Man and Maid Read online

  XIII

  Suspense is the hardest thing to bear--what a ridiculous truism! It hasbeen said a thousand times before and will be said a thousand timesagain!--because it has come to everyone at some moment, and so its painis universally understood. To have attained serenity would mean that onewas strong enough not to allow suspense to cause one a moment's doubt ordistress. I am far from serenity, I fear--for I am filled with unrest--Itry to tell myself that Alathea Sharp does not matter in my life atall--that this is the end--that I am not to be influenced by hermovements or her thoughts, or her comings and goings--I try not to thinkof her even as "Alathea"--And then when I have succeeded in some measurein all this, a hideous feeling of sinking comes over me--that physicalsensation of a lead weight below the heart. What on earth is the good ofliving an ugly maimed life?

  It was ten times easier to carry on under the most disgusting andfearsome circumstances when I was fighting, than it is now wheneverything is done for my comfort, and I have all that money can buy.

  What money cannot buy is of the only real consequence though. I mustread Henley again, and try to feel the thrill of pride I used to feelwhen I was a boy at the line "I am the master of my fate, I am thecaptain of my soul."

  ----What if she does not come back, and I do not hear any more of her?

  Stop! Nicholas Thormonde, this is contemptible weakness!

  * * * * *

  This evening it was wonderful on the terrace, the sun set in a blaze ofcrimson and purple and gold, every window in the _Galerie des Glasses_seemed to be on fire--strange ghosts of by-gone courtiers appeared to beflitting past the mirrors.

  What do they think of the turmoil they have left behind them, I wonder?Each generation torn by the same anguish which the worries of lovebring?--And what is love for?--Just to surround the re-creative instinctwith glamour and render it aesthetic?

  Did cave men love?--They were exempt from pain of the mind at allevents. Civilization has augmented the mental anguishes, and pleasuresof love, and when civilization is in excess it certainly distorts andperverts the whole passion.

  But what is love anyway? the thing itself I mean. It is a want, and anache and a craving--I know what I want. I want firstly Alathea for myown, with everything which that term implies of possession. Then I wantto share her thoughts, and I want to feel all the great aspirations ofher soul--I want her companionship--I want her sympathy--I want herunderstanding.

  When I was in love with Nina--and five or six others--I never thought ofany of these things--I just wanted their bodies: Therefore it is onlywhen the spiritual enters into the damned thing, I suppose, that onecould call it love. By that reasoning I have loved only Alathea in allmy life. But I am stumped with this thought--If she had one eye and noleg below the knee--should I be in love with her? and feel all theseexalted emotions about her? I cannot honestly be certain how I wouldanswer that question yet, so this shows that the physical plays thechief role even in a love that seems spiritual.

  Matho--in Flaubert's Salammbo was beaten to a jelly but his eyes stillflamed with love for his princess--But when she saw him as thisrevolting mass, did her love flame for him? Or was she exalted only bythe incense to her vanity--and a pity for his sufferings? Heloise andAbelard were pretty wonderful in their love, but his love becametransmuted much sooner than hers, because all physical emotions weregone from him. Plato's idea that man gravitates towards beauty for somesubconscious soul desire to re-create himself through perfection, and soattain immortality, is probably the truth. And that is why we shrinkfrom mutilated bodies--. Until I can be quite sure that I should loveAlathea just the same were she disfigured as I am--I cannot in justiceexpect her to return my passion--.

  Nina became re-attracted (if I can coin that word)--because I was out ofreach. The predatory instinct in woman had received a rebuff, anddemanded renewed advance.--She still keeps a picture in some part ofher mental vision of what I was too, therefore, I am not so revoltingto her--but Alathea has not this advantage, and has seen me onlywounded.

