Morosine had been called emancipated by Lady Maria, who after a week or so found it proper to explain that he was by no means so free from chains as he appeared. Sanchia, she thought, was seeing a good deal of him. “He's the victim, like the rest of us, of his constitution. His, as you may see, is deplorable. Weak heart, they say—but it may be lungs. I never heard of a Pole who could live in any climate, least of any his own. As for his mind, that follows his wasted body; it's hectic. He affects a detachment which he will never have. It's a pose. He is exceedingly sentimental, has an imagination which—if you could follow it—might alarm you. I have no doubt at all but that, in imagination, he has you safe in some island of Cythera or another, and has slain every other male inhabitant of it lest some one of them should happen to look at your footprints in the sand. Jealous! He would sicken at the word—not because he would be ashamed, but because it would conjure up the vision of some satyr-shape, and haunt him day and night. He has no need to study Persian poetry, I assure you. He has rose-gardens enough and to spare; for, if you are inclined to be flattered at my suggestion of Cythera, I hasten to assure you that yours is not the only island of his dominion. Bless you, he'll have an archipelago. But I have no fear for you; you can afford a sentimental education.”
Sanchia did not tell her old friend how far that education was proceeding—not because she was afraid, still less because she was ashamed, but in obedience to her nature, which was extremely reserved. She spoke of herself and her affairs with difficulty—never unless she was forced. But it had become a custom just now—in the dull days on either side of Christmas—to look for Morosine in the reading-room about noon, to stroll the galleries for half-an-hour, to receive and to agree to a lightly-offered proposition that they should lunch together, and (it might well be) to accept his escort homewards. This, I say, had become the rule of three days in the week, more or less. And it's not to be supposed that so clear-sighted a young lady could see so much of so keen-sighted a man without a good deal of self-communing.
Her capacity for silent meditation, during which she would sit before her fire, gazing far, smiling at her thoughts, into the glowing coals, had never left her. But there was a slight difference to be noted. She could not think of Ingram—the past, the present, or any future Ingram—without contraction of the brows. Smooth-browed she thought of Morosine.
He interested her greatly; she was conscious of anxiety to learn his opinion, of a wave of warm feeling when she awaited it. She credited him with insight, had a notion, for instance, that she could discuss her own affairs without any preliminary apology. He took so much for granted—surely he would take her youth into full account. She had never said to him a word of herself as yet; but there had been times when she had felt near it—had seen herself rowing a boat, as it were, within range of a weir, been conscious of effort to keep a straight course, and of the fruitlessness of effort. There had been moments when she had been tempted to throw down her oars with a sigh—by no means of despair. Morosine seemed to her so extraordinarily reasonable, so ready, with well-known laws, to account for unheard of vagaries, that it would have been real luxury to her to find herself and her escapade the mere creatures of some such law. To be discovered normal: what a relief from strain!
Lady Maria, it seems, charged him with Oriental aptitudes. Sanchia gave that judgment careful attention, studied her friend in the light of it, weighed every word of his to her, watched him closely in company when he could not be aware of it. She decided against the opinion. His manners with women were his manners with men, those of urbane indifference to sex. To sex! To much more than that. He was, in fact, outwardly polite to the point of formality; but his attitude of mind towards the person he happened to be with seemed to her—when she examined it closely—to be sublimely insulting. No created thing, with the passions and affections common to his kind, ought to take up such a position with his fellow-creature—that which says, “I infer your existence from my sensations: apart from them, I cannot bring myself to believe in it.” She was aware that he must needs regard her from this stand-point, and the knowledge piqued her. If she did not exist for him, why did he seek her out? If she did, why did he pretend she did not? Or was Lady Maria right? Were his sensations awake, and had they fired his imagination, to carry her to Cythera, and keep her hidden there? These questions amused her, and she made no attempt to answer them. Amusement might cease that way: she indulged herself and left her questions open. One thing may be added. Morosine no longer reminded her of Senhouse. Quite otherwise—for of Senhouse just now she dared not think.
Her friend Bill Chevenix gave her no warnings. Even when she sounded for them, he gave none. “I like Alexis,” he said once. “He's not so original as he makes out, but there's enough to give him a relish. A handy chap, too, in a dozen ways—he'll model you in wax, or draw you in pastels, or sing about you on the guitar, or whistle you off on the piano; but he's not strong, isn't Alexis. The one thing he can do—no, there are two. He can ride anything, and he can use a revolver. I saw him empty the ten of hearts once: very pretty. I dare say, if he was put to it, he could use an iron to some purpose; but we don't stick each other here, so he'd be out of practice. I rather wish we did, you know. It's far more gentlemanly than laying for a chap outside his club with a hunting-crop, and getting summoned for assault at Vine Street. Not a bit more vicious, barring the Ten Commandments.”
