We did not dream, my heart, and yet
With what a pang we woke at last.
A. MARY F. ROBINSON.
Rose, with a candle in her hand, stood at the top of the stairs and
yawned.
It was half-past three; the last waltz had been waltzed, the last light
extinguished, the last carriage had rolled away.
Bertie, on his road to Albert Hall Mansions, was dreaming dreams; and
Reuben, as he tossed on his sleepless bed, pondering plans for the
coming contest, was disagreeably haunted by the recollection of some
white chrysanthemums which he had let fall--on purpose.
“It has been a great success,” said Judith, passing by her cousin and
going towards her own room.
Rose followed her, and sitting down on the bed, began drawing out the
pins from her elaborately dressed hair.
“Yes, I think it went off all right. Caroline Cardozo stuck now and
then, and no one would dance with poor Alec, so I had to take him round
myself.”
Judith laughed. She had danced straight through the programme, had eaten
supper, had talked gaily in the intervals of dancing. Rose got up from
the bed and went over to Judith.
“Please unfasten my bodice. I have sent Marie to bed.”
Then, as Judith complied:
“What was Reuben telling Adelaide, and why did he make off so soon?”
“Mr. Ronaldson, the member for St. Baldwin’s, is dead. A man came and
shouted the news down the street.”
Her voice was quite steady.
“What a ghoul Reuben is! He has been waiting to step into that dead
man’s shoes this last month and more.--‘Reuben Sachs, M.P.’--‘My
brother, the member for St. Baldwin’s’--‘A man told me in the House last
night’--‘My son cannot get away while Parliament is sitting.’--The whole
family will be quite unbearable.”
Judith bent her head over an obstinate knot in the silk dress-lace.
“He is not elected yet,” she said.
Rose, her bodice unfastened, sprang round and faced her cousin.
“Reuben is as hard as nails!” she cried with apparent inconsequence.
“Under all that good-nature, he is as hard as nails!”
“Undo my frock, please,” said Judith, yawning with assumed sleepiness.
“It must be nearly four o’clock.”
Rose’s capable fingers moved quickly in and out the lace; as she drew
the tag from the last hole, she said: “Well, Judith, when are we to
congratulate you?”
Judith did not affect to misunderstand the allusion. Bertie’s open
devotion had acted as a buffer between her and her smarting pride.
“Poor little person!” she said, and smiled.
“You might do worse,” said Rose, gathering herself up for departure.
The mask fell off from Judith’s face as the door closed on her cousin.
She stood there stiff and cold in the middle of the room, her hands
hanging loosely at her side.
Rose put her head in at the door--
“Do you know what Jack says?” she began, then stopped suddenly.
“Judith, don’t look like that, it is no good.”
“No,” said Judith, lifting her eyes, “it is no good.” Then she went over
to the door and shut it.
She sat down on the edge of her little white bed, supporting one knee
with a smooth, solid arm, while she stared into vacancy.
Nothing had happened--nothing; yet henceforward life would wear a
different face for her and she knew it.
It was impossible any longer to deceive himself. Her wide, vacant eyes
saw nothing, but her mental vision, grown suddenly acute, was confronted
by a thronging array of images.
Yes, she was beginning to see it all now; dimly and slowly indeed at
first, but with ever increasing clearness as she gazed; to see how it
had all been from the beginning; how slowly and surely this thing had
grown about her life; how in the night a silent foe had undermined the
citadel.
She had been caught, snared in a fine, strong net of woven hair, this
young, strong creature. Her strength mocked her in the clinging, subtle
toils.
She got up from the bed slowly, stiffly, and stood again upright in the
middle of the room. Forced into a position alien to her whole nature, to
the very essence of her decorous, law-abiding soul, it was impossible
that she should not seek to strike a blow in her own behalf.
“It is no good,” Rose had said, and she had echoed the words.
She did not put her thought into words, but her heart cried out in
sudden rebellion, “Why was it no good?”
She went over mentally almost every incident in her intercourse with
Reuben; saw how from day to day, from month to month, from year to year
they had been drawn closer together in ever strengthening, ever
tightening bonds. She remembered his voice, his eyes, his face--his near
face--as she had heard and seen them a few short hours ago.
The conventions, the disguises, which she had been taught to regard as
the only realities, fell down suddenly before the living reality of this
thing which had grown up between her and Reuben. She recognized in it a
living creature, wonderful, mysterious, beautiful and strong, with all
the rights of its existence. It was impossible that they who had given
it breath should do violence to it, should stain their hands with its
blood--it was impossible.
She stood there still, her head lifted up, glowing with a strange
exultation as her pride re-asserted itself.
Opposite was a mirror, a three-sided toilet mirror, hung against the
wall, and suddenly Judith caught sight of her own reflected face with
its wild eyes and flushed cheeks; her face which was usually so calm.
Calm? Had she ever been calm, save with the false calmness which
narcotic drugs bestow? She was frightened of herself, of her own daring,
of the wild, strange thoughts and feelings which struggled for mastery
within her. There is nothing more terrible, more tragic than this
ignorance of a woman of her own nature, her own possibilities, her own
passions.
She covered her face with her hands, and in the darkness the thoughts
came crowding (was it thought, or vision, or feeling?).
The inexorable realities of her world, those realities of which she had
so rarely allowed herself to lose sight, came pressing back upon her
with renewed insistence.
That momentary glow of exultation, of self-vindication faded before the
hard daylight which rushed in upon her soul.
She saw not only how it had all been, but how it would all be to the
end.
Then once more his low, broken voice was in her ear, his supplicating
eyes before her; the music, the breath of dying flowers assailed once
more her senses; she lived over again that near, far-off, wonderful
moment.
Again Judith dropped her hands to her side; she clenched them in an
intolerable agony; she took a few steps and flung herself face forwards
on the pillow.
Shame, anger, pride, all were swept away in an overwhelming torrent of
emotion; in a sudden flood of passion, of longing, of desolation.
Baffled, vanquished, she lay there, crushing out the sound of unresisted
sobs.
From her heart rose only the cry of defeat:--
“Reuben, Reuben, have mercy on me!”