IV
She returned to Ordith with high confidence. The Chinese boy who had laid the table was sent to her father with tea, and she gave orders that a tray should be taken to her mother’s room. When the boy had gone, she leaned over the fire with hands outstretched.
“Cold?” Ordith said. “Sit by the fire, then—there, on that long thing. I’ll manage tea.”
From his chair he could look down upon her. For a time they scarcely spoke. He was content to watch her; she to submit. His empty cup tinkled on the saucer as he set it down.
“Do smoke.”
He leaned forward.
“Have you forgiven me?”
“Yes.” She would not give him the pleasure of a fight.
“Quite?”
“Quite.”
Unprepared for this acquiescence, he was disconcerted. She smiled as, without looking at him, she became aware that he was ill at ease. For the last time, perhaps, he was suppliant now. Soon no mysteries would divide him from her. Soon——
But she liked him for being afraid, for his embarrassment, his momentary helplessness.
“You old fool, Nick!”
“For doubting? Then—Margaret, I’m ghastly afraid of frightening you. But I do love you. I do love you, Margaret. You’re different from me—on a different plane—that’s what makes it difficult. But I love you, body and soul. Margaret——”
“And soul!”
The implication stung. “You mean——”
“Never mind what I mean. I’m not quite sure myself. I don’t care.”
He could not wait to think it out. Perhaps she had meant nothing. He said:
“You know what I am asking.”
“I don’t love you,” she said, before he could speak, “nor you me.”
She faced him suddenly.
“There’s one question I want to ask you, Nick,” she said evenly. “Whatever your answer may be it will not affect my answer. So the truth.... If I consented to be your mistress, would that be enough? Would it?”
“Good God, Margaret! what a question! No, a thousand times, no!”
“Put aside the business aspect of this marriage. Think of the personal only. What is it you want in me?”
“All of you.”
“Body and soul?”
“Yes.”
She bowed her head. “I wonder if you believe that. I think you do.” Then, in a flash, “Oh, Nick, we do lie to ourselves! I was wrong in a way. It’s possession you want, isn’t it?—abstract possession—ownership—gain!”
“Is that wrong?”
“You’re a man,” she said simply, and, with caught breath, “Thank God for that!”
He was careful, in the light of his experience, not to approach her, not to touch her. This time she should come to him.
“Come, Margaret,” he said; “don’t let us be fools.”
She looked across at him. So she was to move towards his chair, and sit at his feet—and sit at his feet. He would touch her hair, her hands, her shoulders. That would be yielding. That would be, very quietly, the end....
That would be extraordinarily like an oleograph—“in the firelight.”
She thrilled to laughter, and slowly, like recognition of an unfamiliar acquaintance, laughter came. It was as if she had wakened from some ridiculous nightmare; as if a shaft of light had fallen across a dim room, revealing countless absurdities that the dark had concealed. And laughter fled suddenly—stifled her a moment, and was gone.
In the stillness, she remembered—as something long passed—the sharp sound of her merriment. Looking round the room, she saw the piano standing open, and beneath its polished lid the black keys and the white. First it was their sharp contrast that seemed to interest her; then, as her attention dwelt on them, they assumed a certain power of reminiscence, of suggestion, as if they were symbolic of something outside themselves, something in the past peculiarly significant to her. With a mental process similar to that by aid of which dream and reality are separated until they stand recognizably on either side of the line between sleep and waking, with the laborious thought of one struggling against the last influence of a drug, she remembered how those black and white notes had imprinted themselves on her consciousness when, on that other occasion, Ordith had so nearly mastered her. The days intervening between that time and the present ran before her in swift procession. She saw herself as she was then; as she was now—then, fighting, determined, clear in mind; now, with even her will gone. By subtle process she had been changed, for the circumstances were unaltered. Slowly, day by day, by patience, by silence, by implied menace, by the bluff on which her father’s power depended, her fortress, unknown to her, had been undermined. Her father had come very near to winning, very near.
He should not win!
If she had not seen herself as a figure in an oleograph and laughed.... The ways of salvation!
She laughed again. Ordith, with the first laugh still ringing in his ears, moved as if to come to her. But, on the instant, the tension that had held her failed. With the sob, not of a woman but of a little girl, she drooped and trembled and hid her face in her hands. She was crying like a child who, having come through some great fear, breaks down under confidence restored: tears of relief, of sanity snatched back, held—just held.
“Margaret!”
She dropped her hands, raised her head. Her eyes were swimming and glistening with tears, her cheeks flushed as if with happy excitement.
“Oh, leave me alone, Nick—please—please! Nick—please. Promise you will leave me alone always.... I’m frightened. You could get anything you wanted at last. But you don’t want me—not really. It’s so much to me; so little to you. Please, Nick, is this the end?”
“If you wish it.”
She seized his hands between hers. “Even if he persuades?”
“Yes.”
“Your word? He’s so strong....”
“My word.... Margaret—oh, you child!—I do care for you now more than ever.”
Suddenly he kissed her.
“There.... Have your own way. I’m not a devil, Margaret dear. But your seeing is different from mine—and your gods, I think. They won’t have us together.”
“No.” She looked up with sudden curiosity. “Nick, you are superstitious like all great men? You—you wouldn’t have me now if I asked you? Would you? Would you?”
He smiled at her with understanding, and admitted, “No.”
“Something—inside you—says ‘No’?”
He nodded.
“Then I’m safe—quite safe.”
This amazing childlikeness!
“As your gods keep you,” he said.
And she, with the embarrassment of one who returns a formal congratulation, answered: “And yours ... and yours, Nick. You’ve been good.”