“Prince Morosine doesn't believe in them,” Sanchia said. “He's vowed to abolish them.”
“So he may tell you, my dear. Don't you believe it. So long as they are good form they will be Alexis' form. He'd sooner die than covet his neighbour's wife.” She reserved this for consideration. Meantime, she saw more of Morosine than of any other man, and got through January very well by his help.
She particularly liked his company in galleries, because, though he never allowed himself raptures—of which she, too, was incapable—he was always seeking the roots of rapture. Sanchia had a fund of enthusiasm for art all the richer, perhaps, for being denied expression. It was comfortable to have that securely based.
“Do you ever consider,” he asked her once, when they stood before the great group of the Pediment, “why it is that these things are so beautiful; why, although they are bare of colour and all that stands for life to us in art, they are more than life? It's because they point to a state of being exquisitely conform to the laws of being. Such a perfect conformity soothes us into believing that while we witness it we are of it—ourselves conforming. These splendid creatures here, so superbly static—idle, you might say (only they wouldn't understand you), indulging their strength—are strong and able precisely because they have submitted themselves—-”
“Unlike the Poles?” She reminded him of their first conversation, and saw that he remembered it. He bowed to her.
“Let me finish. These existences, emanations, essences, what you will, are submiss, not to man, but to Nature. They are as passive as Earth herself, and as immune. They derive their strength from her. That's our only reasonable service.” Whether he intended it or not, the effect of this kind of talk was to make her view submission to the world's voice as a reasonable service.
It was not so odd as it may seem that her intimates had always been men. That reticence of hers which repelled her own sex was precisely that in her which attracted, by provoking, the other. After her dumb childhood, to which she never looked back, came her opening girlhood, and on the threshold of that stood Jack Senhouse, the loyal servitor, the one man who had loved her without an ounce of self-seeking. Then came Nevile Ingram, and swallowed her up for a while, and when he had tired of her she was once more without a friend. To Chevenix afterwards, rather than to Mrs. Devereux, she had struggled to utter herself. That cry of distress, “he wants me, to ravage me,” would never have been made by her to a woman. She would have died of it sooner. And now came the Pole, Morosine, and by taking for granted (as even Lady Maria could not have done) much that could not have been explained, put her at her ease. She found him a Jack without the spirit—without the divine spark. She could never have loved him, though she liked him well, and she had no idea that he thought of nothing but the greatness of his reward when, after patient toiling, she might fall into his arms. Every nerve in her body was now strung up to obedience to Jack's idea of her. She saw, as clearly as if it was printed, her fate before her. She was to put herself under the law. Jack should not have loved in vain her “dear obsequious head.” Nevile would come back and require her. For Jack's sake, who had seen her too noble to be touched by sin, she would dip herself deep in sin.
Morosine, who frankly desired her to be the wife of a man she did not love in order that she might the more easily find consolation in himself afterwards, had the wit to see that she needed some of his sophistry, though not enough to know exactly why. It was perfectly true. Her churchgoing was an ointment. It could soothe but not heal her. Sanchia had a mind. To do wrong by the world because it had seemed right to her was not to be remedied by doing a right by it now, which to her reasoning would glare before her as a monstrous sin. She forgot that Senhouse had also taught her that the great sin of all was insincerity. She could not have afforded to remember that. All her present desire was to be, as nearly as she might, what she had been when Jack had seen her first, what he had found excellent in her and love-worthy—pious, bowing her head in a fair place, obsequious, obedient to the law. He had loved her, of course, whatever she did—outraging the law as well as keeping it, loving Nevile, letting himself go away. She could not remember that. He had loved her meek; she would be meek. That was what her heart told her; and Morosine, to serve his own ends, lulled her head with his sophisticated anodynes, and sent her brain to sleep.
That he should know her story, as he obviously did, was not so disconcerting to her as it would have been to most young women. Taciturn as she was, it was not by reason of timidity, but rather that her own motives seemed too clear to her to be worth stating. She was, perhaps, rather given to assume her prerogative right to be different. Her first thought, therefore, was that she was saved the trouble of explaining herself, and her second that it was satisfactory to have a friend who understood her without explanations.
As for Morosine, he may or may not have felt that he had broken the ice; he pushed forward, at any rate, as if he had clear water in front of him. Sanchia felt, when she next met him, that their acquaintance had entered on a new phase.
Then suddenly, before she knew where she was, her fate was upon her.
