The Mad Busman, and Other Stories/Second Vision
II
Second Vision
I
I SAW them last night when they arrived at the hotel, and again this morning in the cathedral. Even without being told I knew what they had come to do. There have been so many pilgrims with the same mission during the last years, and their purpose hangs about them like a solemn but splendid mantle, dividing them from the rest of men. Their son, I remembered, had been killed at Bar-le-Duc. They had come to see his grave—at least, he would see it and tell her.
Even to the most casual of us in the lounge last night there was something out of the ordinary about those two—something pathetic, but not pitiful—a dignity and fineness that gave one a better hope of oneself and of one's neighbour. People fell silent as they passed, she leaning upon his arm.
He did not look my way. In any case I doubt very much whether he would have recognised me. After all, it's forty years ago. If he reads this he will remember, of course, and forgive me. It's a breach of confidence, but then I have a notion that he has a simple pride in what has happened—that he would wish to tell people himself. It would be like laying an exquisite tribute at her feet.
She is beautiful still—I think more beautiful even than that night when she came down the dark oak stairs of her home, a vision of golden youth, bringing our noisy gaiety to an astonished eager silence. Women are like works of art. If they are lovely at heart, age can only deepen their loveliness. If they are tawdry and shallow, their decay is a hideous thing. And Christine Rivers is fine all through. It is true I was in love with her then for that matter, am still. As she passed me last night—that white-haired woman—my heart began to beat faster, as though it were a boy's heart. And I am an old man.
As to Roger Fenwick, I remember him, too, as he was that night and how I hated him. Not that he knew I hated him. He was far too triumphantly self-assured, too confident that he had only to hold out his hand for every sort of fruit to drop into it, to doubt for a moment that I was flattered at his friendship for me. I was poor, delicate, not much good at anything except as a judge of old glass—a contemptible accomplishment which made him laugh and was the source of endless good-natured jesting—and I used to wonder whether he chose me out simply to puzzle and tantalise people. But for that he was not subtle enough—and also in his way too proud.
He came from nowhere in particular. His antecedents didn't matter. There he was—an isolated fact not to be denied. At thirty he had made his fortune. Mining, adventuring, gambling with huge stakes. Honestly or dishonestly he had accomplished in the full tide of youth enough to make an old man satisfied. And with that the physique of an athlete and a fair handsomeness saved from brutality—one didn't know quite by what—a steadiness of purpose, perhaps, which cuts out inevitably every sort of waste effort. As to his class—and class still mattered to us at Runners End—he belonged to successful men, and you inquired no further. He rode straight to hounds, committed no social crimes, chiefly, no doubt, because his confidence in himself was absolute, and became without any obvious effort the main feature and interest of our quiet world. The rôle amused him. He liked—figuratively—to take us by the scruff of the neck and toss us over his great shoulders like the insignificant, ineffectual drones that we were. He liked to do better than any of us the things on which we prided ourselves most. Tennis, golf, dancing—these things were natural to him. Because, after all, as he said, you needed only a straight eye and a brain and hand that worked together and worked well. Practise was for cripples.
His approach was announced by the purchase of Norbury Manor, a red-brick gabled eruption of the Victorian era, which had deservedly stood empty for ten years. A party of contractors descended upon the place, disembowelled it, and turned it into a palace of ugly and sometimes funny luxury. There were devices for the saving of effort so intricate that they made you tired remembering them, and they were peculiarly inappropriate to a man so obviously capable of doing things for himself. But he was very proud of them and used them painstakingly. I think that really they must have worried him a good deal.
You see, it was quite easy to make fun of Roger Fenwick, and some of us did our best. But it was an effort that fell flat. He was altogether too large, too capable of putting any one of us financially, physically, and mentally in his pocket. That which he had not got, and which we had, was a thing too subtle for us to use as a weapon against him. We hardly knew what it was ourselves, and I certainly never supposed that he knew. Still, I might have guessed. There was one indication, at least
Kings Mead was Christine's home and was divided from Norbury Manor by the high road and a lovely neglected park which remained to her father, Sir Geoffrey, from a once important estate. Fenwick could see it from his smoking-room window, and I remember him taking me by the arm one day and pointing to it with a scornful pipe-stem.
"Queer how people will go on living like that, isn't it? They haven't even got central heating."
"They have other things," I said.
But he brushed me aside, as he always did when I bordered on something he did not understand.
"That old boy, Rivers, is about at the end of his tether, they tell me. He'll have to sell sooner or later. I shall buy the place and throw a bridge over the road. It wouldn't take much to knock that old barn down and build up some decent stables. I've always hated having the stables near the house."
