“ ... There never was to my mindSuch a funny mouth, for it would not shut;And the dented chin too—what a chin!...You were thin, however; like a bird’sYour hand seemed—some would say the pounceOf a scaly-footed hawk—all but!The world was right when it called you thin.”
“ ... There never was to my mindSuch a funny mouth, for it would not shut;And the dented chin too—what a chin!...You were thin, however; like a bird’sYour hand seemed—some would say the pounceOf a scaly-footed hawk—all but!The world was right when it called you thin.”
“ ... There never was to my mindSuch a funny mouth, for it would not shut;And the dented chin too—what a chin!...You were thin, however; like a bird’sYour hand seemed—some would say the pounceOf a scaly-footed hawk—all but!The world was right when it called you thin.”
Meanwhile in London Bertie Lee-Harrison was celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles as best he could.
He had given up with considerable reluctance his plan of living in a tent, the resources of his flat in Albert Hall Mansions not being able to meet the scheme.
He consoled himself by visits to the handsomesuccouthwhich the Montague Cohens had erected in their garden in the Bayswater Road.
I do not like this manner of a dance,This game of two and two; it were much betterTo mix between the pauses than to sitEach lady out of earshot with her friend.Swinburne:Chastelard.
I do not like this manner of a dance,This game of two and two; it were much betterTo mix between the pauses than to sitEach lady out of earshot with her friend.Swinburne:Chastelard.
I do not like this manner of a dance,This game of two and two; it were much betterTo mix between the pauses than to sitEach lady out of earshot with her friend.Swinburne:Chastelard.
TheLeunigers were giving a dance at the beginning of November, and the female part of the household was greatly taken up with preparations for the event.
There was much revising of invitation lists, discussion of the social claims of their friends and acquaintance, and the usual anxious beating up of every available dancing-man.
“Addie will bring Mr. Griffiths, and Esther Mr. Peck,” said Rose. “They go well,look nice, and one sees them everywhere, although Reuben calls them ‘outsiders.’”
Rose loved dances, as well she might, for from the first she had been a success.
Rose, with her fair, plump shoulders and blonde hair, her high spirits and good-nature, her nimble feet and nimble tongue; Rose with her £50,000 and twenty guinea ball-gowns; Rose went down—magic phrase!—as not one girl in ten succeeds in doing.
“I suppose,” said Judith, “that the Samuel Sachses will have to be asked?”
She, though of course she had her admirers, was by no means such a success as her cousin.
“Yes, isn’t it a nuisance?” cried Rose; “and the Lazarus Harts.”
If there is a strong family feeling among the children of Israel, it takes often the form of acute family jealousy.
The Jew who will open his doors inreckless ignorance to every sort and condition of Gentile is morbidly sensitive as regards the social standing of the compatriot whom he admits to his hospitality.
The Leunigers, as we know, were not people of long standing in the Community, and numbered among their acquaintance Jews of every rank and shade; from the Cardozos, who were rich, cultivated, could almost trace their descent from Hillel, the son of David, and had a footing in English society, to such children of nature as the Samuel Sachses.
“We must have Nellie Hepburn and the Strettel girls,” went on Rose, consulting her list; “the men all rush at them, though I don’t see that they are so pretty myself.”
“I suppose they make a change from ourselves,” answered Judith smiling, “whose faces are known by heart.”
Judith was entering with spirit, with a zeal that was almost feverish, into the preparations for the forthcoming festivity.
She and Reuben had scarcely spoken to one another since the Day of Atonement. They had met once or twice at family gatherings, at which, either by accident, or design on Reuben’s part, there had been no opportunity for private conversation.
Perhaps an instinctive feeling that the old relations were imperilled and that no new ones could ever be so satisfactory held them apart.
Meanwhile Judith unconsciously fixed her mind on the one definite fact that Reuben would be at the Leunigers’ dance. It was in the crowded solitude of ball-rooms that they had hitherto found their best opportunity.
The night so much prepared for cameround at last, and the house in Kensington Palace Gardens became for the time being the scene of ceaseless activity.