It was in the Park on a fine Sunday forenoon in February. She was with Lady Maria, and had met with Melusine and Gerald Scales. Morosine also, seeing her and meeting her eyes, instantly left his companion and came to greet her, hat in hand. He addressed himself to her exclusively, having saluted Lady Maria; but she named her sister, and he saluted her too. Gerald Scales, bronzed, plump, and very full in the eye, having looked the newcomer over, decided against him, and gave him a shoulder. “Foreign beggar,” was the conclusion he came to, which does credit to his perspicacity, because the Pole had a very English appearance, and Scales himself the look of a Jew.
When they turned to walk, Morosine took the side next Sanchia, and though he talked to both ladies, so contrived that she should read more in what he said than her sister. He did it deftly, but continuously. Sanchia was entertained, slightly excited, and ended by taking part in the game of skill. It is impossible to say by how much this sort of thing increased the intimacy already established between the pair. It was by so much, at least, that when Melusine joined her husband, by dropping behind and waiting for him to come up with, the old lady, it came as no sort of shock to Sanchia that he took up the talk where he had ended it in the gallery.
“You have been to church, I see. But you are not a Christian?” He did not look at her.
Nor did she turn her head to reply. “I don't know. Nominally, at least; fitfully, at the most.”
“That must be the outside of it,” he continued. “The thing is the antithesis of the Hellenic ideal—which is yours. Your seemingly passive martyr is really in an ecstasy. He aims at outraging Nature; begins by despising and ends by dreading it. Nature, however, has ways of revenging herself.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Sanchia soberly.
They walked on together, she by this time very much absorbed. She was not conscious of the shifting crowd, the lifting of hats, the chatter, the yapping dogs that ran in and out of women's skirts.
Presently he spoke again. “You believe that you failed?”
Her voice came low. “I know that I failed.”
Then he looked at her, and spoke with vehemence. “And what is that to you? What is, failure in such a cause, to such as you?” But she could not meet his face, kept hers rigidly to the front.
“The cause,” Morosine told her, “is everything, the aim, the loyalty, the great surrender. Beside this failure is nothing at all. Do you say that the sapling fails that springs out of a cleft rock and towers—seeking, as we all seek, the sun, the light in heaven? A gale gathers it up and tears it out: over it goes, and lies shattered. Is that failure? How can it be when nothing dies?”
Sanchia, very pale, turned her face to his at last. Her mouth was drawn down at the corners, to the tragic droop. She almost whispered the words, “Something did die.”
His intuition worked like a woman's, in flashes. He knew immediately what she meant.
“I know, I know,” he said. “You were mistaken. But you never faltered. You followed a call.”
“You tell me,” she said, “that there was none.”
“I do.”
“But,” she argued, “that with which I began failed me. I was entirely certain, at the time; I could not possibly have hesitated. And then—it died.” Her eyes loomed large. “It is quite dead now, and I feel that I have betrayed myself—broken faith with myself.”
He shook his head. “You could not break faith; you are the soul of truth.”
This praise she accepted. “I don't tell lies, I hope—and I don't shirk things. But you see that I can stultify my own acts. I believed, and acted on my belief; and then I ceased to believe, and acted on that. I cannot trust myself—I ought to be ashamed to say so, and I hope I am.”
Morosine met her eyes again, and held them. “I can never believe that you would fail. I tell you that you have not failed. It is that you have been failed. You cannot give if what you give is not taken. Failed—you! Ah, no, you have succeeded, I think.”
She bent her brows as she faced resolutely forward. “I must take the consequences of what I have done. I see that.”
“Ah,” said Morosine, “that is a question of courage. Courage you have.”
“I need it,” she said in a hush, and stopped dead. Ingram stood before her, and took off his hat.
“Well, Sanchia,” he said, “here I am.”
{Illustration: “Well, Sanchia,” he said. “Here I am."}
The scattered party was suddenly strung to tensity; Morosine drew himself up, stiff as steel, but stood his ground. Here was the man he had waited for, who was necessary to him. Lady Maria, blinking her little black eyes, Melusine, with hers in a blur of mist, Gerald Scales, level and impassive, joined the other three.
Ingram, with a stretched smile, was volubly explaining. “I've been in London a week—to-day's the first glimpse of the sun I've had. I do think they might make better arrangements for a man home from Africa. I met your mother last night at a play. She told me that I might see you here.” He turned, without effrontery, to greet Melusine. “Ages since we have met. Ah, Scales, how are you?”
The tall Melusine stooped her head; Scales nodded, then, by an afterthought, shook hands. “I'm very fit, thanks,” he said. “Been travelling?”
