by E. F. Benson
Marie sat down again. The passion for analysis, of which Jim Spencer had accused her, was strong in her. She was intensely interested.
“Let me understand,” she said. “You are originally in love with me; then you fall in love with Mildred; then you fall in love with me again. Is that it? We take turns. Were there others? You have gratified your whims; why may not I gratify my curiosity?”
Jack did not reply for a moment. Then, “I never fell in love with her,” he said. “But a man is a man.”
“And a woman only a woman,” said Marie. “No, I ought not to have said that. That is not what we are here for. I want to know quite simply what you have got to say for yourself.”
“This only. Six weeks ago — a short enough time, I grant — I should have come back to you, if you would have had me. You would not. If you had, I should have told you — past history myself. Would that not have made a difference?”
“Yes, it would,” said she. “What then?”
“You are a cold, passionless woman, and will not understand,” he said. Then he paused a moment, for a long sigh lay suspended in her breast. “You object to my saying that?” he added.
“No; go on,” said she.
“I should have told you. But you would not. And in an hour of moral weakness I fell. Ah, you do not know what such temptations mean!” he cried. “You have no right to judge.”
Again Marie got up, and in a sudden restlessness began to pace up and down the room.
“I do know,” she said. “I have felt it all. But this is the difference between me and certain others. You — you, I mean — Mildred, anybody, say, ‘I desire something; and, after all, what does it matter?’ Others and I say, ‘It does not signify what I desire, and there is nothing in the world which matters more.’ Oh, Jack, Jack!” — and for the second time she looked at him— “there is the vital and the eternal difference between us,” she went on, speaking very slowly and weighing her words. “It is in this that there lies the one great incompatibility. If I were as you, if I could conceivably take the same view as you take, and think it possible that I should be able to be to another what Mildred has been to you, I would condone everything, because I should understand it. It would not matter then whether I had reached, as you have, the natural outcome of that possibility. If I could soberly imagine myself in that relation to another man than you, I would confess that there was no earthly reason why we should not continue to live comfortably together. But I cannot. I am not an adulteress. Therefore I will not, in act or in name, live with you any longer.”
Then for one moment she blazed up.
“And it was you, you who have been living like this,” she cried, “who could tell me to be careful, for fear people should talk! It was you who told me you had heard an evil, foolish tale about me! Go to your mistress!”
She stood up, pointing with an unsteady hand to the door. Cell after secret cell of her brain caught the fire, and blazed with white-hot indignation. That consuming intensity was rapid. Soon all was burned.
“You had better go, Jack,” she said quietly.
He rose.
“I do not wish to argue with you,” he said, “nor shall I now or henceforth put in any defence. But — and I say this not in the least hope of influencing the decision you have made — remember that a certain number of weeks ago I should have come back to you and I should have told you. I am speaking the truth. That is nearly all. You will find it more convenient, no doubt, to stay here for the present. I shall be at the Carlton. And — and — —”
His voice for the first time faltered and his lip quivered.
“And I am sorry, Marie. You may not believe it now nor for years to come. But it is true. Good-bye.”
He went out of the room without stopping, without even looking at her, and she was left alone again. That moment of passionate outburst had tried her; she felt weary, done for. But almost immediately Lady Ardingly entered again.
“I heard him go down-stairs, my dear,” she said, “but I did not see him. I hope you gave it him hot!”
“Yes, I suppose you might call it that,” said Marie.
“Well, my dear, let us talk things over. You have decided to take a very grave step. I know that without your telling me. You ought to consider carefully what will be the result. A woman who has divorced her husband cannot, for some reason, hold her head very high in England. She is, at any rate, always liable to meet people who insist on looking calmly over it, and not seeing her. That cannot be pleasant. She is thus driven into the country or else into philanthropy. I do not think either will suit you.”
“I know all that,” said Marie. “But neither will it suit me, as you put it, to live with Jack.”
“No, my dear; I understand,” said Lady Ardingly. “There is a choice of evils — —”
“Ah, that is the point,” said Marie. “There is no choice.”
“So you think at present. I will try to show you that there is. Now think well what you are doing. You ruin yourself. That weighs nothing with you just now, because you are in pain, and nothing seems to matter when one is in pain. Then, you are utterly ruining Jack. That seems to you to matter less than nothing. Why? Because you are simply thinking about yourself, let me tell you, and your own notions of right and wrong, which are no doubt excellent.”
“Because I am thinking about myself?” said Marie.
“Yes, of course. You do not mind ruining Jack’s whole career. He has been offered the War Office. You stop all that, and, what matters more, you annihilate all that he will certainly do for the country. He is not an ordinary man; he is in some ways, perhaps, a great one. It is certain, anyhow, that the country believes in him and that your Empire needs him. But you stop all that like—” and she blew out the match with which she had lit her cigarette.
Marie shook her head.
“I have thought it over,” she said. “It means nothing to me. I cannot go on living with him. And I will be legally set free.”
Lady Ardingly thought a moment. She never wasted words, and saw clearly that the needs of the Empire were a barren discussion.
