THE letter was brief and abrupt.
"I am in London. I have just come back from Jamaica. Will you come and see me? I can be in at any time you appoint."
There was no signature, but he knew the handwriting well enough. The letter came to him by the morning post, sandwiched between his tailor's bill and a catalogue of Rare and Choice Editions.
He read it twice. Then he got up from the breakfast-table, unlocked a drawer, and took out a packet of letters and a photograph.
"I ought to have burned them long ago," he said; "I'll burn them now." He did burn them but first he read them through, and as he read them he sighed, more than once. They were passionate, pretty letters,—the phrases simply turned, the endearments delicately chosen. They breathed of love and constancy and faith, a faiththat should move mountains, a love that should shine like gold in the furnace of adversity, a constancy that death itself should be powerless to shake. And he sighed. No later love had come to draw with soft lips the poison from this old wound. She had married Benoliel, the West Indian Jew. It is a far cry from Jamaica to London, but some whispers had reached her jilted lover. The kindest of them said that Benoliel neglected his wife, the harshest, that he beat her.
He looked at the photograph. It was two years since he had seen the living woman. Yet still, when he shut his eyes, he could see the delicate tints, the coral, and rose, and pearl, and gold that went to the making up of her. He could always see these. And now he should see the reality. Would the two years have dulled that bright hair, withered at all that flower-face? For he never doubted that he must go to her.
He was a lawyer; perhaps she wanted that sort of help from him, wanted to know how to rid herself of the bitter bad bargain that she had made in marrying the Jew. Whatever he could do he would, of course, but—
He went out at once and sent a telegram to her.
"Four to-day."
And at four o'clock he found himself on the doorstep of a house in Eaton Square. He hated the wealthy look of the house, the footman who opened the door, and the thick carpets of the stairs up which he was led. He hated the soft luxury of the room in which he was left to wait for her. Everything spoke, decorously and without shouting, but with unmistakable distinctness, of money, Benoliel's money: money that had been able to buy all these beautiful things, and, as one of them, to buy her.
She came in quietly. Long simple folds of grey trailed after her: she wore no ornament of any kind. Her fingers were ringless, every one. He saw all this, but before he saw anything else he saw that the two years had taken nothing from her charm, had indeed but added a wistful patient look that made her seem more a child than when he had last seen her.
The meaningless contact of their hands was over, and still neither had spoken. She was looking at him questioningly. The silenceappeared silly; there was, and there could be, no emotion to justify, to transfigure it. He spoke.
"How do you do?" he said.
She drew a deep breath, and lifted her eyebrows slightly.
"Won't you sit down?" she said; "you are looking just like you used to." She had the tiniest lisp; once it had used to charm him.
"You, too, are quite your old self," he said. Then there was a pause.
"Aren't you going to say anything?" she said.
"It was you who sent for me," said he.
"Yes."
"Why did you?"
"I wanted to see you." She opened her pretty child-eyes at him, and he noted, only to bitterly resent, the appeal in them. He remembered that old appealing look too well.
"No, Madam," he said inwardly, "not again! You can't whistle the dog to heel at your will and pleasure. I was a fool once, but I'm not fool enough to play the fool with Benoliel's wife."
Aloud he said, smiling—
"I suppose you did, or you would not have written. And now what can I do for you?"
She leaned forward to look at him.
"Then you really have forgotten? You didn't grieve for me long! You used to say you would never leave off loving me as long as you lived."
"My dear Mrs. Benoliel," he said, "if I ever said anything so thoughtless as that, I certainlyhaveforgotten it."
"Very well," she said; "then go!"
This straight hitting embarrassed him mortally.
"But," he said, "I've not forgotten that you and I were once friends for a little while, and I do beg you to consider me as a friend. Let me help you. You must have some need of a friend's services, or you would not have sent for me. I assure you I am entirely at your commands. Come, tell me how I can help you—"
"You can't help me at all," she said hopelessly, "nobody can now."
"I've heard—I hope you'll forgive me for saying so—I've heard that your married life has been—hasn't been—"
"My married life has been hell," she said;"but I don't want to talk about that. I deserved it all."
"But, my dear lady, why not get a divorce or, at least, a separation? My services—anything I can do to advise or—"
She sprang from her chair and knelt beside him.
"Oh, howcouldyou think that of me? How could you? He's dead—Benoliel's dead. I thought you'd understand that by my sending to you. Do you think I'd ever have seen you again as long ashewas alive? I'm not a wicked woman, dear, I'm only a fool."
She had caught the hand that lay on the arm of his chair, her face was pressed on it, and on it he could feel her tears and her kisses.
"Don't," he said harshly, "don't." But he could not bring himself to draw his hand away otherwise than very gently, and after a decent pause. He stood up and held out his hand. She put hers in it, he raised her to her feet and put her back in her chair, and artfully entrenching himself behind a little table, sat down in a very stiff chair with a high seat and gilt legs.
She laughed. "Oh, don't trouble! You needn't barricade yourself like a besieged castle. Don't be afraid of me. You're really quite safe. I'm not so mad as you think. Only, you know, all this time I've never been able to get the idea out of my head—"
He was afraid to ask what idea.
"I always believed you meant it; that you always would love me, just as you said. I was wrong, that's all. Now go! Do go!"
He was afraid to go.
"No," he said, "let's talk quietly, and like the old friends we were before we—"
"Before we weren't. Well?"
He was now afraid to say anything.
"Look here," she said suddenly, "letmetalk. There are some things I do really want to say, since you won't let it go without saying. One is that I know now you're not so much to blame as I thought, and Idoforgive you. I mean it, really, not just pretending forgiveness; I forgive you altogether—"
"You—forgiveme?"
