Griggs came back from the window and sat down near her again in the low chair, looking up into her face.
“Mr. Griggs,” she said, turning from his eyes and looking into the piano, “you asked me a question just now. I should like to answer it, if I were quite sure of you.”
“Are you not sure of me?” he asked. “I think you might be, by this time. We were just saying that we had known each other so long.”
“Yes. But — all sorts of things have happened in that time, you know. I am not the same as I was when I first knew you.”
“No. You are married. That is one great difference.”
“Too great,” said she. “Honestly, do you think me improved since my marriage?”
“Improved? No. Why should you improve? You are just what you were meant to be, as you always were.”
“I know. You called me a perfect woman a little while ago, and you said my surroundings were imperfect. You must have meant that they did not suit me, or that I did not suit them. Which was it?”
“They ought to suit you,” said Griggs. “If they do not, it is not your fault.”
“But I might have done something to make them suit me. I sometimes think that I have not treated them properly.”
“Why should you blame yourself? You did not make them, and they cannot unmake you. You have a right to be yourself. Everybody has. It is the first right. Your surroundings owe you more than you owe to them, because you are what you are, and they are not what they ought to be. Let them bear the blame. As for not treating them properly, no one could accuse you of that.”
“I do not know — some one might. People are so strange, sometimes.”
She stopped, and he answered nothing. Looking down into the open piano, she idly watched the hammers move as she pressed the keys softly with one hand.
“Some people are just like this,” she said, smiling, and repeating the action. “If you touch them in a certain way, they answer. If you press them gently, they do not understand. Do you see? The hammer comes just up to the string, and then falls back again without making any noise. I suppose those are my surroundings. Sometimes they answer me, and sometimes they do not. I like things I can be sure of.”
“And by things you mean people,” suggested Griggs.
“Of course.”
“And by your surroundings you mean — what?”
“You know,” she answered in a low voice, turning her face still further away from him.
“Reanda?”
She hesitated for a moment, knowing that her answer must have weight on the man.
“I suppose so,” she said at last. “I ought not to say so — ought I? Tell me the truth.”
“The truth is, you are unhappy,” he answered slowly. “There is no reason why you should not tell me so. Perhaps I might help you, if you would let me.”
He almost regretted that he had said so much, little as it was. But she had wished him to say it, and more, also. Still turning from him, she rested her chin in her hand. His face was still, but there was the beginning of an expression in it which she had never seen. Now that the window was shut it was very quiet in the room, and the air was strangely heavy and soft and dim. Now and then the panes rattled a little. Griggs looked at the graceful figure as Gloria sat thinking what she should say. He followed the lines till his eyes rested on what he could see of her averted face. Then he felt something like a sharp, quick blow at his temples, and the blood rose hot to his throat. At the same instant came the bitter little pang he had known long, telling him that she had never loved him and never could.
“Are you really my friend?” she asked softly.
“Yes.” The word almost choked him, for there was not room for it and for the rest.
She turned quietly and surveyed the marble mask with curious inquiry.
“Why do you say it like that,” she asked; “as though you would rather not? Do you grudge it?”
“No.” He spoke barely above his breath.
“How you say it!” she exclaimed, with a little laugh that could not laugh itself out, for there was a strange tension in the air, and on her and on him. “You might say it better,” she added, the pupils of her eyes dilating a little so that the room looked suddenly larger and less distinct.
She knew the sensation of coming emotion, and she loved it. She had never thought before that she could get it by talking with Paul Griggs. He did not answer her.
“Perhaps you meant it,” she said presently. “I hardly know. Did you?”
“Please be reasonable,” said Griggs, indistinctly, and his hands gripped each other on his knee.
“How oddly you talk!” she exclaimed. “What have I said that was unreasonable?”
She felt that the emotion she had expected was slipping from her, and her nerves unconsciously resented the disappointment. She was out of temper in an instant.
“You cannot understand,” he answered. “There is no reason why you should. Forgive me. I am nervous to-day.”
“You? Nervous?” She laughed again, with a little scorn. “You are not capable of being nervous.”
She was dimly conscious that she was provoking him to something, she knew not what, and that he was resisting her. He did not answer her last words. She went back to the starting-point again, dropping her voice to a sadder key.
“Honestly, will you be my friend?” she asked, with a gentle smile.
“Heart and soul — and hand, too, if you want it,” he said, for he had recovered his speech. “Tell me what the trouble is. If I can, I will take you out of it.”
It was rather an odd speech, and she was struck by the turn of the phrase, which expressed more strength than doubt of power to do anything he undertook.
“I believe you could,” she said, looking at him. “You are so strong. You could do anything.”
“Things are never so hard as they look, if one is willing to risk everything,” he answered. “And when one has nothing to lose,” he added, as an after-thought.
She sighed, and turned away again, half satisfied.
