NORMA went down to dinner resolved to present a scornful front to public opinion. She found the effort taxed her strength. During the night her courage deserted her. The cold glitter of triumph in her mother's eyes had been intolerable. Her father, generally regarded with contemptuous indifference, had goaded her beyond endurance with his futile upbraiding. Aline had arrived, white-faced and questioning, and had established herself by Jimmie's bedside. Norma shrank from the ordeal of the daily meeting with her and the explanation that would inevitably come. She dreaded the return of Morland, uncertain of her own intentions. As she tossed about on her pillow, she loathed the idea of the marriage. Innermost sex had spoken for one passionate moment, and its message still vibrated. She knew that time might dull the memory; she knew that her will might one day triumph over such things as sex and sentiment; but she must have a breathing space, a period of struggle, of reflection, above all, of disassociation from present surroundings. If she sold herself, it must be in the accustomed cold atmosphere of brain and heart. Not now, when her head burned and flaming swords were piercing her through and through. And last, and chief of all her dreads, was the wounded man now sleeping beneath that roof. Father, mother, Aline, Morland—these, torture though it were, she could still steel her nerves to meet; but him, never. He had done what no other man in the wide world had done. He had awakened the sleeping, sacredest inmost of her, and he had dealt it a deadly wound. If she could have consumed him and all the memories surrounding him with fire, as she had consumed the garment stained with his blood, she would have done so in these hours of misery. And fierce among the bewildering conflict of emotions that raged through the long night was one that filled her with overwhelming disgust—a horrible, almost grotesque jealousy of the dead girl.
In the morning, exhausted, she resolved on immediate flight. In the little village of Penwyrn on the Cornish coast, her aunt Janet Hardacre led a remote, Quakerish existence. The reply to a telegram before she left her room assured Norma of a welcome. By eleven o'clock she had left Heddon Court and was speeding westwards without a word to Jimmie or Aline.
Morland returned in the afternoon, and after a whisky and soda to brace his nerves, at once sought Jimmie, who roused himself with an effort to greet his visitor.
“Getting on famously, I hear,” said Morland, with forced airiness. “So glad. We'll have you on your feet in a day or two.”
“I hope to be able to travel back to London to-morrow.”
“To-morrow?”
“Yes,” said Jimmie, with a curious smile. “I fear I have outstayed my welcome.”
“Not a bit of it,” said Morland, seating himself at the foot of the bed. “We'll put all that right. But you will give one a little time, won't you? You mustn't think you've been altogether left. I ran up to town at once to see my solicitors—not my usual people, you know, but some others, devilish smart fellows at this sort of thing. They'll see that nothing gets into the beastly papers.”
“I don't see that it matters much,” said Jimmie. “
Why, of course it does. I'm not going to let you take the whole blame. I could n't come forward yesterday, it was all so sudden. The scandal would have rotted my election altogether. But you shall be cleared—at any rate in the eyes of this household. I came down with the intention of telling Norma, but she has bolted to Cornwall. Upset, I suppose. However, as soon as she comes back—”
“Let things be as they are,” interrupted Jimmie, closing his eyes for a moment wearily, for he had been suffering much bodily pain. “When I said I was David Rendell, I meant it. I can go on acting the part. It's pretty easy.”
“Impossible, my dear old chap,” said Morland, with an air of heartiness. “You went into the affair with your eyes shut. You didn't know it was such a horrible mess.”
“All the more reason for Norma to remain ignorant. It was for her sake as well as yours.”
A peculiar tenderness in Jimmie's tone caused Morland, not usually perceptive, to look at him sharply.
“You are very keen upon Norma,” he remarked.
Jimmie closed his eyes again, and smiled. He was very weak and tired. The pain of his wound and a certain mental agitation had kept him awake all night, and just before Morland entered he had been dropping off to sleep for the first time. An unconquerable drowsiness induced irresponsibility of speech.
“'The desire of the moth for the star,'” he murmured.
Morland slid from the bed to his feet, and with his hands in his pockets gazed in astonishment at his friend.
An entirely novel state of affairs dawned upon him which required a few moments to bring into focus. The ghastly tragedy for which he was responsible, presenting itself luridly at every instant of the night and day, had hidden from his reminiscent vision Norma's rush down the slope. and her scared tending of the unconscious man. Jimmie's words brought back the scene with unpleasant vividness and provided the interpretation. When he saw this clearly, he was the most amazed man in the three kingdoms. That Jimmie should have conceived and nourished a silly, romantic passion for Norma, although he had never interested himself sufficiently in Jimmie's private affairs to suspect it, was humorously comprehensible. Ludicrously incomprehensible, however, was a reciprocation of the sentiment on the part of Norma. In spite of remorse, in spite of anxiety, in spite of the struggle between cowardice and manhood, his uppermost sensation at that moment was one of lacerated vanity. He had been hoodwinked, befooled, deceived. His own familiar friend had betrayed him; the woman he was about to honour with his name had set him at naught. He tingled with anger and sense of wrong.
The sick man opened his eyes drowsily, and seeing Morland's gaze full upon him, started into wakefulness. He motioned him to come nearer.
“If you marry Norma—” he began.
“If I marry her!” cried Morland. “Of course I'm going to marry her. I'll see any other man damned before he marries her! She's the only woman in the world I've ever set my mind on, and no matter what happens, I'm going to marry her. There are no damned if's about it.”
“Yes, there are,” Jimmie retorted weakly. “I was going to preach, but I'm too tired. You'll have to be especially good to her—to make up.”
“For what?”
“For the wrong done to the other.”
Morland was silent. He went up to the window and stared out across the lawns and tugged at his moustache. The reproach stung him, and he felt that Jimmie was ungenerous. After all, he had only done what thousands of other men had done with impunity. The consequences had been enough to drive him mad, but they had been the hideous accident of a temperament for which he had not been responsible.
“You surely don't believe all that mad fool said yesterday?” he muttered without turning round.
“The promise of marriage?”
“It's a crazy invention. There never was any question of marriage. I told you so months ago. I did everything in my power.”
“I'm glad,” said Jimmie.
Morland made no reply, but continued to stare out of the window and meditate upon the many injuries that fate had done him. He arraigned himself before the bar of his wounded vanity. He had broken the moral law and deserved a certain penalty. The magnanimous verdict received the applause of an admiring self. He was willing to undergo an adequate punishment—the imposition of a fine and the hard labour of setting devious things straight. But the alternative sentence to which he saw himself condemned—on the one hand, the ruin of his political career, his social position, and his marriage with Norma, to all of which he clung with a newly found passion, and on the other, ignoble shelter behind an innocent man who had done him a great wrong—he rebelled against with all his average, sensual Briton's sense of justice. It was grossly unfair. If there had been a spiritual “Times,” he would have written to it.
