"I hope you took the good Samaritan who had given you the tea?" said the Professor.
"We did, yes. As a matter of fact, the leading man proposed to her during the wait at Peterborough. It was the tea that had done it—he said he hadn't believed any woman could look so nice at 6 A.M. Of course the other ladies declared she had curled her hair before she invited us into the compartment, but that was jealousy; he was a good-looking chap, and getting ten pounds a week.... They were engaged all the tour."
"Do you mean that they married then?" Bee asked.
"No, they didn't marry, but they were engaged all the tour. They quarrelled at the Grand, Islington. Her father had been a celebrated wit, and she used to say awfully insulting things and think they were funny."
It was nearly midnight when he rose to go. He was perhaps less impressionable than most young men of his age, less addicted to wasting time in flirtations that promised nothing more satisfactory than a kiss and a keepsake; but as he strode down the silent road to his apartments he was not quite fancy-free in the moonlight, his reverie was not quite so practical as usual. He resolved to send a box to the Professor at the earliest date that it was desirable to "put a little paper out"; and as he foresaw himself welcoming the party in the foyer, he was gratified to reflect that he looked his best in an evening suit. He was also gratified to reflect that "the belle" must go for walks, and examine the windows in the High Street, and that her sister couldn't be always with her.
After he had gone the Professor said—
"Well, he was taken by what he heard of the opera, I think? He'll mention it to Jordan if I'm not very much mistaken. Rome wasn't built in a day, but I've laid the foundation stone. We're getting on!"
"Yes, I'm sure he liked it," answered Bee. "I wish it had been Mr. Jordan himself, though. Don't you think Mr. Harris is rather young to have much authority, father?"
"Tut, tut," replied the composer tetchily, "what nonsense! He's shrewd, he's a smart fellow. What do you suppose he came for—to smoke a cigar with me? Business men don't run after strangers for nothing. You talk without considering. There's always a motive for these friendly actions, my dear. Women don't look beneath the surface; I could never teach your poor mother, God bless her! to look beneath the surface. I daresay he'll drop in next Sunday again; it wouldn't surprise me at all."
He turned to Hilda, as he generally did when he wasn't in trouble. And Hilda nodded—and smiled.
The following morning there came to "Miss H. Sorrenford" a letter from David Lee—an urgent letter because he had been so long impatient, demanding an explanation of her silence. The explanation was that each time she had re-read the note of thanks he had written before leaving town her imposture had looked to her more shameful; but after considering a great deal how to say as much in her answer, she did not say it at all. She told him instead something of her feelings in returning to the house that was called her home.
It was very sweet, very strange, to David to receive the first of her confessions breathing a familiar presence. Hilda had never seemed so close to him as she did in the hour when he pored over these pages of her sister's. He heard Hilda's voice while he welcomed Bee's thoughts; when he replied to Bee, he saw Hilda's face. And it was the face, not the thoughts, that maddened him with longing. It was the face that was dizzying him as he paltered with his conscience and offered prayers to the future. Though he did not discriminate, though he associated the soul of the woman with the form of the girl, the triumph was to the physical. The form, not the soul, tempted him to renounce his father's gospel, even while he proclaimed the soul his justification. The charm of the woman's letters lay no longer in what she said, but in his belief that the girl said it.
Hilda's fairness, not Bee's mind, held his love; and in his confidences to Bee there was a cadence that there had not been, a difference which she strove to persuade herself was imaginary, because to admit that it existed would be to realise that the photograph had wrought mischief. There was nothing tangible, no word to point to, but beneath the intimate record of his doings, and the references to his work, underlying the intuition which enabled him to respond, as always, to more than she had spelt, she felt something in her friend's letters that was new, something—she was conscious of it only in moments—something that made them now a man's letters to a woman.
When September was nearing its end, David received a few lines from Ownie. She wrote:
"I have been meaning to congratulate you oh the success of the book of poems that people are talking about. So you have made a hit? Well, I am very glad. I was always sure when you were a child you would do well at writing—you have all my poor father's talent. Well, I am very glad. Though I haven't had a chance to read it, and never seen anything of you, I am delighted to hear you have done so well. I hope you are well, and don't forget I like to see you whenever you have time to spare." She remained, on paper, his "Affectionate Mother."
His conscience pricked him, for his last visit had been paid in the spring. When he sent a copy of the book, which he knew would bore her to the verge of extinction, he promised to call on her the next Sunday.
He went in the afternoon. The latest of the Swiss lads to be described in the advertisements as "man servant" opened the door while struggling into his coat. His English was as unintelligible as his predecessors', and David had doubts whether she was at home while he waited in the hall. Dinner was over, but the smell of it lingered; she was unlikely to be out, he thought. The Swiss sped back, and delivering himself of strange syllables, led the way to the drawing-room. It was empty, and the smell of dinner was less strong here. After some minutes Ownie came in.
Her hair was yellow still, but the yellow of a "restorer," not the yellow of her youth, and under this piteous travesty of the past her aged face looked older. The years had caricatured her defects, and her business had stamped its mark upon her. Ownie was a bulky woman with a long upper lip and a fretful, vulgar mouth. In conversation she had the restless eye and mechanical smile of the boarding-house keeper, who during three meals every day makes an effort at cheerful small-talk—illustrating the advantages of the district in which her boarding-house is situated—while she listens suspensive to the servant inquiring behind a chair whether the occupant will "take any more." Of the girl who had once smiled victoriously in the mirror of a theatre vestibule nothing was left; in her stead was all the pathos of a lifetime. Only to the bulky woman it was given still to discern a likeness to the girl. Nature had yielded that; she did not see herself as she was. To her the rouge on her cheeks was not so palpable, the wrinkles were not so deep. Dyed, painted, dreary, she sank into a chair, and yawned widely, with her hands in her lap.
"I thought you were never coming again," she said.
He pleaded stress of work: "And I've been in the country since I saw you. Well, how are you, mother?"
"Oh, nothing to brag about; the heat has been killing, hasn't it?Ishould have liked a change too.... I haven't been able to read your book yet—I can't read for long, it tries my eyes so; I must get some new glasses. Well, are you making a fortune out of it?"
"It's selling splendidly—for poetry. Yes, I shall make a good deal by it, strange to say. If you want a change, why not go to Brighton for a week or two? I"—he was embarrassed—"I can give you the money."
"Oh, it isn't that," she explained with another gape; "I can't leave the house. Who's going to look after it while I'm gone? It's an awful drag if you haven't got a house-keeper. And if you have, you can't go away and leave everything to her! Fancy you with money to spare, though! Well, you've got to thankmefor that, David—your cleverness comes frommyside. You didn't have your father's voice, you know; if you hadn't written, I don't know what you'd have done."
He did not know either; his life would have been insupportable if he hadn't written. He looked beyond her vaguely, and nodded. "Is the house full?" he asked.
"Pretty full. They're most of them new now—Americans, and people up for a few weeks; the others 'll be coming back at the end of the month.... There's another boarding-house opened round the corner; they keep the gas full up in every room all the evening."
"As an advertisement?"
"Yes; it's stupid. Not enough people pass here in the evening to make it pay. It isn't as if it were at the seaside. Would you like a cup o' tea or anything?"
"No, thanks," he said.
