Matravers was suddenly conscious of an odd sense of disturbanceMatravers was suddenly conscious of an odd sense of disturbance
“If Mr. Fergusson is right—and he isa pretty good judge—you won’t regret having done so,” she remarked. “He thinks it is going to have a big run.”
“He may be right,” Matravers answered. “For all our sakes, I hope so!”
“It will be a magnificent opportunity for your friend.”
Matravers looked over towards Berenice. She was talking eagerly to Fergusson, whose dark, handsome head was very close to hers, and in whose eyes was already evident his growing admiration. Matravers was suddenly conscious of an odd sense of disturbance. He was grateful to Adelaide Robinson for her intervention. She had risen to her feet, and glanced downwards at the little brougham drawn up below.
“I am so sorry to go,” she said; “but I positively must make some calls this afternoon.”
Fergusson rose also, with obvious regret, and they left together.
“Don’t forget,” he called back from the door; “we read our parts to-morrow, and rehearsals begin on Thursday.”
“I have it all down,” Berenice answered. “I will do my best to be ready for Thursday.”
Berenice remained standing, looking thoughtfully after the little brougham, which was being driven down Piccadilly.
Matravers came back to her, and laid his hand gently upon her arm.
“You must not think of going yet,” he said. “I want you to stay and have tea with me.”
“I should like to,” she answered. “I seem to have so much to say to you.”
He piled her chair with cushions and drew it back into the shade. Then he lit a cigarette, and sat down by her side.
“I suppose you must think that I am very ungrateful,” she said. “I have scarcely said ‘thank you’ yet, have I?”
“You will please me best by never saying it,” he answered. “I only hope that it will be a step you will never regret.”
“How could I?”
He looked at her steadily, a certain grave concentration of thought manifest in his dark eyes. Berenice was looking her best that afternoon. She was certainly a very beautiful and a very distinguished-looking woman. Her eyes met his frankly; her lips were curved in a faintly tender smile.
“Well, I hardly know,” he said. “You are going to be a popular actress. Henceforth the stage will have claims upon you! It will become your career.”
“You have plenty of confidence.”
“I have absolute confidence in you,” he declared, “and Fergusson is equally confident about the play; chance has given you this opportunity—the result is beyond question! Yet I confess that I have a presentiment. If the manuscript of ‘TheHeart of the People’ were in my hands at this moment, I think that I would tear it into little pieces, and watch them flutter down on to the pavement there.”
“I do not understand you,” she said softly. “You say that you have no doubt——”
“It is because I have no doubt—it is because I know that it will make you a popular and a famous actress. You will gain this. I wonder what you will lose.”
She moved restlessly on her chair.
“Why should I lose anything?”
“It is only a presentiment,” he reminded her. “I pray that you may not lose anything. Yet you are coming under a very fascinating influence. It is your personality I am afraid of. You are going to belong definitely to a profession which is at once the most catholic and the most narrowing in the world. I believe that you are strong enough to stand alone, to remainyourself. I pray that it may be so, and yet, there is just the shadow of the presentiment. Perhaps it is foolish.”
Their chairs were close together; he suddenly felt the perfume of her hair and the touch of her fingers upon his hand. Her face was quite close to his.
“At least,” she murmured, “I pray that I may never lose your friendship.”
“If only I could ensure you as confidently the fulfilment of all your desires,” he answered, “you would be a very happy woman. I am too lonely a man, Berenice, to part with any of my few joys. Whether you change or no, you must never change towards me.”
She was silent. There were no signs left of the brilliant levity which had made their little luncheon pass off so successfully. She sat with her head resting upon her elbow, gazing steadily up at the little white clouds which floated over the housetops. Atea equipage was brought out and deftly arranged between them.
“To-day,” Matravers said, “I am going to have the luxury of having my tea made for me. Please come back from dreamland and realize the Englishman’s idyll of domesticity.”
She turned in her chair, and smiled upon him.
“I can do it,” she assured him. “I believe you doubt my ability, but you need not.”
They talked lightly for some time—an art which Matravers found himself to be acquiring with wonderful facility. Then there was a pause. When she spoke again, it was in an altogether different tone.
