by Edith Nesbit
“And the documents, Madame?”
“I will give you them to-morrow. There is a ball at the American Embassy. I can get you a card.”
“I have one.” He had indeed made it his first business to get one — was not the Girl with the Guitar an American, and could he dare to waste the least light chance of seeing her again?
“Well — be there at twelve, and you shall have everything. But,” she looked sidelong at him, “will Monsieur be very kind — very attentive — in short, devote himself to me — for this one evening? He will be there.”
He murmured something banal about the devotion of a lifetime, and went away to his lodging in a remote suburb, which he had chosen because he loved boating.
The next night at twelve saw him lounging, a gloomy figure, on a seat in an ante-room at the Embassy. He knew that the Lady was within, yet he could not go to her. He sat there despairingly, trying to hope that even now something might happen to save him. Yet, as it seemed, nothing short of a miracle could. But his star shone, and the miracle happened. For, as he sat, a radiant vision, all white lace and diamonds, detached itself from the arm of a grey-bearded gentleman, and floated towards him.
“It is you!” said the darling vision, and the next moment his hands — both hands — were warmly clasped by little white-gloved ones, and he was standing looking into the eyes of the Girl.
“I knew I should see you somewhere — this continent is so tiny,” she said. “Come right along and be introduced to Papa — that’s him over there.”
“I — I can’t,” he answered, in an agony. “I — my pocket’s been picked—”
“Do tell!” said the Girl, laughing; “but Papa doesn’t want tipping — he’s got all he wants — come right along.”
“I can’t,” he said, hoarse with the misery of the degrading confession; “it wasn’t my money — it was my shoes. I came up in boots, brown boots; distant suburb; train; my shoes were in my overcoat pocket — I meant to change in the cab. I must have dropped them or they were taken out. And here I am in these things.” He looked down at his bright brown boots. “And all the shops are shut — and my whole future depends on my getting into that room within the next half-hour. But never mind! Why should you bother? — Besides, what does it matter? I’ve seen you again. You’ll speak to me as you come back? I’ll wait all night for a word.”
“Don’t be so silly,” said the Girl; but she smiled very prettily, and her dear eyes sparkled. “If it’s really important, I’ll fix it for you! But why does your future depend on it, and all that?”
“I have to meet a lady,” said the wretched young man.
“The one you were with at the masked ball? The nun? Yes — I made Papa take me. Is it that one?” Her tone was imperious, but it was anxious too.
He looked imploringly at her. “Yes, but—”
“You shall have the shoes, all the same,” she interrupted, and turned away before he could add a word.
A moment later the grey-bearded gentleman was bowing to him.
“My girl tells me you’re in a corner for want of shoes, Sir. Mine are at your service — we seem about of a size — we can change behind that pillar.”
“But,” stammered the young man, “it’s too much — I can’t—”
“It’s nothing at all, Sir,” said the man with the grey beard warmly; “nothing compared to the way you stood by my girl! Shake! John B. Warner don’t forget.”
“I can’t thank you,” said the other, when they had shaken hands. “If you will — just for a short time! I’ll be back in half an hour—”
He was back in two minutes. The first face he saw when he had made his duty bows was the face of the Beautiful Lady. She was radiant: and beside her stood her Jew, also radiant. They had made it up. And what is more — though he never knew it — they had made it up in that half-hour of delay caused by the Boots. The Lady passed our hero without a word or even a glance to acknowledge acquaintanceship, and he saw that the game was absolutely up. He swore under his breath. But the next moment he laughed to himself with a free heart. After all — for any documents, any evidence, for any success in any walk of life, how could he have borne to devote himself, as he had promised to do, to that Corsican lady, while the Girl, the Girl, was in the room? And he perceived now that he should not even use the information he already had. It did not seem fitting that one to whom the Girl stooped to speak, for ever so brief a moment, should play the part of a spy — in however good a cause.
“Back already?” said the old gentleman.
“Thank you — my business is completed.”
