Sisters Part 33

"Of course not," she replied, all at sea as to what this portended, but jumping to the conclusion that he was going to be proud about the money. "It would be an odd thing if we took to being shy, at this time of day."

"It would, wouldn't it?" He cleared his throat again, and made a fresh start. "Look here, Francie--don't do that! Listen to me child--"

"I am not a child, sir. Allow me to inform you that I was twenty-nine last birthday." She was so pleased to think she was only twenty-nine, rich and free, with her life in her hands, and half a year-from thirty still, when she might have dragged on till she was old and grey, or in her grave! "And why am I not to do that? Since when have you lost your taste for kisses?" Then suddenly, with an anxious cry--"Guthrie!

darling! what is the matter with you?"

"Nothing," he said hastily--"nothing, of course, except that we must be serious and sensible, and--and talk things over quietly, dear. As you say, you are not a child. No more am I. We know the ropes, Francie, don't we? We've outgrown the delusions of boys and girls. We've had our experiences as man and woman--eh? You know what I mean. No need to mince matters--to go in for conventional nonsense--you and I. We can talk straight to each other at a time like this?"

As he laboured painfully to explain, without explaining, her face faded like a sunny landscape when a wet fog crawls over it. For, Francie though it was, she loved him--she loved him all she knew.

"Guthrie," she moaned piteously, "have you left off caring for me?"

"No, Francie. Of course I haven't."

"Have you--while I have been away, and in so much trouble--been putting another woman in my place?"

"Certainly not."

"Is it that you don't like to live on his money, Guthrie?"

"I should NOT like to live on it--decidedly not. But the fact is, I haven't given the money a thought." "Then why--why are you like this?"

"I'll tell you, Francie--I'll tell you plainly. It seems infernally brutal--but I'm sure you know I wouldn't say a thing to hurt you if I could help it."

"Oh, go on!"

There were red roses in her cheeks now, and a sparkle that was not all firelight in her eyes.

"It is this, dear--don't try to take your hands away, I am going to keep them; I must have you listen to me till I've quite done--it is this, Francie: Love, as we very well know--I mean our sort of love--is one thing, and marriage another--"

"WHAT? Oh, is THAT it? Ah, ah! I see now."

"Take your own case," said he, with a relentless air. "Haven't you proved it up to the hilt?"

"Proved what?"

"That marriage is a failure."

"Of course, marriage is a failure when it is blundered into as I blundered into mine, when I was too young and ignorant to know a thing about it. That is not saying it would be a failure now."

"It would be a dead failure, Francie. I am absolutely convinced of it."

"Because you have grown tired of me! Because somebody else has got hold of you behind my back! Because--oh, because you men are all alike, thinking of nothing but the amus.e.m.e.nt of the hour, sucking a woman's life-blood as if she were an orange, and throwing her aside like the useless skin--without honour, without constancy, selfish, heartless, treacherous--"

"Hush, Francie! Don't talk rubbish. I may be like other men--I've no doubt I am--but I'm not all that. When I make an engagement, I keep it.

When I take obligations and responsibilities upon me, I do my best to fulfil them. Most men do--decent men; but they never have justice done them in these cases."

"In these cases!" she echoed scornfully. "Everybody knows what their conduct is in these cases. The world is well used to it. Oh, I ought to have known--if I hadn't been the most incredible fool! It was not for want of warnings. But you seemed so different! The idea that you could play with a woman in this way--compromise her--change all her life, and spoil it utterly--and then back out! Oh! oh! Can you sit there and tell me that you have incurred no responsibility in your dealings with me, Guthrie--making me love you as I did--making me a bad woman--unfaithful to my good husband--the most honourable, the most trustful of men--"

"Did I do that? Honour bright now, Francie."

"Oh, this is too much!" she burst out furiously, springing from her seat, and being dragged back by his iron grasp of her hands. "Let me go, sir! I have had insults enough--and in my own house--with no husband to protect me--"

"Sit down," he commanded. "And for G.o.d's sake don't--don't go on like that! I can't stand it. I am not insulting you, dear--not wilfully insulting you--not more than I am forced to. I only want us both to understand the case as it is; surely you and I are not afraid to speak out--to face the truth? You are not crying, Francie?"