He went on explaining a new system of telephones which I only half heard.
But my ironic fancy pictured him touching some bell which would produce horse and groom through a trapdoor at the breakfast table. For the first time I felt a stirring of anger against him. Up to then I had liked him—as most people did whether they wanted to or not. But there had been something arrogant—aggressive—in his tone as though he had a sort of spite against that lovely tumbled-down jumble of the ages that peered at us through the trees like a sad ghost. It was Christine's home, and Christine was mine as I was hers. Even though we had never spoken, we had known ever since we were children that we belonged to each other.
"You can't do that," I said curtly. "You mustn't."
"Why not?"
"There's Miss Rivers. It would break her heart."
He smiled at me. Expressions like that struck him as comically sentimental and unreal. Only a man who thought stained glass important would be soft enough to use them.
"I knew a fellow who tried to corner wheat and didn't and went off his head," he said. "That's the nearest I've ever come to heart-break. What's this Miss Rivers like, anyway?"
She had been abroad when he came, and he knew nothing of her except that when people spoke of her it was always with a sudden change of tone, as though she had been a lovely child whom their very voices had to caress.
"You'll see her for yourself," I said. "She'll be back next month. Sir Geoffrey is giving a dance to celebrate. You'll be asked, I've no doubt."
"I've no doubt either. But he would be wiser to save some of his money for his creditors." Then suddenly he lifted his shoulders impatiently. "If she likes living in that drafty old barn, she must be as daft as her father."
"She and I are friends," I warned him.
He met my eyes, angry enough I've no doubt, and he saw through me and made me feel a fool.
"You mean you want to marry her? Well, you'll make a pretty pair, you and your old glass and your Elizabethan horrors. I'd give you Kings Mead for a wedding-present, if only it didn't spoil my view."
And he slipped his arm through mine and dragged me off, boiling with resentment as I was, to see a marvellous new bathroom recently installed.
"All you have to do," he said, "is to set the indicator, and the water will be at the exact temperature. There's no mistake possible. I'll show you."
II
That night ought to have been a triumph for me. I ought to have taken a malicious satisfaction in his overthrow. But I suppose my instinct warned me. Women meant nothing to him. He had told me that often enough with a sort of boyish pride. They didn't lead anywhere. They just tied you down and messed things up generally. He had seen the results of meddling with women, and so he had cut them out.
Then Christine Rivers came slowly down that broad dark staircase, like a bright burning little flame in her brocaded dress, her hair shining in the despised candlelight, and it was done.
She was late.
It is very Christinish to be late—a kind of provocative, unexpected flaw in her consideration and tenderness for others. And I saw the enchanting well-remembered smile appealing to us all, who waited for her, for toleration. I knew that presently she would be explaining to me how it had happened.
"It's my hair, Keith. You know, one day I shall just have to cut it off"
And then, even if you'd missed a train, you would forgive her.
I wonder now what Roger Fenwick saw that night. It has often puzzled me. Because, after all, he must have met many physically lovelier women in his wanderings. Her essential loveliness lay deeper than her features. It was rare and subtle. If I had to describe it in my limited language I should have to enumerate a lot of strange and seemingly incongruous things—Italian hills in springtime sunset over the Champagna as you see it from the Sabine hills—a perfect sonnet—some old English song—the mellow graciousness of ancient things—the first daffodils of the year. These she loved. These were of her and in her. You saw them in her as a still deep water will reflect the shadows of trees and mountains.
But what could Roger Fenwick have seen?
I glanced at him involuntarily. He had taken a step forward out of the group of men with whom he had been standing—an unconsciously arrogant movement as though he had shaken off a tiresome importunity, still more, perhaps, as though he wanted her to realise him at once, the one man who mattered in that crowd of good-natured, easy-going country gentlemen. But he had flushed up to the roots of his fair thick hair, and he never took his eyes from her. It was so brazen, so almost splendidly honest, that admiration of his, that even I could feel no resentment. And she saw him and stopped short on the last step, like some one overtaken by a dream, and waited for him.
Sir Geoffrey, white-haired and dignified, loftily indifferent to the pile of bills that at that very moment must have been loading down his library table, stepped between them. "My dear, I don't think you've met before. This is our new neighbour, Mr. Fenwick."
He took her hand and held it—it seemed to me for an eternity—and she made no effort to free herself. It was like an enchantment, and if it sounds exaggerated and impossible it was none the less true that every one who saw them together in that moment knew what was to happen. I knew. It seemed to me that my blood turned to ice. My vague resentment became hatred—not because I had lost everything to a man who had not raised a finger to defeat me, but because I knew that he could only make her unhappy.
