CHAPTER IV
"But I didn't know he was married," murmured Patricia to the St. Bernard, after Gareth had gone.
Still, now that she had placed him in the middle of her world, and in a royal ecstasy of sacrifice offered up to him her previous middle-of-the-world, the very book of her heart—it were folly now to make another sacrifice of the altar itself. Patricia had been sincere in her half-laughing remark to Hetty several years ago, that she could not be bothered to give up the little things of life; but that one day when she found someone worth while, she would revel in the supreme indulgence of yielding up her all; flinging gift after gift upon the bonfire, to feed it: her lesser loves, her friends, her memories, the world's opinion of her, her tangible possessions, her individuality even....
She wanted fervently to vindicate herself of the self-charge of egoism; and chafed at the tardy arrival of the person who would be big enough.
Then, as in a transient flash, it seemed to her that Gareth Temple stood revealed as this person. The revelation happened at the mill-house during that pause after he had owned to her his tamperings with the fate of her book. Something in the proud, sad humility of the confession, confession of weakness and a lost ideal, threw him up to her, clear-edged against a luminous background.... What a blind idiot she had been to expect something worth while in its mere superficial meaning—something magnificent and successful and compelling. This man, this strayed idealist, excusing nothing, asking nothing, acquiescent in his own ill-equipment for everyday contest; this sensitive dreamer, with the fine strong face—enough of quick humanity in him to sin, and enough of nobility to confess his sin.... Surely he was worth while! The divine failure ... to him should be her bonfire.
And he loved her. She had to make him say outright he loved her. It gave her the right to do this which she contemplated.
The fortnight between her resolution and her interview with Leslie Campbell she spent in sorrowful discovery of the extent to which her book mattered after all—output of the best of her brain; how she would have rejoiced in its publication! It was no good telling herself that the labour was the fun, and ought to be compensation in itself. The suggestion met with no inner response.... A book written must be a book shared, or it was purposeless, a mere emotional clearance upon paper. A book written must be a book published.... Ruthlessly she had murdered her brain-child—as once she had murdered love-memory....
And again she tingled to a queer excitement in being able to perform these active interferences with destiny.
Yes—Gareth's book should be published when hers was withdrawn to clear the way for him. He loved his book. It could not but be a beautiful and scholarly expression of what was greatest in himself. Posterity would lose nothing by the exchange.
But that interview with the partners had cost her something—had pulled out resolution to the snapping-point; they had dangled success so very alluringly before her eyes....
Gareth's visit, his inarticulate incredulous wonder, had been reward enough. Tenderly she had loved him, and worshipfully.... But when suddenly he forgot control, and had held her and kissed her as a man kisses a woman—sometimes, then she too had forgotten tenderness and worship, and had given him back the love a woman gives to a man—once.
... And then he had spoken of Kathleen. It was a slight shock, but the girl recovered quickly. She was clenched in her determination that her life and Gareth's should be fused. Obstacles only incited her the more. The question now to be solved was the nature of this particular obstacle. The situation was an old one: husband and wife and the third; but Patricia introduced a variation by resolving in her most sunny headlong fashion to go and see Kathleen, and find out—as she expressed it—exactly what she was up against. Perhaps this wife would also prefer to fight an adversary whose strength she had measured. It was a mere absurd convention that the rival protagonists for the soul and body of a man should not meet and talk it over. Besides, Patricia was curious: was Kathleen fond of him? passionately fond of him? Was she a weak drab little creature for whom one's pity and forbearance would willy-nilly be demanded?—or else a shrew and a tyrant, who loudly and stubbornly would stick out for her rights in Gareth? Kathleen ... intellect, or flesh-and-blood, or a habit? Whichever it was, she would have to go on the bonfire!
Patricia went the next afternoon to Pacific Villa.
... So this was where Gareth lived.... A queer lump came to her throat at sight of the commonplace, hideous little red-brick residence in its row of commonplace red brick. And if this was the house—what might not the wife be like?... Some pretty waxen thing he had idealized when he was dreaming through his twenties; some pretty brainless thing who had grown querulous from social disappointment....
"Oh, my poor man—my poor fine man...."
All this, rushing through her mind, as the tousled maid led her through the tiny hall, and into the parlour.
"Miss O'Neill, ma'am."