The opening of the door caused him to turn round with a start. It was Aline, anxious and pale from an all-night sitting by Jimmie's bedside, but holding her slim body erect, and wearing the uncompromising air of a mother who has found her child evilly entreated at the hands of strangers. She glanced at the bed and at Morland; then she put her finger to her lip, and pointed at Jimmie, who lay fast asleep. Morland nodded and went on tiptoe out of the room. Aline looked round, and being a sensitive young person, shivered. She threw open the window wide, as if to rid the place of his influence. Jimmie stirred slightly. She bent down and kissed his hair.
During the dark and troubled time that followed, Morland fell away from Jimmie like the bosom friend of a mediaeval artist stricken with the Black Death. At first, common decency impelled him to send the tainted one affectionate messages, invitations to trust him awhile longer, and enlarged, with the crudity of his mental habit, on the noble aspects of Jimmie's sacrifice. But after Jimmie left the Hardacres' house, which happened as soon as he could bear the journey, Morland shrank from meeting him face to face; and when public exposure came, the messages and the invitations and the protestations ceased, and Jimmie was left in loneliness upon a pinnacle of infamy. Morland, in the futile hope of the weak-willed man that he could, by some astonishing chance, sail a middle course, did indeed give himself peculiar pains to keep the story out of the newspapers, and his ill-success was due to other causes than his own lack of effort. It was a tale too picturesque to be wasted in these days of sensation-hunger. The fact of the dénouement of the tragedy having taken place in the presence of royalty lent it a theatrical glamour. A sardonic press filled an Athenian public with what it lusted after. Indeed, who shall say with authority that the actual dramas re-enacted before our courts and reported in our newspapers have not their value in splashing with sudden colour the drab lives of thousands? May it not be better for the dulled soul to be occasionally arrested by the contemplation of furious passions than to feed contentedly like a pig beside the slaughtered body of its fellow?
Be that as it may. The press paid no heed to Morland or the smart fellows of solicitors whom he employed. It published as many details as it could discover or invent. For the tragical business did not end with the scene on the Hardacres' lawn. There was an inquest on the dead girl. There was the trial of Daniel Stone for attempted murder. The full glare of publicity shed itself upon the sordid history. In the one case the jury gave a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity; in the other the prisoner was found to be insane and was sent to an asylum. These were matters of no great public interest. But letters to the dead girl in a disguised handwriting were discovered, and Stone gave his crazy evidence, and a story of heartless seduction under solemn promise of marriage and of abandonment with cynical offer of money was established, and the fashionable portrait-painter, who was supposed to be the hero of the tale, awoke one morning and found himself infamous. The thing, instead of remaining a mere police-court commonplace, became a society scandal. Exaggeration was inevitable, not only of facts but of the reprobation a virtuous community pronounces on the specially pilloried wrongdoer. The scapegoat in its essential significance is by no means a thing of legendary history. It exists still, and owes its existence to an ineradicable instinct in human nature. The reprobation aforesaid is due not entirely to hypocrisy, as the social satirist would have it, but in a great measure to an unreasoning impulse towards expiation of offences by horrified condemnation of some notorious other. Thus it came to pass that upon Jimmie's head were put all the iniquities of the people and all their transgressions in all their sins, and he was led away into the social wilderness. After that, the world forgot him. He had been obscure enough before he burst for a day into the blaze of royal patronage; but now blackest darkness swallowed him up. Only Aline remained by his side.
Morland wrote to Jimmie once after the exposure. As he had been the cause, said he, of the probable ruin of Jimmie's professional prospects, it was only right that he should endeavour to make some compensation. It was, besides, a privilege of their life-long friendship. He enclosed a cheque for two thousand pounds. Jimmie returned it.
“My dear Morland,” he wrote in answer, “loyalty can only be repaid by loyalty, love by love. If I accepted money, it would dishonour both yourself and me. It is true that I took upon me a greater burden than I was aware of. The world, if it knew the facts, would, as you say, call me a quixotic fool. But if I took your money it would have the right to call me a mercenary knave. I have always suffered fools gladly, myself the greatest. I can go on doing so. Meanwhile you can make full compensation in the only way possible. Devote your life and energies to the happiness of the woman you are about to marry.” This was a stern letter for Jimmie to write. After he had posted it he reproached himself for not having put in a kind word.
I'll never let you inside the house again until you go down on your knees and beg Jimmie's pardon,” cried Aline.
She stood, a slim incarnation of outraged womanhood, with her hand on the knob of the open door. A scared but stubborn youth hesitated on the threshold. Few men, least of all lovers, like being turned out.
“I don't believe you care a hang for me!” he said.
“I don't,” she retorted bravely, but with tremulous lip. “Not a hang, as you call it. I dislike you exceedingly and I don't want to see you any more. I'll never speak to anybody who believes such things of Jimmie.”
“But, my good child,” expostulated Tony Merewether, “they are facts; he never has denied them.”
“He could if he liked.”
“How do you know?”
“How do I know?” Aline repeated scornfully. “That just shows how far we are apart. There's not the slightest reason for talking any more. You have insulted Jimmie and you are going on insulting him. I can't stand by this door forever. I want you to go.”
“Oh, very well, I'll go,” said the young fellow. “But you've behaved damnably to me, Aline—simply damnably.” He strode down the passage and slammed the front door behind him. Aline turned back into the prim little drawing-room where the interview had taken place, and after an attempt to remain composed and dignified, suddenly broke into tears. She could struggle no more against the cruelty of man and the hopelessness of life. It had been a stormy interview. Tony Merewether had come, as her natural protector, to insist upon immediate marriage. A small legacy recently bequeathed to him would enable them to marry with reasonable prudence. Why should they wait? Aline pleaded for time. How could she leave her beloved Jimmie in his blackest hour?
“It's just because I don't think it quite right for you to live here any longer, that I want you to come away at once,” Tony had said.
“Not right to live here? What on earth do you mean?” The luckless lover tried to explain. Aline regarded him icily, and in his confusion and discomfiture he lost the careful wrappings which he had prepared for his words.
“You think that Jimmie is not a fit person for me to associate with?” she had asked in a dangerous tone.
