CHAPTER XVI
Carey walked across the wide, sunny fields next day in the direction of the Café des Sapins. He had driven as far as the village next to St. Marguerite, and had decided to walk the rest of the way. Now he was so near his journey’s end, he dreaded to find himself actually at the threshold. He would delay a little longer. The rattle of the trap, and the cheerful attempts of the driver at conversation, had become insupportable. He wanted intensely to be alone.
It was noon, when, following the direction of the blue bloused village children, he came at last in sight of the café. A midday stillness brooded over the hot fields, where amongst the poppies and the white foam of daisies, a solitary tethered cow was grazing.
Involuntarily he slackened his pace. His eyes were fixed on the streak of blue sea, and the fringe of pine-trees that bordered the cliff. In a few moments he stood at the door of the inn.
“Madame Trelawney was out,” Madame Leroux explained. “She and Monsieur. But Madame Travers? Yes, Madame was at home. She should be told that Monsieur awaited her.”
He was shown into the salon, a primitive, stone-flagged little place. It was filled with cool, green light, that filtered through the vine leaves round its window. Out in the glaring sunshine, a yellow dog lay sleeping, stretched across the garden path. There was no other sign of life. The stillness grew intolerable. Carey rose and stood by the window in the hope of feeling a breath of air, and heard his heart beating in muffled throbs.
The door suddenly opened. He turned with an effort, and saw that it was Bridget who stood there; but he dared not look at her. She wore a white dress, he noticed, and slowly he raised his eyes to her face. It was almost as white as her gown.
She closed the door softly behind her, and came and stood before him.
He did not move.
“Well?” he said at last. He had framed the word several times, but could not utter it.
“I want to talk to you,” she said, below her breath. “Larry, my father is dead—I heard last night.”
His face changed. A look of exquisite relief flashed into his eyes, as he took a sudden step towards her.
“Poor child! poor little Bridget!” he murmured. “What an awful shock for you! No wonder—”
She put out her hand wildly to keep him away.
“Don’t—don’t!” she cried sharply. “I can’t,—I can’t talk if you do!”
She sank helplessly into a chair opposite, and looked up at him with despair in her face.
“Oh—why can’t you understand without words? Why can’t people see into one another’s minds? And I must talk and explain, and it’s all no use—no good!” she cried incoherently.
He had pushed both hands into his pockets, and he stood looking down at her, trying to read her face, his own lined with mingled doubt and fear.
All at once he flung himself into a chair.
“Yes! you must explain. I don’t understand,” he returned doggedly. Then he leant forward with a swift, contrite movement. “How could I? You are ill—upset, no wonder!” he repeated.
“No,” she said deliberately, keeping her voice steady. “I’m not ill. It was a shock, of course; it was unexpected. But father and I were never—we didn’t understand one another,” she added looking past him. “It isn’t as though I had loved him very much!”
He was silent. “Then what is it?” he asked desperately.
She let her eyes rest on his face for a moment before she spoke.
“I—I can’t do it, Larry!” she said at last, in an almost inaudible whisper.
“You mean—you can’t come with me?”
She bowed her head.
There was no sound in the little vine-shaded salon. Carey looked out across the screen of leaves, and noticed the motionless pine-tops against the hot blue sky. His eyes travelled down their red trunks to the sunny garden, to the scarlet zinnias burning amidst the long grass, to the curly yellow dog lying with his nose between his paws on the hot flagstones before the door.
“Why?” he asked, turning his eyes from the garden to where Bridget sat.
She gave a long trembling sigh. “Because of mother.”
Again a quick light of hope flashed into his eyes.
“Yes—yes!” he said eagerly—“I see. Of course just now—in the midst of her trouble—dear, we must wait, of course. I—”
“It is not because of that,” she interrupted, in an even toneless voice. Then, with a restless movement—“Oh, Larry! It must come! I must, yet I know I can’t explain!” she cried, with a sharp note of misery in her voice.
“Listen!” she went on, desperately. “Of course you will think that it’s—father’s death, that has made me see things in a new light; but it isn’t—it isn’t. It drew the veil from before myself—my nature—a little sooner, that’s all. It would have come anyway,” she murmured. “See!” she turned to him with trembling lips—“I had decided. I had told Helen yesterday—I had justified myself. I told her what I had been telling myself for weeks, that it would be mad, foolish, weak, to let mother’s prejudices spoil my life.”
“And mine—” he interrupted, tersely.
“Ah, don’t!” she implored, twisting her hands together in her lap.
