Back Aa

Immortal Moment

Close

<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2> SHE stared at her own face in the glass without seeing it. Her brain was filled with the loud, hurried ticking of the clock. It sounded somehow as if it were out of gear. She felt herself swaying slightly as she stood. She was not going to faint bodily. It seemed to her rather that the immaterial bonds, the unseen, subtle, intimate connections were letting go their hold. Her soul was the heart of the danger. It was there that the travelling powers of dissolution, accelerated, multiplying, had begun their work and would end it. Its moments were not measured by the ticking of the clock. She had remained standing as Lucy had left her, with her back to the door he had gone out by. She was thus unaware that a servant of the hotel had come in, that he[294] had delivered some message and was waiting for her answer. She started as the man spoke to her again. With a great effort her brain grasped and repeated what he had said. "Mr. Marston." No; she was certainly not going to faint. There was no receding of sensation. It was resurgence and invasion, violence shaking the very doors of life. She heard the light, tremulous tread of the little pulses of her body, scattered by the ringing hammer strokes of her heart and brain. She heard the clock ticking out of gear, like the small, irritable pulse of time. She steadied her voice to answer. "Very well. Show him in." Marston's face, as he approached her, was harder and stiffer than ever; his bearing more uncompromisingly upright and correct. He greeted her with that peculiar deference that he showed to women whose acquaintance he had yet to make. Decency[295] required that he should start on a fresh and completely purified footing with the future Mrs. Robert Lucy. "It's charming of you," he said, "to let me come in." "I wanted to see you, Wilfrid." Something in her tone made him glance at her with a look that restored her, for a moment, to her former place. "That is still more charming," he replied. "I've done what you told me. I've given him up." A heavy flush spread over his face and relaxed the hard tension of the muscles. "I thought you'd do it." "Well, I have done it." She paused. "That's all I had to say to you." Her voice struck at him like a blow. But he bore it well, smiling his hard, reticent smile. "I knew you'd do it," he repeated; "but I didn't think you'd do it quite so soon. Why did you?"[296] "You know why." "I didn't mean to put pressure on you, Kitty. It was your problem. Still, I'm glad you've seen it in the right light." "You think you made me see it?" "I should hope you'd see it for yourself. It was obvious." "What was obvious?" "The unsuitability of the entire arrangement. Was it likely you'd stick to it when you saw what you were in for?" "You think I tired of him?" "I think you saw possibilities of fatigue; and, like a wise child, you chucked it. It's as well you did it before instead of after. I say, how did Lucy take it?" She did not answer. His smile flickered and died under the oppression of her silence. "Have you done with him altogether? He didn't suggest—er—any compromise?" "He did not." "He wouldn't. Compromise is foreign to his nature."[297] He sat leaning forward, contemplating, with apparent satisfaction, his own strong-grained, immaculate hands. From time to time he tapped the floor with a nervous movement of his foot. "Then," he said presently, "if that's so, there's no reason, is there, why you shouldn't come back to me?" "I can't come back to you. I told you so yesterday." "Since yesterday the situation has altered considerably; or rather, it remains precisely where it was before." "No, Wilfrid; things can never be as they were before." "Why not?—if I choose to ignore this episode, this little aberration on your part. You must be equally anxious to forget it. In which case we may consider our relations uninterrupted." "Do you think I gave Robert Lucy up to go back to you?" "My dear Kitty, if I'm willing to take[298] you back after you gave me up for him, I think my attitude almost constitutes a claim." "A claim?" "Well, let's say it entitles me to a hearing. You don't seem to realise, in the least, my extreme forbearance. I never reproached you. I never interfered between you and Lucy. You can't say I didn't play the game." "I'm not saying it. I know you didn't betray me." "Betray you? My dear child, I helped you. I never dreamed of standing in your way as long as there was a chance of your marrying. Now that there is none——" "That has nothing to do with