And a sigh of relief from Patricia, at sight of the keen haggard face turned questioningly towards her. No, she need make no allowances for this woman; this woman was a fighter.
"Don't say you're pleased to see me; you won't be in a minute, when I've told you why I came. Look here—do you mind if I go straight to the point? ... because I'm rather nervous really; and you do look as if you were of the right stuff!"
Kathleen raised her thin black brows. "You flatter me. I haven't the faintest notion who you are, but a sensation is always pleasant on a dull day.... So sit down, and make yourself at home."
"You're sarcastic—good. It's not a weapon I can use myself; not with much effect, that is—but I can appreciate it in others. Hasn't Gareth told you about me?"
"No—but you have ... now. Well, under the circumstances, it's original of you to call upon me, Miss O'Neill."
"Taken it like a brick," murmured Patricia. "But you aren't fond of him, which accounts for the calmness. That's an enormous weight off my mind. Now, as you can't be quite sure of the circumstances, even after that tell-tale quiver in my voice which I suppose gave the whole show away—or was it my damnable habit of flushing?—do you mind if I just enlighten you?"
"Go on."
Patricia sprang to her feet, clasped her hands behind her, fingers tightly interlocked. In spite of her assumption of lightness, she was finding this interview with Gareth's wife something of a strain.
"I'm in love with your husband, and he's in love with me. We've known each other about a month. I want him, and you've got him ... and unless you and I talk it out clearly and coherently, we can go on messing about for ages. I hate mess—I fancy you do, too. And Gareth is too chivalrous ever to be quite blunt with you over facts."
"I'm glad to hear that you appreciate Gareth," remarked Kathleen, darting her youthful rival an upward look of rapier mockery.
"Youdon't!" Patricia flashed back.
"Indeed I do. With all my heart."
Patricia sat down again, restlessly, on the arm of her chair. "Your heart is not involved in the matter, is it? Quite frankly, now? You must have been dying to say so to someone, since ages. And why not to me?"
"And why shouldn't we all be great friends?—is that the idea?... Really, my dear child, your views are startlingly up-to-date, and your insolence truly remarkable. Are you aware that in the sight of convention and our neighbours, you've done me a bitter wrong?"
"I haven't—yet. And it's not a question of you and me; it's a question of Gareth's happiness."
"Ah ... Gareth's happiness."
"Sneer!—that proves how much it needs attending to."
"Well ... what do you want me to do?"
"Divorce him."
"Hm! You might have hurled that at me on entrance, instead of shilly-shallying."
Patricia fell into the trap. "Did I shilly-shally? How utterly abominable of me. I apologize. But I really and truly brought in the word as soon as I decently could."
"Don't reproach yourself with an excess of consideration. Does Gareth know you've come on this mission?"
"Heavens, no! Wouldn't he be wanting to shield you from me, and shield me from you, and shield everybody all round—except himself ... the darling!"
Kathleen smiled. "In my very presence?"
"Certainly. I'm not ashamed of loving the man. Mrs. Temple—-will you divorce him—if we give you cause?"
"If you so adore him, why ... bother about a divorce?"
"I know what you mean," said Patricia slowly; "and I wouldn't be afraid for myself. The marriage service is a mere trifle to me—may the daughter of a good mother be forgiven for saying so. But Gareth is not the right type of man for an unorthodox love-affair. He would be worrying himself that I was worrying over all the slights and snubs that didn't matter.... And we'd both end by worrying together. I've thought it all out."
"I'm sure you have," said Kathleen politely.
"Isn't all this scathing irony rather unnecessary? I could be marvellously witty and flippant if I chose to exert my talents that way. But I had a sort of feeling that an interview between us two ought to be conducted in a more reverent spirit."
The other shrugged her shoulders. "Oh—reverent!" She leant back her head against the worn antimacassar, and half closed her eyes. Patricia, watching her, thought in a spasm of generous admiration, how handsome she was, with her aquiline features and sombre colouring and bent weary mouth—"Like an Indian brave...."
