ONE night Paul was at the Opera when he caught sight of Miss Brooke and
Pemberton with her. His evening was spoilt and he left at once. He felt
both angry and hurt, for he had seen her for a few minutes in the
afternoon, and she had said nothing about her plans for the evening
beyond warning him it was highly probable she might not be at home.
The climax had come. He was determined that things should not continue
as they were. If Miss Brooke simply regarded their connection as a mere
students' companionship, agreeable to both parties but strictly
temporary, then he must end it immediately. Miss Brooke must at once be
made aware of what this friendship meant to him. What he had so far
deemed inexpedient seemed to him the only expediency--to stake all on
one coup.
In the stress of the crisis the prejudices that were his by inheritance
and teaching, and that his new life had caused to slumber, asserted
themselves again, crying aloud against these friendships. Miss Brooke
ought never to have expected him to be proof against that sort of thing,
of which he had never had experience. Pemberton might be able and
content to flutter round without hurt, but he himself had been a lost
man from the beginning.
It soothed him to map out the future as he wished it to be, and all
seemed so natural and reasonable that, if she cared for him in the
least, she could not but admit his views on every point. He felt himself
filled with an infinite longing, an infinite tenderness. He would
surround her with his love so that escape from it should be impossible.
It should permeate every fibre of her being, and she should in the end
come to him and give up everything to fulfil the duties of a wife,
presiding over his household, absorbing herself in his career, and
giving all her thought to the unity their two lives would constitute. Of
course, she could paint in such time as was left to her, and any glory
she might achieve would redound to the credit of his name. Still when a
woman had once become a wife, he argued, her ambition generally faded.
Wifehood was absorbing. Greater glory than that of being a perfect wife
there could not be.
A few days later, when his emotion had somewhat calmed down, and he
could trust himself sufficiently to see her, he called at the _pension_,
but, as had happened occasionally from the beginning, he did not find
her at home. So the next morning he sent her a great heterogeneous mass
of flowers with the half-jesting, half-reproachful hope they might meet
with better fortune than he. Whereupon he immediately received a letter
explaining she had passed the previous evening with some very nice
people in the Avenue Kleber, and announcing her intention of taking him
there on the morrow. Would he dine early and call for her? She thanked
him for the flowers in a postscript, saying they had transformed her
room into a veritable bower.
At the time appointed he climbed the well-known two flights of stairs
and the _bonne_ showed him into the little room, saying _mademoiselle_
would join him "in a little minute." Several big minutes passed, and
then the door-hanging was pushed aside and Miss Brooke stood smiling at
him. She had always appealed to his aesthetic side, giving him the sense
of contemplating an exquisite piece of art-work; but the particular
impression he had to-night differed from all previous ones. Her figure
seemed slenderer in its black net evening dress, covered with bead-work
that glistened with a wonderful shading of green into blue and blue into
green. Above the turquoise-blue velvet trimming of the bodice, her long
neck made a dazzling whiteness, and her face looked pink and babyish,
whilst her curls lay about with just a shade more severity than usual.
She wore a necklace of turquoises set in antique gold, and in her hair
was a big gold comb inset with the same stones, irregularly cut. The
note of colour thus given made her blue eyes appear like two large
jewels amid the constellation. Paul told himself he had never realised
before _how_ beautiful those eyes were. The lightly-parted lips
intensified the babyishness, so that she ceased to be the independent,
self-willed girl, fitting in rather with that other conception he had
lingered on as the ideal she might develop into as his wife--a woman
clinging to her husband and glad of his strength.
He was sure he saw her now as she really was. The conditions of her life
were alone to blame for forcing on her the necessity of a career.
Woman's true sphere was the home. An outside existence subjected to
hardening influences a delicate soul whose very nature was to thirst for
tender nurture and love. Such had always been his mother's conviction;
such was his fervent belief. The association of Miss Brooke with
money-earning seemed an ugly blot on the universe.