“Yes, since you choose to put it that way,” he had replied, nettled. He believed that women liked a man of spirit and generally yielded to a show of masterfulness. He was very young. Taking up his parable with greater confidence, he showed her the social and moral necessity of immediate recourse to his respectable protection. Naturally he admired her loyalty, he signified, with a magnanimous wave of the hand; but there were certain things girls did not quite comprehend; a man's judgment had to be trusted. He invited her to surrender entirely to his wisdom. The end of it all was his ignominious dismissal. She would not see him until he had begged Jimmie's pardon on his knees.
But now she buried her face in the sofa-cushions and sobbed. It was her first poignant disillusion. Tony, whom she loved with all her heart, was just like everybody else, incapable of pure faith, ready to believe the worst. He was cruel, uncharitable. She would never speak to him again. And the sweet shy dream of her young life was over. It was very tragical.
Jimmie's step coming up the studio stairs caused her to spring from the sofa and frantically dry her eyes before the mirror. The steps advanced along the passage, and soon Jimmie's head appeared at the door.
“Where have you hidden the little watercolour box?” he asked cheerily.
“In the cupboard. On the second shelf,” she replied, without turning round.
He caught sight of the reflection of a tear-stained face, and came and stood by her side.
“Why, you've been crying!”
“I suppose I have,” she admitted with affectionate defiance, looking up into his face. “Why should n't I, if I like? It's not a crime.”
“It's worse—it's a blunder,” he quoted with a smile. “It can't do any one any good, and it makes your pretty nose red. That will spoil your good looks.”
“I wish it would. My looks will never matter to anybody,” she said desperately.
He put his arm round her shoulders, just as he had done since she could remember.
“What has happened to distress you—more than usual?” he added.
She was silent for a moment, and hung her head.
“I've broken off with Tony,” she said in a low voice.
“You'll mend it up with Tony at once, my dear.”
“I'll never marry him,” declared Aline.
“You'll write and tell him that you'll marry him at the very first opportunity. There are reasons why you should, Aline, grave reasons.”
“You wouldn't have me marry any one I dislike intensely?” she flashed.
“Wouldn't you do it to please me, even though you hated him violently? I have been going to speak to you about this. It's high time you were married, dear, and I particularly wish it. So make friends with Tony as soon as ever you can.”
“I never want to see Tony again—until he has gone on his bended knees to you,” said Aline, with a quivering lip. “I don't want to breathe the same air with any one who does n't think of you as I do.”
This was the first allusion that the girl had made to unhappy things, since they had become common knowledge a month ago. She had conveyed to him by increased tenderness and devotion that she loved him all the more for his suffering, and it had been easy for him to perceive that the main facts of the story were not unknown to her. But hitherto there had been absolute silence on the part of each. He had been greatly puzzled as to the proper course he should take. An interview with Tony Merewether that morning had decided him. It had been short, coldly courteous on the young fellow's side, who merely asked and obtained consent to marry Aline forthwith, and wistfully dignified on Jimmie's.
He sat down on the arm of a chair and took her hand, deeply moved by her passionate faith in him.
“Listen, dear. I am a dishonoured man and it is n't right that you should live with me any longer. Tony, dear good fellow, is no more to blame for what he thinks of me than the crazy wronged man who shot me. But the only way for you to make him think better is to marry him. No, don't interrupt. Stand quietly and let me talk to you. I've been making plans and I should be tremendously upset if there was any difficulty. I'm going to give up the house and studio.”
Aline regarded him in frightened amazement, and then looked round as if the familiar walls and furniture were in danger of incontinent disappearance.
“What?” she gasped.
“I shall give it up and wander about painting abroad, so it's absolutely necessary that you should marry Tony. Otherwise I don't know what on earth I should do with you.”
He swung her hand and looked smilingly into her eyes.
“You see I really am in a hurry to get rid of you,” he added.
Aline gazed at him for a long time, gradually recovering from her stupefaction. Then she withdrew her hand from his clasp and laughed.
“You are talking unadulterated rubbish, Jimmie,” she said.
Upon this declaration she took her stand, and no protest or argument could move her. She withstood triumphantly a siege of several days. Jimmie tried to exert his quasiparental authority. But the submissive little girl, who had always yielded when Jimmie claimed obedience, had given place to a calmly inflexible woman. Jimmie swore that he would not commit the crime of spoiling her life's happiness. She replied, with a toss of her head and a pang of her heart, that her life's happiness had nothing to do with Tony Merewether, and that if it did, the crime would lie at his door and not at Jimmie's.
“As for leaving you alone in the wide world, I would just as soon think of deserting a new-born baby in the street,” she said. “You are not fit to be by yourself. And whether you like it or not, Jimmie, I must stay and look after you.”
At last, by the underhand methods which women often employ for the greater comfort of men, she cajoled him into an admission. The plan of giving up the house had, as its sole object, the forcing of her hand. Victorious, she allowed herself to shed tears over his goodness. Just for her miserable sake he had proposed to turn himself into a homeless wanderer over the face of Europe.
“Do tell me, Jimmie,” she said, “how it feels to be an angel!”
He laughed in his old bright way.
“Very uncomfortable when a tyrannical young woman cuts your wings off.”
“But I do it for your good, Jimmie,” she retorted. “If I did n't, you would be flying about helplessly.”
Thus the clouds that lay around them were lit with tender jesting. During this passage through the darkness he never faltered, serene in his faith, having found triumphant vindication thereof in the devotion of Aline. That he had made a sacrifice greater than any human being had a right to demand of another, he knew full well; he had been driven on to more perilous reefs than he had contemplated; the man whom he had imagined Morland to be would have thrown all planks of safety to the waves in order to rescue him. He felt acutely the pain of his shipwreck; but he did not glorify himself as a martyr: he was satisfied that it was for the worshipped woman's happiness, and that in itself was a reward. His catholic sympathy even found extenuating circumstances in Morland's conduct. Once when Aline inveighed against his desertion, he said in the grave manner in which he delivered himself of his moral maxims:
“We ought never to judge a human being's actions until we know his motives.”
Aline thought the actions were quite sufficient for a working philosophy, but she did not say so. Jimmie half guessed the motives and judged leniently. Though he had lost much that made life sweet to him, his heart remained unchanged, his laugh rang true through the house; and were it not for the loneliness and the dismal blight in her own little soul, Aline would not have realised that any calamitous event had happened.
