by Hugh Walpole
And that led him — all this in the swift interval before she answered him — to wonder whether she, too, had been wanting him also, not as a man, not as James Maradick, but simply as a cap to fit the mood that she was in: any man would fit as well. If that were the case with her as well as with him what a future they were spared by his suddenly seeing as clearly as he did. If that were not so, then the whole thing bristled with difficulties; but that was what he must set himself to find out, now, at once.
Then, in her next speech, he saw two things quite clearly — that she was determined, come what might, to have her way about to-night at any rate, and to go to any lengths to obtain it. She might not have been determined when she came into the room, but she was determined now.
She leant forward in her chair towards him, her cheeks were a little redder, her breath was coming a little faster.
“Jim, I know you meant it seriously. I know you mean it seriously now. But there isn’t much time; and after all, there isn’t much to say. We’ve arranged it all before. We were to have this night, weren’t we, and then, afterwards, we’d arrange to go abroad or something. Here we are, two modern people, you and I, looking at the thing squarely. All our lives we’ve lived stupidly, dully, comfortably. There’s never been anything in the very least to disturb us. And now suddenly this romance has come. Are we, just because of stupid laws that stupid people made hundreds of years ago, to miss the chance of our lives? Jim!”
She put one hand across towards him and touched his knee.
But he, looking her steadily in the face, spoke without moving.
“Wait,” he said. “Stop. I want to ask you a question. Do you love me — really, I mean? So that you would go with me to-morrow to Timbuctoo, anywhere?”
For an instant she lowered her eyes, then she said vehemently, eagerly, “Of course, of course I do. You know — Jim, how can you ask? Haven’t I shown it by coming here?”
But that was exactly what she hadn’t done. Her coming there showed the opposite, if anything; and indeed, at once, in a way that she had answered him, he had seen the truth. She might think, at that moment, quite honestly that she loved him, but really what she wanted was not the man at all, but the expression, the emotion, call it what you will.
And he saw, too, exactly what the after-results would be. They would both of them in the morning postpone immediate action. They would wait a few weeks. She would return to her husband; for a little, perhaps, they would write. And then gradually they would forget. She would begin to look on it as an incident, a “romantic hour”; she would probably sigh with relief at the thought of all the ennui and boredom that she had avoided by not running away with him. He, too, would begin to regard it lightly, would put it down to that queer place, to anything and everything, even perhaps to Morelli; and then — well, it’s no use in crying over spilt milk, and there’s no harm done after all — and so on, until at last it would be forgotten altogether. And so “the unforgiveable sin” would have been committed, “the unforgiveable sin,” not because they had broken social laws and conventions, but because they had acted without love — the unforgiveable sin of lust of the flesh for the sake of the flesh alone.
After her answer to his question she paused for a moment, and he said nothing; then she went on again: “Of course, you know I care, with all my heart and soul.” She said the last three words with a little gasp, and both her hands pressed tightly together. She had moved her chair closer to his, and now both her hands were on his knee and her face was raised to his.
“Then you would go away with me to-morrow anywhere?”
“Yes, of course,” she answered, now without any hesitation.
“You know that you would lose your good name, your life at home, your friends, most of them? Everything that has made life worth living to you?”
“Yes — I love you.”
“And then there is your husband. He has been very good to you. He has never given you the least cause of complaint. He’s been awfully decent to you.”
“Oh! he doesn’t care. It’s you, Jim; I love you heart and soul.”
But he knew through it all that she didn’t: the very repetition of the phrase showed that. She was trying, he knew, to persuade herself that she did because of the immediate pleasure that it would bring her. She wasn’t consciously insincere, but he shrank back in his chair from her touch, because he was not sure what he would do if he let her remain there.
He put her hands aside firmly. “No, you mustn’t. Look here, I’ve something to tell you. I know you’ll think me an awful cad, but I must be straight with you. I’ve found out something. I’ve been thinking all these days, and, you know, I don’t love you as I thought I did. Not in the fine way that I imagined; I don’t even love you as I love my wife. It is only sensual, all of it. It’s your body that I want, not you. That sounds horrible, doesn’t it? I know, I’m ashamed, but it’s true.”
His voice sank into a whisper. He expected her to turn on him with scorn, loathing, hatred. Perhaps she would even make a scene. Well, that was better, at any rate, than going on with it. He might just save his soul and hers in time. But he did not dare to look at her. He was ashamed to raise his eyes. And then, to his amazement, he felt her hand on his knee again. Her face was very close to his and she was speaking very softly.
“Well — perhaps — dear, that other kind of love will come. That’s really only one part of it. That other love cannot come at once.”
He turned his eyes to her. She was looking at him, smiling.
“But you don’t understand, you can’t?”
“Yes, I understand.”
Then something savage in him began to stir. He caught her hands in his fiercely, roughly.
“No, you can’t. I tell you I don’t love you at all. Not as a decent man loves a decent woman. A few weeks ago I thought that I had found my soul. I saw things differently; it was a new world, and I thought that you had shown it me. But it was not really you at all. It isn’t I that you care for, it’s your husband, and we are both being led by the devil — here — now!”
