The Sisters In Law Part 56

"I don't pretend that I've thought of you ever since. I've forgotten you for years at a time. But there have been moments when you have simply projected yourself into me and been closer than any mortal has ever been. You were there!

"I felt there was some meaning in those sudden secret wonderful visits of your soul to mine--I hate to say what sounds like sentimental rotting, but that exactly expresses it. They belonged to some other plane of consciousness. It takes war to s.h.i.+ft a man over the border if only for a moment. It kept me--lately--from ... never mind that now.

When I saw your eyes above that tiny yellow flame ... it wasn't only that your eyes are not to be matched anywhere ... it seemed to me that I saw myself in them, They came as dose as that! Laugh if you like."

He stood defiantly in front of her.

"G.o.d! You look as if you never had had an emotion, never could have one. But you had once, if only for a moment!"

"I have never had one since--for any one, that is. I hear the concierge. I'll tell her to set a place for you."

V

She left the room and he stared after her. Her words had been full of meaning but her voice had been even and cold.

She returned and asked: "Are you in any way committed to Gora Dwight?"

"No ... yes ... that is ... why do you ask me that?"

"Are you engaged to her?"

"I am not. But I came very close--that is, of course if she would have had me. She nursed me after I was wounded and ga.s.sed. She was a wonderful nurse and there was something almost romantic in meeting her again ... as if she had come straight out of the past. We had an extraordinary experience as you know. I was not in the least drawn to her at that time. You filled, possessed me."

He hesitated. But it was a barrier he had not antic.i.p.ated and it must go down. Moreover, it was evident that she wouldn't talk, and he was too excited for silence on his own part.

"She was there ... when a man is weakest ... when he values tenderness above all things ... when he does little thinking on either the past or the future.

"She has a queer odd kind of fascination too, and any man must admire a woman so clever and capable and altogether fine. Several times I almost proposed to her. But there is no privacy in wards. I was sent back to England and went to my brother's house in Hertfords.h.i.+re. It was then that you began to haunt me. She had rejuvenated that California period in my mind--resuscitated it ... but both express what I am trying to say. We had often talked about California and the fire. She alluded to you, casually, of course, more than once; but as I looked back I gathered that your marriage had been a mistake and that you had known it for a long time.

"She did not come to England until four months later, and then she was in charge of a hospital. I took her out occasionally--she was very much confined. I liked her as much as ever. But _I didn't want her_. It seemed tragic. There was one chance in a million that I should ever meet you again. Once I deliberately drew her on to talk of you and asked why you did not divorce your husband. She commented satirically upon the intense conservatism of your family and of your own inflexible pride. She added that you were the only beautiful woman she had ever known who seemed to be quite indifferent to men--s.e.xless, she meant!

But no woman knows anything about other women. I knew better!

"As I said it was rather tragic. To be haunted by a chimera! I liked her so much. Admired her. Who wouldn't? If she had been able to take me home, to remain with me, there is no doubt in the world that I should have married her if she would have had me.... I prefer now to believe that she wouldn't. Why should she, with a great career in front of her?

"No doubt I should have loved her--with what little love I had to give.

But those months had taught me that I could do without her, although I enjoyed her letters. Even so ...

"It was after she came to London that I felt I had to talk to some one and I went down, to the country to see Lady Vick-Elton Gwynne's mother.

She had founded a hospital and run it, and was resting, worn out. She is a hard nut, empty, withered, arid. Nothing left in her but n.o.blesse oblige. But there is little she doesn't know. She was smoking a black cigar that would have knocked me down and looked like an old sibyl. I told her the whole story--all of it, that is that was not too sacred.

She puffed such, a cloud of smoke that I could see nothing but her hard, bright, wise, old eyes. 'Go after her,' she said. 'Find her.

Divorce her. Marry her. That's where you men have the advantage. You can stalk straight out into the open and demand what you want point blank. No scheming, plotting, deceit, being one thing and pretending another, in other words ice when you are fire. Beastly role, woman's--'

I interrupted to remind her that it was twelve years since I had seen you; that you had thrown me down as hard as a man ever got it and married another man. There was no more reason to believe that I could win you now. Then she asked me what I had come to see her and bore her to death for when she was trying to rest. 'If you want a thing go for it and get it, or if you can't get it at least find out that you can't.

Also see her again and find out whether you want her or not, instead of mooning like a silly a.s.s.'

"The upshot was I made tip my mind to go to California as soon as I could obtain my discharge. It never occurred to me that you were in Paris. Then I was sent to Paris with the Commission. I have certain expert knowledge.... For some reason I didn't tell Miss Dwight.... I wrote her a hurried note saying that I was obliged to go to Paris for a few weeks.

