Wild weather set in after Ascot. The break-up was sudden; in England it generally is. In a single night the wind flew into the east, and clouds swept into the sky, and thermometers and barometers went down with a run together. One went to bed on a warm, still, oppressive night in June; one got up four months later, in the rough October weather. The Bride came down shivering and aggrieved; the whims and frailties of the English climate were new to her, and sufficiently disagreeable. She happened to be down before any one else, moreover; and there were no fires in the rooms, which were filled with a cheerless, pallid light; while outside the prospect was dismal indeed.
The rain beat violently upon the windows facing the river, and the blurred panes distorted a picture that was already melancholy enough. The sodden leaves, darkened and discoloured by the rain, swung heavily and nervelessly in the wind; the strip of river behind the trees was leaden, like the sky, and separable from it only by the narrow, formless smear that marked the Surrey shore. In the garden, the paths were flanked with yellow, turbid runnels; the lawn alone looked happy and healthy; the life seemed drowned out of everything else—in this single night after Ascot. Gladys shivered afresh, and turned her back on the windows in miserable spirits. And, indeed, in downright depressing spectacles, a hopeless summer’s day in the Thames Valley is exceptionally rich.
The Bride, however, had no monopoly of bad spirits that morning. This became plain at breakfast, but it was not so plain that the dejection of the others arose from the same simple cause as her own. Vaguely, she felt that it did not. At once she asked herself if aught that she had done or said unwittingly could be connected in any way with the general silence and queer looks; andthen she questioned herself closely on every incident of the previous day and her own conduct therein—a style of self-examination to which Gladys was becoming sadly used. But no, she could remember nothing that she had done or said amiss yesterday. With respect to that day, at least, her conscience was clear. She could say the same of no other day, perhaps; but yesterday morning she had promised her husband golden behaviour; and she honestly believed, this morning, that she had kept her promise well. Yethismanner was strangest of all this morning, and particularly strange towards her, his wife. It was as though he had heard something against her. He barely looked at her. He only spoke to her to tell her that he must go up to town on business, and therefore alone; and he left without any tenderness in bidding her good-bye, though it was the first time he had gone up without her.
Gladys was distressed and apprehensive. What had she done? She did not know; nor could she guess. But she did know that the longer she stood in the empty rooms, and drummed with her fingers upon the cold, bleared panes, gazing out at the wretched day, the more she yearned for one little glimpse ofthe sunlit bush. The barest sand-hill on her father’s run would have satisfied her so long as its contour came with a sharp edge against the glorious dark-blue sky; the worst bit of mallee scrub in all Riverina—with the fierce sun gilding the leaves—would have presented a more cheery prospect than this one on the banks of the renowned (but overrated) Thames. So thought Gladys; and her morning passed without aim or occupation, but with many sad reflections and bewildering conjectures, and in complete solitude; for Lady Bligh was upstairs in her little room, and everybody else was in town. Nor did luncheon enliven matters in the least. It was virtually a silent, as it was certainly a disagreeable,tête-à-tête.
And yet, though Lady Bligh went up again to her little room without so much as inquiring into her daughter-in-law’s plans for the afternoon, neither was she without a slight twinge of shame herself.
‘But I could not help it!’ Lady Bligh exclaimed to herself more than once—so often, in fact, as to prove conclusively that shecouldhave helped it. ‘I could not help it—indeed I could not. Once or twice I did try to say something—but there, I could not do it!After all, what have I to talk to her about? What is there in common between us? On the other hand, is not talking to her hanging oneself on tenter-hooks, for dread of what she will say next? And this is Alfred’s wife! No pretensions—none of the instincts—no, not one!’
A comfortable fire was burning in the sanctum, lighting up the burnished brass of fender and guard and the brown tiles of the fireplace with a cheerful effect; and this made the chill gray light that hung over the writing-table under the window less inviting, if possible, than it had been before luncheon. Lady Bligh immediately felt that, for this afternoon, writing letters over there in the cold was out of the question. She stood for a moment before the pleasant fire, gazing regretfully at Alfred’s photograph on the chimney-piece. Then a thought smote her—heavily. She rang the bell. A maid answered it.
‘Light a fire for Mrs Alfred downstairs—in the morning-room, I think—and this minute. How dreadful of me not to think of it before!’ said Lady Bligh, when the servant was gone. ‘Poor girl! Now I think of it, shedidlook cold at the table. I feel the coldmyself to-day, but she must feel it ten times more, coming from that hot country. And I have had a fire all the morning, and she has not! She looked sad, too, as well as cold, now I think of it. I wonder why? She seems so unconscious of everything, so independent, so indifferent. And, certainly, I blame myself for seeing so little of her. But does the smallest advance ever come fromherside? Doessheever try to meetmehalf-way? If only she had done so—if only she were to do so now——’
Lady Bligh stopped before following further a futile and mortifying train of speculation. No; it were better, after all, that no advances should be made now. It was a little too late for them. If, in the beginning, her daughter-in-law had come to her and sought her sympathy and her advice, it would have been possible then to influence and to help her; it might have been not difficult, even, to break to her—gently and with tact—many of her painful peculiarities as they appeared. But she had not come, and now it was too late. The account might have been settled item by item; but the sum was too heavy to deal with in the lump.
‘Yet her face troubles me,’ said LadyBligh. ‘It is so handsome, so striking, so full of character and of splendid possibilities; and I cannot understand why it should sometimes look so wistful and longing; for at all events this must be a very different—and surely a preferable—existence to her old rough life out there, with her terrible father’ (Lady Bligh shuddered), ‘and no mother.’
She could not write, so she drew the easy-chair close to the fire, and wrapped a shawl about her shoulders, and placed a footstool for her feet, and sat down in luxury with a Review. But neither could Lady Bligh read, and ultimately her brooding would probably have ended in a nap, had not some one tapped at the door.
Lady Bligh—a hater of indolence, who commonly practised her principle—being taken unawares, was weak enough to push back her chair somewhat, and to kick aside the footstool, before saying, ‘Come in.’ Then she looked round—and it was the Bride herself.
‘Am I disturbing you very much?’ asked Gladys, calmly; indeed, she shut the door behind her without waiting for the answer.
Lady Bligh was taken aback rather; butshe did not show it. ‘Not at all. Pray come in. Is it something you want to ask me about?’
‘There’s lots of things I want to ask you about; if it isn’t really bothering you too much altogether, Lady Bligh.’
