Helen Vardon's confession
and year after year, under the same roof with this huge, dull,
uncomely man; to sit at table with him, to walk abroad by his side, to
spend interminable evenings alone with him: it was appalling. I could
hardly bear to think of it. And yet the horrible reality would be upon
me in the course of a few swiftly-passing days.
Nor was it a question of mere companionship--but from this aspect I
hurriedly averted my thoughts in sheer cowardice. I dared not let
myself think even for a moment of what marriage actually meant. Under
normal conditions it may be permitted to the modesty of an unwedded
girl to cast an occasional glance, half-shy and not wholly
unpleasurable, at the more intimate relations of married life: but to
me, if the thought would rise unbidden, it could call up nought but
the quick flush of shame and loathing whereat I would bury my face in
the pillow with a moan of shuddering disgust.
It was a relief to turn from the distressful present and the
unthinkable future to the past, or even to the future that might have
been. For, like most other girls, I had had my day-dreams. The
companionship with my father had been happy and full of interest; but
it had never seemed final. I had looked on it as no more than the
prologue to the real life, which lay, for the moment, hidden behind
the near horizon of my maidenhood. And as to that reality, though it
offered but a vague picture, yet it had a certain definiteness. To
many modern girls, ambition seems to connect itself with the academy
and the laboratory, with the platform and the forum. They appear to
hanker after fame, or even mere notoriety, and would contend with
men--who have nothing better to do--for the high places in politics,
in science or in literature. I had read the impassioned demands of
some of these women for political and economic equality with men, and
had looked at them with a certain dim surprise to see them so eager to
gather this Dead Sea fruit and turn their backs upon the Tree of Life,
with its golden burden of love and blessed motherhood. Ambition of
that kind had no message for me. So far my mind was perfectly clear.
As to the terms in which I conceived the final realities, the blossom
and fructification of a woman’s life, I am less clear. A home of my
own like the pleasant, peaceful home that my father had made; a man of
my own, in whom I could feel pride and by whom I could be linked to
the greater world outside; and a sweet brood of little people in whom
my youth could be renewed and for whom I could even cherish wider
ambitions: this was probably what my rambling thoughts would have
pictured if they could have been gathered up and brought to a definite
focus. But they never had been. The necessary refracting medium had
been absent. For what the burning-glass is to the sunbeam, the actual
love of some particular man is to the opening mind of a young girl,
bringing the scattered rays of thought to a single bright spot in
which the wished-for future becomes sharp and distinct. And this
influence, in its completeness, had never come into my life. The
undoubted liking that I had for the society of men was due, chiefly,
to their larger interests and wider knowledge. Of experiences
sentimental or romantic there had been none.
And yet the little god had not entirely forgotten me. Indeed, his
winged shaft had missed me so narrowly that I could hardly yet be
certain that I had passed quite unscathed. That little episode--tame
enough in all conscience--had occurred two years ago, when a Mr.
Davenant had come from Oxford with a small party of
fellow-undergraduates, to spend a more or less studious vacation in
our neighbourhood. I had met him, in all, three times on the footing
of a casual acquaintance, and we had talked “high philosophy” with the
eager interest of the very young. That was all. He had been a bird of
passage, alighting for a moment on the very outskirts of my life, only
to soar away into the unknown and vanish for ever.
It seemed an insignificant affair. A score of other men had come and
gone in the same way. But there was a difference--to me. Those other
men, too, had talked “high philosophy,” but I had forgotten utterly
what it was that they had said. Not so had it been in the case of Mr.
Davenant. Again and again had I found myself thinking over his talks
with me, not, I suspect, for the sake of the matter--which, to speak
the truth, was neither weighty nor brilliantly original--but rather
because I had enjoyed talking to him. And sometimes I had been
surprised to notice how clearly I remembered those talks, even to the
very words that he had used and the tones of his pleasant, manly
voice. Two years had passed since then--a long time in a girl’s life;
but still Mr. Davenant--his name, by the way, was Jasper, a
pleasant-sounding name I had thought it--remained the one figure that
had separated itself from the nebulous mass of humanity that had
peopled my short existence. And to-night--on this night of misery and
despair, when all that was worth living for seemed to be passing away,
as I lay staring up into the darkness, the memory of him came back to
me again. Once more I heard his voice--how strangely familiar it
sounded!--framing those quaintly-abstruse sentences; I recalled the
look in his eyes--clear, hazel eyes, they were, that sparkled with
vivacity and the fresh interest of youth--and his smile, as he uttered
some mild joke--a queer, humorous smile that drew his mouth just a
little to one side and seemed to give an added piquancy to the jest by
its own trifling oddity. I remembered it all, clearly, vividly, with
the freshness of yesterday; the words of wisdom, the humorous turn of
speech, the earnest, almost eager tone, the easy manner, friendly yet
deferential--all came back to me as it had done a hundred times
before, though it was two years ago.
