XXVIII
HER husband's note had briefly said:
"To-day at four o'clock. N.L."
All day she pored over the words in an agony of longing, trying to readinto them regret, emotion, memories, some echo of the tumult in her ownbosom. But she had signed "Susy," and he signed "N.L." That seemedto put an abyss between them. After all, she was free and he was not.Perhaps, in view of his situation, she had only increased the distancebetween them by her unconventional request for a meeting.
She sat in the little drawing-room, and the cast-bronze clock ticked outthe minutes. She would not look out of the window: it might bring badluck to watch for him. And it seemed to her that a thousand invisiblespirits, hidden demons of good and evil, pressed about her, spying outher thoughts, counting her heart-beats, ready to pounce upon the leastsymptom of over-confidence and turn it deftly to derision. Oh, for analtar on which to pour out propitiatory offerings! But what sweetercould they have than her smothered heart-beats, her choked-back tears?
The bell rang, and she stood up as if a spring had jerked her to herfeet. In the mirror between the dried grasses her face looked long paleinanimate. Ah, if he should find her too changed--! If there were buttime to dash upstairs and put on a touch of red....
The door opened; it shut on him; he was there.
He said: "You wanted to see me?"
She answered: "Yes." And her heart seemed to stop beating.
At first she could not make out what mysterious change had come overhim, and why it was that in looking at him she seemed to be looking at astranger; then she perceived that his voice sounded as it used to soundwhen he was talking to other people; and she said to herself, with asick shiver of understanding, that she had become an "other person" tohim.
There was a deathly pause; then she faltered out, not knowing what shesaid: "Nick--you'll sit down?"
He said: "Thanks," but did not seem to have heard her, for he continuedto stand motionless, half the room between them. And slowly theuselessness, the hopelessness of his being there overcame her. A wall ofgranite seemed to have built itself up between them. She felt as ifit hid her from him, as if with those remote new eyes of his he werestaring into the wall and not at her. Suddenly she said to herself:"He's suffering more than I am, because he pities me, and is afraid totell me that he is going to be married."
The thought stung her pride, and she lifted her head and met his eyeswith a smile.
"Don't you think," she said, "it's more sensible-with everything sochanged in our lives--that we should meet as friends, in this way? Iwanted to tell you that you needn't feel--feel in the least unhappyabout me."
A deep flush rose to his forehead. "Oh, I know--I know that--" hedeclared hastily; and added, with a factitious animation: "But thank youfor telling me."
"There's nothing, is there," she continued, "to make our meeting in thisway in the least embarrassing or painful to either of us, when bothhave found...." She broke off, and held her hand out to him. "I've heardabout you and Coral," she ended.
He just touched her hand with cold fingers, and let it drop. "Thankyou," he said for the third time.
"You won't sit down?"
He sat down.
"Don't you think," she continued, "that the new way of... of meetingas friends... and talking things over without ill-will... is muchpleasanter and more sensible, after all?"
He smiled. "It's immensely kind of you to feel that."
"Oh, I do feel it!" She stopped short, and wondered what on earth shehad meant to say next, and why she had so abruptly lost the thread ofher discourse.
In the pause she heard him cough slightly and clear his throat. "Let mesay, then," he began, "that I'm glad too--immensely glad that your ownfuture is so satisfactorily settled."
She lifted her glance again to his walled face, in which not a musclestirred.
"Yes: it--it makes everything easier for you, doesn't it?"
"For you too, I hope." He paused, and then went on: "I want also to tellyou that I perfectly understand--"
"Oh," she interrupted, "so do I; your point of view, I mean."
They were again silent.
"Nick, why can't we be friends real friends? Won't it be easier?" shebroke out at last with twitching lips.
"Easier--?"
"I mean, about talking things over--arrangements. There are arrangementsto be made, I suppose?"
"I suppose so." He hesitated. "I'm doing what I'm told-simply followingout instructions. The business is easy enough, apparently. I'm takingthe necessary steps--"
She reddened a little, and drew a gasping breath. "The necessary steps:what are they? Everything the lawyers tell one is so confusing.... Idon't yet understand--how it's done."
"My share, you mean? Oh, it's very simple." He paused, and added in atone of laboured ease: "I'm going down to Fontainebleau to-morrow--"
She stared, not understanding. "To Fontainebleau--?"
Her bewilderment drew from him his first frank smile. "Well--I choseFontainebleau--I don't know why... except that we've never been theretogether."
At that she suddenly understood, and the blood rushed to her forehead.She stood up without knowing what she was doing, her heart in herthroat. "How grotesque--how utterly disgusting!"
He gave a slight shrug. "I didn't make the laws...."
"But isn't it too stupid and degrading that such things should benecessary when two people want to part--?" She broke off again, silencedby the echo of that fatal "want to part."...
He seemed to prefer not to dwell farther on the legal obligationsinvolved.
"You haven't yet told me," he suggested, "how you happen to be livinghere."
"Here--with the Fulmer children?" She roused herself, trying to catchhis easier note. "Oh, I've simply been governessing them for a fewweeks, while Nat and Grace are in Sicily." She did not say: "It'sbecause I've parted with Strefford." Somehow it helped her wounded pridea little to keep from him the secret of her precarious independence.