“I can do it,” she assured him. “I believe you doubt my ability, but you need not”“I can do it,” she assured him. “I believe you doubt my ability, but you need not”
“I want you to answer me,” she said, “it is not too late. Shall I give up Bathilde—and the stage? Listen! You do not know anything of my circumstances. I am not dependent upon either the stageor my writing for a living. I ask you for your honest advice. Shall I give it up?”
“You are placing a very heavy responsibility upon my shoulders,” he answered her thoughtfully. “Yet I will try to answer you honestly. I should be happier if I could advise you to give it up! But I cannot! You have the gift—you must use it. The obligation of self-development is heaviest upon the shoulders of those whose foreheads Nature’s twin-sister has touched with fire! I would it were any other gift, Berenice; but that is only a personal feeling. No! you must follow out your destiny. You have an opportunity of occupying a unique and marvellous position. You can create a new ideal. Only be true always to yourself. Be very jealous indeed of absorbing any of the modes of thought and life which will spring up everywhere around you in the new world. Remember it is the old ideals which are the sweetest and thetruest.... Forgive me, please! I am talking like a pedagogue.”
“You are talking as I like to be talked to,” she answered. “Yet you need not fear that my head will be turned, even if the success should come. You forget that I am almost an old woman. The religion of my life has long been conceived and fashioned.”
He looked at her with a curious smile. If thirty seemed old to her, what must she think of him?
“I wonder,” he said simply, “if you would think me impertinent if I were to ask you to tell me more about yourself. How is it that you are altogether alone in the world?”
The words had scarcely left his lips before he would have given much to have recalled them. He saw her start, flinch back as though she had been struck, and a grey pallor spread itself over her face, almost to the lips. She looked at him fixedlyfor several moments without speaking.
“One day,” she said, “I will tell you all that. You shall know everything. But not now; not yet.”
“Whenever you will,” he answered, ignoring her evident agitation. “Come! what do you say to a walk down through the Park? To-day is a holiday for me—a day to be marked with a white stone. I have registered an oath that I will not even look at a pen. Will you not help me to keep it?”
“By all means,” she answered blithely. “I will take you home with me, and keep you there till the hour of temptation has passed. To-day is to be my last day of idleness! I too have need of a white stone.”
“We will place them,” he said, “side by side.”
Matravers’ luncheon party marked the termination for some time of any confidential intercourse between Berenice and himself. Every moment of her time was claimed by Fergusson, who, in his anxiety to produce a play from which he hoped so much before the wane of the season, gave no one any rest, and worked himself almost into a fever. There were two full rehearsals a day, and many private ones at her rooms. Matravers calling there now and then found Fergusson always in possession, and by degrees gave it up in despair. He had a horror of interfering in any way, even of being asked for his advice concerning the practical reproduction of his work. Fergusson’s invitations to the rehearsals at the theatre he rejected absolutely. As the time grew shorter, Berenice became pale and almost haggard with the unceasing work which Fergusson’s anxiety imposed upon her. One night she sent for Matravers, and hastening to her rooms, he found her for the first time alone.
“Do you know that man is driving me slowly mad?”“Do you know that man is driving me slowly mad?”
“I have sent Mr. Fergusson home,” she exclaimed, welcoming him with outstretched hands, but making no effort to rise from her easy chair. “Do you know that man is driving me slowly mad? I want you to interfere.”
“What can I do?” he said.
“Anything to bring him to reason! He is over-rehearsing! Every line, every sentence, every gesture, he makes the subject of the most exhaustive deliberation. He will have nothing spontaneous; it is positively stifling. A few more days of it and my reason will go! He is a great actor,but he does not seem to understand that to reduce everything to mathematical proportions is to court failure.”
“I will go and see him,” Matravers said. “You wish for no more rehearsals, then?”
“I do not want to see his face again before the night of the performance,” she declared vehemently. “I am perfect in my part. I have thought about it—dreamed about it. I have lived more as ‘Bathilde’ than as myself for the last three weeks. Perhaps,” she continued more slowly, “you will not be satisfied. I scarcely dare to hope that you will be. Yet I have reached my limitations. The more I am made to rehearse now, the less natural I shall become.”
