IV
Lady Walton was a woman who never did anything with her hands. She was content to sit for hours at a time thinking--“doing nothing,” her acquaintances called it. Certain hours in the day she read, but she never opened a modern book of any kind.
“I have a feeling,” she said to her niece, “that they would revive a very painful experience I once received of a kitchen-maid in hysterics. People used to accept life and make their appeal to the intellect; now they spend their time screaming at natural laws and living for the emotions. It is a mysterious modern compulsion which used to be called selfishness. When I hear you begin to talk of your temperament, my dear Edith, I shall cease to ask you to run my errands.”
Edith stroked her aunt’s hand and smiled at her; but she was preoccupied; she was expecting Horace.
“Sometimes, Edith, you disappoint me. I have an impression that all the wisdom of all the ages, including my own, would have less effect upon your intelligence than the sound (I suppose they have no creak) of an ordinary pair of Bond Street boots.”
“Well, he is rather late,” said Edith.
“He is talking with his sister,” suggested Lady Walton. “I must congratulate you, my dear, in having chosen a husband who has complete ignorance of women. It is a very valuable attribute nowadays, when women have no restraint and men no manners. Horace is doubtless explaining to Miss Lestrange what an excellent arrangement his marriage will be for everybody concerned; and Miss Lestrange is turning his attention to awkward details. I hope you are prepared for complications, Edith; the maternal instinct of maiden aunts is a very fierce thing to combat. Do you realize that she may refuse to let the boy go?”
The girl moved restlessly.
“Oh, she can’t!” she murmured. “After all, Horace is very strong; he’s not a weak man, auntie.”
“There is nothing so vulnerable as some kinds of strength,” said Lady Walton, with a sigh, “or so invulnerable as some kinds of weakness. What is tyranny but weakness playing on generosity, and how long do you suppose it can last? It can last as long as the generosity.”
Edith shivered a little.
“But he’ll think of me,” she said. “He knows how I want his child.”
“He’ll think of you,” said her aunt very slowly; “yes, he’ll think of you, Edith; but thought doesn’t compel--there is only one compulsion.”
It was surgery for the sake of healing, but the knife struck deep.
Lady Walton sat quite still; she did not attempt to touch or soothe the girl; she did not even look at her. After a while she said reflectively:
“If you had been ten years, or even five years younger, Edith, I should have forbidden this marriage; but you have learnt self-control; you know what you are marrying for--and you won’t fail to receive it, because you are not fool enough to spend your time crying for the moon. Crying for the moon is an injurious element in married life. It is not the kind of thing one gets.”
Edith lifted her eyes to her aunt’s.
“I have asked myself sometimes why I am doing it,” she said, and her voice sounded hard and strained. “I am not a fool of twenty, as you say--but Horace could have given me the moon, only he has given it already. And--and what is so much more, auntie, I could have given him back the moon’s equivalent. I could have filled his life with happiness, and he can’t take it!”
“Well,” said Lady Walton, “do you regret what you are going to do?”
Edith hesitated a moment. Then she said: “Yes, and I’m going to do it.”
“I think I hear the taxi which is the preliminary of the Bond Street boots,” said her aunt, “and if you will excuse me, my dear, I will go to bed. It is a quarter to ten; you will send him away at half-past, cry for half-an-hour, and then go to bed.”
“Oh, I sha’n’t cry!” said Edith, rising and resting her head on the mantelpiece. “I don’t cry.”
“Ah!” replied Lady Walton, “that’s a great pity, my dear, because in that case you won’t sleep. However, we each have our own method.”
It seemed a long time to Edith before the owner of the Bond Street boots came upstairs.
She was a woman with a strong sense of humor, and so she spent the time laughing because it seemed so extremely amusing to receive a man who is going to marry you with a little more than the kindness of a friend and a little less than the freedom of a lover. What made it seem so especially funny to Edith was that she loved him; and it did not occur to her any the less sad because it was funny, or any the less funny because it was sad.
Horace entered, looking glum; he was feeling--as he phrased it--“a bit of a fool.” An ecstatic or an anxious welcome would have annoyed him. Edith met his eyes smiling, but she did not rise from her chair nor did she burst into nervous questions; she merely said:
“My aunt told me to tell you, Horace, that she was suffering from an acute attack of discretion, so that she would be unable to see you this evening; it is usually followed by a relapse into curiosity, which she expects to take place to-morrow; and you may stay until half-past ten.”
Horace sat down beside her and smiled. It was really very peaceful and jolly; the place seemed full of flowers; it was almost like their being together at Como. Edith was dressed in pale soft green; he liked it extremely. He took her hand and held it.
