A FORSAKEN TEMPLE
BY ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK
Author of “The Rescue,” “The Confounding of Camelia,” “The Dull Miss Archinard,” etc.
PART II
THE end had come; not of Christina’s love, not of her absorption, her need, but of Milly’s. At first her mind refused to face the full realization; groped among the omens of the past; refused, even now, to fix on Dick as the cause of all. She could trace the gradual, the dreadful severance; Milly’s slow loss of interest in her—in their life together. It was at first only for the fact of loss that she wept—that, only, that she could look at. But by degrees, as her stifled sobs grew quieter, she was able to think, to think clearly, fiercely, with desperate snatchings at hope, while she crouched by the bed, pushing back her hair from her forehead, pressing her hot temples with icy hands.
Why should Milly lose interest? How could she? How could love and truest sympathy, truest understanding—how could they fail? “Love begets love. Love begets love,” she whispered under her breath, not knowing that she spoke, and, in this hour of shipwreck, clinging unconsciously to such spars and fragments of childish, unreasoning trust as her memory tossed her. No other friendship threatened hers; she was first as friend—she knew it—irrevocably. First as friend did not mean to Milly, could never mean, the deep-burning attachment that it meant to her; but such friendship could not die without some cause other than mere weariness of sameness. And the truth, no longer to be evaded, leaped upon her: Milly was falling in love with Dick. Whether the weariness was the cause of her love, or whether the latent love had been the cause of her long weariness, Christina could not tell, nor, as she acutely guessed, could Milly. But now, this abnormal interest in a man so utterly alien to her, this gentle eagerness, this frank comradeship—above all, this indifference to herself—could only mean one thing: Milly was falling in love; and she was frank and happy because she did not know it; and he did not know it. Like two children with a fresh day of play and sunshine before them, they were engaged in merry, trivial games—picnics, make-believes, no thought of sentiment or emotion in them to account for the new sympathy; but from these games, these picnics,—Christina saw it with burning eyes,—they would return hand in hand, all in all to each other, needing no one else.
Maps! travels! adventures! Africa!—folly! folly! Did they not see these things as silly toys—as she did? What could Milly care for such toys? That she should play with them—as if she placed tin soldiers and blew a tin trumpet—showed the fatal glamour that was upon her; glamour only; a moonshine mood of vague cravings. Dick happened to have stepped into it, and it was fastening around him. How dignify by the sacred name of love thus sentiment—all made of her weakness, her impressionability, her emotionalism—that swayed her toward her husband?
Passionate rejection of the degradation for Milly swept through the stricken friend and mingled with the throes of her anguish for herself. For how could she live without Milly? How could she live as Milly’s formal friend, kept outside the circle of deepest affection, the circle where, till now, she had reigned alone? Ah! she understood Milly’s nature too well; saw that, with all its sweetness, it was slight. Love, with her, would efface all friendship. Like a delicate, narrow little vase, her heart could hold but one deep feeling. She simply would come not to care at all for Christina—would come? Had she not come already? In her eyes, her smiles, the empty caressing of her voice, was there not already the most profound indifference?
Had Milly’s relation with her husband been normal there could have been no such appeal as that upon which their friendship was founded, and when the relation ceased to be abnormal the need of the stop-gap friendship would cease.
The essence of Milly was a complete self-abandonment to one, surrounded by complete reserve to everybody else. She could never give herself to two; Christina saw that. What she did not see so distinctly was that Milly had never really given herself to her; that it had always been she who gave and Milly, tenderly smiling, who received; she did not see that Milly was essentially the woman who must be in love, the woman who must have somebody in love with her. How she would be in love she did see: how she would idealize Dick; imagine him strong and stately, and proceed to lavish upon him, encompass him, and decorate him with all her clasping vines and tendrils. Milly would remain fond of herself as she had been fond of little Joan Ashby—a fondness all sweet demonstration, all emptiness. Yes; she saw it, felt it, luridly: the greater Milly’s need of her had been, the less it would be now. She would mean much less to her for having meant so much. She would be the quaffed cordial that had sustained Milly over the desert of quite illusory disillusion, to be cast aside when the desert was passed and her uses gone.