And Kathleen, behind the mask of immobility, was absorbed in a concentrated vengeful loathing of the man who had dared shatter her romance, her last hot chance of romance ... and then himself flaunt a love-affair. Let him go? Divorce him? Make the way easy for him with this splendid wilful young creature who thought him divine? God in heaven, no!... She would keep him from happiness, keep him dragging on beside her, though his proximity were doubly hateful to herself. Never again would she know the thrill of being desired.... Gareth should be made to suffer now for having, in an access of petty malevolence, interfered with her on the night she was to have joined Napier Kirby.
... Slowly she lifted her eyelids, to encounter Patricia's impatient gaze.
"Well?"
"I don't think I'm going to divorce Gareth for your pleasure. As I happen to be in possession, I'll stick to my nine points of the law, thanks."
The girl's lip curled scornfully. "The dog-in-the-manger attitude—I thought better of your intellect. What good will it do you, to live on with a man you don't love? Besides, it's indecent!"
"Not indecent to throw yourself at the head of a married man, I suppose?"
"Yes, very—if I had. Look here, don't let's descend to vituperation. You won't give him up. And you won't give me a reason."
"Are we on a level with our claims, that I should have to give you a reason?"
"Yes; tradition kicked in the wind—we are. And you want your freedom—oh yes, you do!—and won't take it. You even faintly dislike Gareth—but he's yours.... Frankly, Mrs. Temple, you make me feel as though I'd put my hand in a glue-pot."
The ring of stripped exasperation in Patricia's voice sounded on Kathleen's consciousness with an uncanny sense of familiarity ... and not for the first time that afternoon. It was her own voice speaking to Gareth—trying to urge him to some clear decision.... This girl was strangely an echo of her own girlhood; but with all the gathered advantages of a new generation; so that she marched gaily and by right-of-way where Kathleen had been forced to struggle through thorny barriers.
But what a queer fatality of blindness that Gareth should not perceive the resemblance; that again he should be drawn and held and enchanted by the same personality that during sixteen years' intimacy had been goading him to madness.... If he were able to marry this girl, she would find him out soon enough; soon enough be up against that indefinable rottenness that Kathleen had named Atrophy of the Initiative. And this girl would not bear with it, any more than Kathleen had borne with it; but would contest it with all her vitality and passionate impatience ... and Gareth would hear again that driving note he so detested, from the lips he had newly kissed in love; and be hurt as he had not been hurt for years ... a great many years; because since he had ceased to love Kathleen, she had had to flog him harder and ever harder before she could produce any effect on his numbed spirit....
Where he cared once more, he could once more quiver to pain.
So would it not be a far subtler revenge, and far more poignant, to let him go to this girl ... and let him meet with his disillusion all over again?
Kathleen made her decision....
"I've changed my mind," she said abruptly to Patricia; "I do want my freedom. You can have Gareth—when you like."
Patricia drew her brows together, puzzled at this sudden yielding of obduracy.
"You mean you'll divorce him?"
"Not necessary, my dear. Gareth and I are not married."
... After a pause. "You seem astounded? And yet you remarked just now that you were ready enough to dispense with the ceremony yourself."
"Yes—I am ... but——This is 1913, and we're beginning to open our minds to the proposition of free love—monogamous free love, at least. But surely it was an unusual step, twenty years ago?"
"Sixteen years," corrected the other sharply; "I'm not quite prehistoric yet."
"... And Gareth—I can't imagine him——" For the first time the girl had dropped her easy self-possession; spoke in broken stammering sentences. She had set forth to deal with the situation of a wife to be discarded as quickly and kindly as possible.... And here was her man's mistress veritably unburdening herself of him as though he were an encumbrance: "You can have him when you like."... It staggered Patricia to find her wish so attainable; as though she had been gazing longingly at an object set about with spiked railings—and suddenly the railings were fallen flat to the ground, and she might advance as she chose....
"Did Gareth tell you I was his wife?"
"N-no. No, I don't think he did." Patricia laughed, and some of her embarrassment went. "D'you know, I'm afraid I was conventional enough to take it for granted. The Lord knows why! I've a decently improper point of view as a rule. But Gareth does give the impression of what is called 'a marrying man.'"
"You're right—and very keen-sighted. He is a marrying man. It was I who was fool enough to try and remould what nature had cast him for. I had lived too long and too intimately with a commonplace couple—my brother and his wife—and had gradually sickened at the state of marriage which deadened live things to clay. I thought that omission of the actual ceremony would remove that possibility.... What do you think of my brilliant reasoning?" with a harsh laugh.
