Chapter XIV

Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart;
’Tis woman’s whole existence.
BYRON.

Judith slept far into the morning the sound, deep sleep of exhaustion; that sleep of the heavy-hearted from which, almost by an effort of will, the dreams are banished.

The first thing of which she was aware was the sound of Rose’s voice, and then of Rose herself standing over her with a plate and a cup of coffee in her hand. Judith raised herself on her elbow; a vague sense of calamity clung to her; her eyes were heavy with more than the heaviness of sleep.

“It is ten o’clock,” cried Rose. “I have brought you your breakfast. Rather handsome of me, isn’t it?”

“Yes, very,” said Judith, smiling faintly. “How came I to sleep so late?”

It was quite an event in her well-ordered existence; she realized it with a little shock which set her memory in motion.

Judith drank her coffee hastily and sprang out of bed. She went through her toilet with even more care and precision than usual; there is nothing more conducive to self respect than a careful toilet.

Nothing had happened; everything had happened. Judith felt that she had grown older in the night.

All day long people came and went and gossiped; gossiped loudly and ceaselessly of last night’s party; more cautiously and at intervals of Mr. Ronaldson’s death.

In the evening Adelaide, Esther, and Mrs. Sachs came in, but not Reuben. Not Reuben--she knew her sentence.

That brief moment of clear vision, of courage, had faded, as we know, even as it came. Now she dared not even look back upon it--dared not think at all.

Nothing had happened--nothing.

She fell back upon the unconsciousness, the unsuspiciousness of her neighbours. For them the world was not changed; how was it possible that great things had taken place?

She talked, moved about, and went through all the little offices of her life.

Now and then she repeated to herself the formulæ on which she had been brought up, which she had always accepted, as to the unseriousness, the unreality of the romantic, the sentimental in life.

Two or three days went by without any event to mark them. On the fourth, Bertie Lee-Harrison paid a call of interminable length, when Judith, with bright eyes and flushed cheeks, talked to him with unusual animation.

In her heart she was thinking: “Reuben will never come again, and what shall I do?”

But the very next day Reuben came.

It was of course impossible that he should stay away for any length of time.

The Leunigers were at tea in the drawing-room after dinner when the door was pushed open, and he entered, as usual, unannounced.

Judith’s heart leapt suddenly within her. The misery of the last few days melted like a bad dream. After all, were things any different from what they had always been?

Here was Reuben, here was she, face to face--alive--together.

He came slowly forwards, his eyelids drooping, an air of almost wooden immobility on his face. The black frock-coat which he wore, and in which he had that day attended Mr. Ronaldson’s funeral, brought out the unusual sallowness of his complexion. There was a withered, yellow look about him to-night which forcibly recalled his mother.

Judith’s heart grew very soft as she watched him shaking hands with her aunt and uncle.

“He is not well,” she thought; then: “He always comes last to me.”

But even as this thought flitted across her mind Reuben was in front of her, holding out his hand.

For a moment she stared astonished at the stiff, outstretched arm, the downcast, expressionless face, taking in the exaggerated, self-conscious indifference of his whole manner, then, with lightning quickness, put her hand in his.

It was as though he had struck her.

She looked round, half-expecting a general protest against this public insult, saw the quiet, unmoved faces, and understood.

She, too, to outward appearance, was quiet and unmoved enough, as she sat there on a primrose-coloured ottoman, bending over a bit of work. But the blood was beating and surging in her ears, and her stiff, cold fingers blundered impotently with needle and thread.

Reuben finished his greetings, then sat down near his uncle. He had come, he explained, to say “good-bye” before going down to St. Baldwin’s, for which, as he had expected, he had been asked to stand.

There was every chance of his being returned, Mr. Leuniger believed?

Well, yes. There was a small Radical party down there, certainly, beginning to feel its way, and they had brought forward a candidate. Otherwise there would have been no opposition.

Sir Nicholas Kemys, who had a place down there, and who was member for the county of which St. Baldwin’s was the chief town, had been very kind about it all. Lady Kemys was Lee-Harrison’s sister.

Judith listened, cold as a stone.

How could he bear to sit there, drawling out these facts to Israel Leuniger, which in the natural course of things should have been poured forth for her private benefit in delicious confidence and sympathy?

Esther, who was spending the evening with her cousins, came and sat beside her.

“You are putting green silk instead of blue into those cornflowers,” she cried.

Judith lifted her head and met the other’s curious, penetrating glance.

“When I was a little girl,” cried Esther, still looking at her, “a little girl of eight years old, I wrote in my prayer-book: ‘Cursed art Thou, O Lord my God, Who hast had the cruelty to make me a woman.’ And I have gone on saying that prayer all my life--the only one.”

Judith stared at her as she sat there, self-conscious, melodramatic, anxious for effect.

She never knew if mere whim or a sudden burst of cruelty had prompted her words.

“According to your own account, Esther,” she said, “you must always have been a little beast.”

Esther chuckled. Judith went on sewing, but changed her silks.

She wondered if the evening would never end, and yet she did not want Reuben to go.

He rose at last and made his farewells.

Judith put out her hand carelessly as he approached her, then, drawn by an irresistible magnetism, lifted her eyes to his.

As she did so, from Reuben’s eyes flashed out a long melancholy glance of passion, of entreaty, of renunciation; and once again, even from the depths of her own humiliation, arose that strange, yearning sentiment of pity, with which this man, who was strong, ruthless and successful, had such power of inspiring her.

Only for a moment did their eyes meet, the next she had turned hers away--had in her turn grown cold and unresponsive.

How dared he look at her thus? How dared he profane that holiest of sorrows, the sorrow of those who love and are by fate separated?