"Yes, didn't you understand that that was what I meant? I didn't want tosay'I forgiveyou,' and I thought if I sent for you you'd understand."
"You seem to have thought your sending for me a more enlightening move than I found it."
"Yes—because you don't care now. If you had, you'd have understood."
"I really think I should like to understand."
"What?"
"Exactly what it is you're kind enough to forgive."
"Why—your never coming to see me. Benoliel told me before we'd been married a month that he had got my aunt to stop your letters and mine, so I don't blame you now as I did then. But you might have come when you found I didn't write."
"I did come. The house was shut up, and the caretaker could give no address."
"Did you really? And there was no address? I never thought of that."
"I don't suppose you did," he said savagely; "you neverdidthink!"
"Oh, Iwasa fool! I was!"
"Yes."
"But I have been punished."
"Not you!" he said. "You got what you wanted—money, money, money—the only thing I couldn't give you. If it comes to that, why didn'tyoucome and seeme?I hadn't gone away and left no address."
"I never thought of it."
"No, of course not."
"And, besides, you wouldn't have been there—"
"I? I sat day after day waiting for a letter."
"I never thought of it," she said again.
And again he said: "No, of course you didn't; you wouldn't, you know—"
"Ah, don't! please don't! Oh, you don't know how sorry I've been—"
"But why did you marry him?"
"To spite you—to show you I didn't care—because I was in a rage—because I was a fool! You might as well tell me at once that you're in love with someone else."
"Must one always be in love, then?" he sneered.
"I thought men always were," she said simply. "Please tell me."
"No, I'm not in love with anybody. I havehad enough of that to last me for a year or two."
"Then—oh, won't you try to like me again? Nobody will ever love you so much as I do—you said I looked just the same—"
"Yes, but youaren'tthe same."
"Yes I am. I think really I'm better than I used to be," she said timidly.
"You'renotthe same," he went on, growing angrier to feel that he had allowed himself to grow angry with her. "You were a girl, and my sweetheart; now you're a widow—that man's widow! You're not the same. The past can't be undone so easily, I assure you."
"Oh," she cried, clenching her hands, "I know there must be something I could say that you would listen to—oh, I wish I could think what! I suppose as it is I'm saying things no other woman ever would have said—but I don't care! I won't be reserved and dignified, and leave everything to you, like girls in books. I lost too much by that before. I will say every single thing I can think of. I will! Dearest, you said you would always love me—you don't care for anyone else. Iknowyou would love me again ifyou would only let yourself. Won't you forgive me?"
"I can't," he said briefly.
"Have you never done anything that needed to be forgiven? I would forgive you anything in the world! Didn't you care for other people before you knew me? And I'm not angry about it. And I never cared for him."
"That only makes it worse," he said.
She sprang to her feet. "It makes it worse for me! But if you loved me it ought to make it better for you. If you had loved me with your heart and mind you would be glad to think how little it was, after all, that I did give to that man."
"Sold—not gave—"
"Oh, don't spare me! But there's no need to tellyounot to spare me. But I don't care what you say. You've loved other women. I've never loved anyone but you. And yet you can't forgive me!"
"It's not the same," he repeated dully.
"Iamthe same—only I'm more patient, I hope, and not so selfish. But your pride is hurt, and you think it's not quite the right thing tomarry a rich man's widow. And you want to go home and feel how strong and heroic you've been, and be proud of yourself because you haven't let me make a fool of you."
It was so nearly true that he denied it instantly.
"I don't," he said. "I could have forgiven you anything, however wicked you'd been—but I can't forgive you for having been—"
"Been a fool? I can't forgive myself for that, either. My dear, my dear, you don't love anyone else; you don't hate me. Do you know that your eyes are quite changed from what they were when you came in? And your voice, and your face—everything. Think, dear, if I am not the same woman you loved, I'm still more like her than anyone else in the world. And you did love me—oh, don't hate me for anything I've said. Don't you see I'm fighting for my life? Look at me. I am just like your old sweetheart, only I love you more, and I can understand better now how not to make you unhappy. Ah, don't throw everything away without thinking. Iammore like the woman you loved than anyone else can ever be. Oh,my God! my God! what shall I say to him? Oh, God help me!"
She had said enough. The one phrase "If I am not the same woman you loved, still I am more like her than anyone else in the world" had struck straight at his heart. It was true. What if this, the second best, were now the best life had to offer? If he threw this away, would any other woman be able to inspire him with any sentiment more like love than this passion of memory, regret, tenderness, pity—this desire to hold, protect, and comfort, with which, ever since her tears fell on his hand, he had been fighting in fierce resentment. He looked at the huddled grey figure. He must decide—now, at this moment—he must decide for two lives.
But before he had time to decide anything he found that he had taken her in his arms.
"My own, my dear," he was saying again and again, "I didn't mean it. It wasn't true. I love you better than anything. Let's forget it all. I don't care for anything now I have you again."
"Then why—"
"Oh, don't let's ask each other questions—let's begin all over again at two years ago. We'll forget all the rest—my dear—my own!"
Of course neither has ever forgotten it, but they always pretend to each other that they have.
Her defiance of the literary sense in him and in her was justified. His literary sense, or some deeper instinct, prompted him to refuse to use Benoliel's money—but her acquiescence in his decision reversed it. And they live very comfortably on the money to this day.
The odd thing is that they are extremely happy. Perhaps it is not, after all, such a bad thing to be quite sure, before marriage, that the second-best happiness is all you are likely to get in this world.
