Chapter XXIII NORMA'S HOUR

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SOMETHING had happened—something mysterious, quickening; a pulsation of the inmost harmonies of life. Its tremendous significance Jimmie dared not conjecture. It was to be interpreted by the wisdom of the simplest, yet that interpretation he put aside. It staggered reason. It was enough for them to have met together in an unimagined intimacy of emotion, to have shared the throb of this spiritual happening.

She was to be married in three days. He set the fact as a block to further investigation of the mystery. On this side his loyalty suffered no taint; their relations had but received, in some sense, sanctification. Beyond the barrier lay shame and dishonour. The two were to be married; therefore they loved. He disciplined a disordered mind with a logic of his own invention. It was a logic that entirely begged the question. Remembered words of Norma, “Do you think much love has come my way? Yours are the only lips I have ever heard speak of it,” fell outside his premises. They clamoured for explanation. So did the rich tremor of her voice. So did the lamentable lack of conviction in his reply. To these things he closed his intelligence. They belonged to the interpretation that staggered reason, that threatened to turn his fundamental conceptions into chaos. And past incidents came before him. During those last days in Wiltshire he had seen that her life lacked completion. That memory, too, disturbed his discipline. Fanatically he practised it, proving to himself that ice was hot and that the sun shone at midnight. She was happy in her love for Morland. She was happy in Morland's love for her. She had not identified with herself the imaginary woman of his adoration. She had not drunk in the outpouring of his passion. Her breath had not fallen warm upon his cheek. And the quickening of a wonderful birth had no reference to emotions and cravings quite different, intangible, inexpressible, existent in a far-away spirit land.

He was strangely silent during their homeward journey in the omnibus and the simple evening meal, and Aline, sensitive to his mood, choked down the eager questions that rose to her lips. It was only after supper in the studio, when she lit the spill for Jimmie's pipe—her economical soul deprecating waste in matches—that she ventured to say softly:

“I am afraid you'll miss the picture, Jimmie dear.”

He waited until the pipe was alight, and breathed out a puff of smoke with a sigh.

“Our happiness is made up of the things we miss,” he said.

“That's a paradox, and I don't believe it,” said Aline.

“Everything in life is a paradox,” he remarked, thinking of his logic. He relapsed into his perplexed silence. Aline settled herself in her usual chair with her workbasket and her eternal sewing. This evening she was recuffing his shirts. Presently she held up a cuff.

“See. I'm determined to make you smart and fashionable. I don't care what you say. These are square.”

“Are n't you putting a round man into a square cuff, my dear?” he asked.

She laughed. “Why should you be round? You are smart and rectangular. When you're tidied up—don't you know you are exceedingly good-looking, almost military?”

She was delighted to get him back to foolish talk. His preoccupation had disturbed her. Like Connie Deering, she was femininely conscious that something out of the ordinary had passed between Norma and Jimmie, and apprehension as to her dear one's peace of mind had filled her with many imaginings. He returned a smiling answer. She bestirred herself to amuse. Had he remarked the man in the omnibus? His nose cut it into two compartments. What would he do if he had such a nose? Jimmie felt that he had been selfish and fell into the child's humour. He said that he would blow it. They discussed the subject of noses. He quoted Tristram Shandy. Did she remember him reading to her “Slawkenbergius's Tale”?

“The silliest story I ever heard in my life!” cried Aline. “It had neither head nor tail.”

“That is the beauty of it,” said Jimmie. “It is all nose.”

“No. The only story about a nose that is worth anything,” Aline declared with conviction of her age and sex, “is 'Cyrano de Bergerac.'” She paused as a thought passed swiftly through her mind. “Do you know, if you had a nose like that, you would remind me of Cyrano?”

“Why, I don't go about blustering and carving my fellow-citizens into mincemeat.”

“No. But you—” She began unreflectingly, then she stopped short in confusion. Cyrano, Roxana, Christian; Jimmie, Norma, Morland—the parallel was of an embarrassing nicety. She lost her head, reddened, saw that Jimmie had filled the gap.

“I don't care,” she cried. “You are like him. It's splendid, but it's senseless. You are worth a million of the other man, and she knows it as well as I do.”

She vindictively stitched at the cuff. Jimmie made no reply, but lay back smoking his pipe. Aline recovered and grew remorseful. She had destroyed with an idiotic word the little atmosphere of gaiety she had succeeded in creating. She pricked her finger several times At last she rose and knelt by his side.

