Mrs. Christy, Sitting at a business interview with Dominic Spong, perceived from her window the sight familiar to her of a young man anxiously awaiting admission at her door.
“Now, Matthew, it is a long time since you paid a visit to your future mother-in-law. It is a good thing that my love does not alter when it alteration finds, that in that respect I am at one with the poet. Now if I come to the door I must not shirk what the duty involves. You will have a woman quite without false pride for your wife’s mother. ‘Be proud of what you can do, not of what you can’t,’ is my motto. ‘Thank you,’ I say, ‘my dignity is safe.’ Not that practical matters take the whole of my attention. I have come from quite an abstruse discussion with Mr. Spong. My money matters make no very great demand, but he always accuses me of having quite a man’s mind. It is a most unfeminine thing to plead guilty to, but I must take my stand where he places me.”
“Can I see Camilla,” said Matthew, in a quick, harsh voice.
“If you will adjust your position a little, Matthew,” said Dominic from the background, his measured tone suggesting entertainment, “you will have no reason to find fault with the evidence of your senses.”
Matthew turned and laid his hand on Camilla’s arm.
“Any more than,” proceeded Dominic, “your betrothed appeared to have to find it with that of hers, when her ears informed her of your arrival. I think, Mrs. Christy, that you and I will discover ourselves Monsieur and Madame de Trop, unless we remove ourselves from the threat of that position.”
“We will give the lovers the back room to themselves, and continue our researches into my financial mysteries in the large one, Mr. Spong.”
“I suspect that, in spite of our advantage in the matter of the room, they are at a time when they are more to be envied than we are,” said Dominic in a moved tone, as he followed.
“You don’t give any sign that supports Mr. Spong’s suspicions, Matthew,” said Camilla. “Your voice would break on a different note in touching on this moment. The sooner it passes, the sooner I shall leave behind my perilous youth. You and Gregory have the same tastes. Your father is the natural man, bless him. And I have left it farther behind than you. So give up glowering, and tell me why you have come to watch me keeping the home fires burning. Do you want to add to our romance by surveying me as the beggar-maid?”
Matthew stood with his eyes, sunken and bright from sleeplessness, fixed on her face.
“Matthew, don’t frighten me by that pose. Don’t begin to show me what you will be like when we are married. I warn you not to do it. It is dangerous.”
Matthew stood silent.
“Matthew, do you hear me?”
“I hear you, Camilla. The question is, will you hear me? I have come to ask you one thing, and to have an answer, to know if I am the one man in the world to you, as you are to me the one woman. That is what I will be. And I live in doubt, I sleep in doubt, or I should if I could sleep. I am tormented by too many things for rest. I ask to be at peace about that one.”
“You ask too much,” said Camilla. “Of course you are not the one man in the world to me. The world is too full of too many men for that, and I am the one woman to too many. The dear old world!” She sang the last words and clapped her hands.
“Has any one of them ever done anything for you?”
“Oh, yes, everything, all of them. Betrayed people, played their parents false, got into debt for me. Each one of them according to his lights.”
“I suppose not one of them has put an end to his mother’s life for you?”
“Put an end to his mother’s life! What are you talking of? Of course not. What a question!”
“That is what I found you were worth.”
“Matthew, you should not say things to coerce and scare me. It is a most unmanly way to behave. None of the others has done that. And it is in very bad taste to drag in your mother’s misfortunes. If you helped to drive her to what she did by harping on me, when she did not like me for your wife, it was cowardly and wrong, when she had just returned from her illness; and I like you less for it; I do. And I believe you did. You worried her about me and drove her to it, and I shall always feel it was my fault that she died.”
“It was your fault,” said Matthew. “You made me feel that your love for me would stand very little, and she might have given it much to stand. You see it was your fault.”
Camilla stood staring at him.
“You don’t mean anything?” she said.
“I mean what I say.”
“You don’t mean you did it?”
“I mean I did it. I put the fatal tablet with those she took to make her sleep. I put it out for her with one of her own, that last night. I did it because of you, for fear she might take you from me. She was getting you into her power.”
“Matthew, Matthew! My poor darling Matthew! My poor, helpless, driven boy! I will do all I can to make up to you. I will give myself to you, body and soul. You shall not have done it for nothing. And your poor, poor mother! We both loved her. We will go on loving her together. I will see it does not get on your mind. I will show you it was my fault. It was utterly mine. You shall never think it was yours. I will live to see that you can’t.”
“Hush! There is your mother coming,” said Matthew, in a normal, gentle voice. “People must not hear. They must not know. It must never be found out. They would take me away from you.”
“Camilla, why are you getting upset like this? We heard your voice through the wall. Matthew, you must be careful not to excite her. Poor children, this waiting time is a strain.”
“Oh, all right, Mother, a last lover’s scene. We are not going to break it off or never speak again or do anything agitating. We were only vowing eternal faithfulness, and sealing our vows with tears. Our sentiments were much to our credit, especially mine. You would have got a different idea of me, if you had heard. Yes, I certainly think I came out best.”
