  Hour after hour David read on, dead to all things in the world but to the soul in pain in that book and to his hope that, if only once, she had written the name of her home. Every time he came upon that letter R (by which she meant Rigsworth) he groaned; and anon he looked with eyes of despair and something of fond reproach at her face over the mantelpiece. He read of her leaving the stage, because of the necessity that was now upon her, and then of the months of heaviness and tears. The worst trial of all in her lot seemed to be the constant separations, due to the tyranny of one “Mrs. S.,” who ever drew her husband from her. She wrote: I actually should be jealous, if she wasn’t old! From Paris to Homburg, from Homburg to Siena: and everywhere poor Harry dragged at her chariot-wheels! I should like to have one peep at her in the flesh, just to see what she is really like. Her photographs show a fat, cross-looking old thing, but she can’t be quite like that, with her really good affectionate heart. Has she not been the best of mothers to Harry? From the time she adopted him, he says, when he was a quite poor boy of fifteen, she has never been able to live a month without seeing him, even when he was at Heidelburg Mercenariness is not one of my faults, anyway. It is true that since I have ceased to earn anything, I do sometimes feel a wee pinch of scarcity, and wish that he could send me even a few shillings a week more. But if that was only all of my trouble! No, Mrs. S., may you live as long as Heaven wills. If I thought that in any part of me there lurked one little longing to hear of that good woman’s death, I should never forgive myself. Still, I don’t think it right of her to play the despot over Harry to the extent to which she carries it. A man thirty-eight years old has surely the right to marry, if he wishes to. If it hadn’t been for her, my marriage could have been made public from the first, and all that woe at R. would have been spared. Harry says that she hates the very word “marriage,” and that if she was to get the least scent of his marriage, she would cut him off with a shilling. He has run a risk, poor old Hal, for my sake, and if now and again he can’t help longing to be rich and free, it is hard to blame him. The day he is rich and free there will be a spree, Gwen! It is wrong to anticipate it, but see if I don’t make the street of R. glow, if not with the wine of France, at least with beer, and if I don’t teach a certain staid Miss Violet Mordaunt how to do the high-kick, girls! I wonder if all will be over by then, and if I shall go back to dear old R. not only a wife but a mother? Then again, a month later: What a thing! to be a mother! Sometimes the thought hits me suddenly between the eyes, and I can’t believe it is I myself—that same powerlessness to recognize myself which I had for fully a week after the marriage. But this is greater still, to have something which will be to me what I have been to my own mother. Gwen, For two months there was no entry, and then came joy that a son was born; but from the time of that birth, the diary which had before been profuse and daily became short and broken. A deadlock seemed to have arisen. “Harry” allowed one letter to be written home to tell of the birth; but would not permit any direct statement as to the marriage, nor any meeting, nor any further letter, until “Mrs. S.,” who was now “near her end,” should be dead. She wrote: To-day is six weeks since I have seen him, and altogether he has seen baby only twice. Yesterday’s letter was divided into “heads,” like a sermon, giving the reason why I may not go to him in Paris, why I may not write home, even without giving my address, and why he cannot come back yet. But it is a year now, and I have a mother and a sister. There is no certainty that Mrs. S. may not live ten years longer; and in last night’s letter I said that on the 4th of July, one month from now, if nothing has then happened to change the situation, I shall be compelled to risk displeasing him, and I shall go to R. That’s crossing the Rubicon, Gwen, and I’m awfully frightened now. He will call it defiance, and rave, I know. “Be bold, be bold, be not too bold.” But, then, I can always tame the monster with one Delilah kiss. I think I know my man, and Isn’t there something queerish in his relation with “Mrs. S.”