“I'm sorry, Jimmie. Don't be vexed with me.”

He looked at her, wrinkling his forehead half humorously, half sadly, and patted her cheek.

“No, dear,” he said. “But I think Slawkenbergius's the better tale. Shall I read it you again?”

“Oh, no, Jimmie,” cried the girl, half crying, half laughing. “Please don't, for heaven's sake. I've not been as naughty as that!”

She resumed her sewing. They talked of daily things. Theodore Weever's purchases. The faun—he was sorry to lose it after its companionship for all these years. He would paint a replica—but it would not be the same thing. Other times, other feelings. Gradually the conversation grew spasmodic, dwindled. Jimmie brooded over his mystery, and Aline stitched in silence.

The whirr of the front door-bell aroused them. Aline put down her work.

“It's Renshaw,” said Jimmie.

Renshaw, a broken-down, out-at-heels, drunken black-and-white artist, once of amazing talent, was almost the only member of a large Bohemian coterie who continued to regard Jimmie as at home to his friends on Sunday evenings. Jimmie bore with the decayed man, and helped him on his way, and was pained when Aline insisted upon opening the windows after his departure. Renshaw had been a subject of contention between them for years.

“He has only come to drink whisky and borrow money. Luckily we have n't any whisky in the house,” said Aline.

“We can give him beer, my child. And if the man is in need of half a crown, God forbid we should deny it him. Has Hannah come home yet?”

“I don't think so. It is n't ten o'clock.”

“Then let him in, dear,” said Jimmie, finally.

Aline went upstairs with some unwillingness. She disapproved entirely of Renshaw. She devoutly hoped the man was sober. As she opened the front door, the sharp sound of a turning cab met her ears, and the cloaked tall figure of a woman met her astonished eyes.

“Miss Hardacre!”

“Yes, dear. Won't you let me in?”

The girl drew aside quickly, and Norma passed into the hall.

“You?” cried Aline. “I don't understand.”

“Never mind. Is Mr.—is Jimmie at home?”

“Jimmie!” The girl's heart leaped at the name. She stared wide-eyed at Norma, whose features she could scarcely discern by the pin-point of gas in the hall-lamp. “Yes. He is in the studio.”

“Can I see him? Alone? Do you mind?”

In dumb astonishment Aline took the visitor to the head of the stairs, half lit by the streak of light from the open studio door. Norma paused, bent forward, and kissed her on the cheek.

“I know my way,” she whispered.

Jimmie heard the rustle of skirts that were not Aline's, and springing to his feet, hurried towards the door. But before he could reach it Norma entered and stood before him. Her long dark silk evening cloak was open at the throat, showing glimpses of white bare neck. Its high standing collar set off the stately poise of her head. She wore the diamond star in her hair. To the wondering man who gazed at her she was a vision of radiant beauty. They held each other's eyes for a second or two; and the first dazzling glory in which she seemed to stand having faded, Jimmie read in her face that desperate things had come to pass. He caught her hands as she came swiftly forward. “Why are you here? My God, why are you here?”

“I could stand it no longer,” she said breathlessly. “I am not going to marry Morland. I have cut myself adrift. They all know it. I told them so this evening. The horror of it was unbearable. I have done with it forever and ever.”

“The horror of it?” echoed Jimmie.

“Don't you think it a horror for two people to marry who have never even pretended to love each other? You said so this afternoon.”

He released her hands and turned aside. Even the deep exulting sense of what her presence there must mean could not mitigate a terrible dismay. The interpretation that staggered reason was the true and only one. He had been living in a dream, among shadow-shapes which he himself had cast upon the wall. Even now he could not grasp completely the extent of his heroical self-deception.

“There has never been any love between you and Morland? It has been a cold-blooded question of a marriage of convenience? I thought so differently.”

“Since when?” she asked. “Since this afternoon?”

“No—not since this afternoon.”

“If it had n't been for you, I should have married him. You made it impossible. You taught me things. You made me hate myself and my mean ambitions. That was why I hesitated—put it off till Easter. If I had n't seen you this afternoon I should have gone through with it on Wednesday. When I got home I could n't face it. He put some pearls—a wedding-present—round my neck. They seemed like dead fingers choking out my soul. At last it grew horrible. I said things I don't remember now. I could n't stay in the house. It suffocated me. It would have sent me mad. I think a cab whirled me through the streets. I don't know. I have burnt my ships.”

