As she blotted the last lines, there came to her hearing, from the thoroughfares of the Latin Quarter below, rollicking snatches of song, and the stir of students in noisy holiday mood.
Betty brushed aside her tears, and read carefully the letter she had just signed:
“Noll,
A year ago I was writing you love-letters—delightful deliriousness more full of meaning than of sense. To-day I am writing farewell.
It is the most eager desire of my life, of my whole being, that you should be free—to be a man. I came to you, joined my life to yours, that you should be free to realize yourself, most wholly free—in body, in intellect, and in conscience. I now take back my life from yours, that, having failed with me to achieve freedom for yourself or for me, you shall be free to become free—or as near free as you may be.
Your life is become full of little secrecies—of half-told tales—of timid reservations—of pompously withheld mysteries—of little excuses. I can only live, for close companionship, with a man; and a man shall not fear himself—nor another.
You must live free from the need to hide yourself from me. Therefore, to give you back to yourself I withdraw myself.
No man that is master of himself would live with a woman who is not also free—the free associate only with the free—they do not consort with curs, whether men or women. It is fools’ cant that speaks of the woman obeying the man—such a man were only fit to be the father of a slave people.
And more—the woman in marriage must be free to live her nobility.
I am not of those puling women who, when they are flung aside or suffer rebuff, cling to the arm of him who strikes the blow—who whimper and cringe and are content to be content if they but have occasional consideration. Least of all am I of those women who, being stung with a man’s neglect and jibe and injustice, walk through a haggard existence by the man’s shrinking side, keeping his allegiance by the dread of her crying out upon him to the neighbours, driving him with scowl or invective along a narrow path where his unwilling feet are kept from straying only through fear for his petty dignities—making him a slave to his weaknesses and hers, and herself a hissing whip and a shame. Such women are of the slave-peoples—they mother a race of weaklings. For fear is as much through the mother as the father.
But, you will say, ‘Let us explain, let us make it up and kiss and be friends, let us bury the past.’ So indeed we might sit by the wayside of life and babble threadbare platitudes to hide our losses. Would that be music in our ears? Would it be gain? Even if you hoodwinked me with pathetic promises of duty and the like, is our strength increased?
The conventions of the world might be satisfied by my meekly bowing my head and walking primly by your side. But the past is immortal, and rises again from the dead. We might take our walks abroad together, but we should no longer go hand in hand—a ghost strides between. He smells of the dead most unconscionably, this fawning spectre of little diplomacies. Pah! how I detest the cringing flunkey that speaks in apologies!
You would not have me walk along a way of frequent reconciliations—each reconciliation a humiliation—each humiliation making that uneasy ghost that stalks between us into a more tangible figure of Hate. Reconciliations! of what? for what? You do not think me so little free that I would stoop to call for explanations—explanations that but explain why explanations should not be.
What have you or I to do with the conventions of the world, when all’s said? We are not the hirelings of the world. Are you and I the timid servants of the gossips?
Life is an affirmation—a great Thou Shalt—not an enfeebling incubus of belittling Thou Shalt Nots.
Love, like friendship, will not suffer catechism—does not rest on commandments—does not increase through rebuff.
Life is not a bundle of apologies—how much less then is Love, which is of the essence of Life! Love is a splendid comrade—not an excuse for small disdains.
I have given you all my love. I have not bartered it. I do not haggle over its value. Nor for my part would I hedge you about with restrictions, nor win your smiles on conditions—for willing comradeship sunk to dutiful loyalty is become a restriction. I ask for no paper treaties. I will fling you no Thou Shalt Nots. The written promise is the least part of a strong man’s honour.
If a man or woman, or the shabby travesties of these, would find delight in adulteries, will the written bond or public proclamation of fidelity prevent their secret treacheries?
I can no more stoop to jealousy of the world than of another woman, even if I were possessed of the mean insanity of jealousy, which is but a part of the village-idiot’s wits who sits in the winter and thinks to blow dead ashes into living fire if his rude breath be but harsh enough.
Nor can I, on the other hand, live in your house as ‘one of three.’ If you and I and Apology essayed to live together, it could not last. I cannot embrace Apology with effusion; and I cannot brook to see you yield yourself to shabby excuses. I am not sure that I would not rather have you committing mean sins with a dairymaid.
The pain with which my hand writes these lines it would be wanton cruelty to inflict upon you, Noll; yet I will tell you that since I collected a few belongings together into my poor weather-beaten trunk—indeed, I have never before realized how shabby a dowry I brought to you, dear heart (I have scarred the dear walls with as little brigandage as I might, so that they shall stare upon you with no eyeless sockets and be the less lonely home for you when I am gone)—since I have taken a last look round the rooms where I have known the best days of my life, as I sit waiting for the vehicle which is to take me out into the desert again, I find it hard to keep back the tears from blotting out my handwriting. Scalding tears, Noll; yet I have wept tears also that did not scald, happy tears—indeed, I have but this moment kissed the pillows of our marriage-bed....
But there are wheels that stop outside the courtyard gate. Just one more round of our old home amidst the stars, to touch the dear surrounding things I have loved so well—we have loved so well—and I am gone.
Betty.
P.S.—Ah, Noll; there are no flowers upon the balcony now! Not even a little one to take in remembrance that the balcony was once a garden.”
There was a rustle of skirts on the landing without—a knock at the door.
Betty uttered no sound. She thrust the letter into an envelope and sealed it.
There was another knock, and a panting voice cried from without:
“It is I, madame—Madelaine.”
Betty went to the door and opened it.
“Ah, Madelaine—you are back!”
Madelaine, daintily dressed, and her slim being looking charming and refined, entered the room and shut the door.