“Well, I’m rather glad we’re alone,” he said. “I’m afraid I’m awfully late, but I couldn’t help it. Etta kept me such a confounded time--bush-beating--and then I had to send off the tutor, who’s a beast--and has frightened the little chap silly about you; and altogether it’s been rather a rough passage.”
“Poor Horace,” said Edith softly, “what a shame! But you mustn’t be worried; we’ll straighten it all out between us somehow.”
“But you won’t like it--you won’t like it, Edith!” he exclaimed, looking at her with helpless, appealing eyes.
It was a look which women who love know how to answer--when they are loved in return. Edith drew a sudden quick breath, then she said:
“My dear boy, I didn’t expect we’d get everything all at once; it wouldn’t be any fun if we did. Why, it’s a regular campaign, and this is the first skirmish.”
“No, it’s defeat, Edith,” he said, more quietly. “I’m afraid it’s defeat.”
“Then tell me,” she answered. “I can bear defeat, Horace.”
He looked into her honest, gallant eyes and blessed her; he blessed her for her courage; and he might have kissed her if he had thought about it. He told her about the boy’s delicacy and the doctor’s orders. She asked him one question:
“If you hadn’t met me, could you have lived with him in the country?”
“Oh, no!” said Horace. “I couldn’t get up to town and back from Mallows for my work--we should have had to be parted.”
They were both silent for a little, then she drew his hand up against her cheek.
“We’ll go down all your holidays to Mallows,” she said. “Every single one, Horace!”
“But don’t you--don’t you mind?” he stammered, puzzled.
Edith turned her eyes on his, still smiling.
“We’ve got to mind,” she murmured; “but may I just see him first?”
“Yes, of course, to-morrow,” said Horace quickly. “I think the whole thing’s rather devilish, you know, Edith. I can’t quite follow it. They never told me before about the little chap, and they seem to have turned him against the very idea of you and all that, you know; and he’s such a loving little fellow really, and he said he wanted to go away and leave me--”
Horace’s voice broke and Edith winced. She looked away from him, and he recovered himself in a moment.
“And Etta has got hold of some wild tale about you,” he went on. “I don’t like to speak to you about it, dear--it’s all a stupid bottomless impertinence--but, of course, I had to tell her I’d ask you.”
“You may ask me anything you like, Horace.”
“Thank you, darling! Do you know I always thought you were awfully sensible, but I never knew how sensible you were before to-night.”
Edith gave a long, low laugh.
“Sensible? I’m so glad you think I’m sensible, Horace!” she murmured.
“Yes, I do,” he said with admiring emphasis. “I think you’re the most sensible woman I ever met.”
Edith stopped laughing.
“And the story, Horace?”
“Well, were you ever on the Lake of Como staying with rather an odd person--ten years ago?” he began. He had released her hands now and sat looking red and foolish and staring in front of him. Edith leaned back in her chair and regarded him with a twinkle in her eye.
“Yes,” she said, “I was. I stayed at Bellagio ten years ago with my aunt and her maid--”
“And that’s all?” he asked, glaring at the carpet.
“No--that’s not all,” said Edith in a low voice. “It’s a long story, and I thought perhaps I wouldn’t tell you; my aunt wanted me to, but it was a very sad story, and it happened so long ago I hoped people had forgotten; although I might have known that people’s memory for the unfortunate lasts as long as their oblivion of the happier star. You have observed to-night that I am a sensible woman, Horace; what is your definition of a sensible woman?”
He hesitated.
“Well, hang it all, I don’t know how to define things, but I suppose I meant a woman who wasn’t foolish--never made a fuss, or scenes, or mistakes, or did--well, stupid things, you know.”
“Then,” said Edith, smiling demurely, “as a girl I think I must have answered to your description of a foolish woman, Horace. I don’t know that I made scenes, but I certainly did what people call foolish things, and I behaved, as my aunt would no doubt tell you, as an idiot; at the time you mention she called me a suicidal idiot!
“To begin with, I must tell you I am very susceptible to beauty. I probably shouldn’t have tolerated you nearly as well if it hadn’t been for your extremely handsome nose--you needn’t blush--it is handsome, and I know it is through no effort of your own that you have acquired this undoubted beauty. When I reached Bellagio I saw there the most beautiful human being I have ever seen in my life (you need not jog your foot, Horace); she was a woman, and she was exquisitely beautiful. If you ask my aunt, she will tell you that a girl as beautiful as that ought to be immured for life behind walls. However, she wasn’t immured, she was walking along on the shores of the lake with a loathsome man I hated, and she had a mouth that made your heart ache to look at, with the mere maddening beauty of it! She was very tall, and everything about her was slender that ought to be slender--and every curve that ought to be full was full--and her head was poised like a flower, and her skin was soft as the tenderest little petal of a new bud, and colored like light through a cloud, and her eyes were dark and stormy like a black lake in the mountains--and unutterably sad. I could go on describing her all night, but you’ve got to go at half-past ten. The absurd part of the whole story is that she was in love with the silly little scrap one might call a man, I suppose, if we had to label him as a specimen, and he--was tired (if you please) of her! Plainly, Helen of Troy, the Venus of Milo--or whatever you choose to consider within a thousand miles of her--no longer suited his convenience!