She stopped, panting, with her hands on her bosom. His exultation grew, and fear with it. He was like a child trembling before a joy too great to be realised, frightened lest it should vanish. He said without looking at her:

“Why have you come here?”

“Where else should I go? Unless—” She halted on the word.

“Unless what?”

She broke into an impatient cry.

“Oh, can't you speak? Do you want me to say everything? There is no need for you to be silent any longer.” She faced him. “Who was the woman—the picture woman we spoke of this afternoon?”

“You,” he said. “You. Who else?” There was a quiver of silence. Then he caught her to him. He spoke foolish words. Their lips met, and passion held them.

“Had I anywhere else to go?” she whispered; and he said, “No.”

She released herself, somewhat pale and shaken. Jimmie, scarcely knowing what he did, took off her cloak and threw it on the long deal table. The sudden fresh chill on arms and neck made her realise that they were bare. It was his doing. She blushed. A delicious sense of shyness crept over her. It soon passed. But evanescent though it was, it remained long in her memory.

Jimmie took her in his arms again. He said:

“You madden me. I have loved you so long. I am like a parched soul by a pool of Paradise.”

He took her by the hand, led her to his chair near the stove, and knelt by her side. She looked at him, the edges of her white teeth together, her lips parted. She was living the moment that counts for years in a woman's life. She can only live it once. Great joy or endless shame may come afterwards, but this moment shall ever be to her comfort or her despair.

He asked her how she had known.

“You told me so.”

“When?”

“At Heddon. Do you think I shall ever forget your words?” She laughed divinely at the puzzledom on his face. “No. You were too loyal to tell me—but you told Connie Deering. Hush! Don't start. Connie did not betray you. She is the staunchest soul breathing. You and she were on the slope by the croquet lawn—do you remember? There was a hedge of clipped yew above—”

“And you overheard?”

She laughed again, happily, at his look of distress. “I should be rather pleased—now—if I were you,” she said in the softer and deeper tones of her voice.

A few moments later he said, “You must give me back the portrait. I shall burn it.”

“Why?”

“You are a million times more beautiful, more adorable.” He asked her when she had begun to think of him—the eternal, childlike question. She met his lover's gaze steadily. Frankness was her great virtue.

“It seems now that I have cared for you since the first day. You soon came into my life, but I did n't know how much you represented. Then I heard you speaking to Connie. That mattered a great deal. When that man shot you, I knew that I loved you. I thought you were dead. I rushed down the slope and propped you up against my knees—and I thought I should go mad with agony.”

“I never heard of that,” said Jimmie in a low voice.

He became suddenly thoughtful, rose to his feet and regarded her with a changed expression, like that of a man awakened from a dream.

“What is going to be the end of this?” he asked.

Norma, for once unperceptive and replying to a small preoccupation of her own, flushed to her hair.

“I know Connie well enough to look her up and ask her for hospitality.”

“I wasn't thinking of that,” said Jimmie. “We have been like children and had our hour of joy, without thinking of anything else. Now we must be grown-up people. After what has passed between us, I could only ask you to be my wife.”

“I came here for you to ask me,” she said.

“I have no right to do so, dear. I bear a dishonoured name. The wonder and wild desire of you made me forget.”

She looked at him strangely, her lips working in the shadow of her old smile of mockery.

“That proves to me that it is your name and not yourself that is dishonoured. If it had been yourself, you would not have forgotten.”

Jimmie drew himself up, and there was a touch of haughtiness in his manner that Norma in her woman's way noted swiftly. In spite of his homeliness there was the undefinable spirit of the great gentleman in Jimmie.

“I am dishonoured. The matter was public property. I discuss it with no one, least of all with you.”

“Very well,” she said. “Let it never be mentioned again between us. I range myself with Aline. I shall believe what I like. You can't prevent my doing that, can you? I choose to believe you are the one thing God made in which I can find happiness. That's enough for me, and it ought to be enough for you.”

Jimmie put his hand on her shoulder, deeply moved.

“My dearest, you must n't say things like that.” He repeated the words, “You mustn't say things like that.” Then he was conscious of the warm softness on which his hand rested. She raised her arm and touched his fingers. It was a moment of deep temptation. He resisted, drew his hand away gently.