"You may as well. I want a cup o' tea myself; it'll wake me up—I was just going to have forty winks when the man told me you were here."
"I'm sorry." He rang the bell. "I wish I'd come at another time."
"Oh, it doesn't matter," she returned; "there's always something.... I suppose you haven't heard from Vivian?"
"I never hear from him. I think it's nearly a year since I saw him. What is he doing?"
"He's got a first-rate berth. He left the company at the end of the last tour; you knew he was on tour with a theatrical company, didn't you? He's settled in one place now—much nicer for him than travelling all the time, a great improvement in every way." She roused herself to boast feebly about Vivian. "Not many young men of his age get into such a thing; it's a very responsible position, to be business manager of a theatre. And there's the salary all the year round—every week he's sure of so much. That's an advantage you can't hope for, eh? You may be comfortably off one year, and have nothing the next. Writing is so precarious—you never know where you are."
"I jog along," said David amiably.
"Oh yes," she allowed, "I'm sure it's wonderful, your keeping yourself as you have. And it's nice to have your book talked about. But of course there's no certainty about your profession—you can't depend on that sort of thing." She tittered. "Fame is all very well, but I'm afraid Vivian would say 'Givemea regular income.' ... He'll be up on Sunday, if you'd like to see him."
"Yes, I'll come in," he answered. "What town has he gone to?"
"Beckenhampton," she said; "the Theatre Royal."
"Beckenhampton?" He looked at her wide-eyed.
"Do you know it?"
"N-no," he said; "no, I don't know it exactly. How long has he been there?"
"Oh, two or three months. He's having great times, I believe—he's so popular wherever he goes; he gets asked out to supper parties, and all that." She hesitated, toying with the keeper on her finger, as he remembered her toying in his childhood with rings that flashed. But now the ring no longer turned. "I rather fancy there's an attraction," she went on more slowly; "I hope to goodness it isn't serious! Don't let out that I said anything when you meet him; I didn't mean to mention it."
"An attraction?"
She lifted her fat shoulders impatiently. "There may be nothing in it, but young men are so soft; any girl can catch the smartest of them. It wouldn't astonish me a bit when he comes up, to hear that he's engaged. I had a gushing letter from him a few weeks ago, telling me he'd met the prettiest girl he'd ever seen. I know what that means! He wouldn't have written about her if he hadn't lost his head. And he doesn't answer my questions. It looks as if he's making an idiot of himself."
"Who is she?" asked David, in a low voice.
"He didn't say. What's the difference who she is? You may be sure she hasn't got a sixpence to bless herself with. A nice mess he'll make of his life if he doesn't take care. It's a lucky thing for you that you haven't got that sort of risk to run. 'A young man married is a man that's marred,' as Ouida says."
"Shakespeare," he said, in the same dull tone; "not Ouida."
"Was it? It's at the beginning of one of Ouida's books, I know. If your brother gets married at his age, he might as well hang himself at once."
The tremor was in his pulses still. But Beckenhampton was not a village—the coincidence was so unlikely; he kept repeating that it couldn't be.
"If his salary is such a good one, and he's fond of her——" he demurred.
"'Such a good one'? Well"—she was a shade confused—"it's good enough for him as he is; it wouldn't go far with a wife and family to keep. Besides, a man's always better off single than married; only he's so soft as soon as a pretty face comes along. Some artful minx who wants a home makes up to him, and all of a sudden he imagines he can't go through life without her. Good Lord! if a man could see into a girl's head while she's gushing about the view and pretending she's an angel. Men are taken in by every girl they meet, the fools!" Her scorn of the fools was in no wise restrained by the fact that she had captured two husbands herself. She was thinking of her son. When a woman lives to see the arts by which she gained her husband practised to ensnare her son, candour can reveal no more. Nor in the badly constructed tragedy of life is there any other situation that comes so close to poetical justice.
David found the afternoon the most irksome that he had spent at Regent's Park. Though he told himself that his misgiving was fantastic, it continued to disturb him, and while he sipped weak tea, and made perfunctory responses, he was trying to define Hilda's feeling for him, questioning whether it was in woman's nature for Hilda to write to him as he believed she wrote, and yet to be susceptible to the courtship of another man. Vivian was handsome, debonair, "so popular wherever he went." Yes, Vivian had always been popular, he remembered bitterly. Might not the passion of a lover at her side prove a stronger force than the worship of a correspondent which had never been confessed? Could she not say—might she not be happy to say—that by never a word had her letters to himself been more than the letters of a friend? Then Vivian would take her from him. Vivian, who it seemed to him in a burst of fear and jealousy had always taken everything, would rob him of her too!... But, again, the coincidence was so improbable. Besides, his mother might be wrong; she might be exaggerating the idlest fancy; perhaps Vivian had no desire to marry anyone!
He was relieved when the clock gave him an excuse to rise.
"Well, good-bye, mother." He avoided her complexion and dropped a kiss on her dyed fringe.
"Must you go?" she said. "Er—David, if you're really sure you can spare a few pounds, I'd be very glad of the money to get a new dress with. I haven't got a decent thing to put on for dinner. This blouse is so shabby I'm ashamed to sit at the table in it."
He promised to send what she wanted, and took up his hat. When his hand was on the door-knob, she asked him if he would stay to supper; but he declined the invitation. As he made his way home, he repeated more than once that his tremor was ridiculous, and assured himself that he was much amused at his folly. He smiled stiffly, to prove his amusement.... Still he wished that the week were past and Vivian had come to town. He would feel easier when he had seen Vivian.
Ownie's conjectures were not misleading her; the business manager's views of life had been deranged. To dress well and have a "good time" now appeared to him less dazzling a prospect than to clothe Hilda and have a home. Confronted by temptation he had been no stronger than the multitude; he was prepared to travel the course handicapped, and like every other young man at the inevitable crisis, persuaded himself that a pair of arms round his neck would accelerate the pace. Hilda, too, was in love. Moreover, she was in love with the idea of being married. She had, passed the stage at which the Beauty of every family looks forward to wedding a millionaire, and although she had gathered something of Vivian's position by now, she meant to accept him when he asked her. One of the greatest sacrifices for love that a girl in the provinces can make is to marry and remove to local lodgings. There were perfervid moments when Hilda felt equal even to this, but in moods less head-long it was her intention to remain engaged to him until he secured a similar appointment in another town. Meanwhile Vivian wondered whether she would be startled if he confessed his feelings thus early.
Fearful that he might "lose it all," he resolved to be discreet; so he confided to her facts of which she was unaware, and withheld the one that she knew. It was a vast relief to him to settle the matter of the opera between them. Of late the opera had seemed to darken his future; and when he had intimated nervously that her father overestimated his influence with Mr. Jordan, he thanked Heaven to see that she did not find the news an overwhelming shock.
One afternoon—it was on the Friday after Ownie unbosomed herself to David—Hilda exclaimed—
"What do you think, Bee? The man who wroteA Celibate's Love Songsis Mr. Harris's half-brother. He has just gone."
The colour left Bee's face; her heart thudded.
"Who?" she faltered. "David Lee?"
"No, Mr. Harris. He dropped in just now to return a book. Isn't it strange? His mother married twice; she married Elisha Lee, the black tenor—I don't know how she could have done it. The poet is their son—a mulatto. Fancy!"