There seemed, too, a tenderer, more intimate quality in her voice, and a
sort of clinging in her touch as she went down the stairway with her
hand on his arm. That forbidding barrier of which he had always been
conscious had vanished!
"It's the McCook's last 'At-Home,'" she explained, as the _voiture_
began to move. "They are such nice people--I'm sure you'll like them.
Dora's an old college chum of mine, and she's asked me to stay with her
to-night. Dora and I chat such a deal when we get together, and we
always enjoy sitting up nice and quiet by ourselves after everybody else
has gone. I told her you would escort me home, but she seemed quite
shocked at the idea. As if you haven't escorted me back from the
theatre! Dora has become quite conventional since her marriage. She used
to argue with her mother and do pretty well as she liked not so very
long ago. Now I believe her mother shocks her sometimes. She's leaving
with her husband in a few days for Perros-Guirec, and they're going to
take me with them."
Her words rang with a childlike joy. He asked where Perros-Guirec was in
a voice that was somewhat desolate at the prospect of losing her.
"It's in Brittany--a whole day's journey from Paris. I was there two
years ago, and sketched most of the time. Everybody is thinking of
leaving now, the heat will soon be getting unbearable. The Grand Prix
has been run, the Battle of Flowers has been fought, and the Allee de
Longchamps is deserted. All the smart people are in _villegiature_. How
nice is the evening after the sultry day!"
They were passing through the Boulevard St. Germain. Miss Brooke was
sitting just close enough to Paul for them to touch with the swaying of
the carriage. He felt singularly happy. The hushed sounds of the city
over which the dusk hung mystic came to him like a soft sustained tone
of music; its lights gleamed in upon them with magic rays. He was
conscious of the great dark masses of palaces, of shadowy pedestrians
moving noiselessly on the side-paths. No fever in the air now, only a
far-reaching calm.
"The night makes one almost sorry to leave Paris," resumed Miss Brooke.
Her voice made the harmonies sweeter, blending them all into one perfect
harmony.
"But the breezes, and the woods, and the rye-fields, and the farm-houses
with their delicious old oak presses, and the kind-hearted people, and
the quaint children who love to watch you sketch and see you squeeze the
paint out of the tubes--the memory of all these things draws you back to
them. I long for Brittany almost as much as I once longed to leave
everything and everybody and be just myself--and by myself. It seems so
long ago now."
She had almost unconsciously moved closer to him now.
"Won't you tell me when that was--Lisa?"
It was the first time he had dared to call her by this name. In his
longing to utter it in articulate speech it had rushed to the tip of his
tongue.
"It was three years ago--before I came here. Every place had
associations that hurt me. I wanted to get away--to work, work, work. I
seemed to hate everybody. So I came here, and for months I thought I was
as hard as a stone. Then one day I found myself angry with a girl--a
fellow-student--and I was quite surprised to find I could feel at all.
And then I was suddenly glad I was a human being again."
Her voice melted away into the vast murmur of the soft-twinkling city.
Beyond the fact that he was selfishly glad she had had trouble--it
afforded him the exquisite pleasure of sympathy--there was no active
thought in him now, no estimation of the position. His soul alone
dominated; it had been moved to responsiveness and it now wrought out
its mood, subtly surrounding her, he felt, with its comfort.
They crossed the mysterious, glistening river, and came upon the myriad
flame-points of the Place de la Concorde. They turned into the Champs
Elysees betwixt woods enchanted by the sorcerer Night; catching glimpses
of palaces of light amid the trees whence melody came floating, mingled
with the incense of the summer.
"Won't you tell me, Lisa--that is, if you think you can trust me."
It was sweet to exercise the privilege of calling her "Lisa." He felt it
was his for always now.
"I know I can trust you, Paul. Would you really care to hear? Of course
you would," she continued quickly, giving him no time to reply. "What a
silly question for me to ask! Still there is little to tell! I loved a
man. We were to be married. His mind was poisoned against me by an
enemy. He was harsh and unjust. A few words sum all up. He is married to
another. A commonplace chapter, is it not? But to have lived through
it--to have lived through it!"
