Where Love Is

by William John Locke

“I think it's rather a success. Don't you?”

Norma assented somewhat listlessly, but to please her friend inspected the creation and listened to her chatter. She was feeling lonely and dispirited. At Aline's entreaty she had persuaded Jimmie to go with Tony Merewether to the Langham Sketch Club, thus showing himself, for the first time since the scandal, among his old associates. For her altruism she paid the penalty of a dull evening. Their visits to each other were her sole occupation now, all that was left in life to interest her. In moments of solitude she began to feel the appalling narrowness of the circle in which she was caged. Reading tired instead of refreshing her. She had been accustomed to men and women rather than to books, to the sight of many faces, to the constant change of scene. When she speculated on employment for future solitary hours, she thought ruefully of recuffing shirts.

Connie apologised for leaving her, hoped she would manage to amuse herself. Norma, who had made strenuous efforts to hide the traces of tumult, returned a smiling answer. Connie, quite deceived, put an arm round her waist and said suddenly in her bright, teasing way:

“Now don't you wish you were coming too?”

Norma, staggered at the point-blank question, was mistress enough of herself to observe the decencies of reply, but when Connie had gone, she sat down on the sofa and stared in front of her. She did wish she were going with Connie. She had been wishing vaguely, half-consciously all the evening. Now the wish was the pain of craving. It came upon her like the craving of the alcoholic subject for drink—this sudden longing for the glitter, the excitement, the whirl of the life she had renounced. Her indictment of it seemed unreal, the confused memory of a brain-sick mood. It was her world. She had not cut herself free. All the fibres of her body seemed to be rooted in it, and she was being drawn thither by irresistible desire. The many, many people, the diamonds, the brilliance, the flattery, the envy, the very atmosphere heavy with many perfumes—she saw and felt it all; panted for it, yearned for it. That never, never again would she take up her birthright was impossible. That she should stand forevermore in the humble street outside the gates of that dazzling, wonderful, kaleidoscopic world was unthinkable.

She remembered her talk with Morland at the Duchess of Wiltshire's reception at the end of the last season, her shiver at the idea of a life of poverty; was it a premonition? She remembered the blessed sense of security when she had looked round the splendid scene and felt that she and it were indissoluble parts of the same scheme of things. A crust and heel of cheese as Jimmie's wife had crossed her mind then as a grotesque fantasy; the air of that brilliant gathering was the breath of her being.

But now the grotesque fancy was to be the reality; the other was to become the shadow of a dream. No yearning or panting could restore it. The impossible was the inevitable. The unthinkable was the commonplace. She had made her choice deliberately, irrevocably. She had lost the whole world to gain her own soul. In the despair of her mood she questioned the worth of the sacrifice. The finality of the choice oppressed her. If at this eleventh hour she could still have the opportunity of the heroic—if still the gates of the world were open to her, she would have had a stimulus to continued nobility. The world and the passionate love for the perfect man—which would she choose? Her exaltation would still have swept her to the greater choice. Of, this she was desperately aware. But the gates were shut. She had already chosen. The heroic moment had gone. The acceptance of conditions was now mere uninspired duty. She gave way to unreason.

“O God! Why cannot I have both—my own love and my own life?”

The tears she shed calmed her.

The next day she felt ill from the strain, paying the highly bred woman's penalty of nervous break-down. Connie Deering noted the circles beneath her eyes and the pinched nostrils. Norma casually mentioned a night's neuralgia. It would pass off during the day. She refused to be doctored. She would pay a visit to Jimmie before lunch. The fresh air would do her good.