by Grant Allen
IX
At half-past nine one evening that week, Bertram was seated in hissitting-room at Miss Blake's lodgings, making entries, as usual, on thesubject of taboo in his big black notebook. It was a large bare room,furnished with the customary round rosewood centre table, and decoratedby a pair of green china vases, a set of wax flowers under a big glassshade, and a picture representing two mythical beings, with women'sfaces and birds' wings, hovering over the figure of a sleeping baby.Suddenly a hurried knock at the door attracted his attention. "Come in,"he said softly, in that gentle and almost deferential voice which heused alike to his equals and to the lodging-house servant. The dooropened at once, and Frida entered.
She was pale as a ghost, and she stepped light with a terrified tread.Bertram could see at a glance she was profoundly agitated. For a momenthe could hardly imagine the reason why: then he remembered all at oncethe strict harem rules by which married women in England are hemmed inand circumvented. To visit an unmarried man alone by night is contraryto tribal usage. He rose, and advanced towards his visitor withoutstretched arms. "Why, Frida," he cried,--"Mrs. Monteith--no,Frida--what's the matter? What has happened since I left? You look sopale and startled."
Frida closed the door cautiously, flung herself down into a chair in adespairing attitude, and buried her face in her hands for some momentsin silence. "O Mr. Ingledew," she cried at last, looking up in an agonyof shame and doubt: "Bertram--I KNOW it's wrong; I KNOW it's wicked; Iought never to have come. Robert would kill me if he found out. But it'smy one last chance, and I couldn't BEAR not to say good-bye to you--justthis once--for ever."
Bertram gazed at her in astonishment. Long and intimately as he hadlived among the various devotees of divine taboos the whole world over,it was with difficulty still he could recall, each time, each particularrestriction of the various systems. Then it came home to him with arush. He removed the poor girl's hands gently from her face, which shehad buried once more in them for pure shame, and held them in his own."Dear Frida," he said tenderly, stroking them as he spoke, "why, whatdoes all this mean? What's this sudden thunderbolt? You've come hereto-night without your husband's leave, and you're afraid he'll discoveryou?"
Frida spoke under her breath, in a voice half-choked with frequent sobs."Don't talk too loud," she whispered. "Miss Blake doesn't know I'm here.If she did, she'd tell on me. I slipped in quietly through the open backdoor. But I felt I MUST--I really, really MUST. I COULDN'T stop away; ICOULDN'T help it."
Bertram gazed at her, distressed. Her tone was distressing. Horror andindignation for a moment overcame him. She had had to slip in there likea fugitive or a criminal. She had had to crawl away by stealth from thatman, her keeper. She, a grown woman and a moral agent, with a will ofher own and a heart and a conscience, was held so absolutely in serfdomas a particular man's thrall and chattel, that she could not even goout to visit a friend without these degrading subterfuges of creeping inunperceived by a back entrance, and talking low under her breath, lesta lodging-house crone should find out what she was doing. And all theworld of England was so banded in league with the slave-driver againstthe soul he enslaved, that if Miss Blake had seen her she could hardlyhave come in: while, once in, she must tremble and whisper and stealabout with muffled feet, for fear of discovery in this innocentadventure. He held his breath with stifled wrath. It was painful anddegrading.
But he had no time just then to think much of all this, for there satFrida, tremulous and shivering before his very eyes, trying hard to hideher beautiful white face in her quivering hands, and murmuring over andover again in a very low voice, like an agonised creature, "I couldn'tBEAR not to be allowed to say good-bye to you for ever."
Bertram smoothed her cheek gently. She tried to prevent him, but he wenton in spite of her, with a man's strong persistence. Notwithstanding hisgentleness he was always virile. "Good-bye!" he cried. "Good-bye! why onearth good-bye, Frida? When I left you before dinner you never said oneword of it to me."
"Oh, no," Frida cried, sobbing. "It's all Robert, Robert! As soon asever you were gone, he called me into the library--which always meanshe's going to talk over some dreadful business with me--and he saidto me, 'Frida, I've just heard from Phil that this man Ingledew, who'schosen to foist himself upon us, holds opinions and sentiments whichentirely unfit him from being proper company for any lady. Now, he'sbeen coming here a great deal too often of late. Next time he calls, Iwish you to tell Martha you're not at home to him.'"
Bertram looked across at her with a melting look in his honest blueeyes. "And you came round to tell me of it, you dear thing!" he cried,seizing her hand and grasping it hard. "O Frida, how kind of you!"
Frida trembled from head to foot. The blood throbbed in her pulse. "Thenyou're not vexed with me," she sobbed out, all tremulous with gladness.
"Vexed with you! O Frida, how could I be vexed? You poor child! I'm sopleased, so glad, so grateful!"
Frida let her hand rest unresisting in his. "But, Bertram," shemurmured,--"I MUST call you Bertram--I couldn't help it, you know. Ilike you so much, I couldn't let you go for ever without just sayinggood-bye to you."
"You DON'T like me; you LOVE me," Bertram answered with masculineconfidence. "No, you needn't blush, Frida; you can't deceive me.... Mydarling, you love me, and you know I love you. Why should we two makeany secret about our hearts any longer?" He laid his hand on her faceagain, making it tingle with joy. "Frida," he said solemnly, "youdon't love that man you call your husband.... You haven't loved him foryears.... You never really loved him."
There was something about the mere sound of Bertram's calm voice thatmade Frida speak the truth more plainly and frankly than she could everhave spoken it to any ordinary Englishman. Yet she hung down herhead, even so, and hesitated slightly. "Just at first," she murmuredhalf-inaudibly, "I used to THINK I loved him. At any rate, I was pleasedand flattered he should marry me."
