by E. F. Benson
The Princess was extremely glad to see Reggie, and she couldn’t help congratulating him, if he wouldn’t think it very interfering of her, but she had made great friends with dear Gertrude, and Gertrude had told her all about it. And here was Mrs. Rivière coming, and did Reggie know her; she was a great friend of Lady Hayes, whom she was sure he must have met in London.
Gertrude was standing some little way off, but she heard the name mentioned, and she could not help turning half round and looking at Reggie. Reggie’s back, however, was towards her, and he was making his bow to Mrs. Rivière.
Mrs. Rivière was very busy about this time on modelling herself after the Princess, but having nothing in her composition that could be construed into tact or ability, the result was that the imitation was limited to talking in a loud voice, and saying anything that came into her head.
“Charmed to meet you,” she was telling Reggie in shrill tones, “and all the men here are going to be dreadfully jealous of you at once. Your reputation has preceded you; it came to me by the last mail; how nobody could get in a word edgeways with Lady Hayes, because she was always talking to you, and how your photograph stood on the mantelpiece in her room, and she would never allow the housemaids to dust it, but she dusted it herself every morning with a pink silk handkerchief, also belonging, or belonging once, to you. Oh, don’t deny it, Mr. Davenport — and how she sat out four, or was it forty — I think forty — forty dances with you at some ball one night.”
Mrs. Rivière paused for breath, well satisfied with herself. Her monologue had been quite as rapid as the Princess’s and, she flattered herself, quite as fascinating. Mimi had moved away when Mrs. Rivière came up, and was talking to Gertrude, a few yards off. But Gertrude did not hear what she was saying, for the shrill tones of Mrs. Rivière’s voice rose high above the surrounding babble of conversation, and seemed as if they were spoken to her alone. Reggie’s back was still turned towards her; his face she could not see.
Reggie was conscious that Gertrude was within hearing, conscious also that Mrs. Rivière did not know his relations to her. Eva’s name had caused the blood to rush up into his face, and Mrs. Rivière had been delighted with the success of her speech. The Princess had caught a few of her last words, and, looking up at Gertrude, she saw that she had heard too. She wheeled suddenly about, and approached Mrs. Rivière.
“There are simply twenty thousand people whom I don’t know here,” she said; “you really must come and introduce me to them. Who is that there in a green hat with little purple, bubbly things on it? I want to know anyone who wears purple and green. They must be so very brave; I respect brave people enormously. Come and introduce me. Villari has asked a lot of people I never saw before. I shall talk to him about the woman with purple bobbles!”
She drew Mrs. Rivière away, and Reggie turned round and found himself with Gertrude.
“I heard what that woman said to you,” said Gertrude, simply. “It is only fair to tell you that.”
She waited, looking at him expectantly, but he remained silent.
“Reggie,” she said, touching his arm.
He raised his eyes and looked at her.
“Come and walk round the garden, Gerty,” he said, “I have something to say to you.”
Gerty’s loyalty struggled again and again conquered.
“What you have to say to me can be said here, surely,” she said gently and trustfully. “I do not even want you to deny the truth or any of the truth of what that woman said. I am ashamed of having told you that I heard. Forgive me instantly, please, Reggie, and then we’ll have a stroll.”
Reggie paused, and it was a cruel moment for Gertrude.
“Yes, I will say it here,” he went on at length. “Do you remember my telling you, three days ago, on the morning I came, that everything was right now I was with you? That was true.”
“And it is true, and you have forgiven me?” asked Gertrude.
Was the ghost of Venusberg not laid yet? Else what was that murmur which Reggie had heard again, when Mrs. Rivière spoke of Eva, like the burden of a remembered song?— “She is not gone really, she has only gone elsewhere?” Was that the smell of red geraniums borne along from the flower-beds by the warm wind, faint, acrid, as you smell them in the dusty window-boxes of the great squares and streets in London? There should be no geraniums here, only wild flowers — meadow-sweet, dog-rose, violet —
The sound of Gertrude’s voice had long died away, but Reggie stood silent. An overpowering feeling of anxiety swept over her; the trust that she had felt in his assurance that all was right was suddenly covered by a rolling breaker of doubt. And that silence cost her more than any speech.
