“To bring no sorrow to any one, Louis — that is the way I am trying to live,” she said, seriously.
“You are bringing it to me.”
“If that is so — then I had better depart as I came and leave you in peace.”
“It’s too late.”
“Perhaps it is not. Shall we try it?”
“Could you recover?”
“I don’t know. I am willing to try for your sake.”
“Do you want to?” he asked, almost angrily.
“I am not thinking of myself, Louis.”
“I want you to. I don’t want you not to think about yourself all the time.”
She made a hopeless gesture, opening her arms and turning her palms outward:
“Kelly Neville! What do you suppose loving you means to me?”
“Don’t you think of yourself at all when you love me?”
“Why — I suppose I do — in a way. I know I’m fortunate, happy — I—” She glanced up shyly— “I am glad that I am — loved—”
“You darling!”
She let him take her into his arms, suffered his caress, looking at him in silence out of eyes as dark and clear and beautiful as brown pools in a forest.
“You’re just a bad, spoiled, perverse little kid, aren’t you?” he said, rumpling her hair.
“You say so.”
“Breaking my heart because you won’t marry me.”
“No, breaking my own because you don’t really love me enough, yet.”
“I love you too much—”
“That is literary bosh, Louis.”
“Good God! Can’t you ever understand that I’m respectable enough to want you for my wife?”
“You mean that you want me for what I do not wish to be. And you decline to love me unless I turn into a selfish, dependent, conventional nonentity, which you adore because respectable. Is that what you mean?”
“I want the laws of civilisation to safeguard you,” he persisted patiently.
“I need no more protection than you need. I am not a baby. I am not afraid. Are you?”
“That is not the question—”
“Yes it is, dear. I stand in no fear. Why do you wish to force me to do what I believe would be a wrong to you? Can’t you respect my disreputable convictions?”
“They are theories — not convictions—”
“Oh, Kelly, I’m so tired of hearing you say that!”
“I should think you would be, you little imp of perversity!”
“I am…. And I wonder how I can love you just as much, as though you were kind and reasonable and — and minded your own business, dear.”
“Isn’t it my business to tell the girl to whom I’m engaged what I believe to be right?”
“Yes; and it’s her business to tell you” she said, smiling; and put her arms higher so that they slipped around his neck for a moment, then were quickly withdrawn.
“What a thoroughly obstinate boy you are!” she exclaimed. “We’re wasting such lots of time in argument when it’s all so very simple. Your soul is your own to develop; mine is mine. Noli, me tangere!”
But he was not to be pacified; and presently she went away to pour their tea, and he followed and sat down in an armchair near the fire, brooding gaze fixed on the coals.
They had tea in hostile silence; he lighted a cigarette, but presently flung it into the fire without smoking.
She said: “You know, Louis, if this is really going to be an unhappiness to you, instead of a happiness beyond words, we had better end it now.” She added, with an irrepressible laugh, partly nervous, “Your happiness seems to be beyond words already. Your silence is very eloquent…. I think I’ll take my doll and go home.”
She rose, stood still a moment looking at him where he sat, head bent, staring into the coals; then a swift tenderness filled her eyes; her sensitive lips quivered; and she came swiftly to him and took his head into her arms.
“Dear,” she whispered, “I only want to do the best for you. Let me try in my own way. It’s all for you — everything I do or think or wish or hope is for you. Even I myself was made merely for you.”
Sideways on the arm of his chair, she stooped down, laying her cheek against his, drawing his face closer.
“I am so hopelessly in love with you,” she murmured; “if I make mistakes, forgive me; remember only that it is because I love you enough to die for you very willingly.”
He drew her down into his arms. She was never quick to respond to the deeper emotions in him, but her cheeks and throat were flushed now, and, as his embrace enclosed her, she responded with a sudden flash of blind passion — a moment’s impulsive self-surrender to his lips and arms — and drew away from him dazed, trembling, shielding her face with one arm.
All that the swift contact was awakening in him turned on her fiercely now; in his arms again she swayed, breathless, covering her face with desperate hands, striving to comprehend, to steady her senses, to reason while pulses and heart beat wildly and every vein ran fire.
“No—” she stammered— “this is — is wrong — wrong! Louis, I beg you, to remember what I am to you…. Don’t kiss me again — I ask you not to — I pray that you won’t…. We are — I am — engaged to you, dear…. Oh — it is wrong — wrong, now! — all wrong between us!”
“Valerie,” he stammered, “you care nothing for any law — nor do I — now—”
“I do! You don’t understand me! Let me go. Louis — you don’t love me enough…. This — this is madness — wickedness! — you can’t love me! You don’t — you can’t!”
“I do love you, Valerie—”
“No — no — or you would let me go! — or you would not kiss me again—”
She freed herself, breathless, crimson with shame and anger, avoiding his eyes, and slipped out of his embrace to her knees, sank down on the rug at his feet, and laid her head against the chair, breathing fast, both small hands pressed to her breast.