He behaved so scandalously that night that he passed outside the reach of criticism. He was a law unto himself, and he had no judges. She had become his goal, his purpose, and he went for her in much the way, no doubt that he had gone after fortune and power. He danced with no one else, spoke to no one else. When another partner engaged her, he simply stood back and waited, his arms folded, his eyes following her remorselessly. He looked impatient, passionately impatient, but not anxious. It was as though already an understanding had been reached between them, and that these others were an exasperation to them both.
It was a bitter winter's night. He had his car at the door to take him the few steps to his own house across the way. He chose to dismiss it and to walk home with me across the sodden fields to my own house. For all the cutting north wind he carried his fur-lined coat over his arm, and by the drifting moonlight I caught glimpses of him—an incongruous, not unimposing, figure in the rough austere setting of night and storm, the well-cut evening clothes a masquerade.
We parted at the first gate. For the interview between us had been sharp and bitter and for me unendurable. His first words had been like the sword thrust of an adversary who had not even troubled to make the first warning salute.
"I have asked her to marry me," he said.
I answered passionately, "You are mad," knowing that he was not mad at all, but only absolutely sure of himself.
And he was at once tolerant and faintly amused, knowing my helplessness.
"I suppose I should have told you first, but it would have been a mere formality, and formalities bore me. You yourself are too reasonable to complain against what can't be helped. Perhaps if I hadn't come along she might have married you. I don't know. Anyhow it's done now."
"Do you mean that she accepted you?"
"No. But she will. She knows as well as I do. I have to go to America on business in two months' time. She will go with me."
I stopped short. The thing didn't seem ridiculous—only terrible. I wasn't thinking of myself now, but of her.
"Look here," I said. "You've fallen in love, and whatever you've wanted in life you've taken. You haven't cared what happened. But now you're supposed to care. Look at it from her side. You've swept her off her feet. But when all the excitement of it is over—what will be left? You haven't a thing in common. You despise what is dearest to her—she will hate what you love. You'll break her heart—and if you have any feeling—your own."
He heard me, reining in his impatience. "She loves me and she will be happy. All this"—he nodded towards the dim lights of Kings Mead "—all this junk is like a doll that a girl plays with until her own child comes. It's romantic foolishness. I shall give her the reality."
I felt myself stilling. I said thickly, "She and I belonged to each other," stupidly enough, and he glanced down at me from his superior height, and I am sure he smiled.
"Because you collect old glass and you used to read Swinburne together? I shall give her other things to think of."
"—Money," I said, "modern plumbing, new fangled telephones, and a car."
"Incidentally myself," he interrupted, laughing. "All good things in their way. At any rate it is for her to choose, isn't it? Or are you so old-fashioned that you think not?"
I let him banter me. I had lost. I knew that. But I had at least one last stand to make.
"You think me a poor creature," I said quietly. "I don't make money. I don't like the things you buy with it. But I love Christine. Perhaps that gives me more energy and courage than you expect in me. And I warn you, if she is unhappy, I shall make her come away with me—if she is ten times your wife"
"Agreed," he said. "And I'll let her go. After all, I happen to love her, too, you know."
And he gave me his hand so frankly and so seriously that my anger died. But I was at the end of my tether, and I turned and left him.
III
In six weeks they were married. It was all done very quietly and resolutely. Things happened behind the scenes which I could only suspect. I was fairly certain that the bills loading Sir Geoffrey's writing table vanished during that time. I don't say that he was bought over. After all, the decision rested with Christine. But it made things easier. A poor man would have had to wait. As to Christine, she was like a woman living in a dream. She heard me when I pleaded with her—for I did not give up without a struggle—but as she might have listened to the story of some one infinitely remote. She tried to grieve for both of us, but her own happiness was too great. I remember saying in my anguish for her:
"Have you ever thought what you will talk of together, day after day, year after year, you who haven't a word in common?"
And her answer, "I shall learn to speak his language."
At that, in a kind of miserable anger, I flung the word "infatuation" at her. At which she stood up, looking me straight and fearlessly in the eyes.
"I never loved any one before," she said.
That silenced me. I went away—right away—and when I came back she was Roger Fenwick's wife. It was a year later, and it stands to reason that I knew nothing save what was told me or what I could piece together for myself. They had been to America, Sir Geoffrey was dead, Kings Mead had been pulled down and the new stables were in course of erection, they were adding a ballroom on to the other horrors of the Manor. The latter reared itself up out of the green hillside like a horned and crested monster, red-faced and obese. It had an air of having devoured its ancient rival and of having sunk back upon its haunches, smug with satisfaction.
