“Certainly not. You have the right. He hasn't any children.”
“Ah, the children!” I said, and slid my low chair back till it nearly touched the screen that hid them. “I wonder whether they'll come out for me.”
There was a murmur of voices—Madden's and a deeper note—at the low, dark side door, and a ginger-headed, canvas-gaitered giant of the unmistakable tenant farmer type stumbled or was pushed in.
“Come to the fire, Mr. Turpin,” she said.
“If—if you please, Miss, I'll—I'll be quite as well by the door.” He clung to the latch as he spoke, like a frightened child. Of a sudden I realised that he was in the grip of some almost overpowering fear.
“Well?”
“About that new shed for the young stock—that was all. These first autumn storms settin' in . . . but I'll come again, Miss.” His teeth did not chatter much more than the door latch.
“I think not,” she answered levelly. “The new shed—m'm. What did my agent write you on the 15th?”
“I—fancied p'r'aps that if I came to see you—ma—man to man like, Miss—but—”
His eyes rolled into every corner of the room, wide with horror. He half opened the door through which he had entered, but I noticed it shut again—from without and firmly.
“He wrote what I told him,” she went on. “You are overstocked already. Dunnett's Farm never carried more than fifty bullocks—even in Mr. Wright's time. And he used cake. You've sixty-seven and you don't cake. You've broken the lease in that respect. You're dragging the heart out of the farm.”
“I'm—I'm getting some minerals—superphosphates—next week. I've as good as ordered a truck-load already. I'll go down to the station tomorrow about 'em. Then I can come and see you man to man like, Miss, in the daylight. . . . That gentleman's not going away, is he?” He almost shrieked.
I had only slid the chair a little further back, reaching behind me to tap on the leather of the screen, but he jumped like a rat.
“No. Please attend to me, Mr. Turpin.” She turned in her chair and faced him with his back to the door. It was an old and sordid little piece of scheming that she forced from him—his plea for the new cowshed at his landlady's expense, that he might with the covered manure pay his next year's rent out of the valuation after, as she made clear, he had bled the enriched pastures to the bone. I could not but admire the intensity of his greed, when I saw him out-facing for its sake whatever terror it was that ran wet on his forehead.
I ceased to tap the leather—was, indeed, calculating the cost of the shed—when I felt my relaxed hand taken and turned softly between the soft hands of a child. So at last I had triumphed. In a moment I would turn and acquaint myself with those quick-footed wanderers. . . .
The little brushing kiss fell in the centre of my palm—as a gift on which the fingers were, once, expected to close: as the all faithful half-reproachful signal of a waiting child not used to neglect even when grown-ups were busiest—a fragment of the mute code devised very long ago.
Then I knew. And it was as though I had known from the first day when I looked across the lawn at the high window.
I heard the door shut. The woman turned to me in silence, and I felt that she knew.
What time passed after this I cannot say. I was roused by the fall of a log, and mechanically rose to put it back. Then I returned to my place in the chair very close to the screen.
“Now you understand,” she whispered, across the packed shadows.
“Yes, I understand—now. Thank you.”
“I—I only hear them.” She bowed her head in her hands. “I have no right, you know—no other right. I have neither borne nor lost—neither borne nor lost!”
“Be very glad then,” said I, for my soul was torn open within me.
“Forgive me!”
She was still, and I went back to my sorrow and my joy.
“It was because I loved them so,” she said at last, brokenly. “That was why it was, even from the first—even before I knew that they—they were all I should ever have. And I loved them so!”
She stretched out her arms to the shadows and the shadows within the shadow.
“They came because I loved them—because I needed them. I—I must have made them come. Was that wrong, think you?”
“No—no.”
“I—I grant you that the toys and—and all that sort of thing were nonsense, but—but I used to so hate empty rooms myself when I was little.” She pointed to the gallery. “And the passages all empty. . . . And how could I ever bear the garden door shut? Suppose—”
“Don't! For pity's sake, don't!” I cried. The twilight had brought a cold rain with gusty squalls that plucked at the leaded windows.
“And the same thing with keeping the fire in all night. I don't think it so foolish—do you?”
I looked at the broad brick hearth, saw, through tears I believe, that there was no unpassable iron on or near it, and bowed my head.
“I did all that and lots of other things—just to make believe. Then they came. I heard them, but I didn't know that they were not mine by right till Mrs. Madden told me—”
“The butler's wife? What?”
“One of them—I heard—she saw—and knew. Hers! Not for me. I didn't know at first. Perhaps I was jealous. Afterwards, I began to understand that it was only because I loved them, not because—. . . Oh, you must bear or lose,” she said piteously. “There is no other way—and yet they love me. They must! Don't they?”