? He stands in such mortal fear of her! I don’t think it is quite pretty for a man to have such tremors for any earthly reason. One day I asked him why he could not introduce me to her as—a friend? She might take a fancy to me, I said, since I am generally popular. He looked quite frightened at the mere suggestion of such a thing. . . . That last night, coming home from the theater, he said something about “Anna.” I asked him who Anna was. He said: “I mean Mrs. S.,” looking, it seemed to me, rather put out. I had never heard him call her Anna before. . . . My voice is certainly not what it was, and not through any want of practise, I’m sure. People so hopelessly worried as I am at present can’t sing really well. For the second time yesterday I wrote that I shall really go to mother after the fourth of next month, and I mean it, I do mean it! I owe something to her, too, and to myself, and I still don’t see what harm it can do to Harry. Poor dear, he is awfully frightened! “If you persist in this wild notion, you will compel me to take a step which will be bitter to you and to myself.” I don’t know what step he can mean. That’s only talk. I’ll do it just to see what happens, for one oughtn’t to threaten a woman with penalties which she can’t conceive, or her curiosity will lead her to do the very thing. It was an ill-understood threat that made Eve eat the apple, my Hal. “Thou shalt surely die”; but, not knowing what “to die” was like, she thought to herself: “Well, just to see.” There’s no particularly “bitter step” that he can take, and the time is really come for me to assert myself a little now. Men love a woman better when she is not all milk and honey. . . . It is near now, Vi! He has her chin, her hands, her dark grave eyes, her very smile. I am on the point at last of seeing him in her arms. How will she look? What will she think of me, the little girl whom she used to guide with her eye, beating her a hundred miles, an old experienced mummie while she is still a maid! I can no more resist it than I could fly! I shall do it! I am going to do Yes, it was “a bitter step” enough, poor Hal! God help you and me, and all the helpless!... I told poor Sarah just now: “I am not married. You only think that I am; but I am not. I have a child; but I am not married. Sarah, this is no fit place for a girl like you.” She thinks that I am mad, I know, but I keep quite sane and myself. I am only sorry for poor old Hal. He loves me and I loved him when I had a heart.... I thought of seeing the boy once more, but I haven’t the energy. I don’t seem to care. If I should care, or love, or hate, or eat, it wouldn’t be so horrible. But I am only a ghost, a sham. I am really dead. My nature is akin with the grave, and has no appetite but for that with which it is akin. Well, I will soon come. It shall be to-morrow night, just after Sarah is gone. But I must rouse myself first to do that which is my duty. I ought, as a friend, to cover up poor Hal’s traces, and yet I must be just to the boy, too. He ought to know when he grows up that, if his mother was unfortunate, she was not abandoned, and it is my duty to leave for him the proofs of it. But how to do that, and at the same time protect Harry, is the question, for I suppose that the police will search the flat. It is very wearisome. I doubt if my poor head is too clear to-day.... It shall be like this: I’ll hide the things somewhere where the police won’t readily find them. I’ll invent a place. Then I shall write to Vi, not telling her what is going to happen to me, but telling her that if in a few months’ time she will thoroughly search a certain flat in London, she will find what will be good for her and mother and the boy. And I shall give the address; but I won’t tell her exactly where I hide the things; for fear of the police getting hold of the letter and arresting Harry. And I will post it after Sarah is gone to-morrow night, just before I do it. That’s what I shall do. I’m pretty artful, my brain is quite clear and calm. I I’ll hide the diary in one place, the certificates in another, and the photograph of the boy’s father in another. That’s what I’ll do. Then I’ll tear up all other papers small. No, I’ll hide as well the letter in which he says that he is Mrs. S.’s husband, and that I’m not his legal wife; for some day I should like Vi to know that I did not take my life for nothing, but was murdered before I killed myself. Then I’ll do it. It isn’t bitter; it’s sweet. Death’s a hole to creep in for shelter for one’s poor head. Harry will be in England in five days’ time, so I’ll write him a letter to the Constitutional to say good-by. He loves me. He didn’t mean to kill me. He only told me in order to stop me from going home. It is such a burden to write to him, but it is my duty to give him one last word of comfort, and I will. Then, when all this world of business is over and done, I’ll do it. It isn’t bitter; it’s sweet. God, I couldn’t face them! Forgive me! I know that it is wicked; but it is nice, is death. Things are as they are. One can’t fight against the ocean. It is sweet to close one’s eyes, and drown. That word “drown” was the last. David closed the book with a blackness in his heart and brain. The reading of it had brought him only grief and little light for practical purposes. That “Mrs. S.” meant “Mrs. Strauss” he had no doubt, nor any doubt that “Harry” meant Henry Van Hupfeldt. Still, there was no formal proof of it. The name of her home, to learn which he had dared to open the diary, appeared only as “R.” The only pieces of knowledge which the reading brought him were, firstly, that there were a photograph and a letter still |
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