Sanchia sought the side of Lady Maria, to whom she named Ingram. His exaggerated bow was accepted. “So you've arrived, I see,” said Lady Maria.
“One does, you know.” Ingram shrugged at the inevitable. “All roads lead to Rome.”
“Most roads lead to Lady Maria,” Morosine said to Sanchia, who replied from her heart, “I'm very glad that mine did.” Moved either by loyalty to his friendship, or touched by his recent words, she then brought him bodily into play. “Mr. Nevile Ingram; Prince Morosine.”
The two men inclined; Morosine lifted his hat, Ingram touched his brim.
Ingram, whom Morosine judged as a hard worker just now, supported his part with great gallantry. If he was naked to all these people who knew him, he appeared quite unashamed. Morosine, watching him carefully, believed that he had devoted a night's vigil to getting word perfect. He described Khartoum with vivacity—the English drill sergeant reigning over mudheaps, flies, and prowling dogs; getting up cricket-matches for the edification of contemptuous blacks. “They judge us, those fellows, you know. They are measuring us with their glazed eyes. The cud they chew has gall in it. I don't suppose anything offends them more deeply than our idiotic games. Is there a more frivolous race in the world than ours?”
Lady Maria suggested that the Boers might ask that question; Morosine that the Germans might answer it. Sanchia standing between these two, faced by Ingram, kept silent. She was conscious of being closely under observation. Morosine did not once lose sight of her. Whatever he said was addressed to her. Once, when she looked at him, she saw the gleam of knowledge in his eyes. He and Ingram never spoke to each other directly; indirectly Morosine capped whatever Ingram said. It was these two who maintained the talk through her sensitive frame.
Melusine and her husband exchanged glances—she in obedience to his fidgety heels. He had dug a hole in the gravel deep enough to bury a kitten. Her curtsey—it was almost that—to Lady Maria was very pretty. She drew in her suffering sister, almost embraced her. “Dearest, dearest!” she whispered. Sanchia, who was very pale, made no answer, and hardly returned the salute.
“Insufferable beggar,” was Gerald Scales' outburst. “I could have shot him at sight. But you women will go through with it, I suppose.”
“Oh, Gerald,” faltered Melusine, “it's dreadful—but what can she do?”
“Pon my soul, I'd take Morosov—the Polish party—what's-his-name—first. I would indeed—on the whole.”
There was nothing to say. Melusine knew that could not be.
Lady Maria, however, who never made a fuss over spilt milk, lost no time in ladling up what might be possible. She asked Ingram to luncheon, and was accepted with a cheerful, “Thanks, most happy.” It may have been malice which turned her to Morosine with the question. “And you? Will you join us?”
Morosine promptly excused himself. He had guests, and must consider them. He took ceremonious leave. “You remember, I hope, that I am to see you on Thursday, Lady Maria. And Miss Percival?” He looked to Sanchia, who did not turn him her eyes.
“Perfectly,” said her ladyship. “What's your hour?”
“We will dine at half-past eight.” He named the restaurant. He turned to pay his farewells to Sanchia. She looked him No, being unable to speak to him. Her eyes, deep lakes of woe, were crying to him. His answered.
He held out his hand and received hers. “Thursday,” he repeated, and left her with her fate.
Lady Maria, at luncheon, made what she called the best of a bad business. She treated Ingram to a brisk curiosity. “So you're a wanderer, I hear—like the Gay Cavalier of my childhood. Your mother may have heard the song. Mine sang it. I believe that that kind of thing was considered heroic in her day; in ours, heroism is more difficult, and much more dull. You might try heroism, Mr. Ingram.”
“I might, no doubt,” Ingram said. “Hitherto, I've preferred to travel. But I'm home for good now, so far as I can see.”
“We all hope so,” said Lady Maria. “But that remains to be seen.”
“Of course it does,” said Ingram blandly, and turned to Sanchia. “I thought your mother looking very well. Your father wasn't there. I saw Philippa, by the way; but I suppose she didn't remember me. That was her husband with her, I take it. Stiff old boy.” So he went on, letting bygones be bygones. It was after luncheon that her ordeal came.
Lady Maria having departed for her siesta, he came instantly to Sanchia with his hand out for her. “Sancie, I couldn't talk before all those people. You must forgive me, my dear. You are too good a sort—you must forgive me.”
He had to wait; but slowly she lifted her hand and let him take it. “I have forgiven you,” she said. He stroked her arm.
“That's nice of you—that's like you. I know that I behaved like a brute. I was awfully cut up about it afterwards—but, as you know, I had great provocation.”
“Not from me, I think.” Her eyes were upon him now.