One other of Jimmie's friends maintained relations with him. This was Connie Deering. She had gone abroad soon after the disaster, and moved by various feelings for which she rather forbade her impulsive self to account, had written one or two oddly expressed letters. In the first one she had touched lightly upon the difficult subject. She would not have believed a word of it, if she had not heard it from his own lips. If he would write to her and say that it was all a lie, she would accept his word implicitly. He was either a god or a devil—a remark that filled Jimmie with considerable alarm. A shrewd brain was inside the pretty butterfly head. In his reply he ignored the question, an example which Connie followed in her second letter. This consisted mainly in a rambling account of the beauty of Stresa and the comforts and excellent cuisine of the hotel by the lake; but a postscript informed him that Norma was travelling about with her for an indefinite period, and that she had heard nothing of Morland, who having easily won his election was now probably busy with the beginning of the autumn session. Jimmie, unversed in the postscriptal ways of women, accepted the information as merely the literal statement of facts. A wiser man would have grasped the delicate implication that the relations between the affianced pair were so strained that an interval of separation had seemed desirable.
The unshaken faith of the man in the ultimate righteousness of things kept him serene; but the young girl who had no special faith, save in the perfect righteousness of Jimmie and the dastardly unrighteousness of the world in general and of Mr. Anthony Merewether in particular, found it difficult to live in these high altitudes of philosophy. Indeed she was a very miserable little girl when Jimmie was not by, and pined, and cried her heart out, and grew thin and pale and sharp-tempered, and filled her guardian with much concern. At last Jimmie took heroic measures. Without Aline's knowledge he summoned Tony Merewether to an interview. The young man came. Jimmie received him in the studio, begged him to take a seat, and rang the bell. The middle-aged housekeeper ran down in some perturbation at the unusual summons, for it was Jimmie's habit to shout up the stairs, generally to Aline, for anything he wanted. She received his instructions. Miss Aline would oblige him by coming down at once. During the interval of waiting he talked to Mr. Merewether of indifferent things, flattering himself on a sudden development of the diplomatic faculty. Aline ran into the room, and stopped short at the sight of the young man, uttering a little cry of indignant surprise. Jimmie cleared his throat, but the oration that he had prepared was never delivered. Aline marched straight up to the offending lover.
“I don't see you on your knees,” she said.
Tony, who was entirely unexpectant of this uncompromising attitude, having taken it for granted that by some means or other the way had been made smooth for him, retorted somewhat sharply:
“You're not likely to.”
“Then I wonder,” said Aline, “at your audacity in coming to this house.” She turned and marched back to the door, her little figure very erect and her dark eyes blazing. Jimmie intercepted her.
“Tony came at my request, my child.”
For the first and only time in her life she cast a look of anger upon Jimmie.
“Let me pass, please,” she said, like an outraged princess; and waving Jimmie aside, she made the exit of offended majesty.
The two men looked stupidly at each other. Their position was ignominious.
“I did it for the best, my boy,” said Jimmie, taking up a pipe which he began to fill mechanically. He was just the kind creature of happier days. The young fellow's heart was touched. After a minute's silence he committed a passionate indiscretion.
“I wish to God you would tell me there is something hidden beneath this ghastly story, and that it's quite different from what it appears to be!”
Jimmie drew himself up and looked the young man between the eyes.
“That's a question I discuss with no human being,” said he.
“I beg your pardon,” said Tony Merewether, in sincere apology. “I would not have taken such a liberty if it had n't been a matter of life and death for me. Perhaps you think I ought to do more or less as Aline asks me; but she is too precious to purchase with an infernal lie. I'm hanged if I'll do it, and I don't think you're the man to misunderstand my frankness.”
Jimmie had lit his pipe during the foregoing speech. He drew two or three meditative puffs.
“Have as little to do with lies, my boy, as ever you can,” said he. “And cheer up, all is sure to come right in the end.”
He was sunk in reflection for a long time after the young man had gone, and again for a long time after Aline had done remorseful penance for her loss of temper. Then he went out for a walk and brought back something in his pocket. At dinner-time he was unusually preoccupied. When the meal was over, he fished up a black bottle from beneath the table, and going to the sideboard, came back with a couple of wineglasses. Aline watched him as though he were performing some rite in black magic.
“This is rich fruity port,” said he, filling the glasses. “Evans, the grocer, told me I should get nothing like it at the price in London. You are to drink it. It will do you good.”
Aline, still penitent, obeyed meekly.
“How could you be so extravagant, Jimmie?” she said in mild protest. “It must have cost quite three shillings.”
“And sixpence,” said Jimmie, unabashed. He lifted up his glass. “Now here's to ourWanderjahr, or as much of it as we can run to.”
“Whatever do you mean, Jimmie?”
“I mean my dear,” said he, “that we are going to take a knapsack, a tambourine and a flute, and appropriate ribbons for our costumes, and beg our way through southern Europe.”
He explained and developed his plan, the result of his meditations, in his laughing picturesque way. They were doing nothing but eating expensive fog in November London. A diet of sunshine and garlic would be cheaper. They would walk under the olive-trees and drift about on lagoons, and whisper with dead ages in the moonlit gloom of crumbling palaces. They would go over hills on donkeys. They would steep their souls in Perugino, Del Sarto, Giorgione. They would teach the gaunt Italian flea to respect British Keating's powder. They would fraternise with the beautiful maidens of Arles and sit on the top of Giotto's Campanile. They would do all kinds of impossible things. Afford it? Of course they could. Had he not received his just dues from the princess and sold two pictures a week or two ago? At this point he fell thinking for a couple of dreamy minutes.
“I meant to give you a carriage, dear,” he said at last in mild apology. “I'm afraid it will have to be a third-class one.”
“A fourth or fifth would be good enough for me,” cried Aline. “Or I could walk all the way with you. Don't I know you have planned it out just for my sake?”
“Rubbish, my dear,” said Jimmie, holding the precious wine to the light. “I'm taking you because I don't see how I can leave you behind. You have no idea what an abominable nuisance you'll be.”
Aline laughed a joyous laugh which did Jimmie good to hear, and came behind his chair and put her arms about his neck, behaving foolishly as a young girl penetrated with the sense of the loved one's goodness is privileged to do. What she said is of infinitesimal importance, but it lifted care from Jimmie's heart and made him as happy as a child. Like two children, they discussed the project; and Aline fetching from the top shelf of the bookcase in Jimmie's bedroom a forlorn, dusty, yellow-paged Continental Bradshaw, twenty years old, they looked up phantom trains that had long ceased running, speculated on the merits of dead-and-gone hotels, and plunged into the fairyland of anachronistic information.