“Supposing you had had a child by him, my dear?” she said gently.
“God has spared me that,” said Marie. “We need not discuss it.”
Next moment Lady Ardingly could have boxed her own ears at her own stupidity.
“And Maud?” she said. “Have you thought of her?”
Marie pushed away the footstool on which her feet were resting.
“Maud,” she said— “Maud Brereton?”
“Yes, my dear. She, too, is burned in your suttee. Oh, you will have a fine blaze!”
For the first moment she had a spark of hope.
“Maud!” said Marie again. “What has she done?”
“She has committed the great crime of being the daughter of your husband’s mistress,” said Lady Ardingly. “Otherwise I know nothing against her. Andrew, I should imagine, will divorce his wife, if you do anything. It will be pleasant for a young girl just beginning the world! She was, I believe, perhaps going to marry Anthony Maxwell. That, too, will be off, like the British Empire. But they do not matter; only Lady Alston matters!”
“Ah, you pitiless woman!” cried Marie. “Do you not see how it is with me?”
Lady Ardingly patted her hand gently.
“My dear, I am not pitiless,” she said; “but it would be cruel of me if I did not put these things before you as they are. It is no time for concealing the truth. You have been thinking only of yourself. All your fastidiousness and your purity has been revolted. You wish to vindicate that insult at whatever cost. I point out to you that the cost is a heavy one.”
“But if I did — if I did,” said Marie, her voice quavering, “would it stop Maud’s marriage, for instance?”
“Mrs. Maxwell — Lady Maxwell, I beg her pardon — would assuredly forbid the banns.”
“But Anthony is of age,” said Marie. “He would marry her.”
“He could no
t. Even if he did, she would be the daughter of the divorced woman.”
“But I can’t help myself,” cried Marie. “I could not go on living with Jack.”
“You prefer to sacrifice innocent and guilty to sacrificing yourself,” said Lady Ardingly. “My dear, we live in the world. It may seem to you that I am putting a low view before you, but I assert that you must take the world into account. Else what is the world for?”
There was a long silence, and the longer it lasted the more hopeful Lady Ardingly became. She would not have broken it even if to let it continue meant the abandonment of Bridge for the rest of her natural life. Of all her triumphs, there was none, given that she gained this, that did not weigh light compared to it. She hardly dared look at Marie for fear of breaking the spell; but once, raising her eyes, she saw that the other was looking straight in front of her, perfectly motionless, her hands on her lap. She knew that she herself had said her last word. Her quiver of arguments was empty; she had nothing more.
Then Marie rose.
“If you can spare the time, Lady Ardingly,” she said, “please take Maud down to Windsor. You will see — that woman, and tell her what you think fit. Please tell Maud from me to do exactly as you bid her. You can make up any story you please about her absence last night, in case Andrew knows. He probably will not, for he breakfasts early alone, and comes up to town always.”
She paused a moment.
“And send Jack back to me,” she said.
Later on the same day Jack was waiting for Mildred in her room in the Grosvenor Square house. Before long she came in radiant.
“Now sit down, Jack,” she said, “and tell me all that happened. All I know is that Lady Ardingly brought Maud back before lunch to-day. You may imagine what a relief that was! Andrew had gone up to town early — earlier than you — and he knows nothing about anything. How clever Lady Ardingly is, and how well she has managed everything! Maud, of course, was quite impossible. She would not say a word to me, and stopped down there. But I passed Anthony as I drove up. I said Maud would be charmed to see him. I think things are going all right there, and so Marie’s little scheme was not successful.”
“We will not speak of Marie’s little scheme,” said Jack.
She looked at him in surprise, too absorbed at present in her own thick relief of mind to be annoyed.
“How gloomy you are, Jack! I suppose Marie has put you in a bad temper. Did she give it you hot? Poor old man! tell me what she said.”
“She said — eventually that is — that she was going to do nothing; that she would continue to live with me, and that I might go my own way and do exactly what I liked.”
Mildred was rapidly stripping off her long suède gloves.
“Now, that is nicer than I expected of her,” she said. “Of course one could have objected to nothing, to no condition she chose to impose, for we were absolutely in her power, and she might have bound you never to see me again. Do you think perhaps she has something up her sleeve on her own account?”
Jack leaned back in his chair.
“What do you mean exactly?” he asked.
“Dear Jack, how dull you are! Why, Jim Spencer of course. Has she come round to this policy of mutual tolerance? It is quite the best policy. Honesty is not in it!”
“No,” said he. “I feel sure she has not.”
Mildred laughed, and poured herself out some tea.
“You think not? You don’t half appreciate Marie. Nor did I till to-day. But I think she has got twice as much ordinary work-a-day common-sense as we supposed.”
She bit a macaroon with her short sharp teeth and crunched it.
“It was sensible, very sensible, of her not to make a row of European dimensions,” she continued. “No doubt when it came to, she saw how impossible it was. But to make no conditions — it was charming, simply charming of her! And how much more comfortable we shall be now, Jack! Before there was always that one little reservation: ‘What if Marie knew?’ That is gone now. Why didn’t we let her know, oh, ages ago? It would have saved so much trouble.”