Ernest had gone away into the country with the person who was always talked of as his valet; and Leo, of course, was in Cambridge; but the rest of the family—not excepting Lionel and Sidney, who handed programmes—had mustered in great force to do honour to the event.
From an early hour poor Mrs. Leuniger had taken up her station in the doorway of the primrose-coloured drawing-room, where she stood dejectedly welcoming her guests. She was wearing a quantity of valuable lace, very much crumpled, and had a profusion of diamonds scattered about her person, but had apparently forgotten to do her hair.
Rose, in short, voluminous skirts of pink tulle, and a pale pink satin bodice fitting closeabout her plump person, defining the lines of her ample hips, was performing introductions with noisy zeal, with the help of Jack Quixano, whom she had constituted heraide-de-camp. The Montague Cohens had come early, and Adelaide, in a very grand gown, scrutinized the scene with breathless interest, secretly wondering why more people had not asked her to dance.
Judith was looking very well. Her short, diaphanous white ball-gown, with its low-cut, tight-fitting satin bodice was not exactly a dignified garment, but she managed to maintain, in spite of it, her customary air of stateliness.
Moreover to-night some indefinable change had come over the character of her beauty, heightening it, intensifying it, giving it new life and colour. The calm, unawakened look which many people hadfound so baffling, had left her face; the eyes, always curiously mournful, shone out with a new soft fire.
Bertie Lee-Harrison, tripping jauntily into the ball-room, remained transfixed a moment in excited admiration.
What a beautiful woman was this cousin, or pseudo-cousin, of Sachs’s! How infinitely better bred she seemed than the people surrounding her!
The Quixanos, as Reuben had told him, weresephardim, for whose claim to birth he had the greatest respect. But as for that red-headed young man, her brother—there were no marks of breeding abouthim!
Bertie was puzzled, as the stranger is so often puzzled, by the violent contrasts which exist among Jews, even in the case of members of the same family.
Judith was standing some way off, whereBertie stood observing her, while two or three men wrote their names on her dancing-card.
She was one of the few people of her race who look well in a crowd or at a distance. The charms of person which a Jew or Jewess may possess are not usually such as will bear the test of being regarded as a whole.
Some quite commonplace English girls and men who were here to-night looked positively beautiful as they moved about among the ill-made sons and daughters of Shem, whose interesting faces gain so infinitely on a nearer view, even where it is a case of genuine good-looks.
Bertie waited a minute till the men had moved off, then advanced to Miss Quixano and humbly asked for two dances. Judith gave them to him with a smile. He was a poor creature, certainly, but he wasReuben’s friend, and she knew that, in one way at least, Reuben thought well of him: he was one of the few Gentiles of her acquaintance whom he had not stigmatized as an “outsider.”
Moreover Bertie’s little air of deference was a pleasant change from the rather patronizing attitude of the young men of her set, whose number was very limited, and who were aggressively conscious of commanding the market.
Bertie, his dances secured, moved off regretfully. He would have liked to sue for further favours, but his sense of decorum restrained him. Had he but known it, he might without exciting notice have claimed a third, at least, of the dances on Judith’s card. Hard flirtation was the order of the day, and the chaperons, who were few in number, gossiped comfortably together, while theircharges sat out half the night with the same partner.
Rose fell upon Bertie at this point, and fired him off like a gun at one or two partnerless damsels; while Judith, her partner in her wake, moved over to the doorway, where Adelaide was standing with Caroline Cardozo.
It was eleven o’clock and Reuben had not come. Judith had, it must be owned, changed her position with a view to consulting the hall-clock, and perhaps Adelaide had some inkling of this, for she said very loudly to her companion:
“It is a first night at the Thalian; my brother never misses one. I don’t expect we shall see him to-night. Young men have so many ways of amusing themselves, I wonder they care about dances at all.”
The musicians struck up a fresh waltz,and Bertie came over to claim the first of his dances with Judith.
He danced very nicely, in a straightforward, unambitious way, never reversing his partner round a corner without saying, “I beg your pardon.”
Esther, her sharp brown shoulders shuffling restlessly in and out of a gold-coloured gown ofmoirésilk, and with a string of pearls round her neck worth a king’s ransom, surveyed the scene with shrewd, miserable eyes, while rattling on aimlessly to her partner andprotégé, Mr. Peck.