“Well, I think Matthew must go now. And I shall be glad when your wedding day is fixed. Matthew’s dear mother would not wish to stand in your way. You will go through your lives remembering her together.”
“Stop, Matthew, or I shall scream. Yes, Matthew, go home and arrange with your father for us to be made one. He is eager to have me for his daughter.”
“I will fetch you for dinner to-morrow night,” said Matthew. “I can call for you on my way home from my work.
“I don’t think I want to see you in your own home again just yet, your home where I used to see your mother. And on your way home from your work, that is to end in keeping people alive! I am somehow getting a dislike to your work. I think meeting here is better. It is the man who ought to have the trouble of coming and going. Oh yes, I know you attend me to and from my door. I know it, I know it. I don’t mean anything. I mean nothing, nothing. I only mean I prefer to see you here. We have had enough embracing for to-day. Do make way for me to take a step in front of me.”
Camilla walked with an upright head into the other room, where Dominic sat at the table.
“Mother, don’t stare at me; don’t peer about as if you wanted to ferret something out. It is such an odious habit. What kind of thing do you think you can read in my eyes? I shouldn’t show it, if there was anything there. Oh, oh, don’t gaze at me like that.”
“My dear, I am not gazing at you. There is nothing I want to ferret out. You must not take yourself so seriously. We don’t want to probe your little secrets.”
Camilla flung herself across the table, and buried her head in her arms.
“My child, what is it? I could tell there was something. I thought Matthew seemed very moody when I let him in. It is only that his mother’s death has upset him. It was enough to unnerve him, its happening in that tragic way. Think what it must have been to him, when it was so much to you and me. You will come to see that the trouble is nothing.”
“Oh, yes, it is nothing,” said Camilla, in a strange, light, bitter tone. “It is not worth speaking about. I will not say anything about it. I will go on and keep it to myself, and lock it all up, and get older and older knowing it. And I can’t do it, Mother. I can’t hide it all in my own heart. Think what it must have been to him, you say, his mother’s death! Think of that! Think of that!” She broke into alternate fits of tears and laughter, and Dominic rose to his feet.
“I do not know how much I am justified in taking upon myself. But I advocate that Mrs. Bellamy should unburden her mind.”
“Oh, yes, advocate! Your lawyer’s word!” said Camilla. “You won’t get at Matthew. There is nothing you can prove against him. No one can know he did anything. And he couldn’t help it if he did. He was goaded to it. And he did love her. Better than I love you, Mother, he loved his mother. And she forced him to it, without being able to help it, and he will carry it with him to his grave. And I could not help it; I would have given him up. If she had known it, I would have. I did not want him so much; I do not want him. It was not my fault, it was not. I could not help her not knowing. No, don’t come near me.” She raised her hand to ward off Dominic’s approach. “You shan’t use what I say against me, against us, against him. I don’t mean anything I say. I am telling you I don’t. So don’t you think you will. Because you shan’t, you shan’t.” She ended on a shriek.
“It can hardly be necessary to state, Mrs. Bellamy, that anything you may say, or may have said, will be treated in the strictest confidence.”
“You won’t do anything?” said Camilla, her eyes wavering behind her hair like a child’s. “You will leave him alone? But of course you will. You haven’t anything against him.” She sat up and her voice changed. “I have not said anything against him. I do not know anything. I was carried away by a fearful dream I had. Something he said reminded me of it.”
There was a silence. Mrs. Christy stood with her eyes on her daughter, her features showing the quick working of her mind.
“I don’t know what you mean, my child. No doubt it is a fancy, a dream, as you say. But with the feelings that led to such dreams, is it wise to marry? My daughter, do not make a mistake a second time.”
“No, no, that is a settled thing, Mrs. Christy,” said Dominic. “Whatever may be meant, or not be meant by Mrs. Bellamy’s words, that emerges.”
“Then shall I write to him?” said Camilla, with simple appeal. “I don’t know what to say. It will drive him mad. But I can’t help it; he will have to go mad; I believe he is mad already. He behaves as if he were mad; the things he said were mad; you see they were. And I can’t be married to a madman. Poor boy, he gets it from his family. His mother could not have been herself to do what she did. They said she could not. I have my own life to think of. I can’t do any good to her now. And it was what she wanted, that I should give up her son. She did not know it would drive him mad. I wish I could say it without half killing him, but I seem to have to destroy men; it seems to be my lot. If only people knew what I suffer in writing these mortal messages!”
She pushed back her hair, and took the pen and paper that Dominic put at her hand.
My poor, dear Matthew,
I don’t know how to say it to you, but I must get it into words at once. You would hate my being what I am, and I can never be anything else. And I should hate your being what you are, what you told me you were, and you can never be anything else. There, I have got it down. I could not bear it and I will not bear it. So do not make the fatal mistake of persuading me; I say a fatal mistake. If you do, I cannot tell you what revenge I might take. You know I might say anything in a storm; you know I have no control of myself. I wonder if you know me well enough to see that this is my last word. If you do not, I am sorry for you, for reasons that are enough to make me sorry. I will not see you until you are married. And take my advice, and never tell that other woman what you told me.
Yours as much as I can be,
Camilla.