingering
barbaric woman in her thrilled at the memory of him contemptuously
facing death before the madman's revolver. Her higher nature was awed at
the perfect heroism of his sacrifice. She knelt at his feet, recognising
the loftier soul. Sex was stirred to the depths when his arms were
about her and his kiss was on her lips. In lighter relations he was the
perfect companion. For all her vacillation, let that be remembered: she
loved him. All of her that was worth the giving he had in its plenitude.
The days which followed her initiation into domestic economy were days
of alternating fear and shame and scornful resolution. She lost grip of
herself. The proud beauty curving a contumelious lip at the puppet
show of life was a creature of the past. Set the proudest and most
self-sufficing of women naked in what assembly you please, and she
will crouch, helpless, paralysed, in the furthest corner. Some such
denudation of the moral woman had occurred in the case of Norma
Hardacre. The old garments were stripped from her. She was bewildered,
terrified, no longer endowed with personality.
Sometimes despising herself and resolved to perform her manifest duty,
she sought other lessons from Aline. They ended invariably in dismay.
Once she learned that Jimmie had never had a banking account. The
money was kept in a drawer of which Jimmie and Aline had each a key.
On occasions the drawer had been empty. Another lesson taught her that
certain shops in the neighbourhood were to be avoided as being too
expensive; that cream was regarded as a luxury, and asparagus as
an impossible extravagance. Every new fact in the economy of a poor
household caused her to shiver with apprehension. All was so trivial,
so contemptibly unimportant, and yet it grew to be a sordid barrier
baffling her love. She loathed the base weakness of her nature. It was
degrading to feel such repulsion.
One evening Connie Deering was going to a Foreign Office reception, and
came down an enchanting vision in a new gown from Paquin and exhibited
herself to Norma.
“I think it's rather a success. Don't you?”
Norma assented somewhat listlessly, but to please her friend inspected
the creation and listened to her chatter. She was feeling lonely and
dispirited. At Aline's entreaty she had persuaded Jimmie to go with Tony
Merewether to the Langham Sketch Club, thus showing himself, for the
first time since the scandal, among his old associates. For her altruism
she paid the penalty of a dull evening. Their visits to each other were
her sole occupation now, all that was left in life to interest her. In
moments of solitude she began to feel the appalling narrowness of the
circle in which she was caged. Reading tired instead of refreshing her.
She had been accustomed to men and women rather than to books, to
the sight of many faces, to the constant change of scene. When she
speculated on employment for future solitary hours, she thought ruefully
of recuffing shirts.
Connie apologised for leaving her, hoped she would manage to amuse
herself. Norma, who had made strenuous efforts to hide the traces of
tumult, returned a smiling answer. Connie, quite deceived, put an arm
round her waist and said suddenly in her bright, teasing way:
“Now don't you wish you were coming too?”
Norma, staggered at the point-blank question, was mistress enough of
herself to observe the decencies of reply, but when Connie had gone, she
sat down on the sofa and stared in front of her. She did wish she were
going with Connie. She had been wishing vaguely, half-consciously all
the evening. Now the wish was the pain of craving. It came upon her like
the craving of the alcoholic subject for drink--this sudden longing for
the glitter, the excitement, the whirl of the life she had renounced.
Her indictment of it seemed unreal, the confused memory of a brain-sick
mood. It was her world. She had not cut herself free. All the fibres of
her body seemed to be rooted in it, and she was being drawn thither
by irresistible desire. The many, many people, the diamonds, the
brilliance, the flattery, the envy, the very atmosphere heavy with many
perfumes--she saw and felt it all; panted for it, yearned for it. That
never, never again would she take up her birthright was impossible. That
she should stand forevermore in the humble street outside the gates of
that dazzling, wonderful, kaleidoscopic world was unthinkable.
She remembered her talk with Morland at the Duchess of Wiltshire's
reception at the end of the last season, her shiver at the idea of a
life of poverty; was it a premonition? She remembered the blessed sense
of security when she had looked round the splendid scene and felt that
she and it were indissoluble parts of the same scheme of things. A
crust and heel of cheese as Jimmie's wife had crossed her mind then as a
grotesque fantasy; the air of that brilliant gathering was the breath of
her being.
But now the grotesque fancy was to be the reality; the other was to
become the shadow of a dream. No yearning or panting could restore it.
The impossible was the inevitable. The unthinkable was the commonplace.
She had made her choice deliberately, irrevocably. She had lost the
whole world to gain her own soul. In the despair of her mood she
questioned the worth of the sacrifice. The finality of the choice
oppressed her. If at this eleventh hour she could still have the
opportunity of the heroic--if still the gates of the world were open to
her, she would have had a stimulus to continued nobility. The world and
the passionate love for the perfect man--which would she choose? Her
exaltation would still have swept her to the greater choice. Of, this
she was desperately aware. But the gates were shut. She had already
chosen. The heroic moment had gone. The acceptance of conditions was now
mere uninspired duty. She gave way to unreason.
“O God! Why cannot I have both--my own love and my own life?”
The tears she shed calmed her.