It was indeed a motley throng which was whirling and laughing and shouting across the music, in the bare, bright, flower-scented apartment.
The great majority of the people were Jews—Jews belonging to varying shades of caste and clique in that socially sensitive Community. But besides these, there was agoodly contingent of Gentile dancing men—“outsiders,” according to Reuben, every one—and a smaller band of Gentile ladies who were the fashion of the hour among the sons of Shem.
(“Bad form” was the label affixed by Reuben to these attractive maids and matrons.)
To give distinction to the scene, there were a well-known R.A., who had painted Rose’s portrait for last year’s Academy; two or three pretty actresses; an ex-Lord Mayor, who had been knighted while in office; and last, though by no means least in the eyes of the clannish children of Israel, Caroline Cardozo and her father.
“‘What a pretty girl’?” did you say, remarked Esther as the music died away. “Yes, Judith Quixano is very good-looking, but I don’t know that she goes down particularly well.”
Mr. Peck made some complimentary remark, of a general character, as to the beauty of Jewish ladies.
“Yes, we have some pretty women,” Esther answered; “but our men! No, the Jew, unlike the horse, is not a noble animal.”
Esther, it will be seen, was of those who walk naked and are not ashamed.
At this point, a fashionably late hour, a new arrival was announced, and in marched Netta and Alec Sachs, their heads very much in the air, the self-assertion of self-distrust written on every line of their ingenuous countenances.
Netta, who had had a new dress from Paris for the occasion, really looked rather well in her own style, which was of the exuberant, black-haired, highly-coloured kind, and was at once greeted by one of the “outsiders” as an old friend.
This was no less a person than Adelaide’s particularprotégé, Mr. Griffiths, who, ignorant of the fine shades of Community class-distinction, engaged Miss Sachs for several dances under the eyes of his mortified patroness. Mr. Griffiths indeed was an impartial person, who, so long as you gave him a good floor, a decent supper, and a partner who could “go,” would lend the light of his presence to any ball-room whatever, whether situated in South Kensington or Maida Vale.
Alec Sachs was less fortunate than his sister. There were plenty of men, and the girls whom he thought worthy of inviting to dance for the most part declared themselves engaged.
This was a new experience to him. His skilful dancing—it was of the acrobatic or gymnastic order—his powers of “chaff” and repartee, above all, his reputation as aparti,had secured him a high place among the maidens of Maida Vale.
He stood now, his back to the wall, an air of contempt for the whole proceeding written on his florid face, exclaiming loudly and petulantly to his sister, whenever he had an opportunity: “They don’t introduce, they don’t introduce!”
Twelve o’clock was striking as Reuben Sachs stepped into the hall, which by this time was filled with couples “sitting out”; a few of them really enjoying themselves, the great majority gay with that rather spurious gaiety, that forcing of the note, which is so marked a characteristic of festivities. Sounds of waltz music were borne from the drawing-room, and the draped aperture of the doorway—the door itself had been removed—showed a capering throng of dancers of varying degrees of agility.
Reuben advanced languidly; his face wore the mingled look of exhaustion and nerve-tension which with him denoted great fatigue.
It had been a long day: in and out of court all the morning; two committee meetings, political and philanthropical, respectively, later on; a hurried club dinner; and an interminable first night, with hitches in the scene-shifting, and long waits between the acts.
He had told himself over and over again that he would “cut” the dance at his uncle’s, and here he was—alleging to himself as an excuse the impossibility of getting to sleep directly after the theatre.
It was little more than a month that he had been home, and already his old enemy, insomnia, showed signs of being on the track.
Reuben made his way to a position nearthe foot of the stairs, which afforded a good view of the ball-room.
He could not see Judith, a circumstance which irritated him, as he did not wish to go in search of her.
Beyond, in the crowded refreshment room, he had a glimpse of Rose, who was exceedinglyfriande, giggling behind a large pink ice, while Jack Quixano, a look of conscious waggishness on his face, dropped confidential remarks into her ear. Esther, on the stairs behind him, was delivering herself freely of cheap epigrams to an impecunious partner; and in a rose-lit recess was to be seen Montague Cohen, his pale, pompous, feeble face wreathed in smiles, enjoying himself hugely with a light-hearted matron from the Gentile camp.