“There is nothing to risk,” she said. “It is not a case of danger. And you cannot take my trouble and tear it up like a pack of cards with those hands of yours. I wish you could. I am unhappy — yes, I have told you so. But what can you do to help me? You cannot make my surroundings what they are not, you know.”
“No — I cannot change your husband,” said Griggs.
She started a little, but still looked away.
“No. You cannot make him love me,” she said, softly and sadly.
The big hands lost their hold on one another, and the deep eyes opened a little wider. But she was not watching him.
“Do you mean to say—” He stopped.
She slowly bent her head twice, but said nothing.
“Reanda does not love you?” he said, in wondering interrogation. “Why — I thought—” He hesitated.
“He cares no more for me than — that!” The hand that stretched towards him across the open piano tapped the polished wood once, and sharply.
“Are you in serious earnest?” asked Griggs, bending forward, as though to catch her first look when she should turn.
“Does any one jest about such things?” He could just see that her lips curled a little as she spoke.
“And you — you love him still?” he asked, with pressing voice.
“Yes — I love him. The more fool I.”
The words did not grate on him, as they would have jarred on her husband’s ear. The myth he had imagined made perfections of the woman’s faults.
“It is a pity,” he said, resting his forehead in his hand. “It is a deadly pity.”
Then she turned at last and saw his attitude.
“You see,” she said. “There is nothing to be done. Is there? You know my story now. I have married a man I worship, and he does not care for me. Take it and twist it as you may, it comes to that and nothing else. You can pity me, but you cannot help me. I must bear it as well as
I can, and as long as I must. It will end some day — or I will make it end.”
“For God’s sake do not talk like that!”
“How should I talk? What should I say? Is it of any use to speak to him? Do you think I have not begged him, implored him, besought him, almost on my knees, to give up that work and do other things?”
Griggs looked straight into her eyes a moment and then almost understood what she meant.
“You mean that he — that when he is painting there—” He hesitated.
“Of course. All day long. All the bitter live-long day! They sit there together on pretence of talking about it. You know — you can guess at least — it is the old, old story, and I have to suffer for it. She could not marry him — because she is a princess and he an artist — good enough for me — God knows, I love him! Too good for her, ten thousand times too good! But yet not good enough for her to marry! He needed a wife, and she brought us together, and I suppose he told her that I should do very well for the purpose. I was a good subject. I fell in love with him — that was what they wanted. A wife for her favourite! O God! When I think of it—”
She stopped suddenly and buried her face in both her hands, as she leaned upon the piano.
“It is not to be believed!” The strong man’s voice vibrated with the rising storm of anger.
She looked up again with flashing eyes and pale cheeks.
“No!” she cried. “It is not to be believed! But you see it now. You see what it all is, and how my life is wrecked and ruined before it is half begun. It would be bad enough if I had married him for his fame, for his face, for his money, for anything he has or could have. But I married him because I loved him with all my soul, and worshipped him and everything he did.”
“I know. We all saw it.”
“Of course — was it anything to hide? And I thought he loved me, too. Do you know?” She grew more calm. “At first I used to go and sit in the hall when he was at work. Then he grew silent, and I felt that he did not want me. I thought it was because he was such a great artist, and could not talk and work, and wanted to be alone. So I stayed away. Then, once, I went there, and she was there, sitting in that great chair — it shows off the innocence of her white face, you know! The innocence of it!” Gloria laughed bitterly. “They were talking when I came, and they stopped as soon as the door opened. I am sure they were talking about me. Then they seemed dreadfully uncomfortable, and she went away. After that I went several times. Once or twice she came in while I was there. Then she did not come any more. He must have told her, of course. He kept looking at the door, though, as if he expected her at any moment. But she never came again in those days. I could not bear it — his trying to talk to me, and evidently wishing all the time that she would come. I gave up going altogether at last. What could I do? It was unbearable. It was more than flesh and blood could stand.”
“I do not wonder that you hate her,” said Griggs. “I have often thought you did.”
Gloria smiled sadly.
“Yes,” she answered. “I hate her with all my heart. She has robbed me of the only thing I ever had worth having — if I ever had it. I sometimes wonder — or rather, no. I do not wonder, for I know the truth well enough. I have been over and over it again and again in the night. He never loved me. He never could love any one but her. He knew her long ago, and has loved her all his life. Why should he put me in her place? He admired me. I was a beautiful plaything — no, not beautiful—” She paused.
“You are the most beautiful woman in the world,” said Paul Griggs, with deep conviction.
He saw the blush of pleasure in her face, saw the fluttering of the lids. But he neither knew that she had meant him to say it, nor did he judge of the vast gulf her mind must have instantaneously bridged, from the outpouring of her fancied injuries and of her hatred for Francesca Campodonico, to the unconcealable satisfaction his words gave her.
