It Never Can Happen Again

by William De Morgan

"I dare say it doesn't matter," said he to Judith; "but there was something I hadn't read on the back. What you were reading when the match gave out."

"Yes—I think there was. A postscript. I didn't make it out. Shall we go in, or over on the lawn, where they are dancing?" She added a moment later: "I don't know why I am taking it for granted that you don't dance."

"I certainly don't; nowadays, at least. But you do, of course. The lawn by all means!" They passed through the little porticino, and complied with the understanding it had entered into. As Challis was turning the key, he paused an instant to look round at Judith and say: "Are you sure you can't remember anything of what was written on the back of the letter?" And she replied without hesitation: "Not a word. I had no time." Then he said: "I wish you could remember only just one word or two, to show what it was about." She answered: "But I can't. I am sorry. We must hope it was of no importance."

They walked side by side, without speaking, to the end of the last yew-hedged terrace, just on the open garden. Then, inexplicably, they turned and went back along the path. When they arrived again at the little gate in the wall, Challis suddenly faced his companion. He looked white and almost handsome in the moonlight—or so she may have thought, easily enough—for his eyes had a large, frightened look, that became them and the thoughtful thinness of their bone-marked setting. He spoke quite suddenly, keeping his voice under, with quick speech that showed its tension.

"Judith—Judith Arkroyd! It is no use. I can bear it no longer. I must leave you. It would have been well for me if I had done so earlier. It would have been best for me if I had never seen you." He turned from her, almost as though he shrank from the sight of her, and leaned against the grey stone angle of the little doorway, his face hidden in his arms. Had the woman who watched him—shame if it were so!—a feeling akin to triumph, as she saw how his visible hand caught and clenched and trembled in the moonlight? It may have been so. The story has no plummet to take soundings of her heart.

Her mere words may have meant fear lest she had overplayed her part—no more! "Oh, Scroop, you cannot blame me." But the way she too leaned, as for support in dizziness, on the edge of a great Italian garden-pot, raised on a pedestal at the path-corner, and pressed her hand to her side as though her breath might catch the less for it—these things seemed to belong to more than the alarm of a sudden start.

He turned, with some recovery of self-possession, as one who shakes free of any unmanliness. "Blame you, Judith!" he cried, calling her freely by her name—a thing he had never yet done. "Not I, God knows! I am all self-indictment, if ever man was. And this, look you, is my offence: that I, knowing myself as I am, knowing what I owe to my wife, to my children—they are dear to me still, I tell you, believe it who may!—that I have allowed the image and presence of you, Judith Arkroyd, to take such possession of me, my mind, my whole soul, that you are never absent from me. And the bondage that is on me is one I cannot see the end of. All I know is that I am powerless against it. It may be—it may be—that the memory of you will die out and leave me—that when I see you no longer, your voice and your beauty will become things of the past, and be forgotten. When we have parted, as we must, Heaven grant me this oblivion! But I cannot conceive it now."

He paused, and as he wiped the drops from his brow, seemed to hark back a little to his daily self, saying in a quick undertone: "It is a good world to forget in. Precedents are in favour of it. There is that to be said."

The little change in his manner made her find her voice. "Yes!" she said. "I see how it is. You must go. I shall always grieve that I could not keep your friendship ... yes—you see my meaning? I have valued it. But this kind of thing is the misfortune of some women. It is a bitter thing—we must part in a few hours, so I may speak plainly—a bitter thing to be forced to lose a friend one loves as a friend, merely because one chances to be a woman."

If only this interview might have ended here! If only Mr. Ramsey Tomes and Mr. Brownrigg could have come on the scene now, instead of five minutes later! But there never was good came of last words, from the world's beginning.