The woman stood stone-still.... She moved by a blind instinct to a chair. It seemed to her a long time before she could reach chair.
"A mulatto?" she said faintly.
"Yes—almost a nigger, Mr. Harris says. He's ashamed—I could tell, though he tried to sound casual. Of course it isn't nice for him to have a half-brother like that, is it? And then his mother doing such a thing! I was awfully sorry for him, poor fellow—he did look so uncomfortable while he was talking. Of course he hung on to his brother's cleverness and all that, but——Well, he can't be very proud, can he?"
Bee made no answer; she did not hear. "A mulatto—almost a nigger." For an instant her mind was dwarfed by it. She could not think beyond it, could see no further than the monstrous personality that seemed to close upon her. "Almost a nigger." The instant was heavy, affrighting with his presence. In the next, her thoughts flashed to the mulatto who had gone to Godstone—and she knew that he was the man.
"He must look rather like that Mr. Tremlett, I suppose," Hilda was saying.
She nodded. "Yes."
"Fancy a nigger writing poetry! You don't seem very interested? I thought you'd gasp when I told you—you liked his book so much."
"Did you? Oh, Iaminterested. Yes, fancy his writing poetry.'"
She felt sick, stupefied; she could not talk. David Lee was a mulatto; was the poor young man with the swarthy skin and the negro features whom she had pitied condescendingly, whom she had passed, and repassed, and addressed with no emotion. She sat struggling with the thing. She did not doubt it, she never questioned it for a moment; it was so obvious now that she even wondered that she had not suspected it then; but anomalously David seemed for the first time strange to her, remote. The association dazed her, and before the physical impression all the sense of familiarity receded.
"Tremlett" was David Lee. He had been to seek her. As the cloud of her confusion lifted, she saw the reason of his long delay, saw why, at last, he had assumed a name. Light was shed upon his work; its sorrow was illumined, she understood the secret of its intimate appeal. Like herself, he suffered and was despised.
He had been to seek her, afraid to tell her who he was. Her? No, not her—Hilda!She stared across the room at her sister blankly: Hilda had renounced the effort at conversation, and was in a love-reverie over a novelette. It was Hilda he had been to seek, attracted by her photograph! He had gone at last not to find the writer of the letters, but the girl whose likeness he had seen. Only when the likeness reached him had he cared to go! And he had followed Hilda about the garden, looked at her with his heart in his eyes—he was fond of her. Yes, it was to Hilda that his letters were really written now—and Hilda would probably marry his half-brother!
Her misery and shame were profound; she did not define the vague, pained stir of another feeling in her breast. She was engulfed by the knowledge that she had brought a new grief into his life, had given him still more to bear. She hated herself, and she felt that when he learned the truth he too would hate her—that he must; that he would curse the misshapen fool who had cheated him into loving the girl who would be his brother's wife.
When hours had passed, she untied the letters that had come to her since her return from Surrey, and read them in her bedroom slowly by the light of recognition. The sore stir of the subtle feeling within her was stronger as she read them, realising that they were meant for Hilda. But compassion for him swept her like a flood. The spirit of the man spoke to her again; she found herself again sensitive to his spirit—less dominated by his face.
They were meant for Hilda! Always her mind reverted to this. It became her ascendant thought. She locked the letters in their drawer, and tried to consider the one that she must write; and now she shuddered before confession, not so much in dread of the throes that she would suffer, as of the blow that she would deal. His confidences were meant for Hilda, and he must be told that Hilda had never heard from him, had never responded by a line. She perceived dismayed that the words explaining it would sound to him the words of a stranger—of a little woman with a crooked back, claiming her sister's qualities. Yes, the very qualities that had first pleased him he attributed to Hilda now! And in herself, when he understood, they would fall to nothingness. Her sympathies were abstractions, shadows; the realities were Hilda's lips and eyes, and lithe, straight form. While she sat there, Hilda came to the room with a message; Bee did not look at her as she answered. She tried to think it was because she had been crying; but there was another reason which she would not see, which she shunned because the inborn prejudices of a white woman feared to own it—in her heart there was a jealousy of Hilda.
Sunday came before she had written to David. He went to Regent's Park uneasily. Vivian and his mother were in the little room, half-parlour, half-office, in which she made out the bills, and received applicants for "board residence." It was clear that he had interrupted an altercation. Vivian's smile of greeting was an obvious effort, and Ownie was frankly discomposed. For two or three minutes, while the young men exchanged remarks, she kept silent, breathing quickly, her nostrils dilated, her mouth compressed. Then she broke out—
"Why don't you tell David your news? Your brother's going to be married, David. Don't you congratulate him on his luck?"
"Is that so?" said David, turning to him.
"So the mater says," muttered Vivian. "I didn't know it myself—I'm not engaged yet."
She sniggered: "Oh, it doesn't take long to get engaged; you can soon do that if you want to!"
"Well, I do want to, and I mean to marry her if she'll have me!" he exclaimed. "And now you've got it, so we needn't say any more."
"How pretty," she said between a sneer and a sob. "She has a beautiful influence over you, I must say—to make you rude to your mother."
"Oh, of course," he returned, "it's allherfault that you take it badly, isn't it? It's allherfault that you quarrel with me when I confide in you? That's rich! It strikes me I've behaved about as well as a fellow could, in telling you how things stand; I needn't have said anything till it was settled. I think you might pretend to be glad even if you aren't."
"'Glad'?"
"Yes, glad. What's to prevent your being glad? One would imagine I was doing you some infernal injury by the way you talk."
"I'm talking for your own good; you're too young to get married. Before you've been——"
"Oh, I know all about that!" he cried; "I should always be too young, according to you. I tell you what it is: you're not thinking of my good at all—you're thinking of yourself. You don't like the idea of my marrying; you've got it in your head that you'll 'lose' me if I marry—you said so at the beginning—and so you call me names, and run her down—a girl you've never seen—and try to persuade yourself it's holy affection for me. But it isn't, it isn't anything of the kind. It's just selfishness; and as you've used such very plain English, I'll use some too and tell you so. It's sheer selfishness, to want me to spoil my life to please you. What have you ever done for me, that you should expect me to sacrifice myself for you? I think it's disgusting."
His handsome face was flushed, his manner insolent. The girl to whom his attachment presented him at his best would scarcely have recognised her lover here at his worst. He stirred in Ownie memories of his father, memories of scenes in the Liverpool villa when the fur business had become involved. She did not speak; her lips twitched. Although her objections appeared to David unreasonable, he felt sorry for her. Whatever her faults towards others, she had always been fond of Vivian—it jarred that Vivian reproached her for selfishness.
After a little pause she said wistfully: "If that's the way you feel, I'm afraid I can't expect to see much of you in future whether you marry or not?"
"You don't see much of me now; I don't live here."
"But you belong to me still," she pleaded.
He looked towards David with an air of triumph. "You see what I say is quite true: it isn't for my sake that she's against my marrying, but for her own—I'm to sacrifice myself because she's jealous."
David lit a cigarette, without replying. All this time his pulses were impatient for the sound of the girl's name.
Ownie's humility deserted her; her temper flamed, though there were still tears in her voice.