“Last night,” she went on after a moment, “last night I was so happy!”—her voice faltered so that he hardly heard—“but only for a little while. Ten minutes, I think. Larry, in the midst of my happiness, the old haunting, miserable feeling, that I was treading down part of my own nature in hurting mother, came back! I—” she pushed her hair back from her white face— “And then the telegram came; and after a little while I saw it all: what I must do—what my life was to be!” she added bitterly.
Carey looked at her a moment. He rose from his seat and came deliberately and knelt beside her.
“All this can wait,” he said firmly. He put his arms round her, and drew her towards him. She hesitated for a second, then turned to him with a cry, and put up her lips to his.
She drew herself away presently, shuddering and cowering in her chair.
“Don’t—oh Larry, don’t! If I cry I can’t tell you, and I must—I must,” she wailed—“it must be settled now.”
“Yes; it must be settled now,” he said, rising and dragging his chair closer to hers.
She recognized the tone, and shuddered again. He meant to reason with her, to argue point by point; she could never hope to explain properly, it would last so long, such a terribly long time!
“Larry, I’m worn out already!” she urged pitifully—“don’t.”
“You poor little girl! We won’t talk about it. To-morrow will do.”
“No, no!” she exclaimed, with feverish haste, sitting upright. “Let it be now. I can’t bear another night—I should go mad! Say what you have to say now—quickly!”
“You say it is your mother,” Carey began. “She will look upon this as a sin, you think? She—”
“No,” she answered wearily. “It isn’t even that. Mother is not a religious woman in the sense of the word. She thinks she is. She goes to church, of course, and says her prayers, but her religion doesn’t enter into her life; it isn’t a vital thing to her. The thought of the sin against God would not count for very much with her, it would be the outrage against social prejudice—the—”
She paused. Her voice was dry and hard.
Carey looked at her—puzzled, uncertain. Her face was rigid—it told him nothing.
“You acknowledge this, and yet, surely the knowledge that she would not be tortured by fears for your soul, is much? I understand, I realize what a fearful thought the idea of inflicting pain of that sort must be. But you say yourself her unhappiness will be caused merely by the fact that you may—well, by what she calls your social disgrace. That is hard enough, I own; but, Bridget, will you let scruples like these stand in the way? I mean if you are willing to brave it for yourself, surely—”
He rose impetuously.
“Oh, you don’t understand—you don’t understand,” she wailed, wringing her hands. “Don’t you see that it doesn’t matter to me whether her misery comes from a worthy or an unworthy cause? The fact remains that she will be wretched—wretched—and I shall have made her wretched. I—her child! She has lived for me, thought of me, worked for me early and late, all these years—these long years! Oh, don’t think I don’t know—don’t think I idealize her; don’t think we are devoted even in the sense of being friends—of being in sympathy with one another. We are not. We haven’t a thought, a hope, an ideal in common. We exasperate and irritate one another continually—we always shall. But, don’t you see? She is my mother, the mother that cried over me when I was little, because I had the toothache, or because some one slighted me, or because—Oh!” She threw out her hands towards him with a gesture. “You don’t remember your mother, Larry. If you did, you would know what these things mean—the little baby things that make one feel the bond, the only bond there is between us, just the tie of blood. I’m her child. She’s my mother. I can’t tell you any more!”
She stopped abruptly, shaken and trembling, and hid her face in both hands.
Carey was silent for a time. He took one of them and put it to his lips before he spoke.
“I do understand,” he said very gently. “But, Bridget, think! You have done many things already which you felt to be right, but which must have made her suffer. Would you have them undone? You left home, for instance, and went out into the world. You left your husband”—his face darkened. “Do you think you did wrong? Dear! I know your feeling. It is terrible, this conflict between what one owes to one’s self, and one’s love, or obligation to those who stand in the way. But, Bridget, what are we to do? How will the world go on if we are to be cramped, hindered, fettered, forever? If we are never to be ourselves, never to take the path that leads highest? Suppose you had remained with your—with Travers, out of fear of hurting your mother? You would have done yourself a deadly injury, you—”
She sat silent while he spoke, and his voice grew firm with hope as she listened; but all at once she turned resolutely to him, and put her hand on his.