There was no sound in the room except the lapping voices of the fire, but we two listened intently, and she at least took comfort from what she heard. She recovered herself and half rose. I sat still in my chair by the screen.
“Don't think me a wretch to whine about myself like this, but—but I'm all in the dark, you know, and you can see.”
In truth I could see, and my vision confirmed me in my resolve, though that was like the very parting of spirit and flesh. Yet a little longer I would stay since it was the last time.
“You think it is wrong, then?” she cried sharply, though I had said nothing.
“Not for you. A thousand times no. For you it is right. . . . I am grateful to you beyond words. For me it would be wrong. For me only. . . .”
“Why?” she said, but passed her hand before her face as she had done at our second meeting in the wood. “Oh, I see,” she went on simply as a child. “For you it would be wrong.” Then with a little indrawn laugh, “and, d'you remember, I called you lucky—once—at first. You who must never come here again!”
She left me to sit a little longer by the screen, and I heard the sound of her feet die out along the gallery above.
END
“The Forgotten Ones” by Osie Turner (2014)
From The Dead
Edith Nesbit
1893
Contents:
Part I
Part II
Part III
I
"BUT true or not true, your brother is a scoundrel. No man—no decent man—tells such things."
"He did not tell me. How dare you suppose it? I found the letter in his desk; and she being my friend and you being her lover, I never thought there could be any harm in my reading her letter to my brother. Give me back the letter. I was a fool to tell you."
Ida Helmont held out her hand for the letter.
"Not yet," I said, and I went to the window. The dull red of a London sunset burned on the paper, as I read in the quaint, dainty handwriting I knew so well and had kissed so often—
"Dear, I do—I do love you; but it's impossible. I must marry Arthur. My honour is engaged. If he would only set me free—but he never will. He loves me so foolishly. But as for me, it is you I love—body, soul, and spirit. There is no one in my heart but you. I think of you all day, and dream of you all night. And we must part. And that is the way of the world. Goodbye!—Yours, yours, yours,
Elvire."
I had seen the handwriting, indeed, often enough
. But the passion written there was new to me. That I had not seen.
I turned from the window wearily. My sitting-room looked strange to me. There were my books, my reading-lamp, my untasted dinner still on the table, as I had left it when I rose to dissemble my surprise at Ida Helmont's visit—Ida Helmont, who now sat in my easy-chair looking at me quietly.
"Well—do you give me no thanks?"
"You put a knife in my heart, and then ask for thanks?"
"Pardon me," she said, throwing up her chin. "I have done nothing but show you the truth. For that one should expect no gratitude—may I ask, out of mere curiosity, what you intend to do?"
"Your brother will tell you——"
She rose suddenly, pale to the lips.
"You will not tell my brother?" she began.
"That you have read his private letters? Certainly not!"
She came towards me—her gold hair flaming in the sunset light.
"Why are you so angry with me?" she said. "Be reasonable. What else could I do?"
"I don't know."
"Would it have been right not to tell you?"
"I don't know. I only know that you've put the sun out, and I haven't got used to the dark yet."
"Believe me," she said, coming still nearer to me, and laying her hands in the lightest light touch on my shoulders, "believe me, she never loved you."
There was a softness in her tone that irritated and stimulated me. I moved gently back, and her hands fell by her sides.
"I beg your pardon," I said. "I have behaved very badly. You were quite right to come, and I am not ungrateful. Will you post a letter for me?"
I sat down and wrote—
"I give you back your freedom. The only gift of mine that can please you now.
"Arthur."
I held the sheet out to Miss Helmont, and, when she had glanced at it, I sealed, stamped, and addressed it.
"Goodbye," I said then, and gave her the letter. As the door closed behind her I sank into my chair, and I am not ashamed to say that I cried like a child or a fool over my lost plaything—the little dark-haired woman who loved someone else with "body, soul, and spirit."
I did not hear the door open or any foot on the floor, and therefore I started when a voice behind me said—
"Are you so very unhappy? Oh, Arthur, don't think I am not sorry for you!"
"I don't want anyone to be sorry for me, Miss Helmont," I said.
She was silent a moment. Then, with a quick, sudden, gentle movement she leaned down and kissed my forehead—and I heard the door softly close. Then I knew that the beautiful Miss Helmont loved me.
At first that thought only fleeted by—a light cloud against a grey sky—but the next day reason woke, and said—
"Was Miss Helmont speaking the truth? Was it possible that——?"
I determined to see Elvire, to know from her own lips whether by happy fortune this blow came, not from her, but from a woman in whom love might have killed honesty.