THE month was June, the street was Gower Street, the room was an attic. And in it a poet sat, struggling with the rebellious third act of the poetic drama that was to set him in the immediate shadow of Shakespeare, and on the level of those who ring Parnassus round just below the summit. The attic roof sloped, the furniture was vilely painted in grained yellow, the arm-chair's prickly horsehair had broken to let loose lumps of dark-coloured flock. The curtains were dark and damask and dusty. The carpet was Kidderminster and sand-coloured. It had holes in it; so had the Dutch hearthrug. The poet's penholder was the kind at twopence the dozen. The ink was in a penny bottle. Outside on a blackened flowerless lilac a strayed thrush sang madly of spring and hope and joy and love.
The clear strong June sunshine streamed in through the window and turned the white of the poet's page to a dazzling silver splendour.
"Hang it all!" he cried, and he threw down the yellow-brown penholder. "It's too much! It's not to be borne! It's not human!"
He turned out his pockets. Two-and-seven-pence. He could draw the price of an ode and a roundelay from theSpectator—but not to-day, for this was a Bank Holiday, Whit Monday, in fact. Then he thought of his tobacco jar. Sure enough, there lurked some halfpence among the mossy shag, and—oh, wonder and joy and cursed carelessness for ever to be blessed—a gleaming coy half-sovereign. In the ticket-pocket of his overcoat a splendid unforeseen shilling—a florin and a sixpence in the velveteen jacket he had not worn since last year. Ten—and two—and one—and two and sevenpence and sixpence—sixteen shillings and a penny. Enough, more than enough, to take him out of this world of burst horsehair chairs and greedy foolscap, of arid authorship and burst bubbles of dreams to the real world, where spring, stilllaughing, shrank from the kisses of summer, where white may blossomed and thrushes sang.
"I'll have a holiday," he said, "who knows—I may get an idea for a poem!"
He cleaned his boots with ink; they were not shiny after it, but they were at least black. He put on his last clean shirt and the greeny-blue Liberty tie that his sister had sent him for his April birthday. He brushed his soft hat—counted his money again—found for it a pocket still lacking holes—and went out whistling. The front door slammed behind him with a cheerful conclusive bang.
From the top of an omnibus he noted the town gilded with June sunlight. And it was very good.
He bought food, and had it packed in decent brown paper, so that it looked like something superfluous from the stores.
And he caught the ten something train to Halstead. He only just caught it.
He blundered into a third-class carriage, and nearly broke his neck over an umbrella which lay across the door like an amateur trap for undesired company.
By some extraordinary apotheosis of Bank Holiday mismanagement, there was only one person in the carriage—the owner of the trap-umbrella. A girl, of course. That was inevitable in this magic weather. He had knocked her basket off the seat, and had only just saved himself from buffeting her with his uncontrolled shoulder before he saw that she was a girl. He took off his hat and apologised. She smiled, murmured, and blushed.
He settled himself in his corner, and unfolded the evening paper of yesterday which, by the most fortunate chance, happened to be in his pocket.
Over it he glanced at her. She was pretty—with a vague unawakened prettiness. Her eyes and hair were dark. Her hat seemed dowdy, yet becoming. Her gloves were rubbed at the fingers. Her blouse was light and bright. Her skirt obscure and severe. He decided that she was not well off.
His eyes followed a dull leader on the question of the government of India. But he did not want to read. He wanted to talk. On this June day, when the life of full-grown springthrilled one to the finger tips, how could one feed one's vitality, one's over-mastering joy of life, with printer's ink and the greyest paper in London?
He glanced at her again. She was looking out of the window at the sordid little Bermondsey houses, where the red buds of the Virginia creeper were already waking to their green summer life-work. He spoke. And no one would have guessed from his speech that he was a poet.
"What a beautiful day!" he said.
"Yes, very," said she, and her tone gave no indication of any exuberant spring expansiveness to match his own.
He looked at her again. No. Yes. Yes, he would try the experiment he had long wanted to try—had often in long, silent, tête-à-tête journeys dreamed of trying. He would skip all the pitiful formalities of chance acquaintanceship. He would speak as one human being to another—would assume the sure bond of a common kinship. He said—
"It is such a beautiful day that I want to talk about it! Mayn't I talk to you? Don'tyou feel that you want to say how beautiful it is—just as much as I do?"
The girl looked at him. A scared fold in her brow warned him of the idea that had seized her.
"I'm really not mad," he said; "but it does seem so frightfully silly that we should travel all the way to—to wherever you are going, and not tell each other how good June weather is."
"Well—it is!" she owned.
He eagerly spoke: he wanted to entangle her in talk before her conventional shrinking from chance acquaintanceship should shrivel her interest past hope.
"I often think how silly people are," he said, "not to talk in railway carriages. One can't read without blinding oneself. I've seen women knit, but that's unspeakable. Many a time in frosty, foggy weather, when the South Eastern has taken two hours to get from Cannon Street to Blackheath, I've looked round the carriage and wanted to say, 'Gentlemen, seeing that we are thus delayed, let us each contribute to the general hilarity by telling a story—we might gather them into a Christmas number afterwards—inthe manner of the late Mr. Charles Dickens,' then I've looked round the carriage full of city-centred people, and wondered how they'd deal with the lunatic who ventured to suggest such an All-the-year-round idea. But nobody could be city-centred on such a day, and so early. So let's talk."
She had laughed, as he had meant her to laugh. Now she seemed to throw away some scruple in the gesture with which she shrugged her shoulders and turned to him.
"Very well," she said, and she was smiling. "Only I've nothing to say."
"Never mind; I have," he rejoined, and proceeded to say it. It seemed amusing to him as an experiment to talk to this girl, this perfect stranger, with a delicate candour that he would not have shown to his oldest friend. It seemed interesting to lay bare, save for a veiling of woven transparent impersonality, his inmost mind. Itwasinteresting, for the revelation drew her till they were talking together in a world where it seemed no more than natural for her to show him her soul: and she had no skill to weave veils for it.