At last it became unbearable.
“Speak, Reggie,” she cried, “whatever you have to tell me.”
“Come, let us go round the garden, where we can be quiet,” he said, and together, in silence, they followed a path leading down between dark evergreen bushes to the garden gate.
They sat down on a garden seat where they were hidden from the crowd gathering on the lawn.
“Let us sit here, Reggie,” she said. “Just tell me, and when you have said ‘yes,’ forgive me for asking that it is true that everything is right.”
“Ah! God knows whether it is true or false,” he cried.
For him again, the army of Venus laughed and rioted as it had rioted once before in the crowded opera house. Again a woman, pale, wonderful, with dark eyes, sat beside him, beating time listlessly to the music with her feathered fan. She had worn that night her great diamond necklace, and the jewels had flashed and glittered in the bright light, till he could scarcely believe they were not living things. And he had thought it was all over, past and dead. Oh no! “she is not gone really; she has only gone elsewhere ... she often turns up again.”
Gertrude felt her heart give one great leap of strained suspense, and then stand still for fear.
“I don’t understand,” she cried. “Tell me all about it, and tell me quickly. Yet, yet, you said it was all right, didn’t you, Reggie, and you wouldn’t tell me a lie? Ah! say it is all right again, say it now. I cannot bear it. I should like to kill that woman for what she said. It was not true, was it? Tell me it was not true.”
The ghost of Venusberg loomed large before Reggie’s eyes, blotting out the green bank of trees in front, the pure sky overhead, the mountains sleeping in the still afternoon, blotting out even the tall, English figure by him, leaning forward towards him in an agony of fear, hope, despair; he saw the gleam of electric light, the gleam of jewels, the gleam of another woman’s eyes.
“I will tell you all,” he said. “I saw Lady Hayes for the first time after you had left London, and from that time till four days ago I have seen her constantly. Then one night she showed me she was like all those women she moved among, and from whom I thought her so different. She was like Mrs. Rivière, Princess Villari — all is one after that. It was at the opera, at Tannhäuser—”
The intensity of Gertrude’s suspense relaxed a little. It was all over, then —
“Ah! we heard the overture together. Do you remember? You said you did not like wicked people.”
“Yes, I know. When I saw that, at that moment I loathed her. She had said to me things no woman should say, and when I heard the overture I understood, and told her she was a wicked woman. And not till then — you must believe me when I tell you this — not till I had vowed never to see her again, did I know — my God! that I should say these things to you — did I know I loved her. I have been through heaven and hell, and they are both hell.”
Reggie paused.
“That is not all,” said Gertrude.
The suspense was over, and despair is as calm or calmer than joy.
“I couldn’t leave her like that,” he went on. “I could not hate her utterly at the first moment that I knew I loved her, and I wrote to her asking her forgiveness, and she told me — she wrote to me, that she never would see me again, that I had behave
d unpardonably. She made me angry. And I came straight off here the same day.”
“And now?” asked Gertrude.
“God only knows what now,” said he, leaning his head on his hands.
There was a long silence, and the babble of laughter and talk came to them from the lawn, which was filling fast. Then Reggie heard Gertrude’s voice, very low and very tender, speaking to him, —
“Poor Reggie, poor dear boy. I am very sorry for you.”
She laid her hand on his knee, and then, drawing closer to him, as he sat with down-bent head, leaned forward to kiss him. But in a moment she recollected herself, and by an effort of supremest delicacy, before he was conscious what she had intended, drew back with one long look at him, in which her soul said “Farewell.”
She had something more to say, but it was not easy for her to say it. The uprootal of all one loves best makes it difficult to talk just then. But easy or not, it had to be said, and it was better to say it now.