“I will speak to Fergusson,” Matravers promised. “I will go and see him to-night. But so far as you are concerned, I have no fear; you will be the ‘Bathilde’ of my heart and my brain. You cannot fail!”
She rose to her feet. “It is,” she said, “The desire of my life to make your ‘Bathilde’ a creature of flesh and blood. If I fail, I will never act again.”
“If you fail,” he said, “the fault will be in my conception, not in your execution. But indeed we will not consider anything so improbable. Let us put the play behind us for a time and talk of something else! You must be weary of it.”
She shook her head. “Not that! never that! Just now it is my life, only it is the details which weary me, the eternal harping upon the mechanical side of it. Will you read to me for a little? and I will make you some coffee. You are not in a hurry, are you?”
“I have come,” he said, “to stay with you until you send me away! I will read to you with pleasure. What will you have?”
She handed him a little volume of poems;he glanced at the title and made a faint grimace. They were his own.
Nevertheless, he read for an hour, till the streets below grew silent, and his own voice, unaccustomed to such exercise, lost something of its usual clearness. Then he laid the volume down, and there was silence between them.
“I have been thinking,” he said at last, “of a singular incident in connection with your performance at the New Theatre; it was brought into my mind just then. I meant to have mentioned it before.”
She looked up with only a slight show of interest. Those days at the theatre seemed to her now to be very far behind. There was nothing in connection with them which she cared to remember.
“It was the night of my first visit there,” he continued. “There is a terrible scene at the end of the second act between Herdrine and her husband—you recollect it, ofcourse. Just as you finished your denunciation, I distinctly heard a curious cry from the back of the house. It was a greater tribute to your acting than the applause, for it was genuine.”
“The piece was gloomy enough,” she remarked, “to have dissolved the house in tears.”
“At least,” he said, “it wrung the heart of one man. For I have not told you all. I was interested enough to climb up into the amphitheatre. The man sat there alone amongst a wilderness of empty seats. He was the picture of abject misery. I could scarcely see his face, but his attitude was convincing. It was not a thing of chance either. I made some remark about him to an attendant, and he told me that night after night that man had occupied the same seat, always following every line of the play with the same mournful concentration, never speaking to any one, never movingfrom his seat from the beginning of the play to the end.”
“He must have been,” she declared, “a person of singularly morbid taste. When I think of it now I shiver. I would not play Herdrine again for worlds.”
“I am very glad to hear you say so,” he said, smiling. “Do you know that to me the most interesting feature of the play was its obvious effect upon this man. Its extreme pessimism is too much paraded, is laid on altogether with too thick a hand to ring true. The thing is an involved nightmare. One feels that as a work of art it is never convincing, yet underneath it all there must be something human, for it found its way into the heart of one man.”
“It is possible,” she remarked, “that he was mad. The man who found it sufficiently amusing to come to the theatre night after night could scarcely have been in full possession of his senses.”
“That is possible,” he admitted; “but I do not believe it. The man’s face was sad enough, but it was not the face of a madman.”
“You did see his face, then?”
“On the last night of the play,” he continued. “You remember you were going on to Lady Truton’s, so I did not come behind. But I had a fancy to see you for a moment, and I came round into Pitt Street just as you were driving off. On the other side of the way this man was standing watching you!”
She looked at him with a suddenly kindled interest—or was it fear?—in her dark eyes. The colour had left her cheeks; she was white to the lips.
“Watching me?”
“Yes. As your carriage drove off he stood watching it. I don’t know what prompted me, but I crossed the street to speak to him. He seemed such a lone,mournful figure standing there half dazed, shabby, muttering softly to himself. But when he saw me coming, he gave one half-frightened look at me and ran, literally ran down the street on to the Strand. I could not follow,—the police would have stopped him. So he disappeared.”
“You saw his face. What was he like?”
Berenice had leaned right back amongst the yielding cushions of her divan, and he could scarcely see her face. Yet her voice sounded to him strange and forced. He looked at her in some surprise.
“I had a glimpse of it. It was an ordinary face enough; in fact, it disappointed me a little. But the odd part of it was that it seemed vaguely familiar to me. I have seen it before, often. Yet, try as I will, I cannot recollect where, or under what circumstances.”
“At Oxford,” she suggested. “By the bye, what was your college?”