He looked his wonder. "All alone with that bewildered bonne? But howmany of them are there? Five? Good Lord!" He contemplated the clock withunseeing eyes, and then turned them again on her face.
"I should have thought a lot of children would rather get on yournerves."
"Oh, not these children. They're so good to me."
"Ah, well, I suppose it won't be for long."
He sent his eyes again about the room, which his absent-minded gazeseemed to reduce to its dismal constituent elements, and added, with anobvious effort at small talk: "I hear the Fulmers are not hitting it offvery well since his success. Is it true that he's going to marry VioletMelrose?"
The blood rose to Susy's face. "Oh, never, never! He and Grace aretravelling together now."
"Oh, I didn't know. People say things...." He was visibly embarrassedwith the subject, and sorry that he had broached it.
"Some of the things that people say are true. But Grace doesn't mind.She says she and Nat belong to each other. They can't help it, shethinks, after having been through such a lot together."
"Dear old Grace!"
He had risen from his chair, and this time she made no effort to detainhim. He seemed to have recovered his self-composure, and it struck herpainfully, humiliatingly almost, that he should have spoken in thatlight way of the expedition to Fontainebleau on the morrow.... Well,men were different, she supposed; she remembered having felt that oncebefore about Nick.
It was on the tip of her tongue to cry out: "But wait--wait! I'm notgoing to marry Strefford after all!"--but to do so would seem like anappeal to his compassion, to his indulgence; and that was not what shewanted. She could never forget that he had left her because he had notbeen able to forgive her for "managing"--and not for the world would shehave him think that this meeting had been planned for such a purpose.
"If he doesn't see that I am different, in spite of appearances... andthat I never was what he said I was that day--if in all these months ithasn't come over him, what's the us
e of trying to make him see it now?"she mused. And then, her thoughts hurrying on: "Perhaps he's sufferingtoo--I believe he is suffering-at any rate, he's suffering for me, ifnot for himself. But if he's pledged to Coral, what can he do? Whatwould he think of me if I tried to make him break his word to her?"
There he stood--the man who was "going to Fontainebleau to-morrow"; whocalled it "taking the necessary steps!" Who could smile as he made thecareless statement! A world seemed to divide them already: it was as iftheir parting were already over. All the words, cries, arguments beatingloud wings in her dropped back into silence. The only thought left was:"How much longer does he mean to go on standing there?"
He may have read the question in her face, for turning back from anabsorbed contemplation of the window curtains he said: "There's nothingelse?"
"Nothing else?"
"I mean: you spoke of things to be settled--"
She flushed, suddenly remembering the pretext she had used to summonhim.
"Oh," she faltered, "I didn't know... I thought there might be.... Butthe lawyers, I suppose...."
She saw the relief on his contracted face. "Exactly. I've always thoughtit was best to leave it to them. I assure you"--again for a moment thesmile strained his lips--"I shall do nothing to interfere with a quicksettlement."
She stood motionless, feeling herself turn to stone. He appeared alreadya long way off, like a figure vanishing down a remote perspective.
"Then--good-bye," she heard him say from its farther end.
"Oh,--good-bye," she faltered, as if she had not had the word ready, andwas relieved to have him supply it.
He stopped again on the threshold, looked back at her, began to speak."I've--" he said; then he repeated "Good-bye," as though to make sure hehad not forgotten to say it; and the door closed on him.
It was over; she had had her last chance and missed it. Now, whateverhappened, the one thing she had lived and longed for would never be. Hehad come, and she had let him go again....
How had it come about? Would she ever be able to explain it to herself?How was it that she, so fertile in strategy, so practiced in femininearts, had stood there before him, helpless, inarticulate, like aschool-girl a-choke with her first love-longing? If he was gone, andgone never to return, it was her own fault, and none but hers. What hadshe done to move him, detain him, make his heart beat and his headswim as hers were beating and swimming? She stood aghast at her owninadequacy, her stony inexpressiveness....
And suddenly she lifted her hands to her throbbing forehead and criedout: "But this is love! This must be love!"
She had loved him before, she supposed; for what else was she to callthe impulse that had drawn her to him, taught her how to overcome hisscruples, and whirled him away with her on their mad adventure? Well,if that was love, this was something so much larger and deeper that theother feeling seemed the mere dancing of her blood in tune with his....
But, no! Real love, great love, the love that poets sang, and privilegedand tortured beings lived and died of, that love had its own superiorexpressiveness, and the sure command of its means. The petty arts ofcoquetry were no farther from it than the numbness of the untaughtgirl. Great love was wise, strong, powerful, like genius, like any otherdominant form of human power. It knew itself, and what it wanted, andhow to attain its ends.
Not great love, then... but just the common humble average of human lovewas hers. And it had come to her so newly, so overwhelmingly, with aface so grave, a touch so startling, that she had stood there petrified,humbled at the first look of its eyes, recognizing that what she hadonce taken for love was merely pleasure and spring-time, and the flavourof youth.
"But how was I to know? And now it's too late!" she wailed.