Helen Vardon's confession
satisfaction in marriage. But where marriage is impossible love is a
mere disaster; a voyage with nothing but rocks and breakers at the
end.
So whispered the still, small voice into ears but half attentive; and
as I neared the bottom of Essex Street it became inaudible, for
approaching the club-house from the opposite direction was Jasper
himself.
“Well!” he exclaimed, “this is a piece of luck! And yet I had hoped
that you might be coming into town to-day. Is it business or
pleasure?”
“It has been business, and now I hope it is going to be pleasure. I am
taking the rest of the day off.”
“Now, what a very singular coincidence! I am actually taking the rest
of the day off myself.”
“Your coincidences,” I remarked, “somehow remind me of the
misadventures of the bread-and-butter fly; they always happen.”
“Quite so,” he agreed. “But then, you see, if they didn’t happen they
wouldn’t be coincidences. Do we begin by fortifying ourselves with
nourishment?”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘begin,’ but I came here to get some
lunch.”
“So did I--another coincidence, by the way. Shall we take our usual
little table in the corner?”
We seated ourselves at the table, and as we waited for our lunch to be
brought, I ventured on a few inquiries into Jasper’s professional
affairs.
“You seem to take a good many days off,” I remarked.
“I do. There is, so to speak, a distinctly marked ‘off side’ to my
practice.”
“And when you are away, what happens? Do you keep a clerk?”
Jasper grinned. “You over-estimate the magnitude of my practice. No; I
have a simpler and more economical arrangement. I let my little front
office to a law writer, at a peppercorn rent, subject to the condition
that he shall interview my clients in my absence, furnish evasive
answers to their questions, and supply ambiguous and confusing
information.”
“But don’t the clients get rather dissatisfied?”
Again Jasper smiled. “That question,” said he, “involves an important
philosophic principle. A famous philosopher has proved his own
existence by the formula ‘_cogito, ergo sum_’--I think, therefore I
am--implying that if he didn’t exist he couldn’t think. Now, that
principle applies to my clients. Before they can be dissatisfied, they
must exist. But they don’t exist. Therefore they are not dissatisfied.
Q.E.D.”
“I don’t believe you care whether they exist or not--but that is the
worst of having an independent income.”
“It is a misfortune, isn’t it? But I bear up under it surprisingly.
Will you have some of this stuff? It is called a _pelion_. I heard the
waitress describing it as a pea-lion, apparently misled by the analogy
of the pea-cock and the pea-hen. Evidently she is no zoologist.”
At this moment Miss Tallboy-Smith entered the room and halted at our
table to exchange greetings and remind me of my engagement.
“Tell Miss Finch not to forget,” said she. “It’s next Wednesday. I
shall have my things back from here by then, and I understand that Mr.
Hawkesley has secured the cases for a special exhibition of studio
pottery. You must bring Miss Finch to that, too.”
Like Jasper’s proxy, I gave an evasive answer to this, for I knew that
wild horses would not drag Peggy to an exhibition of her own work. But
evidently Mr. Hawkesley had made no confidences so far.
“Have you ever seen the Diploma Gallery at the R.A.?” Jasper asked
when Miss Tallboy-Smith had flitted away. “If you haven’t, we might
look in there for an hour this afternoon.”
As I had never seen the diploma works, I fell in readily with the
suggestion, and accordingly, when we had finished lunch, we strolled
thither and spent a very pleasant hour examining and comparing the
works of the different academicians, old and new. From Burlington
House we drifted into the Green Park, and presently took possession of
a couple of isolated and lonely-looking chairs. For some time we
gossiped about the pictures at which we had been looking in the
gallery; then our talk turned on to the affairs of my friend Peggy.
“Hawkesley seems to have appointed himself Miss Finch’s advertising
agent,” Jasper remarked. “And he’ll do the job well. He is an
energetic man, and he knows all the pottery connoisseurs. I met him
yesterday, and had to listen to Blue Bird ware by the yard.”
“I like him for his enthusiasm,” said I.
“So do I,” agreed Jasper. “And it is quite a little romance. His
admiration of the pottery is perfectly genuine, as we know; but there
is something in what he calls ‘the personality of the artist.’ I think
he is distinctly ‘taken’ with your pretty little friend. How does she
like him?”
“I think she is decidedly prepossessed. At any rate, she is profoundly
grateful to him for discovering her work, and especially for the
interest that he took in the unknown worker.”
“There you are, then,” said Jasper. “There are the ingredients of a
life-size romance. Fervid admiration on the one side, gratitude on the
other, and good looks and good nature on both. We shall see what we
shall see, Helen; and I, for one, shall look on with the green eyes of
envy.”
“Why will you? Do you want Peggy Finch for yourself?”
“I want Hawkesley’s good fortune. If he loves this little maid and
thinks she cares for him, he can ask her to marry him. That is what
makes me envious.”
I made no reply; indeed, there was nothing to say; and already the
sound of the breakers was in my ears.
“I suppose, Helen,” he said, after a long pause, “you realize that I
love you very dearly?”
“I know that we are the best of friends, and very deeply attached to
one another.”