The next day she felt ill from the strain, paying the highly bred
woman's penalty of nervous break-down. Connie Deering noted the circles
beneath her eyes and the pinched nostrils. Norma casually mentioned a
night's neuralgia. It would pass off during the day. She refused to be
doctored. She would pay a visit to Jimmie before lunch. The fresh air
would do her good.
“The fresh air and Jimmie,” laughed her friend. “You are the most
beautifully in love young woman I have ever met.”
Norma started on her visit, walking fast. At Baker Street station it
began to rain. She took the penitential omnibus; but her thoughts were
too anxious to concern themselves with its discomforts. Besides, it was
almost empty. The night had brought counsel. She would go to Jimmie and
be her true self, frank and unsparing. With a touch of her old scorn she
had resolved to confess unreservedly all the meanness and cowardice
of which she had of late been guilty. She would bare to him the soon
spotted soul and crave his cleansing. He would understand, pardon, and
purify. Perhaps, when he knew all, he would be able to devise some new
scheme of existence. At any rate, she would no longer receive his kisses
with a lie in her heart. She loved him too ardently. He should know what
she was, what were her needs, her limitations. The meeting would be
a crisis in their lives. Out of it would come reconstruction on some
unshakable basis. Up to a certain point she reasoned; beyond it, the
pathetic unreason of a woman drifted rudderless.
It had stopped raining when she left the omnibus and started on the
short walk from the corner to Friary Grove. At the familiar gate her
heart already seemed lighter; she opened it, mounted the front steps,
and rang. The middle-aged servant, minus cap and with thin untidy hair,
in a soiled print dress, her sleeves rolled up to the elbow exposing red
coarse arms, was the first shock to Norma when the door opened.
“Both the Master and Miss Aline are out, Miss,” said Hannah, with a
good-natured smile. “He has gone into town on business, and Miss Aline,
went out a little while ago with her young man. But they'll be back for
lunch. Won't you come in and wait, Miss?”
Norma, vaguely resenting the familiar address of the servant and her
slatternly appearance, hesitated for a moment before deciding to enter.
Hannah showed her into the drawing-room and retired. It was a small dark
room looking on to the back. Part of it had been cut off when the
house had been altered, so as to construct the studio staircase, which
contained one of the original windows. Norma felt strangely ill at
ease in the room. The prim, cheap furniture, the threadbare carpet,
the flimsy girlish contrivances at decoration, gave the place an air of
shabby gentility. The gilt mirror was starred with spots and had a crack
across the corner. Some of Jimmie's socks and underwear lay on the table
for mending. They were much darned, and fresh holes could not fail to
meet the eye that rested but momentarily on the pile. To mend these
would in the future be her duty. She took up an undervest shrinkingly
and shook it out; then folded it again and closed her eyes.... She could
not wait there: the gloom depressed her. The studio would be brighter
and more familiar. She went downstairs. Nothing in the room she knew so
well was changed, yet it seemed to wear a different aspect. The homely
charm had vanished. Here, too, shabbiness and poverty stared at her. The
morning light streaming through the great high window showed pitilessly
the cracks and stains and missing buttons of the old leathern suite, and
the ragged holes in the squares of old carpet laid upon the boards. It
was a mere bleak workshop, not a room for human habitation. The pictures
on the walls and easels ceased to possess decorative or even intimate
value. The large picture of the faun that had exercised so great an
influence upon her had been despatched to its purchaser, and in its
place was a hopeless gap.
She sat down in her accustomed chair, and once more strove to realise
the future. There would be children who would need her care. On herself
would all the sordid burdens fall. She saw herself a soured woman, worn
with the struggle to make ends meet, working with her hands at menial
tasks. The joy of Life! She laughed mirthlessly.
She rose, walked restlessly about the studio, longing for Jimmie to
come and exorcise the devils that possessed her. A little sharp cry of
distress escaped her lips. The place echoed like a vault, and she felt
awfully alone. In her nervous tension she could bear it no longer. She
went up the stairs again into the bare hall. On the pegs hung two or
three discoloured hats and an old coat. Scarce knowing whither she went,
she entered the dining-room. Luncheon had been laid. A freak of destiny
had reproduced the meal of which Morland had spoken at Wiltshire House
and of which last night had revived the memory: a scrag end of cold
boiled mutton, blackened and shapeless, with the hard suet round about
it; a dried-up heel of yellow American cheese; the half of a cottage
loaf. The table-cloth--it was Friday--was stained with a week's meals.
It was coarse in texture, old and thin and darned. The enamel on the
plates was cracked, the hundred tiny fissures showing up dark brown.
The plate on the forks had worn off in places, disclosing the yellowish
metal beneath. The tumblers were thick and common, of glass scarcely
transparent. She stared helplessly at the table. Never in her life had
she seen such preparations for a meal. To the woman always daintily fed,
daintily environed, it seemed squalor unspeakable.