She laid her finger-tips lightly on Jack’s neck as she passed. He moved his head away. But she did not notice it, and passed on to her table.
“This is the photograph of her which you smashed up after the Silly Billy scandal,” she said. “Have they not mended the frame well? I told them to send the bill to you. Will you dine here to-night?”
“No, I am dining at home,” said Jack.
Mildred paused.
“Ah, you have people, I suppose,” she said.
“No, we are dining alone, Marie and I. I have got things I must say to her.”
“Indeed! I cannot guess what.”
“I must tell her what I have decided to do. I must tell you also. I shall not see you again, Mildred. Not, at least, in the way you mean, in the way we meant,” he added.
She sat down heavily.
“You were saying?” she asked.
“I was saying — that.”
“Then what has happened?” she asked, spilling her tea in the saucer as she spoke.
“It has happened that I do appreciate what you do not. I wonder if all things of this sort are so crude. That is by the way. But you are as intolerable to me as I am to Marie. I have fallen in love with her. To-day I know it, fully, completely. But I came here to talk it out. Let me do so, though there is not much to say. Long ago we knew that one of us must get tired first. We settled then that it was impossible for either of us; but supposing the impossible, we should not be sentimental and reproachful. I am sorry it is me. I would sooner that it was you. But it is me.”
“And the reason?” asked she.
“I do not know for certain. What I do know is that there is only one woman in the world for me. She is my wife. And she — she does not know of my existence.”
Mildred got up.
“Go, then,” she said.
And she was left alone with the mended photograph of Marie and her spilt tea.
CHAPTER XVII
It was a warm bright day of early November, so serene and sunny even in London that it seemed as if the promise of spring rather than any threat of winter was in the air. Leaves still lingered thickly on the plane-trees in the Park, and a sun divinely clear flooded the streets and roadways with unusual light. Shop-boys whistled as they went on their errands, the hoops of children were bowled with alacrity, while their nursemaids smiled on the benignant police who piloted them and their charges over perilous crossings. London, moreover, was rather full; that is to say, a few hundreds who would not otherwise have been there had joined the patient millions who were never anywhere else, for Parliament had met, and a three-lined whip had been flogging the laggards back to their places from partridge-drive and pheasant-shoot. For this reason, the columns of “Diana” had been particularly sprightly, and all the world might read with rapture that Lady Ardingly had returned with her husband to Pall Mall; that Lord Alston with his wife, “who looked quite charming in a guipure hat trimmed with sassafras” — or the effect of such words — were in Park Lane; that Lord Brereton with his wife, “whom I saw driving two spirited colts in the Park yesterday,” had returned to Grosvenor Square. “Cupid’s Bow,” also, had reported the marriage of the daughter to Mr. Anthony Maxwell only three days before, and “Diana” had been graciously pleased to express satisfaction at the presents, knew, of course, how delighted everybody was, and what the bride’s travelling dress was like; in fact, there was no doubt whatever about it.
The spirited colt business was also authentic, and the morning after this announcement had appeared it so happened that Mildred was driving them again. The carriage was of a light-phaeton type, with a seat for the groom behind, and the two cobs— “Diana” had miscalled them — took it like a feather. On the whole, Mildred had had a pleasanter autumn that she had thought possible. She had stayed at several entertaining houses, had picked up several new friends and dropped several old ones. Her method of dropping old frie
nds was always admirable. She never hurled them violently away; she merely opened her fingers and let them fall gently to the ground, never quarrelling with them, but just becoming unconscious of their existence. Then she had been at Aix for a fortnight, and had explained matters quite satisfactorily to a person who mattered very much, and altogether had rather a success. Afterwards followed Maud’s marriage, which left her freer than before (and she had already persuaded herself that the last two seasons had been bondage); and she had invented and learned by heart a little story of how that very odd woman, Marie Alston, had tried to stop it. In its finished form it was quite a pathetic narrative. “But every one must choose for himself what he means to do,” it ended, “and if Marie chooses to be malicious, it is her look-out. Dear Marie! I used to be very fond of her. Yes, she has gone off terribly — quite passée, and so young, too. She cannot be more than thirty.” This latter was quite true; she was only twenty-six, and Mildred knew it.
Yes, on the whole Mildred congratulated herself. Her appetite for pleasure had not been diminished by the events of this summer, and there was still plenty to feed it. In her superficial way she missed Jack a good deal, but she had got over it in her hard, practical manner, and all that remained to her now of regret had been transformed into implacable anger against him for his desertion. However, she had some charming new friends, and certainly one crowd was very like another crowd. To have your house full, that was the great thing, and to get plenty of invitations to houses that would also be full. She liked eating, and screaming, and laughing, and intriguing; they were still at her command. Externally, to conclude, she was a shade more pronounced; her hair was slightly more Titianesque, her cheeks a little more highly coloured, her mouth a little redder, her eyebrows a little thicker. Most people thought she looked very well, but Lady Ardingly said to herself, “Poor Mildred is beginning to fight for it.”