He grew dazed and white. "To have lived through it!" Those simple words
seemed to his comprehending mood athrob with the sobbing of great grief.
"But you do not love him now?" he breathed.
"No, no! All is over now. But I brooded and brooded and thought--the
experience made me a woman. Life is a serious thing to me now. I feel
better and stronger for what I have suffered. But the memory remains."
"You have nothing to reproach yourself with, Lisa. Surely there are
happier memories in store for you. It is for you but to shape the
future."
He longed for her impulsive "How?" and had his answer ready. It seemed a
strange thing, but this confession of a past love, this telling of a
great sorrow in her life, had wrought a spell upon him. His eyes were
full of tears. In that moment his love for her seemed to have increased
a thousandfold. The surprise with which the revelation had overwhelmed
him was lost in the rush of pity. She had suffered, and by his love he
would make everything up to her.
But now there came a sudden change, slight in its outward manifestation,
but felt by him like a chill blast, for his soul vibrated to hers,
registering every subtle shade of her mood. She did not speak
immediately, and he knew that moment of silence was fatal.
They had passed the round point of the Champs Elysees, and the woods and
gardens had ended. Only the giant _hotels_ rose on either hand. There
seemed more carriages darting about now, a greater movement of life, a
general sense of disenchantment in the air, of an awakening from a dream
to the clattering reality of things. Paul realised that the spell was
broken.
Miss Brooke had turned her head for a moment to look through the window.
"We shall be there in two or three minutes now," she said, as a sort of
natural outcome of her ascertaining their exact whereabouts. "I am
afraid I must rather have depressed you. It is scarcely courteous to our
hostess for us to arrive in so gloomy a mood."
She gave a little laugh which set his every nerve a-tingle, so certainly
did its ring lack the appealing quality that had brought him so close
to her. It seemed to thrust him back abruptly and brutally.
"Tell me, Paul, haven't you ever had any love affairs?" she went on to
ask, and there was a suspicion of banter in her tone. "I've told you all
about my tragedy, now tell me about yours or all yours. I know we've
told each other all our lives before, but of course we both bowdlerized.
The most interesting parts have yet to be told."
As she had asked him a direct question he felt constrained to answer it.
He found himself considering whether his relation to Celia need count as
a love affair, but he was so convinced he had never been in love with
her at all that he decided he could leave her out without doing violence
to his conscience. Altogether there had been in his life two very minor
and foolish amourettes that might have became entanglements; one with a
barmaid when he was in the lawyer's office, some of the clerks having
persuaded him the girl "was gone on him," the other with a simple maiden
of sixteen, the daughter of a market gardener, which idyll had proceeded
at his father's country seat. Paul told the latter--it was a boyish
passion that had come to nothing and stood for nothing in his life; the
former he was ashamed of. "I proposed to her and gave her a mortal
fright. She was so scared she ran away. We were both shamefaced when we
met again, and my spurt of pluck was at an end. I dared not say another
word to her, and somehow we drifted out of being sweethearts. I was
barely nineteen at the time."
Miss Brooke laughed again heartily, but Paul only felt the gloomier.
"Tell me some more, please. You put me into quite a cheerful humour.
What was your next love affair?"
She had resumed her old militant badinage.
"There is nothing more in my biography that is likely to entertain you,"
he answered evasively.
"Is it so bad as that, Paul? I think you might tell me all the same. I'm
not easily shocked."
"You mistake me. I have told you all," he replied, driven to the lie
direct.
"Come, come, Mr. Paul. In a woman one might expect such a want of
candour. But suppose I tell you _my_ other affairs--will that encourage
you to tell me yours? Is it a bargain?"
"Your other affairs?" he repeated.
"Did you imagine I've had only one in my life? That's paying me a very
poor compliment. This is our destination."
