Chapter XXIV

When four o’clock sounded at last, he walked into the hall of the Mansions. As he mounted the stairs his sensations were not enviable.

Would she be in? Would she see him? Alone? He felt that he would almost rather not see her at all than in the presence of other people. His heart beat till he felt sick, and he paused for some minutes, outside the door, before ringing the bell.

“Is Miss Ley at home?”

The maid, a rosy-cheeked damsel with a fresh and wholesome face, answered, “Yes, sir.”

He felt dismay and intense relief at the same moment. He pulled himself together with an effort, and followed her.

“What name, sir?”

“Legard.”

The door was thrown open, and he heard his name pronounced into a room which he could scarcely see from a feeling of giddiness that came over him. The door closed behind. There was a faint scent of violets, and he was conscious of the rustle of a skirt. He stood within the room twisting his moustache, and staring about him with uncertain eyes. Jocelyn had risen from a chair near the window. He took a step forward and stopped. Her face was white, then crimson, then white again; her hands gripped the back of the chair from which she had risen. Neither offered to move, or to speak; they stood still, and looked fixedly at each other, an unsparing space of conventional carpet between them.

After the first sign of emotion, Jocelyn’s face wore a mask of discouragement. It showed dark and mysterious against the bright sunlight behind her, and reproach seemed to be looking out of her eyes. Giles, clutching the fold of his coat across his chest, gazed at her with a countenance from which hunger had suddenly driven every other emotion.

Jocelyn spoke, and her voice sounded dull and expressionless.

“Why?” she said. “What was the good?”

Giles involuntarily took a half-step forward.

“Why?” he repeated. “Why? You stopped writing--I didn’t know--how could I----”

“Didn’t I write long enough?” she said wearily. “It didn’t seem any use going on. I wanted to forget. I didn’t know where you were--you might have been dead.” A sudden ring of irritability, telling of shaken nerves, came into the tone of her voice. Giles had a swift sense of injustice; he remembered the misery it had cost him not to answer those letters.

“I obeyed you, I would have given the world to write.”

“You should have gone on obeying me. Why have you come back? Why?” She spoke as if under the spur of some unbearable thought. She stamped her foot on the soft carpet, and her dark eyes were full of resentment. Giles winced, his head dropped upon his chest. This was the other side of the question; she made him feel guilty of an act of brutality. He asked himself why he had come back to torture her? Because he, a strong man, could not bear pain! The poorness of the reason struck him for the first time. As always, he admitted the other side at its full value without question.

“I love you,” was all he found to say.

“You love me! But you don’t care how you hurt me.” She pressed her lips tightly together. He could not help the swift thought, “She is cruel,” and hated himself for it in the same breath. He put his clenched hands against his forehead, and the words escaped him--

“Is that all? _All_--after----”

“What more do you want? What more do you expect?”

He gazed long and fixedly at her with the searching, upward look in his eyes peculiar to them. He could see nothing behind the mask of her resentful face. It fixed a barrier between them--impenetrable. Through the half-open window a puff of wind strayed in, and the petals of some flowers upon the table stirred; he heard the sheets of the open music on the piano rustling, and the clock ticking very solemnly. During a moment of numbness he had no other sensation. Then his mind leaped suddenly back to painful consciousness. How beautiful she was; standing, slender and motionless, between him and the light! How pitiless! So! It was all over! He had only exchanged the uncertainty of misery for the certainty of it! He made a movement with his mouth, a movement of dumb pain, and in the spasmodic motion which intolerable suffering exacts, strode past her to the window, and stood there, with his back to her, and his hands over his eyes. He tried to reason. “After all,” he thought, “a man has some pride--I’d better get away.” The subtle fragrance in the room tortured his senses--her fragrance. He stood motionless while long seconds crept by, and found--that he had no pride. He suffered so keenly that his reason refused to come to his aid. He could not think of the why or the wherefore of anything, of what it meant or did not mean; he could _only_ feel; and he seemed to have no tongue with which to plead for himself. It was all over! He choked back a sob rising in his throat....

He had not heard any movement in the room, but he suddenly felt fingers pulling at his hands. Jocelyn was standing beside him, looking at him with pitying and mournful eyes.

“Don’t!” she said, “don’t grieve so! I’m not worth it.”

He knelt down, and clasping her knees looked up at her. She put a hand over her eyes, with a soft movement.

“I’m not worth it,” she repeated.

Suddenly his tongue was loosed, a pent-up torrent of tender words forced its way between his dry lips. He kissed her hands and her dress convulsively. She stood for a moment submitting, shivering a little, a faint colour in her cheeks, then she cried brokenly--

“Oh, get up! _Get_ up, don’t kneel to me. How _can_ you--when I am--what I am?” and burst into a passion of sobbing. The sense of degradation vivid in her voice wounded him like the cut of a knife. He sprang to his feet, and took her in his arms. He was quite silent, but his lips trembled. She grew quiet at last, till only little shudders running through her body, pressed against his own, told him of her emotion. They stood together at the window. In the momentary lull of his feeling, he had dim impressions of outward things--of the blue sky and the shifting play of white clouds, of the river dancing through the green of the trees in glittering patches. At intervals the melodious and doleful cry of a costermonger came to his ears through the soft air, the air that was young with the fluttering of leaves and the chirping of birds.

