'Yes,' answered Basil, after a moment's pause.
'D'you think she cares for you?'
'The other night I felt sure of it, but now again I'm doubtful. Oh, I want her to care for me. I can't help it, Frank, this is quite a different love from the other; it lifts me up and supports me. I don't want to seem a prig, but when I think of Mrs Murray I can't imagine anything unworthy. And I'm proud of it because my love for her is almost spiritual. If she does care for me and will marry me, I think I may do some good in the world. I fancied that if I went away for six months Jenny would gradually think less of me – I think it's better to drift apart than just to break cruelly at once.'
'It would certainly be less painful to you,' said Frank.
'And when I'm free I shall go to Mrs Murray, tell her the whole story, and ask her to marry me.'
Basil lived in a pleasant court of the Temple to which, notwithstanding the sordid contentions of its daily life, the old red houses and the London plane-trees, with their leafy coolness, gave a charm full of repose. His rooms, on the top floor, were furnished simply, but with the taste of a man who cared for beautiful things. The ladies of Sir Peter Lely, with their sweet artificial grace, looked down in mezzotint from the panelled walls, and the Sheraton furniture gave a delicate austerity to the student's room.
Frank filled his pipe, but they had not been long seated, when there came a knock at the door.
'I wonder who the dickens that is?' said Basil. 'I don't often have visitors on Sunday afternoon.'
He went into the tiny passage and opened. Frank heard Jenny's voice.
'Can I come in, Basil? Is anyone there?'
'Only Frank,' he answered, leading the way in.
Jenny was arrayed in Sabbath garments, the colours of which to the doctor's eye seemed a little crude; the bright bow in her black hat contrasted violently with a fawn jacket, but her beauty was such as to overcome all extravagance of costume. She was rather tall, handsomely made, with the rounded hips and full breasts of a passionate woman; her features were chiselled with the clean perfection of a Greek statue, and no duchess could have had a shorter lip or a more delicate nose; her pink ears were more exquisite than the shells of the sea. But it was her wonderful colouring which chiefly attracted notice, with the rich magnificence of her hair, the brilliant eyes, and the creamy perfection of her skin. Her face had a girlish innocence which was very captivating, and Frank, observing her with critical gaze, could not deny that Mrs Murray by her side, notwithstanding all the advantages of dress and manner, would have been reduced to insignificance.
'I thought you were going home this afternoon,' said Basil.
'No, I couldn't manage it. I came here immediately after we closed at three, but you weren't in. I was so afraid that you wouldn't come before six o'clock.'
It was very clear that Jenny wished to talk with Basil, and Frank, deliberately knocking out the ashes of his pipe, rose to go. His host accompanied him downstairs.
'Look here, Basil,' said Frank; 'if I were you I'd take this opportunity to tell Jenny that you're going away.'
'Yes, I mean to. I'm glad she's come. I wanted to write to her, but I think that would be funking it. Oh, I hate myself because I must cause her so much pain.'
Frank walked away. Disposed at first to envy Basil his good fortune, he had cursed his fate because pretty girls never fell desperately enamoured of him: it would certainly have been a bore, and to him more than to another an insufferable slavery, but yet the marked abstention was not flattering. Now, however, on his way to the club, wanted by no one, with no claims on him of any sort, he congratulated himself cynically because fair ladies kept their smiles for persons more fascinating than himself.
When Basil returned to his room, he found that Jenny had not, as usual, taken off her hat, but stood by the window looking at the door. He went to kiss her, but she drew back.
'Not today, Basil. I've got something to say to you.'
'Well, take off your things first, and make yourself comfortable.'
It occurred to him that Jenny had perhaps quarrelled with her employer at the Golden Crown, or wished to reproach him because for a couple of days he had not seen her, and, lighting his pipe, he answered with careless gaiety. He did not see that she looked at him strangely, but when she spoke there was such tragic anguish in her tone that he was startled.
'I don't know what I should have done if I'd not found you in today.'
'Good heavens, Jenny! what's the matter?'