"Why do you tease me, Lisa?" he asked, as they descended. He was
relieved that the drive had come to an end. It had been a trying time
for him. He wondered what it was all coming to? Just when the critical
moment had come she had practically inhibited him from speaking. She was
a strange, baffling girl, and he was helpless in her hands.
"I'm not teasing you, I simply want to finish my confessions. You must
dance three dances with me, and talk to me a lot after. Perhaps I shall
succeed in softening you and then you'll be more tractable. We dance
till midnight. After that we sup and converse till dawn. It seems there
are special complications and permissions for dancing and music in the
small hours, as one's neighbours above and below are apt to want to
sleep just then. Dora shirked the bother, especially as her French is so
weak and her husband's worse."
They went up the stairway and were warmly welcomed by Mrs. McCook. It
was a pleasant gathering of nice-looking men and pretty girls, but Paul
was only half alive to it. To him it was scarcely more than a mere
background for the further development of his drama. So far he took
these further love-affairs of Miss Brooke as the purest make-believe,
but all the same he was curiously uneasy and anxious to hear what she
had in mind to tell him.
When he could talk to her again, he could discover no trace in her
manner of her having lived through with him a supreme emotional moment.
The softness that had given him a glimpse of infinite love, and which he
had perhaps hoped might reveal itself again, was absent; in its place
the old niceness and the frank friendliness of comradeship, and with
them the old warning to him to stand back. She proceeded to give him
the promised account of her various lovers in a light, mocking mood.
"I began very early, much earlier than your simple country maiden. My
memories of childhood are rather hazy, but I should say I must have had
a lover before I was out of my cradle. But I was thirteen before my
heart was really moved. Since then I have been in love with so many men
that I really can't remember half of them. However, I'll try and pick
out those that affected me most seriously at the time. The first one was
really a very nice schoolboy. His idea of love-making was to feed me
incessantly with candy, which he did for a whole year till I fell a
victim to the charms of another boy. The two fought. Both emerged from
the combat with black eyes, which rather spoilt their beauty, and
therefore killed my interest in them. It required quite an heroic
effort, though, to refuse their offerings."
"And was this method of love-making as satisfying to them as it was to
you?" asked Paul, beginning to be confirmed in his supposition that Miss
Brooke was joking.
"Oh, we used to have clandestine meetings and we used to kiss, of
course. That made me rather tired of them. They wanted to be kissing the
whole time."
Paul had a momentary vertigo, though he professed by his manner to be
listening in the same spirit as Miss Brooke narrated.
"The first one was always a nice boy even when he grew up and was always
ready to fall in love with me again. But one fine day he got engaged,
wrote to tell me about it, and asked me to congratulate him. He married.
That finishes with him.
"The next interesting one was a college man. I was about sixteen then
and at the height of my musical ambition. He was musical, too, in fact
quite an enthusiast. He used to pilot me about to concerts and send me
tickets for the opera. Besides I was struggling then with Latin, Greek,
and Conic Sections, and he used to help me polish off things--for
selfish reasons, of course."
"And used you to kiss this time as well?" he asked, no longer
questioning that he was hearing her personal history.
"Only at very sentimental moments," she replied, apparently overlooking
the mockery in his voice. "I was older and a greater expert in emotions.
One's first experiments are necessarily crude. But, to proceed, my
cavalier lost his head one day and wanted me to marry him at once, which
was rather absurd. So I had to give him his _conge_ and accept the
attentions of a less violent lover. I had always a reserve to draw upon,
but so long as a man behaved nicely and didn't get altogether
unreasonable, I let it accumulate. My musical friend, however, gave me
some trouble. We had several stormy interviews, and at last I had
positively to refuse to see him. One fine day he, too, got engaged and
wrote to me asking me to congratulate him. I know he was divorced some
time since, but I've completely lost sight of him."
At this moment Miss Brooke was led away to dance, but was able to join
him again before very long.
