Who? Part 38

"Manners!" he exclaimed and his voice actually shook with rage. "May I ask how you expected to be received? Is it possible that you imagine that I am going to take you back?"

Her eyes narrowed, but she still appeared quite unconcerned.

"Do you know, I rather think you will," she drawled.

"Take you back, now that you have tired of your lover or he has become disgusted with you, which is probably nearer the truth. Do you think I am mad, or are you?"

He fancied that he saw her wince, but she replied calmly:

"Do not let us indulge in mutual recriminations. They are so futile."

"Mutual recriminations, indeed! I like that! What have you to reproach me with? Didn't I marry you to save you from disgrace and penury?

Haven't I done everything I could to keep you straight?"

She rose slowly from her seat and he noticed for the first time that she wore a low-cut gown of some diaphanous material, which revealed and yet softened the too delicate lines of her sinuous figure. Her black hair lay in thick waves around her face, completely covering the ears, and wound in a coil at the back of her neck. He had never seen it arranged in this fashion and reluctantly he had to admit that it was strangely becoming to her. A wide band of dull gold, set with uncut gems, encircled her head and added a barbaric note to her exotic beauty. It was his last gift to her, he remembered.

Yes, she was still beautiful, he acknowledged, although the life she had led, had left its marks upon her. She looked older and frailer than when he had seen her last. But to-night the sunken eyes glowed with extraordinary brilliancy and a soft colour gave a certain roundness to her hollow cheeks. As she stood before him, Cyril was conscious, for the first time in years, of the alluring charm of her personality.

She regarded him for a moment, her full red lips parted in an inscrutable smile. How well he recalled that smile! He could never fathom its meaning. In some mysterious way it suggested infinite possibilities. How he hated it!

"You tried everything, I grant you," she said at last, "except the one thing which would have proved efficacious."

"And what was that, pray?"

"You never loved me."

Her unexpected accusation made Cyril pause. Yes, it was true, he acknowledged to himself. Had he not realised it during the last few days as he had never done before?

"You don't even take the trouble to deny it," she continued. "You married me out of pity and instead of being ashamed of it, you actually pride yourself on the purity of your motive."

"Well, at any rate I can't see what there was to be ashamed of," he replied indignantly.

"Of course you can't! Oh, how you good people exasperate me! You seem to lack all comprehension of the natural cravings of a normal human being.

Pity? What did I want with pity? I wanted love!"

"It was not my fault that I could not love you."

"No, but knowing that you did not love me, it was dastardly of you to have married me without telling me the truth. In doing so, you took from me my objective in life--you destroyed my ideals. Oh, don't look so sceptical, you fool! Can't you see that I should never have remained a governess until I was twenty-five, if I had not had ideals? It was because I had such lofty conceptions of love that I kept myself scrupulously aloof from men, so that I might come to my mate, when I found him, with soul, mind, and body unsullied."

She spoke with such pa.s.sionate sincerity that it was with an effort Cyril reminded himself that her past had not been as blameless as she pictured it.

"Your fine ideals did not prevent you from becoming a drunkard--" he remarked drily.

"When I married, I was not a drunkard," she vehemently protested. "The existence I led was abhorrent to me, and it is true that occasionally when I felt I could not stand it another moment, I would go to my room after dinner and get what comfort I could out of alcohol; but what I did, I did deliberately and not to satisfy an ungovernable appet.i.te. I was no more a drunkard than a woman who takes a dose of morphine during bodily agony is a drug fiend. Of course, my conduct seems inexcusable to you, for you are quite incapable of understanding the torture my life was to me."

"Other women have suffered far greater misfortunes and have borne them with fort.i.tude and dignity."

