The Duchess of Wrexe Part 45

"No, I beg your pardon. It isn't----" He suddenly came to her, caught her and kissed her, holding her with his arm close to him, murmuring in her ear. At first she had struggled, then she lay absolutely still against him, making no response.

He felt her pa.s.sive against his beating heart. He released her and watched her as she went across to the window and looked out into the darkening city.

"I don't care," he said roughly, "I love you. There's no talk about it or anything else. You belong to _me_."

"I belong to Roddy," she answered quietly. "It's all quite clear. My duty is to him until ... unless, life with him becomes impossible. I've got absolutely to do my best and while I'm doing that you've got to help me."

"What do you mean?" he said, his eyes upon her.

"Help me by our not meeting, by our not writing, by our doing nothing--nothing----"

"No--No," he answered her, his eyes set upon her.

"You don't get me any other way. Francis, don't you see that we're not the sort of people, either of us, to put up with the deceits, the trickeries, the lies that the other thing means? Some people might--lots of people do, I suppose--but we're not built that way. We're idealists--We aren't made to stand quietly and see all the quality of the thing vanish before our eyes--just to take the husk when we've known what the kernel was like.

"Besides, it isn't as though I hated Roddy. If I did I'd go off with you now, in a minute if you wanted me, although even then it would be a hopeless thing for _us_ to do. But I'm very fond of Roddy. I'm not in love with him--I never have been--I told him from the first--But I'm going to do my best by him."

"Why did you come here?"

"I came here because I was driven towards you. I wanted to hear you say that you loved me--I wanted to tell you that I loved you. We've both of us said it. We know it now--and we've got to keep it, the most precious thing in the world.

"But we should soon hate one another if we destroyed one another's ideals. For many people it wouldn't matter--For us, weak as we are, it matters everything."

"All this talk," he said. "I'm a man. I'm here to love you, not to talk about it. I've got you and I'm going to keep you."

"You haven't got me," she cried. "You've got a bit of me. There'll be times when I'm away from you when I shall think that you've got all of me. But you haven't--no one's got all of me....

"And I haven't got you either--You think now for the moment that it is so--But I know what it would be if we were hiding about on the Continent or secretly meeting here in London--That's not for us, Francis."

"I've got you," he repeated. "I'm not going to wait any longer----"

"It's the only way you'll ever have me," she answered, "by letting me do my duty to Roddy--I promise you that. If ever life is impossible--if it's ever better for both of us that I should go, I'll come to you--But I shall tell him first."

"Tell him! But he won't let you go."

"He won't stop me--if it comes to that."

He pleaded with her then, telling her about his life, its loneliness, his unhappiness, how impossible it would be now without her.

But she shook her head.

"Don't you think," she cried, "that grandmother would be delighted if we went off? Both of us done for--you never able to return again ... Ah!

no! For all of us, for every reason, it's not to be."

"I won't let you go--I've got you. I'll keep you."

"You can't, Francis----"

"I can and I will----"

Then looking up, catching a vision of her framed in the window with the lighted city behind her, he saw in her eyes how unattainable she might be....

He had, he had always had, his ideals. There was a long silence between them, then he bowed his head.

"You shall do as you will--anything with me that you will."

"Oh, my dear," she whispered, "I love you for that."

Then hurriedly, moving as though she feared her own weakness, she went to put on her wraps--He came to her.

"Let me write--let me."

"No--Better not."

"Just a line--Nothing that any ordinary person----"

"No, we mustn't, Francis."

He put her furs about her neck, then his hand rested on her shoulder.

Her head fell back.

"Once more"--she said. He kissed her throat, then her eyes, then their lips met.

"Stay," he whispered, "stay"--Very slowly she drew away from him, smiled at him once, and was gone.

CHAPTER VIII

CHRISTOPHER'S DAY

"I judge more than I used to--but it seems to me that I have earned the right. One can't judge till one is forty; before that we are too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition too ignorant."

HENRY JAMES.

I

The War had the City in its grip. There was now, during these early weeks of November, no other thought, no other anxiety, no other interest. The shock of its reality came most severely upon those whose lives had been most unreal. Here, in the midst of their dining and their dancing, was the sure fact that many whom they knew and with whom they had been in the habit of playing might now, at any moment, find death--

Here was a reality against which there was no argument, and against the harshness of it music screamed and food was uninteresting.

During that first month of that war, so new a thing was the horrid grimness of it, that hysteria was abroad, life was twopence coloured.

For everyone now it was the question--"What might they do?"

Something to help, something to ease that biting truth--"Your life has been the most utterly useless business--no purpose, no strength, no unselfishness from first to last--what now?"