And Christine was happy. That was the incredible, amazing thing—happy and frank with me as with an old comrade whom she could trust. We stood together at the window of her over-crowded, over-luxurious drawing-room and looked across the lovely park to the disease-spot of brick and scaffolding that had been her home. And she spoke of it all steadily and brightly, not even wincing.
"Roger always hated it," she said, "and when father died there was no reason any more why he shouldn't have his way. It wasn't as though it were Elizabethan or anything like that. It had no real value."
"Except that you loved it," I muttered.
She was silent for a moment. She knew what I was remembering—the gracious and mellow loveliness of those old walls, the sombre and inimitable grandeur of the great beams that had frowned down on generations of her people. There she and I had begun the delicate, exquisite understanding of all lovely things, which had seemed to promise everything and had crumbled to nothing at the first touch. There she and I had talked and read and dreamed together. Now the place and the dreams had gone like a mist blown by a strong wind. Still we knew each other's minds too well for subterfuge. She saw the room behind her as I saw it, and suddenly she turned to me and met my unspoken question with a brave steadiness.
"You see, Keith, if one has to choose between two loves, one has to choose—that's all there is to it."
"You've given up everything," I said.
"My dear, it's very little compared to what I've won. I'm happy—I didn't know any human being could be so happy. What do a few books, a few stone walls, matter? He's new and different. He didn't understand them. But I could understand his life, and I am living it. I wanted you to know that."
"Will it always last?" I asked. "Can one human being give up his personality to another like that and not suffer? Can it be done at all?"
She smiled wisely and tenderly. "Perhaps a woman can," she answered.
At that moment he came in. He had changed—along his own lines. He seemed to have grown bigger and to exhale the very breath of success and power. He shook hands and then stood by his wife's side, his arm over her shoulder, smiling at me with a friendly challenging mockery. And it was true. They were fine to look at—each in a different way and linked together by a frank and open passion for each other. I felt suddenly abashed and small and thankful, too. For, after all, I did love with the best I have in me.
"Well," he said, "are you going to take her away from me, Masters?" And as she turned to look up at him with a smiling interrogation he went on, bringing the hot color to my face, "You see, Masters couldn't believe I could make you happy, dear. So we made a compact that if I failed I was to give you up to him. Shall I?"
For a moment her eyes flashed on me with a proud resentment, and then, remembering, softened and grew kind. Then, worst of all, they both laughed. And I laughed, too, turning the whole thing into a joke. Indeed I seemed to myself absurd enough in the face of that invulnerable happiness.
After that things settled down. I went back to my glass and my old life. I became a frequent visitor to their house and played the part of an old lover become friend, not unsuccessfully, I fancy. But almost unknown to myself I was watching. I didn't, I couldn't, believe in the ultimate success of such an experiment. And yet all the signs of an absolute success were there. One might have said that Fenwick had made her over again in his own image, moulding her mind and soul to his fancy. She who had never cared for sport and had been a timid rider hunted with him. She wore the valuable, rather commonplace jewelry with which he loaded her with a proud head. She moved about that vast, congested, too shiny house, with its retinue of expressionless servants, as though its ugly comfort and shallow magnificence were the very expression of herself. I doubted if she ever opened a book in those days. Her conversation was of the things that interested him—finance, politics, horses, cars, his friends. She had indeed put away her toys, as he had said she would, and taken to the real things of life. Or, as I saw it, she had let him swallow her up, immolating herself as a willing, loving sacrifice.
Well, she had to choose. And that they loved each other utterly was undenied even by me. I began to believe in miracles until one day I saw something that shook my faith.. It was the opening run of the season. Hounds were in full cry. Christine, Fenwick, and I were riding close to one another. Usually she hung behind, but to-day he turned and called to her laughingly, and she drove her horse alongside of his, valiantly keeping pace. So that it happened that for the first time she was in at the kill and the master brought her the bleeding mask as trophy.
I saw her face. It was white as death. The fine tender mouth was set in an inflexible pitiful line. I think she was near fainting. She smiled at last and thanked him. But I knew that the old Christine was there still, driven into hiding, gagged and manacled by her love, but alive.
It was on the ride home that the disaster happened. She said afterward that she was tired and careless. At any rate her horse bolted and swept her under some trees, one low-hanging branch of which struck her across the forehead. She kept her seat mercifully, and within a hundred yards, Fenwick, looking like death himself, had headed off the already sobered animal, bringing it to a standstill. Apparently no damage had been done. She laughed off our anxiety and appeared at the Hunt Ball that night with no sign of the accident save a certain pallor. A heavy diamond and emerald tiara—his last gift—covered the red mark where the branch had struck her. After all, it had been a trivial accident—especially in a hunting county where bad spills were part of the day's work.