“Larry,” she said brokenly, “it’s no use! I’ve told myself all that many times. It doesn’t alter things. It’s true I’ve made her suffer, it’s true it couldn’t have been otherwise. There has always, always been this fight in my life. I should have left home long before I did if it hadn’t been just for this very thing. Perhaps I should never have gone at all if mother had been alone. But she wished it at last. There was father too, you see; and I—she saw at last that it was impossible for me to live at home. Then about—the other—I did it—it had to be done in spite of her; though the thought of her kept me with him three years. But, Larry, don’t you see?—don’t you see that it was different? I can’t disguise it from myself, though I want to. My God! don’t you believe I want to?” she broke out passionately, rising as she spoke. “That was a question of mother’s happiness against my self-respect, my decency; this is a question of her happiness against my happiness. I had a right—a right! I couldn’t do otherwise than to buy my self-respect, at the price even of her suffering, but I have no right—” She stopped, leaning faintly against the window frame.
“And—about me?” Carey said coldly. “Have I no claim, Bridget? You don’t seem to have thought of that.”
She turned slowly towards him, and as his eyes met hers he felt as though he had struck her. She made no answer, but sank down again, with her arm thrown out against the back of the chair, and her face hidden against it, and broke into bitter, hopeless tears.
Carey stood silent a moment, with set face, watching her. With sudden violence he stooped and drew her from the chair into his arms.
“Let everything else go,” he whispered fiercely. “We love one another. What does anything matter? You are the woman for me in all the world! I am the man for you! We belong to one another. No one—nothing—has the right to part us. Think, Bridget. Together, I believe we can do great things, live full lives, drink deep of the cup of life, and find it good. It is only offered to us once—we shall be mad if we refuse it!”
She clung to him, and was silent so long that a sense of exultant triumph began to stir at his heart. He put her away from him a little, and looked in her face with a smile.
She met his eyes steadily, and with a groan he released her.
“You are like the rest of women, after all!” he said bitterly. “You delight in sacrifice. No wonder the wheels of Fate have crushed you—you throw yourselves down before the car, and invite your doom!”
“You are very cruel,” she answered wearily, letting her hands fall heavily in her lap; “but I suppose you can’t help it.”
“Have you thought what life means for you?” He flung out the words between his set teeth.
“Yes. Mother will live with me—and I shall work.”
He started and looked at her for some moments silently.
“Do you realize it, Bridget?” he enquired at last.
“Perfectly,” she said calmly. “I shall work all day. In the mornings I shall teach, in the afternoons I shall write in my own room. The evenings I shall usually spend in unsuccessful attempts to keep my temper.”
“And what sort of woman will you be in five—ten years’ time?”
“God knows!” she cried wildly, her forced calm breaking up. “I don’t. That is nothing to do with me! Some people would tell me—people with lofty, high-toned minds, you know,” she added with a sneer—“that I shall be a very fine character, chastened, subdued, with latent strength, and that sort of thing. Perhaps if I were an archangel, with none of the lower passions, I might be; but I think it’s much more likely I shall be merely a bad tempered, irritable, middle-aged person.”
“And yet—” he began.
She turned her head, with an exasperated, restless movement.
“And yet—and yet” she repeated—“Oh, Larry! it isn’t a question of reason, of judgment, of anything rational. Whatever I do I shall regret it!” she broke off recklessly. “See! if it had been possible I would have gone with you last night—taken the irrevocable step, and ever afterwards cursed myself for doing it! You talk of leading a full, worthy, happy life!—with a woman who is eternally self-tortured? It doesn’t matter whether it’s on her own account or some one else’s; to live with any one under such conditions is impossible—hopeless. You know it!”
“It wouldn’t be so!” he urged. “You exaggerate—”
“I know myself better than you know me—too well!” she interrupted. “No, it’s no use, Larry!” She made a gesture with her hands as of flinging something from her. “Life is too hard for me. I can’t reason, I can’t think any more! I can only cling blindly to this strong instinct, a savage instinct, if you like. I think we come back, after all, to our savage natures in most of the big things in life. It isn’t a question of duty, inclination, religion, or anything, but just the one overwhelming necessity of not breaking the tie of blood. Larry, you must go,” she added, in a hoarse whisper. “I can’t—stand it any longer.”
“One moment,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on her haggard face. His own was white and rigid. “Do you mean that I’m to go away—abroad—not to see you again? You don’t mean that?”
He could hardly keep his voice steady enough to frame the last question.
She raised her head slowly, and looked in his face.
“Larry,” she said at last, under her breath, “what am I doing this for? Is it that I’m afraid for myself? You know it is not! But you know as well as I do that if you stay, and—there is talk, as there will be—our names coupled together—I might just as well—better—have gone with you, in the face of the world. Besides, for my own sake—” she lifted her head proudly, “I couldn’t live a life like—a life of deception.” She paused. “But for mother—I would have gone with you—to the ends of the earth. You know it. But—”
There was a long silence. A film of thick white clouds had gathered over the sun; the air was heavy, breathlessly quiet. At the window, the vine leaves hung straight and still, not a tendril stirred.
