She looked up, laughing, childish, inviting him with her lips. He bent to kiss her, and as his eyes closed, he saw hers were shut. The feeling of restoration was almost unbearable.
"Do you love me?" she whispered, in a little ecstasy.
He did not answer, except with the quick tightening of his arms, clutching her a little closer against him. And he loved the silkiness of her hair, and its natural scent. And it hurt him that the daisies she had threaded in should begin to wither. He resented their hurting her by their dying.
He had not understood. But the trouble had gone off. He was quiet, and he watched her from out of his sensitive stillness, a little bit dimly, unable to recover. She was loving to him, protective, and bright, laughing like a glad child too.
"We must tell Maud I shall be in to dinner," he said.
That was like him--always aware of the practical side of the case, and the appearances. She laughed a little bit ironically. Why should she have to take her arm from round him, just to tell Maud he would be in to dinner?
"I'll go," she said.
He drew the curtains and turned on the light in the big lamp that stood in a corner. The room was dim, and palely warm. He loved it dearly.
His wife, when she came back, as soon as she had closed the door, lifted her arms to him in a little ecstasy, coming to him. They clasped each other closer, body to body. And the intensity of his feeling was so fierce, he felt himself going dim, fusing into something soft and plastic between her hands. And this connection with her was bigger than life or death. And at the bottom of his heart was a sob.
She was gay and winsome at the dinner. Like lovers, they were just deliciously waiting for the night to come up. But there remained in him always the slightly broken feeling which the night before had left.
"And you won't go to Italy," she said, as if it were an understood thing.
She gave him the best things to eat, and was solicitous for his welfare--which was not usual with her. It gave him deep, shy pleasure. He remembered a verse she was often quoting as one she loved. He did not know it for himself:
"On my breasts I warm thy foot-soles;
Wine I pour, and dress thy meats;
Humbly, when my lord disposes,
Lie with him on perfumed sheets."
She said it to him sometimes, looking up at him from the pillow. But it never seemed real to him. She might, in her sudden passion, put his feet between her breasts. But he never felt like a lord, never more pained and insignificant than at those times. As a little girl, she must have subjected herself before her dolls. And he was something like her lordliest plaything. He liked that too. If only . . .
Then, seeing some frightened little way of looking at him which she had, the pure pain came back. He loved her, and it would never be peace between them; she would never belong to him, as a wife. She would take him and reject him, like a mistress. And perhaps for that reason he would love her all the more; it might be so.
But then, he forgot. Whatever was or was not, now she loved him. And whatever came after, this evening he was the lord. What matter if he were deposed to-morrow, and she hated him!
Her eyes, wide and candid, were staring at him a little bit wondering, a little bit forlorn. She knew he had not quite come back. He held her close to him.
"My love," she murmured consolingly. "My love."
And she put her fingers through his hair, arranging it in little, loose curves, playing with it and forgetting everything else. He loved that dearly, to feel the light lift and touch--touch of her finger-tips making his hair, as she said, like an Apollo's. She lifted his face to see how he looked, and, with a little laugh of love, kissed him. And he loved to be made much of by her. But he had the dim, hurting sense that she would not love him to-morrow, that it was only her great need to love that exalted him to-night. He knew he was no king; he did not feel a king, even when she was crowning and kissing him.
"Do you love me?" she asked, playfully whispering.
He held her fast and kissed her, while the blood hurt in his heart-chambers.
"You know," he answered, with a struggle.
Later, when he lay holding her with a passion intense like pain, the words blurted from him:
"Flesh of my flesh. Paula!--Will you--?"
"Yes, my love," she answered consolingly.
He bit his mouth with pain. For him it was almost an agony of appeal.
"But, Paula--I mean it--flesh of my flesh--a wife?"
She tightened her arms round him without answering. And he knew, and she knew, that she put him off like that.
IV
Two months later, she was writing to him in Italy: "Your idea of your woman is that she is an expansion, no, a rib of yourself, without any existence of her own. That I am a being by myself is more than you can grasp. I wish I could absolutely submerge myself in a man--and so I do. I always loved you . . .
"You will say 'I was patient.' Do you call that patient, hanging on for your needs, as you have done? The innermost life you have always had of me, and you held yourself aloof because you were afraid.
"The unpardonable thing was you told me you loved me.--Your feelings have hated me these three months, which did not prevent you from taking my love and every breath from me.--Underneath you undermined me, in some subtle, corrupt way that I did not see because I believed you, when you told me you loved me . . .
"The insult of the way you took me these last three months I shall never forgive you. I honestly did give myself, and always in vain and rebuffed. The strain of it all has driven me quite mad.
"You say I am a tragédienne, but I don't do any of your perverse undermining tricks. You are always luring one into the open like a clever enemy, but you keep safely under cover all the time.
"This practically means, for me, that life is over, my belief in life--I hope it will recover, but it never could do so with you . . ."
To which he answered: "If I kept under cover it is funny, for there isn't any cover now.--And you can hope, pretty easily, for your own recovery apart from me. For my side, without you, I am done . . . But you lie to yourself. You wouldn't love me, and you won't be able to love anybody else--except yourself."
The Collected Short Stories Page 31