it. I told you that I wouldn't go back to you in any case." "Come, I don't propose to throw you over for any other woman. Surely it would be more decent to come back to me than[299] to go off with some other man, heaven knows whom, which is what you must do—eventually?" "It's what I won't do. I'm not going back to that. Don't you see that's why I won't go back to you?" Her apathy had become exhaustion. The flat, powerless voice, dying of its own utterance, gave him a sense of things past and done with, sunk into the ultimate oblivion. No voice of her energy and defiance could have touched him so. Her indifference troubled him like passion; in its completeness, its finality, it stirred him to decision, to acceptance of its terms. She was ready to fall from his grasp by her own dead weight. There was only one way in which he could hold her. "Kitty," he said, "is that really why you won't come back?" "Yes; that's why. Anything—anything but that." "I see. You're tired of it? And you[300] want to give it up? Well, I'm not sure that I don't want you to." "Then why," she moaned, "why won't you let me go?" "Simply because I can't. I've tried it, Kitty. I can't." He came and sat close to her. He leaned his face to hers and spoke thickly and low. "You can't give it up, dear. You're bound to go back." "No—no—no. Don't talk about it." "I won't. I won't ask you to go back; but I can't do without you." "Oh yes, you can. There are other women." "I loathe them all. I wouldn't do for one of them what I'll do for you." "What will you do for me?" "I'll marry you, Kitty." She laughed in her tired fashion. "You want to make an honest woman of me, do you?" "No. I think I'm endeavouring to make[301] myself an honest man. If you give Lucy up for me I don't want you to lose by the transaction. You were to have been married; but for me perhaps, you would have been. Very well, I'll marry you." "And that," said she, "will make it all right?" "Well, won't it?" "No, it won't. How could it?" "You know how. It will help you to keep straight. That's what you want, isn't it?" "Oh yes, that's what I want. And you think I'll keep straight by marrying you?" "I won't swear to it. But I know it's ten to one that you'll go to the devil if you don't marry me. And you say you don't want to do that." "I don't want—to marry you." He shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps not; but even marrying me might be better than the other alternative." "It wouldn't," she cried. "It would be[302] worse. If I married you I couldn't get away from you. I couldn't get away from it. You'd keep me in it. It's what you like me for—what you're marrying me for. You haven't married, all these years, because you can't stand living with a decent woman. And you think, if I marry you, it will make it all right. All right!" She rose and defied him. "Why, I'd rather be your mistress. Then I could get away from you. I shall get away now." She turned violently, and he leaped up and caught her in his arms. She struggled, beating upon his breast, and crying with a sad, inarticulate cry. She would have sunk to the floor if he had not kept his hold of her. He raised her, and she stood still, breathing hard, while he still grasped her tightly by the wrists. "Let me go," she said faintly. "Where are you going to?" "I don't know." [303]"You've no money. If you're not going back what are you going to do?" "I don't know." Her eyelids dropped, and he saw mendacity in her eyes' furtive fleeing under cover. He held her tighter. His arm shook her, not brutally, but with a nervous movement that he was powerless to control. "You lie," he said. "You've been lying to me all the time. You are going back. You're going to that fellow Lucy." "No. I'm going—somewhere—where I shan't see him." "Where?" "I don't know." "Abroad?" "I think so." "By yourself?" Her eyelids quivered, and she panted. "Yes." There was a knock at the door. "Let me go," she said again. He let her go.[304] "You're going to live—by yourself—respectably—abroad?" She was silent. "And how long do you think that will last?" "I don't know." Jane Lucy's voice called her from the door. He swore under his breath. "Let her come in. I want her." He laid his hand upon the door. "What are you going to do?" he reiterated. "Oh, let her come to me." "You haven't answered my question." "Let me see her first. Leave me alone with her. Janey! Janey!" she called. "Very well," he said. He opened the door and bowed to Jane Lucy as she entered. "I shall come back," he said, "for my answer."[305] <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2