"'Sacrifice'?" she retorted. "It's a fine sacrifice, to keep your comfort! The sacrifice'll come in if you throw yourself away for the first pretty face you meet. I thought you had more sense—you talk like a sentimental boy. 'Sacrifice yourself'? In a year's time you'd have forgotten you ever wanted her, and she'd be engaged to somebody else! Any young man can get spoony on any girl if he sees enough of her. Why don't you pick up a girl of a different sort? You must have plenty of opportunities. If you want to play the fool, choose a girl who doesn't aim at getting married!"
Vivian rose with fury in his veins. He made a desperate effort to disguise it, to answer her with dignity.
"I must decline to discuss the matter. If you can compare the love of my life with—with that kind of thing, there's no more to be said."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, exasperated, "what an idiot you are! Marry her then, and drag uphill with a wife and a family on your back, and see how you like it. Make haste before the bargain has gone; I daresay she'll jump at any man who asks her."
"Ah, it isn'teverywoman who'll jump at any man who asks her," he said savagely. "You're not a fair judge on that point, you know!"
The blood swept up to her forehead, and then she blanched, and the rouge stains looked grotesque. She trembled as if the blow had been struck with his fists. Her dyed head went down in her hands, and she began to sob—unrestrainedly, hysterically, in an abandonment of wretchedness.
He watched her, discomfited. His anger dwindled in view of her defeat, and already he repented his taunt. He decided, ashamed, to pretend that he did not understand what she was crying about.
David went over to her, murmuring encouragement.
"Let me alone," she quavered. "Go away, both of you; I don't want anyone."
"I don't know what has upset you," Vivian stammered. "I didn't mean anything particular."
"You did," she gasped; "you insulted me—you tried to! You said I was too low to judge her—your mother was too low to judge her! I'll never talk about your marriage again as long as I live. I don't want to hear about it." She dabbed her eyes and cheeks impetuously, and moved to the door. "I hope you'll be happy ... that's all. I'm going; I've nothing more to say."
The door closed, and there was a moment's pause. Her sons looked at each other.
"Damned nonsense!" said Vivian, scowling.
"I didn't mean any harm. I wish I hadn't come."
"She has gone up to her bedroom," said David constrainedly. "You'd better run up after her."
"What for—to have another scene? No, thank you; I've had enough.... Well, I suppose we may as well go."
"I think I'll just say a word to her first. Will you wait for me? I won't be long. You will wait, won't you? I want to talk to you."
Vivian nodded. "All right; but don't tell her thatIwant to come up, because I don't. It's beastly, this sort of thing. Good Lord! one would think I was dependent on her; one would think she was making me an allowance.... Give me a cigarette."
David found a servant to point "Madam's" room out to him, and tapped timidly. Ownie had thrown herself on the bed, and at his entrance she turned, in the hope that it was his brother's.
"Oh, it's you," she said. "Has he gone?"
"No, he's downstairs. He—I'm sure he's sorry he hurt you, mother."
"He's hard," she faltered, "hard as nails. He doesn't care; he doesn't care for me a bit. You heard how he talked to me. 'What have I ever done for him?' he asked. What have I ever done for him? You know, you know very well how good I've always been to Vivian. When he was a child I never refused him anything—I studied him in every way—he was always first to me. And this is how he treats me. He talks to me as if I were a stranger. It wouldn't trouble him for a minute if he never saw me again."
"Oh, you shouldn't say that," he murmured; "it isn't true. He's got a rough tongue, but his heart is good. He doesn't show what he feels. He's just as unhappy now as you are, but he—it isn't easy for him to find the right words. You understand that really, only you're too sore to remember it yet."
"He only thinks of that girl," she sobbed. "'Jealous,' he called me. If Iamjealous, what of it? He's all I've got, and she's taking him away from me. I'm not young any more, I haven't the interests that I used to have; I don't want to be left alone. He doesn't care a snap of his fingers for me now. He never cared much, but I wouldn't see it, and now he cares nothing. Nobody cares for me; there's not a soul to mind whether I live or die. Oh, it was nice of you to come up—it's more thanhedid—but you're not fond of me, David; you never were. I'm not blaming you—I'm not unjust—it's my own fault, that. But it isn't my fault with him, God knows it isn't! If I deserve anything I deserve to be loved by Vivie. I don't ask for much, I don't expect miracles; but I did expect to be treated well by Vivie when I was old, when I was lonely, and I had nobody else to turn to."
The tears had streaked the rouge on her quivering face; her yellow hair, disordered by the pillow, showed the lines of age that it was trained to hide. Timeworn and desolate, she lay huddled on the bed, making her moan while he sought pityingly to comfort her; and it pained him that he could not speak of his own affection for her—that she could not believe him if he did.
When she was more tranquil he left her. She had not asked for her elder son to be sent to her, nor did he inquire whether he was wanted.
"You've been long enough!" he said. "Well, is she better?"
"Yes," David answered coldly, "she is better. Have you anything to do? What time do you go back?"
Vivian explained that he was not returning to Beckenhampton till the morrow: "I've business here; that's why I came up. No, I've nothing to do till eight o'clock—then I've got to see a man at the Eccentric." They descended the steps, and, after a furtive glance at his half-brother, he added deprecatingly: "It has been going on for an hour pretty nearly—you only heard the fag-end of it. I can tell you that what I've had to listen to would have tried the patience of a saint!" It embarrassed him to walk in the streets with David, and he signed to a passing hansom. "Where shall I tell him to drive? I'll come to your place with you if you like."
His contrition by no means abated his sense of being ill-used, nor did his indifference to his companion extend to his companion's disapproval. That David should be presuming to censure him was a situation not the less annoying because it seemed to him anomalous, and they were no sooner in the cab than he began vehemently to expatiate upon his grievance. David waited with rising eagerness for an opportunity to frame the question that again engrossed him.
"If I had guessed how she'd take the news, there'd have been none of this confounded row at all—I'd have left her in the dark. It's an encouraging thing, upon my soul it is, to be bullied when you make a confidant of your mother! What's it to do with her, anyhow? It won't cost her anything. How does it affect her if I marry? It's not as if I had to keep her—she's in no need of my assistance; I've never given her a pound in my life." He seemed to regard this as conclusive, and repeated it. "On my honour, I've never given her a pound in my life; she'd be every bit as well off if I were married, as she is now I'm single! There isn't a grain of logic in her objection; it isn't even as if I were living at home. Hang it, I scarcely ever see her! It's a regular dog-in-the-manger attitude she adopts—she hasn't got me herself, and she grudges me to anybody else."
"That isn't the way she looks at it," said David; "while you're single she feels shehasstill got you. Who is the girl?"
"She's beautiful—she's absolutely the most beautiful girl I ever met. She—she's the top stair of the highest flight of an artist's imagination. You should see the people turn round after her wherever she goes. And she's as clever as she's good-looking. I never believed I should meet a woman who'd understand me as she does. 'Jump at the first man who asks her'? Ha, ha! You can take your oath she's had proposals enough, young as she is.... I didn't come up with the intention of talking about it at all; it was the mater pumped me. I thought she was entering into it at the start—she was smiling, she seemed interested; I gave myself away before I dreamt she was going to make a fuss. Then it began. A bit of a sneer, a little ridicule, pretending it was all too silly to talk seriously about—after she'd led me on, after she'd made me think she was sympathising! Then when she saw that didn't work, she got nasty; she began to show her claws—I was a 'fool' in every other sentence. A man is the best judge of his own life; I know what I want, without anybody telling me. I'd have proposed long ago if I were sure it would be all right. I haven't much to offer, unfortunately. 'Throwing myself away'? I'm no catch for a girl like that. And then, of course ... I don't know; I think she does, but ... I can't swear she cares for me. Perhaps when it came to the point—she may only like me as a friend."