The whole scene was familiar enough to Reuben, who from his boyhood upward had taken part in the festivities of histribe, with their gorgeously gowned and bejewelled women, elaborate floral decorations and costly suppers.
The Jew, it may be remarked in passing, eats and dresses at least two degrees above his Gentile brother in the same rank of life.
The music came to an end, and the dancers streamed out from the ball-room.
Alec Sachs, who had been dancing with his sister, brushed past Reuben in the throng, and the latter was mechanically aware of hearing him say to his partner:
“Mixed, very mixed! A scratch lot of peopleIcall it.”
Lionel Leuniger came rushing up to him in all the glory of an Eton suit and a white gardenia.
“So you’ve come at last, Reuben! You are very late, and all the pretty girls are engaged. Have a programme?”
Reuben did not answer. By this time the ball-room was almost empty, and he could see clearly into the room beyond, where a red cloth recess had been built in from the balcony.
There are flashes struck from midnights, there are fire-flames noondays kindle,Whereby piled-up honours perish, whereby swollen ambitions dwindle..... . . . . .Oh, observe! Of course, next moment, the world’s honours, in derision,Trampled out the light for ever.Browning:Christina.
There are flashes struck from midnights, there are fire-flames noondays kindle,Whereby piled-up honours perish, whereby swollen ambitions dwindle..... . . . . .Oh, observe! Of course, next moment, the world’s honours, in derision,Trampled out the light for ever.Browning:Christina.
There are flashes struck from midnights, there are fire-flames noondays kindle,Whereby piled-up honours perish, whereby swollen ambitions dwindle..... . . . . .Oh, observe! Of course, next moment, the world’s honours, in derision,Trampled out the light for ever.Browning:Christina.
Therewere two people sitting there, to all appearance completely absorbed in one another. In the distance, Judith’s head bending slightly forward, her profile, the curves of her neck and bosom, and the white mass of her gown, were to be seen clearly outlined against the red. Andanother figure, in close proximity to the first, defined itself against the same background. Reuben started—Judith and Lee-Harrison!
His apathy, his fatigue, his uncertainty as to seeking Judith vanished as by magic. Outwardly he looked impassive as ever as he strolled into the all but deserted ball-room. It would have taken a close observer to perceive, the repressed intensity of his every movement.
There was a draped alcove dividing the front and back drawing-rooms where Caroline Cardozo and Adelaide were standing as Reuben sauntered towards them.
“I hardly expected to see you,” cried his sister as Reuben stopped and greeted the ladies. Adelaide was not enjoying herself. Her social successes, such as they were, were not usually obtained in the open competition of the ball-room.
“Am I too late for a dance?” asked Reuben, turning with deference to Miss Cardozo.
She handed him her card with a faint smile; there were two or three vacant places on it.
A great fortune (I am quoting Esther), though it always brings proposals of marriage, does not so invariably bring invitations to dance. Caroline Cardozo was a plain, thin, wistful girl, with a shy manner that some people mistook for stand-offishness, who was declared by the men of the Leunigers’ set to be without an atom of “go.”
Her wealth and importance notwithstanding, she was, as Rose in her capacity of hostess explained, difficult to get rid of.
Reuben, his dance duly registered, stood talking urbanely, while scrutinizing from beneath his lids the pair on the balcony.
A nearer view showed him the unmistakable devotion on Bertie’s little fair face, which was lifted close to Judith’s; he appeared to be devouring her with his eyes.
And Judith?
It seemed to Reuben that never before had he seen that light in her eyes, never that flush on her soft cheek, never that strange, indescribable, almost passionate air in her pose, in her whole presence.
His own heart was beating with a wild, incredulous anger, an astonished contempt.Heto be careful of Judith;heto beware of engaging her feelings too deeply,he, who after all these years had never been able to bring that look into her eyes!
Bertie? it was impossible!
In any case (with sudden vindictiveness) it was unlikely that Bertie himself meant anything; and yet—yet—he was just the sort of man to do an idiotic thing of the kind.