Such talk is rare: so rare and so keen a pleasure, indeed, as to leave upon one's life, if one be not a poet, a mark strong and never to be effaced.
The slackening of the train at Halstead broke the spell which lay on both with a force equal in strength, if diverse in kind.
"Oh!" she said, "I get out here. Good-bye, good-bye."
He would not spoil the parting by banalities of hat-raising amid the group of friends or relations who would doubtless meet her.
"Good-bye," he said, and his eyes made her take his offered hand. "Good-bye. I shall never forget you. Never!"
And then it seemed to him that the farewell lacked fire: and he lifted her hand to his face. He did not kiss it. He laid it against his cheek, sighed, and dropped it. The action was delicate and very effective. It suggested the impulse, almost irresistible yet resisted, the well-nigh overwhelming longing to kiss the hand, kept in check by a respect that was almost devotion.
She should have torn her hand away. She took it away gently, and went.
Leisurely he got out of the train. She had disappeared. Well—the bright little interlude was over. Still, it would give food for dreams among the ferny woods. The first lines of a little song hummed themselves in his brain—
"Eyes like stars in the night of life,Seen but a moment and seen for ever."
He would finish them and send them to thePall Mall Gazette. That would be a guinea.
He wished the journey had been longer. He would never see her again. Perhaps it was just as well. He crushed that last thought. It would be good to dwell through the day on the thought of her—the almost loved, the wholly lost.
"That could but have happened onceAnd we missed it, lost it for ever!"
Her eyes were very pretty, especially when they opened themselves so widely as she tried to express the thoughts that no one but he had ever cared to hear expressed. The definite biography—dead father, ailing mother—hard work—hard life—hard-won post as High School Mistress, were but as the hoarding on whichwas pasted the artistic poster of their meeting—their parting. He sighed as he walked along the platform. The promise of June had fulfilled itself: he was rich in a sorrow that did not hurt—a regret that did not sting. Poor little girl! Poor pretty eyes! Poor timid, brave maiden-soul!
Suddenly in his walk he stopped short.
Obliquely through the door of the booking-office he saw her. She was alone. No troops of friends or relations had borne her off. She was waiting for someone; and someone had not come.
What was to be done? He felt an odd chill. If he had only not taken her hand in that silly way which had seemed at the time so artistically perfect. The railway carriage talk might have been prolonged prettily, indefinitely. But that foolish contact had rung up the curtain on a transformation scene, whose footlights needed, at least, a good make-up for the facing of them.
She stood there—looking down the road; in every line of her figure was dejection; hopelessness itself had drawn the line of her head's sideward droop. His make-up need be but of the simplest.
She had expected to meet someone, and someone had not come.
His chivalric impulses, leaping to meet the occasion's call, bade him substitute a splendid replacement—himself, for the laggard tryst-breaker. Even though he knew that that touch of the hand must inaugurate the second volume of the day's romance.
He came behind her and spoke.
"Hasn't he come?" He did not like himself for saying "he"—but he said it. It belonged to the second volume.
She turned with a start and a lighting of eyes and lips that almost taught him pity. Not quite: for the poet's nature is hard to teach.
"He?" she said, decently covering the light of lips and eyes as soon as might be. "It was a friend. She was to come from Sevenoaks. She ought to be here. We were to have a little picnic together." She glanced at her basket. "I didn't know you were getting out here. Why—" The question died on trembling lips.
"Why?" he repeated. There was a pause.
"And now, what are you going to do?" he asked, and his voice was full of tender raillery for her lost tryst with the girl friend, and for her pretty helplessness.
"I—I don't know," she said.
"But I do!" he looked in her eyes. "You are going to be kind. Life is so cruel. You are going to help me to cheat Life and Destiny. You are going to leave your friend to the waste desolation of this place, if she comes by the next train: but she won't—she's kept at home by toothache, or a broken heart, or some little foolish ailment like that,"—he prided himself on the light touch here,—"and you are going to be adorably kind and sweet and generous, and to let me drink the pure wine of life for this one day."
Her eyes drooped. Fully inspired, he struck a master-chord in the lighter key.
"You have a basket. I have a brown paper parcel. Let me carry both, and we will share both. We'll go to Chevening Park. It will be fun. Will you?"
There was a pause: he wondered whether by any least likely chance the chord had not rung true. Then—
"Yes," she said half defiantly. "I don't see why I shouldn't—Yes."
"Then give me the basket," he said, "and hey for the green wood!"
The way led through green lanes—through a green park, where tall red sorrel and white daisies grew high among the grass that was up for hay. The hawthorns were silvery, the buttercups golden. The gold sun shone, the blue sky arched over a world of green and glory. And so through Knockholt, and up the narrow road to the meadow whose path leads to the steep wood-way where Chevening Park begins.
They walked side by side, and to both of them—for he was now wholly lost in the delightful part for which this good summer world was the fitting stage—to both of them it seemed that the green country was enchanted land, and they under a spell that could never break.
They talked of all things under the sun: he, eager to impress her with that splendid self of his; she, anxious to show herself not wholly unworthy. She, too, had read her Keats and her Shelley and her Browning—and could cap and even overshadow his random quotations.
"There is no one like you," he said as they passed the stile above the wood; "no one in this beautiful world."
Her heart replied—
"If there is anyone like you I have never met him, and oh, thank God, thank God, that I have met you now."
Aloud she said—
"There's a place under beech trees—a sort of chalk plateau—I used to have picnics there with my brothers when I was a little girl—"
"Shall we go there?" he asked. "Will you really take me to the place that your pretty memories haunt? Ah—how good you are to me."
As they went down the steep wood-path she slipped, stumbled—he caught her.
"Give me your hand!" he said. "This path's not safe for you."