IV
Two days later they went up to town and were gone some weeks. No one knew the reason of their sudden departure, but his huge and wide-spread enterprises were explanation enough. I was hardened by this time to doing without so much as a sight of her, but for some reason or other a vague disquiet possessed me. I was unable to settle down either to my work or my hobby. My unrest drove me out of doors; a bitter winter's wind laden with snow drove me back to my mournful and empty home. At nightfall I heard the familiar purr of Fenwick's car as it slid past on its way to the station. I heard its return, the long clarion note of its horn as it swung into the gateway. I ought to have been at peace then. For she had come home. But instead my unreasoned anxiety suddenly reached a head. To my excited fancy there had been at once something tragic and sinister about that silent departure and that unheralded return. I had to see them. I felt that just to see the lights of their room shining would bring me reassurance.
I stole out. It says something for my strange state that I never noticed the cold or the intense dark which at another time might have made it hard to find my way along the slippery footpath across the fields. A single lighted window guided me, and within sight of the manor's ponderous assured shadow I came to a halt. My own conduct suddenly appeared ridiculous and unwarranted. How should I explain my appearance on such a night—or my fear, an absurd fear in the face of their invulnerable security? Then, just as I was about to turn away, I saw that Fenwick was standing at the long open window opposite staring out as though he had seen me and were waiting. I came out into the light then. But he had not seen me at all. I could tell that, although he made no sign. His usually fresh-colored face was absolutely colorless and blank. I think if the devil himself had risen up at his feet it wouldn't have moved him.
"You'll think me a perfect ass, Fenwick," I said. "I heard your car pass, and I got a ridiculous notion that something was wrong. I didn't mean to disturb you."
He motioned me to come in, then closed the window. He said very quietly:
"Something is wrong."
"What—not Christine."
He nodded. He would not look at me.
"You remember that ride? The blow across the head? It seemed nothing. But afterward—we went up to town—the specialists, you know—not one—all of them—chasing from one to the other—you don't know what it's been like—the waiting the hope. It's her eyes, Masters—her sight."
He stood there, clasping and unclasping his hands, in a nervous, unconscious anguish. If the many he had trampled under foot in his inexorable course had seen him then, they might have wondered and even pitied him.
"Go on, for Heaven's sake!"
"It's something to do with the retina—a loosening—incurable"
"Not—not blind?"
He did not answer.
I felt a sudden sickness, almost physical, shake me so that I could hardly stand. Christine—my blue-eyed, shining Christine—who had loved the loveliness of the world so much, who had turned away from it all for love—now dark, utterly dark forever. It was like a cruel, ironic stroke of fate, an abominable perverse justice. It was as though the power that had given her sight and understanding had been outraged at her sacrifice of the gift.
It was a morbid, horrible reflection. I looked at Fenwick. To my utter amazement I saw that his face was wet. He made no attempt to hide his tears. He was too big to be ashamed.
"I'm crying for both of us," he said. "She doesn't cry at all. You're our friend, and I know you love her. Won't you see her?"
I didn't want to go—not then, not with him—not with all my tenderness and love and pity manacled and helpless. Yet I had no choice. I followed down the palatial corridor to her own room. I had never been there before. But with one glance it revealed everything to me. This was her last stronghold, the secret treasure house. It was from here she had gathered strength to live his life—from these remembered books, these pictures, this subdued and gracious beauty. When the hunger had become too great, too dangerous, she had come here and lost herself a little. No one had ever known or guessed. She might have gone on to her death. But now
She sat by the bright fire. She had taken off her travelling hat, and the glow kindled the red-gold hair. She looked so young—she sat so upright with her hands folded gently in her lap—one couldn't believe.
"Christine—it's Keith."
She turned her head in my direction, smiling. The eyes were unchanged—only they missed mine by a hair's breadth. I stumbled toward her, half blinded too, and put her hand to my mouth.
She murmured: "You mustn't mind so much, you two. After all, I might have been killed. You ought to be thankful."
We both loved her differently, but with all ourselves. And the knowledge of our common anguish broke down our disguise of self-control. To other men he might show an unbroken front—I didn't count.
For suddenly he threw himself on his knees beside her, holding her to him as though some invisible force were trying to tear her away.
"Christine—we have each other."
She laid her slender hand on his brown head. She echoed, "Yes, my darling, we have each other," caressing, soothing him as though he had been a frightened child clamouring to her in the dark where she was to live.
