by George Moore
Kate had been nearly a fortnight with the mummers, but she had lived almost apart. She had not yet learnt that in the company she was in no opprobrium was attached to the fact of a woman having a lover, and she still supposed that because she had left her husband Leslie might not like to associate with her. To learn, then, that she had only replaced another woman in Dick’s affections came upon her with a shock, and it was the very suddenness of the blow that saved her from half the pain; for it was impossible for a woman who saw in the world nothing but the sacrifice she had made for the man she loved, to realize the fact that Dick’s love of her was a toy that had been taken up, just as love of Miss Leslie was a toy that had been laid down. It did not occur to her to think that the man she was living with might desert her, nor did she experience any very cruel pangs of jealousy; she was more startled than anything else by the appearance of a third person in the world which for the last week had seemed so entirely her own.
‘What do you mean?’ she said, stopping abruptly. ‘Was Dick in love with Miss Leslie before he knew me?’
Montgomery coloured, and strove to improvise excuses.
‘No,’ he said, ‘of course he wasn’t really in love with her; but we used to chaff him about her; that’s all.’
‘Why should you do that, when she is in love with Bret?’ said Kate harshly.
Montgomery, who dreaded a quarrel with Dick as he would death, grasped at a bit of truth to help him out of his difficulty.
‘But I assure you Bret and Leslie’s affair only began a couple of months ago, when we first went out on tour. We joked Dick about her to vex him, that’s all. If you don’t believe me, you can ask the rest of the company.’
To this Kate made no reply, and with her eyes upon the ground she remained for some moments thinking. The light and the matter-of-course way in which her companion spoke of the affections troubled her exceedingly, and very naïvely she asked herself if the company did not admit fornication among the sins.
‘’Tis too bad to be taken up in that way,’ he said. ‘There’s always a bit of chaff going on; but if it were all taken for gospel truth I don’t know where we should be. I give you my word of honour that I don’t think he ever looked twice at her; anyhow, he didn’t hesitate between you; nor could he, for, of course, you know you’re a fifty times prettier woman.’
Kate answered the flattery with a delightful smile, and Montgomery thought that he had convinced her. But the young man was deceived by appearances. He had succeeded more in turning the current of her thoughts than in persuading her.
‘You seem to think very lightly of such things,’ she said, raising her brown eyes with a look that melted her face to a heavenly softness.
Montgomery did not understand, and she was forced to explain. This was difficult to do, but, after a slight hesitation, she said:
‘Then you really do believe that Miss Leslie and Mr. Bret are lovers?’
‘Oh, I really don’t know,’ he said hastily, for he saw himself drawn into a fresh complication; ‘I never pry into other people’s affairs. They seem to like each other, that’s all.’
It was now Kate’s turn to see that indiscreet questions might lead to the quarrels she was most anxious to avoid, and they walked along the breezy common in silence, seeing the sea below them, and far away the weedy waste of stone filled with the white wings of gulls, touched here and there with the black backs of the shrimp-fishers.
‘How strange it is that the sea should go and come like that! I’d never seen it as it is now till the day before yesterday, and Dick was so amused, for I thought it was going to dry up. The morning after our arrival here we sat down by the bathing-boxes on the beach and listened to the waves. They roared along the shore. It’s very wonderful. Don’t you think so?’
‘Yes, indeed I do. When I was here before, I spent one whole morning listening to the waves, and their surging suggested a waltz to me. This is the way it went,’ and leaning on the rough paling that guarded the precipitous edge, Montgomery sang his unpublished composition. ‘I never got any further,’ he said, stopping short in the middle of the second part; ‘I somehow lost the character of the thing; but I like the opening.’
‘Oh, so do I. I wonder how you can think of such tunes. How clever you must be!’
Montgomery smiled nervously, and he proposed that they should go over to the hotel to have a drink.
‘Oh, I don’t like to go up there,’ she said, after examining for some moments this hillside bar-room. ‘There’re too many men.’