‘Of course it is not, child; I should say so if it were,’ Lady Bligh answered, with some asperity. But her manner was not altogether discouraging.
‘Thank you. Then I think I will sit down on that footstool by the fender—it is so cold. May I? Thanks. There, that won’t keep the fire from you at all. Now, first of all, may I doallthe questioning, Lady Bligh, please?’
Lady Bligh stared.
‘What I mean is, may I ask you questions without you asking me any? You needn’t answer if you don’t like, you know. You may even get in a—in a rage with me, and order me out of the room, if you like. But please let me do the questioning.’
‘I am not likely to get in a rage with you,’ said Lady Bligh, dryly, ‘though I have no idea what is coming; so you had better begin, perhaps.’
‘Very well; then what I want to know isthis—and I do want to know it very badly indeed. When you married, Lady Bligh, were youbeneathSir James?’
Lady Bligh sat bolt upright in her chair, and stared severely at her daughter-in-law. Gladys was sitting on the low stool with her hands clasped about her knees, and leaning backward with half her weight thus thrown upon her long straight arms. And she was gazing, not at the fire nor at Lady Bligh, but straight ahead at the wall in front of her. Her fine profile was stamped out sharply against the fire, yet touched at the edge with the glowing light, which produced a kind of Rembrandt effect. There was no movement of the long eyelashes projecting from the profile; the well-cut lips were firm. So far as could be seen from this silhouette, the Bride was in earnest. Lady Bligh checked the exclamation that had risen to her lips, and answered slowly:—
‘I do not understand you, Gladys.’
‘No?’ Gladys slowly turned her face to that of her companion; her eyes now seemed like still black pools in a place of shadows; and round her head the red firelight struggled through the loopholes and outworks of her hair. ‘Well, I mean—wasit considered a very great match foryou?’
‘No; it certainly was not.’
‘Then he was not much above you—in riches or rank or anything else?’
‘No; we were both very poor; our early days were a struggle.’
‘But you were equals from the very beginning—not only in money?’
‘Yes; socially we were equals too.’
Gladys turned her face to the fire, and kept it so turned. ‘I am rather sorry,’ she said at length, and sighed.
‘You are sorry? Indeed!’
‘Yes, Lady Bligh, and disappointed too; for I’d been hoping to find you’d been ever so much beneath Sir James. Don’t you see, if youhadbeen ever so much beneath him, you aren’t a bit now; and it would have proved that the wife can become what the husband is, if she isn’t that to begin with—and if she tries hard. No—you mustn’t interrupt unless it’s to send me away. I want you to suppose a case. Look back, and imagine that your own case was the opposite to what it really was. That Sir James was of a very good family. That you were not only not that, but were stupid and ignorant, and a worsething—vulgar. That you had lived your rough life in another country; so that when he brought you to England as his wife, your head was full of nothing but that other country, which nobody wanted to know anything about. That you couldn’t even talk like other people, but gave offence, not only without meaning to, but without knowing how. That——’
Lady Bligh could hear no more. ‘Oh, Gladys!’ she exclaimed in a voice of pain, ‘you are not thinking of yourself?’
‘That’s a question! Still, as it’s your first, I don’t mind telling you you’ve hit it, Lady Bligh. Iamthinking of myself. But you must let me finish. Suppose—to make short work of it—that you had been me, what would you have done to get different, like?’
‘My poor child! I cannot bear to hear you talk like this!’
‘Nonsense, Lady Bligh. I want you to tell me how you’d have gone about it—you know what I mean.’
‘I can’t tell you, Gladys; I can’t indeed!’
‘What! Can’t tell me what you would have done—what I ought to do?’
‘I cannot!’ Lady Bligh commanded her voice with difficulty. ‘I cannot!’
‘Oh! then it’s no good saying anything more about that.’ There was a touch of bitterness in the girl’s tone. ‘But, at any rate, you might give me a hint or two how to be more like what youare. Can’t you do that, even?’
‘No, my dear—how can I? I am no model, Heaven knows!’
‘Aren’t you? Then I will get up. I am going, Lady Bligh. It’s no good staying and bothering you any longer. I have asked my questions.’
She rose sadly from the stool, and her eyes met Lady Bligh’s again. For some minutes she had kept her face turned steadily to the fire. The rich warm glow of the fire still flushed her face and lingered in her luminous eyes. In the half-lit room, with the rain rattling ceaselessly against the panes, the presence of the Bride was especially attractive and comforting; but perhaps it was chiefly the rarity of her companionship to Lady Bligh that made the latter clutch Gladys’s hand so eagerly.
‘Don’t go, my dear. Stop, and let us talk. This is practically our first talktogether, Gladys, dear; you needn’t be in such a hurry to end it. Sit down again. And—and I do wish you would not always call me “Lady Bligh”!’
‘Then what am I to call you, pray?’ Gladys smiled up into the old lady’s face; she could not help facing her now, for Lady Bligh would hold her hand; she was even forced to draw the footstool closer to the easy-chair; and thus she was now sitting at Lady Bligh’s feet, touching her, and holding her hand.
‘Could you not—sometimes—call me—“mother”?’
Gladys laughed. ‘It wouldn’t be easy.’
‘But why not?’
‘Because you could never be a mother tome. You might to another daughter-in-law, but not to me. You, who are so gentle and graceful and—andeverything, could never seem like a mother to a—well, to me. People would say so, too, if they heard me call you “mother.” It would make everybody laugh.’
‘Gladys! Gladys! How cruel you are to yourself! You are not what you say you are. Here—just now——’
‘Ah,’ said the Bride, sadly. ‘Here! Justnow! Yes, it is easy enough here and now. Here in the quiet, by the fireside, alone with you, it is easy enough to be well-behaved. I am on my good behaviour, and no one knows it better than I do. And I know it, too, when I behave badly; but not till afterwards. I go forgetting myself, you see. I believe it’s principally when they talk to me about Australia. I suppose I lose my head, and talk wildly, and less like a lady than usual even. Alfred has told me, you see; though I don’t know where it was I went wrong yesterday. I thought I was so very good all day. I hardly opened my mouth to anybody. But somehow I can’t help it when the Bush crops up. You see, I’m a Bush girl.Allthe girls out there aren’t like me; don’t you believe it. They would think me as bad as you do. I’m not a sample, you see. I should be riled if I was taken for one; nothing riles me so much as people speaking or thinking meanly of Australia! But here, alone with you, with everything so quiet, it would be difficult not to be quiet too. What’s more, I like it, Lady Bligh—I do indeed. I can’t come lady-like all at once, perhaps; but if I was oftener beside you, like just now, I might by degrees get more like you, Lady Bligh.’