“We are much more than friends, Helen,” said he; “at least, there is
much more than friendship on my side. You are my all--all that matters
to me in the world. You live in my thoughts every moment of my life.
When we are apart I yearn for the sight of you--I reckon the hours
that must pass before I shall see you again, and when we are together
the happy minutes slip away like grains of golden sand. But I need not
tell you this. You must have seen that I love you.”
“I have feared it, Jasper--and that I might presently lose the dearest
friend that I have in the world.”
“That you will never do, Helen, dearest, if I have the happiness to be
that friend. Why should you?”
“It seems that it has to be. Our friendship has been a sweet
friendship to me--too sweet to last, as I feared; and if some might
cavil at it, it was innocent and wronged no one. But if it has grown
into--into what I had feared it might, then it has become impossible.
More than friends we can never be, and yet we cannot remain friends.”
We were both silent for more than a minute, and both were very grave.
Then Jasper asked, with a trace of hesitation:
“Helen, if we were as those other two are--if you were free--would you
be willing to marry me?”
It was a difficult question to answer, in the circumstances, and yet I
felt it would be an unpardonable meanness to dissemble.
“Yes,” I answered; “of course I should.”
“Then,” said he, “I don’t see why we can never be more than friends.”
“But, Jasper, how can we? I am a married woman.”
“I don’t admit that,” said he. “Your marriage is a fiction. You are
really a spinster with a technical impediment to the conventional form
of marriage. Your so-called husband is a stranger to whom you have no
ties. You don’t like, or even respect him; and certainly you have no
obligations of duty to him, seeing that he induced you by a mere
fraudulent pretence to go through this form of marriage with him.”
“I am not thinking of Mr. Otway,” said I. “He is nothing to me. I owe
him no duty or consideration, and I would not sacrifice a single hair
of my head for him. But the fact remains that I am, legally, his wife;
and while he lives I can contract no other marriage.”
“But is that quite true, Helen?” he objected.
“Certainly it is; unless you consider a bigamous marriage as an
exception, which it is not.”
“Of course I do not. Bigamy is a futile and fraudulent attempt to
secure the appearance of a legal sanction. No one but a fool
entertains bigamy.”
“Then I don’t see the meaning of your objection.”
“What I mean,” said he, “is that a fictitious marriage does not
exclude the possibility of a real marriage.”
“Still I do not quite follow you. What do you mean by a real
marriage?”
“A real marriage is a permanent, life-long partnership between a man
and a woman. Ordinarily, such a partnership receives the formal
endorsement of the State for certain reasons of public policy. But it
is the partnership which is the marriage. The legal endorsement is an
extrinsic and inessential addition. Now, in your case the State has
accepted and endorsed a marriage which does not exist--which is a pure
fiction. The result is that if you contract a real marriage, the State
will withhold its endorsement. That is all. It cannot hinder the
marriage.”
“This is all very ingenious, Jasper,” said I, “and it does credit to
your legal training. But it is mere sophistry. The position, as it
would appear to a plain person of ordinary common sense, is that a
woman who is legally married to one man and is living as the wife of
another, is a married woman who is living with a man who is not her
husband.”
“That is the conventional view, I admit,” said he. “But it is a
mistaken view. It confuses the legal sanction--which is not
essential--with the covenant of life-long union, which is the essence
of marriage--which, in fact, _is_ the marriage.”
“But what is the bearing of this, Jasper?” I asked. “We seem to be
discussing a rather abstract question of public morals. Has it any
application to our own affairs?”
“Yes, it has. At least, I think so, though I feel a little nervous
about saying just what I mean.”
“I don’t think you need be. At any rate, there had better be a clear
understanding between us. Tell me exactly what you do mean.”
He considered awhile, apparently somewhat at a loss how to begin. At
length, with evident embarrassment, he put his proposal before me.
“The position, Helen, is this: You and I have become deeply attached
to one another; I may say--since you admit that you would be willing
to marry me--that we love one another. It is no passing fancy, based
on mere superficial attractions. We are both persons of character, and
our love is founded on deep-seated sympathy. We have been friends for
some years. We liked one another from the first, and as time has gone
on we have liked one another better. Our friendship has grown. It has
become more and more precious to both of us, and at last it has grown
into love--on my side, into intense and passionate love. We are not
likely to change. People of our type are not given to change. We love
one another and we shall go on loving one another until the end.
“If our circumstances were normal, we should marry in the normal
manner. That is to say, we should enter into a contract publicly with
certain formalities which would confer a definite legal status and
render our contract enforceable in a court of law. But our
circumstances are not normal. We are willing to comply with the
formalities, but we are not allowed to. We are not in the position of
persons who, for their own purposes, lightly disregard the immemorial
usages of society--who dispense with the formalities because they
would avoid the responsibilities of formal marriage. We wish to enter
into a lifelong partnership; we desire to undertake all
responsibilities; we would welcome the formalities and the secure
status. But the law refuses. There is a technical disability.
“We have, therefore, two alternatives. We may give up the marriage
which we both desire, or we may marry and dispense with the
formalities and the legal status. Supposing we give up the marriage.