“St. John’s. No, I do not think,—I hope that it was not at Oxford. Some day I shall think of it quite suddenly.”
Berenice rose from her chair with a sudden, tempestuous movement and stood before him.
“Listen!” she exclaimed. “Supposing I were to tell you that I knew or could guess who that man was—why he came! Oh, if I were to tell you that I were a fraud,that——”
Matravers stopped her.
“I beg,” he said, “that you will tell me nothing!”
There was a short silence. Berenice seemed on the point of breaking down. She was nervously lacing and interlacing her fingers. Her breath was coming spasmodically.
“Berenice,” he said softly, “you are over-wrought; you are not quite yourself to-night. Do not tell me anything. Indeed,there is no need for me to know; just as you are I am content with you, and proud to be your friend.”
“Ah!”
She sat down again. He could not see her face, but he fancied that she was weeping. He himself found his customary serenity seriously disturbed. Perhaps for the first time in his life he found himself not wholly the master of his emotions. The atmosphere of the little room, the perfume of the flowers, the soft beauty of the woman herself, whose breath fell almost upon his cheek, affected him as nothing of the sort had ever done before. He rose abruptly to his feet.
“You will be so much better alone,” he said, taking her fingers and smoothing them softly in his for a moment. “I am going away now.”
“Yes. Good-by!”
At the threshold he paused. She hadnot looked up at him. She was still sitting there with bowed head and hidden face. He closed the door softly, and went out.
The enthusiasm with which Matravers’ play had been received on the night of its first appearance was, if anything, exceeded on the night before the temporary closing of the theatre for the usual summer vacation. The success of the play itself had never been for a moment doubtful. For once the critics, the general press, and the public, were in entire and happy agreement. The first night had witnessed an extraordinary scene. An audience as brilliant as any which could have been brought together in the first city in the world, had flatly refused to leave the theatre until Matravers himself, reluctant and ill-pleased, had joined Fergusson and Berenice before the footlights; and now on the eve of its temporarywithdrawal something of the same sort was threatened again, and Matravers only escaped by standing up in the front of his box, and bowing his acknowledgments to the delighted audience.
It was a well-deserved success, for certainly as a play it was a brilliant exception to anything which had lately been produced upon the English stage. The worn-out methods and motives of most living playwrights were rigorously avoided; everything about it was fresh and spontaneous. Its sentiment was relieved by the most delicate vein of humour. It was everywhere tender and human. The dialogue, to which Matravers had devoted his usual fastidious care, was polished and sprightly; there was not anywhere a single dull or unmusical line. It was a classic, the critics declared,—the first literary play by a living author which London had witnessed for many years. The bookings for months aheadwere altogether phenomenal. Fergusson saw a certain fortune within his hands, and Matravers, sharing also in the golden harvest, found another and a still greater cause for satisfaction.
For Berenice had justified his selection. The same night, as the greatest of critics, speaking through the columns of the principal daily paper, had said, which had presented to them a new writer for the stage, had given them also a new actress. She had surprised Matravers, she had amazed Fergusson, who found himself compelled to look closely to his own laurels. In short, she was a success, descended, if not from the clouds, at least from the mists of Isteinism, but accorded, without demur or hesitation, a foremost place amongst the few accepted actresses. Her future and his position were absolutely secured, and her reputation, as Matravers was happy to think, was made, not as the portrayer ofa sickly and unnatural type of diseased womanhood, but as the woman of his own creation, a very sweet and pure English lady.
The house emptied at last, and Matravers made his way behind, where many of Fergusson’s friends had gathered together, and where congratulations were the order of the day. A species of informal reception was going on, champagne cup and sandwiches were being handed around and a general air of extreme good humour pervaded the place. Berenice was the centre of a group of men amongst whom Matravers was annoyed to see Thorndyke. If he could have withdrawn unseen, he would have done so; but already he was surrounded. A little stir at the entrance attracted his attention. He turned round and found Fergusson presenting him to a royal personage, who was graciously pleased, however, to remember a formermeeting, and waved away the words of introduction.
It chanced, without any design on his part, that Berenice and he left almost at the same time, and met near the stage door. She dropped Fergusson’s arm—he had left his guests to see her to her carriage—and motioned to Matravers.