‘Then you shall be oftener with me—you shall, my dear!’
‘Thank you—thank you so much! And I shan’t mind if you send me away; yet I won’t speak if you’re busy. If you’ll only let me come in sometimes, for a little bit, that’s all I ask.’
‘You shall come in as often as ever you like, my darling!’
The old lady had drawn her daughter-in-law’s head backward upon her lap, and was caressing the lovely hair, more and more nervously, and bending over the upturned face. Gladys leant back with half-closed eyes. Suddenly a scalding drop fell upon her cheek. Next moment the girl was upon her feet. The moment after that she had fallen upon her knees and caught Lady Bligh’s hands in her own.
‘You are crying!’ said Gladys, hoarsely. ‘You are crying, and because of me! Oh, Lady Bligh, forgive me! How could I know I should bring you such trouble as this? I never knew—I never dreamt it would be like this. Alfred told me that I should get on well with you all. He was blind, poor boy, butImight have known; only we loved each other so! Oh, forgive me—forgive me formarrying him! Say that you forgive me! Before God, I never thought it would be like this!’
‘My daughter! I have nothing to forgive! Kiss me, Gladys—kiss me!’
‘Yes, I will kiss you; but I have brought misery upon you all; and I will never forgive myself.’
‘Gladys—you havenot! Do not think it—and don’t go, Gladys.’
‘I must go. You have been good and kind to me; but this is hard for me too, though I am not crying. I never cry, though sometimes I feel inclined to, when I think of everything.’
‘But now you will often come beside me, Gladys?’
‘Yes, I will come. And I will try to change; you have helped me already. It will not come all at once; but perhaps I can prevent myself giving you any fresh cause to be downright ashamed of me. Nay, I must. That’s the least I can do. If I fail——’
She stopped, as though to think well of what she was saying. Her face became pale and stern—Lady Bligh never forgot it.
‘If I fail,’ she repeated slowly, ‘after this, you will know that I am hopeless!’
She went to the door, but turned on the threshold, as though wishful to carry away a distinct impression of the scene—the half-lit room, the failing fire still reflected in the burnished brasses, the darkening panes still beaten by the wild rain, and the figure of Lady Bligh, dimly outlined and quivering with gentle weeping. Then she was gone.
Among unexpected pleasures there are few greater than the sudden discovery that one has become the living illustration of a common proverb. Of course the proverb must be of the encouraging order; but then most proverbs are. Equally of course, the conditions of this personal illustration should be exceptionally delightful; yet will there still remain an intrinsic charm in your relations with the proverb. You will feel benignantly disposed towards it for evermore. You will receive it henceforth with courtesy, even in the tritest application. Nor need the burden of obligation be all on your side: you can give that proverb a good character among your friends—a thing that few people will do for anyproverb. You can tell it frankly: ‘Sir, I always thought you were a humbug, like the rest of them. Now I know better. I admit that I was hasty. I apologise. I shall speak up foryou, sir, till my dying day!’
That good-hearted fellow, Alfred Bligh, awaking gradually to a sensation of this sort, became very rapidly the happiest of men. The proverb in his case was the one about the dawn and the darkest hour. Alfred’s darkest hour had been the day after Ascot, when, after a perfectly amicable conversation with the Judge, he had rushed up to town with ice at his heart and schemes of instant removal in his head. His dawn was the same evening, at dinner, when an indefinableje ne sais quoiin the mutual manner of Gladys and his mother attracted his attention and held him in suspense. And after dinner his sun rose quickly up.
The happiness of the succeeding days—to Alfred, to Gladys, and to Lady Bligh—was complete and pure. Nothing much happened in those last perfect days of June, when the rain had all fallen, and the wind changed, and summer was come back. There was some rowing on the sunlit river, and a good deal of coaching, in small parties; but on thewhole they were quiet days. Yet these were the days that stood out most plainly through the dim distance of after years.
To be closely intimate with Lady Bligh meant an intimacy with a nature that was generous and sweet and womanly; and it included a liberal education—for those who would help themselves to it—in gentle, unaffected manners. Gladys came under this very desirable influence at a favourable moment, and in precisely the right frame of mind to profit most by it. And profit she did. As she herself had predicted, no miracle was wrought; she did not become everything that she ought to have been in a day; but several small alterations of manner, all of them for the better, did very quickly take place.
The Bride felt her feet at last. Then, becoming thoroughly in touch with Lady Bligh, she waxed bold in a less approachable direction, and with the best results. Not only did she start lively little conversations with Sir James, but she got him to carry them on in the same light strain, and sustained her part in them very creditably indeed, all things considered. But the subject of his judicial functions was now avoided far more sedulously by Gladys than by the oldgentleman himself. She even joined the Judge more than once in his early morning prowls; but the stock-whip was always left behind in her room. On these occasions she showed herself to be an admirable assistant-potterer; while she delighted her old companion still further by many pretty and even delicate attentions, to which he was not used, having no daughters of his own. Thus there were mornings when the Judge would come in to breakfast with quite a startling posy in his button-hole, and with a certain scarcely perceptible twitching of the lips and lowering of the eyelids, such as had been observed in him sometimes on the bench when the rest of the court were ‘convulsed with laughter.’ It invariably transpired that the decoration was the work and gift of the Judge’s daughter-in-law; and, as the old gentleman had never before been seen by his family to sport any such ornament, the departure was extremely gratifying to most of them.
Granville, it is true, found fault with the taste displayed in the composition of the button-holes, and one morning flatly refused one that had been made for him expressly; but the fact is, Granville was of rather small account in the house just now. He was busy,certainly, and was seen very little down at Twickenham; but he might have been seen more—his temporary occupation of a back-seat was in a great measure voluntary. Nor was he really malicious at this time. It is true that he spoke of the leopard’s spots, and used other phrases equally ominous but less hackneyed; for the most part, however, he made these observations to himself. He could have found nowhere a more appreciative and sympathetic audience. But, though he looked on sardonically enough at the Bride’s conquests, Granville did not lay himself out to hinder them. This should be clearly understood. The fellow was not a full-blown Mephistopheles.
