The Whirligig of Time Part 49

"Well, you've made a great mistake, that's all. You've condemned me without a hearing. You've a.s.sumed that I was guilty--"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, let's not talk about being guilty or innocent or wronging each other or being faithful to each other! Those things have no meaning for us. I'm not blaming you--I've tried to explain that to the best of my ability!"

"Very well, then, let us say you have made a mistake in facts."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean--what should I mean? That Tommy and I are not lovers."

"Well, what then?"

"What then--?"

"Yes, what of it? I never said you were, did I? Suppose you're not, then; if you're glad, I'm glad, if you're sorry, I'm sorry. It doesn't alter our position."

"James, you don't understand!"

"What?"

"When you spoke before you thought that I was--that I had sinned.--I do consider it a sin; perhaps you'll allow me to call it so if it pleases me."

"Certainly." He smiled.

"Well, you were wrong. I haven't."

"All right; I was wrong. You haven't."

"Very well, then!"

"Very well WHAT?"

"James!"

"I'm sorry.--But what are you driving at? I wasn't accusing you, you know; I was simply telling you you were free, which you knew before, and offering you more freedom if you wanted it. Why this outburst of virtue?"

"James, you are rather brutal!"

"I'm sorry if I seem so; I don't mean to be." He shifted his position slightly and went on quite gently with another smile: "Beatrice, if you have successfully met a temptation--or what you look upon as a temptation--I'm sure I'm very glad. After all, we are friends, and what pleases my friend pleases me, other things being equal. But does that pleasing fact in itself alter things between us when, from my own selfish point of view, I don't care in the least whether you overcame the temptation or not? And does it, I ask you, alter facts? Does it make you any less fond of Tommy than you are; does it make you as fond of me as you are of him?"

"Oh, James! You understand so little--"

"Whatever I may understand or not understand I know that you spent all of last evening and practically all yesterday and a great part of the evening before with Tommy, and that you gave no particular evidence of being bored ... Beatrice, you were happy with him, happy as a child, the happiest person in the whole crowd, and you showed it, too! Do you mean to say that you've ever, at any time in your life, been as happy in my society as all that! No! Deny it if you can!"

"James, you are jealous!" The discovery came to her like an inspiration, sending a thrill through her. She did not stop to a.n.a.lyze it now, but when she came to think it over later she realized that there was something in that thrill quite distinct from the satisfaction of finding a good reply to James' really rather searching (though of course quite unfounded) charges.

"There's a good deal of the cave-man left in you, James, argue as you may. Do you think any one but a jealous man could talk as you are talking now? 'Deny it if you can'--what do you care whether I deny it or not, according to what you just said? Oh, James, how are you living up to your part of the bargain?"

Her tone was free from rancor or spite, and her words had their effect.

James was not beyond appreciating the justice in what she said. He left his chair and raised his hand to his forehead with a gesture of bewilderment.

"Oh, Lord, I suppose you're right," he muttered, and began pacing the room.

So they remained in silence for some time, she sitting quietly in her chair as before and he walking aimlessly up and down, desperately trying to adjust himself to this new fact. It is strange how people will give themselves away when they begin talking; he had been so sure of himself in his thoughts; he had gone over such matters so satisfactorily in his own head! Beatrice understood his plight and respected it; it was not for her, after these last few days, to minimize the trials of self-discovery....

The maid popped in at the pantry door and popped out again.

"All right, Mary, you can take the things," said Beatrice, and led the way into the living room.

There was no air of finality in this move, but the slight domestic incident at least had the effect of putting a check on introspection and restoring things to a more normal footing. Once in the living room--it was a large high room, built as a studio and reaching up two stories--they were both much more at ease; they began to feel capable of resuming negotiations, when the time arrived, like two normal sensible beings. James threw himself on a couch; Beatrice moved about the room, opening a window here, turning up a light there, arranging a vase of flowers somewhere else. At last, deeming the time ripe, she stopped in one of her noiseless trips and spoke down at her husband.

"James, do you realize that you alone, of all the people on the yacht, had the remotest suspicion? You remember how they all joked about it?"

Oh, the danger of putting things into words! Beatrice's voice was as gentle as she could make it; there was even a note of casual amus.e.m.e.nt in it, but in some intangible way, merely by reopening the subject vocally, Beatrice laid herself open to attack. James' lip curled; he could no more keep it from doing so than keep his hair from curling.

"You must remember, however, that they were not fully acquainted with the circ.u.mstances...."

Beatrice turned away in despair, not angry at James, but realizing the inevitability of his reply as well as he himself. She sat down in an armchair and leaned her head against the back of it; she wished it might not be necessary ever to rise from that chair again. The blind hopelessness of their situation lay heavy on them both.

James spoke next.

"Beatrice, will you tell me what it's all about? Why are we squabbling this way? How can we find out--what on earth are we going to do about it all?"

"I've no more idea than you, James."

"Every time we get talking we always fall back on our bargain, as if that was the one reliable thing in the whole universe. Always our bargain, our bargain! Beatrice, what in Heaven's name is our bargain?"

"Marriage, I take it."

"You know it's more than that--less than that--not that, anyway! At first it was all quite clear to me; we were two people whose lives had been broken and we were going to try to mend them as best we might. And as it seemed we could do that better together than alone we determined to marry. Our marriage was to be a perfectly loose, free arrangement, and we were to stick to its terms only as long as we could profit by doing so. We were to part without ill feeling and with perfect understanding. And now, at the first shred of evidence--no, not even evidence, suspicion--that you want to break away we start quarreling like a pair of cats, and I become a monster of jealousy, like any comic husband in a play...."

Beatrice's heart sank again at those words; there was no mistaking the bitterness in them. That heightened a fear she had felt when James had answered her about the people on the yacht; James was still smarting with the discovery of his jealousy, and the trouble was that the smart was so sharp that he might not forgive her for having made him feel it.

She felt the taste of her little triumph turn to ashes in her mouth.

"No, James, no!" she interrupted hurriedly. "You weren't, really. That was all nonsense--we both saw that...."

"No, it's true--I was jealous. Jealous! and for what? And what's more, I still am. I can't help it. When I think of Tommy, and the boat-race, and all that. Oh, Lord, the idiocy of it!"

"I don't particularly mind your being jealous, James, if that's any comfort to you."

"No! Why on earth should you? You're living up to your part of the bargain, and I'm not--that's what it comes to. Oh, it's all my fault, every bit of it--no doubt of that!"

His words gave Beatrice a new sensation, not so much a sinking as a steeling of the heart. His self-accusation was all very well, but if it also involved trampling on her--! And she did begin to feel trampled upon; much more so now than when he had directly accused her.... That was odd! Was it possible that she would rather be vilified than ignored, even by James?

Meanwhile James was ranting on--it had not occurred to her that it was ranting before, but it did now:--"There's something about the mere inst.i.tution of marriage, I suppose, that makes me feel this way; the old idea of possession or something.... You were right about the cave-man!

It's something stronger than me--I can't help it; but if it's going on like this every time you--every time you speak to another man, it'll make a delightful thing out of our married life, won't it? This free and easy bargain of ours, this sensible arrangement! Why, it's a thousand times harder than an ordinary marriage, just because I have nothing to hold you with!...

"Beatrice, we're caught in something. Trapped! Don't you feel it?

Something you can't see, can't understand, only feel gradually pressing in on you, paralyzing you, smothering you! There's no use blaming each other for it; we're both wound up in it equally; it's something far stronger than either of us. A pair of blind mice in a trap!..."