It was not. She gave him her hand, and they went down into the wood together.
The picnic was gay as an August garden. After a life of repression—to meet someone to whom one might be oneself! It was very good.
She said so. That was when he did kiss her hand.
When lunch was over they sat on the sloped, short turf and watched the rabbits in the warren below. They sat there and they talked. And to the end of her days no one will know her soul as he knew it that day, and no one ever knew better than she that aspect of his soul which he chose that day to represent as its permanent form.
The hours went by, and when the shadows began to lengthen and the sun to hide behind the wood they were sitting hand in hand. All the entrenchments of her life's training, her barriers of maidenly reserve, had been swept away by the torrent of his caprice, his indolently formed determination to drink the delicate sweet cup of this day to the full.
It was in silence that they went back along the wood-path—her hand in his, as before. Yet not as before, for now he held it pressed against his heart.
"Oh, what a day—what a day of days!" he murmured. "Was there ever such a day? Could there ever have been? Tell me—tell me! Could there?"
And she answered, turning aside a changed, softened, transfigured face.
"You know—you know!"
So they reached the stile at the top of the wood—and here, when he had lent her his hand to climb it, he paused, still holding in his her hand.
Now or never, should the third volume begin—and end. Should he? Should he not? Which would yield the more perfect memory—the one kiss to crown the day, or the kiss renounced, the crown refused? Her eyes, beseeching, deprecating, fearing, alluring, decided the question. He framed her soft face in his hands and kissed her, full on the lips. Then not so much for insurance against future entanglement as for the sound of the phrase, which pleased him—he was easily pleased at the moment—he said—
"A kiss for love—for memory—for despair!"
It was almost in silence that they went through lanes still and dark, across the widespread park lawns and down the narrow road to the station. Her hand still lay against his heart. The kiss still thrilled through them both. They parted at the station. He would not risk thelessening of the day's charming impression by a railway journey. He could go to town by a later train. He put her into a crowded carriage, and murmured with the last hand pressure—
"Thank God for this one day. I shall never forget. You will never forget. This day is all our lives—all that might have been."
"I shall never forget," she said.
In point of fact, she never has forgotten. She has remembered all, even to the least light touch of his hand, the slightest change in his soft kind voice. That is why she has refused to marry the excellent solicitor who might have made her happy, and, faded and harassed, still teaches to High School girls the Euclid and Algebra which they so deeply hate to learn.
As for him, he went home in a beautiful dream, and in the morning he wrote a song about her eyes which was so good that he sent it to theAthenæum, and got two guineas for it—so that his holiday was really not altogether wasted.
FROM her very earliest teens every man she met had fallen at her feet. Her father in paternal transports—dignified and symbolic as the adoration of the Magi, uncles in forced unwilling tribute, cousins according to their kind, even brothers, resentful of their chains yet still enslaved, lovers by the score, persons disposed to marriage by the half-dozen.
And she had smiled on them all, because it was so nice to be loved, and if one could make those who loved happy by smiling, why, smiles were cheap! Not cheap like inferior soap, but like the roses from a full June garden.
To one she gave something more than smiles—herself to wit—and behold her at twenty, married to the one among her slaves to whom she had deigned to throw the handkerchief—real Brussels, be sure! Behold her happy in the adoration of the one, the only one among heradorers whom she herself could adore. His name was John, of course, and it was a foregone conclusion that he should be a stock-broker.
All the same, he was nice, which is something: and she loved him, which is everything.
The little new red-brick Queen Anne villa was as the Garden of Eden to the man and the woman—but the jerry builder is a reptile more cursed than the graceful serpent who, in his handsome suit of green and gold, pulled out the lynch-pin from the wedding chariot of our first parents. The new house—"Cloudesley" its name was—was damp as any cloud, and the Paradise was shattered, not by any romantic serpent-and-apple business, but by plain, honest, every-day rheumatism. It was, indeed, as near rheumatic fever as one may go without tumbling over the grisly fence.
The doctor said "Buxton." John could not leave town. There was a boom or a slump or something that required his personal supervision.
So her old nurse was called up from out of the mists of the grey past before he and she were hers and his, and she went to Buxton in a specially reserved invalid carriage. She went, withhalf her dainty trousseau clothes—a helpless invalid.
Now I don't want to advertise Buxton waters as a cure for rheumatism, but I know for a fact that she had to be carried down to her first bath. It was a marble bath, and she felt like a Roman empress in it. And before she had had ten days of marble baths she was almost her own man again, and the youth in her danced like an imprisoned bottle-imp. But she was dull because there was no one to adore her. She had always been fed on adoration, and she missed her wonted food—without the shadow of a guess that it was this she was missing. It was, perhaps, unfortunate that her old nurse should have sprained a stout ankle in the very first of those walks on the moors which the Doctor recommended for the completion of the cure so magnificently inaugurated by the Marble Roman Empress baths.
She wrote to her John every day. Long letters. But when the letter was done, what else was there left to do with what was left of the day? She was very, very bored.
One must obey one's doctor. Else why pay him guineas?
So she walked out, after pretty apologies to the nurse, left lonely, across the wonder-wide moors. She learned the springy gait of the true hill climber, and drank in health and strength from the keen hill air. The month was March. She seemed to be the only person of her own dainty feather in Buxton. So she walked the moors alone. All her life joy had come to her in green elm and meadow land, and this strange grey-stone walled rocky country made her breathless with its austere challenge. Yet life was good; strength grew. No longer she seemed to have a body to care for. Soul and spirit were carried by something so strong as to delight in the burden. A month, her town doctor had said. A fortnight taught her to wonder why he had said it. Yet she felt lonely—too small for those great hills.
