The Firing Line Part 31

"I shall love you always," he said. "Right or wrong, always. Remember that, too, when you think of these things."

She turned as though slowly aroused from abstraction, then shook her head.

"It's very brave and boyish of you to be loyal--"

"You speak to me as though I were not years older than you!"

"I can't help it; I am old, old, sometimes, and tired of an isolation no one can break for me."

"If you loved me--"

"How _can_ I? You _know_ I cannot!"

"Are you afraid to love me?"

She blushed crimson, saying: "If I--if such a misfortune--"

"Such a misfortune as your loving me?"

"Yes; if it came, I would never, never admit it! Why do you say these things to me? Won't you understand? I've tried so hard--so hard to warn you!" The colour flamed in her cheeks; a sort of sweet anger possessed her.

"Must I tell you more than I have told before you can comprehend the utter impossibility of any--love--between us?"

His hand fell over hers and held it crushed.

"Tell me no more," he said, "until you can tell me that you dare to love!"

"What do you mean? Do you mean that a girl does not do a dishonourable thing because she dares not?--a sinful thing because she's afraid? If it were only that--" She smiled, breathless. "It is not fear. It is that a girl _can_ not love where love is forbidden."

"And you believe that?"

"Believe it!"--in astonishment.

"Yes; do you believe it?"

She had never before questioned it. Dazed by his impatience, dismayed, she affirmed it again, mechanically. And the first doubt entered as she spoke, confusing her, awakening a swarm of little latent ideas and misgivings, stirring memories of half-uttered sentences checked at her entrance into a room, veiled allusions, words, nods, that she remembered but had never understood. And, somehow, his question seemed a key to this cipher, innocently retained in the unseen brain-cells, stored up without suspicion--almost without curiosity.

For all her recent eloquence upon unhappiness and divorce, it came to her now in some still subtle manner, that she had been speaking concerning things in the world of which she knew nothing. And one of them, perhaps, was love.

Then every instinct within her revolted, all her innate delicacy, all the fastidious purity recoiled before the menace of his question. Love!

Was it possible? Was this that she already felt, _love_? Could such treachery to herself, such treason to training and instinct arise within her and she not know it?

Panic-stricken she raised her head; and at sight of him a blind impulse to finish with him possessed her--to crush out that menace--end it for ever--open his eyes to the inexorable truth.

"Lean nearer," she said quietly. Every vestige of blood had left her face.

"Listen to me. Two years ago I was told that I am a common foundling.

Under the shock of that--disclosure--I ruined my life for ever.... Don't speak! I mean to check that ruin where it ended--lest it spread to--others. Do you understand?"

"No," he said doggedly.

She drew a steady breath. "Then I'll tell you more if I must. I ruined my life for ever two years ago!... I must have been quite out of my senses--they had told me that morning, very tenderly and pitifully--what you already know. I--it was--unbearable. The world crashed down around me--horror, agonized false pride, sheer terror for the future--"

She choked slightly, but went on:

"I was only eighteen. I wanted to die. I meant to leave my home at any rate. Oh, I know my reasoning was madness, the thought of their charity--the very word itself as my mind formed it--drove me almost insane. I might have known it was love, not charity, that held me so safely in their hearts. But when a blow falls and reason goes--how can a girl reason?"

She looked down at her bridle hand.

"There was a man," she said in a low voice; "he was only a boy then."

Hamil's face hardened.

"Until he asked me I never supposed any man could ever want to marry me.

I took it for granted.... He was Gray's friend; I had always known him.... He had been silly sometimes. He asked me to marry him. Then he asked me again.

"I was a debutante that winter, and we were rehearsing some theatricals for charity which I had to go through with.... And he asked me to marry him. I told him what I was and he still wished it."

Hamil bent nearer from his saddle, face tense and colourless.

"I don't know exactly what I thought; I had a dim notion of escaping from the disgrace of being nameless. It was the mad clutch of the engulfed at anything.... Not with any definite view--partly from fright, partly I think for the sake of those who had been kind to a--a foundling; some senseless idea that it was my duty to relieve them of a squalid burden--" She shook her head vaguely: "I don't know exactly--I don't know."

"You married him."

"Yes--I believe so."

"Don't you _know_?"

"Oh, yes," she said wearily, "I know what I did. It was that."

And after he had waited for her in silence for fully a minute she said in a low voice:

"I was very lonely, very, very tired; he urged me; I had been crying. I have seldom cried since. It is curious, isn't it? I can feel the tears in my eyes at night sometimes. But they never fall."

She pa.s.sed her gloved hand slowly across her forehead and eyes.

"I--married him. At first I did not know what to do; did not realise, understand. I scarcely do yet. I had supposed I was to go to mother and dad and tell them that I had a name in the world--that all was well with me at last. But I could not credit it myself; the boy--I had known him always--went and came in our house as freely as Gray. And I could not convince myself that the thing that had happened was serious--had really occurred."

"How did it occur?"

"I will tell you exactly. We were walking home, all of us, along Fifth Avenue, that winter afternoon. The avenue was gay and densely crowded; and I remember the furs I wore and the western sunset crimsoning the cross-streets, and the early dusk--and Jessie ahead with Cecile and the dogs. And then he said that now was the time, for he was going back to college that same day, and would not return before Easter--and he urged it, and hurried me--and--I couldn't think; and I went with him, west, I believe--yes, the sky was red over the river--west, two blocks, or more.... There was a parsonage. It lasted only a few minutes.... We took the elevated to Fifty-ninth Street and hurried east, almost running.

They had just reached the Park and had not yet missed us.... And that is all."

"All?"

"Yes," she said, raising her pale face to his. "What more is there?"

"The--man."