"What's her name?" said David. "How did you meet her?"
"I met her father first, and then he asked me up to the house. I'd seen her already then, or I daresay I shouldn't have gone. I might have missed everything if she hadn't been with him that afternoon. Funny, eh? Did it ever strike you how a fellow's life is often altered by things that don't seem anything at the time? I mean how the biggest things turn up from things that you'd think don't matter. There's a new idea for your poetry—you go in for original fancies like that, don't you? I read somewhere that your book's full of 'em. Her father is very amiable to me, but—he's not very wide awake—I don't think he sees how the land lies. He mayn't be keen on giving his daughter to me when I spring it on him, even if she accepts me. I wish she hadn't got a father. If she were on her own in the profession, the running would be easier for me; they marry in the profession on nothing—some of them—live in lodgings, and carry the babies down to the station on Sunday mornings. It's different with a girl like her. And the town is full of Johnnies who are in their governors' businesses and could offer her a decent home—a villa on the Hunby Road, and a couple of servants. It makes one a bit shaky about one's chances, you know."
The cab stopped before David could obtain the answer that he sought, and he opened the door with his latchkey, and led the way upstairs. His restlessness under the flood of discourse loosed upon him had heightened his misgiving. There had been nothing to justify his fear except enthusiasm—no word to suggest that it was Hilda who was referred to; he kept telling himself so. But, fluttering in his senses, there was a nervous, inexplicable conviction that itwasHilda. Reason could not still it. He even dreaded to repeat his question, feeling that with insistence the bolt would fall.
He took the whisky and a syphon out of the miniature sideboard, and called on the landing for tumblers. Vivian dropped into the armchair on the hearth.
"Yes, it doesn't make a fellow sanguine, to remember how much better she might do," he went on. "I don't mean that she's mercenary—nothing of the sort—but I daresay her family will be against it. Not that they're particularly well off themselves, as far as that goes—rather the reverse. Still, they have got a house. It's not being able to take a house that makes a fellow look so hard up. It doesn't show while he's single—I might have a thousand a year now, for all anybody can tell—but if I stop in diggings after I'm married, it'll be a different pair of shoes. There's no doubt that when a fellow marries, he advertises his position for all the world to see. I'm sick of diggings."
"So am I," said David.
The drudge had burst in with the glasses. Vivian got up, and lounged about the room. "Is that where you write?" he asked. He wandered to the smaller table in a corner, on which some manuscript lay, and swung round with an ejaculation:
"Good heavens! How did you get this?" He held up Hilda's photograph.
The answer to David's question had come. It reverberated as if he had been unprepared. Almost he felt that hehadbeen unprepared. He stared at his brother mutely.
"This is her likeness....Isn'tthis Hilda Sorrenford? How did you get it?"
"She sent it to me," replied David, dragging out his voice.
"Sent it to you? ... Sent it to you? Why, she doesn't know you!"
"Oh yes, she knows me. That is, she writes to me."
"Writes to you?"
"Yes."
"What about?"
"I must explain to you. It's difficult to say. We have written to each other for a long time. She wrote first about my work—she liked it—and then somehow we began to correspond regularly.... She doesn't know that we're related; I haven't spoken of you—I didn't know she had ever seen you."
"I don't understand. I've spoken ofyou:she didn't say she knew you. Why did she make a secret of it?"
"I can't think why."
"Have you ever met her?"
"Yes."
"It's the most extraordinary——Where?"
"She was in the country this summer with her sister."
"Bee?"
"Yes, 'Bee.' I went down there. That was after she sent me the likeness. I wanted to see her. I had rooms in the same house for a few days."
"Upon my soul!... And she let me think—why, she seemed astonished to hear you were a——She knew nothing about you except your name!"
There was silence for an instant.
"Do you mean she was astonished to hear I was a mulatto?" asked David. "You told her?"
"Yes."
"How long ago?"
"The other day."
"When? ... Last week? This week?"
"This week."
David turned aside. It was a week since he had received Bee's last letter. "What did she say?" he faltered.
"She was astonished."
"Horrified?"
"N—no, she wasn't so interested as all that. But I don't understand!" he exclaimed again; "you said just now that you had met her?"
"She doesn't know I've met her—-she doesn't know it was I. I took another name; I called myself 'Tremlett.'"
"You called, yourself 'Tremlett'? Why? What the devil is all this about—what did you take another name for?"
"I didn't want her to discover I—I wasn't a white man; not then, not so soon. I was afraid."
"'Afraid'?"
"Afraid she might stop writing to me if she knew."
"So help me God! it sounds as if you're telling me you are in love with her?"
"Yes," said David quietly, "that is what I have to tell you. I am in love with her."
They stood looking into each other's eyes for several seconds, neither of them moving.
"Is this a joke?" asked Vivian harshly.
"Oh no, it's true, it's perfectly true. I'm sorry, very sorry, to hear you're fond of her; but I loved her before I heard it—you mustn't forget that. It oughtn't to make bad blood between us, whatever happens. I've told you as soon as I could; I've been quite open with you."
"I—I'm hanged if I'm quite sure now what you're driving at," said Vivian after another pause. "You're 'sorry'—'whatever happens'?... What is it you're doing—warning me? Do you mean——You don't mean to say you think she'll marry you?"
"I hope and pray she will. If she cares more foryou, of course she won't."
"What?" He forced a laugh. "Are you out of your mind? Why, the thing's preposterous! It's an insult to her to imagine it.... Look here, I don't want a row with you. You must see very well that it's no good. We don't make ourselves, it's not your fault that you're not the same as other fellows, it's your misfortune—but you can't expect a decent girl to marry a coloured man; it's against nature."
"Our mother did," said David.
"I've had quite enough about that!... Besides, we all know she was wretched. And I've told you Hilda belongs tome. Don't come interfering; it has gone too far already, with the correspondence and the likeness. I can't make it out."
"She doesn't belong to you; if she belonged to you, I'd say nothing. She belongs to neither of us—she can choose the one she likes best. Well, let her choose! If my love is preposterous, if it's an insult to her, why are you frightened for me to go and plead?"
"Frightened?" Vivian blazed; "do you think I'm jealous ofyou? You know better. You're frightened yourself—you said so. When you went to her, it was like a coward; by your own showing, you've hung about her under a false name. I suppose that was 'open,' was it? You've been trying to get round her by your poetry, haven't you? trying to sneak her fancy before she knew what you were like! Go and plead—and be damned to you—and hear what she'll say, now she knows what you are!"
He waited for an answer, affected another laugh, and then turned to the table and picked up his hat. David drew close to him, shaking.
