The Convert Part 79

He had nearly reached the threshold. She saw what she had lost by her momentary lack of that boasted self-control. She forestalled him at the door.

'What resolution?' she asked.

He looked down at her an instant, clothed from head to foot in that indefinable armour of unapproachableness. This was a man who asked other people questions, himself ill-accustomed to be catechised. If he replied it was a grace.

'I came here,' he said, 'under considerable pressure, to speak of the future. Not to reopen the past.'

'The future and the past are one,' said the woman at the door.

'You talk as if that old madness was mine alone; it is the woman's way.'

'I know,' she agreed, to his obvious surprise, 'and it's not fair. Men suffer as well as we by the woman's starting wrong. We are taught to think the man a sort of demi-G.o.d. If he tells her, "Go down into h.e.l.l,"

down into h.e.l.l she goes.'

He would not have been human had he not resented that harsh summary of those days that lay behind.

'Make no mistake,' he said. 'Not the woman alone. _They go down together._'

'Yes, they go down together. But the man comes up alone. As a rule. It is more convenient so--_for him_. And even for the other woman.'

Both pairs of eyes went to Jean's door.

'My conscience is clear,' he said angrily. 'I know--and so do you--that most men in my position wouldn't have troubled themselves. I gave myself endless trouble.'

She looked at him with wondering eyes. 'So you've gone about all these years feeling that you'd discharged every obligation?'

'Not only that. I stood by you with a fidelity that was nothing short of Quixotic. If, woman-like, you _must_ recall the past, I insist on your recalling it correctly.'

'You think I don't recall it correctly?' she said very low.

'Not when you make--other people believe that I deserted you!' The gathering volume of his righteous wrath swept the cool precision out of his voice. 'It's a curious enough charge,' he said, 'when you stop to consider----' Again he checked himself, and, with a gesture of impatience, was for sweeping the whole thing out of his way, including that figure at the door.

But she stood there. 'Well, when we do just for five minutes out of ten years--when we do stop to consider----'

'We remember it was _you_ who did the deserting. And since you had to rake the story up, you might have had the fairness to tell the facts.'

'You think "the facts" would have excused you?'

It was a new view. She left the door, and sat down in the nearest chair.

'No doubt you've forgotten the facts, since Lady John tells me you wouldn't remember my existence once a year, if the papers didn't----'

'Ah!' she interrupted, with a sorry little smile, 'you minded that!'

'I mind your giving false impressions,' he said with spirit. As she was about to speak he advanced upon her. 'Do you deny'--he bent over her, and told off those three words by striking one clenched fist into the palm of the other hand--'do you deny that you returned my letters unopened?'

'No,' she said.

'Do you deny that you refused to see me, and that when I persisted you vanished?'

'I don't deny any of those things.'

'Why'--he stood up straight again, and his shoulders grew more square with justification--'why I had no trace of you for years.'

'I suppose not.'

'Very well, then.' He walked away. 'What could I do?'

'Nothing. It was too late to do anything.'

'It wasn't too late! You knew, since you "read the papers," that my father died that same year. There was no longer any barrier between us.'

'Oh, yes, there was a barrier.'

'Of your own making, then.'

'I had my guilty share in it, but the barrier'--her voice trembled on the word--'the barrier was your invention.'

'The only barrier I knew of was no "invention." If you had ever known my father----'

'Oh, the echoes! the echoes!' She lay back in the chair. 'How often you used to say, if I "knew your father." But you said, too'--her voice sank--'you called the greatest "barrier" by another name.'

'What name?'

So low that even he could hardly hear she answered, 'The child that was to come.'

'That was before my father died,' Stonor returned hastily, 'while I still hoped to get his consent.'

She nodded, and her eyes were set like wide doors for memory to enter in.

'How the thought of that all-powerful personage used to terrorize me!

What chance had a little unborn child against "the last of the great feudal lords," as you called him?'

'You _know_ the child would have stood between you and me.'

'I know the child did stand between you and me.'

He stared at her. With vague uneasiness he repeated, '_Did_ stand----'

She seemed not to hear. The tears were running down her rigid face.

'Happy mothers teach their children. Mine had to teach me----'

'You talk as if----'

'----teach me that a woman may do that for love's sake that shall kill love.'

Neither spoke for some seconds. Fearing and putting from him fuller comprehension, he broke the silence, saying with an air of finality--