And the happy pair were indeed happy. But for an occasional wistful, far-away look—such as will come sometimes to every exile, for all the ‘pleasures and palaces’ of new worlds—Gladys seemed to everybody to be gay and contented as the midsummer days were long. As for Alfred, he considered the sum of his earthly happiness complete. Even the ideal farm (which his solicitors were doing their best to find for him) in the ideal sleepy hollow (whichhemeant to dohisbest to wake up, by the introduction of vigorousBush methods)—when purchased, stocked, furnished, inhabited, and in full swing—could not, he felt, add much to his present happiness. Poor Alfred! He was laying out the future on idyllic lines. But, meanwhile, the present was full of happy days; and that was well.
There was one evening that Alfred did not soon forget.
It was the last Sunday in June. There had been a thunderstorm early in the afternoon and a smart shower. The evening air was a long, cool, delicious draught, flavoured with the exquisite fragrance of dripping leaves and petals; and this, and the sound of the church bells, and the sunlight glittering upon the wet lanes, came back to Alfred afterwards as often as he remembered the conversation which made the walk to the old church all too short. Alfred walked with his mother; Gladys, some little distance ahead, with the Judge.
‘I think Gladys likes England a little better now,’ observed Lady Bligh.
‘And can’t England say the same thing of Gladys?’ cried Alfred. ‘Don’t answer the question—it’s idiotic. But oh, mother, I’m a fool with very joy!’
‘Because Gladys has won all our hearts, dear?’
‘Yes; and I really think she has. You have all been so good, so patient and forgiving. Don’t stop me, mother. If you had been different, I know I never should have allowed that you had anything to forgive; but now that you are like this, I own that there was much. Look at her now with the Judge; he has given her his arm. Now think of the beginning between these two!’
‘Why think of that? We have all forgotten it. You must forget it too.’
‘I think of it,’ said Alfred, ‘because it is all over; because you have civilised my wild darling; and because I like to realise this. But, upon my soul, if you had seen her life out there; if you knew her father (she doesn’t remember her mother); if you had any idea of the work she did on that run; you would simply be amazed—as I am, now that I look back upon it—at what your tenderness has done. But do you know, mother, what the dear girl says? I had nearly forgotten to tell you.’
One would have counted upon a joke, and possibly a good one; for Alfred stopped tochuckle before coming out with it; though, certainly Alfred was not the best judge of jokes.
‘She says that if ever she makes you feel regularly ashamed of her again, she may be considered hopeless; and though you forgive her, she’ll never forgive herself! That’s rather rich, eh?’
Lady Bligh failed to see it in that light. On the contrary, for one moment she seemed both surprised and pained.
‘Perhaps, Alfred,’ she said, thoughtfully, ‘she still feels the restraint, and hates our conventionalities. I often think she must; I sometimes think she does.’
‘Not she! Not a bit of it! She’s as safe as the Bank, and as happy as they make ’em,Iknow her!’
Poor Alfred!
‘Perhaps,’ said Lady Bligh again; ‘but there may be a constant effort which we cannot see; and I have once or twice caught a look in her eyes—but let that pass. I may be wrong; only I think it has been rather slow for her lately. She must have more amusement. There are one or two amusing things coming on presently. But just now I should like to think of something quitefresh to interest her. My dear boy! you are whistling!—in the churchyard!’
In fact, Alfred was foolish with joy, as he himself had said. He could not control his spirits long when speaking of Gladys, and hearing her well spoken of by the others, and marvelling at the change that a few days had brought about. It was a case of either laughing or crying with him then; and the tears never got a chance.
But, in the solemn twilight of the church; standing, kneeling, sitting by his wife’s side; sharing her book; listening with her to the consummate language of the Common Prayer; watching with her the round stained window fail and fade against the eastern sky—then, indeed, the boisterous, boyish spirits of this singularly simple-minded man of thirty melted into thankfulness ineffable and perfect peace.
It so happened that they sang an anthem in the old church that evening. This neither attracted nor distracted Alfred at first. He was a man without very much more music in his soul than what he was able to whistle when in high spirits. It did not strike him that this anthem was lovelier than most ‘tunes.’ The sweet sensations that stole overhis spirit as the singing of it proceeded certainly were not credited to the music. To the words he never would have attempted to listen but for an accident.
To Alfred the anthem presented but one of the many opportunities presented by the Church Service for private reverie on the part of worshippers. Of course his reverie was all about the future and Gladys. And while he mused his arm touched hers, that was the delightful part of it. But on glancing down to see her face again (he had actually not looked upon it for five whole minutes) his musing swiftly ended. Her singular expression arrested his whole attention. And this was the accident that made him listen to the words of the anthem, to see iftheycould have affected her so strangely.
The Bride’s expression was one of powerful yearning. The first sentence Alfred managed to pick out from the words of the anthem was: ‘Oh, for the wings, for the wings of a dove!’ piped in a boy’s high treble.
The melting wistfulness in the Bride’s liquid eyes seemed to penetrate through that darkening east window into far-away worlds; and the choir-boy sang: ‘Far away, far away would I rove!’
The solo went on:
In the wilderness build me a nest:And remain there for ever at rest.
In the wilderness build me a nest:And remain there for ever at rest.
In the wilderness build me a nest:And remain there for ever at rest.
Then, with some repetition which seemed vain to Alfred, the chorus swallowed the solo. And to Alfred’s mind the longing in his wife’s face had grown definite, acute, and almost terrible.
As they knelt down after the anthem, his eyes met those of his mother. She, too, had seen Gladys’s expression. Was it the expression she had referred to on the way to church? Was such an expression a common one with his darling, and concealed only from him? Was it possible that she was secretly longing and pining for the Bush—now—when they were all so happy?
Much later in the evening—long after church—Lady Bligh made an opportunity of speaking again alone with Alfred. ‘I have been maturing my little plans,’ she said, smiling.
‘As regards Gladys?’ he asked.
‘Yes; and I have been thinking that really, after all, she need not be so dull during the next few days——’
Alfred interrupted her hastily.
‘I also have been thinking; and, do you know, after all, I half fancy that sheisa bit dull. I shall be very glad indeed if you have thought of something to ’liven her up a little.’
Lady Bligh regarded him shrewdly; but she was not entirely astonished at this complete change of opinion. She, too, had seen Gladys’s longing, far-away expression in church. She, too, remembered it.
‘Well, she will be less dull during the next few days than just lately,’ said Lady Bligh, after a slight pause. ‘On Tuesday, to begin with, there is this garden-party of ours; a dull thing enough in itself, but the people may amuse Gladys. On Wednesday, there is to be the Opera for her, at last. Thursday and Friday you must boat and drive. But for Saturday—when the Lord Chief is coming—you are all invited to lawn-tennis somewhere; are you not? After this week it is simplyembarras; the two matches at Lord’s, and Henley too, one on top of the other; then Wimbledon. Gladys must miss none of these. But can you guess what my happy thought is?’