‘What does it matter? We’ll have a table to ourselves. Besides, you’d better have something to eat, for now we’re out we may as well stay out. There’s no use going back yet awhile;’ and he talked so rapidly of his waltz — of whether he should call it the ‘Wave,’ the ‘Seashore,’ or the ‘Cliff,’ that he didn’t give her time to collect her thoughts.
‘I can’t go in there,’ she said; ‘why, it’s only a public-house.’
‘Everybody comes up here to have a drink. It’s quite the fashion.’
The men round the doorway stared at her, and seeing some of the chorus-girls coming from where the donkeys were stationed, in the company of young men with high collars and tight trousers, she almost ran into the bar-room.
‘Now you see what a scrape you’ve led me into, I wouldn’t have met those people for anything.’
‘What does it matter? If it were wrong do you think I’d bring you in here? You ask Dick when you get home.’
A doubt of the possibility of Dick thinking anything wrong clouded Kate’s mind, and Montgomery ordered sandwiches and two brandies-and-sodas. The sandwiches were excellent, and Kate, who had scarcely tasted anything but beer in her life, thought the brandy-and-soda very refreshing. The question then came of how to get out of the place, and after much hesitation and conjecturing, they slipped out the back way through the poultry-yard and stables.
In front of them was a very steep path that led to the sea strand. Large masses of earth had given way, and these had formed ledges which, in turn, had somehow become linked together, and it was possible to climb down these.
‘Do you think you could manage?’ he said, holding out his hand.
‘I don’t know; do you think it dangerous?’
‘No, not if you take care; but the cliff is pretty high; it would not do to fall over. Perhaps you’d better come back across the common by the road.’
‘And meet all those girls?’
‘I don’t see why you should be afraid of meeting them,’ said Montgomery, who was secretly anxious to show the chorus that if he were not the possessor, he was at least on intimate terms of friendship with this pretty woman.
‘No, I’d sooner not meet them, and coming out of a public-house; I don’t see why we shouldn’t come down this way. I’m sure I can manage it if you’ll give me your hand and go first.’
The descent then began. Kate’s high-heeled boots were hard to walk in, and every now and then her feet would fail her, and she would utter little cries of fear, and lean against the cliff’s side. It was delightful to reassure her, and Montgomery profited by those occasions to lay his hands upon her shoulders and hold her arms in his hands. No human creature was in hearing or in sight, and solitude seemed to unite them, and the mimic danger of the descent to endear them to each other. The quiet and enchantment of earth and air melted into her thoughts until she enjoyed a perfect bliss of unreasoned emotion. He, too, was conscious of the day, and his happiness, touched with a diffused sense of desire, was intense, even to a savour of bitterness. Like all young men, he longed to complete his youth by some great passion, but out of horror of the gross sensualities with which he was always surrounded, his delicate artistic nature took refuge in a half-platonic affection for his friend’s mistress. It was an infinite pleasure, and could it have lasted for ever he would not have thought of changing it. To take her by the hand and help her to cross the weedy stones; to watch her pretty stare of wonderment when he explained that the f
lux and the reflux of the tides were governed by the moon; to hear her speak of love, and to dream what that love might be, was enough.
Along the coast there were miles and miles of reaches, and to gain the sea they were obliged to make many detours. Sometimes they came upon long stretches of sand separated by what seemed to them to be a river, and Montgomery often proposed that he should carry Kate across the streamlet. But she would not hear of it, although on one occasion she did not refuse until he had placed his arms around her waist. Escaping from him, she ran along the edge, saying she would find a crossing. Montgomery pursued her, amused by the fluttering of her petticoats; but after a race of twenty or thirty yards, they found that their discovered river was only a long pool that owned no outlet to the sea, and they both stopped like disappointed children.
‘Well, never mind,’ said Kate; ‘did you ever see such beautiful clear water? I must have a drink.’
‘You’ve no cup,’ he said, turning away so that she should not see him laughing. ‘You might manage to get up a little in your hands.’