"The next----" were her first words, in a mock-solemn, long-drawn-out
tone, as she took his arm and then she broke into laughter. "The next
was a tall Southerner with nice manners, a soft voice, and a pretty way
of calling me 'ma'am.' He, too, was musical--naturally, I preferred
musical lovers then. The Colonel, as everybody called him, literally
worshipped me, but he was as poor as a church mouse, and I used to
think myself very noble to be satisfied to get stuck with him in back
seats at concert-halls. He went back South after graduating, swearing
he'd never forget me; but, as soon as he'd made his fortune, he was
coming back to marry me. I thought that if the illusion would help him
to make his fortune, he might as well keep it. In any case I should have
given him cause to be grateful to me. He wrote to me half-a-dozen times,
then there was a break of some months; and, when I had almost forgotten
him, one fine day I got a letter from him."
"Announcing his engagement and asking you to congratulate him," said
Paul, with bitterness.
"Yes. I think you may take that for granted. It is what they all do. Is
it any use my telling you more? I'm beginning to think the recital is
getting monotonous. And then there are some coming along and I can't
remember the exact order, which came before which."
She seemed to hurry over her last words as though impatient to be done,
and wearied and bored by the memory of all these dallyings with
sentiment. The mocking merriment appeared also to have died out of her
face and voice. She gazed idly at the dancers who, in the restricted
space, almost constantly brushed up against them as they stood pressed
close to the wall. Paul wondered if he were looking haggard. The air of
careless merriment he had at first forced himself to assume had given
way, as he listened, to a sort of nervous apathy. The one great passion
of hers she had confided to him had drawn him closer to her by its
intrinsic dignity. It had appealed to his finer nature, stirring it to
its very depths. But these later revelations of hers revolted him by
their very pettiness. What had her parents been at that such a girl had
been allowed to run wild in that fashion? It was monstrous she had not
been supervised and prevented from stooping to these foolish and
frivolous relations with foolish and frivolous men--men she had allowed
to kiss her lips!
The pang that tore him at the image revealed to him how powerless he
was. He glanced at her again as she stood at his side. There was a
half-sad expression now on her face, which had resumed all its
babyishness again. The lock of hair near her ear lay about in a dainty
twist. Her lips showed innocent and red. To kiss them _he_ would lay
down his life!
He was shaken; he wanted to sob aloud. But he was at a festive
gathering. Round, round, up and down the room went the dancers,
shuffling forward with their rapid glide, the men bending their long,
supple bodies, the flowing curves of the women's dresses imparting a
greater grace to the movement. The whole scene was dreamy to him. His
inner thought was the only reality.
Why had she told him, why had she told him? he moaned within himself.
Then as he saw a new softness appear in her face, a gleam of comfort
came to him. Perhaps it had been from motives of conscience and she
really repented all; perhaps, too, she had thought it right to tell him
everything before allowing him to ask her to be his.
He would overlook all those episodes if only she would be his. If even
they had been more serious, if even she had been a dishonoured woman, he
knew now he would have had no strength not to condone. If any one had
told him a year ago that he--Paul--would one day be both willing and
eager to make such concessions as regards the past of a woman he
contemplated making his wife, he would have denied the statement
indignantly as a libel on himself.
She turned suddenly, and their looks met. Her face lighted up with a
smile. "Come, Paul, it's your turn now?"
"My turn!" he echoed, her words for the moment startlingly sounding like
an invitation to take his place in the procession of her lovers.
"Yes," she said. "Who was your sweetheart after the gardener's
daughter?"
He denied any further love, though hating to tell the lie. But Miss
Brooke persisted, entreating, provoking, urging, coaxing, pouting;
subtly transforming herself into the child with its lovable moods and
movements; enslaving him, rendering him powerless at her will, with this
one strange exception--he could be strong enough to withhold from her
the episode he was ashamed of.
"Paul, Paul," she said sternly. "Tell the truth. Are you not in love
now?"
He scarcely dared look at her. He was conscious of that lock again and
of another on her forehead.
"Silence betrays. Did you come to Paris for the sake of your
architecture or to be near me?"
"To be near you, Lisa," he breathed.