‘You seem to have so many happy thoughts!’
‘No; but my little plan for to-morrow?’
‘I have no idea. But I think Gladys would be content to do nothing much to-morrow, perhaps.’
‘Alfred,’ said Lady Bligh, severely, ‘Gladys tells me you have never once had her in the Park! How is that?’
‘I—well, the fact is, I’m such a duffer in theveryswagger part of the town,’ said poor Alfred; ‘and I never did know the run of the parks properly.’
‘Then you shall drive with Gladys and me, and learn. It is getting near the end of the season, when every day makes a difference. So, not to lose another day, we’ll drive in to-morrow. This is my happy thought! I think Gladys will like it—though Garrod won’t.’
‘You mean he’ll say it’s too much forhishorses? I should think he’ll give warning,’ said Alfred, encouragingly.
‘He may,’ said Lady Bligh, with a fine fearlessness which can be properly appraised only by ladies who keep, or once kept, their coachman. ‘He may. I defy him!’
Fully ten days were wanting before the Eton and Harrow cricket-match, which appears to be pretty generally recognised as the last ‘turn’ in the great variety entertainment of the season; there was plenty of life, and of high life, too, in the town yet; and, what was even more essential to a thorough enjoyment of the Park, the afternoon, as regarded the weather, was for once beyond all praise. Moreover, Royalty was there for at least half an hour; so that the circumstances attendant upon young Mrs Bligh’s first appearance in the ring of fashion were in every way all that could be desired.
It was an ‘appearance’; for Lady Bligh, though in no sense a woman of fashion, wassufficiently well known to attract attention, which was heightened by the increasing rarity of her appearances in the fashionable world. Even had it been otherwise, the robust, striking beauty of the dark young woman at her side must have awakened interest on its own account. It did, among those who did not know the Blighs by sight. But with most people the questions were: Where had Lady Bligh discovered such a fresh and taking type of prettiness? Was the girl a relative? Was that Alfred Bligh sitting opposite to the ladies, come back from Australia disfigured by a beard? Was she his fiancée—or were they already married? It is intended by no means to imply that the modest and even homely equipage of Lady Bligh became the cynosure of Hyde Park; but it was certainly seen; and few saw it with unawakened curiosity.
One or two persons were able to satisfy to some extent this curiosity, and took a delight in doing so; Lady Lettice Dunlop, for one. The curiosity that Lady Lettice relieved was of a languid and peculiarly well-bred kind. A coronet adorned the barouche in which she rode. She said rather more than she knew, yet not quite all that she didknow, and said it with a gentle disdain. But Lady Lettice was stopped by a deprecatory gesture of her mother the Countess before she came to the end—which made her regret having over-elaborated the beginning. The Countess considered the story most coarse, and regretted the almost friendly nature of the bow with which she had just favoured poor Lady Bligh. Yet, as the Lady Lettice was generous enough to fancy, the Colonial creature did seem on her very best behaviour this afternoon. And in her fancy Lady Lettice was nearer the mark than in her facts.
Another person, in an even better position to answer questions concerning the Bride, was Mr Travers, M.P.—now the newest M.P. but one. He was walking under the trees with his daughter, whom he was boring somewhat with his political ‘shop’; for he was enough of a new boy still to be full of his nice new lessons. This Miss Travers, however, was no young girl, but a woman of thirty, with a kind, sweet, sympathetic face, and a nature intensely independent. She was best known for her splendid work in Whitechapel, though how splendid that work really was no one knew outside the slums, where her face was her only protection—but a greater one thana cordon of police. But she had also a reputation as a singer, which need not have been confined to a few drawing-rooms in the West, and numberless squalid halls in the East, had she been ambitiously inclined. And this Miss Travers was attracted and charmed by the bold, conspicuous beauty of young Mrs Bligh; pressed for an introduction; pressed all the harder on hearing some plain truths about the Bride and her Bush manners; and presently had her way.
It was now six o’clock. The crowning period of the afternoon had commenced with the arrival of Royalty a few minutes before the hour. Carriages were drawn up by the rails on either side in long, regular ranks. The trough between presented visions of glossy horseflesh and flashing accoutrements and flawless japan, to say nothing of fine looks and finer dress; visions changeful as those of the shaken kaleidoscope; marvellous, magical visions—no matter how much or how little they owed to the golden glamour of the sinking sun, visions of intrinsic wonder.
The Blighs’ serviceable vehicle had found an anchorage by the inner rails in the thick of all this, but not in the thickest. They were, in fact, no farther than a furlong fromthe Corner, and thus in comparatively open water. At this point the shrubs planted between the two converging courses come to an end, and the two roads are separated by little more than twenty yards. A little way farther on you can see only the bobbing heads of the riders over in Rotten Row; but at this point you have indeed ‘the whole show’ before you. The position had been taken up on the Bride’s express petition. It was the riding that interested Gladys. She had no eyes for the smart people in the carriages when once she could watch with as little trouble the hacks and their riders in Rotten Row. The little interest she took in the passing and re-passing of Royalty was somewhat disappointing. But it was plain that she was enjoying herself in her own way; and that was everything. When the Traverses came up, the interruption of this innocent enjoyment was a distinct annoyance to Gladys.
Alfred—to whom it was not an afternoon of wild delight—got out of the carriage with some alacrity; and Miss Travers, with a very engaging freedom of manner, got in. She button-holed the Bride (if that is not an exclusively masculine act—as between man andman), and at first the Bride did not like it. Very soon, however, Gladys was pleased to withdraw her attention, partially, from Rotten Row and transfer it to Miss Travers. Like everybody else, the Bride was immensely attracted; Miss Travers’s manner was so sympathetic, yet unaffected, and so amazingly free (Gladys thought) from English stiffness; and her face was infinitely kind and sweet, and her voice musical and soft.
So Mr Travers, with one foot upon the carriage-step, brought Lady Bligh up to date in her politics generally, and in his own political experiences in particular; and Alfred made aimless patterns on the ground with his feet; and Miss Travers questioned Gladys on the subject upon which all strangers who were told where she came from invariably and instantly did question her. But Miss Travers did this in a way of her own, and a charming way. You would have thought it had been the dream of her life to go to Australia; you would have inferred that it was her misfortune and not her fault that her lines were cast in England instead of out there; and yet you would not, you could not, have suspected her of hypocrisy. She was one of those singular people who seem actuallyto prefer, in common conversation, thetuumto themeum. Gladys was charmed. But still she stole furtive glances across the space dividing them from the tan; and her answers, which would have been eager and impetuous enough in any other circumstances, came often slowly; she was obviouslydistraite.
