The Man Who Understood Women and Other Stories/The Reconciliation
THE RECONCILIATION
I have often said that I could not be your wife, but I would never tell you why. To-night, suddenly, I want to tell you why, I want to write to you, I wonder if you will understand.
You have heard how my marriage ended. For many months after I divorced him I could concentrate my thoughts on nothing but my wrongs. I had no child, no interests; the hurricane of pain and jealousy swept me day and night. Then resentment grew less vehement—faded into lassitude. By very slow degrees I concerned myself with other things.
Later, I began to dwell on scenes of my brief happiness with him, and though remembrance made me cry for the irrecoverable, to remember was sweet. Moments which had been trivial while they lasted assumed in retrospect an air of exquisite companionship. It was my weakness to recall some commonplace incident and indulge myself by reanimating its minutest details; the hours that I lived most vividly were the hours that I lived in looking back.
Even when I found pleasure in society again, recollection remained a secret joy. I could forget by this time and amuse myself, had my vanities and vexations, was socially like any other woman, entertained in ordinary ways, but clandestinely I still revisited the past. So thirteen years went by—and, unsuspected by my dearest friends, I communed mentally with a young husband, who, in these reveries, had grown no older.
I tried to bear in mind that he was older—much older than I—but I could think of him only as I had seen him last. I repeated, marvelling, that he must be over forty now, but in my memories I laughed and talked with the personality that I had known. Although I told myself that I might pass him unrecognised, the face that I smiled to in my visions was the face of the young man that he used to be.
I believe you have sometimes wondered who your rival was. He was the man that my divorced husband once had been.
Last September I was at Pourville. One morning in the hotel, glancing at an English paper, I read that he had just arrived in Paris. I meant to leave for Paris, myself, towards the end of the week, and I sat thinking how very soon he and I would be passing through the same streets. Doubtless we had drifted close to each other many times before, but I had not known it, and somehow—Well, the impulse was very strong, I wrote to him!
"I do not know," I wrote, "whether it will please or distress you to hear from me. If my letter is unwelcome, burn and forget it. Speaking for myself, all ill-feeling died long ago. Time has even taught me to think of our first year together and obliterate the rest. Our marriage was a blunder, but—so much am I changed from the girl who was your wife—that seems to me, to-day, no reason why we should never meet again as friends. I shall be at Meurice's on Saturday. If a reconciliation would not be odious to you, if there is no one to resent it, will you come to see me?"
When the letter was posted, I said that I had committed an imbecility, but I am not sure that I believed myself. At any rate, I rejoiced half an hour afterwards. By-and-by, of course, I was sorry again. And so on. Then, on the morrow, something happened—I found his new volume of poems on a chair in the courtyard. Have you ever read any of his poems? But I suppose poetry is not in your line, you great, strong, practical builder of big bridges? On the fly-leaf he had scribbled, "To Janet Herbertson, from her sincere friend, Gilbert Owen." I had picked up the book eager to read some of it, but I fell to dreaming over the fly-leaf, wondering who Janet Herbertson was.
While I wondered, she returned to her seat.
"Have I taken your book?"
"Oh, thank you!"
She was a girl to whom I had already spoken once or twice; I had not known her name, and I don't suppose that she knew mine. I call her a "girl" because she was unmarried, but she could not have been more than four or five years younger than myself—a girl with a fine figure and abundant health, but, to my mind at least, no features worth mentioning. Her eyes were shallow, and her hair came near to being sandy. Most of her remarks were prefaced by "Of course," and she expressed herself in very incisive tones. I had noticed her one day with an easel among the gorse at Varangeville Plage, and I set her down as an amateur, with means.
"You didn't go to the Links, then?" I said.
"Not this afternoon, I was too much interested in this. Have you read any of it?"
"No, I only just saw it. It's a new one of his, isn't it?"
"It isn't out yet at all; this is what's called an 'advance copy'; Mr. Owen sent it to me yesterday."
"I couldn't help seeing by the inscription that you knew him. How very nice to receive such compliments from poets!"
"Of course you admire his work?"
"I admire some of it very much."
"Some of it?" She regarded me with an offensive smile.
"Of course, the best in any art is always unintelligible to the Public." I was certain she was an amateur now, the arrogance was unmistakable.
"I suppose so."
"Emerson—Have you read Emerson?"
"Whom's it by?" I asked viciously. I saw her shudder.
"Emerson was one of the world's teachers. A propos of the impressions to be derived from Nature, he said that a tourist could never take away from any place more than she brought to it. Of course it's the same with a reader; if she hasn't the receptivity, she can't receive."
This person educating me! But I wanted to hear about him; I submitted.
"I think I follow you," I murmured.
She unbent. "If you like I'll lend it to you presently?"