‘So I might. Oh, what fun! Tell me how I’m to do it.’
He told her how to hollow her hands, and waited to enjoy the result, and, forgetful that the sea was salt she lifted the brine to her lips; but when she spat out the horrible mouthful and turned on him a questioning face, he only answered that if she didn’t take care she would be the death of him.
‘And didn’t ums know the sea was salt, and did ums think it very nasty, and not half as nice as a brandy-and-soda?’
Kate watched him for a moment, and then her face clouded, and pouting her pretty lips, she said:
‘Of course I don’t pretend to be as clever as you, but if you’d never seen the sea until a week ago you might forget.’
‘Yes, yes, for-for-get that it — it wasn’t as nice as brandy-and-soda,’ cried Montgomery, holding his sides.
‘I wasn’t going to say that, and it was very rude of you to interrupt me in that way.’
‘Now come, don’t get cross. You should understand a joke better than that,’ he replied, for seeing the tears in her eyes he began to fear that he had spoilt the delight of their day.
‘I think it is unkind of you to laugh at me and play tricks on me like that,’ said Kate, trying to master her emotion; and as they walked under the sunset, Montgomery broke long and irritating silences by apologizing for his indiscretion, but Kate did not answer him until they arrived at a place where a little boy and girl were fishing for shrimps. Here there was quite a little lake, and amid the rocks and weedy stones the clear water flowed as it might in an aquarium, the liquid surface reflecting as perfectly as any mirror the sky’s blue, with clouds going by and many delicate opal tints, and the forms of the children’s plump limbs.
‘Oh, how nice they look! What little dears!’ exclaimed Kate, but as she pressed forward to watch the children her foot dislodged a young lobster from the corner of rock in which he had been hiding.
‘That’s a lobster,’ cried Montgomery.
‘Is it?’ cried Kate, and she pursued the ungainly thing, which sought vainly for a crevice.
After an animated chase, with the aid of her parasol she caught it, and was about to take it up with her fingers when Montgomery stopped her.
‘You’d better take care; it will pretty well nip the fingers off you.’
‘You aren’t joking?’ she asked innocently.
‘No, indeed I’m not; but I hope you don’t mind my telling you.’
At that moment their eyes met, and Kate, seeing how foolish she had been, burst into fits of laughter.
‘No, no, no, I — I don’t mind your telling me that — that a lobster bites, but—’
‘But when it comes to saying sea-water is not as nice as brandy-and-soda,’ he replied, bursting into a roar of merriment, ‘we cut up rough, don’t we?’
The children climbed up on the rocks to look at them, and it was some time before Kate could find words to ask them to show what they had caught.
The little boy was especially clever at his work, and regardless of wetting himself, he plunged into the deepest pools, intercepting with his net at every turn the shrimps that vainly sought to escape him. His little sister, too, was not lacking in dexterity, and between them they had filled a fairly-sized basket. Kate examined everything with an almost feverish interest. She tore long gluey masses of seaweed from the rocks and insisted on carrying them home; the mussels she found on the rocks interested her; she questioned the little shrimp fishers for several minutes about a dead starfish, and they stared in open-eyed amazement, thinking it very strange that a grown-up woman should ask such questions. At last the little boy showed her what she was to do with the lobster. He wedged the claws with two bits of wood, and attached a string whereby she might carry it in her hand, and in silences that were only interrupted by occasional words they picked their way along the strand.
Kate thought of Dick — of what he was doing, of what he was saying. She saw him surrounded by men; there were glasses on the table. She looked into his large, melancholy blue eyes, and dreamed of the time she would again sit on his knees and explain to him for the hundredth time that love was all-sufficing, and that he who possessed it could possess nothing more. Montgomery was also thinking of Dick, and for the conquest of so pretty a woman the dreamy-minded musician viewed his manager with admiration. The morality of the question did not appeal to him, and his only fear was that Kate would one day be deserted. ‘If so, I shall have to support her.’ He thought of the music he would have to compose — songs, all of which would be dedicated to her.