Miss Travers saw this, and followed the direction of the dark, eager eyes, and thought she understood. But suddenly there came a quick gleam into the Bride’s eyes which Miss Travers did not understand. A horsewoman was crossing their span of vision in the Row at a brisk canter. The Bride became strangely agitated. Her face was transfigured with surprise and delight and incredulity. Her lips came apart, but no breath escaped them. Her flashing eyes followed the cantering horsewoman, who, in figure and in colouring, if not in feature, was just such another as Gladys herself, and who sat her horse to perfection. But she was cantering past; she would not turn her head, she would not look; a moment more and the shrubs would hide her from Gladys—perhaps for ever.
Before that moment passed, Gladys stood up in the carriage, trembling with excitement.Careless of the place—forgetful of Lady Bligh, of all that had passed, of the good understanding so hardly gained—attracting the attention of Royalty by conspicuously turning her back upon them as they passed for the fourth time—the Bride encircled her lips with her two gloved palms, and uttered a cry that few of the few hundreds who heard it ever forgot:—
‘Coo-ee!’
That was the startling cry as nearly as it can be written. But no letters can convey the sustained shrillness of the long, penetrating note represented by the first syllable, nor the weird, die-away wail of the second. It is the well-known Bush call, the ‘jodel’ of the black-fellow; but it has seldom been heard from a white throat as Gladys Bligh let it out that afternoon in Hyde Park, in the presence of Royalty.
To say that there was a sensation in the vicinity of the Blighs’ carriage—to say that its occupants were for the moment practically paralysed—is to understate matters, rather. But, before they could recover themselves, the Bride had jumped from the carriage, pressed through the posts, rushed across to the opposite railings, and seized in both handsthe hand of the other dark and strapping young woman, who had reined in her horse at once upon the utterance of the ‘Coo-ee!’
And there was a nice little observation, audible to many, which Gladys had let fall in flying:—
‘Good Lord deliver us—it’sher!’
Patience and sweetness of disposition may not only be driven beyond endurance; they may be knocked outside in, knocked into their own antitheses. And one need not go to crime or even to sin to find offences which no amount of abstract angelicalness could readily forgive or ever forget. It is a sufficiently bad offence, if not an actual iniquity, to bring well-to-do people into public derision through an act of flagrant thoughtlessness and unparalleled social barbarity. But if the people are not only well-to-do, but well and honourably known, and relatives by your marriage, who have been more than kind to you, you could scarcely expect a facile pardon. Sincerity apart, they would be more than mortalif they so much as pretended to forgive you out of hand, and little less than divine if they did not tell you at once what they thought of you, and thereafter ignore you until time healed their wounds.
Woman of infinite sweetness though she was, Lady Bligh was mortal, not divine; and she showed her clay by speaking very plainly indeed, as the carriage swept out of the Park, and by speaking no more (to Gladys) that day. A good deal of cant is current about people whose anger is violent (‘while it lasts’), but short-lived (‘he gets over it in a moment’); but it is difficult to believe in those people. If there be just cause for wrath, with or without violence, it is not in reason that you can be in a rollicking good humour the next minute. That is theatrical anger, the anger of the heavy father. Lady Bligh, with all her virtues, could nurse the genuine passion—an infant that thrives at the breast. Indeed, it is probable that before the end of the silent drive to Twickenham (Alfred never opened his clenched teeth all the way) this thoroughly good woman positively detested the daughter whom she had just learnt to love. For it is a fallacy to suppose that the pepper-and-salt emotion of love and hatred in equalparts is the prerogative of lovers; you will find it oftener in the family.
What penitence Gladys had expressed had been lame—crippled by an excuse. Moreover, her tone had lacked complete contrition. Indeed, if not actually defiant, her manner was at least repellent. She had been spoken to hotly; some of the heat was reflected; it was a hot moment.
As for her excuse, it, of course, was ridiculous—quaexcuse.
She had seen her oldest—indeed, her only—girl friend, Ada Barrington. Ada (Gladys pronounced it ‘Ida’) was another squatter’s daughter; their fathers had been neighbours, more or less, for many years; but Ada’s father owned more stations than one, was a wealthy man—in fact, a ‘woollen king.’ Gladys had known they were in Europe, but that was all. And she had seen Ada cantering past, but Ada had not seen her. So she had ‘coo-ee’d.’ What else was there to be done? Gladys did not exactly ask this question, but she implied it plainly. As it happened, if she had not ‘coo-ee’d,’ she never would have seen Ada again, to a certainty; for the Barringtons had taken a place in Suffolk, and were going down there the verynext day. That was all. Perhaps it was too much.
Silence ensued, and outlasted the long drive. What afterwards passed between the young husband and wife did not, of course, transpire. There was no further expression of regret than the very equivocal and diluted apology comprehended in the Bride’s excuses; indeed, Lady Bligh and her daughter-in-law never spoke that night; nor did Alfred attempt to mediate between them. As a matter of fact, his wife had told him—with a recklessness that cut him to the heart—that, this time, she neither expected nor deserved, nor so much as desired, any one’s forgiveness; that now she knew what she had feared before, that she was hopeless; that—but the rest was wild talk.
Next morning, however, Alfred went to Lady Bligh with a letter, one that Gladys had received by the early post. It was an invitation from the Barringtons, the wording of which was sufficiently impulsive and ill-considered. Ada besought her darling Gladys to go stay with them in Suffolk immediately, on the following Saturday, and for as many days as she could and would; and the invitation included the darling’s husband in a postscript.
‘An extraordinary kind of invitation!’ observed Lady Bligh, handing back the letter.
‘Ignorance,’ said Alfred laconically.
‘Did you meet the people out there?’
‘Only this girl’s brother; the others had been in Europe some time. I thought him a very pleasant fellow, I remember, though his contempt for me and for all “home” birds was magnificent.’
‘Well,’ said Lady Bligh, ‘it is hardly the kind of invitation that Gladys can accept. Is it?’
‘She refuses to think of it,’ Alfred answered, with a frown that rather puzzled Lady Bligh. ‘But I hope she will change her mind. I wish her to go.’