She had forgotten me. She was not accustomed yet to the knowledge that though others were hidden from her, she was still visible to them.
So she forgot to mask her face. And in that moment I saw how terribly afraid she was.
V
I stayed away until he came for me. It was hard to believe that a few days like that could have shaken this man so profoundly that he looked years older. And it wasn't only the tragedy that had overtaken Christine. It was something else.
"Masters, be a good fellow and come round," he said. "Of course, I know you wanted to leave us to ourselves and all that—but—but the days are long for her now. You might read to her a bit. She says you used to. I've tried—but—well, you know, it's not my line. I made a hash of it."
Our eyes met involuntarily and as quickly slid away from each other. Neither of us dared to think out our own thought.
But I went over as he had asked. I sat with her in that significant little room and took down the old books from the shelves. It seemed to me, as I read, that the two years of her married life had been wiped out and that if I lifted my eyes I should see her smiling on me with that remembered tenderness. But she was not thinking of me. Her face was toward the softly opened door. Her husband stood there. He came in and sat beside her, holding her hand, his jaw set as though he were fighting some one.
"You go on, Masters."
It was something from Swinburne, I remember. All the time I was reading I was aware of Fenwick's presence. It was like a spirit of unrest and violence in the room. As far as I knew he scarcely moved, and yet I felt the whole man quivering with impatience. And suddenly, almost violently, he stood up.
"Well," he said, "I don't understand all that. Sounds gibberish to me. When you've done I've got something to show you, Christine"-he flushed scarlet at that pitiful blunder—"I mean something to give you. Bring her with you, won't you?"
But after he had gone I did not read any more. A painful awkwardness divided us. We knew too much of each other's thoughts. I looked at her pale, composed young face, thankful almost that she could not see mine, and remembered my own question, "What will you two talk of, year after year?"
She made a little vague gesture. "Thank you, Keith. Not any more now. I'd like to see"—she smiled unaffectedly—"I mean, feel what he's brought for me. You know, he brings me something every day. It helps him to bear it, my poor darling."
So I gave her my arm, and we went down together to the front entrance of the house where Fenwick waited for us. And outside stood a new car, a monstrous, marvellous thing, each detail thought out to its most extravagant possibilities, its glitter demanding an endless labor.
"It's to be your very own, Christine."
He must have hoped for something—I don't know what. What could he have hoped? He watched her run her hand over the luxurious upholstery and finger the hundred and one little contrivances for her comfort. And gradually all the fire died out of his handsome face. He looked like a child who has discovered that his favorite fairy-story is just another make-believe.
"What's this for, Roger?"
"Why, dear, don't you see?"
The whole thing was indescribably pitiful. She tried so hard. She made him drive her round the park, and praised the smooth-running engine and the perfect springing. But after all he was no fool. At the end he turned a face to me that had a queer look of panic.
"Come again, won't you, Masters—and—and read to her?"
"Do you really want me to?" I asked and met his eyes deliberately.
"Yes, I want you to," he answered steadily.
I knew that he was thinking of that night when I had warned him. Then he had laughed. I had seemed a puny and insignificant force. He did not laugh now. The fight was on. She was his possession, and now in some inexplicably dangerous way I challenged him. I could almost see him gathering together every reserve faculty to meet and defeat me.
"Come every day you can, Masters," he said. "You see, I can't be with her always."
And so that strange year began. I can say this truthfully, that I had only one object. And I was not thinking of myself. But once I was certain that her happiness lay in my hands, I meant to stop at nothing. Neither reputation nor conventional notions of honour would have held me back. She had lost too much. She was too utterly alone.
As to Roger Fenwick, he fought me step by step. It must have been a terrible struggle—for after all, I did nothing—I had to make no effort. What I had to give her was the old unshaken understanding, an intimacy of the mind and spirit that had been ours from the beginning. I walked and read and talked and was silent with her. That was all.
He loaded her with gifts. It became a kind of obsession with him. He gave her jewels she could not see, luxuries that were like dead-sea fruit to her. He laid the whole material world—the only world he knew—at her feet, certain that therein lay her only possible consolation. He carried her away on headlong journeys across the country, wilfully oblivious to the truth that one place was dark as another to her. Sometimes she would ask him, "Tell me what you see, Roger," and he could only stammer colorless words.
And she would come back white with exhaustion and hide herself in her little room, and I would read her back to tranquillity.
I don't know what went on between those two. I could only guess. Toward the end he tried courageously enough to meet me on my own ground. He would come in and sit with us and talk of the things that had once seemed to absorb her. I remember one night in particular, for it marked a sort of crisis. He had been telling her of some big financial deal that he was trying to pull, and suddenly he looked up and saw her face.
