‘LADY DENZIL SAYS she must see you, please, ma’am,’ said Mary at my room door.
It had lasted for a week and I was downright ill. She would not go away; when I represented to her that I could not go on keeping her, that she must go to her own home, wherever that was, she either moaned that she had no home, or that I must open a way for her back to her husband. She was quite unmoved by my attempts to dislodge her. I told her I had people coming, and she assured me she did not mind, that there was plenty of room in the house, and that, if I wished it, she would change into a smaller chamber. This drove me almost out of my senses, I could not turn her out by force. I dared not face the criticisms of my neighbours: I shut myself up. I got a headache which never left me, and the result was, that I was quite ill. I had been lying down in my own room to try to get a little quiet and respite from the pain in my head; and I was impatient in my trouble, and felt disposed to turn my back on all the world.
‘I cannot see her,’ I said impatiently. ‘I am not well enough to see any one.’
‘Please, ma’am, is that what I am to say?’ asked Mary.
Then I recollected myself. Lady Denzil was my close friend and counsellor. I had been admitted into the secret places of her life, and she knew me in every aspect of mine. I would not send such a reply to my old friend. I rose from my sofa and went stumbling to the door, feeling more miserable than I can say. ‘Tell her I have a very bad headache, Mary. I will try to see her to-morrow. Give her my love, and say that I could not talk to-day, nor explain anything. If she will please leave it till to-morrow!—’
‘Please, ma’am,’ said Mary, earnestly, ‘I think it would be a deal better if you could make up your mind to see my lady to-day.’
‘I cannot do it — I cannot do it!’ I said. ‘If you but knew how my head aches! Give her my dear love, but I must keep quiet. If you tell her that, she will understand.’
‘If you won’t give no other answer, ma’am—’ said Mary, disapprovingly; and I had lost my wits so completely that I actually locked the door when she went down-stairs, in case some one should force the way. I went back to my sofa and lay down again. I had closed the shutters, I don’t know why — not that the light hurt me, but because I did not feel able to bear anything. I never lost my head in the same way before. I was irritable to such a degree that I could not bear any one to speak to me — this was, I suppose, because I felt that nobody would approve of me, and was ashamed of myself and my weakness. While I lay thus, she began to sing down-stairs; she had a pretty voice; there was a quaver in it, which was in reality a defect, but did not appear so when she sang. Her voice, I felt sure, could be heard half over the Green, and Lady Denzil would be sure to hear it, and what would they think of me? They would think she was a relation, somebody belonging to me, whom I had motive for hiding. No one would believe that she was a mere stranger whom I knew nothing of.
I kept as much away from her as I could during the day, and in the evening, when I came down-stairs, I managed to steal out by myself for a walk. I thought the fresh air would do me good, and, as all the people were at dinner, I was not likely to meet any one. When I felt myself outside and free, I stood still for a moment, and in my weakness three or four different impulses came upon me. In the first place I had a temptation to run away. It seems absurd to write it, but my feeling of nervous irritation was so great that I actually entertained for a moment the idea of abandoning my own house because this strange woman had taken possession of it. And then I thought of rushing to Lady Denzil, whom I had not long before sent away from my door, and entreating her to come and save me. When I had made but a few steps from my own gate a nervous terror made me pause again, and, turning round suddenly, I almost ran against some one coming in the opposite direction. I made a half-conscious clutch at him when I saw who it was, and then tried to hurry past in the fluctuations of my despair. But he stopped, struck, I suppose, by the strangeness of my looks.
‘Can I do anything for you?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes — everything!’ I gasped forth, not knowing what I said.
‘I! That is strange — that is very strange! but if it should be so! — Will you lean upon my arm, Mrs. Mulgrave? you are very much agitated.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I am very much agitated, but I will not lean upon you, for perhaps you will think I am your enemy — though I don’t mean to be anybody’s enemy, Heaven knows.’
‘Ah!’ he said. This little cry came from him unawares, and he fell back a step, and his face, which was like ivory, took a yellower pale tint. I do not mean that I observed this in my agitation at the moment, but I felt it. His countenance changed. He already divined what it was.