“I have heard him say that, too,” she answered a moment later. “But he did not mean it. He never meant anything he said to me — not one word of it all. You do not know what that means,” she went on, working herself back into a sort of despairing anger again. “You do not know. To have built one’s whole life on one thing, as I did! To have believed only one thing, as I did! To find that it is all gone, all untrue, all a wretched piece of acting — oh, you do not know! That woman’s face haunts me in the dark — she is always there, with him, wherever I look, as they are together now at her house. Do you understand? Do you know what I feel? You pity me — but do you know? Oh, I have longed for some one — I have wished I had a dog to listen to me — sometimes — it is so hard to be alone — so very hard—”
She broke off suddenly and hid her face again.
“You are not alone. You have me — if you will have me.”
Before he had finished speaking the few words, the first sob broke, violent, real, uncontrollable. Then came the next, and then the storm of tears. Griggs rose instinctively and came to her side. He leaned heavily on the piano, bending down a little, helpless, as some men are at such moments. She did not notice him, and her sobs filled the still room. As he stood over her he could see the bright tears falling upon the black and white ivory keys. He laid his trembling hand upon her shoulder. He could hardly draw his breath for the sight of her suffering.
“Don’t — don’t,” he said, almost pathetic in his lack of eloquence when he thought he most needed it.
One of her hot hands, all wet with tears, went suddenly to her shoulder, and grasped his that lay there, with a convulsive pressure, seeming to draw him down as she bowed herself almost to the keyboard in her agony of weeping. Then, without thought, his other hand, cold as ice, was under her throat, bringing her head gently back upon his arm, till the white face was turned up to his. Sob by sob, more distantly, the tempest subsided, but still the great tears swelled the heavy lids and ran down across her face upon his wrist. Then the wet, dark eyes opened and looked up to his, above her head.
“Be my friend!” she said softly, and her fingers pressed his very gently.
He looked down into her eyes for one moment, and then the passion in him got the mastery of his honourable soul.
“How can I?” he cried in a broken, choking voice. “I love you!”
In an instant he was standing up, lifting her high from the floor, and the lips that had perhaps never kissed for love before, were pressed upon hers. What chance had she, a woman, in those resistless arms of his? In her face was the still, fateful look of the dead nun, rising from the far grave of a buried tragedy.
In his uncontrollable passion he crushed her to him, holding her up like a child. She struggled and freed her hands and pressed them both upon his two eyes.
“Please — please!” she cried.
There was a pitiful ring in the tone, like the bleating of a frightened lamb. He hurt her too, for he was overstrong when he was thoughtless.
She cried out to him to let her go. But as she hung there, it was not all fear that she felt. There came with it an uncertain, half-delirious thrill of delight. To feel herself but a feather to his huge strength, swung, tossed, kissed, crushed, as he would. There was fear already, there was all her innocent maidenlike resistance, beating against him with might and anger, there was the feminine sense of injury by outrageous violence; but with it all there was also the natural woman’s delight in the main strength of the natural man, that could kill her in an instant if he chose, but that could lift her to itself as a little child and surround her and protect her against the whole world.
“Please — please!” she cried again, covering his fierce eyes and white face with her hands and trying to push him away. The tone was pathetic in its appeal, and it touched him. His arms relaxed, tightened again with a sort of spasm, and then she found herself beside him on her feet. A long silence followed.
Gloria sank into a chair, glanced at him and saw that his face was turned away, looked down again and then watched him. His chest heaved once or twice,
as though he had run a short sharp race. One hand grasped the back of a chair as he stood up. All at once, without looking at her, he went to the window and stood there, looking out, but seeing nothing. The soft damp wind made the panes of glass rattle. Still neither broke the silence. Then he came to her and stood before her, looking down, and she looked down, too, and would not see him. She was more afraid of him now than when he had lifted her from her feet, and her heart beat fast. She wondered what he would say, for she supposed that he meant to ask her forgiveness, and she was right.
“Gloria — forgive me!” — Vol. II., .
“Gloria — forgive me,” he said.
She looked up, a little fear of him still in her face.
“How can I?” she asked, but in her voice there was forgiveness already.
Her womanly instinct, though she was so young, told her that the fault was hers, and that considering the provocation it was not a great one — what were a few kisses, even such kisses as his, in a lifetime? And she had tempted him beyond all bounds and repented of it. Before the storm she had raised in him, her fancied woes sank away and seemed infinitely small. She knew that she had worked herself up to emotion and tears, though not half sure of what she was saying, that she had exaggerated all she knew and suggested all she did not know, that she had almost been acting a part to satisfy something in her which she could not understand. And by her acting she had roused the savage truth in her very face and it had swept down everything before it. She had not guessed such possibilities. Before the tempest of his love all she had ever felt or dreamed of feeling seemed colourless and cold. She dreaded to rouse it again, and yet she could never forget the instant thrill that had quivered through her when he had lifted her from her feet.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 781