“Won’t you see me home?” she asked quietly. “I have sent my maid on, she was so tired, and I am all alone.”
“I shall be very pleased,” Matravers answered. “May I come in with you?” Fergusson lingered for a moment or two at the carriage door, and then they drove off. Berenice, with a little sigh, leaned back amongst the cushions.
“You are very tired, I am afraid,” he said gently. “The last few weeks must have been a terrible strain upon you.”
“They have been in many ways,” she said, “the happiest of my life.”
“I am glad of that; yet it is quite time that you had a rest.”
She did not answer him,—she did not speak again until the carriage drew up before her house. He handed her out, and opened the door with the latch-key which she passed over to him.
“Good night,” he said, holding out his hand.
“You must please come in for a little time,” she begged. “I have seen you scarcely at all lately. You have not even told me about your travels.”
He hesitated for a moment, then seeing the shade upon her face, he stepped forward briskly.
“I should like to come very much,” he said, “only you must be sure to send me away if I stay too long. You are tired already.”
“I am tired,” she admitted, leading the way upstairs, “only it will rest me muchmore to have you talk to me than to go to bed. Mine is scarcely a physical fatigue. My nerves are all quivering. I could not sleep! Tell me where you have been.”
Matravers took the seat to which she motioned him, and obeyed her, watching, whilst she stooped down over the fire and poured water into a brazen coffee-pot, and took another cup and saucer from a quaint little cupboard. She made the coffee carefully and well, and Matravers, as he lit his cigarette, found himself wondering at this new and very natural note of domesticity in her.
Matravers found himself wondering at this new and very natural note of domesticity in herMatravers found himself wondering at this new and very natural note of domesticity in her
All the time he was talking, telling her in a few chosen sentences of the little tour for which she really was responsible—of the pink-and-white apple-blossoms of Brittany, of the peasants in their quaint and picturesque garb, and of the old time-worn churches, the exploration of which had constituted his chief interest. She listenedeagerly; every word of his description, so vivid and picturesque, was interesting. When he had finished, he looked at her thoughtfully.
“You too,” he said, “need a change! You have worked very hard, and you will need all your strength for the autumn season.”
“I am going away,” she said, “very soon. Perhaps to-morrow.”
He looked at her surprised.
“So soon!”
“Why not? What is there to keep me? The theatre is closed. London is positively stifling. I am longing for some fresh air.”
He was silent for a moment or two. It was so natural that she should go, and yet in a sense it was so unexpected. Looking steadily across at her as she leaned back amongst the cushions of her chair, her dark eyes watching his face, her attitude and expression alike convincing him in somesubtle way of her satisfaction at his presence, he became suddenly conscious that the time which he had dimly anticipated with mingled fear and pleasure was now close at hand. His heart was beating with a quickened throb! He was aghast as he realized with quick, unerring truth the full effect of her words upon him. He drew a sharp little breath and walked to the open window, taking in a long draught of the fresh night air, sweetly scented with the perfume of the flowers in her boxes. Her voice came to him low and sweet from the interior of the room.
“There is a little farmhouse in Devonshire which belongs to me. It is nothing but a tumbledown, grey stone place; but there are hills, and meadows, and country lanes, and the sea. I want to go there.”
“Away from me!” he cried hoarsely.
“Will you come too?” she murmured.
She did not answer him. But indeed there was no needShe did not answer him. But indeed there was no need
He turned back into the room and lookedat her. She was standing up, coming towards him; a faint tinge of pink colour had stained her cheek—her bosom was heaving—her eyes were challenging his with a light which needed no borrowed brilliancy. Go with her! The man’s birthright, his passion, which through the long days of his austere life had lain dormant and undreamt of swept up from his heart. He held out his arms, and she came across the room to him with a sweet effort of self-yielding which yet waited for while it invited his embrace.
“You mean it?” he murmured, “you are sure?”
She did not answer him. But indeed there was no need.
