Dividing Waters

by I. A. R. Wylie

"You know very well what I mean!" Nora said roughly. "I ask you because you must know. Will there be war?"

Seleneck nearly laughed. So much for his sharp-sightedness! She had not been thinking of her husband, but of herself; or was perhaps the fear written on her face, fear for his safety? He did not believe it. He was too bitter against her to give her the benefit of the doubt.

"I know no more than you know, gnädige Frau," he said. "Our ultimatum has been sent to England. The next twenty-four hours must decide."

"But surely you have an idea—surely you can guess?"

"Gnädige Frau, we soldiers are not politicians. We are ready to march when the order is given. That is the only point with which we are concerned."

He waited an instant, and then, as she did not answer, he clapped his spurred heels together and went.

Nora crept back to her place at the table. Her movements were like those of a woman who has struggled up from a severe illness, and as she sat there with the pen in her listless hand she asked herself if this feeling of deadly physical inertia were not indeed the forerunner of the definite breakdown of her whole strength. Alone her thoughts seemed alive, to be indued with an agonising vitality which left her no peace or rest. They had followed her through the short night hours of sleep, and they pursued her now till she could have cried out with pain and despair. They were not thoughts that helped her, or sought a way for her out of the problem of her life. They were of the kind that haunt the fevered mind in dreams, pictures of the past and of the future that slipped across her mental vision in kaleidoscopic confusion, only to return again and again with hideous persistency. She could not control them; she sat there and yielded herself listlessly to their torture, leaving to Fate the whole guidance of the future. She had no plans of her own. Once it had occurred to her to write to her mother, but she had not traced more than the first few lines before the pen fell from her hand. Pride, rather than love, held her back from the bitter confession of her wretchedness. The thought of her father's triumph and her mother's grief had been sufficient to turn her away from the one path which still remained open to her.

Thus her thoughts continued their round, and the winter dusk deepened to evening. The servant had forgotten to attend to the stove, and a bitter penetrating cold ate into her very heart. She cared too little to move. She sat with her chin resting on her hand and watched the snow that was beginning to fall in the quiet street. Winter—in a few days Christmas! The thoughts took a swift turn. A year ago she had been at home, fighting with the courage of her youth for what she deemed her happiness. A year ago she had slept—foolish child!—with Wolff's last letter beneath her pillow and sworn to it that, come what might, she would trample on home and people and country, and follow him whithersoever he would lead her. "Thy people shall be my people, thy God my God!" A year ago—no more than that! And now she sat alone, and the door was locked between them.

She listened intently, and again her thoughts changed their course. What was he doing? Was he, too, sitting alone, as she sat, with his face between his hands, gazing into the ruin of his life's happiness? A wave of pity, even of tenderness, passed like a thawing breath over her frozen misery. Could she not go to him and put her arms about his shoulders, and plead with him, "Let all be good between us! Take me away from here to the other end of the earth and let us forget! I cannot bear to suffer thus, nor to see you suffer!" Surely it was not too late.

Urged by a hope born of her despair, she rose quickly and went to his door. She heard him move; there was a sound of papers being turned over, the clatter of keys, a short sigh of satisfaction, and then slow steps approaching from the other side. Her hand, raised in the act of knocking, fell paralysed. The next instant she was back at her table writing—what and to whom she never knew. But she was laughing to herself—that piteous heart-rending laughter of those who find in themselves the butt for the bitterest mockery. He had been working. Not for an instant had he been thrown out of his course by the storm which was threatening her with total shipwreck. He had gone on with his plans, his maps, his calculations as though nothing had happened, as though she were no more than an episode in his life. He did not care for her suffering—or what was worse, he did not know, so complete was the severance of their union.