"You're not listening, Christine," he said. "You don't care."
We saw her pitiful start, the gallant effort of her spirit. She put out her hand toward him.
"My dear, of course I'm listening. If it concerns you, it concerns me."
But he shook her off. And then he asked a strange thing. "Where are you, Christine?"
I suppose she was utterly worn out, past feigning and almost past caring. Both of them had forgotten that they were not alone.
"My darling, I've had to go back into myself. I can't help it—it's all dark everywhere else—forgive me"
She was crying. But he did not come near her.
"I give you everything," he said, "and I only torture you.
And he went out without another word.
She poured out her heart to me then—not to me, but just to a faceless, invisible presence that was almost a part of herself. She loved him—that was the unalterable tragic fact. For love of him she had made his world her world, his gods her gods. And had her life gone on unbroken, she might have continued to worship obediently by his side at their altars. But fate—the power that had made her what she was—turned on her to punish her.
"Perhaps there are things one mustn't do—even for love, Keith."
I held my hand for that night. And the next day they were gone. It was a flight. I knew that much, and but for the thought of her weariness and despair, I might have gathered consolation from the knowledge. "Italy," the butler told me. And that again had a bitter tang. For Italy had been the land of her girl's dreams when there had been no money for such things—and after marriage—well, what did one go to Italy for anyway? A lot of old musty ruins—an historical dust-heap. I could almost hear Fenwick's voice and his good-humoured laugh. His egotism had ridden over her like a great smooth rolling wave. And now, when it was too late, his no less egotistical fear would drag her from place to place on a tragic hopeless pilgrimage.
They were back within a month. I had no warning. Simply at nightfall, as I sat brooding over a book, Roger Fenwick stood at my open window. He was so much a part of my thoughts that for a moment I did not believe in his reality. He might have been his own ghost. Yes, that is the impression he made on me—of something not quite earthly, of a man stripped of his body. It was just a moment's fancy, of course, but even when he spoke and moved, a little of that feeling remained. It was partly, no doubt, the fact that he looked extraordinarily ill—almost broken. The muscular heavy shoulders were rounded as though under an intolerable burden. The mere strength of his face had been fined down to a sort of austerity.
There were no preliminaries between us. I don't think we even shook hands. He came and stood opposite, leaning on the mantelshelf.
"I give up, Masters." I'm sure he had never said that to any man before and that it cost him terribly. "I give up," he repeated. Then he went on with a dogged resolution, "You remember that compact of ours? I made it in jest, I was so sure of myself. Well, you were right. She might love me—but I can't make her happy now I've seen the whole thing. I've given her everything I have to give, and she's dying for something I haven't got. It's killing me, too. Not that that matters. I sit opposite her, and I don't know what to say. She used to follow me—and now she can't any more. And I can't follow her. I don't know where she's gone. But you know."
"I warned you," I said, and was ashamed. It was like hitting a man who could not even defend himself.
"I know," he said. "I love her. But that's all. It's not enough. It's got to be something more than that. I haven't got it. So she's going free."
I waited. After a moment he began to tell me his plans. He was very composed and matter-of-fact. But my eyes were sharpened, and he looked to me like a man bleeding to death. He was going away—right away. He would give her a formal cause for divorce. He left it to me to see it through for her.
"Then marry her," he said. "She's your mate. I only love her."
"As she loves you," I had strength enough to answer.
"That's what's breaking her heart," he said. "She loves me—and I'm nothing to her. Masters, when we were standing in that old Roman forum, she turned and asked, 'What is it like, Roger?' and I couldn't tell her. I said, 'It looks like a heap of old bricks, dear.' And she laughed. But I saw she was near crying. She had asked for bread, and I gave her a stone. We had the most expensive suite at the Quirinal, Masters. I would have bought up the whole place for her. But that wasn't what she wanted."
"We've got to make life bearable for her," I said.
"I know," he answered. "And I can't."
We talked for a long time after that. He was pitifully practical. He put my protests on one side. She was to be free.
"I give up," he repeated. "You've got to carry on.'
When at last he left me, he held my hand for a long minute.
"I'm almost happy," he said. "I've done the right thing at last. I've made up to her. She'll think I never really cared at all. But you'll know."
"Wait," I implored him. "For God's sake, wait."
"I can't," he said. "I haven't got the strength. Go in and win."
He nodded to me with a last effort at self-control, stepped out of my window, and was gone like a flash into the dark. It made me think of a boy flying to hide the shame of his grief, and suddenly all my own hopes fell withered and dead. For they loved each other. How then should I ever make her happy? And I ran after him, calling him, stammering:
"It can't be done, Fenwick; it's too late."