She shrank back into the hall, pressed her hands to her eyes, looked
round, as if to search for some refuge. The stairs met her eye. She
had never seen what lay above the ground floor--except once, on the
memorable evening when Aline had fainted. Suddenly madness seized
her--an insane craving to spy out the whole nakedness of the house. The
worn stair-carpet ended at the first landing. Then bare boards. The door
of the bathroom was wide open. She peeked in. The ceiling was blackened
with gas; the bath cracked and stained; the appointments as bare as
those in a workhouse. Her glance fell upon a battered tin dish holding
an uncompromising cube of yellow soap with hard sharp edges. She
withdrew her head and shut the door hurriedly. Another door stood ajar.
She pushed it open and entered. It was the front bedroom--inhabited by
Jimmie. The thought that it would be her own, which a fortnight before
might have clothed her in delicious confusion, chilled her to the
bone. Bare boards again; a strip of oil-cloth by the narrow cheap iron
bedstead; a painted deal table with a little mirror and the humblest of
toilette equipments laid upon it; a painted deal chest of drawers with
white handles; a painted deal wash-stand; a great triangular bit broken
out of the mouth of the ewer.
It was poverty--grinding, sordid, squalid poverty. From the one
dishevelled, slatternly, middle-aged servant to the cheap paper
peeling off the wall in the bedrooms, all she had seen was poverty. The
gathering terror of it burst like a thunderstorm above her head. Her
courage failed her utterly. Like a creature distracted, she rushed
downstairs and fled from the house. She walked homewards with an
instinctive sense of direction. Afterwards she had little memory of the
portion of the road she traversed on foot. She moved in a shuddering
nightmare. All the love in the world could not shed a glamour over the
nakedness of the existence that had now been revealed to her in its
entire crudity. She could not face it. Other women of gentle birth had
forsaken all and followed the men they loved; they had loved peasants
and had led great-heartedly the peasant's life. They had qualities
of soul that she lacked. Hideously base, despicably cowardly she knew
herself to be. It was her nature. She could not alter. The world of
graceful living was her world. In the other she would die. He had warned
her. The gipsy faith in Providence had made him regard as a jest what
would be to her a sordid shift, an intolerable ugliness, stripping life
of its beauty. The passion-flower could not thrive in the hedge with the
dog-rose. It was true--mercilessly true. The craving of last night awoke
afresh, imperiously insistent. She walked blindly, tripped, and nearly
fell. A subconscious self hailed a passing hansom and gave the address.
What would become of her she knew not. She thought wildly of suicide as
the only possible escape. From her own world she was outcast. Its gates
were barred with gold and opened but to golden keys. She was penniless.
In this other world she would die. Love could not prevent her starving
on its diet of herbs. She clung to life, to the stalled ox, and recked
little of the hatred; but at the banquet she no longer had a seat. She
had said she would follow him in rags and barefoot over the earth. She
had not fingered the rags when she had made the senseless vow; she had
not tried her tender feet on the stones. She could have shrieked with
terror at the prospect. There was no way out but death.
The Garden of Enchantment faded from her mind like a forgotten dream.
The sweet Arcadian make-believe alone rose up in ironical mockery, a
scathing memory which seemed to flay the living heart of her. She sat
huddled together in a corner of the cab, tortured and desperate.
On either hand hung the doom of death. In the one case it would be
lingering: the soul would die first; the man she loved would be tied to
a living corpse; she would be a devastating curse to him instead of
a blessing. In the other she could leave him in the fulness of their
unsullied love. The years that the locust hath eaten would not stretch
an impassable waste between them. In his sorrow there would be the
imperishable sense of beauty. And for herself the quick end were better.
She was aroused to consciousness of external things by a husky voice
addressing her from somewhere above her head. The cab had stopped at
Connie's house in Bryanston Square. She descended, handed to the man the
first coin in her purse that her fingers happened to grasp. He looked at
it, said that he was sorry he had not change for a sovereign. She
waved her hand vaguely, deaf to his words. The cabman, with a clear
conscience, whipped up his horse smartly and drove off.
A figure on the doorstep raised his hat.
“How delightful of you to arrive at the very moment, Miss Hardacre! I am
summoned back to America. I sail to-morrow. I was calling on the chance
of being able to bid you good-bye.”
Norma collected her scattered wits and recognised Theodore Weever. She
looked at him full in the eyes.
Her lips were parted; her breath came fast. He stretched out his hand
to press the electric button, so as to gain admittance to the house. She
touched his arm, restraining his action, and still stared at him.
“Wait,” she said at last. “I have something to say to you.”
“I am honoured,” he replied in his imperturbable way.
“Have you found your decorative wife, Mr. Weever?”
A sudden light shone lambently in his pale, expressionless blue eyes.
“Am I to understand that I can find her on Mrs. Deering's doorstep?”
“If you look hard enough,” said Norma.
He took her hand and shook it with the air of a man concluding a
bargain.
“I felt sure of it,” he said. “I intended from the first to marry you.
I shall ever be your most devoted servant.'”
“I make one condition,” she said.
“Name it.”
“You don't enter this house, and I sail with you to-morrow.”
“Certainly.”
“What train shall I catch and from what station shall I start?”
“The ten o'clock from Waterloo.”
She rang the bell.
“May I trouble you to book my passage?”
“It will be my happiness.”
“_Au revoir_,” she said, holding out her hand.
He raised his hat and walked away briskly. The door opened, and Norma
entered the house.