And Patricia said gently: "It worked out to exactly the same thing, of course."
"It worked out—a little bit worse."
... A barrel-organ started to play its tunes in the road just outside. The sudden loud jangle fell startlingly into the silence which had succeeded Kathleen's remark....
"Will you have some tea, Miss O'Neill?"
"Funny!" thought Patricia; "that's what I'd have said at this juncture...." And aloud: "Thanks—yes, with the utmost goodwill. It would be so melodramatic for us to refuse to break bread with each other."
"I appreciate your magnanimity. Especially as you've obtained what you wanted from me."
"You have a pretty gift for repartee, haven't you?"
Kathleen went to the door, and gave an order to Maggie. "What a tragedy for Gareth to have had to live with it for sixteen years ... is that what you were thinking?"
It was. And Patricia owned it cheerfully; thanking her stars the while that she had this woman to cope with, and not a tearful bit of helplessness, who would have pleaded: "Don't take him away—don't—he's all I've got...."
She was curious to hear more of the long-drawn-out liaison which had proved such a failure. "How did you first meet, you and Gareth?" as her hostess poured out the tea which had just been brought in, and tendered the thick bread-and-butter. These were curious circumstances for a friendly meal ... and as their eyes met, each gave the other reassurance as to her own appreciation of the existing blend of humour and irony.
"Where did we meet? Oh, accidentally, on a summer holiday. I was a teacher, shepherding a flock of chattering schoolgirls. He was a good young man, seeing life with a band of touring botanists. We ran away from our respective responsibilities, and enjoyed a most delightful month at a mountain village called Alpenruh—do you know it? No? Perhaps Gareth will take you there for your honeymoon.... It was an entirely platonic affair, and it should have ended as such. But when we got back to London, our horrified families seemed to expect Gareth to repair the wrong he hadn't done me—and he went to pieces before their attitude. One day he came galloping up to me on a metaphorical charger, insisting that I should marry him...."
The organ outside effected an uneasy gulping transition from one tune into another.... And absent-mindedly Kathleen refilled Patricia's cup, as she brooded over that scene in Nelly Morrison's dining-room.... Nicholas's toys bestrewing the floor—old Mr. Jeyne asleep in the corner—Nelly ostentatiously removing the children, to give her sister-in-law a chance.
And Patricia too was seeing a vision—a serious young knight, incredibly handsome, with his liquid dark eyes and waving black hair, setting forth on his quest for right.... She wished she had known Gareth in those days; how tenderly she could have loved his rapt boyish ideals.
This Kathleen—she was like an eternal east wind; stimulating to those who liked the chill and the nip of it—Patricia did, for one—but deadly suffering to a nature unpractical and romantic, like Gareth's.
"You refused to marry him?"
"Yes. I talked him over. I was older than he—four years older; and had the stronger will. Our respective families promptly cast us off, as might have been expected. And thus we embarked upon—the idyll of Pacific Villa. You see what it's made of us."
"And neither of you broke away? You dragged on—feeling like this?"
The melancholy in Kathleen's eyes deepened to bitterness.
"We had nothing tangible to break away from, except the necessity of keeping up an illusion that it was all divine.... And you try breaking away from that! It's like a tough sticky web ... an invisible web—I'd sooner have steel chains to smash. Break away?—when already you are free, except for voluntary propinquity.... My dear child, you are very beautiful and immensely wise—but you don't know what you're talking about. I couldn't budge, becauseIhad talked Gareth into the situation, and had to keep up a feverish pretence that it was all right—all right—quite different to the usual dreary matrimonial failure; bound to be different, because we weren't married. For my vindication in his eyes, in my own eyes, for my pride's sake, I had to keep up the strain.... And besides, I dared not own that our life was exactly, down to its hatefullest detail of a burst boiler on a winter's day, what I had so dreaded——"
Patricia broke in impetuously. "And Gareth would not break away for fear you might think it was because he held you in any less esteem than if he had married you. That was like Gareth——"
"Hm. Always ready with a pretty picture to justify him, aren't you?"
"And you're always ready with a taunt to ridicule him. It would be vain to pretend I'm violently astonished the household wasn't all harmony, Mrs. Temple——"
"My name is Morrison. I've anticipated your future title long enough, Miss O'Neill.... More crimson blushes? That's an incongruous charm of yours, considering how extremely modern you are in all else."