His mother was silent for more than a minute. ‘Does the letter say Saturday?’ she then inquired.
‘Yes.’ Alfred gazed steadily in his mother’s face as though he would search her inmost thoughts. ‘Yes, it says Saturday. And it is on Saturday that the Lord Chief is coming down to stay over Sunday, is it not? I thought so. I very much wish I could induce her to go.’
‘Not on that account, my boy, I hope?’ Lady Bligh seemed slightly embarrassed.
‘Partly,’ said Alfred, speaking firmly and distinctly, but not without an effort; ‘partly on that account, but by no means altogether.’
‘She could not go without you,’ remarked Lady Bligh; ‘and they do not ask you civilly, to say the least of it.’
‘Shecouldgo without me,’ returned Alfred emphatically. ‘What’s more, I want her to. It’s she that won’t hear of it. These are quite old and intimate friends of Gladys and her father. She might easily spend a week with them alone, without me. Mother—I think she would like it so, if only she would go! They are probably free-and-easy, roughish folks, and it would do her good, a week with them. There would be no restraints—nay, she has observed none here, God knows!—but there there might be none to observe. She could do and say what she liked. She would hurt no one’s feelings. She would scandalise no one. And—do you know what, mother?—I have got it into my head that when she came back she would see the difference, and appreciate your ways here more than she ever might otherwise. I have got it into my head that one week of that kind, just now, would open her eyes forgood and all. And I think—there might be no more relapses! Yes, I thought that before; but I was wrong, you see—after yesterday! Besides, this week would bring us within a few weeks of Scotland; and, after Scotland, we shall have our own little place to go to—I have almost settled upon one. But if I went with her, restraint would go with her too.’
His voice had broken more than once with emotion. He commanded it with difficulty, and it became hard and unnatural. In this tone he added:—
‘Besides—it would be more comfortable for every one if she were not here with the Lord Chief Justice.’
‘Do not say that—do not think that!’ said Lady Bligh; but faintly, because her heart echoed his sentiment.
‘Oh, there’s no disguising it—my wife’s dynamite!’ said Alfred, with a short, harsh laugh. ‘Only an explosion is worse at one time than at another.’ He went hastily from the room, neither of them having referred more directly to the scandalous scene in the Park.
He went straight to his wife, to try once more to coax her into accepting the Barringtons’invitation. But it was of no use. She would not listen to him. She would go nowhere without her husband; she should write that to Ada plainly.
Later in the morning, Lady Bligh, of her own deliberate design, came in contact with her daughter-in-law. Gladys attempted escape. Lady Bligh caught her by the hand.
‘You are angry, Gladys!’
Gladys said nothing.
‘I don’t thinkyouare the one to be angry,’ Lady Bligh said, nettled by the other’s sullen manner.
Gladys raised her eyes swiftly from the ground; they were filled with bitterness. ‘Haven’t I a right to be what I like with myself?’ she cried. ‘I am angry with no one else. But I shall never forgive myself—no, nor I won’t be forgiven either; I am hopeless! I feared it before; now I know it. Let me go, Lady Bligh!’
She broke away, and found a quiet spot, by-and-by, among the trees by the river.
‘If only I were inthere!’ cried Gladys, out of the tumult of shame and rebellion within her. ‘In there—or else back in theBush! And one is possible and easy; and the other is neither!’
By a single grotesque act she had brought her happiness, and not hers alone, to wreck and ruin!
Happily for all concerned, there was something else to be thought about that day: it was the day of Lady Bligh’s garden-party.
The British garden-party is possibly unique among the social gatherings of the world. It might be a revelation to most intelligent foreigners. It is held, of course, in the fresh air; the weather, very likely, is all that can be desired. The lawn is soft and smooth and perfectly shaven; sweeping shadows fall athwart it from the fine old trees. The flower-beds are splendidly equipped; their blended odours hover in the air. The leaves whisper and the birds sing. The scene is agreeably English. But let in the actors. They are English too. The hostess on the lawn receivingthe people, and slipping them through her busy fingers into solitude and desolation—anywhere, anywhere, out of her way; the stout people in the flimsy chairs, in horrid jeopardy which they alone do not realise; the burly, miserable male supers, in frock-coats and silk hats, standing at ease (but only in a technical sense) around the path, ashamed to eat the ices that the footman proffers them, ashamed of having nobody to talk to but their sisters or wives—who are worse than no one: it is so feeble to be seen speaking only tothem. This is the British garden-party in the small garden, in the suburbs. In the large garden, in the country, you may lose yourself among the fruit-trees without being either missed or observed; but this is not a point in favour of the institution. Even in suburban districts there are bold spirits that aspire to make their garden-parties different from everybody else’s, and not dull; who write ‘Lawn Tennis’ in the corner of their invitation-cards before ascertaining the respective measurements of a regulation court and of their own back gardens. But beware of these ambitioussouls; they add yet another terror to the British garden-party. To go in flannels and find everybody else in broadcloth; to be received as a champion player in consequence, and asked whether you have ‘entered at Wimbledon’; to be made to play in every set (because you are the only man in flannels), with terrible partners, against adversaries more terrible still—with the toes of the onlookers on the side lines of the court, and the dining-room windows in peril should you but swing back your racket for your usual smashing service, once in a way, to show them how it is done: all this amounts to spending your afternoon in purgatory, in the section reserved for impious lawn-tennis players. Yet nothing is more common. The lawn must be utilised, either for lawn-tennis or for bowls (played with curates), or by the erection of a tent for refreshments. By Granville’s intervention, the Blighs had the refreshment-tent.
Lady Bligh would not have given garden-parties at all, could she have been ‘at home’ in any other way; but as her set was largely composed of people living actually in town,who would not readily come ten miles out for a dinner-party, still less for an after-dinner party, she had really no choice in the matter. Still, Lady Bligh’s garden-parties were not such very dull affairs after all. They were immensely above the suburban average. To the young and the curious they held out attractions infinitely greater than garden-party lawn-tennis, though these could not be advertised on the cards of invitation. For instance, you were sure of seeing a celebrity or two, if not even the highest dignitaries, with some of the dignity in their pockets. And it is inexpressible how delightful it was to come across a group of Her Majesty’s Judges gorging strawberry ices unblushingly in a quiet corner of the marquee. On the present occasion, when the stoutest and most pompous Q.C. at the Bar—Mr Merivale—sat down on the slenderest chair in the garden, and thence, suddenly, upon the grass, the situation was full of charm for Granville and some of his friends, who vied with one another in a right and proper eagerness to help the great man to his feet. Even Gladys (who wasso very far from being in a laughing mood) laughed at this; though she was not aware that the stout gentleman was a Q.C., nor of the significance of those initials, had any one told her so.
