Part 39 (2/2)

”We'll be like the ancient Egyptians, Antoinette,” I explained, ”who placed food and wine and raiment and costly offerings in the tombs of the departed, so that their shades could come and enjoy them for all eternity. We'll have to make believe, Antoinette, that this is a tomb, for one can't rear a pyramid in London, though it is a desert sufficiently vast; and the little second floor room is the inner sanctuary where the body lies in silence embalmed with sweet spices and swathed in endless bands of linen.”

”But Mademoiselle is not dead?” cried Antoinette, with a s.h.i.+ver. ”How can Monsieur talk of such things? It makes me fear, the way Monsieur speaks.”

”It makes me fear, too, Antoinette,” said I, gravely.

When she had gone I took the box of furs upstairs and laid it unopened on Carlotta's bed and came away, relocking the door behind me.

November 9th.

I have formed a great resolution. I have devoted the week to the envisagement of things, and while I lay awake last night the solution came to me as something final and irrevocable. Mistrusting the counsels of the night, when the brain is unduly excited by nervous insomnia, I have applied the test of a day's cold reason.

I have broken a woman's heart. I have spurned the pa.s.sionate love of a woman who has been near and dear to me; a woman of great nature; a woman of subtle brain who has been my chosen companion, my equal partner in any intellectual path I chose to tread; a sensitive lady, with all the graciousness of soul that term conveys. Heaven knows what a woman can see in me to love. I look in the gla.s.s at my bony, hawk-like face, on which the stamp of futility seems eternally set, and I am seized with a prodigious wonder; but the fact remains that to me unlovely and unworthy has been given that thing without price, a woman's love. I remember Pasquale laughing merrily at this valuation. He said the love of women was as cheap as dirt, and the only use for it was to make mud pies. The d.a.m.ned cynical villain! ”Always reflect,” said he, on another occasion, ”that although a man may be as ugly as sin, the probability is that he is just as pleasant. Beauties will find hitherto unsuspected amenities in Beasts till the end of time.” But I am such a poor and sorry Beast, without the chance of a transformation; a commonplace Beast, dull and didactic; a besotted, purblind, despicable Beast! Yet Judith loved me.

Instead of thanking on my knees the high G.o.ds for the boon conferred, I rejected it, and went mad for craving of the infinitely lesser glory of Carlotta's baby lips and gold-bronze hair. I have broken Judith's heart.

I will expiate the crime I have committed.

Expiate the crime! The realisation of the meaning of the words covers me with shame. As if what I propose will be a sorry penance! That is the danger of a man thinking, as I have always done, in metaphors. It has given me my loose, indirect views of life, of myself, of those around me. If I had advice to offer to a young man, I should say: ”Learn to think straight.” Expiate, indeed! I will go to her and make confession.

I will tell her that awful loneliness is crus.h.i.+ng my soul. I will kneel before her and beseech her of her great woman's goodness to give me her love again, and to be my helpmeet and my companion who will be cherished with all that there is of loyalty in me to her life's end. She will pity me a little, for I have suffered, and I will pity her tenderly, in deep sincerity, and our life together will be based on that all-understanding which signifies all-forgiveness. And it shall be a real life together.

I used to smile, in a superior way, at her dread of solitude. Heaven forgive me. I did not then know its terrors. It comforted for the first few benumbed days, but now it is gathering around me like a mysterious and appalling force. I crave the human presence in my home. I need the woman's presence in my heart.

We shall live together then as man and wife, in defiance of the world.

Let the moralists blame us. We shall not care. It will make little social difference to Judith, and as for myself, have I not already inflicted public outrage on society? does not my Aunt Jessica regard me as a wringer of the public conscience, and does not my Cousin Rosalie mention me with a shudder of horror in her tepid prayers? If I really give them cause for reprobation they will be neither wiser, nor better, nor sorrier. And if the baronetcy flickers out in unseemly odour, I for one shall know that the odour is sweeter than that wherein it was lighted, when my great-grandfather earned the radiance by services rendered at Brighton to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent. This is the only way in which I can make Judith reparation, the only way in which I can find comfort. We shall travel. Italy, beloved of Judith, is calling me. Probably Florence will be our settled home. I shall give up this house of madness. The clean sweet love of Judith will purify my heart of this poisonous pa.s.sion, and in the end there will be peace.

I have taken Carlotta's photograph from its frame and cast it into the fire, thus burning her for her witchcraft. I watched the flames leap and curl. The last look she gave me before they licked away her face had its infinite allurement, its devilish sorcery so intensified in the fierce yellow light, that the yearning for her clutched me by the throat and shook me through all my being.

But it is over now. I have done with Carlotta. If she thinks I am going to sit and let the wind which comes over Primrose Hill drive me mad like Gastibelza, _l'homme a la carabine_, in Victor Hugo's poem, she is vastly mistaken. From this hour henceforth I swear she is nothing to me; I will eat and sleep and laugh as if she had never existed. Polyphemus, curled up in Carlotta's old place on the sofa, regards me with his sardonic eye. He is an evil, incredulous, mocking beast, who a few centuries ago would have been burned with his late mistress.

I am sane and happier now that I have come to my irrevocable determination.

To-morrow I go to Judith.

CHAPTER XIX

November 10th.

I had to ring twice before Judith's servant opened the flat door.

”Mrs. Mainwaring is engaged just at present, Sir Marcus.”

<script>