"Pleased and flattered!" Bertram exclaimed, more to himself than to her;"great Heavens, how incredible! Pleased and flattered by that man! Onecan hardly conceive it! But you've never loved him since, Frida. Youcan't look me in the face and tell me you love him."
"No, not since the first few months," Frida answered, still hanging herhead. "But, Bertram, he's my husband, and of course I must obey him."
"You must do nothing of the sort," Bertram cried authoritatively. "Youdon't love him at all, and you mustn't pretend to. It's wrong: it'swicked. Sooner or later--" He checked himself. "Frida," he went on,after a moment's pause, "I won't speak to you of what I was going tosay just now. I'll wait a bit till you're stronger and better able tounderstand it. But there must be no more silly talk of farewells betweenus. I won't allow it. You're mine now--a thousand times more truly minethan ever you were Monteith's; and I can't do without you. You mustgo back to your husband for the present, I suppose,--the circumstancescompel it, though I don't approve of it; but you must see me again...and soon... and often, just the same as usual. I won't go to your house,of course: the house is Monteith's; and everywhere among civilised andrational races the sanctity of the home is rightly respected. But YOUyourself he has no claim or right to taboo; and if _I_ can help it, heshan't taboo you. You may go home now to-night, dear one; but you mustmeet me often. If you can't come round to my rooms--for fear of MissBlake's fetich, the respectability of her house--we must meet elsewhere,till I can make fresh arrangements."
Frida gazed up at him in doubt. "But will it be RIGHT, Bertram?" shemurmured.
The man looked down into her big eyes in dazed astonishment. "Why,Frida," he cried, half-pained at the question, "do you think if it wereWRONG I'd advise you to do it? I'm here to help you, to guide you, tolead you on by degrees to higher and truer life. How can you imagineI'd ask you to do anything on earth unless I felt perfectly sure andconvinced it was the very most right and proper conduct?"
His arm stole round her waist and drew her tenderly towards him. Fridaallowed the caress passively. There was a robust frankness about hislove-making
that seemed to rob it of all taint or tinge of evil. Thenhe caught her bodily in his arms like a man who has never associated thepurest and noblest of human passions with any lower thought, any baserpersonality. He had not taken his first lessons in the art of love fromthe wearied lips of joyless courtesans whom his own kind had debased andunsexed and degraded out of all semblance of womanhood. He bent over thewoman of his choice and kissed her with chaste warmth. On the foreheadfirst, then, after a short interval, twice on the lips. At each kiss,from which she somehow did not shrink, as if recognising its purity,Frida felt a strange thrill course through and through her. She quiveredfrom head to foot. The scales fell from her eyes. The taboos of herrace grew null and void within her. She looked up at him more boldly."O Bertram," she whispered, nestling close to his side, and burying herblushing face in the man's curved bosom, "I don't know what you've doneto me, but I feel quite different--as if I'd eaten the fruit of the treeof knowledge of good and evil."
"I hope you have," Bertram answered, in a very solemn voice; "for,Frida, you will need it." He pressed her close against his breast; andFrida Monteith, a free woman at last, clung there many minutes with novile inherited sense of shame or wrongfulness. "I can't bear to go,"she cried, still clinging to him and clutching him tight. "I'm so happyhere, Bertram; oh, so happy, so happy!"
"Then why go away at all?" Bertram asked, quite simply.
Frida drew back in horror. "Oh, I must," she said, coming to herself: "Imust, of course, because of Robert."
Bertram held her hand, smoothing it all the while with his own, as hemused and hesitated. "Well, it's clearly wrong to go back," he said,after a moment's pause. "You ought never, of course, to spend anothernight with that man you don't love and should never have lived with. ButI suppose that's only a counsel of perfection: too hard a saying foryou to understand or follow for the present. You'd better go back, justto-night: and, as time moves on, I can arrange something else for you.But when shall I see you again?--for now you belong to me. I sealed youwith that kiss. When will you come and see me?"
"I can't come here, you know," Frida whispered, half-terrified; "for ifI did, Miss Blake would see me."
Bertram smiled a bitter smile to himself. "So she would," he said,musing. "And though she's not the least interested in keeping up RobertMonteith's proprietary claim on your life and freedom, I'm beginning tounderstand now that it would be an offence against that mysterious andincomprehensible entity they call RESPECTABILITY if she were to allowme to receive you in her rooms. It's all very curious. But, of course,while I remain, I must be content to submit to it. By-and-by, perhaps,Frida, we two may manage to escape together from this iron generation.Meanwhile, I shall go up to London less often for the present, and youcan come and meet me, dear, in the Middle Mill Fields at two o'clock onMonday."
She gazed up at him with perfect trust in those luminous dark eyes ofhers. "I will, Bertram," she said firmly. She knew not herself what hiskiss had done for her; but one thing she knew: from the moment theirlips met, she had felt and understood in a flood of vision that perfectlove which casteth out fear, and was no longer afraid of him.
"That's right, darling," the man answered, stooping down and laying hischeek against her own once more. "You are mine, and I am yours. You arenot and never were Robert Monteith's, my Frida. So now, good-night, tillMonday at two, beside the stile in Middle Mill Meadows!"
She clung to him for a moment in a passionate embrace. He let herstop there, while he smoothed her dark hair with one free hand. Thensuddenly, with a burst, the older feelings of her race overcame her fora minute; she broke from his grasp and hid her head, all crimson, ina cushion on the sofa. One second later, again, she lifted her faceunabashed. The new impulse stirred her. "I'm proud I love you, Bertram,"she cried, with red lips and flashing eyes; "and I'm proud you love me!"
With that, she slipped quietly out, and walked, erect and graceful, nolonger ashamed, down the lodging-house passage.