Where the Path Breaks

by C. N. Williamson; A. M. Williamson

“Before we had been in London very long I met a man who was different from any one I had ever seen before. From the first night, when we were introduced at a dance, I could think about no one else. I wish I could make you understand what he was like, for then you would see how a woman who cared about him could never stop caring, even when he was dead; for no other man could at all take his place. He wasn’t handsome, not even what people would call ‘good looking,’ I suppose, and he didn’t talk very much. But somehow, when he came into a room with lots of other men in it, all the rest simply ceased to count. He was very tall, and a great athlete. Maybe that was one thing that pleased a woman, for we do like strength—we can’t help it. But there was so much more about him, magnetic and sincere and splendid, which would somehow have made one feel that he was near, if one were blind! He could do all the things other men do better than any of the others, yet he had thoughts such as none of the others had. One knew that a woman could have no moods or imaginings beyond his power to understand, if he cared enough, because he was fine—‘fine’ in the French meaning of the word—as well as strong. I shall never forget the first time he looked at me. We had just been introduced. There was something wonderful about his eyes—I could hardly tell you what it was. But one suddenly felt caught and drawn into them, as into a vortex in deep, still water, clear and pure, though dark.

“I saw that he rather liked me, and even that meant a good deal from him, because he was a man’s man, and didn’t care much about laughing and talking with lots of girls. Perhaps he was shy of them. Mother saw, too, that he was interested; and that was what began all the trouble, because he was exactly what she had set her heart on for me. She wouldn’t leave him alone to make up his mind whether he really wanted to see more of me or not. She tried to force him to want me. She did all she could to bring us together. She left no stone unturned. To me it was sickening. I don’t know whether he saw it or not, but I was so afraid he might, and be disgusted with us both, that it made me feel absolutely ill. I could never be at ease with him. It was hateful, hateful that he should think my mother and I were trying to ‘catch’ him, because of his title and money, and his beautiful old house which every one admired and talked about, and heaps of women wanted.

“After we had known him for awhile, mother hinted and hinted for us to be invited to stay at his place. It was almost like asking him to marry me—at least I felt it was. He was obliged to get up a house-party for us, so that we shouldn’t be alone, for he had no mother or aunt or any one to entertain for him. We and the others were invited for a week, but the day everybody was going on somewhere else, mother was taken ill, so she and I had to stay. I was sure she was pretending, though she wouldn’t confess, and I was almost wild with misery and shame, I loved him so dreadfully.

“For days mother kept her room, and when she came down she seemed so weak, that of course he begged us not to think of going. A fortnight more passed like that. Then the first rumors of war began; and we were still with him when war was declared. That same day, out in a garden by a lake we both loved, he told me he cared, and asked if I would marry him before he went off to fight. If only I could have been sure that he did really care, and hadn’t been drawn on by things mother had said, I should have been divinely happy. But I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t at all sure. And the shame and suffering I felt, and the fear of showing that I adored the ground he walked on, when perhaps he was only being chivalrous to me, made me behave like a beast. I was just a sullen lump. I said yes, I would marry him, if he was quite, quite sure he wanted me to; and then mother came out of the house, and straight to us, as if she had known exactly what was going on and could hardly wait to make certain of him.

“He had to go so soon, to rejoin his old regiment, and leave for the front, that he got a special license, and we were married when we had been engaged just two days. If he did love me—and looking back I almost believe now that he did, for he was too true as well as strong to be ‘trapped’ by any woman—I must have hurt him by keeping him so at a distance. He couldn’t have understood, not even with the wonderful power he had of seeing deep into people, all the way through to their souls. But now I have explained to you about mother, you will understand. We were hardly alone together, he and I, for more than five minutes at a time. I always made some excuse to escape. I was afraid if I were with him for long I should break down and be a fool. And I thought if he didn’t love me I should certainly disgust him by crying. Mother had told me often, when she was training me to ‘come out’ in society, that a man must love a woman very much, not to be irritated with her when she cries, and her face crinkles up and her nose gets red.

“After our wedding he was with me for about an hour, but mother was with us too, for half the time, and even when she left us alone in an ostentatious sort of way, I could think of nothing to say to him, nothing at all. There were a thousand things in my brain, will-o’-the-wisp things, but my tongue could not catch up with them. I let him go. And then it was too late.

“Three weeks afterwards, he died, saving the life of a friend. So now you see what your book meant to me, very specially, and why I begged you to tell me whether you had found out these wonderful things by going down close to death yourself. You know why it wasn’t enough even when you answered as you did at first. I longed to hear whether you thought he would know the truth about me. Your answer to that question is all I hoped for, and more. But I don’t deserve it, for I am married now to my cousin—the one I so childishly made an idol of when I was a little girl.

“You are shocked. You think of me with horror. You are sorry you have troubled with me at all. When you read at the beginning of this letter that I had given another man a ‘place in my life,’ you didn’t dream that I had married him. But so it is. Eight months after my love died, and my youth died with him, I was my cousin’s wife.

“I won’t tell you much about that. Only this: a month after I was a widow, this cousin came to England, wounded. My mother and I were helping the nurses as best we knew how, in the private hospital of a friend. My cousin arranged to be sent there. He wasn’t seriously hurt, and we saw something of him, of course. He was immensely changed from the old days. Because he might have been a stick or a stone instead of a man for all I cared, he was piqued, I suppose. He told mother that he meant to make me fall in love with him and marry him when the war was over. And when he had gone back to the front again, she repeated what he had said to me. You see, she didn’t know how I had loved the other, so she was surprised at the way I took the message. I couldn’t help showing that I was angry because he had dared. He wrote to me later, more than once, but I didn’t answer his letters.

“Months afterwards, he was horribly wounded. As he had no near relatives, he asked to have us sent for, to Boulogne. He was supposed to be dying, and we couldn’t refuse to go. We never thought of refusing. It seemed to do him good to see us, and he grew better. His one wish, he said, was to die in England. We brought him back—a dreadful journey. He grew worse again on the way, and we were obliged to stop at Folkestone for two weeks. Then we got him to London, to see a great specialist for spinal operations. The surgeon said that such an operation as would have to be made—if any—might kill, and could not cure. At best, if he lived, my cousin would be an invalid for the rest of his life. Still, without an operation, he must surely die. It would be just a question of a few weeks. My cousin had to be told this by some one, and the surgeon thought the news of such a verdict had better be broken to him by a person he cared for. Mother felt unable to bear the strain, after all she had gone through. She isn’t strong, and since last August she has changed very much. It seems as if, now that I’m ‘provided for’ (as she says), she had let herself go. That day, when she asked if I would tell my cousin what the surgeon said, I was frightened about her, she trembled so much and suddenly turned so deathly pale, with bluish lips, and blue circles round her eyes. Without an instant’s hesitation I promised to speak to my cousin. But I didn’t realize what the scene would be like, or I could hardly have faced it. In his weakness he broke down, as I never saw any one else break down. He said, if there was no hope of his being made into a man again, what good would it bring him to be cut up and hacked about by a surgeon? Besides, the specialist was the most expensive operator in England, and he couldn’t afford such a costly experiment. The simplest thing would be to put a revolver to his head, or take an overdose of some sleeping draft, and so to be out of his misery once and for all.