and while i was in this phase of fatigue and despair in mayo, the scene was laid and all the other actors were waiting for the last act of my defeat in london. i came back to find two letters from mary and a little accumulation of telegrams and notes, one written in my flat, from tarvrille.
mary's letters were neither of them very long, and full of a new-born despair. she had not realized how great were the forces against her and against us both. she let fall a phrase that suggested she was ill. she had given in, she said, to save herself and myself and others from the shame and ruin of a divorce, and i must give in too. we had to agree not to meet or communicate for three years, and i was to go out of england. she prayed me to accept this. she knew, she said, she seemed to desert me, but i did not know everything,—i did not know everything,—i must agree; she could not come with me; it was impossible. now certainly it was impossible. she had been weak, but i did not know all. if i knew all i should be the readier to understand and forgive her, but it was part of the conditions that i could not know all. justin had been generous, in his way.... justin had everything in his hands, the whole world was behind him against us, and i must give in. those letters had a quality i had never before met in her, they were broken-spirited. i could not understand them fully, and they left me perplexed, with a strong desire to see her, to question her, to learn more fully what this change in her might mean.
tarvrille's notes recorded his repeated attempts to see me, i felt that he alone was capable of clearing up things for me, and i went out again at once and telegraphed to him for an appointment.
he wired to me from that same house in mayfair in which i had first met mary after my return. he asked me to come to him in the afternoon, and thither i went through a november fog, and found him in the drawing-room that had the plate glass above the fireplace. but now he was vacating the house, and everything was already covered up, the pictures and their frames were under holland, the fine furniture all in covers of faded stuff, the chandeliers and statues wrapped up, the carpets rolled out of the way. even the window-curtains were tucked into wrappers, and the blinds, except one he had raised, drawn down. he greeted me and apologized for the cold inhospitality of the house. "it was convenient here," he said. "i came here to clear out my papers and boxes. and there's no chance of interruptions."
he went and stood before the empty fireplace, and plunged into the middle of the matter.
"you know, my dear stratton, in this confounded business my heart's with you. it has been all along. if i could have seen a clear chance before you—for you and mary to get away—and make any kind of life of it—though she's my cousin—i'd have helped you. indeed i would. but there's no sort of chance—not the ghost of a chance...."
he began to explain very fully, quite incontrovertibly, that entire absence of any chance for mary and myself together. he argued to the converted. "you know as well as i do what that romantic flight abroad, that ouidaesque casa in some secluded valley, comes to in reality. all round florence there's no end of such scandalous people, i've been among them, the nine circles of the repenting scandalous, all cutting one another."
"i agree," i said. "and yet——"
"what?"
"we could have come back."
tarvrille paused, and then leant forward. "no."
"but people have done so. it would have been a clean sort of divorce."
"you don't understand justin. justin would ruin you. if you were to take mary away.... he's a queer little man. everything is in his hands. everything always is in the husband's hands in these affairs. if he chooses. and keeps himself in the right. for an injured husband the law sanctifies revenge....
"and you see, you've got to take justin's terms. he's changed. he didn't at first fully realize. he feels—cheated. we've had to persuade him. there's a case for justin, you know. he's had to stand—a lot. i don't wonder at his going stiff at last. no doubt it's hard for you to see that. but you have to see it. you've got to go away as he requires—three years out of england, you've got to promise not to correspond, not to meet afterwards——"
"it's so extravagant a separation."
"the alternative is—not for you to have mary, but for you two to be flung into the ditch together—that's what it comes to, stratton. justin's got his case. he's set like—steel. you're up against the law, up against social tradition, up against money—any one of those a man may fight, but not all three. and she's ill, stratton. you owe her consideration. you of all people. that's no got-up story; she's truly ill and broken. she can no longer fly with you and fight with you, travel in uncomfortable trains, stay in horrible little inns. you don't understand. the edge is off her pluck, stratton."
"what do you mean?" i asked, and questioned his face.
"just exactly what i say."
a gleam of understanding came to me....
"why can't i see her?" i broke in, with my voice full of misery and anger. "why can't i see her? as if seeing her once more could matter so very greatly now!"
he appeared to weigh something in his mind. "you can't," he said.
"how do i know that she's not being told some story of my abandonment of her? how do i know she isn't being led to believe i no longer want her to come to me?"
"she isn't," said tarvrille, still with that arrested judicial note in his voice. "you had her letters?" he said.
"two."
"yes. didn't they speak?"
"i want to see her. damn it, tarvrille!" i cried with sudden tears in my smarting eyes. "let her send me away. this isn't—— not treating us like human beings."
"women," said tarvrille and looked at his boot toes, "are different from men. you see, stratton——"
he paused. "you always strike me, stratton, as not realizing that women are weak things. we've got to take care of them. you don't seem to feel that as i do. their moods—fluctuate—more than ours do. if you hold 'em to what they say in the same way you hold a man—it isn't fair...."
he halted as though he awaited my assent to that proposition.
"if you were to meet mary now, you see, and if you were to say to her, come—come and we'll jump down etna together, and you said it in the proper voice and with the proper force, she'd do it, stratton. you know that. any man knows a thing like that. and she wouldn't want to do it...."
"you mean that's why i can't see her."
"that's why you can't see her."
"because we'd become—dramatic."
"because you'd become—romantic and uncivilized."
"well," i said sullenly, realizing the bargain we were making, "i won't."
"you won't make any appeal?"
"no."
he made no answer, and i looked up to discover him glancing over his shoulder through the great glass window into the other room. i stood up very quickly, and there in the further apartment were guy and mary, standing side by side. our eyes met, and she came forward towards the window impulsively, and paused, with that unpitying pane between us....
then guy was opening the door for her and she stood in the doorway. she was in dark furs wrapped about her, but in the instant i could see how ill she was and how broken. she came a step or so towards me and then stopped short, and so we stood, shyly and awkwardly under guy and tarvrille's eyes, two yards apart. "you see," she said, and stopped lamely.
"you and i," i said, "have to part, mary. we—— we are beaten. is that so?"
"stephen, there is nothing for us to do. we've offended. we broke the rules. we have to pay."
"by parting?"
"what else is there to do?"
"no," i said. "there's nothing else." ...
"i tried," she said, "that you shouldn't be sent from england."
"that's a detail," i answered.
"but your politics—your work?"
"that does not matter. the great thing is that you are ill and unhappy—that i can't help you. i can't do anything.... i'd go anywhere ... to save you.... all i can do, i suppose, is to part like this and go."
"i shan't be—altogether unhappy. and i shall think of you——"
she paused, and we stood facing one another, tongue-tied. there was only one word more to say, and neither of us would say it for a moment.
"good-bye," she whispered at last, and then, "don't think i deserted you, stephen my dear. don't think ill of me. i couldn't come—i couldn't come to you," and suddenly her face changed slowly and she began to weep, my fearless playmate whom i had never seen weeping before; she began to weep as an unhappy child might weep.
"oh my mary!" i cried, weeping also, and held out my arms, and we clung together and kissed with tear-wet faces.
"no," cried guy belatedly, "we promised justin!"
but tarvrille restrained his forbidding arm, and then after a second's interval put a hand on my shoulder. "come," he said....
and so it was mary and i parted from one another.