A few days were enough for Jimmie's simple arrangements; and then began the pilgrimage of these two, each bearing a burden, a heart-ache, a pain from which there was no escaping, but each bearing it with a certain splendour of courage that made life beautiful to the other. For the girl suffered keenly, as Jimmie knew. She had given a passionate heart for good and all to the handsome young fellow who had refused to bow the knee to the man whom he had every reason to consider a blackguard. They had come together, youth to youth, as naturally as two young birds in the first mating-season; but, fortunately or unfortunately for Aline, she was not a bird, but a human being of unalterable affections and indomitable character. She had the glorious faith,quia incredibile, in Jimmie, and rather than swerve aside from it she would have walked on knife edges all the rest of her days. So she scorned the pain, and scorned herself for feeling it when she saw the serenity with which he bore his cross. Dimly she felt that if the truth were known he would stand forth heroically, not infamously. She had revered him as a child does its father; but in that sweet and pure relationship of theirs, she had also watched him with the minute, jealous solicitude that a mother devotes to an only child who is incapable of looking after itself. Nothing in his character had escaped her. She knew both his strength and his enchanting weaknesses. To her trained eyes, he was all but transparent; and of late her quickened vision had read in letters of fire across his heart, “The desire of the moth for the star.”
So they travelled through the world, hand in hand, as it were, and drank together of its beauty. They were memorable journeyings. Sleeping-cars and palatial hotels and the luxuries of modern travel were not for them. Aline, who knew that Jimmie, as far as he himself was concerned, would have slept upon wood quite as cheerfully as upon feathers, but for her sake would have royally commanded down, held the purse-strings and dictated the expenditure. They had long, wonderful third-class journeys, stopping at every wayside station, at each having some picturesque change of company in the ever-crowded, evil-smelling, wooden-seated compartment. She laughed at Jimmie's fears as to her discomfort; protested with energetic sincerity that this was the only way in the world to travel with enjoyment. It was a never-failing interest to see Jimmie disarm the suspicion of peasants by his sympathetic knowledge of their interests, to listen to his arguments with the chance-met curé, perspiring and polite, or the mild young soldier in a brass helmet a size too big for him. In France she understood what they were saying, and maintained a proper protectorate over Jimmie by means of a rough and ready acquaintance with the vernacular. But in Italy she was dumb, could only regard Jimmie in open-mouthed astonishment and admiration. He spoke Italian. She had known him all her life and never suspected this accomplishment. It required some tact to keep him in his proper position as interpreter and restrain him from acting on his own initiative. In the towns they put up at little humble hostelries in by-streets and in country-places at rough inns, eating rude fare and drinking sour wine with great content. The more they economised the longer would the idyllic vagabondage last.
Through southern France and northern Italy they wandered without fixed plans, going from place to place as humour seized them, seeking the sunshine. At last it seemed to be their normal existence. London with its pain and its passion grew remote like the remembered anguish of a dream. Few communications reached them. The local newspaper gave them all the tidings they needed of the great world. It was a life free from vexation. The decaying splendour of the larger cities with their treasure-houses of painting and sculpture and their majestic palaces profoundly stirred the young girl's imagination and widened her conceptions and sympathies. But she loved best to arrive by a crazy, old-world diligence at some little townlet built on a sunny hillside, whose crumbling walls were the haunts of lizards and birds and strange wild-flowers; and having rested and eaten at the dark littlealbergo, smelling of wine and garlic and all Italian smells, to saunter out with Jimmie through the narrow, ill-paved, clattering streets alive with brown children and dark-eyed mothers, and men sitting on doorsteps violently gesticulating and screaming over the game ofmorra, and to explore the impossible place from end to end. A step or two when they desired it would bring them to the sudden peace of the mediaeval church, with its memories of Romanesque tradition and faint stirrings of Gothic curiously reflecting the faith of its builders; the rough, weather-beaten casket of one flawless gem of art, a Virgin smiling over the child on her lap at many generations of worshippers, superbly eternal and yet quaintly woman. And then they would pass out of the chilly streets and down the declivitous pathways below the town and sit together on the hillside, in a sun-baked spot sheltered from the wind. This Aline, vaguely conscious of the Infinite, called “hanging on the edge of Nowhere.”
One day, on such a hillside Jimmie had been painting three brown-faced children whom he had cajoled into posing for him, while Aline looked on dreamily. The urchins, dismissed with a few halfpennies, bowed polite thanks, the two boys taking off their caps with the air of ragged princes, and scampered away like rabbits out of sight.
“There!” cried Jimmie, throwing down his brush and holding out the little panel at arm's length. “I have never done anything so good in all my life! Have n't I got it? Is n't it better than ten cathedralfuls of sermons? Is n't it the quintessence of happiness, the perfect trust in the sweet earth to yield them its goodness? Could any one after seeing that dare say the world was only a dank and dismal prison where men do nothing but sit and hear each other groan? Look at it, Aline. What do you think of it?”
“It's just lovely, Jimmie,” said Aline.
“If I painted a pink hippopotamus standing on its head, you would say it was lovely. Why did n't you tell me that arm was out of drawing?”
He took up his brush and made the necessary correction. Aline laughed.
“Do you know one of the few things I can remember my father saying was about you?”
“God bless my soul,” said Jimmie. “I had almost forgotten you ever had a father—dear old chap! What did he say?”
“I remember him telling you that one day you would die of incurable optimism. For years I used to think it was some horrible disease, and I used to whisper in my prayers, 'O God, please cure Jimmie of optimism,' and sometimes lie awake at nights thinking of it.”
“Well, do you think your prayer has been answered?” asked Jimmie, amused.
She shifted herself a little nearer him and put her hand on his knee.
“Thank goodness, no. You've got it as bad as ever—and I believe I've caught it.” Then, between a sob and a laugh, she added:
“Oh, Jimmie dear, your stupid old head could never tell you what you have done for me since we have been abroad. If I had stayed at home I think I should have died of—of—of malignant pessimism. You will never, never, never understand.”
“And will you ever understand what you have done for me, my child?” said Jimmie, gravely. “We won't talk about these things. They are best in our hearts.”
THAT autumn pressed heavily upon Mrs. Hardacre. Norma's engagement, without being broken off, was indefinitely suspended, and Norma, by going abroad with Mrs. Deering immediately on her return from Cornwall, had placed herself beyond reach of maternal influence. It is true that Mrs. Hardacre wrote many letters; but as Norma's replies mainly consisted of a line or two on a picture post-card, it is to be doubted whether she ever read them. Mrs. Hardacre began to feel helpless. Morland could give her little assistance. He shrugged his shoulders at her appeals. He was perfectly determined to marry Norma, but trusted to time to restore her common-sense and lead her into the path of reason. Nothing that he could do would be of any avail. Mrs. Hardacre urged him to join the ladies on the Continent and bring matters to a crisis. He replied that an election was crisis enough for one man in a year, and furthermore the autumn session necessitated his attendance in the House. He was quite satisfied, he told her stolidly, with things as they were, and in the meantime was actually finding an interest in his new political life. But Mrs. Hardacre shared neither his satisfaction nor his interest, a mother's point of view being so different from that of a lover.