The young man resumed his brown boots.
“Now, Papa,” said the Girl, “just go right along and do your devoirs in there — and I’ll stay and talk to him—”
The father went obediently.
“Have you quarrelled with her, then?” asked the Girl, her eyes on the diamond buckles of her satin shoes.
He told her everything — or nearly.
“Well,” she said decisively, “I’m glad you’re out of it, anyway. Don’t worry about it. It’s a nasty trade. Papa’ll find you a berth. Come out to the States and edit one of his papers!”
“You told me he was a millionaire! I suppose everything went all right? He didn’t lose his money or anything?” His tone was wistful.
“Not he! You don’t know Papa!” said the Girl; “but, say, you’re not going to be too proud to be acquainted with a self-made man?”
He didn’t answer.
“Say,” said she again, “I don’t take so much stock in dukes as I used to.” She laid a hand on his arm.
“Don’t make a fool of me,” said the young man, speaking very low.
“I won’t,” — her voice was a caress,—”but Papa shall make Something of you. You don’t know Papa! He can make men’s fortunes as easily as other folks make men’s shoes. And he always does what I tell him. Aren’t you glad to see me again? And don’t you remember — ?” said she, looking at him so kindly that he lost his head and —
“Ah! haven’t you forgotten?” said he.
That is about all there is of the story. He is now a Something — and he has married the Girl. If you think that a young man of comparatively small income should not marry the girl he loves because her father happens to have made money in pork, I can only remind you that your opinion is not shared by the bulk of our English aristocracy. And they don’t even bother about the love, as often as not.
THE SECOND BEST
THE letter was brief and abrupt.
“I am in London. I have just come back from Jamaica. Will you come and see me? I can be in at any time you appoint.”
There was no signature, but he knew the handwriting well enough. The letter came to him by the morning post, sandwiched between his tailor’s bill and a catalogue of Rare and Choice Editions.
He read it twice. Then he got up from the breakfast-table, unlocked a drawer, and took out a packet of letters and a photograph.
“I ought to have burned them long ago,” he said; “I’ll burn them now.” He did burn them but first he read them through, and as he read them he sighed, more than once. They were passionate, pretty letters, — the phrases simply turned, the endearments delicately chosen. They breathed of love and constancy and faith, a faith that should move mountains, a love that should shine like gold in the furnace of adversity, a constancy that death itself should be powerless to shake. And he sighed. No later love had come to draw with soft lips the poison from this old wound. She had married Benoliel, the West Indian Jew. It is a far cry from Jamaica to London, but some whispers had reached her jilted lover. The kindest of them said that Benoliel neglected his wife, the harshest, that he beat her.
He looked at the photograph. It was two years since he had seen the living woman. Yet still, when he shut his eyes, he could see the delicate tints, the coral, and rose, and pearl, and gold that went to the making up of her. He could always see these. And now he should see the reality. Would the two years have dul
led that bright hair, withered at all that flower-face? For he never doubted that he must go to her.
He was a lawyer; perhaps she wanted that sort of help from him, wanted to know how to rid herself of the bitter bad bargain that she had made in marrying the Jew. Whatever he could do he would, of course, but —
He went out at once and sent a telegram to her.
“Four to-day.”
And at four o’clock he found himself on the doorstep of a house in Eaton Square. He hated the wealthy look of the house, the footman who opened the door, and the thick carpets of the stairs up which he was led. He hated the soft luxury of the room in which he was left to wait for her. Everything spoke, decorously and without shouting, but with unmistakable distinctness, of money, Benoliel’s money: money that had been able to buy all these beautiful things, and, as one of them, to buy her.
She came in quietly. Long simple folds of grey trailed after her: she wore no ornament of any kind. Her fingers were ringless, every one. He saw all this, but before he saw anything else he saw that the two years had taken nothing from her charm, had indeed but added a wistful patient look that made her seem more a child than when he had last seen her.