The spirit of the day seemed to be calling with a whisper of invitation. He felt a sudden hope spring up in his heart. Could her love be dead? He put his lips down to the level of her bent head--

“Have you _no_ love for me, Jocelyn?” he said.

She did not answer, but bent her head a little lower, and he felt a faint pressure of her fingers upon his hand, a momentary clinging which passed, and left them cold and lifeless in his grasp. She _did_ love him still! He felt it with a great joy. Was it possible then that she could throw away everything that made life bright, that gave it form, and colour, and meaning? And for what? For a shadow! Because of a memory. The matter-of-fact temper of his mind revolted. For a shadow! After all, nothing more!

His eyes fell upon the gleaming river.

“Come away from it all, my darling. Be my wife. Let me take you somewhere where you can forget. If you only _will_, you _can_. The world is so beautiful; I will give you everything. Won’t you come?” and he raised his eyes to her face. There were the marks of tears upon it, and her hands moved with a little gesture of helplessness, as though she found life too heavy for her. She shook her head wearily.

“Why?” he said, seizing her hands, so that she had to turn towards him. “Why?”

She did not answer at once, and when she did, every word went through him.

“You want me to take _her_ place, and you say, forget? How could I? Forget! In _her place. Ah!_ don’t ask me!”

From the living pain in her voice, he had a gleam of insight that to her the shadow was substance, the substance only shadows, and he said in a voice that shook, in spite of all his efforts to keep it calm and persuasive--

“Think, darling, can it be _worse_ together than alone? Won’t you think of _me_ a little?” He wanted to break into passionate words telling of his starvation, but somehow he couldn’t; they refused to come, they rose indeed to his lips, but vanished ashamed and unspoken.

“Think of you? I _do_ think of you. Do you think I don’t know, that I haven’t thought and thought? I can’t trust myself. I should only make you wretched--I’m not good enough. It’s too strong for me--I can’t forget. I’m not good enough. Can’t you see what it is you’re asking of me?”

His grasp tightened upon her hands. In spite of himself he did see her side of the question, something of what it meant to her proud and sensitive nature to stand in the place of the dead woman; it did not move his passionate desire by the breadth of one single hair, but it deprived him suddenly of the power of fighting her with words. He seemed to see beforehand all her answers to his arguments, all the pitiless irony of the situation. It was not _in_ him to thrust his convictions down the throats of other people. He wished to, but he was not able. The fatal turn of his mind was always to see the other view. He could only say--

“For _my_ sake, dear.”

“It can’t be--it can’t be; it would kill me, perhaps both of us. I know what would come. _Her_ place! Horrible!” She shivered as if with deadly cold, and shut her eyes. Then she said quite calmly--

“Some day, you see, it would be too strong for me, I should leave you, or kill myself. I can’t love as you do; if I could, perhaps it would be different. I know myself, I’m shallow, not good enough for you.”

In the expression of her face fear, pity, and wounded pride were strangely blended, and her voice was measured and even. He had an immense inclination to break into harsh laughter. Not good enough for him! What a reason! It was as if some one, holding a cup of water to the lips of a man dying of thirst, had snatched it away, with the words, “Don’t drink, it is not cold enough.”

He repeated the words--

“Not good enough!” In his desperation he turned away from her, and walked up and down the room.

“So!” burst from him suddenly and very bitterly, “it was only an episode! All our pain, all my life, all yours, for it _is_ all yours, I tell you,--only an episode!” It was the only harsh thing he had ever said to her--a betrayal of his inmost instinct--a treachery to his nature. He knew it; and dropping into a chair, rested his head in his hands, muttering, “Forgive me.”

There was a tense silence in the room.... Jocelyn came quickly from the window. She sank upon her knees at his side.

“I can’t!” she sobbed. “I would--but oh! I can’t. _Anything_ but that!” and she pressed her face against him.

“Not that, dearest! I _will_ be anything else to you--_anything_. I love you! But not that--oh! _not_ that.”

What was she saying? The blood throbbed in his veins; the perfume of her breath was on his cheek, he could feel the warmth of her body against his knee. The whole vehemence of his passion stirred within him. The temptation was such that he writhed; his senses reeled with the desire to gain, and lose, all things in her embrace. His instinct told him it was ruin for him and for her, but what did it matter?... He threw his arms round her. She rubbed her cheek against his hand with a little tender movement, and he felt it suddenly wet. A pure and great pity took hold of him. “God help me!” he thought. “Not again!” He got up on to his feet, and raised her, smoothing the loosened hair back from her temples.

“No, no!” he said gently. “No, _no_! Anything rather----”

He felt he was talking to himself, not to her, that he was suddenly thrust back into utter isolation; and he knew that he must get away quickly before the maddened throbbing in his blood overmastered him.

“This will make you ill, sweet,” he said, “I had better go--yes--I’ll write. God bless you! Good-bye!”

He did not know how he got out of the room, how he left her, or where. Everything swam in a mist before his eyes, but at last he found himself on the stairs, going down slowly and deliberately, and trying to pull his gloves on to his hands. A man passed him at the foot of the stairs, and stopped in his ascent to look after him.