As if the loss of ducal favour and filial obedience were not enough for the distraught lady, her husband one morning threw a business letter upon the table, and with petulant curses on the heads of outside brokers, incoherently explained that he was ruined. They were liars and knaves and thieves, he sputtered. He would drag them all into the police court, he would write to the “Times,” he would go and horsewhip the blackguards. Damme if he would n't!
“I wish the blackguards could horsewhip you,” remarked his wife, grimly. “Have you sufficient brains to realise what an unutterable fool you have been?”
If he did not realise it by the end of the week, it was not Mrs. Hardacre's fault. She reduced the unhappy man to craven submission and surreptitious nipping of old brandy in order to keep up the feeble spirit that remained in him, and took the direction of affairs into her own hands. They were not ruined, but a considerable sum of money had been lost through semi-idiotic speculation, and for a time strict economy was necessary. By Christmas the establishment in the country was broken up, a tenant luckily found for Heddon Court, and a small furnished house taken in Devonshire Place. These arrangements gave Mrs. Hardacre much occupation, but they did not tend to soften her character. When Norma came home, sympathetically inclined and honestly desirous to smooth down asperities—for she appreciated the aggravating folly of her father—she found her advances coldly repulsed.
“What is the good of saying you are sorry for me,” Mrs. Hardacre asked snappishly, “when you refuse to do the one thing that can mend matters?”
Then followed the old, old story which Norma had heard so often in days past, but now barbed with a new moral and adorned with new realism. Norma listened wearily, surprised at her own lack of retort. When the familiar homily came to an end, her reply was almost meek:
“Give me a little longer time to think over it.”
“You had better cut it as short as possible,” said Mrs. Hardacre, “or you may find yourself too late. As it is, you are going off. What have you been doing to yourself? You look thirty.”
“I feel fifty,” said Norma.
“You had better go and have your face massaged, or you'll soon not be fit to be seen.”
“I think I want a course of soul massage,” answered Norma, with a hard little laugh.
But when she was alone in her own room, she looked anxiously at her face in the glass. Her mother had confirmed certain dismal imaginings. She had grown thinner, older looking; tiny lines were just perceptible at the corners of eyes and lips and across the forehead. The fresh bloom of youth was fading from her skin. She was certainly going off. She had not been a happy woman since her precipitate flight to Cornwall. The present discovery added anxiety to depression.
A day or two afterwards Mrs. Hardacre returned to the unedifying attack. Had Norma written to Morland to inform him of her arrival? Norma replied that she had no inordinate longing to see Morland. Mrs. Hardacre used language that only hardened and soured women of fashion who are beginning to feel the pinch of poverty dare use nowadays. It is far more virulent than a fishwife's, for every phrase touches a jangling nerve and every gibe tears a delicate fibre, whereas Billingsgate merely shocks and belabours. Norma bore it in silence for some time, and then went away quivering from head to foot. A new and what seemed a horrible gift had been bestowed upon her—the power to feel. Once a sarcastic smile, a scornful glance, a withering retort would have carried her in triumph from her mother's presence. Secure in her own callous serenity, she would have given scarcely a further thought to the quarrel. Now things had inexplicably changed. Her mother's stabs hurt. Some curious living growth within her was wrung with pain. She could only grope humbled and broken to her room and stare at nothing, wishing she could cry like other women.
No wonder she looked old, when the spirit had left her and taken with it the cold, proud setting of the features that had given her beauty its peculiar stamp. Dimly she realised the disintegration. When a nature which has taken a colossal vanity for strength and has relied thereon unquestioningly for protection against a perilous world, once loses grip of that sublime mainstay, it is impossible for it to take firm hold again. It must content itself with lesser planks or flounder helplessly, fearful of imminent shipwreck. Norma, during those autumn months, had found her strength vanity. The fact in rude, symbolic form was brought home to her a short time after her return.
It was a bright Sunday afternoon, when, on her way to pay a call in Kensington, she had dismissed her cab at Lancaster Gate and was walking through Kensington Gardens. Half-way a familiar figure met her eye. It was her own maid sitting on a bench with a man by her side. The girl was wearing a cheap long jacket over an elaborate dress, absurdly light for the time of year. It caught Norma's attention, and then suddenly it flashed upon her that it was the dress she had given to be burned months ago. She walked on, aching with a sense of the futility of grandiose determinations. She had consigned the garment stained with Jimmie's blood contemptuously to the flames. It was incongruously whole in Kensington Gardens. She had cast her love for Jimmie out of her heart in the same spirit of comedic tragedy. Forlorn and bedraggled it was still there, mockingly refusing to be reduced to its proper dust and ashes. Her strength had not availed her to cast it out. Her strength was a vain thing. Yet being forlorn and bedraggled the love was as hateful as the unconsumed garment. It haunted her like an unpurged offence. The newspaper details had made it reek disgustfully. At times Connie Deering's half faith filled her with an extravagant hope that these sordid horrors which had sullied the one pure and beautiful thing that had come into her life were nothing but a ghastly mistake; that it was, as Connie suggested, a dark mystery from which if Jimmie chose he could emerge clean. But then her judgment, trained from childhood to look below the surface of even smiling things and find them foul, rebelled. The man had proclaimed himself, written himself down a villain. It was in black and white. And not only a villain—that might be excusable—but a hypocritical canting villain, which was the unforgivable sin. Every woman has a Holy Ghost of sorts within her.
Norma did not write to Morland. She dreaded renewal of relations, and yet she had not the courage to cut him finally adrift. The thought of withered spinsterhood beneath her father's roof was a dismaying vision. Marriage was as essential as ever to the scheme of her future. Why not with Morland? Her mother's words, though spoken as with the tongues of asps, were those of wisdom.