And all the forces of Christina’s nature rose in rebellion. She felt the rebellion like the onslaught of angels of light against powers of darkness; it was the ideal thing doing battle with some primal, evil force. She measured herself beside Dick Quentyn, her needs beside his. His life was cheerful, contented, complete; hers would be without Milly a warped, a meaningless, a broken life. Strangely her thoughts in all their anguish turned in not one reproach upon her friend; rather, her comprehension, from heights of love, sorrowed over her with infinite tenderness. For, so she told herself, she could have resigned her to true greatness, to true comprehension, to true companionship; but Milly, her Milly,—made hers by all these years,—in love with Dick! It was a calamity, a disease, that had befallen her darling. It would last with her, too; she would not learn to unlove him. This love, asking no heights, would slowly lead her down to contented levels, and her life, too, in all true senses, would be warped, meaningless, broken.
In Christina’s mind there grew, inflexibly, the determination to fight for Milly as well as for herself, to save herself, and Milly too. She armed herself with desperate measures.
Meanwhile in the library Dick said to his wife: “Are n’t I interrupting you? Don’t you want to read—or talk with Mrs. Drent?”
And at the question, alone with him as she was, Milly made a swift, surprised little survey of the situation. She was sitting contentedly—more than contentedly—talking with her husband; she did not want to talk to Christina; she wanted to go on talking to Dick. Her thoughts did not carry her further, did not dwell on Christina. She had not yet realized—as Christina had—that Christina was profoundly indifferent to her; she had not realized that Christina’s presence had become an interruption, a burden. Christina’s personality merely seemed blurred and very far away.
“Oh, no, you are not interrupting me; Christina and I have read everything—talked of everything,” she said, smiling, and yet, though she was unconscious of it, blushing faintly; Dick, as unconscious of its meaning, gazed at the blush; and then they went on talking.
When Christina came down to dinner that evening her eyes were only very slightly shadowed with her weeping.
Her task was enormous. She must never let them feel her there, as a barrier between them, and yet she must be there always, and always as a barrier. She was all ease, all lightness, all unemphatic adaptation. She seemed as soft, as unmenacing, as she was resolute and implacable.
“We had thought, you know, Dick, of going to Greece,” said Milly. “How would you like to go to Greece, Dick?”
“With you and Mrs. Drent, do you mean? Immensely. But you don’t mean it.”
“Indeed, why not?” laughed Milly. “Indeed, I do mean it. Do come. Would it not be nice, Christina dear? He would take such good care of us.”
“It would be delightful,” said Christina, smiling at Dick over the fruit she was peeling.
“Dick is going to London in a few days, and I thought we might all go together, and then start for Greece in about a week’s time,” said Milly.
“Delightful,” Christina reiterated; “you know how much my heart has been set on Greece.”
Her greatest terror now was that Milly should guess her terror.
Two days afterward they went up to London, and during these two days Christina had effectually—though so delicately so imperceptibly—kept the wife and husband apart. Dick went to his bachelor chambers, Milly to her friend’s house. She and Christina had hardly been alone together since Dick’s return, and now, in the unchanged surroundings of the old companionship, the change in the companionship itself could but strike them both; but Christina did not show any consciousness of change. Over the lava-heavings of her terror and misery she showed a constant smiling composure. Poor Milly, hardly yet seeing distinctly, hardly yet comprehending clearly, felt a strange awkwardness, a strange confusion; Christina’s ignoring of change deepened it; she tried to hide it by an over-demonstrativeness that only revealed new and huge reserves. She was horribly afraid lest Christina should guess things at which she herself had hardly looked, and the fear at once gave her an odd feeling of defiance. She thought a great deal, unreasonably it seemed to her, of that distant scene over Joan Ashby. Milly was cowardly about giving pain, yet, stung to desperation, she could be crueler than a less tender person. She was not yet stung to desperation, but she was afraid of Christina. The fear, superficially, was that Christina should guess that she was not altogether frank with her, and it nerved her to apparent frankness.
“I asked Dick to come and dine,” she said; “we can talk over the trip.”
“It is all arranged, dear,” Christina could not repress—a false step, she knew, but in her position false steps were almost inevitable from time to time.
“Yes—but not for three,” said Milly. And the monstrousness of there being three, of there being such a third, suddenly overcame her; she stood dyed in helpless blushes, not knowing what her helplessness confessed. Christina ignored the blush.
“Yes, that will need retalking,” she said gaily. Perhaps Milly would think that she saw and did not mind; for the present that was safest; for the present the safest of all was to keep on the surface, to define nothing.