‘I am very sure of that — that you mean only to be kind to all the world,’ he said. He had a slight foreign accent, a roll of the r which is not in an English voice, and he spoke very deliberately, like one to whom English was an acquired language. I think this struck me now for the first time.
Then we paused and looked at each other — he on his guard; I, trembling in every limb trying to remember what I had said in my imaginary interviews with him, and feeling as if my very mind had gone. I made a despairing attempt to collect myself, to state her case in the best possible way, but I might as well have tried any impossible feat of athletics. I could not do it.
‘There is a lady,’ I faltered, ‘in my house.’
A kind of smile crossed his face at the first words. He gave a nod as if to say, ‘I know it;’ but again a change came over him when I finished my sentence.
‘In your house!’
‘Yes, in my house,’ I went on, finding myself at last wound up to speech. ‘I found her on Friday last at your door — seated in the dust, almost dying.’
Here he stopped, making an incredulous movement — a shrug of the shoulders, an elevation of the eyebrows.
‘It is true,’ I said: ‘she has heart-disease: she could scarcely walk the little distance to my house. Had you seen her, as I did, panting, gasping for very breath — —’
‘I should have thought it a fiction,’ he said, bitterly, ‘and I know her best.’
‘It was no fiction. Oh, you may have had your wrongs. I say nothing to the contrary,’ I cried: ‘for anything I can tell, you may have been deeply wronged; but she is so beautiful, and so young, and loves pleasure and luxury so — —’
I think he heard only the half of what I said, and that struck him like an unexpected arrow. He turned from me and walked a few steps away, and then came back again. ‘So beautiful and so young,’ he cried. ‘Who should know that so well as I? — who should know that so well as I?’
‘You know it, and still you let her sit at your door all through the lonely night? I would not let a tramp shiver at mine if I could help it. You let her perish within reach of you. You condemn her at her age, with her lovely face, unheard — —’
He put out his hand to stop me. He was as much agitated as I was. ‘Her lovely face,’ he said to himself,— ‘oh, her lovely face!’ That was the point at which I touched him. It woke recollections in him which were more eloquent than anything I could say.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘think of it.’ I do not know by what inspiration I laid hold upon this feature of the story — her beauty; perhaps because it was the real explanation of the power she had acquired over me.
But in a minute more he had overcome his agitation; he came to a sudden pause in front of me and looked at me in the face, though there were signs of a conflict in his. ‘It is vain to attempt to move me,’ he said, hoarsely. ‘I do not know why you should take it in hand, or why you should try to attain your object in this way. I did not expect it from such as you. Her lovely face — does that make her good or true or fit for a man’s wife?’
‘No doubt it was for that you married her,’ said I, with an impulse I could not restrain.
He turned away from me again; he made a few hasty steps and then he came back. ‘I do not choose to discuss my own history with a stranger,’ he said; and then softening into politeness: ‘You said I could do something for you. What can I do?’
This question suddenly brought me to a standstill, for even in my perplexity and confusion, and the state of semi-despair I had been thrown into by my visitor, a vestige of reason still remained in my mind. After all he must know her and his own concerns better than I could. His question seemed to stop my breath. ‘She is in my house,’ I said.
‘You are too charitable, Mrs. Mulgrave,’ he answered harshly. His voice sounded loud and sharp to me after the subdued tone in which we had been speaking, for we were the only two living creatures visible on the Green. Everything was quiet around us, and the night beginning to fall.
‘I did not mean to be charitable,’ I said, feeling that there was, without any consciousness of mine, a tone of apology in my voice. ‘I did not expect — what has happened. I meant her to leave me — next day.’
‘She will never leave you as long as you will keep her and give her all she wants,’ he said, in the same sharp, harsh voice.
‘Then Heaven help me!’ I cried, in my confusion, ‘what am I to do?’
He seized my arm, so that he hurt me, in what seemed a sudden access of passion. ‘It will teach you not to thrust yourself into other people’s concerns, or meddle with what does not concern you,’ he said. He had come quite close to me, and his face was flushed with passion. I think it was the only time I was ever so spoken to in my life. The effect was bewildering, but I was more surprised than afraid. In short, the curious shock of this unexpected rage, the rude, sudden touch, the angry voice, brought me to myself.