Her voice broke with a sob.
'I'm in trouble, Basil.'
The tears cut his heart, and very tenderly he put his arms round her; but again she withdrew.
'No, please don't sit near me, or I shall never have the courage to tell you.'
She stood up, drying her eyes, and walked up and down.
'I wanted to see you this morning, Basil. I came to your door, and then I was afraid to knock. So I went away again. And then this afternoon, when I couldn't make you hear, I thought you'd gone away, and I couldn't have borne another night of it.'
'Tell me quickly what it is, Jenny.'
A horrible fear seized him, and his cheeks grew pale as hers. She watched him with anxious eyes.
'I've not been feeling very well these last few days,' she whispered, 'and yesterday I went to the doctor. He told me I was going to have a child.'
And then, hiding her face, she sobbed bitterly. Basil's heart sank within him, and when he looked at that wretched girl, bowed down with fear and shame, he was filled with remorse. If he had never regretted before, he regretted now, with all his soul.
'Don't cry, Jenny; I can't bear it.'
She looked up hopelessly, and the ugliness of that fair face, pain-distraught, tortured him. He was all confused, and many an impulse madly skeltered through his brain: he, too, feared, but at the same time, above all and overmastering, was a wonderful elation because he would be the father of a living child. His pulse throbbed with pride, and like a miracle a sudden love mysteriously burnt up his heart; he took Jenny in his arms and kissed her more passionately than he had ever done before.
'Oh, don't, for God's sake; it's nothing to you,' she cried, trying to tear herself away. 'But what about me? I wish I was dead. I'd always been straight till I knew you.'
He could bear her agony no longer, and the thought which had come to him immediately now grew irresistible. There was one way to dry those tears, one way alone to repair that wrong, and a rising flood of passion made it very easy. His whole soul demanded one definite course, uplifting him and crushing every nascent objection; but his heart beat painfully when he spoke, for he was taking an irretrievable step, and God only knew what would be the end.
'Don't cry, darling; it's not so bad as all that,' he said. 'We'd better get married at once.'
With a little gasp Jenny's sobs were stilled, and quite motionless, looking down, she clung to Basil like a thing from which all life was gone. The words sank into her mind slowly, and she puzzled over them as though they were said in a language she barely understood; and then, still silent, she began to tremble.
'Say that again, Basil,' she whispered, and after a pause: 'Did you mean it? Can you bring yourself to marry me?'
She stood up and looked at him, dishevelled and beautiful, a tragic figure in whose unutterable woe was a most noble pathos.
'I'm only a barmaid, Basil.'
'You're the mother of my child, and I love you,' he answered gravely. 'I've always longed to have children, Jenny, and you've made me very proud and very happy.'
Her eyes shone with tears, and into her anxious, terror-stricken face came a look of such ecstatic happiness that Basil felt himself ten times rewarded.
'Oh, Basil, you are good. You do mean it, don't you? And I shall be with you always?'
'Did you think so badly of me as to suppose I would throw you over now?'
'Oh, I was afraid. You've cared for me less of late, and I've been so unhappy, Basil, but I didn't dare show it. At
first I hadn't the courage to tell you, because I thought you'd be angry. I knew you wouldn't let me starve, but you might just have given me money and told me to go.'
He kissed her hands, aflame as never before with her radiant beauty.
'I didn't know I loved you so much,' he cried.
She sank into his arms with a sob, but it was a sob now of uncontrollable passion, and avid of love she sought his lips.
Basil had in his passage a little gas-stove, and presently with a charming housewifely grace, Jenny set about making the tea: languorous and happy, she was proud to do things for him, and insisted, while she prepared, that he should sit still and smoke.
'I wish we needn't keep a servant, Basil, so as I might wait on you.'
'You mustn't go back to that beastly bar.'
'I can't leave them in a hole, you know. I shall have to give a week's notice.'
'Then give it at once, and as soon as you're free we'll be married.'
'Oh, I shall be so happy!' she sighed with rapture.