After dinner that night, in the drawing-room, Christina felt the very air electric with all the restraints ready to burst into revelations that would surprise no one. The terrible falseness of her attitude, the thing that put her terribly in the wrong, was that she ought to leave them; but she could not risk an explanation between them, and if she left them there must be an explanation. They must, dumbly, feel her as an intolerable intruder, and she must, as yet, be intolerable. With all her inflexible calm, a new feeling was surging over her—blind hatred of Dick Quentyn, a torment of jealousy. And in this room!—where everything spoke of her and Milly,—which had grown, as it were, around their affection, symbolized it in every bit of porcelain chosen together, every print, the furniture, the very wall-paper—all speaking of that real community of taste and feeling that this crude, elemental passion was to part forever. And Dick was unsuspecting, even now; even now when Milly had begun to grope toward complete discovery. But Christina read in his eyes, as they rested upon his wife, in the new slight shyness that had suddenly colored all his manner toward her, that for him, too, revelation would not be long delayed. Christina hated him so much that she knew that joy only would be in her were he to fall suddenly dead before her. She sat quaking with misery, her throat dry, her eyes hot; she sat, smiling, until the hour was late and Dick was forced to go.
Milly walked beside him to the door; Christina guessed that she wanted to go outside with him, and then that the courage to be frankly cowardly failed her, for, bidding him good-by inside the drawing-room, she said:
“Would you like a walk to-morrow, in the park?” She had lacked the courage to murmur it out of earshot, and in the question Christina felt the defiant hostility of weakness brought to bay.
“Delighted; may I come for you at eleven?” said Dick.
Left alone, the two women were silent. Milly went to the mantelpiece and touched her hair, looking at her reflection in the mirror.
“Dear me, how late!” she said at last, turning to her friend, but not looking at her. “Good night, dearest; I am dead with sleepiness.”
“May I not come, too, for the walk?” Christina asked, smiling up at her from the review she had opened on her knees; “it is our usual hour, you know.”
“Why, dearest, of course you are coming,” said Milly, instantly.
Christina measured the depth of estrangement in all that the flexible acquiescence hid of bitterness, disappointment—hatred even. The contest was becoming desperate indeed.
The walk next morning was as meaningless as Christina had intended it should be. She felt herself a frail barrier between two surging impatiences. She could not long divide them unless she armed herself with some towering strength.
But even her reckless dexterity was not to prevent a meeting. Next morning, at an hour she thought thoroughly safe,—indeed, she had heard Dick speak of an engagement for that morning,—she went out to make the last preparations for the Grecian trip. She and Milly were still to go to Greece, and they were to go alone—so Christina saw the future.
During her absence Mr. Quentyn came, and Milly, in the drawing-room, seeing him drive up, hearing his voice, knew a sudden throb of triumph. She had not time to analyze it. Dick was in the room; she only knew that she was unutterably glad to see him, unutterably glad to see him alone; knew, too, that she was suddenly shy of showing her gladness. With cool sweetness she gave him her hand.
“Surely I have further privileges,” said Dick. He bent his head and kissed his wife’s cheek.
“Only after a return from Africa,” said Milly, lightly, turning away to hide her new and quite overwhelming confusion. Waves of it were going over her; she was seeing, in flashes, the absurdity, the difficulty, the wonder of what was happening to her.
“I must be off again at once, then,” said Dick, “and get back as soon as possible.”
She had sat down, now, on the sofa, still wondering greatly. Why, why was this foolish talk so charming, so dear to her? Why did she dread—and hope—that Dick would take the place beside her? He took it. For a moment she was so frightened that sh» thought she was sorry.
“It will be awfully jolly, this Grecian trip,” said Dick, who, on his side, was also feeling a mixture of dread and hope; he hardly dared to hope—and yet—Dick, too, was wondering greatly. Most definitely he was wondering if he could dare propose something—that they might take the trip to Greece alone—together.
“It ‘s awfully good of you to let me come,” he said.
She said nothing, looking away, a little smile fixed on her face. She could not alter it; it meant nothing—was therefore safe.
“Why are you so good to me, Milly?” he asked, and leaning to her, gently, very timidly, yet with a certain elated air of right asserting itself, he took her hand. She burst into tears.
“Oh, Milly!” said Dick. He held her hand and stared.
And upon these tears, and Dick’s look of mingled alarm and rapture, Christina entered.
Through her tears Milly saw, blurred and wavering, Christina’s face, white, distorted, in agony. Christina and Christina’s agony were now, indeed, intolerable. Milly sprang up and ran out of the room.