All that she could bring to a husband was her beauty, her superb presence, her air of royalty. These gone, her chances were as illusory as those of the pinched and faded gentlewomen who tittle-tattled at Cosford tea-parties. Another year, and at the present rate of decay her beauty would have vanished into the limbo of last year's snows. She exaggerated; but what young woman of six-and-twenty placed as she has not looked tremulously in her mirror and seen feet of crows and heaven knows what imaginary fowls that prey upon female charms? At six-and-thirty she smiles with wistful, longing regret at the remembered image. Yet youth, happily, is not cognisant of youth's absurdities. It takes itself tragically. Thus did Norma. Her dowry of beauty was dwindling. She must marry within the year. Sometimes she wished that Theodore Weever, who had not yet discovered his decorative wife and had managed to find himself at various places which she had visited abroad, would come like a Paladin and deliver her from her distress and carry her off to his castle in Fifth Avenue. He would at least interest her as a human being, which Morland, with all his solid British qualities, had never succeeded in doing. But Theodore Weever had not spoken. He retained the imperturbability of the bald marble bust of himself that he had taken her to see in a Parisian sculptor's studio. There only remained Morland. But for some reason, for which she could not account, he seemed the last man on earth she desired to marry. When she had written to him, soon after her flight to Cornwall, to beg for a postponement of the wedding, giving him the very vaguest reasons for her request, he had assented with a cheerfulness ill befitting an impatient lover. It would be impertinence, he wrote, for him to enquire further into her reasons. She was too much a woman of the world to act without due consideration, and provided that he could look forward to the very great happiness of one day calling her his wife, he was perfectly satisfied with whatever she chose to arrange. The absence of becoming fervour, in spite of her desire to postpone the dreaded day, produced a feeling of irritated disappointment. None of us, least of all women, invariably like to be taken at our word. If Morland lay so little value upon her as that, he might just as well give her up altogether. She replied impulsively, suggesting a rupture of the engagement. Morland, longing for time to raise him from the abasement in which he grovelled, had welcomed the proposal to defer the marriage; but as he smarted at the same time under a sense of wrong—had he not been betrayed by his own familiar friend and the woman he loved?—he now unequivocally refused to accept her suggestion. He had made up his mind to marry her. He had made all his arrangements for marrying her. The check he had experienced had stimulated a desire which only through unhappy circumstances had languished for a brief season. He persuaded himself that he was more in love with her than ever. At all costs, in his stupid, dogged way, he determined to marry her. He told her so bluntly. He merely awaited her good pleasure. Norma accepted the situation and thought, by going abroad, to leave it at home to take care of itself. It might die of inanition. Something miraculous might happen to transform it entirely. She returned and found it alive and quite undeveloped. It grinned at her with a leer which she loathed from the depths of her soul; and the more Mrs. Hardacre pointed at it the more it leered, and the greater became the loathing.
At last Mrs. Hardacre took matters into her own hands and summoned Morland to London. “Norma is in a green, depressed state,” she wrote, “and I think your proper place is by her side. I imagine she regrets her foolishness in postponing the marriage and is ashamed to confess it. A few words with you face to face would bring her back to her old self. Women have these idiotic ways, my dear Morland, and men being so much stronger and saner must make generous allowances. I confidently expect you.”
Morland's vanity, spurred by this letter, brought him in a couple of days to London.
“My dear Morland, this is a surprise,” cried Mrs. Hardacre dissemblingly, as he entered the drawing-room, “we were only just talking of you. I'll ring for another cup.”
She moved to the bell by the side of the fireplace, and Norma and Morland shook hands with the conventional words of greeting.
“I hope you've had a good time abroad?”
“Oh, yes. The usual thing, the usual places, the usual people, the usual food. In fact, a highly successful pursuit of the usual. I've invented a verb—'to usualise.' I suppose you've been usualising too?”
The sudden sight of him had braced her, and instinctively she had adopted her old, cool manner as defensive armour. Her reply pleased him. There was something pungent in her speech, irreconcilable in her attitude, which other women did not possess. He was not physiognomist or even perceptive enough to notice the subtle change in her expression. He noted, as he remarked to her later, that she was “a bit off colour,” but he attributed it to the muggy weather, and never dreamed of regarding her otherwise than as radically the same woman who had engaged herself to many him in the summer. To him she was still the beautiful shrew whose taming appealed to masculine instincts. The brown hair sweeping up in a wave from the forehead, the finely chiselled sensitive features, the clear brown eyes, the mocking lips, the superb poise of the head, the stately figure perfectly set off in the dark blue tailor-made dress, all combined to impress him with a realisation of the queenliness of the presence that had grown somewhat shadowy of late to his unimaginative mental vision.
“And how do you like Parliament?” she asked casually, when the teacup had been brought and handed to him filled.
“I find it remarkably interesting,” he replied sententiously. “It is dull at times, of course, but no man can sit on those green benches and not feel he is helping to shape the destinies of a colossal Empire.”
“Is that what you really feel—or is it what you say when you are responding for the House of Commons at a public dinner?” asked Norma.
Morland hesitated for a moment between huffiness and indulgence. In spite of his former gibes at the stale unprofitableness of parliamentary life, he had always had the stolid Briton's reverence for our Institutions, and now that he was actually a legislator, his traditions led him to take himself seriously.
“I have become a very keen politician, I assure you,” he answered. “If you saw the amount of work that falls on me, you would be astonished. If it were n't for Manisty—that's my secretary, you know—I don't see how I could get through it.”
“I always wonder,” said Mrs. Hardacre, “how members manage to find time for anything. They work like galley-slaves for nothing at all. I regard them as simply sacrificing themselves for the public good.”
“A member of Parliament is the noblest work of God. Don't, mother. Please leave us our illusions.”
“What are they?” asked Morland.
“One is that there are a few decently selfish people left in an age of altruists,” said Norma.
She talked for the sake of talking, careless of the stupid poverty of her epigram. Morland, as the healthy country gentleman alternating with the commonplace man about town, was a passable type enough, though failing to excite exuberant admiration. But Morland, with his narrow range of sympathies and pathetic ignorance of the thought of the day, posing solemnly as a trustee of the British Empire, aroused a scorn which she dare not express in words.
“I don't know that we are all altruists,” replied Morland, good-temperedly. “If we are good little members of Parliament, we may be rewarded with baronetcies and things. But one has to play the game thoroughly. It's worth it, is n't it, even from your point of view, Norma?”
“You're just the class of man the government does best in rewarding,” remarked Mrs. Hardacre, with her wintry smile that was meant to be conciliatory. “A man of birth and position upholds the dignity of a title and is a credit to his party.”
Morland laughingly observed that it was early in the day to be thinking of parliamentary honours. He had not even made his maiden speech. As Norma remained silent, the conversation languished. Presently Mrs. Hardacre rose.
“I have no doubt you two want to have a talk together. Won't you stay and dine with us, Morland?”
He glanced at Norma, but failing to read an endorsement of the invitation in her face, made an excuse for declining.
