Chapter XIII

We did not dream, my heart, and yet
With what a pang we woke at last.
A. MARY F. ROBINSON.

Rose, with a candle in her hand, stood at the top of the stairs and yawned.

It was half-past three; the last waltz had been waltzed, the last light extinguished, the last carriage had rolled away.

Bertie, on his road to Albert Hall Mansions, was dreaming dreams; and Reuben, as he tossed on his sleepless bed, pondering plans for the coming contest, was disagreeably haunted by the recollection of some white chrysanthemums which he had let fall--on purpose.

“It has been a great success,” said Judith, passing by her cousin and going towards her own room.

Rose followed her, and sitting down on the bed, began drawing out the pins from her elaborately dressed hair.

“Yes, I think it went off all right. Caroline Cardozo stuck now and then, and no one would dance with poor Alec, so I had to take him round myself.”

Judith laughed. She had danced straight through the programme, had eaten supper, had talked gaily in the intervals of dancing. Rose got up from the bed and went over to Judith.

“Please unfasten my bodice. I have sent Marie to bed.”

Then, as Judith complied:

“What was Reuben telling Adelaide, and why did he make off so soon?”

“Mr. Ronaldson, the member for St. Baldwin’s, is dead. A man came and shouted the news down the street.”

Her voice was quite steady.

“What a ghoul Reuben is! He has been waiting to step into that dead man’s shoes this last month and more.--‘Reuben Sachs, M.P.’--‘My brother, the member for St. Baldwin’s’--‘A man told me in the House last night’--‘My son cannot get away while Parliament is sitting.’--The whole family will be quite unbearable.”

Judith bent her head over an obstinate knot in the silk dress-lace.

“He is not elected yet,” she said.

Rose, her bodice unfastened, sprang round and faced her cousin.

“Reuben is as hard as nails!” she cried with apparent inconsequence. “Under all that good-nature, he is as hard as nails!”

“Undo my frock, please,” said Judith, yawning with assumed sleepiness. “It must be nearly four o’clock.”

Rose’s capable fingers moved quickly in and out the lace; as she drew the tag from the last hole, she said: “Well, Judith, when are we to congratulate you?”

Judith did not affect to misunderstand the allusion. Bertie’s open devotion had acted as a buffer between her and her smarting pride.

“Poor little person!” she said, and smiled.

“You might do worse,” said Rose, gathering herself up for departure.

The mask fell off from Judith’s face as the door closed on her cousin. She stood there stiff and cold in the middle of the room, her hands hanging loosely at her side.

Rose put her head in at the door--

“Do you know what Jack says?” she began, then stopped suddenly.

“Judith, don’t look like that, it is no good.”

“No,” said Judith, lifting her eyes, “it is no good.” Then she went over to the door and shut it.

She sat down on the edge of her little white bed, supporting one knee with a smooth, solid arm, while she stared into vacancy.

Nothing had happened--nothing; yet henceforward life would wear a different face for her and she knew it.

It was impossible any longer to deceive himself. Her wide, vacant eyes saw nothing, but her mental vision, grown suddenly acute, was confronted by a thronging array of images.

Yes, she was beginning to see it all now; dimly and slowly indeed at first, but with ever increasing clearness as she gazed; to see how it had all been from the beginning; how slowly and surely this thing had grown about her life; how in the night a silent foe had undermined the citadel.

She had been caught, snared in a fine, strong net of woven hair, this young, strong creature. Her strength mocked her in the clinging, subtle toils.

She got up from the bed slowly, stiffly, and stood again upright in the middle of the room. Forced into a position alien to her whole nature, to the very essence of her decorous, law-abiding soul, it was impossible that she should not seek to strike a blow in her own behalf.

“It is no good,” Rose had said, and she had echoed the words.

She did not put her thought into words, but her heart cried out in sudden rebellion, “Why was it no good?”

She went over mentally almost every incident in her intercourse with Reuben; saw how from day to day, from month to month, from year to year they had been drawn closer together in ever strengthening, ever tightening bonds. She remembered his voice, his eyes, his face--his near face--as she had heard and seen them a few short hours ago.

The conventions, the disguises, which she had been taught to regard as the only realities, fell down suddenly before the living reality of this thing which had grown up between her and Reuben. She recognized in it a living creature, wonderful, mysterious, beautiful and strong, with all the rights of its existence. It was impossible that they who had given it breath should do violence to it, should stain their hands with its blood--it was impossible.

She stood there still, her head lifted up, glowing with a strange exultation as her pride re-asserted itself.

Opposite was a mirror, a three-sided toilet mirror, hung against the wall, and suddenly Judith caught sight of her own reflected face with its wild eyes and flushed cheeks; her face which was usually so calm.

Calm? Had she ever been calm, save with the false calmness which narcotic drugs bestow? She was frightened of herself, of her own daring, of the wild, strange thoughts and feelings which struggled for mastery within her. There is nothing more terrible, more tragic than this ignorance of a woman of her own nature, her own possibilities, her own passions.

She covered her face with her hands, and in the darkness the thoughts came crowding (was it thought, or vision, or feeling?).

The inexorable realities of her world, those realities of which she had so rarely allowed herself to lose sight, came pressing back upon her with renewed insistence.

That momentary glow of exultation, of self-vindication faded before the hard daylight which rushed in upon her soul.

She saw not only how it had all been, but how it would all be to the end.

Then once more his low, broken voice was in her ear, his supplicating eyes before her; the music, the breath of dying flowers assailed once more her senses; she lived over again that near, far-off, wonderful moment.

Again Judith dropped her hands to her side; she clenched them in an intolerable agony; she took a few steps and flung herself face forwards on the pillow.

Shame, anger, pride, all were swept away in an overwhelming torrent of emotion; in a sudden flood of passion, of longing, of desolation.

Baffled, vanquished, she lay there, crushing out the sound of unresisted sobs.

From her heart rose only the cry of defeat:--

“Reuben, Reuben, have mercy on me!”