‘I think you forget yourself, Mr. Reinhardt,’ I said.
Then he dropped my arm as if the touch burned him, and turned away, and shook, as I could see, with the effort to control himself. His passion calmed me, but it swept over him like a storm. He muttered something at length, hurriedly, in which there was the word ‘pardon,’ as if he were forced most unwillingly to say it, and then he turned round upon me again: ‘I may have forgotten myself, as you say; but you force me to face a subject I would give the world to forget, and in the only way that makes it unavoidable. Good heavens! your amiability, and your Christianity, and all that, force me to take up again what I had put from me for ever. And you look for politeness, too!’
I did not make any answer: what was the use? At bottom, I did blame myself; I should not have interfered; I should have been firm enough and strong enough to take her to her home, wherever it was: I did not stand upon my defence. I let him say what he would; and I cannot tell how long this went on. I suppose the interval was not nearly so long as it seemed to me. He stood before me, and he smiled and frowned, and ground his teeth and discharged, as it were, bitter sentences at me. Englishmen can be brutal enough, but no Englishman, I think, would have done it in this way. He seemed to take a pleasure in saying everything that was most disagreeable. When he scowled at me I could bear it, but when he smiled and affected politeness I grew so angry that I could have struck him. Poor wretch! perhaps there was some justification for him after all.
‘Because you are a woman!’ he cried. ‘A woman! — what it is to be a woman! It gives you a right to set every power of hell in motion, and always to be spared the consequences; to upset every arrangement of the world, and disturb the quiet, and put your fingers into every mess, and always to be held blameless. That is your right. Oh, I like those women’s rights! I should have knocked down the man who had interfered as you have done; but, because you are a woman, I must come out of my quiet, I must derange my life, to save you from your folly. God in heaven! was that what those creatures, those slaves, those toys were made for? To interfere — for ever to interfere — and to be spared the consequences at any cost to us?’
I don’t know how I bore it all. I got tired after a while of the mere physical effort of standing to listen to him. I did not try to answer at first, and after the torrent began I could not, he spoke so fast and so vehemently. But at length I turned from him, and walked slowly, as well as I was able, to my own door. He paused for a moment as if in surprise, and then turned and walked on with me, talking and gesticulating. ‘Nothing else would have disturbed me,’ he said; ‘I had made my arrangements. How was I to tell that a fool, a woman, — would thrust herself into it, and put it on my honour as a gentleman to free her? What has honour to do with it? Why should I trouble more for a woman — an old woman — than for a man? Bah! Ah, I will be rude; yes, I am rude; it is a pleasure — it is a compensation. You are plain; you are old. You have lost what charms. Therefore, what right have you to be considered? Why should you not bear your own folly? Why should I interfere?’
‘Pray make yourself quite easy about me,’ I said, roused in my turn. ‘I did not appeal to you on my account, and anything you can do for me would be dearly purchased by submitting to this violence. Go your own way, and leave me to manage my own concerns.’
He stopped, bewildered; and then he asked with confusion, ‘What do you call your own concerns?’
‘Nothing that can any way affect you,’ I said, and in my passion I went in at my own gate and closed it upon him. I stood on one side defying him, and he stood on the other with confusion and amazement on his face.
‘You do not wish my help any more?’
‘No more. I shall act for myself, without thought of you,’ I said. He stood and gazed at me for a moment, and then suddenly he turned round and left me. I looked after him as he walked rapidly away, and I confess that, notwithstanding my indignation and pride, my heart sank. He was the only creature who could help me, and I had driven him away. I had taken once more upon myself the task which it had made me half frantic to think of. My heart fell. I looked back upon my house, which had been such a haven of quietness and rest for so many years, and felt that the Eden was spoiled — that it was no longer my paradise. And yet I had rejected the only help! I was very forlorn, standing there with my hand upon my gate under the chilly October stars, having thrust all my friends from me, and refused even the only possible deliverance. ‘I cannot allow myself to be insulted,’ I said to myself, trying to get some comfort from my pride, but that was cold consolation. I turned round to go in, sighing and ready to sink with fatigue and trouble; and then I suddenly heard moans coming from the house, and Mary calling and beckoning from the open door.