The music struck up, and the dancers drifted back to the ball-room.
Reuben, bowing himself away, turned to see Judith and her escort standing behind him, while the latter, gathering courage, wrote his name again and again on her card.
Reuben remained a moment in doubt, then went straight up to her.
“Good-evening, Miss Quixano.”
There was a note of irony in his voice, a look of irony on his pale, tense face; the glance that he shot at her from his brilliant eyes was almost cruel.
“Ah, good-evening, Reuben.”
She gave a little gasp, thrilled, bewildered. Long ago, her searching glance travelling across the two crowded rooms had distinguished the top of Reuben’s head in the hall beyond. She knew just the way the hair grew, just the way it was liftedfrom the forehead in a sidelong crest, just the way it was beginning to get a little thin at the temples.
Bertie moved off in search of his partner, with a bow and a reminder of future engagements.
“May I have the pleasure of a dance?”
Reuben retained his tone of ironical formality, but looking into her uplifted face his jealousy faded and was forgotten.
She held up her card with a smile; it was quite full.
Reuben took it gently from her hand, glanced at it, and tore it into fragments.
Judith said not a word.
To both of them the little act seemed fraught with strange significance, the beginning of a new phase in their mutual relations.
Reuben gave her his arm in silence; she took it, half frightened, and he led her to the furthermost corner of the crimson recess.
The dancers, overflowing from the ball-room beyond, closed about it, and they were screened from sight.
Reuben leaned forward, looking at her with eyes that seemed literally alight with some inward flame. The precautions, the restraints, the reserves which had hitherto fenced in their intercourse, were for the moment overthrown. Each was swept away on a current of feeling which was bearing them who knew whither?
To Judith, Reuben was no longer a commodity of the market with a high price set on him; he was a piteous human creature who entreated her with his eyes, yet held her chained: her suppliant and her master.
A soft wind blew in suddenly through the red curtains and stirred the hair on Judith’s forehead.
“Aren’t you cold?”
Reuben broke the silence for the first time.
“No, not at all.” She smiled, then holding back the red drapery with her hand, looked out into the night.
The November air was damp, warm, and filled full of a yellow haze which any but a Londoner would have called a fog.
Across the yard and a half of garden which divided the house from the street, she could see the long deserted thoroughfare with its double line of lamps, their flames shining dull through the mist.
Reuben watched her. The clear curve of the lifted arm, the beautiful lines of the half-averted face stirred his already excited senses.
“Judith!”
She turned her face, with its almost ecstatic look, towards him, letting fall the curtain.
There were some chrysanthemums likesnowflakes in her bodice, scarcely showing against the white, and as she turned, Reuben bent towards her and laid his hand on them.
“I am going to commit a theft,” he said, and his low voice shook a little.
Judith yielded, passive, rapt, as his fingers fumbled with the gold pin.
It was like a dream to her, a wonderful dream, with which the whirling maze of dancers, the heavy scents, the delicious music were inextricably mingled. And mingling with it also was a strange, harsh sound in the street outside, which, faint and muffled at first, was growing every moment louder and more distinct.
Reuben had just succeeded in releasing the flowers from their fastening; but he held them loosely, with doubtful fingers, realizing suddenly what he had done.
Judith shivered, vaguely conscious of a change in the moral atmosphere.
The noise in the street was very loud, and words could be distinguished.
“What is it they are saying?” he cried, dropping the flowers, springing to the aperture, and pulling back the curtain.
Outside the house stood a dark figure, a narrow crackling sheet flung across one shoulder. A voice mounted up, clear in discordance through the mist:
“Death of a Conservative M.P.! Death of the member for St. Baldwin’s!”
“Ah, what is it?”
Cold, white, trembling, she too heard the words, and knew that they were her sentence.
He turned towards her; on his face was the look of a man who has escaped a great danger.
“Poor Ronaldson is dead. It has come suddenly at the last. No doubt I shall find a telegram at home.”
He spoke in his most every-day tones, but he did not look at her.
She summoned all her strength, all her pride:
“Then I suppose you will be going down there to-morrow?”
Her voice never faltered.
“No; in any case I must wait till after the funeral.”