Matravers never altogether forgot the sensations with which he awoke on the following morning. Notwithstanding a sleepless night, he rose and made a deliberate toilet with a wonderful buoyancy of spirits. The change which had come into his life was a thing so wonderful that he could scarcely realize it. Yet it was true! He had found the one experience in life which had hitherto been denied him, and he was amazed at the full extent of its power and sweetness. He felt himself to be many years younger! Old dreams and enthusiasms were suddenly revived. Once more his foot seemed to be poised upon the threshold of life! After all, he had not yet reached middle age! He was surprised tofind himself so young. Marriage, although so far as regarded himself he had never imagined it a possible part of his life, was a condition against which he held no vows. Instinctively he felt that with Berenice, existence must inevitably become a fuller and a richer thing. The old days of philosophic quietude, of self-contained and cultured ease, had been in themselves very pleasant, but his was altogether too large a nature to become in any way the slave of habit. He looked forward to their abandonment without regret,—what was to come would be a continuation of the best part of them set to the sweetest music. He was conscious of holding himself differently as he entered his breakfast-room! Was it his fancy, or was the perfume of his little bowl of roses indeed more sweet this morning, the sunshine mellower and warmer, the flavour of his grapes more delicate? At any rate, he ate with a rare appetite, andthen whilst he smoked a cigarette afterwards, an idea came to him! The colour rose in his cheeks,—he felt like a boy. In a few minutes he was walking through the streets, smiling softly to himself as he thought of his strange errand.
He found his way to a jeweller’s shop in Bond Street, and asked for pearls! They were the only jewels she cared for, and he made a deliberate and careful choice, wondering more than once, with a curious sort of shyness, whether the man who served him so gravely had any idea for what purpose he was buying the ring which had been the object of his first inquiry. He walked home with a little square box in his hand, and a much smaller one in his waistcoat pocket. On the pavement he had hesitated for a moment, but a glance at his watch had decided him. It was too early to go and see her yet. He walked back to his rooms! There was a little work which he must finishduring the day. He had better attempt it at once.
On his desk a letter was waiting for him. With a little tremor of pleasure he recognized her handwriting. He took it over to the tall sunny window, with a smile of anticipation upon his lips. He broke the seal and read:
“My love, the daylight has come, and I am here where you left me, a very happy and yet a very unhappy woman! Is it indeed only a few hours since we parted? It all seems so different. The starlight and the night wind and the deep, sweet silence have gone! There is a great shaft of yellow light in the sky, and a bank of purple clouds where the sun has risen. Only the perfume of your roses lying crushed in my lap remains to prove to me that it has not all been a very sweet dream. Dearest, I have a secret to tell you,—the sorrow ofmy life. The time has come when you must, alas! know it. Last night it was enough for me to hear you tell me of your love! Nothing else in the world seemed worthy of a moment’s thought. But as you were leaving, you whispered something about our marriage. How sweetly it sounded,—and yet how bitterly! For, dear, I can never marry you. I am already married! I can see you start when you read this. You will blame me for having kept this secret from you. Very likely you will be angry with me. Only for the love of God pity me a little!“My story is so commonplace. I can tell it you in a few sentences. I married when I was seventeen at my father’s command, to save him from ruin. My husband, like my father, was a city merchant. I did not love him, but then I did not know what love was. My girlhood was a miserable one. My father belonged to the sect ofCalvinists. Our home was hideous, and we were poor. Any release from it was welcome. John Drage, the man whom I married, had one good quality. He was generous. He bought me pictures, and books—things which I always craved. When my father’s command came, it did not seem a hardship. I married him. He was not so much a bad man, perhaps, as a weak one. We lived together for four years. I had one child, a little boy. Then I made a horrible discovery. My husband, whom I knew to be a drunkard, was hideously, debasingly false to me. The bald facts are these. I myself saw him drunk and helped into his carriage by one of those women whose trade it is to prey upon such creatures. This was not an exceptional occurrence. It was a habit.“There, I have told you. It would have hurt me less to have cut off my right hand. But there shall be no misunderstanding,nor any concealment between us. I left John Drage’s house that night. I took little Freddy with me; but when I refused to return, he stole the child away from me. Then I drew a sharp line at that point in my life. I had neither friend nor relation, but there was some money which had been left me soon after my marriage. I lived alone, and I began to write. That is my story. That is why I cannot marry you.“Dear, I want you, now that you know my very ugly history, to consider this. Whilst I was married, I was faithful to my husband; since then I have been faithful to my self-respect. But I have told myself always that if ever the time came when I should love, I would give myself to that man without hesitation and without shame. And that time has come, dear. You know that I love you! Your coming has been the great awakening joy of my life. Nothing that has gone before, nothing that thefuture may hold, can ever trouble me if we are together—you and I. I have suffered more than most women. But you will help me to forget it.“I sit here with my face to the morning, and I seem to see a new life stretching out before me. Is not love a beautiful thing! I am not ambitious any more. I do not want any other object in life than to make you happy, and to be made happy by you. I began this letter with a heavy heart and with trembling fingers. But now I am quite calm and quite happy. I know that you will come to me. You see I have great faith in your love. Thank God for it!“Berenice.”