'Now, look here: we must be sensible and talk over things. You know I'm not very well-to-do. I've only got three hundred a year.'
'Oh, that's lots,' she cried. 'Why, dad has never had more than three-ten a week.'
Basil smiled doubtfully, for his tastes were expensive, and he had never been able satisfactorily to make ends meet. But he persuaded himself that two persons could live more economically than one; he would give serious attention to his law, and had no doubt that in time he would earn an income. While he waited for briefs he might write. They could afford a little house in the suburbs at Barnes or Putney, and, so as not to be extravagant, for their honeymoon would merely go to Cornwall for a fortnight. After that he must set to work immediately.
'Ma will be surprised when I tell her I'm going to get married,' said Jenny, laughing. 'You must come down and see them.'
Though a brother in the City sometimes came to the Golden Crown, Basil had never made acquaintance with any of Jenny's relations; he knew that they lived at Crouch End.
'I wouldn't have gone back to them if you hadn't said you'd marry me, Basil. Ma would have turned me out of doors. I was frightened to go down today in case she suspected something.' Suddenly, a doubt rising in her mind, she turned to him quickly. 'You do mean it, don't you? You won't go back on me now?'
'Of course not, you foolish child. Don't you think I shall be proud to have so beautiful a wife?'
Jenny was obliged to go a little before six, at which hour the Golden Crown opened its doors to thirsty Christians; and Basil, having accompanied her thither, walked on to consider this new state of his affairs. The capacity to stand quite alone, careless of praise or censure, is very rare among men, and he, temperamentally lacking confidence in himself, felt at that moment a most urgent need for advice and sympathy; but Frank was inaccessible, and he could not disturb Miss Ley again that day. He went to his club and wrote a note asking if he might see her the following morning.
He slept uneasily, and getting up later than usual, had scarcely finished breakfast when an answer came to say that she would be pleased to walk with him at eleven in St James's Park. He fetched her punctually. They sauntered for a while, looking at the wild-fowl, and Basil, hesitating, spoke of indifferent subjects; but Miss Ley, noting his unusual gravity, surmised that he had a difficult communication to make.
'Well, what is it?' she asked point-blank, sitting down.
'Only that I'm going to be married.'
Her thoughts at once went to Mrs Murray, and she wondered when Basil could have found opportunity for his declaration.
'Is that all?' she cried, smiling. 'It's a very proper proceeding for young things, but surely you need not look so serious over it.'
'I'm going to marry a Miss Bush.'
'Who on earth is she? I've never heard of her,' answered the good lady, turning to him with surprise; but a dim recollection flashed across her mind. 'Wasn't it a certain Jenny Bush that Frank told me you had discovered somewhere and vowed was the loveliest creature in the world?' She gave him a long and searching look. 'I suppose you're not going to marry a barmaid from a public-house in Fleet Street?'
'Yes,' he answered quietly.
'But why?'
'Presumably because I'm in love with her.'
'Nonsense! A susceptible youth falls in love with a dozen girls, but in a country where monogamy is enforced by Act of Parliament, it is impracticable to marry them all.'
'I'm afraid I can give you no other reason.'
'You might really have made that interesting announcement by letter,' returned Miss Ley dryly.
He looked down with a discouraged air, and for a while was silent.
'I must talk it over with someone,' he burst out at length. 'I'm so utterly alone, and I have no one to help or advise me. ... I'm marrying Jenny because I must. I've known her for some time – the whole thing was sordid and hateful – and yesterday after I left you she came to my rooms. She was half hysterical, poor thing, she hardly knew what she was saying, and she told me ...'
'What you very well might have foreseen,' interrupted Miss Ley.
'Yes.'
Miss Ley meditated, slowly drawing her initials with the point of her parasol in the gravel, and Basil stared at her anxiously.
'Are you sure you're not making a fool of yourself?' she asked finally. 'You're not in love with her, are you?'
'No.'