  I have done nothing to earn her respect--She has apprehended my uselesslife in these last months--She has heard the chattering of mycompanions, whom I have been free to choose--the obvious deduction beingthat these are what I desire--And finally, she knows that I have had amistress.--In heaven's name _why_ should she be anything but what she isin her manner to me!--Of course she despises me. So that the only thingI could possibly allure her by would be that intangible something whichNina and Suzette and even Coralie--have inferred that Ipossess--"It"!!--. And how would that translate itself to a mind likeAlathea's?--It might mean nothing to her--It probably would not. Theonly times I have ever seen any feeling at all in her for me were whenshe thought she had destroyed a wounded man's interest in a harmlesshobby--and felt remorse--And the freezing reserve which showed when shehanded me the cheque-book--and the perturbation and contempt when I wasrude about the child.--At other times she has shown a blankindifference--or a momentary consciousness that there was admiration inmy eye for her.

  Now what do I get out of the iciness over Suzette's cheque?

  Two possibilities--.

  One--that she is more prudish than one of her literary cultivation, andworldly knowledge is likely to be, so that she strongly disapproves ofa man having a "_petite amie_"--or--

  Two--that she has sensed that I love her and was affronted at thediscovery that at the same time I had a--friend?--

  The second possibility gives me hope, and so I fear to entertain abelief in it--but taken coldly it seems the most likely.--Now if she had_not_ been affronted at this stage, would she have gone on believing Iloved her, and so eventually have shown some reciprocity?

  It is just possible--.

  And as it is, will that same instinct which is in the subconscious mindof all women--and men too for the matter of that--which makes them wantto fight to retain or retake what was theirs, influence her nowunconsciously to feel some, even contemptuous, interest in me? This alsois possible--.

  If only fate brings her to me again--. That is where one is done--whenabsence cuts threads.

  To-morrow it will be Monday--a whole week since I received her telegram.

  I shall go up to Paris in the morning if I hear nothing and go myself tothe Hotel de Courville to try and obtain a trace of her--if that isimpossible I will write to the Duchesse.--

  * * * * *

  _Reservoirs--Night:_

  As I wrote the last words--a note was brought to me by Burton--someonehad left at the Hotel.

  "Dear Sir Nicholas--(it ran)

  I am very sorry I have been unable to come out to do my work--but my brother died last Tuesday, and I have been extremely occupied--I will be at Versailles at eleven on Thursday as usual.

  Yours truly, A. Sharp."

  * * * * *

  Her firm writing, more like a man's than a woman's looked a little shakyat the end--Was she crying perhaps when she wrote the letter--the poorlittle girl--What will the death mean to her eventually? Will thenecessity to work be lessened?

  But even the gravity of the news did not prevent a feeling of joy andrelief in me--I would see her again--Only four days to wait!

  But what a strange note!--not any exhibition of feeling! she would notshare even that natural emotion of grief with me. Her work is business,and a well bred person ought not to mix anything personal into it.--Howwill she be--? Colder than ever? or will it have softened her--.

  She will probably be more unbending to Burton than to me.

  The weather has changed suddenly, the wind is sighing, and I know thatthe summer is over--I shall have the sitting-room fire lighted andeverything as comfortable as I can when she does turn up, and I shallhave to stay here until then since I cannot communicate with her in anyway. This ridiculous obscurity as to her address must be cleared away.I must try
to ask her casually, so as not to offend her.

  * * * * *

  A week has passed--.

  Alathea came on Thursday--I was sickeningly nervous on Thursday morning.I resented it extremely. As yet the only advance I have made is that Ican control most of the outward demonstrations of my perturbations, butnot the sensations themselves. I was sitting in my chair quite stillwhen the door opened, and in she came--Just the scrap of a creature indead black. Although there was no crepe, one could see that the garmentswere French trappings of woe, that is, she had a veil hanging from hersimple small hat. I felt that she had had to buy these things for thefuneral, and probably could not afford a second set of more dowdy onesfor her working clothes, so that there was that indescribable air ofelegance about her appearance which had shown in the _Bois_ that Sunday.The black was supremely becoming to her transparent white skin, andseemed to set off the bright bronze brown of her hair--the rebelliouslittle curls had slipped out beside her ears, but the yellow hornspectacles were as uncompromising as ever--I could not see whether hereyes were sad or no--her mouth was firm as usual.

  "I want to tell you of my sympathy," I said immediately--"I was so sorrynot to know your address that I might have expressed it to you before--Iwould have wished to send you some flowers."

  "Thank you," was all she answered--but her voice trembled a little.