“How much have they said? How much? How much?” Christina was saying to herself monotonously. She was left alone confronting the husband.
“What has happened? What has happened?” She asked it in her lowest, most intent tones.
Dick had risen, agitated, yet, as usual, simple. “I am afraid I have distressed Milly. At least—”
“What have you said to her?” Her right to question him seemed, oddly, far greater than his to resent such questioning.
“I asked her—to tell you the truth, I have always hoped, Mrs. Drent, that Milly could care for me—again. I asked her why she was so good to me. She has been good, you know—surprisingly so. And—but of course you have known that—I have always been in love with Milly—quite desperately in love; that ‘s why I never minded—never felt turned against her—you understand—”
She understood all, as he blundered on in his terribly telling way. How it would tell upon Milly with her new longings for simplicity and strength she understood too.
“Did you tell her that you loved her?” she asked.
“She must know it. No, I did n’t tell her; I had n’t time.”
She felt as if she held, lifted in her hand above some innocent life, a murderous weapon. Yet, relentlessly, it fell.
“I must tell you, Mr. Quentyn, you will kill your wife if you continue to see her—to pursue her,” she said; and she heard, as if from a far distance, the icy steadiness of her voice. “I cannot keep the truth from you now. You know my love for Milly, as great, as true, as any love can be. She told me that when you came back she was going to be kind—as kind as she could be. She felt it to be her duty—her duty only. An almost morbid change came over her this winter. Life took a new aspect to her. She saw it only as a sacrifice to be offered. She determined to live for duty only; to sacrifice herself. But you will, I know, ask no such sacrifices when you know that it is upon them that your happiness will be based. You will help me to save her from her own sick conscience. Milly does not love you—could never love you. She does not even care for you. I must tell you all the truth—as she told it to me—last night,”—she was rapidly drawing her gloves through her hands while she spoke; now she twisted them around her knuckles, clenched her fingers upon them,—”she hates you. You are repulsive to her. She cannot conquer the repulsion. It will kill her if she tries to conquer it. She is strong for martyrdom, but, you have just seen it, not strong enough to go through it, always, unflinching. Spare her. Do not see her again. Go away. Go away forever.”
Her voice was hardly more than an insistent thread of sound. Drops of sweat stood on her brow. The truth of her dreadful outspeaking seemed stamped upon her rigid face. Dick Quentyn did not know a doubt. There was bewilderment, horror, on his countenance; but of incredulity not a trace—not even a trace of humiliation. A quick dart of keenest admiration for him went through her, cutting, horridly painful.
“Mrs. Drent—how right of you! This is awfully right of you,” he murmured. “Of course I’ll go; at once.” He looked about dazedly for his hat.
“Forever?” Christina asked.
“Forever—of course.”
“And you will never let Milly guess—what I have told you?”
He stared for a moment.
“That I have let you know!” her impatience, almost fierce, explained to him.
“Of course I ‘ll never let her know. You will tell her that I have gone? I will write—some sort of a letter. Make her think I don’t mind—that will be easiest for her. Make her think that shooting—all that sort of thing—is all that I really care for—that she could n’t do anything for me.”
“I will make her think it. Where are you going?”
Again Dick stared for a vague moment. Where was he going?
“I may as well go back to Africa,” he proposed.
“To Africa,” Christina assented.
She was looking, still with the inflexible face, at him, but she felt as if the pain of her admiration were almost killing her.
“It was for her sake,” she whispered. “I had to do it. It was for her sake.”
“I understand—perfectly,” said Dick. “Good-by.” He held out his hand to her.
“Noble! noble!” she breathed, still fiercely.
And Dick actually smiled.
He was gone. She pressed her hands to her face. She shook in every limb. And yet she did not regret. Above the horror and the pain she felt, with a savage joy, that she had bound Milly to herself, snatched her from degradation—forever. She was breathless, trembling, but her soul was still dauntless. And now—Milly.
Christina went to her.
She found her sitting near her window, looking out, still with the wonder on her face. When she looked round at her friend, Christina read upon it, too,—under the confusion and the attempt at affection,—that latent, instinctive hostility, as though her nature warned her against the enemy to her love.
Christina knelt down beside her.
“Darling,” she said, “do you care for him?”
“Yes,” said Milly, sullenly. She had been nerving herself to the difficult task of declaring her love; Christina’s solemn question forestalled her declaration and seemed ominous of something against which, unconsciously, she armed herself.
“Oh, my own dearest—no, no. Not really?”