"No, no! Indeed, I'm not! Don't you flatter yourself! I am not hurt, and I'm not the sort of person to go begging a man to marry me, either.

I don't think--I really DON'T think that I am QUITE so poorly off as all that comes to." Here she laughed, but only for an instant. "If you were to go down on your knees before me, Guthrie, I would not have you now, after the things you have said to me."

The statement calmed and strengthened him. He felt able to say the rest.

"Quite right, Francie. Dozens of men will come courting you as soon as you go out again, and any one of them will make you a better husband than I should have done; but not a better friend. I hope you will always remember that."

"Many thanks. Will you be so very kind as to release my hands, Captain Carey? They ache."

"One moment. I want to make sure of the last chance I shall get to explain--to tell you exactly what I mean--you, who are old enough, experienced enough, to understand. I don't want to defend myself, Francie--not at all. I am not the cad to say, 'The woman tempted me, and I did eat.' I don't blame you, dear--I don't blame anybody. A woman is a woman; and a lovely woman like you--well, the way things are managed in this world, I don't believe she can help herself. But look here, Francie, a man is a man too, and a good deal more so. If you were a girl, I wouldn't say this; but you knew--you knew what you were doing when you laid yourself out to be sweet and--and kind to a fellow, as you were to me. Did you take me for an old maid or a Social Purity Society? You know you didn't. A man does his best, but he's too heavily handicapped--I won't say by nature--perhaps by habit, which is second nature--the habit of generations, inherited in his blood--and his case is not on all-fours with your case. And especially when he is a sailor--so cut off--so deprived--Very well. And so it happened--as it happened. Never mind about the right and wrong. What's wrong today may be right tomorrow; and in any case, no arguing can undo what's done.

We'll leave that."

She sat before him, panting, and the roses in her cheeks were white.

Happily, the fire had grown a little dull by this time.

"For myself," he continued, speaking slowly, as if trying to think things out--"for myself, whether I ought to repent or not, I don't--I can't. Theoretically, I know it is always the man who is in the wrong, and I should have been foully in the wrong--I should be unfit to live--if you had been an unmarried girl, Francie--or if I had been the--the--"

"Oh!" she moaned bitterly, grasping his point of view, if not the plain justice of it. "But I have brought it on myself--I have only myself to thank. I made myself cheap, and must take the consequences."

"It is not that," he said kindly, but still feeling in his unsophisticated brain that it was. "I don't hold you cheap, my dear. I want to disabuse your mind of that idea, that I am throwing anything in your teeth. Good G.o.d, I should think not!--it would come ill from me. I have no conventional views about these things--none. But look here now: if you were my wife, I should never see you with another fellow without thinking--well, you know what I should think--and feeling myself like poor old Ewing--Oh, I AM a brute!" It was revealed to him all at once.

"Do--DO forgive me!"

"Pray don't apologise!" she cried, in a high, shaking voice. "It is best, as you say, to speak plainly--not to mince matters--especially as there is no one to call you to account for what you say."

"And it would be worse for you, ever so much," he continued earnestly.

"Having got into the way of--of this sort of thing--I'm afraid I might be tempted again--that I couldn't honestly promise--in short, the fact of the matter is that we are neither of us domesticated, so to speak--"

"There--that will do" she broke in, coldly furious, but with a volcano in her breast that threatened eruption and devastation shortly. "Will you let me go, Captain Carey? Or must I call my servants to my a.s.sistance? I have only servants now."

"Yes, yes"--and he released one hand--"I will, if you'll say you forgive me, Francie. I've made an awful mess of it, I know--"

They rose together, and the other hand was freed. It was the right hand, and she returned it to him immediately.

"Good-bye!" she said, between clenched teeth.

He held her tightly once more.

"May I come and see you again? May I write? I can say it better in writing."

"You have said all that needs to be said. There is no necessity to write. If you write to me, I shall return the letter unopened."

"But why? It is surely absurd for us to put on airs of dignity with one another. Francie, you don't mean us to part like this?"