‘Have you known Dick,’ she asked suddenly, ‘a long time?’
‘Two or three years or so,’ replied Montgomery, a little abashed at a question which sounded at that moment like a distant echo of his own thoughts. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘For no particular reason, only you seem such great friends.’
‘Yes, I like him very much; he’s a dear good fellow, he’d divide his last bob with a pal.’
The conversation then came to a pause. Both suddenly remembered how they had set out on their walk determined to seek information of each other on certain subjects.
Montgomery wished to hear from Kate how Dick had persuaded her to run away with him; Kate wanted to learn from Montgomery something of her lover’s private life — if he were faithful to a woman when he loved her, if he had been in love with many women before.
As she considered how she would put her questions a grey cloud passed over her face, and she thought of Leslie. But just as she was going to speak Montgomery interrupted her. He said:
‘You didn’t know Dick before he came to lodge in your house at Hanley, did you?’
Kate raised her eyes with a swift and startled look, but being anxious to speak on the subject she replied, speaking very softly:
‘No, and perhaps it would have been well if he had never come to my house.’
There was not so much insincerity in the phrase as may at first appear. Nearly all women consider it necessary to maintain to themselves and to others that they deeply regret having sinned. The delusion at once pleases and consoles them, and they cling to it to the last.
‘I often think of you,’ said Montgomery. ‘Yours appears to me such a romantic story … you who sat all day and mi-mi—’ he was going to say minding a sick husband, but for fear of wounding her feelings he altered the sentence to ‘and never, or hardly ever, left Hanley in your life, should be going about the country with us.’
Kate, who guessed what he had intended saying, answered:
‘Yes, I’m afraid I’ve been very wicked. I often think of it and you must despise me. That’s what makes me ashamed to go about with the rest of the company. I’m always wondering what they think of me. Tell me, do tell me the truth; I don’t mind hearing it. What do they say about me? Do they abuse me very much?’
‘Abuse you? They abuse you for being a pretty woman, I suppose; but as for anything else, good heaven
s! they’d look well! Why, you’re far the most respectable one among the lot. Don’t you know that?’
‘I suspected Beaumont was not quite right, perhaps; but you don’t mean to say there isn’t one? Not that little thing with fair hair who sings in the chorus?’
‘Well, yes, they say she’s all right. There are one or two, perhaps; but when it comes to asking me if Beaumont and Leslie are down on you — well!’ Montgomery burst out laughing.
This decided expression of opinion was grateful to Kate’s feelings, and the conversation might have been pursued with advantage, but seeing an opportunity of speaking of Dick, she said:
‘But you told me there was nothing between Mr. Bret and Miss Leslie.’
‘I told you I didn’t know whether there was or not; but I’m quite sure there never was between her and Dick. You see I can guess what you’re trying to get at.’
‘I can scarcely believe it. Now I think of it, I remember she was in his room the night of the row, when he turned me out.’
‘Yes, yes; but there were a lot of us. The principals in a company generally stick together. It’s extraordinary how you women will keep on nagging at a thing. I swear to you that I’m as certain as I stand here there was never anything between them. Do let us talk of something else.’
They had now wandered back to the fine pebbly beach, to within a hundred yards of the pier, and above the high cliff they could just see the red chimney-stacks of the town.
Montgomery sang his waltz softly over, but before he arrived at the second part his thoughts wandered, and he said:
‘Have you heard anything of your husband since you left Hanley?’
The abruptness of the question made Kate start; but she was not offended, and she answered:
‘No, I haven’t. I wonder what he’ll do.’
‘Possibly apply for a divorce. If he does, you’ll be able to marry Dick.’
A flush of pleasure passed over Kate’s face, and when she raised her eyes her look seemed to have caught some of the brightness of the sunset. But it died into grey gloom even as the light above, and she said sighing:
