she knew now that she loved senhouse, and that knowledge filled her with indescribable triumph, and gave her unimagined strength. at the same time, the quietude of her new joy really amazed her. she could lie back in her corner seat of the train and watch her flight to the south, be conscious that every thresh of the great driving wheels was taking her from her beloved, reflect that she could neither write to him nor hear from him—wanderer that he was, and sojourner in tents—and regret nothing, and long for nothing more tangible than she possessed already. he had her heart; she had made her surrender on that night of intense colloquy. that had been her true bridal night—by that mysterious intercourse she had become his irrevocably. a great security possessed her, a conviction, which it would have been blasphemous to question, that all was well. if one had told her, you and he may never meet again, she would have laughed in his face at the absurdity. such a thing was not worth argument, spelt its own refutation.
an immense content possessed her, a security which excused her from looking back, and made the future indifferent. she thought neither of her husband with remorse nor of duplessis with apprehension. she was not appalled by the flatness of her immediate prospect: of a return to town and its round of flurry, chatter, and dress; of southover and its autumn rites. these things were shadows of life: the real life was hidden in her heart. she would send her tricked-out body to dinner-parties and other assemblies of dolls, while she herself would be elsewhere, in some blue immensity of air, breasting some great hill, breathing the breath—which was food—of her mother the earth—her mother! their mother! she and her beloved were brother and sister. entertainment here, for the flying miles, to which the threshing wheels lent processional music.
if she hardly knew herself it is no wonder. she crossed london by rote, reached blackheath, walked sedately to her father’s little house, entered the little dull door, and kissed her parents, whom she found at tea—all in a dream. they made much of her, the great lady she was become; found it not amiss that she appeared in tumbled gown, with soiled blouse, and hat remarkable for its unremarkableness. great ladies could do as they pleased, being a law unto themselves. nor were they confused by her replies to the proper inquiries. “mr. germain?” she said, “i think he’s very well. i haven’t seen him since i left london. we don’t see much of each other, you know, mother.” a stack of forwarded letters was indicated, telegrams among them. she nodded her head, and passed her cup for some more tea.
she heard of the girls’ progress—all out in good boarding schools of her providing; next of jinny’s triumphs in the lincolnshire home of the podmores. “jinny has a bold way with her, as you know, mary. they were not inclined towards her at first. there was a question whether she should not pack up her box again the day after she got there—but mr. podmore—her mr. podmore—went on his knees, on his knees, mary—and she consented to stay. very bold of jinny, considering that old mr. podmore is a rural dean——”
mary smiled. the simple talk went on. by-and-by it came out that a visitor had called to see mary several times—a mr. duplessis, a very tall young man. “he came here the evening we had expected you, and i thought the chimney was afire when i heard his knock. exactly like the fire brigade. i opened the door in a twitter—and there he was—six feet-two of him, and a tall hat atop of that. “is mrs. germain at home?” he asks me, and i say, “she may be, for she’s not here.” then he says, “you are mrs. middleham, i take it.” i tell him he takes me rightly. “don’t you expect your—mrs. germain?” i told him the truth. “i’ll call to-morrow,” he says—“and he did, mary, and to-day, too. a handsome, upstanding young man—very much at home with the likes of me. i suppose—but you know your own business best, of course.”
mary stroked her mother’s cheek. “dear little old mother,” she said, “i know you’re afraid for me. mr. duplessis is quite harmless. i’ll see him, if he comes to-morrow.”
in the intervals of housework—for she insisted upon being useful—she wrote to her husband from day to day, telling him in her first letter that she had been unable to write before as she had been travelling. on this particular information he made no comment whatsoever; indeed, he confined himself to such generalities as the state of the weather, his cold, “which, under medical advice, i am nursing at home,” and the proceedings of mrs. james. “constantia is a great comfort to me. you will be pleased to hear that i am not without hope of inducing her to prolong her visit. she speaks very kindly of you. my brother, i regret to say, has been called home by parochial cares. . . . the cantacutes dined here last evening. i regretted that i could not be down to receive them. however, constantia. . . .” she replied pleasantly to all this, feeling not one grain of discomfort out of anything which mrs. james could or could not do. she begged to be kept informed of his cold. “you know that i will come to you the moment you care to have me.” in answer to that, by return of post, he wrote that “on no account” must she alter her plans. “believe me, i am fully contented that you should be with your parents. it is, i understand, reckoned a failing of the past generation that children should admit any claim in them who bore and nurtured them. personally, i do not pretend to be abreast of the times in this particular; nor should i wish you to be so. i am assured that there is no cause for uneasiness on my account, and will most certainly see that you are kept supplied with bulletins. i beg my sincere respects to your father and mother.”
after that she heard nothing more from him.
duplessis had called two days after her arrival, but she had been out, and he had not waited. he came again after three days’ interval—having written to announce his intention—at 11 o’clock in the morning. she was on her knees, in pinned-up skirt and apron, her arms bare to the elbows, scrubbing the kitchen floor, when his knock resounded through the house. the quick blood leapt into her cheeks, but she held to her task. her mother came fluttering in. “that’s your visitor, mary. what am i to do?—and you in such a state!”
“show him in here, mother,” says mary.
“never, child. he’ll think you demented.”
mary was inflexible; her eyes glittered. “i shall see him nowhere else,” she said.
upon his second attack, a scared and serious mrs. middleham opened the door. mary, pausing in her scrubbing, heard the dialogue.
“oh, good-morning. mrs. germain?”
“my daughter is here, sir.”
“oh, she’s come, has she? do you think she would see me?”
“she says so, sir. i have asked her. but she hopes you will excuse her untidiness——”
“oh, of course——”
“she has been kind enough to help us here—she is at work now. you will please to overlook——”
“my dear mrs. middleham——”
“if you will follow me i will show you where she is.”
mary rose from her knees to receive him, having wiped her hands and arms on her apron. her cheeks were burning and her eyes alight—but she looked none the worse, assuredly, for that.
when duplessis, stooping his fair head, entered the kitchen, she came forward lightly to receive him. “good-morning,” she said. “you will take me as i am?”
“i’ll take you how i can,” said tristram, shaking hands. “your mother prepared me for this attack of industry. you might let me help you.”
mary laughed. “don’t destroy my mother’s illusions. she is convinced of the complete idleness of the upper classes. if she lost that she would have to alter all her ideas of society.”
“i don’t know anything about the upper classes; but mrs. middleham can have no notion how hard i can work,” duplessis said. “i was at it all last night. dancing till heaven knows when.”
“i’ll warrant heaven does,” said mrs. middleham to herself. she was not able to find anything to say to this magnificent visitor.
duplessis and mary made a fairer show, for she had learned to dread, with the high world, a single second of awkwardness. she was even able to continue her work on her knees and chat with tristram, who, for his part, sat calmly on the kitchen table and talked nineteen to the dozen. it is difficult to say which side of this simple performance scandalized mrs. middleham the more—that mary should be on her knees with a scrubbing brush, or that duplessis should not be. the good blunt woman sat it out as long as her endurance would last, growing more and more stiff in the back, primming her lips in and in until she showed none at all. finally she rose with a “you will excuse me,” and stalked out of her own kitchen. she sat in the empty parlour and looked at a photograph album as a protest. meanwhile mary’s hour had come. it had been on the edge of her tongue to ask her mother to stay—but she had dismissed the thought as unworthy. she fixed her mind upon the plateau of mariposa lilies, and her eyes on her work, and scrubbed for life.
“molly,” said duplessis, “why did you run away from me?”
she elbowed her brush stoutly. “because i was afraid of you,” she said—then stopped and looked up at him. “but i’m not now—not in the least afraid.”
“you need not be. you wrote to me that you were coming on the 13th.”
“i know.”
“and this is the 20th, and you are only just here.”
“no. i have been here four or five days.”
“where were you—when you were not here?”
“i was travelling.”
“travelling!”
“yes. but i decline to be questioned.”
“you mean, i suppose, that you will decline to answer.”
her colour rose. “you always correct my language, i know. my exact meaning is that i deny your right to question me about my own affairs.”
“but if they are my affairs, too? may i not know what you are doing with them?”
she thought. “yes—i suppose you may do that.”
“very well. then i will ask you why you sent me word that you were to come here on the 13th ‘by train,’ and then did nothing of the sort?”
on her knees still, she faced him with her answer. “yes, i will answer that. when i wrote, i intended to come—and expected that you would meet me. but when i posted the letter i had changed my mind. i did not intend to come.”
he stared, with very cold, bright eyes. “you did not intend to come when you posted the letter? pray, did you intend me to expect you at the station?”
she answered him, “yes, i did expect it.”
he raised his eyebrows. “really, my dear friend, you interest me extremely. did you think that six hours or more at charing cross station would be good for my nerves, morals, or constitution?”
“i will tell you what i thought,” she said. “i thought that waiting at charing cross would be no worse—to say the least—for a man than an appointment in burlington arcade could be for a woman.”
duplessis bit his cheek. “that was your gentle reproof, then, for my blunder?”
“yours was only a blunder because i saw what it really was. it had never entered your head that i could be other than honoured to meet you anywhere. you presumed that i should run there.”
“you ran very near to it, my friend,” he said. “that is, you had yourself driven.”
she bowed her head. “i admit it. i was a fool—but i am not a fool now.”
“no,” said duplessis, “you are not. you are, as a matter of truth, extraordinarily beautiful just now, and i am more ridiculously in love with you than ever. but—” she rose from her knees and stood before him.
