Sacred and Profane Love Part 15

'Tell me,' I murmured. 'Tell me--what I can do.'

I had remained in bed; she was by the fireplace. A distance between us seemed necessary.

'You can't do anything, my dear,' she said. 'Only I was obliged to talk to someone, after all the night. It's about Frank.'

'Mr. Ispenlove!' I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, acting as well as I could, but not very well.

'Yes. He has left me.'

'But why? What is the matter?'

Even to recall my share in this interview with Mary Ispenlove humiliates me. But perhaps I have learned the value of humiliation. Still, could I have behaved differently?

'You won't understand unless I begin a long time ago,' said Mary Ispenlove. 'Carlotta, my married life has been awful--awful--a tragedy.

It has been a tragedy both for him and for me. But no one has suspected it; we have hidden it.'

I nodded. I, however, had suspected it.

'It's just twenty years--yes, twenty--since I fell in love,' she proceeded, gazing at me with her soft, moist eyes.

'With--Frank,' I a.s.sumed. I lay back in bed.

'No,' she said. 'With another man. That was in Brixton, when I was a girl living with my father; my mother was dead. He was a barrister--I mean the man I was in love with. He had only just been called to the Bar.

I think everybody knew that I had fallen in love with him. Certainly he did; he could not help seeing it. I could not conceal it. Of course I can understand now that it flattered him. Naturally it did. Any man is flattered when a woman falls in love with him. And my father was rich, and so on, and so on. We saw each other a lot. I hoped, and I kept on hoping. Some people even said it was a match, and that I was throwing myself away. Fancy--throwing myself away--me!--who have never been good for anything! My father did not care much for the man; said he was selfish and grasping. Possibly he was; but I was in love with him all the same. Then I met Frank, and Frank fell in love with me. You know how obstinate Frank is when he has once set his mind on a thing. Frank determined to have me; and my father was on his side. I would not listen.

I didn't give him so much as a chance to propose to me. And this state of things lasted for quite a long time. It wasn't my fault; it wasn't anybody's fault.'

'Just so,' I agreed, raising my head on one elbow, and listening intently. It was the first sincere word I had spoken, and I was glad to utter it.

'The man I had fallen in love with came nearer. He was decidedly tempted.

I began to feel sure of him. All I wanted was to marry him, whether he loved me a great deal or only a little tiny bit. I was in that state.

Then he drew away. He scarcely ever came to the house, and I seemed never to be able to meet him. And then one day my father showed me something in the _Morning Post_. It was a paragraph saying that the man I was in love with was going to marry a woman of t.i.tle, a widow and the daughter of a peer. I soon found out she was nearly twice his age. He had done it to get on. He was getting on very well by himself, but I suppose that wasn't fast enough for him. Carlotta, it nearly killed me. And I felt so sorry for him. You can't guess how sorry I felt for him. I felt that he didn't know what he had missed. Oh, how happy I should have made him! I should have lived for him. I should have done everything for him. I should have ... You don't mind me telling you all this?'

I made an imploring gesture.

'What a shame!' I burst out.

'Ah, my dear!' she said, 'he didn't love me. One can't blame him.'

'And then?' I questioned, with an eagerness that I tried to overcome.

'Frank was so persevering. And--and--I _did_ admire his character. A woman couldn't help admiring his character, could she? And, besides, I honestly thought I had got over the other affair, and that I was in love with him. I refused him once, and then I married him. He was as mad for me as I had been for the other one. Yes, I married him, and we both imagined we were going to be happy.'

'And why haven't you been?' I asked.

'This is my shame,' she said. 'I could not forget the other one. We soon found that out.'

'Did you _talk_ about it, you--and Frank?' I put in, amazed.

'Oh _no_!' she said. 'It was never mentioned--never once during fifteen years. But he knew; and I knew that he knew. The other one was always between us--always, always, always! The other one was always in my heart.

We did our best, both of us; but it was useless. The pa.s.sion of my life was--it was invincible. I _tried_ to love Frank. I could only like him.

Fancy his position! And we were helpless. Because, you know, Frank and I are not the sort of people that go and make a scandal--at least, that was what I thought,' she sighed. 'I know different now. Well, he died the day before yesterday.'

'Who?'

'Crettell. He had just been made a judge. He was the youngest judge on the bench--only forty-six.'

