It Never Can Happen Again

by William De Morgan

But he could not leave that "Why even then?" unanswered, with his questioner waiting there behind her closed eyelids for whatever excuse he might see his way to. Why even then? He felt he was flushing a little, and hoped she would not open her eyes. But his speech hung fire too long; and when they turned on him suddenly to see what it was going to be, he was caught, and could only see his way out through frankness. "I know," he said—"I know. Of course, I was wrong to suggest it. Still, it was the only thing that came to hand. It was either that or nothing. And you wished it ... and besides...."

"I am not blaming you. Go on ... 'and besides'...." The beautiful eyes that were to make so much mischief on the Danube were almost cruel in the way they waited for what Challis felt he had better not have begun to say.

But there was no help for it now. He had to continue, and did so: "... And besides, I did not know you so well as I do now.... I mean, I saw the thing differently...." He was getting deeper and deeper in the mire, and the eyes showed no signs of letting him off. "No; it's no use," he said abruptly. "I did wrong. But then, can you understand me?—how could I know it was you?" Then he made a weak attempt to dispersonalize his words. "No one of us remains the same." And then, feeling he wasn't shining, settled to hold his tongue. But he did not look Judith in the face over it.

She, for her part, being perfectly collected and thoroughly mistress of herself, only saw in his confusion a clear token that she was also mistress of the situation. She had done this sort of thing before—love of power being always her chief incentive—and had come out scathless. If a doubt now crossed her mind that she might be playing with edged tools, it was not strong enough to stop her.

"How true that is! Do you know, Challis"—please note this habit of address; it has somehow become natural to Judith—"I was thinking only just now, before you came in, how completely you have changed your identity since those days. Do you remember when we played chess?... Well, I'm almost ashamed to tell you how I thought of you then...."

"You owe it me. See how I've been at the confessional myself!" Challis submits to the soul-brush without protest. It is no use. Why resist?

"You were merely an author whose works I hadn't read—yes!—that's true; authors never have any idea what a lot of people haven't read their books. I thought you would just come and go, like the rest of them. But I fancied you seemed at a loose end, and I would take pity on you. I never thought...."

"Never thought what?"

"Don't look so empressé over it, Challis!" Really, this woman's faculty for going close to precipices, foot-sure, is something perfectly marvellous. Tenderness outright seemed the only natural sequel just now. But she will get back to safety, after gazing coolly over the edge. Trust her! "I couldn't say it all in one word, you see.... Never thought that in six months you would be writing a tragedy for me to play in. That's all that it comes to. At any rate, you seemed quite a different person then." Had she recoiled too abruptly from the precipice? Is there slight concession, just to accommodate a working equilibrium, in her last words? Her own working equilibrium, mind you;—in which to dangle her victim over that precipice at leisure, and yet to keep able to deny its proximity undisturbed, or pooh-pooh it altogether, at choice. For a thorough-paced female flirt enjoys driving her quarry mad best, when she knows she has plausible innocent unconsciousness enough left in the cellar to quench any fever of self-accusation of her own. "Who ever said a word, or thought a thought, about love-making?..." Don't we know the sort of thing?

Challis's own frame of mind—for the story must needs try to define it, however difficult it is to deal with—was one of a sort of thankfulness that he had perturbation of feeling all to himself. Therein lay his safety; he could keep it secret. He could and would pay for it by additional tenderness to poor dear Polly Anne—who was Polly Anne, after all, mind you!—when this last stupid bit of purposeless quarrelsomeness should have cleared away. But he wanted security that the conflagration whose smouldering he could not disguise from himself would be local. He had just, only just, stamped out a spark that might have become a flame at that precipice-edge, now a moment since. He was willing to go great lengths in persuading himself that there were no fires smouldering elsewhere; for to what end, in Heaven's name, should he recognize them?