He had been but a stranger--a mere passing stranger who had come and
gone--who had sailed across the rim of my horizon and vanished. But
even in that swift passage some virtue had exhaled from him by which
it had been given to me to look beyond the present into a world
hitherto invisible to me. He was my one little romance; a very little
one, but all that I had; and, to me, he stood for all those things
that might have been and now could never be. And so it happened that,
on this night, when I seemed to be bidding farewell to my youth and
all its dimly-cherished hopes, the memory of him lingered in my
thoughts and was with me still when, at last, sleep--the sleep of
utter weariness and exhaustion--closed my eyelids and shut out for a
time the realities of that life on which I would have been well
content never to look again.
Chapter V.
On the Brink
Of the four days that followed, I do not, even now, like to think.
The dreadful change that was coming into my life loomed up every
moment more distinct, more threatening, more terrible. The hideous
realities of what was about to happen to me refused to be ignored.
They thrust themselves upon me and filled my thoughts every instant of
the day and haunted my dreams at night. There were times when I turned
a wistful eye upon that solution of the hopeless difficulties of life
at which my father had hinted; but alas! even that was no solution as
matters stood. Death, which would have released me from this bondage
into which I had sold myself, would have left my father unemancipated;
and to attain it by my own act would have been a grossly dishonest
evasion of the covenant into which I had entered with Mr. Otway.
Expediency and honour both demanded that I should carry out the terms
of my agreement.
But it was a terrible burden that I bore during those four days, and
bore, of necessity, with a cheerful face and as little change as might
be from my usual manner. That was the most difficult part of all. To
keep up the appearance of quiet gaiety, which was the tone of our
house; to smile, to jest, to discuss projected work and to talk over
the history which I was supposed still to be reading; and all the time
to feel the day of doom creeping upon me, nearer and nearer with every
beat of my aching heart. That was the hardest part. But it had to be
done and done with thoroughness; for my father’s watchful and
sympathetic eye would have detected at once the smallest flutter of a
signal of distress. And it was imperative that he should be kept in
the dark.
And that, perhaps, was the bitterest drop in this bitter potion. For
the first time in my life I had a secret from my father. I was
systematically deceiving him. And the secret that I withheld from him
and shared with a mere stranger--with an enemy, in fact--was one that
concerned him profoundly. And yet that, too, had to be. It was of the
essence of the transaction. For, if he had suspected, for one instant,
what I proposed to do, he would certainly have interfered; and I knew
him well enough to feel sure that his interference would not have
taken the form of mere persuasion. He was a quiet man, suave and
gentle in manner; even-tempered, patient, forebearing--up to a certain
point; but when that point was passed, a change occurred which was apt
to surprise those who knew him but slightly. Like a heavy body, he was
difficult to move and difficult to stop when moved. If he had
suspected Mr. Otway of putting unfair pressure on me--which he would
certainly have done--then I would not have answered for the
consequences to Mr. Otway.
But strive as I would to keep my secret, the intolerable strain of
those days of misery must have made itself visible in some change in
my appearance. Once or twice I caught my father looking at me narrowly
with something of anxiety in his expression, and hastened to put on a
little extra spurt of gaiety and to divert his attention from myself.
Still, he was not entirely deceived by my assumed cheerfulness, though
he made no remark until the very last evening, when, I suppose, my
efforts to conceal the grief and wretchedness that were gnawing at my
heart were less successful than usual. Then it was that he took me
quite seriously to task.
“I wonder what is the matter with my little girl,” he said, looking at
me reflectively as we sat at the supper table. “She has been getting a
little pale of late, and looks tired and worn. Is it too much Queen
Anne and not enough sleep, think you?”
“I am feeling quite well,” I replied.
“That is an evasion, my dear, and a tarradiddle to boot, I suspect.
You are looking quite well. What is it, Jimmy?”
“I don’t think it is anything, Pater, dear,” I answered, not without a
qualm of conscience at the direct untruth. “I haven’t been sleeping so
very well lately, but that is not due to my sitting up reading.
Perhaps it’s the weather.”
“H’m!” he grunted; “perhaps it is--and perhaps it isn’t. Are you sure
there is nothing troubling you? No--what shall we say? Well, to put it
bluntly, no young man, for instance, competing with the good Queen
Anne for your attention?”
I laughed a little, bitterly. If only there had been!
But, alas! I was only too well secured against any troubles of that
sort. So I was able to reply with a moderately clear conscience.
“No, of course there isn’t. You know that perfectly well. How could
there be when you keep me so securely in my little hutch?”
“That’s true, Jimmy,” he answered. “I certainly haven’t noticed any
buck rabbit sniffing around. But perhaps it is the hutch itself that
is the trouble. It is a dull life for a girl, to be shut up with an
old fellow like me. Coal-scuttles and such-like are all very well for
an ancient fossil who has sucked all the juice out of life and must
needs content himself with a modest nibble at the rind that’s left.
But it’s not the sort of thing for a girl. Your orange is still