“No, no,” he admitted; “certainly not from you; but—well, perhaps I may say that I had some ground for thinking that you—possibly—No, I don't think I ought to say that. At any rate, I thought then that I had. As for that young friend of yours—but he's nothing. It's you I want to make my peace with.”
“It's not difficult,” she said. “I tell you that I don't bear any malice. I bore none at the time. I wanted to go.”
He let her hand slide from his, and plunged his own into his pockets. “I know you did; I felt that at the time. That hurt me a good bit. I had come to rely upon you so much—oh, for every mortal thing. I expect the whole place has gone to the devil now. You had your hand on the tiller, by Jove! You kept a straight course, You see, I'd got into the way of thinking we were—married, don't you know, and all that—-”
“I think you had, indeed,” she said. He saw her wry smile.
“I know what you mean by that. You mean, if that's marriage—many thanks! Well, my dear, all I can say is, you were absolutely wrong. It wasnotmarriage—it never had been, and you know it couldn't have been. But if it had been, Sancie, you'd have been as right as rain. You know you would. Your own place—everything to your hand—Society—all that kind of thing. Why, you'd never have thought it amiss in me to go off tiger-shooting for a bit. You'd have had your whack of travelling, playing the grass widow; you'd have entertained, had all sorts of little games—and both of us been all the better. No! But it was just because our relationship was so infernally irregular that you felt those separations—took them, if I may say it, so hard. Depend upon it, that was it.”
Her lip curled back, though she said nothing. She wondered if he had always been quite so fatuous as this, quite so sublimely unhumorous. If he had, what under heaven had she been about? That she could have believed this smug cockscomb to have loved her—to have been capable of anything but hunger and thirst for her—incredible! It made her out precisely as fatuous as he. And yet she said nothing. With the likes of him nothing seemed worth doing except to forget him.
And she was to marry him, to live in his house, to see him daily—ah, and more than that; and yet she said nothing of what her curled back lip expressed. She was in the presence of her fate, and, as ever, was dumb before it. To make him shrivel under scorn, to wind her tongue about him like a whip till he writhed; to play the honest woman and tell him quietly that she did not love and had nothing more to say to him; or to ask him urgently for release—she did none of these things: none of them entered her head. She had never shirked the apportioning of the Weaving Women. Destiny was unquestionable. She felt that she abhorred Ingram. What she was to suffer from him she knew but too well. And yet she knew also that she was going to marry him, to be neglected by him, put to scorn, betrayed. All these things she would undergo, because they could not be avoided. She was bound as well as gagged. Her destiny was before her, as her character was within. The one had begotten the other. She had sowed, and now she was to reap. Her stony mind contemplated the harvest, and saw that it was just.
Therefore she said nothing, but stood with her foot on the fender, shading her face from the fire with her thin hand. In this attitude, though able to see sideways what was coming upon her, she stood nerveless to his approach. “Sancie, my own Sancie,” he said, and put his arm about her, and drew her bodily to his side. She stiffened, but allowed it.
“Dearest girl, tell me that you forgive me—tell me that. I am wretched without you—I can't go on like this. It's not good for me; my health suffers. Darling Sancie, forgive poor old Nevile. He was once your boy—you loved him so much. For the sake of old times, Sancie, my dear.”
She could only say, “I have forgiven you—you know that. I have told you so.” He pressed her closely to him, feeling his urgent need to make the most of what she had to give him. Her apathy struck him mortally chill; he wooed her the more desperately.
Holding her to his heart—an inanimate burden—he kissed her cold lips, her eyelids, her hair; called her by names whose use she had long forgotten, whose revival caused her pain like nausea. If he could have known it, this was the last way to win her. It was like pressing upon a queasy invalid the sweets which had made him sick. But he, remembering their ancient potency, seeing himself the triumphant wielder of charms, felt secure in them still; therefore she was his darling, his hardy little lover, his Queen of Love, his saucy Sancie, his lass. On fire himself by his own blowing, at last he fell upon his knees and clasped hers: “Dearest, most beautiful, my own, I love you more than ever. Comfort me, be my salvation—I pray that I may be worth your while. Marry me, Sancie, and save my soul alive.”
Honestly, for the moment, he believed himself irresistible, and so far succeeded with her that her disgust hid itself in a cloud of pity. She felt pity for a man abject at her feet, and could speak more kindly to him.
But she could not bring herself to touch him. Looking down at him there, her eyes were softer and her lips took a gentler curve. “You mustn't be down there,” she said. “I don't like to see you there—and can't talk to you till you get up. Let's sit down and talk—if you will.” He rose obediently and stood with heaving chest, while she drew a chair to the fire and seated herself. Then he took to the hearthrug, and possessed himself of her hand.