The old nurse, patient, loving, urged her lamb to "go out in the fresh air"; and the lamb went.
It was on a grey day, when the vast hill slopes seemed more than ever sinister and reluctant to the little figure that braved them. She wore an old skirt and an old jacket—herhusband had slipped them in when he strapped her boxes.
"They're warm," he had said; "you may need them."
She had a rainbow-dyed neckerchief and a little fur hat, perky with a peacock's iridescent head and crest.
She was very pretty. The paleness of her illness lent her a new charm. And she walked the lonely road with an air. She had never been a great walker, and she was proud of each of the steps that this clear hill air gave her the courage to take.
And it was glorious, after all, to be alone—the only human thing on these wide moors, where the curlews mewed as if the place belonged to them. There was a sound behind her. The rattle of wheels.
She stopped. She turned and looked. Far below her lay the valley—all about her was the immense quiet of the hills. On the white road, quite a long way off, yet audible in that noble stillness, hoofs rang, wheels whirred. She waited for the thing to pass, for its rings of sound to die out in that wide pool of silence.
The wheels and the hoofs drew near. The rattle and jolt grew louder. She saw the horse and cart grow bigger and plainer. In a moment it would have passed. She waited.
It drew near. In another moment it would be gone, and she be left alone to meet again the serious inscrutable face of the grey landscape.
But the cart—as it drew near—drew up, the driver tightened rein, and the rough brown horse stopped—his hairy legs set at a strong angle.
"Have a lift?" asked the driver.
There was something subtly coercive in the absolute carelessness of the tone. There was the hearer on foot—here was the speaker in a cart. She being on foot and he on wheels, it was natural that he should offer her a lift in his cart—it was a greengrocer's cart. She could see celery, cabbages, a barrel or two, and the honest blue eyes of the man who drove it—the man who, seeing a fellow creature at a disadvantage, instantly offered to share such odds as Fate had allotted to him in life's dull handicap.
The sudden new impossible situation appealed to her. If lifts were offered—well—thatmust mean that lifts were generally accepted. In Rome one does as Rome does. In Derbyshire, evidently, a peacock crested toque might ride, unreproved by social criticism, in a greengrocer's cart. A tea-tray on wheels it seemed to her.
She was a born actress; she had that gift of throwing herself at a moment's notice into a given part which in our silly conventional jargon we nickname tact.
"Thank you," she said, "I should like it very much."
The box on which he arranged a seat for her contained haddocks. He cushioned it with a sack and his own shabby greatcoat, and lent her a thick rough hand for the mounting.
"Which way were you going?" he asked, and his voice was not the soft Peak sing-song—but something far more familiar.
"I was only going for a walk," she said, "but it's much nicer to drive. I wasn't going anywhere. Only I want to get back to Buxton some time."
"I live there," said he. "I must be home by five. I've a goodish round to do. Will five be soon enough for you?"
"Quite," she said, and considered within herself what rôle it would be kindest, most tactful, most truly gentlewomanly to play. She sought to find, in a word, the part to play that would best please the man who was with her. That was what she had always tried to find. With what success let those who love her tell.
"I mustn't seem too clever," she said to herself; "I must just be interested in what he cares about. That's true politeness: mother always said so."
So she talked of the price of herrings and the price of onions, and of trade, and of the difficulty of finding customers who had at once appreciation and a free hand.
When he drew up in some lean grey village, or at the repellent gates of some isolated slate-roofed house, he gave her the reins to hold, while he, with his samples of fruit and fish laid out on basket lids, wooed custom at the doors.
She experienced a strangely crescent interest in his sales.
Between the sales they talked. She found it quite easy, having swept back and penned in themajor part of her knowledges and interests, to leave a residuum that was quite enough to meet his needs.
As the chill dusk fell in cloudy folds over the giant hill shoulders and the cart turned towards home, she shivered.
"Are you cold?" he asked solicitously. "The wind strikes keen down between these beastly hills."
"Beastly?" she repeated. "Don't you think they're beautiful?"
"Yes," he said, "of course I see they're beautiful—for other folks, but not for me. What I like is lanes an' elm trees and farm buildings with red tiles and red walls round fruit gardens—and cherry orchards and thorough good rich medders up for hay, and lilac bushes and bits o' flowers in the gardens, same what I was used to at home."
She thrilled to the homely picture.
"Why, that's what I like too!" she said. "These great hills—I don't see how they can feel like home to anyone. There's a bit of an orchard—one end of it is just a red barn wall—and there are hedges round, and it's all softwarm green lights and shadows—and thrushes sing like mad. That's home!"
He looked at her.
"Yes," he said slowly, "that's home."
"And then," she went on, "the lanes with the high green hedges, dog-roses and brambles and may bushes and traveller's joy—and the grey wooden hurdles, and the gates with yellow lichen on them, and the white roads and the light in the farm windows as you come home from work—and the fire—and the smell of apples from the loft."
"Yes," he said, "that's it—I'm a Kentish man myself. You've got a lot o' words to talk with."
When he put her down at the edge of the town she went to rejoin her nurse feeling that to one human being, at least, she had that day been the voice of the home-ideal, and of all things sweet and fair. And, of course, this pleased her very much.
Next morning she woke with the vague but sure sense of something pleasant to come. She remembered almost instantly. She had met a man on whom it was pleasant to smile, andwhom her smiles and her talk pleased. And she thought,—quite honestly,—that she was being very philanthropic and lightening a dull life.
She wrote a long loving letter to John, did a little shopping, and walked out along a road. It was the road by which he had told her that he would go the next day. He overtook her and pulled up with a glad face, that showed her the worth of her smiles and almost repaid it.
"I was wondering if I'd see you," he said; "was you tired yesterday? It's a fine day to-day."
