Where Love Is

by William John Locke

If she had remained at home that afternoon and continued to practise insensibility, she would probably have followed the line of least resistance during the evening. Or, on the other hand, if she could have been alone, a night's fevered sleeplessness would have caused dull reaction in the morning. The cold contempt for things outside her, which had served for strength, was now gone, leaving a helpless woman to be swayed by passion or led spiritless by convention. The heroic in her needed the double spur. Passion shook her; miserable bondage, claiming her, drove her to rebellion. She rose to sublime heights, undreamed of in her earth-bound philosophy.

She had gone into the street after her interview with Jimmie, white, palpitating, torn. Though the man had spoken tremulous words, it was the unspoken, the wave of longing and all unspeakable things in whose heaving bosom they had been caught, that mattered. The Garden of Enchantment had thrown wide its gates; she had been admitted within its infinitely reaching vistas, and flowers of the spirit had bared their hearts before her eyes. Dressing, she strove to kill the memory, to deafen her ears to the haunting music, to clear her brain of the intoxication. A thing hardly a woman, hardly a coherent entity, but half marble, half-consuming fire, stood before Morland, as he clasped the pearl necklace around her throat. The touch of it against her skin caused a shudder. Up to then sensation had blotted out thought. But now the brain worked with startling lucidity. There was yet time to escape from the thraldom. The Idea gathered strength from every word and incident during the meal. The commonness, sordidness, emptiness of the life behind and around and before her were revealed in the unpitying searchlight of an awakened soul.

She pleaded with Morland for release. The necklace choked her. She unclasped it. He refused to take it back. She was his. He loved her. Her conduct was an outrage on his affections. She dared him to an expression of passionate feeling. He failed miserably, and her anger grew. Unhappily he spoke of an outrage upon Society. She fastened on the phrase. His affection and Society! One was worth the other. Society—the Mumbo Jumbo—the grotesque false god to which women were offered up in senseless sacrifice! Her mother instanced the bishop and the duchess as avatars of the divinity. Norma poured scorn on the hierarchy. Mrs. Hardacre implored her daughter by her love for her not to humiliate her thus in the world's eyes. She struck the falsest of notes. Norma turned on her, superb, dramatic, holding the three in speechless dismay. Love! what love had been given her that she should return? She had grown honest. The gods of that house were no longer her gods. They were paltry and dishonoured, shams and hypocrisies. Once she worshipped them. To that she had been trained from her cradle. Her nurses dangled the shams before her eyes. The women who taught her bent fawning knees before the shrines of the false gods. A mother's love? what had she learned from her mother? To simper and harden her heart. That the envy of other simpering hardened women was the ultimate good. That the dazzling end of a young girl's career was to capture some man of rank and fortune—that when she was married her lofty duty was to wear smarter clothes, give smarter parties, and to inveigle to her house by any base and despicable means smarter people than her friends. What had she learned from her mother? To let men of infamous lives leer at her because they had title or fortune. To pay court to shameless women in the hope of getting to know still more shameless men who might dishonour her with their name. She had never been young—never, never, with a young girl's freshness of heart. She spoke venom and was praised for wit. She was the finished product of a vapid world. Her whole existence had been an intricate elaboration of shams—miserable, empty, despicable futilities. How dared her mother stand before her and talk of love?

Then a quick angry scene, a crisp thud of the pearls on the floor, a stormy exit—and that, as Morland said, was the end of it. The three were left staring at each other in angry bewilderment.

In the face of this disaster Connie could not find it in her heart to reproach Morland, still less to hint at Theodore Weever's insinuation. Rather did she reproach herself for being the cause of the catastrophe, and she was smitten with a sense of guilt when Mrs. Hardacre turned upon her accusingly.

“She had tea with you, did n't she? Did you notice anything wrong?”

“She didn't seem quite herself—was nervous and strange,” said Connie, diplomatically. “I think I had better go up and talk to her,” she added after an anxious pause.

“Yes, do, for God's sake, Connie,” said Morland.

She nodded, smiled the ghost of her bright smile, and, glad of escape, went upstairs. The three sat in gloomy silence, broken only by Mr. Hardacre's maledictions on his gout. It was a bitter hour for them.

In a few moments Connie burst into the room, with a letter in her hand. She looked scared.