For a few minutes he let her lie so; then, stooping over her, white lipped, trembling:
“What can you expect if we sow the wind?”
She began to cry, softly: “You don’t understand — you never have understood!”
“I understand this: that I am ready to take you in your way, now. I cannot live without you, and I won’t. I care no longer how I take you, or when, or where, as long as I can have you for mine, to keep for ever, to love, to watch over, to worship…. Dear — will you speak to me?”
She shook her head, desolately, where it lay now against his knees, amid its tumbled hair.
Then he asked again for her forgiveness — almost fiercely, for passion still swayed him with every word. He told her he loved her, adored her, could not endure life without her; that he was only too happy to take her on any terms she offered.
“Louis,” she said in a voice made very small and low by the crossed arms muffling her face, “I am wondering whether you will ever know what love is.”
“Have I not proved that I love you?”
“I — don’t know what it is you have proved…. We were engaged to each other — and — and—”
“I thought you cared nothing for such conventions!”
She began to cry again, silently.
“Valerie — darling—”
“No — you don’t understand,” she sobbed.
“Understand what, dearest — dearest —
“That I thought our love was its own protection — and mine.”
He made no answer.
She knelt there silent for a little while, then put her hand up appealingly for his handkerchief.
“I have been very happy in loving you,” she faltered; “I have promised you all there is of myself. And you have already had my best self. The rest — whatever it is — whatever happens to me — I have promised — so that there will be nothing of this girl called Valerie West which is not all yours — all, all — every thought, Louis, every pulse-beat — mind, soul, body…. But no future
day had been set; I had thought of none as yet. Still — since I knew I was to be to you what I am to be, I have been very busy preparing for it — mind, soul, my little earthly possessions, my personal affairs in their small routine…. No bride in your world, busy with her trousseau, has been a happier dreamer than have I, Louis. You don’t know how true I have tried to be to myself, and to the truth as I understand it — as true as I have been to you in thought and deed…. And, somehow, what threatened — a moment since — frightens me, humiliates me—”
She lifted her head and looked up at him with dimmed eyes:
“You were untrue to yourself, Louis — to your own idea of truth. And you were untrue to me. And for the first time I look at you, ashamed and shamed.”
“Yes,” he said, very white.
“Why did you offer our love such an insult?” she asked.
He made no answer.
“Was it because, in your heart, you hold a girl lightly who promised to give herself to you for your own sake, renouncing the marriage vows?”
“No! Good God—”
“Then — is it because you do not yet love me enough? For I shall not give myself to you until you do.”
He hung his head.
“I think that is it,” she said, sorrowfully.
“No. I’m no good,” he said. “And that’s the truth, Valerie.” A dark flush stained his face and he turned it away, sitting there in silence, his tense clasp tightening on the arms of the chair. Then he said, still not meeting her eyes:
“Whatever your beliefs are you practice them; you are true to your convictions, loyal to yourself. I am only a miserable, rotten specimen of man who is true to nothing — not even to himself. I’m not worth your trouble, Valerie.”
“Louis!”
“Well, what am I?” he demanded in fierce disgust. “I have told you that I believe in the conventions — and I violate every one of them. I’m a spectacle for gods and men!” His face was stern with self-disgust: he forced himself to meet her gaze, wincing under it; but he went on:
“I know well enough that I deserve your contempt; I’ve acquired plenty of self-contempt already. But I do love you, God knows how or in what manner, but I love you, cur that I am — and I respect you — oh, more that you understand, Valerie. And if I ask your mercy on such a man as I am, it is not because I deserve it.”
“My mercy, Louis?”
She rose to her knees and laid both hands on his shoulders.
“You are only a man, dear — with all the lovable faults and sins and contradictions of one. But there is no real depravity in you any more than there is in me. Only — I think you are a little more selfish than I am — you lose self-command—” she blushed— “but that is because you are only a man after all…. I think, perhaps, that a girl’s love is different in many ways. Dear, my love for you is perfectly honest. You believe it, don’t you? If for one moment I thought it was otherwise, I’d never let you see me again. If I thought for one moment that anything spiritual was to be gained for us by denying that love to you or to myself — or by living out life alone without you, I have the courage to do it. Do you doubt it?”
“No,” he said.
She sighed, and her gaze passed from his and became remote for a moment, then:
“I want to live my life with you,” she said, wistfully; “I want to be to you all that the woman you love could possibly be. But to me, the giving of myself to you is to be, in my heart, a ceremony more solemn than any in the world — and it is to be a rite at which my soul shall serve on its knees, Louis.”
“Dearest — dearest,” he breathed, “I know — I understand — I ask your pardon. And I worship you.”
Then a swift, smiling change passed over her face; and, her hands still resting on his shoulders, kneeling there before him, she bent forward and kissed him on the forehead.
“Pax,” she said. “You are forgiven. Love me enough, Louis. And when I am quite sure you do, then — then — you may ask me, and I will answer you.”