At last Carey moved. He raised both her hands to his lips. “Forgive me!” he said brokenly.
She flung out her arms with a cry, and they closed round him. She shed no tears, but her whole body was shaken with her sobs.
At last she pushed him from her.
“Go—go!” she implored. “I can’t—don’t come back.”
“I will go,” he said. He started at the sound of his own voice. “I will not come back—unless you send for me.”
“I—I pray I never may. If I can bear it I—oh, go! only go!” she cried incoherently.
She dragged herself to the window and watched him with wide, dry eyes, as he went down the garden path. His footsteps, crunching the gravel, sounded loud and harsh in the stillness.
“He stoops like an old man. He didn’t stoop this morning,” she thought idly. “I wonder if I stoop?” She turned and glanced at herself in the little mirror opposite the window. “No; I’m young, dreadfully young. I have—how many more years to live? How old am I? I can’t count, I never could reckon.” She smiled a little to herself, and caught sight of her face in the glass. “I wonder if I’m going mad?” she murmured listlessly.
A heavy drop fell on one of the vine leaves outside, it swayed, and tossed it lower; another—and then the first low growl of thunder.
Helen hurried up the garden path, spoke a word to Madame Leroux, and opened the door of the salon.
The vine-leaf screen at the window made the room almost dark, and the patter of rain on the leaves was the only sound as she crossed to where Bridget sat crouched in her chair.
“Bid, dearest!” she whispered, her voice almost lost in the second louder peal of thunder.
Bridget turned to her with a wan smile, and she almost cried aloud at the sight of her face in the gloom.
“I’ve sent him away,” she explained, “do I look rather dreadful? Never mind. When we go back—to-morrow, is it?—I want you to choose rooms for mother and me.”
THE END.
The Keynotes Series.
16mo. Cloth. Each volume with a Titlepage and Cover Design.
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| I. | KEYNOTES. By George Egerton. |
| II. | THE DANCING FAUN. By Florence Farr. |
| III. | POOR FOLK. By Fedor Dostoievsky. Translated from the Russian by Lena Milman. With an Introduction by George Moore. |
| IV. | A CHILD OF THE AGE. By Francis Adams. |
| V. | THE GREAT GOD PAN AND THE INMOST LIGHT. By Arthur Machen. |
| VI. | DISCORDS. By George Egerton. |
| VII. | PRINCE ZALESKI. By M. P. Shiel. |
| VIII. | THE WOMAN WHO DID. By Grant Allen. |
| IX. | WOMEN’S TRAGEDIES. By H. D. Lowry. |
| X. | GREY ROSES AND OTHER STORIES. By Henry Harland. |
| XI. | AT THE FIRST CORNER AND OTHER STORIES. By H. B. Marriott Watson. |
| XII. | MONOCHROMES. By Ella D’Arcy. |
| XIII. | AT THE RELTON ARMS. By Evelyn Sharp. |
| XIV. | THE GIRL FROM THE FARM. By Gertrude Dix. |
| XV. | THE MIRROR OF MUSIC. By Stanley V. Makower. |
| XVI. | YELLOW AND WHITE. By W. Carlton Dawe. |
| XVII. | THE MOUNTAIN LOVERS. By Fiona Macleod. |
| XVIII. | THE THREE IMPOSTORS. By Arthur Machen. |
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THE WOMAN WHO DID.
BY GRANT ALLEN.
Keynotes Series. American Copyright Edition.
16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.
A very remarkable story, which in a coarser hand than its refined and gifted author could never have been effectively told; for such a hand could not have sustained the purity of motive, nor have portrayed the noble, irreproachable character of Herminia Barton.—Boston Home Journal.
“The Woman Who Did” is a remarkable and powerful story. It increases our respect for Mr. Allen’s ability, nor do we feel inclined to join in throwing stones at him as a perverter of our morals and our social institutions. However widely we may differ from Mr. Allen’s views on many important questions, we are bound to recognize his sincerity, and to respect him accordingly. It is powerful and painful, but it is not convincing. Herminia Barton is a woman whose nobleness both of mind and of life we willingly concede; but as she is presented to us by Mr. Allen, there is unmistakably a flaw in her intellect. This in itself does not detract from the reality of the picture.—The Speaker.
In the work itself, every page, and in fact every line, contains outbursts of intellectual passion that places this author among the giants of the nineteenth century.—American Newsman.
Interesting, and at times intense and powerful.—Buffalo Commercial.
