In the Year of Jubilee Part 35

'I look at it in this way. We ought to regard ourselves as married people living under exceptionally favourable circ.u.mstances. One has to bear in mind the brutal fact that man and wife, as a rule, see a great deal too much of each other--thence most of the ills of married life: squabblings, discontents, small or great disgusts, leading often enough to _altri guai_. People get to think themselves victims of incompatibility, when they are merely suffering from a foolish custom--the habit of being perpetually together. In fact, it's an immoral custom. What does immorality mean but anything that tends to kill love, to harden hearts? The common practice of man and wife occupying the same room is monstrous, gross; it's astounding that women of any sensitiveness endure it. In fact, their sensitiveness is destroyed. Even an ordinary honeymoon generally ends in quarrel--as it certainly ought to. You and I escape all that. Each of us lives a separate life, with the result that we like each other better as time goes on; I speak for myself, at all events. I look forward to our meetings. I open the door to you with as fresh a feeling of pleasure as when you came first. If we had been ceaselessly together day and night--well, you know the result as well as I do.'

He spoke with indulgent gravity, in the tone of kindness to which his voice was naturally attuned. And Nancy's reply, though it expressed a stronger feeling, struck the same harmonious note.

'I can agree with all that. But it applies to people married in the ordinary way. I was speaking of ourselves, placed as we are.'

'I don't pretend to like the concealment,' said Tarrant. 'For one thing, there's a suggestion of dishonour about it. We've gone over all that--'

'Oh, I don't mean that for a moment. It isn't really dishonourable. My father could never have objected to _you_ for my husband. He only wanted to guard me--Mary says so, and he told her everything. He thought me a silly, flighty girl, and was afraid I should be trapped for the sake of my money. I wish--oh how I wish I had had the courage to tell him! He would have seen you, and liked and trusted you--how could he help?'

'It might have been better--but who knows whether he would have seen me with your eyes, Nancy?'

'Yes, yes. But I was going to say----'

She hesitated.

'Say on.'

'There are so many difficulties before us, dear.'

'Not if we continue to think of each other as we do now. Do you mean it might be discovered?'

'Yes, through no fault of ours.'

She hesitated again.

'Quite sure you haven't told anybody?'

'No one.'

Tarrant had a doubt on this point. He strongly suspected that Jessica Morgan knew the truth, but he shrank from pressing Nancy to an avowal of repeated falsehood.

'Then it's very unlikely we should be found out. Who would dream of tracking you here, for instance? And suppose we were seen together in the street or in the country, who would suspect anything more than love-making? and that is not forbidden you.'

'No. But--'

'But?'

'But suppose I--'

She rose, crossed to him, seated herself on his knee and put an arm about his neck. Before she had spoken another word, Tarrant understood; the smile on his face lost its spontaneity; a bitter taste seemed to distort his lips.

'You think--you are afraid--'

He heard a monosyllable, and sat silent. This indeed had not entered into his calculations; but why not? He could hardly say; he had ignored the not unimportant detail, as it lurked among possibilities. Perhaps had willingly ignored it, as introducing a complication oppressive to his indolence, to his hodiernal philosophy. And now he arraigned mother-nature, the very divinity whom hitherto he had called upon to justify him. All at once he grew cold to Nancy. The lulled objections to matrimony awoke in him again; again he felt that he had made a fool of himself. Nancy was better than he had thought; he either loved her, or felt something towards her, not easily distinguishable from love. His inferior she remained, but not in the sense he had formerly attributed to the word. Her mind and heart excelled the idle conception he had formed of them. But Nancy was not his wife, as the world understands that relation; merely his mistress, and as a mistress he found her charming, lovable. What she now hinted at, would shatter the situation.

Tarrant thought not of the peril to her material prospects; on that score he was indifferent, save in so far as Mr Lord's will helped to maintain their mutual independence. But he feared for his liberty, in the first place, and in the second, abhorred the change that must come over Nancy herself. Nancy a mother--he repelled the image, as though it degraded her.

Delicacy, however, constrained him to a disguise of these emotions. He recognised the human sentiments that should have weighed with him; like a man of cultivated intelligence, he admitted their force, their beauty.

None the less, a syllable on Nancy's lips had arrested the current of his feelings, and made him wish again that he had been either more or less a man of honour down at Teignmouth.

'And yet,' he said to himself, 'could I have resisted an appeal for marriage _now_? That comes of being so confoundedly humane. It's a marvel that I didn't find myself married to some sheer demirep long ago.'

Nancy was speaking.

'Will it make you love me less?'

'I have always refused to prophesy about love,' he answered, with forced playfulness.

'But you wouldn't--you wouldn't?'

'We should find ourselves in a very awkward position.'

'I know,' said Nancy hurriedly. 'I can't see what would be done. But you seem colder to me all at once, Lionel. Surely it oughtn't to--to turn you away from me. Perhaps I am mistaken.'

This referred to the alarming possibility, and Tarrant caught at hope.

Yes, she might be mistaken; they wouldn't talk about it; he shook it away.

'Let me fill my pipe again. Yes, you can do it for me. That reminds me of a story Harvey Munden tells. A man he knew, a doctor, got married, and there was nothing his wife wouldn't do for him. As he sat with her one evening, smoking, a patient called him into the consulting-room. He had only just lighted a fresh pipe, and laid it down regretfully. 'I'll keep it in for you,' said his wife. And she did so, with dainty and fearful puffs, at long intervals. But the doctor was detained, and when he came back--well, the poor wife had succ.u.mbed to her devotion. She never kept in his pipe again.

Nancy tried to laugh. She was in her own chair again, and sat resting her cheek upon her hand, gazing at the fire.

'How is it, Lionel, that no one ever knocks at your door when I'm here.'

'Oh, very simple. I sport the oak--as you know.'

'But don't you think some friend of yours might see a light in your window, and come up?'

'If so, _il respecte la consigne_.'

'No, no; I don't like you when you begin to use French words. I think it reminds me of once when you did it a long time ago,--and I thought you--never mind.'

Tarrant laughed.

'Weren't they strange--those meetings of ours at Champion Hill? What did you think me? Arrogant? Insolent? That is my tendency with strangers, I admit.'

'But I was asking you a question,' said Nancy. 'You mean that no one would knock, if he saw your outer door closed. But what would they think?'

'No doubt--that I was working. I am supposed to be secretly engaged on some immortal composition.'

Nancy pondered.

'I do hope no one that knows you will ever see me coming or going.'

'What could it matter? They wouldn't know who you were.'

'But to have such things thought. I should feel it just as if they knew me. I believe I could never come again.'

'Why, what's the matter with you?' Tarrant asked. 'You have tears in your eyes. You're not well to-day.' He checked himself on an unwelcome thought, and proceeded more carelessly. 'Do you suppose for a moment that any friend of mine is a.s.s enough to think with condemnation of a girl who should come to my rooms--whatever the circ.u.mstances? You must get rid of that provincialism--let us call it Camberwellism.'

'They wouldn't think it any harm--even if--?'