“What a cold hand, my dear! Oh, Sancie, how I could have warmed you once! Is that never to be again? Don't tell me so, for God's sake.”
“Oh, how can I tell!” cried she. “Surely you can understand me better than that? Do you ask me to forget everything that has has happened in eight years?”
“I asked you to forgive me, my dear.”
“And I have forgiven.”
“But do you store these things up against me? That's not too generous, is it?”
“I don't store anything,” she assured him; “but it wouldn't be honest of me to pretend I am what I was—once. I was a child then, and now I'm a woman. You have made me that. I am what you made me.”
He stared into the fire, dropped her hand, which she instantly hid under the other.
“You mean to tell me, then,” he said, “that I have made you cease to care?”
She tried to soften the verdict. “You seemed to me not to care very much yourself. You left me for a year together—”
“Once, my dear. I left you for one year.”
“One whole year, you know,” she replied, “and for other times too.”
“I never ceased to love you,” he vowed. “You must be aware how much I depended upon you. You were always with me.”
She could have laughed at him. “I don't pretend to the same state of mind. During those absences of yours I learned to be happy alone—and I was happy, too.”
This seemed horrible to him. “I could not have believed it of you,” he said, aghast. “You must have changed indeed.”
“I have changed,” she owned. He started to his knees and clasped her.
“Beloved, I can change you again—I am the man who had your heart. I must do it—it's my right as well as my duty. Trust me again, my own; give me your dear hand again—and you shall see. If you are changed for the worse, I am changed for the better. You have redeemed me. What is it they say in the Bible? By your stripes I am healed. Yes, yes—that's precisely it. Kiss me, my own girl; kiss me.” His eyes implored: she stooped her sad head that he might kiss her. He strained upwards and held her until she broke away with a sob. “Oh, leave me, leave me for a little while,” she prayed him brokenly. “I can't talk any more now; I assure you I can't.”
He begged her pardon for his vehemence. “I'm pretty bad myself, you know. This kind of thing plays the deuce with a man's heart.”
She could thank him with a woman's for this naive assurance. “I don't doubt you for a moment,” she said. “You have been rather eloquent.”
“Eloquent, my dear!” He raised his eyebrows. “You might spare me congratulations upon my eloquence. I don't deserve very much, perhaps—though God knows I tried to make you comfortable; but perhaps I deserve credit for sincerity.”
She was not to be drawn that way. “I don't doubt your sincerity in the least,” she said. “But I wish you to allow for mine. I am changed, and have told you so.”
“I can see that you are. Heaven knows that. Perhaps I deserve it: I don't know. It's hardly for me to talk about my own points, is it? Criticism, from whichever side it comes, does seem to me out of place in a love-scene. And you found me eloquent in spite of it! Surely I may congratulate myself upon that.”
She looked at him standing before her, his arms folded; she showed him a face too dreary to be moved by sarcasm. “You may congratulate yourself on lots of things, I'm sure.”
Annoyance began to prick him; he showed spirit. “You are tired—and I may have tired you. I won't do that any longer. I think I'll go, if you'll excuse me to your Lady Maria. Sensible lady, that. She goes to sleep....” He took a turn over the room, then came back and stood over her. “I have not had my answer yet. I'll come for it in a few days' time. May I hope you'll have it for me—say, to-day week?”
“What is the question I have to answer?” She looked up for it, though she knew what it was to be quite well.
“Do you wish it repeated?” He was perfectly cool by now. “I'll put it categorically. I have wronged you, and wish to repair my fault: will you allow it? I love you more than before: will you permit me to prove it? I believe that I can make you happy: may I try?”
She had scarcely listened, and when she answered him, did not lift her head. “I can't answer you now, Nevile. Don't ask me.”
“I have not asked you. I have simply put my questions fairly. I will come for my answer next Sunday afternoon. Good-bye, Sanchia.”
He held out his hand and received hers, which he kissed. Then he turned and left her alone.
“I should swallow him, if I were you,” was Lady Maria's spoken reflection upon what her young friend was able to tell her. “I should swallow him like a pill. You won't taste him much, and he'll do you worlds of good. The world? I'm not talking of the world. I never do. He'll put you right with yourself. That's much more to the point. He's in love with you, I believe. From what you tell me, that's new. You suppose that he was in love with you before. I do not. He was in love with himself, as you presented him. Most men are. Now you are to occupy that exceedingly comfortable position of a woman out of love with her husband, extravagantly beloved by him. Next to being a man's mistress there's no surer ground for you than that, with respectability added, mind you. No mean addition. Take my advice, my dear, and you won't regret it.”