He looked down stiffly. It was she who kept her presence of mind.
“Don’t you want to buy a paper and to tell Adelaide?”
“If you will excuse me. Where shall I leave you?”
“Oh, I will stop here. The dance is just over.”
He moved off awkwardly; she stood there white and straight, and never moving.
At her feet lay her own chrysanthemums, crushed by Reuben’s departing feet.
She picked them up and flung them into the street.
At the same moment a voice sounded at her elbow:
“I have found you at last.”
“Is this our dance, Mr. Lee-Harrison?”
We did not dream, my heart, and yetWith what a pang we woke at last.A. Mary F. Robinson.
We did not dream, my heart, and yetWith what a pang we woke at last.A. Mary F. Robinson.
We did not dream, my heart, and yetWith what a pang we woke at last.A. Mary F. Robinson.
Rose, with a candle in her hand, stood at the top of the stairs and yawned.
It was half-past three; the last waltz had been waltzed, the last light extinguished, the last carriage had rolled away.
Bertie, on his road to Albert Hall Mansions, was dreaming dreams; and Reuben, as he tossed on his sleepless bed, pondering plans for the coming contest, was disagreeably haunted by the recollection of some white chrysanthemums which he had let fall—on purpose.
“It has been a great success,” said Judith, passing by her cousin and going towards her own room.
Rose followed her, and sitting down on the bed, began drawing out the pins from her elaborately dressed hair.
“Yes, I think it went off all right. Caroline Cardozo stuck now and then, and no one would dance with poor Alec, so I had to take him round myself.”
Judith laughed. She had danced straight through the programme, had eaten supper, had talked gaily in the intervals of dancing. Rose got up from the bed and went over to Judith.
“Please unfasten my bodice. I have sent Marie to bed.”
Then, as Judith complied:
“What was Reuben telling Adelaide, and why did he make off so soon?”
“Mr. Ronaldson, the member for St.Baldwin’s, is dead. A man came and shouted the news down the street.”
Her voice was quite steady.
“What a ghoul Reuben is! He has been waiting to step into that dead man’s shoes this last month and more.—‘Reuben Sachs, M.P.’—‘My brother, the member for St. Baldwin’s’—‘A man told me in the House last night’—‘My son cannot get away while Parliament is sitting.’—The whole family will be quite unbearable.”
Judith bent her head over an obstinate knot in the silk dress-lace.
“He is not elected yet,” she said.
Rose, her bodice unfastened, sprang round and faced her cousin.
“Reuben is as hard as nails!” she cried with apparent inconsequence. “Under all that good-nature, he is as hard as nails!”
“Undo my frock, please,” said Judith,yawning with assumed sleepiness. “It must be nearly four o’clock.”
Rose’s capable fingers moved quickly in and out the lace; as she drew the tag from the last hole, she said: “Well, Judith, when are we to congratulate you?”
Judith did not affect to misunderstand the allusion. Bertie’s open devotion had acted as a buffer between her and her smarting pride.
“Poor little person!” she said, and smiled.
“You might do worse,” said Rose, gathering herself up for departure.
The mask fell off from Judith’s face as the door closed on her cousin. She stood there stiff and cold in the middle of the room, her hands hanging loosely at her side.
Rose put her head in at the door—
“Do you know what Jack says?” she began, then stopped suddenly.
“Judith, don’t look like that, it is no good.”
“No,” said Judith, lifting her eyes, “it is no good.” Then she went over to the door and shut it.
She sat down on the edge of her little white bed, supporting one knee with a smooth, solid arm, while she stared into vacancy.
Nothing had happened—nothing; yet henceforward life would wear a different face for her and she knew it.
It was impossible any longer to deceive himself. Her wide, vacant eyes saw nothing, but her mental vision, grown suddenly acute, was confronted by a thronging array of images.
Yes, she was beginning to see it all now; dimly and slowly indeed at first, but with ever increasing clearness as she gazed; to see how it had all been from the beginning;how slowly and surely this thing had grown about her life; how in the night a silent foe had undermined the citadel.
She had been caught, snared in a fine, strong net of woven hair, this young, strong creature. Her strength mocked her in the clinging, subtle toils.
