CHAPTER XXV
No record of the next few weeks exists for me. I suppose I must have done things—little things. I must have gone in and out, and eaten my meals, and fulfilled Lovey’s orders—for, lacking volition of my own, I was entirely at his command. But the recollection of it all has passed from me. I remember reading in some one’s reminiscences of prison life that the weeks of solitary confinement went by; but the released prisoner could not say how. Nothing remained with him, apparently, but a big, black blur; and of these first weeks in New York it was all that stayed with me.
I know that Christmas came and went, and that I spent the festival at Atlantic City. I did this in a wild hope, which I knew was idiotic when I formed it. I told Lovey what I was about to do; I knew he, in the course of his valeting, which he still kept up, would tell Cantyre; I guessed that Cantyre would tell Regina; and I hoped—it never really amounted to hoping, I only dreamed—that Regina might find the moment a favorable one for slipping away and joining me. Then we should actually do the thing so impossible to plan.
But, of course, nothing came of it; and I returned to New York more unsatisfied than I had gone away. The sense of being unsatisfied sent me at last to Sterling Barry’s door.
You will observe that I had not talked with Regina since our last night on board ship. On the morning oflanding her quick movements, as compared with my slow, lumbering ones, enabled her to elude me. Since our landing my will had been positively paralyzed. Those words of hers, “Oh, Frank, I hope you won’t make me!” were always in my memory; but the very sense that I could use the power held me back from doing it. I meant to use it; but as each minute came round when I might have taken a step toward that end I seemed to fall backward, like the men who went out with swords and staves to take the Christ.
But two days after my return from Atlantic City I came to the conclusion that I could wait no longer. I could go and call on her at least. For the family it would mean no more than that I had come to offer my congratulations. For her—but I could tell that only by being face to face with her.
The old manservant recognized me on coming to the door. He was sorry that Miss Barry had gone to tea with Miss van Elstine, and was sure his mistress would be sorry, too. Moreover, they had all heard of my prowess in battle, and were proud of me.
So I drove round in my taxi to Annette’s.
The maid would have ushered me straight up to the library, but I preferred to send in my card. As I was being conducted up-stairs a minute later I had the privilege of hearing a few words which I am sure Annette intended for my ear.
“Well, I don’t mind this once, Regina; but I can’t have it going on.... Yes, I know it’s an accident; but it’s an accident that mustn’t continue to happen. The very fact that he’s my cousin obliges me to be the more careful. It wouldn’t be fair to your father and mother if I were to let you come here—”
“But, Annette, this once is all I’m asking for.”
“And all I mean to grant.”
I could tell by Annette’s voice that she was retreating to another room, so that by the time I entered Regina stood there alone. Before I knew what I was doing I held both her hands in mine and was kissing them.
It is an odd fact that on raising my eyes I saw her features for the first time since that summer afternoon at Rosyth. On board ship she had always worn the yashmak; and on the dock she had been too far away to allow of my seeing more than that she was there.
The face I saw now was not like Annette’s, untouched by the passage of time and suffering and world agony. You might have said that in its shadows and lines and intensities the whole history of the epoch was expressed. It was one of those twentieth-century faces—they are women’s faces, as a rule—on which the heroic in our time has stamped itself in lineaments which neither paint nor marble could reproduce. It flashed on me that the transmigrated soul had traveled farther than I had suspected.
I don’t know what we said to each other at first. They were no more than broken things, not to be set down by the pen. When I came to the consciousness of my actual words I was saying, “I’m going to make you, Regina; I’m going to make you.”
She responded like a child who recognizes power, but has no questionings as to right and wrong.
“Are you, Frank? How?”
“In any way that suggests itself.” I added, helplessly, “I don’t know how.”
“I’ll do whatever you tell me,” she said, simply and submissively.
“Then will you just walk away with me some afternoon—and be married—without saying anything to any one?”
“If you say so.”
“When shall we do it?”
“Whenever you like.”
“Next week?”
“If that suits you.”
“Would it suit you?”
She bent her head and was silent. I repeated the question with more insistence.
“Would it suit you, Regina?”
“There’s no question of suiting me. I’ve got myself where I can’t be”—she smiled, a twitching, nervous smile—“where I can’t be suited.”
“Do you mean that you’d come with me—when you wouldn’t want to?”
“Something like that.”
“Why should you?”
“I’ve told you that. I’ve—I’ve let you see it—in what I’ve been doing for the past two years.”
“So that I’m absolutely master?”
“That’s it.”
I turned away from her, walking to the other end of the long room. When I came back she was standing as I had left her, humbly, with eyes downcast, like a slave-girl put up for sale.
I paused in front of her.
“Do you know that your abandonment of will puts us both in an extraordinary position?”
“Yes.” She went on presently, “But I know, too, that where you’re concerned my will-power has left me.”
“But that isn’t like you.”
She shook her head.
“No, it isn’t. Generally my will is rather strong. But in this case— You see—I’d—I’d waited so long—and I’d never believed that you—that you cared anything—and now that I know you do—well, it’s simply made me helpless. I’ve—I’ve no will at all.”
“So that I must have enough for two?”
“I suppose so.”
“And if I—if I carry you off—and make every one unhappy—and put you in a position where you’d be—where you’d be done for—that’s what Annette calls it—the responsibility would be all mine?”
“I should never reproach you.”
“In words.”
“Nor in thought—if I could help it.”
“But you mightn’t be able to help it.”
To this there was no reply. I took another turn to the end of the room. My freedom of action was terrifying. Since I could do with her what I liked, I was afraid to do anything. I came back and said so.
The old Regina woke as she murmured, “If you’re afraid to do anything—do nothing.”
“And what would you do?”
“I should let things take their course.”
“Let things take their course—and marry him?”
“If things took their course that way.”
“Do you mean that they mightn’t take their course that way?”
“I’m not married to him yet. There are—there are difficulties.”
I caught her by the arm. “Of what kind?”
“Of opinion chiefly—but of very vital opinion.”
“Do you mean about the war?”
She said with a force like that of a suppressed cry: “He wants me not to have anything more to do with it! And I—I can’t stop—not while it’s going on. I—I must be doing something. It’s one of the reasons why I could marry him—that he’s a doctor—and I could take him over there—where they need him so much.”
“And he won’t go?”
“He doesn’t say that exactly; but he doesn’t want to. He thinks it’s all wrong—that when it comes to brutality, one side is as bad as the other.”
“Oh, he’ll get over that—if you insist; and then you’ll marry him.”
“Perhaps so—if I haven’t already married you.”
“What makes you think you may have married me?”
“You said you’d make me.”
And in the end, when Annette came back, we left it at that, with everything up in the air.