But Sanchia knew at the bottom of her heart that Ingram was not in love with her. He wanted her restored to his collection.
On the Monday morning, after a night of broken sleep, she received a letter from her mother.
“MY DEAR CHILD,” Mrs. Percival wrote, “I met Nevile Ingram,quite unexpectedly,on Saturday evening. Yesterday he called here, after he had seen you in the house where you choose to remain. Our interview was naturally distressing, and I should be glad to feel sure that you could spare me athird. I need not remind you of the first.
“But I feel bound to own, from what I could learn from him of hisdiscussion(as I must call it) with you, that I am most uneasy. If I were to sayunhappy, tho' it would be less than the truth, you might accuse me of exaggeration. That I could not bear. Therefore, let 'uneasy' be the word. Is it possible, I ask myself, that my youngest child—my latest-born—can find it in her heart totorturethe already agonised heart of her mother? I put the question to you, Sanchia, for I am incapable myself of finding the answer. I blush to write it—but such is the terrible fact. I can only beg you to put me out of suspense as gently as may be. I am growing old. There are limits to what a grey-haired mother's heart can bear.
“Mr. Ingram's proposals towards a settlement of the untoldruinhe has wrought in a once smiling and contented household were (I must say) liberal. That they were all that they should be, I must not declare—for how could that ever be? He put himself, however, and his extremely handsome fortune unreservedly in my hands and those of your father, who was not present at our interview. He wasresting,I believe—his own phrase. Philippa came in to tea, with her trusty, honourable Tertius, and was more than gracious to N. You know her way. Shestoopsmore charmingly than any woman I have ever met. Her manners, certainly, are to be copied.
“His position in the county—I return to Nevile—I need not dwell upon. It may bebrilliant.A Justice of the Peace at thirty-two! I leave you to imagine what he might become, building upon that, if he were blessed with the loving companionship of atender, chaste and Xtian wife.Such an one could guide him into Green Pastures—and such an one only. Secure in the gratitude of his inferiors, the respect of his peers, reconciled to the Altar, and his God, one sees before Nevile the upright, prosperous, honoured career of an English Gentleman. There is no higher, I believe. But it is clear to all of those who truly love you, my child, that you only can ensure him these advantages. He is sincerely penitent now—of that I am sure. Who can tell, however, what relapse there may be unless he is taken in hand?
“You have been his curse, but may be his Blessing. You have my prayers.
“I beg my compliments to Lady Maria Wenman if she condescends to recognise the existence of—Your affect. Mother,
“P.S.—Nevile assures me that his cousin, the Bishop, would perform the rite. This would be agreat thing. One must think of N's position in the county.”
“Venus, wounded in the side ...” is the opening line of an old poem of Senhouse's, one of those “Greek Idylls” with which he made his bow to the world—old placid stories illuminated by modern romantic fancy; nursery-rhyme versions, we may call them, of the myths. “Venus, wounded in the side,” recounts how the Dame, struck by a shaft of her son's, ran moaning from one ally to another seeking Pity, the only balm that could assuage her wound. To the new lover, to the old, to the fresh-wedded, to the long-mated: from one to the other she ran—hand clapt to throbbing heart. None could help her. “Pity! What's that?” cried the first. “I triumph: rejoice with me. Is she not like the sun in a valley?” The second cursed her for a procuress. The bride stirred in her sleep, and whispered, “Kiss me again, Beloved.” As for the fourth, he said, “All my Pity was for myself. It is gone; now I am frost-bound.” Venus wept: Adonis healed the wound.
Sanchia, reading long afterwards, saw in it a parallel to her case, when she, stricken deep, ran about London ways for a soothing lotion. She saw herself trapped; felt the steel bite to the bone. Tears might have helped her, but she had none: pray she could not, nor crave mercy. It was not Ingram who held her caged, but Destiny; and there's no war with him.
She thought of Vicky, of Melusine. Their kisses would have been sweet, but she knew what they would say. Melusine's sideways head, her sighed, “Dearest, how sad! But life is so serious, isn't it?” She saw the gleam in Vicky's eyes, and heard her “Dear old Sancie, how splendid! Now you'll be all right.” Then she would clasp her round the neck and whisper in her ear, “Do make me an aunt—I shall adore your baby. Quick, darling!” She turned her back on Kensington and Camberley, and went into the City, to The Poultry, with her griefs.