I walked from Hampstead to Gower Street. As I trod its long length, I saw a figure in pink come out of one of the houses. It was Elvire. She walked in front of me to the corner of Store Street. There she met Oscar Helmont. They turned and met me face to face, and I saw all I needed to see. They loved each other. Ida Helmont had spoken the truth. I bowed and passed on. Before six months were gone they were married, and before a year was over I had married Ida Helmont.
What did it I don't know. Whether it was remorse for having, even for half a day, dreamed that she could be so base as to forge a lie to gain a lover, or whether it was her beauty, or the sweet flattery of the preference of a woman who had half her acquaintances at her feet, I don't know; anyhow, my thoughts turned to her as to their natural home. My heart, too, took that road, and before very long I loved her as I had never loved Elvire. Let no one doubt that I loved her—as I shall never love again, please God!
There never was anyone like her. She was brave and beautiful, witty and wise, and beyond all measure adorable. She was the only woman in the world. There was a frankness—a largeness of heart—about her that made all other women seem small and contemptible. She loved me and I worshipped her. I married her, I stayed with her for three golden weeks, and then I left her. Why?
Because she told me the truth. It was one night—late—we had sat all the evening in the verandah of our seaside lodging watching the moonlight on the water and listening to the soft sound of the sea on the sand. I have never been so happy; I never shall be happy any more, I hope.
"Heart's heart," she said, leaning her gold head against my shoulder, "how much do you love me?"
"How much?"
"Yes—how much? I want to know what place it is I hold in your heart. Am I more to you than anyone else?"
"My love!"
"More than yourself?"
"More than my life!"
"I believe you," she said. Then she drew a long breath, and took my hands in hers. "It can make no difference. Nothing in heaven or earth can come between us now."
"Nothing," I said. "But, sweet, my wife, what is it?"
For she was deathly pale.
"I must tell you," she said; "I cannot hide anything now from you, because I am yours—body, soul, and spirit."
The phrase was an echo that stung me.
The moonlight shone on her gold hair, her warm, soft, gold hair, and on her pale face.
"Arthur," she said, "you remember my coming to you at Hampstead with that letter?"
"Yes, my sweet, and I remember how you——"
"Arthur!"—she spoke fast and low—"Arthur, that letter was a forgery. She never wrote it. I——"
She stopped, for I had risen and flung her hands from me, and stood looking at her. God help me! I thought it was anger at the lie I felt. I know now it was only wounded vanity that smarted in me. That I should have been tricked, that I should have been deceived, that I should have been led on to make a fool of myself! That I should have married the woman who had befooled me! At that moment she was no longer the wife I adored—she was only a woman who had forged a letter and tricked me into marrying her.
I spoke; I denounced her; I said I would never speak to her again. I felt it was rather creditable in me to be so angry. I said I would have no more to do with a liar and forger.
I don't know whether I expected her to creep to my knees and implore forgiveness. I think I had some vague idea that I could by-and-by consent with dignity to forgive and forget. I did not mean what I said. No, no; I did not mean a word of it. While I was saying it I was longing for her to weep and fall at my feet, that I might raise her and hold her in my arms again.
But she did not fall at my feet; she stood quietly looking at me.
"Arthur," she said, as I paused for breath, "let me explain—she—I——"
"There is nothing to explain," I said hotly, still with that foolish sense of there being something rather noble in my indignation, as one feels when one calls one's self a miserable sinner. "You are a liar and forger, and that is enough for me. I will never speak to you again. You have wrecked my life——"
"Do you mean that?" she said, interrupting me, and leaning forward to look at me. Tears lay on her cheeks, but she was not crying now.
I hesitated. I longed to take her in my arms and say—"Lay your head here, my darling, and cry here, and know how I love you."
But instead I kept silence.
"Do you mean it?" she persisted.
Then she put her hand on my arm. I longed to clasp it and draw her to me.
Instead, I shook it off, and said—
"Mean it? Yes—of course I mean it. Don't touch me, please! You have ruined my life."
She turned away without a word, went into our room, and shut the door.
I longed to follow her, to tell her that if there was anything to forgive I forgave it.
Instead, I went out on the beach, and walked away under the cliffs.
The moonlight and the solitude, however, presently brought
me to a better mind. Whatever she had done had been done for love of me—I knew that. I would go home and tell her so—tell her that whatever she had done she was my dearest life, my heart's one treasure. True, my ideal of her was shattered, but, even as she was, what was the whole world of women compared to her? I hurried back, but in my resentment and evil temper I had walked far, and the way back was very long. I had been parted from her for three hours by the time I opened the door of the little house where we lodged. The house was dark and very still. I slipped off my shoes and crept up the narrow stairs, and opened the door of our room quite softly. Perhaps she would have cried herself to sleep, and I would lean over her and waken her with my kisses and beg her to forgive me. Yes, it had come to that now.
The Altar of the Dead And Other Morbid Tales Page 11