“Yes, really,” said Milly, more sullenly. “I can’t help it. I don’t want to help it. You need not reproach me. It has all been a hideous mistake. I believe that I have always needed him.”
“No! no!” It was an almost fierce appeal. Milly misread its significance. She shook off her friend’s encircling arms and rose.
“I can’t help it, if it does part us—and it has parted us. It is all impossible—and you have made it so, Christina, not I; the way you have acted toward us shows it. You have been so false—pretending not to see, and yet seeing all, and separating us! I am fearfully sorry. I know how ungrateful I seem, how cruel; but—you oppress me; you imprison me: I have felt it for a long, long time without knowing that I felt it. I must be free. I must love Dick, and be alone with him,—do you understand, Christina?—alone with him.”
The cruel courage with which weakness in supreme moments of self-assertion can arm itself thrilled in her sharpened voice; a violent red burned on either cheek; her eyes were wild with the half-terrified,determination to be pitiless.
And even now Christina did not waver. Her faith in the power of her own love swept her on.
“Milly—Milly—I am not thinking of myself—of parting from you—of obtruding myself upon you.” The quality of the deep sadness, of the infinitely sorrowful tenderness, in her voice stilled Milly’s agitation to instant attention. “I was thinking of you—of how to tell you. Dearest, how to tell you! It was not for myself I pretended not to see that you were in love with your husband; it was for you, Milly—and, if possible, to keep him from seeing, too: it was for that I tried to separate you. Dear one, from me you must hear it; who else could tell you? Your husband, Milly, has gone.”
Milly gazed, again wildly.
“He has gone to Africa.”
“To Africa?”
“Yes.” Christina grasped her hands. “Now bear it. I will bear it with you. We will never speak of it again. He guessed to-day at your love for him—and he has gone—because he has none to give you.”
Milly stood rigidly, manacled by the other’s grasp.
“He told me all the truth. He said that to me, who loved you so, he could speak—must speak. He felt, after what your tears had revealed, that it would be dastardly to remain. I was not to let you know that he had guessed; I was to let you think that he believed you cared as little as he did. He does n’t love you. He does n’t love you,”—Christina paused, looking her friend in the eyes,—”but more than that,” she said, “more than that—though he did not tell me this—there is another woman; and for years, Milly, I have known it.”
She saw all the enormous risks she was taking; she knew that Milly might be armed with some knowledge of her husband’s heart that would unmask the lie: but she dared it, ready to meet passionate denial with pitiful and inflexible reiteration, or to catch her friend, fainting, to her breast.
But Milly neither fainted nor denied.
For a long moment she looked, with strange eyes, and lips parted, at Christina. Then, not violently, with a cold, soft persistence, she twisted her hands from the grasp that clung to them. Silently she sat down again by the window, and again looked out.
On her face was none of the horror and bewilderment that her husband’s had shown, but, like his, it showed no humiliation; it was with a new wonder, a frozen calm, that she looked out at the street.
“Dear one,” Christina whispered, “you will love me again—and forget him?”
Her work accomplished, a dreadful weakness—a weakness that clung, shuddered, appealed—seized her.
“Will you let me be alone, please?” said Milly, not turning her head.
“Milly! Milly!” Christina moaned, “what have I done that you should change so?”
“Nothing. Nothing. It is not you who have changed me—or anything you have done. I cannot think of you. Have mercy on me,” Milly answered, “and leave me.”
Dick’s note of farewell came next morning; Christina did not see it, but she knew that it had been effective. Milly had not needed the effectiveness of the brief information as to his sudden determination to be off on another expedition; no more than Christina’s other victim did she feel incredulity.
She and Christina went on living together in Christina’s house, living together, yet parted unutterably.
And it was not Milly who drooped and pined and leaned, again, upon her friend. Milly never mentioned her husband’s name; never alluded to the terrible episode of her mistimed love; never—ah, never!—asked a question about that “other woman.” With a look of hard serenity she went through her days; refused with gentle courtesy the proposal of the Grecian trip; acceded with formal gratitude to less onerous suggestions.
She went out; she saw people; she smiled, was alert, almost merry, and altogether reticent. The barriers, now, were of stone indeed, but of stone overlaid with diamonds; her manner glittered with forbidding sweetness. No conscious cruelty could have been so cruel as the cruelty with which her broken and bleeding heart shut itself from any look or touch.
It was Christina who grew thin and wan, Christina who pined and sickened.