“At this moment he caught diphtheria, and I sincerely hope he suffered abominably; but, needless to say, he hadn’t the decency to die. No one in the hotel was any the wiser. It was too early in the season, and the man had money, so ‘Helen of Troy’ nursed him in their particular part of the hotel behind a carbolic sheet, and we were told he had bronchitis.
“My aunt is one of the most plucky and altogether delightful women I know, but she has a pronounced terror of infectious disease, and if she had guessed what lurked in that distant wing I might never be telling you this story. One morning as I was crossing the hotel lounge I saw the unpromising specimen of manhood in front of the bureau. He had quite recovered and was giving notice for his departure that day. He added that Madame could not accompany him; she had better be removed to the hospital, as he was unable to continue to offer her his protection. I heard him say this in the quick French, which he no doubt calculated could hardly reach the intelligence of an English miss. Then I went over to the bureau and told the manager that I would be responsible for Madame, and that I would nurse her and undertake her expenses. He seemed very unwilling to accept my offer, and finally under promise of secrecy he told me the nature of the trouble. There was no one in the hotel but ourselves. I told my aunt what I intended to do, and that as bronchitis was occasionally infectious I should not come out of my patient’s room for some weeks. (Did I ever tell you that I had worked previously in a London hospital for a year? I meant to be a nurse, but my throat wasn’t strong enough, so I never finished my training.) Well, my aunt appealed to my common sense, to my affection for her, and finally to her authority; and then I kissed her and reminded her that she had always told me to consider my life my personal property, and how long Helen of Troy’s eyelashes were, and what an ineffable brute the man must have been. She said I was a suicidal idiot, and that I could send her a daily message. But of course I never did, because you might be able to carry that kind of bronchitis in notes.
“Well, the end of the story was that my aunt met the doctor, and whether she had had her suspicions or not before, I don’t know, but the doctor couldn’t stand against her; she got the truth out of him, left the hotel in a panic, and wired to me to leave instantly, get quarantined somewhere, and then join her.
“I had been by this time a fortnight with Helen of Troy; she was recovering, but she had found out that I wasn’t the man, and her heart was broken. I don’t expect you know anything about women with broken hearts, Horace, but I think you would agree with me, you can’t leave them. So I didn’t leave Helen of Troy. We stayed on together long after she had actually recovered. I slept in a room leading out of hers, and I was glad I was a strong woman, because on three occasions she tried to commit suicide, and you need a good deal of muscle to stop a person who wants to commit suicide as much as she did. After her illness was over we used to wander up and down the garden by the lake-side. The season had begun there, and all kinds of people kept turning up. One day some strange men spoke to us in the garden. One of them was a friend of the ‘unpromising specimen,’ and before we had time to make ourselves perfectly plain to them the hotel gossip scuttled off like a rabbit from almost under our feet to the manager, and he told us the next morning very politely that unfortunately our rooms were wanted.
“We left, of course, and Helen of Troy went back to America (did I tell you she was half-Jewish and half-American?). She had a friend on the stage who had offered her a part. She never told me her real name. I always called her ‘Helen,’ and though she promised to write to me I have never heard from her since. I expect she thought I might try to trace her.
“That is the whole and entire story of Helen of Troy, and I’m afraid, my dear Horace, that you can no longer consider me the most sensible woman in the world.”
Horace took her hand in his and kissed it.
“I wish I had married you ten years ago,” he said gently. Then he remembered Annette. He let her hand drop suddenly, and walked quickly to the window.
“It’s half-past ten,” said Edith, and then she moved past him and ran hastily upstairs, because she did not wish him to say good-night to her while he was remembering Annette.
Miss Lestrange’s comment on the story was characteristic.
“Dear me, Horace!” she said. “What an extraordinary tale! How strange those kind of people are! I suppose it never occurred to either the aunt or the niece to hire a trained nurse for the creature?”
And Horace hung his head, because there are some explanations which the children of light are ashamed to put to the children of this world, who are so much wiser.