ssed as without significance. She and Desboro were still lightly rallying each other; Clydesdale was explaining to Daisy that lapis lazuli was the sapphire of the ancients, while Jacqueline was showing her a bit under a magnifying glass, when the noise of sleighs and motors outside signalled the return of the skating party.
As Desboro passed her, Elena said under her breath: “I want a moment alone with you this evening.”
“It’s impossible,” he motioned with his lips; and passed on with a smile of welcome for his returning guests.
Later, in the billiard room, where they all had gathered before the impromptu dance which usually terminated the evening, Elena found another chance for a word aside: “Jim, I must speak to you alone, please.”
“It can’t be done. You see that for yourself, don’t you?”
“It can be done. Go to your room and I’ll come — —”
“Are you mad?”
“Almost. I tell you you’d better find some way — —”
“What has happened?”
“I mean to have you tell me, Jim.”
A dull flush came into his face: “Oh! Well, I’ll tell you now, if you like.”
Her heart seemed to stop for a second, then almost suffocated her, and she instinctively put her hand to her throat.
He was leaning over the pool table, idly spinning the ivory balls; she, seated on the edge, one pretty, bare arm propping her body, appeared to be watching him as idly. All around them rang the laughter and animated chatter of his guests, sipping their after-dinner coffee and cordial around the huge fireplace.
“Don’t say — that you are going to — Jim — —” she breathed. “It isn’t true — it mustn’t be — —”
He interrupted deliberately: “What are you trying to do to me? Make a servant out of me? Chain me up while you pass your life deciding at leisure whether to live with your husband or involve yourself and me in scandal?”
“Are you in love with that girl — after what you have promised me?”
“Are you sane or crazy?”
“You once told me you would never marry. I have rested secure in the knowledge that when the inevitable crash came you would be free to stand by me!”
“You have a perfectly good husband. You and he are on better terms — you are getting on all right together. Do you expect to keep me tied to the table-leg in case of eventualities?” he said, in a savage whisper. “How many men do you wish to control?”
“One! I thought a Desboro never lied.”
“Have I lied to you?”
“If you marry Miss Nevers you will have lied to me, Jim.”
“Very well. Then you’ll release me from that fool of a promise. I remember I did say that I would never marry. I’ve changed my mind, that’s all. I’ve changed otherwise, too — please God! The cad you knew as James Desboro is not exactly what you’re looking at now. It’s in me to be something remotely resembling a man. I learned how to try from her, if you want to know. What I was can’t be helped. What I’m to make of the débris of what I am concerns myself. If you ever had a shred of real liking for me you’ll show it now.”
“Jim! Is this how you betray me — after persuading me to continue a shameful and ghastly farce with Cary Clydesdale! You have betrayed me — for your own ends! You have made my life a living lie again — so that you could evade responsibility — —”
“Was I ever responsible for you?”
“You asked me to marry you — —”
“Before you married Cary. Good God! Does that entail hard labour for life?”
“You promised not to marry — —”
“What is it to you what I do — if you treat your husband decently?”
“I have tried — —” She crimsoned. “I — I endured degradation to which I will never again submit — whatever the law may be — whatever marriage is supposed to include! Do you think you can force me to — to that — for your own selfish ends — with your silly and unsolicited advice on domesticity and — and children — when my heart is elsewhere — when you have it, and you know you possess it — and all that I am — every bit of me. Jim! Don’t be cruel to me who have been trying to live as you wished, merely to satisfy a moral notion of your own! Don’t betray me now — at such a time — when it’s a matter of days, hours, before I tell Cary that the farce is ended. Are you going to leave me to face things alone? You can’t! I won’t let you! I am — —”
“‘Be careful,’ he said.... ‘People are watching us’”
“Be careful,” he said, spinning the 13 ball into a pocket. “People are watching us. Toss that cue-ball back to me, please. Laugh a little when you do it.”
For a second she balanced the white ivory ball in a hand which matched it; then the mad impulse to dash it into his smiling face passed with a shudder, and she laughed and sent it caroming swiftly from cushion to cushion, until it darted into his hand.
“Jim,” she said, “you are not really serious. I know it, too; and because I do know it, I have been able to endure the things you have done — your idle fancies for a pretty face and figure — your indiscretions, ephemeral courtships, passing inclinations. But this is different — —”
“Yes, it is different,” he said. “And so am I, Elena. Let us be about the honest business of life, in God’s name, and clear our hearts and souls of the morbid and unwholesome mess that lately entangled us.”
“Is that how you speak of what we have been to each other?” she asked, very pale.
He was silent.
“Jim, dear,” she said timidly, “won’t you give me ten minutes alone with you?”
He scarcely heard her. He spun the last parti-coloured ball into a corner pocket, straightened his shoulders, and looked at Jacqueline where she sat in the corner of the fireplace. Herrendene, cross-legged on the rug at her feet, was doing Malay card tricks to amuse her; but from moment to moment her blue eyes stole across the room toward Desboro and Mrs. Clydesdale where they leaned together over the distant pool table. Suddenly she caught his eye and smiled a pale response to the message in his gaze.