But this was all the entertainment that Gladys extracted from the long afternoon. She was amused, at the moment, in spite of herself; she was not amused a second time. She kept ingeniously in the background. Alfred was attentive to her, of course, but not foolishly attentive, this afternoon. And Granville introduced to her one of his clean-shaven friends, whom Gladys conversed with for perhaps a minute. She was also presented by the Judge—in his recent genial, fatherly manner—to one or two of his colleagues. Plainly, the disgraceful scene in Hyde Park had not yet reached Sir James’s ears. But that scandal was being discreetly discussed by not a few of the guests. Gladys suspected as much, though she did not know it. She imagined herself to be a not unlikely subject of conversation in any case, but quite a tempting one in the light of her last escapade.But this idea did not worry her. In some moods it is possible to be acutely self-conscious without being the least sensitive; Gladys’s present mood was one. More often than at the people, she gazed at the window of her own room, and longed to be up there, alone. She neither took any interest in what was going on around her, nor cared what the people were whispering concerning her. No doubt theywerewhispering, but what did it matter? Misery is impervious to scorn and ridicule and contempt. These things wound the vanity; misery deadens it. Gladys was miserable.
Among the later arrivals was Miss Travers. Her father could not come: he was doing the fair thing by the Party and his constituents: it was his first term. Miss Travers came alone, and intended to go back alone, the later the better. Whitechapel had made her fearless and independent. She rather hoped to be asked to stop to dinner: some people were certain to stay, for the Blighs were uncommonly hospitable, and in many things quite unconventional; and Miss Traversintended to be one of those people, if she got the opportunity. She also intended to cultivate the most original specimen of her sex that she had ever yet met with; and for this she tried to make the opportunity.
But the most original of her sex was also one of the most slippery, when she liked; she dodged Miss Travers most cleverly, until the pursuer was herself pursued, and captured. Her captor was a rising solicitor, a desirable gentleman and an open admirer; but he did not improve his chances by that interview. Miss Travers was disappointed, almost annoyed. The unlucky lawyer sought to make her smile with a story: the story of the ‘coo-ee!’ as he had heard it. He knew Miss Travers intimately; her appreciation of humour was vast, for a woman; he felt sure she would be tickled. But, unfortunately, the version he had heard was already fearfully exaggerated, and, as Miss Travers drew him on gently, yet without smiling as he wished her to, the good fellow improvised circumstances still more aggravating andscandalous; and then—sweet Miss Travers annihilated him in a breath.
‘I was in their carriage at the time, myself; but—you will excuse my saying so—I shouldn’t have recognised the incident from your description!’
It was a staggerer; but Miss Travers did not follow up the blow. She reproved him, it is true, but so kindly, and with such evident solicitude for his moral state, that the wretch was in ecstasies in two minutes.
‘At all events,’ he said, with enthusiasm, ‘she has you for her champion! I won’t hear another word about her;I’llchampion her too!’
‘If you spoke to her for one moment,’ Miss Travers replied, ‘you would own yourself that she is charming. You never saw such eyes!’
This the lawyer seemed to question, by the rapt manner in which he gazed into Miss Travers’s own eyes; but the speech was the prettier for being left unspoken; and here the lawyer showed some self-restraint and more wisdom. But immediately the lady left him: she had descried her quarry.
Gladys dodged again, and, passing quickly through the tent, heard two words that sent the blood to her cheeks. The words were in close conjunction—‘coo-ee!’ and ‘disgrace.’ Without turning to see who had uttered them—the voice was unfamiliar—she hurried through into the house, and finding the little morning-room quite empty, went in there to sit down and think.
She was not wounded by the chance words; her lifeless pride had not quickened and become vulnerable all in a moment—it was not that. But it was this: what she had done, she realised now, for the first time, fully. Disgrace! She had disgraced Lady Bligh, Sir James, Alfred, Granville, all of them; in a public place, she, the interloper in the family, had brought down disgrace upon them all. Disgrace!—that was what people were saying. Disgrace to the Blighs—that was why she minded what the people said. And she minded this so much, now, that she rocked herself to and fro where she sat, and wrung her large strong hands, and groaned aloud.
And it was not only once; she had disgraced them many times. And all had been forgiven. But this could never be forgiven.
If only she had never married poor Alfred; if only she had never come among his family, to behave worse than their very servants! The servants? Would Bella Bunn have behaved so in her place? It was not likely, for even Bella had been able to give her hints, and she had consulted Bella upon points on which she would have been ashamed to confess her ignorance, even to Alfred. But, in spite of all their goodness and patience, she had brought only unhappiness to them all; there could be no more happiness for them or for her while she remained in the family.
‘I ought to be dead—or back in the Bush!’ she cried again, in her heart. ‘Oh, if only one was as easy as the other!’
These were her sole longings. Of the two, one was strong and not new (being intensified, not produced, by the circumstances), but sufficiently impracticable. The other was easy to compass, easy to the point of temptation, but as yet not nearly so strong, beingentirely the impulse of events. But neither longing was at present anything more than a longing; no purpose showed through either yet. The reality of Alfred’s love, the feeling that it would kill him to lose her, was accountable for this. Gladys’s resolution was, so far, a blank tablet, not because purpose was absent, but because it was not yet become visible.
A rough analogy may be borrowed from the sensitive film used for the production of a photographic negative. The impression is taken, yet the film remains blank as it was before, until the proper acid is applied, when the impression becomes visible.
Now, a moral acid, acting upon that blank tablet of the mind, would produce a precisely similar effect. Suppose Gladys became convinced that Alfred would be a happier man without her, that it would be even a relief to him to lose her: this would supply the moral acid.
The effect of this moral acid would coincide with that of the photographer’s acid. In either case something that had beenimperceptible hitherto would now start out in sharp outline. The blank film would yield the negative picture; the vague longings of Gladys would take the shape of two distinct alternatives, one of them inevitable.
Suppose this happened, one of these alternatives was so simple as to be already, in its embryo state, something of a temptation; while the other would remain a moral impossibility.
It must be remembered that the Bride confronted no such alternatives yet, but merely experienced vague, passionate longings. In this state of mind, however, but one drop of acid was needed to produce ‘development.’