The meaningless contact of their hands was over, and still neither had spoken. She was looking at him questioningly. The silence appeared silly; there was, and there could be, no emotion to justify, to transfigure it. He spoke.
“How do you do?” he said.
She drew a deep breath, and lifted her eyebrows slightly.
“Won’t you sit down?” she said; “you are looking just like you used to.” She had the tiniest lisp; once it had used to charm him.
“You, too, are quite your old self,” he said. Then there was a pause.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she said.
“It was you who sent for me,” said he.
“Yes.”
“Why did you?”
“I wanted to see you.” She opened her pretty child-eyes at him, and he noted, only to bitterly resent, the appeal in them. He remembered that old appealing look too well.
“No, Madam,” he said inwardly, “not again! You can’t whistle the dog to heel at your will and pleasure. I was a fool once, but I’m not fool enough to play the fool with Benoliel’s wife.”
Aloud he said, smiling —
“I suppose you did, or you would not have written. And now what can I do for you?”
She leaned forward to look at him.
“Then you really have forgotten? You didn’t grieve for me long! You used to say you would never leave off loving me as long as you lived.”
“My dear Mrs. Benoliel,” he said, “if I ever said anything so thoughtless as that, I certainly have forgotten it.”
“Very well,” she said; “then go!”
This straight hitting embarrassed him mortally.
“But,” he said, “I’ve not forgotten that you and I were once friends for a little while, and I do beg you to consider me as a friend. Let me help you. You must have some need of a friend’s services, or you would not have sent for me. I assure you I am entirely at your commands. Come, tell me how I can help you—”
“You can’t help me at all,” she said hopelessly, “nobody can now.”
“I’ve heard — I hope you’ll forgive me for saying so — I’ve heard that your married life has been — hasn’t been—”
“My married life has been hell,” she said; “but I don’t want to talk about that. I deserved it all.”
“But, my dear lady, why not get a divorce or, at least, a separation? My services — anything I can do to advise or—”
She sprang from her chair and knelt beside him.
“Oh, how could you think that of me? How could you? He’s dead — Benoliel’s dead. I thought you’d understand that by my sending to you. Do you think I’d ever have seen you again as long as he was alive? I’m not a wicked woman, dear, I’m only a fool.”
She had caught the hand that lay on the arm of his chair, her face was pressed on it, and on it he could feel her tears and her kisses.
“Don’t,” he said harshly, “don’t.” But he could not bring himself to draw his hand away otherwise than very gently, and after a decent pause. He stood up and held out his hand. She put hers in it, he raised her to her feet and put her back in her chair, and artfully entrenching himself behind a little table, sat down in a very stiff chair with a high seat and gilt legs.
She laughed. “Oh, don’t trouble! You needn’t barricade yourself like a besieged castle. Don’t be afraid of me. You’re really quite safe. I’m not so mad as you think. Only, you know, all this time I’ve never been able to get the idea out of my head—”
He was afraid to ask what idea.
“I always believed you meant it; that you always would love me, just as you said. I was wrong, that’s all. Now go! Do go!”
He was afraid to go.
“No,” he said, “let’s talk quietly, and like the old friends we were before we—”
“Before we weren’t. Well?”
He was now afraid to say anything.
“Look here,” she said suddenly, “let me talk. There are some things I do really want to say, since you won’t let it go without saying. One is that I know now you’re not so much to blame as I thought, and I do forgive you. I mean it, really, not just pretending forgiveness; I forgive you altogether—”
“You — forgive me?”
“Yes, didn’t you understand that that was what I meant? I didn’t want to say ‘I forgive you,’ and I thought if I sent for you you’d understand.”
“You seem to have thought your sending for me a more enlightening move than I found it.”
“Yes — because you don’t care now. If you had, you’d have understood.”
“I really think I should like to understand.”
“What?”
“Exactly what it is you’re kind enough to forgive.”