“There is another reason why it cannot be,” he said. “You belong to a world of wealth and luxury, I have been in poverty all my life. God forbid I should complain. I have never done so. But it is a life of struggle for daily bread. Aline and I are used to it. We laugh. We often dine with Duke Humphrey. We make believe like the marchioness. What the discipline of life and a sort of gipsy faith in Providence have made us regard as a jest, would be to you a sordid shift, an intolerable ugliness stripping life of its beauty—”

“Oh, hush!” she pleaded.

“No, I must talk and you must listen,” he said with a certain masterful dignity. “Look at you now, in the exquisite loveliness of your dress, with that diamond star in your hair, with that queenly presence of yours. Do you fit in with all this? Your place is in great houses, among historic pictures, rare carpets, furniture that is invested with the charm of an artist's touch. The chair you are sitting in—the leather is split and the springs are broken.” He was walking now backwards and forwards across the studio, fulfilling his task bravely, scarcely trusting himself to look at her. “Your place,” he continued, “is among the great ones of the earth—princes, ambassadors, men of genius. Here are but the little folk: even should they come, as they used to do: homely men with rough ways and their wives—sweet simple women with a baby and a frock a year, God help them! I can't ask you to share this life with me, my dear. I should be a scoundrel if I did. As it is, I have fallen below myself in letting you know that I love you. You must forgive me. A man is, after all, a man, whether he be beggar or prince. You must go back into your world and forget it all. The passion-flower cannot thrive in the hedge with the dog-rose, my dearest. It will pine and fade. We must end it all. Don't you see? You don't know what poverty means. Even decent poverty like ours. Look—the men you know have valets to dress them—when you came Aline was sewing new cuffs on my shirts. I don't suppose you ever knew that such things were done. Mere existence is a matter of ever anxious detail. I am a careless fellow, I am a selfish brute, like most men, and give over to the women folk around me the thousand harassing considerations of ways and means for every day in every year. But I see more than they think. Aline can tell you. I dare n't, my dear, ask you to share this life with me. I dare n't, I dare n't.”

He came to a stop in front of her; saw her leaning over the arm of the chair away from him, her face covered by her hands. Her white shoulders twitched in little convulsive movements.

“Why, my dear—my dear—” he said in a bewilderment of distress; and kneeling by her, he took her wrists and drew them to him. The palms of her hands and her cheeks were wet with miserable tears.

“What must you think of me? What futile, feeble creature must you think me? Heaven knows I'm degraded enough—but not to that level. Do you suppose I ever thought you a rich man? Oh, you have hurt me—flayed me alive. I did n't deserve it! I would follow you in rags barefoot through the world. What does it matter so long as it is you that I follow?”

What could mortal man do but take the wounded woman of his idolatry into his arms? The single-hearted creature, aghast at the havoc he had wrought, bitterly reproached himself for want of faith in the perfect being. He had committed a horrible crime, plunged daggers, stab after stab, into that radiant bosom. She sobbed in his embrace—a little longer than was strictly necessary. Tears and sobs were a wonder to her, who since early childhood had never known the woman's relief of weeping. It came upon her first as a wondrous new-found emotion; when his strong arms were about her, as an unutterably sweet solace. And the man's voice in her ears was all that has nearly been said but never been quite said in music.

Presently she drew herself away from him.

“Do you think I am such a fool that I can't sew?”

He sank back on his heels. She rose, helping herself to rise by a hand on his arm, an action wonderfully sweet in its intimacy, and crossed over to Aline's cane-bottomed, armless easy-chair. She plucked the shirt from the basket on the top of which Aline had thrust it, groped among the wilderness of spools, tape, bits of ribbon, scissors, needle-cases, patterns and year-old draper's bills for a thimble, found the needle sticking in the work, and began to sew with a little air of defiance. Jimmie looked on, ravished. He drew nearer.

“God bless my soul,” he said. “Do you mean to say you can do that?”

There was nothing she could not do in this hour of exaltation. She had found herself—simple woman with simple man. It was her hour. Her feet trod the roots of life; her head touched the stars.

“Sit in your chair and smoke, and let us see what it will be like,” she commanded.

He obeyed. But whether it was tobacco or gunpowder in his old briarwood pipe he could not have told. The poor wretch was mazed with happiness.

“Poor little Aline is all by herself upstairs,” said Norma, after a while.

“Heaven forgive me,” cried Jimmie, starting up. “I had n't thought about her!”


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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