“My love, the daylight has come, and I am here where you left me, a very happy and yet a very unhappy woman! Is it indeed only a few hours since we parted? It all seems so different. The starlight and the night wind and the deep, sweet silence have gone! There is a great shaft of yellow light in the sky, and a bank of purple clouds where the sun has risen. Only the perfume of your roses lying crushed in my lap remains to prove to me that it has not all been a very sweet dream. Dearest, I have a secret to tell you,—the sorrow ofmy life. The time has come when you must, alas! know it. Last night it was enough for me to hear you tell me of your love! Nothing else in the world seemed worthy of a moment’s thought. But as you were leaving, you whispered something about our marriage. How sweetly it sounded,—and yet how bitterly! For, dear, I can never marry you. I am already married! I can see you start when you read this. You will blame me for having kept this secret from you. Very likely you will be angry with me. Only for the love of God pity me a little!
“My story is so commonplace. I can tell it you in a few sentences. I married when I was seventeen at my father’s command, to save him from ruin. My husband, like my father, was a city merchant. I did not love him, but then I did not know what love was. My girlhood was a miserable one. My father belonged to the sect ofCalvinists. Our home was hideous, and we were poor. Any release from it was welcome. John Drage, the man whom I married, had one good quality. He was generous. He bought me pictures, and books—things which I always craved. When my father’s command came, it did not seem a hardship. I married him. He was not so much a bad man, perhaps, as a weak one. We lived together for four years. I had one child, a little boy. Then I made a horrible discovery. My husband, whom I knew to be a drunkard, was hideously, debasingly false to me. The bald facts are these. I myself saw him drunk and helped into his carriage by one of those women whose trade it is to prey upon such creatures. This was not an exceptional occurrence. It was a habit.
“There, I have told you. It would have hurt me less to have cut off my right hand. But there shall be no misunderstanding,nor any concealment between us. I left John Drage’s house that night. I took little Freddy with me; but when I refused to return, he stole the child away from me. Then I drew a sharp line at that point in my life. I had neither friend nor relation, but there was some money which had been left me soon after my marriage. I lived alone, and I began to write. That is my story. That is why I cannot marry you.
“Dear, I want you, now that you know my very ugly history, to consider this. Whilst I was married, I was faithful to my husband; since then I have been faithful to my self-respect. But I have told myself always that if ever the time came when I should love, I would give myself to that man without hesitation and without shame. And that time has come, dear. You know that I love you! Your coming has been the great awakening joy of my life. Nothing that has gone before, nothing that thefuture may hold, can ever trouble me if we are together—you and I. I have suffered more than most women. But you will help me to forget it.
“I sit here with my face to the morning, and I seem to see a new life stretching out before me. Is not love a beautiful thing! I am not ambitious any more. I do not want any other object in life than to make you happy, and to be made happy by you. I began this letter with a heavy heart and with trembling fingers. But now I am quite calm and quite happy. I know that you will come to me. You see I have great faith in your love. Thank God for it!
“Berenice.”
The letter fluttered from Matravers’ fingers on to the floor. For several minutes he stood quite still, with his hand pressed to his heart. Then he calmly seated himself in a little easy chair which stood by hisside, with its back to the window. He had a curious sense of being suddenly removed from his own personality,—his own self. He was another man gazing for the last time upon a very familiar scene.