“Ah!” she said, drawing back a little. “I thought you were braver than that. You do care for all the old conventional things after all, ‘the sanctity of the marriage tie,’ and all the rest of it. I thought that we had settled all that.”
“No,” he answered her. “It isn’t the conventions that I care for, but it’s our souls, yours and mine. If we loved each other it would be a different thing; but I’ve found out there’s something more than thrilling at another person’s touch — that isn’t enough. I don’t love you; we must end it.”
“No!” She had knelt down by his chair and had suddenly taken both his hands in hers, and was kissing them again and again. “No, Jim, we must have to-night. Never mind about the rest. I want you — now. Take me.”
Her arms were about him. Her head was on his chest. Her fascination began to steal about him again. His blood began to riot. After all, what were all these casuistries, this talk about the soul? Anyone could talk, it was living that mattered. He began to press her hands; his head was swimming.
Then suddenly a curious thing happened. The room seemed to disappear. Mrs. Maradick was sitting on the edge of her bed looking at him. He could see the pathetic bend of her head as she looked at him. He felt once again, as he had felt in Morelli’s room, as though there were devils about him.
He was tired again, dog-tired; in a moment he was going to yield. Both women were with him again. Beyond the window was the night, the dark hedges, the white road, the tower, grey and cold with the shadow lying at its feet and moving with the moon as the waves move on the shore.
For a moment the fire seized him. He felt nothing but her body — the pressure, the warmth of it. His fingers grated a little on the silk of her dress.
There was perfect silence, and he thought that he could hear, beyond the beating of their hearts, the sounds of the night — the rustle of the trees, the monotonous drip of water, the mysterious d
istant playing of the flute that he had heard before. His hands were crushing her. In another moment he would have bent and covered her face, her body, with kisses; then, like the coming of a breeze after a parching stillness, the time was past.
He got up and gently put her hands away. He walked across the room and looked out at the stars, the moon, the light on the misty trees.
He had won his victory.
His voice was quite quiet when he spoke to her.
“You had better, we had both better go to bed. It must never happen, to either of us, because it isn’t good enough. I’m not the sort of man, you’re not the sort of woman, that that does for; you know that you don’t really love me.”
She had risen too, and now stood by the door, her head hanging a little, her hands limply by her side. Then she gave a hard little laugh.
“I’ve rather given myself away,” she said harshly. “Only, don’t you think it would have been kinder, honester, to have said this a week ago?”
“I don’t try to excuse myself,” he said quietly. “I’ve been pretty rotten, but that’s no reason — —” He stopped abruptly.
She clenched her hands, and then suddenly flung up her head and looked at him across the room furiously.
“Good night, Mr. Maradick,” she said, and was gone.
CHAPTER XX. MARADICK TELLS THE FAMILY, HAS BREAKFAST WITH HIS
WIFE, AND SAYS GOOD-BYE TO SOME FRIENDS
But he did not sleep.
Perhaps it was because his fatigue lay upon him like a heavy burden, so that to close his eyes was as though he allowed a great weight to fall upon him and crush him. His fatigue hung above him like a dark ominous cloud; it seemed indeed so ominous that he was afraid of it. At the moment when sleep seemed to come to him he would pull himself back with a jerk, he was afraid of his dreams.
Towards about four o’clock in the morning he fell into confused slumber. Shapes, people — Tony, Morelli, Mrs. Lester, his wife, Epsom, London — it was all vague, misty, and, in some incoherent way, terrifying. He wanted to wake, he tried to force himself to wake, but his eyes refused to open, they seemed to be glued together. The main impression that he got was of saying farewell to some one, or rather to a great many people. It was as though he were going away to a distant land, somewhere from which he felt that he would never return. But when he approached these figures to say good-bye they would disappear or melt into some one else.
About half-past six he awoke and lay tranquilly watching the light fill the windows and creep slowly, mysteriously, across the floor. His dreams had left him, but in spite of his weariness when he had gone to bed and the poor sleep that he had had he was not tired. He had a sensation of relief, of having completed something and, which was of more importance, of having got rid of it. A definite period in his life seemed to be ended, marked off. He had something of the feeling that Christian had when his pack left him. All the emotions, the struggles, the confusions of the last weeks were over, finished. He didn’t regret them; he welcomed them because of the things that they had taught him, but he did not want them back again. It was almost like coming through an illness.
He knew that it was going to be a difficult day. There were all sorts of explanations, all kinds of “settling up.” But he regarded it all very peacefully. It did not really matter; the questions had all been answered, the difficulties all resolved.
At half-past seven he got up quietly, had his bath and dressed. When he came back into the bedroom he found that his wife was still asleep. He watched her, with her head resting on her hand and her hair lying in a dark cloud on the pillow. As he stood above her a great feeling of tenderness swept over him. That was quite new; he had never thought of her tenderly before. Emmy Maradick wasn’t the sort of person that you did think of tenderly. Probably no one had ever thought of her in that way before.
But now — things had all changed so in these last weeks. There were two Emmy Maradicks. That was his great discovery, just of course as there were two James Maradicks.