"I should be delighted, if you can spare it?"
"Yes, I shan't read after dinner. In the evening you always play that idiotic game, though, don't you? Well, you can have it in the morning."
"If you're sure I shouldn't be robbing you?"
"Quite. Besides, I've read most of it already, in manuscript."
"Really? It must be very fascinating to know a poet so well as that!"
"Oh, I know Gilbert Owen very well! If you're staying next week, you'll see him here;" she tittered self-consciously: "I've told him that the rest would do him good."
"Here?"
"Yes, but not till Wednesday; I didn't want him till I had finished my picture. Of course, I shan't have much time for my work after he comes."
"I shall be gone by then," I said. "What a pity! I suppose there's no chance of his coming before?"
"Oh, no, he'll come on the day I fixed."
"Wednesday?"
"Yes."
"To oblige me, you might let him come a little sooner," I laughed.
"I'm afraid I can't do that. You had better stay."
"I wish it were possible. You must be immensely proud of your influence?"
"Oh, I don't know. I find myself quite forgetting he's famous, and thinking of him simply as a dear friend."
In a pause I glanced at her left hand. There was no ring on it, but I knew that she foresaw one there. She turned a page of his book, and for a minute or two we didn't speak again. Across the begonias the musicians in their red coats were fiddling drowsily, and, inside, the croupier called "Numéro deux!"
"What's he like?"
"Eh? Oh, it's so difficult to say what anyone is like. Do you mean his appearance, or his disposition?"
"I think I meant his disposition. Amusing?"
"Amusing? No, I should scarcely describe him as 'amusing.' Of course he can be very brilliant when he meets a foeman worthy of his steel, but his nature is a wistful one. He has suffered deeply, and it has left its mark."
"I think I remember reading something," I said. "Wasn't there a case of some sort?"
"He made a very unhappy marriage years ago," she said sharply; "his wife was a vapid girl who didn't understand him. He was very much to be pitied."
I nodded. I could have struck her across her conceited face.
"It must have been hideous," she added, "for a man of his intellect to be married to a fool."
The begonias were making my eyes ache. "Awful," I muttered. I wondered what in the world he could find to admire in her. "Well, you shall be left in peace. I've a sudden fancy for Cinq. It's my lucky number."
I didn't play. I sat watching the horses swirl, and hating her—hating my idiocy in having written to him. I was jealous. Is it heartless of me to say that to you, dear man? I must be frank. I was jealous of her, and when I had the honesty to own it at last, I was glad that the letter had gone. I asked myself if she had more attractions than I; I asked myself—it was abominable, you'll despise me!—if I couldn't teach bun to humiliate her.
There was no note for me at Meurice's when I arrived on Friday, but I had an instinct that he would come next day. I spent the whole of Saturday morning before the mirror, I wonder my maid didn't give me notice; I had my hair dressed in a new way, and snapped at her till she cried before I was satisfied with it. Afterwards I decided that it didn't suit me, and my hair was done as usual, after all. The same with my things, I felt myself a sight in everything—my frock had to be changed three times.
It was four o'clock when the waiter came up and frightened me. My knees were trembling, and the doorway was a blur.
"Gilbert!"
"Nan!"
"I'm glad you've come," I got out, in a horrid dry whisper. We shook hands. He was speaking, but I had turned deaf; I heard a confused sound and strained to distinguish what he said. His face grew clear to me before his words. I saw blankly that he was like someone with a resemblance to the husband I had remembered. "I'm glad you've come," I repeated. It encouraged me to find that my voice was louder. I didn't feel that he was Gilbert. He was someone queerly familiar, but I didn't feel that he was Gilbert.
"It was very, good and generous of you." His voice seemed different, too. "You haven't changed so much."
"Ah!"
"Really! How are you?"
"All right. Won't you sit down?"
He twitched his trousers to save their bagging at the knees. It may have been mechanical, but it hurt me that he could do it then.
"You've been at Pourville?"
"Yes. Only for a little while."
"I've never stayed there. It's very quiet, isn't it?"
"Oh, a mite of a place, just the hotel and the sea. There are beautiful walks, though."
"You used to be fond of walking."
"I am still."
"You're looking wonderfully well."
"You look very well, too."
"Do you think so?" he asked. "Fact? Not so much older as you expected?"
"N—no," I said.
"My hair's going, eh? begins a little further back than it used to, doesn't it?"
"A little more intellectual brow, perhaps! You should try a specialist."
"I've tried a dozen. They're no use. The first time you go, the man tells you that you'll be bald directly if you don't use his lotions. 'Ah, humph! Well, I'll do all that can be done for you.' And you buy bottles at half-a-guinea each, and find they make no difference. Then, when you go again to say there isn't any improvement, he exclaims, 'My! I didn't hope to do so much in the time. This is splendid. Look at all that new hair coming up!' Of course you like to believe him, and you go on buying his rubbish for twelve months. A hair specialist lives by his knowledge of human nature, not his knowledge of the hair."