“I am sure you told me the truth,” she began, “when I met you three days ago, and you said everything was right. We know nothing for certain, do we; we can only say what we think, and I am sure you thought that. Anyhow, these last three days have been very sweet. And now, Reggie, there is only one thing more to say ... you are free, absolutely free.... I am not so selfish as to wish to bind you to me.... I love you ... surely I may tell you once more what I have told you so often ... I love you with all my heart and soul, and I do not think I shall change. But we must wait. If that day comes when you say to me, ‘Will you have me?’ I shall say ‘Yes.’ But, you must say it in the same spirit in which I shall say ‘Yes.’ You know what that means, don’t you? Ah, Reggie, I don’t blame you. How could I do that?”
“Gerty, Gerty,” cried he, “I would give all the world to be able to say that to you. I know what you mean. But I am helpless, dumb, blind, deaf. I can do nothing. I am tossed about. I don’t know what is happening to me. And that you should suffer too.”
Gertrude smiled, ever so faintly.
“It’s a difficult world, isn’t it,” she said, “but it has its ups and downs. I have been very happy almost all my life.”
“Forgive me, forgive me,” he cried. “Gerty, say you don’t hate me.”
A deep tremor ran through her. When she met his imploring gaze, the desire of her young, strong love to gather him into her arms, to comfort him, to make him feel the depths of her yearning for him, to lose all for one moment in one last, clasping embrace was very hard to resist. “What harm is done?” whispered one voice within her, but another said, “He is not yours; he belongs to the woman he loves.” For one moment she hesitated: tenderness, love, memory, wrestled with that other voice, but prevailed not. There was that within her stronger than them all.
“I love you more than all the world,” she said, “and there is nothing to forgive.”
For one moment she stood looking at him, treasuring the seconds that passed too quickly, knowing that before a short minute had passed that last look would be over. Such a pause is purely instinctive, and when instinct tells us that it is time to take up one’s life again, it is impossible to stay longer.
That moment came all too soon, and Gertrude spoke again.
“Come, we must be going back. They will wonder where we are. Ah! there is the Princess. Reggie, pick me that tea-rose.”
The Princess felt vaguely reassured. The look in Gertrude’s face when she heard what Mrs. Rivière was saying was not pleasant, and it remained in her mind with some vividness. But the last remark which she had overheard was distinctly encouraging.
“Really, you two people are too bad,” she said. “You are here to amuse me and my guests, and show these little French people how magnificent, clean, nice, English boys and girls are. I’ve been entertaining a lot of stupid people, whom I didn’t want to see, and who wouldn’t have wanted to see me if I hadn’t been a Highness. But I’ve got a great notion of my duty as a hostess. Didn’t somebody write an “Ode to Duty”? You might as well write an “Ode to Dentistry.” They are both very unpleasant, but they both keep you straight.”
She led the way back to the lawn, and Gertrude and Reggie followed.
Society may be a farce, but it is a very grim farce. The devout but rejected lover, who has proposed to the lady of his love beneath an idyllic moon, goes to bed that night as usual, and if, in the agony of his mind, he has forgotten, to take the links out of his shirt in the evening, he will have to do it in the morning. The bows of his evening shoes will want untying just as much that night as on any other, and next morning he will find himself at the breakfast-table just as usual, having washed and brushed his teeth and combed his hair. The unkempt, haggard lovers of fiction have no existence in real life. Edwin does not refuse to shave because Angelina will have none of him, nor does he use his razor, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, for any more anatomical process than that of removing his superfluous hair. And Gertrude did not go home in floods of tears and refuse to be comforted, but she talked to several old acquaintances, and made several new ones, and quite a number of people said, “What a delightful girl Miss Carston is.” But her grief was none the less deep for that.
Among the old acquaintances, Prince Villari chose to number himself.
“I hear Mr. Davenport, whom my wife says you were expecting, has arrived,” said he. “Would you do me the pleasure to introduce him to me?”
Reggie was standing near Gertrude at the time, and she said, —
“Reggie, Prince Villari desires me to do you the honour to introduce you to him.”
“Mrs. Carston has been so good as to accept a most informal invitation to dinner from my wife for to-night,” continued the Prince. “She said we might hope that you and Mr. Davenport would join us too.”
Gertrude did not flinch.
“I should be charmed,” she said. “Reggie, you are not engaged, are you?”