"Youmake the quarrel," he panted, "do you?Youcomplain?... By what right? She was dear to me before you had ever seen her, before you had ever heard of her, before you'd set foot in the town she lives in.Youcomplain? It's for me to resent, not you. All our lives since we were children, you've had everything I was denied because you were good-looking and I was hideous; when we were boys your good looks made things harder for me; as men, all the pleasure of life has been for you, while I've had nothing but contempt. And at last when a girl has come to care for me—to care for what I am, my work, my thoughts, my feelings, the things thataremyself—youmust blunder in the way, and want to takeherfrom me too. You taunt me with my colour? It ought to remind you of what I've had to bear; it ought to shame you for asking me to give up to you the only chance of happiness I've ever had! If I've been a coward, I was what the intolerance of minds like yours has made me. Show your own courage—take your appeals to the girl you love, don't beg me to stand aside for you! You taunt me with my colour? Wait tillshedoes! Talk to her as best you can—and so will I. For once I'm not afraid of your good looks—she has seen deeper than my skin.Tellher that you love her, and find which has more power to move her heart—your face, orthe words in me!"
And while he boasted, he believed in the power of words, not knowing that he had preferred a face himself.
When he was alone, he cried, looking uglier still.
And late in the evening he wrote his first love-letter.
It was a very long letter. He wrote of the joy that the correspondence had brought him, of the years of loneliness and suffering that had made him afraid to own the truth. He wrote of the day the portrait came, his temptation, his weakness—of his longing to confess himself at Godstone, and of the fear that had still held him back. He poured out the story of his life, the story of his childhood, of his youth, and of his love. He prayed to her for pity, for tenderness, for "Heaven." He said that on the morrow he would go to her to hear her answer. And because the need for pretending ignorance of the name was past now, he addressed the letter to "Miss Hilda Sorrenford" in full.
It reached her early the next afternoon. She was sitting before the dining-room fire, with a shilling manicure set in her lap, polishing her finger-nails. There was no one else in the room; Bee had gone back to the studio, and the Professor was at Great Hunby. The handwriting was unfamiliar, and she opened the envelope with as much interest as was natural in a girl whose letters were few. Astonishment laid hold of her at the first lines. She glanced instinctively at the address again, and then found the last page, and looked at the signature. Her lovely eyes dilated, her brows climbed high; truth to tell, she had a rather stupid air as she sat deciphering David's declaration, with her mouth ajar, and the file, and the rubber, and the little powder-box lying in her lap. Only two points were intelligible to her: the "Mr. Tremlett" she had met was David Lee, and he adored her. It can never be unpleasant to be adored; she by no means shared the opinion that his adoration was an insult, though she did not regard it seriously; but she was too bewildered even to simper. "Her photograph, their correspondence?" At every reference to these things she felt more dazed. By what extraordinary mistake could a man from whom she had never heard till now imagine that he had been corresponding with her?
After she had stared at the fire, and smiled at herself in the glass, she mounted to the studio, her eyes still wide, a glimmer of amusement in them.
"Just look at this! Read it through!" she exclaimed, holding the letter out.
Bee was writing, and rose confused.
"What is it?"
"A proposal!" She giggled. "I mean it From David Lee! It's a mystery."
Bee started. Her gaze wandered from the letter in Hilda's hand to the letter on the table. She did not speak.
"Read it," repeated Hilda.
"I'd rather not," she answered painfully; "it's written toyou."
"What rubbish! Well, listen, then. You'd better sit down again, my dear—he worships me at great length."
She dropped into a chair herself, and began to declaim the pages with zest. In moments she looked up, with a comment or grimace. The woman sat passive, never meeting her glance. She listened to David's avowal of devotion to her sister dumbly—line after line, to the end—her hands hanging at her sides, her chin sunk. Only her meagre bosom showed that she was listening. For the first time it heaved to love words that were not ordered for the ears of all—for the first time in her life she heard a man's passion crying out to flesh and blood. When she raised her head at last, she was white to the lips.
"What's the matter?"
Contrition, love and pity surged in her. In the distorted body all the forces of womanhood beat at his appeal. She yearned over the story of his childish years like a mother, she trembled to his passion like a wife. The thin hands strained across the lifting bosom; she found her voice.
"There's something I must tell you. I—I ought to have told you before.... It'sIwho have been writing to him," she said.
"You?... It's you who have been What do you mean? Why does he write tomethen?"
"He doesn't know. I always signed myself 'H,' of course, and one day he asked for my photograph. I——" She hesitated. She drooped before the girl abjectly.
"You sent him mine?" cried Hilda.
Bee nodded, her eyes to the ground.... The pause was broken by Hilda's giggle.
"Whatever did you do that for?" she said.
The deformed woman spoke by a gesture. "Then he came to Godstone, and fell in love with you," she went on huskily. "I didn't know it was he when we were there; I only guessed when I heard he was—when I heard what his brother had told you about him. I was writing to him when you came in, to say that I had deceived him. It's too late, the harm is done, but I was writing!"
"It was an awful shame," exclaimed Hilda with sudden heat. "Supposing he has talked to Vivian—I mean 'Mr. Harris'—about it? I expect he has—he seems to know his brother's here. Why, what a liar I shall look! It was a beastly thing to do, Bee. What will his brother think of me?"
"You're fond of Mr. Harris, aren't you?" inquired Bee humbly.
"Perhaps. Anyhow, I don't want him to imagine I'm such a hateful liar as to pretend I don't know a fellow I've been corresponding with for months."
"That can soon be put right; I wish I'd done no worse harm than that."
"What else have you done, for goodness' sake?"
Bee's lips tightened. She pointed to David's letter, which had fallen to the floor.
"Have you forgotten he loves you?" she asked.
"Oh!" Hilda was relieved. "Well, you'll have to own up to everybody, that's all," she said; "I hope you'll like it. But carrying on a correspondence with a man you've never seen—you! That's what gets over me. What on earth did you find to say to him?"
"I wrote about his work."
"And why should you have minded his knowing about your accident—what difference did that make? Really"—her vexation melted into amusement—"it may have been all about poetry and the fine arts, but it was going rather far, wasn't it? IfIhad done such a thing—-A secret correspondence with a strange man! I'd never have believed it of you. I'm appalled. I shouldn't like to call you 'fast,' but——And he turns out to be a nigger!" Her laughter pealed. "Oh, it's funny! it is, it is, it's screaming!"
"He loves you," said the woman again, flushing to the temples; "try to remember it."
The ridicule in the girl's stare shamed her through and through. She picked the scattered pages up, and folded them. Hilda took them negligently, and stood struggling to control her mouth. Smiles still played hide-and-seek with the dimple in her cheek.
"Which likeness has he got of me?" she said after a minute.
"It was the one I took at Godstone."
"You might as well have sent the one you took of me in the tucked chiffon, while you were about it. That thing at Godstone didn't show the best side of my face."
"He loves you," cried Bee passionately. "Are you made of wood? You're the world to him, he thinks you understand him, he's coming to you to-day, praying for your answer! Have you got no feeling in you; can't you pity him?"
"Good Lord!" said Hilda, "don't go on at me like that. Of course I pity him; I'm very sorry for him indeed, I'm sure. I think I shall write him a very nice note after he has got over the shock," she added complacently, "hoping he'll soon forget me, and 'find comfort in his work.' I might do that, mightn't I? Something very kind."
