The Later Life Part 41

She saw him turn pale; his eyes blazed angrily, as though sparks were flas.h.i.+ng from that vivid blue, generally so young and boyish.

"He would so much like ... he asked me...."

She could not get the words out, looked at him, afraid of his eyes, now that she was in no mood for a scene of mutual recrimination. But she could not keep silent either:

"He asked me ... if I thought ... that Marianne...."

She saw him give a s.h.i.+ver. He understood it all. Nevertheless, she went on:

"That Marianne could get to care for him.... He asked me to go to Bertha ... and ask her...."

"Van Vreeswijck? Marianne?" he repeated; and his eyes were almost black. "Asked you ... to go to Bertha?... Well, you're not mixing yourself up in it, are you? You're not going, surely?"

"I went this morning," she said; and her voice once more sounded discordant.

He seemed to hear a hostile note in it. And, unable to contain himself, he flew into a pa.s.sion:

"You went? You went this morning?" he raved; and even in his raving she saw the suffering. "Why need you mix yourself up in it? What business has Van Vreeswijck to come asking you?... Van Vreeswijck...."

He could not find the words. All that he could get out was a rough word, cruel, hard and insulting:

"Plotting and scheming ... if you want to go plotting...."

Her eyes flamed; she felt his intention to insult her. But his suffering was so obvious, she saw him so plainly writhing under his pain, that the angry tempest died down at once and she merely said, very gently:

"She has refused him."

He looked at her. The black cloud lifted from his eyes, which turned blue again, and his gloomy frown gave way to his usual boyish expression, full of wide-eyed astonishment now. His features relaxed, his whole body relaxed; he gave a s.h.i.+ver and sat down, as though all his temper and rage were subsiding like a sudden storm that had arisen for no reason at all. And he asked, slowly:

"She ... has refused him?"

"Yes. Of course, Bertha had nothing against it. But Marianne, when I spoke to her, declined at once. I did not insist. Poor Vreeswijck!"

"Yes, poor fellow!" he said, mechanically.

"I wanted to tell you, because ..."

"Because what?"

"Because Vreeswijck is a friend and I thought it better that you should know. I meant to tell you this morning, before I started. But you went out...."

He looked at her again, with a keen glance, wondering if she was sincere or if there was anything behind her words; wondering what she thought, knew or guessed about him and Marianne; what she would really have liked; if it was a disappointment to her that Marianne had declined so promptly: so promptly that Constance had not insisted for a moment. But she was so calm and gentle, as she stood leaning against his table, that he found her incomprehensible and was only conscious of breathing again after that first moment when it had seemed to him that his throat, lungs, chest and heart were all gripped in one hideous constriction.

They were silent, she standing there and he looking at her, with his keen glance. A heat haze hung over the garden; the heavy summer scent floated up to them; from the kitchen came the monotonous voice of the housemaid droning out her love-song. And suddenly a sort of remorse loomed as a spectre before Constance, because she had fettered him to her life, for all his life, years ago; because she had fettered him to her then by accepting his sacrifice and that of his parents in her despair and helplessness, reviled outcast as she then was. It flashed before her: the recollection of that day when he came to her in Florence, when he made his gift of himself to her, made it despairingly, feeling even then perhaps, despite the forced love-illusion of pa.s.sion, the life-long mistake which they were mutually making. She had accepted his gift, taken his youth; she had rendered him aimless, him and his life, his career and his happiness: all that he might perhaps yet have found. It flashed before her again: the recollection of that good-looking boy, the way he had come to her in Florence and the way she had taken everything, without having anything to give him in exchange. Oh, how the past oppressed her now, how it hung round her shoulders, crus.h.i.+ng her like a nightmare that was not to be shaken off, like the embrace of some leering monster! Oh, the remorse, the remorse that was beginning to torture her!

She stared before her as she stood leaning against the table; and beads of perspiration began to come out on her forehead in the small, warm room, full of summer haze. He continued to look at her, penetratingly. And suddenly he heard her voice speak his name:

"Henri...."