No one can doubt the sincerity of the author.—Woman’s Journal.
The story is a strong one, very strong, and teaches a lesson that no one has a right to step aside from the moral path laid out by religion, the law, and society.—Boston Times.
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DISCORDS.
A Volume of Stories.
By GEORGE EGERTON, author of “Keynotes.”
AMERICAN COPYRIGHT EDITION.
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George Egerton’s new volume entitled “Discords,” a collection of short stories, is more talked about, just now, than any other fiction of the day. The collection is really stories for story-writers. They are precisely the quality which literary folk will wrangle over. Harold Frederic cables from London to the “New York Times” that the book is making a profound impression there. It is published on both sides, the Roberts House bringing it out in Boston. George Egerton, like George Eliot and George Sand, is a woman’s nom de plume. The extraordinary frankness with which life in general is discussed in these stories not unnaturally arrests attention.—Lilian Whiting.
The English woman, known as yet only by the name of George Egerton, who made something of a stir in the world by a volume of strong stories called “Keynotes,” has brought out a new book under the rather uncomfortable title of “Discords.” These stories show us pessimism run wild; the gloomy things that can happen to a human being are so dwelt upon as to leave the impression that in the author’s own world there is no light. The relations of the sexes are treated of in bitter irony, which develops into actual horror as the pages pass. But in all this there is a rugged grandeur of style, a keen analysis of motive, and a deepness of pathos that stamp George Egerton as one of the greatest women writers of the day. “Discords” has been called a volume of stories; it is a misnomer, for the book contains merely varying episodes in lives of men and women, with no plot, no beginning nor ending.—Boston Traveller.
This is a new volume of psychological stories from the pen and brains of George Egerton, the author of “Keynotes.” Evidently the titles of the author’s books are selected according to musical principles. The first story in the book is “A Psychological Moment at Three Periods.” It is all strength rather than sentiment. The story of the child, of the girl, and of the woman is told, and told by one to whom the mysteries of the life of each are familiarly known. In their very truth, as the writer has so subtly analysed her triple characters, they sadden one to think that such things must be; yet as they are real, they are bound to be disclosed by somebody and in due time. The author betrays remarkable penetrative skill and perception, and dissects the human heart with a power from whose demonstration the sensitive nature may instinctively shrink even while fascinated with the narration and hypnotized by the treatment exhibited.—Courier.
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POOR FOLK.
A Novel.
Translated from the Russian of Fedor Dostoievsky, by Lena Milman, with decorative titlepage and a critical introduction by George Moore. American Copyright edition.
16mo. Cloth. $1.00.
A capable critic writes: “One of the most beautiful, touching stories I have read. The character of the old clerk is a masterpiece, a kind of Russian Charles Lamb. He reminds me, too, of Anatole France’s ‘Sylvestre Bonnard,’ but it is a more poignant, moving figure. How wonderfully, too, the sad little strokes of humor are blended into the pathos in his characterization, and how fascinating all the naive self-revelations of his poverty become,—all his many ups and downs and hopes and fears. His unsuccessful visit to the money-lender, his despair at the office, unexpectedly ending in a sudden burst of good fortune, the final despairing cry of his love for Varvara,—these hold one breathless. One can hardly read them without tears.... But there is no need to say all that could be said about the book. It is enough to say that it is over powerful and beautiful.”
We are glad to welcome a good translation of the Russian Dostoievsky’s story “Poor Folk,” Englished by Lena Milman. It is a tale of unrequited love, conducted in the form of letters written between a poor clerk and his girl cousin whom he devotedly loves, and who finally leaves him to marry a man not admirable in character who, the reader feels, will not make her happy. The pathos of the book centres in the clerk, Makar’s, unselfish affection and his heart-break at being left lonesome by his charming kinswoman whose epistles have been his one solace. In the conductment of the story, realistic sketches of middle class Russian life are given, heightening the effect of the denouement. George Moore writes a sparkling introduction to the book.—Hartford Courant.
Dostoievsky is a great artist. “Poor Folk” is a great novel.—Boston Advertiser.
It is a most beautiful and touching story, and will linger in the mind long after the book is closed. The pathos is blended with touching bits of humor, that are even pathetic in themselves.—Boston Times.
Notwithstanding that “Poor Folk” is told in that most exasperating and entirely unreal style—by letters—it is complete in sequence, and the interest does not flag as the various phases in the sordid life of the two characters are developed. The theme is intensely pathetic and truly human, while its treatment is exceedingly artistic. The translator, Lena Milman, seems to have well preserved the spirit of the original.—Cambridge Tribune.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.