She got up from the bed slowly, stiffly, and stood again upright in the middle of the room. Forced into a position alien to her whole nature, to the very essence of her decorous, law-abiding soul, it was impossible that she should not seek to strike a blow in her own behalf.
“It is no good,” Rose had said, and she had echoed the words.
She did not put her thought into words, but her heart cried out in sudden rebellion, “Why was it no good?”
She went over mentally almost every incident in her intercourse with Reuben;saw how from day to day, from month to month, from year to year they had been drawn closer together in ever strengthening, ever tightening bonds. She remembered his voice, his eyes, his face—his near face—as she had heard and seen them a few short hours ago.
The conventions, the disguises, which she had been taught to regard as the only realities, fell down suddenly before the living reality of this thing which had grown up between her and Reuben. She recognized in it a living creature, wonderful, mysterious, beautiful and strong, with all the rights of its existence. It was impossible that they who had given it breath should do violence to it, should stain their hands with its blood—it was impossible.
She stood there still, her head lifted up, glowing with a strange exultation as her pride re-asserted itself.
Opposite was a mirror, a three-sided toilet mirror, hung against the wall, and suddenly Judith caught sight of her own reflected face with its wild eyes and flushed cheeks; her face which was usually so calm.
Calm? Had she ever been calm, save with the false calmness which narcotic drugs bestow? She was frightened of herself, of her own daring, of the wild, strange thoughts and feelings which struggled for mastery within her. There is nothing more terrible, more tragic than this ignorance of a woman of her own nature, her own possibilities, her own passions.
She covered her face with her hands, and in the darkness the thoughts came crowding (was it thought, or vision, or feeling?).
The inexorable realities of her world, those realities of which she had so rarelyallowed herself to lose sight, came pressing back upon her with renewed insistence.
That momentary glow of exultation, of self-vindication faded before the hard daylight which rushed in upon her soul.
She saw not only how it had all been, but how it would all be to the end.
Then once more his low, broken voice was in her ear, his supplicating eyes before her; the music, the breath of dying flowers assailed once more her senses; she lived over again that near, far-off, wonderful moment.
Again Judith dropped her hands to her side; she clenched them in an intolerable agony; she took a few steps and flung herself face forwards on the pillow.
Shame, anger, pride, all were swept away in an overwhelming torrent of emotion; in a sudden flood of passion, of longing, of desolation.
Baffled, vanquished, she lay there, crushing out the sound of unresisted sobs.
From her heart rose only the cry of defeat:—
“Reuben, Reuben, have mercy on me!”
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart;’Tis woman’s whole existence.Byron.
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart;’Tis woman’s whole existence.Byron.
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart;’Tis woman’s whole existence.Byron.
Judithslept far into the morning the sound, deep sleep of exhaustion; that sleep of the heavy-hearted from which, almost by an effort of will, the dreams are banished.
The first thing of which she was aware was the sound of Rose’s voice, and then of Rose herself standing over her with a plate and a cup of coffee in her hand. Judith raised herself on her elbow; a vague sense of calamity clung to her; her eyes wereheavy with more than the heaviness of sleep.
“It is ten o’clock,” cried Rose. “I have brought you your breakfast. Rather handsome of me, isn’t it?”
“Yes, very,” said Judith, smiling faintly. “How came I to sleep so late?”
It was quite an event in her well-ordered existence; she realized it with a little shock which set her memory in motion.
Judith drank her coffee hastily and sprang out of bed. She went through her toilet with even more care and precision than usual; there is nothing more conducive to self respect than a careful toilet.
Nothing had happened; everything had happened. Judith felt that she had grown older in the night.
All day long people came and went and gossiped; gossiped loudly and ceaselesslyof last night’s party; more cautiously and at intervals of Mr. Ronaldson’s death.
In the evening Adelaide, Esther, and Mrs. Sachs came in, but not Reuben. Not Reuben—she knew her sentence.
That brief moment of clear vision, of courage, had faded, as we know, even as it came. Now she dared not even look back upon it—dared not think at all.
Nothing had happened—nothing.
She fell back upon the unconsciousness, the unsuspiciousness of her neighbours. For them the world was not changed; how was it possible that great things had taken place?