He did not answer, thought her strange, did not recognize her; and again he wondered what she thought, guessed or knew ... and what else she wanted to say. But she, while a sweat of fear broke from her, made a great inward effort to release herself from the oppression of her past and her remorse, to be once more the woman that she had become: the woman young again; the woman whose life was beginning for the first time; the woman who thought, dreamed and loved; the woman in whom nowadays the thoughts and dreams sometimes darted and darted like mult.i.tudes of laughing b.u.t.terfly fancies, swiftly, swiftly in front of them; the woman who loved so deeply that she floated in ecstasy as in the mystic sun of herself. Did she not now see farther than the usual little circle which had bounded her vision for years: the little circle of the little prejudices, the little moralities, the little follies; the little circle in which all the others--her own people, people like herself, the small people--felt happy and comfortable with their little philosophies, their little religions, their little dogmas? Had she not, for weeks and months past, been contemplating more distant prospects, all the distant cities of light on the horizons above which sailed the s.p.a.cious cloud-worlds and across which shot the revealing lightning-flashes? In the love which she had already confessed to herself so honestly that it etherealized into sheer ecstasy, had she not risen above all that was still left in her and about her of prejudice and insincerity, that sneering at herself and others, with all the rest of that feeble cynicism? If she wanted to live, must she not be honest, honest in all things? Oh, she felt--in these thoughts which rushed through her mind in those few seconds while she leant against the table, her forehead bedewed with heat and excitement--that she was shaking off the nightmare of the past and that, if she felt remorse, she must also try to give back what she had taken ... and what had never belonged to her, because it had never been her right, because it had never been her happiness, any more than his, nor her life, any more than his life! No, she had grown out of that prejudice, the horror of making herself ridiculous; and what she had stolen she would like to give back now ... in so far as was possible to her!

"Henri," she repeated, for her whole thought had rushed through her in those two or three seconds, "there is something more I want to say to you. I should like to talk frankly to you. Promise me to keep calm; and do not let us lose our tempers. It is not necessary to lose our tempers, Henri, in order to understand each other at last...."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I have been thinking a great deal lately," she continued, turning her steady eyes towards him. "I have been thinking a very great deal, about our life, about both our lives ... and about the mistake we made...."

He became impatient:

"What on earth are you driving at and what is it all about?" he asked, with an irritable shake of his shoulders.

"Come, Henri," she said, gently, "let us talk for once, for once in our lives, and be quite frank and serious. Our life has been a mistake. And the fault...."

"Is mine, I suppose?" he broke in, angrily, aggressively, working himself up for the scene which he foresaw.

She looked at him long and deeply and then said, firmly:

"The fault is mine."

He remained silent, again shook his shoulders, restlessly, not understanding her, not recognizing her at all. This woman was now a stranger to him; and, above all, her calm seriousness confused him: he would almost have preferred that she should fly out at him and have done with it and tell him that he had no business to go bicycling alone with Marianne.

But she did not do this, she merely repeated, calmly:

"The fault is mine. The fault, the blame is mine alone, Henri. I ought not, in Florence, to have accepted the sacrifice which you made for me, which your father and mother made for me. It was my fault that your life did not become ... what it might have been."

Yes, she was frank and calm: he had to admit that; and it was not a crafty prelude leading up to one of her angry scenes. She was speaking so quietly and gently; her voice had a note of sorrowful humility that almost touched him.

"But what are you driving at?" he said, nevertheless, in a voice that was still nervous and jerky. "You are very frank and honest in looking at things like that; but what is the use of it all now? It is so long ago. It is the past. And it was my duty then to make up for the wrong which I had done you."

"I had done you quite as great a wrong, Henri. I should not have accepted your sacrifice. I ought not to have become your wife."

"But what would you have done then?"

"I should have gone away, somewhere or other. If I had been then the woman that I am now, I should have gone away, somewhere or other. And I should have left you to your life ... and to the happiness that was perhaps awaiting you elsewhere...."

"I should have had to give up the service just the same...."

"But you would have been freer without me. You were still so young: you had your whole life before you; and you would perhaps have found your happiness. As it is, you have never found it ... or ... perhaps too late."

He stood up, very restless and nervous, and his boyish eyes pleaded anxiously:

"Constance, I can't talk in this way. I'm not used to it...."

"Can't you face things seriously for a moment?..."

"No, I can't. It upsets me. I don't know: you mean to be nice, I believe, but please don't let us talk like this. We're not accustomed to it. And I ... I can't do it. You can see for yourself, it upsets me."

"Come," she said, in a motherly tone, "you are not so much upset as all that. You can have a bicycle-ride afterwards and you will feel better. But first let us talk seriously for a moment...."