Milly did not notice—or care to notice—her wasted hands, her sunken cheeks, the haunted eyes that dwelt in a deep humility of dumb appeal upon her. She could not think of Christina’s feelings; the hiding of her own demanded all her strength. Christina’s mere presence was an almost insupportable burden; it made huge demands, to none of which she could respond. It was a constant reminder of all the things she could not longer give, all the things she did not care to remember. She knew that Christina saw her unutterable misery, but she determined that Christina should never see it without its mask. Endurance was all that she could give Christina, and after a month of mutual torture Milly felt that even that she could not longer give.
She said one day that she was going down to Chawlton House—to be alone for a little while. There was no longer any veiled defiance in Milly’s manner; it was gentle and inflexible. Christina made no protest, no reply. She submitted. All hope now lay in submission. But deep in her heart dwelt the dreadful fear that all had been in vain and that all was in vain; that Milly would never come to her again; that she had lost her the more utterly for having tried, at such awful costs, to keep her; that Milly had no longer been hers to lose, and would never again be hers.
Milly left her, kissing her good-by with more sincere affection than she had shown for months.
“I have been very horrid, but you have understood,” she whispered hurriedly as they stood together in the hall, the carriage waiting outside. “Learn to live without me; I am not nearly fine enough, generous enough, true enough for you. Go to Greece, Christina; take some nice woman and go to Greece.”
Christina only bowed her forehead upon the speaker s shoulder, clasping her, for one moment, mutely.
In the country, full of summer now, Milly felt the hateful oppression fall from her. She could be miserable and not have to hide her misery. She could sit and look at her life without dreading that another’s eyes were looking with her.
It pained her to see how utterly all love for poor Christina had died from her; to see how the, perhaps, crude and elemental love had killed the delicate, derivative affection; it pained her for Christina’s sake, and grieved her for her own, too, to contemplate her own essential smallness and instability of nature. And yet the pain and grief were very superficial; it was saddest of all to realize that—to realize that her chief feeling about Christina, and really about herself too, was a deep indifference. Worst of all,—and she turned from the thought with a pain that was no longer superficial,—with the sensation of a real cruelty in herself, was the other latent feeling about Christina, the feeling that she could not conquer, that vaguely underlay the indifference—a dim repulsion, a dim dislike. Was it that she could not forgive her for having seen her deepest woe?
The thought of Dick was like the blue sky, like the free wind, like the grass and wild flowers; to think of Christina—even apart from recent black associations—was to think of a hothouse atmosphere, where one was exquisite—and imprisoned. It had been real, it had been normal—for Christina; for her, with her far less idealistic nature, her nature so puny, for all its big cravings (Milly was very severe with herself), it had been a long, gradual exhaustion. She could not live in a hothouse, nor on heights either; she could not live in any rarefied atmosphere. Nectarines would not do for daily food. She only wanted simple, wholesome bread. Bread was denied her; the trees, the wind, the blue sky were not to be hers; but never, never would she go again into the hothouse, never eat nectarines again.
She was sorry, very sorry, for poor Christina. She had accepted Christina’s life, used it, and now, through the strange compulsion of fate, she must cut herself away from it—even if she left it to bleed to death. That, of course, was only a simile; Christina would not carry the abnormal so far as actually to die; but that she must bleed Milly knew. But the cruelty was kind, because so truly necessary, and with time—time healed everything—Milly dropped finally into soothing truisms—with time Christina would find some other parasite, some other fragile life to cling to her own, and joy and strength would come to her again in upholding and supporting it.
That Christina had submitted showed in her letters, not too frequent, making no appeal, unemphatic, friendly recordings of superficial facts. Among them was no mention of her own health. It was, therefore, with a shock, a shock that roused her effectually from her condition of benumbed indifference, that Milly read one autumn morning, in a blurred, shaking hand:
I am very ill—dying, I think. Come to me at once. I must tell you something.
Milly was horrified, conscience-stricken too. She hastened to London and to the little house, home of so many remembrances, near Sloane street.
The maid at the door told her that Mrs. Drent was rapidly sinking. Milly read wondering reproach in her simple eyes.
“I did not know! Why was I not told? Why was I not told?” she repeated to the nurse who came to meet her.
Mrs. Drent, the nurse said, would not have her sent for; but during these last few days she had become slightly delirious, had spoken repeatedly of something she wished to tell, had, at last, written herself. She could hardly live a day longer; heart-failure had made her illness fatal.