The Prince smiled in anticipation of a “sweet, secret speech,” but he was disappointed. Reggie considered it an honour, and ventured to inquire at what time they should come.
“My wife has refused to allow Mrs. Carston to go home. She says it would be too cruel to entail that double journey over the most dusty mile of road in Europe twice in one day. May I add,” he said, turning to Gertrude, “that it would also be too cruel if you went. It is already half-past six, and we dine in an hour. I see the people are all going. Let me show you the garden. Ah! I see Mr. Davenport has found an acquaintance. Won’t you come with me down as far as the gate? There is a seat there commanding a lovely view.”
Ah! but how Gertrude’s heart knew that seat and that lovely view! Had she not looked on it once already this afternoon?
The Prince was disposed to be particularly amiable.
“I am sure you must love this view,” he said. “I know it’s a great bore having views shown you, and that sort of thing, but I must say I think this view really is enchanting! Those mountains there look so fine in this evening light! They always remind me of the English lake scenery. My wife raves about English scenery; she says it is part of the only satisfactory system of life in the world, and belongs to the same order of things as roast beef and five o’clock tea, and daisies and large cart-horses. Ah! here is Mrs. Rivière; I suppose she has been looking at the scenery, too.”
As a matter of fact, Mrs. Rivière had been doing nothing of the sort. She had come to a secluded corner, in order to smoke a cigarette and carry on a promising flirtation with a somewhat mature French count. But the mature French count had gone his way, and she was finishing her cigarette alone.
“I have been looking for that fascinating and wicked Englishman,” she said. “Yes; isn’t the view charming? You really don’t know, Miss Carston, how dreadfully you are compromising yourself by going about with him. Take my word for it, as a married woman, that it endangers your reputation. Really, I don’t know what young people are coming to. It’s perfectly frightful. I heard all about him f
rom a very dear friend of mine in London.”
Gertrude felt an overwhelming desire to stop this sort of thing. Mrs. Rivière had run herself out by this time, and stood taking little puffs from her cigarette, and thinking how very Mimi-ish she was becoming. Gertrude stood by her a moment in silence, and Prince Villari thought the contrast between them very striking indeed. There was an expression in Gertrude’s face which puzzled him somewhat and he waited in patience for an explanation which he felt sure was forthcoming.
“You mean Reggie Davenport?” she said at length.
“Reggie!” screamed Mrs. Rivière, “really you are getting on at a tremendous pace. I honestly tremble for you.”
“Your fears are misplaced,” said Gertrude, looking down at her. “I have been engaged to him for eighteen months.”
She turned round after saying these words, and walked slowly back, the Prince by her side, without troubling herself to see the effect produced on Mrs. Rivière. They walked in silence for some yards, and then the Prince said, —
“May I offer you my congratulations on the double event — on your engagement, and your defeat of Mrs. Rivière? It was really very fine.”
“Thanks,” said she, without tremor or raised colour. “I don’t like Mrs. Rivière. I think she is insupportable. Ah! there is Reggie. May I go and speak to him?”
The Prince walked gracefully off in another direction. He never made himself de trop.
“Reggie,” said she, “it was necessary, I found just now, to let Mrs. Rivière believe we were engaged, and I think, perhaps, we had better not let it be known what has happened just yet. I have good reason for it. But tell your mother. I am tired. I think I shall go indoors. Stop and talk to the Prince.”
By a merciful arrangement of Nature’s, a great shock is never entirely comprehended by the victim all at once. A numbness always succeeds it first, and the torn and bleeding tissues recover not altogether, but one by one. At present Gertrude was conscious that she did not wholly take in all that had happened. Volition and action in small things went on still with mechanical regularity, and it is doubtful whether any of those about her saw any difference. She wandered into the Princess’s room which opened on to the verandah, and was pleased to find it untenanted. She threw herself down in a chair, and took up the paper, which had just come in by the mail. There was a famine somewhere, and a war somewhere else, Mr. Gladstone had gone to Biarritz, the Prince of Wales had opened a Working-Man’s Institute and Lord Hayes was dead. His death, it appeared, was sudden.