"Look at me, Cyril; even now am I like other women?" She drew herself up proudly. "Was it my fault that I was born with beauty that demanded its due? Was I to blame that my blood leaped wildly through my veins, that my imagination was always on fire? But I was, and still am, instinctively and fundamentally a virtuous woman. Oh, you may sneer, but it is true! Although as a girl I was starving for love, I never accepted pa.s.sion as a subst.i.tute, and you can't realise how incessantly the latter was offered me. Wherever I went, I was persecuted by it. At times I had a horrible fear that desire was all that I was capable of evoking; and when you came to me in my misery, poverty, and disgrace, I hailed you as my king--my man! I believed that you were offering me a love so great that it welcomed the sacrifice of every minor consideration. It never occurred to me that you would dare to ask me for myself, my life, my future, unless you were able to give me in exchange something more than the mere luxuries of existence."

"I also offered you my life----"

"You did not!" she interrupted him. "You offered up your life, not to me, but to your own miserable conception of chivalry. The greatness of your sacrifice intoxicated you and consequently it seemed to you inevitable that I also would spend the rest of my days in humble contemplation of your sublime character?"

"Such an idea never occurred to me," Cyril angrily objected.

"Oh, you never formulated it in so many words, I know that! You are too self-conscious to be introspective and are actually proud of the fact that you never stop to a.n.a.lyse either yourself or your motives. So you go blundering through life without in the least realising what are the influences which shape your actions. You fancy that you are not self-centred because you are too shy, yes, and too vain to probe the hidden recesses of your heart. You imagine that you are unselfish because you make daily sacrifices to your own ideal of conduct. But of that utter forgetfulness of self, of that complete merging and submerging of your ident.i.ty in another's, you have never had even the vaguest conception. When you married me, it never occurred to you that I had the right to demand both love and comprehension. You, the idealist, expected me to be satisfied with the material advantages you offered; but I, the degraded creature you take me to be, had I known the truth, would never have consented to sell my birthright for a mess of pottage."

"That sounds all very fine, and I confess I may not have been a perfect husband, but after all, what would you have done, I should like to know, if I had not married you?"

"Done? I would have worked and hoped, and if work had failed me, I would have begged and hoped. I would even have starved, before abandoning the hope that some day I should find the man who was destined for me. When I at last realised that you did not love me, you cannot imagine my despair. I consumed myself in futile efforts to please you, but the very intensity of my love prevented me from exercising those arts and artifices which might have brought you to my feet. My emotion in your presence was so great that it sealed my lips and made you find me a dull companion."

"I never thought you dull. You know very well that it was not that which alienated me from you. When I married you, I may not have been what is called in love with you, but I was certainly fond of you, and if you had behaved yourself, I should no doubt in time have become more closely united to you. You talk of 'consuming' yourself to please me. Nice, effective word, that! I must add it to my vocabulary. But you chose a strange means of gaining my affections when you took to disgracing yourself both privately and publicly."

The pa.s.sionate resentment which had transfigured her slowly faded from Amy's face, leaving it drawn and old; her voice, when she spoke, sounded infinitely weary.

"When I knew for a certainty that a lukewarm affection was all you would ever feel for me, I lost hope, and in losing hope, I lost my foothold on life. I wanted to die--I determined to die. Time and time again, I pressed your pistol to my forehead, but something stronger than my will always prevented me from pulling the trigger; and finally I sought forgetfulness in drink, because I had not the courage to find it in death. At first I tried to hide my condition from you, but there came a moment when the sight of your bland self-satisfaction became unbearable, when your absolute unconsciousness of the havoc you had made of my life maddened me. I wanted you to suffer! Oh, not as I had suffered, you are not capable of that; but at any rate I could hurt your vanity and deal a death-blow to your pride! You had disgraced me when you tricked me into giving myself to a man who did not love me; I determined to disgrace you by reeling through the public streets. And I was glad, glad!" she cried with indescribable bitterness. "When I saw you grow pale with anger, when I saw you tremble with shame, I suppose you fancy that I must, at times, have suffered from remorse and humiliation? I swear that never for a moment have I regretted the course I chose. I am ashamed of nothing except that I lacked the courage to kill myself. Drink? I bless it! How I welcomed the gradual deadening of my senses, the dulling of my fevered brain! When I awoke from my long torpor and found myself at Charleroi, I cursed the doctor who had brought me back to life. Little by little the old agony returned. The thought of you haunted me day and night, while a raging thirst racked my body, and from this twofold torture the constant supervision of the nurses prevented me from obtaining even a temporary respite. It was h.e.l.l!"