I knew that he was talking for effect and I laughed, to gratify him. He glanced round the room.
"You're very comfortable here."
"Yes; this is where I generally stay."
"Are you often in Paris?"
"Not very often; I'm in London a good deal."
"I never go to London, excepting to see a publisher; the atmosphere is fatal. In London I'm commonplace. Positively. The murk gets on my genius. Give me a blue sky and God's sunshine! All artistic natures are very susceptible to external influences. You know that?"
"I remember you used to say so."
"It's just the same with me now; I haven't altered, I feel just as I felt when I was a boy. I'm young—just as young in myself. That's what keeps my work so fresh, that's what people rave about. Other men's stuff ages; mine doesn't—everybody says so—the spirit of it's as youthful as when I was twent} Temperament—temperament!"
I sickened at the word; formerly that had been his apology; to-day, I saw it was his boast. Presently I inquired about his favourite sister, if she was well. "I don't know, I don't often see her now," he said indifferently. I spoke of a chum he had lost, a man at whose death I had pictured him grief-stricken. "It must have been an awful blow to you?" I asked. "Oh, he had got rather tedious," he answered; "Charlie was a bit of an ass." He proceeded to tell me an anecdote of a woman who had paid him a fulsome compliment. While he aimed eagerly at making an impression—while his sole thought was to show me how brilliant and fascinating he remained—he revealed to me that every tendency I had once condemned had developed to a salient feature of his character, that every blemish I had once regretted had grown to be a glaring fault.
I am sure that vanity would have urged him to gain my admiration, even if he had found me faded and a frump; I am sure that he had come with that desire; but his eyes told me he found me charming, and his note, by-and-by, I think, was unpremeditated.
"I wish I had been worthier of you," he said. He said it very beautifully, but late. So much too late to give me any pleasure!
"Don't let us talk about the past," I murmured.
"My coming here to-day will make me regret it more still."
"I hope not—I didn't mean to give you pain. Perhaps it was foolish of me to write."
"Ah, you know I am glad you wrote. Only—It won't be the last time I see you? Don't say that." His gaze dwelt on me sentimentally. "I wish it were the first! If I had just been presented to you, we might have become great friends, Nan. Who knows?"
"I trust we are friends."
He sighed. "It's noble of you to say so, but the 'friendship' you can give me now is only a gentler name for 'pardon.' I might have looked forward to something sweeter if we had just met, I might have won your esteem, your confidence—perhaps even your love. I wonder if you know what it has meant to me this afternoon, to be here like this—with a wall of formality between me and the woman who used to be my wife? The torture, the shame of it! My heart is full of emotion, but I may only speak to you of trivial subjects; I want to pour out my remorse at your feet and feel your arms about me in forgiveness, but I may only touch your hand, like a stranger. When we parted, I was a boy, who ruined his own happiness; to-day I am a man, and I realise what I've lost."
"You make me miserable."
"Every day I have thought of you. My life—empty! What is anything without you?"
"You mustn't talk to me like this."
"I can't help it. Nan, I'm so wretched!"
"It's my fault for making you come here."
"No, no. But let me see you again. Tell me I may come to-morrow."
"I can't."
"It's Sunday—let us lunch at Versailles, or Saint-Germain, or somewhere—let us go into the country. I know a perfectly lovely spot we can motor to in an hour, and the hotel is really quite decent. Say you will!"
"I'm expecting people to-morrow."
"Well, Monday? Tuesday? You'll be free on Tuedsay?"
I shook my head.
"Then Wednesday? I was going to the sea on Wednesday, but I'll stay. Promise to spare me Wednesday."
How easy it had been! I saw the sandy-haired girl's mortification, saw her fuming, week by week, while he dangled at my side. My petty plan had triumphed—but it brought no joy.
"I am leaving Paris," I said. And when he went, I think he was conscious that, after all, his visit had been a failure.
But he was speedily at ease again, I know, for those who have no deep affections avoid much of life's unhappiness. For the selfish is the peace. The suffering was for the woman who had felt—for me, to whom the reconciliation had proved more painful than the estrangement—for me, whom reality had robbed of a dream I Always I had seen him as he had been—now I could see only the man he had become. Our meeting had killed Remembrance; I could spend hours in the past no longer. I tried, I tried for months, but the spell was gone. The husband of my youth would come to my mind no more—I met only a middle-aged poseur, from whom I turned and fled.
Best of men, how I seem to you I do not know, but I have owned the truth. There is nothing more for me to write. Excepting—well, all day long I have wished that you were with me, and I am feeling very much alone.