“Then I will say good-bye and leave you. I would n't stand any nonsense if I were you,” she added in a whisper through the door which he held open for her.
He sauntered up to the fireplace and stood on the hearth-rug, his hands in his pockets. Norma, looking at him from her easy-chair, wondered at a certain ignobility that she detected for the first time beneath his bluff, prosperous air. In spite of birth and breeding he looked common.
“Well?” he said. “We had better have it out at once. What is it to be? I must have an answer sooner or later.”
“Can't it be later?”
“If you insist upon it. I'm not going to hold a pistol to your head, my dear girl. Only you must admit that I've treated you with every consideration. I have n't worried you. You took it into your head to put off our marriage. I felt you had your reasons and I raised no objection. But we can't go on like this forever, you know.”
“Why not?” asked Norma.
“Human nature. I am in love with you, and want to marry you.”
“But supposing I am not in love with you, Morland. I've never pretended to be, have I?”
“We need n't go over old ground. I accepted all that at the beginning. The present state of affairs is that we are engaged; when are we going to be married?”
“Oh, I don't know,” said Norma, desperately. “I have n't thought of it seriously. I know I have behaved like a beast to you—you must forgive me. At times it has seemed as though I was not the right sort to marry and bring children into the world. I should loathe it!”
“Oh, I don't think so,” said Morland, in a tone he meant to be soothing. “Besides—”
“I know what you are going to say—or at any rate what you would like to say. It's scarcely decent to talk of such things. But I have n't been brought up in a nunnery. I wish to God I had been. At all events, I am frank. I would loathe it—all that side of it. Could n't we suppress that side? Oh, yes, I am going to speak of it—it has been on my mind for months,” she burst out, as Morland made a quick step towards her.
He did not allow her to continue. With his hand on the arm of her chair, he bent down over her.
“You are talking wild nonsense,” he said; and she flushed red and did not meet his eyes. “When a man marries, he marries in the proper sense of the term, unless he is an outrageous imbecile. There is to be no question of that sort of thing. I thought you knew your world better. I want you—you yourself. Don't you understand that?”
Norma put out her hand to push him away. He seized it in his. She snatched it from him.
“Let me get up,” she said, waving him off. She brushed past him, as she rose.
“We can't go on talking. What I've said has made it impossible. Let us change the subject. How long are you going to stay in town?”
“I'm not going to change the subject,” said Morland, rather brutally. “I'm far too much interested in it. Hang it all, Norma, you do owe me something.”
“What do I owe you? What?” she asked with a sudden flash in her eyes.
“You are a woman of common-sense. I leave you to guess. You admit you have n't treated me properly. You have nothing to complain of as far as I am concerned. Now, have you?”
“How do I know? No. I suppose not, as things go. Once I did try to—to feel more like other women—and to make some amends. I told you that perhaps we were making a mistake in excluding sentiment. If you had chosen, you could have—I don't know—made me care for you, perhaps. But you didn't choose. You treated me as if I were a fool. Very likely I was.”
“When was that?” asked Morland, with a touch of sarcasm. “I certainly don't remember.”
“It was the last night we had any talk together—in the billiard-room. The night before—before the garden-party.” He turned away with an involuntary exclamation of anger. He remembered now, tragic events having put the incident out of his mind. He was caught in a trap.
“I did n't think you meant it,” he said, hurrying to the base excuse. “Women sometimes consider it their duty to say such things—to act a little comedy, out of kindness. Some fellows expect it. I thought it would be more decent to let you see that I did n't.”
There was a short silence. Norma stood in the centre of the room, biting her lip, her head moving slightly from side to side; she was seeking to formulate her thoughts in conventional terms. Her cheek grew a shade paler.
“Listen,” she said at length. “I am anything bad you like to call me. But I'm not a woman who cajoles men. And I'm not a liar. I'm far too cynical to lie. Truth is much more deadly. I hate lying. That's the main reason why I broke with a man I cared for more than for any other man I have ever met—because he lied. You know whom I mean.”
He faced her with a conscious effort. Even at this moment of strain and anger, Norma was struck again with the lurking air of ignobility on his face; but she only remembered it afterwards. He brazened it out.
“Jimmie Padgate, I suppose.”
“I can't forgive him for lying.”
“I don't see how he lied. He faced the music, at any rate, like a man,” said Morland, compelled by a remnant of common decency to defend Jimmie.
“All his pose beforehand was a lie—unless the disclosures afterwards were lies—”
“What do you mean?” asked Morland, sharply.
“Oh, never mind. We have not met to discuss the matter. I don't know why I referred to it.”
She paused for a moment. She had begun her tirade at a white heat. Suddenly she had cooled down, and felt lassitude in mind and limbs. An effort brought her to a lame conclusion.
“You accused me of acting a comedy. I was n't acting. I was perfectly sincere. I have been absolutely frank with you from the hour you proposed to me.”
“Well, I'm sorry for having misunderstood you. I beg your pardon,” said Morland. They took up the conversation from the starting-point, but listlessly, dispiritedly. The reference to Jimmie had awakened the ever-living remorse in Morland's not entirely callous soul. The man did suffer, at times acutely. And now to act the conscious comedy in the face of Norma's expressed abhorrence was a difficult and tiring task. Unwittingly he grew gentler; and Norma, her anger spent, weakly yielded to the change of tone.
“We have settled nothing, after all our talk,” he said at last, looking at his watch. “Don't you think we had better fix it up now? Society expects us to get married. What will people say? Come—what about Easter?”
Norma passed her hand wearily over her eyes.
“I oughtn't to marry you at all. I should loathe it, as I said. I should never get to care for you in that way. You see I am honest. Let us break off the engagement.”
“Well, look here,” said Morland, not unkindly, “let us compromise. I'll come back in three days' time. You'll either say it's off altogether or we'll be married at Easter. Will that do?”
“Very well,” said Norma.
When Mrs. Hardacre came for news of the interview, Norma told her of the arrangement.
“Which is it going to be?” she asked.
Norma set her teeth. “I can't marry him,” she said.
But the proud spirit of Norma Hardacre was broken. The three days' Inferno that Mrs. Hardacre created in the house drove the girl to desperation. Her father came to her one day with the tears running down his puffy cheeks. Unknown to her mother he had borrowed money from Morland, which he had lost on the Stock Exchange. Norma looked in her mirror, and found herself old, ugly, hag-ridden. Anything was preferable to the torture and degradation of her home. The next time that Morland called he stayed to dinner, and the wedding was definitely fixed for Easter.