HUSBAND AND WIFE.
The meeting between Philip Ray and his sister was full of pain and
shame to him and the acutest agony to her. Few words were spoken.
Bramwell was not in the room. He tarried behind on the pretence of
mooring the stage, so that the two might not be restrained or
embarrassed by any consideration of him. But the presence of the
husband seemed to haunt the place, and was felt by both as a
restraining influence.
"If he can forgive her and take her back, what have I to say in the
affair?" asked Philip of himself.
"No matter how much he may reproach me, I will not answer," thought
the unhappy woman. "Anything Philip could say to me would not hurt me
now."
So beyond a few formal words no speech was exchanged between the two,
and shortly after Bramwell came back Philip went away.
"May I stay in this room? This is your room, I know," said Kate
meekly, when they were alone. "I do not wish to intrude. I know you
have writing to do, and that I may be in the way."
There was no tone of bitterness or complaint in her voice. She simply
wanted to know what his wishes were.
"While you were out," he said, "I arranged the room I had intended to
be a play-room for the boy as my own. Yours will be the one you used
last night, and this will be common to all of us. I shall shift my
books into my own room and write there."
"And the boy?" said she, with a tremble in her hoarse, dull voice.
"Which room will be the boy's?"
"Yours, of course."
She moved towards him as if to catch his hand in gratitude. He stood
still, and made no responsive sign.
"When I came here two years ago," he said quietly, "I changed my name
from Mellor to Bramwell. I shall retain the name of Bramwell, and you
will take it."
He did not request her to do it or command her to do it. He told her
she would do it.
"As no doubt you are aware, I am very badly off now compared with the
time--compared with some years ago." He was going to say "compared
with the time I married you," but he forebore out of mercy. "I have
little more than a hundred a year and this place rent-free; it is my
own, but I cannot let it. I hope soon to be able to add to my income.
If my anticipations are realised I may double my income; but at
present I am very poor."
"And I am bankrupt," said she with passionate self-reproach, "in
fortune, in appearance, and in reputation."
He held up his hand in deprecation of her vehemence.
"Understand me clearly. Mrs. Bramwell may not have any money, and may
not be as remarkable for beauty as some other women. But recollect,
she has no reputation, good or bad. She did not exist until this
present interview began. The past can be of no use to us. I shall
never refer to it again; you will never refer to it again. There may
have been things in the life of Kate and Frank Mellor which each of
them contemplates with pain. No pain has come into the life of
Francis Bramwell during the two years of his existence. No pain can
have come into the life of Kate Bramwell during the few minutes she
has existed. It will be wisest if we do not trouble ourselves with the
miseries of the Mellors. Do you understand?" he asked in his deep,
full, organ-toned voice.
"I think I do," she answered. "You mean that we are to forget the
past."
"Wholly, and without exception."
"And you will forget that you ever cared for me?"
"Entirely."
His voice was full and firm, but when he had spoken the word his lip
trembled and his eyelids drooped.
He was walking softly up and down the room. She was sitting by the
table in the same place as she had sat last night. Her arms hung down
by her side, her head was bowed on her chest, her air one of infinite,
incommunicable misery.
"And you will never say a kind word to me again?" she said, her voice
choked and broken.
"I hope I shall never say any word to you that is unkind."
"That is not what I mean. You will never change towards me from what
you are now this minute? You will never say a loving word to me as you
used--long ago?"
She raised her face and looked beseechingly at him as he passed her
chair.
"I shall, I hope, be always as kind-minded to you as I am now."
"And never any more?"
"I cannot be any more."
"Is there--is there no hope?" She clasped her hands and looked up at
him in wild appeal.
He shook his head. "I loved you once, but I cannot love you again."
"You say you forgive me. If you forgive me, why cannot you love me?
for I love you now as I never loved any one before."
"Too late! Too late!"
"Is it because my good looks are gone? Why, O, why cannot you love me
again, unless it is because my good looks are gone?"
"No; your good looks have no weight in the matter. I could not forgive
you if I loved you in the old way."
"Then," she cried, rising and stretching forth her arms wildly towards
him, "do not forgive me; revile me, abuse me, yes, beat me, but tell
me you love me as you did long ago; for I love you now above anything
and all things on earth. Yes, ten thousand times better than I love my
child! I never knew you until now. I was too giddy and vain and
shallow to understand you. I have behaved to you worse than a
murderess. But, Frank, I would die for you now!" She flung herself on
her knees on the floor, and raised her clasped hands above her
streaming face to him. "On my knees I ask you in the name of merciful
Heaven to give me back your love, as I had it once! Give it to me for
a little while, and then I shall be content to die. You are noble
enough to forgive me and to take me back into your house. Take me back
into your heart too. Raise me up and take me in your arms once, and
then I will kill myself, if you wish it; I shall then die content.
Refill my empty veins with words of love and I will trouble you no
more. I have been walking blindfold in the desert all my life, and now
that the bandages are taken off my eyes and I can see the promised
land, am I to find I can never enter it? I am only a weak, wicked
woman. You have extended to me forgiveness that makes you a god. Have
for me, a weak woman, the pity of a god."
"I am no longer a man," he said, leaning against the wall. "I am
smoke, an abstraction, a thing, an idea, a code. You are my wife and I
will not cast a stone at you. You are my wife, and you are entitled to
the shelter of my roof and the protection of my name. I make you free
of both. But when you ask for love such as once was yours, I fail to
catch the meaning of your words. You are speaking a language the
import of which is lost to me. It is not that I will not, but that I
cannot, give you what you ask. There would have been no meaning in the
love I offered you years ago if I could offer you love now. Get up. It
was with a view to avoiding a scene I spoke."
"I will not get up until you tell me there is hope--that some day you
may relent."
"There is no question of relenting. When you left me you destroyed in
me the faculty of loving you. Now get up. We have had enough of this.
We must have no more. I have been betrayed into saying things I
determined not even to refer to. Get up, and, mind, no more of this."
With strong, firm arms he raised her from her knees.
She stood for a moment, leaning one hand on the table to steady
herself. Then in a low quavering whisper, she said, "Is there any, any
hope?"
"There is none."
She raised herself, and moved with uncertain feet to the door. "It
would have been better I went to the river last night."