"Isn't it glorious!" she returned, blinking at the pale clear sun.
"It makes everything look a heap prettier, doesn't it? Even this country that looks like as if it had had all the colour washed out of it in strong soda and suds."
"Yes," she said. And then he spoke of yesterday's trade—he had done well; and of the round he had to go to-day. But he did not offer her a lift.
"Won't you give me a drive to-day?" she asked suddenly. "I enjoyed it so much."
"Willyou?" he cried, his face lighting up as he moved to arrange the sacks. "I didn't like to offer. I thought you'd think I was takin' too much on myself. Come up—reach me your hand. Right oh!"
The cart clattered away.
"I was thinking ever since yesterday when I see you how is it you can think o' so many words all at once. It's just as if you was seeing it all—the way you talked about the red barns and the grey gates and all such."
"Idosee it," she said, "inside my mind, you know. I can see it all as plainly as I see these great cruel hills."
"Yes," said he, "that's just what they are—they're cruel. And the fields and woods is kind—like folks you're friends with."
She was charmed with the phrase. She talked to him, coaxing him to make new phrases. It was like teaching a child to walk.
He told her about his home. It was a farm in Kent—"red brick with the glorydyjohn rose growin' all up over the front door—so that they never opened it."
"The paint had stuck it fast," said he, "it wasquite a job to get it open to get father's coffin out. I scraped the paint off then, and oiled the hinges, because I knew mother wouldn't last long. And she didn't neither."
Then he told her how there had been no money to carry on the fruit-growing, and how his sister had married a greengrocer at Buxton, and when everything went wrong he had come to lend a hand with their business.
"And now I takes the rounds," said he; "it's more to my mind nor mimming in the shop and being perlite to ladies."
"You're very polite tome," she said.
"Oh, yes," he said, "but you're not a lady—leastways, I'm sure you are in your 'art—but you ain't a regular tip-topper, are you, now?"
"Well, no," she said, "perhaps not that."
It piqued her that he should not have seen that shewasa lady—and yet it pleased her too. It was a tribute to her power of adapting herself to her environment.
The cart rattled gaily on—he talked with more and more confidence; she with a more and more pleased consciousness of her perfect tact. As they went a beautiful idea came toher. She would do the thing thoroughly—why not? The episode might as well be complete.
"I wish you'd let me help you to sell the things," she said. "I should like it."
"Wouldn't you be above it?" he asked.
"Not a bit," she answered gaily. "Only I must learn the prices of things. Tell me. How much are the herrings?"
He told her—and at the first village she successfully sold seven herrings, five haddocks, three score of potatoes, and so many separate pounds of apples that she lost count.
He was lavish of his praises.
"You might have been brought up to it from a girl," he said, and she wondered how old he thought she was then.
She yawned no more over dull novels now—Buxton no longer bored her. She had suddenly discovered a new life—a new stage on which to play a part, her own ability in mastering which filled her with the pleasure of a clever child, or a dog who has learned a new trick. Of course, it was not a new trick; it was the old one.
It was impossible not to go out with the greengrocer every day. What else was there todo? How else could she exercise her most perfectly developed talent—that of smiling on people till they loved her? We all like to do that which we can do best. And she never felt so contented as when she was exercising this incontestable talent of hers. She did not know the talent for what it was. She called it "being nice to people."
So every day saw her, with roses freshening in her cheeks, driving over the moors in the wheeled tea-tray. And now she sold regularly. One day he said—
"What a wife you'd make for a business chap!" But even that didn't warn her, because she happened to be thinking of Jack—and she thought how good a wife she meant to be to him.Hewas a "business chap" too.
"What are you really—by trade, I mean?" he said on another occasion.
"Nothing in particular. What did you think I was?" she said.
"Oh—I dunno—I thought a lady's maid, as likely as not, or maybe in the dressmaking. You aren't a common sort—anyone can see that."
Again pique and pleasure fought in her.
She never so much as thought of telling him that she was married. She saw no reason for it. It was her rôle to enter into his life, not to dazzle him with visions of hers.
At last that happened which was bound to happen. And it happened under the shadow of a great rock, in a cleft, green-grown and sheltered, where the road runs beside the noisy, stony, rapid, unnavigable river.
He had drawn the cart up on the grass, and she had got down and was sitting on a stone eating sandwiches, for her nurse had persuaded her to take her lunch with her so as to spend every possible hour on these life-giving moors. He had eaten bread and cheese standing by the horse's head. It was a holiday. He was not selling fish and vegetables. He was in his best, and she had never liked him so little. As she finished her last dainty bite he threw away the crusts and rinds of his meal and came over to her.
"Well," he said, with an abrupt tenderness that at once thrilled and revolted her, "don't you think it's time as we settled something betwixt us?"
"I don't know what you mean," she said. But, quite suddenly and terribly, she did.
"Why," he said, "I know well enough you're miles too good for a chap like me—but if you don't think so, that's all right. And I tell you straight, you're the only girl I ever so much as fancied."
"Oh," she breathed, "do you mean—"
"You know well enough what I mean, my pretty," he said; "but if you want it said out like in books, I've got it all on my tongue. I love every inch of you, and your clever ways, and your pretty talk. I haven't touched a drop these eight months—I shall get on right enough with you to help me—and we'll be so happy as never was. There ain't ne'er a man in England'll set more store by his wife nor I will by you, nor be prouder on her. You shan't do no hard work—I promise you that. Only just drive out with me and turn the customers round your finger. I don't ask no questions about you nor your folks. Iknowyou're an honest girl, and I'd trust you with my head. Come, give me a kiss, love, and call it a bargain."
She had stood up while he was speaking, butshe literally could not find words to stop the flow of his speech. Now she shrank back and said, "No—no!"