'Then you have no right to marry her. Oh, my dear boy, you don't know how tiresome marriage is sometimes, even with persons of the same class and inclinations. I've known so many people in my life, and I'm convinced that marriage is the most terrible thing in the world unless passion makes it absolutely inevitable. And I hate and abhor with all my soul those fools who strive to discredit and ignore that.'
'If I don't marry Jenny she'll kill herself. She's not like an ordinary barmaid. Until I knew her she was perfectly straight. It means absolute ruin to her.'
'I think you exaggerate. After all, it's not much more than a very regrettable incident due to your – innocence; and there's no need for desperate courses or histrionics. You will behave like a gentleman, and take proper care of the girl. She can go into the country till the whole thing is over, and when she comes back no one will be the wiser nor she very much the worse.'
'But it isn't a matter of people knowing; it's a matter of honour.'
'Isn't it rather late in the day to talk of morality? I don't see where precisely the honour came in when you seduced her.'
'I dare say I've been an utter cad,' he answered humbly; 'but I see a plain duty before me, and I must do it.'
'You talk as though such things had never happened before,' pursued Miss Ley.
'Oh yes, I know they happen every day. If the girl gives way, so much the worse for her; it's no business of the man's. Let her go on the streets, let her go to the devil, and be hanged to her.'
Miss Ley, pursing her lips, shrugged her shoulders. She wondered how he proposed to live, since his income was quite insufficient for the necessities of a family, and he was peculiarly unsuited to the long drudgery of the Bar. She knew the profession termed 'literary' well enough to be aware that in it little money could be earned. Basil lacked the journalistic quickness, and it took him two years to write a novel for which he would probably not get more than fifty pounds; and his passion for the analysis of mental states offered small chance of lucrative success. Besides, he was extravagant, and would hate to pinch and spare: nor had he occasion ever to learn the difficult art of getting a shilling's-worth of goods for twelve coppers.
'I suppose you've realized that people will cut your wife,' Miss Ley added.
'Then they will cut me too.'
'But you're the last man in the world to give up these things. There's nothing you enjoy more than dinner-parties and visits to country houses. Women's smiles are all-important to you.'
'You talk of me as if I were a tame cat,' he returned smiling. 'After all, I'm only trying to do my duty.
I made an awful mistake, and heaven knows how bitterly I've regretted it. But now I see the way clearly before me, and whatever the cost, I must take it.'
Miss Ley looked at him sharply, and her keen grey eyes travelled over his face in a minute examination.
'Are you sure you don't admire a little too much your heroic attitude?' she asked, and in her voice was a stinging coldness at which Basil winced. 'Nowadays self-sacrifice is a luxury which few have the strength to deny themselves; people took to it when they left off sugar because it was fattening, and they sacrifice themselves wantonly, from sheer love of it, however worthless the object. In fact, the object scarcely concerns them; they don't care how much they harm it so long as they can gratify their passion.'
'When I asked Jenny to marry me, and saw the radiant joy in her poor, tear-stained face, I knew I'd done the right thing. Ah, what does it matter if I'm wretched, so long as I can make her happy!'
'I wasn't thinking of your wretchedness, Basil. I was thinking that you had done that girl harm enough already without marrying her. ... D'you think she'll be anything but utterly miserable? You're only doing this from selfishness and cowardice, because you love your self-esteem and you're afraid to give pain.'
This point of view was new to Basil, but it seemed unreasonable. He put it hastily aside.
'All this time you've not thought of the child, Miss Ley,' he said slowly. 'I can't let the child skulk into the world like a thief. Let him go through life with an honest name; it's hard enough without marking him with a hideous stigma. And, after all, I'm proud to be the father of a living child. Whatever I suffer, whatever we both suffer, will be worth it for that.'
'When are you to be married?' asked Miss Ley, after a pause.
'I think this day week. You won't abandon me, Miss Ley, will you?'
'Of course not,' she answered, smiling gently. 'I think you're a fool, but then most people are. They never realize that they have only one life, and mistakes are irreparable. They play with it as though it were a game of chess in which they could try this move and that, and when they get in a muddle, sweep the board clear and begin again.'