  "It was so stupid of me not to have asked you for your addressbefore--you must have thought it was so careless and unsympathetic."

  "Oh! no"--.

  "Won't you give it to me now that I may know in the future?"

  "We are going to move--It would be useless--it is not decided where wego yet."

  I knew I dared not insist.

  "Is there some place where I could be certain of a message reaching youthen? because I would have asked you to come to the flat to-day and notout here if I could have found you."

  She was silent for a moment. I could see she was in a corner--I felt anawful brute but I had said it all quite naturally as any employer wouldwho was quite unaware that there could be any reluctance to give theinformation, and I felt it was better to continue in this strain not torender her suspicious.

  After a second or two she gave the number of a stationer's shop in theAvenue Mosart--.

  "I pass there every day," she said.

  I thanked her--.

  "I hope you did not hurry back to your work--I can't bear to think thatperhaps you would have wished to remain at home now."

  "No, it does not matter"--There was an infinite weariness in hertone--A hopeless flatness I had never heard before, it moved me so thatI blurted out--.

  "Oh! I have felt so anxious, and so sorry--I saw you in the _Bois_ twoSundays ago in the thunder storm, and I tried to get near the path Ithought you would cross to offer you the carriage to return in, but Imissed you--Perhaps your little brother caught cold then?"

  There was a sob in her voice--.

  "Yes--will you--would you mind if we just did not speak of anything butbegan work."

  "Forgive me--I only want you to know that I'm so awfully sorry--and Oh,if there was anything in the world I could do for you--would you not letme?"

  "I appreciate your wish--it is kind of you--but there is nothing--Youwere going to begin the last chapter over again--Here is the old one--Iwill take off my hat while you look at it," and she handed it to me.

  Of course I could not say anything more--I had had a big bunch ofviolets put on the table where she types, in Burton's roomadjoining--they were the first forced ones which could be got inParis--and I had slipped a card by them with just "my sympathy" on it.

  When she came back into the room hatless, her cheeks were bright pinkbelow the glasses--and all she said was "Thank you" and then I saw alittle streak of wet trickle from under the horn rims. I have never hadsuch a temptation in my life--to stretch out my arms and cry "Darlingone, let me comfort you, here clasped close to me!"--I longed to touchher--to express somehow that I felt profoundly for her grief.--

  "Miss Sharp--" I did burst out--"I am not saying anything because I knowyou don't want me to--but it is not because I do notfeel--I'm--I'm--awfully sorry--May not I perhaps send some rosesto--your home--or, perhaps there is someone there who would likethem--flowers are such jolly things!"--Then I felt the awfully illchosen word "jolly" was--but I could not alter it.

  I believe that _gaucherie_ on my part helped though a little, her finesenses understood it was because I was so nervously anxious to offercomfort--a much kinder note came into her voice--.

  "I'll take the violets with me if you will let me," she said--"Pleasedon't trouble about anything more--and do let us begin work."

  So we started upon the Chapter.

  Her hands were not so red I noticed. I am becoming sensitive to what iscalled "atmosphere" I suppose, for I felt all the currents in the roomwere disturbed--that ambience of serenity did not surround Alathea andkeep me unconsciously in awe of her as it always has before--I was awarethat my natural emotions were running riot and that my one eye wasgazing at her with love in it, and that my imagination was conjuring upscenes of delight with her as a companion. Her want of complete controlallowed the waves to reach her, I expect--for I knew that she was usingall her will to keep her attention upon the work, and that she wasnearly as disturbed as I was myself--.

  But how was she disturbed?--was she just nervous from events--or was Icausing her any personal trouble? The moment I felt that perhaps I was,a feeling of assurance and triumph came over me--! Then I used every bitof the cunning I possess--I tried to say subtle things--I made her talkabout the ridiculous book, and the utterly unimportant furniture--I madeher express her opinion about styles, and got out of her that a simpleQueen Anne was what she herself preferred.--I _knew_ that she was givingway and talking with less stiffness because she was weak with sorrow,and probably had not had much sleep--I _knew_ that it was not becauseshe had forgotten about the Suzette cheque or really was more friendly.I _knew_ that I was taking an unfair advantage of her--but Icontinued--Men are really brutes after all!--and gloried in my powerevery time the slightest indication showed that I possessed it! I lostsome of my diffidence--If I could only have stood upon two feet and seenwith two eyes--I know that even the morning would have ended by mytaking her in my arms, cost what might; but as I was glued to my chairshe was enabled always at this stage to stay out of reach--and fencedgallantly with me by silence and stiff answers--but by luncheon timethere was a distinct gain on my side--I had made her feel something, Ino longer was a nonentity who did not count--.