Milly felt herself choking with sobs. In the room she paused for one moment. Was that Christina, that strange face with such phantom eyes? For the one moment she felt herself seized by the terror that seemed to look at her from those eyes; for Christina did not smile at her; only looked, silently, and, it seemed, with terror unspeakable.
Then Milly remembered: she was dying; not herself; and oh, what must she be feeling in her abandonment, her desolation! The rush of intense pity, intense self-reproach, shook her through and through.
She ran to the bed, weeping. Her tears rained upon Christina’s face, upon her hands as she took her in her arms, kissed hands and face.
“Christina—dearest—dearest! Forgive me for leaving you—oh, forgive me! I did not know! Why did you not tell me? let me come and nurse you? Oh, Christina! Christina!”
Holding her, kissing her, she could not see clearly, or at all interpret, the strange illumination that, at her words, irradiated the dying woman’s face.
Life seemed suddenly to leap to her eyes and lips. Terror vanished like a ghost in the uprising of strong morning sunlight. With a rapture of hope, a vigor of yearning that resumed all her ebbing power, physical and spiritual, she stretched up her body and clasped her hands around Milly’s neck.
“Do you love me again? Do you love me again?” she repeated. Her voice was like a flame springing from the languors of dissolution.
“Yes! yes! yes!” cried Milly. No affirmation could be too strong, she felt, no atonement too great.
“Better than you love him?” Christina asked.
Milly did not even hesitate. Lies were like obstacles hardly seen, as, in the gallop of her remorse and pity, she leaped them.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she reiterated.
“You could be happy with me—again?”
“Yes, dearest Christina. It has passed—that feeling. I love you—only you.”
“Milly sat sobbing”
She smiled, a solemn, intent smile, into Christina’s eyes.
“Ah!” Christina gasped. Milly laid her back upon her pillows. Her eyes had closed; but her fingers hunted among Milly’s, seized her hand, held it.
“Only me,” she said; “the other love has passed. All was right, then; all was right. He could not have seen the pictures—the jewels, Milly—heard the music.”
“No, dear, no.” Milly put over her eyes the hand Christina did not hold. Ah! those cravings, to which Christina had responded—now so dead.
“He could never have loved you—as I did—could he, Milly?”
Christina’s face was still radiant, but her voice had sunken to a shrouded whisper.
“Never, Christina.”
“I shall get better,” said Christina; “I feel it now, I know it. I shall get better—and be always with you.”
Held by those cold, clutching fingers, Milly sat sobbing. Christina would not get better; and, with horror at herself, she felt that only at the gates of death could she love Christina and be with her. Life would be impossible. And, glancing round at the head on the pillow—ah, poor head! Christina’s wonderful head, more wonderful than ever now, so eager, so doomed. So white, with all its flood of black, black hair—glancing at its ebony and marble, she saw, in the closed eyes, the relaxed lips, that she need have no fear of life. Death was to end all. Christina would not get better. Brokenly, she spoke a few vague words:
“If you had loved him—you would have hated me. Now you will never hate me.”
“I love you, dearest.”
“You will not send for him? You will not see him? You will stay with me?”
“I will stay with you—not send for him.”
“And be glad again—with me?”
“So glad.”
“I shall get better,” Christina repeated, turning her head on Milly’s arm.
And the disarray of her mind still whispered on in strange fragments:
“It was not useless. I had not lost you. You were really mine. You are mine now; for always.”
A few hours afterward, her head still turned on Milly’s arm, Christina died.
Sitting alone very sadly on a winter day in the library at Chawlton, Milly heard carriage-wheels outside, and then a voice, and steps, familiar, wonderfully dear, wonderfully terrible to hear. Dick—returned.
All the misery and humiliation of her ruined married life rose before her as she heard, and as she felt her terror and her joy. She could hardly bear to see him. And then, her mind running swiftly over wild possibilities, she felt suddenly that his cruelty in coming might be explained by a great hope. Shaken by fear and hope, she rose to meet him. Dick appeared immediately,—he had not even taken off his long traveling-coat,—with no emphasis at all of look or manner, almost as casually as he might have returned from a day’s hunting, though she detected at once a new and natural embarrassment; his pity, however, cloaked it. His manner might be casual, but his pity was warm and vehement, so warm, so vehement, that it gave her no further time for wonder over his conquest of the other, older pity.