“Why — your never coming to see me. Benoliel told me before we’d been married a month that he had got my aunt to stop your letters and mine, so I don’t blame you now as I did then. But you might have come when you found I didn’t write.”
“I did come. The house was shut up, and the caretaker could give no address.”
“Did you really? And there was no address? I never thought of that.”
“I don’t suppose you did,” he said savagely; “you never did think!”
“Oh, I was a fool! I was!”
“Yes.”
“But I have been punished.”
“Not you!” he said. “You got what you wanted — money, money, money — the only thing I couldn’t give you. If it comes to that, why didn’t you come and see me? I hadn’t gone away and left no address.”
“I never thought of it.”
“No, of course not.”
“And, besides, you wouldn’t have been there—”
“I? I sat day after day waiting for a letter.”
“I never thought of it,” she said again.
And again he said: “No, of course you didn’t; you wouldn’t, you know—”
“Ah, don’t! please don’t! Oh, you don’t know how sorry I’ve been—”
“But why did you marry him?”
“To spite you — to show you I didn’t care — because I was in a rage — because I was a fool! You might as well tell me at once that you’re in love with someone else.”
“Must one always be in love, then?” he sneered.
“I thought men always were,” she said simply. “Please tell me.”
“No, I’m not in love with anybody. I have had enough of that to last me for a year or two.”
“Then — oh, won’t you try to like me again? Nobody will ever love you so much as I do — you said I looked just the same—”
“Yes, but you aren’t the same.”
“Yes I am. I think really I’m better than I used to be,” she said timidly.
“You’re not the same,” he wen
t on, growing angrier to feel that he had allowed himself to grow angry with her. “You were a girl, and my sweetheart; now you’re a widow — that man’s widow! You’re not the same. The past can’t be undone so easily, I assure you.”
“Oh,” she cried, clenching her hands, “I know there must be something I could say that you would listen to — oh, I wish I could think what! I suppose as it is I’m saying things no other woman ever would have said — but I don’t care! I won’t be reserved and dignified, and leave everything to you, like girls in books. I lost too much by that before. I will say every single thing I can think of. I will! Dearest, you said you would always love me — you don’t care for anyone else. I know you would love me again if you would only let yourself. Won’t you forgive me?”
“I can’t,” he said briefly.
“Have you never done anything that needed to be forgiven? I would forgive you anything in the world! Didn’t you care for other people before you knew me? And I’m not angry about it. And I never cared for him.”
“That only makes it worse,” he said.
She sprang to her feet. “It makes it worse for me! But if you loved me it ought to make it better for you. If you had loved me with your heart and mind you would be glad to think how little it was, after all, that I did give to that man.”
“Sold — not gave—”
“Oh, don’t spare me! But there’s no need to tell you not to spare me. But I don’t care what you say. You’ve loved other women. I’ve never loved anyone but you. And yet you can’t forgive me!”
“It’s not the same,” he repeated dully.
“I am the same — only I’m more patient, I hope, and not so selfish. But your pride is hurt, and you think it’s not quite the right thing to marry a rich man’s widow. And you want to go home and feel how strong and heroic you’ve been, and be proud of yourself because you haven’t let me make a fool of you.”
It was so nearly true that he denied it instantly.
“I don’t,” he said. “I could have forgiven you anything, however wicked you’d been — but I can’t forgive you for having been—”
“Been a fool? I can’t forgive myself for that, either. My dear, my dear, you don’t love anyone else; you don’t hate me. Do you know that your eyes are quite changed from what they were when you came in? And your voice, and your face — everything. Think, dear, if I am not the same woman you loved, I’m still more like her than anyone else in the world. And you did love me — oh, don’t hate me for anything I’ve said. Don’t you see I’m fighting for my life? Look at me. I am just like your old sweetheart, only I love you more, and I can understand better now how not to make you unhappy. Ah, don’t throw everything away without thinking. I am more like the woman you loved than anyone else can ever be. Oh, my God! my God! what shall I say to him? Oh, God help me!”