  Her skin is so transparent that the colour fluctuates with everyemotion. I love to watch it. What a mercy that I had very strongsight!--for my one eye sees quite clearly.

  At luncheon we talked of the time of the Fronde--Alathea is sowonderfully well read. I make dashes into all sorts of subjects, andfind she knows more of them than I do myself--What a mind she must haveto have acquired all this in her short twenty-three years.

  "You are not thinking of leaving Paris, I hope when you move," I said aswe drank coffee. "I am going to begin another book directly this one isfinished."

  "It is not yet decided," she answered abruptly.

  "I could not write without you."

  Silence.

  "I would love to think that you took an interest in teaching me how tobe an author--."

  The faintest shrug of the shoulders--.

  "You don't take any interest?"

  "No."

  "Are not you very unkind?"--

  "No--If you have anything to complain of in my work I will listenattentively and try and alter it."

  "You will never allow the slightest friendship?"

  "No."

  "Why?"

  "Why should I?"

  "I must be grateful even that you ask a question, I suppose--Well, Idon't know quite myself why you should--You think I am a rotter--Youdespise my character--you think my life is wasted and that--er--I haveundesirable friends."
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  Silence.

  "Miss Sharp! you drive me crazy never answering--I can't think why youlike to be so provoking!" I was stung to exasperation.

  "Sir Nicholas," and she put down her cup with displeasure--"If you willnot keep to the subject of work--I am sorry but I cannot stay as yoursecretary."

  Terror seized me--.

  "I shall have to if you insist upon it--I suppose--but I am longing tobe friends with you--and I can't think why you should resent it so--Weare both English, we are both--unhappy--we are both lonely--."

  Silence!--

  "Somehow I don't feel it is altogether because I am a revolting objectto look at that you are so unkind--you must have seen lots like me sincethe war--."

  "I am not unkind--I think you are--May I go to my work now?"

  We rose from the table--And for a second she was so near to me the pentup desire of weeks mastered me and the tantalization of the morningovercame me so that a frantic temptation seized me--I _could not_ resistit--I put out one arm while I steadied myself with the other by the backof a chair, and I drew her tiny body towards me, and pressed my lips toher Cupid's bow of a mouth--And Oh God the pleasure of it--right orwrong!

  She went dead white when I released her, she trembled, and in her turnheld on to the back of the chair--.

  "How dare you!" she panted--"How dare you!--I will go this minute--Youare not a gentleman."

  The reaction came to me--.

  "That is it, I suppose--" I said hoarsely--"I am not a gentlemanunderneath--the civilization is mere veneer--and the _man_ breaksthrough it--I have nothing to say--I was mad, that is all. You will haveto weigh up as to whether it is worth your while to stay with me or not.I cannot judge of that. I can only assure you that I will try not to erragain--perhaps some day you will know how you have been making me sufferlately--I shall go to my room now, and you can let me have your decisionin an hour or so--."

  I could not move because my crutch had fallen to the floor out of myreach--She stood in indecision for a moment and then she bent and pickedit up and gave it to me. She was still as white as a ghost. As I got tothe door I turned and said--.

  "I apologize for having lost my self-control--I am ashamed of that--anddo not ask you to forgive me--Your staying or not is a businessarrangement. I give you my word I will try never to be so weak again."

  She was gazing at me--For once I had taken the wind out of her sails--.

  Then I bowed and hobbled on into my bedroom, shutting the door after me.

  Here my courage deserted me. I got to the bed with difficulty and threwmyself down upon it and lay there, too filled with emotion to stir. Thethought tormenting me always. Have I burnt my boats--or is this only thebeginning of a new stage?

  Time will tell.