For a moment Cyril felt a wave of pity sweep over him, but suddenly he stiffened.

"You forget to mention that--consolation was offered you."

"Consolation! Had I found that, I should not be here! I admit, however, that when I first noticed that M. de Brissac was attracted by me, I was mildly pleased. It was a solace to my wounded vanity to find that some one still found me desirable. But I swear that it never even occurred to me to give myself to him, till the doctor told me that you were coming to take me away with you. See you again? Subject myself anew to your indifference--your contempt? Never! So I took the only means of escaping from you which offered itself. And I am glad, glad that I flung myself into the mire, for by defiling love, I killed it. I am at last free from the obsession which has been the torment of my life. Neither you nor any other man will again fire my imagination or stir my senses. I am dead, but I am also free--free!"

As she spoke the last words her expression was so exalted that Cyril was forced to grant her his grudging admiration. As she stood before him, she seemed more a spirit than a woman; she seemed the incarnation of life, of love, of the very fundamentals of existence. She was really an extraordinary woman; why did he not love her, he asked himself. But even as this flashed through his mind the memory of his long martyrdom obtruded itself. He saw her again not as she appeared then, but as the central figure in a succession of loathsome scenes.

"Your attempt to justify yourself may impose on others, but not on me. I know you too well! You are rotten to the core. What you term love is nothing but an abnormal craving, which no healthy-minded man with his work in life to do could have possibly satisfied. Our code, however, is too different for me to discuss the matter with you. And so, if you have quite finished expatiating on my shortcomings, would you kindly tell me to what I owe the honour of your visit?"

She turned abruptly from him and leaned for a minute against the mantelpiece; then, sinking into a chair, she took a cigarette from a box which lay on the table near her and proceeded to light it with apparent unconcern. Cyril, however, noticed that her hand trembled violently.

After inhaling a few puffs, she threw her head back and looked at him tauntingly from between her narrowed lids.

"Because, my dear Cyril, I read in yesterday's paper that your wife had been your companion on your ill-timed journey from Paris. So I thought it would be rather amusing to run over and find out a few particulars as to the young person who is masquerading under my name."

She had caught Cyril completely off his guard and he felt for a moment incapable of parrying her attack.

"I a.s.sure you," he stuttered, "it is all a mistake--" He hesitated; he could think of no explanation which would satisfy her.

"I expected you to tell me that she was as pure as snow!" she exclaimed with a scornful laugh. "But how you with your puritanic ideas managed to get yourself into such an imbroglio pa.s.ses my understanding. Really, I consider that you owe it to me, to satisfy my curiosity."

"I regret that I am unable to do so."

"So do I! Still, as I shall no doubt solve the riddle in a few days, I can possess my soul in patience. Meanwhile I shall enjoy watching your efforts to prevent me from learning the truth."

"Unfortunately for you, that pleasure will be denied you. You are going to leave this house at once and we shall not meet again till we do so before judge and jury."

Amy settled herself more comfortably in her chair.

"So you will persist in trying to bluff it out? Foolish Cyril! Don't you realise that I hold all the cards and that I am quite clever enough to use them to the best advantage? You see, knowing you as I do, I am convinced that the motive which led you to sacrifice both truth and honour is probably as praiseworthy as it is absurd. But having made such a sacrifice, why are you determined to render it useless? I cannot believe that you are willing to face the loss not only of your own reputation but of that of the young person who has accepted your protection. How do you fancy she would enjoy figuring as corespondent in a divorce suit?"