It Never Can Happen Again

by William De Morgan

"Do you remember," said she, "how I called you Scroop, and how funny it made you look? Oh dear, how strange it does all seem!"

"I remember. And how I couldn't well call you Judith back. Would you have been offended?"

"Should I ever have been offended at anything you did, dear love?" Her hand was pressed between his arm and the other hand, that had come across to caress it.

The two of them had the little secluded path well to themselves; certainly Saladin didn't count. Now was the time for those kisses that had waited, and others, if need were. Challis, as he took Judith Arkroyd to his heart, felt his own past grow insignificant and dim. This was Life!

A phantasmagoric presentment of Great Coram Street and Wimbledon ran rapidly across the background of his mind. It was wonderful how many images he could feel the dimness of at once. Even so, the man who fell off the Monument marvelled at the incredible grasp of his powers of recollection, stung to a paroxysm of self-assertion. Why need so many things appeal to be forgotten; each one a bygone to itself; a faint spark, surely, but craving a separate extinction? He could feel—oh yes!—he could feel—that the nourishments of his life in those days were the merest refreshments. This was a banquet! He had attained to a satiety of Love. But why need those all-but-forgotten satisfactions of an unpretentious past thrust in their claims for recollection, each with its ill-timed reproach—"You did not despise us then!"?

There was no need for him to forget Kate. She was little more now than a bad misadventure of his early life. But there was many a little memory of Marianne in the earlier days that he would have to oust from the future unless his every hour was to be cross-textured with a weft of self-reproach. One little paltry thing went near to madden him with its importunity. Could he never touch the damask cheek of his enchantress of to-day without an intrusion into his mind of—Marianne's mole? Too ridiculous!—many will say. But there it was—the mole—back in this man's inner vision, to plague him with a reminder of that long-ago when he rallied its proprietor—Marianne was eighteen then—on its possession, but congratulated himself at the same time that it was not in the best place.

The story knows Challis too well to attempt to make the oddities of his mind plausible; it can only vouch for them. About minds it cannot vouch for, only speculation is open to it. It makes no pretence to know the inner heart of the beautiful woman whom he conceives to be so entirely his own. Whether what followed was, on her part, schemed to make all wavering on his impossible, and to bind that skein of his life fast in hers, or whether it was really what it seemed, she alone could tell. The story has no blame for her, mind, if it was the former! She was within her rights—every woman's rights.

"Oh, Scroop—dear Titus—dear love! Let's have done with it and forget it all—all! It can never be, and we both know it." He had released her waist at some sound of footsteps approaching them as they stood in the pathway, but had kept her hands in his. Whoever it was was not in sight yet.

"'Odsbodikins, dearest, why—why—why? Why this of a sudden, out of the blue?"

"No—dearest—no!—it is truth. I am in earnest, indeed. It cannot be!" He would have taken her in his arms again, but her outstretched hand on his breast repelled him. "It must come to an end, and we know it.... No—do not!..."