He hadn’t any illusion about it. He didn’t in the least expect that the old Emmy Maradick would suddenly disappear and never come out again. That, of course, was absurd, things didn’t happen so quickly. But now that he knew that the other one, the recent mysterious one that he had seen the shadow of ever so faintly, was there, everything would be different. And it would grow, it would grow, just as this new soul of his own was going to grow.
Whilst he looked at her she awoke, looked at him for a moment without realisation, and then gave a little cry: “Oh! Is it late?”
“No, dear, just eight. I’ll be back for breakfast at quarter to nine.”
In her eyes was again that wondering pathetic little question. As an answer he bent down and kissed her tenderly. He had not kissed her like that for hundreds of years. As he bent down to her her hands suddenly closed furiously about him. For a moment she held him, then she let him go. As he left the room his heart was beating tumultuously.
And so he went downstairs to face the music, as he told himself.
He knocked on the Gales’ sitting-room door and some one said “Come in.” He drew a deep breath of relief when he saw that Lady Gale was in there alone.
“Ah! that’s good!”
She was sitting by the window with her head towards him. She seemed to him — it was partly the grey silk dress that she wore and partly her wonderful crown of white hair — unsubstantial, as though she might fade away out of the window at any moment.
He had even a feeling that he ought to clutch at her, hold her, to prevent her from disappearing. Then he saw the dark lines under her eyes and her lack of colour; she was looking terribly tired.
“Ah, I am ashamed; I ought to have told you last night.”
She gave him her hand and smiled.
“No, it’s all right; it’s probably better as it is. I won’t deny that I was anxious, of course, that was natural. But I was hoping that you would come in now, before my husband comes in. I nearly sent a note up to you to ask you to come down.”
Her charming kindness to him moved him strangely. Oh! she was a wonderful person.
“Dear Lady,” he said, “that’s like you. Not to be furious with me, I mean. But of course that’s what I’m here for now, to face things. I expect it and I deserve it; I was left for that.”
“Left?” she said, looking at him. He saw that her hand moved ever so quickly across her lap and then back again.
“Yes. Of course Tony’s gone. He was married yesterday afternoon at two o’clock at the little church out on the hill. The girl’s name is Janet Morelli. She is nineteen. They are now in Paris; but he gave me this letter for you.”
He handed her the letter that Tony had given to him on the way up to the station.
She did not say anything to him, but took the letter quickly and tore it open. She read it twice and then handed it to him and waited for him to read it. It ran: —
Dearest and most wonderful of Mothers,
By the time that you get this I shall be in Paris and Janet will be my wife. Janet Morelli is her name, and you will simply love her when you see her. Do you remember telling me once that whatever happened I was to marry the right person? Well, suddenly I saw her one night like Juliet looking out of a window, and there was never any question again; isn’t it wonderful? But, of course, you know if I had told you the governor would have had to know, and then there would simply have been the dickens of a rumpus and I’d have got kicked out or something, and no one would have been a bit the better and it would have been most awfully difficult for you. And so I kept it dark and told Maradick to. Of course the governor will be sick at first, but as you didn’t know anything about it he can’t say anything to you, and that’s all that matters. Because, of course, Maradick can look after himself, and doesn’t, as a matter of fact, ever mind in the least what anyone says to him. We’ll go to Paris directly afterwards, and then come back and live in Chelsea, I expect. I’m going to write like anything; but in any case
, you know, it won’t matter, because I’ve got that four hundred a year and we can manage easily on that. The governor will soon get over it, and I know that he’ll simply love Janet really. Nobody could help it.
And oh! mother dear, I’m so happy. I didn’t know one could be so happy; and that’s what you wanted, didn’t you? And I love you all the more because of it, you and Janet. Send me just a line to the Hôtel Lincoln, Rue de Montagne, Paris, to say that you forgive me. Janet sends her love. Please send her yours.
Ever your loving son,
Tony.
PS. — Maradick has been simply ripping. He’s the most splendid man that ever lived. I simply don’t know what we’d have done without him.
There was silence for a minute or two. Then she said softly, “Dear old Tony. Tell me about the girl.”
“She’s splendid. There’s no question at all about her being the right thing. I’ve seen a lot of her, and there’s really no question at all. She’s seen nothing of the world and has lived down here all her life. She’s simply devoted to Tony.”
“And her people?”
“There is only her father. He’s a queer man. She’s well away from him. I don’t think he cares a bit about her, really. They’re a good old family, I believe. Italians originally, of course. The father has a good deal of the foreigner in him, but the girl’s absolutely English.”
There was another pause, and then she looked up and took his hand.
“I can’t thank you enough. You’ve done absolutely the right thing. There was nothing else but to carry it through with a boy of Tony’s temperament. I’m glad, gladder than I can tell you. But of course my husband will take it rather unpleasantly at first. He had ideas about Tony’s marrying, and he would have done anything he could to have prevented its happening like this. But now that it has happened, now that there’s nothing to be done but to accept it, I think it will soon be all right. But perhaps you had better tell him now at once, and get it over. He will be here in a minute.”