“let me finish what i have to say to you, please,” she said. “that was not my only reason for deceiving you. i wished you to wait for me in vain, because i wished you to understand that i could not see you any more. i wished you to believe that our intercourse must be over. i chose the harshest means i could think of. i might have written it, no doubt, but you would have answered the letter, and i am no match for you in writing. i might have seen you and told you—but i couldn’t do that.”
“molly,” said duplessis, folding his arms, “why couldn’t you see me?”
she looked down. “because i couldn’t.”
“it was because you dared not,” said duplessis.
she did not answer; she was trembling a little now, and he saw it. but presently she looked him straight in the face.
“yes,” she said, “that is true. i did not dare.” he laughed gaily and started forward to take her; but she put her hand up.
“no,” she said, “you are mistaken. i dared not then, but now i dare. i can meet you now whenever you please, and have no fear at all.”
duplessis, red in the face, scowled and watched her from under savage brows. “am i to understand by that that you have ceased to care?”
“you must understand that i do not love you.”
he left the table where he had been sitting and took a turn about the room. presently he stopped in front of her. his height gave him great advantage.
“i decline to take that answer. i cannot believe that you mean it seriously. i think that you loved me two, nearly three years ago, and that you have loved me of late since last october—some nine months. i know that i have never for a moment ceased to love you. through your engagement—horrible entanglement as it was—through your years of married life—miserable eclipse—my love has gone on, my need has increased. you know that; you cannot doubt me. it was not my doing that you were false to our love; i couldn’t interfere; it was begun without my suspicion, and all the mischief done before i could get home. after that i did my honest best to get on without you—and then your fool of a husband must drag me in. what next? the inevitable, the undoubted. we two were drawn together: it had to be. and now you ask me to believe that—for no reason at all—it must stop. my dear girl, you can’t swap horses crossing the stream, you know. i decline to be switched off like so much electric current. who’s the other man?”
this surprising turn to his speech nearly threw her off her pedestal. but she could answer him truthfully.
“there is no question of caprice or of other people at all. the real truth is that i have grown wiser. i know now that i was losing my self-respect by permitting you to love me as you did—in the manner you saw fit to use. it was not love at all—you had got into the habit of considering me as your property, and you could not bear that anybody else should claim a right to me. directly i saw that, i knew that i couldn’t allow myself to think of you, to be with you—if i was to be—if i could hope to hold up my head.”
he was very angry. “may i know what, or who, enabled you to see this unfortunate aspect of my affairs?”
“i can’t tell you that,” she said. “it came to me suddenly. i think your asking me to meet you in such an extraordinary place had something to do with it.”
“i beg your pardon for that,” he said at once. “honestly and sincerely i am ashamed of that. only it is fair to say that i meant no possible disrespect to you. i couldn’t well meet you in your own house. the weather was beastly—i thought we could discuss our plans—and might as well do it under a glass cover as under umbrellas. we might have been there five minutes. really, i can’t admit that the base is broad enough to hold all the superstructure.”
“it was nothing,” she admitted; “i was only offended for a moment—and of course if i had still been nursery governess i should have gone, without a question. i should have been flattered, i am sure. but—ah, surely you can be honest with yourself, surely you know what it is you want of me. why, if i could bring myself—would it be worthy of you to—?” she broke off, impatient at the hopelessness of convincing him. “mr. duplessis,” she said, and he frowned at the style, “i have been wicked, i think—at least, i have been so foolish that i can hardly believe it was i. i am sure you won’t be so ungenerous as to pin me down to a mistake. i beg you to take what i say now—as i mean it.”
looking up at him, she saw that she had made no way. the more she said, she could see, the greater the fire in the man. he stooped right over her, and she could hear the fever in his voice.
“my love, my adorable love—i shall never give you up—never—never——”
she cowered. “ah, be merciful——”
he said, “my mercy shall be my love and service”—and took her hands.
she strained away—she turned her head—“no, no,” she murmured, “i implore you.” but he drew her in—“my beloved—my darling——”
the street knocker clamoured—a double call—and as he started she sprang back to the wall, and gained the door. she went down the passage and met her mother with a telegram in her hand. “for you, mary. no bad news, i hope.”
mary read. “think it would be well if you could come to-day.—constantia germain.”
she had not heard from hill-street for three days. yes, certainly she must go.
“mother, i must go home immediately. mr. duplessis will take me. i’ll tell him to wait.”
she returned to the kitchen; duplessis was biting his cheek leaning against the table with folded arms. his breath was still quick.
“mr. duplessis,” said she, “i have had a telegram from home—from mrs. james. my husband is ill and i must go to him. will you take me, please?”
he jumped forward. “of course. i’m very sorry. i’ll do everything. go and get ready—i’ll find a cab.”