He sat there with his head resting upon the palm of his hand, looking with lingering eyes around his little room, even the simplest objects of which were in a sense typical of the life which he was abandoning. He knew that that life, if even its influence had not been wide, had been a studiously well-ordered and a seemly thing. A touch of that ultra æstheticism, which had given to all his writings a peculiar tone and individuality, had permeated also his ideas as to the simplest events of living. All that was commonplace and ugly and vicious had ever repelled him. He had lived not only a clean life, but a sweet one. His intense love for pure beauty, combined with a strong dash of epicureanism, hadgiven a certain colour to its outward form as well as to its inward workings. Even the simplest objects by which he was surrounded were the best of their kind,—carefully and faithfully chosen. The smallest details of his daily life had always been governed by a love of comely and kindly order. Both in his conversation and in his writings he had studiously avoided all excess, all shadow of evil or unkindness. His opinions, well chosen and deliberate though they were, were flavoured with a delicate temperateness so distinctive of the man and of his habits. And now, it was all to come to an end! He was about to sever the cords, to cut himself adrift from all that had seemed precious, and dear, and beautiful to him. He, to whom even the women of the streets had been as sacred things, was about to become the established and the open lover of a woman whom he could never marry. To a certain extent it waslike moral shipwreck to him. Yet he loved her! He was sure of that. He had called himself in the past, as indeed he had every right to, something of a philosopher; but he had never tried to harden within himself the human leaven which had kept him, in sympathy and kindliness, always in close touch with his fellows. And this was its fruit! To him of all men there had come this....
Soon he found himself in the street, on his way to her. Such a letter as this called for no delay. It was barely twelve o’clock when he rang the bell at her house. The girl who answered it handed him a note. He asked quickly for her mistress.
She left an hour ago by the early train, he was told. She has gone into the country.
She had made up her mind quite suddenly, and had not even taken her maid. The address would probably be in the letter.
Still standing on the doorstep, he tore open the note and read it. There were only a few lines.
“Dearest, can you take a short holiday? I have a fancy to have you come to me at my little house in Devonshire. London is stifling me, and I want to taste the full sweetness of my happiness. You see I do not doubt you! I know that you will come. Shall you mind a tiresome railway journey? The address is Bossington Old Manor House, Devonshire, and the station is Minehead. Wire what train you are coming by, and I will send something to meet you.“Berenice.”
“Dearest, can you take a short holiday? I have a fancy to have you come to me at my little house in Devonshire. London is stifling me, and I want to taste the full sweetness of my happiness. You see I do not doubt you! I know that you will come. Shall you mind a tiresome railway journey? The address is Bossington Old Manor House, Devonshire, and the station is Minehead. Wire what train you are coming by, and I will send something to meet you.
“Berenice.”
Matravers walked back to his rooms and ordered his portmanteau to be packed. Then he went out, and after making all his arrangements for an absence from town, bought a Bradshaw. There were two trains, he found, by which he could travel, one at three, the other at half-past four. He arranged to catch the earlier one, and drove to his club for lunch. Afterwards he strolled towards the smoking-room, but finding it unusually full, was on the point of withdrawing. As he lingered on the threshold, a woman’s name fell upon his ears. The speaker was Mr. Thorndyke. He became rigid.
“Why, yes, I gave her the victoria,” he was saying. “We called it a birthdaypresent, or something of that sort. I supposed every one knew about that. Those little arrangements generally are known somehow!”
The innuendo was unmistakable. Matravers advanced with his usual leisurely walk to the little group of men.
“I beg your pardon,” he said quietly. “I understood Mr. Thorndyke to say, I believe, that he had given a carriage to a certain lady. Am I correct?”
Thorndyke turned upon him sharply. There was a sudden silence in the crowded room. Matravers’ clear, cold voice, although scarcely raised above the pitch of ordinary conversation, had penetrated to its furthest corner.
“And if I did, sir! What——”
“These gentlemen will bear me witness that you did say so?” Matravers interrupted calmly. “I regret to have to use unpleasant language, Mr. Thorndyke, butI am compelled to tell you, and these gentlemen, that your statement is a lie!”
Thorndyke was a florid and a puffy man. The veins upon his temples stood out like whipcord. He was not a pleasant sight to look upon.
“What do you mean, sir?” he spluttered. “The carriage was mine before she had it. Everybody recognizes it.”