"Don't you be so shy, my dear," he said. "Come—just one! And then I'll take you home and interduce you to my sister. You'll like her. I've told her all about you."
Waves of unthinkable horror seemed to be closing over her head. She struck out bravely, and it seemed as though she were swimming for her life.
"No," she cried, "it's impossible! You don't understand! You don't know!"
"I know you've been keeping company with me these ten days," he said, and his voice had changed. "What did you do it for if you didn't mean nothing by it?"
"I didn't know," she said wretchedly. "I thought you liked being friends."
"If it's what you call 'friends,' being all day long with a chap, I don't so call it," he said. "But come—you're playing skittish now, ain't you? Don't tease a chap like this. Can't you see I love you too much to stand it? I know it sounds silly to say it—but I loveyou before all the world—I do—my word I do!"
He held out his arms.
"I see—I see you do," she cried, all her tact washed away by this mighty sea that had suddenly swept over her. "But I can't. I'm—I'm en—I'm promised to another young man."
"I wonder what he'll say to this," he said slowly.
"I'm so—so sorry," she said; "I'd no idea—"
"I see," he said, "you was just passing the time with me—and you never wanted me at all. And I thought you did. Get in, miss. I'll take you back to the town. I've just about had enough holiday for one day."
"Iamso sorry," she kept saying. But he never answered.
"Do forgive me!" she said at last. "Indeed, I didn't mean—"
"Didn't mean," said he, lashing up the brown horse; "no—and it don't matter to you if I think about you and want you every day and every night so long as I live. It ain't nothing to you. You've had your fun. And you've gotyour sweetheart. God, I wish him joy of you!"
"Ah—don't," she said, and her soft voice even here, even now, did not miss its effect. "Idolike you very, very much—and—"
She had never failed. She did not fail now. Before they reached the town he had formally forgiven her.
"I don't suppose you meant no harm," he said grudgingly; "though coming from Kent you ought to know how it is about walking out with a chap. But you say you didn't, and I'll believe you. But I shan't get over this, this many a long day, so don't you make no mistake. Why, I ain't thought o' nothing else but you ever since I first set eyes on you. There—don't you cry no more. I can't abear to see you cry."
He was blinking himself.
Outside the town he stopped.
"Good-bye," he said. "I haven't got nothing agin you—but I wish to Lord above I'd never seen you. I shan't never fancy no one else after you."
"Don't be unhappy," she said. And then sheought to have said good-bye. But the devil we call the force of habit would not let her leave well alone.
"I want to give you something," she said; "a keepsake, to show I shall always be your friend. Will you call at the house where I'm staying this evening at eight? I'll have it ready for you. Don't think too unkindly of me! Will you come?"
He asked the address, and said "Yes." He wanted to see her—just once again, and he would certainly like the keepsake.
She went home and looked out a beautiful book of Kentish photographs. It was a wedding present, and she had brought it with her to solace her in her exile by pictures of the home-land. Her unconscious thought was something like this: "Poor fellow; poor, poor fellow! But he behaved like a gentleman about it. I suppose there is something in the influence of a sympathetic woman—I am glad I was a good influence."
She bathed her burning face, cooled it with soft powder, and slipped into a tea-gown. It was a trousseau one of rich, heavy, yellow silkand old lace and fur. She chose it because it was warm, and she was shivering with agitation and misery. Then she went and sat with the old nurse, and a few minutes before eight she ran out and stood by the front door so as to open it before he should knock. She achieved this.
"Come in," she said, and led him into the lodging-house parlour and closed the door.
"It was good of you to come," she said, taking the big, beautiful book from the table. "This is what I want you to take, just to remind you that we're friends."
She had forgotten the tea-gown. She was not conscious that the accustomed suavity of line, the soft richness of texture influenced voice, gait, smile, gesture. But they did. Her face was flushed after her tears, and the powder, which she had forgotten to dust off, added the last touch to her beauty.
He took the book, but he never even glanced at the silver and tortoise-shell of its inlaid cover. He was looking at her, and his eyes were covetous and angry.
"Are you an actress, or what?"
"No," she said, shrinking. "Why?"
"What the hell are you, then?" he snarled furiously.
"I'm—I'm—a—"
The old nurse, scared by the voice raised beyond discretion, had dragged herself to the door of division between her room and the parlour, and now stood clinging to the door handle.
"She's a lady, young man," said the nurse severely; "and her aunt's a lady of title, and don't you forget it!"
"Forget it," he cried, with a laugh that Jack's wife remembers still; "she's a lady, and she's fooled me this way? I won't forget it, nor she shan't neither! By God, I'll give her something to forget!"
With that he caught the silken tea-gown and Jack's trembling wife in his arms and kissed her more than once. They were horrible kisses, and the man smelt of onions and hair-oil.
"And I loved her—curse her!" he cried, flinging her away, so that she fell against the arm of the chair by the fire.
He went out, slamming both doors. She had softened and bewitched him to the forgiving ofthe outrage that her indifference was to his love. The outrage of her station's condescension to his was unforgivable.
She went back to her Jack next day. She was passionately glad to see him. "Oh, Jack," she said, "I'll never, never go away from you again!"
But the greengrocer from Kent reeled down the street to the nearest public-house. At closing time he was telling, in muffled, muddled speech, the wondrous tale, how his girl was a real lady, awfully gone on him, pretty as paint, and wore silk dresses every day.
"She's a real lady—she is," he said.
"Ay!" said the chucker out, "we know all about them sort o' ladies. Time, please!"
"I tell you she is—her aunt's a lady of title, and the gal's that gone on me I expect I'll have to marry her to keep her quiet."
"I'll have to chuck you out to keepyouquiet," returned the other. "Come on—outside!"