She talked, moved about, and went through all the little offices of her life.
Now and then she repeated to herself the formulæ on which she had been brought up, which she had always accepted, as to the unseriousness, the unreality of the romantic, the sentimental in life.
Two or three days went by without any event to mark them. On the fourth, Bertie Lee-Harrison paid a call of interminable length, when Judith, with bright eyes and flushed cheeks, talked to him with unusual animation.
In her heart she was thinking: “Reuben will never come again, and what shall I do?”
But the very next day Reuben came.
It was of course impossible that he should stay away for any length of time.
The Leunigers were at tea in the drawing-room after dinner when the door was pushed open, and he entered, as usual, unannounced.
Judith’s heart leapt suddenly within her. The misery of the last few days melted like a bad dream. After all, were things any different from what they had always been?
Here was Reuben, here was she, face to face—alive—together.
He came slowly forwards, his eyelids drooping, an air of almost wooden immobility on his face. The black frock-coat which he wore, and in which he had that day attended Mr. Ronaldson’s funeral, brought out the unusual sallowness of his complexion. There was a withered, yellow look about him to-night which forcibly recalled his mother.
Judith’s heart grew very soft as she watched him shaking hands with her aunt and uncle.
“He is not well,” she thought; then: “He always comes last to me.”
But even as this thought flitted across her mind Reuben was in front of her, holding out his hand.
For a moment she stared astonished at the stiff, outstretched arm, the downcast,expressionless face, taking in the exaggerated, self-conscious indifference of his whole manner, then, with lightning quickness, put her hand in his.
It was as though he had struck her.
She looked round, half-expecting a general protest against this public insult, saw the quiet, unmoved faces, and understood.
She, too, to outward appearance, was quiet and unmoved enough, as she sat there on a primrose-coloured ottoman, bending over a bit of work. But the blood was beating and surging in her ears, and her stiff, cold fingers blundered impotently with needle and thread.
Reuben finished his greetings, then sat down near his uncle. He had come, he explained, to say “good-bye” before going down to St. Baldwin’s, for which, as he had expected, he had been asked to stand.
There was every chance of his being returned, Mr. Leuniger believed?
Well, yes. There was a small Radical party down there, certainly, beginning to feel its way, and they had brought forward a candidate. Otherwise there would have been no opposition.
Sir Nicholas Kemys, who had a place down there, and who was member for the county of which St. Baldwin’s was the chief town, had been very kind about it all. Lady Kemys was Lee-Harrison’s sister.
Judith listened, cold as a stone.
How could he bear to sit there, drawling out these facts to Israel Leuniger, which in the natural course of things should have been poured forth for her private benefit in delicious confidence and sympathy?
Esther, who was spending the evening with her cousins, came and sat beside her.
“You are putting green silk instead of blue into those cornflowers,” she cried.
Judith lifted her head and met the other’s curious, penetrating glance.
“When I was a little girl,” cried Esther, still looking at her, “a little girl of eight years old, I wrote in my prayer-book: ‘Cursed art Thou, O Lord my God, Who hast had the cruelty to make me a woman.’ And I have gone on saying that prayer all my life—the only one.”
Judith stared at her as she sat there, self-conscious, melodramatic, anxious for effect.
She never knew if mere whim or a sudden burst of cruelty had prompted her words.
“According to your own account, Esther,” she said, “you must always have been a little beast.”
Esther chuckled. Judith went on sewing, but changed her silks.
She wondered if the evening would neverend, and yet she did not want Reuben to go.
He rose at last and made his farewells.
Judith put out her hand carelessly as he approached her, then, drawn by an irresistible magnetism, lifted her eyes to his.
As she did so, from Reuben’s eyes flashed out a long melancholy glance of passion, of entreaty, of renunciation; and once again, even from the depths of her own humiliation, arose that strange, yearning sentiment of pity, with which this man, who was strong, ruthless and successful, had such power of inspiring her.
Only for a moment did their eyes meet, the next she had turned hers away—had in her turn grown cold and unresponsive.
How dared he look at her thus? How dared he profane that holiest of sorrows, the sorrow of those who love and are by fate separated?