“I love you now, enough.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Then — ask,” she said, faintly.
His lips moved in a voiceless question, she could not hear him, but she understood.
“In a year, I think,” she answered, forcing her eyes to meet his, but the delicate rose colour was playing over her cheeks and throat.
“As long as that?”
“That is not long. Besides, perhaps you won’t learn to love me enough even by that time. Do you think you will? If you really think so — perhaps in June—”
She watched him as he pressed her hands together and kissed them; laughed a little, shyly, as she suddenly divined a new tenderness and respect in his eyes — something matching the vague exaltation of her own romantic dreams.
“I will wait all my life if you wish it,” he said.
“Do you mean it?”
“You know I do, now.”
She considered him, smiling. “If you truly do feel that way — perhaps — perhaps it might really be in June — or in July—”
“You said June.”
“Listen to the decree of the great god Kelly! He says it must be in
June, and he shakes his thunderbolts and frowns.”
“June! Say so, Valerie,”
“You have said so.”
“But there’s no use in my saying so if—”
“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed, “the great god totters on his pedestal and the oracle falters and I see the mere man looking very humbly around the corner of the shrine at me, whispering, ‘June, if you please, dear lady!’”
“Yes,” he said, “that’s what you see and hear. Now answer me, dear.”
“And what am I to say?”
“June, please.”
“June — please,” she repeated, demurely.
“You darling!… What day?”
“Oh, that’s too early to decide—”
“Please, dear!”
“No; I don’t want to decide—”
“Dearest!”
“What?”
“Won’t you answer me?”
“If you make me answer now, I’ll be tempted to fix the first of April.”
“All right, fix it.”
“It’s All Fool’s day, you know,” she threatened. “Probably it is peculiarly suitable for us…. Very well, then, I’ll say it.”
She was laughing when he caught her hands and looked at her, grave, unsmiling. Suddenly her eyes filled with tears and her lip trembled.
“Forgive me, I meant no mockery,” she whispered. “I had already fixed the first day of June for — for the great change in our lives. Are you content?”
“Yes.” And before she knew what he was doing a brilliant flashed along her ring finger and clung sparkling to it; and she stared at the gold circlet and the gem flashing in the firelight.
There were tears in her eyes when she kissed it, looking at him while her soft lips rested on the jewel.
Neither spoke for a moment; then, still looking at him, she drew the ring from her finger, touched it again with her lips, and laid it gently in his hand.
“No, dear,” she said.
He did not urge her; but she knew he still believed that she would come to think as he thought; and the knowledge edged her lips with tremulous humour. But her eyes were very sweet and tender as she watched him lay away the ring as though it and he were serenely biding their time.
“Such a funny boy,” she said, “and such a dear one. He will never, never grow up, will he?”
“Such an idiot, you mean,” he said, drawing her into the big chair beside him.
“Yes, I mean that, too,” she said, impudently, nose in the air. “Because, if I were you, Louis, I wouldn’t waste any more energy in worrying about a girl who is perfectly able to take care of herself, but transfer it to a boy who apparently is not.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean about your painting.
Dear, you’ve got it into that obstinate head of yours that there’s something lacking in your pictures, and there isn’t.”
“Oh, Valerie! You know there is!”
“No, no, no! There isn’t anything lacking in them. They’re all of you,
Louis — every bit of you — as far as you have lived.”
“What!”
“Certainly. As far as you have lived. Now live a little more, and let more things come into your life. You can’t paint what isn’t in you; and there’s nothing in you except what you get out of life.”
She laid her soft cheek against his.
“Get a little real love out of life, Louis; a little real love. Then surely, surely your canvases can not disguise that you know what life means to us all. Love nobly; and the world will not doubt that love is noble; love mercifully; and the world will understand mercy. For I believe that what you are must show in your work, dear.
“Until now the world has seen in your work only the cold splendour, or dreamy glamour, or the untroubled sweetness and brilliancy of passionless romance. I love your work. It is happiness to look at it; it thrills, bewitches, enthralls!… Dear, forgive me if in it I have not yet found a deeper inspiration…. And that inspiration, to be there, must be first in you, my darling — born of a wider interest in your fellow men, a little tenderness for friends — a more generous experience and more real sympathy with humanity — and perhaps you may think it out of place for me to say it — but — a deeper, truer, spiritual conviction.
“Do you think it strange of me to have such convictions? I can’t escape them. Those who are merciful, those who are kind, to me are Christ-like. Nothing else matters. But to be kind is to be first of all interested in the happiness of others. And you care nothing for people. You must care, Louis!
“And, somehow, you who are, at heart, good and kind and merciful, have not really awakened real love in many of those about you. For one thing your work has absorbed you. But if, at the same time, you could pay a little more attention to human beings—”
“Valerie!” he said in astonishment, “I have plenty of friends. Do you mean to say I care nothing for them?”
“How much do you care, Louis?”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 536