"Yes, isn't it? Quite old-world, one might say!" Unabashed, Patricia rose to go. "Good-bye. I won't say that we've had such a delightful chat and when are we to have another?—for I take it that this interview is for one performance only. But—wish me luck, won't you? Just because you're the last person in the world from whom I ought to be begging good wishes." She held out her hand; Kathleen took it.
"Certainly I wish you luck," stolidly and without hesitation. Then with an almost witch-like lilt of voice and twist of the lip, she spoke again. "I leave Gareth to you with the completest confidence."
"That's—fine of you!... Good-bye——"
Patricia ran down the three steps, and clanged the little gate behind her.
"And she is a jolly fine person," she reflected further, as she walked rapidly away from Pacific Villa; "but it was her fault, all the same, that they came to grief, and that his whole career was mucked up. Lord! sixteen years at that pitch of strain, in that beastly toadstool house, pretending all the time...." She vowed that she would make up to Gareth for this woman's hard unmerciful judgments. And again she murmured, as on entrance: "My poor man...."
"Good-bye. I'm going."
Gareth looked up in bewilderment at the sight of Kathleen, in her outdoor clothes, standing in the dining-room doorway.
"Going? Where?"
"Just going. You won't try to stop me this time, will you?"
"Yes; certainly I will. You can't walk out of the house in this—this haphazard fashion."
"You mean, that I should discuss it for weeks beforehand, and write all the luggage-labels twice over. That's not my way, Gareth. Besides, as was rightly observed by that big radiant young person with the green eyes, it's indecent, under the circumstances, for us to go on sharing ... our meals."
"Patricia!"
"She had tea with me this afternoon," Kathleen explained casually, drawing on her worn-out gloves; "and both being competent creatures, we settled up matters without you. By the way, you might let me have some money; any loose cash you have about you. We'll call it wages in lieu of notice, to save my dignity. My boxes will be sent after me directly I let Maggie know my address; I've given orders. Thank you, that's plenty.... Good-bye."
"But—what are you going to do? Kathleen, Imustknow ... considering——"
"Considering the long and happy years we've dwelt together?" she scoffed. "You've not the slightest claim to know, except sentimentalism. And I don't want bits of you still hanging about me, like wool from the box in which I've been smothered. Take the girl—I genuinely congratulate your choice—and be thankful you're quit of me—as I'm thankful to be quit of you!"
That stabbed him, even in his dazed condition resultant upon her announcement. After all, he had endured patiently during sixteen years of monotonous strife. He had not run away ... not attempted once to run away. "I'm sorry, Kathleen. I did my best...."
"Especially on a certain occasion last October. If you had let me go then...."
And again, subdued by the gloom of passionate regret which for an instant darkened her face, he repeated, humbly and ineffectually: "I'm sorry...."
"Well—we needn't linger any more over the farewells, need we?"
"Won't you wish me luck?" he entreated. And wondered why her laugh grated so harshly.... They were really humorous, these two people in love, each begging her for a final blessing on their union.
"With Patricia? Oh yes, I wish you luck."... An elfin gleam shot on him from beneath her heavy eyelids.
A few seconds later, and he heard the front door bang.
He stood motionless, one hand clenched on the soiled plush tablecloth ... gradually it relaxed.
He had once been given a book and his freedom. Both had been snatched away from him. Now both were restored.
Wonderingly, he looked round at the walls; hideous dingy pattern of red flowers clumped on a brown background. This room, in which he and Kathleen had sat for two meals a day—three on Sundays—sixteen years—one must subtract the recurring summer holidays ... or add them on—which was it?... And the dusty black cat with its staring eyes had overheard all that had been said at those meals—all that had not been said.
He took his writing-case to the table; and began a letter to his house-agent.
"Pacific Villa,"Hammersmith."Jan. 6th."Dear Sir,"I am desirous of sub-letting this house, which is mine on a seven-years' lease renewed two years ago. Will you therefore...."
"Pacific Villa,"Hammersmith."Jan. 6th.
"Dear Sir,
"I am desirous of sub-letting this house, which is mine on a seven-years' lease renewed two years ago. Will you therefore...."