But he had vanished utterly.
VI
Afterward he told me what happened to him that night. Outwardly it was nothing. It was one of those strange adventures of the spirit which are more dramatic, more significant for good or evil, than any visible event. He says that after he left me a marvellous sense of peace came over him. He had made the first sacrifice of his life. He had given up happiness. That obstinate and steadfast quality in him made his loss final and incurable. He had never loved a woman before, and his love, ruthless and egotistical as it was, had been given absolutely. He looked forward into a black empty avenue of years, his life stripped of everything that had made it worth living. He went out of my house a beggar. That was the first step of revelation.
He says that for a long time he didn't know what was happening to him. All he could think of was that she would be free and that at last he had given her peace. He knew that he was suffering. He was like a prince, clothed in silks and furs and rich ornaments, who had torn off all the splendid regalia and luxury which shielded him and walked naked in the bitter spring wind. He says he felt naked—stripped of everything—and that the pain was so keen and sharp that it was a sort of ecstasy. He had done with a burden; he had thrown off something that had stifled him. He was breathing freely for the first time.
And then, when he came out on to high ground and looked down upon his house lying like a great sleeping monster in the folds of the hills, he remembered. Everything was his. He was one of the richest men in the world. There was nothing that human reason could desire that could not be his. He had power, he had health. He was young still. Everything.
He looked across to where Christine's home had stood and where an ornate and gaudy building now gleamed blankly in the moonlight. That old tumble-down place! Not even Elizabethan—of no possible value. Just an old homestead where people had lived, and which had been steeped in years and some grave wisdom of its own. He had been right about it, of course from his point of view, so absolutely right. Only now something had changed. It was as though unconsciously he had shifted his ground and was seeing something that he had never seen before—something that Christine had seen even in her blindness.
And suddenly he found himself saying aloud: "What is it? What is it you love? What is it you know, Christine? Shall I never learn?"
He went into the house. Its meaningless magnificence made him feel an outcast. He went to his wife's little room and closed the door and drew the curtains across the moonlit window, like a thief opening a chest of treasures. One has to realise that he was a very strong and proud man utterly broken and humbled. He does not know how long he spent in that place. He says it was a sort of terrible, wonderful journey. He was trying to find his way to her at last. He took up the things she loved—some of them little personal trifles which made his heart ache. He held them as though they had been talismans by which he could open the door into her secret life. He says he believes he prayed to them like a heathen. He was beside himself—outside himself, as the French say, a naked shivering spirit.
He found a book that I had been reading to her the night before they left on that last desperate flight. It was a volume of Rossetti's poems. His eye chanced on that sonnet which seems the final expression of love's dread and tenderness. Why, he had heard me read it to her. And it meant nothing.
But now he had lost her.
"Oh, love, my love, if I no more should see thyself
Nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,
How then should sound upon life's darkened slope
The ground whirl of the perished leaves of hope,
The wind of death's imperishable wing?"
That got him, tore him to pieces. Fundamentally he was very primitive and simple. He cried openly. And then he went out and up the stairs to his wife's bedroom. The door was never closed against him, and he stumbled in and kneeled beside her, and hid his wet face against her breast.
"Christine, I'm blind," he said. "My dear, teach me to see."
Perhaps she had been waking, too, and crying. At least, somehow she understood and gathered him a close to her as though he had been a frightened child that had blundered its way safely to her through the dark.
That's forty years ago. They've suffered a good deal in those years. But they have weathered through. They have something between them which endures.
People watched them as they came into the lounge last night. It wasn't their obvious wealth—the humble deference of the servants. It wasn't the fact that even in their old age they make a very lovely couple. It was his tenderness of her, and the way she clung to him, letting him guide her. They seemed so much a part of each other.
And to-day in the cathedral I watched them from the shadow of a side chapel. I saw her run her white hand over the old slender Gothic columns and heard her ask him:
"Tell me what you see, Roger?"
And he told her, standing there hat in hand, earnest and a little anxious. For he is no poet. He sees as through a glass darkly. But at least he sees. He is like some simple pilgrim; blundering and almost inarticulate, but at least he is on the road.
"The west window is like a great jeweled wheel, Christine. The light on that column is quite red."
She smiled.
"I can almost feel it on my hand."
To-morrow they are going to the Bois des Eschelles, and there amid the army of white crosses he will pick out one for her to touch. And she will see the flowers that are growing there with his eyes, and he will see them with her spirit.
And so they will be together.