After a moment he said quietly to Elena: “I am deeply and reverently in love — for the first and only time in my life. It is proper that you should know it. And now you do know it. There is absolutely nothing further to be said between us.”
“There is — more than you think,” she whispered, white to the lips.
CHAPTER XI
Nobody, apparently, was yet astir; not a breakfast tray had yet tinkled along the dusky corridors when Desboro, descending the stairs in the dim morning light, encountered Jacqueline coming from the general direction of the east wing, her arms loaded with freshly cut white carnations.
“Good morning,” he whispered, in smiling surprise, taking her and her carnations into his arms very reverently, almost timidly.
She endured the contact shyly and seriously, as usual, bending her head aside to avoid his lips.
“Do you suppose,” he said laughingly, “that you could ever bring yourself to kiss me, Jacqueline?”
She did not answer, and presently he released her, saying: “You never have yet; and now that we’re engaged — —”
“Engaged!”
“You know we are!”
“Is that what you think, Jim?”
“Certainly! I asked you to marry me — —”
“No, dear, I asked you. But I wasn’t certain you had quite accepted me — —”
“Are you laughing at me?”
“I don’t know — I don’t know what I am doing any more; laughter and tears seem so close to each other — sometimes — and I can never be certain which it is going to be any more.”
Her eyes remained grave, but her lips were sweet and humourous as she stood there on the stairs, her chin resting on the sheaf of carnations clasped to her breast.
“What is troubling you, Jacqueline?” he asked, after a moment’s silence.
“Nothing. If you will hold these flowers a moment I’ll decorate yo
u.”
He took the fragrant sheaf from her; she selected a magnificent white blossom, drew the stem through the lapel of his coat, patted the flower into a position which suited her, regarded the effect critically, then glanced up out of her winning blue eyes and found him watching her dreamily.
“I try to realise it, and I can’t,” he said vaguely. “Can you, dear?”
“Realise what?” she asked, in a low voice.
“That we are engaged.”
“Are you so sure of me, Jim?”
“Do you suppose I could live life through without you now?”
“I don’t know. Try it for two minutes anyway; these flowers must stand in water. Will you wait here for me?”
He stepped forward to aid her, but she passed him lightly, avoiding his touch, and sped across the corridor. In a few minutes she returned and they descended the stairs together, and entered the empty library. She leaned back against the table, both slender hands resting on the edge behind her, and gazed out at the sparrows in the snow. And she did not even appear to notice his arm, which ventured around her waist, or his lips resting against the lock of bright hair curling on her cheek, so absorbed she seemed to be in her silent reflections.
After a few moments she said, still looking out of the window: “I must tell you something now.”
“Are you going to tell me that you love me?”
“Yes — perhaps I had better begin that way.”
“Then begin, dearest.”
“I — I love you.”
His arm tightened around her, but she gently released herself.
“There is a — a little more to say, Jim. I love you enough to give you back your promise.”
“My promise!”
“To marry me,” she said steadily. “I scarcely knew what I was saying yesterday — I was so excited, so much in love with you — so fearful that you might sometime be unhappy if things continued with us as they threatened to continue. I’m afraid I overvalued myself — made you suspect that I am more than I really am — or can ever be. Besides, I frightened you — and myself — unnecessarily. I never could be in any danger of — of loving you — unwisely. It was not perfectly fair to you to hint such a thing — because, after all, there is a third choice for you. A worthy one. For you could let me go my way out of your life, which is already so full, and which would fill again very easily, even if my absence left a little void for a while. And if it was any kind of pity you felt for me — for what I said to you — that stirred you to — ask of me what I begged you to ask — then I give you back your promise. I have not slept for thinking over it. I must give it back.”
He remained silent for a while, then his arms slipped down around her body and he dropped on one knee beside her and laid his face close against her. She had to bend over to hear what he was saying, he spoke so low and with such difficulty.
“How can you care for me?” he said. “How can you? Don’t you understand what a beast I was — what lesser impulse possessed me — —”
“Hush, Jim! Am I different?”
“Good God! Yes!”
“No, dear.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying!”
“You don’t know. Do you suppose I am immune to — to the — lesser love — at moments — —”
He lifted his head and looked up at her, dismayed.
“You!”
“I. How else could I understand you?”
“Because you are so far above everything unworthy.”
“No, dear. If I were, you would only have angered and frightened me — not made me sorry for us both. Because women and men are something alike at moments; only, somehow, women seem to realise that — somehow — they are guardians of — of something — of civilisation, perhaps. And it is their instinct to curb and silence and ignore whatever unworthy threatens it or them. It is that way with us, Jim.”
She looked out of the window at the sky and the trees, and stood thinking for a while. Then: “Did you suppose it is always easy for a girl in love — whose instinct is to love — and to give? Especially such a girl as I am, especially when she is so dreadfully afraid that her lover may think her cold-blooded — self-seeking — perhaps a — a schemer — —”
She covered her face with her hand — the quick, adorable gesture he knew so well.