"The night after I arrived I saw you at the Emba.s.sy. That finished it.

If I hadn't been sent back to England for some papers--twice--I'd have found you before this."

CHAPTER XI

I

The concierge announced supper. Alexina had brought food with her and the little meal was good if not abundant. The dining-room was very dreary, although warmed by the petrol stove. It was a long dark room, paneled to the ceiling, and the two candles on the table did little more to define their lineaments to each other than the flames of briquet and match.

The concierge served and they talked of the Peace Conference and of the general pessimism that prevailed. Same old diplomacy. Same old diplomatists. Same old ambitions. Same old European policies. An idealist had about as much chance with those astute conventionalized brains dyed in the diplomatic wiles and methods of the centuries as an unarmed man on foot with a pack of wolves.... At the moment all the other Commissions were cursing Italy.... She might be the stumbling block to ultimate peace.... As for the League of Nations, as well ask for the millenium at once. Human, nature probably inspired the creed: "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be," etc. "What we want" (this, Gathbroke), "is an alliance between Great Britain, and the United States. They could rule the world. Let the rest of everlastingly snarling Europe go hang." Elton Gwynne would work for that. He had already obtained his discharge and returned to America. He, Gathbroke, 'd work for it too. So would anybody else in the two countries that had any sense and no personal fish to fry.

II

When they returned to the salon he smoked. Alexina was thankful that it was cigarettes. Mortimer had made her hate cigars. If, like most Englishmen, he loved his pipe, he had the tact to keep it in his pocket.

It was she who reopened the subject that filled him.

"I feel sorry for Gora. Her life has been a tragedy in a way. Of course she has had her successes, her compensations. But it isn't quite everything to be the best of nurses, and I don't know that even writing could fill a woman's life. Not unless she'd had the other thing first.

I am afraid she'll never be very popular anyhow. There are only small groups here and there in America than can stand intellect in fiction.... It seems to me that she would make a great wife. I mean that. It is a great role and she could fill it greatly. I don't know, of course, whether she cares for you or not. I am not in her confidence. She is staying at my pension in Pa.s.sy and I saw her constantly for ten days before I came here, but she did not mention your name.... If she does she's the sort that would never marry any one else and her life would be spoilt. I don't mean to say she would give up, but she would just keep going. That seems to me the greatest tragedy of all....

"No! Why should there be any of this conventional subterfuge. I believe that she does care for you. I believed so long ago. I was jealous of her. I don't mean, to say that I was in love with you. I--perhaps forced myself not to be. It seemed too silly. Too utterly hopeless....

Besides I knew even then the danger of letting myself go ... of the unbridled imagination. Probably love is all imagination anyhow. French marriages would seem to prove it. But we--your race and mine--have fallen into a sublime sort of error, and we'll no more reason ourselves out of it than out of the s.e.x tyranny itself.... I don't see how I could be happy with the eternal knowledge that Gora was miserable--that she would be happy if I had remained in California...."

"I have just told you that I should have gone to California as soon as I was free."

III

The air between them quivered and their eyes were almost one. But he remained smoking in his chair and continued:

"I marry you or no one. A man well and a man ill are two different beings. In illness s.e.x is dormant. When a man is well he wants a woman or he doesn't want her. It may be neither his fault nor hers. But if she hasn't the s.e.x pull for him, doesn't make a powerful insistent demand upon his pa.s.sion, there is nothing to build on. I haven't come out alive from that shrieking h.e.l.l to be satisfied with second-cla.s.s emotions. I lay one night under three dead bodies, not one over twenty-five. I knew them all. Each was deeply in love with a woman....

Well, I knew the value of life that night if I never did before. And life was given to us, when we can hold on to it, for the highest happiness of which we are individually capable, no matter what else we are forced to put up with. Happiness at the highest pitch, not makes.h.i.+fts.... The horrors, the obstacles, the very demons in our own characters were second thoughts on the part of Life either to satisfy her own spite or to throw her highest purpose into stronger relief.

I'll have the highest or nothing."

"But that is not everything. There must be other things to make it lasting. Gora would make a great companion."

"Not half so great--to me--as you would and you know it. I hope you will understand that I dislike extremely to speak of Miss Dwight at all. If you had not brought her name into it I never should have done so. But now I feel I must have a complete understanding with you at any cost."

He dropped his cigarette on the table. He left his chair swiftly and s.n.a.t.c.hed her from her own. His face was dark and he was trembling even more than she was.