"And when he comes to-day?"
"What, when he comes? You don't expectmeto explain matters to him, do you?"
"No,Imust do that, I know; it serves me right for not having told him before. But he'll ask to see you afterwards—to say good-bye to you. You'll go down and speak to him?"
"I shan't do anything of the sort, it isn't likely. To say 'good-bye' to me? Why, the man's a stranger to me, it would be most horribly embarrassing—I should feel a perfect idiot. You can tell him I had to go out—or that I'm not well. Besides, I shouldn't think hewouldask to see me when he hears he has been taken in; why should he?"
"'Why should he'? Because he loves you, because he's hungry for you, mad for you. Because you're pretty and soft, and made for men to admire, and he'll want to look at your face, and touch your hand, and hold it for a second longer than he ought to. And if you let him, would it kill you? Would it be so much to give him? Can you read that letter—can you hear his life—and smirk and talk of your 'embarrassment'? To him it'll be worse than embarrassment, it'll be despair."
"You're very rude," said Hilda, paling. "I think you're in love with him yourself, upon my word I do!"
"Do you? It would be very strange, wouldn't it? I'm not pretty like you, and I've got a crooked spine—so I'm not a woman. You can hardly believe thatIcould be in love, can you?"
"I really don't know what to believe," stammered Hilda, "when you talk like that. I should have thought you'd have respected yourself more than to fall in love with a ni—with a mulatto, at any rate."
"I respect myself because I do love him—I love him better than it's in you to love anybody. You fool, you doll, you'll write him something very 'kind,' and think you're condescending? If that letter had been written to me, I'd have thanked God for it on my knees—God knows it's true! Yes, I love him—with all my body and all my soul, and if he had wanted me, instead of you, and I had looked no further than my own joy, I'd have given myself to him body and soul, and been proud."
"Ah, ssh!" the girl faltered, "you don't know what you're saying."
"And been proud!" she sobbed. "Yes, I do know, I mean it!... Without fear—it would have been my honour. Body and soul—his and mine—one mind, one life, one flesh!... I'd have gloried. That's love, that's human!" She shrank against the wall, and bowed her head there under the failures of her art. "Go away from me, don't stare at me! I'm a cripple, no one ever cared for me—I wish I were dead!"
In the hush of the next instant a bell rang. Their gaze met, startled. Neither spoke. Both listened intently.
The servant came up the stairs with slow, heavy feet. She said: "Mr. Lee to see Miss Hilda."
"Where is he?" murmured the girl.
"In the drawing-room, Miss."
The attic was still again after the servant went. Her footsteps struck the oilcloth of the top stairs harshly, and fell duller on the carpet, and subsided in the hall. In the silence the sisters sat looking away from each other, as strangers look.
"One of us must go down to him!" said Hilda at last in a nervous gasp.
"I'll go down as soon as I can," Bee answered.
He waited restlessly. The suspense that had shivered in him on the journey—that sickened him as the fly rattled through the town—had culminated with the sight of the house in which she lived. He was in her home. There was nothing gracious in the shabby, formal room where the music and the elocution lessons were given. No flowers lent a touch of nature to the early Victorian vases on the mantelpiece; no piece of fancy-work had been forgotten, to humanise the asperity of the clumsy furniture with the hint of a woman's presence. But he was in her home —and everything in the room spoke to him. Things quite trivial, quite trite, woke emotion in him because they were familiar to her; they took unto their inanimate ugliness some of the fascination of her life.
He stood on the faded hearthrug, watching the door. After the servant's feet had clattered to the basement all was quiet except the clock, which ticked behind him sadly. He became acutely conscious of its tick in the long waiting; it stole into his nerves, and heightened his misgiving. At last he caught a sound outside the door; the handle stirred. For an instant it was as if Hilda were before him; he knew that upheaval of the chest with which a man sees the woman of whom he is despairing turn the corner. He moved a step towards the door breathlessly—and then blankness fell and Bee came slowly in.
"How do you do, Mr. Lee?" she murmured.
"How do you do, Miss Sorrenford?"
She did not offer him her hand—she felt that it would be unfair to make him take her hand before he knew what she had to say; she did not ask him to sit—she did not think of it. In the pause, the significant tick of the clock vibrated in him.
"You expected to see my sister," she began monotonously, reciting the sentence she had prepared; "I have come instead, because I have something to tell you."
"She won't see me?" asked David in a whisper.
She made an effort to swallow. "When she got your letter, I was writing to you. I—I have behaved very badly. I had no idea—I did not think of the consequences. Hilda has never—the letters you've received haven't come from Hilda.... All the letters have come fromme."
He did not start. Only his eyes showed that he had heard. He stood gazing at her—and she knew that she had killed something in him. The dark lips moved. Watching them, she understood that he said "From you?"
"Yes," she muttered. "It was I who wrote about your poems. I've written all the letters. Hilda hasn't written. Hilda has never heard from you before.... She didn't send you her likeness—I sent it. You wanted mine; I'm deformed—I didn't like to tell you—I sent Hilda's.... I didn't think it would matter—I didn't think long enough—it was an impulse. I shall never forgive myself as long as I live; nothing can tell you how ashamed I am!... You're a stranger to Hilda; she doesn't—it's impossible—you're a stranger to her."
She was trembling violently. She put out a hand to a chair, and sat down. David still stood motionless, his gaze fixed.
"A stranger to her," he echoed.
"She only met you at Godstone. There was nothing at Godstone to—to make you hope she might care for you, was there? Was there?"
"No," he said dully; "no, there was nothing at Godstone to make me hope she might care for me. It was at Godstone I began to love her, that's all.... Your name is 'Bee '?"
"My name is 'Hebe,'" she answered bitterly. "I am called 'Bee' for—for short."
"I understand; Hilda has never written to me—she has never heard from me before. I understand, of course; you've explained it, and—and I do understand, I think. But all the same ... I have believed she——Oh, God!" he broke out, "it was a cruel thing to do.Why? What for? Wasn't I wretched enough? To do this to me—for nothing! to spare your petty pride."
She twisted her hands in agony. "All my life I shall be sorry."
"Sorry! Thank you. All mine I shall be sorry, too. If you had wished to torture me—if you had tried! I love her. She's more to me than all the world, than the only soul I think of in the next. I love her! do you know what it means? To say I'd die for her says nothing—my life is empty; but the one joy I have had has been my work, and I would give all the work I've done, and all the power to do any more—I'd give it gladly —just to kiss her once.... If she knew—if I could tell her what I feel for her, there might—mightn't there be hope for me yet?"
"No," she said; the tears were running down her face; "she's fond of someone else."
"Of Vivian?... Oh, she is fond of him, is she? Don't cry, I didn't mean to make you cry. It can't be helped now."
"Forgive me," she sobbed. "Don't hate me! Say that you forgive me!"
"May God make her happy with him," murmured the man, deaf and blind.
"Forgive me, forgive me," she moaned. "It was cruel, what you said was true, I've tortured you—to spare my pride, to spare my vanity, but forgive me. Say you forgive me what I've done!"
"I forgive you," he said. "After all, you were no more cowardly than I was. You might have told me so; you didn't."
It was some minutes before either of them spoke another word.
