Part 27 (1/2)
”Forgive me. I didn't mean it so. I am only afraid that after close intimacy with her you will find--your wife rather a poor thing by comparison. Just the 'eternal feminine' with all an artist's egoism, and more than the full complement of faults.”
She spoke so simply, and with such transparent sincerity, that again he turned on her abruptly; his smouldering pa.s.sion quickened to a flame.
”Quita . . . you dear woman . . . if I could only make you realise . . . !”
But long repression, and the knowledge that was poisoning his perfect hour, constrained him to reticence. He dared not let himself go.
”I think I do realise . . . now . . .” she whispered, stirred to the depths by the repressed intensity of his tone.
”Then don't belittle yourself any more. I forbid it. You understand?”
Again he heard the low laugh on which her soul seemed to ride. Then, leaning impulsively down to him, she put her bare arms round his shoulders from behind, and rested her cheek upon his hair.
The man held his breath, and remained very still, as if fearful lest word or movement should break the spell. After five years of unloved loneliness, this first spontaneous caress from his wife, with its delicate suggestion of intimacy, seemed to break down invisible barriers and set new life coursing in his veins.
”You forbid it?” she echoed, on a tremulous note of happiness. ”And you have the right to. You, and no one else in all the world! You laughed at me in the old days--do you remember?--for clutching at my independence. Well, I have had my surfeit of it now; and I am desperately tired of standing alone . . . darling.”
She paused before the unfamiliar word, unconsciously accentuating its effect, and Lenox, taking her two hands in one of his own, kissed them fervently. The moment he dreaded was upon him, and in the face of her impa.s.sioned tenderness he scarcely knew how to meet it.
”You should not stand alone one minute longer, if I could have my will,” he said in a repressed voice.
She lifted her head and looked at him.
”And why can't you have your will? What are we going to do about it, Eldred?”
”Nothing in a hurry,” he answered slowly. ”We paid too dearly for that last time.”
”But, _mon cher_ . . . we have waited five whole years.”
”That is just the difficulty. Five years of overwork and bitterness of spirit are not to be wiped out in a single hour; even such an hour as this. The man you married had not gone through the fire, and been badly burned in the process.”
He paused. The irony of their reversed positions stung him to the quick, and she sat watching his face. The pallor of moonlight intensified its ruggedness, its deep indentations of cheek and brow.
She began to be aware that the dropped st.i.tches of life cannot always be picked up again at will; that there is no tyrant more pitiless than the Past; and a vague dread took hold of her, sealing her lips.
”We have got to look facts in the face to-night,” Lenox went on with the doggedness of his race. ”I'm a poor hand at discussing myself.
It's an unprofitable subject. But I can't let you rush headlong into a reunion that may prove disastrous . . . for you. To-night's revelation has astounded me. It isn't easy to get one's bearings all at once; but before we take any further irretrievable step I am bound, in conscience, to tell you how the land lies. When you--repudiated me, I accepted your decision as final. I never dreamed of your coming back; and I acted accordingly. I took to work as I might have taken to drink, if I had been made that way; with the natural result that I . . . smoked a great deal too much, and slept too little. I saw no earthly reason to husband my strength, or my life; and in consequence, I have gained something of a reputation for tackling dangerous and difficult jobs. There's plenty more work of the kind ahead, with the forward policy in full swing; and one can't go back on all that has been done. You see that, don't you?”
”Yes. But couldn't I ever go with you?”
He smiled. ”I believe you have grit enough! But it would be unheard of. Besides . . . there is another trouble, and a very serious one, blocking the way.”
”You will tell me what it is?”
He did not answer at once. To blacken himself deliberately in the eyes of the woman he loves is no light ordeal for a man; and Lenox shrank from it with the peculiar sensitiveness of a nature at once humble and proud; the more so since to-night had brought home to him the heart-breaking truth that in ”the devil's wedlock of evil and pain” one can never suffer alone.
But a great love had been given him, and a force stronger than his will impelled him to speak truth, even at the cost of losing it.
”Yes . . . I will tell you what it is,” he said slowly, looking straight before him. ”You have the right to know.”
And in a few blunt words, unsoftened by excuse or justification, he told her, not the fact only, but his dread of its far-reaching effect.