'Was _that_ the man?' I exclaimed; for Crettell's character was well known in London.

'That was the man. Frank came in yesterday afternoon, and after he had glanced at the paper, he said: "By the way, Crettell's dead." I did not grasp it at first. He repeated: "Crettell--he's dead." I burst into tears. I couldn't help it. And, besides, I forgot. Frank asked me very roughly what I was crying for. You know, Frank has much changed these last few months. He is not as nice as he used to be. Excuse me talking like this, my dear. Something must be worrying him. Well, I said as well as I could while I was crying that the news was a shock to me. I tried to stop crying, but I couldn't. I sobbed. Frank threw down the paper and stamped on it, and he swore. He said: "I know you've always been in love with the brute, but you needn't make such a d.a.m.n fuss about it." Oh, my dear, how can I tell you these things? That angered me. This was the first time in our married life that Crettell had been even referred to, and it seemed to me that Frank put all the hatred of fifteen years into that single sentence. Why was I angry? I didn't know. We had a scene.

Frank lost his temper, for the first time that I remember, and then he recovered it. He said quietly he couldn't stand living with me any more; and that he had long since wanted to leave me. He said he would never see me again. And then one of the servants came in, and--'

'What?'

'Nothing. I sent her out. And--and--Fran didn't come home last night.'

There was a silence. I could find nothing to say, and Mary had hidden her face. I utterly forgot myself and my own state in this extraordinary hazard of matrimony. I could only think of Mary's grief--a grief which, nevertheless, I did not too well comprehend.

'Then you love him now?' I ventured at length.

She made no reply.

'You love him--is that so?' I pursued. 'Tell me honestly.'

I spoke as gently as it was in me to speak.

'Honestly!' she cried, looking up. 'Honestly! No! If I loved him, could I have been so upset about Crettell? But we have been together so long. We are husband and wife, Carlotta. We are so used to each other. And generally he is so good. We've got on very well, considering. And now he's left me. Think of the scandal! It will be terrible! terrible! A separation at my age! Carlotta, it's unthinkable! He's mad--that's the only explanation. Haven't I tried to be a good wife to him? He's never found fault with me--never! And I'm sure, as regards him, I've had nothing to complain of.'

'He will come back,' I said. 'He'll think things over and see reason.'

And it was just as though I heard some other person saying these words.

'But he didn't come _home_ last night,' Mary insisted. 'What the servants are thinking I shouldn't like to guess.'

'What does it matter what the servants think?' I said brusquely.

'But it _does_ matter. He didn't come _home_. He must have slept at a hotel. Fancy, sleeping at a hotel, and his home waiting for him! Oh, Carlotta, you're too young to understand what I feel! You're very clever, and you're very sympathetic; but you can't see things as I see them. Wait till you've been married fifteen years. The scandal! The shame! And me only too anxious to be a good wife, and to keep our home as it should be, and to help him as much as I can with my stupid brains in his business!'

'I can understand perfectly,' I a.s.serted. 'I can understand perfectly.'

And I could. The futility of arguing with Mary, of attempting to free her ever so little from the coils of convention which had always bound her, was only too plainly apparent. She was--and naturally, sincerely, instinctively--the very incarnation and mouthpiece of the conventionality of society, as she cowered there in her grief and her quiet resentment. But this did not impair the authenticity of her grief and her resentment. Her grief appealed to me powerfully, and her resentment, almost angelic in its quality, seemed sufficiently justified.

I knew that my own position was in practice untenable, that logic must always be inferior to emotion. I am intensely proud of my ability to see, then, that no sentiment can be false which is sincere, and that Mary Ispenlove's att.i.tude towards marriage was exactly as natural, exactly as free from artificiality, as my own. Can you go outside Nature? Is not the polity of Londoners in London as much a part of Nature as the polity of bees in a hive?

'Not a word for fifteen years, and then an explosion like that!' she murmured, incessantly recurring to the core of her grievance. 'I did wrong to marry him, I know. But I _did_ marry him--I _did_ marry him! We are husband and wife. And he goes off and sleeps at a hotel! Carlotta, I wish I had never been born! What will people say? I shall never be able to look anyone in the face again.'

'He will come back,' I said again.

'Do you think so?'

This time she caught at the straw.