“I — did ask you to marry me,” she said, in a stifled voice, “but I am not a schemer; my motive was not self-interest. It was for you I asked it, Jim, far more than for myself — or I never could have found the courage — perhaps not even the wish. Because, somehow, I am too proud to wish for anything that is not offered.”
As he said nothing, she broke out suddenly with a little sob of protest in her voice: “I am not a self-seeking, calculating woman! I am not naturally cold and unresponsive! I am — inclined to be — otherwise. And you had better know it. But you won’t believe it, I am afraid, because I — I have never responded to — to you.”
Tears fell between her fingers over the flushed cheeks. She spoke with increasing effort: “You don’t understand; and I can’t explain — except to say that to be demonstrative seemed unworthy in me.”
He put his arms around her shoulders very gently; she rested her forehead against his shoulder.
“Don’t think me calculating and cold-blooded — or a fool,” she whispered. “Probably everybody kisses or is kissed. I know it as well as you do. But I haven’t the — effrontery — to permit myself — such emotions. I couldn’t, Jim. I’d hate myself. And I thought of that, too, when I asked you to marry me. Because if you had refused — and — matters had gone on — you would have been sorry for me sooner or later — or perhaps hated me. Because I would have been — been too much ashamed of myself to have — loved you — unwisely.”
He stood with head bent, listening; and, as he listened, the comparison between this young girl and himself forced itself into his unwilling mind — how that all she believed and desired ennobled her, and how what had always governed him had made of him nothing more admirable than what he was born, a human animal. For what he began as he still was — only cleverer.
What else was he — except a trained animal, sufficiently educated to keep out of jail? What had he done with his inheritance? His body was sane and healthy; he had been at pains to cultivate that. How was it with his mind? How was it with his spiritual beliefs? Had he cultivated and added to either? He had been endowed with a brain. Had he made of it anything except an instrument for idle caprice and indolent passions to play upon?
“Do you understand me now?” she whispered, touching wet lashes with her handkerchief.
He replied impetuously, hotly; her hands dropped from her face and she looked up at him with sweet, confused eyes, blushing vividly under his praise of her.
He spoke of himself, too, with all the quick, impassioned impulse of youthful emotion, not sparing himself, promising better things, vowing them before the shrine of her innocence. Yet, a stronger character might have registered such vows in silence. And his fervour and incoherence left her mute; and after he had ceased to protest too much she stood quiet for a while, striving to search herself so that nothing unworthy should remain — so that heart and soul should be clean under the magic veil of happiness descending before her enraptured eyes.
Gently his arms encircled her; her clasped hands rested on his shoulder, and she gazed out at the blue sky and sun-warmed snow as at a corner of paradise revealed.
Later, when the household was astir, she went out with him into the greenhouse, where the enchanted stillness of growing things thrilled her, and the fragrance and sunlight made the mystery of love and its miracle even more exquisitely unreal to her.
At first they did not speak; her hand lay loosely in his, her blue eyes remained remote; and together they slowly paced the long, glass-sheeted galleries between misty, scented mounds of bloom, to and fro, under the flood of pallid winter sunshine, pale as the yellow jasmine flowers overhead.
After a
while a fat gardener came into one of the further wings. Presently the sound of shovelled coal from the furnace-pit aroused them from their dream; and they looked at each other gravely.
After a moment, he said: “Does it make a difference to you, Jacqueline, what I was before I knew you?”
“No.”
“I was only wondering what you really think of me.”
“You know already, Jim.”
He shook his head slowly.
“Jim! Of course you know!” she insisted hotly. “What you may have been before I knew you I refuse to consider. Anyway, it was you — part of you — and belongs to me now! Because I choose to make it mine — all that you were and are — good and evil! For I won’t give up one atom of you — even to the devil himself!”
He tried to laugh: “What a fierce little partisan you are,” he said.
“Very — where it concerns you,” she said, unsmiling.
“Dear — I had better tell you now; you may hear things about me — —”
“I won’t listen to them!”
“No; but one sometimes hears without listening. People may say things. They will say things. I wish I could spare you. If I had known — if I had only known — that you were in the world — —”
“Don’t, Jim! It — it isn’t best for me to hear. It doesn’t concern me,” she insisted excitedly. “And if anybody dares say one word to me — —”
“Wait, dear. All I want to be sure of is that you do love me enough to — to go on loving me. I want to be certain, and I want you to be certain before you are a bride — —”
She was growing very much excited, and suddenly near to tears, for the one thing that endangered her self-control seemed to be his doubt of her.
“There is nothing that I haven’t forgiven you,” she said. “Nothing! There is nothing I won’t forgive — except — one thing — —”
“What?”
“I can’t say it. I can’t even think it. All I know is that now I couldn’t forgive it.” Suddenly she became perfectly quiet.
“I know what you mean,” he said.
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