“My dearest Milly,” he said, “I only heard yesterday. I got back from Africa yesterday. And I felt that I must see you. I don’t want to bother you, you know, or make a nuisance of my sympathy. I have only come down for the afternoon; but I wanted to ask you if I could do anything—help you in any way—be of any use—” In spite of his careful voice, his longing to see her—a longing that even his generous love for her had not made him proof against—showed in his candid, clouded eyes. Milly could only feel it vaguely; her hope, face to face with reality, was hardly conscious of itself.
“How kind of you—dear Dick!” she said, and her poor voice groped vainly for firmness. “I am glad to see you. Yes, I have been very unhappy.”
And that he should know the other reason for her unhappiness! that he should know that not Christina’s death alone had crushed her to the earth—that he should know that she loved him! Suddenly she seemed not to care that he should know. Her womanly pride broke. With this human kindness, so warm, so true, near her, she forgot their tangled relations as man and woman; the simple human one only remained, and the loneliness, the grief of a child overwhelmed her. She sank, sobbing helplessly, into her chair.
“They stood in the firelight, holding each other’s hands”
“Oh, Milly!” said poor Dick Quentyn, as he had said on another occasion. But the human appeal, the human longing to console, overcoming his fears and diffidence, he knelt beside her and took her in his arms.
Milly then did and said what she never could have believed herself capable of doing or saying. No pride could hold her back from it—no dignity, no common shame, even. She simply could not keep herself from dropping her face upon his shoulder and sobbing: “Oh, Dick—try—to love me—a little. I can’t bear it any longer.”
It was a startling moment for Dick Quentyn—the most startling of his life.
“Try—to love you!” he stammered. He pushed her back to look at her. “Milly, the maddest self-sacrifice does n’t demand that from you. I ought, I know, to be ashamed to force myself upon you like this, knowing as I do—for I do, Milly—that you simply can’t endure me.”
Milly had shut her eyes after her appeal; it had been like a diving under deep waters—she had not known how or where or when she would come up again. Now she opened them and stared at her husband. She seemed to have come up under new, bewildering skies; strange stars made her dizzy.
She and Dick looked, and in each other’s faces they saw great wonder, and, amazing yet unmistakable, great love.
“What do you mean?” asked Milly.
“Why, that is why I went away—because you could n’t endure me. What do you mean?”
“Endure you? When I adore you! And you—who love the other woman! Oh, Dick! Dick!” She hid her face, she could not look at him, and still the strange stars seemed to dance, the very universe to turn round.
Dick was repeating with a stupefaction numbed to mildness: “The other woman? Another woman, Milly?—when there has never been any woman but you—never, never—from the first.”
Again they gazed at each other. It was as if, groping toward each other through a forest, they were calling in the dark. Suddenly Milly sprang to her feet.
“Oh!” she cried, “oh! oh!” Horror, triumph, love, and hatred thrilled in her voice.
Dick rose, still gazing, still uncomprehending.
“Christina! Christina!” cried Milly. “That is what she was going to tell me!—and did not—did not—died without telling me!”
She seized her husband’s hands.
“Was it she? Did Christina say that I could not endure you?”
This was no time for a careful keeping of promises. The truth must trample on lies and disdain hoodwinked pledges.
“Yes, she did,” said Dick, and he grew white.
“And she told me,” said Milly, “that you were going because you guessed that I loved you, and because you could not love me, and that you loved somebody else.”
After this they stood in the firelight, holding each other’s hands, as though, after long wanderings, they had found each other at last. There was silence. Only after many moments of grave, mutual survey did Dick say, gently, with a sudden acute wonder and pity: “Poor thing!”
“Horrible! oh, horrible!” said Milly. “You might have died away from me—I might never have seen you again. Horrible woman! Horrible love!”
“Poor thing!” Dick repeated vaguely. He kissed his wife’s forehead, and, his arm around her: “I have n’t died: she is dead. I do see you again: she does n’t see you. I have got you: she has lost you.”
Milly still shuddered; she still looked down the black precipice—only just escaped.
“Yes; she has lost me—lost me forever. It may be cruel, but I hate her. I shall never forgive her. Oh, Dick, I can never—never forgive her.”
“Ah, but she loved you tremendously,” said Dick. “All I can feel is that.”
But Milly only said: “I love you all the more for feeling it.”
THE END
Nguồn: Wikisource English — Century Magazine/Volume 65/Issue 2/A Forsaken Temple. Văn bản được nhập và định dạng lại; CC BY-SA 4.0, có thể áp dụng điều khoản bổ sung của tác phẩm.