"If she had loved me!" cried David, suddenly. He fell on to the couch, and hid his face in his hands. "If she had loved me!"
"If she had loved you," said Bee's pitying voice, "it would have been worse for you to bear; you would have had a harder trial. She couldn't have married you. It would have been wrong."
He raised his head. "Because I'm what I am?" he asked.
"No," she said—and her wet eyes did not fall before him—"because of what your child would be.... Had you ever thought of that?"
"Yes. For my own childhood seems the other day."
"I know—I've heard your letter; don't grudge me having heard it. Your child would suffer too, not so deeply, perhaps, but the world wouldn't be kind to him; if your child were a girl, God knows the world wouldn't be kind to her.... It is a very barren world for some of us, but we oughtn't to steal our joy, ought we? We oughtn't to make others pay for it. You know that; Hilda would know it. She couldn't have been your wife."
"If she had loved me," he said, brokenly, "she wouldn't have argued so."
"The woman who loved you with all her heart and soul would have argued so," affirmed the woman.... "And you would have suffered more in knowing that she loved you, when you had to lose her. The knowledge that she loved you would have brought no light into your life; it would have made your loneliness lonelier."
"How can you say?"
"Because you are a man."
"And a woman? Would it be different with a woman?"
"Yes," she answered, out of her longing. "A woman's loneliness would be less for knowing she was loved."
"What is my sin?" he cried out. "Why should the freedom of other men be always denied to me? I have the same feelings, the same heeds, the same God put them in me. You are so righteous, you teach me my duty; haveyouno duty towardsme? The world mouths the Scriptures that tell us all men are brothers, and persecutes me while it cants. From the time I can remember, it has been so. My own mother was ashamed of me. At school they prayed God to pardon the Jews and the infidels—'Take from them all hardness of heart'—and came out from the Service and beat the 'nigger.' As a man, I have never had a friend. Is it charity, is it justice, to make a pariah of me? Why should I be shunned? I was given life, I didn't ask for it."
"No," she said gently, "but could you bear to have your child say that to you? It is a brutal world, a merciless world. When they tell us it is a beautiful world, they tell a lie. They speak with their eyes shut to everything that is painful to see. When Browning wrote, 'God's in His heaven, all's right with the world,' I think God must have shuddered. I know you believe in a life afterwards where all the crookedness down here will be put straight—all the crooked backs, and things: try to be strong, and wait for the Explanation—and the soul you spoke of. And you've your work to help you; if I could only work like you! I am not 'righteous,' I am not very patient, I have rebelled as passionately as you do; if it can comfort you to know it, I suffer as you do. We are alike, we two—you and I weren't made for happiness."
"Forgive me," said David; "I might have remembered that you suffer. You can understand me.... But you alwayshaveunderstood me." It recurred to him with surprise that from her came the letters that he had treasured. It was difficult to realise that the mind within the bent little woman who seemed a stranger was indeed the one so near to him. Even, as yet, their affinity left him desolate. It was still to Hilda that his spirit turned—Hilda despoiled of all the qualities by which he had justified his love, but sovereign still, still Hilda. "How strange it is," he murmured. "Your letters used to make me very happy. And the letters are real, aren't they? I think I was ready to love her for what she wrote, only——"
"Only then you loved her for herself?"
"Yes.... Vivian will marry her now. Vivian would be glad to know whatIknow; he is afraid she doesn't care for him. If—if, she wonders whether he loves her, you might tell her that I know he does. I boasted to him yesterday. How he might laugh at me to-day!"
"I'm so sorry for you. It's a worn-out word; it seemed an insult to you when I used it just now, but what other is there? The relief will come. You'll pour your pain into your poetry; you'll write something beautiful and great because of what you're suffering, and know that it is beautiful and great. The pain will fade a little because you'll feel you utter it so well."
He looked beyond her thoughtfully. "Yes," he said.... "It sounds paltry, doesn't it? But it's true. Are we so shallow?"
"We?" she sighed. "I'm not an artist, I am dumb. I used to think—but what has that to do with it!"
"Tell me," he said.
"I used to think I must have genius; I didn't think a little gift like mine could cry so loud. If people knew some of the things I have done in my life, they would laugh, because—because one has no right to feel like that and be mediocre; it is silly.... Did you know as a child that you had power?"
"I always longed.... I remember telling my father once that it was in me. I lost hope afterwards.... I've been so miserable."
"I could hear it in your work; you seemed to be speaking for me sometimes.... I wanted to thank you for such a long while before I found the courage to do it. If I had guessed what was to come of it! I did nearly tear the letter up—so nearly!"
"I used to ask myself what you'd say if you could see me. I was frightened I shouldn't hear from you any more if you knew what I was like.... Ishouldhave heard from you, shouldn't I?"
"Yes."
"Shall I hear from you still?"
Her gaze rose to him wonderingly. "Do you mean that?" she faltered. "Do you want to?"
"I don't know," he said.
"It would keep the pain alive. You wouldn't be able to bear it."
He was silent a moment, pondering. "Your letters made me happy," he repeated, "they have been all I've had—I shall be poorer without them. Yes, I must have them. I'll try not to think of her when I read them. I'll read them for what they are—what they were to me before I saw her.... This isn't the end?"
"If you are sure you wish it, write to me; I will always answer," she promised.
The poignancy was fading from their tones, as the anger against her had already faded from his heart. By degrees they talked more freely. She lost the bearing of a penitent before her judge; the weakness was all the man's, and it became her part to comfort. A slow thankfulness that she had been revealed to him began to tinge the greyness of his outlook; in him, and in her, a sense was dawning that they could never again be so utterly alone. When she went to the door with him not an hour had passed since he uttered his reproaches—and upon the threshold he took both her hands, and she said, "It's not 'good-bye.'"
On the morning when David's father followed a blonde in crape along the Brighton sea-front, the band was playing "La Fille de Madame Angot": when David held Bee's hands, and she said, "It's not good-bye," the present century was born. So far as the lives of David Lee and Hebe Sorrenford are lived, the story of their lives is told. Where it ends, another is beginning, and to some of us it must seem that the story of their friendship can end only when the man or woman dies. For the sympathy between these two who in spirit are one cannot die. That must last longer than their youth, and longer than their passions; I who have said what has been, believe it must last longer than the bodies that belie their souls. The pages of the story are blank, and we can do no more than guess how Time will write it. But after Hilda has become Vivian's wife, and when the music-room is silent, it cannot be rash to think that Bee will make her new home close to David's, and, since Nature calls to both, that through some village street the figures of the quaint companions will pass together every day—and pass together for so many days that at last the rustics cease to point at them. Alike in their ideals, in their feeling for beauty, alike even in their weaknesses, how can they drift apart? Far on in the unwritten story I see no separation but the night. I see them working together, hoping together—hopeful of an immortality for David's verse which perhaps it will not win—but both happier, both braver, each of them fortified by the other's love. When the name of Ownie is unspoken and she rests as "Lilian Augusta, Widow of Elisha Lee," I see them together still, and I think there is no knowledge in his comrade's heart that David does not share, excepting that his history has held such love as women give to men where children sing. If I am not wrong, one day he will know that too, but he will learn it only where there is a fuller charity, and a clearer light—in a World where a hue of the skin cannot ostracise, and a crook of the body cannot ban.