Poor Mr. Percival's rosy gills and white whiskers, his invariable, “Well, Sancie—well, my dear, well, well—” called her home. She ran forward, clung to him, and lay a while in his arms, short-breathing, breathless for the advent of peace. To his, “What is it, my love? Tell your old father all about it,” she could only murmur, “Oh, dearest, what shall I do?” He urged her again to tell him what the matter was—“What has hurt you? Who has dared to hurt my darling? Show me that scoundrel—” but she was luxuriating in new comfort and would say nothing. Into her false peace she snuggled and lay still; and the honest man, loving her to be there, let her be.
Presently she opened her weary eyes, looked up, and smiled, then snuggled again. He led her to his office chair, and took her on his knee. “Lie here, my bird, make your pillow of my shoulder. That's more comfortable, I hope. Why, Sancie, you've not been here, in my arms, since you hurt your foot at Sidmouth deuce knows how long ago—and I kissed it well! Do you remember that? Ah, but I do. I'm a foolish old chap, with nothing else to think about but my girls. And you're the only one left—the only one, Sancie. And I always loved you best—and behaved as if you were the worst—God forgive me!” She put her hand up and touched his cheek. “Hush, dearest. We don't talk about that.”
“No, no, my darling—that's over, thank God. You have forgiven me, I know—my great-hearted Sancie. Now, if you feel stronger, tell me all your troubles.” She murmured what follows.
“He came to see me. Nevile came.”
“I know, my love. Your mother told me.”
“She wrote to me. Rather a dreadful letter. She's on his side—she talks about his position in the county.”
“I daresay, I daresay. But you know, your mother thinks a great deal of that kind of thing. She says we owe a deal to our station, you know. There's something in it, my dear. I'm bound to say that.”
“Papa, he—wants me again. He thinks he does.”
“Oh, my dear, there's no doubt about that—none at all. He proposes—well, it'scarte blanche; there's no other word for it. A blank cheque, you know. We must do Master Nevile justice. It is the least he can do; but he does it.”
“What am I to do, Papa?” The poor gentleman looked rather blank.
“Do, my dear? Do?” He puzzled; then, as the light broke on him, could not help showing his dismay. “Why, you don't mean to say—Oh, my child, is that what you mean?”
She clung to him convulsively, buried her face.
“God help us all!” His thought, his pity, his love whirled him hither and thither. He shivered in the blast. “'Pon my soul, I don't know how we shall break it to your mother. I don't, indeed.” He stared miserably, then caught her to him. “It breaks my heart to see you like this—my child; it cuts me to the heart. Sancie, what are we to do?”
She sat up and brushed her dry eyes with her handkerchief. “I know. There's nothing to do. It's my fate.”
This was rather shocking to old Mr. Percival, who shared the common opinion of matrimony, that it should be marked by champagne at luncheons. It was a signal for rejoicing—therefore you must rejoice. White stood for a wedding all the world over, black for a funeral. To go scowling to church, or tearless to the cemetery, was to fail in duty.
“We mustn't look at it like that, my darling. I don't think we ought, indeed. Fate, you know! That's a gloomy view of an affair of the sort. I don't pretend to understand you, quite, my love. You see, a year or two ago, you would have asked nothing better—and now you call it fate. Oh, my dear—”
She could not have hoped that he would understand, and yet she felt more like crying than at any time yet. “My heart is cold,” she said. “It's dead, I think.”
He echoed her, whispering, “Not dead, Sancie, not dead, my child. Numbed. He'll warm it asleep, he'll kiss it awake. He loves you.”
She moaned as she shook her head. “No, no. He wants me—that's all.”
“Well, my dear,” pleaded good Mr. Percival, “and so he may. We do want what we love, don't we now? He's come to his senses by this time, found out the need of you. And I don't wonder at it. You're a beautiful girl, my dear—you're the pick of my bevy. But I must bring back the roses to those cheeks—Mildred Grant, eh? Jack Etherington used to call you that: he was a great rose-fancier—old Jack. Do you remember our tea-party last summer? And how happy we were? Let's be happy again, my lamb! Come, my child, can't you squeeze me out one little smile? You'll make the sun shine in this foggy old den of mine.” He pinched her cheek, peered for the dimple which a smile must bring; then he drew her closer to him and whispered his darling thought: “Shall I tell you something, Sancie? What your old dad prays for when he's by himself? I want another grandchild, my dear—one I can spoil. I ought to be a happy man with what I've got—I know that. But you were always the pet, my love; you know you were—until, until—ah, Sancie! And one of yours! Aren't you going to indulge your old father? He's only got a few years left, mind you. Don't want any more. To see his darling happy, smiling down on her baby—bless me, I'm getting foolish.” He blinked his bravest, but had to wipe his glasses. She rewarded him with a kiss, and did not leave till she could leave him at ease.